GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS
The world is weary of new tracks of thought
That lead to nought—
Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain
For mortal pain,
Yet still above them all one Figure stands
With outstretched Hands.
"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long after her return from Yorkshire.
"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a young man of parts, and his manners are admirable."
"I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views," said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think they are very broad and enlightened?"
"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the prophets. As they grow older they learn better."
Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully clever," she remarked.
"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word awfully, except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in trust—it belongs to the nation and not to us—and we have no more right to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to pollute her rivers."
"All right; I'll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan is clever, don't you?"
"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his own limitations."
"You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer," suggested Elisabeth.
"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend."
"And he is aw—I mean frightfully well off."
Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker. "Never again let me hear you refer to the income of persons about whom you are speaking, Elisabeth; it is a form of ill-breeding which I can not for a moment tolerate in my house. That money is a convenience to the possessor of it, I do not attempt to deny; but that the presence or the absence of it should be counted as a matter of any moment (except to the man himself), presupposes a standpoint of such vulgarity that it is impossible for me to discuss it. And even the man himself should never talk about it; he should merely silently recognise the fact, and regulate his plan of life accordingly."
"Still, I have heard quite nice people sometimes say that they can not afford things," argued Elisabeth.
"I do not deny that; even quite nice people make mistakes sometimes, and well-mannered persons are not invariably well-mannered. Your quite nice people would have been still nicer had they realized that to talk about one's poverty—though not so bad as talking about one's wealth—is only one degree better; and that perfect gentle-people would refer neither to the one nor to the other."
"I see." Elisabeth's tone was subdued.
"I once knew a woman," continued Miss Farringdon, "who, by that accident of wealth, which is of no interest to anybody but the possessor, was enabled to keep a butler and two footmen; but in speaking of her household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as 'my parlourmaid,' for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was distinctly vulgar."
"But you have always taught me that it is good manners to keep out of sight any point on which you have the advantage over the people you are talking to," Elisabeth persisted. "You have told me hundreds of times that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively polite after they have been obviously rude. Those are your very words, Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse."
"And I meant what I said, my dear. Wider knowledge and higher breeding are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted. The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about lay in imagining that there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there is not. To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially plebeian one. There was no difference at all, save one of convenience; the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs. And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that?"
Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the subject. "The Bishop of Merchester is preaching at St. Peter's Church, in Silverhampton, on St. Peter's Day, and I have asked Alan Tremaine to drive me over in his dog-cart to hear him." Although she had strayed from the old paths of dogma and doctrine, Elisabeth could not eradicate the inborn Methodist nature which hungers and thirsts after righteousness as set forth in sermons.
"I should like to hear him too, my dear," said Miss Farringdon, who also had been born a Methodist.
"Then will you come? In that case we can have our own carriage, and I needn't bother Alan," said Elisabeth, with disappointment written in capital letters all over her expressive face.
"On which day is it, and at what hour?"
"To-morrow evening at half-past six," replied the girl, knowing that this was the hour of the evening sacrifice at East Lane Chapel, and trusting to the power of habit and early association to avert the addition of that third which would render two no longer any company for each other.
Her trust was not misplaced. "It is our weekevening service, my dear, with the prayer-meeting after. Did you forget?"
Elisabeth endeavoured to simulate the sudden awakening of a dormant memory. "So it is!"
"I see no reason why you should not go into Silverhampton to hear the Bishop," said Miss Farringdon kindly. "I like young people to learn the faith once delivered to the saints, from all sorts and conditions of teachers; but I shall feel it my duty to be in my accustomed place."
So it came to pass, one never-to-be-forgotten summer afternoon, that Alan Tremaine drove Elisabeth Farringdon into Silverhampton to hear the Bishop of Merchester preach.
As soon as she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan's eyes which told her that he meant to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for resisting Cupid's darts.
It was a glorious afternoon—one of those afternoons which advertise to all the world how excellent was the lotus-eaters' method of dividing time; and although the woods had exchanged the fresh variety of spring for the dark green sameness of summer, the fields were gay with haymakers, and the world still seemed full of joyous and abundant life.
"Let's go the country way," Elisabeth had said at starting; "and then we can come back by the town." So the two drove by Badgering Woods, and across the wide common; and as they went they saw and felt that the world was very good. Elisabeth was highly sensitive to the influences of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan's eyes, and that was enough for her.
