Chapter IX: Charles Osmond

Thou art no Sabbath drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart to fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.
TENNYSON.

The deadly temptation of that night did not return, but, though Donovan was no longer torn by the fierce, inward struggle, what had happened made him think more seriously. He was disappointed and perplexed to find that, after these years of struggle and repression, the old passionate desire was still as strong as ever within him. With all his endeavours--and he knew that he had honestly tried with all his might--he had only been able to check the outward actions; he had cut off bravely enough the visible growth, he had, as it were, razed to the ground this evil passion, but its roots were still untouched. He smiled a little as he thought of it.

"Radical that I am, can I fail to root out the evil in myself? Professing to go straight to the root of all grievances, must I yet be unable to get rid of this?"

He was obliged to own that his power was absolutely limited to the suppression of evil in action; he had come to the very end of his strength, he might by great effort be pure in deed, but pure in heart he could never make himself. Yet actual purity was no dream. Gladys was pure, purity was written on every line of her face; he could not imagine her harbouring an impure thought or desire for an instant. Yet he knew that she was not in herself perfect; he was not at all the sort of man to fall blindly in love; he had noticed many trifling faults in Gladys, had heard her speak hastily, had discovered that she was a little too desirous of standing first with those she loved, was apt to exaggerate and to tell small incidents with pretty little imaginative touches of her own. She was not faultless, but, in spite of occasional and momentary falls, she was pervaded by a purity of thought and deed, of word and desire, which to Donovan was utterly incomprehensible. He was conscious, as he had latterly been with Dot, that she was breathing an altogether different atmosphere. He was like the shaded valley, little air and little light reaching him, she was like a beautiful snowy mountain peak in sunshine; a passing fault like a cloud might for a time dim the brightness, but only for a time--the sunshine would illumine all again. And then his own metaphor flashed a conviction on him--it must be a reflected brightness, a reflected loveliness that he saw in Gladys!

Unsatisfied as he had long been with agnosticism, he was now fully aware that he had reached the limit of what it could give him; he had tried with all his might to live a self-denying, pure life, and in some degree he had succeeded, but if he lived a hundred years he saw no chance of getting further; there would of course be constant opportunities for fresh self-denial, but he could not of himself ever attain to purity of heart. What then? There was a great want somewhere; he was incomplete, he reproached himself with being so, but yet had he not striven to the utmost? Might there not be a living Purity, a living Strength other than himself, to fill this void, to round off this incompleteness? It was only a speculation, but speculations are helpful if they go hand-in-hand with honest work; if they lead to nothing, they at least teach us our own ignorance, and they may lead towards the unveiling of the hidden truth.

One Sunday, in January, it happened that Donovan was out alone, for though Rouge generally went with him on his long Sunday rambles, the afternoon had seemed so raw and cold and unpromising that he had preferred to stay indoors. It certainly was not a comfortable sort of day, but the weekly chance of a twenty mile stretch was not to be lightly lost, and, rain or shine, Donovan generally spent the greater part of the Sunday in exercise. Even had he not been exceedingly fond of walking, there was Waif to be considered; as it was, both dog and master looked forward to the day of rest, and used it to the best of their present abilities.

It was quite dark by the time they had reached the suburbs; walking on at a brisk pace they made their way further into London. The bells had ceased ringing, and, becoming aware that he was exceedingly hungry, Donovan glanced at his watch, finding to his surprise that it was already a quarter to eight. They were passing through a very poor neighbourhood, and he had just turned from a crowded thoroughfare into a quiet side street, when a man, flushed, bare-headed, and breathless, dashed out of a building to the left, and in his haste almost knocked Donovan over.

"Beg pardon, sir," he panted; "a lady in a fit in the church, and heaven knows where I'm to find a doctor!"

"Better have me, I'm half a doctor," said Donovan. "Be quick, anything's better than losing time."

"A providence!" gasped the verger. "This way, sir, this way."

Now the church had been built on what an architect would have considered a very "_in_eligible site," for it was wedged in between the houses in a way which cruelly spoilt its beauty. The site, however, was in other respects exceedingly "eligible," that is to say, it was within a stone's throw of hundreds of the poor and ignorant. It was not, however, a convenient church for people afflicted with fits, for there was no separate entrance to the vestry, and the vestry was at the east end. The verger, followed by Donovan and Waif, walked straight up the church, to the distraction of the congregation; some people were amused, some were scandalised at the entrance of the fox-terrier. One of the churchwardens tried to drive him back; but Waif's master had called him to heel, and to heel he would keep, though all the churchwardens in the world were to set upon him.

