With that I fell back under the former spell, and feared nothing, and walked boldly across the yard and down the road, and there was St. Nicholas’s Church, a dark shadow rising up against me. As I came nearer I could distinguish the bell-gable and the two bells hanging side by side against the sky, and I began to sing softly to myself the tag-end from the rhyme of bells, “We two, we two!”
I unlatched the wicket gate and went up the path between the hollies to the church door; and there on a bench outside sat Mun wrapped in his cloak, waiting for me patiently. He said nothing, but took me up at once into his arms; and how long we embraced I know not. When I began to shiver, so that I thought my limbs would be racked apart by the shivering, despite his close holding of me, he said: “The bolt on the church door is drawn, I find; let us come in together out of the wind,” and he led me in. We went into the bell-ringers’ place and I began to sing again in a sort of ecstasy, “We two, we two!”
Mun took out his tinder-box, and with it lighted a lantern that he had with him. We went into the pews and gathered some hassocks and footstools and brought them into the bell-ringers’ place and made us a couch there; and Mun spread his cloak over me and we began to speak together in whispers.
This was no ordinary love-prattle, as may be imagined, because of the strangeness of our meeting, and the holiness of the place, and the brevity of the night-time yet remaining to us. Indeed, we spoke, as I remember, in a language that seemed not to be that English tongue which is shared between every John and Jane Doe in the land, but was compounded of phrases that were curious and fanciful and peculiarly our own; so that, as I believe, any eavesdropper would have mistaken us for Chinaman and Chinawoman.
We kissed and caressed often, but though my body was wholly his own he did not lie with me, as might be supposed, nor did I care whether he did so or whether he refrained, it was all one to me, being caught up in an excess of love for him that seemed to soar us beyond carnality and into perfect bliss—that bliss which perhaps is prefigured in the Scripture which says that in Heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage. What was more to be wondered at, we did not speak of his going to Ireland; nor of my remaining there widowed, as it were, in Forest Hill; nor of our next meeting; nor of the sending of letters between us and how this should be contrived; nor of any such temporal matters. We spoke only of how it was between us, and how it had been these months past, and of love, and of the bells. When I asked Mun: “Mun, Mun, tell me, which are the Four Best Things?” he answered: “Why, they are Marie and Mun and Alpha and Omega! Or, to put them in their due order of time, Alpha and Mun and Marie and Omega.” By this I knew that Alpha and Omega were the proper names of two bells above us, being emblems of the beginning and end of Time that enfolded my Mun and his Marie.
When the light that comes a little before dawn shone down to us from the bell-windows, and we could now see along the whole length of the ropes, we knew that it was time to be stirring. Mun sat up and said soberly in his every-day voice: “My dear, it is nearly day. If we delay longer, it may go ill with us.”
“You must go out and leave me,” said I, “since I cannot at present return to the house. I shall remain here until a little before breakfast-time, and then return boldly. I shall tell my mother, if she should ask me, that I rose early while Zara slept, and went to the Church; which is the truth.”
He kissed me again, but neither could bear to utter a good-bye, having a double presentiment: first, that one day we should meet again, and second, that before our next meeting we must each suffer a world of sorrow. He lighted his lantern again for a minute or two (which was an error and proved our undoing) while we restored the mats and hassocks to their several places and then I went to the door and looked out. The town slept fast, and I came back and for awhile we spoke together of indifferent matters—of my sister Zara, and of his horse which he had left hoppled in a coppice a mile away, and of the cold.
Mun took a ring off his finger and looked at it awhile, but put it back again, and “Marie,” said he, “we have no need to exchange keepsakes. Fail nothing by any means and there shall be no neglect in me. You know well that you have my whole heart, as I have yours.”
“For a thousand years,” I answered him.
“Nay, for twice so many,” he said. “Setting Mun and Marie together, we have ‘MM,’ and this is the Latin manner of writing two thousand years. And even two millenniums are not the whole span between Alpha and Omega.”
