Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  “Well, if there’s anything at the bottom of it all you’re sure to find it out,” — said Howard; “I suppose your sermon of to-morrow will be reported?”

  “As an assistance to the charity for which it pleads, I suppose it will,” — answered Everton; “But for no other reason.”

  “What is your text?”

  “A very familiar one, ‘The poor ye have always with you; — but Me ye have not always.’ I think my arguments deal chiefly with the latter half of the saying.”

  “‘Me ye have not always!’ Ah! One is almost tempted to alter the words to ‘Me ye have not at all’ nowadays,” — said Howard; “But in what way do you propose to move a London congregation to such a conviction? Rustic folk are easily persuaded but the people, — especially the fashionable people, — of this giant metropolis are of more stubborn material.”

  “There I don’t agree with you!” — and Everton laughed a little, “Rustic folk are among the most obstinate of human beings. I think it would be easier to move the emotions of a London club lounger than those of a Cotswold farmer! But so far as my sermon may lead me to-morrow, I am not anxious to force any conviction on any one. I merely want to show, if I can, that the giving of alms without the ‘Me,’ or the Spirit of Christ in the gift, is not true generosity. The majority of people are proverbially ungrateful for every kind of assistance because it needs a great nature to acknowledge great benefit, — but what I would seek to teach is that if you give at all, have Christ with you in the giving, and then ingratitude cannot hurt you. For I am sure that the Christ-intention to do good is bound to work out to noble issues. It is the ‘Me you have not always’ that makes the difference between mere alms-giving without heart, and real charity.”

  They had by this time reached their hotel, and entering it they said good-night to each other. As Everton held out his hand, Howard detained it a moment in an extra-cordial pressure.

  “You must forgive me,” he said, “for having bored you with my talk! — but I’ve wanted some one to ‘pour out’ to for ever so long! Most Americans talk too much, and I’m not exempt from my countrymen’s little failing. I think you English talk too little; — but that’s a matter of opinion. Anyhow, what I want to say just now is that I’ve taken a great liking to you, and that if I can be of any service to you at any time I hope you’ll command me. You may have some scheme for the betterment of your parish, — some plan for improving the general condition of poor humanity,” and he laughed; “and if you have, do me the favor of letting me help you. I have plenty of money I don’t want for myself — that would be a tempting bait to most clergymen! — but it won’t be to you, — you’re too straight. You’ll just tell me when you need something done and you’ll find me on the square!”

  Everton was surprised and touched.

  “It’s very good of you,” — he began, — but Howard interrupted him.

  “No, it isn’t!” he declared, with a whimsical sparkle in his eyes; “It isn’t ‘good’ of me — it is simply agreeable to me. A mere form of selfish indulgence, I assure you! Good-night!”

  He went then to his room, — and Everton soon followed his example. Alone, with the roar of London still making muffled thunder on his ears though the hour was so late, he stood looking through the dingy panes of his window at two or three faintly twinkling stars that could just be seen between the dividing lines of a stack of tall chimneys opposite, and he thought of his own quiet Vicarage with its old-world garden, — of the little church with its square ivied tower, and the grassy flower-strewn plot where his murdered wife Azalea lay, mingling her delicate dust with the creative elements of Mother Earth, who so quickly changes what we call death into other forms of life; — and it seemed to him as if a kind of epoch had rolled away since he had left Shadbrook that morning. Was it possible that he had only been one day in London? — nay, barely more than half of one day? Why, it was an age! — an age since the garden-gate of his country home had swung behind him, shutting away the lovely quiet of fair lawns and full-foliaged trees, — so much had happened since then, — he had seen so much, — heard so much, — and suffered so much! Suffered? Ay, with a poignancy incredible, though the agony was nothing more than the compression of a few facts into a few sentences uttered casually by a stranger. Why should he wince at it? What did it all amount to? Only this; — that all the pain and doubt and despair of good that had gripped his soul as it were in the clutches of devils when his wife had been brought home to him slain by Dan Kiernan, had returned in full force upon him now with the knowledge that Jacynth was alive and prospering. Somehow he had sub-consciously imagined her going from bad to worse, — becoming perhaps a frequenter of such gin-palaces as he had seen that night, and inhabiting a room in one of those wretched slums. He had never thought to see her as a wealthy woman, with jewels flashing on her breast, and the world of fashion gaping greedily upon her beauty. It was not fair, he told himself angrily, that she should be thus full of pride and vitality, while the innocent Azalea lay dead, — murdered, as surely through her as by Dan Kiernan. And he thought of a phrase in the book of a modern author, —— — a phrase which when he had first read it, had shocked and grieved him; ‘the dreadful mind of God.’ He had considered such an expression blasphemous — and yet — was it not true?

