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The Third Vision7
That was but the opening of an enormous interview. Presently he had contrived in a helpful and sympathetic manner to seat the unhappy lady on a sofa, and when after some cramped discourse she stood up before him, wiping her eyes with a wet wonder of lace, to deliver herself the better, a newborn appreciation of the tactics of the situation made him walk to the other side of the table under colour of picking up a drawing.
In the retrospect he tried to disentangle the threads of a discussion that went to and fro and contradicted itself and began again far back among things that had seemed forgotten and disposed of. Lady Sunderbund`s mind was extravagantly untrained, a wild-grown mental thicket. At times she reproached him as if he were a heartless God; at times she talked as if he were a recalcitrant servant. Her mingling of utter devotion and the completest disregard for his thoughts and wishes dazzled and distressed his mind. It was clear that for half a year her clear, bold, absurd will had been crystallized upon the idea of giving him exactly what she wanted him to want. The crystal sphere of those ambitions lay now shattered between them.
She was trying to reconstruct it before his eyes.
She was, she declared, prepared to alter her plans in any way that would meet his wishes. She had not understood. "If it is a Toy," she cried, "show me how to make it not a Toy! Make it `eal!"
He said it was the bare idea of a temple that made it impossible. And there was this drawing here; what did it mean? He held it out to her. It represented a figure, distressingly like himself, robed as a priest in vestments.
She snatched the offending drawing from him and tore it to shreds.
"If you don`t want a Temple, have a meeting-house. You wanted a meeting-house anyhow."
"Just any old meeting-house," he said. "Not that special one. A place without choirs and clergy."
"If you won`t have music," she responded, "don`t have music. If God doesn`t want music it can go. I can`t think God does not app`ove of music, but--that is for you to settle. If you don`t like the` being o`naments, we`ll make it all plain. Some g`ate g`ey Dome--all g`ey and black. If it isn`t to be beautiful, it can be ugly. Yes, ugly. It can be as ugly "--she sobbed--" as the City Temple. We will get some otha a`chitect--some City a`chitect. Some man who has built B`anch Banks or `ailway stations. That`s if you think it pleases God.... B`eak young Venable`s hea`t.... Only why should you not let me make a place fo` you` message? Why shouldn`t it be me? You must have a place. You`ve got `to p`each somewhe`."
"As a man, not as a priest."
"Then p`each as a man. You must still wea` something."
"Just ordinary clothes."
"O`dina`y clothes a` clothes in the fashion," she said. "You would have to go to you` taila for a new p`eaching coat with b`aid put on dif`ently, or two buttons instead of th`ee...."
"One needn`t be fashionable."
"Ev`ybody is fash`nable. How can you help it? Some people wea` old fashions; that`s all.... A cassock`s an old fashion. There`s nothing so plain as a cassock."
"Except that it`s a clerical fashion. I want to be just as I am now."
"If you think that--that owoble suit is o`dina`y clothes!" she said, and stared at him and gave way to tears of real tenderness.
"A cassock," she cried with passion. "Just a pe`fectly plain cassock. Fo` deecency!... Oh, if you won`t--not even that!"
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