Donovan found his patient stretched on the floor in an epileptic fit, an old woman kneeling beside her, vainly trying to restrain her wild movements. The little room was used as a choir vestry, two unused surplices were hanging on the wall, he snatched one of them down, crushed the white folds remorselessly together, and put them between his patient's teeth. Presently she grew quieter. Donovan, seeing a half open door, glanced in, and found a second room, with a sofa and a larger window; with the verger's help he carried the girl in, and soon she became herself again. He decreed, however, that she should rest where she was till the service was over, when the verger could get her a cab.

Leaving her under her mother's care, he went back into the little outer vestry; but realising that Waif might be considered _de trop_ in a church he would not again go down the aisle; besides, it might be better that he should see his patient fairly out of her trouble. The waiting, however, was dull; to pass the time he noiselessly opened the vestry door and, through the narrowest of openings, took a glance at the congregation. They appeared to be listening very intently. He could not see the preacher, but he could hear him quite plainly, and instinctively he too began to listen. How many years was it since he had heard a sermon? Very nearly seven, and the last had been that never-to-be-forgotten sermon in the school chapel. Even now the recollection of it brought an angry glow to his face.

But the remembrance died away as soon as he began to listen to the clear tones of the present speaker, whose rather uncommon delivery attracted him not a little; it was manly, straightforward, quite free from the touch of patronage or the conventional sanctimonious drawl which goes far towards making many sermons unpalatable.

"I speak now more particularly to those who have some faith in God, but whose faith is weak, variable, largely mingled with distrust. I ask you to look at your everyday life and tell me this: Which suffers most, the father who disciplines, or the child who is disciplined? You who have had anything to do with little children will surely answer, 'It is the one who disciplines who suffers most--the father bears his own pain and his child's as well.'

"Look once more at your daily life and answer me one more question. Two friends are estranged, which suffers most, the one who doubts or the one who is unjustly doubted? You who can speak from experience will, I think, answer without hesitation, 'the one who is doubted.'

"Believe me, you who are in the twilight of a half faith, you who are in the darkness of scepticism, you who are hungering after you scarcely know what, hungering perhaps for an unknown goodness, a far distant holiness, your pain, cruel and gnawing and remorseless as it is, is a mere nothing compared with the pain which He whom you doubt suffers.

"Yes, look again at your own experience, realise as keenly as you can what is the pain of being unjustly doubted. Take it all ways, the sting of the injustice, the grievous disappointment in your friend, the dull ache of forsakenness, that is your own share, but you bear your friend's as well. There is his disappointment, his loneliness, his sense of betrayal, his indignation to be taken into account, the thought of it weighs on you more than your own personal pain. Oh! without question the pain of the one doubted is keener than the pain of the one who doubts, it is double pain. And in proportion to the strength of the love will be the sharpness of the suffering.

"To infinite, unthinkable love, therefore, we who doubt must bring infinite, unthinkable pain.

"It can hardly be, however, that in this congregation there have not been many dissentient thoughts during to-night's sermon. Even as I read my text I wondered how many will object to those words, 'the Father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.'

"Father! How many shrink from using the word! Sometimes they are people who tell you they believe in 'a God;' I notice that they always use the word 'a,' they do not say 'we believe in _the_ God.' Sometimes they are people who accept the latter part of the text only, they believe in a 'force' in which there is 'no variableness.' Sometimes they believe in an 'impersonal God,' which--allowing that by person you mean the 'ego,' the spirit--is about equal to speaking of an 'unspiritual God.' I do not wish to say one harsh word about those of you who hold such views, but before you urge again the old objections, 'degrading ideas,' 'anthropomorphism,' and such like, I should like you to ask yourselves, with perfect honesty, this question: 'Did not my first objection to the word father rise from dislike to the necessary sequence that I was His child, rather than from real belief that the term was degrading to the Deity?'

"Spiritual life has its analogies with natural life; there does come a time when, with the consciousness of a certain strength, we long to be free agents, to shake off all authority, to go out in the world and feud for ourselves. And the real recognition of a father implies obedience, and obedience is hard to all men.

"But, on the other hand, I must defend my use of the word father from misconceptions. Not in the Mahomedan sense of a gigantic man do we call God our Father. The term given to us by Christ brings to our mind a conception of love and protection, it ought to rouse in us the child sense of reverence, obedience--in a word, 'sonship.' 'Words!' you exclaim, 'mere terms!' But remember that we must use finite terms in this life, even in speaking of infinity. You feel the terms to be a limitation? Perhaps that is well; to be conscious of limitation points to a larger, fuller, grander possibility dawning for us in the hereafter. Why should we for that reason be too proud to use the grand, simple Anglo-Saxon word 'father'? You will not better it with all your laborious efforts, your many worded and complicated substitutes.

