The Vision Splendid

by D. K. Broster; G. Winifred Taylor

But how could his desire be sin? He was not a Roman Catholic priest; he was a member of a body where marriage was almost expected. Even if, at his ordination, his intention had been plain to himself, he had taken no formal vow of celibacy. Newman, in spite of his ascetic views, thought that vows were foolish, and showed a lack of trust in Providence. Moreover, might not Horatia's sudden liberation be a sign that she was meant for him after all? And how could she hinder him in his work?—she would be a help to any man. He thought of what she might be as a companion, as an inspiration. And he wanted her for herself; he wanted the warm and ordered joys of home. Was that wrong? How could such desires be wrong, when God Himself had implanted them? Had not Jeremy Taylor called marriage "the nursery of heaven?"

But he knew now that this very exaltation of marriage by the Christian Church was only the other side of her exaltation of virginity. This lost truth, the heart of early asceticism—positive offence though it was even to persons who prided themselves on taking literally every other Gospel precept—he had learnt unwillingly enough. He too had found it a hard saying, but like his friends at Oriel, having once admitted it, he could not conveniently forget it. And though these men, because of their intense belief in the Divine plan for every individual life, would never presume to demand from him that he should not marry, yet, with their severe ideals, they would certainly expect that he should not go back on a line once chosen. And he had chosen; no use to deny that. He knew, if no other human being knew, how deeply he was committed to the idea of the life without ties. It was impossible for him to blink the fact that, had Horatia not become free, he would have gone on in the direction in which his mind was set. This present hesitation meant, then, that when, in his heart, he had made a dedication of his life to God, it was only because the one woman he wanted had been taken from him—an offering, as he had always felt, but little worth, though the best that he could bring. But now, now that the offering was to cost him more dear, he was desirous of taking it back again. And he reflected how such conduct would appear in worldly matters. It did not seem to him that its transference to another plane of values would render it any the more creditable.

Yes, said another voice, but you cannot set your relations with the Almighty on a sort of business footing. Do you imagine that the Architect of the Universe keeps a strict ledger account with the dust he has called into being, that he does not know the weak and childish heart of it, and accept its poor offerings, not like a merchant, but like a king?

To and fro went the warring armies in his soul, while his body carried him about his business among the poor of St. Thomas's. But all the time the tide of combat was setting in one direction, and at last he knew it.

There was a certain old woman in one of the courts to whom he used to read every day. Though dirty and illiterate she was methodical and self-willed, and, oblivious of the lessons of the day, selected what book of the Bible she pleased to be read straight through to her. In this way, after a course of Deuteronomy, she had pitched upon St. Mark.

"You was reading yesterday, Sir, how we should cut off our 'ands and feet and cast them into 'ell fire," she observed one morning as Tristram sat down in her little room. "It seems a 'ard thing to be told to do, don't it?"

Scarcely encouraged by this result of his ministrations, Tristram promptly turned to the end of the ninth chapter and re-read the passage, trying to explain as simply as possible its meaning. But the attitude of the old dame was that of one taking her stand on the rock of the Word—"the Good Book says so, and it don't become us to say otherwise"—and after a while, seeing that his exegesis was making no impression, he desisted, and went on to the tenth chapter. He was reading it, truth to tell, without attending much to the words, his mind occupied half unconsciously with the eternal conflict, when he found that he was in the midst of the story of the young ruler, and that his lips were repeating the familiar words, "One thing thou lackest ... sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ... and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."

All the rest of the day the story kept running in his head. He could not quite think why, except that it was one of those scenes in the Gospel, dealing with an individual, which had always interested him. With his mother's charity he had often hoped that the young ruler came back after all. He remembered once having a talk with Dormer, who said that there was some sort of tradition that he returned, but that he, Dormer, thought there was very little ground for such a hope. On the same occasion he had enunciated a theory which Tristram had thought rather austere—that certain people, often good people, who had kept the commandments from their youth up, could only be saved at all by enduring hardness. Such people were constantly asked to make decisions involving sacrifice, and whereas others seemed able to compass the heavenly ascent by a tolerably easy road, they, if they were to reach the same summit, must climb by a very different path.

And somehow Tristram began to apply these conditions to himself. He had kept the commandments, he had great possessions—friends, enough to live upon, perhaps the possession that he had coveted all these years. What if he were in the position of the young ruler, although he had already begun to obey the command. He had thought that God was perhaps calling him to the single life because he could serve the poor better in that state. He had found how happy he could be at St. Thomas's, and experience had convinced him that for such work a man must be single. It was not just the fact of marrying Horatia. He would have responsibilities which would clash with what he hoped to do. He could not take her to live in the midst of dirt and poverty to risk her health, and the health of their children. If he married her he would be turning his back on his work. According to Dormer's theory he might be turning his back on Christ.

And so, in no romantic surroundings but among the trying adornments of his little room in Hollybush Row—the waxen bouquets springing from woolwork mats and shrined under domes of glass, the very bad engraving of the entry of the Allies into Paris, the lustre jugs, the framed announcement of the Oxford coaches and the wall-paper that oppressed the very soul—he fought his way through to the conclusion that Horatia was not for him now any more than she had been two years ago. He must take the harder path, he must go on as he had begun.