S TELLA came back from Germany less foreign-looking than
Michael expected, and he could take a certain amount of
pleasure in her company at Bournemouth, For a time they were
well matched, as they walked with their mother under the pines.
Once, as they passed a bunch of old ladies on a seat, Stella
said to Michael:
“Did you hear what those people said?”
Michael had not heard, so Stella whispered:
“They said ‘What good-looking children!’ Shall we turn back and walk by
them again?”
“Whatever for?” Michael demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Stella, flapping the big violet bows in her
chestnut hair. “Only I like to hear people talking about me. I think
it’s interesting. I always try to hear what they say when I’m playing.”
“Mother,” Michael appealed, “don’t you think Stella ought not to be so
horribly conceited? I do.”
“Darling Stella,” said Mrs. Fane, “I’m afraid people spoil her. It
isn’t her fault.”
“It must be her fault,” argued Michael.
Michael remembered Miss Carthew’s admonition not to snub
Stella, but he could not help feeling that Miss Carthew herself
would have disapproved of this open vanity. He wished that Miss
Carthew were not now Mrs. Ross and far away in Edinburgh. He
felt almost a responsibility with regard to Stella, a highly
moral sensation of knowing better the world and its pitfalls
than she could. He feared for the effect of its lure upon
Stella and her vanity, and
was very anxious his sister should always comport herself with
credit to her only brother. In his mother’s attitude Michael
seemed to discern a dangerous inclination not to trouble about
Stella’s habit of thought. He resolved, when he and Stella
were alone together, to address his young sister seriously.
Stella’s nonchalance alarmed him more and more deeply as he
began to look back at his own life and to survey his wasted
years. Michael felt he must convince Stella that earnestness
was her only chance.
“You’re growing very fast, Michael,” said his mother one morning.
“Really I think you’re getting too big for Etons.”
Michael critically examined himself in his mother’s toilet-glass and
had to admit that his sleeves looked short and that his braces showed
too easily under his waistcoat. The fact that he could no longer survey
his reflection calmly and that he dreaded to see Stella admire herself
showed him something was wrong.
“Perhaps I’d better get a new suit,” he suggested.
In his blue serge suit, wearing what the shops called a Polo or
Shakespeare collar, Michael felt more at ease, although the sleeves
were now as much too long as lately his old sleeves were too short. The
gravity of this new suit confirmed his impression that age was stealing
upon him and made him the more inclined to lecture Stella. This desire
of his seemed to irritate his mother, who would protest:
“Michael, do leave poor Stella alone. I can’t think why you’ve suddenly
altered. One would think you’d got the weight of the world on your
shoulders.”
“Like Atlas,” commented Michael gloomily.
“I don’t know who it’s like,” said Mrs. Fane. “But it’s very
disagreeable for everybody round you.”
“Michael always thinks he knows about everything,” Stella put
in spitefully.
“Oh, shut up!” growled Michael.
He was beginning to feel that his mother admired Stella more
than himself, and the old jealousy of her returned. He was
often reproved for being untidy and, although he was no longer
inky and grubby, he did actually find that his hair refused to
grow neatly and that he was growing clumsy both in manners and
appearance. Stella always remained cool and exasperatingly
debonair under his rebukes, whereas he felt himself growing hot
and awkward. The old self-consciousness had returned and with
it two warts on his finger and an intermittent spot on his
chin. Also a down was visible on his face that somehow blunted
his profile and made him more prone than ever to deprecate the
habit of admiring oneself in a looking-glass. He felt impelled
to untie Stella’s violet bows whenever he caught her posing
before the mirror, and as the holidays advanced he and she grew
less and less well matched. The old worrying speculation about
his father returned together with a wish that his mother would
not dress in such gay colours. Michael admired her slimness and
tallness, but he wished that men would not turn round and stare
at her as she passed them. He used to stare back at the men
with a set frowning face and try to impress them with his
distaste for their manners; but day by day he grew more
miserable about his mother, and would often seek to dissuade
her from what he considered a too conspicuous hat or vivid
ribbon. She used to laugh and tell him that he was a regular
old ‘provincial.’ The opportunity for perfect confidence
between Michael and his mother seemed to have slipped by, and
he found it impossible now to make her talk about his father.
To be sure, she no longer tried to wave aside his enquiries;
but she did worse by answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to his questions
according to her mood, never seeming to care whether she
contradicted a previous statement or not.
Once, Michael asked straight out whether his father was in prison and
he was relieved when his mother rippled with laughter and told him he
was a stupid boy. At the same time, since he had been positively
assured his father was dead, Michael felt that laughter, however
convincing it were, scarcely became a widow.
“I cannot think what has happened to you, Michael. You were perfectly
charming all last term and never seemed to have a moment on your hands.
