Part 15

“Our good Judge’s discovery and investigation of the character of Jesus,” said Gildea, almost ready to laugh outright at Maddock’s concluding dythramb, “are certainly not unlike those of a man who should charter a penny steam-boat for a trip up the Nile, and proceed, on his return to England, to give a lengthy description of certain large triangular-shaped buildings which, he should say, bore considerable resemblance to the common-sense conception of pyramids! And it _is_ possible perhaps to denominate such a description as fatuous. His conception of Jesus _is_, we are agreed—inadequate: ‘an exemplar ... who merits all praise, all esteem, and love, and admiration for that, _being human_, he led so pure, so blameless, so noble and unselfish a life.’ This, what this with our good Judge _means_, is an inadequate conception of Jesus. He perceives nothing of the real essence of Jesus. Anything that Arnold, whom he quotes so often, may have said of ‘the mildness and sweet reasonableness’ of Jesus, or that Renan may have said of the wonderful powers of personal attraction that are in Jesus—all this has fallen like water on the judicial back of our duck here! It is for none of these that our good Judge, our typical man of common-sense, goes to his New Testament. ‘Mildness and sweet reasonableness,’ the yearning of a consuming personal love, are not clear solid spiritual qualities which his mind can see and touch and handle. They have no place in the copy-books of the soul, nor yet in the sum-books thereof, and you shall search its ‘Little Arthur’s History’ from beginning to end and find no mention of them. Their only place is in the thoughts, words, and actions of the men and women who have moved thousands and millions of their fellows, in the radiant days of high civilizations, in the agonies of the travail or the destruction of peoples and races. ‘It is apparent,’ says he, ‘that we can collect from the Christian Bible, a purer, more beautiful, and more advanced ethical code, than is to be obtained from any other book or books.’ O good Judge, O belovèd Judge, if all that is to be got out of the Christian Bible is an ‘ethical code,’ then the sooner Martin Tupper and Mr. Harrison are deified, the sooner will the human soul have reached its apogee!”

“That is well,” said Maddock, “but, at the same time, there are few things that disgust me more than the man of the opposite sort—he who, like so many of these Socialists of yours, will sing the love of Christ with passion, and then go out and commit a hundred of the grossest sins. Christ is morality.”

“Ah no,” said Gildea, “he is something better; he is religion! It is immoral to commit adultery: it is moral to punish it: (‘Infinitely better that they should atone for it, than lose a step towards a higher life’): it is religious, not to condemn it, but to bid go and sin no more. It is immoral to take your share in your father’s substance and waste it in violent living: it is moral to punish this prodigal, to whom repentance has only come with a belly that was fain to fill itself with the husks of the swine: it is religious to kill the fatted calf for such a penitent, and rejoice and make glad. Jesus’ sole criticism on practical morality, on the realization of an ethical code in everyday life, is, that ‘it was not so from the beginning.’”

“Just so; but this is precisely the difference of the ethical code of the Old and of the New Dispensation.”

“Will you let me say, that it has nothing to do with any ethical code at all? For, surely, the essence of ethical codes is justice, and the essence of the religious code, of the code of Jesus, is love. The Amazon may be a big river, but you shall compass all time in trying to put into it the unspeakable ocean.—No, it is just here that, as Fitzgerald would say, all these good people are superstitious. They believe that the spiritual progress of humanity is synonymous with the progress of one portion of the spirit of humanity, namely the ethical portion; and this, being a belief in a thing not worthy of that belief, may justly, as it seems to me, be denominated a superstition. It is superstition without religion.”

“And what, then,” asked Maddock, “do you call the belief of men like your friend Hawkesbury?”

“Those who are immoral? men and women who, as most of these Socialists, work in the spirit of Jesus and act (as a polemist would say) in the manner of Bradlaugh?—what is _their_ belief?”

“Yes,” said Maddock.

