It was not long before he was at loggerheads with the fraternity in general and with Mr. Scrowncer in particular. Blandford Febery was indisputably the head and front of their great spiritual revival, but Scrowncer was the alloy that shaped it, the hidden plinth of its structure, the provider of the means whereby it throve, and Scrowner had grown uneasy, become alarmed, and at last appalled, at Febery’s recusancy. He pleaded, he protested, he argued, he demonstrated clearly that even an ordinary clergyman could confute these new dogmas with one twist of his cloven tongue. He stormed, he ridiculed, he forbade; but Febery believed, and believed violently, that no one saw things as clearly as himself, or felt so deeply as he. Fortitude, he claimed, was his prime virtue. The truth! The truth alone! He would shame the devil still, though it brought him to the stake!
“The devil!” Mr. Scrowncer said. “You do not shame the devil, my poor man, you only shame us all!”
“Well, if the cap fits,” roared Febery, “wear it!”
“God forgive you, Febery,” then said Mr. Scrowncer, “this is the end. We have come to the parting of the ways.”
They had indeed, and Febery was cast out of the fraternity. Sadly the circuits were notified, meetings were cancelled, and the great mission for the time being came to an end. In the numerous windows of the Scrowncer emporiums, amid their displays of the latest things in linoleum blankets and lingerie, appeared the announcement:
SPECIAL NOTICE
I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO DO WITH
BLANDFORD FEBERY.
(SIGNED) A SCROWNCER
His fall was complete.
Hard upon this debacle there came the saddest news from Marie, still suffering from her long-standing malady. It had been thought that marriage would effect a cure, but it had not done so, and now, after four years of wedlock, she was despairing and begged to see him once again—it might be for the last time. Without an hour’s delay he went off by train to her seaside town. Bright was the day; the summer had been long and dry, yet seemed in no mood to change, mellow breezes were crimping the blue water of the streams, and as he journeyed Febery felt as elated as the pilgrim who had thrown a burden from his back. At times he was ashamed of this joy, but he continued to rejoice. From the station he limped out to the villa where Marie dwelt, with a sardonic smile upon his heavy face, for the long-haired “ginger” preacher was known to many of the passers-by and his cloaked appearance brought caustic comments from others more staidly clothed than he.
Her house had a garden in front with a tennis lawn and a dell under some trees. There was a summer hammock strung up in the dell, but the garden and the hammock were empty. The window blinds were drawn. “She may be away, or gone out,” thought Febery as he gave a gentle knock upon the door.
It opened immediately. Her husband and his brother came out, and the door was shut quietly behind them.
“She is sleeping,” muttered the husband, while his brother groped in a nook under the windows and brought out three folding chairs, which they opened and stood upon the lawn.
“She is very ill,” her husband said moodily, “but she will not take to her bed as she ought now. She is lying down in the room there. Sit down, please, or is it too hot here?”
They sat down and talked of her condition in low tones. Was she so ill! It seemed to Febery that they were disinclined to let him see her again. Of course he had written to her about his loss of faith and his disagreement with Scrowncer, and she had sympathized, she had praised him, but it was clear that her husband deeply disapproved and was antagonistic. Marie had sent for him, a pathetic invitation, and he had flown in response to her. So this was her husband, the successful tradesman! His expensive clothes somehow hung cheaply upon him, and his pale sour face oppressed the visitor. Ten sombre minutes had passed when the door opened quietly and she herself stood there, her soft eyes blinking in the sharp sunlight, her mouth curved in a wry smile. Her dress was creased upon her, for she had been lying down. Malignant Time! How she had changed! Illness had scooped into her beauty, the contours of her face were angular now, and her hair hung in wispy locks. But the prime design was still there, it was beauty in a cloud—Febery’s beauty. She walked slowly up to him as he rose, and they exchanged timid greetings.
Quickly her husband led her out of the sunlight to the dell under the trees, and as she sank down into the hammock she bade Febery bring his chair. He did so. The husband and his brother—partners in ironmongery—did not rejoin them, they went strolling up and down the far side of the lawn as though by intention leaving the two friends together. The dell was screened by its trees, the hammock hidden by them.
“Do you like him?” Marie whispered.
“Who?” he asked doubtfully.
“My husband,” she said.
Febery made a shrugging gesture.
“You do not like him!” She smiled as though it were no matter.
“Because you married him,” he ventured, “and I still love you.”
Marie stared at him. Then she groped for his hand and pressed it fondly. She closed her eyes and turned her face away.
“Ha ha ha!” laughed her husband, and “He he he!” his brother tittered in echo. They were apparently telling each other peculiar stories. With a glance at them through the screen of leaves, Febery bent over Marie and kissed her. She opened her eyes.
“Too late,” she whispered. All her graceful frailness smote him with grief and longing. There was a small spider running across her bosom; it had jade-green legs and a lemon-coloured body with a brown disk upon it. Febery brushed it away and let his hand glide along her hip.
“Too late,” she murmured again. “And I hate being good!”
