The Prodigal Returns

The Prodigal Returns.

by Lilian Staveley.

PART I

Sunshine and a garden path . . . flowers . . . the face and neck and bosom of the nurse upon whose heart I lay, and her voice telling me that she must leave me, that we must part, and immediately after anguish--blotting out the sunshine, the flowers, the face, the voice.

This is my first recollection of Life--the pain of love. I was two years old.

Nothing more for two years--and then the picture of a pond and my baby brother floating on it, whilst with agonised hands I seized his small white coat and held him fast.

And then a meadow full of long, deep gra.s.s and summer flowers, and I--industriously picking b.u.t.tercups into a tiny petticoat to take to cook, "to make the b.u.t.ter with," I said.

And then a table spread for tea. Our nurses, my two brothers, and myself. Angry words and screaming baby voices, a knife thrown by my little brother. Rage and hate.

And then a wedding, and I a bridesmaid, aged five years--the church, the altar, and great awe, and afterwards a long white table, white flowers, and a white Bride. Grown men on either side of me--smilingly delightful, tempting me with sweets and cakes and wine, and a new strange interest rising in me like a little flood of exultation--the joy of the world, and the first faint breath of the mystery of s.e.x.

Then came winters of travel. Sunshine and mimosa, olive trees against an azure sky. Climbing winding, stony paths between green terraces, tulips and anemones and vines; white sunny walls and lizards; green frogs and deep wells fringed around with maidenhair.

Mountains and a sea of lapis blue, and early in the mornings from this lapis lake a great red sun would rise upon a sky of molten gold.

In the rooms so near me were my darling brothers, from whom I often had to part. Beauty and Joy, and Love and Pain--these made up life.

At ten I twice narrowly escaped death. From Paris we were to take the second or later half of the train to Ma.r.s.eilles. Late the night before my father suddenly said, "I have changed my mind; I feel we must go by the first train." This was with some difficulty arranged.

On reaching an immense bridge across a deep ravine I suddenly became acutely aware that the bridge was about to give way. In a terrible state of alarm I called out this fearful fact to my family. I burst into tears. I suffered agonies. My mother scolded me, and when we safely reached the other side of the bridge I was severely taken to task for my behaviour. The bridge broke with the next train over it--the train in which we should have been. Some four hundred people perished. It was the most terrible railway disaster that had ever occurred in France.

A few weeks later, death came nearer still. Having escaped from our tutor, with a party of other children we ran to two great reservoirs to fish for frogs. Laughing and talking and full of childish joy, we fished there for an hour, when all at once I was impelled, under an extraordinary sense of pressure, to call out, "If anyone falls into the water, no one must jump in to save them, but must immediately run to those long sticks" (I had never noticed them until I spoke) "and draw one out and hold it to whoever has fallen in." I spoke automatically, and felt as much surprised as my companions that I should speak of such a thing.

Within five minutes I had fallen in myself. My brother remembered my words, but before he could reach me with the stick I was under the water for the third and last time. It was all that they could do to drag my weight up to the ledge, for the water was a yard below it.

Had my brother jumped in, as he said he most surely would have done had I not forewarned him, we must both have been drowned, for they would have had neither the strength nor the time to pull us both out alive. I was not at all frightened or upset till I heard someone say that I was dead; then I wept--it was so sad to be dead!

The pressure put upon me to speak as I did had been so great that I have never forgotten the strange impression of it to this day. On both these occasions I consider that I was under immediate Divine protection.

I believed earnestly in G.o.d with the complete and peaceful faith of childhood. I thought of Him, and was afraid: but more afraid of a great Angel who stood with pen and book in hand and wrote down all my sins. This terrible Angel was a great reality to me. I prayed diligently for those I loved. Sometimes I forgot a name: then I would have to get out of bed and add it to my prayer. As I grew older, if the weather were cold I did not pray upon the floor but from my bed, because it was more comfortable. I was not always sure if this were quite right, but I could not concentrate my mind on G.o.d if my body was cold, because then I could not forget my body.

