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diff --git a/old/1269-0.txt b/old/1269-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4fda20 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1269-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9614 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Soul of a Bishop, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Soul of a Bishop + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #1269] +Last Updated: March 2, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUL OF A BISHOP *** + + + + +Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger + + + + + +THE SOUL OF A BISHOP + +By H. G. Wells + + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER THE FIRST - THE DREAM + CHAPTER THE SECOND - THE WEAR AND TEAR OF EPISCOPACY + CHAPTER THE THIRD - INSOMNIA + CHAPTER THE FOURTH - THE SYMPATHY OF LADY SUNDERBUND + CHAPTER THE FIFTH - THE FIRST VISION + CHAPTER THE SIXTH - EXEGETICAL + CHAPTER THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION + CHAPTER THE EIGHTH - THE NEW WORLD + CHAPTER THE NINTH - THE THIRD VISION + + +“Man's true Environment is God” + +J. H. OLDHAM in “The Christian Gospel” (Tract of the N. M. R. and H.) + + + + +THE SOUL OF A BISHOP + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST - THE DREAM + +(1) + + +IT was a scene of bitter disputation. A hawk-nosed young man with a +pointing finger was prominent. His face worked violently, his lips moved +very rapidly, but what he said was inaudible. + +Behind him the little rufous man with the big eyes twitched at his robe +and offered suggestions. + +And behind these two clustered a great multitude of heated, excited, +swarthy faces.... + +The emperor sat on his golden throne in the midst of the gathering, +commanding silence by gestures, speaking inaudibly to them in a tongue +the majority did not use, and then prevailing. They ceased their +interruptions, and the old man, Arius, took up the debate. For a time +all those impassioned faces were intent upon him; they listened as +though they sought occasion, and suddenly as if by a preconcerted +arrangement they were all thrusting their fingers into their ears and +knitting their brows in assumed horror; some were crying aloud and +making as if to fly. Some indeed tucked up their garments and fled. They +spread out into a pattern. They were like the little monks who run from +St. Jerome's lion in the picture by Carpaccio. Then one zealot rushed +forward and smote the old man heavily upon the mouth.... + +The hall seemed to grow vaster and vaster, the disputing, infuriated +figures multiplied to an innumerable assembly, they drove about like +snowflakes in a gale, they whirled in argumentative couples, they spun +in eddies of contradiction, they made extraordinary patterns, and then +amidst the cloudy darkness of the unfathomable dome above them there +appeared and increased a radiant triangle in which shone an eye. The eye +and the triangle filled the heavens, sent out flickering rays, glowed +to a blinding incandescence, seemed to be speaking words of thunder +that were nevertheless inaudible. It was as if that thunder filled the +heavens, it was as if it were nothing but the beating artery in the +sleeper's ear. The attention strained to hear and comprehend, and on the +very verge of comprehension snapped like a fiddle-string. + +“Nicoea!” + +The word remained like a little ash after a flare. + +The sleeper had awakened and lay very still, oppressed by a sense of +intellectual effort that had survived the dream in which it had arisen. +Was it so that things had happened? The slumber-shadowed mind, moving +obscurely, could not determine whether it was so or not. Had they indeed +behaved in this manner when the great mystery was established? Who +said they stopped their ears with their fingers and fled, shouting with +horror? Shouting? Was it Eusebius or Athanasius? Or Sozomen.... Some +letter or apology by Athanasius?... And surely it was impossible that +the Trinity could have appeared visibly as a triangle and an eye. Above +such an assembly. + +That was mere dreaming, of course. Was it dreaming after Raphael? After +Raphael? The drowsy mind wandered into a side issue. Was the picture +that had suggested this dream the one in the Vatican where all the +Fathers of the Church are shown disputing together? But there surely God +and the Son themselves were painted with a symbol--some symbol--also? +But was that disputation about the Trinity at all? Wasn't it rather +about a chalice and a dove? Of course it was a chalice and a dove! Then +where did one see the triangle and the eye? And men disputing? Some such +picture there was.... + +What a lot of disputing there had been! What endless disputing! Which +had gone on. Until last night. When this very disagreeable young man +with the hawk nose and the pointing finger had tackled one when one was +sorely fagged, and disputed; disputed. Rebuked and disputed. “Answer me +this,” he had said.... And still one's poor brains disputed and would +not rest.... About the Trinity.... + +The brain upon the pillow was now wearily awake. It was at once +hopelessly awake and active and hopelessly unprogressive. It was like +some floating stick that had got caught in an eddy in a river, going +round and round and round. And round. Eternally--eternally--eternally +begotten. + +“But what possible meaning do you attach then to such a phrase as +eternally begotten?” + +The brain upon the pillow stared hopelessly at this question, without an +answer, without an escape. The three repetitions spun round and round, +became a swiftly revolving triangle, like some electric sign that +had got beyond control, in the midst of which stared an unwinking and +resentful eye. + +(2) + + +Every one knows that expedient of the sleepless, the counting of sheep. + +You lie quite still, you breathe regularly, you imagine sheep jumping +over a gate, one after another, you count them quietly and slowly until +you count yourself off through a fading string of phantom numbers to +number Nod.... + +But sheep, alas! suggest an episcopal crook. + +And presently a black sheep had got into the succession and was +struggling violently with the crook about its leg, a hawk-nosed black +sheep full of reproof, with disordered hair and a pointing finger. A +young man with a most disagreeable voice. + +At which the other sheep took heart and, deserting the numbered +succession, came and sat about the fire in a big drawing-room and argued +also. In particular there was Lady Sunderbund, a pretty fragile tall +woman in the corner, richly jewelled, who sat with her pretty eyes +watching and her lips compressed. What had she thought of it? She had +said very little. + +It is an unusual thing for a mixed gathering of this sort to argue about +the Trinity. Simply because a tired bishop had fallen into their party. +It was not fair to him to pretend that the atmosphere was a liberal and +inquiring one, when the young man who had sat still and dormant by the +table was in reality a keen and bitter Irish Roman Catholic. Then the +question, a question-begging question, was put quite suddenly, without +preparation or prelude, by surprise. “Why, Bishop, was the Spermaticos +Logos identified with the Second and not the Third Person of the +Trinity?” + +It was indiscreet, it was silly, to turn upon the speaker and affect an +air of disengagement and modernity and to say: “Ah, that indeed is the +unfortunate aspect of the whole affair.” + +Whereupon the fierce young man had exploded with: “To that, is it, that +you Anglicans have come?” + +The whole gathering had given itself up to the disputation, Lady +Sunderbund, an actress, a dancer--though she, it is true, did not say +very much--a novelist, a mechanical expert of some sort, a railway peer, +geniuses, hairy and Celtic, people of no clearly definable position, +but all quite unequal to the task of maintaining that air of reverent +vagueness, that tenderness of touch, which is by all Anglican standards +imperative in so deep, so mysterious, and, nowadays, in mixed society at +least, so infrequent a discussion. + +It was like animals breaking down a fence about some sacred spot. Within +a couple of minutes the affair had become highly improper. They had +raised their voices, they had spoken with the utmost familiarity of +almost unspeakable things. There had been even attempts at epigram. +Athanasian epigrams. Bent the novelist had doubted if originally there +had been a Third Person in the Trinity at all. He suggested a reaction +from a too-Manichaean dualism at some date after the time of St. John's +Gospel. He maintained obstinately that that Gospel was dualistic. + +The unpleasant quality of the talk was far more manifest in the +retrospect than it had been at the time. It had seemed then bold +and strange, but not impossible; now in the cold darkness it seemed +sacrilegious. And the bishop's share, which was indeed only the weak +yielding of a tired man to an atmosphere he had misjudged, became a +disgraceful display of levity and bad faith. They had baited him. +Some one had said that nowadays every one was an Arian, knowingly or +unknowingly. They had not concealed their conviction that the bishop did +not really believe in the Creeds he uttered. + +And that unfortunate first admission stuck terribly in his throat. + +Oh! Why had he made it? + +(3) + + +Sleep had gone. + +The awakened sleeper groaned, sat up in the darkness, and felt gropingly +in this unaccustomed bed and bedroom first for the edge of the bed and +then for the electric light that was possibly on the little bedside +table. + +The searching hand touched something. A water-bottle. The hand resumed +its exploration. Here was something metallic and smooth, a stem. Either +above or below there must be a switch.... + +The switch was found, grasped, and turned. + +The darkness fled. + +In a mirror the sleeper saw the reflection of his face and a corner +of the bed in which he lay. The lamp had a tilted shade that threw +a slanting bar of shadow across the field of reflection, lighting a +right-angled triangle very brightly and leaving the rest obscure. The +bed was a very great one, a bed for the Anakim. It had a canopy with +yellow silk curtains, surmounted by a gilded crown of carved wood. +Between the curtains was a man's face, clean-shaven, pale, with +disordered brown hair and weary, pale-blue eyes. He was clad in purple +pyjamas, and the hand that now ran its fingers through the brown hair +was long and lean and shapely. + +Beside the bed was a convenient little table bearing the light, a +water-bottle and glass, a bunch of keys, a congested pocket-book, a +gold-banded fountain pen, and a gold watch that indicated a quarter past +three. On the lower edge of the picture in the mirror appeared the back +of a gilt chair, over which a garment of peculiar construction had been +carelessly thrown. It was in the form of that sleeveless cassock of +purple, opening at the side, whose lower flap is called a bishop's +apron; the corner of the frogged coat showed behind the chair-back, and +the sash lay crumpled on the floor. Black doeskin breeches, still warmly +lined with their pants, lay where they had been thrust off at the corner +of the bed, partly covering black hose and silver-buckled shoes. + +For a moment the tired gaze of the man in the bed rested upon these +evidences of his episcopal dignity. Then he turned from them to the +watch at the bedside. + +He groaned helplessly. + +(4) + + +These country doctors were no good. There wasn't a physician in the +diocese. He must go to London. + +He looked into the weary eyes of his reflection and said, as one makes a +reassuring promise, “London.” + +He was being worried. He was being intolerably worried, and he was ill +and unable to sustain his positions. This doubt, this sudden discovery +of controversial unsoundness, was only one aspect of his general +neurasthenia. It had been creeping into his mind since the “Light Unden +the Altar” controversy. Now suddenly it had leapt upon him from his own +unwary lips. + +The immediate trouble arose from his loyalty. He had followed the King's +example; he had become a total abstainer and, in addition, on his own +account he had ceased to smoke. And his digestion, which Princhester +had first made sensitive, was deranged. He was suffering chemically, +suffering one of those nameless sequences of maladjustments that still +defy our ordinary medical science. It was afflicting him with a general +malaise, it was affecting his energy, his temper, all the balance and +comfort of his nerves. All day he was weary; all night he was wakeful. +He was estranged from his body. He was distressed by a sense of +detachment from the things about him, by a curious intimation of +unreality in everything he experienced. And with that went this levity +of conscience, a heaviness of soul and a levity of conscience, that +could make him talk as though the Creeds did not matter--as though +nothing mattered.... + +If only he could smoke! + +He was persuaded that a couple of Egyptian cigarettes, or three at the +outside, a day, would do wonders in restoring his nervous calm. That, +and just a weak whisky and soda at lunch and dinner. Suppose now--! + +His conscience, his sense of honour, deserted him. Latterly he had had +several of these conscience-blanks; it was only when they were over that +he realized that they had occurred. + +One might smoke up the chimney, he reflected. But he had no cigarettes! +Perhaps if he were to slip downstairs.... + +Why had he given up smoking? + +He groaned aloud. He and his reflection eyed one another in mutual +despair. + +There came before his memory the image of a boy's face, a swarthy little +boy, grinning, grinning with a horrible knowingness and pointing +his finger--an accusing finger. It had been the most exasperating, +humiliating, and shameful incident in the bishop's career. It was +the afternoon for his fortnightly address to the Shop-girls' Church +Association, and he had been seized with a panic fear, entirely +irrational and unjustifiable, that he would not be able to deliver the +address. The fear had arisen after lunch, had gripped his mind, and then +as now had come the thought, “If only I could smoke!” And he had smoked. +It seemed better to break a vow than fail the Association. He had fallen +to the temptation with a completeness that now filled him with shame and +horror. He had stalked Dunk, his valet-butler, out of the dining-room, +had affected to need a book from the book-case beyond the sideboard, +had gone insincerely to the sideboard humming “From Greenland's icy +mountains,” and then, glancing over his shoulder, had stolen one of +his own cigarettes, one of the fatter sort. With this and his bedroom +matches he had gone off to the bottom of the garden among the laurels, +looked everywhere except above the wall to be sure that he was alone, +and at last lit up, only as he raised his eyes in gratitude for the +first blissful inhalation to discover that dreadful little boy peeping +at him from the crotch in the yew-tree in the next garden. As though God +had sent him to be a witness! + +Their eyes had met. The bishop recalled with an agonized distinctness +every moment, every error, of that shameful encounter. He had been too +surprised to conceal the state of affairs from the pitiless scrutiny of +those youthful eyes. He had instantly made as if to put the cigarette +behind his back, and then as frankly dropped it.... + +His soul would not be more naked at the resurrection. The little boy +had stared, realized the state of affairs slowly but surely, pointed his +finger.... + +Never had two human beings understood each other more completely. + +A dirty little boy! Capable no doubt of a thousand kindred +scoundrelisms. + +It seemed ages before the conscience-stricken bishop could tear himself +from the spot and walk back, with such a pretence of dignity as he could +muster, to the house. + +And instead of the discourse he had prepared for the Shop-girls' Church +Association, he had preached on temptation and falling, and how he knew +they had all fallen, and how he understood and could sympathize with the +bitterness of a secret shame, a moving but unsuitable discourse that +had already been subjected to misconstruction and severe reproof in the +local press of Princhester. + +But the haunting thing in the bishop's memory was the face and gesture +of the little boy. That grubby little finger stabbed him to the heart. + +“Oh, God!” he groaned. “The meanness of it! How did I bring myself--?” + +He turned out the light convulsively, and rolled over in the bed, making +a sort of cocoon of himself. He bored his head into the pillow and +groaned, and then struggled impatiently to throw the bed-clothes off +himself. Then he sat up and talked aloud. + +“I must go to Brighton-Pomfrey,” he said. “And get a medical +dispensation. If I do not smoke--” + +He paused for a long time. + +Then his voice sounded again in the darkness, speaking quietly, speaking +with a note almost of satisfaction. + +“I shall go mad. I must smoke or I shall go mad.” + +For a long time he sat up in the great bed with his arms about his +knees. + +(5) + + +Fearful things came to him; things at once dreadfully blasphemous and +entirely weak-minded. + +The triangle and the eye became almost visible upon the black background +of night. They were very angry. They were spinning round and round +faster and faster. Because he was a bishop and because really he did not +believe fully and completely in the Trinity. At one and the same time +he did not believe in the Trinity and was terrified by the anger of the +Trinity at his unbelief.... He was afraid. He was aghast.... And oh! he +was weary.... + +He rubbed his eyes. + +“If I could have a cup of tea!” he said. + +Then he perceived with surprise that he had not thought of praying. What +should he say? To what could he pray? + +He tried not to think of that whizzing Triangle, that seemed now to be +nailed like a Catherine wheel to the very centre of his forehead, +and yet at the same time to be at the apex of the universe. Against +that--for protection against that--he was praying. It was by a great +effort that at last he pronounced the words: + +“Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord ....” + +Presently he had turned up his light, and was prowling about the room. +The clear inky dinginess that comes before the raw dawn of a spring +morning, found his white face at the window, looking out upon the great +terrace and the park. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND - THE WEAR AND TEAR OF EPISCOPACY + +(1) + + +IT was only in the last few years that the bishop had experienced +these nervous and mental crises. He was a belated doubter. Whatever +questionings had marked his intellectual adolescence had either been +very slight or had been too adequately answered to leave any serious +scars upon his convictions. + +And even now he felt that he was afflicted physically rather than +mentally, that some protective padding of nerve-sheath or brain-case had +worn thin and weak, and left him a prey to strange disturbances, rather +than that any new process of thought was eating into his mind. These +doubts in his mind were still not really doubts; they were rather alien +and, for the first time, uncontrolled movements of his intelligence. +He had had a sheltered upbringing; he was the well-connected son of +a comfortable rectory, the only son and sole survivor of a family +of three; he had been carefully instructed and he had been a willing +learner; it had been easy and natural to take many things for granted. +It had been very easy and pleasant for him to take the world as he found +it and God as he found Him. Indeed for all his years up to manhood +he had been able to take life exactly as in his infancy he took his +carefully warmed and prepared bottle--unquestioningly and beneficially. + +And indeed that has been the way with most bishops since bishops began. + +It is a busy continuous process that turns boys into bishops, and it +will stand few jars or discords. The student of ecclesiastical biography +will find that an early vocation has in every age been almost universal +among them; few are there among these lives that do not display the +incipient bishop from the tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefield +composed hymns before he was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcely +older possessed a little oratory in which he conducted services and--a +pleasant touch of the more secular boy--which he protected from a too +inquisitive sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that those +marked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer world +as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This early +predestination has always been the common episcopal experience. +Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious services remind one both +of St. Thomas a Becket, the “boy bishop,” and those early ceremonies of +St. Athanasius which were observed and inquired upon by the good bishop +Alexander. (For though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius with +perfect correctness and validity was baptizing a number of his innocent +playmates, and the bishop who “had paused to contemplate the sports of +the child remained to confirm the zeal of the missionary.”) And as with +the bishop of the past, so with the bishop of the future; the Rev. H. J. +Campbell, in his story of his soul's pilgrimage, has given us a pleasant +picture of himself as a child stealing out into the woods to build +himself a little altar. + +Such minds as these, settled as it were from the outset, are either +incapable of real scepticism or become sceptical only after catastrophic +changes. They understand the sceptical mind with difficulty, and their +beliefs are regarded by the sceptical mind with incredulity. They have +determined their forms of belief before their years of discretion, and +once those forms are determined they are not very easily changed. Within +the shell it has adopted the intelligence may be active and lively +enough, may indeed be extraordinarily active and lively, but only within +the shell. + +There is an entire difference in the mental quality of those who are +converts to a faith and those who are brought up in it. The former know +it from outside as well as from within. They know not only that it is, +but also that it is not. The latter have a confidence in their creed +that is one with their apprehension of sky or air or gravitation. It +is a primary mental structure, and they not only do not doubt but they +doubt the good faith of those who do. They think that the Atheist and +Agnostic really believe but are impelled by a mysterious obstinacy to +deny. So it had been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning +or design but in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited +assurances of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire, +decorum, respectability, solvency--and compulsory Greek at the Little +Go--as his father had done before him. If in his undergraduate days he +had said a thing or two in the modern vein, affected the socialism +of William Morris and learnt some Swinburne by heart, it was out of a +conscious wildness. He did not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far +more genuine interest in the artistry of ritual. + +Through all the time of his incumbency of the church of the Holy +Innocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop suffragan +of Pinner, he had never faltered from his profound confidence in those +standards of his home. He had been kind, popular, and endlessly active. +His undergraduate socialism had expanded simply and sincerely into a +theory of administrative philanthropy. He knew the Webbs. He was +as successful with working-class audiences as with fashionable +congregations. His home life with Lady Ella (she was the daughter of +the fifth Earl of Birkenholme) and his five little girls was simple, +beautiful, and happy as few homes are in these days of confusion. Until +he became Bishop of Princhester--he followed Hood, the first bishop, +as the reign of his Majesty King Edward the Peacemaker drew to its +close--no anticipation of his coming distress fell across his path. + +(2) + + +He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home life +at the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of truth and +reality. London had not disillusioned him. It was a strange waste of +people, it made him feel like a missionary in infidel parts, but it was +a kindly waste. It was neither antagonistic nor malicious. He had always +felt there that if he searched his Londoner to the bottom, he would +find the completest recognition of the old rectory and all its data and +implications. + +But Princhester was different. + +Princhester made one think that recently there had been a second and +much more serious Fall. + +Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside savagely +invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black things. It was scarred +and impeded and discoloured. Even before that invasion, when the heather +was not in flower it must have been a black country. Its people were +dour uncandid individuals, who slanted their heads and knitted their +brows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered by +the gases from chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories, +closely reminiscent of the dear old home at Otteringham, jostled and +elbowed and overshadowed by horrible iron cylinders belching smoke and +flame. The fine old abbey church of Princhester, which was the cathedral +of the new diocese, looked when first he saw it like a lady Abbess who +had taken to drink and slept in a coal truck. She minced apologetically +upon the market-place; the parvenu Town Hall patronized and protected +her as if she were a poor relation.... + +The old aristocracy of the countryside was unpicturesquely decayed. The +branch of the Walshinghams, Lady Ella's cousins, who lived near Pringle, +was poor, proud and ignoble. And extremely unpopular. The rich people +of the country were self-made and inclined to nonconformity, the +working-people were not strictly speaking a “poor,” they were highly +paid, badly housed, and deeply resentful. They went in vast droves to +football matches, and did not care a rap if it rained. The prevailing +wind was sarcastic. To come here from London was to come from +atmospheric blue-greys to ashen-greys, from smoke and soft smut to grime +and black grimness. + +The bishop had been charmed by the historical associations of +Princhester when first the see was put before his mind. His realization +of his diocese was a profound shock. + +Only one hint had he had of what was coming. He had met during +his season of congratulations Lord Gatling dining unusually at the +Athenaeum. Lord Gatling and he did not talk frequently, but on this +occasion the great racing peer came over to him. “You will feel like a +cherub in a stokehole,” Lord Gatling had said.... + +“They used to heave lumps of slag at old Hood's gaiters,” said Lord +Gatling. + +“In London a bishop's a lord and a lark and nobody minds him,” said Lord +Gatling, “but Princhester is different. It isn't used to bishops.... +Well,--I hope you'll get to like 'em.” + +(3) + + +Trouble began with a fearful row about the position of the bishop's +palace. Hood had always evaded this question, and a number of +strong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence, full of local +patriotism and that competitive spirit which has made England what it +is, already intensely irritated by Hood's prevarications, were resolved +to pin his successor to an immediate decision. Of this the new bishop +was unaware. Mindful of a bishop's constant need to travel, he was +disposed to seek a home within easy reach of Pringle Junction, from +which nearly every point in the diocese could be simply and easily +reached. This fell in with Lady Ella's liking for the rare rural +quiet of the Kibe valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins the +Walshinghams. Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexible +resolution of each and every one of the six leading towns of the see to +put up, own, obtrude, boast, and swagger about the biggest and showiest +thing in episcopal palaces in all industrial England, and the new +bishop had already taken a short lease and gone some way towards the +acquisition of Ganford House, two miles from Pringle, before he realized +the strength and fury of these local ambitions. + +At first the magnates and influences seemed to be fighting only among +themselves, and he was so ill-advised as to broach the Ganford House +project as a compromise that would glorify no one unfairly, and leave +the erection of an episcopal palace for some future date when he perhaps +would have the good fortune to have passed to “where beyond these +voices there is peace,” forgetting altogether among other oversights +the importance of architects and builders in local affairs. His +proposal seemed for a time to concentrate the rich passions of the whole +countryside upon himself and his wife. + +Because they did not leave Lady Ella alone. The Walshinghams were +already unpopular in their county on account of a poverty and shyness +that made them seem “stuck up” to successful captains of industry +only too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeed +of friendship, consciously hospitable and eager for admission and +endorsements. And Princhester in particular was under the sway of that +enterprising weekly, The White Blackbird, which was illustrated by, +which indeed monopolized the gifts of, that brilliant young caricaturist +“The Snicker.” + +It had seemed natural for Lady Ella to acquiesce in the proposals of the +leading Princhester photographer. She had always helped where she could +in her husband's public work, and she had been popular upon her own +merits in Wealdstone. The portrait was abominable enough in itself; it +dwelt on her chin, doubled her age, and denied her gentleness, but it +was a mere starting-point for the subtle extravagance of The Snicker's +poisonous gift.... The thing came upon the bishop suddenly from the +book-stall at Pringle Junction. + +He kept it carefully from Lady Ella.... It was only later that he found +that a copy of The White Blackbird had been sent to her, and that she +was keeping the horror from him. It was in her vein that she should +reproach herself for being a vulnerable side to him. + +Even when the bishop capitulated in favour of Princhester, that decision +only opened a fresh trouble for him. Princhester wanted the palace to be +a palace; it wanted to combine all the best points of Lambeth and +Fulham with the marble splendours of a good modern bank. The bishop's +architectural tastes, on the other hand, were rationalistic. He was all +for building a useful palace in undertones, with a green slate roof +and long horizontal lines. What he wanted more than anything else was +a quite remote wing with a lot of bright little bedrooms and a +sitting-room and so on, complete in itself, examination hall and +everything, with a long intricate connecting passage and several doors, +to prevent the ordination candidates straying all over the place and +getting into the talk and the tea. But the diocese wanted a proud +archway--and turrets, and did not care a rap if the ordination +candidates slept about on the carpets in the bishop's bedroom. +Ordination candidates were quite outside the sphere of its imagination. + +And he disappointed Princhester with his equipage. Princhester had +a feeling that it deserved more for coming over to the church from +nonconformity as it was doing. It wanted a bishop in a mitre and a gilt +coach. It wanted a pastoral crook. It wanted something to go with its +mace and its mayor. And (obsessed by The Snicker) it wanted less of Lady +Ella. The cruelty and unreason of these attacks upon his wife distressed +the bishop beyond measure, and baffled him hopelessly. He could not see +any means of checking them nor of defending or justifying her against +them. + +The palace was awaiting its tenant, but the controversies and +bitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when King +George was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave of social +discontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense of social and +political instability, and the first beginnings of the bishop's ill +health. + +(4) + + +There came a day of exceptional fatigue and significance. + +The industrial trouble was a very real distress to the bishop. He had +a firm belief that it is a function of the church to act as mediator +between employer and employed. It was a common saying of his that the +aim of socialism--the right sort of socialism--was to Christianize +employment. Regardless of suspicion on either hand, regardless of +very distinct hints that he should “mind his own business,” he exerted +himself in a search for methods of reconciliation. He sought out every +one who seemed likely to be influential on either side, and did his +utmost to discover the conditions of a settlement. As far as possible +and with the help of a not very efficient chaplain he tried to combine +such interviews with his more normal visiting. + +At times, and this was particularly the case on this day, he seemed to +be discovering nothing but the incurable perversity and militancy of +human nature. It was a day under an east wind, when a steely-blue sky +full of colourless light filled a stiff-necked world with whitish high +lights and inky shadows. These bright harsh days of barometric high +pressure in England rouse and thwart every expectation of the happiness +of spring. And as the bishop drove through the afternoon in a hired +fly along a rutted road of slag between fields that were bitterly wired +against the Sunday trespasser, he fell into a despondent meditation upon +the political and social outlook. + +His thoughts were of a sort not uncommon in those days. The world was +strangely restless. Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had +been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some +compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, +and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow. Not that Queen +Victoria had really been a paper-weight or any weight at all, but +it happened that she died as an epoch closed, an epoch of tremendous +stabilities. Her son, already elderly, had followed as the selvedge +follows the piece, he had passed and left the new age stripped bare. +In nearly every department of economic and social life now there was +upheaval, and it was an upheaval very different in character from the +radicalism and liberalism of the Victorian days. There were not only +doubt and denial, but now there were also impatience and unreason. +People argued less and acted quicker. There was a pride in rebellion for +its own sake, an indiscipline and disposition to sporadic violence that +made it extremely hard to negotiate any reconciliations or compromises. +Behind every extremist it seemed stood a further extremist prepared to +go one better.... + +The bishop had spent most of the morning with one of the big employers, +a tall dark man, lean and nervous, and obviously tired and worried +by the struggle. He did not conceal his opinion that the church was +meddling with matters quite outside its sphere. Never had it been +conveyed to the bishop before how remote a rich and established +Englishman could consider the church from reality. + +“You've got no hold on them,” he said. “It isn't your sphere.” + +And again: “They'll listen to you--if you speak well. But they don't +believe you know anything about it, and they don't trust your good +intentions. They won't mind a bit what you say unless you drop something +they can use against us.” + +The bishop tried a few phrases. He thought there might be something in +co-operation, in profit-sharing, in some more permanent relationship +between the business and the employee. + +“There isn't,” said the employer compactly. “It's just the malice of +being inferior against the man in control. It's just the spirit of +insubordination and boredom with duty. This trouble's as old as the +Devil.” + +“But that is exactly the business of the church,” said the bishop +brightly, “to reconcile men to their duty.” + +“By chanting the Athanasian creed at 'em, I suppose,” said the big +employer, betraying the sneer he had been hiding hitherto. + +“This thing is a fight,” said the big employer, carrying on before the +bishop could reply. “Religion had better get out of the streets until +this thing is over. The men won't listen to reason. They don't mean +to. They're bit by Syndicalism. They're setting out, I tell you, to be +unreasonable and impossible. It isn't an argument; it's a fight. They +don't want to make friends with the employer. They want to make an end +to the employer. Whatever we give them they'll take and press us for +more. Directly we make terms with the leaders the men go behind +it.... It's a raid on the whole system. They don't mean to work the +system--anyhow. I'm the capitalist, and the capitalist has to go. I'm to +be bundled out of my works, and some--some “--he seemed to be rejecting +unsuitable words--“confounded politician put in. Much good it would do +them. But before that happens I'm going to fight. You would.” + +The bishop walked to the window and stood staring at the brilliant +spring bulbs in the big employer's garden, and at a long vista of +newly-mown lawn under great shapely trees just budding into green. + +“I can't admit,” he said, “that these troubles lie outside the sphere of +the church.” + +The employer came and stood beside him. He felt he was being a little +hard on the bishop, but he could not see any way of making things +easier. + +“One doesn't want Sacred Things,” he tried, “in a scrap like this. + +“We've got to mend things or end things,” continued the big employer. +“Nothing goes on for ever. Things can't last as they are going on +now....” + +Then he went on abruptly to something that for a time he had been +keeping back. + +“Of course just at present the church may do a confounded lot of harm. +Some of you clerical gentlemen are rather too fond of talking socialism +and even preaching socialism. Don't think I want to be overcritical. +I admit there's no end of things to be said for a proper sort of +socialism, Ruskin, and all that. We're all Socialists nowadays. +Ideals--excellent. But--it gets misunderstood. It gives the men a sense +of moral support. It makes them fancy that they are It. Encourages them +to forget duties and set up preposterous claims. Class war and all that +sort of thing. You gentlemen of the clergy don't quite realize that +socialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx. And that from +the Class War to the Commune is just one step.” + +(5) + + +From this conversation the bishop had made his way to the vicarage of +Mogham Banks. The vicar of Mogham Banks was a sacerdotal socialist of +the most advanced type, with the reputation of being closely in touch +with the labour extremists. He was a man addicted to banners, prohibited +ornaments, special services at unusual hours, and processions in the +streets. His taste in chasubles was loud, he gardened in a cassock +and, it was said, he slept in his biretta; he certainly slept in a hair +shirt, and he littered his church with flowers, candles, side altars, +confessional boxes, requests for prayers for the departed, and the like. +There had already been two Kensitite demonstrations at his services, and +altogether he was a source of considerable anxiety to the bishop. The +bishop did his best not to know too exactly what was going on at Mogham +Banks. Sooner or later he felt he would be forced to do something--and +the longer he could put that off the better. But the Rev. Morrice Deans +had promised to get together three or four prominent labour leaders for +tea and a frank talk, and the opportunity was one not to be missed. +So the bishop, after a hasty and not too digestible lunch in the +refreshment room at Pringle, was now in a fly that smelt of straw +and suggested infectious hospital patients, on his way through the +industry-scarred countryside to this second conversation. + +The countryside had never seemed so scarred to him as it did that day. + +It was probably the bright hard spring sunshine that emphasized +the contrast between that dear England of hedges and homes and the +south-west wind in which his imagination lived, and the crude presences +of a mechanical age. Never before had the cuttings and heapings, the +smashing down of trees, the obtrusion of corrugated iron and tar, the +belchings of smoke and the haste, seemed so harsh and disregardful +of all the bishop's world. Across the fields a line of gaunt iron +standards, abominably designed, carried an electric cable to some +unknown end. The curve of the hill made them seem a little out of the +straight, as if they hurried and bent forward furtively. + +“Where are they going?” asked the bishop, leaning forward to look out of +the window of the fly, and then: “Where is it all going?” + +And presently the road was under repair, and was being done at a great +pace with a huge steam-roller, mechanically smashed granite, and kettles +of stinking stuff, asphalt or something of that sort, that looked +and smelt like Milton's hell. Beyond, a gaunt hoarding advertised +extensively the Princhester Music Hall, a mean beastly place that +corrupted boys and girls; and also it clamoured of tyres and potted +meats.... + +The afternoon's conference gave him no reassuring answer to his +question, “Where is it all going?” + +The afternoon's conference did no more than intensify the new and +strange sense of alienation from the world that the morning's talk had +evoked. + +The three labour extremists that Morrice Deans had assembled obviously +liked the bishop and found him picturesque, and were not above a certain +snobbish gratification at the purple-trimmed company they were in, but +it was clear that they regarded his intervention in the great dispute +as if it were a feeble waving from the bank across the waters of a great +river. + +“There's an incurable misunderstanding between the modern employer and +the modern employed,” the chief labour spokesman said, speaking in a +broad accent that completely hid from him and the bishop and every one +the fact that he was by far the best-read man of the party. “Disraeli +called them the Two Nations, but that was long ago. Now it's a case +of two species. Machinery has made them into different species. The +employer lives away from his work-people, marries a wife foreign, out of +a county family or suchlike, trains his children from their very birth +in a different manner. Why, the growth curve is different for the two +species. They haven't even a common speech between them. One looks east +and the other looks west. How can you expect them to agree? Of course +they won't agree. We've got to fight it out. They say we're their +slaves for ever. Have you ever read Lady Bell's 'At the Works'? A +well-intentioned woman, but she gives the whole thing away. We say, +No! It's our sort and not your sort. We'll do without you. We'll get a +little more education and then we'll do without you. We're pressing for +all we can get, and when we've got that we'll take breath and press +for more. We're the Morlocks. Coming up. It isn't our fault that we've +differentiated.” + +“But you haven't understood the drift of Christianity,” said the bishop. +“It's just to assert that men are One community and not two.” + +“There's not much of that in the Creeds,” said a second labour leader +who was a rationalist. “There's not much of that in the services of the +church.” + +The vicar spoke before his bishop, and indeed he had plenty of time +to speak before his bishop. “Because you will not set yourselves to +understand the symbolism of her ritual,” he said. + +“If the church chooses to speak in riddles,” said the rationalist. + +“Symbols,” said Morrice Deans, “need not be riddles,” and for a time the +talk eddied about this minor issue and the chief labour spokesman and +the bishop looked at one another. The vicar instanced and explained +certain apparently insignificant observances, his antagonist was +contemptuously polite to these explanations. “That's all very pratty,” + he said.... + +The bishop wished that fine points of ceremonial might have been left +out of the discussion. + +Something much bigger than that was laying hold of his intelligence, the +realization of a world extravagantly out of hand. The sky, the wind, +the telegraph poles, had been jabbing in the harsh lesson of these men's +voices, that the church, as people say, “wasn't in it.” And that at +the same time the church held the one remedy for all this ugliness and +contention in its teaching of the universal fatherhood of God and the +universal brotherhood of men. Only for some reason he hadn't the phrases +and he hadn't the voice to assert this over their wrangling and their +stiff resolution. He wanted to think the whole business out thoroughly, +for the moment he had nothing to say, and there was the labour leader +opposite waiting smilingly to hear what he had to say so soon as the +bout between the vicar and the rationalist was over. + +(6) + + +That morning in the long galleries of the bishop's imagination a fresh +painting had been added. It was a big wall painting rather in the manner +of Puvis de Chavannes. And the central figure had been the bishop of +Princhester himself. He had been standing upon the steps of the +great door of the cathedral that looks upon the marketplace where the +tram-lines meet, and he had been dressed very magnificently and rather +after the older use. He had been wearing a tunicle and dalmatic under a +chasuble, a pectoral cross, purple gloves, sandals and buskins, a mitre +and his presentation ring. In his hand he had borne his pastoral staff. +And the clustering pillars and arches of the great doorway were painted +with a loving flat particularity that omitted nothing but the sooty +tinge of the later discolourations. + +On his right hand had stood a group of employers very richly dressed +in the fashion of the fifteenth century, and on the left a rather more +numerous group of less decorative artisans. With them their wives and +children had been shown, all greatly impressed by the canonicals. Every +one had been extremely respectful. + +He had been reconciling the people and blessing them and calling them +his “sheep” and his “little children.” + +But all this was so different. + +Neither party resembled sheep or little children in the least degree. . + +The labour leader became impatient with the ritualistic controversy; he +set his tea-cup aside out of danger and leant across the corner of the +table to the bishop and spoke in a sawing undertone. “You see,” he said, +“the church does not talk our language. I doubt if it understands our +language. I doubt if we understand clearly where we are ourselves. These +things have to be fought out and hammered out. It's a big dusty dirty +noisy job. It may be a bloody job before it's through. You can't +suddenly call a halt in the middle of the scrap and have a sort of +millennium just because you want it.... + +“Of course if the church had a plan,” he said, “if it had a proposal to +make, if it had anything more than a few pious palliatives to suggest, +that might be different. But has it?” + +The bishop had a bankrupt feeling. On the spur of the moment he could +say no more than: “It offers its mediation.” + +(7) + + +Full as he was with the preoccupation of these things and so a little +slow and inattentive in his movements, the bishop had his usual luck +at Pringle Junction and just missed the 7.27 for Princhester. He might +perhaps have got it by running through the subway and pushing past +people, but bishops must not run through subways and push past people. +His mind swore at the mischance, even if his lips refrained. + +He was hungry and, tired; he would not get to the palace now until long +after nine; dinner would be over and Lady Ella would naturally suppose +he had dined early with the Rev. Morrice Deans. Very probably there +would be nothing ready for him at all. + +He tried to think he was exercising self-control, but indeed all his +sub-conscious self was busy in a manner that would not have disgraced +Tertullian with the eternal welfare of those city fathers whose +obstinacy had fixed the palace at Princhester. He walked up and down the +platform, gripping his hands very tightly behind him, and maintaining +a serene upcast countenance by a steadfast effort. It seemed a small +matter to him that the placards of the local evening papers should +proclaim “Lloyd George's Reconciliation Meeting at Wombash Broken up +by Suffragettes.” For a year now he had observed a strict rule against +buying the products of the local press, and he saw no reason for varying +this protective regulation. + +His mind was full of angry helplessness. + +Was he to blame, was the church to blame, for its powerlessness in these +social disputes? Could an abler man with a readier eloquence have done +more? + +He envied the cleverness of Cardinal Manning. Manning would have got +right into the front of this affair. He would have accumulated credit +for his church and himself.... + +But would he have done much?... + +The bishop wandered along the platform to its end, and stood +contemplating the convergent ways that gather together beyond the +station and plunge into the hillside and the wilderness of sidings and +trucks, signal-boxes, huts, coal-pits, electric standards, goods sheds, +turntables, and engine-houses, that ends in a bluish bricked-up cliff +against the hill. A train rushed with a roar and clatter into the +throat of the great tunnel and was immediately silenced; its rear lights +twinkled and vanished, and then out of that huge black throat came wisps +of white steam and curled slowly upward like lazy snakes until they +caught the slanting sunshine. For the first time the day betrayed +a softness and touched this scene of black energy to gold. All late +afternoons are beautiful, whatever the day has been--if only there is a +gleam of sun. And now a kind of mechanical greatness took the place of +mere black disorder in the bishop's perception of his see. It was harsh, +it was vast and strong, it was no lamb he had to rule but a dragon. +Would it ever be given to him to overcome his dragon, to lead it home, +and bless it? + +He stood at the very end of the platform, with his gaitered legs wide +apart and his hands folded behind him, staring beyond all visible +things. + +Should he do something very bold and striking? Should he invite both men +and masters to the cathedral, and preach tremendous sermons to them upon +these living issues? + +Short sermons, of course. + +But stating the church's attitude with a new and convincing vigour. + +He had a vision of the great aisle strangely full and alive and astir. +The organ notes still echoed in the fretted vaulting, as the preacher +made his way from the chancel to the pulpit. The congregation was tense +with expectation, and for some reason his mind dwelt for a long time +upon the figure of the preacher ascending the steps of the pulpit. +Outside the day was dark and stormy, so that the stained-glass windows +looked absolutely dead. For a little while the preacher prayed. Then in +the attentive silence the tenor of the preacher would begin, a thin jet +of sound, a ray of light in the darkness, speaking to all these men as +they had never been spoken to before.... + +Surely so one might call a halt to all these harsh conflicts. So one +might lay hands afresh upon these stubborn minds, one might win them +round to look at Christ the Master and Servant.... + +That, he thought, would be a good phrase: “Christ the Master and +Servant.”.... + +“Members of one Body,” that should be his text.... At last it was +finished. The big congregation, which had kept so still, sighed and +stirred. The task of reconciliation was as good as done. “And now to God +the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost....” + +Outside the day had become suddenly bright, the threatening storm had +drifted away, and great shafts of coloured light from the pictured +windows were smiting like arrows amidst his hearers.... + +This idea of a great sermon upon capital and labour did so powerfully +grip the bishop's imagination that he came near to losing the 8.27 train +also. + +He discovered it when it was already in the station. He had to walk down +the platform very quickly. He did not run, but his gaiters, he felt, +twinkled more than a bishop's should. + +(8) + + +Directly he met his wife he realized that he had to hear something +important and unpleasant. + +She stood waiting for him in the inner hall, looking very grave and +still. The light fell upon her pale face and her dark hair and her long +white silken dress, making her seem more delicate and unworldly than +usual and making the bishop feel grimy and sordid. + +“I must have a wash,” he said, though before he had thought of nothing +but food. “I have had nothing to eat since tea-time--and that was mostly +talk.” + +Lady Ella considered. “There are cold things.... You shall have a tray +in the study. Not in the dining-room. Eleanor is there. I want to tell +you something. But go upstairs first and wash your poor tired face.” + +“Nothing serious, I hope?” he asked, struck by an unusual quality in her +voice. + +“I will tell you,” she evaded, and after a moment of mutual scrutiny he +went past her upstairs. + +Since they had come to Princhester Lady Ella had changed very markedly. +She seemed to her husband to have gained in dignity; she was stiller +and more restrained; a certain faint arrogance, a touch of the “ruling +class” manner had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. There had been +a time when she had inclined to an authoritative hauteur, when she had +seemed likely to develop into one of those aggressive and interfering +old ladies who play so overwhelming a part in British public affairs. +She had been known to initiate adverse judgments, to exercise the snub, +to cut and humiliate. Princhester had done much to purge her of such +tendencies. Princhester had made her think abundantly, and had put a new +and subtler quality into her beauty. It had taken away the least little +disposition to rustle as she moved, and it had softened her voice. + +Now, when presently she stood in the study, she showed a new +circumspection in her treatment of her husband. She surveyed the tray +before him. + +“You ought not to drink that Burgundy,” she said. “I can see you +are dog-tired. It was uncorked yesterday, and anyhow it is not very +digestible. This cold meat is bad enough. You ought to have one of those +quarter bottles of champagne you got for my last convalescence. There's +more than a dozen left over.” + +The bishop felt that this was a pretty return of his own kindly thoughts +“after many days,” and soon Dunk, his valet-butler, was pouring out the +precious and refreshing glassful.... + +“And now, dear?” said the bishop, feeling already much better. + +Lady Ella had come round to the marble fireplace. The mantel-piece was +a handsome work by a Princhester artist in the Gill style--with +contemplative ascetics as supporters. + +“I am worried about Eleanor,” said Lady Ella. + +“She is in the dining-room now,” she said, “having some dinner. She came +in about a quarter past eight, half way through dinner.” + +“Where had she been?” asked the bishop. + +“Her dress was torn--in two places. Her wrist had been twisted and a +little sprained.” + +“My dear!” + +“Her face--Grubby! And she had been crying.” + +“But, my dear, what had happened to her? You don't mean--?” + +Husband and wife stared at one another aghast. Neither of them said the +horrid word that flamed between them. + +“Merciful heaven!” said the bishop, and assumed an attitude of despair. + +“I didn't know she knew any of them. But it seems it is the second +Walshingham girl--Phoebe. It's impossible to trace a girl's thoughts and +friends. She persuaded her to go.” + +“But did she understand?” + +“That's the serious thing,” said Lady Ella. + +She seemed to consider whether he could bear the blow. + +“She understands all sorts of things. She argues.... I am quite unable +to argue with her.” + +“About this vote business?” + +“About all sorts of things. Things I didn't imagine she had heard of. +I knew she had been reading books. But I never imagined that she could +have understood....” + +The bishop laid down his knife and fork. + +“One may read in books, one may even talk of things, without fully +understanding,” he said. + +Lady Ella tried to entertain this comforting thought. “It isn't like +that,” she said at last. “She talks like a grown-up person. This--this +escapade is just an accident. But things have gone further than that. +She seems to think--that she is not being educated properly here, that +she ought to go to a College. As if we were keeping things from her....” + +The bishop reconsidered his plate. + +“But what things?” he said. + +“She says we get all round her,” said Lady Ella, and left the +implications of that phrase to unfold. + +(9) + + +For a time the bishop said very little. + +Lady Ella had found it necessary to make her first announcement standing +behind him upon the hearthrug, but now she sat upon the arm of the great +armchair as close to him as possible, and spoke in a more familiar tone. + +The thing, she said, had come to her as a complete surprise. Everything +had seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it was true, but it had +never occurred to her mother that she had really been thinking--about +such things as she had been thinking about. She had ranged in the +library, and displayed a disposition to read the weekly papers and the +monthly reviews. But never a sign of discontent. + +“But I don't understand,” said the bishop. “Why is she discontented? +What is there that she wants different?” + +“Exactly,” said Lady Ella. + +“She has got this idea that life here is secluded in some way,” she +expanded. “She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial' and--what was +it?