“Ah, but when you are well?” he said softly, “when you recover—!”
“No use,” she sighed. “I’m done for. Can’t last much longer. They’re only waiting for me to die. Quick, kiss me again—I don’t care!”
They heard her husband chortling across the lawn: “Oh dear! Oh dear!” and his brother replying: “That’s good, very good!”
The stupefied Febery stared over the back of his chair at the scorched grass of the lawn; the tennis net had slackened, the air was full of gnats. Sweat hung upon Febery’s brow. How incredible it was! Of course it could not be true! What vital men those two looked prancing over there, though their clothes seemed to sag upon them and their shoes were dusty! Marie was wearing slippers of blue leather with white fur on the edges; her stockings were of silk to the knee, and a little beyond. It was piteous, it was impossible, she could not be dying—now!
“Tell me,” she said. “What you are going to do now you have broken with old Scrowncer?”
“I have no plans,” he answered, “I can think only of you.”
“And there’ll be no more plans for me, either.” She spoke with a gay rally. “Lord, I have done nothing, been nothing, seen nothing—and there’s Paris, and all those Alps, and the Kremlin, and the Suez Canal!”
He wanted to comfort her with kisses but feared to excite the frail sick woman and sat on despairingly by her side, wondering whether the predicament of Tantalus was not after all said and done more applicable to her than to him.
“You will not go preaching again?”
“Never any more,” he said.
“I am glad of that!”
“I feel no gladness, Marie,” he averred. “Far from it.”
“Ah, don’t fail me now, my dear.” She smiled, but added ruthlessly: “I never believed in you as a preacher!”
“Not?”
“Of course not.”
“I believed in myself.”
“As a preacher of the truth! But you don’t now, do you?”
What was it he did believe, or had once believed, or could ever believe again? How explain to her, dying as she was, that he had found out he had been preaching—oh, vanity of vanities!—to God and not to man! It was too piteous now to disturb her simple faith. Not now, not now.
“You don’t believe in it now?” she
iterated urgently, as though a paramount consolation hung upon his expected answer; and moved by her insistence, he conceded:
“I have no—what you call—beliefs, but—”
“Neither have I!” she interjected triumphantly. “Never. I supposed I had—till I met you. Then I knew I had none. They know it too,” she whispered.
“Who?”
She nodded towards the lawn. “I am tired of it all. He worries me. He knows I am fond of you and think just as you think, and he wants me to believe now and be good—good!”
“Then why not, Marie?”
She was startled and half rose from the hammock.
“What! Why do you say that—now?”
Febery hesitated; again she urged him: “Why?”
The miserable man said: “You have nothing to lose—now—if—if—”
“You mean now I am dying?” She turned her face away, murmuring: “Yes, I know that. But it would be mean, now, don’t you think?”
“Pooh!” he exclaimed.
“Ah, don’t fail me now!” she protested with damnable caressing archness. “You have no faith, you never had any at all.”
He could not bring himself to utter a reply, but she understood his silence; it confirmed her.
“Nor have I,” she said. “I can’t have. What is the use of pretending now? I’m just sorry.”
Later in the afternoon Febery went away into the town and took a lodging. Her husband did not ask him to stay with them, and indeed Febery shrank from lingering there. He promised Marie that he would call every day, every day—until—yes, he would come every day.
He called the next day, but she was not to be seen, she was sleeping. Again he called, but she was sleeping, sleeping; her husband almost shooed him away. For three days he hung around the closed house. Then she died.
IV
For months Febery drifted about like a dead leaf at the will of the winds, limping on foot from town to town, doing little or nothing, until he was reduced to beggary and the winter days came on.
“It is time now,” said he, “to take my fate in hand.” And he thought and thought and went on thinking until his brains were woolly and the soles of his boots worn thin. Forlorn and unshaven, he was no longer fitted for business, from acting he was bitterly resigned, and religion had cast him out. “Is there nothing to which I can turn my hand?” he mournfully mused. “Am I only a spouter of hyperbole and fudge?”
Well, on a Sunday morning he tramped into a little town. By the grace of God it was a fine day, with no sharpness wherever the sunlight lay, and where it lay brightest and best was on a small green common with an old gibbet conserved in its centre. There were men idling about there, plenty of men waiting for the taverns to open, so Febery walked up to the gibbet, took a stand upon its knoll, and began calling the men to come listen to him. And when they came he began to preach to them of the virtues of temperance and the sin of indulgence in strong drink. Having sworn vows against it ever since he had broken his foot in the dock at Liverpool, no drop of the evil had again passed his stubborn lips. Inspired now by necessity rather than any moral urge, he harangued so passionately, so despairingly, and yet so amusingly that his hearers were moved to applaud him. It was not his theme that arrested and impressed them so much as his appearance; they were enlivened by his gestures and tickled by his style, so that his appeal for a collection at the close met with a generous response, and he left the common with a new hope in his breast while they left it mostly for the purpose of whetting the whistle with an ironical relish. That was one to Febery; he had preached temperance, and the intemperate had paid him jovially. Well, it was no use preaching to the temperate!
