The Complete Novels Of George Orwell (58 page)

‘But dash it all!’ went on Victor, ‘a procession is such fun! Down the aisle, out through the west door and back through the south door, with the choir carrying candles behind and the Boy Scouts in front with the banner. It would look fine.’ He sang a stave in a thin but tuneful tenor:

‘Hail thee, Festival Day, blest day that art hallowed for ever!’

‘If I had
my
way,’ he added, ‘I’d have a couple of boys swinging jolly good censers of incense at the same time.’

‘Yes, but you know how much Father dislikes that kind of thing. Especially when it’s anything to do with the Virgin Mary. He says it’s all Roman Fever and leads to people crossing themselves and genuflecting at the wrong times and goodness knows what. You remember what happened at Advent.’

The previous year, on his own responsibility, Victor had chosen as one of the hymns for Advent, Number 642, with the refrain ‘Hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary full of grace!’ This piece of popishness had annoyed the Rector extremely. At the close of the first verse he had pointedly laid down his hymn book, turned round in his stall and stood regarding the congregation with an air so stony that some of the choirboys faltered and almost broke down. Afterwards he had said that to hear the rustics bawling ‘’Ail Mary! ‘Ail Mary!’ made him think he was in the four-ale bar of the Dog and Bottle.

‘But dash it!’ said Victor in his aggrieved way, ‘your father always puts his foot down when I try and get a bit of life into the service. He won’t allow us 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 the 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 of 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 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 if 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 wearing a Gothic cope with a modern Italian lace alb. 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 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 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 the 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? No. But I tell you what I have got, though. I’ve got a copy of
The Pilgrim’s Progress
and another of Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs
that I’ve been wanting to get rid of for years. Beastly Protestant trash! An old Dissenting aunt of mine gave them to me.–Doesn’t it make you sick, all this cadging for pennies? Now, if we only held our services in a proper Catholic way, so that we could get up a proper congregation, don’t you see, we shouldn’t need–’

‘That’ll be splendid,’ said Dorothy. ‘We always have a stall for books–we charge a penny for each book, and nearly all of them get sold. We simply
must
make that jumble sale a success, Victor! I’m counting on Miss Mayfill to give us something really
nice
. What I’m specially hoping is that she might give us that beautiful old Lowestoft china tea service of hers, and we could sell it for five pounds at least. I’ve been making special prayers all the morning that she’ll give it to us.’

‘Oh?’ said Victor, less enthusiastically than usual. Like Proggett earlier in the morning, he was embarrassed by the word ‘prayer’. He was ready to talk all day long about a point of ritual; but the mention of private devotions struck him as slightly indecent. ‘Don’t forget to ask your father about the procession,’ he said, getting back to a more congenial topic.

‘All right, I’ll ask him. But you know how it’ll be. He’ll only get annoyed and say it’s Roman Fever.’

‘Oh, damn Roman Fever!’ said Victor, who, unlike Dorothy, did not set himself penances for swearing.

Dorothy hurried to the kitchen, discovered that there were only five eggs to make the omelettes for three people, and decided to make one large omelette and swell it out a bit with the cold boiled potatoes left over from yesterday. With a short prayer for the success of the omelette (for omelettes are so dreadfully apt to get broken when you take them out of the pan), she whipped up the eggs, while Victor made off down the drive, half wistfully and half sulkily humming ‘Hail thee, Festival Day’, and passing on his way a disgusted-looking manservant carrying the two handleless chamber-pots which were Miss Mayfill’s contribution to the jumble sale.

It was a little after ten o’clock. Various things had happened–nothing, however, of any particular importance; only the usual round of parish jobs that filled up Dorothy’s afternoon and evening. Now, as she had arranged earlier in the day, she was at Mr Warburton’s house, and was trying to hold her own in one of those meandering arguments in which he delighted to entangle her.

They were talking–but indeed, Mr Warburton never failed to manœuvre the conversation towards this subject–about the question of religious belief.

‘My dear Dorothy,’ he was saying argumentatively, as he walked up and down with one hand in his coat pocket and the other manipulating a Brazilian cigar. ‘My dear Dorothy, you don’t seriously mean to tell me that at your age–twenty-seven, I believe–and with your intelligence, you will retain your religious beliefs more or less
in toto?’

‘Of course I do. You know I do.’

‘Oh, come, now! The whole bag of tricks? All that nonsense that you learned at your mother’s knee–surely you’re not going to pretend to me that you still believe in it? But of course you don’t! You can’t! You’re afraid to own up, that’s all it is. No need to worry about that here, you know. The Rural Dean’s wife isn’t listening, and
I
won’t give the show away.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “all that
nonsense”,’
began Dorothy, sitting up straighter in her chair, a little offended.

‘Well, let’s take an instance. Something particularly hard to swallow–Hell, for instance. Do you believe in Hell? When I say
believe
, mind you, I’m not asking whether you believe it in some milk and water metaphorical way like these Modernist bishops young Victor Stone gets so excited about. I mean do you believe in it literally? Do you believe in Hell as you believe in Australia?’

‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Dorothy, and she endeavoured to explain to him that the existence of Hell is much more real and permanent than the existence of Australia.

‘Hm,’ said Mr Warburton, unimpressed. ‘Very sound in its way, of course. But what always makes me so suspicious of you religious people is that you’re so deucedly cold-blooded about your beliefs. It shows a very poor imagination, to say the least of it. Here am I an infidel and blasphemer and neck deep in at least six out of the Seven Deadly, and obviously doomed to eternal torment. There’s no knowing that in an hour’s time I mayn’t be roasting in the hottest part of Hell. And yet you can sit there talking to me as calmly as though I’d nothing the matter with me. Now, if I’d merely got cancer or leprosy or some
other bodily ailment, you’d be quite distressed about it–at least, I like to flatter myself that you would. Whereas, when I’m going to sizzle on the grid throughout eternity, you seem positively unconcerned about it.’

‘I never said
you
were going to Hell,’ said Dorothy somewhat uncomfortably, and wishing that the conversation would take a different turn. For the truth was, though she was not going to tell him so, that the point Mr Warburton had raised was one with which she herself had had certain difficulties. She did indeed believe in Hell, but she had never been able to persuade herself that anyone actually
went
there. She believed that Hell existed, but that it was empty. Uncertain of the orthodoxy of this belief, she preferred to keep it to herself. ‘It’s never certain that
anyone
is going to Hell,’ she said more firmly, feeling that here at least she was on sure ground.