Chapter VI

Helen had gone out to tea with an artistic friend, and, retiring upstairs with her afterwards, had sat on the hearthrug of her friend's bed-sitting-room, and discussed the narrowness of the world, of Hanstead, and of religious people in particular.

"Did you ever know such a place?" she said. "Very nearly all the only people of our sort are entirely wrapped up in St. James' and the Vicar. Of course, father's a churchwarden, and that makes it worse for me.... I... I hate church."

The friend cooed sympathetically.

" Then there's Percy," went on Helen discontentedly. " He's in the City all day, and I do think the City absolutely deadly. And then when he's at home he's always busy, and when he isn't busy he's singing in that beastly choir. It's only the music he cares about, you know: he isn't a bit pious, really; but it's just as bad as if he was. Oh! he's a good boy: I know that. I sometimes almost wish he wasn't."

Then Helen launched out into her gospel. It was the convention of unconventionality; and there is nothing more conventional. The ideal life appeared to her to consist in living in a particular sort of house, almost precisely the opposite of the house in which she happened to live: there must be a great deal of whitewash in it, and red tiles, and rough-cast, and copper fireplaces. There must be large bare rooms, with floors stained with permanganate of potash, and rugs on the top of it. It must have divans;

Digitized by Google there must be leaded lights in the windows, and doors of stained deal; there must be a large " studio/' with plaster casts on a shelf all round it. There must be little oak beds in the bedrooms and a green-tiled bath-room. There must be an orchard all round it, with anemones in the grass in spring-time, and a stream running through it, and a perpetual liquid sunshine.

" I don't want a big house," she had said modestly, "with estates and responsibilities, and... and... manages de... de — what's the word?... Oh! yes — convenance. All that's as stifling as a suburb. I don't want any servants at all, or horses, or motors. I wouldn't use them if I had them. No; just a little house, of th* right kind — artistic, you know."

The details of the life to be lived there were a little vague. She, and the ideal friend with whom she must live, must, of course, cook for themselves and wear Greek-looking costumes: they must be fearless artists and paint what they really saw: they would recreate themselves with gardening and housework, and the reading out of books that were bound in olive-coloured leather. They must never go to church. They must And their religion in the clean, innocent things of earth and water and air. It was all immensely spiritual and unspeakably superior. fc..

She did not say quite all this, but this was more or less the vision behind her speech, and the friend listened rapturously. Helen illustrated it by references to what it must not be, taking the awful examples of such households as that of the Vicarage or of Mr. MainV These stood to her (with her own home) as types of Philistinism; they were respectable in the wrong way; they were religious and conventional.

u I can't conceive what the inside of that man's mind is like," she said, referring to Mr. Main's. " I picture

Digitized by Google it like the inside of a station waiting-room." (Her friend gasped at the brilliancy of the comparison.) " It's got useful ^seats to sit down upon, and a square table in the middle, and a time-table on the walls; and no fire; and a bottle of flat water and a glass on -the 'chimney-piece. And it's absolutely dreary and drab-coldured. I wouldn't be that man for... for nuts. And then Mrs. Main lives there always, you know." There was a pause.

Mrs. Main may be said to be the one person whom Helen really hated — whom she hated so much that she seldom said so. She was, as has been said, a little, bitter, fierce woman, rather hollow-eyed and tragic, and a very great deal more capable than Helen suspected. But the reason Helen hated her was because the elder woman ignored her as if she were a child, and refused to admire or to sympathize. * She had been quite rude to her once at least, in this kind of way.

"Well — and about the Vicar?" said the friend, who was of the adoring kind, and thought Helen in great form this evening.

"The Vicar?" reflected Helen, staring into the little coal fire and stroking her ankle. " Oh! he's like a little new drawing-room, furnished by contract. It's all quite complete, down to the oil pictures of waterfalls and the blue mat and the proper books in the revolving bookcase. He's a bright little man, and quite competent in his own little way: he knows a little about everything; but... Lord! the futility of it all. It doesn't amount to anything."

And then Helen began on theology, until the tubular bells began to peal outside.

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She got to church a little late with her friend, and slipped into a seat near the door. It was considered proper for her to go, since her father was the Vicar's warden, and she was not yet emancipated enough to refuse. Her mother was quite resolute on the point, and when that was so there was no more to be said.

As a matter of fact, too, she rather enjoyed it, since she had an unequalled opportunity there for despising (in a youthful and comparatively harmless manner) everyone in sight. She despised the Vicar in his Oxford hood, the curate in his humbler Durham hood, the choir in their surplices, and the congregation, of whom she saw little this evening except the backs of their heads. She despised the white stone and the bricks and the ironwork and the candlesticks and the altar-frontal. It all seemed to her conventional and narrow and meaningless and Philistine: she thought with an exquisite superiority of her ideal house amidst its orchards.

