GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS
The world is weary of new tracks of thought
That lead to nought--
Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain
For mortal pain,
Yet still above them all one Figure stands
With outstretched Hands.
"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long
after her return from Yorkshire.
"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have
as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a
young man of parts, and his manners are admirable."
"I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views,"
said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at
the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think
they are very broad and enlightened?"
"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are
frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that
they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the
prophets. As they grow older they learn better."
Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully
clever," she remarked.
"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word _awfully_,
except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in
trust--it belongs to the nation and not to us--and we have no more right
to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and
slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to
pollute her rivers."
"All right; I'll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan
is clever, don't you?"
"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing
even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his
own limitations."
"You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer,"
suggested Elisabeth.
"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that
approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend."
"And he is aw--I mean frightfully well off."
Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker. "Never again let me hear
you refer to the income of persons about whom you are speaking,
Elisabeth; it is a form of ill-breeding which I can not for a moment
tolerate in my house. That money is a convenience to the possessor of
it, I do not attempt to deny; but that the presence or the absence of it
should be counted as a matter of any moment (except to the man himself),
presupposes a standpoint of such vulgarity that it is impossible for me
to discuss it. And even the man himself should never talk about it; he
should merely silently recognise the fact, and regulate his plan of life
accordingly."
"Still, I have heard quite nice people sometimes say that they can not
afford things," argued Elisabeth.
"I do not deny that; even quite nice people make mistakes sometimes, and
well-mannered persons are not invariably well-mannered. Your quite nice
people would have been still nicer had they realized that to talk about
one's poverty--though not so bad as talking about one's wealth--is only
one degree better; and that perfect gentle-people would refer neither to
the one nor to the other."
"I see." Elisabeth's tone was subdued.
"I once knew a woman," continued Miss Farringdon, "who, by that accident
of wealth, which is of no interest to anybody but the possessor, was
enabled to keep a butler and two footmen; but in speaking of her
household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods
than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as 'my
parlourmaid,' for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own
superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was
distinctly vulgar."
"But you have always taught me that it is good manners to keep out of
sight any point on which you have the advantage over the people you are
talking to," Elisabeth persisted. "You have told me hundreds of times
that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have
displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively
polite after they have been obviously rude. Those are your very words,
Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse."
"And I meant what I said, my dear. Wider knowledge and higher breeding
are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted.
The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about lay in imagining that
there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there
is not. To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a
difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially
plebeian one. There was no difference at all, save one of convenience;
the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water
laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs.
And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that?"
Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the
subject. "The Bishop of Merchester is preaching at St. Peter's Church,
in Silverhampton, on St. Peter's Day, and I have asked Alan Tremaine to
drive me over in his dog-cart to hear him." Although she had strayed
from the old paths of dogma and doctrine, Elisabeth could not eradicate
the inborn Methodist nature which hungers and thirsts after
righteousness as set forth in sermons.
"I should like to hear him too, my dear," said Miss Farringdon, who also
had been born a Methodist.
"Then will you come? In that case we can have our own carriage, and I
needn't bother Alan," said Elisabeth, with disappointment written in
capital letters all over her expressive face.
"On which day is it, and at what hour?"
"To-morrow evening at half-past six," replied the girl, knowing that
this was the hour of the evening sacrifice at East Lane Chapel, and
trusting to the power of habit and early association to avert the
addition of that third which would render two no longer any company for
each other.
Her trust was not misplaced. "It is our weekevening service, my dear,
with the prayer-meeting after. Did you forget?"
Elisabeth endeavoured to simulate the sudden awakening of a dormant
memory. "So it is!"
"I see no reason why you should not go into Silverhampton to hear the
Bishop," said Miss Farringdon kindly. "I like young people to learn the
faith once delivered to the saints, from all sorts and conditions of
teachers; but I shall feel it my duty to be in my accustomed place."
