Saint`s Progress

SAINT’S PROGRESS

The face of the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own. She thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of shocked and wondering girls. Suppose one of them had been in her position! ‘Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest? I wouldn’t no, I wouldn’t,’ she thought; ‘I should have understood!’ But she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in her thought. Instinctively she felt the painter right. One who acted differently from others, was lost.

She told her father of the encounter, adding: «I expect he’ll come, Daddy».

Pierson answered dreamily: «Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if he does».

«And you’ll sit to him, won’t you?» «My dear – I?»

«He’s lonely, you know, and people aren’t nice to him. Isn’t it hateful that people should hurt others, because they’re foreign or different?»

She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: «I know you think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren’t, of course».

«That’s not exactly charitable, Nollie».

«You know they’re not. I think sin often just means doing things differently. It’s not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that doesn’t prevent people condemning you, does it?»

«I don’t know what you mean, Nollie».

Noel bit her lips, and murmured: «Are you sure we’re really Christians, Daddy?»

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The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took refuge in an attempt at wit. «I should like notice of that question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament».

«That means you don’t».

Pierson flushed. «We’re fallible enough; but, don’t get such ideas into your head, my child. There’s a lot of rebellious talk and writing in these days...».

Noel clasped her hands behind her head. «I think»,she said, looking straight before her, and speaking to the air, «that Christianity is what you do, not what you think or say. And I don’t believe people can be Christians when they act like others – I mean, when they join together to judge and hurt people».

Pierson rose and paced the room. «You have not seen enough of life to talk like that»,he said. But Noel went on:

«One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of conscientious objectors – it was horrible. Why do they treat them like that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort says it’s fear which makes people bullies. But how can it be fear when they’re hundreds to one? He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in domesticating himself. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world couldn’t be so awfully brutal. I don’t see much difference between being brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones».

Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings – sometimes! But then the young generation was always something of a sealed

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VIII

Leila was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in love it had always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt itself out before that of her partner. This had been, of course, a great advantage to her. Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn themselves out. When she fell in love she had always thought it was for always. This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been. Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life. He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these others seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed they did not figure at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together with the others for whom she had known passing weaknesses. There was only one man in the world for her now, and would be for evermore. She did not idealise him either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by his voice, and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was not with her. She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was not half as fond of her as she was of him. Such a new experience puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert. It was perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which made him seem more precious than any of

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the others. But there was ever the other reason, too-conscious- ness that Time was after her, and this her last grand passion. She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten, without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience. She had begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not have said. It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to what he called «that little fairy princess».Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy. Until the death of her young cousin’s lover she had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man’s property; had he not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away from her? And she had often regretted having told him of Cyril Morland’s death. One day she determined to repair that error. It was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday afternoons. They were standing before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both of old days on the veldt. Without turning her head she said, as if to the little animal: «Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?»

The sound of his «What!»gave her quite a stab. It was so utterly horrified.

She said stubbornly: «She came and told me all about it. The boy is dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn’t it?»And she looked at him. His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.

«That lovely child! But it’s impossible!»

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«The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy». «I refuse to believe it».

«I tell you it is so»,she said angrily. «What a ghastly shame!»

«It was her own doing; she said so, herself». «And her father – the padre! My God!»

Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt. She had thought it would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a dangerous compassion. She could have bitten her tongue out for having spoken. When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy. And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel. What an idiot she had been!

«Don’t look like that, Jimmy. I’m sorry I told you».

His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:

«Well, I do think that’s the limit. What’s to be done for her?»

Leila answered softly: «Nothing, I’m afraid. Do you love me?»And she pressed his hand hard.

«Of course».

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But Leila thought: ‘If I were that meercat he’d have taken more notice of my paw!’ Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on to the next cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.

Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme discomfort of mind. Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave immediately after supper. She had refused to talk about Noel; had even seemed angry when he had tried to. How extraordinary some women were! Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that about such a dainty young creature without being upset! It was the most perfectly damnable news! What on earth would she do – poor little fairy princess! Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance! The whole of her life – the whole of her life! With her bring- ing-up and her father and all – it seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it. And Leila had been almost callous about the monstrous business. Women were hard to each other! Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl, but this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child! No, it was altogether too strong – too painful! And following an impulse which he could not resist, he made his way to the old Square. But having reached the house, he nearly went away again. While he stood hesitating with his hand on the bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of the moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then vanished into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps. Fort jerked the bell. He was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to be a brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but two lamps and five people in it. They were sitting

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round the fire, talking, and paused when he came in. When he had shaken hands with Pierson and been introduced to «my daughter Gratian»and a man in khaki «my son-in-law George Laird»,to a tall thin-faced, foreign-looking man in a black stock and seemingly no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen from a chair before the fire. ‘No!’ he thought, ‘I’ve dreamed it, or Leila has lied!’ She was so perfectly the selfpossessed, dainty maiden he remembered. Even the feel of her hand was the same-warm and confident; and sinking into a chair, he said: «Please go on, and let me chip in».

«We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort»,said the man in khaki; «delighted to have your help. I was just saying that this particular world has no particular importance, no more than a newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed tomorrow – ’’.rrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world – six o’clock editionpyper!’ I say that it will become again the nebula out of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form into a fresh shape and so on ad infinitum – but I can’t explain why. My wife wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind – but she can’t explain what the human mind is. My father-in-law thinks that it is God’s hobby – but he can’t explain who or what God is. Nollie is silent. And Monsieur Lavendie hasn’t yet told us what he thinks. What do you think, monsieur?»The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high, veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in French, which Fort followed with difficulty.

«For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all time and to all time is ever expressing himself in dif-

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fering forms – always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing. For me this world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and trees – little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little lives run their course, and are spilled or powdered back into this Creative Artist, whence issue ever fresh attempts at art. I agree with Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I understand her. You see, I think mind and matter are one, or perhaps there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth – an artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night which comes between two days. But the next day is never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in the same form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds, fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything. I do not see anything depressing in that. To me it would be depressing to think that I would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself yet not myself. How stale that would be! When I finish a picture it is inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another picture, or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it has expressed. The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is ever in fresh effort to achieve new things. He is as a fountain who throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the water, flow into the pipe,

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and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped drops. But I cannot explain why there should be this Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal Working Artist, instead of nothing at all – just empty dark for always; except indeed that it must be one thing or the other, either all or nothing; and it happens to be this and not that, the all and not the nothing».

He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on Fort’s face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to rest on something beyond. The man in khaki, who had risen and was standing with his hand on his wife’s shoulder, said:

«Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist’s point of view. The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all? Things are; and we have just to take them».Fort had the impression of something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had risen and come close to the fire.

«I cannot admit»,he was saying, «the identity of the Creator with the created. God exists outside ourselves. Nor can I admit that there is no defnite purpose and fulfilment. All is shaped to His great ends. I think we are too given to spiritual pride. The world has lost reverence; I regret it, I bitterly regret it».

«I rejoice at it»,said the man in khaki. «Now, Captain Fort, your turn to bat!»

Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said: «I think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting. I suspect the Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and defeats. Conquests leading to defeats,

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