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 apointing finger was prominent. His face worked violently, his lips movedvery rapidly, but what he said was inaudible. 

Behind him the little rufous man with the big eyes twitched at his robeand 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 tonguethe majority did not use, and then prevailing. They ceased theirinterruptions, and the old man, Arius, took up the debate. For a timeall those impassioned faces were intent upon him; they listened asthough they sought occasion, and suddenly as if by a preconcertedarrangement they were all thrusting their fingers into their ears andknitting their brows in assumed horror; some were crying aloud andmaking as if to fly. Some indeed tucked up their garments and fled. Theyspread out into a pattern. They were like the little monks who run fromSt. Jerome's lion in the picture by Carpaccio. Then one zealot rushedforward and smote the old man heavily upon the mouth.... 

The hall seemed to grow vaster and vaster, the disputing, infuriatedfigures multiplied to an innumerable assembly, they drove about likesnowflakes in a gale, they whirled in argumentative couples, they spunin eddies of contradiction, they made extraordinary patterns, and thenamidst the cloudy darkness of the unfathomable dome above them thereappeared and increased a radiant triangle in which shone an eye. The eyeand the triangle filled the heavens, sent out flickering rays, glowedto a blinding incandescence, seemed to be speaking words of thunderthat were nevertheless inaudible. It was as if that thunder filled theheavens, it was as if it were nothing but the beating artery in thesleeper's ear. The attention strained to hear and comprehend, and on thevery 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 ofintellectual effort that had survived the dream in which it had arisen. Was it so that things had happened? The slumber-shadowed mind, movingobscurely, could not determine whether it was so or not. Had they indeedbehaved in this manner when the great mystery was established? Whosaid they stopped their ears with their fingers and fled, shouting withhorror? Shouting? Was it Eusebius or Athanasius? Or Sozomen.... Someletter or apology by Athanasius?... And surely it was impossible thatthe Trinity could have appeared visibly as a triangle and an eye. Abovesuch an assembly. 

That was mere dreaming, of course. Was it dreaming after Raphael? AfterRaphael? The drowsy mind wandered into a side issue. Was the picturethat had suggested this dream the one in the Vatican where all theFathers of the Church are shown disputing together? But there surely Godand the Son themselves were painted with a symbol--some symbol--also?But was that disputation about the Trinity at all? Wasn't it ratherabout a chalice and a dove? Of course it was a chalice and a dove! Thenwhere did one see the triangle and the eye? And men disputing? Some suchpicture there was.... 

What a lot of disputing there had been! What endless disputing! Whichhad gone on. Until last night. When this very disagreeable young manwith the hawk nose and the pointing finger had tackled one when one wassorely fagged, and disputed; disputed. Rebuked and disputed. "Answer methis, " he had said.... And still one's poor brains disputed and wouldnot rest.... About the Trinity.... 

The brain upon the pillow was now wearily awake. It was at oncehopelessly awake and active and hopelessly unprogressive. It was likesome floating stick that had got caught in an eddy in a river, goinground and round and round. And round. Eternally--eternally--eternallybegotten. 

"But what possible meaning do you attach then to such a phrase aseternally begotten?"

The brain upon the pillow stared hopelessly at this question, without ananswer, without an escape. The three repetitions spun round and round, became a swiftly revolving triangle, like some electric sign thathad got beyond control, in the midst of which stared an unwinking andresentful eye. 

(2)

Every one knows that expedient of the sleepless, the counting of sheep. 

You lie quite still, you breathe regularly, you imagine sheep jumpingover a gate, one after another, you count them quietly and slowly untilyou count yourself off through a fading string of phantom numbers tonumber Nod.... 

But sheep, alas! suggest an episcopal crook. 

And presently a black sheep had got into the succession and wasstruggling violently with the crook about its leg, a hawk-nosed blacksheep full of reproof, with disordered hair and a pointing finger. Ayoung man with a most disagreeable voice. 

At which the other sheep took heart and, deserting the numberedsuccession, came and sat about the fire in a big drawing-room and arguedalso. In particular there was Lady Sunderbund, a pretty fragile tallwoman in the corner, richly jewelled, who sat with her pretty eyeswatching and her lips compressed. What had she thought of it? She hadsaid very little. 

It is an unusual thing for a mixed gathering of this sort to argue aboutthe 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 andinquiring one, when the young man who had sat still and dormant by thetable was in reality a keen and bitter Irish Roman Catholic. Then thequestion, a question-begging question, was put quite suddenly, withoutpreparation or prelude, by surprise. "Why, Bishop, was the SpermaticosLogos identified with the Second and not the Third Person of theTrinity?"

It was indiscreet, it was silly, to turn upon the speaker and affect anair of disengagement and modernity and to say: "Ah, that indeed is theunfortunate aspect of the whole affair. "

Whereupon the fierce young man had exploded with: "To that, is it, thatyou Anglicans have come?"

The whole gathering had given itself up to the disputation, LadySunderbund, an actress, a dancer--though she, it is true, did not sayvery 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 reverentvagueness, that tenderness of touch, which is by all Anglican standardsimperative in so deep, so mysterious, and, nowadays, in mixed society atleast, so infrequent a discussion. 

It was like animals breaking down a fence about some sacred spot. Withina couple of minutes the affair had become highly improper. They hadraised their voices, they had spoken with the utmost familiarity ofalmost unspeakable things. There had been even attempts at epigram. Athanasian epigrams. Bent the novelist had doubted if originally therehad been a Third Person in the Trinity at all. He suggested a reactionfrom a too-Manichaean dualism at some date after the time of St. John'sGospel. He maintained obstinately that that Gospel was dualistic. 

The unpleasant quality of the talk was far more manifest in theretrospect than it had been at the time. It had seemed then boldand strange, but not impossible; now in the cold darkness it seemedsacrilegious. And the bishop's share, which was indeed only the weakyielding of a tired man to an atmosphere he had misjudged, became adisgraceful display of levity and bad faith. They had baited him. Some one had said that nowadays every one was an Arian, knowingly orunknowingly. They had not concealed their conviction that the bishop didnot 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 gropinglyin this unaccustomed bed and bedroom first for the edge of the bed andthen for the electric light that was possibly on the little bedsidetable. 

The searching hand touched something. A water-bottle. The hand resumedits exploration. Here was something metallic and smooth, a stem. Eitherabove 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 cornerof the bed in which he lay. The lamp had a tilted shade that threwa slanting bar of shadow across the field of reflection, lighting aright-angled triangle very brightly and leaving the rest obscure. Thebed was a very great one, a bed for the Anakim. It had a canopy withyellow silk curtains, surmounted by a gilded crown of carved wood. Between the curtains was a man's face, clean-shaven, pale, withdisordered brown hair and weary, pale-blue eyes. He was clad in purplepyjamas, and the hand that now ran its fingers through the brown hairwas long and lean and shapely. 

Beside the bed was a convenient little table bearing the light, awater-bottle and glass, a bunch of keys, a congested pocket-book, agold-banded fountain pen, and a gold watch that indicated a quarter pastthree. On the lower edge of the picture in the mirror appeared the backof a gilt chair, over which a garment of peculiar construction had beencarelessly thrown. It was in the form of that sleeveless cassock ofpurple, opening at the side, whose lower flap is called a bishop'sapron; the corner of the frogged coat showed behind the chair-back, andthe sash lay crumpled on the floor. Black doeskin breeches, still warmlylined with their pants, lay where they had been thrust off at the cornerof the bed, partly covering black hose and silver-buckled shoes. 

For a moment the tired gaze of the man in the bed rested upon theseevidences of his episcopal dignity. Then he turned from them to thewatch at the bedside. 

He groaned helplessly. 

(4)

These country doctors were no good. There wasn't a physician in thediocese. He must go to London. 

He looked into the weary eyes of his reflection and said, as one makes areassuring promise, "London. "

He was being worried. He was being intolerably worried, and he was illand unable to sustain his positions. This doubt, this sudden discoveryof controversial unsoundness, was only one aspect of his generalneurasthenia. It had been creeping into his mind since the "Light Undenthe Altar" controversy. Now suddenly it had leapt upon him from his ownunwary lips. 

The immediate trouble arose from his loyalty. He had followed the King'sexample; he had become a total abstainer and, in addition, on his ownaccount he had ceased to smoke. And his digestion, which Princhesterhad first made sensitive, was deranged. He was suffering chemically, suffering one of those nameless sequences of maladjustments that stilldefy our ordinary medical science. It was afflicting him with a generalmalaise, it was affecting his energy, his temper, all the balance andcomfort 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 ofdetachment from the things about him, by a curious intimation ofunreality in everything he experienced. And with that went this levityof conscience, a heaviness of soul and a levity of conscience, thatcould make him talk as though the Creeds did not matter--as thoughnothing mattered.... 

If only he could smoke!

He was persuaded that a couple of Egyptian cigarettes, or three at theoutside, 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 hadseveral of these conscience-blanks; it was only when they were over thathe 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 mutualdespair. 

There came before his memory the image of a boy's face, a swarthy littleboy, grinning, grinning with a horrible knowingness and pointinghis finger--an accusing finger. It had been the most exasperating, humiliating, and shameful incident in the bishop's career. It wasthe afternoon for his fortnightly address to the Shop-girls' ChurchAssociation, and he had been seized with a panic fear, entirelyirrational and unjustifiable, that he would not be able to deliver theaddress. The fear had arisen after lunch, had gripped his mind, and thenas 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 fallento the temptation with a completeness that now filled him with shame andhorror. 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 icymountains, " and then, glancing over his shoulder, had stolen one ofhis own cigarettes, one of the fatter sort. With this and his bedroommatches 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 thefirst blissful inhalation to discover that dreadful little boy peepingat him from the crotch in the yew-tree in the next garden. As though Godhad sent him to be a witness!

Their eyes had met. The bishop recalled with an agonized distinctnessevery moment, every error, of that shameful encounter. He had been toosurprised to conceal the state of affairs from the pitiless scrutiny ofthose youthful eyes. He had instantly made as if to put the cigarettebehind his back, and then as frankly dropped it.... 

His soul would not be more naked at the resurrection. The little boyhad stared, realized the state of affairs slowly but surely, pointed hisfinger.... 

Never had two human beings understood each other more completely. 

A dirty little boy! Capable no doubt of a thousand kindredscoundrelisms. 

It seemed ages before the conscience-stricken bishop could tear himselffrom the spot and walk back, with such a pretence of dignity as he couldmuster, to the house. 

And instead of the discourse he had prepared for the Shop-girls' ChurchAssociation, he had preached on temptation and falling, and how he knewthey had all fallen, and how he understood and could sympathize with thebitterness of a secret shame, a moving but unsuitable discourse thathad already been subjected to misconstruction and severe reproof in thelocal press of Princhester. 

But the haunting thing in the bishop's memory was the face and gestureof 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, makinga sort of cocoon of himself. He bored his head into the pillow andgroaned, and then struggled impatiently to throw the bed-clothes offhimself. Then he sat up and talked aloud. 

"I must go to Brighton-Pomfrey, " he said. "And get a medicaldispensation. If I do not smoke--"

He paused for a long time. 

Then his voice sounded again in the darkness, speaking quietly, speakingwith 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 hisknees. 

(5)

Fearful things came to him; things at once dreadfully blasphemous andentirely weak-minded. 

The triangle and the eye became almost visible upon the black backgroundof night. They were very angry. They were spinning round and roundfaster and faster. Because he was a bishop and because really he did notbelieve fully and completely in the Trinity. At one and the same timehe did not believe in the Trinity and was terrified by the anger of theTrinity at his unbelief.... He was afraid. He was aghast.... And oh! hewas 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. Whatshould he say? To what could he pray?

He tried not to think of that whizzing Triangle, that seemed now to benailed 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. Againstthat--for protection against that--he was praying. It was by a greateffort 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 springmorning, found his white face at the window, looking out upon the greatterrace 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 experiencedthese nervous and mental crises. He was a belated doubter. Whateverquestionings had marked his intellectual adolescence had either beenvery slight or had been too adequately answered to leave any seriousscars upon his convictions. 

And even now he felt that he was afflicted physically rather thanmentally, that some protective padding of nerve-sheath or brain-case hadworn thin and weak, and left him a prey to strange disturbances, ratherthan that any new process of thought was eating into his mind. Thesedoubts in his mind were still not really doubts; they were rather alienand, for the first time, uncontrolled movements of his intelligence. He had had a sheltered upbringing; he was the well-connected son ofa comfortable rectory, the only son and sole survivor of a familyof three; he had been carefully instructed and he had been a willinglearner; 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 foundit and God as he found Him. Indeed for all his years up to manhoodhe had been able to take life exactly as in his infancy he took hiscarefully 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 itwill stand few jars or discords. The student of ecclesiastical biographywill find that an early vocation has in every age been almost universalamong them; few are there among these lives that do not display theincipient bishop from the tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefieldcomposed hymns before he was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcelyolder possessed a little oratory in which he conducted services and--apleasant touch of the more secular boy--which he protected from a tooinquisitive sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that thosemarked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer worldas Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This earlypredestination has always been the common episcopal experience. Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious services remind one bothof St. Thomas a Becket, the "boy bishop, " and those early ceremonies ofSt. Athanasius which were observed and inquired upon by the good bishopAlexander. (For though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius withperfect correctness and validity was baptizing a number of his innocentplaymates, and the bishop who "had paused to contemplate the sports ofthe child remained to confirm the zeal of the missionary. ") And as withthe 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 pleasantpicture of himself as a child stealing out into the woods to buildhimself a little altar. 

Such minds as these, settled as it were from the outset, are eitherincapable of real scepticism or become sceptical only after catastrophicchanges. They understand the sceptical mind with difficulty, and theirbeliefs are regarded by the sceptical mind with incredulity. They havedetermined their forms of belief before their years of discretion, andonce those forms are determined they are not very easily changed. Withinthe shell it has adopted the intelligence may be active and livelyenough, may indeed be extraordinarily active and lively, but only withinthe shell. 

There is an entire difference in the mental quality of those who areconverts to a faith and those who are brought up in it. The former knowit 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 creedthat is one with their apprehension of sky or air or gravitation. Itis a primary mental structure, and they not only do not doubt but theydoubt the good faith of those who do. They think that the Atheist andAgnostic really believe but are impelled by a mysterious obstinacy todeny. So it had been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunningor design but in simple good faith he had accepted all the inheritedassurances of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire, decorum, respectability, solvency--and compulsory Greek at the LittleGo--as his father had done before him. If in his undergraduate days hehad said a thing or two in the modern vein, affected the socialismof William Morris and learnt some Swinburne by heart, it was out of aconscious wildness. He did not wish to be a prig. He had taken a farmore genuine interest in the artistry of ritual. 

Through all the time of his incumbency of the church of the HolyInnocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop suffraganof Pinner, he had never faltered from his profound confidence in thosestandards of his home. He had been kind, popular, and endlessly active. His undergraduate socialism had expanded simply and sincerely into atheory of administrative philanthropy. He knew the Webbs. He wasas successful with working-class audiences as with fashionablecongregations. His home life with Lady Ella (she was the daughter ofthe fifth Earl of Birkenholme) and his five little girls was simple, beautiful, and happy as few homes are in these days of confusion. Untilhe became Bishop of Princhester--he followed Hood, the first bishop, as the reign of his Majesty King Edward the Peacemaker drew to itsclose--no anticipation of his coming distress fell across his path. 

(2)

He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home lifeat the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of truth andreality. London had not disillusioned him. It was a strange waste ofpeople, it made him feel like a missionary in infidel parts, but it wasa kindly waste. It was neither antagonistic nor malicious. He had alwaysfelt there that if he searched his Londoner to the bottom, he wouldfind the completest recognition of the old rectory and all its data andimplications. 

But Princhester was different. 

Princhester made one think that recently there had been a second andmuch more serious Fall. 

Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside savagelyinvaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black things. It was scarredand impeded and discoloured. Even before that invasion, when the heatherwas not in flower it must have been a black country. Its people weredour uncandid individuals, who slanted their heads and knitted theirbrows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered bythe gases from chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories, closely reminiscent of the dear old home at Otteringham, jostled andelbowed and overshadowed by horrible iron cylinders belching smoke andflame. The fine old abbey church of Princhester, which was the cathedralof the new diocese, looked when first he saw it like a lady Abbess whohad taken to drink and slept in a coal truck. She minced apologeticallyupon the market-place; the parvenu Town Hall patronized and protectedher as if she were a poor relation.... 

The old aristocracy of the countryside was unpicturesquely decayed. Thebranch of the Walshinghams, Lady Ella's cousins, who lived near Pringle, was poor, proud and ignoble. And extremely unpopular. The rich peopleof the country were self-made and inclined to nonconformity, theworking-people were not strictly speaking a "poor, " they were highlypaid, badly housed, and deeply resentful. They went in vast droves tofootball matches, and did not care a rap if it rained. The prevailingwind was sarcastic. To come here from London was to come fromatmospheric blue-greys to ashen-greys, from smoke and soft smut to grimeand black grimness. 

The bishop had been charmed by the historical associations ofPrinchester when first the see was put before his mind. His realizationof his diocese was a profound shock. 

Only one hint had he had of what was coming. He had met duringhis season of congratulations Lord Gatling dining unusually at theAthenaeum. Lord Gatling and he did not talk frequently, but on thisoccasion the great racing peer came over to him. "You will feel like acherub in a stokehole, " Lord Gatling had said.... 

"They used to heave lumps of slag at old Hood's gaiters, " said LordGatling. 

"In London a bishop's a lord and a lark and nobody minds him, " said LordGatling, "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'spalace. Hood had always evaded this question, and a number ofstrong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence, full of localpatriotism and that competitive spirit which has made England what itis, already intensely irritated by Hood's prevarications, were resolvedto pin his successor to an immediate decision. Of this the new bishopwas unaware. Mindful of a bishop's constant need to travel, he wasdisposed to seek a home within easy reach of Pringle Junction, fromwhich nearly every point in the diocese could be simply and easilyreached. This fell in with Lady Ella's liking for the rare ruralquiet of the Kibe valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins theWalshinghams. Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexibleresolution of each and every one of the six leading towns of the see toput up, own, obtrude, boast, and swagger about the biggest and showiestthing in episcopal palaces in all industrial England, and the newbishop had already taken a short lease and gone some way towards theacquisition of Ganford House, two miles from Pringle, before he realizedthe strength and fury of these local ambitions. 

At first the magnates and influences seemed to be fighting only amongthemselves, and he was so ill-advised as to broach the Ganford Houseproject as a compromise that would glorify no one unfairly, and leavethe erection of an episcopal palace for some future date when he perhapswould have the good fortune to have passed to "where beyond thesevoices there is peace, " forgetting altogether among other oversightsthe importance of architects and builders in local affairs. Hisproposal seemed for a time to concentrate the rich passions of the wholecountryside upon himself and his wife. 

Because they did not leave Lady Ella alone. The Walshinghams werealready unpopular in their county on account of a poverty and shynessthat made them seem "stuck up" to successful captains of industryonly too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeedof friendship, consciously hospitable and eager for admission andendorsements. And Princhester in particular was under the sway of thatenterprising 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 theleading Princhester photographer. She had always helped where she couldin her husband's public work, and she had been popular upon her ownmerits in Wealdstone. The portrait was abominable enough in itself; itdwelt on her chin, doubled her age, and denied her gentleness, but itwas a mere starting-point for the subtle extravagance of The Snicker'spoisonous gift.... The thing came upon the bishop suddenly from thebook-stall at Pringle Junction. 

He kept it carefully from Lady Ella.... It was only later that he foundthat a copy of The White Blackbird had been sent to her, and that shewas keeping the horror from him. It was in her vein that she shouldreproach herself for being a vulnerable side to him. 

Even when the bishop capitulated in favour of Princhester, that decisiononly opened a fresh trouble for him. Princhester wanted the palace to bea palace; it wanted to combine all the best points of Lambeth andFulham with the marble splendours of a good modern bank. The bishop'sarchitectural tastes, on the other hand, were rationalistic. He was allfor building a useful palace in undertones, with a green slate roofand long horizontal lines. What he wanted more than anything else wasa quite remote wing with a lot of bright little bedrooms and asitting-room and so on, complete in itself, examination hall andeverything, with a long intricate connecting passage and several doors, to prevent the ordination candidates straying all over the place andgetting into the talk and the tea. But the diocese wanted a proudarchway--and turrets, and did not care a rap if the ordinationcandidates 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 hada feeling that it deserved more for coming over to the church fromnonconformity as it was doing. It wanted a bishop in a mitre and a giltcoach. It wanted a pastoral crook. It wanted something to go with itsmace and its mayor. And (obsessed by The Snicker) it wanted less of LadyElla. The cruelty and unreason of these attacks upon his wife distressedthe bishop beyond measure, and baffled him hopelessly. He could not seeany means of checking them nor of defending or justifying her againstthem. 

The palace was awaiting its tenant, but the controversies andbitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when KingGeorge was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave of socialdiscontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense of social andpolitical instability, and the first beginnings of the bishop's illhealth. 

(4)

There came a day of exceptional fatigue and significance. 

The industrial trouble was a very real distress to the bishop. He hada firm belief that it is a function of the church to act as mediatorbetween employer and employed. It was a common saying of his that theaim of socialism--the right sort of socialism--was to Christianizeemployment. Regardless of suspicion on either hand, regardless ofvery distinct hints that he should "mind his own business, " he exertedhimself in a search for methods of reconciliation. He sought out everyone who seemed likely to be influential on either side, and did hisutmost to discover the conditions of a settlement. As far as possibleand with the help of a not very efficient chaplain he tried to combinesuch interviews with his more normal visiting. 

At times, and this was particularly the case on this day, he seemed tobe discovering nothing but the incurable perversity and militancy ofhuman nature. It was a day under an east wind, when a steely-blue skyfull of colourless light filled a stiff-necked world with whitish highlights and inky shadows. These bright harsh days of barometric highpressure in England rouse and thwart every expectation of the happinessof spring. And as the bishop drove through the afternoon in a hiredfly along a rutted road of slag between fields that were bitterly wiredagainst the Sunday trespasser, he fell into a despondent meditation uponthe political and social outlook. 

His thoughts were of a sort not uncommon in those days. The world wasstrangely restless. Since the passing of Victoria the Great there hadbeen an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if somecompact 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 QueenVictoria had really been a paper-weight or any weight at all, butit happened that she died as an epoch closed, an epoch of tremendousstabilities. Her son, already elderly, had followed as the selvedgefollows the piece, he had passed and left the new age stripped bare. In nearly every department of economic and social life now there wasupheaval, and it was an upheaval very different in character from theradicalism and liberalism of the Victorian days. There were not onlydoubt and denial, but now there were also impatience and unreason. People argued less and acted quicker. There was a pride in rebellion forits own sake, an indiscipline and disposition to sporadic violence thatmade it extremely hard to negotiate any reconciliations or compromises. Behind every extremist it seemed stood a further extremist prepared togo 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 worriedby the struggle. He did not conceal his opinion that the church wasmeddling with matters quite outside its sphere. Never had it beenconveyed to the bishop before how remote a rich and establishedEnglishman 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'tbelieve you know anything about it, and they don't trust your goodintentions. They won't mind a bit what you say unless you drop somethingthey can use against us. "

The bishop tried a few phrases. He thought there might be something inco-operation, in profit-sharing, in some more permanent relationshipbetween the business and the employee. 

"There isn't, " said the employer compactly. "It's just the malice ofbeing inferior against the man in control. It's just the spirit ofinsubordination and boredom with duty. This trouble's as old as theDevil. "

"But that is exactly the business of the church, " said the bishopbrightly, "to reconcile men to their duty. "

"By chanting the Athanasian creed at 'em, I suppose, " said the bigemployer, betraying the sneer he had been hiding hitherto. 

"This thing is a fight, " said the big employer, carrying on before thebishop could reply. "Religion had better get out of the streets untilthis thing is over. The men won't listen to reason. They don't meanto. They're bit by Syndicalism. They're setting out, I tell you, to beunreasonable and impossible. It isn't an argument; it's a fight. Theydon't want to make friends with the employer. They want to make an endto the employer. Whatever we give them they'll take and press us formore. Directly we make terms with the leaders the men go behindit.... It's a raid on the whole system. They don't mean to work thesystem--anyhow. I'm the capitalist, and the capitalist has to go. I'm tobe bundled out of my works, and some--some "--he seemed to be rejectingunsuitable words--"confounded politician put in. Much good it would dothem. But before that happens I'm going to fight. You would. "

The bishop walked to the window and stood staring at the brilliantspring bulbs in the big employer's garden, and at a long vista ofnewly-mown lawn under great shapely trees just budding into green. 

"I can't admit, " he said, "that these troubles lie outside the sphere ofthe church. "

The employer came and stood beside him. He felt he was being a littlehard on the bishop, but he could not see any way of making thingseasier. 

"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 onnow.... "

Then he went on abruptly to something that for a time he had beenkeeping 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 socialismand 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 ofsocialism, Ruskin, and all that. We're all Socialists nowadays. Ideals--excellent. But--it gets misunderstood. It gives the men a senseof moral support. It makes them fancy that they are It. Encourages themto forget duties and set up preposterous claims. Class war and all thatsort of thing. You gentlemen of the clergy don't quite realize thatsocialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx. And that fromthe Class War to the Commune is just one step. "

(5)

From this conversation the bishop had made his way to the vicarage ofMogham Banks. The vicar of Mogham Banks was a sacerdotal socialist ofthe most advanced type, with the reputation of being closely in touchwith the labour extremists. He was a man addicted to banners, prohibitedornaments, special services at unusual hours, and processions in thestreets. His taste in chasubles was loud, he gardened in a cassockand, it was said, he slept in his biretta; he certainly slept in a hairshirt, 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, andaltogether he was a source of considerable anxiety to the bishop. Thebishop did his best not to know too exactly what was going on at MoghamBanks. Sooner or later he felt he would be forced to do something--andthe longer he could put that off the better. But the Rev. Morrice Deanshad promised to get together three or four prominent labour leaders fortea 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 therefreshment room at Pringle, was now in a fly that smelt of strawand suggested infectious hospital patients, on his way through theindustry-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 emphasizedthe contrast between that dear England of hedges and homes and thesouth-west wind in which his imagination lived, and the crude presencesof a mechanical age. Never before had the cuttings and heapings, thesmashing down of trees, the obtrusion of corrugated iron and tar, thebelchings of smoke and the haste, seemed so harsh and disregardfulof all the bishop's world. Across the fields a line of gaunt ironstandards, abominably designed, carried an electric cable to someunknown end. The curve of the hill made them seem a little out of thestraight, as if they hurried and bent forward furtively. 

"Where are they going?" asked the bishop, leaning forward to look out ofthe window of the fly, and then: "Where is it all going?"

And presently the road was under repair, and was being done at a greatpace with a huge steam-roller, mechanically smashed granite, and kettlesof stinking stuff, asphalt or something of that sort, that lookedand smelt like Milton's hell. Beyond, a gaunt hoarding advertisedextensively the Princhester Music Hall, a mean beastly place thatcorrupted boys and girls; and also it clamoured of tyres and pottedmeats.... 

The afternoon's conference gave him no reassuring answer to hisquestion, "Where is it all going?"

The afternoon's conference did no more than intensify the new andstrange sense of alienation from the world that the morning's talk hadevoked. 

The three labour extremists that Morrice Deans had assembled obviouslyliked the bishop and found him picturesque, and were not above a certainsnobbish gratification at the purple-trimmed company they were in, butit was clear that they regarded his intervention in the great disputeas if it were a feeble waving from the bank across the waters of a greatriver. 

"There's an incurable misunderstanding between the modern employer andthe modern employed, " the chief labour spokesman said, speaking in abroad accent that completely hid from him and the bishop and every onethe fact that he was by far the best-read man of the party. "Disraelicalled them the Two Nations, but that was long ago. Now it's a caseof two species. Machinery has made them into different species. Theemployer lives away from his work-people, marries a wife foreign, out ofa county family or suchlike, trains his children from their very birthin a different manner. Why, the growth curve is different for the twospecies. They haven't even a common speech between them. One looks eastand the other looks west. How can you expect them to agree? Of coursethey won't agree. We've got to fight it out. They say we're theirslaves for ever. Have you ever read Lady Bell's 'At the Works'? Awell-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 alittle more education and then we'll do without you. We're pressing forall we can get, and when we've got that we'll take breath and pressfor more. We're the Morlocks. Coming up. It isn't our fault that we'vedifferentiated. "

"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 leaderwho was a rationalist. "There's not much of that in the services of thechurch. "

The vicar spoke before his bishop, and indeed he had plenty of timeto speak before his bishop. "Because you will not set yourselves tounderstand 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 thetalk eddied about this minor issue and the chief labour spokesman andthe bishop looked at one another. The vicar instanced and explainedcertain apparently insignificant observances, his antagonist wascontemptuously polite to these explanations. "That's all very pratty, "he said.... 

The bishop wished that fine points of ceremonial might have been leftout of the discussion. 

Something much bigger than that was laying hold of his intelligence, therealization of a world extravagantly out of hand. The sky, the wind, the telegraph poles, had been jabbing in the harsh lesson of these men'svoices, that the church, as people say, "wasn't in it. " And that atthe same time the church held the one remedy for all this ugliness andcontention in its teaching of the universal fatherhood of God and theuniversal brotherhood of men. Only for some reason he hadn't the phrasesand he hadn't the voice to assert this over their wrangling and theirstiff resolution. He wanted to think the whole business out thoroughly, for the moment he had nothing to say, and there was the labour leaderopposite waiting smilingly to hear what he had to say so soon as thebout between the vicar and the rationalist was over. 

(6)

That morning in the long galleries of the bishop's imagination a freshpainting had been added. It was a big wall painting rather in the mannerof Puvis de Chavannes. And the central figure had been the bishop ofPrinchester himself. He had been standing upon the steps of thegreat door of the cathedral that looks upon the marketplace where thetram-lines meet, and he had been dressed very magnificently and ratherafter the older use. He had been wearing a tunicle and dalmatic under achasuble, a pectoral cross, purple gloves, sandals and buskins, a mitreand his presentation ring. In his hand he had borne his pastoral staff. And the clustering pillars and arches of the great doorway were paintedwith a loving flat particularity that omitted nothing but the sootytinge of the later discolourations. 

On his right hand had stood a group of employers very richly dressedin the fashion of the fifteenth century, and on the left a rather morenumerous group of less decorative artisans. With them their wives andchildren had been shown, all greatly impressed by the canonicals. Everyone had been extremely respectful. 

He had been reconciling the people and blessing them and calling themhis "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; heset his tea-cup aside out of danger and leant across the corner of thetable 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 ourlanguage. I doubt if we understand clearly where we are ourselves. Thesethings have to be fought out and hammered out. It's a big dusty dirtynoisy job. It may be a bloody job before it's through. You can'tsuddenly call a halt in the middle of the scrap and have a sort ofmillennium just because you want it.... 

"Of course if the church had a plan, " he said, "if it had a proposal tomake, 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 couldsay no more than: "It offers its mediation. "

(7)

Full as he was with the preoccupation of these things and so a littleslow and inattentive in his movements, the bishop had his usual luckat Pringle Junction and just missed the 7. 27 for Princhester. He mightperhaps have got it by running through the subway and pushing pastpeople, 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 longafter nine; dinner would be over and Lady Ella would naturally supposehe had dined early with the Rev. Morrice Deans. Very probably therewould be nothing ready for him at all. 

He tried to think he was exercising self-control, but indeed all hissub-conscious self was busy in a manner that would not have disgracedTertullian with the eternal welfare of those city fathers whoseobstinacy had fixed the palace at Princhester. He walked up and down theplatform, gripping his hands very tightly behind him, and maintaininga serene upcast countenance by a steadfast effort. It seemed a smallmatter to him that the placards of the local evening papers shouldproclaim "Lloyd George's Reconciliation Meeting at Wombash Broken upby Suffragettes. " For a year now he had observed a strict rule againstbuying the products of the local press, and he saw no reason for varyingthis protective regulation. 

His mind was full of angry helplessness. 

Was he to blame, was the church to blame, for its powerlessness in thesesocial disputes? Could an abler man with a readier eloquence have donemore?

He envied the cleverness of Cardinal Manning. Manning would have gotright into the front of this affair. He would have accumulated creditfor his church and himself.... 

But would he have done much?... 

The bishop wandered along the platform to its end, and stoodcontemplating the convergent ways that gather together beyond thestation and plunge into the hillside and the wilderness of sidings andtrucks, signal-boxes, huts, coal-pits, electric standards, goods sheds, turntables, and engine-houses, that ends in a bluish bricked-up cliffagainst the hill. A train rushed with a roar and clatter into thethroat of the great tunnel and was immediately silenced; its rear lightstwinkled and vanished, and then out of that huge black throat came wispsof white steam and curled slowly upward like lazy snakes until theycaught the slanting sunshine. For the first time the day betrayeda softness and touched this scene of black energy to gold. All lateafternoons are beautiful, whatever the day has been--if only there is agleam of sun. And now a kind of mechanical greatness took the place ofmere 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 wideapart and his hands folded behind him, staring beyond all visiblethings. 

Should he do something very bold and striking? Should he invite both menand masters to the cathedral, and preach tremendous sermons to them uponthese 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 preachermade his way from the chancel to the pulpit. The congregation was tensewith expectation, and for some reason his mind dwelt for a long timeupon the figure of the preacher ascending the steps of the pulpit. Outside the day was dark and stormy, so that the stained-glass windowslooked absolutely dead. For a little while the preacher prayed. Then inthe attentive silence the tenor of the preacher would begin, a thin jetof sound, a ray of light in the darkness, speaking to all these men asthey had never been spoken to before.... 

Surely so one might call a halt to all these harsh conflicts. So onemight lay hands afresh upon these stubborn minds, one might win themround to look at Christ the Master and Servant.... 

That, he thought, would be a good phrase: "Christ the Master andServant. ".... 

"Members of one Body, " that should be his text.... At last it wasfinished. The big congregation, which had kept so still, sighed andstirred. The task of reconciliation was as good as done. "And now to Godthe Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.... "

Outside the day had become suddenly bright, the threatening storm haddrifted away, and great shafts of coloured light from the picturedwindows were smiting like arrows amidst his hearers.... 

This idea of a great sermon upon capital and labour did so powerfullygrip the bishop's imagination that he came near to losing the 8. 27 trainalso. 

He discovered it when it was already in the station. He had to walk downthe 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 somethingimportant and unpleasant. 

She stood waiting for him in the inner hall, looking very grave andstill. The light fell upon her pale face and her dark hair and her longwhite silken dress, making her seem more delicate and unworldly thanusual and making the bishop feel grimy and sordid. 

"I must have a wash, " he said, though before he had thought of nothingbut food. "I have had nothing to eat since tea-time--and that was mostlytalk. "

Lady Ella considered. "There are cold things.... You shall have a trayin the study. Not in the dining-room. Eleanor is there. I want to tellyou something. But go upstairs first and wash your poor tired face. "

"Nothing serious, I hope?" he asked, struck by an unusual quality in hervoice. 

"I will tell you, " she evaded, and after a moment of mutual scrutiny hewent 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 stillerand more restrained; a certain faint arrogance, a touch of the "rulingclass" manner had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. There had beena time when she had inclined to an authoritative hauteur, when she hadseemed likely to develop into one of those aggressive and interferingold 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 suchtendencies. Princhester had made her think abundantly, and had put a newand subtler quality into her beauty. It had taken away the least littledisposition to rustle as she moved, and it had softened her voice. 

Now, when presently she stood in the study, she showed a newcircumspection in her treatment of her husband. She surveyed the traybefore him. 

