by James Doig
She glanced down at once at her ornate and hideous dress, but it was not disarranged, she was clad as fully as its cut permitted.
“Fancy!” she said archly. “It must have been bad for you to look like that. I’m tired too; dead tired. But what’s the odds, so long as you’re happy? We always did get good results, didn’t we, in this circle?”
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, by Patience Tillyard
The Australian National Review, February 1939
Patience Tillyard was a Canberra-born educator who spent several years in the UK in the 1930s. Her father, Robin John Tillyard, was a world-renowned entomologist who founded the Australian National Review, and her mother, Patricia Tillyard, received a MBE in 1951.
I.
The last of the sunset light was pouring slantwise through the narrow windows of the little church when the Rev. Thomas Cochran pronounced the benediction and, gathering up his books, strode out into the vestry, the rustle of his cassock and surplice consorting oddly with the creak of the black leather riding boots he wore beneath. Dutifully clutching the plate, Mr MacWhirrter, the lawyer, padded out behind the parson, and his stout little middle-aged sister, breathing stertorously as she pumped at the organ pedals, broke into somewhat wheezy variations on the closing hymn.
Julia Thorpe, the Bank Manager’s wife, rose from her knees and, taking her husband’s disengaged arm, proceeded with him down the church, out into the dusty golden light that was flooding the west door. Round it the black-coated, black-frocked congregation gathered.
They were a strange pair, the Thorpes: Julia tall and stately, with a haughty aquiline nose and a grim twist to her thin lips; James short and square, slightly bow-legged from many years of riding, his eyes blue and kindly and crinkled at the corners. But though Wangawarra had smiled when they first came to the Bank, seven years before, and though the knowing ones had said: “Ah, it’s easy to see who’s lord and master in that house!” they knew better now, having learnt that James was the only man on earth for whom the downright, hard-headed Julia had any considerable respect at all.
As they took up their stand to the left of the porch, there were salutations for them from every group: for James Thorpe in Wangawarra was as much of a power as was the Reverend Thomas in his mining parish of Mount Clancy, and Julia was as popular as such a blunt-spoken woman could be.
Though they acknowledged the greetings, it was obvious that they were thinking of other things; for they stood silently, arm-in-arm, and James now and again stole a sideways glance up at the handsome profile of his wife, who was still looking thoughtful, just as she had done during the peroration of the Reverend Thomas’s fine forty minute sermon.
“Generally,” said James to himself, “she looks politely heretical. But I believe that this time Tom got home somewhere.”
Julia turned her eyes severely upon him.
“James, don’t look at me like that. I know quite well what you’re thinking. Yes, for once there was something in that sermon, and I shall tell him so.”
The old verger, Ruffie Gilligan, on week-days custodian of the least disreputable of Wangawarra’s three public houses, had closed half the double door and stood lugubriously beside it, swinging his bunch of large keys. In the year of grace 1865, church property had to be carefully guarded, or it was liable to be put to unhallowed uses, especially in townships which lay, like Wangawarra, on the direct route from Sydney to the great goldfields.
“’Avin’ a reel ’unt, they is,” announced Ruffie mournfully. “The Reverend dropped a penny on the floor, and Mr MacWhirrter’s down on ’ands and knees with ’im lookin’ for it. Show’s ’e’s Scotch, that does,” and he cackled rustily.
Julia heard the vestry door flung open, and from where she stood she could see the Reverend Thomas emerge into the dim church with a small canvas bag on the palm of his left hand. Poor stout MacWhirrter, panting slightly from his exertions on the vestry floor, followed the parson down the aisle.
Ruffle clanged the door to triumphantly behind them and locked it with much jangling of keys.
“That which was lost is found,” said the Reverend Thomas. “Eh, Mac? Sorry we’ve kept you waiting, everybody, but I dropped the penny, and Mac quite rightly wouldn’t let me go until we’d found it. Here you are, James,” and he handed the bag to the Manager, in whose private safe the day’s spoils would repose until the Bank opened the next morning.
