“She was took with no clothes on,” — and Mrs. Moddley in announcing the startling fact, sniffed meaningly— “Which is to say just a shift droppin’ off ‘er an’ ‘er ‘air down. That ‘ud be Jacynth all over!”
The aged ‘Bricks and Mortar’ chuckled.
“So it ‘ood! — so it ‘ood!” he averred— “An’ mighty fine she’d look in a shift! — mighty fine! Wouldn’t she now? Just the shape for a shift! I’d give a bob to see her like that myself!”
“Mercy on us!” Mrs. Moddley shot this exclamation at him as from a pop-gun— “An’ you totterin’ on the brink o’ Kingdom Come! Well, Mr. Pike! I ‘ad thought better o’ you !” —
Pike shook his gray head to and fro like the movable porcelain figure of a Chinese mandarin.
“Wheer’s the ‘arm? — wheer’s the ‘arm?” he demanded, pipingly— “If we b’leeves the Bible, the Lord made us at the first wi’ no clothes on, an’ we was all good and ‘appy as babes in the wood then.’Ow d’ye get out o’ that?”
Mrs. Moddley made no attempt to get out of it, — she simply gave another portentous sniff and retired into obscurity.
Nothing, however, of the supposed public pictorial representation of Jacynth reached the ears of either the Vicar or his wife. So far as they two were concerned, the villagers seemed to be banded together in a conspiracy of silence on the subject, and once when Everton, seized by a sudden restless desire to know or hear something of the lost girl, called at the miserable and ill-kept cottage where the old woman lived who was understood to be Jacynth’s aunt or great-aunt, he was met by a torrent of vituperation from the bent and wrinkled crone, who, like one of the worst-looking of Macbeth’s witches, shook her skinny fist in the air and bade him ‘get off her doorstep.’ She was half dressed and more than half drunk, and her voice rang sharp and shrill, acidulated by what was familiarly known in the neighborhood as ‘Minchin’s brew.’
“Git off my doorstep!” she yelled— “You black sneak of a parson, you! comin’ round to worrit me inter my grave as ye worrited Jennie Kiernan, are ye! Not for me, thank’ee! You’ve drove my gel away from me, an’ me without ‘elp to do my work an’ my washin’ — a pore old soul like me with the rheumatiz,” — and here maudlin tears made furrows in the dirt on her face— “an’ wot did it matter to you whether she was one man’s sweet ‘art or t’other? An’ the kid as was a-comin’ would a’ bin rare an’ useful to me, speshul if ‘t ‘ad bin a boy! Git off an’ git out wi’ ye! Dan Kiernan’s worth a dozen of ye!”
It was impossible to speak with the old creature in her tipsy fury, and Everton, shuddering inwardly at her words and all they implied, made no attempt at either reproach or argument. And the name of Jacynth Miller never passed his lips, though the thought of her lay deeply concealed in his mind.
The months moved on, slowly, laggingly, and uneventfully, bringing no very marked change to Shadbrook Vicarage, its surroundings or its inmates, save the increasing intimacy between the Evertons and their friend of an opponent Church, Sebastien Douay. Douay, on his introduction to the Vicar’s pretty wife, had made no attempt to conceal his frank admiration of her beauty and grace, and Azalea was, like many another charming woman, pleased to have her good looks appreciated by some other man than her husband. For husbands, even the most affectionate ones, sometimes forget to say the sweet nothings which came so readily to their lips when they were lovers; and wives often vainly crave for the fond observation of eye and tenderness of speech to which they were accustomed before marriage. Azalea was like a child in her eager response to flattery — she loved a compliment, and her whole nature thirsted for adulation as a river plant thirsts for water. Douay saw this and humored her, — playfully and kindly, as a father might humor a spoilt daughter, and they became great friends. He liked the winsome little creature, — he listened to her gay prattle about ‘Baby dear’ and all the other small domestic concerns which made up the sum of her daily life, with the most exemplary patience, though now and then he suppressed a slight sigh of weariness and glanced curiously at Richard, wondering how it had chanced that such complete opposites had become united in holy matrimony. And he occasionally gave secret thanks to the fates that had made him a Roman Catholic priest and a celibate, though this was a point upon which Azalea often dwelt, with delightfully earnest sympathy.
