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CHAPTER XXVII
A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
"Boxing-day.
"Well, my dear David, all our festivities are over, and, having piloted our party safely into the calm waters of Boxing-day afternoon, I am free to retire to the library, and resume my talk with you.
"What a wonderful season is Christmas! It seems to represent words entirely delightful. Light, warmth, gifts, open hearts, open hands, goodwill – and, I suppose the children would add: turkey, mince-pies, and plum-pudding. Well, why not? I am by no means ashamed of looking forward to my Christmas turkey; in fact I once mentioned it in a vestry as an alluring prospect, to a stern young man in a cassock! I must have had the courage of my convictions!
"No, the fact of the matter is, I was very young then, David; very crude; altogether inexperienced. You would find me older now; mellowed, I hope; matured. Family cares have aged me.
"Yesterday, however, being Christmas-day, I threw off my maturity, just as one gleefully leaves off wearing kid gloves at the seaside, and became an infant with the infants. How we romped, and how delightfully silly we were! After the midday Christmas dinner, as we all sat round at dessert, I could see Mrs. Mallory eying me with amazed contempt, because I wore the contents of my cracker – a fine guardsman's helmet, and an eyeglass, which I jerked out, and screwed in again, at intervals, to amuse the children. When I surprised Mrs. Mallory's gaze of pitying scorn, I screwed in the eyeglass for her especial benefit, and looked at her through it, saying: 'Don't I wear it as if to the manner born, Mrs. Mallory?' 'Oh, quite,' said Mrs. Mallory, with an appreciative smile. 'Quite, my dear Mrs. Rivers; quite.' Which was so very 'quite quite,' that nothing remained but for me to fix on my guardsman's helmet more firmly, and salute.
"Mrs. Mallory's cracker had produced a jockey cap, in green and yellow, and it would have delighted the children if she had worn it jauntily on her elaborately crimped coiffure. But she insisted upon an exchange with a dear little girl seated next her, who was feeling delightfully grown-up, in a white frilled Marie Antoinette cap, with pink ribbons. This, on Mrs. Mallory's head, except that it was made of paper, was exactly what she might have bought for herself in Bond Street; so she had achieved the conventional, and successfully avoided amusing us by the grotesque. The jockey cap was exactly the same shape as the black velvet one I keep for the little girls to wear when they ride the pony in the park. The disappointment on the face of the small owner of the pretty mob-cap, passed quite unnoticed by Mrs. Mallory. Yet she adores children. I, who only tolerate them, saw it. So did the oldest of the boys – such a nice little fellow. 'I say, Mrs. Rivers,' he said, 'Swapping shouldn't be allowed.' 'Quite right, Rodney,' said I. 'Kiddies, there is to be no swapping!' 'Surely,' remarked Mrs. Mallory, in her shocked voice, 'no one present here, would think of swapping?' Rodney said, 'Crikey!' under his breath; and I haven't a notion, to this hour, what meaning the elegant verb 'to swap' holds for Mrs. Mallory.
"But here I go again, telling you of all sorts of happenings in our home life, which must seem to you so trivial. I wish I could write a more interesting letter; especially this afternoon, David. This time last year you and I were having our momentous talk. There was certainly nothing trivial about that! I sometimes wish you could know – oh, no matter what! It is useless to dwell perpetually on vain regrets. And as we are on the subject of Mrs. Mallory, David, I want to ask your opinion on a question of conscience which came up between her and myself.
"Oh, David, how often I wish you were here to tackle her for me, as you used to tackle poor old Chappie; only the difficulties caused by Chappie's sins, were as nothing, compared with the complications caused by Lucy Mallory's virtues.
"She is such a gentle-looking little woman, in trailing widow's weeds; a pink and white complexion, china blue eyes, and masses of flaxen hair elaborately puffed and crimped. She never knows her own mind, for five minutes at a time; is never quite sure on any point, or able to give you a straightforward yes or no. And yet, in some respects, she is the most obstinate person I ever came across. My old donkey, Jeshurun, isn't in it with Mrs. Mallory, when once she puts her dainty foot down, and refuses to budge. Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked, and did everything he shouldn't; but always yielded to the seduction of a carrot. But it is no good waving carrots at Mrs. Mallory. She won't look at them! She reminds me of the deaf adder who stoppeth her ears, lest she should hear the voice of the charmer. And always about such silly little things, that they are not worth a battle.
