XLIV
ViaGrayfield, Easing and Chettleford the distance to Wellwood was nearly twenty miles. He might train from Brombridge, but the service was bad and there would be three miles to walk at the end. So he decided that old Alice should take him to Grayfield, and then he would ask Whymper to lend him his car.
But long before he came to Grayfield he felt that this could not be. At that moment his old Magdalen friend was the last person in the universe he desired to meet. If he had now to face his kind it must be some other. Thus, as the stately chimneys and fine gables of the Manor house, rising proudly behind an enchanted copse of fern and Canterbury bells, came into view, he urged old Alice past them at her best pace and on to the Chequers, Grayfield’s model public house. Its landlord, Hickman, a civil, obliging fellow, was known to the vicar, who in this dilemma was very glad of his help. It was not fair to ask the full journey of poor old Alice.
He was able to exchange her temporarily for thelandlord’s young mare. But in the process he had to submit to an ordeal that he would have given much to be spared.
“I see, sir, in theAdvertiser,” said Hickman, as he gave the ostler a hand in the inn yard, “that the Captain’s gone. My boy went the same day. He was not in the Captain’s lot, but I happen to know that he thought there was no one like him. He was such a gentleman, and he had a way with him that had a rare power over young chaps.”
The vicar could not answer the honest fellow, whose voice failed suddenly and whose eyes were full of tears. But he held out his hand very simply, and Hickman, his tears now falling softly, like those of a child, took it.
“Excuse me, sir. Bill was my all. You see, I buried the wife in the spring. Things are at a dead end for me now.”
The vicar, unable to speak, offered his hand again.
All at once Hickman took him firmly by the coat-sleeve and led him a dozen paces away from the ostler. “Excuse the great freedom, sir”—the big, not over-bright fellow’s whisper was excessive in its humility—“but, as a minister of the Gospel, there’s one question I’d like to ask you.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington shuddered at the perception of what was coming.
“The only hope for a chap like me is that I’ll meet the wife and the boy in Heaven. Otherwise, I’m at a dead end as you might say. As one man to another, what chance do you think there is?”
The vicar grew cold at the heart.
“Of course, I’m not a churchgoer; I am not a religious man or anything of that kind. My father wasn’t. I’ve always tried to go straight, keep sober, pay my way and so on, but of course, I’ve never taken Communion or read the Bible or done anything to curry favor. That’s not my nature. Still, I reckon myself a fairish, decentish chap; and on Sunday evening, after the service, I went round to talk to our vicar here, Mr. Pierce.”
“Yes.” Mr. Perry-Hennington gave an eager gasp. “That was very wise. What did he say to you?” His lips could hardly shape the question.
“Why, sir, he said that a Christian couldn’t doubt for a moment that one day he would be with his wife and children in Heaven.”
“Mr. Pierce said that!”
“He did. And I told him I didn’t pretend to be a Christian and I asked him if he thought I had left it too late.”
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, he said it was never too late to be a Christian. And he gave me a prayer book—he’s a very nice gentleman—and told me to take it home and read it.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve tried to read it, sir, but to be quite honest, I don’t feel that I shall ever be much of a Christian.”
“Well, Hickman—” suddenly Mr. Perry-Hennington found his voice—“always try to remember this: Jesus Christ came to us here in order that you might be with your dear wife and your dear boy in Heaven, and—and—we have His pledged Word—and we must believe in that.”
“But how is a chap to believe what he can’t prove?”
“We must have faith—we must all have faith.”
“All very well, sir,” said Hickman dourly, “but suppose He has promised more than He can perform?”
“In what way? How do you mean?”
“According to the Bible He was to come again, but as far as I can make out there doesn’t seem much sign of Him yet.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington was silent a moment and then he took one of the landlord’s large hands in both of his own and said in an abrupt, half grotesque, wholly illogical way, “My dear friend, we are all members one of another. It is our duty to hope for thebest—our duty to believe that the best will happen.” And as he turned aside, he added with another curious change of voice, which he could not have recognized as belonging to himself, “You see, we are all in the same boat.”
Saying these words, the vicar climbed into his trap with almost the stagger of a drunken man. He hardly knew what he said or what he did, but as soon as the mare was out of the inn yard it came upon him that he had to go to Wellwood, and that the way to get there was through Easing and Chettleford.
Why at that particular moment that particular place should be his destination he didn’t quite know, unless it was in obedience to a voice he had heard in the sky. A modern man, whose supreme desire was to take reason for his guide in all things, even if the vows of his faith forced him to accept the supernatural in form and sum, he feared in this hour to apply it too rigidly.
As the publican’s mare went steadily forward along the winding, humid lanes of a woodland country, a feeling of hopelessness came upon him. What did he expect to do when he got to the end of his journey? Such a question simply admitted of no answer. It was not to be faced by Thomas Perry-Hennington onhis present plane of being. The logic of the matter could not be met.
That was the case, no doubt, but a compromise was equally impossible. Something would have to happen. Either he must go forward or he must go back. A soul in strange, terrible torment passed unseen and unseeing through the tiny hamlet of Easing and on and on up a steep hill and then down through a long valley of trees and a gloom of massively beautiful furze country. There was not a ripple of wind in the tense air, and in the early afternoon it grew very dark, with an occasional growl of thunder over the far hills. On the outskirts of Chettleford it began to rain in large slow drops; and as his sweating face perceived the soft, cool splash he half dared to take it as the explicit kindness of Heaven. Upon the wings of that thought came the automatic intrusion into his mind of the words:
Methought I saw my late espousèd saintBrought to me like Alcestis from the grave.
Methought I saw my late espousèd saintBrought to me like Alcestis from the grave.
Methought I saw my late espousèd saintBrought to me like Alcestis from the grave.
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.
And with them came the strange fancy that these tears out of Heaven were those of his wife and his boy.
A mile beyond Chettleford, at the dark edge of a wood, the sudden fear struck him that the soul of Thomas Perry-Hennington was about to enter unendingnight. A recollection dread and spectral, which might have been Dante or the far distant ages of the past, engulfed him swiftly and completely. It was impossible to turn back now or he would have done so.
The narrow road grew darker and darker as it wound under the heavy, rain-pattered canopy of the wood. Earth and sky were without form, and void. He lost touch with time and place; he began to lose touch with his own identity. He only knew that Thomas Perry-Hennington was his name and that his destination was Wellwood Asylum.
The rain grew heavier, but there was no comfort in it now. He was already far beyond any kind of physical aid. A grisly demon was in him, urging him onward to his doom. His soul’s reaction to it was beyond pity and terror. Quite suddenly, and long before he expected to see them, the heavy iron gates of the asylum were before him. At the sound of wheels an old man, very bent and grim, whom in the wet half-light he almost took for Charon, came slowly out of his lodge and fitted a key to the lock.