Very early in the morning Howard woke to hear the faint twittering of
the birds begin in bush and ivy. It was at first just a fitful, drowsy
chirp, a call "are you there? are you there?" until, when all the
sparrows were in full cry, a thrush struck boldly in, like a solo
marching out above a humming accompaniment of strings. That was a
delicious hour, when the mind, still unsated of sleep, played softly
with happy, homelike thoughts. He slept again, but the sweet mood
lasted; his breakfast was served to him in solitude in a little
panelled parlour off the Hall; and in the fresh April morning, with the
sunlight lying on the lawn and lighting up the old worn detail of the
carved cornices, he recovered for a time the boyish sense of ecstasy of
the first morning at home after the return from school. While he was
breakfasting, a scribbled note from Jack was brought in.
"Just heard you arrived last night; it's an awful bore, but I have to
go away to-day--an old engagement made, I need hardly say, FOR me and
not BY me; I shall turn up to-morrow about this time. No WORK, I think.
A day of calm resolution and looking forward manfully to the future! My
father and sister are going to dine at the Manor to-night. I shall be
awfully interested to hear what you think of them. He has been looking
up some things to talk about, and I can tell you, you'll have a dose.
Maud is frightened to death.--Yours
"Jack.
"P.S.--I advise you to begin COUNTING at once."
A little later, Miss Merry turned up, to ask Howard if he would care to
look round the house. "Mrs. Graves would like," she said, "to show it
you herself, but she is easily tired, and can't stand about much." They
went round together, and Howard was surprised to find that it was not
nearly as large a house as it looked. Much space was agreeably wasted
in corridors and passages, and there were huge attics with great
timbered supports, needed to sustain the heavy stone tiling, which had
never been converted into living rooms. There was the hall, which took
up a considerable part of one side; out of this, towards the road,
opened the little parlour where he had breakfasted, and above it was a
library full of books, with its oriel overhanging the road, and two
windows looking into the garden. Then there was the big drawing-room.
Upstairs there were but a half a dozen bedrooms. The offices and the
servants' bedrooms were in the wing on the road. There was but little
furniture in the house. Mr. Graves had had a preference for large bare
rooms; and such furniture as there was, was all for use and not for
ornament, so that there was a refreshing lack of any aesthetic pose
about it. There were but few pictures, but most of the rooms were
panelled and needed no other ornament. There was a refreshing sense of
space everywhere, and Howard thought that he had never seen a house he
liked so well. Miss Merry chirped away, retailing little bits of
history. Howard now for the first time learned that Mr. Graves had
retired early from business with a considerable fortune, and being fond
of books and leisure, and rather delicate in health, had established
himself in the house, which had taken his fancy. There were some
fifteen hundred acres of land attached, divided up into several small
farms.
Miss Merry was filled with a reverential sort of adoration of Mrs.
Graves; "the most wonderful person, I assure you! I always feel she is
rather thrown away in this remote place."
"But she likes it?" said Howard.
"Yes, she likes everything," said Miss Merry. "She makes everyone feel
happy: she says very little, but you feel somehow that all is right if
she is there. It's a great privilege, Mr. Kennedy, to be with her; I
feel that more and more every day."
This artless praise pleased Howard. When he was left alone he got out
his papers; but he found himself restless in a pleasant way; he
strolled through the garden. It was a singular place, of great extent;
the lawn was carefully kept, but behind the screen of shrubs the garden
extended far up the valley beside the river in a sort of wilderness;
and he could see by the clumps of trees and the grassy mounds that it
must have once been a great formal pleasaunce, which had been allowed
to follow its own devices; at the far end of it, beside the stream,
there was a long flagged terrace, with a stone balustrade looking down
upon the stream, and beyond that the woods closed in. He left the
garden and followed the stream up the valley; the downs here drew in
and became steeper, till he came at last to one of the most lovely
places he thought he had ever set eyes upon. The stream ended suddenly
in a great clear pool, among a clump of old sycamores; the water rose
brimming out of the earth, and he could see the sand fountains rising
and falling at the bottom of the basin; by the side of it was a broad
stone seat, with carved back and ends. There was not a house in sight;
beyond there was only the green valley-end running up into the down,
which was here densely covered with thickets. It was perfectly still;
and the only sound was the liquid springing of the water in the pool,
and the birds singing in the bushes. Howard had a sudden sense that the
place held a significance for him. Had he been there before, in some
dream or vision? He could not tell; but it was strangely familiar to
him. Even so the trees had leaned together, and the clear ripples
pulsed upon the bank. Something strange and beautiful had befallen him
there. What was it? The mind could not unravel the secret.
He sat there long in the sun, his eyes fixed upon the pool, in a
blissful content that was beyond thought. Then he slowly retraced his
steps, full of an intense inner happiness.
