NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Read online

  ‘. . . Done for them? That’s what you’re trying to do—do for them! Kill joy and youth and laughter in them to implant your wizened mean little creed instead! Because of your own dour miserable narrowness, you’re trying to bully them into living life your way—you, with your bigotry and prudishness that sees sin and temptation in a flower in a hat, the gay colour of a pretty gown. . . .’

  ‘Black is the Lord’s colour,’ croaked the Reverend Thomas, though he was growing more and more dreadfully frightened, confused, puzzled . . . why, oh why, had nice quiet Mr Imray imported this crazy young man? His inquisitor’s laugh was contemptuous.

  ‘Are you sure you know Him? He never said anything like that to me! And as far as that goes, isn’t it in your dour creed that He created all things, so, what of the scarlet poppy-flower, the blue-and-purple of the hills yonder, the gold of Rosamond Perkins’s hair?’

  ‘I have never noticed the colour of Miss Perkins’s hair!’ said Mr Minchin stiffly—the laugh that answered him stung him like the flick of a whip.

  ‘Poor fool! You’ve kept your nose so long between the leaves of your dusty Book of Duty that you almost forget you are a man at all . . . almost, almost you have remade yourself into a hard religious machine grinding out texts and platitudes and conventions! And yet still because I love my people—and perhaps a little because under those black absurdities of yours I discern the germ of a real man still, one worth saving—’

  ‘A crazy revivalist . . . must be!’ muttered Mr Minchin to himself, catching at the explanatory straw. Above his shrinking head the voice went on, light, laughing, yet faintly menacing in its very laughter.

  ‘. . . Didn’t you stop little Molly Isitt from wearing a pink sash? Tell the Squire that to start a cinema in the village meant encouraging immorality—since it would be held in the dark? Get Miss Banks’s maid, Ellen, sacked because you caught her kissing a gypsy in the lane? Abolish the kindly old custom of giving bread to beggars each Friday because it encouraged pauperism? Abolish beer-drinking and the use of perfumes? Forbid dancing and singing, and refuse permission for the yearly pageant to be held in the Vicarage grounds? . . .’

  ‘All vanity—and turning their thoughts from the Lord,’ snuffled the Reverend Thomas feebly, for he was very frightened—above him the voice seemed to be shaping itself into a song of triumph and of scorn together, and he was shaking, cold, despite the glowing heat. . . .

  ‘From the Lord! Oh Allah! Oh Set and Horus and Osiris! Oh Kali, Shiva, and all forgotten gods!’ Oh, the ringing scorn of that laughter—shrivelled tiny the wretched listener felt as the voice boomed on. ‘Oh Zeus, Apollo and goat-footed Pan! In the great world is there not room—is there not room for more than one God?’

  It was evening when Mr Minchin awoke, and the slanting rays of the sun were touching his bare head over the bank. Staggering to his feet, stiffly enough, for it seemed he had slept a long time, he dusted and shook himself and turned to the copse behind him. The path opened out into the end of ‘Pan’s Lane’ up which he had trudged so wearily in the afternoon, and as the clang of the bell for Evensong rang out he hastened his steps. He had slept too long indeed—it was still a little way to the church, and he always liked to be there a good while before the service, fussing about the choirboys, heckling the patient little humpbacked organist, arranging and rearranging his books and papers. As he came down the darkening graveyard he could see the people already filing into evening service, the single bell swinging in the square tower, and he frowned.

  He would have to hurry to get into his surplice and head the procession—he almost ran down the incline to the crooked little vestry-door that hid slyly behind a buttress, and rushing to the cupboard, reached for his surplice . . . and gasped! It was no longer there! Neither his own, nor the clean white surplices of the choirboys, ironed and carefully hung up every Sunday by Mrs Kitson . . . as he stared, unable to believe his eyes, the organ burst forth into full volume and he realised the dreadful truth. The service had begun without him!

  Staring vaguely round the vestry, Mr Minchin pinched himself, at first doubtfully, then viciously—the shock of the pain made him realise quite definitely that he was not dreaming, and a wave of anger took possession of him. How dare they—meek little Mr Lycett, his curate, Kitson the verger, Clubb the organist, all the rest? How dared they venture to open the service without him? Was it possible that he had invited a brother priest to conduct Evensong for him, and forgotten? No—it was impossible. Frazer of King’s Panton was not free, and he knew no other. . . . The organ boomed and surged around him, the choirboys sang lustily and the crowding people sang too. . . . Though the church was full, it seemed that a long line of dark figures, black silhouettes against the violet evening sky, still streamed towards the door, and as they came, they sang. . . .