“They will serve for a short beginning of our acquaintance,” I answered, laughing, and held out my hand to him, which he did not kiss, but clasped in his own, and looked steadfastly at me for a small space. Then he turned about and strode out of the church, clapping his long-plumed hat upon his head.
I sat down in our pew and began to pray, if prayer it may be called, since I asked God for nothing, but only gave thanks, from the fullness of my heart. Presently I was interrupted by the sound of a horse trotting down the road in the contrary direction to that which Mun had taken; but it went past the Church and died away in the distance, so I knew that it was not Mun returning. I rose up and went into the bell-ringers’ place again and my heart sang, “We two, we two”; and I knew that Mun’s heart echoed the same on his road to Cuddesdon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I Fall into Disgrace
Mun had ridden perhaps so far as Wheatley when I heard trudging footsteps on the path that led to the porch. I slipped out from behind the screen and knelt down in the aisle, where I determined to continue as in prayer, whoever it might be, to avoid disturbance or questioning. It was Ned, the sexton, who came past me without pausing, and went in and began pulling at a bell-rope. These were single slow strokes, and only upon the second bell, that Mun and I called Omega; by which I knew that he tolled for a death that had been reported to him in the night. I arose from my knees, and asked him who was dead, that he tolled the bell. He answered, pulling at his forelock, that it was Old Mother Catcher, down by Bayardswater, who was found drowned in the mill-pool. The bell struck so ominously upon my heart, being only a single bell, which cried “Death! Death! Death!” with a great pause between each stroke, that I ran out from the Church in a horrible agitation of heart. I had come to the wicket-gate and was opening it, to hurry homeward down the road, when a man slipped out from behind the holly bushes, where he had been lurking, and clapped his hand on my shoulder.
I cried aloud for terror, but turning about saw that it was the new curate, the Rev. Luke Proctor, clad in a torn cassock and an old woollen nightcap, and that he grasped a bill-hook in his hand.
“So it is you, Mistress Marie Powell!” said he.
“Good morning, Sir Reverence,” said I, recovering my wits. “I suppose you are come here with your hook and nightcap to trim the holly bushes. Continue with your unseasonable work, and remove your hand from my shoulder, you fuddled wretch!”
But he held me the faster and asked me: “Where have you been, woman?”
I answered: “Sir, I confess I am a woman, but if you were sober you would remember your manners and not address me ungenteelly by the name of woman only, as though I were a trull. But to leave that, and come to your question. I have been in the church, praying. I felt a great compunction to go thither and pray, and I found the door open and went in.”
“Where is your lantern?” he asked.
“I have none,” I answered. “I came without any lantern or candle.”
“I saw a light shining out from the north windows not half an hour ago,” he said, “as I rose up to let in the cat. I put on my apparel in haste, to see what thieves were at large in my church, and snatched up this hook, and came to the porch and listened. I heard voices within, and stood perdue in the bushes. Presently a young gallant came striding out, but when I saw his sword I durst not apprehend him, but waited until his companion should come out also. Then the sexton entered in at the gate and did not espy me in the bushes where I was. I called to him in a low, hissing voice to warn him of his dan
ger, but being deaf he heard not. He went on into the Church and by God’s grace took no harm, but began to toll the bell. Unless there be another person still within doors I shall conclude that you and the young gallant were alone together in the Church at the time when I saw the light shining.”
“You may conclude what you please, Sirrah, and if you find anything disordered in the Church, or anything spoilt or stolen you will not blame me, pray: you will blame your own boozy self, who left the bolts drawn on the porch door when you let yourself out last night at the vestry door. As I have acquainted you already, if you were not too drunken to hear, I arose early from my bed and came in here to pray. The sexton found me upon my knees in the aisle, as he will tell you; and that is all that I know to your purpose.”
Yet he compelled me to come back with him into the Church, threatening me with his weapon; and there he found the lantern, which Mun had forgotten, standing on a mat in the corner. He handled it and found the metal part to be still a little warm.