"Do you know," began Tremaine, getting to work, "that I have been doing nothing lately but thinking about you? And I have come to the conclusion that what appeals so much to me is your strength. The sweetness which attracts some men has no charm for me; I am one of the men who above all things admire and reverence a strong woman, though I know that the sweet and clinging woman is to some the ideal of feminine perfection. But different men, of course, admire different types."
"Exactly; there is a Latin proverb, something about tots and sentences, which embodies that idea," suggested Elisabeth, with a nervous, girlish laugh.
Alan did not smile; he made it a rule never to encourage flippancy in women.
"It is hardly kind of you to laugh at me when I am speaking seriously," he said, "and it would serve you right if I turned my horse's head round and refused to let you hear your Bishop. But I will not punish you this time; I will heap coals of fire on your head by driving on."
"Oh! don't begin heaping coals of fire on people's head, Mr. Tremaine; it is a dangerous habit, and those who indulge in it always get their fingers burned in the end—just as they do when they play with edged tools, or do something (I forget what) with their own petard."
There was a moment's silence, and then Alan said—
"It makes me very unhappy when you are in a mood like this; I do not understand it, and it seems to raise up an impassable barrier between us."
"Please don't be unhappy about a little thing like that; wait till you break a front tooth, or lose your collar-stud, or have some other real trouble to cry over. But now you are making a trouble out of nothing, and I have no patience with people who make troubles out of nothing; it seems to me like getting one's boots spoiled by a watering-cart when it is dry weather; and that is a thing which makes me most frightfully angry."
"Do many things make you angry, I wonder?"
"Some things and some people."
"Tell me what sort of people make a woman of your type angry."
Elisabeth fell into the trap; she could never resist the opportunity of discussing herself from an outside point of view. If Alan had said you, she would have snubbed him at once; but the well-chosen words, a woman of your type, completely carried her away. She was not an egotist; she was only intensely interested in herself as the single specimen of humanity which she was able to study exhaustively.
"I think the people who make me angry are the unresponsive people," she replied thoughtfully; "the people who do not put their minds into the same key as mine when I am talking to them. Don't you know the sort? When you discuss a thing from one standpoint they persist in discussing it from another; and as soon as you try to see it from their point of view, they fly off to a third. It isn't so much that they differ from you—that you would not mind; there is a certain harmony in difference which is more effective than its unison of perfect agreement—but they sing the same tune in another key, and the discords are excruciating. Then the people who argue make me angry; those who argue about trifles, I mean."
"Ah! All you women are alike in that; you love discussion, and hate argument. The cause of which is that you decide things by instinct rather than by reason, and that therefore—although you know you are right—you can not possibly prove it."
"Then," Elisabeth continued, "I get very angry with the people who will bother about non-essentials; who, when you have got hold of the vital centre of a question, stray off to side issues. They are first-cousins of the people who talk in different keys."
"I should have said they were the same."
"Well, perhaps they are; I believe you are right. Christopher Thornley is one of that sort; when you are discussing one side of a thing with him, you'll find him playing bo-peep with you round the other; and you never can get him into the right mood at the right time. He makes me simply furious sometimes. Do you know, I think if I were a dog I should often bite Christopher? He makes me angry in a biting kind of way."
Alan smiled faintly at this; jokes at Christopher's expense were naturally more humorous than jokes at his own. "And what other sorts of people make you angry?" he asked.
"I'm afraid the people who make me angriest of all are the people who won't do what I tell them. They really madden me." And Elisabeth began to laugh. "I've got a horribly strong will, you see, and if people go against it, I want them to be sent to the dentist's every morning, and to the photographer's every afternoon, for the rest of their lives. Now Christopher is one of the worst of those; I can't make him do what I want just because I want it; he always wishes to know why I want it, and that is so silly and tiresome of him, because nine times out of ten I don't know myself."
"Very trying!"
"Christopher certainly has the knack of making me angrier than anybody else I ever met," said Elisabeth thoughtfully. "I wonder why it is? I suppose it must be because I have known him for so long. I can't see any other reason. I am generally such an easy-going, good-tempered girl; but when Christopher begins to argue and dictate and contradict, the Furies simply aren't in it with me."
"The excellent Thornley certainly has his limitations."
Elisabeth's eyes flashed. She did not mind finding fault with Christopher herself; in fact, she found such fault-finding absolutely necessary to her well-being; but she resented any attempt on the part of another to usurp this, her peculiar prerogative. "He is very good, all the same," she said, "and extremely clever; and he is my greatest friend."
