God's Good Man - Marie Corelli (i want to read a book .txt) 📗

conscious of a heart,—and that I feel a regretful yearning at times for the joys I have missed out of my life—and you’ll forgive me for that too,—I know you will! For the rest, draw a curtain over this little weakness of mine, will you? I don’t want to speak of it—I want to fight it and conquer it.”

The Bishop stretched out a hand and caught Walden’s in a close grasp.

“Right!”—he said—“Do that, and you will do well! It is all a question of fighting and conquering, or—being conquered. But YOU will never give in, John! You are not the man to yield to the wiles of the devil. For there IS a devil!—I am sure of it!” And his dark eyes flashed with a sudden wild light. “A cozening, crafty, lurking devil, that sets temptation before us in such varied and pleasing forms that it is difficult—sometimes impossible—to tell which is right and which is wrong! Walden, we must escape from this devil—we must escape!”

He sprang up with an impulsive quickness which startled Walden, and began to pace up and down the room again.

“A mocking devil,”—he said—“a lying devil!—whispering from morning till evening, and from evening till morning, doubts of God! Doubts whether He, the Creator of worlds, really exists,doubts as to whether He, or It, is not some huge blind, deaf Force, grinding its way on through limitless and eternal Production and Reproduction to one end,-Annihilation! Walden, you must now hear MY confession! These doubts are driving me mad! I cannot bear the thought of the whirl of countless universes, immeasurable solar systems, crammed with tortured life for which there seems to be no hope, no care, no rescue, no future! I am unable to preach or to FEEL comfort for the human race! The very tragedy of the Cross only brings me to one result—that Truth is always crucified. The world prefers Falsehood. So much so indeed that the Christian religion itself is little more than a super-structure of lies raised above the sepulchre of a murdered Truth. I told you in my letter I had serious thoughts of resigning my bishopric. So I have. My spirit turns to Rome!”

“Rome!” cried Walden—“What, YOU, Brent!—you think of going over to Rome? What strange fantasy has seized you?”

“Rome,” said Brent, slowly, stopping in his restless walk—“is the Mother of Creeds—the antique Muse of the world’s history! Filled with the blood of martyrs, hallowed by the memories of saints, she is, she must always be, supreme in matters of faith—or superstition!” And he smiled,—a wan and sorrowful smile—“Or even idolatry, if you will! Emotionalism,—sensationalism in religion— these the craving soul must have, and these Rome gives! We must believe,—mark you, Walden!—we must positively BELIEVE that the Creator of all Universes was moved to such wrath against the helpless human creature He had made, that he cursed that creature forever for merely eating, like a child, fruit which had been forbidden! And after that we must believe everything else that has since followed in the track of the Woman, the Serpent and the Tree. Now in the Church of England I find I cannot believe these things— in the Church of Rome I WILL believe, because I MUST! I will humble myself in dust and ashes, and accept all—all. Anything is better than Nothingness! I will be the lowest of lay brethren, and in solitude and silence, make atonement for my unbelief. It is the only way, Walden!—for me, it is the only way! To Her!” And he pointed up to the picture of the Virgin and Child—“To Her, my vows! As Woman, she will pity me—as Woman, she can be loved!”

Walden heard this wild speech without any word or gesture of interruption. Then, raising his eyes to the picture Brent thus apostrophised, he said, quietly—

“When did you have that painted, Brent?”

A sudden change came over the Bishop’s features. He looked as though startled by some vague terror. Then he answered, slowly:

“Some years ago—in Florence. Why do you ask? It is a copy---”

“Of HER likeness—yes!” said Walden, softly—“I saw that at once. You had it done, of course! She was beautiful and good—she died young. I know! But you have no right to turn your personal passion and grief into a form of worship, Harry!”

The Bishop gazed at him fixedly and solemnly.

“You do not know,”—he murmured—“You have not seen what I have seen! She has come to me lately—she, who died so long ago!—she has come to me night after night, and she has told me to pray for her— ‘pray’ she says—‘pray that I may help to save your soul!’ And I must surely do as she bids. I must get away from this place—away from this city of turmoil and wickedness, into some quieter comer of the world,—some monastic retreat where I may end my days in peace,- I cannot fight my devils here-they are too strong for me!”

“They will be too strong for you anywhere, if you are a coward!”— said Walden, impetuously. “Brent, I thought you had gotten the victory over this old despair of yours long ago! I thought you had made the memory of the woman you loved a noble spur to noble actions! I never dreamed that it would be possible for you to brood silently on your sorrow till you made it a cause of protest against God’s will! And worst and strangest of all is this frenzied idea of yours to fly to the Church of Rome for shelter from yourself and your secret misery, and there give yourself over to monasticism and a silent, idolatrous worship,—not of Mary, the Mother of Christ,— but of the mere picture of the woman you loved! And you would pray to THAT?—you would kneel before THAT?—you would pass long hours of fasting and vigil, gazing at that face, till, like the ‘stigmata,’ it is almost outlined in blood upon your heart? My dear Brent, is it possible your brain is so shaken and your soul so feeble that you must needs seek refuge in a kind of half-spiritual, half-sensuous passion, which is absolute rank blasphemy?”

