Mr. Tasker's Gods

by T. F. Powys

  Mrs. Turnbull had given herself, as was the fashion in olden times, to her home. And her longing tears could never bring that old taste back again. Slowly the truth, bare, as it always is, came to her. Something terrible must have happened in her life when ‘the sound’ was carried away.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  A SUNSHINE HOLIDAY

  ‘ONE must do the right thing.’

  Besides this remark the Rev. John said:

  ‘Fools will take their own course, and what can you do with a chap who goes off the rails?’

  The right thing that came most naturally to these two brothers was to drive the black sheep out of the fold. What else could they do? How could Henry with his quiet manners be set to work in the doctor’s garden beside the gardener, who understood motor cars? How could he be allowed to clean the silver with ‘the dear girl’s’ butler?

  To prevent any foolishness on the part of their mother, any sign or symptom of a desire to give money to Henry, the doctor, acting by the everwise advice of John, explained to her one evening at dinner, while he wondered whether she would notice that he had given her the leg of the chicken, that he was ‘glad to say that Henry had found other work, and was most happy helping to feed the pigs and doing other duties with another of the small farmers on the heath, and that by his industry and his digging his presence there was very much valued, so much so that the farmer was glad to pay him a regular wage, even more than was necessary for his moderate wants.’ Mrs. Turnbull ate the leg of chicken without noticing where the breast went.

  There was a certain amount of truth in the doctor’s story. Henry, though still living with Molly Neville, went out sometimes to help the heath farmer in the hope of earning a little money, for which there was grave necessity. Alice’s illness had been a heavy drain upon Molly’s purse. The girl was still with them in the house, for her mother, naturally remembering the bread, refused to have so wicked a child home again.

  Certain weeks passed, and Mrs. Netley, one morning at breakfast in her neat villa at Portstown, happened to think that it might be well for her daughter Rose to visit the new tenant at their heath cottage. The new tenant had written to ask if she might put up another room against the south side of the cottage, where there was neither window nor door nor wood-shed.

  Mrs. Netley decided that it would be best for Rose to go and see about it. Besides, her daughter had been working too hard of late at the ‘saving of her sisters.’ The hard labours of Rose had given her a nasty cough, not downright enough to be ‘just a cold,’ but more than enough to worry her mother. The doctor’s sage remark was, ‘Nothing to worry about yet.’

  ‘It might be well,’ Mrs. Netley thought, ‘for Rose and me to live in the country for a time.’

  The farmer who lived near Mrs. Netley’s cottage on the heath let rooms. It was there that she thought Rose had better go after she had seen the new tenant at the cottage, and see what the rooms were like. So Rose and the faithful Maiden set off on the early down-train the next day, which happened to be Sunday, and therefore a holiday at the Bank. And at 10.30 this early spring morning, Mr. Malden and his lady left the train at Tadnoll and began their walk over the heath.

  Malden believed in Rose. He rejoiced in the month of June, and never forgot the game of chess. Farther back, he was dimly conscious of God, feeling that the month of June, Rose, and chess must have been made by Him. There was no doubt in his mind that any fellow who loved chess must be on the right road. That was the way big Malden understood the world.

  With Rose there, he intended to enjoy every step that day. Rose seemed to turn the whole heath into a girl. His work at the Bank calmed and steadied every day his joy in life. When his work was done, he rejoiced in his freedom. Work polished the surface of his appreciation, so that the slightest thing, a bud or an opening leaf, brought him all the joy he needed. It was nothing to him whether the rich exploited his powers, so long as they allowed him some time in which to go out into the fields or to enjoy a game of chess at his club. He was, there is no doubt about it, at heart a servant, a noble, contented, and trustworthy servant.

  But all the same he was a servant bound to the wheel, helping to hold up and keep going the tyrant’s chariot. The tyrant, when attacked, simply points to the big Maldens as the best and most moral type in the world. Without his help and the help of his kind the tyrants would have no chance at all, for a tyrant cannot rule without good servants.

  Malden enjoyed himself on the heath like a child. He followed the sly track of an adder to where he believed it lived in a crack in the ground. He watched the rush of foaming water near the mill, and threw a penny into the stream for luck. He filled his pockets with specimens of flowers to show to the manager at the Bank, a polite old gentleman whose interests in life were botany and money. He broke off some May-blossom and insisted on putting it into Rose’s hair, after which she could do no less than put up her face to be kissed.

  Malden stretched his long form over one of the heath dykes and peered down into the deep clear water. Just below him was a pike, about a foot long. All at once, fearing the great shadow above, it flashed away. Malden was delighted. It was the first pike that he had seen in the heath pools. That pike would be something to talk about over those columned and figured books.

  All around him the earth was yearning to yield up her charm and colour. He could not walk two yards without seeing something that he wished to look at nearer. There was the delicious delight of touching the flowers. He could hardly bear to leave the bush of May underneath which he had kissed Rose.

  Together they opened the cottage gate and knocked at the door. A lady, who had been reclining in a very pleasant-looking cushioned chair in the little garden at the side of the cottage, came to meet them and took them indoors, where a fair girl, who was somewhat nervous, gave them chairs. The lady made immediately a good impression upon Rose. She felt sure at once that she was one who walked on the hills. Malden was quite as pleased as Rose, but then he always expected a great many delightful surprises to happen, as they always did happen to him on Sundays.

