‘I might have known it. Of course you read Greek like a schoolmaster,' he said. ‘I read it like a poet.'
‘And do you find it more poetic when you don't quite know what it means? I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.'
At last, having finished the beer, Hayward left Weeks's room hot and dishevelled; with an angry gesture he said to Philip:
‘Of course the man's a pedant. He has no real feeling for beauty. Accuracy is the virtue of clerks. It's the spirit of the Greeks that we aim at. Weeks is like that fellow who went to hear Rubinstein and complained that he played false notes. False notes! What did they matter when he played divinely?'
Philip, not knowing how many incompetent people have found solace in these false notes, was much impressed.
Hayward could never resist the opportunity which Weeks offered him of regaining ground lost on a previous occasion, and Weeks was able with the greatest ease to draw him into a discussion. Though he could not help seeing how small his attainments were beside the American's, his British pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject as though Christian charity impelled him to spare the vanquished foe. Philip tried sometimes to put in something to help his friend, and Weeks gently crushed him, but so kindly, differently from the way in which he answered Hayward, that even Philip, outrageously sensitive, could not feel hurt. Now and then, losing his calm as he felt himself more and more foolish, Hayward became abusive, and only the American's smiling politeness prevented the argument from degenerating into a quarrel. On these occasions when Hayward left Weeks's room he muttered angrily:
‘Damned Yankee!'
That settled it. It was a perfect answer to an argument which had seemed unanswerable.
Though they began by discussing all manner of subjects in Weeks's little room eventually the conversation always turned to religion: the theological student took a professional interest in it, and Hayward welcomed a subject in which hard facts need not disconcert him; when feeling is the gauge you can snap your fingers at logic, and when your logic is weak that is very agreeable. Hayward found it difficult to explain his beliefs to Philip without a great flow of words; but it was clear (and this fell in with Philip's idea of the natural order of things) that he had been brought up in the church by law established. Though he had now given up all idea of becoming a Roman Catholic, he still looked upon that communion with sympathy. He had much to say in its praise, and he compared favourably its gorgeous ceremonies with the simple services of the Church of England. He gave Philip Newman's Apologia to read, and Philip, finding it very dull, nevertheless read it to the end.
‘Read it for its style, not for its matter,' said Hayward.
He talked enthusiastically of the music at the Oratory, and said charming things about the connexion between incense and the devotional spirit. Weeks listened to him with his frigid smile.
‘You think it proves the truth of Roman Catholicism that John Henry Newman wrote good English and that Cardinal Manning has a picturesque appearance?'
Hayward hinted that he had gone through much trouble with his soul. For a year he had swum in a sea of darkness. He passed his fingers through his fair, waving hair and told them that he would not for five hundred pounds endure again those agonies of mind. Fortunately he had reached calm waters at last.
‘But what do you believe?' asked Philip, who was never satisfied with vague statements.
‘I believe in the Whole, the Good, and the Beautiful.'
Hayward with his loose large limbs and the fine carriage of his head looked very handsome when he said this, and he said it with an air.
‘Is that how you would describe your religion in a census paper?' asked Weeks, in mild tones.
‘I hate the rigid definition: it's so ugly, so obvious. If you like I will say that I believe in the church of the Duke of Wellington and Mr Gladstone.'
‘That's the Church of England,' said Philip.
‘Oh, wise young man!' retorted Hayward, with a smile which made Philip blush, for he felt that in putting into plain words what the other had expressed in a paraphrase he had been guilty of vulgarity. ‘I belong to the Church of England. But I love the gold and the silk which clothe the priest of Rome, and his celibacy, and the confessional, and purgatory; and in the darkness of an Italian cathedral, incense-laden and mysterious, I believe with all my heart in the miracle of the Mass. In Venice I have seen a fisherwoman come in, barefoot, throw down her basket of fish by her side, fall on her knees, and pray to the Madonna; and that I felt was the real faith, and I prayed and believed with her. But I believe also in Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great God Pan.'
He had a charming voice, and he chose his words as he spoke; he uttered them almost rhythmically. He would have gone on, but Weeks opened a second bottle of beer.
‘Let me give you something to drink.'
Hayward turned to Philip with the slightly condescending gesture which so impressed the youth.
‘Now are you satisfied?' he asked.
Philip, somewhat bewildered, confessed that he was.
‘I'm disappointed that you didn't add a little Buddhism,' said Weeks. ‘And I confess I have a sort of sympathy for Mahomet; I regret that you should have left him out in the cold.'
Hayward laughed, for he was in a good humour with himself that evening, and the ring of his sentences still sounded pleasant in his ears. He emptied his glass.