He found his aunt in the garden, sitting out in the sun. He bent down
to kiss her, and she detained his hand for a moment. "So you are at
home?" she said, "and happy?--that is what I had wished and hoped. You
have been to the pool--yes, that is a lovely spot. It was that, I
think, which made your uncle buy the place; he had a great love of
water--and in my unhappy days here, when I had lost him, I used often
to go there and wish things were otherwise. But that is all over now!"
After luncheon, Miss Merry excused herself and said she was going to
the village to see a farm-labourer's wife, who had lost a child and was
in great distress. "Poor soul!" said Mrs. Graves. "Give her my love,
and ask her to come and see me as soon as she can." Presently as they
sat together, Howard smoking, she asked him something about his work.
"Will you tell me what you are doing?" she said. "I daresay I should
not understand, but I like to know what people are thinking
about--don't use technical terms, but just explain your idea!"
Howard was just in the frame of mind, trying to revive an old train of
thought, in which it is a great help to make a statement of the range
of a subject; he said so, and began to explain very simply what was in
his mind, the essential unity of all religion, and his attempt to
disentangle the central motive from outlying schemes and dogmas. Mrs.
Graves heard him attentively, every now and then asking a question,
which showed that she was following the drift of his thought.
"Ah, that's very interesting and beautiful," she said at last. "May I
say that it is the one thing that attracts me, though I have never
followed it philosophically. Now," she went on, "I am going to reduce
it all to practical terms, and I don't want to beat about the
bush--there's no need for that! I want to ask you a plain question.
Have you any religion or faith of your own?"
"Ah," said Howard, "who can say? I am a conformist, certainly, because
I recognise in religion a fine sobering, civilising force at work, and
if one must choose one's side, I want to be on that side and not on the
other. But religion seems to me in its essence a very artistic thing, a
perception of effects which are hidden from many hearts and minds. When
a man speaks of definite religious experience, I feel that I am in the
presence of a perception of something real--as real as music and
painting. But I doubt if it is a sense given to all, or indeed to many;
and I don't know what it really is. And then, too, one comes across
people who hold it in an ugly, or a dreary, or a combative, or a formal
way; and then sometimes it seems to me almost an evil thing."
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "I understand that. May I give you an
instance, and you will see if I perceive your thought. The good Vicar
here, my cousin Frank, Jack's father--you will meet him to-night--is a
man who holds a rigid belief, or thinks he holds it. He preaches what
he calls the sinew and bone of doctrine, and he is very stern in the
pulpit. He likes lecturing people in rows! But in reality he is one of
the kindest and vaguest of men. He preached a stiff sermon about
conversion the other day--I am pretty sure he did not understand it
himself--and he disquieted one of my good maids so much that she went
to him and asked what she could do to get assurance. He seems to have
hummed and hawed, and then to have said that she need not trouble her
head about it--that she was a good girl, and had better be content with
doing her duty. He is the friendliest of men, and that is his real
religion; he hasn't an idea how to apply his system, which he learned
at a theological college, but he feels it his duty to preach it."
"Yes," said Howard, "that is just what I mean; but there must be some
explanation for this curious outburst of forms and doctrines, so
contradictory in the different sects. Something surely causes both the
form of religion and the force of it?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "just as in an engine something causes both
the steam and the piston-rod; it's an intelligence somewhere that fits
the one to the other. But then, as you say, what is the cause of all
this extravagance and violence of expression?"
"That is the human element," said Howard--"the cautious, conservative,
business-like side that can't bear to let anything go. All religion
begins, it seems to me, by an outburst of moral force, an attempt to
simplify, to get a principle; and then the people who don't understand
it begin to make it technical and defined; uncritical minds begin to
attribute all sorts of vague wonders to it--things unattested, natural
exaggerations, excited statements, impossible claims; and then these
take traditional shape and the poor steed gets hung with all sorts of
incongruous burdens."
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "but the force is there all the time; the old
hard words, like regeneration and atonement, do not mean DEFINITE
things--that is the mischief; they are the receipts made up by stupid,
hard-headed people who do not understand; but they stand for large and
wonderful experiences and are like the language of children telling
their dreams. The moral genius who sees through it all and gives the
first impulse is trying to deal with life directly and frankly; and the
difficulty arises from people who see the attendant circumstances and
mistake them for the causes. But I do not see it from that side, of
course! I understand what you are aiming at. You are trying to
disentangle all the phenomena, are you not, and referring them to their
real causes, instead of lumping them all together as the phenomena of
religion?"
"Yes," said Howard, "that is what I am doing. I suppose I am naturally
sceptical; but I want to put aside all that stands on insecure
evidence, and all the sham terminology that comes from a muddled
delight in the supernatural. I want to give up and clear away all that
is not certain--material things must be brought to the test of material
laws--and to see what is left."
"Well," said Mrs. Graves, "now I will tell you my own very simple
experience. I began, I think, with a very formal religion, and I tried
in my youth to attach what was really instinctive to religious motives.
It got me into a sad mess, because I did not dare to go direct to life.
