Mr. Tasker's Gods (3 page)

Henry grew a beard and read curious,
old-fashioned
little brown books, books written by old forgotten Church Fathers who thought like angels. Henry was surprised to find that these old thinkers were very much like himself. He quite understood their reasons for loving and believing, and he quite understood their deep melancholy that was by no means like the boredom that is sad only because it wants something to play with. He liked the way that these good men spoke of religion—a way individual and restraining, a way beautiful and mysterious, that was more afraid of its own virtue than of the vice of a brother. He delighted in their manner.
They spoke of religion rather as an aged
housekeeper
would have spoken, with great dignity and quiet and peace. Although they often lived in wild times, they seemed to be moving in old palace gardens amongst tall white lilies far from the world and ever contemplating the works of that divine Saviour artist, Jesus Christ.

There were two events, one human and one vegetable, that Henry always remembered of his travels. One was the kiss and the other was the hacked fir tree. Often at night he dreamt of both, of the tree cut through at last and falling upon him, and of the kiss whose influence over his life was not yet gone. There was not much chance of another kiss. The girls of the vicarage—the servants were the only girls there—did not like Master Henry. Alice did not like his beard, nor his quiet manner, and Edith supposed him to be secretly sold to the devil because he spoke in the same gentle manner to every one.

Alice understood quite well what she was meant to do in the world; she felt herself quite plainly budding into a woman, and was well content. This young person possessed a round merry face; bright eyes, rather too green perhaps; brown, rather dark brown, hair; and a dainty, though by no means thin, girl’s body. For a servant she was good enough, for herself she was quite the nicest thing she had known. Alice was conventional, even more so than the vicar himself. She liked a man in his Sunday
clothes, and to her mind a coming together must begin in the right way; it did not matter so much how it ended, it must begin with a Sunday walk up the hill, a proper sign to the villagers to watch events.

Alice delighted in Mr. Turnbull’s elder son John, who was a curate, and who came to see them sometimes, dressed in wonderful clothes and mounted upon a snorting motor bicycle. The Rev. John had looked at her once or twice, or perhaps oftener, in the right way, his eyes roving over her frock and stopping for a moment about her mouth and then slowly returning to her feet. The vicarage daily bread had given Alice her rounded form and one or two romantic ideas about John; it had given her the desire for more. She wanted very much to be a lady, and to bully—Mrs. Turnbull never did bully—a servant like herself.

The older girl, Edith, was nearly worked out, she had been at it so long. The vicarage
house-cleanings
and everlasting plate-wiping had washed all her youth away. She went to the village chapel whenever she could, and there she sang of her last hope—‘salvation.’

O
NE afternoon the vicarage was sleeping peacefully, all the leads of its roof basking in the sunshine. It was quite pleasant to witness the content of this English homestead. The different creepers that climbed about it gave the house the appearance of a friendly arbour, and if a young maiden wearing a white frock and a hat with red poppies had danced down the steps the scene would have been wholly delightful. The stone steps were warm, and the front door was open, and inside was a cool dimness. The vicarage looked at peace with the whole world, and
appeared
to be under the wing of a very drowsy and sun-loving Godhead.

Alas! the most sleepy content has at times a bad dream, and terrifies the dreamer by showing him an ugly thing.

The Rev. Hector Turnbull stood outside his own door; he was wearing an old straw hat, and held in his hand a note. He looked around him. He was looking for something, he was looking for his son.

And then he called, ‘Henry!’ The tone of his voice was sleek and moist, disclosing the fact, unknown to the doctors, that every man has poison glands under his tongue, and when he speaks most gently he is really making up his mind to use them.

‘Yes, father, here I am,’ came the answer from the garden.

The contrast between the voice of the son and the voice of the father was very striking. The voice of the son expressed a natural
melancholy
and a candour quite his own, as well as an utter obedience to the will of others.

In a very little while Henry’s somewhat stooping form came up the path from the kitchen garden.

