Born in Exile (34 page)

By the exercise of watchfulness and dexterity, Peak managed for
the most part to avoid expression of definite opinions. His
attitude was that of a reverent (not yet reverend) student. Mr.
Warricombe was less guarded, and sometimes allowed himself to
profess that he saw nothing but vain ingenuity in Reusch's
argument: as, for example, where the theologian, convinced that the
patriarchs did really live to an abnormal age, suggests that man's
life was subsequently shortened in order that 'sin might not
flourish with such exuberance'. This passage caused Martin to
smile.

'It won't do, it won't do,' he said, quietly. 'Far better apply
his rationalism here as elsewhere. These are wonderful old stories,
not to be understood literally. Nothing depends upon them nothing
essential.'

Thereupon Peak mused anxiously. Not for the first time there
occurred to him a thought which suited only too well with his
ironic habits of mind. What if this hypocritic comedy were
altogether superfluous? What if Mr. Warricombe would have received
him no less cordially had he avowed his sincere position, and
contented himself with guarding against offensiveness? Buckland, it
was true, had suffered in his father's esteem on account of his
unorthodoxy, but that young man had been too aggressive, too
scornful. With prudence, would it not have been possible to win
Martin's regard by fortifying the scientific rather than the
dogmatic side of his intellect? If so, what a hopeless error had he
committed!—But Sidwell? Was
she
liberal enough to take a
personal interest in one who had renounced faith in revelation? He
could not decide this question, for of Sidwell he knew much less
than of her father. And it was idle to torment himself with such
debate of the irreversible.

And, indeed, there seemed much reason for believing that Martin,
whatever the extent of his secret doubts, was by temperament armed
against agnosticism. Distinctly it comforted him to hear the
unbelievers assailed—the friends of whom he spoke most heartily
were all on the orthodox side; if ever a hint of gentle malice
occurred in his conversation, it was when he spoke of a fallacy, a
precipitate conclusion, detected in works of science. Probably he
was too old to overcome this bias.

His view of the Bible appeared to harmonise with that which Peak
put forth in one of their dialogues. 'The Scriptures were meant to
be literally understood in primitive ages, and spiritually when the
growth of science made it possible.
Genesis
was never
intended to teach the facts of natural history; it takes phenomena
as they appear to uninstructed people, and uses them only for the
inculcation of moral lessons; it presents to the childhood of the
world a few great elementary truths. And the way in which phenomena
are spoken of in the Old Testament is never really incompatible
with the facts as we know them nowadays. Take the miracle of the
sun standing still, which is supposed to be a safe subject of
ridicule. Why, it merely means that light was miraculously
prolonged; the words used are those which common people would at
all times understand.'

(Was it necessary to have admitted the miracle? Godwin asked
himself. At all events Mr. Warricombe nodded approvingly.)

'Then the narrative of the creation of man; that's not at all
incompatible with his slow development through ages. To teach the
scientific fact—if we yet really know it—would have been worse than
useless. The story is meant to express that spirit, and not matter,
is the source of all existence. Indeed, our knowledge of the true
meaning of the Bible has increased with the growth of science, and
naturally that must have been intended from the first. Things which
do not concern man's relation to the spiritual have no place in
this book; they are not within its province. Such things were
discoverable by human reason, and the knowledge which achieves has
nothing to do with a divine revelation.'

To Godwin it was a grinding of the air, but the listener
appeared to think it profitable.

With his clerical friend, Mr. Lilywhite, he rarely touched on
matters of religion. The vicar of St. Ethelreda's was a man well
suited to support the social dignity of his Church. A gentleman
before everything, he seemed incapable of prying into the state of
a parishioner's soul; you saw in him the official representative of
a Divinity characterised by well-bred tolerance. He had written a
pleasant little book on the by-ways of Devon and Cornwall, which
brought about his intimacy with the Warricombe household. Peak
liked him more the better he knew him, and in the course of the
summer they had one or two long walks together, conversing
exclusively of the things of earth. Mr. Lilywhite troubled himself
little about evolution; he spoke of trees and plants, of birds and
animals, in a loving spirit, like the old simple naturalists.
Geology did not come within his sphere.