"You ought not to drink that Burgundy, " she said. "I can see youare dog-tired. It was uncorked yesterday, and anyhow it is not verydigestible. This cold meat is bad enough. You ought to have one of thosequarter bottles of champagne you got for my last convalescence. There'smore 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 theprecious 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 wasa handsome work by a Princhester artist in the Gill style--withcontemplative ascetics as supporters. 

"I am worried about Eleanor, " said Lady Ella. 

"She is in the dining-room now, " she said, "having some dinner. She camein 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 alittle 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 thehorrid 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 secondWalshingham girl--Phoebe. It's impossible to trace a girl's thoughts andfriends. 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 unableto 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 couldhave understood.... "

The bishop laid down his knife and fork. 

"One may read in books, one may even talk of things, without fullyunderstanding, " he said. 

Lady Ella tried to entertain this comforting thought. "It isn't likethat, " she said at last. "She talks like a grown-up person. This--thisescapade is just an accident. But things have gone further than that. She seems to think--that she is not being educated properly here, thatshe 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 theimplications 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 standingbehind him upon the hearthrug, but now she sat upon the arm of the greatarmchair 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. Everythinghad seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it was true, but it hadnever occurred to her mother that she had really been thinking--aboutsuch things as she had been thinking about. She had ranged in thelibrary, and displayed a disposition to read the weekly papers and themonthly 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, " sheexpanded. "She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial' and--what wasit?--'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 facedowncast. 

"The ferment of youth, " he said at last. "The ferment of youth. Who hasgiven her these ideas?"

Lady Ella did not know. She could have thought a school like St. Aubynswould have been safe, but nowadays nothing was safe. It was clear thegirls who went there talked as girls a generation ago did not talk. Their people at home encouraged them to talk and profess opinions abouteverything. It seemed that Phoebe Walshingham and Lady Kitty Kingdomwere the leaders in these premature mental excursions. Phoebe airedreligious 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 daughtergo 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 childuntil some unexpected development betrays the cheat. 

The bishop had still to learn this perennial newness of the young. Helearnt 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 andsmoking a cigarette. He had an honourable dread of being portentous inhis family; almost ostentatiously he laid the bishop aside. Eleanor hadfinished her meal, and was sitting in the arm-chair by the fire with onehand holding her sprained wrist. 

"Well, " he said, and strolled to the hearthrug. He had had an odd ideathat he would find her still dirty, torn, and tearful, as her mother haddescribed her, a little girl in a scrape. But she had changed intoher best white evening frock and put up her hair, and became in thefirelight more of a lady, a very young lady but still a lady, than shehad ever been to him before. She was dark like her mother, but not ofthe same willowy type; she had more of her father's sturdy build, andshe had developed her shoulders at hockey and tennis. The firelightbrought out the gracious reposeful lines of a body that ripened inadolescence. And though there was a vibration of resolution in her voiceshe 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 beenindiscreet, little Norah. "

"I got excited, " she said. "They began turning out the otherwomen--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 wouldhave said, "That is my case, my lord. " The bishop prepared to open thenext 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 commitmore than yourself when you commit an indiscretion. Apart from that, itwasn't the place for a girl to be at. You are not a child now. We giveyou freedom--more freedom than most girls get--because we think youwill use it wisely. You knew--enough to know that there was likely to betrouble. "

The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. "I don't thinkthat I oughtn't to know the things that are going on. "

The bishop studied her face for an instant. It struck him that theyhad reached something very fundamental as between parent and child. Hismodernity showed itself in the temperance of his reply. 

"Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I, who havelived longer and know more, are more likely to know when it is best thatyou should begin to know--this or that?"

The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer out ofthe depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking, altered hermind and tried a different beginning. 

"I think that every one must do their thinking--histhinking--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 andthings 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--youare 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 talkabout--oh, all sorts of things. Freely.... "

"You've been awfully good to me, " she said irrelevantly. "And of coursethis 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 herdemand. 

"I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work. I feel--sohorribly ignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a son I shouldgo--"

"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 thememory 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 certainatmosphere. "

He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response fromthe 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 livingin a kind of magic world--not really real. Out there--" she glancedover her shoulder at the drawn blind that hid the night. "One meets withdifferent sorts of minds and different--atmospheres. All this is verybeautiful. I've had the most wonderful home. But there's a sort offeeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikesand 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 couldnot see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and awkwardly withher eyes upon the fire. 

Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received thatday.... 

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 tiredand have more time.... You have been reading books.... When Caxton setup his printing-press he thrust a new power between church and discipleand father and child.... And I am tired. We must talk it over a littlelater. "

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 thatmeeting.... You look tired out. "

"We must talk--properly, " said the bishop, patting one hand, thendiscovering from her wincing face that it was the sprained one. "Yourpoor wrist, " he said. 

"It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy. It isn't that Ihave hidden things.... "

She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she kissed him asthough she was sorry for him.... 

It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the presentfor discussing these "questionings" of hers, and then his fatigue andshyness 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 thebishop's insomnia. It was the definite beginning of a new phase in hislife. 

Doctors explain to us that the immediate cause of insomnia is alwayssome poisoned or depleted state of the body, and no doubt thefatigues and hasty meals of the day had left the bishop in a state ofunprecedented chemical disorder, with his nerves irritated by strangecompounds and unsoothed by familiar lubricants. But chemical disordersfollow mental disturbances, and the core and essence of his trouble wasan intellectual distress. For the first time in his life he wasreally in doubt, about himself, about his way of living, about all hispersuasions. It was a general doubt. It was not a specific suspicionupon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality atonce extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was asif he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatorysolidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of fleshand 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 hisown skin. 

And as he lay there, a weak phantom mentally and bodily, an endlesssuccession and recurrence of anxieties for which he could find noreassurance besieged him. 

Chief of this was his distress for Eleanor. 

She was the central figure in this new sense of illusion in familiar andtrusted things. It was not only that the world of his existence whichhad seemed to be the whole universe had become diaphanous and betrayedvast and uncontrollable realities beyond it, but his daughter had as itwere suddenly opened a door in this glassy sphere of insecurity that hadbeen his abiding refuge, a door upon the stormy rebel outer world, andshe stood there, young, ignorant, confident, adventurous, ready to stepout. 

"Could it be possible that she did not believe?"

He saw her very vividly as he had seen her in the dining-room, slenderand upright, half child, half woman, so fragile and so fearless. And thedoor she opened thus carelessly gave upon a stormy background like oneof the stormy backgrounds that were popular behind portrait Dianas ineighteenth century paintings. Did she believe that all he had taughther, all the life he led was--what was her phrase?--a kind of magicworld, not really real?

He groaned and turned over and repeated the words: "A kind of magicworld--not really real!"

The wind blew through the door she opened, and scattered everything inthe room. And still she held the door open. 

He was astonished at himself. He started up in swift indignation. Hadhe not taught the child? Had he not brought her up in an atmosphereof faith? What right had she to turn upon him in this matter? Itwas--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 havethundered. He saw that quite clearly now. He ought to have cried out andsaid, "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 havesaid to Eleanor. And now the eloquence of reverie was upon him. In alittle time he was also addressing the tea-party at Morrice Deans'. Uponthem too he ought to have thundered. And he knew now also all that heshould have said to the recalcitrant employer. Thunder also. Thunder issurely 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 withoutdelay. 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 bishoppassed to such a pessimistic estimate of the church as had never enteredhis mind before. 

It was as if he had fallen suddenly out of a spiritual balloon intoa world of bleak realism. He found himself asking unprecedented anddevastating questions, questions that implied the most fundamentalshiftings of opinion. Why was the church such a failure? Why had itno grip upon either masters or men amidst this vigorous life of modernindustrialism, and why had it no grip upon the questioning young? It wasa tolerated thing, he felt, just as sometimes he had felt that theCrown was a tolerated thing. He too was a tolerated thing; a curioussurvival.... 

This was not as things should be. He struggled to recover a properattitude. But he remained enormously dissatisfied.... 

The church was no Levite to pass by on the other side away from thestruggles and wrongs of the social conflict. It had no right when thechildren asked for the bread of life to offer them Gothic stone.... 

He began to make interminable weak plans for fulfilling his duty to hisdiocese and his daughter. 

What could he do to revivify his clergy? He wished he had more personalmagnetism, he wished he had a darker and a larger presence. He wished hehad 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 anunsympathetic rector. He wished he had it in him to make some resoundingappeal. He might of course preach a series of thumping addresses andsermons, rather on the lines of "Fors Clavigera, " to masters and men, in the Cathedral. Only it was so difficult to get either masters or meninto the Cathedral. 

Well, if the people will not come to the bishop the bishop must go outto the people. Should he go outside the Cathedral--to the place wherethe trains met?

Interweaving with such thoughts the problem of Eleanor rose again intohis consciousness. 

Weren't there books she ought to read? Weren't there books she ought tobe made to read? And books--and friends--that ought to be imperativelyforbidden? 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 adistinct feeling of subsidence sleepwards, when first one and thenanother little creature roused itself and the bishop to greet thegathering daylight. 

It became a little clamour, a misty sea of sound in which individualityappeared and disappeared. For a time a distant cuckoo was veryperceptible, like a landmark looming up over a fog, like the cuckoo inthe Pastoral Symphony. 

The bishop tried not to heed these sounds, but they were by their verynature 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 fromthe world of his upbringing. His hallucination of disillusionment hadspread from himself and his church and his faith to the whole animatecreation. He knew that these were the voices of "our featheredsongsters, " that this was "a joyous chorus" greeting the day. He knewthat a wakeful bishop ought to bless these happy creatures, and joinwith them by reciting Ken's morning hymn. He made an effort that wasmore than half habit, to repeat and he repeated with a scowling face andthe voice of a schoolmaster:

"Awake my soul, and with the sunThy daily stage of duty run.... "

He got no further. He stopped short, sat still, thinking what utterlydetestable things singing birds were. A. Blackbird had gripped hisattention. Never had he heard such vain repetitions. He struggledagainst the dark mood of criticism. "He prayeth best who loveth best--"

No, he did not love the birds. It was useless to pretend. Whatever onemay 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 ashort, insistent, wheezing sound at regular intervals of perhaps twentyseconds. If a bird could have whooping-cough, that, he thought, was thesort of whoop it would have. But even if it had whooping-cough he couldnot pity it. He hung in its intervals waiting for the return of thewheeze. 

And then that blackbird reasserted itself. It had a rich boastful note;it seemed proud of its noisy reiteration of simple self-assertion. Forsome obscure reason the phrase "oleographic sounds" drifted into thebishop's thoughts. This bird produced the peculiar and irrationalimpression that it had recently made a considerable sum of money byshrewd industrialism. It was, he thought grimly, a genuine Princhesterblackbird. 

This wickedly uncharitable reference to his diocese ran all unchallengedthrough the bishop's mind. And others no less wicked followed it. 

Once during his summer holidays in Florence he and Lady Ella hadsubscribed to an association for the protection of song-birds. Herecalled this now with a mild wonder. It seemed to him that perhapsafter all it was as well to let fruit-growers and Italians deal withsinging-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 madeentirely 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 somesort 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 thewindow trying to see that blackbird. He just wanted to look at it. Hewas persuaded it was a quite exceptional blackbird. 

Again came that oppressive sense of the futility of the contemporarychurch, but this time it came in the most grotesque form. For hanginghalf out of the casement he was suddenly reminded of St. Francis ofAssisi, 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 interveningdays of lassitude and afternoon siestas, that the bishop realized thathe was in the grip of insomnia. 

He did not go at once to a doctor, but he told his trouble to every onehe met and received much tentative advice. He had meant to have histalk with Eleanor on the morning next after their conversation in thedining-room, but his bodily and spiritual anaemia prevented him. 

The fifth night was the beginning of the Whitsuntide Ember week, andhe wore a red cassock and had a distracting and rather interesting daywelcoming his ordination candidates. They had a good effect upon him; wespiritualize ourselves when we seek to spiritualize others, and he wentto bed in a happier frame of mind than he had done since the day of theshock. He woke in the night, but he woke much more himself than he hadbeen since the trouble began. He repeated that verse of Ken's:

"When in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with heavenly thoughtssupply; Let no ill dreams disturb my rest, No powers of darkness memolest. "

Almost immediately after these there floated into his mind, as if itwere a message, the dear familiar words:

"He giveth his Beloved sleep. "

These words irradiated and soothed him quite miraculously, the clouds ofdoubt seemed to dissolve and vanish and leave him safe and calm under aclear sky; he knew those words were a promise, and very speedily he fellasleep and slept until he was called. 

But the next day was a troubled one. Whippham had muddled his timetableand crowded his afternoon; the strike of the transport workers hadbegun, and the ugly noises they made at the tramway depot, where theywere booing some one, penetrated into the palace. He had to snatch ameal between services, and the sense of hurry invaded his afternoonlectures to the candidates. He hated hurry in Ember week. His ideal wasone of quiet serenity, of grave things said slowly, of still, kneelingfigures, of a sort of dark cool spiritual germination. But what sort ofdark cool spiritual germination is possible with an ass like Whipphamabout?

In the fresh courage of the morning the bishop had arranged for thattalk with Eleanor he had already deferred too long, and this had provedless satisfactory than he had intended it to be. 

The bishop's experience with the ordination candidates was followingthe usual course. Before they came there was something bordering upondistaste for the coming invasion; then always there was an effect ofsurprise at the youth and faith of the neophytes and a real response ofthe spirit to the occasion. Throughout the first twenty-four hoursthey were all simply neophytes, without individuality to break up theiruniformity of self-devotion. Then afterwards they began to developlittle personal traits, and scarcely ever were these pleasing traits. Always one or two of them would begin haunting the bishop, giving wayto an appetite for special words, special recognitions. He knew theexpression of that craving on their faces. He knew the way-layingmovements in room and passage that presently began. 

This time in particular there was a freckled underbred young man whohanded in what was evidently a carefully prepared memorandum upon whathe called "my positions. " Apparently he had a muddle of doubts aboutthe early fathers and the dates of the earlier authentic copies of thegospels, things of no conceivable significance. 

The bishop glanced through this bale of papers--it had of course noindex and no synopsis, and some of the pages were not numbered--handedit over to Whippham, and when he proved, as usual, a broken reed, thebishop had the brilliant idea of referring the young man to Canon Bliss(of Pringle), "who has a special knowledge quite beyond my own in thisfield. "

But he knew from the young man's eye even as he said this that it wasnot going to put him off for more than a day or so. 

The immediate result of glancing over these papers was, however, toenhance in the bishop's mind a growing disposition to minimize theimportance of all dated and explicit evidences and arguments fororthodox beliefs, and to resort to vague symbolic and liberalinterpretations, and it was in this state that he came to his talk withEleanor. 

He did not give her much time to develop her objections. He met herhalf way and stated them for her, and overwhelmed her with sympathyand understanding. She had been "too literal. " "Too literal" was hiskeynote. He was a little astonished at the liberality of his own views. He had been getting along now for some years without looking into hisown opinions too closely and he was by no means prepared to discoverhow far he had come to meet his daughter's scepticisms. But he did meetthem. He met them so thoroughly that he almost conveyed that hers was aneedlessly conservative and oldfashioned attitude. 

Occasionally he felt he was being a little evasive, but she did notseem to notice it. As she took his drift, her relief and happiness weremanifest. And he had never noticed before how clear and pretty her eyeswere; they were the most honest eyes he had ever seen. She looked at himvery steadily as he explained, and lit up at his points. She brightenedwonderfully as she realized that after all they were not apart, they hadnot differed; simply they had misunderstood.... 

And before he knew where he was, and in a mere parenthetical declarationof liberality, he surprised himself by conceding her demand for Newnhameven before she had repeated it. It helped his case wonderfully. 

"Call in every exterior witness you can. The church will welcomethem.... No, I want you to go, my dear.... "

But his mind was stirred again to its depths by this discussion. Andin particular he was surprised and a little puzzled by this Newnhamconcession and the necessity of making his new attitude clear to LadyElla.... 

It was with a sense of fatality that he found himself awake again thatnight, like some one lying drowned and still and yet perfectly consciousat the bottom of deep cold water. 

He repeated, "He giveth his Beloved sleep, " but all the conviction hadgone out of the words. 

(4)

Neither the bishop's insomnia nor his incertitudes about himself and hisfaith developed in a simple and orderly manner. There were periods ofsustained suffering and periods of recovery; it was not for a year orso that he regarded these troubles as more than acute incidentalinterruptions of his general tranquillity or realized that he waspassing 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 hebetrayed only by an increasing tendency towards vagueness, symbolism, poetry and toleration. Eleanor seemed satisfied with his exposition; shedid not press for further enlightenment. She continued all her outwardconformities except that after a time she ceased to communicate; and inSeptember she went away to Newnham. Her doubts had not visibly affectedClementina or her other sisters, and the bishop made no further attemptsto explore the spiritual life of his family below the surface of itsformal acquiescence. 

As a matter of fact his own spiritual wrestlings were almost exclusivelynocturnal. During his spells of insomnia he led a curiously doubleexistence. In the daytime he was largely the self he had always been, able, assured, ecclesiastical, except that he was a little jaded andirritable or sleepy instead of being quick and bright; he believed inGod and the church and the Royal Family and himself securely; inthe wakeful night time he experienced a different and novel self, abare-minded self, bleakly fearless at its best, shamelessly weak at itsworst, critical, sceptical, joyless, anxious. The anxiety was quite theworst element of all. Something sat by his pillow asking grey questions:"What are you doing? Where are you going? Is it really well with thechildren? Is it really well with the church? Is it really well with thecountry? Are you indeed doing anything at all? Are you anything morethan an actor wearing a costume in an archaic play? The people turntheir backs on you. "

He would twist over on his pillow. He would whisper hymns and prayersthat had the quality of charms. 

"He giveth his Beloved sleep"; that answered many times, and many timesit failed. 

The labour troubles of 1912 eased off as the year wore on, and thebitterness of the local press over the palace abated very considerably. Indeed there was something like a watery gleam of popularity when hebrought down his consistent friend, the dear old Princess Christiana ofHoch and Unter, black bonnet, deafness, and all, to open a new wing ofthe children's hospital. The Princhester conservative paper took theoccasion to inform the diocese that he was a fluent German scholar andconsequently a persona grata with the royal aunts, and that the PrincessChristiana was merely just one of a number of royalties now practicallyat the beck and call of Princhester. It was not true, but it was veryeffective locally, and seemed to justify a little the hauteur of whichLady Ella was so unjustly suspected. Yet it involved a possibility ofdisappointments in the future. 

He went to Brighton-Pomfrey too upon the score of his general health, and Brighton-Pomfrey revised his general regimen, discouraged indiscreetfasting, and suggested a complete abstinence from red wine except whiteport, if indeed that can be called a red wine, and a moderate use ofEgyptian cigarettes. 

But 1913 was a strenuous year. The labour troubles revived, thesuffragette movement increased greatly in violence and aggressiveness, and there sprang up no less than three ecclesiastical scandals inthe diocese. First, the Kensitites set themselves firmly to makepresentations and prosecutions against Morrice Deans, who was reservingthe sacrament, wearing, they said, "Babylonish garments, " going beyondall reason in the matter of infant confession, and generally brighteningup Mogham Banks; next, a popular preacher in Wombash, published a bookunder the exasperating title, "The Light Under the Altar, " in whichhe showed himself as something between an Arian and a Pantheist, andtreated the dogma of the Trinity with as little respect as one wouldshow to an intrusive cat; while thirdly, an obscure but overworkedmissioner of a tin mission church in the new working-class district atPringle, being discovered in some sort of polygamous relationship, hadseen fit to publish in pamphlet form a scandalous admission and defence, a pamphlet entitled "Marriage True and False, " taking the publicneedlessly into his completest confidence and quoting the affairs ofAbraham and Hosea, reviving many points that are better forgotten aboutLuther, and appealing also to such uncanonical authorities asMilton, Plato, and John Humphrey Noyes. This abnormal concurrence ofindiscipline was extremely unlucky for the bishop. It plunged him intostrenuous controversy upon three fronts, so to speak, and involveda great number of personal encounters far too vivid for his mentalserenity. 

The Pringle polygamist was the most moving as Morrice Deans was the mostexacting and troublesome and the Wombash Pantheist the most insidiouslydestructive figure in these three toilsome disputes. The Pringle man'ssoul had apparently missed the normal distribution of fig-leaves; hewas an illiterate, open-eyed, hard-voiced, freckled, rational-mindedcreature, with large expository hands, who had come by a side way intothe church because he was an indefatigable worker, and he insisted upontelling the bishop with an irrepressible candour and completeness justexactly what was the matter with his intimate life. The bishop veryearnestly did not want these details, and did his utmost to avoid thecontroversial questions that the honest man pressed respectfully butobstinately 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 andstill burning!" and, "I think you would find, my lord, consideringall Charlotte's peculiarities, that the situation was really much moretrying than the absolute celibacy St. Paul had in view. "... 

The bishop listened to these arguments as little as possible, and didnot answer them at all. But afterwards the offender came and wept andsaid he was ruined and heartbroken and unfairly treated becausehe wasn't a gentleman, and that was distressing. It was so exactlytrue--and so inevitable. He had been deprived, rather on account ofhis voice and apologetics than of his offence, and public opinion wassolidly with the sentence. He made a gallant effort to found whathe called a Labour Church in Pringle, and after some financialmisunderstandings departed with his unambiguous menage to join theadvanced movement on the Clyde. 

The Morrice Deans enquiry however demanded an amount of erudition thatgreatly fatigued the bishop. He had a very fair general knowledge ofvestments, but he had never really cared for anything but the poetry ofornaments, and he had to work strenuously to master the legal sideof the question. Whippham, his chaplain, was worse than useless as ahelper. The bishop wanted to end the matter as quickly, quietly, andfavourably to Morrice Deans as possible; he thought Morrice Deans athoroughly good man in his parish, and he believed that the substitutionof a low churchman would mean a very complete collapse of churchinfluence in Mogham Banks, where people were now thoroughly accustomedto a highly ornate service. But Morrice Deans was intractable and hispursuers indefatigable, and on several occasions the bishop sat far intothe night devising compromises and equivocations that should make theKensitites think that Morrice Deans wasn't wearing vestments when hewas, and that should make Morrice Deans think he was wearing vestmentswhen he wasn't. And it was Whippham who first suggested green tea asa substitute for coffee, which gave the bishop indigestion, as hisstimulant for these nocturnal bouts. 

Now green tea is the most lucid of poisons. 

And while all this extra activity about Morrice Deans, these vigils andcrammings and writings down, were using all and more energy than thebishop could well spare, he was also doing his quiet utmost to keep "TheLight 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 "TheLight under the Altar, " was a man who not only reasoned closelybut indelicately. There was a demonstrating, jeering, air about hispreaching and writing, and everything he said and did was saturated bythe spirit of challenge. He did not so much imitate as exaggerate thestyle of Matthew Arnold. And whatever was done publicly against himwould have to be done very publicly because his book had got him aLondon 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 allthe tests and taken all the pledges that stand on the way to ordination, chiefly for the pleasure of attacking them more successfully from therear; he had been given the living of Wombash by a cousin, and filled itvery largely because it was not only more piquant but more remunerativeand respectable to be a rationalist lecturer in a surplice. And in ahard kind of ultra-Protestant way his social and parochial work was notbadly done. But his sermons were terrible. "He takes a text, " said oneinformant, "and he goes on firstly, secondly, thirdly, fourthly, likesomebody tearing the petals from a flower. 'Finally, ' he says, andthrows the bare stalk into the dustbin. "

The bishop avoided "The Light under the Altar" for nearly a year. Itwas only when a second book was announced with the winning title of "TheCore of Truth in Christianity" that he perceived he must take action. He sat up late one night with a marked copy, a very indignantly markedcopy, of the former work that an elderly colonel, a Wombash parishioner, an orthodox Layman of the most virulent type, had sent him. He perceivedthat he had to deal with a dialectician of exceptional ability, who hadconcentrated a quite considerable weight of scholarship upon the task ofexplaining away every scrap of spiritual significance in the Eucharist. From Chasters the bishop was driven by reference to the works of Leggeand Frazer, and for the first time he began to measure the dimensionsand power of the modern criticism of church doctrine and observance. Green tea should have lit his way to refutation; instead it lit up thewhole inquiry with a light of melancholy confirmation. Neither by nightnor by day could the bishop find a proper method of opening a counterattack upon Chasters, who was indisputably an intellectually abler manand a very ruthless beast indeed to assail, and meanwhile the demandthat action should be taken increased. 

The literature of church history and the controversies arising out ofdoctrinal development became the employment of the bishop's leisure anda commanding preoccupation. He would have liked to discuss with some oneelse the network of perplexities in which he was entangling himself, andmore particularly with Canon Bliss, but his own positions were becomingso insecure that he feared to betray them by argument. He had grown upwith a kind of intellectual modesty. Some things he had never yet talkedabout; it made his mind blench to think of talking about them. And hisgreat aching gaps of wakefulness began now, thanks to the green tea, tobe interspersed with theological dreams and visions of an extravagantvividness. He would see Frazer's sacrificial kings butcheredpicturesquely and terribly amidst strange and grotesque rituals; hewould survey long and elaborate processions and ceremonials in whichthe most remarkable symbols were borne high in the sight of all men; hewould cower before a gigantic and threatening Heaven. Thesegreen-tea dreams and visions were not so much phases of sleep as anintensification and vivid furnishing forth of insomnia. It addedgreatly to his disturbance that--exceeding the instructions ofBrighton-Pomfrey--he had now experimented ignorantly and planlesslywith one or two narcotics and sleeping mixtures that friends andacquaintances had mentioned in his hearing. For the first time in hislife he became secretive from his wife. He knew he ought not to takethese things, he knew they were physically and morally evil, buta tormenting craving drove him to them. Subtly and insensibly hischaracter was being undermined by the growing nervous trouble. 

He astonished himself by the cunning and the hypocritical dignity hecould display in procuring these drugs. He arranged to have a tea-makingset in his bedroom, and secretly substituted green tea, for which hedeveloped a powerful craving, in the place of the delicate China teaLady Ella procured him. 

(5)

These doctrinal and physical anxieties and distresses were at theirworst in the spring and early summer of 1914. That was a time of greatmental and moral disturbance. There was premonition in the air of thosedays. It was like the uneasiness sensitive people experience before athunderstorm. The moral atmosphere was sullen and close. The wholeworld seemed irritable and mischievous. The suffragettes becameextraordinarily malignant; the democratic movement went rotten withsabotage and with a cant of being "rebels"; the reactionary Tories and acrew of noisy old peeresses set themselves to create incurable confusionagain in the healing wounds of Ireland, and feuds and frantic follybroke out at every point of the social and political edifice. And thena bomb burst at Sarajevo that silenced all this tumult. The unstablepolity 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 uponmost imaginative minds, was to steady and exalt it. Trivialities andexasperations seemed swept out of existence. Men lifted up their eyesfrom disputes that had seemed incurable and wrangling that promised tobe interminable, and discovered a plain and tragic issue that involvedevery one in a common call for devotion. For a great number of men andwomen who had been born and bred in security, the August and Septemberof 1914 were the supremely heroic period of their lives. Myriadsof souls were born again to ideas of service and sacrifice in thosetremendous 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 theyrealized the epic quality of history and their own relationship to thedestinies of the race. The flimsy roof under which we had been livingour lives of comedy fell and shattered the floor under our feet; we sawthe stars above and the abyss below. We perceived that life was insecureand 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 fromhis immediate surroundings and employments, so absorbed by great events, that his history if it were told in detail would differ scarcely at allfrom the histories of most comparatively unemployed minds during thosefirst dramatic days, the days when the Germans made their great rushupon Paris and it seemed that France was down, France and the wholefabric of liberal civilization. He emerged from these stunningapprehensions after the Battle of the Marne, to find himself busy upon ascore of dispersed and disconnected war jobs, and trying to get all thenew appearances and forces and urgencies of the war into relations withhimself. One thing became very vivid indeed, that he wasn't being usedin any real and effective way in the war. There was a mighty goingto and fro upon Red Cross work and various war committees, a vastpreparation for wounded men and for the succour of dislocatedfamilies; a preparation, that proved to be needless, for catastrophicunemployment. The war problem and the puzzle of German psychology oustedfor a time all other intellectual interests; like every one else thebishop swam deep in Nietzsche, Bernhardi, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and the like; he preached several sermons upon German materialismand the astonishing decay of the German character. He also read everynewspaper he could lay his hands on--like any secular man. He signedan address to the Russian Orthodox church, beginning "Brethren, " andhe revised his impressions of the Filioque controversy. The idea of areunion of the two great state churches of Russia and England had alwaysattracted him. But hitherto it had been a thing quite out of scale, visionary, utopian. Now in this strange time of altered perspectives itseemed the most practicable of suggestions. The mayor and corporationand a detachment of the special reserve in uniform came to a greatintercession service, and in the palace there were two conferences oflocal influential people, people of the most various types, peoplewho had never met tolerantly before, expressing now opinions ofunprecedented breadth and liberality. 

All this sort of thing was fresh and exciting at first, and then itbegan to fall into a routine and became habitual, and as it becamehabitual he found that old sense of detachment and futility was creepingback again. One day he realized that indeed the whole flood and tumultof the war would be going on almost exactly as it was going on now ifthere had been neither cathedral nor bishop in Princhester. It came tohim that if archbishops were rolled into patriarchs and patriarchs intoarchbishops, it would matter scarcely more in the world process that wasafoot than if two men shook hands while their house was afire. At timesall of us have inappropriate thoughts. The unfortunate thought thatstruck the bishop as a bullet might strike a man in an exposed trench, as he was hurrying through the cloisters to a special service andaddress upon that doubly glorious day in our English history, the day ofSt. 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 hadglanced after lunch, an article written by one of those scepticalspirits who find all too abundant expression in our periodicalliterature. The writer boldly charged the "Christian churches" withabsolute ineffectiveness. This war, he declared, was above all otherwars a war of ideas, of material organization against rational freedom, of violence against law; it was a war more copiously discussed than anywar had ever been before, the air was thick with apologetics. And whatwas the voice of the church amidst these elemental issues? Bishops anddivines who were patriots one heard discordantly enough, but where werethe bishops and divines who spoke for the Prince of Peace? Where was theblessing of the church, where was the veto of the church? When itcame to that one discovered only a broad preoccupied back busied insupplementing the Army Medical Corps with Red Cross activities, goodwork in its way--except that the canonicals seemed superfluous. Whoindeed 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. Andcame back and came back to the image of Diogenes. 

It was with that image dangling like a barbed arrow from his mind thatthe bishop went into the pulpit to preach upon St. Crispin's day, andlooked 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, thegreatest storm of war that had ever stirred mankind. It ought to bestanding fearlessly between the combatants like a figure in a wallpainting, with the cross of Christ uplifted and the restored memory ofChristendom softening the eyes of the armed nations. "Put down thoseweapons and listen to me, " so the church should speak in irresistibletones, 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 abruptabandonment of smoking and alcohol. Alcoholic relaxation, a necessarymitigation of the unreality of peacetime politics, becomes a gravedanger in war, and it was with an understandable desire to forward theinterests of his realm that the King decided to set his statesmen anexample--which unhappily was not very widely followed--by abstainingfrom alcohol during the continuance of the struggle. It did howeverswing over the Bishop of Princhester to an immediate and completeabandonment of both drink and tobacco. At that time he was findingcomfort for his nerves in Manila cheroots, and a particularly big andheavy type of Egyptian cigarette with a considerable amount of opium, and his disorganized system seized upon this sudden change as agrievance, and set all his jangling being crying aloud for onecigarette--just one cigarette. 

The cheroots, it seemed, he could better spare, but a cigarette becamehis symbol for his lost steadiness and ease. 

It brought him low. 

The reader has already been told the lamentable incident of the stolencigarette and the small boy, and how the bishop, tormented by thatshameful memory, cried aloud in the night. 

The bishop rolled his tub, and is there any tub-rolling in the worldmore busy and exacting than a bishop's? He rolled in it spite ofill-health and insomnia, and all the while he was tormented by theenormous background of the world war, by his ineffective realizationof vast national needs, by his passionate desire, for himself and hischurch, not to be ineffective. 

The distressful alternation between nights of lucid doubt and days ofdull acquiescence was resumed with an intensification of its contrasts. The brief phase of hope that followed the turn of the fighting upon theMaine, 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 Antwerpand the doubts and uncertainties of the Flanders situation weighedterribly upon the bishop. He was haunted for a time by nightmares ofZeppelins presently raining fire upon London. These visions becameApocalyptic. The Zeppelins came to England with the new year, and withthe close of the year came the struggle for Ypres that was so nearto being a collapse of the allied defensive. The events of the earlyspring, 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'simpression of the immensity of the nation's difficulties and of hisown unhelpfulness. He was ashamed that the church should hold back itscurates from enlistment while the French priests were wearing theiruniforms in the trenches; the expedition of the Bishop of London tohold open-air services at the front seemed merely to accentuate thetub-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 mosttrusted organs of public opinion were intermittently discussing the samequestion. Their discussions implied at once the extreme need thatwas felt for religion by all sorts of representative people, and theuniversal conviction that the church was in some way muddling andmasking her revelation. "What is wrong with the Churches?" was, for example, the general heading of The Westminster Gazette'scorrespondence. 

One day the bishop skimmed a brief incisive utterance by Sir HarryJohnston 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 ina quick tenor. "Instead of propounding plainly and without the aceretedmythology of Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, the pure Gospel of Christ.... They present it overloaded with unbelievable myths (such as, amonga thousand others, that Massacre of the Innocents which never tookplace).... Bore their listeners by a Tibetan repetition of creeds thathave 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 thedestruction 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 hundredor two thousand five hundred years ago.... The increasingly educatedand practical-minded working classes will not come to church, weekday orSunday. "

The bishop held the paper in his hand, and with a mind that he felt tobe terribly open, asked himself how true that sharp indictment might be, and, granting its general truth, what was the duty of the church, thatis 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 hewere to side with Chasters and let the whole diocese, the church ofPrinchester, drift as far as it chose under his inaction towards anextreme modernism, risking a conflict with, and if necessary fighting, the archbishop.... It was but for a moment that his mind swung to thispossibility and then recoiled. The Laymen, that band of bigots, wouldfight. He could not contemplate litigation and wrangling about theteaching 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 aNew Testament from his desk and opened it haphazard. He felt a curiouswish that he could read it for the first time. It was over-familiar. Everything latterly in his theology and beliefs had becomeover-familiar. It had all become mechanical and dead and unmeaning tohis tired mind.... 

Whippham came with a reminder of more tub-rolling, and the bishop'sspeculations 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. TheseGarstein 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 calledHartstein and Blumenhart and so forth, who had acquired a considerableamount of ungentlemanly science and energy in Germany and GermanSwitzerland. But the Fellows element was good old Princhester stuff. There had been a Fellows firm in Princhester in 1819. They were notpeople the bishop liked and it was not a house the bishop liked stayingat, but it had become part of his policy to visit and keep in touch withas 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 hadbeen not least among the negligences and evasions of the sainted butindolent Hood that he had invariably refused overnight hospitalitywhenever it was possible for him to get back to his home. The morningwas his working time. His books and hymns had profited at the cost ofmissing many a generous after-dinner subscription, and at the expenseof social unity. From the outset Scrope had set himself to alter this. A certain lack of enthusiasm on Lady Ella's part had merely provokedhim to greater effort on his own. His ideal of what was needed with thepeople was something rather jolly and familiar, something like a verygood and successful French or Irish priest, something that cameeasily and readily into their homes and laid a friendly hand on theirshoulders. The less he liked these rich people naturally the morefamiliar his resolution to be successfully intimate made him. He putdown the names and brief characteristics of their sons and daughters ina little note-book and consulted it before every visit so as to gethis most casual enquiries right. And he invited himself to the GarsteinFellows house on this occasion by telegram. 

