by Grant Allen
“Perilously near falling in love,” Paul continued boldly, turning his big eyes full upon her. “Yes, perilously near.”
Their eyes met; Meenie’s fell; and they said no more. But they both felt they understood one another. Just at that moment the Professor’s wife came up to interrupt the tête-à-tête; “for that young Owen,” she said to herself, “is really getting quite too confidential with dear Meenie.”
That same evening Paul paced up and down his rooms in Peckwater with all his soul strangely upheaved within him and tossed and racked by a dozen conflicting doubts and passions. Had he gone too far? Had he yielded like Adam to the woman who beguiled him? Had he given way like Samson to the snares of Delilah? For the old Scripture phraseology and imagery, so long burned into his very nature, clung to him still in spite of all his faltering changes of opinion. Had he said more than he thought and felt about the Apostle? Even if he was going to revise his views, was it right, was it candid, was it loyal to the truth, that he should revise them under the biassing influence of Meenie’s eyes? If only he could have separated the two questions — the Apostle’s mission, and the something which he felt growing up within him! But he could not — and, as he suspected, for a most excellent reason, because the two were intimately bound up in the very warp and woof of his existence. Nature was asserting herself against the religious asceticism of the Apostle; it could not be so wrong for him to feel those feelings that had thrilled every heart in all his ancestors for innumerable generations.
He was in love with Meenie: he knew that clearly now. And this love was after all not such a wicked and terrible feeling; on the contrary, he felt all the better and the purer for it already. But then that might merely be the horrible seductiveness of the thing. Was it not always typified by the cup of Circe, by the song of the Sirens, by all that was alluring and beautiful and hollow? He paced up and down for half an hour, and then (he had sported his oak long ago) he lit his little reading lamp and sat down in the big chair by the bay window. Running his eyes over his bookshelf, he took out, half by chance, Spencer’s “Sociology.” Then, from sheer weariness, he read on for a while, hardly heeding what he read. At last he got interested, and finished a chapter. When he had finished it, he put the book down, and felt that the struggle was over. Strange that side by side in the same world, in the same London, there should exist two such utterly different types of man as Herbert Spencer and the Gideonite Apostle. The last seemed to belong to the sixteenth century, the first to some new and hitherto uncreated social world. In an age which produced thinkers like that, how could he ever have mistaken the poor, bigoted, narrow, half-instructed Apostle for a divinely inspired teacher! So far as Paul Owen was concerned, the Gideonite Church and all that belonged to it had melted utterly into thin air.
Three days later, after the Eights in the early evening, Paul found an opportunity of speaking again alone with Meenie. He had taken their party on to the Christchurch barge to see the race, and he was strolling with them afterwards round the meadow walk by the bank of the Cherwell. Paul managed to get a little in front with Meenie, and entered at once upon the subject of his late embarrassments.
“I have thought it all over since, Miss Bolton,” he said — he half hesitated whether he should say “Meenie” or not, and she was half disappointed that he didn’t, for they were both very young, and very young people fall in love so unaffectedly— “I have thought it all over, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no help for it: I must break openly with the Church.”
“Of course,” said Meenie, simply. “That I understood.”
He smiled at her ingenuousness. Such a very forward young person! And yet he liked it. “Well, the next thing is, what to do about it. You see, I have really been obtaining my education, so to speak, under false pretences. I can’t continue taking these good people’s money after I have ceased to believe in their doctrines. I ought to have faced the question sooner. It was wrong of me to wait until — until it was forced upon me by other considerations.”
This time it was Meenie who blushed. “But you don’t mean to leave Oxford without taking your degree?” she asked quickly.
“No, I think it will be better not. To stop here and try for a fellowship is my best chance of repaying these poor people the money which I have taken from them for no purpose.”
“I never thought of that,” said Meenie. “You are bound in honour to pay them back, of course.”