I saw G.o.d very plainly when I shut my eyes! He was a White Figure in white robes on a white throne, amongst the clouds. He heard my prayers as easily as I saw His robes. He was by no means very far away, though sometimes He was further than at others. He took the trouble to make everything very beautiful: and He could not bear sinful children. The Angel with the Book read out to Him my faults in the evenings.

When I was twelve years old my grandmother died, and for three months I was in real grief. All day I mourned for her, and at night I looked out at the stars, and the terrible mystery of death and s.p.a.ce and loneliness struck at my childish heart.

After thirteen I could no longer be taken abroad to hotels, for my parents considered that I received too much attention, too many presents, too many chocolates from men. I was educated by a governess, and was often very lonely. My brothers would come back from school; then I overflowed with happiness and sang all day long in my heart with joy. The last night of the holidays was a time of anguish. Upstairs the clothes were packed. Downstairs I helped them pack the "play-boxes," square deal boxes at sight of which tears sprang to my eyes and a dreadful pain gripped my heart. Oh, the pain of love at parting! there never was a pain so terrible as suffering love. The last meal: the last hour: the last look. There are natures which feel this anguish more than others. We are not all alike.

I had been pa.s.sionately fond of dolls. Now I was too old for such companions, and when my brothers went away I was completely alone with my governess and my lessons. I fell into the habit of dreaming. In these dreams I evolved a companion who was at the same time myself--and yet not an ordinary little girl like myself, but a marvellous creature of unlimited possibilities and virtues. She even had wings and flew with such ease from the tops of the highest buildings, and floated so delightfully over my favourite fields and brooks that I found it hard to believe that I myself did not actually fly. What glorious things we did together, what courage we had, nothing daunted us! I cared very little to read books of adventure, for our own adventures were more wonderful than anything I ever read.

Not only had I wings, but when I was my other self I was extremely good, and the Angel with the Book was then never able to make a single adverse record of me. And then how easy it was to be good: how delightful, no difficulties whatever! As we both grew older the actual wings were folded up and put away. The virtues remained, but we led an intensely interesting life, and a certain high standard of life was evolved which was afterwards useful to me.

When, later on, I grew up and my parents allowed me to have as many friends as I wanted, and when I became exceedingly gay, I still retained the habit of this double existence; it remained with me even after my marriage and kept me out of mischief. If I found myself temporarily dull or in some place I did not care for, clothed in the body of my double, like the wind, I went where I listed. I would go to b.a.l.l.s and parties, or with equal ease visit the mountains and watch the sunset or the incomparable beauties of dawn, making delicate excursions into the strange, the wonderful, and the sublime.

I gathered crystal flowers in invisible worlds, and the scent of those flowers was Romance.

All this vivid imagination sometimes made my mind over-active: I could not sleep. "Count sheep jumping over a hurdle," I was advised.

But it did not answer. I found the most effective way was to think seriously of my worst sins--my mind immediately slowed down, became a discreet blank--I slept!

I grew tall and healthy. At sixteen I received my first offer of marriage and with it my first vision of the love and pa.s.sion of men. I recoiled from it with great shyness and aversion. Yet I became deeply interested in men, and remained so for very many years.

From that time on I never was without a lover till my marriage.

II

At seventeen my "lessons" came to an end. I had not learnt much, but I could speak four languages with great fluency. I learnt perhaps more from listening to the conversation of my father and his friends.

He had always been a man of leisure and was acquainted with many of the interesting and celebrated people of the day, both in England and on the Continent. I was devoted to him, and whenever he guided my character he did so with the greatest judgment. He taught me above all things the need of self-control, and never to make a remark of a fellow-creature unless I had something pleasant or kind to say.