  Staggering to the little window, Mr Minchin watched them come—never in all his life, certainly never since his ministry in Little Ingleton, had so great and eager a congregation besieged his church, and beneath all his bewildered anger he felt a sharp pang of compunction, of shame. Surely, surely, had he known his work as he should have known it, this throng should have trooped before to listen to his teaching? . . . Suddenly his anger left him—gave place to bewilderment and a nameless deep-seated fear—and slipping noiselessly into the dimlit church, he crouched down in a distant pew, his heart for the first time in his narrow life humbled, abashed before a thing he could not understand.

  The tall windows were slips of gleaming purple where the night sky showed through, and the one rose window in the nave, of gorgeous old painted glass, shone like a glorious jewelled buckler—the high-hung gas-lamps down the centre aisle shone out, round globes of yellow, like pale marsh-flares in the velvet gloom, but it seemed either a few of these had failed or else this summer dusk was heavier than usual, for the church was dimly lit on the whole.

  From his far corner Mr Minchin could see the old pulpit with its supporting stone angels shrouded in their drooping wings; a corner of the lighted choirstalls, the carved oak lectern that bore the great leather-bound Bible with its gold-tasselled marker. As he looked at this his eyes bulged and he drew an astonished breath . . . it passed in a flash, but for a moment Mr Minchin had imagined he saw an audacious red squirrel, own twin to the furry creature that had eaten crumbs so tamely from the brown hand of the strange young man, dash down the stem of the lectern and vanish beside the pulpit! It was a mere impression, of course—must be—but Mr Minchin was not quite so sure of himself as he had been a few hours ago, and the supreme assurance with which he would have said ‘Imagination!’ had its tail between its legs and was already sneaking ignominiously away. . . . A little way beyond him stood a slim girlish figure, a child clinging to either hand: Rosamond Perkins, adorable in her pink-flowered gown, crowned with the rose-wreathed hat, her pretty mouth open as she sang, heartily, happily, her eyes fixed on the stall where sat the strange priest, grave and sedate, in the place usually sacred to the Vicar of Little Ingleton. From his position Mr Minchin could not see anything but a white-sleeve laid along the carved chair-arm, the back of a head . . . yet he had the impression that the head was young, and suddenly, completely, a miserable jealousy seized him, and he knew that he would have given anything in his lonely world to have had Rosamond Perkins look up at him like that. . . . Fool that he had been—oh, fool and blind! The choir sang on; the people sang, and strange voices from every side took up the chant; voices strange and, to Mr Minchin’s dazed ears, barely human at times . . . gruff and squeaky, shrill, batlike, or deep and ringing, as one, in an insane dream, might think a goat’s or a ram’s might be. . . . Old Miss Banks stood hand in hand with pretty Ellen, her dismissed maidservant, dressed gaily as for a wedding in white muslin and ribbons, and beside Ellen stood her gypsy swain: and grim old Miss Banks’s face was gay with smiles, and she wore a flower-spray pinned to her cloak! Molly Isitt’s pink sash gleamed beside a pillar, and a pink frilly hat accompanied it—all the village was there, and b
ehind them and beside them in the shadows there seemed a thousand creatures more, strange and elusive, indistinct to see, yet present, a great concourse of tossing heads and rustling hairy bodies bringing with them the scent of leaves and trampled grasses and flowers! ... And behind these, more elusive still, others that Mr Minchin did not dare to look at; slim, elflike shadows, bright-eyed and wild, yet singing shrilly, lustily with all their hearts.

  The singing stopped, and shivering, not daring to glance up, Mr Minchin knew that the Strange Preacher was in the pulpit—yet without glancing up he knew who stood there well enough—for it was the Young Man of the road, the mad student! In the lightning brilliance of those hawk’s eyes that played upon him now, Mr Minchin knew the truth, and shivering, cowered in sheer terror in his shadowy corner—above him, his twin peaks of bleached shining hair like two flames under the flaring gaslight, the Preacher gave out his text. . . . ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills!’

