|Shortly afterwards Mrs. Haldane suggested that they should take a
turn about the grounds, instead of wasting the sunshine indoors.
As they left the chapel the vicar paused and looked back at the
ivy-draped building, with its half-hidden lancets.
“You have turned a sacred edifice to a strange use,” he said. “Here,
within the walls where past generations have dwelt and worshipped,
you have set up your apparatus for the destruction of man’s holiest
heritage. Pardon me if I speak warmly, but to me this appears to be
sacrilege.”
“The Church has always been intolerant of science and research,”
replied Mr. Haldane, good-humouredly, “and it is the fortune of
conflict if sometimes we are able to make reprisals. But, seriously, I
see no desecration here.”
“No desecration in converting Gods house into a laboratory to analyze
soul and spirit into function and force!”
“No desecration,” should say, “in converting the shrine of a narrow,
selfish superstition into a schoolroom where one may learn a truer
and a grander theology, and a less presumptuous and illusive theory of
life. It is, however, impossible for us to be at one on these matters;
let us at least agree to differ amicably. Your predecessor and I found
much of common interest. He was of the old school, but life had taught
him a kindly tolerance of opinion. To you, as I gleaned from your
sermon yesterday, the new philosophy and modern criticism are
familiar. You must surely concede that the old theological ground must
be immeasurably widened, if you are still resolved to occupy it.
Why should you fear truth, if God has indeed revealed Himself to the
Church?”
“The Church does not fear truth,” replied the vicar; “but she does
fear the wild speculations and guesses at truth which unsettle the
faith of the world. For myself I have looked into some of these
fantastic theories of science, and I repudiate them as at once
blasphemous and hopeless. It is easy to destroy the old trust in the
beneficence of Providence, in the redemption and destiny of man; but
when you have accomplished that, you can go no further. Tyndall proves
to you that all life in the world is the outcome of antecedent life;
Haeckel contends that science must in the long run accept spontaneous
generation. Your leading men are at loggerheads; and it signifies
little which is right, for in either case the _causa causans_ is only
removed one link further back in the chain of causation. Some of
you hold that there is only matter and force in the universe, but on
others it is beginning to dawn that possibly matter and force are in
the ultimate one and the same. And again, it signifies little which is
right, for both, being conditioned, must have had a beginning. A God,
a creative Power, is needed in the long run--‘a power behind humanity,
and behind all other things,’ as Herbert Spencer describes it; a God
of whom science can predicate nothing, of whom science declares it to
be beyond her province to speak, but of whom every heart is at some
time vividly conscious and has been from the beginning--demonstrably
from the Paleolithic period until now.”
“Oh, Mr. Santley, I am so pleased you have said that. I have often
wished that I were able to answer my husband, but I have no power of
argument,” said Mrs. Haldane, looking gratefully at the vicar. “You
must not think he is not a good, a real practical Christian, in spite
of his opinions.”
Mr. Haldane laughed quietly as his wife slipped her hand into his.
“As to the God of the Paleolithic man, Mr. Santley forgets that it was
at best a personification of some of the great natural powers--wind;
rain, thunder, sunshine, and moonlight; and as to Christianity, my
dear, there is much in the teaching of Christ, and even of the Church,
which I reverence and hold sacred. Morality, and the consequent
civilization of the world, owes more to Christianity than to any
other creed. It has done much evil, but I think it has done more good.
Purified from its mythic delusions, it has still a splendid future
before it.”
“And _à propos_ of practical Christianity, Mr. Santley,” continued
Mrs. Haldane, “I want to talk to you about the parish. I am eager to
begin with my poor people again; and, by-the-bye, the children have, I
understand, had no school treat yet this year. Now, sit down here and
tell me all about your sick, in the first place.”
Mr. Haldane stood listening to the woes and illnesses of the village
for a few minutes, and then left them together in deep discussions
over flannels and medicines and nourishing food. Dinner passed
pleasantly enough. The vicar had satisfied his conscience by
protesting against the desecration of the chapel and the disastrous
results of scientific research. Clearly it was useless, and worse than
useless, to contend with this large-natured, clear-headed unbeliever.
It was infinitely more agreeable to feel the soft dark light of Mrs.
Haldane’s eyes dwelling on his face, and to listen to the music of her
voice as she told him of their travels abroad. In his imagination the
scenes she described rose before him, and he and she were the central
figures in the clear, new landscape. He thought of their walks on the
cliffs and on the sea-shore, in the golden days that had gone by. How
easily it might have been!
