CHAPTER VIII
Mrs. Cardew met Catharine two or three times accidentally within the next fortnight. There were Dorcas meetings and meetings of all kinds at which the young women at the Limes were expected to assist. One afternoon, after tea, the room being hot, two or three of the company had gone out into the garden to work. Catharine and Mrs. Cardew sat by themselves at one corner, where the ground rose a little, and a seat had been placed under a large ash tree. From that point St. Mary’s spire was visible, about half a mile away in the west, rising boldly, confidently, one might say, into the sky, as if it dared to claim that it too, although on earth and finite, could match itself against the infinite heaven above. On this particular evening the spire was specially obvious and attractive, for it divided the sunset clouds, standing out black against the long, narrow interspaces of tender green which lay between. It was one of those evenings which invite confidence, when people cannot help drawing nearer than usual to one another.
“Is it not beautiful, Miss Furze?”
“Beautiful; the spire makes it so lovely.”
“I wonder why.”
“I am sure I do not know; but it is so.”
“Catharine—you will not mind my calling you by your Christian name—you can explain it if you like.”
Catharine smiled. “It is very kind of you, Mrs. Cardew, to call me Catharine, but I have no explanation. I could not give one to save my life, unless it is the contrast.”
“You cannot think how I wish I had the power of saying what I think and feel. I cannot express myself properly—so my husband says.”
“I sympathise with you. I am so foolish at times. Mr. Cardew, I should think, never felt the difficulty.”
“No, and he makes so much of it. He says I do not properly enjoy a thing if I cannot in some measure describe my enjoyment—articulate it, to use his own words.”
He had inwardly taunted her, even when she was suffering, and had said to himself that her trouble must be insignificant, for there was no colour nor vivacity in her description of it. She did not properly even understand his own shortcomings. He could pardon her criticism, so he imagined, if she could be pungent. Mistaken mortal! it was her patient heroism which made her dumb to him about her sorrows and his faults. A very limited vocabulary is all that is necessary on such topics.
“I am just the same.”
“Oh, no, you are not; Mr. Cardew says you are not.”
“Mr. Cardew?—he has not noticed anything in me, I am certain, and if he has, why nobody could be less able to talk to him than I am.”
Catharine knew nothing of what had passed between husband and wife—one scene amongst many—and consequently could not understand the peculiar earnestness, somewhat unusual with her, with which Mrs. Cardew dwelt upon this subject. We lead our lives apart in close company, with private hopes and fears unknown to anybody but ourselves, and when we go abroad we often appear inexplicable and absurd, simply because our friends have not the proper key.
“Do you think, Catharine—you know that, though I am older than you and married, I feel we are friends.” Here Mrs. Cardew took Catharine’s hand in hers. “Do you think I could learn how to talk? What I mean is, could I be taught how to say what is appropriate? I do feel something when Mr. Cardew reads Milton to me. It is only the words I want—words such as you have.”
“Oh, Mrs. Cardew!”—Catharine came closer to her, and Mrs. Cardew’s arm crept round her waist—“I tell you again I have not so many words as you suppose. I believe, though, that if people take pains they can find them.”
“Couldn’t you help me?”
“I? Oh, no! Mr. Cardew could. I never heard anybody express himself as he does.”
“Mr. Cardew is a minister, and perhaps I should find it easier with you. Suppose I bring the ‘Paradise Lost’ out into the garden when we next meet, and I will read, and you shall help me to comment on it.”
Catharine’s heart went out towards her, and it was agreed that “Paradise Lost” should be brought, and that Mrs. Cardew would endeavour to make herself “articulate” thereon. The party broke up, and Catharine’s reflections were not of the simplest order. Rather let us say her emotions, for her heart was busier than her head. Mrs. Cardew had deeply touched her. She never could stand unmoved the eyes of her dog when the poor beast came and laid her nose on her lap and looked up at her, and nobody could have persuaded her of the truth of Mr. Cardew’s doctrine that the reason why a dog can only bark is that his thoughts are nothing but barks. Mrs. Cardew’s appeal, therefore, was of a kind to stir her sympathy; but—had she not heard that Mr. Cardew had observed and praised her? It was nothing—ridiculously nothing; it was his duty to praise and blame the pupils at the Limes; he had complimented Miss Toogood on her Bible history the other day, and on her satisfactory account of the scheme of redemption. He had done it publicly, and he had pointed out the failings of the other pupils, she, Catharine herself, being included. He had reminded her that she had not taken into account the one vital point, that as we are the Almighty Maker’s creatures, His absolutely, we have no ground of complaint against Him in whatever way He may be pleased to make us. Nevertheless, just those two or three words Mrs. Cardew reported were like yeast, and her whole brain was in a ferment.
The Milton was produced next week. Since Catharine had been at the Limes she had read some of it, incited by Mr. Cardew, for he was an enthusiast for Milton. Mrs. Cardew was a bad reader; she had no emphasis, no light and shade, and she missed altogether the rhythm of the verse. To Catharine, on the other hand, knowing nothing of metre, the proper cadence came easily. They finished the first six hundred lines of the first book.
