第38章 THE SIXTH - EXEGETICAL(7)

"But need you take action against Mr.Chasters?" she asked at once.

"It's a very complicated subject, my dear," he said.

"His arguments?"

"The practical considerations."

"But what are practical considerations in such a case?""That's a post-graduate subject, Norah," her father said with a smile and a sigh.

"But," began Eleanor, gathering fresh forces.

"Daddy is tired," Lady Ella intervened, patting him on the head.

"Oh, terribly!--of that," he said, and so escaped Eleanor for the evening.

But he knew that before very long he would have to tell his wife of the changes that hung over their lives; it would be shabby to let the avalanche fall without giving the longest possible warning; and before they parted that night he took her hands in his and said: "There is much I have to tell you, dear.

Things change, the whole world changes.The church must not live in a dream....

"No," she whispered."I hope you will sleep to-night," and held up her grave sweet face to be kissed.

(6)

But he did not sleep perfectly that night.

He did not sleep indeed very badly, but he lay for some time thinking, thinking not onward but as if he pressed his mind against very strong barriers that had closed again.His vision of God which had filled the heavens, had become now gem-like, a minute, hard, clear-cut conviction in his mind that he had to disentangle himself from the enormous complications of symbolism and statement and organization and misunderstanding in the church and achieve again a simple and living worship of a simple and living God.Likeman had puzzled and silenced him, only upon reflection to convince him that amidst such intricacies of explanation the spirit cannot live.Creeds may be symbolical, but symbols must not prevaricate.A church that can symbolize everything and anything means nothing.

It followed from this that he ought to leave the church.But there came the other side of this perplexing situation.His feelings as he lay in his bed were exactly like those one has in a dream when one wishes to run or leap or shout and one can achieve no movement, no sound.He could not conceive how he could possibly leave the church.

His wife became as it were the representative of all that held him helpless.She and he had never kept secret from one another any plan of action, any motive, that affected the other.It was clear to him that any movement towards the disavowal of doctrinal Christianity and the renunciation of his see must be first discussed with her.He must tell her before he told the world.

And he could not imagine his telling her except as an incredibly shattering act.

So he left things from day to day, and went about his episcopal routines.He preached and delivered addresses in such phrases as he knew people expected, and wondered profoundly why it was that it should be impossible for him to discuss theological points with Lady Ella.And one afternoon he went for a walk with Eleanor along the banks of the Prin, and found himself, in response to certain openings of hers, talking to her in almost exactly the same terms as Likeman had used to him.

Then suddenly the problem of this theological eclaircissement was complicated in an unexpected fashion.

He had just been taking his Every Second Thursday Talk with Diocesan Men Helpers.He had been trying to be plain and simple upon the needless narrowness of enthusiastic laymen.He was still in the Bishop Andrews cap and purple cassock he affected on these occasions; the Men Helpers loved purple; and he was disentangling himself from two or three resolute bores--for our loyal laymen can be at times quite superlative bores--when Miriam came to him.

"Mummy says, 'Come to the drawing-room if you can.' There is a Lady Sunderbund who seems particularly to want to see you."He hesitated for a moment, and then decided that this was a conversation he ought to control.

He found Lady Sunderbund looking very tall and radiantly beautiful in a sheathlike dress of bright crimson trimmed with snow-white fur and a white fur toque.She held out a long white-gloved hand to him and cried in a tone of comradeship and profound understanding: "I've come, Bishop!""You've come to see me?" he said without any sincerity in his polite pleasure.

"I've come to P'inchesta to stay!" she cried with a bright triumphant rising note.

She evidently considered Lady Ella a mere conversational stop-gap, to be dropped now that the real business could be commenced.She turned her pretty profile to that lady, and obliged the bishop with a compact summary of all that had preceded his arrival."I have been telling Lady Ella," she said, "I've taken a house, fu'nitua and all! Hea.In P'inchesta! I've made up my mind to sit unda you--as they say in Clapham.I've come 'ight down he' fo' good.I've taken a little house--oh! a sweet little house that will be all over 'oses next month.I'm living f'om 'oom to 'oom and having the othas done up.It's in that little quiet st'eet behind you' ga'den wall.And he' I am!""Is it the old doctor's house?" asked Lady Ella.

"Was it an old docta?" cried Lady Sunderbund."How delightful!

And now I shall be a patient!"

She concentrated upon the bishop.

"Oh, I've been thinking all the time of all the things you told me.Ova and ova.It's all so wondyful and so--so like a G'ate Daw opening.New light.As if it was all just beginning."She clasped her hands.