again, and dark forms moved with cries of alarm overhead, and something fell heavily. I shivered in the dark, evil-smelling place, and hurried to get out of doors. I clutched my hands with relief and pleasure when I saw the sky above me quivering with the last crystal lights, and the lowest red of sunset behind the yew-boles. I drank the fresh air, that sparkled with the sound of the blackbirds and thrushes whistling their strong bright notes.
I strayed round to where the headstones, from their eminence, leaned to look on the Hall below, where great windows shone yellow light on the flagged courtyard, and the little fish-pool. A stone staircase descended from the graveyard to the court, between stone balustrades whose pock-marked grey columns still swelled gracefully and with dignity, encrusted with lichens. The staircase was filled with ivy and rambling roses — impassable. Ferns were unrolling round the big square halting-place, half-way down where the stairs turned.
A peacock, startled from the back premises of the Hall, came flapping up the terraces to the churchyard. Then a heavy footstep crossed the flags. It was the keeper. I whistled the whistle he knew, and he broke his way through the vicious rose-boughs up the stairs. The peacock flapped beyond me, on to the neck of an old bowed angel, rough and dark, an angel which had long ceased sorrowing for the lost Lucy, and had died also. The bird bent its voluptuous neck and peered about. Then it lifted up its head and yelled. The sound tore the dark sanctuary of twilight. The old grey grass seemed to stir, and I could fancy the smothered primroses and violets beneath it waking and gasping for fear.
The keeper looked at me and smiled. He nodded his head towards the peacock, saying:
“Hark at that damned thing!”
Again the bird lifted its crested head and gave a cry, at the same time turning awkwardly on its ugly legs, so that it showed us the full wealth of its tail glimmering like a stream of coloured stars over the sunken face of the angel.
“The proud fool! — look at it! Perched on an angel, too, as if it were a pedestal for vanity. That’s the soul of a woman — or it’s the devil.”
He was silent for a time, and we watched the great bird moving uneasily before us in the twilight.
“That’s the very soul of a lady,” he said, “the very, very soul. Damn the thing, to perch on that old angel. I should like to wring its neck.”
Again the bird screamed, and shifted awkwardly on its legs; it seemed to stretch its beak at us in derision. Annable picked up a piece of sod and flung it at the bird, saying:
“Get out, you screeching devil! God!” he laughed. “There must be plenty of hearts twisting under here”— and he stamped on a grave —“when they hear that row.”
He kicked another sod from a grave and threw at the big bird. The peacock flapped away, over the tombs, down the terraces.
“Just look!” he said, “the miserable brute has dirtied that angel. A woman to the end, I tell you, all vanity and screech and defilement.”
He sat down on a vault and lit his pipe. But before he had smoked two minutes, it was out again. I had not seen him in a state of perturbation before.
“The church,” said I, “is rotten. I suppose they’ll stand all over the country like this soon — with peacocks trailing the graveyards.”
“Ay,” he muttered, taking no notice of me.
“This stone is cold,” I said, rising.
He got up too, and stretched his arms as if he were tired. It was quite dark, save for the waxing moon which leaned over the east.
“It is a very fine night,” I said. “Don’t you notice a smell of violets?”
“Ay! The moon looks like a woman with child. I wonder what Time’s got in her belly.”
“You?” I said. “You don’t expect anything exciting, do you?”
“Exciting! — No — about as exciting as this rotten old place — just rot off — Oh, my God! — I’m like a good house, built and finished, and left to tumble down again with nobody to live in it.”
“Why — what’s up — really?”
He laughed bitterly, saying, “Come and sit down.”
He led me off to a seat by the north door, between two pews, very black and silent. There we sat, he putting his gun carefully beside him. He remained perfectly still, thinking.
“Whot’s up?” he said at last. “Why — I’ll tell you. I went to Cambridge — my father was a big cattle dealer — he died bankrupt while I was in college, and I never took my degree. They persuaded me to be a parson, and a parson I was.
“I went a curate to a little place in Leicestershire — a bonnie place with not many people, and a fine old church, and a great rich parsonage. I hadn’t overmuch to do, and the rector — he was the son of an earl — was generous. He lent me a horse and would have me hunt like the rest. I always think of that place with a smell of honeysuckle while the grass is wet in the morning. It was fine, and I enjoyed myself, and did the parish work all right. I believe I was pretty good.
“A cousin of the rector’s used to come in the hunting season — a Lady Crystabel, lady in her own right. The second year I was there she came in June. There wasn’t much company, so she used to talk to me — I used to read then — and she used to pretend to be so childish and unknowing, and would get me telling her things, and talking to her, and I was hot on things. We must play tennis together, and ride together, and I must row her down the river. She said we were in the wilderness and could do as we liked. She made me wear flannels and soft clothes. She was very fine and frank and unconventional — ripping, I thought her. All the summer she stopped on. I should meet her in the garden early in the morning when I came from a swim in the river — it was cleared and deepened on purpose — and she’d blush and make me talk with her. I can remember I used to stand and dry myself on the bank full where she might see me — I was mad on her — and she was madder on me.
“We went to some caves in Derbyshire once, and she would wander from the rest, and loiter, and, for a game, we played a sort of hide and seek with the party. They thought we’d gone, and they went and locked the door. Then she pretended to be frightened and clung to me, and said what would they think, and hid her face in my coat. I took her and kissed her, and we made it up properly. I found out afterwards — she actually told me — she’d got the idea from a sloppy French novel — the Romance of a Poor Young Man. I was the Poor Young Man.
“We got married. She gave me a living she had in her parsonage, and we went to live at her Hall. She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Lord! — we were an infatuated couple — and she would choose to view me in an aesthetic light. I was Greek statues for her, bless you: Croton, Hercules, I don’t know what! She had her own way too much — I let her do as she liked with me.
“Then gradually she got tired — it took her three years to be really glutted with me. I had a physique then — for that matter, I have now.”
He held out his arm to me, and bade me try his muscle. I was startled. The hard flesh almost filled his sleeve.
“Ah,” he continued, “you don’t know what it is to have the pride of a body like mine. But she wouldn’t have children — no, she wouldn’t — said she daren’t. That was the root of the difference at first. But she cooled down, and if you don’t