  ‘The dreadful mind of God!’ Surely it was a dreadful mind, if it could so give pre-eminence to evil, and doom innocence to destruction! The vision of Jacynth as she had entered the Savoy dining-room that night, radiant, self-possessed, smiling, supreme in her beauty and egotism, flashed before him as though it were a mirage-picture, sketched in summer lightning. She had recognized him, — of that he felt sure. She had recognized him as quickly and as positively as he had recognized her. Her dark luminous eyes had challenged his scrutiny, — had dumbly but insistently commanded his silence as to her past. Even now, in the solitude that environed him, he could see those eyes, — could feel their haunting, passionate dominance. The idea that they mysteriously followed him and looked at him steadfastly like stars shining out of the misty air, stung him with an angry, sense of helplessness; — and full of strange wrath and pain, with a spirit rising up in indignant protest at what seemed to be the unequitableness of Divine equity, he suddenly threw himself upon his knees and prayed with all his heart and soul that he might never meet her again! Never, never! For so it would be best!

  CHAPTER XIX

  A CHURCH, crowded with ultra-fashionable people, is, in the minds of a few thinkers, always a curious anomaly. It is called the ‘House of God,’ and in certain forms of faith there are priests who affirm that God Himself, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, is personally present in the compressed form of a consecrated wafer. If this fantastic and superstitious theory finds actual acceptance with sane persons, is it not rather wonderful that in this ‘Presence’ of God, men and women are so indifferent, irreverent and callous as they, for the most part, show themselves to be during any and every sort of Divine worship? For even where no eccentric inventions of the priesthood are in vogue, — where the ritual is simply one of prayer and praise to that Almighty Power whose eternal force projects the life-currents through interminable oceans of space wherein great planetary systems, like golden argosies, sail on their glorious voyages to pre-determined ports of wider splendor, is it not amazing, even appalling, that a crowd of human units, whose lives hang on the finest hairs of circumstance, should gather together in a building for the ostensible purpose of acknowledging their ‘manifold sins and wickedness,’ in the presence, — mark you! — in the ‘Presence’ of this Supreme Omnipotence, and should show themselves less conscious of Divine nearness than they do of their neighbors’ looks and clothing? Are they humble? Repentant? Modest in bearing? Not they! Nothing perhaps in all our various mockeries of true religion can equal the ridiculous arrogance, the pitiable conceit of Church congregations in fashionable quarters of London, where the women rustle up to their seats arrayed in all the newest modes, casting glances of envy or scorn
at one another, — where the men, not troubling to kneel lest their trousers should grow ‘baggy,’ say what they dare to call a prayer in the crowns of their hats to the God they thus impudently deride; — and where the pretentious show of mere mannerism is trebly enhanced when the church is one of those known as ‘high,’ — and ornate ceremonial assists the general aspect of the over-dressed, self-conscious throng. For then the priests, as well as the people, attitudinize and make dumb mimicry of the awful things of life and death, — then they, too, play like children with the danger-signals of the universe and invite disaster on the soul, — then they, too, make show of dress and ornament, and mince and simper before the altar like tawdry puppets on a stage playing for money and applause, forgetful that while Truth may be called the very blood and being of God, Falsehood, as opposed to the spirit of Eternal Law, contains within itself the destruction of every fabric, religious or social, that it attempts to build on its own quicksands of sham.

