“Yes. But no doubt Satan will see that he is employed wherever he may be. I have little hope of our power to save such as he is. There is my car,” he continued as the sound of a motor-horn came to us from the road; “my chaplain is there to see I keep to his time-table. Well, I am sorry my little time here is up. Keep me fully informed of anything that may happen, and don’t worry if I cannot answer your letters.”
We went back sadly through the house, and as he was stepping into the car he paused and said: “Do not write to Van Ermengen. It would be a mistake. You can only wait now for things to happen. Believe me, I know how difficult that is.”
With a heavy heart I watched his car drive off, for I knew that anxiety and perplexity would return to dwell with me in his absence.
CHAPTER XV
AWAITING DEVELOPMENTS
THE period of waiting for news of Edmund, of what was really the opening of a campaign against Jakoub, and the persons whom he so largely controlled, was necessarily for me a very irksome time.
I tried to thrust all these affairs into the background of my thoughts and to wait on events in a spirit of philosophic curiosity. In this laudable attempt I was much helped by my necessary preoccupation with parochial affairs.
I had left a peaceful community of Christian souls, most of them doing their duty in life more or less successfully, a few of them refusing or shirking their responsibilities, and some behaving really badly.
I returned to find a population of whom practically all were members of committees, all competing for chairmanships and secretaryships, and nearly all imbued with an acrid jealousy of each other. Bee-hives and even gardens were being neglected in this new enthusiasm for the redemption of everybody by the formation of committees, and envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness stalked the parish in the wake of poor Snape, just as though he had been some emissary of that Potentate of the Manicheans to whose destruction he had devoted his harmless, ineffectual life. Even in the public-house I found that the old academic discussions about prices in the local markets, and their influence on Imperial stability, had given place to acrimonious wrangles as to the personality and conduct of competitors for prominence in the new hierarchy of committees.
The publican said to me, “I’m selling less beer and more whisky, sir. I’m making a bit extra, but I don’t like it. They’d be better on beer and the old-fashioned doctrines, and we’d all be more comfortable. Whisky makes them quarrelsome, and the new teetotallers as comes in for ginger is mostly rancorous, sir. They says things as I won’t have said to me or my missus in my bar. And your reverence knows how my house has been conducted ever since you was here.”
I departed, leaving my verbal certificate as to his conduct, and pondering over his word “rancorous.” It was the just word. It described exactly the new spirit that I had to combat in my parish. It appeared to me that christianity had had a definite set-back in the village.