CHAPTER III
Meadowes did not pay much heed to where he was going as he left Yard’s Entry that Sunday afternoon. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he walked forward without aim or direction. And these thoughts were curiously involved: a horror of what he was about; a determination to persist in it.
‘What’s this I am doing? what’s this I’ve done? Broken a woman’s heart, and played a good man false . . . and I am gaining (perhaps) my desires, and losing (certainly) my soul. . . . Soul? Have we got souls? I that am doing this, have I a soul? I doubt it . . . we are but as the beasts that perish—and yet——’
He stumbled along through the narrow, crowded streets. ‘I’ll go and pray,’ he said, stopping suddenly before the door of one of the old city churches (it stands there yet, grey and cool).
‘Here,’ he said to the verger, ‘is the church empty?’
‘Empty as a new-made grave, sir,’ said the man cheerfully.
Meadowes passed into the musty coolness of the church. He walked up the aisle and chose out the darkest corner he could find, where to offer up his strange petitions. There was a brass let into the wall here commemorating the brave fall of men who had died gallant deaths; a banner, bullet-singed and tattered, hung from the roof. Meadowes knelt under the faded fringes and covered his eyes with his hands, to shut out the world.
Then the former doubt invaded him, and the terror that the unseen was a delusion and man but a soulless higher brute with a hand-breadth of Time to sport in, overcame him with the blackness of despair.
‘Better far have a lost soul than none at all,’ he cried out in horror. He looked up at the banner above him; for things, after all, as intangible as the soul he doubted of, some happy mortals had bled and died—for Honour, Patriotism, Courage. Had they forfeited the merry years for shadows, been fools for their pains? Remembrances crowded on him of War and Death: he seemed to see whole spectral armies of the slain arise. He named them happy as they rose; for had they not died undoubtingly, bartering life for these intangible realities so worthy the life-blood of men! Ah for the unquestioning heart—to be able to walk straight forward in a plain path! But for him question would rise upon question: and this, the darkest doubt, the poisoning of Effort at its very sources, was worst of all—no Unseen, nothing but the solid merry world really to be counted upon! If this was so, then good-bye to aspiration, grasp at the Seen, hold it fast, for seventy miserable years only were to be depended on—depended on! not seventy seconds were assured to him. ‘Lord! I must have my pleasures!’ he cried, remembering the few and evil years. Then in spite of the doubts that tormented him, Meadowes suddenly began to pray. He came before the God whose existence he could not be sure of, with a confession he would not have made to his fellow-men.
‘O God,’ he prayed, speaking low into his clasped hands, ‘I have planned this thing and am going on with it—’tis pure devilry, but I am going on. Lord, I do it open-eyed. Some day punish me as I deserve—now I must take my pleasure——’
A curious prayer; but perhaps better than no prayer at all. For herein lies the world’s hope, that every man—the blackest sinner amongst us—is on his own extraordinary terms with the Unseen. Were we as grossly material as appears, we were lost indeed.
Meadowes’ faith truly was reduced to the minimum, and yet, and yet—to Something he made confession, assured only of this, that if any Presence listened it must be with pity. He rose from his knees and went out again into the crowded streets, filled not with any sudden resolutions of repentance, but with the determination to persist in the course he had originally planned out. He even felt a certain relief of conscience. ‘I have explained it with God,’ he found himself saying, adding a moment later, ‘If there be such an One.’ Then his thoughts seemed to fall into question and answer:
‘And doth that make all straight?’
‘Straighter: for I have said that such punishment as I deserve for this, I shall take.’
‘Did you mean what you prayed?’
‘If there are punishments in truth.’
‘Do you think there are?’
‘No: I doubt it.’
‘Then you will have your pleasure without risk?’
‘I hope for it.’
But conscience had after all the last word, for it spoke suddenly and loudly then:—
‘No, no; “a sword shall pierce thine own heart also.”’