第63章 THE NINTH - THE THIRD VISION(7)

Nevertheless it began to drift into his mind that he was by no means so completely in control of the new departure as he had supposed at first.Both he and Lady Sunderbund professed universalism; but while his was the universalism of one who would simplify to the bare fundamentals of a common faith, hers was the universalism of the collector.Religion to him was something that illuminated the soul, to her it was something that illuminated prayer-books.For a considerable time they followed their divergent inclinations without any realization of their divergence.None the less a vague doubt and dissatisfaction with the prospect before him arose to cloud his confidence.

At first there was little or no doubt of his own faith.He was still altogether convinced that he had to confess and proclaim God in his life.He was as sure that God was the necessary king and saviour of mankind and of a man's life, as he was of the truth of the Binomial Theorem.But what began first to fade was the idea that he had been specially called to proclaim the True God to all the world.He would have the most amiable conference with Lady Sunderbund, and then as he walked back to Notting Hill he would suddenly find stuck into his mind like a challenge, Heaven knows how: "Another prophet?" Even if he succeeded in this mission enterprise, he found himself asking, what would he be but just a little West-end Mahomet? He would have founded another sect, and we have to make an end to all sects.How is there to be an end to sects, if there are still to be chapels--richly decorated chapels--and congregations, and salaried specialists in God?

That was a very disconcerting idea.It was particularly active at night.He did his best to consider it with a cool detachment, regardless of the facts that his private income was just under three hundred pounds a year, and that his experiments in cultured journalism made it extremely improbable that the most sedulous literary work would do more than double this scanty sum.Yet for all that these nasty, ugly, sordid facts were entirely disregarded, they did somehow persist in coming in and squatting down, shapeless in a black corner of his mind--from which their eyes shone out, so to speak--whenever his doubt whether he ought to set up as a prophet at all was under consideration.

(6)

Then very suddenly on this October afternoon the situation had come to a crisis.

He had gone to Lady Sunderbund's flat to see the plans and drawings for the new church in which he was to give his message to the world.They had brought home to him the complete realization of Lady Sunderbund's impossibility.He had attempted upon the spur of the moment an explanation of just how much they differed, and he had precipitated a storm of extravagantly perplexing emotions....

She kept him waiting for perhaps ten minutes before she brought the plans to him.He waited in the little room with the Wyndham Lewis picture that opened upon the balcony painted with crazy squares of livid pink.On a golden table by the window a number of recently bought books were lying, and he went and stood over these, taking them up one after another.The first was "The Countess of Huntingdon and Her Circle," that bearder of lightminded archbishops, that formidable harbourer of Wesleyan chaplains.For some minutes he studied the grim portrait of this inspired lady standing with one foot ostentatiously on her coronet and then turned to the next volume.This was a life of Saint Teresa, that energetic organizer of Spanish nunneries.The third dealt with Madame Guyon.It was difficult not to feel that Lady Sunderbund was reading for a part.

She entered.

She was wearing a long simple dress of spangled white with a very high waist; she had a bracelet of green jade, a waistband of green silk, and her hair was held by a wreath of artificial laurel, very stiff and green.Her arms were full of big rolls of cartridge paper and tracing paper."I'm so pleased," she said.

"It's 'eady at last and I can show you."

She banged the whole armful down upon a vivid little table of inlaid black and white wood.He rescued one or two rolls and a sheet of tracing paper from the floor.

"It's the Temple," she panted in a significant whisper."It's the Temple of the One T'ue God!"She scrabbled among the papers, and held up the elevation of a strange square building to his startled eyes."Iszi't it just pe'fect?" she demanded.

He took the drawing from her.It represented a building, manifestly an enormous building, consisting largely of two great, deeply fluted towers flanking a vast archway approached by a long flight of steps.Between the towers appeared a dome.It was as if the Mosque of Saint Sophia had produced this offspring in a mesalliance with the cathedral of Wells.Its enormity was made manifest by the minuteness of the large automobiles that were driving away in the foreground after "setting down." "Here is the plan," she said, thrusting another sheet upon him before he could fully take in the quality of the design."The g'eat Hall is to be pe'fectly 'ound, no aisle, no altar, and in lettas of sapphiah, 'God is ev'ywhe'.'"She added with a note of solemnity, "It will hold th'ee thousand people sitting down.""But--!" said Scrope.

"The'e's a sort of g'andeur," she said."It's young Venable's wo'k.It's his fl'st g'ate oppo'tunity.""But--is this to go on that little site in Aldwych?""He says the' isn't 'oom the'!" she explained."He wants to put it out at Golda's G'een.""But--if it is to be this little simple chapel we proposed, then wasn't our idea to be central?""But if the' isn't 'oem! "she said--conclusively."And isn't this--isn't it rather a costly undertaking, rather more costly--""That docsn't matta.I'm making heaps and heaps of money.Half my p'ope'ty is in shipping and a lot of the 'eat in munitions.

I'm 'icher than eva.Isn't the' a sort of g'andeur?" she pressed.