‘I am sorry to trouble you, but please come to me—here. I wish you to take this note—at once—to Mr. Tasker.’ And the father looked at his son with that interesting paternal hatred that the human family so well know, the polite hatred that half closes its eyes over its victim, knowing that the victim is completely in its power.

The reason for these two appearances whose voices met in a garden was that Mr. Turnbull, after his afternoon sleep of an hour, had written a letter to Mr. Tasker about the new church lamp, and when the letter was written, appeared outside the door and uttered the command, and the voice in the kitchen garden replied.

Henry walked away with the note. There was no need for him to hurry. Outside the gate, he noticed a little garden of stones and flowers that two children were building. He watched them for a moment and then passed by and saw something else. At first he did not know what this something else was. ‘What it was’ was being dragged across the meadow towards the dairy.

Henry was quick to notice and ready to love almost everything that he saw. He could note without any disgust a rubbish heap with old tins and broken bottles; he could look with affection at pieces of bones that were always to be found in a corner of the churchyard. The simple and childish manners of men always pleased him, he never drove his eyes away from common sights. He allowed his mind to make the best it could of everything it saw, and so far he had seen nothing very disgusting.

He was now watching a new phenomenon. The thing in question was harnessed to a horse, and it flashed and sparkled in the sun like a splendid jewel. The noise it made was not as pleasing as its colour. There was a sort of slush and gurgle as it moved along at the heels of the horse, sounds that suggested to the mind the breaking out of foul drains.

Henry noted the colour and the noise, and then the appearance coming nearer, showed itself to be the skinned body of a horse.

As he watched the thing, Henry felt as though he held the skinned leg of the horse and was being dragged along too. Anyhow, it went his way, and he followed the track of the carcass towards the dairy-house. Sundry splashes of blood and torn pieces of flesh marked the route. At the yard gate the procession stopped and Henry waited. He wished to know what happened to dead skinned horses that were
dragged across fields; he had a sort of foolish idea that they ought to be buried. Anyhow, he had to take his note to the dairy.

There was something wanting in the field as he went through. At first he could not think what he missed, and then he remembered Mr. Tasker’s gods. There was not one of them to be seen. However, a grunting and squealing from the yard showed that they were alive. All at once Mr. Tasker’s long form uprose by the gate, chastising his gods with one hand while he opened the gate with the other. And then the strange thing happened. The carcass of the skinned horse was dragged into the yard and the gods were at it.

Henry Turnbull wished to see what men do and what pigs eat. He walked up to the gate and delivered his note, and watched the feast with the other men.

The pigs, there were over a hundred of them, were at it. They covered the carcass and tore away and devoured pieces of flesh; they covered each other with blood, and fought like human creatures. The stench of the medley rose up in clouds, and was received as incense into the nostrils of Mr. Tasker. At last the horrible and disgusting feast ended, and the pigs were let out, all bloody, into the meadow, and a few forkfuls of rotting dung were thrown upon the bones of the horse.

Henry was beginning to learn a little about
the human beings in whose world he dwelt. He had had hints before. But now there was no getting away from what he had witnessed. There had been no actual cruelty in the scene, but he knew quite well where the horror lay. It lay in the fact that the evil spirits of the men, Mr. Tasker’s in particular, had entered into the pigs and had torn and devoured the dead horse, and then again entered, all bloody and reeking, into the men.

It seemed to Henry that he needed a little change after the sight that he had just witnessed, and so he wandered off down the valley through the meads that led to the nearest village, that was only a mile from their own. He thought a cigarette with his friend, who was the priest there, would be the best way to end that afternoon.

This clergyman was not a popular man. He had the distinction of being disliked by the people; he was also avoided by Mr. Turnbull and his other well-to-do neighbours, and was treated with extreme rudeness by the farmers. He lived in a house sombre and silent as the grave. He possessed a housekeeper who did two things: she drank brandy and she told every one about the wickedness of her master.