It was during the Magnificat (to " Gadsby in C ") that she first noticed Percy, and was surprised by the look on his face. She hadn't seen him since breakfast, and he looked, she thought, a little tired or overwrought. Perhaps he had walked too far, she thought.... Really he looked rather nice, though, in his surplice up there in the choir-stalls — rather distinguished, with his clean profile, his curly dark hair and his dark eyes....

Mr. Main preached, all about Ahab. She attended in a kind of fierce contempt for about five minutes, marvelling that any man could be so dreary, could say such banal things and avoid with what was very nearly a kind of genius a single interesting or attractive thought. His jaws moved solemnly in enunciation; his eyes were downcast;

Digitized by Google aa his hand, trembling a little, appeared at regular intervals and turned a page. Then she half closed her eyes and began to think about copper fire-hoods.

The Vesper-hymn (sung kneeling) betrayed her very nearly into sentimentalism. The windows were all but dark; there was just a glimmer behind them like the light of a dying fire; the gas burned with clear radiance; the surplices shone; the brasswork sparkled; while from the organ, heard in pauses and short intermediate passages, came the sound of aerial bleating, with a tremolo, as if ten thousand goats wailed together from a distance of five miles in luscious, languorous harmonies.

Then Mr. Bennett elevated the alms-dish, as if in sacrifice, and sang a blessing.

Percy joined her as she waited in the dark evening outside. The others had gone on home.

She had forgotten all about his looking tired, and greeted him with genial friendliness. But the instant he spoke she remembered.

. " Yes, I've had a good time," he said. " We've got half an hour before supper. I wish you'd come a little walk. I've got something to tell you." He spoke with a curious solemnity. " But "

"I want to tell you before I tell father and mother, and I must tell them this evening."

She was silent. This was a completely new side of Percy.

Ill

All through supper she kept on glancing at him when he wasn't looking, in complete bewilderment. She did not even yet understand one half of all that he had tried to tell her as they picked their way in the dusk through the

Digitized by Google nursery gardens on the north of the High Street It seemed to her incredible and very nearly indecent. But she had controlled herself: she had spoken in short sentences rather breathlessly; and had nodded for assent. He had had a burst of humanity at the end.

" I expect this seems to you hopelessly foolish.... Well, so it would have to me yesterday."

" And you're going to tell them to-night? " she asked after a silence.

" Yes," he said. " What d'you suppose mother will say?"

She shook her head. That was the point in both their minds. Their father could be managed; but they were not so sure about their mother.

All this appeared to the girl, then, simply unintelligible. She was aware that such things happened to people of the lower classes — these strange, emotional, almost inhuman brain-storms; and she had been no more puzzled by these than by other habits of the same class, such as getting drunk and singing loud on Bank holidays. But that it should take Percy, her own brother, like this! (That was the phrase she used to herself. He seemed to " have got them badly," she said to herself.) That he should speak about God and Grace and a new life! It was all jargon to her.

But the crisis would come, she knew, when he told all this at home. He would have to be more explicit then; he would have to make some kind of a coherent defence; and what would his mother say?

He was silent during supper, except when he was directly questioned. Once, when his father asked him outright where he had been all day, he answered that he wished to tell them all about that afterwards. And he had

Digitized by Google said this in a manner that made both his parents look up at him and then down again, and say no more.

He was surprisingly brisk and useful at supper. He had their plates on the sideboard, and the cold sweets ranged before his mother, with unusual speed. He passed the sugar before he was asked, and had his hand on the bell-push before his mother told him to ring for hot water. And all through his face was of the same steady paleness which Helen had noticed in church, and his brown eyes were soft and bright. Certainly he " had them very badly."

The moment came when his mother had sat down in the easy chair in the drawing-room, and his father had taken up the Sunday paper and immediately laid it down again. It was evident that they too were aware that some kind of a revelation was coming. Helen sat far back out of the circle of light and watched.

Percy pokec[ the fire with great deliberateness.

" A little more coal," said his mother.

He put the coal on; lingered a little over its bestowal. Then he suddenly laid the tongs down, went straight to his chair opposite his father, and began, as if in desperation.

" It was a Roman Catholic church I went to to-day," said Percy. " It was the first time I've ever been in one, to a service at least. I went with Reggie Ballard."

There was silence.

Helen saw her father's face, first downcast with pursed lips, glance sharply up at his wife. It was a very little and melancholy face, of a dusky complexion, with little discreet whiskers. He made no movement after another glance at his son's face and away again. She looked at

Digitized by Google her mother. That lady also was motionless, with rather a rigorous look in her face.