The parson went round shaking hands, asking questions and bidding friendly farewells; for he came only twice a year from Mount Clancy to preach at Wangawarra. As he left it, each group dispersed, this one across the dusty, grass-grown churchyard to the straggling main street of the little town, that to collect children and put into the shafts of buggies horses which had been tied beneath the pine trees since the eleven o’clock morning service; many people drove thirty miles to hear the Reverend Thomas and spend, between the services, some happy social hours among their friends.
“Now supper,” said James, steering his wife down the path. “You’ll come in too, won’t you, Mac? And Miss MacWhirrter?”
II.
Supper over, the Thorpes and their guests were sitting out on the deep verandah of the Bank House. They had left the lamps inside, and the thick darkness had brought relief from the flies, though very little from the heat, which was still intense. Two red points of light marked the long chairs in which the parson and James Thorpe reclined, puffing slowly at pipes, another the spot where the little lawyer and his cigar were perched on the verandah edge. Now and again there was an uneasy stir from the straight-backed chair where Miss MacWhirrter primly sat, her feet dangling uncomfortably just above the floor. Julia was sitting equally erect upon another stiff chair, but her presence was betrayed only by the brisk click of the knitting needles which she had brought out in defiance of the Sabbath day. Poor Miss MacWhirrter. Scots-bred, had long ago ceased to be shocked by Mrs Thorpe, whose practical Christianity she had to admit was unimpeachable, if unconventional.
Suddenly in the silence the tempo of the knitting needles accelerated, and James gave a little chuckle.
“Julia’s making up for lost time, aren’t you, my love?”
“Nonsense, James,” was the tart rejoinder. “I’ve merely changed from ribbing to plain. ‘Lost time,’ if you like, but I must say not so much wasted as usually is by the Sunday evening sermon.”
“Ma’am,” came the Reverend Thomas’s voice, “were I not so comfortable, I should feel it my duty to arise and bow. I ask you to take the will for the deed. So my dissertation entertained you?”
“Thomas,” observed Julia, “your attitude, for one of the cloth, is refreshing in the extreme. But no, I was not entertained. I was, for once, completely interested.”
There was a grunt of assent from her husband, a gentle “Yes, indeed” from Miss MacWhirrter, and from the lawyer a vigorous nod, indicated by the movement of his cigar-end.
“Instead of your Hebrews text,” said James, “you might even have taken ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,’ were Shakespeare permitted in the pulpit instead of the Scriptures.”
“Um,” agreed the parson thoughtfully. “I might.”
“Clouds of witnesses, ghosts, what you will,” announced Julia decisively, “I’ve no time for. I hope the dead have better things to do than supervise our wretched goings-on. But most certainly I agree with casting away the works of darkness in this land of light.”
“What I said about our responsibilities,” explained the parson, “is one of my firmest beliefs. It stands to reason that the thoughts and actions which go into this young land in its early years are going largely to determine its future—shall we say?—atmosphere, and there’s no doubt about it that the start hasn’t been a good one on the whole, has it?”
“Nae doot whitever,” came in a grunt from the verandah edge. The little t
hat Alexander MacWhirrter spoke was in the Scots of his boyhood.
“That’s why I always try to push home the point about the greater responsibility of those few people who are willing to cast aside the works of darkness.”
Julia moved restlessly, and the click of the needles stopped for a minute.
“Works, yes,” she said emphatically, “and actions, yes. But, Thomas, you’ll never convince me that thoughts, good or bad, hang about unseen, like ghosts, to influence us. It’s too fantastic.”
“’The evil that men do lives after them’,” said James softly. “I’m good on Shakespeare tonight.”
“Yes, but that’s concrete evil, James” maintained Julia. “Come, Thomas, you don’t really believe in principalities and powers, do you? Weren’t you speaking metaphorically about the works of darkness?”
“Yes to the first question,” replied the Reverend Thomas slowly, “no to the second. My twenty years in Australia have shown me some queer things, Julia, and I can’t for the life of me explain them all away on rational grounds. Seriously, sometimes I can feel evil preponderating round me—”
“Overwork,” diagnosed Mrs Thorpe. “Or liver.”
