Audrey had made a faint protest against Wyndham's realistic presentation
of Flaxman Reed. In doing so she was not guided by any insight into the
character of that divine, or by any sympathy with his aims. Indeed she
could not have understood him if she had tried. Her thoughts had never
travelled along that avenue of time down which Wyndham had tracked his
pathetic figure to the thirteenth century. She merely wanted to avoid a
slavish acquiescence in Wyndham's view, to guard a characteristic
intellectual attitude. Intellect has its responsibilities, and she was
anxious to show herself impartial. In all this Flaxman Reed counted for
nothing. It was intolerable to her that Wyndham should have classed her
even for a moment with those weak emotional creatures who submitted to
his influence. Why, he might just as well have said that she was
influenced by Ted Haviland; the fact being that no engaged woman ever
preserved her independence more completely than she had done. Had
devotion to Ted interfered with her appreciation of Wyndham? Then she
reflected that Wyndham did not know about her engagement any more than
other people.
So when Mr. Flaxman Reed called, as he did on Monday afternoon, Audrey
met him with a mind secure against any malignant charm. His most
innocent remarks excited her suspicion.
"I'm glad you've found your way to St. Teresa's. We don't often get such
a strong contingent from the other side." By "the other side" Mr. Reed
meant Middlesex, but to Audrey the phrase was insidiously controversial.
She determined to take her stand once and for all.
"I'm afraid my heterodoxy is incorrigible. So I should say is Mr.
Langley Wyndham's."
The vicar raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. "I don't know why _he_
came--unless it was for old acquaintance' sake."
"Ah! you knew him, didn't you? Do tell me about him. He's public
property, you know."
"I daresay, but I have no right to discuss him. We hardly ever meet now;
if we did we shouldn't agree. We are enigmas to each other."
"Yes," she said meditatively, and with a faint reproduction of Wyndham's
manner, "I should say you would be. He belongs so essentially to the
present, don't you think?"
Flaxman Reed flushed painfully. "And I to the past--is that what you
mean?"
"Yes, I think I do."
"You may be right. I suppose he is very modern--a decadent who would
rather die with his day than live an hour behind it--who can't see that
the future may have more kindred with the past than with the present.
Mind you, I'm not talking of him, but of his school."
"Then you read him? Of course--everybody reads him."
"I've not much time for any reading that lies outside my work. But I
read his first book when it came out. Is it from him you get what you
call your heterodoxy?"
"No. You have to think these things out for yourself."
Audrey was led into making this statement simply by the desire to
please. That eternally feminine instinct told her that at the moment she
would be most interesting to Flaxman Reed in the character of a forlorn
sceptic. His face sharpened with a sudden distrust.
"What, have _you_ got the malady of the century--the disease of thought?
Surely this is something new?"
"It is. One can't go on for ever in the old grooves. One must think."
"Yes; that curse is laid upon us for our sins."
Audrey smiled a bitter smile, as much as to say that she must have
committed some awful crime to be so tormented with intellect as she was.
"I suppose," he continued guilelessly, "every earnest mind must go
through this sooner or later."
"Yes, but I've come out on what you call the other side. I can't go
back, can I?"
"No; but you can go round."
Audrey shook her head sadly, feeling all the time how nice it was to be
taken seriously.
"Why not? Why not compromise? What is life but compromise? What else is
my own position as an Anglican priest? I daresay you know that my heart
is not altogether with the Church I serve?" He checked himself; he had
not meant to strike this personal note. And how could he explain the
yearning of his heart for the great heart of the Mother-church? This
would have been possible last year at Oxford, but not now. "I tell you
this because I feel that it might perhaps help you."
"No; I know what you will say next. You will tell me to stop thinking
because it hurts me."
"I won't. You will go on thinking in spite of me. But your intellect
will be feeding on itself. You will get no farther. Thought can never be
satisfied with thought."
Flaxman Reed was only a simple pure-minded priest, but Wyndham himself
could not have chosen words more subtly calculated to establish the
"influence." To have two such champions battling for possession of her
soul was exciting enough in all conscience, but she was inexpressibly
flattered by that dramatic conception of herself as a restless intellect
struggling with the storms of doubt. It would be hard to say how Flaxman
Reed came to believe in any real passion of thought behind Audrey's
spiritual coquetry. His ministration to a living illusion was almost as
touching as his devotion to a dead ideal. But Audrey herself was too
completely the thrall of the illusion to feel compunction.
There was no voice to warn him that his enthusiasm was the prey of the
eternal vanity. He leaned back in his meditative hieratic attitude, his
elbows resting on the arm of his chair, his thin hands joined at the
finger-tips, wondering what he should say to help her. After all, Audrey
had stated her case a little vaguely--there was a reticence as to
details. These, however, he easily supplied from his own experience,
supposing hers to have been more or less like it. He said he wished he
had known of this before, that he had spoken sooner, wincing perceptibly
as Audrey pointed out the inexpediency of discussing eternal things on
so temporal an occasion as her dinner-party. He did not mean that. His
time now was short; he had a stupid parish meeting at five o'clock. He
went rapidly over the ground, past immemorial stumbling-stones of
thought, refuting current theories, suggesting lines of reading; in his
excitement he even recommended some slight study of Patristics. There
was nothing like getting to the sources--Polycarp and Irenaeus were
important; or he could lend her Lightfoot. But he did not want to
overwhelm her with dogmas--mere matter for the intellect--he would
prefer her to accept some truths provisionally and see how they worked
out. After all, the working out was everything. He wanted her to see
that it was a question of will. In the crisis of his own life he had
helped himself most by helping others--practically, he meant--seeing
after his poor people, and so on. Didn't she think it might be the same
with her?
Audrey looked grave. It was good to be taken seriously, but this was
going a little too far.
Didn't she think she could "do something? Other ladies----"
Flaxman Reed was doing well, very well indeed, but he had spoiled it all
by that hopelessly inartistic touch. Any man of the world could have
told him that to mention "other ladies" to Audrey--to take her out of
the circle of supreme intelligences in which he had placed her ten
minutes ago, and to confuse her with the rank and file of parochial
underlings and hangers-on--was death to the "influence." It was an
insult to her glorious womanhood. Some people might even have objected
that such crass ignorance of the world he renounced detracted from the
merit of the renunciation. Her voice was very cold and distant as she
answered him. "What do you suppose I could do? If you mean slumming,
I've never been down a slum in my life." No, he didn't mean slumming
exactly. To tell the truth, he could not fancy Audrey mingling with the
brutal side of life. He would have shrunk from giving her work that he
committed without a pang to his deaconesses and sisters.
"Do you mean mothers' meetings then, and that sort of thing? I
_couldn't_."
No, he didn't mean mothers' meetings either. But he thought she might
like to come sometimes to their social evenings.
"Social evenings"--that was worse than all. He had plunged in his
nervousness to the lowermost bathos. Audrey saw that he looked puzzled
and disheartened. She crossed over to her writing-desk, wrote out a
cheque for five pounds, and gave it to him with the prettiest action in
the world. "I want you to take that for your poor people. I wish I could
help in some other way, but I can't. I am so sorry." The apology was
sweetness itself, but she had the air of having settled her account with
humanity--and him. He thanked her gravely and took his leave, reminding
her that whenever she needed his help, it would still be there. She
remained musing some time after he had gone.
He little guessed how nearly he had won the victory. Perhaps he would
have scorned any advantage gained by an appeal to her sex, though he had
conceded much to it--more than he well knew.