Now you hang about the house on these lovely fine days and mope and
grumble. I do wish you could enjoy yourself as you used to.”
“Well, I’ve got no friends down here,” Michael declared. “What is there
to do? I’m sick of the band, and the niggers are rotten, and Stella
always wants to hang about on the pier so that people can stare at her.
I wish she’d go back to her glorious Germany where everything is so
wonderful.”
“Why don’t you read? You used to love reading,” suggested Mrs. Fane.
“Oh, read!” exclaimed Michael. “There’s nothing to read. I hate Henty.
Always the same!”
“Well, I don’t know anything about Henty, but there’s Scott and Dickens
and——”
“I’ve read all them, mother,” Michael interrupted petulantly.
“Well, why don’t you ask Mrs. Rewins if you can borrow a book from her,
or I’ll ask her, as you don’t like going downstairs.”
Mrs. Rewins brought up an armful of books which Michael
examined dismally one by one. However, after several gilded
volumes of sermons and sentimental Sunday-school prizes, he
came across a tattered Newgate Calendar and Roderick Random,
both of which satisfied somewhat his new craving for
excitement. When he had finished these books, Mrs. Rewins
invited him to explore the cupboard
in her warm kitchen, and here Michael found Peregrine Pickle,
Tom Jones, a volume of Bentley’s Miscellany containing the
serial of Jack Sheppard by Harrison Ainsworth, and What Every
Woman of Forty-five ought to Know. The last work upset him
very much because he found it unintelligible in parts, and
where it was intelligible extremely alarming. An instinct of
shamefulness made him conceal this book in a drawer, but he
became very anxious to find out exactly how old his mother
was. She, however, was more elusive on this point than he had
ever known her, and each elaborate trap failed, even the
innocent production of the table for ascertaining anybody’s
age in a blue sixpenny Encyclopædia: still, the Encyclopædia
was not without its entertainment, and the table of diseases
at the end was very instructive. Among the books which Michael
had mined down in Mrs. Rewins’ kitchen was The Ingoldsby
Legends illustrated by Cruikshank. These he found very
enthralling, for though he was already acquainted with The
Jackdaw of Rheims, he now discovered many other poems still
more amusing, in many of which he came across with pleasure
quotations that he remembered to have heard used with much
effect by Mr. Neech in the Shell. The macabre and ghostly lays
did not affect him so much as the legends of the saints. These
he read earnestly as he read Don Quixote, discerning less of
laughter than of Gothic adventure in their fantastic pages,
while his brain was fired by the heraldic pomps and
ecclesiastical glories.
About this time he happened to pay a visit to Christchurch
Priory and by the vaulted airs of that sanctuary he was greatly
thrilled. The gargoyles and brasses and effigies of dead
knights called to him mysteriously, but the inappropriate
juxtaposition of an early Victorian tomb shocked him with a
sense of sacrilege. He could not bear to contemplate the
nautical trousers of the boy commemorated. Yet, simultaneously
with his outraged decorum,
he was attracted to this tomb, as if he detected in that
ingenuous boy posited among sad cherubs some kinship with
himself.
In bed that night Michael read The Ingoldsby Legends in a fever
of enjoyment, while the shadows waved about the ceiling and
walls of the seaside room in the vexed candlelight. As yet the
details of the poems did not gain their full effect, because
many of the words and references were not understood. He felt
that knowledge was necessary before he could properly enjoy the
colour of these tales. Michael had always been inclined to
crystallize in one strong figure of imagination his vague
impressions. Two years ago he had identified Mr. Neech with old
prints, with Tom Brown’s Schooldays and with shelves of
calf-bound books. Now in retrospect he, without being able to
explain his reason to himself, identified Mr. Neech with that
statue of the trousered boy in Christchurch Priory, and not
merely Mr. Neech but even The Ingoldsby Legends as well. He
felt that they were both all wrong in the sanctified glooms of
the Middle Ages, and yet he rejoiced to behold them there, as
if somehow they were a pledge of historic continuity. Without
the existence of the trousered boy Michael would scarcely have
believed in the reality of those stone ladies and carved
knights. The candlelight fluttered and jigged in the seaside
room, while Mr. Neech, The Ingoldsby Legends and the oratories
of Christchurch became more and more hopelessly confused.
Michael’s excited brain was formulating visions of immense
cathedrals beneath whose arches pattered continually the
populations of old prints: the tower of St. Mary’s College,
Oxford, rose, slim and lovely, against the storm-wrack of a
Doré sky: Don Quixote tilted with knights-at-arms risen from
the dead. Michael himself was swept along in cavalcades towards
the clouds with Ivanhoe, Richard Cœur de Lion, Roderick Random
and half a dozen woodcut murderers
from the Newgate Calendar. Then, just as the candlelight was
gasping and shimmering blue in the bowl of the candlestick, he
fell asleep.