"Using, then, this much abused term, let us turn back to our recollections of childhood. Some of us at least--I hope very many--have had fathers worthy of the name. We did not understand our father, but we revered and loved him, he was at once friend and counsellor, our standard in everything. What would have been his feeling if in later life we had doubted him, doubted his very love for us, cast off our family name, lived in independence and lovelessness? The really loving father would be grieved, cut to the heart, never vindictively wrathful.

"This father I would take as the shadow of the Divine reality. I cannot doubt that God has often been represented to you as a jealous potentate, an autocrat with human passions; but I would beg you to-night to put those thoughts from you, to turn instead to the revelation of Jesus Christ, the revelation, that is, of the 'Father of lights,' the Father in whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, who in spite of our sin, our doubt, our unworthiness, will be our Father for ever and ever.

"My friends, my brothers, will you not think of the infinite pain which is caused by the doubt of one heart? Will you not struggle to free yourselves from it?

"'But,' I think I hear some one say, 'this man can know nothing about doubt or unbelief; if he did he would know the impossibility of willing to believe, willing to free yourself from doubt.'

"Yes, that is true. To will belief is quite impossible. By struggling to free yourselves from doubt, I mean making a constant effort to live the Christ-life--the life of self-renunciation that God has consecrated and ordained as the high road to Himself. There may be some here who know nothing of God, some who know Him in part, but to all alike there is but that one road which can lead to knowledge of things divine--the road of the cross.

"'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus,' says St. Paul, 'has made me free from the law of sin and death.'

"The law that is of loving self-sacrifice, Christ's new law, is the law which sets us free from selfishness and ignorance of God.

"And that hard road of self-denial, so uncongenial to us all in itself, has proved to everyone who has taken his way honestly along it, in very truth the way of light. For the Father of lights will Himself meet us as we walk that road, when we are 'yet a great way off' He will appear to us from afar, saying--'Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.'

"Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think, &c."

The congregation rose, Donovan pushed the door to.

"H'm, so that's what you think about it," he muttered to himself, giving his mind a sort of matter-of-fact twist because he was conscious of a certain choking sensation in his throat. "Yet could anyone imagine such a Being? It would take a strangely pure mind to form such a conception. If there were a God, He must be like that; the utter lovelessness of Doery's 'offended autocrat' had been its own disproof. Could there be truth in that saying in the sermon on the mount, 'The pure in heart shall see God.'"

From a confused train of thought like this he was roused by the sound of one of Dot's favourite hymns, Newman's "Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom." Why it had been such a favourite of hers he had never found out, it was hardly a child's hymn, and Dot had been the simplest of little children. Perhaps the pure Saxon English had attracted her, as it usually does attract simple childlike souls. How many times could Donovan remember playing the tune for her! He seemed now almost to hear the soft child-voice singing with the congregation. With almost painful intentness he listened, the words of the last verse floating in to him with perfect distinctness.

"So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone.
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

He turned away with hot tears in his eyes. He had lost all his "angel faces," and did not yet believe that "the morn" was coming, he could not believe in the hereafter, and he had given up all that was beautiful in the present. Life will feel black to such.

He began to poke the fire, he picked up the crumpled surplice from the floor, folded it methodically, and laid it on the table, then, finding such work too mechanical to answer his purpose, he retreated into the inner vestry, and began to talk to his patient's mother.

Before very long there was a hum of voices in the next room, then the door opened and the verger appeared, followed to Donovan's utter amazement by Brian Osmond.

"Hullo, who would have thought of seeing you here?" he exclaimed. "Why didn't you hurry to the rescue?"

"I was the other side of the choir, and didn't see what was up," said Brian; "the first thing I did see was the entrance of you and Waif. How's your patient?"

"All right again," said Donovan, "we must get her a cab."

"Brown will do that. You come with me now, I want you to see my father."

"Your father?"

"This is his church, did you not know?"

Was it then Brian's father who had been preaching? Donovan did not ask, but followed him into the other vestry, where several rather shabby-looking little boys were just disappearing through the doorway, having left what Mrs. Doery would have called their "whites" behind them. There was only one clergyman, he was standing by the fire talking to the organist, and Donovan had a minute or two in which to take a survey of him.