“You have not said anything, Catharine.”
“No; but what have you to say?”
“It is very fine; but there I stick; I cannot say any more; I want to say more; that is where I always am. I can not understand why I cannot go on as some people do; I just stop there with ‘very fine.’”
“Cannot you pick out some passage which particularly struck you?”
“That is very true, is it not, that the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven?”
“Most true; but did you not notice the description of the music?”
Catharine was fond of music, but only as an expression of her own feelings. For music as music—for a melody of Mozart, for example—that is to say, for pure art, which is simply beauty, superior to our personality, she did not care. She liked Handel, and there was a choral society in Eastthorpe which occasionally performed the “Messiah.”
“Don’t you remember what Mr. Cardew said about it—it was remarkable that Milton should have given to music the power to chase doubt from the mind, doubt generally, and yet music is not argument?”
“Oh, yes, I recollect, but I do not quite comprehend him, and I told him I did not see how music could make me sure of a thing if there was not a reason for it.”
“What did he say then?”
“Nothing.”
Mr. Cardew called that evening to take his wife home. He was told that she was in the garden with Miss Furze, and thither he at once went.
“Milton!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing with Milton here?”
“Miss Furze and I were reading the first book of the ‘Paradise Lost’ together.”
Mrs. Cardew looked at her husband inquiringly, and with a timid smile, hoping he would show himself pleased. His brow, however, slightly wrinkled itself with displeasure. He had told her to read Milton, had said, “Fancy an Englishwoman with any pretensions to education not knowing Milton!” and now, when she was doing exactly what she was directed to do, he was vexed. He was annoyed to find he was precisely obeyed, and perhaps would have been in a better temper if he had been contradicted and resisted. Mrs. Cardew turned her head away. What was she to do with him? Every one of her efforts to find the door had failed.
“What has struck you particularly in that book, Miss Furze?”
Catharine was about to say something, but she caught sight of Mrs. Cardew, and was arrested. At last she spoke, but what she said was not what she at first had intended to say.
“Mrs. Cardew and I were discussing the lines about doubt and music, and we cannot see what Milton means. We cannot see how music can make us sure of a thing if there is not good reason for it.”
Catharine used the first person plural with the best intention, but her object was defeated. The rector recognised the words at once.
“Yes, yes,” he replied, impatiently; “but, Miss Furze, you know better than that. Milton does not mean doubt whether an arithmetical proposition is true. I question if he means theological doubt. Doubt in that passage is nearer despondency. It is despondency taking an intellectual form and clothing itself with doubts which no reasoning will overcome, which re-shape themselves the moment they are refuted.” He stopped for a moment. “Don’t you think so, Miss Furze?”
She forgot Mrs. Cardew, and looked straight into Mr. Cardew’s face bent earnestly upon her.
“I understand.”
Mrs. Cardew had lifted her eyes from the ground, on which they had been fixed. “I think,” said she, “we had better be going.”
“We can go out by the door at the end of the garden, if you will go and bid the Misses Ponsonby good-bye.”
Mrs. Cardew lingered a moment.
“I have bidden them good-bye,” said her husband.
She went, and Miss Ponsonby detained her for a few minutes to arrange the details of an important quarterly meeting of the Dorcas Society for next week.
“What do you think of the subject of the ‘Paradise Lost.’ Miss Furze?”
“I hardly know; it seems so far away.”
“Ah! that is just the point. I thought so once, but not now. Milton could not content himself with a common theme; nothing less than God and the man—mortal feud between Him and Satan would suffice. Milton is representative to me of what I may call the heroic attitude towards existence. Mark, too, the importance of man in the book. Men and women are not mere bubbles—here for a moment and then gone—but they are actually important, all-important, I may even say, to the Maker of the universe and his great enemy. In this Milton follows Christianity, but what stress he lays on the point! Our temptation, notwithstanding our religion, so often is to doubt our own value. All appearances tend to make us doubt it. Don’t you think so?”
Catharine looked earnestly at the excited preacher, but said nothing.
“I do not mean our own personal worth. The temptation is to doubt whether it is of the smallest consequence whether we are or are not, and whether our being here is not an accident. Oh, Miss Furze, to think that your existence and mine are part of the Divine eternal plan, and that without us it would be wrecked! Then there is Satan. Milton has gone beyond the Bible, beyond what is authorised, in giving such a distinct, powerful, and prominent individuality to Satan. You will remember that in the great celestial battle—
“‘Long time in even scale
The battle hung.’
But what a wonderful conception that is of the great antagonist of God! It comes out even more strongly in the ‘Paradise Regained.’ Is it not a relief to think that the evil thought in you or me is not altogether yours and mine, but is foreign; that it is an incident in the war of wars, an attack on one of the soldiers of the Most High?”
Mr. Cardew paused.
“Have you never written anything which I could read?”