Paul liked the instantaneous honesty of that “of course.” It marked the naturally honourable character; for “of course,” too, they must wait to marry (young people jump so) till all that money was paid off. “Fortunately,” he said, “I have lived economically, and have not spent nearly as much as they guaranteed. I got scholarships up to a hundred a year of my own, and I only took a hundred a year of theirs. They offered me two hundred. But there’s five years at a hundred, that makes five hundred pounds — a big debt to begin life with.”
“Never mind,” said Meenie. “You will get a fellowship, and in a few years you can pay it off.”
“Yes,” said Paul, “I can pay it off. But I can never pay off the hopes and aspirations I have blighted. I must become a schoolmaster, or a barrister, or something of that sort, and never repay them for their self-sacrifice and devotion in making me whatever I shall become. They may get back their money, but they will have lost their cherished Apostle for ever.”
“Mr. Owen,” Meenie answered solemnly, “the seal of the Apostolate lies far deeper than that. It was born in you, and no act of yours can shake it off.”
“Meenie,” he said, looking at her gently, with a changed expression— “Meenie, we shall have to wait many years.”
“Never mind, Paul,” she replied, as naturally as if he had been Paul to her all her life long, “I can wait if you can. But what will you do for the immediate present?”
“I have my scholarship,” he said; “I can get on partly upon that; and then I can take pupils; and I have only one year more of it.”
So before they parted that night it was all well understood between them that Paul was to declare his defection from the Church at the earliest opportunity; that he was to live as best he might till he could take his degree; that he was then to pay off all the back debt; and that after all these things he and Meenie might get comfortably married whenever they were able. As to the Rector and his wife, or any other parental authorities, they both left them out in the cold as wholly as young people always do leave their elders out on all similar occasions.
“Maria’s a born fool!” said the Rector to his wife a week after Meenie’s return; “I always knew she was a fool, but I never knew she was quite such a fool as to permit a thing like this. So far as I can get it out of Edie, and so far as Edie can get it out of Meenie, I understand that she has allowed Meenie to go and get herself engaged to some Dissenter fellow, a Shaker, or a Mormon, or a Communist, or something of the sort, who is the son of a common labourer, and has been sent up to Oxford, Tom tells me, by his own sect, to be made into a gentleman, so as to give some sort or colour of respectability to their absurd doctrines. I shall send the girl to town at once to Emily’s, and she shall stop there all next season, to see if she can’t manage to get engaged to some young man in decent society at any rate.”
III.
When Paul Owen returned to Peckham for the long vacation, it was with a heavy heart that he ventured back slowly to his father’s cottage. Margaret Owen had put everything straight and neat in the little living room, as she always did, to welcome home her son who had grown into a gentleman; and honest John stood at the threshold beaming with pleasure to wring Paul’s hand in his firm grip, just back unwashed from his day’s labour. After the first kissings and greetings were over, John Owen said rather solemnly, “I have bad news for you, Paul. The Apostle is sick, even unto death.”
When Paul heard that, he was sorely tempted to put off the disclosure for the present; but he felt he must not. So that same night, as they sa
t together in the dusk near the window where the geraniums stood, he began to unburden his whole mind, gently and tentatively, so as to spare their feelings as much as possible, to his father and mother. He told them how, since he went to Oxford, he had learned to think somewhat differently about many things; how his ideas had gradually deepened and broadened; how he had begun to inquire into fundamentals for himself; how he had feared that the Gideonites took too much for granted, and reposed too implicitly on the supposed critical learning of their Apostle. As he spoke his mother listened in tearful silence; but his father murmured from time to time, “I was afeard of this already, Paul; I seen it coming, now and again, long ago.” There was pity and regret in his tone, but not a shade of reproachfulness.
At last, however, Paul came to speak, timidly and reservedly, of Meenie. Then his father’s eye began to flash a little, and his breath came deeper and harder. When Paul told him briefly that he was engaged to her, the strong man could stand it no longer. He rose up in righteous wrath, and thrust his son at arm’s length from him. “What!” he cried fiercely, “you don’t mean to tell me you have fallen into sin and looked upon the daughters of Midian! It was no Scriptural doubts that druv you on, then, but the desire of the flesh and the lust of the eyes that has lost you! You dare to stand up there, Paul Owen, and tell me that you throw over the Church and the Apostle for the sake of a girl, like a poor miserable Samson! You are no son of mine, and I have nothin’ more to say to you.”
