A Severe Mercy

by Sheldon Vanauken

  When I had done telling this tale of Horsebite Hall, all the students wanted to pat Flurry, a tribute that she was only too pleased to accept. And the parable evidently made sense to them; years later, some of them would say that they still thought of Gypsy whenever there was a reference to the Fall.

  About the time the Christian group began I wrote to C. S. Lewis, telling him that he had virtually created us anew through the books and letters leading to our conversion. I expressed my disgust at certain clergymen—men called, supposedly, to represent Christ —who neither believed nor had the honesty to resign. I also expressed my astonishment, at moments, at the thought of myself being a Christian. Lewis replied, as follows:

  It was very nice to hear from you. I hope my interest in you both is something less blasphemous than that of a Creator in a creature (it wd. anyway be begetting not creating, see Philemon 10). My feeling about people in whose conversion I have been allowed to play a part is always mixed with awe and even fear: such as a boy might feel on first being allowed to fire a rifle. The disproportion between his puny finger on the trigger and the thunder & lightning wh. follow is alarming. And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself. By writing the things I write, you see, one especially qualifies for being hereafter ‘condemned out of one’s own mouth’. Think of me as a fellow-patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, cd. give some advice.

  The semi-Christians (in dog-collars) that you speak of are a great trial. Our College chaplain is rather of that kind. I’ m glad you have something better in your own church.

  I feel an amused recognition when you describe those moments at wh. one feels ‘How cd. I —I, of all people—ever have come to believe this cock & bull story.’ I think they will do us no harm. Aren’t they just the reverse side of one’s just recognition that the truth is amazing? Our fathers were more familiar with the opposite danger of taking it all for granted: which is probably just as bad.

  God bless you both: you are always in my prayers. I hope we may meet again one day.

  The moments of astonished incredulity at one’s own belief were, as Lewis said, rather amusing. I smiled at them myself. I knew of course that they were much more likely to occur here in Virginia, where my past experience was pagan, than in Oxford, which, to Davy and me, was almost entirely associated with Christianity. I tended, indeed, to feel, here in Virginia, that God Himself dwelt in Oxford, His holy city, where He could hear the bells. My moments of astonishment did not of course mean that my faith was endangered. At the same time, my pagan impulses were somewhat troubling.

  I became more troubled as the year moved on, which, in turn, troubled Davy. While still in Oxford, we had talked at the Lamb and Flag of the need to be alone, with leisure, in order to reconcile and bring into harmony our pagan dream of love and beauty and this overwhelming Christianity. And we had given the name of Ladywood to the place where we should, when we could, do it. How did the Shining Barrier stand under the Light? But Li’l Dreary was not Ladywood. There was little of leisure or being alone together. And I was remembering—being stabbed by remembrance—the images from the old pagan days: the gay companionship, the love of life and beauty, the dedication to our love, the schooner outward bound to far islands.

  But we were Christians now. Davy, with the eagerness that was part of her very being, was flinging herself into the service of the Incarnate God. I, too, was serving Him: the morning and evening prayers with Davy, the church, the student group, the challenges that I tried to make implicit in my teaching. Indeed, it was I who at Oxford had seen and written in our Journal: ‘It is not possible to be “incidentally a Christian”. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing.’ And I would no doubt have affirmed that statement still, with my mind. Davy was affirming it with her whole being. And Christianity was first in my concerns. Intellectually I was wholly committed to its truth. And yet I was holding something back. But for Davy it really was ‘overwhelmingly first’—nothing held back. She was literally pouring out her life in Christ’s service.

  I wanted—what did I want? I wanted the fine keen bow of a schooner cutting the waves with Davy and me—just Davy and me and Flurry—happy and loving and comradely on her decks. Well, there was nothing unChristian about that, as long as God was there, too, and as long as we were neglecting no service of love. But, though I wouldn’t have admitted it, even to myself, I didn’t want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted Him approving from a considerable distance. I didn’t want to be thinking of Him. I wanted to be free—like Gypsy. I wanted life itself, the colour and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn’t want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ. We should, somehow, be able to have the Shining Barrier intact and follow the King of Glory. I didn’t want to be a saint. Almost none of this did I consciously know—just longings.