--'cloistered.' And she said--” + +Lady Ella paused with an effect of exact retrospection. + +“'Out there,' she said, 'things are alive. Real things are happening.' +It is almost as if she did not fully believe--” + +Lady Ella paused again. + +The bishop sat with his arm over the back of his chair, and his face +downcast. + +“The ferment of youth,” he said at last. “The ferment of youth. Who has +given her these ideas?” + +Lady Ella did not know. She could have thought a school like St. Aubyns +would have been safe, but nowadays nothing was safe. It was clear the +girls who went there talked as girls a generation ago did not talk. +Their people at home encouraged them to talk and profess opinions about +everything. It seemed that Phoebe Walshingham and Lady Kitty Kingdom +were the leaders in these premature mental excursions. Phoebe aired +religious doubts. + +“But little Phoebe!” said the bishop. + +“Kitty,” said Lady Ella, “has written a novel.” + +“Already!” + +“With elopements in it--and all sorts of things. She's had it typed. +You'd think Mary Crosshampton would know better than to let her daughter +go flourishing the family imagination about in that way.” + +“Eleanor told you?” + +“By way of showing that they think of--things in general.” + +The bishop reflected. “She wants to go to College.” + +“They want to go in a set.” + +“I wonder if college can be much worse than school.... She's eighteen--? +But I will talk to her....” + +(10) + + +All our children are changelings. They are perpetually fresh strangers. +Every day they vanish and a new person masquerades as yesterday's child +until some unexpected development betrays the cheat. + +The bishop had still to learn this perennial newness of the young. He +learnt it in half an hour at the end of a fatiguing day. + +He went into the dining-room. He went in as carelessly as possible and +smoking a cigarette. He had an honourable dread of being portentous in +his family; almost ostentatiously he laid the bishop aside. Eleanor had +finished her meal, and was sitting in the arm-chair by the fire with one +hand holding her sprained wrist. + +“Well,” he said, and strolled to the hearthrug. He had had an odd idea +that he would find her still dirty, torn, and tearful, as her mother had +described her, a little girl in a scrape. But she had changed into +her best white evening frock and put up her hair, and became in the +firelight more of a lady, a very young lady but still a lady, than she +had ever been to him before. She was dark like her mother, but not of +the same willowy type; she had more of her father's sturdy build, and +she had developed her shoulders at hockey and tennis. The firelight +brought out the gracious reposeful lines of a body that ripened in +adolescence. And though there was a vibration of resolution in her voice +she spoke like one who is under her own control. + +“Mother has told you that I have disgraced myself,” she began. + +“No,” said the bishop, weighing it. “No. But you seem to have been +indiscreet, little Norah.” + +“I got excited,” she said. “They began turning out the other +women--roughly. I was indignant.” + +“You didn't go to interrupt?” he asked. + +She considered. “No,” she said. “But I went.” + +He liked her disposition to get it right. “On that side,” he assisted. + +“It isn't the same thing as really meaning, Daddy,” she said. + +“And then things happened?” + +“Yes,” she said to the fire. + +A pause followed. If they had been in a law-court, her barrister would +have said, “That is my case, my lord.” The bishop prepared to open the +next stage in the proceedings. + +“I think, Norah, you shouldn't have been there at all,” he said. + +“Mother says that.” + +“A man in my position is apt to be judged by his family. You commit +more than yourself when you commit an indiscretion. Apart from that, it +wasn't the place for a girl to be at. You are not a child now. We give +you freedom--more freedom than most girls get--because we think you +will use it wisely. You knew--enough to know that there was likely to be +trouble.” + +The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. “I don't think +that I oughtn't to know the things that are going on.” + +The bishop studied her face for an instant. It struck him that they +had reached something very fundamental as between parent and child. His +modernity showed itself in the temperance of his reply. + +“Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I, who have +lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when it is best that +you should begin to know--this or that?” + +The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer out of +the depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking, altered her +mind and tried a different beginning. + +“I think that every one must do their thinking--his +thinking--for--oneself,” she said awkwardly. + +“You mean you can't trust--?” + +“It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is hungry.” + +“And you find yourself hungry?” + +“I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about votes and +things means.” + +“And we starve you--intellectually?” + +“You know I don't think that. But you are busy....” + +“Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After all--you +are barely eighteen.... We have given you all sorts of liberties.” + +Her silence admitted it. “But still,” she said after a long pause, +“there are other girls, younger than I am, in these things. They talk +about--oh, all sorts of things. Freely....” + +“You've been awfully good to me,” she said irrelevantly. “And of course +this meeting was all pure accident.” + +Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a better grip. + +“What exactly do you want, Eleanor?” he asked. + +She looked up at him. “Generally?” she asked. + +“Your mother has the impression that you are discontented.” + +“Discontented is a horrid word.” + +“Well--unsatisfied.” + +She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to make her +demand. + +“I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work. I feel--so +horribly ignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a son I should +go--” + +“Ye--es,” said the bishop and reflected. + +He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage people; +he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the +memory of these utterances hampered him. + +“You could read here,” he tried. + +“If I were a son, you wouldn't say that.” + +His reply was vague. “But in this home,” he said, “we have a certain +atmosphere.” + +He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response from +the hardier male. + +Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply. “It's just that,” + she said. “One feels--” She considered it further. “As if we were living +in a kind of magic world--not really real. Out there--” she glanced +over her shoulder at the drawn blind that hid the night. “One meets with +different sorts of minds and different--atmospheres. All this is very +beautiful. I've had the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of +feeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes +and doubts and questionings--” + +She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said. + +The bishop took her meaning gallantly and honestly. + +“The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock.” + +She made no answer. She moved her head very slightly so that he could +not see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and awkwardly with +her eyes upon the fire. + +Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received that +day.... + +It seemed very long indeed before either of them spoke. At last he said: +“We must talk about these things again, Norah, when we are less tired +and have more time.... You have been reading books.... When Caxton set +up his printing-press he thrust a new power between church and disciple +and father and child.... And I am tired. We must talk it over a little +later.” + +The girl stood up. She took her father's hands. “Dear, dear Daddy,” + she said, “I am so sorry to be a bother. I am so sorry I went to that +meeting.... You look tired out.” + +“We must talk--properly,” said the bishop, patting one hand, then +discovering from her wincing face that it was the sprained one. “Your +poor wrist,” he said. + +“It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy. It isn't that I +have hidden things....” + +She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she kissed him as +though she was sorry for him.... + +It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the present +for discussing these “questionings” of hers, and then his fatigue and +shyness had the better of him again. + +(11) + + +The papers got hold of Eleanor's share in the suffragette disturbance. +The White Blackbird said things about her. + +It did not attack her. It did worse. It admired her ...impudently. + +It spoke of her once as “Norah,” and once as “the Scrope Flapper.” + +Its headline proclaimed: “Plucky Flappers Hold Up L. G.” + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD - INSOMNIA + +(1) + + +THE night after his conversation with Eleanor was the first night of the +bishop's insomnia. It was the definite beginning of a new phase in his +life. + +Doctors explain to us that the immediate cause of insomnia is always +some poisoned or depleted state of the body, and no doubt the +fatigues and hasty meals of the day had left the bishop in a state of +unprecedented chemical disorder, with his nerves irritated by strange +compounds and unsoothed by familiar lubricants. But chemical disorders +follow mental disturbances, and the core and essence of his trouble was +an intellectual distress. For the first time in his life he was +really in doubt, about himself, about his way of living, about all his +persuasions. It was a general doubt. It was not a specific suspicion +upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at +once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as +if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory +solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh +and blood but of tissue paper. + +But this intellectual insecurity extended into his physical sensations. +It affected his feeling in his skin, as if it were not absolutely his +own skin. + +And as he lay there, a weak phantom mentally and bodily, an endless +succession and recurrence of anxieties for which he could find no +reassurance besieged him. + +Chief of this was his distress for Eleanor. + +She was the central figure in this new sense of illusion in familiar and +trusted things. It was not only that the world of his existence which +had seemed to be the whole universe had become diaphanous and betrayed +vast and uncontrollable realities beyond it, but his daughter had as it +were suddenly opened a door in this glassy sphere of insecurity that had +been his abiding refuge, a door upon the stormy rebel outer world, and +she stood there, young, ignorant, confident, adventurous, ready to step +out. + +“Could it be possible that she did not believe?” + +He saw her very vividly as he had seen her in the dining-room, slender +and upright, half child, half woman, so fragile and so fearless. And the +door she opened thus carelessly gave upon a stormy background like one +of the stormy backgrounds that were popular behind portrait Dianas in +eighteenth century paintings. Did she believe that all he had taught +her, all the life he led was--what was her phrase?--a kind of magic +world, not really real? + +He groaned and turned over and repeated the words: “A kind of magic +world--not really real!” + +The wind blew through the door she opened, and scattered everything in +the room. And still she held the door open. + +He was astonished at himself. He started up in swift indignation. Had +he not taught the child? Had he not brought her up in an atmosphere +of faith? What right had she to turn upon him in this matter? It +was--indeed it was--a sort of insolence, a lack of reverence.... + +It was strange he had not perceived this at the time. + +But indeed at the first mention of “questionings” he ought to have +thundered. He saw that quite clearly now. He ought to have cried out and +said, “On your knees, my Norah, and ask pardon of God!” + +Because after all faith is an emotional thing.... + +He began to think very rapidly and copiously of things he ought to have +said to Eleanor. And now the eloquence of reverie was upon him. In a +little time he was also addressing the tea-party at Morrice Deans'. Upon +them too he ought to have thundered. And he knew now also all that he +should have said to the recalcitrant employer. Thunder also. Thunder is +surely the privilege of the higher clergy--under Jove. + +But why hadn't he thundered? + +He gesticulated in the darkness, thrust out a clutching hand. + +There are situations that must be gripped--gripped firmly. And without +delay. In the middle ages there had been grip enough in a purple glove. + +(2) + + +From these belated seizures of the day's lost opportunities the bishop +passed to such a pessimistic estimate of the church as had never entered +his mind before. + +It was as if he had fallen suddenly out of a spiritual balloon into +a world of bleak realism. He found himself asking unprecedented and +devastating questions, questions that implied the most fundamental +shiftings of opinion. Why was the church such a failure? Why had it +no grip upon either masters or men amidst this vigorous life of modern +industrialism, and why had it no grip upon the questioning young? It was +a tolerated thing, he felt, just as sometimes he had felt that the +Crown was a tolerated thing. He too was a tolerated thing; a curious +survival.... + +This was not as things should be. He struggled to recover a proper +attitude. But he remained enormously dissatisfied.... + +The church was no Levite to pass by on the other side away from the +struggles and wrongs of the social conflict. It had no right when the +children asked for the bread of life to offer them Gothic stone.... + +He began to make interminable weak plans for fulfilling his duty to his +diocese and his daughter. + +What could he do to revivify his clergy? He wished he had more personal +magnetism, he wished he had a darker and a larger presence. He wished he +had not been saddled with Whippham's rather futile son as his chaplain. +He wished he had a dean instead of being his own dean. With an +unsympathetic rector. He wished he had it in him to make some resounding +appeal. He might of course preach a series of thumping addresses and +sermons, rather on the lines of “Fors Clavigera,” to masters and men, +in the Cathedral. Only it was so difficult to get either masters or men +into the Cathedral. + +Well, if the people will not come to the bishop the bishop must go out +to the people. Should he go outside the Cathedral--to the place where +the trains met? + +Interweaving with such thoughts the problem of Eleanor rose again into +his consciousness. + +Weren't there books she ought to read? Weren't there books she ought to +be made to read? And books--and friends--that ought to be imperatively +forbidden? Imperatively! + +But how to define the forbidden? + +He began to compose an address on Modern Literature (so-called). + +It became acrimonious. + +Before dawn the birds began to sing. + +His mind had seemed to be a little tranquillized, there had been a +distinct feeling of subsidence sleepwards, when first one and then +another little creature roused itself and the bishop to greet the +gathering daylight. + +It became a little clamour, a misty sea of sound in which individuality +appeared and disappeared. For a time a distant cuckoo was very +perceptible, like a landmark looming up over a fog, like the cuckoo in +the Pastoral Symphony. + +The bishop tried not to heed these sounds, but they were by their very +nature insistent sounds. He lay disregarding them acutely. + +Presently he pulled the coverlet over his ears. + +A little later he sat up in bed. + +Again in a slight detail he marked his strange and novel detachment from +the world of his upbringing. His hallucination of disillusionment had +spread from himself and his church and his faith to the whole animate +creation. He knew that these were the voices of “our feathered +songsters,” that this was “a joyous chorus” greeting the day. He knew +that a wakeful bishop ought to bless these happy creatures, and join +with them by reciting Ken's morning hymn. He made an effort that was +more than half habit, to repeat and he repeated with a scowling face and +the voice of a schoolmaster: + + +“Awake my soul, and with the sun +Thy daily stage of duty run....” + + +He got no further. He stopped short, sat still, thinking what utterly +detestable things singing birds were. A. blackbird had gripped his +attention. Never had he heard such vain repetitions. He struggled +against the dark mood of criticism. “He prayeth best who loveth best--” + +No, he did not love the birds. It was useless to pretend. Whatever one +may say about other birds a cuckoo is a low detestable cad of a bird. + +Then the bishop began to be particularly tormented by a bird that made a +short, insistent, wheezing sound at regular intervals of perhaps twenty +seconds. If a bird could have whooping-cough, that, he thought, was the +sort of whoop it would have. But even if it had whooping-cough he could +not pity it. He hung in its intervals waiting for the return of the +wheeze. + +And then that blackbird reasserted itself. It had a rich boastful note; +it seemed proud of its noisy reiteration of simple self-assertion. For +some obscure reason the phrase “oleographic sounds” drifted into the +bishop's thoughts. This bird produced the peculiar and irrational +impression that it had recently made a considerable sum of money by +shrewd industrialism. It was, he thought grimly, a genuine Princhester +blackbird. + +This wickedly uncharitable reference to his diocese ran all unchallenged +through the bishop's mind. And others no less wicked followed it. + +Once during his summer holidays in Florence he and Lady Ella had +subscribed to an association for the protection of song-birds. He +recalled this now with a mild wonder. It seemed to him that perhaps +after all it was as well to let fruit-growers and Italians deal with +singing-birds in their own way. Perhaps after all they had a wisdom.... + +He passed his hands over his face. The world after all is not made +entirely for singing-birds; there is such a thing as proportion. +Singing-birds may become a luxury, an indulgence, an excess. + +Did the birds eat the fruit in Paradise? + +Perhaps there they worked for some collective musical effect, had some +sort of conductor in the place of this--hullabaloo.... + +He decided to walk about the room for a time and then remake his bed.... + +The sunrise found the bishop with his head and shoulders out of the +window trying to see that blackbird. He just wanted to look at it. He +was persuaded it was a quite exceptional blackbird. + +Again came that oppressive sense of the futility of the contemporary +church, but this time it came in the most grotesque form. For hanging +half out of the casement he was suddenly reminded of St. Francis of +Assisi, and how at his rebuke the wheeling swallow stilled their cries. + +But it was all so different then. + +(3) + + +It was only after he had passed four similar nights, with intervening +days of lassitude and afternoon siestas, that the bishop realized that +he was in the grip of insomnia. + +He did not go at once to a doctor, but he told his trouble to every one +he met and received much tentative advice. He had meant to have his +talk with Eleanor on the morning next after their conversation in the +dining-room, but his bodily and spiritual anaemia prevented him. + +The fifth night was the beginning of the Whitsuntide Ember week, and +he wore a red cassock and had a distracting and rather interesting day +welcoming his ordination candidates. They had a good effect upon him; we +spiritualize ourselves when we seek to spiritualize others, and he went +to bed in a happier frame of mind than he had done since the day of the +shock. He woke in the night, but he woke much more himself than he had +been since the trouble began. He repeated that verse of Ken's: + +“When in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with heavenly thoughts +supply; Let no ill dreams disturb my rest, No powers of darkness me +molest.” + + +Almost immediately after these there floated into his mind, as if it +were a message, the dear familiar words: + +“He giveth his Beloved sleep.” + + +These words irradiated and soothed him quite miraculously, the clouds of +doubt seemed to dissolve and vanish and leave him safe and calm under a +clear sky; he knew those words were a promise, and very speedily he fell +asleep and slept until he was called. + +But the next day was a troubled one. Whippham had muddled his timetable +and crowded his afternoon; the strike of the transport workers had +begun, and the ugly noises they made at the tramway depot, where they +were booing some one, penetrated into the palace. He had to snatch a +meal between services, and the sense of hurry invaded his afternoon +lectures to the candidates. He hated hurry in Ember week. His ideal was +one of quiet serenity, of grave things said slowly, of still, kneeling +figures, of a sort of dark cool spiritual germination. But what sort of +dark cool spiritual germination is possible with an ass like Whippham +about? + +In the fresh courage of the morning the bishop had arranged for that +talk with Eleanor he had already deferred too long, and this had proved +less satisfactory than he had intended it to be. + +The bishop's experience with the ordination candidates was following +the usual course. Before they came there was something bordering upon +distaste for the coming invasion; then always there was an effect of +surprise at the youth and faith of the neophytes and a real response of +the spirit to the occasion. Throughout the first twenty-four hours +they were all simply neophytes, without individuality to break up their +uniformity of self-devotion. Then afterwards they began to develop +little personal traits, and scarcely ever were these pleasing traits. +Always one or two of them would begin haunting the bishop, giving way +to an appetite for special words, special recognitions. He knew the +expression of that craving on their faces. He knew the way-laying +movements in room and passage that presently began. + +This time in particular there was a freckled underbred young man who +handed in what was evidently a carefully prepared memorandum upon what +he called “my positions.” Apparently he had a muddle of doubts about +the early fathers and the dates of the earlier authentic copies of the +gospels, things of no conceivable significance. + +The bishop glanced through this bale of papers--it had of course no +index and no synopsis, and some of the pages were not numbered--handed +it over to Whippham, and when he proved, as usual, a broken reed, the +bishop had the brilliant idea of referring the young man to Canon Bliss +(of Pringle), “who has a special knowledge quite beyond my own in this +field.” + +But he knew from the young man's eye even as he said this that it was +not going to put him off for more than a day or so. + +The immediate result of glancing over these papers was, however, to +enhance in the bishop's mind a growing disposition to minimize the +importance of all dated and explicit evidences and arguments for +orthodox beliefs, and to resort to vague symbolic and liberal +interpretations, and it was in this state that he came to his talk with +Eleanor. + +He did not give her much time to develop her objections. He met her +half way and stated them for her, and overwhelmed her with sympathy +and understanding. She had been “too literal.” “Too literal” was his +keynote. He was a little astonished at the liberality of his own views. +He had been getting along now for some years without looking into his +own opinions too closely and he was by no means prepared to discover +how far he had come to meet his daughter's scepticisms. But he did meet +them. He met them so thoroughly that he almost conveyed that hers was a +needlessly conservative and oldfashioned attitude. + +Occasionally he felt he was being a little evasive, but she did not +seem to notice it. As she took his drift, her relief and happiness were +manifest. And he had never noticed before how clear and pretty her eyes +were; they were the most honest eyes he had ever seen. She looked at him +very steadily as he explained, and lit up at his points. She brightened +wonderfully as she realized that after all they were not apart, they had +not differed; simply they had misunderstood.... + +And before he knew where he was, and in a mere parenthetical declaration +of liberality, he surprised himself by conceding her demand for Newnham +even before she had repeated it. It helped his case wonderfully. + +“Call in every exterior witness you can. The church will welcome +them.... No, I want you to go, my dear....” + +But his mind was stirred again to its depths by this discussion. And +in particular he was surprised and a little puzzled by this Newnham +concession and the necessity of making his new attitude clear to Lady +Ella.... + +It was with a sense of fatality that he found himself awake again that +night, like some one lying drowned and still and yet perfectly conscious +at the bottom of deep cold water. + +He repeated, “He giveth his Beloved sleep,” but all the conviction had +gone out of the words. + +(4) + + +Neither the bishop's insomnia nor his incertitudes about himself and his +faith developed in a simple and orderly manner. There were periods of +sustained suffering and periods of recovery; it was not for a year or +so that he regarded these troubles as more than acute incidental +interruptions of his general tranquillity or realized that he was +passing into a new phase of life and into a new quality of thought. +He told every one of the insomnia and no one of his doubts; these he +betrayed only by an increasing tendency towards vagueness, symbolism, +poetry and toleration. Eleanor seemed satisfied with his exposition; she +did not press for further enlightenment. She continued all her outward +conformities except that after a time she ceased to communicate; and in +September she went away to Newnham. Her doubts had not visibly affected +Clementina or her other sisters, and the bishop made no further attempts +to explore the spiritual life of his family below the surface of its +formal acquiescence. + +As a matter of fact his own spiritual wrestlings were almost exclusively +nocturnal. During his spells of insomnia he led a curiously double +existence. In the daytime he was largely the self he had always been, +able, assured, ecclesiastical, except that he was a little jaded and +irritable or sleepy instead of being quick and bright; he believed in +God and the church and the Royal Family and himself securely; in +the wakeful night time he experienced a different and novel self, a +bare-minded self, bleakly fearless at its best, shamelessly weak at its +worst, critical, sceptical, joyless, anxious. The anxiety was quite the +worst element of all. Something sat by his pillow asking grey questions: +“What are you doing? Where are you going? Is it really well with the +children? Is it really well with the church? Is it really well with the +country? Are you indeed doing anything at all? Are you anything more +than an actor wearing a costume in an archaic play? The people turn +their backs on you.” + +He would twist over on his pillow. He would whisper hymns and prayers +that had the quality of charms. + +“He giveth his Beloved sleep”; that answered many times, and many times +it failed. + +The labour troubles of 1912 eased off as the year wore on, and the +bitterness of the local press over the palace abated very considerably. +Indeed there was something like a watery gleam of popularity when he +brought down his consistent friend, the dear old Princess Christiana of +Hoch and Unter, black bonnet, deafness, and all, to open a new wing of +the children's hospital. The Princhester conservative paper took the +occasion to inform the diocese that he was a fluent German scholar and +consequently a persona grata with the royal aunts, and that the Princess +Christiana was merely just one of a number of royalties now practically +at the beck and call of Princhester. It was not true, but it was very +effective locally, and seemed to justify a little the hauteur of which +Lady Ella was so unjustly suspected. Yet it involved a possibility of +disappointments in the future. + +He went to Brighton-Pomfrey too upon the score of his general health, +and Brighton-Pomfrey revised his general regimen, discouraged indiscreet +fasting, and suggested a complete abstinence from red wine except white +port, if indeed that can be called a red wine, and a moderate use of +Egyptian cigarettes. + +But 1913 was a strenuous year. The labour troubles revived, the +suffragette movement increased greatly in violence and aggressiveness, +and there sprang up no less than three ecclesiastical scandals in +the diocese. First, the Kensitites set themselves firmly to make +presentations and prosecutions against Morrice Deans, who was reserving +the sacrament, wearing, they said, “Babylonish garments,” going beyond +all reason in the matter of infant confession, and generally brightening +up Mogham Banks; next, a popular preacher in Wombash, published a book +under the exasperating title, “The Light Under the Altar,” in which +he showed himself as something between an Arian and a Pantheist, and +treated the dogma of the Trinity with as little respect as one would +show to an intrusive cat; while thirdly, an obscure but overworked +missioner of a tin mission church in the new working-class district at +Pringle, being discovered in some sort of polygamous relationship, had +seen fit to publish in pamphlet form a scandalous admission and defence, +a pamphlet entitled “Marriage True and False,” taking the public +needlessly into his completest confidence and quoting the affairs of +Abraham and Hosea, reviving many points that are better forgotten about +Luther, and appealing also to such uncanonical authorities as +Milton, Plato, and John Humphrey Noyes. This abnormal concurrence of +indiscipline was extremely unlucky for the bishop. It plunged him into +strenuous controversy upon three fronts, so to speak, and involved +a great number of personal encounters far too vivid for his mental +serenity. + +The Pringle polygamist was the most moving as Morrice Deans was the most +exacting and troublesome and the Wombash Pantheist the most insidiously +destructive figure in these three toilsome disputes. The Pringle man's +soul had apparently missed the normal distribution of fig-leaves; he +was an illiterate, open-eyed, hard-voiced, freckled, rational-minded +creature, with large expository hands, who had come by a side way into +the church because he was an indefatigable worker, and he insisted upon +telling the bishop with an irrepressible candour and completeness just +exactly what was the matter with his intimate life. The bishop very +earnestly did not want these details, and did his utmost to avoid the +controversial questions that the honest man pressed respectfully but +obstinately upon him. + +“Even St. Paul, my lord, admitted that it is better to marry than burn,” + said the Pringle misdemeanant, “and here was I, my lord, married and +still burning!” and, “I think you would find, my lord, considering +all Charlotte's peculiarities, that the situation was really much more +trying than the absolute celibacy St. Paul had in view.”... + +The bishop listened to these arguments as little as possible, and did +not answer them at all. But afterwards the offender came and wept and +said he was ruined and heartbroken and unfairly treated because +he wasn't a gentleman, and that was distressing. It was so exactly +true--and so inevitable. He had been deprived, rather on account of +his voice and apologetics than of his offence, and public opinion was +solidly with the sentence. He made a gallant effort to found what +he called a Labour Church in Pringle, and after some financial +misunderstandings departed with his unambiguous menage to join the +advanced movement on the Clyde. + +The Morrice Deans enquiry however demanded an amount of erudition that +greatly fatigued the bishop. He had a very fair general knowledge of +vestments, but he had never really cared for anything but the poetry of +ornaments, and he had to work strenuously to master the legal side +of the question. Whippham, his chaplain, was worse than useless as a +helper. The bishop wanted to end the matter as quickly, quietly, and +favourably to Morrice Deans as possible; he thought Morrice Deans a +thoroughly good man in his parish, and he believed that the substitution +of a low churchman would mean a very complete collapse of church +influence in Mogham Banks, where people were now thoroughly accustomed +to a highly ornate service. But Morrice Deans was intractable and his +pursuers indefatigable, and on several occasions the bishop sat far into +the night devising compromises and equivocations that should make the +Kensitites think that Morrice Deans wasn't wearing vestments when he +was, and that should make Morrice Deans think he was wearing vestments +when he wasn't. And it was Whippham who first suggested green tea as +a substitute for coffee, which gave the bishop indigestion, as his +stimulant for these nocturnal bouts. + +Now green tea is the most lucid of poisons. + +And while all this extra activity about Morrice Deans, these vigils and +crammings and writings down, were using all and more energy than the +bishop could well spare, he was also doing his quiet utmost to keep “The +Light under the Altar” ease from coming to a head. + +This man he hated. + +And he dreaded him as well as hated him. Chasters, the author of “The +Light under the Altar,” was a man who not only reasoned closely +but indelicately. There was a demonstrating, jeering, air about his +preaching and writing, and everything he said and did was saturated by +the spirit of challenge. He did not so much imitate as exaggerate the +style of Matthew Arnold. And whatever was done publicly against him +would have to be done very publicly because his book had got him a +London reputation. + +From the bishop's point of view Chasters was one of nature's ignoblemen. +He seemed to have subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles and passed all +the tests and taken all the pledges that stand on the way to ordination, +chiefly for the pleasure of attacking them more successfully from the +rear; he had been given the living of Wombash by a cousin, and filled it +very largely because it was not only more piquant but more remunerative +and respectable to be a rationalist lecturer in a surplice. And in a +hard kind of ultra-Protestant way his social and parochial work was not +badly done. But his sermons were terrible. “He takes a text,” said one +informant, “and he goes on firstly, secondly, thirdly, fourthly, like +somebody tearing the petals from a flower. 'Finally,' he says, and +throws the bare stalk into the dustbin.” + +The bishop avoided “The Light under the Altar” for nearly a year. It +was only when a second book was announced with the winning title of “The +Core of Truth in Christianity” that he perceived he must take action. +He sat up late one night with a marked copy, a very indignantly marked +copy, of the former work that an elderly colonel, a Wombash parishioner, +an orthodox Layman of the most virulent type, had sent him. He perceived +that he had to deal with a dialectician of exceptional ability, who had +concentrated a quite considerable weight of scholarship upon the task of +explaining away every scrap of spiritual significance in the Eucharist. +From Chasters the bishop was driven by reference to the works of Legge +and Frazer, and for the first time he began to measure the dimensions +and power of the modern criticism of church doctrine and observance. +Green tea should have lit his way to refutation; instead it lit up the +whole inquiry with a light of melancholy confirmation. Neither by night +nor by day could the bishop find a proper method of opening a counter +attack upon Chasters, who was indisputably an intellectually abler man +and a very ruthless beast indeed to assail, and meanwhile the demand +that action should be taken increased. + +The literature of church history and the controversies arising out of +doctrinal development became the employment of the bishop's leisure and +a commanding preoccupation. He would have liked to discuss with some one +else the network of perplexities in which he was entangling himself, and +more particularly with Canon Bliss, but his own positions were becoming +so insecure that he feared to betray them by argument. He had grown up +with a kind of intellectual modesty. Some things he had never yet talked +about; it made his mind blench to think of talking about them. And his +great aching gaps of wakefulness began now, thanks to the green tea, to +be interspersed with theological dreams and visions of an extravagant +vividness. He would see Frazer's sacrificial kings butchered +picturesquely and terribly amidst strange and grotesque rituals; he +would survey long and elaborate processions and ceremonials in which +the most remarkable symbols were borne high in the sight of all men; he +would cower before a gigantic and threatening Heaven. These +green-tea dreams and visions were not so much phases of sleep as an +intensification and vivid furnishing forth of insomnia. It added +greatly to his disturbance that--exceeding the instructions of +Brighton-Pomfrey--he had now experimented ignorantly and planlessly +with one or two narcotics and sleeping mixtures that friends and +acquaintances had mentioned in his hearing. For the first time in his +life he became secretive from his wife. He knew he ought not to take +these things, he knew they were physically and morally evil, but +a tormenting craving drove him to them. Subtly and insensibly his +character was being undermined by the growing nervous trouble. + +He astonished himself by the cunning and the hypocritical dignity he +could display in procuring these drugs. He arranged to have a tea-making +set in his bedroom, and secretly substituted green tea, for which he +developed a powerful craving, in the place of the delicate China tea +Lady Ella procured him. + +(5) + + +These doctrinal and physical anxieties and distresses were at their +worst in the spring and early summer of 1914. That was a time of great +mental and moral disturbance. There was premonition in the air of those +days. It was like the uneasiness sensitive people experience before a +thunderstorm. The moral atmosphere was sullen and close. The whole +world seemed irritable and mischievous. The suffragettes became +extraordinarily malignant; the democratic movement went rotten with +sabotage and with a cant of being “rebels”; the reactionary Tories and a +crew of noisy old peeresses set themselves to create incurable confusion +again in the healing wounds of Ireland, and feuds and frantic folly +broke out at every point of the social and political edifice. And then +a bomb burst at Sarajevo that silenced all this tumult. The unstable +polity of Europe heeled over like a ship that founders. + +Through the swiftest, tensest week in history Europe capsized into war. + +(6) + + +The first effect of the war upon the mind of the bishop, as upon +most imaginative minds, was to steady and exalt it. Trivialities and +exasperations seemed swept out of existence. Men lifted up their eyes +from disputes that had seemed incurable and wrangling that promised to +be interminable, and discovered a plain and tragic issue that involved +every one in a common call for devotion. For a great number of men and +women who had been born and bred in security, the August and September +of 1914 were the supremely heroic period of their lives. Myriads +of souls were born again to ideas of service and sacrifice in those +tremendous days. + +Black and evil thing as the war was, it was at any rate a great thing; +it did this much for countless minds that for the first time they +realized the epic quality of history and their own relationship to the +destinies of the race. The flimsy roof under which we had been living +our lives of comedy fell and shattered the floor under our feet; we saw +the stars above and the abyss below. We perceived that life was insecure +and adventurous, part of one vast adventure in space and time.... + +Presently the smoke and dust of battle hid the great distances again, +but they could not altogether destroy the memories of this revelation. + +For the first two months the bishop's attention was so detached from +his immediate surroundings and employments, so absorbed by great events, +that his history if it were told in detail would differ scarcely at all +from the histories of most comparatively unemployed minds during those +first dramatic days, the days when the Germans made their great rush +upon Paris and it seemed that France was down, France and the whole +fabric of liberal civilization. He emerged from these stunning +apprehensions after the Battle of the Marne, to find himself busy upon a +score of dispersed and disconnected war jobs, and trying to get all the +new appearances and forces and urgencies of the war into relations with +himself. One thing became very vivid indeed, that he wasn't being used +in any real and effective way in the war. There was a mighty going +to and fro upon Red Cross work and various war committees, a vast +preparation for wounded men and for the succour of dislocated +families; a preparation, that proved to be needless, for catastrophic +unemployment. The war problem and the puzzle of German psychology ousted +for a time all other intellectual interests; like every one else the +bishop swam deep in Nietzsche, Bernhardi, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, +and the like; he preached several sermons upon German materialism +and the astonishing decay of the German character. He also read every +newspaper he could lay his hands on--like any secular man. He signed +an address to the Russian Orthodox church, beginning “Brethren,” and +he revised his impressions of the Filioque controversy. The idea of a +reunion of the two great state churches of Russia and England had always +attracted him. But hitherto it had been a thing quite out of scale, +visionary, utopian. Now in this strange time of altered perspectives it +seemed the most practicable of suggestions. The mayor and corporation +and a detachment of the special reserve in uniform came to a great +intercession service, and in the palace there were two conferences of +local influential people, people of the most various types, people +who had never met tolerantly before, expressing now opinions of +unprecedented breadth and liberality. + +All this sort of thing was fresh and exciting at first, and then it +began to fall into a routine and became habitual, and as it became +habitual he found that old sense of detachment and futility was creeping +back again. One day he realized that indeed the whole flood and tumult +of the war would be going on almost exactly as it was going on now if +there had been neither cathedral nor bishop in Princhester. It came to +him that if archbishops were rolled into patriarchs and patriarchs into +archbishops, it would matter scarcely more in the world process that was +afoot than if two men shook hands while their house was afire. At times +all of us have inappropriate thoughts. The unfortunate thought that +struck the bishop as a bullet might strike a man in an exposed trench, +as he was hurrying through the cloisters to a special service and +address upon that doubly glorious day in our English history, the day of +St. Crispin, was of Diogenes rolling his tub. + +It was a poisonous thought. + +It arose perhaps out of an article in a weekly paper at which he had +glanced after lunch, an article written by one of those sceptical +spirits who find all too abundant expression in our periodical +literature. The writer boldly charged the “Christian churches” with +absolute ineffectiveness. This war, he declared, was above all other +wars a war of ideas, of material organization against rational freedom, +of violence against law; it was a war more copiously discussed than any +war had ever been before, the air was thick with apologetics. And what +was the voice of the church amidst these elemental issues? Bishops and +divines who were patriots one heard discordantly enough, but where were +the bishops and divines who spoke for the Prince of Peace? Where was the +blessing of the church, where was the veto of the church? When it +came to that one discovered only a broad preoccupied back busied in +supplementing the Army Medical Corps with Red Cross activities, good +work in its way--except that the canonicals seemed superfluous. Who +indeed looked to the church for any voice at all? And so to Diogenes. + +The bishop's mind went hunting for an answer to that indictment. And +came back and came back to the image of Diogenes. + +It was with that image dangling like a barbed arrow from his mind that +the bishop went into the pulpit to preach upon St. Crispin's day, and +looked down upon a thin and scattered congregation in which the elderly, +the childless, and the unoccupied predominated. + +That night insomnia resumed its sway. + +Of course the church ought to be controlling this great storm, the +greatest storm of war that had ever stirred mankind. It ought to be +standing fearlessly between the combatants like a figure in a wall +painting, with the cross of Christ uplifted and the restored memory of +Christendom softening the eyes of the armed nations. “Put down those +weapons and listen to me,” so the church should speak in irresistible +tones, in a voice of silver trumpets. + +Instead it kept a long way from the fighting, tucked up its vestments, +and was rolling its local tubs quite briskly. + +(7) + + +And then came the aggravation of all these distresses by an abrupt +abandonment of smoking and alcohol. Alcoholic relaxation, a necessary +mitigation of the unreality of peacetime politics, becomes a grave +danger in war, and it was with an understandable desire to forward the +interests of his realm that the King decided to set his statesmen an +example--which unhappily was not very widely followed--by abstaining +from alcohol during the continuance of the struggle. It did however +swing over the Bishop of Princhester to an immediate and complete +abandonment of both drink and tobacco. At that time he was finding +comfort for his nerves in Manila cheroots, and a particularly big and +heavy type of Egyptian cigarette with a considerable amount of opium, +and his disorganized system seized upon this sudden change as a +grievance, and set all his jangling being crying aloud for one +cigarette--just one cigarette. + +The cheroots, it seemed, he could better spare, but a cigarette became +his symbol for his lost steadiness and ease. + +It brought him low. + +The reader has already been told the lamentable incident of the stolen +cigarette and the small boy, and how the bishop, tormented by that +shameful memory, cried aloud in the night. + +The bishop rolled his tub, and is there any tub-rolling in the world +more busy and exacting than a bishop's? He rolled in it spite of +ill-health and insomnia, and all the while he was tormented by the +enormous background of the world war, by his ineffective realization +of vast national needs, by his passionate desire, for himself and his +church, not to be ineffective. + +The distressful alternation between nights of lucid doubt and days of +dull acquiescence was resumed with an intensification of its contrasts. +The brief phase of hope that followed the turn of the fighting upon the +Maine, the hope that after all the war would end swiftly, dramatically, +and justly, and everything be as it had been before--but pleasanter, +gave place to a phase that bordered upon despair. The fall of Antwerp +and the doubts and uncertainties of the Flanders situation weighed +terribly upon the bishop. He was haunted for a time by nightmares of +Zeppelins presently raining fire upon London. These visions became +Apocalyptic. The Zeppelins came to England with the new year, and with +the close of the year came the struggle for Ypres that was so near +to being a collapse of the allied defensive. The events of the early +spring, the bloody failure of British generalship at Neuve Chapelle, +the naval disaster in the Dardanelles, the sinking of the Falaba, +the Russian defeat in the Masurian Lakes, all deepened the bishop's +impression of the immensity of the nation's difficulties and of his +own unhelpfulness. He was ashamed that the church should hold back its +curates from enlistment while the French priests were wearing their +uniforms in the trenches; the expedition of the Bishop of London to +hold open-air services at the front seemed merely to accentuate the +tub-rolling. It was rolling the tub just where it was most in the way. + +What was wrong? What was wanting? + +The Westminster Gazette, The Spectator, and several other of the most +trusted organs of public opinion were intermittently discussing the same +question. Their discussions implied at once the extreme need that +was felt for religion by all sorts of representative people, and the +universal conviction that the church was in some way muddling and +masking her revelation. “What is wrong with the Churches?” was, +for example, the general heading of The Westminster Gazette's +correspondence. + +One day the bishop skimmed a brief incisive utterance by Sir Harry +Johnston that pierced to the marrow of his own shrinking convictions. +Sir Harry is one of those people who seem to write as well as speak in +a quick tenor. “Instead of propounding plainly and without the acereted +mythology of Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, the pure Gospel of Christ.... +they present it overloaded with unbelievable myths (such as, among +a thousand others, that Massacre of the Innocents which never took +place).... bore their listeners by a Tibetan repetition of creeds that +have ceased to be credible.... Mutually contradictory propositions.... +Prayers and litanies composed in Byzantine and mediaeval times.... +the want of actuality, the curious silliness which has, ever since the +destruction of Jerusalem, hung about the exposition of Christianity.... +But if the Bishops continue to fuss about the trappings of religion.... +the maintenance of codes compiled by people who lived sixteen hundred +or two thousand five hundred years ago.... the increasingly educated +and practical-minded working classes will not come to church, weekday or +Sunday.” + +The bishop held the paper in his hand, and with a mind that he felt to +be terribly open, asked himself how true that sharp indictment might be, +and, granting its general truth, what was the duty of the church, that +is to say of the bishops, for as Cyprian says, ecelesia est in episcopo. +We say the creeds; how far may we unsay them? + +So far he had taken no open action against Chasters. Suppose now he +were to side with Chasters and let the whole diocese, the church of +Princhester, drift as far as it chose under his inaction towards an +extreme modernism, risking a conflict with, and if necessary fighting, +the archbishop.... It was but for a moment that his mind swung to this +possibility and then recoiled. The Laymen, that band of bigots, would +fight. He could not contemplate litigation and wrangling about the +teaching of the church. Besides, what were the “trappings of religion” + and what the essentials? What after all was “the pure gospel of Christ” + of which this writer wrote so glibly? He put the paper down and took a +New Testament from his desk and opened it haphazard. He felt a curious +wish that he could read it for the first time. It was over-familiar. +Everything latterly in his theology and beliefs had become +over-familiar. It had all become mechanical and dead and unmeaning to +his tired mind.... + +Whippham came with a reminder of more tub-rolling, and the bishop's +speculations were broken off. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH - THE SYMPATHY OF LADY SUNDERBUND + +(1) + + +THAT night when he cried aloud at the memory of his furtive cigarette, +the bishop was staying with a rich man named Garstein Fellows. These +Garstein Fellows people were steel people with a financial side to them; +young Garstein Fellows had his fingers in various chemical businesses, +and the real life of the firm was in various minor partners called +Hartstein and Blumenhart and so forth, who had acquired a considerable +amount of ungentlemanly science and energy in Germany and German +Switzerland. But the Fellows element was good old Princhester stuff. +There had been a Fellows firm in Princhester in 1819. They were not +people the bishop liked and it was not a house the bishop liked staying +at, but it had become part of his policy to visit and keep in touch with +as many of the local plutocracy as he could, to give and take with them, +in order to make the presence of the church a reality to them. It had +been not least among the negligences and evasions of the sainted but +indolent Hood that he had invariably refused overnight hospitality +whenever it was possible for him to get back to his home. The morning +was his working time. His books and hymns had profited at the cost of +missing many a generous after-dinner subscription, and at the expense +of social unity. From the outset Scrope had set himself to alter this. +A certain lack of enthusiasm on Lady Ella's part had merely provoked +him to greater effort on his own. His ideal of what was needed with the +people was something rather jolly and familiar, something like a very +good and successful French or Irish priest, something that came +easily and readily into their homes and laid a friendly hand on their +shoulders. The less he liked these rich people naturally the more +familiar his resolution to be successfully intimate made him. He put +down the names and brief characteristics of their sons and daughters in +a little note-book and consulted it before every visit so as to get +his most casual enquiries right. And he invited himself to the Garstein +Fellows house on this occasion by telegram. + + +“A special mission and some business in Wombash may I have a scrap of +supper and a bed?” + + +Now Mrs. Garstein Fellows was a thoroughly London woman; she was one of +the banking Grunenbaums, the fair tall sort, and she had a very decided +tendency to smartness. She had a little party in the house, a sort of +long week-end party, that made her hesitate for a minute or so before +she framed a reply to the bishop's request. + + +It was the intention of Mrs. Garstein Fellows to succeed very +conspicuously in the British world, and the British world she felt was +a complicated one; it is really not one world but several, and if you +would surely succeed you must keep your peace with all the systems and +be a source of satisfaction to all of them. So at least Mrs. Garstein +Fellows saw it, and her method was to classify her acquaintances +according to their systems, to keep them in their proper bundles, and +to give every one the treatment he or she was accustomed to receive. And +since all things British are now changing and passing away, it may not +be uninteresting to record the classification Mrs. Garstein Fellows +adopted. First she set apart as most precious and desirable, and +requiring the most careful treatment, the “court dowdies “--for so it +was that the dignity and quiet good taste that radiated from Buckingham +Palace impressed her restless, shallow mind--the sort of people who +prefer pair horse carriages to automobiles, have quiet friendships in +the highest quarters, quietly do not know any one else, busy themselves +with charities, dress richly rather than impressively, and have either +little water-colour accomplishments or none at all, and no other +relations with “art.” At the skirts of this crowning British world Mrs. +Garstein Fellows tugged industriously and expensively. She did not keep +a carriage and pair and an old family coachman because that, she felt, +would be considered pushing and presumptuous; she had the sense to stick +to her common unpretending 80 h.p. Daimler; but she wore a special sort +of blackish hat-bonnet for such occasions as brought her near the centre +of honour, which she got from a little good shop known only to very few +outside the inner ring, which hat-bonnet she was always careful to +sit on for a few minutes before wearing. And it was to this first and +highest and best section of her social scheme that she considered that +bishops properly belonged. But some bishops, and in particular such +a comparatively bright bishop as the Bishop of Princhester, she also +thought of as being just as comfortably accommodated in her second +system, the “serious liberal lot,” which was more fatiguing and less +boring, which talked of books and things, visited the Bells, went to all +first-nights when Granville Barker was the producer, and knew and valued +people in the grey and earnest plains between the Cecils and the Sidney +Webbs. And thirdly there were the smart intellectual lot, again not very +well marked off, and on the whole practicable to bishops, of whom fewer +particulars are needed because theirs is a perennial species, and then +finally there was that fourth world which was paradoxically at once very +brilliant and a little shady, which had its Night Club side, and seemed +to set no limit to its eccentricities. It seemed at times to be aiming +to shock and yet it had its standards, but here it was that the dancers +and actresses and forgiven divorcees came in--and the bishops as a rule, +a rule hitherto always respected, didn't. This was the ultimate world of +Mrs. Garstein Fellows; she had no use for merely sporting people and +the merely correct smart and the duller county families, sets that led +nowhere, and it was from her fourth system of the Glittering Doubtfuls +that this party which made her hesitate over the bishop's telegram, was +derived. + +She ran over their names as she sat considering her reply. + +What was there for a bishop to object to? There was that admirable +American widow, Lady Sunderbund. She was enormously rich, she was +enthusiastic. She was really on probation for higher levels; it was her +decolletage delayed her. If only she kept off theosophy and the Keltic +renascence and her disposition to profess wild intellectual passions, +there would be no harm in her. Provided she didn't come down to dinner +in anything too fantastically scanty--but a word in season was possible. +No! there was no harm in Lady Sunderbund. Then there were Ridgeway Kelso +and this dark excitable Catholic friend of his, Paidraig O'Gorman. Mrs. +Garstein Fellows saw no harm in them. Then one had to consider Lord +Gatling and Lizzie Barusetter. But nothing showed, nothing was likely to +show even if there was anything. And besides, wasn't there a Church and +Stage Guild? + +Except for those people there seemed little reason for alarm. Mrs. +Garstein Fellows did not know that Professor Hoppart, who so amusingly +combined a professorship of political economy with the writing of +music-hall lyrics, was a keen amateur theologian, nor that Bent, the +sentimental novelist, had a similar passion. She did not know that her +own eldest son, a dark, romantic-looking youngster from Eton, had also +come to the theological stage of development. She did however weigh +the possibilities of too liberal opinions on what are called social +questions on the part of Miss Sharsper, the novelist, and decided that +if that lady was watched nothing so terrible could be said even in an +undertone; and as for the Mariposa, the dancer, she had nothing but +Spanish and bad French, she looked all right, and it wasn't very likely +she would go out of her way to startle an Anglican bishop. Simply she +needn't dance. Besides which even if a man does get a glimpse of a +little something--it isn't as if it was a woman. + +But of course if the party mustn't annoy the bishop, the bishop must +do his duty by the party. There must be the usual purple and the silver +buckles. + +She wired back: + + +“A little party but it won't put you out send your man with your +change.” + +(2) + + +In making that promise Mrs. Garstein Fellows reckoned without the +morbid sensibility of the bishop's disorganized nervous system and the +unsuspected theological stirrings beneath the apparent worldliness of +Hoppart and Bent. + +The trouble began in the drawing-room after dinner. Out of deference to +the bishop's abstinence the men did not remain to smoke, but came in to +find the Mariposa and Lady Sunderbund smoking cigarettes, which these +ladies continued to do a little defiantly. They had hoped to finish them +before the bishop came up. The night was chilly, and a cheerful wood +fire cracking and banging on the fireplace emphasized the ordinary +heating. Mrs. Garstein Fellows, who had not expected so prompt an +appearance of the men, had arranged her chairs in a semicircle for a +little womanly gossip, and before she could intervene she found her +party, with the exception of Lord Gatling, who had drifted just a little +too noticeably with Miss Barnsetter into a window, sitting round with +a conscious air, that was perhaps just a trifle too apparent, of being +“good.” + +And Mr. Bent plunged boldly into general conversation. + +“Are you reading anything now, Mrs. Garstein Fellows?” he asked. “I'm an +interested party.” + +She was standing at the side of the fireplace. She bit her lip and +looked at the cornice and meditated with a girlish expression. “Yes,” + she said. “I am reading again. I didn't think I should but I am.” + +“For a time,” said Hoppart, “I read nothing but the papers. I bought +from a dozen to twenty a day.” + +“That is wearing off,” said the bishop. + +“The first thing I began to read again,” said Mrs. Garstein Fellows, +“--I'm not saying it for your sake, Bishop--was the Bible.” + +“I went to the Bible,” said Bent as if he was surprised. + +“I've heard that before,” said Ridgeway Kelso, in that slightly +explosive manner of his. “All sorts of people who don't usually read the +Bible--” + +“But Mr. Kelso!” protested their hostess with raised eyebrows. + +“I was thinking of Bent. But anyhow there's been a great wave of +seriousness, a sudden turning to religion and religious things. I don't +know if it comes your way, Bishop....” + +“I've had no rows of penitents yet.” + +“We may be coming,” said Hoppart. + +He turned sideways to face the bishop. “I think we should be coming +if--if it wasn't for old entangled difficulties. I don't know if you +will mind my saying it to you, but....” + +The bishop returned his frank glance. “I'd like to know above all +things,” he said. “If Mrs. Garstein Fellow will permit us. It's my +business to know.” + +“We all want to know,” said Lady Sunderbund, speaking from the low chair +on the other side of the fireplace. There was a vibration in her voice +and a sudden gleam of enthusiasm in her face. “Why shouldn't people talk +se'iously sometimes?” + +“Well, take my own case,” said Hoppart. “In the last few weeks, I've +been reading not only in the Bible but in the Fathers. I've read most of +Athanasius, most of Eusebius, and--I'll confess it--Gibbon. I find all +my old wonder come back. Why are we pinned to--to the amount of creed we +are pinned to? Why for instance must you insist on the Trinity?” + +“Yes,” said the Eton boy explosively, and flushed darkly to find he had +spoken. + +“Here is a time when men ask for God,” said Hoppart. “And you give them +three!” cried Bent rather cheaply. “I confess I find the way encumbered +by these Alexandrian elaborations,” Hoppart completed. + +“Need it be?” whispered Lady Sunderbund very softly. + +“Well,” said the bishop, and leant back in his armchair and knitted his +brow at the fire. “I do not think,” he said, “that men coming to God +think very much of the nature of God. Nevertheless,” he spoke slowly +and patted the arm of his chair, “nevertheless the church insists that +certain vitally important truths have to be conveyed, certain mortal +errors are best guarded against, by these symbols.” + +“You admit they are symbols.” + +“So the church has always called them.” + +Hoppart showed by a little movement and grimace that he thought the +bishop quibbled. + +“In every sense of the word,” the bishop hastened to explain, “the +creeds are symbolical. It is clear they seek to express ineffable things +by at least an extended use of familiar words. I suppose we are all +agreed nowadays that when we speak of the Father and of the Son we mean +something only in a very remote and exalted way parallel with--with +biological fatherhood and sonship.” + +Lady Sunderbund nodded eagerly. “Yes,” she said, “oh, yes,” and held up +an expectant face for more. + +“Our utmost words, our most elaborately phrased creeds, can at the best +be no better than the shadow of something unseen thrown upon the screen +of experience.” + +He raised his rather weary eyes to Hoppart as if he would know what else +needed explanation. He was gratified by Lady Sunderbund's approval, but +he affected not to see or hear it. But it was Bent who spoke. + +He spoke in the most casual way. He made the thing seem the most +incidental of observations. + +“What puzzles me,” he said, “is why the early Christians identified the +Spermaticos Logos of the Stoics with the second and not with the third +person of the Trinity.” + +To which the bishop, rising artlessly to the bait, replied, “Ah! that +indeed is the unfortunate aspect of the whole affair.” + +And then the Irish Catholic came down on him.... + +(3) + + +How the bishop awakened in the night after this dispute has been +told already in the opening section of this story. To that night of +discomfort we now return after this comprehensive digression. He +awoke from nightmares of eyes and triangles to bottomless remorse and +perplexity. For the first time he fully measured the vast distances +he had travelled from the beliefs and attitudes of his early training, +since his coming to Princhester. Travelled--or rather slipped and fallen +down the long slopes of doubt. + +That clear inky dimness that comes before dawn found his white face at +the window looking out upon the great terrace and the park. + +(4) + + +After a bout of mental distress and sleeplessness the bishop would +sometimes wake in the morning not so much exhausted as in a state of +thin mental and bodily activity. This was more particularly so if the +night had produced anything in the nature of a purpose. So it was +on this occasion. The day was clear before him; at least it could be +cleared by sending three telegrams; his man could go back to Princhester +and so leave him perfectly free to go to Brighton-Pomfrey in London and +secure that friendly dispensation to smoke again which seemed the only +alternative to a serious mental breakdown. He would take his bag, stay +the night in London, smoke, sleep well, and return the next morning. +Dunk, his valet-butler, found him already bathed and ready for a cup of +tea and a Bradshaw at half-past seven. He went on dressing although the +good train for London did not start until 10.45. + +Mrs. Garstein Fellows was by nature and principle a late riser; the +breakfast-room showed small promise yet of the repast, though the table +was set and bright with silver and fresh flowers, and a wood fire popped +and spurted to greet and encourage the March sunshine. But standing in +the doorway that led to the promise and daffodils and crocuses of Mrs. +Garstein Fellows' garden stood Lady Sunderbund, almost with an effect +of waiting, and she greeted the bishop very cheerfully, doubted the +immediate appearance of any one else, and led him in the most natural +manner into the new but already very pleasant shrubbery. + +In some indefinable special way the bishop had been aware of Lady +Sunderbund's presence since first he had met her, but it was only now +that he could observe her with any particularity. She was tall like his +own Lady Ella but not calm and quiet; she was electric, her eyes, her +smiles, her complexion had as it were an established brightness that +exceeded the common lustre of things. This morning she was dressed in +grey that was nevertheless not grey but had an effect of colour, and +there was a thread of black along the lines of her body and a gleam of +gold. She carried her head back with less dignity than pride; there was +a little frozen movement in her dark hair as if it flamed up out of her +head. There were silver ornaments in her hair. She spoke with a pretty +little weakness of the r's that had probably been acquired abroad. And +she lost no time in telling him, she was eager to tell him, that she had +been waylaying him. “I did so want to talk to you some maw,” she said. +“I was shy last night and they we' all so noisy and eaga'. I p'ayed that +you might come down early. + +“It's an oppo'tunity I've longed for,” she said. + +She did her very pretty best to convey what it was had been troubling +her. 'iligion bad been worrying her for years. Life was--oh--just +ornaments and games and so wea'isome, so wea'isome, unless it was +'iligious. And she couldn't get it 'iligious. + +The bishop nodded his head gravely. + +“You unde'stand?” she pressed. + +“I understand too well--the attempt to get hold--and keep hold.” + +“I knew you would!” she cried. + +She went on with an impulsive rapidity. O'thodoxy had always 'ipelled +her,--always. She had felt herself confronted by the most insurmountable +difficulties, and yet whenever she had gone away from Christianity--she +had gone away from Christianity, to the Theosophists and the Christian +Scientists--she had felt she was only “st'aying fu'tha.” And then +suddenly when he was speaking last night, she had felt he knew. It was +so wonderful to hear the “k'eed was only a symbol.” + +“Symbol is the proper name for it,” said the bishop. “It wasn't for +centuries it was called the Creed.” + +Yes, and so what it really meant was something quite different from what +it did mean. + +The bishop felt that this sentence also was only a symbol, and nodded +encouragingly--but gravely, warily. + +And there she was, and the point was there were thousands and thousands +and thousands of educated people like her who were dying to get through +these old-fashioned symbols to the true faith that lay behind them. That +they knew lay behind them. She didn't know if he had read “The Light +under the Altar”? + +“He's vicar of Wombash--in my diocese,” said the bishop with restraint. + +“It's wonde'ful stuff,” said Lady Sunderbund. “It's spi'tually cold, +but it's intellectually wonde'ful. But we want that with spi'tuality. We +want it so badly. If some one--” + +She became daring. She bit her under lip and flashed her spirit at him. + +“If you--” she said and paused. + +“Could think aloud,” said the bishop. + +“Yes,” she said, nodding rapidly, and became breathless to hear. + +It would certainly be an astonishing end to the Chasters difficulty if +the bishop went over to the heretic, the bishop reflected. + +“My dear lady, I won't disguise,” he began; “in fact I don't see how +I could, that for some years I have been growing more and more +discontented with some of our most fundamental formulae. But it's been +very largely a shapeless discontent--hitherto. I don't think I've said a +word to a single soul. No, not a word. You are the first person to +whom I've ever made the admission that even my feelings are at times +unorthodox.” + +She lit up marvellously at his words. “Go on,” she whispered. + +But she did not need to tell him to go on. Now that he had once broached +the casket of his reserves he was only too glad of a listener. He talked +as if they were intimate and loving friends, and so it seemed to both +of them they were. It was a wonderful release from a long and painful +solitude. + +To certain types it is never quite clear what has happened to them until +they tell it. So that now the bishop, punctuated very prettily by +Lady Sunderbund, began to measure for the first time the extent of his +departure from the old innate convictions of Otteringham Rectory. He +said that it was strange to find doubt coming so late in life, but +perhaps it was only in recent years that his faith had been put to any +really severe tests. It had been sheltered and unchallenged. + +“This fearful wa',” Lady Sunderbund interjected. + +But Princhester had been a critical and trying change, and “The Light +under the Altar” case had ploughed him deeply. It was curious that +his doubts always seemed to have a double strand; there was a moral +objection based on the church's practical futility and an intellectual +strand subordinated to this which traced that futility largely to its +unconvincing formulae. + +“And yet you know,” said the bishop, “I find I can't go with Chasters. +He beats at the church; he treats her as though she were wrong. I feel +like a son, growing up, who finds his mother isn't quite so clear-spoken +nor quite so energetic as she seemed to be once. She's right, I feel +sure. I've never doubted her fundamental goodness.” + +“Yes,” said Lady Sunderbund, very eagerly, “yes.” + +“And yet there's this futility.... You know, my dear lady, I don't +know what to do. One feels on the one hand, that here is a cloud of +witnesses, great men, sainted men, subtle men, figures permanently +historical, before whom one can do nothing but bow down in the utmost +humility, here is a great instrument and organization--what would the +world be without the witness of the church?--and on the other hand here +are our masses out of hand and hostile, our industrial leaders equally +hostile; there is a failure to grip, and that failure to grip is so +clearly traceable to the fact that our ideas are not modern ideas, that +when we come to profess our faith we find nothing in our mouths but +antiquated Alexandrian subtleties and phrases and ideas that may have +been quite alive, quite significant, quite adequate in Asia Minor or +Egypt, among men essentially orientals, fifteen hundred years ago, but +which now--” + +He expressed just what they came to now by a gesture. + +She echoed his gesture. + +“Probably I'm not alone among my brethren,” he went on, and then: “But +what is one to do?” + +With her hands she acted her sense of his difficulty. + +“One may be precipitate,” he said. “There's a kind of loyalty and +discipline that requires one to keep the ranks until one's course of +action is perfectly clear. One owes so much to so many. One has to +consider how one may affect--oh! people one has never seen.” + +He was lugging things now into speech that so far had been scarcely +above the threshold of his conscious thought. He went on to discuss the +entire position of the disbelieving cleric. He discovered a fine point. + +“If there was something else, an alternative, another religion, another +Church, to which one could go, the whole case would be different. But to +go from the church to nothingness isn't to go from falsehood to truth. +It's to go from truth, rather badly expressed, rather conservatively +hidden by its protections, truth in an antiquated costume, to the +blackest lie--in the world.” + +She took that point very brightly. + +“One must hold fast to 'iligion,” she said, and looked earnestly at him +and gripped fiercely, pink thumbs out, with her beautiful hands held up. + +That was it, exactly. He too was gripping. But while on the outside the +Midianites of denial were prowling for these clinging souls, within +the camp they were assailed by a meticulous orthodoxy that was only too +eager to cast them forth. The bishop dwelt for a time upon the curious +fierceness orthodoxy would sometimes display. Nowadays atheism can be +civil, can be generous; it is orthodoxy that trails a scurrilous fringe. + +“Who was that young man with a strong Irish accent--who contradicted me +so suddenly?” he asked. + +“The dark young man?” + +“The noisy young man.” + +“That was Mist' Pat'ick O'Go'man. He is a Kelt and all that. Spells +Pat'ick with eva so many letters. You know. They say he spends ouas and +ouas lea'ning E'se. He wo'ies about it. They all t'y to lea'n E'se, and +it wo'ies them and makes them hate England moa and moa.” + +“He is orthodox. He--is what I call orthodox to the ridiculous extent.” + +“'idiculous.” + +A deep-toned gong proclaimed breakfast over a square mile or so of +territory, and Lady Sunderbund turned about mechanically towards the +house. But they continued their discussion. + +She started indeed a new topic. “Shall we eva, do 'ou think, have a new +'iligion--t'ua and betta?” + +That was a revolutionary idea to him. + +He was still fending it off from him when a gap in the shrubs brought +them within sight of the house and of Mrs. Garstein Fellows on the +portico waving a handkerchief and crying “Break-fast.” + +“I wish we could talk for houas,” said Lady Sunderbund. + +“I've been glad of this talk,” said the bishop. “Very glad.” + +She lifted her soft abundant skirts and trotted briskly across the still +dewy lawn towards the house door. The bishop followed gravely and slowly +with his hands behind his back and an unusually peaceful expression upon +his face. He was thinking how rare and precious a thing it is to find +intelligent friendship in women. More particularly when they were +dazzlingly charming and pretty. It was strange, but this was really his +first woman friend. If, as he hoped, she became his friend. + +Lady Sunderbund entered the breakfast room in a gusty abundance like +Botticelli's Primavera, and kissed Mrs. Garstein Fellows good-morning. +She exhaled a glowing happiness. “He is wondyful,” she panted. “He is +most wondyful.” + +“Mr. Hidgeway Kelso?” + +“No, the dee' bishop! I love him. Are those the little sausages I like? +May I take th'ee? I've been up houas.” + +The dee' bishop appeared in the sunlit doorway. + +(5) + + +The bishop felt more contentment in the London train than he had felt +for many weeks. He had taken two decisive and relieving steps. One was +that he had stated his case to another human being, and that a very +charming and sympathetic human being, he was no longer a prey to a +current of secret and concealed thoughts running counter to all the +appearances of his outward life; and the other was that he was now +within an hour or so of Brighton-Pomfrey and a cigarette. He would lunch +on the train, get to London about two, take a taxi at once to the wise +old doctor, catch him over his coffee in a charitable and understanding +mood, and perhaps be smoking a cigarette publicly and honourably and +altogether satisfyingly before three. + +So far as Brighton-Pomfrey's door this program was fulfilled without +a hitch. The day was fine and he had his taxi opened, and noted with a +patriotic satisfaction as he rattled through the streets, the glare of +the recruiting posters on every vacant piece of wall and the increasing +number of men in khaki in the streets. But at the door he had a +disappointment. Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was away at the front--of all +places; he had gone for some weeks; would the bishop like to see Dr. +Dale? + +The bishop hesitated. He had never set eyes on this Dr. Dale. + +Indeed, he had never heard of Dr. Dale. + +Seeing his old friend Brighton-Pomfrey and being gently and tactfully +told to do exactly what he was longing to do was one thing; facing some +strange doctor and going slowly and elaborately through the whole +story of his illness, his vow and his breakdown, and perhaps having his +reaction time tested and all sorts of stripping and soundings done, was +quite another. He was within an ace of turning away. + +If he had turned away his whole subsequent life would have been +different. It was the very slightest thing in the world tipped the +beam. It was the thought that, after all, whatever inconvenience and +unpleasantness there might be in this interview, there was at the end of +it a very reasonable prospect of a restored and legitimate cigarette. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH - THE FIRST VISION + +(1) + + +Dr. DALE exceeded the bishop's worst apprehensions. He was a lean, lank, +dark young man with long black hair and irregular, rather prolonged +features; his chin was right over to the left; he looked constantly at +the bishop's face with a distinctly sceptical grey eye; he could not +have looked harder if he had been a photographer or a portrait painter. +And his voice was harsh, and the bishop was particularly sensitive to +voices. + +He began by understanding far too much of the bishop's illness, and he +insisted on various familiarities with the bishop's heart and tongue and +eye and knee that ruffled the bishop's soul. + +“Brighton-Pomfrey talked of neurasthenia?” he asked. “That was his +diagnosis,” said the bishop. “Neurasthenia,” said the young man as +though he despised the word. + +The bishop went on buttoning up his coat. + +“You don't of course want to break your vows about drinking and +smoking,” said the young man with the very faintest suggestion of +derision in his voice. + +“Not if it can possibly be avoided,” the bishop asserted. “Without a +loss, that is, of practical efficiency,” he added. “For I have much to +do.” + +“I think that it is possible to keep your vow,” said the young man, +and the bishop could have sworn at him. “I think we can manage that all +right.” + +(2) + + +The bishop sat at the table resting his arm upon it and awaiting the +next development of this unsatisfactory interview. He was on the verge +of asking as unpleasantly as possible when Brighton-Pomfrey would +return. + +The young man stood upon Brighton-Pomfrey's hearth-rug and was evidently +contemplating dissertations. + +“Of course,” he said, as though he discussed a problem with himself, +“you must have some sort of comfort. You must get out of this state, one +way or another.” + +The bishop nodded assent. He had faint hopes of this young man's ideas +of comfort. + +Dr. Dale reflected. Then he went off away from the question of comfort +altogether. “You see, the trouble in such a case as this is peculiarly +difficult to trace to its sources because it comes just upon the +border-line of bodily and mental things. You may take a drug or alter +your regimen and it disturbs your thoughts, you may take an idea and +it disturbs your health. It is easy enough to say, as some do, that all +ideas have a physical substratum; it is almost as easy to say with the +Christian Scientist that all bodily states are amenable to our ideas. +The truth doesn't, I think, follow the border between those opposite +opinions very exactly on either side. I can't, for instance, tell you to +go home and pray against these uncertainties and despairs, because it +is just these uncertainties and despairs that rob you of the power of +efficient prayer.” + +He did not seem to expect anything from the bishop. + +“I don't see that because a case brings one suddenly right up against +the frontier of metaphysics, why a doctor should necessarily pull +up short at that, why one shouldn't go on into either metaphysics or +psychology if such an extension is necessary for the understanding of +the case. At any rate if you'll permit it in this consultation....” + +“Go on,” said the bishop, holding on to that promise of comfort. “The +best thing is to thrash out the case in your own way. And then come to +what is practical.” + +“What is really the matter here--the matter with you that is--is a +disorganization of your tests of reality. It's one of a group of states +hitherto confused. Neurasthenia, that comprehensive phrase--well, it is +one of the neurasthenias. Here, I confess, I begin to talk of work I am +doing, work still to be published, finished first and then published.... +But I go off from the idea that every living being lives in a state +not differing essentially from a state of hallucination concerning the +things about it. Truth, essential truth, is hidden. Always. Of course +there must be a measure of truth in our working illusions, a working +measure of truth, or the creature would smash itself up and end itself, +but beyond that discretion of the fire and the pitfall lies a wide +margin of error about which we may be deceived for years. So long as it +doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I don't know if I make myself clear.” + +“I follow you,” said the bishop a little wearily, “I follow you. +Phenomena and noumena and so on and so on. Kant and so forth. +Pragmatism. Yes.” + +With a sigh. + +“And all that,” completed Dr. Dale in a voice that suggested mockery. +“But you see we grow into a way of life, we settle down among habits and +conventions, we say 'This is all right' and 'That is always so.' We +get more and more settled into our life as a whole and more and more +confident. Unless something happens to shake us out of our sphere of +illusion. That may be some violent contradictory fact, some accident, +or it may be some subtle change in one's health and nerves that makes +us feel doubtful. Or a change of habits. Or, as I believe, some subtle +quickening of the critical faculty. Then suddenly comes the feeling as +though we were lost in a strange world, as though we had never really +seen the world before.” + +He paused. + +The bishop was reluctantly interested. “That does describe something--of +the mental side,” he admitted. “I never believe in concealing my own +thoughts from an intelligent patient,” said Dr. Dale, with a quiet +offensiveness. “That sort of thing belongs to the dark ages of the +'pothecary's art. I will tell you exactly my guesses and suppositions +about you. At the base of it all is a slight and subtle kidney trouble, +due I suggest to your going to Princhester and drinking the local +water--” + +“But it's excellent water. They boast of it.” + +“By all the established tests. As a matter of fact many of our best +drinking waters have all sorts of unspecified qualities. Burton water, +for example, is radioactive by Beetham's standards up to the ninth +degree. But that is by the way. My theory about your case is that this +produced a change in your blood, that quickened your sensibilities and +your critical faculties just at a time when a good many bothers--I don't +of course know what they were, but I can, so to speak, see the marks all +over you--came into your life.” + +The bishop nodded. + +“You were uprooted. You moved from house to house, and failed to get +that curled up safe feeling one has in a real home in any of them.” + +“If you saw the fireplaces and the general decoration of the new +palace!” admitted the bishop. “I had practically no control.” + +“That confirms me,” said Dr. Dale. “Insomnia followed, and increased the +feeling of physical strangeness by increasing the bodily disturbance. I +suspect an intellectual disturbance.” + +He paused. + +“There was,” said the bishop. + +“You were no longer at home anywhere. You were no longer at home in your +diocese, in your palace, in your body, in your convictions. And then +came the war. Quite apart from everything else the mind of the whole +world is suffering profoundly from the shock of this war--much more +than is generally admitted. One thing you did that you probably did not +observe yourself doing, you drank rather more at your meals, you smoked +a lot more. That was your natural and proper response to the shock.” + +“Ah!” said the bishop, and brightened up. + +“It was remarked by Tolstoy, I think, that few intellectual men would +really tolerate the world as it is if it were not for smoking and +drinking. Even novelists have their moments of lucidity. Certainly these +things soothe the restlessness in men's minds, deaden their sceptical +sensibilities. And just at the time when you were getting most +dislodged--you gave them up.” + +“And the sooner I go back to them the better,” said the bishop brightly. +“I quite see that.” + +“I wouldn't say that,” said Dr. Dale.... + +(3) + + +“That,” said Dr. Dale, “is just where my treatment of this case differs +from the treatment of “--he spoke the name reluctantly as if he disliked +the mere sound of it--“Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey.” + +“Hitherto, of course,” said the bishop, “I've been in his hands.” + +“He,” said Dr. Dale, “would certainly set about trying to restore your +old sphere of illusion, your old familiar sensations and ideas and +confidences. He would in fact turn you back. He would restore all your +habits. He would order you a rest. He would send you off to some holiday +resort, fresh in fact but familiar in character, the High lands, North +Italy, or Switzerland for example. He would forbid you newspapers and +order you to botanize and prescribe tranquillizing reading; Trollope's +novels, the Life of Gladstone, the works of Mr. A. C. Benson, memoirs +and so on. You'd go somewhere where there was a good Anglican chaplain, +and you'd take some of the services yourself. And we'd wash out the +effects of the Princhester water with Contrexeville, and afterwards +put you on Salutaris or Perrier. I don't know whether I shouldn't have +inclined to some such treatment before the war began. Only--” + +He paused. + +“You think--?” + +Dr. Dale's face betrayed a sudden sombre passion. “It won't do now,” he +said in a voice of quiet intensity. “It won't do now.” + +He remained darkly silent for so long that at last the bishop spoke. +“Then what,” he asked, “do you suggest? + +“Suppose we don't try to go back,” said Dr. Dale. “Suppose we go on and +go through.” + +“Where?” + +“To reality. + +“I know it's doubtful, I know it's dangerous,” he went on, “but I am +convinced that now we can no longer keep men's minds and souls in these +feathered nests, these spheres of illusion. Behind these veils there is +either God or the Darkness.... Why should we not go on?” + +The bishop was profoundly perplexed. He heard himself speaking. “It +would be unworthy of my cloth,” he was saying. + +Dr. Dale completed the sentence: “to go back.” + +“Let me explain a little more,” he said, “what I mean by 'going on.' I +think that this loosening of the ties of association that bind a man to +his everyday life and his everyday self is in nine cases out of ten a +loosening of the ties that bind him to everyday sanity. One common form +of this detachment is the form you have in those cases of people who +are found wandering unaware of their names, unaware of their places +of residence, lost altogether from themselves. They have not only lost +their sense of identity with themselves, but all the circumstances of +their lives have faded out of their minds like an idle story in a book +that has been read and put aside. I have looked into hundreds of such +cases. I don't think that loss of identity is a necessary thing; it's +just another side of the general weakening of the grip upon reality, a +kind of anaemia of the brain so that interest fades and fails. There +is no reason why you should forget a story because you do not believe +it--if your brain is strong enough to hold it. But if your brain is +tired and weak, then so soon as you lose faith in your records, your +mind is glad to let them go. When you see these lost identity people +that is always your first impression, a tired brain that has let go.” + +The bishop felt extremely like letting go. + +“But how does this apply to my case?” + +“I come to that,” said Dr. Dale, holding up a long large hand. “What +if we treat this case of yours in a new way? What if we give you not +narcotics but stimulants and tonics? What if we so touch the blood that +we increase your sense of physical detachment while at the same time +feeding up your senses to a new and more vivid apprehension of things +about you?” He looked at his patient's hesitation and added: “You'd lose +all that craving feeling, that you fancy at present is just the need +of a smoke. The world might grow a trifle--transparent, but you'd keep +real. Instead of drugging oneself back to the old contentment--” + +“You'd drug me on to the new,” said the bishop. + +“But just one word more!” said Dr. Dale. “Hear why I would do this! It +was easy and successful to rest and drug people back to their old states +of mind when the world wasn't changing, wasn't spinning round in the +wildest tornado of change that it has ever been in. But now--Where can +I send you for a rest? Where can I send you to get you out of sight and +hearing of the Catastrophe? Of course old Brighton-Pomfrey would go on +sending people away for rest and a nice little soothing change if the +Day of Judgment was coming in the sky and the earth was opening and the +sea was giving up its dead. He'd send 'em to the seaside. Such things as +that wouldn't shake his faith in the Channel crossing. My idea is that +it's not only right for you to go through with this, but that it's the +only thing to do. If you go right on and right through with these doubts +and intimations--” + +He paused. + +“You may die like a madman,” he said, “but you won't die like a tame +rabbit.” + +(4) + + +The bishop sat reflecting. What fascinated and attracted him was the +ending of all the cravings and uneasinesses and restlessness that had +distressed his life for over four years; what deterred him was the +personality of this gaunt young man with his long grey face, his excited +manner, his shock of black hair. He wanted that tonic--with grave +misgivings. “If you think this tonic is the wiser course,” he began. +“I'd give it you if you were my father,” said Dr. Dale. “I've got +everything for it,” he added. + +“You mean you can make it up--without a prescription.” + +“I can't give you a prescription. The essence of it--It's a distillate I +have been trying. It isn't in the Pharmacopeia.” + +Again the bishop had a twinge of misgiving. + +But in the end he succumbed. He didn't want to take the stuff, but also +he did not want to go without his promised comfort. + +Presently Dale had given him a little phial--and was holding up to the +window a small medicine glass into which he was pouring very carefully +twenty drops of the precious fluid. “Take it only,” he said, “when you +feel you must.” + +“It is the most golden of liquids,” said the bishop, peering at it. + +“When you want more I will make you more. Later of course, it will be +possible to write a prescription. Now add the water--so. + +“It becomes opalescent. How beautifully the light plays in it! + +“Take it.” + +The bishop dismissed his last discretion and drank. + +“Well?” said Dr. Dale. + +“I am still here,” said the bishop, smiling, and feeling a joyous +tingling throughout his body. “It stirs me.” + +(5) + + +The bishop stood on the pavement outside Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey's house. +The massive door had closed behind him. + +It had been an act of courage, of rashness if you will, to take this +draught. He was acutely introspective, ready for anything, for the most +disagreeable or the most bizarre sensations. He was asking himself, Were +his feet steady? Was his head swimming? + +His doubts glowed into assurance. + +Suddenly he perceived that he was sure of God. + +Not perhaps of the God of Nicaea, but what did these poor little +quibblings and definitions of the theologians matter? He had been +worrying about these definitions and quibblings for four long restless +years. Now they were just failures to express--what surely every one +knew--and no one would ever express exactly. Because here was God, and +the kingdom of God was manifestly at hand. The visible world hung before +him as a mist might hang before the rising sun. He stood proudly and +masterfully facing a universe that had heretofore bullied him into doubt +and apologetics, a universe that had hitherto been opaque and was now +betrayed translucent. + +That was the first effect of the new tonic, complete reassurance, +complete courage. He turned to walk towards Mount Street and Berkeley +Square as a sultan might turn to walk among his slaves. + +But the tonic was only beginning. + +Before he had gone a dozen steps he was aware that he seemed more solid +and larger than the people about him. They had all a curious miniature +effect, as though he was looking at them through the wrong end of an +opera glass. The houses on either side of the street and the traffic +shared this quality in an equal measure. It was as if he was looking at +the world through apertures in a miniature cinematograph peep-show. This +surprised him and a little dashed his first glow of satisfaction. + +He passed a man in khaki who, he fancied, looked at him with an odd +expression. He observed the next passers-by narrowly and suspiciously, a +couple of smartish young men, a lady with a poodle, a grocer's boy with +a basket, but none seemed to observe anything remarkable about him. Then +he caught the eye of a taxi-driver and became doubtful again. + +He had a feeling that this tonic was still coming in like a tide. It +seemed to be filling him and distending him, in spite of the fact that +he was already full. After four years of flaccidity it was pleasant to +be distended again, but already he felt more filled than he had ever +been before. At present nothing was showing, but all his body seemed +braced and uplifted. He must be careful not to become inflated in his +bearing. + +And yet it was difficult not to betray a little inflation. He was so +filled with assurance that things were right with him and that God was +there with him. After all it was not mere fancy; he was looking through +the peepholes of his eyes at the world of illusion and appearance. The +world that was so intent upon its immediate business, so regardless of +eternal things, that had so dominated him but a little while ago, was +after all a thing more mortal than himself. + +Another man in khaki passed him. + +For the first time he saw the war as something measurable, as something +with a beginning and an end, as something less than the immortal spirit +in man. He had been too much oppressed by it. He perceived all these +people in the street were too much oppressed by it. He wanted to tell +them as much, tell them that all was well with them, bid them be of good +cheer. He wanted to bless them. He found his arm floating up towards +gestures of benediction. Self-control became increasingly difficult. + +All the way down Berkeley Square the bishop was in full-bodied struggle +with himself. He was trying to control himself, trying to keep within +bounds. He felt that he was stepping too high, that his feet were not +properly reaching the ground, that he was walking upon cushions of air. + +The feeling of largeness increased, and the feeling of transparency in +things about him. He avoided collision with passers-by--excessively. And +he felt his attention was being drawn more and more to something that +was going on beyond the veil of visible things. He was in Piccadilly +now, but at the same time Piccadilly was very small and he was walking +in the presence of God. + +He had a feeling that God was there though he could not see him. And at +the same time he was in this transitory world, with people going to and +fro, men with umbrellas tucked dangerously under their arms, men in a +hurry, policemen, young women rattling Red Cross collecting boxes, smart +people, loafers. They distracted one from God. + +He set out to cross the road just opposite Prince's, and jumping +needlessly to give way to an omnibus had the narrowest escape from a +taxicab. + +He paused on the pavement edge to recover himself. The shock of his near +escape had, as people say, pulled him together. + +What was he to do? Manifestly this opalescent draught was overpowering +him. He ought never to have taken it. He ought to have listened to the +voice of his misgivings. It was clear that he was not in a fit state to +walk about the streets. He was--what had been Dr. Dale's term?--losing +his sense of reality. What was he to do? He was alarmed but not +dismayed. His thoughts were as full-bodied as the rest of his being, +they came throbbing and bumping into his mind. What was he to do? + +Brighton-Pomfrey ought never to have left his practice in the hands of +this wild-eyed experimenter. + +Strange that after a lifetime of discretion and men's respect one should +be standing on the Piccadilly pavement--intoxicated! + +It came into his head that he was not so very far from the Athenaeum, +and surely there if anywhere a bishop may recover his sense of +being--ordinary. + +And behind everything, behind the tall buildings and the swarming people +there was still the sense of a wide illuminated space, of a light of +wonder and a Presence. But he must not give way to that again! He had +already given way altogether too much. He repeated to himself in a +whisper, “I am in Piccadilly.” + +If he kept tight hold upon himself he felt he might get to the Athenaeum +before--before anything more happened. + +He murmured directions to himself. “Keep along the pavement. Turn to +the right at the Circus. Now down the hill. Easily down the hill. Don't +float! Junior Army and Navy Stores. And the bookseller.” + +And presently he had a doubt of his name and began to repeat it. + +“Edward Princhester. Edward Scrope, Lord Bishop of Princhester.” + +And all the while voices within him were asserting, “You are in the +kingdom of Heaven. You are in the presence of God. Place and time are a +texture of illusion and dreamland. Even now, you are with God.” + +(6) + + +The porter of the Athenaeum saw him come in, looking well--flushed +indeed--but queer in expression; his blue eyes were wide open and +unusually vague and blue. + +He wandered across towards the dining-room, hesitated, went to look at +the news, seemed in doubt whether he would not go into the smoking-room, +and then went very slowly upstairs, past the golden angel up to the +great drawing-room. + +In the drawing-room he found only Sir James Mounce, the man who knew +the novels of Sir Walter Scott by heart and had the minutest and most +unsparing knowledge of every detail in the life of that supreme giant of +English literature. He had even, it was said, acquired a Scotch burr in +the enthusiasm of his hero-worship. It was usually sufficient only to +turn an ear towards him for him to talk for an hour or so. He was now +studying Bradshaw. + +The bishop snatched at him desperately. He felt that if he went away +there would be no hold left upon the ordinary things of life. + +“Sir James,” he said, “I was wondering the other day when was the exact +date of the earliest public ascription of Waverley to Scott.” + +“Eh!” said Sir James, “but I'd like to talk that over with ye. Indeed +I would. It would be depending very largely on what ye called 'public.' +But--” + +He explained something about an engagement in Birmingham that night, a +train to catch. Reluctantly but relentlessly he abandoned the proffered +ear. But he promised that the next time they met in the club he would go +into the matter “exhausteevely.” + +The door closed upon him. The bishop was alone. He was flooded with +the light of the world that is beyond this world. The things about him +became very small and indistinct. + +He would take himself into a quiet corner in the library of this doll's +house, and sit his little body down in one of the miniature armchairs. +Then if he was going to faint or if the trancelike feeling was to become +altogether a trance--well, a bishop asleep in an armchair in the library +of the Athenaeum is nothing to startle any one. + +He thought of that convenient hidden room, the North Library, in which +is the bust of Croker. There often one can be quite alone.... It was +empty, and he went across to the window that looks out upon Pall Mall +and sat down in the little uncomfortable easy chair by the desk with its +back to the Benvenuto Cellini. + +And as he sat down, something snapped--like the snapping of a lute +string--in his brain. + +(7) + + +With a sigh of deep relief the bishop realized that this world had +vanished. + +He was in a golden light. + +He perceived it as a place, but it was a place without buildings or +trees or any very definite features. There was a cloudy suggestion of +distant hills, and beneath his feet were little gem-like flowers, and +a feeling of divinity and infinite friendliness pervaded his being. His +impressions grew more definite. His feet seemed to be bare. He was no +longer a bishop nor clad as a bishop. That had gone with the rest of the +world. He was seated on a slab of starry rock. + +This he knew quite clearly was the place of God. + +He was unable to disentangle thoughts from words. He seemed to be +speaking in his mind. + +“I have been very foolish and confused and perplexed. I have been like a +creature caught among thorns.” + +“You served the purpose of God among those thorns.” It seemed to him at +first that the answer also was among his thoughts. + +“I seemed so silly and so little. My wits were clay.” + +“Clay full of desires.” + +“Such desires!” + +“Blind desires. That will presently come to the light.” + +“Shall we come to the light?” + +“But here it is, and you see it!” + +(8) + + +It became clearer in the mind of the bishop that a figure sat beside +him, a figure of great strength and beauty, with a smiling face and +kindly eyes. A strange thought and a strange courage came to the bishop. + +“Tell me,” he whispered, “are you God?” + +“I am the Angel of God.” + +The bishop thought over that for some moments. + +“I want,” he said, “to know about God. + +“I want,” he said, with a deepening passion of the soul, “to know about +God. Slowly through four long years I have been awakening to the need +of God. Body and soul I am sick for the want of God and the knowledge of +God. I did not know what was the matter with me, why my life had become +so disordered and confused that my very appetites and habits are all +astray. But I am perishing for God as a waterless man upon a raft +perishes for drink, and there is nothing but madness if I touch the seas +about me. Not only in my thoughts but in my under thoughts and in my +nerves and bones and arteries I have need of God. You see I grew up in +the delusion that I knew God, I did not know that I was unprovisioned +and unprovided against the tests and strains and hardships of life. I +thought that I was secure and safe. I was told that we men--who were +apes not a quarter of a million years ago, who still have hair upon +our arms and ape's teeth in our jaws--had come to the full and perfect +knowledge of God. It was all put into a creed. Not a word of it was to +be altered, not a sentence was to be doubted any more. They made me a +teacher of this creed. They seemed to explain it to me. And when I came +to look into it, when my need came and I turned to my creed, it was old +and shrivelled up, it was the patched-up speculations of vanished Greeks +and Egyptians, it was a mummy of ancient disputes, old and dry, that +fell to dust as I unwrapped it. And I was dressed up in the dress of old +dead times and put before an altar of forgotten sacrifices, and I went +through ceremonies as old as the first seedtime; and suddenly I knew +clearly that God was not there, God was not in my Creed, not in my +cathedral, not in my ceremonies, nowhere in my life. And at the same +time I knew, I knew as I had never known before, that certainly there +was God.” + +He paused. “Tell me,” said the friend at his side; “tell me.” + +“It was as if a child running beside its mother, looked up and saw that +he had never seen her face before, that she was not his mother, and that +the words he had seemed to understand were--now that he listened--words +in an unknown tongue. + +“You see, I am but a common sort of man, dear God; I have neither lived +nor thought in any way greatly, I have gone from one day to the next day +without looking very much farther than the end of the day, I have gone +on as life has befallen; if no great trouble had come into my life, so +I should have lived to the end of my days. But life which began for me +easily and safely has become constantly more difficult and strange. +I could have held my services and given my benedictions, I could have +believed I believed in what I thought I believed.... But now I am lost +and astray--crying out for God....” + +(9) + + +“Let us talk a little about your troubles,” said the Angel. “Let us talk +about God and this creed that worries you and this church of yours.” + +“I feel as though I had been struggling to this talk through all the +years--since my doubts began.” + +“The story your Creed is trying to tell is much the same story that +all religions try to tell. In your heart there is God, beyond the stars +there is God. Is it the same God?” + +“I don't know,” said the bishop. + +“Does any one know?” + +“I thought I knew.” + +“Your creed is full of Levantine phrases and images, full of the patched +contradictions of the human intelligence utterly puzzled. It is about +those two Gods, the God beyond the stars and the God in your heart. It +says that they are the same God, but different. It says that they have +existed together for all time, and that one is the Son of the other. It +has added a third Person--but we won't go into that.” + +The bishop was reminded suddenly of the dispute at Mrs. Garstein +Fellows'. “We won't go into that,” he agreed. “No!” + +“Other religions have told the story in a different way. The Cathars and +Gnostics did. They said that the God in your heart is a rebel against +the God beyond the stars, that the Christ in your heart is like +Prometheus--or Hiawatha--or any other of the sacrificial gods, a rebel. +He arises out of man. He rebels against that high God of the stars and +crystals and poisons and monsters and of the dead emptiness of space.... +The Manicheans and the Persians made out our God to be fighting +eternally against that Being of silence and darkness beyond the stars. +The Buddhists made the Lord Buddha the leader of men out of the futility +and confusion of material existence to the great peace beyond. But it is +all one story really, the story of the two essential Beings, always the +same story and the same perplexity cropping up under different names, +the story of one being who stirs us, calls to us, and leads us, and +of another who is above and outside and in and beneath all things, +inaccessible and incomprehensible. All these religions are trying to +tell something they do not clearly know--of a relationship between these +two, that eludes them, that eludes the human mind, as water escapes from +the hand. It is unity and opposition they have to declare at the same +time; it is agreement and propitiation, it is infinity and effort.” + +“And the truth?” said the bishop in an eager whisper. “You can tell me +the truth.” + +The Angel's answer was a gross familiarity. He thrust his hand through +the bishop's hair and ruffled it affectionately, and rested for a moment +holding the bishop's cranium in his great palm. + +“But can this hold it?” he said.... + +“Not with this little box of brains,” said the Angel. “You could as soon +make a meal of the stars and pack them into your belly. You haven't the +things to do it with inside this.” + +He gave the bishop's head a little shake and relinquished it. + +He began to argue as an elder brother might. + +“Isn't it enough for you to know something of the God that comes down to +the human scale, who has been born on your planet and arisen out of Man, +who is Man and God, your leader? He's more than enough to fill your mind +and use up every faculty of your being. He is courage, he is adventure, +he is the King, he fights for you and with you against death....” + +“And he is not infinite? He is not the Creator?” asked the bishop. + +“So far as you are concerned, no,” said the Angel. + +“So far as I am concerned?” + +“What have you to do with creation?” + +And at that question it seemed that a great hand swept carelessly across +the blackness of the farther sky, and smeared it with stars and suns and +shining nebulas as a brush might smear dry paint across a canvas. + +The bishop stared in front of him. Then slowly he bowed his head, and +covered his face with his hands. + +“And I have been in orders,” he murmured; “I have been teaching people +the only orthodox and perfect truth about these things for seven and +twenty years.” + +And suddenly he was back in his gaiters and his apron and his shovel +hat, a little black figure exceedingly small in a very great space.... + +(10) + + +It was a very great space indeed because it was all space, and the roof +was the ebony of limitless space from which the stars swung flaming, +held by invisible ties, and the soil beneath his feet was a dust of +atoms and the little beginnings of life. And long before the bishop +bared his face again, he knew that he was to see his God. + +He looked up slowly, fearing to be dazzled. + +But he was not dazzled. He knew that he saw only the likeness and +bodying forth of a being inconceivable, of One who is greater than the +earth and stars and yet no greater than a man. He saw a being for ever +young, for ever beginning, for ever triumphant. The quality and texture +of this being was a warm and living light like the effulgence at +sunrise; He was hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. He +was adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into and +submerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And this +presence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in a +wordless speech. + +He bade him surrender himself. He bade him come out upon the Adventure +of Life, the great Adventure of the earth that will make the atoms our +bond-slaves and subdue the stars, that will build up the white fires of +ecstasy to submerge pain for ever, that will overcome death. In Him +the spirit of creation had become incarnate, had joined itself to men, +summoning men to Him, having need of them, having need of them, having +need of their service, even as great kings and generals and leaders need +and use men. For a moment, for an endless age, the bishop bowed himself +in the being and glory of God, felt the glow of the divine courage and +confidence in his marrow, felt himself one with God. + +For a timeless interval.... + +Never had the bishop had so intense a sense of reality. It seemed that +never before had he known anything real. He knew certainly that God was +his King and master, and that his unworthy service could be acceptable +to God. His mind embraced that idea with an absolute conviction that was +also absolute happiness. + +(11) + + +The thoughts and sensations of the bishop seemed to have lifted for +a time clean away from the condition of time, and then through a vast +orbit to be returning to that limitation. + +He was aware presently that things were changing, that the light was +losing its diviner rays, that in some indescribable manner the glory and +the assurance diminished. + +The onset of the new phase was by imperceptible degrees. From a glowing, +serene, and static realization of God, everything relapsed towards +change and activity. He was in time again and things were happening, it +was as if the quicksands of time poured by him, and it was as if God +was passing away from him. He fell swiftly down from the heaven +of self-forgetfulness to a grotesque, pathetic and earthly +self-consciousness. + +He became acutely aware of his episcopal livery. And that God was +passing away from him. + +It was as if God was passing, and as if the bishop was unable to rise up +and follow him. + +Then it was as if God had passed, and as if the bishop was in headlong +pursuit of him and in a great terror lest he should be left behind. And +he was surely being left behind. + +He discovered that in some unaccountable way his gaiters were loose; +most of their buttons seemed to have flown off, and his episcopal +sash had slipped down about his feet. He was sorely impeded. He kept +snatching at these things as he ran, in clumsy attempts to get them off. + +At last he had to stop altogether and kneel down and fumble with the +last obstinate button. + +“Oh God!” he cried, “God my captain! Wait for me! Be patient with me!” + +And as he did so God turned back and reached out his hand. It was indeed +as if he stood and smiled. He stood and smiled as a kind man might do; +he dazzled and blinded his worshipper, and yet it was manifest that he +had a hand a man might clasp. + +Unspeakable love and joy irradiated the whole being of the bishop as he +seized God's hand and clasped it desperately with both his own. It was +as if his nerves and arteries and all his substance were inundated with +golden light.... + +It was again as if he merged with God and became God.