So it came to pass, one never-to-be-forgotten summer afternoon, that
Alan Tremaine drove Elisabeth Farringdon into Silverhampton to hear the
Bishop of Merchester preach.
As soon as she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of
escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan's eyes which told her that he meant
to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made
the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began
to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in
an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for
resisting Cupid's darts.
It was a glorious afternoon--one of those afternoons which advertise to
all the world how excellent was the lotus-eaters' method of dividing
time; and although the woods had exchanged the fresh variety of spring
for the dark green sameness of summer, the fields were gay with
haymakers, and the world still seemed full of joyous and abundant life.
"Let's go the country way," Elisabeth had said at starting; "and then we
can come back by the town." So the two drove by Badgering Woods, and
across the wide common; and as they went they saw and felt that the
world was very good. Elisabeth was highly sensitive to the influences
of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on
such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan's eyes,
and that was enough for her.
"Do you know," began Tremaine, getting to work, "that I have been doing
nothing lately but thinking about you? And I have come to the conclusion
that what appeals so much to me is your strength. The sweetness which
attracts some men has no charm for me; I am one of the men who above all
things admire and reverence a strong woman, though I know that the sweet
and clinging woman is to some the ideal of feminine perfection. But
different men, of course, admire different types."
"Exactly; there is a Latin proverb, something about tots and sentences,
which embodies that idea," suggested Elisabeth, with a nervous, girlish
laugh.
Alan did not smile; he made it a rule never to encourage flippancy in
women.
"It is hardly kind of you to laugh at me when I am speaking seriously,"
he said, "and it would serve you right if I turned my horse's head round
and refused to let you hear your Bishop. But I will not punish you this
time; I will heap coals of fire on your head by driving on."
"Oh! don't begin heaping coals of fire on people's head, Mr. Tremaine;
it is a dangerous habit, and those who indulge in it always get their
fingers burned in the end--just as they do when they play with edged
tools, or do something (I forget what) with their own petard."
There was a moment's silence, and then Alan said--
"It makes me very unhappy when you are in a mood like this; I do not
understand it, and it seems to raise up an impassable barrier between
us."
"Please don't be unhappy about a little thing like that; wait till you
break a front tooth, or lose your collar-stud, or have some other real
trouble to cry over. But now you are making a trouble out of nothing,
and I have no patience with people who make troubles out of nothing; it
seems to me like getting one's boots spoiled by a watering-cart when it
is dry weather; and that is a thing which makes me most frightfully
angry."
"Do many things make you angry, I wonder?"
"Some things and some people."
"Tell me what sort of people make a woman of your type angry."
Elisabeth fell into the trap; she could never resist the opportunity of
discussing herself from an outside point of view. If Alan had said
_you_, she would have snubbed him at once; but the well-chosen words, _a
woman of your type_, completely carried her away. She was not an
egotist; she was only intensely interested in herself as the single
specimen of humanity which she was able to study exhaustively.
"I think the people who make me angry are the unresponsive people," she
replied thoughtfully; "the people who do not put their minds into the
same key as mine when I am talking to them. Don't you know the sort?
When you discuss a thing from one standpoint they persist in discussing
it from another; and as soon as you try to see it from their point of
view, they fly off to a third. It isn't so much that they differ from
you--that you would not mind; there is a certain harmony in difference
which is more effective than its unison of perfect agreement--but they
sing the same tune in another key, and the discords are excruciating.
Then the people who argue make me angry; those who argue about trifles,
I mean."
"Ah! All you women are alike in that; you love discussion, and hate
argument. The cause of which is that you decide things by instinct
rather than by reason, and that therefore--although you know you are
right--you can not possibly prove it."
"Then," Elisabeth continued, "I get very angry with the people who will
bother about non-essentials; who, when you have got hold of the vital
centre of a question, stray off to side issues. They are first-cousins
of the people who talk in different keys."
"I should have said they were the same."