  But for Davy, to live was Christ. She didn’t want to be a saint, either; she was too humble even to think of such a thing. She simply wanted God—almost totally. His service was her freedom, her joy. She loved me, she loved our sharing; but, ultimately, all there was to share was Christ and His service. I knew it was so with her.

  She served God and she served our neighbour, gladly. She worked hard and long—to my mind too hard and long—preparing for her Sunday school class. If I had done it, I’ d probably have done it without preparation. But the very idea of a Sunday school bored me. Davy wanted some of her more obdurate boys to talk to me. It never came about because I did nothing to bring it about. I knew she would be delighted if I were to offer to be a co-teacher of that class; perhaps God would have been delighted, too, and the work of the Kingdom furthered; certainly it would have been sharing. But I did not do it. I felt that, with the church and the group and our prayers, I was doing enough. I did not, needless to say, ask myself what I meant by ‘enough’. Enough for what?

  When Davy wasn’t reading the Bible to prepare for her class, she was reading it for her soul’s sake. She was always reading it, or reading Brother Lawrence and other devotional works. I wanted to protest that it was too much; but how could I do that? It’s not possible for one Christian to say to another: You love God too much. Nor to say: You are holier than necessary. I couldn’t even think such thoughts. They would have been dangerous. I might have seen things. I merely felt a sort of helpless protest. I didn’t quite like to see her poring over Isaiah or St. John. I think I’ d have smiled to see her curled up with an Agatha Christie. I knew that everything had to be different now we were Christians— but this different? I may even have read the Bible less as she read it more, as a kind of dumb protest. Some witty tongue defined a martyr as a person who lives with a saint. I might have given that a wry smile. The martyrdom consisted of being unable to say anything and of not knowing what to say, anyhow.

  Davy of course knew that all was not well, despite my silence. I expect she prayed about it, but she, too, must have found it hard to speak of anything so vague, something she merely sensed. Once, before Oxford, if one of us had felt that something was not right, or that something was dividing us and was, therefore, a threat to our love, a Navigators’ Council would have been called for. The whole thing would have been discussed, and, if need be, the Appeal to Love, bright and irresistible, would have been brought forth: what is best for our love? Always, the Appeal to Love had been the one, the sufficient, basis for action. But now— I knew it and she must have known it—the Appeal was broken. The simple, perfect Appeal, without a word said, was blunted. Now, the only appeal was to God. It would not be best for our love for Davy to be crucified -but how if it were best for God? It might be what God required of her. And I certainly could not suppose or maintain that I knew better than Davy what was best for the Kingdom. Indeed, I had an uneasy suspicion that she knew a great deal more about it than I did. And yet I could not—
or, at all events, did not—go all the way with her.

  We still prayed together hand in hand. We went to church and discussed what we should do in the student group. We were still a team and we loved each other dearly. But we did not talk of what I was feeling. And yet the knowledge that the Appeal was broken sank deep into me. I did not consciously think—let alone say—that I ought to be able to invoke the old Appeal; but I felt it. It was like having something I had always trusted, my right arm perhaps, suddenly useless. I was deeply confused. I spoke on an earlier page of our love as like a fine watch that could be thrown off by a grain of dust. But this was not a grain of dust or even a mustard seed: it was the eternal God. After all, as C. S. Lewis had said, I was not finding the existence of a Master and a Judge ‘simply pleasant’. My intellectual commitment to that Master was perfectly clear, as was Davy’s. And at Oxford it had all been challenging and beautiful and exciting. But now it seemed different. Duller. Davy was simply living up to her commitment, wherever it led. For me, that was the trouble: where it led. I was ready to play in a match, Christians v. Atheists. I was ready to level my lance and charge under the Cross of Gold. I was ready to follow the King into battle. But —Sunday school? Where was the glory? Poring over the Bible—when we could be reading poetry? Where was the army of the King with banners? Where was the cathedral, beautiful and holy?