But Alan was bored by Christopher as a subject of conversation, so he changed him for Elisabeth's self. "How loyal you are!" he exclaimed with admiration; "it is indeed a patent of nobility to be counted among your friends."
The girl, having just been guilty of disloyalty, was naturally delighted at this compliment. "You always understand and appreciate me," she said gratefully, unconscious of the fact that it was Alan's lack of understanding and appreciation which had aroused her gratitude just then. Perfect comprehension—untempered by perfect love—would be a terrible thing; mercifully for us poor mortals it does not exist.
Alan went on: "Because I possess this patent of nobility, I am going to presume upon my privileges and ask you to help me in my life-work; and my life-work, as you know, is to ameliorate the condition of the poor, and to carry to some extent the burdens which they are bound to bear."
Elisabeth looked up at him, her face full of interest; no appeal to her pity was ever made in vain. If people expected her to admire them, they were frequently disappointed; if they wished her to fear them, their wish was absolutely denied; but if they only wanted her to be sorry for them, they were abundantly satisfied, sympathy being the keynote of her character. She was too fastidious often to admire; she was too strong ever to fear; but her tenderness was unfailing toward those who had once appealed to her pity, and whose weakness had for once allowed itself to rest upon her strength. Therefore Alan's desire to help the poor, and to make them happier, struck the dominant chord in her nature; but unfortunately when she raised her eyes, full of sympathetic sympathy, to his, she encountered that look in the latter which had frightened her at the beginning of the excursion; so she again clothed herself in her garment of flippancy, and hardened her heart as the nether millstone. In blissful unconsciousness Alan continued—
"Society is just now passing through a transition stage. The interests of capital and labour are at war with each other; the rich and the poor are as two armies made ready for battle, and the question is, What can we do to bridge over the gulf between the classes, and to induce them each to work for, instead of against, the other? It is these transition stages which have proved the most difficult epochs in the world's history."
"I hate transition stages and revolutions, they are so unsettling. It seems to me they are just like the day when your room is cleaned; and that is the most uncomfortable day in the whole week. Don't you know it? You go upstairs in the accustomed way, fearing nothing; but when you open the door you find the air dark with dust and the floor with tea-leaves, and nothing looking as it ought to look. Prone on its face on the bed, covered with a winding-sheet, lies your overthrown looking-glass; and underneath it, in a shapeless mass, are huddled together all the things that you hold dearest upon earth. You thrust in your hand to get something that you want, and it is a pure chance whether your Bible or your button-hook rises to the surface. And it seems to me that transition periods are just like that."
"How volatile you are! One minute you are so serious and the next so frivolous that I fail to follow you. I often think that you must have some foreign blood in your veins, you are so utterly different from the typical, stolid, shy, self-conscious English-woman."
"I hope you don't think I was made in Germany, like cheap china and imitation Astrakhan."
"Heaven forbid! The Germans are more stolid and serious than the English. But you must have a Celtic ancestor in you somewhere. Haven't you?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, my great-grandmother was a Manxwoman; but we are ashamed to talk much about her, because it sounds as if she'd had no tail."
"Then you must have inherited your temperament from her. But now I want to talk to you seriously about doing something for the men who work in the coal-pits, and who—more even than the rest of their class—are shut out from the joy and beauty of the world. Their lives not only are made hideous, but are also shortened, by the nature of their toil. Do you know what the average life of a miner is?"
"Of course I do: twenty-one years."
Alan frowned; he disapproved of jokes even more than of creeds, and understood them equally. "Miss Farringdon, you are not behaving fairly to me. You know what I mean well enough, but you wilfully misunderstand my words for the sake of laughing at them. But I will make you listen, all the same. I want to know if you will help me in my work by becoming my wife; and I think that even you can not help answering that question seriously."
The laughter vanished from Elisabeth's face, as if it had been wiped out with a sponge. "Oh! I—I don't know," she murmured lamely.
"Then you must find out. To me it seems that you are the one woman in all the world who was made for me. Your personality attracted me the first moment that I met you; and our subsequent companionship has proved that our minds habitually run in the same grooves, and that we naturally look at things from the same standpoint. That is so, is it not?"
"Yes."
"The only serious difference between us seemed to be the difference of faith. You had been trained in the doctrines of one of the strictest sects, while I had outgrown all dogmas and thrown aside all recognised forms of religion. So strong were my feelings on this point, that I would not have married any woman who still clung to the worn-out and (by me) disused traditions; but I fancy that I have succeeded in converting you to my views, and that our ideas upon religion are now practically identical. Is not that so?"
