PRAYER OF MR. WRIFORD
I
Look where she lies. Never to wake? Unconscious, and only, under
God, to wake to die? Surely she but reposes, smiling, smiling there?
Look where her face, surrounded by her hair, rests there untouched by
scratch or mark or bruise. Surely she only sleeps; and sleeping,
surely still pursues those gay young fancies of her joyous life: look
how they seem to smile upon those soft, expressive lips of hers.
Look where she lies. Look how her tender form, hid of its suffering,
lies there so slim and shapely beneath the wrappings drawn about her.
Look at her hands, each slightly closed, that lie upon her breast:
surely to touch them is to feel responsive their firm, cool clasp?
surely to touch them is to wake her? Look where she lies. Never to
wake? Unconscious, and only, under God, to wake to die? Surely she
but reposes, smiling, smiling there?
Look where she lies. This is her room. Look where here, and here,
and here, and here, are all her little trinkets, treasures, trifles,
she has brought with her from home for this her jolly holiday. These
are her portraits here, in those plush frames, of Mother and of Dad.
That is her text she has illumined, taken from her "fav'rit:" "Lift
up your heads, O ye gates: and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors."
An odd, long text for framing. Those are her copper wire "native"
bracelets there. "Oh, you don't have to look half smart on the
parade, evenings!" That is her Church-service by her bed. He
remembers that first night when he used it. Those are her best
gloves, smoothed out there. That old stump of lead pencil lying upon
them was his. He remembers it.
Look where she lies. On the threshold he pauses. That is old Mr.
Bickers gone again on his knees against the bed, his white head bowed
within his hands. That is Mrs. Bickers kneeling there, her lips
moving. Brokenly now, such an odd, deep, trembling sound, comes Mr.
Bickers' voice. Brokenly--jumbling his own words with words
familiar. It is the prayer he had said was their daily prayer, and
he jumbles it with other prayers and into it jumbles his own.
"Lord, now lettest--" Mr. Bickers stops; and there is long silence;
and he begins again: "Lord, if it be thy will, if it be thy will, if
it be thy will, if our Essie's suffering, if it be thy will, Lord,
now lettest this thy servant, thy servant, depart in peace, in peace,
in peace, according to ... mine eyes have seen thy ... through the
tender mercies of our God whereby the dayspring ... from on high ...
hath visited us. Amen. Amen."
Mrs. Bickers says "Amen." Mrs. Bickers collapses where she kneels.
Mr. Bickers goes to her and raises her and says: "There, Mother!
There, Mother, dear! Come and rest, Mother. Rest just a little
while, Mother. Arthur's here. Arthur will stay by her. Arthur will
tell us. Just a little while, Mother, dear."
She has no resistance. She is collapsed in his arms.
He supports her from the room. He says to Mr. Wriford: "I'll just
lay her on her bed, Arthur. Just across the passage. Doors open.
I'll hear you. The doctor's down-stairs. There, Mother! There,
there, Mother."
Look where she lies. He is alone with her.
II
Come to this Mr. Wriford on his knees with her, his hands upon her
hand, his head between his outstretched arms. Come to his revelation
she has revealed to him; to that which came to him with sudden
thought of Captain; come to his prayer.
"This is my dear, my darling, lying here.... I have looked back. I
have looked back upon such pitiless review of all my blindness, that
to look forward, to live and not destroy myself, is almost heavier
than I can bear.... I will bear it.... I see. I understand. I
accept. Self has been the cause of all my wreckage--thought of
myself, always of myself and of no other. I see that now--clearly,
bitterly, I see it. And yet--and yet, O God--in the very moment of
seeing it, I still thought to kill myself. That was self again. I
am so rooted in self that, in the very hour of my revelation, still
only of myself I thought--only of saving myself by death from these
my torments, only of ending them because I could not bear to let
myself endure them. All my life I have lived in self. Ah, with my
eyes open--deeper shame! deeper shame!--I almost had died in self.
Ah, even realising that, still I cannot tear self out of me, still I
kneel here dreading to live, fearing to live, crying that it is
heavier than I can bear, heavier than I can bear! Oh, what a thing
is self that with such cunning can prevail, how deeply hidden, in
what myriad forms disguised! Help me to see it. Keep my eyes open.
Keep my eyes open....
"Well, I accept then. I will not kill myself.... Lord, since I have
accepted, use this my dear, my darling, no longer for me.... This is
my dear, my darling, lying here beneath thy hand. She has offered
her life for mine. Let it suffice, O God. Judge me apart from her.
Judge me apart from her. Judge me apart from my darling. One life
came to me to open my eyes. I remained blind. He gave the deeper
sacrifice--blind in my blindness I remained. Then Essie. Thy
servant. My jolly little Essie. If I had killed myself, if by
destroying myself I had mocked her sacrifice, mocked Thee, O God,
then mightest Thou by closing Thy hand upon her have pursued me even
into hell. But I accept--but I accept, O God. Therefore relieve
her--therefore relieve her--therefore let suffice that which she has
done....
"Am I daring to bargain? Am I stipulating, making terms, advancing a
price? Remember, remember that I am new before Thee, long out of
prayer, long unaccustomed to Thy ways. It is no bargain, O God. It
is only confusion of these my thoughts. All that I ask is
this--judge me apart from her, use her no longer for me, judge me no
more through her, let that which she has done suffice. Look, I will
go away from her and leave her. Whether, beneath Thy wisdom, she
lives or dies shall nothing prevail with me. If she may live it
shall not strengthen me--no bargain there, O God. If she must die it
shall not shake me--O God, no bargain there. Judge me apart from
her. I will go out of her life. I will go out from every knowledge
of Thy will towards her. I will not even pray for her. I will not
even pray for her lest in my heart, beneath my words, beneath my
thoughts, it is in cunning that actually I am here--agreeable to
forego destruction of myself if I may know that she is spared;
resolved to kill myself if I be guilty of her death. Enough--enough.
