"I go for Clark"s sake princ.i.p.ally," he replied. "He is the one pulpit-man in the neighbourhood who has a real glimpse of truth, and I feel it my duty to support him."
"But what about the Church itself?"
"You mean, what do I think of it?"
"Yes."
"I think that it will disappear, that, in fact, it is in process of disappearance. Dry rot has set in, and so, though it looks stately and stable, it is like the towering mast of a ship, only held upright by a thin varnished skin, but rotten at the core. It will last as long as the weather is fine; when a storm comes, it will fall."
"Well, but what has happened? I don"t think I understand."
"Something has happened that very few persons have observed. Wealth has bought the Church; it is in the proprietorship of the rich. They finance it, they dictate its policies, and naturally those policies are not going to be hostile to themselves. Then it has ceased to be democratic in any true sense. It will be charitable to the poor, but it will not be just. Thus its very charity is a bribe to make men forget justice. And besides this, the note of conviction has left the pulpit. Half the preachers spend their time in apologies for Christianity, and the apologetic person soon finds himself despised.
The centre of gravity has shifted, and the people who do believe most heartily in Christianity are people outside the churches--men like Tolstoi, for example. Why is it that the Church is always complaining of its want of success? It ought to succeed as nothing else can. It has privileges and attractions which no other inst.i.tution has. The reason is that its vitality has run out. It has the dry rot, as I said, and the only skin that holds the thing together is the custom of worship. That also is becoming spotted with decay, and when the decay eats through the outer skin, the end will come."
"But we must have religion."
"Yes, we must have religion; but the Church and religion are not synonymous terms. The Founder of the Christian religion stood outside the Church." He paused a moment, with that curious hesitation which marked the movement of emotion in him. Then he laid his hand upon Arthur"s shoulder, and said in a gentle voice, "Do you remember what you said you would do with your life? You said you wished to make it worthy of the highest. "The utmost for the highest"--that"s it, isn"t it? Well, you needn"t bother your head about the Church. That saying of yours is a tolerably complete definition of religion. You"ll find it more than sufficient, if you"ll be true to it."
There were many conversations such as this between Arthur and Vickars in this wonderful summer month. Life and love, like twin flowers on one stem, were opening, their petals simultaneously for Arthur. His mind flowered in contact with Vickars, his heart in contact with Elizabeth; for though the girl said little, her silence was eloquent of the bond of complete sympathy which existed between her father and herself. He tacitly included her in all his views of life. And it was clear that she gave him adoring discipleship--the discipleship of a young girl, long motherless, who had drawn from him all the elements of thought and will in her own character. It was a beautiful relationship, rare always, but especially rare in that conventional society which surrounded them, in which women were merely the b.u.t.terfly appendages of men whose chief work in life was to provide them with the means of easy gaiety.
Vickars did not press his opinions upon Arthur; he was much too wise and gentle to play the pedant. If Arthur learned much from him, it was by indirection; knowledge came to him unconsciously, as an atmosphere to be breathed, rather than as a lesson to be mastered. Vickars had a curious knack of evading controversy. He would flash a winged sentence on the air, satisfied that it would find its mark; and then dismiss the subject with a laugh, or with the usual comment, "But we are growing too serious; let us have some music." Then Elizabeth would open the piano, and find her way to some solemn theme of Beethoven or Tchaikowsky, and the soft, perfumed wind would blow across the room from the open window, and the divine melodies would lift the spirit into worlds of unimaginable agony or rapture. But all the time the word that had been spoken would vibrate through the music, till the music seemed its real interpretation; and thus it was endowed with new vitality and emphasis by Elizabeth"s playing. "How well she understands him!" Arthur would reflect, wondering at the perfect bond of sympathy between them; and then, with a pang of yearning, "Will she ever understand me like that?"
In such moments he trod the lover"s h.e.l.l, which is as real as the lover"s heaven. He could never attain to her. He saw the miraculous freshness and richness of her nature, and knew the crudeness of his own. What was there in him that she should desire him? This very bond of sympathy between her and her father, so rare and sensitive, became his menace. She could not _want_ him; but, O G.o.d! with what an agony of yearning did he want her! And then, as he sat disconsolate, with head resting on his hand, she would turn to him, as if she divined his thoughts, with a gaze infinitely pitiful and kind; and his eyes clung to hers for an instant in mute appeal and adoration, and something told him that there was yet a void in that virgin heart that he alone could fill. O exquisite terrors, authentic agonies, brief sky-daring hopes, surely it were worth all the millions of years of slow evolution from the brute to touch but for an instant so painful and delicate a bliss!
One night--it was a Sunday night--the three sat together in the little room.
Vickars was unusually silent.
"You look depressed, father. What is it?" said Elizabeth.