  It was in one of these highest of ‘High Anglican ‘churches that Everton found himself called upon to preach on the Sunday morning following his arrival in London, and all through the service, which was little less than Roman Catholic in its character, he was full of a silent, deeply-repressed but all the more poignant regret, shame and sorrow. It was not that he was in any way fanatically prejudiced against the Roman Catholic faith; — on the contrary, should it have chanced that he had been born and brought up in that faith, his very temperament would probably have made him one of its most devoted adherents. He would have obeyed the laws of his Church to the letter, and would never have known what it was to enjoy ‘the glorious liberty of the free,’ But, being what he was, he could not understand how thinking, reasonable men, having once cast off the yoke of mere heathen superstition, and having begun to learn some of the magnificent scientific Facts of the Divine Cosmos, could willfully return again to the slavery of the dark ages with their pagan rites and ceremonials, all of which show as barbaric tawdriness when compared with the pure and quiet spirit of simple piety.

  “If this were a Roman Catholic Church,” he thought, “I should feel nothing but compassionate respect for all who were engaged in performing their devotions according to the measure of their intellectual capabilities; but when I know it is the ‘Church of England’ professing to teach the ‘reformed ‘faith which our forefathers died to hand down to us, together with the watchword ‘The Open Bible,’ — I cannot but wonder what my fellow-clergy are about that they so deliberately falsify their mission! And the Bishops and the Archbishops! Why do they remain inert? To whom are they truckling? To Rome? To ‘principalities and powers’? To themselves and their own love of authority? One thing is certain, — they are not obeying Christ; — and with disobedience must come downfall!”

  And he was so full of perplexity and pain that when the time came for him to preach he ascended the pulpit like a man in a dream, looking down on the sea of faces and upturned eyes as part of the shifting and uncertain glamour of a vision briefly presented and soon to vanish in nothingness. He was unconscious of the ripple of interest that ran through the crowded congregation as he appeared, — he could not hear the many whispers cautiously exchanged between various persons such as:— “That’s the man whose wife was murdered.”

  “Oh really!”

  “I suppose she had a lover?”

  “Oh dear no! — She was killed by a drunken laborer, — you see, he’s a temperance preacher.”

  “You don’t say so! There must have been some reason for the murder?”

  “No — just the drink, — a sort of revenge on a temperance man.”

  “Hope he isn’t going to preach temperance to-day?”

  “No — that isn’t his subject — hush-sh-sh!”

  And every one settled down into decorous silence as Everton’s mellow voice rang out over their heads with a clear penetrative tone so unlike the affected drawl of most preachers, that of itself alone it roused and arrested immediate attention. Unlike most preachers, too, was Everton himself, with his pale fine face, earnest eyes and rapt expression; — and before he had spoken for five minutes the whole worldly, egotistical crowd was moved, if not to actual interest, to extreme curiosity. He was ‘something new’; — something of which they had latterly lost the knowledge, — something real in eloquence, grace and inspiration. And they listened; — amazed, if not impressed. Here was a country parson, — a stranger to London congregations, — whose life, so it was said, had been clouded by a terrible tragedy, — who was Vicar of a very small parish in an obscure corner of the Cotswolds, and who, till the murder of his wife by an irresponsible drunkard; had been absolutely unknown, — here was this very man preaching to a large section of wealthy and exclusive London society with an ease, an elegance, a beauty of phrasing and a boldness of purpose such as had not been heard for many a long day in that church or any other. It was understood that ‘Royalty’ in the shape of a German Princess of that or this other ‘Hofsburger’ was present, and the glances of such toadies and time-servers as bow to the very smell of royal boots, were, for a while, furtively turned on a stout, unprepossessing lady who occupied a seat immediately opposite the pulpit; — but presently as the stout lady remained royally rigid, her aspect became tiresome, and people left off watching the quivering of the short feather in her bonnet which they had at first contemplated reverently as though it were a plume in an angel’s wing, and concentrated their entire attention upon the sermon. And gradually they became aware that they were listening to a flow of unusually brilliant and persuasive oratory, — by degrees their vague brains grasped the astonishing fact that a parson preaching in aid of a charity and openly appealing for funds, may, if so gifted and inclined, present his subject in various points of view like the facets of a diamond, — may plead his cause with the picturesqueness of a poet and the subtle power of a philosopher, and may win his way by sheer strength and beauty of rhetoric where doctrinal persuasion would be of no avail. And as Everton spoke on and on, the hush of the church grew more strained and intense, — till the smallest interruption, even of the proverbial ‘church cough,’ would have been resented as an almost unpardonable offense by all present. So exceptional a preacher had not been expected to appeal to the congregation on behalf of a benevolent scheme which, on the whole, had been rather difficult to organize, owing to the prevalent custom among ‘society’ folk of giving their names by way of assistance and nothing else; and the most callous and indifferent persons who heard Richard Everton’s sermon that morning were faintly stirred to reluctant admiration for the strength, sincerity and simplicity of his utterance. With the tenderest pathos he spoke of the miseries of the poor, and with equally tender compassion he compared these with the sufferings of the rich, — the ‘sorrowful successful’ as he called them, — they who had all this world’s goods at their disposal, and cared for nothing save the change and a ‘new sensation.’

