A priest he was, not over-merry,
Who loved sound doctrine and good sherry;
Who wound his mind up every morning
At the sedate cathedral’s warning,
And found it soberly keep time,
In a pocket, to each hourly chime;
“Who, church’s clock-face dwelling under,
Knew ’twas impossible to blunder,
If Peter’s self at’s door should knock,
And roundly ask him—What’s o’clock?
The Hermitage.
On the morning of June 2 the Rev. Ambrose Bradley left Fensea by the early market train, and arrived at Darkdale just in time for his interview with the Bishop of his diocese.
Seen in broad daylight, as he quickly made his way through the narrow streets to the episcopal residence, Bradley looked pale and troubled, yet determined. He was plainly drest, in a dark cloth suit, with broad felt hat; and there was nothing in his attire, with the exception of his white clerical necktie, to show that he held a sacred office. His dress, indeed, was careless almost to slovenliness, and he carried a formidable walking-stick of common wood. With his erect and powerful frame and his closely shaven cheeks he resembled an athlete rather than a clergyman, for he had been one of the foremost rowers and swimmers of his time. He wore no gloves, and his hands, though small and well formed, were slightly reddened by the sun.
Arrived at his destination, an old-fashioned residence, surrounded by a large garden, he rang the gate bell, and was shown by a footman into the house, where his card was taken by a solemn-looking person clerically attired. After waiting a few moments in the hall, he was ushered into a luxuriously furnished study, where he found the Bishop, with his nether limbs wrapt in rugs, seated close to a blazing fire.
Bishop ———— was a little spare man of about sixty, with an aquiline nose, a slightly receding forehead, a mild blue eye, and very white hands. He was said to bear some facial likeness to Cardinal Newman, and he secretly prided himself upon the resemblance. He spoke slowly and with a certain precision, never hurrying himself in his utterance, and giving full force to the periods of what was generally considered a beautiful and silvery voice.
‘Good morning, Mr. Bradley,’ he said, without noticing the other’s extended hand. ‘You will excuse my rising? The rheumatism in my knees has been greatly increased by this wretched weather. Pray take a chair by the fire.’
Bradley, however, found a seat as far from the fire as possible; for the weather was far from cold, and the room itself was like a vapour bath.
There was a pause. The Bishop, shading his face with one white hand, on which sparkled a valuable diamond ring, was furtively inspecting his visitor.
‘You sent for me?’ said Bradley, somewhat awkwardly.
‘Yes—about that letter. I cannot tell you how distressed I was when I received it; indeed, if I may express myself frankly, I never was so shocked in my life. I had always thought you so different, so very different. But there! I trust you have come to tell me that the hope I expressed was right, and that it was under some temporary aberration that you expressed sentiments so extraordinary, so peculiarly perverted, and—hem!—unchristian.’
The clergyman’s dark eye flashed, and his brow was knitted.
‘Surely not unchristian,’ he returned.
‘Not merely that, sir, but positively atheistic!’ cried the Bishop, wheeling round in his chair and looking his visitor full in the face.
‘Then I expressed myself miserably. I am not an atheist; God forbid!’
‘But as far as I can gather from your expressions, you absolutely dare to question the sacred character of the Scriptures, and the Divine nature and miraculous life and death of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!’
‘Not at all,’ replied Bradley, quietly.
‘Not at all!’ echoed the Bishop.
‘Permit me to explain. I expressed my humble opinion that there are many things in the Scriptures which are contradicted by modern evidence, so that the sacred writings must be accepted not as history but as poetry; and I said that, although the miraculous narrative of Christ’s life and death might have to be revised, the beautiful Ideal it had set before us was sufficient for all our needs. In other words, whether Our Lord was a Divine personage or not, He had become a Divine Influence—which, after all, is the same thing.’
‘It is not the same thing, sir!’ exclaimed the Bishop, horrified. ‘It is very far from being the same thing. Why, any Unitarian would admit as much as you do!—and pardon me for reminding you, you are not a Unitarian—you are a clergyman of the Church of England. You have subscribed the Articles—you—God bless my soul! what is the world coming to, when a Christian minister uses language worthy of the atheist Bradlaugh?’
‘You remind me that I subscribed the Articles,’ said Bradley, still preserving his calmness. ‘I did so without thought, as so many do, when I was a very young man.’ ‘What are you now, sir? A young man, a very young man; and in the audacious spirit of youth and inexperience you touch on subjects which the wisest minds of the world have been content to approach with reverence, with awe and trembling. I see your position clearly enough. The horrible infidelity which fills the air at the present day has penetrated your mind, and with the pride of intellectual impiety—that very pride for which Satan was cast from heaven—you profane the mysteries of your religion. After what you have said, I am almost prepared to hear you tell me that you actually did write that article on Miracles, which your parishioners impute to you, in the “Bi-monthly Review!”’
‘It is quite true. I did write that article.’
‘And you have contributed to other infidel publications; for instance, to the “Charing Cross Chronicle,” which is edited by an infidel and written for infidels?’
‘Excuse me; the “Chronicle” is not generally considered an infidel publication.’
‘Have you contributed to it—yes or no, sir?’
‘Not on religious subjects; on literary topics only.’
‘But you have written for it; that is enough. All this being granted, I think I may safely gather whence you receive your inspirations. From that portion of the press which is attempting to destroy our most sacred institutions, and which is endeavouring, in one way or another, to undermine the whole foundations of the Christian Church.’
Bradley rose to his feet and stood on the hearthrug, facing his superior, who looked up at him with ill-concealed horror and amazement. By this time he was not a little agitated; but he still preserved a certain outward composure, and his manner was full of the greatest humility and respect.
‘Will you permit me to explain?’ he said in a low voice. ‘The hope and dream of my life is to upraise the Church, not to destroy it.’
‘Humph! to upraise a church, perhaps, but not the Church of Christ.’
