Events which by skill, compromise and good will might have been halted, were now whirled out of all sensible men’s control on their fatal course of calamity. Dr. Bunnion could no longer uphold the innocence of his moaning, bleeding son, and Major Alexander did not see how he could avoid avenging his daughter’s honor.
Shortly before dawn, when Mr. Brett had at last managed to forget his own wretched situation sufficiently to fall into a light sleep, he was awakened by yet another knocking at his door. Savagely he cried out, “Go away! For God’s sake, leave me in peace! All of you, go to hell!”
Outside the door, poor bewildered Tizzy Alexander sobbed quietly and went away.
Six
THE BELLS OF St. Nicholas’s wrinkled the morning air as they summoned the town to prayer. Dully the two distressed households understood it to be Sunday and they must needs carry their griefs and perplexities to church to thank God for being alive.
“Let us pray,” suggested Mr. Hudson, the vicar, when the time came, and the congregation knelt—some opening their hearts for relief from private anguish and others endeavoring to close them against the prying eyes of the Almighty. Chief among the former were Mrs. Harris and Tizzy Alexander, and chief among the latter were Bostock and Harris.
Not even God can help me now, thought Harris as he peered around the well-filled pews for a sight of Ralph Bunnion, who, it turned out, had been the last living soul to clap eyes on Adelaide and had left her only he knew where. After the night’s disaster, it was plain that Adelaide was not in the school. He had some confused notion of throwing himself on the school hero’s mercy, confessing all (or nearly all) and imploring his aid. But Ralph Bunnion was nowhere to be seen.
Sadly, Harris glanced sideways to where the sturdy Bostock knelt with closed eyes and open mouth. He envied his friend his slow, simple mind that was not tormented with dreadful thoughts. Though Bostock might never reach the heights that he, Harris, sometimes knew, he would never plummet to the depths that he, Harris, was now in.
A great loneliness fell upon Harris as round about him prayers of all descriptions rose in silence to the church’s roof. He felt himself to be the outcast of creation against whom every man’s hand was raised. Then he looked at Bostock again and was briefly consoled. Bostock was his companion and friend; he was just as involved as Harris himself and would, therefore, be bound to suffer at his side. At once Harris felt less lonely and more a part of the common fate of mankind.
Mr. Hudson nodded to his flock. He was a shaggy man with large hands and large feet, and as he began to snap and bark his sermon from the pulpit, was the very image of a pious sheepdog with a sharp eye for strays.
As the town was becoming quite fashionable of late by reason of an interest in sea bathing, Mr. Hudson thought it necessary to touch on the extreme difficulty of rich men entering the Kingdom of Heaven unaided. The poor were all right—here he smiled encouragingly at the fisherfolk at the back—but the rich—here he frowned at the private pews—stood in need of assistance. Though he didn’t say it outright, he implied pretty strongly that they weren’t likely to get such assistance from God direct. Their only chance lay through the proper channels. That was what churches were for. And St. Nicholas’s in particular. They were not likely to do better elsewhere . . . even though the actual building stood in need of repair. Exposed as it was to the winds from the sea, even the house of God was subject to the elements. The roof leaked. Money was required to restore it. And where should such money come from? From those who would benefit. From this very congregation who prayed and expected their prayers to be answered.
Here Mr. Hudson paused so that the equity of the arrangement might sink in. Harris felt in his pockets and wondered how much he could afford on the chance of a quick return. He had reached the final pit of despair in which anything was worth trying.
He had a shilling and a sixpence. Strenuously he wrestled with his conscience, arguing that Mr. Hudson would never know that if he gave the sixpence, a shilling had been withheld. But God would know, said a pious voice within. “Yah!” snarled Harris, whose faith was a rubbery commodity and tended to shift out of the way under pressure. “Who cares?”
He fished in his pockets and came upon a battered brass button that a horse had trodden flat. He mused. Why the sixpence when the button would make as good a noise in the collecting box? After all, it was the thought that counted—and Mr. Hudson would certainly think it was money.
When the service ended, Harris frowned and dropped the button in the box. The vicar smiled and wagged his clasped hands behind his back, and Bostock, seeing Harris’s gesture, sighed and put in a shilling, which was all he had.
