Oh he was like them, like those laced-up ladies — warm from words. A man, he still chewed the nipple, titillation, and risked no freer, deeper draught. Fearless in speech, he was cowardly in all else… ah, to be rich, luxuriant, episcopal… well, he'd conquered that by flight. Yet to spread simplicity more deeply than cosmetic…. These steaming images, Mrs. Kinsman, these strange wants, we must fight them off. You've been given back to maidenhood. Do not despair. Jerome rejoices — he who praised marriage because it made more virgins — good Jerome, his dog, his lion. The injury to your husband was a gracious act of God.
His first announcement had said that the Reverend Jethro Furber would preach on Godless Ways, a customary theme, and surely disappointing. He thought that considering the circumstances most would think something more pointed was proper, and he knew everyone entertained a picture of Lucy Pimber's disarranged and dirty clothes. Certainly they would hope that he would preach upon that picture; define the character of the disaster; say, in short, what ailed the present time; warn, as pastors had of old, with a trumpet. Godless ways were numberless, and even though his congregation knew his rhetoric could skirt the nature of each sin so skillfully that selfsame skirt was flung above the head and chaste discretion tumbled, how much easier it was to follow the outline of general woes when colored by your neighbor's troubles, and how much easier to take to heart the lessons of man's universal flaws, his little mischiefs, if they were enlivened with local examples and the recital of Gilean names.
Well he'd not fail them, he would name a name, but they would have to wait, for it was in the mind of the Reverend Jethro Furber to preach a series, and the thought of its simple form filled him with radiant power. His outward movements were in contrast stiff and short like shafts and pistons that run in rapid jerks from steam. His ends and surfaces trembled continually; his tongue darted from his mouth and slid its length to disappear; his dark curly hair seemed tightened into knots and forced flat against his head. Indeed his appearance might have given alarm had he not kept entirely to his study, repulsing every effort to communicate, including those of Jefferson Flack who brought the Reverend Furber's supper and left it by his lunch.
The Reverend Furber's designing figure was a slowly circling hawk, its orbits tightening until with shut-up wings, it dropped. Only the quietness was out of place. In his plan there was no quietness. Rather he would make them like the windings of hell, noisy with flame. He had in mind to preach a series, each one a wind of hell, a circle of the hawk, a coil of snake. He paced the room, his body rocking, shouting at God. Always, too, he fought to keep that one bright image out: he standing, she beside. He fought it furiously. He damned the meadow grass that seemed to lie along his cheek all night and the stream that ran like music through him, his voice growing hoarse, lost in his composing, yet always fighting the cool sweet air, the devilish calm, the loosening that followed him. On his shoulder, sometimes, these sensations seemed. Up his sleeves he found he must pursue them, through his clothing, underarms — air like the first of spring, infinitely promising. Then he would shout, writhing, his hands hunting them like crawling things, clawing through his clothes, striking at space, pounding against his ears until he thought the drums would break. All this until he was exhausted and he fell in pillows, hiding his face. Up again his arm described a circle. He floated out, alight behind his glowing eyes, the hawk, predatory of mice.
He searched eagerly for his texts, reading each one he thought suitable aloud in a voice that shook with emotion. He was silent afterward listening to himself. Then with angry mutters he always shuffled on. When he finally bent the corner of a page and shut the book, it was suddenly, without a reading or a silence after, like the hawk's wings come together. He stacked the Bible in the cupboard with several others that despite their excellent condition were deemed by Reverend Furber to have their potency exhausted. They were only fit to serve as prizes for good behavior and dutiful attendance, now, for feats of memory and recital as Miss Samantha, in each case, decided. He was constantly renewing his supply of power. Some demands dispelled it quickly, and he'd seen, in his trouble with the texts, that this one was running down.
He had in stock, especially for the series, one of splendid size and paper, of multicolored type and softest leather. He reached in the cabinet and touched the top. There, he thought, was force and eloquence; he could feel it swelling against the cover.
He was troubled, however, by the immanence of his success. He met it everywhere. It was in the air like the smell of apples — troubling, sweet. Every day of Henry's disappearance was a day of rejoicing, and as the year drifted slowly toward its winter, Jethro Furber sped to his triumph. Yet his visions had increased — in vividness, in number, in the shamelessness of their delights. He rolled in pubic hair and woke with semen sliding down his leg. Sin and sin and sin again. He knew the names. But no name damned this clean and innocent relief. It seemed, God help him, like the action of successful prayer, the momentary prevenience of grace.
For some time the ferocity of his sermons had increased. He was leading them up… up. And he was winning. He knew this to be true despite their disappointment at the general, abstract tenor of his remarks at first, despite their uneasiness at his heat, their mystification, too, since the pitch of his language was steep. So that when the delegates of moderation broke upon his privacy, they broke his confidence and peace. Could he trust his judgment? trust his eyes? for he'd been certain they were fattening on his words. The sense of his success rose from them like a warm wind from a field, bending the hairs in his nose. Had he only felt his own pulsebeat? God — more moderate — a more moderate tone… Were they frightened? then of what? of the truth — was that it? should that affright them, a simple bugaboo? well for what cause? or worse — were they merely afraid of what he might say, the embarrassment of it, caught in the pews, with no page to thumb for response?
And events, too, with a kind of fatality, had fallen in his favor. Pushed against his will toward Lucy Pimber — who could have imagined the extent of his triumph there? Then summoning all his powers, like an ancient Celtic lord, a German chief, an heroic Greek, he had struck down Watson, driving the light from his eyes so that he toppled into darkness and his bones clattered about him. Henry, moreover, had cleverly escaped the combing net. One could only conclude that everything was changing in favor of Furber, everything was moving to the tune of his wishes, everything was changing… What was it he heard? trumpets? tambourines and timbrels? church chimes? balustrades of bells?