incense, or decent music, or proper vestments, or anything. And what’s the result? We can’t get enough people to fill the church a quarter full, even on Easter Sunday. You look round the church on Sunday morning, and it’s nothing but the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides and a few old women.”
“I know. It’s dreadful,” admitted Dorothy, sewing on her button. “It doesn’t seem to make any difference what we do—we simply can’t get people to come to church. Still,” she added, “they do come to us to be married and buried. And I don’t think the congregation’s actually gone down this year. There were nearly two hundred people at Easter Communion.”
“Two hundred! It ought to be two thousand. That’s the population of this town. The fact is that three-quarters of the people in this place never go near a church in their lives. The Church has absolutely lost its hold over them. They don’t know that it exists. And why? That’s what I’m getting at. Why?”
“I suppose it’s all this Science and Free Thought and all that,” said Dorothy rather sententiously, quoting her father.
This remark deflected Victor from what he had been about to say. He had been on the very point of saying that St. Athelstan’s congregation had dwindled because of the dullness of the services; but the hated words Science and Free Thought set him off in another and even more familiar channel.
“Of course it’s this so-called Free Thought!” he exclaimed, immediately beginning to fidget up and down again. “It’s these swine of atheists like Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley and all that crowd. And what’s ruined the Church is that instead of jolly well answering them and showing them up for the fools and liars they are, we just sit tight and let them spread their beastly atheist propaganda wherever they choose. It’s all the fault of the bishops, of course.” (Like every Anglo-Catholic, Victor had an abysmal contempt for bishops.) “They’re all Modernists and time-servers. By Jove!” he added more cheerfully, halting, “did you see my letter in the Church Times last week?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” said Dorothy, holding another button in position with her thumb. “What was it about?”
“Oh, Modernist bishops and all that. I got in a good swipe at old Barnes.”
It was very rarely that a week passed when Victor did not write a letter to the Church Times. He was in the thick of every controversy and in the forefront of every assault upon Modernists and atheists. He had twice been in combat with Dr. Major, had written letters of withering irony about Dean Inge and the Bishop of Birmingham, and had not hesitated to attack even the fiendish Russell himself—but Russell, of course, had not dared to reply. Dorothy, to tell the truth, very seldom read the Church Times, and the Rector grew angry if he so much as saw a copy of it in the house. The weekly paper they took in at the Rectory was the High Churchman’s Gazette—a fine old High Tory anachronism with a small and select circulation.
“That swine Russell!” said Victor reminiscently, with his hands deep in his pockets. “How he does make my blood boil!”
“Isn’t that the man who’s such a clever mathematician, or something?” said Dorothy, biting off her thread.
“Oh, I dare say he’s clever enough in his own line, of course,” admitted Victor grudgingly. “But what’s that got to do with it? Just because a man’s clever at figures it doesn’t mean to say that—well, anyway! Let’s come back to what I was saying. Why is it that we can’t get people to come to church in this place? It’s because our services are so dreary and godless, that’s what it is. People want worship that is worship—they want the real Catholic worship of the real Catholic Church we belong to. And they don’t get it from us. All they get is the old Protestant mumbo-jumbo, and Protestantism’s as dead as a doornail, and everyone knows it.”
“That’s not true!” said Dorothy rather sharply as she pressed the third button into place. “You know we’re not Protestants. Father’s always saying that the Church of England is the Catholic Church—he’s preached I don’t know how many sermons about the Apostolic Succession. That’s why Lord Pockthorne and the others won’t come to church here. Only he won’t join in the Anglo-Catholic movement because he thinks they’re too fond of ritualism for its own sake. And so do I.”
“Oh, I don’t say your father isn’t absolutely sound on doctrine—absolutely sound. But if he thinks we’re the Catholic Church, why doesn’t he hold the service in a proper Catholic way? It’s a shame we can’t have incense occasionally. And his ideas about vestments—if you don’t mind my saying it—are simply awful. On Easter Sunday he was actually wearing a Gothic cope with a modern Italian lace alb. Why, dash it, it’s like wearing a top hat with brown boots.”
“Well, I don’t think vestments are so important as you do,” said Dorothy. “I think it’s the spirit of the priest that matters, not the clothes he wears.”
“That’s the kind of thing a Primitive Methodist would say!” exclaimed Victor disgustedly. “Of course vestments are important! Where’s the sense of worshipping at all if we can’t make a proper job of it? Now, if you want to see what real Catholic worship can be like, look at St. Wedekind’s in Millborough! By Jove, they do things in style there! Images of the Virgin, reservation of the Sacrament—everything. They’ve had the Kensitites on to them three times, and they simply defy the Bishop.”
“Oh, I hate the way they go on at St. Wedekind’s!” said Dorothy. “They’re absolutely spiky. You can hardly see what’s happening at the altar, there are such clouds of incense. I think people like that ought to turn Roman Catholic and have done with it.”
“My dear Dorothy, you ought to have been a Nonconformist. You really ought. A Plymouth Brother—or a Plymouth Sister or whatever it’s called. I think your favourite hymn must be Number 567, ‘O my God I fear Thee, Thou art very High!’ ”
“Yours is Number 231, ‘I nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march nearer Rome!’ ” retorted Dorothy, winding the thread round the fourth and last button.
The argument continued for several minutes while Dorothy adorned a Cavalier’s beaver hat (it was an old black felt school hat of her own) with plume and ribbons. She and Victor were never long together without being involved in an argument upon the question of “ritualism.” In Dorothy’s opinion Victor was of a kind to “go over to Rome” if not prevented, and she was very likely right. But Victor was not yet aware of his probable destiny. At present the fevers of the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its ceaseless exciting warfare on three fronts at once—Protestants to right of you, Modernists to left of you, and, unfortunately, Roman Catholics to rear of you and always ready for a sly kick in the pants—filled his mental horizon. Scoring off Dr. Major in the Church Times meant more to him than any of the serious business of life. But for all his churchiness he had not an atom of real piety in his constitution. It was essentially as a game that religious controversy appealed to him—the most absorbing game ever invented, because it goes on for ever and because just a little cheating is allowed.
“Thank goodness, that’s done!” said Dorothy, twiddling the Cavalier’s beaver hat round on her hand and then putting it down. “Oh dear, what piles of things there are still to do, though! I wish I could get those wretched jackboots off my mind. What’s the time, Victor?”
“It’s nearly five to one.”
“Oh, good gracious! I must run. I’ve got three omelettes to make. I daren’t trust them to Ellen. And, oh, Victor! Have you got anything you can give us for the jumble sale? If you had an old pair of trousers you could give us, that would be best of all, because we can always sell trousers.”
“Trousers?
