6
But the women of Marlow were to learn afresh the old lesson that religious enthusiasm is not to be killed by ridicule or oppression. Jasper Thrale understood and appreciated that fact, but the policy he suggested could not be approved by the committee.
“This emotion is a fundamental thing,” he said to Lady Durham, “and history will show you that persecution will intensify it to the point of martyrdom. There is only one way to combat it. Give it room. Let them do as they will. The heat of the fire is too fierce for you to damp it down; you only supply more fuel. Fan it, throw it open to the air, and it will burn itself harmlessly out.”
Elsie Durham shrugged her shoulders. “That’s all very well,” she said. “I believe it’s perfectly true. But they make you the bone of contention. If it were only Millie Gosling—well—she might go. We could find a place for her—at Fingest, perhaps. But we can’t spare you.”
“I don’t know why not,” returned Thrale. “I never intended to stay indefinitely. You can carry on now without me, and I can fulfil my original intention and push on into the West.”
“My dear man! we can’t, and we won’t!” said Elsie Durham. “You are indispensable.”
“No one is indispensable,” replied Thrale.
“Bother your metaphysics, Jasper!” was the answer. “We are not going to let you go. ‘We’ is the majority of Marlow, not only the committee. We’ll fight the fanatics somehow.”
The majority referred to by Elsie Durham was fairly compact in relation to this issue of retaining Jasper Thrale, and included the two greater of the three recognizable parties in the community. Of these three, the greatest was the moderate party, made up of Episcopalians, Nonconformists and a few Roman Catholics, who found relief for their emotion one day in seven either in the Town Hall or Marlow Church, in which places services and meetings were held—the former by certain approved individuals, notably Elsie Durham and the widow of the late Rector of Marlow. The second party in order of size included all those who either denied the Divine revelation or were careless of all religious matters. The third party—the Jenkynites, as they were dubbed by their opponents—had drawn their numbers from every old denomination. The Jenkynites were differentiated from the other two parties by certain physical differences. For instance, the Jenkynites numbered few members under the age of thirty-five; very few of them were fat, and very few of them were capable field workers; they were hungry-eyed, and had a certain air of disappointed eagerness about them; they looked as though they had for ever sought something, and, finding it, had remained unsatisfied. In all, there were some seventeen women who might have been regarded as quite true to type, and about this vivid nucleus were clustered nearly a hundred other women, many of whom exhibited some characteristic mark of the same type, while the remainder, perhaps 40 per cent of the whole body, had joined the party out of bravado, to seek excitement, or for some purpose of expediency.
Among the last was Mrs Isaacson, who was the ultimate cause of the Jenkynite defeat.
Ever since she had passed her examination in farm supervision, Mrs Isaacson had exhibited an increasing tendency to rest on her laurels. She had grown very stout again during her stay in Marlow, and complained of severe heart trouble. The least exertion brought on violent palpitation accompanied by the most alarming symptoms. The poor lady would gasp for breath, press her hands convulsively to a spot just below her left breast, and roll up her eyes till they presented only a terrifying repulsive rim of blood-streaked white, if the least exertion were demanded from her, and yet she would persist in the effort until absolutely on the verge of collapse. “No, no! I must work!” she would insist. “It iss not fair to the others that I do no work. I will try once more. It iss only fair.”
At times they had to insist that she should return home and rest.
And as the winter closed in, Mrs Isaacson’s rests became more and more protracted. Jasper Thrale grinned and said: “I suppose we’ve got to keep her”; but there was a feeling among the other members of the committee that they were creating an undesirable precedent. Mrs Isaacson’s example was being followed by other women who preferred rest to work.
Heart weakness was becoming endemic in Marlow.
Then came the news that Mrs Isaacson had joined the Jenkynites. The seventeen received her somewhat doubtfully at first, but the body of the sect were in favour of her reception. Possibly they were rather proud of counting one more fat woman among them; the average member was so noticeably thin.
Even the seventeen were satisfied within a fortnight of Mrs Isaacson’s conversion. She had a wonderful fluency, and she said the right and proper things in her own peculiar English—a form of speech which had a certain piquancy and interest and afforded relief and variety after the somewhat stereotyped formulas of the seventeen.
But early in December, before the floods came, Mrs Isaacson was convicted of a serious offence against the community. One of the committee’s first works had been to store certain priceless valuables. Tea, coffee, sugar, soap, candles, salt, baking powder, wine and other irreplaceable commodities had been locked up in one of the bank premises. In all, they had a fairly large store, upon which they had hardly drawn as yet. It was not intended to hoard these luxuries indefinitely. After harvest a dole had been made to all the workers as acknowledgment of their services, and it had been decided to hold another festival on Christmas Day.
Mrs Isaacson, with unsuspected energy, had burglariously entered this storehouse of wealth. She had found an accessible window at the rear, which she had succeeded in forcing, and, despite her bulk and the delicate state of her heart, she had effected an entrance and stolen tea, sugar, candles and whisky.
She was, indeed, finally caught in the act; but her thefts would probably have escaped notice—she worked after dark, and with a cunning and caution that would have placed her high in the profession before the plague—had it not been for Blanche.