At the same hour as Evelyn and Farquharson parted, Hare, wrapped round with all the paraphernalia of illness, sitting beside his window at an hotel in Biarritz which faced the Plage, braced himself by force of will to write a letter which he felt impelled to send.
"By the time this reaches you, dear Evelyn, I shall be dead. I shall leave instructions with the solicitor to whom I telegraphed six hours ago, that this letter shall be held back until the end. I have always been fond of you, as you know; it is not often given to childless men to meet with their ideal daughter; but in my heart I have always regarded you as that. I have been powerless to save you from the consequences of your actions, to spare you one lash of the whip with which the malicious sprites which govern this world's happenings have seen fit to scourge you. Throughout the vicissitudes through which you have passed, I have stood detached, a critical spectator. You might have resented my explanation in life; you are amongst those who forgive with exquisite tenderness the past impertinences of the dead.
"I suppose instinct led me to read you aright throughout. I saw you, as a child, battling against the inevitable; you are waging the same war to-day. You may, or you may not know, a phrase which is bandied about by 'common people' in Hindoo bazars—'Likka hai'—'It is written.' From the first, you have had to brave the most cruel enemies that can beset a woman—enemies of the household—secret enemies; enemies far more powerful, of faith and doubt.
"People will tell you that at the end, our thoughts are usually concentrated upon self—that the scenes of a man's mimic life pass each in turn before him in succession. I have not found that to be true. I am thinking of you now, your doubts, your difficulties, the problems that you are grappling with, which you have never told me, but which I have never mentioned until now.
"I am not a pious man, as you know. I pay no attention to the ordinary claims of religion. I take precisely the same pleasure in the Tenebrae of the Catholic Church, as I do in the Burial Service of the Church of England. In both you are swept from your ordinary course of placidity on the waves of the eternal. In the first, you have the dull rhythm of sound, with breaks, and curious changes of key and tune—if tune it may be called which is so Gregorian in its methods. Working up, step by step, with the disciples in their vigil with the Lord, you have the putting out of candle upon candle, the pause, the heart-stirring silence, culminating in complete darkness symbolical of dissolution. That is dramatic and intense. In the second, you have the direct voice of God. St. Paul never spoke with so clear a note as in his wonderful description of the triumph of things spiritual over things temporal. 'We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed.... There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.... As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.... The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.' We can never find words to match these either for concentration or for power.
"Catholicism is, as you know, not so abhorrent to me as it is to some Anglicans. To begin with, I am an historian; that in itself is a strong point in favour of a creed which personally I dislike. I think myself that it was a good thing for England when she threw off the yoke under which she had bled for so many centuries; my greatest contention against the Catholic power is her interference in the politics of nations, and her attacks on men's independence. On the other hand, I admit that one of the first charges we bring against her exponents is a paradox; we call them too worldly and too mystic; complaining that their eyes are fixed so steadily on the vision of Heaven, that they fail to recognize ordinary precautions which men of business, dealing with men of business, should observe. There are a million paradoxes in the Church; you can explain them only by admitting her claim, acknowledging her, like Christ Himself, to be the possessor of two different entities, Divine and human.
"I have known many Catholics in my day; I have never known one like you. You weigh all questions fairly, without prejudice, but shed on the solution of great problems the light of an undying faith. You know I obey no active claims of religion; yet I have never willingly abjured God in my heart. Mine is a negative quality, not aggressive. I am as sure that, were your faith called into question, you would go to the rack to uphold its most trivial point as I believe in God myself. There are many who trust you in this way; I am one of the number. If you failed, their faith would shatter; it would be as the foundation of a house sinking suddenly.
"Many things have been denied you in life, those things even which you most ardently wished, and for which from our human point of view you were most fitted for. But this is yours: The power to point the way by example; to uplift, as a living witness of its purity, the creed to which you have subscribed, and against which here in England so many barriers are raised of scorn and contumely and indifference.
"Here, on the very brink of the unknown, having gone through life as best I might, faultily. no doubt, but as, I hope, a gentleman to the last, I look to you with failing eyes and raise my hat in farewell. And perhaps I see you more clearly now than I ever did. You have been led away by emotion in your day; the devil seldom errs in aim; in your case, he has lodged his shaft in your most sensitive spot. Other women fall through egotism or ambition; you would fall through pity. But you are eminently logical. Should the time come when you are face to face with a great crisis, I beg you to remember my words and to pause and inquire. You would sacrifice yourself to one; yes, but would you sacrifice others? And there are many others who look to you as I do now, as the living witness of the purity of a faith which has kept its pre-eminence in spite of scorn and mockery and scourging—a faith which will, I think, always endure.
"The sea has lashed itself into absurd frenzy as I write. The sea can be very cruel. It longs to destroy, to tear and rend, like any human being. Three or four nights ago, as you doubtless read in the papers, it broke up a big ship like matchwood; it met and battered the men who tried to fight it beyond recognition, from mere wickedness. The sea and life are very alike in their methods. Life mars and mutilates the body. But if the soul has been true to itself, it looks upon those human wounds as outlets through which it may creep hour by hour, filtering through earthly channels to be one at last—bleeding but satisfied—in the image of its Creator.