He came to another town at evening and again attracted a large audience for his sermon on the evils of drink, with still more profitable results. There was something hoarsely commanding about the man; wild-eyed and with uplifted hands, he seemed to denounce the whole world in most hearty fashion, and the spittle came spurting from his lips.
Some of his hearers were impressed, others were visibly moved, but all were fascinated. When they flung questions at him his repartee delighted them—oh, they liked to be bullied!—and into a handkerchief he had spread on the ground before him their pence fell like showers of leaves on windy autumn days. It was a long, long time before Febery realized that this largesse was not the reward of virtue communicated or acclaimed, but was bestowed upon him because he was a most impressive amusement. By then, however, he was launched upon his new career and, uncontrolled by any executives, spoke wherever he happened to be, in any fashion he chose, and with a lugubrious philosophy that deepened as the months rolled by. Now and again offers were made to him by wealthy societies who required him to lecture for them, but he declined, roughly, rudely. Disliking organizations, he chose to live in haphazard fashion on his itinerant alms. That made a hard life of it, and to the wandering man it seemed as though winter would never pass away. Yet neither spring nor summer brought any ease to the sorrow that laboured in his heart, a sorrow that was often mingled with a mysterious resentment. Poor Marie! It was sad—poor baffled woman! She was—good Lord above—she was—well—she had been born a romantic, a romantic without wings! She had had the flame in her breast, but not the wit to fly!
It was not alone the loss of Marie that fretted and consumed him: there was something within himself, loneliness and intolerance, that also consumed, that was all of a piece with his strange appearance. The glitter of heaven had dulled, it was no longer desirable; he was of the world, and yet the world disgusted him; he wanted to love it, love it madly, yet he could take no part in it at all. He was cast out, he too was baffled, and his despairing isolation fumed and quavered at his speeches:
“One enters a tavern at night—Stop! Why have you entered here? The mind stammers at the question; it knows there is a subtle answer, but it cannot enunciate it. To drink, to talk, to rest? Bah! Not these alone! One’s journey is long, with an end no man knows, from a beginning that none remembers, and on either hand the Green Dragons and the Black Lions and the Pink Ptarmigans blazon their foolish symbols. One enters a tavern at night—to lounge over a bar counter and be absorbed. Absorbed! What do you mean? Absorbed in what? Well, in a twist of harmonious chaos, minute parochial chaos, torn from immensities of isolation. But what are these figures standing here or sitting there, babbling incessantly in gay tones? There is beer before them on the tables. They have hats on. Their faces are ruddy or sallow. They are arrayed in suits with soiled handkerchiefs in the pockets, matches, tobacco, money, and all the intimate revelations of a gnat. They discourse of work, wenching, and horseracing, or they are immersed in mysteries to which I have no clue. It is a world of shirt-button joys, and griefs that would drown in a single tear. How fatuous! What waste, what profanation! I hear a voice that cries: ‘Begone! You may not enter here!’ Yet the heart pleads for some charity that the soul ever denies, and I long to enter there, to merge myself humbly with these, and be one with its cheap oblivion. ‘Begone! Begone! You may not enter here!’
“The world is my tavern. Am I excluded, or is it I that exclude myself? Are there cherubin at the gate of that paradise from which I have known neither expulsion or exclusion, or is that flaming sword merely my own? I know, I know, for it scorches my hand and heart!”
TWO WINTERS FOLLOWED TWO SUMMERS, AND CARELESS of personal welfare, Febery slept often in barns or among the heather, but in the end his self-consuming flame and the quite needless privations he incurred did their work: he was stricken with a fever and carried helpless into a hospital attached to a convent. A convent! There was no escape for Febery, he was dying. The quiet nuns besought him to take the final consolation. Febery declined. There was bliss in all this restful illness, the small white ward, the immaculate nuns, the comfort, the soft passage of the daylight hours. It was a community of gentle women, sisters of mercy indeed. But the nights were full of mortal anguish and fear of what might lie ahead when there were nights no more. A young monk came to s
it by his bedside and spoke earnestly. He too seemed to be lit with gleams of that urgent holy rapture that had once been Febery’s joy, and the mind of the sick man faltered under his persuasions; at the core of his dying heart an ash of warmth began again to flicker. What beauteous visions still hung in that curious creed! And he had only to submit himself, to cast away his human pride, and say simply and humbly—yes! The word sang in his heart and had almost trembled from his lips when the voice of poor dead Marie came murmuring to his ears:
“Ah, do not fail me now!”
And Febery remembered. He had led her from the cross; they had agreed! Despite everlasting hell he could not fail her now. He dared not. With a grim gurgle he recalled an incident at one of the great Scrowncer revivals. A shoemaker on crutches, with both of his legs partially paralysed, had shuffled up to them, a derelict ugly outcast.
The Hurly Burly and Other Stories Page 18