There was no subject upon which he was unread; and when my brothers, who were both exceedingly clever, returned from college and the University, wonderful and brilliant were the discussions that went on. Both my parents were of Huguenot descent, belonging to the old French n.o.blesse. I think the Latin blood had sharpened their brains, and certainly gave an extra zest to life.

My father was a great believer in heredity, and the following personal experience may show him somewhat justified in his belief.

In quite early childhood I commenced to feel a preference for the _left_ side of my body: I washed, dried, and dressed the left side first; I preserved it carefully from all harm; I kept it warm. I was, comparatively speaking, totally indifferent to my right side.

As I grew older I observed that the place of honour was upon the right-hand side: I understood that G.o.d had made the world and ruled it with His right hand! I was wrong, then, in preferring my left hand.

I determined to change over. It was very difficult to do: so deep was the instinct that it took me some years to eradicate the love for my left side and transfer it to my right, and when I had at last accomplished it I was still liable to go back to my first preference.

No one ever detected my peculiarity.

I was already eighteen or nineteen years old when one day I entered my father"s room, ready dressed to go out. I had on both my gloves.

Suddenly I remembered that I had put on my left glove first.

Immediately I took off both my gloves--then I replaced the right one, and then the left. My father was watching me and asked me for an explanation. I gave it him, and he looked very grave, almost alarmed.

After a moment of silence he said, "I want you to give that habit up--I want you to break yourself of it immediately. I had it myself as a youth: it took me years to conquer. No one should permit himself to be the slave of _any_ habit."

I asked him which side he had loved. "The _left_ side," he said. At five-and-twenty he had conquered the habit, and I was not born till he was almost sixty-one! yet I had inherited it. We never referred to it again, and in two years I, also, had conquered it.

We spent the winter of the year in which I was seventeen in Italy, to which country a near relative was Amba.s.sador, and there I went to my first ball. That night--and how often afterwards!--I knew the surging exultation, the intoxication of the joy of life. How often in social life, in brilliant scenes of light and laughter, music and love, I seemed to ride on the crest of a wave, in the marvellous glamour of youth!

This love of the world and of social life was a very strong feeling for many years: at the same time and running, as it were, in double harness with it was a necessity for solitude. My mind imperatively demanded this, and indeed my heart too.

It was during this year that I first commenced a new form of mental pleasure through looking at the beautiful in Nature. Not only solitude, but total silence was necessary for this pastime, and, if possible, beauty and a distant view: failing a view I could accomplish it by means of the beauties of the sky. This form of mental pleasure was the exact opposite of my previous dreamings, for all imagination absolutely ceased, all forms, all pictures, all activities disappeared--the very scene at which I looked had to vanish before I could know the pleasure of this occupation in which, in some mysterious manner, I inhaled the very essence of the Beautiful.

At first I was only able to remain in this condition for a few moments at a time, but that satisfied me--or, rather, did not satisfy me, for through it all ran a strange unaccountable anguish--a pain of longing--which, like a high, fine, tremulous nerve, ran through the joy. What induced me to pursue this habit, I never asked myself.

That it was a form of the spirit"s struggle towards the Eternal--of the soul"s great quest of G.o.d--never occurred to me. I was worshipping the Beautiful without giving sufficient thought to Him from Whom all beauty proceeds. Half a lifetime was to go by before I realised to what this habit was leading me--that it was the first step towards the acquirement of that most exquisite of all blessings--the gift of the Contemplation of G.o.d. Ah, if anyone knows in his heart the call of the Beautiful, let him use it towards this glorious end! Love, and the Beautiful--these are the twin golden paths that lead us all to G.o.d.

III

Certainly we were not a religious family. One attendance at church upon Sunday--if it did not rain!--and occasionally the Communion, this was the extent of any outward religious feeling. But my father"s daily life and acts were full of Christianity. A man of a naturally somewhat violent temper, he had so brought himself under control that towards everyone, high and low, he had become all that was sweet and patient, sympathetic and gentle.

