There was something singularly compelling in his tone, and Everton was thrilled by it — with — a strange sensation — akin to fear. To ‘stand — alone’ had — never been his ambition. — He had set before him — as his aim — and — end the quiet life — of a country clergyman, — established — with — a wife and family — in a peaceful village where no disturbing rumors of the larger outer world should ever trouble his studious and contented calm, — far removed from the clamor and call of warring humanity — the struggle of nations — the rise and fall of governments, — and all other urgent things which with great pulsation of eager breath and vital stir of hurrying blood are the actual heart-beats of the world. He had attained what his dreams had pictured as the most beautiful life for any man — the life of quiet contemplation and limited influence, happily associated with the consolations of love and domestic tranquillity, — what then remained for him but a satisfaction as perfect as any that could be found on earth? What did he need that he was not possessed of? Surely nothing! — yet — if he would be honest with himself he knew that there was a lurking restlessness in his soul to which he could give no name.
“You will not always be here,” — went on Douay, nodding impressively at him— “That is quite imposs-eeble! You will have what some of the so many religious in England say is a ‘call’ — you will hear a voice cry ‘Go forth!’ and you will go. I am much older than you, — and I have not lived so long not to know many things. I have seen the folly of trying to do good — but you — you have not learned that lesson yet — and you will try! — you will half kill yourself in the effort to do kind actions, and they will all be misjudged — they will come back as curses upon you, — they always do! Study the life of Our Lord and read the lesson! Each of His miracles was treated the same—’ He hath a devil!’ — and for the great crime of loving mankind,’ He was crucified! See you! It is the same always — it will always be the same! But you will not quite believe this — and you will try to imitate Our Lord. If you try too far you also will be nailed to the gibbet and put in the sepulcher. Perhaps you will rise again — perhaps not! — that depends on the strength of the soul within you!”
“Then, you think there is no such thing as justice?” asked Everton.
“For the good — none at all!” replied Douay emphatically— “None — not one leetle bit! Not in this world! No, — not at all — I know not why! But for the bad there is much enjoyment, — they have what they call ‘great fun,’ and often die in their beds quite peacefully, with the smiles of angels! And if they have much money, the clergyman say ‘Ah, how good! What saintly souls are here gone to heaven!’ Of course! I would say the same myself if a very bad person left me a hundred thousand pounds!” He laughed pleasantly. “Yes — that is so! The bad person does very well as a rule. It is natural to be bad, apparently — it is unnatural to be good! Or I will put it that we have made social and moral laws into which the natural man does not fit. When the unnatural man arranges himself to obey those laws, the natural one fights against him — and so it goes on. Always trouble! — always misunderstanding! So it has been from the beginning — so it will ever be!”
“You are more of a philosopher than a priest,” — said Everton, smiling.
“Exactly! — so I am! I might have been another Renan, if I had not seen how foolishly Renan himself wasted his life. Think of it! To write the Vie de Jésus, he went to the Holy Land — and there his sister Henriette, the most true friend he ever had, died of fever. Well! — what use was all the agony, the sickness, the weariness, the work? Does the great world in all its sections care for the Vie de Jésus? Not one leetle bit! All the writers may write as they please, but the Divine Personality remains Divine — and why? Because it is a simple, tender, loving Personality, uniting itself to the poor and the suffering, — there are no complex side-issues to its work — it is Love only! That is why it will remain with the world, when Voltaire and Renan are forgotten!”
They were seated in Everton’s study during this conversation, — luncheon was over, and they had drawn their chairs up to the fireside, for though the day was fine and bright, a cold March wind was driving its steely whips through the air, and the blaze of sparkling coal was cheery and full of comfort. Everton was, in a vague sort of fashion, surprised to think how little he had noted the absence of his wife from the lunch table. The meal had been a simple one, but perfectly well served — no particular confusion had occurred among the domestics because the mistress of the house was away, — and the pleasure he had derived from the presence of a stranger who could talk about matters in which he was intellectually interested, entirely softened, if it did not quite obliterate, the previous wretched sense of utter solitude and desertion which, with the departure of Azalea and ‘Baby Laurence,’ had fallen like a cloud upon him. And he was sorrier than he cared to express when Douay presently rose to take his leave.
