The Delane was so effectually disguised or travestied that it was almost impossible to say. The ruined mill set his imagination to work. It was not a comely thing for adornment, it was not—strictly speaking—a habitation. Its excuse for existence had been the cause of its erection—work. Now that the work had gone it had neither excuse nor existence. It was simply a corpse, and the grass throve and grew green upon it. But grass has its distinct uses as long as it is kept in bounds. Here the grass seemed to surge up from the valley against the chalk, looking like an invading force.
‘Your aunt is a very interesting woman,’ said Armstrong in the light of the ruined house and desolate mill. Arthur whistled.
‘Then she’s the only interesting one I know,’ he replied.
‘Perhaps she isn’t your idea of an interesting woman?’
‘I don’t want a woman to be interesting.’
‘I meant that she had character, and that is interesting.’
‘Well, Josephine has character, but she’s remarkably plain, even for a sister, isn’t she?’
‘You don’t think good looks and character go together?’
‘Well, there’s old Godfrey,’ returned Arthur, thrusting out his chin, ‘he would have made a beautiful woman: a little too dark perhaps for real beauty.
I think you want a dash of fire for that. I once saw a girl . . .’ he stopped hastily, then went on again, ‘I tried to draw her. I draw, you know,’ he announced gravely, as if he wished to spare Armstrong a painful or startling shock.
‘Perhaps you’ll show me your drawings then,’ said Armstrong rather absently. He was still thinking of Aunt Ellen looking out from those vanished windows upon the Morton house, coveting with her whole soul. He wondered how she enjoyed the possession now that it was so completely in her hands. The family had become quite a pleasant little problem. One of the prominent points in it became the personality of the late Mrs Delane-Morton.
How had the combined attack of the Delanes mastered her ? The scenes of the play which were enacted long before he or even Arthur appeared upon the stage were what concerned him now. He was anxious to get back as quickly as possible from the valley to the hill, and see if there were any answer to his question contained within the old mansion.
V
The Story of the Church: A Sermon which need not be read
WHILE ARMSTRONG WAS WALKING across the fields with Arthur the girl still remained upon her knees in the dim shadowed chapel, under the stained light through the glass of the windows, falling in jewelled patches and an unassorted entanglement that caught her dark figure and her very white hands in their network. It seemed as if she were held there and bound with something stronger than cords, though utterly unseen. She never moved while the sunlight slowly passed from pane to pane of the leaded spaces; her hands remained as rigidly upraised, her body as abased. The quiet of the place hung in thick folds about her, almost as though the prayer of all the ages had combined to weave something finely palpable between those chapel walls. The imagination might have caught the faint flash and stir of the withdrawing shuttle knitting together a mystical web, the quick answering throb which welcomed its return. The light shifted across the dark paving-stones, from the altar steps it drew nearer the carved screen dividing the chapel from the aisle. It passed over the brass figure of a knight in armour, then to a little broken plate that lay beyond—half of its inscription torn away, and the faint outline alone left to show that the effigy of a priest had once shone upon the pavement. ‘Of your charity,’ said the ancient letters, ‘pray . . .’ then came the jagged edges battered into silence.
The mute appeal of the thing, the suggestion of a cry suddenly broken in its utterance caught at some sort of response in the kneeling girl. ‘Of your charity . . .’ said the little brass again. The marks of the nails could clearly be seen, the nails which had fastened the scroll below the feet of the nameless priest. The sun shifted still a little. The shape of the tonsured head came into view; the erasure of all detail, ornament, whatever had been, spoke of selflessness however much enforced. ‘Of your charity pray . . .’ the broken phrase repeated itself. Then no more; no suggestion of the prayer to be used, no name of anyone for whom to pray.
‘And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born.’
