The nearest Roman Catholic church was upwards of twenty miles away.
Ivor, who was punctilious in his devotions, came down early to breakfast
and had his car at the door, ready to start, by a quarter to ten. It was
a smart, expensive-looking machine, enamelled a pure lemon yellow and
upholstered in emerald green leather. There were two seats--three if you
squeezed tightly enough--and their occupants were protected from
wind, dust, and weather by a glazed sedan that rose, an elegant
eighteenth-century hump, from the midst of the body of the car.
Mary had never been to a Roman Catholic service, thought it would be an
interesting experience, and, when the car moved off through the great
gates of the courtyard, she was occupying the spare seat in the sedan.
The sea-lion horn roared, faintlier, faintlier, and they were gone.
In the parish church of Crome Mr. Bodiham preached on 1 Kings vi. 18:
“And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops”--a sermon of
immediately local interest. For the past two years the problem of the
War Memorial had exercised the minds of all those in Crome who had
enough leisure, or mental energy, or party spirit to think of such
things. Henry Wimbush was all for a library--a library of local
literature, stocked with county histories, old maps of the district,
monographs on the local antiquities, dialect dictionaries, handbooks
of the local geology and natural history. He liked to think of the
villagers, inspired by such reading, making up parties of a Sunday
afternoon to look for fossils and flint arrow-heads. The villagers
themselves favoured the idea of a memorial reservoir and water supply.
But the busiest and most articulate party followed Mr. Bodiham in
demanding something religious in character--a second lich-gate, for
example, a stained-glass window, a monument of marble, or, if possible,
all three. So far, however, nothing had been done, partly because the
memorial committee had never been able to agree, partly for the more
cogent reason that too little money had been subscribed to carry out any
of the proposed schemes. Every three or four months Mr. Bodiham preached
a sermon on the subject. His last had been delivered in March; it was
high time that his congregation had a fresh reminder.
“And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops.”
Mr. Bodiham touched lightly on Solomon’s temple. From thence he passed
to temples and churches in general. What were the characteristics of
these buildings dedicated to God? Obviously, the fact of their, from
a human point of view, complete uselessness. They were unpractical
buildings “carved with knops.” Solomon might have built a
library--indeed, what could be more to the taste of the world’s wisest
man? He might have dug a reservoir--what more useful in a parched city
like Jerusalem? He did neither; he built a house all carved with knops,
useless and unpractical. Why? Because he was dedicating the work to God.
There had been much talk in Crome about the proposed War Memorial. A
War Memorial was, in its very nature, a work dedicated to God. It was a
token of thankfulness that the first stage in the culminating world-war
had been crowned by the triumph of righteousness; it was at the same
time a visibly embodied supplication that God might not long delay the
Advent which alone could bring the final peace. A library, a reservoir?
Mr. Bodiham scornfully and indignantly condemned the idea. These were
works dedicated to man, not to God. As a War Memorial they were totally
unsuitable. A lich-gate had been suggested. This was an object which
answered perfectly to the definition of a War Memorial: a useless work
dedicated to God and carved with knops. One lich-gate, it was true,
already existed. But nothing would be easier than to make a second
entrance into the churchyard; and a second entrance would need a second
gate. Other suggestions had been made. Stained-glass windows, a monument
of marble. Both these were admirable, especially the latter. It was high
time that the War Memorial was erected. It might soon be too late.
At any moment, like a thief in the night, God might come. Meanwhile a
difficulty stood in the way. Funds were inadequate. All should subscribe
according to their means. Those who had lost relations in the war might
reasonably be expected to subscribe a sum equal to that which they would
have had to pay in funeral expenses if the relative had died while at
home. Further delay was disastrous. The War Memorial must be built at
once. He appealed to the patriotism and the Christian sentiments of all
his hearers.
Henry Wimbush walked home thinking of the books he would present to the
War Memorial Library, if ever it came into existence. He took the path
through the fields; it was pleasanter than the road. At the first
stile a group of village boys, loutish young fellows all dressed in the
hideous ill-fitting black which makes a funeral of every English Sunday
and holiday, were assembled, drearily guffawing as they smoked their
cigarettes. They made way for Henry Wimbush, touching their caps as he
passed. He returned their salute; his bowler and face were one in their
unruffled gravity.
In Sir Ferdinando’s time, he reflected, in the time of his son, Sir
Julius, these young men would have had their Sunday diversions even at
Crome, remote and rustic Crome. There would have been archery, skittles,
dancing--social amusements in which they would have partaken as members
of a conscious community. Now they had nothing, nothing except Mr.
Bodiham’s forbidding Boys’ Club and the rare dances and concerts
organised by himself. Boredom or the urban pleasures of the county
metropolis were the alternatives that presented themselves to these poor
youths. Country pleasures were no more; they had been stamped out by the
Puritans.
In Manningham’s Diary for 1600 there was a queer passage, he remembered,
a very queer passage. Certain magistrates in Berkshire, Puritan
magistrates, had had wind of a scandal. One moonlit summer night they
had ridden out with their posse and there, among the hills, they had
come upon a company of men and women, dancing, stark naked, among the
sheepcotes. The magistrates and their men had ridden their horses into
the crowd. How self-conscious the poor people must suddenly have felt,
how helpless without their clothes against armed and booted horsemen!
The dancers were arrested, whipped, gaoled, set in the stocks; the
moonlight dance is never danced again. What old, earthy, Panic rite came
to extinction here? he wondered. Who knows?--perhaps their ancestors had
danced like this in the moonlight ages before Adam and Eve were so much
as thought of. He liked to think so. And now it was no more. These weary
young men, if they wanted to dance, would have to bicycle six miles to
the town. The country was desolate, without life of its own, without
indigenous pleasures. The pious magistrates had snuffed out for ever a
little happy flame that had burned from the beginning of time.
“And as on Tullia’s tomb one lamp burned clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year...”
He repeated the lines to himself, and was desolated to think of all the
murdered past.