XXI
Pressedfor time, Dr. Parker fled. But he took the letter with him in order that he might post it in Brombridge, and so insure its earlier delivery in London. As soon as Dr. Parker had gone the vicar made a survey of the elements, and then set off at his best pace on a ten-minute walk to his house.
In doing this he knew that he ran the risk of a soaking. Storm clouds which had hovered all the afternoon were now massed overhead. Hardly had he entered the village street, when he perceived large drops of rain. But in his present frame of mind he did not feel like staying a moment longer under Joliffe’s roof than he could help. He was still seething within. He was still marveling at the crassness of certain of his fellow creatures. The open defection of one whom he had counted a sure ally was very hard to forgive.
However, by the time he had reached the edge of the common he realized that he was in a fair way of being drenched to the skin; moreover the rainstormsof the district, though often of great severity, did not last long as a rule.
Near by was a thicket of well-grown trees, which at once lured the vicar to accept their protection. As he crept under the branches there came a play of lightning, followed by thunder in a series of deafening crashes. Devoutly thankful that he had had the wit to gain shelter he crouched low, turned up his coat collar and looked out at the rain descending in a sheet. A hundred yards or so away, an old, white-aproned village woman, very thinly clad, was struggling toward her cottage. As she came near the priest’s stone in the middle of the village green, a man without a hat, and no better protected from the storm than herself, suddenly sprang up before her. In an instant he had taken off his coat and placed it round her shoulders.
The old woman went slowly on toward her cottage, while the man stood coatless in the rain. It did not seem to cause him any concern, he seemed, in fact, almost to welcome the storm, as he stood erect in its midst, the elements beating upon him, the thunder rolling over his head. And the vicar, peering from his shelter, thought that once or twice his right hand was raised as if he were in the act of speaking to heaven.
The man was John Smith. The vicar was amazed; such sheer insensibility to what was going on around was uncanny. Bareheaded, coatless, drenched to the skin, the man scorned the shelter so close at hand. The first thought that passed through the vicar’s mind was one of pity for the man’s physical and mental state. But hard upon that emotion came regret that the stubborn Joliffe was not also a spectator of the scene. Any doubts he still held as to the man’s sanity must surely have been dispelled.
A great wind began to roam the upper air. The lightning grew more vivid, the thunder louder, the weight of rain still heavier. The vicar crouched against the bole of the best tree. And as he did so, his thoughts somehow passed from the poor, demented figure of fantasy still before his eyes, to those overwhelming forces of nature in which they were both at that minute engulfed.
Intellectually the vicar was a very modest man. Sometimes, it is true, he had been tempted to ask himself poignant questions. But he had never presumed to give an independent answer of his own. For him the solution of the central mystery of man’s relation to the forces around him was comprised in the word “Faith.”
But now that he was the witness of poor JohnSmith’s dementia, the sense of human futility recurred to him. It needed a power of Faith to relate that drenched scarecrow, a mere insect upon whom Nature was wreaking a boundless will, to the cosmic march and profluence. For a moment the vicar was almost tempted to deny the still, small voice within and submit entirely to the judgment of the senses. His eyes, his ears, his sense of touch assured him that the poor madman out in the rain was lost in the sum of things. What relation could he have to those majestic powers by whom he was buffeted? Surely that lone, hapless figure was the symbol of Man himself.
And yet the act of devotion the man had just performed must have a meaning. It was a mystery within a mystery. Of whom had this poor blasphemer learned that trick; by what divine license did he practice it? For nearly half an hour it continued to rain pitilessly, and during that time the vicar searched and questioned his heart in regard to the man before him. At last the storm subsided; he came out of his shelter and went thoughtfully home. But in bed that night, when he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, he found the image of John Smith printed inside his eyelids.