"Well, perhaps they are; I believe you are right. Christopher Thornley
is one of that sort; when you are discussing one side of a thing with
him, you'll find him playing bo-peep with you round the other; and you
never can get him into the right mood at the right time. He makes me
simply furious sometimes. Do you know, I think if I were a dog I should
often bite Christopher? He makes me angry in a biting kind of way."
Alan smiled faintly at this; jokes at Christopher's expense were
naturally more humorous than jokes at his own. "And what other sorts of
people make you angry?" he asked.
"I'm afraid the people who make me angriest of all are the people who
won't do what I tell them. They really madden me." And Elisabeth began
to laugh. "I've got a horribly strong will, you see, and if people go
against it, I want them to be sent to the dentist's every morning, and
to the photographer's every afternoon, for the rest of their lives. Now
Christopher is one of the worst of those; I can't make him do what I
want just because I want it; he always wishes to know why I want it,
and that is so silly and tiresome of him, because nine times out of ten
I don't know myself."
"Very trying!"
"Christopher certainly has the knack of making me angrier than anybody
else I ever met," said Elisabeth thoughtfully. "I wonder why it is? I
suppose it must be because I have known him for so long. I can't see any
other reason. I am generally such an easy-going, good-tempered girl; but
when Christopher begins to argue and dictate and contradict, the Furies
simply aren't in it with me."
"The excellent Thornley certainly has his limitations."
Elisabeth's eyes flashed. She did not mind finding fault with
Christopher herself; in fact, she found such fault-finding absolutely
necessary to her well-being; but she resented any attempt on the part of
another to usurp this, her peculiar prerogative. "He is very good, all
the same," she said, "and extremely clever; and he is my greatest
friend."
But Alan was bored by Christopher as a subject of conversation, so he
changed him for Elisabeth's self. "How loyal you are!" he exclaimed with
admiration; "it is indeed a patent of nobility to be counted among your
friends."
The girl, having just been guilty of disloyalty, was naturally delighted
at this compliment. "You always understand and appreciate me," she said
gratefully, unconscious of the fact that it was Alan's lack of
understanding and appreciation which had aroused her gratitude just
then. Perfect comprehension--untempered by perfect love--would be a
terrible thing; mercifully for us poor mortals it does not exist.
Alan went on: "Because I possess this patent of nobility, I am going to
presume upon my privileges and ask you to help me in my life-work; and
my life-work, as you know, is to ameliorate the condition of the poor,
and to carry to some extent the burdens which they are bound to bear."
Elisabeth looked up at him, her face full of interest; no appeal to her
pity was ever made in vain. If people expected her to admire them, they
were frequently disappointed; if they wished her to fear them, their
wish was absolutely denied; but if they only wanted her to be sorry for
them, they were abundantly satisfied, sympathy being the keynote of her
character. She was too fastidious often to admire; she was too strong
ever to fear; but her tenderness was unfailing toward those who had once
appealed to her pity, and whose weakness had for once allowed itself to
rest upon her strength. Therefore Alan's desire to help the poor, and to
make them happier, struck the dominant chord in her nature; but
unfortunately when she raised her eyes, full of sympathetic sympathy, to
his, she encountered that look in the latter which had frightened her at
the beginning of the excursion; so she again clothed herself in her
garment of flippancy, and hardened her heart as the nether millstone. In
blissful unconsciousness Alan continued--
"Society is just now passing through a transition stage. The interests
of capital and labour are at war with each other; the rich and the poor
are as two armies made ready for battle, and the question is, What can
we do to bridge over the gulf between the classes, and to induce them
each to work for, instead of against, the other? It is these transition
stages which have proved the most difficult epochs in the world's
history."
"I hate transition stages and revolutions, they are so unsettling. It
seems to me they are just like the day when your room is cleaned; and
that is the most uncomfortable day in the whole week. Don't you know it?
