MISS ARBOUR
FOR some months I continued without much change in my monotonous
existence. I did not see Mardon often, for I rather dreaded him. I
could not resist him, and I shrank from what I saw to be inevitably true
when I talked to him. I can hardly say it was cowardice. Those may call
it cowardice to whom all associations are nothing, and to whom beliefs
are no more than matters of indifferent research; but as for me, Mardon’s
talk darkened my days and nights. I never could understand the light
manner in which people will discuss the gravest questions, such as God
and the immortality of the soul. They gossip about them over their tea,
write and read review articles about them, and seem to consider
affirmation or negation of no more practical importance than the
conformation of a beetle. With me the struggle to retain as much as I
could of my creed was tremendous. The dissolution of Jesus into
mythologic vapour was nothing less than the death of a friend dearer to
me then than any other friend whom I knew.
But the worst stroke of all was that which fell upon the doctrine of a
life beyond the grave. In theory I had long despised the notion that we
should govern our conduct here by hope of reward or fear of punishment
hereafter. But under Mardon’s remorseless criticism, when he insisted on
asking for the where and how, and pointed out that all attempts to say
where and how ended in nonsense, my hope began to fail, and I was
surprised to find myself incapable of living with proper serenity if
there was nothing but blank darkness before me at the end of a few years.
As I got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching
after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow only,
a reason for the joyfulness of to-day. I learned, when, alas! it was
almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my head,
believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it will ever be,
and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow. But when I
was young I was the victim of that illusion, implanted for some purpose
or other in us by Nature, which causes us, on the brightest morning in
June, to think immediately of a brighter morning which is to come in
July. I say nothing, now, for or against the doctrine of immortality.
All I say is, that men have been happy without it, even under the
pressure of disaster, and that to make immortality a sole spring of
action here is an exaggeration of the folly which deludes us all through
life with endless expectation, and leaves us at death without the
thorough enjoyment of a single hour.
So I shrank from Mardon, but none the less did the process of excavation
go on. It often happens that a man loses faith without knowing it.
Silently the foundation is sapped while the building stands fronting the
sun, as solid to all appearance as when it was first turned out of the
builder’s hands, but at last it falls suddenly with a crash. It was so
at this time with a personal relationship of mine, about which I have
hitherto said nothing.
Years ago, before I went to college, and when I was a teacher in the
Sunday-school, I had fallen in love with one of my fellow-teachers, and
we became engaged. She was the daughter of one of the deacons. She had
a smiling, pretty, vivacious face; was always somehow foremost in school
treats, picnics, and chapel-work, and she had a kind of piquant manner,
which to many men is more ensnaring than beauty. She never read
anything; she was too restless and fond of outward activity for that, and
no questions about orthodoxy or heresy ever troubled her head. We
continued our correspondence regularly after my appointment as minister,
and her friends, I knew, were looking to me to fix a day for marriage.
But although we had been writing to one another as affectionately as
usual, a revolution had taken place. I was quite unconscious of it, for
we had been betrothed for so long that I never once considered the
possibility of any rupture.
One Monday morning, however, I had a letter from her. It was not often
that she wrote on Sunday, as she had a religious prejudice against
writing letters on that day. However, this was urgent, for it was to
tell me that an aunt of hers who was staying at her father’s was just
dead, and that her uncle wanted her to go and live with him for some
time, to look after the little children who were left behind. She said
that her dear aunt died a beautiful death, trusting in the merits of the
Redeemer. She also added, in a very delicate way, that she would have
agreed to go to her uncle’s at once, but she had understood that we were
to be married soon, and she did not like to leave home for long. She was
evidently anxious for me to tell her what to do.
