This next hour raised my spiritual tone considerably. I should not like to give a precis of the Address, but I had secured a seat near the bow window, and enjoyed I my view of the garden more than I can say. The Rectory stands back from the market square, red-brick, with plaster facings, and at the back an old walled garden slopes gently downhill to a row of poplars before the town obtrudes itself again. Mrs. Eardley-Gage is, of course, a keen and successful gardener, and is a little liable to say that flowers grow for those who love them, whereas “we all know that she doesn’t mind what she spends on manure”, says Mrs. Weekes with a sniff. I found it much easier to attend mildly to the Address of Prayer in Wartime as I looked out at the groups of snowdrops and crocuses, and still more at the fat pink shoots of peonies and the gay green growth round the dead stalks of the herbaceous plants. For they do show that winter and seeming death have a purpose at least, and that the efforts of the poor little strugglers underground are rewarded, however helpless they may be. The sun was on my back and I was feeling warm, mentally and physically, when I was distracted by Father Merrion’s pronouncements on Prayers for Victory.
He is a delightful man, I feel sure, with a heart of gold beneath his cassock, and a most acute mind behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. But is he not, I asked myself, one of the old arguments which crop up in everyday life against a celibate clergy in spite of my reflections last night? I am quite sure that in the monastery of his Order there is no thought but for the things of the Spirit. I quite see that the bewildering cares of a clergyman with a family on an inadequate income must distract the mind at times from God. But when even the noblest of celibate priests grow older they do tend, I think, to take a very academic view of parenthood. Very few men have enough imagination to realize anything they have not experienced, and in this question of prayer, one of the important sides, it seems to me, is the conception of a child praying to his Father for what he really needs. I was so full of the thought that when Father Merrion stopped, and urged us to discuss the point with him, I found my tongue for once (or was it the demoralizing result of my speechmaking yesterday?) and broke out.
“But shouldn’t we feel our own children very affected and insincere if they came to us and asked for everything except the thing they really wished?” As usual my voice rose and my eyes grew moist, but Mrs. Gage cast me a glance of approval. Nothing, as we all know, is so daunting as the moment when an audience is pressed to ask questions and sits dumb in embarrassed silence.
“But is victory what we all want most?” asked Father Merrion kindly but disapprovingly.
“Surely,” said Mrs. Pratt, briskly and rather officially. “What we desire most is the coming of God’s Kingdom upon earth.”
“Well, as far as we can see, that’s what we are fighting for—freedom of speech and freedom to worship God,” put in Mrs. Stead, who has, I remembered, a son in the Air Force.
“I pray for victory, and peace on that condition,” announced old Mrs. Cummings, majestically.
“I pray so much for our enemies,” said Mrs. Gage, leaning forward more intently than ever, and crossing her thin beautiful ankles. “I pray daily for Thy child Hitler, Thy son von Ribbentrop and Thy child Stalin. You don’t know how it helps.”
It is a beautiful thought but the condescension of it rather took away my breath. I could see that Mrs. Stead felt too that it would take one of the famous Littleways to presume as far as that.
“There I differ from you,” said Mrs. Cummings, still more pontifically. “To my mind these people are Apollyon and the power of darkness. I would no more pray for them than for the Devil.”
“Oh, but I often do!” Little stout bubbling Mrs. Jay has a local reputation for being so clever and original, but everyone clearly felt she had gone too far this time.
“Do you qualify your prayers by that clause, ‘If it be Thy Will’?” said Father Merrion, turning to me, rather unfairly, I thought, as quite four people had spoken since I had.
“Yes, I do, and I ask to be helped to mean it!” (Now that all our tongues were loosed my voice was under control at last.) “But if your child came to you and saw a box of chocolates on the table, and asked for a kiss or a new lesson-book, and didn’t ask for a chocolate, you would think him rather affected and insincere, wouldn’t you?”
“My children are never allowed sweets or chocolates of any kind,” put in Mrs. Holm, suddenly. She is always described as such an excellent mother, and has developed the face and figure of a broody hen on her reputation; but Father Merrion was not the man to let the conversation glide into a discussion of nursery regime, as it showed some tendency to do from the confidential murmurs in the corners of the room.
