Yeast: a Problem Part 20

And then she thought of his last drawing, and the looks which had accompanied it,--unmistakable looks of pa.s.sionate and adoring love.

There was no denying it--she had always known that he loved her, but she had never dared to confess it to herself. But now the earthquake was come, and all the secrets of her heart burst upward to the light, and she faced the thought in shame and terror. 'How unjust I have been to him! how cruel! thus to entice him on in hopeless love!'

She lifted up her eyes, and saw in the mirror opposite the reflection of her own exquisite beauty.

'I could have known what I was doing! I knew all the while! And yet it is so delicious to feel that any one loves me! Is it selfishness? It is selfishness, to pamper my vanity on an affection which I do not, will not return. I will not be thus in debt to him, even for his love. I do not love him--I do not; and even if I did, to give myself up to a man of whom I know so little, who is not even a Christian, much less a Churchman! Ay! and to give up my will to any man! to become the subject, the slave, of another human being!

I, who have worshipped the belief in woman's independence, the hope of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, who have felt how glorious it is to live like the angels, single and self-sustained! What if I cut the Gordian knot, and here make, once for all, a vow of perpetual celibacy?'

She flung herself on her knees--she could not collect her thoughts.

'No,' she said, 'I am not prepared for this. It is too solemn to be undertaken in this miserable whirlwind of pa.s.sion. I will fast, and meditate, and go up formally to the little chapel, and there devote myself to G.o.d; and, in the meantime, to write at once to the superior of the Beguines; to go to my mother, and tell her once for all--What? Must I lose him?--must I give him up? Not his love--I cannot give up that--would that I could! but no! he will love me for ever. I know it as well as if an angel told me. But to give up him! Never to see him! never to hear his voice! never to walk with him among the beech woods any more! Oh, Argemone! Argemone!

miserable girl! and is it come to this?' And she threw herself on the sofa, and hid her face in her hands.

Yes, Argemone, it is come to this; and the best thing you can do, is just what you are doing--to lie there and cry yourself to sleep, while the angels are laughing kindly (if a solemn public, who settles everything for them, will permit them to laugh) at the rickety old windmill of sham-Popery which you have taken for a real giant.

At that same day and hour, as it chanced, Lancelot, little dreaming what the said windmill was grinding for him, was scribbling a hasty and angry answer to a letter of Luke's, which, perhaps, came that very morning in order to put him into a proper temper for the demolishing of windmills. It ran thus,--

'Ay, my good Cousin,--So I expected--

'Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem . . .

Pleasant and easy for you Protestants (for I will call you what you are, in spite of your own denials, a truly consistent and logical Protestant--and therefore a Materialist)--easy for you, I say, to sit on the sh.o.r.e, in cold, cruel self-satisfaction, and tell the poor wretch buffeting with the waves what he ought to do while he is choking and drowning. . . . Thank Heaven, the storm has stranded me upon the everlasting Rock of Peter;--but it has been a sore trouble to reach it. Protestants, who look at creeds as things to be changed like coats, whenever they seem not to fit them, little know what we Catholic-hearted ones suffer. . . . If they did, they would be more merciful and more chary in the requirements of us, just as we are in the very throe of a new-born existence. The excellent man, to whose care I have committed myself, has a wise and a tender heart . . . he saw no harm in my concealing from my father the spiritual reason of my giving up my curacy (for I have given it up), and only giving the outward, but equally true reason, that I found it on the whole an ineligible and distressing post. . . . I know you will apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me and for me--for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for my wearied and excited state of mind; and strangely enough--to show how differently, according to the difference of the organs, the same object may appear to two people--he quoted in my favour that very verse which you wrest against me. He wished me to show my father that I had only changed my heaven, and not my character, by becoming an Ultramontane- Catholic . . . that, as far as his esteem and affection were founded on anything in me, the ground of it did not vanish with my conversion. If I had told him at once of my altered opinions, he would have henceforth viewed every word and action with a perjudiced eye. . . . Protestants are so bigoted . . . but if, after seeing me for a month or two the same Luke that he had ever known me, he were gradually informed that I had all the while held that creed which he had considered incompatible with such a life as I hope mine would be--you must see the effect which it ought to have. . . . I don't doubt that you will complain of all this. . . . All I can say is, that I cannot sympathise with that superst.i.tious reverence for mere verbal truth, which is so common among Protestants. . . . It seems to me they throw away the spirit of truth, in their idolatry of its letter. For instance,--what is the use of informing a man of a true fact but to induce a true opinion in him? But if, by clinging to the exact letter of the fact, you create a false opinion in his mind, as I should do in my father's case, if by telling him at once of my change, I gave him an unjust horror of Catholicism,--you do not tell him the truth. . . . You may speak what is true to you,-- but it becomes an error when received into his mind. . . . If his mind is a refracting and polarising medium--if the crystalline lens of his soul's eye has been changed into tourmaline or Labrador spar- -the only way to give him a true image of the fact, is to present it to him already properly altered in form, and adapted to suit the obliquity of his vision; in order that the very refractive power of his faculties may, instead of distorting it, correct it, and make it straight for him; and so a verbal wrong in fact may possess him with a right opinion. . . .

