Unknown (23 page)

As for John Geard, under this explosion from his Welsh ally, what he did was slowly and deliberately to turn, not his head, but his eyes, in their hollow motionless sockets, completely away from the agitated man. Mr. Geard had his mouth full of sponge-cake, of which he was particularly fond, and his voice sounded blurred and thick. “What we ought to have in Glastonbury,” he said, “and Midsummer would be a good time for it—is a Religious Fair, or Passion Play, that would attract people. There has not been a Passion Play here for years.” He paused and shut his eyes. “Nor a Miracle either,” he muttered. “No, not for three hundred years; but the time will come, and the Miracle will come!”

It was at that moment that Crummie, who was much more aware of what Sally was doing than of what any of her father's guests were saying, jumped up from her seat and ran into the kitchen. From the kitchen—for the impulsive girl left the door wide open—everyone could hear her scolding the little maid for inattention. It was clear from the first words that ensued that Crummie found the domestic truant standing in Street Road contemplating the passers-by; but a moment later they heard Crum-mie's own voice raised in lively salutation. Sally herself came back, shamefacedly enough, into the dining-room and whispered something to Cordelia; but there was such a draught of chilly air entering the room now, that Mr. and Mrs. Geard and their two male guests kept their faces turned and their attention directed towards the two open doors.

“It's young Mr. Dekker,” said Cordelia presently, “I know his voice.” At the name Dekker there occurred that curious moral stiffening, that gathering together of relaxed social awareness, which always happens in England when an upper middle-class person enters the company of a group of lower middle-class persons. Cordelia had hardly uttered the words, “I know his voice,” than Crummie herself came back into the room bringing Sam Dekker with her.

There was a general rising and shuffling and shaking of hands; and in the midst of the confusion, while Sally was pouring lukewarm water upon stale tea-leaves, Cordelia slipped into the kitchen and began to make a fresh pot of tea and to cut fresh bread and butter. Sam Dekker sat down, awkwardly enough, by Crummie's side. Here he was at the end of the table, next Mrs. Geard, but also next the door. He refused to put.down his hat and stick and kept protesting that he must not stay and that he had already had tea.

“Oil, Cordy! How nice of you to think of that!” cried the younger sister, when after a few nervous generalities about the balmy mornings and the chilly evenings of this unusual March the ice was broken by the appearance of fresh tea and fresh bread and butter.

Sam did now consent to allow Crummie to take his hat and his stick away from him. He had begun to look at John Crow with a stealthy, silent, lowering curiosity, as if John had been a fellow badger in a gathering of foxes.

“May I tell Mr. Dekker,” John now found himself saying, “about the grand plot that you two gentlemen are hatching to make this place a sort of English Oberammergau ?”

“I could hardly hope,” remarked Mr. Geard, with an imperceptible nod of approval towards John, “to convert Mr. Dekker to my immature Design; considering the position held by his father.”

“Mr. Geard has the idea,” John went on, addressing himself now to Sam Dekker alone, “of holding a sort of Pageant, a sort of Religious Fair at Midsummer. ... I believe he has the twenty-fourth of June in his mind, ... in the Tor Fair-field, eh, Sir? His idea is to make this such an event, that people wTill come to it from France and Germany, as well as from all over England. It will, of course, be entirely friendly to all religious bodies. It won't be a church affair. It won't be a nonconformist affair. It'll be . . . I'm right in this, aren't I, Mr. Geard? . . * a Glaston-bury Revival, absolutely independent of the churches. I can see you're interested in the idea, Mr. Dekker; and so will everybody be when we've got it advertised a little. Oh, I wish you'd make me your secretary, Sir, or your master of ceremonies—anything of that sort! I know I catch exactly what you have in your mind. And it would hush up all gossip too, and look wrell in the papers, if you had one of us Crows as your chief lieutenant. And incidentally 'twould give me a chance to”—he was going to say “to upset Philip,” but as he surveyed Bloody Johnny's face he recognised that malice towards an enemy was completely alien to the man's nature, so he concluded differently—“a chance to marry and settle down. I can see you're surprised, Mr. Dekker, to see me here at all; considering my family's grievance against Mr. Geard, and our envy and our jealousy of Mr. Geard; but I'm a black sheep, you know. I don't mind confessing to all you kind people”—here he raised his voice and glanced at the round, red, hypnotised face of the maid Sally, who, standing behind Mrs. Geard's chair, had long since been hanging upon his lips with as much attention as if he had been the Human Chimpanzee talking in the Magic Booth at Somerton Circus—“that I came here hoping that Mr. Geard would let me help him in some way. I even thought that his employment of me would act as hush-money to all this gossip ... a sop to Cerberus, as you might say ... but Mr. Geard reads my thoughts . . . you know you do, Sir! Yes, you really do!”'