‘The Church of Christ—a church wherein all men may worship, irrespective of points of dogma, which have been the curse of every religion, and of ours most of all. For such a communion only two articles of faith would be necessary—a belief in an all-loving and all-wise Creator, or First Unknown Cause, and a belief in a Divine Character, created and evolved we need not ask how, but bearing the name of the Founder of Christianity.’
‘And the Bible, sir, the Bible!’ cried the Bishop, impatiently. ‘What would you do with that?’
‘I would use it in its proper place as—literature.’
‘Literature!’ said the Bishop with uplifted hands. ‘You would then class that Blessed Book, from which the world has drawn the milk of immortal life, in the same category as Homer’s Iliad, the profane poems of Horace and Catullus, and—save the mark!—Lord Byron’s poems, and the miserable novels of the period?’
‘You do not quite understand me!’
‘Sir, I understand you only too well.’
‘I do not call all printed matter literature; but I hold that all literature of the higher kind is, like the Bible, divinely inspired. Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare were as assuredly sent by God as Moses and Elijah. Shall we call the Book of Job a divine piece of moral teaching, and deny that title to “Hamlet” and “King Lear”? Is not the “Faust” of Goethe as spiritual a product as the Song of Solomon? Ezekiel was a prophet; prophets also are Emerson and Thoreau. Spinoza has been called God-intoxicated; and it is true. There might be some question as to the mission of Byron (though I myself believe there is none); but surely no thinking person can reject the pretensions of that divine poet and martyred man who wrote the “Prometheus Unbound”!’ ‘Shelley!’ ejaculated the other, as if a bomb had exploded under his feet. ‘Are you actually speaking of him, sir?—the atheist.’
‘He was no atheist. More than most men he believed in God—a god of love.’
This was too much. Quite forgetting his rheumatism, the Bishop threw off his rugs and rose tremulously to his feet.
‘Mr. Bradley,’ he said, ‘let there be an end to this. I have heard you patiently and respectfully, thinking perhaps you might have something to say in your own defence; but every word you utter is an outrage—yes, sir, an outrage. Such opinions as you have expressed here to-day, and the other day in your letter, might be conceivable in a boy fresh from college; but coming from one who has been actually ordained, and has held more than one office in the Church, they savour of blasphemy. In any case, I shall have to take the matter into consideration, with a view to your immediate suspension. But if you wish it I will give you time—a little time—to reflect. I would do anything to avoid a scandal.’
The clergyman lifted his hat and stick, with a slight involuntary shrug of the shoulder.
‘It is, then, as I expected,’ he said. ‘I am to be denounced and unfrocked. The days of persecution are not yet quite over, I perceive.’
The Bishop flushed angrily.
‘It is absurd to talk of persecution in such a case, Mr. Bradley. Do you yourself conceive it possible that you, bearing such opinions, can remain in the Church?’
‘I do not conceive it possible. Shall I resign at once?’
‘Permit me to think it over, and perhaps to consult with those who in such matters are wiser than myself. I shall do nothing hasty, or harsher than the occasion warrants, be sure of that.’
‘Thank you,’ returned Bradley, with a peculiar smile.
‘You shall hear from me. In the meantime, let me entreat you to be careful. Good morning.’
And with a cold bow the Bishop dismissed his visitor.
On leaving the episcopal residence Bradley went straight to the railway station, had a slight and hasty lunch at the buffet, and then took the midday express to London. Entering a second-class carriage, the only other occupants of which were a burly personage going up for a Cattle Show and a spruce individual with ‘bagman’ written on every lineament of his countenance, he resigned himself to reflections on his peculiar position.
Throughout these reflections I have no intention of following him, but they seemed less gloomy and miserable than might be conceived possible under the circumstances. His eye was clear and determined, his mouth set firmly, and now and then he smiled sadly to himself—just as he had smiled in the presence of the Bishop.
The express reached London in about six hours, so that it was evening when Bradley arrived at King’s Cross, carrying with him only a small hand-bag. Instead of hailing a cab, he walked right on along the streets—through Taviton Street to Russell Square, thence into Holborn, and thence, across Lincoln’s Inn Fields, into the Strand. He then turned off towards the Temple, which he entered with the air of one who knew its quiet recesses well.
He was turning into Pump Court when he suddenly came face to face with a man of about thirty, elegantly dressed, with faultless gloves and boots, and carrying a light cane. He was very fresh and fair-complexioned, with sandy whiskers and moustaches; and to complete his rather dandified appearance he sported an eyeglass.
‘Cholmondeley!’ cried the clergyman, pronouncing it ‘Chumley’ according to the approven mode.
‘Ambrose Bradley!’ returned the other. ‘Is it possible? Why, I thought you were hundreds of miles away.’
‘I came up here by the express, and was just coming to see you.’
‘Then come along with me and dine at the “Reform.”’
They looked a strange contrast as they walked on side by side—the powerful, gravelooking man, shabbily attired in his semiclerical dress, and the elegant exquisite attired in the height of London fashion, with his mild blue eye and his eyeglass in position. Yet John Cholmondeley was something more than the mere ornamental young person he appeared; and as for his mildness, who that had read his savage articles on foreign politics in the ‘Bi-monthly Review’ would have taken him for a harmless person? He was a Positivist of Positivists, an M.A. of Oxford, and the acting-editor of the ‘Charing Cross Chronicle.’
His literary style was hysterical and almost feminine in its ferocity. Personally he was an elegant young man, with a taste for good wines and good cigars, and a tendency in external matters to follow the prevailing fashion.
They drove to the ‘Reform’ in a hansom, and dined together. At the table adjoining theirs on one side two Cabinet Ministers were seated in company with Jack Bustle, of the ‘Chimes,’ and Sir Topaz Cromwell, the young general just returned from South Africa; at the table on the other side an Under-Secretary of State was giving a little feast to Joseph Moody, the miners’ agent and delegate, who had been a miner himself, and who was just then making some stir in political circles by his propaganda.
