Non-combatants and Others Part 17

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 G.o.d, and her distaste for Him merely meant that she disliked some of Kate's methods of approach.

Alix felt, vaguely, that West's G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+pped a G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

'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 a.s.sociate 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 cla.s.s 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 Ma.s.s 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; G.o.d is well known in her palaces as a sure refuge. Above the noise of battle, above the great water-floods, is the city of G.o.d 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 G.o.d.'

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 Ma.s.s. 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 sh.e.l.ls, to shatter the old materialism, the old comfortable selfishness, the old sn.o.bberies, 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 h.e.l.l 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. G.o.d, 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 m.u.f.fled, 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.