Towers in the Mist Page 3

  But Canon Leigh was not to be turned aside from the search. “I told him to wait for me,” he said, and insisted upon walking all round the chapel, looking behind every tree and even inquiring at the hospital in case Faithful had hidden himself there. The Fellows, feeling it would be impolite to leave a senior member of the University to pursue a vagabond hunt alone, trailed gloomily in the rear, poking half-heartedly at bushes and peering round corners in a growing depression of spirit. . . . They considered that Gervas Leigh made an absurd fuss about trifles. . . . He had the emigré’s outlook, that of a man who has suffered great extremes in his life: persecution and peace, exile and security, destitution and comfort; and whose battered nerves will not again allow him to take the cheerful comfortable view of those who have suffered the extremes of discomfort only in imagination. . . . Yet in spite of themselves the man’s quiet despair affected them, and when he at last gave up the search and led the way towards Oxford and belated nourishment they followed him with a funereal gait and mien most inappropriate to May-Day. . . . That was the worst of Gervas Leigh; such was his intensity of feeling that he dragged everyone else down into the whirlpool of his own emotion. They might like it, or they might not like it, but they were in it up to the neck. It was the secret of his power over men, perhaps, but to those of independent spirit and the opposite way of thinking it was intensely annoying. . . . The Fellows were intensely annoyed and talked little.

  Canon Leigh, overwhelmed by his sense of loss, did not talk at all. That boy had appeared to him in the chapel in a way that he would never forget. He had been standing up to speak to his congregation and had suddenly been visited by one of those moments of acute misery and terror that leap like thieves out of the night upon men of his temperament. He had looked from the prosperous happy folk within the chapel to the outcast lepers beyond the windows, and had found himself once again confronting the awful fact of human suffering and had, as always, gone down before it. After a moment of prostration he had mentally picked himself up again, forced himself to face the terror of the unexplainable, subdue it and pass on, but the misery of his impotence had remained with him. . . . For it seemed to him that suffering built up a barrier between the happy and the unhappy, like the stone wall of the chapel that separated the sick from the whole. The happy might busy themselves with their golden bowls and silver pieces, they might look through the window in pity and fear and congratulate themselves upon their charity, but only one man in a thousand knew how to knock down the wall and of his own will unite himself to those outside; and in spite of a lifetime of struggle Gervas Leigh did not consider himself yet of their number. . . . His warm tidy gown had seemed to hang on him like fire, so burning with shame had been his well fed body, and when he began to speak he had seemed to be listening to his own voice as though it belonged to someone else, noting its cultivation and detesting it. To his fancy the bright crowd filling the chapel had undergone a change and become as they would be when their hours of suffering were upon them; the hues of old age and death had seemed to creep over them, dimming their colors, twisting their figures and tarnishing their beauty. . . . And there was nothing he could do to prevent it. . . . He could do nothing but stand up there in his fine gown and talk in his cultivated voice. His misery had nearly overwhelmed him, while inwardly he prayed that there might be something, something he could do besides talk.

  It had been eased by a sudden realization of response in the crowd before him. He had established contact with someone there. Like all actors and preachers, he knew these moments. Something said, or something only thought, has got there; perhaps it has pierced the consciousness of the audience as a whole, perhaps the heart of one person only. . . . This time Gervas Leigh had known it was one person only. . . . The crowd in front of him had seemed to melt away leaving one figure as the personification of suffering, that of an ugly ragged boy whose face had reflected the misery of his own mind. In a flash he had banished it, forcing his voice to ring out cheerily, mentally reaffirming his own faith in the resurrection of all strength and beauty, even making a movement of his hands as though to show the whole to the sick as a symbol of it; and saw as he did so how the boy’s face cleared and brightened. . . . Sinner that he was that he had allowed his defeatism to last long enough to cloud the outlook of another. . . . In making amends to this boy he would find the answer to his prayer.