After dinner they adjourned to the smoking-room, which they found almost empty; and then, in a few eager sentences, Bradley explained his position and solicited his friend’s advice. For that advice was well worth having, Cholmondeley being not only a clever thinker but a shrewd man of the world.
A pebble, not a pearl!—worn smooth and round
With lying in the currents of the world
Where they run swiftliest—polished if you please,
As such things may and must be, yet indeed
No shining agate and no precious stone;
Nay, pebble, merely pebble, one of many
Thrown in the busy shallows of the stream
To break its flow and make it garrulous.
The City Dame; or, a Match for Mammon.
I am not at all surprised at what you have told me,’ said Cholmondeley, sipping his coffee and smoking his cigar. ‘I knew that it must come sooner or later. Your position in the Church has always been an anomalous one, and, egad! if you have been going on as you tell me, I don’t wonder they want to get rid of you. Well, what do you intend to do?’
‘That is just the point I came to consult you upon,’ returned the clergyman.
‘I know what I should do in your place. I should stand to my colours, and give them a last broadside. The ‘Chronicle’ is open to you, you know. The old ship of the Church is no longer seaworthy, and if you helped to sink it you would be doing a service to humanity.’
‘God forbid!’ cried Bradley, fervently. ‘I would rather cut off my right hand than do anything to injure the Establishment. After all, it is the only refuge in times of doubt and fear.’
‘It strikes me you are rather inconsistent,’ said Cholmondeley with cool astonishment.
‘Not at all. It is precisely because I love the Church, because I believe in its spiritual mission, that I would wish to see it reorganised on a scientific and rational basis. When all is said and done, I am a Christian—that is, a believer in the Divine Idea of self-sacrifice and the enthusiasm of humanity. All that is beautiful and holy, all that may redeem man and lead him to an everlasting righteousness, is, in my opinion, summed up in the one word, Christianity.’
‘But, my dear Bradley, you have rejected the thing! Why not dispense with the name as well?’
‘I believe the name to be indispensable. I believe, moreover, that the world would waste away of its own carnality and atheism without a Christian priesthood. In the flesh or in the spirit Christ lives, to redeem the world.’
‘Since you believe so much,’ said Cholmondrley drily, ‘it is a pity you don’t believe a little more. For my own part, you know my opinion—which is, that Christ gets a great deal more credit for what is good in civilisation than He deserves. Science has done more in one hundred years to redeem the race than Christianity has done in eighteen hundred. Verb, sap.’
‘Science is one of his handmaids,’ returned Bradley, ‘and Art is another; that is why I would admit both of these into the service of the Temple. But bereft of his influence, separated from the Divine Idea, and oblivious of the Divine Character, both Science and Art go stumbling in the dark—and blaspheme. When Science gives the lie to any deathless human instinct—when, for example, she negatives the dream of personal immortality—she simply stultifies herself; for she knows nothing and can tell us nothing on that subject, whereas Christ, answering the impulse of the human heart, tells us all. When Art says that she labours for her own sake, and that the mere reproduction of beautiful earthly forms is soul-satisfying, she also is stultified; for there is no true art apart from the religious spirit. In one word, Science and Art, rightly read, are an integral part of the world’s religion, which is Christianity.’
‘I confess I don’t follow you,’ said the journalist, laughing; ‘but there, you were always a dreamer. Frankly, I think this bolstering up of an old creed with the truths of the new is a little dishonest. Christianity is based upon certain miraculous events, which have been proved to be untrue; man’s foolish belief in their truth has led to an unlimited amount of misery; and having disposed of your creed’s miraculous pretensions——’
‘Are you quite sure you have disposed of them?’ interrupted Bradley. ‘In any case, is not the personal and posthumous influence of Our Saviour, as seen in the world’s history, quite as miraculous as any of the events recorded of Him during His lifetime?’
‘On the contrary! But upon my life, Bradley, I don’t know where to have you! You seem to have taken a brief on both sides. Beware of indecision—it won’t do in religion. You are stumbling between two stools.’
‘Then I say with Mercutio, “a plague on both your houses!”’ cried Bradley, laughing.
‘But don’t you see I want to reconcile them?’
‘You won’t do it. It’s too old a feud—a vendetta, in fact. Remember what Mercutio himself got by trying to be a peacemaker. The world can understand your Tybalts and your Parises—that is to say, your fire-eating Voltaires and your determined Tom Paines—but it distrusts the men who, like Matt Arnold et hoc genus omne, believe simply nothing, and yet try to whitewash the old idols.’
There was a silence. The two men looked at each other in friendly antagonism, Cholmondeley puffing his cigar leisurely with the air of a man who had solved the great problem, and Bradley smoking with a certain suppressed excitement.
Presently the clergyman spoke again.
‘I don’t think we shall agree—so let us cease to argue. What I want you to understand is, that I do love the Church, and cannot part from her without deep pain—without, in fact, rupturing all my most cherished associations. But there is another complication which makes this affair unusually distressing to me. You know I am engaged to be married?’
‘Ah, yes! I heard something about it. I begin to see your difficulty. You are afraid——’
He hesitated, as if not liking to complete the sentence.
‘Afraid of what, pray?’
‘Well, that, when you are pronounced heretical, she will throw you over!’
The clergyman smiled curiously and shook his head.
‘If that were all,’ he replied, ‘I should be able very easily to resign myself to the consequences of my heresy; but, fortunately or unfortunately, the lady to whom I am engaged (our engagement, by the way, is only private) is not likely to throw me over, however much I may seem to deserve it.’
‘Then why distress yourself?’
‘Simply because I doubt my right to entail upon her the consequences of my heterodoxy. She herself is liberal-minded, but she does not perceive that any connection with a heretic must mean, for a sensitive woman, misery and martyrdom. When I leave the Church I shall be practically ruined—not exactly in pocket, for, as you know, I have some money of my own—but intellectually and socially. The Church never pardons, and seldom spares.’