“Well!” said Harris, challenging the great host of heaven. “Now show me you’re really there! Where’s Adelaide?”
The congregation had left the cool shadows of the church and were out in the pagan sunshine.
“Answer me!” muttered Harris, looking up defiantly at the golden pastures of the universe. “Or you’ll be the loser!”
Thus Harris barbed his soul and aimed it at the sky—to bring down an angel, or nothing. That he himself had not been absolutely honest in this trial of faith did not disturb him in the least. On the contrary, he argued with Jesuitical subtlety that the Almighty now had every opportunity for displaying His vaunted understanding and forgiveness.
He waited while round about he heard the clatter of gossip and the salty grumbling of fisherfolk as the Sunday town, in homespun and starfish ribbons, jostled him out of their homeward way. But nothing came to him from the invisible God. Instead, sturdily stumping across the graveyard, came Bostock. He had left his family, gone out of his way to raise his hat, with furious blushes, to the wild, slender Miss Harris, and come to join his friend.
Harris, who was at the very crisis of belief, looked depressed, and Bostock wondered how he might cheer him up. He did not like to see Harris miserable.
“I expect she’ll turn up somewhere, Harris,” he mumbled, and laid his hand timidly on his friend’s narrow shoulder.
Harris turned. “Bosty, old friend,” he whispered. “There ain’t no God.”
The words struck Bostock like a blow in the stomach. They were so strange and unexpected.
“The sky’s empty, old friend,” went on Harris grimly. “There’s just us, Bosty.”
“What, you and me?” Bostock was shaken to the depths of his soul.
“No,” said Harris irritably. “Mankind. All of us down here. We’re all there is, Bosty. The rest is—is air.”
“Are you sure, Harris?” asked Bostock pleadingly. He knew he hadn’t the intellect to question his friend, but at the same time he did not want to abandon his own beliefs without a struggle. They meant a great deal to him, and had it been anyone else but wise old Harris who’d shaken them, he’d have clouted him without more ado. “How—how do you know?”
Harris frowned. He did not care to admit that his reason was chiefly that he’d received no answer to his gift of the brass button.
“But there must be a God,” urged Bostock desperately.
“Why, old friend?”
“Because—because of everything. Look about you, Harris! All the grass and trees and different animals and flowers—who made them if not God?”
“Somebody else,” said Harris bleakly. The friends stared at one another, Harris as still and somber as the headstones among which they stood, and Bostock swaying slightly, as if rocking on a sea of doubt. Bostock turned his small, fierce eyes from side to side, ranging the wide landscape as if trying to see it in some other light than the bright sun’s. Painfully he stared from the soft, silken sea to the green velvet folds of the Downs. Not two miles off he saw the tiny village of Preston clustering like a brood of kittens about the wise gray church whose square head watched over the cottages, ready to call them back if they strayed into danger. Bostock’s eyes began to fill with tears. Passionately he struggled to reject Harris’s grim philosophy, and to bring his friend back into the warm
, motherly world.
“Look, Harris—look!” he muttered, pointing to the village but unable to put his thoughts into words.
Wearily Harris looked. “What is it, old friend?”
“The—the church,” said Bostock incoherently, and hoped Harris would understand.
Harris gazed at the aged building that looked, from where he stood, to be no better than a child’s toy. “Poor, poor Bosty,” he whispered pityingly. He was half sorry for the damage he’d done his friend, but nevertheless the truth was more sacred than anything else; nothing was worse than worshiping a lie. Just how Harris, whose mind was furtive in the extreme, managed to believe in this philosophy, was a mystery as deep as life. But then, he was a scientist.
“Yes, Bosty—another church.”
He stopped. His heart quickened. Another church. In his mind’s eye he saw once more the horseman and the baby of the previous night, and in a blaze of understanding he guessed what had happened. Ralph Bunnion, with Adelaide in his arms, for some reason or another must have ridden past St. Nicholas’s and on to the church at Preston!
The lights came on in his eyes. He thumped Bostock on the back. “Now I know, old friend!”
“I don’t want to hear it,” said Bostock bitterly, thinking Harris had shifted the heavens still farther afield.