“It must be so dreadful for you,” — she would say, raising her beautiful eyes full of compassion to his face— “to have no one to love you and to take care of you! I think the rules of your Church are simply cruel! Just fancy! — no one to mend your shirts and socks and things — how ever do you manage?”
And Douay would smile deprecatingly.
“Ah, Madame!” he would answer— “To mend shirts and socks is an easy matter! — and my housekeeper, who is as old and sad to see as you are lovely and charming, is careful of me in that regard. Then, she is a good cook, — all wives are not that, chère Madame! She wash, she mend, she iron, she sew — she work for me from morning until night for very leetle money — but she never grumble — she never scold — she do all I tell her — eh voilà! she is happy and so am I!”
“But really now,” — Azalea, sometimes persisted— “Wouldn’t you have liked to be married?”
And Douay then shook his head decisively.
“Chère Madame, I have seen the world!” he replied— “Do not be angry with me! To your question I must answer, No!”
Azalea thought this very wrong and absurd of him, ‘unnatural,’ she termed it, to her husband.
“He’s really such a pleasant little man,” — she said— “So clever — such a good talker and all that. It is sad that he should be a Roman Catholic priest! Now if he were a Church of England clergyman and there were a Mrs. Douay, how nice it would have been for me!”
Richard smiled at this.
“It might not have been nice at all,” — he said— “You might not have liked Mrs. Douay. She might have been jealous of you! Things might have happened that would have made our two families mortal foes! You never can tell! Douay’s all right as he is — better single than married, I think.”
Azalea opened her eyes wide.
“Better single!” she repeated— “Better? Oh, Dick! Would you rather be without me?”
He took her in his arms.
“Now, darling, aren’t you turning the whole question round the wrong way?” he demanded, laughingly— “You know I wouldn’t, couldn’t be without you! You know I wouldn’t, couldn’t be better single! But Douay is different, — he has vowed himself to the service of God only—”
He broke off. Azalea was looking at him in surprise.
“But haven’t you also vowed yourself to the service of God?” she asked— “Haven’t you taken holy orders?”
A slight shadow of perplexity swept across his brow.
“Yes — of course I have — but — somehow it is different—”
“How different? Surely a married man can serve God as well as a bachelor! Oh!” and she gave vent to one of her musical rippling peals of merriment— “You might just as well say a bird can’t sing when it has a mate!”
She ran off gayly, and left Richard half smiling, half serious, and not a little troubled in spirit by the lurking consciousness that, after all, the Roman Catholic Church has good authority for the celibacy of priests, inasmuch as the Founder of the Christian Faith had certainly demanded from His disciples All or Nothing. And yet — to give up the joy and consolation of human love was surely too much to ask, and against the very teaching of all Nature! But then again, what is the example furnished by the natural world? To eat, sleep, breed and die. Nothing further. The natural world itself voices no thought — it merely suggests thought to its dominant creature, Man. That dominant creature is permitted to use its vast resources — to inquire into its secrets — to plumb the depth of its hidden treasures, — and though pigmy in strength, as compared to the huge forces around him, is given the eyes and the mind to weigh and consider not only
the material and physical nature of the globe on which he dwells, but also the movements and mysteries of larger worlds beyond his ken. With such privileges as these, is there no Higher Intention for a being so richly endowed, than that of the usual procedure of animal life on the planet? There is; there must be; else Creation were little more than a cruel comedy. And Richard Everton, thinking of these things, could not but admit to himself that Christ’s mission to humanity was to teach and emphasize that Higher Intention of life, — wherefore it followed that His servants and ministers should equally, both by precept and example, teach and emphasize the same principle. Now did the Roman Catholic Church work on these lines better than the Protestant? This was the question he put to his conscience, — and his reason replied at once in the strongest possible negative. Again, — did the Protestant Church, and all the sects which like branches from a tree, sprouted around it, truly and faithfully enunciate the doctrine of Christ in all its pristine purity? Here the reply came hesitatingly and reluctantly— “No! — but we do our best!” And an inward passion of regret moved him as he thought of the atheism of the modern day, — the laxity of the law, which in granting ‘liberty of conscience’ in religious matters forgets to set a restraint on open blasphemy against God and things divine, and which in re-constituting new methods of education, blindly prepares the way for the bringing up of a ‘generation of vipers’ — a generation without faith, without morals, without heart, without love, without pity — such an ‘evil and adulterous generation’ as is bound to be the disgrace and ruin of a once glorious empire.