Charles Osmond was a man of eight and forty; he was tall, nearly six feet, squarely made rather, muscularly very strong, but constitutionally delicate. His character was much like his body; he united in a very rare way the man's strength and the woman's tenderness. Looking at him superficially, he seemed older than his years, for he was nearly bald, and the fringe of hair that remained round what he called his "tonsure" was quite grey; but his eyes were young, his voice was young; there was a sprightliness, almost a boyishness in his manner at times.

"Clever and honest, and not too clerical," was Donovan's comment, the last adjective being, from his lips, of the nature of a compliment, for he had a great dislike of the clergy as a class. He had received from individual members of the profession some injustice and no kindness, and he not unnaturally proceeded to judge them as a class, and to abuse them wholesale. A patient who has received mistaken treatment from a doctor, invariably scoffs at all doctors, and ever after terms them quacks. A client receiving an exorbitant bill from his solicitor, relieves his annoyance by proclaiming all lawyers to be grasping and avaricious. In this, as in other cases, a little fire kindles a great matter.

Charles Osmond turned in a minute or two, and Brian introduced Donovan.

"I saw you and your dog come in," he observed, with laughter in his eyes. "Now, if certain religious newspapers get hold of that incident, we shall have some beautiful paragraphs. 'Strange new innovation,' 'Canine processions,' etc. I hope your patient is better?"

By this time Donovan liked the man, instinctively liked and trusted him. Charles Osmond had a very strange fascination about him. He had an extraordinary power in his touch; to shake hands with him was to receive no conventional greeting, but to be taken closer to the man himself, to be assured of his hearty, honest sympathy. His eyes were to Donovan like Waif's eyes; all his soul seemed to look out of them; they were eyes which never looked in a hard way at people, never seemed to be forming an opinion about them, but, like the bright eager eyes of a dog, expressed almost as clearly as words, "let us come as near each other as we can."

He was a man who cared not a rush for what was said of people, a man who would have preferred dining with an excommunicated heretic to dining with the queen. He was no respecter of persons, and rather disliked official dignitaries as such, but he could admire worth whatever its surroundings, and he had a profound respect for man as man.

For a few minutes he was left alone with Donovan, while Brian and the verger were helping the patient to a cab.

Before this there had been ordinary small talk, a sort of jumble of epileptic fits, fox-terriers, Barnard and Bishop stoves, etc., but as soon as they were alone, Donovan, obeying the plea of those dog-like eyes, did draw a little nearer, a little more out of his shell.

"I heard the end of your sermon to-night," he said, rather abruptly. "It is the first I have heard for several years. If it wouldn't be asking too much, would you let me have it to read?"

"With all my heart, if it were readable," said Mr. Osmond, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, as he handed half a sheet of paper to Donovan, with a few notes written on it.

"Oh! you preach extempore. I am sorry," remarked Donovan.

"It is the only way for a church like mine," said Mr. Osmond. "But I can, if you like, give you plenty of sermons on that subject, and books too, much more to the point than anything you can have heard to-night."

"Thank you," said Donovan, "but I am afraid I must ungraciously refuse that offer. I have read some dozens of theological books to very little purpose, and have just made a clean sweep of them, and bought a polariser for my microscope with the proceeds."

"And find it of much more use, I daresay," said Mr. Osmond, laughing. "But if you cared enough for such matters to get and read theological books, why were you so many years without the far less tedious process of sermon hearing?"

"Because I am an agnostic," said Donovan, "and as there is no necessity, I do not care to stand, sit, and kneel through a meaningless form. I would not do it even to hear you again, and I own that I should like to hear you."

"Then any Sunday that you care to look in here at a quarter to eight, you shall find the seat nearest the door empty," said Mr. Osmond. "Of course we extend the invitation to the dog as long as he'll sit quiet; I see you are inseparable. What an intelligent-looking mortal he is!"

"I could not quite tell you the number of times he has saved my life," said Donovan. "He won't defile your church; he's much more of a Christian than many church-goers I have known."

"Did you ever hear the story of the eccentric man of Bruges?" said Mr. Osmond. "He was passionately fond of his dogs; the _curé_ remonstrated with him, and told him that if he went to heaven he must part with them. 'I will go nowhere,' exclaimed the good man, 'where I cannot take my dogs.'"

"Capital fellow!" said Donovan, laughing. "I quite agree with him."

By that time Brian had returned; the verger was beginning to turn out the gas.

"Come and have supper with us," said Mr. Osmond, as they walked together down the empty church.

"Thank you," replied Donovan, "I am afraid I must go home; I have been out most of the day."

"Microscope, or the old man of the sea?" questioned Brian.

"The latter," said Donovan, with a laugh. "Good night."

He whistled to Waif, and they disappeared in the dark street.