Part 2 (1/2)
There was rapture in John's eyes. With a quick movement of his hands he seemed to spurn the entire materialism of Suss.e.x. After a pause, he continued:
”There is no asceticism in Suss.e.x, there is no yearning for anything higher or better. You--yes, you and the whole place are, in every sense of the word, Conservative--that is to say, brutally satisfied with the present ordering of things.”
”Now, now, my dear John, by your own account Pearson is not by any means so satisfied with the present condition of things as you yourself would wish him to be.”
John laughed loudly, and it was clear that the paradox in no way displeased him.
”But we were speaking,” he continued, ”not of temporal, but of spiritual pains and penalties. Now, anyone who did not know me--and none will ever know me--would think that I had not a care in the world. Well, I have suffered as horribly, I have been tortured as cruelly, as ever poor mortal was.... I have lain on the floor of my room, my heart dead within me, and moaned and shrieked with horror.”
”Horror of what?”
”Horror of death and a worse horror of life. Few amongst men ever realise the truth of things, but there are rare occasions, moments of supernatural understanding or suffering (which are two words for one and the same thing), when we see life in all its worm-like meanness, and death in its plain, stupid loathsomeness. Two days out of this year live like fire in my mind. I went to my uncle Richard's funeral. There was cold meat and sherry on the table; a dreadful servant asked me if I would go up to the corpse-room. (Mark the expression.) I went. It lay swollen and featureless, and two busy hags lifted it up and packed it tight with wisps of hay, and mechanically uttered shrieks and moans.
”But, though the funeral was painfully obscene, it was not so obscene as the view of life I was treated to last week....
”Last week I was in London; I went to a place they call the 'Colonies.'
Till then I had never realised the foulness of the human animal, but there even his foulness was overshadowed by his stupidity. The ma.s.ses, yes, I saw the ma.s.ses, and I fed with them in their huge intellectual stye. The air was filled with lines of the most inconceivable flags, lines upon lines of pale yellow, and there were gla.s.s cases filled with pickle bottles, and there were piles of ropes and a machine in motion, and in nooks there were some dreadful lay figures, and written underneath them, 'Indian corn-seller,' 'Indian fish-seller.' And there was the Prince of Wales on horseback, three times larger than life; and there were stuffed deer upon a rock, and a Polar bear, and the Marquis of Lome underneath. In another room there were Indian houses, things in carved wood, and over each large placards announcing the popular dinner, the _buffet_, the _table d'hote_, at half-a-crown; and there were oceans of tea, and thousands of rolls of b.u.t.ter, and in the gardens the band played 'Thine alone' and 'Mine again.'
”It seemed as if all the back-kitchens and staircases in England had that day been emptied out--life-tattered housewives, girls grown stout on porter, pretty-faced babies, heavy-handed fathers, whistling boys in their sloppy clothes, and att.i.tudes curiously evidencing an odious domesticity....
”In the Greek and Roman life there was an ideal, and there was a great ideal in the monastic life of the Middle Ages; but an ideal is wholly wanting in nineteenth century life. I am not of these later days. I am striving to come to terms with life.”
”And you think you can do that best by folding vestments and reviling humanity. I do not see how you reconcile these opinions with the teaching of Christ--with the life of Christ.”
”Oh, of course, if you are going to use those arguments against me, I have done; I can say no more.”
Mr Hare did not answer, and at the end of a long silence John said:
”But, what do you say, supposing I show you over the college now, and when that's done you will come up to my room and we'll have a smoke before dinner?”
Mr Hare raised no objection, and the two men descended the staircase into the long stony corridor. The quadrangle filled the diamond panes of the latticed windows with green, and the divine walking to and fro was a spot of black. There were pictures along the walls of the corridor--pictures of upturned faces and clasped hands--and these drew words of commiseration for the artistic ignorance of the College authorities from John's lips.
”And they actually believe that that dreadful monk with the skull is a real Ribera.... The chapel is on the right, the refectory on the left.
Come, let us see the chapel; I am anxious to hear what you think of my window.”
”It ought to be very handsome; it cost five hundred, did it not?”
”No, not quite so much as that,” John answered abruptly; and then, pa.s.sing through the communion rails, they stood under the multi-coloured glory of three bishops. Mr Hare felt that a good deal of rapture was expected of him; but in his efforts to praise, he felt he was exposing his ignorance. John called attention to the transparency of the green-watered skies; and turning their backs on the bishops, the blue ceiling with the gold stars was declared, all things considered, to be in excellent taste. The benches in the body of the church were for boys; the carved chairs set along both walls between the communion rails and the first steps of the altar were for the divines. The president and vice-president knelt facing each other. The priests, deacons, and sub-deacons followed according to their rank. There were slenderer benches, and these were for the choir; and from a music-book placed on wings of the great golden eagle, the leader conducted the singing.
The side altar, with the rich Turkey carpet spread over the steps, was St George's, and further on, in an addition made lately, there were two more altars, dedicated respectively to the Virgin and St Joseph.
”The maid-servants kneel in that corner. I have often suggested that they should be moved out of sight. You do not understand me.
Protestantism has always been more reconciled to the presence of women in sacred places than we. We would wish them beyond the precincts. And it is easy to imagine how the unspeakable feminality of those maid-servants jars a beautiful impression--the altar towering white with wax candles, the benedictive odour of incense, the richness of the vestments, treble voices of boys floating, and the sweetness of a long day spent about the sanctuary with flowers and chalices in my hands, fade in a sense of sullen disgust, in a revulsion of feeling which I will not attempt to justify.”
Then his thoughts, straying back to sudden recollections of monastic usages and habits, he said:
”I should like to scourge them out of this place.” And then, half playfully, half seriously, and wholly conscious of the grotesqueness, he added:
”Yes, I am not at all sure that a good whipping would not do them good.
They should be well whipped. I believe that there is much to be said in favour of whipping.”