The words seemed to come out of silence, from nowhere, and yet the chapel was full of them. Again the sentence said ‘Of your charity pray . . .’ and then fell upon a whispered silence, ‘Not for my soul; nor have they left me a name that you could mention in your praying. It is well; is not my soul a little thing amongst so many that may need it just as much? And yet I think no soul could need it more. But yet I am content it should pass forgotten from amongst those that come after me. As the counting of years go, it must be long ages since human voices said one prayer in my remembrance. It is very well. There are better prayers that may be said. And yet it is good that men should pray for one another in all love. A little word and soon said, daughter: but I heard your heart speaking, and it crossed these many hundred years of silence. It said such things as I would be saying, and therefore it sounded in my ears; for so it is we come together, may be, you on your side of life, and I on mine. Nevertheless I hear you, and yours is a wise heart that speaks, as well as a kind. Of your charity . . . so poor and humble a word; so common and to be despised, some might think, unless it go well clothed in a fair shape. Very like you have a fair shape also, but I hear only your fair voice; but if you have not a fair shape it is sure that few will look for kindness in you and ask it of you. Yet you will give it. You have given already; I have heard and I know.
You are willing to cross from your side of life to mine if only you may put your prayer into deeds. It was not so with me. I was blind at the beginning and afraid at the end. Hence is it not well my name should perish, and I become as though I had never been?
‘Walking the field path in my time I still felt my soul warm with charity; but it was wilful though I did not know. It loved to choose where it should go, and it turned from the low and common things. So I fell, and those I loved with me. Hear, daughter, how !
‘I was a poor priest, who had been a poor scholar and a student; I had lived with poverty all my life, and all my life I had loved her; putting away from me the desires of living, the lust of the eyes, and even at last the mind’s desire of knowledge. I gave up every one and came here to live in that little room over the porch yonder, vowing myself to God Almighty’s service and the care of His people in all charity. So for many years, as time goes in the world, I herded their poor souls like a flock of silly sheep, and every day it seemed that my charity grew more and more: yet for one thing I had no charity at all, nor any pity, and that was for the body which clothed me in those days. I hated it, tormenting it until the creature almost ceased from being, and at length I put all thought of it away from me, so that it was as 4 0
dead as the poor thing they buried in the tomb years ago. I was very happy in those days; and besides my service the people gave me a return of the love I spent on them, more and better, I now believe, than ever I gave. But over and above all this, it was allowed me to bestow of that store of learning I had so much treasured on two youths I loved more than sons. They lived in the manor house which stands over away in the fields, as you go by the chantry-house and the fish-ponds, and so by the mill. I served in their father’s chapel there besides. He was a good friend to me and to many another.
‘From the time that they were very little lads until the moment when they grew to be fine, tall youths they came to learn at my side; and very quick of wit they proved, besides being skilled and active in more manly pastimes.
Yet always they loved me and my books; and though I was ever careful to keep my heart humble as regards my service towards them, be it known, daughter, that I fell into the sin of a more subtle pride. For the learning of which, in myself, I would not be proud, yet in them I behel
d with a most uplifted and complacent mind. They were scholars that would have done far better masters credit.
‘Now above all the matters that I taught these young men, I prided myself upon the manner in which I had treated of the body and the things pertaining thereto: how that it was a poor thing and mean, to be despised and overlooked, to be trampled on if need be, but better far to be utterly neglected and forgotten. And they being young and hardy, like the animals of the woods, were as little conscious of the meaning of my words as the animals themselves might have been; yet always it seemed that they followed my teaching. For never have I seen young things who troubled so little for the satisfying of their own desires, whatever they might be. For all that they were well-grown, comely, strong and well liked by their fellows. And the happy time we four had in those days—their father, themselves, and me.
‘I mind me that almost the last time we sat together was when they were both on the point of setting out in the world, each one appointed as esquires in the service of some lord. I doled them out the same words of advice as I had been wont to do, and very earnestly did they say them after me, commending me for a wise teacher and one to be obeyed with a whole heart. Then away they went, and for some years we saw them no more, their father and I; and the news which came of them was scant indeed, though good, and enough to make glad those who cared for the two young men.
