Saint's Progress Part 5

"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably. "Gits on me nerves; I'm not used to it. She was in a raid, and 'er nerves are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl? Makes me feel me 'ead. I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now. I might do somethin' if she was to go on like this for long."

Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully. The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. "Take one," he said. Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak, murmured: "We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we? I had one with my daughter last night."

"Ah!" said the soldier; "that's right. The wife and me'll make it up.

'Ere, come orf it, old girl."

From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink, kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When they got out at Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war! How it affects everyone!' His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest of the journey was pa.s.sed in making himself small. When at last he reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.

"Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in this heat. It was dreadful to spoil your holiday."

"My dear! As if--May I go up and see him?"

George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood gazing down at him compa.s.sionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellows.h.i.+p with death. Death! The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner than life! This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years, saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising young couple they were! And putting his arm round her, he led her away to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.

"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.

"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our soldiers do."

"I know; but that's no comfort. I've been watching here all day; I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more brutal. The world will go on the same."

"We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie?"

Gratian shook her head.

"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything! I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life. If George dies, we shall never meet again."

Pierson stared at her without a word.

Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel that he was right."

Pierson said tremulously:

"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought. G.o.d in His mercy will give you back belief."

"There is no G.o.d, Dad"

"My darling child, what are you saying?"

"No G.o.d who can help us; I feel it. If there were any G.o.d who could take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared what we did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."

"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working."

"Then He's no good to us. It's the same as if He didn't exist. Why should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own? I know George oughtn't to die. If there's a G.o.d who can help, it will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there's a G.o.d who can help, it's a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor boys. I would rather think there's no G.o.d than a helpless or a wicked G.o.d--"

Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears. She moved closer, and put her arm round him.

"Dad dear, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:

"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost belief when your mother died? I have never lost belief. Pray G.o.d I never shall!"

Gratian murmured:

"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to be honest. If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live. I don't believe, and I can't pray."

"My darling, you're overtired."

"No, Dad." She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her hands round her knees, looked straight before her. "We can only help ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."

Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would touch her just then. The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed. She stood looking down at him a long time.

"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven. I'll call you if I want anything. I shall lie down a little, beside him."

Pierson kissed her, and went out. To lie there beside him would be the greatest comfort she could get. He went to the bare narrow little room he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots, walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crus.h.i.+ng loneliness. Both his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them! It was as if Life were pus.h.i.+ng him utterly aside! He felt confused, helpless, bewildered. Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left G.o.d's side, whatever she might say. Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this thought, he stood still at the open window.

Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any a.n.a.logy between them?

From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered; and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder. 3

George Laird pa.s.sed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the morning was p.r.o.nounced out of danger. He had a splendid const.i.tution, and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting character. He came back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were: "I've been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"

A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone. Deuced rum sensation! But not so horrible as it would have been in real life. With the slip of that last inch he felt he would have pa.s.sed at once into oblivion, without the long horror of a fall. So this was what it was for all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years! Mercifully, at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was leaving, not alive enough even to care. If he had been able to take in the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at her face, touching her for the last time--it would have been h.e.l.l; if he had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the most poignant anguish of defraudment. Life was a rare good thing, and to be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for his own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths, would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of men! He could smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had heaped fuel on a fire which had always smouldered in his doctor's soul against that half emanc.i.p.ated breed of apes, the human race. Well, now he would get a few days off from his death-carnival! And he lay, feasting his returning senses on his wife. She made a pretty nurse, and his practised eye judged her a good one--firm and quiet.

George Laird was thirty. At the opening of the war he was in an East-End practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army. For the first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it. A poisoned arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave he married Gratian. He had known the Piersons some time; and, made conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the first chance he got. For his father-in-law he had respect and liking, ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity. The blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist, mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but often irritated, wonder. He saw things so differently himself, and had little of the humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply because it is strange. They could never talk together without soon reaching a point when he wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason and our senses for what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what we are to trust? How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters, and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?" Once, in one of their discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded himself at length.

"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say, about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our moral code? If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries, leaving my reason and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his shoes--it won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You must show me the door; and you can't! And I'll tell you why, sir. Because in your brain there's a little twist which is not in mine, or the lack of a little twist which is in mine. Nothing more than that divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom wors.h.i.+ps, and one of whom doesn't. Oh, yes!

I know; you won't admit that, because it makes your religions natural instead of what you call supernatural. But I a.s.sure you there's nothing more to it. Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight before them. Well, mine do just the opposite."

That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it. His brain had stammered. He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand, as if to cover that momentary break in his defences. Some days later he had said:

"I am able now to answer your questions, George. I think I can make you understand."

Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."

"You begin by a.s.suming that the human reason is the final test of all things. What right have you to a.s.sume that? Suppose you were an ant. You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you? Would that be the truth?" And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above his little grave beard.

George Laird also had smiled.

"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense. I only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that test all is quite dark and unknowable."

"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"

"Nothing, sir."

"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."

"I don't think we can, sir. In talking with you, I always feel like fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."