“Why, clearly,” answered Gildea smiling, “religion _with_ superstition! The men of enthusiasm like Hawkesbury, and the men of morality like Judge Parker, are surely both of them right, and surely both of them wrong: right in their appreciation of the truth of one portion of the spiritual life, wrong in their ignorance of another portion. They both possess truth, and they both possess superstition.”

“And what of a man like our friend Alcock here, who is ignorant of religion and more or less lax as regards morality?”

“He too,” answered Gildea, “as Fitzgerald clearly demonstrated, is a victim of superstition. But he is not, for all that, without his belief, without his appreciation of truth. He believes in that portion of the spiritual life which we call intellect. Men like him have their enthusiasm, for which they are ready to suffer and do suffer all things; and that enthusiasm is the enthusiasm for that portion of truth which we call Science.”

“And your Fitzgerald—is he too both right and wrong?”

“Of course he is; for has he not both belief and negation? All belief is truth, not _the whole_ truth, but _a part_ of the truth. There is but one thing that is the whole truth.”

“God?”

“No, not God, for God does not include Nature, from which He is the outcome—not God, not Nature, but that which contains them both, Everything, the All!”

“Pooh,” said Maddock, “flat Pantheism!”

“_And suppose_,” cried Gildea, “_it were_ Pot-_theism, if the thing is true_!” (He laughed outright.) “—That answer of Carlyle’s,” he said, “is immortal.”

“Oh, it was Carlyle said it?” said Maddock, “I had forgotten.—And so,” he proceeded, “the secret is out, and Sir Horace Gildea ‘stands confessed a Pantheist in all his charms!’”

“Two of the happy family still remain unaccounted for,” Gildea said, “although they too have not probably attained to perfect truth.”

“Oh, that is you and I. As for me, I can describe myself without your aid. I believe in morality and religion, with a touch of superstition in both.”

“Worse,” said Gildea, “worse!”

“What, then?”

“You believe in theology which is as bad a superstition as, what Judge Parker calls, ‘the calm blissful sea of pure _theistic_ belief.’ (You notice how emphatic he is about his superstition and casual about his truth?)”

“Stop a moment now, my bright Apollo, and explain to me, what you have not yet attempted to, what the superstition of Theism is?”

“_What is Theism?_—‘It is a faith,’ answers our good Judge, ‘which is _the_ faith of all others’ (that is to say the faith of Judge Parker and all the ‘celebrated unitarian ministers’), ‘to be clung to, cherished and maintained as long as man exists—belief, trust in, and love for the All-loving, All-righteous, All-wise Universal Spirit of God.’ Now observe that this faith, this unique faith of faiths, is ‘refreshing, and invigorating in its simplicity’—(as, we might add, is also its formulator, if we did not shun flippancy as we would the pest)—‘warm and glowing in its absolute unclouded devotion to, love for, and perfect trust in God alone—_proclaimed by_ NATURE!’ O wise Judge, O upright Judge, O Judge much more elder than thy looks, where, when, and how, in the name of all observers of Nature from Darwin through Haeckel to Tennyson, did you discover therein either this love or righteousness of which you make such mention? ‘The struggle for existence and survival of the fittest,’ the parent of theistic righteousness and love! ‘_Proclaimed by_ NATURE!’—and Nature in italics! O immemorial phrase that eats up all the others even as Aaron’s rod swallowed up all the rods of the magicians!—Who, after this, would care to trouble himself with all the other potent items of this faith of faiths? The idea of God, God ‘the All-loving, All-righteous, All-wise Universal Spirit’ ‘originated in instinct,’ and is not the slow and painful growth of time? Think of the love of Jehovah! the righteousness of Baal! the wisdom of Moloch!—The beauty and sympathy and warmth of the theistic form of belief,” he added, “are recognizable as a half-hearted mixture of the clap-trap of Religion and Science—Superstition, which knows that it is naked, and sews fig-leaves together, and make itself an apron!”

