"Why, of course; I'm only too happy, Mary darling."
Mary coughed and drew a deep breath. "I presume," she began
35
sententiously, "I presume we may take for granted that an intelligent
young woman of twenty-three who has lived in civilised society in the
twentieth century has no prejudices."
"Well, I confess I still have a few."
"But not about repressions."
"No, not many about repressions; that's true."
"Or, rather, about getting rid of repressions."
"Exactly."
"So much for our fundamental postulate," said Mary. Solemnity was
expressed in every feature of her round young face, radiated from her large
blue eyes. "We come next to the desirability of possessing experience.
I hope we are agreed that knowledge is desirable and that ignorance is
undesirable."
Obedient as one of those complaisant disciples from whom Socrates
could get whatever answer he chose, Anne gave her assent to this
proposition.
"And we are equally agreed, I hope, that marriage is what it is."
"It is."
"Good!" said Mary. "And repressions being what they are..."
"Exactly."
"There would therefore seem to be only one conclusion."
"But I knew that," Anne exclaimed, "before you began."
"Yes, but now it's been proved," said Mary. "One must do things
logically. The question is now..."
"But where does the question come in? You've reached your only
possible conclusion--logically, which is more than I could have done. All
that remains is to impart the information to someone you like--someone
you like really rather a lot, someone you're in love with, if I may express
myself so baldly."
"But that's just where the question comes in," Mary exclaimed. "I'm
not in love with anybody."
"Then, if I were you, I should wait till you are."
"But I can't go on dreaming night after night that I'm falling down a
well. It's too dangerous."
36
"Well, if it really is TOO dangerous, then of course you must do
something about it; you must find somebody else."
"But who?" A thoughtful frown puckered Mary's brow. "It must be
somebody intelligent, somebody with intellectual interests that I can share.
And it must be somebody with a proper respect for women, somebody
who's prepared to talk seriously about his work and his ideas and about my
work and my ideas. It isn't, as you see, at all easy to find the right
person."
"Well" said Anne, "there are three unattached and intelligent men in
the house at the present time. There's Mr. Scogan, to begin with; but
perhaps he's rather too much of a genuine antique. And there are
Gombauld and Denis. Shall we say that the choice is limited to the last
two?"
Mary nodded. "I think we had better," she said, and then hesitated,
with a certain air of embarrassment.
"What is it?"
"I was wondering," said Mary, with a gasp, "whether they really were
unattached. I thought that perhaps you might...you might..."
"It was very nice of you to think of me, Mary darling," said Anne,
smiling the tight cat's smile. "But as far as I'm concerned, they are both
entirely unattached."
"I'm very glad of that," said Mary, looking relieved. "We are now
confronted with the question: Which of the two?"
"I can give no advice. It's a matter for your taste."
"It's not a matter of my taste," Mary pronounced, "but of their merits.
We must weigh them and consider them carefully and dispassionately."
"You must do the weighing yourself," said Anne; there was still the
trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth and round the half-closed eyes.
"I won't run the risk of advising you wrongly."
"Gombauld has more talent," Mary began, "but he is less civilised than
Denis." Mary's pronunciation of "civilised" gave the word a special and
additional significance. She uttered it meticulously, in the very front of
her mouth, hissing delicately on the opening sibilant. So few people
were civilised, and they, like the first-rate works of art, were mostly
37
French. "Civilisation is most important, don't you think?"
Anne held up her hand. "I won't advise," she said. "You must make
the decision."
"Gombauld's family," Mary went on reflectively, "comes from
Marseilles. Rather a dangerous heredity, when one thinks of the Latin
attitude towards women. But then, I sometimes wonder whether Denis is
altogether serious-minded, whether he isn't rather a dilettante. It's very
difficult. What do you think?"
"I'm not listening," said Anne. "I refuse to take any responsibility."
Mary sighed. "Well," she said, "I think I had better go to bed and
think about it."
"Carefully and dispassionately," said Anne.
At the door Mary turned round. "Good-night," she said, and
wondered as she said the words why Anne was smiling in that curious way.
It was probably nothing, she reflected. Anne often smiled for no
apparent reason; it was probably just a habit. "I hope I shan't dream of
falling down wells again to-night," she added.
"Ladders are worse," said Anne.
Mary nodded. "Yes, ladders are much graver."
38
CHAPTER VIII.
Breakfast on Sunday morning was an hour later than on week-days,
and Priscilla, who usually made no public appearance before luncheon,
honoured it by her presence. Dressed in black silk, with a ruby cross as
well as her customary string of pearls round her neck, she presided. An
enormous Sunday paper concealed all but the extreme pinnacle of her
coiffure from the outer world.
"I see Surrey has won," she said, with her mouth full, "by four wickets.
The sun is in Leo: that would account for it!"
"Splendid game, cricket," remarked Mr. Barbecue-Smith heartily to no
one in particular; "so thoroughly English."
Jenny, who was sitting next to him, woke up suddenly with a start.
"What?" she said. "What?"
"So English," repeated Mr. Barbecue-Smith.
Jenny looked at him, surprised. "English? Of course I am."
He was beginning to explain, when Mrs. Wimbush vailed her Sunday
paper, and appeared, a square, mauve-powdered face in the midst of
orange splendours. "I see there's a new series of articles on the next
world just beginning," she said to Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "This one's called
'Summer Land and Gehenna.'"
