Mrs. Adcott curtsied again meekly, and went away with bent head, crying softly. For a moment the Vicar stood inert, — for a moment he lifted his pale face to the lowering sky which darkly threatened rain, as though in mute appeal, — then he signed to Stowey the sexton, who advanced at once and began the work of ‘covering in,’ or as he himself was wont to express it— ‘putting a warm quilt on a cold sleeper.’
“There worn’t no chief mourner to-day,” — he said, as he cast the loose earth rattling down upon Jennie Kiernan’s coffin; “Dan, he wor up an’ away ‘fore ’twas dawn, an’ his sticks o’ furniture went arter ’im at ten o’clock. There’s a men’s dinner on at the Brewery, on account of it’s bein’ Mr. Minchin’s birthday. Dan wouldn’t miss that if ‘e’d got twenty wives bein’ buried — he’s a new ‘hand’ at the Brewery, an’ of course they’ll drink ’is ‘elth!”
Everton said nothing. ‘Silent Stowey’ was not usually so communicative.
“Mr. Minchin’s birthday it is!” he went on, with a kind of inward chuckle— “That’s a fine thing for rejoicin’, ain’t it!” And he threw an extra large shovelful of earth into the grave. “He drinks ’is own ‘elth in water, an’ he’s kind enough to let his Brewery men drink it in poison!”
The Vicar let this satire pass without comment.
“Dan Kiernan has left the village for good, then, I suppose?” he said.
“Or for bad,” — retorted Stowey— “Ay! It seems like it.”
With this last remark he relapsed into his usual taciturnity. Everton watched him working for a while, and then rain beginning to fall, returned to the Vicarage and to the quiet of his own study. Here he made combat against his own sense of utter depression by writing a long letter to his wife, though he was not at all sure she would read it through. The charming Azalea was fond of asserting that letters ‘bored’ her, especially when she was expected to answer them. But he felt the necessity of expressing his thoughts to somebody, even though that somebody might be, as far as mental receptiveness was concerned, the merest nobody — so he penned an eloquent, tender, graceful and affectionate epistle, telling her everything he imagined she might wish to know, softening all that was gloomy or unpleasant in the Kiernan incident, and only dwelling particularly on the fact that Dan himself had now left the village to work at Minchin’s brewery, ten miles off, so that she need not fear any personal annoyance from him in her daily walks at home.
“Don’t stay away now unless you like,” — he concluded— “Think that a day without you and Laurence is to me longer than a year, and come back soon, for I am very lonely. I want you every minute, for life itself is too short a span in which to express how much I love you.” And he signed himself as usual her ‘devoted husband,’ feeling satisfied that his appeal would bring her back at once. In fact, when his letter was posted, he began to look up the possible trains by which she could return the very next day.
“She will be sure to come,” he said to himself— “When she knows Kiernan is out of the village, she will want to get home as quickly as she can.”
But in this he was mistaken. Azalea did not want to get home quickly by any means. He was indeed altogether unprepared for the ease with which she managed to exist without his company. She answered his letter and told him she was ‘so happy’ at the sea-side, and ‘Baby was so well, that it seemed dreadful to have to return to Shadbrook too soon!’
“I’m so glad, darling,” she wrote, in her pretty, characteristic running hand, “that the dreadful man Kiernan has gone out of the place — he was a horror! But he’s just the sort of brute that Minchin would like to have in his nasty smelly yards, — rolling casks about or driving a dray along. I should say he would do very well as a brewery hand, and as he will always be drunk, he will be quite a nice advertisement for Minchin’s Ale! Won’t he? Baby is so brown and lovely! — he makes the most beautiful sand forts, and actually finds shrimps! Just a few days longer, dear old Dick, and we will come home!”
He sighed as he finished reading the light, inconsequent school-girl sentences, — then he smiled.