In the sunshine of the next day Michael almost wondered whether like
someone in The Ingoldsby Legends he had ridden with witches on a
broomstick. All the cool security of boyhood had left him; he was in a
turmoil of desire for an astounding experience. He almost asked himself
what he wanted so dearly; and, as he pondered, out of the past in a
vision came the picture of himself staring at the boy who walked beside
the incense with a silver boat. What did the Lay of St. Alois say?
_This with his chasuble, this with his rosary,_
_This with his incense-pot holding his nose awry._
Michael felt a craving to go somewhere and smell that powerful odour
again. He remembered how the boy had put out his tongue and he envied
him such familiarity with pomps and glories.
“Are there any High Churches in Bournemouth?” he asked Mrs. Rewins.
“Very high. Incense and all that, you know.”
Mrs. Rewins informed him there was one church so high that some said it
was practically ‘Roming Catholic.’
“Where is it?” asked Michael, choking with excitement. Yet he
had never before wanted to go to church. In the days of Nurse
he had hated it. In the days of Miss Carthew he had only found
it endurable if his friends were present. He had loathed the
rustle of many women dressed in their best clothes. He had
hated the throaty voices of smooth-faced clergymen. He had
despised the sleek choir-boys smelling of yellow soap. Religion
had been compounded of Collects, Greek Testament, Offertory
Bags, varnish, qualms for the safety of one’s top-hat, the
pleasure of an extra large hassock, ambition to be grown up and
bend over instead of kneeling down, the podgy feel of a Prayer
Book,
and a profound disapproval that only Eton and Winchester among
public schools were mentioned in its diaphanous fumbling
pages. Now religion should be an adventure. The feeling that
he was embarking upon the unknown made Michael particularly
reticent, and he was afraid to tell his mother that on Sunday
morning he proposed to attend the service at St.
Bartholomew’s, lest she might suggest coming also. He did not
want to be irritated by Stella’s affectations and conceit, nor
did he wish to notice various women turning round to study his
mother’s hat. In the end Michael did not go on Sunday to the
church of his intention, because at the last moment he could
not brace himself to mumble an excuse.
Late on the afternoon of the following day Michael walked
through the gustiness of a swift-closing summer toward St.
Bartholomew’s, where it stood facing a stretch of sandy heather
and twisted pine trees on the outskirts of Bournemouth. The sky
was stained infrequently with the red of a lifeless sunset and,
as Michael watched the desolation of summer’s retreat, he
listened sadly to the sibilant heather lisping against the
flutes of the pines, while from time to time the wind drummed
against the buttresses and boomed against the bulk of the
church. Michael drew near the west door whose hinges and nails
stood out unnaturally distinct in the last light of the sun.
Abruptly on the blowy eve the church-bell began to ring, and
from various roads Michael saw people approaching, their heads
bent against the gale. At length he made up his mind to follow
one of the groups through the churchyard and presently, while
the gate rattled behind him in the wind, he reached the warm
glooms within. As he took his seat and perceived the altar
loaded with flowers, dazzling with lighted candles, he wondered
why this should be so on a Monday night in August. The air was
pungent with the smell of wax and the stale perfume of incense
on stone. The congregation was
scattered about in small groups and units, and the vaulted
silence was continually broken by coughs and sighs and hollow
footsteps. From the tower the bell rang in slow monotone,
while the wind whistled and moaned and flapped and boomed as
if, thought Michael, all the devils in hell were trying to
break into the holy building. The windows were now scarcely
luminous with the wan shadow of daylight and would indeed have
been opaque as coal had the inside of the church been better
lighted. But the few wavering gas-jets in the nave made all
seem dark save where the chancel, empty and candle-lit, shone
and sparkled in a radiancy. Something in Michael’s attitude
must have made a young man sitting behind lean over and ask if
he wanted a Prayer Book. Michael turned quickly to see a lean
and eager face.
“Yes, please. I left mine at home,” he answered.
“Well, come and sit by me,” said the young man.
Michael changed his place and the young man talked in a low whisper,
while the bell rang its monotone upon the gusts which swept howling
round the church.
“Solemn Evensong isn’t until seven o’clock. It’s our patronal festival,
St. Bartholomew’s Day—you know. We had a good Mass this morning. Every
year we get more people. Do you live in Bournemouth?”
“No,” whispered Michael. “I’m just here for the holidays.”
“What a pity,” said the stranger. “We do so want servers—you
know—decent-looking servers. Our boys are so clumsy. It’s not
altogether their fault—the cassocks—you know—they’re only in
two sizes. They trip up. I’m the Ceremonarius, and I can tell
you I have my work cut out. Of course I ought to have been
helping to-night. But I wasn’t sure I could get away from the
Bank in time. I hope Wilson—that’s our second thurifer—won’t go
wrong in the Magnificat. He usually does.”
