Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Bodiham was sitting in his study at the Rectory. The
nineteenth-century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted
the light grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the
room was sombre. Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls,
filled with row upon row of those thick, heavy theological works
which the second-hand booksellers generally sell by weight. The
mantelpiece, the over-mantel, a towering structure of spindly
pillars and little shelves, were brown and varnished. The
writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were the chairs, so was
the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns covered the
floor. Everything was brown in the room, and there was a curious
brownish smell.

In the midst of this brown gloom Mr. Bodiham sat at his desk. He
was the man in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron
cheek-bones and a narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and
unchanging, ran perpendicularly down his cheeks; his nose was the
iron beak of some thin, delicate bird of rapine. He had brown
eyes, set in sockets rimmed with iron; round them the skin was
dark, as though it had been charred. Dense wiry hair covered his
skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His ears were
very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were
dark, iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke
and especially when he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like
the grating of iron hinges when a seldom-used door is opened.

It was nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from
church, hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury,
with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of
his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were
made of india-rubber, solid rubber; the flail rebounded. They
were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. The flail thumped on india-
rubber, and as often as not the rubber slept.

That morning he had preached, as he had often preached before, on
the nature of God. He had tried to make them understand about
God, what a fearful thing it was to fall into His hands. God--
they thought of something soft and merciful. They blinded
themselves to facts; still more, they blinded themselves to the
Bible. The passengers on the "Titanic" sang "Nearer my God to
Thee" as the ship was going down. Did they realise what they
were asking to be brought nearer to? A white fire of
righteousness, an angry fire...

When Savonarola preached, men sobbed and groaned aloud. Nothing
broke the polite silence with which Crome listened to Mr.
Bodiham--only an occasional cough and sometimes the sound of
heavy breathing. In the front pew sat Henry Wimbush, calm, well-
bred, beautifully dressed. There were times when