“Evenin’, Posh.”
“Evenin’. Marvous train,” the Colonel said.
“Absooty marvous,” the lady agreed.
The Colonel was fumbling for his ticket.
“So you are the Posh who was to regret my having Spirr,” Frampton muttered. “Well, my son, if I can make you regret it, I will.”
It was an unfortunate meeting. He drove on from that point to Mullples with none but sad and bitter thoughts. But for death, Margaret would perhaps have been to the station to meet him, as this Tilter woman had come to meet her man. Now Margaret was gone, and that thin hag, eyebrow-plucked and with the sherry stink, was here. He was coming alone to a house he had made for his love and did not want for himself one little bit.
The car turned to the left at last, at the conspicuous white gate and posts which he had put there, at Margaret’s suggestion, to show their guests where to turn. He saw the lights of his home, a long line of festal lights, all on for his homecoming. This was the little house he had built to be so gay with; it seemed like a country house in hell. This was his first home; he hated the look and the thought of it.
The door was thrown open; a gush of light spread across the terrace and made visible some small, whitish moths flitting in the evening air. There in the hall ready to welcome him, were the servants, who had been with him for years, though he supposed that they liked his father much better than himself. There was Charlotte, red-faced, very devout, strong as an ox, and good at a game of bowls. At her side was the stalwart Helga, with the fine contralto voice, which he had had trained; she had some sense of design, too, and embroidered her dresses at wrists and throat. Farther back was the kitchen staff; the cook, whom they all called Pongie, a short, plump, very good-humoured soul, an admirable cook, still under thirty, whose deplorable husband had left her. With Pongie were the two kitchen-maids, Binnie and Minnie, both of them the daughters of Mark, for years his driver and general aid, who was said to be related to one who had been in the boat with Captain Bligh. There they all were, glad to welcome him home, and determined to welcome him specially this time, for all were sorry for him, more than they cared to say. Mrs. Haulover came through the people in the porch and was the first to welcome him.
He had promised Margaret, in some idle moment, that when they came to Mullples he would give his parish church a fair trial. He remembered this, in time, the next morning, and therefore set out for Weston Mullples Church to attend morning service there. Bitter thoughts were in him as he walked, of the injustice of Margaret’s death.
“A senseless fury with abhorred shears,” he said to himself, “a fury who sees the world made a muckheap and never lifts a finger, and then sends a drunkard loose in a car to kill the one bright star in the nation.”
He thought over the few church services he had attended in his life. He had been to very few, save the compulsory ones at school, and remembered none, as touched in any way with what he could imagine to be religious feeling.
“I suppose each of the worshippers is supposed to bring his share of God into the communal church,” he mused, “and I suppose I’ve never done that. I wish to God I could find God. Some chaps do or have. These places, churches, are said to help in the search. They’ve never helped me yet; but they may, now, perhaps. Yet how can they? How can this old rigmarole, with its whine and its oiliness, and its bad verse and ancient prose and worn-out tunes and the tales one can’t believe, help a chap like me, who have power in my thought to kill half a nation?”
He did not expect much from his visit to Weston Mullples Church. He kept thinking, that religion ought to be and is an exciting, kindling, overwhelming thing; it was a getting into the love of God, which was like the light and energy of the Sun. Who could be in that light and energy and see his brother have need? Who could be in that light and energy and want to make a Mansell Death Spray? He felt far enough from any sharing of that light and energy.
As he drew near to the church, his mind began to prickle against the curiosity of the neighbours. He had timed his arrival for the stroke of eleven, thinking that the parson would be punctual, and that the loiterers would be all in the church at that time. He found the church clock five minutes slow; about fifty people were loitering outside the church; a horrible little bell was going in the tower, and he was well stared at, as he entered the church and took his seat. There were whisperings and nudgings.
“That’s Mr. Mansell, who makes the guns. . . . That’s the new man at Mullples. . . . That’s the chap whose girl was killed the day of marriage. . . . He spent thousands on his house, now he’ll never live there. . . . He makes guns. . . . His girl killed herself, they say, rather than marry him. . . . Mullples. . . . Pots of money. . . . Father was a baker. . . . Awful bounder. . . .”
He heard, or imagined that he heard, all these things. The churchwarden, an old farmer, ushered him to a seat. He sat down, bent his brow into his hand in the way usual among church-goers, and then settled to an examination of the church.
He knew a good deal about churches. He summed up this one as follows: “Norman plan, small and beautiful; nothing but the sanctuary remaining; present structure begun in fourteenth century, 1350, and added to, with much rebuilding and changing, till about 1520. After that, very little until a ceiling and some whitewash, about 1740. After that, an almost total neglect for a hundred and forty years, then a collection and a bazaar, a scraper firm put in and a general clean-up, coinciding with the first bath-room in the squire’s manor; the results before us, bright pine pews, varnished, ye olde churche style; gas brackets the same, by the well-known firm; the Bish. out from Tatchester to open it.”
At this point, the padre came in with the choir and the service began. It went on in the usual way, with the usual intonations, the usual tunes, the usual signals and smiles from woman to woman, the farmers coming out strong in the psalms, the ladies getting their own back in the hymns, a sigh of content when the litany ended, a rustle of bliss when they all settled for the sermon.
The sermon did not interest Frampton; during the giving out of the text, his eye was caught by a bit of old glass in a window across the church in the north aisle. He decided, that he would not enter this church again, except to look at this glass. Yet he gave the parson a good mark; he seemed a good chap. Somehow, he was angry with the institution. He was a hungry sheep looking up and not being fed; there was no food for him there. He had the justice to ask himself, if he would have taken any good offered by this particular shepherd, who no doubt would offer some, if he had the inkling of a suspicion that some were wanted. The service came to an end; he walked swiftly out and away, followed by curious eyes.
He was much discussed at lunch-time throughout the parish.
“He went away so quickly,” the parson’s wife said. “I meant to speak to him, to ask him to come to tea this afternoon.”
“The fellow went away as if the hounds were after him,” the squire, Button Budd, said. “A dark-looking fellow. Didn’t at all like his looks. To tell the truth, I’m glad. I didn’t want to have to ask him to lunch. Fellow makes guns; father was a baker; low fellow, not at all the sort of thing.”
All the same, Mrs. Button Budd, who shared his prejudices, felt that her husband ought to call at Mullples.
“It is only leaving a card,” she said. “He will very likely be out; and even if he’s in you need not see him; the cards are the important thing. We need not see him, if he returns the call; but anyhow, we shall have done our duty, if anything should crop up later.”