None Other Gods by Robert Hugh Benson (debian ebook reader txt) 📖

energy, like warmth or biting cold, as of a charged force: it was like a real person standing motionless in the middle of a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary to men who have received a public school and university education, half slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have just attempted to set down.)

Frank, then, seemed as much out of place in this perfectly correct and suitable little room as an Indian prince in Buckingham Palace; or, if you prefer it, an English nobleman (with spats) in Delhi. He was just entirely different from it all; he had nothing whatever to do with it; he was wholly out of place, not exactly as regarded his manner (for he was quite at his ease), but with regard to his significance. He was as a foreign symbol in a familiar language.

Its effect upon Mr. Parham-Carter was quite clear and strong. He instanced to me the fact that he said nothing to Frank about his soul: he honestly confessed that he scarcely even wished to press him to come to Evensong on Sunday. Of course, he did not like Frank's being a Roman Catholic; and his whole intellectual being informed him that it was because Frank had never really known the Church of England that he had left it. (Mr. Parham-Carter had himself learned the real nature of the Church of England at the Pusey House at Oxford.) But there are certain atmospheres in which the intellectual convictions are not very important, and this was one of them. So here the two young men sat and stared at one another, or, rather, Mr. Parham-Carter stared at Frank, and Frank looked at nothing in particular.

"You haven't drunk your cocoa," said the clergyman suddenly.

Frank turned abruptly, took up the cup and drank the contents straight off at one draught.

"And a cigarette?"

Frank took up a cigarette and put in his mouth.

"By the way," he said, taking it out again, "when'll you send your ladies round? The morning's best, when the rest of us are out of the way."

"All right."

"Well, I don't think there's anything else?"

"My dear chap," said the other, "I wish you'd tell me what it's all about--why you're in this sort of life, you know. I don't want to pry, but--"

Frank smiled suddenly and vividly.

"Oh, there's nothing to say. That's not the point. It's by my own choice practically. I assure you I haven't disgraced anybody."

"But your people--"

"Oh! they're all right. There's nothing the matter with them.... Look here! I really must be going."

He stood up, and something seemed to snap in the atmosphere as he did so.

"Besides, I've got to be at work early--"

"I say, what did you do then?"

"Do then? What do you mean?"

"When you stood up--Did you say anything?..."

Frank looked at him bewildered.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Mr. Parham-Carter did not quite know what he had meant himself. It was a sensation come and gone, in an instant, as Frank had moved ... a sensation which I suppose some people would call "psychical"--a sensation as if a shock had vibrated for one moment through every part of his own being, and of the pleasant little warm room where he was sitting. He looked at the other, dazed for a second or two, but there was nothing. Those two steady black eyes looked at him in a humorous kind of concern....

He stood up himself.

"It was nothing," he said. "I think I must be getting sleepy."

He put out his hand.

"Good-night," he said. "Oh! I'll come and see you as far as the gate."

Frank looked at him a second.

"I say," he said; "I suppose you've never thought of becoming a Catholic?"

"My dear chap--"

"No! Well, all right.... oh! don't bother to come to the gate."

"I'm coming. It may be locked."

* * * * *


Mr. Parham-Carter stood looking after Frank's figure even after it had passed along the dark shop fronts and was turning the corner towards Turner Road. Then it went under the lamplight, and disappeared.

It was a drizzling, cold night, and he himself was bareheaded; he felt the moisture run down his forehead, but it didn't seem to be happening to him. On his right rose up the big parish-hall where the entertainments were held, and beyond it, the east end of the great church, dark now and tenantless; and he felt the wet woodwork of the gate grasped in his fingers.

He did not quite know what was happening to him but everything seemed different. A hundred thoughts had passed through his mind during the last half hour. It had occurred to him that he ought to have asked Guiseley to come to the clergy-house and lodge there for a bit while things were talked over; that he ought, tactfully, to have offered to lend him money, to provide him with a new suit, to make suggestions as to proper employment instead of at the jam factory--all those proper, philanthropic and prudent suggestions that a really sensible clergyman would have made. And yet, somehow, not only had he not made them, but it was obvious and evident when he regarded them that they could not possibly be made. Guiseley (of Drew's) did not require them, he was on another line altogether.... And what was that line?

