His voice sank, — and once more he paused. There was a moment’s deep silence, and the German ‘royalty’ who was seated opposite the pulpit made a rustling movement of her gown, indicative of her readiness to depart. The flicker of a smile crossed Everton’s face — he heard and saw the lady’s restless stir, but paid no heed. It was not his intention to spoil his sermon for the convenience of any ‘Highness’ whatsoever. He had no sympathy with that section of the time-serving clergy who hastily gabble through a prepared sermon for the delectation of exalted personages who decline to listen to any exposition of the Word of God longer than ten minutes. And so, gathering up by degrees all the threads of his discourse, he wove them gradually and without haste into a powerful summary and conclusion, full of ardor and feeling, delivered with such moving earnestness that a kind of lightning thrill ran through the eagerly listening congregation. They were indeed sufficiently warmed by enthusiasm as to have given way to outbursts of applause had the place been any other than a church, — and when the sermon at last came to an end, they were ready to generously and gladly assist the cause for which it had been preached. A collection was made immediately Everton had descended from the pulpit, and over two hundred pounds in loose money was taken in about five minutes, added to a bank note for one hundred pounds which had been dropped in the plate like a crumpled bit of paper by Everton’s American acquaintance, Clarence Howard. While the people were filing out of church to the solemn and thunderous strains of a Wagnerian organ voluntary, Everton had to wait a few minutes in the vestry for the Vicar of the parish, whom he had promised to accompany to luncheon with the particular Bishop whose invitation and persuasion had brought him to London. He was a trifle weary; he had done his best, and yet there was a sense of fatigue and depression upon him; — a kind of unsatisfied query lurking at the bottom of his soul, which said, “What is the use of it all? What is the use of charity to the poor? The utmost that can be done is but a drop of relief in the ocean of human misery; — an ocean so vast and wide and deep that sometimes it seems threatening to swamp the world!”
The door of the vestry opened softly, and a verger looked in.
“Beg pardon, sir! A lady wishes to speak to you.”
And before he could draw a breath or utter a word, he was face to face with, — Jacynth.
“How do you do, Mr. Everton?” she said.
He was silent. She smiled as his eyes fastened upon her gravely and coldly. She knew how beautiful she looked in her gown of dark clinging velvet with old lace at her throat and wrists, and a plumed hat such as Gainsborough’s ladies might have worn, coquettishly poised on the waving masses of her rich brown hair.
“I saw you last night at the Savoy,” — she went on, in soft slow accents which had the ring of an almost ultrarefinement, “It was quite a surprise, — though of course I knew you were in London because I heard you were to preach here to-day. We are all so interested in the charitable scheme which you have pleaded for so splendidly, and see! — this is to add to the collection on behalf of my husband and myself.” And she laid a check for five hundred pounds on the little table that stood between them. “It is to be included in the general collection, please! — and our names are not to be mentioned. I brought it round to the vestry myself in order to explain this to you personally, — and also because, — because I wanted to speak to you again. You remember me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he answered, quietly— “I remember you perfectly — Jacynth!”
As he uttered her name she gave him a quick glance of something like amusement. “If you were quite candid with yourself,” she thought, in her overweening vanity, “you would say you remember me because you can never forget!” But his features were perfectly impassive; she could read upon them no expression of either pleasure or pain.
“So much has happened since we last met,” — she went on, lowering her brilliant eyes and heaving a slight sigh; “But I often think of poor little Shadbrook—”
A sudden flash of scorn on his face checked her in the middle of her sentence.
“I should imagine,” he said, “that it would be difficult for you not to think of poor little Shadbrook!”
She looked up at him with a musing, almost childlike expression of surprise. Then she laughed a little.
“You are not a bit changed, Mr. Everton! You are just the same well-meaning parson trying to make bad folks good! I wonder you don’t get tired of it, for it’s no use, you know! But you are famous now, and that makes such a difference! Even if people won’t be reformed the preacher who tries to reform them always gets the advantage of being talked about.” She smiled; — the radiant smile of sweetest self-content. “Come and see me to-morrow, will you?”
