DATCHERD AND THE VICAR.
Datcherd looked ill; that was the predominant impression Eddy got of
him. An untidy, pale, sad-eyed person of thirty-five, with a bad temper
and an extraordinarily ardent fire of energy, at once determined and
rather hopeless. The evils of the world loomed, it seemed, even larger
in his eyes than their possible remedies; but both loomed large. He was
a pessimist and a reformer, an untiring fighter against overwhelming
odds. He was allied both by birth and marriage (the marriage had been a
by-gone mistake of the emotions, for which he was dearly paying) with a
class which, without intermission, and by the mere fact of its
existence, incurred his vindictive wrath. (See _Further_, month by
month.) He had tried and failed to get into Parliament; he had now given
up hopes of that field of energy, and was devoting himself to
philanthropic social schemes and literary work. He was not an attractive
person, exactly; he lacked the light touch, and the ordinary human
amenities; but there was a drawing-power in the impetuous ardour of his
convictions and purposes, in his acute and brilliant intelligence, in
his immense, quixotic generosity, and, to some natures, in his
unhappiness and his ill-health. And his smile, which came seldom, would
have softened any heart.
Perhaps he did not smile at Hillier on Monday evening; anyhow Hillier’s
heart remained hard towards him, and his towards Hillier. He was one of
the generation who left the universities fifteen years ago; they are
often pronounced and thoughtful agnostics, who have thoroughly gone into
the subject of Christianity as taught by the Churches, and decided
against it. They have not the modern way of rejection, which is to let
it alone as an irrelevant thing, a thing known (and perhaps cared) too
little about to pronounce upon; or the modern way of acceptance, which
is to embark upon it as an inspiring and desirable adventure. They of
that old generation think that religion should be squared with science,
and, if it can’t be, rejected finally. Anyhow Datcherd thought so; he
had rejected it finally as a Cambridge undergraduate, and had not
changed his mind since. He believed freedom of thought to be of immense
importance, and, a dogmatic person himself, was anxious to free the
world from the fetters of dogma. Hillier (also a dogmatic person; there
are so many) preached a sermon the Sunday after he had met Datcherd
about those who would find themselves fools at the Judgment Day.
Further, Hillier agreed with James Peters that the relations of Datcherd
and Mrs. Le Moine were unfitting, considering that everyone knew that
Datcherd didn’t get on with his wife nor Mrs. Le Moine live with her
husband. People in either of those unfortunate positions cannot be too
careful of appearances.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Le Moine’s fiddling held the club spell-bound. She
played English folk-melodies and Hungarian dances, and the boys’ feet
shuffled in tune. Londoners are musical people, on the whole; no one can
say that, though they like bad music, they don’t like good music, too;
they are catholic in taste. Eddy Oliver, who liked anything he heard,
from a barrel-organ to a Beethoven Symphony, was a typical specimen. His
foot, too, tapped in tune; his blood danced in him to the lilt of
laughter and passion and gay living that the quick bow tore from the
strings. He knew enough, technically, about music, to know that this was
wonderful playing; and he remembered what he had heard before, that this
brilliant, perverse, childlike-looking person, with her great brooding
eyes and half-sullen brows, and the fiddle tucked away under her round
chin, was a genius. He believed he had heard that she had some Hungarian
blood in her, besides the Irish strain. Certainly the passion and the
fire in her, that was setting everyone’s blood stirring so, could hardly
be merely English.
At the end of a wild dance tune, and during riotous applause, Eddy
turned to Datcherd, who stood close to him, and laughed.
“My word!” was all he said.
Datcherd smiled a little at him, and Eddy liked him more than ever.
“They like it, don’t they?” said Datcherd. “Look how they like it. They
like this; and then we go and give them husks; vulgarities from the
comic operas.”
“Oh, but they like those, too,” said Eddy.
Datcherd said impatiently, “They’d stop liking them if they could always
get anything decent.”
“But surely,” said Eddy, “the more things they like the better.”
Datcherd, looking round at him to see if he meant it, said, “Good
heavens!” and was frowningly silent.
An intolerant man, and ill-tempered at that, Eddy decided, but liked him
very much all the same.