  “To make others happy,” he said in one passage, “is the only ‘new sensation’ that never tires. It matters nothing at all if these others prove ungrateful for the benefits you bestow upon them. You gain far more than they do, by your simple act of giving. You expand your soul; it grows nearer to the stature of the Divine. The grudging man, the mean man, dwarfs his spiritual height — cramps his spiritual powers — withers his spiritual fibers, — and becomes the merest pigmy, when he might reach heroic form and heroic attributes. Nothing that is given in a noble cause is ever lost — it comes back again to the giver with an additional thousand blessings. You who carefully count your pounds and pence, — you who invest every shilling in something that you imagine may bring you high interest, and as often as not lose all your stakes, have you so little faith in the God you profess to worship as to think He will not richly satisfy you for what you give in His Name? I say that the richest man among you to-day is likely to be poor if he refuses to help his less fortunate fellow-creatures, while the poorest who gives what he can with a loving heart in the gift, is more certain of
prosperity, swift and continuous, than any present millionaire who denies assistance to those who are in genuine need. I am not pleading for indiscriminate charity. There is nothing I deprecate so much or consider so harmful to the true interests of benevolence as the giving of money to the unworthy, — to the practiced begging-letter writer, for example, or to the degraded disciple of the Drink mania, who feigns misery in order to obtain the wherewithal to spend on the poison that transforms him into a thing that is neither man nor beast, — but I say that wherever a real means arises of doing good to our fellow-travelers who are journeying in the same road as ourselves, through life to the larger life beyond, we should never lose the opportunity thus offered to us. Sometimes a kind word is more than gold — sometimes a gentle look is worth more than millions to the lonely-hearted man or woman; — and of these lonely-hearted there are many among the world’s richest inhabitants. In whatever way we are called upon or expected to help and console, let us not grudge our sympathy, — our quick aid, — our utmost love! Captious critics may say I express myself in mere platitudes; that we have all heard over and over again to the point of positive tedium that it is good to ‘give to the poor and lend to the Lord.’

  ‘We know all that!’ they exclaim:—’ Give us something new!’ Yes! — you may know all that, — but like the dates and figures of history you learned in childhood, you need to be reminded of a duty which is so obvious that by this very cause alone if falls into neglect. And there is nothing so ‘new’ in this age, as the doing of a kindness for kindness’ sake! Without a selfish motive, without egotism, without brag, without any of the smug self-importance and assertiveness which so frequently disfigures the donors of large sums to charities; nothing of all’ this, — but just kindness for kindness’ sake! love for love’s sake!” He paused here, smitten by a sudden personal emotion. “For, after all,” — he continued, slowly; “love is the greatest of all the attributes of God. If we can love our neighbors as ourselves, we have reached a high form of faith, — I repeat ‘if’ we can! If we can forgive our enemies while they are slaying us with their scorns and slanders, we have gone yet a step higher, — and if we can do good to those that despitefully use us, we have touched the hem of the garment of Christ Himself, who when He was being nailed to the Cross said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’”