'You see the whole question turns on your Protestant deification of the intellect. . . . If you really believed, as you all say you do, that the nature of man, and therefore his intellect among the rest, was utterly corrupt, you would not be so superst.i.tiously careful to tell the truth . . . as you call it; because you would know that man's heart, if not his head, would needs turn the truth into a lie by its own corruption. . . . The proper use of reasoning is to produce opinion,--and if the subject in which you wish to produce the opinion is diseased, you must adapt the medicine accordingly.'

To all which Lancelot, with several strong curses, scrawled the following answer:--

'And this is my Cousin Luke!--Well, I shall believe henceforward that there is, after all, a thousand times greater moral gulf fixed between Popery and Tractarianism, than between Tractarianism and the extremest Protestantism. My dear fellow,--I won't bother you, by cutting up your charming ambiguous middle terms, which make reason and reasoning identical, or your theory that the office of reasoning is to induce opinions--(the devil take opinions, right or wrong--I want facts, faith in real facts!)--or about deifying the intellect-- as if all sound intellect was not in itself divine light--a revelation to man of absolute laws independent of him, as the very heathens hold. But this I will do--thank you most sincerely for the compliment you pay us Cismontane heretics. We do retain some dim belief in a G.o.d--even I am beginning to believe in believing in Him.

And therefore, as I begin to suppose, it is, that we reverence facts, as the work of G.o.d, His acted words and will, which we dare not falsify; which we believe will tell their own story better than we can tell it for them. If our eyes are dimmed, we think it safer to clear them, which do belong to us, than to bedevil, by the light of those very ALREADY DIMMED eyes, the objects round, which do not belong to us. Whether we are consistent or not about the corruptness of man, we are about the incorruptness of G.o.d; and therefore about that of the facts by which G.o.d teaches men: and believe, and will continue to believe, that the blackest of all sins, the deepest of all Atheisms, that which, above all things, proves no faith in G.o.d's government of the universe, no sense of His presence, no understanding of His character, is--a lie.

'One word more--Unless you tell your father within twenty-four hours after receiving this letter, I will. And I, being a Protestant (if cursing Popery means Protestantism), mean what I say.'

As Lancelot walked up to the Priory that morning, the Reverend Panurgus...o...b..areaway dashed out of a cottage by the roadside, and seized him unceremoniously by the shoulders. He was a specimen of humanity which Lancelot could not help at once liking and despising; a quaint mixture of conceit and earnestness, uniting the shrewdness of a stockjobber with the frolic of a schoolboy broke loose. He was rector of a place in the west of Ireland, containing some ten Protestants and some thousand Papists. Being, unfortunately for himself, a red-hot Orangeman, he had thought fit to quarrel with the priest, in consequence of which he found himself deprived both of t.i.thes and congregation; and after receiving three or four Rockite letters, and a charge of slugs through his hat (of which he always talked as if being shot at was the most pleasant and amusing feature of Irish life), he repaired to England, and there, after trying to set up as popular preacher in London, declaiming at Exeter Hall, and writing for all the third-rate magazines, found himself inc.u.mbent of Lower Whitford. He worked there, as he said himself, 'like a horse;' spent his mornings in the schools, his afternoons in the cottages; preached four or five extempore sermons every week to overflowing congregations; took the lead, by virtue of the 'gift of the gab,' at all 'religious' meetings for ten miles round; and really did a great deal of good in his way. He had an unblushing candour about his own worldly ambition, with a tremendous brogue; and prided himself on exaggerating deliberately both of these excellences.

'The top of the morning to ye, Mr. Smith. Ye haven't such a thing as a cegar about ye? I've been preaching to school-children till me throat's as dry as the slave of a lime-burner's coat.'

'I am very sorry; but, really, I have left my case at home.'

'Oh! ah! faix and I forgot. Ye mustn't be smokin' the nasty things going up to the castle. Och, Mr. Smith, but you're the lucky man!'

'I am much obliged to you for the compliment,' said Lancelot, gruffly; 'but really I don't see how I deserve it.'

'Desarve it! Sure luck's all, and that's your luck, and not your deserts at all. To have the handsomest girl in the county dying for love of ye'--(Panurgus had a happy knack of blurting out truths-- when they were pleasant ones). 'And she just the beautifulest creature that ever spilte shoe-leather, barring Lady Philandria Mountflunkey, of Castle Mountflunkey, Quane's County, that shall be nameless.'

'Upon my word, O'Blareaway, you seem to be better acquainted with my matters than I am. Don't you think, on the whole, it might be better to mind your own business?'

'Me own business! Poker o' Moses! and ain't it me own business?

