第76章 THE NINTH - THE THIRD VISION(20)

There was an air of tension at supper as though the whole family felt that momentous words impended.But Phoebe had emerged victorious from her mathematical struggle, and she seemed to eat with better appetite than she had shown for some time.It was a cold meat supper; Lady Ella had found it impossible to keep up the regular practice of a cooked dinner in the evening, and now it was only on Thursdays that the Scropes, to preserve their social tradition, dressed and dined; the rest of the week they supped.Lady Ella never talked very much at supper; this evening was no exception.Clementina talked of London University and Bedford College; she had been making enquiries; Daphne described some of the mistresses at her new school.The feeling that something was expected had got upon Scrope's nerves.He talked a little in a flat and obvious way, and lapsed into thoughtful silences.While supper was being cleared away he went back into his study.

Thence he returned to the dining-room hearthrug as his family resumed their various occupations.

He tried to speak in a casual conversational tone.

"I want to tell you all," he said, "of something that has happened to-day."He waited.Phoebe had begun to figure at a fresh sheet of computations.Miriam bent her head closer over her work, as though she winced at what was coming.Daphne and Clementina looked at one another.Their eyes said "Eleanor!" But he was too full of his own intention to read that glance.Only his wife regarded him attentively.

"It concerns you all," he said.

He looked at Phoebe.He saw Lady Ella's hand go out and touch the girl's hand gently to make her desist.Phoebe obeyed, with a little sigh.

"I want to tell you that to-day I refused an income that would certainly have exceeded fifteen hundred pounds a year."Clementina looked up now.This was not what she expected.Her expression conveyed protesting enquiry.

"I want you all to understand why I did that and why we are in the position we are in, and what lies before us.I want you to know what has been going on in my mind."He looked down at the hearthrug, and tried to throw off a memory of his Princhester classes for young women, that oppressed him.His manner he forced to a more familiar note.He stuck his hands into his trouser pockets.

"You know, my dears, I had to give up the church.I just simply didn't believe any more in orthodox Church teaching.And I feel I've never explained that properly to you.Not at all clearly.Iwant to explain that now.It's a queer thing, I know, for me to say to you, but I want you to understand that I am a religious man.I believe that God matters more than wealth or comfort or position or the respect of men, that he also matters more than your comfort and prosperity.God knows I have cared for your comfort and prosperity.I don't want you to think that in all these changes we have been through lately, I haven't been aware of all the discomfort into which you have come--the relative discomfort.Compared with Princhester this is dark and crowded and poverty-stricken.I have never felt crowded before, but in this house I know you are horribly crowded.It is a house that seems almost contrived for small discomforts.This narrow passage outside; the incessant going up and down stairs.And there are other things.There is the blankness of our London Sundays.What is the good of pretending? They are desolating.There's the impossibility too of getting good servants to come into our dug-out kitchen.I'm not blind to all these sordid consequences.

But all the same, God has to be served first.I had to come to this.I felt I could not serve God any longer as a bishop in the established church, because I did not believe that the established church was serving God.I struggled against that conviction--and I struggled against it largely for your sakes.

But I had to obey my conviction....I haven't talked to you about these things as much as I should have done, but partly at least that is due to the fact that my own mind has been changing and reconsidering, going forward and going back, and in that fluid state it didn't seem fair to tell you things that I might presently find mistaken.But now I begin to feel that I have really thought out things, and that they are definite enough to tell you....

He paused and resumed."A number of things have helped to change the opinions in which I grew up and in which you have grown up.There were worries at Princhester; I didn't let you know much about them, but there were.There was something harsh and cruel in that atmosphere.I saw for the first time--it's a lesson I'm still only learning--how harsh and greedy rich people and employing people are to poor people and working people, and how ineffective our church was to make things better.

That struck me.There were religious disputes in the diocese too, and they shook me.I thought my faith was built on a rock, and Ifound it was built on sand.It was slipping and sliding long before the war.But the war brought it down.Before the war such a lot of things in England and Europe seemed like a comedy or a farce, a bad joke that one tolerated.One tried half consciously, half avoiding the knowledge of what one was doing, to keep one's own little circle and life civilized.The war shook all those ideas of isolation, all that sort of evasion, down.The world is the rightful kingdom of God; we had left its affairs to kings and emperors and suchlike impostors, to priests and profit-seekers and greedy men.We were genteel condoners.The war has ended that.It thrusts into all our lives.It brings death so close--A fortnight ago twenty-seven people were killed and injured within a mile of this by Zeppelin bombs....Every one loses some one....Because through all that time men like myself were going through our priestly mummeries, abasing ourselves to kings and politicians, when we ought to have been crying out: 'No! No!