Mr. Tasker's Gods (9 page)

T
HE next day being Sunday, Henry went down again to his friend’s. He found him lying just as he had left him the day before. This time he was talking to a young clergyman. This gentleman was the Rev. Edward Lester, the curate from the town. He was lent to Mr. Neville to entertain the people of the village in the church. The little hamlet by the river on this sort of occasion was quite forgotten.

The Rev. Edward Lester was a modern. He was a curate in a parish of the country town of Maidenbridge. He had given it out as his idea more than once that he believed in the people, and he also used to remark sometimes that he believed in himself. As Henry took the chair by the open window next to the bookcase, Neville had been speaking, and the young clergyman was replying.

‘Our religion is up to date,’ he said. ‘
Worship
, and playing the game, that’s what our Church teaches. It’s a splendid body, and we are all gentlemen. What we try to do is to make the rich give and the poor pray. Look here, Neville, our club boys like games better than they like girls!’

The curate made a queer noise, a sort of
clucking
in his throat.

Neville answered slowly, looking out of the window. His voice was tired, and he spoke in quite a new way for him.

‘The English Church is humanly organized,’ he said. ‘It has become a very successful
business
. It took a great work out of loving hands and built in the Master’s name a jam factory. They boil the stones of the fruit and call it “Christ’s Church.”—Without Jesus our Church is really splendid. I can easily conceive of a bishop suddenly waking up and crying out, “What fools we have been, all listening to a dark man, a fellow little better than a nigger, a fellow nearly as black as Dr. Johnson’s servant!”’

Mr. Lester rose from his chair, stretched, lit a cigarette, and said:

‘Jolly long grass you ’ve got, Neville, out under the trees.’

Henry Turnbull had been asked by his father to bring the curate home to supper, and he now intimated that it was time for them to be going. Once outside the priest’s broken gate, the curate, like a schoolboy, began to chatter.

‘A queer sort of old boy, Neville—not the right kind for our Church. Don’t tell anybody—but do you know what he did once? Ravished a girl in the street! He’s a regular Hun. I heard it from Canon Allfreem, his vicar. That’s what Neville’s come down here for. The people stoned him; you can always trust the people to do the right thing.—Do you know what I do, Turnbull? After our evensong I carry a flag. A good chap, A1, a sidesman, helps me to hold it. We go to the town green and sing a hymn,
and I preach a little sermon. We have quite a good time. The girls bring their young men to hear us, and one or two old topers from the pubs have been known to come. I do these services without the vicar. He didn’t like the idea at first—called it ranting—I brought him to it. He’s a good chap—keeps old port, you know—gives me a glass sometimes after a tiring celebration.’

He took Henry’s arm.

‘You should see our men’s club; we are all socialists there—real red ones. We must bring down the very rich, Turnbull, we must make them give. I told our mayor so, and Miss Rudge, at dinner. Our mayor’s a rare old sport. Can give away a thousand; he can write the largest cheque in the country, and not miss it. Look here, Turnbull, Kitty Rudge will have every penny when he dies—this is between ourselves—a jolly nice girl too!’

The Rev. Edward Lester sidled into the dining-room of the vicarage at Shelton, and his face beamed with smiles and his eyes glistened when he saw the family porter-jug.

‘We used to get good stout in Hall,’ he said, and put down his glass empty.

‘Edith, Mr. Lester will take another glass.’

‘Your pickles are home-made, I expect, Mrs. Turnbull? What lovely sweet-peas, quite heavenly! Miss Rudge, you know, takes all the prizes in our town. I believe she sometimes waters the plants herself, and I know for a fact
she chooses the seeds, though they keep gardeners. She kindly sends some flowers over to our men’s club sometimes. Good fellows, our men—rough and ready, you know. You would be surprised how they love flowers.’

Mr. Turnbull was eating. Henry and his mother listened quietly.

‘By the by, one of our men told me his father lived here. I think he said his father was your gardener. Such a serious young man. I have had him up to my rooms—he is rather too advanced, though—a red-hot socialist, but a dear good chap! He said it was awful the way young girls followed him about. I met him at the station this afternoon. He said he had been somewhere on business.’

