He looked through the letters; they did not keep him five minutes; then he opened the paper, and at once saw the heading: “Ancient Paintings Laid Bare in Stubbington Church.” He read, that two days before (which may have meant two days before the writing of the article, on the Wednesday of the week), some ancient wall-paintings had been laid bare by the removal of some panellings. The works were supposed to be of the fourteenth century, and to represent King Stubba’s fight with the pagans and subsequent conversion to Christianity. These works were in a little church called St. Lawrence in the Peppery. He had not heard of the church and had not seen it, but had heard of the Peppery as a place where people had once made long tobacco pipes; there was a couplet somewhere:
He judged that the light would be bad, but still, he could take a torch; he would go over to see these paintings. A glance at the map of Stubbington showed him the Peppery; it opened off the Market Square; within half an hour he was walking down the Peppery to the church.
He felt sure that on a day so contrary he would find, when he came there, that the church would be closed. In this he was wrong. It was not closed. The door stood open. A woman, who was making the church ready for the next day’s service, was emptying the altar flower vases into the gutter.
“Can I see the old paintings?” he asked.
“They’re in the side chapel,” she said; “the far side there; but you’ll not see much of them; it’s so dark.”
With the willingness to help the stranger and the helpless which is so marked a feature among the English, she followed him into the dark little church and pointed out an inner gloom at the north-east corner.
“It’s in there,” she said; “up in the corner there the paintings are, if it’s the paintings you want to see. But I don’t call them paintings myself; only a lot of queer mess, I call them. But you’ll see them for yourself, sir. Very old paintings, they’re said to be, and all about religion.”
He flung the beam of his torch on to the paintings, as far as they had been revealed. They were in a sad state still, with dust, dirt, cobwebs and the slime of slugs upon them. He could make out some big figures, with one bigger figure with a crown, probably King Stubba, wielding a sword. Up above the figures was a conventional design in dull red. He tried to get a good view from all the sides of the chapel, but could not make out much more. He determined to go again on Monday; nay, he would find out the vicar of the church and see to it that these old works were tenderly cared for. Nobody in England to-day could do things so vivid. Why, even the pattern above the figures was better than anyone could do to-day. And who had done these things? He sat down in a pew in the church to stare into the side chapel at the shadowy figures on the wall. Who had done the things in that little fourteenth or early fifteenth century England? He supposed that it was some local chap, for the church could never have been rich, and could not have afforded a man specially down from London to do the work. As he thought of it, he decided that probably King Stubba lay buried in that chapel, and that perhaps the shrine had been great and famous, visited by hundreds from all over England. It may not have been poor, but very rich.
He sat on there, wondering about who had done the design. “It was probably somebody here,” he thought. Somebody here had the knack and guts. Such chaps are in the town here still, perhaps. Those chaps at Hordiestraw’s, playing darts, could have done it if they had wanted to draw, instead of to ride on motor-bikes.
He was very lonely suddenly, longing unbearably for Margaret. She would have said:
“Of course, it’s the same race still; we must find those talents again and set them free and see that they can grow.”
His grief for her, which was sometimes numb, now gnawed unbearably.
“My God,” he muttered, “I wish to God I had died with you, instead of living on for this.”
He thought of what the old painter of the designs had probably believed about death and punishment after death.
“Life is punishment enough for most sinners,” he thought; “no more punishment than life is necessary.”
He thought that he would go on to speak to the vicar; he asked the woman, who was now shaking out the mats, where he could find him.
“You won’t find him on a Saturday,” she said. “He always goes out to Tatchester almshouses of a Saturday; but a letter would find him. She thought that she ought to say something about the paintings. “Very strange old things, the paintings, sir,” she said. “Still,” she added cheerfully, “it shows you what they thought was decoration, years ago.”
“Yes,” he said, “they show you that.”
Something made him think of Twelfth Night: “’Tis but Fortune; all is Fortune.” He often thought of Fortune in these days. What was she? He knew Dante’s description of her: “Necessity compels her to be swift”; but there was such a thing as a stable Fortune, in dynasties and great families, which endured for centuries. What was that? Well, what could you call it but Fortune? He did not rail at that kind of Fortune, but he was bitter at the superior Fortune being inferior in intelligence, in feeling, in the mixture of the two called tact, and in cultivation, and priding itself on possession, family, the front row seat, and the item in the society news column, and also, largely, on the power these things gave of making want of general intelligence function as its opposite. His own Fortune puzzled him. Here he was, called from a low-class family, as it was reckoned, the son of a man who had made much money by a clever device, and himself very clever at all dodges and devices of destruction and explosion. He was wealthy; he was shrewd, swift; and as it seemed, possessed of all things, but at the instant of his attainment, everything had been dashed from him; he had lost his throw; he was a failure in life; he had not won the world he had set out to win. He had won the crown, and put it on, only to find that the crown was tin and had no kingdom attached.
He passed out of the church into the evil weather, with its failing light and beginning storm. He had planned to go to the left, to see the forlorn water-meadows; he had thought that they would be a good image of desolation. Something, he knew not what, perhaps only a gust or draught of wind coming up the Peppery against him as he left the church door, made him say: “No, not the water-meadows.” He turned, instead, to the right, and was soon in the lights and glistening pavings of the Market Square. He had left his car there, and was just about to turn again to the right, towards it, when something caught his eye on the wall of the Corn Exchange, on the other side of the open space. It was a big notice-board, nearly covered with what seemed to be a design from Botticelli’s Primavera. He wondered what could have made her venture to a place like Stubbington, and crossed the Square to find out.
When he stood beneath the notice-board, he saw that the Spring was subtly changed, to show that she was dancing; it had been done with a good deal of ribald dash, but what brought ribald dash to Stubbington? Underneath was the announcement:
“Poor devils,” he muttered, “what on earth can bring Circassians to Stubbington of all places and on a day like this? Poor devils. What brought them here?” He knew nothing about Circassians, except what Tolstoi tells. “And ballet, too,” he muttered. “What can bring ballet here, a thing of rhythm, beauty and delight, to that awful hall where the concert was?”