James gave a crack of laughter, and the parson chuckled.
“‘Help thou mine unbelief’,” said the Manager. “Julia is a confirmed sceptic.”
“No, but really,” went on the Reverend Thomas, “I do often feel it. Tonight, for instance, with all due deference to the Sabbath and to your hospitality, Ma’am, I should say was one on which the powers of darkness are balancing the scales fairly evenly with those of light.”
“It’s the weather,” said Julia firmly.
As she spoke there was a resounding crash from above. Simultaneously, Miss MacWhirrter let out a frightened squeak, and the Reverend Thomas sat bolt upright in his chair. There was a dismal wail the next second.
Julia imperturbably gathered up her knitting.
“John has fallen out of bed,” she said. “He often does. Too much Sunday tea is the rational explanation of that.”
III.
Since Sunday there had been no relief from the heat, which had steadily grown more oppressive. All day Wednesday the blue sky had arched, with a glow like an overheated oven, above the dusty, breathless earth. In the afternoon, the western sky thickened, and the sun went down, a hot red ball, into murky clouds that were climbing slowly out of the plains.
After an early breakfast on Monday morning, James and the Reverend Thomas had set off together on horseback for Mount Clancy, eighty-seven miles distant. On Tuesday the Manager had business to transact at the branch there and would ride back alone on Wednesday, leaving the parson to another six months’ work among his miners. Excursions like this were frequent; for Wangawarra had a more important branch of the Bank than Mount Clancy, which, ever since it had been Clancy’s Claim, a collection of prospectors’ shacks, had had a bad history. Two of its Bank Managers had been murdered, one actually outside the Wangawarra Bank, whither he had ridden for his life with a store of gold. Another had been badly man-handled, and the Bank itself had been robbed four times, so that many Mount Clancy people did their business, whenever possible, at Wangawarra, a farming centre with a clean sheet.
Julia had had a trying day. The three children had not been to the parsonage for lessons, as the Vicar was away. Their good humour was exhausted by lunch-time, when a violent triangular scrap ended in floods of tears and bed for them all. At tea, there was further trouble, when John dipped Katharine’s pigtails in the milk jug, and they bawled again. By 6.30 they were all back again in their beds for the night, and Julia was free to take a book to the angle of the verandah whence she could watch the storm clouds mounting, at the same time command the short drive and, through a gap in the pepper trees, most of the street down which James would come clattering home.
The light she found was too bad for reading, and she was too weary to go in for a lamp, so she sat quietly in her tall chair, pushing back with both hands the depression that she had felt all day, but with especial force now that darkness was falling and she had nothing active to do.
So abstracted was she that the sudden hurried crunch of the gravel in the drive made her jump sharply to her feet.
“Who’s there?” she called sharply and immediately upbraided herself for her lack of self-command.
“Only I” answered the timid voice of Miss MacWhirrter, who emerged, puffing, from the shadows of the drive.
“Oh, Julia”—and she stood looking beseechingly up from the bottom of the steps—“I had to come over and see you. Alexander is working in his office, and we aren’t having supper ’til eight, and I couldn’t stand it any longer!” Her voice rose, and she wrung her hands.
“Come, come, Annie,” said Julia briskly. “Pull yourself together, and come inside.”
She helped her up the steps and led the way in, steering the breathless little woman firmly by one arm.
“Wait,” she ordered, “’til I light the lamp.”
As her groping fingers found the tinder-box on the hall table, there was a sudden squeak of fear from Miss MacWhirrter, and Julia promptly dropped the box with a clatter on the stone floor.
“Well, what is it?” she exclaimed, all the more sharply because her nervousness made her angry with herself.
Miss MacWhirrter stood clutching the doorpost and staring down the drive. As Julia came out, she seized her arm in a grip of surprising strength.
“S-someone by the gate!” she gasped.
