“When the country’s press permits open discussion of the ‘New’ theory, — old as the hills and false as the kiss of Judas — that Christ was merely a man like ourselves, what can be done with people who are only to be held in check by either fear or love of the Divine!” he thought— “And when medical men criminally unite together, under pressure brought to bear upon them by the beer and spirit traders, to pronounce alcohol — that curse of the country — as ‘positively beneficial’ what can the workers for Truth and Right do? Our hands are rendered strengthless — our souls dis-spirited — and our hearts, in the long and anxious struggle, are broken!”
He sighed, and walked on rapidly, almost unconscious of the pouring rain. He had a faint hope that Kiernan might possibly keep his promise — but he could not console himself with it as likely to be a certainty. And moved by an impulse, which whether wise or foolish, was at least straightforward and well-intentioned, he made his way to the smart-looking public-house of the ‘model’ half of the village, which was known by the name of the ‘Stag and Crow,’ and entered it, to the surprise of the proprietor, a heavyfaced man with red hair, who passed most of his time in reading the halfpenny papers and airing himself outside his door in his shirt sleeves.
“Can I speak to you for a moment, Mr. Topper?” he inquired.
Mr. Topper smiled an affable smile.
“Certainly you can, Mr. Everton! — certainly! What can I do for you this afternoon? It’s very wet for you to be out sure-ly!”
“It is wet,” — and Everton, looking in at the bar, surrounded as it was with shelves full of shining bottles and glasses, was bound to admit that, so far as outward appearances of comfort were concerned, Topper had the best of it in bad weather. “But I’ve been visiting Mrs. Kiernan — she got rather seriously hurt this morning.”
“Oh indeed! How was that?” and Mr. Topper put on an expression of bland and sympathetic interest.
“Her husband,” — replied the Vicar, with a straight glance— “He was mad drunk, and knocked her down.”
“Dear, dear!” and the placid Topper sighed— “Dear,-dear, dear! Very sad — very sad —— —”
“Mr. Topper,” went on Everton earnestly— “It is very sad — and very bad. So sad and bad is it that I’ve come here myself to tell you that Dan Kiernan is not in a fit state to be given any more drink to-day. I’ve come here to ask you, as a friend, to help me in preventing him from getting any more. Will you?”
Topper’s red face grew redder.
“I don’t know what you mean— “he began.
“I mean,” continued Everton— “that I want you to join hands with me in a good work — a work of rescue. It’s quite simple. It won’t give you any trouble. It’s only just this — Don’t sell any more beer or spirits to Kiernan to-day — if he comes round and asks you for either, refuse him.”
Topper’s little pig eyes glistened almost angrily.
“Mr. Everton,” he said, with laborious dignity— “You are evidently not acquainted with public-house rules. We are bound to supply customers with whatever they ask and pay for. It is not our business to inquire whether a man is ‘fit’ to have beer and spirits, — if he pays his money we must give him his exchange.”
The Vicar drew himself up a trifle more stiffly erect.
“So that if a man is drunk, you must make him more drunken!” he said reproachfully.
“If he is drunk on the premises and behaves himself in a disorderly manner, I can turn him out,” — said Topper, with visible impatience— “But it’s no part of my duty to find out the exact moment when he is drunk or sober.”
“I tell you,” said the Vicar warmly— “that Dan Kiernan is not in a fit state to be given any more drink to-day. If he gets it, he is likely to commit murder.”
“And I tell you!” retorted Topper, with equal warmth, “that I know nothing about it because I haven’t seen him since dinner-time and don’t want to see him. He came in here this morning, and went away perfectly sober.”
Everton looked at him steadily.
“Perfectly sober!” he echoed— “You say that? Perfectly sober?”