Elisabeth thought for a moment. "Yes," she answered slowly; "you have taught me that Christianity, like all the other old religions, has had its day; and that the world is now ready for a new dispensation."
"Exactly; and for a dispensation which shall unite the pure ethics of the Christian to the joyous vitality of the Greek, eliminating alike the melancholy of the one and the sensualism of the other. You agree with me in this, do you not?"
"You know that I do."
"I am glad, because—as I said before—I could not bear to marry any woman who did not see eye to eye with me on these vital matters. I love you very dearly, Elisabeth, and it would be a great grief to me if any question of opinion or conviction came between us; yet I do not believe that two people could possibly be happy together—however much they might love each other—if they were not one with each other on subjects such as these."
Elisabeth was silent; she was too much excited to speak. Her heart was thumping like the great hammer at the Osierfield, and she was trembling all over. So she held her peace as they drove up the principal street of Silverhampton and across the King's Square to the lych-gate of St. Peter's Church; but Alan, looking into the tell-tale face he knew so well, was quite content.
Yet as she sat beside Alan in St. Peter's Church that summer evening, and thought upon what she had just done, a great sadness filled Elisabeth's soul. The sun shone brightly through the western window, and wrote mystic messages upon the gray stone walls; but the lights of the east window shone pale and cold in the distant apse, where the Figure of the Crucified gleamed white upon a foundation of emerald. And as she looked at the Figure, which the world has wept over and worshipped for nineteen centuries, she realized that this was the Symbol of all that she was giving up and leaving behind her—the Sign of that religion of love and sorrow which men call Christianity. She felt that wisdom must be justified of her children, and not least of her, Elisabeth Farringdon; nevertheless, she mourned for the myth which had once made life seem fair, and death even fairer. Although she had outgrown her belief in it, its beauty had still power to touch her heart, if not to convince her intellect; and she sighed as she recalled all that it had once meant, and how it had appeared to be the one satisfactory solution to the problems which weary and perplex mankind. Now she must face all the problems over again in the grim twilight of dawning science, with no longer a Star of Bethlehem to show where the answer might be found; and her spirit quailed at the pitiless prospect. She had never understood before how much that Symbol of eternal love and vicarious suffering had been to her, nor how puzzling would be the path through the wilderness if there were no Crucifix at life's cross-roads to show the traveller which way to go; and her heart grew heavier as she took part in the sacred office of Evensong, and thought how beautiful it all would be if only it were true. She longed to be a little child again—a child to whom the things which are not seen are as the things which are seen, and the things which are not as the things which are; and she could have cried with homesickness when she remembered how firmly she had once believed that the shadow which hung over the Osierfield was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, to testify that God was still watching over His people, as in the days of old. Now she knew that the pillar was only the smoke and the flame of human industries; and the knowledge brought a load of sadness, as it seemed to typify that there was no longer any help for the world but in itself.
When the Bishop ascended the pulpit, Elisabeth recalled her wandering thoughts and set herself to listen. No one who possesses a drop of Nonconformist blood can ever succeed in not listening to a sermon, even if it be a poor one; and the Bishop of Merchester was one of the finest preachers of his day. His text was, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee"; and he endeavoured to set forth how it is only God who can teach men about God, and how flesh and blood can never show us the Christ until He chooses to reveal Himself. At first Elisabeth listened only with her mind, expecting an intellectual treat and nothing more; but as he went on, and showed how the Call comes in strange places and at strange times, and how when it comes there is no resisting it, her heart began to burn within her; and she recognised the preacher, not only as a man of divers gifts and great powers, but as the ambassador of Christ sent direct to her soul. Then slowly her eyes were opened, and she knew that the Figure in the east window was no Sign of an imaginary renunciation, no Symbol of a worn-out creed, but the portrait of a living Person, Whose Voice was calling her, and Whose Love was constraining her, and Whose Power was enfolding her and would not let her go. With the certainty that is too absolute for proof, she knew in Whom she now believed; and she knew, further, that it was not her own mind nor the preacher's words that had suddenly shown her the truth—flesh and blood had not revealed it to her, but Christ Himself.