“Thank-you,” he replied stiffly, “I am returning to Shadbrook to-morrow.”
“Ah, but you will not return if I ask you to remain in town just for one more day!” she said, with a sudden pretty earnestness— “Please do me this favor! I want to have a long talk with you, — I have so much to tell you! Don’t refuse me!”
She laid her delicately gloved hand on his arm. He shuddered instinctively, trying hard to control the rising wave of bitter wrath that surged through him at the sight of her. Only last night he had prayed God that he might never meet her again. And this was how God had answered his prayer! Then, were prayers futile? Or was there in very truth a malicious devil who took delight in intercepting them and bringing them to naught? He longed to tell this woman what he thought of her, — what evil she had worked on harmless lives, — and yet, — there she stood, foul to the soul’s core with vulgarest vice, and lovely as a spring morning! — smiling at him too with the simplest and most wistful air of perfect innocence! He lifted her hand from his arm and put it gently aside.
“If you wish it, I will come,” he said— “What hour shall I find you disengaged?”
She took out a golden card-case on which an elaborate monogram ‘J.N.’ sparkled in diamonds, and on one of her visiting cards wrote with a tiny pencil—’ 5,’
“There!” she said— “You must consider yourself quite a privileged person, for as a rule I never see any caller on Mondays. We’ll have a good long ‘talk-out’! I want to tell you everything!”
Almost he smiled. There was something vaguely humorous about her splendid effrontery; — the effrontery of the position to which she had been raised by the wealth and the whim of a rascal Jew. So contemptible an uplifting! — and yet in the world’s eyes quite sufficient for the subjugation of that Clown with Cap and Bells which is nowadays called ‘Society.’ Sufficient too, for her, originally a mere village wanton, to assure him that he, her former Vicar, ‘was quite a privileged person’ in that he might be permitted to see her on a day not usually granted to visitors! And through the recesses of his memory rang the echo of a dying man’s frenzied scream— ‘Jacynth! Jacynth! Hold her! See where she goes! Will no one stop her? Running, running, running, — look! — running straight into Hell! Jacynth! All the devils at her! — tearing her lovely body, — her lovely body that God made! God! There’s no God! There never was! It’s all a lie!”
At that moment the vestry door opened again, and the Vicar for whom he had been waiting, entered.
“I’m sorry to have left you alone so long, Mr. Everton,” he began, formally; then with a sudden change of tone he exclaimed— “Mrs. Nordstein! This is indeed an unexpected pleasure!”
She held out her hand to him with a graceful air of condescension.
“I hope you don’t mind my coming into the vestry?” she said, and a dazzling smile lit up her lovely face as brilliantly as though the sunshine had illumined it— “I felt that I really must congratulate you on having secured Mr. Everton’s services for our good cause. He has given us much to think about, has he not? I have brought an offering from my husband and myself — Mr. Everton will explain—”
She broke off, looking from one to the other in prettily feigned embarrassment, while Everton handed the check she had given him
to his colleague.
“Mrs. Nordstein wishes this to be included in the general collection,” he said, coldly— “The donors’ names are not to be publicly mentioned.”
The Vicar glanced hastily at the sum for which the check was inscribed. Then his little eyes twinkled with excitement and his face, which was full and rubicund, grew rounder and redder.
“My dear Mrs. Nordstein!” he murmured, in almost reverential accents, “This is really too much! You are too generous! Five Hundred Pounds! Why, this brings our collection up to eight hundred pounds this morning! Mr. Everton, are you not delighted with such an excellent result of your good efforts? It is positively unprecedented!”
Everton was looking fixedly at Jacynth, and wondering as he looked whether any memory of the past, or any prick of conscience troubled her? Apparently not.
“I am sure,” he said, stiffly, “that Mr and Mrs. Nordstein would have helped your cause in any case.”