‘But there are other careers open to you—literature, for example! We all know your talents—you would soon win an eminence from which you might laugh at your persecutors.’
‘Literature, my dear Cholmondeley, is simply empiricism—I see nothing in it to attract an earnest man.’
‘You are complimentary!’ cried Cholmondeley, with a laugh.
‘Oh!—you are different! You carry into journalism an amount of secular conviction which I could never emulate; and, moreover, you are one of those who, like Harry the Smith, always fight “for your own hand.” Now, I do not fight for my own hand; I repeat emphatically, all my care is for the Church. She may persecute me, she may despise me, but still I love her and believe in her, and shall pray till my last breath for the time when she will become reorganised.’
‘I see how all this will end,’ said the journalist, half seriously. ‘Some of these days you will go over to Rome!’
‘Do you think so? Well, I might do worse even than that, for in Rome, now as ever, I should find excellent company. But no, I don’t fancy that I shall go even halfway thither, unless—which is scarcely possible—I discover signs that the doting mother of Christianity accepts the new scientific miracle and puts Darwin out of the Index. Frankly, my difficulty is a social, or rather a personal, one. Ought I, a social outcast, to accept the devotion of one who would follow me, not merely out of the Church, but down into the very Hell of atheism, if I gave her the requisite encouragement?’
Cholmondeley did not reply, but after reflecting quietly for some moments he said:—
‘You have not told me the name of the lady.’
‘Miss Alma Craik.’
‘Not the heiress?’
‘Yes, the heiress.’
‘I know her cousin, George Craik—we were at school together. I thought they were engaged.’
‘They were once, but she broke it off long ago.’
‘And she has accepted you?’ ‘Unconditionally.’ He added with strange fervour: ‘She is the noblest, the sweetest, and most beautiful woman in the world.’
‘Then why on earth do you hesitate?’ asked Cholmondeley. ‘You are a lucky fellow.’
‘I hesitate for the reason I have told you. She had placed her love, her life, her fortune at my feet, devotedly and unreservedly. As a clergyman of the Church, as one who might have devoted his lifetime to the re-establishment of his religion and the regeneration of his order, one, moreover, whom the world would have honoured and approved as a good and faithful servant, I might have accepted the sacrifice; indeed, after some hesitation, I did accept it. But now it is altogether different. I cannot consent to her martyrdom, even though it would glorify mine.’
Although Bradley exercised the strongest control over his emotions, and endeavoured to discuss the subject as dispassionately and calmly as possible, it was clear to his listener that he was deeply and strangely moved. Cholmondeley was touched, for he well knew the secret tenderness of his friend’s nature. Under that coldly cut, almost stern face, with its firm eyebrows and finely chiselled lips—within that powerful frame which, so far at least as the torso was concerned, might have been used as a model for Hercules—there throbbed a heart of almost feminine sensitiveness and sweetness; of feminine passion too, if the truth must be told, for Bradley possessed the sensuousness of most powerful men. Bradley was turned thirty years of age, but he was as capable of a grande passion as a boy of twenty—as romantic, as high-flown, as full of the fervour of youth and the brightness of dream. With him, to love a woman was to love her with all his faith and all his life; he was far too earnest to trifle for a moment with the most sacred of all human sentiments. Cholmondeley was aware of this, and gauged the situation accordingly.
‘If my advice is worth anything,’ he said, ‘you will dismiss from your mind all ideas of martyrdom. You are really exaggerating the horrors of the situation; and, for the rest, where a woman loves a man as I am sure Miss Craik loves you, sacrifice of the kind you mention becomes easy, even delightful. Marry her, my dear Bradley, and from the very altar of pagan Hymen smile at the thunderbolts of the Church.’
Bradley seemed plunged in deep thought, and sat silent, leaning back and covering his face with one hand. At last he looked up, and exclaimed with unconcealed emotion—
‘No, I am not worthy of her! Even if my present record were clean, what could I say of my past? Such a woman should have a stainless husband! I have touched pitch, and been defiled.’
‘Come, come!’ said the journalist, not a little astonished. ‘Of all the men I ever knew—and I have known many—you are about the most irreproachable.’
The clergyman bent over the table, and said in a low voice, ‘Do you remember Mary Goodwin?’
‘Of course,’ replied the other with a laugh. ‘What! is it possible that you are reproaching yourself on that account? Absurd! You acted by her like a man of honour; but little Mary was too knowing for you, that was all.’
‘You knew I married her?’
‘I suspected it, knowing your high-flown notions of duty. We all pitied you—we all——’
‘Hush!’ said the clergyman, still in the same low, agitated voice. ‘Not a word against her. She is asleep and at peace; and if there was any sin I shared it—I who ought to have known better. Perhaps, had I been a better man, I might have made her truly happy; but she didn’t love me—I did not deserve her love—and so, as you know, we parted.’
‘I know she used you shamefully,’ returned Cholmondeley, with some impatience. ‘Come, I must speak! You picked her from the gutter, and made her what Mrs. Grundy calls an honest woman. How did she reward you? By bolting away with the first rascal who offered her the run of his purse and a flash set of diamonds. By-the-by, I heard of her last in India, where she was a member of a strolling company. Did she die out there?’
‘Yes,’ answered the clergyman, very sadly.
‘Nine years ago.’
‘You were only a boy,’ continued Cholmondeley, with an air of infinite age and experience, ‘and Mr. Verdant Green was nothing to you. You thought all women angels, at an age when most youngsters know them to be devils. Well, that’s all over, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I wish I could show as clean a book, old fellow.’
‘I do reproach myself, nevertheless,’ was the reply. ‘That boyish episode has left its taint on my whole life; yes, it is like the mark of a brand burned into the very flesh. I had no right to woo another woman; yet I have done so, to my shame, and now Heaven is about to punish me by stripping me bare in her sight and making me a social outlaw. I have deserved it all.’