"But the greatest trial of all is, that she has a morbid conscience.
"Oh, David! Did you ever have to live with a person who had a morbid conscience?
"Now – if it won't bore you – may I just give you an instance of the working of Mrs. Mallory's morbid conscience, and perhaps you will help me, by making a clear pronouncement on the matter. Remember, I only have her here because she is a missionary's widow, left badly off; and not strong enough to undertake school teaching, or any arduous post involving long hours. I have tried to make her feel at home here, and she seems happy. Sometimes she is a really charming companion.
"The first evening she was here, she told me she had always been 'a great Bible student.' She spends much time over a very large Bible, which she marks in various coloured inks, and with extraordinary criss-cross lines, which she calls 'railways'. She explained the system to me one day, and showed me a new 'line' she had just made. You started at the top of a page at the word little. Then you followed down a blue line, which brought you to a second mention of the word little. From there you zigzagged off, still on blue, right across to the opposite page; and there found little, again. This was a junction! If you started down a further blue line you arrived at yet a fourth little, but if you adventured along a red line, you found less.
"I had hoped to learn a lot from Mrs. Mallory, when she said she was a great Bible student, because I am so new at Bible study, and have no one to help me. But I confess these railway excursions from little to little, and from little to less, appear to me somewhat futile! None of the littles had any connection with one another; that is, until Mrs. Mallory's blue railway connected them. She is now making a study of all the Marys of the Bible. She has a system by which she is going to prove that they were all one and the same person. I suggested that this would be an infinite pity; as they all have such beautiful individual characters, and such beautiful individual histories.
"'Truth before beauty, my dear Mrs. Rivers,' said Mrs. Mallory.
"'Cannot truth and beauty go together?' I inquired.
"'No, indeed,' pronounced Mrs. Mallory, firmly. 'Truth is a narrow line; beauty is a snare.'
"According to which method of reasoning, my dear David, I ought to have serious misgivings as to whether your Christmas-eve sermon, which changed my whole outlook on life, was true – seeing that it most certainly was beautiful!
"Now listen to my little story.
"One morning, during this last autumn, Mrs. Mallory received a business letter at breakfast, necessitating an immediate journey to town, for a trying interview. After much weighing of pros and cons, she decided upon a train; and I sent her to the station in the motor.
"A sadly worried and distressed little face looked out and bowed a tearful farewell to me, as she departed. I knew she had hoped I should offer to go with her; but it was a lovely October day, and I wanted a morning in the garden, and a ride in the afternoon. It happened to be a very free day for me; and I did not feel at all like wasting the golden sunshine over a day in town, in and out of shops with Mrs. Mallory; watching her examine all the things which she, after all, could not 'feel it quite right to buy.' She never appears to question the rightness of giving tired shop people endless unnecessary labour. I knew she intended combining hours of this kind of negative enjoyment, with her trying interview.
"So I turned back into the house, sat down in the sunny bay window of the breakfast room, and took Times; thankful that the dear lady had departed by the earliest of the three trains which had been under discussion during the greater part of breakfast.
"But my conscience would not let me enjoy my morning paper in peace. I had not read five lines before I knew that it would have been kind to have gone with Mrs. Mallory; I had not read ten, before I knew that it was unkind to have let the poor little soul go alone. She was a widow and worried; and she had mentioned the departed Philip, as a bitterly regretted shield, prop, and mainstay, many times during breakfast.
"I looked at the clock. The motor was, of course, gone; and the quarter of an hour it would take to send down to the stables and put in a horse would lose me the train. I could just do it on my bicycle if I got off in four minutes, and rode hard.
"Rodgers trotted out my machine, while I rushed up for a hat and gloves. I was wearing the short tweed skirt, Norfolk coat, and stout boots, in which I had intended to tramp about the park and gardens; but there was not time to change. I caught up the first hat I could lay hands on, slipped on a pair of reindeer gloves as I ran downstairs, jumped on to my bicycle, and was half-way down the avenue, before old Rodgers had recovered his breath, temporarily taken by the haste with which he had answered my pealing bell.