“Ah, do not be too sure about that!” — and Jacynth laughed softly, “We have so many appeals that we are obliged to harden our hearts against them all sometimes. But such a grand sermon as you have preached this morning would move the coldest spirit! Thank you so much for it! Good-by!” —
She extended her hand. He was obliged to take it for civility’s sake, — but he dropped it again quickly. She under-
Stood the repulsion expressed in his movement, and an amused smile lifted the corners of her lovely mouth. Turning from him, she held out the same hand to the Vicar, whose name was Carey, and whose congregations, owing to their ‘High’ ritualistic practices, were known among the irreverent as ‘Mother Carey’s chickens.’ He grasped it impressively and bent over it.
“May I?” he said, and kissed the well-fitting back of her glove. Her smile deepened.
“You remind me of Cardinal Lyall!” — she said— “He is a perfect courtier, — like yourself!”
“Ah, the Cardinal is privileged! He sees you oftener than I do!” answered the Reverend Carey, with a fatuously tender air of reproach.
“You mean that he calls on me oftener!” she corrected him, laughingly— “But he is not always admitted! Now if you will let me know next time you are coming to see me, I promise to be at home! Good-by!”
With a flashing backward glance of her dark eyes at Everton, she moved out of the vestry, and Mr. Carey ambled hastily after her.
“Allow me to see you to your car!” he said, eagerly, and, like a portly servitor attendant on a queen he followed in the wake of her trailing velvets and perfumed lace, and disappeared.
Everton left alone again a few moments, was thankful for the brief respite from the strain he had been putting on his nerves. He was astonished and dismayed at the force of the storm that raged within his soul. He felt as a man deeply and cruelly wronged may feel in the presence of his bitterest foe. Over and over again he asked himself how it was possible that Jacynth — Jacynth Miller — Dan Kiernan’s light-o’-love, and the toy of other men besides Dan Kiernan, should actually have taken a position in London society! — a position too in which she could seemingly afford to dictate her ‘days for visitors,’ as though she were some great celebrity or mover of world’s business, to whom time was more precious than money! He could have laughed at the incongruity of the thing, if his thoughts were not so bitter. Jacynth! — she, whom he had hoped to call ‘the best girl in the village’ —— — Jacynth, — who had been a frequenter of the Shadbrook public-houses, — Jacynth whose old ‘auntie’ still lived on in her tumble-down cottage, drinking and swearing her days away, — Jacynth, the same, the very Jacynth, without heart, without conscience, without pity! Her half-amused, halftolerant condescension of manner towards him had stung him to the quick! But, — he would see her to-morrow. And to-morrow he would tell her the truth of herself! — the cruelty, the shame, the grief she had brought into other lives than her own, — for though he had prayed God to spare him from any contact with her, God had not consented to his prayer. Therefore, let the worst happen! The worst? What was his idea of the worst? There was no ‘worst’ for Jacynth. Divine Order or Divine Chaos had arranged that all should go well with her who served God not at all, — while the same Divine Order or Chaos had equally decreed that all should go ill with him who was God’s minister. Then, if it was to be so, God’s will be done! Here his troubled meditations were interrupted by the return of the Reverend ‘Mother Carey.’
“Come along now, Mr. Everton,” he said, “I’m sorry we have been delayed a little, but we shall not be late for the Bishop’s luncheon. It’s only ten minutes from here and my brougham is waiting. This way!”
They passed out of the vestry and through a side passage of the church into the street, and entering the carriage which, as stated, was in readiness, were rapidly driven away.
“You know Mrs. Nordstein, I suppose?” said Carey, then.
“I have met her,” Everton replied, evasively.
“Charming woman! — perfectly charming! — and generous to a fault! A less simple nature than hers would be spoilt, — ah dear me, yes — quite spoilt by the constant adulation she receives in society; but she is so young, and so unsophisticated — so beautifully unconscious of her beauty!”
Everton smiled coldly.
“You are no doubt a good judge of her character,” — he said.
Mr. Carey beamed all over with self-gratulation.