  So Davy went on reading the Bible, and I went on not reading it much. I read other things, novels and mysteries, which she didn’t have time to read. No longer in loyalty to our love were we reading the same books. How could I say: Stop reading Isaiah and read Margery Allingham? Besides, if she did, I’ d have to read Isaiah. And the old sharing was going in another way. She was becoming wifely. She was accepting St. Paul on women and wives. She seemed to want to be domestic and make things in the kitchen. I was afraid she might actually obey me if I issued a command. There was something very humble and good in her attitude towards me as well as towards Christ. A humble vocation. But it wasn’t like her. I almost wanted a fight.

  As spring came on with its blossoms, its stir, its soft and cajoling breezes, its lilacs, I felt that stir in me as I walked to college. Images of blue water and a yacht heeling under a fresh breeze came into my mind. Images of far islands. The ‘divine discontent’ that spring is supposed to foster was, in me, not a bit divine. But it was discontent. I talked about yachts that spring, when we sat after dinner on our small back porch, and Davy herself spoke of them with love and nostalgia. We spoke, with a faintly tentative air, of when we should have a Grey Goose again. The sense of being outward bound that had marked our whole life was with us again, a little. But we did not come to grips with the big question: how can the old pagan joy, the Shining-Barrier love, symbolised by a schooner named Grey Goose heeling under the wind, be reconciled with Christian joy?

  What I wanted, emotionally if not intellectually, was the old Davy back along with the old love of life and beauty and poetry for their own sakes. It was a longing of the heart that seemingly could not be reconciled with my intellectual commitment to Christ. Even less could it be reconciled with Davy’s wholeness, both mind and heart, of devotion. Perhaps if we had been given time — unpressured time alone together—we could have reconciled all and found our way. But we were not given time.

  The college term ended, but this once, for the sake of the exchequer, I taught summer school. And Davy was working in the bank.

  The heat that summer was frightful. The heat and the jungle. And we were used to England. No air-conditioning. We should hardly have had the energy to talk if we had had time. In July I became worried about Davy’s tiredness—tiredness coupled with a slight swelling of her ankles—and insisted that she see our doctor. He said she was overdoing and must work part-time only. So now I did issue a command: she must stop working altogether. Accordingly, she gave in her notice.

  Davy did not say so then, but she secretly thought—perhaps only briefly—that she was going to die. She prayed that she be allowed to live one more year for the sake of the Christian group. But I did not know.

  In August came Jane from England. For three weeks. Davy had brought her from the choir at St. Ebbe’s to the Studio, and then she had come often. Just before we left England, she had come back to Oxford for a brief gay visit. Now, her parents being in New York on business for awhile, she had come over. Jane was country-bred and loved country things, as did we. She also loved poetry. So those were bonds. On the other hand, she was very young and, sometimes, moody and silent. Our early feelings about her in Oxford had varied between thinking her ‘a nice child’ and being annoyed with her moodiness, but the nice child had won out. Then I began to notice her perceptiveness and intensity of listening when I read poetry. She also loved Charles Williams. When she came back on that last visit to Oxford, we felt a real bond with her.

  We looked forward to her visit. She would be a breath of England. And Oxford which we all loved. Unfortunately Davy had just given in her notice, so she would still be working during most of Jane’s stay. It would be up to me to cope in the daytime.

  So the ‘nice child’, rather distinctly less the child now that she was in the university, came, and I coped. Every morning she walked into college with me and came to my class in English literature. She even took the tests with Alpha double plusses. After class we sometimes walked about the town, looking at houses and talking of England. Eventually we would go home and talk some more. And read poetry. All manner of poem. But, especially, I would read T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, which was already a bond between us. And she would read Emily Bronte’s poems, poems that she had always loved, which became a bond between us. We talked a lot of Emily Bronte: of the strange love that linked Heathcliffe and Cathy, and of the sisters, Emily and Charlotte, growing up in that lonely Yorkshire house, running in ragged frocks across the moors. We also talked endlessly about Oxford, very dear to us both. So the hours happily sped.