Maddock, however, could have no confidence in the expressed views of this man, from whose face the light of amusement, amusement at others and himself, seemed never to be absent long. There had, indeed, been moments when it required all Maddock’s intuition to prevent his perception rising in absolute revolt against what seemed Gildea’s flagrant insincerity: then his perception had said to him that this was but a youth, endowed with brilliant abilities, the mere exercise of which was a pleasure and satisfaction to him, caring too little for any one thing to owe it loyalty. Whereto his intuition had replied that this was not a youth but a man, and a man whose secret could not thus be read. And the feeling that Maddock had, once before that day, felt towards Gildea returned now with an intensity and strangeness that seemed to Maddock, when he afterwards considered it, as little short of wonderful. Maddock’s profundity was often beyond the average, and herein indeed lay his secret, herein nestled “the heart of his mystery.”

“And yet,” said Gildea, “here, as in the other case, the common-sense view of belief has, of course, its excellence. ‘To take nothing else,’ says the Judge, ‘the very idea of “space” and “distance” that astronomy has given us fills the mind with wonder and with awe, clothing nature with a sublimity, a majesty, and a beauty which, otherwise, we had never known.’ For observe that _Space_ and _Time_, these two inexhaustible ideas, are not, to our average intelligent secular view of things, the mere words that they are to the orthodox: they are realities thus far, that they help us to perceive that ‘there exists throughout space,—throughout the vast limitless universe,—motion, order, beauty; that there is behind all motion, all order, all beauty, a force that produces the motion, the order, and the beauty.’ And further. They are realities thus far, that they help us to be (whatever Dr. Maddock, in a polemico-theological spirit, may declare) earnest in our life and earnest in our wish to bring home to others the truth of that life, a ‘most serious and difficult task!’ They help us to all this, and an unrecognized intuitional belief in the essence which, in other forms and other men whom we fail to appreciate, not to say understand, we condemn—our intuitional belief, I say, in the Faith, Hope, and Love, which are the great movers of the progress of Humanity both upward and onward, will not let the forms that portions of this belief may take in us make the whole grow cold, lifeless, petrified, but the beauty and melody of our acts will often be found to contradict the deformity and discord of our words.”

“I confess, Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “that you are a puzzle to me. I really should not be surprised to see you some day walking side by side with the Judge, the best friends in the world!”

“And perhaps,” said Gildea, “the Judge would not subsequently be surprised to see me doing the same with yourself! For that indeed is the only use of such poor creatures as I: we see the good in opponents and serve as links in the spiritual bridge of Humanity.”

“I should very much like,” said Maddock, “to hear how you would abuse me to him. I think I see the urbane expression with which you would delight him by shewing how, in this ecclesiastical, metaphysical, theological polemist here, habemus confitentem asinum; and then turn upon him and say: ‘The question that now arises, my dear Judge, is, has this man nothing but faults—has he no excellencies? does there remain, after the attack on him of so eminent a biblical critic as Judge Parker is, no residuum of real and vital truth? Let us see.’”

“Doctor, Doctor,” said Gildea, “to make me laugh so, is cruel!”

“You do not consider me,” said Maddock, “in the least.”

They both laughed heartily.

“And now,” said Maddock, “in order to complete the matter, tell me, what is _your_ superstition? Here are Alcock and Parker with their respective superstitions of Atheism and Theism, of purely scientific and purely ethical progress. Here is Hawkesbury with his superstition about the unselfishness of the People and the practical neglect of Morality. Here is Fitzgerald with his superstitious belief in a Church whose splendid logical consistency will prove its ruin. Here am I, a member of a sect that more nearly approaches ideal Christianity than any other sect in existence, and is a logical absurdity—blessed with the superstition of theology and, worse, of polemical theology, with.... But I cannot express all my superstitions: they seem more in number than the hairs of my head!”

“Let us say broadly, then, that Alcock and the Judge are those who have superstition _without_, and Fitzgerald, you, and to a certain degree Hawkesbury, those who have superstition _with_, Religion.”

