by Hugh Walpole
“Why do you go,” said Maggie, “if you think it all so dreadful?”
“Oh! I have to go,” said Miss Smith, “to please mother. And one has to do something on Sunday, and besides one sees one’s friends. Did you notice Martin Warlock, Mr. Warlock’s son, you know. He was sitting quite close to me.”
“He was here yesterday afternoon,” said Maggie quietly.
“Oh, was he really? Now that is interesting. I wonder what he came for. He scarcely ever comes here. Did you like him?”
“I didn’t speak to him,” said Maggie.
“Of course he’s only been here a little time. He’s Mr. Warlock’s only son. He’s lived for years abroad and then the other day his aunt died and left him some money so he came home. His father simply adores him. They say — but of course I don’t know. Don’t quote me — that he’s been most awfully wild. Drink, all sorts of things. But of course they’ll say anything of anybody. I think he’s got such an interesting face, don’t you?”
“I don’t think,” said Maggie, “that you ought to say those things of any one if you don’t know they’re true.”
“Oh! what a darling you are!” said Miss Smith. “You’re perfectly right — one oughtn’t. But every one does. When you’ve lived up here a little while you will too. And what does it matter? You’re sure to hear it sooner or later. But that’s right. You keep me straight. I know I talk far too much. I’m always being told about it. But what can one do? Life’s so funny — one must talk about it. You haven’t seen Miss Avies and Mr. Thurston yet, have you?”
“No,” said Maggie. “Not unless I saw them in Chapel this morning.”
“Ah! they’re the ones,” said Miss Smith. “No, they weren’t there to-day. They’re away on a mission. They make things hum. They quarrel with Mr. Warlock because they say he isn’t noisy enough. Mr. Thurston’s awful and Miss Avies isn’t much better. You’ll have them on to you soon enough. But of course I’m not one of the Inside Ones.”
“Inside Ones?” asked Maggie.
“Yes, the real ones. They’ll be at you after a time and ask you if you’ll join them. The congregation this morning was just anybody who likes to come. But the real brethren have to swear vows and be baptized and all sorts of things. But that’s only if you believe God’s really coming in a year or two. Of course I don’t, although sometimes it makes one quite creepy — all down one’s spine. In case, after all, He really should come, you know.”
“Are my aunts inside?” asked Maggie.
“Of course they are. Miss Anne Cardinal’s one of the chief of them. Miss Avies is jealous as anything of her, but your aunt’s so quiet that Miss Avies can’t do anything. I just love your aunts. I think they’re sweet. You will be a friend of mine, won’t you? I like you so much. I like your being quiet and telling me when I talk too much. I sound silly, I know, but it’s really mother’s fault, as I always tell her. She never brought me up at all. She likes me to wear pretty things and doesn’t care about anything else. Poor mother! She’s had such a time with father; he’s one of the most serious of all the Brethren and never has time to think about any of us. Then he’s in a bank all the week, where he can’t think about God much because he makes mistakes about figures if he does, so he has to put it all into Sunday. We will be friends, won’t we?”
It came to Maggie with a strange ironic little pang that this was the first time that any one had asked for her friendship.
“Of course,” she said.
Miss Smith’s further confidences were interrupted by the aunts and behind them, to Maggie’s great surprise, Mr. Warlock and his son. The sudden descent of these gentlemen upon the still lingering echoes of Miss Caroline Smith’s critical and explanatory remarks embarrassed Maggie. Not so Miss Smith. She kissed both the aunts with an emphasis that they apparently appreciated for they smiled and Aunt Anne laid her hand affectionately upon the girl’s sleeve. Maggie, watching, felt the strangest little pang of jealousy. That was the way that she should have behaved, been warm and demonstrative from the beginning — but she could not.
Even now she stood back in the shadows of the room, watching them all with large grave eyes, hoping that they would not notice her.
With Mr. Warlock and his son also Miss Smith seemed perfectly at home, chattering, laughing up into young Warlock’s eyes, as though there were some especial understanding between them. Maggie, nevertheless, fancied that he, young Warlock, was not listening to her. His eyes wandered. He had that same restlessness of body that she had before noticed in him, swinging a little on his legs set apart, his hands clasped behind his thick broad back. He had some compelling interest for her. He had had that, she now realised, since the first moment that she had seen him. It might be that the things that that girl had told her about him increased her interest and, perhaps her sympathy? But it was his strange detached air of observation that held her — as though he were a being from some other planet watching them all, liking them, but bearing no kind of relation to them except that of a cheerful observer — it was this that attracted her. She liked his thick, rough untidy hair, the healthy red brown of his cheeks, his light blue eyes, his air of vigour and bodily health.
As she waited she was startled into consciousness by a voice in her ear. She turned to find the elder Mr. Warlock beside her.
“You will forgive my speaking to you, Miss Cardinal. I saw you at our Chapel this morning.”
