Saint\'s Progress

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SAINTS PROGRESS


By John Galsworthy



PART I




I

Such a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were waving; the
sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining,
and the bees busy on the snapdragons. The lime-trees were coming
into flower. Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the
delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their
golden hearts. There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum
rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from his
lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey. He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother
Robert's home on the bank of the Wye only that morning, having stayed
at Bath on the way down; and now he had got his face burnt in that
parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of those who have been too long
in London. As he came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the
sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he
smiled, for music was the greatest passion he had. His dark grizzled
hair was pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw
hat. Though not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a narrow
oval face whose length was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a
visage such as Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its
bright grey eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its strange look
of not seeing what was before it. He walked quickly, though he was tired
and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose
black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.

Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the railway
line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson stood
where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and the cool
whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches. A man of fifty,
with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully
from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his
afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his senses
sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he had
watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers,
and sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked
the speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been
wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
the blue. He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
of London off his soul.

For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--for
his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday
since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his
brother's home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the
avenue. Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century
in Ceylon. Dear old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his elder
brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a
Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes, he had found
a perfect home for Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed. He too
had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose
death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their two
daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like
his own mother, and Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded
him of his cousin Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her
life, and now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.
Ah! What a pretty girl she had been!

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly
in the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy,
with blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had a
moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge
May Week--on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must
have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This would be the young
man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks. Were
they never going to stop?

He passed into view of those within, and said:

"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"

She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious,
and Eve called out:

"It's a bet, Uncle. They've got to dance me down."

Pierson said mildly:

"A bet? My dears!"

Noel murmured over her shoulder:

"It's all right, Daddy!" And the young man gasped:

"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"

Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of
his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by. He
sat with a smile on his lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian
was married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear
wife had lived! The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very
tired. The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these
fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men
would have married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege.
Real unions were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.

He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
perplexity. Could this be good for her? To go on dancing indefinitely
with one young man could that possibly be good for her? But they looked
very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did
not understand. Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes
possessed of a little devil. Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those
outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was
such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's
place. That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious
of failure.

He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word
a little, she said:

"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to
fan herself.

Eve struck a triumphant chord. "Hurrah I've won!"

The young man muttered:

"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"

"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear? This is Cyril
Morland."

Pierson shook the young man's hand.

"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"

"My dear; I know."

"I can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep with it on
all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it."

"Nollie!"

"Well, Eve says so. If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for that
current!"

The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:

"Rather!" and went out.

Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.

"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better hurry
up."

"All right. Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"

"Lovely; like a great piece of music."

"Daddy always puts everything into music. You ought to see it by
moonlight; it's gorgeous then. All right, Eve; I'm coming." But she did
not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her father's
and murmured:

"What d'you think of Cyril?"

"My dear, how can I tell? He seems a nice-looking young man."

"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself. It's jolly down here, isn't
it?" She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away, looking
like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her head.

Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the
piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He
had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his
way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite
failed him.

At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream. He had always
had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
happily in an East-End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to
help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When, however, he
married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders
of East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
nearly killed him. It was better to go on where work and all reminded
him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he
knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
before her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed. Everything had
become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
house. Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for
which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of
change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
or treason on his soul. Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
others or they hurt him. And, since explanation was the last thing which
o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
found but scant occasion ever to examine anything. Just as in the old
Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles,
and the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own
making, he was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising
that he was in one of his, most religious moods.

"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"

The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of
the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers. In days of
suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was
a valuable person. Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all
the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
still existed. Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
nearly every one she came across. Nothing disturbed her. She was like a
painting of "Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway. She
never went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it. This was
her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.

He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at
the bottom of the garden.

"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"

"Very pretty. That young man, Thirza?"

"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."

At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
his. "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"

"Have they talked to you?"

"He has. Nollie hasn't yet."

"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."

"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."

Pierson sighed.

In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the
"rather desperate character" was swaying. "What a picture she is!" he
said, and sighed again.

The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:

"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted! We've eaten all the raspberries.
Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead! Phew! the heat! Come on, my
dear, and pour out his tea. Hallo, Cyril! Had a good bathe? By George,
wish my head was wet! Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll
swing, and keep the flies off you."

"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"

"What! Your father doesn't--"

"Just for the flies. You don't mind, Daddy?"

"Not if it's necessary, my dear."

Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
their long lashes.

"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."

"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson. "Here you are, Nollie!"

But Noel shook her head. At that moment she struck her father as
startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at
her feet, whose sunny face was all adoration. 'No longer a child!' he
thought. 'Dear Nollie!'