He stopped now, quite out of breath; and Sam Dekker glowered at him in sulky silence. Sam's attention had been wandering from the beginning to the end of his discourse. He had been saying to himself, “I know what it means, seeing Zoyland going up Wells Road. He's walked in to see Philip! This means that ha is going to Wookey Hole. He wouldn't come to see him otherwise. He didn't last year; and I fancy he couldn't very well . . . not on a job like that.” At this point, hearing the words of John as if they were perfectly meaningless sounds, his mind ceased to think in words. He felt himself sleeping with Nell in William's bed. He felt the pressure of her breasts against his chest. This voluble fellow opposite him, chattering about a Midsummer Pageant was of no more significance to him than a quacking duck in a farm-yard when he was on his way to Queen's Sedgemoor. In fact as he glared at John, John's nose became the road between the two great oaks and the hamlet of Wick, while John's forehead became the path over the water-meadows. “I must know the truth, one way or the other,” he said to himself. I must know if she's going to be“ alone out there when he goes to Wookey Hole.”

It was touching to Cordelia to watch the way Crummie was behaving. She was no longer the wanton, playful, toying girl, who- delighted in tantalising the senses of men. She was a grave maiden, a tender, drooping-eyed, watchful maiden, who did all she could, by a thousand little attentions and tactful considerations, to win favour with her absent-minded lord!

“He's a gentleman,” Mr. Geard was thinking to himself. :'aud he's a clever rogue. Of course he's an atheist. He doesn't believe in anything. You can see that with half an eye. But it's the Blessed Lord who's brought him to me. He's the very man for my Design—the very man! A believer would be difficult. A churchman would be impossible. This lad will treat my Design as a masquerade. He'll have no prejudices. He's what I've been looking for ever since I got back from Norfolk. And he is his grandchild too—yes, he's perfectly right about the fortune. It'll make a very good impression on all concerned, for me to have one of these Crows as a sort of partner! He'll have a share in spending his grandfather's money. With his help I shall ... I shall do ... I shall have ... I shall be ... I shall make ... an absolutely New Thing—sobbing happiness—black earth —rain—dew—peace-------"

By this time the towers of his New Jerusalem, thus built to the Glory of the Blood, were rising clear and crystalline to his view, piling themselves up, buttress upon buttress, rampart upon rampart, beyond his wife's windowbox of begonias! Castles of crystal, islands of glass, mirrors and mirages of the invisible, hiding-places of Merlin, horns and urns and wells and cauldrons—hilltops of magic—stones of mystery—all these seemed to Bloody Johnny's brain at that moment no mere fluctuating, undulating mind-pictures, but real things; real as the cracked wood of the old windowbox, real as the indented frown upon Megan's forehead! John Crow could clearly see what an impression his words had made upon his host; but he waited patiently till this fit of absent-mindedness should come to an end.

Crurnrnie had by now reached the point of daring to express, in gentle, hesitating tones, her growing absorption in the study of natural history. She was asking Sam if there were not some easy books that she could buy on such things as aquatic plants, water beetles, pond weeds, and so forth; for these, it seemed, had for many years been Crummie's secret delight; though, for the sake of peace in the family, it had been necessary to conceal her obsession.

“Don't you think, John, it would be wiser,” burst out Mrs. Geard at last, finding her opportunity in on© of those curious long silences that seem especially to fall on groups of human beings of just about the numbers that occupied that room, whereas fewer people or more people would have been free from that embarrassment, “don't you think, John, it would be wiser to wait till we moved into Chalice House before employing anyone else?”

“Mother dearl” interrupted Cordelia. “Mr. Crow doesn't mean that he wants to live with us! Father will only pay him a small salary for his help. It'll save Father a great deal. It'll save Father taking an office.”

