Part 37 (1/2)

”Yes; glad and thankful.” He paused; his thin sensitive lips trembled, and when he spoke again it was in a low constrained voice, as if he were struggling with some powerful feeling.

”I wanted you to learn by failure that it is not what we know, nor what we do, but what we are that matters in the sight of G.o.d.”

”Yes, I know that.” She sat looking up, with her head a little on one side, holding her chin in one hand: it had been her att.i.tude in her student days at Oxford when trying to follow a difficult lecture, and she reverted to it now. For Mr. Flaxman Reed was very difficult. His style fascinated and yet repelled her, and in this case the style was the man.

”What am I?” said Audrey, presently. It was a curious question, and none of her friends had answered it to her satisfaction. She was eager to know Mr. Reed's opinion. He turned and looked at her, and his eyes were two clear lights under the shadow of the sharp eyebone.

”What are you? With all your faults and all your failures, you are something infinitely more valuable than you know.”

”What makes you say so?”

”I say so because I think that G.o.d cares more for those that hunger and thirst after righteousness than for those who are filled at his table.

Believe me, nothing in all our intercourse has touched me so much as this confession of your failure.”

”Has it really? Can you--can you trust me again in spite of it?”

”Yes; you have trusted me. I take it as one of the greatest pleasures, the greatest privileges of my life, that you should have come to me as you have done--not when you were bright and happy, but in your weakness and distress, in what I imagine to have been the darkest hour of all, when refuge failed you, and no man cared for your soul.”

”No; that's the worst of it,--that there's n.o.body to turn to--n.o.body cares. If I thought that you cared--but----”

”Indeed I care.”

”For my soul--yes.” Her ”yes” was a deep sigh.

”Why not? It is my office. A priest is answerable to G.o.d for the souls of his people.”

He spoke with a touch of austerity in his tone. Something warned him that if this conversation was to be profitable to either of them, he must avoid personalities. His position in the Church was a compromise.

His att.i.tude towards Audrey Craven was only another kind of compromise,--so much concession to her weakness, so much to her appealing womanhood. He had begun by believing in her soul,--that was the plea he made to the fierce exacting conscience, always requiring a spiritual motive for his simplest actions,--and he had ended by creating the thing he believed in, and in his own language he was answerable to G.o.d for it. But hitherto with his own nature he had made no compromise.

He had sacrificed heart, senses, and intellect to the tyranny of his conscience; he had ceased to dread their insane revolt against that benevolent despotism. And now the question that tormented him was whether all the time he had not been temporising with his own inexorable humanity, whether his relations with Audrey Craven did not involve a perpetual intrigue between the earthly and the heavenly. For there was a strange discrepancy between his simple heart that took all things seriously--even a frivolous woman--and the tortuous entangled thing that was his conscience. He went on at first in the same self-controlled voice, monotonous but for a peculiar throbbing stress on some words, and he seemed to be speaking more to himself than her.

”You say you can do nothing, and I believe it. What of that? The things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen are eternal. Our deeds are of the things that are seen; they are part of the visible finite world, done with our hands, with our body. They belong to the flesh that profiteth nothing. It is only the spirit, only the pure and holy will, that gives them life. That will is not ours--not yours or mine. Before we can receive it our will must die; otherwise there would be two wills in us struggling for possession. You have come to me for help--after all I can give you none. I can only tell you what I know--that there is no way of peace but the way of renunciation. I can only say: if your will is not yet one with G.o.d's will, renounce it--give it up. Then and then only you will live--not before. Look there!” he pointed to the crucifix. ”The great Pagan religions had each their symbol of life. For us who are Christ's the symbol of life is the crucifix. Crucify self. When you have done that, you will have no need to come and ask me what you must do and what you must leave undone. Your deeds are--they _must_ be pure.”

His excitement moved her, her eyes filled with tears; but she followed his words slowly and painfully. He was always making these speeches to her, full of the things she could not understand. How often she had felt this sense of effort and pain in the old ”art” days with Ted, or when she had been held helpless in the grasp of Wyndham's relentless intellect. She had chafed when the barriers rose between her mind and theirs. But between her and this nineteenth century ascetic there was an immeasurable gulf fixed; she could not reach the hand he stretched out to her across it. Even his living presence seemed endlessly far from hers, and the thought of that separation filled her with a deep resigned humility. Now, though his thoughts were poured into her consciousness without mixing with it, cloudy, insoluble, troubling its blank transparency, something in the rhythmic movement of his words stirred her, so responsive was she to every impression of sense. They recalled to her that other gospel of life preached to her by Langley, and though she understood imperfectly, she felt the difference with shame. The young priest went on, still as if speaking to himself.

”There are only two things we have to learn--the knowledge of self and the knowledge of G.o.d, and they hang together. If there is any sin in us, unconfessed and unrecognised as sin, there is no knowledge of G.o.d and no union with him possible for us.”

She rose, moved a step forward, and then stood looking at him irresolutely. Truly a revelation was there for her; but she was in that state of excitement in which we are more capable of making revelations than of receiving them. He had risen too, and was holding out his hand.

”Well,” he said more gently, ”there is something you want to say to me.

Please sit down again.”

She shook her head and still stood upright. Possessed with the thought of the confession she was about to make, she felt that she needed all the dignity that att.i.tude afforded. At last she spoke, very low and quickly, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor.

”You say you know me, but you don't. You don't know what I am--what I am capable of. But I must tell you,--the thought of it is stifling me.

Once, only two years ago, I had a terrible temptation. It came to me through some one whom I loved--very dearly. I was ready to give up everything--_everything_, you understand--for him; and I would have done it, only--G.o.d was good to me. He made it impossible for me, and I was saved. But I am just as bad, just as guilty, as if he had let it happen.”

It was done. The unutterable thing was said. For once Audrey had been absolutely truthful and sincere. The soul that he had evoked had come forth as it were new-born out of the darkness.