The two remained together for some time longer, but Bradley, though he listened gently to his friends remonstrances, could not be persuaded to take a less gloomy view of the situation. He was relieved unconsciously, nevertheless, by the other’s cheery and worldly counsel. It was something, at least, to have eased his heart, to have poured the secret of his sorrow and fear into a sympathetic bosom.
They had dined very early, and when they rose to separate it was only half-past eight o’clock.
‘Will you go on to my chambers?’ asked Cholmondeley. ‘I can give you a bed, and I will join you after I have done my duties at the office.’
‘No; I shall sleep at Morley’s Hotel, and take the early morning express down home.’
They strolled together along Pall Mall and across Leicester Square, where they separated, Cholmondeley sauntering airily, with that sense of superhuman insight which sits so lightly on the daily journalist, towards the newspaper office in Cumberland Street, and the clergyman turning into Morley’s, where he was well known, to arrange for his room.
As it was still so early, however, Bradley did not stay in the hotel, but lighted his pipe and strolled thoughtfully along the busy Strand.
At a little after nine o’clock he found himself close to the Parthenon Theatre, where ‘Hamlet’ was then being performed for over the hundredth night. He had always been a lover of the theatre, and he now remembered that Mr. Aram’s performance of the Danish prince was the talk of London. Glad to discover any means of distracting his dreary thoughts, he paid his two shillings, and found a place at the back of the pit.
The third act was just beginning as he entered, and it was not until its conclusion that he began to look around the crowded house. The assemblage was a fashionable one, and every box as well as every stall was occupied. Many of the intelligent spectators held in their hands books of the play, with which they might be supposed to be acquainting themselves for the first time; and all wore upon their faces more or less of that bored expression characteristic of audiences which take their pleasures sadly, not to say stupidly. In all the broad earth there is nothing which can quite equal the sedate unintelligence of an English theatrical audience.
Suddenly, as he gazed, his eyes became attracted by a face in one of the private boxes—he started, went pale, and looked again—as he did so, the head was turned away towards the back of the box. Trembling like one that had seen an apparition, he waited for it to incline again his way—and when it did so he watched it in positive horror. As if to convince himself of its identity, he borrowed an opera-glass from a respectable-looking man seated near him, and fixed it on the face in the box.
The face of a woman, splendidly attired, with diamonds sparkling on her naked throat and arms, and other diamonds in her hair. The hair was jet-black, and worn very low down on the forehead, almost reaching to the thick black eyebrows, beneath which shone a pair of eyes as black and bold as those of Circe herself. Her complexion had the olive clearness of a perfect brunette, and her mouth, which was ripe and full, was crimson red as some poisonous flower—not with blood, but paint. She was certainly very handsome, though somewhat petite and over-plump. Her only visible companion was a plainly dressed elderly woman, with whom she seldom exchanged a word, and a little boy of seven, elegantly dressed.
Bradley looked again and again, and the more he looked the more his wonder and horror grew. During all the rest of the performance he scarcely withdrew his eyes, but just before the curtain fell he slipped out of the pit, and passed round to the portico in front of the theatre.
There he waited, in the shadow of one of the pillars, till the throng began to flow forth, and the linkmen began summoning the carriages and cabs to take up their elegant burthens. The vestibule of the theatre was full of gentlemen in full dress and ladies in opera-cloaks, laughing and chatting over the evening’s performance. He drew close to the glass doors and looked in, pale as death.
At last he saw the lady he sought, standing with the woman and the child, and talking gaily with an elderly gentleman who sported an eyeglass. How bold and beautiful she looked! He watched her in fascination, always taking care to keep out of the range of her vision.
At last she shook hands with the gentleman, and moved towards the door. He drew back into the shadow.
She stood on the threshold, looking out into the night, and the linkman ran up to her, touching his cap.
‘Mrs. Montmorency’s carriage,’ she said in a clear silvery voice; and the man ran off to seek the vehicle.
Presently a smart brougham came up, and, accompanied by her elderly companion and the child, she stepped in. Almost simultaneously, Bradley crossed the pavement and leapt into a hansom.
‘Keep that carriage in view,’ he said to the driver, pointing to the brougham, ‘and I will give you a sovereign.’
The man laughed and nodded, and immediately the pursuit began.
Ay me, I sowed a seed in youth,
Nor knew that ’twas a dragon’s tooth,
Whereof has sprung to bring me shame
Legions of woe without a name.—Fausticulus.
The brougham passed rapidly up Wellington Street into Long Acre, thence into Oxford Street, passing westward till it came to Regent Circus, then it was driven up Portland Place to the gates of Regent’s Park. It entered, and the hansom followed about fifty yards behind. Passing to the left around the park, it reached Cranwell Terrace, and drew up before one of the large houses fronting the artificial water.
The hansom paused too, but Bradley kept his seat until he saw the lady and her companion alight, knock at the door, and enter in; while the brougham drove round to the stables at the rear. Then he sprang out, paid the man his sovereign, and prepared to follow.
For a moment he hesitated on the steps of the house, as if undecided whether to knock or fly; but recovering his determination he knocked loudly. The sound had scarcely died away when the door was opened by the same elderly woman he had noticed at the theatre.
‘Mrs. Montmorency?’ he said, for he had got the name by heart.
The woman looked at him in surprise, and answered with a strong French accent.
‘Madame has only just come in, and you cannot see her to-night.’
‘I must see her,’ returned the clergyman, entering the hall. ‘It is a matter of very important business.’
‘But it is so late. To-morrow, monsieur?’
‘To-morrow I am leaving London. I must see her at once.’
Seeing his persistence, and observing that he had the manners of a gentleman, the woman yielded.
‘If you will step this way, I will tell madame, but I am afraid she will not see you.’
So saying she led the way into a room on the ground floor, furnished splendidly as a kind of study, and communicating with a small dining room, which in its turn led to a large conservatory.
‘Your name, monsieur, if you please?’ said the woman.
‘My name is of no consequence—perhaps your mistress would not remember it. Tell her simply that a gentleman wishes to see her on very important business.’