His great height towered above her short clumsy figure; he seemed to peer down at her from above his snowy beard as though he were the inhabitant of some other world. His voice was of an extreme kindliness and his eyes, when she looked up at him, shone with friendliness. She found herself, to her own surprise, talking to him with great ease. He was perfectly simple, human and unaffected. He asked her about her country.
“I spend my days in longing to get back to my own place — and perhaps I shall never see it again. I was born in Wiltshire — Salisbury Plain. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, they all were ministers of our Chapel there before me. They had no thought in their day of London. I have always missed that space, the quiet. I shall always miss it. Towns are not friendly to me.”
She told him about St. Dreots, a little about her father.
“Ah, you’re lucky!” he said. “You’ll return many times before you die — and you’ll find no change there. Those places do not change as towns do.”
They were standing apart from the others near the window. He suddenly put his hand on her arm, smiling at her.
“My dear,” he said. “You don’t mind me saying ‘My dear,’ but an old man has his privileges — will you come and see us whenever you care to? My wife will be so glad. I know that at first one can be lonely in this great place. Just come in when you please.”
He took her hand for a moment and then turned back to Aunt Anne, who was now pouring out tea at a little table by the fire.
Martin Warlock, as his father moved away, came across to her, She had known that he would do that as though something had been arranged between them. When he came to her, however, he stood there before her and had nothing to say. She also had nothing to say. His eyes searched her face, then he broke out abruptly.
“Are you better?”
“I’m all right,” she answered him brusquely. “Please don’t say anything about yesterday. It was an idiotic thing to do.”
“That’s what I came about to-day — to see how you were,” he answered her, his eyes laughing at her. “I should never have dreamed of coming otherwise, you know. I saw you in chapel this morning so I guessed you were all right, but it seemed such bad luck fainting right off the minute you got here.”
“I’ve never fainted in my life before,” she answered.
“No, you don’t look the sort of girl who’d faint. But I suppose you’ve had a rotten time with your father and all.”
His eyes still searched for hers. She determined that she would not look at him; her heart was beating strangely and, although she did
not look, she could in some sub-conscious way see the rough toss of his hair against his forehead; she could smell the stuff of his coat. But she would not look up.
“You’re going to live here, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ve only just come back,” he went on.
“I know,” she said.
“Oh! of course; that girl,” jerking his head in the direction of the tea-table and laughing. “She told you. She’s been here this afternoon, hasn’t she? She chatters like anything. Don’t you believe half she says.”
There was another pause. The voices at the tea-table seemed to come from very far away.
Then he said roughly, moving a very little nearer to her:
“I’m glad you’ve come.”
At that she raised her eyes, her cheeks flushed. She looked him full in the face, her head up. Her heart thundered in her breast. She felt as though she were at the beginning of some tremendous adventure — an adventure enthralling, magnificent — and perilous.
PART II. THE CHARIOT OF FIRE
CHAPTER I
THE WARLOCKS
There is beyond question, in human nature, such a thing as an inherited consciousness of God, and this consciousness, if inherited through many generations, may defy apparent reason, all progress of vaunted civilisations, and even, it may be suggested, the actual challenge of death itself.
This consciousness of God had been quite simply the foundation of Mr. Warlock’s history. In the middle of the eighteenth century it expressed itself in the formula of John Wesley’s revival; the John Wesley of that day preached up and down the length and breadth of Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and being a fighter, a preacher and a simple-minded human being at one and the same time, received a large following and died full of years and honours.
It was somewhere about 1830 that this John’s grandson, James Warlock, Martin’s grandfather, broke from the main body and led his little flock on to the wide spaces of Salisbury Plain. James Warlock, unlike his father and grandfather, was a little sickly man with a narrow chest, no limbs to speak of and a sharp pale face. Martin had a faded daguerreotype of him set against the background of the old Wiltshire kitchen, his black clothes hung upon him like a disguise, his eyes burning even upon that faded picture with the fire of his spirit. For James Warlock was a mystic, a visionary, a prophet. He walked and talked with God; in no jesting spirit it was said that he knew God’s plans and could turn the world into a blazing coal so soon as he pleased. It was because he knew with certainty that God would, in person, soon, descend upon the earth that he separated from the main body and led his little band down into Wiltshire. Here on the broad gleaming Plain they prepared for God’s coming. Named now the Kingscote Brethren after their new abode, they built a Chapel, sat down and waited. Then in 1840 the prophet declared that the Coming was not yet, that it would be in the next generation, but that their preparations must not be relaxed. He himself prepared by taking to himself a wife, a calm untroubled countrywoman of the place, that she might give him a son whom he might prepare, in due course, for his great destiny. John, father of Martin, was born, a large-limbed, smiling infant, with the tranquillity of his mother as well as something of the mysticism of his father.
Upon him, as upon his ancestors, this consciousness of God had most absolutely descended. Never for a moment did he question the facts that his father told to him. He grew into a giant of health and strength, and those who, in those old days, saw them tell that it was a strange picture to watch the little wizened man, walking with odd emotional gestures, with little hops and leaps and swinging of the arms beside the firm long stride of the young man towering above him.