  Jane was a Christian. She had not grown up as one but had been converted not long before we knew her, converted almost at the same time as I had been. So we jokingly said that she was my ‘godsister’. If godparents, why not a godsister? Although low-church St. Ebbe’s had brought about our meeting, she had become higher. What moved her was Anglo-Catholic worship with its emphasis on the altar and the sacraments, as well as its deep aesthetic appeal. I, too, was inclined that way, rather more than Davy was. It had not been an issue between us, partly because we were united in our dislike of the watered-down ‘broad church’ and partly because there was no high church in Lynchburg any-how. But now Jane and I werefindinga bond in the Anglo-Catholic approach to the faith: the beauty, the mystery, the holiness. The beauty of holiness. A less workaday sort of Christianity. No Sunday schools, perhaps. It may be that Jane and I were drawn more by the beauty than the holiness. We remembered St. Mary Magdalen in Oxford—an aesthetic and, indeed, romantic appeal. And of course we were finding an aesthetic bond in the poetry— poetry that we were loving for its own sake. I had always served beauty. Davy and I together had loved beauty. Now, maybe, I was worshipping beauty in the Christian God while Davy was worshipping God. There may be danger in the love of beauty, though it seems treason to say it. Perhaps it can be a snare. If so Jane and I were snared. And Davy went tiredly off to work, thinking she might be going to die, and faithfully taught her Sunday school class. And Jane and I entertained each other.

  Jane’s weeks with us sped tranquilly by, marked by small events. The Rector and his wife came to tea. Other people called. My colleague, Belle, took us all for a Sunday drive in the country, and we were caught in a frightful storm that rocked the car while trees and barns blew down around us. We made our communion at the beautiful white altar of Grace Church. And imperceptibly Jane and I grew closer and laughed at little jokes that grew out of our hours together. Early in her stay with us, a strange gloom and silence fell upon Jane; and I went impatiently off and left it to Davy to do something. Later in the visit it occurred again, and this time it was
I that stroked her hair and soothed her. The gloom was caused by the approaching end of her stay with us.

  Since Oxford Davy and I had longed for one of the beautifully designed TC or TD MG two-seaters. Now, a few days before Jane was to leave, I spotted a black TD with a For Sale sign on it and entered into discussion with its owner. I took Davy, now at last not working, for a spin. Then we bought it. Jane, imitating a cockney child, said, ‘Coo, Miss!’ when she saw it.

  The next three nights—Jane’s last—the three of us drove under a full moon, Davy and I rediscovering the real Virginia, the country, that we loved. We went up into the high Blueridge, mysterious and beautiful under the moon. Once while we lay in the grass on the mountain a huge white owl drifted over us. Once we stopped at the little country church, St. Stephen’s, that we had used to go to occasionally. We sat there beneath the great oaks of the churchyard and talked. Then, after our drive, overwhelmed by the cool beauty of the night, we would come home. Davy, no longer working but still tired out, would go to bed; and Jane and I would sit up awhile, talking and reading some poems. We were very conscious that her stay was ending and were sad, Jane perhaps especially.

  The third night’s drive was the most lovely of all —unearthly in its mooon-blanched beauty. And it was the last, for Jane was to go in the morning. When we came home, perhaps about one, Davy went to bed and Jane and I, again, sat up. We read ‘Little Gidding’ from the Four Quartets and talked a little. There was a sort of anguish in me that she was going away. I wished we were all sailing for England. I wished she were my sister in truth. I said something and she did not reply. I looked at her: there were tears in her eyes. I reached out and took her hand. Perhaps I murmured, ‘Oh, Jane!’ No one said anything further. I may have started to withdraw my hand, but her clasp tightened. I did not withdraw it. Minutes passed. Then hours. Silence. I do not know what I thought. I do not know whether I thought. I felt, mostly. Grief at her going, certainly. A feeling that she and England were one. Images of the Yorkshire moors and children running over them. The hours passed unaware. The grey light of dawn seeped in the windows. A few hours later Jane was on her way to England.