THE SUPPLICANT
There was in the house that night one person who did not attempt to
sleep--its mistress, Mrs. Miriam Powell, a woman of character; a fact
which was sufficiently demonstrated by the name by which she was best
known to the world. For when the Christian name of a married woman is
familiar to the public it is because she is a person of marked
individuality.
Something of her history was notorious; not only within a large
circle of acquaintance, but outside of it. It had lost nothing in the
telling. An unhappy marriage; a loose-living husband--a man who was
in more senses than one unclean; a final resolution on her part to
live out her life alone. Out of these data she had evolved a set of
opinions on sexual questions to which she endeavoured to induce
anyone and everyone, in season and out of season, to listen. There
were some who regarded her with sympathy, some with admiration, some
with respect, and some with fatigue.
In such cases women are apt to be regarded as representatives of a
class; as abstractions, not concrete facts. The accident of her
having had a bad husband was known to all the world; that she was
herself the victim of a temperament was not. She was of the stuff out
of which saints and martyrs may have been made, which is not
necessarily good material out of which to make a wife. Enthusiasm was
a necessity of her existence--not the frothy, fleeting frenzy of a
foolish female, but an enduring possession of the kind which makes
nothing of fighting with beasts at Ephesus. Although she herself
might not be aware of it, the nature of her matrimonial experiences
had given her what her instincts craved for: a creed--sexual reform.
She maintained that sexual intercourse was a thing of horror; the
cause of all the evil which the world contains. Although she was wise
enough not to proclaim the fact, in her heart she was of opinion that
it would be better that the race should die out rather than that the
evil should continue. She aimed at what she called universal
chastity; maintaining that the less men and women had to do with each
other the better. In pursuit of this chimera she performed labours
which, if not worthy of Hercules, at least resembled those of
Sisyphus in that they had to be done over and over again. The stone
would not stay at the top of the hill.
At the outset she had been convinced--as the fruit of her own
experience--that the fault lay with the men. Latterly she had been
inclining more and more to the belief that the women had something to
do with it as well. Indeed, she was beginning to more than suspect
that theirs might be the major part of the blame. The suspicion
filled her with a singular sort of rage.
This was the person to whose house the Stranger had come at this
particular stage of her mental development. His advent had brought
her to the verge of what is called madness in the case of an ordinary
person of to-day; and spiritual exaltation in the case of saints and
martyrs. She already knew that she was on a hopeless quest, and,
although the fact did not daunt her for a moment, had realised that
nothing short of a miracle would bring about that change in the human
animal which she desired. Here was the possibility of a miracle
actually at hand. Here was a worker of wonders--men said, the very
Christ.
It was the reflection that what men said might be true which made her
courage quail at last.
A miracle-monger she desired. But--the Christ! To formulate the
proposition which was whirling in her brain to a
doer-of-strange-deeds was one thing, but--to Him! That was another.
When she had come into His near neighbourhood she had shrunk back, a
frightened creature. She had been afraid to look Him in the face.
Ever since He had been beneath her roof she had been shaken as with
palsy.
Dare she do this thing?
That was the problem which had been present in her mind the whole day
long, and which still racked it in the silent watches of the night.
To and fro she passed, from room to room, from floor to floor. More
than once she approached the door behind which He was, only to start
away from it again and flee. She did not even dare to kneel at His
portal, fearful lest He, knowing she was there, might come out and
see. In her own chamber she scanned the New Testament in search of
words which would comfort and encourage her. In vain. The sentences
seemed to rise up from off the printed pages to condemn her.
She had an idea. The lame man and the charcoal-burner were the joint
occupants of a spare room. She would learn from them what manner of
man their Master was--whether He might be expected to lend a
sympathetic ear to such a supplication as that which she had it in
her heart to make. But when she stood outside their apartment she
reflected that they were common fellows. Her impulse had been to
refuse them shelter, being at a loss to understand what connection
there could be between her guest and such a pair. That they had
thrust themselves upon Him she thought was probable; the more reason,
therefore, why she should decline to countenance their presumptuous
persistence. To seek from them advice or information would be an act
of condescension which would be as resultless as undignified.
No. Better go directly to the fountainhead. That would be the part
both of propriety and wisdom.
She screwed her courage to the sticking-point, and went.
The two disciples were lodged in an upper story. She had her knuckles
against the panel of their door when at last her resolution was
arrived at. Straightway relinquishing her former purpose, she
hastened down the stairs to the floor on which He was. As she went
the clock in the hall struck three.
The announcement of the hour moved her to fresh irresolution. Would
it be seemly to rouse Him out of slumber to press on Him such a
petition? Yet if she did not do it now, when could she? She might
never again have such an opportunity. Were His ears not always open
to the prayers of those that stood in need of help? What difference
did the night or the morning make to Him? She put out her hand
towards the door.
As she did so a great fear came over her. It was as though she was
stricken with paralysis. She could neither do as she intended nor
withdraw her hand. She remained as one rooted to the floor. How long
she stayed she did not know. The seconds and the minutes passed, and
still she did not move. Presently her fear grew greater. She knew,
although she had not made a sound, that, conscious of her presence,
He was coming towards her on the other side of the door.
Then the door was opened, and she saw Him face to face. He
did not speak a word; and she was still. The gift of fluent speech
for which she was notorious had gone from her utterly. He looked at
her in such fashion that she was compelled to meet His eyes, though
she would have given all that she had to have been able to escape
their scrutiny. For in them was an eloquence which was not of words,
and a quality which held her numb. For she was conscious not only
that He knew her, in a sense of which she had never dreamed in her
blackest nightmares, but that He was causing her to know herself. In
the fierce light of that self-knowledge her heart dried up within
her. She saw herself as what she was--the embittered, illiberal,
narrow-minded woman who, conscious of her isolation, had raised up
for herself a creed of her own--a creed which was not His. She saw
how, with the passage of the years, her persistence in this creed had
forced her farther and farther away from Him, until now she had grown
to have nothing in common with Him, since she had so continually
striven to bring about the things which He would not have. She had
placed herself in opposition to His will, and now had actually come
to solicit His endorsement of her action. And she knew that in so
doing she had committed the greatest of all her sins.
She did not offer her petition. But when the door was closed again,
and He had passed from her actual sight, there stood without one from
whose veins the wine of life had passed, and whose hair had become
white as snow. Although not a word had been spoken, she had stood
before the Judgment Seat, and tasted of more than the bitterness of
death. When she began to return to her own room she had to feel her
way with her hands. Her sight had become dim, her limbs feeble. She
had grown old.