Saint's Progress

When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to her:

‘Your troubles are very little. There’s the sun, the sea, the air; enjoy them. They can’t take those from you.’

At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room before George came.

“Nollie! Splendid. I’ve got an hour. Let’s get out of this cemetery. We’ll have time for a good stretch on the tops. Jolly of you to have come to me. Tell us all about it.”

When she had finished, he squeezed her arm. 348

“I knew it wouldn’t do. Your Dad forgot that he’s a public figure, and must expect to be damned accordingly. But though you’ve cut and run, he’ll resign all the same, Nollie.”

“Oh, no!” cried Noel.

George shook his head.

“Yes, he’ll resign, you’ll see, he’s got no worldly sense; not a grain.”

“Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if – oh, no!”

“Let’s sit down here. I must be back at eleven.”

They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.

“Why should he resign,” cried Noel again, “now that I’ve gone? He’ll be lost without it all.”

George smiled.

“Found, my dear. He’ll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the Church is, and the Churchmen are not – in the air!”

“Don’t!” cried Noel passionately.

“No, no, I’m not chaffing. There’s no room on earth for saints in authority. There’s use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn’t hold with it, but there’s no mortal use for those who try to have things both ways – to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical and worldly and rule ordinary men’s lives. Saintly example yes; but not saintly governance. You’ve been his deliverance, Nollie.”

“But Daddy loves his Church.”

George frowned. “Of course, it’ll be a wrench. A man’s bound to have a cosey feeling about a place where he’s been boss so long; and there is something about a Church – the drone, the scent, the half darkness; there’s beauty in it, it’s a pleasant drug. But he’s not being asked to give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs to others. Don’t worry, Nollie; I don’t believe that’s ever suited him, it wants a thicker skin than he’s got.”

“But all the people he helps?”

“No reason he shouldn’t go on helping people, is there?”

“But to go on living there, without – Mother died there, you know!”

George grunted. “Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the future, of what people are and what he can do with them. I never see him without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I’m fond of him. But I should be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he’d drop the habits of authority. Then I believe he’d have some real influence over me; there’s something beautiful about him, I know that quite well.”

“Yes,” murmured Noel fervently.

“He’s such a queer mixture,” mused George. “Clean out of his age; chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks below most of them in the worldly. And yet I believe he’s in the right of it. The Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should believe in it. Instead of that, it’s a sort of business that no one can take too seriously. You see, the Church spiritual can’t make good in this age – has no chance of making good, and so in the main it’s given it up for vested interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of what the Church is not. But what about you, my dear? There’s a room at my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself, who knits all the time. If Grace can get shifted we’ll find a house, and you can have the baby. They’ll send your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and in the meantime Gracie’s got some things here that you can have.”

“I’ll have to send a wire to Daddy.”

“I’ll do that. You come to my diggings at half past one, and I’ll settle you in. Until then, you’d better stay up here.”

When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the short grass, where the chalk broke through in patches. She could hear a distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long mutter of the Flanders guns. ‘I wonder if it’s as beautiful a day there,’ she thought. ‘How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies, no flowers-not even sky-for the dust of the shells. Oh! won’t it ever, ever end?’ And a sort of passion for the earth welled up in her, the warm grassy earth along which she lay, pressed so close that she could feel it with every inch of her body, and the soft spikes of the grass against her nose and lips. An aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted the earth to close its arms about her, she wanted the answer to her embrace of it. She was alive, and wanted love. Not death – not loneliness – not death! And out there, where the guns muttered, millions of men would be thinking that same thought!

X

Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his past, the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married life. The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight sustained him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction. There was not nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for, with all his dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in all parish matters. But a hundred times that night he stopped, overcome by memories. Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a thread in the long-spun web of his life in this house. Some phase of his work, some vision of his wife or daughters started forth from each bit of furniture, picture, doorway. Noiseless, in his slippers, he stole up and down between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and anyone seeing him at his work in the dim light which visited the staircase from above the front door and the upper-passage window, would have thought: ‘A ghost, a ghost gone into mourning for the condition of the world.’ He had to make this reckoning to-night, while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had to rummage out the very depths of old association, so that once for all he might know whether he had strength to close the door on the past. Five o’clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight. The last memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they came back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and waiting for them. They had spent it in Germany – the first days in Baden-baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played down in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to remind them that they were in heaven. And softly, so softly that the tunes seemed to be but dreams he began playing those old Chorales, one after another, so that the stilly sounds floated out, through the opened window, puzzling the early birds and cats and those few humans who were abroad as yet…

He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day, just as he was about to set out for Leila’s to get news of her; and close on the top of it came Lavendie. He found the painter standing disconsolate in front of his picture.

“Mademoiselle has deserted me?”

“I’m afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur.”

“You are going?”

“Yes, I am leaving here. I hope to go to France.”

“And mademoiselle?”

“She is at the sea with my son-in-law.”

The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-way, as if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.

“Mon dieu!” he said: “Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le cure?” But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his unfinished picture that Pierson could not help a smile.

“Ah, monsieur!” said the painter, on whom nothing was lost. “Comme je suis egoiste! I show my feelings; it is deplorable. My disappointment must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so distressed at leaving your old home. This must be a time of great trouble. Believe me; I understand. But to sympathise with a grief which is not shown would be an impertinence, would it not? You English gentlefolk do not let us share your griefs; you keep them to yourselves.”

Pierson stared. “True,” he said. “Quite true!”

“I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the doors of the human heart stand open, our own and others. I suppose we have no pride – c’est tres-indelicat. Tell me, monsieur, you would not think it worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would you, as I have spoken of mine?”

Pierson bowed his head, abashed.

“You preach of universal charity and love,” went on Lavendie; “but how can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of your troubles to yourselves? Man responds to example, not to teaching; you set the example of the stranger, not the brother. You expect from others what you do not give. Frankly, monsieur, do you not feel that with every revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you? And I will tell you why, if you will not think it an offence. In opening your hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers, and must never forget that. Is it not so?”

Pierson grew red. “I hope there is another feeling too. I think we feel that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to obtrude oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might be concerned with others.”

“Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self. To seem selfless is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien! What is that but a deeper concern with self? To be free of this, there is no way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget everything when I am painting. But,” he added, with a sudden smile, “you would not wish to forget the perfecting of self – it would not be right in your profession. So I must take away this picture, must I not? It is one of my best works: I regret much not to have finished it.”

“Some day, perhaps – ”

“Some day! The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not. She will rush at something, and behold! this face will be gone. No; I prefer to keep it as it is. It has truth now.” And lifting down the canvas, he stood it against the wall and folded up the easel. “Bon soir, monsieur, you have been very good to me.” He wrung Pierson’s hand; and his face for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit. “Adieu!”

“Good-bye,” Pierson murmured. “God bless you!”

“I don’t know if I have great confidence in Him,” replied Lavendie, “but I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it. To mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please. If you will permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow.” And carrying easel and canvas, he departed.