Part 20 (1/2)
He smiled up with fond indulgence. ”That's the woman of it--concession for temporal advantage.” Then more seriously he added, ”I wouldn't be true to myself, Nance, if I went down there in any spirit of truckling to wealth. Public approval is a most desirable luxury, I grant you--wealth and ease are desirable luxuries, and the favour of those in power--but they're only luxuries. And I know in this matter but one real necessity: my own self-approval. If consciously I preached a polite sermon there, my own soul would accuse me and I should be as a leaf in the wind for power. No, Nance--never urge me to be untrue to that divine Christ-self within me! If I cannot be my best self before G.o.d, I am nothing. I must preach Christ and Him crucified, whether it be to the wealthy of St. Antipas or only to believing poverty.”
Stung with contrition, she was quick to say, ”Oh, my dearest, I didn't mean you to be untrue! Only it seemed unnecessary to affront them in your very first sermon.”
”I have been divinely guided, Nance. No considerations of expediency can deflect me now. This _had_ to be! I admit that I had my hour of temptation--but that has gone, and thank G.o.d my integrity survives it.”
”Oh, how much bigger you are than I am, dearest!” She looked down at him proudly as she stood close to his side, smoothing the tawny hair. Then she laid one finger along his lips and made the least little kissing noise with her own lips--a trick of affection learned in the early days of their love. After a little she stole from his side, leaving him with head bent in prayerful study--to be herself alone with her new a.s.surance.
It was moments like this that she had come to long for and to feed her love upon. Nor need it be concealed that there had not been one such for many months. The situation had been graver than she was willing to acknowledge to herself. Not only had she not ceased to wonder since the first days of her marriage, but she had begun to smile in her wonder, fancying from time to time that certain plain answers came to it--and not at all realising that a certain kind of smile is love's unforgivable blasphemy; conscious only that the smile left a strange hurt in her heart.
For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly turning the light of her newly fed faith upon an idol whose clearness of line and purity of tint had become blurred in a dusk of wondering--an idol that had begun, she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely through that deepening gloom of doubt.
Now all was well again. In this new light the dear idol might even at times show a dual personality--one kneeling beside her very earnestly to wors.h.i.+p the other with her. Why not, since the other showed itself truly worthy of adoration? With faith made new in her husband--and, therefore, in G.o.d--she went to Aunt Bell.
She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, over her book, ”The Beautiful Within,” her particular chapter being headed, ”Psychology of Rest: Rhythms and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism with Subliminal Spontaneity.” Over this frank revelation of hidden truths Aunt Bell's handsome head was, for the moment, nodding in sub-rhythms of psychic placidity--a state from which Nancy's animated entrance sufficed to arouse her. As the proud wife spoke, she divested herself of the psychic restraint with something very like a carnal yawn behind her book.
”Oh, Aunt Bell! Isn't Allan _fine_! Of course, in a way, it's too bad--doubtless he'll spoil his chances for the thing I know he's set his heart upon--and he knows it, too--but he's going calmly ahead as if the day for martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, dear, martyrs are _so_ dowdy and out-of-date--but there he is, a great, n.o.ble, beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity and independence that is stunning!”
”What has Allan been saying now?” asked Aunt Bell, curiously unmoved.
”_Said?_ It's what he's _doing!_ The dear, big, stupid thing is going down there to preach the very first Sunday about Dives and Lazarus--the poor beggar in Abraham's bosom and the rich man down below, you remember?” she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to hover about the centre of psychic repose.
”Well?”
”Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to _any one_ in this age--then think of a young minister talking it to a church of rich men and expecting to receive a call from them!”
Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness of her small hands with more than her usual studious complacence. ”My dear,” she said at last, ”no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have--but I've observed that he usually knows what he's about.”
”Indeed, he knows what he's about now, Aunt Bell!” There was a swift little warmth in her tones--”but he says he can't do otherwise. He's going deliberately to spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a piece of mere early-Christian quixotism. And you must see how _great_ he is, Aunt Bell. Do you know--there have been times when I've misjudged Allan. I didn't know his simple genuineness. He wants that church, yet he will not, as so many in his place would do, make the least concession to its people.”
Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to bear upon one small foot which she thrust absently out until its profile could be seen.
”Perhaps he will have his reward,” she said. ”Although it is many years since I broadened into what I may call the higher unbelief, I have never once suspected, my dear, that merit fails of its reward. And above all, I have faith in Allan, in his--well, his psychic nature is so perfectly attuned with the Universal that Allan simply _cannot_ harm himself. Even when he seems deliberately to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead.
So cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence and holding the thought of success for him. I think Allan will attend very acceptably to the mere details.”
CHAPTER VI
THE WALLS OF ST. ANTIPAS FALL AT THE THIRD BLAST
On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when the young minister faced a thronged St. Antipas at eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at him from Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward--the pew of Cyrus Browett--looked up at him in trembling, loving wonder. Then a little tender half-smile of perfect faith went dreaming along her just-parted lips. Let the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas--she could see the relentless profile of their chief at her right--be offended by his rugged speech: he should find atoning comfort in her new love. Like Luther, he must stand there to say out the soul of him, and she was prostrate before his brave greatness.
When, at last, he came to read the biting verses of the parable, her heart beat as if it would be out to him, her face paled and hardened with the strain of his ordeal.
”And it came to pa.s.s that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died and was buried.
”And in h.e.l.l he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.
”And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'
”But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'”
The sermon began. Unflinchingly the preacher pointed out that Dives, apparently, lay in h.e.l.l for no other reason than that he had been a rich man; no sin was imputed to him; not even unbelief; he had not only transgressed no law, but was doubtless a respectable, G.o.d-fearing man of irreproachable morals--sent to h.e.l.l for his wealth.