The Feast Read online

  But at funerals he could always think about death, which dignifies life and abolishes triviality. While here no suitable topic occurred to him. His reflections during the hymn had been too detached, too flippant. He wanted to feel, if he could. He stared at the top of the pew in front of him and tried to clear his mind of the petty traffic which daily swarmed through it, as a street might be cleared for a procession. No procession arrived.

  I must think about people I love, he decided, and then could not think of any. The children … He glanced at the little creatures on either side of him. Caroline had her head buried in her arms. Luke was following the Service in his Prayer Book. Michael was twisting a button off his jacket. Hebe knelt erect, staring avidly at Father Bott. They meant very little to him. They were Eirene’s affair. Only one of them was his, and she was the lease attractive. For five years, during the war, they had been in America. And even at home he seldom saw them. Were they all right? Were they happy? Were they growing up as they ought?

  These uneasy speculations were not quite suitable. He must postpone them to a less sacred moment. He would do better to think of his own childhood, of people whom he had loved and who were gone now, of remembered places and happy moments. He looked across the years and sought a way back.

  Evangeline’s sick feelings were beginning to subside. Nothing dreadful was going to happen. That little disturbance before the Service started had been nothing: those people really deserved it. The thing she most dreaded had not befallen, in spite of the incense and the genuflections and the candles. God had prevented it.

  Her father took, it was true, no part in the Service. He sat with folded arms, looking on with an expression of grim amusement, as though he had been told in advance of some well-merited retribution which was going to overtake Father Bott. And that was bad enough, for people stared when he did not stand up for the Greed. But she was used to staring people, and if he would only keep quiet she would believe that God did really listen to prayer. She would show her gratitude. She would give up her sin, although nobody could really call it a sin because it did not hurt anyone. Perhaps it was a waste of time to grind up glass with a nail file, but surely nothing worse? Because she would never use it, she would never do anything wicked with it. And that little pill box full of powdered glass was such a relief to possess. They said it could never be detected in a person’s food. If she were a wicked woman it could free her from this martyrdom. It was a very powerful little treasure, that box. She kissed it sometimes. But if God kept the Canon quiet, then God was really there and she would placate Him by throwing the box into the sea. For He would know all about that box.

  When I am confirmed, thought Caroline, I shall be religious. The Bishop will put his hand on my head and the Holy Ghost will go all through me like an electric shock, and I shall be religious. But Hebe will be wishing she was the Bishop.

  ‘It is very meet, right, and our bounden du-uty …’ intoned Father Bott.

  The Lord’s Supper! thought Beatrix Cove. I am at the Lord’s Supper with Hebe and all the people. Her heart swelled with ecstasy. She lifted her head and looked at the dazzling candle light, half expecting to see a long table with all the disciples round it and the Divine Presence in the midst. But she only saw Father Bott and Gerry Siddal. It had been so nice when young Mr. Siddal waved the incense at all the people and bowed, and all the people bowed back politely. These gracious courtesies were the very essence of a Feast. She looked round to see if Blanche was as happy as she was. But Blanche, white and rigid, had tears on her cheeks, not of bliss but of pain. Kneeling had brought on the agonizing ache in her back, and she was entirely concentrated upon enduring it. But she caught her sister’s eye and gave a faint smile.

  ‘Evermore praising Thee and sa-a-aying …’

  Duff and Robin fixed their eyes upon their parts in the Sanctus and drew deep breaths.

  ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ sang the choir of St. Sody’s.

  I became dumb, prayed Christina Paley, and opened not rny mouth. For it was Thy doing…. Hear my prayer Oh Lord, and let Thine ear consider my calling. Hold not Thy peace at my tears. For I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength … before I go hence and be no more seen.

  Father Bott was speaking in a whisper and when he paused three soft, clear notes from a bell filled up the silence, just before the incredible horror fell upon them. A kind of bellow rose up from the nave. A great voice was howling:

  ‘I denounce this mummery!’