With another look of wonder, the woman withdrew.
Still dreadfully pale and agitated, Bradley surveyed the apartment. It was furnished oddly, but with a perfect disregard of expense. A gorgeous Turkey carpet covered the floor; the curtains were of black-and-gold tapestry, the chairs of gold and crimson. In a recess, close to the window, was an elegant ormolu writing-desk, surmounted by a small marble statue, representing a young maid just emerging from the bath. Copies of well-known pictures covered the walls, but one picture was a genuine Etty, representing Diana and her virgins surprised by Actæon. Over the mantelpiece, which was strewn with golden and silver ornaments, and several photographs in frames, was a copy of Titian’s Venus, very admirably coloured.
To the inexperienced mind of the clergyman, ill acquainted with a certain phase of society, the pictures seemed sinister, almost diabolic. The room, moreover, was full of a certain sickly scent like patchouli, as if some perfumed creature had just passed through it leaving the scent behind.
He drew near the mantelpiece and looked at the photographs. Several of them he failed to recognise, though they represented women well known in the theatrical world; but in one he recognised the elderly gentleman with the eyeglass whom he had seen at the theatre, in another the little boy, and in two the mistress of the house herself. In one of the two last she was represented semi-nude, in the spangled trunks, flesh-coloured tights, and high-heeled boots of some fairy prince.
He was gazing at this photograph in horror, when he heard the rustle of a dress behind him. Turning quickly, he found himself face to face with the woman he sought.
The moment their eyes met, she uttered a sharp cry and went even more pale than usual, if that were possible. As she recoiled before him, he thought she did so in fear, but he was mistaken. All she did was to move to the door, peep out into the lobby, then, closing the door rapidly, she faced him again.
The expression of her face was curious to behold. It was a strange mixture of devilry and effrontery. She wore the dress she had worn in the theatre—her arms, neck, and bosom were still naked and covered with diamonds; and her eyes flashed with a beautiful but forbidding light.
‘So it is you!’ she said in a low voice. ‘At last!’
He stood before her like a man of marble, livid, ghastly, unable to speak, but surveying her with eyes of infinite despair. The sickly scent he had noticed in the room clung about her, and filled the air he was breathing.
There was a long silence. At last, unable any longer to bear his steadfast gaze, she laughed sharply, and, tripping across the room, threw herself in a chair.
‘Well?’ she said, looking up at him with a wicked smile.
His predominant thought then found a broken utterance.
‘It is true, then!—and I believed you dead!’
‘No doubt,’ she answered, showing her white teeth maliciously, ‘and you are doubtless very sorry to find yourself mistaken. No, I am very much alive, as you see. I would gladly have died to oblige you, but it was impossible, mon cher. But won’t you take a seat? We can talk as well sitting as standing, and I am very tired.’
Almost involuntarily, he obeyed her, and taking a chair sat down, still with his wild eyes fixed upon her face.
‘My God!’ he murmured. ‘And you are still the same, after all these years.’
She leant back in her chair, surveying him critically. It was obvious that her light manner concealed a certain dread of him; for her bare bosom rose and fell quickly, and her breath came in short sharp pants.
‘And you, my dear Ambrose, are not much changed—a little older, of course, for you were only a foolish boy then, but still very much the same. I suppose, by your clerical necktie, that you have gone into the Church? Have you got on well? I am sure I hope so, with all my heart; and I always said you were cut out for that kind of life.’
He listened to her like one listening to some evil spirit in a dream. It was difficult for him to believe the evidence of his own senses. He had been so certain that the woman was dead and buried past recall!
‘How did you find me out?’ she asked.
‘I saw you at the theatre, and followed you home.’
‘Eh bien!’ she exclaimed, with a very doubtful French pronunciation. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘Want with you?’ he repeated. ‘My God! Nothing!’
She laughed again, flashing her teeth and eyes. Then springing up, she approached a small table, and took up a large box of cigarettes. Her white hand trembled violently.
‘Can I offer you a cigarette?’ she said, glancing at him over her naked shoulder.
‘No, no!’
‘With your permission I will light one myself!’ she said, striking a wax match and suiting the action to the word. Then holding the cigarette daintily between her white teeth, she again sat down facing him. ‘Well, I am glad you have not come to make a scene. It is too late for that. We agreed to part long ago, and it was all for the best.’
‘You left me,’ he answered in a hollow voice.
‘Just so,’ she replied, watching the thin cloud of smoke as it wreathed from her lips. ‘I left you because I saw we could never get along together. It was a stupid thing of us to marry, but it would have been a still stupider thing to remain tied together like two galley-slaves. I was not the little innocent fool you supposed me, and you were not the swell I at first imagined; so we were both taken in. I went to India with young St. Clare, and after he left me I was very ill, and a report, which I did not contradict, got into the papers that I had died. I went on the stage out there under an assumed name, and some years ago returned to England.’
‘And now,’ he asked with more decision than he had yet shown, ‘how are you living?’
She smiled maliciously.
‘Why do you want to know?’
He rose and stood frowning over her, and despite her assumed sang-froid she looked a little alarmed.
‘Because, when all is said and done, I am your husband! Whatever you now call yourself, you are the same Mary Goodwin whom I married at Oxford ten years ago, and the tie which links us together has never been legally broken. Yet I find you here, living in luxury, and I suppose in infamy. Who pays for it all? Who is your present victim?’
With an impatient gesture and a flash of her white teeth she threw her cigarette into the fire, and rose up before him trembling, with fear, or anger.
‘So you have found your tongue at last!’ she said. ‘Do you think I am afraid of you? No, I defy you! This is my house, and if you are not civil I will have you turned out of it. Bah! it is like you to come threatening me, at the eleventh hour.’
Her petulant rage did not deceive him; it was only a mask hastily assumed to conceal her growing alarm.
‘Answer my question, Mary!—how are you living?’
