A Laodicean

Chapter 2

He found that it had its origin in a building standing alone

in a field; and though the evening was not yet dark without,

lights shone from the windows. In a few moments Somerset

stood before the edifice. Being just then en rapport with

ecclesiasticism by reason of his recent occupation, he could

not help murmuring, 'Shade of Pugin, what a monstrosity!'

Perhaps this exclamation (rather out of date since the

discovery that Pugin himself often nodded amazingly) would not

have been indulged in by Somerset but for his new

architectural resolves, which caused professional opinions to

advance themselves officiously to his lips whenever occasion

offered. The building was, in short, a recently-erected

chapel of red brick, with pseudo-classic ornamentation, and

the white regular joints of mortar could be seen streaking its

surface in geometrical oppressiveness from top to bottom. The

roof was of blue slate, clean as a table, and unbroken from

gable to gable; the windows were glazed with sheets of plate

glass, a temporary iron stovepipe passing out near one of

these, and running up to the height of the ridge, where it was

finished by a covering like a parachute. Walking round to the

end, he perceived an oblong white stone let into the wall just

above the plinth, on which was inscribed in deep letters:--

'You are carrying in a great deal of water,' he said, as each

dipped his pitcher.

One of the young men modestly replied, 'Yes: we filled the

cistern this morning; but it leaks, and requires a few

pitcherfuls more.'

'Why do you do it?'

'There is to be a baptism, sir.'

Somerset was not sufficiently interested to develop a further

conversation, and observing them in silence till they had

again vanished into the building, he went on his way.

Reaching the brow of the hill he stopped and looked back. The

chapel was still in view, and the shades of night having

deepened, the lights shone from the windows yet more brightly

than before. A few steps further would hide them and the

edifice, and all that belonged to it from his sight, possibly

for ever. There was something in the thought which led him to

linger. The chapel had neither beauty, quaintness, nor

congeniality to recommend it: the dissimilitude between the

new utilitarianism of the place and the scenes of venerable

Gothic art which had occupied his daylight hours could not

well be exceeded. But Somerset, as has been said, was an

instrument of no narrow gamut: he had a key for other touches

than the purely aesthetic, even on such an excursion as this.

His mind was arrested by the intense and busy energy which

must needs belong to an assembly that required such a glare of

light to do its religion by; in the heaving of that tune there

was an earnestness which made him thoughtful, and the shine of

those windows he had characterized as ugly reminded him of the

shining of the good deed in a naughty world. The chapel and

its shabby plot of ground, from which the herbage was all

trodden away by busy feet, had a living human interest that

the numerous minsters and churches knee-deep in fresh green

grass, visited by him during the foregoing week, had often

lacked. Moreover, there was going to be a baptism: that

meant the immersion of a grown-up person; and he had been told

that Baptists were serious people and that the scene was most

impressive. What manner of man would it be who on an ordinary

plodding and bustling evening of the nineteenth century could

single himself out as one different from the rest of the

inhabitants, banish all shyness, and come forward to undergo

such a trying ceremony? Who was he that had pondered, gone

into solitudes, wrestled with himself, worked up his courage

and said, I will do this, though few else will, for I believe

it to be my duty?

Whether on account of these thoughts, or from the circumstance

that he had been alone amongst the tombs all day without

communion with his kind, he could not tell in after years

(when he had good reason to think of the subject); but so it

was that Somerset went back, and again stood under the chapel-

wall.

Instead of entering he passed round to where the stove-chimney

came through the bricks, and holding on to the iron stay he

put his toes on the plinth and looked in at the window. The

building was quite full of people belonging to that vast

majority of society who are denied the art of articulating

their higher emotions, and crave dumbly for a fugleman--

respectably dressed working people, whose faces and forms were

worn and contorted by years of dreary toil. On a platform at

the end of the chapel a haggard man of more than middle age,

with grey whiskers ascetically cut back from the fore part of

his face so far as to be almost banished from the countenance,

stood reading a chapter. Between the minister and the

congregation was an open space, and in the floor of this was

sunk a tank full of water, which just made its surface visible

above the blackness of its depths by reflecting the lights

overhead.