There were great elm trees round the house, so that in summer only a little corner of the roof could be seen. The place was always in the shade and was always cold. It was one of those
old church houses through which doubts and strange torments have crept and have stung men for generations, and where nameless fevers lie in wait for the little children. The place was built with the idea of driving men to despair or to God. Inside the house you felt the whole weight cover you. Outside, the trees, overfed with damp leaf-mould, chilled to the bone. A list of the vicars and their years of office, that was hung in a corner of the church, showed how quickly the evil influence of the house had dealt with them. In the time, or about the time of the Black Death, five different priests had been there in the space of one year, and since then there had been many changes; hardly any
incumbent
had stayed longer than five years. It was a house intended for a saint or for a devil. Young Henry often went there, though his father very much disapproved of his going, but he went all the same, and Mr. Turnbull never missed him at tea.

The fields were delightful and cool as Henry loitered along them. Summer, full of her divinity, lay stretched before him. No heart could move without beating fast; the life of the sun was lord and king. The sounds that Henry heard were full of summer. The July heat was in a dog’s bark. The colours of the clouds were July colours and the stream trembled over little stones, gaily singing a summer song. A
kingfisher
darted down from under the bridge, and
Henry could hardly believe he had seen it, because it looked so lovely.

Henry’s mind had regained its balance, and he could now drink of the cup that the summer held out to him. He breathed the sweet air and saw that the sun painted the upper part of every green leaf with shining silver. The July dust lay thick like a carpet along the road to the vicarage.

Henry pushed by the heavy gate. It could only open enough to let him pass: the lower hinge was off and the gate was heavy to move like a great log. The postman, who knew how to go about, had made a private gap through the hedge. In the way up to the house there was silence: the tall trees kept out all the wind, and the grass path appeared scarcely trodden.

A grassy way to an English home is a sign of decay and want. In the middle-class drives, clergymen’s or doctors’, a very long time is spent by the gardener every summer in digging out with a knife the seedling grasses that grow between the gravel, and farmers’ daughters are seen, in their shorter drives, performing the same office, kneeling on a mat, not praying to God but grubbing for the wicked trespassers that bring calamity to the household.

Henry’s feelings were not of the ordinary kind; once inside the gate he only felt the very rare human delight of being welcomed, welcomed, do what he might. He knew that if he were to
die there of the plague, the hands of his friend would carry him into the house and lay him upon his own bed. He could not possibly have come at an unwelcome hour; no other guest could be there who would prevent the master receiving him with pleasure; there was no business so pressing as his business, that of friendship.

Henry walked up to the house. There was one low window wide open, a window that opened out into and touched the long grass. Henry went up the slightly trodden path
towards
this window. Mr. Neville, the vicar, was within, reading; his head was bent a little over his book. Had an artist seen him, an artist like William Blake, he would have thought at once of that romantic prophet, Amos the herdsman. The face was more strong than clever; it had indeed none of those hard, ugly lines, those examination lines, that mark the educated of the world. His beard and hair were grey, and his heart, could it have been seen, was greyer still; and no wonder, for he had found out what human unkindness was.

He had, unluckily for himself, broken down the illusions that the healing habit of custom wraps around men, and especially around the clergy. To tear off this vesture, to arrive at nakedness, was to open, perhaps, a way for heavenly voices, but certainly a way for the little taunts and gibes of the world, the flesh and the devil.

In casting off the garments of the world, this priest had not, like his comrades of the cloth, provided himself with a well-fitting black coat made in Oxford. On the other hand, it was easy for him to stay in the Church. He had no desire to make a show of himself or to set himself up in any kind of opposition to his religion, he was too good a catholic to allow any personal trend to undermine the larger movement. He held himself very tenderly and at the same time very closely to the altar, not from any sense of human duty, but because he knew the want of a divine Master.

Henry Neville, for they were two Henrys, these friends, shut the book he was reading and jumped up hastily. A pile of books and papers beside his chair was overturned; he put out his hand to prevent them, and then, seeing that they fell safely, allowed them to lie on the floor, while he, stepping through the window, went out to meet his visitor. They both returned to the study and sat down in cane chairs before the window.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Lefevre, a stout
creature
, old and unpleasantly human, knocked at the door, and without waiting for an answer, came in and produced a soiled table-cloth, and retired again for cups and plates, leaving the door wide open.