I Shall Not Want

by Norman Collins

  “I SHALL NOT WANT”

  by

  NORMAN COLLINS

  Contents

  Book I. The Fall

  Book II. John Marco, Elder

  Book III. Mary and the Child

  Book IV. John Marco, Limited

  Book V. Green Pastures

  Book VI. The Cracks Widen

  Book VII. John Marco Reaches Jordan

  Book I

  The Fall

  Chapter I

  The Amos Immersionist Tabernacle imposed itself upon the whole thoroughfare. There it stood, a defiant citadel of righteousness looming over the insignificant abodes of men: it dominated. Its façade of twin, stucco columns and chocolate-coloured pilasters dwarfed everything around it, making the terrace of inferior shops and shabby, old-fashioned villas on either side seem like so many dolls’ houses set up against something serious and life-size.

  Across the front of the Tabernacle ran a row of spiked, green-painted railings; and behind the railings there mounted a steep flight of steel-tread concrete steps. These steps, however, served another and more important purpose than to be walked up: they provided a high place from which to announce the Message. And in the twelve-inch letters, behind thick plate-glass, the Word was exhibited in a series of notice-boards. It was a strange, disjunctive Message which emerged: GOD IS LOVE the first board announced. Above it, in still larger letters, were the words I CAME NOT TO SEND PEACE, BUT A SWORD. Over to the right, a pasted notice, THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL REJOICE WHEN HE SEETH THE VENGEANCE: HE SHALL WASH HIS FEET IN THE BLOOD OF THE WICKED, caught the eye. And down almost on the pavement level was the printed advice, now a little soiled and yellow at the corners with age and exposure, SALUTE ONE ANOTHER WITH AN HOLY KISS.

  Above all was another notice board, set back a little and lettered in gold. This gave the style and title of the chapel, the times of the services, and the name and address of the verger; and, in the second line from the top, bolder and more freshly gilded than the rest, were the words: Prebend and Minister: the Reverend Eliud Tuke, B.D., Surrogate for Marriages.

  To-night the Tabernacle was lit up in almost pagan splendour. Every gas-jet in the place was hissing and, through its four long windows, it glowed. There was, even for one of West London’s leading fortresses of nonconformity, an unusual stir of activity. Ever since six o’clock the devout had been arriving. They had passed up the concrete steps in their multitudes, and in batch after batch the big Tabernacle had swallowed them. Behind those studded, panelled doors between five and six hundred people were now seated in their pews.

  It was bleak enough outside, with a threat of sleet or snow in the air, but the heat inside was terrific. Eight steep steps up from the roadway it was tropical. Already, before the important business of the evening, the baptisms, had started, two of the sisterhood had fainted. With waxen frightened faces, on which the beads of sweat stood out like raindrops, they had been carried off to the vestry and been revived on the long benches that were used for Zenana soirées and Missionary Teas. On Baptism Nights a deaconess of the Order was permanently stationed in the vestry: it was her duty to revive the fragile, one after another, as they were brought in. Smelling salts, a bottle of lavender water and the tea-urn from the basement comprised the whole of her equipment. As soon as the women—and there were always some men among the fainters as well—were breathing again, they were packed off into the body of the chapel once more to see the sights and be edified.

  There was certainly something tremendous to see. On these immersionist nights the Tabernacle resembled an arena more than a temple. Only the plain altar, the Table of the Lord, in the eastern wall broke the symmetry of the seats. And from the central dais where Mr. Tuke stood, it Was like being submerged in a vast well of gleaming faces, so that no matter in what direction he looked there were still those endless batteries of peering, fascinated eyes. From Mr. Tuke’s standpoint it was even more alarming when the congregation began a hymn; it was as though he were being swallowed. Those pink layers upon layers of faces would suddenly open, and what he would see would be not eyes but the dark cavities of six hundred throats. Then with the intoning of the Amen the whole hall would go pink again.