  With all his theology-trained heart the Reverend Thomas longed to shriek ‘blasphemy, blasphemy’, for was it not blasphemy to have to listen, in God’s Own House, to This that preached . . . why did not the outraged heavens open, the earth split and swallow up church and congregation, the very stones, consecrated by austere bishop and celibate priest, crumble upon them for this impiety? But in the hush that settled over the dusk-veiled church there seemed no note but attention, no hint of action from an outraged God. . . . At last, raising his head from his hands where he had thrust his fingers into his ears, fascinated, Mr Minchin listened too, as the Preacher spoke on.

  He spoke of the grave eternal hills and of their story. Of the hills in whose cradling generous arms nestle grim Druid Grove and pagan altar—fairy ring and Christian church alike. Of the rains and dews that settle in their folds and run together into streams and pools, deep lakes and mighty rivers; of the little bright unconsidered flowers that grow on the hills, and the myriad unknown creatures that live out their coloured lives of but a day, the gossamer moths and lazy painted butterflies, the grey-velvet ground spider and his black neighbour the busy ant. . . . Of the forgotten forts that, built by a long-dead people, still face the sea, the green turf weaving a winding sheet over the sturdy bones of the old builders; of the cromlechs and dolmens—the strange stone rings, so old that even their purpose is forgotten now—of the battered altars to ancient creeds, so old that their very names are dead; the green groves in hidden woodland places, groves planted in honour of goddesses that rule no longer. . . .

  He told of trees; of the bent and crooked pine trees that face the sea-gales, the sturdy sentinels that stand guard over England and her shores; of the green willow that trails her long hair in the brooks, the sad yew with its clustering red berries; the brittle lanky elm and its twin sister the larch, slim and elegant in delicate fluttering green, like a Watteau lady, all powdered and panniered, ever whispering to her other still lovelier sister, the silver birch, superior as any Bond Street miss, and twice as fair. Of the grave oak, whose roots are planted in a Britain older even than we dream—of secret ash, and subtle thorn, that Trinity of pagan magic . . . of the little furry creatures that scamper and fight and hide beneath the great tree-boles, the quiet-eyed deer peering wary from the thickets, all the thousand-and-one shy people of the woods that live and love, happy in their untaught way. . . . And then he spoke of Man and his wonder and his strength, and Woman, in her beauty—and of how Man and Woman were made for love and joy, and for the dear companioning of each other through laughing youth to hale old age. He spoke of the loveliness of love, of frank kisses betwixt honest man and maid, of the close pressure of hand in hand and heart to heart; the murmured holiness of loving speech, of marriage, and mating, and the proud bearing of sturdy children . . . and as he listened the Reverend Thomas thought of the red lips and uplifted eyes of Rosamond Perkins, and smiled and trembled, and did not turn away. . . .

  And above him, under the flaring gaslight, his twisting spirals of hair like pale horns, his yellow hawk’s eyes roving the crowded audience, the Preacher preached on . . . and now he spoke of Others—of careless and happy things that roam the green woods in vivid lovely life, if not life as mere humans know it . . . of Those that knew and loved their Mother Earth ere ever Man had set foot upon it! Those Older Things that, retreating before Man and his noisy dusty cities, yet laugh and, shaking their wind-blown hair, withdraw deeper and deeper yet to their old fastnesses in mountain and cave and forest. . . . Unbaptised, perchance—knowing no creed nor caste—merry pagan Things that own no church, yet should there not be room for all beneath the mantle of Him whose name is Love? . . . Room for even these, for elf and satyr and white-browed nymph, merry brown gnome and wandering fairy, fauns with their goat-feet, and green-eyed nixy with her dripping hair? All—the Old Ancient Things that Man denies, since dust of cities blinds his once-keen sight. . . . Yet strangely, amazingly, the listener understood, and nodded happily, though his face was wet with tears, as the great Voice boomed on, that Voice that held in it the pattering of rain on summer leaves, the sweep and majesty of thunder on the cowering hills, the shrilling clearness of the stars that sing eternally in the Outer Spaces! . . . And as he listened, it seemed to the Reverend Mr Minchin that his soul shrank within him in shame at his past littleness; shrank to the smallness of a shrivelled pea, and yet swelled to a greatness and happiness utterly beyond his knowledge, a happiness too immense to even grasp as yet. Yet remembering his past harshness, his bigotry, the narrow foolish laws with which he had sought to bind and straiten the great and laughing World—his mean, harsh judgment, and lack of charity—in the shelter of the kindly pew he wept and trembled, afraid, as the Voice boomed and shouted above him, and he knew Who, for the saving of his little soul, had supplanted him to teach the people truth!

