Mr. Tasker's Gods

by T. F. Powys

  ‘They’ve give thik wold brew tub to Mr. Tasker.’

  The arrival of a household of such wealth set all the finger-tips of the people of the village itching for their share. They were quite prepared to touch their hats to the very shadow of the lady or of her dogs. Some half-dozen or so began to attend the church who had never entered it before, moving crestfallenly up the path, impelled by a far-fetched idea that if they went in and sat with a book in their workworn hands, some coins might, with the blessing, fall upon them. There was always the chance, the possibility that the Rev. John after preaching from the text, ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters,’ might follow it by throwing out handfuls of shillings and pennies among the people. There was no knowing in what way the golden ship of the vicarage might spring a leak.

  The vicars of Shelton and South Egdon lived so like each other that they might have been brothers. Together they rightly deserved the blessing of a religious Church and the praise of their fellow-men. They received likewise proper acknowledgment from a grateful world, that looked up to them as being able to make any village happy—if they chose to give away enough money.

  They were, these happy frocked ones, eating their dinners through their own efforts. At every turning they had most carefully chosen the road that led to the greatest amount of pleasant sensation for the body. A little outing between times provided just the right and merry appetite for their meals.

  One day the two clergymen confided to one another, after a little dinner given by ‘the dear girl,’ how the days went with them.

  ‘Time simply swims away,’ the Rev. John was saying. ‘I can hardly remember what I do in the day. We have breakfast rather late, you know, a habit of the dear girl’s. And after breakfast, well, one must read the Times, and then a pipe or two, and after that—I’m always awfully astonished how time flies—it’s the gong for lunch! After lunch I just take a tiny nap in the study. The afternoon is rather dull in the country; somehow or another it bores me to hear the clock strike four. Some people, I know, despise afternoon tea; the dear girl and I take the chance that little break gives us to talk about my village work. She really gives me all the help she can, you know. We dine at seven: perhaps a little early, but one does get hungry in these wild fields, we become almost like farmers. Only, dining so early hardly gives a chance for a motor run after tea—one can’t be a sloven over meals. Suppose we finish dinner by half-past eight, what time is there left to read? No one sits up after ten in the country, except servants.’

  The Rev. John held a glass of port to the light.

  The common people of the village were the very things that the two clergymen’s ladies wished them to be: they were the dull background in the picture in which they shone out as queens. How kind the ladies were to the poor! How kind the ladies felt when they spoke to a cottage woman! How they prided themselves on the way they could come down to the lowly and be one with them, talking quite naturally about scarlet fever and the price of sugar, or whether Lyons’ tea was better than Lipton’s.

  It was a pleasure to be taken, as Mrs. Edward Lester was, by a smallholder to see his calf. She stepped in the dung just as though she thought it was plain untrodden straw. What a sweet white spot the calf—it was intended for veal—had upon its forehead. It was so homely, the way it touched her hand with its nose. The ladies were always so affable, so charming, and dressed so suitably, that it was a real pleasure for a tired labourer, coming home from his work, to meet them and touch his hat.

  This was a vision to be remembered, even when the labourer reached his own cottage which a newly lit fire had filled with smoke. And why should he not have the little dogs in his mind’s eye while he waited and watched a dirty sloven of a woman, his wife, bring out the bread and heel of cheese, explaining rather ungenerously that butter was much too dear for her to buy any for him? And then, thank goodness, he had the lady to think of!

  The people of the villages were respectfully pleased with their pastors. Their chief pleasure in the Rev. John began in this wise. It once happened, by some almost impossible error, that the proper replenishing of the vicarage sideboard decanters had been overlooked when the last order had been sent to the stores. That was why an extremely valued order had been received by the ‘Soldiers’ Return’ for a dozen of whisky. This order being placed so locally, pleased not only the innkeeper but the people; even the little boys who rolled on the green knew about it. It brought to the people’s mind the good old days when the clergy used to find time to drink, when a farmer could bleed a sheep to death for pleasure, when all the children of a labourer were allowed to die of smallpox.

  The special pleasure that the Rev. Edward Lester gave to his people was of another kind. He gave out a notice in church that he himself would go the round of the village to collect a few ‘widows’ mites.’ He did not wish the people to give more than they could afford. The gifts were for a ‘poor clergy’s motor fund.’ ‘So many poor vicars,’ he said, ‘have no proper way of getting about the country roads.’

  What the clergyman collected for, no one cared a halfpenny. What they noticed was that even Mrs. Lester lowered herself to flutter round, going in and out and here and there for subscriptions. They saw the Rev. Edward, with his shining face, write down in a notebook that Mrs. Mells had given fourpence, just as carefully as the baker would have done.

  The people were gratified to see the way their minister of the Gospel walked down the main street, after a light lunch, smiling here and there at the children, even chucking one remarkably plain little girl under the chin, and giving her a penny. The Rev. Edward Lester smiled, as he walked, at the cottage chimneys. They were quite low enough for him to view without holding his head very high.

