TEA À LA MODE
SUNDAY afternoon came. It was the strangest party. Pauline, on being
introduced to Mrs. Coleman, made a profound curtsey, which Mrs. Coleman
returned by an inclination of her head, as if she consented to recognise
Pauline, but to go no further. Tea was served early, as chapel began at
half-past six. Mrs. Coleman, although it was Sunday, was very busy. She
had made hot buttered toast, and she had bought some muffins, but had
appeased her conscience by telling the boy that she would not pay for
them till Monday. The milk was always obtained on the same terms. She
also purchased some water-cresses; but the water-cress man demanded
prompt cash settlement, and she was in a strait. At last the desire for
the water-cresses prevailed, and she said:
“How much?”
“Three-halfpence.”
“Now, mind I give you twopence for yourself—mind I give it you. I do not
approve of buying and selling on Sunday. We will settle about the other
ha’porth another time.”
“All right, ma’am; if you like it that way, it’s no odds to me;” and Mrs.
Coleman went her way upstairs really believing that she had prevented the
commission of a crime.
Let those of us cast the stone who can take oath that in their own
morality there is no casuistry. Probably ours is worse than hers,
because hers was traditional and ours is self-manufactured.
Everything being at last in order, Mrs. Coleman, looking rather warm, but
still very neat and very charming, sat at the head of the table, with her
back to the fireplace; the Major was on her right, Jean on her left,
Pauline next to him, and opposite to her Zachariah. Zachariah and his
wife believed in asking a blessing on their food; but, curiously enough,
in 1814, even amongst the strictest sort, it had come to be the custom
not to ask it at breakfast or tea, but only at dinner; although breakfast
and tea in those days certainly needed a blessing as much as dinner, for
they were substantial meals. An exception was made in favour of public
tea-meetings. At a public tea-meeting a blessing was always asked and a
hymn was always sung.
For some time nothing remarkable was said. The weather was very hot, and
Mrs. Coleman complained. It had been necessary to keep up a fire for the
sake of the kettle. The Major promptly responded to her confession of
faintness by opening the window wider, by getting a shawl to put over the
back of her chair; and these little attentions she rewarded by smiles and
particular watchfulness over his plate and cup. At last he and Jean fell
to talking about the jubilee which was to take place on the first of the
next month to celebrate the centenary of the “accession of the
illustrious family of Brunswick to the throne”—so ran the public notice.
There was to be a grand display in the parks, a sham naval action on the
Serpentine, and a balloon ascent.
“Are you going, Caillaud?” said the Major. “It will be a holiday.”
“We,” cried Pauline—“we! I should think not. _We_ go to rejoice over
your House of Brunswick; and it is to be the anniversary of your battle
of the Nile too! _We_ go! No, no.”
“What’s your objection to the House of Brunswick? And as for the battle
of the Nile, you are no friend to Napoleon.” So replied the Major, who
always took a pleasure in exciting Pauline.
“The House of Brunswick! Why should we thank God for them; thank God for
the stupidest race that ever sat upon a throne; thank God for
stupidity—and in a king, Major? God, the Maker of the sun and stars—to
call upon the nation to bless Him for your Prince Regent. As for the
Nile, I am, as you say, no friend to Napoleon, but I am French. It is
horrible to me to think—I saw him the other day—that your Brunswick
Prince is in London and Napoleon is in Elba.”
“God, after all,” said the Major, laughing, “is not so hostile to
stupidity, then; as you suppose.”
“Ah! don’t plague me, Major; that’s what you are always trying to do.
I’m not going to thank the Supreme for the Brunswicks. I don’t believe
He wanted them here.”
Pauline’s religion was full of the most lamentable inconsistencies, which
the Major was very fond of exposing, but without much effect, and her
faith was restored after every assault with wonderful celerity. By way
of excuse for her we may be permitted to say that a perfectly consistent,
unassailable creed, in which conclusion follows from premiss in
unimpeachable order, is impossible. We cannot construct such a creed
about any man or woman we know, and least of all about the universe. We
acknowledge opposites which we have no power to bring together; and
Pauline, although she knew nothing of philosophy, may not have been
completely wrong with her Supreme who hated the Brunswicks and
nevertheless sanctioned Carlton House.