  One point of variety in the encircling panorama of the Tabernacle was that the men were separated from the women. On the north side of the central aisle was a sea of bosoms and feather-boas and veiled faces; to the south, it was all beards and watch-chains and deep bass voices. To balance the altar, stood the organ. Controversy had raged round this instrument, and its erection had once been a matter not merely of vestry politics but of heresy; the unwitting donor, long since deceased, had been the cause of a schism which had divided the entire Synod of Amosite Elders. In the first place, it had been suggested that the foundations were not strong enough for such a monster. But objections of this kind were no more than subterfuge: the Amos Tabernacle was clearly strong enough for anything. Then the question of propriety had arisen and the real row had begun. On one side it was felt that the presence of a box of pipes of this nature was so dangerously High as to be almost Roman, and on the other there was an equally determined move not to deprive themselves of anything costing the colossal sum of nearly four hundred pounds. In the end, it was the acquisitive who won; and, after suitable safeguards had been laid down as to the nature of the music that was to be played, the gift had been accepted. It now stood against the west wall, a towering mass of cylindrical metal, with a little red velvet curtain in front of it, behind which the organist sat in his own private asylum of ivory keys, stops, swell-pedal and spy-mirror. The blower, a brother-in-law of the verger, had to stand right out in the passage, heaving away at the great wooden arm like a pump-handle during all the musical moments of divine service.

  But it was not at the organ that anyone was looking to-night; after seven years’ installation it had become as orthodox and unexceptionable as the gas-lighting. It was the Jordan Tank which was the focus of everyone’s attention. It stood, a great zinc bath more than six feet square, let into the very centre of the auditorium. Five wooden steps, which flattened out deceptively under the surface of the water, led down into the tank on one side and a duplicate set led out on the other. The heating apparatus ran right underneath it.

  It was only twice yearly that the tank was used, and it was at these bi-annual immersions that Amosites declared their faith to the world. There was a kind of raucous majesty about the occasion. The adult choir, again divided into male and female, was augmented by choristers from other Amosite chapels; and there was a cornet player a strained, melancholy-looking little man—who brought his instrument all the way from Croydon. Nor was this all: a large banner ran right across the hall, and on this in giant, embroidered letters ran the words: WITH THE BAPTISM THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITHAL SHALL YE BE BAPTIZED.

  Mr. Tuke, in the simple surplice of his Order, was standing right beneath his banner. The singing had just stopped and there was an atmosphere of impatient expectancy throughout the hall. But it was not yet time for the immersions. There was the psalm first and Mr. Tuke, holding his surplice up with one hand so that he should not trip, mounted the two steps to the lectern. He was a large man, so large in fact that he made the sprawling Bible on the shelf in front of him seem almost small and trivial. And his voice was powerful and resonant; it had a thousand rich modulations in it. He used words slowly and gloatingly as though he were fingering them.

  His large pink face—he always looked as though he had just emerged from the hot towels of a barber—began to crease and fall in folds about his mouth as he swung the heavy volume back onto the marker. Already at the thought of those words, his mouth was watering. He took a quick glance round the galleries (it was as though invisible wires of sympathy were radiating from
him) and began. “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” The voice softened for a moment and it became like a woman speaking. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” The womanliness vanished and a hint of brass and kettle-drum crept in. “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (pp.) I will fear no evil: for thou art with me (ff.) Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” Mr. Tuke’s expression changed subtly, and he spread out his hands towards the congregation, as though thanking them. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou annointest my head with oil: my cup runneth over.” Then his face changed again and he magically cast off forty years of his life and was a little boy again: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

  He became a mighty, all-powerful man again as he finished, a man capable of surviving without a tremor the ordeal of standing for over half-an-hour in lukewarm water up to his waist.

  And the reading of the Psalm over, he offered up a prayer. It was the Amosite prayer which invoked God in the name of his servant Amos, to be present while these of the faithful dedicated themselves in His name. “. . . as in Jordan of old,” Mr. Tuke magnificently intoned, “so do we, Thy mean and wretched disciples, ask of Thee the abundant and glorious blessings which Thou alone canst give.”