"A special mission and some business in Wombash may I have a scrap ofsupper and a bed?"

Now Mrs. Garstein Fellows was a thoroughly London woman; she was one ofthe banking Grunenbaums, the fair tall sort, and she had a very decidedtendency to smartness. She had a little party in the house, a sort oflong week-end party, that made her hesitate for a minute or so beforeshe framed a reply to the bishop's request. 

It was the intention of Mrs. Garstein Fellows to succeed veryconspicuously in the British world, and the British world she felt wasa complicated one; it is really not one world but several, and if youwould surely succeed you must keep your peace with all the systems andbe a source of satisfaction to all of them. So at least Mrs. GarsteinFellows saw it, and her method was to classify her acquaintancesaccording to their systems, to keep them in their proper bundles, andto give every one the treatment he or she was accustomed to receive. Andsince all things British are now changing and passing away, it may notbe uninteresting to record the classification Mrs. Garstein Fellowsadopted. First she set apart as most precious and desirable, andrequiring the most careful treatment, the "court dowdies "--for so itwas that the dignity and quiet good taste that radiated from BuckinghamPalace impressed her restless, shallow mind--the sort of people whoprefer pair horse carriages to automobiles, have quiet friendships inthe highest quarters, quietly do not know any one else, busy themselveswith charities, dress richly rather than impressively, and have eitherlittle water-colour accomplishments or none at all, and no otherrelations with "art. " At the skirts of this crowning British world Mrs. Garstein Fellows tugged industriously and expensively. She did not keepa carriage and pair and an old family coachman because that, she felt, would be considered pushing and presumptuous; she had the sense to stickto her common unpretending 80 h. P. Daimler; but she wore a special sortof blackish hat-bonnet for such occasions as brought her near the centreof honour, which she got from a little good shop known only to very fewoutside the inner ring, which hat-bonnet she was always careful tosit on for a few minutes before wearing. And it was to this first andhighest and best section of her social scheme that she considered thatbishops properly belonged. But some bishops, and in particular sucha comparatively bright bishop as the Bishop of Princhester, she alsothought of as being just as comfortably accommodated in her secondsystem, the "serious liberal lot, " which was more fatiguing and lessboring, which talked of books and things, visited the Bells, went to allfirst-nights when Granville Barker was the producer, and knew and valuedpeople in the grey and earnest plains between the Cecils and the SidneyWebbs. And thirdly there were the smart intellectual lot, again not verywell marked off, and on the whole practicable to bishops, of whom fewerparticulars are needed because theirs is a perennial species, and thenfinally there was that fourth world which was paradoxically at once verybrilliant and a little shady, which had its Night Club side, and seemedto set no limit to its eccentricities. It seemed at times to be aimingto shock and yet it had its standards, but here it was that the dancersand actresses and forgiven divorcees came in--and the bishops as a rule, a rule hitherto always respected, didn't. This was the ultimate world ofMrs. Garstein Fellows; she had no use for merely sporting people andthe merely correct smart and the duller county families, sets that lednowhere, and it was from her fourth system of the Glittering Doubtfulsthat this party which made her hesitate over the bishop's telegram, wasderived. 

She ran over their names as she sat considering her reply. 

What was there for a bishop to object to? There was that admirableAmerican widow, Lady Sunderbund. She was enormously rich, she wasenthusiastic. She was really on probation for higher levels; it was herdecolletage delayed her. If only she kept off theosophy and the Kelticrenascence and her disposition to profess wild intellectual passions, there would be no harm in her. Provided she didn't come down to dinnerin anything too fantastically scanty--but a word in season was possible. No! there was no harm in Lady Sunderbund. Then there were Ridgeway Kelsoand this dark excitable Catholic friend of his, Paidraig O'Gorman. Mrs. Garstein Fellows saw no harm in them. Then one had to consider LordGatling and Lizzie Barusetter. But nothing showed, nothing was likely toshow even if there was anything. And besides, wasn't there a Church andStage Guild?

Except for those people there seemed little reason for alarm. Mrs. Garstein Fellows did not know that Professor Hoppart, who so amusinglycombined a professorship of political economy with the writing ofmusic-hall lyrics, was a keen amateur theologian, nor that Bent, thesentimental novelist, had a similar passion. She did not know that herown eldest son, a dark, romantic-looking youngster from Eton, had alsocome to the theological stage of development. She did however weighthe possibilities of too liberal opinions on what are called socialquestions on the part of Miss Sharsper, the novelist, and decided thatif that lady was watched nothing so terrible could be said even in anundertone; and as for the Mariposa, the dancer, she had nothing butSpanish and bad French, she looked all right, and it wasn't very likelyshe would go out of her way to startle an Anglican bishop. Simply sheneedn't dance. Besides which even if a man does get a glimpse of alittle something--it isn't as if it was a woman. 

But of course if the party mustn't annoy the bishop, the bishop mustdo his duty by the party. There must be the usual purple and the silverbuckles. 

She wired back:

"A little party but it won't put you out send your man with yourchange. "

(2)

In making that promise Mrs. Garstein Fellows reckoned without themorbid sensibility of the bishop's disorganized nervous system and theunsuspected theological stirrings beneath the apparent worldliness ofHoppart and Bent. 

The trouble began in the drawing-room after dinner. Out of deference tothe bishop's abstinence the men did not remain to smoke, but came in tofind the Mariposa and Lady Sunderbund smoking cigarettes, which theseladies continued to do a little defiantly. They had hoped to finish thembefore the bishop came up. The night was chilly, and a cheerful woodfire cracking and banging on the fireplace emphasized the ordinaryheating. Mrs. Garstein Fellows, who had not expected so prompt anappearance of the men, had arranged her chairs in a semicircle for alittle womanly gossip, and before she could intervene she found herparty, with the exception of Lord Gatling, who had drifted just a littletoo noticeably with Miss Barnsetter into a window, sitting round witha 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 aninterested party. "

She was standing at the side of the fireplace. She bit her lip andlooked 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 boughtfrom 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 slightlyexplosive manner of his. "All sorts of people who don't usually read theBible--"

"But Mr. Kelso!" protested their hostess with raised eyebrows. 

"I was thinking of Bent. But anyhow there's been a great wave ofseriousness, a sudden turning to religion and religious things. I don'tknow 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 comingif--if it wasn't for old entangled difficulties. I don't know if youwill mind my saying it to you, but.... "

The bishop returned his frank glance. "I'd like to know above allthings, " he said. "If Mrs. Garstein Fellow will permit us. It's mybusiness to know. "

"We all want to know, " said Lady Sunderbund, speaking from the low chairon the other side of the fireplace. There was a vibration in her voiceand a sudden gleam of enthusiasm in her face. "Why shouldn't people talkse'iously sometimes?"

"Well, take my own case, " said Hoppart. "In the last few weeks, I'vebeen reading not only in the Bible but in the Fathers. I've read most ofAthanasius, most of Eusebius, and--I'll confess it--Gibbon. I find allmy old wonder come back. Why are we pinned to--to the amount of creed weare pinned to? Why for instance must you insist on the Trinity?"

"Yes, " said the Eton boy explosively, and flushed darkly to find he hadspoken. 

"Here is a time when men ask for God, " said Hoppart. "And you give themthree!" cried Bent rather cheaply. "I confess I find the way encumberedby 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 hisbrow at the fire. "I do not think, " he said, "that men coming to Godthink very much of the nature of God. Nevertheless, " he spoke slowlyand patted the arm of his chair, "nevertheless the church insists thatcertain vitally important truths have to be conveyed, certain mortalerrors 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 thebishop quibbled. 

"In every sense of the word, " the bishop hastened to explain, "thecreeds are symbolical. It is clear they seek to express ineffable thingsby at least an extended use of familiar words. I suppose we are allagreed nowadays that when we speak of the Father and of the Son we meansomething only in a very remote and exalted way parallel with--withbiological fatherhood and sonship. "

Lady Sunderbund nodded eagerly. "Yes, " she said, "oh, yes, " and held upan expectant face for more. 

"Our utmost words, our most elaborately phrased creeds, can at the bestbe no better than the shadow of something unseen thrown upon the screenof experience. "

He raised his rather weary eyes to Hoppart as if he would know what elseneeded explanation. He was gratified by Lady Sunderbund's approval, buthe 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 mostincidental of observations. 

"What puzzles me, " he said, "is why the early Christians identified theSpermaticos Logos of the Stoics with the second and not with the thirdperson of the Trinity. "

To which the bishop, rising artlessly to the bait, replied, "Ah! thatindeed 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 beentold already in the opening section of this story. To that night ofdiscomfort we now return after this comprehensive digression. Heawoke from nightmares of eyes and triangles to bottomless remorse andperplexity. For the first time he fully measured the vast distanceshe had travelled from the beliefs and attitudes of his early training, since his coming to Princhester. Travelled--or rather slipped and fallendown the long slopes of doubt. 

That clear inky dimness that comes before dawn found his white face atthe window looking out upon the great terrace and the park. 

(4)

After a bout of mental distress and sleeplessness the bishop wouldsometimes wake in the morning not so much exhausted as in a state ofthin mental and bodily activity. This was more particularly so if thenight had produced anything in the nature of a purpose. So it wason this occasion. The day was clear before him; at least it could becleared by sending three telegrams; his man could go back to Princhesterand so leave him perfectly free to go to Brighton-Pomfrey in London andsecure that friendly dispensation to smoke again which seemed the onlyalternative to a serious mental breakdown. He would take his bag, staythe night in London, smoke, sleep well, and return the next morning. Dunk, his valet-butler, found him already bathed and ready for a cup oftea and a Bradshaw at half-past seven. He went on dressing although thegood train for London did not start until 10. 45. 

Mrs. Garstein Fellows was by nature and principle a late riser; thebreakfast-room showed small promise yet of the repast, though the tablewas set and bright with silver and fresh flowers, and a wood fire poppedand spurted to greet and encourage the March sunshine. But standing inthe doorway that led to the promise and daffodils and crocuses of Mrs. Garstein Fellows' garden stood Lady Sunderbund, almost with an effectof waiting, and she greeted the bishop very cheerfully, doubted theimmediate appearance of any one else, and led him in the most naturalmanner into the new but already very pleasant shrubbery. 

In some indefinable special way the bishop had been aware of LadySunderbund's presence since first he had met her, but it was only nowthat he could observe her with any particularity. She was tall like hisown Lady Ella but not calm and quiet; she was electric, her eyes, hersmiles, her complexion had as it were an established brightness thatexceeded the common lustre of things. This morning she was dressed ingrey that was nevertheless not grey but had an effect of colour, andthere was a thread of black along the lines of her body and a gleam ofgold. She carried her head back with less dignity than pride; there wasa little frozen movement in her dark hair as if it flamed up out of herhead. There were silver ornaments in her hair. She spoke with a prettylittle weakness of the r's that had probably been acquired abroad. Andshe lost no time in telling him, she was eager to tell him, that she hadbeen 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 thatyou 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 troublingher. 'iligion bad been worrying her for years. Life was--oh--justornaments 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 'ipelledher, --always. She had felt herself confronted by the most insurmountabledifficulties, and yet whenever she had gone away from Christianity--shehad gone away from Christianity, to the Theosophists and the ChristianScientists--she had felt she was only "st'aying fu'tha. " And thensuddenly when he was speaking last night, she had felt he knew. It wasso wonderful to hear the "k'eed was only a symbol. "

"Symbol is the proper name for it, " said the bishop. "It wasn't forcenturies it was called the Creed. "

Yes, and so what it really meant was something quite different from whatit did mean. 

The bishop felt that this sentence also was only a symbol, and noddedencouragingly--but gravely, warily. 

And there she was, and the point was there were thousands and thousandsand thousands of educated people like her who were dying to get throughthese old-fashioned symbols to the true faith that lay behind them. Thatthey knew lay behind them. She didn't know if he had read "The Lightunder 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. Wewant 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 ifthe bishop went over to the heretic, the bishop reflected. 

"My dear lady, I won't disguise, " he began; "in fact I don't see howI could, that for some years I have been growing more and morediscontented with some of our most fundamental formulae. But it's beenvery largely a shapeless discontent--hitherto. I don't think I've said aword to a single soul. No, not a word. You are the first person towhom I've ever made the admission that even my feelings are at timesunorthodox. "

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 broachedthe casket of his reserves he was only too glad of a listener. He talkedas if they were intimate and loving friends, and so it seemed to bothof them they were. It was a wonderful release from a long and painfulsolitude. 

To certain types it is never quite clear what has happened to them untilthey tell it. So that now the bishop, punctuated very prettily byLady Sunderbund, began to measure for the first time the extent of hisdeparture from the old innate convictions of Otteringham Rectory. Hesaid that it was strange to find doubt coming so late in life, butperhaps it was only in recent years that his faith had been put to anyreally 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 Lightunder the Altar" case had ploughed him deeply. It was curious thathis doubts always seemed to have a double strand; there was a moralobjection based on the church's practical futility and an intellectualstrand subordinated to this which traced that futility largely to itsunconvincing 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 feellike a son, growing up, who finds his mother isn't quite so clear-spokennor quite so energetic as she seemed to be once. She's right, I feelsure. 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'tknow what to do. One feels on the one hand, that here is a cloud ofwitnesses, great men, sainted men, subtle men, figures permanentlyhistorical, before whom one can do nothing but bow down in the utmosthumility, here is a great instrument and organization--what would theworld be without the witness of the church?--and on the other hand hereare our masses out of hand and hostile, our industrial leaders equallyhostile; there is a failure to grip, and that failure to grip is soclearly traceable to the fact that our ideas are not modern ideas, thatwhen we come to profess our faith we find nothing in our mouths butantiquated Alexandrian subtleties and phrases and ideas that may havebeen quite alive, quite significant, quite adequate in Asia Minor orEgypt, among men essentially orientals, fifteen hundred years ago, butwhich 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: "Butwhat 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 anddiscipline that requires one to keep the ranks until one's course ofaction is perfectly clear. One owes so much to so many. One has toconsider how one may affect--oh! people one has never seen. "

He was lugging things now into speech that so far had been scarcelyabove the threshold of his conscious thought. He went on to discuss theentire position of the disbelieving cleric. He discovered a fine point. 

"If there was something else, an alternative, another religion, anotherChurch, to which one could go, the whole case would be different. But togo from the church to nothingness isn't to go from falsehood to truth. It's to go from truth, rather badly expressed, rather conservativelyhidden by its protections, truth in an antiquated costume, to theblackest lie--in the world. "

She took that point very brightly. 

"One must hold fast to 'iligion, " she said, and looked earnestly at himand gripped fiercely, pink thumbs out, with her beautiful hands held up. 

That was it, exactly. He too was gripping. But while on the outside theMidianites of denial were prowling for these clinging souls, withinthe camp they were assailed by a meticulous orthodoxy that was only tooeager to cast them forth. The bishop dwelt for a time upon the curiousfierceness orthodoxy would sometimes display. Nowadays atheism can becivil, can be generous; it is orthodoxy that trails a scurrilous fringe. 

"Who was that young man with a strong Irish accent--who contradicted meso 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. SpellsPat'ick with eva so many letters. You know. They say he spends ouas andouas lea'ning E'se. He wo'ies about it. They all t'y to lea'n E'se, andit 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 ofterritory, and Lady Sunderbund turned about mechanically towards thehouse. 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 broughtthem within sight of the house and of Mrs. Garstein Fellows on theportico 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 stilldewy lawn towards the house door. The bishop followed gravely and slowlywith his hands behind his back and an unusually peaceful expression uponhis face. He was thinking how rare and precious a thing it is to findintelligent friendship in women. More particularly when they weredazzlingly charming and pretty. It was strange, but this was really hisfirst woman friend. If, as he hoped, she became his friend. 

Lady Sunderbund entered the breakfast room in a gusty abundance likeBotticelli's Primavera, and kissed Mrs. Garstein Fellows good-morning. She exhaled a glowing happiness. "He is wondyful, " she panted. "He ismost 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 feltfor many weeks. He had taken two decisive and relieving steps. One wasthat he had stated his case to another human being, and that a verycharming and sympathetic human being, he was no longer a prey to acurrent of secret and concealed thoughts running counter to all theappearances of his outward life; and the other was that he was nowwithin an hour or so of Brighton-Pomfrey and a cigarette. He would lunchon the train, get to London about two, take a taxi at once to the wiseold doctor, catch him over his coffee in a charitable and understandingmood, and perhaps be smoking a cigarette publicly and honourably andaltogether satisfyingly before three. 

So far as Brighton-Pomfrey's door this program was fulfilled withouta hitch. The day was fine and he had his taxi opened, and noted with apatriotic satisfaction as he rattled through the streets, the glare ofthe recruiting posters on every vacant piece of wall and the increasingnumber of men in khaki in the streets. But at the door he had adisappointment. Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was away at the front--of allplaces; 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 tactfullytold to do exactly what he was longing to do was one thing; facing somestrange doctor and going slowly and elaborately through the wholestory of his illness, his vow and his breakdown, and perhaps having hisreaction time tested and all sorts of stripping and soundings done, wasquite another. He was within an ace of turning away. 

If he had turned away his whole subsequent life would have beendifferent. It was the very slightest thing in the world tipped thebeam. It was the thought that, after all, whatever inconvenience andunpleasantness there might be in this interview, there was at the end ofit 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 prolongedfeatures; his chin was right over to the left; he looked constantly atthe bishop's face with a distinctly sceptical grey eye; he could nothave looked harder if he had been a photographer or a portrait painter. And his voice was harsh, and the bishop was particularly sensitive tovoices. 

He began by understanding far too much of the bishop's illness, and heinsisted on various familiarities with the bishop's heart and tongue andeye and knee that ruffled the bishop's soul. 

"Brighton-Pomfrey talked of neurasthenia?" he asked. "That was hisdiagnosis, " said the bishop. "Neurasthenia, " said the young man asthough he despised the word. 

The bishop went on buttoning up his coat. 

"You don't of course want to break your vows about drinking andsmoking, " said the young man with the very faintest suggestion ofderision in his voice. 

"Not if it can possibly be avoided, " the bishop asserted. "Without aloss, that is, of practical efficiency, " he added. "For I have much todo. "

"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 allright. "

(2)

The bishop sat at the table resting his arm upon it and awaiting thenext development of this unsatisfactory interview. He was on the vergeof asking as unpleasantly as possible when Brighton-Pomfrey wouldreturn. 

The young man stood upon Brighton-Pomfrey's hearth-rug and was evidentlycontemplating 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, oneway or another. "

The bishop nodded assent. He had faint hopes of this young man's ideasof comfort. 

Dr. Dale reflected. Then he went off away from the question of comfortaltogether. "You see, the trouble in such a case as this is peculiarlydifficult to trace to its sources because it comes just upon theborder-line of bodily and mental things. You may take a drug or alteryour regimen and it disturbs your thoughts, you may take an idea andit disturbs your health. It is easy enough to say, as some do, that allideas have a physical substratum; it is almost as easy to say with theChristian Scientist that all bodily states are amenable to our ideas. The truth doesn't, I think, follow the border between those oppositeopinions very exactly on either side. I can't, for instance, tell you togo home and pray against these uncertainties and despairs, because itis just these uncertainties and despairs that rob you of the power ofefficient prayer. "

He did not seem to expect anything from the bishop. 

"I don't see that because a case brings one suddenly right up againstthe frontier of metaphysics, why a doctor should necessarily pullup short at that, why one shouldn't go on into either metaphysics orpsychology if such an extension is necessary for the understanding ofthe case. At any rate if you'll permit it in this consultation.... "

"Go on, " said the bishop, holding on to that promise of comfort. "Thebest thing is to thrash out the case in your own way. And then come towhat is practical. "

"What is really the matter here--the matter with you that is--is adisorganization of your tests of reality. It's one of a group of stateshitherto confused. Neurasthenia, that comprehensive phrase--well, it isone of the neurasthenias. Here, I confess, I begin to talk of work I amdoing, work still to be published, finished first and then published.... But I go off from the idea that every living being lives in a statenot differing essentially from a state of hallucination concerning thethings about it. Truth, essential truth, is hidden. Always. Of coursethere must be a measure of truth in our working illusions, a workingmeasure of truth, or the creature would smash itself up and end itself, but beyond that discretion of the fire and the pitfall lies a widemargin of error about which we may be deceived for years. So long as itdoesn'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 andconventions, we say 'This is all right' and 'That is always so. ' Weget more and more settled into our life as a whole and more and moreconfident. Unless something happens to shake us out of our sphere ofillusion. That may be some violent contradictory fact, some accident, or it may be some subtle change in one's health and nerves that makesus feel doubtful. Or a change of habits. Or, as I believe, some subtlequickening of the critical faculty. Then suddenly comes the feeling asthough we were lost in a strange world, as though we had never reallyseen the world before. "

He paused. 

The bishop was reluctantly interested. "That does describe something--ofthe mental side, " he admitted. "I never believe in concealing my ownthoughts from an intelligent patient, " said Dr. Dale, with a quietoffensiveness. "That sort of thing belongs to the dark ages of the'pothecary's art. I will tell you exactly my guesses and suppositionsabout 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 localwater--"

"But it's excellent water. They boast of it. "

"By all the established tests. As a matter of fact many of our bestdrinking waters have all sorts of unspecified qualities. Burton water, for example, is radioactive by Beetham's standards up to the ninthdegree. But that is by the way. My theory about your case is that thisproduced a change in your blood, that quickened your sensibilities andyour critical faculties just at a time when a good many bothers--I don'tof course know what they were, but I can, so to speak, see the marks allover you--came into your life. "

The bishop nodded. 

"You were uprooted. You moved from house to house, and failed to getthat 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 newpalace!" admitted the bishop. "I had practically no control. "

"That confirms me, " said Dr. Dale. "Insomnia followed, and increased thefeeling of physical strangeness by increasing the bodily disturbance. Isuspect an intellectual disturbance. "

He paused. 

"There was, " said the bishop. 

"You were no longer at home anywhere. You were no longer at home in yourdiocese, in your palace, in your body, in your convictions. And thencame the war. Quite apart from everything else the mind of the wholeworld is suffering profoundly from the shock of this war--much morethan is generally admitted. One thing you did that you probably did notobserve yourself doing, you drank rather more at your meals, you smokeda 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 wouldreally tolerate the world as it is if it were not for smoking anddrinking. Even novelists have their moments of lucidity. Certainly thesethings soothe the restlessness in men's minds, deaden their scepticalsensibilities. And just at the time when you were getting mostdislodged--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 differsfrom the treatment of "--he spoke the name reluctantly as if he dislikedthe 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 yourold sphere of illusion, your old familiar sensations and ideas andconfidences. He would in fact turn you back. He would restore all yourhabits. He would order you a rest. He would send you off to some holidayresort, fresh in fact but familiar in character, the High lands, NorthItaly, or Switzerland for example. He would forbid you newspapers andorder you to botanize and prescribe tranquillizing reading; Trollope'snovels, the Life of Gladstone, the works of Mr. A. C. Benson, memoirsand 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 theeffects of the Princhester water with Contrexeville, and afterwardsput you on Salutaris or Perrier. I don't know whether I shouldn't haveinclined 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, " hesaid 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 andgo through. "

"Where?"

"To reality. 

"I know it's doubtful, I know it's dangerous, " he went on, "but I amconvinced that now we can no longer keep men's minds and souls in thesefeathered nests, these spheres of illusion. Behind these veils there iseither God or the Darkness.... Why should we not go on?"

The bishop was profoundly perplexed. He heard himself speaking. "Itwould 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. ' Ithink that this loosening of the ties of association that bind a man tohis everyday life and his everyday self is in nine cases out of ten aloosening of the ties that bind him to everyday sanity. One common formof this detachment is the form you have in those cases of people whoare found wandering unaware of their names, unaware of their placesof residence, lost altogether from themselves. They have not only losttheir sense of identity with themselves, but all the circumstances oftheir lives have faded out of their minds like an idle story in a bookthat has been read and put aside. I have looked into hundreds of suchcases. I don't think that loss of identity is a necessary thing; it'sjust another side of the general weakening of the grip upon reality, akind of anaemia of the brain so that interest fades and fails. Thereis no reason why you should forget a story because you do not believeit--if your brain is strong enough to hold it. But if your brain istired and weak, then so soon as you lose faith in your records, yourmind is glad to let them go. When you see these lost identity peoplethat 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. "Whatif we treat this case of yours in a new way? What if we give you notnarcotics but stimulants and tonics? What if we so touch the blood thatwe increase your sense of physical detachment while at the same timefeeding up your senses to a new and more vivid apprehension of thingsabout you?" He looked at his patient's hesitation and added: "You'd loseall that craving feeling, that you fancy at present is just the needof a smoke. The world might grow a trifle--transparent, but you'd keepreal. 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! Itwas easy and successful to rest and drug people back to their old statesof mind when the world wasn't changing, wasn't spinning round in thewildest tornado of change that it has ever been in. But now--Where canI send you for a rest? Where can I send you to get you out of sight andhearing of the Catastrophe? Of course old Brighton-Pomfrey would go onsending people away for rest and a nice little soothing change if theDay of Judgment was coming in the sky and the earth was opening and thesea was giving up its dead. He'd send 'em to the seaside. Such things asthat wouldn't shake his faith in the Channel crossing. My idea is thatit's not only right for you to go through with this, but that it's theonly thing to do. If you go right on and right through with these doubtsand intimations--"

He paused. 

"You may die like a madman, " he said, "but you won't die like a tamerabbit. "

(4)

The bishop sat reflecting. What fascinated and attracted him was theending of all the cravings and uneasinesses and restlessness that haddistressed his life for over four years; what deterred him was thepersonality of this gaunt young man with his long grey face, his excitedmanner, his shock of black hair. He wanted that tonic--with gravemisgivings. "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 goteverything 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 Ihave 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 alsohe did not want to go without his promised comfort. 

Presently Dale had given him a little phial--and was holding up to thewindow a small medicine glass into which he was pouring very carefullytwenty drops of the precious fluid. "Take it only, " he said, "when youfeel 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 bepossible 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 joyoustingling 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 thisdraught. He was acutely introspective, ready for anything, for the mostdisagreeable or the most bizarre sensations. He was asking himself, Werehis 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 littlequibblings and definitions of the theologians matter? He had beenworrying about these definitions and quibblings for four long restlessyears. Now they were just failures to express--what surely every oneknew--and no one would ever express exactly. Because here was God, andthe kingdom of God was manifestly at hand. The visible world hung beforehim as a mist might hang before the rising sun. He stood proudly andmasterfully facing a universe that had heretofore bullied him into doubtand apologetics, a universe that had hitherto been opaque and was nowbetrayed translucent. 

That was the first effect of the new tonic, complete reassurance, complete courage. He turned to walk towards Mount Street and BerkeleySquare 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 solidand larger than the people about him. They had all a curious miniatureeffect, as though he was looking at them through the wrong end of anopera glass. The houses on either side of the street and the trafficshared this quality in an equal measure. It was as if he was looking atthe world through apertures in a miniature cinematograph peep-show. Thissurprised him and a little dashed his first glow of satisfaction. 

He passed a man in khaki who, he fancied, looked at him with an oddexpression. He observed the next passers-by narrowly and suspiciously, acouple of smartish young men, a lady with a poodle, a grocer's boy witha basket, but none seemed to observe anything remarkable about him. Thenhe 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. Itseemed to be filling him and distending him, in spite of the fact thathe was already full. After four years of flaccidity it was pleasant tobe distended again, but already he felt more filled than he had everbeen before. At present nothing was showing, but all his body seemedbraced and uplifted. He must be careful not to become inflated in hisbearing. 

And yet it was difficult not to betray a little inflation. He was sofilled with assurance that things were right with him and that God wasthere with him. After all it was not mere fancy; he was looking throughthe peepholes of his eyes at the world of illusion and appearance. Theworld that was so intent upon its immediate business, so regardless ofeternal things, that had so dominated him but a little while ago, wasafter 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 somethingwith a beginning and an end, as something less than the immortal spiritin man. He had been too much oppressed by it. He perceived all thesepeople in the street were too much oppressed by it. He wanted to tellthem as much, tell them that all was well with them, bid them be of goodcheer. He wanted to bless them. He found his arm floating up towardsgestures of benediction. Self-control became increasingly difficult. 

All the way down Berkeley Square the bishop was in full-bodied strugglewith himself. He was trying to control himself, trying to keep withinbounds. He felt that he was stepping too high, that his feet were notproperly reaching the ground, that he was walking upon cushions of air. 

The feeling of largeness increased, and the feeling of transparency inthings about him. He avoided collision with passers-by--excessively. Andhe felt his attention was being drawn more and more to something thatwas going on beyond the veil of visible things. He was in Piccadillynow, but at the same time Piccadilly was very small and he was walkingin the presence of God. 

He had a feeling that God was there though he could not see him. And atthe same time he was in this transitory world, with people going to andfro, men with umbrellas tucked dangerously under their arms, men in ahurry, policemen, young women rattling Red Cross collecting boxes, smartpeople, loafers. They distracted one from God. 

He set out to cross the road just opposite Prince's, and jumpingneedlessly to give way to an omnibus had the narrowest escape from ataxicab. 

He paused on the pavement edge to recover himself. The shock of his nearescape had, as people say, pulled him together. 

What was he to do? Manifestly this opalescent draught was overpoweringhim. He ought never to have taken it. He ought to have listened to thevoice of his misgivings. It was clear that he was not in a fit state towalk about the streets. He was--what had been Dr. Dale's term?--losinghis sense of reality. What was he to do? He was alarmed but notdismayed. 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 ofthis wild-eyed experimenter. 

Strange that after a lifetime of discretion and men's respect one shouldbe 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 ofbeing--ordinary. 

And behind everything, behind the tall buildings and the swarming peoplethere was still the sense of a wide illuminated space, of a light ofwonder and a Presence. But he must not give way to that again! He hadalready given way altogether too much. He repeated to himself in awhisper, "I am in Piccadilly. "

If he kept tight hold upon himself he felt he might get to the Athenaeumbefore--before anything more happened. 

He murmured directions to himself. "Keep along the pavement. Turn tothe right at the Circus. Now down the hill. Easily down the hill. Don'tfloat! 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 thekingdom of Heaven. You are in the presence of God. Place and time are atexture of illusion and dreamland. Even now, you are with God. "

(6)

The porter of the Athenaeum saw him come in, looking well--flushedindeed--but queer in expression; his blue eyes were wide open andunusually vague and blue. 

He wandered across towards the dining-room, hesitated, went to look atthe 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 thegreat drawing-room. 

In the drawing-room he found only Sir James Mounce, the man who knewthe novels of Sir Walter Scott by heart and had the minutest and mostunsparing knowledge of every detail in the life of that supreme giant ofEnglish literature. He had even, it was said, acquired a Scotch burr inthe enthusiasm of his hero-worship. It was usually sufficient only toturn an ear towards him for him to talk for an hour or so. He was nowstudying Bradshaw. 

The bishop snatched at him desperately. He felt that if he went awaythere would be no hold left upon the ordinary things of life. 

"Sir James, " he said, "I was wondering the other day when was the exactdate of the earliest public ascription of Waverley to Scott. "

"Eh!" said Sir James, "but I'd like to talk that over with ye. IndeedI would. It would be depending very largely on what ye called 'public. 'But--"

He explained something about an engagement in Birmingham that night, atrain to catch. Reluctantly but relentlessly he abandoned the profferedear. But he promised that the next time they met in the club he would gointo the matter "exhausteevely. "

The door closed upon him. The bishop was alone. He was flooded withthe light of the world that is beyond this world. The things about himbecame very small and indistinct. 

He would take himself into a quiet corner in the library of this doll'shouse, 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 becomealtogether a trance--well, a bishop asleep in an armchair in the libraryof the Athenaeum is nothing to startle any one. 

He thought of that convenient hidden room, the North Library, in whichis the bust of Croker. There often one can be quite alone.... It wasempty, and he went across to the window that looks out upon Pall Malland sat down in the little uncomfortable easy chair by the desk with itsback to the Benvenuto Cellini. 

And as he sat down, something snapped--like the snapping of a lutestring--in his brain. 

(7)

With a sigh of deep relief the bishop realized that this world hadvanished. 

He was in a golden light. 

He perceived it as a place, but it was a place without buildings ortrees or any very definite features. There was a cloudy suggestion ofdistant hills, and beneath his feet were little gem-like flowers, anda feeling of divinity and infinite friendliness pervaded his being. Hisimpressions grew more definite. His feet seemed to be bare. He was nolonger a bishop nor clad as a bishop. That had gone with the rest of theworld. 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 bespeaking in his mind. 

"I have been very foolish and confused and perplexed. I have been like acreature caught among thorns. "

"You served the purpose of God among those thorns. " It seemed to him atfirst 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 besidehim, a figure of great strength and beauty, with a smiling face andkindly 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 aboutGod. Slowly through four long years I have been awakening to the needof God. Body and soul I am sick for the want of God and the knowledge ofGod. I did not know what was the matter with me, why my life had becomeso disordered and confused that my very appetites and habits are allastray. But I am perishing for God as a waterless man upon a raftperishes for drink, and there is nothing but madness if I touch the seasabout me. Not only in my thoughts but in my under thoughts and in mynerves and bones and arteries I have need of God. You see I grew up inthe delusion that I knew God, I did not know that I was unprovisionedand unprovided against the tests and strains and hardships of life. Ithought that I was secure and safe. I was told that we men--who wereapes not a quarter of a million years ago, who still have hair uponour arms and ape's teeth in our jaws--had come to the full and perfectknowledge of God. It was all put into a creed. Not a word of it was tobe altered, not a sentence was to be doubted any more. They made me ateacher of this creed. They seemed to explain it to me. And when I cameto look into it, when my need came and I turned to my creed, it was oldand shrivelled up, it was the patched-up speculations of vanished Greeksand Egyptians, it was a mummy of ancient disputes, old and dry, thatfell to dust as I unwrapped it. And I was dressed up in the dress of olddead times and put before an altar of forgotten sacrifices, and I wentthrough ceremonies as old as the first seedtime; and suddenly I knewclearly that God was not there, God was not in my Creed, not in mycathedral, not in my ceremonies, nowhere in my life. And at the sametime I knew, I knew as I had never known before, that certainly therewas 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 thathe had never seen her face before, that she was not his mother, and thatthe words he had seemed to understand were--now that he listened--wordsin an unknown tongue. 

"You see, I am but a common sort of man, dear God; I have neither livednor thought in any way greatly, I have gone from one day to the next daywithout looking very much farther than the end of the day, I have goneon as life has befallen; if no great trouble had come into my life, soI should have lived to the end of my days. But life which began for meeasily and safely has become constantly more difficult and strange. I could have held my services and given my benedictions, I could havebelieved I believed in what I thought I believed.... But now I am lostand astray--crying out for God.... "

(9)

"Let us talk a little about your troubles, " said the Angel. "Let us talkabout 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 theyears--since my doubts began. "

"The story your Creed is trying to tell is much the same story thatall religions try to tell. In your heart there is God, beyond the starsthere 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 patchedcontradictions of the human intelligence utterly puzzled. It is aboutthose two Gods, the God beyond the stars and the God in your heart. Itsays that they are the same God, but different. It says that they haveexisted together for all time, and that one is the Son of the other. Ithas added a third Person--but we won't go into that. "

The bishop was reminded suddenly of the dispute at Mrs. GarsteinFellows'. "We won't go into that, " he agreed. "No!"

