The Devil's Garden Part 30

"I do think Mrs. Dale must have put it in the cupboard under the stairs to get it safe out of Billy's way."

And sure enough there the hat was. Both children pressed beside Norah to peep in with her when she opened the cupboard door. This hall cupboard was the most sacred and awe-inspiring receptacle in the whole house, because here were kept Dale's fireman's outfit always ready and handy to be s.n.a.t.c.hed out at a moment's notice. Rachel gazed delightedly at the blue coat hanging extended, with the webbed steel on the shoulder-straps, at the helmet above, the great boots beneath, and the shining ax that dangled near an empty sleeve; but the sight was almost too tremendous for Billy. His lively young imagination could too readily inflate this sh.e.l.l of apparel with ogreish flesh and bone waiting to pounce on small intruders, and he clung rather timorously to Norah's skirt.

"Daddy," said Rachel, "I wis' you'd wear your helmet to-day."

"Oh, no, la.s.sie, that wouldn't be seemly. This is more the thing for Sunday. Thank you, Norah." And having taken the silk hat, he laid his hand lightly on Norah's wavy black hair, and spoke to her very kindly.

"Nothing like thought, Norah. I believe you've got a good little thinking-box under all this pretty hair, and you can't use it too much, my dear--specially so long as you're thinking about others."

Norah, with her blue eyes fixed on the venerated master's face, seemed to tremble joyously under the caress and the compliment. She and the children came out into the front garden and stood at the gate to watch Dale march away down the white road. He looked grandly stiff, black and large, in his ceremonious costume--a daddy and a master to be proud of.

He went only half-way to Rodchurch, and then sitting on a gate opposite the Baptist chapel indulged himself with another pipe. He made his halt here because several times when he had gone farther he had found Mavis accompanied by old Rodchurch acquaintances who had volunteered to escort her for a portion of the homeward journey, and he felt no inclination for this sort of chance society.

Not a human being, not even the smallest sign of a man's habitation, was in sight; not a movement of bird or beast could be perceived in the stretching expanse of flat fields, across which huge cloud shadows pa.s.sed slowly; the broad white road on either hand seemed to lead from nowhere to nowhere, and Dale, meditatively puffing out his tobacco smoke and watching it rise and vanish, had that sense of deep and almost solemn restfulness which comes whenever we realize that for any reason we are cut off from the possibility of communication with our kind. For a few moments he felt as a man feels all alone at the summit of a mountain, in the depths of an untrodden forest, on the limitless surface of a calm ocean. Yet, as he knew, there were men quite near to him. Across the road, not fifty yards away, the brick walls of the Baptist Chapel were hiding many men and women. Perhaps it was the complete isolation of this ugly building, the house of prayer pushed away into the desert far from all houses of laughter and talk, that had induced the idea of isolation in himself.

If he listened, he could hear sounds made by men. Through the chapel windows there came a continuous murmur, like the buzzing of a monster bee under the dome of a gla.s.s hive--the voice of the pastor preaching his sermon. Then all at once came loud music, shuffling of seats, sc.r.a.ping of chairs; and a voluminous song poured out and upward in the silent air. Dale idly thought of this chorus as resembling the smoke from the pipe--something that went up a little way and faded long before it reached the sky.

The music ceased. The congregation were leaving the chapel. Dale got off the gate, put his pipe in his pocket, and watched the humble worshipers as they came toward him. He knew them nearly all, and gravely returned their grave salutations as they pa.s.sed by. They were maid-servants and men-servants from Rodchurch, old people and quite young people, a few laborers and cottage-women; and they all walked slowly, not at first talking to one another, but smiling with introspective vagueness. Dale observed their decent costume, their sober deportment, and leisurely gait, observed also a striking similarity in the expression of all the faces. They were like people who unwillingly awake and struggle to recall every detail of the dream they are being forced to relinquish. Observing them thus, one could not fail to understand that, at this moment at least, they all firmly believed that their just-finished song had been heard a very, very long way up.

The road was empty again when the pastor came out and locked the chapel door behind him. He spoke to Dale with a gentle cheerfulness.

"Good day, friend Dale."

Dale, not too well pleased with this easy and familiar mode of address, replied stiffly.

"I wish you good day, Mr. Osborn."

"Good day. G.o.d's day. That's what it meant in the beginning, Mr.

Dale."

And Dale, resuming his seat on the gate, watched Mr. Osborn go plodding away toward Vine-Pits and the Cross Roads. This pastor, who had succeeded old Melling a few years ago, was a short, bearded man of sixty, and he lived in lodgings on the outskirts of Rodchurch.

Evidently he was not going home to dinner. Perhaps he had some sick person to visit, and he might get a snack at the Barradine Arms or one of the cottages. It was said that his father had been a rich linen-draper in some North of England town; and that he himself would have inherited this flourishing business and its acc.u.mulated wealth, if he had not insisted on joining the ministry. But he threw up all to preach the Gospel. Dale thought of the nature of the faith that would make a man go and do a thing like that. It must be unquestioning, undoubting; a conviction that amounted to certainty.

He did not see Mavis approaching. She called to him from a distance, and he sprang off the gate and hurried to meet her. Instinctively, as he drew near, he looked into her face, searching for the expression that he had noticed just now in those other faces. It was not there.

She was hot and red after her walk; her eyes were full of life and gaiety; she seemed a fine, broad-blown, well-dressed dame who might have been returning from market instead of from church, and her first words spoke of practical affairs.