“He took her to Preston,” said Harris. “That’s where Adelaide went!”
“Oh,” said Bostock. “I thought you meant God.”
“What’s God got to do with it? Come on, Bosty!”
He set off at a smart trot toward Preston and Bostock followed after. All questions of faith and belief had vanished from Harris’s mind. He left the gates of heaven swinging open, so to speak, for God to resume His leasehold until he, Harris, chose to foreclose again.
When the friends reached Preston, Harris’s inspiration was confirmed. Ingeniously they fell into conversation with a boy and learned that a baby had indeed been left in the church on the previous night. But almost at once their lifted hopes were dashed to the ground. They were too late. The baby had already been taken to the poorhouse in Brighton.
As they walked back in the deepest dejection, the fleeting thought struck Harris that had he put his shilling, or even his sixpence in the collecting box instead of the brass button, they might have been in time. Then he shook his head. No god could be that petty.
“At least we know where she is,” said Bostock hopefully, and secretly considered the shilling he’d sacrificed in church had been money well spent. Of such strange materials is faith built, unbuilt and built again, in ever changing designs.
By the time the two friends drew near their homes, they were buoyant again. Harris’s eyes were gleaming and Bostock watched him admiringly. He knew that Harris’s large brain was fairly humming to devise a plan to rescue Adelaide from the poorhouse. He did not anticipate any further problems.
They shook hands at the corner of Harris’s street and parted, each confident that their troubles were all but at an end. Harris was whistling under his breath, and as he entered his house, his spindly, wrinkle-stockinged legs did a jaunty, doorstep jig.
“This is my son, sir,” said Dr. Harris wearily as Harris entered the parlor and the stranger smiled.
He was shortish, stout and quietly dressed. He wore a neat bagwig and had soft, large eyes. With an unaccountable chill, Harris saw he had a clubfoot whose grim black bulk seemed to belie the gentleness of his expression.
‘This is Mister Selwyn Raven,” said Dr. Harris to his suddenly pale son. “He has come to get at the truth about Adelaide.”
Seven
“A SAD AFFAIR, my young friend,” said Mr. Raven. Harris nodded warily, his eyes moving from Mr. Raven’s mild face to his unnatural black boot.
“I don’t wish to pry, young man, into any of your private secrets, but a few questions, if you’d be so kind, eh?” He nodded to Dr. Harris, who looked momentarily distressed, as if on his son’s behalf, then hurriedly left the room.
Harris felt curiously abandoned. He did not know what to make of Mr. Raven, who kept shifting his wicked boot as if to draw attention to it.
“You are interested in such things?” asked the inquiry agent, observing Harris’s fascination. “But of course! Being a physician’s son such deformities must seem commonplace.”
Harris nodded and smiled casually. Or believed that he did.
“Would you care to see it?” offered Mr. Raven eagerly. He bent down as if to remove the boot.
“No!” said Harris quickly. He had been seized by a sudden dread that the deformed foot might have been something altogether frightful. Mr. Raven looked mildly surprised and apologized for embarrassing the young gentleman. He had not intended to do any such thing, but when one had such a misfortune it was difficult to judge its effect. He himself had always found it was better to be open with it, not to attempt to hide it, or even to pretend it wasn’t there. After all, it was an act of God, and one didn’t deny God—
“You do believe in God, young man?” he asked anxiously; and then, before the startled Harris could reply, he smiled and added, “But of course. You’ve just come from church. When did you last see your sister?”
“I—I don’t remember,” said Harris faintly. The abrupt change of direction made him break out in a sweat. Mr. Raven was an eerie adversary.
“I didn’t mean to pry into your religious beliefs, young man,” said Mr. Raven gently. “But I like to know where we stand.” Again he moved his horrible boot as if, having discovered exactly where Harris was standing, he intended to flatten him under it. “Did you see any stranger in the neighborhood yesterday? A woman, perhaps?”
Again the abrupt change of direction, but this time Harris was ready. “Yes!” he said quickly. He was anxious to transfer Mr. Raven’s attention to someone else.
“Interesting,” said the inquiry agent, but strangely did not pursue the point. Instead he rapped his boot sharply with a stout stick that had been leaning beside his chair. He chuckled disarmingly and explained that the deformed member was inclined to “go to sleep,” and he liked to wake it up from time to time . . .