Haven't ye spilte my tenderest hopes? And good luck to ye in that same, for ye're as pretty a rider as ever kicked coping-stones out of a wall; and poor Paddy loves a sportsman by nature. Och! but ye've got a hand of trumps this time. Didn't I mate the vicar the other day, and spake my mind to him?'

'What do you mean?' asked Lancelot, with a strong expletive.

'Faix, I told him he might as well Faugh a ballagh--make a rid road, and get out of that, with his bowings and his crossings, and his Popery made asy for small minds, for there was a gun a-field that would wipe his eye,--maning yourself, ye Prathestant.'

'All I can say is, that you had really better mind your own business, and I'll mind my own.'

'Och,' said the good-natured Irishman, 'and it's you must mind my business, and I'll mind yours; and that's all fair and aqual. Ye've cut me out intirely at the Priory, ye Tory, and so ye're bound to give me a lift somehow. Couldn't ye look me out a fine fat widow, with an illigant little fortune? For what's England made for except to find poor Paddy a wife and money? Ah, ye may laugh, but I'd buy me a chapel at the West-end: me talents are thrown away here intirely, wasting me swateness on the desert air, as Tom Moore says'

(Panurgus used to attribute all quotations whatsoever to Irish geniuses); 'and I flatter meself I'm the boy to shute the Gospel to the aristocracy.'

Lancelot burst into a roar of laughter, and escaped over the next gate: but the Irishman's coa.r.s.e hints stuck by him as they were intended to do. 'Dying for the love of me!' He knew it was an impudent exaggeration, but, somehow, it gave him confidence; 'there is no smoke,' he thought, 'without fire.' And his heart beat high with new hopes, for which he laughed at himself all the while. It was just the cordial which he needed. That conversation determined the history of his life.

He met Argemone that morning in the library, as usual; but he soon found that she was not thinking of Homer. She was moody and abstracted; and he could not help at last saying,--

'I am afraid I and my cla.s.sics are de trop this morning, Miss Lavington.'

'Oh, no, no. Never that.' She turned away her head. He fancied that it was to hide a tear.

Suddenly she rose, and turned to him with a clear, calm, gentle gaze.

'Listen to me, Mr. Smith. We must part to-day, and for ever. This intimacy has gone on--too long, I am afraid, for your happiness.

And now, like all pleasant things in this miserable world, it must cease. I cannot tell you why; but you will trust me. I thank you for it--I thank G.o.d for it. I have learnt things from it which I shall never forget. I have learnt, at least from it, to esteem and honour you. You have vast powers. Nothing, nothing, I believe, is too high for you to attempt and succeed. But we must part; and now, G.o.d be with you. Oh, that you would but believe that these glorious talents are His loan! That you would but be a true and loyal knight to him who said--"Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls!"--Ay,' she went on, more and more pa.s.sionately, for she felt that not she, but One mightier than herself was speaking through her, 'then you might be great indeed.

Then I might watch your name from afar, rising higher and higher daily in the ranks of G.o.d's own heroes. I see it--and you have taught me to see it--that you are meant for a faith n.o.bler and deeper than all doctrines and systems can give. You must become the philosopher, who can discover new truths--the artist who can embody them in new forms, while poor I--And that is another reason why we should part.--Hush! hear me out. I must not be a clog, to drag you down in your course. Take this, and farewell; and remember that you once had a friend called Argemone.'

She put into his hands a little Bible. He took it, and laid it down on the table.

For a minute he stood silent and rooted to the spot.

Disappointment, shame, rage, hatred, all boiled up madly within him.

The bitterest insults rose to his lips--'Flirt, cold-hearted pedant, fanatic!' but they sank again unspoken, as he looked into the celestial azure of those eyes, calm and pure as a soft evening sky.

A mighty struggle between good and evil shook his heart to the roots; and, for the first time in his life, his soul breathed out one real prayer, that G.o.d would help him now or never to play the man. And in a moment the darkness pa.s.sed; a new spirit called out all the latent strength within him; and gently and proudly he answered her,--

'Yes, I will go. I have had mad dreams, conceited and insolent, and have met with my deserts. Brute and fool as I am, I have aspired even to you! And I have gained, in the sunshine of your condescension, strength and purity.--Is not that enough for me? And now I will show you that I love you--by obeying you. You tell me to depart--I go for ever.'

He turned away. Why did she almost spring after him?

'Lancelot! one word! Do not misunderstand me, as I know you will.

You will think me so cold, heartless, fickle.--Oh, you do not know-- you never can know--how much I, too, have felt!'

He stopped, spell-bound. In an instant his conversation with the Irishman flashed up before him with new force and meaning. A thousand petty incidents, which he had driven contemptuously from his mind, returned as triumphant evidences; and, with an impetuous determination, he cried out,--

'I see--I see it all, Argemone! We love each other! You are mine, never to be parted!'

What was her womanhood, that it could stand against the energy of his manly will! The almost coa.r.s.e simplicity of his words silenced her with a delicious violence. She could only bury her face in her hands and sob out,--

'Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot, whither are you forcing me?'