HOPE CHAPEL.
It was Sunday, during which Malcolm lay at the point of death some
three stories above his sister’s room. There, in the morning, while
he was at the worst, she was talking with Clementina, who had called
to see whether she would not go and hear the preacher of whom he had
spoken with such fervour. Florimel laughed.
“You seem to take everything for gospel Malcolm says, Clementina!”
“Certainly not,” returned Clementina, rather annoyed. “Gospel
now-a-days is what nobody disputes and nobody heeds; but I do heed what
Malcolm says, and intend to find out, if I _can_, whether there is any
reality in it. I thought you had a high opinion of your groom!”
“I would take his word for anything a man’s word can be taken for,”
said Florimel.
“But you don’t set much store by his judgment?”
“Oh, I daresay he’s right. But I don’t care for the things you like so
much to talk with him about. He’s a sort of poet, anyhow, and poets
must be absurd. They are always either dreaming or talking about their
dreams. They care nothing for the realities of life. No--if you want
advice, you must go to your lawyer or clergyman, or some man of common
sense, neither groom nor poet.”
“Then, Florimel, it comes to this--that this groom of yours is one of
the truest of men, and one who possessed your father’s confidence, but
you are so much his superior that you are capable of judging him, and
justified in despising his judgment.”
“Only in practical matters, Clementina.”
“And duty towards God is with you such a practical matter that you
cannot listen to anything he has got to say about it.”
Florimel shrugged her shoulders.
“For my part, I would give all I have to know there was a God worth
believing in.”
“Clementina!”
“What?”
“Of course there is a God. It is very horrible to deny it.”
“Which is worse--to deny _it_, or to deny _him_? Now, I confess to
doubting _it_--that is, the fact of a God; but you seem to me to deny
God himself, for you admit there is a God--think it very wicked to deny
that, and yet you don’t take interest enough in him to wish to learn
anything about him. You won’t _think_, Florimel. I don’t fancy you ever
really _think_.”
Florimel again laughed.
“I am glad,” she said, “that you don’t judge me _incapable_ of that
high art. But it is not so very long since Malcolm used to hint
something much the same about yourself, my lady!”
“Then he was quite right,” returned Clementina. “I am only just
beginning to think, and if I can find a teacher, here I am, his pupil.”
“Well, I suppose I can spare my groom quite enough to teach you all he
knows,” Florimel said, with what Clementina took for a marked absence
of expression. She reddened. But she was not one to defend herself
before her principles.
“If he can, why should he not?” she said. “But it was of his friend Mr
Graham I was thinking---not himself.”
“You cannot tell whether he has got anything to teach you.”
“Your groom’s testimony gives likelihood enough to make it my duty to
go and see. I intend to find the place this evening.”
“It must be some little ranting methodist conventicle. He would not be
allowed to preach in a church, you know.”
“Of course not! The church of England is like the apostle that forbade
the man casting out devils, and got forbid himself for it --with this
difference, that she won’t be forbid. Well, she chooses her portion
with Dives and not Lazarus. She is the most arrant respecter of persons
I know, and her Christianity is worse than a farce. It was that first
of all that drove me to doubt. If I could find a place where everything
was just the opposite, the poorer it was the better I should like
it. It makes me feel quite wicked to hear a smug parson reading the
gold ring and the goodly apparel, while the pew-openers beneath are
illustrating in dumb show the very thing the apostle is pouring out
the vial of his indignation upon over their heads;--doing it calmly
and without a suspicion, for the parson, while he reads, is rejoicing
in his heart over the increasing aristocracy of his congregation. The
farce is fit to make a devil in torment laugh.”
Once more, Florimel laughed aloud.
“Another revolution, Clementina, and we shall have you heading the
canaille to destroy Westminster Abbey.”
“I would follow any leader to destroy falsehood,” said Clementina. “No
canaille will take that up until it meddles with their stomachs or
their pew-rents.”
“Really, Clementina, you are the worst Jacobin I ever heard talk. My
groom is quite an aristocrat beside you.”
“Not an atom more than I am. I do acknowledge an aristocracy-- but it
is one neither of birth nor of intellect nor of wealth.”
“What is there besides to make one?”
“Something I hope to find before long. What if there be indeed a
kingdom and an aristocracy of life and truth!--Will you or will you not
go with me to hear this schoolmaster?”
“I will go anywhere with you, if it were only to be seen with such a
beauty,” said Florimel, throwing her arms round her neck and kissing
her.
Clementina gently returned the embrace, and the thing was settled.
The sound of their wheels, pausing in swift revolution with the clangor
of iron hoofs on rough stones at the door of the chapel, refreshed the
diaconal heart like the sound of water in the desert. For the first
time in the memory of the oldest, the day-spring of success seemed on
the point of breaking over Hope Chapel. The ladies were ushered in by
Mr Marshal himself, to Clementina’s disgust and Florimel’s amusement,
with much the same attention as his own shop-walker would have shown
to carriage-customers.--How could a man who taught light and truth be
found in such a mean _entourage_? But the setting was not the jewel.
A real stone _might_ be found in a copper ring. So said Clementina to
herself as she sat waiting her hoped for instructor.
Mrs Catanach settled her broad back into its corner, chuckling over her
own wisdom and foresight. Her seat was at the pulpit end of the chapel,
at right angles to almost all the rest of the pews --chosen because
thence, if indeed she could not well see the preacher, she could get
a good glimpse of nearly everyone that entered. Keen-sighted both
physically and intellectually, she recognized Florimel the moment she
saw her.
