_ PART I. THE GATES OF BRASS CHAPTER XIII. THE VISION
It was growing very dark in the little church, almost too dark to see the carving of the choir-stalls, and Avery gave a short sigh of weariness.
She had so nearly finished her task that she had sent the children in to prepare for tea, declaring that she would follow them in five minutes, and then just at the last a whole mass of ivy and holly, upon which the boys had been at work, had slipped and strewn the chancel-floor. She was the only one left in the church, and it behooved her to remove the litter. It had been a hard day, and she was frankly tired of the very sight and smell of the evergreens.
There was no help for it, however. The chancel must be made tidy before she could go, and she went to the cupboard under the belfry for the dustpan and brush which the sexton's wife kept there. She found a candle also, and thus armed she returned to the scene of her labours at the other end of the dim little church. She tried to put her customary energy into the task, but it would not rise to the occasion, and after a few strenuous seconds she paused to rest.
It was very still and peaceful, and she was glad of the solitude. All day long she had felt the need of it; and all day long it had been denied her. She had been decorating under Miss Whalley's superintendence, and the task had been no light one. Save for the fact that she had gone in Mrs. Lorimer's stead, she had scarcely undertaken it. For Miss Whalley was as exacting as though the church were her own private property. She deferred to the Vicar alone, and he was more than willing to leave the matter in her hands. "My capable assistant" was his pet name for this formidable member of his flock, and very conscientiously did Miss Whalley maintain her calling. She would have preferred to direct Mrs. Lorimer rather than the mother's help, but since the latter had firmly determined to take the former's place, she had accepted her with condescension and allotted to her all the hardest work.
Avery had laboured uncomplainingly in her quiet, methodical fashion, but now that the stress was over and Miss Whalley safely installed in the Vicarage drawing-room for tea, she found it impossible not to relax somewhat, and to make the most of those few exquisite moments of sanctuary.
She was very far from expecting any invasion of her solitude, and when after a moment or two she went on with her sweeping she had no suspicion of another presence in the dark building. She had set herself resolutely to finish her task, and so energetic was she that she heard no sound of feet along the aisle behind her.
Some unaccountable impulse induced her to pause at length and still kneeling, brush in hand, to throw a backward glance along the nave. Then it was that she saw a man's figure standing on the chancel-steps, and so unexpected was the apparition that her weary nerves leapt with violence out of all proportion to the event, and she sprang to her feet with a startled cry that echoed weirdly through the empty place. Then with a rush of self-ridicule she recognized Piers Evesham. "Oh, it is you!" she said. "How stupid of me!"
He came straight to her with an air of determination that would brook no opposition and took the brush out of her hand. "That's not your job," he said. "You go and sit down!"
She stared at him in silence, trying to still the wild agitation that his unlooked-for coming had raised in her. He was wearing a heavy motor-coat, but he divested himself of this, and without further parley bent himself to the task of which he had deprived her.
Avery sat down somewhat limply on the pulpit-stairs and watched him. He was very thorough and far brisker than she could have been. In a very few minutes the litter was all collected, and Piers turned round and looked back at her across the dim chancel.
"Feeling better?" he said.
She did not answer him. "What made you come in like that?" she asked.
He replied to the question with absolute simplicity. "I've just brought Gracie home again. She asked me to tea in the schoolroom, but you weren't there, and they said I should find you here, so I came to fetch you."
He moved slowly across and stood before her, looking down into her tired eyes with an odd species of relentlessness in his own.
"It's an infernal shame that you should work so hard!" he said, with sudden resentment. "You're looking fagged to death."
Avery smiled a little. "I like hard work," she said.
"Not such as this!" said Piers. "It isn't fit for you. Why can't the lazy hound do it himself?"
Her smile passed. "Hush, Piers!" she said. "Not here!"
He glanced towards the altar, and she thought a shade of reverence came into his face for a moment. But he turned to her again immediately with his flashing, boyish smile.
"Well, it isn't good for you to overwork, you know, Avery. I hate to think of it. And you have no one to take care of you and see you don't."
Avery got up slowly. Her own face was severe in the candlelight, but before she could speak he went lightly on.
"Would you like me to play you something before we go? Or are you too tired to blow? It's rather a shame to suggest it. But it's such a grand opportunity."
Avery turned at once to the organ with a feeling of relief. As usual she found it very hard to rebuke him as he deserved.
"Yes, I will blow for you," she said. "But it must be something short, for we ought to be going."
She sat down and began to blow.
Piers took his place at once at the organ. It was characteristic of him that he never paused for inspiration. His fingers moved over the keys as it were by instinct, and in a few moments Avery forgot that she was tired and dispirited with the bearing of many burdens, forgot all the problems and difficulties of life, forgot even her charges at the Vicarage and the waiting schoolroom tea, and sat wrapt as it were in a golden mist of delight, watching the slow spreading of a dawn such as she had never seen even in her dreams. What he played she knew not, and yet the music was not wholly unfamiliar to her. It waked within her soul harmonies that vibrated in throbbing response. He spoke to her in a language that she knew. And as the magic moments passed, the wonderful dawn so grew and deepened that it seemed to her that all pain, all sorrow, had fallen utterly away, and she stood on the threshold of a new world.
Wider and wider spread the glory. There came to her an overwhelming sense of greatness about to be revealed. She became strung to a pitch of expectancy that was almost anguish, while the music swelled and swelled like the distant coming of a vast procession as yet unseen. She stood as it were on a mountain-top before the closed gates of heaven, waiting for the moment of revelation.
