"Even if one has doubts about the whole doctrine of the Church, it is
still possible to wish to lead a good life. Don't you think so,
Monsignor?"
"There are many Protestants who lead excellent lives. But I have always
noticed that when a Catholic begins to question the doctrine of the
Church, his or her doubts were preceded by a desire to lead an irregular
life."
And in the silence Evelyn became aware of the afternoon sun shining
through the window above their heads, enlivening the dark parlour. It
seemed strange to sit discussing such subjects in the sunshine. The ray
that fell through the window lighted up the priest's thin face till it
seemed like one of the wood carvings she had seen in Germany. When he
resumed the conversation it was to lead her to speak of herself and the
reasons which had suggested an abandonment of her stage career. The
tender, impersonal kindness of the priest drew her out of herself, and
she told him how she had begun to perceive that the stage had ceased to
interest her as it had once done; she spoke of vulgarity and parade, yet
that was not quite what she meant; it had come to seem to her like so
much waste, as if she were wasting her time in doing things that did not
matter, like grown people would feel if they were asked to pass the
afternoon playing with dolls. Shrugging her shoulders hysterically, she
said she could not explain.
"But have you an idea of what life you wish to lead?"
"No, I don't think I have; I only know that I am not happy in my present
life."
"I believe you see a good deal of Sir Owen Asher. He helped you, did he
not, in your musical education?"
"Yes," she answered under her breath. "He is an intimate friend." In a
moment of unexpected courage, she said, "Do you know him, Monsignor?"
"I have heard a good deal about him, and nothing, I regret to say, to
his credit. He is, I believe, an avowed atheist, and does not hesitate
to declare his unbelief in every society, and to make open boast of an
immoral life. He has read and tried to understand a little more than the
people with whom he associates. I suppose the doubts you entertain
regarding the doctrine of the Church are the result of his teaching?"
With a little pathetic air, Evelyn admitted that Owen had used every
possible argument to destroy her faith. She had read Huxley, Darwin, and
a little Herbert Spencer.
"Herbert Spencer! Miserable collections of trivial facts, bearing upon
nothing. Of what value, I ask, can it be to suffering humanity to know
that such and such a fact has been observed and described? Then the
general law! rubbish, ridiculous rubbish!"
"The scientists fail to see that what we feel matters much more than
what we know."
"True, quite true," he said, turning sharply and looking at her with
admiration. Then, recollecting himself, he said, "But God does not exist
because we feel He exists. He exists not through us, but through
Himself, from all time and through all eternity. To feel is better than
to observe, to pray is better than to inquire, but indiscriminate
abandonment to our feelings would lead us to give credence to every
superstition. You have, I perceive, escaped from the rank materialism of
Sir Owen's teaching, but whither are you drifting, my dear child? You
must return to the Church; without the Church, we are as vessels without
a rudder or compass."
He walked up and down the room as though debating with himself. Evelyn
held her breath, wondering what new turn the conversation would take.
Suddenly she lost her courage, and overcome with fear got up to go, and
Monsignor, considering that enough had been said, did not attempt to
detain her. But as he bade her good-bye at the door, his keen eye fixed
upon her, he added, "Remember, I do not admit your difficulties to be
intellectual ones. When you come to realise that for yourself, I shall
be glad to do all in my power to help you. God bless you, my child!"
If only she could put the whole thing aside--refuse to bother her head
any more, or else believe blindly what she was told. She hated wobbling,
yet she did nothing else. Suddenly she felt that if she were to believe
at all, it must be like Monsignor. The magnetism of his faith thrilled
her, and, in a moment, it had all became real to her. But it was too
late. She could never do all her religion asked. Her whole life would
have to come to pieces; nothing of it would remain, and she entirely
lost heart when she considered in detail the sacrifices she would have
to make. She saw herself at Dulwich with her father, giving singing
lessons, attending the services, and living about St. Joseph's. She saw
herself singing operas in every capital, and always a new lover at her
heels. Both lives were equally impossible to her. As she lay back in her
carriage driving through the lazy summer streets, she almost wished she
had no conscience at all. What was the use of it? She had just enough to
spoil her happiness in wrong-doing, yet not enough to prevent her doing
what deep down in her heart she knew to be wrong.
That evening she wrote a number of letters, and begged a subscription of
every friend--Owen was out of the question and she hesitated whether she
should make use of Ulick. She would have liked to have left him out of
this concert altogether, and it was only because she had no one else
whom she could depend upon that she consented to let him go off in
search of the necessary tenor. But to take him to the concert did not
seem right.