  After a few minutes a quiet bearded young man, rather pale, entered the room and shook hands with them. It was quite natural that Malden should wander away with this new companion, and find within a few yards of the gate whole garlands of pleasantly boyish conversation. Malden’s enjoyment of a companion was never spoiled by the question ‘What does he do?’ that an Englishman usually puts to himself when he meets any one for the first time. Though he would glance, sometimes, a little curiously at a new friend, to find out as soon as he could whether, later on in the day, among the other pleasures, there might be the chance of a game of chess.

  The two men had wandered a few hundred yards along the white chalk lane when Malden all at once dropped on his knees. Henry did not mind, there was no reason why he should not pray there if he wanted to. But prayer was not at all in Malden’s thoughts. What he did was to pick up a narrow grooved pebble that had about its shape something of the look of a bishop. He was overjoyed to find that it would stand. Henry, who knew a little about chess, entered readily and eagerly into the new quest. And the two friends were at once very busy here and there in the path looking for pebble chessmen. Henry was lucky enough to find a stone that would do for a castle. He was so delighted with his find that he walked across to Malden, who was a little way ahead, to show it to him. After that they decided to concentrate their efforts upon pawns, for which piece they chose a special little round mottled pebble, and no other colour or size would do. Malden was greatly pleased with Henry, and they came back together to the cottage with their pockets full of curiously coloured and oddly shaped stones.

  While they were taking their walk, Molly had with great care divided the cushions equally between two chairs, so that both she and Rose might recline in comfort. Alice, without waiting to be asked, had gone off to the farm for eggs. Molly, when they were settled, spoke quite candidly about the relationship in which the dwellers in her house stood to o
ne another, and she said to Rose that ‘it was quite natural that Alice should sometimes look girlishly and thoughtfully at Henry.’ She surprised Rose by telling her that the people who lived in the villages would be very glad to burn the cottage over their heads, and that no doubt Mrs. Netley would shortly receive letters advising her to turn such deplorable ill livers into the road.

  Molly explained further to the astonished Rose, that to live quietly in the country without a motor car, or two little dogs, or a gun, was considered by the peasant of England a heinous offence for a lady or a gentleman to commit. To be popular, they should join the others in wounding birds or holding a ferret over a rabbit’s hole. She explained that in her case, there were other reasons why the people of the countryside hated her, regarding her, as they did, as a murderer and a witch. As to Alice and Henry, they had come to her for protection, ‘because, poor children, they had nowhere else to go.’

  She was poor: that fact in itself was quite enough to set the little boys throwing stones at her window. She had taken in Henry, who ought to have gone off in the steerage to America. And what business had she to give shelter to Alice, who, by the approved law of God and her neighbours, should have drowned herself on the heath, becoming a scandal and a joy to every one?

  Rose did not hide her surprise. How could she have known how deeply the manners of the country become the people who wear them? Molly explained that the pretty cottage was looked at by the people who came that way and knew the story, as the abode of unlicensed wickedness. Henry had done his best to remedy their poverty by aiding, as Dr. George had truthfully told his mother, the heath farmer. But beyond the gift of a few eggs that knowing gentleman had been unwilling to go. Besides Henry, Molly said, there was Alice to think of. And the two could not help looking at each other.

  Then Rose told Molly how she and her mother were coming to stay near, because they wished to study, at first hand, the kind of life the people led in the country. She knew a good deal, almost too much, about the affairs of the town. Rose said she wished to know how the cottage women were treated, and what the men did for their homes, and how the farmers and the others who held the money-bags treated the poor. Besides all this, she was anxious to see how the popular feeling would express its distaste to Miss Neville and her companions; and if the people from the two villages were to come and snarl, Rose was quite prepared to snarl too and show her little white teeth at them.

  Thus the golden bond that must at last chain all rebels together, whatever their habits of life, was cast around the two women who sat together looking up out of the valley towards the hills.

  Malden, in his way, in his own pet manner, had found a friend. Henry, who for all he knew or cared, might have just stepped out of Maidenbridge prison, could play chess. Malden had already pencilled out a chess-board upon a portion of deal plank, and each player moved with dainty deliberation, after looking for inspiration across the moors.

  When it was time for Rose and Malden to go to the station, they expressed themselves most delighted with their day. Rose, eagerly, arranged for the hire of the room at the farm, while big Malden splashed in the marsh and filled both hands with Yellow-flags.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  TWO CLERGYMEN

  WHEN the Rev. John Turnbull accepted the living of Shelton he told the people, by letter, that ‘he hoped to enter as a friend into their quiet lives, cheering them in their sorrows, and sharing their joys. He looked upon the village of Shelton as his home. He prayed that his ministrations among them might be blessed, though he knew that he could not be as good a man as his father. He hoped, he said, to follow in his steps.