“Perfectly sober!” reiterated Topper— “I would swear to it before a magistrate, Bible oath!”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Everton spoke— “If you swear to that, you would swear to a lie!” he said sternly, — and as Topper uttered an indignant exclamation, he raised his hand with a commanding gesture— “I repeat — you would swear to a lie — I, your Vicar, tell you so. Make the best of it that you can! You know that Kiernan left your premises drunk, — you know all about the injuries he has inflicted on his wife, and you only pretend not to know! Yet to make a few extra pence of profit you will, if occasion arises, assist this wretched man to poison himself again, so that driven by the force of a desperate delirium, he shall not know whether he is man or beast — though no beast that lives is so fallen from self-respect as a drunkard! You and your class might help to cleanse the nation of its ruling vice if you would, — but you will not! — you would rather see your fellow-creatures die in misery and infamy than abate one jot of your gains on the accursed drugs you sell!”
His breath came and went quickly, — he was shaken altogether from his ordinary composure. Mr. Topper, however, was a man who rather liked to anger his ‘betters’; ‘give them a rub the wrong way,’ as he himself expressed it — and the more justly irritated they became the more stolid was his own attitude. His favorite meat was pork, and his favorite drink Minchin’s cheapest ale, — with the result that his physical and mental composition was made up of these two baneful ingredients. He smiled tolerantly at what he privately called the Vicar’s ‘temper.’
“I’m sorry you take it like that, Mr. Everton,” he said, with unctuous mildness— “You’re very hard on us poor publicans, — you are indeed! We’ve got to make our little bit of money somehow — and if Kiernan didn’t take his glass at the ‘Stag and Grow,’ he’d take it at the ‘Ram’s Head’ — so it would be just the same in the long-run. And there’s not a drop of harm in Minchin’s Fourpenny, if it’s taken steady.”
Everton could not trust himself to continue the discussion. “Well, Mr. Topper, I have told you plainly what I think,” — he said— “and though it’s not always wise to express one’s thoughts, I’m not sorry for having done so on this occasion. I’ve been told that Dan Kiernan was quite a decent fellow before he came to Shadbrook, where he cannot walk from one end of the village to the other without passing two public-houses—”
“And why dont he pass ’em?” demanded Topper, with vehemence— “Why does he come inside? He isn’t pulled neck and crop through the doors! The drink isn’t forced down his throat! It’s his own choice and his own doing. And if any change is to be worked in him, why that’s more your business than mine, Mr. Everton!”
Everton’s eyes clouded with a quick sadness.
“You are right!” he said simply, “But I am aware of my own shortcomings. I can do very little.”
He said no more then, — and left Mr. Topper to his own meditations, which were rather of a mixed nature. Topper, like most of the inhabitants of Shadbrook, had a certain respect for the Vicar, — but every now and again this respect was drowned by a touch of contempt for his ‘softness’ — the phrase which so greatly irritated the Vicar’s pretty wife.
“Why don’t he let things alone and go easy!” he thought now, as he drew for himself a glass of the ‘Minchin Four-penny,’ and drank it down with infinite gusto— “Look at Minchin himself now! He’s a standing example to the community! He don’t touch a drop of his own liquor — drinks nothing but water — and lets those that like his beer have it at a fair price, and so makes his money out of it. That’s what I call common sense. As for Kiernan or any one else getting drunk, that’s nobody’s business and nobody’s fault.” Such was his argument — the common argument held by most people. The fact that one human being is always more or less answerable for the good or evil aff
ecting his fellow human beings is not realized by the majority. Each unit thinks that its companion unit stands, or ought to stand alone — and it needs a profound insight, as well as a most sympathetic intelligence, to see how all the units are really linked together by threads of cause and effect, — threads which slowly but surely weave them into communities or nations which according to their national merits, rise or fall. One man influences the other by word, thought and deed — though every man disclaims responsibility for his brother man, lest it should bring himself into trouble. But it was the full consciousness of such responsibility and the serious acceptance of it, that moved Richard Everton to a sense of deep sorrow when he reflected that he, a man of good education and scholarship, placed in a position of religious authority to guide, teach and control those who were set under his charge, could do nothing — nothing to rescue even one creature obsessed by the demon of Drink! And he tramped through the village wearily, his face growing almost haggard under the pressure of vexatious feeling, wondering whether he should or should not risk a call at the ‘Ram’s Head’ — which dominated the other half of Shadbrook, and see if he could lodge a warning there.
