Part 27

His conclusion was, not that the Christian religion had become theatrical, rhetorical, mechanical, inhuman and unjust, but that he himself by his own life had become unworthy to administer it. Like many Christians, faced with the difficult, almost (in these days) impossible, task of distilling the essential truth from its accumulation of tainted lumber, he took refuge, without seeing any inconsistency, in the ascetic ideal, thinking that a life of absolute chastity and poverty and abstraction from the things of this world would give a man the right to hurl thunder and the lightnings of the Jewish Bible at his fellow men. And yet in his heart, as, latent in the hearts of all men, was the true faith in the ineffable love,

_. . . che muove 'l Sole e l'altre stelle._

He could not disentangle this love, this spirit of man, from the superstition of the ages, and could not therefore let it freely move his own existence. He told himself that he had failed, that he ought never to have entered the priesthood, that he was an old man and could not change. No other course lay open to him than to retire.

He wrote to his Bishop to ask his leave, and, if it were granted, to apply for a pension from the Diocesan fund.

Never again did he conduct Divine service in any church.

* * *

He felt infinitely happier when he had done this, and a new brightness came to Mrs. Folyat and Mary when they knew they were to escape from the town where they had come by so much suffering, and the numbing monotony of a rather idle existence in drab surroundings. They set their faces southwards, for they had decided to live in Potsham, where Francis had held his first curacy. They were going to live in Crabtrees, where Francis Folyat and Martha Brett had met and loved each other so long ago, and all day long Francis would be busy in the garden running down to the river, and all day long Martha would sit in the gazebo and look out at the water, and see the tide coming in, and the herons fishing, and the boats go sailing by, all as it had been long ago, peaceful and beautiful. . . . Already, weeks before they could go, the peace of it began to fill the house in Burdley Park, and the dark past slipped away from them and Francis began to feel the richness of old age, when best and worst have been done, and the fruits of reflection can be gathered in.

Often as he sat working in the greenhouse, or in the study turning over his books--he had gone back to the loves of his early days, Fielding and Don Quixote--Francis would think of Serge, and the day when together they had walked away from Mrs. Entwistle's cottage. That memory preoccupied him more and more, and he felt a desire to see Annie Lipsett again before he went away. She wrote to him at long intervals to let him know that she had not forgotten. His feeling about the episode had always been spiced with the joy of forbidden things. It had been entirely separate from the rest of his life, and yet, unknown to him, it had informed the whole of it, and, in his most need, had given him the assurance of love and mercy which had upheld him in the face of the doctrine and dogma of his Church, even though he had seemed to himself to be upholding the Church by the sacrifice of himself.

* * *

He found Annie Lipsett busy and thoughtful. She was going to be married to an auctioneer who had been a lodger in her mother's house. She had just had a letter from Serge in Ceylon and its friendliness had removed her last anxieties.

"You see, sir," she said to Francis, "Mr. Serge found me when everything was as complicated as that piece of lace, and he made it all simple. And after that, being with him made one able to bear everything, because one felt that, whatever it was, it would go away. He used to say that being unhappy and dark in your mind was just the same as being unwell in your body, and if it was taken in time there was always a cure for it. So funny he used to be about it. He was always talking to me about the boy, and he used to say that I must teach him nothing, because children are always right by themselves until they begin to imitate grown-up people, and bad things are easier to imitate than good because they are grotesque, and grown-up people have always to be learning good things from children over and over again."

"I have never forgotten that day when I came to see you."

"Nor I, sir."

"We're going away, for ever. It is queer, but you are the only person whom I really wanted to see before I left. We have never seemed to belong to this place."

"I used to hate it too, but Mr. Serge made me laugh at it all. He said it was just an accident, though I didn't know what he meant by that. I often didn't really understand Mr. Serge, except about the boy, but then I could see that everything he said was true."

"I hope you will be very, very happy."

Annie surprised Francis by putting her arms round his neck and kissing him. He returned the kiss.

It was only some time after he had left her that it struck him that he had never once thought of Frederic in connection with her. When he called Frederic to his mind it was always as a graceful, impudent, funny little boy. He had never known the man Frederic. Frederic had never been a man.