The sun had gone down when he parted from his host and hostess at the
great gate at the end of the avenue. He had declined their offer to
drive him over to Omberley. He preferred walking in the cool of the
evening, and the distance was, he professed, not at all too great. As
he shook hands with her, that wild, etherial fancy of a world to come,
in which her husband would have no claim to her, brightened his eyes
and flushed his cheek. There was a strange nervous pressure in the
touch of his hand, and an expression of surprise started into her
face. He noticed it at once, and was warned. Mr. Haldane’s farewell
was bluffly cordial, and he warmly pressed the vicar to call on them
at any time that best suited his convenience.
They were pretty sure to be always at home, and they were not likely
to have too much company.
As he walked along the high-road, bordered on one side with the green
murmuring masses of foliage, and on the other with waving breadths of
corn, his mind was absorbed in that new dream of transcendent love.
There was nothing earthly or gross in this dawning glow of spiritual
passion; indeed, it raised him in delicious exaltation beyond the
coarseness of the physical, till, as it suddenly occurred to him that
somewhere on his way Edith was waiting for him, his heart rose in
revulsion at the recollection of her. At the same time there was a
large element of the sensuous beauty of transient humanity in that
celestial forecast. The pure, radiant spirit of the woman he loved
still wore the sweet lineaments of her earthly loveliness. Death had
not destroyed that magical face; those dark, luminous, loving eyes;
that sweet shape of womanhood. The spiritual body was cast in the
mould of the physical, and the chief difference lay in a shining
mistiness of colour, which floated in a sort of elusive drapery about
the glorified woman, and replaced the worldly silks and satins of the
living wife. This spiritual being was no intangible abstraction, of
which only the intellect could take cognizance. As in its temporal
condition, it could still kiss and thrill with a touch. Clearly,
however unconscious he might be of the fact, the vicar’s conception of
the divine was intensely human, and his spiritual idealizations were
the immediate growth and delicate blossom of the senses.
A great stillness was growing over the land as he pursued his way. The
woodlands had been left behind him, and their incessant murmur was now
inaudible. Sleep and quietude had fallen on the level fields; not an
ear of wheat stirred, no leaf rustled. The birds had all gone to nest,
except a solitary string of belated crows, flying low down in black
dots, against the distant silvery green horizon. The moon was
rising through a low-lying haze, which had begun to spread over the
landscape. The vicar looked at his watch. It was after nine o’clock.
He began to hope that Edith had grown tired of waiting for him, and
had returned home. He had a sickening feeling of repugnance and vague
dread of meeting her.
Little more than a month after Mr. Santley had settled in Omberley,
Miss Dove had come to live with her aunt.
Her father and mother had died within a year of each other, and the
girl gladly accepted the offer of Mrs. Russell to consider her house
as a home until she had had time to look about her. Edith had been
left sufficiently well provided for, and her aunt, the widow of a
banker, was in a position of independence, so that the disinterested
offer was accepted without any sense of dependence or humiliation.
The bright, innocent face of the girl instantly caught the eye of
the vicar. He saw her frequently at her aunt’s house, and gradually
learned to esteem, not only her excellent qualities, but to find a use
for her accomplishments. She was especially fond of music, and when
the vicar suggested that she might add to the beauty of the service
at St. Cuthbert’s by interesting herself in the choir and presiding
at the organ, she eagerly acquiesced. The church was one of Edith’s
favourite haunts; and when the vicar, who was himself a lover of
music, heard the soul-stirring vibrations of some masterpiece of the
great composers, his steps were drawn by an easily explicable fatality
to the side of the pretty performer. Still, it was a fatality. Slowly,
and imperceptibly at first, the sense of pleasure at meeting grew up
between the two; then swiftly and imperceptibly they found that there
was something in the presence of each other that satisfied a
vague, indefinable craving; and lastly, with a sudden access of
self-consciousness, they looked into each other’s eyes, and each
became gladly and tremulously aware of the other’s love. Edith was
still young, almost too young yet to assume the station of the wife of
the spiritual head of the parish; and Mr. Santley was not sure as to
the manner in which his sister would receive the intimation that there
was, even in the remote future, to be a new mistress brought to the
Vicarage. The girl was, however, still too happy in the knowledge that
she was beloved to look forward to marriage. With a strange, feminine
inconsistency, she regarded their union with a certain dread and
shamefacedness. It seemed such a dreadful exposure that all the
village should know that they loved each other. “Oh no, no; it must
not be for a long, long time yet!” she once exclaimed nervously. “Is
it not sufficient happiness to know that I am yours and you are mine?
I cannot bear to think that every one must know our secret.” To have
those long, pleasant chats under cover of the music; to be invited
to the Vicarage, and to sit and talk with him there; to receive those
haphazard glances, as it were, while he was preaching; to be escorted
home by him in the evening when it was dark, and no one could see that
her hand was on his arm; to receive those almost stolen kisses; to
feel his arm about her waist what more could maiden desire to dream
over for weeks and months--for years, if need were?