Somerset endeavoured to discover which one among the

assemblage was to be the subject of the ceremony. But nobody

appeared there who was at all out of the region of

commonplace. The people were all quiet and settled; yet he

could discern on their faces something more than attention,

though it was less than excitement: perhaps it was

expectation. And as if to bear out his surmise he heard at

that moment the noise of wheels behind him.

His gaze into the lighted chapel made what had been an evening

scene when he looked away from the landscape night itself on

looking back; but he could see enough to discover that a

brougham had driven up to the side-door used by the young

water-bearers, and that a lady in white-and-black half-

mourning was in the act of alighting, followed by what

appeared to be a waiting-woman carrying wraps. They entered

the vestry-room of the chapel, and the door was shut. The

service went on as before till at a certain moment the door

between vestry and chapel was opened, when a woman came out

clothed in an ample robe of flowing white, which descended to

her feet. Somerset was unfortunate in his position; he could

not see her face, but her gait suggested at once that she was

the lady who had arrived just before. She was rather tall

than otherwise, and the contour of her head and shoulders

denoted a girl in the heyday of youth and activity. His

imagination, stimulated by this beginning, set about filling

in the meagre outline with most attractive details.

She stood upon the brink of the pool, and the minister

descended the steps at its edge till the soles of his shoes

were moistened with the water. He turned to the young

candidate, but she did not follow him: instead of doing so

she remained rigid as a stone. He stretched out his hand, but

she still showed reluctance, till, with some embarrassment, he

went back, and spoke softly in her ear.

She approached the edge, looked into the water, and turned

away shaking her head. Somerset could for the first time see

her face. Though humanly imperfect, as is every face we see,

it was one which made him think that the best in woman-kind no

less than the best in psalm-tunes had gone over to the

Dissenters. He had certainly seen nobody so interesting in

his tour hitherto; she was about twenty or twenty-one--perhaps

twenty-three, for years have a way of stealing marches even

upon beauty's anointed. The total dissimilarity between the

expression of her lineaments and that of the countenances

around her was not a little surprising, and was productive of

hypotheses without measure as to how she came there. She was,

in fact, emphatically a modern type of maidenhood, and she

looked ultra-modern by reason of her environment: a

presumably sophisticated being among the simple ones--not

wickedly so, but one who knew life fairly well for her age.

Her hair, of good English brown, neither light nor dark, was

abundant--too abundant for convenience in tying, as it seemed;

and it threw off the lamp-light in a hazy lustre. And though

it could not be said of her features that this or that was

flawless, the nameless charm of them altogether was only

another instance of how beautiful a woman can be as a whole

without attaining in any one detail to the lines marked out as

absolutely correct. The spirit and the life were there: and

material shapes could be disregarded.

Whatever moral characteristics this might be the surface of,

enough was shown to assure Somerset that she had some

experience of things far removed from her present

circumscribed horizon, and could live, and was even at that

moment living, a clandestine, stealthy inner life which had

very little to do with her outward one. The repression of

nearly every external sign of that distress under which

Somerset knew, by a sudden intuitive sympathy, that she was

labouring, added strength to these convictions.

'And you refuse?' said the astonished minister, as she still

stood immovable on the brink of the pool. He persuasively

took her sleeve between his finger and thumb as if to draw

her; but she resented this by a quick movement of displeasure,

and he released her, seeing that he had gone too far.

'But, my dear lady,' he said, 'you promised! Consider your

profession, and that you stand in the eyes of the whole church

as an exemplar of your faith.'

'I cannot do it!'

'But your father's memory, miss; his last dying request!'

'I cannot help it,' she said, turning to get away.

'You came here with the intention to fulfil the Word?'

'But I was mistaken.'

'Then why did you come?'

She tacitly implied that to be a question she did not care to

answer. 'Please say no more to me,' she murmured, and

hastened to withdraw.

During this unexpected dialogue (which had reached Somerset's

ears through the open windows) that young man's feelings had

flown hither and thither between minister and lady in a most

capricious manner: it had seemed at one moment a rather

uncivil thing of her, charming as she was, to give the

minister and the water-bearers so much trouble for nothing;

the next, it seemed like reviving the ancient cruelties of the

ducking-stool to try to force a girl into that dark water if

she had not a mind to it. But the minister was not without

insight, and he had seen that it would be useless to say more.