II


1

Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London. A
wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and
the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain,
and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning.
The air was intoxicatingly sweet. Haze clung over the river and the
woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in
the dewy sunshine. 'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those poor
boys at the front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began
to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church,
use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was in the
loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could worship
Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill,
by the banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers;
God was in everything! And he added to his usual prayer this whisper: "I
give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord. In all of us, keep them bright,
and grateful for beauty." Then he remained motionless, prey to a sort
of happy yearning very near, to melancholy. Great beauty ever had that
effect on him. One could capture so little of it--could never enjoy it
enough! Who was it had said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only
the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies." Ah! yes,
George--Gratian's husband. George Laird! And a little frown came between
his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh. Poor George! But then,
all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows, though; a fine
fellow, George, working himself to death out there in France. One must
not take them too seriously. He plucked a bit of sweetbrier and put it
to his nose, which still retained the shine of that bleaching ointment
Noel had insisted on his using. The sweet smell of those little rough
leaves stirred up an acute aching. He dropped them, and drew back. No
longings, no melancholy; one ought to be out, this beautiful morning!

It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once. It was
almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could
not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down. He dressed with
extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: "Can I come in, Daddy?"

In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met
on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision
of freshness.

"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and he's
gone to our house. She's got leave from her hospital to come home and
nurse him."

Pierson read the letter. "Poor George!"

"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"

"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."

"I could easily say I was. It's only a month; and I look much more."

Pierson smiled.

"Don't I?"

"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear, according
as you behave."

"I want to go out as near the front as possible."

Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes. It was her lips,
dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
which made her a swan. He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.

"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"

"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
Everybody goes."

"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."

"I know; all the more reason to begin."

She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak,
but did not. A little colour had come into her cheeks. Then, obviously
making conversation, she asked:

"Are you going to church? It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read the
Lessons, especially when he loses his place. No; you're not to put on
your long coat till just before church time. I won't have it!"

Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.

"Now, you see, you can have my rose. Your nose is better!" She kissed
his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short coat.
"That's all. Come along!" And with her arm through his, they went down.
But he knew she had come to say something which she had not said.



2

Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
breathing never adjusted to the length of any period. The congregation,
accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
necessary finger in the pie. It was his own family whom he perturbed. In
the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in
the front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy! His eyes look as if they were
coming out. Oh, Daddy! Smile! or it'll hurt you!' Young Morland beside
her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!'
And just then her little finger crooked into his. Edward Pierson was
thinking: 'Oh! My dear old Bob! Oh!' And, beside him, Thirza thought:
'Poor dear Ted I how nice for him to be having a complete rest! I must
make him eat he's so thin!' And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father! Mercy!'
But Bob Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh! Only another three verses!'
Noel's little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through
the singing and the prayers. At last, in the reverential rustle of the
settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.

"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."

Pierson looked up. He felt deep restfulness. There was a pleasant light
in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference
to the quality of silence. No critical thought stirred within him, nor
any excitement. He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my
good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little away
from the others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face up there
above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached to,
so long since he had had a rest! The words came forth, dropped on
his forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and
disappeared. 'A good plain sermon!' he thought. 'I suppose I'm stale; I
don't seem--' "Let us not, dear brethren," droned the preacher's earnest
voice, "think that our dear Lord, in saying that He brought a sword,
referred to a physical sword. It was the sword of the spirit to which He
was undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all
ages has cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves
by their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of
their ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the invasion
by our cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which had done
them no harm. Dear brethren, we may all bring swords." Pierson's chin
jerked; he raised his hand quickly and passed it over his face. 'All
bring swords,' he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--surely!' "But let
us be sure that our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with
faith, that we may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this
mortal life, carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where
alone is peace, perfect peace. Let us pray."

Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees.
In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their
knees their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand
and his right hung at their sides. They prayed a little longer than any
others and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.



3

No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so
long and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war. No news
whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July
afternoon, or the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's Sunday
lunch. Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and young
Morland walked upward through the woods towards a high common of heath
and furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between these two
young people no actual word of love had yet been spoken. Their lovering
had advanced by glance and touch alone.

Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys
now at the front. He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead;
and this was not his first visit to Kestrel. Arriving three weeks ago,
for his final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting
in a little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate at
once. But who knows when Noel fell in love? She was--one supposes--just
ready for that sensation. For the last two years she had been at one of
those high-class finishing establishments where, in spite of the healthy
curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of
interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to
eliminate instinct are quite successful. The disappearance of every
young male thing into the maw of the military machine put a premium on
instinct. The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned,
perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could
afford to regard as of secondary interest. Love and Marriage and
Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were
threatened for these young creatures. They not unnaturally pursued what
they felt to be receding.

When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what
was happening to him, Noel was pleased. From being pleased, she became a
little excited; from being excited she became dreamy. Then, about a week
before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man
about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If
there had been another young man to favour--but there was not; and she
favoured Uncle Bob's red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate. During
those three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed
her. And then, one evening, while they walked back together from the
hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: "Oh!
Noel, what have I done?" She caught his hand, and gave it a quick
squeeze. What a change! What blissful alteration ever since!

Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
kiss him if he kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady
hat. Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole
wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why
should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
another awaken nothing? He knelt down and pressed his lips to her
foot. Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
expected him to kiss her foot. She heard him hurrying after her, and
stopped, leaning against a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without
a word spoken, his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which
no words can render, had come for them. They had found their enchanted
spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round
each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A marvellous
speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months, was thus
accomplished in three weeks.