You go upstairs in the accustomed way, fearing nothing; but when you
open the door you find the air dark with dust and the floor with
tea-leaves, and nothing looking as it ought to look. Prone on its face
on the bed, covered with a winding-sheet, lies your overthrown
looking-glass; and underneath it, in a shapeless mass, are huddled
together all the things that you hold dearest upon earth. You thrust in
your hand to get something that you want, and it is a pure chance
whether your Bible or your button-hook rises to the surface. And it
seems to me that transition periods are just like that."
"How volatile you are! One minute you are so serious and the next so
frivolous that I fail to follow you. I often think that you must have
some foreign blood in your veins, you are so utterly different from the
typical, stolid, shy, self-conscious English-woman."
"I hope you don't think I was made in Germany, like cheap china and
imitation Astrakhan."
"Heaven forbid! The Germans are more stolid and serious than the
English. But you must have a Celtic ancestor in you somewhere. Haven't
you?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, my great-grandmother was a Manxwoman; but
we are ashamed to talk much about her, because it sounds as if she'd had
no tail."
"Then you must have inherited your temperament from her. But now I want
to talk to you seriously about doing something for the men who work in
the coal-pits, and who--more even than the rest of their class--are shut
out from the joy and beauty of the world. Their lives not only are made
hideous, but are also shortened, by the nature of their toil. Do you
know what the average life of a miner is?"
"Of course I do: twenty-one years."
Alan frowned; he disapproved of jokes even more than of creeds, and
understood them equally. "Miss Farringdon, you are not behaving fairly
to me. You know what I mean well enough, but you wilfully misunderstand
my words for the sake of laughing at them. But I will make you listen,
all the same. I want to know if you will help me in my work by becoming
my wife; and I think that even you can not help answering that question
seriously."
The laughter vanished from Elisabeth's face, as if it had been wiped out
with a sponge. "Oh! I--I don't know," she murmured lamely.
"Then you must find out. To me it seems that you are the one woman in
all the world who was made for me. Your personality attracted me the
first moment that I met you; and our subsequent companionship has proved
that our minds habitually run in the same grooves, and that we naturally
look at things from the same standpoint. That is so, is it not?"
"Yes."
"The only serious difference between us seemed to be the difference of
faith. You had been trained in the doctrines of one of the strictest
sects, while I had outgrown all dogmas and thrown aside all recognised
forms of religion. So strong were my feelings on this point, that I
would not have married any woman who still clung to the worn-out and (by
me) disused traditions; but I fancy that I have succeeded in converting
you to my views, and that our ideas upon religion are now practically
identical. Is not that so?"
Elisabeth thought for a moment. "Yes," she answered slowly; "you have
taught me that Christianity, like all the other old religions, has had
its day; and that the world is now ready for a new dispensation."
"Exactly; and for a dispensation which shall unite the pure ethics of
the Christian to the joyous vitality of the Greek, eliminating alike the
melancholy of the one and the sensualism of the other. You agree with me
in this, do you not?"
"You know that I do."
"I am glad, because--as I said before--I could not bear to marry any
woman who did not see eye to eye with me on these vital matters. I love
you very dearly, Elisabeth, and it would be a great grief to me if any
question of opinion or conviction came between us; yet I do not believe
that two people could possibly be happy together--however much they
might love each other--if they were not one with each other on subjects
such as these."
Elisabeth was silent; she was too much excited to speak. Her heart was
thumping like the great hammer at the Osierfield, and she was trembling
all over. So she held her peace as they drove up the principal street of
Silverhampton and across the King's Square to the lych-gate of St.
Peter's Church; but Alan, looking into the tell-tale face he knew so
well, was quite content.