This letter, as I have said, came to me on Monday, when I was exhausted
by a more than usually desolate Sunday. I became at once aware that my
affection for her, if it ever really existed, had departed. I saw before
me the long days of wedded life with no sympathy, and I shuddered when I
thought what I should do with such a wife. How could I take her to
Mardon? How could I ask him to come to me? Strange to say, my pride
suffered most. I could have endured, I believe, even discord at home, if
only I could have had a woman whom I could present to my friends, and
whom they would admire. I was never unselfish in the way in which women
are, and yet I have always been more anxious that people should respect
my wife than respect me, and at any time would withdraw myself into the
shade if only she might be brought into the light. This is nothing
noble. It is an obscure form of egotism probably, but anyhow, such
always was my case.
It took but a very few hours to excite me to distraction. I had gone on
for years without realising what I saw now, and although in the situation
itself the change had been only gradual, it instantaneously became
intolerable. Yet I never was more incapable of acting. What could I do?
After such a long betrothal, to break loose from her would be cruel and
shameful. I could never hold up my head again, and in the narrow circle
of Independency, the whole affair would be known and my prospects ruined.
Then other and subtler reasons presented themselves. No men can expect
ideal attachments. We must be satisfied with ordinary humanity.
Doubtless my friend with a lofty imagination would be better matched with
some Antigone who exists somewhere and whom he does not know. But he
wisely does not spend his life in vain search after her, but settles down
with the first decently sensible woman he finds in his own street, and
makes the best of his bargain. Besides, there was the power of use and
wont to be considered. Ellen had no vice of temper, no meanness, and it
was not improbable that she would be just as good a helpmeet for me in
time as I had a right to ask. Living together, we should mould one
another, and at last like one another. Marrying her, I should be
relieved from the insufferable solitude which was depressing me to death,
and should have a home.
So it has always been with me. When there has been the sternest need of
promptitude, I have seen such multitudes of arguments for and against
every course that I have despaired. I have at my command any number of
maxims, all of them good, but I am powerless to select the one which
ought to be applied.
A general principle, a fine saying, is nothing but a tool, and the wit of
man is shown not in possession of a well-furnished tool-chest, but in the
ability to pick out the proper instrument and use it.
I remained in this miserable condition for days, not venturing to answer
Ellen’s letter, until at last I turned out for a walk. I have often
found that motion and change will bring light and resolution when
thinking will not. I started off in the morning down by the river, and
towards the sea, my favourite stroll. I went on and on under a leaden
sky, through the level, solitary, marshy meadows, where the river began
to lose itself in the ocean, and I wandered about there, struggling for
guidance. In my distress I actually knelt down and prayed, but the
heavens remained impassive as before, and I was half ashamed of what I
had done, as if it were a piece of hypocrisy.
At last, wearied out, I turned homeward, and diverging from the direct
road, I was led past the house where the Misses Arbour lived. I was
faint, and some beneficent inspiration prompted me to call. I went in,
and found that the younger of the two sisters was out. A sudden tendency
to hysterics overcame me, and I asked for a glass of water. Miss Arbour,
having given it to me, sat down by the side of the fireplace opposite to
the one at which I was sitting, and for a few moments there was silence.
I made some commonplace observation, but instead of answering me she said
quietly, “Mr. Rutherford, you have been upset; I hope you have met with
no accident.”
How it came about I do not know, but my whole story rushed to my lips,
and I told her all of it with quivering voice. I cannot imagine what
possessed me to make her my confidante. Shy, reserved, and proud, I
would have died rather than have breathed a syllable of my secret if I
had been in my ordinary humour, but her soft, sweet face altogether
overpowered me.
As I proceeded with my tale, the change that came over her was most
remarkable. When I began she was leaning back placidly in her large
chair, with her handkerchief upon her lap; but gradually her face
kindled, she sat upright, and she was transformed with a completeness and
suddenness which I could not have conceived possible. At last, when I
had finished, she put both her hands to her forehead, and almost shrieked
out, “Shall I tell him?—O my God, shall I tell him?—may God have mercy on
him!” I was amazed beyond measure at the altogether unsuspected depth of
passion which was revealed in her whom I had never before seen disturbed
by more than a ripple of emotion. She drew her chair nearer to mine, put
both her hands on my knees, looked right into my eyes, and said,
“Listen.” She then moved back a little, and spoke as follows:
“It is forty-five years ago this month since I was married. You are
surprised; you have always known me under my maiden name, and you thought
I had always been single. It is forty-six years ago this month since the
man who afterwards became my husband first saw me. He was a partner in a
cloth firm. At that time it was the duty of one member of a firm to
travel, and he came to our town, where my father was a well-to-do
carriage-builder. My father was an old customer of his house, and the
relationship between the customer and the wholesale merchant was then
very different from what it is now. Consequently, Mr. Hexton—for that
was my husband’s name—was continually asked to stay with us so long as he
remained in the town. He was what might be called a singularly handsome
man—that is to say, he was upright, well-made, with a straight nose,
black hair, dark eyes, and a good complexion. He dressed with perfect
neatness and good taste, and had the reputation of being a most temperate
and most moral man, much respected—amongst the sect to which both of us
belonged.
“When he first came our way I was about nineteen and he about
three-and-twenty. My father and his had long been acquainted, and he was
of course received even with cordiality. I was excitable, a lover of
poetry, a reader of all sorts of books, and much given to enthusiasm.
Ah! you do not think so, you do not see how that can have been, but you
do not know how unaccountable is the development of the soul, and what is
the meaning of any given form of character which presents itself to you.
You see nothing but the peaceful, long since settled result, but how it
came there, what its history has been, you cannot tell. It may always
have been there, or have gradually grown so, in gradual progress from
seed to flower, or it may be the final repose of tremendous forces.
“I will show you what I was like at nineteen,” and she got up and turned
to a desk, from which she took a little ivory miniature. “That,” she
said, “was given to Mr. Hexton when we were engaged. I thought he would
have locked it up, but he used to leave it about, and one day I found it
in the dressing-table drawer, with some brushes and combs, and two or
three letters of mine. I withdrew it, and burnt the letters. He never
asked for it, and here it is.”
The head was small and set upon the neck like a flower, but not bending
pensively. It was rather thrown back with a kind of firmness, and with a
peculiarly open air, as if it had nothing to conceal and wished the world
to conceal nothing. The body was shown down to the waist, and was slim
and graceful. But what was most noteworthy about the picture was its
solemn seriousness, a seriousness capable of infinite affection, and of
infinite abandonment, not sensuous abandonment—everything was too severe,
too much controlled by the arch of the top of the head for that—but of an
abandonment to spiritual aims.
Miss Arbour continued: “Mr. Hexton after a while gave me to understand
that he was my admirer, and before six months of acquaintanceship had
passed my mother told me that he had requested formally that he might be
considered as my suitor. She put no pressure upon me, nor did my father,
excepting that they said that if I would accept Mr. Hexton they would be
content, as they knew him to be a very well-conducted young man, a member
of the church, and prosperous in his business. My first, and for a time
my sovereign, impulse was to reject him, because I thought him mean, and
because I felt he lacked sympathy with me.
“Unhappily I did not trust that impulse. I looked for something more
authoritative, but I was mistaken, for the voice of God, to me at least,
hardly ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect stillness
to make it out. It spoke to me, told me what to do, but I argued with it
and was lost. I was guiltless of any base motive, but I found the wrong
name for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I deluded myself. I
reasoned that his meanness was justifiable economy, and that his
dissimilarity from me was perhaps the very thing which ought to induce me
to marry him, because he would correct my failings. I knew I was too
inconsiderate, too rash, too flighty, and I said to myself that his
soberness would be a good thing for me.
“Oh, if I had but the power to write a book which should go to the ends
of the world, and warn young men and women not to be led away by any
sophistry when choosing their partners for life! It may be asked, How
are we to distinguish heavenly instigation from hellish temptation? I
say, that neither you nor I, sitting here, can tell how to do it. We can
lay down no law by which infallibly to recognise the messenger from God.
But what I do say is, that when the moment comes, it is perfectly easy
for us to recognise him. Whether we listen to his message or not is
another matter. If we do not—if we stop to dispute with him, we are
undone, for we shall very soon learn to discredit him.
“So I was married, and I went to live in a dark manufacturing town, away
from all my friends. I awoke to my misery by degrees, but still rapidly.
I had my books sent down to me. I unpacked them in Mr. Hexton’s
presence, and I kindled at the thought of ranging my old favourites in my
sitting-room. He saw my delight as I put them on some empty shelves, but
the next day he said that he wanted a stuffed dog there, and that he
thought my books, especially as they were shabby, had better go upstairs.
“We had to give some entertainments soon afterwards. The minister and
his wife, with some other friends, came to tea, and the conversation
turned on parties and the dullness of winter evenings if no amusements
were provided. I maintained that rational human beings ought not to be
dependent upon childish games, but ought to be able to occupy themselves
and interest themselves with talk. Talk, I said—not gossip, but
talk—pleases me better than chess or forfeits; and the lines of Cowper
occurred to me—
‘When one, that holds communion with the skies,
Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
’Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.’
I ventured to repeat this verse, and when I had finished, there was a
pause for a moment, which was broken by my husband’s saying to the
minister’s wife who sat next to him, ‘Oh, Mrs. Cook, I quite forgot to
express my sympathy with you; I heard that you had lost your cat.’ The
blow was deliberately administered, and I felt it as an insult. I was
wrong, I know. I was ignorant of the ways of the world, and I ought to
have been aware of the folly of placing myself above the level of my
guests, and of the extreme unwisdom of revealing myself in that unguarded
way to strangers. Two or three more experiences of that kind taught me
to close myself carefully to all the world, and to beware how I uttered
anything more than commonplace. But I was young, and ought to have been
pardoned. I felt the sting of self-humiliation far into the night, as I
lay and silently cried, while Mr. Hexton slept beside me.
“I soon found that he was entirely insensible to everything for which I
most cared. Before our marriage he had affected a sort of interest in my
pursuits, but in reality he was indifferent to them. He was cold, hard,
and impenetrable. His habits were precise and methodical, beyond what is
natural for a man of his years. I remember one evening—strange that
these small events should so burn themselves into me—that some friends
were at our house at tea. A tradesman in the town was mentioned, a
member of our congregation, who had become bankrupt, and everybody began
to abuse him. It was said that he had been extravagant; that he had
chosen to send his children to the grammar-school, where the children of
gentlefolk went; and finally, that only last year he had let his wife go
to the seaside.
“I knew what the real state of affairs was. He had perhaps been living a
little beyond his means, but as to the school, he had rather refined
tastes, and he longed to teach his children something more than the
ciphering, as it was called, and bookkeeping which they would have
learned at the academy at which men in his position usually educated
their boys; and as to the seaside, his wife was ill, and he could not
bear to see her suffering in the smoky street, when he knew that a little
fresh air and change of scene would restore her.
“So I said that I was sorry to hear the poor man attacked; that he had
done wrong, no doubt, but so had the woman who was brought before Jesus;
and that with me, charity or a large heart covered a multitude of sins.
I added that there was something dreadful in the way in which everybody
always seemed to agree in deserting the unfortunate. I was a little
moved, and unluckily upset a teacup. No harm was done; and if my
husband, who sat next to me, had chosen to take no notice, there need
have been no disturbance whatever. But he made a great fuss, crying,
‘Oh, my dear, pray mind! Ring the bell instantly, or it will all be
through the tablecloth.’ In getting up hastily to obey him, I happened
to drag the cloth, as it lay on my lap; a plate fell down and was broken;
everything was in confusion; I was ashamed and degraded.
“I do not believe there was a single point in Mr. Hexton’s character in
which he touched the universal; not a single chink, however narrow,
through which his soul looked out of itself upon the great world around.
If he had kept bees, or collected butterflies or beetles, I could have
found some avenue of approach.—But he had no taste for anything of the
kind. He had his breakfast at eight regularly every morning, and read
his letters at breakfast. He came home to dinner at two, looked at the
newspaper for a little while after dinner, and then went to sleep. At
six he had his tea, and in half-an-hour went back to his counting-house,
which he did not leave till eight. Supper at nine, and bed at ten,
closed the day.
“It was a habit of mine to read a little after supper, and occasionally I
read aloud to him passages which struck me, but I soon gave it up, for
once or twice he said to me, ‘Now you’ve got to the bottom of that page,
I think you had better go to bed,’ although perhaps the page did not end
a sentence. But why weary you with all this? I pass over all the rest
of the hateful details which made life insupportable to me. Suffice to
say, that one wet Sunday evening, when we could not go to chapel and were
in the dining-room alone, the climax was reached. My husband had a
religious magazine before him, and I sat still, doing nothing. At last,
after an hour had passed without a word, I could bear it no longer, and I
broke out—
“‘James, I am wretched beyond description!”
“He slowly shut the magazine, tearing a piece of paper from a letter and
putting it in as a mark, and then said—
“‘What is the matter?’
“‘You must know. You must know that ever since we have been married you
have never cared for one single thing I have done or said; that is to
say, you have never cared for me. It is _not_ being married.’
“It was an explosive outburst, sudden and almost incoherent, and I cried
as if my heart would break.
“‘What is the meaning of all this? You must be unwell. Will you not
have a glass of wine?’
“I could not regain myself for some minutes, during which he sat
perfectly still, without speaking, and without touching me. His coldness
nerved me again, congealing all my emotion into a set resolve, and I
said—
“‘I want no wine. I am not unwell. I do not wish to have a scene. I
will not, by useless words, embitter myself against you, or you against
me. You know you do not love me. I know I do not love you. It is all a
bitter, cursed mistake, and the sooner we say so and rectify it the
better.’
“The colour left his face; his lips quivered, and he looked as if he
would have killed me.
“‘What monstrous thing is this? What do you mean by your tomfooleries?’
“I did not speak.
“‘Speak!’ he roared. ‘What am I to understand by rectifying your
mistake? By the living God, you shall not make me the laughing-stock and
gossip of the town! I’ll crush you first.’
“I was astonished to see such rage develop itself so suddenly in him, and
yet afterwards, when I came to reflect, I saw there was no reason for
surprise. Self, self was his god, and the thought of the damage which
would be done to him and his reputation was what roused him. I was still
silent, and he went on—
“‘I suppose you intend to leave me, and you think you’ll disgrace me.
You’ll disgrace yourself. Everybody knows me here, and knows you’ve had
every comfort and everything to make you happy. Everybody will say what
everybody will have the right to say about you. Out with it and confess
the truth, that one of your snivelling poets has fallen in love with you
and you with him.’
“I still held my peace, but I rose and went into the best bedchamber, and
sat there in the dark till bedtime. I heard James come upstairs at ten
o’clock as usual, go to his own room, and lock himself in. I never
hesitated a moment. I could not go home to become the centre of all the
chatter of the little provincial town in which I was born. My old nurse,
who took care of me as a child, had got a place in London as housekeeper
in a large shop in the Strand. She was always very fond of me, and to
her instantly I determined to go. I came down, wrote a brief note to
James, stating that after his base and lying sneer he could not expect to
find me in the morning still with him, and telling him I had left him for
ever. I put on my cloak, took some money which was my own out of my
cashbox, and at half-past twelve heard the mail-coach approaching. I
opened the front door softly—it shut with an oiled spring bolt; I went
out, stopped the coach, and was presently rolling over the road to the
great city.
“Oh, that night! I was the sole passenger inside, and for some hours I
remained stunned, hardly knowing what had become of me. Soon the morning
began to break, with such calm and such slow-changing splendour that it
drew me out of myself to look at it, and it seemed to me a prophecy of
the future. No words can tell the bound of my heart at emancipation. I
did not know what was before me, but I knew from what I had escaped; I
did not believe I should be pursued, and no sailor returning from
shipwreck and years of absence ever entered the port where wife and
children were with more rapture than I felt journeying through the rain
into which the clouds of the sunrise dissolved, as we rode over the dim
flats of Huntingdonshire southwards.
“There is no need for me to weary you any longer, nor to tell you what
happened after I got to London, or how I came here. I had a little
property of my own and no child. To avoid questions I resumed my maiden
name. But one thing you must know, because it will directly tend to
enforce what I am going to beseech of you. Years afterwards, I might
have married a man who was devoted to me. But I told him I was married
already, and not a word of love must he speak to me. He went abroad in
despair, and I have never seen anything more of him.
“You can guess now what I am going to pray of you to do. Without
hesitation, write to this girl and tell her the exact truth. Anything,
any obloquy, anything friends or enemies may say of you must be faced
even joyfully rather than what I had to endure. Better die the death of
the Saviour on the cross than live such a life as mine.”
I said: “Miss Arbour, you are doubtless right, but think what it means.
It means nothing less than infamy. It will be said, I broke the poor
thing’s heart, and marred her prospects for ever. What will become of
me, as a minister, when all this is known?”
She caught my hand in hers, and cried with indescribable feeling—
“My good sir, you are parleying with the great Enemy of Souls. Oh! if
you did but know, if you _could_ but know, you would be as decisive in
your recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly opened at your
feet. Never mind the future. The one thing you have to do is the thing
that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you. What does the 119th
Psalm say?—‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.’ We have no light promised
us to show us our road a hundred miles away, but we have a light for the
next footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light for the one
which is to follow. The inspiration of the Almighty could not make
clearer to me the message I deliver to you. Forgive me—you are a
minister, I know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, but I am an
old woman. Never would you have heard my history from me, if I had not
thought it would help to save you from something worse than death.”
At this moment there came a knock at the door, and Miss Arbour’s sister
came in. After a few words of greeting I took my leave and walked home.
I was confounded. Who could have dreamed that such tragic depths lay
behind that serene face, and that her orderly precision was like the
grass and flowers upon volcanic soil with Vesuvian fires slumbering
below? I had been altogether at fault, and I was taught, what I have
since been taught, over and over again, that unknown abysses, into which
the sun never shines, lie covered with commonplace in men and women, and
are revealed only by the rarest opportunity.
But my thoughts turned almost immediately to myself, and I could bring
myself to no resolve. I was weak and tired, and the more I thought the
less capable was I of coming to any decision. In the morning, after a
restless night, I was in still greater straits, and being perfectly
unable to do anything, I fled to my usual refuge, the sea. The whole day
I swayed to and fro, without the smallest power to arbitrate between the
contradictory impulses which drew me in opposite directions.
I knew what I ought to do, but Ellen’s image was ever before me, mutely
appealing against her wrongs, and I pictured her deserted and with her
life spoiled. I said to myself that instinct is all very well, but for
what purpose is reason given to us if not to reason with it; and
reasoning in the main is a correction of what is called instinct, and of
hasty first impressions. I knew many cases in which men and women loved
one another without similarity of opinions, and, after all, similarity of
opinions upon theological criticism is a poor bond of union. But then,
no sooner was this pleaded than the other side of the question was
propounded with all its distinctness, as Miss Arbour had presented it.
I came home thoroughly beaten with fatigue, and went to bed. Fortunately
I sank at once to rest, and with the morning was born the clear
discernment that whatever I ought to do, it was more manly of me to go
than to write to Ellen. Accordingly, I made arrangements for getting
somebody to supply my place in the pulpit for a couple of Sundays, and
went home.