'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'that I could never care much for it.
Don't think I'm afraid of it—not I! I feel the grandeur of its
scope, just as I do in the case of astronomy; but I have never
brought myself to study either science. A narrowness of mind, no
doubt. I can't go into such remote times and regions. I love the
sunlight and the green fields of this little corner of the
world—too well, perhaps: yes, perhaps too well.'

After one of these walks, he remarked to Mrs. Lilywhite:

'It's my impression that Mr. Peak has somehow been misled in his
choice of a vocation. I don't think he'll do as a churchman.'

'Why not, Henry?' asked his wife, with gentle concern, for she
still spoke of Peak's 'quiet moral force'.

'There's something too restless about him. I doubt whether he
has really made up his mind on any subject whatever. Well, it's not
easy to explain what I feel, but I don't think he will take
Orders.'

Calling at the vicarage one afternoon in September, Godwin found
Mrs Lilywhite alone. She startled him by saying at once:

'An old acquaintance of yours was with us yesterday, Mr.
Peak.'

'Who could that be, I wonder?'

He smiled softly, controlling his impulse to show quite another
expression.

'You remember Mr. Bruno Chilvers?'

'Oh, yes!'

There was a constriction in his throat. Struggling to overcome
it, he added:

'But I should have thought he had no recollection of me.'

'Quite the contrary, I assure you. He is to succeed Mr. Bell of
St Margaret's, at Christmas; he was down here only for a day or
two, and called upon my husband with a message from an old friend
of ours. It appears he used to know the Warricombes, when they
lived at Kingsmill, and he had been to see them before visiting us;
it was there your name was mentioned to him.'

Godwin had seated himself, and leaned forward, his hands
grasping the glove he had drawn off.

'We were contemporaries at Whitelaw College,' he observed.

'So we learnt from him. He spoke of you with the greatest
interest; he was delighted to hear that you contemplated taking
Orders. Of course we knew Mr. Chilvers by reputation, but my
husband had no idea that he was coming to Exeter. What an energetic
man he is! In a few hours he seemed to have met everyone, and to
have learnt everything. My husband says he felt quite rebuked by
such a display of vigour!'

Even in his discomposure, graver than any that had affected him
since his talks with Buckland Warricombe, Peak was able to notice
that the Rev. Bruno had not made a wholly favourable impression
upon the Lilywhites. There was an amiable causticity in that
mention of his 'display of vigour', such as did not often
characterise Mrs Lilywhite's comments. Finding that the vicar would
be away till evening, Godwin stayed for only a quarter of an hour,
and when he had escaped it irritated and alarmed him to reflect how
unusual his behaviour must have appeared to the good lady.

The blow was aimed at his self-possession from such an unlikely
quarter. In Church papers he had frequently come across Chilvers's
name, and the sight of it caused him a twofold disturbance: it was
hateful to have memories of humiliation revived, and perhaps still
more harassing to be forced upon acknowledgment of the fact that he
stood as an obscure aspirant at the foot of the ladder which his
old rival was triumphantly ascending. Bad enough to be classed in
any way with such a man as Chilvers; but to be regarded as at one
with him in religious faith, to be forbidden the utterance of scorn
when Chilvers was extolled, stung him so keenly that he rushed into
any distraction to elude the thought. When he was suffering shame
under the gaze of Buckland Warricombe he remembered Chilvers, and
shrank as before a merited scoff. But the sensation had not been
abiding enough to affect his conduct. He had said to himself that
he should never come in contact with the fellow, and that, after
all, community of religious profession meant no more, under their
respective circumstances, than if both were following law or
physic.

But the unforeseen had happened. In a few months, the Rev. Bruno
Chilvers would be a prominent figure about the streets of Exeter;
would be frequently seen at the Warricombes', at the Lilywhites',
at the houses of their friends. His sermons at St. Margaret's would
doubtless attract, and form a staple topic of conversation. Worse
than all, his expressions of 'interest' and 'delight' made it
probable that he would seek out his College competitor and offer
the hand of brotherhood. These things were not to be avoided—save
by abandonment of hopes, save by retreat, by yielding to a hostile
destiny.