Yet as she sat beside Alan in St. Peter's Church that summer evening,
and thought upon what she had just done, a great sadness filled
Elisabeth's soul. The sun shone brightly through the western window,
and wrote mystic messages upon the gray stone walls; but the lights of
the east window shone pale and cold in the distant apse, where the
Figure of the Crucified gleamed white upon a foundation of emerald. And
as she looked at the Figure, which the world has wept over and
worshipped for nineteen centuries, she realized that this was the Symbol
of all that she was giving up and leaving behind her--the Sign of that
religion of love and sorrow which men call Christianity. She felt that
wisdom must be justified of her children, and not least of her,
Elisabeth Farringdon; nevertheless, she mourned for the myth which had
once made life seem fair, and death even fairer. Although she had
outgrown her belief in it, its beauty had still power to touch her
heart, if not to convince her intellect; and she sighed as she recalled
all that it had once meant, and how it had appeared to be the one
satisfactory solution to the problems which weary and perplex mankind.
Now she must face all the problems over again in the grim twilight of
dawning science, with no longer a Star of Bethlehem to show where the
answer might be found; and her spirit quailed at the pitiless prospect.
She had never understood before how much that Symbol of eternal love and
vicarious suffering had been to her, nor how puzzling would be the path
through the wilderness if there were no Crucifix at life's cross-roads
to show the traveller which way to go; and her heart grew heavier as she
took part in the sacred office of Evensong, and thought how beautiful it
all would be if only it were true. She longed to be a little child
again--a child to whom the things which are not seen are as the things
which are seen, and the things which are not as the things which are;
and she could have cried with homesickness when she remembered how
firmly she had once believed that the shadow which hung over the
Osierfield was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
to testify that God was still watching over His people, as in the days
of old. Now she knew that the pillar was only the smoke and the flame of
human industries; and the knowledge brought a load of sadness, as it
seemed to typify that there was no longer any help for the world but in
itself.
When the Bishop ascended the pulpit, Elisabeth recalled her wandering
thoughts and set herself to listen. No one who possesses a drop of
Nonconformist blood can ever succeed in not listening to a sermon, even
if it be a poor one; and the Bishop of Merchester was one of the finest
preachers of his day. His text was, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona:
for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee"; and he endeavoured
to set forth how it is only God who can teach men about God, and how
flesh and blood can never show us the Christ until He chooses to reveal
Himself. At first Elisabeth listened only with her mind, expecting an
intellectual treat and nothing more; but as he went on, and showed how
the Call comes in strange places and at strange times, and how when it
comes there is no resisting it, her heart began to burn within her; and
she recognised the preacher, not only as a man of divers gifts and great
powers, but as the ambassador of Christ sent direct to her soul. Then
slowly her eyes were opened, and she knew that the Figure in the east
window was no Sign of an imaginary renunciation, no Symbol of a worn-out
creed, but the portrait of a living Person, Whose Voice was calling
her, and Whose Love was constraining her, and Whose Power was enfolding
her and would not let her go. With the certainty that is too absolute
for proof, she knew in Whom she now believed; and she knew, further,
that it was not her own mind nor the preacher's words that had suddenly
shown her the truth--flesh and blood had not revealed it to her, but
Christ Himself.
When the service was over, Elisabeth came out into the sunlight with a
strange, new, exultant feeling, such as she had never felt before. She
stood in the old churchyard, waiting for Alan to bring round the
dog-cart, and watching the sun set beyond the distant hills; and she was
conscious--how she could not explain--that the sunset was different from
any other sunset that she had ever seen. She had always loved nature
with an intense love; but now there seemed a richer gold in the parting
sunbeams--a sweeter mystery behind the far-off hills--because of that
Figure in the east window. It was as if she saw again a land which she
had always loved, and now learned for the first time that it belonged to
some one who was dear to her; a new sense of ownership mingled with the
old delight, and gave an added interest to the smallest detail.