  But the boy had disappeared and with him seemed to have gone his chance of lessening by so little the sum of the world’s suffering. As he turned towards Oxford, walking with the limp that had kept his body lagging irritatingly behind his impetuous spirit ever since he had been put to the torture in the days of the late Queen, the sun seemed suddenly dim to him and the new yellow flowers in the meadows sank out of sight.

  6.

  But to Faithful, far on ahead of him in the jostling crowd, they had suddenly blazed out in all their glory.

  After an interval of being dragged along by the crowd in a state of semi-consciousness his powers were momentarily restored to him; he kicked himself free of the boys who held him and pushed his way to the edge of the crowd so that he could see the way that they were going, and so excited was he that for the moment he forgot that he had lost his friend of the chapel.

  They were walking through the fields towards the city. The Oxford that he had seen from the heights of Shotover was now standing in front of him, no longer dwarfed by distance to a miniature city that would sit on the palm of his hand but towering up before his eyes in full-size reality. Towers and spires, many of them still white from the masons’ hands, piled themselves against the blue sky and the golden clouds of early morning in a sort of arrogant loveliness, as though they thought themselves the equals in beauty of the gold and the blue that they blotted out with their whiteness. The old bastioned walls still swept round the city to protect it, looking at first sight one with the earth, rough and gray like her natural rock and stained with the brown and green of her fields and meadows; while the towers and spires were of the sky, formed of her vapors and blown into airy shapes by the winds of heaven. The river curved about walls and towers as though in added protection, and the water meadows, spangled with lady-smocks, buttercups and kingcups, swept right up to the city like the green tide of the sea.

  Close to the bridge that spanned the river, outside the city wall, a tall tower soared up from the block of College buildings beneath it. It stood head and shoulders above the other towers, incomparable in beauty. Exquisitely slender yet very strong, its simple base set firmly upon the earth and its ornamented belfry fretting the sky like wing tips, it stood beside the East Gate like an archangel set to guard the city. . . . For the rest of his life Faithful felt that while Magdalen tower still stood no harm could come to Oxford.

  The May-Day holiday was being celebrated inside the city as well as beyond the walls and as Faithful passed under East Gate all the bells were pealing. I come in a happy hour, he thought, and though he knew the bells were not really for him he grinned in delight.

  Inside the city there was pandemonium, for the morris dancers were in possession of the High Street. They had come down to East Gate to hear the singers on top of Magdalen tower welcome May-Day and now they were preparing to dance round the town. It seemed to Faithful that all the citizens who had not gone out to Saint Bartholomew’s must have assembled in the High Street, and now that the Saint Bartholomew’s crowd was added to the High Street crowd there seemed very little space in which to breathe. He was dimly aware of a street that went winding up into the heart of the town; a gracious street with a leisurely slope and gentle curves; a street that was not itself in a hurry whatever anyone else might be. In honor of the day the kennel in the middle had for once in a way been swept clean of refuse, and the rain in the night had made the cobbles clean and wholesome. On each side of the street were gabled, curly-roofed houses, timbered with oak to which exposure to weather had given a pleasant gray tint, the top stories projecting over the lower and lea
ning outwards in a very friendly sort of way. Today each of them had a branch of may hung out over the front door and out of each window peeped the laughing faces of the little children and the old grandmothers who had not dared to trust themselves in the crowd below.

  In the center of the crowd were the morris dancers in their spring green, with bells tied round their arms and fastened to their garters and shoes, and colored handkerchiefs in their hands. They were attended by their drummers, their pipers and the immortal heroes and heroines of May-Day: Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen of the May, the Fool, the Hobby Horse and the Dragon. They had just finished a dance and were drinking ale and stuffing themselves with cakes and apples that the laughing townspeople threw to them. A cake intended for the Dragon flew into the air over Faithful’s head and he leaped and caught it, stuffing it into his mouth with the greed of an urchin who had not eaten for nearly eighteen hours. The Dragon, flinging back his painted head, rose upon his hind legs and fell upon Faithful with a roar of fury. They rolled over and over on the cobbles, punching each other, while the crowd swayed and shouted above them.