When young John was twenty-three years of age his father was found dead under a tree upon a summer’s evening. His expression was of a man challenging some new and startling discovery; he had found perhaps new visions to confront his gaze. They buried him in Kingscote and his son reigned in his stead.
But they were approaching new and modern times. These old days, of simple faith and superstition were passing never to return. There were new elements in the Kingscote company of souls and these elements demanded freer play both of thought and action. They argued that, as to them alone out of all the world the time and manner of God’s coming was known, they should influence with their activities some wider sphere than this Wiltshire village.
John Warlock clung with all his strength to the old world that he knew, the world that gave him leisure and quiet for contemplation. He had no wish to bring in converts, to stir England into a frenzy of terror and anticipation. God gave him no command to spread his beliefs; even his father, fanatic though he had been, had cherished his own small company of saints as souls to whom these things, hidden deliberately from the outside world, had especially been entrusted.
So long as he could he resisted; then when he was about forty, somewhere around 1880, the Kingscote Brethren moved to London. In this year, 1907, John Warlock was sixty-seven and the Kingscote Brethren had had their Chapel in Solomon’s Place, behind Garrick Street, for twenty-seven years. In 1880 John Warlock had married Amelia, daughter of Francis Stephens, merchant. In 1881 a daughter, Amy, was born to them; in 1883, Martin; they had no other children. Martin was at the time of Maggie’s arrival in London twenty-four years of age.
Upon a certain fine evening, a fortnight after Martin Warlock’s first meeting with Maggie, he arrived at the door of his house in Garrick Street, and having forgotten his latch-key, was compelled to ring the old screaming bell that had long survived its respectable reputable days. The Warlocks had lived during the last ten years in an upper part above a curiosity shop four doors from the Garrick Club in Garrick Street. There was a house-door that abutted on to the shop-door and, passing through it, you stumbled along a little dark passage like a rabbit warren, up some crooked stairs, and found yourself in the Warlock country without ever troubling Mr. Spencer, the stout, hearty, but inartistic owner of the curiosity shop.
On the present occasion, after pulling the bell, Martin stared down the street as though somewhere in the dim golden light of its farthest recesses he would find an answer to a question that he was asking. The broad sturdy strength of his body, the easy good-temper of his expression spoke of a life lived physically rather than mentally. And yet this was only half true. Martin Warlock should at this time have been a quite normal young man with normal desires, normal passions, normal instincts. Such he would undoubtedly have been had he not had his early environment of egotism, mystery and clap-trap — had he, also, not developed through his childhood and youth his passionate devotion to his father. The religious ceremonies of his young days had made him self-conscious and introspective and, although during his years abroad he had felt on many occasions that he was completely freed from his early bondage, scenes, thoughts and longings would recur and remind him that he was celebrating his liberty too soon. The licences that to most men in their first youth are incidental and easily forgotten engraved themselves upon Martin’s reluctant soul because of that religious sense that had been driven in upon him at the very hour of his birth. He could not sin and forget. He sinned and was remorseful, was impatient at his remorse, sinned again to rid himself of it and was more remorseful still. The main impulse of his life at this time was his self-distrust. He fancied that by returning home he might regain confidence. He longed to rid himself of the conviction that he was “set aside” by some fate or other, call it God or not as you please. He thought that he hurt all those whom he loved when his only longing was to do them good. He used suddenly to leave his friends because he thought that he was doing them harm. It was as though he heard some Power saying to him: “I marked you out for my own in the beginning and you can’t escape me. You may struggle as you like. Until you surrender everything shall turn to dust in your hands.” He came back to England determined to assert his independence.
He gazed now at the placidity of Garrick Street with the intensity of som
e challenging “Stand and Deliver!” All that the street had to give for the moment was a bishop and an actor mounting the steps of the Garrick Club, an old lady with a black bonnet and a milk-jug, a young man in a hurry and a failure selling bootlaces. None of them could be expected to offer reassurance to Martin — none of these noticed him — but an intelligent observer, had such a stranger to Garrick Street been present, might have found that gaze of interest. Martin’s physical solidity could not entirely veil the worried uncertain glance that flashed for a moment and then, with a little reassuring sigh, was gone.
The door opened, a girl looked for a moment into the street, he passed inside. Having stumbled up the dark stairs, pushed back their private entrance, hung up his coat in the little hall, with a deliberate effort he shook off the suspicions that had, during the last moments, troubled him and prepared to meet his mother and sister.
Because he had a happy, easy and affectionate temperament absence always gilded his friends with gifts and qualities that their presence only too often denied. His years abroad had given him a picture of his mother and sister that the few weeks of his return had already dimmed and obscured. His mother’s weekly letters had, during ten long years, built up an image of her as the dearest old lady in the world. He had always, since a child, seen her in a detached way — his deep and permanent relations had been with his father — but those letters, of which he had now a deep and carefully cherished pile, gave him a most charming picture of her. They had not been clever nor deep nor indeed very interesting, but they had been affectionate and tender with all the gentleness of the figure that he remembered sitting in its lace cap beside the fire.