Mrs. Le Moine was playing again, quite differently; all the passion and
the wildness were gone now; she was playing a sixteenth century tune,
curiously naïf and tender and engaging, and objective, like a child’s
singing, or Jane Dawn’s drawings. The detachment of it, the utter
self-obliteration, pleased Eddy even more than the passion of the dance;
here was genius at its highest. It seemed to him very wonderful that she
should be giving of her best so lavishly to a roomful of ignorant
Borough lads; very wonderful, and at the same time very characteristic
of her wayward, quixotic, self-pleasing generosity, that he fancied was
neither based on any principle, nor restrained by any considerations of
prudence. She would always, he imagined, give just what she felt
inclined, and when she felt inclined, whatever the gifts she dealt in.
Anyhow she had become immensely popular in the club-room. The admiration
roused by her music was increased by the queer charm she carried with
her. She stood about among the boys for a little, talking. She told them
about the tunes, what they were and whence they came; she whistled a bar
here and there, and they took it up from her; she had asked which they
had liked, and why.
“In my Settlement up by the Lea,” said Datcherd to Eddy, “she’s got some
of the tunes out into the streets already. You hear them being whistled
as the men go to work.”
Eddy looked at Hillier, to see if he hadn’t been softened by this
wonderful evening. Hillier, of course, had liked the music; anyone
would. But his moral sense had a fine power of holding itself severely
aloof from conversion by any but moral suasions. He was genially
chatting with the boys, as usual--Hillier was delightful with boys and
girls, and immensely popular--but Eddy suspected him unchanged in his
attitude towards the visitors. Eddy, for music like that, would have
loved a Mrs. Pendennis (had she been capable of producing it) let alone
anyone so likeable as Eileen Le Moine. Hillier, less susceptible to
influence, still sat in judgment.
Flushed and bright-eyed, Eddy made his way to Mrs. Le Moine.
“I say, thanks most awfully,” he said. “I knew it was going to be
wonderful, but I didn’t know how wonderful. I shall come to all your
concerts now.”
Hillier overheard that, and his brows rose a little. He didn’t see how
Eddy was going to make the time to attend all Mrs. Le Moine’s concerts;
it would mean missing club nights, and whole afternoons. In his opinion,
Eddy, for a parish worker, went too much out of the parish already.
Mrs. Le Moine said, with her usual lack of circumlocution, “I’ll come
again next Monday. Shall I? I would like to get the music thoroughly
into their heads; they’re keen enough to make it worth while.”
Eddy said promptly, “Oh, will you really? How splendid.”
Hillier, coming up to them, said courteously, “This has been extremely
good of you, Mrs. Le Moine. We have all had a great treat. But you
really mustn’t waste more of your valuable time on our uncultivated
ears. We’re not worth it, I’m afraid.”
Eileen looked at him with a glint of amusement in the gloomy blue
shadowiness of her eyes.
“I won’t come,” she said, “unless you want me to, of course.”
Hillier protested. “It’s delightful for us, naturally--far more than we
deserve. It was your time I was thinking of.”
“That will be all right. I’ll come, then, for half an hour, next
Monday.” She turned to Eddy. “Will you come to lunch with us--Miss Hogan
and me, you know--next Sunday? Arnold Denison’s coming, and Karl
Lovinski, the violinist, and two or three other people. 3, Campden Hill
Road, at 1.30.”
“Thanks; I should like to.”
Datcherd came up from the back of the room where he had been talking to
Traherne, who had come in lately. They said goodbye, and the club took
to billiards.
“Is Mr. Datcherd coming, too, next Monday?” Hillier inquired gloomily of
Eddy.
“Oh, I expect so. I suppose it’s less of a bore for Mrs. Le Moine not to
have to come all that way alone. Besides, he’s awfully interested in it
all.”
“A first-class man,” said Traherne, who was an enthusiast, and had found
in Datcherd another Socialist, though not a Church one.
Eddy and the curates walked back together later in the evening. Eddy
felt vaguely jarred by Hillier to-night; probably because Hillier was,
in his mind, opposing something, and that was the one thing that annoyed
Eddy. Hillier was, he felt, opposing these delightful people who had
provided the club with such a glorious evening, and were going to do so
again next Monday; these brilliant people, who spilt their genius so
lavishly before the poor and ignorant; these charming, friendly people,
who had asked Eddy to lunch next Sunday.
What Hillier said was, “Shall you get Wilkes to take your class again on
Sunday afternoon, Oliver?”
“Yes, I suppose so. He doesn’t mind, does he? I believe he really takes
it a lot better than I do.”
Hillier believed so, too, and made no comment. Traherne laughed.