“Poor little woman,” he murmured tenderly— “I daresay it’s very dull for her here — very dull! Even love itself is not always sufficient to lighten monotony. Love itself—”
Here he paused, and began to think introspectively as to the nature of love. Scientifically, it has been defined as ‘the law of attraction between the sexes,’ and if any estimate is to be formed by the conduct of the present-day man and woman in their marriages, it seems no more than this. But to Richard Everton it was much more. To him, love meant the sanctification of life. It does not mean this to the majority of men. Once, now and again, the Beatific Vision of the Ideal shines into the soul of a poet or other world’s dreamer, — but that it should descend from the high empyrean and dwell with a plain country parson, is a strange and unusual circumstance. Yet so it was, — and the perfect conception of perfect love which he cherished with such tender tenacity, made him a much greater man than he realized himself to be. Heroisms and martyrdoms in embryo were hidden beneath this central pure flame which dominated his existence, and the intellectual power that lay dormant within him was being steadily nourished and strengthened by many springs of bitter-sweetness which, unconsciously to himself, flowed through his whole being, though they often poured themselves to waste on the very small and limited plot of love’s garden-ground which his pretty wife with her graceful figure and charming face represented. And, moved by the unselfishness which always led him to consider her happiness more than his own, he resigned himself cheerfully to the loneliness her absence imposed upon him, determining to let her enjoy herself at the sea-side as long as she liked, without obtruding any personal complaint. Meanwhile, he went about his ordinary duties with redoubled energy, believing that if he mingled familiarly with his parishioners and showed no sign of constraint or embarrassment, they would open their hearts to him freely on the matter of the Kiernan episode, concerning which he felt there was much more to learn than had yet been told.
But in this expectation he was disappointed. The villagers were sad — not to say sullen. They received him everywhere civilly enough — but they were distinctly not in the humor to volunteer any confidences. And when Sunday came round he noticed that the attendance at church was much smaller than usual. This pained him considerably, — the more so as he felt himself to be innocent of any offense against his ‘little flock.’ In the vexation of his heart he spoke about this sudden falling away of his congregation to Dr. Brand.
“I cannot understand it,” — he said, wearily— “What have I done?”
Brand looked at him with a touch of compassion.
“Nothing!” he answered promptly— “That’s just it! You have done nothing! But the rustic, or let us say, the bucolic mind, has ideas of right and wrong which are completely the reverse of right and wrong as you and I conceive them, — and the result of this topsy-turvy view of things is that Shadbrook considers Dan Kiernan a deeply injured man!”
Everton gave a kind of hopeless gesture.
“So!” he ejaculated— “Is that the latest?”
“That is the very latest!” and Brand, who was thoroughly kind-hearted as well as eminently practical, laughed a little— “Don’t look so down in the mouth about it! You can’t weave fine silk out of raw hide, and these people’s sense of justice is as primitive as are their passions. They say Dan is a man, and can’t help being a man — Jacynth is a girl who likes men, and she took Dan just because he came handy — and why not? And they kept silence while the mischief went on, thinking that ‘least said, soonest mended.’ I confess I thought so myself. Then when — when,” — here ‘Dr. Harry’ hesitated delicately— “when it became necessary to tell Dan’s wife of her husband’s infidelity, why then — well! — then the poor woman died and got out of her trouble, and Jacynth ran off with another fellow, as was to be expected, — but Dan — Dan remains to bear the burden of having lost wife and sweetheart both
at once and together! Don’t you see? And thus, comfortably following their own line of argument, they conclude that after all Dan, with all his faults, is the one most to be pitied!”
The Vicar sighed. He was troubled, — but could not find words to express exactly the nature of his trouble.
“Nothing can convince these sort of folk of the true character of sin;” — went on Brand— “They are for the most part more barbaric than civilized, and their notions of life are not much higher than the notions of savages concerning their squaws and wigwams. No one realizes the utter impossibility of reasoning logically with them so well as a country doctor. When any affair occurs among them like this of Dan Kiernan and Jacynth Miller, it would be no use for me to tell them that it is a bad and immoral affair. They would only laugh at me. Some of them have no sense of morality or immorality — and you might talk to them for a year, and you would never make them understand. If you were to take the statistics or standard of morality in every village all over the British Isles, you would, with your idealistic views, be simply appalled at the result. Rural life is not always the most innocent — and the ‘sweet sylvan maid’ of the poet’s line may be, and often is, a very impudent minx. You must remember that in these later years, the current press has made a mock of marriage, — and as the daily halfpenny papers circulate everywhere, it is not surprising that the vices of the country keep pace with those of the town.”
