The Upton Letters

by Arthur Christopher Benson

What I have suffered from all my life is making friends too easily. It is so painful to me being with a person who seems to be dull, that I have always instinctively tried to be interested in, and to interest my companion. The result has been—I am making a very barefaced confession—that I have been often supposed to be more friendly than I really am, and to allow a certain claim of loyalty to be established which I could not sincerely sustain.—Ever yours,

T. B.

KNAPSTEAD VICARAGE,
BALDOCK,
Aug. 14, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,—A curious little incident occurred to me yesterday—so curious, so inexplicable, that I cannot refrain from telling it to you, though it has no solution and no moral so far as I can see. I am staying with an old family friend, Duncan by name—you don't know him—who is a parson near Hitchin. We were to have gone for a bicycle ride together, but he was called away on sudden business, and as the only other member of the party is my friend's wife, who is much of an invalid, I went out alone.

I went off through Baldock and Ashwell. And I must interrupt my story for a moment to tell you about the latter. Above a large hamlet of irregularly built and scattered white houses, many of them thatched, most of them picturesque, rises one of the most beautiful, mouldering church towers I have ever seen. It is more like a weather-worn crag-pinnacle than a tower; it is of great height, and the dim and blurred outlines of its arched windows and buttresses communicate a singular grace of underlying form to the broken and fretted stone. I fear that it must before long be restored, if it is to hold together much longer; all I can say is that I am thankful to have seen it in its hour of decay. It is infinitely patient and pathetic. Its solemn, ruinous dignity, its tender grace, make it like some aged and sanctified spirit that has borne calamity and misfortune with a sweet and gentle trust. A little farther on in the village is another extraordinarily beautiful thing. The road, while still almost in the street, passes across a little embankment; and on the left hand you look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam. The water is deliciously cool and clear, running as it does straight off the chalk. No words of mine can do justice to the wonderful purity and peace of the place. I found myself murmuring over those perfect lines of Marvell—you know them?—

"Might a soul bathe there and be clean,
And slake its drought?"

These two sights, the tower and the well-head, put my mind into tune; and I went on my way rejoicing, with that delicate elation of spirit that rarely visits one. Everything I saw had an airy quality, a flavour, an aroma, I know not how to describe it. Now I caught the sunlight on the towering greenness of an ancient elm; now a wide view over flat pastures, with a pool fringed deep in rushes, came in sight; now an old manorial farm held up its lichened chimneys above a row of pollarded elms. I came at last, by lanes and byways, to a silent village that seemed entirely deserted. The men, I suppose, were all working in the fields; the cottage doors stood open; near the little common rose an old high-shouldered church, much overgrown with ivy. The sun lay pleasantly upon its leaded roof, and among the grass-grown graves. I left my bicycle by the porch, and at first could not find an entrance; but at last I discovered that a low, priest's door that led into the chancel, was open. The church had an ancient and holy smell. It was very cool in there out of the sun. I turned into the nave, and wandered about for a few moments, noting the timbered roof, the remains of old frescoes on the walls; the tomb of a knight who lay still and stiff, his head resting on his hand. I read an epitaph or two, with the faint cry of love and grief echoing through the stilted phraseology of the tomb, and then I went back to the altar.

On a broad slab of slate, immediately below the altar steps, lay something dark; I bent down to look at it, and then realised, with a curious sense of horror, that it was a little pool of blood; beside it lay two large jagged stones, also stained with blood, which had dried into a viscous paste upon them. It seemed as if the stoning of some martyr had taken place, and that, the first horrible violence done, the deed had been transferred to the open air. What made it still stranger to me was that in the east window was a rude representation of the stoning of Stephen; and I have since discovered that the church is dedicated to him.

I cannot give you the smallest hint of explanation. Indeed, pondering over it, I cannot conceive of any circumstances which can in any way account for what I saw. I wandered out into the churchyard—for the sight gave me a curious chill of horror—and I could see nothing that could further enlighten me. A few yards beyond stood the rectory, embowered in thickets. It seemed to be deserted; the windows were dark and undraped; no smoke went up from the chimneys. It suddenly appeared to me that I must be the victim of some strange hallucination, So I stepped again within the church to see if my senses had played me false. But no! there were the stones, and the blood beside them.

The sun began to decline to his setting; the shadows lengthened and darkened, as I rode slowly away, with a shadow on my spirit. I felt I had somehow seen a type, a mystery. These incidents do not befall one by chance, and I was sure, in some remote way, that I had looked, as it were, for a moment into a dark avenue of the soul; that I was bidden to think, to ponder. These tokens of violence and death, the blood outpoured, in witness of pain, in the heart of the quiet sanctuary, before the very altar of the God of peace and love. What is it that we do that is like that? What is it that I do? I will not tell you how the message shaped itself for me; perhaps you can guess; but it came, it formed itself out of the dark, and in that silent hour a voice called sharply in my spirit.