Then he called me a harlot and rolled his eyes, like the Turkish knight in the mumming play. He said that I had defiled the Church by using it as a stew; and that for this sin I should fry in everlasting Hell.
I was beside myself with wrath, when he spoke in this fashion. I caught up the lantern and swung it against his head; but he avoided the blow and the lantern struck against the bill-hook and was broken. He named me a frantic termagant and a Babylonian witch. The sexton was not so deaf but that he heard these horrid words: he stood still in amaze, and missed his time for tolling, but said nothing.
I ran off and came to our house and found all the doors open, and went in, and heard the bustle and clatter of breakfast coming from the hall. I met with a servant or two, who looked curiously at me, as I thought, and saluted me, but I had no speech with them and went up to my chamber again, the hour being not yet eight o’clock, to order my dress and hair. I found Zara lying awake in bed, munching biscuit.
She said to me: “Marie, your hair is in lamentable disorder! Whence do you come?”
“From the Church,” I answered shortly.
“Have you been long away?” she asked in a cooing voice.
“The bell is tolling for Old Mother Catcher,” I said, hoping to divert her questioning. “She was found drowned in the mill-pool. Do you think it possible that she flung herself in?”
“Why should it not be possible?” Zara answered, giggling softly. “Even it is possible that you pushed her in yourself, you nasty schemer. You have been away from this bed long enough to have drowned a dozen such old hags.”
I ran to the bed, with my long-handled bone hair-brush in my hand, and would have caught her a crack on the skull with it. When she took refuge under the quilted coverlet, I thumped at her knees and elbows as well as I might through the quilting, and warned her that if she spoke another scurrilous word I should drag her out by the ears and twist her wrists till she wept for mercy. I could never manage Zara, but only by the use of threats and blows. My sister Ann, on the contrary, was a sweet child and could be ruled by kind words and kisses; Ann was two years younger than Zara.
When I had dressed myself to my satisfaction, and washed the night from my face, and put my hair into better order, I went downstairs again and came into the hall and made my curtsy, to my parents, who, to my relief, greeted me without any alteration of countenance. They were entertaining my Uncle Jones of Sandford, who had come in half a minute before me. He was telling them that he had risen very early to go on a matter of business to Beckley, hoping to catch a gentleman before he went off for the day; which business he had concluded and ridden homeward without breaking his fast, but, fainting for hunger, he had dismounted here to try his pot-luck.
After my uncle had spoken volubly upon indifferent matters, my parents answering him shortly (for at breakfast the rule with us was taciturnity and grunting), he said: “As I came riding by your house very early this morning, a little worse than a mile before I came to it, in the half-light, I almost rode down a gentleman who was walking towards me. He threw a short curse at me as I trotted on, by which I instantly knew the very man, and yet could not put a proper name to him. Now suddenly it has come to me: he was the undergraduate from Magdalen Hall whom I met here at this very table four years ago or more: the young man who was so backward in his studies, a younger son of the King’s Knight-Marshal. He has grown into a hearty fine rascal since that time.”
My mother pricked up her ears at this, like a hound, and “You mean young Edmund Verney?” she asked.
“Aye, that was his name,” cried my Uncle Jones. “He had long dark tresses, a great nose and a melancholic look.”
“Now, here’s a pretty riddle!” cried my mother, giving her tongue full rein at last. “He was here yesterday in the afternoon, in young Sir Thomas Gardiner’s company; but an hour after supper was ended, I mean about eight o’clock, he gave us his lugubrious farewells (for he is destined for this new war in Ireland) and rode away again to Cuddesdon with Sir Thomas.”
My Uncle Jones coughed in a pensive manner and said: “Being a dissolute young spark, it may be that, after leaving you, he dismounted at the ale-house and drank and played at dice, and at last diced away all his money and his horse, too; so that when dawn came, perforce he went off on foot.”