“And that you?”

“And that _I_ am he who unites in my proper person the superstitions of all with the actualities of none.”

There was a pause. Then:

“Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “I take you seriously. And I will confess that I would sooner, far sooner, be any one of us than you.—Verily and indeed,” he added, solemnly, “I cannot see why you should care to live.”

“Nor yet,” said Gildea, “why I should care to die?”

Maddock was possessed by sadness. The absolute, inevitable hopelessness of this man made him again turn faint and sick at heart.

“Nor yet,” he said, “why you should care to die.”

There was a long pause. Never again could Maddock be illuded into momentary misunderstanding of this man: he had now not only seen this strange soul laid bare before him and felt the influence of that sight, but had felt as if he had, as it were, almost received it into his own, almost made it a part of himself.

At last:

“I asked you to believe,” he said with a touch of wistfulness in face and tone, “that I was your true friend. You will perhaps, forgive me if I ... if I offer you the one token of it that seems left to me to offer. Some day—I cannot tell, but so I trust—you may care to think that, each night you close your eyes in sleep, there is one whose prayers for you are rising, as he believes, to the God and Father of us all, to bless and keep you, to lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and to give you peace.”

The two men stood facing each other for a few moments in silence: then their hands met in a close, long clasp, and parted; and they turned, standing almost touching each other, looking out over the lovely scene of earth and water and sky.

At last:

“Those clouds,” said Gildea softly, “they have a peerless radiancy. One seems to understand how the men of the past days saw a spirit therein, and held converse with it with wonder and delight and awe. Those were days of a music and beauty and sweetness such as we shall never know again.”

“_If not_,” said Maddock as softly,

“_if not the calm_ _of its early mountainous shore,_ _yet a solemn peace of its own._”

A footstep was heard behind them. It was Edgar, come to say that Mrs. and Miss Medwin had arrived and were up in the drawing-room with Mr. Alcock.

Gildea stepped out onto the lawn.

“Let us go up by the balcony,” he said to Maddock.

VI.