‘Sit down quietly, and I will tell you.’
He obeyed her, covering his eyes with his hand. She watched him for a moment; then, reassured by his subdued manner, she proceeded.
‘I am not sure that I ought to tell you, but I dare say you would find out. Lord Ombermere——’
‘Lord Ombermere!’ echoed the clergyman. ‘Why, to my knowledge, he has a wife—and children.’
She shrugged her white shoulders, with a little grimace.
‘That is his affair, not mine,’ she said. ‘For the rest, I know the fact, and never trouble myself about it. He is very good to me, and awfully rich. I have all I want. He sent me to France and had me taught French and music; and he has settled a competence upon our boy. That is how the matter stands. I do pretty much as I like, but if Eustace knew I had a husband actually living he would make a scene, and perhaps we should have to part.’
‘Is it possible?—and—and are you happy?’
‘Perfectly,’ was the cool reply.
Bradley paced up and down the chamber in agitation.
‘Such a life is an infamy,’ he at last exclaimed. ‘It is an offence against man and God.’
‘I know all that cant, and I suppose you speak as a clergyman; but I do my duty by the man who keeps me, and never—like some I could name—have intrigues with other men. It wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t pay. I hope,’ she added, as if struck suddenly by the thought, ‘you have not come here to-night imagining I shall return to you?’ He recoiled as if from a blow.
‘Return to me? God forbid!’
‘So say I, though you might put it a little more politely. By the way, I forgot to ask you,—but perhaps you yourself have married again?’
The question came suddenly like a stab. Bradley started in fresh horror, holding his hand upon his heart. She exclaimed:—
‘You might have done so, you know, thinking me food for worms, and if such were the case you may be sure I should never have betrayed you. No; “live and let live” is my motto. I am not such a fool as to suppose you have never looked at another woman; and if you had consoled yourself, taking some nice, pretty, quiet, homely creature, fit to be a clergyman’s wife, to mend his stockings, and to visit the sick with rolls of flannel and bottles of beef-tea, I should have thought you had acted like a sensible man.’
It was too horrible. He felt stifled, asphyxiated. He had never before encountered such a woman, though their name is legion in all the Babylons, and he could not understand her. With a deep frown he rose to his feet.
‘Are you going?’ she cried. ‘Pray don’t, till we understand each other!’
He turned and fixed his eyes despairingly upon her, looking so worn, so miserable, that even her hard heart was touched.
‘Try to think I am really dead,’ she said, ‘and it will be all right. I have changed both my life and my name, and no one of my old friends knows me. I don’t act. Eustace wanted to take a theatre for me, but, after all, I prefer idleness to work, and I am not likely to reappear. I have no acquaintances out of theatrical circles, where I am known only as Mrs. Montmorency. So you see there is no danger, mon cher. Let me alone, and I shall let you alone. You can marry again whenever you like.’
Again she touched that cruel chord, and again he seemed like a man stabbed.
‘Marry?’ he echoed. ‘But I am not free! You are still my wife.’
‘I deny it,’ was the answer. ‘We are divorced; I divorced myself. It is just the same as if we had gone before the judge: a course you will surely never adopt, for it would disgrace you terribly and ruin me, perhaps.
Eustace is horribly proud, and if it should all come out about his keeping me, he would never forgive me. No, no, you’ll never be such a fool!’
Yet she watched him eagerly, as if anxious for some assurance that he would not draw her into the open daylight of a legal prosecution.
He answered her, as if following her own wild thoughts—
‘Why should I spare you? Why should I drag on my lifetime, tied by the law to a shameless woman? Why should I keep your secret and countenance your infamy? Do you take me for one of those men who have no souls, no consciences, no honour? Do you think that I will bear the horror of a guilty secret, now I know that you live, and that God has not been merciful enough to rid me of such a curse?’
It was the first time he had seemed really violent. In his pain he almost touched her with his clenched hand.
‘You had better not strike me!’ she said viciously.
At this moment the door opened, and a little boy (the same Bradley had seen at the theatre) ran eagerly in. He was dressed in a suit of black velvet, with bows of coloured ribbon, and, though he was pale and evidently delicate, he looked charmingly innocent and pretty.
‘Maman! maman!’ he cried in French.
She returned angrily, answering him in the same tongue—
‘Que cherchez-vous, Bébé? Allez-vous en!’
‘Maman, je viens vous souhaiter la bonne nuit!
‘Allez, allez,’ she replied impatiently, ‘je viendrai vous baiser quand vous serez couché.’
With a wondering look at the stranger the child ran from the room.
The interruption seemed to have calmed them both. There was a brief silence, during which Bradley gazed drearily at the door through which the child had vanished, and his companion seemed lost in thought.
The time has perhaps come to explain that, if this worldly and sin-stained woman had one redeeming virtue, it was love for her little boy. True, she showed it strangely, being subject to curious aberrations of mood. The child was secretly afraid of her. Sometimes she would turn upon him, for some trivial fault, with violent passion; the next moment she would cover him with kisses and load him with toys. In her heart she adored him; indeed, he was the only thing in the world that she felt to be her own. She knew how terribly his birth, when he grew up, would tell against his chances in life, and she had so managed matters that Lord Ombermere had settled a large sum of money unconditionally upon the child; which money was already invested for him, in his mother’s name, in substantial Government securities. Her own relation with Ombermere, I may remark in passing, was a curious one. Whenever he was in London, his lordship dropped in every afternoon at about four, as ‘Mr. Montmorency’; he took a cup of tea in company with mother and child; at a quarter to six precisely he looked at his watch and rose to go; and at seven he was dining in Bentinck Square, surrounded by his legal children, and faced by his lady. Personally, he was a mild, pale man, without intelligence or conversational powers of any kind, and ‘Mrs. Montmorency’ found his company exceedingly tedious and tame.
‘You see my position,’ said Mrs. Montmorency at last. ‘If you have no consideration for me, perhaps you will have some for my boy.’
