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_ In the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on Duck Bank there was a full and
influential congregation. For in those days influential people
were not merely content to live in the town where their fathers
had lived, without dreaming of country residences and smokeless
air--they were content also to believe what their fathers had
believed about the beginning and the end of all. There was no such
thing as the unknowable in those days. The eternal mysteries were
as simple as an addition sum; a child could tell you with absolute
certainty where you would be and what you would be doing a million
years hence, and exactly what God thought of you. Accordingly,
every one being of the same mind, every one met on certain
occasions in certain places in order to express the universal
mind. And in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, for example, instead
of a sparse handful of persons disturbingly conscious of being in
a minority, as now, a magnificent and proud majority had
collected, deeply aware of its rightness and its correctness.
And the minister, backed by minor ministers, knelt and covered his
face in the superb mahogany rostrum; and behind him, in what was
then still called the 'orchestra' (though no musical instruments
except the grand organ had sounded in it for decades), the choir
knelt and covered their faces; and all around in the richly
painted gallery and on the ground-floor, multitudinous rows of
people, in easy circumstances of body and soul, knelt in high pews
and covered their faces. And there floated before them, in the
intense and prolonged silence, the clear vision of Jehovah on a
throne, a God of sixty or so with a moustache and a beard, and a
non-committal expression which declined to say whether or not he
would require more bloodshed; and this God, destitute of pinions,
was surrounded by white-winged creatures that wafted themselves to
and fro while chanting; and afar off was an obscene monstrosity,
with cloven hoofs and a tail very dangerous and rude and
interfering, who could exist comfortably in the middle of a coal-
fire, and who took a malignant and exhaustless pleasure in coaxing
you by false pretences into the same fire; but of course you had
too much sense to swallow his wicked absurdities. Once a year, for
ten minutes by the clock, you knelt thus, in mass, and by
meditation convinced yourself that you had too much sense to
swallow his wicked absurdities. And the hour was very solemn, the
most solemn of all the hours.
Strange that immortal souls should be found with the temerity to
reflect upon mundane affairs in that hour! Yet there were
undoubtedly such in the congregation; there were perhaps many to
whom the vision, if clear, was spasmodic and fleeting. And among
them the inhabitants of the Baines family pew! Who would have
supposed that Mr. Povey, a recent convert from Primitive Methodism
in King Street to Wesleyan Methodism on Duck Bank, was dwelling
upon window-tickets and the injustice of women, instead of upon
his relations with Jehovah and the tailed one? Who would have
supposed that the gentle-eyed Constance, pattern of daughters, was
risking her eternal welfare by smiling at the tailed one, who,
concealing his tail, had assumed the image of Mr. Povey? Who would
have supposed that Mrs. Baines, instead of resolving that Jehovah
and not the tailed one should have ultimate rule over her, was
resolving that she and not Mr. Povey should have ultimate rule
over her house and shop? It was a pew-ful that belied its highly
satisfactory appearance. (And possibly there were other pew-fuls
equally deceptive.)
Sophia alone, in the corner next to the wall, with her beautiful
stern face pressed convulsively against her hands, was truly busy
with immortal things. Turbulent heart, the violence of her
spiritual life had made her older! Never was a passionate, proud
girl in a harder case than Sophia! In the splendour of her remorse
for a fatal forgetfulness, she had renounced that which she loved
and thrown herself into that which she loathed. It was her nature
so to do. She had done it haughtily, and not with kindness, but
she had done it with the whole force of her will. Constance had
been compelled to yield up to her the millinery department, for
Sophia's fingers had a gift of manipulating ribbons and feathers
that was beyond Constance. Sophia had accomplished miracles in the
millinery. Yes, and she would be utterly polite to customers; but
afterwards, when the customers were gone, let mothers, sisters,
and Mr. Poveys beware of her fiery darts!
But why, when nearly three months had elapsed after her father's
death, had she spent more and more time in the shop, secretly
aflame with expectancy? Why, when one day a strange traveller
entered the shop and announced himself the new representative of
Birkinshaws--why had her very soul died away within her and an
awful sickness seized her? She knew then that she had been her own
deceiver. She recognized and admitted, abasing herself lower than
the lowest, that her motive in leaving Miss Chetwynd's and joining
the shop had been, at the best, very mixed, very impure. Engaged
at Miss Chetwynd's, she might easily have never set eyes on Gerald
Scales again. Employed in the shop, she could not fail to meet
him. In this light was to be seen the true complexion of the
splendour of her remorse. A terrible thought for her! And she
could not dismiss it. It contaminated her existence, this thought!
And she could confide in no one. She was incapable of showing a
wound. Quarter had succeeded quarter, and Gerald Scales was no
more heard of. She had sacrificed her life for worse than nothing.
She had made her own tragedy. She had killed her father, cheated
and shamed herself with a remorse horribly spurious, exchanged
content for misery and pride for humiliation--and with it all,
Gerald Scales had vanished! She was ruined.
She took to religion, and her conscientious Christian virtues,
practised with stern inclemency, were the canker of the family.
