“The rain’s come on very suddenly,” he had said.
“I know,” she had answered. “And I didn’t bring an umbrella. I didn’t think I should need one.”
He had paused. He had not brought his own umbrella either: his bowler-hat and his neat Sunday overcoat with the deep velvet collar were going to suffer. But as he stood there he had seen Mr. Tuke’s umbrella in the corner, a stout, well-set-up umbrella, with a silver band which ran round the cherry wood handle. His throat had contracted and his mouth suddenly gone dry as he looked at it. Admittedly, it was not his; but it could be.
“May I offer you mine as far as your home?” he had asked.
Mary Kent had turned and looked at him, hesitating and awkward as he stood there before her. She could not help noticing that in his way he was a handsome man, virile and wide-shouldered and erect; and in his present awkwardness he looked somehow younger. She had dropped her eyes.
“Thank you,” she had said.
It was only ten minutes’ walk to the private entrance of the shop where Miss Kent lived, and they had not talked much on the way. John Marco had been aware only of one thing—that beside him, so close that his elbow almost touched her, was Miss Kent. And had he shielded her gallantly as he walked; his own bowler and the velvet collar had got no protection at all. And even so, the rain, which was blowing in gusts up every side road they passed, found its way to her. He kept glancing sideways at her, noticing as he passed each lamp how young she looked and how pure. It seemed incredible that in London where even the flowers are dirty there should be such a face straight out of Eden.
When they said good-bye he had held her hand for the first time. It was smaller than he would have believed: his own hand engulfed it. But it was very firm and alive. He tingled at the touch of it. Then with a wild, muttered remark about hoping that one evening he might call on her, he had turned away, without waiting for the answer and, still hot from the excitement of having been so close to her, had gone striding back through the gloom of the evening to return what he had stolen.
“Sister Kent.”
Mr. Tuke’s words startled John Marco. He had been lost within himself, not noticing the succession of muffled female figures who had padded their way down the narrow wooden steps into the water and up out of the tank on the other side.
His eyes had been fixed on Mary Kent and everything that went on around her seemed misty and unreal. Now that he looked about him again he was surprised to see how unchanged and ordinary everything in the Chapel now looked. There were the same tiers of faces, the same batteries of eyes, even the same heavy breathing of the exhausted Amosites. There was Mr. Tuke, too, as roseate and commanding as ever, standing in the middle of the Jordan Tank. Actually, he was moving a little from side to side, shifting from one foot to the other. He was both uncomfortable and apprehensive. The verger, after seeing to the supply of towels in the men’s disrobing room, had remembered his Minister’s injunction about the fire. He had stoked furiously. In the result, mysterious Gulf streams of heat now circulated about Mr. Tuke’s feet: he began to wonder if, after having been so nearly frozen to death, he had been preserved only to be boiled alive.
Mary Kent, John Marco noticed, moved with a grace of her own, despite the thick folds of stuff around her. She still looked a woman as she walked. Her head in its white turban was bowed, and she looked young and virginal. He felt his heart hammering as she descended into the water and stood there, chaste and obedient, in front of Mr. Tuke.
She would stand just that way, he told himself, when somehow and against what odds he knew not, he would be there beside her at another and a greater sacrament.
ii
About this time, a shabby, little woman in a rusty overcoat, an attenuated feather-boa round her neck, was endeavouring to push her way into the Tabernacle. It was not easy. The sidesman who met her in the porch tried to dissuade her. It was useless, he said, to hope for a seat even in the gallery; they had been assembling there ever since six o’clock when the door opened.
But it was not a seat that the woman wanted: it was Mr. Tuke himself. She had some urgent private mission of her own, she said; some purpose so secret that it might be confided only to the Minister in person. The sidesman, however, was adamant. His instructions had been to close the doors, and he was not disposed to re-open them. He knew, too, from experience that strange things could happen on Immersion Nights; the occasion affected some people—women especially—very queerly. There were hysterical outbreaks sometimes; confessions, public acts of contrition, importunings of the Almighty. And the woman, now that he came to study her more closely, certainly looked distraught. She was flushed—evidently she had been running—and she was breathing in quick gasps. Her hair, which was grey and untidy anyhow, had come loose, and now fell about her face in ugly, straggling wisps. He would not have been surprised if there had been drink on her breath as well.
But distraught or not, she was clearly in earnest. There was no stopping her. Every time he stepped in her path to intercept her, she sidled by him like a dog which is difficult to catch. And when he laid his hand on her arm for a moment to reason with her, she threw it off violently, as if the touch had burnt her. It was then that the sickening realisation came to him that, if he were to prevent her at all, he would have to use force; for Mr. Tuke’s sake he would have to indulge in a scuffle with a strange woman in the Chapel porch. With that in mind he stepped in front of her for the last time and, with his back up against the green baize door that led into the Tabernacle, planted both feet firmly on the ground and faced her.
