Catholic movement because he thinks they're too fond of ritualism
for its own sake. And so do I.'
'Oh, I don't say your father isn't absolutely sound on doctrine--
absolutely sound. But if he thinks we're the Catholic Church, why
doesn't he hold the service in a proper Catholic way? It's a shame
we can't have incense OCCASIONALLY. And his ideas about vestments--
if you don't mind my saying it--are simply awful. On Easter
Sunday he was wearing a Gothic cope with a modern Italian lace alb.
Dash it, it's like wearing a top hat with brown boots.'
'Well, I don't think vestments are so important as you do,' said
Dorothy. 'I think it's the spirit of the priest that matters, not
the clothes he wears.'
'That's the kind of thing a Primitive Methodist would say!'
exclaimed Victor disgustedly. 'Of course vestments are important!
Where's the sense of worshipping at all if we can't make a proper
job of it? Now, if you want to see what real Catholic worship CAN
be like, look at St Wedekind's in Millborough! By Jove, they do
things in style there! Images of the Virgin, reservation of the
Sacrament--everything. They've had the Kensitites on to them three
times, and they simply defy the Bishop.'
'Oh, I hate the way they go on at St Wedekind's!' said Dorothy.
'They're absolutely spiky. You can hardly see what's happening at
the altar, there are such clouds of incense. I think people like
that ought to turn Roman Catholic and have done with it.'
'My dear Dorothy, you ought to have been a Nonconformist. You
really ought. A Plymouth Brother--or a Plymouth Sister or whatever
it's called. I think your favourite hymn must be Number 567, "O my
God I fear Thee, Thou art very High!"'
'Yours is Number 231, "I nightly pitch my moving tent a day's march
nearer Rome!"' retorted Dorothy, winding the thread round the last
button.
The argument continued for several minutes while Dorothy adorned a
Cavalier's beaver hat (it was an old black felt school hat of her
own) with plume and ribbons. She and Victor were never long
together without being involved in an argument upon the question of
'ritualism'. In Dorothy's opinion Victor was a kind to 'go over to
Rome' if not prevented, and she was very likely right. But Victor
was not yet aware of his probable destiny. At present the fevers
of the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its ceaseless exciting warfare
on three fronts at once--Protestants to right of you, Modernists to
the left of you, and, unfortunately, Roman Catholics to rear of you
and always ready for a sly kick in the pants--filled his mental
horizon. Scoring off Dr Major in the Church Times meant more to
him than any of the serious business of life. But for all his
churchiness he had not an atom of real piety in his constitution.
It was essentially as a game that religious controversy appealed to
him--the most absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for
ever and because just a little cheating is allowed.
'Thank goodness, that's done!' said Dorothy, twiddling the
Cavalier's beaver hat round on her hand and then putting it down.
'Oh dear, what piles of things there are still to do, though! I
wish I could get those wretched jackboots off my mind. What's the
time, Victor?'
'It's nearly five to one.'
'Oh, good gracious! I must run. I've got three omelettes to make.
I daren't trust them to Ellen. And, oh, Victor! Have you got
anything you can give us for the jumble sale? If you had an old
pair of trousers you could give us, that would be best of all,
because we can always sell trousers.'
'Trousers? No. But I tell you what I have got, though. I've got
a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress and another of Foxe's Book of
Martyrs that I've been wanting to get rid of for years. Beastly
Protestant trash! An old Dissenting aunt of mine gave them to me.--
Doesn't it make you sick, all this cadging for pennies? Now, if
we only held our services in a proper Catholic way, so that we
could get up a proper congregation, don't you see, we shouldn't
need--'
'That'll be splendid,' said Dorothy. 'We always have a stall for
books--we charge a penny for each book, and nearly all of them get
sold. We simply MUST make that jumble sale a success, Victor! I'm
counting on Miss Mayfill to give us something really NICE. What
I'm specially hoping is that she might give us that beautiful old
Lowestoft china tea service of hers, and we could sell it for five
pounds at least. I've been making special prayers all the morning
that she'll give it to us.'
'Oh?' said Victor, less enthusiastically than usual. Like Proggett
earlier in the morning, he was embarrassed by the word 'prayer'.
He was ready to talk all day long about a point of ritual; but the
mention of private devotions struck him as slightly indecent.
'Don't forget to ask your father about the procession,' he said,
getting back to a more congenial topic.
'All right, I'll ask him. But you know how it'll be. He'll only
get annoyed and say it's Roman Fever.'
'Oh, damn Roman Fever!' said Victor, who, unlike Dorothy, did not
set himself penances for swearing.
Dorothy hurried to the kitchen, discovered that there were only
five eggs to make the omelettes for three people, and decided to
make one large omelette and swell it out a bit with the cold boiled
potatoes left over from yesterday. With a short prayer for the
success of the omelette (for omelettes are so dreadfully apt to get
broken when you take them out of the pan), she whipped up the eggs,
while Victor made off down the drive, half wistfully and half
sulkily humming 'Hail thee, Festival Day', and passing on his way a
disgusted-looking manservant carrying the two handleless chamber-
pots which were Miss Mayfill's contribution to the jumble sale.