* * *

Even in our town the green of spring was showing and the zestful wind was blowing upon the blackened houses when Francis, his wife and Mary left upon their long journey to the south. Gleeful and glad they were, and the spring was in their hearts and the keen adventurousness of escape. After long captivity they were shaking from their shoes the dust of the hostile city, leaving in its toils the sole hostage of all their family, Annette, doomed to the life of drudgery to which that city condemns its women, for, except they be born in drudgery, the sons of its women could never endure its service, nor would they be fitted for it.

XXXIV

NUNC DIMITTIS SERVUM TUUM, DOMINE

_For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation._ THE SONG OF SIMEON.

MANY wise men have laughed at the futility of thought and discarded an opinion as a worthless thing.

In the garden at Crabtrees Francis grew roses and delphiniums and tall hollyhocks and all homely flowers, and busily he tended his vegetables and herbs. He kept bees and grew skilled in their ways. Every day in summer Mrs. Folyat sat in the gazebo, and in the winter she had her own little drawing-room where the gossips would come in and take tea over a great fire.

Their living was very frugal, for their means were small. Only two houses besides Crabtrees were left of Mrs. Folyat's inheritance.

Outwardly Potsham was hardly at all changed since the day when Francis and his bride had set out on their honeymoon, but its glory was departed. Its fragrance and faint perfume of the high manners of an older day were gone. Little boys whom they remembered playing barefooted in the street called the Strand, down by the little dock and the mud flats, had made fortunes and dispossessed little by little the old gentlefolk. Their sons had gone to the universities and their daughters had visited London. No longer were the inhabitants of Potsham gently little in a little place, but in a little place aped the follies of great cities. People and place were no longer in harmony. Men and women seemed continually to be adjusting themselves to an outside standard. They were as sluggards who protest their wakefulness. . . . But for Francis and Martha, Potsham was as it had been in their youth, a place of sleep, of tranquil sleep attended by pleasant dreams of roses and blue water and warm figs ripening in the sunlight mellowed by the soft, moist air.

Their golden wedding came, their diamond-wedding, and between the two was but the drowsy humming of bells in a lofty tower. The hair of both was snow-white, and Francis had his brushed into two long ringlets that fell down on to his shoulders on either side of his head. His eyes were bright and young, often twinkling with merriment behind his spectacles, and people used to come and tell him funny things to see him enjoy the joke and chuckle down in his throat and shake all over with his inward mirth.

Gertrude often came to stay with her two children, and upon a day she arrived and never went away. Streeten had shed his capital bit by bit in one profession after another until he had not enough left to support his family. Then he disappeared without a word and no trace of him could be found.

Every two years Annette used to come and bring with her one or more of her children. Like her mother, she had eight. She could never stay long because Bennett would write every day and implore her to come back. . . . When any of her children had been ill she used to send them down, and they stayed until Francis judged them well enough to return, and that was never until their little pinched white faces were filled out and baked as brown as a bun. The second boy, Stephen, once spent five months at Crabtrees. He was a very queer, silent little creature, and he used to sit and stare at his grandparents and his aunts. Once, after dogging Francis for two days and scrutinising him in the most embarrassing way, he said:

"Grandpa, what is it makes your eyes so bright and blue, like the sky?"

Francis chuckled and replied:

"My dear, they're little mirrors and I polish them."

A great summer passed into a melancholy misty autumn, but on a rare fine day, the sun warming the first sighing breath of winter, Stephen Lawrie sat with a book in his lap under the Siberian crabtree on the lawn. His grandfather was digging in the vegetable garden near by, when, looking up, Stephen saw him pitch forward and fall flat on his face. It was as though he had been blown down.

The boy sat staring, stunned by the heaviness of the fall. Then he was seized by the terror of it and rushed screaming away.

It was a stroke, and Crabtrees became a house of the sick. Stephen was packed off home.

* * *

Before the winter was out Francis seemed to be quite well again, and he was out and about and busy preparing for the spring. February was hardly gone when he was laid low again, this time never to rise. He was partially paralysed and could not speak. For a long time his wits were gone. . . . Slowly he crept back again into the existence of the house. His spirit would not yield up his body to the earth.