"Other religions have told the story in a different way. The Cathars andGnostics did. They said that the God in your heart is a rebel againstthe God beyond the stars, that the Christ in your heart is likePrometheus--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 andcrystals and poisons and monsters and of the dead emptiness of space.... The Manicheans and the Persians made out our God to be fightingeternally against that Being of silence and darkness beyond the stars. The Buddhists made the Lord Buddha the leader of men out of the futilityand confusion of material existence to the great peace beyond. But it isall one story really, the story of the two essential Beings, always thesame story and the same perplexity cropping up under different names, the story of one being who stirs us, calls to us, and leads us, andof another who is above and outside and in and beneath all things, inaccessible and incomprehensible. All these religions are trying totell something they do not clearly know--of a relationship between thesetwo, that eludes them, that eludes the human mind, as water escapes fromthe hand. It is unity and opposition they have to declare at the sametime; it is agreement and propitiation, it is infinity and effort. "

"And the truth?" said the bishop in an eager whisper. "You can tell methe truth. "

The Angel's answer was a gross familiarity. He thrust his hand throughthe bishop's hair and ruffled it affectionately, and rested for a momentholding 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 soonmake a meal of the stars and pack them into your belly. You haven't thethings 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 tothe 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 mindand 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 acrossthe blackness of the farther sky, and smeared it with stars and suns andshining nebulas as a brush might smear dry paint across a canvas. 

The bishop stared in front of him. Then slowly he bowed his head, andcovered his face with his hands. 

"And I have been in orders, " he murmured; "I have been teaching peoplethe only orthodox and perfect truth about these things for seven andtwenty years. "

And suddenly he was back in his gaiters and his apron and his shovelhat, 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 roofwas the ebony of limitless space from which the stars swung flaming, held by invisible ties, and the soil beneath his feet was a dust ofatoms and the little beginnings of life. And long before the bishopbared 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 andbodying forth of a being inconceivable, of One who is greater than theearth and stars and yet no greater than a man. He saw a being for everyoung, for ever beginning, for ever triumphant. The quality and textureof this being was a warm and living light like the effulgence atsunrise; He was hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. Hewas adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into andsubmerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And thispresence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in awordless speech. 

He bade him surrender himself. He bade him come out upon the Adventureof Life, the great Adventure of the earth that will make the atoms ourbond-slaves and subdue the stars, that will build up the white fires ofecstasy to submerge pain for ever, that will overcome death. In Himthe spirit of creation had become incarnate, had joined itself to men, summoning men to Him, having need of them, having need of them, havingneed of their service, even as great kings and generals and leaders needand use men. For a moment, for an endless age, the bishop bowed himselfin the being and glory of God, felt the glow of the divine courage andconfidence 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 thatnever before had he known anything real. He knew certainly that God washis King and master, and that his unworthy service could be acceptableto God. His mind embraced that idea with an absolute conviction that wasalso absolute happiness. 

(11)

The thoughts and sensations of the bishop seemed to have lifted fora time clean away from the condition of time, and then through a vastorbit to be returning to that limitation. 

He was aware presently that things were changing, that the light waslosing its diviner rays, that in some indescribable manner the glory andthe assurance diminished. 

The onset of the new phase was by imperceptible degrees. From a glowing, serene, and static realization of God, everything relapsed towardschange and activity. He was in time again and things were happening, itwas as if the quicksands of time poured by him, and it was as if Godwas passing away from him. He fell swiftly down from the heavenof self-forgetfulness to a grotesque, pathetic and earthlyself-consciousness. 

He became acutely aware of his episcopal livery. And that God waspassing away from him. 

It was as if God was passing, and as if the bishop was unable to rise upand follow him. 

Then it was as if God had passed, and as if the bishop was in headlongpursuit of him and in a great terror lest he should be left behind. Andhe 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 episcopalsash had slipped down about his feet. He was sorely impeded. He keptsnatching 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 thelast 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 indeedas 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 hehad a hand a man might clasp. 

Unspeakable love and joy irradiated the whole being of the bishop as heseized God's hand and clasped it desperately with both his own. It wasas if his nerves and arteries and all his substance were inundated withgolden 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 thelittle North Library of the Athenaeum club and staring at the bust ofJohn Wilson Croker. He was sitting motionless and musing deeply. He wasquestioning with a cool and steady mind whether he had seen a visionor whether he had had a dream. If it had been a dream it had been anextraordinarily vivid and convincing dream. He still seemed to be in thepresence of God, and it perplexed him not at all that he should alsobe in the presence of Croker. The feeling of mental rottenness andinsecurity that had weakened his thought through the period of hisillness, had gone. He was secure again within himself. 

It did not seem to matter fundamentally whether it was an experience ofthings without or of things within him that had happened to him. It wasclear to him that much that he had seen was at most expressive, thatsome was altogether symbolical. For example, there was that suddenabsurd realization of his sash and gaiters, and his perception of themas encumbrances in his pursuit of God. But the setting and essential ofthe whole thing remained in his mind neither expressive nor symbolical, but as real and immediately perceived, and that was the presence andkingship of God. God was still with him and about him and over him andsustaining 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 andremained altogether plain and manifest. 

Whether an actual vision had made his conviction, or whether theconviction of his own subconscious mind had made the dream, seemed buta small matter beside the conviction that this was indeed the God he haddesired and the God who must rule his life. 

"The stuff? The stuff had little to do with it. It just cleared myhead.... I have seen. I have seen really. I know. "

(2)

For a long time as it seemed the bishop remained wrapped in clouds ofluminous meditation. Dream or vision it did not matter; the essentialthing was that he had made up his mind about God, he had found God. Moreover, he perceived that his theological perplexities had gone. Godwas higher and simpler and nearer than any theological God, than theGod of the Three Creeds. Those creeds lay about in his mind now likegarments flung aside, no trace nor suspicion of divinity sustained themany longer. And now--Now he would go out into the world. 

The little Library of the Athenaeum has no visible door. He went to thebook-masked entrance in the corner, and felt among the bookshelvesfor the hidden latch. Then he paused, held by a curious thought. Whatexactly was the intention of that symbolical struggle with his sash andgaiters, 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 stillwearing the uniform of a priest in the service of those three creeds. 

After a long interval he walked into the big reading-room. He orderedsome tea and dry toast and butter, and sat down very thoughtfully in acorner. He was still sitting and thinking at half-past eight. 

It may seem strange to the reader that this bishop who had been doubtingand criticizing the church and his system of beliefs for four longyears had never before faced the possibility of a severance from hisecclesiastical dignity. But he had grown up in the church, his life hadbeen so entirely clerical and Anglican, that the widest separation hehad hitherto been able to imagine from this past had left him still abishop, heretical perhaps, innovating in the broadening of beliefs andthe liberalizing of practice, defensive even as Chasters was defensive, but still with the palace and his dignities, differing in opinion ratherthan in any tangible reality from his previous self. For a bishop, disbelief in the Church is a far profounder scepticism than meredisbelief in God. God is unseen, and in daily things unfelt; butthe Church is with the predestined bishop always. His concept of theextremest possible departure from orthodoxy had been something thatChasters had phrased as "a restatement of Christ. " It was a new idea, anidea that had come with an immense effect of severance and novelty, thatGod could be other than the God of the Creed, could present himselfto the imagination as a figure totally unlike the white, gentle, andcompromising Redeemer of an Anglican's thought. That the bishop shouldtreat 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 acloudless sky. But here, clear in his mind now, was a feeling, amountingto conviction, that it was the purpose and gesture of the true God thathe should come right out of the church and all his professions. 

And in the first glow of his vision he felt this gesture imperative. Hemust step right out.... Whither? how? And when?

To begin with it seemed to him that an immediate renunciation wasdemanded. But it was a momentous step. He wanted to think. And to goon thinking. Rather than to act precipitately. Although the imperativeseemed absolute, some delaying and arresting instinct insisted that hemust "think" If he went back to Princhester, the everyday duties ofhis position would confront him at once with an effect of a definitechallenge. He decided to take one of the Reform club bedrooms for two orthree days, and wire to Princhester that he was "unavoidably delayed intown, " without further explanations. Then perhaps this inhibitory forcewould give way. 

It did not, however, give way. His mind sat down for two days in a blankamazement at the course before him, and at the end of that time thisreasonless and formless institution was as strong as ever. During thattime, except for some incidental exchanges at his clubs, he talked to noone. At first he did not want to talk to any one. He remained mentallyand practically active, with a still intensely vivid sense that God, the true God, stood watching him and waiting for him to follow. And tofollow 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 havedemanded more from the bishop's store of resolution. He stood on thevery verge. The chief secretion of his mind was a shadowy experiment orso in explanation of why he did not follow. 

(3)

Insensibly the extreme vividness of his sense of God's nearnessdecreased. But he still retained a persuasion of the reality of animmediate listener waiting, and of the need of satisfying him. 

On the third day he found his mind still further changed. He no longerfelt that God was in Pall Mall or St. James's Park, whither heresorted to walk and muse. He felt now that God was somewhere about thehorizon.... 

He felt too no longer that he thought straight into the mind of God. Hethought now of what he would presently say to God. He turned over andrehearsed phrases. With that came a desire to try them first on someother 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 hismind. 

He found her address in the telephone book. She could be quite aloneto him if he wouldn't mind "just me. " It was, he said, exactly what hedesired. 

But when he got to her great airy flat overlooking Hyde Park, with itsOmega Workshop furniture and its arresting decoration, he was not sosure whether this encounter was so exactly the thing he had desired ashe had supposed. 

The world had become opaque and real again as he walked up St. James'sStreet and past the Ritz. He had a feeling that he was taking anafternoon off from God. The adventurous modernity of the room in whichhe waited intensified that. One whole white wall was devoted to a smallpicture by Wyndham Lewis. It was like a picture of an earthquake in acity of aniline pink and grey and keen green cardboard, and he wished ithad never existed. 

He turned his back upon it and stared out of the window over the treesand greenery. The balcony was decorated with white and pink geraniums inpots painted black and gold, and the railings of the balcony were blackand gold with crimson shape like squares wildly out of drawing. 

Lady Sunderbund kept him waiting perhaps five minutes. Then she camesailing in to him. 

She was dressed in a way and moved across the room in a way that wasmore reminiscent of Botticelli's Spring than ever--only with a kindof superadded stiffish polonaise of lace--and he did not want to bereminded of Botticelli's Spring or wonder why she had taken to stifflace polonaises. He did not enquire whether he had met Lady Sunderbundto better advantage at Mrs. Garstein Fellows' or whether his memory hadoverrated her or whether anything had happened to his standard of taste, but his feeling now was decidedly one of disappointment, and all thetalk and self-examination he had promised himself seemed to wither andhide away within him. For a time he talked of her view, and thenadmired her room and its arrangement, which he thought really were quiteunbecomingly flippant and undignified for a room. Then came the blacktea-things on their orange tray, and he searched in his mind for smalltalk 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 withour 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 hadfinished conveying her pretty bliss to him. "I've been so helped bythinking the k'eeds are symbols. And all you said. And I've felt timeafter time, you couldn't stay whe' you we'. That what you we' saying tome, would have to be said 'ight out. "

That brought him in. He could not very well evade that opening withoutincivility. After all he had asked to see her, and it was a foolishthing to let little decorative accidentals put him off his friendlypurpose. A woman may have flower-pots painted gold with black checkersand still be deeply understanding. He determined to tell her what was inhis mind. But he found something barred him from telling that he hadhad an actual vision of God. It was as if that had been a private andconfidential meeting. It wasn't, he felt, for him either to boast aprivilege 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 subjectof our conversation. "

"I have been t'ying to think, " she said in a confirmatory tone, as ifshe 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 wasborn and trained in Anglicanism, and it is with a sort of astonishment Ifind myself passing now out of every sort of Catholicism--seeing it fromthe 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 thecouch upon which she was sitting, and leaning forward at him, so as toseem 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 withhushed and solemn movements as though she administered a ceremony ofpeculiar significance. The bishop too rose slowly out of the profundityof his confession. "No sugar please, " he said, arresting the lump in midair. 

It was only when they were embarked upon cups of tea and had a littlerefreshed 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 knowwhat 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 theworld--and then suddenly walked out through a door and discovered thesea and the mountains and stars. So it was with me and the AnglicanChurch. It seems so extraordinary now--and it would have seemed themost natural thing a year ago--to think that I ever believed that theAnglican Compromise was the final truth of religion, that nothing moreuntil the end of the world could ever be known that Cosmo Gordon Langdid not know, that there could be no conception of God and his qualitythat 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 thesame position of that man at the door. "

She quoted aptly and softly: "The wo'ld was all befo' them whe' tochoose. "

He was struck by the aptness of the words. 

"I feel I have to come right out into the bare truth. What exactly thendo I become? Do I lose my priestly function because I discover how greatGod 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. Icannot 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 exploringpriest. "

"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. 'Whomtherefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. ' That comesto me with an effect of--guidance is an old-fashioned word--shall Isay suggestion? To stand by the altar bearing strange names and ancientsymbols, speaking plainly to all mankind of the one true God--!"

(4)

He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he remainedtalking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer. The rest wasmerely a beating out of what had already been said. But insensibly sherenewed her original charm, and as he became accustomed to her he forgota certain artificiality in her manner and the extreme modernity of hercostume and furniture. She was a wonderful listener; nobody else couldhave helped him to expression in quite the same way, and when he lefther he felt that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherentand acceptable form to almost any intelligent hearer. He had a point ofview now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate goldenpresence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic; his problem haddiminished to the scale of any other great human problem, to the scaleof political problems and problems of integrity and moral principle, problems about which there is no such urgency as there is about a houseon fire, for example. 

And now the desire for expression was running strong. He wanted tostate his situation; if he did not state he would have to act; and as hewalked back to the club dinner he turned over possible interlocutorsin his thoughts. Lord Rampound sat with him at dinner, and he came nearbroaching the subject with him. But Lord Rampound that evening hadthat morbid running of bluish legal anecdotes which is so common anaffliction with lawyers, and theology sinks and dies in that turbidstream. 

But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend and helperBishop 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, theyoungest and most helpful of Likeman's historical band of curates, theirfriendship had continued. Likeman had been a second father to him; inparticular his tact and helpfulness had shone during those days of doubtand anxiety when dear old Queen Victoria, God's representative on earth, had obstinately refused, at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop. Shehad those pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops. She hadliked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs--nobody could everfind out who wrote them and nobody could ever find out who showed themto the old lady--anticipating his elevation. She had gone very redin the face and stiffened in the Guelphic manner whenever Scrope wasmentioned, and so a rich harvest of spiritual life had remained untilledfor some months. Likeman had brought her round. 

It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman beforehe came to any open breach with the Establishment. 

He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on account of thewar, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as ever. His voice soundedmore than ever like a kind old woman's. 

He sat buried in his cushions--for "nowadays I must save every scrapof vitality"--and for a time contented himself with drawing out hisvisitor's story. 

Of course, one does not talk to Likeman of visions or intuitions. "I amdisturbed, I find myself getting out of touch;" that was the bishop'stone. 

Occasionally Likeman nodded slowly, as a physician might do at therecital of familiar symptoms. "Yes, " he said, "I have been through mostof this.... A little different in the inessentials.... How clear youare!"

"You leave our stupid old Trinities--as I left them long ago, " said oldLikeman, 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 itall--straight as a line. I did. You take the wings of the morning andfly 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 Godthe Son, and that Light which comes in upon us from the inaccessibleGodhead, which is God the Holy Spirit. "

"But I know of no God the Holy Spirit, and Fate is not God at all. Isaw in my vision one sole God, uncrucified, militant--conquering and toconquer. "

Old Likeman stared. "You saw!"

The Bishop of Princhester had not meant to go so far. But he stuck tohis 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! Thesemetaphors as men walking!"

"You talk like an agnostic. "

"We are all agnostics. Our creeds are expressions of ourselves and ourattitude and relationship to the unknown. The triune God is just theform of our need and disposition. I have always assumed that you tookthat for granted. Who has ever really seen or heard or felt God? Godis neither of the senses nor of the mind; he is of the soul. You arerealistic, you are materialistic.... "

His voice expostulated. 

The Bishop of Princhester reflected. The vision of God was far offamong his memories now, and difficult to recall. But he said at last: "Ibelieve there is a God and that he is as real a person as you or I. Andhe is not the theological God we set out before the world. "

"Personification, " said Likeman. "In the eighteenth century they used todraw beautiful female figures as Science and Mathematics. Young men haveloved Science--and Freedom--as Pygmalion loved Galatea. Have it soif you will. Have a visible person for your Deity. But let me keep upmy--spirituality. "

"Your spirituality seems as thin as a mist. Do you reallybelieve--anything?"

"Everything!" said Likeman emphatically, sitting up with a transitoryvigour. "Everything we two have ever professed together. I believe thatthe creeds of my church do express all that can possibly be expressed inthe relationship of--That"--he made a comprehensive gesture with a twistof his hand upon its wrist--"to the human soul. I believe that theyexpress it as well as the human mind can express it. Where they seemto be contradictory or absurd, it is merely that the mystery isparadoxical. I believe that the story of the Fall and of the Redemptionis a complete symbol, that to add to it or to subtract from it or toalter it is to diminish its truth; if it seems incredible at this pointor that, then simply I admit my own mental defect. And I believe in ourChurch, Scrope, as the embodied truth of religion, the divine instrumentin human affairs. I believe in the security of its tradition, inthe complete and entire soundness of its teaching, in its essentialauthority 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. "Isee you believe all you profess, " he said, and remained for a moment orso rallying his forces. 

"Your vision--if it was a vision--I put it to you, was just some singleaspect of divinity, " said Likeman. "We make a mistake in supposing thatHeresy has no truth in it. Most heresies are only a disproportionateapprehension of some essential truth. Most heretics are men who havesuddenly caught a glimpse through the veil of some particular verity.... They are dazzled by that aspect. All the rest has vanished.... They areobsessed. You are obsessed clearly by this discovery of the militancy ofGod. God the Son--as Hero. And you want to go out to the simple worshipof that one aspect. You want to go out to a Dissenter's tent in thewilderness, 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 faraway was the vision now of that golden Captain who bade him come. Thenat a thought the bishop smiled. 

"The Great Temple of the Ages, " he repeated. "But do you remember thetrouble we had when the little old Queen was so pigheaded?"

"Oh! I remember, I remember, " said Likeman, smiling with unshakenconfidence. "Why not?"

"For sixty years all we bishops in what you call the Great Temple ofthe Ages, were appointed and bullied and kept in our places by thatpink irascible bit of dignity. I remember how at the time I didn't darebetray my boiling indignation even to you--I scarcely dared admit it tomyself.... "

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 temporaryaccidents--just as the severance of an Anglican from a Roman communionand a Greek orthodox communion are temporary accidents. You will remarkthat wise men in all ages have been able to surmount the difficulty ofthese things. Why? Because they knew that in spite of all these splitsand irregularities and defacements--like the cracks and crannies andlichens on a cathedral wall--the building held good, that it was shelterand security. There is no other shelter and security. And so I come toyour problem. Suppose it is true that you have this incidental visionof the militant aspect of God, and he isn't, as you see him now thatis, --he isn't like the Trinity, he isn't like the Creed, he doesn't seemto be related to the Church, then comes the question, are you going outfor that? And whither do you go if you do go out? The Church remains. Wealter doctrines not by changing the words but by shifting the accent. Wecan 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 centralheating of the soul. But never mind that point now. Consider theessential question, the question of breaking with the church. Askyourself, whither would you go? To become an oddity! A Dissenter. ANegative. Self emasculated. The spirit that denies. You would just goout. You would just cease to serve Religion. That would be all. Youwouldn't do anything. The Church would go on; everything else would goon. Only you would be lost in the outer wilderness. 

"But then--"

Old Likeman leant forward and pointed a bony finger. "Stay in the Churchand 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 thesetexts--whuff, whuff--like a conjuror's hat--whuff--make 'em--fitanything. "

A man-servant appeared and handed a silver box of lozenges into whichthe 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 asthe 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 fromyour shipwreck of faith with something to explain--that nobody wants tohear. You are going out I suppose you have means?"

The old man awaited the answer to his abrupt enquiry with a handful oflozenges. 

"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 theordinary 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 yougot that living in St. John's Wood. I suppose she took it for grantedthat you were fixed in an ecclesiastical career. That was implicit inthe transaction. "

"I haven't looked very much at that side of the matter yet, " said theBishop 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 fordelay, for deliberation. He went on to a wider set of considerations. Aman who has held the position of a bishop for some years is, he held, nolonger a free man in matters of opinion. He has become an official partof a great edifice which supports the faith of multitudes of simpleand dependant believers. He has no right to indulge recklessly inintellectual and moral integrities. He may understand, but how is theflock to understand? He may get his own soul clear, but what will happento them? He will just break away their supports, astonish them, puzzlethem, distress them, deprive them of confidence, convince them ofnothing. 

"Intellectual egotism may be as grave a sin, " said Bishop Likeman, "asphysical selfishness. 

"Assuming even that you are absolutely right, " said Bishop Likeman, "aren't you still rather in the position of a man who insists uponSwedish 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 supposingit is damnable to repeat prayers and creeds you do not believe in, andadminister sacraments you think superstition, nobody can be damnedbut yourself. On the other hand if you express doubts that are not yetperfectly digested--you experiment with the souls of others.... "

(5)

The bishop found much to ponder in his old friend's counsels. They werediscursive and many-fronted, and whenever he seemed to be penetrating ordefeating the particular considerations under examination the othersin the background had a way of appearing invincible. He had a strongpersuasion that Likeman was wrong--and unanswerable. And the true Godnow was no more than the memory of a very vividly realized idea. Itwas clear to the bishop that he was no longer a churchman or in thegenerally accepted sense of the word a Christian, and that he was boundto come out of the church. But all sense of urgency had gone. It was amatter demanding deliberation and very great consideration for others. 

He took no more of Dale's stuff because he felt bodily sound and sleptwell. And he was now a little shy of this potent fluid. He went downto Princhester the next day, for his compromise of an interval of threemonths made it seem possible to face his episcopal routine again. Itwas only when he was back in his own palace that the full weight ofhis domestic responsibilities in the discussion of the course he had totake, became apparent. 

Lady Ella met him with affection and solicitude. 

"I was tired and mentally fagged, " he said. "A day or so in London hadan effect of change. "

She agreed that he looked much better, and remained for a moment or soscrutinizing him with the faint anxiety of one resolved to be completelyhelpful. 

He regarded her with a renewed sense of her grace and dignity andkindliness. She was wearing a grey dress of soft silky material, touchedwith blue and covered with what seemed to him very rich and beautifullace; her hair flowed back very graciously from her broad brow, andabout her wrist and neck were delicate lines of gold. She seemedtremendously at home and right just where she was, in that bighospitable room, cultured but Anglican, without pretensions ornovelties, with a glow of bound books, with the grand piano that Miriam, his third daughter, was beginning to play so well, with the tea equipageof 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 finelyadjusted things not to be rashly disturbed was still more in the mind ofthe bishop. At dinner he had all his domesticities about him. It was thefamily time, from eight until ten, at which latter hour he would usuallygo 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 brightbut very keen and happy. She had taken a first in the first part ofthe Moral Science Tripos, and she was working hard now for part two. Clementina was to go back to Newnham with her next September. Sheaspired to history. Miriam's bent was musical. She and Phoebe and Daphneand Clementina were under the care of skilful Mademoiselle Lafarge, most tactful of Protestant French-women, Protestant and yet not tooProtestant, one of those rare French Protestants in whom a touch ofBergson and the Pasteur Monod

 "scarce suspected, animates the whole. "

And also they had lessons, so high are our modern standards ofeducation, from Mr. Blent, a brilliant young mathematician in orders, who sat now next to Lady Ella. Mr. Whippham, the chaplain, was at thebishop's right hand, ready for any chance of making arrangements toclear off the small arrears of duty the little holiday in London hadaccumulated. The bishop surveyed all these bright young people betweenhimself and the calm beauty of his wife. He spoke first to one and thenanother upon the things that interested them. It rejoiced his heart tobe able to give them education and opportunity, it pleased him to seethem in clothes that he knew were none the less expensive because oftheir complete simplicity. Miriam and Mr. Blent wrangled pleasantlyabout Debussy, and old Dunk waited as though in orders of some rare andspecial sort that qualified him for this service. 

All these people, the bishop reflected, counted upon him that this wouldgo on.... 

Eleanor was answering some question of her mother's. They were so oddlyalike and so curiously different, and both in their several ways sofine. Eleanor was dark like his own mother. Perhaps she did a littlelack Lady Ella's fine reserves; she could express more, she could feelmore acutely, she might easily be very unhappy or very happy.... 

All these people counted on him. It was indeed acutely true, as Likemanhad said, that any sudden breach with his position would be a breach offaith--so far as they were concerned. 

And just then his eye fell upon the epergne, a very old and beautifulpiece of silver, that graced the dinner-table. It had been given him, together with an episcopal ring, by his curates and choristers at theChurch of the Holy Innocents, when he became bishop of Pinner. When theygave it him, had any one of them dreamt that some day he might be movedto strike an ungracious blow at the mother church that had reared themall?

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 trivialitiesabout next month's confirmations in Pringle and Princhester. When hecame in he found Miriam playing, and playing very beautifully one ofthose later sonatas of Beethoven, he could never remember whether itwas Of. 109 or Of. 111, but he knew that he liked it very much; itwas solemn and sombre with phases of indescribable sweetness--whileClementina, Daphne and Mademoiselle Lafarge went on with their warknitting and Phoebe and Mr. Blent bent their brows over chess. Eleanorwas reading the evening paper. Lady Ella sat on a high chair by thecoffee things, and he stood in the doorway surveying the peaceful scenefor a moment or so, before he went across the room and sat down on thecouch 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, hefelt, 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 ifit wasn't for the House of Laymen. But they--they feel they must dosomething. "

He seized the opportunity of the music ceasing to get away from thesubject. "Miriam dear, " he asked, raising his voice; "is that 109 or111? 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 toplay you 109, Daddy?"

"I should love it, my dear. " And he leant back and prepared to listen insuch a thorough way that Eleanor would have no chance of discussing theChasters' heresies. But this was interrupted by the consummation of thecoffee, and Mr. Blent, breaking a long silence with "Mate in three, ifI'm not mistaken, " leapt to his feet to be of service. Eleanor, with therough 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 smileand 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 theevening. 

But he knew that before very long he would have to tell his wife ofthe changes that hung over their lives; it would be shabby to let theavalanche fall without giving the longest possible warning; and beforethey parted that night he took her hands in his and said: "There is muchI have to tell you, dear. Things change, the whole world changes. Thechurch must not live in a dream.... 

"No, " she whispered. "I hope you will sleep to-night, " and held up hergrave 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 strongbarriers that had closed again. His vision of God which had filled theheavens, had become now gem-like, a minute, hard, clear-cut convictionin his mind that he had to disentangle himself from the enormouscomplications of symbolism and statement and organization andmisunderstanding in the church and achieve again a simple and livingworship of a simple and living God. Likeman had puzzled and silencedhim, only upon reflection to convince him that amidst such intricaciesof explanation the spirit cannot live. Creeds may be symbolical, butsymbols must not prevaricate. A church that can symbolize everything andanything means nothing. 

It followed from this that he ought to leave the church. But there camethe other side of this perplexing situation. His feelings as he lay inhis bed were exactly like those one has in a dream when one wishes torun or leap or shout and one can achieve no movement, no sound. He couldnot conceive how he could possibly leave the church. 

His wife became as it were the representative of all that held himhelpless. She and he had never kept secret from one another any plan ofaction, any motive, that affected the other. It was clear to him thatany movement towards the disavowal of doctrinal Christianity and therenunciation of his see must be first discussed with her. He must tellher before he told the world. 

And he could not imagine his telling her except as an incrediblyshattering act. 

So he left things from day to day, and went about his episcopalroutines. He preached and delivered addresses in such phrases as he knewpeople expected, and wondered profoundly why it was that it should beimpossible for him to discuss theological points with Lady Ella. And oneafternoon he went for a walk with Eleanor along the banks of the Prin, and found himself, in response to certain openings of hers, talking toher in almost exactly the same terms as Likeman had used to him. 

Then suddenly the problem of this theological eclaircissement wascomplicated in an unexpected fashion. 

He had just been taking his Every Second Thursday Talk with DiocesanMen Helpers. He had been trying to be plain and simple upon the needlessnarrowness of enthusiastic laymen. He was still in the Bishop Andrewscap and purple cassock he affected on these occasions; the Men Helpersloved purple; and he was disentangling himself from two or threeresolute bores--for our loyal laymen can be at times quite superlativebores--when Miriam came to him. 

"Mummy says, 'Come to the drawing-room if you can. ' There is a LadySunderbund who seems particularly to want to see you. "

He hesitated for a moment, and then decided that this was a conversationhe ought to control. 

He found Lady Sunderbund looking very tall and radiantly beautiful ina sheathlike dress of bright crimson trimmed with snow-white fur and awhite fur toque. She held out a long white-gloved hand to him andcried 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 politepleasure. 

"I've come to P'inchesta to stay!" she cried with a bright triumphantrising note. 

She evidently considered Lady Ella a mere conversational stop-gap, tobe dropped now that the real business could be commenced. She turnedher pretty profile to that lady, and obliged the bishop with a compactsummary of all that had preceded his arrival. "I have been tellingLady 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 sayin Clapham. I've come 'ight down he' fo' good. I've taken a littlehouse--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 thatlittle 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 Ishall be a patient!"

She concentrated upon the bishop. 

"Oh, I've been thinking all the time of all the things you told me. Ovaand ova. It's all so wondyful and so--so like a G'ate Daw opening. Newlight. As if it was all just beginning. "

She clasped her hands. 

The bishop felt that there were a great number of points to thissituation, and that it was extremely difficult to grasp them allat once. But one that seemed of supreme importance to his whirlingintelligence was that Lady Ella should not know that he had gone torelieve his soul by talking to Lady Sunderbund in London. It had neveroccurred to him at the time that there was any shadow of disloyalty toLady Ella in his going to Lady Sunderbund, but now he realized that thiswas a thing that would annoy Lady Ella extremely. The conversation hadin the first place to be kept away from that. And in the second place ithad to be kept away from the abrupt exploitation of the new theologicaldevelopments. 

He felt that something of the general tension would be relieved if theycould all three be got to sit down. 

"I've been talking for just upon two hours, " he said to Lady Ella. "It'sgood to see the water boiling for tea. "

He put a chair for Lady Sunderbund to the right of Lady Ella, got herinto it by infusing an ecclesiastical insistence into his manner, andthen went and sat upon the music-stool on his wife's left, so as toestablish a screen of tea-things and cakes and so forth against her moreintimate enthusiasm. Meanwhile he began to see his way clearer and todevelop his line. 

"Well, Lady Sunderbund, " he said, "I can assure you that I think youwill be no small addition to the church life of Princhester. But I warnyou this is a hard-working and exacting diocese. We shall take yourmoney, all we can get of it, we shall take your time, we shall work youhard. "

"Wo'k me hard!" cried Lady Sunderbund with passion. 

"We will, we will, " said the bishop in a tone that ignored herpassionate 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, " shesaid. "I don't mind wo'king, but I shall wo'k like the poo' students inthe Middle Ages did, to get my teaching. I've got my own soul to save aswell as help saving othas. Since oua last talk--"

She found the bishop handing her bread and butter. For a time the bishopfought a delaying action with the tea-things, while he sought eagerlyand vainly in his mind for some good practical topic in which he couldentangle and suppress Lady Sunderbund's enthusiasms. From this she brokeaway by turning suddenly to Lady Ella. 

"Youa husband's views, " she said, "we'e a 'eal 'evelation to me. It waslike not being blind--all at once. "

Lady Ella was always pleased to hear her husband praised. Her colourbrightened 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 theouter appearance of the old doctor's house?" And found that at last hehad discovered the saving topic. 

"Ha'dly at all, " she said. "I shall just have it pointed white and dothe doa--I'm not su' how I shall do the doa. Whetha I shall do the doagold or a vehy, vehy 'itch blue. "

For a time she and Lady Ella, to whom these ideas were novel, discussedthe animation of grey and sombre towns by house painting. In such matterLady Sunderbund had a Russian mind. "I can't bea' g'ey, " she said. "Notin 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 haveseen Ely. There the old painting has been largely restored.... "

From that to the end there was no real danger, and at last the bishopfound himself alone with his wife again. 

"Remarkable person, " he said tentatively. "I never met any one whosefaults 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 newviews? 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 besuddenly reminded of duties elsewhere.... 

It was chiefly manifest to him that the difficulties in explaining thechanges of his outlook to Lady Ella had now increased enormously. 

(7)

A day or so after Lady Sunderbund's arrival in Princhester the bishophad a letter from Likeman. The old man was manifestly in doubt about theeffect of their recent conversation. 

"My dear Scrope, " it began. "I find myself thinking continually aboutour interview and the difficulties you laid bare so frankly to me. We touched upon many things in that talk, and I find myself full ofafterthoughts, and not perfectly sure either quite of what I said orof what I failed to say. I feel that in many ways I was not perhaps soclear and convincing as the justice of my case should have made me, andyou are one of my own particular little company, you were one of thebest workers in that band of good workers, your life and your careerare very much my concern. I know you will forgive me if I still minglesomething of the paternal with my fraternal admonitions. I watched youclosely. I have still my old diaries of the St. Matthew's days, and Ihave been looking at them to remind me of what you once were. It was mycustom 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 andthe considerable risk one runs of having them obscured by the accidentsand habituations of constant intercourse. I found that quite early inyour days at St. Matthew's I wrote against your name 'enthusiastic, buta saving delicacy. ' After all our life-long friendship I would not writeanything truer. I would say of you to-day, 'This man might have been arevivalist, if he were not a gentleman. ' There is the enthusiast, there is the revivalist, in you. It seems to me that the stresses andquestions of this great crisis in the world's history have brought itnearer to the surface than I had ever expected it to come. 

"I quite understand and I sympathize with your impatience withthe church at the present time; we present a spectacle of pompousinsignificance hard to bear with. We are doing very little, and we aregiving ourselves preposterous airs. There seems to be an opinion abroadthat in some quasi-automatic way the country is going to collapse afterthe war into the arms of the church and the High Tories; a possibilityI don't accept for a moment. Why should it? These forcible-feeblereactionaries are much more likely to explode a revolution thatwill disestablish us. And I quite understand your theologicaldifficulties--quite. The creeds, if their entire symbolism is for amoment forgotten, if they are taken as opaque statements of fact, areinconsistent, incredible. So incredible that no one believes them;not even the most devout. The utmost they do is to avert theirminds--reverentially. Credo quia impossibile. That is offensive to aWestern mind. I can quite understand the disposition to cry out at suchthings, '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 thisthing. Wait, I implore you. Give me--and some others, a little time. Ihave your promise for three months, but even after that, I ask youto wait. Let the reform come from within the church. The church issomething more than either its creeds, its clergy, or its laymen. Lookat your cathedral rising out of and dominating Princhester. It standsnot simply for Athanasius; it stands but incidentally for Athanasius; itstands for all religion. Within that fabric--let me be as frank hereas in our private conversation--doctrine has altered again and again. To-day two distinct religions worship there side by side; one that fadesand one that grows brighter. There is the old quasi-materialistic beliefof the barbarians, the belief in such things, for example, as thatChrist the physical Son of God descended into hell and stayed there, seeing the sights I suppose like any tourist and being treated withdiplomatic civilities for three terrestrial days; and on the otherhand there is the truly spiritual belief that you and I share, whichis absolutely intolerant of such grotesque ideas. My argument to youis that the new faith, the clearer vision, gains ground; that theonly thing that can prevent or delay the church from being altogetherpossessed by what you call and I admit is, the true God, is that suchmen as yourself, as the light breaks upon you, should be hasty and leavethe church. You see my point of view, do you not? It is not one thathas 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 fullybecause I am not working alone. But there are movements afoot in whichI hope very shortly to be able to ask you to share. That much at least Imay say at this stage. Obscure but very powerful influences are atwork for the liberalizing of the church, for release from manynarrow limitations, for the establishment of a modus vivendi with thenonconformist and dissentient bodies in Britain and America, and withthe churches of the East. But of that no more now. 

