Strange that his first aspiration--towards academical
proficiency--had been checked by a woman, and that his second
aspiration--towards apostleship--had also been checked by a woman.
"Is it," he said, "that the women are to blame; or is it the
artificial system of things, under which the normal sex-impulses are
turned into devilish domestic gins and springs to noose and hold back
those who want to progress?"
It had been his standing desire to become a prophet, however humble,
to his struggling fellow-creatures, without any thought of personal
gain. Yet with a wife living away from him with another husband, and
himself in love erratically, the loved one's revolt against her state
being possibly on his account, he had sunk to be barely respectable
according to regulation views.
It was not for him to consider further: he had only to confront the
obvious, which was that he had made himself quite an impostor as a
law-abiding religious teacher.
At dusk that evening he went into the garden and dug a shallow hole,
to which he brought out all the theological and ethical works that
he possessed, and had stored here. He knew that, in this country of
true believers, most of them were not saleable at a much higher price
than waste-paper value, and preferred to get rid of them in his own
way, even if he should sacrifice a little money to the sentiment of
thus destroying them. Lighting some loose pamphlets to begin with,
he cut the volumes into pieces as well as he could, and with a
three-pronged fork shook them over the flames. They kindled, and
lighted up the back of the house, the pigsty, and his own face, till
they were more or less consumed.
Though he was almost a stranger here now, passing cottagers talked to
him over the garden hedge.
"Burning up your awld aunt's rubbidge, I suppose? Ay; a lot gets
heaped up in nooks and corners when you've lived eighty years in one
house."
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning before the leaves, covers,
and binding of Jeremy Taylor, Butler, Doddridge, Paley, Pusey, Newman
and the rest had gone to ashes, but the night was quiet, and as he
turned and turned the paper shreds with the fork, the sense of being
no longer a hypocrite to himself afforded his mind a relief which
gave him calm. He might go on believing as before, but he professed
nothing, and no longer owned and exhibited engines of faith which,
as their proprietor, he might naturally be supposed to exercise on
himself first of all. In his passion for Sue he could not stand as
an ordinary sinner, and not as a whited sepulchre.