Great Possessions Part 19

"I have said Ma.s.s for you twice since poor Moloney died," he said.

"I thought there was some sort of influence," she murmured. "That night I was tired and excited and worried, and foolishly prejudiced. Somehow the prayers you read for Pat Moloney, the whole att.i.tude of your Church in those prayers, caught my breath. I imagine it was something like the effect of a revivalist preacher on a Welsh miner." She paused. Father Molyneux was full of interest, and did not conceal it.

"I can't tell," he said. "Of course, it may have been----"

"Nerves," interrupted Molly so decidedly that he laughed; it was not in the least what he had meant to say.

"But," she went on, with an air of impartial diagnosis, "it has lasted.

I have been very happy. I understand now what is meant by religion. I understand what you felt about that man's soul. I understand, when you are preaching, that intense sense of worth-whileness. I understand the religious sense, the religious att.i.tude. It makes everything worth while because of love. It does not explain all the puzzles. It does not answer questions, it swallows them up alive. It makes everything so big, and at the same time so small, because there are infinite things too.

Then it insists on reality; I see now it must insist on dogma for fear of unreality. Renan was quite wrong in that great sentence of his: 'Il ne faut rien dire de limitee en face de l'infini.' The infinite is a fog to us if there are no outlines in our conception of it. Don't you think so?"

There was a light in her face no one had ever seen there before.

"And the only outlines that can satisfy us are the outlines of a Personality. As a rule I have always disliked individuals. I know you are surprised. Of course, you are just the other way; you have a touch of genius, a gift for being conscious of personalities, of being attracted to them. Now I have never liked people; in fact, I've hated most of them. But since this religious experience I have known"--her voice dropped; it had been a little loud--"I have known that I want a friend, and can have one."

The priest was astonished by Molly. He had never met any one like her before. Her self-confidence was curious, and her eloquence was so sudden and abounding that his own words seemed to leave him. She was in a moment as silent as she had been talkative, her eyes cast down on the floor. Then she looked at him with an almost imperious questioning in her eyes.

"You have said so much that I expected to say myself," he said, with a faint sense of humour, "and you have not asked me a single question."

Molly laughed "Tell me," she said, "I am right; it is all true? I _do_ understand religious experience, the religious sense at last, don't I?"

"Shall I tell you what I miss in it?" he said, suppressing any further comment on her amazing a.s.sertion. "I mean in all you have said. And, oddly enough, the Welsh miner would have had it. I mean that, seeing Our Lord as the One Friend of your life, you should also see that you have resisted and betrayed and offended Him during that life which He gave you."

"No: I have not thought much about that side of things" said Molly "I have been too happy."

"You would be far happier if you did."

"But what have I done?" said Molly, almost in a tone of injured respectability.

"Well, you have hated people--or, at least" (in a tone of apology), "you said so just now."

"Oh! yes; it's quite true. I am a great hater and an uncertain one. I never know who it is going to be, or when it will come."

"But you know you have been commanded to love them."

"Yes; but only as much as I love myself, and I quite particularly dislike myself."

"You've no right to--none whatever."

"And why not?"

"Because G.o.d made you in His own image and likeness. You can't get out of it. But, you know, I don't believe one word you say. I met you showing love to the poor."

"No, indeed," said Molly indignantly, "I did not love Pat Moloney. I wish you would believe what I say. I hate my mother; I hate the aunt who brought me up; I hate crowds of people. I don't hate one man because I want him to fall in love with me, but if he doesn't do that soon, I shall hate him too. I feel friendly towards you now, but I don't know how soon I may hate you. At least," she paused, and a gentle look came into her face, "I had all these hatreds up to a few weeks ago; now they are comparatively dormant."

Again the flood of her words seemed to check him, but he tried:

"I believe it then; I will take all you say as true. I think you are fairly convincing. Well, then, how do you suppose you can be united to Infinite Love, Infinite Mercy, Infinite Purity? G.o.d is not merely good, He is Goodness. Until you feel that His Presence would burn and destroy and annihilate your unworthiness, you have no sense of the joys of His Friends.h.i.+p. You stand now looking up to Him and choosing Him as your Friend, whereas you must lie prostrate in the dust and wait to be chosen. When you have done that He will raise you, and the Heavens will ring with the joy of the great spirits who never fell, and who are almost envious of the sinner doing Penance."

Molly bent her head low. "I see," she murmured, "mine have been merely the guesses of an amateur; it is useless--I don't understand."

"It isn't, indeed it isn't," he said quietly. "It is the introduction.

The King is sending His heralds. Some are drawn to Him by the sense of their own sinfulness, others, as you are, by a glimpse of His beauty."

Molly was not angry, only disappointed. The very habit of a life of reserve must have brought some sense of disappointment in the result.

She did not mind being told that she must lie in the dust; the abnegation was not abhorrent; she knew that love in itself sometimes demanded humiliation. But she felt sad and discouraged. She had seemed to have conquered a kingdom. Without exactly being proud of them, she had felt her religious experiences to be very remarkable, and now she saw that they only pointed to a very long road, hard to walk on. She got up quickly and was near the door before he was.

"Will you come and see me?" she said, and she gave him her card. "If you can, send me a postcard beforehand that I may not miss you. Good-bye."

He opened the front door for her and her carriage was waiting.

"The third time you have been late for dinner this week," observed the Father Rector. "Have some mutton?"

"Thanks," said the young man; "I wish I could learn the gentle art of sending people away without offending them."

"They didn't include that in the curriculum at Oxford?" The tone was not quite kind; neither was the snort with which the remark was concluded.

It was no sauce to the lumpy, greasy mutton that Mark was struggling to eat. Suddenly he caught the eye of the second curate, Father Marny, who had conceived a great affection for him, and he smiled merrily with a school-boy's sense of mischief.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BLIND CANON

In a small room in a small house in a small street in Chelsea, Father Molyneux was sitting with a friend. There were a few beautiful things in the room, and a few well-bound books; but they had a dusty, uncared for look about them. It teased the young priest to see a medicine bottle and a half-washed medicine gla.s.s standing on a bracket with an exquisite statuette of the Madonna. The present occupier of these lodgings had had very true artistic perceptions before he had become blind.

Mark Molyneux had just been reading to him for an hour, and he now put down the book. The old man smacked his lips with enjoyment. The author was new to him, but he had won his admiration at the first reading.

"What people call his paradoxes," he said, "is his almost despairing attempt at making people pay attention; he has to shout to men who are too hurried to stop. The danger is that, as time goes on, he will only be able to think in contrasts and to pursue contradictions."

The speaker paused, and then, his white fingers groped a little as if he were feeling after something. His voice was rich and low. Then he kept still, and waited with a curious look of acquired patience. At last, the younger man began.

"I want to ask your advice, or rather, I want to tell you something I have decided on."

"And you only want me to agree," laughed Canon Nicholls, and the blind face seemed full of perception.

"Well, I think you will." The boyish voice was bright and keen. "I've come to tell you that I want to be a monk."

"Tut, tut," said Canon Nicholls, and then they both laughed together.

"Since when?" he asked a moment later.

"It has been coming by degrees," said Mark, in a low voice. "I want to be altogether for G.o.d."

"And why can't you be that now?"

"It's too confusing," he said; "half the day I am amused or worried or tired. I've got next to no spiritual life."