"And in conclusion, my dear Scrope, let me insist again upon the eternalpersistence of the essential Religious Fact:"

(Greek Letters Here)

(Rev. I. 18. "Fear not. I am the First and Last thing, the Livingthing. ")

And these promises which, even if we are not to take them as promises inthe exact sense in which, let us say, the payment of five sovereignsis promised by a five-pound note, are yet assertions of practicallyinevitable veracity:

(Greek Letters Here)

(Phil. I. 6. "He who began... Will perfect. " Eph. V. 14. "He willilluminate. ")

The old man had written his Greek tags in shakily resolute capitals. Itwas his custom always to quote the Greek Testament in his letters, never the English version. It is a practice not uncommon with the morescholarly of our bishops. It is as if some eminent scientific man wereto insist upon writing H2O instead of "water, " and "sodium chloride"instead of "table salt" in his private correspondence. Or upon hangingup a stuffed crocodile in his hall to give the place tone. The Bishopof Princhester construed these brief dicta without serious exertion, hefound them very congenial texts, but there were insuperable difficultiesin the problem why Likeman should suppose they had the slightest weightupon his side of their discussion. The more he thought the less theyseemed to be on Likeman's side, until at last they began to take on acomplexion entirely opposed to the old man's insidious arguments, untilindeed they began to bear the extraordinary interpretation of a specialmessage, unwittingly delivered. 

(8)

The bishop was still thinking over this communication when he wasinterrupted by Lady Ella. She came with a letter in her hand to ask himwhether 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 bya dislocation of the cartilage of her knee. If she could go to thatunorthodox but successful practitioner, Mr. Barker, the bone-setter, shewas convinced she could be restored to efficiency. But she had no readymoney. The bishop agreed without hesitation. His only doubt was thecertainty 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 dothings like this.... "

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION

(1)

A MONTH later found the bishop's original state of perplexity andinsomnia returned and intensified. He had done none of all the thingsthat had seemed so manifestly needing to be done after his vision in theAthenaeum. All the relief and benefit of his experience in London hadvanished out of his life. He was afraid of Dr. Dale's drug; he knewcertainly that it would precipitate matters; and all his instinctsin the state of moral enfeeblement to which he had relapsed, were totemporize. 

Although he had said nothing further about his changed beliefs to LadyElla, yet he perceived clearly that a shadow had fallen between them. She had a wife's extreme sensitiveness to fine shades of expression andbearing, and manifestly she knew that something was different. MeanwhileLady Sunderbund had become a frequent worshipper in the cathedral, shewas a figure as conspicuous in sombre Princhester as a bird of paradisewould have been; common people stood outside her very very rich bluedoor on the chance of seeing her; she never missed an opportunity ofhearing the bishop preach or speak, she wrote him several longand thoughtful letters with which he did not bother Lady Ella, shecommunicated persistently, and manifestly intended to become a veryactive worker in diocesan affairs. 

It was inevitable that she and the bishop should meet and talkoccasionally in the cathedral precincts, and it was inevitable that heshould contrast the flexibility of her rapid and very responsive mindwith a certain defensiveness, a stoniness, in the intellectual bearingof Lady Ella. 

If it had been Lady Sunderbund he had had to explain to, instead of LadyElla, he could have explained a dozen times a day. 

And since his mind was rehearsing explanations it was not unnatural theyshould overflow into this eagerly receptive channel, and that the lesshe told Lady Ella the fuller became his spiritual confidences to LadySunderbund. 

She was clever in realizing that they were confidences and treating themas such, more particularly when it chanced that she and Lady Ella andthe bishop found themselves in the same conversation. 

She made great friends with Miriam, and initiated her by a wholecollection of pretty costume plates into the mysteries of the "UssianBallet" and the works of Mousso'gski and "Imsky Ko'zakof. "

The bishop liked a certain religiosity in the texture of Moussorgski'smusic, but failed to see the "significance "--of many of the costumes. 

(2)

It was on a Sunday night--the fourth Sunday after Easter--that thesupreme crisis of the bishop's life began. He had had a feeling all dayof extreme dulness and stupidity; he felt his ministrations unreal, hisceremonies absurd and undignified. In the night he became bleakly andpainfully awake. His mind occupied itself at first chiefly with thetortuousness and weakness of his own character. Every day he perceivedthat the difficulty of telling Lady Ella of the change in his faithbecame more mountainous. And every day he procrastinated. If he hadtold her naturally and simply on the evening of his return fromLondon--before anything material intervened--everything would have beendifferent, 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 thatamidst these petty immediacies he had lost touch with God. The lastmonth became incredible. He had seen God. He had touched God's hand. Godhad been given to him, and he had neglected the gift. He was still lostamidst 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 sovivid and real and reassuring that surely no saint nor prophet had everhad a better, he had made no more than vague responsive movements; hehad allowed himself to be persuaded into an unreasonable and cowardlydelay, and the fetters of association and usage and minor interestswere as unbroken as they had been before ever the vision shone. Was itcredible that there had ever been such a vision in a life so entirelydictated by immediacy and instinct as his? We are all creatures of thedark stream, we swim in needs and bodily impulses and small vanities; ifever and again a bubble of spiritual imaginativeness glows out of us, itbreaks 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 theGod that he had seen, the high courage, the golden intention, the lightthat 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, forexample, 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 alittle bishop in a purple stock and doeskin breeches, who hangs back inhis 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 insectgiving himself airs. What advantage has a bishop over the PrayingMantis, that cricket which apes the attitude of piety? Does he mattermore--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 indescribablehunger for God and an indescribable sense of his complete want ofcourage 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 tohim that he was not really praying but only making believe to pray. Itseemed 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, withfigures painted on walls, with the flimsy imagined lives of men instories 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 headand went to his bureau. 

He stood with Dale's tonic in his hand. He remained for some timeholding it, and feeling a curious indisposition to go on with the thingin his mind. 

He turned at last with an effort. He carried the little phial to hisbedside, 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 bulbof his reading lamp he added the water and stood watching the slowpearly eddies in the mixture mingle into an opalescent uniformity. Hereplaced the water-bottle and stood with the glass in his hand. But hedid not drink. 

He was afraid. 

He knew that he had only to drink and this world of confusion would growtransparent, 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 imperativesthat he knew would at once take hold of his life. He wanted to muddleon for just a little longer. He wanted to stay just where he was, inhis familiar prison-house, with the key of escape in his hand. Before hetook 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 wanderinginterminably in an endless building of innumerable pillars, pillars sovast and high that the ceiling was lost in darkness. By the scale ofthese pillars he felt himself scarcely larger than an ant. He was alwaysalone in these wanderings, and always missing something that passedalong distant passages, something desirable, something in the natureof a procession or of a ceremony, something of which he was in futilepursuit, of which he heard faint echoes, something luminous of which heseemed at times to see the last fading reflection, across vast hallsand wildernesses of shining pavement and through Cyclopaean archways. Atlast there was neither sound nor gleam, but the utmost solitude, and adarkness and silence and the uttermost profundity of sorrow.... 

It was bright day. Dunk had just come into the room with his tea, andthe 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 abusy 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 thebishop's evening clothes. 

The bishop remained motionless facing the day. There stood the draughtof decision that he had lacked the decision even to touch. 

From his bed he could just read the larger items that figured upon theengagement tablet which it was Whippham's business to fill over-nightand place upon his table. He had two confirmation services, firstthe big one in the cathedral and then a second one in the evening atPringle, various committees and an interview with Chasters. He had notyet finished his addresses for these confirmation services.... 

The task seemed mountainous--overwhelming. 

With a gesture of desperation he seized the tumblerful of tonic anddrank 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 athrobbing and tingling of artery and nerve. 

He had a sense of adventure, a pleasant fear in the thing that he haddone. He got out of bed, leaving his cup of tea untasted, and began todress. He had the sensation of relief a prisoner may feel who suddenlytries his cell door and finds it open upon sunshine, the outside worldand freedom. 

He went on dressing although he was certain that in a few minutes theworld of delusion about him would dissolve, and that he would findhimself again in the great freedom of the place of God. 

This time the transition came much sooner and much more rapidly. Thistime the phases and quality of the experience were different. He feltonce again that luminous confusion between the world in which a humanlife is imprisoned and a circumambient and interpenetrating world, butthis phase passed very rapidly; it did not spread out over nearly halfan hour as it had done before, and almost immediately he seemed toplunge away from everything in this life altogether into that outerfreedom he sought. And this time there was not even the elementalscenery of the former vision. He stood on nothing; there was nothingbelow 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 asit were a clear darkness about him. Then it was manifest to him that hewas not alone, but that with him was that same being that in his formervision had called himself the Angel of God. He knew this without knowingwhy he knew this, and either he spoke and was answered, or he thoughtand his thought answered him back. His state of mind on this occasionwas altogether different from the first vision of God; before it hadbeen spectacular, but now his perception was altogether super-sensuous. 

(And nevertheless and all the time it seemed that very faintly he wasstill in his room. )

It was he who was the first to speak. The great Angel whom he feltrather 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, Isought him and I touched his hand. When I went back to my life I waspresently lost in perplexity. I could not tell why God had called me norwhat 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 thebishop's seeking hands. 

"I want to see God and to understand him. I want reassurance. I wantconviction. I want to understand all that God asks me to do. The worldis full of conflict and confusion and the spirit of war. It is dark anddreadful now with suffering and bloodshed. I want to serve God who couldsave it, and I do not know how. "

It seemed to the bishop that now he could distinguish dimly but surelythe form and features of the great Angel to whom he talked. For a littlewhile there was silence, and then the Angel spoke. 

"It was necessary first, " said the Angel, "that you should apprehend Godand desire him. That was the purport of your first vision. Now, sinceyou 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 theworld 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 manifestthroughout the earth. Men will know him and know that he is King. To youthis 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 beenshapelessly present in his mind now took form and found words forthemselves. 

"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 yousaw in your vision will speedily be manifest in the world. To you thisvision is given of the things that come. The world is already glowingwith God. Mankind is like a smouldering fire that will presently, inquite a little time, burst out into flame. 

"In your former vision I showed you God, " said the Angel. "This timeI will show you certain signs of the coming of God. And then you willunderstand the place you hold in the world and the task that is requiredof you. "

(6)

And as the Angel spoke he lifted up his hands with the palms upward, andthere appeared above them a little round cloud, that grew denser untilit had the likeness of a silver sphere. It was a mirror in the form ofa ball, but a mirror not shining uniformly; it was discoloured withgreyish patches that had a familiar shape. It circled slowly upon theAngel'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 wholeearth. It was the earth. The hands of the Angel vanished out of sight, dissolved and vanished, and the spinning world hung free. All about thebishop the velvet darkness broke into glittering points that shaped outthe constellations, and nearest to them, so near as to seem only a fewmillion miles away in the great emptiness into which everything hadresolved itself, shone the sun, a ball of red-tongued fires. The Angelwas but a voice now; the bishop and the Angel were somewhere aloof fromand yet accessible to the circling silver sphere. 

At the time all that happened seemed to happen quite naturally, asthings happen in a dream. It was only later, when all this was a matterof memory, that the bishop realized how strange and incomprehensible hisvision had been. The sphere was the earth with all its continents andseas, its ships and cities, its country-sides and mountain ranges. Itwas so small that he could see it all at once, and so great and fullthat he could see everything in it. He could see great countries likelittle patches upon it, and at the same time he could see the faces ofthe men upon the highways, he could see the feelings in men's hearts andthe thoughts in their minds. But it did not seem in any way wonderfulto the bishop that so he should see those things, or that it was to himthat 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 momentmarvelling at the compass of his vision. For here was India, herewas Samarkand, in the light of the late afternoon; and China and theswarming cities upon her silvery rivers sinking through twilight to thenight and throwing a spray and tracery of lantern spots upon the dark;here was Russia under the noontide, and so great a battle of artilleryraging on the Dunajec as no man had ever seen before; whole lines oftrenches dissolved into clouds of dust and heaps of blood-streakedearth; here close to the waiting streets of Constantinople were thehills of Gallipoli, the grave of British Imperialism, streaming toheaven with the dust and smoke of bursting shells and rifle fire and thesmoke and flame of burning brushwood. In the sea of Marmora a big shipcrowded with Turkish troops was sinking; and, purple under the clearwater, he could see the shape of the British submarine which hadtorpedoed her and had submerged and was going away. Berlin prepared itsfrugal meals, still far from famine. He saw the war in Europe as if hesaw it on a map, yet every human detail showed. Over hundreds of milesof trenches east and west of Germany he could see shells bursting andthe men below dropping, and the stretcher-bearers going back withthe wounded. The roads to every front were crowded with reserves andmunitions. For a moment a little group of men indifferent to all thisstruggle, who were landing amidst the Antarctic wilderness, held hisattention; and then his eyes went westward to the dark rolling Atlanticacross which, as the edge of the night was drawn like a curtain, moreand still more ships became visible beating upon their courses eastwardor westward under the overtaking day. 

The wonder increased; the wonder of the single and infinitelymultitudinous adventure of mankind. 

"So God perhaps sees it, " he whispered. 

(7)

"Look at this man, " said the Angel, and the black shadow of a handseemed to point. 

It was a Chinaman sitting with two others in a little low room separatedby translucent paper windows from a noisy street of shrill-voicedpeople. The three had been talking of the ultimatum that Japan had sentthat day to China, claiming a priority in many matters over Europeaninfluences they were by no means sure whether it was a wrong or abenefit that had been done to their country. From that topic they hadpassed to the discussion of the war, and then of wars and nationalaggressions and the perpetual thrusting and quarrelling of mankind. Theolder man had said that so life would always be; it was the will ofHeaven. The little, very yellow-faced, emaciated man had agreed withhim. But now this younger man, to whose thoughts the Angel had soparticularly directed the bishop's attention, was speaking. He did notagree 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. Thescience of the West has taught us that. Man changes and war changes andall things change. China has been the land of flowery peace, and she mayyet give peace to all the world. She has put aside that puppet Emperorat Peking, she turns her face to the new learning of the West as a manlays aside his heavy robes, in order that her task may be achieved. "

The older man spoke, his manner was more than a little incredulous, andyet not altogether contemptuous. "You believe that someday there will beno more war in the world, that a time will come when men will no longerplot and plan against the welfare of men?"

"Even that last, " said the younger man. "Did any of us dream twenty-fiveyears ago that here in China we should live to see a republic? The ageof the republics draws near, when men in every country of the world willlook 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 thatfaith exactly the faith that is coming to you?")

The two other Chinamen questioned their companion, but withouthostility. 

"This war, " said the Chinaman, "will end in a great harvesting ofkings. "

"But Japan--" the older man began. 

The bishop would have liked to hear more of that conversation, butthe 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 inthe heat of Mesopotamia. Along the sandy bank of a wide, slow-flowingriver rode two horsemen, an Englishman and a Turk. They were returningfrom the Turkish lines, whither the Englishman had been with a flag oftruce. When Englishmen and Turks are thrown together they soonbecome friends, and in this case matters had been facilitated bythe Englishman's command of the Turkish language. He was quite anexceptional Englishman. The Turk had just been remarking cheerfully thatit wouldn't please the Germans if they were to discover how amiably heand 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 andpictures, 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? Allwho worship the One God are brothers. "

"They ought to be, " said the Englishman, and thought. He was struck bywhat seemed to him an amazingly novel idea. 

"If it weren't for religions all men would serve God together, " hesaid. "And then there would be no wars--only now and then perhaps just alittle honest fighting.... "

"And see here, " said the Angel. "Here close behind this frightfulbattle, where the German phalanx of guns pounds its way through theRussian hosts. Here is a young German talking to two wounded Russianprisoners, who have stopped to rest by the roadside. He is a German ofEast Prussia; he knows and thinks a little Russian. And they too aresaying, all three of them, that the war is not God's will, but theconfusion of mankind. 

"Here, " he said, and the shadow of his hand hovered over theburning-ghats of Benares, where a Brahmin of the new persuasion watchedthe straight spires of funereal smoke ascend into the glow of the lateafternoon, while he talked to an English painter, his friend, of theblind intolerance of race and caste and custom in India. 

"Or here. "

The Angel pointed to a group of people who had gathered upon a littlebeach at the head of a Norwegian fiord. There were three lads, an oldman and two women, and they stood about the body of a drowned Germansailor which had been washed up that day. For a time they had talked inwhispers, 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 onenods to a beggar. They do not serve God who is their King. They set uptheir 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 thesethings? Why did we Norwegians, who are a free-spirited people, permitthe Germans and the Swedes and the English to set up a king over us?Because we lack faith. Kings mean secret counsels, and secret counselsbring war. Sooner or later war will come to us also if we give the soulof our nation in trust to a king.... But things will not always be thuswith men. God will not suffer them for ever. A day comes, and it is nodistant 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 ridingdown to Windhuk. Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by side andtalked of the German officer they brought prisoner with them. He had putsheep-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 byside. 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, hehad meant to make a good end, fierce and scornful, a relentless fighterto the last; and these men who might have shot him like a man were goingto spare him like a dog. His mind was a tumbled muddle of old andnew ideas. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of the foulest andfiercest militarism; he had been trained to relentlessness, ruthlessnessand so forth; war was war and the bitterer the better, frightfulnesswas your way to victory over every enemy. But these people had found abetter way. Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years agothey had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform androde together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because he wasfor spitting at them and defying them, and folding his arms and lookinglevel at the executioners' rifles. There were to be no executioners'rifles.... If it was so with Dutch and English, why shouldn't it be sopresently with French and Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, Dutch and English, Russian and Pole, ride together under this new starof mankind, the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-makerwas left to poison the wells of goodwill?

His mind resisted and struggled against these ideas. "Austere, " hewhispered. "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 rathershort. "... 

"There's another brain busy here with the same idea, " the Angelinterrupted. And the bishop found himself looking into the bedroom of ayoung German attache in Washington, sleepless in the small hours. 

"Ach!" cried the young man, and sat up in bed and ran his hands throughhis 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 allAmerica was aflame with it. It might mean war. His task had been to pourout explanations and justifications to the press; to show that it was anact of necessity, to pretend a conviction that the great ship was loadedwith munitions, to fight down the hostility and anger that blazed acrossa continent. He had worked to his limit. He had taken cup after cup ofcoffee, and had come to bed worked out not two hours ago. Now here hewas awake after a nightmare of drowning women and children, trying tocomfort his soul by recalling his own arguments. Never once since thewar began had he doubted the rightness of the German cause. It seemedonly a proof of his nervous exhaustion that he could doubt it now. Germany was the best organized, most cultivated, scientific and liberalnation the earth had ever seen, it was for the good of mankind that sheshould be the dominant power in the world; his patriotism had had thepassion of a mission. The English were indolent, the French decadent, the Russians barbaric, the Americans basely democratic; the rest of theworld was the "White man's Burthen"; the clear destiny of mankindwas subservience to the good Prussian eagle. Nevertheless--thosewet draggled bodies that swirled down in the eddies of the sinkingTitan--Ach! He wished it could have been otherwise. He nursed his kneesand prayed that there need not be much more of these things before thespirit of the enemy was broken and the great Peace of Germany came uponthe world. 

And suddenly he stopped short in his prayer. 

Suddenly out of the nothingness and darkness about him came theconviction 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 thetraining of all his life. "Could it be possible that after all our oldGerman God is not the proper style and title of the true God? Is our oldGerman God perhaps only the last of a long succession of bloodstainedtribal effigies--and not God at all?"

For a long time it seemed that the bishop watched the thoughts thatgathered in the young attache's mind. Until suddenly he broke into aquotation, into that last cry of the dying Goethe, for "Light. MoreLight!"... 

"Leave him at that, " said the Angel. "I want you to hear these two youngwomen. "

The hand came back to England and pointed to where Southend at the mouthof the Thames was all agog with the excitement of an overnight Zeppelinraid. People had got up hours before their usual time in order tolook at the wrecked houses before they went up to their work in town. Everybody seemed abroad. Two nurses, not very well trained as nurses gonor very well-educated women, were snatching a little sea air upon thefront after an eventful night. They were too excited still to sleep. They were talking of the horror of the moment when they saw the nastything "up there, " and felt helpless as it dropped its bombs. They hadboth 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 suchthings! He says that it's science that they won't always go on likethis. There's more sense coming into the world and more--my youngbrother says so. Says it stands to reason; it's Evolution. It's sciencethat men are all brothers; you can prove it. It's science that thereoughtn't to be war. Science is ending war now by making it horrible likethis, and making it so that no one is safe. Showing it up. Only whennobody is safe will everybody want to set up peace, he says. He saysit's proved there could easily be peace all over the world now if itwasn't for flags and kings and capitalists and priests. They stillmanage to keep safe and out of it. He says the world ought to be justone 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 theAngel. "The very children in the board schools are turning against thisnarrowness and nonsense and mischief of nations and creeds and kings. You see it at a thousand points, at ten thousand points, look, theworld is all flashing and flickering; it is like a spinthariscope; it isaquiver with the light that is coming to mankind. It is on the verge ofblazing even now. "

"Into a light. "

"Into the one Kingdom of God. See here! See here! And here! This bravelittle French priest in a helmet of steel who is daring to think for thefirst time in his life; this gentle-mannered emir from Morocco lookingat the grave-diggers on the battlefield; this mother who has lost herson.... 

"You see they all turn in one direction, although none of them seem todream 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. Theyturn to that communism of effort in the world which alone permits mento serve God in state and city and their economic lives.... They are allcoming to the verge of the same salvation, the salvation of one humanbrotherhood under the rule of one Righteousness, one Divine will.... Isthat the salvation your church offers?"

(8)

"And now that we have seen how religion grows and spreads in men'shearts, now that the fields are white with harvest, I want you to lookalso and see what the teachers of religion are doing, " said the Angel. 

He smiled. His presence became more definite, and the earthly globeabout them and the sun and the stars grew less distinct and lessimmediately there. The silence invited the bishop to speak. 

"In the light of this vision, I see my church plainly for the littlething 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 humanstruggle, small and pitiful as one thinks of it here in the light of theadvent of God's Kingdom, but very great, very great indeed, ancient andhigh and venerable, in comparison with me. But mostly it is human. It ismost human. For my story is the church's story, and the church's storyis mine. Here I could almost believe myself the church itself. Theworld saw a light, the nations that were sitting in darkness saw a greatlight. Even as I saw God. And then the church began to forget and loseitself among secondary things. As I have done.... It tried to expressthe truth and lost itself in a maze of theology. It tried to bring orderinto the world and sold its faith to Constantine. These men who hadprofessed the Invisible King of the World, shirked his service. It is amost terrible disaster that Christianity has sold itself to emperors andkings. They forged a saying of the Master's that we should render untoCeasar the things that are Ceasar's and unto God the things that areGod's.... 

"Who is this Ceasar to set himself up to share mankind with God? Nothingthat is Ceasar's can be any the less God's. But Constantine Caesar satin the midst of the council, his guards were all about it, and the poorfanatics and trimmers and schemers disputed nervously with their eyeson him, disputed about homoousian and homoiousian, and grimaced andpretended to be very very fierce and exact to hide how much they werefrightened and how little they knew, and because they did not dare tolay violent hands upon that usurper of the empire of the world.... 

"And from that day forth the Christian churches have been damned andlost. Kept churches. Lackey churches. Roman, Russian, Anglican; itmatters not. My church indeed was twice sold, for it doubled the sin ofNicaea and gave itself over to Henry and Elizabeth while it shammeda dispute about the sacraments. No one cared really abouttransubstantiation any more than the earlier betrayers cared aboutconsubstantiality; that dispute did but serve to mask the betrayal. "

He turned to the listening Angel. "What can you show me of my churchthat I do not know? Why! we Anglican bishops get our sees as footmen geta job. For months Victoria, that old German Frau, delayed me--because ofsome tittle-tattle.... The things we are! Snape, who afterwards becameBishop of Burnham, used to waylay the Prince Consort when he was ridingin Hyde Park and give him, he boasts, 'a good loud cheer, ' and then hewould 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 lighthave sunken.... 

"I have always despised that poor toady, " the bishop went on. "Andyet here am I, and God has called me and shown me the light of hiscountenance, and for a month I have faltered. That is the mystery of thehuman heart, that it can and does sin against the light. What right haveI, who have seen the light--and failed, what right have I--to despiseany other human being? I seem to have been held back by a sort ofparalysis. 

"Men are so small, so small still, that they cannot keep hold of thevision of God. That is why I want to see God again.... But if it werenot for this strange drug that seems for a little while to lift my mindabove the confusion and personal entanglements of every day, I doubt ifeven now I could be here. I am here, passionate to hold this moment andkeep 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! Theforgetfulness of men! I want to know what my chief duty is, to have itplain, in terms so plain that I can never forget. 

"See in this world, " he said, turning to the globe, "while Chinesemerchants and Turkish troopers, school-board boys and Norwegianfishermen, half-trained nurses and Boer farmers are full of the spiritof 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 silverglobe, and it was the Angel who stood over him and listened, as ateacher might stand over a child who is learning a lesson. The bishop'shand rested for a second on a cardinal who was planning a politicalintrigue to produce a reaction in France, then for a moment on aPomeranian pastor who was going out to his well-tilled fields with hisSunday sermon, full of fierce hatred of England, still echoing in hishead. Then he paused at a Mollah preaching the Jehad, in doubt whetherhe too wasn't a German pastor, and then at an Anglican clergyman stilllying abed and thinking out a great mission of Repentance and Hope thatshould restore the authority of the established church--by incoherentmissioning--without any definite sin indicated for repentance nor anyclear hope for anything in particular arising out of such activities. The bishop's hand went seeking to and fro, but nowhere could he findany religious teacher, any religious body rousing itself to meet the newdawn of faith in the world. Some few men indeed seemed thoughtful, butwithin the limitation of their vows. Everywhere it was church and creedand nation and king and property and partisanship, and nowhere was itthe True God that the priests and teachers were upholding. It was alwaysthe common unhampered man through whom the light of God was breaking; itwas always the creed and the organization of the religious professionalsthat stood in the way to God.... 

"God is putting the priests aside, " he cried, "and reaching out tocommon men. The churches do not serve God. They stand between man andGod. They are like great barricades on the way to God. "

The bishop's hand brushed over Archbishop Pontifex, who was just comingdown to breakfast in his palace. This pompous old man was dressed ina purple garment that set off his tall figure very finely, and he washolding out his episcopal ring for his guests to kiss, that being thecustomary morning greeting of Archbishop Pontifex. The thought of thatring-kissing had made much hard work at lower levels "worth while"to Archbishop Pontifex. And seventy miles away from him old Likemanbreakfasted in bed on Benger's food, and searched his Greek Testamentfor tags to put to his letters. And here was the familiar palace atPrinchester, and in an armchair in his bed-room sat Bishop Scropeinsensible and motionless, in a trance in which he was dreaming of thecoming 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, foldupon fold. "The implications of yesterday bind me for the morrow. Thisis 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 theservice of the one true God? When I see myself, then I understand how itis 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 tohelp and forward His coming, to make myself part of His coming?"

He perceived that he was returning into himself, and that the vision ofthe sphere and of the starry spaces was fading into non-existence. 

He struggled against this return. He felt that his demand was stillunanswered. His wife's face had suddenly come very close to him, and herealized 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 allabout him, and yet the bishop perceived that he was now sitting in thearm-chair in his bedroom in the palace of Princhester. He was boththere and not there. It seemed now as if he had two distinct yet kindredselves, and that the former watched the latter. The latter was nowawakening to the things about him; the former marked his gestures andlistened with an entire detachment to the words he was saying. Thesewords he was saying to Lady Ella: "God is coming to rule the world, Itell you. We must leave the church. "

Close to him sat Lady Ella, watching him with an expression in whichdismay and resolution mingled. Upon the other side of him, upon a littleoccasional table, was a tray with breakfast things. He was no longer thewatcher now, but the watched. 

Lady Ella bent towards him as he spoke. She seemed to struggle with anddismiss his astonishing statement. 

"Edward, " she said, "you have been taking a drug. " He looked round athis night table to see the little phial. It had gone. Then he saw thatLady Ella held it very firmly in her hand. 

"Dunk came to me in great distress. He said you were insensible andbreathing heavily. I came. I realized. I told him to say nothing to anyone, but to fetch me a tray with your breakfast. I have kept all theother servants away and I have waited here by you.... Dunk I thinkis safe.... You have been muttering and moving your head from side toside.... "

The bishop's mind was confused. He felt as though God must be standingjust outside the room. "I have failed in my duty, " he said. "But I amvery near to God. " He laid his hand on her arm. "You know, Ella, He isvery close to us.... "

She looked perplexed. 

He sat up in his chair. 

"For some months now, " he said, "there have been new forces at workin my mind. I have been invaded by strange doubts and still strangerrealizations. This old church of ours is an empty mask. God is notspecially concerned in it. "

"Edward!" she cried, "what are you saying?"

"I have been hesitating to tell you. But I see now I must tell youplainly. Our church is a cast hull. It is like the empty skin of asnake. 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 haveprepared you, I know.... "

She looked at him wild-eyed. Then she glanced at the phial, gripped inher hand. 

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and going swiftly to the window emptied out thecontents of the little bottle. He realized what she was doing too lateto prevent her. 

"Don't waste that!" he cried, and stepping forward caught hold of herwrist. The phial fell from her white fingers, and crashed upon the roughpaved 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. Ineed 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 turnedand faced her. 

"They are not blasphemies, " he said. "But I ought not to have surprisedyou and shocked you as I have done. I want to tell you of changes thathave happened to my mind. "

"Now!" she exclaimed, and then: "I will not hear them now. Until you arebetter. 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, butI have been so ready to help you. I have been willing--you know I havebeen 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 thingsfrom me?"

He stood remorseful and distressed. "I should have talked to you, " hesaid lamely. 

"Edward, " she said, laying her hands on his shoulders, "will you do onething for me? Will you try to eat a little breakfast? And stay here? Iwill go down to Mr. Whippham and arrange whatever is urgent with him. Perhaps if you rest--There is nothing really imperative until theconfirmation in the afternoon.... I do not understand all this. For sometime--I have felt it was going on. But of that we can talk. The thingnow is that people should not know, that nothing should be seen.... Suppose for instance that horrible White Blackbird were to hear ofit.... I implore you. If you rest here--And if I were to send for thatyoung 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 externalizedperceptions of the bishop witnessed his agreement with the rest of LadyElla'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 senseof being in two places at the same time haunted the bishop's mind. Hestood beside the Angel in the great space amidst the stars, and at thesame time he was back in his ordinary life, he was in his palace atPrinchester, first resting in his bedroom and talking to his wifeand presently taking up the routines of his duties again in his studydownstairs. 

His chief task was to finish his two addresses for the confirmationservices of the day. He read over his notes, and threw them asideand remained for a time thinking deeply. The Greek tags at the endof Likeman's letter came into his thoughts; they assumed a quality ofpeculiar relevance to this present occasion. He repeated the words:"Epitelesei. Epiphausei. "

He took his little Testament to verify them. After some slight troublehe located the two texts. The first, from Philippians, ran in the oldversion, "He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it";the second was expressed thus: "Christ shall give thee light. " He wasdissatisfied 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 theselittle points lost any significance. He began to write rapidly, and ashe wrote he felt the Angel stood by his right hand and read and approvedwhat he was writing. There were moments when his mind seemed to beworking entirely beyond his control. He had a transitory questioningwhether this curious intellectual automatism was not perhaps what peoplemeant by "inspiration. "

(11)

The bishop had always been sensitive to the secret fount of pathos thatis hidden in the spectacle of youth. Long years ago when he and LadyElla had been in Florence he had been moved to tears by the beautyof the fresh-faced eager Tobit who runs beside the great angel in thepicture of Botticelli. And suddenly and almost as uncontrollably, thatfeeling returned at the sight of the young congregation below him, of all these scores of neophytes who were gathered to make a publicacknowledgment of God. The war has invested all youth now with theshadow of tragedy; before it came many of us were a little envious ofyouth and a little too assured of its certainty of happiness. All thathas changed. Fear and a certain tender solicitude mingle in our regardfor every child; not a lad we pass in the street but may presently becalled to face such pain and stress and danger as no ancient hero everknew. The patronage, the insolent condescension of age, has vanished outof the world. It is dreadful to look upon the young. 

He stood surveying the faces of the young people as the rector read thePreface to the confirmation service. How simple they were, how innocent!Some were a little flushed by the excitement of the occasion; some alittle pallid. But they were all such tender faces, so soft in outline, so fresh and delicate in texture and colour. They had soft credulousmouths. Some glanced sideways at one another; some listened with aforced intentness. The expression of one good-looking boy, sitting in acorner scat, struck the bishop as being curiously defiant. He stoodvery erect, he blinked his eyes as though they smarted, his lips werecompressed bitterly. And then it seemed to the bishop that the Angelstood beside him and gave him understanding. 

"He is here, " the bishop knew, "because he could not avoid coming. Hetried to excuse himself. His mother wept. What could he do? But thechurch's teaching nowadays fails even to grip the minds of boys. "

The rector came to the end of his Preface: "They will evermore endeavourthemselves faithfully to observe such things as they by their ownconfession 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, leantforward, and straightway began his first address. 

Nowadays it is possible to say very unorthodox things indeed in anAnglican pulpit unchallenged. There remains no alert doctrinal criticismin the church congregations. It was possible, therefore, for the bishopto say all that follows without either hindrance or disturbance. Theonly opposition, indeed, came from within, from a sense of dreamlikeincongruity between the place and the occasion and the things that hefound himself delivering. 

"All ceremonies, " he began, "grow old. All ceremonies are tainted evenfrom the first by things less worthy than their first intention, andyou, my dear sons and daughters, who have gathered to-day in this wornand ancient building, beneath these monuments to ancient vanities andthese symbols of forgotten or abandoned theories about the mystery ofGod, will do well to distinguish in your minds between what is essentialand what is superfluous and confusing in this dedication you make ofyourselves to God our Master and King. For that is the real thing youseek to do today, to give yourselves to God. This is your spiritualcoming of age, in which you set aside your childish dependence uponteachers and upon taught phrases, upon rote and direction, and stand upto look your Master in the face. You profess a great brotherhood whenyou do that, a brotherhood that goes round the earth, that numbers menof every race and nation and country, that aims to bring God intoall the affairs of this world and make him not only the king of yourindividual lives but the king--in place of all the upstarts, usurpers, accidents, and absurdities who bear crowns and sceptres today--of anunited mankind. "

He paused, and in the pause he heard a little rustle as though thecongregation before him was sitting up in its places, a sound thatalways 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 isyour sacrament urn, your soldier's oath. You salute and give your fealtyto the coming Kingdom of God. And upon that I would have you fix yourminds to the exclusion of much that, I know only too well, has beennarrow and evil and sectarian in your preparation for this solemn rite. God is like a precious jewel found among much rubble; you must cast therubble from you. The crowning triumph of the human mind is simplicity;the supreme significance of God lies in his unity and universality. TheGod you salute to-day is the God of the Jews and Gentiles alike, theGod of Islam, the God of the Brahmo Somaj, the unknown God of many arighteous unbeliever. He is not the God of those felted theologies andinexplicable doctrines with which your teachers may have confused yourminds. I would have it very clear in your minds that having drunken thedraught you should not reverence unduly the cracked old vessel that hasbrought it to your lips. I should be falling short of my duty if I didnot 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, sittingnow with a startled interest in his eyes. The bishop leant over the deskbefore him, and continued in the persuasive tone of a man who speaks ofthings too manifest for laboured argument. 

