Chapter IV: ‘it Is a Basilisk Unto Mine Eye.’

Tranquil and monotonous days hung like a cloud upon the little household of Combhaven. The daily round of labour, of eating and drinking in a spare and Spartan fashion, of praying and preaching, went on with pitiless regularity; but of household joys there were none, of family love but little. A gloomy change had come over Joshua Haggard. He was still the enthusiastic apostle of Primitive Methodism; a man ready to go out and preach the Gospel in wild and barbarous places, to be the bearer of glad tidings to those who despised and rejected such messengers, to be hooted by a brutal rabble, if need were, and driven from village to village at peril of his life, and to escape from his persecutors by the skin of his teeth, as John Wesley did, more than once, in his long and difficult career. He was ready to endure all things. Day by day his discourses grew more fervid, but, alas, more darkly fraught with a message which was not glad tidings--the message of an offended and an avenging God. Christ, the Saviour, was almost excluded from the preacher’s exhortations. When he talked of man’s Redeemer it was as of one who turned His face from a sinful world, in which there were very few to be saved. If he had lived in that awful time before the Deluge, when all the earth was peopled with reprobates, he could hardly have been more despairing of humanity’s ultimate destiny.

His flock were in nowise offended by this gloomy view of their spiritual condition, although it implied so mean an opinion of their personal merits and conduct. The more vehemently threatening Joshua Haggard’s sermons became, the more eagerly the sinners crowded to hear him. It was as if they liked to hear themselves upbraided and denounced. Perhaps everybody saw the barbed shaft fly straight to the gold of a neighbour’s heart, and did not feel it rankling in his own. When Joshua talked of the frivolity and extravagance of an unregenerate race, Mrs. Pycroft thought of Mrs. Spradgers’s last new bonnet, which was clearly a superfluous and culpable outlay; such bonnet not being due to Mrs. Spradgers, from an economic point of view, until Advent Sunday, whereas the lady had flaunted it before the disapproving eyes of the flock early in October. If Joshua denounced sensuality and the vile indulgence of earthly desires, Mrs. Pentelow’s thoughts flew at once to the Polwhele family, who were known to have hot suppers--squab-pies and other savoury meats--every night in the week. You could see the grease oozing out of their complexions on warm Sunday afternoons, as if digestion as well as respiration were a function of the skin.

From the day when he gave up humanity for lost, and plainly told them so, Joshua’s popularity increased in a marked degree. The darker his doctrines grew, the better his congregation liked to hear him. It was not milk for babes which they wanted, but strong meat for men of iron thews and sinews, and women with vigorous constitutions and masculine strength of mind. They liked to hear that the devil was among them, at their shoulders, prompting them to evil, fighting for the mastery of their souls.

‘I can see him, I can feel his presence,’ cried Joshua, in a passion of despairing ecstasy. ‘He is among us; his sulphurous breath burns me with a foretaste of eternal fire; his whisper hisses in my ear as the serpent’s hiss stole into the ear of Eve. He will not loose his hold. He is fighting for the possession of my soul; he is striving to drag me down into the pit. What shall I do to be saved? How shall I win the fight against so omnipotent an adversary--omnipotent to destroy, omnipotent to enthral and enchain souls? He wants to people hell, my brethren. He is not content with his victory over willing sinners; the profligates and harlots are too pitiful a prey for him! He wants to have the virtuous man in his net. He would have liked to get John Wesley, or George Whitfield, or William Law. He tried for them, as he is trying for us. He is a fallen angel himself, and it pleases him to entrap men of high estate--to take the Christian in his toils--to make the white scarlet, and the wool like unto blood.’

Naomi heard and shuddered. Was this her father, who had once preached infinite faith in God’s mercy, in Christ’s redeeming grace? He talked now as if mankind were abandoned as a prey to the Evil One, with no guardian and champion to protect and save, no all-merciful Judge to adjust the balance; as if humanity, forgotten by God, were left to struggle single-handed against the devices of the great Enemy. Of our ever-interceding Redeemer, of guardian angels and ministering spirits, and saints who had fought and conquered, Joshua now rarely spoke. He described a world given over to the Prince of Darkness.

Nor was this the only change which Naomi beheld with remorseful grief, believing herself in somewise to blame for this gloomy transformation. In his home as well as in his pulpit the minister was a new man. It was not in his nature to become a domestic tyrant. He interfered with no one’s liberty or comfort; but he sat in his domestic circle like a statue, he banished all cheerfulness by his silent presence, he breathed an atmosphere of gloom.