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH - EXEGETICAL + +(1) + + +WITHOUT any sense of transition the bishop found himself seated in the +little North Library of the Athenaeum club and staring at the bust of +John Wilson Croker. He was sitting motionless and musing deeply. He was +questioning with a cool and steady mind whether he had seen a vision +or whether he had had a dream. If it had been a dream it had been an +extraordinarily vivid and convincing dream. He still seemed to be in the +presence of God, and it perplexed him not at all that he should also +be in the presence of Croker. The feeling of mental rottenness and +insecurity that had weakened his thought through the period of his +illness, had gone. He was secure again within himself. + +It did not seem to matter fundamentally whether it was an experience of +things without or of things within him that had happened to him. It was +clear to him that much that he had seen was at most expressive, that +some was altogether symbolical. For example, there was that sudden +absurd realization of his sash and gaiters, and his perception of them +as encumbrances in his pursuit of God. But the setting and essential of +the whole thing remained in his mind neither expressive nor symbolical, +but as real and immediately perceived, and that was the presence and +kingship of God. God was still with him and about him and over him and +sustaining him. He was back again in his world and his ordinary life, +in his clothing and his body and his club, but God had been made and +remained altogether plain and manifest. + +Whether an actual vision had made his conviction, or whether the +conviction of his own subconscious mind had made the dream, seemed but +a small matter beside the conviction that this was indeed the God he had +desired and the God who must rule his life. + +“The stuff? The stuff had little to do with it. It just cleared my +head.... I have seen. I have seen really. I know.” + +(2) + + +For a long time as it seemed the bishop remained wrapped in clouds of +luminous meditation. Dream or vision it did not matter; the essential +thing was that he had made up his mind about God, he had found God. +Moreover, he perceived that his theological perplexities had gone. God +was higher and simpler and nearer than any theological God, than the +God of the Three Creeds. Those creeds lay about in his mind now like +garments flung aside, no trace nor suspicion of divinity sustained them +any longer. And now--Now he would go out into the world. + +The little Library of the Athenaeum has no visible door. He went to the +book-masked entrance in the corner, and felt among the bookshelves +for the hidden latch. Then he paused, held by a curious thought. What +exactly was the intention of that symbolical struggle with his sash and +gaiters, and why had they impeded his pursuit of God? + +To what particularly significant action was he going out? + +The Three Creeds were like garments flung aside. But he was still +wearing the uniform of a priest in the service of those three creeds. + +After a long interval he walked into the big reading-room. He ordered +some tea and dry toast and butter, and sat down very thoughtfully in a +corner. He was still sitting and thinking at half-past eight. + +It may seem strange to the reader that this bishop who had been doubting +and criticizing the church and his system of beliefs for four long +years had never before faced the possibility of a severance from his +ecclesiastical dignity. But he had grown up in the church, his life had +been so entirely clerical and Anglican, that the widest separation he +had hitherto been able to imagine from this past had left him still a +bishop, heretical perhaps, innovating in the broadening of beliefs and +the liberalizing of practice, defensive even as Chasters was defensive, +but still with the palace and his dignities, differing in opinion rather +than in any tangible reality from his previous self. For a bishop, +disbelief in the Church is a far profounder scepticism than mere +disbelief in God. God is unseen, and in daily things unfelt; but +the Church is with the predestined bishop always. His concept of the +extremest possible departure from orthodoxy had been something that +Chasters had phrased as “a restatement of Christ.” It was a new idea, an +idea that had come with an immense effect of severance and novelty, that +God could be other than the God of the Creed, could present himself +to the imagination as a figure totally unlike the white, gentle, and +compromising Redeemer of an Anglican's thought. That the bishop should +treat the whole teaching of the church and the church itself as wrong, +was an idea so new that it fell upon him now like a thunderbolt out of a +cloudless sky. But here, clear in his mind now, was a feeling, amounting +to conviction, that it was the purpose and gesture of the true God that +he should come right out of the church and all his professions. + +And in the first glow of his vision he felt this gesture imperative. He +must step right out.... Whither? how? And when? + +To begin with it seemed to him that an immediate renunciation was +demanded. But it was a momentous step. He wanted to think. And to go +on thinking. Rather than to act precipitately. Although the imperative +seemed absolute, some delaying and arresting instinct insisted that he +must “think” If he went back to Princhester, the everyday duties of +his position would confront him at once with an effect of a definite +challenge. He decided to take one of the Reform club bedrooms for two or +three days, and wire to Princhester that he was “unavoidably delayed in +town,” without further explanations. Then perhaps this inhibitory force +would give way. + +It did not, however, give way. His mind sat down for two days in a blank +amazement at the course before him, and at the end of that time this +reasonless and formless institution was as strong as ever. During that +time, except for some incidental exchanges at his clubs, he talked to no +one. At first he did not want to talk to any one. He remained mentally +and practically active, with a still intensely vivid sense that God, +the true God, stood watching him and waiting for him to follow. And to +follow meant slipping right out of all the world he had ever known. +To thrust his foot right over the edge of a cliff would scarcely have +demanded more from the bishop's store of resolution. He stood on the +very verge. The chief secretion of his mind was a shadowy experiment or +so in explanation of why he did not follow. + +(3) + + +Insensibly the extreme vividness of his sense of God's nearness +decreased. But he still retained a persuasion of the reality of an +immediate listener waiting, and of the need of satisfying him. + +On the third day he found his mind still further changed. He no longer +felt that God was in Pall Mall or St. James's Park, whither he +resorted to walk and muse. He felt now that God was somewhere about the +horizon.... + +He felt too no longer that he thought straight into the mind of God. He +thought now of what he would presently say to God. He turned over and +rehearsed phrases. With that came a desire to try them first on some +other hearer. And from that to the attentive head of Lady Sunderbund, +prettily bent towards him, was no great leap. She would understand, +if any one could understand, the great change that had happened in his +mind. + +He found her address in the telephone book. She could be quite alone +to him if he wouldn't mind “just me.” It was, he said, exactly what he +desired. + +But when he got to her great airy flat overlooking Hyde Park, with its +Omega Workshop furniture and its arresting decoration, he was not so +sure whether this encounter was so exactly the thing he had desired as +he had supposed. + +The world had become opaque and real again as he walked up St. James's +Street and past the Ritz. He had a feeling that he was taking an +afternoon off from God. The adventurous modernity of the room in which +he waited intensified that. One whole white wall was devoted to a small +picture by Wyndham Lewis. It was like a picture of an earthquake in a +city of aniline pink and grey and keen green cardboard, and he wished it +had never existed. + +He turned his back upon it and stared out of the window over the trees +and greenery. The balcony was decorated with white and pink geraniums in +pots painted black and gold, and the railings of the balcony were black +and gold with crimson shape like squares wildly out of drawing. + +Lady Sunderbund kept him waiting perhaps five minutes. Then she came +sailing in to him. + +She was dressed in a way and moved across the room in a way that was +more reminiscent of Botticelli's Spring than ever--only with a kind +of superadded stiffish polonaise of lace--and he did not want to be +reminded of Botticelli's Spring or wonder why she had taken to stiff +lace polonaises. He did not enquire whether he had met Lady Sunderbund +to better advantage at Mrs. Garstein Fellows' or whether his memory had +overrated her or whether anything had happened to his standard of taste, +but his feeling now was decidedly one of disappointment, and all the +talk and self-examination he had promised himself seemed to wither and +hide away within him. For a time he talked of her view, and then +admired her room and its arrangement, which he thought really were quite +unbecomingly flippant and undignified for a room. Then came the black +tea-things on their orange tray, and he searched in his mind for small +talk to sustain their interview. + +But he had already betrayed his disposition to “go on with our talk” + in his telephone enquiry, and Lady Sunderbund, perceiving his shyness, +began to make openings for him, at first just little hinting openings, +and then larger and larger ones, until at last one got him. + +“I'm so glad,” she said, “to see you again. I'm so glad to go on with +our talk. I've thought about it and thought about it.” + +She beamed at him happily. + +“I've thought ova ev'y wo'd you said,” she went on, when she had +finished conveying her pretty bliss to him. “I've been so helped by +thinking the k'eeds are symbols. And all you said. And I've felt time +after time, you couldn't stay whe' you we'. That what you we' saying to +me, would have to be said 'ight out.” + +That brought him in. He could not very well evade that opening without +incivility. After all he had asked to see her, and it was a foolish +thing to let little decorative accidentals put him off his friendly +purpose. A woman may have flower-pots painted gold with black checkers +and still be deeply understanding. He determined to tell her what was in +his mind. But he found something barred him from telling that he had +had an actual vision of God. It was as if that had been a private and +confidential meeting. It wasn't, he felt, for him either to boast a +privilege or tell others of things that God had not chosen to show them. + +“Since I saw you,” he said, “I have thought a great deal--of the subject +of our conversation.” + +“I have been t'ying to think,” she said in a confirmatory tone, as if +she had co-operated. + +“My faith in God grows,” he said. + +She glowed. Her lips fell apart. She flamed attention. + +“But it grows less like the faith of the church, less and less. I was +born and trained in Anglicanism, and it is with a sort of astonishment I +find myself passing now out of every sort of Catholicism--seeing it from +the outside....” + +“Just as one might see Buddhism,” she supplied. + +“And yet feeling nearer, infinitely nearer to God,” he said. + +“Yes,” she panted; “yes.” + +“I thought if one went out, one went out just to doubt and darkness.” + +“And you don't?” + +“No.” + +“You have gone at one step to a new 'iligion!” + +He stared for a moment at the phrase. + +“To religion,” he said. + +“It is so wondyful,” she said, with her hands straight down upon the +couch upon which she was sitting, and leaning forward at him, so as to +seem almost as much out of drawing as a modern picture. + +“It seems,” he reflected; “--as if it were a natural thing.” + +She came back to earth very slowly. She turned to the tea-things with +hushed and solemn movements as though she administered a ceremony of +peculiar significance. The bishop too rose slowly out of the profundity +of his confession. “No sugar please,” he said, arresting the lump in mid +air. + +It was only when they were embarked upon cups of tea and had a little +refreshed themselves, that she carried the talk further. + +“Does it mean that you must leave the church?” she asked. + +“It seemed so at first,” he said. “But now I do not know. I do not know +what I ought to do.” + +She awaited his next thought. + +“It is as if one had lived in a room all one's life and thought it the +world--and then suddenly walked out through a door and discovered the +sea and the mountains and stars. So it was with me and the Anglican +Church. It seems so extraordinary now--and it would have seemed the +most natural thing a year ago--to think that I ever believed that the +Anglican Compromise was the final truth of religion, that nothing more +until the end of the world could ever be known that Cosmo Gordon Lang +did not know, that there could be no conception of God and his quality +that Randall Davidson did not possess.” + +He paused. + +“I did,” he said. + +“I did,” she responded with round blue eyes of wonder. + +“At the utmost the Church of England is a tabernacle on a road.” + +“A 'oad that goes whe'?” she rhetorized. + +“Exactly,” said the bishop, and put down his cup. + +“You see, my dear Lady Sunderbund,” he resumed, “I am exactly in the +same position of that man at the door.” + +She quoted aptly and softly: “The wo'ld was all befo' them whe' to +choose.” + +He was struck by the aptness of the words. + +“I feel I have to come right out into the bare truth. What exactly then +do I become? Do I lose my priestly function because I discover how great +God is? But what am I to do?” + +He opened a new layer of his thoughts to her. + +“There is a saying,” he remarked, “once a priest, always a priest. I +cannot imagine myself as other than what I am.” + +“But o'thodox no maw,” she said. + +“Orthodox--self-satisfied, no longer. A priest who seeks, an exploring +priest.” + +“In a Chu'ch of P'og'ess and B'othe'hood,” she carried him on. + +“At any rate, in a progressive and learning church.” + +She flashed and glowed assent. + +“I have been haunted,” he said, “by those words spoken at Athens. 'Whom +therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.' That comes +to me with an effect of--guidance is an old-fashioned word--shall I +say suggestion? To stand by the altar bearing strange names and ancient +symbols, speaking plainly to all mankind of the one true God--!” + +(4) + + +He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he remained +talking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer. The rest was +merely a beating out of what had already been said. But insensibly she +renewed her original charm, and as he became accustomed to her he forgot +a certain artificiality in her manner and the extreme modernity of her +costume and furniture. She was a wonderful listener; nobody else could +have helped him to expression in quite the same way, and when he left +her he felt that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherent +and acceptable form to almost any intelligent hearer. He had a point of +view now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate golden +presence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic; his problem had +diminished to the scale of any other great human problem, to the scale +of political problems and problems of integrity and moral principle, +problems about which there is no such urgency as there is about a house +on fire, for example. + +And now the desire for expression was running strong. He wanted to +state his situation; if he did not state he would have to act; and as he +walked back to the club dinner he turned over possible interlocutors +in his thoughts. Lord Rampound sat with him at dinner, and he came near +broaching the subject with him. But Lord Rampound that evening had +that morbid running of bluish legal anecdotes which is so common an +affliction with lawyers, and theology sinks and dies in that turbid +stream. + +But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend and helper +Bishop Likeman, and it was borne in upon him that he should consult him. +And this he did next day. + +Since the days when the bishop had been only plain Mr. Scrope, the +youngest and most helpful of Likeman's historical band of curates, their +friendship had continued. Likeman had been a second father to him; in +particular his tact and helpfulness had shone during those days of doubt +and anxiety when dear old Queen Victoria, God's representative on earth, +had obstinately refused, at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop. She +had those pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops. She had +liked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German pronunciation, +but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs--nobody could ever +find out who wrote them and nobody could ever find out who showed them +to the old lady--anticipating his elevation. She had gone very red +in the face and stiffened in the Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was +mentioned, and so a rich harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled +for some months. Likeman had brought her round. + +It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman before +he came to any open breach with the Establishment. + +He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on account of the +war, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as ever. His voice sounded +more than ever like a kind old woman's. + +He sat buried in his cushions--for “nowadays I must save every scrap +of vitality”--and for a time contented himself with drawing out his +visitor's story. + +Of course, one does not talk to Likeman of visions or intuitions. “I am +disturbed, I find myself getting out of touch;” that was the bishop's +tone. + +Occasionally Likeman nodded slowly, as a physician might do at the +recital of familiar symptoms. “Yes,” he said, “I have been through most +of this.... A little different in the inessentials.... How clear you +are!” + +“You leave our stupid old Trinities--as I left them long ago,” said old +Likeman, with his lean hand feeling and clawing at the arm of his chair. + +“But--!” + +The old man raised his hand and dropped it. “You go away from it +all--straight as a line. I did. You take the wings of the morning and +fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. And there you find--” + +He held up a lean finger, and inclined it to tick off each point. + +“Fate--which is God the Father, the Power of the Heart, which is God +the Son, and that Light which comes in upon us from the inaccessible +Godhead, which is God the Holy Spirit.” + +“But I know of no God the Holy Spirit, and Fate is not God at all. I +saw in my vision one sole God, uncrucified, militant--conquering and to +conquer.” + +Old Likeman stared. “You saw!” + +The Bishop of Princhester had not meant to go so far. But he stuck to +his words. “As if I saw with my eyes. A God of light and courage.” + +“You have had visions, Scrope?” + +“I seemed to see.” + +“No, you have just been dreaming dreams.” + +“But why should one not see?” + +“See! The things of the spirit. These symbols as realities! These +metaphors as men walking!” + +“You talk like an agnostic.” + +“We are all agnostics. Our creeds are expressions of ourselves and our +attitude and relationship to the unknown. The triune God is just the +form of our need and disposition. I have always assumed that you took +that for granted. Who has ever really seen or heard or felt God? God +is neither of the senses nor of the mind; he is of the soul. You are +realistic, you are materialistic....” + +His voice expostulated. + +The Bishop of Princhester reflected. The vision of God was far off +among his memories now, and difficult to recall. But he said at last: “I +believe there is a God and that he is as real a person as you or I. And +he is not the theological God we set out before the world.” + +“Personification,” said Likeman. “In the eighteenth century they used to +draw beautiful female figures as Science and Mathematics. Young men have +loved Science--and Freedom--as Pygmalion loved Galatea. Have it so +if you will. Have a visible person for your Deity. But let me keep up +my--spirituality.” + +“Your spirituality seems as thin as a mist. Do you really +believe--anything?” + +“Everything!” said Likeman emphatically, sitting up with a transitory +vigour. “Everything we two have ever professed together. I believe that +the creeds of my church do express all that can possibly be expressed in +the relationship of--That”--he made a comprehensive gesture with a twist +of his hand upon its wrist--“to the human soul. I believe that they +express it as well as the human mind can express it. Where they seem +to be contradictory or absurd, it is merely that the mystery is +paradoxical. I believe that the story of the Fall and of the Redemption +is a complete symbol, that to add to it or to subtract from it or to +alter it is to diminish its truth; if it seems incredible at this point +or that, then simply I admit my own mental defect. And I believe in our +Church, Scrope, as the embodied truth of religion, the divine instrument +in human affairs. I believe in the security of its tradition, in +the complete and entire soundness of its teaching, in its essential +authority and divinity.” + +He paused, and put his head a little on one side and smiled sweetly. +“And now can you say I do not believe?” + +“But the historical Christ, the man Jesus?” + +“A life may be a metaphor. Why not? Yes, I believe it all. All.” + +The Bishop of Princhester was staggered by this complete acceptance. “I +see you believe all you profess,” he said, and remained for a moment or +so rallying his forces. + +“Your vision--if it was a vision--I put it to you, was just some single +aspect of divinity,” said Likeman. “We make a mistake in supposing that +Heresy has no truth in it. Most heresies are only a disproportionate +apprehension of some essential truth. Most heretics are men who have +suddenly caught a glimpse through the veil of some particular verity.... +They are dazzled by that aspect. All the rest has vanished.... They are +obsessed. You are obsessed clearly by this discovery of the militancy of +God. God the Son--as Hero. And you want to go out to the simple worship +of that one aspect. You want to go out to a Dissenter's tent in the +wilderness, instead of staying in the Great Temple of the Ages.” + +Was that true? + +For some moments it sounded true. + +The Bishop of Princhester sat frowning and looking at that. Very far +away was the vision now of that golden Captain who bade him come. Then +at a thought the bishop smiled. + +“The Great Temple of the Ages,” he repeated. “But do you remember the +trouble we had when the little old Queen was so pigheaded?” + +“Oh! I remember, I remember,” said Likeman, smiling with unshaken +confidence. “Why not?” + +“For sixty years all we bishops in what you call the Great Temple of +the Ages, were appointed and bullied and kept in our places by that +pink irascible bit of dignity. I remember how at the time I didn't dare +betray my boiling indignation even to you--I scarcely dared admit it to +myself....” + +He paused. + +“It doesn't matter at all,” and old Likeman waved it aside. + +“Not at all,” he confirmed, waving again. + +“I spoke of the whole church of Christ on earth,” he went on. +“These things, these Victorias and Edwards and so on, are temporary +accidents--just as the severance of an Anglican from a Roman communion +and a Greek orthodox communion are temporary accidents. You will remark +that wise men in all ages have been able to surmount the difficulty of +these things. Why? Because they knew that in spite of all these splits +and irregularities and defacements--like the cracks and crannies and +lichens on a cathedral wall--the building held good, that it was shelter +and security. There is no other shelter and security. And so I come to +your problem. Suppose it is true that you have this incidental vision +of the militant aspect of God, and he isn't, as you see him now that +is,--he isn't like the Trinity, he isn't like the Creed, he doesn't seem +to be related to the Church, then comes the question, are you going out +for that? And whither do you go if you do go out? The Church remains. We +alter doctrines not by changing the words but by shifting the accent. We +can under-accentuate below the threshold of consciousness.” + +“But can we?” + +“We do. Where's Hell now? Eighty years ago it warmed the whole Church. +It was--as some atheist or other put it the other day--the central +heating of the soul. But never mind that point now. Consider the +essential question, the question of breaking with the church. Ask +yourself, whither would you go? To become an oddity! A Dissenter. A +Negative. Self emasculated. The spirit that denies. You would just go +out. You would just cease to serve Religion. That would be all. You +wouldn't do anything. The Church would go on; everything else would go +on. Only you would be lost in the outer wilderness. + +“But then--” + +Old Likeman leant forward and pointed a bony finger. “Stay in the Church +and modify it. Bring this new light of yours to the altar.” + +There was a little pause. + +“No man,” the bishop thought aloud, “putteth new wine into old bottles.” + +Old Likeman began to speak and had a fit of coughing. “Some of these +texts--whuff, whuff--like a conjuror's hat--whuff--make 'em--fit +anything.” + +A man-servant appeared and handed a silver box of lozenges into which +the old bishop dipped with a trembling hand. + +“Tricks of that sort,” he said, “won't do, Scrope--among professionals. + +“And besides,” he was inspired; “true religion is old wine--as old as +the soul. + +“You are a bishop in the Church of Christ on Earth,” he summed it up. +“And you want to become a detached and wandering Ancient Mariner from +your shipwreck of faith with something to explain--that nobody wants to +hear. You are going out I suppose you have means?” + +The old man awaited the answer to his abrupt enquiry with a handful of +lozenges. + +“No,” said the Bishop of Princhester, “practically--I haven't.” + +“My dear boy!” it was as if they were once more rector and curate. +“My dear brother! do you know what the value of an ex-bishop is in the +ordinary labour market?” + +“I have never thought of that.” + +“Evidently. You have a wife and children?” + +“Five daughters.” + +“And your wife married you--I remember, she married you soon after you +got that living in St. John's Wood. I suppose she took it for granted +that you were fixed in an ecclesiastical career. That was implicit in +the transaction.” + +“I haven't looked very much at that side of the matter yet,” said the +Bishop of Princhester. + +“It shouldn't be a decisive factor,” said Bishop Likeman, “not decisive. +But it will weigh. It should weigh....” + +The old man opened out fresh aspects of the case. His argument was for +delay, for deliberation. He went on to a wider set of considerations. A +man who has held the position of a bishop for some years is, he held, no +longer a free man in matters of opinion. He has become an official part +of a great edifice which supports the faith of multitudes of simple +and dependant believers. He has no right to indulge recklessly in +intellectual and moral integrities. He may understand, but how is the +flock to understand? He may get his own soul clear, but what will happen +to them? He will just break away their supports, astonish them, puzzle +them, distress them, deprive them of confidence, convince them of +nothing. + +“Intellectual egotism may be as grave a sin,” said Bishop Likeman, “as +physical selfishness. + +“Assuming even that you are absolutely right,” said Bishop Likeman, +“aren't you still rather in the position of a man who insists upon +Swedish exercises and a strengthening dietary on a raft?” + +“I think you have made out a case for delay,” said his hearer. + +“Three months.” + +The Bishop of Princhester conceded three months. + +“Including every sort of service. Because, after all, even supposing +it is damnable to repeat prayers and creeds you do not believe in, and +administer sacraments you think superstition, nobody can be damned +but yourself. On the other hand if you express doubts that are not yet +perfectly digested--you experiment with the souls of others....” + +(5) + + +The bishop found much to ponder in his old friend's counsels. They were +discursive and many-fronted, and whenever he seemed to be penetrating or +defeating the particular considerations under examination the others +in the background had a way of appearing invincible. He had a strong +persuasion that Likeman was wrong--and unanswerable. And the true God +now was no more than the memory of a very vividly realized idea. It +was clear to the bishop that he was no longer a churchman or in the +generally accepted sense of the word a Christian, and that he was bound +to come out of the church. But all sense of urgency had gone. It was a +matter demanding deliberation and very great consideration for others. + +He took no more of Dale's stuff because he felt bodily sound and slept +well. And he was now a little shy of this potent fluid. He went down +to Princhester the next day, for his compromise of an interval of three +months made it seem possible to face his episcopal routine again. It +was only when he was back in his own palace that the full weight of +his domestic responsibilities in the discussion of the course he had to +take, became apparent. + +Lady Ella met him with affection and solicitude. + +“I was tired and mentally fagged,” he said. “A day or so in London had +an effect of change.” + +She agreed that he looked much better, and remained for a moment or so +scrutinizing him with the faint anxiety of one resolved to be completely +helpful. + +He regarded her with a renewed sense of her grace and dignity and +kindliness. She was wearing a grey dress of soft silky material, touched +with blue and covered with what seemed to him very rich and beautiful +lace; her hair flowed back very graciously from her broad brow, and +about her wrist and neck were delicate lines of gold. She seemed +tremendously at home and right just where she was, in that big +hospitable room, cultured but Anglican, without pretensions or +novelties, with a glow of bound books, with the grand piano that Miriam, +his third daughter, was beginning to play so well, with the tea equipage +of shining silver and fine porcelain. + +He sat down contentedly in the low armchair beside her. + +It wasn't a setting that one would rashly destroy.... + +And that evening at dinner this sense of his home as a complex of finely +adjusted things not to be rashly disturbed was still more in the mind of +the bishop. At dinner he had all his domesticities about him. It was the +family time, from eight until ten, at which latter hour he would usually +go back from the drawing-room to his study. He surveyed the table. +Eleanor was at home for a few days, looking a little thin and bright +but very keen and happy. She had taken a first in the first part of +the Moral Science Tripos, and she was working hard now for part two. +Clementina was to go back to Newnham with her next September. She +aspired to history. Miriam's bent was musical. She and Phoebe and Daphne +and Clementina were under the care of skilful Mademoiselle Lafarge, +most tactful of Protestant French-women, Protestant and yet not too +Protestant, one of those rare French Protestants in whom a touch of +Bergson and the Pasteur Monod + + “scarce suspected, animates the whole.” + +And also they had lessons, so high are our modern standards of +education, from Mr. Blent, a brilliant young mathematician in orders, +who sat now next to Lady Ella. Mr. Whippham, the chaplain, was at the +bishop's right hand, ready for any chance of making arrangements to +clear off the small arrears of duty the little holiday in London had +accumulated. The bishop surveyed all these bright young people between +himself and the calm beauty of his wife. He spoke first to one and then +another upon the things that interested them. It rejoiced his heart to +be able to give them education and opportunity, it pleased him to see +them in clothes that he knew were none the less expensive because of +their complete simplicity. Miriam and Mr. Blent wrangled pleasantly +about Debussy, and old Dunk waited as though in orders of some rare and +special sort that qualified him for this service. + +All these people, the bishop reflected, counted upon him that this would +go on.... + +Eleanor was answering some question of her mother's. They were so oddly +alike and so curiously different, and both in their several ways so +fine. Eleanor was dark like his own mother. Perhaps she did a little +lack Lady Ella's fine reserves; she could express more, she could feel +more acutely, she might easily be very unhappy or very happy.... + +All these people counted on him. It was indeed acutely true, as Likeman +had said, that any sudden breach with his position would be a breach of +faith--so far as they were concerned. + +And just then his eye fell upon the epergne, a very old and beautiful +piece of silver, that graced the dinner-table. It had been given him, +together with an episcopal ring, by his curates and choristers at the +Church of the Holy Innocents, when he became bishop of Pinner. When they +gave it him, had any one of them dreamt that some day he might be moved +to strike an ungracious blow at the mother church that had reared them +all? + +It was his custom to join the family in the drawing-room after dinner. +To-night he was a little delayed by Whippham, with some trivialities +about next month's confirmations in Pringle and Princhester. When he +came in he found Miriam playing, and playing very beautifully one of +those later sonatas of Beethoven, he could never remember whether it +was Of. 109 or Of. 111, but he knew that he liked it very much; it +was solemn and sombre with phases of indescribable sweetness--while +Clementina, Daphne and Mademoiselle Lafarge went on with their war +knitting and Phoebe and Mr. Blent bent their brows over chess. Eleanor +was reading the evening paper. Lady Ella sat on a high chair by the +coffee things, and he stood in the doorway surveying the peaceful scene +for a moment or so, before he went across the room and sat down on the +couch close to her. + +“You look tired,” she whispered softly. + +“Worries.” + +“That Chasters case?” + +“Things developing out of that. I must tell you later.” It would be, he +felt, a good way of breaking the matter to her. + +“Is the Chasters case coming on again, Daddy?” asked Eleanor. + +He nodded. + +“It's a pity,” she said. + +“What? + +“That he can't be left alone.” + +“It's Sir Reginald Phipps. The Church would be much more tolerant if +it wasn't for the House of Laymen. But they--they feel they must do +something.” + +He seized the opportunity of the music ceasing to get away from the +subject. “Miriam dear,” he asked, raising his voice; “is that 109 or +111? I can never tell.” + +“That is always 111, Daddy,” said Miriam. “It's the other one is 109.” + And then evidently feeling that she had been pert: “Would you like me to +play you 109, Daddy?” + +“I should love it, my dear.” And he leant back and prepared to listen in +such a thorough way that Eleanor would have no chance of discussing the +Chasters' heresies. But this was interrupted by the consummation of the +coffee, and Mr. Blent, breaking a long silence with “Mate in three, if +I'm not mistaken,” leapt to his feet to be of service. Eleanor, with the +rough seriousness of youth, would not leave the Chasters case alone. + +“But need you take action against Mr. Chasters?” she asked at once. + +“It's a very complicated subject, my dear,” he said. + +“His arguments?” + +“The practical considerations.” + +“But what are practical considerations in such a case?” + +“That's a post-graduate subject, Norah,” her father said with a smile +and a sigh. + +“But,” began Eleanor, gathering fresh forces. + +“Daddy is tired,” Lady Ella intervened, patting him on the head. + +“Oh, terribly!--of that,” he said, and so escaped Eleanor for the +evening. + +But he knew that before very long he would have to tell his wife of +the changes that hung over their lives; it would be shabby to let the +avalanche fall without giving the longest possible warning; and before +they parted that night he took her hands in his and said: “There is much +I have to tell you, dear. Things change, the whole world changes. The +church must not live in a dream.... + +“No,” she whispered. “I hope you will sleep to-night,” and held up her +grave sweet face to be kissed. + +(6) + + +But he did not sleep perfectly that night. + +He did not sleep indeed very badly, but he lay for some time thinking, +thinking not onward but as if he pressed his mind against very strong +barriers that had closed again. His vision of God which had filled the +heavens, had become now gem-like, a minute, hard, clear-cut conviction +in his mind that he had to disentangle himself from the enormous +complications of symbolism and statement and organization and +misunderstanding in the church and achieve again a simple and living +worship of a simple and living God. Likeman had puzzled and silenced +him, only upon reflection to convince him that amidst such intricacies +of explanation the spirit cannot live. Creeds may be symbolical, but +symbols must not prevaricate. A church that can symbolize everything and +anything means nothing. + +It followed from this that he ought to leave the church. But there came +the other side of this perplexing situation. His feelings as he lay in +his bed were exactly like those one has in a dream when one wishes to +run or leap or shout and one can achieve no movement, no sound. He could +not conceive how he could possibly leave the church. + +His wife became as it were the representative of all that held him +helpless. She and he had never kept secret from one another any plan of +action, any motive, that affected the other. It was clear to him that +any movement towards the disavowal of doctrinal Christianity and the +renunciation of his see must be first discussed with her. He must tell +her before he told the world. + +And he could not imagine his telling her except as an incredibly +shattering act. + +So he left things from day to day, and went about his episcopal +routines. He preached and delivered addresses in such phrases as he knew +people expected, and wondered profoundly why it was that it should be +impossible for him to discuss theological points with Lady Ella. And one +afternoon he went for a walk with Eleanor along the banks of the Prin, +and found himself, in response to certain openings of hers, talking to +her in almost exactly the same terms as Likeman had used to him. + +Then suddenly the problem of this theological eclaircissement was +complicated in an unexpected fashion. + +He had just been taking his Every Second Thursday Talk with Diocesan +Men Helpers. He had been trying to be plain and simple upon the needless +narrowness of enthusiastic laymen. He was still in the Bishop Andrews +cap and purple cassock he affected on these occasions; the Men Helpers +loved purple; and he was disentangling himself from two or three +resolute bores--for our loyal laymen can be at times quite superlative +bores--when Miriam came to him. + +“Mummy says, 'Come to the drawing-room if you can.' There is a Lady +Sunderbund who seems particularly to want to see you.” + +He hesitated for a moment, and then decided that this was a conversation +he ought to control. + +He found Lady Sunderbund looking very tall and radiantly beautiful in +a sheathlike dress of bright crimson trimmed with snow-white fur and a +white fur toque. She held out a long white-gloved hand to him and +cried in a tone of comradeship and profound understanding: “I've come, +Bishop!” + +“You've come to see me?” he said without any sincerity in his polite +pleasure. + +“I've come to P'inchesta to stay!” she cried with a bright triumphant +rising note. + +She evidently considered Lady Ella a mere conversational stop-gap, to +be dropped now that the real business could be commenced. She turned +her pretty profile to that lady, and obliged the bishop with a compact +summary of all that had preceded his arrival. “I have been telling +Lady Ella,” she said, “I've taken a house, fu'nitua and all! Hea. +In P'inchesta! I've made up my mind to sit unda you--as they say +in Clapham. I've come 'ight down he' fo' good. I've taken a little +house--oh! a sweet little house that will be all over 'oses next month. +I'm living f'om 'oom to 'oom and having the othas done up. It's in that +little quiet st'eet behind you' ga'den wall. And he' I am!” + +“Is it the old doctor's house?” asked Lady Ella. + +“Was it an old docta?” cried Lady Sunderbund. “How delightful! And now I +shall be a patient!” + +She concentrated upon the bishop. + +“Oh, I've been thinking all the time of all the things you told me. Ova +and ova. It's all so wondyful and so--so like a G'ate Daw opening. New +light. As if it was all just beginning.” + +She clasped her hands. + +The bishop felt that there were a great number of points to this +situation, and that it was extremely difficult to grasp them all +at once. But one that seemed of supreme importance to his whirling +intelligence was that Lady Ella should not know that he had gone to +relieve his soul by talking to Lady Sunderbund in London. It had never +occurred to him at the time that there was any shadow of disloyalty to +Lady Ella in his going to Lady Sunderbund, but now he realized that this +was a thing that would annoy Lady Ella extremely. The conversation had +in the first place to be kept away from that. And in the second place it +had to be kept away from the abrupt exploitation of the new theological +developments. + +He felt that something of the general tension would be relieved if they +could all three be got to sit down. + +“I've been talking for just upon two hours,” he said to Lady Ella. “It's +good to see the water boiling for tea.” + +He put a chair for Lady Sunderbund to the right of Lady Ella, got her +into it by infusing an ecclesiastical insistence into his manner, and +then went and sat upon the music-stool on his wife's left, so as to +establish a screen of tea-things and cakes and so forth against her more +intimate enthusiasm. Meanwhile he began to see his way clearer and to +develop his line. + +“Well, Lady Sunderbund,” he said, “I can assure you that I think you +will be no small addition to the church life of Princhester. But I warn +you this is a hard-working and exacting diocese. We shall take your +money, all we can get of it, we shall take your time, we shall work you +hard.” + +“Wo'k me hard!” cried Lady Sunderbund with passion. + +“We will, we will,” said the bishop in a tone that ignored her +passionate note. + +“I am sure Lady Sunderbund will be a great help to us,” said Lady Ella. +“We want brightening. There's a dinginess....” + +Lady Sunderbund beamed an acknowledgment. “I shall exact a 'eturn,” she +said. “I don't mind wo'king, but I shall wo'k like the poo' students in +the Middle Ages did, to get my teaching. I've got my own soul to save as +well as help saving othas. Since oua last talk--” + +She found the bishop handing her bread and butter. For a time the bishop +fought a delaying action with the tea-things, while he sought eagerly +and vainly in his mind for some good practical topic in which he could +entangle and suppress Lady Sunderbund's enthusiasms. From this she broke +away by turning suddenly to Lady Ella. + +“Youa husband's views,” she said, “we'e a 'eal 'evelation to me. It was +like not being blind--all at once.” + +Lady Ella was always pleased to hear her husband praised. Her colour +brightened a little. “They seem very ordinary views,” she said modestly. + +“You share them?” cried Lady Sunderbund. + +“But of course,” said Lady Ella. + +“Wondyful!” cried Lady Sunderbund. + +“Tell me, Lady Sunderbund,” said the bishop, “are you going to alter the +outer appearance of the old doctor's house?” And found that at last he +had discovered the saving topic. + +“Ha'dly at all,” she said. “I shall just have it pointed white and do +the doa--I'm not su' how I shall do the doa. Whetha I shall do the doa +gold or a vehy, vehy 'itch blue.” + +For a time she and Lady Ella, to whom these ideas were novel, discussed +the animation of grey and sombre towns by house painting. In such matter +Lady Sunderbund had a Russian mind. “I can't bea' g'ey,” she said. “Not +in my su'oundings, not in my k'eed, nowhe'e.” She turned to the bishop. +“If I had my way I would paint you' cathed'al inside and out.” + +“They used to be painted,” said the bishop. “I don't know if you have +seen Ely. There the old painting has been largely restored....” + +From that to the end there was no real danger, and at last the bishop +found himself alone with his wife again. + +“Remarkable person,” he said tentatively. “I never met any one whose +faults were more visible. I met her at Wimbush House.” + +He glanced at his watch. + +“What did she mean,” asked Lady Ella abruptly, “by talking of your new +views? And about revelations?” + +“She probably misunderstood something I said at the Garstein Fellows',” + he said. “She has rather a leaping mind.” + +He turned to the window, looked at his nails, and appeared to be +suddenly reminded of duties elsewhere.... + +It was chiefly manifest to him that the difficulties in explaining the +changes of his outlook to Lady Ella had now increased enormously. + +(7) + + +A day or so after Lady Sunderbund's arrival in Princhester the bishop +had a letter from Likeman. The old man was manifestly in doubt about the +effect of their recent conversation. + +“My dear Scrope,” it began. “I find myself thinking continually about +our interview and the difficulties you laid bare so frankly to me. +We touched upon many things in that talk, and I find myself full of +afterthoughts, and not perfectly sure either quite of what I said or +of what I failed to say. I feel that in many ways I was not perhaps so +clear and convincing as the justice of my case should have made me, and +you are one of my own particular little company, you were one of the +best workers in that band of good workers, your life and your career +are very much my concern. I know you will forgive me if I still mingle +something of the paternal with my fraternal admonitions. I watched you +closely. I have still my old diaries of the St. Matthew's days, and I +have been looking at them to remind me of what you once were. It was my +custom to note my early impressions of all the men who worked with me, +because I have a firm belief in the soundness of first impressions and +the considerable risk one runs of having them obscured by the accidents +and habituations of constant intercourse. I found that quite early in +your days at St. Matthew's I wrote against your name 'enthusiastic, but +a saving delicacy.' After all our life-long friendship I would not write +anything truer. I would say of you to-day, 'This man might have been a +revivalist, if he were not a gentleman.' There is the enthusiast, +there is the revivalist, in you. It seems to me that the stresses and +questions of this great crisis in the world's history have brought it +nearer to the surface than I had ever expected it to come. + +“I quite understand and I sympathize with your impatience with +the church at the present time; we present a spectacle of pompous +insignificance hard to bear with. We are doing very little, and we are +giving ourselves preposterous airs. There seems to be an opinion abroad +that in some quasi-automatic way the country is going to collapse after +the war into the arms of the church and the High Tories; a possibility +I don't accept for a moment. Why should it? These forcible-feeble +reactionaries are much more likely to explode a revolution that +will disestablish us. And I quite understand your theological +difficulties--quite. The creeds, if their entire symbolism is for a +moment forgotten, if they are taken as opaque statements of fact, are +inconsistent, incredible. So incredible that no one believes them; +not even the most devout. The utmost they do is to avert their +minds--reverentially. Credo quia impossibile. That is offensive to a +Western mind. I can quite understand the disposition to cry out at such +things, 'This is not the Church of God!'