Dolores Read online

  “So am I,” said Mrs Hutton, allowing her eyes to meet her husband’s.

  “It is strange to think,” said Lettice, with rather conscious modesty, “that, had there been no Divine intervention to prevent the death of Wesley in childhood, there would have been such a gap in the evangelization of the world. One is apt to forget, in religious matters as in others, how large a train of events may be attached to a single incident.”

  “That is just the same as I said, Letty, only put into stilted words,” said Elsa.

  “You’re quite right, you’re quite right, Letty, my darling,” said Mr Blackwood.

  “Yes, it is so in all things,” said Mrs Blackwood, in tones of a quality to attract attention. “Suppose Shakespeare, or Browning, or Milton had never been born, or had died in childhood! Think of the immense difference in the world of thought! We hardly realise, when we are being inspired by their finest passages, how trivial an accident might have torn them from us.”

  “Mother, you never read Shakespeare, or Browning, or Milton,” said Elsa. “And if you did, you would not know which were the finest passages.”

  “My dear Elsa, think what you are saying before you speak. You know quite well that Milton has always been my favourite poet. I was reading some of ‘Paradise Lost’ only the other day—the part about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and comparing it with the corresponding parts of Genesis. How very magnificent some of the passages are, are they not, Mr Billing? The language is so good, and the rhythm is always so accurate. As I was saying to Lettice, Milton’s poetry carries so many lessons in it.”

  “Yes, yes, a great man—Milton,” said Mr Billing. “A sincere Christian, in addition to all that brought him worldly fame.”

  “I really think,” continued Mrs Blackwood, “that if I were asked to give the palm to any one poet, I should give it to Milton. His poetry is so suggestive. In every line there is something that transports you at once to the classic days of ancient Greece and Rome. I always feel so much better informed after reading him. I do not think any other poet quite comes up to him in that.”

  “My dear, you may take the credit to yourself of your view of the vocation of poetry,” said Mrs Hutton. “It is entirely your own.”

  “Oh, you do not follow me, dear,” said Mrs Blackwood, in a careless tone, but continuing quickly. “Dolores, you understand what I mean, I am sure. I expect you know Milton nearly by heart, do you not? I knew a great deal when I was your age, I know; and his classical allusions must be so very illuminating to you, with your knowledge of the classical languages and mythology.”

  “Yes, Dolores is the one for classics,” said the Reverend Cleveland. “She is better read in them already than many a lad of her age.”

  “How nice to be so clev-er, de-ar!” said Mrs Merton-Vane.

  “I suppose you and your father are great companions, Miss Hutton?” said Mr Billing, looking with heightened interest at Dolores, and reflecting that she looked just the sort of lady to be the erudite associate of a gentleman.

  “Oh, I am away from home a great deal,” said Dolores, sparing her stepmother. “When I am at Millfield, my brother and I are a great deal together.”

  “Oh, my dear, you and your father have always been such great friends,” said Mrs Blackwood, not neglecting the opportunity for sisterly revenge. “You have so much in common—so many tastes, and so many memories. I always think he seems quite lost when you are away.”

  “He must seem rather seldom at disposal then,” said Dolores, smiling—not unconscious of Mrs Blackwood’s motive. “I am only at home for a third of the year. But I think it is only a matter of seeming. He has become quite used to my being away.”

  “Cleveland is so very absent-minded,” said Mrs Hutton, with a little laugh. “Last summer he told me to ask Dolores for a book nearly a week after she had returned to school. He actually did not know whether she was in the house or not.”

  “Clev-er people are always a little for-get-ful now and then,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, inclining her head towards Dolores in sympathetic explanation.

  “Well, my darling, if we have all finished, suppose we go into the drawing-room,” said Mr Blackwood, loudly addressing his wife. “Open the door, Herbert, my son. Well, Vicar, as Mr Billing here is a non-smoker, and the doctor and I are the same, as we need not tell you, perhaps you will become one yourself for this evening, and join the ladies with us at once. I never believe in trying to do without the ladies, do you, Mr Billing? We owe most of what is good in ourselves and everything else to them, you know. What do you say, my love? You agree with me, I am sure.”

  Mr Blackwood linked his arm in his wife’s and led the way from the room. His guests followed; with Mrs Hutton at their head, and brought up by the Reverend Cleveland; who mutely repudiated Mr Billing’s surrender of precedence, with an air that seemed to say that personally he found it no gratification to be prominent in this company. In the drawing - room Mrs Blackwood entered at once into talk with Dr Cassell.