Even Judith regretted this alteration in her brother’s temper, though she had been apt in happier days to think him far too easy and indulgent a father. She, like Naomi, had her moments of remorse, thinking the change her work. Better perhaps if she had held her tongue about that foolish young man, and let time and Providence cure him of his folly. Naomi’s marriage would have been a feather in the family cap; and although Miss Haggard had been disposed to begrudge her niece this exaltation, it was a trial to receive the condolences of friends whose affected sympathy thinly disguised their inward satisfaction. Yes, taking all things into consideration, Judith was sorry she had not held her peace. She had acted for the best, of course--when had she ever done otherwise?--but the worst had come of it instead of the best.

Cynthia bore her cross and made no murmur, and had neither kindness nor pity for any one except James Haggard, who thought it a hard thing that his pretty young stepmother should lead so dreary a life. She had not even the business and the delightful consciousness of increasing profits to console her, nor the power to restore exhausted nature with a surreptitious handful of figs or pudding-raisins when the dinner had been more than usually Spartan. James was sorry for the ‘poor little woman,’ as he called her, and was kind to her always, for which grace she rewarded him with heartfelt affection.

But her husband--the teacher, master, and friend, whom she had loved so dearly, reverenced so deeply, and to whom, even when weak enough to pity and return Oswald’s romantic passion, she had always rendered homage and affection--had withdrawn his favour from her; he loved her no longer; he was doubtless sorry that he had linked himself to so weak and useless a creature.

‘What am I in his life?’ she asked herself, in deepest despondency. ‘I cannot even keep his house for him; others do that. I sit by his fireside a useless intruder. He will not let me share in his higher life; if I ask him about the books he reads, or talk to him about our religion, I can see a disdainful sneer upon his lip. Sometimes I think that he is getting to hate me.’

This thought was poison. Cynthia searched her life to see in what article of it she had offended her husband, and could discover no cause for his anger. That she had erred in letting Oswald love her, in letting her heart go out to him, she knew, and had repented of her sin with many tears; and, having bidden the sinner an eternal farewell, deemed that error a thing of the past, repented of, and in somewise atoned. She did not believe that jealousy was the cause of her husband’s estrangement. Jealousy was allied to love, and her great fear was that Joshua hated her. She did not know that there is a kind of jealousy, and that which has its root in the deepest love, which puts on the garb of hate, and has not seldom culminated in murder--such jealousy as made Othello strike Desdemona before the Venetian emissaries, the passion of strong natures.

She endured her husband’s unkindness with a sweet submission which might have softened a sterner temper than Joshua’s, and would assuredly have melted him but for the corroding influence of a sleepless jealousy--jealousy of the past, jealousy of a ghost--for the departed Oswald was nothing more than a shade.

Joshua had said no word to his daughter about Oswald’s letter. All through that day on which Cynthia went to Matcherly Common, Naomi had been full of anxiety and fear. How would her father act? Would his anger against Oswald take any violent shape? That was assuredly a contingency to be dreaded, an evil she had not foreseen when she gave Joshua the letter. But passion is fatally blind. The harm being done, she could see the possible danger plainly enough.

All through the long summer day she was restless and watchful, fearing she knew not what, or rather not daring to tell herself what she feared. The morning went by very quietly: Cynthia sitting in the parlour, sewing; Naomi busy about her usual household labours. She went in and out of the parlour a good many times, and always found Cynthia in the same attitude, working assiduously.

Had Joshua spoken to his wife about the letter?

Yes; Naomi thought he had. There was one bright spot of colour on Cynthia’s pale cheek that told of agitation studiously suppressed. Once when Naomi spoke to her she answered absently. She must know something about the letter, Naomi thought.

After dinner Cynthia went up to her bedroom, and came down in five minutes with her bonnet on. It was a busy afternoon in the shop. Aunt Judith and Jim had returned to their duties, and Joshua had gone out. There was only Naomi in the parlour when Cynthia came down ready for her walk.

‘I am going for a long walk, Naomi,’ she said. ‘I shall be home by tea-time.’

There was no fear of Naomi offering to accompany her stepmother. They had not walked together since Oswald Pentreath’s departure. Day by day the gulf had been widening.

This walk of Cynthia’s set Naomi wondering. Could she be gone to meet Oswald? That seemed of all things most unlikely. Joshua had the letter; it was Joshua who would keep the appointment. And then, O God! who would tell what might be the issue of the meeting!

Naomi went about the house and the garden like a wandering spirit for the next hour, and then it seemed to her that this suspense was beyond endurance; she must follow her father to the old shaft--she made very sure that he had gone there--she must be on the spot or near it, whatever harm was to come. O, why had she given him that shameful letter? Blind and wicked rage which prompted so wild an act!

‘Did I want to make my father’s life miserable, or to bring evil upon Oswald?’ she cried. ‘Yes, I was wicked enough for anything yesterday; I was mad with anger and jealousy.’

