Chapter VII (1)
“More particularly am I bound to pray for the good estate of Oriel College, and herein for the Reverend the Provost, Fellows, Clerks, and all other members of that society....”
It was not the first time that Horatia had listened to the bidding prayer which prefaces a sermon before the University of Oxford, nor even the first time that she had heard mentioned therein “the munificence of founders and benefactors, such as were King Edward the Second, the Founder of Oriel College, Adam de Brome, his almoner, and other benefactors of the same.” But it was the first occasion on which she had heard the prayer from the lips of the preacher who, two mornings afterwards, occupied the pulpit of St. Mary-the-Virgin. And as she sat down by Mrs. Pusey’s side, behind the Heads and Doctors in their scarlet and crimson, and looked up at Charles Dormer, she felt a curious accession of interest, as though she had never seen him before. In the black gown and bands he seemed, she thought, absurdly young to be addressing that august assembly. Then she remembered that, being just Tristram’s age, he must be a year older than the Vicar of St. Mary’s, who so often addressed them. But he did not look it.
The congregation settled down in the peculiarly arranged nave, and in rather a low voice Dormer gave out his text, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
And Horatia’s momentarily excited interest sank again. She felt that she knew the kind of sermon which would be preached on that text, and she did not want to hear it. She wished with all her heart that she were not in church at all. She had not wanted to come to hear Mr. Dormer; she had only done so to fulfil a promise made to Tristram. If it had been Mr. Newman now—or Mr. Keble preaching his Assize sermon—she would have listened.... Laurence de Vigerie scrubbing a stone floor.... In the coach, at the Puseys at Christ Church, here now in St. Mary’s—Laurence, the shapeless figure, the veil, the rough dress....
A miracle had happened to Horatia, and she hardly knew it for a miracle. What religion and conscience could not bring about, human feeling and Protestant indignation had accomplished. That one moment’s contact with a—to her—shocking reality had swept away, on a flood of horrified pity, not only her hatred but even the thought of forgiveness as a duty. She knew nothing of either now, only that her heart (preparing as it was to welcome a happiness of its own) was aching with compassion. Why was Laurence doing this awful thing? It was not right to punish herself like that, why had she not spoken to her! “Laurence, I am so sorry. It was more his fault than yours; I know it. Don’t, don’t make yourself so unhappy. It is all wrong... all a mistake....”
Her brain worked on, and the tears came hot into her eyes. She must concentrate her mind on something else, or she would really cry. Definite words in a clear voice came to her, and she remembered that she was supposed to be listening to Mr. Dormer, and that he must be three parts through by now. She looked up at him again, over the distinguished heads in front of her, this man not so very much older than herself, who was Tristram’s greatest friend, and whom she had never liked, as he stood, using no gestures, in the new wooden pulpit that reared itself up against a slender column of nave, the rows of Masters of Arts below. A pillar in front of her, somewhat to her left, and the edge of the north gallery for undergraduates, beneath which she sat, made two sides of a square to frame him, as if for herself alone. She listened.
“What is a pure heart? A German mystic has said that it is a heart which finds its whole and only satisfaction in God, whose thoughts and intents are ever occupied with God, which makes all joys and griefs, all outward cares and anxieties work together for the glory of God.
“How far does such a temper of mind seem to be from all of us who call ourselves Christians! and yet our Lord has definitely contemplated a class of persons who are capable of this peculiar consecration, and to whom is as definitely promised the vision of Him Whom the saints desire to see. This same teacher, taking St. John as the type of the pure in heart, would seem to indicate that all Christians are given the opportunity of making by degrees a gradual and more perfect response to the Divine Call, and that, as our Lord revealed Himself to the beloved disciple in a threefold manner, as His Master, his Friend, and his God, so He still shows Himself to those who surrender themselves, not only to the joy of His friendship but also to the fellowship of His sufferings.
“As our Lord thus called St. John, He calls us out of the world. And, like His beloved disciple, the darlings of His love, sheltered in the life of the Church, hear a gracious invitation, and so abide with Him that day and many days. But there are others with the same capacity for purity of heart, who, in sin or unbelief, have wandered far from their true home, and for these a different call is needed.
“In the frustration of hopes and ambitions, in the sudden fear that for us life has no meaning, in the realisation that death is coming, and after death the judgment, God is calling to us. We have gone on for a long way in our loves and hates, our vanities and pleasures, our imaginations and our sins, and one day the road crumbles beneath us. The beloved is dead, youth is dead, pleasure is dead. Nothing matters now. Why plan for the morrow, when the only reality is death?”
Dormer paused, moved a little, and said, still more quietly, “It is true that for us this is the only reality—the death of the soul.”