“We do our best!” he repeated sorrowfully— “We do our wretched little best! And we know how wretched and little it is! We know that the Press fights the Pulpit as Thrones fight Peoples — always under cover of sympathy and friendship — with a poisoned knife in a velvet glove! We know — even I know — that if the Government could stop the sale of strong drink all over the country, — it would not, — because of depletion to the national revenues. It would rather see one quarter or one half of the population idiots or criminals through Drink, and all set free to perpetuate the race of idiots and criminals, than make any positively firm stand against the evil. It will not even frame laws that shall insist on the selling of pure, unadulterated liquors to the million. As a matter of right and justice the brewer who poisons beer, the distiller who poisons spirit, should be heavily punished, not only by a ‘fine’ which is a mere farce, but by several months’ imprisonment, without any option of getting ‘bought off,’ — and in that case Government would have to imprison several members of its own House! But nothing will be done — nothing, that is to say, of any real service — and drunkards will increase and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it. Ministers of the Gospel are blamed because their teaching of Christianity cannot persuade men and women to greater self-control, — but what minister of a parish would hold the place for a week if he dealt plainly with every one in it? What preacher ever preached truth to a king or queen without receiving a polite intimation that Majesty would not again require his services? Why, if an Archangel entered the private apartment of King Edward the Seventh or the Kaiser and ventured to reproach either one potentate or the other, the heavenly messenger would be ‘hustled’ out of the royal presence by a valet or Court Chamberlain! For we are the veriest humbugs, after all! We pretend to believe in God — and yet if we are told that our conduct is opposed to everything God-like, we are at once offended. No! — ministers of the Gospel can do nothing — or at least very little — in such an age as the present; all we can hope is that a change is coming — a world’s catastrophe maybe — when ‘the one shall be taken and the other left.’”
Thoughts such as these were often in his brain, but he gave them no utterance. Often and often he longed to preach in a way that he had never yet attempted — a way that should rouse apathy, stimulate energy, and awaken conscience, — but he knew very well that if he spoke ‘with the tongues of men and of angels he could not move the inhabitants of Shadbrook to more than a bovine stare and dull smile. And half afraid of the combative spirit that clamored to utter itself through his lips, he retreated, as it were, further and further into the close sanctuary of his own isolated and reflective mind, there to do battle against himself and control what he considered were the freakish fancies of an overwrought imagination.
And so the days and weeks went on, placidly and monotonously. The Minchin Brewery still prospered, and the proprietors of both public-houses in Shadbrook waxed fat and made good profit out of an increasingly intemperate community. The little Roman Catholic mission progressed but slowly, — there were barely twenty people to attend Mass at Sebastien Douay’s ‘tin chapelle’ — but he, as its priest, was never disheartened and never complained. Full of cheerfulness and energy, his dapper figure was soon a familiar object in the Cotswold villages, and he was always ready to assist the sick and poor, whether they professed his own form of faith or not. He had made his promised attempt to ‘convert’ Dan Kiernan, but his efforts were wholly vain. That brutish creature, more brutalized by drink than ever, was not as he himself expressed it ‘going to be a damned Pope’s penitent.’ Faithfully and patiently Douay tried his honest best to save what remnant of soul there was in that base ton of material man, — but he had to give up the task at last, and after a final appeal and argument, which had nearly ended in Dan’s mauling him with blows in the public street, he had left him to the tender mercies of Mr. Minchin. Meeting that gentleman by chance one day, however, he was bold enough to stop him in his walk and request him to have an eye on Dan Kiernan, as the man was ‘dangerous.’