But Margaret Owen put her hand on his shoulder and said softly, “John, let us hear him out.” And John, recalled by that gentle touch, listened once more. Then Paul pleaded his case powerfully again. He quoted Scripture to them; he argued with them, after their own fashion, and down to their own comprehension, text by text; he pitted his own critical and exegetical faculty against the Apostle’s. Last of all, he turned to his mother, who, tearful still and heart-broken with disappointment, yet looked admiringly upon her learned, eloquent boy, and said to her tenderly, “Remember, mother, you yourself were once in love. You yourself once stood, night after night, leaning on the gate, waiting with your heart beating for a footstep that you knew so well. You yourself once counted the days and the hours and the minutes till the next meeting came.” And Margaret Owen, touched to the heart by that simple appeal, kissed him fervently a dozen times over, the hot tears dropping on his cheek meanwhile; and then, contrary to all the rules of their austere Church, she flung her arms round her husband too, and kissed him passionately the first time for twenty years, with all the fervour of a floodgate loosed. Paul Owen’s apostolate had surely borne its first fruit.
The father stood for a moment in doubt and terror, like one stunned or dazed, and then, in a moment of sudden remembrance, stepped forward and returned the kiss. The spell was broken, and the Apostle’s power was no more. What else passed in the cottage that night, when John Owen fell upon his knees and wrestled in spirit, was too wholly internal to the man’s own soul for telling here. Next day John and Margaret Owen felt the dream of their lives was gone; but the mother in her heart rejoiced to think her boy might know the depths of love, and might bring home a real lady for his wife.
On Sunday it was rumoured that the Apostle’s ailment was very serious; but young Brother Paul Owen would address the Church. He did so, though not exactly in the way the Church expected. He told them simply and plainly how he had changed his views about certain matters; how he thanked them from his heart for the loan of their money (he was careful to emphasize the word loan), which had helped him to carry on his education at Oxford; and how he would repay them the principal and interest, though he could never repay them the kindness, at the earliest possible opportunity. He was so grave, so earnest, so transparently true, that, in spite of the downfall of their dearest hopes, he carried the whole meeting with him, all save one man. That man was Job Grimshaw. Job rose from his place with a look of undisguised triumph as soon as Paul had finished, and, mounting the platform quietly, said his say.
“I knew, Episcops, Presbyters, and Brethren,” he began, “how this ’ere young man would finish. I saw it the day he was appinted. He’s flushing up now the same as he flushed up then when I spoke to him; and it ain’t sperritual, it’s worldly pride and headstrongness, that’s what it is. He’s had our money, and he’s had his eddication, and now he’s going to round on us, just as I said he would. It’s all very well talking about paying us back: how’s a young man like him to get five hundred pounds, I should like to know. And if he did even, what sort o’ repayment would that be to many of the brethren, who’ve saved and scraped for five year to let him live like a gentleman among the great and the mighty o’ Midian? He’s got his eddication out of us, and he can keep that whatever happens, and make a living out of it, too; and now he’s going back on us, same as I said he would, and, having got all he can out of the Church, he’s going to chuck it away like a sucked orange. I detest such backsliding and such ungratefulness.”
Paul’s cup of humiliation was full, but he bit his lip till the blood almost came, and made no answer.
“He boasted in his own strength,” Job went on mercilessly, “that he wasn’t going to be a backslider, and he wasn’t going to sign no bond, and he wasn’t going to confer with us, but we must trust his honour and honesty, and such like. I’ve got his very words written down in my notebook ’ere; for I made a note of ’em, foreseeing this. If we’d ‘a’ bound him down, as I proposed, he wouldn’t ‘a’ dared to go backsliding and rounding on us, and making up to the daughters of Midian, as I don’t doubt but what he’s been doing.” Paul’s tell-tale face showed him at once that he had struck by accident on the right chord. “But if he ever goes bringing a daughter of Midian here to Peckham,” Job continued, “we’ll show her these very notes, and ask her what she thinks of such dishonourable conduct. The Apostle’s dying, that’s clear; and before he dies I warrant he shall know this treachery.”
