‘_Dieu, qui, dès le commencemeut de la création, avez en tirant la femme
d’une côte de l’homme établi le grand sacrement du mariage, vous qui
l’avez honorée et relevée si hautsoit en vous, incarnant dans le sein
d’une femme, soit en commençant vos miracles par celui des noces de
Cana, vous qui avez jadis accordé ce remède, suivant vos vues, à mon
incontinente faiblesse, ne repoussez pas les prières de votre servante:
je les verse humblement aux pieds de votre divine majesté pour mes
péchés et pour ceux de mon bien-aimé. O Dieu qui êtes la bonté
même, pardonnez à nos crimes si grands, et que l’immensité de votre
miséricorde se mesure à la multitude de nos fautes. Prenez contre
vos serviteurs la verge de la correction, non le glaive de la fureur.
Frappez la chair pour conserver les âmes. Venez en pacificateur, non en
vengeur; avec bonté plûtot qu’avec justice; en père miséricordieux, non
en maître sévère.’_
_The Prater of Héloïse (written for her by Abelard)_.
Alma remained as her uncle and cousin had left her, leaning against the
mantelpiece, with her eyes fixed, her frame convulsively trembling. Yet
her look and manner still would have confirmed Sir George in his opinion
that she bore the shock ‘better than might have been expected.’ She did
not cry or moan. Once or twice her hand was pressed upon her heart, as
if to still its beating, that was all.
Nevertheless, she was already aware that the supreme sorrow, the fatal
dishallucination, of her life had come. She saw all her cherished hopes
and dreams, her fairy castles of hope and love, falling to pieces like
houses of cards; the idol of her life falling with them, changing to
clay and dust; the whole world darkening, all beauty withering, in a
chilly wind from the eternity of shadows. If Ambrose Bradley was
base, if the one true man she had ever known and loved was false, what
remained? Nothing but disgrace and death.
He had been in her eyes next to God, without speck or flaw, perfectly
noble and supreme; one by one he had absorbed all her childish faiths,
while in idolatry of passion she had knelt at his feet adoring him--
He for God only, she for God in _him_.
And that godhead had sufficed.
She had given up to him, together with her faith, her hope, her
understanding, her entire spiritual life.
Passionate by nature, she had never loved any other human creature; even
such slight thrills of sympathy as most maidens feel, and which by some
are christened ‘experiences,’ having been almost or quite unknown
to her. She had been a studious, reserved girl, with a manner which
repelled the approaches of beardless young men of her own age; her
beauty attracted them, but her steadfast intellectual eyes frightened
and cowed the most impudent among them. Not till she came into collision
with Bradley did she understand what personal passion meant; and even
the first overtures were intellectual, leading only by very slow degrees
to a more tender relationship.
Alma Craik, in fact, was of the same fine clay of which enthusiasts have
been made in all ages. Born in the age of Pericles, she would doubtless
have belonged to the class of which Aspasia was an immortal type; in the
early days of Christianity, she would have perhaps figured as a Saint;
in its mediaeval days as a proselytising abbess; and now, in the days of
Christian decadence, she opened her dreamy eyes on the troublous lights
of spiritual Science, found in them her inspiration and her heavenly
hope. But men cannot live by bread alone, and women cannot exist without
love. Her large impulsive nature was barren and incomplete till she
had discovered what the Greek _hetairai_ found in Pericles, what the
feminine martyrs found in Jesus, what Eloisa found in Abelard; that is
to say, the realisation of a masculine ideal. She waited, almost without
anticipation, till the hour was ripe.
Love comes not as a slave
To any beckoning finger; but, some day,
When least expected, cometh as a King,
And takes his throne.
So at last it was with the one love of Alma’s life. Without doubt,
without fear or question, she suffered her lover to take full
sovereignty, and to remain thenceforth throned and crowned.
And now, she asked herself shudderingly, was it all over? Had the end
of her dream come, when she had scarcely realised its beginning? If
this was so, the beautiful world was destroyed. If Bradley was unworthy,
there was no goodness in man; and if the divine type in humanity
was broken like a cast of clay, there was no comfort in religion, no
certainty of God.
