To the mutter of thunder he followed the path to its ending at a dilapidated iron bridge. Once there had been a grand old bridge here, crowned by a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, and a paved way from the North Gate had crossed it and continued into the fen. This was the way that Prior Hugh’s monks had followed on the night of storm when they had left the city. Of this bridge there was nothing left now but the stone piers that held up the rusty ironwork of the new bridge. As the North Gate came down in the world, and a bridge to the east of the city came into more general use, the old north bridge had gradually fallen into disrepair. The Dean’s plan for his garden had included the taking away of the iron bridge and its replacement with a stone one, simple and strong, with a parapet of the right height for the accommodation of fishermen. For the people loved to fish here. Draping themselves over the iron railing of the present bridge was one of the few innocent pleasures of the men and small boys of Swithin’s Lane.
But there was no one here today and the Dean was alone as he stood on the crown of the bridge and looked down at the rough drove that followed the track of the old road. Between wind-twisted hedges of crab apple and hawthorn it led waveringly from the bridge to the village that still stood out so courageously against the narrowing band of golden sky. Nowadays more modern roads linked the villages and the monks’ way was overgrown and deserted. But not today, for the Dean could see a lonely figure coming toward him, now seen where the way opened out, now hidden as the hedges drew closer. He came as unsteadily as the way, wavering from side to side as though drunk or exhausted. In the whole terrible landscape he seemed the only living creature, as though he were the last man left to face alone the doom of all things. As the first flash of lightning lit up the stretch of the fen, so that it seemed for a blinding instant as though every road and every twig were simultaneously visible, proclaiming aloud the preciousness of its identity before the darkness overwhelmed it, the Dean started forward from the bridge. That wavering figure was not Job, he knew, but it had the loneliness of Job and he could not leave it to face the doom alone.
12. King Lear
1.
THE wind and rain came together as the Dean stumbled forward over the tussocks of rough grass, driving into his face and nearly blinding him. The windings of the drove hid the other man, he could see nothing but the sheeting rain and the stripped hawthorn boughs tossing in the wind. It was like struggling in a trough of waves, and took him back in thought to the days before the dikes had been built, when in a great storm the sea would come raging in over the fen to join the overflowing waters of river and stream. Men had struggled then somewhat as he was struggling now, battling their way through rising water with children on their backs or lambs under their arms, trying to reach rising ground and safety before the waters covered the earth. But he had no more than rain and mud to contend with and was hampered only by his ridiculous top hat and flapping cloak. He felt a quirk of amusement at the thought of the absurdity of his appearance. A poor sort of parody of those courageous shepherds of old days! And with his poor eyesight he was likely to pass the lost sheep in the drove and never even see it. He battled on and presently ceased to feel amused, for he was feeling extremely ill. The thudding of his heart made it difficult for him to get his breath. He stopped, supporting himself on his stick. Fool that he was to go in for such capers at his age!
“Are you mad?” asked a hoarse high-pitched voice, and he was aware of a bony hand pressed against his chest, gripping the clasp of his cloak. Peering through the deluge he saw a tall dripping skeleton or scarecrow reared up before him, supporting itself by its grip on his chest. He seemed to see dark rags flapping about the bones of the thing, dark pits for eyes and mouth. But the hoarse voice was human. “ ‘O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!’ ”
The Dean was in no state to support the crazy creature. They were in danger of both falling headlong. There was a slight slackening of the rain and he saw to his right an old hawthorn tree whose branches, bent all one way by the prevailing wind from the sea, gave some hope of slight shelter if they sat on the bank beneath it. He steered them both toward it and they fell, rather than sat, upon the bank. The hand that had gripped the Dean’s cloak fell away and was clasped by the other in an attitude of prayer. Holding them before him, his head lifted in a queer sort of proud ecstasy, he prayed in a voice that was suddenly strong and resonant.
“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this!”
His voice broke and he said uncertainly, “I don’t remember. How does it go on? How did he finish his prayer? Do you know?”
The Dean finished it for him.
“Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said the man, and lifted one hand, dripping with water, in a childish gesture to his face, as though he thought to wipe away the raindrops that were trickling down his grooved cheeks and plastering his few wisps of white hair like seaweed to his bald pate. The Dean felt for his handkerchief, not too wet because it had been in his coat pocket beneath the shelter of his cloak, and handed it pitifully to the lunatic. Yet he doubted if he was mad. He doubted if lunatics could quote Shakespeare with such accuracy. An eccentric, rather, an eccentric who had suffered greatly.
“I think the storm is passing,” he said gently. “These autumn storms are violent but soon over.”
A sudden gleam of sunshine glinted like a sword through the rain, then vanished again. But it was lighter and the wind had dropped.
“I have been to see Letitia,” said the man. “I always go to see Letitia on a Saturday.”
The Dean found his eyeglasses and putting them on turned to have a good look at his companion. He was an old man, tall and thin and almost as bent as the ancient hawthorn that sheltered them. His eyes were blue and bewildered, his mouth hung a little open and raindrops dripped from the point of his thin nose. He wiped them off with the Dean’s handkerchief but the hawthorn was not an adequate protection from the downpour and to his distress they gathered again. The Dean was better off. His top hat, tipped a little forward as usual, made a gutter for the rain. Where the bend came in front it shot off to the ground as though through one of the waterspouts on the Cathedral roof, leaving his face dry.
