I Shall Not Want (2 page)

Mr. Tuke placed his hand on the man's shoulder and his voice rang out like an organ note as he prayed over him; there was not a quaver in his throat . . . “now shall he sit,” he chanted, “at the table of the Most Holy. Among the elect ones shall he sit down.” With that, he filled the little silver cup—it held about half-a-pint—and emptied it over the new disciple. The man's astonished gasp—he had not expected the douching quite so soon—was audible throughout the chapel, and those who had themselves suffered a chilly baptism shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Then, Brother Freeman, urged on by a nudge from Mr. Tuke, shuffled through the water in his felt slippers and clambered up the other side. He was visibly shivering by now, and his air of importance had vanished. He was simply a big man in uncomfortable clothes drenched to the skin and without his glasses. He disappeared out of sight down a staircase on the left, leaving a water trail behind him as Mr. Tuke's voice was heard again.

“Brother Buckley,” he said; and the next man arose.

There was a pause when all the male benches had been emptied, and the indeterminate forms in the female half could be seen stirring with foreboding. There was also a noticeable restlessness in the body of the temple itself at the prospect of the feminine immersions; they excited everyone—even the women—as no amount of male immersions could ever do.

In particular, there was one man seated to the left of the gangway immediately below the tank who was leaning forward with every muscle strained. He had not taken his eyes off the women's benches from the moment the service
began. Even when the whole congregation had been kneeling in prayer, he had still, through clasped fingers, contrived to keep one of the white, shrouded figures in sight. The fact that she was swathed in so much material did not dismay him: he knew by heart the shape of her head, the way the slim neck mounted to support it, the heavy coil of hair that rested there. And under the uncomely coif the pale face was still the same. Once or twice the girl had become aware that she was being watched and had turned towards him. But each time it was her eyes which had dropped first and she had fixed her gaze modestly on the white, billowing back of the woman in front of her.

The young man who was so transfixed was John Marco. Within his Church he was regarded as a model Amosite. He was still young—not yet thirty-four—but there was a consciousness of purpose about him that counted for more than mere age. In his seriousness towards life, he seemed indeed a middle-aged man already; and he was respected as middle-aged men are respected. He was a pew-opener in the Tabernacle and taught the children of the Elders in Sunday School. In his business, too, he was respected; an aura of promotion surrounded him. In God's good time, he had often told himself, the reward would come; and he would have earned himself a place on earth as well as in Heaven. But the reward, the gift for which he had been waiting, still seemed as far away as ever, even though in the Silk and Cotton department of Morgan and Roberts where he worked he now had three young lady assistants.

The coldness and determination of his nature had left their mark upon his face. It was a calculating, close-lipped face. Only the breadth of the forehead gave it strength. And the eyes. These were deep-set and penetrating. In most lights they were almost black, and they held the gaze longer than was comfortable. They were the eyes of a man who would spare no one, least of all himself.

He looked towards the girl on the baptismal bench and the lines of his face softened for a moment. It was remarkable that her beauty should have such power over him. But there
was no disputing it. It was there. In her presence he became meek and humble. Somewhere within the limits of her smile his ambition vanished.

It was only lately that he had known her. She had been shy and diffident at first, as though reluctant to let herself be loved. She had avoided him. In Sunday school where they both taught she had treated him like a stranger, not speaking to him, not noticing him. Not
showing
that she noticed him, at least. For it was impossible for her not to know. There were so many little things he did which betrayed him; he would be the first to hand her a hymn book at prayers; he would come into her class-room during sessions on odd excuses to borrow a wall-map of the Holy Land or an oleograph of the infant Moses among the rushes; he would arrive so early that he was waiting there in the prim, oak-panelled common-room when she came in to take off her gloves; he would time his lessons so that he contrived to meet her in the corridor; he would hang about after school was over so that he could say good night to her as she passed through the gate.