It came. Just when she felt that she could bear no more, just when the wild beating of her heart seemed as if it would choke her, the music changed, became suddenly all-conquering, a paean of triumph, and the gates swung back before her eager eyes.
In spirit she entered the Holy Place, and the same hand that had admitted her lifted for her the last great Veil. For one moment of unutterable rapture such as no poor palpitating mortal body could endure for long, the vision was her own. She saw Heaven opened....
And then the Veil descended, and the Gates closed. She came down from the mountain-top, leaving the golden dawn very far behind her. She opened her eyes in darkness and silence.
Someone was bending over her. She felt warm hands about her own. She heard a voice, sudden and imploring, close to her.
"Avery! Avery darling! For God's sake, dear, speak to me! What is it? Are you ill?"
"Ill!" she said, bewildered.
His hands gripped hers impetuously. "You gave me such a fright," he said. "I thought you'd fainted. Did you faint?"
"Of course not!" she said slowly. "I never faint. Why did you stop playing?"
"I didn't," said Piers. "At least, you stopped first."
"Oh, did I forget to blow?" she said. "I'm sorry."
She knew that she ought not to suffer that close clasp of his, but somehow for the moment she was powerless to resist it. She sat quite still, gazing out before her with a curious sense of powerlessness.
"You're tired out," said Piers softly. "It was a shame to keep you here. I'm awfully sorry, dear."
She stirred at that, beginning to seek for freedom. "Don't, Piers!" she said. "It--it isn't right of you. It isn't fair."
He knelt swiftly down before her. His voice came quick and passionate in answer. "It can't be wrong to love you," he said. "And you will never be any the worse for my love. Let me love you, Avery! Let me love you!"
The words rushed out tempestuously. His forehead was bowed upon her hands. He became silent, and through the silence she heard his breathing, hard and difficult,--the breathing of a man who faces stupendous odds.
With an effort she summoned her strength. Yet she could not speak harshly to him, for her heart went out in pity. "No, you mustn't, Piers," she said. "You mustn't indeed. I am years older than you are, and it is utterly unsuitable. You must forget it. You must indeed. There! Let us be friends! I like you well enough for that."
He uttered a laugh that sounded as though it covered a groan. "Yes, you're awfully good to me," he said. "But you're not--in one sense--anything approaching my age, and pray Heaven you never will be!"
He raised his head and looked at her. "And you're not angry with me?" he said, half wistfully.
No, she was not angry. She could not even pretend to be. "But please be sensible!" she begged. "I know it was partly my fault. If I hadn't been so tired, it wouldn't have happened."
He got to his feet, still holding her hands. "No; you're not to blame yourself," he said. "What has happened was bound to happen, right from the very beginning. But I'm sorry if it has upset you. There is no reason why it should that I can see. You are better now?"
He helped her gently to rise. They stood face to face in the dim candlelight, and his eyes looked into hers with such friendly concern that again she had it not in her heart to be other than kind.
"I am quite well," she assured him. "Please forget my foolishness! Tell me what it was you played just now!"
"That last thing?" he said. "Surely you know that! It was Handel's _Largo_."
She started. "Of course! I remember now! But--I've never heard it played like that before."
A very strange smile crossed his face. "No one but you would have understood," he said. "I wanted you to hear it--like that."
She withdrew her hands from his. Something in his words sent a curious feeling that was almost dread through her heart.
"I don't--quite--know what you mean," she said.
"Don't you?" said Piers, and in his voice there rang a note of recklessness. "It's a difficult thing to put into words, isn't it? I just wanted you to see the Open Heaven as I have seen it--and as I shall never see it again."
"Piers!" she said.
He answered her almost fiercely. "No, you won't understand. Of course you can't understand. You will never stand hammering at the bars, breaking your heart in the dark. Wasn't that the sort of picture our kindly parson drew for us on Sunday? It's a pretty theme--the tortures of the damned!"
"My dear Piers!" Avery spoke quickly and vehemently. "Surely you have too much sense to take such a discourse as that seriously! I longed to tell the children not to listen. It is wicked--wicked--to try to spread spiritual terror in people's hearts, and to call it the teaching of religion. It is no more like religion than a penny-terrible is like life. It is a cruel and fantastic distortion of the truth."
She paused. Piers was listening to her with that odd hunger in his eyes that had looked out of them the night before.
"You don't believe in hell then?" he said quietly, after a moment.
"As a place of future torment--no!" she said. "The only real hell is here on earth--here in our hearts when we fall away from God. Hell is the state of sin and all that goes with it--the fiery hell of the spirit. It is here and now. How could it be otherwise? Can you imagine a God of Love devising hideous tortures hereafter, for the punishment of the pigmies who had offended Him? Tortures that were never to do them any good, but just to keep them in misery for ever and ever? It is unthinkable--it's almost ludicrous. What is the good of suffering except to purify? That we can understand and thank God for. But the other--oh, the other is sheer imagery, more mythical than Jonah and the whale. It just doesn't go." Again she paused, then very frankly held out her hand to him. "But I like your picture of the Open Heaven, Piers," she said. "Show it me again some day--when I'm not as tired and stupid as I am to-day."
He bent over her hand with a gesture that betrayed the foreign blood in him, and his lips, hot and passionate, pressed her cold fingers. He did not utter a word. Only when he stood up again he looked at her with eyes that burned with the deep fires of manhood, and suddenly all-unbidden the woman's heart in her quivered in response. She bent her head and turned away. _