“_The Desire of the Moth for the Star_”
He woke from his dream to conditions favourable to peace of mind; a
rippling sea, a sunny shore, and a day that promised to be cloudless.
They breakfasted in a verandah looking seawards, the children seemed
to miss something but said nothing; and Caroline’s manner showed an
improved change. Reserve and deference mingled with tenderness when she
spoke to him. When she suggested plans for the day she was shy and a
little nervous: for now her conscience was troubled: she had Davidina
on her mind, and was expecting the reply-telegram. She had sent off
the message without consulting him, under what she now felt to be a
misapprehension. If Davidina wired that she was coming she would have
to break it to him; and fearing that the news would not please him, she
put off the evil moment as long as possible. Her immediate anxiety was
to get him out of the house before the arrival of the telegram.
This she managed to do: and all day nursed her guilty secret that
Davidina would arrive by a late train to know what was the matter. And
as a consequence, as much as possible she avoided him.
Meanwhile Mr. Trimblerigg was thinking. Immediate conditions were
conducive to a quiet examination of the problem; but though temporarily
at ease, he was not getting more reconciled to the prospect. He had
been long accustomed to hear and speak of people being overtaken in
sin; but it had never entered his mind that, by a similar involuntary
capitulation to a stronger power, they could also be overtaken in
goodness--still less in goodness of so conspicuous a character,
attaching itself like a disease, independent of the will.
‘The white flower of a blameless life’ was a poetic phrase which, like
that other about sin, had passed into the currency of the language:
and mentally he had always been able to wear it, and feel the better
for the consciousness that it was there. But it was a different matter
when becoming visible and almost concrete, it turned into an evening
primrose, catching him by the hair of his head, and refusing to let go.
Martin’s question, ‘Is Father a holy man?’ was a child’s way of putting
it; but substantially it was so much his own point of view about the
visitation now afflicting him, that he began to wonder whether he
might not get rid of it by ceasing to be holy. If he went into the
kitchen and kissed the charwoman, if he made himself drunk, if he went
down to the marine parade and extracted cigarettes from the automatic
slot-machine by inserting metal discs instead of pennies, or if--to
make the matter worse--he were to add sacrilege to dishonesty, go into
the church and rob the poor box--if he did those or other similar
things, would this outward expression of his sanctity take itself
off--go away and leave him?
But while entertaining the fancy that it might do so, he more than
doubted it; for he felt that in his own heart he would not be doing any
of those things; that it would not really be him; internally his good
qualities and motives would remain unaffected. On such lines it would
be useless, therefore, to experiment.
But mentally was there nothing which, if sedulously entertained, might
bring him back to a more mundane and normal condition? Here, as he sat
on the shore, with his children building sand-castles near by, and his
wife making domestic sounds in the bungalow behind him, could he not
definitely will away the manifestation by a slight deflection from his
high ideals towards what is called temptation?
He began to think of Isabel Sparling; and to think of her pleasurably;
she was still attractive to him; and that he had once again held
her in his arms counted for something, gave to youthful memories a
livelier flavour--a bouquet which hitherto they had lacked. He and
Isabel Sparling had become enemies--or rather she had become his, and
had all the more remained so because he had successfully evaded and
got the better of her. But he had always liked her, her pluck, her
perseverance, her capacity, and the spark of zealous fire for a cause
which had burned in her for years, and which nothing could quench.
Provocative, annoying, unscrupulous and vindictive though she might
be, she was never dull. He knew that with her he would have had a more
uneasy time than with Caroline--yet now he wished--or told himself he
wished--that he had taken the risk, adopted her crusade as his own, and
married her. It would have been harder, more uphill work--but looking
back complacently on his successful career, due entirely to his own
powers and intuitions--he believed he could have done it. And had he
adopted that course, life, otherwise so interesting, would not have had
at its centre that dull, that very dull spot which was Caroline.
So Mr. Trimblerigg sat and thought, indulging himself with the imagined
sweetness of forbidden fruit. But as he was not in the very least
ashamed or put out of countenance by the entertainment of these wayward
fancies they had of course no effect upon him. His internal unity of
purpose not consciously weakened, he continued to feel complacent and
good, in the sense that he had always been--good to himself. It was not
as if anybody had found him out; then it would have been different. The
only person who ever found him out was Davidina; and as to her, since
their last encounter, his mind was at peace.
The evening post brought letters forwarded from town; and Caroline,
having to confess what she had done, made them the occasion for
breaking into the solitude in which all day she had left him. An added
reason was that one of the bunch was in the handwriting of Davidina. It
was futile any longer to postpone the news that Davidina was on her way
to see him.
Caroline handed him the letters, and as after sorting them through he
seemed in no hurry to open them--Davidina’s she noticed, he put aside
from the rest--she opened, on her own account, the matter wherewith she
was charged.
The Presence had begun to manifest itself again, though not as
powerfully yet, as at the moment which had brought her to her knees and
to conversion. She was moved, feeling very humble towards him; and her
eyes grew full of tears.
