Born in Exile (30 page)

In the meantime he had purchased a copy of Reusch's
Bibel und
Natur
, and had made a translation of some fifty pages. This
experiment he submitted to a London publishing house, with
proposals for the completion of the work; without much delay there
came a civil letter of excuse, and with it the sample returned.
Another attempt again met with rejection. This failure did not
trouble him. What he really desired was to read through his version
of Reusch with Martin Warricombe, and before long he had brought it
to pass that Martin requested a perusal of the manuscript as it
advanced, which it did but slowly. Godwin durst not endanger his
success in the examination by encroaching upon hours of necessary
study; his leisure was largely sacrificed to
Bibel und
Natur
, and many an evening of calm golden loveliness, when he
longed to be amid the fields, passed in vexatious imprisonment. The
name of Reusch grew odious to him, and he revenged himself for the
hypocrisy of other hours by fierce scorn, cast audibly at this
laborious exegetist.

It occasionally happens that a woman whose early life has been
directed by native silliness and social bias, will submit to a
tardy education at the hands of her own children. Thus was it with
Mrs Warricombe.

She came of a race long established in squirearchic dignity amid
heaths and woodlands. Her breeding was pure through many
generations of the paternal and maternal lines, representative of a
physical type, fortified in the males by much companionship with
horse and hound, and by the corresponding country pursuits of
dowered daughters. At the time of her marriage she had no charms of
person more remarkable than rosy comeliness and the symmetry of
supple limb. As for the nurture of her mind, it had been intrusted
to home-governesses of respectable incapacity. Martin Warricombe
married her because she was one of a little circle of girls, much
alike as to birth and fortune, with whom he had grown up in
familiar communication. Timidity imposed restraints upon him which
made his choice almost a matter of accident. As befalls often
enough, the betrothal became an accomplished fact whilst he was
still doubting whether he desired it or not. When the fervour of
early wedlock was outlived, he had no difficulty in accepting as a
matter of course that his life's companion should be hopelessly
illogical and at heart indifferent to everything but the small
graces and substantial comforts of provincial existence. One of the
advantages of wealth is that it allows husband and wife to keep a
great deal apart without any show of mutual unkindness, a condition
essential to happiness in marriage. Time fostered in them a calm
attachment, independent of spiritual sympathy, satisfied with a
common regard for domestic honour.

Not that Mrs. Warricombe remained in complete ignorance of her
husband's pursuits; social forms would scarcely have allowed this,
seeing that she was in constant intercourse, as hostess or guest,
with Martin's scientific friends. Of fossils she necessarily knew
something. Up to a certain point they amused her; she could talk of
ammonites, of brachiopods, and would point a friend's attention to
the
Calceola sandalina
which Martin prized so much. The
significance of palaeontology she dimly apprehended, for in the
early days of their union her husband had felt it desirable to
explain to her what was meant by geologic time and how he
reconciled his views on that subject with the demands of religious
faith. Among the books which he induced her to read were Buckland's
Bridgewater Treatise and the works of Hugh Miller. The intellectual
result was chaotic, and Mrs. Warricombe settled at last into a
comfortable private opinion, that though the record of geology
might be trustworthy that of the Bible was more so. She would admit
that there was no impiety in accepting the evidence of nature, but
held to a secret conviction that it was safer to believe in
Genesis. For anything beyond a quasi-permissible variance from
biblical authority as to the age of the world she was quite
unprepared, and Martin, in his discretion, imparted to her nothing
of the graver doubts which were wont to trouble him.

But as her children grew up, Mrs. Warricombe's mind and temper
were insensibly modified by influences which operated through her
maternal affections, influences no doubt aided by the progressive
spirit of the time. The three boys—Buckland, Maurice, and
Louis—were distinctly of a new generation. It needed some ingenuity
to discover their points of kindred with paternal and maternal
grandparents; nor even with father and mother had they much in
common which observation could readily detect. Sidwell, up to at
least her fifteenth year, seemed to present far less change of
type. In her Mrs. Warricombe recognised a daughter, and not without
solace. But Fanny again was a problematical nature, almost from the
cradle. Latest born, she appeared to revive many characteristics of
the youthful Buckland, so far as a girl could resemble her brother.
It was a strange brood to cluster around Mrs. Warricombe. For many
years the mother was kept in alternation between hopes and fears,
pride and disapproval, the old hereditary habits of mind, and a new
order of ideas which could only be admitted with the utmost
slowness. Buckland's Radicalism deeply offended her; she marvelled
how such depravity could display itself in a child of hers. Yet in
the end her ancestral prejudices so far yielded as to allow of her
smiling at sentiments which she once heard with horror. Maurice,
whom she loved more tenderly, all but taught her to see the cogency
of a syllogism—amiably set forth. And Louis, with his indolent
good-nature, laughed her into a tolerance of many things which had
moved her indignation. But it was to Sidwell that in the end she
owed most. Beneath the surface of ordinary and rather backward
girlhood, which discouraged her father's hopes, Sidwell was quietly
developing a personality distinguished by the refinement of its
ethical motives. Her orthodoxy seemed as unimpeachable as Mrs
Warricombe could desire, yet as she grew into womanhood, a
curiosity, which in no way disturbed the tenor of her quietly
contented life, led her to examine various forms of religion,
ancient and modern, and even systems of philosophy which professed
to establish a moral code, independent of supernatural faith. She
was not of studious disposition—that is to say, she had never cared
as a schoolgirl to do more mental work than was required of her,
and even now it was seldom that she read for more than an hour or
two in the day. Her habit was to dip into books, and meditate long
on the first points which arrested her thoughts. Of continuous
application she seemed incapable. She could read French, but did
not attempt to pursue the other languages of which her teachers had
given her a smattering. It pleased her best when she could learn
from conversation. In this way she obtained some insight into her
father's favourite sciences, occasionally making suggestions or
inquiries which revealed a subtle if not an acute intelligence.