Mr. Turnbull coughed. Mrs. Turnbull looked at a dead wasp in the jam, while Henry was left to explain that the curate’s friend, ‘the red-hot socialist,’ had seduced their simple
servant-maid
Alice.

‘And no doubt he must have deserted her, as you saw him to-day.’

Mr. Lester’s face, already flushed with talking and eating, now flushed with anger.

‘And I gave him three Turkish cigarettes, and a whisky and soda, in the station bar! What kind of a person was your servant?’ he asked Henry. At the same time his flush deepened.

‘Quite a pretty girl and little more than a child,’ said Henry. ‘We would like to know where she is now. Would you mind asking your friend?’

The story of Alice cast a gloom over Mr. Lester’s smile, but at the same time awakened within him certain thoughts. How could he overcome the virtue, already beginning to fade, of a young girl that
he
knew? As became a modern clergyman, he did not like to be
overreached
in any way by a red-hot socialist.

As he walked back to the town—his bicycle had unluckily been punctured that morning riding from his ‘diggings’ to church—he strode along through the dampness of the night and his thoughts wandered over one or two things that had happened to him not so very long before. He dwelt upon every detail in these little
experiences
even to the taking off of the stockings—he always insisted upon that.

The town was quiet, and he entered his rooms with a certain determination in his heart. He sat down for a moment and looked at his boots, then he took a drink and went to bed, having in his inner thoughts overcome the last feelings of modesty in a girl who could hardly write her own name. The happiness of a natural man is certainly a wonderful thing, and Mr. Lester was no stranger to it!

While this reverend gentleman who had taken the duty at South Egdon was returning to his lodgings, enjoying his own thoughts, the sick priest whose place he had taken at the altar was holding a conversation with a stranger, who had been admitted after protest from Mrs. Lefevre.
This stranger was the same repulsive drover whose dog had taken such a fancy to the leg of the bar table at Kingston. The drover was sitting in the chair that Mr. Lester had placed by the bed, upon his face was a strange look, a look that seemed to plead. He sat there and watched the priest. He held his heavy stick tight. He had come there to confess.

‘I beats ’er—I took ’er money—she starved. She ate naught. To-day they buried she over there,’ he nodded out of the window. ‘I beat she—poor maid—like thik.’ And the drover hit as though he were beating something on the ground. And then he went on to explain. ‘I watched through rails—they bury ’un up at Shelton—parson Turnbull, little black cap on ’es ’ead—they drop she in like thik,’ the drover dropped his stick. ‘I heared she go thud! into thik hole.—I beat thik dog—thik maid. Thik dog, ’e growl—she, whine, whine—and now to-day—thud!—Will she bide still? That’s what I wants to know—will she walk? I drives stock late—shall I meet she when I go by thik wold tree where a man were ’anged? Can you keep she down, parson, like she wented—thud. Let she bide still in ground!’

The drover had never uttered so long a speech in his life. After it was over he looked at the priest. Then he turned to stare again at
something
white that he saw between the trees.

Neville lay with his hand upon his forehead.

‘Have you any money?’ he asked.

The drover, with a slow downward motion of his hand, carefully laid his stick upon the floor and took off the coat, stained with cow-dung, that he wore. Very slowly he folded it and placed it gently upon his stick; after that, with much care, he unfastened his belt. There was attached to the belt a purse. The drover turned it out upon the bed, shaking out therefrom seventeen sovereigns and one shilling.

‘Take it—take it all—it belonged to she. I’m fear’d of she—take thik money and keep she in the ground—thud! like she wented. She saved thik money in service—I beat she—I took ’en and to-day she went, thud!’ And the drover brought his hat with a heavy motion to the floor.

Neville put the gold, pound by pound, into the purse, and gave the strap again to the drover.

‘Listen to what I say. Go on with your work and keep the money for a while. Remember it is still hers,—the woman that you beat. She wishes you to keep it till you meet a maid in trouble, unhappy like she was. And when you find a girl in trouble give her all of it, only keep the shilling; and when you go “thud,” let them put that shilling with you into the ground. The devil will not dare to face that shilling, and Christ will not forget it. Now go.’

The drover slowly picked up his coat, and, taking up his stick, went out to find the maid who should save his soul.

M
RS. FANCY folded up and put away the clothes from the lodgers’ bed. They had left her. But the girl lodger was still hanging about.