Then she and Alan turned their backs to the sunset, and drove along the
bleak high-road toward Sedgehill, where the reflection of the
blast-furnaces--that weird aurora borealis of the Black Country--was
already beginning to pulsate against the darkening sky. And here again
Elisabeth realized that for her the old things had passed away, and all
things had become new. She felt that her childish dream was true, and
that the crimson light was indeed a pillar of fire showing that the Lord
was in the midst of His people; but she went further now than she had
gone in her day-dreams, and knew that all the lights and shadows of life
are but pillars of cloud and of fire, forthtelling the same truth to all
who have seeing eyes and understanding hearts.
Suddenly the silence was broken by Alan. "I have been thinking about you
during the service, and building all sorts of castles in the air which
you and I are going to inhabit together. But we must not let the old
faiths hamper us, Elisabeth; if we do, our powers will be impaired by
prejudices, and our usefulness will be limited by traditions."
"I have something to say to you," Elisabeth replied, and her eyes shone
like stars in the twilight; "you won't understand it, but I must say it
all the same. In church to-night, for the first time in my life, I heard
God speaking to me; and I found out that religion is no string of
dogmas, but just His calling us by name."
Tremaine looked at her pityingly. "You are overtired and overwrought by
the heat, and the excitement of the sermon has been too much for you.
But you will be all right again to-morrow, never fear."
"I knew you wouldn't understand, and I can't explain it to you; but it
has suddenly all become quite clear to me--all the things that I have
puzzled over since I was a little child; and I know now that religion is
not our attitude toward God, but His attitude toward us."
"Why, Elisabeth, you are saying over again all the old formulas that you
and I have refuted so often."
"I know I am; but I never really believed in them till now. I can't
argue with you, Alan--I'm not clever enough--and besides, the best
things in the world can never be proved by argument. But I want you to
understand that the Power which you call Christianity is stronger than
human wills, or human strength, or even human love; and now that it has
once laid hold upon me, it will never let me go."
Alan's face grew pale with anger. "I see; your old associations have
been too strong for you."
"It isn't my old associations, or my early training, or anything
belonging to me. It isn't me at all. It is just His Voice calling me.
Can't you understand, Alan? It is not I who am doing it all--it is He."
There was a short silence, and then Tremaine said--
"But I thought you loved me?"
"I thought so too, but perhaps I was wrong; I don't know. All I know is
that this new feeling is stronger than any feeling I ever had before;
and that I can not give up my religion, whatever it may cost me."
"I will not marry a woman who believes in the old faith."
"And I will not marry a man who does not."
Alan's voice grew hard. "I don't believe you ever loved me," he
complained.
"I don't know. I thought I did; but perhaps I knew as little about love
as you know about religion. Perhaps I shall find a real love some day
which will be as different from my friendship for you as this new
knowledge is different from the religion that Cousin Maria taught me.
I'm very sorry, but I can never marry you now."
"You would have given up your religion fast enough if you had really
cared for me," sneered Tremaine.
Elisabeth pondered for a moment, with the old contraction of her
eyebrows. "I don't think so, because, as I told you before, it isn't
really my doing at all. It isn't that I won't give up my religion--it is
my religion that won't give up me. Supposing that a blind man wanted to
marry me on condition that I would believe, as he did, that the world is
dark: I couldn't believe it, however much I loved him. You can't not
know what you have once known, and you can't not have seen what you have
seen, however much you may wish to do so, or however much other people
may wish it."
"You are a regular woman, in spite of all your cleverness, and I was a
fool to imagine that you would prove more intelligent in the long run
than the rest of your conventional and superstitious sex."
"Please forgive me for hurting you," besought Elisabeth.
"It is not only that you have hurt me, but I am so disappointed in you;
you seemed so different from other women, and now I find the difference
was merely a surface one."
"I am so sorry," Elisabeth still pleaded.
Tremaine laughed bitterly. "You are disappointed in yourself, I should
imagine. You posed as being so broad and modern and enlightened, and yet
you have found worn-out dogmas and hackneyed creeds too strong for you."
Elisabeth smiled to herself. "No; but I have found the Christ," she
answered softly.