I used to fret because your uncle seemed so indifferent to these
things. He was a wise and good man, and lived by a sort of inner beauty
of character that made all mean cruel spiteful petty things impossible
to him. Then when he died, I had a terrible time to go through. I felt
utterly adrift. My old system did not give me the smallest help. I was
trying to find an intellectual solution. It was then that I met Miss
Gordon, the great evangelist. She saw I was unhappy, and she said to me
one day: 'You have no business to be unhappy like this. What you want
is STRENGTH, and it is there all the time waiting for you! You are
arguing your case with God, complaining of the injustice you have
received, trying to excuse yourself, trying to find cause to blame Him.
Your life has been broken to pieces, and you are trying to shelter
yourself among the fragments. You must cast them all away, and thank
God for having pierced through the fortress in which you were
imprisoned. You must just go straight to Him, and open your heart, as
if you were opening a window to the sun and air.' She did not explain,
or try to give me formulas or phrases, she simply showed me the light
breaking round me.
"It came to me quite suddenly one morning in my room upstairs. I was
very miserable indeed, missing my dear husband at every turn, quite
unable to face life, shuddering and shrinking through the days. I threw
it all aside, and spoke to God Himself. I said, 'You made me, You put
me here, You sent me love, You sent me prosperity. I have cared for the
wrong things, I have loved in the wrong way. Now I throw everything
else aside, and claim strength and light. I will sorrow no more and
desire no more; I will take every day just what You send me, I will say
and do what You bid me. I will make no pretences and no complaints. Do
with me what You will.'
"I cannot tell you what happened to me, but a great tide of strength
and even joy flowed into my whole being; it was the water of life,
clear as crystal; and yet it was myself all the time! I was not
different, but I was one with something pure and wise and loving and
eternal.
"That has never left me. You will ask why I have not done more,
bestirred myself more; because that is just what one cannot do. All
that matters nothing. The activities which one makes for oneself, they
are the delusions which hide God from us. One must not strive or rebuke
or arrange; one must simply love and be. Let me tell you one thing. I
was haunted all my early life with a fear of death. I liked life so
well, every moment of it, every incident, that I could not bear to
think it should ever cease; now, though I shrink from pain as much as
ever, I have no shrinking whatever from death. It is the perfectly
natural and simple change, and one is with God there as here. The soul
and God--those are the two imperishable things; one has not either to
know or to act--one has only to feel."
She ceased speaking, and sat for a moment upright in her chair. Then
she went on. "Now the moment I saw you, my dear boy, I loved
you--indeed I have always loved you, I think, and I have always felt
that some day in His good time God would bring us together. But I see
too that you have not found the strength of God. You are not at peace.
Your life is full and active and kind; you are faithful and pure; but
your self is still unbroken, like a crystal wall all round you. I think
you will have to suffer; but you will believe, will you not, that you
have not seen a half of the wonder of life? You are full of happy
experience, but you have begun to feel the larger need. And I knew that
when you began to feel that need, you would be brought to me, not to be
given it, but to be shown it. That is all I can say to you now, but you
will know the fulness of life. It is not experience, action, curiosity,
ambition, desire, as many think, that is fulness of life; those are
delusions, things through which the soul has to pass, just that it may
learn not to rest in them. The fulness of life is the stillest,
quietest, inner joy, which nothing can trouble or shadow; love is a
part of it, but not quite all--for there is a shadow even in love; and
this is the larger peace."
Howard sat amazed at the fire and glow of the words that came to him.
He did not fully understand all that was said, but he had a sense of
being brought into touch with a very tremendous and overwhelming force
indeed. But he could not for the moment revise his impressions; he only
perceived that he had come unexpectedly upon a calm and radiating
centre of energy, and it seemed in his mind that the pool which he had
seen that morning was an allegory of what he had now heard. The living
water, breaking up so clearly from underground in the grassy valley,
and passing downwards to gladden the earth! It would be used, be
tainted, be troubled, but he saw that no soil or stain, no scattering
or disruption, could ever really intrude itself into that elemental
purity. The stream would reunite itself, the impregnable atom would let
the staining substance fall unheeded. He would have to consider all
that, scrutinise his life in a new light. He felt that he had been
living on the surface of things, relying on impression, living in
impression, missing the strong central current all the time. He rose,
and taking his aunt's hand, kissed her cheek.
"Those are my thanks!" he said smiling. "I can't express my gratitude,
but you have given me so much to think about and to ponder over that I
can say no more now. I do indeed feel that I have missed what is
perhaps the greatest thing in the world. But I ask myself, Can I attain
to this, is it for me? Am I not condemned by temperament to live in the
surface-values?"
"No, dear child," said Mrs. Graves, looking at him, so that for an
instant he felt like a child indeed at a mother's knee; "we all come
home thus, sooner or later; and the time has come for you. I knew it
the moment I opened your letter. He is at the gate, I said, and I may
have the joy of being beside him when the door is opened."
V