--to run out from it-- + +“You have some dream, I suspect, of a dramatic dissidence. + +“Now, my dear Brother and erstwhile pupil, I ask you not to do this +thing. Wait, I implore you. Give me--and some others, a little time. I +have your promise for three months, but even after that, I ask you +to wait. Let the reform come from within the church. The church is +something more than either its creeds, its clergy, or its laymen. Look +at your cathedral rising out of and dominating Princhester. It stands +not simply for Athanasius; it stands but incidentally for Athanasius; it +stands for all religion. Within that fabric--let me be as frank here +as in our private conversation--doctrine has altered again and again. +To-day two distinct religions worship there side by side; one that fades +and one that grows brighter. There is the old quasi-materialistic belief +of the barbarians, the belief in such things, for example, as that +Christ the physical Son of God descended into hell and stayed there, +seeing the sights I suppose like any tourist and being treated with +diplomatic civilities for three terrestrial days; and on the other +hand there is the truly spiritual belief that you and I share, which +is absolutely intolerant of such grotesque ideas. My argument to you +is that the new faith, the clearer vision, gains ground; that the +only thing that can prevent or delay the church from being altogether +possessed by what you call and I admit is, the true God, is that such +men as yourself, as the light breaks upon you, should be hasty and leave +the church. You see my point of view, do you not? It is not one that +has been assumed for our discussion; it is one I came to long years ago, +that I was already feeling my way to in my St. Matthew's Lenton sermons. + +“A word for your private ear. I am working. I cannot tell you fully +because I am not working alone. But there are movements afoot in which +I hope very shortly to be able to ask you to share. That much at least I +may say at this stage. Obscure but very powerful influences are at +work for the liberalizing of the church, for release from many +narrow limitations, for the establishment of a modus vivendi with the +nonconformist and dissentient bodies in Britain and America, and with +the churches of the East. But of that no more now. + +“And in conclusion, my dear Scrope, let me insist again upon the eternal +persistence of the essential Religious Fact:” + +(Greek Letters Here) + +(Rev. i. 18. “Fear not. I am the First and Last thing, the Living +thing.”) + +And these promises which, even if we are not to take them as promises in +the exact sense in which, let us say, the payment of five sovereigns +is promised by a five-pound note, are yet assertions of practically +inevitable veracity: + +(Greek Letters Here) + +(Phil. i. 6. “He who began... will perfect.” Eph. v. 14. “He will +illuminate.”) + + +The old man had written his Greek tags in shakily resolute capitals. It +was his custom always to quote the Greek Testament in his letters, +never the English version. It is a practice not uncommon with the more +scholarly of our bishops. It is as if some eminent scientific man were +to insist upon writing H2O instead of “water,” and “sodium chloride” + instead of “table salt” in his private correspondence. Or upon hanging +up a stuffed crocodile in his hall to give the place tone. The Bishop +of Princhester construed these brief dicta without serious exertion, he +found them very congenial texts, but there were insuperable difficulties +in the problem why Likeman should suppose they had the slightest weight +upon his side of their discussion. The more he thought the less they +seemed to be on Likeman's side, until at last they began to take on a +complexion entirely opposed to the old man's insidious arguments, until +indeed they began to bear the extraordinary interpretation of a special +message, unwittingly delivered. + +(8) + + +The bishop was still thinking over this communication when he was +interrupted by Lady Ella. She came with a letter in her hand to ask him +whether she might send five-and-twenty pounds to a poor cousin of his, +a teacher in a girls' school, who had been incapacitated from work by +a dislocation of the cartilage of her knee. If she could go to that +unorthodox but successful practitioner, Mr. Barker, the bone-setter, she +was convinced she could be restored to efficiency. But she had no ready +money. The bishop agreed without hesitation. His only doubt was the +certainty of the cure, but upon that point Lady Ella was convinced; +there had been a great experience in the Walshingham family. + +“It is pleasant to be able to do things like this,” said Lady Ella, +standing over him when this matter was settled. + +“Yes,” the bishop agreed; “it is pleasant to be in a position to do +things like this....” + + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION + +(1) + + +A MONTH later found the bishop's original state of perplexity and +insomnia returned and intensified. He had done none of all the things +that had seemed so manifestly needing to be done after his vision in the +Athenaeum. All the relief and benefit of his experience in London had +vanished out of his life. He was afraid of Dr. Dale's drug; he knew +certainly that it would precipitate matters; and all his instincts +in the state of moral enfeeblement to which he had relapsed, were to +temporize. + +Although he had said nothing further about his changed beliefs to Lady +Ella, yet he perceived clearly that a shadow had fallen between them. +She had a wife's extreme sensitiveness to fine shades of expression and +bearing, and manifestly she knew that something was different. Meanwhile +Lady Sunderbund had become a frequent worshipper in the cathedral, she +was a figure as conspicuous in sombre Princhester as a bird of paradise +would have been; common people stood outside her very very rich blue +door on the chance of seeing her; she never missed an opportunity of +hearing the bishop preach or speak, she wrote him several long +and thoughtful letters with which he did not bother Lady Ella, she +communicated persistently, and manifestly intended to become a very +active worker in diocesan affairs. + +It was inevitable that she and the bishop should meet and talk +occasionally in the cathedral precincts, and it was inevitable that he +should contrast the flexibility of her rapid and very responsive mind +with a certain defensiveness, a stoniness, in the intellectual bearing +of Lady Ella. + +If it had been Lady Sunderbund he had had to explain to, instead of Lady +Ella, he could have explained a dozen times a day. + +And since his mind was rehearsing explanations it was not unnatural they +should overflow into this eagerly receptive channel, and that the less +he told Lady Ella the fuller became his spiritual confidences to Lady +Sunderbund. + +She was clever in realizing that they were confidences and treating them +as such, more particularly when it chanced that she and Lady Ella and +the bishop found themselves in the same conversation. + +She made great friends with Miriam, and initiated her by a whole +collection of pretty costume plates into the mysteries of the “Ussian +Ballet” and the works of Mousso'gski and “Imsky Ko'zakof.” + +The bishop liked a certain religiosity in the texture of Moussorgski's +music, but failed to see the “significance “--of many of the costumes. + +(2) + + +It was on a Sunday night--the fourth Sunday after Easter--that the +supreme crisis of the bishop's life began. He had had a feeling all day +of extreme dulness and stupidity; he felt his ministrations unreal, his +ceremonies absurd and undignified. In the night he became bleakly and +painfully awake. His mind occupied itself at first chiefly with the +tortuousness and weakness of his own character. Every day he perceived +that the difficulty of telling Lady Ella of the change in his faith +became more mountainous. And every day he procrastinated. If he had +told her naturally and simply on the evening of his return from +London--before anything material intervened--everything would have been +different, everything would have been simpler.... + +He groaned and rolled over in his bed. + +There came upon him the acutest remorse and misery. For he saw that +amidst these petty immediacies he had lost touch with God. The last +month became incredible. He had seen God. He had touched God's hand. God +had been given to him, and he had neglected the gift. He was still lost +amidst the darkness and loneliness, the chaotic ends and mean shifts, +of an Erastian world. For a month now and more, after a vision of God so +vivid and real and reassuring that surely no saint nor prophet had ever +had a better, he had made no more than vague responsive movements; he +had allowed himself to be persuaded into an unreasonable and cowardly +delay, and the fetters of association and usage and minor interests +were as unbroken as they had been before ever the vision shone. Was it +credible that there had ever been such a vision in a life so entirely +dictated by immediacy and instinct as his? We are all creatures of the +dark stream, we swim in needs and bodily impulses and small vanities; if +ever and again a bubble of spiritual imaginativeness glows out of us, it +breaks and leaves us where we were. + +“Louse that I am!” he cried. + +He still believed in God, without a shadow of doubt; he believed in the +God that he had seen, the high courage, the golden intention, the light +that had for a moment touched him. But what had he to do with God, he, +the loiterer, the little thing? + +He was little, he was funny. His prevarications with his wife, for +example, were comic. There was no other word for him but “funny.” + +He rolled back again and lay staring. + +“Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” What right has a +little bishop in a purple stock and doeskin breeches, who hangs back in +his palace from the very call of God, to a phrase so fine and tragic as +“the body of this death?” + +He was the most unreal thing in the universe. He was a base insect +giving himself airs. What advantage has a bishop over the Praying +Mantis, that cricket which apes the attitude of piety? Does he matter +more--to God? + +“To the God of the Universe, who can tell? To the God of man,--yes.” + +He sat up in bed struck by his own answer, and full of an indescribable +hunger for God and an indescribable sense of his complete want of +courage to make the one simple appeal that would satisfy that hunger. +He tried to pray. “O God!” he cried, “forgive me! Take me!” It seemed to +him that he was not really praying but only making believe to pray. It +seemed to him that he was not really existing but only seeming to exist. +He seemed to himself to be one with figures on a china plate, with +figures painted on walls, with the flimsy imagined lives of men in +stories of forgotten times. “O God!” he said, “O God,” acting a gesture, +mimicking appeal. + +“Anaemic,” he said, and was given an idea. + +He got out of bed, he took his keys from the night-table at the bed head +and went to his bureau. + +He stood with Dale's tonic in his hand. He remained for some time +holding it, and feeling a curious indisposition to go on with the thing +in his mind. + +He turned at last with an effort. He carried the little phial to his +bedside, and into the tumbler of his water-bottle he let the drops fall, +drop by drop, until he had counted twenty. Then holding it to the bulb +of his reading lamp he added the water and stood watching the slow +pearly eddies in the mixture mingle into an opalescent uniformity. He +replaced the water-bottle and stood with the glass in his hand. But he +did not drink. + +He was afraid. + +He knew that he had only to drink and this world of confusion would grow +transparent, would roll back and reveal the great simplicities behind. +And he was afraid. + +He was afraid of that greatness. He was afraid of the great imperatives +that he knew would at once take hold of his life. He wanted to muddle +on for just a little longer. He wanted to stay just where he was, in +his familiar prison-house, with the key of escape in his hand. Before he +took the last step into the very presence of truth, he would--think. + +He put down the glass and lay down upon his bed.... + +(3) + + +He awoke in a mood of great depression out of a dream of wandering +interminably in an endless building of innumerable pillars, pillars so +vast and high that the ceiling was lost in darkness. By the scale of +these pillars he felt himself scarcely larger than an ant. He was always +alone in these wanderings, and always missing something that passed +along distant passages, something desirable, something in the nature +of a procession or of a ceremony, something of which he was in futile +pursuit, of which he heard faint echoes, something luminous of which he +seemed at times to see the last fading reflection, across vast halls +and wildernesses of shining pavement and through Cyclopaean archways. At +last there was neither sound nor gleam, but the utmost solitude, and a +darkness and silence and the uttermost profundity of sorrow.... + +It was bright day. Dunk had just come into the room with his tea, and +the tumbler of Dr. Dale's tonic stood untouched upon the night-table. +The bishop sat up in bed. He had missed his opportunity. To-day was a +busy day, he knew. + +“No,” he said, as Dunk hesitated whether to remove or leave the tumbler. +“Leave that.” + +Dunk found room for it upon the tea-tray, and vanished softly with the +bishop's evening clothes. + +The bishop remained motionless facing the day. There stood the draught +of decision that he had lacked the decision even to touch. + +From his bed he could just read the larger items that figured upon the +engagement tablet which it was Whippham's business to fill over-night +and place upon his table. He had two confirmation services, first +the big one in the cathedral and then a second one in the evening at +Pringle, various committees and an interview with Chasters. He had not +yet finished his addresses for these confirmation services.... + +The task seemed mountainous--overwhelming. + +With a gesture of desperation he seized the tumblerful of tonic and +drank it off at a gulp. + +(4) + + +For some moments nothing seemed to happen. + +Then he began to feel stronger and less wretched, and then came a +throbbing and tingling of artery and nerve. + +He had a sense of adventure, a pleasant fear in the thing that he had +done. He got out of bed, leaving his cup of tea untasted, and began to +dress. He had the sensation of relief a prisoner may feel who suddenly +tries his cell door and finds it open upon sunshine, the outside world +and freedom. + +He went on dressing although he was certain that in a few minutes the +world of delusion about him would dissolve, and that he would find +himself again in the great freedom of the place of God. + +This time the transition came much sooner and much more rapidly. This +time the phases and quality of the experience were different. He felt +once again that luminous confusion between the world in which a human +life is imprisoned and a circumambient and interpenetrating world, but +this phase passed very rapidly; it did not spread out over nearly half +an hour as it had done before, and almost immediately he seemed to +plunge away from everything in this life altogether into that outer +freedom he sought. And this time there was not even the elemental +scenery of the former vision. He stood on nothing; there was nothing +below and nothing above him. There was no sense of falling, no terror, +but a feeling as though he floated released. There was no light, but as +it were a clear darkness about him. Then it was manifest to him that he +was not alone, but that with him was that same being that in his former +vision had called himself the Angel of God. He knew this without knowing +why he knew this, and either he spoke and was answered, or he thought +and his thought answered him back. His state of mind on this occasion +was altogether different from the first vision of God; before it had +been spectacular, but now his perception was altogether super-sensuous. + +(And nevertheless and all the time it seemed that very faintly he was +still in his room.) + +It was he who was the first to speak. The great Angel whom he felt +rather than saw seemed to be waiting for him to speak. + +“I have come,” he said, “because once more I desire to see God.” + +“But you have seen God.” + +“I saw God. God was light, God was truth. And I went back to my life, +and God was hidden. God seemed to call me. He called. I heard him, I +sought him and I touched his hand. When I went back to my life I was +presently lost in perplexity. I could not tell why God had called me nor +what I had to do.” + +“And why did you not come here before?” + +“Doubt and fear. Brother, will you not lay your hand on mine?” + +The figure in the darkness became distincter. But nothing touched the +bishop's seeking hands. + +“I want to see God and to understand him. I want reassurance. I want +conviction. I want to understand all that God asks me to do. The world +is full of conflict and confusion and the spirit of war. It is dark and +dreadful now with suffering and bloodshed. I want to serve God who could +save it, and I do not know how.” + +It seemed to the bishop that now he could distinguish dimly but surely +the form and features of the great Angel to whom he talked. For a little +while there was silence, and then the Angel spoke. + +“It was necessary first,” said the Angel, “that you should apprehend God +and desire him. That was the purport of your first vision. Now, since +you require it, I will tell you and show you certain things about him, +things that it seems you need to know, things that all men need to know. +Know then first that the time is at hand when God will come into the +world and rule it, and when men will know what is required of them. +This time is close at hand. In a little while God will be made manifest +throughout the earth. Men will know him and know that he is King. To you +this truth is to be shown--that you may tell it to others.” + +“This is no vision?” said the bishop, “no dream that will pass away?” + +“Am I not here beside you?” + +(5) + + +The bishop was anxious to be very clear. Things that had been +shapelessly present in his mind now took form and found words for +themselves. + +“The God I saw in my vision--He is not yet manifest in the world?” + +“He comes. He is in the world, but he is not yet manifested. He whom you +saw in your vision will speedily be manifest in the world. To you this +vision is given of the things that come. The world is already glowing +with God. Mankind is like a smouldering fire that will presently, in +quite a little time, burst out into flame. + +“In your former vision I showed you God,” said the Angel. “This time +I will show you certain signs of the coming of God. And then you will +understand the place you hold in the world and the task that is required +of you.” + +(6) + + +And as the Angel spoke he lifted up his hands with the palms upward, and +there appeared above them a little round cloud, that grew denser until +it had the likeness of a silver sphere. It was a mirror in the form of +a ball, but a mirror not shining uniformly; it was discoloured with +greyish patches that had a familiar shape. It circled slowly upon the +Angel's hands. It seemed no greater than the compass of a human skull, +and yet it was as great as the earth. Indeed it showed the whole +earth. It was the earth. The hands of the Angel vanished out of sight, +dissolved and vanished, and the spinning world hung free. All about the +bishop the velvet darkness broke into glittering points that shaped out +the constellations, and nearest to them, so near as to seem only a few +million miles away in the great emptiness into which everything had +resolved itself, shone the sun, a ball of red-tongued fires. The Angel +was but a voice now; the bishop and the Angel were somewhere aloof from +and yet accessible to the circling silver sphere. + +At the time all that happened seemed to happen quite naturally, as +things happen in a dream. It was only later, when all this was a matter +of memory, that the bishop realized how strange and incomprehensible his +vision had been. The sphere was the earth with all its continents and +seas, its ships and cities, its country-sides and mountain ranges. It +was so small that he could see it all at once, and so great and full +that he could see everything in it. He could see great countries like +little patches upon it, and at the same time he could see the faces of +the men upon the highways, he could see the feelings in men's hearts and +the thoughts in their minds. But it did not seem in any way wonderful +to the bishop that so he should see those things, or that it was to him +that these things were shown. + +“This is the whole world,” he said. + +“This is the vision of the world,” the Angel answered. + +“It is very wonderful,” said the bishop, and stood for a moment +marvelling at the compass of his vision. For here was India, here +was Samarkand, in the light of the late afternoon; and China and the +swarming cities upon her silvery rivers sinking through twilight to the +night and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern spots upon the dark; +here was Russia under the noontide, and so great a battle of artillery +raging on the Dunajec as no man had ever seen before; whole lines of +trenches dissolved into clouds of dust and heaps of blood-streaked +earth; here close to the waiting streets of Constantinople were the +hills of Gallipoli, the grave of British Imperialism, streaming to +heaven with the dust and smoke of bursting shells and rifle fire and the +smoke and flame of burning brushwood. In the sea of Marmora a big ship +crowded with Turkish troops was sinking; and, purple under the clear +water, he could see the shape of the British submarine which had +torpedoed her and had submerged and was going away. Berlin prepared its +frugal meals, still far from famine. He saw the war in Europe as if he +saw it on a map, yet every human detail showed. Over hundreds of miles +of trenches east and west of Germany he could see shells bursting and +the men below dropping, and the stretcher-bearers going back with +the wounded. The roads to every front were crowded with reserves and +munitions. For a moment a little group of men indifferent to all this +struggle, who were landing amidst the Antarctic wilderness, held his +attention; and then his eyes went westward to the dark rolling Atlantic +across which, as the edge of the night was drawn like a curtain, more +and still more ships became visible beating upon their courses eastward +or westward under the overtaking day. + +The wonder increased; the wonder of the single and infinitely +multitudinous adventure of mankind. + +“So God perhaps sees it,” he whispered. + +(7) + + +“Look at this man,” said the Angel, and the black shadow of a hand +seemed to point. + +It was a Chinaman sitting with two others in a little low room separated +by translucent paper windows from a noisy street of shrill-voiced +people. The three had been talking of the ultimatum that Japan had sent +that day to China, claiming a priority in many matters over European +influences they were by no means sure whether it was a wrong or a +benefit that had been done to their country. From that topic they had +passed to the discussion of the war, and then of wars and national +aggressions and the perpetual thrusting and quarrelling of mankind. The +older man had said that so life would always be; it was the will of +Heaven. The little, very yellow-faced, emaciated man had agreed with +him. But now this younger man, to whose thoughts the Angel had so +particularly directed the bishop's attention, was speaking. He did not +agree with his companion. + +“War is not the will of Heaven,” he said; “it is the blindness of men.” + +“Man changes,” he said, “from day to day and from age to age. The +science of the West has taught us that. Man changes and war changes and +all things change. China has been the land of flowery peace, and she may +yet give peace to all the world. She has put aside that puppet Emperor +at Peking, she turns her face to the new learning of the West as a man +lays aside his heavy robes, in order that her task may be achieved.” + +The older man spoke, his manner was more than a little incredulous, and +yet not altogether contemptuous. “You believe that someday there will be +no more war in the world, that a time will come when men will no longer +plot and plan against the welfare of men?” + +“Even that last,” said the younger man. “Did any of us dream twenty-five +years ago that here in China we should live to see a republic? The age +of the republics draws near, when men in every country of the world will +look straight up to the rule of Right and the empire of Heaven.” + +(“And God will be King of the World,” said the Angel. “Is not that +faith exactly the faith that is coming to you?”) + +The two other Chinamen questioned their companion, but without +hostility. + +“This war,” said the Chinaman, “will end in a great harvesting of +kings.” + +“But Japan--” the older man began. + +The bishop would have liked to hear more of that conversation, but +the dark hand of the Angel motioned him to another part of the world. +“Listen to this,” said the Angel. + +He pointed the bishop to where the armies of Britain and Turkey lay in +the heat of Mesopotamia. Along the sandy bank of a wide, slow-flowing +river rode two horsemen, an Englishman and a Turk. They were returning +from the Turkish lines, whither the Englishman had been with a flag of +truce. When Englishmen and Turks are thrown together they soon +become friends, and in this case matters had been facilitated by +the Englishman's command of the Turkish language. He was quite an +exceptional Englishman. The Turk had just been remarking cheerfully that +it wouldn't please the Germans if they were to discover how amiably he +and his charge had got on. “It's a pity we ever ceased to be friends,” + he said. + +“You Englishmen aren't like our Christians,” he went on. + +The Englishmen wanted to know why. + +“You haven't priests in robes. You don't chant and worship crosses and +pictures, and quarrel among yourselves.” + +“We worship the same God as you do,” said the Englishman. + +“Then why do we fight?” + +“That's what we want to know.” + +“Why do you call yourselves Christians? And take part against us? All +who worship the One God are brothers.” + +“They ought to be,” said the Englishman, and thought. He was struck by +what seemed to him an amazingly novel idea. + +“If it weren't for religions all men would serve God together,” he +said. “And then there would be no wars--only now and then perhaps just a +little honest fighting....” + +“And see here,” said the Angel. “Here close behind this frightful +battle, where the German phalanx of guns pounds its way through the +Russian hosts. Here is a young German talking to two wounded Russian +prisoners, who have stopped to rest by the roadside. He is a German of +East Prussia; he knows and thinks a little Russian. And they too are +saying, all three of them, that the war is not God's will, but the +confusion of mankind. + +“Here,” he said, and the shadow of his hand hovered over the +burning-ghats of Benares, where a Brahmin of the new persuasion watched +the straight spires of funereal smoke ascend into the glow of the late +afternoon, while he talked to an English painter, his friend, of the +blind intolerance of race and caste and custom in India. + +“Or here.” + +The Angel pointed to a group of people who had gathered upon a little +beach at the head of a Norwegian fiord. There were three lads, an old +man and two women, and they stood about the body of a drowned German +sailor which had been washed up that day. For a time they had talked in +whispers, but now suddenly the old man spoke aloud. + +“This is the fourth that has come ashore,” he said. “Poor drowned souls! +Because men will not serve God.” + +“But folks go to church and pray enough,” said one of the women. + +“They do not serve God,” said the old man. “They just pray to him as one +nods to a beggar. They do not serve God who is their King. They set up +their false kings and emperors, and so all Europe is covered with dead, +and the seas wash up these dead to us. Why does the world suffer these +things? Why did we Norwegians, who are a free-spirited people, permit +the Germans and the Swedes and the English to set up a king over us? +Because we lack faith. Kings mean secret counsels, and secret counsels +bring war. Sooner or later war will come to us also if we give the soul +of our nation in trust to a king.... But things will not always be thus +with men. God will not suffer them for ever. A day comes, and it is no +distant day, when God himself will rule the earth, and when men will do, +not what the king wishes nor what is expedient nor what is customary, +but what is manifestly right.”.... + +“But men are saying that now in a thousand places,” said the Angel. +“Here is something that goes a little beyond that.” + +His pointing hand went southward until they saw the Africanders riding +down to Windhuk. Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by side and +talked of the German officer they brought prisoner with them. He had put +sheep-dip in the wells of drinking-water; his life was fairly forfeit, +and he was not to be killed. “We want no more hate in South Africa,” + they agreed. “Dutch and English and German must live here now side by +side. Men cannot always be killing.” + +“And see his thoughts,” said the Angel. + +The German's mind was one amazement. He had been sure of being shot, he +had meant to make a good end, fierce and scornful, a relentless fighter +to the last; and these men who might have shot him like a man were going +to spare him like a dog. His mind was a tumbled muddle of old and +new ideas. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of the foulest and +fiercest militarism; he had been trained to relentlessness, ruthlessness +and so forth; war was war and the bitterer the better, frightfulness +was your way to victory over every enemy. But these people had found a +better way. Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years ago +they had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform and +rode together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because he was +for spitting at them and defying them, and folding his arms and looking +level at the executioners' rifles. There were to be no executioners' +rifles.... If it was so with Dutch and English, why shouldn't it be so +presently with French and Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, +Dutch and English, Russian and Pole, ride together under this new star +of mankind, the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-maker +was left to poison the wells of goodwill? + +His mind resisted and struggled against these ideas. “Austere,” he +whispered. “The ennobling tests of war.” A trooner rode up alongside, +and offered him a drink of water + +“Just a mouthful,” he said apologetically. “We've had to go rather +short.”... + +“There's another brain busy here with the same idea,” the Angel +interrupted. And the bishop found himself looking into the bedroom of a +young German attache in Washington, sleepless in the small hours. + +“Ach!” cried the young man, and sat up in bed and ran his hands through +his fair hair. + +He had been working late upon this detestable business of the Lusitania; +the news of her sinking had come to hand two days before, and all +America was aflame with it. It might mean war. His task had been to pour +out explanations and justifications to the press; to show that it was an +act of necessity, to pretend a conviction that the great ship was loaded +with munitions, to fight down the hostility and anger that blazed across +a continent. He had worked to his limit. He had taken cup after cup of +coffee, and had come to bed worked out not two hours ago. Now here he +was awake after a nightmare of drowning women and children, trying to +comfort his soul by recalling his own arguments. Never once since the +war began had he doubted the rightness of the German cause. It seemed +only a proof of his nervous exhaustion that he could doubt it now. +Germany was the best organized, most cultivated, scientific and liberal +nation the earth had ever seen, it was for the good of mankind that she +should be the dominant power in the world; his patriotism had had the +passion of a mission. The English were indolent, the French decadent, +the Russians barbaric, the Americans basely democratic; the rest of the +world was the “White man's Burthen”; the clear destiny of mankind +was subservience to the good Prussian eagle. Nevertheless--those +wet draggled bodies that swirled down in the eddies of the sinking +Titan--Ach! He wished it could have been otherwise. He nursed his knees +and prayed that there need not be much more of these things before the +spirit of the enemy was broken and the great Peace of Germany came upon +the world. + +And suddenly he stopped short in his prayer. + +Suddenly out of the nothingness and darkness about him came the +conviction that God did not listen to his prayers.... + +Was there any other way? + +It was the most awful doubt he had ever had, for it smote at the +training of all his life. “Could it be possible that after all our old +German God is not the proper style and title of the true God? Is our old +German God perhaps only the last of a long succession of bloodstained +tribal effigies--and not God at all?” + +For a long time it seemed that the bishop watched the thoughts that +gathered in the young attache's mind. Until suddenly he broke into a +quotation, into that last cry of the dying Goethe, for “Light. More +Light!”... + +“Leave him at that,” said the Angel. “I want you to hear these two young +women.” + +The hand came back to England and pointed to where Southend at the mouth +of the Thames was all agog with the excitement of an overnight Zeppelin +raid. People had got up hours before their usual time in order to +look at the wrecked houses before they went up to their work in town. +Everybody seemed abroad. Two nurses, not very well trained as nurses go +nor very well-educated women, were snatching a little sea air upon the +front after an eventful night. They were too excited still to sleep. +They were talking of the horror of the moment when they saw the nasty +thing “up there,” and felt helpless as it dropped its bombs. They had +both hated it. + +“There didn't ought to be such things,” said one. + +“They don't seem needed,” said her companion. + +“Men won't always go on like this--making wars and all such wickedness.” + +“It's 'ow to stop them?” + +“Science is going to stop them.” + +“Science?” + +“Yes, science. My young brother--oh, he's a clever one--he says such +things! He says that it's science that they won't always go on like +this. There's more sense coming into the world and more--my young +brother says so. Says it stands to reason; it's Evolution. It's science +that men are all brothers; you can prove it. It's science that there +oughtn't to be war. Science is ending war now by making it horrible like +this, and making it so that no one is safe. Showing it up. Only when +nobody is safe will everybody want to set up peace, he says. He says +it's proved there could easily be peace all over the world now if it +wasn't for flags and kings and capitalists and priests. They still +manage to keep safe and out of it. He says the world ought to be just +one state. The World State, he says it ought to be.” + +(“Under God,” said the bishop, “under God.”) + +“He says science ought to be King of the whole world.” + +“Call it Science if you will,” said the bishop. “God is wisdom.” + +“Out of the mouths of babes and elementary science students,” said the +Angel. “The very children in the board schools are turning against this +narrowness and nonsense and mischief of nations and creeds and kings. +You see it at a thousand points, at ten thousand points, look, the +world is all flashing and flickering; it is like a spinthariscope; it is +aquiver with the light that is coming to mankind. It is on the verge of +blazing even now.” + +“Into a light.” + +“Into the one Kingdom of God. See here! See here! And here! This brave +little French priest in a helmet of steel who is daring to think for the +first time in his life; this gentle-mannered emir from Morocco looking +at the grave-diggers on the battlefield; this mother who has lost her +son.... + +“You see they all turn in one direction, although none of them seem to +dream yet that they are all turning in the same direction. They turn, +every one, to the rule of righteousness, which is the rule of God. They +turn to that communism of effort in the world which alone permits men +to serve God in state and city and their economic lives.... They are all +coming to the verge of the same salvation, the salvation of one human +brotherhood under the rule of one Righteousness, one Divine will.... Is +that the salvation your church offers?” + +(8) + + +“And now that we have seen how religion grows and spreads in men's +hearts, now that the fields are white with harvest, I want you to look +also and see what the teachers of religion are doing,” said the Angel. + +He smiled. His presence became more definite, and the earthly globe +about them and the sun and the stars grew less distinct and less +immediately there. The silence invited the bishop to speak. + +“In the light of this vision, I see my church plainly for the little +thing it is,” he said. + +He wanted to be perfectly clear with the Angel and himself. + +“This church of which I am a bishop is just a part of our poor human +struggle, small and pitiful as one thinks of it here in the light of the +advent of God's Kingdom, but very great, very great indeed, ancient and +high and venerable, in comparison with me. But mostly it is human. It is +most human. For my story is the church's story, and the church's story +is mine. Here I could almost believe myself the church itself. The +world saw a light, the nations that were sitting in darkness saw a great +light. Even as I saw God. And then the church began to forget and lose +itself among secondary things. As I have done.... It tried to express +the truth and lost itself in a maze of theology. It tried to bring order +into the world and sold its faith to Constantine. These men who had +professed the Invisible King of the World, shirked his service. It is a +most terrible disaster that Christianity has sold itself to emperors and +kings. They forged a saying of the Master's that we should render unto +Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's and unto God the things that are +God's.... + +“Who is this Ceasar to set himself up to share mankind with God? Nothing +that is Ceasar's can be any the less God's. But Constantine Caesar sat +in the midst of the council, his guards were all about it, and the poor +fanatics and trimmers and schemers disputed nervously with their eyes +on him, disputed about homoousian and homoiousian, and grimaced and +pretended to be very very fierce and exact to hide how much they were +frightened and how little they knew, and because they did not dare to +lay violent hands upon that usurper of the empire of the world.... + +“And from that day forth the Christian churches have been damned and +lost. Kept churches. Lackey churches. Roman, Russian, Anglican; it +matters not. My church indeed was twice sold, for it doubled the sin of +Nicaea and gave itself over to Henry and Elizabeth while it shammed +a dispute about the sacraments. No one cared really about +transubstantiation any more than the earlier betrayers cared about +consubstantiality; that dispute did but serve to mask the betrayal.” + +He turned to the listening Angel. “What can you show me of my church +that I do not know? Why! we Anglican bishops get our sees as footmen get +a job. For months Victoria, that old German Frau, delayed me--because of +some tittle-tattle.... The things we are! Snape, who afterwards became +Bishop of Burnham, used to waylay the Prince Consort when he was riding +in Hyde Park and give him, he boasts, 'a good loud cheer,' and then he +would run very fast across the park so as to catch him as he came round, +and do it again.... It is to that sort of thing we bearers of the light +have sunken.... + +“I have always despised that poor toady,” the bishop went on. “And +yet here am I, and God has called me and shown me the light of his +countenance, and for a month I have faltered. That is the mystery of the +human heart, that it can and does sin against the light. What right have +I, who have seen the light--and failed, what right have I--to despise +any other human being? I seem to have been held back by a sort of +paralysis. + +“Men are so small, so small still, that they cannot keep hold of the +vision of God. That is why I want to see God again.... But if it were +not for this strange drug that seems for a little while to lift my mind +above the confusion and personal entanglements of every day, I doubt if +even now I could be here. I am here, passionate to hold this moment and +keep the light. As this inspiration passes, I shall go back, I know, +to my home and my place and my limitations. The littleness of men! The +forgetfulness of men! I want to know what my chief duty is, to have it +plain, in terms so plain that I can never forget. + +“See in this world,” he said, turning to the globe, “while Chinese +merchants and Turkish troopers, school-board boys and Norwegian +fishermen, half-trained nurses and Boer farmers are full of the spirit +of God, see how the priests of the churches of Nicaea spend their time.” + +And now it was the bishop whose dark hands ran over the great silver +globe, and it was the Angel who stood over him and listened, as a +teacher might stand over a child who is learning a lesson. The bishop's +hand rested for a second on a cardinal who was planning a political +intrigue to produce a reaction in France, then for a moment on a +Pomeranian pastor who was going out to his well-tilled fields with his +Sunday sermon, full of fierce hatred of England, still echoing in his +head. Then he paused at a Mollah preaching the Jehad, in doubt whether +he too wasn't a German pastor, and then at an Anglican clergyman still +lying abed and thinking out a great mission of Repentance and Hope that +should restore the authority of the established church--by incoherent +missioning--without any definite sin indicated for repentance nor any +clear hope for anything in particular arising out of such activities. +The bishop's hand went seeking to and fro, but nowhere could he find +any religious teacher, any religious body rousing itself to meet the new +dawn of faith in the world. Some few men indeed seemed thoughtful, but +within the limitation of their vows. Everywhere it was church and creed +and nation and king and property and partisanship, and nowhere was it +the True God that the priests and teachers were upholding. It was always +the common unhampered man through whom the light of God was breaking; it +was always the creed and the organization of the religious professionals +that stood in the way to God.... + +“God is putting the priests aside,” he cried, “and reaching out to +common men. The churches do not serve God. They stand between man and +God. They are like great barricades on the way to God.” + +The bishop's hand brushed over Archbishop Pontifex, who was just coming +down to breakfast in his palace. This pompous old man was dressed in +a purple garment that set off his tall figure very finely, and he was +holding out his episcopal ring for his guests to kiss, that being the +customary morning greeting of Archbishop Pontifex. The thought of that +ring-kissing had made much hard work at lower levels “worth while” + to Archbishop Pontifex. And seventy miles away from him old Likeman +breakfasted in bed on Benger's food, and searched his Greek Testament +for tags to put to his letters. And here was the familiar palace at +Princhester, and in an armchair in his bed-room sat Bishop Scrope +insensible and motionless, in a trance in which he was dreaming of the +coming of God. + +“I see my futility. I see my vanity. But what am I to do?” he said, +turning to the darkness that now wrapped about the Angel again, fold +upon fold. “The implications of yesterday bind me for the morrow. This +is my world. This is what I am and what I am in. How can I save myself? +How can I turn from these habits and customs and obligations to the +service of the one true God? When I see myself, then I understand how it +is with the others. All we priests and teachers are men caught in nets. +I would serve God. Easily said! But how am I to serve God? How am I to +help and forward His coming, to make myself part of His coming?” + +He perceived that he was returning into himself, and that the vision of +the sphere and of the starry spaces was fading into non-existence. + +He struggled against this return. He felt that his demand was still +unanswered. His wife's face had suddenly come very close to him, and he +realized she intervened between him and that solution. + +What was she doing here? + +(9) + + +The great Angel seemed still to be near at hand, limitless space was all +about him, and yet the bishop perceived that he was now sitting in the +arm-chair in his bedroom in the palace of Princhester. He was both +there and not there. It seemed now as if he had two distinct yet kindred +selves, and that the former watched the latter. The latter was now +awakening to the things about him; the former marked his gestures and +listened with an entire detachment to the words he was saying. These +words he was saying to Lady Ella: “God is coming to rule the world, I +tell you. We must leave the church.” + +Close to him sat Lady Ella, watching him with an expression in which +dismay and resolution mingled. Upon the other side of him, upon a little +occasional table, was a tray with breakfast things. He was no longer the +watcher now, but the watched. + +Lady Ella bent towards him as he spoke. She seemed to struggle with and +dismiss his astonishing statement. + +“Edward,” she said, “you have been taking a drug.” He looked round at +his night table to see the little phial. It had gone. Then he saw that +Lady Ella held it very firmly in her hand. + +“Dunk came to me in great distress. He said you were insensible and +breathing heavily. I came. I realized. I told him to say nothing to any +one, but to fetch me a tray with your breakfast. I have kept all the +other servants away and I have waited here by you.... Dunk I think +is safe.... You have been muttering and moving your head from side to +side....” + +The bishop's mind was confused. He felt as though God must be standing +just outside the room. “I have failed in my duty,” he said. “But I am +very near to God.” He laid his hand on her arm. “You know, Ella, He is +very close to us....” + +She looked perplexed. + +He sat up in his chair. + +“For some months now,” he said, “there have been new forces at work +in my mind. I have been invaded by strange doubts and still stranger +realizations. This old church of ours is an empty mask. God is not +specially concerned in it.” + +“Edward!” she cried, “what are you saying?” + +“I have been hesitating to tell you. But I see now I must tell you +plainly. Our church is a cast hull. It is like the empty skin of a +snake. God has gone out of it.” + +She rose to her feet. She was so horrified that she staggered backward, +pushing her chair behind her. “But you are mad,” she said. + +He was astonished at her distress. He stood up also. + +“My dear,” he said, “I can assure you I am not mad. I should have +prepared you, I know....” + +She looked at him wild-eyed. Then she glanced at the phial, gripped in +her hand. + +“Oh!” she exclaimed, and going swiftly to the window emptied out the +contents of the little bottle. He realized what she was doing too late +to prevent her. + +“Don't waste that!” he cried, and stepping forward caught hold of her +wrist. The phial fell from her white fingers, and crashed upon the rough +paved garden path below. + +“My dear,” he cried, “my dear. You do not understand.” + +They stood face to face. “It was a tonic,” he said. “I have been ill. I +need it.” + +“It is a drug,” she answered. “You have been uttering blasphemies.” + +He dropped her arm and walked half-way across the room. Then he turned +and faced her. + +“They are not blasphemies,” he said. “But I ought not to have surprised +you and shocked you as I have done. I want to tell you of changes that +have happened to my mind.” + +“Now!” she exclaimed, and then: “I will not hear them now. Until you are +better. Until these fumes--” + +Her manner changed. “Oh, Edward!” she cried, “why have you done this? +Why have you taken things secretly? I know you have been sleepless, but +I have been so ready to help you. I have been willing--you know I have +been willing--for any help. My life is all to be of use to you....” + +“Is there any reason,” she pleaded, “why you should have hidden things +from me?” + +He stood remorseful and distressed. “I should have talked to you,” he +said lamely. + +“Edward,” she said, laying her hands on his shoulders, “will you do one +thing for me? Will you try to eat a little breakfast? And stay here? I +will go down to Mr. Whippham and arrange whatever is urgent with him. +Perhaps if you rest--There is nothing really imperative until the +confirmation in the afternoon.... I do not understand all this. For some +time--I have felt it was going on. But of that we can talk. The thing +now is that people should not know, that nothing should be seen.... +Suppose for instance that horrible White Blackbird were to hear of +it.... I implore you. If you rest here--And if I were to send for that +young doctor who attended Miriam.” + +“I don't want a doctor,” said the bishop. + +“But you ought to have a doctor.” + +“I won't have a doctor,” said the bishop. + +It was with a perplexed but powerless dissent that the externalized +perceptions of the bishop witnessed his agreement with the rest of Lady +Ella's proposals so soon as this point about the doctor was conceded. + +(10) + + +For the rest of that day until his breakdown in the cathedral the sense +of being in two places at the same time haunted the bishop's mind. He +stood beside the Angel in the great space amidst the stars, and at the +same time he was back in his ordinary life, he was in his palace at +Princhester, first resting in his bedroom and talking to his wife +and presently taking up the routines of his duties again in his study +downstairs. + +His chief task was to finish his two addresses for the confirmation +services of the day. He read over his notes, and threw them aside +and remained for a time thinking deeply. The Greek tags at the end +of Likeman's letter came into his thoughts; they assumed a quality of +peculiar relevance to this present occasion. He repeated the words: +“Epitelesei. Epiphausei.” + +He took his little Testament to verify them. After some slight trouble +he located the two texts. The first, from Philippians, ran in the old +version, “He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it”; +the second was expressed thus: “Christ shall give thee light.” He was +dissatisfied with these renderings and resorted to the revised version, +which gave “perfect” instead of “perform,” and “shall shine upon you” + for “give thee light.” He reflected profoundly for a time. + +Then suddenly his addresses began to take shape in his mind, and these +little points lost any significance. He began to write rapidly, and as +he wrote he felt the Angel stood by his right hand and read and approved +what he was writing. There were moments when his mind seemed to be +working entirely beyond his control. He had a transitory questioning +whether this curious intellectual automatism was not perhaps what people +meant by “inspiration.” + +(11) + + +The bishop had always been sensitive to the secret fount of pathos that +is hidden in the spectacle of youth. Long years ago when he and Lady +Ella had been in Florence he had been moved to tears by the beauty +of the fresh-faced eager Tobit who runs beside the great angel in the +picture of Botticelli. And suddenly and almost as uncontrollably, that +feeling returned at the sight of the young congregation below him, +of all these scores of neophytes who were gathered to make a public +acknowledgment of God. The war has invested all youth now with the +shadow of tragedy; before it came many of us were a little envious of +youth and a little too assured of its certainty of happiness. All that +has changed. Fear and a certain tender solicitude mingle in our regard +for every child; not a lad we pass in the street but may presently be +called to face such pain and stress and danger as no ancient hero ever +knew. The patronage, the insolent condescension of age, has vanished out +of the world. It is dreadful to look upon the young. + +He stood surveying the faces of the young people as the rector read the +Preface to the confirmation service. How simple they were, how innocent! +Some were a little flushed by the excitement of the occasion; some a +little pallid. But they were all such tender faces, so soft in outline, +so fresh and delicate in texture and colour. They had soft credulous +mouths. Some glanced sideways at one another; some listened with a +forced intentness. The expression of one good-looking boy, sitting in a +corner scat, struck the bishop as being curiously defiant. He stood +very erect, he blinked his eyes as though they smarted, his lips were +compressed bitterly. And then it seemed to the bishop that the Angel +stood beside him and gave him understanding. + +“He is here,” the bishop knew, “because he could not avoid coming. He +tried to excuse himself. His mother wept. What could he do? But the +church's teaching nowadays fails even to grip the minds of boys.” + +The rector came to the end of his Preface: “They will evermore endeavour +themselves faithfully to observe such things as they by their own +confession have assented unto.” + +“Like a smart solicitor pinning them down,” said the bishop to himself, +and then roused himself, unrolled the little paper in his hand, leant +forward, and straightway began his first address. + +Nowadays it is possible to say very unorthodox things indeed in an +Anglican pulpit unchallenged. There remains no alert doctrinal criticism +in the church congregations. It was possible, therefore, for the bishop +to say all that follows without either hindrance or disturbance. The +only opposition, indeed, came from within, from a sense of dreamlike +incongruity between the place and the occasion and the things that he +found himself delivering. + +“All ceremonies,” he began, “grow old. All ceremonies are tainted even +from the first by things less worthy than their first intention, and +you, my dear sons and daughters, who have gathered to-day in this worn +and ancient building, beneath these monuments to ancient vanities and +these symbols of forgotten or abandoned theories about the mystery of +God, will do well to distinguish in your minds between what is essential +and what is superfluous and confusing in this dedication you make of +yourselves to God our Master and King. For that is the real thing you +seek to do today, to give yourselves to God. This is your spiritual +coming of age, in which you set aside your childish dependence upon +teachers and upon taught phrases, upon rote and direction, and stand up +to look your Master in the face. You profess a great brotherhood when +you do that, a brotherhood that goes round the earth, that numbers men +of every race and nation and country, that aims to bring God into +all the affairs of this world and make him not only the king of your +individual lives but the king--in place of all the upstarts, usurpers, +accidents, and absurdities who bear crowns and sceptres today--of an +united mankind.” + +He paused, and in the pause he heard a little rustle as though the +congregation before him was sitting up in its places, a sound that +always nerves and reassures an experienced preacher. + +“This, my dear children, is the reality of this grave business to-day, +as indeed it is the real and practical end of all true religion. This is +your sacrament urn, your soldier's oath. You salute and give your fealty +to the coming Kingdom of God. And upon that I would have you fix your +minds to the exclusion of much that, I know only too well, has been +narrow and evil and sectarian in your preparation for this solemn rite. +God is like a precious jewel found among much rubble; you must cast the +rubble from you. The crowning triumph of the human mind is simplicity; +the supreme significance of God lies in his unity and universality. The +God you salute to-day is the God of the Jews and Gentiles alike, the +God of Islam, the God of the Brahmo Somaj, the unknown God of many a +righteous unbeliever. He is not the God of those felted theologies and +inexplicable doctrines with which your teachers may have confused your +minds. I would have it very clear in your minds that having drunken the +draught you should not reverence unduly the cracked old vessel that has +brought it to your lips. I should be falling short of my duty if I did +not make that and everything I mean by that altogether plain to you.” + +He saw the lad whose face of dull defiance he had marked before, sitting +now with a startled interest in his eyes. The bishop leant over the desk +before him, and continued in the