Everton turned upon him quickly.
“Are you speaking seriously?” he demanded, with eager and sudden vehemence— “Do you mean to tell me that the teaching of the Gospel has no influence?”
Brand’s eyes grew sad and stern.
“I will not say it has no influence,” — he replied— “But it has not so much as it might have. We are living in very evil days, — and the Church does not seem strong enough to cope with its adversaries. Honestly speaking, I pity the clergy! For many years past they have been lax in their duties — they have taken things too easily — and the consequence is that they now find themselves unprepared for difficulty. Look at them! Men, educated at Oxford, Cambridge or other of the Universities, and brought up without the slightest intimate comprehension of the real, suffering, heart-broken world around them—”
“Heart-broken world!” echoed Everton— “That’s a melancholy phrase!”
“It’s a true one!” said Brand— “The only really happy human creatures in it are very young children, and even they are not exempt from pain. But for grown men and women who have to face all the countless miseries and struggles of life, what else is it but a heart-broken world? Especially if it is robbed of faith in God. The Christian religion was given to us to help mend the heart-break — has it done so? No — because its ministers will not allow it to do so. They construe its simple tenderness by the light of their own narrow and prejudiced minds — and those who should be comforted are left comfortless. In my profession I meet with cases of utter mental, moral and spiritual despair every day, — cases where both the Church and the resident clergyman have done their little best.”
“You are very eloquent,” — said Everton, with a touch of surprise— “You have evidently thought a great deal on the subject—”
“Pretty much so! Doctors think more than you might perhaps suppose. But in all my experience, I’m bound to say I have never had a dying patient whose condition was not made worse by the ministrations of the clergyman. Now” — and the doctor squared his shoulders and looked full into the face of his quietly attentive listener— “I tell you this unpleasant fact, plainly and bluntly, because I can see you’re a different sort of parson to most of your class. Holy orders are really ‘holy’ to you — and you evidently want to do the right thing. Well! — do it! — and never mind if you’re called names. It’s possible to preach Christ to humanity in the true way.”
“A way I hope I may find,” — said Everton, gently— “I shall not forget your words!”
“As for the villagers falling off in attendance at church,” went on Brand— “pay no attention to it. They’ll only sulk for a week or two. Like children, they’ll soon come out of the corner. The chief element of trouble has left the place — Jacynth Miller—”
“Yes — I wonder where she has gone?” Everton put the question quickly and with eagerness.
Brand glanced at him.
“Does it matter?”
“Oh, it matters nothing — but — the wreck of a young girl’s life—”
“She has wrecked it herself, if it is a wreck,” — said Brand— “You may consider her as ruined, — but she considers her fortune made. She has gone off with an actor — a fellow pretty well known for his questionable character and insufferable conceit — he gets up provincial ‘amateur’ dramatic societies, and touts for ‘county’ bumpkins that will fee him for training them to make asses of themselves on the stage. He snapped up Jacynth for her face and figure, and has got her a place, so I hear, at some London theater as a chorus girl. I shouldn’t wonder if she ends by becoming a peeress!”
“You jest,” and Everton’s brows darkened— “She has gone to a life of shame!”
