"I cannot but think that the sudden rush of exciting events has turned our honoured friend"s brain."
"It has, towards the light; so that I can see the outer darkness which lies beyond."
"General, I cannot find language with which to express the pain I feel at the tendency which I perceive in your att.i.tude to turn your back on all the teachings of your life."
"Your sentence is involved--your sentences sometimes are; but your meaning"s tolerably clear. I"m sorry too."
"Do you mean to deny that he who repents finds G.o.d--you who have been vehement in the cause of instant conversion."
"To my shame you say it."
"Your shame! Have you forgotten that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons? You out-Herod Calvin in his blackest moods."
"I"ll not dispute with you. It"s but words, words. I only hope that by repentance He means what you do. But I greatly fear."
"I am sure."
"Oh, man, how often we have been sure--we two!"
"I am sure still. My friends, the General is nearer to Christ than he thinks, and Christ is nearer to him. We shall do no harm, any of us, by expressing our consciousness of sin, though at such a time as this I cannot but think that such an expression may go too far. We who are here have all of us laboured in our several ways in the Lord"s vineyard. To suggest that the fruit of our endeavours has been all that it might have been would be presumption. We are but men. The best that men can do is faulty. But we have done our best, each according to his or her light. And having done that best, we are ent.i.tled to wait with a glad confidence the inspection of the Master.
To suppose that He will require from us what He knows it has not been in our power to give or to do--I thank G.o.d that there is nothing in Scripture or out of it to cause any one to imagine that He is so relentless a taskmaster. And I--I have enjoyed the glad and glorious privilege of standing in His very presence. I have dared to speak to Him, to look Him in the face. I give you my personal a.s.surance that I have not suffered for my daring, but have been filled instead with a great joy, and with an infinite content. No, General; no, my friends; the Lord has not come to us in anger, but in peace--a man like unto ourselves, knowing our infirmities, to wipe the tears out of our eyes. Do not, I beseech you, look upon Him for a moment as the dreadful being the General has depicted. The General himself, when his black mood has pa.s.sed, and he finds himself indeed face to face with his Master, will be the first to perceive how contrary to truth that picture is. And in that moment he will know, once and forever, how very certain it is that the Second Coming of our Lord and Saviour is to us, His children, an occasion of great joy."
CHAPTER XV
THE SUPPLICANT
There was in the house that night one person who did not attempt to sleep--its mistress, Mrs. Miriam Powell, a woman of character; a fact which was sufficiently demonstrated by the name by which she was best known to the world. For when the Christian name of a married woman is familiar to the public it is because she is a person of marked individuality.
Something of her history was notorious; not only within a large circle of acquaintance, but outside of it. It had lost nothing in the telling. An unhappy marriage; a loose-living husband--a man who was in more senses than one unclean; a final resolution on her part to live out her life alone. Out of these data she had evolved a set of opinions on s.e.xual questions to which she endeavoured to induce anyone and everyone, in season and out of season, to listen. There were some who regarded her with sympathy, some with admiration, some with respect, and some with fatigue.
In such cases women are apt to be regarded as representatives of a cla.s.s; as abstractions, not concrete facts. The accident of her having had a bad husband was known to all the world; that she was herself the victim of a temperament was not. She was of the stuff out of which saints and martyrs may have been made, which is not necessarily good material out of which to make a wife. Enthusiasm was a necessity of her existence--not the frothy, fleeting frenzy of a foolish female, but an enduring possession of the kind which makes nothing of fighting with beasts at Ephesus. Although she herself might not be aware of it, the nature of her matrimonial experiences had given her what her instincts craved for: a creed--s.e.xual reform.
She maintained that s.e.xual intercourse was a thing of horror; the cause of all the evil which the world contains. Although she was wise enough not to proclaim the fact, in her heart she was of opinion that it would be better that the race should die out rather than that the evil should continue. She aimed at what she called universal chast.i.ty; maintaining that the less men and women had to do with each other the better. In pursuit of this chimera she performed labours which, if not worthy of Hercules, at least resembled those of Sisyphus in that they had to be done over and over again. The stone would not stay at the top of the hill.
At the outset she had been convinced--as the fruit of her own experience--that the fault lay with the men. Latterly she had been inclining more and more to the belief that the women had something to do with it as well. Indeed, she was beginning to more than suspect that theirs might be the major part of the blame. The suspicion filled her with a singular sort of rage.
This was the person to whose house the Stranger had come at this particular stage of her mental development. His advent had brought her to the verge of what is called madness in the case of an ordinary person of to-day; and spiritual exaltation in the case of saints and martyrs. She already knew that she was on a hopeless quest, and, although the fact did not daunt her for a moment, had realised that nothing short of a miracle would bring about that change in the human animal which she desired. Here was the possibility of a miracle actually at hand. Here was a worker of wonders--men said, the very Christ.