The effect was immediate and alarming. The woman eyed him for a moment with an expression of exasperated hatred, and then, raising her umbrella, came straight at him. The sidesman instinctively raised his arm to protect himself; in that instant he really feared that he was going to be struck. But it was not in him that she was interested. Instead, the appalling creature hammered with her umbrella handle on the panel of the door. It was a strong panel, strong but thin. Under the blows, it resounded like a drum. It shook. Everyone in the chapel heard it. Six hundred pairs of eyes were wrenched for a moment from the white figures in the tank, and were directed towards the door; even Mr. Tuke paused for a moment at the words, “among the elect ones shall she sit down,” and looked up, angry and resentful, to see from what direction this rival commotion was coming.
The blows, moreover, had their effect. One of the sidesmen within the body of the hall got hurriedly to his feet and marched towards the door. He was a large man who had always seen himself as someone who is vital and reliable in an emergency. When, therefore, he found that the door would not budge forward, and when the fusillade of blows was suddenly repeated from outside, he did not hesitate: he wrenched the door open towards him. The result was disastrous. The sidesman outside who had been leaning against the door fell backwards into the arms of his brother from within, and the shabby little woman, her umbrella held across her breast like a sceptre, pushed her way past them both and started to walk up the aisle.
The disturbance by now was complete. No one at all was looking at Mr. Tuke, and everyone was staring at the rusty black back of the intruder. Everyone that is except John Marco. His eyes were still fixed on Mary Kent. As Mr. Tuke raised the cup to anoint her, John Marco closed his eyes for a moment: he was suddenly aware of being present at something that was too sacred to watch, something which belonged alone with God in the innermost Holy.
As for the woman she did not hesitate: she walked straight in the direction of the Jordan Tank. She was thus upon John Marco before he was properly aware of what was happening. She touched his sleeve, and he started.
“I’ve got to speak to Mr. Tuke,” she said.
“Mr. Tuke?” he repeated.
“Tell him that I’ve got to speak to him now,” the woman answered. “Tell him that Mr. Trackett says it’s urgent.”
John Marco looked at her coldly.
“No one can speak to Mr. Tuke now,” he said. “
The Minister is officiating.”
“I’ve got to speak to him,” she answered. “There’s someone dying.”
“Who?”
“It’s Mr. Trackett.”
It was then that John Marco became aware that everyone in the chapel was staring at them both; simply by pulling at his sleeve, the frowsty old harridan had somehow identified him with her cause. It was almost as though he, John Marco, were holding up the service himself. But the mention of a fellow human being who was dying gave her a kind of over-riding authority; it was impossible to ignore the woman.
“Do you know he’s dying?” he asked. “Did you call a doctor?”
“He’s dying all right,” the woman answered. “And he’s got something he wants to give the gentleman.”
John Marco hesitated. Then, at the cost of making himself even more conspicuous, he did the only possible thing. He stepped over the brass chain and went to the very edge of the tank. The tank was empty of initiates for the moment. And Mr. Tuke, an expression of angry bewilderment on his face, came wading across the tank towards him like a resentful Triton.
“What does our Sister want?” he asked.
“She’s been sent by Mr. Trackett,” John Marco explained in a carrying whisper. “He’s dying.”
“Mr. Trackett’s been an invalid for a long time,” Mr. Tuke said dubiously.
“She says that he’s got something for you,” John Marco continued.
“What is it?”
“She wouldn’t tell me,” he answered. “It’s something private.”
Mr. Tuke glanced at the eight muffled figures on the baptismal bench. Then he glanced at the clock opposite the pulpit. It showed seven-thirty-five; there was almost another fifty-five minutes of divine service. He couldn’t go now. It was unheard of for a Minister to suspend an Immersion night in this way. Besides, it was a sin that he would not have cared to have on his conscience to withhold the Sacrament of baptism from eight of the Sisterhood who, having properly prepared themselves for it, had now waited so long.
“You must go in my stead, Mr. Marco,” he said. “Comfort Mr. Trackett. Console him. Tell him that I am detained on the Lord’s business.”
John Marco straightened his back.
“I’ll go, sir,” he said.
He turned and stepped over the brass chain again. As he did so, he heard Mr. Tuke, magnificently master of the situation, calling upon the next disciple, a Sister Bowen, to come forward. Mr. Tuke uttered the name as though nothing untoward had happened, as though it were the commonest of experiences at adult baptisms for the Minister to be called to the side of the tank like a swimming instructor.
But the magic had gone from the evening. Somewhere during those few seconds of turmoil followed by this remarkable incursion, the spell had been broken; and it was not at the swathed figure of the latest initiate that everyone was looking, but at John Marco and the woman in black.
While Sister Bowen was, so to speak, being baptized privately and without excitement to anyone, John Marco and Mr. Trackett’s sluttish messenger became wonderland figures of speculation and mystery. Six hundred people exchanged glances and congratulated themselves on having been present on this unforgettable night when the door of the Amosite Tabernacle had been battered down, when one sidesman had flung himself upon another, when Mr. Tuke had been treated with contempt, and when one of their own Sunday schoolmasters had been whisked away from their midst by a drab.