“You think so — of course you would think so,” — here Brand smiled indulgently— “She doesn’t. Anyway she began the life of shame here — here, in apparently innocent looking little Shadbrook. And I repeat, — with her beauty and her cajoling ways, she will probably marry one of our jejune peers, who has no idea of a woman beyond her body. Virtue is out of date, — the odd marriages made by some of our modern men show that they have apparently ceased to care whether a woman is good or the reverse. Only the other day, a girl, who was brought up before a magistrate on a charge of willfully murdering her illegitimate child, had five offers of marriage before she left the Court! What can you make of that? I know plenty of good honest girls fit to be excellent wives, and never a breath of scandal has touched them — yet they don’t get one offer of marriage — much less five! What of a certain Duchess, none of whose children were born in wedlock, — and who, nevertheless, is a ‘leader of society’? The times are corrupt — and the best and most patient of us can only pray that some great revolution will break out upon us before it is too late, and cleanse the nation of its accumulated filth!” He spoke with strong feeling — adding— “It’s no good my getting on these topics — my thoughts brim over and I talk too much. But the days are ripe for another Peter the Hermit to preach a new and higher crusade. Of course if such a preacher came he would be laughed at, — he would be made the butt of the cheap newspapers, and the joke of the stable and the greenroom — but if he were a strong, and above all, a sincere man, he wouldn’t mind all that, — and he might turn back the tide of national disaster — even now!”
Everton thought over this conversation for days after it had taken place, — days that were rather more than usually productive of meditation, owing to his being so much alone. The little Roman Catholic priest, Sebastien Douay, came over to see him several times, his visits making a pleasant break in what to him was a long and irksome solitude — and the at first merely congenial acquaintance between the two men, began to ripen into a warm friendship. Douay was not only tactful and kindly, but he also was gifted with a cheerfulness of disposition so great as to make his presence eminently welcome and desirable in dull weather, a fact which he himself appeared to recognize, for he generally chose cold, blustering east-windy afternoons for cycling over to the Vicarage, sometimes in the very teeth of a strong gale blowing hard against him.
“I Jove the cold!” he would say— “I love the cross wind! They are good to fight with! Often I have much quarrel in my mind — quarrel with the world — quarrel with wicked human nature — quarrel with myself! And it is better to use one’s angry force against bad weather than against bad men! That is how your Mistaire Gladstone did, — he was often very angry, sans doute! — he must have wished to chop off heads — instead of that he chopped down trees! So wise of him! — to get rid of hot blood! It is what you call to ‘let off
steam’!”
Everton was often amused at the little man’s unruffled philosophy.
“I believe you are never out of temper!” he said to him one day— “You never seem to be annoyed or anxious or sorry about anything!”
Douay spread out his plump hands with a deprecatory air.
“Ah, you mistake!” he answered— “I am not of stone, my friend! — not all indifferent — no! But to be annoyed — why should I be? At what? For whom? For some one who thinks he troubles me? Then I give him pleasure by showing that he is of importance to me! Then again, — to be anxious will make me that I am not at all sure of God. This would be wicked — for I am sure of Him!” Here he shook his finger emphatically in the air— “Sure! Remember, in this age of mockery, to put so much to the credit of a leetle priest Roman Catholique. But, — to be sorry — ah yes! I am sorry all the hours of all the days! — sorry for others! — never for myself.”
“Never sorry for yourself!”-r-repeated Everton, thoughtfully— “You mean you have nothing to regret or to desire?”
“Nothing!” — and Douay’s eyes shone with a steadfast light— “Not now! In the old days, perhaps, — when I was young — then it may be that the love of God seemed cold and distant — and the love of life — and woman — seemed too near and dear! — but now — now I would not change my lot with that of any man! No — I have no desire and no regret — except sometimes for my leetle French parish, where I trained the children to love their prayers and their sweet thoughts of Heaven — for by-and-bye there will be no children left who will know how to pray — thanks to modern Governments! — but after all!” — and he shrugged his shoulders lightly— “They will continue to do without me — no man is missed anywhere more than a few weeks, — if so long!”
Everton was silent. His thoughts had jumped to a purely selfish and personal consideration — for he wondered if Azalea, supposing he should be parted from her for any great length of time, would miss him? The answer to this question in his own mind was so decisively in the negative that he almost recoiled from its emphasis. He would miss Her — he missed her now — every moment of every hour — but he could not flatter himself that his feeling was reciprocated. Yet she loved him — certainly she loved him. Then — what was love — ? The agreeable voice of Sebastien Douay interrupted his brief meditation.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 719
