Robert Falconer

‘You seem hardly inclined to do me justice,’ said Lady Georgina, with, for the first time, a perceptible, though slight shadow crossing the disc of her resolution. ‘I only meant it,’ she went on, ‘as a step towards a further proposal, which I think you will allow looks at least in the direction you have been indicating.’

She paused.

‘May I beg of you to state the proposal?’ said Falconer.

But Lady Georgina was apparently in some little difficulty as to the proper form in which to express her object. At last it appeared in the cloak of a question.

‘Do you require no assistance in your efforts for the elevation of the lower classes?’ she asked.

‘I don’t make any such efforts,’ said Falconer.

Some of my lady-readers will probably be remarking to themselves, ‘How disagreeable of him! I can’t endure the man.’ If they knew how Falconer had to beware of the forwardness and annoyance of well-meaning women, they would not dislike him so much. But Falconer could be indifferent to much dislike, and therein I know some men that envy him.

When he saw, however, that Lady Georgina was trying to swallow a lump in her throat, he hastened to add,

‘I have only relations with individuals—none with classes.’

Lady Georgina gathered her failing courage. ‘Then there is the more hope for me,’ she said. ‘Surely there are things a woman might be useful in that a man cannot do so well—especially if she would do as she was told, Mr. Falconer?’

He looked at her, inquiring of her whole person what numen abode in the fane. She misunderstood the look.

‘I could dress very differently, you know. I will be a sister of charity, if you like.’

‘And wear a uniform?—as if the god of another world wanted to make proselytes or traitors in this! No, Lady Georgina, it was not of a dress so easily altered that I was thinking; it was of the habit, the dress of mind, of thought, of feeling. When you laid aside your beautiful dress, could you avoid putting on the garment of condescension, the most unchristian virtue attributed to Deity or saint? Could you—I must be plain with you, Lady Georgina, for this has nothing to do with the forms of so-called society—could your temper endure the mortifications of low opposition and misrepresentation of motive and end—which, avoid intrusion as you might, would yet force themselves on your perception? Could you be rudely, impudently thwarted by the very persons for whom you were spending your strength and means, and show no resentment? Could you make allowances for them as for your own brothers and sisters, your own children?’

Lady Georgina was silent.

‘I shall seem to glorify myself, but at that risk I must put the reality before you.—Could you endure the ugliness both moral and physical which you must meet at every turn? Could you look upon loathsomeness, not merely without turning away in disgust, and thus wounding the very heart you would heal, but without losing your belief in the Fatherhood of God, by losing your faith in the actual blood-relationship to yourself of these wretched beings? Could you believe in the immortal essence hidden under all this garbage—God at the root of it all? How would the delicate senses you probably inherit receive the intrusions from which they could not protect themselves? Would you be in no danger of finding personal refuge in the horrid fancy, that these are but the slimy borders of humanity where it slides into, and is one with bestiality? I could show you one fearful baboon-like woman, whose very face makes my nerves shudder: could you believe that woman might one day become a lady, beautiful as yourself, and therefore minister to her? Would you not be tempted, for the sake of your own comfort, if not for the pride of your own humanity, to believe that, like untimely blossoms, these must fall from off the boughs of the tree of life, and come to nothing at all—a theory that may do for the preacher, but will not do for the worker: him it would paralyze?—or, still worse, infinitely worse, that they were doomed, from their birth, to endless ages of a damnation, filthy as that in which you now found them, and must probably leave them? If you could come to this, you had better withhold your hand; for no desire for the betterment of the masses, as they are stupidly called, can make up for a lack of faith in the individual. If you cannot hope for them in your heart, your hands cannot reach them to do them good. They will only hurt them.’

Lady Georgina was still silent. Falconer’s eloquence had perhaps made her ashamed.

‘I want you to sit down and count the cost, before you do any mischief by beginning what you are unfit for. Last week I was compelled more than once to leave the house where my duty led me, and to sit down upon a stone in the street, so ill that I was in danger of being led away as intoxicated, only the policeman happened to know me. Twice I went back to the room I had left, crowded with human animals, and one of them at least dying. It was all I could do, and I have tolerable nerve and tolerable experience.’

A mist was gathering over Lady Georgina’s eyes. She confessed it afterwards to Miss St. John. And through the mist he looked larger than human.

‘And then the time you must spend before you can lay hold upon them at all, that is with the personal relation which alone is of any real influence! Our Saviour himself had to be thirty years in the world before he had footing enough in it to justify him in beginning to teach publicly: he had been laying the needful foundations all the time. Not under any circumstances could I consent to make use of you before you had brought yourself into genuine relations with some of them first.’

‘Do you count societies, then, of no use whatever?’ Lady Georgina asked, more to break the awkwardness of her prolonged silence than for any other reason.