  As he walked along, with his dark trousers neatly turned up, he noticed a small boy, who was, so he said, searching for a yellow frog that had hopped into the ditch. Mr. Lester leaned over, and peered and smiled through his shining glasses. He prodded about with his walking-stick, causing the frog to jump into the road. He wished to help the boy with his sport. The boy pounced upon it, and tying its leg with a bootlace, flicked it into the faces of the girls he met, much to their mutual delight. To finish up, he trailed the frog along the road before a large black cat.

  Seeing the frog jump safely into the road, without waiting to see what the boy did with it, the Rev. Edward Lester passed on his way laughing.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  A COUNTRY WORD

  IT is the instinct of wolves, if good fortune brings a lamb into their path, to devour it. No doubt they prefer, for the pleasant flick to their appetite, that the lamb should try to run away. When such a pack of wolfish creatures have once started to scent out a victim, they never give over the trail until the victim is devoured, or, by good fortune, escapes.

  It was this kind of hunt that Neville had heard coming behind him, and though it had had to give up the chase at that corner where were the nettles, it had started a new cry after that ‘harlot’—as they called Miss Neville. Neville had given them, through his housekeeper, plenty of fiction and droll stories, but they could never forgive or forget the way their late vicar had looked at them, and the way he forgave them their hatred. All the pleasure they had ever got out of him, besides the droll stories, was an inquest. The people felt it a pity that he should have escaped their teeth so meanly by getting himself underground. There was still, however, his sister living near.

  In diverse ways and from different tongues, the Rev. John heard the snarling sounds uttered about his brother Henry. One morning he heard a new accusation, delivered, in really worried tones, by ‘the dear girl,’ who had heard it from the woman up the lane. ‘The dear girl’ even went on telling her story while the maids and footmen sat on their row of chairs waiting for their master to begin to read the fourth chapter of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians. ‘The dear girl’ ought to have stopped when the servants came in, but she really felt that something must be done about Henry.

  After prayers
and breakfast, the Rev. John entered his study. There was something that morning that he had to do, and the interval between meals being so short, his expectant ears already almost caught the sound of the gong; he must needs begin to do it at once. He lit a cork-tipped Turkish cigarette. When the luncheon gong sounded his letter was finished.

  Some might regard the letter he wrote as holding up the ideal of rural virtue a little too high, but the truth is and always will be a queer affair to take hold of, not only in the country but everywhere.

  Shelton Vicarage, August 9th.

  Dear Henry,—Although I am particularly busy this morning, I must write a letter to you without any further delay, and I must speak plainly, and come to the point at once.

  I advise you to go to Canada.

  From the experience that you have already had in that country, you must quite well know the way to look out for an opening when you get there. Your dear mother, who is living happily and so quietly with George, would, I feel sure, help a little in the matter of your passage, and George and I will try to pay the remainder, though it will be a hard pull for us.

  I am quite sure that you are strong enough to attend to a fruit farm, or even a dairy. A hard-working young man can do, so Mr. Tasker says, a good deal in that way.

  I must, of course, leave the matter of going to Canada to you. As I am only your brother, I cannot force you to do the right thing. You will, I know, go your own way in the world.

  My dear wife and I most earnestly pray you to leave Miss Neville. The village people, both here and at South Egdon, are talking about you. You know what that must mean to me. They say that if they lived like that—a woman said so to my wife this morning—she said if any of her class lived like Miss Neville, Mr. Acton, the landlord’s agent, would turn the offending one into the road.

  To me this matter is very serious. I pray you to consider the moral tone of Shelton, where your dear father laboured, and South Egdon, that is now, I am glad to say, in such good hands. To live in sin, as you are doing, adds to the burden of our already hard task with the poor. Surely the thought of Father must come to you at times.

  I trust that you will, anyhow, think the matter over, and if you decide to meet our wishes, we will at once inquire of the ship agents about the cost of a steerage ticket.—I remain, your ever affectionate brother, John Turnbull.

  A wily pryer into the human soul would perhaps suggest that the Rev. John was now become more old in days and more orthodox in the middle order of the Church, perhaps even stouter in his faith as well as stouter in his belly. All of which guesses may be equally true.

  It was a fortunate thing that when the postman carried this letter to the cottage on the heath, Rose Netley, who had settled in at the farm, should have been there for an early lunch. Henry opened it, and noticing its sermon manner, at once handed it to Molly, who passed it on to Miss Rose.

  Rose read it in the proper spirit, taking it as a huge joke. She laughed immoderately over it. Although Rose laughed, she by no means despised the forces of the enemy. She only wished to show by laughing that she was not afraid of them, and to give confidence to the others.

  And now the spiritual life of the two villages proceeded in its gently devout circles. They were rightly proud of the way their churches were filled on Sunday.

  The people of South Egdon began to be very familiar with their vicar. He was always walking about amongst them. And since those blessed days when he had collected their money, he was always welcome to go wherever he wished.