She dipped her pen in the ink, and then laid it down, overcome by a
sudden and intolerable melancholy. She could have cried, so great was
her weariness with the world, so worthless did her life seem. She had
begged her father's forgiveness; he had forgiven her, but she had not
sent away her lover.... She had told Monsignor that, in consequence of
certain scruples of conscience, she intended to give up the stage, but
she had not told him that she had taken another lover and brought him to
live with her under her father's roof. Whether there was a God and a
hereafter, or merely oblivion, such conduct as hers was surely wrong.
She walked to and fro, and came to a resolution regarding her relations
with Ulick, at all events in her father's house.
Then life seemed perfectly hopeless, and she wished Monsignor had not
come to see her. What could she do to shake off this clammy and
unhealthy depression which hung about her? She might go for a walk, but
where? The perspective of the street recalled the days when she used to
stand at the window wondering if nothing would ever happen to her. She
remembered the moment with singular distinctness when she heard the
voice crying within her? "Will nothing ever happen? Will this go on for
ever?" She remembered the very tree and the very angle of the house!
Dulwich was too familiar; it was like living in a room where there was
nothing but mirrors. Dulwich was one vast mirror of her past life. In
Dulwich she was never living in the present. She could not see Dulwich,
she could only remember it. One walk more in that ornamental park! She
knew it too well! And the picture gallery meant Owen--she would only see
him and hear his remarks. Her thoughts reverted to his proposal of
marriage and her acceptance. Not for the whole world! Why, she did not
know. He had been very good to her. Her ingratitude shocked her. She
shrugged her shoulders hysterically; she could not help it--that was how
she felt.
But Ulick? Should she marry him and accept the Gods? That would settle
everything.
But a sense of humour solves nothing, and at that moment the servant
brought her a small brown paper parcel. It looked like a book. It was a
book. She opened it. Monsignor had sent her a book. As she turned the
leaves she remembered the parcels of books from Owen which she used to
open in the same room, sitting in the same chair. _Sin and its
Consequences_! She began reading it. On one point she was sure, that sin
did exist.... If we felt certain things to be wrong, they were wrong; at
least they were wrong for those who thought them wrong, and she had
never been able to feel that it was right to live with a man to whom she
was not married. Everyone had a moral code. Owen would not cheat at
cards, and he thought it mean to tell lies--a very poor code it was, but
still he acted up to it. She did not know how Ulick felt on such
matters; his beliefs, though numerous and picturesque, supplied no moral
code, and she could not live on symbols, though perhaps they were better
than Owen's theories. Her mistake from the beginning was in trying to
acquire a code of morals which did not coincide with her feelings. But
the teaching in this book did coincide with her feelings. Could she
follow it? That was the point. Could she live without a lover? Owen
thought not. She laughed and then walked about the room, unable to shake
off a dead weight of melancholy. Though the Church was all wrong, and
there was no God, she was still leading a life which she felt to be
wrong; and if the Church were right, and there was a resurrection, her
soul was lost. She took up the book and read till her fears became so
intense that she could read no more, and she walked up and down the
room, her nerves partially unstrung. In the evening she talked a great
deal and rapidly, apparently not quite aware of what she was saying, or
else her face wore a brooding look; sometimes it awakened a little, and
then her eyes were fixed on Ulick.
The next day was Friday, and as the train service seemed complex and
inconvenient, and as she had not at Dulwich a suitable dress to wear at
the concert, she decided to sleep at Park Lane and drive to Wimbledon in
the afternoon. She left her father, promising to return to him soon, and
she had told Ulick that she thought it better he should return by train.
She saw that he had noticed the book in her hand, and she knew that he
understood her plea that she did not wish to be seen driving with him to
mean that she was going to call on Monsignor on her way home. She had
thought of calling at St. Joseph's, but, unable to think of a
sufficient excuse for the visit, had abandoned the idea. She knew the
time was not opportune. Monsignor would be hearing confessions. But as
the carriage turned out of Camberwell, she remembered that it would be
polite to thank him for the book, and leaning forward she told the
coachman to drive to St. Joseph's.... So after all she was going
there.... Ulick was right.
The attendant told her that Monsignor was hearing confessions, and would
not be free for another half-hour. She drew a breath of relief, for this
second visit had frightened her. The attendant asked her if she would
wait. She thought she would like to wait in church. She desired its
collectedness, its peace. But the thought of Monsignor's confessional
frightened her, and she thanked the attendant hurriedly, and went slowly
to her carriage.