  The shock was so great that everyone recoiled, as though struck. Still upon their knees they turned to see the Canon coming out of his pew.

  ‘This is a Protestant Church …’ he began.

  He was interrupted by an excruciating scream from his daughter. Evangeline’s nerves had snapped. She was not only shrieking, she was banging her Prayer Book on the ledge of the pew.

  ‘No!’ she yelled. ‘No … no … no! I can’t bear it. I can’t … ahoo! Ahoo! Ahoo!’

  This attack from the rear seemed to confuse the Canon. He had meant to march up to the altar and attack Father Bott. But he now turned round and ordered the girl to be quiet. She only screamed louder. He seized her arm and tried to drag her up from her knees whereat she laughed insanely and hit him with her Prayer Book.

  ‘Help me, somebody,’ he said, almost humbly.

  The paralyzed congregation bestirred itself. Bruce and Sir Henry went to help him and between them they carried the laughing, screaming girl out of church. The verger shut the door upon the noise, but there was still a sound of sobbing for several of the children had begun to cry. It was some minutes before these gasps of woe subsided and Father Bott was able to finish the Consecration.

  6. Dost Thou Well to be Angry?

  ‘But you’ve no idea,’ said Gerry, ‘how utterly disgusting it was. What an outrage…. One reads about that sort of thing in the papers and it sounds shocking enough then. But to be there … they must go. We can’t keep them. I told Father Bott … I said we’ll turn them out immediately.’

  ‘We can’t make them go,’ sighed Mrs. Siddal. ‘I spoke to Canon Wraxton. I explained how embarrassing it is for us. But he simply said he’d paid for a week and should stay for a week.’

  ‘What about the girl? She was worse than he was … the ghastly noise she made.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is. She wasn’t at lunch, and she’s not in her room.’

  ‘Would Father …?’

  ‘Gerry, you know he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Very well, then. I must. I’ll go and speak to the old brute now. I’ll tell him to clear out. Give me the money they paid, and I’ll return it.’

  Gerry marched upstairs, determined to have a fight with somebody. He was not naturally pugnacious, but he felt that the morning’s outrage demanded action of some kind. The Wraxtons must be demolished. He did not distinguish much between them, nor was he quite clear about the facts. They had created a most blasphemous disturbance, shouting and laughing, until they were turned out. From his place, up by the altar, he had seen very little. He had tried to rush down and hit Canon Wraxton, but Father Bott had restrained him. He did not realize that Evangeline’s laughter proceeded from hysteria, not from mockery, and he believed that the interruption had been deliberately planned by both the offenders.

  The Canon was lying on his bed having forty winks. But when Gerry came in he sat up and swung his legs to the floor.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘And what can I do for you?’

  Gerry put twelve guineas on the bedside table.

  ‘You must go, please,’ he said. ‘At once. Here is the money you paid.’

  ‘Are you,’ asked the Canon, ‘the proprietor of this hotel?’

  ‘No. I’m speaking for my mother.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she speak for herself?’

  ‘Because you won’t listen to her.’

  ‘I listened to her. It’s she who didn’t listen to me, or she’d
have told you what I said.’

  And the Canon flung himself back on his bed.

  ‘She told me you wouldn’t go.’

  ‘And I told her that if she wants me out she’ll have to send for the police to put me out. Let nobody make any mistake about that.’

  ‘All right!’ said Gerry.

  ‘I also told her that, if I’m put out, I shall sue her for breach of contract. She agreed to take me in and to render certain services for which I paid.’

  ‘No hotel is expected to keep people who cause a public scandal,’ said Gerry.

  ‘No scandal, as you call it, occurred on your mother’s premises. But if she wants a fight she can have it. I don’t mind a fight. If Mister Bott wants a fight he can have one too. He’ll have it whether he wants it or not. I’m writing to his Bishop. I shall see that the facts are known.’

  ‘So shall we,’ declared Gerry.

  ‘And if I’m turned out of this hotel for doing my duty as a Minister of the Church of England, I shall see that that’s known too. I shall write to every newspaper in the country.’