‘I am sorry, Jonathan, I have misjudged you,’ she said.
The announcement, though it surprised, rather pleased him; for he saw
plainly by her look that misjudgment was over.
‘How have you misjudged me, my dear?’ he asked.
‘I--I didn’t think you were always quite straight,’ she said.
‘Straight’: the word had a certain sting. It stirred faintly the
slumbers of that small sleeping dog--his conscience, which he was so
accustomed to let lie. Then his sure instinct for defence brought him
gaily to the attack.
‘Oh, yes, I know, my dear child, sometimes you’ve been jealous.’
‘No, no, never really,’ she said, ‘only I know I’m stupid--so, of
course, sometimes--’
At that she left it and returned to her point--the point she had been
wondrously cogitating all day in her slow mind. ‘No, I mean straight in
quite little things. You see, Jonathan, I know now Martin was right. I
haven’t understood you--not properly. And when I say ‘not straight,’ I
mean in such little, little things, that never seemed to matter till
now.’
This was a new experience altogether. Caroline was thoroughly
surprising him. ‘How didn’t you think I was straight?’ he asked.
‘Well, for one thing,’ she replied, ‘I know now that you _do_ take your
cold bath. I thought you didn’t.’
Had Heaven thundered and shaken off the roof, leaving nothing above but
bare sky, Mr. Trimblerigg could not have been more startled than at
those words. To poor honest Caroline, the acceptance of the spiritual
interpretation of what had happened to him meant, meant necessarily
that he had always not merely been good in his own sense of the term,
but done the straight thing--taken his baths, and in all quite small
things told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
And then, on the top of that, while the shock of it still reverberated
through his soul, Caroline let go the thing she had come to tell him.
‘Davidina is coming,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, Jonathan, I didn’t
understand then. And when you refused to see a doctor I telegraphed for
her.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Only that you’d got something the matter with your head. She’s coming
by the late train. It’s nearly due.’
He sat so still that she grew frightened. She reached out a hand and
touched him.
‘Go away,’ he said, ‘let me alone!’
And weeping she got up and left him.
For a long while he sat on, motionless, unable to move. Doubt leapt in
on him, engulfed him: blackness--such as he had never known before--was
upon his soul. Not Davidina--no, not Davidina herself, whom he had now
to expect by the late train--had ever dealt him so devastating a blow.
‘Now I know you take your cold bath: I thought you didn’t.’
O pellucid Eve: O rib of Adam, how naked hast thou made the man for
whom thou wast formed! And this without in the least intending it, or
knowing what she had done.
It was true that, even now, she had not found him out; but she had
revealed to him with fatal clearness the fact that the shirking of a
cold bath and the wearing of a yellow halo were incompatible. And this
was the worst thing she had against him, this trivial doubt; but it was
enough. Down came his castle. A horrid blush went over him--down even
into his clothes; it went farther, had he only known.
‘Thou, Lord, seest me!’ he said to himself, got up, and went swiftly
out into the starlit dusk carrying a red light.
And then the thought of Davidina, coming on the top of this, struck him
cold. He remembered that he had upon him a letter from her which he
had not yet read; opening it, he drew out the contents. There was no
need to go indoors to get a light; that which he had was sufficient.
The letter was very brief and to the point. ‘Found you out! but no
matter: you did the honest thing with your eyes open--for once.’
Enclosed was an old envelope, cut open across the top, still bearing
its seal, addressed to Davidina in Uncle Phineas’s handwriting.
Minutely examining the seal, he found--what Davidina also had
found--traces of his own handiwork, a scar showing where it had been
removed and put on again.
‘Idiot!’ he said to himself--why hadn’t he covered up the breakage with
a larger seal? Or why, again, after all those years had he troubled to
tell a lie about it? But the reason for that he knew; it was so that he
might stand well--better than he had ever stood before--in Davidina’s
eyes. Just that once, so simply, so easily, by so slight a departure
from the truth--he had got the better of her; and now her clutch was
upon him again. She was coming through the dark night; he must meet her
face to face, and hear her asking in hard matter-of-fact tone: ‘Well,
what’s the matter now?’
Through the house he heard a knock at the front door; the thought that
it might possibly be Davidina, come earlier than she was expected,
drove him down the garden in flight and out by the back way. He was
suffering badly. The double buffet--Caroline’s, followed by Davidina’s,
had left him dazed; he had no spirit left. If there had ever been doubt
of him in his wife’s easy-going and utterly domesticated mind, how
could he meet the all-seeing eye of Davidina, in the expectation that
his shining certificate of virtue would, even for a moment, divert her
from common sense? All the haloes in the world would not convince
Davidina that he really took his bath of a cold morning: it would
convince her of nothing of which he would like her to be convinced, but
only of other things that he would rather she did not know.
And yet the thought stuck to him, ‘I am good, sometimes.’ To that
anchor he clung like a drowning man who happens also to be a little
drunk. If he could only have let the anchor go it would have given him
a better chance. But no--a sense of his sometimes exceeding goodness
still clung to him. Out into the night he went, and his blush went with
him--extending farther than he knew.