“Could you not assume that your child did not ask for one because, knowing they were indulgences rather than necessities, he preferred to wait for you to exercise your own judgement?”
“You can see he’s no children of his own,” murmured Mrs. Stead under her breath to me, thus reaching the identical point of my meditation on the celibacy of the clergy.
“I shouldn’t think he was behaving naturally to me,” I said, “and shouldn’t prayer be natural?”
“I wish”, said Mrs. Jay, undaunted by the failure off her previous effort, “that someone could explain to me why prayers sometimes seem such a bore.”
“Perhaps we might return to that point later,” said Father Merrion, as the clergy always do when they feel a little nonplussed. “The question is, how far are we justified in praying for victory? I suppose the real difficulty we all admit is, to continue the analogy, that there is only one chocolate in the box and several children are asking for it. The Germans and Russians are doubtless praying as earnestly as we. …”
“Not the Russians,” said Mrs. Cummings, shocked at Father Merrion’s laxity. “They are heathen now, and you must remember we have the Jews on our side. My dear father always used to say that God’s blessing would certainly rest on any nation which was kind to the Jews.”
“Let us only admit the Germans, then. Your theory would”, he said, turning to me again, “make a mere duel of prayer.”
Of course I know that argument and I know none against it, but I am still convinced that it is hopeless to try to pray in love and trust if you leave your chief desire out of your petitions.
“Well, if our armies were defeated,” said Mrs. Stead, whom I hardly knew before as she lives at some distance in the country, but is becoming rapidly my greatest friend in the audience, “there’ll be nothing left worth living for!”
“May it not be”, said Father Merrion, “that there comes a point in the lives of certain nations as of Our Lord Himself, when they must be sacrificed on the Cross for the ultimate good of humanity? It is a hard saying, and needs a mystic’s submission, but must we not school our minds even to that?”
His eyes grew very beautiful and far-away, as he withdrew himself to the last outpost which the true saints are taking refuge in now, I know, and Mrs. Stead only whispered to me, instead of voicing her opinion aloud: “Well, I can only hope it’ll be the Germans who have to be sacrificed.”
“That is a wonderful thought,” said Mrs. Gage. “That is something to help us in all the privations and anxieties we have to undergo.” (And what these are at the moment, compared with ours, Mrs. Stead and I would very much like to know!)
“But we are told to pray ‘deliver us from evil’,” I ventured. “And surely we can all assume that German victory would be an evil.”
“Personally,” put in Mrs. Pratt, “I think that politics should never be mixed with religion at all. It is just that which has caused so much trouble in your parish, Mrs. Lacely.”
Two or three of the audience who had remained remote and uninterested in the discussion brightened up perceptibly at this.
“In fact, I don’t think we could do better than pray that Mr. Strang should be made to see the error of his ways,” continued Mrs. Pratt, to the evident discomfiture of Mrs. Gage and our spiritual adviser. In the circles in
which Mrs. Gage moved normally I am sure such discursive and reasonless discussion would have been unthinkable. Some cultured lady would have quoted Dante, another produced a pensée of Pascal, and a third have remembered what the dear Archbishop had said to her the other day at Lambeth. I do humbly agree that it is very good for us to meet the superior spiritual culture of our hostess and our pastor, only I can’t help thinking it rather funny when the two parties clash as they did to-day.
“I think we should indeed pray for him,” I murmured to Mrs. Pratt as the bell sounded again. “He is very ill indeed to-day, I fear.”