The clergyman sighed, and looked at her as if dazed.
‘I must think it over,’ he said. ‘All this has come as a terrible shock upon me.’
‘Shall I see you again?’
‘God knows!’
‘If you should call, never do so between four and six; those are Eustace’s hours. I am generally in during the evening, unless I go to the theatre. Good night!’
And with the ghost of a smile she extended her hand. He took it vacantly, and held it limply for a moment. Then he dropped it with another sigh, and went to the door, which he opened. Turning on the threshold, he saw her standing in the centre of the room, pale, beautiful, and baleful. She smiled again, flashing her eyes and showing her white teeth. With a shudder that went through all his frame, he passed out into the silent street.
It was now very late, and the Park lay still and sleeping under the dim light of the moon. From time to time a carriage passed by, but the pavement was quite deserted. Full of what he had seen, with the eyes of his soul turned inward to the horrible reflection, he wandered slowly along, his footfalls sounding hollow and ominous on the footpath, as he went.
Instinctively, but almost unreflectingly, he took the direction of his hotel; passed out of the park and into Harley Street, thence across Cavendish Square to Regent Circus.
It seemed now to him as if his fate was sealed. God, in indignation at his revolt, meant to deal him full measure. Attacked on one side by the thunders of the Church, and tormented on the other by the ghost of his own youthful folly, where was he to find firm foothold for his feet? His one comfort in the strenuousness of his intellectual strife had been the sympathy and devotion of a woman who was now surely lost to him for ever; a woman who, compared to this frightful apparition of a dead past, was a very spirit of heaven. Yes, he loved an angel—an angel who would have redeemed him; and lo! in the very hour of his hope, his life was to be possessed by an incarnate devil.
His thoughts travelled back to the past.
He thought of the time when he had first known Mary Goodwin. He was a youth at Oxford, and she was the daughter of a small tradesman. She was very pretty and modest-looking in those days; though she knew the world well, and the worst side of it, she seemed to know it very little. His boy’s heart went out to her beauty, and he became entangled in an amour which he thought a seduction; she played her part prettily, with no lack of tears, so that, although he already knew that his first wild fancy was not love, he married her.
Afterwards his eyes were opened. The tender looking, mild-spoken, black-eyed little beauty showed that she had been only acting a part. As their marriage was a secret one, and they could not live together, she resided in the town, and was left a good deal to herself. Once or twice whispers came to his ears that he did not like, and he remonstrated with her; she answered violently, in such terms as opened his eyes still wider to her character. She was exorbitant in her demands for money, and she dressed gorgeously, in execrable taste. When his supplies fell short, as was inevitable, she was still well provided; and he accepted her statement that the supplementary sums came from her father. Once, coming upon her one evening unexpectedly, he found her hysterical and much the worse for liquor: empty champagne bottles and glasses were lying on the table, and the room was full of the scent of tobacco smoke. He discovered that two men of his own college had been calling upon her. A scene ensued, which was only one of many. I have no intention, however, of going into all the wretched details of what is a very common story; but it is sufficient to say that Bradley discovered himself tied miserably to a creature without honour, without education, without virtue, sometimes without decency. Nevertheless he did not cast her out or expose her, but during the Vacation took her with him to London, trying hard to reclaim her. It was while they were stopping there that she relieved him of all further suspense by walking off one day with all his ready cash, and joining an officer whose acquaintance she had made by accident in the open street. Bradley searched for her everywhere without success. It was not for many weeks afterwards that he received a line from her, addressed from Gibraltar, telling him that she was en route for India, and that she had no wish either to see him or to hear from him again.
So she disappeared from his life, and when the report of her death reached him he was touched, but secretly relieved. Few even of his own personal friends knew much of this chapter of his experience: he had been wise enough to keep his actual marriage to the woman as dark as possible. So he entered the Church a free man, and purer than most men in having only one unfortunate record, throughout which he had acted honourably, on his conscience.
And now, after all those years, she had arisen from the grave! At the very moment when he was most threatened with other perils, of body and of soul, and when his place in the world of work and duty was most insecure, she had appeared, to drive him to despair! He had been so certain that she had passed away, with all her sins, that she had become in time almost a sad sweet memory, of one more sinned against than sinning. And all the time she had been roaming up and down the earth, painted and dissolute, cruel and predatory—no longer a reckless girl, but a cold, calculating woman, with all the audacity of her experience.
But she was worse, he thought; she, in her splendour of wealth and mature beauty, was infinitely fouler. How calmly she wore her infamy! how lightly she trafficked with him for his silence, for his complicity! Unconscious of her own monstrosity, she dared to bargain with him—her husband—a priest of Christ!
Let those who sympathise with Bradley in his despair beware of sharing his revengeful thoughts. In simple fact, the woman was rising, not falling; her life, bad as it was from certain points of view, was still a certain advance upon what it once had been—was certainly a purer and an honester life than that of many men; than that, for example, of the honoured member of the aristocracy who paid her bills. She was faithful to this man, and her one dream was to secure comfort and security for her child. She had never loved Bradley, and had never pretended to love him. She did not wish to bring him any unhappiness. She had, as she expressed it, divorced herself, and, according to her conceptions of morality, she owed him no obligation.
But the more he thought of her and of the fatality of her resurrection, the more his whole soul arose in hate against her.
Of course there was one way which led to liberty, the one which she had implored him not to take. The law could doubtless at once grant him a formal divorce from the woman; but this could not be done without publicity, from which his soul shrank in horror. He pictured to himself how his adversaries would exult on seeing his name dragged through the mud! No; come what might, he would never think of that!
I cannot follow either his spiritual or his bodily wanderings any further at present. He walked the night away, not returning to his hotel until early dawn, when, pale, dishevelled, and wild, like a man after a night’s dissipation (as, indeed, he seemed to the waiter, whose experience of clergymen on town visits was not small), he called for his hand-bag, had a hasty wash, and crept away to take the morning train.