  With that he rose from his knees and walked towards the tank. His surplice, specially weighted at the edges to prevent it from billowing up round him like a parachute as he entered the water, hung round him in sullen, dejected folds. Behind him, in rows, sat the new disciples, the un-baptized. There were thirty-four of them in all; fourteen men and twenty women. They sat pale-faced and apprehensive, like victims ready for sacrifice. Even their dress was sacrificial: it was white from head to foot, a long, white clinging garment that buttoned up at the back and was gathered in closely at the wrists. Beneath this dress the Amosite initiate could wear whatever he or she chose; the men, for the most part, wore very little else, and the women only sufficient to ensure that when they climbed up the steps again after the dipping the garment should not cling to them too revealingly. On the advice of the deaconess in the disrobing-room below, many of the women had wound a bath towel round themselves before putting on the vestment; and, in the result, they sat in muffled, mysterious shapes that disguised everything about them except the fact that they were women and that they had disguised themselves. They were really doubly disguised for they wore a close white handkerchief around their heads; the men of course were bare-headed.

  Mr. Tuke shuddered as his left foot touched the water even though, under the surplice, he was wearing waders like a fisherman. It was ten degrees colder than it should have been, and the contact sent a shiver running along the length of his spine. He registered a decision to speak to the verger about it as soon as the service was over—he had told the man when he came in that his duty to-night lay down in the stoke-hold—and, pursing up his lips as the icy water took his breath away, he went resolutely down the steps. Once actually in the tank he felt a powerful desire to duck his head under and be done with it; but he controlled himself. Instead, holding his little slip of paper with the names of Baptists-elect in one hand and the silver cup with which he was to anoint their heads in the other, he stood waist-deep in the water and called out their names.

  “Brother Freeman.”

  A large man who moved importantly like a shop-walker, rose from the extreme right of the front bench and came forward. He stalked along as though intending to enter the water with dignity but, as soon as his ankle was covered, he drew back and muttered an involuntary “Ah!” Mr. Tuke frowned at him: he had no patience with people who made a fuss over less than a minute of it while he, in his fifty-second year, would have to remain there in the bath for nearly three-quarters of an hour. Brother Freeman observed the rebuke. Holding his breath, he almost ran down the five steps and presented himself before his Minister and Baptist.

  Mr. Tuke placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and his voice rang out like an organ note as he prayed over him; there was not a quaver in his throat . . . “now shall he sit,” he chanted, “at the table of the Most Holy. Among the elect ones shall he sit down.” With that, he filled the little silver cup—it held about half-a-pint—and emptied it over the new disciple. The man’s astonished gasp—he had not expected the douching quite so soon—was audible throughout the chapel, and those who had themselves suffered a chilly baptism shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Then, Brother Freeman, urged on by a nudge from Mr. Tuke, shuffled through the water in his felt slippers and clambered up the other side. He was visibly shivering by now, and his air of importance had vanished. He was simply a big man in uncomfortable clothes drenched to the skin and without his glasses. He disappeared out of sight down a staircase on the left, leaving a water trail behind him as Mr. Tuke’s voice was heard again.

  “Brother Buckley,” he said; and the next man arose.

  There was a pause when all the male benches had been emptied, and the indeterminate forms in the female half could be seen stirring with foreboding. There was also a noticeable restlessness in the body of the temple itself at the prospect of the feminine immersions; they excited everyone—even the women—as no amount of male immersions could ever do.

  In particular, there was one man seated to the left of the gangway immediately below the tank who was leaning forward with every muscle strained. He had not taken his eyes off the women’s benches from the moment the service began. Even when the whole congregation had been kneeling in prayer, he had still, through clasped fingers, contrived to keep one of the white, shrouded figures in sight. The fact that she was swathed in so much material did not dismay him: he knew by heart the shape of her head, the way the slim neck mounted to support it, the heavy coil of hair that rested there. And under the uncomely coif the pale face was still the same. Once or twice the girl had become aware that she was being watched and had turned towards him. But each time it was her eyes which had dropped first and she had fixed her gaze modestly on the white, billowing back of the woman in front of her.