Mrs. Pratt could say no more, as the bell was the signal for a relapse into the silence. We left the Arundel prints, Morris wall-papers and chintzes once more, and I regret to say, to my acute disappointment, did not file into the dining-room, the door of which stood invitingly open, but once more to the chapel for the Litany. It is true, as I told Arthur, that the Litany alone seems to me a perfect war-time prayer, but not after the morning I had spent, and not, I concluded then, for clergy wives. So many of us are so much in the habit of finding ourselves one out of two or three gathered together for extra services, that we tend, as a class, to develop a resonant style in responses. I am always ashamed that this is no gift of mine, for I cannot bear to order Heaven in a loud voice, but most of the gathering were adepts, and when we were all united the fervour evidently surprised Father Merrion. I even had an unworthy suspicion that Mrs. Cummings had determined from the first that she would have no nonsense about playing second fiddle, and beseeched God in a loud, positively minatory voice. Mrs. Gage, on the other hand, murmured quite softly, but so very swiftly and efficiently that she had got her whole phrase in before Mrs. Cummings was even under way. Mrs. Holm lisped very clearly, as if leading a choir of children; Mrs. Jay’s voice was audible with resigned hunger and despair. One little lady near me with a tight, sallow, repressive face, showed by her voice quite clearly what she thought of us all. Altogether a very undevotional ceremony, and my knees were so stiff that I could hardly stand when at last we were safely among the Raphael cartoons and heavy oak of the dining-room.
The lunch was beautifully laid and served for the twenty-odd of our party. The only breakdown in the arrangement was that we seemed to sit avoiding each other’s eyes for some time before the first course appeared, and that I felt a weak inclination to smile over our polite bowings to each other as we offered or accepted water, our delicate curtseyings for the salt, and ostentatious shakes of the head to the servants who offered us second helpings. I rather regretted the last, as the fillets of fish offered to us were tiny thought delightful, and the portion of stewed rhubarb almost infinitesimal, especially as Father Merrion accepted second helpings on each occasion without losing one jot of his ascetic preoccupation. But after merely toying with her fish, Mrs. Gage stood up and read aloud to us a very fragrant story about some little Italian saint who ate, apparently, nothing but a few chestnuts from the day of her birth to that of her rather repellent death, so that no clergy-wife could have imperilled her position by showing any carnal greed. My one water biscuit at the close seemed positively large and satisfying, and Mrs. Gage did break off her story and her silence very kindly to press us to take butter, “as Cook says the grocer gives us as much as we want”.
This confession of perfidiousness, and a slight sense of emptiness made the next address rather torpid, I fear. I was still preoccupied about the fish and the window blind, and was prone to wonder whether the Archdeacon would bring his own hot-water bottle and whether the old stone one leaked if he didn’t. And whether I should run in to Mrs. Strang again this evening, and what effect his illness was having on the militant laity of our parish. By this time I had acquired a pencil and paper from Mrs. Stead, but all I found on the paper afterwards, I regret to say, was:
(1) A drawing of snowdrops under a cedar tree—quite good;
(2) The Problem of Pain. Incomplete: cf. Saint Paul and parable of sheep and goats—Vic; Redempt.;
(3) A sketch of Mrs. Gage’s gown—she always calls them gowns and says her maid makes them for her. This I can well believe, as whatever their material they are of a design which always suggests the fashions of 1910 modified by a study of last year’s Vogue and a subtle hint of ecclesiastical vestments;
(4) A very poor Clerihew—automatic writing, I trust:
When Dr. Angus MacTain
Was asked to speak on the Problem of Pain,
All he said was, “Ye needn’t fash
As long as it’s not below your sash.”
(5) Mem. Find bathroom key if poss.