She looked at her watch; it was not far from midnight. She moved from
her support, and walked nervously up and down the room.
At last her mind was made up. She put on her hat and mantle, and left
the house.
In her hand she clutched the piece of paper which George Craik had given
her, and which contained the name and address of Mrs. Montmorency.
The place was close at hand, not far indeed from Bradley’s residence and
her own. She hastened thither without hesitation, her way lay along
the borders of the park, past the very Church which she had spared no
expense to build, so that she came into its shadow almost before she
knew.
It was a still and windless night; the skies were blue and clear, with
scarcely a cloud, and the air was full of the vitreous pour of the
summer moon, which glimmered on the church windows with ghostly silvern
light. From the ground there exhaled a sickly heavy odour--the scent of
the heated dew-charged earth.
Alma stood for some time looking at the building with the fortunes of
which her own seemed so closely and mysteriously blent. Its shadow fell
upon her with ominous darkness.
Black and sepulchral it seemed now, instead of bright and full of joy.
As she gazed upon it, and remembered how she had laboured to upbuild
it, how she had watched it grow stone by stone, and felt the joy a child
might feel in marking the growth of some radiant flower, it seemed the
very embodiment of her own despair.
Now, for the first time, her tears began to flow, but slowly, as if
from sources in an arid heart. If she had heard the truth that day, the
labour of her life was done; the place she looked upon was curst, and
the sooner some thunderbolt of God struck it, or the hand of man razed
it to the ground, the better for all the world.
There was a light in the house close by--in the room where she knew
her lover was sitting. She crept close to the rails of the garden, and
looked at the light through her tears. As she gazed, she prayed; prayed
that God might spare her yet, rebuke the satanic calumny, and restore
her lord and master to her, pure and perfect as he had been.
Then, in her pity for him and for herself, she thought how base he might
think her if she sought from any lips but his own the confirmation
of her horrible fear. She would be faithful till the last. Instead of
seeking out the shameless woman, she would go in and ask Bradley himself
to confess the truth.
Swift action followed the thought. She opened the gate, crossed the
small garden, and rang the bell.
The hollow sound, breaking on the solemn stillness, startled her, and
she shrank trembling in the doorway; then she heard the sound of
bolts being drawn, and the next moment the house door opened, and the
clergyman appeared on the threshold, holding a light.
He looked wild and haggard enough, for indeed he had been having his
dark hour alone. He wore a black dressing jacket with no waistcoat, and
the collar of his shirt was open and tieless, falling open to show his
powerful muscular throat.
‘Alma!’ he exclaimed in astonishment.
‘_You_ here, and so late!’
‘Yes, it is I,’ she answered in a low voice. ‘I wish to speak to you.
May I come in?’
He could not see her face, but the tones of her voice startled him, as
he drew back to let her enter. She passed by him without a word, and
hastened along the lobby to the study.
He closed the door softly, and followed her.
The moment he came into the bright lamplight of the room he saw her
standing and facing him, her face white as death, her eyes dilated.
‘My darling, what is it? Are you ill?’ he cried.
But he had no need to ask any question. He saw in a moment that she knew
his secret.
‘Close the door,’ she said in a low voice; and after he had obeyed her
she continued, ‘Ambrose, I have come here to-night because I could
not rest at home till I had spoken to you. I have heard something
terrible--so terrible that, had I believed it utterly, I think I should
not be living now. It is something that concerns us both--me, most of
all. Do you know what I mean? Tell me, for God’s sake, if you know!
Spare me the pain of an explanation if you can. Ah, God help me! I see
you know!’
Their eyes met. He could not lie to her now.
‘Yes, I know,’ he replied.
‘But it is not true? Tell me it is not true?’
As she gazed at him, and stretched out her arms in wild entreaty, his
grief was pitiful beyond measure. He turned his eyes away with a groan
of agony.