My brother James objected against this, saying: “For Captain Verney to have alighted at an ale-house, and that not of the better quality, after having supped well at our house, and to have left Sir Thomas to continue his journey alone, while he diced and drank ale with our village sots—that I find inconceivable. I dare swear that you have mistaken your man, Uncle. For I have noticed that often, when a man has been in a place, he leaves behind him a sort of phantasma, which does not walk disembodied, but fastens itself upon another man of equal size and height; so that, as I remember once, three times I thought I saw my Uncle Cyprian Archdale in a street in Westminster, and each time I was deceived, yet the fourth time it was himself in person—though I had no intelligence or belief but that he was in his house at Wheatley, whence he rarely stirs.”
I had felt my face flush and my ears burn at the mention of Mun, and pushed aside my trencher of cold boiled venison and sweet pickled pears, to bury my nose in my ale-cup. But James’s interpretation of what my Uncle Jones had seen passing as reasonable, I breathed freely again, for soon my Uncle Jones went crying after another fox, namely, the sad massacres in Ireland.
I muttered a silent prayer that the curate might stand sufficiently in dread of my father, who paid him his fee, not to come to him with an account of the passage between us, and that he would enjoin silence upon the sexton too: for to have called me a whore upon no evidence but his own dirty imagination was nothing for which he could expect praise or gratitude at the Manor-house. Besides, it had been by his own carelessness that the door was left unlocked and unbolted; which was a grave fault in a curate. In a word, he was as deep in the mud as I was in the mire. As for Zara, I could, I hoped, manage her. But what puzzled my wits was to know by whose hand the pantry door had been made fast after me. Likely enough, I thought, it was the cook’s, who had heard the door bang in the wind and rising up from beside the fire had bolted it and returned to his slumbers. If that were so, I could heartily thank him: since but for his officious act, I should have returned again to my bed, and Mun would have waited for me in the Church porch until morning, and gone away again without a sight of me.
I asked leave to retire from the table, which was granted, and ran upstairs again, just as Zara came down. In a low voice I threatened her that if she told anyone, whomsoever, that I had been out betimes praying in Church, I would strangle her that night as she slept; for I wished nobody to know that I was inclined to thoughts of salvation and godliness.
Zara gazed impudently back at me and, says she: “I shall tell whom I please, for if you are indeed regenerate in spirit you will be bold in the Lord and openly confess your new faith, and you will also forgive me, whatever I may do against you; an
d, as for strangling me, how can you hope for salvation if you become the murderess of your own sister?”
“That is nobody’s business but my own,” I answered. “Mind your tongue to-day, Zara, or it will sentence your throat to be squeezed to death to-night.”
With that we parted, and I went out to my accustomed tasks in the fowl-house and the upper dairy-house.
At eleven o’clock Trunco sought me out in the dairy-house. I could see that she had been weeping and the skin about one eye was bruised; and in a great affright she cried, gasping: “Oh, my darling child, Madam your mother commands you instantly to the little parlour.”
“Why, what is amiss, dear Trunco?” I asked.
She answered me: “His Reverence, Sir Luke the Woodman, has come to your father in the little parlour with a complaint against you—I know not what, but he carried a broken lantern in his hand, and Ned the Sexton lagged behind him, brought along in evidence, I suppose. I dared not listen at the keyhole, for the bailiff was waiting outside to speak to his Worship your father; but I saw to it that he did not listen, neither, and presently he went off. And then his Worship called for your mother, who came out from the kitchen, and I heard a great sound of altercation within doors, with your mother’s voice prevailing; and then Madam your mother bursts out and bawls for your sister Zara, who comes running; and then I heard a greater sound of altercation, with the sound of blows and Zara setting up a screech, and then the Curate’s voice roaring out rhetorications and prevailing. After this, Madam your mother comes out once more, distracted and passionate, and spies me lurking in a doorway and runs at me with her fists, and strikes me in the eye, accusing me of eavesdropping; and sends me to seek out ‘that brazen little bitch-fox, my daughter Marie.’”
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