Irresolute Catherine

by Violet Jacob

He knew little of the man, scarcely more than that he was Catherine’s old lover, and that the two had parted because of some trivial disagreement; but he had once drawn from her the admission that she had been afraid of Black Heber. Saunders, who worked for a well-to-do cattle-breeding uncle, whom he was eventually to succeed in business, was made of a different stuff from the tall shepherd whose ways were in the hill; and though the two men belonged to the same sect they did not go to the same chapel, for Saunders worshipped in Llangarth, where he and his relation lived and drove their trade. Heber’s looks suggested a rebellion against all with which the other held, and the independence that clothed him as a garment irked the richer man; for he had a mortifying certainty that if the other envied him at all, it was on Catherine’s account alone. There was annoyance in the thought that Heber Moorhouse would not have exchanged his sheep and his life of exertion and hardship—the cold winter snow and starlight of the mountain, its burning, shadeless summer heats—for the advantages which had placed himself high in the consideration of Catherine’s few friends. Catherine was an orphan and her lot in life that of a maidservant at a humble farm. She had caught Charles’s affections in spite of every prejudice he possessed and the fact spoke well for the strength of his feelings.

The minister was beginning the opening line of a hymn. His voice was not strong, but the first sharp note pierced the silence of the trees and threw the murmur of falling water into the background. The sound gathered volume as one and then another of the congregation struck in. Saunders alone was silent; he had a rich voice which agreed with his generous type of looks and he was fond of using it; but he stood dumb in his place as verse after verse rose and fell. It seemed to him as if everything—voices, prayers, the very trees and the air of the early autumn afternoon—was conspiring to make a show of the girl who was his own and who was set in front of these scores of eyes, conspicuous, with her bare ankles.

As the last words of the hymn died out the minister stepped down into the water. It swirled round his middle, for he was a small man, and lapped against the stone sides of the pool; and the oddness of his appearance as he stood, fully dressed, in the confined space, with only the upper half of him visible, brought a smile to the lips of a few present to whom the sight was strange.

Catherine was the last of the four to descend into the pool, and she paused before entering it to help her grey-headed predecessor up the slope of the bank. The old woman was bewildered from the shock of the immersion, and her teeth chattered as the girl supported her for a moment before her companions led her away to the house. The minister looked after the retreating women with some concern. Every eye was upon Catherine, who had drawn the shawl she wore more tightly about her and stood waiting for the support of her pastor’s hand. For a minute her heart quailed at the coming chill and her lips trembled; then she put forward one white ankle and found herself clinging to the man’s sleeve, and up to her waist in the pool. Her grasp loosened as she felt her feet and she joined her hands together while he lifted his voice, calling on God to look down on this woman, His servant, who stood forth to be baptized before the little congregation of the faithful. She did not unclasp her hands as he put one arm round her while he gently forced her backwards with the other; her eyes were closed as the water rose about her throat and over her forehead. Just as she disappeared completely under the surface the minister put his foot on a loose stone on the floor of the paved place and slipped. He regained his balance in a moment, but as Catherine felt his support waver, panic took her, and she made a convulsive effort to rise. The water gripped at her shawl and the sudden weight almost dragged her down.

She had fastened the heavy covering securely, but it broke loose and floated, half submerged, on the pool. She stood up, pale and terrified, in her white shift and thick petticoat. The linen clung, dripping, to her shoulders and bosom, outlining every curve of her body, and her loosened hair fell in a coil to her elbows. The minister drew the shawl from the water and wrapped it about her.

Saunders had come a few paces nearer, and as she regained the bank the girl could see, even through the streams pouring from her hair, his look of steady rage. She hurried quickly into the house: the tears were mingling with the colder drops that washed her cheeks. She sank down on a chair, in the room where the other women were putting on their dry clothes, and sobbed. One of them came to her and began to unfasten her wet shift. A dry one lay in a corner, with her stockings and the rest of her garments; she sobbed on, heeding no one, for her thoughts were with the angry man outside. She was very timid and she had looked forward to this day as to a day of happiness.

At the brink of the pool the men who were awaiting baptism were taking off their coats and boots and Saunders stood back again as he saw them making their preparations. The wrath which the sight of Catherine’s bare ankles and her thinly veiled body had raised turned every instinct in revolt against the rite he had witnessed. His foolish promise to share in it had been given in the glamour of some tender moment and he felt it would be impossible to redeem it. The whole thing disgusted him; he took his religion and its forms more as a matter of course than as a matter of conviction; and baptism by immersion struck him now as an absurdity for a man—a positive indecency for a woman. As he saw the minister looking towards him he turned away, and went, in a tumult of revulsion, in among the trees. He would have no part with these people.

He felt a wide difference between himself and these men and women of the hillside; and he would take care that his wife should have no more to do with them. She had no relations, fortunately, to beset her with their influence.

He strode over the channel which was the outlet of the pool, his head down, his angry look fixed on the ground. He would have turned his back upon Bethesda, there and then, had he not told Catherine that he would walk home with her to the farmhouse at which she served. He knew that most of the congregation was aware of his intention to be baptized to-day, and he could not endure the well-meaning glances of inquiry that followed him. He hated every creature in it.