Part 38 (1/2)
”Was it Lady Sunderbund?” asked Clementina.
Scrope was pulled up abruptly. ”Yes,” he said. ”It seemed at first a quite hopeful project.”
”We'd have hated that,” said Clementina, with a glance as if for a.s.sent, at her mother. ”We should all have hated that.”
”Anyhow it has fallen through.”
”We don't mind that,” said Clementina, and Daphne echoed her words.
”I don't see that there is any necessity to import this note of--hostility to Lady Sunderbund into this matter.” He addressed himself rather more definitely to Lady Ella. ”She's a woman of a very extraordinary character, highly emotional, energetic, generous to an extraordinary extent....”
Daphne made a little noise like a comment.
A faint acerbity in her father's voice responded.
”Anyhow you make a mistake if you think that the personality of Lady Sunderbund has very much to do with this thing now. Her quality may have brought out certain aspects of the situation rather more sharply than they might have been brought out under other circ.u.mstances, but if this chapel enterprise had been suggested by quite a different sort of person, by a man, or by a committee, in the end I think I should have come to the same conclusion. Leave Lady Sunderbund out. Any chapel was impossible. It is just this specialization that has been the trouble with religion. It is just this tendency to make it the business of a special sort of man, in a special sort of building, on a special day--Every man, every building, every day belongs equally to G.o.d.
That is my conviction. I think that the only possible existing sort of religions meeting is something after the fas.h.i.+on of the Quaker meeting.
In that there is no professional religious man at all; not a trace of the sacrifices to the ancient G.o.ds.... And no room for a professional religions man....” He felt his argument did a little escape him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed, ”That is what I want to make clear to you. G.o.d is not a speciality; he is a universal interest.”
He stopped. Both Daphne and Clementina seemed disposed to say something and did not say anything.
Miriam was the first to speak. ”Daddy,” she said, ”I know I'm stupid.
But are we still Christians?”
”I want you to think for yourselves.”
”But I mean,” said Miriam, ”are we--something like Quakers--a sort of very broad Christians?”
”You are what you choose to be. If you want to keep in the church, then you must keep in the church. If you feel that the Christian doctrine is alive, then it is alive so far as you are concerned.”
”But the creeds?” asked Clementina.
He shook his head. ”So far as Christianity is defined by its creeds, I am not a Christian. If we are going to call any sort of religious feeling that has a respect for Jesus, Christianity, then no doubt I am a Christian. But so was Mohammed at that rate. Let me tell you what I believe. I believe in G.o.d, I believe in the immediate presence of G.o.d in every human life, I believe that our lives have to serve the Kingdom of G.o.d....”
”That practically is what Mr. Chasters calls 'The Core of Truth in Christianity.'”
”You have been reading him?”
”Eleanor lent me the book. But Mr. Chasters keeps his living.”
”I am not Chasters,” said Scrope stiffly, and then relenting: ”What he does may be right for him. But I could not do as he does.”
Lady Ella had said no word for some time.
”I would be ashamed,” she said quietly, ”if you had not done as you have done. I don't mind--The girls don't mind--all this.... Not when we understand--as we do now.”
That was the limit of her eloquence.
”Not now that we understand, Daddy,” said Clementina, and a faint flavour of Lady Sunderbund seemed to pa.s.s and vanish.
There was a queer little pause. He stood rather distressed and perplexed, because the talk had not gone quite as he had intended it to go. It had deteriorated towards personal issues. Phoebe broke the awkwardness by jumping up and coming to her father. ”Dear Daddy,” she said, and kissed him.