One day's work among the poor of St. Teresa's, Lambeth, is enough to
exhaust you, if you are at all sensitive and highly strung, and Audrey
had had three days of it. No wonder, then, that as she leaned back in a
particularly hard wooden chair in the vicar's study every nerve in her
body was on edge.
It was a year after Vincent's death. With lapse of time that event had
lost much of its oppressive magnificence, and it affected Audrey more in
looking back than it had done in reality. Time, too, had thrown her
relations with Wyndham into relief; and as she realised more and more
their true nature, the conscience that had been so long quiescent began
to stir in her. Its voice seemed to be seconding Wyndham's and
Katherine's verdict. She became uneasy about herself. Once more, this
time in serious sincerity, she felt the need of a stronger personality
upholding and pervading her own. Absolute dependence on somebody else's
character had become a habit of her nature: she could no more live now
without some burning stimulus to thought and feeling than the drunkard
can satisfy his thirst with plain water. Naturally she thought of Mr.
Flaxman Reed, as Katherine had thought of him the midnight before
Vincent's death, or as she had thought of him herself in the day of her
temptation. This time she had ended by going to him, as many a woman had
gone before, with her empty life in her hands, begging that it might be
filled. For all cases of the kind Mr. Flaxman Reed had one remedy--work
in the parish of St. Teresa's; as a rule it either killed or cured them.
But he had spared Audrey hitherto, as he would have spared some sick
child a medicine too strong and bitter for it. Finally, much to his
surprise, she asked him for the work of her own accord, and he gave it
to her.
And now she had had three days of it. It was enough. It made her head
ache yet to think of all she had gone through. For the first two days
she had been sustained by a new and wholly delightful sensation, the
consciousness of her own goodness; on the third day that support had
suddenly given way. A woman's coarse word, the way a man had looked at
her as she lifted her silk petticoats out of the mud, some bit of crude
criticism such as Demos publishes at street corners in the expressive
vernacular, had been sufficient to destroy all the bright illusions that
gilded the gutters of Lambeth--reflections of a day that was not hers.
And yet, she had come into a new world with new ideas and new emotions;
if not the best of all possible worlds, it was better than any which had
once seemed probable, and she wanted to stay in it. She was dazzled by
the splendour of religion. The curtain had risen on the great
miracle-play of the soul; she, too, longed to dance in the masque of the
virtues and the graces. Every fresh phase of life had presented itself
to Audrey in spectacular magnificence; she could not help seeing things
so, it was the way her mind worked. The candles burning on the high
altar of St. Teresa's were only footlights in the wrong place; and the
veil that Mr. Flaxman Reed had lifted a little for her was the curtain
going up before another stage. Meanwhile while she had to consider his
possible criticism of her own acting. Sitting in the hard ascetic chair,
she looked round the room and tried to understand a little of its
owner's life. Every detail in it was a challenge to her intelligence.
She perplexed herself with questions. Why didn't Mr. Flaxman Reed have a
proper carpet on the floor? Why didn't he hang a curtain over that ugly
green baize door? It led into the room where he held his classes and
entertained his poorer parishioners; that room was also his dining-room.
How could he eat his meals after all those dreadful people had been in
it, poor things? Why only common deal book-cases, a varnished desk, and
that little painted table underneath the big crucifix? Why these
painfully uneasy chairs, and--yes--only one picture, and that of the
most emaciated of Madonnas? Could not her old favourite Botticelli have
supplied him with a lovelier type? Or there was Raphael. Sometimes, on a
Sunday evening after service, she had come in here from the rich, warm,
scented church, with the music of an august liturgy ringing in her ears,
and the chill place had struck like death to all her senses. And this
was the atmosphere in which his life was spent--this, and the gaunt
streets and the terrible slums of Lambeth.
She was not left long alone, for Mr. Flaxman Reed never kept any one
waiting if he could help it. As he seated himself opposite to her, the
set lines of his face relaxed and his manner softened. Her eyes followed
the outline of his face, which stood out white and sharp against the
dark window-curtain. She noted the crossed legs, the hands folded on his
knees, the weary pose of the whole wasted figure. It ought to have been
an appeal to her pity. The poor man was suffering from many kinds of
hunger, and from intense exhaustion. He had just dismissed a tiresome
parishioner, and, vexed with himself for having kept Audrey waiting, had
left his dinner in the next room untouched, and came all unnerved to
this interview which he dreaded yet desired. He listened quietly to the
story of her failure; it was not only what he had expected, but what he
had wished.
"It's no good my trying any more," she urged in the pleading voice that
she could make so sweet. "I can't do anything. The sight of those poor
wretches' misery only makes me miserable too. I dream of it at night. I
assure you it's been the most awful three days I ever spent in my
life."
"Has it?"
"Yes. I feel things so terribly, you know; and it's not as if I could do
anything--I simply can't. What _must_ you think of me?"
"I think nothing. I knew that you would tell me this, and I am glad."
"Are you? Glad that I failed?"
"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 God."
"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 attitude 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 God 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 nobody to turn to--nobody
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 God 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 attitude 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
God 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 God'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 God, and they hang together. If there is any sin in us,
unconfessed and unrecognised as sin, there is no knowledge of God 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 attitude 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--God 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.
At first neither of them spoke. Then he sat down and thanked her,
simply, for what she had just told him. But to his own shame and grief
he had nothing more to say. He had heard many a confession, and from
many a guiltier woman's lips, but none so piteous, because none so
purely spontaneous, as this. And to all he had given pity, counsel, and
help.
But now he was dumb.
She was thirsting for help, for help that she could understand. She
clasped her hands imploringly and looked into his face, but it had no
pity for her and no deliverance. She could see nothing there but
grief--grief terrible and profound.
"I see. Then you too judge me--like the rest."
"God forbid. I judge no man." Which was true, for it was the woman he
had judged.
She looked at him again, a long look full of wonder and reproach; then
she went quietly away.
She had reached the end of the narrow passage leading from the study to
the front hall, when she recollected that she had left behind her a
small manual of devotion. He had given it to her not long ago. She went
back for it, and knocked softly at the study door. There was no answer,
and supposing that he had gone through into the room beyond, she opened
the door and looked in.
He was kneeling in the far corner of the study, with his hands stretched
out before the crucifix. From the threshold where she stood she could
see the agony of his uplifted face and hear his prayer. "O wretched man
that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Audrey knew then that for one moment the love she had hungered and
thirsted after, more than after righteousness, had been actually within
her grasp, and that she had lost it. The shadow of an uncommitted sin
stood between her and the one man by whom and for whom she could have
grown pure and womanly and good. For Flaxman Reed had loved her, though
up to that evening he had been in complete ignorance of the fact, being
already wedded to what the world considers an impossible ideal.
Such is the power of suggestion, that Audrey's confession of her
weakness had revealed to him his own. If she had been all that he
believed her to be, he might not have regarded his feeling for her as in
itself of the nature of sin; but his sensitive soul, made morbid by its
self-imposed asceticism, recoiled from the very thought of impurity in
the woman he loved. Hence his powerlessness to help her. He knew, none
better, that a stronger man would not have felt this difficulty. He had
trembled before his own intellect; now he was afraid of his own heart.
Audrey--it was for such that his Christ had died. And he could not even
speak a word to save her.
He became almost blasphemous in his agony. Christ had died on _his_
cross. He, Christ's servant, had crucified self--and it could not die.
Was this the ironic destiny of all ideals too austere for earth, too
divine for humanity?
Not long afterwards Flaxman Reed was received into the communion of the
Church of Rome. He had done with compromise.