Mr. Minchin stretched his wide ugly mouth into its usual wolfish grin. —
“Dangerous!” he echoed, in suave tones— “Really! I don’t quite understand you!”
“Do you not? That is a pity!” And the little priest planted himself still more firmly across the path along which Mr. Minchin evinced every desire to proceed— “For you should make it your business to understand! I say the man is dangerous, — dangerous to himself and to everybody else. He has no brain left — it is all poison! He has no control of himself — he is worse than a brute beast at night when he has drunk all the beer you give him, and when he puts raw spirit on the top of the beer! Yes — that is so! He is dangerous to women — to the leetle children — you will take my word, please! — and I say that if he do something of terror — some crime — some shocking wickedness, — you, Mr. Minchin, will be as much to blame as he is — if not morel Yes — you! No one else! You!”
And lifting his hat in an elaborate salute, Douay went on his way, outwardly calm but inwardly trembling in every nerve with the force of his own indignation. Minchin looked after him and laughed softly. He never laughed loudly. His marriage with the daughter of a pauper baronet compelled him to try and seem well-bred despite his low origin.
“These religious fools!” he said half aloud— “Always cowards — the whole lot of them — Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Methodists and all! That little priestly ass is afraid of Kiernan — positively afraid of poor old Dan! One of my best hands too — and I like him!” Here he gave an eel-like writhe of his body which was a movement peculiar to him in moments of self-satisfaction. “I like him! He hates the Vicar of Shadbrook as much as I do — and for that reason only, if he were drunk every minute of every day and night, I’d keep him on!”
Whereby it will be seen that the advocates of the cause of temperance in the Cotswold villages immediately adjacent to the Minchin Brewery were not likely to meet with much encouragement in their efforts to save the souls and bodies of men.
Yet the people went to church regularly enough in all their own little scattered parishes, and Richard Everton’s congregation, though it had fallen off for a few weeks immediately after Jennie Kiernan’s death, rallied together again in due course and resumed its normal aspect. But the most sanguine onlooker could never have said that it was either a devout or deeply attentive congregation. The chief inter
est of the villagers appeared to be centered on Mrs. Everton — her looks, her manners, and, more than all, her dress. They attended the church to see her, much as the stalls and dress circle people attend certain plays merely to see the costumes. She was the principal attraction, and everything and everybody seemed to wait for her on Sundays, — even the Church service itself. The organist never began to play the opening voluntary till one of the small choir boys, sent out as scout, returned to him with the information that Mrs. Everton was ‘just a-comin’.’ Her slight, pretty figure, always daintily clothed — her beautiful hair, always massed in twists and curls that shone like burnished gold, — her fair face, with the dark blue eyes always demurely downcast as she entered and walked noiselessly up the aisle, — all these charms were subject for comment, and ill-natured comment, too, on the part of the Shadbrook rustics, who were as spiteful and cruel as most semi-educated provincial folk are who only see two ways of existence, namely, ‘doing’ people and being ‘done’ by them. The village grocer’s girl, a young feminine scarecrow with projecting teeth and a snub nose, tossed her head at the lovely goldilocks of the Vicar’s wife, saying she never did see such ‘dyed ‘air and himpudence.’ The ‘young’ lady at the bar of the ‘Stag and Crow’ public-house, who had once in the long-ago been honored by the kisses of Mr. Minchin himself, before he married the pauper baronet’s daughter, remarked that ‘the wicked extravagance of Mrs. Everton was that shameful that she wondered how the Vicar could stand it! — she did indeed!’ The carpenter’s niece, fat, sallow and ungainly, but who despite these drawbacks was understood to be engaged to a Cheltenham tailor of distinction, sighed gently and opined that her Tom ‘wouldn’t look at a woman who got up her eyes and painted her cheeks like that for ever so!’
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 721