All the mercury of his composition had gone down into his boots; and
though he still believed in himself he was very, very miserable. The
fact that he attracted moths, added to his depression. It was merely
one more indication of the futility of the moral emblem which had
fastened in on him. Coming to a stile leading into fields, he made
it his _prie-Dieu_, and kneeling on the foot-rest bowed his head and
prayed: ‘O Lord, take away my life; thou hast laid on me a burden too
heavy for me to bear!’ So, characteristically--I had often heard him do
it before--still shifting the blame from himself to others.
One did for him what one could--stirred memories he had striven to make
dormant, suggested to him interpretations of his action in the past
which at other times he would have denied vehemently. All I could do I
did to make him shake off for good that halo of self-worship with which
he had surrounded himself. But, as always when he took to his knees, he
left me with a peculiar sense of helplessness. His tendency to defend
himself in prayer not only from the imputations the world made against
him, but from the imputations of his own conscience, was just as much
in evidence as ever; and familiarity with the Scriptures continued to
make sincerity of speech difficult. Quotations from the Old Testament
kept coming into his head to be hurled at mine, as though, from such a
source, they must needs be true statements of fact.
‘I have been very zealous for the Lord God,’ he cried; and then having
chosen his prophet, started upon variations. ‘The priests of Baal I
have slain; I have broken down their altars; and I, only I, am left,
desolate.’ He was not arguing, he was telling me.
With his persistencies and his prevarications he made me really angry
at last; for he would not leave off. As Jonah once had a great fish
prepared for him, so I prepared and drove a cow up to the stile where
he was kneeling. It touched him with its nose. In the darkness he
mistook it for a passer-by, waiting to get over. Apologizing he got up
and stood aside; and when he discovered his mistake it made him feel
very foolish.
He ceased praying, and rambling quickly across the field, found himself
presently at a level-crossing. Away on the other side he heard mixed
music, shouting, laughter, and the crack of toy fire-arms, where the
heath had temporarily become a fair-ground. From farther away in the
distance came the mumble of an approaching train.
As he trod the metals, he wondered--his sense of direction being
defective--which was the up and which the down line. He stood still
on the track. Suddenly into his quick divided mind the thought
flashed--suppose there were an accident! He had heard of people
standing to watch trains becoming fascinated by them, hypnotized,
unable to move. Hypnotism would, he supposed, provide a comparatively
happy death: it would also make the recipient irresponsible for his
actions. Well, an express train might do it; but of local or luggage
trains he was doubtful; they had not sufficient thunder or speed.
And so, between two rails, and still of two minds as usual, he halted
and waited. The idea began to fascinate him, as always where so much
hung upon chance. Was he standing on the right track? Would it be an
express, or would it be a local. And then the thought--if it were an
express, and with track coinciding, would he after death display to a
remorseful world that sign of divine approbation which as a living man
now so encumbered him?
It was a wonderful and an inspiring thought; and as it came forthwith
it blazed into a certainty; he became exalted and uplifted in spirit.
Yes, posterity would see him in his true light, as he had always felt
himself to be in those blessed moments when it was borne in on him
that his whole life was a mission, and he himself the great modern
evangelist making goodness a thing simple to the understanding. What a
beautiful end! he thought. Even Davidina would be sorry then for her
past misreadings of his character.
The train leapt into view. It did not leave him long in doubt; it
was an express and a fast one at that. He watched it, and became
fascinated. Power of control left him: his mind soared in a vague
hopeful ecstasy toward the stars. He saw Sirius winking at him--Sirius,
which had always been his special star, his affinity. He winked back at
it: tears rushed to his eyes, he became blind.
Absolutely irresponsible for his actions now, he stood unable to move,
his whole body possessed by the mighty rushing sound which filled his
ears; the world around, the heaven above, the earth beneath grew full
of the thunder of it. Upon those monstrous vibrations his soul mounted
to bliss; he had become superior to his own body at last, did not mind,
was not afraid. Heaven had been gracious to him after all.
Suddenly the engine, opening its throttle, gave a ghastly scream.
With a blast of its nostrils, a rattling of chains, a grinding of
brakes, and a screeching of wheels, which sent shuddering discords
to the night, it came to a precipitate standstill, less than a dozen
yards from where Mr. Trimblerigg stood with sapling feet waiting to be
uprooted for another and a better world.
Those horrible noises, and the abrupt abatement of its speed snatched
Mr. Trimblerigg from his trance. With loosened knees and presence
of mind mercifully restored, now only apprehensive of detection and
capture, he sped swiftly away; high-hedged night received him into its
obliterating embrace; the track was clear.
A stoker, descending hastily from the arrested train, searched the line
ahead. His voice swung back angrily out of the darkness:
‘Red light? I don’t see no red light. It’s some damned fool’s been
having a blooming game with us--that was all.’
And so, with a rich accompaniment of expletives from stoker and driver,
the express proceeded upon its way.
Mr. Trimblerigg, in a much more shaken state, did the same.