“Twenty years ago, Mr. Carfax, I was a self-doubting, colourless woman. My youth, as I thought, was past. It had brought me nothing. No love, no human experience, no joys, no very deep sorrows even. Nothing but the grey hopeless depression of a woman who has never taken her part in the world, who has always stood outside, who knows nothing of life; the sort of woman who ignorant to begin with, grows narrower and more prejudiced as the years pass, till at last in the bitter sense of the word, she is an old maid by nature, useless as a friend, helpless as a comforter, of no account in a world of men and women she cannot understand.
“Well, before that happened to me, before I was old in heart at least, I met a man who loved me, and whom I loved. I might have married him. I chose not to marry him, because——” She smiled a little. “I need not trouble you with my reasons. They seemed good reasons to me, and I have never regretted them. I lived with him for three years. The memory of those three years has lasted with me to this day, and has made me a woman so proud and happy that if my deep content has overflowed, and reached the lives of others, it is no credit to me. I simply can’t help caring for people, because by the mercy of Heaven, I have loved and been loved. Nothing else, for me at least, would have made that understanding and caring possible. Not the money that came to me, nor the opportunities it afforded for what is called ‘doing good.’ It was a change in me, that was needed, a personal experience of loving and suffering. Well! I have loved and I have suffered, and now I understand.
“That’s my little story. It’s a story I would not have told you ten minutes ago. But—well, you made me feel just now that you were human.
“Don’t imagine you see before you the sinner that repenteth. She has never repented. She never will repent, though it’s an old white-haired woman who is talking—to a man years younger than herself!”
Her eyes met his, and beneath their smiling gaze, half wise, half whimsical, the Vicar dropped his own, and reddened like a school-boy.
The gentle reproof, implied rather than spoken, went home.
Suddenly, in the presence of this dignified gracious woman, he felt raw and awkward, very young, more than a little ashamed. He was confused moreover, with the sense that there existed possibly whole realms of experience which no code of morals he had ever preached seemed adequate to cover.
Here was a woman who certainly possessed the fairest of the Christian virtues. She was gentle, tolerant, generous (with a twinge of compunction he realized how great a part the anticipated loss of her donations had played in his reflections during the walk from the Vicarage to Fairholme Court). She was patient, longsuffering,—the Vicar ran through the whole gamut of spiritual gifts, and acknowledged her richly endowed.
Could it be that there were other paths to the Kingdom of Heaven than the strait way and the narrow gate that alone were said to lead to salvation?
The very useful brain of Mr. Carfax, unaccustomed to be exercised in unusual directions, began to feel the strain, and its possessor wisely took the hint, and abandoned the fatiguing labour of original research.