Paul could not stand that last threat. Though he had lost faith in the Apostle as an Apostle, he could never forget the allegiance he had once borne him as a father, or the spell which his powerful individuality had once thrown around him as a teacher. To have embittered that man’s dying bed with the shadow of a terrible disappointment would be to Paul a lifelong subject of deep remorse. “I did not intend to open my mouth in answer to you, Mr. Grimshaw,” he said (for the first time breaking through the customary address of Brother), “but I pray you, I entreat you, I beseech you, not to harass the Apostle in his last moments with such a subject.”
“Oh yes, I suppose so,” Job Grimshaw answered maliciously, all the ingrained coarseness of the man breaking out in the wrinkles of his face. “No wonder you don’t want him enlightened about your goings on with the daughters of Midian, when you must know as well as I do that his life ain’t worth a day’s purchase, and that he’s a man of independent means, and has left you every penny he’s got in his will, because he believes you’re a fit successor to the Apostolate. I know it, for I signed as a witness, and I read it through, being a short one, while the other witness was signing. And you must know it as well as I do. I suppose you don’t think he’ll make another will now; but there’s time enough to burn that one anyhow.”
Paul Owen stood aghast at the vulgar baseness of which this lewd fellow supposed him capable. He had never thought of it before; and yet it flashed across his mind in a moment how obvious it was now. Of course the Apostle would leave him his money. He was being educated for the Apostolate, and the Apostolate could not be carried on without the sinews of war. But that Job Grimshaw should think him guilty of angling for the Apostle’s money, and then throwing the Church overboard — the bare notion of it was so horrible to him that he could not even hold up his head to answer the taunt. He sat down and buried his crimson face in his hands; and Job Grimshaw, taking up his hat sturdily, with the air of a man who has to perform an unpleasant duty, left the meeting-room abruptly without another word.
There was a gloomy Sunday dinner tha
t morning in the mason’s cottage, and nobody seemed much inclined to speak in any way. But as they were in the midst of their solemn meal, a neighbour who was also a Gideonite came in hurriedly. “It’s all over,” he said, breathless— “all over with us and with the Church. The Apostle is dead. He died this morning.”
Margaret Owen found voice to ask, “Before Job Grimshaw saw him?”
The neighbour nodded, “Yes.”
“Thank heaven for that!” cried Paul. “Then he did not die misunderstanding me!”
“And you’ll get his money,” added the neighbour, “for I was the other witness.”
Paul drew a long breath. “I wish Meenie was here,” he said. “I must see her about this.”
IV.
A few days later the Apostle was buried, and his will was read over before the assembled Church. By earnest persuasion of his father, Paul consented to be present, though he feared another humiliation from Job Grimshaw. But two days before he had taken the law into his own hands, by writing to Meenie, at her aunt’s in Eaton Place; and that very indiscreet young lady, in response, had actually consented to meet him in Kensington Gardens alone the next afternoon. There he sat with her on one of the benches by the Serpentine, and talked the whole matter over with her to his heart’s content.
“If the money is really left to me,” he said, “I must in honour refuse it. It was left to me to carry on the Apostolate, and I can’t take it on any other ground. But what ought I to do with it? I can’t give it over to the Church, for in three days there will be no Church left to give it to. What shall I do with it?”
“Why,” said Meenie, thoughtfully, “if I were you I should do this. First, pay back everybody who contributed towards your support in full, principal and interest; then borrow from the remainder as much as you require to complete your Oxford course; and finally, pay back all that and the other money to the fund when you are able, and hand it over for the purpose of doing some good work in Peckham itself, where your Church was originally founded. If the ideal can’t be fulfilled, let the money do something good for the actual.”