There was no doubt about Horatia’s interest now. How was it that he knew the very horror that gripped her, the fear of death, the fear of life? She held her hands tightly together in her muff, wishing with all her heart that she had listened earlier. He went on, speaking of the ways that God uses to save a soul from death, but, because of her very anxiety to hear, his utterance, exquisite as it was, dulled for a moment or two to a mere buzz in her ears. Then her senses cleared, and she heard him say:
“And, to save us from this death, it may be that God will use, as His last weapon, loneliness. In loneliness He asks us, ‘What seek ye?’ In loneliness we confess that we do not know His dwelling-place; in loneliness, at last, we can no longer escape the challenge of His merciful displeasure that bids us ‘Come and see.’ If still we hesitate, it may be our very honesty that makes us afraid to go and see where He dwells, for if we go with Him we must admit His claim, we must acknowledge our fault, we must forgive the friend who has done us irreparable wrong, we can never be as we were before.
“But if in the Divine mercy we yield ourselves captives to His love, and loosed from sin we know Him in Whom we have believed, yet we may not rest in this, the first sight of Jesus, for, like St. John, we are called to a yet more intimate knowledge—the friendship of the Lord. And here sincerity that is to become purity will pass into singleness of heart. For if the surrender of ourselves to the Divine Will has to be made over and over again before God can be glorified in us, still our intention must be pure, our purpose must be sincere. He calls us, indeed, to communion with Himself in sacrament and prayer while as yet the work of transformation is hardly begun. And those who live with Him day by day may still be a prey to resentment and to pride, to jealousy and to ambition, and those who rest on His heart may fail to watch with Him, may even forsake Him when wicked men lay hold on Him. But if, like St. John, greatly, though dimly, desiring the Beatific Vision, they grasp the cup of His Passion, crying out that they are able to drink of it, our Lord, it may be, will take them at their word, and the power of His Cross shall do for them what the joy of His Presence could never do.
“Who are the pure in heart, and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”
(2)
Horatia emerged with her hostess between the twisted pillars of the porch into the High, to a crowd of people, and the prospect of an Oxford Sunday such as she loved. But she would have given anything to go back, alone, into the emptying church, to pray to this new Christ, who had called her—her—and to Whom she had not come. But she would come, she would come, if only she could find the way.... “Where dwellest Thou?”
“Excuse me a moment,” said Mrs. Pusey, stopping to speak to someone, and Horatia, waiting in the momentary press, heard one gentleman commoner say to another, “Couldn’t make anything of the sermon. Are all your Fellows as unintelligible as that?” To which his companion, evidently an Oriel man, responded, “I don’t often hear them. But I can stand ‘Mercy and Judgment’ because he is at least short.—By Gad, there he is, with Mr. Denison!” And he capped the two Fellows as they crossed the street. Dormer was smiling as he returned the salute.
Horatia followed them with her eyes. Did he then know the friendship of the Lord, walking in sober academic garb along an Oxford street? Could people other than those in stained glass windows, dressed in reds and blues against a background of palm-tree and lake, hear His call, know His friendship, carry His cross?...
“Pray forgive me!” said Mrs. Pusey’s voice at her side. “Shall we go past Oriel; it is shortest. No doubt we shall encounter Edward on his way to meet us, if Cathedral is over, as I should guess it to be. Then we might perhaps take a turn in the Broad Walk. It will do Edward good, for his health is so precarious just now that I do not know how he is to get on to the end of term.”
As Horatia murmured her sympathy the two gowns disappeared under Oriel gateway.
“Where dwellest Thou?” All through the remainder of the day the question persisted, wrecking everything she did in the pleasant, dignified atmosphere of Mr. Pusey’s house. Were these kind, learned people who sat round the Sunday dinner-table, were they the captives of His love; had they been loosed from sin? She wished that Tristram could have been there, sitting opposite to her. His familiar presence would have steadied her. Even if he knew the meaning of all these phrases there was nothing disturbing about him.
Later in the afternoon she watched Mr. Newman, the friend of the family, sitting with the two elder children on his knee, while he put his spectacles on their noses, or told them a story. What would happen if she suddenly interrupted the story with her insistent question—“Do you know where He dwells?”
The interminable day came to an end at last, and she was alone in her room. Without waiting to undress she flung herself down beside the bed. “Where dwellest Thou, where dwellest Thou?” There was no one to answer, nothing to see, only the rose and jasmine of the wall-paper, distorted through the rain of tears.
She woke next morning in a very different frame of mind, more than a little ashamed of her emotion of the day before. She might have been a Methodist! It was not for her, this enthusiasm, and she ought not to have been so discomposed. To have been carried away, against her will, by the words of a man whom she disliked! She disliked, too, some of what he had said, now that more of it came back to her. Life was made for happiness; though sorrow intruded it was an incident to be forgotten, not to be dwelt upon. Comfortably eating her breakfast in her well-appointed room she felt sure of this, and knew that she, who was certainly not ignorant of suffering, did not approve of its glorification. What did Mr. Dormer know about it?
And yet... she knew that she should not forget St. Mary’s.