We did not discuss the problem of pain, but went back to the study-chapel. There I tried to summon my concentration and conquer my disconnected thoughts with greater success, till my chair—the type called prie dieu—on rather excitable wheels, took a little run into Mrs. Cummings’s back. This accident and the look which the old lady turned upon me shattered me so much that I did not recover till we were back in the drawing-room with our note-books, taking abstracts on an imaginary debate on free-will. If Father Merrion imagines that any of us willingly embark on such a subject with our Sunday Schools or classes he is almost certainly mistaken, and when he proposed that we should continue the debate ourselves, and Mrs. Gage looked encouragingly at me, there was a complete silence. Mrs. Jay remarked that she knew there was a very amusing and helpful Limerick on the subject, but as she could get no further than that it began, “There once was a man who said,” and ended in something about a tram, Mrs. Gage hastened to say it was all so difficult, and she herself felt faith was the only solution. Mrs. Holm, after a shattering pause, said that after all, nature always did bring its own punishments, didn’t it, and if you let a child grow up self-willed it would meet with troubles all its life, wouldn’t it? She had found in her own nursery—but what she had found we never knew, for Mrs. Gage tinkled a little bell, and it was time for Vespers. These I should have appreciated more if the floor had not by now become so hard, and my back so tired, that I might have taken to my seat, as Mrs. Cummings did (I hoped not as a result of my little accident) but for the merciful sound of tea-cups in the distance. I don’t know if we were really supposed to be out of the Silence, but with teacups in our hands we all began to break it with one accord, and I had time to tell Mrs. Pratt, now all sympathy and anxiety, about the poor Strangs before Mrs. Gage rang her bell and, discarding her tea-cup, began to read aloud to us. At an ordinary time I am sure we should have enjoyed the rather cryptic little parable about a sunny little Anglican stream and a very talkative kingfisher, but we were all, I fancy, too sadly disappointed by the failure to exchange views with each other to do it justice. At this point I own I disgraced myself. One of the French windows of the dining-room was open, and I escaped through it into the garden, where the late afternoon sunlight was falling across the grass on a daphne bush, and a winter jasmine was flowering against a wall. But I do not think anyone saw me, and I did at last feel myself nearer to God in the garden (much as I dislike that sentimental poem on the subject). When I saw the drawing-room filling up again, I crept back, and the last address was really very peaceful and beautiful; but I began to grow anxious about the time, as Arthur had to have dinner punctually, as he has to look in at the choir practice to-night. This made my farewells very inferior, I fear, to those of Mrs. Pratt, who was assuring Mrs. Eardley-Gage that the day had been an inspiration and would help her through the War whatever happened. As I felt that nothing I had heard would make any real difference if even Dick’s little finger were hurt, I felt it best just to mumble, with the hope that the radiance of Mrs. Gage’s smile (was it partly due to relief and the prospect of a quiet tête-à-tête with Father Merrion?) might spread its reflection on to my face. Like all parties of this kind we all declared that we must hurry away (but I saw to my relief the drawing-room clock was, perhaps intentionally, fast), and then stopped and chatted to each other in the drive.
“I must say,” said the sallow, severe little la
dy, “that if I had been warned how very very ritualistic the whole affair would be, nothing would have persuaded me to come.”
“Well, my dear, you knew, as he was a Father, that was the kind of thing you must expect,” said Mrs. Pratt very sensibly.
“There are fathers and fathers,” retorted the little lady no less severely, and I took care not to catch Mrs. Jay’s eye.
“I thought it was all beautiful, quite beautiful,” murmured a tall, vague, wispy woman near me. “If only one could carry it all back into one’s daily life!”
“That’s just it,” agreed Mrs. Holm. “I’m sure personally it would be a help to meditate every day, if only one had the time, and to have a little oratory of one’s own; but it’s so difficult, isn’t it? We haven’t even got a second bathroom now that the children use it for developing photographs.”
“My bedside, where my dear mother taught me my prayers, is good enough for me,” said Mrs. Cummings, moving off our slow, straggly procession towards the gate.
“I”, said Mrs. Stead, anxiously, “have a drawer bursting with extra Collects I’ve been asked to say at one time or another, but you know if I really used them all, I should never get down in time for breakfast.”
“Let alone massage and nail-polish,” said a woman whose red beret, shoes and gloves had distracted my attention through almost the whole of the Address on Free-Will. Her tweed suit was the only clerical thing about her, and even that was brightened by a red button-hole and a red scarf. As this was the only remark she made from first to last and no-one seemed to know what part of the neighbourhood she had come from, she will only live in my mind as the one parson’s wife I ever knew who came to a Quiet Day wearing mild but quite obvious make-up. She reminded me of the boy who said that the only person braver than a boy who said his prayers in a dormitory when no-one else did, would be a bishop who didn’t say his in a dormitory of bishops. Oddly enough, she departed in the custody of the severe little Evangelical, and they both remain an enigma to this day.
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