Gertrude was his nurse, and very gentle with him. She was creeping about his room, thinking him asleep, with her shadow swinging to and fro as she moved. In a sudden, strangled voice, she heard him say:

"I can speak."

She turned to him, but he lay very still, and his face looked pinched and whiter than it had done. She was alarmed and sat up with him all night. In the early morning he asked to see his wife. Gertrude fetched her, and she came huddled and bunched up in shawl and flannels and sat by his bedside. He moved his hand a little and she reached out and took it in hers. He said:

"It has been a long time, but it has been a good time. It has not all been good for you. I would be glad if you--if you could forgive me . . ."

"Oh! my dear, my dear. . . . The best . . ."

"I have always been afraid," he went on, and his voice gained in strength. "I have always been afraid of saying too much, and I have said too little. . . . It has been best when we were old. You have much to forgive."

Mrs. Folyat could only weep. Francis asked to be given his Bible and the amethyst cross he had worn on Sundays on his watchchain. They were laid by his side and he took the cross in his hand. He said that everything he left was to go to Mary, but she was to help the others when they needed help. . . . Then he told his wife she must go away and rest, for he desired to communicate for the last time and must have a space in which to prepare himself. Gertrude aided Mrs. Folyat out of the room.

It was All Fool's Day.

At nine o'clock Mary was having breakfast alone when Serge walked in. She told him, and he went up at once to his father's room. He stood by the bed for a long time before Francis opened his eyes and saw him. His eyes smiled and he said:

"My son."

"Father."

"I am not of those who believe that understanding is not given to us, for I came to understand. The beginning and the ending of all things is in God, and we may not question, nor idly interpret the beginning and the end. We pass from dust to dust, but the spirit endureth for ever, and in all things in our passage the spirit moves us. Is it not so?"

"It is so."

"And life is very good, to be rounded with a sleep."

"Life is very good."

"Surely I have not altogether failed my God, since I have known you."

"We have known each other. A man must die many times before his life be done."

"So be it. . . . I shall sleep now."

Serge stooped and kissed his father's brow, and in a few minutes he was dead.

THE END

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN LONDON

Transcriber's Note

This transcription is based on scans digitized from a copy at the Cornell University Library and posted by the Internet Archive at:

https://archive.org/details/cu31924013593722

For reference, scans digitized by Google from a copy at Princeton University were also consulted. This file is posted at:

https://books.google.com/books?id=hL4sAAAAYAAJ

The following changes to the text are noted:

-- p. 58: at the same age and the same maiden condition In short--Added a period after "condition".

-- p. 87: The old man watched hm with a sort of hunger--Changed "hm" to "him".

-- p. 92: She goes to his church and looks at him as though she were a beautifully-cooked chop. He is rather like that. I shall call him the mutton-chop when he comes.--Changed the "she" after "though" to "he".

-- p. 114: Serged plunged with a question--Changed "Serged" to "Serge".

-- p. 142: Keep it to youself, my dear.--Changed "youself" to "yourself".

-- p. 160: She made an effort and went on.:--Deleted the period between "on" and the colon.

-- p. 163: "I am deeply pained and grieved, . ."--Changed the comma to a period.

-- p. 181: Five minutes later Serge knocked at the study door. went in, and found his father at his desk writing a letter, Francis laid down his pen and turned.--Changed the period after "door" to a comma and changed the comma after "a letter" to a period.

-- p. 184: Serge found rooms for Annie Lispett in a not too dull village.--Changed "Lispett" to "Lipsett".

-- p. 216: forced into him piecemeal, so peacemeal it was pumped--changed "peacemeal" to "piecemeal".

-- p. 247: Inserted a period at the end of the epigraph.

-- p. 280: has a me wanting a greal deal to eat--Changed "greal" to "great".

-- p. 319: "No. That comes long after the mischief's done." "The trouble between Basil and me is simply this.--Deleted the quotation marks between "done." and "The trouble".

Variant spellings such as "prejudicies," "delinquences," and "strategems" were retained.