“I think so! I think I may say I know her fairly well,” — he answered, placidly. “She is always ready to help our church, though she is not a regular member of our congregation. She has numerous friends among the clergy, and is very catholic in her tastes. You heard her mention Cardinal Lyall?”
Everton bent his head in assent.
“He is, as of course you know, a leading light of the Roman Church in England, and she assists his charities quite as much as she does ours. Her husband is a Jew; an enormously wealthy man! — enormously wealthy!” and the reverend gentleman almost smacked his lips as he said the words— “But he leaves her at perfect liberty to follow her own religion, and to help its good works in any way she pleases—”
“Her own religion? What is that?” asked Everton, “My dear sir!” And Mr. Carey opened his round eyes in mild wonder— “Was she not in my church this morning?”
“That does not make the matter clear to me,” — and Everton looked at him, fully and squarely— “Because I do not know what form of faith your church stands for.”
‘Mother Carey’ stared hard.
“Why, you have just preached there,” he began.
“As I should have preached anywhere in the cause of charity,” answered Everton, quietly— “But I do not consider that I have preached in a church which represents the national faith of England. To tell you the truth I am rather puzzled to know what to call it. My density, no doubt! I should have been glad, however, had I known it was quite ‘Roman’ rather than partially so. I should have preached with quite as much heart, — perhaps even with more feeling in a place that showed itself honestly consistent with its own professed doctrines.”
Carey reddened.
“You speak rather plainly, Mr. Everton,” — he said— “And were I inclined to be touchy, which I am not, I might say offensively.”
Everton gave a slight deprecatory gesture.
“You would be right, I am sure!” — he said— “It is my habit to deal bluntly and unsparingly with what I consider a false position, and that I often give offense is my fault as well as my misfortune. But I can make no apology. Our Church is in a very serious state — and I cannot tolerate what I view as ‘stagey’ trifling with the noble and simple truths of Christ. Christ Himself is being arraigned before the world’s tribunal for the second time in these degenerate days, and I cannot stand idly looking on without protest. ‘High’ ritual is theatrical, — theatrical things are sham things, — and God knows we have enough shams in this life without making a sham of the Life Beyond!”
“I fail to understand you!” �
� and the Reverend Mr. Carey drew himself up rigidly— “But — if you please, we will not argue! There are at the present day several points of -difference among the clergy which it is better we should not discuss. You have done us great service in preaching for our cause this morning, and for the rest,” — and here he smiled, unctuously— “let us agree to disagree! Here we are!”
The carriage stopped at that moment. They alighted and entered the house where they were expected by the Bishop, who, as one of the chief patrons of the benevolent scheme in which society had interested itself, was responsible for having invited Everton to preach in aid of the cause that morning. This distinguished ecclesiastic was a portly pleasant-looking man, with a kindly, somewhat effusive manner, and humorous twinkling eyes which often belied the utterance of his rather primly set mouth, over which they appeared to keep mischievous watch for a chance of contradiction. He was a great favorite with women, because he always managed to impress them with the idea that he was particularly and paternally interested in each individual member of the sex taken severally and apart. Considered as a whole, however, his opinion of them was widely different from that which he simulated, and perhaps if they had known of the not always choice witticisms which he was wont to indulge in at their expense when well out of their vicinity, they might not have subscribed to give him the luxurious motor-car, of which he had lately become possessor, as the result of their admiring homage. Nevertheless he was quite an agreeable personage, though he was prouder of his own legs than of anything else in his diocese. Let it be said that this vanity was excusable, for the legs were undoubtedly exceptional in their elegant shapeliness. Wherever they moved they commanded attention. Standing upright, or gracefully crossed when the body they so nobly supported was in a sitting attitude, — slightly-bent in a posture of attention, or moving forward with an all-conquering stateliness, the legs were the dignity of the Bishop. They advanced now to meet Everton with a bland geniality, and the hand that was proffered at the same moment was quite a poor and secondary affair compared to them.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 740