"By dint of hard riding, I got into the station just in time to fling my bicycle to a porter, and leap into the guard's van of the already moving train.
"At the first stop, I went along, and found Mrs. Mallory, alone and melancholy, in an empty compartment. Her surprise and pleasure at sight of me, seemed ample reward. She pressed my hand, in genuine delight and gratitude.
"'I couldn't let you go alone,' I said. Then, as I sat down opposite to her, something – it may have been her own dainty best attire – made me suddenly conscious of the shortness of my serviceable skirt, and the roughness of my tweed. 'So I am coming with you, after all,' I added; 'unless you think me too countrified, in this get-up; and will be ashamed to be seen with me in town!'
"Mrs. Mallory enveloped me, thick boots and all, in grateful smiles.
"'Oh, of course not!' she said. 'Dear Mrs. Rivers! Of course not! You are quite too kind!'
"Now, will you believe it, David? Weeks afterwards she came to me and said there was something she must tell me, as it was hindering her in her prayers, and she could not enjoy 'fully restored communion,' until she had confessed it, and thus relieved her mind.
"I thought the dear lady must, at the very least, have forged my signature to a cheque. I sat tight, and told her to proceed. She thereupon reminded me of that October morning, and said that she had thought my clothes countrified, and had felt ashamed to be seen with me in town.
"Oh, David, can you understand how it hurt? When one had given up the day, and raced to the station, and done it all to help her in her trouble. It was not so much that she had noticed that which was an obvious fact. It was the pettiness of mind which could dwell on it for weeks, and then wound the friend who had tried to be kind to her, by bringing it up, and explaining it.
"I looked at her for a moment, absolutely at a loss what to reply. At last I said: 'I am very sorry, Mrs. Mallory. But had I stopped, on that morning, to change into town clothes, I could not have caught your train.'
"'Oh, I know!' she cried, with protesting hands. 'It did not matter at all. It is only that I felt I had not been absolutely truthful.'
"Now, David – you, who are by profession a guide of doubting souls, an expounder of problems of casuistry, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart – will you give me a pronouncement on this question? In itself it may be a small matter; but it serves to illustrate a larger problem.
"Which was the greater sin in Mrs. Mallory: to have lapsed for a moment from absolute truthfulness; or, to wound deliberately a friend who had tried to be kind to her? Am I right in saying that such an episode is the outcome of the workings of a morbid conscience? It is but one of many.
"I am often tempted to regret my good old Chappie, though she was not a Bible student, had not a halo of fluffy flaxen hair, and never talked, with clasped hands, of the perfections of departed Philips. I am afraid Chappie used to lie with amazing readiness; but always in order to please one, or to say what she considered the right thing.
"By the way, Chappie and Mr. Inglestry dined here the other night. Whenever I see them, David, I am reminded of how we laughed in the luncheon-car, on our wedding-day, over having left Chappie at the church, with two strings to her bow. I remember you said: 'Two beaux to her string' more exactly described the situation; a pun for which I should have pinched you, had my spirits on that morning been as exuberant as yours. Poor old Inglestry does not look as well as he used to do. There may be a chance for god-papa, yet!
"What an epistle! And it seems so full of trivialities, as compared with the deep interest of yours. But it is not given unto us all to build churches. Some of us can only build cottages – humble little four-roomed places, with thatched roof and anxious windows. I try to cultivate a little garden in front of mine, full of fragrant gifts and graces. But, just as I think I have obtained some promise of bloom and beauty, Mrs. Mallory annoys me, or something else goes wrong, and my quick temper, like your early hippopotamus, dances a devastating cake-walk in the garden of my best intentions, and tramples down my oleanders.
"Mrs. Mallory spends most of her time building a mausoleum to the memory of the Rev. Philip. Just now, she is gilding the dome. I get so tired of hearing of Philip's perfections. It almost tempts me to retaliate by suddenly beginning to talk about you. It would be good for Mrs. Mallory to realise that she is not the only person in the world who has married a missionary, and lost him. However, in that case, my elaborate parrying of many questions would all be so much time wasted. Besides, she would never understand you and me, and our – friendship.