  “Dr Cassell, I was reading a pamphlet the other day which you would have been so interested in. It was about the Roman Catholics; and it treated the question in the main almost exactly as you do; but with some minor differences, which I really am not sure I do not incline to myself—they were put so very convincingly. I should so like you to read it. It was called ‘Roman Catholicism—its Spread and Significance.’”

  Dr Cassell leant forward in his chair, and held up one hand.

  “It is a subject—Mrs Blackwood—upon which I hardly require to read further treatises. I know it—only too well—under both the heads to which you allude—to which the title of the little work you mention, alluded. I do not think further reading could add to my comprehension of it.”

  “Ah, Mr Billing, the doctor is the man to consult, if you want to know anything about the Roman Catholics,” said Mr Blackwood. “He is an authority upon them, I can tell you. He has studied the question, and no mistake, has the doctor.”

  “You consider the spread of Roman Catholicism a serious thing?” said Mr Billing, addressing Dr Cassell.

  Dr Cassell leant forward, and again raised his hand.

  “You ask me, Mr Billing—whether I consider—the spread of Roman Catholicism—a serious thing. My answer is—that I consider it a hopeless thing, a damnable thing, a thing that is sucking the very life-blood of our religion.” Dr Cassell held himself for a further moment in his didactic posture, and then leaned back in his chair.

  “But do you not think,” said Mr Billing, “that the spread of agnosticism and atheism—I fear we must recognise that they are both spreading—is even more serious—more significant of vital danger to the faith?”

  “I do not,” said Dr Cassell, implying a not uncomplacent knowledge that his view was peculiar. “I have met—in the course of my medical experience—as I could not have failed to do—examples of all the three forms of—er—perverted religious conviction; and I am of the opinion—that the Roman Catholic is more—obstinately tenacious of error, and pernicious in influence, than either the atheist or the agnostic. Both the latter are—as a rule more or less amenable to argument, and more or less straightforward and aboveboard in their tactics. But the Catholic—” Dr Cassell broke off and shook his head.

  “You have had dealings with them?” said the Reverend Cleveland, his tone accepting this as a matter of course, and therefore implying collapse of the doctor’s position if he should be mistaken.

  “I will tell you,” said Dr Cassell, relapsing into his anecdotal tone, “of an experience I had with one. I was called in to attend a patient—a Catholic—in his last illness; and I found him in a state of great depression about the state he was about to enter; burdened with notions of purgatory, praying to the Virgin, and so forth.” The doctor paused to allow this grave evidence to be grasped. “I endeavoured—to bring the light or the true faith to his darkened mind; but—with little success—owing to its prejudiced and—generally unhappy condition. As I was leaving the ro
om, I happened to pause for a moment, holding the door ajar; and I fancied as I stood there—that I heard a faint noise”—the speaker gesticulated slightly with his hand and his tone became mystical—“as of somebody moving quickly away from the door-mat. When I opened the door, I came upon a priest—ostensibly coming across the passage. I shall never forget the appearance of the man, as he came towards me, with a sort of leering smile on his lips—his long, black, gown-sort-of-thing hanging about him, and a crucifix suspended from his neck. I stopped him—I placed myself dead in front of him—and I remember now how his eye quailed beneath mine. ‘So,’ I said, ‘you have added to your list of deadly sins—the sins that have clouded deathbeds and damned souls. Go,’ I said, ‘and dare to contradict a word of mine to that dying man, as you will answer for it at the judgment.’ Would you believe it, the fellow never even answered me! He calmly walked by me, and into the sick-room; though, mark you, he did not once raise his eyes to mine. The next day—no, wait a minute”—the doctor checked with a motion of his hand any exclamations on the point of breaking forth—“I received a message—purporting to be written by the patient—though I knew he was too weak to handle a pen—informing me that my services would not be again required. This message I ignored; happening to regard the future of a soul—as of greater importance than the will of a priest. I was not allowed—to set my foot over the threshold. Orders had been given that I should not be admitted; and my only course was to leave the priest to his work—doubtless he wished to get the man’s money bequeathed to his cause. The money I have no doubt was gained— the soul of the man—” The doctor broke off, and just perceptibly shook his head.

  Mr Blackwood twisted his moustache, and observed without altering his easy posture in his chair, “Ah! Ah!—an awful thing—the power of these priests—an awful thing—there’s no doubt of that.” Mr Billing dropped his eyes to the ground, and nodded once or twice, muttering, “Yes, yes—yes, yes,” as though he could well believe what he heard, but looked upon the subject as hardly a matter for words. Mr Hutton raised his eyes and met his wife’s, and perceiving an unsteadiness about her lips, dropped them and assumed an equivocal expression; and in a moment addressed the doctor.