persuasive tone of a man who speaks of +things too manifest for laboured argument. + +“In all ages religion has come from God through broad-minded creative +men, and in all ages it has fallen very quickly into the hands +of intense and conservative men. These last--narrow, fearful, and +suspicious--have sought in every age to save the precious gift of +religion by putting it into a prison of formulae and asseverations. Bear +that in mind when you are pressed to definition. It is as if you made a +box hermetically sealed to save the treasure of a fresh breeze from the +sea. But they have sought out exact statements and tortuous explanations +of the plain truth of God, they have tried to take down God in writing, +to commit him to documents, to embalm his living faith as though it +would otherwise corrupt. So they have lost God and fallen into endless +differences, disputes, violence, and darkness about insignificant +things. They have divided religion between this creed and teacher and +that. The corruption of the best is the worst, said Aristotle; and the +great religions of the world, and especially this Christianity of ours, +are the ones most darkened and divided and wasted by the fussings and +false exactitudes of the creed-monger and the sectary. There is no lie +so bad as a stale disfigured truth. There is no heresy so damnable as +a narrow orthodoxy. All religious associations carry this danger of the +over-statement that misstates and the over-emphasis that divides and +betrays. Beware of that danger. Do not imagine, because you are gathered +in this queerly beautiful old building today, because I preside here in +this odd raiment of an odder compromise, because you see about you in +coloured glass and carven stone the emblems of much vain disputation, +that thereby you cut yourselves off and come apart from the great world +of faith, Catholic, Islamic, Brahministic, Buddhistic, that grows now +to a common consciousness of the near Advent of God our King. You enter +that waiting world fraternity now, you do not leave it. This place, this +church of ours, should be to you not a seclusion and a fastness but a +door. + +“I could quote you a score of instances to establish that this simple +universalism was also the teaching of Christ. But now I will only remind +you that it was Mary who went to her lord simply, who was commended, and +not Martha who troubled about many things. Learn from the Mary of +Faith and not from these Marthas of the Creeds. Let us abandon the +presumptions of an ignorant past. The perfection of doctrine is not +for finite men. Give yourselves to God. Give yourselves to God. Not to +churches and uses, but to God. To God simply. He is the first word of +religion and the last. He is Alpha; he is Omega. Epitelesei; it is He +who will finish the good work begun.” + +The bishop ended his address in a vivid silence. Then he began his +interrogation. + +“Do you here, in the presence of God, and of this congregation, renew +the solemn promise and vow that was made in your name at your Baptism; +ratifying and confirming the same in your own persons, and acknowledging +yourselves--” + +He stopped short. The next words were: “bound to believe and do all +those things, which your Godfathers and Godmothers then undertook for +you.” + +He could not stand those words. He hesitated, and then substituted: +“acknowledge yourselves to be the true servants of the one God, who is +the Lord of Mankind?” + +For a moment silence hung in the cathedral. Then one voice, a boy's +voice, led a ragged response. “I do.” + +Then the bishop: “Our help is in the Name of the Lord.” + +The congregation answered doubtfully, with a glance at its prayer books: +“Who hath made heaven and earth.” + +The bishop: “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” + +The congregation said with returning confidence: “Henceforth, world +without end.” + +(12) + + +Before his second address the bishop had to listen to Veni Creator +Spiritus, in its English form, and it seemed to him the worst of all +possible hymns. Its defects became monstrously exaggerated to his +hypersensitive mind. It impressed him in its Englished travesty as a +grotesque, as a veritable Charlie Chaplin among hymns, and in truth it +does stick out most awkward feet, it misses its accusatives, it catches +absurdly upon points of abstruse doctrine. The great Angel stood +motionless and ironical at the bishop's elbow while it was being sung. +“Your church,” he seemed to say. + +“We must end this sort of thing,” whispered the bishop. “We must end +this sort of thing--absolutely.” He glanced at the faces of the singers, +and it became beyond all other things urgent, that he should lift them +once for all above the sectarian dogmatism of that hymn to a simple +vision of God's light.... + +He roused himself to the touching business of the laying on of hands. +While he did so the prepared substance of his second address was running +through his mind. The following prayer and collects he read without +difficulty, and so came to his second address. His disposition at first +was explanatory. + +“When I spoke to you just now,” he began, “I fell unintentionally into +the use of a Greek word, epitelesei. It was written to me in a letter +from a friend with another word that also I am now going to quote to +you. This letter touched very closely upon the things I want to say to +you now, and so these two words are very much in my mind. The former one +was taken from the Epistle to the Philippians; it signifies, 'He will +complete the work begun'; the one I have now in mind comes from the +Epistle to the Ephesians; it is Epiphausei--or, to be fuller, epiphausei +soi ho Christos, which signifies that He will shine upon us. And this is +very much in my thoughts now because I do believe that this world, which +seemed so very far from God a little while ago, draws near now to an +unexampled dawn. God is at hand. + +“It is your privilege, it is your grave and terrible position, that you +have been born at the very end and collapse of a negligent age, of an +age of sham kingship, sham freedom, relaxation, evasion, greed, waste, +falsehood, and sinister preparation. Your lives open out in the midst +of the breakdown for which that age prepared. To you negligence is no +longer possible. There is cold and darkness, there is the heat of the +furnace before you; you will live amidst extremes such as our youth +never knew; whatever betide, you of your generation will have small +chance of living untempered lives. Our country is at war and half +mankind is at war; death and destruction trample through the world; +men rot and die by the million, food diminishes and fails, there is +a wasting away of all the hoarded resources, of all the accumulated +well-being of mankind; and there is no clear prospect yet of any end to +this enormous and frightful conflict. Why did it ever arise? What made +it possible? It arose because men had forgotten God. It was possible +because they worshipped simulacra, were loyal to phantoms of race and +empire, permitted themselves to be ruled and misled by idiot princes and +usurper kings. Their minds were turned from God, who alone can rule and +unite mankind, and so they have passed from the glare and follies of +those former years into the darkness and anguish of the present day. And +in darkness and anguish they will remain until they turn to that King +who comes to rule them, until the sword and indignation of God have +overthrown their misleaders and oppressors, and the Justice of God, the +Kingdom of God set high over the republics of mankind, has brought peace +for ever to the world. It is to this militant and imminent God, to this +immortal Captain, this undying Law-giver, that you devote yourselves +to-day. + +“For he is imminent now. He comes. I have seen in the east and in the +west, the hearts and the minds and the wills of men turning to him as +surely as when a needle is magnetized it turns towards the north. Even +now as I preach to you here, God stands over us all, ready to receive +us....” + +And as he said these words, the long nave of the cathedral, the shadows +of its fretted roof, the brown choir with its golden screen, the rows +of seated figures, became like some picture cast upon a flimsy and +translucent curtain. Once more it seemed to the bishop that he saw +God plain. Once more the glorious effulgence poured about him, and the +beautiful and wonderful conquest of men's hearts and lives was manifest +to him. + +He lifted up his hands and cried to God, and with an emotion so +profound, an earnestness so commanding, that very many of those who +were present turned their faces to see the figure to which he looked and +spoke. And some of the children had a strange persuasion of a presence +there, as of a divine figure militant, armed, and serene.... + +“Oh God our Leader and our Master and our Friend,” the bishop prayed, +“forgive our imperfection and our little motives, take us and make us +one with thy great purpose, use us and do not reject us, make us all +here servants of thy kingdom, weave our lives into thy struggle to +conquer and to bring peace and union to the world. We are small and +feeble creatures, we are feeble in speech, feebler still in action, +nevertheless let but thy light shine upon us and there is not one of +us who cannot be lit by thy fire, and who cannot lose himself in thy +salvation. Take us into thy purpose, O God. Let thy kingdom come into +our hearts and into this world.” + +His voice ceased, and he stood for a measurable time with his arms +extended and his face upturned.... + +The golden clouds that whirled and eddied so splendidly in his brain +thinned out, his sense of God's immediacy faded and passed, and he was +left aware of the cathedral pulpit in which he stood so strangely posed, +and of the astonished congregation below him. His arms sank to his side. +His eyes fell upon the book in front of him and he felt for and gripped +the two upper corners of it and, regardless of the common order and +practice, read out the Benediction, changing the words involuntarily as +he read: + +“The Blessing of God who is the Father, the Son, the Spirit and the King +of all Mankind, be upon you and remain with you for ever. Amen.” + +Then he looked again, as if to look once more upon that radiant vision +of God, but now he saw only the clear cool space of the cathedral vault +and the coloured glass and tracery of the great rose window. And then, +as the first notes of the organ came pealing above the departing stir of +the congregation, he turned about and descended slowly, like one who is +still half dreaming, from the pulpit. + +(13) + + +In the vestry he found Canon Bliss. “Help me to take off these +garments,” the bishop said. “I shall never wear them again.” + +“You are ill,” said the canon, scrutinizing his face. + +“Not ill. But the word was taken out of my mouth. I perceive now that +I have been in a trance, a trance in which the truth is real. It is a +fearful thing to find oneself among realities. It is a dreadful thing +when God begins to haunt a priest.... I can never minister in the church +again.” + +Whippham thrust forward a chair for the bishop to sit down. The bishop +felt now extraordinarily fatigued. He sat down heavily, and rested his +wrists on the arms of the chair. “Already,” he resumed presently, “I +begin to forget what it was I said.” + +“You became excited,” said Bliss, “and spoke very loudly and clearly.” + +“What did I say?” + +“I don't know what you said; I have forgotten. I never want to remember. +Things about the Second Advent. Dreadful things. You said God was close +at hand. Happily you spoke partly in Greek. I doubt if any of those +children understood. And you had a kind of lapse--an aphasia. You +mutilated the interrogation and you did not pronounce the +benediction properly. You changed words and you put in words. One sat +frozen--waiting for what would happen next.” + +“We must postpone the Pringle confirmation,” said Whippham. “I wonder to +whom I could telephone.” + +Lady Ella appeared, and came and knelt down by the bishop's chair. “I +never ought to have let this happen,” she said, taking his wrists in her +hands. “You are in a fever, dear.” + +“It seemed entirely natural to say what I did,” the bishop declared. + +Lady Ella looked up at Bliss. + +“A doctor has been sent for,” said the canon to Lady Ella. + +“I must speak to the doctor,” said Lady Ella as if her husband could +not hear her. “There is something that will make things clearer to the +doctor. I must speak to the doctor for a moment before he sees him.” + +Came a gust of pretty sounds and a flash of bright colour that shamed +the rich vestments at hand. Over the shoulder of the rector and quite at +the back, appeared Lady Sunderbund resolutely invading the vestry. The +rector intercepted her, stood broad with extended arms. + +“I must come in and speak to him. If it is only fo' a moment.” + +The bishop looked up and saw Lady Ella's expression. Lady Ella was +sitting up very stiffly, listening but not looking round. + +A vague horror and a passionate desire to prevent the entry of Lady +Sunderbund at any cost, seized upon the bishop. She would, he felt, be +the last overwhelming complication. He descended to a base subterfuge. +He lay back in his chair slowly as though he unfolded himself, he +covered his eyes with his hand and then groaned aloud. + +“Leave me alone!” he cried in a voice of agony. “Leave me alone! I can +see no one.... I can--no more.” + +There was a momentous silence, and then the tumult of Lady Sunderbund +receded. + + + + +CHAPTER THE EIGHTH - THE NEW WORLD + +(1) + + +THAT night the bishop had a temperature of a hundred and a half. The +doctor pronounced him to be in a state of intense mental excitement, +aggravated by some drug. He was a doctor modern and clear-minded enough +to admit that he could not identify the drug. He overruled, every one +overruled, the bishop's declaration that he had done with the church, +that he could never mock God with his episcopal ministrations again, +that he must proceed at once with his resignation. “Don't think of +these things,” said the doctor. “Banish them from your mind until your +temperature is down to ninety-eight. Then after a rest you may go into +them.” + +Lady Ella insisted upon his keeping his room. It was with difficulty +that he got her to admit Whippham, and Whippham was exasperatingly in +order. “You need not trouble about anything now, my lord,” he said. +“Everything will keep until you are ready to attend to it. It's well +we're through with Easter. Bishop Buncombe of Eastern Blowdesia +was coming here anyhow. And there is Canon Bliss. There's only two +ordination candidates because of the war. We'll get on swimmingly.” + +The bishop thought he would like to talk to those two ordination +candidates, but they prevailed upon him not to do so. He lay for the +best part of one night confiding remarkable things to two imaginary +ordination candidates. + +He developed a marked liking for Eleanor's company. She was home again +now after a visit to some friends. It was decided that the best thing +to do with him would be to send him away in her charge. A journey abroad +was impossible. France would remind him too dreadfully of the war. His +own mind turned suddenly to the sweet air of Hunstanton. He had gone +there at times to read, in the old Cambridge days. “It is a terribly +ugly place,” he said, “but it is wine in the veins.” + +Lady Ella was doubtful about Zeppelins. Thrice they had been right over +Hunstanton already. They came in by the easy landmark of the Wash. + +“It will interest him,” said Eleanor, who knew her father better. + +(2) + + +One warm and still and sunny afternoon the bishop found himself looking +out upon the waters of the Wash. He sat where the highest pebble layers +of the beach reached up to a little cliff of sandy earth perhaps a foot +high, and he looked upon sands and sea and sky and saw that they were +beautiful. + +He was a little black-gaitered object in a scene of the most exquisite +and delicate colour. Right and left of him stretched the low grey salted +shore, pale banks of marly earth surmounted by green-grey wiry grass +that held and was half buried in fine blown sand. Above, the heavens +made a complete hemisphere of blue in which a series of remote cumulus +clouds floated and dissolved. Before him spread the long levels of the +sands, and far away at its utmost ebb was the sea. Eleanor had gone to +explore the black ribs of a wrecked fishing-boat that lay at the edge of +a shallow lagoon. She was a little pink-footed figure, very bright +and apparently transparent. She had reverted for a time to shameless +childishness; she had hidden her stockings among the reeds of the bank, +and she was running to and fro, from star-fish to razor shell and from +cockle to weed. The shingle was pale drab and purple close at hand, but +to the westward, towards Hunstanton, the sands became brown and +purple, and were presently broken up into endless skerries of low flat +weed-covered boulders and little intensely blue pools. The sea was +a band of sapphire that became silver to the west; it met the silver +shining sands in one delicate breathing edge of intensely white foam. +Remote to the west, very small and black and clear against the afternoon +sky, was a cart, and about it was a score or so of mussel-gatherers. +A little nearer, on an apparently empty stretch of shining wet sand, a +multitude of gulls was mysteriously busy. These two groups of activities +and Eleanor's flitting translucent movements did but set off and +emphasize the immense and soothing tranquillity. + +For a long time the bishop sat passively receptive to this healing +beauty. Then a little flow of thought began and gathered in his mind. He +had come out to think over two letters that he had brought with him. +He drew these now rather reluctantly from his pocket, and after a long +pause over the envelopes began to read them. + +He reread Likeman's letter first. + +Likeman could not forgive him. + +“My dear Scrope,” he wrote, “your explanation explains nothing. This +sensational declaration of infidelity to our mother church, made under +the most damning and distressing circumstances in the presence of young +and tender minds entrusted to your ministrations, and in defiance of the +honourable engagements implied in the confirmation service, confirms my +worst apprehensions of the weaknesses of your character. I have always +felt the touch of theatricality in your temperament, the peculiar +craving to be pseudo-deeper, pseudo-simpler than us all, the need of +personal excitement. I know that you were never quite contented +to believe in God at second-hand. You wanted to be taken notice +of--personally. Except for some few hints to you, I have never breathed +a word of these doubts to any human being; I have always hoped that +the ripening that comes with years and experience would give you an +increasing strength against the dangers of emotionalism and against your +strong, deep, quiet sense of your exceptional personal importance....” + +The bishop read thus far, and then sat reflecting. + +Was it just? + +He had many weaknesses, but had he this egotism? No; that wasn't +the justice of the case. The old man, bitterly disappointed, was +endeavouring to wound. Scrope asked himself whether he was to blame for +that disappointment. That was a more difficult question.... + +He dismissed the charge at last, crumpled up the letter in his hand, and +after a moment's hesitation flung it away.... But he remained acutely +sorry, not so much for himself as for the revelation of Likeman this +letter made. He had had a great affection for Likeman and suddenly it +was turned into a wound. + +(3) + + +The second letter was from Lady Sunderbund, and it was an altogether +more remarkable document. Lady Sunderbund wrote on a notepaper that was +evidently the result of a perverse research, but she wrote a letter far +more coherent than her speech, and without that curious falling away +of the r's that flavoured even her gravest observations with an unjust +faint aroma of absurdity. She wrote with a thin pen in a rounded boyish +handwriting. She italicized with slashes of the pen. + +He held this letter in both hands between his knees, and considered +it now with an expression that brought his eyebrows forward until they +almost met, and that tucked in the corners of his mouth. + +“My dear Bishop,” it began. + +“I keep thinking and thinking and thinking of that wonderful service, of +the wonderful, wonderful things you said, and the wonderful choice you +made of the moment to say them--when all those young lives were coming +to the great serious thing in life. It was most beautifully done. At any +rate, dear Bishop and Teacher, it was most beautifully begun. And now we +all stand to you like creditors because you have given us so much that +you owe us ever so much more. You have started us and you have to go on +with us. You have broken the shell of the old church, and here we are +running about with nowhere to go. You have to make the shelter of a new +church now for us, purged of errors, looking straight to God. The +King of Mankind!--what a wonderful, wonderful phrase that is. It says +everything. Tell us more of him and more. Count me first--not foremost, +but just the little one that runs in first--among your disciples. They +say you are resigning your position in the church. Of course that must +be true. You are coming out of it--what did you call it?--coming out of +the cracked old vessel from which you have poured the living waters. I +called on Lady Ella yesterday. She did not tell me very much; I think +she is a very reserved as well as a very dignified woman, but she said +that you intended to go to London. In London then I suppose you will set +up the first altar to the Divine King. I want to help. + +“Dear Bishop and Teacher, I want to help tremendously--with all my heart +and all my soul. I want to be let do things for you.” (The “you” was +erased by three or four rapid slashes, and “our King” substituted.) + +“I want to be privileged to help build that First Church of the World +Unified under God. It is a dreadful thing to says but, you see, I am +very rich; this dreadful war has made me ever so much richer--steel and +shipping and things--it is my trustees have done it. I am ashamed to be +so rich. I want to give. I want to give and help this great beginning of +yours. I want you to let me help on the temporal side, to make it +easy for you to stand forth and deliver your message, amidst suitable +surroundings and without any horrid worries on account of the sacrifices +you have made. Please do not turn my offering aside. I have never wanted +anything so much in all my life as I want to make this gift. Unless I +can make it I feel that for me there is no salvation! I shall stick with +my loads and loads of stocks and shares and horrid possessions outside +the Needle's Eye. But if I could build a temple for God, and just live +somewhere near it so as to be the poor woman who sweeps out the chapels, +and die perhaps and be buried under its floor! Don't smile at me. I +mean every word of it. Years ago I thought of such a thing. After I had +visited the Certosa di Pavia--do you know it? So beautiful, and those +two still alabaster figures--recumbent. But until now I could never see +my way to any such service. Now I do. I am all afire to do it. Help me! +Tell me! Let me stand behind you and make your mission possible. I feel +I have come to the most wonderful phase in my life. I feel my call has +come.... + +“I have written this letter over three times, and torn each of them up. +I do so want to say all this, and it is so desperately hard to say. I am +full of fears that you despise me. I know there is a sort of high colour +about me. My passion for brightness. I am absurd. But inside of me is +a soul, a real, living, breathing soul. Crying out to you: 'Oh, let me +help! Let me help!' I will do anything, I will endure anything if only I +can keep hold of the vision splendid you gave me in the cathedral. I see +it now day and night, the dream of the place I can make for you--and you +preaching! My fingers itch to begin. The day before yesterday I said +to myself, 'I am quite unworthy, I am a worldly woman, a rich, smart, +decorated woman. He will never accept me as I am.' I took off all +my jewels, every one, I looked through all my clothes, and at last I +decided I would have made for me a very simple straight grey dress, just +simple and straight and grey. Perhaps you will think that too is absurd +of me, too self-conscious. I would not tell of it to you if I did not +want you to understand how alive I am to my utter impossibilities, how +resolved I am to do anything so that I may be able to serve. But never +mind about silly me; let me tell you how I see the new church. + +“I think you ought to have some place near the centre of London; not too +west, for you might easily become fashionable, not too east because you +might easily be swallowed up in merely philanthropic work, but somewhere +between the two. There must be vacant sites still to be got round about +Kingsway. And there we must set up your tabernacle, a very plain, very +simple, very beautifully proportioned building in which you can +give your message. I know a young man, just the very young man to do +something of the sort, something quite new, quite modern, and yet solemn +and serious. Lady Ella seemed to think you wanted to live somewhere in +the north-west of London--but she would tell me very little. I seem to +see you not there at all, not in anything between west-end and suburb, +but yourself as central as your mind, in a kind of clergy house that +will be part of the building. That is how it is in my dream anyhow. All +that though can be settled afterwards. My imagination and my desire is +running away with me. It is no time yet for premature plans. Not that +I am not planning day and night. This letter is simply to offer. I just +want to offer. Here I am and all my worldly goods. Take me, I pray you. +And not only pray you. Take me, I demand of you, in the name of God our +king. I have a right to be used. And you have no right to refuse me. You +have to go on with your message, and it is your duty to take me--just as +you are obliged to step on any steppingstone that lies on your way to +do God service.... And so I am waiting. I shall be waiting--on thorns. +I know you will take your time and think. But do not take too much time. +Think of me waiting. + +“Your servant, your most humble helper in God (your God), + +“AGATHA SUNDERBUND.” + + +And then scrawled along the margin of the last sheet: + + +“If, when you know--a telegram. Even if you cannot say so much as +'Agreed,' still such a word as 'Favourable.' I just hang over the Void +until I hear. + +“AGATHA S.” + + +A letter demanding enormous deliberation. She argued closely in spite of +her italics. It had never dawned upon the bishop before how light is +the servitude of the disciple in comparison with the servitude of the +master. In many ways this proposal repelled and troubled him, in many +ways it attracted him. And the argument of his clear obligation to +accept her co-operation gripped him; it was a good argument. + +And besides it worked in very conveniently with certain other +difficulties that perplexed him. + +(4) + + +The bishop became aware that Eleanor was returning to him across the +sands. She had made an end to her paddling, she had put on her shoes and +stockings and become once more the grave and responsible young woman +who had been taking care of him since his flight from Princhester. He +replaced the two letters in his pocket, and sat ready to smile as she +drew near; he admired her open brow, the toss of her hair, and the poise +of her head upon her neck. It was good to note that her hard reading at +Cambridge hadn't bent her shoulders in the least.... + +“Well, old Dad!” she said as she drew near. “You've got back a colour.” + +“I've got back everything. It's time I returned to Princhester.” + +“Not in this weather. Not for a day or so.” She flung herself at his +feet. “Consider your overworked little daughter. Oh,how good this is!” + +“No,” said the bishop in a grave tone that made her look up into his +face. “I must go hack.” + +He met her clear gaze. “What do you think of all this business, +Eleanor?” he asked abruptly. “Do you think I had a sort of fit in the +cathedral?” + +He winced as he asked the question. + +“Daddy,” she said, after a little pause; “the things you said and did +that afternoon were the noblest you ever did in your life. I wish I had +been there. It must have been splendid to be there. I've not told you +before--I've been dying to.... I'd promised not to say a word--not to +remind you. I promised the doctor. But now you ask me, now you are well +again, I can tell you. Kitty Kingdom has told me all about it, how it +felt. It was like light and order coming into a hopeless dark muddle. +What you said was like what we have all been trying to think--I mean all +of us young people. Suddenly it was all clear.” + +She stopped short. She was breathless with the excitement of her +confession. + +Her father too remained silent for a little while. He was reminded of +his weakness; he was, he perceived, still a little hysterical. He felt +that he might weep at her youthful enthusiasm if he did not restrain +himself. + +“I'm glad,” he said, and patted her shoulder. “I'm glad, Norah.” + +She looked away from him out across the lank brown sands and water pools +to the sea. “It was what we have all been feeling our way towards, the +absolute simplification of religion, the absolute simplification of +politics and social duty; just God, just God the King.” + +“But should I have said that--in the cathedral?” + +She felt no scruples. “You had to,” she said. + +“But now think what it means,” he said. “I must leave the church.” + +“As a man strips off his coat for a fight.” + +“That doesn't dismay you?” + +She shook her head, and smiled confidently to sea and sky. + +“I'm glad if you're with me,” he said. “Sometimes--I think--I'm not a +very self-reliant man.” + +“You'll have all the world with you,” she was convinced, “in a little +time.” + +“Perhaps rather a longer time than you think, Norah. In the meantime--” + +She turned to him once more. + +“In the meantime there are a great many things to consider. Young +people, they say, never think of the transport that is needed to win a +battle. I have it in my mind that I should leave the church. But I can't +just walk out into the marketplace and begin preaching there. I see the +family furniture being carried out of the palace and put into vans. It +has to go somewhere....” + +“I suppose you will go to London.” + +“Possibly. In fact certainly. I have a plan. Or at least an +opportunity.... But that isn't what I have most in mind. These things +are not done without emotion and a considerable strain upon one's +personal relationships. I do not think this--I do not think your mother +sees things as we do.” + +“She will,” said young enthusiasm, “when she understands.” + +“I wish she did. But I have been unlucky in the circumstances of +my explanations to her. And of course you understand all this means +risks--poverty perhaps--going without things--travel, opportunity, nice +possessions--for all of us. A loss of position too. All this sort of +thing,” he stuck out a gaitered calf and smiled, “will have to go. +People, some of them, may be disasagreeable to us....” + +“After all, Daddy,” she said, smiling, “it isn't so bad as the cross and +the lions and burning pitch. And you have the Truth.” + +“You do believe--?” He left his sentence unfinished. + +She nodded, her face aglow. “We know you have the Truth.” + +“Of course in my own mind now it is very clear. I had a kind of +illumination....” He would have tried to tell her of his vision, and +he was too shy. “It came to me suddenly that the whole world was in +confusion because men followed after a thousand different immediate +aims, when really it was quite easy, if only one could be simple it was +quite easy, to show that nearly all men could only be fully satisfied +and made happy in themselves by one single aim, which was also the aim +that would make the whole world one great order, and that aim was to +make God King of one's heart and the whole world. I saw that all this +world, except for a few base monstrous spirits, was suffering hideous +things because of this war, and before the war it was full of folly, +waste, social injustice and suspicion for the same reason, because it +had not realized the kingship of God. And that is so simple; the essence +of God is simplicity. The sin of this war lies with men like myself, men +who set up to tell people about God, more than it lies with any other +class--” + +“Kings?” she interjected. “Diplomatists? Finance?” + +“Yes. Those men could only work mischief in the world because the +priests and teachers let them. All things human lie at last at the +door of the priest and teacher. Who differentiate, who qualify and +complicate, who make mean unnecessary elaborations, and so divide +mankind. If it were not for the weakness and wickedness of the priests, +every one would know and understand God. Every one who was modest enough +not to set up for particular knowledge. Men disputed whether God is +Finite or Infinite, whether he has a triple or a single aspect. How +should they know? All we need to know is the face he turns to us. They +impose their horrible creeds and distinctions. None of those things +matter. Call him Christ the God or call him simply God, Allah, Heaven; +it does not matter. He comes to us, we know, like a Helper and Friend; +that is all we want to know. You may speculate further if you like, but +it is not religion. They dispute whether he can set aside nature. But +that is superstition. He is either master of nature and he knows that it +is good, or he is part of nature and must obey. That is an argument for +hair-splitting metaphysicians. Either answer means the same for us. It +does not matter which way we come to believe that he does not idly set +the course of things aside. Obviously he does not set the course of +things aside. What he does do for certain is to give us courage and save +us from our selfishness and the bitter hell it makes for us. And every +one knows too what sort of things we want, and for what end we want +to escape from ourselves. We want to do right. And right, if you think +clearly, is just truth within and service without, the service of God's +kingdom, which is mankind, the service of human needs and the increase +of human power and experience. It is all perfectly plain, it is all +quite easy for any one to understand, who isn't misled and chattered at +and threatened and poisoned by evil priests and teachers.” + +“And you are going to preach that, Daddy?” + +“If I can. When I am free--you know I have still to resign and give +up--I shall make that my message.” + +“And so God comes.” + +“God comes as men perceive him in his simplicity.... Let men but see God +simply, and forthwith God and his kingdom possess the world.” + +She looked out to sea in silence for awhile. + +Then she turned to her father. “And you think that His Kingdom will +come--perhaps in quite a little time--perhaps in our lifetimes? And +that all these ridiculous or wicked little kings and emperors, and +these political parties, and these policies and conspiracies, and +this nationalist nonsense and all the patriotism and rowdyism, all the +private profit-seeking and every baseness in life, all the things that +it is so horrible and disgusting to be young among and powerless among, +you think they will fade before him?” + +The bishop pulled his faith together. + +“They will fade before him--but whether it will take a lifetime or a +hundred lifetimes or a thousand lifetimes, my Norah--” + +He smiled and left his sentence unfinished, and she smiled back at him +to show she understood. + +And then he confessed further, because he did not want to seem merely +sentimentally hopeful. + +“When I was in the cathedral, Norah--and just before that service, it +seemed to me--it was very real.... It seemed that perhaps the Kingdom of +God is nearer than we suppose, that it needs but the faith and courage +of a few, and it may be that we may even live to see the dawning of his +kingdom, even--who knows?--the sunrise. I am so full of faith and hope +that I fear to be hopeful with you. But whether it is near or far--” + +“We work for it,” said Eleanor. + +Eleanor thought, eyes downcast for a little while, and then looked up. + +“It is so wonderful to talk to you like this, Daddy. In the old days, I +didn't dream--Before I went to Newnham. I misjudged you. I thought Never +mind what I thought. It was silly. But now I am so proud of you. And so +happy to be back with you, Daddy, and find that your religion is after +all just the same religion that I have been wanting.” + + + + +CHAPTER THE NINTH - THE THIRD VISION + +(1) + + +ONE afternoon in October, four months and more after that previous +conversation, the card of Mr. Edward Scrope was brought up to Dr. +Brighton-Pomfrey. The name awakened no memories. The doctor descended to +discover a man so obviously in unaccustomed plain clothes that he had a +momentary disagreeable idea that he was facing a detective. Then he saw +that this secular disguise draped the familiar form of his old friend, +the former Bishop of Princhester. Scrope was pale and a little untidy; +he had already acquired something of the peculiar, slightly faded +quality one finds in a don who has gone to Hampstead and fallen amongst +advanced thinkers and got mixed up with the Fabian Society. His anxious +eyes and faintly propitiatory manner suggested an impending appeal. + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey had the savoir-faire of a successful consultant; he +prided himself on being all things to all men; but just for an instant +he was at a loss what sort of thing he had to be here. Then he adopted +the genial, kindly, but by no means lavishly generous tone advisable +in the case of a man who has suffered considerable social deterioration +without being very seriously to blame. + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was a little round-faced man with defective +eyesight and an unsuitable nose for the glasses he wore, and he +flaunted--God knows why--enormous side-whiskers. + +“Well,” he said, balancing the glasses skilfully by throwing back his +head, “and how are you? And what can I do for you? There's no external +evidence of trouble. You're looking lean and a little pale, but +thoroughly fit.” + +“Yes,” said the late bishop, “I'm fairly fit--” + +“Only--?” said the doctor, smiling his teeth, with something of the +manner of an old bathing woman who tells a child to jump. + +“Well, I'm run down and--worried.” + +“We'd better sit down,” said the great doctor professionally, and looked +hard at him. Then he pulled at the arm of a chair. + +The ex-bishop sat down, and the doctor placed himself between his +patient and the light. + +“This business of resigning my bishopric and so forth has involved very +considerable strains,” Scrope began. “That I think is the essence of the +trouble. One cuts so many associations.... I did not realize how +much feeling there would be.... Difficulties too of readjusting one's +position.” + +“Zactly. Zactly. Zactly,” said the doctor, snapping his face and making +his glasses vibrate. “Run down. Want a tonic or a change?” + +“Yes. In fact--I want a particular tonic.” + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey made his eyes and mouth round and interrogative. + +“While you were away last spring--” + +“Had to go,” said the doctor, “unavoidable. Gas gangrene. Certain +enquiries. These young investigators all very well in their way. But we +older reputations--Experience. Maturity of judgment. Can't do without +us. Yes?” + +“Well, I came here last spring and saw, an assistant I suppose he was, +or a supply,--do you call them supplies in your profession?--named, I +think--Let me see--D--?” + +“Dale!” + +The doctor as he uttered this word set his face to the unaccustomed +exercise of expressing malignity. His round blue eyes sought to blaze, +small cherubic muscles exerted themselves to pucker his brows. His +colour became a violent pink. “Lunatic!” he said. “Dangerous Lunatic! He +didn't do anything--anything bad in your case, did he?” + +He was evidently highly charged with grievance in this matter. “That man +was sent to me from Cambridge with the highest testimonials. The +very highest. I had to go at twenty-four hours' notice. Enquiry--gas +gangrene. There was nothing for it but to leave things in his hands.” + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey disavowed responsibility with an open, +stumpy-fingered hand. + +“He did me no particular harm,” said Scrope. + +“You are the first he spared,” said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey. + +“Did he--? Was he unskilful?” + +“Unskilful is hardly the word.” + +“Were his methods peculiar?” + +The little doctor sprang to his feet and began to pace about the room. +“Peculiar!” he said. “It was abominable that they should send him to me. +Abominable!” + +He turned, with all the round knobs that constituted his face, aglow. +His side-whiskers waved apart like wings about to flap. He protruded his +face towards his seated patient. “I am glad that he has been killed,” he +said. “Glad! There!” + +His glasses fell off--shocked beyond measure. He did not heed them. They +swung about in front of him as if they sought to escape while he poured +out his feelings. + +“Fool!” he spluttered with demonstrative gestures. “Dangerous fool! His +one idea--to upset everybody. Drugs, Sir! The most terrible drugs! I +come back. Find ladies. High social position. Morphine-maniacs. Others. +Reckless use of the most dangerous expedients.... Cocaine not in it. +Stimulants--violent stimulants. In the highest quarters. Terrible. +Exalted persons. Royalty! Anxious to be given war work and become +anonymous.... Horrible! He's been a terrible influence. One idea--to +disturb soul and body. Minds unhinged. Personal relations deranged. +Shattered the practice of years. The harm he has done! The harm!” + +He looked as though he was trying to burst--as a final expression of +wrath. He failed. His hands felt trembling to recover his pince-nez. +Then from his tail pocket he produced a large silk handkerchief and +wiped the glasses. Replaced them. Wriggled his head in his collar, +running his fingers round his neck. Patted his tie. + +“Excuse this outbreak!” he said. “But Dr. Dale has inflicted injuries!” + +Scrope got up, walked slowly to the window, clasping his hands behind +his back, and turned. His manner still retained much of his episcopal +dignity. “I am sorry. But still you can no doubt tell from your books +what it was he gave me. It was a tonic that had a very great effect on +me. And I need it badly now.” + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was quietly malignant. “He kept no diary at all,” + he said. “No diary at all.” + +“But + +“If he did,” said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey, holding up a flat hand and +wagging it from side to side, “I wouldn't follow his treatment.” + He intensified with the hand going faster. “I wouldn't follow his +treatment. Not under any circumstances.” + +“Naturally,” said Scrope, “if the results are what you say. But in +my case it wasn't a treatment. I was sleepless, confused in my mind, +wretched and demoralized; I came here, and he just produced the +stuff--It clears the head, it clears the mind. One seems to get away +from the cloud of things, to get through to essentials and fundamentals. +It straightened me out.... You must know such a stuff. Just now, +confronted with all sorts of problems arising out of my resignation, +I want that tonic effect again. I must have it. I have matters to +decide--and I can't decide. I find myself uncertain, changeable from +hour to hour. I don't ask you to take up anything of this man Dale's. +This is a new occasion. But I want that drug.” + +At the beginning of this speech Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey's hands had fallen +to his hips. As Scrope went on the doctor's pose had stiffened. His head +had gone a little on one side; he had begun to play with his glasses. +At the end he gave vent to one or two short coughs, and then pointed his +words with his glasses held out. + +“Tell me,” he said, “tell me.” (Cough.) “Had this drug that cleared your +head--anything to do with your resignation?” + +And he put on his glasses disconcertingly, and threw his head back to +watch the reply. + +“It did help to clear up the situation.” + +“Exactly,” said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey in a tone that defined his own +position with remorseless clearness. “Exactly.” And he held up a flat, +arresting hand. . + +“My dear Sir,” he said. “How can you expect me to help you to a drug so +disastrous?--even if I could tell you what it is.” + +“But it was not disastrous to me,” said Scrope. + +“Your extraordinary resignation--your still more extraordinary way of +proclaiming it!” + +“I don't think those were disasters.” + +“But my dear Sir!” + +“You don't want to discuss theology with me, I know. So let me tell you +simply that from my point of view the illumination that came to me--this +drug of Dr. Dale's helping--has been the great release of my life. It +crystallized my mind. It swept aside the confusing commonplace things +about me. Just for a time I saw truth clearly.... I want to do so +again.” + +“Why?” + +“There is a crisis in my affairs--never mind what. But I cannot see my +way clear.” + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was meditating now with his eyes on his carpet +and the corners of his mouth tucked in. He was swinging his glasses +pendulum-wise. “Tell me,” he said, looking sideways at Scrope, “what +were the effects of this drug? It may have been anything. How did it +give you this--this vision of the truth--that led to your resignation?” + +Scrope felt a sudden shyness. But he wanted Dale's drug again so badly +that he obliged himself to describe his previous experiences to the best +of his ability. + +“It was,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “a golden, transparent +liquid. Very golden, like a warm-tinted Chablis. When water was added +it became streaked and opalescent, with a kind of living quiver in it. I +held it up to the light.” + +“Yes? And when you took it?” + +“I felt suddenly clearer. My mind--I had a kind of exaltation and +assurance.” + +“Your mind,” Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey assisted, “began to go twenty-nine to +the dozen.” + +“It felt stronger and clearer,” said Scrope, sticking to his quest. + +“And did things look as usual?” asked the doctor, protruding his knobby +little face like a clenched fist. + +“No,” said Scrope and regarded him. How much was it possible to tell a +man of this type? + +“They differed?” said the doctor, relaxing. + +“Yes.... Well, to be plain.... I had an immediate sense of God. I +saw the world--as if it were a transparent curtain, and then God +became--evident.... Is it possible for that to determine the drug?” + +“God became--evident,” the doctor said with some distaste, and shook his +head slowly. Then in a sudden sharp cross-examining tone: “You mean you +had a vision? Actually saw 'um?” + +“It was in the form of a vision.” Scrope was now mentally very +uncomfortable indeed. + +The doctor's lips repeated these words noiselessly, with an effect of +contempt. “He must have given you something--It's a little like morphia. +But golden--opalescent? And it was this vision made you astonish us all +with your resignation?” + +“That was part of a larger process,” said Scrope patiently. “I had been +drifting into a complete repudiation of the Anglican positions long +before that. All that this drug did was to make clear what was already +in my mind. And give it value. Act as a developer.” + +The doctor suddenly gave way to a botryoidal hilarity. “To think that +one should be consulted about visions of God--in Mount Street!” he said. +“And you know, you know you half want to believe that vision was real. +You know you do.” + +So far Scrope had been resisting his realization of failure. Now he +gave way to an exasperation that made him reckless of Brighton-Pomfrey's +opinion. “I do think,” he said, “that that drug did in some way make God +real to me. I think I saw God.” + +Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey shook his head in a way that made Scrope want to +hit him. + +“I think I saw God,” he repeated more firmly. “I had a sudden +realization of how great he was and how great life was, and how timid +and mean and sordid were all our genteel, professional lives. I was +seized upon, for a time I was altogether possessed by a passion to serve +him fitly and recklessly, to make an end to compromises with comfort and +self-love and secondary things. And I want to hold to that. I want to +get back to that. I am given to lassitudes. I relax. I am by temperament +an easy-going man. I want to buck myself up, I want to get on with my +larger purposes, and I find myself tired, muddled, entangled.... The +drug was a good thing. For me it was a good thing. I want its help +again.” + +“I know no more than you do what it was.” + +“Are there no other drugs that you do know, that have a kindred effect? +If for example I tried morphia in some form?” + +“You'd get visions. They wouldn't be divine visions. If you took small +quantities very discreetly you might get a temporary quickening. But +the swift result of all repeated drug-taking is, I can assure you, +moral decay--rapid moral decay. To touch drugs habitually is to become +hopelessly unpunctual, untruthful, callously selfish and insincere. I am +talking mere textbook, mere everyday common-places, to you when I tell +you that.” + +“I had an idea. I had a hope....” + +“You've a stiff enough fight before you,” said the doctor, “without such +a handicap as that.” + +“You won't help me?” + +The doctor walked up and down his hearthrug, and then delivered himself +with an extended hand and waggling fingers. + +“I wouldn't if I could. For your good I wouldn't. And even if I would +I couldn't, for I don't know the drug. One of his infernal brews, +no doubt. Something--accidental. It's lost--for good--for your good, +anyhow....” + +(2) + + +Scrope halted outside the stucco portals of the doctor's house. He +hesitated whether he should turn to the east or the west. + +“That door closes,” he said. “There's no getting back that way.”... + +He stood for a time on the kerb. He turned at last towards Park Lane and +Hyde Park. He walked along thoughtfully, inattentively steering a course +for his new home in Pembury Road, Notting Hill. + +(3) + + +At the outset of this new phase in Scrope's life that had followed the +crisis of the confirmation service, everything had seemed very clear +before him. He believed firmly that he had been shown God, that he had +himself stood in the presence of God, and that there had been a plain +call to him to proclaim God to the world. He had realized God, and it +was the task of every one who had realized God to help all mankind to +the same realization. The proposal of Lady Sunderbund had fallen in with +that idea. He had been steeling himself to a prospect of struggle and +dire poverty, but her prompt loyalty had come as an immense relief to +his anxiety for his wife and family. When he had talked to Eleanor +upon the beach at Hunstanton it had seemed to him that his course was +manifest, perhaps a little severe but by no means impossible. They had +sat together in the sunshine, exalted by a sense of fine adventure and +confident of success, they had looked out upon the future, upon +the great near future in which the idea of God was to inspire and +reconstruct the world. + +It was only very slowly that this pristine clearness became clouded and +confused. It had not been so easy as Eleanor had supposed to win over +the sympathy of Lady Ella with his resignation. Indeed it had not been +won over. She had become a stern and chilling companion, mute now upon +the issue of his resignation, but manifestly resentful. He was secretly +disappointed and disconcerted by her tone. And the same hesitation of +the mind, instinctive rather than reasoned, that had prevented a frank +explanation of his earlier doubts to her, now restrained him from +telling her naturally and at once of the part that Lady Sunderbund was +to play in his future ministry. In his own mind he felt assured about +that part, but in order to excuse his delay in being frank with his +wife, he told himself that he was not as yet definitely committed to +Lady Sunderbund's project. And in accordance with that idea he set +up housekeeping in London upon a scale that implied a very complete +cessation of income. “As yet,” he told Lady Ella, “we do not know where +we stand. For a time we must not so much house ourselves as camp. We +must take some quite small and modest house in some less expensive +district. If possible I would like to take it for a year, until we know +better how things are with us.” + +He reviewed a choice of London districts. + +Lady Ella said her bitterest thing. “Does it matter where we hide our +heads?” + +That wrung him to: “We are not hiding our heads.” + +She repented at once. “I am sorry, Ted,” she said. “It slipped from +me.”