Little by little Mrs. Warricombe found herself changing places
with the daughter whom she had regarded as wholly subject to her
direction. Sidwell began to exercise an indeterminate control, the
proofs of which were at length manifest in details of her mother's
speech and demeanour. An exquisite social tact, an unfailing
insensibly as the qualities of pure air: these were the points of
sincerity of moral judgment, a gentle force which operated as
character to which Mrs. Warricombe owed the humanisation observable
when one compared her in 1885 with what she was, say, in 1874, when
the sight of Professor Walsh moved her to acrimony, and when she
conceived a pique against Professor Gale because the letter P has
alphabetical precedence of W. Her limitations were of course the
same as ever, and from her sons she had only learnt to be ashamed
of announcing them too vehemently. Sidwell it was who had led her
to that degree of genuine humility, which is not satisfied with
hiding a fault but strives to amend it.

Martin Warricombe himself was not unaffected by the growth about
him of young men and maidens who looked upon the world with new
eyes, whose world, indeed, was another than that in which he had
spent the better part of his life. In his case contact with the
young generation tended to unsettlement, to a troublesome
persistency of speculations which he would have preferred to
dismiss altogether. At the time of his marriage, and for some years
after, he was content to make a broad distinction between those
intellectual pursuits which afforded him rather a liberal amusement
than the pleasures of earnest study and the questions of
metaphysical faith which concerned his heart and conscience. His
native prejudices were almost as strong, and much the same, as
those of his wife; but with the vagueness of emotional logic
natural to his constitution, he satisfied himself that, by
conceding a few inessential points, he left himself at liberty to
follow the scientific movements of the day without damage to his
religious convictions. The tolerant smile so frequently on his
countenance was directed as often in the one quarter as in the
other. Now it signified a gentle reproof of those men of science
who, like Professor Walsh, 'went too far', whose zeal for knowledge
led them 'to forget the source of all true enlightenment'; now it
expressed a forbearing sympathy with such as erred in the opposite
direction, who were 'too literal in their interpretation of the
sacred volume'. Amiable as the smile was, it betrayed weakness, and
at moments Martin became unpleasantly conscious of indisposition to
examine his own mind on certain points. His life, indeed, was one
of debate postponed. As the realm of science extended, as his
intercourse with men who frankly avowed their 'infidelity' grew
more frequent, he ever and again said to himself that, one of these
days, he must sit down and 'have it out' in a solemn
self-searching. But for the most part he got on very well amid his
inconsistencies. Religious faith has rarely any connection with
reasoning. Martin believed because he believed, and avoided the
impact of disagreeable arguments because he wished to do so.

The bent of his mind was anything but polemical; he cared not to
spend time even over those authors whose attacks on the outposts of
science, or whose elaborate reconcilements of old and new, might
have afforded him some support. On the other hand, he altogether
lacked that breadth of intellect which seeks to comprehend all the
results of speculation, to discern their tendency, to derive from
them a consistent theory of the nature of things. Though a man be
well versed in a science such as palaeontology it does not follow
that he will view it in its philosophical relations. Martin had
kept himself informed of all the facts appertaining to his study
which the age brought forth, but without developing the new modes
of mental life requisite for the recognition of all that such facts
involved. The theories of evolution he did not venture openly to
resist, but his acceptance of them was so half-hearted that
practically he made no use of their teaching. He was no man of
science, but an idler among the wonders which science uses for her
own purposes.

He regarded with surprise and anxiety the tendencies early
manifested in his son Buckland. Could he have had his way the lad
would have grown up with an impossible combination of qualities,
blending the enthusiasm of modern research with a spirit of
expansive teleology. Whilst Buckland was still of boyish years, the
father treated with bantering good-humour such outbreaks of
irreverence as came immediately under his notice, weakly abstaining
from any attempt at direct argument or influence. But, at a later
time, there took place serious and painful discussions, and only
when the young man had rubbed off his edges in the world's highways
could Martin forget that stage of most unwelcome conflict.

At the death of his younger boy, Maurice, he suffered a blow
which had results more abiding than the melancholy wherewith for a
year or two his genial nature was overshadowed. From that day
onwards he was never wholly at ease among the pursuits which had
been wont to afford him an unfailing resource against whatever
troubles. He could no longer accept and disregard, in a spirit of
cheerful faith, those difficulties science was perpetually throwing
in his way. The old smile of kindly tolerance had still its twofold
meaning, but it was more evidently a disguise of indecision, and
not seldom touched with sadness. Martin's life was still one of
postponed debate, but he could not regard the day when conclusions
would be demanded of him as indefinitely remote. Desiring to dwell
in the familiar temporary abode, his structure of incongruities and
facile reconcilements, he found it no longer weather-proof. The
times were shaking his position with earthquake after earthquake.
His sons (for he suspected that Louis was hardly less emancipated
than Buckland) stood far aloof from him, and must in private feel
contemptuous of his old-fashioned beliefs. In Sidwell, however, he
had a companion more and more indispensable, and he could not
imagine that
her
faith would ever give way before the
invading spirit of agnosticism. Happily she was no mere pietist.
Though he did not quite understand her attitude towards
Christianity, he felt assured that Sidwell had thought deeply and
earnestly of religion in all its aspects, and it was a solace to
know that she found no difficulty in recognising the large claims
of science. For all this, he could not deliberately seek her
confidence, or invite her to a discussion of religious subjects.
Some day, no doubt, a talk of that kind would begin naturally
between them, and so strong was his instinctive faith in Sidwell
that he looked forward to this future communing as to a certain
hope of peace.