‘I didn't expect you to understand me,' he answered. ‘With your cold American intelligence you can only adopt the critical attitude. Emerson and all that sort of thing. But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up. You are a pedant, my dear fellow. The important thing is to construct: I am constructive; I am a poet.'
Weeks looked at him with eyes which seemed at the same time to be quite grave and yet to be smiling brightly.
‘I think, if you don't mind my saying so, you're a little drunk.'
‘Nothing to speak of,' answered Hayward cheerfully. ‘And not enough for me to be unable to overwhelm you in argument. But come, I have unbosomed my soul; now tell us what your religion is.'
Weeks put his head on one side so that he looked like a sparrow on a perch.
‘I've been trying to find that out for years. I think I'm a Unitarian.'
‘But that's a dissenter,' said Philip.
He could not imagine why they both burst into laughter, Hayward uproariously, and Weeks with a funny chuckle.
‘And in England dissenters aren't gentlemen, are they?' asked Weeks.
‘Well, if you ask me point-blank, they're not,' replied Philip rather crossly.
He hated being laughed at, and they laughed again.
‘And will you tell me what a gentleman is?' asked Weeks.
‘Oh, I don't know; everyone knows what it is.'
‘Are you a gentleman?'
No doubt had ever crossed Philip's mind on the subject, but he knew it was not a thing to state of oneself.
‘If a man tells you he's a gentleman you can bet your boots he isn't,' he retorted.
‘Am I a gentleman?'
Philip's truthfulness made it difficult for him to answer, but he was naturally polite.
‘Oh, well, you're different,' he said. ‘You're American, aren't you?'
‘I suppose we may take it that only Englishmen are gentlemen,' said Weeks gravely.
Philip did not contradict him.
‘Couldn't you give me a few more particulars?' asked Weeks.
Philip reddened, but, growing angry, did not care if he made himself ridiculous.
‘I can give you plenty.' He remembered his uncl
e's saying that it took three generations to make a gentleman: it was a companion proverb to the silk purse and the sow's ear. ‘First of all he's the son of a gentleman, and he's been to a public school and to Oxford or Cambridge.'
‘Edinburgh wouldn't do, I suppose?' asked Weeks.
‘And he talks English like a gentleman, and he wears the right sort of things, and if he's a gentleman he can always tell if another chap's a gentleman.'
It seemed rather lame to Philip as he went on, but there it was: that was what he meant by the word, and everyone he had ever known meant that too.
‘It is evident to me that I am not a gentleman,' said Weeks. ‘I don't see why you should have been so surprised because I was a dissenter.'
‘I don't quite know what a Unitarian is,' said Philip.
Weeks in his odd way again put his head on one side: you almost expected him to twitter.
‘A Unitarian very earnestly believes in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn't quite know what.'
‘I don't see why you should make fun of me,' said Philip. ‘I really want to know.'
‘My friend, I'm not making fun of you. I have arrived at that definition after years of great labour and the most anxious, nerve-racking study.'
When Philip and Hayward got up to go, Weeks handed Philip a little book in a paper cover.
‘I suppose you can read French pretty well by now. I wonder if this would amuse you.'
Philip thanked him and, taking the book, looked at the title. It was Renan's Vie de Jésus.
XXVIII
IT OCCURRED neither to Hayward nor to Weeks that the conversations which helped them to pass an idle evening were being turned over afterwards in Philip's active brain. It had never struck him before that religion was a matter upon which discussion was possible. To him it meant the Church of England, and not to believe in its tenets was a sign of wilfulness which could not fail of punishment here or hereafter. There was some doubt in his mind about the chastisement of unbelievers. It was possible that a merciful judge, reserving the flames of hell for the heathen—Mahommedans, Buddhists, and the rest—would spare Dissenters and Roman Catholics (though at the cost of how much humiliation when they were made to realize their error!), and it was also possible that He would be pitiful to those who had had no chance of learning the truth—this was reasonable enough, though such were the activities of the Missionary Society there could not be many in this condition—but if the chance had been theirs and they had neglected it (in which category were obviously Roman Catholics and Dissenters), the punishment was sure and merited. It was clear that the miscreant was in a parlous state. Perhaps Philip had not been taught it in so many words, but certainly the impression had been given him that only members of the Church of England had any real hope of eternal happiness.
One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but Weeks, though he believed in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of Christian purity. Philip had received little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the American's desire to help him: once when a cold kept him in bed for three days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was neither vice nor wickedness in him, but only sincerity and loving-kindness. It was evidently possible to be virtuous and unbelieving.