  ‘. . . Lift up your eyes to the hills, whence cometh your help indeed! The hills whence came your fathers; The woods, the seas wherein dwell strange and lovely things undreamt of in your little lives—the aged, the eternal Mother Earth! Mother Earth from whose heart we are come, and to whose arms we return at the last. Man and Beast and stranger Folk alike! Sing praises, my people—to the dear and goodly Earth and All Those that dwell therein, each in their kind and every kind, and to all gods old and new that love the world . . . for beneath the mantle of the Great God, is there not room to shelter smaller gods? . . .’

  Abruptly the wonderful voice ceased—confusedly, dazed by the tumult of emotions that possessed him, yet dimly afterwards the Reverend Thomas seemed to remember a great and wonderful acclamation in which he joined, calling feebly, his face wet with joyful tears . . . the singing of a great Magnificat in which he vaguely remembered such happy lines as he had never dreamt the dourly thunderous Psalms possessed. . . .

  ‘God is gone up with a merry sound . . . with the sound of the trumpet! . . .’

  He remembered stumbling out into the churchyard, ghostly, beautiful with its black tall cypresses in the moonlight, its crowded gravestones leaning against each other in the shadows as if to listen to the happy chanting, the chorus of praise that followed him out into the open.

  As if in a dream from his place on the sloping bank above the path he watched the congregation file out, two and two, like the figures in a Noah’s Ark, a strung-out line of black shadows against the gorgeous sunset, rose, green and gold, singing jubilantly as they went—and smiled, without surprise, but with happy knowledge, as he saw, mingling with the village folk, Those of a different world, beast and satyr and elvish unnamed creature, all come to shout their gladness in one great festival of praise! He saw old Kitson, arm-in-arm with his wife . . . and a faun, goat-footed, leaf-crowned, pranced beside them and tweaked old Kitson’s hair . . . and the old man laughed and hugged his old wife the closer! He saw sour Gertrude Pring, who ran the post-office, companioned by two merry small Things, brown-eyed and saucy, and Miss Banks, unscandalised, walk beside a sly-eyed young Bacchante, whose white breasts gleamed shamelessly beautiful in the dusk. . . .
r />   Wee Molly Isitt held a fawn in leash, that trotted sedately at her side, and two slim green nixies bestrode Dame Calder’s pig—sweet-breathing cows came by beside the tossing antlered deer, the snarling village dogs, now harmless and friendly, playing between their pacing feet. Singing and waving branches of trees and garlands in the air, they wound away over the ridge that hid the village from the little church, and the sound of their singing was an echo in the listening air . . . yet Mr Minchin waited, afraid, for the Preacher had not yet come forth.

  The last chanting figure vanished, silhouetted against the blazing golden sky, and from the dark church door two figures came, shadowy among the shadows of the darkened churchyard, moving each by each—and as they went they gazed into each other’s faces, rapt, enthralled—and suddenly, horribly, a pang of dread caught at the Reverend Thomas’s once cold heart! For it was the Preacher—the Strange Young Man, his gay hawk-eyes bent upon his companion, his arm about her waist . . . and that companion, slim and young in pink flowered gingham, swinging her rose-crowned hat by its dangling ribbons, Rosamond Perkins!

  Held by a spell he could not break, the wretched listener watched them approach, whispering, murmuring to each other, with little tender foolish sounds and laughter and beneath him on the path, pause and turn, rapt in each other’s eyes. He saw, sharp in the moonlight that now strove valiantly against the fading gold, the face, upraised, ecstatic, of Rosamond Perkins, her red lips pouted, her blue eyes starry with love! He saw, bending to that kiss, the profile of the Stranger, hooked nose meeting lean chin, those dancing light eyes triumphant beneath those hornlike tufts of curling hair, his arms, now no longer surpliced, lean and muscular in the tattered shirt of the afternoon, clasped about the slender body of the girl that the miserable Thomas Minchin now realised he loved with all the yearning passion of a man at last awake to love!