... + +He called it camping, but the house they had found in Pembury Road, +Notting Hill, was more darkened and less airy than any camp. Neither he +nor his wife had ever had any experience of middle-class house-hunting +or middle-class housekeeping before, and they spent three of the most +desolating days of their lives in looking for this cheap and modest +shelter for their household possessions. Hitherto life had moved them +from one established and comfortable home to another; their worst +affliction had been the modern decorations of the Palace at Princhester, +and it was altogether a revelation to them to visit house after house, +ill-lit, ill-planned, with dingy paint and peeling wallpaper, kitchens +for the most part underground, and either without bathrooms or with +built-out bathrooms that were manifestly grudging afterthoughts, such +as harbour the respectable middle classes of London. The house agents +perceived intimations of helplessness in their manner, adopted a +“rushing” method with them strange to people who had hitherto lived in +a glowing halo of episcopal dignity. “Take it or leave it,” was the note +of those gentlemen; “there are always people ready for houses.” The +line that property in land and houses takes in England, the ex-bishop +realized, is always to hold up and look scornful. The position of the +land-owning, house-owning class in a crowded country like England is +ultra-regal. It is under no obligation to be of use, and people are +obliged to get down to the land somewhere. They cannot conduct business +and rear families in the air. England's necessity is the landlord's +opportunity.... + +Scrope began to generalize about this, and develop a new and sincerer +streak of socialism in his ideas. “The church has been very remiss,” + he said, as he and Lady Ella stared at the basement “breakfast room” of +their twenty-seventh dismal possibility. “It should have insisted far +more than it has done upon the landlord's responsibility. No one should +tolerate the offer of such a house as this--at such a rent--to decent +people. It is unrighteous.” + +At the house agent's he asked in a cold, intelligent ruling-class voice, +the name of the offending landlord. + +“It's all the property of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that side of +the railway,” said the agent, picking his teeth with a pin. “Lazy +lot. Dreadfully hard to get 'em to do anything. Own some of the worst +properties in London.” + +Lady Ella saw things differently again. “If you had stayed in the +church,” she said afterwards, “you might have helped to alter such +things as that.” + +At the time he had no answer. + +“But,” he said presently as they went back in the tube to their modest +Bloomsbury hotel, “if I had stayed in the church I should never have +realized things like that.” + +(4) + + +But it does no justice to Lady Ella to record these two unavoidable +expressions of regret without telling also of the rallying courage with +which she presently took over the task of resettling herself and her +stricken family. Her husband's change of opinion had fallen upon her out +of a clear sky, without any premonition, in one tremendous day. In one +day there had come clamouring upon her, with an effect of revelation +after revelation, the ideas of drugs, of heresy and blasphemy, of an +alien feminine influence, of the entire moral and material breakdown of +the man who had been the centre of her life. Never was the whole world +of a woman so swiftly and comprehensively smashed. All the previous +troubles of her life seemed infinitesimal in comparison with any single +item in this dismaying debacle. She tried to consolidate it in the idea +that he was ill, “disordered.” She assured herself that he would +return from Hunstanton restored to health and orthodoxy, with all +his threatenings of a resignation recalled; the man she had loved and +trusted to succeed in the world and to do right always according to her +ideas. It was only with extreme reluctance that she faced the fact that +with the fumes of the drug dispelled and all signs of nervous exhaustion +gone, he still pressed quietly but resolutely toward a severance from +the church. She tried to argue with him and she found she could not +argue. The church was a crystal sphere in which her life was wholly +contained, her mind could not go outside it even to consider a +dissentient proposition. + +While he was at Hunstanton, every day she had prayed for an hour, some +days she had prayed for several hours, in the cathedral, kneeling upon +a harsh hassock that hurt her knees. Even in her prayers she could not +argue nor vary. She prayed over and over again many hundreds of times: +“Bring him back, dear Lord. Bring him back again.” + +In the past he had always been a very kind and friendly mate to her, but +sometimes he had been irritable about small things, especially during +his seasons of insomnia; now he came back changed, a much graver man, +rather older in his manner, carefully attentive to her, kinder and more +watchful, at times astonishingly apologetic, but rigidly set upon his +purpose of leaving the church. “I know you do not think with me in +this,” he said. “I have to pray you to be patient with me. I have +struggled with my conscience.... For a time it means hardship, I know. +Poverty. But if you will trust me I think I shall be able to pull +through. There are ways of doing my work. Perhaps we shall not have to +undergo this cramping in this house for very long....” + +“It is not the poverty I fear,” said Lady Ella. + +And she did face the worldly situation, if a little sadly, at any +rate with the courage of practical energy. It was she who stood in +one ungainly house after another and schemed how to make discomforts +tolerable, while Scrope raged unhelpfully at landlordism and the +responsibility of the church for economic disorder. It was she who at +last took decisions into her hands when he was too jaded to do anything +but generalize weakly, and settled upon the house in Pembury Road which +became their London home. She got him to visit Hunstanton again for half +a week while she and Miriam, who was the practical genius of the family, +moved in and made the new home presentable. At the best it was barely +presentable. There were many plain hardships. The girls had to share one +of the chief bedrooms in common instead of their jolly little individual +dens at Princhester.... One little room was all that could be squeezed +out as a study for “father”; it was not really a separate room, it was +merely cut off by closed folding doors from the dining-room, folding +doors that slowly transmitted the dinner flavours to a sensitive worker, +and its window looked out upon a blackened and uneventful yard and the +skylights of a populous, conversational, and high-spirited millinery +establishment that had been built over the corresponding garden of the +house in Restharrow Street. Lady Ella had this room lined with open +shelves, and Clementina (in the absence of Eleanor at Newuham) +arranged the pick of her father's books. It is to be noted as a fact of +psychological interest that this cramped, ill-lit little room distressed +Lady Ella more than any other of the discomforts of their new quarters. +The bishop's writing-desk filled a whole side of it. Parsimony ruled her +mind, but she could not resist the impulse to get him at least a seemly +reading-lamp. + +He came back from Hunstanton full of ideas for work in London. He was, +he thought, going to “write something” about his views. He was very +grateful and much surprised at what she had done to that forbidding +house, and full of hints and intimations that it would not be long +before they moved to something roomier. She was disposed to seek some +sort of salaried employment for Clementina and Miriam at least, but he +would not hear of that. “They must go on and get educated,” he said, “if +I have to give up smoking to do it. Perhaps I may manage even without +that.” Eleanor, it seemed, had a good prospect of a scholarship at the +London School of Economics that would practically keep her. There would +be no Cambridge for Clementina, but London University might still be +possible with a little pinching, and the move to London had really +improved the prospects of a good musical training for Miriam. Phoebe and +Daphne, Lady Ella believed, might get in on special terms at the Notting +Hill High School. + +Scrope found it difficult to guess at what was going on in the heads +of his younger daughters. None displayed such sympathy as Eleanor had +confessed. He had a feeling that his wife had schooled them to say +nothing about the change in their fortunes to him. But they quarrelled +a good deal, he could hear, about the use of the one bathroom--there was +never enough hot water after the second bath. And Miriam did not seem to +enjoy playing the new upright piano in the drawing-room as much as +she had done the Princhester grand it replaced. Though she was always +willing to play that thing he liked; he knew now that it was the Adagio +of Of. 111; whenever he asked for it. + +London servants, Lady Ella found, were now much more difficult to get +than they had been in the Holy Innocents' days in St. John's Wood. And +more difficult to manage when they were got. The households of the more +prosperous clergy are much sought after by domestics of a serious and +excellent type; an unfrocked clergyman's household is by no means +so attractive. The first comers were young women of unfortunate +dispositions; the first cook was reluctant and insolent, she went before +her month was up; the second careless; she made burnt potatoes and +cindered chops, underboiled and overboiled eggs; a “dropped” look about +everything, harsh coffee and bitter tea seemed to be a natural aspect of +the state of being no longer a bishop. He would often after a struggle +with his nerves in the bedroom come humming cheerfully to breakfast, to +find that Phoebe, who was a delicate eater, had pushed her plate away +scarcely touched, while Lady Ella sat at the end of the table in a state +of dangerous calm, framing comments for delivering downstairs that would +be sure to sting and yet leave no opening for repartee, and trying at +the same time to believe that a third cook, if the chances were risked +again, would certainly be “all right.” + +The drawing-room was papered with a morose wallpaper that the landlord, +in view of the fact that Scrope in his optimism would only take the +house on a yearly agreement, had refused to replace; it was a design of +very dark green leaves and grey gothic arches; and the apartment was lit +by a chandelier, which spilt a pool of light in the centre of the room +and splashed useless weak patches elsewhere. Lady Ella had to interfere +to prevent the monopolization of this centre by Phoebe and Daphne for +their home work. This light trouble was difficult to arrange; the plain +truth was that there was not enough illumination to go round. In the +Princhester drawing-room there had been a number of obliging little +electric pushes. The size of the dining-room, now that the study was +cut off from it, forbade hospitality. As it was, with only the family at +home, the housemaid made it a grievance that she could scarcely squeeze +by on the sideboard side to wait. + +The house vibrated to the trains in the adjacent underground railway. +There was a lady next door but one who was very pluckily training a +contralto voice that most people would have gladly thrown away. At the +end of Restharrow Street was a garage, and a yard where chauffeurs were +accustomed to “tune up” their engines. All these facts were persistently +audible to any one sitting down in the little back study to think out +this project of “writing something,” about a change in the government of +the whole world. Petty inconveniences no doubt all these inconveniences +were, but they distressed a rather oversensitive mind which was also +acutely aware that even upon this scale living would cost certainly two +hundred and fifty pounds if not more in excess of the little private +income available. + + +(5) + + +These domestic details, irrelevant as they may seem in a spiritual +history, need to be given because they added an intimate keenness +to Scrope's readiness for this private chapel enterprise that he was +discussing with Lady Sunderbund. Along that line and along that line +alone, he saw the way of escape from the great sea of London dinginess +that threatened to submerge his family. And it was also, he felt, the +line of his duty; it was his “call.” + +At least that was how he felt at first. And then matters began to grow +complicated again. + +Things had gone far between himself and Lady Sunderbund since that +letter he had read upon the beach at Old Hunstanton. The blinds of the +house with the very very blue door in Princhester had been drawn +from the day when the first vanload of the renegade bishop's private +possessions had departed from the palace. The lady had returned to +the brightly decorated flat overlooking Hyde Park. He had seen her +repeatedly since then, and always with a fairly clear understanding that +she was to provide the chapel and pulpit in which he was to proclaim to +London the gospel of the Simplicity and Universality of God. He was to +be the prophet of a reconsidered faith, calling the whole world from +creeds and sects, from egotisms and vain loyalties, from prejudices of +race and custom, to the worship and service of the Divine King of all +mankind. That in fact had been the ruling resolve in his mind, the +resolve determining his relations not only with Lady Sunderbund but with +Lady Ella and his family, his friends, enemies and associates. He had +set out upon this course unchecked by any doubt, and overriding the +manifest disapproval of his wife and his younger daughters. Lady +Sunderbund's enthusiasm had been enormous and sustaining.... + +Almost imperceptibly that resolve had weakened. Imperceptibly at first. +Then the decline had been perceived as one sometimes perceives a thing +in the background out of the corner of one's eye. + +In all his early anticipations of the chapel enterprise, he had imagined +himself in the likeness of a small but eloquent figure standing in a +large exposed place and calling this lost misled world back to God. Lady +Sunderbund, he assumed, was to provide the large exposed place (which +was dimly paved with pews) and guarantee that little matter which was +to relieve him of sordid anxieties for his family, the stipend. He had +agreed in an inattentive way that this was to be eight hundred a year, +with a certain proportion of the subscriptions. “At first, I shall be +the chief subscriber,” she said. “Before the rush comes.” He had been +so content to take all this for granted and think no more about it--more +particularly to think no more about it--that for a time he entirely +disregarded the intense decorative activities into which Lady Sunderbund +incontinently plunged. Had he been inclined to remark them he certainly +might have done so, even though a considerable proportion was being +thoughtfully veiled for a time from his eyes. + +For example, there was the young architect with the wonderful tie whom +he met once or twice at lunch in the Hyde Park flat. This young man +pulled the conversation again and again, Lady Sunderbund aiding and +abetting, in the direction of the “ideal church.” It was his ambition, +he said, someday, to build an ideal church, “divorced from tradition.” + +Scrope had been drawn at last into a dissertation. He said that hitherto +all temples and places of worship had been conditioned by orientation +due to the seasonal aspects of religion, they pointed to the west or--as +in the case of the Egyptian temples--to some particular star, and by +sacramentalism, which centred everything on a highly lit sacrificial +altar. It was almost impossible to think of a church built upon other +lines than that. The architect would be so free that-- + +“Absolutely free,” interrupted the young architect. “He might, for +example, build a temple like a star.” + +“Or like some wondyful casket,” said Lady Sunderbund.... + +And also there was a musician with fuzzy hair and an impulsive way of +taking the salted almonds, who wanted to know about religious music. + +Scrope hazarded the idea that a chanting people was a religious people. +He said, moreover, that there was a fine religiosity about Moussorgski, +but that the most beautiful single piece of music in the world +was Beethoven's sonata, Opus 111,--he was thinking, he said, more +particularly of the Adagio at the end, molto semplice e cantabile. It +had a real quality of divinity. + +The musician betrayed impatience at the name of Beethoven, and thought, +with his mouth appreciatively full of salted almonds, that nowadays we +had got a little beyond that anyhow. + +“We shall be superhuman before we get beyond either Purcell or +Beethoven,” said Scrope. + +Nor did he attach sufficient importance to Lady Sunderbund's disposition +to invite Positivists, members of the Brotherhood Church, leaders among +the Christian Scientists, old followers of the Rev. Charles Voysey, +Swedenborgians, Moslem converts, Indian Theosophists, psychic phenomena +and so forth, to meet him. Nevertheless it began to drift into his mind +that he was by no means so completely in control of the new departure +as he had supposed at first. Both he and Lady Sunderbund professed +universalism; but while his was the universalism of one who would +simplify to the bare fundamentals of a common faith, hers was the +universalism of the collector. Religion to him was something that +illuminated the soul, to her it was something that illuminated +prayer-books. For a considerable time they followed their divergent +inclinations without any realization of their divergence. None the less +a vague doubt and dissatisfaction with the prospect before him arose to +cloud his confidence. + +At first there was little or no doubt of his own faith. He was still +altogether convinced that he had to confess and proclaim God in his +life. He was as sure that God was the necessary king and saviour of +mankind and of a man's life, as he was of the truth of the Binomial +Theorem. But what began first to fade was the idea that he had been +specially called to proclaim the True God to all the world. He would +have the most amiable conference with Lady Sunderbund, and then as he +walked back to Notting Hill he would suddenly find stuck into his +mind like a challenge, Heaven knows how: “Another prophet?” Even if +he succeeded in this mission enterprise, he found himself asking, what +would he be but just a little West-end Mahomet? He would have founded +another sect, and we have to make an end to all sects. How is there to +be an end to sects, if there are still to be chapels--richly decorated +chapels--and congregations, and salaried specialists in God? + +That was a very disconcerting idea. It was particularly active at night. +He did his best to consider it with a cool detachment, regardless of +the facts that his private income was just under three hundred pounds a +year, and that his experiments in cultured journalism made it extremely +improbable that the most sedulous literary work would do more than +double this scanty sum. Yet for all that these nasty, ugly, sordid facts +were entirely disregarded, they did somehow persist in coming in and +squatting down, shapeless in a black corner of his mind--from which +their eyes shone out, so to speak--whenever his doubt whether he ought +to set up as a prophet at all was under consideration. + +(6) + + +Then very suddenly on this October afternoon the situation had come to a +crisis. + +He had gone to Lady Sunderbund's flat to see the plans and drawings for +the new church in which he was to give his message to the world. They +had brought home to him the complete realization of Lady Sunderbund's +impossibility. He had attempted upon the spur of the moment an +explanation of just how much they differed, and he had precipitated a +storm of extravagantly perplexing emotions.... + +She kept him waiting for perhaps ten minutes before she brought the +plans to him. He waited in the little room with the Wyndham Lewis +picture that opened upon the balcony painted with crazy squares of livid +pink. On a golden table by the window a number of recently bought books +were lying, and he went and stood over these, taking them up one after +another. The first was “The Countess of Huntingdon and Her Circle,” + that bearder of lightminded archbishops, that formidable harbourer of +Wesleyan chaplains. For some minutes he studied the grim portrait of +this inspired lady standing with one foot ostentatiously on her coronet +and then turned to the next volume. This was a life of Saint Teresa, +that energetic organizer of Spanish nunneries. The third dealt with +Madame Guyon. It was difficult not to feel that Lady Sunderbund was +reading for a part. + +She entered. + +She was wearing a long simple dress of spangled white with a very high +waist; she had a bracelet of green jade, a waistband of green silk, +and her hair was held by a wreath of artificial laurel, very stiff and +green. Her arms were full of big rolls of cartridge paper and tracing +paper. “I'm so pleased,” she said. “It's 'eady at last and I can show +you.” + +She banged the whole armful down upon a vivid little table of inlaid +black and white wood. He rescued one or two rolls and a sheet of tracing +paper from the floor. + +“It's the Temple,” she panted in a significant whisper. “It's the Temple +of the One T'ue God!” + +She scrabbled among the papers, and held up the elevation of a strange +square building to his startled eyes. “Iszi't it just pe'fect?” she +demanded. + +He took the drawing from her. It represented a building, manifestly an +enormous building, consisting largely of two great, deeply fluted towers +flanking a vast archway approached by a long flight of steps. Between +the towers appeared a dome. It was as if the Mosque of Saint Sophia had +produced this offspring in a mesalliance with the cathedral of +Wells. Its enormity was made manifest by the minuteness of the large +automobiles that were driving away in the foreground after “setting +down.” “Here is the plan,” she said, thrusting another sheet upon him +before he could fully take in the quality of the design. “The g'eat Hall +is to be pe'fectly 'ound, no aisle, no altar, and in lettas of sapphiah, +'God is ev'ywhe'.'” + +She added with a note of solemnity, “It will hold th'ee thousand people +sitting down.” + +“But--!” said Scrope. + +“The'e's a sort of g'andeur,” she said. “It's young Venable's wo'k. It's +his fl'st g'ate oppo'tunity.” + +“But--is this to go on that little site in Aldwych?” + +“He says the' isn't 'oom the'!” she explained. “He wants to put it out +at Golda's G'een.” + +“But--if it is to be this little simple chapel we proposed, then wasn't +our idea to be central?” + +“But if the' isn't 'oem!” she said--conclusively. “And isn't this--isn't +it rather a costly undertaking, rather more costly--” + +“That doesn't matta. I'm making heaps and heaps of money. Half my +p'ope'ty is in shipping and a lot of the 'eat in munitions. I'm 'icher +than eva. Isn't the' a sort of g'andeur?” she pressed. + +He put the elevation down. He took the plan from her hands and seemed to +study it. But he was really staring blankly at the whole situation. + +“Lady Sunderbund,” he said at last, with an effort, “I am afraid all +this won't do.” + +“Won't do!” + +“No. It isn't in the spirit of my intention. It isn't in a great +building of this sort--so--so ornate and imposing, that the simple +gospel of God's Universal Kingdom can be preached.” + +“But oughtn't so gate a message to have as g'ate a pulpit?” + +And then as if she would seize him before he could go on to further +repudiations, she sought hastily among the drawings again. + +“But look,” she said. “It has ev'ything! It's not only a p'eaching +place; it's a headquarters for ev'ything.” + +With the rapid movements of an excited child she began to thrust the +remarkable features and merits of the great project upon him. The +preaching dome was only the heart of it. There were to be a library, +“'efecto'ies,” consultation rooms, classrooms, a publication department, +a big underground printing establishment. “Nowadays,” she said, “ev'y +gate movement must p'int.” There was to be music, she said, “a gate +invisible o'gan,” hidden amidst the architectural details, and pouring +out its sounds into the dome, and then she glanced in passing at +possible “p'ocessions” round the preaching dome. This preaching dome +was not a mere shut-in drum for spiritual reverberations, around it ran +great open corridors, and in these corridors there were to be “chapels.” + +“But what for?” he asked, stemming the torrent. “What need is there for +chapels? There are to be no altars, no masses, no sacraments?” + +“No,” she said, “but they are to be chapels for special int'ests; a +chapel for science, a chapel for healing, a chapel for gov'ment. Places +for peoples to sit and think about those things--with paintings and +symbols.” + +“I see your intention,” he admitted. “I see your intention.” + +“The' is to be a gate da'k blue 'ound chapel for sta's and atoms and the +myst'ry of matta.” Her voice grew solemn. “All still and deep and high. +Like a k'ystal in a da'k place. You will go down steps to it. Th'ough +a da'k 'ounded a'ch ma'ked with mathematical symbols and balances and +scientific app'atus.... And the ve'y next to it, the ve'y next, is to be +a little b'ight chapel for bi'ds and flowas!” + +“Yes,” he said, “it is all very fine and expressive. It is, I see, a +symbolical building, a great artistic possibility. But is it the place +for me? What I have to say is something very simple, that God is the +king of the whole world, king of the ha'penny newspaper and the omnibus +and the vulgar everyday things, and that they have to worship him and +serve him as their leader in every moment of their lives. This isn't +that. This is the old religions over again. This is taking God apart. +This is putting him into a fresh casket instead of the old one. And.... +I don't like it.” + +“Don't like it,” she cried, and stood apart from him with her chin in +the air, a tall astonishment and dismay. + +“I can't do the work I want to do with this.” + +“But--Isn't it you' idea?” + +“No. It is not in the least my idea. I want to tell the whole world +of the one God that can alone unite it and save it--and you make this +extravagant toy.” + +He felt as if he had struck her directly he uttered that last word. + +“Toy!” she echoed, taking it in, “you call it a Toy!” + +A note in her voice reminded him that there were two people who might +feel strongly in this affair. + +“My dear Lady Sunderbund,” he said with a sudden change of manner, “I +must needs follow the light of my own mind. I have had a vision of God, +I have seen him as a great leader towering over the little lives of men, +demanding the little lives of men, prepared to take them and guide them +to the salvation of mankind and the conquest of pain and death. I have +seen him as the God of the human affair, a God of politics, a God of +such muddy and bloody wars as this war, a God of economics, a God of +railway junctions and clinics and factories and evening schools, a God +in fact of men. This God--this God here, that you want to worship, is a +God of artists and poets--of elegant poets, a God of bric-a-brac, a God +of choice allusions. Oh, it has its grandeur! I don't want you to think +that what you are doing may not be altogether fine and right for you to +do. But it is not what I have to do.... I cannot--indeed I cannot--go on +with this project--upon these lines.” + +He paused, flushed and breathless. Lady Sunderbund had heard him to the +end. Her bright face was brightly flushed, and there were tears in her +eyes. It was like her that they should seem tears of the largest, most +expensive sort, tears of the first water. + +“But,” she cried, and her red delicate mouth went awry with dismay and +disappointment, and her expression was the half incredulous expression +of a child suddenly and cruelly disappointed: “You won't go on with all +this?” + +“No,” he said. “My dear Lady Sunderbund--” + +“Oh! don't Lady Sunderbund me!” she cried with a novel rudeness. “Don't +you see I've done it all for you?” + +He winced and felt boorish. He had never liked and disapproved of Lady +Sunderbund so much as he did at that moment. And he had no words for +her. + +“How can I stop it all at once like this?” + +And still he had no answer. + +She pursued her advantage. “What am I to do?” she cried. + +She turned upon him passionately. “Look what you've done!” She marked +her points with finger upheld, and gave odd suggestions in her face of +an angry coster girl. “Eva' since I met you, I've wo'shipped you. I've +been 'eady to follow you anywhe'--to do anything. Eva' since that night +when you sat so calm and dignified, and they baited you and wo'id you. +When they we' all vain and cleva, and you--you thought only of God +and 'iligion and didn't mind fo' you'self.... Up to then--I'd been +living--oh! the emptiest life...” + +The tears ran. “Pe'haps I shall live it again....” She dashed her grief +away with a hand beringed with stones as big as beetles. + +“I said to myself, this man knows something I don't know. He's got the +seeds of ete'nal life su'ely. I made up my mind then and the' I'd follow +you and back you and do all I could fo' you. I've lived fo' you. Eve' +since. Lived fo' you. And now when all my little plans are 'ipe, you--! +Oh!” + +She made a quaint little gesture with pink fists upraised, and then +stood with her hand held up, staring at the plans and drawings that were +littered over the inlaid table. “I've planned and planned. I said, I +will build him a temple. I will be his temple se'vant.... Just a me' +se'vant....” + +She could not go on. + +“But it is just these temples that have confused mankind,” he said. + +“Not my temple,” she said presently, now openly weeping over the gay +rejected drawings. “You could have explained....” + +“Oh!” she said petulantly, and thrust them away from her so that they +went sliding one after the other on to the floor. For some long-drawn +moments there was no sound in the room but the slowly accelerated slide +and flop of one sheet of cartridge paper after another. + +“We could have been so happy,” she wailed, “se'ving oua God.” + +And then this disconcerting lady did a still more disconcerting thing. +She staggered a step towards Scrape, seized the lapels of his coat, +bowed her head upon his shoulder, put her black hair against his cheek, +and began sobbing and weeping. + +“My dear lady!” he expostulated, trying weakly to disengage her. + +“Let me k'y,” she insisted, gripping more resolutely, and following his +backward pace. “You must let me k'y. You must let me k'y.” + +His resistance ceased. One hand supported her, the other patted her +shining hair. “My dear child!” he said. “My dear child! I had no idea. +That you would take it like this....” + +(7) + + +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!” + +(8) + + +As he walked now after his unsuccessful quest of Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey +towards the Serpentine he acted that stormy interview with Lady +Sunderbund over again. At the end, as a condition indeed of his +departure, he had left things open. He had assented to certain promises. +He was to make her understand better what it was he needed. He was not +to let anything that had happened affect that “spi'tual f'enship.” + She was to abandon all her plans, she was to begin again “at the ve'y +beginning.” But he knew that indeed there should be no more beginning +again with her. He knew that quite beyond these questions of the +organization of a purified religion, it was time their association +ended. She had wept upon him; she had clasped both his hands at parting +and prayed to be forgiven. She was drawing him closer to her by their +very dissension. She had infected him with the softness of remorse; from +being a bright and spirited person, she had converted herself into a +warm and touching person. Her fine, bright black hair against his cheek +and the clasp of her hand on his shoulder was now inextricably in the +business. The perplexing, the astonishing thing in his situation was +that there was still a reluctance to make a conclusive breach. + +He was not the first of men who have tried to find in vain how and when +a relationship becomes an entanglement. He ought to break off now, and +the riddle was just why he should feel this compunction in breaking off +now. He had disappointed her, and he ought not to have disappointed +her; that was the essential feeling. He had never realized before as +he realized now this peculiar quality of his own mind and the gulf into +which it was leading him. It came as an illuminating discovery. + +He was a social animal. He had an instinctive disposition to act +according to the expectations of the people about him, whether they were +reasonable or congenial expectations or whether they were not. That, he +saw for the first time, had been the ruling motive of his life; it was +the clue to him. Man is not a reasonable creature; he is a socially +responsive creature trying to be reasonable in spite of that fact. From +the days in the rectory nursery when Scrope had tried to be a good boy +on the whole and just a little naughty sometimes until they stopped +smiling, through all his life of school, university, curacy, vicarage +and episcopacy up to this present moment, he perceived now that he had +acted upon no authentic and independent impulse. His impulse had always +been to fall in with people and satisfy them. And all the painful +conflicts of those last few years had been due to a growing realization +of jarring criticisms, of antagonized forces that required from him +incompatible things. From which he had now taken refuge--or at any rate +sought refuge--in God. It was paradoxical, but manifestly in God he not +only sank his individuality but discovered it. + +It was wonderful how much he had thought and still thought of the +feelings and desires of Lady Sunderbund, and how little he thought of +God. Her he had been assiduously propitiating, managing, accepting, for +three months now. Why? Partly because she demanded it, and there was +a quality in her demand that had touched some hidden spring--of vanity +perhaps it was--in him, that made him respond. But partly also it was +because after the evacuation of the palace at Princhester he had felt +more and more, felt but never dared to look squarely in the face, the +catastrophic change in the worldly circumstances of his family. +Only this chapel adventure seemed likely to restore those fallen and +bedraggled fortunes. He had not anticipated a tithe of the dire quality +of that change. They were not simply uncomfortable in the Notting Hill +home. They were miserable. He fancied they looked to him with something +between reproach and urgency. Why had he brought them here? What next +did he propose to do? He wished at times they would say it out instead +of merely looking it. Phoebe's failing appetite chilled his heart. + +That concern for his family, he believed, had been his chief motive in +clinging to Lady Sunderbund's projects long after he had realized how +little they would forward the true service of God. No doubt there had +been moments of flattery, moments of something, something rather in the +nature of an excited affection; some touch of the magnificent in +her, some touch of the infantile,--both appealed magnetically to his +imagination; but the real effective cause was his habitual solicitude +for his wife and children and his consequent desire to prosper +materially. As his first dream of being something between Mohammed and +Peter the Hermit in a new proclamation of God to the world lost colour +and life in his mind, he realized more and more clearly that there was +no way of living in a state of material prosperity and at the same time +in a state of active service to God. The Church of the One True God (by +favour of Lady Sunderbund) was a gaily-coloured lure. + +And yet he wanted to go on with it. All his imagination and intelligence +was busy now with the possibility of in some way subjugating Lady +Sunderbund, and modifying her and qualifying her to an endurable +proposition. Why? + +Why? + +There could be but one answer, he thought. Brought to the test of +action, he did not really believe in God! He did not believe in God as +he believed in his family. He did not believe in the reality of either +his first or his second vision; they had been dreams, autogenous +revelations, exaltations of his own imaginations. These beliefs were +upon different grades of reality. Put to the test, his faith in God gave +way; a sword of plaster against a reality of steel. + +And yet he did believe in God. He was as persuaded that there was a +God as he was that there was another side to the moon. His +intellectual conviction was complete. Only, beside the living, +breathing--occasionally coughing--reality of Phoebe, God was something +as unsubstantial as the Binomial Theorem.... + +Very like the Binomial Theorem as one thought over that comparison. + +By this time he had reached the banks of the Serpentine and was +approaching the grey stone bridge that crosses just where Hyde Park +ends and Kensington Gardens begins. Following upon his doubts of his +religious faith had come another still more extraordinary question: +“Although there is a God, does he indeed matter more in our ordinary +lives than that same demonstrable Binomial Theorem? Isn't one's duty to +Phoebe plain and clear?” Old Likeman's argument came back to him with +novel and enhanced powers. Wasn't he after all selfishly putting his +own salvation in front of his plain duty to those about him? What did +it matter if he told lies, taught a false faith, perjured and damned +himself, if after all those others were thereby saved and comforted? + +“But that is just where the whole of this state of mind is false +and wrong,” he told himself. “God is something more than a priggish +devotion, an intellectual formula. He has a hold and a claim--he should +have a hold and a claim--exceeding all the claims of Phoebe, Miriam, +Daphne, Clementina--all of them.... But he hasn't'!...” + +It was to that he had got after he had left Lady Sunderbund, and to that +he now returned. It was the thinness and unreality of his thought of God +that had driven him post-haste to Brighton-Pomfrey in search for that +drug that had touched his soul to belief. + +Was God so insignificant in comparison with his family that after +all with a good conscience he might preach him every Sunday in Lady +Sunderbund's church, wearing Lady Sunderbund's vestments? + +Before him he saw an empty seat. The question was so immense and +conclusive, it was so clearly a choice for all the rest of his life +between God and the dear things of this world, that he felt he could not +decide it upon his legs. He sat down, threw an arm along the back of the +seat and drummed with his fingers. + +If the answer was “yes” then it was decidedly a pity that he had not +stayed in the church. It was ridiculous to strain at the cathedral gnat +and then swallow Lady Sunderbund's decorative Pantechnicon. + +For the first time, Scrope definitely regretted his apostasy. + +A trivial matter, as it may seem to the reader, intensified that regret. +Three weeks ago Borrowdale, the bishop of Howeaster, had died, and +Scrope would have been the next in rotation to succeed him on the +bench of bishops. He had always looked forward to the House of Lords, +intending to take rather a new line, to speak more, and to speak more +plainly and fully upon social questions than had hitherto been the +practice of his brethren. Well, that had gone.... + +(9) + + +Regrets were plain now. The question before his mind was growing clear; +whether he was to persist in this self-imposed martyrdom of himself and +his family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionary +fanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbund +offered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and social +status of his wife and daughters. In which case it was clear to him +he would have to go to great lengths and exercise very considerable +subtlety--and magnetism--in the management of Lady Sunderbund.... + +He found himself composing a peculiar speech to her, very frank and +revealing, and one that he felt would dominate her thoughts.... She +attracted him oddly.... At least this afternoon she had attracted +him.... + +And repelled him.... + +A wholesome gust of moral impatience stirred him. He smacked the back of +the seat hard, as though he smacked himself. + +No. He did not like it.... + +A torn sunset of purple and crimson streamed raggedly up above and +through the half stripped trecs of Kensington Gardens, and he found +himself wishing that Heaven would give us fewer sublimities in sky and +mountain and more in our hearts. Against the background of darkling +trees and stormily flaming sky a girl was approaching him. There was +little to be seen of her but her outline. Something in her movement +caught his eye and carried his memory back to a sundown at Hunstanton. +Then as she came nearer he saw that it was Eleanor. + +It was odd to see her here. He had thought she was at Newnham. + +But anyhow it was very pleasant to see her. And there was something in +Eleanor that promised an answer to his necessity. The girl had a kind +of instinctive wisdom. She would understand the quality of his situation +better perhaps than any one. He would put the essentials of that +situation as fully and plainly as he could to her. Perhaps she, with +that clear young idealism of hers, would give him just the lift and the +light of which he stood in need. She would comprehend both sides of it, +the points about Phoebe as well as the points about God. + +When first he saw her she seemed to be hurrying, but now she had fallen +to a loitering pace. She looked once or twice behind her and then ahead, +almost as though she expected some one and was not sure whether this +person would approach from east or west. She did not observe her father +until she was close upon him. + +Then she was so astonished that for a moment she stood motionless, +regarding him. She made an odd movement, almost as if she would have +walked on, that she checked in its inception. Then she came up to him +and stood before him. “It's Dad,” she said. + +“I didn't know you were in London, Norah,” he began. + +“I came up suddenly.” + +“Have you been home?” + +“No. I wasn't going home. At least--not until afterwards.” + +Then she looked away from him, east and then west, and then met his eye +again. + +“Won't you sit down, Norah?” + +“I don't know whether I can.” + +She consulted the view again and seemed to come to a decision. “At +least, I will for a minute.” + +She sat down. For a moment neither of them spoke.... + +“What are you doing here, little Norah?” + +She gathered her wits. Then she spoke rather volubly. “I know it looks +bad, Daddy. I came up to meet a boy I know, who is going to France +to-morrow. I had to make excuses--up there. I hardly remember what +excuses I made.” + +“A boy you know?” + +“Yes.” + +“Do we know him?” + +“Not yet.” + +For a time Scrope forgot the Church of the One True God altogether. “Who +is this boy?” he asked. + +With a perceptible effort Eleanor assumed a tone of commonsense +conventionality. “He's a boy I met first when we were skating last year. +His sister has the study next to mine.” + +Father looked at daughter, and she met his eyes. “Well?” + +“It's all happened so quickly, Daddy,” she said, answering all that was +implicit in that “Well?” She went on, “I would have told you about him +if he had seemed to matter. But it was just a friendship. It didn't +seem to matter in any serious way. Of course we'd been good friends--and +talked about all sorts of things. And then suddenly you see,”--her tone +was offhand and matter-of-fact--“he has to go to France.” + +She stared at her father with the expression of a hostess who talks +about the weather. And then the tears gathered and ran down her cheek. + +She turned her face to the Serpentine and clenched her fist. + +But she was now fairly weeping. “I didn't know he cared. I didn't know I +cared.” + +His next question took a little time in coming. + +“And it's love, little Norah?” he asked. + +She was comfortably crying now, the defensive altogether abandoned. +“It's love, Daddy.... Oh! love!.... He's going tomorrow.” For a minute +or so neither spoke. Scrope's mind was entirely made up in the matter. +He approved altogether of his daughter. But the traditions of parentage, +his habit of restrained decision, made him act a judicial part. “I'd +like just to see this boy,” he said, and added: “If it isn't rather +interfering....” + +“Dear Daddy!” she said. “Dear Daddy!” and touched his hand. “He'll be +coming here....” + +“If you could tell me a few things about him,” said Scrope. “Is he an +undergraduate?” + +“You see,” began Eleanor and paused to marshal her facts. “He graduated +this year. Then he's been in training at Cambridge. Properly he'd have +a fellowship. He took the Natural Science tripos, zoology chiefly. +He's good at philosophy, but of course our Cambridge philosophy is so +silly--McTaggart blowing bubbles.... His father's a doctor, Sir Hedley +Riverton.” + +As she spoke her eyes had been roving up the path and down. “He's +coming,” she interrupted. She hesitated. “Would you mind if I went and +spoke to him first, Daddy?” + +“Of course go to him. Go and warn him I'm here,” said Scrope. + +Eleanor got up, and was immediately greeted with joyful gestures by an +approaching figure in khaki. The two young people quickened their paces +as they drew nearer one another. There was a rapid greeting; they stood +close together and spoke eagerly. Scrope could tell by their movements +when he became the subject of their talk. He saw the young man start +and look over Eleanor's shoulder, and he assumed an attitude of +philosophical contemplation of the water, so as to give the young man +the liberty of his profile. + +He did not look up until they were quite close to him, and when he did +he saw a pleasant, slightly freckled fair face a little agitated, and +very honest blue eyes. “I hope you don't think, Sir, that it's bad form +of me to ask Eleanor to come up and see me as I've done. I telegraphed +to her on an impulse, and it's been very kind of her to come up to me.” + +“Sit down,” said Scrope, “sit down. You're Mr. Riverton?” + +“Yes, Sir,” said the young man. He had the frequent “Sir” of the +subaltern. Scrope was in the centre of the seat, and the young officer +sat down on one side of him while Eleanor took up a watching position on +her father's other hand. “You see, Sir, we've hardly known each other--I +mean we've been associated over a philosophical society and all that +sort of thing, but in a more familiar way, I mean....” + +He hung for a moment, just a little short of breath. Scrope helped +him with a grave but sympathetic movement of the head. “It's a little +difficult to explain,” the young man apologized. + +“We hadn't understood, I think, either of us very much. We'd just +been friendly--and liked each other. And so it went on even when I was +training. And then when I found I had to go out--I'm going out a little +earlier than I expected--I thought suddenly I wouldn't ever go to +Cambridge again at all perhaps--and there was something in one of her +letters.... I thought of it a lot, Sir, I thought it all over, and I +thought it wasn't right for me to do anything and I didn't do anything +until this morning. And then I sort of had to telegraph. I know it was +frightful cheek and bad form and all that, Sir. It is. It would be +worse if she wasn't different--I mean, Sir, if she was just an ordinary +girl.... But I had a sort of feeling--just wanting to see her. I don't +suppose you've ever felt anything, Sir, as I felt I wanted to see +her--and just hear her speak to me....” + +He glanced across Scrope at Eleanor. It was as if he justified himself +to them both. + +Scrope glanced furtively at his daughter who was leaning forward with +tender eyes on her lover, and his heart went out to her. But his manner +remained judicial. + +“All this is very sudden,” he said. + +“Or you would have heard all about it, Sir,” said young Riverton. +“It's just the hurry that has made this seem furtive. All that there is +between us, Sir, is just the two telegrams we've sent, hers and mine. +I hope you won't mind our having a little time together. We won't do +anything very committal. It's as much friendship as anything. I go by +the evening train to-morrow.” + +“Mm,” said Serope with his eye on Eleanor. + +“In these uncertain times,” he began. + +“Why shouldn't I take a risk too, Daddy?” said Eleanor sharply. + +“I know there's that side of it,” said the young man. “I oughtn't to +have telegraphed,” he said. + +“Can't I take a risk?” exclaimed Eleanor. “I'm not a doll. I don't want +to live in wadding until all the world is safe for me.” + +Scrope looked at the glowing face of the young man. + +“Is this taking care of her?” he asked. + +“If you hadn't telegraphed--!” she cried with a threat in her voice, and +left it at that. + +“Perhaps I feel about her--rather as if she was as strong as I am--in +those ways. Perhaps I shouldn't. I could hardly endure myself, Sir--cut +off from her. And a sort of blank. Nothing said.” + +“You want to work out your own salvation,” said Scrope to his daughter. + +“No one else can,” she answered. “I'm--I'm grown up.” + +“Even if it hurts?” + +“To live is to be hurt somehow,” she said. “This--This--” She flashed +her love. She intimated by a gesture that it is better to be stabbed +with a clean knife than to be suffocated or poisoned or to decay.... + +Scrope turned his eyes to the young man again. He liked him. He liked +the modelling of his mouth and chin and the line of his brows. He liked +him altogether. He pronounced his verdict slowly. “I suppose, after +all,” he said, “that this is better than the tender solicitude of a +safe and prosperous middleaged man. Eleanor, my dear, I've been thinking +to-day that a father who stands between his children and hardship, by +doing wrong, may really be doing them a wrong. You are a dear girl to +me. I won't stand between you two. Find your own salvation.” He got up. +“I go west,” he said, “presently. You, I think, go east.” + +“I can assure you, Sir,” the young man began. + +Scrope held his hand out. “Take your life in your own way,” he said. + +He turned to Eleanor. “Talk as you will,” he said. + +She clasped his hand with emotion. Then she turned to the waiting young +man, who saluted. + +“You'll come back to supper?” Scrope said, without thinking out the +implications of that invitation. + +She assented as carelessly. The fact that she and her lover were to +go, with their meeting legalized and blessed, excluded all other +considerations. The two young people turned to each other. + +Scrope stood for a moment or so and then sat down again. + +For a time he could think only of Eleanor.... He watched the two young +people as they went eastward. As they walked their shoulders and elbows +bumped amicably together. + +(10) + + +Presently he sought to resume the interrupted thread of his thoughts. +He knew that he had been dealing with some very tremendous and urgent +problem when Eleanor had appeared. Then he remembered that Eleanor at +the time of her approach had seemed to be a solution rather than an +interruption. Well, she had her own life. She was making her own life. +Instead of solving his problems she was solving her own. God bless those +dear grave children! They were nearer the elemental things than he was. +That eastward path led to Victoria--and thence to a very probable death. +The lad was in the infantry and going straight into the trenches. + +Love, death, God; this war was bringing the whole world back to +elemental things, to heroic things. The years of comedy and comfort were +at an end in Europe; the age of steel and want was here. And he had been +thinking--What had he been thinking? + +He mused, and the scheme of his perplexities reshaped itself in his +mind. But at that time he did not realize that a powerful new light +was falling upon it now, cast by the tragic illumination of these young +lovers whose love began with a parting. He did not see how reality had +come to all things through that one intense reality. He reverted to +the question as he had put it to himself, before first he recognized +Eleanor. Did he believe in God? Should he go on with this Sunderbund +adventure in which he no longer believed? Should he play for safety and +comfort, trusting to God's toleration? Or go back to his family and warn +them of the years of struggle and poverty his renunciation cast upon +them? + +Somehow Lady Sunderbund's chapel was very remote and flimsy now, and the +hardships of poverty seemed less black than the hardship of a youthful +death. + +Did he believe in God? Again he put that fundamental question to +himself. + +He sat very still in the sunset peace, with his eyes upon the steel +mirror of the waters. The question seemed to fill the whole scene, to +wait, even as the water and sky and the windless trees were waiting.... + +And then by imperceptible degrees there grew in Scrope's mind the +persuasion that he was in the presence of the living God. This time +there was no vision of angels nor stars, no snapping of bow-strings, no +throbbing of the heart nor change of scene, no magic and melodramatic +drawing back of the curtain from the mysteries; the water and the +bridge, the ragged black trees, and a distant boat that broke the +silvery calm with an arrow of black ripples, all these things were still +before him. But God was there too. God was everywhere about him. This +persuasion was over him and about him; a dome of protection, a power in +his nerves, a peace in his heart. It was an exalting beauty; it was a +perfected conviction.... This indeed was the coming of God, the real +coming of God. For the first time Scrope was absolutely sure that +for the rest of his life he would possess God. Everything that had so +perplexed him seemed to be clear now, and his troubles lay at the foot +of this last complete realization like a litter of dust and leaves in +the foreground of a sunlit, snowy mountain range. + +It was a little incredible that he could ever have doubted. + +(11) + + +It was a phase of extreme intellectual clairvoyance. A multitude of +things that hitherto had been higgledy-piggledy, contradictory and +incongruous in his mind became lucid, serene, full and assured. He +seemed to see all things plainly as one sees things plainly through +perfectly clear still water in the shadows of a summer noon. His doubts +about God, his periods of complete forgetfulness and disregard of God, +this conflict of his instincts and the habits and affections of +his daily life with the service of God, ceased to be perplexing +incompatibilities and were manifest as necessary, understandable aspects +of the business of living. + +It was no longer a riddle that little immediate things should seem +of more importance than great and final things. For man is a creature +thrusting his way up from the beast to divinity, from the blindness of +individuality to the knowledge of a common end. We stand deep in +the engagements of our individual lives looking up to God, and only +realizing in our moments of exaltation that through God we can escape +from and rule and alter the whole world-wide scheme of individual lives. +Only in phases of illumination do we realize the creative powers that +lie ready to man's hand. Personal affections, immediate obligations, +ambitions, self-seeking, these are among the natural and essential +things of our individual lives, as intimate almost as our primordial +lusts and needs; God, the true God, is a later revelation, a newer, less +natural thing in us; a knowledge still remote, uncertain, and confused +with superstition; an apprehension as yet entangled with barbaric +traditions of fear and with ceremonial surgeries, blood sacrifices, and +the maddest barbarities of thought. We are only beginning to realize +that God is here; so far as our minds go he is still not here +continually; we perceive him and then again we are blind to him. God +is the last thing added to the completeness of human life. To most His +presence is imperceptible throughout their lives; they know as little +of him as a savage knows of the electric waves that beat through us +for ever from the sun. All this appeared now so clear and necessary +to Scrope that he was astonished he had ever found the quality of +contradiction in these manifest facts. + +In this unprecedented lucidity that had now come to him, Scrope saw as +a clear and simple necessity that there can be no such thing as a +continuous living presence of God in our lives. That is an unreasonable +desire. There is no permanent exaltation of belief. It is contrary to +the nature of life. One cannot keep actively believing in and realizing +God round all the twenty-four hours any more than one can keep awake +through the whole cycle of night and day, day after day. If it were +possible so to apprehend God without cessation, life would dissolve in +religious ecstasy. But nothing human has ever had the power to hold the +curtain of sense continually aside and retain the light of God always. +We must get along by remembering our moments of assurance. Even Jesus +himself, leader of all those who have hailed the coming kingdom of God, +had cried upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” + The business of life on earth, life itself, is a thing curtained off, as +it were, from such immediate convictions. That is in the constitution of +life. Our ordinary state of belief, even when we are free from doubt, +is necessarily far removed from the intuitive certainty of sight and +hearing. It is a persuasion, it falls far short of perception.... + +“We don't know directly,” Scrope said to himself with a checking gesture +of the hand, “we don't see. We can't. We hold on to the remembered +glimpse, we go over our reasons.”