"In all ages religion has come from God through broad-minded creativemen, and in all ages it has fallen very quickly into the handsof intense and conservative men. These last--narrow, fearful, andsuspicious--have sought in every age to save the precious gift ofreligion by putting it into a prison of formulae and asseverations. Bearthat in mind when you are pressed to definition. It is as if you made abox hermetically sealed to save the treasure of a fresh breeze from thesea. But they have sought out exact statements and tortuous explanationsof 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 itwould otherwise corrupt. So they have lost God and fallen into endlessdifferences, disputes, violence, and darkness about insignificantthings. They have divided religion between this creed and teacher andthat. The corruption of the best is the worst, said Aristotle; and thegreat religions of the world, and especially this Christianity of ours, are the ones most darkened and divided and wasted by the fussings andfalse exactitudes of the creed-monger and the sectary. There is no lieso bad as a stale disfigured truth. There is no heresy so damnable asa narrow orthodoxy. All religious associations carry this danger of theover-statement that misstates and the over-emphasis that divides andbetrays. Beware of that danger. Do not imagine, because you are gatheredin this queerly beautiful old building today, because I preside here inthis odd raiment of an odder compromise, because you see about you incoloured glass and carven stone the emblems of much vain disputation, that thereby you cut yourselves off and come apart from the great worldof faith, Catholic, Islamic, Brahministic, Buddhistic, that grows nowto a common consciousness of the near Advent of God our King. You enterthat waiting world fraternity now, you do not leave it. This place, thischurch of ours, should be to you not a seclusion and a fastness but adoor. 

"I could quote you a score of instances to establish that this simpleuniversalism was also the teaching of Christ. But now I will only remindyou that it was Mary who went to her lord simply, who was commended, andnot Martha who troubled about many things. Learn from the Mary ofFaith and not from these Marthas of the Creeds. Let us abandon thepresumptions of an ignorant past. The perfection of doctrine is notfor finite men. Give yourselves to God. Give yourselves to God. Not tochurches and uses, but to God. To God simply. He is the first word ofreligion and the last. He is Alpha; he is Omega. Epitelesei; it is Hewho will finish the good work begun. "

The bishop ended his address in a vivid silence. Then he began hisinterrogation. 

"Do you here, in the presence of God, and of this congregation, renewthe solemn promise and vow that was made in your name at your Baptism;ratifying and confirming the same in your own persons, and acknowledgingyourselves--"

He stopped short. The next words were: "bound to believe and do allthose things, which your Godfathers and Godmothers then undertook foryou. "

He could not stand those words. He hesitated, and then substituted:"acknowledge yourselves to be the true servants of the one God, who isthe Lord of Mankind?"

For a moment silence hung in the cathedral. Then one voice, a boy'svoice, 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, worldwithout end. "

(12)

Before his second address the bishop had to listen to Veni CreatorSpiritus, in its English form, and it seemed to him the worst of allpossible hymns. Its defects became monstrously exaggerated to hishypersensitive mind. It impressed him in its Englished travesty as agrotesque, as a veritable Charlie Chaplin among hymns, and in truth itdoes stick out most awkward feet, it misses its accusatives, it catchesabsurdly upon points of abstruse doctrine. The great Angel stoodmotionless 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 endthis sort of thing--absolutely. " He glanced at the faces of the singers, and it became beyond all other things urgent, that he should lift themonce for all above the sectarian dogmatism of that hymn to a simplevision 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 runningthrough his mind. The following prayer and collects he read withoutdifficulty, and so came to his second address. His disposition at firstwas explanatory. 

"When I spoke to you just now, " he began, "I fell unintentionally intothe use of a Greek word, epitelesei. It was written to me in a letterfrom a friend with another word that also I am now going to quote toyou. This letter touched very closely upon the things I want to say toyou now, and so these two words are very much in my mind. The former onewas taken from the Epistle to the Philippians; it signifies, 'He willcomplete the work begun'; the one I have now in mind comes from theEpistle to the Ephesians; it is Epiphausei--or, to be fuller, epiphauseisoi ho Christos, which signifies that He will shine upon us. And this isvery much in my thoughts now because I do believe that this world, whichseemed so very far from God a little while ago, draws near now to anunexampled dawn. God is at hand. 

"It is your privilege, it is your grave and terrible position, that youhave been born at the very end and collapse of a negligent age, of anage of sham kingship, sham freedom, relaxation, evasion, greed, waste, falsehood, and sinister preparation. Your lives open out in the midstof the breakdown for which that age prepared. To you negligence is nolonger possible. There is cold and darkness, there is the heat of thefurnace before you; you will live amidst extremes such as our youthnever knew; whatever betide, you of your generation will have smallchance of living untempered lives. Our country is at war and halfmankind is at war; death and destruction trample through the world;men rot and die by the million, food diminishes and fails, there isa wasting away of all the hoarded resources, of all the accumulatedwell-being of mankind; and there is no clear prospect yet of any end tothis enormous and frightful conflict. Why did it ever arise? What madeit possible? It arose because men had forgotten God. It was possiblebecause they worshipped simulacra, were loyal to phantoms of race andempire, permitted themselves to be ruled and misled by idiot princes andusurper kings. Their minds were turned from God, who alone can rule andunite mankind, and so they have passed from the glare and follies ofthose former years into the darkness and anguish of the present day. Andin darkness and anguish they will remain until they turn to that Kingwho comes to rule them, until the sword and indignation of God haveoverthrown their misleaders and oppressors, and the Justice of God, theKingdom of God set high over the republics of mankind, has brought peacefor ever to the world. It is to this militant and imminent God, to thisimmortal Captain, this undying Law-giver, that you devote yourselvesto-day. 

"For he is imminent now. He comes. I have seen in the east and in thewest, the hearts and the minds and the wills of men turning to him assurely as when a needle is magnetized it turns towards the north. Evennow as I preach to you here, God stands over us all, ready to receiveus.... "

And as he said these words, the long nave of the cathedral, the shadowsof its fretted roof, the brown choir with its golden screen, the rowsof seated figures, became like some picture cast upon a flimsy andtranslucent curtain. Once more it seemed to the bishop that he sawGod plain. Once more the glorious effulgence poured about him, and thebeautiful and wonderful conquest of men's hearts and lives was manifestto him. 

He lifted up his hands and cried to God, and with an emotion soprofound, an earnestness so commanding, that very many of those whowere present turned their faces to see the figure to which he looked andspoke. And some of the children had a strange persuasion of a presencethere, 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 usone with thy great purpose, use us and do not reject us, make us allhere servants of thy kingdom, weave our lives into thy struggle toconquer and to bring peace and union to the world. We are small andfeeble creatures, we are feeble in speech, feebler still in action, nevertheless let but thy light shine upon us and there is not one ofus who cannot be lit by thy fire, and who cannot lose himself in thysalvation. Take us into thy purpose, O God. Let thy kingdom come intoour hearts and into this world. "

His voice ceased, and he stood for a measurable time with his armsextended and his face upturned.... 

The golden clouds that whirled and eddied so splendidly in his brainthinned out, his sense of God's immediacy faded and passed, and he wasleft 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 grippedthe two upper corners of it and, regardless of the common order andpractice, read out the Benediction, changing the words involuntarily ashe read:

"The Blessing of God who is the Father, the Son, the Spirit and the Kingof 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 visionof God, but now he saw only the clear cool space of the cathedral vaultand 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 ofthe congregation, he turned about and descended slowly, like one who isstill half dreaming, from the pulpit. 

(13)

In the vestry he found Canon Bliss. "Help me to take off thesegarments, " 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 thatI have been in a trance, a trance in which the truth is real. It is afearful thing to find oneself among realities. It is a dreadful thingwhen God begins to haunt a priest.... I can never minister in the churchagain. "

Whippham thrust forward a chair for the bishop to sit down. The bishopfelt now extraordinarily fatigued. He sat down heavily, and rested hiswrists on the arms of the chair. "Already, " he resumed presently, "Ibegin 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 closeat hand. Happily you spoke partly in Greek. I doubt if any of thosechildren understood. And you had a kind of lapse--an aphasia. Youmutilated the interrogation and you did not pronounce thebenediction properly. You changed words and you put in words. One satfrozen--waiting for what would happen next. "

"We must postpone the Pringle confirmation, " said Whippham. "I wonder towhom I could telephone. "

Lady Ella appeared, and came and knelt down by the bishop's chair. "Inever ought to have let this happen, " she said, taking his wrists in herhands. "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 couldnot hear her. "There is something that will make things clearer to thedoctor. 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 shamedthe rich vestments at hand. Over the shoulder of the rector and quite atthe back, appeared Lady Sunderbund resolutely invading the vestry. Therector 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 wassitting up very stiffly, listening but not looking round. 

A vague horror and a passionate desire to prevent the entry of LadySunderbund at any cost, seized upon the bishop. She would, he felt, bethe last overwhelming complication. He descended to a base subterfuge. He lay back in his chair slowly as though he unfolded himself, hecovered his eyes with his hand and then groaned aloud. 

"Leave me alone!" he cried in a voice of agony. "Leave me alone! I cansee no one.... I can--no more. "

There was a momentous silence, and then the tumult of Lady Sunderbundreceded. 

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH - THE NEW WORLD

(1)

THAT night the bishop had a temperature of a hundred and a half. Thedoctor pronounced him to be in a state of intense mental excitement, aggravated by some drug. He was a doctor modern and clear-minded enoughto admit that he could not identify the drug. He overruled, every oneoverruled, 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 ofthese things, " said the doctor. "Banish them from your mind until yourtemperature is down to ninety-eight. Then after a rest you may go intothem. "

Lady Ella insisted upon his keeping his room. It was with difficultythat he got her to admit Whippham, and Whippham was exasperatingly inorder. "You need not trouble about anything now, my lord, " he said. "Everything will keep until you are ready to attend to it. It's wellwe're through with Easter. Bishop Buncombe of Eastern Blowdesiawas coming here anyhow. And there is Canon Bliss. There's only twoordination candidates because of the war. We'll get on swimmingly. "

The bishop thought he would like to talk to those two ordinationcandidates, but they prevailed upon him not to do so. He lay for thebest part of one night confiding remarkable things to two imaginaryordination candidates. 

He developed a marked liking for Eleanor's company. She was home againnow after a visit to some friends. It was decided that the best thingto do with him would be to send him away in her charge. A journey abroadwas impossible. France would remind him too dreadfully of the war. Hisown mind turned suddenly to the sweet air of Hunstanton. He had gonethere at times to read, in the old Cambridge days. "It is a terriblyugly place, " he said, "but it is wine in the veins. "

Lady Ella was doubtful about Zeppelins. Thrice they had been right overHunstanton 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 lookingout upon the waters of the Wash. He sat where the highest pebble layersof the beach reached up to a little cliff of sandy earth perhaps a foothigh, and he looked upon sands and sea and sky and saw that they werebeautiful. 

He was a little black-gaitered object in a scene of the most exquisiteand delicate colour. Right and left of him stretched the low grey saltedshore, pale banks of marly earth surmounted by green-grey wiry grassthat held and was half buried in fine blown sand. Above, the heavensmade a complete hemisphere of blue in which a series of remote cumulusclouds floated and dissolved. Before him spread the long levels of thesands, and far away at its utmost ebb was the sea. Eleanor had gone toexplore the black ribs of a wrecked fishing-boat that lay at the edge ofa shallow lagoon. She was a little pink-footed figure, very brightand apparently transparent. She had reverted for a time to shamelesschildishness; 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 fromcockle to weed. The shingle was pale drab and purple close at hand, butto the westward, towards Hunstanton, the sands became brown andpurple, and were presently broken up into endless skerries of low flatweed-covered boulders and little intensely blue pools. The sea wasa band of sapphire that became silver to the west; it met the silvershining sands in one delicate breathing edge of intensely white foam. Remote to the west, very small and black and clear against the afternoonsky, 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, amultitude of gulls was mysteriously busy. These two groups of activitiesand Eleanor's flitting translucent movements did but set off andemphasize the immense and soothing tranquillity. 

For a long time the bishop sat passively receptive to this healingbeauty. Then a little flow of thought began and gathered in his mind. Hehad 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 longpause 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. Thissensational declaration of infidelity to our mother church, made underthe most damning and distressing circumstances in the presence of youngand tender minds entrusted to your ministrations, and in defiance of thehonourable engagements implied in the confirmation service, confirms myworst apprehensions of the weaknesses of your character. I have alwaysfelt the touch of theatricality in your temperament, the peculiarcraving to be pseudo-deeper, pseudo-simpler than us all, the need ofpersonal excitement. I know that you were never quite contentedto believe in God at second-hand. You wanted to be taken noticeof--personally. Except for some few hints to you, I have never breatheda word of these doubts to any human being; I have always hoped thatthe ripening that comes with years and experience would give you anincreasing strength against the dangers of emotionalism and against yourstrong, 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'tthe justice of the case. The old man, bitterly disappointed, wasendeavouring to wound. Scrope asked himself whether he was to blame forthat disappointment. That was a more difficult question.... 

He dismissed the charge at last, crumpled up the letter in his hand, andafter a moment's hesitation flung it away.... But he remained acutelysorry, not so much for himself as for the revelation of Likeman thisletter made. He had had a great affection for Likeman and suddenly itwas turned into a wound. 

(3)

The second letter was from Lady Sunderbund, and it was an altogethermore remarkable document. Lady Sunderbund wrote on a notepaper that wasevidently the result of a perverse research, but she wrote a letter farmore coherent than her speech, and without that curious falling awayof the r's that flavoured even her gravest observations with an unjustfaint aroma of absurdity. She wrote with a thin pen in a rounded boyishhandwriting. She italicized with slashes of the pen. 

He held this letter in both hands between his knees, and consideredit now with an expression that brought his eyebrows forward until theyalmost 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, ofthe wonderful, wonderful things you said, and the wonderful choice youmade of the moment to say them--when all those young lives were comingto the great serious thing in life. It was most beautifully done. At anyrate, dear Bishop and Teacher, it was most beautifully begun. And now weall stand to you like creditors because you have given us so much thatyou owe us ever so much more. You have started us and you have to go onwith us. You have broken the shell of the old church, and here we arerunning about with nowhere to go. You have to make the shelter of a newchurch now for us, purged of errors, looking straight to God. TheKing of Mankind!--what a wonderful, wonderful phrase that is. It sayseverything. Tell us more of him and more. Count me first--not foremost, but just the little one that runs in first--among your disciples. Theysay you are resigning your position in the church. Of course that mustbe true. You are coming out of it--what did you call it?--coming out ofthe cracked old vessel from which you have poured the living waters. Icalled on Lady Ella yesterday. She did not tell me very much; I thinkshe is a very reserved as well as a very dignified woman, but she saidthat you intended to go to London. In London then I suppose you will setup the first altar to the Divine King. I want to help. 

"Dear Bishop and Teacher, I want to help tremendously--with all my heartand all my soul. I want to be let do things for you. " (The "you" waserased by three or four rapid slashes, and "our King" substituted. )

"I want to be privileged to help build that First Church of the WorldUnified under God. It is a dreadful thing to says but, you see, I amvery rich; this dreadful war has made me ever so much richer--steel andshipping and things--it is my trustees have done it. I am ashamed to beso rich. I want to give. I want to give and help this great beginning ofyours. I want you to let me help on the temporal side, to make iteasy for you to stand forth and deliver your message, amidst suitablesurroundings and without any horrid worries on account of the sacrificesyou have made. Please do not turn my offering aside. I have never wantedanything so much in all my life as I want to make this gift. Unless Ican make it I feel that for me there is no salvation! I shall stick withmy loads and loads of stocks and shares and horrid possessions outsidethe Needle's Eye. But if I could build a temple for God, and just livesomewhere 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. Imean every word of it. Years ago I thought of such a thing. After I hadvisited the Certosa di Pavia--do you know it? So beautiful, and thosetwo still alabaster figures--recumbent. But until now I could never seemy 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 feelI have come to the most wonderful phase in my life. I feel my call hascome.... 

"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 amfull of fears that you despise me. I know there is a sort of high colourabout me. My passion for brightness. I am absurd. But inside of me isa soul, a real, living, breathing soul. Crying out to you: 'Oh, let mehelp! Let me help!' I will do anything, I will endure anything if only Ican keep hold of the vision splendid you gave me in the cathedral. I seeit now day and night, the dream of the place I can make for you--and youpreaching! My fingers itch to begin. The day before yesterday I saidto 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 allmy jewels, every one, I looked through all my clothes, and at last Idecided I would have made for me a very simple straight grey dress, justsimple and straight and grey. Perhaps you will think that too is absurdof me, too self-conscious. I would not tell of it to you if I did notwant you to understand how alive I am to my utter impossibilities, howresolved I am to do anything so that I may be able to serve. But nevermind 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 toowest, for you might easily become fashionable, not too east because youmight easily be swallowed up in merely philanthropic work, but somewherebetween the two. There must be vacant sites still to be got round aboutKingsway. And there we must set up your tabernacle, a very plain, verysimple, very beautifully proportioned building in which you cangive your message. I know a young man, just the very young man to dosomething of the sort, something quite new, quite modern, and yet solemnand serious. Lady Ella seemed to think you wanted to live somewhere inthe north-west of London--but she would tell me very little. I seem tosee 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 thatwill be part of the building. That is how it is in my dream anyhow. Allthat though can be settled afterwards. My imagination and my desire isrunning away with me. It is no time yet for premature plans. Not thatI am not planning day and night. This letter is simply to offer. I justwant 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 ourking. I have a right to be used. And you have no right to refuse me. Youhave to go on with your message, and it is your duty to take me--just asyou are obliged to step on any steppingstone that lies on your way todo 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 Voiduntil I hear. 

"AGATHA S. "

A letter demanding enormous deliberation. She argued closely in spite ofher italics. It had never dawned upon the bishop before how light isthe servitude of the disciple in comparison with the servitude of themaster. In many ways this proposal repelled and troubled him, in manyways it attracted him. And the argument of his clear obligation toaccept her co-operation gripped him; it was a good argument. 

And besides it worked in very conveniently with certain otherdifficulties that perplexed him. 

(4)

The bishop became aware that Eleanor was returning to him across thesands. She had made an end to her paddling, she had put on her shoes andstockings and become once more the grave and responsible young womanwho had been taking care of him since his flight from Princhester. Hereplaced the two letters in his pocket, and sat ready to smile as shedrew near; he admired her open brow, the toss of her hair, and the poiseof her head upon her neck. It was good to note that her hard reading atCambridge 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 hisfeet. "Consider your overworked little daughter. Oh, how good this is!"

"No, " said the bishop in a grave tone that made her look up into hisface. "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 thecathedral?"

He winced as he asked the question. 

"Daddy, " she said, after a little pause; "the things you said and didthat afternoon were the noblest you ever did in your life. I wish I hadbeen there. It must have been splendid to be there. I've not told youbefore--I've been dying to.... I'd promised not to say a word--not toremind you. I promised the doctor. But now you ask me, now you are wellagain, I can tell you. Kitty Kingdom has told me all about it, how itfelt. 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 allof us young people. Suddenly it was all clear. "

She stopped short. She was breathless with the excitement of herconfession. 

Her father too remained silent for a little while. He was reminded ofhis weakness; he was, he perceived, still a little hysterical. He feltthat he might weep at her youthful enthusiasm if he did not restrainhimself. 

"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 poolsto the sea. "It was what we have all been feeling our way towards, theabsolute simplification of religion, the absolute simplification ofpolitics 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 avery self-reliant man. "

"You'll have all the world with you, " she was convinced, "in a littletime. "

"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. Youngpeople, they say, never think of the transport that is needed to win abattle. I have it in my mind that I should leave the church. But I can'tjust walk out into the marketplace and begin preaching there. I see thefamily furniture being carried out of the palace and put into vans. Ithas to go somewhere.... "

"I suppose you will go to London. "

"Possibly. In fact certainly. I have a plan. Or at least anopportunity.... But that isn't what I have most in mind. These thingsare not done without emotion and a considerable strain upon one'spersonal relationships. I do not think this--I do not think your mothersees things as we do. "

"She will, " said young enthusiasm, "when she understands. "

"I wish she did. But I have been unlucky in the circumstances ofmy explanations to her. And of course you understand all this meansrisks--poverty perhaps--going without things--travel, opportunity, nicepossessions--for all of us. A loss of position too. All this sort ofthing, " 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 andthe 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 ofillumination.... " He would have tried to tell her of his vision, andhe was too shy. "It came to me suddenly that the whole world was inconfusion because men followed after a thousand different immediateaims, when really it was quite easy, if only one could be simple it wasquite easy, to show that nearly all men could only be fully satisfiedand made happy in themselves by one single aim, which was also the aimthat would make the whole world one great order, and that aim was tomake God King of one's heart and the whole world. I saw that all thisworld, except for a few base monstrous spirits, was suffering hideousthings because of this war, and before the war it was full of folly, waste, social injustice and suspicion for the same reason, because ithad not realized the kingship of God. And that is so simple; the essenceof God is simplicity. The sin of this war lies with men like myself, menwho set up to tell people about God, more than it lies with any otherclass--"

"Kings?" she interjected. "Diplomatists? Finance?"

"Yes. Those men could only work mischief in the world because thepriests and teachers let them. All things human lie at last at thedoor of the priest and teacher. Who differentiate, who qualify andcomplicate, who make mean unnecessary elaborations, and so dividemankind. If it were not for the weakness and wickedness of the priests, every one would know and understand God. Every one who was modest enoughnot to set up for particular knowledge. Men disputed whether God isFinite or Infinite, whether he has a triple or a single aspect. Howshould they know? All we need to know is the face he turns to us. Theyimpose their horrible creeds and distinctions. None of those thingsmatter. 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, butit is not religion. They dispute whether he can set aside nature. Butthat is superstition. He is either master of nature and he knows that itis good, or he is part of nature and must obey. That is an argument forhair-splitting metaphysicians. Either answer means the same for us. Itdoes not matter which way we come to believe that he does not idly setthe course of things aside. Obviously he does not set the course ofthings aside. What he does do for certain is to give us courage and saveus from our selfishness and the bitter hell it makes for us. And everyone knows too what sort of things we want, and for what end we wantto escape from ourselves. We want to do right. And right, if you thinkclearly, is just truth within and service without, the service of God'skingdom, which is mankind, the service of human needs and the increaseof human power and experience. It is all perfectly plain, it is allquite easy for any one to understand, who isn't misled and chattered atand 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 giveup--I shall make that my message. "

"And so God comes. "

"God comes as men perceive him in his simplicity.... Let men but see Godsimply, 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 willcome--perhaps in quite a little time--perhaps in our lifetimes? Andthat all these ridiculous or wicked little kings and emperors, andthese political parties, and these policies and conspiracies, andthis nationalist nonsense and all the patriotism and rowdyism, all theprivate profit-seeking and every baseness in life, all the things thatit 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 ahundred lifetimes or a thousand lifetimes, my Norah--"

He smiled and left his sentence unfinished, and she smiled back at himto show she understood. 

And then he confessed further, because he did not want to seem merelysentimentally hopeful. 

"When I was in the cathedral, Norah--and just before that service, itseemed to me--it was very real.... It seemed that perhaps the Kingdom ofGod is nearer than we suppose, that it needs but the faith and courageof a few, and it may be that we may even live to see the dawning of hiskingdom, even--who knows?--the sunrise. I am so full of faith and hopethat 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, Ididn't dream--Before I went to Newnham. I misjudged you. I thought Nevermind what I thought. It was silly. But now I am so proud of you. And sohappy to be back with you, Daddy, and find that your religion is afterall 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 previousconversation, the card of Mr. Edward Scrope was brought up to Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey. The name awakened no memories. The doctor descended todiscover a man so obviously in unaccustomed plain clothes that he had amomentary disagreeable idea that he was facing a detective. Then he sawthat 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 fadedquality one finds in a don who has gone to Hampstead and fallen amongstadvanced thinkers and got mixed up with the Fabian Society. His anxiouseyes and faintly propitiatory manner suggested an impending appeal. 

Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey had the savoir-faire of a successful consultant; heprided himself on being all things to all men; but just for an instanthe was at a loss what sort of thing he had to be here. Then he adoptedthe genial, kindly, but by no means lavishly generous tone advisablein the case of a man who has suffered considerable social deteriorationwithout being very seriously to blame. 

Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was a little round-faced man with defectiveeyesight and an unsuitable nose for the glasses he wore, and heflaunted--God knows why--enormous side-whiskers. 

"Well, " he said, balancing the glasses skilfully by throwing back hishead, "and how are you? And what can I do for you? There's no externalevidence of trouble. You're looking lean and a little pale, butthoroughly fit. "

"Yes, " said the late bishop, "I'm fairly fit--"

"Only--?" said the doctor, smiling his teeth, with something of themanner 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 lookedhard at him. Then he pulled at the arm of a chair. 

The ex-bishop sat down, and the doctor placed himself between hispatient and the light. 

"This business of resigning my bishopric and so forth has involved veryconsiderable strains, " Scrope began. "That I think is the essence of thetrouble. One cuts so many associations.... I did not realize howmuch feeling there would be.... Difficulties too of readjusting one'sposition. "

"Zactly. Zactly. Zactly, " said the doctor, snapping his face and makinghis 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. Certainenquiries. These young investigators all very well in their way. But weolder reputations--Experience. Maturity of judgment. Can't do withoutus. 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, Ithink--Let me see--D--?"

"Dale!"

The doctor as he uttered this word set his face to the unaccustomedexercise of expressing malignity. His round blue eyes sought to blaze, small cherubic muscles exerted themselves to pucker his brows. Hiscolour became a violent pink. "Lunatic!" he said. "Dangerous Lunatic! Hedidn't do anything--anything bad in your case, did he?"

He was evidently highly charged with grievance in this matter. "That manwas sent to me from Cambridge with the highest testimonials. Thevery highest. I had to go at twenty-four hours' notice. Enquiry--gasgangrene. 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 hisface towards his seated patient. "I am glad that he has been killed, " hesaid. "Glad! There!"

His glasses fell off--shocked beyond measure. He did not heed them. Theyswung about in front of him as if they sought to escape while he pouredout his feelings. 

"Fool!" he spluttered with demonstrative gestures. "Dangerous fool! Hisone idea--to upset everybody. Drugs, Sir! The most terrible drugs! Icome 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 becomeanonymous.... Horrible! He's been a terrible influence. One idea--todisturb 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 ofwrath. He failed. His hands felt trembling to recover his pince-nez. Then from his tail pocket he produced a large silk handkerchief andwiped 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 behindhis back, and turned. His manner still retained much of his episcopaldignity. "I am sorry. But still you can no doubt tell from your bookswhat it was he gave me. It was a tonic that had a very great effect onme. 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 andwagging it from side to side, "I wouldn't follow his treatment. "He intensified with the hand going faster. "I wouldn't follow histreatment. Not under any circumstances. "

"Naturally, " said Scrope, "if the results are what you say. But inmy case it wasn't a treatment. I was sleepless, confused in my mind, wretched and demoralized; I came here, and he just produced thestuff--It clears the head, it clears the mind. One seems to get awayfrom 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 todecide--and I can't decide. I find myself uncertain, changeable fromhour 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 fallento his hips. As Scrope went on the doctor's pose had stiffened. His headhad 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 hiswords with his glasses held out. 

"Tell me, " he said, "tell me. " (Cough. ) "Had this drug that cleared yourhead--anything to do with your resignation?"

And he put on his glasses disconcertingly, and threw his head back towatch the reply. 

"It did help to clear up the situation. "

"Exactly, " said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey in a tone that defined his ownposition 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 sodisastrous?--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 ofproclaiming 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 yousimply that from my point of view the illumination that came to me--thisdrug of Dr. Dale's helping--has been the great release of my life. Itcrystallized my mind. It swept aside the confusing commonplace thingsabout me. Just for a time I saw truth clearly.... I want to do soagain. "

"Why?"

"There is a crisis in my affairs--never mind what. But I cannot see myway clear. "

Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was meditating now with his eyes on his carpetand the corners of his mouth tucked in. He was swinging his glassespendulum-wise. "Tell me, " he said, looking sideways at Scrope, "whatwere the effects of this drug? It may have been anything. How did itgive 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 badlythat he obliged himself to describe his previous experiences to the bestof his ability. 

"It was, " he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "a golden, transparentliquid. Very golden, like a warm-tinted Chablis. When water was addedit became streaked and opalescent, with a kind of living quiver in it. Iheld it up to the light. "

"Yes? And when you took it?"

"I felt suddenly clearer. My mind--I had a kind of exaltation andassurance. "

"Your mind, " Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey assisted, "began to go twenty-nine tothe dozen. "

"It felt stronger and clearer, " said Scrope, sticking to his quest. 

"And did things look as usual?" asked the doctor, protruding his knobbylittle face like a clenched fist. 

"No, " said Scrope and regarded him. How much was it possible to tell aman of this type?

"They differed?" said the doctor, relaxing. 

"Yes.... Well, to be plain.... I had an immediate sense of God. Isaw the world--as if it were a transparent curtain, and then Godbecame--evident.... Is it possible for that to determine the drug?"

"God became--evident, " the doctor said with some distaste, and shook hishead slowly. Then in a sudden sharp cross-examining tone: "You mean youhad a vision? Actually saw 'um?"

"It was in the form of a vision. " Scrope was now mentally veryuncomfortable indeed. 

The doctor's lips repeated these words noiselessly, with an effect ofcontempt. "He must have given you something--It's a little like morphia. But golden--opalescent? And it was this vision made you astonish us allwith your resignation?"

"That was part of a larger process, " said Scrope patiently. "I had beendrifting into a complete repudiation of the Anglican positions longbefore that. All that this drug did was to make clear what was alreadyin my mind. And give it value. Act as a developer. "

The doctor suddenly gave way to a botryoidal hilarity. "To think thatone 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 hegave way to an exasperation that made him reckless of Brighton-Pomfrey'sopinion. "I do think, " he said, "that that drug did in some way make Godreal to me. I think I saw God. "

Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey shook his head in a way that made Scrope want tohit him. 

"I think I saw God, " he repeated more firmly. "I had a suddenrealization of how great he was and how great life was, and how timidand mean and sordid were all our genteel, professional lives. I wasseized upon, for a time I was altogether possessed by a passion to servehim fitly and recklessly, to make an end to compromises with comfort andself-love and secondary things. And I want to hold to that. I want toget back to that. I am given to lassitudes. I relax. I am by temperamentan easy-going man. I want to buck myself up, I want to get on with mylarger purposes, and I find myself tired, muddled, entangled.... Thedrug was a good thing. For me it was a good thing. I want its helpagain. "

"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 smallquantities very discreetly you might get a temporary quickening. Butthe swift result of all repeated drug-taking is, I can assure you, moral decay--rapid moral decay. To touch drugs habitually is to becomehopelessly unpunctual, untruthful, callously selfish and insincere. I amtalking mere textbook, mere everyday common-places, to you when I tellyou that. "

"I had an idea. I had a hope.... "

"You've a stiff enough fight before you, " said the doctor, "without sucha handicap as that. "

"You won't help me?"

The doctor walked up and down his hearthrug, and then delivered himselfwith an extended hand and waggling fingers. 

"I wouldn't if I could. For your good I wouldn't. And even if I wouldI 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. Hehesitated 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 andHyde Park. He walked along thoughtfully, inattentively steering a coursefor his new home in Pembury Road, Notting Hill. 

(3)

At the outset of this new phase in Scrope's life that had followed thecrisis of the confirmation service, everything had seemed very clearbefore him. He believed firmly that he had been shown God, that he hadhimself stood in the presence of God, and that there had been a plaincall to him to proclaim God to the world. He had realized God, and itwas the task of every one who had realized God to help all mankind tothe same realization. The proposal of Lady Sunderbund had fallen in withthat idea. He had been steeling himself to a prospect of struggle anddire poverty, but her prompt loyalty had come as an immense relief tohis anxiety for his wife and family. When he had talked to Eleanorupon the beach at Hunstanton it had seemed to him that his course wasmanifest, perhaps a little severe but by no means impossible. They hadsat together in the sunshine, exalted by a sense of fine adventure andconfident of success, they had looked out upon the future, uponthe great near future in which the idea of God was to inspire andreconstruct the world. 

It was only very slowly that this pristine clearness became clouded andconfused. It had not been so easy as Eleanor had supposed to win overthe sympathy of Lady Ella with his resignation. Indeed it had not beenwon over. She had become a stern and chilling companion, mute now uponthe issue of his resignation, but manifestly resentful. He was secretlydisappointed and disconcerted by her tone. And the same hesitation ofthe mind, instinctive rather than reasoned, that had prevented a frankexplanation of his earlier doubts to her, now restrained him fromtelling her naturally and at once of the part that Lady Sunderbund wasto play in his future ministry. In his own mind he felt assured aboutthat part, but in order to excuse his delay in being frank with hiswife, he told himself that he was not as yet definitely committed toLady Sunderbund's project. And in accordance with that idea he setup housekeeping in London upon a scale that implied a very completecessation of income. "As yet, " he told Lady Ella, "we do not know wherewe stand. For a time we must not so much house ourselves as camp. Wemust take some quite small and modest house in some less expensivedistrict. If possible I would like to take it for a year, until we knowbetter how things are with us. "

He reviewed a choice of London districts. 

Lady Ella said her bitterest thing. "Does it matter where we hide ourheads?"

That wrung him to: "We are not hiding our heads. "

She repented at once. "I am sorry, Ted, " she said. "It slipped fromme. "... 

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 henor his wife had ever had any experience of middle-class house-huntingor middle-class housekeeping before, and they spent three of the mostdesolating days of their lives in looking for this cheap and modestshelter for their household possessions. Hitherto life had moved themfrom one established and comfortable home to another; their worstaffliction 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, kitchensfor the most part underground, and either without bathrooms or withbuilt-out bathrooms that were manifestly grudging afterthoughts, suchas harbour the respectable middle classes of London. The house agentsperceived intimations of helplessness in their manner, adopted a"rushing" method with them strange to people who had hitherto lived ina glowing halo of episcopal dignity. "Take it or leave it, " was the noteof those gentlemen; "there are always people ready for houses. " Theline that property in land and houses takes in England, the ex-bishoprealized, is always to hold up and look scornful. The position of theland-owning, house-owning class in a crowded country like England isultra-regal. It is under no obligation to be of use, and people areobliged to get down to the land somewhere. They cannot conduct businessand rear families in the air. England's necessity is the landlord'sopportunity.... 

Scrope began to generalize about this, and develop a new and sincererstreak of socialism in his ideas. "The church has been very remiss, "he said, as he and Lady Ella stared at the basement "breakfast room" oftheir twenty-seventh dismal possibility. "It should have insisted farmore than it has done upon the landlord's responsibility. No one shouldtolerate the offer of such a house as this--at such a rent--to decentpeople. 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 ofthe railway, " said the agent, picking his teeth with a pin. "Lazylot. Dreadfully hard to get 'em to do anything. Own some of the worstproperties in London. "

Lady Ella saw things differently again. "If you had stayed in thechurch, " she said afterwards, "you might have helped to alter suchthings as that. "

At the time he had no answer. 

"But, " he said presently as they went back in the tube to their modestBloomsbury hotel, "if I had stayed in the church I should never haverealized things like that. "

(4)

But it does no justice to Lady Ella to record these two unavoidableexpressions of regret without telling also of the rallying courage withwhich she presently took over the task of resettling herself and herstricken family. Her husband's change of opinion had fallen upon her outof a clear sky, without any premonition, in one tremendous day. In oneday there had come clamouring upon her, with an effect of revelationafter revelation, the ideas of drugs, of heresy and blasphemy, of analien feminine influence, of the entire moral and material breakdown ofthe man who had been the centre of her life. Never was the whole worldof a woman so swiftly and comprehensively smashed. All the previoustroubles of her life seemed infinitesimal in comparison with any singleitem in this dismaying debacle. She tried to consolidate it in the ideathat he was ill, "disordered. " She assured herself that he wouldreturn from Hunstanton restored to health and orthodoxy, with allhis threatenings of a resignation recalled; the man she had loved andtrusted to succeed in the world and to do right always according to herideas. It was only with extreme reluctance that she faced the fact thatwith the fumes of the drug dispelled and all signs of nervous exhaustiongone, he still pressed quietly but resolutely toward a severance fromthe church. She tried to argue with him and she found she could notargue. The church was a crystal sphere in which her life was whollycontained, her mind could not go outside it even to consider adissentient proposition. 