"Holly Lodge is let again, Will, and Mr. Allen says the new gentleman keeps horses--because he's having the stables painted. You ought to send a circular at once, and make a call without delay."

Dale took his pipe out of his pocket, and spoke in an absent tone.

"I've been thinking what a rum world it is, Mav."

"Yes, but a very nice world, Will;" and she slipped her arm in his, as they walked on together. "No, not another pipe. Don't take the edge off your appet.i.te with any more smoking. There's good roast beef and Yorkshire pudding waiting for you. That is, if Mary hasn't made a mess of everything."

XVIII

On the evening of the next Sunday Dale was quietly going out of the house when Mavis offered to accompany him.

"Off for a stroll, Will? If you can wait ten minutes, I'll come with you."

But he excused himself from waiting, and further confessed that he preferred to be alone. He said he was in a thoughtful rather than a talkative mood to-night.

"You understand, old girl?"

"Yes, dear, I understand. You want to put on your considering cap about something."

"That's just it, Mav. The considering cap. Ta-ta."

Outside in the roadway Mr. Creech, a farmer, hindered him for a few minutes. Between him and Mr. Creech there were certain business arrangements now under negotiation, and it was impossible to avoid speaking of them. Dale, however, cut their chat as short as possible, and directly he had shaken off Mr. Creech he walked away briskly toward Rodchurch.

He had intended to arrive at the Baptist Chapel before the evening service began, but now he was late. The congregation were all on their knees, and the pastor, standing in his desk or pulpit above a raised platform, had begun to pray aloud. Dale paused just inside the door, looking at his strange surroundings, and feeling the awkwardness of a person who enters a place that he has never seen before, and finds himself among a lot of people who have their own customs and usages, all of which are unknown to him. Then he noticed that a man was smiling at him and beckoning, and he bowed gravely and followed the hand. He was led up the little building to some empty chairs on a level with the platform, at right angles to the rows of benches, and close to a harmonium. Mr. Osborn, the pastor, had stopped praying, and he did not go on again until Dale was seated. No one else had looked up or seemed to be aware of the interruption caused by his entrance.

He a.s.sumed a duly reverent att.i.tude, not kneeling, but bending his body forward, and observed everything with great interest. There were many differences between the arrangements of this chapel and those of an ordinary church. The absence of an altar struck him as very remarkable. The large platform, with its bal.u.s.trade and central perch, seemed to be altar, pulpit, and lectern all rolled into one--and choir too, since it was occupied by several men and a dozen girls and young women, who were all now on their knees while Mr. Osborn, looking very odd in purely civilian clothes, prayed loudly over their heads.

He glanced at the high bare walls and narrow windows, and observed that, except for some stenciled texts, there was not the slightest attempt at decoration. Outside, the light was rapidly waning, and inside the building the general tone had a grayness and dimness that obliterated all the bright colors of the girls' dresses and hats. The circ.u.mstance that not a single face was visible produced a curious impression on one's mind. It made Dale feel for a moment as though he were improperly prying, behind people's backs, at matters that did not in the least concern him; and next moment he thought that all the gray stooping forms were exactly like those of ghosts. Then, in another moment, noticing with what rigid immobility they held themselves, he thought of them as being dead and waiting for some tremendous signal that should bring them to life again.

"Now," said Mr. Osborn, "let us praise G.o.d by singing the hundred and twenty-sixth hymn."

Then all the faces showed. It was like a flash of pallid light running to and fro along the benches as everybody changed the kneeling to the sitting posture; and Dale immediately felt that he had been placed in an uncomfortably conspicuous position. Far from being situated so that he could pry on the private affairs of others, he was where everybody could study him. He was alone, opposite to the entire crowd, instead of being comfortably absorbed in its ma.s.s.

"Oh, thank you. Much obliged."

Mr. Osborn, speaking from the pulpit, had said something to one of his young women, and she was leaning over the bal.u.s.trade, smilingly offering Dale an open hymn-book.

"I am afraid," she said, "that it's very small print; but I dare say you have good eyes."

She spoke in the most friendly natural manner, exactly as one speaks to a visitor when one is anxious to make him feel welcome and at home.

Dale, startled by this style of address in such a place, made a dignified bow.

"Give him this," said Mr. Osborn, handing a book out of the pulpit.

"It's a larger character--'long primer,' as I believe the printers call it. We'll have the lamps directly; but we are all of us rather partial to blind man's holiday--not to mention that oil is oil, and that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford to do that. But there it is--Take care of the pence."

To Dale's astonishment, he heard a distinct chuckle here and there among the congregation. Then the same young woman, having found the correct page, handed him the large-type book. Then the man at the harmonium struck up, and the whole congregation burst into song.

They sang with a fervent strength that he had never heard equaled. For a moment the powerful chorus seemed to shake the walls, to fill every cubic foot of air that the building contained, and then to go straight up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn would have left one no s.p.a.ce to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing solely at him, that they and their pastor had together planned to set him alone in this high place where he must bear the full brunt of the hymn while they all watched its effect upon him, and that the hymn itself had been specially and artfully chosen with a view to him and to n.o.body else.

"Hail, sov'reign love, that first began The scheme to rescue fallen man!

Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace, That gave my soul a hiding-place."

With his face turned as much as possible from the singers, he stood very stiff and erect, staring at the printed page. Loudly as they had sung the first verse they seemed to sing the second verse more loudly.

"Against the G.o.d that rules the sky, I fought with hand uplifted high; Despised His rich abounding grace, Too proud to seek a hiding-place."

Dale braced himself, squared his shoulders and stood more erect than ever as they struck into the third verse.