Pauline surprised Mrs. Zachariah considerably. A woman, and more
particularly a young woman, even supposing her to be quite orthodox, who
behaved in that style amongst the members of Pike Street, would have been
like a wild seagull in a farmyard of peaceful, clucking, brown-speckled
fowls. All the chapel maidens and matrons, of course, were serious; but
their seriousness was decent and in order. Mrs. Coleman was therefore
scandalised, nervous, and dumb. Jean, as his manner was when his
daughter expressed herself strongly, was also silent. His love for her
was a consuming, hungry fire. It utterly extinguished all trace, not
merely of selfishness, but of self, in him, and he was perfectly content,
when Pauline spoke well, to remain quiet, and not allow a word of his to
disturb the effect which he thought she ought to produce.
The Major, as a man of the world, thought the conversation was becoming a
little too metaphysical, and asked Mrs. Coleman gaily if she would like
to see the _fête_.
“Really, I hardly know what to say. I suppose”—and this was said with a
peculiar acidity—“there is nothing wrong in it? Zachariah, my dear,
would you like to go?”
Zachariah did not reply. His thoughts were elsewhere. But at last the
spirit moved in him:
“Miss Pauline, your Supreme Being won’t help you very far. There is no
light save in God’s Holy Word. God hath concluded them all in unbelief
that He might have mercy upon all. As by one man’s disobedience many
were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made
righteous. That is the explanation; that is the gospel. God allows all
this wickedness that His own glory may be manifested thereby, and His own
love in sending Jesus Christ to save us: that, as sin hath reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord. Do you ask me why does God wink at the crimes
of kings and murderers? What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to
make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction, and that He might make known the riches of
His glory on the vessels of mercy which He had afore prepared unto glory,
even us whom He had called? Miss Pauline, the mere light of human reason
will never save you or give you peace. Unless you believe God’s Word you
are lost; lost here and hereafter; lost _here_ even, for until you
believe it you wander in a fog of ever deepening confusion. All is dark
and inexplicable.”
Being very much excited, he used largely the words of St. Paul, and not
his own. How clear it all seemed to him, how indisputable! Childish
association and years of unquestioning repetition gave an absolute
certainty to what was almost unmeaning to other people.
Mrs. Zachariah, although she had expressed a strong desire for the
Major’s conversion, and was the only other representative of the chapel
present, was very fidgety and uncomfortable during this speech. She had
an exquisite art, which she sometimes practised, of dropping her husband,
or rather bringing him down. So, when there was a pause, everybody being
moved at least by his earnestness, she said:
“My dear, will you take any more tea?”
He was looking on the table-cloth, with his head on his hands, and did
not answer.
“Major Maitland, may I give you some more tea?”
“No, thank you.” The Major too was impressed—more impressed than the
lady who sat next to him, and she felt rebuffed and annoyed. To Pauline,
Zachariah had spoken Hebrew; but his passion was human, and her heart
leapt out to meet him, although she knew not what answer to make. Her
father was in the same position; but the Major’s case was a little
different. He had certainly at some time or other read the Epistle to
the Romans, and some expressions were not entirely unfamiliar to him.
“‘Vessels of wrath fitted to destruction!’—a strong and noble phrase.
Who are your vessels of wrath, Coleman?”
Caillaud and Pauline saw a little light, but it was speedily eclipsed
again.
“The unregenerate.”
“Who are they?”
“Those whom God has not called.”
“Castlereagh, Liverpool, Sidmouth, and the rest of the gang, for
example?”
Zachariah felt that the moment had come.
“Yes, yes; but not only they. More than they. God help me if I deny the
Cross of Christ—all of us into whose hearts God’s grace has not been
poured—we, you, all of us, if we have not been born of the Spirit and
redeemed by the sacrifice of His Son.”