Mr. Parham-Carter leaned on the gate a full five minutes considering all this. But he arrived at no conclusion.


CHAPTER II

(I)

The Rector of Merefield was returning from a short pastoral visitation towards the close of an afternoon at the beginning of November. His method and aims were very characteristic of himself, since he was one of that numerous class of persons who, interiorly possessing their full share of proper pride, wear exteriorly an appearance of extreme and almost timid humility. The aims of his visiting were, though he was quite unaware of the fact, directed towards encouraging people to hold fast to their proper position in life (for this, after all, is only another name for one's duty towards one's neighbor), and his method was to engage in general conversation on local topics. There emerged, in this way, information as to the patient's habits and actions; it would thus transpire, for example, whether the patient had been to church or not, whether there were any quarrels, and, if so, who were the combatants and for what cause.

He had been fairly satisfied to-day; he had met with good excuses for the absence of two children from day-school, and of a young man from choir-practice; he had read a little Scripture to an old man, and had been edified by his comments upon it. It was not particularly supernatural, but, after all, the natural has its place, too, in life, and he had undoubtedly fulfilled to-day some of the duties for whose sake he occupied the position of Rector of Merefield, in a completely inoffensive manner. The things he hated most in the world were disturbances of any kind, abruptness and the unexpected, and he had a strong reputation in the village for being a man of peace.

It sounds a hard thing to say of so conscientious a man, but a properly preserved social order was perhaps to his mind the nearest approach to the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Each person held his proper position, including himself, and he no more expected others to be untrue to their station than he wished to be untrue to his own. There were, of course, two main divisions--those of gentle birth and those not of gentle birth, and these were as distinct as the sexes. But there were endless gradations in each respectively, and he himself regarded those with as much respect as those of the angelic hierarchy: the "Dominations" might, or might not be as "good" as the "Powers," but they were certainly different, by Divine decree. It would be a species of human blasphemy, therefore, for himself not to stand up in Lord Talgarth's presence, or for a laborer not to touch his hat to Miss Jenny. This is sometimes called snobbishness, but it is nothing of the kind. It is merely a marked form of Toryism.

It was a pleasant autumnal kind of afternoon, and he took off his hat as he turned up past the park gates to feel the cool air, as he was a little heated with his walk. He felt exceedingly content with all things: there were no troubles in the parish, he enjoyed excellent health, and he had just done his duty. He disliked pastoral visiting very deeply indeed; he was essentially a timid kind of man, but he made his rules and kept them, for he was essentially a conscientious man. He was so conscientious that he was probably quite unaware that he disliked this particular duty.

Just as he came opposite the gates--great iron-work affairs with ramping eagles and a Gothic lodge smothered in ivy--the man ran out and began to wheel them back, after a hasty salute to his pastor; and the Rector, turning, saw a sight that increased his complacency. It was just Jenny riding with Lord Talgarth, as he knew she was doing that afternoon.

They made a handsome, courtly kind of pair--a sort of "father and daughter" after some romantic artist or other. Lord Talgarth's heavy figure looked well-proportioned on horseback, and he sat his big black mare very tolerably indeed. And Jenny looked delicious on the white mare, herself in dark green. A groom followed twenty yards behind.

Lord Talgarth's big face nodded genially to the Rector and he made a kind of salute; he seemed in excellent dispositions; Jenny was a little flushed with exercise, and smiled at her father with a quiet, friendly dignity.

"Just taking her ladyship home," said the old man.... "Yes; charming day, isn't it?"

* * * * *


The Rector followed them, pleased at heart. Usually Jenny rode home alone with the groom to take back her mare to the stables. It was the first time, so far as he could remember, that Lord Talgarth had taken the trouble to escort her all the way home himself. It really was very pleasant indeed, and very creditable to Jenny's tact, that relations were so cordial.... And they were dining there to-morrow, too. The social order of Merefield seemed to be in an exceedingly sound condition.


(II)

Lord Talgarth, too, seemed to the lodge-keeper, as ten minutes later the gates rolled back again to welcome their lord, in an unusually genial temper (and, indeed, there was always about this old man as great a capacity for geniality on one side as for temper on the other; it is usually so with explosive characters). He even checked his horse and asked after "the missus" in so many words; although two days before a violent message had come down to complain of laxity in the gate-opening, owing to the missus' indisposition on