Sinister Street

"I say, I know Mrs. Carruthers. She lives near us," Maurice exclaimed.

"Come on," his friends insisted. "You haven't time now to explain the complications of Surrey society."

"I'm so glad," said Mrs. Fane. "Because you'll be able to see that Michael remembers the address."

"I never forget addresses, mother," protested Michael.

"No, I know. I always think everyone is like me. Merry Christmas, and do send a post card to Stella. She was so hurt you wouldn't go to Germany."

In the drench and soak of December weather they drove off in the four-wheeler. On such a night it seemed more than ever romantic to be setting out to Spain, and all the way to Victoria Maurice tried to decide by the occasional gleam of a blurred lamp-light how many pesetas one received for an English sovereign.

The crossing to Dieppe was rough, but all memories of the discomfort were wiped out when next day they saw the Sud Express looking very long and swift and torpedo-like between the high platforms of that white drawing-room, the Gare d'Orleans. Down they went all day through France with rain speckling the windows of their compartment, past the naked poplar trees and rolling fallows until dusk fell sadly on the flooded agriculture. Dawn broke as they were leaving behind them the illimitable Landes. Westward the Atlantic clouds swept in from the Bay of Biscay, parting momentarily to reveal rifts of milky turquoise sky. Wider and wider grew the rifts, and when the train pa.s.sed close to the green cliffs of St. Jean de Luz, the air was soft and fragrant: the sea was blue. At Irun they were in Spain, and Michael, as he walked up and down the platform waiting for dejeuner, watched, with a thrill of conviction that this was indeed a frontier, the red and blue toy soldiers and the black and green toy soldiers dotted about the toy landscape.

Maurice was rather annoyed that n.o.body demanded their pa.s.sports and that every official should seem so much more anxious to examine their railway tickets, but when they reached Madrid and found that no bull-fights would be held before the spring, he began to mutter of Rome and was inclined to obliterate the Spaniards from the category of civilization, so earnestly had he applied himself by the jiggling light of the train to the mastery of all the grades from matador to banderillo.

In Seville, however, Maurice admitted he could not imagine a city more perfectly adapted to express all that he desired from life. Seville with her guitars and lemon-trees, her castanets and oranges and fans, her fountains and carnations and flas.h.i.+ng Andalusians, was for him the city to which one day he would return and dream. Here one day he could come when seriously he began to write or paint or take up whatever destiny in art was in store for him. Here he would forget whatever blow life might hold in the future. He would send everybody he knew to Seville, notwithstanding Michael's objection that such generosity would recoil upon himself in his desire to possess somewhere on earth the opportunity of oblivion. Maurice and Wedderburn both bought Spanish cloaks and hats and went with easels to sit beside the Guadalquiver that sun-stained to the hue of its tawny banks was so contemptuous of their gentlemanly water-colors, as contemptuous as those cigarette-girls that came chattering from the tobacco-factory every noon. Michael preferred to wander over the roofs of the cathedral, until drowsed by the scent of warm stone he would sit for an hour merely conscious that the city lay below and that the sky was blue above.

After Seville they traveled to Granada, to Cadiz and Cordova and other famous cities; and in the train they went slowly through La Mancha where any windmill might indeed be mistaken for Pentapolin of the Naked Arm, and where at the stations the water-carriers even in January cried "agua, agua," so that already the railway-carriages seemed parched by the fierce summer sun. They traveled to Salamanca and Toledo, and last of all they went to Burgos where Maurice and Wedderburn strove in vain to draw corner after corner of the cathedral, in the dust and shadows of whose more remote chantries Michael heard many Ma.s.ses. A realization of the power of faith was stirred in him by these Ma.s.ses that every day of every year were said without the recognition of humanity. These mumblings of ancient priests, these sanctus-bells that rattled like shaken ribs, these interminable and ceremonious shufflings were the outward expression of the force that sustained this fabric of Burgos and had raised in Seville a cathedral that seemed to crush like a stupendous monster the houses scattered about in its path, insignificant as a heap of white sh.e.l.ls. Half of these old priests, thought Michael, were probably puppets who did not understand even their own cracked Latinity, yet their ministrations were almost frightening in their efficacy: they were indeed the very stones of Burgos made vocal.

Listening to these Ma.s.ses, Michael began to regret he had allowed all his interest in religion to peter out in the irritation of compulsory chapel-keeping at Oxford. Here in Burgos, he felt less the elevating power of faith than the unrelenting and disdainful inevitableness of its endurance. At Bournemouth, when he experienced the first thrill of conversion, he had been exultingly aware of a personal friendliness between himself and G.o.d. Here in Burgos he was absorbed into the divine purpose neither against his will nor his desire, since he was positively aware of the impotency of his individuality to determine anything in the presence of omnipotence. He told himself this sense of inclusion was a sign of the outpouring once more of the grace of G.o.d, but he wished with a half whimsical amus.e.m.e.nt that the sensation were rather less like that of being contemptuously swept by a broom into the main dust-heap. Yet as on the last morning of his stay in

That much power of impression at least had the individual on this cathedral.