She came close to him, and, taking his head in her trembling hands,
turned his face again to hers. He collected all his strength to meet her
reproachful gaze, while he replied, in a deep tremulous voice:--
‘You have heard that I have deceived you, that I am the most miserable
wretch beneath the sun. You have heard--God help me!--that there is a
woman living, other than yourself, who claims to be my wife.’
‘Yes! that is what I have heard. But I do not believe--I will not
believe it. I have come to have from your own lips the assurance that it
is a falsehood. Dear Ambrose, tell me so. I will believe _you_. Whatever
_you_ tell me, I will believe with all my soul.’
She clung to him tenderly as she spoke, with the tears streaming fast
down her face.
Disengaging himself gently, he crossed the room to his desk, and placed
his hand upon some papers scattered there, with the ink fresh upon them.
‘When I heard you knock,’ he said, ‘I was trying to write down, for your
eyes to read, what my lips refused to tell, what I could not speak
for utter, overpowering shame. I knew the secret must soon be known; I
wished to be first to reveal it to you, that you might know the whole
unvarnished truth. I was too late, I find. My enemies have been before
me, and you have come to reproach me--as I deserve.’
‘I have _not_ come for that,’ answered Alma, sobbing. ‘It is too late
for reproaches. I only wish to know my fate.’
‘Then try and listen, while I tell you everything,’ said Bradley, in
the same tone of utter misery and despair. ‘I am speaking my own
death-warrant, I know; for with every word I utter I shall be tearing
away another living link that binds you to my already broken heart. I
have nothing to say in my own justification; no, not one word. If you
could strike me dead at your feet, in your just and holy anger, it would
be dealing with me as I deserve. I should have been strong; I was weak,
a coward! I deserve neither mercy nor pity.’
It was strange how calm they both seemed; he as he addressed her in his
low deep voice, she as she stood and listened. Both were deathly pale,
but Alma’s tears were checked, as she looked in despair upon the man who
had wrecked her life.
Then he told her the whole story: of how, in his youthful infatuation,
he had married Mary Goodwin, how they had lived a wretched life
together, how she had fled from him, and how for many a year he had
thought her dead. His face trembled and his cheek flushed as he spoke
of the new life that had dawned upon him, when long afterwards he became
acquainted with herself; while she listened in agony, thinking of the
pollution of that other woman’s embraces from which he had passed.
But presently she hearkened more peacefully, and a faint dim hope began
to quicken in her soul--for as yet she but dimly apprehended Bradley’s
situation. So far as she had heard, the man was comparatively blameless.
The episode of his youth was a repulsive one, but the record of his
manhood was clear. He had believed the woman dead, he had had every
reason to believe it, and he had been, to all intents and purposes,
free.
As he ceased, he heaved a sigh of deep relief, and her tears flowed more
freely. She moved across the room, and took his hand.
‘I understand now,’ she said. ‘O Ambrose, why did you not confide in me
from the first? There should have been no secrets between us.
I would freely have forgiven you.... And I forgive you now! When you
married me, you believed the woman dead and in her grave. If she has
arisen to part us so cruelly, the blame is not yours--thank God for
that!’
But he shrank from her touch, and uttering a cry of agony sank into a
chair, and hid his face in his hands.
‘Ambrose!’ she murmured, bending over him.
‘Do not touch me,’ he cried; ‘I have more to tell you yet--something
that must break the last bond uniting us together, and degrade me for
ever in your eyes. Alma, do not pity me; your pity tortures and destroys
me, for I do not deserve it--I am a villain! Listen, then!
I betrayed you wilfully, diabolically; for when I went through the
marriage ceremony with you I _knew_ that Mary Goodwin was still alive!’
‘You knew it!--and, knowing it, you----’
She paused in horror, unable to complete the sentence.
‘I knew it, for I had seen her with my own eyes--so long ago as when I
was vicar of Fensea. You remember my visit to London; you remember
my trouble then, and you attributed it to my struggle with the Church
authorities. That was the beginning of my fall; I was a coward and a
liar from that hour; for I had met and spoken with my first wife.’