  The young man who was so transfixed was John Marco. Within his Church he was regarded as a model Amosite. He was still young—not yet thirty-four—but there was a consciousness of purpose about him that counted for more than mere age. In his seriousness towards life, he seemed indeed a middle-aged man already; and he was respected as middle-aged men are respected. He was a pew-opener in the Tabernacle and taught the children of the Elders in Sunday School. In his business, too, he was respected; an aura of promotion surrounded him. In God’s good time, he had often told himself, the reward would come; and he would have earned himself a place on earth as well as in Heaven. But the reward, the gift for which he had been waiting, still seemed as far away as ever, even though in the Silk and Cotton department of Morgan and Roberts where he worked he now had three young lady assistants.

  The coldness and determination of his nature had left their mark upon his face. It was a calculating, close-lipped face. Only the breadth of the forehead gave it strength. And the eyes. These were deep-set and penetrating. In most lights they were almost black, and they held the gaze longer than was comfortable. They were the eyes of a man who would spare no one, least of all himself.

  He looked towards the girl on the baptismal bench and the lines of his face softened for a moment. It was remarkable that her beauty should have such power over him. But there was no disputing it. It was there. In her presence he became meek and humble. Somewhere within the limits of her smile his ambition vanished.

  It was only lately that he had known her. She had been shy and diffident at first, as though reluctant to let herself be loved. She had avoided him. In Sunday school where they both taught she had treated him like a stranger, not speaking to him, not noticing him. Not showing that she noticed him, at least. For
it was impossible for her not to know. There were so many little things he did which betrayed him; he would be the first to hand her a hymn book at prayers; he would come into her class-room during sessions on odd excuses to borrow a wall-map of the Holy Land or an oleograph of the infant Moses among the rushes; he would arrive so early that he was waiting there in the prim, oak-panelled common-room when she came in to take off her gloves; he would time his lessons so that he contrived to meet her in the corridor; he would hang about after school was over so that he could say good night to her as she passed through the gate.

  The first time he had ever walked home with her had been little more than a month ago. The memory was vividly imprinted on his mind for two reasons: he had seen her with rain on her hair—and he had committed a sin; he had stolen. The sight of her with the raindrops on her face and on the soft waves of hair that escaped from underneath her hat had affected him strangely; when he had seen that her cheeks were wet, he had been as much moved as if she had been crying. But after he had left her and he had come to his senses again, it was the sin, his sin, that troubled him. It frightened him. It showed that deep within him he was weak and frail and not to be trusted; it wiped out in a single moment the careful portrait of himself that he had been painting in his own mind through all the years.

  In the manner of most temptations it had been enticingly simple, even innocent-looking, at the onset. At three-fifty-five on that melancholy Sunday afternoon in November he had still been whole; and by five minutes past he had succumbed. His Bible class had passed off smoothly enough and the lesson on the fruits of faith in the fathers of old time had been absorbed by the thirty ten-year old children of the Amosite parish. Then, as John Marco, his Bible under his arm, had walked in the direction of the common-room the rain had started. It had not been ordinary rain; it was as though the original flood-gates-of-the-deluge had reopened. On the corrugated-iron-roof of the chapel Sunday school it had drummed and battered. “A sound of abundance of rain,” John Marco had thought. “The heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.” When he had reached the common-room, Miss Kent was already there. She was standing at the window looking out into the small asphalt yard in which the raindrops were bouncing. He had seen her profile as he came in, lit by the yellow glow of the single gas mantle. It was pale and beautiful. The fair hair curled upwards over the temples and, under her hat, ran smoothly across her head into the thick coil behind. She was just drawing on her veil as he approached her.