THE GURGOYLE: ITS DOINGS
THE tower of Weatherbury Church was a squareerection of fourteenth-century date, having two stonegurgoyles on each of the four faces of its parapet. Ofthese eight carved protuberances only two at this timecontinued to serve the purpose of their erection -- thatof spouting the water from the lead roof within. Onemouth in each front had been closed by bygone church-wardens as superfluous, and two others were brokenaway and choked -- a matter not of much consequenceto the wellbeing of the tower, for the two mouths whichstill remained open and active were gaping enough to doall the work.It has been sometimes argued that there is no truercriterion of the vitality of any given art-period than thepower of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque;and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is nodisputing the proposition. Weatherbury tower was asomewhat early instance of the use of an ornamentalparapet in parish as distinct from cathedral churches,and the gurgoyles, which are the necessary correlativesof a parapet, were exceptionally prominent -- of theboldest cut that the hand could shape, and of the mostoriginal design that a human brain could conceive.There was, so to speak, that symmetry in their distortionwhich is less the characteristic of British than ofContinental grotesques of the period. All the eightwere different from each other. A beholder was con-vinced that nothing on earth could be more hideousthan those he saw on the north side until he wentround to the south. Of the two on this latter face, onlythat at the south-eastern corner concerns the story. Itwas too human to be called like a dragon, too impishto be like a man, too animal to be like a fiend, and notenough like a bird to be called a griffin. This horriblestone entity was fashioned as if covered with a wrinkledhide; it had short, erect ears, eyes starting from theirsockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing thecorners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pullopen to give free passage to the water it vomited. Thelower row of teeth was quite washed away, though theupper still remained. Here and thus, jutting a coupleof feet from the wall against which its feet rested as asupport, the creature had for four hundred yearslaughed at the surrounding landscape, voicelessly indry weather, and in wet with a gurgling and snortingsound.Troy slept on in the porch, and the rain increasedoutside. Presently the gurgoyle spat. In due time asmall stream began to trickle through the seventy feetof aerial space between its mouth and the ground, whichthe water-drops smote like duckshot in their acceleratedvelocity. The stream thickened in substance, and in-creased in power, gradually spouting further and yetfurther from the side of the tower. When the rain fellin a steady and ceaseless torrent the stream dasheddownward in volumes.We follow its course to the ground at this point oftime. The end of the liquid parabola has come forwardfrom the wall, has advanced over the plinth mouldings,over a heap of stones, over the marble border, into themidst of Fanny Robin's grave.The force of the stream had, until very lately, beenreceived upon some loose stones spread thereabout,which had acted as a shield to the soil under the onset.These during the summer had been cleared from theground, and there was now nothing to resist the down-fall but the bare earth. For several years the streamhad not spouted so far from the tower as it was doingon this night, and such a contingency had been over-looked. Sometimes this obscure corner received noinhabitant for the space of two or three years, andthen it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or othersinner of undignified sins.The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jawsdirected all its vengeance into the grave. The richtawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled likechocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeperdown, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread intothe night as the head and chief among other noises ofthe kind created by the deluging rain. The flowers socarefully planted by Fanny's repentant lover began tomove and writhe in their bed. The winter-violetsturned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat ofmud. Soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced inthe boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron. Plantsof the tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface,and floated of.Troy did not awake from his comfortless sleep till itwas broad day. Not having been in bed for two nightshis shoulders felt stiff his feet tender, and his headheavy. He remembered his position, arose, shivered,took the spade, and again went out.The rain had quite ceased, and the sun was shiningthrough the green, brown, and yellow leaves, nowsparkling and varnished by the raindrops to the bright-ness of similar effects in the landscapes of Ruysdael andHobbema, and full of all those infinite beauties thatarise from the union of water and colour with highlights. The air was rendered so transparent by theheavy fall of rain that the autumn hues of the middledistance were as rich as those near at hand, and theremote fields intercepted by the angle of the tower ap-peared in the same plane as the tower itself.He entered the gravel