At this the Bishop raised his head with an air of imperious authority.

“I cannot permit!---” he said, in unsteady accents—“You have no right to speak to me in such a tone—it is not your place---”

Then, suddenly, his voice broke, and throwing himself into his chair, he dropped his head forward on the desk and covered it with his hands in an attitude of the utmost abandonment and dejection. The moisture rose to Walden’s eyes,—he knew the great tragedy of his friend’s life—all comprised in one brief, romantic episode of the adoring love, and sudden loss of a beautiful woman drowned by accident in her own pleasure-boat on the very eve of her marriage with him,—and be knew that just as deep and ardent as the man’s passion had been, so deep and ardent was his sorrow—a sorrow that could never be consoled. And John sat silent, deeply moved in himself, and ever and anon glancing upwards at the exquisite face of the painted Virgin above him,—the face of the dead girl whom her lover had thus sanctified. Presently Brent raised his head,—his face was white and worn—his eyes were wet.

“Forgive me, John!” he said—“I have been working hard of late, and my nerves are unstrung. And—I cannot, I cannot forget her! And what is more awful and terrible to me than anything is that I cannot forgive God!” He uttered these words in an awed whisper. “I cannot! I bear the Almighty a grudge for wrenching her life away from mine! Of what use was it to be so cruel? Of what purpose to kill one so young? If God is omnipotent, God could have saved her. But He let her die! I tell you, Walden, that ever since I have been Bishop of this diocese, I have tried to relieve sorrow and pain whenever I have met with it—I have striven to do my duty, hoping against hope that perhaps God would teach me—would explain the why and wherefore of so much needless agony to His creatures—and that by discovering reasons for the afflictions of others, I should learn to become reconciled to my own. But no!—nothing has been made clear! I have seen innocent women die in the tortures of the damned—while their drunken husbands have lived to carouse over their coffins. Children,—mere babes—are afflicted with diseases for which often no cause can be assigned and no cure discovered—while over the whole sweltering mass of human helplessness and ignorance, Death stalks triumphant,—and God, though called upon for rescue with prayers and tears, withdraws Himself in clouds of impenetrable silence. It is all hopeless, useless, irremediable! That is why my thoughts turn to Rome—I say, let me believe in SOMETHING, if it be only a fairy tale! Let me hear grand music mounting to heaven, even if human words cannot reach so high!—let me think that guardian angels exist, even if there is nothing in space save a blind Chance spawning life particles uselessly,—let my soul and senses feel the touch of something higher, vaster, purer and better than what the Church of England calls Christianity at this present day!”

“And that ‘something higher, vaster, purer and better’—would you call it the Church of Rome?” asked Walden. “In suggestion,—in emotion and poetic inspiration, yes!”—said Brent—“In theory and in practice, no!”

There was a pause. Walden sat for a few moments absorbed in anxious thought. Then he looked up with a cheerful air.

“Harry,” he said—“Will you do me a favour? Promise that you will postpone the idea of seceding, or as you put it, ‘returning’ to Rome, for six months. Will you? At the end of that time we’ll discuss it again.”

The Bishop looked uneasy.

“I would rather do what has to be done at once,”—he said.

“Then I must talk to you straightly,”—continued John, bracing himself up, and squaring his shoulders resolutely—“I must forget that you are my Bishop, and speak just as man to man. All the facts of the case can be summed up in one word—Selfishness! Pure Selfishness, Harry!—and I never thought I should have had to convict you of it!”

Brent drew himself slowly up in his chair.

“Selfishness!” he echoed, dreamily—“I can take anything from you, John!—I did at college,—but—selfishness---”

“Selfishness!” repeated John, firmly—“You have had to suffer a grief—a great grief,—and because it was so sudden, so tragic and overwhelming, you draw a mourning veil of your own across the very face of God! You try to rule your diocese by the measure of your own rod of affliction. And, finding that nothing is clear to you, because of your own obstructive spirit, you would set up a fresh barrier between yourself and Eternal Wisdom, by deserting your post here, and separating yourself from all the world save the shadow of the woman you yourself loved! Harry, my dear old friend, unless I had heard this from your own lips, I should never have believed it of you!”

Brent sat heavily in his chair, sunk in a brooding melancholy.

“‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness!’”—he murmured wearily— “Your reproaches are just,—I know I deserve them, but they do not rouse me. They do not stir one pulse in my soul! What have I learned of Eternal Wisdom?—what have I seen? Nothing but cruelty upon cruelty dealt out, not to the wicked, but to the innocent! And because I protest against this, you call my spirit an obstructive one—well!—it may be so! But, Walden, you have never loved!—you have never felt all your life rush like a river to the sea of passion!—not low, debasing passion, but passion born of vitality, ardour, truth,