“Your daughter?” asked the Dean.
“My wife.”
“Does she live in Willowthorn?”
“Not now. She’s dead. I go to see her on a Saturday. I sit on her grave and we talk.”
The Dean looked again at his companion. He saw now that his greenish rags of clothes might once have been decent clerical black, and the sodden wisps of white under his chin a parson’s bands. From the first there had seemed to him something vaguely familiar about the figure. Who was he? Suddenly he remembered Augustus Penny, the vicar of St. Peter’s in the market place. He had only seen the old man once or twice, for he seldom attended clerical gatherings and had never accepted any of his invitations to the Deanery, but the Dean remembered that in years gone by, before he himself had come to the city, Augustus Penny had been Vicar of Willowthorn. He also remembered being told that Penny was a recluse, and odd, and that he had felt a desire to call upon him, but he had not done so because he feared to intrude on his privacy. For this he now blamed himself. The reasons for seclusion were many. One should find out why a man is alone before one lets him alone, for he may not want to be alone. This he had not done.
“Mr. Penny,” said the Dean, “I believe it has stopped raining. We are both old men. Shall we help each other home?”
Mr. Penny showed no surprise at
being recognized; age, bewilderment and suffering had brought him long past the point of ever being surprised at anything. He was never quite sure these days whether he was living in memory, dreams, this world or the other. The frontiers were not clearly distinguishable now. There had been a time when he could lose himself in memories of the past and then with a deliberate exercise of the will leave them and come back to the present. He had known then when he was dreaming and when he was awake, and whether the glow of comfort that warmed and reassured him was that of heaven or the kitchen range. It was difficult to be sure now except when he was doing his work. Reading the liturgy, ministering the sacraments, teaching the children, preaching, doing what he could for those who suffered, that lifelong routine still held and was still his life line. It had always been for him the utterance of his love of God, the expression in works of his adoration and delight. He would hold on to it while he lived. He would praise his God while he had his being. Suddenly he struggled to his feet, feeling the tug of the life line. He was needed at home. Someone needed him.
“I am needed at home,” he said.
“Our way lies together,” said the Dean. “Could you help me up? I do not seem to be able to get a proper purchase in this mud. You are nimbler than I am. Much obliged. Much obliged.”
Augustus Penny was surprisingly strong and had swung the Dean to his feet in a trice. “Ah, see there!” he cried in his high-pitched voice. “The waters have abated. The dove has found rest for the sole of her foot. She has not returned.”
The storm had passed and the whole fen lay bathed in spent sunlight. Every stream and stretch of water among the rushes, which had been whipped and tormented by the storm, lay quiet now, reflecting the piled masses of white and silver clouds that floated like swans on the far deep pools of the sky. Every twig was strung with sparkling crystal drops, and every drop had a rainbow caught in its heart. The Dean could not see these rainbows, he could only see the dazzle of light, but Augustus Penny could see them and he laughed and clapped his hands like a child. And then looking back up the drove he saw something else. “Look there! Look there!” he cried, pointing a lean forefinger at what he saw. “That’s where she is. That’s it! That’s it!”
The Dean looked too and this time he saw something of what Mr. Penny saw, for his long-distance sight was better than his near sight. From this point onward the drove ran fairly straight, a green way narrowing to vanishing point in what looked like a floating silver cloud, so ethereal in the evening light was the grove of willow trees that grew about the lower slopes of Willowthorn. Above this shimmering cloud rose a small dreamlike city, as delicate as though carved out of aquamarine or opal, roof rising above roof to cluster about the church that rose to the sky like a lifted sword, with a bright point of light twinkling at the summit of the spire. It looked far away, not close at hand as it had appeared before the storm. It had looked then attainable by living man, but not now. They would not get there now. Not until they were as utterly changed as the city. He took the bemused Mr. Penny gently by the arm and turned him around to face the other way, toward the mortal city where they must finish it out.
“You are needed at home,” he reminded Mr. Penny.
“I don’t remember,” murmured Mr. Penny. “Who is it? Did I tell you anyone wanted me at home? Generally I’m not much needed, you know. Not now. Are you?”
“No,” said the Dean, and the thought of Elaine was a hard pain at his heart. “No, not much needed. But we have to finish it out.”
2.
There was still a bank of dark cloud low down in the west and the sun soon dropped behind it. By the time they reached the bridge it was dusk, but the Dean could make out the soft white blur of the floating swans and the arrowed gleam of darting moor hens. The birds had come back. He heard a cock crow and a dog bark. The terror was over and a cool breath came from the face of the river. It was so dusky, and there were so few people about, that no one recognized the two old men as wet and exhausted they struggled up the steep streets of the city toward the market place. As they went there was another shower of rain but they were already so wet that it could not make them much wetter. Five o’clock struck as they reached the market place and the Dean was astonished to find it still so early. He seemed to have lived through a lifetime since he had left home after luncheon. And he had accomplished nothing.