"When the late Philip proposed to her, he held her hand for an hour in blissful silence, after she had murmured 'yes'; then, bent over her and asked whether she took sugar in her tea; because, if she did, they must take some out with them; it was difficult to obtain in the place to which they were going! Philip was evidently a domesticated man. I should have screamed, long before the hour of silence was up; and flatly refused to go to any country where I could not buy sugar at a moment's notice!
"Oh, David, I must stop! You will consider this flippant. But Uncle Falcon enjoys the joke. He is looking more amused than I have seen him look for many months. He would have liked to see Philip trying to hold my hand. Uncle Falcon's amber eyes are twinkling.
"Talking of cottages, I was inspecting the schools the other day, and the children recited 'po-tray' for my benefit. They all remarked together, in a sing-song nasal chant: 'The cottage was a thatched one,' with many additional emphatic though unimportant facts. I suggested, when it was over, that 'The cottage was a thatched one,' might better render the meaning of the poet. But the schoolmaster and his wife regarded me doubtfully; saying, that in the whole of their long experience it had always been: 'The cottage was a thatched one.' I hastily agreed that undoubtedly a long established precedent must never be disregarded; and what has been should ever – in this good conservative land of ours – for that reason, if for no other, continue to be. Then I turned my attention to the drawing and needlework.
"How my old set would laugh if they knew how often I spend a morning inspecting the schools. But many things in my daily life now would be incomprehensible to them and, therefore, amusing.
"How much depends upon one's point of view. I jumped upon a little lady in the train the other day, travelling up to town for a day's shopping, for saying with a weary sigh and dismal countenance, that she was 'facing Christmas'! Fancy approaching the time of gifts and gladness and thought for others, in such a spirit! I told her the best 'facing' for her to do, would be to 'right about face' and go home to bed, and remain there until Christmas festivities were over! She pulled her furs more closely around her, and tapped my arm with the jewelled pencil-case with which she was writing her list of gifts. 'My dear Diana,' she said, 'you have always been so fatiguingly energetic.' This gave me food for thought. I suppose even the sight of the energy of others is a weariness to easily exhausted people. A favourite remark of Chappie's used to be, that the way I came down to breakfast tired her out for the day.
"Well, as I remarked before, I must close this long epistle. I am becoming quite Pauline in my postscripts. As I think of it on its way to you, I shall have cause to recite with compunction: 'The letter was– a long one!'
"Good-bye, my dear David.
"May all best blessings rest upon the Church of the Holy Star, and upon your ministry therein.
"Affectionately yours,Diana Rivers."
"P.S. Don't you think you might relieve my natural wifely anxiety, by giving me a few details as to your general health? And please remember to answer my question about Mrs. Mallory's conscience."
CHAPTER XXVIII
DAVID'S PRONOUNCEMENT
When David's reply arrived, in due course, he went straight to the point in this matter of Mrs. Mallory's conscience, with a directness which fully satisfied Diana.
"It is impossible," wrote David, "to give an opinion as to which was the greater or lesser wrong, when your friend had already advanced so far down a crooked way. Undoubtedly it was a difficult moment for her in the railway carriage, as in all probability her own critical thought gave you the mental suggestion of not being suitably got up for town. But you, in similar circumstances, would have said: 'Why, what does the fact of your clothes being countrified matter, compared to the immense comfort of having you with me. And if all the people we meet, could know how kind you have been and how you raced to the train, they would not give a second thought to what you happen to be wearing.'
"But a straightforward answer, such as you would have given, would not be a natural instinct to a mind habitually fencing and hedging, and shifting away from facing facts.
"Personally, on the difficult question of confession of wrong-doing, I hold this: that if confession rights a wrong, and is clearly to the advantage of the person to whom it is made, then confession is indeed an obvious duty, which should be faced and performed without delay.
"But – if confession is merely the method adopted by a stricken and convicted conscience, for shifting the burden of its own wrong-doing by imparting to another the knowledge of that wrong, especially if that knowledge will cause pain, disappointment, or perplexity to an innocent heart – then I hold it to be both morbid and useless.