Harris began to feel sick. He longed for Mr. Raven to go. He was morbidly terrified of him. Now Mr. Raven was asking him if he knew of any enemies the household had—a dismissed servant, perhaps? Fiercely Harris retreated within himself. You’re a genius, Harris! he screamed in his heart. And he’s a—a madman! You are more than a match for him. Outwit him! Be calm! Smile! Answer him, don’t be rushed! For God’s sake, be careful! Nonetheless, in spite of the certainty of his own intellectual superiority over this man, Harris could not keep down a terrible desire to confess to Mr. Raven and so get rid of him. I took her! he longed to shout out. Bostock and me! We took her!
He felt the words rattling in his throat. He coughed and swallowed to keep them to himself.
“This strange woman you saw,” said Mr. Raven smoothly. “Can you describe her?”
“What woman?” said Harris, bewildered by the suddenness of the question.
“Oh, nothing. I must have been mistaken. Only I thought you said you saw such a one in the neighborhood. I must have misheard you. Pardon me.”
Harris bit his lip. He’d slipped. The devilish Mr. Raven had caught him. All desire to confess vanished under a flood of panic.
“No matter,” murmured the inquiry agent, hobbling to his feet. “I shall be at the Old Ship Inn. If anything occurs to you—if you remember anything you think might interest me—come and see me. I shall be waiting, my young friend . . . any time, any time . . .”
With that, he clumped from the room and was presently out of the house, which seemed somehow less upright and secure than when he’d entered it.
The inquiry agent limped along the street, his stick and his great boot tapping and thumping inquisitively on the ground, as if searching for a weakness or a symptom of rot. Mostly he kept his eyes downward, but from time to time he glanced at the houses he passed and then up to the splendid sun.
And as always his eyes remained mild, and his expression innocent. It was only his boot—his monstrous boot—that suggested Mr. Raven was a terrible man.
He was deeply acquainted with the darknesses of the human soul, and he knew too well the terror of the guilty spirit as it twists and turns to escape. Suspicion was second nature to him, and he had no first. Wearily he brooded on his last interview, with the boy Harris, whose spirit had fled almost visibly for refuge to his boots.
The inquiry agent shrugged his shoulders. He was all too used to being greeted with fear and guilt. Where was innocence? A dream—a milky idea in the noddles of fools, and nowhere else. It was not even in the hearts of children, all of whom had their corrupting little secrets they struggled to hide from the light of day.
What had the boy Harris been trying to hide with his frowns and grins, his rapid, sideways eyes and his dismal attempts at honesty of manner? A theft from a neighbor, perhaps. Or a furtive tryst with some sluttish maid, etcetera?
The word “etcetera” was a very necessary one to Mr. Raven. It was like a great black bag in which he tumbled men’s thoughts and deeds when he sensed they were too deep and foul for other words.
Mr. Raven knew it all. Nothing surprised him any more. Guilt was in every heart; even infants in their cradles tended to look fearful and evasive when Mr. Raven stared mildly down on them. The Gypsy child in the Harrises’ usurped cot had crumpled its face and turned from the inquiry agent’s bland eyes as if suddenly conscious of the original sin that had dealt it, like the ace of spades, into the frightened household’s hand.
“Yes, my young friend,” Mr. Raven had whispered. “You know—and soon, very soon, so shall I.”
At length he reached the Old Ship Inn where he asked for a mutton chop and a pint of sherry to be sent up to his room. The Harrises had not seen fit to ask him to luncheon. Not that the omission rankled particularly, but Mr. Raven had noted it. He sat by his window and stared out onto the smooth Sunday sea and considered the strange affair of Adelaide Harris. Or, rather, the strange affair of the mysterious baby that now lay in her place. It was glaringly clear that Adelaide had only been removed to make way for it. The Harrises were ordinary folk, and however they might have rated themselves, Mr. Raven knew they were of no consequence in the world, so their infant could have been of no value to anyone. Its only possession was the space it had occupied—its cot—and this it was, rather than the infant itself, that had been stolen. For the dark one . . . for the dark one . . .
The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris Page 5