‘In as far as any of the persons they employ fulfil the conditions of which I have spoken, they are useful—that is, just in as far as they come into genuine human relations with those whom they would help. In as far as their servants are incapable of this, the societies are hurtful. The chief good which societies might effect would be the procuring of simple justice for the poor. That is what they need at the hands of the nation, and what they do not receive. But though few can have the knowledge of the poor I have, many could do something, if they would only set about it simply, and not be too anxious to convert them; if they would only be their friends after a common-sense fashion. I know, say, a hundred wretched men and women far better than a man in general knows him with whom he claims an ordinary intimacy. I know many more by sight whose names in the natural course of events I shall probably know soon. I know many of their relations to each other, and they talk about each other to me as if I were one of themselves, which I hope in God I am. I have been amongst them a good many years now, and shall probably spend my life amongst them. When I went first, I was repeatedly robbed; now I should hardly fear to carry another man’s property. Two years ago I had my purse taken, but next morning it was returned, I do not know by whom: in fact it was put into my pocket again—every coin, as far as I could judge, as it left me. I seldom pretend to teach them—only now and then drop a word of advice. But possibly, before I die, I may speak to them in public. At present I avoid all attempt at organization of any sort, and as far as I see, am likely of all things to avoid it. What I want is first to be their friend, and then to be at length recognized as such. It is only in rare cases that I seek the acquaintance of any of them: I let it come naturally. I bide my time. Almost never do I offer assistance. I wait till they ask it, and then often refuse the sort they want. The worst thing you can do for them is to attempt to save them from the natural consequences of wrong: you may sometimes help them out of them. But it is right to do many things for them when you know them, which it would not be right to do for them until you know them. I am amongst them; they know me; their children know me; and something is always occurring that makes this or that one come to me. Once I have a footing, I seldom lose it. So you see, in this my labour I am content to do the thing that lies next me. I wait events. You have had no training, no blundering to fit you for such work. There are many other modes of being useful; but none in which I could undertake to direct you. I am not in the habit of talking so much about my ways—but that is of no consequence. I think I am right in doing so in this instance.’

‘I cannot misunderstand you,’ faltered Lady Georgina.

Falconer was silent. Without looking up from the floor on which her eyes had rested all the time he spoke, Lady Georgina said at last,

‘Then what is my next duty? What is the thing that lies nearest to me?’

‘That, I repeat, belongs to your every-day history. No one can answer that question but yourself. Your next duty is just to determine what your next duty is.—Is there nothing you neglect? Is there nothing you know you ought not to do?—You would know your duty, if you thought in earnest about it, and were not ambitious of great things.’

‘Ah then,’ responded Lady Georgina, with an abandoning sigh, ‘I suppose it is something very commonplace, which will make life more dreary than ever. That cannot help me.’

‘It will, if it be as dreary as reading the newspapers to an old deaf aunt. It will soon lead you to something more. Your duty will begin to comfort you at once, but will at length open the unknown fountain of life in your heart.’

Lady Georgina lifted up her head in despair, looked at Falconer through eyes full of tears, and said vehemently,

‘Mr. Falconer, you can have no conception how wretched a life like mine is. And the futility of everything is embittered by the consciousness that it is from no superiority to such things that I do not care for them.’

‘It is from superiority to such things that you do not care for them. You were not made for such things. They cannot fill your heart. It has whole regions with which they have no relation.’

‘The very thought of music makes me feel ill. I used to be passionately fond of it.’

‘I presume you got so far in it that you asked, “Is there nothing more?” Concluding there was nothing more, and yet needing more, you turned from it with disappointment?’

‘It is the same,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘with painting, modelling, reading—whatever I have tried. I am sick of them all. They do nothing for me.’

‘How can you enjoy music, Lady Georgina, if you are not in harmony with the heart and source of music?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Until the human heart knows the divine heart, it must sigh and complain like a petulant child, who flings his toys from him because his mother is not at home. When his mother comes back to him he finds his toys are good still. When we find Him in our own hearts, we shall find him in everything, and music will be deep enough then, Lady Georgina. It is this that the Brahmin and the Platonist seek; it is this that the mystic and the anchorite sigh for; towards this the teaching of the greatest of men would lead us: Lord Bacon himself says, “Nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God, and the contemplation of God.” It is Life you want. If you will look in your New Testament, and find out all that our Lord says about Life, you will find the only cure for your malady. I know what such talk looks like; but depend upon it, what I am talking about is something very different from what you fancy it. Anyhow to this you must come, one day or other.’

‘But how am I to gain this indescribable good, which so many seek, and so few find?’

‘Those are not my words,’ said Falconer emphatically. ‘I should have said—“which so few yet seek; but so many shall at length find.”’

‘Do not quarrel with my foolish words, but tell me how I am to find it; for I suppose there must be something in what so many good people assert.’

‘You thought I could give you help?’

‘Yes. That is why I came to you.’

‘Just so. I cannot give you help. Go and ask it of one who can.’

‘Speak more plainly.’

‘Well then: if there be a God, he must hear you if you call to him. If there be a father, he will listen to his child. He will teach you everything.’

‘But I don’t know what I want.’

‘He does: ask him to tell you what you want. It all comes back to the old story: “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the holy Spirit to them that ask him!” But I wish you would read your New Testament—the Gospels I mean: you are not in the least fit to understand the Epistles yet. Read the story of our Saviour as if you had never read it before. He at least was a man who seemed to have that secret of life after the knowledge of which your heart is longing.’

Lady Georgina rose. Her eyes were again full of tears. Falconer too was moved. She held out her hand to him, and without another word left the room. She never came there again.

Her manner towards Falconer was thereafter much altered. People said she was in love with him: if she was, it did her no harm. Her whole character certainly was changed. She sought the friendship of Miss St. John, who came at length to like her so much, that she took her with her in some of her walks among the poor. By degrees she began to do something herself after a quiet modest fashion. But within a few years, probably while so engaged, she caught a fever from which she did not recover. It was not till after her death that Falconer told any one of the interview he had had with her. And by that time I had the honour of being very intimate with him. When she knew that she was dying, she sent for him. Mary St. John was with her. She left them together. When he came out, he was weeping.