  ‘You must do as you please about that,’ said Gerry. ‘As long as you go.’

  ‘I’ll go if I’m flung out by force. Not otherwise.’

  Gerry went off to find his mother, but could not persuade her to send for the police. She said that she would rather put up with the Canon for a week, nor would she agree that loyalty to their Parish Church demanded extreme measures. When he persisted, she even said that it was partly Father Bott’s fault, for being so High Church. ‘He’s not High Church,’ explained Gerry. ‘He’s Anglo-Catholic’

  ‘Which is worse,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘I’m sure I sympathize with people who don’t like it. What did we have the Reformation for?’

  ‘I’m an Anglo-Catholic myself,’ said Gerry.

  ‘I know. But I’m not. I’m a Protestant and I don’t like all these goings on in my Parish Church. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, and I won’t have the police brought into it.’

  In despair Gerry took an unusual step. He decided to consult his father, hoping to get some kind of parental encouragement in pursuing the vendetta. For Dick Siddal had often annoyed his wife by professing considerable admiration for Father Bott. It was not to be hoped that he would do anything energetic himself, but he might say something which could be construed as authority to ring up the police.

  He, too, was taking a little nap when Gerry arrived, in a boot-hole strewn with Sunday newspapers. He had just finished the crossword in the Observer and was collecting his resources before attempting that in the Sunday Express. But he opened one eye and looked at his son good-humouredly.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How’s Martin Luther?’

  ‘He won’t go.’

  ‘Why should he go?’

  ‘We can’t have people of that sort here.’

  ‘Then why did you take them?’

  ‘We didn’t know what they were like.’

  ‘But you must have known. Do you never read the newspapers? He’s always doing this sort of thing; his name’s a household word. Why … only last month he started a free fight somewhere down in Dorset. He’s been suspended, or whatever it is they do to parsons who won’t behave, but he goes on doing it.’

  Gerry gaped at his father and presently asked:

  ‘Did you know all about him, then, yesterday?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Siddal, ‘when I heard we’d got a Canon Wraxton I supposed it must be the Canon Wraxton.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘I wasn’t asked.’

  ‘But, Father, you must have known … that we wouldn’t … if we’d had the slightest idea….’

  ‘Not a bit of it. I didn’t like to interfere. Advice from me is seldom appreciated. I don’t pretend for a minute to understand how or why your mother chooses her inmates.’

  ‘Then you knew … when we all went to church … you knew this would probably happen?’

  ‘I thought it likely. And when I saw you all coming back I knew I was right. I’ve never laughed so much since your mother opened this hotel. I wish you could have seen yourselves.’

  No help was coming from this quarter, so Gerry climbed the hill in search of Father Bott, hoping to be told that it was his duty, as a good Churchman, to use physical violence on the Canon. But the Vicar, whom he met in the churchyard, was discouraging.

  ‘Oh leave it, leave it,’ said Father Bott. ‘He can’t do more harm than he’s done already. If he tries to get into my church again, I’ll deal with him.’

  ‘But for us to harbour such people!’ cried Gerry. ‘I won’t have it.’

  ‘My dear boy, that’s for your parents to decide. It’s their hotel, not yours.’

  ‘But I’m so angry,’ protested Gerry. ‘I can’t bear to let them get away with it. It was so … so vile … so obscene … it made me sick.’

  ‘It made me sick too,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But there you are.’

  And he sighed. He was feeling very old and discouraged that afternoon. As a younger man he had enjoyed tussles with Protestants, but he had come to regard his own pugnacity with suspicion as a vice rather than a virtue, and he knew that a fresh scandal at St. Sody’s would do his church no good. He looked up at the sky and down at the grass and then he looked at Gerry’s irate face.

  ‘Dost thou well to be angry?’ he asked, smiling suddenly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gerry. ‘I really think there are occasions when anger is justified.’

  ‘There may be,’ agreed Father Bott. ‘But I’ve never been able to make up my mind which they are.’

