She was forty-five years old and she had not believed that such a thing could happen to her. Through the years her faith had grown so strong that she had not believed that she could lose it. The living light that had made love possible had seemed too glorious ever to go out, yet now it had gone and left her in darkness, and the loneliness of life without love was to her a horror quite indescribable. It had a stifling nightmare quality. A cold darkness, she thought, would have been easier to bear, but this hot thick darkness brought one near to the breaking of the mind. It had been for nothing, she thought. It was not true. It had been for nothing. The wells of water to which she had always turned for refreshment had dried up. When she opened her Bible it was just a book like any other, and that revered historical figure, as self-deceived as herself, was as dead as Clive, killed like him by suffering so great that she could not let herself think of it, for they were not the only ones to pass into nothingness through that meaningless agony. Even the current cat could give her no joy; it was spring and when she tried to find a little comfort in the garden she was perpetually stumbling over the young birds that he had killed. The Cathedral, huge and glowering, oppressed her with a sense of the colossal idiocy of man and she could have wept to think of all the men who had suffered and died to build it. Why pour out all that blood and treasure for the glory of a God who if He existed at all existed only as a heartless tyrant? She went on going to the Cathedral services as usual but they bored her so intolerably that she could scarcely sit through them. She went, she supposed, from force of habit. It was part of her routine.
Later she realized how much men and women owe to mere routine. She had for years led an extremely disciplined life, and now discipline held her up as irons hold the body of a paralytic. No one except Sarah and Doctor Jenkins found her at all changed. Her parents, old and ailing now, her father growing blind and her mother bedridden, propped their whole weight upon her just as usual, the old people in the workhouse and in Swithin’s Lane listened as eagerly as ever for the sound of her pony carriage coming down the cobbled lane, and found her just as satisfactory a source of supply as she had ever been. But Sarah kept trying to make her put her feet up on the sofa, and Doctor Jenkins called upon her on his own initiative one day and placed a bottle of pink medicine on her escritoire.
“What’s that for?” she asked a little tartly.
Doctor Jenkins was a young shy man in those days but he was not abashed by the tartness, unusual though it was, because he loved Miss Montague. When he had first come to the city as assistant to old Doctor Wharburton he had felt scared and lonely and had not liked the place, but as soon as Captain Montague’s gout and Mrs. Montague’s asthma had brought him to Fountains he began to feel different. He had had no idea what an intelligent and attractive fellow he was until he had met Miss Montague. Now he sat down in his favorite chair, realized afresh how likable he was, relaxed happily and told her at length how exhausted she was by her brother’s long illness, and by her father’s gout and blindness and her mother’s asthmatic heart and querulous temper. She must rest more and take this tonic. “It has iron in it,” he finished.
“I’ll take it, Tom,” Miss Montague promised for love of him, though she did not believe a word of it.
Yet at the end of the first bottle of tonic she began to wonder if there was something in it. She was used to feeling exhausted and paid no attention to it, it was her normal state, but this abysmal fatigue both of body and mind was not her normal state. She was in darkness but how much had the miasma of fatigue contributed to it? Was it possible that a bottle of tonic and putting one’s feet up could affect one’s faith in God? Shocked at the unaccustomed way in which her thoughts were dwelling on herself she drove down to the workhouse in her pony carriage with six flannel petticoats and a dozen packets of tea and baccy. Coming back up Cockspur Street her eyes were caught by the window of the new little shop which had just been opened by young Mr. Isaac Peabody. It was a very long time since her attention had been caught by anything, but there was a clock there shaped like a Greek lyre and Clive had taught her to love all things Greek. Before she knew what she was doing she had stopped the pony carriage, climbed out, and was gazing at the clock, fascinated by the circle of bright birds whose bodies would never fall and die. The lark at the summit of the lyre was so beautifully fashioned that she could see the quiver of his spread wings and the pulsing of his throat as the song poured from his open beak. In old days her mind had been full of poetry she loved but in this darkness she had forgotten it all. Now as she looked at the lark one of Shakespeare’s sonnets seemed to be struggling to make re-entrance into the darkness of her closed mind, beating against it like a bird beating against a shutter.
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries . . .
How did it go on? “Precious friends hate in death’s dateless night.” No, it wasn’t that one. Then suddenly the shutter crashed down and the bird flew in on a beam of light.
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
She leaned against the window as the children did. “Thy sweet love remember’d.” Clive. Clive. And He who she had thought had turned her and got her. What wealth had it been to love them, even if now they were dead. Even if there was no God, even if dateless night was the end of it all, how could she lose them while she lived and remembered, and when she no longer lived then loss, like every other pain, would be over for her.
She opened the shop door and walked in and young Mr. Isaac Peabody came forward from the room behind the counter, an oddly birdlike creature with arms that were too long for him. He moved them up and down as he talked as though they were wings and he meant to take off at any moment. It showed how much good the tonic had done her that the moment she set eyes on him she knew she had a new friend, and was glad. A short while ago she had wanted no new friends. Somehow, against her conscience, she bought the Lyre clock, and when she reached Fountains the delighted Sarah carried it up the stairs for her and put it on her escritoire, and she sat down on the sofa and put her feet up and looked at it. From then onward, whenever she had a few moments, she put her feet up and looked at it and the bright ring of birds seemed to gather all the sunshine to itself.
