Catharine Furze Part 9

"Mr. Cardew is a minister, and perhaps I should find it easier with you.

Suppose I bring the 'Paradise Lost' out into the garden when we next meet, and I will read, and you shall help me to comment on it."

Catharine's heart went out towards her, and it was agreed that "Paradise Lost" should be brought, and that Mrs. Cardew would endeavour to make herself "articulate" thereon. The party broke up, and Catharine's reflections were not of the simplest order. Rather let us say her emotions, for her heart was busier than her head. Mrs. Cardew had deeply touched her. She never could stand unmoved the eyes of her dog when the poor beast came and laid her nose on her lap and looked up at her, and n.o.body could have persuaded her of the truth of Mr. Cardew's doctrine that the reason why a dog can only bark is that his thoughts are nothing but barks. Mrs. Cardew's appeal, therefore, was of a kind to stir her sympathy; but--had she not heard that Mr. Cardew had observed and praised her? It was nothing--ridiculously nothing; it was his duty to praise and blame the pupils at the Limes; he had complimented Miss Toogood on her Bible history the other day, and on her satisfactory account of the scheme of redemption. He had done it publicly, and he had pointed out the failings of the other pupils, she, Catharine herself, being included.

He had reminded her that she had not taken into account the one vital point, that as we are the Almighty Maker's creatures, His absolutely, we have no ground of complaint against Him in whatever way He may be pleased to make us. Nevertheless, just those two or three words Mrs. Cardew reported were like yeast, and her whole brain was in a ferment.

The Milton was produced next week. Since Catharine had been at the Limes she had read some of it, incited by Mr. Cardew, for he was an enthusiast for Milton. Mrs. Cardew was a bad reader; she had no emphasis, no light and shade, and she missed altogether the rhythm of the verse. To Catharine, on the other hand, knowing nothing of metre, the proper cadence came easily. They finished the first six hundred lines of the first book.

"You have not said anything, Catharine."

"No; but what have you to say?"

"It is very fine; but there I stick; I cannot say any more; I want to say more; that is where I always am. I can _not_ understand why I cannot go on as some people do; I just stop there with 'very fine.'"

"Cannot you pick out some pa.s.sage which particularly struck you?"

"That is very true, is it not, that the mind can make a heaven of h.e.l.l and a h.e.l.l of heaven?"

"Most true; but did you not notice the description of the music?"

Catharine was fond of music, but only as an expression of her own feelings. For music as music--for a melody of Mozart, for example--that is to say, for pure art, which is simply beauty, superior to our personality, she did not care. She liked Handel, and there was a choral society in Eastthorpe which occasionally performed the "Messiah."

"Don't you remember what Mr. Cardew said about it--it was remarkable that Milton should have given to music the power to chase doubt from the mind, doubt generally, and yet music is not argument?"

"Oh, yes, I recollect, but I do not quite comprehend him, and I told him I did not see how music could make me sure of a thing if there was not a reason for it."

"What did he say then?"

"Nothing."

Mr. Cardew called that evening to take his wife home. He was told that she was in the garden with Miss Furze, and thither he at once went.

"Milton!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing with Milton here?"

"Miss Furze and I were reading the first book of the 'Paradise Lost'

together."

Mrs. Cardew looked at her husband inquiringly, and with a timid smile, hoping he would show himself pleased. His brow, however, slightly wrinkled itself with displeasure. He had told her to read Milton, had said, "Fancy an Englishwoman with any pretensions to education not knowing Milton!" and now, when she was doing exactly what she was directed to do, he was vexed. He was annoyed to find he was precisely obeyed, and perhaps would have been in a better temper if he had been contradicted and resisted. Mrs. Cardew turned her head away. What was she to do with him? Every one of her efforts to find the door had failed.

"What has struck you particularly in that book, Miss Furze?"

Catharine was about to say something, but she caught sight of Mrs.

Cardew, and was arrested. At last she spoke, but what she said was not what she at first had intended to say.

"Mrs. Cardew and I were discussing the lines about doubt and music, and we cannot see what Milton means. We cannot see how music can make us sure of a thing if there is not good reason for it."