Mrs. Medwin was the only native-born australian lady who was “good style.” So at least a Governor’s wife, about the “goodness” of whose “style” there could be no question, had declared. It was not, this Governor’s wife had explained, that there were no ladies in Australia, (There were not however many, par parenthèse, and such style as they had was at best but second-rate american), but they none of them had that manner of dressing, moving, and speaking which characterizes what (to use this rather objectional term again, for want of a better) we call “good style.” This Governor’s wife, with her usual delicate feminine instinct, had felt on the occasion of this now socially celebrated description of Mrs. Medwin, that she had not quite satisfied herself, that the description did not contain the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth, of the matter; and she was right, it did not. Mrs. Medwin undoubtedly possessed that serene refinement of movement and speech which go so far to making up that all but defunct individuality, a “lady,” but she was wanting in the final gift of a “lady,” social charm. The flower was scentless, or rather the scent it had was of another description. Her life had not, indeed, been favourable to the development of this final gift. She had been married early, a ready enough victim to the convenience of her family, to a man with whom she had little in common and much in opposition. He was liked by none and feared by all those who had any personal dealings with him: his savage outbursts of passion recalled to memory the dark stories that were told of his father who had, as the Australians euphemistically put it, come out at the government expense. But she, having calmly decided to accept Medwin and life with him, set herself by the sheer intrepidity of her sweet high beauty, to dominate them. She succeeded. And she won, not only the control, but the deep, admiring love, of the man. Then came the catastrophe which those who knew him had prophesied and recanted. In one of his savage outbursts of passion, he struck her. The blow was a cruel one and its results life-long. Much as she then suffered in body and soul, she could have no other feeling for him than that of pity. For days he would take no food, but sat in a chair outside her door, like a dog that waits in silence on an idolized master; and, when he was first permitted to enter, flung himself onto his knees by the bedside, sobbing and moaning and covering her hand with kisses. And she, who had had little or no care for him before, save as the principal incident in her life, now to her own surprise found that from out this appalling misery was born affection for him and even love. Her life from then onwards had been spent in a struggle far more terrible than that which she had waged with him. At first the idea of wasting away inch by inch on a diseased sick-bed almost overwhelmed her: she longed, she prayed for death. But death did not come; and then her spiritual pride began to reassert itself, and, like the captain of a battered ship, she once more thought how she could rule these waters that had ruled her. For long it seemed as if the effort would be too much for her: she said to herself one sleepless horrible night that she was being consumed alive. Her very latest gift seemed but as an added thorn to her; for now that she had affection and even love, she had also jealousy. The spell of her sweet, fearless health and strength and beauty was passed from him save as a memory: his love, deepened it might be by his abiding remorse, was (as she thought) deprived of that admiration which had been her first and strongest hold on him. Nothing more pitiful, than to see the womanliness in her assert itself against her pride and speak in jealousy! With wonderful intuition, however, she divined and with wonderful determination carried out, what was the only plan of still keeping for herself his admiration. She, who since she had married him had not given his business affairs a thought, now gave herself up to the mastery of them. She had herself taught all arithmetic thoroughly, and, in little less than three years after her misfortune, knew more of all his business affairs than he did himself. And more. She stirred up in him the ambition to become the leader of that great amorphous section of colonial society of which he was a member, the land-owners, the “squatters.” She had a certain liking for society, and when she was in England went into it as much as her extremely delicate health would permit her: in Australia, however, where, as she said, there was no society, or only of a sort which she did not like, she yet entertained a good deal, as she wished her husband to be popular in view of his entering parliament and attempting to organize his party. But her entertainment was more after the fashion of a listless social empress than an interested hostess: she did not care enough about these people to make, what would have been to her, a painful physical effort to attract them. She had indeed something of the feeling of one of the old aristocrats forced by the pressure of the time to open their houses to the Middle-class; she acknowledged the salute of her guests, and provided them with fine rooms, music, amusement, foods and drinks, and what more could they want? Her coldness was generally ascribed to her notorious ill-health, but the young people felt instinctively that she condemned them, and were not drawn to her. Between her and Gildea, however, there was an understanding that was not without either charm or brightness to both. He understood her, and she half-felt this and, never having been really understood before, was in a way pleased at it and drawn to him. She amused him and at times, thanks to the pity with which her sweet courage inspired him, affected him. He was not too without respect for her intuitional capacities. He said once to Sydney Medwin, who was complaining that his mother was fifty years behind the time, (Mrs. Medwin supported her husband in his views for their elder son), that, on the contrary, she was fifty years before; for she was the only person he had met or heard of in the Colony who clearly saw that the Land Question was upon them. Mrs. Medwin indeed, as has been noticed, saw that the attempt of the Australian land-owners to repeat the performance of those of England and form a dominant aristocracy, would be met with keen opposition, and that the only hope of success lay in creating out of an amorphous class a party, and organizing it. The feeling of possession and caste had grown a strong one in her, in her more or less absorbed in the life of her husband. Hers, then, with all its powers of passionate attachment to an individual, was one of those not frequent female souls that see beyond a man into the cause which he represents. Her elder son she looked upon as a failure, as useless, as worth no more than making behave himself. Her younger son, Stephen, she was training with some care, and to him the far greater bulk of his father’s wealth and property was at present destined. Miss Medwin, whom Mrs. Medwin called her niece, and who called Mr. and Mrs. Medwin respectively uncle and aunt, but who was in reality no such relation, being the daughter of Mr. Medwin’s father’s brother’s son; of Miss Medwin it will perhaps be enough to state, that the report which Gildea had unexpectedly received of her from the Private Enquiry Office was correct, and that she was the possessor of a moderate fortune who had come out to Australia, half for a change from her English life of which she was weary, half in search of an old schoolfellow to whom she was much attached.