The first time he had ever walked home with her had been little more than a month ago. The memory was vividly imprinted on his mind for two reasons: he had seen her with rain on her hair—and he had committed a sin; he had stolen. The sight of her with the raindrops on her face and on the soft waves of hair that escaped from underneath her hat had affected him strangely; when he had seen that her cheeks were wet, he had been as much moved as if she had been crying. But after he had left her and he had come to his senses again, it was the sin, his sin, that troubled him. It frightened him. It showed that deep within him he was weak and frail and not to be trusted; it wiped out in a single moment the careful portrait of himself that he had been painting in his own mind through all the years.

In the manner of most temptations it had been enticingly simple, even innocent-looking, at the onset. At three-fifty-five on that melancholy Sunday afternoon in November he had still been whole; and by five minutes past he had
succumbed. His Bible class had passed off smoothly enough and the lesson on the fruits of faith in the fathers of old time had been absorbed by the thirty ten-year old children of the Amosite parish. Then, as John Marco, his Bible under his arm, had walked in the direction of the common-room the rain had started. It had not been ordinary rain; it was as though the original flood-gates-of-the-deluge had reopened. On the corrugated-iron-roof of the chapel Sunday school it had drummed and battered. “A sound of abundance of rain,” John Marco had thought. “The heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.” When he had reached the common-room, Miss Kent was already there. She was standing at the window looking out into the small asphalt yard in which the raindrops were bouncing. He had seen her profile as he came in, lit by the yellow glow of the single gas mantle. It was pale and beautiful. The fair hair curled upwards over the temples and, under her hat, ran smoothly across her head into the thick coil behind. She was just drawing on her veil as he approached her.

“The rain's come on very suddenly,” he had said.

“I know,” she had answered. “And I didn't bring an umbrella. I didn't think I should need one.”

He had paused. He had not brought his own umbrella either: his bowler-hat and his neat Sunday overcoat with the deep velvet collar were going to suffer. But as he stood there he had seen Mr. Tuke's umbrella in the corner, a stout, well-set-up umbrella, with a silver band which ran round the cherry wood handle. His throat had contracted and his mouth suddenly gone dry as he looked at it. Admittedly, it was not his; but it could be.

“May I offer you mine as far as your home?” he had asked.

Mary Kent had turned and looked at him, hesitating and awkward as he stood there before her. She could not help noticing that in his way he was a handsome man, virile and wide-shouldered and erect; and in his present awkwardness he looked somehow younger. She had dropped her eyes.

“Thank you,” she had said.

It was only ten minutes' walk to the private entrance of the shop where Miss Kent lived, and they had not talked much on the way. John Marco had been aware only of one thing—that beside him, so close that his elbow almost touched her, was Miss Kent. And had he shielded her gallantly as he walked; his own bowler and the velvet collar had got no protection at all. And even so, the rain, which was blowing in gusts up every side road they passed, found its way to her. He kept glancing sideways at her, noticing as he passed each lamp how young she looked and how pure. It seemed incredible that in London where even the flowers are dirty there should be such a face straight out of Eden.

When they said good-bye he had held her hand for the first time. It was smaller than he would have believed: his own hand engulfed it. But it was very firm and alive. He tingled at the touch of it. Then with a wild, muttered remark about hoping that one evening he might call on her, he had turned away, without waiting for the answer and, still hot from the excitement of having been so close to her, had gone striding back through the gloom of the evening to return what he had stolen.

“Sister Kent.”

Mr. Tuke's words startled John Marco. He had been lost within himself, not noticing the succession of muffled female figures who had padded their way down the narrow wooden steps into the water and up out of the tank on the other side.

His eyes had been fixed on Mary Kent and everything that went on around her seemed misty and unreal. Now that he looked about him again he was surprised to see how unchanged and ordinary everything in the Chapel now looked. There were the same tiers of faces, the same batteries of eyes, even the same heavy breathing of the exhausted Amosites. There was Mr. Tuke, too, as roseate and commanding as ever, standing in the middle of the Jordan Tank. Actually, he was moving a little from side to side,
shifting from one foot to the other. He was both uncomfortable and apprehensive. The verger, after seeing to the supply of towels in the men's disrobing room, had remembered his Minister's injunction about the fire. He had stoked furiously. In the result, mysterious Gulf streams of heat now circulated about Mr. Tuke's feet: he began to wonder if, after having been so nearly frozen to death, he had been preserved only to be boiled alive.