‘It came about one hot summer, when the whole earth lay parched with heat under an unwinking sun, that messages arrived at the manor house that both young men would be home in the winter to keep Christmas once more under their father’s roof. As you may guess, daughter, there was joy for all of us in those words. But the summer that year lay heavy on the land, and it seemed hard to believe that winter could ever come. The people well remembered that season, for more fervent prayers in church went up for rain, behind their curses in the fields upon the drought, than at many a Lenten fast-day service. And there were strange rumours abroad, and terrors by night and day among the shepherds on the hills; and even my dreams as I slept were much troubled and full of ill omens: so that often I got up from my slumbers and went down into the church to pray.
‘The summer went slowly enough and faded into an autumn as parched as the season before it, and so sank into winter. Still there were strange tales told upon the hillside, and men said that queer things came between them and the stars o’ nights. It wore on to Christmas. The brothers might come on any day or at any moment. Many’s the time their father and I would sit listening only, and never speaking one word, just to catch the sound of their awaited feet. We sat so together on an evening—there was but one more between us and the Eve itself—whilst the people were busy about preparing for the feast, laughing and talking: when suddenly there came a silence upon them as upon us, and the sound of a man crying out. And he was calling on the Holy Mother and Saint Michael for help. So I went down into the hall whence came all this clamour, and through all the people all crowded about the man where he stood screaming, with a great horror on his face. He was one of the herdsmen off the hill. I blessed him in the name of God, His Son, and our Lady, and presently he became still so that I could question him. But he could tell little; only that he had met with a great and terrible thing on the downs, which he could not describe in form, but which passed with a great roaring and rushing like the dragons of old time. So I commended him to our patron St Michael and left him. Yet there was no news of the brothers, and I came back here to my room in the porch.
‘Benediction was said, the curfew-bell had rung, and you could feel the Christmas peace fallen upon all the town. I bolted the church door, and had just tended the light upon the altar, I was even on my knees at prayer, when there came a loud rattling at the door below my chamber. Great blows fell upon it, then the voice of some one crying anguishfully in the name of our Lord; then again came silence. I was so stricken to the heart with terror that I could not move; and yet all the while I knew the voice. It was that of the youngest brother. At length the coward that I was drew near to the door and asked who called; but no answer came. I was afraid to open. It was exceeding dark all around me, and upon me was the remembrance of my ill-omened dreams.
‘It may have been a long space, or a short, as time goes, when I said a prayer and undid the door. The door opened inwards. As I drew it towards me the figure of a man kneeling crouched against it fell forward at my feet. I lifted him up as well as I was able for the weight of his body, and dragged it into the light of my lantern. It was indeed the younger brother, but he was quite dead, with the blood pouring out of him from many wounds—out upon the pavement of the porch, down the steps into the church.
‘A horse whinnied at the churchyard gate, some other answered. There were sounds of quick, heavy feet upon the path, and then a man’s tall figure came in between me and the dark sky. He came forward, snatching the lantern out of my hand. He turned the light upon us, but while he did this, he also was illumined: it fell first upon his soiled and muddy clothes, then on his bloodstained hands, and at last upon his dreadful face. Yet it was the elder brother; I had known him from the first moment, though my faith refused him such belief.
‘He looked at us for a while silently, in a kind of rage, and there were tears of anger in his sunken eyes: then slowly, deliberately, he cursed me where I stood, so that the tongue clave to the roof of my mouth in anguish and dread. I could say nothing for sorrow. Then presently, ‘My son!’ I said. At that he dashed the lantern down upon the ground, so that I looked for death itself; but instead I felt his breath low upon my hands, and he was kneeling before me by the body of his murdered brother. Before I could well hear what his low voice said he was confessing all his sins. Heavy they were, daughter, and not few. Yet for every sin he owned, meseemed mine only was the fault and the shame. It seemed to me also that his curse had not fallen on me, but mine on him; for the deeds he had done were of my sowing, and so I might know surely they would truly be absolved.