“Twa doos mair to the boody-craw!” she laughed to herself. “Ae man
thrashin’, an’ twa birdies pickin’!” she went on, quoting the old
nursery nonsense. Then she stooped, and let down her veil. Florimel
hated her, and therefore might know her.
“It’s the day o’ the Lord wi’ auld Sanny Grame!” she resumed to
herself, as she lifted her head. “He’s stickit nae mair, but a chosen
trumpet at last! Foul fa’ ’im for a wearifu’ cratur for a’ that! He
has nowther balm o’ grace nor pith o’ damnation. Yon laad Flemin’, ’at
preached i’ the Baillies’ Barn aboot the dowgs gaein’ roon’ an’ roon’
the wa’s o’ the New Jeroozlem, gien he had but hauden thegither an’
no gane to the worms sae sune, wad hae dung a score o’ ’im. But Sanny
angers me to that degree ’at but for rizons--like yon twa--I wad gang
oot i’ the mids o’ ane o’ ’s palahvers, an’ never come back, though I
ha’e a haill quarter o’ my sittin’ to sit oot yet, an’ it cost me dear,
an’ fits the auld back o’ me no that ill.”
When Mr Graham rose to read the psalm, great was Clementina’s
disappointment: he looked altogether, as she thought, of a sort with
the place--mean and dreary--of the chapel very chapelly, and she
did not believe it could be the man of whom Malcolm had spoken. By
a strange coincidence however, a kind of occurrence as frequent as
strange, he read for his text that same passage about the gold ring and
the vile raiment, in which we learn how exactly the behaviour of the
early Jewish churches corresponded to that of the later English ones,
and Clementina soon began to alter her involuntary judgment of him
when she found herself listening to an utterance beside which her most
voluble indignation would have been but as the babble of a child.
Sweeping, incisive, withering, blasting denunciation, logic and poetry
combining in one torrent of genuine eloquence, poured confusion and
dismay upon head and heart of all who set themselves up for pillars of
the church without practising the first principles of the doctrine of
Christ--men who, professing to gather their fellows together in the
name of Christ, conducted the affairs of the church on the principles
of hell--men so blind and dull and slow of heart, that they would never
know what the outer darkness meant until it had closed around them--men
who paid court to the rich for their money, and to the poor for their
numbers--men who sought gain first, safety next, and the will of God
not at all --men whose presentation of Christianity was enough to drive
the world to a preferable infidelity.
Clementina listened with her very soul. All doubt as to whether this
was Malcolm’s friend, vanished within two minutes of his commencement.
If she rejoiced a little more than was humble or healthful in
finding that such a man thought as she thought, she gained this
good notwithstanding--the presence and power of a man who believed
in righteousness the doctrine he taught. Also she perceived that
the principles of equality he held, were founded on the infinite
possibilities of the individual--and of the race only through the
individual; and that he held these principles with an absoluteness, an
earnestness, a simplicity, that dwarfed her loudest objurgation to the
uneasy murmuring of a sleeper. She could not but trust him, and her
hope grew great that perhaps for her he held the key of the kingdom of
heaven. She saw that if what this man said was true, then the gospel
was represented by men who knew nothing of its real nature, and by such
she had been led into a false judgment of it.
“If such a man,” said the schoolmaster in conclusion, “would but once
represent to himself that the man whom he regards as beneath him, _may_
nevertheless be immeasurably above him--and _that_ after no arbitrary
judgment, but according to the absolute facts of creation, the scale
of the kingdom of God, in which _being_ is rank; if he could persuade
himself of the possibility that he may yet have to worship before the
feet of those on whom he looks down as on the creatures of another and
meaner order of creation, would it not sting him to rise, and, lest
this should be one of such, make offer of his chair to the poor man in
the vile raiment? Would he ever more, all his life long, dare to say,
‘Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool?’”
During the week that followed, Clementina reflected with growing
delight on what she had heard, and looked forward to hearing more of a
kind correspondent on the approaching Sunday. Nor did the shock of the
disappearance of Florimel with Malcolm abate her desire to be taught by
Malcolm’s friend.
Lady Bellair was astounded, mortified, enraged. Liftore turned grey
with passion, then livid with mortification, at the news. Not one of
all their circle, as Florimel had herself foreseen, doubted for a
moment that she had run away with that groom of hers. Indeed, upon
examination, it became evident that the scheme had been for some time
in hand: the yacht they had gone on board had been lying there for
months; and although she was her own mistress, and might marry whom she
pleased, it was no wonder she had run away, for how could she have held
her face to it, or up after it?
Lady Clementina accepted the general conclusion, but judged it
individually. She had more reason to be distressed at what seemed to
have taken place than anyone else; indeed it stung her to the heart,
wounding her worse than in its first stunning effects she was able to
know; yet she thought better rather than worse of Florimel because
of it. What she did not like in her with reference to the affair was
the depreciatory manner in which she had always spoken of Malcolm. If
genuine, it was quite inconsistent with due regard for the man for
whom she was yet prepared to sacrifice so much; if, on the other hand,
her slight opinion of his judgment was a pretence, then she had been
disloyal to the just prerogatives of friendship.
The latter part of that week was the sorest time Clementina had ever
passed. But, like a true woman, she fought her own misery and sense
of loss, as well as her annoyance and anxiety,--constantly saying to
herself that, be the thing as it might, she could never cease to be
glad that she had known Malcolm MacPhail.