“I consider it settled,” I said.
He went to his room early, and I was glad I had asked him, for I felt my soul was in need of some penance. Afterwards I was especially glad that I had done it before I got the bishop’s letter.
I was at last alone in my familiar study with silence, with my shaded lamp, with the June twilight on the garden outside. I sat down, hoping to find the perspective I had lost. But instead I found only a new foreground; a foreground of Snape and his absurdities, of the passions and excitements of my parishioners. It was only as in a mirage that I caught disconnected visions: of the Astarte with her sails golden in the light of the setting sun, slowly pushing her way along with her cargo of iniquity; of the desert with its hot bright sand and lilac shadows; of the rushing terror of the sand-storm, and the pale back of a camel moving ahead of me in the dark; of the stupendous masonry of the half-buried temple of a dead worship; of a sherbet-seller in the native quarter of the Eastern city, with his flaming red tunic, his clashing brass trays, his huge water vessel and great lump of melting ice; of tall yellow buildings draped with purple flowers; of a great pile of packing-cases, a rope and pulley, and a fearful trepidation in a man’s soul; of Welfare sailing out into the night with the crew who would certainly murder him if they guessed his secret. Through every scene in the panorama stole the sinister face and lithe figure of Jakoub. But amid all this, myself I could not see.
CHAPTER XIV
BLACKMAIL
MY natural indolence prompted me to settle down again in my old familiar rut while I awaited the bishop’s visit and Edmund’s return.
Snape’s presence in my home, however, effectually prevented this programme. He was a discomfort to me, constant and irritating as a piece of grit in one’s eye, with the added annoyance that he was ostentatiously trying to be inoffensive.
When I went to my study to cope with arrears of correspondence he would follow me and sit in a wicker chair which he creaked until he drove me forth to my pigeon-loft. If he sat by the fire-place he kicked the fire-irons rhythmically, filling me with the dread of homicidal mania.
He could not read a book without saying “Just listen to this” and reading a passage aloud, when he would expect some intelligent comment from my exasperated mind. During meals he expounded the duties of a parish priest as conceived by himself, and twenty times a day he thanked me abjectly for my hospitality.
But I endured all patiently, for I felt that need of penance which comes to all of us at times, and felt that Snape had been sent to me to chasten me.
His chastening bore fruit too, for it stimulated me to perform one more task that my indolence would have postponed.