Julia gazed into the black shadows along the lightness of the drive until her eyes ached.
“Nonsense,” she said finally. “I can’t see a thing, and I don’t see how you could in such darkness. Now, Annie, don’t be silly. Come along in with me, and tell me what’s the matter.”
“But I did see someone!” almost sobbed Miss MacWhirrter, as she was towed into the hall by Julia, to whose arm she still clung so tightly that she had to bend down with her to grope for the lost tinder-box. “Down by the gate, in the bushes to the left. It moved.”
Julia allowed the light to sputter before she answered.
“All imagination! You’re overwrought, Annie. I’ll just light the verandah lantern for James, and then we’ll go into the parlour.”
Miss MacWhirrter followed her fearfully to the door.
Julia stretched up to light the lantern, high on one of the verandah posts; it flung a feeble circle of yellow light a few yards down the drive, whose darkness it only accentuated. She had another good look towards the gate, partly to reassure Miss MacWhirrter, partly to steady her own nerves, which were strangely jerky.
“Really, Annie, I can’t see a thing,” she repeated, turning and stepping inside. “Just your imagination. Though what’s come over you I can’t think.”
Bearing the hall-lamp, she led the way into the parlour, where she lit the big central lamp and firmly but kindly pushed Miss MacWhirrter, still shivering and shaking, into a chair.
“Now,” she said, “just what is the matter?”
The little woman gave a gulp and then poured out an incoherent story.
“It’s all the Reverend Thomas’ fault. I’ve never felt like this since I was a small girl out on the moors at night. He shouldn’t have talked about powers of darkness. You can’t see them, but you can feel them, if you think about it. And I never had ’til Sunday night. Oh, it was dreadful going home! And Alexander said it was all havers, but it wasn’t—I knew they were there. And I didn’t sleep a wink, and it wasn’t any better in the morning, and it’s got worse ever since, and I couldn’t come over and see you before because I thought you’d laugh. And then when I did come, I saw—” Her voice rose hysterically, then broke in a sob. “It’s all the Reverend Thomas’s fault!”
Julia, standing beside her, listened with her fine bro
ws drawn together. She put her hand on Miss MacWhirrter’s fat little shoulder and gave her a kindly shake.
“Now I expect you feel better. There’s quite a lot in confession for some people, you know, Annie. I think myself it’s the weather. No one feels quite normal in heat like this. Also you have been overworking—haven’t you? Without any help in that barracks of a place of Alexander’s?”
Miss MacWhirrter looked up at her with comfort dawning in her eyes.
“Do you really think that’s what it is? Oh, I do hope so. Yes, I suppose I have been doing too much.” She gave a final hiccup into her handkerchief. “Oh, Julia, you are a comfort. And thank you for not laughing at me. I was so afraid you might.”
“Rubbish! I’ll go and make a cup of tea for you, and then you’ll be all right. Will you come with me, or stay here?”
She looked down with kindly eyes on the short conflict revealed in Miss MacWhirrter’s ingenuous round face.
“Oh, I think—I’ll stay here. You’ve made me feel so much better, Julia. Yes, I shall be all right here.”
“Good!”
With a reassuring pat, Julia took up the hall lamp and walked across the parlour to the dining-room, which led to the kitchen. She half-turned at the threshold to smile at Miss MacWhirrter, huddled in her chair opposite, and so she did not see, until she had passed through the doorway, the figure of a man in riding kit, standing with his back to her and leaning on the mantelpiece over the empty fireplace.
Her fingers tightened convulsively on the lamp handle, and she bit back by a colossal effort of will the shriek that rose to her lips.
The second she stood there getting a grip on herself seemed an eternity. The man at the mantelpiece must suddenly have realized she was there; for he spun round on his booted heel and looked full at her, his face illuminated in the warm glow of the lamp. She saw a queer crooked mouth and a great beak of a nose beneath brows that were inordinately thick and dark. It was a frightening face, yet somehow, strangely, a friendly one. Behind it, the clock said twenty-one minutes past seven.