She put on her bonnet, and went out, unseen even by Sally, who was washing in the cool brick-floored back kitchen. The sun was blazing upon the neat little town. The white houses were of a dazzling brightness, the sweet-williams and red roses shone like spots of fire, the ruddy glow of the forge looked pale against the sun-glory. Naomi took no heed of the heat; she walked rapidly to the end of the lane that led to Matcherly, and then ran along the shaded narrow way till she came to the edge of the wood. Here she paused for a little, breathless and exhausted. They would be coming homewards by this time, she thought--Cynthia and Oswald, and he who had gone to watch their meeting--or to disturb it. She might come face to face with her false lover. Her heart beat wildly at the thought.

There was one central path through the wood, a clearly defined cattle track, which she felt assured would be taken by any one going in the direction of the old shaft. It was easy to skirt this broad grassy track by a narrow footway that wound through the underwood, and among the smooth silvery beech boles and the rugged greenish-gray oak trunks. The path ran like a thread through the bracken. By this narrow way Naomi went swiftly, till she came to the rising ground that sloped upwards to Matcherly Common. Here she chose her post of espial behind a sturdy old oak, bearded with gray lichen and half strangled with ivy--a Methuselah of trees, from which Time had lopped limb after limb, but which still held numerous arms aloft, like a woodland Briareus, and seemed to threaten or denounce surrounding Nature. So one might fancy some prophetic Druid transformed into a tree, dumbly prophesying evil to come upon the earth.

Sheltered by this broad trunk, which stood waist high in hawthorn and bracken, Naomi waited to see her father and Oswald pass by, and to be assured that all was well with them. They would hardly fail to return by the cattle track; it was the only direct path to Combhaven, and on either side the underwood was too thick and wild for the perambulation of anything but the furred and feathered inhabitants of the forest.

She waited for what seemed a long and weary time; then, a little after four o’clock, she saw Cynthia go by, walking slowly. She was very pale, and the white wan cheeks bore the trace of tears; but she had a resigned look, as of one whose soul is not lost to peace.

‘She has been to meet him,’ thought Naomi. ‘And yet she does not look like a shameless sinner.’ Then she began to pray that Joshua might not have seen that clandestine unholy meeting--that he might have been spared the temptation to any evil act.

The time she had to wait for her father’s coming hung heavily, so great had become that burden of nameless dread. Yet it was but half an hour after Cynthia had gone by that her husband came slowly along the forest glade, and passed within a yard of the tree behind which his daughter was watching.

She rose as he approached, and stood leaning against the bulky old trunk, gazing at her father’s face as she had never looked before at anything under God’s heaven. Never had any other spectacle so thrilled, so frozen her being as this one view of a familiar countenance. To have looked in the face of the dead would have been less awful.

White to the lips, and with big drops of sweat upon brow and cheek, the mouth rigid, the dark eyes almost hidden under the lowering brows--Joshua, the Christian preacher, the man sure of election and grace, passed under the flickering lights and shadows, like some horrible vision of sin and vengeance--passed, and was gone. Naomi leaned against the tree, her hands clasped, her eyes gazing at the empty air, the shaft of afternoon sunlight upon which a million atoms, each a life, danced and sparkled; yet still seeing that blanched and awful face--the face of a man who had come straight from some hideous death-scene; the face of a man burdened with the secret of a crime.

‘O God!’ cried Naomi, with an overmastering despair, ‘why didst Thou create us, predestined sinners, judged, doomed before we were born! The best of us, the most earnest, the truest, the noblest, given over a prey to the Evil One! My father, even my father, lowest, blackest of sinners!’

She stood in the same attitude, supported by the mossy trunk; stood as in a trance, and saw the sunlight dip lower behind the black branches and change from gold to rose, from rose to crimson, from deepest red to tenderest purple. She watched these changes in a kind of semi-consciousness and a strange feeling of uncertainty as to her own identity; this Naomi Haggard leaning against a tree seeming to her--the actual entity--to be a forlorn and stricken creature sorely to be pitied. She pitied herself and was sorry for herself with a half-scornful compassion. And so she waited, in a dreamy watchfulness, till nature gave way, and she sank, worn out, into a heap at the foot of the tree.

Here, faint and exhausted, but not unconscious, she still watched, till thick night came down upon the wood, and she heard the owls hooting and saw the rabbits running within a few feet of her resting-place. Only when the darkness closed round her did she rise and go home, too familiar with the wood to lose her way even amidst the shadows of night. She went homeward slowly, caring little who might question or wonder at her absence.

And in all the time of her watch she had not seen Oswald Pentreath go by.