The crestfallen old man had to turn round upon the

congregation and declare officially that the baptism was

postponed.

She passed through the door into the vestry. During the

exciting moments of her recusancy there had been a perceptible

flutter among the sensitive members of the congregation;

nervous Dissenters seeming to be at one with nervous

Episcopalians in this at least, that they heartily disliked a

scene during service. Calm was restored to their minds by the

minister starting a rather long hymn in minims and semibreves,

amid the singing of which he ascended the pulpit. His face

had a severe and even denunciatory look as he gave out his

text, and Somerset began to understand that this meant

mischief to the young person who had caused the hitch.

'In the third chapter of Revelation and the fifteenth and

following verses, you will find these words:--

'"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I

would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art

lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my

mouth. . . . Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with

goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art

wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."'

The sermon straightway began, and it was soon apparent that

the commentary was to be no less forcible than the text. It

was also apparent that the words were, virtually, not directed

forward in the line in which they were uttered, but through

the c***k of the vestry-door, that had stood slightly ajar

since the exit of the young lady. The listeners appeared to

feel this no less than Somerset did, for their eyes, one and

all, became fixed upon that vestry door as if they would

almost push it open by the force of their gazing. The

preacher's heart was full and bitter; no book or note was

wanted by him; never was spontaneity more absolute than here.

It was no timid reproof of the ornamental kind, but a direct

denunciation, all the more vigorous perhaps from the

limitation of mind and language under which the speaker

laboured. Yet, fool that he had been made by the candidate,

there was nothing acrid in his attack. Genuine flashes of

rhetorical fire were occasionally struck by that plain and

simple man, who knew what straightforward conduct was, and who

did not know the illimitable caprice of a woman's mind.

At this moment there was not in the whole chapel a person

whose imagination was not centred on what was invisibly taking

place within the vestry. The thunder of the minister's

eloquence echoed, of course, through the weak sister's cavern

of retreat no less than round the public assembly. What she

was doing inside there--whether listening contritely, or

haughtily hastening to put on her things and get away from the

chapel and all it contained--was obviously the thought of each

member. What changes were tracing themselves upon that lovely

face: did it rise to phases of Raffaelesque resignation or

sink so low as to flush and frown? was Somerset's inquiry; and

a half-explanation occurred when, during the discourse, the

door which had been ajar was gently pushed to.

Looking on as a stranger it seemed to him more than probable

that this young woman's power of persistence in her unexpected

repugnance to the rite was strengthened by wealth and position

of some sort, and was not the unassisted gift of nature. The

manner of her arrival, and her dignified bearing before the

assembly, strengthened the belief. A woman who did not feel

something extraneous to her mental self to fall back upon

would be so far overawed by the people and the crisis as not

to retain sufficient resolution for a change of mind.

The sermon ended, the minister wiped his steaming face and

turned down his cuffs, and nods and sagacious glances went

round. Yet many, even of those who had presumably passed the

same ordeal with credit, exhibited gentler judgment than the

preacher's on a tergiversation of which they had probably

recognized some germ in their own bosoms when in the lady's

situation.

For Somerset there was but one scene: the imagined scene of

the girl herself as she sat alone in the vestry. The fervent

congregation rose to sing again, and then Somerset heard a

slight noise on his left hand which caused him to turn his

head. The brougham, which had retired into the field to wait,

was back again at the door: the subject of his rumination

came out from the chapel--not in her mystic robe of white, but

dressed in ordinary fashionable costume--followed as before by

the attendant with other articles of clothing on her arm,

including the white gown. Somerset fancied that the younger

woman was drying her eyes with her handkerchief, but there was

not much time to see: they quickly entered the carriage, and

it moved on. Then a cat suddenly mewed, and he saw a white

Persian standing forlorn where the carriage had been. The

door was opened, the cat taken in, and the carriage drove

away.

The stranger's girlish form stamped itself deeply on

Somerset's soul. He strolled on his way quite oblivious to

the fact that the moon had just risen, and that the landscape

was one for him to linger over, especially if there were any

Gothic architecture in the line of the lunar rays. The

inference was that though this girl must be of a serious turn

of mind, wilfulness was not foreign to her composition: and

it was probable that her daily doings evinced without much

abatement by religion the unbroken spirit and pride of life

natural to her age.

