murmuring, but that had only roused Ned to frenzy, so that for a whole day he had done nothing but bang in and out of the study, screaming forth blasphemies againt the God of his brother….’
Sarah relented when she saw the minister hide his face.
There might be a time for that kind of thing, later,’ she conceded, ‘but he’s in no condition for it just now. What he needs is firm handling, as if he were a bairn. I’m going to make him get up for breakfast, and dress himself decently. And I’m going to cut off the gas at the meter at eleven o’clock every night. A regular way of life —’
She broke off. Her resolution was not sufficient to enable her to finish her sentence. A regular way of life is the first duty of a Christian, she was thinking, but William, she knew, would not agree with her. Men got such queer bees in their bonnets; even the best of them.
William still sat motionless.
‘You said before – don’t you remember? – that I was quite right in standing up to him.’
Sarah was insensibly taking up the defensive.
The minister roused himself with a sigh.
‘Yes, yes: you’re right to a certain extent, Sarah…. He must learn to live in this world as well as in the other.’ He smiled a little wryly. ‘But washing one’s face and putting on a fresh collar every day is only cleaning the outside of the platter after all.’
‘It’s at least a beginning,’ said Sarah, turning to go. ‘And it’s the only way that some bairns can be brought up to understand that there must be order in the world.’
The door closed behind her, cutting her off, but leaving the last sentence still hanging in the air.
Order in the world? Did William really believe that there was perceptible order in the world? What he believed was that God pervaded the world; but more and more he was being driven to acknowledge that God’s order was beyond human comprehension, although not beyond human faith. ‘Your God allows mean cunning,’ Ned had said. ‘Your God allows sheer cruelty. Your God allowed Christ to be crucified, and still allows it.’ Ned was blind to everything but the evil in the world…. There was one remark of his which persisted at the back of William’s mind. ‘Your God allows brute savages like Hector Shand to do things to people that I wouldn’t even think of, and then gives him a job and a wife and a home….’
He had not known what answer to make, for he too felt there was evil in Hector Shand.
Strangely enough, although Ned was becoming more and more exasperating, the minister was now convinced that there was real innocence in the boy. He was not evil in himself. He was twisted with fear, but he was not evil. Ned was a queer tangle of odds and ends, like the reverse of a pattern which might never be discernible this side of the grave, but which one felt was there. God’s pattern, thought the minister.
He summoned to his recollection what he could remember of his brother’s life. It was not much. There were six years between them – a large gap when both were young. He was at the University when Ned was at school: and he was in orders when Ned came to the University. But there was one dominant characteristic in all he could remember: Ned’s amiability, gentleness, docility – whatever it was, it was an almost excessive mildness of temper. Ned had been tied to his mother’s apron-strings until she died. He must have been about ten at that time.
The minister sighed, and followed in his memory the phantom of his mother. She had been gentle too; gentle and frail; uncomplaining under the harsh and somewhat fractious rule of her husband.
An odd thought struck him. Sarah was always like father, he said to himself in surprise, and Ned and I were like two different versions of mother….
The more he brooded on this resemblance between himself and his brother the more agitated he became. It was as if he were resisting with all his might the temptation to catch hold of an idea which was struggling for recognition. How could there be a fundamental resemblance between two people whose vision of life was so different? Ned’s vision was a nightmare; by an unhappy fatality he saw nothing but evil in the world. It was an impossible nightmare; one could not go on living in it; and yet the minister suddenly comprehended with agony that the nightmare closed round Ned with an immediate certainty that prevented him from questioning its truth. It was as real to him as water closing over his head. But if Ned were like a man weighted down so that his head was just under water, with a little readjustment could he not be as easily cradled on the top of the sea, and would he not then be exactly like his brother?
The minister swerved away from the implications of this admission, and forced his mind back to Ned. When waters are closing over his head a man can think of nothing but himself: he cannot be gentle and amenable; he must insist that his feelings are of the first importance, and that he is suffering; he must be in a state of terror. All that was true of Ned. Nor is a man necessarily a devil because he is drowning and clutches at other people and curses God. An infinitesimal readjustment to bring his head above water will suffice to restore his natural gentleness.
The verse in the Book of Job detached itself once more from the page:
‘O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour.’
Oh, that one might!
What was this sea that closed over Ned’s head and for so many years had cradled himself in security?
The point of the idea had at last pricked the minister’s consciousness, and he started. Ned saw nothing but evil around him, and for years he himself had seen nothing but good. He had believed in a consoling dream exactly as Ned was believing in a nightmare. Was the dream as false as the nightmare? Or were they both real?
The minister felt as if he were on the verge of a sickening abyss.
When he recoverd himself he said aloud: ‘Neither heaven nor hell. Or both heaven and hell?’
He remembered, as if from a far-off world, that he had once guessed at a final state of being where there was neither punishment nor forgiveness, neither good nor evil…. But that must be on the other side of death…. On this side of it both heaven and hell were real. You could not have one without the other: you could not live without admitting both. That had been forced upon him.
They must be real. They must be real. But God was incomprehensible.
‘O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour.’
But one might not. Sympathy was unavailing. That, too, he had had to learn.
The minister offered up a prayer to the incomprehensible God he acknowledged, asking that his feeble spirit might be sharpened and hardened to do God’s work as a faithful member of His Church.
Later he finished his sermon.
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