  The proper time had now come for the clergymen in the two villages to ferret out of their holes candidates for the Confirmation that the Bishop was to hold at South Egdon. As with everything else, the villages went together in this programme. The two vicars during their longest interval sought in the cottages for boys and girls who had completed their education and were old enough to say ‘bloody’ or to be nurse-maids.

  The Rev. John fished in his cure, and the Rev. Edward in his. The Rev. John landed the greater number of fish, and he prided himself that it was his grand manner of talking to the people that did it.

  The next thing that had to be done was to instruct the candidates, and the Rev. John had to get both the boys and the girls into one interval. He could not possibly spare two. By squeezing in the girls at five-forty, and by hurrying out the boys at half-past six, he had just time to get ready for his own dinner at seven. Inside the vicarage the children were very good, docile, and meek. And no wonder! They had to report all about the furniture to their mothers. They might be asked, not by the Bishop but by their more earthly father, exactly what there was on the sideboard, or what kind of coal went into the fire. When the end of the lesson came they all knew the dining-room by heart. They had got used, besides, to the sound of the Rev. John’s voice, it seemed to help them to remember the pictures. Of course the Bishop was much too wise to ask any one a question.

  His Lordship’s other important duties compelled him to hold the service in the morning. The Shelton girls found to their sorrow that it was all over and themselves home before dinnertime. They had the whole afternoon at home to talk about one of their companions who, from what they knew about her, certainly ought not to have been there at all, ‘unless,’ as one mother put it, ‘the good Bishop wished to kill two birds with one pat on the head.’

  The Shelton boys were left to come home as they liked, it had been trouble enough to get them there. Several of them loafed out toward the heath, hoping, as it was a cold day, to stone to death a blackbird, or, with luck, even a wren.

  Through years so many that no man can count them, these boys had been arrived at. Out of the dim background of immortal nature they had come, and their ever-recurring answer to the mystery beyond them and to the depths behind was the one word ‘bloody!’ That was their right word to use when, after long waiting through everlasting years, at last the wonder of thought was with them—‘bloody!’

  ‘Dear children’—that was the way the Bishop had begun his address. The dear children loafed out on to the heath, killing, on their way, a thrush and a hedge-sparrow. The earth that had brought them forth remained pensive about them.

  Out on the heath, near where they passed, a solitary figure stooped, cutting gorse. The boys watched while this lonely one made the bundle ready to carry. The boys, so lately confirmed in their attachment to the Church, recognized the figure. It was Henry Turnbull. All the children of Shelton knew about him. They knew about his wicked life. Their mothers had often used a word to express the sin they supposed that he was guilty of, and these dear children, so sweet from under the Bishop’s very hands, likewise named this sin after the approved Shelton manner.

  When Miss Neville had first gone over to the heath, she had brought the little furniture that she needed from Maidenbridge. There was only one piece that she had taken from her brother’s house, and that happened to be a small bed. This bed had been conveyed in open daylight, through Shelton towards the heath, naturally going up Mr. Tasker’s hill. Having once seen the bed, and a great many of them did see it, the village mind began to plod in sweet thought about it, reasoning, in their usual able manner, that three persons, two of them females, and one bed opened the way to a nice kind of problem.

  They hoped to have learned something from Alice, but she, alas! had turned traitor to them, wholly giving herself up to the enemy. If she went anywhere, it was by train to Maidenbridge; so although they often lay in wait, not even the young men were able to pounce upon her.

  The confirmed boys, with their knees still dusty from the floor of the pew, evoked the Shelton idea, with one or two merry additions from South Egdon. They called out polite questions about that bed to Henry, who continued to do up his faggot. The boys followed up their words with stones, and saw with delight, when Henry took up his bundle, that his face was bleeding from a nasty cut that a sharp flint had made over his left eye.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  TOO LATE

  IN the cosy bar parlour at the Maidenbridg
e ‘Rod and Lion,’ some farmers sat at their ease, partaking of a few last drinks, and discussing, in the style of the local paper, their hard times. They had been damning a certain small strike of farm labourers in one of the eastern counties. Mr. Dane of Shelton had been treating the company to a discourse upon wages, and, as he was known to be the worst payer in the district, he was looked up to as an authority by the others. Seeing how interested they all were, he went on to tell them, after another pull at his glass, that there was ‘up his way, a damn agitator, brother to the parson at Shelton, and living with that murdering whore woman on the heath.’ Parson Turnbull, a good Christian man, had told the farmer himself that he wished his brother was in Canada.

  ‘And what do ’ee think happened yesterday? You do know me cowman Bill?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘He asks I for a shilling rise! That’s what we get by letting them damn agitators in. Shoot ’un! I say, shoot ’un!’

  The farmer, seeing how important the subject was, raised his voice, that was by nature loud enough. Even the bottle and jug department hushed their clamour in order to hear, hoping that a row, a row with blood in it, was going to happen amongst the gentry.