It was the reflection that what men said might be true which made her courage quail at last.
A miracle-monger she desired. But--the Christ! To formulate the proposition which was whirling in her brain to a doer-of-strange-deeds was one thing, but--to Him! That was another.
When she had come into His near neighbourhood she had shrunk back, a frightened creature. She had been afraid to look Him in the face.
Ever since He had been beneath her roof she had been shaken as with palsy.
Dare she do this thing?
That was the problem which had been present in her mind the whole day long, and which still racked it in the silent watches of the night.
To and fro she pa.s.sed, from room to room, from floor to floor. More than once she approached the door behind which He was, only to start away from it again and flee. She did not even dare to kneel at His portal, fearful lest He, knowing she was there, might come out and see. In her own chamber she scanned the New Testament in search of words which would comfort and encourage her. In vain. The sentences seemed to rise up from off the printed pages to condemn her.
She had an idea. The lame man and the charcoal-burner were the joint occupants of a spare room. She would learn from them what manner of man their Master was--whether He might be expected to lend a sympathetic ear to such a supplication as that which she had it in her heart to make. But when she stood outside their apartment she reflected that they were common fellows. Her impulse had been to refuse them shelter, being at a loss to understand what connection there could be between her guest and such a pair. That they had thrust themselves upon Him she thought was probable; the more reason, therefore, why she should decline to countenance their presumptuous persistence. To seek from them advice or information would be an act of condescension which would be as resultless as undignified.
No. Better go directly to the fountainhead. That would be the part both of propriety and wisdom.
She screwed her courage to the sticking-point, and went.
The two disciples were lodged in an upper story. She had her knuckles against the panel of their door when at last her resolution was arrived at. Straightway relinquishing her former purpose, she hastened down the stairs to the floor on which He was. As she went the clock in the hall struck three.
The announcement of the hour moved her to fresh irresolution. Would it be seemly to rouse Him out of slumber to press on Him such a pet.i.tion? Yet if she did not do it now, when could she? She might never again have such an opportunity. Were His ears not always open to the prayers of those that stood in need of help? What difference did the night or the morning make to Him? She put out her hand towards the door.
As she did so a great fear came over her. It was as though she was stricken with paralysis. She could neither do as she intended nor withdraw her hand. She remained as one rooted to the floor. How long she stayed she did not know. The seconds and the minutes pa.s.sed, and still she did not move. Presently her fear grew greater. She knew, although she had not made a sound, that, conscious of her presence, He was coming towards her on the other side of the door.
Then the door was opened, and she saw Him face to face. He did not speak a word; and she was still. The gift of fluent speech for which she was notorious had gone from her utterly. He looked at her in such fashion that she was compelled to meet His eyes, though she would have given all that she had to have been able to escape their scrutiny. For in them was an eloquence which was not of words, and a quality which held her numb. For she was conscious not only that He knew her, in a sense of which she had never dreamed in her blackest nightmares, but that He was causing her to know herself. In the fierce light of that self-knowledge her heart dried up within her. She saw herself as what she was--the embittered, illiberal, narrow-minded woman who, conscious of her isolation, had raised up for herself a creed of her own--a creed which was not His. She saw how, with the pa.s.sage of the years, her persistence in this creed had forced her farther and farther away from Him, until now she had grown to have nothing in common with Him, since she had so continually striven to bring about the things which He would not have. She had placed herself in opposition to His will, and now had actually come to solicit His endors.e.m.e.nt of her action. And she knew that in so doing she had committed the greatest of all her sins.
She did not offer her pet.i.tion. But when the door was closed again, and He had pa.s.sed from her actual sight, there stood without one from whose veins the wine of life had pa.s.sed, and whose hair had become white as snow. Although not a word had been spoken, she had stood before the Judgment Seat, and tasted of more than the bitterness of death. When she began to return to her own room she had to feel her way with her hands. Her sight had become dim, her limbs feeble. She had grown old.
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE MORNING
All through the night people remained in the street without. With the return of day their numbers so increased that the authorities began to be concerned. The house itself was besieged. It was with difficulty that the police could keep a sufficient open s.p.a.ce in front to enable persons to pa.s.s in and out. An official endeavoured to represent to the inmates the authoritative point of view.
"Whose house is this?" he asked of the servant who opened the door.
He was told.
"Can I see Mrs. Powell?"
The maid seemed bewildered.
"We don"t know what"s the matter with her. We"re going to send for a doctor."
"Is she ill?"
"She"s grown old since last night."
"What do you mean?"
The officer stared. The girl began to cry.
"I want to get away. I"m frightened."