The bell stopped: there was a momentary hush for the battling wind to
moan louder than ever: then the organ began to play and from the
sacristy came the sound of a chanted Amen. Choristers appeared followed
by two or three of the clergy, and when these had taken their places a
second procession appeared, with boys in scarlet and lace and a
tinkling censer and a priest in a robe of blood-red velvet patterned
with dull gold.
“That’s the new cope,” whispered the stranger. “Fine work, isn’t it?”
“Awfully decent,” Michael whispered back.
“All I hope is the acolytes will remember to put out the candles
immediately after the Third Collect. It’s so important,” said the
stranger.
“I expect they will,” whispered Michael encouragingly.
Then the Office began, and Michael, waiting for a spiritual experience,
communed that night with the saints of God, as during the Magnificat
his soul rose to divine glories on the fumes of the aspiring incense.
There was a quality in the voices of the boys which expressed for him
more beautifully than the full Sunday choir could have done, the pathos
of human praise and the purity of his own surrender to Almighty God.
The splendours of the Magnificat died away to a silence and one of the
clergy stepped from his place to read the Second Lesson. As he came
down the chancel steps Michael’s new friend whispered:
“The censing of the altar was all right. It’s really a good thing
sometimes to be a spectator—you know—one sees more.”
Michael nodded a vague assent. Already the voice of the lector was
vibrating through the church.
_In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the
first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary to see the sepulchre._
Michael thought to himself how he had come to St. Bartholomew’s when
Sunday was over. That was strange.
_His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white
as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and
became as dead men._
“I wish that boy Wiggins wouldn’t fidget with his zuchetto,” Michael’s
friend observed.
_And behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall
ye see him: lo, I have told you._
Michael felt an impulse to sob, as he mentally offered the best of
himself to the worship of Christ, for the words of the lesson were
striking on his soul like bells.
_And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some
doubted._
“Now you see the other boy has started fidgeting with _his_ ,”
complained the young man.
_And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world._ _Amen._
As the lector’s retreating footsteps died away into the choir the words
were burned on Michael’s heart, and for the first time he sang the Nunc
Dimittis with a sense of the privilege of personally addressing
Almighty God. When the Creed was chanted Michael uttered his belief
passionately, and while the Third Collect was being read between the
exalted candles of the acolytes he wondered why never before had the
words struck him with all their power against the fears and fevers of
the night.
_Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy
great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this
night, for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus
Christ._ _Amen._
The acolytes lowered their candles to extinguish them:
then they darkened the altar while the hymn was being sung,
and Michael’s friend gave a sigh of relief.
“Perfectly all right,” he whispered.
Michael himself was sorry to see the gradual extinction of the
altar-lights; he had concentrated upon that radiance his new desire of
adoration and a momentary chill fell upon him, as if the fiends without
were gaining strength and fury. All dread and doubt was allayed when,
after the murmured Grace of Our Lord, the congregation and the choir
and the officiant knelt in a silent prayer. The wind still shrieked and
thundered: the gas-jets waved uneasily above the huddled forms of the
worshippers: but over all that incense-clouded gloom lay a spirit of
tranquillity. Michael said the Our Father to himself and allowed his
whole being to expand in a warmth of surrender. The purification of
sincere prayer, voiced more by his attitude of mind than by any spoken
word, made him infinitely at peace with life.
When the choir and clergy had filed out and the sacristan like an old
rook came limping down the aisle to usher the congregation forth into
the dark wind of Bartlemy-tide, Michael’s friend said:
“Wait just a minute. I want to speak to Father Moneypenny for a moment,
and then we can walk back together.”
Michael nodded, and presently his friend came back from the sacristy
with Father Moneypenny in cassock and biretta, looking like the
photographs of clergymen that Michael remembered in Nurse’s album long
ago.
“So you enjoyed the Evensong?” enquired the priest. “Capital! You must
come to Mass next Sunday. There will be a procession. By the way,
Prout, perhaps your young friend would help us. We shall want extra
torch-boys.”
Mr. Prout agreed, and Michael, although he wondered what his
mother would say, was greatly excited by the idea. They were
standing now by the door of the church and as
it opened a gust of wind burst in and whistled round the
interior. Father Moneypenny shivered.
“What a night. The end of summer, I’m afraid.”
He closed the door, and Michael and Mr. Prout forced their way through
the gale over the wet gravel of the churchyard. The pine trees and the
heather made a melancholy concert, and they were glad to reach the
blown lamplight of the streets.
“Will you come round to my place?” Mr. Prout asked.
“Well, I ought to go back. My mater will be anxious,” said Michael.
Mr. Prout thereupon invited him to come round to-morrow afternoon.