“Must you go so soon?” he asked, regretfully— “I have not said half what I should like to say — —”
“No — that is true!” said Douay, pressing his hand cordially— “You have been very silent, — I have done all the talking, and you have listened. That is your way just now. You are a dumb evangelist! But some day you — you also — will speak!”
They parted on the mutual understanding that they meant to see a good deal of each other in the future. Everton agreed to cycle over as often as he could to the cottage near the ‘tin chapelle’ of which Douay was now the ‘curé’ — and Douay in his turn promised to call at the Vicarage whenever he found himself in Shadbrook.
“Though, mind you, I won’t have you making ‘perverts’ of my parishioners!” laughed Everton.
“Not even to save them from the drink of Mistaire Minchin?” — retorted Douay— “Be not afraid, mon ami! I never try to convert or ‘pervert’ anybody. It is too much trouble! I open my little church or tin chapelle, and let the people come, or stay away as they please. But here is the fault of what we call our Christianity. If one Church cannot make a bad man better, it is preferred that he should be left in his badness than that any other Church should make him good. Ah, bah!” — and he smiled genially as Everton uttered a few quick eager words of protest— “I do not mind — why should I? — but you know it is as I say. You speak as your training makes you speak, and you are right to do as you are told. I also — I do what I am told. But I keep my own opinion. And I say if a man is born more savage than civilized — and there are many such — it is better to soften his cruel nature by a superstition than to give up his soul altogether. You will not make him understand the grand scientific cosmos — no! You will never teach him the mathematical miracle of the solar system, — his brain will be too shallow to accept it. But he will comprehend the devil — he will be troubled! — especially in drink — by pictures of the horns and hoofs and tail! Yet the horns and hoofs and tail are quite common — we see them every day in the oxen, — and as a part of the devil they are only the relics of an old pagan myth — the myth of the god Pan and his leaping satyrs — but no matter! — there are thousands of excellent persons calling themselves educated who never heard of the god Pan or any pagan myth at all, — and if we may believe the so wonderful newspapers, the leetle children in Australia are growing up without knowing any more of Christ than they do of Pan! It is a wonderful age! — so clever as to be too clever! — and Our Lord’s prophecies are being so quickly fulfilled that His unworthy priests must surely tremble!”
His voice sank — and a sudden sadness darkened his features like the shadow of a cloud. Everton was silent, — and in a certain sense was astonished at the emotion evinced by this simple, ordinary-looking little man, to whom, at a first glance, no one would have given credit for possessing any great interest in things beyond the merest commonplace duties of his calling. Douay seemed to read his thoughts, for, laying one hand upon his arm, he went on —
“If I were a gifted man — a man with an eloquent tongue, and, above all, if I were a handsome
man — for the physique is always more to the male and female savages than the morale-, — I would be a prophet to this time of what is coming. Yes! — of what is coming! Of the terror — the doom that is coming! Not because God is angry — no! — but because Wrong must be made Right by the changeless order of the Eternal mathematics, which God cannot alter unless He would destroy Himself! There is no such thing as Chaos, — there never was. It is all Law! And we must obey — if not — then gare à nous! Yes!” and he smiled strangely— “If I were a gifted man — a man like you! — I would be something of an apostle!”
“Like me!” exclaimed Everton— “My dear sir, you overrate my powers altogether! I am nothing! — the most incompetent of preachers and teachers, — and though I deeply feel the things you say, I cannot express them — —”
Not in Shadbrook!” said Douay— “No! That I understand! To Shadbrook you must talk as to a leetle child — but there is a world outside Shadbrook — and to that you will speak, — when the time is ready!”