While he was at Hunstanton, every day she had prayed for an hour, somedays she had prayed for several hours, in the cathedral, kneeling upona harsh hassock that hurt her knees. Even in her prayers she could notargue 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, butsometimes he had been irritable about small things, especially duringhis seasons of insomnia; now he came back changed, a much graver man, rather older in his manner, carefully attentive to her, kinder and morewatchful, at times astonishingly apologetic, but rigidly set upon hispurpose of leaving the church. "I know you do not think with me inthis, " he said. "I have to pray you to be patient with me. I havestruggled 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 pullthrough. There are ways of doing my work. Perhaps we shall not have toundergo 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 anyrate with the courage of practical energy. It was she who stood inone ungainly house after another and schemed how to make discomfortstolerable, while Scrope raged unhelpfully at landlordism and theresponsibility of the church for economic disorder. It was she who atlast took decisions into her hands when he was too jaded to do anythingbut generalize weakly, and settled upon the house in Pembury Road whichbecame their London home. She got him to visit Hunstanton again for halfa 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 barelypresentable. There were many plain hardships. The girls had to share oneof the chief bedrooms in common instead of their jolly little individualdens at Princhester.... One little room was all that could be squeezedout as a study for "father"; it was not really a separate room, it wasmerely cut off by closed folding doors from the dining-room, foldingdoors that slowly transmitted the dinner flavours to a sensitive worker, and its window looked out upon a blackened and uneventful yard and theskylights of a populous, conversational, and high-spirited millineryestablishment that had been built over the corresponding garden of thehouse in Restharrow Street. Lady Ella had this room lined with openshelves, 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 ofpsychological interest that this cramped, ill-lit little room distressedLady 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 hermind, but she could not resist the impulse to get him at least a seemlyreading-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 verygrateful and much surprised at what she had done to that forbiddinghouse, and full of hints and intimations that it would not be longbefore they moved to something roomier. She was disposed to seek somesort of salaried employment for Clementina and Miriam at least, but hewould not hear of that. "They must go on and get educated, " he said, "ifI have to give up smoking to do it. Perhaps I may manage even withoutthat. " Eleanor, it seemed, had a good prospect of a scholarship at theLondon School of Economics that would practically keep her. There wouldbe no Cambridge for Clementina, but London University might still bepossible with a little pinching, and the move to London had reallyimproved the prospects of a good musical training for Miriam. Phoebe andDaphne, Lady Ella believed, might get in on special terms at the NottingHill High School. 

Scrope found it difficult to guess at what was going on in the headsof his younger daughters. None displayed such sympathy as Eleanor hadconfessed. He had a feeling that his wife had schooled them to saynothing about the change in their fortunes to him. But they quarrelleda good deal, he could hear, about the use of the one bathroom--there wasnever enough hot water after the second bath. And Miriam did not seem toenjoy playing the new upright piano in the drawing-room as much asshe had done the Princhester grand it replaced. Though she was alwayswilling to play that thing he liked; he knew now that it was the Adagioof Of. 111; whenever he asked for it. 

London servants, Lady Ella found, were now much more difficult to getthan they had been in the Holy Innocents' days in St. John's Wood. Andmore difficult to manage when they were got. The households of the moreprosperous clergy are much sought after by domestics of a serious andexcellent type; an unfrocked clergyman's household is by no meansso attractive. The first comers were young women of unfortunatedispositions; the first cook was reluctant and insolent, she went beforeher month was up; the second careless; she made burnt potatoes andcindered chops, underboiled and overboiled eggs; a "dropped" look abouteverything, harsh coffee and bitter tea seemed to be a natural aspect ofthe state of being no longer a bishop. He would often after a strugglewith his nerves in the bedroom come humming cheerfully to breakfast, tofind that Phoebe, who was a delicate eater, had pushed her plate awayscarcely touched, while Lady Ella sat at the end of the table in a stateof dangerous calm, framing comments for delivering downstairs that wouldbe sure to sting and yet leave no opening for repartee, and trying atthe same time to believe that a third cook, if the chances were riskedagain, 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 thehouse on a yearly agreement, had refused to replace; it was a design ofvery dark green leaves and grey gothic arches; and the apartment was litby a chandelier, which spilt a pool of light in the centre of the roomand splashed useless weak patches elsewhere. Lady Ella had to interfereto prevent the monopolization of this centre by Phoebe and Daphne fortheir home work. This light trouble was difficult to arrange; the plaintruth was that there was not enough illumination to go round. In thePrinchester drawing-room there had been a number of obliging littleelectric pushes. The size of the dining-room, now that the study wascut off from it, forbade hospitality. As it was, with only the family athome, the housemaid made it a grievance that she could scarcely squeezeby 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 acontralto voice that most people would have gladly thrown away. At theend of Restharrow Street was a garage, and a yard where chauffeurs wereaccustomed to "tune up" their engines. All these facts were persistentlyaudible to any one sitting down in the little back study to think outthis project of "writing something, " about a change in the government ofthe whole world. Petty inconveniences no doubt all these inconvenienceswere, but they distressed a rather oversensitive mind which was alsoacutely aware that even upon this scale living would cost certainly twohundred and fifty pounds if not more in excess of the little privateincome available. 

(5)

These domestic details, irrelevant as they may seem in a spiritualhistory, need to be given because they added an intimate keennessto Scrope's readiness for this private chapel enterprise that he wasdiscussing with Lady Sunderbund. Along that line and along that linealone, he saw the way of escape from the great sea of London dinginessthat threatened to submerge his family. And it was also, he felt, theline of his duty; it was his "call. "

At least that was how he felt at first. And then matters began to growcomplicated again. 

Things had gone far between himself and Lady Sunderbund since thatletter he had read upon the beach at Old Hunstanton. The blinds of thehouse with the very very blue door in Princhester had been drawnfrom the day when the first vanload of the renegade bishop's privatepossessions had departed from the palace. The lady had returned tothe brightly decorated flat overlooking Hyde Park. He had seen herrepeatedly since then, and always with a fairly clear understanding thatshe was to provide the chapel and pulpit in which he was to proclaim toLondon the gospel of the Simplicity and Universality of God. He was tobe the prophet of a reconsidered faith, calling the whole world fromcreeds and sects, from egotisms and vain loyalties, from prejudices ofrace and custom, to the worship and service of the Divine King of allmankind. That in fact had been the ruling resolve in his mind, theresolve determining his relations not only with Lady Sunderbund but withLady Ella and his family, his friends, enemies and associates. He hadset out upon this course unchecked by any doubt, and overriding themanifest disapproval of his wife and his younger daughters. LadySunderbund'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 thingin the background out of the corner of one's eye. 

In all his early anticipations of the chapel enterprise, he had imaginedhimself in the likeness of a small but eloquent figure standing in alarge exposed place and calling this lost misled world back to God. LadySunderbund, he assumed, was to provide the large exposed place (whichwas dimly paved with pews) and guarantee that little matter which wasto relieve him of sordid anxieties for his family, the stipend. He hadagreed in an inattentive way that this was to be eight hundred a year, with a certain proportion of the subscriptions. "At first, I shall bethe chief subscriber, " she said. "Before the rush comes. " He had beenso content to take all this for granted and think no more about it--moreparticularly to think no more about it--that for a time he entirelydisregarded the intense decorative activities into which Lady Sunderbundincontinently plunged. Had he been inclined to remark them he certainlymight have done so, even though a considerable proportion was beingthoughtfully veiled for a time from his eyes. 

For example, there was the young architect with the wonderful tie whomhe met once or twice at lunch in the Hyde Park flat. This young manpulled the conversation again and again, Lady Sunderbund aiding andabetting, 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 hithertoall temples and places of worship had been conditioned by orientationdue to the seasonal aspects of religion, they pointed to the west or--asin the case of the Egyptian temples--to some particular star, and bysacramentalism, which centred everything on a highly lit sacrificialaltar. It was almost impossible to think of a church built upon otherlines than that. The architect would be so free that--

"Absolutely free, " interrupted the young architect. "He might, forexample, 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 oftaking 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 worldwas Beethoven's sonata, Opus 111, --he was thinking, he said, moreparticularly of the Adagio at the end, molto semplice e cantabile. Ithad 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 wehad got a little beyond that anyhow. 

"We shall be superhuman before we get beyond either Purcell orBeethoven, " said Scrope. 

Nor did he attach sufficient importance to Lady Sunderbund's dispositionto invite Positivists, members of the Brotherhood Church, leaders amongthe Christian Scientists, old followers of the Rev. Charles Voysey, Swedenborgians, Moslem converts, Indian Theosophists, psychic phenomenaand so forth, to meet him. Nevertheless it began to drift into his mindthat he was by no means so completely in control of the new departureas he had supposed at first. Both he and Lady Sunderbund professeduniversalism; but while his was the universalism of one who wouldsimplify to the bare fundamentals of a common faith, hers was theuniversalism of the collector. Religion to him was something thatilluminated the soul, to her it was something that illuminatedprayer-books. For a considerable time they followed their divergentinclinations without any realization of their divergence. None the lessa vague doubt and dissatisfaction with the prospect before him arose tocloud his confidence. 

At first there was little or no doubt of his own faith. He was stillaltogether convinced that he had to confess and proclaim God in hislife. He was as sure that God was the necessary king and saviour ofmankind and of a man's life, as he was of the truth of the BinomialTheorem. But what began first to fade was the idea that he had beenspecially called to proclaim the True God to all the world. He wouldhave the most amiable conference with Lady Sunderbund, and then as hewalked back to Notting Hill he would suddenly find stuck into hismind like a challenge, Heaven knows how: "Another prophet?" Even ifhe succeeded in this mission enterprise, he found himself asking, whatwould he be but just a little West-end Mahomet? He would have foundedanother sect, and we have to make an end to all sects. How is there tobe an end to sects, if there are still to be chapels--richly decoratedchapels--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 ofthe facts that his private income was just under three hundred pounds ayear, and that his experiments in cultured journalism made it extremelyimprobable that the most sedulous literary work would do more thandouble this scanty sum. Yet for all that these nasty, ugly, sordid factswere entirely disregarded, they did somehow persist in coming in andsquatting down, shapeless in a black corner of his mind--from whichtheir eyes shone out, so to speak--whenever his doubt whether he oughtto set up as a prophet at all was under consideration. 

(6)

Then very suddenly on this October afternoon the situation had come to acrisis. 

He had gone to Lady Sunderbund's flat to see the plans and drawings forthe new church in which he was to give his message to the world. Theyhad brought home to him the complete realization of Lady Sunderbund'simpossibility. He had attempted upon the spur of the moment anexplanation of just how much they differed, and he had precipitated astorm of extravagantly perplexing emotions.... 

She kept him waiting for perhaps ten minutes before she brought theplans to him. He waited in the little room with the Wyndham Lewispicture that opened upon the balcony painted with crazy squares of lividpink. On a golden table by the window a number of recently bought bookswere lying, and he went and stood over these, taking them up one afteranother. The first was "The Countess of Huntingdon and Her Circle, "that bearder of lightminded archbishops, that formidable harbourer ofWesleyan chaplains. For some minutes he studied the grim portrait ofthis inspired lady standing with one foot ostentatiously on her coronetand then turned to the next volume. This was a life of Saint Teresa, that energetic organizer of Spanish nunneries. The third dealt withMadame Guyon. It was difficult not to feel that Lady Sunderbund wasreading for a part. 

She entered. 

She was wearing a long simple dress of spangled white with a very highwaist; 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 andgreen. Her arms were full of big rolls of cartridge paper and tracingpaper. "I'm so pleased, " she said. "It's 'eady at last and I can showyou. "

She banged the whole armful down upon a vivid little table of inlaidblack and white wood. He rescued one or two rolls and a sheet of tracingpaper from the floor. 

"It's the Temple, " she panted in a significant whisper. "It's the Templeof the One T'ue God!"

She scrabbled among the papers, and held up the elevation of a strangesquare building to his startled eyes. "Iszi't it just pe'fect?" shedemanded. 

He took the drawing from her. It represented a building, manifestly anenormous building, consisting largely of two great, deeply fluted towersflanking a vast archway approached by a long flight of steps. Betweenthe towers appeared a dome. It was as if the Mosque of Saint Sophia hadproduced this offspring in a mesalliance with the cathedral ofWells. Its enormity was made manifest by the minuteness of the largeautomobiles that were driving away in the foreground after "settingdown. " "Here is the plan, " she said, thrusting another sheet upon himbefore he could fully take in the quality of the design. "The g'eat Hallis 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 peoplesitting down. "

"But--!" said Scrope. 

"The'e's a sort of g'andeur, " she said. "It's young Venable's wo'k. It'shis 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 outat Golda's G'een. "

"But--if it is to be this little simple chapel we proposed, then wasn'tour idea to be central?"

"But if the' isn't 'oem!" she said--conclusively. "And isn't this--isn'tit rather a costly undertaking, rather more costly--"

"That doesn't matta. I'm making heaps and heaps of money. Half myp'ope'ty is in shipping and a lot of the 'eat in munitions. I'm 'icherthan 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 tostudy it. But he was really staring blankly at the whole situation. 

"Lady Sunderbund, " he said at last, with an effort, "I am afraid allthis won't do. "

"Won't do!"

"No. It isn't in the spirit of my intention. It isn't in a greatbuilding of this sort--so--so ornate and imposing, that the simplegospel 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 furtherrepudiations, she sought hastily among the drawings again. 

"But look, " she said. "It has ev'ything! It's not only a p'eachingplace; it's a headquarters for ev'ything. "

With the rapid movements of an excited child she began to thrust theremarkable features and merits of the great project upon him. Thepreaching 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'ygate movement must p'int. " There was to be music, she said, "a gateinvisible o'gan, " hidden amidst the architectural details, and pouringout its sounds into the dome, and then she glanced in passing atpossible "p'ocessions" round the preaching dome. This preaching domewas not a mere shut-in drum for spiritual reverberations, around it rangreat open corridors, and in these corridors there were to be "chapels. "

"But what for?" he asked, stemming the torrent. "What need is there forchapels? There are to be no altars, no masses, no sacraments?"

"No, " she said, "but they are to be chapels for special int'ests; achapel for science, a chapel for healing, a chapel for gov'ment. Placesfor peoples to sit and think about those things--with paintings andsymbols. "

"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 themyst'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'ougha da'k 'ounded a'ch ma'ked with mathematical symbols and balances andscientific app'atus.... And the ve'y next to it, the ve'y next, is to bea little b'ight chapel for bi'ds and flowas!"

"Yes, " he said, "it is all very fine and expressive. It is, I see, asymbolical building, a great artistic possibility. But is it the placefor me? What I have to say is something very simple, that God is theking of the whole world, king of the ha'penny newspaper and the omnibusand the vulgar everyday things, and that they have to worship him andserve him as their leader in every moment of their lives. This isn'tthat. 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 inthe 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 worldof the one God that can alone unite it and save it--and you make thisextravagant 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 mightfeel strongly in this affair. 

"My dear Lady Sunderbund, " he said with a sudden change of manner, "Imust 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 themto the salvation of mankind and the conquest of pain and death. I haveseen him as the God of the human affair, a God of politics, a God ofsuch muddy and bloody wars as this war, a God of economics, a God ofrailway junctions and clinics and factories and evening schools, a Godin fact of men. This God--this God here, that you want to worship, is aGod of artists and poets--of elegant poets, a God of bric-a-brac, a Godof choice allusions. Oh, it has its grandeur! I don't want you to thinkthat what you are doing may not be altogether fine and right for you todo. But it is not what I have to do.... I cannot--indeed I cannot--go onwith this project--upon these lines. "

He paused, flushed and breathless. Lady Sunderbund had heard him to theend. Her bright face was brightly flushed, and there were tears in hereyes. It was like her that they should seem tears of the largest, mostexpensive sort, tears of the first water. 

"But, " she cried, and her red delicate mouth went awry with dismay anddisappointment, and her expression was the half incredulous expressionof a child suddenly and cruelly disappointed: "You won't go on with allthis?"

"No, " he said. "My dear Lady Sunderbund--"

"Oh! don't Lady Sunderbund me!" she cried with a novel rudeness. "Don'tyou see I've done it all for you?"

He winced and felt boorish. He had never liked and disapproved of LadySunderbund so much as he did at that moment. And he had no words forher. 

"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 markedher points with finger upheld, and gave odd suggestions in her face ofan angry coster girl. "Eva' since I met you, I've wo'shipped you. I'vebeen 'eady to follow you anywhe'--to do anything. Eva' since that nightwhen 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 Godand 'iligion and didn't mind fo' you'self.... Up to then--I'd beenliving--oh! the emptiest life... "

The tears ran. "Pe'haps I shall live it again.... " She dashed her griefaway 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 theseeds of ete'nal life su'ely. I made up my mind then and the' I'd followyou 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 thenstood with her hand held up, staring at the plans and drawings that werelittered over the inlaid table. "I've planned and planned. I said, Iwill 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 gayrejected drawings. "You could have explained.... "

"Oh!" she said petulantly, and thrust them away from her so that theywent sliding one after the other on to the floor. For some long-drawnmoments there was no sound in the room but the slowly accelerated slideand 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 hisbackward pace. "You must let me k'y. You must let me k'y. "

His resistance ceased. One hand supported her, the other patted hershining 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 hadcontrived in a helpful and sympathetic manner to seat the unhappy ladyon a sofa, and when after some cramped discourse she stood up beforehim, wiping her eyes with a wet wonder of lace, to deliver herself thebetter, a newborn appreciation of the tactics of the situation madehim walk to the other side of the table under colour of picking up adrawing. 

In the retrospect he tried to disentangle the threads of a discussionthat went to and fro and contradicted itself and began again farback among things that had seemed forgotten and disposed of. LadySunderbund's mind was extravagantly untrained, a wild-grown mentalthicket. At times she reproached him as if he were a heartless God; attimes she talked as if he were a recalcitrant servant. Her mingling ofutter devotion and the completest disregard for his thoughts and wishesdazzled and distressed his mind. It was clear that for half a year herclear, bold, absurd will had been crystallized upon the idea of givinghim exactly what she wanted him to want. The crystal sphere of thoseambitions 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 wouldmeet 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. Andthere was this drawing here; what did it mean? He held it out to her. Itrepresented a figure, distressingly like himself, robed as a priest investments. 

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 ameeting-house anyhow. "

"Just any old meeting-house, " he said. "Not that special one. A placewithout choirs and clergy. "

"If you won't have music, " she responded, "don't have music. If Goddoesn't want music it can go. I can't think God does not app'ove ofmusic, but--that is for you to settle. If you don't like the' beingo'naments, we'll make it all plain. Some g'ate g'ey Dome--all g'ey andblack. If it isn't to be beautiful, it can be ugly. Yes, ugly. It canbe as ugly"--she sobbed--"as the City Temple. We will get some othaa'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 youngVenable'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 'top'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 wouldhave to go to you' taila for a new p'eaching coat with b'aid put ondif'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' oldfashions; that's all.... A cassock's an old fashion. There's nothing soplain 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, andstared 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-Pomfreytowards the Serpentine he acted that stormy interview with LadySunderbund over again. At the end, as a condition indeed of hisdeparture, 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 notto 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'ybeginning. " But he knew that indeed there should be no more beginningagain with her. He knew that quite beyond these questions of theorganization of a purified religion, it was time their associationended. She had wept upon him; she had clasped both his hands at partingand prayed to be forgiven. She was drawing him closer to her by theirvery dissension. She had infected him with the softness of remorse; frombeing a bright and spirited person, she had converted herself into awarm and touching person. Her fine, bright black hair against his cheekand the clasp of her hand on his shoulder was now inextricably in thebusiness. The perplexing, the astonishing thing in his situation wasthat 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 whena relationship becomes an entanglement. He ought to break off now, andthe riddle was just why he should feel this compunction in breaking offnow. He had disappointed her, and he ought not to have disappointedher; that was the essential feeling. He had never realized before ashe realized now this peculiar quality of his own mind and the gulf intowhich it was leading him. It came as an illuminating discovery. 

He was a social animal. He had an instinctive disposition to actaccording to the expectations of the people about him, whether they werereasonable or congenial expectations or whether they were not. That, hesaw for the first time, had been the ruling motive of his life; it wasthe clue to him. Man is not a reasonable creature; he is a sociallyresponsive creature trying to be reasonable in spite of that fact. Fromthe days in the rectory nursery when Scrope had tried to be a good boyon the whole and just a little naughty sometimes until they stoppedsmiling, through all his life of school, university, curacy, vicarageand episcopacy up to this present moment, he perceived now that he hadacted upon no authentic and independent impulse. His impulse had alwaysbeen to fall in with people and satisfy them. And all the painfulconflicts of those last few years had been due to a growing realizationof jarring criticisms, of antagonized forces that required from himincompatible things. From which he had now taken refuge--or at any ratesought refuge--in God. It was paradoxical, but manifestly in God he notonly sank his individuality but discovered it. 

It was wonderful how much he had thought and still thought of thefeelings and desires of Lady Sunderbund, and how little he thought ofGod. Her he had been assiduously propitiating, managing, accepting, forthree months now. Why? Partly because she demanded it, and there wasa quality in her demand that had touched some hidden spring--of vanityperhaps it was--in him, that made him respond. But partly also it wasbecause after the evacuation of the palace at Princhester he had feltmore and more, felt but never dared to look squarely in the face, thecatastrophic change in the worldly circumstances of his family. Only this chapel adventure seemed likely to restore those fallen andbedraggled fortunes. He had not anticipated a tithe of the dire qualityof that change. They were not simply uncomfortable in the Notting Hillhome. They were miserable. He fancied they looked to him with somethingbetween reproach and urgency. Why had he brought them here? What nextdid he propose to do? He wished at times they would say it out insteadof merely looking it. Phoebe's failing appetite chilled his heart. 

That concern for his family, he believed, had been his chief motive inclinging to Lady Sunderbund's projects long after he had realized howlittle they would forward the true service of God. No doubt there hadbeen moments of flattery, moments of something, something rather in thenature of an excited affection; some touch of the magnificent inher, some touch of the infantile, --both appealed magnetically to hisimagination; but the real effective cause was his habitual solicitudefor his wife and children and his consequent desire to prospermaterially. As his first dream of being something between Mohammed andPeter the Hermit in a new proclamation of God to the world lost colourand life in his mind, he realized more and more clearly that there wasno way of living in a state of material prosperity and at the same timein a state of active service to God. The Church of the One True God (byfavour of Lady Sunderbund) was a gaily-coloured lure. 

And yet he wanted to go on with it. All his imagination and intelligencewas busy now with the possibility of in some way subjugating LadySunderbund, and modifying her and qualifying her to an endurableproposition. Why?

Why?

There could be but one answer, he thought. Brought to the test ofaction, he did not really believe in God! He did not believe in God ashe believed in his family. He did not believe in the reality of eitherhis first or his second vision; they had been dreams, autogenousrevelations, exaltations of his own imaginations. These beliefs wereupon different grades of reality. Put to the test, his faith in God gaveway; a sword of plaster against a reality of steel. 

And yet he did believe in God. He was as persuaded that there was aGod as he was that there was another side to the moon. Hisintellectual conviction was complete. Only, beside the living, breathing--occasionally coughing--reality of Phoebe, God was somethingas 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 wasapproaching the grey stone bridge that crosses just where Hyde Parkends and Kensington Gardens begins. Following upon his doubts of hisreligious faith had come another still more extraordinary question:"Although there is a God, does he indeed matter more in our ordinarylives than that same demonstrable Binomial Theorem? Isn't one's duty toPhoebe plain and clear?" Old Likeman's argument came back to him withnovel and enhanced powers. Wasn't he after all selfishly putting hisown salvation in front of his plain duty to those about him? What didit matter if he told lies, taught a false faith, perjured and damnedhimself, if after all those others were thereby saved and comforted?

"But that is just where the whole of this state of mind is falseand wrong, " he told himself. "God is something more than a priggishdevotion, an intellectual formula. He has a hold and a claim--he shouldhave 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 thathe now returned. It was the thinness and unreality of his thought of Godthat had driven him post-haste to Brighton-Pomfrey in search for thatdrug that had touched his soul to belief. 

Was God so insignificant in comparison with his family that afterall with a good conscience he might preach him every Sunday in LadySunderbund's church, wearing Lady Sunderbund's vestments?

Before him he saw an empty seat. The question was so immense andconclusive, it was so clearly a choice for all the rest of his lifebetween God and the dear things of this world, that he felt he could notdecide it upon his legs. He sat down, threw an arm along the back of theseat and drummed with his fingers. 

If the answer was "yes" then it was decidedly a pity that he had notstayed in the church. It was ridiculous to strain at the cathedral gnatand 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, andScrope would have been the next in rotation to succeed him on thebench 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 moreplainly and fully upon social questions than had hitherto been thepractice 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 andhis family or whether he was to go back upon his outbreak of visionaryfanaticism and close with this last opportunity that Lady Sunderbundoffered of saving at least the substance of the comfort and socialstatus of his wife and daughters. In which case it was clear to himhe would have to go to great lengths and exercise very considerablesubtlety--and magnetism--in the management of Lady Sunderbund.... 

He found himself composing a peculiar speech to her, very frank andrevealing, and one that he felt would dominate her thoughts.... Sheattracted him oddly.... At least this afternoon she had attractedhim.... 

And repelled him.... 

A wholesome gust of moral impatience stirred him. He smacked the back ofthe seat hard, as though he smacked himself. 

No. He did not like it.... 

A torn sunset of purple and crimson streamed raggedly up above andthrough the half stripped trecs of Kensington Gardens, and he foundhimself wishing that Heaven would give us fewer sublimities in sky andmountain and more in our hearts. Against the background of darklingtrees and stormily flaming sky a girl was approaching him. There waslittle to be seen of her but her outline. Something in her movementcaught 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 inEleanor that promised an answer to his necessity. The girl had a kindof instinctive wisdom. She would understand the quality of his situationbetter perhaps than any one. He would put the essentials of thatsituation as fully and plainly as he could to her. Perhaps she, withthat clear young idealism of hers, would give him just the lift and thelight 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 fallento 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 thisperson would approach from east or west. She did not observe her fatheruntil 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 havewalked on, that she checked in its inception. Then she came up to himand 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 eyeagain. 

"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. "Atleast, 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 looksbad, Daddy. I came up to meet a boy I know, who is going to Franceto-morrow. I had to make excuses--up there. I hardly remember whatexcuses 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. "Whois this boy?" he asked. 

With a perceptible effort Eleanor assumed a tone of commonsenseconventionality. "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 wasimplicit in that "Well?" She went on, "I would have told you about himif he had seemed to matter. But it was just a friendship. It didn'tseem to matter in any serious way. Of course we'd been good friends--andtalked about all sorts of things. And then suddenly you see, "--her tonewas offhand and matter-of-fact--"he has to go to France. "

She stared at her father with the expression of a hostess who talksabout 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 Icared. "

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 minuteor 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'dlike just to see this boy, " he said, and added: "If it isn't ratherinterfering.... "

"Dear Daddy!" she said. "Dear Daddy!" and touched his hand. "He'll becoming here.... "

"If you could tell me a few things about him, " said Scrope. "Is he anundergraduate?"

"You see, " began Eleanor and paused to marshal her facts. "He graduatedthis year. Then he's been in training at Cambridge. Properly he'd havea fellowship. He took the Natural Science tripos, zoology chiefly. He's good at philosophy, but of course our Cambridge philosophy is sosilly--McTaggart blowing bubbles.... His father's a doctor, Sir HedleyRiverton. "

As she spoke her eyes had been roving up the path and down. "He'scoming, " she interrupted. She hesitated. "Would you mind if I went andspoke 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 anapproaching figure in khaki. The two young people quickened their pacesas they drew nearer one another. There was a rapid greeting; they stoodclose together and spoke eagerly. Scrope could tell by their movementswhen he became the subject of their talk. He saw the young man startand look over Eleanor's shoulder, and he assumed an attitude ofphilosophical contemplation of the water, so as to give the young manthe liberty of his profile. 

He did not look up until they were quite close to him, and when he didhe saw a pleasant, slightly freckled fair face a little agitated, andvery honest blue eyes. "I hope you don't think, Sir, that it's bad formof me to ask Eleanor to come up and see me as I've done. I telegraphedto 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 thesubaltern. Scrope was in the centre of the seat, and the young officersat down on one side of him while Eleanor took up a watching position onher father's other hand. "You see, Sir, we've hardly known each other--Imean we've been associated over a philosophical society and all thatsort of thing, but in a more familiar way, I mean.... "

He hung for a moment, just a little short of breath. Scrope helpedhim with a grave but sympathetic movement of the head. "It's a littledifficult to explain, " the young man apologized. 

"We hadn't understood, I think, either of us very much. We'd justbeen friendly--and liked each other. And so it went on even when I wastraining. And then when I found I had to go out--I'm going out a littleearlier than I expected--I thought suddenly I wouldn't ever go toCambridge again at all perhaps--and there was something in one of herletters.... I thought of it a lot, Sir, I thought it all over, and Ithought it wasn't right for me to do anything and I didn't do anythinguntil this morning. And then I sort of had to telegraph. I know it wasfrightful cheek and bad form and all that, Sir. It is. It would beworse if she wasn't different--I mean, Sir, if she was just an ordinarygirl.... But I had a sort of feeling--just wanting to see her. I don'tsuppose you've ever felt anything, Sir, as I felt I wanted to seeher--and just hear her speak to me.... "

He glanced across Scrope at Eleanor. It was as if he justified himselfto them both. 

Scrope glanced furtively at his daughter who was leaning forward withtender eyes on her lover, and his heart went out to her. But his mannerremained 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 isbetween 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 doanything very committal. It's as much friendship as anything. I go bythe 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 tohave telegraphed, " he said. 

"Can't I take a risk?" exclaimed Eleanor. "I'm not a doll. I don't wantto 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, andleft it at that. 

"Perhaps I feel about her--rather as if she was as strong as I am--inthose ways. Perhaps I shouldn't. I could hardly endure myself, Sir--cutoff 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 flashedher love. She intimated by a gesture that it is better to be stabbedwith 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 likedthe modelling of his mouth and chin and the line of his brows. He likedhim altogether. He pronounced his verdict slowly. "I suppose, afterall, " he said, "that this is better than the tender solicitude of asafe and prosperous middleaged man. Eleanor, my dear, I've been thinkingto-day that a father who stands between his children and hardship, bydoing wrong, may really be doing them a wrong. You are a dear girl tome. 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 youngman, who saluted. 

"You'll come back to supper?" Scrope said, without thinking out theimplications of that invitation. 

She assented as carelessly. The fact that she and her lover were togo, with their meeting legalized and blessed, excluded all otherconsiderations. 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 youngpeople as they went eastward. As they walked their shoulders and elbowsbumped 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 urgentproblem when Eleanor had appeared. Then he remembered that Eleanor atthe time of her approach had seemed to be a solution rather than aninterruption. Well, she had her own life. She was making her own life. Instead of solving his problems she was solving her own. God bless thosedear 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 toelemental things, to heroic things. The years of comedy and comfort wereat an end in Europe; the age of steel and want was here. And he had beenthinking--What had he been thinking?

He mused, and the scheme of his perplexities reshaped itself in hismind. But at that time he did not realize that a powerful new lightwas falling upon it now, cast by the tragic illumination of these younglovers whose love began with a parting. He did not see how reality hadcome to all things through that one intense reality. He reverted tothe question as he had put it to himself, before first he recognizedEleanor. Did he believe in God? Should he go on with this Sunderbundadventure in which he no longer believed? Should he play for safety andcomfort, trusting to God's toleration? Or go back to his family and warnthem of the years of struggle and poverty his renunciation cast uponthem?

Somehow Lady Sunderbund's chapel was very remote and flimsy now, and thehardships of poverty seemed less black than the hardship of a youthfuldeath. 

Did he believe in God? Again he put that fundamental question tohimself. 

He sat very still in the sunset peace, with his eyes upon the steelmirror of the waters. The question seemed to fill the whole scene, towait, even as the water and sky and the windless trees were waiting.... 

And then by imperceptible degrees there grew in Scrope's mind thepersuasion that he was in the presence of the living God. This timethere was no vision of angels nor stars, no snapping of bow-strings, nothrobbing of the heart nor change of scene, no magic and melodramaticdrawing back of the curtain from the mysteries; the water and thebridge, the ragged black trees, and a distant boat that broke thesilvery calm with an arrow of black ripples, all these things were stillbefore him. But God was there too. God was everywhere about him. Thispersuasion was over him and about him; a dome of protection, a power inhis nerves, a peace in his heart. It was an exalting beauty; it was aperfected conviction.... This indeed was the coming of God, the realcoming of God. For the first time Scrope was absolutely sure thatfor the rest of his life he would possess God. Everything that had soperplexed him seemed to be clear now, and his troubles lay at the footof this last complete realization like a litter of dust and leaves inthe 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 ofthings that hitherto had been higgledy-piggledy, contradictory andincongruous in his mind became lucid, serene, full and assured. Heseemed to see all things plainly as one sees things plainly throughperfectly clear still water in the shadows of a summer noon. His doubtsabout God, his periods of complete forgetfulness and disregard of God, this conflict of his instincts and the habits and affections ofhis daily life with the service of God, ceased to be perplexingincompatibilities and were manifest as necessary, understandable aspectsof the business of living. 

It was no longer a riddle that little immediate things should seemof more importance than great and final things. For man is a creaturethrusting his way up from the beast to divinity, from the blindness ofindividuality to the knowledge of a common end. We stand deep inthe engagements of our individual lives looking up to God, and onlyrealizing in our moments of exaltation that through God we can escapefrom and rule and alter the whole world-wide scheme of individual lives. Only in phases of illumination do we realize the creative powers thatlie ready to man's hand. Personal affections, immediate obligations, ambitions, self-seeking, these are among the natural and essentialthings of our individual lives, as intimate almost as our primordiallusts and needs; God, the true God, is a later revelation, a newer, lessnatural thing in us; a knowledge still remote, uncertain, and confusedwith superstition; an apprehension as yet entangled with barbarictraditions of fear and with ceremonial surgeries, blood sacrifices, andthe maddest barbarities of thought. We are only beginning to realizethat God is here; so far as our minds go he is still not herecontinually; we perceive him and then again we are blind to him. Godis the last thing added to the completeness of human life. To most Hispresence is imperceptible throughout their lives; they know as littleof him as a savage knows of the electric waves that beat through usfor ever from the sun. All this appeared now so clear and necessaryto Scrope that he was astonished he had ever found the quality ofcontradiction in these manifest facts. 

In this unprecedented lucidity that had now come to him, Scrope saw asa clear and simple necessity that there can be no such thing as acontinuous living presence of God in our lives. That is an unreasonabledesire. There is no permanent exaltation of belief. It is contrary tothe nature of life. One cannot keep actively believing in and realizingGod round all the twenty-four hours any more than one can keep awakethrough the whole cycle of night and day, day after day. If it werepossible so to apprehend God without cessation, life would dissolve inreligious ecstasy. But nothing human has ever had the power to hold thecurtain of sense continually aside and retain the light of God always. We must get along by remembering our moments of assurance. Even Jesushimself, 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, asit were, from such immediate convictions. That is in the constitution oflife. Our ordinary state of belief, even when we are free from doubt, is necessarily far removed from the intuitive certainty of sight andhearing. It is a persuasion, it falls far short of perception.... 