About this time a devouring curiosity for knowledge commenced to possess me. What was the truth--what was the truth about every single thing I saw? Astronomy, Biology, Geology--in these things I discovered a new and marvellous interest: here at last I found my natural bent. History had small attraction for me: it spoke of the doings of people mostly vain or cruel, and untruthful. I wanted truth--irrefutable facts! No scientific work seemed too difficult for me; but I never, then or later, read anything upon the subject of religion, philosophy, or psychology. I had a healthy, wholesome young intelligence with a voracious appet.i.te: it would carry me a long way, I thought. It did--it landed me in Atheism.

To a woman Atheism is intolerable pain: her very nature, loving, tender, sensitive, clinging, demands belief in G.o.d. The high moral standard demanded of her is impossible of fulfilment for mere reasons of race-welfare. The personal reason, the Personal G.o.d--these are essential to high virtue. Young as I was, I realised this.

Outwardly I was frivolous; inwardly I was no b.u.t.terfly, the deep things of my nature were by no means unknown to me. I not only became profoundly unrestful at heart but I was fearful for myself, and of where strong forces of which I felt the pull might lead me. I had great power over the emotions of men: moreover, interests and instincts within me corresponded to this dangerous capacity. I felt that the world held many strange fires: some holy and beautiful; some far otherwise.

Without G.o.d I knew myself incapable of overcoming the evil of the world, or even of my own petty nature and entanglements. I despaired, for I perceived that G.o.d does not reveal Himself because of an imperious demand of the human mind, and I had yet to learn that those mysteries which are under lock and key to the intelligence are open to the heart and soul. But indeed there was no G.o.d to reveal Himself. All was a fantastic make-believe! a pitiful childish invention and illusion!

My intelligence said, "Resign yourself to what is, after all, the truth: console yourself with the world and material achievements." The heart said, "Resignation is impossible, for there is no consolation to the heart without G.o.d." I listened to my heart rather than my intelligence, and for two terrible years I fought for faith. I was always reserved, and never admitted anyone into the deep things of my life--but when I was twenty my father perceived that I was going through some inward crisis. He knew the books that I read, and probably guessed what had happened to me. At any rate he called me into his room one day and asked me, out of love and obedience to himself, to give up reading all science. This was an overwhelming blow to me: yet I loved him dearly, and had never disobeyed him in my life. Again I let my heart speak; and I sacrificed my mind and my books.

I threw myself now more than ever into social amus.e.m.e.nts, and in my solitary hours sought consolation in my "dream-life." I was afraid to turn to the love of Nature--to my beautiful pastime,--for the pain in it was unbearable.

Towards the end of two years my struggles for faith commenced to find a reward. Little by little a faint hope crept into my mind--fragile, often imperceptible. A questioning remark made by my younger brother helped me: "If human life is entirely material and a part of Nature only, then what becomes of human thoughts and aspirations?" Science had proved to me that nothing is lost--but has a destiny--in that it evolves into another form or condition of activity.

Evolution! with its many seeming contradictions to Religion--might it not be merely a strong light, too strong as yet for my weak mind, blinding me into temporary darkness? What raised Man above the beasts but his thoughts and aspirations; and if even a grain of dust were imperishable, were these thoughts and aspirations of Man alone to end in nothing--to be lost! It was but a reasonable inference to say No. These invisible thoughts and aspirations have also a future--a destiny in a, to us, still invisible world--in the Life of the Spirit. To this my mind was able to agree. It was a step. In the realm of Ideal Thought I might find again my Faith. I had indeed been foolish to suppose that a system which provided for the continuation of a grain of sand should overlook the Spirit of Man. This was presupposing the existence of a spirit in Man; but who could be found to truly and reasonably hold that the mysterious high and soaring thoughts of Man were one and the same thing as mere animalism? they were too obviously of another nature to the merely bovine, to the solids of the flesh: for one thing, they were free of the law of gravity which so entirely overrules the rest of Nature--they must therefore come to their destiny in another world, another condition of consciousness.