He shook hands again and went on his way, — and Everton, left alone, busied himself among his books for the rest of the afternoon. Douay’s words troubled him, and made him dwell more or less irritably on remote possibilities in the future, — therefore he sought to cool his mind by plunging it, as it were, into a deep well of study. A telegram from Azalea announced her safe arrival at Weston-superMare, and her delight at being by the sea, — and, satisfied that she was evidently perfectly happy without him, he tried for the time being, to imagine himself unmarried and free from all the responsibility of having other lives dependent on his own. What would be his purpose in life now, under such circumstances?
The answer came at once. To resign his living and go to London. London, the mighty fermenting mass of good and evil, — London with all its deep-centered horror, beauty and vileness, — London, the Lost Soul of a vast section of humanity — a Soul that is sinking so surely and swiftly into choking quicksands of vice that not even the outstretched beams of the Cross seem able to bear it up from destruction. Yet what should he do in London? Preach ‘the wrath to come’? It would be called ‘ranting’ by the halfpenny press; and the public, or such portion of it as swears by its lying daily newspapers, would be induced to jest at and condemn him. Well, what then? Did that matter, he asked himself? Did not the ancient Jewish precursors of the modern press cry in the same mocking spirit: “If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross!” And “He saved others: Himself He cannot save!” With a quick, impatient sigh, he walked up and down his room like a trapped animal in a cage, not in any way realizing that his whole nature was panting for freedom. Even if he had thought it, he never would have entirely admitted that he longed to break through the narrow circle wherein he was pent, and escape from the small and mean concerns of low rural life — life in which the mating of man and woman reaches no higher plane than that of moth with moth, and yet is considered the chief business of living — life, out of which children are born merely to drudge and die, — life which is made up of such weary and monotonous nothings that one can but marvel at the dogged patience and stolid endurance with which it is lived.
Pausing in one of his turns to and fro, he stood at the window and stared out into the garden. The sun was sinking in a dull crimson glow behind a clump of short fir trees, and their branches looked black as ink stretched stiffly out; against the lurid western light. Something like a pale fiery reflection seemed cast up from the ground to mingle with the stronger glare in the sky, and Everton caught himself thinking, he knew not why, of the first murder as chronicled in Genesis, when the Lord said:— “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground!” How many such voices of blood had cried to the Lord since then! Millions upon millions of them, shrieking through tortured mouths red with human wrong! — red as the ground there, which the scarlet sun flamed upon silently without any pitying touch of golden tenderness — as silently as the Lord Himself now watched all the accumulating crime of the world! Everton shivered with a sudden sense of cold, and turned away from the garden view, which to him had become unaccountably gloomy. At that instant there was a knock at the study door and the parlor-maid entered.
“If you please, sir,” — she said, somewhat nervously— “there’s some one wants to see you — a man from the village—”
He looked at her, and noticed that she seemed a trifle scared.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“It’s — it’s Dan Kiernan, sir.”
He waited a moment, considering. Then he said quietly: “All right! Show him in.”
The girl lingered hesitatingly — and added in a low tone: “I think he’s quite sober, sir.”
Everton nodded.
“Good. I’m glad of that. I’ll see him at once.”
She disappeared then, and there came a pause — a pause in which Everton tried to get a firm hold of his thoughts and so steady them that he should betray no sign of the hatred — yes, hatred! — that he bore to the man who was not only a vile accuser of the innocent, but also — the lover of Jacynth. Then came the sound of heavy, clumbering feet in the outer passage; the feet of the rustic boor which always tread with the same uncouth awkwardness whether on carpets or clods of clay, — and in another few seconds a shadow loomed on the threshold of his quiet room — a huge, brawny, bulky figure that seemed to suddenly create an obstruction in space and a darkness in light. Everton looked steadily at this slouching form as it appeared, mentally measuring it in its gross material mass of man, — he watched it enter his study and shut the door, — then he stood up and faced it. But he said nothing. And for one long minute there was a tense stillness, in which only the slow ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece could be heard. Both men met each other’s eyes with equal recognition and antipathy, — both men knew, albeit obscurely, that the same passions animated them, though the one was an educated minister of Christ’s Gospel, and the other an ignorant, drink-sodden ruffian, — and both were conscious of a certain fascination in each other’s personality. So they stood, each waiting for the other to speak, — but both with the same name ready to spring to their lips at the first provocation — the name of Jacynth.