“Wilkes! Oh, he means well, no doubt. But I wouldn’t turn up on Sunday
afternoon if I was going to be taught by Wilkes. What an ass you are,
Oliver, going to lunch parties on Sundays.”
With Traherne, work came first, and everything else, especially anything
social, an immense number of lengths behind. With Eddy a number of
things ran neck to neck all the time. He wouldn’t, Traherne thought, a
trifle contemptuously, ever accomplish much in any sphere of life at
that rate.
He said to the vicar that night, “Oliver’s being caught in the toils of
Society, I fear. For such a keen person, he’s oddly slack about sticking
to his job when anything else turns up.”
But Hillier said, at a separate time, “Oliver’s being dragged into a
frightfully unwholesome set, vicar. I hate those people; that man
Datcherd is an aggressive unbeliever, you know; he does more harm, I
believe, than anyone quite realises. And one hears things said, you
know, about him and Mrs. Le Moine--oh, no harm, I daresay, but one has
to think of the effect on the weaker brethren. And Oliver’s bringing
them into the parish, and I wouldn’t care to answer for the effects....
It made me a little sick, I don’t mind saying to you, to see Datcherd
talking to the lads to-night; a word dropped here, a sneer there, and
the seed is sown from which untold evil may spring. Of course, Mrs. Le
Moine is a wonderful player, but that makes her influence all the more
dangerous, to my mind. The lads were fascinated this evening; one saw
them hanging on her words.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the vicar, “that she, or Datcherd either, would
say anything to hurt them.”
Hillier caught him up sharply.
“You approve, then? You won’t discourage Oliver’s intimacy with them, or
his bringing them into the parish?”
“Most certainly I shall, if it gets beyond a certain point. There’s a
mean in all things.... But it’s their effect on Oliver rather than on
the parish that I should be afraid of. He’s got to realise that a man
can’t profitably have too many irons in the fire at once. If he’s going
perpetually to run about London seeing friends, he’ll do no good as a
worker. Also, it’s not good for his soul to be continually with people
who are unsympathetic with the Church. He’s not strong enough or
grown-up enough to stand it.”
But Eddy had a delightful lunch on Sunday, and Wilkes took his class.
Other Sundays followed, and other week-days, and more delightful
lunches, and many concerts and theatres, and expeditions into the
country, and rambles about the town, and musical evenings in St.
Gregory’s parish, and, in general, a jolly life. Eddy loved the whole
of life, including his work in St. Gregory’s, which he was quite as much
interested in as if it had been his exclusive occupation. Ingenuously,
he would try to draw his friends into pleasures which they were by
temperament and training little fitted to enjoy. For instance, he said
to Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine one day, “We’ve got a mission on now in
the parish. There’s an eight o’clock service on Monday night, so
there’ll be no club. I wish you’d come to the service instead; it’s
really good, the mission. Father Dempsey, of St. Austin’s, is taking it.
Have you ever heard him?”
Datcherd, in his grave, melancholy way, shook his head. Eileen smiled at
Eddy, and patted his arm in the motherly manner she had for him.
“Now what do you think? No, we never have. Would we understand him if we
did? I expect not, do you know. Tell us when the mission (is that what
you call it? But I thought they were for blacks and Jews) is over, and
I’ll come again and play to the clubs. Till then, oughtn’t you to be
going to services every night, and I wonder ought you to be dining and
theatreing with us on Thursday?”
“Oh, I can fit it in easily,” said Eddy, cheerfully. “But, seriously, I
do wish you’d come one night. You’d like Father Dempsey. He’s an
extraordinarily alive and stimulating person. Hillier thinks him
flippant; but that’s rubbish. He’s the best man in the Church.”
All the same, they didn’t come. How difficult it is to make people do
what they are not used to! How good it would be for them if they would;
if Hillier would but sometimes spend an evening at Datcherd’s
settlement; if James Peters would but come, at Eddy’s request, to shop
at the Poetry Bookshop; if Datcherd would but sit under Father Dempsey,
the best man in the Church! It sometimes seemed to Eddy that it was he
alone, in a strange, uneclectic world, who did all these things with
impartial assiduity and fervour.
* * * * *
And he found, which was sad and bewildering, that those with less
impartiality of taste got annoyed with him. The vicar thought, not
unnaturally, that during the mission he ought to have given up other
engagements, and devoted himself exclusively to the parish, getting them
to come. All the curates thought so too. Meanwhile Arnold Denison
thought that he ought to have stayed to the end of the debate on
Impressionism in Poetry at the Wednesday Club that met in Billy
Raymond’s rooms, instead of going away in the middle to be in time for
the late service at St. Gregory’s. Arnold thought so particularly
because he hadn’t yet spoken himself, and it would obviously have been
more becoming in Eddy to wait and hear him. Eddy grew to have an
uncomfortable feeling of being a little wrong with everyone; he felt
aggrieved under it.
At last, a fortnight before Christmas, the vicar spoke to him. It was
on a Sunday evening. Eddy had had supper with Cecil Le Moine, as it was
Cecil’s turn to have the Sunday Games Club, a childish institution that
flourished just then among them, meet at his house. Eddy returned to St.
Gregory’s late.
The vicar said, at bedtime, “I want to speak to you, Oliver, if you can
spare a minute or two,” and they went into his study. Eddy felt rather
like a schoolboy awaiting a jawing. He watched the vicar’s square,
sensible, kind face, through a cloud of smoke, and saw his point of view
precisely. He wanted certain work done. He didn’t think the work was so
well done if a hundred other things were done also. He believed in
certain things. He didn’t think belief in those things could be quite
thorough if those who held it had constant and unnecessary traffic with
those who quite definitely didn’t. Well, it was of course a point of
view; Eddy realised that.
The vicar said, “I don’t want to be interfering, Oliver. But, frankly,
are you as keen on this job as you were two months ago?”
“Yes, rather,” said Eddy. “Keener, I think. One gets into it, you see.”
The vicar nodded, patient and a little cynical.
“Quite. Well, it’s a full man’s job, you know; one can’t take it easy.
One’s got to put every bit of oneself into it, and even so there isn’t
near enough of most of us to get upsides with it.... Oh, I don’t mean
don’t take on times, or don’t have outside interests and plenty of
friends; of course I don’t. But one’s got not to fritter and squander
one’s energies. And one’s got to have one’s whole heart in the work, or
it doesn’t get done as it should. It’s a job for the keen; for the
enthusiasts; for the single-minded. Do you think, Oliver, that it’s
quite the job for you?”
“Yes,” said Eddy, readily, though crest-fallen. “I’m keen. I’m an
enthusiast. I’m----” He couldn’t say single-minded, so he broke off.
“Really,” he added, “I’m awfully sorry if I’ve scamped the work lately,
and been out of the parish too much. I’ve tried not to, honestly--I mean
I’ve tried to fit it all in and not scamp things.”
“Fit it all in!” The vicar took him up. “Precisely. There you are. Why
do you try to fit in so much more than you’ve properly room for? Life’s
limited, you see. One’s got to select one thing or another.”
“Oh,” Eddy murmured, “what an awful thought! I want to select lots and
lots of things!”
“It’s greedy,” said the vicar. “What’s more, it’s silly. You’ll end by
getting nothing.... And now there’s another thing. Of course you choose
your own friends; it’s no business of mine. But you bring them a good
deal into the parish, and that’s my business, of course. Now, I don’t
want to say anything against friends of yours; still less to repeat the
comments of ignorant and prejudiced people; but I expect you know the
sort of things such people would say about Mr. Datcherd and Mrs. Le
Moine. After all, they’re both married to someone else. You’ll admit
that they are very reckless of public opinion, and that that’s a pity.”
He spoke cautiously, saying less than he felt, in order not to be
annoying. But Eddy flushed, and for the first time looked cross.
“Surely, if people are low-minded enough----” he began.
“That,” said the vicar, “is part of one’s work, to consider low minds.
Besides--my dear Oliver, I don’t want to be censorious--but why doesn’t
Mrs. Le Moine live with her husband? And why isn’t Datcherd ever to be
seen with his wife? And why are those two perpetually together?”
Eddy grew hotter. His hand shook a little as he took out his pipe.
“The Le Moines live apart because they prefer it. Why not? Datcherd, I
presume, doesn’t go about with his wife because they are hopelessly
unsuited to each other in every way, and bore each other horribly. I’ve
seen Lady Dorothy Datcherd. The thought of her and Datcherd as
companions is absurd. She disapproves of all he is and does. She’s a
worldly, selfish woman. She goes her way and he his. Surely it’s best.
As for Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine--they _aren’t_ perpetually together.
They come down here together because they’re both interested; but
they’re in quite different sets, really. His friends are mostly social
workers, and politicians, and writers of leading articles, and
contributors to the quarterlies and the political press--what are
called able men you know; his own family, of course, are all that sort.
Her friends are artists and actors and musicians, and poets and
novelists and journalists, and casual, irresponsible people who play
round and have a good time and do clever work--I mean, her set and his
haven’t very much to do with one another really.” Eddy spoke rather
eagerly, as if he was anxious to impress this on the vicar and himself.
The vicar heard him out patiently, then said, “I never said anything
about sets. It’s him and her I’m talking about. You won’t deny they’re
great friends. Well, no man and woman are ‘great friends’ in the eyes of
poor people; they’re something quite different. And that’s not
wholesome. It starts talk. And your being hand and glove with them does
no good to your influence in the parish. For one thing, Datcherd’s known
to be an atheist. These constant Sunday outings of yours--you’re always
missing church, you see, and that’s a poor example. I’ve been spoken to
about it more than once by the parents of your class-boys. They think it
strange that you should be close friends with people like that.”
Eddy started up. “People like that? People like Hugh Datcherd and Eileen
Le Moine? Good heavens! I’m not fit to black their boots, and nor are
the idiots who talk about them like that. Vulgar-mouthed lunatics!”
This was unlike Eddy; he never called people vulgar, nor despised them;
that was partly why he made a good church worker. The vicar looked at
him over his pipe, a little irritated in his turn. He had not reckoned
on the boy being so hot about these friends of his.
“It’s a clear choice,” said the vicar, rather sharply. “Either you give
up seeing so much of these people, and certainly give up bringing them
into the parish; or--I’m very sorry, because I don’t want to lose
you--you must give up St. Gregory’s.”
Eddy stood looking on the floor, angry, unhappy, uncertain.
“It’s no choice at all,” he said at last. “You know I can’t give them
up. Why can’t I have them and St. Gregory’s, too? What’s the
inconsistency? I don’t understand.”
The vicar looked at him impatiently. His faculty of sympathy, usually so
kind, humorous, and shrewd, had run up against one of those limiting
walls that very few people who are supremely in earnest over one thing
are quite without. He occasionally (really not often) said a stupid
thing; he did so now.
“You don’t understand? Surely it’s extremely simple. You can’t serve God
and Mammon; that’s the long and the short of it. You’ve got to choose
which.”
That, of course, was final. Eddy said, “Naturally, if it’s like that,
I’ll leave St. Gregory’s at once. That is, directly it’s convenient for
you that I should,” he added, considerate by instinct, though angry.
The vicar turned to face him. He was bitterly disappointed.
“You mean that, Oliver? You won’t give it another trial, on the lines I
advise? Mind, I don’t mean I want you to have no friends, no outside
interests.... Look at Traherne, now; he’s full of them.... I only want,
for your own sake and our people’s, that your heart should be in your
job.”
“I had better go,” said Eddy, knowing it for certain. He added, “Please
don’t think I’m going off in a stupid huff or anything. It’s not that.
Of course, you’ve every right to speak to me as you did; but it’s made
my position quite clear to me. I see this isn’t really my job at all. I
must find another.”
The vicar said, holding out his hand, “I’m very sorry, Oliver. I don’t
want to lose you. Think it over for a week, will you, and tell me then
what you have decided. Don’t be hasty over it. Remember, we’ve all grown
fond of you here; you’ll be throwing away a good deal of valuable
opportunity if you leave us. I think you may be missing the best in
life. But I mustn’t take back what I said. It is a definite choice
between two ways of life. They won’t mix.”
“They will, they will,” said Eddy to himself, and went to bed. If the
vicar thought they wouldn’t, the vicar’s way of life could not be his.
He had no need to think it over for a week. He was going home for
Christmas, and he would not come back after that. This job was not for
him. And he could not, he knew now, be a clergyman. They drew lines;
they objected to people and things; they failed to accept. The vicar,
when he had mentioned Datcherd, had looked as Datcherd had looked when
Eddy had mentioned Father Dempsey and the mission; Eddy was getting to
know that critical, disapproving look too well. Everywhere it met him.
He hated it. It seemed to him even stranger in clergymen than in others,
because clergymen are Christians, and, to Eddy’s view, there were no
negations in that vivid and intensely positive creed. Its commands were
always, surely, to go and do, not to abstain and reject. And look, too,
at the sort of people who were of old accepted in that generous,
all-embracing circle....