EVENING IN CHURCH
1
Alix was huddled on her bed in a rug. She had taken two aspirin tablets
because her head ached, and really one is enough. She felt cold and low.
She was occupied in not thinking about Paul or the war; it was rather a
difficult operation, and took her whole energies. Paul was insistent;
she pressed her hands against her eyes and saw him on the darkness, her
little brother, white-faced, with the nervous smile she knew; Paul in a
trench, among the wounded and killed, seeing things, hearing things ...
taken suddenly sick ... unable to leave off ... putting his head above
the parapet, trying to get hit, called sharply to order by superiors....
Paul desperate, at the end of his tether, in the night full of flashes
and smashes and laughter and grumbling and curses.... Paul laughing too,
and talking, as she and Paul always did when they were hiding things....
Paul in his dug-out, alone ... unseen, he supposed ... with only one
thought, to get out of it somehow.... The shot, the pain, like flame ...
the men approaching, who knew.... Paul's face, knowing they knew ...
white, frightened, staring, pain swallowed up in shame ... the end ...
how soon? Ingram hadn't said that. Anyhow, the end; and Paul, out of it
at last, slipping into the dark, alone.... A noble end, Mrs. Frampton
had said, not a wasted life.... Anyhow, all over for Paul, as Terry had
said.
And then what? Ingram hadn't said that either; nor had Terry; no one
could say, for no one knew. What, if anything, _did_ come then?
Darkness, nothingness, or something new?
'He has begun to live now, dear, for ever and ever,' Kate had said.
'World without end, amen,' Mrs. Frampton had rounded it off.
World without end! What a thought! Poor Paul, finding a desperate way
out from the world, slipping away into another which had no way out at
all. But Mrs. Frampton's and Kate's world without end was a happy, jolly
one, presumably, and the more of it the better. It would give Paul space
for the life he hadn't lived here. Oh, could that be so? Was it
possible, or was it, as so many people thought, only a dream? Who could
know? No one, till they came to try. And then perhaps they would know
nothing at all either way, not being there any more....
Yet people thought they knew, even here and now. Nicky's friend, Mr.
West; he, presumably, thought he knew; anyhow, if not going so far as
that, he had taken a hypothesis and was, so to speak, acting, thinking,
and talking on it. He was clever, too. Mrs. Frampton and Kate thought
they knew, too; but they weren't clever. They believed in God: but Alix
could have no use for the Violette God. Mrs. Frampton's God was the
Almighty, an omnipotent Being who governed all things in gross and in
detail, including the weather (though the connection here was
mysteriously vague). A God of crops and sun and rain, who spoke in the
thunder; a truly pagan God (though Mrs. Frampton would not have cared
for the word), of chastisements and arbitrary mercies, who was capable
of wrecking ships and causing wars, in order to punish and improve
people. The God of the 'act of God' in the shipping regulations. A God
who could, and would, unless for wise purposes he chose otherwise, keep
men and women physically safe, protect them from battle, murder, and
sudden death. An anthropomorphic God, in the semblance, for some strange
reason known only to the human race, of a man. A God who somehow was
responsible for the war. A God who ordered men's estates so that there
should be a wholesome economic inequality among them.
Such was Mrs. Frampton's God, in no material way altered from the
conception of the primitive Jews or the modern South Sea Islanders, who
make God in their image. He had no attractions for Alix, who could not
feel that a God of weather was in any way concerned with the soul of the
world.
Kate's God, on the other hand, was for Alix enshrined in the little
books of devotion that Kate had lent her sometimes, and all of which she
found revolting, even on the hypothesis that you believed that sort of
thing. They propounded ingenuous personal questions for the reader to
ask himself, such as 'Have I eaten or drunk too much? Have I used bad
words? Have I read bad books?' (As if, thought Alix, any one would read
a bad book on purpose, life being so much too short to get through the
good ones; unless one had the misfortune to be a reviewer, like Nicky,
or to have bad taste, like many others; and then wasn't it rather a
misfortune than a fault?) 'Have I been unkind to animals?' the inquiries
went on. 'Have I obeyed those set over me? Have I kept a guard of my
eyes?' (a mysterious phrase, unexplained by any footnote, and leaving it
an open question whether to have done so or to have omitted to do so
would have been the sin. Alix inclined to the former view; it somehow
sounded an unpleasant thing to do.)
These books adopted a tone too intimate and ejaculatory for Alix's
taste; and they were, it must be admitted, about all she knew of Kate's
God, and her distaste for Him merely meant that she disliked some of
Kate's methods of approach.
Alix felt, vaguely, that West's God was different. There was no softness
about Him, or about West's approach to Him; no sentimental sweetness, no
dull piety, but energy, effort, adventure, revolt, life taken at a rush.
Dynamite, West had said, to blow up the world. Poetry, too; harsh and
grim poetry, often, but the real thing. Kate's religion might be sung in
hymns by Faber; Mrs. Frampton's in hymns by Dr. Watts; West's had very
little to do with any hymns sung in churches. And it was West's religion
which thought it was going to break up the world in pieces and build it
anew. Certainly neither Mrs. Frampton's nor Kate's would be up to the
task; they would not even want it. Mrs. Frampton worshipped a God of
Things as they Are, who has already done all things well, and Kate one
who is little concerned with the ordering of the world at all, but only
with individual souls.
One would like to know more about West's God.
'You should go to church,' West had told her. 'You'd find it
interesting.'
She might find it so, of course; anyhow, she could try. Paul was driving
her to find things out; his desperation and pain, her own, all the
world's, must somehow break a way through, out and beyond, fling open a
gate on to new worlds.... Anyhow, it might take one's mind off, help one
not to think. It occurred to Alix that she would go to church this
evening. It seemed, at the moment, the simplest way of watching these
odd mystical forces, if there were any such forces, at work. She would
be able thus to see them concentrated, working through a few people
gathered together for the purpose. Alix's acquaintance with Sunday
evening services, it may be observed, was rudimentary.
2
Meanwhile there was tea. Alix went down to it. There were Mrs. Frampton,
Kate, a Mrs. Buller from Anzac next door, and a toasted bun.
Mrs. Frampton said to Alix, 'You do look low, dear. I'm sure it's a good
thing you came home. Biliousness isn't a thing to play with. Suppose you
were to go to bed straight away, and let Kate bring you up a nice hot
cup of tea there?'
Kate said, playfully, 'This is what Sunday outings lead to.'
They were both at a great distance, as if Alix were at the bottom of the
sea. So was Mrs. Buller, who talked to Mrs. Frampton about girls. Girls
are, of course, an inexhaustible and fruitful topic--there are so many
of them coming and going, and nearly all so bad. Mrs. Frampton and Mrs.
Buller and Kate all found them interesting, if a nuisance. Alix found
them a safe subject.
Mrs. Buller was saying, 'On one thing I have made up my mind, Mrs.
Frampton; never again will I have a G.F.S. girl in my house. Besides all
the meetings and things at all hours, to have the girl's Associate
coming into my kitchen and talking about prayer (it was prayer, for I
overheard) and ending up with a kiss you could hear upstairs--it was
more than I could be expected to stand. And the girl smashed three cups
that same afternoon, and answered me back in a downright impertinent
way. So I said, 'If _that's_ what your G.F.S. teaches you for manners,
the sooner you and I part company the better,' and I gave her her
month.'
'I'm sure you were right,' said Mrs. Frampton. 'Though of course one
mustn't put it all on the G.F.S.' She said this because of Kate, who was
a church worker. But as it happened Kate did not care for the G.F.S.,
having fallen out with the local secretary, and also having been told by
her vicar that it was a society which drew too rigid an ethical line and
no denominational line at all. Kate also drew rigid ethical lines, when
left to herself and her own natural respectability; the comic spirit
must be largely responsible for driving people like Kate into the
Christian church, a body which, whatever opprobrium it may have at
various times incurred, has never yet been justly accused of
respectability. So Kate joined in about Girls and the G.F.S.
Mrs. Buller said, 'However, we may be thankful we aren't in the country,
for my sister at Stortford has had five soldiers billeted on her, and
how is her girl to keep her head among them all? She won't, of course.
Girls and a uniform--it goes to their heads like drink.'
'It does seem an upset for your sister,' said Mrs. Frampton.
'And Bertie's started again wanting to enlist,' continued their visitor,
who had many troubles. 'If I've told him once I've told him fifty times,
"Not while _I_ live you don't, Bertie." So I hope he'll settle down
again. But he says he'll only be fetched later if he doesn't; such
rubbish. He actually wants to go as a common soldier, not even a
commission. Think of the class of _company_ he'd be thrown into, not to
speak of the risk. Fancy his thinking his father and I could let him do
such a thing.'
Mrs. Frampton made sympathetic sounds.
They had tea. They went on talking, of Belgians, Zeppelins, bulbs, and
Girls. Belgians as a curiosity (in the corner house), Zeppelins as
murder ('to call that war, you know'), bulbs as a duty (to be put in
quite soon), and Girls as a nuisance (to be changed as speedily as may
be). Mrs. Buller stayed till nearly six.
'It's always a treat to see Mrs. Buller,' said Mrs. Frampton. 'But
fancy, it's nearly time to get ready for church.'
Mrs. Frampton's church was at half-past six. Kate's was at seven. It was
to Kate's that Alix wanted to go. She did not think that Kate's church
would be much use, but she was sure that Mrs. Frampton's wouldn't. Mrs.
Frampton's was florid Gothic outside, with a mellifluous peal of bells.
Kate's was of plain brick, with a single tinny bell. Mrs. Frampton's
looked comfortable. Kate's did not. The road into another world, if
there was another world, surely would not be a comfortable one....
3
Kate was pleased when Alix said she was coming. She thought the little
books had borne fruit.
'It'll be something to do,' said Alix cautiously.
'I hope Mr. Alison will preach,' Kate said. 'He's so helpful always.'
Alix wondered if Mr. Alison knew about another world, and if he would
tell in his sermon. If he did not, he would not be helpful to her.
Probably not even if he did.
They went diagonally across the little common, to the unpretentious
brick church whose bell tinkled austerely. It was an austere church both
within and without, and had a sacrificial beauty of outline and of
ritual that did not belong to Mrs. Frampton's church, which was full of
cheery comfort and best hats and Hymns A. and M. Kate's church had an
oblative air of giving up. It gave up succulent, completed tunes for the
restrained rhythms of plain-song, which, never completed, suggest an
infinite going on; it gave up comfortable pews for chairs which slid
when you knelt against them; its priests and congregation gave up food
before Mass and meat on fast-days. The chief luxury it seemed to allow
itself was incense, of which Alix disliked the smell. Certainly the air
of cheery, everyday respectability which characterises some churches was
conspicuously absent: this church seemed to be perpetually approaching a
mystery, trying to penetrate it, laying aside impedimenta in the
quest.... The quest for what? That seemed to be the question.
The candles on the far altar quivered and shone like stars. They sang
hymns out of little green books. They began by singing, in procession, a
long hymn about gardens and gallant walks and pleasant flowers and
spiders' webs and dampish mists, and the flood of life flowing through
the streets with silver sound, and many other pleasant things. Alix
glanced at Kate, curiously. Kate, prim and proper, so essentially of
Violette, seemed in herself to have no point of contact with such
strange, delightful songs, such riot of attractive fancy. For this was
poetry, and Kate and poetry were incongruous.
Poetry: having found the word, Alix felt it pervade and explain the
whole service--the tuneless chants, the dim glooms and twinkling lights,
the austerity. Kate interpreted this poetry for her own needs through
the medium of little books of devotion for which prose was far too
honourable a word; jargon, rather; pious, mushy, abominable....
It was odd. Kate seemed to be caught in the toils of some strange,
surprising force. Alix hadn't learnt yet that it is a force nowhere more
surprising than in the unlikely people it does catch. The further
question may then arise, how is it going to use them? Can it use them at
all, or does the turning of its wheels turn them out and get rid of
them, or does it retain them, unused? It is certainly all very odd. This
essentially romantic and adventurous and mystical force seems to have a
special hold on many timid, unromantic and unimaginative persons. This
essentially corporate and catholic body lays its grasp as often as not
on extreme individualists. Perhaps it is the unconscious need in them of
the very thing they have not got, that makes the contact. Perhaps it
reveals poetry and adventure to those who could find them in no other
guise. Perhaps it links together in a body those who must otherwise
creep through life unlinked, gives awareness of the community to the
otherwise unaware. Perhaps, on the other hand, it doesn't. The powers in
human beings of evading influences and escaping obvious inferences is
unlimited.
The lights were suddenly dimmer. Some one got into the pulpit and
preached. He preached on a question, 'Who will lead me into the strong
city?' A very pertinent inquiry, Alix thought, and just what she wanted
to know. Who would? Who could? Was there a strong city at all, or only
chaos and drifting ways of terror and unrest? If so, where was it, and
how to get there? The strong city, said the preacher, is the city of
refuge for which we all crave, and more especially just now, in this day
of tribulation. The kings of the earth are gathered and gone by
together; but the hill of Sion is a fair place and the joy of the whole
earth; upon the north side lieth the city of the great King; God is well
known in her palaces as a sure refuge. Above the noise of battle, above
the great water-floods, is the city of God that lieth four-square,
unshaken by the tempests.
Jolly, thought Alix, and just where one would be: but how to get into
it? One had tried, ever since the war began, to shut oneself away,
unshaken and undisturbed by the tempests. One had come to Violette
because it seemed more unshaken than Wood End; but Violette wasn't
really, somehow, a strong city. The tempests rocked one till one felt
sick.... Where was this strong city, any strong city? Well, all about;
everywhere, anywhere, said the preacher; one could hardly miss it.
''Tis only your estranged faces
That miss the many-splendoured thing....'
and he quoted quite a lot of that poem. Then he went on to a special
road of approach, quoting instead, 'I went into the sanctuary of God.'
Church, Alix presumed. Well, here she was. No: it transpired that it
wasn't evening service he meant; he went on to talk of the Mass. That,
apparently, was the strong city. Well, it might be, if one was of that
way of thinking. But if one wasn't? Did Kate find it so, and was that
why she went out early several mornings in the week? And what sort of
strength had that city? Was it merely a refuge, well bulwarked, where
one might hide from fear? Or had it strength to conquer the chaos? West
would say it had; that its work was to launch forces over the world like
shells, to shatter the old materialism, the old comfortable selfishness,
the old snobberies, cruelties, rivalries, cant, blind stupidities, lies.
The old ways, thought Alix (which were the same ways carried further,
West would say), of destruction and unhappiness and strife, that had led
to the bitter hell where boys went out in anguish into the dark.
The city wasn't yet strong enough, apparently, to do that. Would it be
one day?
'I will not cease from mental fight,' cried the preacher, who was fond,
it seemed, of quoting poetry, 'nor let my sword sleep in my hand, till
we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.'
The next moment he was talking of another road of approach to the city
on the hill, besides going to church, besides building Jerusalem in
England. A road steep and sharp and black; we take it unawares, forced
along it (many boys are taking it this moment, devoted and unafraid.
Unafraid, thought Alix); and suddenly we are at the city gates; they
open and close behind us, and we are in the strong city, the drifting
chaos of our lives behind us, to be redeemed by firm walking on whatever
new roads may be shown us. God, who held us through all the drifting,
unsteady paths, has led us now right out of them into a sure refuge....
How do you know? thought Alix. Beyond the steep dark road there may be
chaos still, endless, worse chaos: or, surely more natural to suppose,
there may be nothing. How _did_ people think they knew? Or didn't they?
Did they only guess, and say what they thought was attractive? Did Kate
know? And Mrs. Frampton? How _could_ they know, people like that? How
could it be part of their equipment of knowledge, anything so
extraordinary, so wild, so unlike their usual range as that? They knew
about recipes, and servants, and dusting, and things like that--but
surely not about weird and wonderful things that they couldn't see? Alix
could rather better believe that this preacher knew, though he did
sometimes use words she didn't like, such as tribulation and grace. (It
would seem that preachers sometimes must: it is impossible, and not
right, to judge them.)
When the sermon ended abruptly, and they sang a hymn of Bunyan's about a
pilgrim (402 in the green books), one was left with a queer feeling that
the Church had its hand on a door, and at any moment might turn a handle
and lead the way through.... Alix caught for a moment the forces at
work; perhaps West was right about them, and they were adequate for the
job of blowing up the debris of the world. If only the Church could
collect them, focus them, use them.... Kate, and church people of Kate's
calibre, were surely like untaught children playing, ignorantly and
placidly, with dynamite. They would be blown up if they weren't careful.
They kept summoning forces to their aid which must surely, if they fully
came, shatter and break to bits most of the things they clung to as
necessary comforts and conveniences. But perhaps people knew this, and
therefore prayed cautiously, with reservations; so the powers came in
the same muffled, wrapped way, with reservations.
Such were Alix's speculations as the music ended and the congregation
filed down the church and shook hands with the tired vicar at the door
and went out into the dark evening. The fog came round them and choked
the light that streamed from the church, and made Alix cough. They
hurried home through the blurred, gas-lit roads.
'Did you enjoy the service?' asked Kate.
'I think so,' said Alix, wondering whether she had.
'It's queer,' she added, meaning the position of the Christian church in
this world.
But Kate said, 'Queer! Whatever do you mean? It was just like the
ordinary; like it always is.... I wish Mr. Alison had preached, though;
I never feel Mr. Daintree has the same _touch_. He preaches about things
and people in general, and that's never so inspiring; he doesn't seem to
get home the same way to each one. Now, Mr. Alison this morning was
beautiful. Mr. Daintree, I always think, has almost too many _ideas_,
and they run away with him a little. However.' Kate's principle (one of
them) was not to criticise the clergy, so she stopped.
'I wonder if Florence is in yet,' she said instead, 'and if she's left
the larder open, as usual, and let that kitten get at the chicken? I
shouldn't be a bit surprised. She _is_ a girl.'
Alix felt another incongruity. If Kate really believed the extraordinary
things she professed to believe about the interfusion of two worlds (at
least two), how then did it matter so much about chickens and kittens
and Florence? Yet why not? Why shouldn't it give all things an intenser,
more vivid reality, a deeper significance? Perhaps it did, thought Alix,
renouncing the problem of the Catholic church and its so complicated
effects.
'You've got your cough worse,' said Kate, fitting the key into
Violette's latch. 'You'd better go to bed straight, I think, and have a
mustard leaf on after supper. You're the colour of a ghost, child.
Evie's back, I can hear.'
So could Alix.
'I shall go to bed,' she said. 'I don't want supper.'
While she was undressing, Evie came in, to wash her hands for supper.
Evie was radiant and merry.
'Hard luck your having to go back, Al,' said Evie, splashing her face
and hands. 'I'm stiff all over; I'm for a hot bath afterwards. We had a
lovely time; simply screaming, it was. Mr. Doye is rather a sport.
They're all a jolly set, though. Even that Mr. Ingram, the one you were
talking to, brightened up later on, though when first you turned back he
looked as if he was at his father's funeral. You must have made an
impression. But he got over it all right and was quite chirpy.'
'Was he?' said Alix.
'I've promised Mr. Doye to go out again with him, next Sat. He's quite
determined. I don't know what Sid Vinney'll say, because I'd half
promised him. But I don't care. Sid's an old silly, anyhow.'
Evie smothered herself in the towel, scrubbing her smooth skin that no
scrubbing could hurt.
'Dommage, you being seedy,' said Evie, and pulled off her walking shoes.
'You'd have enjoyed the day no end. Still feeling sick? Oh, poor kid,
bad luck.... Well, there's the bell, I must run. I've heaps more to tell
you. But you'd better go off straight to sleep after supper; I won't
disturb you when I come up.'
She ran downstairs. Alix heard her voice in the dining-room below,
through supper. Evie had had a good day. Evie was lovely, and jolly, and
kind, and a good sort, but Alix did not want to see her, or to hear her
talk.
4
It was Kate who came up after supper, with a mustard leaf, which she put
on Alix's chest.
'Shall I read to you till I take it off?' Kate said; and what she
selected to read was the current issue of the _Sign_, the parish
magazine she took in. (Mrs. Frampton took the _Peep of Day_, which was
the magazine of the church she attended.)
The mustard leaf, an ancient and mild one, which needed keeping on for
some time, allowed of reading the _Sign_ almost straight through, apart
from the parish news on the outer pages, which, though absorbing, is
local and ephemeral, and should not be treated as literature. Kate began
with an article on the Organs in our Churches, worked on through a
serial called Account Rendered; a poem on the Women of the Empire; a
page on Waifs and Strays; A Few Words to Parents and Teachers on the
Christian Doctrine of the Trinity; Thoughts to Rest Upon; Keeping Well,
some Facts for our Families; The Pitman's Amen (a short story);
Wholesome Food for Baby; and so at last to Our Query Corner, wherein the
disturbed in mind were answered when they had during the month written
to inquire, 'Why does my clergyman worship a cross? Is not this against
the second commandment?' 'What amusements, if any, may be allowed on
Sunday?' 'If I take the Communion, should I go to dancing-classes?' 'How
can I turn from Low Church to High Church?' 'Should not churchwardens be
Christians?' and about many other perplexing problems. The answers were
intelligent and full, never a bald Yes, or No, or We do not know; they
often included a recommendation to the inquirer to try and look at the
matter from a wider, or higher, standpoint, and (usually) to read the
little book by an eminent Canon that bore more particularly on his case.
Alix got it all, from the Organs in our Churches to the Christian
Churchwardens, mixed up with the mustard leaf, so that it seemed a
painful magazine, but, one hoped, profitable. She looked at Kate's
small, prim head in the shadow under the gas, and thought how Kate had
been through love and loss and jealousy and still survived. But Kate's
love and loss and jealousy could not be so bad; it was like some one
else's toothache.
'We do not quite understand your question,' read Kate. (This was on
turning from Low to High.) 'You should try to detach yourself from these
party names, which are often mischievous.... We think you might be
helped by the following books.... Twenty-five minutes: I should think
that must be enough, even for that old leaf. Does it smart much?'
'Dreadfully,' said Alix, who was tired of it.
'Well, two minutes more,' said Kate, and went on to the Churchwardens,
who, it seemed, _should_ be Christians, if possible.
'Now then,' said Kate, advancing with cotton wool.
'Oo,' said Alix. 'It's been on too long, Kate.'
'You do make a fuss,' said Kate, padding her chest with cotton wool and
tucking the clothes round her. 'Now you go off to Sleepy Town quick.'
Alix thought how kind Kate was. When one had any physical ailment,
Violette came out strong. It was soft-hearted. Women are.
5
When Kate had gone, Alix lay with her eyes tight shut and her head
throbbing, and tried to go to sleep, so that she need no longer make her
brain ache with keeping things out. But she could not go to sleep. And
she could not, in the silence and dark, keep things out; not Paul; nor
the war; nor Basil; nor Evie.
At last Evie came. Alix, feigning sleep, lay with tight-shut eyes, face
to the wall. Every movement of Evie, undressing in her frightful
loveliness, was horribly clear. Alix was afraid Evie, in passing her
bed, would brush against her, and that she would have to scream. If only
Evie would get to bed and to sleep.
Evie, after her undressing and washing, knelt in prayer for thirty
seconds (what was Evie's God, who should say? One cannot tell with
people like Evie, or see into their minds), then took her loveliness to
bed and fell sweetly asleep.
Alix knew from her breathing that she slept; then she unclenched her
hands and relaxed her body and cried.