CHAPTER XXXIV

The matter, as I soon perceived, was not at all so simple as in the first flush of discovery it appeared to be. But one excellent effect it had, and that was to make Sunday, which had been the dullest, the most interesting, day of the week, while I went from church to church in search of my confessor. In almost every case I could tell at once that I had not found him, and I was on the point of giving up the whole idea as hopeless, when one Sunday evening I went to St. Mary Magdalene’s. The clergyman who took the service was already well past middle-age. He was delicate and ascetic-looking, with a peculiar expression on his worn face, as of one who had had to make a fight against something――possibly it had only been ill-health――and who had come out of the struggle victorious if not unscarred. He preached a sermon which may have been slightly vague, but which appealed to my imagination. Even the weakness of his voice and the almost colourlessness of his manner had the curious effect of making what he said to me more real. Listening to him was like listening to a spirit, to a disembodied voice; and through all there flickered a kind of nervous exaltation, like a tremulous, uncertain flame. There were no signs of that mental and imaginative poverty which had so frequently discouraged me. But he struck me, above all, as a man who had been unhappy, and therefore, if he had found peace, there must be some reason for it. I returned to hear him several times, and although my first impression was not strengthened, it was not effaced. I persuaded Owen to come with me to hear him, but Owen did not like him at all.

Far from shaking me in my view, this unfavourable opinion helped to confirm me. Not through any perversity, but simply because I knew the person I was in search of would not particularly appeal to Owen. I did not want a purely reasonable being, I did not perhaps even want one whom Owen would consider quite healthy――I wanted one who would understand. That night I wrote a letter to Henry Applin, asking if I might come to him, and, if I might, would he tell me when.