CHAPTER IX
KIERNAN was the first to break silence.
“I want a wurrd with ye, Mister Parson,” — he said, gruffly.
“Certainly!” — and the Vicar, moving ‘to his customary desk chair, seated himself— “I know of your great trouble—”
“Oh, ye knows of it, does ye?” and Dan glowered sullenly at him from under his heavy black brows— “Well, that’ll save some talkin’. Anyway ye doan’t need tellin’ that my wife’s dead.”
“I heard of her death last night,” — said Everton, as gently as he could— “And I am very, very sorry.”
“Very very sorry won’t mend it,” retorted Kiernan— “She’s gone, and very very sorry woan’t bring her back. She was a good wench to me, Jennie was, — an’ ef it ‘adn’t bin for you, Mister Parson, meddlin’ an’ muddlin’ round with what worn’t yer bizness, an’ interferin’ with a poor man’s ‘ome, she’d a’ bin alive now!”
The Vicar sat rigidly in his chair, quite silent.
“Ef it ‘adn’t bin for you,” went on Dan, in a louder tone— “you an’ yer mincin’ smirkin’ dolly wife, Jennie would a’ bin livin’ yet, strong an’ ‘arty. She never minded a bit o’ my fist, didn’t Jennie — she knew ’twas all right an’ what she’d got to ‘xpect from a man with a drop o’ drink in ’im, an’ she didn’t go fur to blame me neither. She worn’t no darnation preacher! She was that fond o’ me that she took the hull o’ me for better an’ worser, drink or no drink, as the weddin’ words bound ‘er to do, and ef one parson marries a man to a woman with them words, I’d like to know ‘ow any other parson dare come interferin’ between ’em!’ Ow dare he? Come! Tell me that!” Everton lifted his calm clear eyes and looked full at him. “If you mean that for me,” he said slowly— “I never came between you. I only trie
d to save your wife from you when you were too drunk to know what you were doing — and when you might unintentionally have murdered her. I also tried to save you from yourself!”
Kiernan gave a short laugh.
“Fine talk that is!” he exclaimed— “Reg’lar pulpit jabber! Save me from myself! What d’ye mean? I am myself, an’ there ain’t no me outside myself. Any fool knows that! An’ it’s me myself that sez Jennie would a’ bin all right ef she’d a’ bin left alone — she was a-gettin’ on fine an’ comin’ round as well as could be, till your wife, Mister Parson,” — here he thrust his dark face forward with a threatening movement— “your lady wife with ‘er airs an’ ‘er graces an’ ‘er mean gossipin’ tongue came in tellin’ tales, an’ killed ‘er!”
Everton rose suddenly and walked straight up to him.
“Dare to speak of my wife again and I’ll put you out of the house!” he said, in low, perfectly even tones— “I don’t want any quarrel with you, Dan Kiernan, but if you force one upon me it will be the worse for you!”
Kiernan stared, — for the moment completely taken aback by the Vicar’s rapid movement and resolute expression. Then he gave vent to a hoarse chuckle.
“So you’ve got a bit o’ pluck about ye, ‘ave ye!” he sneered. “Can’t ‘ave your wife touched! ‘Ow about my wife then? My wife as is lyin’ dead? S’pose your wife was a-lyin’ wheer mine is? S’pose you was a-goin’ to shovel ‘er into the ground to-morrer? ‘Ow would you like it? One man’s no worse an’ no better than t’other, if we goes by Church preachin’, an’ poor’s as good as rich — so I doan’t s’pose your feelin’s ‘as any speshul right to be took care of more’n mine! An’ ef ye knew that your wife ‘ad bin killed by a lot of cursed gabble an’ mischief-makin’, m’appen ye’d feel like killin’ the man or the woman what done ye the bad turn!”
He chuckled savagely again as Everton moved away from him with an involuntary gesture of repulsion, and added: —
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 716