smiled up to him as he bent confidentially nearer to make this confession.
‘If you put it like that,’ she said.
It was at this moment that Hector Shand, having let himself in, walked into the drawing-room.
In spite of the fresh air with which Calderwick was liberally supplied he did not feel much the better of his afternoon’s outing. He was already dissatisfied with himself when he went out to the football match, and neither the weather nor the bad play of the local team had relieved his dissatisfaction.
At the close of play, mindful of his promise to Elizabeth, he had refused the invitation of several friends to ‘have one’ at the Clubhouse, and as the men of Calderwick were as self-conscious about their drinks as about their women there had been a considerable amount of chaffing when he said with attempted heartiness: ‘No, I promised the wife.’
All the way home his grievances harassed him. John had jumped down his throat that morning. Calderwick was a one-horse town where a man couldn’t enjoy himself without everybody kicking up a fuss. Damn it all, a fellow had to go on the loose sometimes. A fellow couldn’t be mollycoddling about his own fireside all the time. All very well for Elizabeth; she had her books; but it gave him a pain in the neck when he tried to read a book.
His head ached and there was an evil taste on the back of his tongue. As his physical misery increased his dissatisfaction with himself, his sense of failure threatened to overwhelm him completely. The one thing he needed was to lay his head on Elizabeth’s bosom, as he had done to his comfort in the small hours of the morning. He hurried on, and almost burst into the drawing-room.
His quick eye at once caught the picture of Elizabeth and the minister smiling intimately to each other, while Aunt Janet and Mabel were talking in a corner. Half of him seemed to rise inside and choke in his throat, while the other half sank clean through the pit of his stomach, leaving him hollow and sick. The figures in the room changed their positions like puppets while he stood there glaring.
The look in his eyes made Mabel forget her intention of teasing him. Better go at once, her social sense warned her. She hastily put on her furs.
‘Glad to see you enjoying yourselves,’ said Hector at last, removing his eye from Elizabeth but making no attempt to come farther into the room.
Elizabeth felt and looked bewildered.
‘We’re only having tea,’ she said. ‘Here’s your cup.’
‘I’m afraid I must go now,’ put in Mabel quickly. ‘Good-bye, Elizabeth; good-bye, everybody. It’s good- afternoon and good-bye in the same breath to you, Hector, I’m sorry to say.’
Hector had moved his lips once or twice as if swallowing, and he now turned to Mabel with exaggerated camaraderie.
‘Not a bit of it, Mabel. I only looked in to say I wasn’t having any tea. I’ll come with you.’
‘Why, where are you going, Hector?’ cried Elizabeth.
‘To the Club,’ said Hector, without looking at her. ‘So long, Aunt Janet,’ he went on. ‘See you another time. Sorry I can’t stop. Come along, Mabel.’
The door shut upon them. Elizabeth found herself filling a cup with hot water instead of tea.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said in a flat voice.
Then she suddenly burst into tears.
‘Go away!’ she sobbed. ‘Go away! Both of you.’
With another sob she rose and rushed out of the room.
To his own amazement the minister’s first impulse was to rush out after her. He was literally upset; everything within him felt topsy-turvy. Little enough had been said, but Elizabeth’s agitation seemed to him natural and his own not less so. Something evil had struck into the very heart of the room like an invisible thunderbolt and had scattered the peace of all the people in it. Yet he was amazed to find himself involuntarily springing to the door.
Janet Shand caught him by the sleeve. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but her voice was harsh and angry. ‘Let her go!’ she said. ‘You can’t do anything with her. Nobody can do anything with her. She’ll be the ruin of him yet.’
William shook his arm free but stood irresolutely shifting his feet while Janet Shand sank into a chair crying: ‘My poor boy! My poor, poor boy!’
William Murray could not bear to see anyone in tears; and it was not only because he was a minister that he felt obliged to comfort those in disress. On this occasion, however, his own distress was so immediate and unexpected that his instinctive attempt to comfort the old woman was awkward and perfunctory.
He found himself outside on the pavement with some confused idea in his head that Miss Shand had sent him out to find Hector and bring him back. He started off mechanically with long strides, but the street was so thickly crowded with Saturday-nighters that his impatience drove him into the roadway. He ejaculated irrelevant words as he walked. ‘No, no,’ he said, and ‘Evil, evil.’ The rain had stopped, but the storm was not yet spent; high above the blue arc-lamps of the High Street a wild scud of clouds was flying over the waning moon, and, as if driven by the same force, the minister flew along the street below.
Blindly he turned out of the High Street. He wanted to get hold of the man. Had Janet Shand asked him to catch Hector Shand, or had she not? Anything might happen, she had said, with Hector in that mood. His fists clenched and unclenched as they swung. His heart was pounding; little pulses hammered in his eyes. ‘Evil, evil.’
In the side-street where he now was, a dark street indifferently lit by gas-lamps that flung yellow rings upon the wet pavement, the minister suddenly came to himself, and leaned against a wall. He was possessed by evil, his body was shaking with anger, his fists were thinking of hitting Hector Shand, of hitting him and hitting him until he crumpled up. The last time he had been so invaded by anger was as a boy of fourteen when he had seized a bully at the school and pounded his head against a window until the window smashed in. His remorse afterwards, and his terror of the murderous fury that had thrilled him, had converted him to that contemplation of the eternal love of God in which he had found serenity. Not until this day had the devil entered into him again.
He walked to and fro between the two gas-lamps, filled with an anguish of shame. He a minister of the Gospel, a servant of Christ! He stood on the edge of the pavement and stared at the wall, a high, well-built wall enclosing a garden. Its regularly cut stones were so smoothly fitted together that there was neither handhold nor foothold all the way up to the top, although the stones were greenish with age. The minister stared at it as if obsessed.
Smooth, blank, and yet frowning, the wall stared back at him. The minister shut his eyes as if the sight of the wall had become intolerable. ‘O God,’ he prayed, and again, and again: ‘O God,’ the simple incantation with which the soul seeks to recover a communion it has lost.
When he began to walk again it was at a more sober pace. He had sinned. He had met evil with evil. One should overcome evil with good. One should be sorry for a man like Hector Shand, not murderously angry with him. At any rate, he was in no fit state to pursue the man; he could do nothing spiritually effective; he felt spent.
But young Mrs Hector was sobbing her heart out. He shivered a little as the remembrance of her tears called up the scene again. It was dreadful to live with evil