Let me end with that while I have clearness of vision to see it.
This is my dear, my darling, lying here. I will go out from all
knowledge of her. Judge me apart from her. Let that which she has
done suffice."
He withdrew his hands from her hand as though in evidence of
detaching himself from her. He thrust them out again to touch her
and cried "Essie! Essie!" He then took them to his face.
He said: "Let me speak as a man. I will go out from her. I will
live. Let me speak as a man. Let me not make vain promises, offer
false protests. This is not religion. Religion, as it is lived, is
nothing to me. Let me not delude myself nor seek in cunning to
delude Thee. Let me not try to pretend that this that I have
suffered converts me suddenly from that which I was to that which
Essie is. Let me speak as a man. That is not of a moment. I am not
one man in one moment, a new man in the next. I am the same. All my
infirmities the same--rooted in me as my bones: bones of my spirit
and no more changed than bones of my body that are rooted in my
flesh. I am the same. Ay, even as I say it, I am tempted to say
that I am not the same but am changed. Rescue me from that cunning.
Keep me from that. Let me not even in cunning pretend, in
self-delusion believe, that this hour, these thoughts, these torments
I have endured will all my life remain with me. I have known
penitence before. I have knelt in presence of death before. I have
wept. I have vowed. Where are my tears? Where my promises? Let me
speak as a man. Time swings on. That which is all the world to-day
is less than dust to-morrow, That which is laid, beneath death's
shadow, in penitence before Thy feet, is there in ashes, when death
has winged away, to mock Thy mercy. Time swings on. Vows made in
penitence--they are no more than to the drunkard his drink: delusion,
forgetfulness, anodyne, courage until the spirit that has tricked the
brain has gone, until the travail that has worn the soul has ebbed.
Back then to fear, to baseness, as surely as night succeeds to day....
"What then? What do I purpose? What have I to offer? Lord, there
is only this in me that is different: that my eyes are opened to that
to which all my life they have been sealed. I have nothing to
promise, nothing to vow. I have only to ask: Keep my eyes open; help
me to remember this that my eyes have seen; help me to know what is
self; help me to rid me of it. All my life--all my life from the
beginning it has been self. Back in the London days when I was
working day and night, when I was longing to be free, when I thought
I was giving up my life to others, it was all self, self that was
destroying me. It was not ceaseless work that wrought upon my peace
of mind, robbed me of my youth; it was pitying myself, thinking of
myself, contrasting my lot with that of others. It is not work nor
trouble that kills a man, robs him of sleep, loses him his
happiness--it is turning the stress of it inwards upon himself, never
forgetting himself when occupied with it, always keeping himself
before his eyes, watching himself, pitying himself. Brida knew it.
'You think too much about yourself, Phil,' she used to tell me. That
old Puddlebox had the secret of it and told it me plainly. 'You
think too much about yourself, boy, and that is what's the matter
with you and with most of us.' He told it to me plainly. 'I don't
believe a word of it,' he told me when he had heard my story. 'Your
story is the same as my story and the same as everybody else's story
in this way: that you've never done any thing wrong in all your life,
and that all that's happened to you is what other folk have put upon
you.' Ay, that was it! I thought I was sacrificing my life; I was
grudging every thought of it, every moment of it given away from my
own pursuits. How could I be sacrificing when in doing so I was
unhappy? That is negation in terms. To sacrifice is happiness. Old
Puddlebox showed it me. This my Essie showed it me. To give--to
give time, money, life itself, and have compassion for oneself in
giving them, that is the very pit of self, worse than self open and
wilful. That is the selfishness that all my life has been my curse,
my wreckage. All that ever has happened to me I have seen in terms
of myself and of no other. Every trouble, every irritation that in
those London days those poor things about me brought to me, I at once
turned upon myself--looked at with my eyes, not with theirs; thought
instantly and always, even while I helped them, how it affected me,
not how it affected them. Ah, that is the heart of misery and that
is the secret of happiness! To see only with one's own eyes, to
judge only from one's own point, to estimate life in terms of self
and of no other: that is to goad oneself on from trial to trial, from
misery to misery. To see with others' eyes, to judge from their
outlook upon life, to estimate life in terms of those upon whom life
presses and not in terms of self: that is the secret of happiness,
that is the thing in life that I have missed....
"Try me not, O God, in great things. Help me in small. In the small
things, in the small, the everyday things, O God, that is where self
comes--that is where I shall not see it, that is where, disguised, it
will deceive me. To quarrel, to complain, to be impatient--what is
it but self? Help me to put myself where each one stands that comes
about me. Help me to look with their eyes--how have vexation then?
There is no vexation, there is no unhappiness in all this world but
what through self a man brings into it. All happiness, this
world--in every hour happiness, in every remotest corner happiness.
But man lives not in it but in his own world--the world that he
himself creates; of which he is the centre; that, however little he
be, revolves about him. That is whence is his unhappiness. Others
come into his world. Ah, if he can but watch them in it with their
own eyes, not with his! God! what a world this world would be if
under Thy hand it were governed as man governs the world which he
himself creates--as I have governed mine! Tolerance for none but
self, pity for none but self, all within it judged, measured, watched
in terms of self! Rid me of that! Rid me of self. Help me to see
self. Help me to see with others' eyes, not with my own...."
So ends his prayer--so ends his vigil. Mr. Bickers returns, and it
is towards daybreak. He looks once more at her, smiling, smiling
there. He will not even pray for her. Let that which she has done
suffice. Let him be judged apart from her--not strengthened if she
may live, not shaken if she must die. He goes down the stairs; out
into young morning spreading across the sea.