‘At first all had gone well with him in the world: God and his fellows had been good to him, and his wishes were fulfilled before he well knew what they might be. So he went on prospering and beloved. But at length desire in a dark form met him by the way, and he fell without knowing how he got his fall, for I had blinded his eyes with beauty and he could not tell truth.
Then finding all I had said ill-matched to his new shameful knowledge, he cursed me in his heart for a fool, and went his ways.
‘Even so all might have been righted, if from one desire he had not passed unto another: but this time there stood something between it and him; and that which stood between was no other than his own flesh and blood—his younger brother. (The Lord knows how he had fared; but I think not so badly by my means.) Still it came about that they purposed to spend the Christmas season with their father together, and, if it might be, to find some peace from their discords. Yet ever while they rode the elder brother grew more and more wroth, until they came unto the midst of the downs. It chanced that they were talking of indifferent matters, but the elder’s bitter spirit found a means to chafe his brother; and from words, they say, it is a short road to blows. So it was now. He set upon his brother with such weapons as he had to hand. The other defended himself for awhile, but he was overcome with surprise and dismay.
‘He spoke wild words of how some monstrous, flying thing came between them at the end—a creature scaled and winged: how his brother spurred his horse away into the valley to the church; and how he followed, still mad with fury. But to me there could be no monster more terrible than the image of his own hideous desire and rage: for is not that always the dragon which Saint Michael treads underfoot?
‘I gave him what comfort I might, and he rode off into the darkness, nor did we ever see or hear of him again. I was left solitary with his secret and my own. That was a dark and sad Christmastide. Mercifully their father was a very aged man: he had not many years in which to count his only half-known sorrow. As for me, I prayed that a long time on earth might be gi
ven me in which to atone, and to preach other and better wisdom, a greater truth.
For if we have not charity for this poorest creature, for what shall we have it?
and if we may not give it to God, being too small a gift, may we not consecrate it in sacrifice and so leave it always beside the altar-stone ? But soon I died, and there are no words left for me to say. Only, daughter, of your charity, pray . . . of your charity . . . pray . . .’
If there had been a disturbance of the silence it had ceased. The sun had passed from the battered brasses; the weaving of strange lights and shadows had all gone. There was nothing in the church but the girl alone.
VI
Strange Conversation Between Two Chairs
ARMSTRONG AND THE BOY walked home very quickly, urged on by the former’s newly-awakened curiosity. There was still half an hour before lunch-time. None of the family were about. The house was utterly silent and seemingly unoccupied. It wore a more communicative mood now that Aunt Ellen was not present. The difference her personality made was rather remarkable. Armstrong proceeded to the library with feelings of relief. That also was tenantless. He warmed himself before the fire.
Like all the other rooms in the house, it was notably wanting in personality; it revealed nothing of tastes or inclinations. There were not even any photographs. Looking round desperately for traces of the departed mistress of the place he found no answering sign there. Aunt Ellen obscured everything, for even in her absence the very chair she sat in loomed up like a shadow of herself in the window. It seemed that she had commanded it to be moved away from its position beside the hearth, and now it stood half turned towards the wintry slopes outside; beside it, and confronting it in confidential fashion, another smaller chair. Aunt Ellen’s chair had a tall straight back that curved round in wings at the side, but despite its rigid appearance it was still comfortably padded, so well padded that only a small person could have been happy within its encircling frame. The other chair was a nicely-proportioned circle with the necessary segment omitted; it was as like Mr Delane-Morton as a chair could be, with that air of engaging confidentialness about nothing whatever. A cushion sliding off the polished seat still bore the impress of his not inconsiderable weight. The arm of his chair touched the arm of Aunt Ellen’s, but all the same it had taken a sudden angry curvet to one side, which looked as if he had pushed it back on some uncontrolled irritation in rising. It would be impossible for the imperturbable chair on which Aunt Ellen sat to be moved in such a fashion.
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