The little village inn at which Somerset intended to pass the

night lay a mile further on, and retracing his way up to the

stile he rambled along the lane, now beginning to be streaked

like a zebra with the shadows of some young trees that edged

the road. But his attention was attracted to the other side

of the way by a hum as of a night-bee, which arose from the

play of the breezes over a single wire of telegraph running

parallel with his track on tall poles that had appeared by the

road, he hardly knew when, from a branch route, probably

leading from some town in the neighbourhood to the village he

was approaching. He did not know the population of Sleeping-

Green, as the village of his search was called, but the

presence of this mark of civilization seemed to signify that

its inhabitants were not quite so far in the rear of their age

as might be imagined; a glance at the still ungrassed heap of

earth round the foot of each post was, however, sufficient to

show that it was at no very remote period that they had made

their advance.

Aided by this friendly wire Somerset had no difficulty in

keeping his course, till he reached a point in the ascent of a

hill at which the telegraph branched off from the road,

passing through an opening in the hedge, to strike across an

undulating down, while the road wound round to the left. For

a few moments Somerset doubted and stood still. The wire sang

on overhead with dying falls and melodious rises that invited

him to follow; while above the wire rode the stars in their

courses, the low nocturn of the former seeming to be the

voices of those stars,

Somerset stopped to examine it. The castle was not

exceptionally large, but it had all the characteristics of its

most important fellows. Irregular, dilapidated, and muffled

in creepers as a great portion of it was, some part--a

comparatively modern wing--was inhabited, for a light or two

steadily gleamed from some upper windows; in others a

reflection of the moon denoted that unbroken glass yet filled

their casements. Over all rose the keep, a square solid tower

apparently not much injured by wars or weather, and darkened

with ivy on one side, wherein wings could be heard flapping

uncertainly, as if they belonged to a bird unable to find a

proper perch. Hissing noises supervened, and then a hoot,

proclaiming that a brood of young owls were residing there in

the company of older ones. In spite of the habitable and more

modern wing, neglect and decay had set their mark upon the

outworks of the pile, unfitting them for a more positive light

than that of the present hour.

He walked up to a modern arch spanning the ditch--now dry and

green--over which the drawbridge once had swung. The large

door under the porter's archway was closed and locked. While

standing here the singing of the wire, which for the last few

minutes he had quite forgotten, again struck upon his ear, and

retreating to a convenient place he observed its final course:

from the poles amid the trees it leaped across the moat, over

the girdling wall, and thence by a tremendous stretch towards

the keep where, to judge by sound, it vanished through an

arrow-slit into the interior. This fossil of feudalism, then,

was the journey's-end of the wire, and not the village of

Sleeping-Green.

There was a certain unexpectedness in the fact that the hoary

memorial of a stolid antagonism to the interchange of ideas,

the monument of hard distinctions in blood and race, of deadly

mistrust of one's neighbour in spite of the Church's teaching,

and of a sublime unconsciousness of any other force than a

brute one, should be the goal of a machine which beyond

everything may be said to symbolize cosmopolitan views and the

intellectual and moral kinship of all mankind. In that light

the little buzzing wire had a far finer significance to the

student Somerset than the vast walls which neighboured it.

But the modern fever and fret which consumes people before

they can grow old was also signified by the wire; and this

aspect of to-day did not contrast well with the fairer side of

feudalism--leisure, light-hearted generosity, intense

friendships, hawks, hounds, revels, healthy complexions,

freedom from care, and such a living power in architectural

art as the world may never again see.

Somerset withdrew till neither the singing of the wire nor the

hisses of the irritable owls could be heard any more. A clock

in the castle struck ten, and he recognized the strokes as

those he had heard when sitting on the stile. It was

indispensable that he should retrace his steps and push on to

Sleeping-Green if he wished that night to reach his lodgings,

which had been secured by letter at a little inn in the

straggling line of roadside houses called by the above name,

where his luggage had by this time probably arrived. In a

quarter of an hour he was again at the point where the wire

left the road, and following the highway over a hill he saw

the hamlet at his feet.