She shrank away from him now, indeed. The last remnant of his old
nobility had fallen from him, leaving him utterly contemptible and
ignoble.
‘Afterwards,’ he continued, ‘I was like a man for whose soul the angels
of light and darkness struggle. You saw my anguish, but little guessed
its cause. I had tried to fly from temptation. I went abroad; even
there, your heavenly kindness reached me, and I was drawn back to your
side. Then for a time I forgot everything, in the pride of intellect and
newly acquired success. By accident, I heard the woman had gone abroad;
and I knew well, or at least I believed, that she would never cross
my path again. My love for you grew hourly; and I saw that you were
unhappy, so long as our lives were passed asunder. Then in an evil
moment I turned to my creed for inspiration. I did not turn to God, for
I had almost ceased to believe in Him; but I sought justification from
my conscience, which the spirit of evil had already warped. I reasoned
with myself; I persuaded myself that I had been a martyr, that I owed
the woman no faith, that I was still morally free. I examined the laws
of marriage, and, the wish being father to the thought, found in them
only folly, injustice, and superstition. I said to myself, “She and I
are already divorced by her own innumerable acts of infamy;” I asked
myself, “Shall I live on a perpetual bondslave to a form which I
despise, to a creature who is utterly unworthy?” Coward that I was, I
yielded, forgetting that no happiness can be upbuilt upon a lie. And see
how I am punished! I have lost you for ever; I have lost my soul alive!
I, who should have been your Instructor in all things holy, have been
your guide in all things evil. I have brought the curse of heaven upon
myself. I have put out my last strength in wickedness, and brought the
roof of the temple down upon my head.’
In this manner his words flowed on, in a wild stream of sorrowful
self-reproach. It seemed, indeed, that he found a relief in denouncing
himself as infamous, and in prostrating himself, as it were, under the
heel of the woman he had wronged.
But the more he reproached himself, the greater her compassion grew;
till at last, in an agony of sympathy and pain, she knelt down by his
side, and, sobbing passionately, put her arms around him.
‘Ambrose,’ she murmured, ‘Ambrose, do not speak so! do not break my
heart! That woman shall _not_ come between us. I do not care for the
world, I do not care for the judgment of men. Bid me to remain with you
to the end, and I will obey you.’
And she hid her face, blinded with weeping, upon his breast.
For a time there was silence; then the clergyman, conquering his
emotion, gathered strength to speak again.
‘Alma! my darling! Do not tempt me with your divine goodness. Do not
think me quite so lost as to spare myself and to destroy _you_. I have
been weak hitherto; henceforth I will be cruel and inexorable. Do not
waste a thought upon me; I am not worth it. Tomorrow I shall leave
London. If I live, I will try, in penitence and suffering, to atone; but
whether I live or die, you must forget that I ever lived to darken your
young life.’
As he spoke, he endeavoured gently to disengage himself, but her arms
were wound about him, and he could not stir.
‘No,’ she answered, ‘you must not leave me. I will still be your
companion, your handmaid. Grant me that last mercy. Let me be your
loving sister still, if I may not be your wife.’
‘Alma, it is impossible. We must part!’
‘If you go, I will follow you. Ambrose, _you_ will not leave me behind
you, to die of a broken heart. To see you, to be near you, will be
enough; it is all I ask. You will continue the great work you have
begun, and I--I will look on, and pray for you as before.’
It was more than the man could bear; he too began to sob convulsively,
as if utterly broken.
‘O God! God!’ he cried, ‘I forgot Thee in mine own vain-glory, in my
wicked lust of happiness and power! I wandered farther and farther away
from Thy altars, from my childish faith, and at every step I took, my
pride and folly grew! But now, at last, I know that it was a brazen
image that I worship--nay, worse, the Phantom of my own miserable sinful
self. Punish me, but let me come back to Thee! Destroy, but save me!
I know now there is no God but One--the living, bleeding Christ whom I
endeavoured to dethrone!’