When Michael lay awake in the train going northward he remembered very vividly the sense of subordination which in retrospect suddenly seemed to him to reveal the essential majesty of Spain. The train stopped at some French station. Their carriage was already full enough, but a bilious and fussy Frenchman insisted there was still room, and on top of him broke in a loud-voiced and a.s.sertive Englishman with a meek wife. It was intolerable. Michael, Wedderburn, and Maurice displayed their most polite obstructiveness, but in the end each of them found himself upright, stiff-backed and exasperated. Michael thought regretfully of Spain, and remembered those peasants who shared their crusts, those peasants with rank skins of wine and flopping turkeys, those peasants who wrought so inimitably their cigarettes and would sit on the floor of the carriage rather than disarrange the comfort of the three English travelers. Michael went off into an uneasy sleep trying to arrange synthetically his deductions, trying to put Don Quixote and Burgos Cathedral and the grace of G.o.d and subordination and feudalism and himself into a working theory of life. And just when the theory really seemed to be shaping itself, he was awakened by the Englishman prodding his wife.

"What is it, dear?" she murmured.

"Did you pack those collars that were in the other chest of drawers?"

"I think so, dear."

"I wish you'd know something for a change," the husband grumbled.

The Frenchman ground his teeth in swollen sleep, exhaling himself upon the stale air of the compartment. Maurice was turning over the pages of a comic paper. Wedderburn snored. It was difficult to achieve subordination of one's personality in the presence of other personalities so insistently irritating.

Stella had not come back from Germany when Michael reached home, which was a disappointment as he had looked forward to planning with her a journey back to Spain as soon as possible. His mother during this vacation had lapsed from Mental Science into an a.s.sociation to prevent premature burial.

"My dearest boy, you have no idea of the numbers of people buried alive every year," she said. "I have been talking to d.i.c.k Prescott about it. I cannot understand his indifference. I intend to devote all my time to it. We are going to organize a large bazaar next season. Banging their foreheads against the coffins! It's dreadful to think of. Do be careful, Michael. I have written a long letter to Stella explaining all the precautions she ought to take. Who knows what may happen in Germany?

Such an impulsive nation. At least the Kaiser is. Don't laugh, my dear boy, it's so much more serious than you think. Would you like to come with me to Mrs. Carruthers' and hear some of the statistics? Gruesome, but most instructive. At three o'clock. You needn't wait for tea, if you're busy. The lecturer is an Eurasian. Where _is_ Eurasia, by the by?"

Michael kissed his mother with affectionate amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Will you wear the mantilla I brought you from Spain? Look, it's as light as burnt tissue paper."

"Dearest Michael," she murmured reproachfully, "you ought not to laugh about sacred subjects.... I don't really see why we shouldn't have a car. We must have a consultation with d.i.c.k Prescott."

After dinner that night Michael wrapped up some stained and faded vestments he had brought for Viner and went off to see him at Netting Hill. He told himself guiltily in the hansom that it was more than a year since he had been to see old Viner, but the priest was so heartily glad to welcome him and accepted so enthusiastically his propitiatory gifts, that he felt as much at ease as ever in the smoke-hung room.

"Well, how's Oxford? I was coming up last term, but I couldn't get away.

Have you been to see Sandifer yet? Or Pallant at Cowley, or Canon Harrowell?"

Michael said he had not yet taken advantage of Viner's letters of introduction to these dignitaries. He had indeed heard Pallant preach at the church of the Cowley Fathers, but he had thought him too much inclined to sacrifice on the altar of empirical science.

"I hate compromise," said Michael.

"I don't think Pallant compromises, but I think he does get hold of men by offering them Catholic doctrine in terms of the present."

Michael shrugged his shoulders.

"This visit to Spain seems to have made you very bigoted," Viner observed, smiling.

"I haven't made up my mind one way or the other about Christianity,"

Michael said. "But when I do I won't try to include everybody, to say to every talkative young Pragmatist with Schiller's last book in his pocket, 'come inside, you're really one of us.' I shan't invite every callow biologist to hear Ma.s.s just because a Cowley Dad sees nothing in the last article on spontaneous generation that need dismay the faithful. I'm getting rather fed up with toleration, really; the only people with any fanaticism now are the rationalists. It's quite exhilarating sometimes to see the fire of disbelief glowing in the eyes of a pa.s.sionate agnostic."