"Mrs. Mallory did not undo the fact of her lapse from absolute truthfulness by telling you of it, in a way which she must have known would cause you both mortification and pain. She simply added to the sin of untruthfulness, the sins of ingratitude, and of inconsideration for the feelings of another. Had she forged your signature to a cheque, she would have been right to confess it; because confession would have been a necessary step toward restitution. All confession which rights a wrong, is legitimate and essential. Confession which merely lays a burden upon another, is morbid and selfish. The loneliness of a conscience under conviction, bearing in solitude the burden of acute remembrance of past sins, is a part of the punishment those sins deserve. Then – into that loneliness – there comes the comfort of the thought: 'He Who knows all, understands all; and He Who knows and understands already, may be fully told, all.' And, no sooner is that complete confession made, than there breaks the radiance of the promise, shining star-like in the darkness of despair: 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' Mrs. Mallory could thus have got back into the light of restored communion, without ever mentioning the matter to you.
"But this kind of mind is so difficult to help, because its lapses are due to a lack of straightforward directness, which would be, to another mind, not an effort, but an instinct.
"Such people stand in a chronic state of indecision, at perpetual cross-roads; and are just as likely to take the wrong road, as the right; then, after having travelled far along that road, are pulled up by complications arising, not so much from the predicament of the moment, as from the fact that they vacillated into the wrong path at the crucial time when they stood hesitating. They need Elijah's clarion call to the people of Israel: 'How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but, if Baal, then follow him' – honest idolatry being better than vacillating indecision.
"This species of mental lameness reminds me of a man I knew at college, who had one leg longer than the other. He was no good at all at racing on the straight; but, round the grass plot in the centre of one of our courts, no one could beat him. He used to put his short leg inside, and his long leg out, and round and round he would sprint, like a lamplighter. People who halt between two opinions always argue in a circle, but never arrive at any definite conclusion. They are no good on the straight. They find themselves back where they originally started. They get no farther.
"Mrs. Mallory should take her place in the Pool of Bethesda among the blind, and the halt, and the withered. She should get her eyes opened to a larger outlook on life; her crooked walk made straight; and her withered sensibilities quickened into fresh life. Then she would soon cease to try you with her morbid conscience.
"Mrs. Mallory should give up defacing her Bible with the ink of her own ideas or the ideas of others. Human conceptions, however helpful, should not find a permanent place, even in your own individual copy of the Word of God. The particular line of truth they emphasised, may have been the teaching intended for that particular hour of study. But, every time you turn to a passage, you may expect fresh light, and a newly revealed line of thought. If your eye is at once arrested by notes and comments, or even by the underlining of special words, your mind slips into the groove of a past meditation; thus the liberty of fresh light, and the free course of fresh revelation, are checked and impeded. Do not crowd into the sacred sanctuary of the Word, ideas which may most helpfully be garnered in the classroom of your notebook. Remember that the Bible differs from all human literature in this: that it is a living, vital thing – ever new, ever replete with fresh surprises. The living Spirit illumines its every line, the living Word meets you in its pages. As in the glades of Eden, when the mysterious evening wind (ruach) stirred the leaves of the trees, making of that hour 'the cool of the day' – you can say, as the wind of the Spirit breathes upon your passage through the Word: 'I hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.' Then, passing down its quiet glades, straightway, face to face, you meet your Lord. No unconfessed sin can remain hidden in the light of that meeting. No conscience can continue morbid if illumined, cleansed, adjusted, by habitual study of the Word.
"There! I have calmly given my view of the matter, as being 'by profession, a guide of doubting souls, an expounder of problems of casuistry,' and all the other excellent things it pleased you to call me.
"Now – as a man – allow me the relief of simply stating, that I should dearly like to pound Mrs. Mallory to pulp, for her utter ingratitude to you."
This sudden explosion on David's part, brought out delighted dimples in Diana's cheeks; and, thereafter, whenever Mrs. Mallory proved trying, she found consolation in whispering to herself: "David – my good, saintly David – would dearly like to pound her to pulp!"
