III
"How am I to dress for this business?" Max had inquired; it was one of the first practical problems to be solved, and an important one.
"If you don't mind," said Sister Jenifer, "you had better dress like a Socialist. Wear a very soft hat, a very low collar, and a very red or green tie, done loose in the French fashion, and nobody will wonder at your looking clean, or at your asking questions. Young Socialists come here to study the social problem and to show themselves off, and in a vague sort of way the people have begun to understand them; and though they look upon them as cranks, they don't any longer think they are inspectors or charity agents—the two things you must avoid."
"Dress," said Max, "has a very subtle effect upon the character. At a fancy-dress ball, last season, I wore a Cardinal's robe—there is a portrait of one in the British National Gallery rather like me—and it took me a month to get rid of the effects. If I turn into a Socialist, therefore, it will be upon your advice."
"As far as politics go it matters very little what you turn into," said Sister Jenifer.
"What a statement!" exclaimed Max.
"It is perfectly true," she said. "At present what we are fighting is ignorance and indifference; in comparison to that the mere theory of government doesn't matter, for nothing is going to succeed while one half of society neither knows nor cares how the other half lives. Your politicians are welcome to any theories they can find tenable, if only they will face facts."
"What are your own politics?"
"I haven't any; I haven't room for them. My only aim is just to get that one half of the community to come and look with understanding at the other half; and then service, I know, would follow. It won't until they do."
"Well, you are making me look," said Max.
"Yet I have not been able to make my father."
"Has he never been here?"
"He has opened churches."
"Well, you believe in prayer."
"That depends on how you define it."
"I wanted to ask you that. You are only a lay-sister; but some of you have taken vows—for a period, at all events."
"That is all the Church allows; but it makes little difference since they can always renew."
"Those who have taken vows—do they give themselves entirely up to prayer?"
"No, but they entirely depend upon it."
"Depend—how?"
"They could not do their work without it. You asked me for definition: I can only give you example. Some of our sisters quite literally cannot face what they have to do except after prayer; otherwise their flesh would revolt."
"Is it such horrible work?"
"They will not tell you so; but I know that it must be. You see I am rather an outsider. My father only allowed me to come here on certain conditions; and with the inner side of our work here I have nothing to do; I understand nothing about it."
Her face flushed slightly under his gaze, the faint, troubled flush of maidenhood which apprehends an evil of which it may not know the conditions; and he saw by swift intuition that this sincere spirit was ashamed of its own ignorance. His mind darted a guess that he had before him, in fact, an inexperience of life underlying intimate acquaintance with grief and poverty which he would not have believed to be possible. And oh, sexually, how it redoubled her beauty and charm! Yes, he could not deny that so unnatural a combination attracted him, and yet it enraged him also. A few moments ago he had heard from this woman's lips a declaration that no help could come till half and half made up one whole in knowledge and understanding; and yet there she stood—if his guess was right—hesitant and bashful on the borders of that great central problem about which parental authority had decreed she was to know nothing; an example set before him of that idealistic waste of womanhood which is for ever going on, and which for bad practical reasons society is always encouraging. For depend upon it the practical social result is what we men are really afraid of—not lest our women should lose either modesty or charm, but lest with knowledge they should apply themselves too ruthlessly to practical ends, and set upon their charm a price which hitherto we have avoided having to pay. And as he so moralized upon the relations of sex, a sentimental desire grew in him to kneel down there and then at her feet and tell her how good a young man from his point of view he had always been—and how bad a one from hers.
For the time being he resisted that temptation; other things that he was not yet sure of must come first; for before we can allow the beloved to think ill of us at all she must first think far better of us than we deserve. Then for the letting-down process there is a safe margin left, and confession becomes a luxury with no danger involved; since to see himself retrospectively pardoned by a heart virginally pure has surely restored to many a weary and disillusioned sensualist a better opinion of himself than he could ever have hoped to refurbish by his own efforts. That, oh ye men about town, is a good woman's mission in life; that is what she is for—when the watch has run down she winds it up again and sets it domestically ticking. And that she may continue to do so, let us keep her from all knowledge independently acquired. When we ourselves bring her the evidence, having first packed her fond jury of a heart, then we can also dictate verdict and sentence, and the world will run on in the grooves to which we have accustomed it.
All of which is a digression, and not in the least intended as being applicable to Max, unless, indeed, some reader of virulent morals so chooses to apply it; for far be it from this historian to prevent any reader forming his or her own judgment on the facts set forth. And if to any of these Max appears as one whose springs have run riotously down and now need setting up again—if his seems to be a heart that has never yet ticked domestically, because it had not been legally registered, I can at least promise them this—that before they come to the end of this history they will have an eminent ecclesiastical authority agreeing with them, and expressing their sentiments with an eloquence which I cannot hope to rival. And so having done with digression, let us return to the social education of Max, now trying to become acquainted with the lowest stratum of all.