6
It was a little after ten o'clock. Various things had happened--
nothing, however, of any particular importance; only the usual
round of parish jobs that filled up Dorothy's afternoon and
evening. Now, as she had arranged earlier in the day, she was at
Mr Warburton's house, and was trying to hold her own in one of
those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her.
They were talking--but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to
manoeuvre the conversation towards this subject--about the question
of religious belief.
'My dear Dorothy,' he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up
and down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating
a Brazilian cigar. 'My dear Dorothy, you don't seriously mean to
tell me that at your age--twenty-seven, I believe--and with your
intelligence, you will retain your religious beliefs more or less
in toto?'
'Of course I do. You know I do.'
'Oh, come, now! The whole bag of tricks? All that nonsense that
you learned at your mother's knee--surely you're not going to
pretend to me that you still believe in it? But of cou
rse you
don't! You can't! You're afraid to own up, that's all it is. No
need to worry about that here, you know. The Rural Dean's wife
isn't listening, and _I_ won't give the show away.'
'I don't know what you mean by "all that NONSENSE",' began Dorothy,
sitting up straighter in her chair, a little offended.
'Well, let's take an instance. Something particularly hard to
swallow--Hell, for instance. Do you believe in Hell? When I say
BELIEVE, mind you, I'm not asking whether you believe it in some
milk and water metaphorical way like these Modernist bishops young
Victor Stone gets so excited about. I mean do you believe in it
literally? Do you believe in Hell as you believe in Australia?'
'Yes, of course I do,' said Dorothy, and she endeavoured to explain
to him that the existence of Hell is much more real and permanent
than the existence of Australia.
'Hm,' said Mr Warburton, unimpressed. 'Very sound in its way, of
course. But what always makes me so suspicious of you religious
people is that you're so deucedly cold-blooded about your beliefs.
It shows a very poor imagination, to say the least of it. Here am
I an infidel and blasphemer and neck deep in at least six out of
the Seven Deadly, and obviously doomed to eternal torment. There's
no knowing that in an hour's time I mayn't be roasting in the
hottest part of Hell. And yet you can sit there talking to me as
calmly as though I'd nothing the matter with me. Now, if I'd
merely got cancer or leprosy or some other bodily ailment, you'd be
quite distressed about it--at least, I like to flatter myself that
you would. Whereas, when I'm going to sizzle on the grid
throughout eternity, you seem positively unconcerned about it.'
'I never said YOU were going to Hell,' said Dorothy somewhat
uncomfortably, and wishing that the conversation would take a
different turn. For the truth was, though she was not going to
tell him so, that the point Mr Warburton had raised was one with
which she herself had had certain difficulties. She did indeed
believe in Hell, but she had never been able to persuade herself
that anyone actually WENT there. She believed that Hell existed,
but that it was empty. Uncertain of the orthodoxy of this belief,
she preferred to keep it to herself. 'It's never certain that
ANYONE is going to Hell,' she said more firmly, feeling that here
at least she was on sure ground.
'What!' said Mr Warburton, halting in mock surprise. 'Surely you
don't mean to say that there's hope for me yet?'
'Of course there is. It's only those horrid Predestination people
who pretend that you go to Hell whether you repent or not. You
don't think the Church of England are Calvinists, do you?'
'I suppose there's always the chance of getting off on a plea of
Invincible Ignorance,' said Mr Warburton reflectively; and then,
more confidently: 'Do you know, Dorothy, I've a sort of feeling
that even now, after knowing me two years, you've still half an
idea you can make a convert of me. A lost sheep--brand plucked
from the burning, and all that. I believe you still hope against
hope that one of these days my eyes will be opened and you'll meet
me at Holy Communion at seven o'clock on some damned cold winter
morning. Don't you?'
'Well--' said Dorothy, again uncomfortably. She did, in fact,
entertain some such hope about Mr Warburton, though he was not
exactly a promising case for conversion. It was not in her nature
to see a fellow being in a state of unbelief without making some
effort to reclaim him. What hours she had spent, at different
times, earnestly debating with vague village atheists who could not
produce a single intelligible reason for their unbelief! 'Yes,'
she admitted finally, not particularly wanting to make the
admission, but not wanting to prevaricate.
Mr Warburton laughed delightedly.
'You've a hopeful nature,' he said. 'But you aren't afraid, by any
chance, that I might convert YOU? "The dog it was that died", you
may remember.'
At this Dorothy merely smiled. 'Don't let him see he's shocking
you'--that was always her maxim when she was talking to Mr
Warburton. They had been arguing in this manner, without coming to
any kind of conclusion, for the past hour, and might have gone on
for the rest of the night if Dorothy had been willing to stay; for
Mr Warburton delighted in teasing her about her religious beliefs.
