§ 26

The Mounts’ little servant had gone to bed by the time Stella came home from church, so she did not hear till the next morning of the message from Starvecrow. Her father had rung her up earlier in the evening to say that he would probably not be home that night; and she was not to sit up for him. So she carefully bolted both the doors, looked to see if the kitchen fire was raked out, pulled down a blind or two, and went upstairs.

She was not sorry to be alone, for her mind was still wandering in the dark church she had left ... coal black, without one glimmer of light, except the candle which had shown for a moment behind the altar and then flickered out in the draughts of the sanctuary. Spring by spring the drama of the Passion searched the deep places of her heart. The office of Tenebrae seemed to stand mysteriously apart from the other offices and rites of the church, being less a showing forth of the outward events of man’s redemption than of the thoughts of the Redeemer’s heart.... “He came, a man, to a deep heart, that is to a secret heart, exposing His manhood to human view.” Throughout those sad nocturnes she seemed to have been looking down into that Deep Heart, watching its agony in its betrayal and its forsaking, watching it brood on the scriptures its anguish had fulfilled.... “From the lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet” ... watching it comfort itself with the human songs of God’s human lovers, psalms of steadfastness and praise—then in the Responds breaking once more into its woe—a sorrowful dialogue with itself—“Judas, that wicked trader, sold his Lord with a kiss”—“It had been good for that man if he had not been born” ... “O my choicest vine, I have planted thee. How art thou turned to bitterness” ... “Are ye come out against a thief with swords and staves for to take me?” ... “I have delivered my beloved into the hand of the wicked, and my inheritance is become unto me as a lion in the wood”—“My pleasant portion is desolate, and being desolate it crieth after me.”

Through psalm and lesson, antiphon and response, the Deep Heart went down into the final darkness. It was swallowed up, all but its last, inmost point of light—and that too was hidden for a time ... “keeping His divinity hidden within, concealing the form of God.” In the darkness His family knelt and prayed Him to behold them; then for a few brief moments came the showing of the light, the light which had not been extinguished but hidden, and now for a few moments gleamed again.

It was all to the credit of Stella’s imagination that she could make a spiritual adventure out of Tenebrae as sung in Vinehall church. The choir of eight small boys and three hoarse young men was rather a hindrance than an aid to devotion, nor was there anything particularly inspiring in the congregation itself, sitting on and on through the long-drawn nocturnes in unflagging patience, for the final reward of seeing the lights go out. Even this was an uncertain rite, for old Mr. Bream, the sacristan, occasionally dozed at the end of a psalm with the result that he once had three candles over at the Benedictus; and another time he had let the Christ candle go out in the draught at the back of the Altar and was unable to show it at the end, though his hoarse entreaties for a match were audible at the bottom of the church. But Stella loved the feeling of this His family sitting down and watching Him there in stolid wonder. She loved their broad backs, the shoulders of man and girl touching over a book, the children sleeping against their mothers, to be roused for the final thrill of darkness. She was conscious also of an indefinable atmosphere of sympathy, as of the poor sharing the sorrows of the Poor, and drawn terribly close to this suffering human Heart, whose sorrows they could perhaps understand better than the well-educated and well-to-do. She felt herself more at ease in such surroundings than in others of more sophisticated devotion, and on leaving the church was indignant with an unknown lady who breathed into her ear that she’d seen it better done at St. John Lateran.

Up in her bedroom, taking the pins out of her hair, her mind still lingered over the office. Perhaps Gervase was singing it now, far away at Thunders Abbey.... She must write to Gervase soon, and tell him how much happier she had been of late. During the last few weeks a kind of tranquillity had come, she had lost that sense of being in the wrong with Peter, of having failed him by going away. She saw that she was right, and that she had hated herself for that very reason of being in the right when poor Peter whom she loved was in the wrong. But her being in the right would probably be more help to him at the last than if she had put herself in the wrong for his dear sake.

“Judas the wicked trader

Sold his Lord with a kiss.

It had been good for that man

If he had not been born.”

She too might have sold her Lord with a kiss. She wondered how often kisses were given as His price—kisses which should have been His joy given as the token of His betrayal. She might have given such a token if He had not preserved her, delivered her from the snare of Peter’s arms ... oh, that Peter’s arms should be a snare ... but such he himself had made them. She had not seen him for a long time now—a whole fortnight at least; and in less than another fortnight she would be gone.... He was keeping away from her, and would probably keep away until the end. Then once more he would see Vera, his wife, holding their child in her arms ... and surely then he would go back. Probably in a few days too he would be Sir Peter Alard, Squire of Conster, head of the house ... then he would be thankful that he had not entangled himself with Stella Mount—he would be grateful to her, perhaps....

“For I have delivered my beloved into the hand of the wicked,

And my inheritance is become unto me as a lion in the wood

My pleasant portion is desolate—

And, being desolate,—it crieth after me.”

How the words would ring in her head!—breaking up her thoughts. She felt very tired and sleepy—and she would have to be up early the next morning. “My inheritance is as a lion in the wood.”... Those words had made her think of Starvecrow. She had always thought of Starvecrow as her inheritance, the inheritance of which Peter had robbed her.... Starvycrow ... oh, if only Peter had been true they might now be waiting to enter their inheritance together. Sir John Alard could not have kept them out of it for more than a few years. But Peter had cut her off, and Starvecrow was strange to her—she dared not go near it ... strange and fierce—a lion in the wood.

She was sorry for Sir John Alard, lying at the point of death. She viewed his share in her tragedy with the utmost tolerance. He had belonged to the old order, the toppling, changing order, and it was not he who had failed the spirit of life, but Peter, who belonged to the new but had stood by the old. Poor Peter who had inherited only the things which are shaken, when he was the heir of the kingdom which cannot be moved....