That was not the end of her darkness, which continued for a long while yet, but it was the first bit of comfort in it. She began to sleep better and sometimes now when she woke in the mornings it was not to that indescribable despair but to a quiet sadness, and with the name of her God upon her lips. But it was autumn before joy was restored to her again, and then it was not the same joy.
She found herself, one wet Wednesday afternoon in October, with an hour to spare, an unusual state of things in her hard-pressed life. She was to have taken the chair at a women’s missionary meeting but the speaker had been taken ill and the meeting was canceled. She had arranged for Sarah to sit with her mother, and for a friend of her father’s to have tea with him and read aloud until she came back, and the wild idea came to her that she would do with this hour just what she pleased. But she must go out, for her household did not know that the meeting had been canceled. Feeling like a truant from school she put on her bonnet and shawl, found her umbrella and let herself out of the old front door into the cool dark cavern of the Porta. Beyond it was a drizzle of fine rain and Worship Street looked gray and dismal, but in the grayness of the Close there were gleams of gold, as though sunrays were enmeshed in the rain, because the bright leaves were not yet fallen. So she went that way, limping slowly under her umbrella, and the air seemed fresh and sweet after her mother’s overheated bedroom. But where should she go? She could only go a short way; now that the rheumatism had settled so firmly in her bad leg and her back such a thing as going for a walk
was not possible for her. She could call at any of the houses in the Close and be warmly welcomed, but she felt too tired for social calls. She thought she would go to the south door of the Cathedral and sit there on the stone bench and talk to the old bedesman, old Bob Hathaway whom she was very fond of, because she found poor people much more restful than the well-to-do. She walked slowly, for there was that whole hour stretching before her with its blessed emptiness, but even so she was tired when she reached the south door and found it oddly comforting to have old Bob clucking at her like a fussy hen, helping her to shake the wet out of her skirts and put her umbrella down. He was a crusty old man, without the courtesy of Tom Hochicorn who years later was to succeed him, but he was almost as fond of her as she was of him and the scolding he gave her was a pleasure.
“Abroad in all this wet!” he growled. “Why don’t ee wear pattens, ma’am?”
“They don’t suit my rheumatism, Bob,” she explained.
“Sitting on this ’ere cold stone at your age, ma’am!” he went on wrathfully.
“You sit on it,” she said, “and you’re older than I am.”
“Old enough to be your father, ma’am,” he said, “which is why I’m giving ee a piece o’ my mind.”
He went on giving it for some while, and then they talked of rheumatism in general and Bob’s in particular, and the terrible wind he had after fried onions, and Miss Montague was just beginning most wonderfully to enjoy Bob when she had the misfortune to sneeze and he got angry with her again. Either she must go home, he said, or she must go into the Cathedral and have a bit of a warm by the brazier. It was lit. She did not want to go home and so to please him she said she would go into the Cathedral for a few moments. He opened the door for her and she went in.
It was very dark in the Cathedral, except for the glow of the large charcoal braziers that were lit here and there in its vastness. They did practically nothing to conquer the cold of the great place but they were pretty as flowers. She made her way to the nearest and held out her chilly hands to its comfort. It burned beside the carved archway that led into the chantry of the Duchess Blanche and glowed rosily upon the stone, just as the sunset glowed upon the stone of Blanche’s Bower at home at Fountains. Miss Montague moved forward into the chantry and sat down on the old rush-seated chair that was just inside. It had a hole in it, for in these days, before the coming of Adam Ayscough, the Cathedral was not well cared for, and her spreading skirts stirred up the dust. Then the dust settled, and with it the silence, and she realized that she had never before been quite alone in the Cathedral. There were the old bedesmen at the doors but they seemed far away, and it was dark. Vast curtains of shadow fell from the invisible roof and they seemed to move like a tide of dark water. She felt very lonely and she wished she had the cat on her lap.
In the dimness she could just see the little figure of the Duchess Blanche lying on her tomb, by herself because her husband had been buried beside the High Altar, but not lonely because there was a dog at her feet. Her hands lay on her breast placed palm to palm in prayer. It was said that she had had her humble part in the making of this place. She had not lived long enough to see the great church of her husband’s dream completed, for she had died young, but every day of her widowhood she had come to the Cathedral and knelt down in a particular spot to pray for the repose of her husband’s soul, and for a blessing upon the builders of his dream, and after her death they had built her chantry about the place where she had knelt. It was too dark to see it now but Miss Montague knew how lovely it was, small and delicate like the little duchess herself, with small cherubs in all the nooks and crannies. Cromwell’s men had defaced these and Blanche’s praying hands, but they had not succeeded in spoiling the chantry’s beauty, only in giving it a look of battered but enduring patience.