  Suddenly Faithful found himself on his feet again and staggering up the High Street clinging to the Dragon’s tail. He had had his head severely bumped and at first could see little but stars, but he realized that he and the Dragon were at the tail end of the procession and that in front of them the morris dancers were dancing their way uphill into the city. He could see their green threading its way through the holiday doublets and farthingales of scarlet and russet and rose color, purple and azure and gold, while the bells pealed, the pipers piped, the drummers thundered on their drums and a hundred gay handkerchiefs fluttered in the blue air.

  I have come in a happy hour, thought Faithful again, and it seemed to him that the bells were echoing his thought. “A happy hour,” they pealed. “A happy hour. . . . Come in. . . . Come in. . . . Stay long.”

  Chapter 2: A Stirring Housewife

  With merry lark this maiden rose,

  And straight about the house she goes,

  With swapping besom in her hand;

  And at her girdle in a band

  A jolly bunch of keys she wore;

  Her petticoat fine laced before,

  Her tail tucked up in trimmest guise,

  A napkin hanging o’er her eyes,

  To keep off dust and dross of walls,

  That often from the windows falls.

  She won the love of all the house,

  And pranked it like a pretty mouse,

  And sure at every word she spake,

  A goodly curtsy could she make;

  A stirring housewife everywhere,

  That bent both back and bones to bear.

  THOMAS CHURCHYARD.

  1.

  FAITHFUL was still in the chapel of Saint Bartholomew when a little girl and a dog, fast asleep in a big bed at Christ Church, opened their eyes to the new day. Pippit, the Italian greyhound, woke first. He knew quite well that the dawn had come. The great four-poster where he slept with two other little dogs and three little girls was heavily curtained, and inside it was almost as dark as night, but Pippit knew all the same. He could feel the dawn as an itch in the soles of his paws and a twitch in the tip of his tail. His slim body was so tightly wedged between the plump persons of Meg and Joan that he could not move, but he turned his head sideways on the pillow and licked Joan’s chin very gently.

  Joan sighed, wriggled, awoke and sat up very cautiously, so as not to wake the others, for she and her twin sister were the youngest girls of the family and as such were spanked if they made a nuisance of themselves. . . . Little children knew their place in the sixteenth century and kept it lest worse befall.

  “Quiet, Pippit!” she whispered, and gathered him into her arms, holding him tightly squeezed against her plump chest. Pippit, his eyes bulging from his breathless state, did not make a sound, for he too would be thrashed if he made a nuisance of himself.

  Out in the garden a robin called, one clear note like a fairy trumpet, and Joan and Pippit thrilled together. They were of an age, Joan being in her sixth year and Pippit in his second, to feel that a new day was a thing of mysterious wonder. It stretched before them like a fairyland, full of hot scents and colors and unimaginable glories as exciting as a voyage to the Spanish Main or a journey to the city of London. And this particular dawn felt unusually adventurous. The world outside the darkened bed seemed to Joan to be surging up against the curtains with a quickened life; as though she were a little fish in a shell and the tide was coming in to pick her up and carry her to new and wonderful places.

  At thought of this new day she dared to give a pull to the curtain beside her and a shaft of light pierced through the chink and lay across the darkness of the bed like a golden sword. It must be a magic sword, Joan thought, because it was too lovely to be of the earth. She touched it with the tip of her finger but she couldn’t feel anything, and Pippit, smelling it, found to his astonishment that it had no scent. . . . And was annoyed because for some unexplainable reason he had expected it to smell like rabbits. . . . But if it had neither substance nor scent it had a soft light like a lantern’s that showed Joan that the others had safely weathered the dangers of the night and were still there.