Then Percy burst out all at once, leaning suddenly forward, with his hands gripping his knees. An extraordinarily tense look was in his eyes and the lines of his mouth.

" It's no good/' he said. " I can't beat about the bush. The fact is that I was entirely knocked over by the sermon. It wasn't the least what I expected.... All I know is that I was knocked over... once and for all. It was a monk who preached, at least a friar. Everybody's going to hear him: the place was crammed. Well: I was knocked over. I... I suppose you'd call it conversion. All I know is that everything's perfectly different. Everything's changed. I... I understand now what religion's about. I... I didn't before; at least, not in that way. I... I see everything now, for the first time. That's..." (he hesitated), "that's all."

He threw himself back in his chair, and his face fell into shadow.

No one moved for a moment. Helen's heart beat so furiously in her ears that it seemed as if there were no other sound in the whole world. Then she heard her father clear his throat, in the little rasping way he used, when he did not quite know what to say.

" Well, my boy... I... I'm very glad to hear that... that you think religion will mean more to you now. But... but I wish you'd told us it was a Roman Catholic church you were going to — eh, mother? "

"I know, father; I ought to have. I'm sorry."

"Well: I'm glad you've told us now. That's something. I... I hope I'm broad-minded enough to

Digitized by Google recognize that there's good in all religions.... And. •. and what do you mean to do? "

Suddenly Helen perceived for the very first time in her life that her father had his limitations — not limitations that he chose to have, but limitations which he could not help. She perceived that there were larger things in the room than her father, and that he saw this too. The doctor suddenly became small to her. It was an odd sensation.... But her mother had not yet spoken.

" How do you mean, father? "

"Well, my boy, I hope you don't want to become a Romanist yourself. That I... I shouldn't approve of at all."

There was no answer for a moment.

" Your mother and I — " began the doctor.

" I really haven't thought about that much yet," said Percy. " It had occurred to me. But... but that wasn't quite the point with me.... I... I only thought I'd better tell you straight out what had happened."

" Yes, my boy; that's quite right of you — very honest and straightforward. I'm... I'm glad that it's gone no farther yet. Eh, mother? "

His wife drew a breath and expelled it again. And simultaneously Helen perceived by a quick inexplicable intuition, that the situation was far beyond her mother too. There was no question about it. Percy dominated everyone there, or, rather, the forces that he had brought with him into the room entirely beat down and practically eliminated the forces for which his parents stood. It was like a wind blowing suddenly through a little parlour....

" Percy's done quite right to tell us," said Mrs. Brandreth Smith. " I of course hope with your father that it'll

Digitized by Google go no further. I think it's just a little sentiment, and no more; natural, perhaps, in a boy." She stopped.

"A good talk to the Vicar'll set all that right," said the doctor.

"And a little thought and consideration," chorused his wife more emphatically.

It was a great relief to the tension of Helen. The situation had been so completely abnormal, so wholly unexpected, that she had not been able to form any conjectures, even, as to what would happen. Her parents, in spite of her pose of emancipation, still stood to her as the sky stands to the earth — presenting indeed one side of her to a protective and final kind, but having another side of which she knew nothing. They had been symbols to her of finality — especially her mother — the authoritative embodiment of human life so far as she had experienced it; they were (so to speak) the emblems of Church and State to her: they were always the last infallible court of appeal. She would no more have dreamed, really, of setting up her studio against their wishes, than she would have contemplated an elopement. They were the background and walls and roof of existence.

And now, though she did not entirely realize it yet, she had had a glimpse that there were forces and powers and principalities beyond them; that they were not the sky, after all, but moved beneath it, like herself. They seemed infinitely smaller than they had ever seemed before; she saw round them and beyond them; and it was Percy, of all people — or, rather, Percy's incredible situation — that had wrought this revelation. Finally, she was vastly relieved. So far as she had expected anything, she had expected a painful scene, and denunciations

Digitized by Google and threats. It would have been terrible, but in keeping with her scheme, if these had been uttered. And now she saw that they would not be used at all; and that her parents were really human like herself.

Then Percy leaned forward again; and she saw his face strangely working.

" Mother/' he said, " — and father too. I... I can't tell you how grateful I am. You have been as kind as possible. I'll... I'll do anything you ask me... now that I know you'll let me follow my conscience. I'll see anybody you like.... I'm ever so..

Then Helen drew a whistling breath of pain and bit fiercely on her lower lip, for she saw Percy's face suddenly break into tears.

"That's all right, my boy; that's all right," said his father tremblingly. " There! there! "

His mother said nothing.

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