At the word “office” Megan Geard crumpled up. She sank back in her chair and gasped. The idea of the golden stream of this great Northwold legacy being deflected into an “office” seemed to her almost the worst that could happen. In the moving pictures which she sometimes attended the word “office” was synonymous with dissipation and deception.

Sam Dekker at this moment rose stiffly to his feet. He had decided upon immediate action. He would go himself that very second—it could only be about half-past five—and call upon the Philip Crows. He shook hands hurriedly with his host and hostess, nodded to John Crow and Mr. Evans, and was escorted by the silent Crummie to the front door where she reluctantly handed him his hat and stick. He was so obsessed with what was in his head to do that he took his things from her with a mere “thank you,” gave her an abstracted nod, and hurried off up the street As he approached St. John's Church, on the way to Wells Road, it occurred to him with extreme vividness that it was likely enough that Nell had walked into town with her husband from Queen's Sedgemoor. He had seen William alone, but that meant little; it was Nell's frequent custom to separate from Zoyland when they were together in Glastonbury, do her shopping in peace, and meet him afterward at the Pilgrims' Inn. Sam well knew this habit of hers and had ere now taken advantage of it, meeting her in the Ruins, and once, even, but that was a dangerous risk, in a field at the foot of the Tor. His heart beat fiercely now, therefore, but more from love than from any startled surprise, when he perceived her figure passing under the iron gas-lamp arch into the churchyard. It had been a grey day; and with the approach of sunset the air was beginning to grow both chilly and dark. He took hurried steps in pursuit and reached the churchyard just in time to see her entering the church porch.

There were several people moving in and out of the church at that hour. TheVe were still more people passing up and down in front of the churchyard entrance; and among these latter, as Sam was about to hurry under the iron arch that held the gas-lamp, was a figure in working-man's clothes who hesitated not to stop him and address him. Sam could hardly endure this delay. The man was polite enough and his general demeanour had the air of a foreman or a master plumber. But Sam's soul wTas already inside the church. And what on earth was this pale, intense, red-haired young artisan talking about? He had caught hold of Sam by the lappet of his coat. He was agitated about something. “I beg your pardon,” Sam blurted out at last, “but Fm in rather a hurry. I've got to go, if you don't mind, into the church. I've got to go!” At that moment such a bitter sneer contracted this excitable young man's face that Sam did notice it and stopped. What was the matter with this fellow? Why was he so agitated?

“So you're the gent she can't sigh 'arf enough about,” the man began, in a strong cockney accent “She sighs you 'ave the look of a sighnt. Well, Crummie, I sighs, the next charnst I gets I'll tike a good look at 'im. It ain't every die yer sees a bloomin' sighnt on 'Igh Street. But I'll arst 'im, I sighs, if 'ee won't speak up for a poor dog like yours 'umbly. A sighnt's word, I'll tell 'im, ought to go pretty far with a gal if he cares to give a bloke a 'and-up in 'is courtin'.”

A light for the first time broke upon Sam's impatient mind. This must be Red Robinson, the cockney Communist, who was always plotting troubles and strikes in Philip's factories. Sam now remembered the fact that Red Robinson's mother, with whom he lived, was an old charwoman of the most rigid conservative principles, who worked regularly in the church. Sam knew her well and had often heard her speak sorrowfully and tragically of the wicked opinions of her infidel son. The whole episode was a revelation to him of how poor the Geards had been before they inherited their legacy. It seemed hard to imagine this well-to-do workman aspiring to Crummie's hand!

“You've come to see your mother home?” he murmured feebly, cursing ooth mother and son, and thinking to himself, “If this chap comes in with me now it'll be the last straw!” And the last straw it was. For Red Robinson, clapping his workman's cap firmly on his head, as if to show that a churchyard was no more sacred than any other yard, resolutely followed as Sam moved away, and as he followed continued to talk of Crummie. Sam's desperation grew worse and worse as they approached the church door. He had never heard a cockney accent carried to such a limit. The truth was that Red's accent was more cockney than any living Londoner's. A deep vein of what might be called “philological malice” in him had come to emphasise this way of speaking as a form of spite against the Glastonbury bourgeoisie.

“She sighs you 'ave the look of a sighnt,” Red kept repeating. “She sighs you 'ave haltered 'er whole life. She sighs that since she's known you she's a different gal. So all you've got to do, Mister, is to sigh the wTord and she'll marry me tomorrow!”