When Ulick came in that evening she was seated on the corner of the sofa
near the window. The moon was shining on the breathless park, and a moth
whirled between the still flames of the candles which burned on the
piano. He noticed that her mood was subdued and reflective. She liked
him to sit by her, to take her hand and tell her he loved her. She liked
to listen to him, but not to music; nor would she sing that evening, and
his questions as to the cause remained unanswered. Her voice was calm
and even, and seemed to come from far away. There was a tremor in his,
and between whiles they watched and wondered at the flight of the moth.
It seemed attracted equally by darkness and light. It emerged from the
darkness, fluttered round the perilous lights and returned again to its
natural gloom. But the temptation could not be resisted, and it fell
singed on the piano.
"We ought to have quenched those candles," Evelyn said.
"It would have found others," Ulick answered, and he took the maimed
moth on to the balcony and trod it out of its misery. They sat there
under the little green verandah, and in the colour of the clear night
their talk turned on the stars and the Zodiacal signs. Ulick was born
under the sign of Aquarius, and all the important events of his life
began when Aquarius was rising. Pointing to a certain group of stars, he
said--
"The story of Grania is no more than our story, your story, my story,
and the story of Sir Owen Asher, and I had written my poem before I saw
you." Then, as a comment on this fact, he added, "We should be careful
what we write, for what we write will happen. Grania is the beautiful
fortune which we will strive for, which chooses one man to-day and
another to-morrow."
The idea interested her for a moment, but she was thinking of her
project to find out if, like Owen, he thought that the virtue of
chastity was non-essential in women, or if the other virtues were
dependent upon it. But how to lead the conversation back to this
question she did not for the moment know. At last she said--"You ask me
to love you--but to be my lover you would have to surrender all your
spiritual life, that which is most to you, that which makes your genius.
Do you think it worth it?"
He hesitated, then answered her with some vague reference to destiny,
but she guessed the truth. As free as Owen himself from ethical
scruples, he still felt that we should overcome our sexual nature. She
asked herself why: and she wondered just as Owen wondered when
confronted by her religious conscience. They looked at each other long
and gravely, and he told her of the great seer who had collected in her
own person all the cryptic revelation, all the esoteric lore of the
East. He admitted that she had allowed carnal intercourse to some of her
disciples while forbidding it to others.
"Evidently judging chastity to be in some cases essential to the other
virtues."
She heard him say that a sect of mystics to which he belonged, or
perhaps it was whose society he frequented, advised the married state
but with this important reservation, that instead of corporal possession
they should endeavour to aid each other to rise to a higher spiritual
plane, anticipating in this life a little the perfect communion of
spirit which awaited them in the next. But such theories did not appeal
to Evelyn. She could only understand the renunciation of the married
state for the sake of closer intimacy with the spiritual life; and she
was more interested when he told her of the cruelties, the macerations
and the abstinences which the Indian seers resorted to, so that the
opacity of the fleshly envelope might be diminished and let the soul
through. In modern, as in the most ancient ages, with the scientist as
with the seer, marvels and prodigies are reached through the subjugation
of the flesh; as life dwindles like a flame that a breath will quench,
the spirit attains its maximum, and the abiding and unchanging life that
lies beyond death waxes till it becomes the real life.
"Is this life, then, not real?"
"If reality means what we understand, could anything be more unreal?"
"Then you do believe in a future state?"
"Yes, I certainly believe in a future state.... So much so that it seems
impossible to believe that life ends utterly with death."
But to Evelyn's surprise, he seemed to doubt the immortality of this
future state, and fell back on the Irish doctrine which holds that after
death you pass to the great plain or land under the sea, or the land
over the sea, or the land of the children of the goddess Dana.
"Even now my destiny is accomplishing."
The true Celt is still a pagan--Christianity has been superimposed. It
is little more than veneer, and in the crises of life the Celt turns to
the ancient belief of his race. But did Ulick really believe in Angus
and Lir and the Great Mother Dana? Perhaps he merely believed that as a
man of genius it was his business to enroll himself in the original
instincts and traditions of his race.
They were as unquiet as cattle before an approaching storm, and when
they returned to the drawing-room it seemed to him like a scene in a
theatre about to be withdrawn to make way for another part of the story.
Even while looking at it, it seemed to have receded a little.
At last it was time for Ulick to go. As they said good-night he asked
her if he should come to lunch. She looked at him, uncertain if she
ought to take him to the concert at all.