That Chilvers might talk here and there of Whitelaw stories was
comparatively unimportant. The Warricombes must already know all
that could be told, and what other people heard did not much
matter. It was the man himself that Peak could not endure.
Dissembling had hitherto been no light task. The burden had more
than once pressed so gallingly that its permanent support seemed
impossible; but to stand before Bruno Chilvers in the attitude of
humble emulation, to give respectful ear whilst the popular cleric
advised or encouraged, or bestowed pontifical praise, was
comparable only to a searing of the flesh with red irons. Even with
assured prospect of recompense in the shape of Sidwell Warricombe's
heart and hand, he could hardly submit to such an ordeal. As it
was, reason having so often convinced him that he clung to a
visionary hope, the torture became gratuitous, and its mere
suggestion inspired him with a fierce resentment destructive of all
his purposes.

For several days he scarcely left the house. To wrath and dread
had succeeded a wretched torpor, during which his mind kept
revolving the thoughts prompted by his situation, turbidly and to
no issue. He tasted all the bitterness of the solitude to which he
had condemned himself; there was not a living soul with whom he
could commune. At moments he was possessed with the desire of going
straightway to London, and making Earwaker the confidant of all his
folly. But that demanded an exertion of which he was physically
incapable. He thought of the old home at Twybridge, and was tempted
also in that direction. His mother would welcome him with human
kindness; beneath her roof he could lie dormant until fate should
again point his course. He even wrote a letter saying that in all
probability he should pay a visit to Twybridge before long. But the
impulse was only of an hour's duration, for he remembered that to
talk with his mother would necessitate all manner of new
falsehoods, a thickening of the atmosphere of lies which already
oppressed him. No; if he quitted Exeter, it must be on a longer
journey. He must resume his purpose of seeking some distant
country, where new conditions of life would allow him to try his
fortune at least as an honest adventurer. In many parts of colonial
England his technical knowledge would have a value, and were there
not women to be won beneath other skies—women perhaps of subtler
charm than the old hidebound civilisation produced? Reminiscences
of scenes and figures in novels he had read nourished the illusion.
He pictured some thriving little town at the ends of the earth,
where a young Englishman of good manners and unusual culture would
easily be admitted to the intimacy of the richest families; he saw
the ideal colonist (a man of good birth, but a sower of wild oats
in his youth) with two or three daughters about him—beautiful
girls, wondrously self-instructed—living amid romantic dreams of
the old world, and of the lover who would some day carry them off
(with a substantial share of papa's wealth) to Europe and the
scenes of their imagination.

The mind has marvellous methods of self-defence against creeping
lethargy of despair. At the point to which he had been reduced by
several days of blank despondency, Peak was able to find genuine
encouragement in visions such as this. He indulged his fancy until
the vital force began to stir once more within him, and then, with
one angry sweep, all his theological books and manuscripts were
flung out of sight. Away with this detestable mummery! Now let
Bruno Chilvers pour his eloquence from the pulpit of St.
Margaret's, and rear to what heights he could the edifice of his
social glory; men of that stamp were alone fitted to thrive in
England. Was not
he
almost certainly a hypocrite, masking
his brains (for brains he had) under a show of broadest
Anglicanism? But his career was throughout consistent. He trod in
the footsteps of his father, and with inherited aptitude moulded
antique traditions into harmony with the taste of the times.
Compared with such a man, Peak felt himself a bungler. The wonder
was that his clumsy lying had escaped detection.

Another day, and he had done nothing whatever, but was still
buoyed up by the reaction of visionary hope. His need now was of
communicating his change of purpose to some friendly hearer. A week
had passed since he had exchanged a word with anyone but Mrs.
Roots, and converse he must. Why not with Mr. Warricombe? That was
plainly the next step: to see Martin and make known to him that
after all he could not become a clergyman. No need of hinting a
conscientious reason. At all events, nothing more definite than a
sense of personal unfitness, a growing perception of difficulties
inherent in his character. It would be very interesting to hear Mr.
Warricombe's replies.