Zachariah put in the “us” and the “we,” it will be observed. It was a
concession to blunt the sharpness of that dreadful dividing-line.
“We? Not yourself, Caillaud, and Pauline?”
He could not face the question. Something within him said that he ought
to have gone further; that he ought to have singled out the Major,
Caillaud, and Pauline; held them fast, looked straight into their eyes,
and told them each one there and then that they were in the bonds of
iniquity, sold unto Satan, and in danger of hell-fire. But, alas! he was
at least a century and a half too late. He struggled, wrestled, self
against self, and failed, not through want of courage, but because he
wanted a deeper conviction. The system was still the same, even to its
smallest details, but the application had become difficult. The
application, indeed, was a good deal left to the sinner himself. That
was the difference. Phrases had been invented or discovered which served
to express modern hesitation to bring the accepted doctrine into actual,
direct, week-day practice. It was in that way that it was gradually bled
into impotence. One of these phrases came into his mind. It was from
his favourite author:
“‘Who art thou that judgest?’ It is not for me, Major Maitland.”
Ah, but, Zachariah, do you not remember that Paul is not speaking of
those who deny the Lord, but of the weak in faith; of differences in
eating and drinking, and the observation of days? Whether he remembered
it or not, he could say no more. Caillaud, the Major, Pauline, condemned
to the everlasting consequences of the wrath of the Almighty! He could
not pronounce such a sentence, and yet his conscience whispered that just
for want of the last nail in a sure place what he had built would come
tumbling to the ground. During the conversation the time had stolen
away, and, to their horror, Zachariah and his wife discovered that it was
a quarter-past six. He hastily informed his guests that he had hoped
they would attend him to his chapel. Would they go? The Major
consented. He had nothing particular on hand, but Caillaud and Pauline
refused. Zachariah was particularly urgent that these two should
accompany him, but they were steadfast, for all set religious
performances were hateful to them.
“No, Coleman, no more; I know what it all means.”
“And I,” added Pauline, “cannot sit still with so many respectable
people; I never could. I have been to church, and always felt impelled
to do something peculiar in it which would have made them turn me out. I
cannot, too, endure preaching. I cannot tolerate that man up in the
pulpit looking down over all the people—so wise and so self-satisfied. I
want to pull him out and say. ‘Here, you, sir, come here and let me see
if you can tell me two or three things I want to know.’ Then, Mr.
Coleman, I am never well in a great building, especially in a church; I
have such a weight upon my head as if the roof were resting on it.”
He looked mournfully at her, but there was no time to remonstrate. Mrs.
Zachariah was ready, in her Sunday best of sober bluish cloud-colour.
Although it was her Sunday best, there was not a single thread of finery
on it, and there was not a single crease nor spot. She bade Caillaud and
Pauline good-bye with much cheerfulness, and tripped downstairs. The
Major had preceded her, but Zachariah lingered for a moment with the
other two.
“Come, my dear, make haste, we shall be so late.”
“Go on with the Major; I shall catch you in a moment; I walk faster than
you. I must close the window a trifle, and take two or three of the
coals off the fire.”
Caillaud and Pauline lingered too. The three were infinitely nearer to
one another than they knew. Zachariah thought he was so far, and yet he
was so close. The man rose up behind the Calvinist, and reached out arms
to touch and embrace his friends.
“Good-bye, Caillaud; good-bye, Pauline! May God in His mercy bless and
save you. God bless you!”
Caillaud looked steadfastly at him for a moment, and then, in his
half-forgotten French fashion, threw his arms round his neck, and the two
remained for a moment locked together, Pauline standing by herself apart.
She came forward, took Zachariah’s hand, when it was free, in both her
own, held her head back a little, as if for clearness of survey, and said
slowly, “God bless you, Mr. Coleman.” She then went downstairs. Her
father followed her, and Zachariah went after his wife and the Major,
whom, however, he did not overtake till he reached the chapel door, where
they were both waiting for him.