"Oh, nothing personal, my child. I think it"s merely the spectacle of the congregation at church to-night that has disturbed me."
"What was wrong with the congregation?"
"Nothing was right, I think. Didn"t you notice how stolid they looked--and in the presence of truths and hopes so vast, that had they believed them, they must have leapt to their feet and shouted in ecstasy?"
"That would be a novelty indeed," she smiled.
"It would have been natural," he replied. "But alas! who is natural?
Most people never live at first-hand. They are plagiarists. Arthur, don"t be a plagiarist. It cuts the fibre of sincerity. It"s like drinking stale water from a dirty cup. But there," and then came the usual comment, "let us have some music."
And Elizabeth began to play. Perhaps it was the suggestion of the Sabbath evening that made her play sweet and solemn airs from Handel.
Presently she wandered into old hymn-tunes, and finally began to play "Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee."
Suddenly she stopped, for Vickars had left the room.
"Oh, I forgot!" she cried. "I ought not to have played that."
While she spoke, her father returned. His face was pale: he held in his hand a miniature of a woman.
"Do you remember what to-day is?" he said in a soft, shaken voice.
"Twenty years ago to-day. And that was the last thing she played ...
and then she went ... in the night ... upon her long journey. And it all seems but an hour ago. O my child! you are so like your mother."
He kissed her forehead.
Twenty years ago, and love still fresh! Arthur bowed his head before the sacred vision. He rose to go. He felt he had no right to look on that unveiled immortal sorrow.
Elizabeth stood for a moment with him at the garden gate.
"Could you?" ... He stopped, for emotion choked him. "Could you ...
love me like that?"
He could see her tremble, and in the dim light he could divine her startled gaze. His hand clasped hers.
She pressed his for a single moment, turned, and fled.
VII
ENTER SCALES
August had come with its heavy, brooding heat, and the idyllic weather had disappeared. There were no more fresh breezes, tempering the hot sunlight, no more cool nights of lingering twilight; over the weary city spread a pall of stifling haze, and the atmosphere had the flatness of an unaired room. The trees turned brown, and the leaves began to fall, as though it were autumn, not summer. The greenness of the parks had vanished, and the pleasant sward had become a dirty gray, upon which vast tribes of ragged children camped. August in London, when from countless miles of brick walls and stone pavements heat is radiated; when roads steam beneath the casual visitations of the water-cart, and barefooted urchins paddle in the gutters, and the city sprawls like a languid drab too tired to be conscious of her dishevelment; August, when a million hearts feel a dull ache of yearning for green fields and open s.p.a.ces, and in fortunate homes guide-books are being studied, routes of travel discussed, boxes packed, fishing-tackle and golf-clubs overhauled, and carriages, piled high with trunks, with pale, excited children gazing from their windows, day by day roll down every street, and converge at last in the wild pandemonium of the great terminal stations which are the doorways of the country.
In Eagle House such preparations were in process, but it was a joyless business. Masterman had informed his family that there would be no Scotland for them this year; times were hard, and they must make the best they could of Brighton.
"I"m sure Brighton will cost just as much as Scotland," objected his daughter.
"It"s near London, and I can"t afford to be far from town this year,"
he replied.
"We don"t know any one there, father. All the people we know are going north. Why can"t we?"
For this young lady was accustomed to get her own way in most things, and to consider every one her enemy who opposed her. There was not much of her physically; she was _pet.i.te_ and graceful, with irregular features, pretty hair, and shallow blue eyes which showed no evidence of a soul; but like many small persons, she had a wonderful gift of obstinacy. As a rule, she could do as she liked with her father in small ways, by means of a childish wheedling manner, which concealed her obstinacy; but every now and again she came upon a hard strata in his nature which turned the edge of her a.s.saults, and it was so now.
Of course, she did not so much as perceive the grim lines that had written themselves upon his tired face during the past two months.
Neither did she believe his plea of poverty. It was merely a selfish whim of his to be near London through August, and she must needs be sacrificed to his whim.
"At any rate, you might choose a better place than Brighton," she retorted petulantly.
"I might choose, but I don"t," he retorted. "There"s a good train service to Brighton, and it suits me. It will have to suit you, too."
"I"m sure I would just as soon stay in London," Arthur interrupted; and he was rewarded by a glance of intense disdain from his sister"s eyes.
"No; you"ll go to Brighton with the others." And Masterman, not knowing the private thoughts of Arthur, was gratified with his remark.
He saw in it the evidence of that serious sense of duty which was presently to make him the kind of man for whom business is an imperious master. "You see, we must go somewhere. If we didn"t, folk might talk. I"ve had a pretty hard time, my boy, but it"s nearly over now.
And I want you to go to Brighton for a reason of my own. There are some people there I"d like you to meet."