“There won’t be a fire at home, you know,” said Mr. Penny gloomily. “Not till I light it. No fire.”
The Dean had intended to leave Mr. Penny at his door but now he changed his mind. He would go in. There must surely be someone to be found who would light a fire for Mr. Penny and dry his clothes. He could not go back to his own luxurious home and leave him comfortless.
St. Peter’s vicarage was behind the church and was reached by a narrow lane that led off the market place between the church and the Swan and Duck. “This is my church,” said Mr. Penny proudly, pausing at the entrance to the lane and looking up at the weight of darkness beside him and above him. St. Peter’s was not a large church but with its low square tower and storm-gray buttressed walls it had an air of sturdiness and strength, and in this duskiness looked less like a church than a great rock upon the seashore. The deserted market place, with the wet cobbles reflecting the last of the afterglow as ripples do on calm water, and the street lamps like the riding lights of ships at anchor, seemed to the Dean to be the sea lapping gently against the worn stone.
“Shall we go in?” whispered Mr. Penny. “I hide the key in the porch.”
The Dean could see the porch, a pitch-black cave in the storm-gray rock. The beautiful gold-flecked water washed into it and out again, but silently. He felt he could not presume to go inside. He saw a broken marble floor through which there welled up a clear cool spring that mirrored a few stars, for there was a rent in the roof. The water was living so that the stars trembled. There was a freshness in the air. One could not go in.
“Another day,” said Mr. Penny, disappointed. “We’ll go home now.” They went on down the lane into a garden overgrown with trees and saw through the tangled boughs a gaunt house where all the windows but one were darkened. In that one there was the wink and glow of firelight. “It is lighted,” said Mr. Penny. “There’s someone there. How very odd.”
“We will understand when we go in,” said the Dean. He still thought he had better go in. It might be that Mr. Penny had lighted the fire himself before he went out, and had forgotten what he had done. In that case there was no one to see that he changed his wet clothes.
Mr. Penny stumbled up the cracked steps to the battered old front door, from which the paint had long since peeled away, and pushed it open. Then with an uncertain stumbling courtesy, the remnant of something that had once been sure and proud, he took off an imaginary hat and holding it against his breast with his left hand gestured with his right toward his home. “Please to come in, sir. You are very welcome. Just a glass of wine and a biscuit. I am honored, sir. A glass of wine and a biscuit.”
His voice trailed off uncertainly and the Dean saw that he must go in first. The hall was a vast chill darkness, crossed by a thin beam of light from a door that was not quite closed. It illumined a curtain of cobwebs, swaying in the draft, but nothing else. The sickly-sweet smell of mildew, unaired rooms, dust and mice made the Dean’s head swim and for a moment he was utterly bewildered. “Most extraordinary!” he said to himself.
For some while now he had found it hard to remember that this was the city, and that not a mile from him Garland was washing up the tea things and Elaine was sitting by the fire with her embroidery. The silence of birds by the bridge, the drenching storm and the old mad king clutching at his chest, the celestial city at the end of the long green way, the riding lights of the ships and the hidden place where the living water welled up through the broken floor, and now this house of windy darkness. Who could have believed that they were there beneath the crust of things? Life had taken on a strange richness since Mr. Peabody had sidled like a terrifi
ed crab into his study, had lifted the thin gold shell of his watch and shown him the hidden watch cock. Until now life for him had meant the aridity of earthly duty and the dews of God. Now he was aware of something else, a world that was neither earth nor heaven, a heartbreaking, fabulous, lovely world where the conies take refuge in the rainbowed hills and in the deep valleys of the unicorns the songs are sung that men hear in dreams, the world that the poets know and the men who make music. Job’s world. Isaac’s world. The autumn song of the robin could let you in, or a shower of rain or a hobbyhorse lying on a green lawn.
The strange dark hall was flooded with light, and in the oblong splendor of the opened door stood a beautiful boy. His dark hair was tumbled on his forehead and his broad fine-boned face was fiercely flushed across the cheekbones. His eyes, dark and brilliant, swept the hall with that effortless certainty of the young who see so well that they are in no doubt about what they see. His head was flung back, his hands raised to each side of the door, and the garment of soft olive green that he wore belted about him flowed to the ground. His figure was defiant, glorious, and for a moment or two the Dean placed it with the riding lights and the broken marble floor, something he would not have seen a month ago. “Sir! Sir!” cried the boy, but still it took him a few minutes to identify this young god with Job attired in a woman’s faded velvet dressing gown, and a few moments more to realize that the change was the change from normal health to the defiant courage that will not submit to fever and pain. Job had guts. The Dean took two long strides across the hall and put his arms around him that he might take his taut hands from the sides of the door. Job sagged for a moment, tried for his footing and failed to find it. The Dean picked him up, feeling his body burning hot under the dressing gown and as surprisingly light as the body of a dead bird can feel, held upon the palm in the days of snow and frost-bound earth. In his mood of exaltation he did not find it hard to carry him to the old sofa with broken springs that stood at right angles to the fire.