“I shall be back from the Bank about five. Good night. You’ve got my
card? Bernard Prout, Esdraelon, Saxton Road. Good night. Pleased to
have met you.”
Mrs. Fane was surprized to hear of Michael’s visit to St.
Bartholomew’s.
“You’re getting so secretive, dearest boy. I’d no idea you were
becoming interested in religion.”
“Well, it is interesting,” said Michael.
“Of course. I know it must be. So many people think of nothing else.
And do you really want to march in the procession?”
“Yes, but don’t you and Stella come,” Michael said.
“Oh, I must, Michael. I’d love to see you in all those pretty clothes.”
“Well, I _can_ go round and see this chap Prout, can’t I?”
Michael asked.
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Fane replied. “Of course, I don’t know anything
about him. Is he a gentleman?”
“Of course he’s a gentleman,” affirmed Michael warmly. “Besides I don’t
see it matters a bit whether he’s a gentleman or not.”
“No, of course it doesn’t really, as it all has to do with
religion,” Mrs. Fane agreed. “Nothing is so mixed as religious
society.”
Saxton Road possessed no characteristic to distinguish it from many
similar roads in Bournemouth. A few hydrangeas debated in sheltered
corners whether they should be pink or blue, and the number of each
house was subordinate to its title. The gate of Esdraelon clicked
behind Michael’s entrance just as the gate of Homeview or Ardagh or
Glenside would have clicked. By the bay-window of the ground floor was
planted a young passion-flower whose nursery label lisped against the
brick-work, and whose tendrils were flattened beneath wads of
nail-pierced flannel. Michael was directed upstairs to Mr. Prout’s
sitting-room on the first floor, where the owner was arranging the
tea-cups.
“I’m so glad you were able to come,” he said.
Michael looked round the room with interest, and while the tea-cake
slowly cooled Mr. Prout discussed with enthusiasm his possessions.
“That’s St. Bernardine of Sienna,” he explained, pointing to a
coloured statuette. “My patron, you know. Curious I should have
been born on his day and be christened Bernard. I thought of
changing my name to Bernardine, but it’s so difficult at a
Bank. Of course, I have a cult for St. Bernard too, but I never
really can forgive him for opposing the Immaculate Conception.
Father Moneypenny and I have great arguments on that point. I’m
afraid he’s a _little_ bit wobbly. But absolutely sound on the
Assumption. Oh, absolutely, I’m glad to say. In fact, I don’t
mind telling you that next year we intend to keep it as a
Double of the First Class with Octave _which_ , of course, it
_is_ . This rosary is made of olive-wood from the Garden of
Gethsemane and I’m very anxious to get it blessed by the Pope.
Some friends of mine are going to Rome next Easter with a
Polytechnic tour, so I _may_ be able to manage it. But it’s
difficult. The Cardinals—you know,” said Mr.
Prout vaguely. “They’re inclined to be bitter against English
Catholics. Of course, Vaughan made the mistake of his life in
getting the Pope to pronounce against English Orders. I know a
Roman priest told me he considered it a fatal move.
However—you’re waiting for your tea?”
Michael ate Mr. Prout’s bread-and-butter and drank his tea, while the
host hopped from trinket to trinket.
“This is a sacred amulet which belonged to one of the
Macdonalds who fought at Prestonpans. I suppose you’re a
Jacobite? Of course, I belong to all the Legitimist
Societies—the White Rose, the White Cockade, the White
Carnation. Everyone. I wish I were a Scotchman, although my
grandmother was a Miss Macmillan, so I’ve got Scotch blood. You
_are_ a Jacobite, aren’t you?”
“Rather,” said Michael as enthusiastically as his full mouth would
allow him to declare.
“Of course, it’s the only logical political attitude for an
English Catholic to adopt,” said Mr. Prout. “All this
Erastianism—you know. Terrible. What’s the Privy Council got to
do with Vestments? Still the Episcopal appointments haven’t
been so bad lately. That’s Lord Salisbury. Of course, we’ve had
trouble with our Bishop. Oh, yes. He simply declines to listen
to reason on the subject of Reservation for the Sick.
Personally I advised Father Moneypenny not to pay any attention
to him. I said the Guild of St. Wilfrid—that’s our servers’
guild, you know—was absolutely in favour of defiance, open
defiance. But one of the churchwardens got round him. There’s
your Established Church. Money’s what churchwardens think
of—simply money. And has religion got anything to do with
money? Nothing. ‘Blessed are the poor.’ You can’t go against
that, as I told Major Wilton—that’s our people’s warden—in the
sacristy. He’s a client of ours at the Bank, or I should have
said a jolly sight more. I should have told him that in my
opinion his attitude was
simony—rank simony, and let it go at that. But I couldn’t very
well, and, of course, it doesn’t look well for the
Ceremonarius and the churchwarden to be bickering after Mass.