  ‘He insulted God,’ said Gerry.

  ‘Oh no, no, no! Oh no. He couldn’t do that, could he?’

  ‘He tried to.’

  The Rector sighed again, looked at his watch, and said impatiently:

  ‘We don’t have to make all this fuss about God.’

  Then, trying not to laugh at Gerry’s shocked expression, he added:

  ‘God can look after Himself. And He’s told us not to make a fuss. Be still and know that I am God. Now excuse me … I have to take a children’s service.’

  ‘Then you mean … do nothing?’

  ‘Not now. Anything you do just now will probably be wrong. I must admit I’m extremely angry myself. But I doubt if I do well.’

  He turned away and strode across the grass, his old cassock flapping about his thin legs.

  Baffled, the good Churchman returned to Pendizack. He was not going to be allowed to fight anybody though his fury was unabated. The Wraxtons were not entirely responsible for his frame of mind; the long trial to his patience, his father’s spite, his mother’s partiality, and his own frustrated existence, were getting to be more than he could bear. So that it was a relief to feel that his wrath was righteous.

  On the doorstep, unfortunately, he encountered Evangeline. She had been hiding for hours in some lair on the cliffs, unable to endure her disgrace, and was now hoping to creep back to her room unnoticed. Gerry stood aside, grimly, to let her pass. But at the sight of him the silly creature dodged and swerved and waited for him to precede her. For a few seconds they danced about on the doorstep.

  ‘Please go in,’ said Gerry, with freezing politeness.

  She gulped and began to mutter. He caught the words:

  ‘So very sorry … apologize….’

  ‘Don’t speak of it,’ he said. ‘If you were really sorry you wouldn’t insist on staying here when we’ve asked you to go.’

  He watched her cross the lobby and crawl up the stairs. It should have been a satisfaction to see her so brought down. But it was not, and he felt more miserable than ever. He had never before in his life spoken to anyone so unkindly.

  7. Old Acquaintance

  The whole house was suffering from moral shock. The hideous scene in church weighed upon the spirits of all who had been there, and there was a tendency among the adults to sit alone in their rooms.

  The child
ren vanished, rising up like a flock of starlings immediately after luncheon and betaking themselves to some hidden place. They retired into their own world, as children will when their elders misbehave. Bewildered, unable to judge, they turned their backs upon the ugly memory.

  At supper time they reappeared and, as one child, refused the dessert of loganberries and ice-cream with which Mrs. Siddal had hoped to cheer them. The Giffords waved it away grimly. The Coves, who were dining, after all, downstairs since Mrs. Siddal had insisted upon charging full rates for them, declined it with a devotional enthusiasm. Fred brought a whole dish back into the kitchen, and Siddal consoled his wife by suggesting that Duff could eat it.

  ‘It will melt unless he comes in soon,’ she said. ‘He and Robin went over to Porthmerryn. I’ll put it in the larder.’

  ‘Yes … do,’ said Siddal. ‘Gerry and I don’t want any, either.’

  Blushing a little she exclaimed:

  ‘Oh … I meant after you’d had some.’

  And began to help them, while Gerry tactfully divertedhis father’s attention by passing him a piece of paper.

  ‘I picked this up in the hall,’ he said. ‘It looks likea cypher.’

  On a page torn from an exercise book a message wasprinted in capitals:

  BBM TQBSUBOT XJMM SFGVTF

  EFTFSU UPOJHIU CZ PSEFS

  Siddal, who liked puzzles, took it and put on his spectacles. When Duff and Robin came in he was so intent that he hardly looked up.

  It was at once apparent to Mrs. Siddal that Duff had been up to something. He was flushed, excited and unusually silent. She was so much disturbed by his looks that she scarcely noticed Robin’s boisterous swagger. But Gerry did, and thanked heaven that his father’s attention should be engaged elsewhere. He hoped that the cypher would take a long time to solve. Later on, in the privacy of the stable loft, he would doubtless hear all about it.