“But I shall only get the same answer if I do,” — he thought— “I shall be told I have no business to interfere — and, after all, that’s true enough! My business is ‘only’ the saving of souls for Heaven, — but apparently I may not hinder souls from going to Hell through drink, inasmuch as their loss is gain to the national revenue!”
So he mused, conscious of his own bitter feeling, yet unable to look at the position in any other light. He was within a few steps of the ‘Ram’s Head’ public-house, and he brought himself to a sudden standstill hesitating as to whether he should enter it or not. In a moment of indecision, a tall girl with a lithe, graceful figure, and a shawl flung carelessly over her head, came out and faced him with a smile.
“Rather a wet afternoon, sir!” she said.
He looked at her silently. Something in his straight glance confused her, for she colored crimson. Then the deep blush slowly faded, leaving her pale, yet still smiling — and she lifted her head with an air of haughty self-assertion as though she sought to express the fact that not only was she beautiful, but that she well knew the power of her beauty. Everton understood her gesture — he had seen it often. Jacynth Miller did not spare him any more than she spared other men. A clergyman was no more to her than a day-laborer, — she was willing to make fools of both, and she knew that her physical charms exercised a strange and not always propitious influence upon the male sex generally. Certainly no one save the most jaundiced and spiteful of critics could have denied that she was perfectly lovely. An artist would have delighted to draw the exquisite oval of her face, and to paint the dark liquid luster of her eyes, fringed as they were by long, silky upcurling lashes, and overarched by the most delicately penciled well-shaped brows. Her mouth, rosy as a pomegranate, seemed framed for the utterance of sweet words, — and her tiny even teeth, white as milk, made her look enchanting when she smiled as she was smiling now.
‘Jacynth!” said the Vicar gravely— “Were you in there?”
“In where?”
He pointed to the ‘Ram’s Head.’
“You know what I mean,” — he said, his voice shaking a little— “You are only a girl, Jacynth — the public-house is no place for you—”
She gave a little shrug..
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Mr. Everton!” she retorted, “I’m all right! I can take care of myself.”
He said nothing for a moment.
She looked at him curiously and with a touch of compassion.
“You’re wet through, Mr. Everton!”
“Am I?” he answered wearily— “I didn’t know it!”
She moved a step or two closer, with a fascinating air of gentle penitence —
“I haven’t been drinking, Mr. Everton,” — she said in a low tone— “I haven’t really, sir!” Here she raised her wonderful eyes to his face— “I wouldn’t vex you for the world, — I know you’re set against the drink, and I’d like to please you—”
“Would you indeed, Jacynth!” and he shook his head doubtfully— “Well! — perhaps you would! I don’t know!”
“I would — I would, really!” and Jacynth gazed at him with a sweet frankness that startled him—”.What do you want me to do?”
With a kind of nervousness he recoiled from her, — why, in Heaven’s name, he thought, had this girl been made so bewitchingly beautiful that no man — not even the strongest, — could look at her without admiration?
“I want nothing of you, Jacynth,” — he said, with studied coldness— “except more steadiness of character. You say you were not drinking — God grant you were not! If you really wished to please me, you would be kinder and more thoughtful of others — others whom you have wronged —
Bob Hadley, for example—”
“What’s the matter with Bob?” she asked, putting back her shawl a little more from her face, and by accident or design showing the luxuriant twists of her rich brown hair plaited on her head in the form of a coronal.
“He is dying” — said the Vicar, gently— “And he wants to see you again. He loved you very much, Jacynth!”
“I’m afraid he did!” she murmured, with a quick sigh— “I couldn’t help it! Could I?”
She lifted her eyes again, with a flashing coquetry in their radiant depths. He gave a slight gesture of annoyance.
“You need not have encouraged him,” — he said stiffly —
“You led him on to believe you would marry him—”
“Marry him!” She laughed. “I? I shall never marry any one in Shadbrook!”