‘Funeral’s’ son had used the last few shillings of Miss Alice’s money to buy a ticket to
Maidenbridge
. It was there that Mr, Tasker sold his pigs, and there too the Rev. Edward Lester resided. Roude had managed to slip away from Alice in the town, and when she reached the station, the train, and her last shilling, and her lover were all departed. The girl wandered back to the street that had been her ‘home’ for a week.

Mrs. Fancy had not been at home when she knocked, but all the same she had seen Alice tearfully walking up the street, and then she watched her coming down the other side, and, by setting her head at the very corner of the window, saw Alice enter the small lodging-house near the lamp-post.

Mrs. Fancy was pleased. She rubbed her hands. She knew that house, and two gentlemen of the sea had followed the girl in.

Mrs. Fancy dusted her rooms and again set up in her window the notice directing visitors to her good lodgings. After that she looked once more out of the window. This time the figure of a big sailor swayed along taking up nearly the whole pavement. Mrs. Fancy prayed
that the sailor might enter the house by the
lamppost
. She wanted Alice brought down a little; that white dress was a bit too white in Mrs. Fancy’s eyes. The sailor was drunk. She watched him stoop a little as he entered the door.

Then Mrs. Fancy counted again the money that had been paid her for the week’s lodgings. She counted ten shillings and sixpence. The ten
shillings she wrapped in a small piece of paper, a piece of the
Dainty
Bits
that had been left by her late lodger. She laid the sixpence on the table, the ten shillings she put aside for her rent. Then she cut herself a thin slice of bread and margarine, and poured some hot water upon the lodgers’ tea-leaves that still lay at the bottom of the pot. She helped herself to a cup, and, after drinking, gazed at the tea-leaves that were settled at the bottom.

During her life Mrs. Fancy had amused herself more than once telling her fortune with
tea-leaves
. Now she thought she would find out by the same means what was going to happen to her late lodger. She knew pretty well what
would
happen to Alice, but she wanted a sign. She shook the cup and peered; then she laughed,—a mocking, aged, female laugh.

‘What funny people!’ she said aloud.

The leaves in the bottom of the cup had taken the form of two devils.

‘What funny people!’ remarked Mrs. Fancy, this time to herself. She picked up the sixpence,
and, putting on her bonnet, went out, after
carefully
locking her door. In one hand she carried a string bag and in the other her purse.

‘They will think,’ she said to herself, ‘that I am going to buy a tin of salmon for my supper.’

But the people of that street knew quite well what the woman of the chapel was going to buy.

As she passed the house by the lamp-post she heard sailors singing. Mrs. Fancy walked fast when she got away from her own street. She took the first turning to the right and then entered a little public-house, out of which she presently emerged without the sixpence.

Of course Mrs. Fancy had taken that walk before, but this time the outing gave her especial pleasure. She walked along the street slowly and piously, like a good English matron going to her home, and she lapped up, like a thirsty hyena, the noise that came from the lodging-house by the lamp-post.

About four hours after Mrs. Fancy’s return, the church clock that was nearest to this particular lamp-post struck two, and the door of the
lodging-house
at the corner noisily opened. A girl in a white soiled frock was thrust out in the street. She was thrust out by the big sailor who had passed Mrs. Fancy’s in the afternoon, and who now shouted:

‘Cut away, kid! Damnation, I’ve paid for your going.’

And so indeed he had, for he was covered with
blood, and with one eye black. As he let the girl out, three heads appeared at the upper window, and an empty rum bottle was hurled after the retreating figure of Alice. Luckily for her it burst upon the lamp-post, and she was followed only by a volley of obscene abuse.

The girl was dazed. She felt only like a sick creature, beaten and trampled upon. She hurried away from that street, the street of her week’s honeymoon. As she went along she heard the wailing of a new-born infant.

Alice waited. The babe wailed again.

‘A girl,’ she said aloud, and passed on
shivering
.

A sick feeling overcame her; there were pains in her body, and her feet had no feeling in them. She fell forward on the pavement. Then she crawled. Just beyond her she saw an open space with a seat under a tree. In the dim light it seemed a refuge. Inch by inch she made her way to the wet board. At last she reached it, and leaned against the rough bark of an old elm. She even pressed her lips against the tree.