Catharine used the first person plural with the best intention, but her object was defeated. The rector recognised the words at once.

"Yes, yes," he replied, impatiently; "but, Miss Furze, you know better than that. Milton does not mean doubt whether an arithmetical proposition is true. I question if he means theological doubt. Doubt in that pa.s.sage is nearer despondency. It is despondency taking an intellectual form and clothing itself with doubts which no reasoning will overcome, which re-shape themselves the moment they are refuted." He stopped for a moment. "Don't you think so, Miss Furze?"

She forgot Mrs. Cardew, and looked straight into Mr. Cardew's face bent earnestly upon her.

"I understand."

Mrs. Cardew had lifted her eyes from the ground, on which they had been fixed. "I think," said she, "we had better be going."

"We can go out by the door at the end of the garden, if you will go and bid the Misses Ponsonby good-bye."

Mrs. Cardew lingered a moment.

"I have bidden them good-bye," said her husband.

She went, and Miss Ponsonby detained her for a few minutes to arrange the details of an important quarterly meeting of the Dorcas Society for next week.

"What do you think of the subject of the 'Paradise Lost.' Miss Furze?"

"I hardly know; it seems so far away."

"Ah! that is just the point. I thought so once, but not now. Milton could not content himself with a common theme; nothing less than G.o.d and the man--mortal feud between Him and Satan would suffice. Milton is representative to me of what I may call the heroic att.i.tude towards existence. Mark, too, the importance of man in the book. Men and women are not mere bubbles--here for a moment and then gone--but they are actually important, all-important, I may even say, to the Maker of the universe and his great enemy. In this Milton follows Christianity, but what stress he lays on the point! Our temptation, notwithstanding our religion, so often is to doubt our own value. All appearances tend to make us doubt it. Don't you think so?"

Catharine looked earnestly at the excited preacher, but said nothing.

"I do not mean our own personal worth. The temptation is to doubt whether it is of the smallest consequence whether we are or are not, and whether our being here is not an accident. Oh, Miss Furze, to think that your existence and mine are part of the Divine eternal plan, and that without us it would be wrecked! Then there is Satan. Milton has gone beyond the Bible, beyond what is authorised, in giving such a distinct, powerful, and prominent individuality to Satan. You will remember that in the great celestial battle--

"'Long time in even scale The battle hung.'

But what a wonderful conception that is of the great antagonist of G.o.d!

It comes out even more strongly in the 'Paradise Regained.' Is it not a relief to think that the evil thought in you or me is not altogether yours and mine, but is foreign; that it is an incident in the war of wars, an attack on one of the soldiers of the Most High?"

Mr. Cardew paused.

"Have you never written anything which I could read?"

"Scarcely anything. I wrote some time ago a little story of a few pages, but it was never published. I will lend you the ma.n.u.script, but you will please remember that it is anonymous, and that I do not wish the authors.h.i.+p revealed. I believe most people would not think any the better of me, certainly as a clergyman, if they knew it was mine."

"That is very kind of you."

Catharine felt the distinction, the confidence. The sweetest homage which can be offered us is to be entrusted with something which others would misinterpret.

"I should like, Miss Furze, to have some further talk with you about Milton, but I do not quite see" (musingly) "how it is to be managed."

"Could you not tell us something about him when you and Mrs. Cardew next have tea with us at the Limes?"

"I do not think so. I meant with you, yourself. It is not easy for me to express myself clearly in company--at any rate, I should not hear your difficulties. You seem to possess a sympathy which is unusual, and I should be glad to know more of your mind."

"When Mrs. Cardew comes here, could you not fetch her, and could we not sit out here together?"

He hesitated. They were walking slowly over the gra.s.s towards the gate, and were just beginning to turn off to the right by the side path between the laurels. At that point, the lawn being levelled and raised, there were two stone steps. In descending them Catharine slipped, and he caught her arm. She did not fall, but he did not altogether release her for at least some seconds.

"Mrs. Cardew has no liking for poetry."