Mary Kent, John Marco noticed, moved with a grace of her own, despite the thick folds of stuff around her. She still looked a woman as she walked. Her head in its white turban was bowed, and she looked young and virginal. He felt his heart hammering as she descended into the water and stood there, chaste and obedient, in front of Mr. Tuke.

She would stand just that way, he told himself, when somehow and against what odds he knew not, he would be there beside her at another and a greater sacrament.

ii

About this time, a shabby, little woman in a rusty overcoat, an attenuated feather-boa round her neck, was endeavouring to push her way into the Tabernacle. It was not easy. The sidesman who met her in the porch tried to dissuade her. It was useless, he said, to hope for a seat even in the gallery; they had been assembling there ever since six o'clock when the door opened.

But it was not a seat that the woman wanted: it was Mr. Tuke himself. She had some urgent private mission of her own, she said; some purpose so secret that it might be confided only to the Minister in person. The sidesman, however, was adamant. His instructions had been to close the doors, and he was not disposed to re-open them. He knew, too, from experience that strange things could happen on Immersion Nights; the occasion affected some people—women especially—very queerly. There were hysterical outbreaks sometimes; confessions, public acts of contrition, importunings of the Almighty. And the woman, now that
he came to study her more closely, certainly looked distraught. She was flushed—evidently she had been running—and she was breathing in quick gasps. Her hair, which was grey and untidy anyhow, had come loose, and now fell about her face in ugly, straggling wisps. He would not have been surprised if there had been drink on her breath as well.

But distraught or not, she was clearly in earnest. There was no stopping her. Every time he stepped in her path to intercept her, she sidled by him like a dog which is difficult to catch. And when he laid his hand on her arm for a moment to reason with her, she threw it off violently, as if the touch had burnt her. It was then that the sickening realisation came to him that, if he were to prevent her at all, he would have to use force; for Mr. Tuke's sake he would have to indulge in a scuffle with a strange woman in the Chapel porch. With that in mind he stepped in front of her for the last time and, with his back up against the green baize door that led into the Tabernacle, planted both feet firmly on the ground and faced her.

The effect was immediate and alarming. The woman eyed him for a moment with an expression of exasperated hatred, and then, raising her umbrella, came straight at him. The sidesman instinctively raised his arm to protect himself; in that instant he really feared that he was going to be struck. But it was not in him that she was interested. Instead, the appalling creature hammered with her umbrella handle on the panel of the door. It was a strong panel, strong but thin. Under the blows, it resounded like a drum. It shook. Everyone in the chapel heard it. Six hundred pairs of eyes were wrenched for a moment from the white figures in the tank, and were directed towards the door; even Mr. Tuke paused for a moment at the words, “among the elect ones shall she sit down,” and looked up, angry and resentful, to see from what direction this rival commotion was coming.

The blows, moreover, had their effect. One of the sidesmen within the body of the hall got hurriedly to his feet and marched towards the door. He was a large man
who had always seen himself as someone who is vital and reliable in an emergency. When, therefore, he found that the door would not budge forward, and when the fusillade of blows was suddenly repeated from outside, he did not hesitate: he wrenched the door open towards him. The result was disastrous. The sidesman outside who had been leaning against the door fell backwards into the arms of his brother from within, and the shabby little woman, her umbrella held across her breast like a sceptre, pushed her way past them both and started to walk up the aisle.

The disturbance by now was complete. No one at all was looking at Mr. Tuke, and everyone was staring at the rusty black back of the intruder. Everyone that is except John Marco. His eyes were still fixed on Mary Kent. As Mr. Tuke raised the cup to anoint her, John Marco closed his eyes for a moment: he was suddenly aware of being present at something that was too sacred to watch, something which belonged alone with God in the innermost Holy.