"Summer Land," echoed Mr. Barbecue-Smith, closing his eyes.
"Summer Land. A beautiful name. Beautiful--beautiful."
Mary had taken the seat next to Denis's. After a night of careful
consideration she had decided on Denis. He might have less talent than
Gombauld, he might be a little lacking in seriousness, but somehow he
was safer.
"Are you writing much poetry here in the country?" she asked, with a
bright gravity.
"None," said Denis curtly. "I haven't brought my typewriter."
"But do you mean to say you can't write without a typewriter?"
Denis shook his head. He hated talking at breakfast, and, besides, he
wanted to hear what Mr. Scogan was saying at the other end of the table.
"...My scheme for dealing with the Church," Mr. Scogan was saying,
39
"is beautifully simple. At the present time the Anglican clergy wear their
collars the wrong way round. I would compel them to wear, not only
their collars, but all their clothes, turned back to frantic--coat, waistcoat,
trousers, boots--so that every clergyman should present to the world a
smooth facade, unbroken by stud, button, or lace. The enforcement of
such a livery would act as a wholesome deterrent to those intending to
enter the Church. At the same time it would enormously enhance, what
Archbishop Laud so rightly insisted on, the 'beauty of holiness' in the few
incorrigibles who could not be deterred."
"In hell, it seems," said Priscilla, reading in her Sunday paper, "the
children amuse themselves by flaying lambs alive."
"Ah, but, dear lady, that's only a symbol," exclaimed Mr. Barbecue-
Smith, "a material symbol of a h-piritual truth. Lambs signify..."
"Then there are military uniforms," Mr. Scogan went on. "When
scarlet and pipe-clay were abandoned for khaki, there were some who
trembled for the future of war. But then, finding how elegant the new
tunic was, how closely it clipped the waist, how voluptuously, with the
lateral bustles of the pockets, it exaggerated the hips; when they realized
the brilliant potentialities of breeches and top-boots, they were reassured.
Abolish these military elegances, standardise a uniform of sack- cloth and
mackintosh, you will very soon find that..."
"Is anyone coming to church with me this morning?" asked Henry
Wimbush. No one responded. He baited his bare invitation. "I read
the lessons, you know. And there's Mr. Bodiham. His sermons are
sometimes worth hearing."
"Thank you, thank you," said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. "I for one prefer
to worship in the infinite church of Nature. How does our Shakespeare
put it? 'Sermons in books, stones in the running brooks.'" He waved his
arm in a fine gesture towards the window, and even as he did so he
became vaguely, but none the less insistently, none the less uncomfortably
aware that something had gone wrong with the quotation. Something-what
could it be? Sermons? Stones? Books?
40
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Bodiham was sitting in his study at the Rectory. The nineteenth-
century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted the light
grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the room was sombre.
Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls, filled with row upon row of
those thick, heavy theological works which the second-hand booksellers
generally sell by weight. The mantelpiece, the over-mantel, a towering
structure of spindly pillars and little shelves, were brown and varnished.
The writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were the chairs, so was
the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns covered the floor.
Everything was brown in the room, and there was a curious brownish
smell.
In the midst of this brown gloom Mr. Bodiham sat at his desk. He
was the man in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron cheekbones
and a narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran
perpendicularly down his cheeks; his nose was the iron beak of some thin,
delicate bird of rapine. He had brown eyes, set in sockets rimmed with
iron; round them the skin was dark, as though it had been charred. Dense
wiry hair covered his skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His
ears were very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were dark,
iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke and
especially when he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like the grating of
iron hinges when a seldom-used door is opened.
It was nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church,
hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with passion,
an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But
the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid rubber;
the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. The
flail thumped on india- rubber, and as often as not the rubber slept.
That morning he had preached, as he had often preached before, on the
nature of God. He had tried to make them understand about God, what a
fearful thing it was to fall into His hands. God-- they thought of
something soft and merciful. They blinded themselves to facts; still more,
41
they blinded themselves to the Bible. The passengers on the "Titanic"
sang "Nearer my God to Thee" as the ship was going down. Did they
realise what they were asking to be brought nearer to? A white fire of
righteousness, an angry fire...
When Savonarola preached, men sobbed and groaned aloud. Nothing
broke the polite silence with which Crome listened to Mr. Bodiham--only
an occasional cough and sometimes the sound of heavy breathing. In the
front pew sat Henry Wimbush, calm, well- bred, beautifully dressed.
There were times when Mr. Bodiham wanted to jump down from the
pulpit and shake him into life,-- times when he would have liked to beat
and kill his whole congregation.
He sat at his desk dejectedly. Outside the Gothic windows the earth
was warm and marvellously calm. Everything was as it had always been.
And yet, and yet...It was nearly four years now since he had preached that
sermon on Matthew xxiv. 7: "For nation shall rise up against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and
earthquakes, in divers places." It was nearly four years. He had had the
sermon printed; it was so terribly, so vitally important that all the world
should know what he had to say. A copy of the little pamphlet lay on his
desk--eight small grey pages, printed by a fount of type that had grown
blunt, like an old dog's teeth, by the endless champing and champing of
the press. He opened it and began to read it yet once again.
"'For nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:
and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers
places.'
"Nineteen centuries have elapsed since Our Lord gave utterance to