path which would take himbehind the tower. The path, instead of being stony asit had been the night before, was browned over with athin coating of mud. At one place in the path he sawa tuft of stringy roots washed white and clean as abundle of tendons. He picked it up -- surely it couldnot be one of the primroses he had planted? He sawa bulb, another, and another as he advanced. Beyonddoubt they were the crocuses. With a face of perplexeddismay Troy turned the corner and then beheld thewreck the stream had made.The pool upon the grave had soaked away into theground, and in its place was a hollow. The disturbedearth was washed over the grass and pathway in theguise of the brown mud he had already seen, and itspotted the marble tombstone with the same stains.Nearly all the flowers were washed clean out of theground, and they lay, roots upwards, on the spots whitherthey had been splashed by the stream.Troy's brow became heavily contracted. He set histeeth closely, and his compressed lips moved as those ofone in great pain. This singular accident, by a strangeconfluence of emotions in him, was felt as the sharpeststing of all. Troy's face was very expressive, and anyobserver who had seen him now would hardly havebelieved him to be a man who had laughed, and sung,and poured love-trifles into a woman's ear. To cursehis miserable lot was at first his impulse, but even thatlowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whoseabsence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of themorbid misery which wrung him. The sight, comingas it did, superimposed upon the other dark scenery ofthe previous days, formed a sort of climax to the wholepanorama, and it was more than he could endure.Sanguine by nature, Troy had a power of eludinggrief by simply adjourning it. He could put off theconsideration of any particular spectre till the matterhad become old and softened by time. The plantingof flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but aspecies of elusion of the primary grief, and now it wasas if his intention had been known and circumvented.Almost for the first time in his life, Troy, as he stoodby this dismantled grave, wished himself another man.lt is seldom that a person with much animal spirit doesnot feel that the fact of his life being his own is the onequalification which singles it out as a more hopeful lifethan that of others who may actually resemble him inevery particular. Troy had felt, in his transient way,hundreds of times, that he could not envy other peopletheir condition, because the possession of that conditionwould have necessitated a different personality, when hedesired no other than his own. He had not mindedthe peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his life,the meteorlike uncertainty of all that related to him,because these appertained to the hero of his story,without whom there would have been no story at all forhim; and it seemed to be only in the nature of thingsthat matters would right themselves at some proper dateand wind up well. This very morning the illusioncompleted its disappearance, and, as it were, all of asudden, Troy hated himself. The suddenness wasprobably more apparent than real. A coral reef whichjust comes short of the ocean surface is no more to thehorizon than if it had never been begun, and the merefinishing stroke is what often appears to create an eventwhich has long been potentially an accomplished thing.He stood and mediated -- a miserable man. Whithershould he go? He that is accursed, let him be accursedstill. was the pitiless anathema written in this spoliatedeffort of his new-born solicitousness. A man who hasspent his primal strength in journeying in one directionhas not much spirit left for reversing his course. Troyhad, since yesterday, faintly reversed his; but the merestopposition had disheartened him. To turn about wouldhave been hard enough under the greatest providentialencouragement; but to find that Providence, far fromhelping him into a new course, or showing any wishthat he might adopt one, actually jeered his first tremblingand critical attempt in that kind, was more than naturecould bear.He slowly withdrew from the grave. He did notattempt to fill up the hole, replace the flowers, or doanything at all. He simply threw up his cards andforswore his game for that time and always. Going outof the churchyard silently and unobserved -- none of thevillagers having yet risen -- he passed down some fieldsat the back, and emerged just as secretly upon the highroad. Shortly afterwards he had gone from the village.Meanwhile, Bathsheba remained a voluntary prisonerin the attic. The door was kept locked, except duringthe entries and exits of Liddy, for whom a bed hadbeen arranged in a small adjoining room. The lightof Troy's lantern in the churchyard was noticed aboutten o'clock by the maid-servant, who casually glancedfrom the window in that direction whilst taking hersupper, and she called Bathsheba's attention to it.They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time,until Liddy was sent to bed.bathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night.When her attendant was unconscious and softly breath-ing in the next room, the mistress of the house wasstill looking out of the window at the faint gleamspreading from among the trees -- not in a steady shine,but blinking like a