  ‘He was sure that the helpmate whom he had married would join with him in bringing to their homes all the comfort that they could. A village community, he very much wished to impress this upon them, was bound together by the bonds of labour and love. There was the squire, who took the rents and concerned himself with the administration of justice; the priest gave spiritual consolation to all the people; the hard-working farmer willingly provided employment for the industrious labourer; each gave up to each a proper proportion of his time. He was coming there to take his father’s place, hoping that he might have God’s blessing and the people’s love, so that he could with gladness perform the duties of his calling.’

  A printed copy of this letter was sent to each of the householders whose names the Rev. John could remember, and those who did not receive one were not a little offended by the omission. A week or two after this letter ‘the dear girl’ made her appearance, showing herself in a new white motor, with two long-haired dogs, a chauffeur, and a footman. She came there to see ‘if the place would do,’ and she thought it ‘rather small.’ To deal with its smallness she wrote a cheque to a Maidenbridge builder.

  This cheque produced groups of working men, each an artist in his own line. While some attacked the house, others laid out new lawns and trampled upon the quiet earth which had been cultivated by Henry.

  ‘The dear girl’ had managed her life quite as she had wished to. She believed in the most simple of all enjoyments, that of being above some one else. She had, however, not been quite pleased until she had become a wife to the Church. In that manner might be washed away the last vestige of the glass-bottle trade. The town had not been quite the right thing. In the town there had been too many like herself. She preferred that her money should glitter and shine upon the grey surface of the country in order to make an impressive picture of herself to the common people.

  ‘The dear girl’ had married the Rev. John because he was part of the country idea. His place was to be fed, to be obeyed by the servants, to be always there at breakfast with a well-washed, bacony look, shining manicured nails, and great pointed dancing pumps, making ready to read the morning prayers.

  ‘The dear girl’ battered at the wooden vicarage gate, and it became iron. Her cheque could do more than that. It turned out all the odds and ends, all the flotsam and jetsam that had been washed or driven by rains and winds within the Turnbull walls. One by one, white-faced cringing creatures, amongst them ‘Funeral’ from the dust of his tool-house, made their escape. Poor ‘Funeral’ drifted here and there, hustled about, until at last he was forced, through the taunts of his wife, to become a jobbing gardener in the town.

  Often two events of the same nature happen together, and no farther off than South Egdon vicarage there was the same kind of change proceeding. The Rev. Edward Lester had, early that spring, married Miss Rudge, because her father was kind enough to die, like Shakespear, of a surfeit, though two London doctors were in attendance. Thus favoured, in process of time Mrs. Lester arrived at South Egdon vicarage with her two little dogs, tailor-made coat and skirt, brown boots, and a long whip. She patted the dogs, walked round and condemned the place, the legal repairs of the Nevilles being, in her eyes, quite inadequate. She decided on her plan of change more impetuously than ‘the dear girl’ had done. The wood was to become a lake with an island in the middle, the kitchen garden a lawn, and the front drive a Swiss rockery, while the high road was to be moved three hundred yards away to accommodate those vulgar plebeians who were still rude enough to want to walk there. Her taste in alteration darted here and there like a swallow. Almost everything about the place had to be taken up and put somewhere else. The red tiles of the back yard must be replaced by paving stones and the garden hedge by a brick wall. Feeling a drop of rain, she looked upwards and saw that the chimney-pots had not the proper glaze. The front of the house, she felt sure, looked the wrong way. It should, like every Godly parsonage, face the church and show its back to the village.

  During the period necessary to these changes, the Rev. Edward Lester and his wife lived at Maidenbridge, the Rev. Edward being motored to his service every Sunday. Mrs. Lester used sometimes to go and take her place in the church too, just to please him and to show herself as a coming shining light to the people. She received the Holy Communion as a priest’s lady should, all by herself in state, before the on
e or two farmers’ wives who attended were called up.

  The two aspiring young clergymen, who lived so near to each other, and whose wives possessed incomes that no successful munition dealer or jam merchant would have been ashamed of, were, considering all the difficulties of life, very pleased with themselves. They followed the right path, the path wherein lies human happiness. They were the blessed ones of the earth, the pleasantly fat kine for whom the world is made. In their growth, nature blew them out as the hawker blows out the little red bladders he sells to the children on the sands.

  By the time that the delightful month of June had sung itself into the Shelton valley, the Rev. John Turnbull and his lady were settled in Shelton vicarage. Mr. Duggs, walking past just to see how things were going, could not believe his own eyes. It was all so different from the times of the Rev. Hector. Mr. Duggs, noting the changes, remembered the heavy weight that he had helped to carry out of that drive, and that he had seen set so snugly under a pleasant canopy of good chalk in the Shelton churchyard.

  Mr. Duggs, walking on, happened to be just by the church steps when the cart that brought the stone cross for the Rev. Hector’s grave arrived. He walked up with the men to see them put it at the head of the grave. Upon its face when it was got upright, he read the promise of the great awakening. From the good upland situation of the grave, Mr. Duggs studied the alterations at the vicarage, and fell to wondering what would happen next in the world. He knew that workmen had gone up there for many days, and now he beheld the result. Leaving the tall white cross, he walked back very mournfully through the village, stopping now and then sagely to shake his head. Getting at last into his own cottage, he delivered his one and only description of the changes to his wife: