'How much will you pay?'
I said, 'Bring the wine. Set it here. See me drink it. Charge me your
due.'
I found that this brutal way of speaking was just what was needed for
the kine and cattle of this pen. She skipped off to a cupboard, and
set wine before me, and a glass. I drank quite quietly till I had had
enough, and asked what there was to pay. She said 'Threepence,' and I
said 'Too much,' as I paid it. At this the ox-faced man grunted and
frowned, and I was afraid; but hiding my fear I walked out boldly and
slowly, and made a noise with my stick upon the floor of the hall
without. Neither did I bid them farewell. But I made a sign at the
house as I left it. Whether it suffered from this as did the house at
Dorchester which the man in the boat caused to wither in one night, is
more than I can tell.
The road led straight across the valley and approached the further
wall of hills. These I saw were pierced by one of the curious gaps
which are peculiar to limestone ranges. Water cuts them, and a torrent
ran through this one also. The road through it, gap though it was,
went up steeply, and the further valley was evidently higher than the
one I was leaving. It was already evening as I entered this narrow
ravine; the sun only caught the tops of the rock-walls. My fatigue was
very great, and my walking painful to an extreme, when, having come to
a place where the gorge was narrowest and where the two sides were
like the posts of a giant's stile, where also the fifth ridge of the
Jura stood up beyond me in the further valley, a vast shadow, I sat
down wearily and drew what not even my exhaustion could render
unremarkable.
While I was occupied sketching the slabs of limestone, I heard wheels
coming up behind me, and a boy in a waggon stopped and hailed me.
What the boy wanted to know was whether I would take a lift, and this
he said in such curious French that I shuddered to think how far I had
pierced into the heart of the hills, and how soon I might come to
quite strange people. I was greatly tempted to get into his cart, but
though I had broken so many of my vows one remained yet whole and
sound, which was that I would ride upon no wheeled thing. Remembering
this, therefore, and considering that the Faith is rich in
interpretation, I clung on to the waggon in such a manner that it did
all my work for me, and yet could not be said to be actually carrying
me. _Distinguo_. The essence of a vow is its literal meaning. The
spirit and intention are for the major morality, and concern Natural
Religion, but when upon a point of ritual or of dedication or special
worship a man talks to you of the Spirit and Intention, and complains
of the dryness of the Word, look at him askance. He is not far removed
from Heresy.
I knew a man once that was given to drinking, and I made up this rule
for him to distinguish between Bacchus and the Devil. To wit: that he
should never drink what has been made and sold since the
Reformation--I mean especially spirits and champagne. Let him (said I)
drink red wine and white, good beer and mead--if he could get
it--liqueurs made by monks, and, in a word, all those feeding,
fortifying, and confirming beverages that our fathers drank in old
time; but not whisky, nor brandy, nor sparkling wines, not absinthe,
nor the kind of drink called gin. This he promised to do, and all went
well. He became a merry companion, and began to write odes. His prose
clarified and set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy. He
slept well; he comprehended divine things; he was already half a
republican, when one fatal day--it was the feast of the eleven
thousand virgins, and they were too busy up in heaven to consider the
needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and betempted wretches of
men--I went with him to the Society for the Prevention of Annoyances
to the Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the
cruelty of Spaniards to their mules. As we were all seated there round
a table with a staring green cloth on it, and a damnable gas pendant
above, the host of that evening offered him whisky and water, and, my
back being turned, he took it. Then when I would have taken it from
him he used these words--
'After all, it is the intention of a pledge that matters;' and I saw
that all was over, for he had abandoned definition, and was plunged
back into the horrible mazes of Conscience and Natural Religion.
What do you think, then, was the consequence? Why, he had to take some
nasty pledge or other to drink nothing whatever, and become a
spectacle and a judgement, whereas if he had kept his exact word he
might by this time have been a happy man.
Remembering him and pondering upon the advantage of strict rule, I
hung on to my cart, taking care to let my feet still feel the road,
and so passed through the high limestone gates of the gorge, and was
in the fourth valley of the Jura, with the fifth ridge standing up
black and huge before me against the last of the daylight. There were
as yet no stars.
There, in this silent place, was the little village of Undervelier,
and I thanked the boy, withdrew from his cart, and painfully
approached the inn, where I asked the woman if she could give me
something to eat, and she said that she could in about an hour, using,
however, with regard to what it was I was to have, words which I did
not understand. For the French had become quite barbaric, and I was
now indeed lost in one of the inner places of the world.
A cigar is, however, even in Undervelier, a cigar; and the best cost a
penny. One of these, therefore, I bought, and then I went out smoking
it into the village square, and, finding a low wall, leaned over it
and contemplated the glorious clear green water tumbling and roaring
along beneath it on the other side; for a little river ran through the
village.
As I leaned there resting and communing I noticed how their church,
close at hand, was built along the low banks of the torrent. I admired
the luxuriance of the grass these waters fed, and the generous arch of
the trees beside it. The graves seemed set in a natural place of rest
and home, and just beyond this churchyard was that marriage of hewn
stone and water which is the source of so peculiar a satisfaction; for
the church tower was built boldly right out into the stream and the
current went eddying round it. But why it is that strong human
building when it dips into water should thus affect the mind I cannot
say, only I know that it is an emotion apart to see our device and
structure where it is most enduring come up against and challenge that
element which we cannot conquer, and which has always in it something
of danger for men. It is therefore well to put strong mouldings on to
piers and quays, and to make an architecture of them, and so it was a
splendid thought of the Romans to build their villas right out to sea;
so they say does Venice enthrall one, but where I have most noticed
this thing is at the Mont St Michel--only one must take care to shut
one's eyes or sleep during all the low tide.
As I was watching that stream against those old stones, my cigar being
now half smoked, a bell began tolling, and it seemed as if the whole
village were pouring into the church. At this I was very much
surprised, not having been used at any time of my life to the
unanimous devotion of an entire population, but having always thought
of the Faith as something fighting odds, and having seen unanimity
only in places where some sham religion or other glozed over our
tragedies and excused our sins. Certainly to see all the men, women,
and children of a place taking Catholicism for granted was a new
sight, and so I put my cigar carefully down under a stone on the top
of the wall and went in with them. I then saw that what they were at
was vespers.
All the village sang, knowing the psalms very well, and I noticed that
their Latin was nearer German than French; but what was most pleasing
of all was to hear from all the men and women together that very noble
good-night and salutation to God which begins--
_Te, lucis ante terminum._
My whole mind was taken up and transfigured by this collective act,
and I saw for a moment the Catholic Church quite plain, and I
remembered Europe, and the centuries. Then there left me altogether
that attitude of difficulty and combat which, for us others, is always
associated with the Faith. The cities dwindled in my imagination, and
I took less heed of the modern noise. I went out with them into the
clear evening and the cool. I found my cigar and lit it again, and
musing much more deeply than before, not without tears, I considered
the nature of Belief.
Of its nature it breeds a reaction and an indifference. Those who
believe nothing but only think and judge cannot understand this. Of
its nature it struggles with us. And we, we, when our youth is full on
us, invariably reject it and set out in the sunlight content with
natural things. Then for a long time we are like men who follow down
the cleft of a mountain and the peaks are hidden from us and
forgotten. It takes years to reach the dry plain, and then we look
back and see our home.
What is it, do you think, that causes the return? I think it is the
problem of living; for every day, every experience of evil, demands a
solution. That solution is provided by the memory of the great scheme
which at last we remember. Our childhood pierces through again... But
I will not attempt to explain it, for I have not the power; only I
know that we who return suffer hard things; for there grows a gulf
between us and many companions. We are perpetually thrust into
minorities, and the world almost begins to talk a strange language; we
are troubled by the human machinery of a perfect and superhuman
revelation; we are over-anxious for its safety, alarmed, and in danger
of violent decisions.
And this is hard: that the Faith begins to make one abandon the old
way of judging. Averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. We
see things from within and consider one mind or a little group as a
salt or leaven. The very nature of social force seems changed to us.
And this is hard when a man has loved common views and is happy only
with his fellows.
And this again is very hard, that we must once more take up that awful
struggle to reconcile two truths and to keep civic freedom sacred in
spite of the organization of religion, and not to deny what is
certainly true. It is hard to accept mysteries, and to be humble. We
are tost as the great schoolmen were tost, and we dare not neglect the
duty of that wrestling.
But the hardest thing of all is that it leads us away, as by a
command, from all that banquet of the intellect than which there is no
keener joy known to man.
I went slowly up the village place in the dusk, thinking of this
deplorable weakness in men that the Faith is too great for them, and
accepting it as an inevitable burden. I continued to muse with my eyes
upon the ground...
There was to be no more of that studious content, that security in
historic analysis, and that constant satisfaction of an appetite which
never cloyed. A wisdom more imperative and more profound was to put a
term to the comfortable wisdom of learning. All the balance of
judgement, the easy, slow convictions, the broad grasp of things, the
vision of their complexity, the pleasure in their innumerable
life--all that had to be given up. Fanaticisms were no longer entirely
to be despised, just appreciations and a strong grasp of reality no
longer entirely to be admired.
The Catholic Church will have no philosophies. She will permit no
comforts; the cry of the martyrs is in her far voice; her eyes that
see beyond the world present us heaven and hell to the confusion of
our human reconciliations, our happy blending of good and evil things.
By the Lord! I begin to think this intimate religion as tragic as a
great love. There came back into my mind a relic that I have in my
house. It is a panel of the old door of my college, having carved on
it my college arms. I remembered the Lion and the Shield, _Haec fuit,
Haec almae janua sacra domus._ Yes, certainly religion is as tragic as
first love, and drags us out into the void away from our dear homes.
It is a good thing to have loved one woman from a child, and it is a
good thing not to have to return to the Faith.
They cook worse in Undervelier than any place I was ever in, with the
possible exception of Omaha, Neb.