When the service was over, Elisabeth came out into the sunlight with a strange, new, exultant feeling, such as she had never felt before. She stood in the old churchyard, waiting for Alan to bring round the dog-cart, and watching the sun set beyond the distant hills; and she was conscious—how she could not explain—that the sunset was different from any other sunset that she had ever seen. She had always loved nature with an intense love; but now there seemed a richer gold in the parting sunbeams—a sweeter mystery behind the far-off hills—because of that Figure in the east window. It was as if she saw again a land which she had always loved, and now learned for the first time that it belonged to some one who was dear to her; a new sense of ownership mingled with the old delight, and gave an added interest to the smallest detail.
Then she and Alan turned their backs to the sunset, and drove along the bleak high-road toward Sedgehill, where the reflection of the blast-furnaces—that weird aurora borealis of the Black Country—was already beginning to pulsate against the darkening sky. And here again Elisabeth realized that for her the old things had passed away, and all things had become new. She felt that her childish dream was true, and that the crimson light was indeed a pillar of fire showing that the Lord was in the midst of His people; but she went further now than she had gone in her day-dreams, and knew that all the lights and shadows of life are but pillars of cloud and of fire, forthtelling the same truth to all who have seeing eyes and understanding hearts.
Suddenly the silence was broken by Alan. "I have been thinking about you during the service, and building all sorts of castles in the air which you and I are going to inhabit together. But we must not let the old faiths hamper us, Elisabeth; if we do, our powers will be impaired by prejudices, and our usefulness will be limited by traditions."
"I have something to say to you," Elisabeth replied, and her eyes shone like stars in the twilight; "you won't understand it, but I must say it all the same. In church to-night, for the first time in my life, I heard God speaking to me; and I found out that religion is no string of dogmas, but just His calling us by name."
Tremaine looked at her pityingly. "You are overtired and overwrought by the heat, and the excitement of the sermon has been too much for you. But you will be all right again to-morrow, never fear."
"I knew you wouldn't understand, and I can't explain it to you; but it has suddenly all become quite clear to me—all the things that I have puzzled over since I was a little child; and I know now that religion is not our attitude toward God, but His attitude toward us."
"Why, Elisabeth, you are saying over again all the old formulas that you and I have refuted so often."
"I know I am; but I never really believed in them till now. I can't argue with you, Alan—I'm not clever enough—and besides, the best things in the world can never be proved by argument. But I want you to understand that the Power which you call Christianity is stronger than human wills, or human strength, or even human love; and now that it has once laid hold upon me, it will never let me go."
Alan's face grew pale with anger. "I see; your old associations have been too strong for you."
"It isn't my old associations, or my early training, or anything belonging to me. It isn't me at all. It is just His Voice calling me. Can't you understand, Alan? It is not I who am doing it all—it is He."
There was a short silence, and then Tremaine said—
"But I thought you loved me?"
"I thought so too, but perhaps I was wrong; I don't know. All I know is that this new feeling is stronger than any feeling I ever had before; and that I can not give up my religion, whatever it may cost me."
"I will not marry a woman who believes in the old faith."
"And I will not marry a man who does not."
Alan's voice grew hard. "I don't believe you ever loved me," he complained.
"I don't know. I thought I did; but perhaps I knew as little about love as you know about religion. Perhaps I shall find a real love some day which will be as different from my friendship for you as this new knowledge is different from the religion that Cousin Maria taught me. I'm very sorry, but I can never marry you now."
"You would have given up your religion fast enough if you had really cared for me," sneered Tremaine.
Elisabeth pondered for a moment, with the old contraction of her eyebrows. "I don't think so, because, as I told you before, it isn't really my doing at all. It isn't that I won't give up my religion—it is my religion that won't give up me. Supposing that a blind man wanted to marry me on condition that I would believe, as he did, that the world is dark: I couldn't believe it, however much I loved him. You can't not know what you have once known, and you can't not have seen what you have seen, however much you may wish to do so, or however much other people may wish it."
"You are a regular woman, in spite of all your cleverness, and I was a fool to imagine that you would prove more intelligent in the long run than the rest of your conventional and superstitious sex."
"Please forgive me for hurting you," besought Elisabeth.
"It is not only that you have hurt me, but I am so disappointed in you; you seemed so different from other women, and now I find the difference was merely a surface one."
"I am so sorry," Elisabeth still pleaded.
Tremaine laughed bitterly. "You are disappointed in yourself, I should imagine. You posed as being so broad and modern and enlightened, and yet you have found worn-out dogmas and hackneyed creeds too strong for you."
Elisabeth smiled to herself. "No; but I have found the Christ," she answered softly.