"It is so wondyful," she said, with her hands straight down upon the couch upon which she was sitting, and leaning forward at him, so as to seem almost as much out of drawing as a modern picture.
"It seems," he reflected; "--as if it were a natural thing."She came back to earth very slowly.She turned to the tea-things with hushed and solemn movements as though she administered a ceremony of peculiar significance.The bishop too rose slowly out of the profundity of his confession."No sugar please," he said, arresting the lump in mid air.
It was only when they were embarked upon cups of tea and had a little refreshed themselves, that she carried the talk further.
"Does it mean that you must leave the church?" she asked.
"It seemed so at first," he said."But now I do not know.I do not know what I ought to do."She awaited his next thought.
"It is as if one had lived in a room all one's life and thought it the world--and then suddenly walked out through a door and discovered the sea and the mountains and stars.So it was with me and the Anglican Church.It seems so extraordinary now--and it would have seemed the most natural thing a year ago--to think that I ever believed that the Anglican Compromise was the final truth of religion, that nothing more until the end of the world could ever be known that Cosmo Gordon Lang did not know, that there could be no conception of God and his quality that Randall Davidson did not possess."He paused.
"I did," he said.
"I did," she responded with round blue eyes of wonder.
"At the utmost the Church of England is a tabernacle on a road.""A 'oad that goes whe'?" she rhetorized.
"Exactly," said the bishop, and put down his cup.
"You see, my dear Lady Sunderbund," he resumed, "I am exactly in the same position of that man at the door."She quoted aptly and softly: "The wo'ld was all befo' them whe'
to choose."
He was struck by the aptness of the words.
"I feel I have to come right out into the bare truth.What exactly then do I become? Do I lose my priestly function because I discover how great God is? But what am I to do?"He opened a new layer of his thoughts to her.
"There is a saying," he remarked, "once a priest, always a priest.I cannot imagine myself as other than what I am.""But o'thodox no maw," she said.
"Orthodox--self-satisfied, no longer.A priest who seeks, an exploring priest.""In a Chu'ch of P'og'ess and B'othe'hood," she carried him on.
"At any rate, in a progressive and learning church."She flashed and glowed assent.
"I have been haunted," he said, "by those words spoken at Athens.'Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.' That comes to me with an effect of--guidance is an old-fashioned word--shall I say suggestion? To stand by the altar bearing strange names and ancient symbols, speaking plainly to all mankind of the one true God--!"(4)
He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he remained talking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer.
The rest was merely a beating out of what had already been said.
But insensibly she renewed her original charm, and as he became accustomed to her he forgot a certain artificiality in her manner and the extreme modernity of her costume and furniture.She was a wonderful listener; nobody else could have helped him to expression in quite the same way, and when he left her he felt that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherent and acceptable form to almost any intelligent hearer.He had a point of view now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate golden presence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic;his problem had diminished to the scale of any other great human problem, to the scale of political problems and problems of integrity and moral principle, problems about which there is no such urgency as there is about a house on fire, for example.
And now the desire for expression was running strong.He wanted to state his situation; if he did not state he would have to act;and as he walked back to the club dinner he turned over possible interlocutors in his thoughts.Lord Rampound sat with him at dinner, and he came near broaching the subject with him.But Lord Rampound that evening had that morbid running of bluish legal anecdotes which is so common an affliction with lawyers, and theology sinks and dies in that turbid stream.
But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend and helper Bishop Likeman, and it was borne in upon him that he should consult him.And this he did next day.
Since the days when the bishop had been only plain Mr.Scrope, the youngest and most helpful of Likeman's historical band of curates, their friendship had continued.Likeman had been a second father to him; in particular his tact and helpfulness had shone during those days of doubt and anxiety when dear old Queen Victoria, God's representative on earth, had obstinately refused, at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop.She had those pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops.She had liked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs --nobody could ever find out who wrote them and nobody could ever find out who showed them to the old lady--anticipating his elevation.She had gone very red in the face and stiffened in the Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was mentioned, and so a rich harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled for some months.
Likeman had brought her round.
It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman before he came to any open breach with the Establishment.
He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on account of the war, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as ever.His voice sounded more than ever like a kind old woman's.
He sat buried in his cushions--for "nowadays I must save every scrap of vitality"--and for a time contented himself with drawing out his visitor's story.