Chapter II
It was Gold outside the Chapel, so cold that John Marco turned up the collar of his overcoat and shuddered. The rain, which had been holding off earlier, was now coming down in slanting, icy streams and every gas-lamp in the street cast a smudged, primrose-coloured path of light across the roadway. Chapel Walk, indeed, had more the appearance of a river than of a road; it flowed, gleaming and sinister, through the narrow stucco chasm that connected the western limits of Paddington with the northern fringe of Bayswater.
The woman at his elbow was talking to herself, he noticed. At first he could not catch the words. She had put up her gaping umbrella and was huddled nearly double as she walked; her head was pressed down on to her chest and her arms were raised almost as though she were trying to press the rain aside by sheer force. Only occasional syllables of what she was saying reached him. But these were enough.
“Got to get back in time,” she was repeating. “Got to get back in time.”
She turned up Flaxman Parade as though she had forgotten that he was with her. The rain was driving against their backs by now and she straightened herself a little. But she still kept her arms clasped in front of her and her chin crushed down into the collar of her coat. She was walking faster by now.
“Is it far?” John Marco asked.
The words had a strange effect on his companion. She began to run. Not a brisk, vigorous run, but a halting, limping movement, which made it appear as if she were skipping.
“Clarence Gardens: it’s a good ten minutes,” she said over her shoulder.
John Marco found now that to keep up with her he had almost to run himself. He could remain level with this prancing, jumping creature beside him only by proceeding with great, striding steps. The absurdity of the spectacle which they both must be making troubled him; to any onlooker they would have seemed to be competing in a fantastic race.
The tired clop of a cruising hansom met his ears. It was something which until that moment had not occurred to him. He had never taken a hansom in his life before; it was the kind of extravagance which he had despised in other men. But to-night it was different. It was not extravagance to reach the bedside of a dying man while he still had some life left in him.
“We’ll take a cab,” he said.
But the suggestion seemed almost to shock his companion.
“Oh no,” she said. “Don’t do that. He wouldn’t expect it. He wouldn’t like it.”
“Why not?” John Marco asked.
He had nine shillings in his pocket and not to spend one of them seemed somehow to be treating death with less respect than it deserved.
The woman shook her head, however.
“Waste,” she said. “Sinful waste.”
It was then that John Marco remembered the reputation of Ephraim Trackett. It was not a pretty one. Even in those strict Amosite circles where everything that was not frugal was suspect, he was a bye-word for meanness and parsimony. Until a year ago when his illness had imprisoned him, Mr. Trackett had been a regular attendant at chapel. In a shiny, frock coat that was worn bare at the elbows and had been refaced, and again refaced, he had, every Sunday, glorified God and given a single penny to the collection. There was, John Marco recalled, a pale, dejected girl of about thirty—his niece—as shabbily dressed as himself, who used to accompany him. She had a sullen, bitter face. He had seen her looking round during the Sermon, eyeing the Amosite men on the far side of the aisle as though envious of other women whose lot allowed them to know such creatures.
They had reached the house by now and the woman beside him was fumbling for her key. They went up the steps together and stood sheltering in the Palladian entrance-porch. It was a large house, altogether different from John Marco’s scale of things; it was the kind of house that hinted at wealth no matter how it might have decayed. The woman swung the heavy front door open and John Marco found himself in a dim entrance hall shrouded with palms and hangings and dense lace curtains. His companion pulled a chair up and tugged at one of the hanging-chains from the gas-burner—apparently there were no other servants in the house. When the mantle had lit itself she got down and told John Marco to wait.
It was not pleasant, waiting. The house was silent; very silent and very cold. It seemed to be composed of shut-up rooms and empty grates; it was like a house from which everyone had suddenly gone away. There was a peculiar, chilling atmosphere—an odour almost—of dissolution. It was as though everything in the house—the stair carpet, the velvet pall at the foot of the stairs, the lace curtains at the windo
ws—had withered and dried up; as though a gust of wind blowing through the house would have carried everything before it like dust.
John Marco had not long to wait, however. The woman—she had her hat off by now and her hair streamed across her head more wildly than ever—came down the stairs and beckoned to him to follow. She led him up to the first landing and, without knocking, flung open the door which faced him.
John Marco stood in the doorway without moving; the smell in the room was too much for him; it was the sour, human smell of a sick-room that has been occupied too long. The room itself was almost in darkness. The gas was not alight and a solitary oil lamp, turned very low, burned on the dressing-table.
John Marco peered into the design of shadows in front of him. First of all, he made out the bed. It was a lavish, brass-railed affair; at the head and foot were thick bars of metal that gleamed in the surrounding darkness. Altogether, it was like a cage from which the sides had been removed. And in it, amid a litter of bed-clothes, was the propped-up body of a small white-haired man.
His neck, which showed miserably thin like a chicken’s over the top of his nightshirt, was stretched to its uttermost as he bent forward to catch sight of his visitor.
It was then that John Marco noticed that the old man was not alone. There was a dark head on the counterpane beside him. It was the head of a woman who was kneeling on the floor with her face resting in her two hands. When at last she moved, John Marco became aware of a white face with two sunken, staring eyes.
I Shall Not Want Page 2