By the way, will you help us next Sunday?”
“I’d like to,” said Michael, “but I don’t know anything about it.”
“There’ll be a rehearsal,” said Mr. Prout. “And it’s perfectly
simple. You elevate your torch first of all at the Sanctus and
then at the Consecration. And now, if you’ve finished your tea,
I’ll show you my oratory. Of course, you’ll understand that I’m
only in rooms here, but the landlady is a very pleasant woman.
She let me plant that passion-flower in the garden. Perhaps you
noticed it? The same with this oratory. It _was_ a housemaid’s
cupboard, but it was very inconvenient—and there isn’t a
housemaid as a matter of fact—so I secured it. Come along.”
Mr. Prout led the way on to the landing, at the end of which were two
doors.
“We can’t both kneel down, unless the door’s open,” said Mr.
Prout. “But when I’m alone, I can _just_ shut myself in.”
He opened the oratory door as he spoke, and Michael was impressed by
the appearance of it. The small window had been covered with a
rice-paper design of Jesse’s Rod.
“It’s a bit ‘Protty,’” whispered Mr. Prout. “But I thought it was
better than plain squares of blue and red.”
“Much better,” Michael agreed.
A ledge nailed beneath the window supported two brass
candlesticks and a crucifix. The reredos was an Arundel print
of the Last Supper and on corner brackets on either side were
statues of the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Victories.
A miniature thurible hung on a nail and on another nail was a
holy-water stoup which Michael at first thought was intended
for soap. In front of the altar was a prie-dieu stacked with
books of devotion.
There were also blessed palms, very dusty, and a small
sanctuary lamp suspended from the ceiling. Referring to this,
Mr. Prout explained that really it came from the Turkish
Exhibition at Earl’s Court, but that he thought it would do as
he had carefully exorcized it according to the use of Sarum.
“Shall we say Vespers?” suggested Mr. Prout. “You know—the
Small Office of the Blessed Virgin. It won’t take long. We can
say Compline _too_ , if you like.”
“Just as you like,” said Michael.
“You’re sure you don’t mind the door being left open? Because, you see,
we can’t both get in otherwise. In fact, I have to kneel sideways when
I’m alone.”
“Won’t your landlady think it rather rum?” Michael asked.
“Good gracious, no. Why, when we have Vespers of St. Charles the
Martyr, I have fellows kneeling all the way down the stairs, you
know—members of the White Rose League. Bournemouth and South of England
Branch.”
Michael was handed a thin sky-blue book labelled _Office of the
B.V.M._
“Latin or English?” queried Mr. Prout.
“Whichever you like,” said Michael.
“Well, Latin, if you don’t mind. I’m anxious to learn Latin, and I find
this is good practice.”
“It doesn’t look very good Latin,” said Michael doubtfully.
“Doesn’t it?” said Mr. Prout. “It ought to. It’s the right version.”
“I expect this is Hellenistic—I mean Romanistic—Latin,” said Michael,
who was proud of his momentary superiority in knowledge. “Greek Test is
Hellenistic Greek.”
“Do you know Greek?” asked Mr. Prout.
“A little.”
Mr. Prout sighed.
When the Office was concluded, Michael promised he would attend a
rehearsal of next Sunday’s ceremony and, if he felt at ease, the Solemn
High Mass itself. Mr. Prout, before Michael went away, lent him a book
called Ritual Reason Why, and advised him to buy The Catholic Religion
at One Shilling, and meanwhile to practise direct Invocation of the
Saints.
At home Michael applied himself with ardour to the mastery of
his religion. He wrestled with the liturgical colours; he tried
to grasp the difference between Transubstantiation,
Consubstantiation and the Real Presence; and he congratulated
himself upon being under the immediate patronage of an
Archangel. Also with Charles as his first name he felt he could
fairly claim the protection of St. Charles the Martyr, though
later on Mr. Prout suggested St. Charles Borromeo as a less
ordinary patron. However, there was more than ritualism in
Michael’s new attitude, more than the passion to collect new
rites and liturgies and ornaments as once he had collected the
portraits of famous cricketers or silkworms or silver-paper. To
be sure, it soon came to seem to him a terribly important
matter whether according to the Roman sequence red were worn at
Whitsuntide or whether according to Old English use white were
the liturgical colour. Soon he would experience a shock of
dismay on hearing that some reputed Catholic had taken the
Ablutions at the wrong moment, just as once he had been
irritated by ignorant people confusing Mr. W. W. Read of Surrey
with Read (M.) of the same county. Beyond all this Michael
sincerely tried to correct his morals and manners in the light
of aspiration and faith. He experienced a revolt against
impurity of any kind and was simultaneously seized with a
determination to suffer Stella’s conceit gladly. He really felt
a deep-seated avarice for being good. He may not have
distinguished between morality due to emotion and morality
wrung out of intellectual
assent: but he did know that the Magnificat’s incense took him
to a higher elation than Dora’s curly head upon his shoulder,
or even than Alan’s bewitching company. Under the influence of
faith, Michael found himself bursting with an affection for his
mother such as he had not felt for a long time. Indeed Michael
was in a state of love. He loved the candles on the altar, he
loved his mother’s beauty, he loved Stella, he loved the people
on the beach and the August mornings and the zest for acquiring
and devouring information upon every detail connected with the
Catholic religion; and out of his love he gratified Mr. Prout
by consenting to bear a torch at the Solemn High Mass on the
Sunday within the octave of St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr
and Patron of St. Bartholomew’s Church, Bournemouth.
Michael’s first High Mass was an emotional experience deeper even than
that windy Evensong. The church was full of people. The altar was
brilliant with flowers and lights. The sacristy was crowded with boys
in scarlet cassocks and slippers and zuchettos, quarrelling about their
cottas and arguing about their heights. Everybody had a favourite
banner which he wanted to escort and, to complicate matters still
further, everybody had a favourite companion by whose side he wished to
walk.
The procession was marshalled before the altar: the organ
boomed through the church: the first thurifer started off,
swinging his censer towards the clouded roof. After him went
the cross of ebony and silver, while one by one at regular
intervals between detachments of the choir the banners of the
saints floated into action. Michael escorted the blue velvet
banner of Our Lady, triumphant, crowned, a crescent moon
beneath her feet and round about her stars and Cherubim. The
procession was long enough to fill two aisles at once, and as
Michael turned up the south aisle on the return to the chancel,
he saw the pomp of the
procession’s rear—the second thurifer, Mr. Prout in a cotta
bordered by lace two feet deep, the golden crucifix aloft, the
acolytes with their golden candlesticks, the blood-red
dalmatic and tunicle of the deacon and sub-deacon, and
solemnly last of all the blood-red cope of the celebrant.
Michael took no pleasure in being observed by the
congregation; he was simply elated by the privilege of being
able to express his desire to serve God, and during the Mass,
when the Sanctus bell chimed forth, he raised his torch
naturally to the pæan of the salutation. The service was long:
the music was elaborate: it was back-breaking work to kneel on
the chancel steps without support; but Michael welcomed the
pain with pleasure. During the Elevation of the Host, as he
bowed his head before the wonder of bread and wine made God,
his brain reeled in an ecstasy of sublime worship. There was a
silence save for the censer tinkling steadily and the low
whispered words of the priest and the click of the broken
wafer. The candles burned with a supernatural intensity: the
boys who lately quarrelled over precedence were hushed as
angels: the stillness became fearful; the cold steps burned
into Michael’s knees and the incense choked him. At last after
an age of adoration, the plangent appeal of the Agnus Dei came
with a melody that seemed the music of the sobbing world from
which all tears had departed in a clarity of harmonious sound.
Before Michael left Bournemouth, Mr. Prout promised to come and
see him in London, and Mr. Moneypenny said he would write to a
priest who would be glad to prepare him for Confirmation. When
Michael reached school again, he felt shy at meeting Alan who
would talk about nothing but football and was dismayed to find
Michael indifferent to the delights of playing three-quarter on
Middle Side. Michael deplored Alan’s failure to advance
intellectually beyond mere football and the two of them
temporarily lost touch with each other’s ambitions. Michael
now read nothing but ecclesiastical books and was greatly
insulted by Mr. Viner’s elementary questions. Mr. Viner was
the priest to whom Mr. Moneypenny had written about Michael.
He had invited him to tea and together they had settled that
Michael should be confirmed early in the spring. Michael
borrowed half a dozen books from Mr. Viner and returned home
to make an attempt to convert the cook and the housemaid to
the Catholic faith as a preliminary to converting his mother
and Alan. In the end he did actually convert a boy in the
Lower Fifth who for his strange beliefs suffered severely at
the hands of his father, a Plymouth Brother. Michael wished
that Stella had not gone back to Germany, for he felt that in
her he would have had a splendid object on whom to practise
his power of controversy. At Mr. Viner’s house Michael met
another Jacobean called Chator in whom he found a
fellow-enthusiast. Chator knew of two other Jacobeans
interested in Church matters, Martindale and Rigg, and the
four of them founded a society called De Rebus Ecclesiasticis
which met every Friday evening in Michael’s room to discuss
the Catholic Church in all her aspects. The discussions were
often heated because Michael had violently Ultra-montane
leanings, Chator was narrowly Sarum, Martindale tried to
preserve a happy mean and Rigg always agreed with the last
speaker. The Society De Rebus Ecclesiasticis was splendidly
quixotic and gloriously unrelated to the dead present. To the
quartette of members Archbishop Laud was a far more more vital
proposition than Archbishop Temple, the society of cavaliers
was more vividly realized than the Fabian Society. As was to
be expected from Michael’s preoccupation with the past, he
became very anxious again about his parentage. He longed to
hear that in some way he was connected with Jacobite heroes
and the romantic Stuarts. Mrs. Fane was no longer able to put
him off with contradictions and vagueness: Michael
demanded his family tree. The hymn ‘Faith of our Fathers’
ringing through a Notting Dale mission-hall moved him to
demand his birthright of family history.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Michael,” said his mother at last. “Your father
ought to have been the Earl of Saxby—only—something went wrong—some
certificate or something.”
“An Earl?” cried Michael, staggered by the splendid news. “But—but,
mother, we met Lord Saxby. Who was that?”
“He’s a relation. Only, please don’t tell people about this, because
they wouldn’t understand. It’s all very muddled and difficult.”
“My father ought to have been Lord Saxby? Why wasn’t he? Mother, was he
illegitimate?”
“Michael, how can you talk like that? Of course not.”
Michael blushed because his mother blushed.
“I’m sorry, mother, I thought he might have been. People are. You read
about them often enough.”
Michael decided that as he must not tell Chator, Martindale and
Rigg the truth, he would, at any rate, join himself on to the
House of Saxby collaterally. To his disappointment, he
discovered that the only reference in history to an Earl of
Saxby made out that particular one to be a most pestilent
Roundhead. So Michael gave up being the Legitimist Earl of
Saxby, and settled instead to be descended through the
indiscretion of an early king from the Stuarts. Michael grew
more and more ecclesiastical as time went on. He joined several
Jacobite societies, and accompanied Mr. Prout on the latter’s
London visit to a reception at Clifford’s Inn Hall in honour of
the Legitimist Emperor of Byzantium. Michael was very much
impressed by kissing the hand of an Emperor, and even more
deeply impressed by the Scottish piper who marched up and down
during the light refreshment at one shilling a head afterwards.
Mr. Prout, accompanied by Michael, Chator, Martindale
and Rigg, spent the Sunday of his stay in town by attending
early Mass in Kensington, High Mass in Holborn, Benediction in
Shoreditch and Evensong in Paddington. He also joined several
more guilds, confraternities and societies and presented
Michael with one hair from the five hairs he possessed of a
lock of Prince Charlie’s hair (authentic) before he returned
to Bournemouth. This single hair was a great responsibility to
Michael, until he placed it in a silver locket to wear round
his neck. During that year occurred what the papers called a
Crisis in the Church, and Michael and his three friends took
in every week The Church Times, The Church Review, The English
Churchman, Church Bells, The Record and The Rock in order to
play their part in the crisis. They attended Protestant
meetings to boo and hiss from the gallery or to applaud
violently gentlemen on their side who rose to ask the lecturer
what they supposed to be irrefutable questions. In the spring
Michael made his first Confession and was confirmed. The first
Confession had more effect on his imagination than the
Confirmation, which in retrospect seemed chiefly a sensation
of disappointment that the Bishop in view of the crisis in the
Church refused to wear the mitre temptingly laid out for him
by Mr. Viner. The Confession, however, was a true test of
Michael’s depth. Mr. Viner was by no means a priest who only
thought of candles and lace. He was a gaunt and humorous man,
ready to drag out from his penitents their very souls.
Michael found that first Confession an immense strain upon his
truthfulness and pluck, and he made up his mind never to commit
another mortal sin, so deeply did he blush in the agony of
revelation. Venial faults viewed in the aggregate became
appalling, and the real sins, as one by one Michael compelled
himself to admit them, stabbed his self-consciousness with
daggers of shame. Michael had a sense of completeness which
prevented him from making a bad Confession, from gliding over
his sins and telling half-truths, and having embarked upon the
duties of his religion he was not going to avoid them. The
Confession seemed to last for ever. Beforehand, Michael had
supposed there would be only one commandment whose detailed
sins would make his heart beat with the difficulty of
confessing them; but when he knelt in the empty church before
the severe priest, every breach of the other commandments
assumed a demoniac importance. Michael thought that never
before could Father Viner have listened to such a narration of
human depravity from a boy of fifteen, or even from a man full
grown. He half expected to see the priest rise in the middle
and leave his chair in disgust. Michael felt beads of sweat
trickling from his forehead: the strain grew more terrible:
the crucifix before him gave him no help: the book he held
fell from his fingers. Then he heard the words of absolution,
tranquil as evening bells. The inessentials of his passionate
religion faded away in the strength and beauty of God’s
acceptation of his penitence. Outside in the April sunlight
Michael could have danced his exultation, before he ran home
winged with the ecstasy of a light heart.