She drew her face from his breast, and looked at him in terror, It
seemed to her that he was raving.
‘Ambrose! my poor Ambrose! God has forgiven you, as I forgive you. You
have been His faithful servant, His apostle!’
‘I have been a villain! I have fallen, as Satan fell, from intellectual
vanity and pride. You talk to me of the great work that I have done;
Alma, that work has been wholly evil, my creed a rotten reed. A
materialist at heart, I thought that I could reject all certitude of
faith, all fixity of form. My God became a shadow, my Christ a figment,
my morality a platitude and a lie. Believing and accepting everything in
the sphere of ideas, I believed nothing, accepted nothing, in the
sphere of living facts. Descending by slow degrees to a creed of shallow
materialism, I justified falseness to myself, and treachery to _you_.
I walked in my blind self-idolatry, till the solid ground was rent open
beneath me, as you have seen. In that final hour of temptation, of which
I have spoken, a Christian would have turned to the Cross and found
salvation. What was that Cross to me? A dream of the poet’s brain, a
symbol which could not help me. I turned from it, and have to face, as
my eternal punishment, all the horror and infamy of the old Hell.’
Every word that he uttered was true, even truer than he yet realised.
He had refined away his faith till it had become a mere figment. Christ
the Divine Ideal had been powerless to keep him to the narrow path,
whereas Christ the living Lawgiver might have enabled him to walk on a
path thrice as narrow, yea, on the very edge of the great gulf, where
there is scarcely foothold for a fly. I who write these lines, though
perchance far away as Bradley himself from the acceptance of a Christian
terminology, can at least say this for the Christian scheme--that it is
complete as a law for life. Once accept its facts and theories, and it
becomes as strong as an angel’s arm to hold us up in hours of weariness,
weakness, and vacillation. The difficulty lies in that acceptance. But
for common workaday use and practical human needs, transcendentalism,
however Christian in its ideas, is utterly infirm. It will do when
there is fair weather, when the beauty of Art will do, and when even the
feeble glimmer of æstheticism looks like sunlight and pure air. But when
sorrow comes, when temptation beckons, when what is wanted is a staff
to lean upon and a Divine finger to point and guide, woe to him who puts
his trust in any transcendental creed, however fair!
It is the tendency of modern agnosticism to slacken the moral fibre
of men, even more than to weaken their intellectual grasp. The laws of
human life are written in letters of brass on the rock of Science, and
it is the task of true Religion to read them and translate them for the
common use. But the agnostic is as shortsighted as an owl, while the
atheist is as blind as a bat; the one will not, and the other cannot,
read the colossal cypher, interpret the simple speech, of God.
Ambrose Bradley was a man of keen intellect and remarkable intuitions,
but he had broadened his faith to so great an extent that it became like
one of many ways in a wilderness, leading anywhere, or nowhere. He had
been able to accept ideals, never to cope with practicalities. His creed
was beautiful as a rainbow, as many-coloured, as capable of stretching
from heaven to earth and earth to heaven, but it faded, rainbow-like,
when the sun sank and the darkness came. So must it be with all creeds
which are not solid as the ground we walk on, strength-giving as the air
we breath, simple as the thoughts of childhood, and inexorable as the
solemn verity of death.
Such has been, throughout all success or failure, and such is, practical
Christianity. Blessed is he who, in days of backsliding and unbelief,
can become as a little child and lean all his hope upon it. Its
earthly penance and its heavenly promise are interchangeable terms. The
Christian dies that he may live; suffers that he may enjoy; relinquishes
that he may gain; sacrifices his life that he may save it. He knows the
beatitude of suffering, which no merely happy man can know. We who are
worlds removed from the simple faith of the early world may at least
admit all this, and then, with a sigh for the lost illusion, go dismally
upon our way.
That night Ambrose Bindley found, to his astonishment, that Alma was
still at his mercy, that at a word from him she would defy the world.
Therein came his last temptation, his last chance of moral redemption.
The Devil was at hand busily conjuring, but a holier presence was also
there. The man’s soul was worth saving, and there was still a stake.