He looked at her, vaguely perplexed. Here was a creature endowed with magnificent physical health and superb beauty — a girl of radiant loveliness in the full morning of her womanhood — were all her powers of charm and conquest to be limited to Shadbrook? Involuntarily he found himself asking the same question for her as he had asked for himself— “Is she to pass all her life in Shadbrook?”
Suddenly she spoke again.
“I’ve heard all about the row this morning,” — she said— “Dan Kiernan nearly killed his wife. And I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Everton — he shan’t get any more drink today. I’ll prevent that!”
The Vicar’s face cleared, and he was conscious of a great relief.
“Will you? But how can you?”
Jacynth nodded mysteriously.
“Leave it to me! I’ll manage him!” Her little teeth gleamed again like pearls between the red of her lips.
“He’s a fierce brute, is Dan Kiernan! But I can keep him in order!”
Everton was too keen a man not to perceive that there was some circumstance underlying her words with which he was not acquainted. He was a little troubled — but forbore to press inquiry for the moment.
“Well — if you have any influence over him,” — he said at last, hesitatingly— “you will be doing a kindness to his wife as well as to himself if you can keep him away from the public-house. He gave me his promise that he would not drink any more to-day—”
“His promise isn’t worth a penny!” said Jacynth, contemptuously— “I don’t believe any man alive knows what a promise means! But I’ll see he’s all right. And — as you wish it, Mr. Everton! I’ll go and see Bob Hadley.”
He smiled — and his kind eyes lightened. He took her hand gently in his own and pressed it.
“That’s right, Jacynth!” he said— “I shall be proud of you yet!”
She flushed a little, — then laughed, perking up a lovely rounded white chin from the folds of her shawl.
“I hope you will!” she said.
“I’m sure I shall! You’ll be the best girl in the village before long!”
An odd quiver passed over her face — she grew suddenly very white. She drew her shawl more closely round her head, completely hiding the beautiful hair she had before been proud to try and show.
>
“It’s going to rain all day, I think,” — she said, evasively— “Do get home as quick as you can, Mr. Everton — you are so wet, — I’m sure you’ll catch cold.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of that!” laughed the Vicar, cheerily— “I’m seasoned to all weathers. But as you seem to think you can answer for Kiernan’s good behavior—”
“I can!” she said, in a low tone.
“Well, that’s a great weight off my mind — and I’m much obliged to you, Jacynth,” — here he lifted his hat to her— “But if there’s any more trouble with him, be sure you send for me, won’t you?”
“Yes — oh yes — I’ll be sure!” and Jacynth smiled again— “Good-afternoon, Mr. Everton!”
“Good-afternoon!” he replied — and with a kindly nod, he turned away from her and walked rapidly up a little by-lane, which was a short cut out of the village, and led almost directly to the Vicarage. The girl Jacynth stood for a few moments watching him till he was out of sight, with a kind of angry wonder in her large dark eyes. Then she burst into a laugh.
“Poor devil!” she said half aloud— “He wants to be good — and to make me good too! And he’s only a man!”
She gave an eloquently contemptuous gesture with her whole body — a shrug and a writhe in one.
“Only a man!” she repeated— “And every man is just the same wherever a woman’s concerned! — strong or weak, plain or handsome, married or single — they’re all the same fool quality!”
Folding her shawl tightly round her shoulders, she ran with the speed and lightness of an Atalanta over the bridge which divided old Shadbrook from new, towards Kiernan’s cottage, her tall figure vanishing like a dark blur in the driving rain.
The Vicar himself, happily unconscious of the disparaging criticism passed upon his sex by her whom he vainly hoped one day to call ‘the best girl in the village,’ reached his own dwelling with considerable thankfulness. In his mind he was perfectly aware that he had done little or no good by playing sentinel over Kiernan’s drunken slumbers, and he met his wife’s pretty inquiring expression and querying monosyllable of “Well?” with a practical statement concerning himself.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 704