revolving coastlight, though thisappearance failed to suggest to her that a person waspassing and repassing in front of it. Bathsheba sathere till it began to rain, and the light vanished, whenshe withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed and re-enactin a worn mind the lurid scene of yesternight.Almost before the first faint sign of dawn appearedshe arose again, and opened the window to obtain a fullbreathing of the new morning air, the panes being nowwet with trembling tears left by the night rain, eachone rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose-hued slashes through a cloud low down in the awaken-ing sky. From the trees came the sound of steadydripping upon the drifted leaves under them, and fromthe direction of the church she could hear another noise -- peculiar, and not intermittent like the rest, the purlof water falling into a pool.Liddy knocked at eight o'clock, and Bathsheba un-locked the door.What a heavy rain we've had in the night, ma'am!said Liddy, when her inquiries about breakfast had beenmade.Yes, very heavy.Did you hear the strange noise from the churchyard?I heard one strange noise. I've been thinking itmust have been the water from the tower spouts.Well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am.He's now gone on to see.Oh! Gabriel has been here this morning!Only just looked in in passing -- quite in his old way,which I thought he had left off lately. But the towerspouts used to spatter on the stones, and we are puzzled,for this was like the boiling of a pot.Not being able to read, think, or work, Bathsheba askedLiddy to stay and breakfast with her. The tongue of themore childish woman still ran upon recent events. Areyou going across to the church, ma'am? she asked.Not that I know of. said Bathsheba.I thought you might like to go and see where theyhave put Fanny. The trees hide the place from yourwindow.Bathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting herhusband. Has Mr. Troy been in to-night? she saidNo, ma'am; I think he's gone to Budmouth.Budmouth! The sound of the word carried withit a much diminished perspective of him and his deeds;there were thirteen miles interval betwixt them now.She hated questioning Liddy about her husband'smovements, and indeed had hitherto sedulously avoideddoing so; but now all the house knew that there hadbeen some dreadful disagreement between them, andit was futile to attempt disguise. Bathsheba hadreached a stage at which people cease to have anyappreciative regard for public opinion.What makes you think he has gone there? she said.Laban Tall saw him on the Budmouth road thismorning before breakfast.Bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that waywardheaviness of the past twenty-four hours which hadquenched the vitality of youth in her without sub-stituting the philosophy of maturer years, and theresolved to go out and walk a little way. So whenbreakfast was over, she put on her bonnet, and tooka direction towards the church. It was nine o'clock,and the men having returned to work again from theirfirst meal, she was not likely to meet many of them inthe road. Knowing that Fanny had been laid in thereprobates' quarter of the graveyard, called in the parishbehind church. which was invisible from the road, itwas impossible to resist the impulse to enter and lookupon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she at thesame time dreaded to see. She had been unable toovercome an impression that some connection existedbetween her rival and the light through the trees.Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the holeand the tomb, its delicately veined surface splashed andstained just as Troy had seen it and left it two hoursearlier. On the other side of the scene stood Gabriel.His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her arrivalhaving been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted hisattention. Bathsheba did not at once perceive that thegrand tomb and the disturbed grave were Fanny's, andshe looked on both sides and around for some humblermound, earthed up and clodded in the usual way. Thenher eye followed Oak's, and she read the words withwhich the inscription opened: --Erected by Francis Troy in Beloved Memory ofFanny Robin.Oak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringlyand learn how she received this knowledge of theauthorship of the work, which to himself had causedconsiderable astonishment. But such discoveries didnot much affect her now. Emotional convulsions seemedto have become the commonplaces of her history, andshe bade him good morning, and asked him to fill inthe hole with the spade which was standing by. WhilstOak was doing as she desired, Bathsheba collected theflowers, and began planting them with that sympatheticmanipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuousin a woman's gardening, and which flowers seem tounderstand and thrive upon. She requested Oak toget the churchwardens to turn the leadwork at themouth of the gurgoyle that hung gaping down uponthem, that by this means the stream might be directedsideways, and a repetition of the accident prevented.Finally, with the superfluous magnanimity of a womanwhose narrower instincts have brought down bitternessupon her instead of love, she wiped the mud spots fromthe tomb as if she rather liked its words than otherwise,
CHAPTER XLVII