“You’ve been here so long,” Miss Montague said to Blanche, “praying with those wounded hands.” For though her mind told her that Blanche was either nowhere, or somewhere else, but anyhow not here, yet she could not this afternoon quite get rid of the feeling that Blanche was here. And high up in the darkness that her sight could not penetrate He was there upon the rood. Her hands folded in her lap, Miss Montague shut her eyes; she was very tired. She ceased to feel lonely. Blanche was here, and the Man on the rood, sharing the same darkness with her and with a vast multitude of people whom she seemed to know and love. How much more friendly it is when you cannot see, thought Miss Montague, and how much closer we are to Him. Why should we always want a light? He chose darkness for us, darkness of the womb and of the stable, darkness in the garden, darkness on the cross and in the grave. Why do I demand certainty? That is not faith. Why do I want to understand? How can I understand this great web of sin and ugliness and love and suffering and joy and life and death when I don’t understand the little tangle of good and evil that is myself? I’ve enough to understand. I understand that He gave me light that I might turn to Him, for without light I could not have seen to turn. I have seen creation in His light. He shared His light with me that I, turned, might share with Him the darkness of His redemption. Why did I despair? What do I want? If it is Him I want He is here, not only love in light illuming all that He has made but love in darkness dying for it. . . . And she said, I will learn to pray.
It was a promise. She said, Please may I begin to learn here with Blanche, and she whose prayer until now had been the murmuring of soothing and much-loved words in the tired intervals between one thing and another, or the presentation to Almighty God of inventories of the needs of the city as she drove about it in her pony carriage, abandoned herself for the sake of those she loved to silence and the dark, understanding however dimly that to draw some tiny fraction of the sin of the world into her own being with this darkness was to do away with it.
Bob’s hand fell upon her shoulder and she looked up. It was now almost entirely dark in the Cathedral and she saw his anxious puckered face only dimly by the light of the brazier. “Ma’am, ee’s been here near an hour,” he said crossly.
It had seemed five minutes. She got up with his help and they went back to the south door. He opened her umbrella for her, while she settled her shawl and shook the dust out of her skirts. Then she smiled at him and thanked him and went away into the rain. She seemed, he thought, “bit moidered,” yet she looked younger than when she came.
She did not despair again, and though the darkness came back at times right up to the time when she was a very old woman, she was always able to welcome it. Yet if these times came when her health was low she would remember that first bottle of tonic and ask Doctor Jenkins for another, for true darkness and the murkiness of ill health could be intertwined, to one’s confusion, and she would remember that other sonnet of Shakespeare’s and know she must not
. . . permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide.
After her parents died the city noticed with dismay that she was what is called “breaking up.” But increasing physical weakness did not distress Miss Montague. The enforced lengthening of the tired intervals between one thing and another meant more time to learn the work of prayer, and the house where she now lived alone with the old servants became more and more a place where everybody came because she was more often in it than she had been. As the years passed she was disturbed, almost alarmed, by the growing peace and serenity of her days. Surely it was wrong to be so happy. Then, abruptly, she knew it was not wrong. This was the ending of her days on earth, the dawn of her heavenly days, and it had been given to her to feel the sun on her face.
And so she was happy in old age and vastly amused to find herself a personage in the city, almost an institution, beloved, revered, and apparently the hostess of a salon. Shrewd as she was she could not but be aware that her chair by the fire had become a throne, and that when she went to the Cathedral in her Bath chair it was a queen’s progress. When she looked back on the unloved girl she had b
een, on the toiling drone of her middle years, on the shabby prayerful recluse of her elderly years, it was all beyond her comprehension. But she enjoyed it and with a slightly mocking amusement dressed up for the part with velvet shoes on her feet and lace about her shoulders and over her head. She knew her own worthlessness and so did God, though He loved her none the less, and this false idea of her that the city had got into its head was a private joke between them.
3.
Outside it was nearly dark, but she did not call Sarah to draw the curtains; she did not want even the footsteps of dear Sarah on the stairs to enter the silence that held her. But presently other footsteps entered it, slow and heavy, as of a man carrying a heavy weight. They came into the dark cavern of the Porta beneath her room and the flap of the letter box was lifted and dropped once. Miss Montague smiled and her happiness became deeper. It was the Dean.
It had never been her habit to examine love, or to compare one affection with another, for as love had grown so had reverence for it, but she did realize that Adam Ayscough had brought again to her life something that had been withdrawn when Clive had died. To him alone of all her friends could she speak out of the depths of herself, and from him alone did she receive as much as she gave. In the two intimacies there were differences. Clive had not always understood her but the Dean knew far better what she was talking about than she did herself. Clive had told her everything about himself that there was to tell; Adam Ayscough told her nothing. Yet mysteriously she knew much. She thought sometimes it was as though he kept all his grief in a locked box. Being the man he was he could not show it to her but he had given her the box, and possessing it gave her much power to comfort him. Their friendship had been of slow growth, so shy and self-abhorring was the man, so long did it take him to realize that their need of each other was mutual. And even now he came only seldom to see her, afraid to trespass on her hospitality and afraid to tire her. She wished he would come oftener but like all the old and infirm she had accepted with rueful humor the fact that she must be visited oftenest by those she least wished to see. It was the sensitive, the gentle and humble who feared to come too often lest they tire her. The coarse-fibered had no such inhibitions.