Thus a year and a half had passed.
And then, on this last day of the year, the second year of her
shame and of her heart's widowhood, Mr. Scales had reappeared. She
had gone casually into the shop and found him talking to her
mother and Mr. Povey. He had come back to the provincial round and
to her. She shook his hand and fled, because she could not have
stayed. None had noticed her agitation, for she had held her body
as in a vice. She knew the reason neither of his absence nor of
his return. She knew nothing. And not a word had been said at
meals. And the day had gone and the night come; and now she was in
chapel, with Constance by her side and Gerald Scales in her soul!
Happy beyond previous conception of happiness! Wretched beyond an
unutterable woe! And none knew! What was she to pray for? To what
purpose and end ought she to steel herself? Ought she to hope, or
ought she to despair? "O God, help me!" she kept whispering to
Jehovah whenever the heavenly vision shone through the wrack of
her meditation. "O God, help me!" She had a conscience that, when
it was in the mood for severity, could be unspeakably cruel to
her.
And whenever she looked, with dry, hot eyes, through her gloved
fingers, she saw in front of her on the wall a marble tablet
inscribed in gilt letters, the cenotaph! She knew all the lines by
heart, in their spacious grandiloquence; lines such as:
EVER READY WITH HIS TONGUE HIS PEN AND HIS PURSE TO HELP THE
CHURCH OF HIS FATHERS IN HER HE LIVED AND IN HER HE DIED
CHERISHING A DEEP AND ARDENT AFFECTION FOR HIS BELOVED FAITH AND
CREED.
And again:
HIS SYMPATHIES EXTENDED BEYOND HIS OWN COMMUNITY HE WAS ALWAYS TO
THE FORE IN GOOD WORKS AND HE SERVED THE CIRCUIT THE TOWN AND THE
DISTRICT WITH GREAT ACCEPTANCE AND USEFULNESS.
Thus had Mr. Critchlow's vanity been duly appeased.
As the minutes sped in the breathing silence of the chapel the
emotional tension grew tighter; worshippers sighed heavily, or
called upon Jehovah for a sign, or merely coughed an invocation.
And then at last the clock in the middle of the balcony gave forth
the single stroke to which it was limited; the ministers rose, and
the congregation after them; and everybody smiled as though it was
the millennium, and not simply the new year, that had set in.
Then, faintly, through walls and shut windows, came the sound of
bells and of steam syrens and whistles. The superintendent
minister opened his hymn-book, and the hymn was sung which had
been sung in Wesleyan Chapels on New Year's morn since the era of
John Wesley himself. The organ finished with a clanguor of all its
pipes; the minister had a few last words with Jehovah, and nothing
was left to do except to persevere in well-doing. The people
leaned towards each other across the high backs of the pews.
"A happy New Year!"
"Eh, thank ye! The same to you!"
"Another Watch Night service over!"
"Eh. yes!" And a sigh.
Then the aisles were suddenly crowded, and there was a good-
humoured, optimistic pushing towards the door. In the Corinthian
porch occurred a great putting-on of cloaks, ulsters, goloshes,
and even pattens, and a great putting-up of umbrellas. And the
congregation went out into the whirling snow, dividing into
several black, silent-footed processions, down Trafalgar Road, up
towards the playground, along the market-place, and across Duck
Square in the direction of St. Luke's Square.
Mr. Povey was between Mrs. Baines and Constance.
"You must take my arm, my pet," said Mrs. Baines to Sophia.
Then Mr. Povey and Constance waded on in front through the drifts.
Sophia balanced that enormous swaying mass, her mother. Owing to
their hoops, she had much difficulty in keeping close to her. Mrs.
Baines laughed with the complacent ease of obesity, yet a fall
would have been almost irremediable for her; and so Sophia had to
laugh too. But, though she laughed, God had not helped her. She
did not know where she was going, nor what might happen to her
next.
"Why, bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Baines, as they turned the corner
into King Street. "There's some one sitting on our door-step!"
There was: a figure swathed in an ulster, a maud over the ulster,
and a high hat on the top of all. It could not have been there
very long, because it was only speckled with snow. Mr. Povey
plunged forward.
"It's Mr. Scales, of all people!" said Mr. Povey.
"Mr. Scales!" cried Mrs. Baines.
And, "Mr. Scales!" murmured Sophia, terribly afraid.
Perhaps she was afraid of miracles. Mr. Scales sitting on her
mother's doorstep in the middle of the snowy night had assuredly
the air of a miracle, of something dreamed in a dream, of
something pathetically and impossibly appropriate--'pat,' as they
say in the Five Towns. But he was a tangible fact there. And years
afterwards, in the light of further knowledge of Mr. Scales,
Sophia came to regard his being on the doorstep as the most
natural and characteristic thing in the world. Real miracles never
seem to be miracles, and that which at the first blush resembles
one usually proves to be an instance of the extremely prosaic. _
Read next: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER V - THE TRAVELLER: PART III
Read previous: BOOK I MRS. BAINES: CHAPTER V - THE TRAVELLER: PART I
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