Also Philip had been given to understand that people adhered to other faiths only from obstinacy or self-interest: in their hearts they knew they were false; they deliberately sought to deceive others. Now, for the sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began instead to go with him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the protestant church was nearly empty and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was crowded and the worshippers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at the contrast; for he knew of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was closer to that of the Church of England, on that account were nearer to the truth than the Roman Catholics. Most of the men—it was largely a masculine congregation—were South Germans; and he could not help saying to himself that if he had been born in South Germany he would certainly have been a Roman Catholic. He might just as well have been born in a Roman Catholic country as in England; and in England as well in a Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist family as in one that fortunately belonged to the church by law established. He was a little breathless at the danger he had run. Philip was on friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at table with him twice each day. His name was Sung. He was always smiling, affable, and polite. It seemed strange that he should frizzle in hell merely because he was a Chinaman; but if salvation was possible whatever a man's faith was, there did not seem to be any particular advantage in belonging to the Church of England.
Philip, more puzzled than he had ever been in his life, sounded Weeks. He had to be careful, for he was very sensitive to ridicule; and the acidulous humour with which the American treated the Church of England disconcerted him. Weeks only puzzled him more. He made Philip acknowledge that those South Germans whom he saw in the Jesuit church were every bit as firmly convinced of the truth of Roman Catholicism as he was of that of the Church of England, and from that he led him to admit that the Mahommedan and the Buddhist were convinced also of the truth of their respective religions. It looked as though knowing that you were right meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no intention of undermining the boy's faith, but he was deeply interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of conversation. He had described his own views accurately when he said that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost everything that other people believed. Once Philip asked him a question, which he had heard his uncle put when the conversation at the vicarage had fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting discussion in the newspapers.
‘But why should you be right and all those fellows like St Anselm and St Augustine be wrong?'
‘You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have grave doubts whether I am either?' asked Weeks.
‘Yes,' answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question seemed impertinent.
‘St Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned round it.'
‘I don't know what that proves.'
‘Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible.'
‘Then how d'you know that we have the truth now?'
‘I don't.'
Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said:
‘I don't see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn't be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.'
‘Neither do I.'
‘Then how can you believe anything at all?'
‘I don't know.'
Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward's religion.
‘Men have always formed gods in their own image,' said Weeks. ‘He believes in the picturesque.'
Philip paused for a little while, then he said:
‘I don't see why one should believe in God at all.'
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realized that he had ceased to do so. It took his breath away like a plunge into cold water. He looked at Weeks with startled eyes. Suddenly he felt afraid. He left Weeks as quickly as he could. He wanted to be alone. It was the most startling experience that he had ever had. He tried to think it all out; it was very exciting, since his whole life seemed concerned (he thought his decision on this matter must profoundly affect its course) and a mistake might lead to eternal damnation; but the more he reflected the more convinced he was; and though during the next few weeks he read books, aids to scepticism, with eager interest it was only to confirm him in what he felt instinctively. The fact was that he had ceased to believe not for this reason
or the other, but because he had not the religious temperament. Faith had been forced upon him from the outside. It was a matter of environment and example. A new environment and a new example gave him the opportunity to find himself. He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realized it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to make life a more thrilling adventure; and in a little while the stick which he had thrown aside, the cloak which had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he had been eased. The religious exercises which for so many years had been forced upon him were part and parcel of religion to him. He thought of the collects and epistles which he had been made to learn by heart, and the long services in the Cathedral through which he had sat when every limb itched with the desire for movement; and he remembered those walks at night through muddy roads to the parish church at Blackstable, and the coldness of that bleak building; he sat with his feet like ice, his fingers numb and heavy, and all around was the sickly smell of pomatum. Oh, he had been so bored! His heart leaped when he saw he was free from all that.
He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth's lack of sympathy for an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks and Hayward because they were content with the vague emotion which they called God and would not take the further step which to himself seemed so obvious. One day he went alone up a certain hill so that he might see a view which, he knew not why, filled him always with wild exhilaration. It was autumn now, but often the days were cloudless still, and then the sky seemed to glow with a more splendid light: it was as though nature consciously sought to put a fuller vehemence into the remaining days of fair weather. He looked down upon the plain, a-quiver with the sun, stretching vastly before him: in the distance were the roofs of Mannheim and ever so far away the dimness of Worms. Here and there a more piercing glitter was the Rhine. The tremendous spaciousness of it was glowing with rich gold. Philip, as he stood there, his heart beating with sheer joy, thought how the tempter had stood with Jesus on a high mountain and shown him the kingdoms of the earth. To Philip, intoxicated with the beauty of the scene, it seemed that it was the whole world which was spread before him, and he was eager to step down and enjoy it. He was free from degrading fears and free from prejudice. He could go his way without the intolerable dread of Hell-fire. Suddenly he realized that he had lost also that burden of responsibility which made every action of his life a matter of urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
Of Human Bondage Page 15