He had that fatal cleverness that so often goes with unbelief, and
in their arguments, though Dorothy was always RIGHT, she was not
always victorious. They were sitting, or rather Dorothy was
sitting and Mr Warburton was standing, in a large agreeable room,
giving on a moonlit lawn, that Mr Warburton called his 'studio'--
not that there was any sign of work ever having been done in it.
To Dorothy's great disappointment, the celebrated Mr Bewley had not
turned up. (As a matter of fact, neither Mr Bewley, nor his wife,
nor his novel entitled Fishpools and Concubines, actually existed.
Mr Warburton had invented all three of them on the spur of the
moment, as a pretext for inviting Dorothy to his house, well
knowing that she would never come unchaperoned.) Dorothy had felt
rather uneasy on finding that Mr Warburton was alone. It had
occurred to her, indeed she had felt perfectly certain, that it
would be wiser to go home at once; but she had stayed, chiefly
because she was horribly tired and the leather armchair into which
Mr Warburton had thrust her the moment she entered the house was
too comfortable to leave. Now, however, her conscience was
pricking her. It DIDN'T DO to stay too late at his house--people
would talk if they heard of it. Besides, there was a multitude of
jobs that she ought to be doing and that she had neglected in order
to come here. She was so little used to idleness that even an hour
spent in mere talking seemed to her vaguely sinful.
She made an effort, and straightened herself in the too-comfortable
chair. 'I think, if you don't mind, it's really time I was getting
home,' she said.
'Talking of Invincible Ignorance,' went on Mr Warburton, taking no
notice of Dorothy's remark, 'I forget whether I ever told you that
once when I was standing outside the World's End pub in Chelsea,
waiting for a taxi, a damned ugly little Salvation Army lassie came
up to me and said--without any kind of introduction, you know--
"What will you say at the Judgement Seat?" I said, "I am reserving
my defence." Rather neat, I think, don't you?'
Dorothy did not answer. Her conscience had given her another and
harder jab--she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots,
and the fact that at least one of them had got to be made tonight.
She was, however, unbearably tired. She had had an exhausting
afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so bicycling to and fro
in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing with the
Mothers' Union tea in the hot little wo
oden-walled room behind the
parish hall. The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea
and do some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them.
(At present she was reading Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the
Limberlost.) It was nearly always upon Dorothy that jobs of that
kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted women (the church
fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most parishes had
dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most. The only helper on
whom Dorothy could count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall,
rabbit-faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but
made a mess of everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry.
Mr Warburton used to say that she reminded him of a comet--'a
ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing round on an eccentric orbit
and always a little behind time'. You could trust Miss Foote with
the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the Sunday
School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect. She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God
best under the blue dome of the sky. After tea Dorothy had dashed
up to the church to put fresh flowers on the altar, and then she
had typed out her father's sermon--her typewriter was a rickety
pre-Boer War 'invisible', on which you couldn't average eight
hundred words an hour--and after supper she had weeded the pea rows
until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking. With
one thing and another, she was even more tired than usual.
'I really MUST be getting home,' she repeated more firmly. 'I'm
sure it's getting fearfully late.'
'Home?' said Mr Warburton. 'Nonsense! The evening's hardly begun.'
He was walking up and down the room again, with his hands in his
coat pockets, having thrown away his cigar. The spectre of the
unmade jackboots stalked back into Dorothy's mind. She would, she
suddenly decided, make two jackboots tonight instead of only one,
as a penance for the hour she had wasted. She was just beginning
to make a mental sketch of the way she would cut out the pieces of
brown paper for the insteps, when she noticed that Mr Warburton had
halted behind her chair.
'What time is it, do you know?' she said.
'I dare say it might be half past ten. But people like you and me
don't talk of such vulgar subjects as the time.'
'If it's half past ten, then I really must be going,' said Dorothy.
I've got a whole lot of work to do before I go to bed.'
'Work! At this time of night? Impossible!'
'Yes, I have. I've got to make a pair of jackboots.'
'You've got to make a pair of WHAT?' said Mr Warburton.
'Of jackboots. For the play the schoolchildren are acting. We
make them out of glue and brown paper.'
'Glue and brown paper! Good God!' murmured Mr Warburton. He went
on, chiefly to cover the fact that he was drawing nearer to
Dorothy's chair: 'What a life you lead! Messing about with glue
and brown paper in the middle of the night! I must say, there are
times when I feel just a little glad that I'm not a clergyman's
daughter.'
'I think--' began Dorothy.
But at the same moment Mr Warburton, invisible behind her chair,
had lowered his hands and taken her gently by the shoulders.
Dorothy immediately wriggled herself in an effort to get free of
him; but Mr Warburton pressed her back into her place.
'Keep still,' he said peaceably.
'Let me go!' exclaimed Dorothy.
Mr Warburton ran his right hand caressingly down her upper arm.
There was something very revealing, very characteristic in the way
he did it; it was the lingering, appraising touch of a man to whom
a woman's body is valuable precisely in the same way as though it
were something to eat.
'You really have extraordinary nice arms,' he said. 'How on earth