  They were carefully arranged like sardines in a tin. Joan and Meg lay at one end of the bed with Pippit between them. At the other end of the bed lay Grace, aged thirteen, with Posy and Spot, two rotund and spotted mongrel dogs, one on each side of her. They all slept excellently, the dogs having been trained to lie perfectly still under the bedclothes with their heads on the pillows, and during the long cold winter nights the nearness of the six little bodies to each other kept them as warm as toast.

  Meg and Joan were as round and rosy and solid as apples, with soft, straight, honey-colored hair and eyes like speedwells, but Grace, though she was as round and compact and blue eyed as her sisters, had dark hair that curled softly round her rosy face and long dark eyelashes that were lying now on her cheeks like delicate feathery fans. . . . Joan, peering at her, thought that Grace looked very pretty when she was asleep, and decided that she liked her best like that; for Grace when awake was a person of forceful character with strong ideas on the bringing up of younger sisters. . . . But nevertheless she was glad Grace was still alive, and she hoped that her elder sister Joyeuce, and her little brother Diccon, who slept in a further four-poster with the domestic cat, were still alive too.

  These children were motherless, for Mistress Leigh had died four years ago soon after the birth of her eighth child and fourth son, young Diccon, and Joyeuce her eldest daughter had been left at the age of twelve to bring up three sisters and four brothers as best she could. . . . And poor Joyeuce was not very practical. . . . Yet so hard had she struggled that at her present age of sixteen she was considered one of the best housewives in sixteenth-century Oxford, a time and a place where housewives were incomparable, and the younger children were as well behaved as was possible under the circumstances.

  These circumstances included a father, Gervas Leigh, Canon of Christ Church, whose learning and piety were very great but whose arm lacked strength when it applied the rod to his offspring; and a terrifying old great-aunt, Dame Susan Cholmeley, who lived with them for no adequate reason that Joyeuce had ever been able to discover and whose tyrannous temper and insatiable curiosity, alternating with fits of indulgence, did nothing to help Joyeuce in the bringing up of her brothers and sisters. . . . She missed her mother more than anyone could possibly understand.

  Blackbird and thrush and tomtit and jenny the wren answered the robin, wishing him good day and joining him in praising the God Who made them, and at each of the four corners of the bed, where the curtains did not quite meet, there was now an upright golden spear of light. Meg, awaking, distinctly saw the four tall angels who stood against the carved bedposts holding the spears; she saw
their huge wings, reaching to the ceiling, and their steady eyes and smiling lips; and then she was silly enough to rub her fists in her eyes and wake right up and there was nothing there but the inside of the bed and her sisters and the dogs. . . . Dull, of course, but possessed of a sweet familiarity. . . . Before she had time to remember that she must not make a noise she had punched them all with ecstatic squeaks of pleasure and turned the inside of the bed into a confusion of legs and tails and yelps and squeals. Joyeuce was rudely awakened and the day began, as so often in the Leigh family, with trouble.

  “Be quiet, children!” cried Joyeuce, bounding from her smaller bed and running barefoot to the bigger one. “Be quiet, you’ll wake Diccon!”

  It was too late, for a loud and sustained roar announced the return of Diccon to life and power and thought, while a tapping on the wall of the adjoining room showed that Great-Aunt was disturbed and mentioning the fact with the aid of her stick. . . . And when Great-Aunt was disturbed in the early morning the rest of the day was a nightmare for Joyeuce. . . . She pulled back the curtains, dragged the twins summarily from their warm nests, turned back their little embroidered night rails and smacked them hard.

  They made no sound, and the merry placidity of their round faces remained unaltered, for they were chastised so often that their behinds had become quite hardened; moreover they had been told so frequently that smacking was the road to heaven that they believed it, and they were very anxious to get to heaven, which was from all accounts a more comfortable place to spend eternity in than hell.

  “Now you’re awake you can all get up,” said Joyeuce. “It’s broad daylight, and broad daylight on a May morning is time to be up and doing.”

  “Why, it’s the first of May!” cried Joan.