The game was decided for the time being when the clergyman spoke as
follows:--
‘My darling, I am not so utterly lost as to let you share my
degradation. I do not deserve your pity any more than I have deserved
your love. Your goodness only makes me feel my own baseness twenty-fold.
I should have told you the whole truth; I failed to do so, and I grossly
deceived you; there fore it is just that I should be punished and driven
forth. I have broken the laws of my country as well as the precepts of
my creed. I shall leave England to-morrow, never to return.’
‘You must not go,’ answered Alma. ‘I know that we must separate, I see
that it is sin to remain together, but over and above our miserable
selves is the holy labour to which you have set your hand. Do not, I
conjure you, abandon that! The last boon I shall ask you is to labour
on in the church I upbuilt for you, and to keep your vow of faithful
service.’
‘Alma, it is impossible! In a few days, possibly in a few hours, our
secret will be known, and then----’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ she replied, ‘and I will answer for my
uncle and my cousin--that they shall leave you in peace. It is I that
must leave England, not you. Your flight would cause a scandal and would
destroy the great work for ever; my departure will be unnoticed and
unheeded. Promise me, promise me to remain.’
‘I cannot, Alma!--God forbid!--and allow you, who are blameless, to be
driven forth from your country and your home!’
‘I have no home, no country now,’ she said, and as she spoke her voice
was full of the pathos of infinite despair. ‘I lost these, I lost
everything, when I lost _you_. Dearest Ambrose, there is but one
atonement possible for both of us! We must forget our vain happiness,
and work for God.’
Her face became Madonna-like in its beautiful resignation. Bradley
looked at her in wonder, and never before had he hated himself so much
for what he had done. Had she heaped reproaches upon him, had she turned
from him in the pride of passionate disdain, he could have borne it far
better. But in so much as she assumed the sweetness of an angel, did he
feel the misery and selfscorn of a devil.
And, if the truth must be spoken, Alma wondered at herself. She had
thought at first, when the quick of her pain was first touched, that she
must madden and die of agony; but her nature seemed flooded now with
a piteous calm, and her mind hushed itself to the dead stillness of
resignation. Alas! she had yet to discover how deep and incurable was
the wound that she had received; how it was to fester and refuse all
healing, even from the sacred unguents of religion.
‘Promise me,’ she continued after a pause, ‘to remain and labour in your
vocation.’
‘Alma, I cannot!’
‘You _must_. You say you owe me reparation; let your reparation be
this--to grant my last request.’
‘But it is a mockery!’ he pleaded. ‘Alma, if you knew how hollow, how
empty of all living faith, my soul had become!’
‘Your faith is not dead,’ she replied.
‘Even if it be, He who works miracles will restore it to life. Promise
to do as I beseech you, and be sure _then_ of my forgiveness.
Promise!’
‘I promise,’ he said at last, unable to resist her.
‘Good-bye!’ she said, holding out her hand, which he took sobbing and
covered with kisses. ‘I shall go away to some still place abroad where
I may try to find peace. I may write to you sometimes, may I not? Surely
there will be no sin in that! Yes, I will write to you; and you--you
will let me know that you are well and happy.’
‘O Alma!’ he sobbed, falling on his knees before her, ‘my love! my
better angel! I have destroyed you, I have trampled on the undriven
snow!’
‘God is good,’ she answered. ‘Perhaps even this great sorrow is sent
upon us in mercy, not in wrath. I will try to think so! Once more,
good-bye!’
He rose to his feet, and, taking her tear-drenched face softly between
his hands, kissed her upon the brow.
‘God bless and protect you!’ he cried. ‘Pray for me, my darling! I shall
need all your prayers! Pray for me and forgive me!’
A minute later, and he was left alone. He would have followed her out
into the night, as far as her own door, but she begged him not to do so.
He stood at the gate, watching her as she flitted away. Then, with a cry
of anguish, he looked towards his empty church standing shadowy in the
cold moonlight, and re-entered his desolate home.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME