After the experiences of that early morning's walk Evadne did not go to
bed so late; she got up early and went to church. The agreeable working of
her intellectual faculties during the early part of her absorbing
self-education had kept her senses in abeyance; but when the discipline of
all regular routine was relaxed, they were set free to get the upper hand
if they would, and now they had begun to have their way--a delicate,
dreamy way, of a surety, but it was a sensuous way nevertheless, and not
at all a spiritual way, as her mother maintained it to be, because of the
church-going. Sometimes sense, sometimes intellect, is the first to awake
in us--supposing we are dowered with an intellect; but pain, which is the
perfecting of our nature, must precede the soul's awakening and for Evadne
at that age, with her limited personal knowledge of life and scant
experience of every form of human emotion which involves suffering, such
an awakening was impossible. The first feeling of a girl as happily
situated, healthy-minded, and physically strong as she was is bound to be
pleasurable; and had she been a young man at this time she would not
improbably have sought to heighten and vary her sensations by adding
greater quantities of alcohol to her daily diet; she would have grown
coarse of skin by eating more than she could assimilate; she would have
smelt strongly enough of tobacco, as a rule, to try the endurance of a
barmaid; she would have been anxious about the fit of coats, fastidious as
to the choice of ties, quite impossible in the matter of trousers, and
prone to regard her own image in the glass caressingly. She would have
considered that every petticoat held a divinity, or every woman had her
price according to the direction in which nature had limited her powers of
perception with a view to the final making of her into a sentimental or a
vicious fool. When she should have been hard at work she would have stayed
in bed in the morning flattering her imagination with visions of the
peerless beauties who would all adore her, and the proud place she would
conquer in the world; and she would have gone girl-stalking in
earnest--_probably_--had she been a young man. But being as she was,
she got up early and went to church. It was the one way she had of
expressing the silent joy of her being, and of intensifying it. She
practised an extreme ritual at this time, and found in it the most
complete form of expression for her mood possible. And in those early
morning walks when she brushed the dew-bespangled cobwebs from the gorse,
and startled the twittering birds from their morning meal--in the
caressing of healthy odours, the uplifting of all sweet natural sounds,
the soothing of the great sea-voice, the sense of infinity in the level
landscape, of beauty in form and colour, of rest and peace in the grateful
shadow of the little church on the cliff, but, above all, in the release
from mental tension, and the ease of feeling after the strain of thought,
she found the highest form of pleasure she had tasted, the most rarefied,
the most intense. The St. Valentine's Day of her development was
approaching, and her heart had begun already to practise the notes of the
song-significant into which she would burst when it came.
It is a nice question that, as to where the sensuous ends, and the
spiritual begins. The dovetail is so exact just at the junction that it is
impossible to determine, and it is there that "spirit and flesh grow one
with delight" on occasion; but the test of the spiritual lies in its
continuity. Pleasures of the senses pall upon repetition, but pleasures of
the soul continue and increase. A delicate dish soon wearies the palate,
but the power to appreciate a poem or a picture grows greater the more we
study them--illustrations as trite, by the way, as those of the average
divine in his weekly sermon, but calculated to comfort to the same extent
in that they possess the charm of familiarity which satisfies self-love by
proving that we know quite as much of some subjects as those who profess
to teach them. Still, a happy condition of the senses may easily be
mistaken for a great outpouring of spiritual enthusiasm, and many an
inspiring soul unconsciously stimulates them in ways less pardonable
perhaps than the legitimate joy of a good dinner to a hungry man, or the
more subtle pleasure which a refined woman experiences while sharing the
communion of well-dressed saints on a cushioned seat, listening to
exquisite music in a fashionable church. Sensations of gladness send some
people to church whom grief of any kind would drive from thence
effectually. It is a matter of temperament. There are those who are by
nature grateful for every good gift, who even bow their heads and suffer
meekly if they perceive that they will have their reward, but are ready to
rebel with rage against any form of ineffectual pain. This was likely to
be Evadne's case. Yet her mother had been right about her having a deeply
religious disposition.
The vicar in charge of the church on the cliff--he of the musical voice,
Mr. Borthwick by name--became aware at once of Evadne's regular
attendance. He was a young man, very earnest, very devout, worn thin with
hard work, but happy in that he had it to do, and with that serene
expression of countenance which comes of the habit of conscientious
endeavour. As a matter of course, with such men at the present time, he
sought solace in ritual. His whole nature thrilled to the roll of the
organ, to the notes of a grateful anthem, to the sight and scent of his
beautiful flowers on the altar, and to the harmony of colour and
conventional design on the walls of his little church. He spent his life
and his substance upon it, doing what he could to beautify it himself, in
the name of the Lord, and finding in the act of worship a refinement of
pleasure difficult of attainment, but possible and precious. And while all
that sufficed for him, he honestly entertained the idea of celibacy as a
condition necessary for the perfect purification of his own soul, and
desirable as giving him a place apart which would help to maintain and
strengthen his influence with his people. A layman may remain a bachelor
without attracting attention, but a priest who abjures matrimony insists
that he makes a sacrifice, and deserves credit for the same. He says that
the laws of nature are the laws of God, yet arranges his own life in
direct opposition to the greatest of them. He can give no unanswerable
reason for maintaining that the legitimate exercise of one set of natural
functions is less holy than the exercise of the others, but that is what
he believes, and curiously inconsistent as the conclusion is, the Rev.
Henry Borthwick had adopted this view emphatically at the outset of his
clerical career, and had announced his intention of adhering to it for the
rest of his life. But, just as the snow under the cool and quiet stars at
dusk might feel full force in itself to vow to the rising moon that it
will not melt, and find nevertheless of necessity when the sun appears
that it cannot keep its vow, so did the idea of celibacy pass from the
mind of the Rev. Henry Borthwick when Evadne began to attend his morning
services. Insensibly his first view of the subject vanished altogether,
and was immediately replaced, first by an uplifting vision of the
advantages of having a wife's help in the parish, then by a glimpse of the
tender pleasure of a wife's presence in the house; and--extraordinary as
it may seem, this final thought occurred to him while the Psalms were
being sung in church one morning, so uncertain is the direction of man's
mind at any time--he even had a vision of the joy of a wife's kiss when
the sweet red lips that gave it were curved like those of the girl before
him. He felt a great outpouring of spiritual grace during that service;
his powers of devotion were intensified. But the moment it was over he
hurried to the vestry, tore off his surplice and threw it on the floor,
met Evadne as she left the church, and lingered long on the cliffs with
her in earnest conversation.
She was late for breakfast that morning, and her mother asked her what had
detained her.
"Mr. Borthwick was talking to me about the sacraments of the Church,
mother," she answered, her calm true eyes meeting her mother's without
confusion; "and about the necessity for, and the advantage of, frequent
communions."
"And what do you think about it, dear?"
"I think I should like it."
Her mother said no more. Young Borthwick was a cadet of good family with
expectations in the way of money, influence enough to procure him a
deanery at least, and with a reputation for ability which, with his other
advantages, gave him as fair a prospect as anybody she knew of a bishopric
eventually--just the thing for Evadne, she reflected, so she did not
interfere.
This was really a happy time for Evadne. The young priest frequently met
her after the early service, and she liked his devotion. She liked his
clean-featured, close-shaven face too, and his musical voice. He was her
perfection of a priest, and when he did not meet her she missed him. She
did not care for him so much when he called at the house, however. She
associated him somehow with her morning moods, with religious discourses,
and the Church service; but when he ventured beyond these limits, they
lost touch, and so she held him down to them rigorously. He tried to
resist. He even conceived a distaste for ecclesiastical subjects, and
endeavoured to float her attention from these on little boats of fancy
phrases made out of the first freshness of new days, the beauty of the sun
on the sea, the jade-green of grass on the cliffs, the pleasure he took in
the songs of birds, and other more mundane matters; but he lost her
sympathetic interest when he did so, receiving her polite attention
instead, which was cold in comparison, and therefore did not satisfy him,
so he determined to try and come to a perfect understanding, and during
one of their morning walks, he startled her by making her a solemn and
abrupt offer of marriage.
She considered the proposition in silence for some time. Then she looked
at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she said, not knowing she
was cruel, and only desiring to be frank: "I have never thought of you as
a man, you know--only as a priest; and in that character I think you
perfect. I respect and reverence you. I even love you, but--"
"But what?" he asked eagerly, his delicate face flushing, his whole being
held in suspense.
"But I could not marry a priest. It would seem to be a sort of sacrilege."
She was very pale when she went in that morning, and her mother noticed
it, and questioned her.
"Mr. Borthwick asked me to marry him, mother," she answered straight to
the point, as was her wont. "He surprised me."
"I am not surprised, dear," her mother rejoined, smiling.
"Did you suppose he would, mother?'
"Yes. I was sure of it."
"Oh, I wish you had warned me!"
"Then you haven't accepted him, Evadne?"
"No. I have always understood that it is not right for a priest to marry,
and the idea of marrying one repels me. He has lowered himself in my
estimation by thinking of such a thing. I could not think of him as I do
of other men. I cannot dissociate him from his office. I expect him
somehow to be always about his reading-desk and pulpit."
Mrs. Frayling's face had fallen, but she only said: "I wish you could have
felt otherwise, dear."
Evadne went up to her room, and stood leaning against the frame of the
open window, looking out over the level landscape. The poor priest had
shown deep feeling, and it was the first she had seen of such suffering.
It pained her terribly.
She got up early next morning, and went out as usual; but the scent of the
gorse was obtrusive, the bird-voices had lost their charm, the far-off
sound of the sea had a new and melancholy note in it, and the little
church on the cliff looked lonely against the sky. She could not go there
again to be reminded of what she would fain have forgotten. No; that phase
was over. The revulsion of feeling was complete, and to banish all
recollection of it she tried with a will to revive the suspended animation
of her interest in her books.