“Scarcely anything. I wrote some time ago a little story of a few pages, but it was never published. I will lend you the manuscript, but you will please remember that it is anonymous, and that I do not wish the authorship revealed. I believe most people would not think any the better of me, certainly as a clergyman, if they knew it was mine.”
“That is very kind of you.”
Catharine felt the distinction, the confidence. The sweetest homage which can be offered us is to be entrusted with something which others would misinterpret.
“I should like, Miss Furze, to have some further talk with you about Milton, but I do not quite see” (musingly) “how it is to be managed.”
“Could you not tell us something about him when you and Mrs. Cardew next have tea with us at the Limes?”
“I do not think so. I meant with you, yourself. It is not easy for me to express myself clearly in company—at any rate, I should not hear your difficulties. You seem to possess a sympathy which is unusual, and I should be glad to know more of your mind.”
“When Mrs. Cardew comes here, could you not fetch her, and could we not sit out here together?”
He hesitated. They were walking slowly over the grass towards the gate, and were just beginning to turn off to the right by the side path between the laurels. At that point, the lawn being levelled and raised, there were two stone steps. In descending them Catharine slipped, and he caught her arm. She did not fall, but he did not altogether release her for at least some seconds.
“Mrs. Cardew has no liking for poetry.”
Catharine was silent.
“It is quite a new thing to me, Miss Furze, to find anybody in Abchurch who cares anything for that which is most interesting to me.”
“But, Mr. Cardew, I am sure I have not shown any particular capacity, and I am very ignorant, for I have read very little.”
“It does not need much to reveal what is in a person. It would be a great help to me if we could read a book together. This self-imprisonment day after day and self-imposed reticence is very unwholesome. I would give much to have a pupil or a friend whose world is my world.”
To Catharine it seemed as if she was being sucked in by a whirlpool and carried she knew not whither. They had reached the gate, and he had taken her hand in his to bid her good-bye. She felt a distinct and convulsive increase of pressure, and she felt also that she returned it. Suddenly something passed through her brain swift as the flash of the swiftest blazing meteor: she dropped his hand, and, turning instantly, went back to the house, retreating behind the thick bank of evergreens.
“Where is Miss Furze?” said Mrs. Cardew, who came down the path a minute or two afterwards.
“I do not know: I suppose she is indoors.”
“A canting, hypocritical parson, type not uncommon, described over and over again in novels, and thoroughly familiar to theatre-goers.” Such, no doubt, will be the summary verdict passed upon Mr. Cardew. The truth is, however, that he did not cant, and was not a hypocrite. One or two observations here may perhaps be pertinent. The accusation of hypocrisy, if we mean lofty assertion, and occasional and even conspicuous moral failure, may be brought against some of the greatest figures in history. But because David sinned with Bathsheba, and even murdered her husband, we need not discredit the sincerity of the Psalms. The man was inconsistent, it is true, inconsistent exactly because there was so much in him that was great, for which let us be thankful. Let us take notice too, of what lies side by sidle quietly in our own souls. God help us if all that is good in us is to be invalidated by the presence of the most contradictory evil.
Secondly it is a fact that vitality means passion. It does not mean avarice or any of the poor, miserable vices. If David had been a wealthy and most pious Jerusalem shopkeeper, who subscribed largely to missionary societies to the Philistines, but who paid the poor girls in his employ only two shekels a week, refusing them ass-hire when they had to take their work three parts of the way to Bethlehem, and turning them loose at a minute’s warning, he certainly would not have been selected to be part author of the Bible, even supposing his courtship and married life to have been most exemplary and orthodox. We will, however, postpone any further remarks upon Mr. Cardew: a little later we shall hear something about his early history, which may perhaps explain and partly exculpate him. As to Catharine, she escaped. It is vexatious that a complicated process in her should be represented by a single act which was transacted in a second. It would have been much more intelligible if it could have written itself in a dramatic conversation extending over two or three pages, but, as the event happened, so it must be recorded. The antagonistic and fiercely combatant forces did so issue in that deed, and the present historian has no intention to attempt an analysis. One thing is clear to him, that the quick stride up the garden path was urged not by any single, easily predominating impulse which had been enabled to annihilate all others. Do not those of us, who have been mercifully prevented from damming ourselves before the whole world, who have succeeded and triumphed—do we not know, know as we know hardly anything else, that our success and our triumph were due to superiority in strength by just a grain, no more, of our better self over the raging rebellion beneath it? It was just a tremble of the tongue of the balance: it might have gone this way, or it might have gone the other, but by God’s grace it was this way settled—God’s grace, as surely, in some form of words, everybody must acknowledge it to have been. When she reached her bedroom she sat down with her head on her hands, rose, walked about, looked out of window in the hope that she might see him, thought of Mrs. Cardew; forgot her; dwelt on what she had passed through till she almost actually felt the pressure of his hand; cursed herself that she had turned away from him; prayed for strength to resist temptation, and longed for one more chance of yielding to it.
The next morning a little parcel was left for Miss Furze. It contained the promised story, which is here presented to my readers:—