"Our Lord Himself was very tolerant," said Viner.

"Yes, tolerant to the weaknesses of the flesh, tolerant to the woman taken in adultery, tolerant to the people without wine at Cana, but he hadn't much use for people who didn't believe just as He believed."

"Isn't it rather risky to slam the door in the face of the modern man?"

"But, Mr. Viner," Michael protested, "you can't betray the myriads of the past because the individual of to-day finds his faith too weak to sustain him in their company, because the modern man wants to reedit spiritual truths just as he has been able to reedit a few physical facts that apparently stand the test of practical experiment. While men have been rolling along intoxicated by the theory of physical evolution, they may have retrograded spiritually."

"Of course, of course," the priest agreed. "By the way, your faith seems to be resisting the batterings of external progress very stoutly. I'm glad, old chap."

"I'm not sure that I have much faith, but I certainly haven't given up hope," Michael said gravely. "I think, you know, that hope, which is after all a theological virtue, has never had justice at the hands of the theologians. Oh, lord, I wish earnest young believers weren't so smug and timid. Or else I wish that I didn't feel the necessity of coordinating my opinions and accepting Christianity as laid down by the Church. I should love to be a sort of Swedenborgian with all sorts of fanciful private beliefs. But I want to force everything within the convention. I hate Free Thought, Free Love, and Free Verse, and yet I hate almost equally the stuffy people who have never contemplated the possibility of their merit. Do you ever read a paper called The Spectator? Now I believe in what The Spectator stands for, and I admire its creed enormously, but the expression of its opinions makes me spue.

If only earnest young believers wouldn't treat Almighty G.o.d with the same sort of proprietary air that schoolgirls use toward a favorite mistress."

"Michael, Michael!" cried Viner, "where are you taking me with your coordinating impulses and your Spectators and your earnest young believers? What undergraduate paradox are you trying to wield against me? Remember, I've been down nearly twenty years. I can no longer turn mental somersaults. I thought you implied _you_ were a believer."

"Oh, no, I'm watching and hoping. And just now I'm afraid the anchor is dragging. Hope does have an anchor, doesn't she? I'm not asking, you know, for the miracle of a direct revelation from G.o.d. The psychologists have made miracles of that sort hardly worth while. But I'm hoping with all my might to see bit by bit everything fall away except faith.

Perhaps when I behold G.o.d in one of his really cynical moods... I'm groping in the dark after a hazy idea of subordination. That's something, you know. But I haven't found my own place in the scheme."

"You see you're very modern, after all," said Viner, "with your coordinations and subordinations."

"But I don't want to a.s.sert myself," Michael explained. "I want to surrender myself, and I'm not going to surrender anything until I am sure by faith that I'm not merely surrendering the wastage of myself."

Michael left Viner with a sense of the pathetic sameness of the mission-priest's existence. He had known so well before he went that, because it was Monday, he would find him sitting in that armchair, smoking that pipe, reading that novel. Every other evening he would be either attending to parochial clubs in rooms of wood and corrugated iron, or his own room would be infested with boys who from year to year, from month to month, never changed in general character, but always gave the same impression of shrill c.o.c.kney, of boisterous familiarity, of self-satisfied election. To-morrow morning he would say Ma.s.s to the same spa.r.s.e congregation of sacristan and sisters-of-mercy and devout old maids. The same red-wristed server would stump about his liturgical business in Viner's wake, and the same coffee pot put in the same place on the same table by the same landlady would await his return. There was a dreariness about the ministrations of this Notting Hill Mission which had been absent from the atmosphere of Burgos Cathedral. No doubt superficially even at Burgos there was a sameness, but it was a glorious sameness, a sameness that approximated to eternity. Long ago had the priests learned subordination. They had been absorbed into the omnipotence of the church against which the gates of h.e.l.l could not prevail. Viner remained, however much as he might have surrendered of himself to his mission work, essentially an isolated, a pathetic individual.

As usual, Michael met Alan at Paddington, and he was concerned to see that Alan looked rather pale and worried.

"What problems have you been solving this vac?" Michael asked.

"Oh, I've been swatting like a pig for Mods," said Alan hopelessly. "You are a lucky lazy devil."

Even during the short journey to Oxford Alan furtively fingered his text-books, while he talked to Michael about a depressing January in London.

"Never mind. Perhaps you'll get your Blue next term," said Michael. "And if you aren't determined to play cricket all the Long, we'll go away and have a really sporting vac somewhere."

"If I'm plowed," said Alan gloomily, "I've settled to become a chartered accountant."