... + +And it was clear too just because God is thus manifest like the +momentary drawing of a curtain, sometimes to this man for a time and +sometimes to that, but never continuously to any, and because the +perception of him depends upon the ability and quality of the perceiver, +because to the intellectual man God is necessarily a formula, to the +active man a will and a commandment, and to the emotional man love, +there can be no creed defining him for all men, and no ritual and +special forms of service to justify a priesthood. “God is God,” he +whispered to himself, and the phrase seemed to him the discovery of +a sufficient creed. God is his own definition; there is no other +definition of God. Scrope had troubled himself with endless arguments +whether God was a person, whether he was concerned with personal +troubles, whether he loved, whether he was finite. It were as reasonable +to argue whether God was a frog or a rock or a tree. He had imagined God +as a figure of youth and courage, had perceived him as an effulgence +of leadership, a captain like the sun. The vision of his drug-quickened +mind had but symbolized what was otherwise inexpressible. Of that he was +now sure. He had not seen the invisible but only its sign and visible +likeness. He knew now that all such presentations were true and that all +such presentations were false. Just as much and just as little was God +the darkness and the brightness of the ripples under the bows of the +distant boat, the black beauty of the leaves and twigs of those trees +now acid-clear against the flushed and deepening sky. These riddles of +the profundities were beyond the compass of common living. They were +beyond the needs of common living. He was but a little earth parasite, +sitting idle in the darkling day, trying to understand his infinitesimal +functions on a minor planet. Within the compass of terrestrial living +God showed himself in its own terms. The life of man on earth was a +struggle for unity of spirit and for unity with his kind, and the aspect +of God that alone mattered to man was a unifying kingship without and +within. So long as men were men, so would they see God. Only when they +reached the crest could they begin to look beyond. So we knew God, so +God was to us; since we struggled, he led our struggle, since we were +finite and mortal he defined an aim, his personality was the answer to +our personality; but God, except in so far as he was to us, remained +inaccessible, inexplicable, wonderful, shining through beauty, shining +beyond research, greater than time or space, above good and evil and +pain and pleasure. + +(12) + + +Serope's mind was saturated as it had never been before by his sense of +the immediate presence of God. He floated in that realization. He +was not so much thinking now as conversing starkly with the divine +interlocutor, who penetrated all things and saw into and illuminated +every recess of his mind. He spread out his ideas to the test of this +presence; he brought out his hazards and interpretations that this light +might judge them. + +There came back to his mind the substance of his two former visions; +they assumed now a reciprocal quality, they explained one another and +the riddle before him. The first had shown him the personal human aspect +of God, he had seen God as the unifying captain calling for his personal +service, the second had set the stage for that service in the spectacle +of mankind's adventure. He had been shown a great multitude of human +spirits reaching up at countless points towards the conception of the +racial unity under a divine leadership, he had seen mankind on the +verge of awakening to the kingdom of God. “That solves no mystery,” + he whispered, gripping the seat and frowning at the water; “mysteries +remain mysteries; but that is the reality of religion. And now, now, +what is my place? What have I to do? That is the question I have been +asking always; the question that this moment now will answer; what have +I to do?...” + +God was coming into the life of all mankind in the likeness of a captain +and a king; all the governments of men, all the leagues of men, their +debts and claims and possessions, must give way to the world republic +under God the king. For five troubled years he had been staring religion +in the face, and now he saw that it must mean this--or be no more than +fetishism, Obi, Orphic mysteries or ceremonies of Demeter, a legacy +of mental dirtiness, a residue of self-mutilation and superstitious +sacrifices from the cunning, fear-haunted, ape-dog phase of human +development. But it did mean this. And every one who apprehended as much +was called by that very apprehension to the service of God's kingdom. +To live and serve God's kingdom on earth, to help to bring it about, to +propagate the idea of it, to establish the method of it, to incorporate +all that one made and all that one did into its growing reality, was the +only possible life that could be lived, once that God was known. + +He sat with his hands gripping his knees, as if he were holding on to +his idea. “And now for my part,” he whispered, brows knit, “now for my +part.” + +Ever since he had given his confirmation addresses he had been clear +that his task, or at least a considerable portion of his task, was +to tell of this faith in God and of this conception of service in his +kingdom as the form and rule of human life and human society. But up to +now he had been floundering hopelessly in his search for a method and +means of telling. That, he saw, still needed to be thought out. For +example, one cannot run through the world crying, “The Kingdom of God +is at hand.” Men's minds were still so filled with old theological ideas +that for the most part they would understand by that only a fantasy of +some great coming of angels and fiery chariots and judgments, and hardly +a soul but would doubt one's sanity and turn scornfully away. But one +must proclaim God not to confuse but to convince men's minds. It was +that and the habit of his priestly calling that had disposed him towards +a pulpit. There he could reason and explain. The decorative genius +of Lady Sunderbund had turned that intention into a vast iridescent +absurdity. + +This sense he had of thinking openly in the sight of God, enabled him to +see the adventure of Lady Sunderbund without illusion and without shame. +He saw himself at once honest and disingenuous, divided between two +aims. He had no doubt now of the path he had to pursue. A stronger man +of permanently clear aims might possibly turn Lady Sunderbund into a +useful opportunity, oblige her to provide the rostrum he needed; but for +himself, he knew he had neither the needed strength nor clearness; +she would smother him in decoration, overcome him by her picturesque +persistence. It might be ridiculous to run away from her, but it was +necessary. And he was equally clear now that for him there must be +no idea of any pulpit, of any sustained mission. He was a man of +intellectual moods; only at times, he realized, had he the inspiration +of truth; upon such uncertain snatches and glimpses he must live; to +make his life a ministry would be to face phases when he would simply be +“carrying on,” with his mind blank and his faith asleep. + +His thought spread out from this perennial decision to more general +things again. Had God any need of organized priests at all? Wasn't that +just what had been the matter with religion for the last three thousand +years? + +His vision and his sense of access to God had given a new courage to +his mind; in these moods of enlightenment he could see the world as a +comprehensible ball, he could see history as an understandable drama. He +had always been on the verge of realizing before, he realized now, the +two entirely different and antagonistic strands that interweave in the +twisted rope of contemporary religion; the old strand of the priest, +the fetishistic element of the blood sacrifice and the obscene rite, the +element of ritual and tradition, of the cult, the caste, the consecrated +tribe; and interwoven with this so closely as to be scarcely separable +in any existing religion was the new strand, the religion of the +prophets, the unidolatrous universal worship of the one true God. Priest +religion is the antithesis to prophet religion. He saw that the +founders of all the great existing religions of the world had been like +himself--only that he was a weak and commonplace man with no creative +force, and they had been great men of enormous initiative--men reaching +out, and never with a complete definition, from the old kind of religion +to the new. The Hebrew prophets, Jesus, whom the priests killed when +Pilate would have spared him, Mohammed, Buddha, had this much in common +that they had sought to lead men from temple worship, idol worship, from +rites and ceremonies and the rule of priests, from anniversaryism and +sacramentalism, into a direct and simple relation to the simplicity of +God. Religious progress had always been liberation and simplification. +But none of these efforts had got altogether clear. The organizing +temper in men, the disposition to dogmatic theorizing, the distrust +of the discretion of the young by the wisdom of age, the fear of +indiscipline which is so just in warfare and so foolish in education, +the tremendous power of the propitiatory tradition, had always caught +and crippled every new gospel before it had run a score of years. Jesus +for example gave man neither a theology nor a church organization; His +sacrament was an innocent feast of memorial; but the fearful, limited, +imitative men he left to carry on his work speedily restored all these +three abominations of the antiquated religion, theology, priest, and +sacrifice. Jesus indeed, caught into identification with the ancient +victim of the harvest sacrifice and turned from a plain teacher into +a horrible blood bath and a mock cannibal meal, was surely the supreme +feat of the ironies of chance.... + +“It is curious how I drift back to Jesus,” said Scrope. “I have never +seen how much truth and good there was in his teaching until I broke +away from Christianity and began to see him plain. If I go on as I am +going, I shall end a Nazarene....” + +He thought on. He had a feeling of temerity, but then it seemed as if +God within him bade him be of good courage. + +Already in a glow of inspiration he had said practically as much as +he was now thinking in his confirmation address, but now he realized +completely what it was he had then said. There could be no priests, +no specialized ministers of the one true God, because every man to +the utmost measure of his capacity was bound to be God's priest and +minister. Many things one may leave to specialists: surgery, detailed +administration, chemistry, for example; but it is for every man to think +his own philosophy and think out his own religion. One man may tell +another, but no man may take charge of another. A man may avail himself +of electrician or gardener or what not, but he must stand directly +before God; he may suffer neither priest nor king. These other things +are incidental, but God, the kingdom of God, is what he is for. + +“Good,” he said, checking his reasoning. “So I must bear witness to +God--but neither as priest nor pastor. I must write and talk about him +as I can. No reason why I should not live by such writing and talking if +it does not hamper my message to do so. But there must be no high place, +no ordered congregation. I begin to see my way....” + +The evening was growing dark and chill about him now, the sky was barred +with deep bluish purple bands drawn across a chilly brightness that +had already forgotten the sun, the trees were black and dim, but his +understanding of his place and duty was growing very definite. + +“And this duty to bear witness to God's kingdom and serve it is so plain +that I must not deflect my witness even by a little, though to do +so means comfort and security for my wife and children. God comes +first....” + +“They must not come between God and me....” + +“But there is more in it than that.” + +He had come round at last through the long clearing-up of his mind, to +his fundamental problem again. He sat darkly reluctant. + +“I must not play priest or providence to them,” he admitted at last. “I +must not even stand between God and them.” + +He saw now what he had been doing; it had been the flaw in his faith +that he would not trust his family to God. And he saw too that this +distrust has been the flaw in the faith of all religious systems +hitherto.... + +(13) + + +In this strange voyage of the spirit which was now drawing to its end, +in which Scrope had travelled from the confused, unanalyzed formulas and +assumptions and implications of his rectory upbringing to his present +stark and simple realization of God, he had at times made some +remarkable self-identifications. He was naturally much given to analogy; +every train of thought in his mind set up induced parallel currents. He +had likened himself to the Anglican church, to the whole Christian body, +as, for example, in his imagined second conversation with the angel +of God. But now he found himself associating himself with a still more +far-reaching section of mankind. This excess of solicitude was traceable +perhaps in nearly every one in all the past of mankind who had ever had +the vision of God. An excessive solicitude to shield those others from +one's own trials and hardships, to preserve the exact quality of the +revelation, for example, had been the fruitful cause of crippling +errors, spiritual tyrannies, dogmatisms, dissensions, and futilities. +“Suffer little children to come unto me”; the text came into his head +with an effect of contribution. The parent in us all flares out at the +thought of the younger and weaker minds; we hide difficulties, seek to +spare them from the fires that temper the spirit, the sharp edge of +the truth that shapes the soul. Christian is always trying to have a +carriage sent back from the Celestial City for his family. Why, we ask, +should they flounder dangerously in the morasses that we escaped, or +wander in the forest in which we lost ourselves? Catch these souls +young, therefore, save them before they know they exist, kidnap them to +heaven; vaccinate them with a catechism they may never understand, lull +them into comfort and routine. Instinct plays us false here as it plays +the savage mother false when she snatches her fevered child from the +doctor's hands. The last act of faith is to trust those we love to +God.... + +Hitherto he had seen the great nets of theological overstatement and +dogma that kept mankind from God as if they were the work of purely evil +things in man, of pride, of self-assertion, of a desire to possess and +dominate the minds and souls of others. It was only now that he saw how +large a share in the obstruction of God's Kingdom had been played by the +love of the elder and the parent, by the carefulness, the fussy care, +of good men and women. He had wandered in wildernesses of unbelief, in +dangerous places of doubt and questioning, but he had left his wife and +children safe and secure in the self-satisfaction of orthodoxy. To none +of them except to Eleanor had he ever talked with any freedom of his +new apprehensions of religious reality. And that had been at Eleanor's +initiative. There was, he saw now, something of insolence and something +of treachery in this concealment. His ruling disposition throughout the +crisis had been to force comfort and worldly well-being upon all those +dependants even at the price of his own spiritual integrity. In no way +had he consulted them upon the bargain.... While we have pottered, each +for the little good of his own family, each for the lessons and clothes +and leisure of his own children, assenting to this injustice, conforming +to that dishonest custom, being myopically benevolent and fundamentally +treacherous, our accumulated folly has achieved this catastrophe. It is +not so much human wickedness as human weakness that has permitted the +youth of the world to go through this hell of blood and mud and fire. +The way to the kingdom of God is the only way to the true safety, the +true wellbeing of the children of men.... + +It wasn't fair to them. But now he saw how unfair it was to them in a +light that has only shone plainly upon European life since the great +interlude of the armed peace came to an end in August, 1914. Until +that time it had been the fashion to ignore death and evade poverty and +necessity for the young. We can shield our young no longer, death has +broken through our precautions and tender evasions--and his eyes went +eastward into the twilight that had swallowed up his daughter and her +lover. + +The tumbled darkling sky, monstrous masses of frowning blue, with icy +gaps of cold light, was like the great confusions of the war. All our +youth has had to go into that terrible and destructive chaos--because of +the kings and churches and nationalities sturdier-souled men would have +set aside. + +Everything was sharp and clear in his mind now. Eleanor after all had +brought him his solution. + +He sat quite still for a little while, and then stood up and turned +northward towards Notting Hill. + +The keepers were closing Kensington Gardens, and he would have to skirt +the Park to Victoria Gate and go home by the Bayswater Road.... + +(14) + + +As he walked he rearranged in his mind this long-overdue apology for his +faith that he was presently to make to his family. There was no one to +interrupt him and nothing to embarrass him, and so he was able to +set out everything very clearly and convincingly. There was perhaps a +disposition to digress into rather voluminous subordinate explanations, +on such themes, for instance, as sacramentalism, whereon he found +himself summarizing Frazer's Golden Bough, which the Chasters' +controversy had first obliged him to read, and upon the irrelevance of +the question of immortality to the process of salvation. But the reality +of his eclaircissement was very different from anything he prepared in +these anticipations. + +Tea had been finished and put away, and the family was disposed about +the dining-room engaged in various evening occupations; Phoebe sat at +the table working at some mathematical problem, Clementina was reading +with her chin on her fist and a frown on her brow; Lady Ella, Miriam and +Daphne were busy making soft washing cloths for the wounded; Lady +Ella had brought home the demand for them from the Red Cross centre +in Burlington House. The family was all downstairs in the dining-room +because the evening was chilly, and there were no fires upstairs yet +in the drawing-room. He came into the room and exchanged greetings with +Lady Ella. Then he stood for a time surveying his children. Phoebe, he +noted, was a little flushed; she put passion into her work; on the whole +she was more like Eleanor than any other of them. Miriam knitted with a +steady skill. Clementina's face too expressed a tussle. He took up one +of the rough-knit washing-cloths upon the side-table, and asked how many +could be made in an hour. Then he asked some idle obvious question +about the fire upstairs. Clementina made an involuntary movement; he was +disturbing her. He hovered for a moment longer. He wanted to catch his +wife's eye and speak to her first. She looked up, but before he could +convey his wish for a private conference with her, she smiled at him and +then bent over her work again. + +He went into the back study and lit his gas fire. Hitherto he had always +made a considerable explosion when he did so, but this time by taking +thought and lighting his match before he turned on the gas he did it +with only a gentle thud. Then he lit his reading-lamp and pulled down +the blind--pausing for a time to look at the lit dressmaker's opposite. +Then he sat down thoughtfully before the fire. Presently Ella would come +in and he would talk to her. He waited a long time, thinking only weakly +and inconsecutively, and then he became restless. Should he call her? + +But he wanted their talk to begin in a natural-seeming way. He did not +want the portentousness of “wanting to speak” to her and calling her out +to him. He got up at last and went back into the other room. Clementina +had gone upstairs, and the book she had been reading was lying closed on +the sideboard. He saw it was one of Chasters' books, he took it up, it +was “The Core of Truth in Christianity,” and he felt an irrational +shock at the idea of Clementina reading it. In spite of his own +immense changes of opinion he had still to revise his conception of the +polemical Chasters as an evil influence in religion. He fidgeted +past his wife to the mantel in search of an imaginary mislaid pencil. +Clementina came down with some bandage linen she was cutting out. He +hung over his wife in a way that he felt must convey his desire for a +conversation. Then he picked up Chasters' book again. “Does any one want +this?” he asked. + +“Not if I may have it again,” consented Clementina. + +He took it back with him and began to read again those familiar +controversial pages. He read for the best part of an hour with his knees +drying until they smoked over the gas. What curious stuff it was! How +it wrangled! Was Chasters a religious man? Why did he write these +books? Had he really a passion for truth or only a Swift-like hatred +of weakly-thinking people? None of this stuff in his books was really +wrong, provided it was religious-spirited. Much of it had been indeed +destructively illuminating to its reader. It let daylight through all +sorts of walls. Indeed, the more one read the more vividly true its +acid-bit lines became.... And yet, and yet, there was something hateful +in the man's tone. Scrope held the book and thought. He had seen +Chasters once or twice. Chasters had the sort of face, the sort of +voice, the sort of bearing that made one think of his possibly saying +upon occasion, rudely and rejoicing, “More fool you!” Nevertheless +Scrope perceived now with an effort of discovery that it was from +Chasters that he had taken all the leading ideas of the new faith that +was in him. Here was the stuff of it. He had forgotten how much of it +was here. During those months of worried study while the threat of +a Chasters prosecution hung over him his mind had assimilated almost +unknowingly every assimilable element of the Chasters doctrine; he +had either assimilated and transmuted it by the alchemy of his own +temperament, or he had reacted obviously and filled in Chasters' gaps +and pauses. Chasters could beat a road to the Holy of Holies, and shy +at entering it. But in spite of all the man's roughness, in spite of a +curious flavour of baseness and malice about him, the spirit of truth +had spoken through him. God has a use for harsh ministers. In one man +God lights the heart, in another the reason becomes a consuming fire. +God takes his own where he finds it. He does not limit himself to nice +people. In these matters of evidence and argument, in his contempt for +amiable, demoralizing compromise, Chasters served God as Scrope could +never hope to serve him. Scrope's new faith had perhaps been altogether +impossible if the Chasters controversy had not ploughed his mind. + +For a time Scrope dwelt upon this remarkable realization. Then as +he turned over the pages his eyes rested on a passage of uncivil and +ungenerous sarcasm. Against old Likeman of all people!... + +What did a girl like Clementina make of all this? How had she got the +book? From Eleanor? The stuff had not hurt Eleanor. Eleanor had been +able to take the good that Chasters taught, and reject the evil of his +spirit.... + +He thought of Eleanor, gallantly working out her own salvation. The +world was moving fast to a phase of great freedom--for the young and the +bold.... He liked that boy.... + +His thoughts came back with a start to his wife. The evening was +slipping by and he had momentous things to say to her. He went and just +opened the door. + +“Ella!” he said. + +“Did you want me?” + +“Presently.” + +She put a liberal interpretation upon that “presently,” so that after +what seemed to him a long interval he had to call again, “Ella!” + +“Just a minute,” she answered. + +(15) + + +Lady Ella was still, so to speak, a little in the other room when she +came to him. + +“Shut that door, please,” he said, and felt the request had just that +flavour of portentousness he wished to avoid. + +“What is it?” she asked. + +“I wanted to talk to you--about some things. I've done something rather +serious to-day. I've made an important decision.” + +Her face became anxious. “What do you mean?” she asked. + +“You see,” he said, leaning upon the mantelshelf and looking down at the +gas flames, “I've never thought that we should all have to live in this +crowded house for long.” + +“All!” she interrupted in a voice that made him look up sharply. “You're +not going away, Ted?” + +“Oh, no. But I hoped we should all be going away in a little time. It +isn't so.” + +“I never quite understood why you hoped that.” + +“It was plain enough.” + +“How?” + +“I thought I should have found something to do that would have enabled +us to live in better style. I'd had a plan.” + +“What plan?” + +“It's fallen through.” + +“But what plan was it?” + +“I thought I should be able to set up a sort of broad church chapel. I +had a promise.” + +Her voice was rich with indignation. “And she has betrayed you?” + +“No,” he said, “I have betrayed her.” + +Lady Ella's face showed them still at cross purposes. He looked down +again and frowned. “I can't do that chapel business,” he said. “I've had +to let her down. I've got to let you all down. There's no help for it. +It isn't the way. I can't have anything to do with Lady Sunderbund and +her chapel.” + +“But,” Lady Ella was still perplexed. + +“It's too great a sacrifice.” + +“Of us?” + +“No, of myself. I can't get into her pulpit and do as she wants and keep +my conscience. It's been a horrible riddle for me. It means plunging +into all this poverty for good. But I can't work with her, Ella. She's +impossible.” + +“You mean--you're going to break with Lady Sunderbund?” + +“I must.” + +“Then, Teddy!”--she was a woman groping for flight amidst intolerable +perplexities--“why did you ever leave the church?” + +“Because I have ceased to believe--” + +“But had it nothing to do with Lady Sunderbund?” + +He stared at her in astonishment. + +“If it means breaking with that woman,” she said. + +“You mean,” he said, beginning for the first time to comprehend her, +“that you don't mind the poverty?” + +“Poverty!” she cried. “I cared for nothing but the disgrace.” + +“Disgrace?” + +“Oh, never mind, Ted! If it isn't true, if I've been dreaming....” + +Instead of a woman stunned by a life sentence of poverty, he saw his +wife rejoicing as if she had heard good news. + +Their minds were held for a minute by the sound of some one knocking +at the house door; one of the girls opened the door, there was a brief +hubbub in the passage and then they heard a cry of “Eleanor!” through +the folding doors. + +“There's Eleanor,” he said, realizing he had told his wife nothing of +the encounter in Hyde Park. + +They heard Eleanor's clear voice: “Where's Mummy? Or Daddy?” and then: +“Can't stay now, dears. Where's Mummy or Daddy?” + +“I ought to have told you,” said Scrope quickly. “I met Eleanor in the +Park. By accident. She's come up unexpectedly. To meet a boy going to +the front. Quite a nice boy. Son of Riverton the doctor. The parting had +made them understand one another. It's all right, Ella. It's a little +irregular, but I'd stake my life on the boy. She's very lucky.” + +Eleanor appeared through the folding doors. She came to business at +once. + +“I promised you I'd come back to supper here, Daddy,” she said. “But I +don't want to have supper here. I want to stay out late.” + +She saw her mother look perplexed. “Hasn't Daddy told you?” + +“But where is young Riverton?” + +“He's outside.” + +Eleanor became aware of a broad chink in the folding doors that was +making the dining-room an auditorium for their dialogue. She shut them +deftly. + +“I have told Mummy,” Scrope explained. “Bring him in to supper. We ought +to see him.” + +Eleanor hesitated. She indicated her sisters beyond the folding doors. +“They'll all be watching us, Mummy,” she said. “We'd be uncomfortable. +And besides--” + +“But you can't go out and dine with him alone!” + +“Oh, Mummy! It's our only chance.” + +“Customs are changing,” said Scrope. + +“But can they?” asked Lady Ella. + +“I don't see why not.” + +The mother was still doubtful, but she was in no mood to cross her +husband that night. “It's an exceptional occasion,” said Scrope, and +Eleanor knew her point was won. She became radiant. “I can be late?” + +Scrope handed her his latch-key without a word. + +“You dear kind things,” she said, and went to the door. Then turned and +came back and kissed her father. Then she kissed her mother. “It is +so kind of you,” she said, and was gone. They listened to her passage +through a storm of questions in the dining-room. + +“Three months ago that would have shocked me,” said Lady Ella. + +“You haven't seen the boy,” said Scrope. + +“But the appearances!” + +“Aren't we rather breaking with appearances?” he said. + +“And he goes to-morrow--perhaps to get killed,” he added. “A lad like +a schoolboy. A young thing. Because of the political foolery that we +priests and teachers have suffered in the place of the Kingdom of God, +because we have allowed the religion of Europe to become a lie; because +no man spoke the word of God. You see--when I see that--see those two, +those children of one-and-twenty, wrenched by tragedy, beginning with +a parting.... It's like a knife slashing at all our appearances and +discretions.... Think of our lovemaking....” + +The front door banged. + +He had some idea of resuming their talk. But his was a scattered mind +now. + +“It's a quarter to eight,” he said as if in explanation. + +“I must see to the supper,” said Lady Ella. + +(16) + + +There was an air of tension at supper as though the whole family felt +that momentous words impended. But Phoebe had emerged victorious from +her mathematical struggle, and she seemed to eat with better appetite +than she had shown for some time. It was a cold meat supper; Lady Ella +had found it impossible to keep up the regular practice of a cooked +dinner in the evening, and now it was only on Thursdays that the +Scropes, to preserve their social tradition, dressed and dined; the rest +of the week they supped. Lady Ella never talked very much at supper; +this evening was no exception. Clementina talked of London University +and Bedford College; she had been making enquiries; Daphne described +some of the mistresses at her new school. The feeling that something was +expected had got upon Scrope's nerves. He talked a little in a flat and +obvious way, and lapsed into thoughtful silences. While supper was being +cleared away he went back into his study. + +Thence he returned to the dining-room hearthrug as his family resumed +their various occupations. + +He tried to speak in a casual conversational tone. + +“I want to tell you all,” he said, “of something that has happened +to-day.” + +He waited. Phoebe had begun to figure at a fresh sheet of computations. +Miriam bent her head closer over her work, as though she winced at what +was coming. Daphne and Clementina looked at one another. Their eyes said +“Eleanor!” But he was too full of his own intention to read that glance. +Only his wife regarded him attentively. + +“It concerns you all,” he said. + +He looked at Phoebe. He saw Lady Ella's hand go out and touch the girl's +hand gently to make her desist. Phoebe obeyed, with a little sigh. + +“I want to tell you that to-day I refused an income that would certainly +have exceeded fifteen hundred pounds a year.” + +Clementina looked up now. This was not what she expected. Her expression +conveyed protesting enquiry. + +“I want you all to understand why I did that and why we are in the +position we are in, and what lies before us. I want you to know what has +been going on in my mind.” + +He looked down at the hearthrug, and tried to throw off a memory of his +Princhester classes for young women, that oppressed him. His manner +he forced to a more familiar note. He stuck his hands into his trouser +pockets. + +“You know, my dears, I had to give up the church. I just simply didn't +believe any more in orthodox Church teaching. And I feel I've never +explained that properly to you. Not at all clearly. I want to explain +that now. It's a queer thing, I know, for me to say to you, but I want +you to understand that I am a religious man. I believe that God matters +more than wealth or comfort or position or the respect of men, that he +also matters more than your comfort and prosperity. God knows I have +cared for your comfort and prosperity. I don't want you to think that in +all these changes we have been through lately, I haven't been aware of +all the discomfort into which you have come--the relative discomfort. +Compared with Princhester this is dark and crowded and poverty-stricken. +I have never felt crowded before, but in this house I know you are +horribly crowded. It is a house that seems almost contrived for small +discomforts. This narrow passage outside; the incessant going up and +down stairs. And there are other things. There is the blankness of our +London Sundays. What is the good of pretending? They are desolating. +There's the impossibility too of getting good servants to come into our +dug-out kitchen. I'm not blind to all these sordid consequences. But all +the same, God has to be served first. I had to come to this. I felt I +could not serve God any longer as a bishop in the established church, +because I did not believe that the established church was serving God. +I struggled against that conviction--and I struggled against it largely +for your sakes. But I had to obey my conviction.... I haven't talked +to you about these things as much as I should have done, but partly at +least that is due to the fact that my own mind has been changing and +reconsidering, going forward and going back, and in that fluid state +it didn't seem fair to tell you things that I might presently find +mistaken. But now I begin to feel that I have really thought out things, +and that they are definite enough to tell you....” + +He paused and resumed. “A number of things have helped to change the +opinions in which I grew up and in which you have grown up. There were +worries at Princhester; I didn't let you know much about them, but there +were. There was something harsh and cruel in that atmosphere. I saw for +the first time--it's a lesson I'm still only learning--how harsh and +greedy rich people and employing people are to poor people and working +people, and how ineffective our church was to make things better. That +struck me. There were religious disputes in the diocese too, and they +shook me. I thought my faith was built on a rock, and I found it was +built on sand. It was slipping and sliding long before the war. But the +war brought it down. Before the war such a lot of things in England and +Europe seemed like a comedy or a farce, a bad joke that one tolerated. +One tried half consciously, half avoiding the knowledge of what one was +doing, to keep one's own little circle and life civilized. The war shook +all those ideas of isolation, all that sort of evasion, down. The world +is the rightful kingdom of God; we had left its affairs to kings and +emperors and suchlike impostors, to priests and profit-seekers and +greedy men. We were genteel condoners. The war has ended that. It +thrusts into all our lives. It brings death so close--A fortnight ago +twenty-seven people were killed and injured within a mile of this by +Zeppelin bombs.... Every one loses some one.... Because through all that +time men like myself were going through our priestly mummeries, abasing +ourselves to kings and politicians, when we ought to have been crying +out: 'No! No! There is no righteousness in the world, there is no right +government, except it be the kingdom of God.'” + +He paused and looked at them. They were all listening to him now. But he +was still haunted by a dread of preaching in his own family. He dropped +to the conversational note again. + +“You see what I had in mind. I saw I must come out of this, and preach +the kingdom of God. That was my idea. I don't want to force it upon you, +but I want you to understand why I acted as I did. But let me come to +the particular thing that has happened to-day. I did not think when I +made my final decision to leave the church that it meant such poverty as +this we are living in--permanently. That is what I want to make clear to +you. I thought there would be a temporary dip into dinginess, but that +was all. There was a plan; at the time it seemed a right and reasonable +plan; for setting up a chapel in London, a very plain and simple +undenominational chapel, for the simple preaching of the world kingdom +of God. There was some one who seemed prepared to meet all the immediate +demands for such a chapel.” + +“Was it Lady Sunderbund?” asked Clementina. + +Scrope was pulled up abruptly. “Yes,” he said. “It seemed at first a +quite hopeful project.” + +“We'd have hated that,” said Clementina, with a glance as if for assent, +at her mother. “We should all have hated that.” + +“Anyhow it has fallen through.” + +“We don't mind that,” said Clementina, and Daphne echoed her words. + +“I don't see that there is any necessity to import this note +of--hostility to Lady Sunderbund into this matter.” He addressed +himself rather more definitely to Lady Ella. “She's a woman of a very +extraordinary character, highly emotional, energetic, generous to an +extraordinary extent....” + +Daphne made a little noise like a comment. + +A faint acerbity in her father's voice responded. + +“Anyhow you make a mistake if you think that the personality of Lady +Sunderbund has very much to do with this thing now. Her quality may have +brought out certain aspects of the situation rather more sharply than +they might have been brought out under other circumstances, but if +this chapel enterprise had been suggested by quite a different sort of +person, by a man, or by a committee, in the end I think I should have +come to the same conclusion. Leave Lady Sunderbund out. Any chapel was +impossible. It is just this specialization that has been the trouble +with religion. It is just this tendency to make it the business of +a special sort of man, in a special sort of building, on a special +day--Every man, every building, every day belongs equally to God. +That is my conviction. I think that the only possible existing sort of +religions meeting is something after the fashion of the Quaker meeting. +In that there is no professional religious man at all; not a trace of +the sacrifices to the ancient gods.... And no room for a professional +religions man....” He felt his argument did a little escape him. He +snatched, “That is what I want to make clear to you. God is not a +speciality; he is a universal interest.” + +He stopped. Both Daphne and Clementina seemed disposed to say something +and did not say anything. + +Miriam was the first to speak. “Daddy,” she said, “I know I'm stupid. +But are we still Christians?” + +“I want you to think for yourselves.” + +“But I mean,” said Miriam, “are we--something like Quakers--a sort of +very broad Christians?” + +“You are what you choose to be. If you want to keep in the church, then +you must keep in the church. If you feel that the Christian doctrine is +alive, then it is alive so far as you are concerned.” + +“But the creeds?” asked Clementina. + +He shook his head. “So far as Christianity is defined by its creeds, +I am not a Christian. If we are going to call any sort of religious +feeling that has a respect for Jesus, Christianity, then no doubt I am +a Christian. But so was Mohammed at that rate. Let me tell you what I +believe. I believe in God, I believe in the immediate presence of God in +every human life, I believe that our lives have to serve the Kingdom of +God....” + +“That practically is what Mr. Chasters calls 'The Core of Truth in +Christianity.'” + +“You have been reading him?” + +“Eleanor lent me the book. But Mr. Chasters keeps his living.” + +“I am not Chasters,” said Scrope stiffly, and then relenting: “What he +does may be right for him. But I could not do as he does.” + +Lady Ella had said no word for some time. + +“I would be ashamed,” she said quietly, “if you had not done as you +have done. I don't mind--The girls don't mind--all this.... Not when we +understand--as we do now.” + +That was the limit of her eloquence. + +“Not now that we understand, Daddy,” said Clementina, and a faint +flavour of Lady Sunderbund seemed to pass and vanish. + +There was a queer little pause. He stood rather distressed and +perplexed, because the talk had not gone quite as he had intended it +to go. It had deteriorated towards personal issues. Phoebe broke the +awkwardness by jumping up and coming to her father. “Dear Daddy,” she +said, and kissed him. + +“We didn't understand properly,” said Clementina, in the tone of one who +explains away much--that had never been spoken.... + +“Daddy,” said Miriam with an inspiration, “may I play something to you +presently?” + +“But the fire!” interjected Lady Ella, disposing of that idea. + +“I want you to know, all of you, the faith I have,” he said. + +Daphne had remained seated at the table. + +“Are we never to go to church again?” she asked, as if at a loss. + +(17) + + +Scrope went back into his little study. He felt shy and awkward with his +daughters now. He felt it would be difficult to get back to usualness +with them. To-night it would be impossible. To-morrow he must come +down to breakfast as though their talk had never occurred.... In his +rehearsal of this deliverance during his walk home he had spoken much +more plainly of his sense of the coming of God to rule the world and end +the long age of the warring nations and competing traders, and he had +intended to speak with equal plainness of the passionate subordination +of the individual life to this great common purpose of God and man, an +aspect he had scarcely mentioned at all. But in that little room, in the +presence of those dear familiar people, those great horizons of life +had vanished. The room with its folding doors had fixed the scale. +The wallpaper had smothered the Kingdom of God; he had been, he felt, +domestic; it had been an after-supper talk. He had been put out, too, by +the mention of Lady Sunderbund and the case of Chasters.... + +In his study he consoled himself for this diminution of his intention. +It had taken him five years, he reflected, to get to his present real +sense of God's presence and to his personal subordination to God's +purpose. It had been a little absurd, he perceived, to expect these +girls to leap at once to a complete understanding of the halting hints, +the allusive indications of the thoughts that now possessed his soul. He +tried like some maiden speaker to recall exactly what it was he had said +and what it was he had forgotten to say.... This was merely a beginning, +merely a beginning. + +After the girls had gone to bed, Lady Ella came to him and she was +glowing and tender; she was in love again as she had not been since the +shadow had first fallen between them. “I was so glad you spoke to them,” + she said. “They had been puzzled. But they are dear loyal girls.” + +He tried to tell her rather more plainly what he felt about the whole +question of religion in their lives, but eloquence had departed from +him. + +“You see, Ella, life cannot get out of tragedy--and sordid +tragedy--until we bring about the Kingdom of God. It's no unreality that +has made me come out of the church.” + +“No, dear. No,” she said soothingly and reassuringly. “With all these +mere boys going to the most dreadful deaths in the trenches, with death, +hardship and separation running amok in the world--” + +“One has to do something,” she agreed. + +“I know, dear,” he said, “that all this year of doubt and change has +been a dreadful year for you.” + +“It was stupid of me,” she said, “but I have been so unhappy. It's +over now--but I was wretched. And there was nothing I could say.... +I prayed.... It isn't the poverty I feared ever, but the disgrace. +Now--I'm happy. I'm happy again. + +“But how far do you come with me?” + +“I'm with you.” + +“But,” he said, “you are still a churchwoman?” + +“I don't know,” she said. “I don't mind.” + +He stared at her. + +“But I thought always that was what hurt you most, my breach with the +church.” + +“Things are so different now,” she said. + +Her heart dissolved within her into tender possessiveness. There came +flooding into her mind the old phrases of an ancient story: “Whither +thou goest I will go... thy people shall be my people and thy God my +God.... The Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part thee +and me.” + +Just those words would Lady Ella have said to her husband now, but she +was capable of no such rhetoric. + +“Whither thou goest,” she whispered almost inaudibly, and she could get +no further. “My dear,” she said. + +(18) + + +At two o'clock the next morning Scrope was still up. He was sitting over +the snoring gas fire in his study. He did not want to go to bed. His +mind was too excited, he knew, for any hope of sleep. In the last twelve +hours, since he had gone out across the park to his momentous talk with +Lady Sunderbund, it seemed to him that his life had passed through its +cardinal crisis and come to its crown and decision. The spiritual voyage +that had begun five years ago amidst a stormy succession of theological +nightmares had reached harbour at last. He was established now in the +sure conviction of God's reality, and of his advent to unify the lives +of men and to save mankind. Some unobserved process in his mind had +perfected that conviction, behind the cloudy veil of his vacillations +and moods. Surely that work was finished now, and the day's experience +had drawn the veil and discovered God established for ever. + +He contrasted this simple and overruling knowledge of God as the supreme +fact in a practical world with that vague and ineffective subject for +sentiment who had been the “God” of his Anglican days. Some theologian +once spoke of God as “the friend behind phenomena”; that Anglican deity +had been rather a vague flummery behind court and society, wealth, +“respectability,” and the comfortable life. And even while he had lived +in lipservice to that complaisant compromise, this true God had been +here, this God he now certainly professed, waiting for his allegiance, +waiting to take up the kingship of this distraught and bloodstained +earth. The finding of God is but the stripping of bandages from the +eyes. Seek and ye shall find.... + +He whispered four words very softly: “The Kingdom of God!” + +He was quite sure he had that now, quite sure. + +The Kingdom of God! + +That now was the form into which all his life must fall. He recalled his +vision of the silver sphere and of ten thousand diverse minds about the +world all making their ways to the same one conclusion. Here at last was +a king and emperor for mankind for whom one need have neither contempt +nor resentment; here was an aim for which man might forge the steel +and wield the scalpel, write and paint and till and teach. Upon this +conception he must model all his life. Upon this basis he must found +friendships and co-operations. All the great religions, Christianity, +Islam, in the days of their power and honesty, had proclaimed the advent +of this kingdom of God. It had been their common inspiration. A religion +surrenders when it abandons the promise of its Millennium. He had +recovered that ancient and immortal hope. All men must achieve it, and +with their achievement the rule of God begins. He muttered his faith. It +made it more definite to put it into words and utter it. “It comes. +It surely comes. To-morrow I begin. I will do no work that goes not +Godward. Always now it shall be the truth as near as I can put it. +Always now it shall be the service of the commonweal as well as I can +do it. I will live for the ending of all false kingship and priestcraft, +for the eternal growth of the spirit of man....” + +He was, he knew clearly, only one common soldier in a great army that +was finding its way to enlistment round and about the earth. He was not +alone. While the kings of this world fought for dominion these others +gathered and found themselves and one another, these others of the faith +that grows plain, these men who have resolved to end the bloodstained +chronicles of the Dynasts and the miseries of a world that trades in +life, for ever. They were many men, speaking divers tongues. He was +but one who obeyed the worldwide impulse. He could smile at the artless +vanity that had blinded him to the import of his earlier visions, that +had made him imagine himself a sole discoverer, a new Prophet, that had +brought him so near to founding a new sect. Every soldier in the new +host was a recruiting sergeant according to his opportunity.... And none +was leader. Only God was leader.... + +“The achievement of the Kingdom of God;” this was his calling. +Henceforth this was his business in life.... + +For a time he indulged in vague dreams of that kingdom of God on earth +of which he would be one of the makers; it was a dream of a shadowy +splendour of cities, of great scientific achievements, of a universal +beauty, of beautiful people living in the light of God, of a splendid +adventure, thrusting out at last among the stars. But neither his +natural bent nor his mental training inclined him to mechanical or +administrative explicitness. Much more was his dream a vision of +men inwardly ennobled and united in spirit. He saw history growing +reasonable and life visibly noble as mankind realized the divine aim. +All the outward peace and order, the joy of physical existence finely +conceived, the mounting power and widening aim were but the expression +and verification of the growth of God within. Then we would bear +children for finer ends than the blood and mud of battlefields. Life +would tower up like a great flame. By faith we reached forward to that. +The vision grew more splendid as it grew more metaphorical. And the +price one paid for that; one gave sham dignities, false honour, a +Levitical righteousness, immediate peace, one bartered kings and +churches for God.... He looked at the mean, poverty-struck room, he +marked the dinginess and tawdriness of its detail and all the sordid +evidences of ungracious bargaining and grudging service in its +appointments. For all his life now he would have to live in such rooms. +He who had been one of the lucky ones.... Well, men were living in +dug-outs and dying gaily in muddy trenches, they had given limbs and +lives, eyes and the joy of movement, prosperity and pride, for a smaller +cause and a feebler assurance than this that he had found.... + +(19) + + +Presently his thoughts were brought back to his family by the sounds of +Eleanor's return. He heard her key in the outer door; he heard her move +about in the hall and then slip lightly up to bed. He did not go out to +speak to her, and she did not note the light under his door. + +He would talk to her later when this discovery of her own emotions no +longer dominated her mind. He recalled her departing figure and how she +had walked, touching and looking up to her young mate, and he a little +leaning to her.... + +“God bless them and save them,” he said.... + +He thought of her sisters. They had said but little to his clumsy +explanations. He thought of the years and experience that they must +needs pass through before they could think the fulness of his present +thoughts, and so he tempered his disappointment. They were a gallant +group, he felt. He had to thank Ella and good fortune that so they were. +There was Clementina with her odd quick combatant sharpness, a harder +being than Eleanor, but nevertheless a fine-spirited and even more +independent. There was Miriam, indefatigably kind. Phoebe too had a real +passion of the intellect and Daphne an innate disposition to service. +But it was strange how they had taken his proclamation of a conclusive +breach with the church as though it was a command they must, at least +outwardly, obey. He had expected them to be more deeply shocked; he had +thought he would have to argue against objections and convert them to +his views. Their acquiescence was strange. They were content he should +think all this great issue out and give his results to them. And his +wife, well as he knew her, had surprised him. He thought of her words: +“Whither thou goest--” + +He was dissatisfied with this unconditional agreement. Why could not +his wife meet God as he had met God? Why must Miriam put the fantastic +question--as though it was not for her to decide: “Are we still +Christians?” And pursuing this thought, why couldn't Lady Sunderbund set +up in religion for herself without going about the world seeking for +a priest and prophet. Were women Undines who must get their souls from +mortal men? And who was it tempted men to set themselves up as priests? +It was the wife, the disciple, the lover, who was the last, the most +fatal pitfall on the way to God. + +He began to pray, still sitting as he prayed. + +“Oh God!” he prayed. “Thou who has shown thyself to me, let me never +forget thee again. Save me from forgetfulness. And show thyself to those +I love; show thyself to all mankind. Use me, O God, use me; but keep my +soul alive. Save me from the presumption of the trusted servant; save me +from the vanity of authority.... + +“And let thy light shine upon all those who are so dear to me.... Save +them from me. Take their dear loyalty....” + +He paused. A flushed, childishly miserable face that stared indignantly +through glittering tears, rose before his eyes. He forgot that he had +been addressing God. + +“How can I help you, you silly thing?” he said. “I would give my own +soul to know that God had given his peace to you. I could not do as you +wished. And I have hurt you!... You hurt yourself.... But all the time +you would have hampered me and tempted me--and wasted yourself. It was +impossible.... And yet you are so fine!” + +He was struck by another aspect. + +“Ella was happy--partly because Lady Sunderbund was hurt and left +desolated....” + +“Both of them are still living upon nothings. Living for nothings. A +phantom way of living....” + +He stared blankly at the humming blue gas jets amidst the incandescent +asbestos for a space. + +“Make them understand,” he pleaded, as though he spoke confidentially of +some desirable and reasonable thing to a friend who sat beside him. “You +see it is so hard for them until they understand. It is easy enough when +one understands. Easy--” He reflected for some moments--“It is as if +they could not exist--except in relationship to other definite people. +I want them to exist--as now I exist--in relationship to God. Knowing +God....” + +But now he was talking to himself again. + +“So far as one can know God,” he said presently. + +For a while he remained frowning at the fire. Then he bent forward, +turned out the gas, arose with the air of a man who relinquishes a +difficult task. “One is limited,” he said. “All one's ideas must fall +within one's limitations. Faith is a sort of tour de force. A feat of +the imagination. For such things as we are. Naturally--naturally.... One +perceives it clearly only in rare moments.... That alters nothing....” + + + + + + +Mr. WELLS has also written the following novels: + + LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM + KIPPS + MR. POLLY + THE WHEELS OF CHANCE + THE NEW MACHIAVELLI + ANN VERONICA + TONO BUNGAY + MARRIAGE + BEALBY + THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS + THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN + THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT + MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH + + The following fantastic and imaginative romances: + THE WAR OF THE WORLDS + THE TIME MACHINE + THE WONDERFUL VISIT + THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU + THE SEA LADY + THE SLEEPER AWAKES + THE FOOD OF THE GODS + THE WAR IN THE AIR + THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON + IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET + THE WORLD SET FREE + + And numerous Short Stories now collected in + One Volume under the title of + THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND + + A Series of books upon Social, Religious and + Political questions: + ANTICIPATIONS (1900) + MANKIND IN THE MAKING + FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY) + NEW WORLDS FOR OLD + A MODERN UTOPIA + THE FUTURE IN AMERICA + AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD + WHAT IS COMING? + WAR AND THE FUTURE + GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + + And two little books about children's play, called: + FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Soul of a Bishop, by H. G. 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