Edith was endowed with the intense feminine faith and fervid ideality
of the worshipper. To sit at her lover’s feet and to look up adoringly
to him, was at once her favourite mental and physical attitude. On her
side, she exercised a curious spiritual influence over him. There was
such an aerial brightness and lightness about her, such sweet fragile
loveliness in her form and figure, such tender abandonment of self in
her disposition, that he felt he had not only a woman to love, but a
beautiful childlike soul to keep unspotted from the world, to
guide through the dark ways of life to the arms of the great loving
Fatherhood of God. The presence of Edith helped him to banish the dark
doubts and evil promptings of the spirit of unbelief. When she spoke
to him of her spiritual experiences, he felt joyous ascensions of
the heart which raised him nearer to heaven. She created in him the
unspeakable holy longings and vague wants that give the lives of the
mystic saints of Roman Catholicism so singular a blending of divine
illumination and voluptuous colour. Unconsciously the vicar was
realizing in his own nature Swedenborg’s doctrine of celestial
affinities. This love restored to him the innocence and ardour of the
days of Eden; he had found at once his Eve and his Paradise, and he
felt that, as of old, God still walked in the garden in the cool of
the day. Some such glamour surrounds the first developments of every
sincere attachment. It is the first rosy tingling flush of dawn, dim
and sweet and dreamy, and, like the dawn, it glows and brightens into
the fierce clear heat of broad day, burning the dew from the petal and
withering the blossom.
As Mr. Santley’s thoughts turned to Edith, the recollection of these
things came vividly upon him. Only a week ago, and she was the one
woman in the world he believed he could have chosen for his wife. In
an instant, at the sight of a face, all had been changed. His love had
become a burthen, a shame, a dread to him. Edith had grown hateful to
him. At the same time, he could not deaden the sting of remorse as
he reflected on his broken vows. The passionate protestations he had
uttered sounded again in his ears in accents of bitter mockery; the
pledges he had given seemed now to him hideous blasphemies.
At a bend of the road he suddenly came in sight of a figure moving
before him in the dusk. He knew at a glance it was she, and he
prepared himself for the meeting. Although he earnestly wished to
disembarrass himself of her, he found himself unable to do so at once
and brutally. He would try to estrange her, and free himself little by
little.
As they approached each other he saw that Edith’s face was grave and
sad. She was trying to learn from his look in what manner she ought to
speak to him.
His assurances on the previous evening had not tranquillized her, and
she had still a terrible misgiving that a chasm was widening between
them.
The vicar was the first to speak.
“I am a little later than I expected,” he said, as he held out his
hand to her.
“It does not signify _now_. I was only afraid that you might be so
late I should have to go home without seeing you.”
He made no reply, and they walked on side by side in silence for a few
seconds. At last she stopped abruptly and looked at him.
“Charles,” she said, “you know what you said to me last night?”
“Yes.”
“Was it true?”
“Why should you ask such a question? Why should you doubt its truth?”
“I try not to doubt it, but I cannot help it. Oh, tell me again that
you do not hate and contemn me! Tell me you still love me.”
“My dear Edith,” replied the vicar, laying his hand on her arm, “you
are not well. You have been overtaxing your strength and exciting
yourself.”
Edith did not answer, but the tears rose to her eyes and began to run
down her cheeks. She did not sob or make any sound of weeping, but her
hand was pressed against her throat.
“Come, don’t cry like that; you know I cannot bear to see you cry.”
He stopped as he spoke, and took her hand in his. They stood still a
little while, and she at length was able to speak.
“Do you remember,” she asked in a low, broken voice, “that I once told
you you were my conscience?”
He regarded her uneasily before he replied.
“Yes; you once said that, I know. But why return to that now?”
“And have you not been?”
He was silent.
“Your word,” she continued, “has been my law; what you have said I
have believed. Have I done wrong?”
“Why are you letting these things trouble you now?” he asked
impatiently.
“Because I know that when a woman gives herself wholly to the man she
loves, it is common for her to lose him, and I have begun to feel that
I am losing you.”
“I do not think I have given you any reason to feel that.”
She did not speak again immediately, but stood with her innocent blue
eyes raised beseechingly to his face. Suddenly she took hold of his
hands, and said--
“You told me that in the eyes of God we were man and wife, that
no marriage ceremony could ever join us together more truly, that
marriage really consisted in the union of heart and soul, not in
the words of any priest--did you not? Was that true? Am I still your
little wife?”
He hesitated. The blood had vanished from his cheek, leaving it
haggard and pale; she felt his hands trembling in hers. Then, with
a sudden impulse, he took her face between his hands and drew her
towards him, as he answered--
“You are, darling. I will not do you any wrong.”