"We don't know directly, " Scrope said to himself with a checking gestureof the hand, "we don't see. We can't. We hold on to the rememberedglimpse, we go over our reasons. "... 

And it was clear too just because God is thus manifest like themomentary drawing of a curtain, sometimes to this man for a time andsometimes to that, but never continuously to any, and because theperception of him depends upon the ability and quality of the perceiver, because to the intellectual man God is necessarily a formula, to theactive 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 andspecial forms of service to justify a priesthood. "God is God, " hewhispered to himself, and the phrase seemed to him the discovery ofa sufficient creed. God is his own definition; there is no otherdefinition of God. Scrope had troubled himself with endless argumentswhether God was a person, whether he was concerned with personaltroubles, whether he loved, whether he was finite. It were as reasonableto argue whether God was a frog or a rock or a tree. He had imagined Godas a figure of youth and courage, had perceived him as an effulgenceof leadership, a captain like the sun. The vision of his drug-quickenedmind had but symbolized what was otherwise inexpressible. Of that he wasnow sure. He had not seen the invisible but only its sign and visiblelikeness. He knew now that all such presentations were true and that allsuch presentations were false. Just as much and just as little was Godthe darkness and the brightness of the ripples under the bows of thedistant boat, the black beauty of the leaves and twigs of those treesnow acid-clear against the flushed and deepening sky. These riddles ofthe profundities were beyond the compass of common living. They werebeyond the needs of common living. He was but a little earth parasite, sitting idle in the darkling day, trying to understand his infinitesimalfunctions on a minor planet. Within the compass of terrestrial livingGod showed himself in its own terms. The life of man on earth was astruggle for unity of spirit and for unity with his kind, and the aspectof God that alone mattered to man was a unifying kingship without andwithin. So long as men were men, so would they see God. Only when theyreached the crest could they begin to look beyond. So we knew God, soGod was to us; since we struggled, he led our struggle, since we werefinite and mortal he defined an aim, his personality was the answer toour personality; but God, except in so far as he was to us, remainedinaccessible, inexplicable, wonderful, shining through beauty, shiningbeyond research, greater than time or space, above good and evil andpain and pleasure. 

(12)

Serope's mind was saturated as it had never been before by his sense ofthe immediate presence of God. He floated in that realization. Hewas not so much thinking now as conversing starkly with the divineinterlocutor, who penetrated all things and saw into and illuminatedevery recess of his mind. He spread out his ideas to the test of thispresence; he brought out his hazards and interpretations that this lightmight 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 andthe riddle before him. The first had shown him the personal human aspectof God, he had seen God as the unifying captain calling for his personalservice, the second had set the stage for that service in the spectacleof mankind's adventure. He had been shown a great multitude of humanspirits reaching up at countless points towards the conception of theracial unity under a divine leadership, he had seen mankind on theverge of awakening to the kingdom of God. "That solves no mystery, "he whispered, gripping the seat and frowning at the water; "mysteriesremain 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 beenasking always; the question that this moment now will answer; what haveI to do?... "

God was coming into the life of all mankind in the likeness of a captainand a king; all the governments of men, all the leagues of men, theirdebts and claims and possessions, must give way to the world republicunder God the king. For five troubled years he had been staring religionin the face, and now he saw that it must mean this--or be no more thanfetishism, Obi, Orphic mysteries or ceremonies of Demeter, a legacyof mental dirtiness, a residue of self-mutilation and superstitioussacrifices from the cunning, fear-haunted, ape-dog phase of humandevelopment. But it did mean this. And every one who apprehended as muchwas 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, topropagate the idea of it, to establish the method of it, to incorporateall that one made and all that one did into its growing reality, was theonly 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 tohis idea. "And now for my part, " he whispered, brows knit, "now for mypart. "

Ever since he had given his confirmation addresses he had been clearthat his task, or at least a considerable portion of his task, wasto tell of this faith in God and of this conception of service in hiskingdom as the form and rule of human life and human society. But up tonow he had been floundering hopelessly in his search for a method andmeans of telling. That, he saw, still needed to be thought out. Forexample, one cannot run through the world crying, "The Kingdom of Godis at hand. " Men's minds were still so filled with old theological ideasthat for the most part they would understand by that only a fantasy ofsome great coming of angels and fiery chariots and judgments, and hardlya soul but would doubt one's sanity and turn scornfully away. But onemust proclaim God not to confuse but to convince men's minds. It wasthat and the habit of his priestly calling that had disposed him towardsa pulpit. There he could reason and explain. The decorative geniusof Lady Sunderbund had turned that intention into a vast iridescentabsurdity. 

This sense he had of thinking openly in the sight of God, enabled him tosee the adventure of Lady Sunderbund without illusion and without shame. He saw himself at once honest and disingenuous, divided between twoaims. He had no doubt now of the path he had to pursue. A stronger manof permanently clear aims might possibly turn Lady Sunderbund into auseful opportunity, oblige her to provide the rostrum he needed; but forhimself, he knew he had neither the needed strength nor clearness;she would smother him in decoration, overcome him by her picturesquepersistence. It might be ridiculous to run away from her, but it wasnecessary. And he was equally clear now that for him there must beno idea of any pulpit, of any sustained mission. He was a man ofintellectual moods; only at times, he realized, had he the inspirationof truth; upon such uncertain snatches and glimpses he must live; tomake 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 generalthings again. Had God any need of organized priests at all? Wasn't thatjust what had been the matter with religion for the last three thousandyears?

His vision and his sense of access to God had given a new courage tohis mind; in these moods of enlightenment he could see the world as acomprehensible ball, he could see history as an understandable drama. Hehad always been on the verge of realizing before, he realized now, thetwo entirely different and antagonistic strands that interweave in thetwisted rope of contemporary religion; the old strand of the priest, the fetishistic element of the blood sacrifice and the obscene rite, theelement of ritual and tradition, of the cult, the caste, the consecratedtribe; and interwoven with this so closely as to be scarcely separablein any existing religion was the new strand, the religion of theprophets, the unidolatrous universal worship of the one true God. Priestreligion is the antithesis to prophet religion. He saw that thefounders of all the great existing religions of the world had been likehimself--only that he was a weak and commonplace man with no creativeforce, and they had been great men of enormous initiative--men reachingout, and never with a complete definition, from the old kind of religionto the new. The Hebrew prophets, Jesus, whom the priests killed whenPilate would have spared him, Mohammed, Buddha, had this much in commonthat they had sought to lead men from temple worship, idol worship, fromrites and ceremonies and the rule of priests, from anniversaryism andsacramentalism, into a direct and simple relation to the simplicity ofGod. Religious progress had always been liberation and simplification. But none of these efforts had got altogether clear. The organizingtemper in men, the disposition to dogmatic theorizing, the distrustof the discretion of the young by the wisdom of age, the fear ofindiscipline which is so just in warfare and so foolish in education, the tremendous power of the propitiatory tradition, had always caughtand crippled every new gospel before it had run a score of years. Jesusfor example gave man neither a theology nor a church organization; Hissacrament was an innocent feast of memorial; but the fearful, limited, imitative men he left to carry on his work speedily restored all thesethree abominations of the antiquated religion, theology, priest, andsacrifice. Jesus indeed, caught into identification with the ancientvictim of the harvest sacrifice and turned from a plain teacher intoa horrible blood bath and a mock cannibal meal, was surely the supremefeat of the ironies of chance.... 

"It is curious how I drift back to Jesus, " said Scrope. "I have neverseen how much truth and good there was in his teaching until I brokeaway from Christianity and began to see him plain. If I go on as I amgoing, I shall end a Nazarene.... "

He thought on. He had a feeling of temerity, but then it seemed as ifGod within him bade him be of good courage. 

Already in a glow of inspiration he had said practically as much ashe was now thinking in his confirmation address, but now he realizedcompletely what it was he had then said. There could be no priests, no specialized ministers of the one true God, because every man tothe utmost measure of his capacity was bound to be God's priest andminister. Many things one may leave to specialists: surgery, detailedadministration, chemistry, for example; but it is for every man to thinkhis own philosophy and think out his own religion. One man may tellanother, but no man may take charge of another. A man may avail himselfof electrician or gardener or what not, but he must stand directlybefore God; he may suffer neither priest nor king. These other thingsare incidental, but God, the kingdom of God, is what he is for. 

"Good, " he said, checking his reasoning. "So I must bear witness toGod--but neither as priest nor pastor. I must write and talk about himas I can. No reason why I should not live by such writing and talking ifit 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 barredwith deep bluish purple bands drawn across a chilly brightness thathad already forgotten the sun, the trees were black and dim, but hisunderstanding of his place and duty was growing very definite. 

"And this duty to bear witness to God's kingdom and serve it is so plainthat I must not deflect my witness even by a little, though to doso means comfort and security for my wife and children. God comesfirst.... "

"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, tohis fundamental problem again. He sat darkly reluctant. 

"I must not play priest or providence to them, " he admitted at last. "Imust not even stand between God and them. "

He saw now what he had been doing; it had been the flaw in his faiththat he would not trust his family to God. And he saw too that thisdistrust has been the flaw in the faith of all religious systemshitherto.... 

(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 andassumptions and implications of his rectory upbringing to his presentstark and simple realization of God, he had at times made someremarkable self-identifications. He was naturally much given to analogy;every train of thought in his mind set up induced parallel currents. Hehad likened himself to the Anglican church, to the whole Christian body, as, for example, in his imagined second conversation with the angelof God. But now he found himself associating himself with a still morefar-reaching section of mankind. This excess of solicitude was traceableperhaps in nearly every one in all the past of mankind who had ever hadthe vision of God. An excessive solicitude to shield those others fromone's own trials and hardships, to preserve the exact quality of therevelation, for example, had been the fruitful cause of cripplingerrors, spiritual tyrannies, dogmatisms, dissensions, and futilities. "Suffer little children to come unto me"; the text came into his headwith an effect of contribution. The parent in us all flares out at thethought of the younger and weaker minds; we hide difficulties, seek tospare them from the fires that temper the spirit, the sharp edge ofthe truth that shapes the soul. Christian is always trying to have acarriage sent back from the Celestial City for his family. Why, we ask, should they flounder dangerously in the morasses that we escaped, orwander in the forest in which we lost ourselves? Catch these soulsyoung, therefore, save them before they know they exist, kidnap them toheaven; vaccinate them with a catechism they may never understand, lullthem into comfort and routine. Instinct plays us false here as it playsthe savage mother false when she snatches her fevered child from thedoctor's hands. The last act of faith is to trust those we love toGod.... 

Hitherto he had seen the great nets of theological overstatement anddogma that kept mankind from God as if they were the work of purely evilthings in man, of pride, of self-assertion, of a desire to possess anddominate the minds and souls of others. It was only now that he saw howlarge a share in the obstruction of God's Kingdom had been played by thelove of the elder and the parent, by the carefulness, the fussy care, of good men and women. He had wandered in wildernesses of unbelief, indangerous places of doubt and questioning, but he had left his wife andchildren safe and secure in the self-satisfaction of orthodoxy. To noneof them except to Eleanor had he ever talked with any freedom of hisnew apprehensions of religious reality. And that had been at Eleanor'sinitiative. There was, he saw now, something of insolence and somethingof treachery in this concealment. His ruling disposition throughout thecrisis had been to force comfort and worldly well-being upon all thosedependants even at the price of his own spiritual integrity. In no wayhad he consulted them upon the bargain.... While we have pottered, eachfor the little good of his own family, each for the lessons and clothesand leisure of his own children, assenting to this injustice, conformingto that dishonest custom, being myopically benevolent and fundamentallytreacherous, our accumulated folly has achieved this catastrophe. It isnot so much human wickedness as human weakness that has permitted theyouth 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, thetrue wellbeing of the children of men.... 

It wasn't fair to them. But now he saw how unfair it was to them in alight that has only shone plainly upon European life since the greatinterlude of the armed peace came to an end in August, 1914. Untilthat time it had been the fashion to ignore death and evade poverty andnecessity for the young. We can shield our young no longer, death hasbroken through our precautions and tender evasions--and his eyes wenteastward into the twilight that had swallowed up his daughter and herlover. 

The tumbled darkling sky, monstrous masses of frowning blue, with icygaps of cold light, was like the great confusions of the war. All ouryouth has had to go into that terrible and destructive chaos--because ofthe kings and churches and nationalities sturdier-souled men would haveset aside. 

Everything was sharp and clear in his mind now. Eleanor after all hadbrought him his solution. 

He sat quite still for a little while, and then stood up and turnednorthward towards Notting Hill. 

The keepers were closing Kensington Gardens, and he would have to skirtthe 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 hisfaith that he was presently to make to his family. There was no one tointerrupt him and nothing to embarrass him, and so he was able toset out everything very clearly and convincingly. There was perhaps adisposition to digress into rather voluminous subordinate explanations, on such themes, for instance, as sacramentalism, whereon he foundhimself summarizing Frazer's Golden Bough, which the Chasters'controversy had first obliged him to read, and upon the irrelevance ofthe question of immortality to the process of salvation. But the realityof his eclaircissement was very different from anything he prepared inthese anticipations. 

Tea had been finished and put away, and the family was disposed aboutthe dining-room engaged in various evening occupations; Phoebe sat atthe table working at some mathematical problem, Clementina was readingwith her chin on her fist and a frown on her brow; Lady Ella, Miriam andDaphne were busy making soft washing cloths for the wounded; LadyElla had brought home the demand for them from the Red Cross centrein Burlington House. The family was all downstairs in the dining-roombecause the evening was chilly, and there were no fires upstairs yetin the drawing-room. He came into the room and exchanged greetings withLady Ella. Then he stood for a time surveying his children. Phoebe, henoted, was a little flushed; she put passion into her work; on the wholeshe was more like Eleanor than any other of them. Miriam knitted with asteady skill. Clementina's face too expressed a tussle. He took up oneof the rough-knit washing-cloths upon the side-table, and asked how manycould be made in an hour. Then he asked some idle obvious questionabout the fire upstairs. Clementina made an involuntary movement; he wasdisturbing her. He hovered for a moment longer. He wanted to catch hiswife's eye and speak to her first. She looked up, but before he couldconvey his wish for a private conference with her, she smiled at him andthen bent over her work again. 

He went into the back study and lit his gas fire. Hitherto he had alwaysmade a considerable explosion when he did so, but this time by takingthought and lighting his match before he turned on the gas he did itwith only a gentle thud. Then he lit his reading-lamp and pulled downthe blind--pausing for a time to look at the lit dressmaker's opposite. Then he sat down thoughtfully before the fire. Presently Ella would comein and he would talk to her. He waited a long time, thinking only weaklyand inconsecutively, and then he became restless. Should he call her?

But he wanted their talk to begin in a natural-seeming way. He did notwant the portentousness of "wanting to speak" to her and calling her outto him. He got up at last and went back into the other room. Clementinahad gone upstairs, and the book she had been reading was lying closed onthe sideboard. He saw it was one of Chasters' books, he took it up, itwas "The Core of Truth in Christianity, " and he felt an irrationalshock at the idea of Clementina reading it. In spite of his ownimmense changes of opinion he had still to revise his conception of thepolemical Chasters as an evil influence in religion. He fidgetedpast his wife to the mantel in search of an imaginary mislaid pencil. Clementina came down with some bandage linen she was cutting out. Hehung over his wife in a way that he felt must convey his desire for aconversation. Then he picked up Chasters' book again. "Does any one wantthis?" he asked. 

"Not if I may have it again, " consented Clementina. 

He took it back with him and began to read again those familiarcontroversial pages. He read for the best part of an hour with his kneesdrying until they smoked over the gas. What curious stuff it was! Howit wrangled! Was Chasters a religious man? Why did he write thesebooks? Had he really a passion for truth or only a Swift-like hatredof weakly-thinking people? None of this stuff in his books was reallywrong, provided it was religious-spirited. Much of it had been indeeddestructively illuminating to its reader. It let daylight through allsorts of walls. Indeed, the more one read the more vividly true itsacid-bit lines became.... And yet, and yet, there was something hatefulin the man's tone. Scrope held the book and thought. He had seenChasters once or twice. Chasters had the sort of face, the sort ofvoice, the sort of bearing that made one think of his possibly sayingupon occasion, rudely and rejoicing, "More fool you!" NeverthelessScrope perceived now with an effort of discovery that it was fromChasters that he had taken all the leading ideas of the new faith thatwas in him. Here was the stuff of it. He had forgotten how much of itwas here. During those months of worried study while the threat ofa Chasters prosecution hung over him his mind had assimilated almostunknowingly every assimilable element of the Chasters doctrine; hehad either assimilated and transmuted it by the alchemy of his owntemperament, or he had reacted obviously and filled in Chasters' gapsand pauses. Chasters could beat a road to the Holy of Holies, and shyat entering it. But in spite of all the man's roughness, in spite of acurious flavour of baseness and malice about him, the spirit of truthhad spoken through him. God has a use for harsh ministers. In one manGod 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 nicepeople. In these matters of evidence and argument, in his contempt foramiable, demoralizing compromise, Chasters served God as Scrope couldnever hope to serve him. Scrope's new faith had perhaps been altogetherimpossible if the Chasters controversy had not ploughed his mind. 

For a time Scrope dwelt upon this remarkable realization. Then ashe turned over the pages his eyes rested on a passage of uncivil andungenerous sarcasm. Against old Likeman of all people!... 

What did a girl like Clementina make of all this? How had she got thebook? From Eleanor? The stuff had not hurt Eleanor. Eleanor had beenable to take the good that Chasters taught, and reject the evil of hisspirit.... 

He thought of Eleanor, gallantly working out her own salvation. Theworld was moving fast to a phase of great freedom--for the young and thebold.... He liked that boy.... 

His thoughts came back with a start to his wife. The evening wasslipping by and he had momentous things to say to her. He went and justopened the door. 

"Ella!" he said. 

"Did you want me?"

"Presently. "

She put a liberal interpretation upon that "presently, " so that afterwhat 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 shecame to him. 

"Shut that door, please, " he said, and felt the request had just thatflavour of portentousness he wished to avoid. 

"What is it?" she asked. 

"I wanted to talk to you--about some things. I've done something ratherserious 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 thegas flames, "I've never thought that we should all have to live in thiscrowded house for long. "

"All!" she interrupted in a voice that made him look up sharply. "You'renot going away, Ted?"

"Oh, no. But I hoped we should all be going away in a little time. Itisn'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 enabledus 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. Ihad 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 downagain and frowned. "I can't do that chapel business, " he said. "I've hadto 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 andher 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 keepmy conscience. It's been a horrible riddle for me. It means plunginginto all this poverty for good. But I can't work with her, Ella. She'simpossible. "

"You mean--you're going to break with Lady Sunderbund?"

"I must. "

"Then, Teddy!"--she was a woman groping for flight amidst intolerableperplexities--"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 hiswife rejoicing as if she had heard good news. 

Their minds were held for a minute by the sound of some one knockingat the house door; one of the girls opened the door, there was a briefhubbub in the passage and then they heard a cry of "Eleanor!" throughthe folding doors. 

"There's Eleanor, " he said, realizing he had told his wife nothing ofthe 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 thePark. By accident. She's come up unexpectedly. To meet a boy going tothe front. Quite a nice boy. Son of Riverton the doctor. The parting hadmade them understand one another. It's all right, Ella. It's a littleirregular, but I'd stake my life on the boy. She's very lucky. "

Eleanor appeared through the folding doors. She came to business atonce. 

"I promised you I'd come back to supper here, Daddy, " she said. "But Idon'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 wasmaking the dining-room an auditorium for their dialogue. She shut themdeftly. 

"I have told Mummy, " Scrope explained. "Bring him in to supper. We oughtto 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 herhusband that night. "It's an exceptional occasion, " said Scrope, andEleanor 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 andcame back and kissed her father. Then she kissed her mother. "It isso kind of you, " she said, and was gone. They listened to her passagethrough 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 likea schoolboy. A young thing. Because of the political foolery that wepriests and teachers have suffered in the place of the Kingdom of God, because we have allowed the religion of Europe to become a lie; becauseno 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 witha parting.... It's like a knife slashing at all our appearances anddiscretions.... Think of our lovemaking.... "

The front door banged. 

He had some idea of resuming their talk. But his was a scattered mindnow. 

"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 feltthat momentous words impended. But Phoebe had emerged victorious fromher mathematical struggle, and she seemed to eat with better appetitethan she had shown for some time. It was a cold meat supper; Lady Ellahad found it impossible to keep up the regular practice of a cookeddinner in the evening, and now it was only on Thursdays that theScropes, to preserve their social tradition, dressed and dined; the restof the week they supped. Lady Ella never talked very much at supper;this evening was no exception. Clementina talked of London Universityand Bedford College; she had been making enquiries; Daphne describedsome of the mistresses at her new school. The feeling that something wasexpected had got upon Scrope's nerves. He talked a little in a flat andobvious way, and lapsed into thoughtful silences. While supper was beingcleared away he went back into his study. 

Thence he returned to the dining-room hearthrug as his family resumedtheir various occupations. 

He tried to speak in a casual conversational tone. 

"I want to tell you all, " he said, "of something that has happenedto-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 whatwas 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'shand 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 certainlyhave exceeded fifteen hundred pounds a year. "

Clementina looked up now. This was not what she expected. Her expressionconveyed protesting enquiry. 

"I want you all to understand why I did that and why we are in theposition we are in, and what lies before us. I want you to know what hasbeen going on in my mind. "

He looked down at the hearthrug, and tried to throw off a memory of hisPrinchester classes for young women, that oppressed him. His mannerhe forced to a more familiar note. He stuck his hands into his trouserpockets. 

"You know, my dears, I had to give up the church. I just simply didn'tbelieve any more in orthodox Church teaching. And I feel I've neverexplained that properly to you. Not at all clearly. I want to explainthat now. It's a queer thing, I know, for me to say to you, but I wantyou to understand that I am a religious man. I believe that God mattersmore than wealth or comfort or position or the respect of men, that healso matters more than your comfort and prosperity. God knows I havecared for your comfort and prosperity. I don't want you to think that inall these changes we have been through lately, I haven't been aware ofall 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 arehorribly crowded. It is a house that seems almost contrived for smalldiscomforts. This narrow passage outside; the incessant going up anddown stairs. And there are other things. There is the blankness of ourLondon Sundays. What is the good of pretending? They are desolating. There's the impossibility too of getting good servants to come into ourdug-out kitchen. I'm not blind to all these sordid consequences. But allthe same, God has to be served first. I had to come to this. I felt Icould 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 largelyfor your sakes. But I had to obey my conviction.... I haven't talkedto you about these things as much as I should have done, but partly atleast that is due to the fact that my own mind has been changing andreconsidering, going forward and going back, and in that fluid stateit didn't seem fair to tell you things that I might presently findmistaken. 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 theopinions in which I grew up and in which you have grown up. There wereworries at Princhester; I didn't let you know much about them, but therewere. There was something harsh and cruel in that atmosphere. I saw forthe first time--it's a lesson I'm still only learning--how harsh andgreedy rich people and employing people are to poor people and workingpeople, and how ineffective our church was to make things better. Thatstruck me. There were religious disputes in the diocese too, and theyshook me. I thought my faith was built on a rock, and I found it wasbuilt on sand. It was slipping and sliding long before the war. But thewar brought it down. Before the war such a lot of things in England andEurope seemed like a comedy or a farce, a bad joke that one tolerated. One tried half consciously, half avoiding the knowledge of what one wasdoing, to keep one's own little circle and life civilized. The war shookall those ideas of isolation, all that sort of evasion, down. The worldis the rightful kingdom of God; we had left its affairs to kings andemperors and suchlike impostors, to priests and profit-seekers andgreedy men. We were genteel condoners. The war has ended that. Itthrusts into all our lives. It brings death so close--A fortnight agotwenty-seven people were killed and injured within a mile of this byZeppelin bombs.... Every one loses some one.... Because through all thattime men like myself were going through our priestly mummeries, abasingourselves to kings and politicians, when we ought to have been cryingout: 'No! No! There is no righteousness in the world, there is no rightgovernment, except it be the kingdom of God. '"

He paused and looked at them. They were all listening to him now. But hewas still haunted by a dread of preaching in his own family. He droppedto the conversational note again. 

"You see what I had in mind. I saw I must come out of this, and preachthe 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 tothe particular thing that has happened to-day. I did not think when Imade my final decision to leave the church that it meant such poverty asthis we are living in--permanently. That is what I want to make clear toyou. I thought there would be a temporary dip into dinginess, but thatwas all. There was a plan; at the time it seemed a right and reasonableplan; for setting up a chapel in London, a very plain and simpleundenominational chapel, for the simple preaching of the world kingdomof God. There was some one who seemed prepared to meet all the immediatedemands for such a chapel. "

"Was it Lady Sunderbund?" asked Clementina. 

Scrope was pulled up abruptly. "Yes, " he said. "It seemed at first aquite 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 noteof--hostility to Lady Sunderbund into this matter. " He addressedhimself rather more definitely to Lady Ella. "She's a woman of a veryextraordinary character, highly emotional, energetic, generous to anextraordinary 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 LadySunderbund has very much to do with this thing now. Her quality may havebrought out certain aspects of the situation rather more sharply thanthey might have been brought out under other circumstances, but ifthis chapel enterprise had been suggested by quite a different sort ofperson, by a man, or by a committee, in the end I think I should havecome to the same conclusion. Leave Lady Sunderbund out. Any chapel wasimpossible. It is just this specialization that has been the troublewith religion. It is just this tendency to make it the business ofa special sort of man, in a special sort of building, on a specialday--Every man, every building, every day belongs equally to God. That is my conviction. I think that the only possible existing sort ofreligions meeting is something after the fashion of the Quaker meeting. In that there is no professional religious man at all; not a trace ofthe sacrifices to the ancient gods.... And no room for a professionalreligions man.... " He felt his argument did a little escape him. Hesnatched, "That is what I want to make clear to you. God is not aspeciality; he is a universal interest. "

He stopped. Both Daphne and Clementina seemed disposed to say somethingand 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 ofvery broad Christians?"

"You are what you choose to be. If you want to keep in the church, thenyou must keep in the church. If you feel that the Christian doctrine isalive, 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 religiousfeeling that has a respect for Jesus, Christianity, then no doubt I ama Christian. But so was Mohammed at that rate. Let me tell you what Ibelieve. I believe in God, I believe in the immediate presence of God inevery human life, I believe that our lives have to serve the Kingdom ofGod.... "

"That practically is what Mr. Chasters calls 'The Core of Truth inChristianity. '"

"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 hedoes 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 youhave done. I don't mind--The girls don't mind--all this.... Not when weunderstand--as we do now. "

That was the limit of her eloquence. 

"Not now that we understand, Daddy, " said Clementina, and a faintflavour of Lady Sunderbund seemed to pass and vanish. 

There was a queer little pause. He stood rather distressed andperplexed, because the talk had not gone quite as he had intended itto go. It had deteriorated towards personal issues. Phoebe broke theawkwardness by jumping up and coming to her father. "Dear Daddy, " shesaid, and kissed him. 

"We didn't understand properly, " said Clementina, in the tone of one whoexplains away much--that had never been spoken.... 

"Daddy, " said Miriam with an inspiration, "may I play something to youpresently?"

"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 hisdaughters now. He felt it would be difficult to get back to usualnesswith them. To-night it would be impossible. To-morrow he must comedown to breakfast as though their talk had never occurred.... In hisrehearsal of this deliverance during his walk home he had spoken muchmore plainly of his sense of the coming of God to rule the world and endthe long age of the warring nations and competing traders, and he hadintended to speak with equal plainness of the passionate subordinationof the individual life to this great common purpose of God and man, anaspect he had scarcely mentioned at all. But in that little room, in thepresence of those dear familiar people, those great horizons of lifehad 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, bythe 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 realsense of God's presence and to his personal subordination to God'spurpose. It had been a little absurd, he perceived, to expect thesegirls to leap at once to a complete understanding of the halting hints, the allusive indications of the thoughts that now possessed his soul. Hetried like some maiden speaker to recall exactly what it was he had saidand 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 wasglowing and tender; she was in love again as she had not been since theshadow 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 wholequestion of religion in their lives, but eloquence had departed fromhim. 

"You see, Ella, life cannot get out of tragedy--and sordidtragedy--until we bring about the Kingdom of God. It's no unreality thathas made me come out of the church. "

"No, dear. No, " she said soothingly and reassuringly. "With all thesemere 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 hasbeen a dreadful year for you. "

"It was stupid of me, " she said, "but I have been so unhappy. It'sover 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 thechurch. "

"Things are so different now, " she said. 

Her heart dissolved within her into tender possessiveness. There cameflooding into her mind the old phrases of an ancient story: "Whitherthou goest I will go... Thy people shall be my people and thy God myGod.... The Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part theeand me. "

Just those words would Lady Ella have said to her husband now, but shewas capable of no such rhetoric. 

"Whither thou goest, " she whispered almost inaudibly, and she could getno further. "My dear, " she said. 

(18)

At two o'clock the next morning Scrope was still up. He was sitting overthe snoring gas fire in his study. He did not want to go to bed. Hismind was too excited, he knew, for any hope of sleep. In the last twelvehours, since he had gone out across the park to his momentous talk withLady Sunderbund, it seemed to him that his life had passed through itscardinal crisis and come to its crown and decision. The spiritual voyagethat had begun five years ago amidst a stormy succession of theologicalnightmares had reached harbour at last. He was established now in thesure conviction of God's reality, and of his advent to unify the livesof men and to save mankind. Some unobserved process in his mind hadperfected that conviction, behind the cloudy veil of his vacillationsand moods. Surely that work was finished now, and the day's experiencehad drawn the veil and discovered God established for ever. 

He contrasted this simple and overruling knowledge of God as the supremefact in a practical world with that vague and ineffective subject forsentiment who had been the "God" of his Anglican days. Some theologianonce spoke of God as "the friend behind phenomena"; that Anglican deityhad been rather a vague flummery behind court and society, wealth, "respectability, " and the comfortable life. And even while he had livedin lipservice to that complaisant compromise, this true God had beenhere, this God he now certainly professed, waiting for his allegiance, waiting to take up the kingship of this distraught and bloodstainedearth. The finding of God is but the stripping of bandages from theeyes. 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 hisvision of the silver sphere and of ten thousand diverse minds about theworld all making their ways to the same one conclusion. Here at last wasa king and emperor for mankind for whom one need have neither contemptnor resentment; here was an aim for which man might forge the steeland wield the scalpel, write and paint and till and teach. Upon thisconception he must model all his life. Upon this basis he must foundfriendships and co-operations. All the great religions, Christianity, Islam, in the days of their power and honesty, had proclaimed the adventof this kingdom of God. It had been their common inspiration. A religionsurrenders when it abandons the promise of its Millennium. He hadrecovered that ancient and immortal hope. All men must achieve it, andwith their achievement the rule of God begins. He muttered his faith. Itmade 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 notGodward. 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 cando 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 thatwas finding its way to enlistment round and about the earth. He was notalone. While the kings of this world fought for dominion these othersgathered and found themselves and one another, these others of the faiththat grows plain, these men who have resolved to end the bloodstainedchronicles of the Dynasts and the miseries of a world that trades inlife, for ever. They were many men, speaking divers tongues. He wasbut one who obeyed the worldwide impulse. He could smile at the artlessvanity that had blinded him to the import of his earlier visions, thathad made him imagine himself a sole discoverer, a new Prophet, that hadbrought him so near to founding a new sect. Every soldier in the newhost was a recruiting sergeant according to his opportunity.... And nonewas 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 earthof which he would be one of the makers; it was a dream of a shadowysplendour of cities, of great scientific achievements, of a universalbeauty, of beautiful people living in the light of God, of a splendidadventure, thrusting out at last among the stars. But neither hisnatural bent nor his mental training inclined him to mechanical oradministrative explicitness. Much more was his dream a vision ofmen inwardly ennobled and united in spirit. He saw history growingreasonable and life visibly noble as mankind realized the divine aim. All the outward peace and order, the joy of physical existence finelyconceived, the mounting power and widening aim were but the expressionand verification of the growth of God within. Then we would bearchildren for finer ends than the blood and mud of battlefields. Lifewould tower up like a great flame. By faith we reached forward to that. The vision grew more splendid as it grew more metaphorical. And theprice one paid for that; one gave sham dignities, false honour, aLevitical righteousness, immediate peace, one bartered kings andchurches for God.... He looked at the mean, poverty-struck room, hemarked the dinginess and tawdriness of its detail and all the sordidevidences of ungracious bargaining and grudging service in itsappointments. 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 indug-outs and dying gaily in muddy trenches, they had given limbs andlives, eyes and the joy of movement, prosperity and pride, for a smallercause and a feebler assurance than this that he had found.... 

(19)

Presently his thoughts were brought back to his family by the sounds ofEleanor's return. He heard her key in the outer door; he heard her moveabout in the hall and then slip lightly up to bed. He did not go out tospeak 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 nolonger dominated her mind. He recalled her departing figure and how shehad walked, touching and looking up to her young mate, and he a littleleaning to her.... 

"God bless them and save them, " he said.... 

He thought of her sisters. They had said but little to his clumsyexplanations. He thought of the years and experience that they mustneeds pass through before they could think the fulness of his presentthoughts, and so he tempered his disappointment. They were a gallantgroup, he felt. He had to thank Ella and good fortune that so they were. There was Clementina with her odd quick combatant sharpness, a harderbeing than Eleanor, but nevertheless a fine-spirited and even moreindependent. There was Miriam, indefatigably kind. Phoebe too had a realpassion of the intellect and Daphne an innate disposition to service. But it was strange how they had taken his proclamation of a conclusivebreach with the church as though it was a command they must, at leastoutwardly, obey. He had expected them to be more deeply shocked; he hadthought he would have to argue against objections and convert them tohis views. Their acquiescence was strange. They were content he shouldthink all this great issue out and give his results to them. And hiswife, 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 nothis wife meet God as he had met God? Why must Miriam put the fantasticquestion--as though it was not for her to decide: "Are we stillChristians?" And pursuing this thought, why couldn't Lady Sunderbund setup in religion for herself without going about the world seeking fora priest and prophet. Were women Undines who must get their souls frommortal 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 mostfatal 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 neverforget thee again. Save me from forgetfulness. And show thyself to thoseI love; show thyself to all mankind. Use me, O God, use me; but keep mysoul alive. Save me from the presumption of the trusted servant; save mefrom the vanity of authority.... 

"And let thy light shine upon all those who are so dear to me.... Savethem from me. Take their dear loyalty.... "

He paused. A flushed, childishly miserable face that stared indignantlythrough glittering tears, rose before his eyes. He forgot that he hadbeen addressing God. 

"How can I help you, you silly thing?" he said. "I would give my ownsoul to know that God had given his peace to you. I could not do as youwished. And I have hurt you!... You hurt yourself.... But all the timeyou would have hampered me and tempted me--and wasted yourself. It wasimpossible.... And yet you are so fine!"

He was struck by another aspect. 

"Ella was happy--partly because Lady Sunderbund was hurt and leftdesolated.... "

"Both of them are still living upon nothings. Living for nothings. Aphantom way of living.... "

He stared blankly at the humming blue gas jets amidst the incandescentasbestos for a space. 

"Make them understand, " he pleaded, as though he spoke confidentially ofsome desirable and reasonable thing to a friend who sat beside him. "Yousee it is so hard for them until they understand. It is easy enough whenone understands. Easy--" He reflected for some moments--"It is as ifthey could not exist--except in relationship to other definite people. I want them to exist--as now I exist--in relationship to God. KnowingGod.... "

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 adifficult task. "One is limited, " he said. "All one's ideas must fallwithin one's limitations. Faith is a sort of tour de force. A feat ofthe imagination. For such things as we are. Naturally--naturally.... Oneperceives 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