  “Well, but, Dr Cassell, you could hardly expect the priest to feel grateful to you, especially as you worded what you had to say as you did. I daresay he was an honest fellow, doing his best for what he thought to be right, as you were.”

  “I once knew a Roman Catholic priest, and he was a de-ar man,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, with a vague sense of supporting Mr Hutton.

  “It was not my object to make him grateful. My object was to bring him to a sense of the abominable wickedness of his course. It was the last thing I expected of him—that he should be grateful!” said Dr Cassell, ending with a grim little laugh.

  “Well, on what ground do you find fault with him then?” said the Reverend Cleveland. “I hardly follow you.”

  “I think I may retort,” said Dr Cassell, frankly militant, “that I do not follow you. I should not myself describe a man, whose habit it is to listen at doors, as ‘an honest fellow.’”

  “Oh, but,” said Mr Hutton, with casual surprise at ignorance of a widespread truth, “the Catholic priests are considered justified in going to any length for the sake of their cause. A breach of morality committed in furtherance or their faith is righteous in their eyes. They would regard it as service for their religion.”

  “I think that nothing could show more clearly than that—the superiority—of our religion—the religion of the majority of us here,” said Dr Cassell, with the quiver in his voice of temper kept when loss of it is to be expected, and a glance at the cross on the breast of Mr Hutton. “It is given to us to know, that it is not lawful to do evil—that good may come.”

  “Oh, come, Vicar,” interposed Mr Blackwood in loud tones; “the doctor is right—as right as it is possible for a man to be. This spread of the Roman Catholics is an awful thing—an out-and-out awful thing—there’s no denying that. Of course there may be good people amongst them, mistaken through no fault of their own; we all admit that. But we can’t have you talking as if priests and people of that sort ought to be allowed to do their worst without any check. We can’t have that.”

  The Reverend Cleveland just glanced at his host, and then looked out of the window with disengaged contemplativeness, tapping his fingertips together.

  “Now, Mr Billing” suddenly observed Mr Blackwood, changing the topic with frankly exclusive regard to his own inclination, “I was glad to hear—from some one or other—that you were a Liberal. Now, if there is anything that makes me feel thoroughly rubbed up the wrong way, it is all this Toryism and Conservatism, and all those other “isms,” that really mean utter selfishness, and disregard of all classes but one’s own. If there is anything that makes me feel drawn towards a man, it is when I hear that he is a genuine Liberal. A grand word that—Liberal.”

  “Well, I think I may claim to be genuine; I do not regard myself as a spurious article,” said Mr Billing, a sense of his effort at humour prompting him the next moment to turn a little red, glance at Mr Hutton, and look at his hands.

  “Well, I am glad to hear it,” said Mr Blackwood. “You and I must have some walks and talks together.”

  Mr Billing jumped, and looked towards Dr Cassell—feeling in the warmth of his emotions a desire to soothe that wounded gentleman and draw him again into converse.

  “You are a Liberal too, I suppose, Dr Cassell?”

  “No,” said Dr Cassell, pausing after this word, as though hardly able again to evince a generous loquaciousness; and then leaning towards Mr Billing, and speaking in hesitating, narrative tones, “I do not regard myself as belonging to any particular—political party. I have never been able to find—justification in the Bible—for a man’s giving of his time and interest to political matters; and I withhold mine. It seems to me that religion is so much the greatest thing in life, that energy bestowed upon other things is energy wasted.”

  “But I meant on which side do you vote?” said Mr Billing, choosing what he supposed the most direct way of ridding himself of perplexity.

  “I do not vote,” said Dr Cassell, pregnantly.

  Mr Billing, not being a member of the doctors’ circle at Millfield, looked a little bewildered and glanced round the company.

  “Ah, Mr Billing, now that is a subject upon which the doctor and I do not agree,” said Mr Blackwood loudly, coming to the help of his guest with the assignment of the local leaders of thought to their sides. “The doctor, you know, believes in that theory, that the world will go on getting worse and worse, and all that sort of thing, until at last it reaches the stage when the elect are caught up in the air,”—there was no suggestion of a flippant attitude towards Dr Cassell’s convictions in Mr Blackwood’s tone, rather the dropping that belongs to sacred reference—“and the world with every one else is left to the dealings of the Devil, and that sort of thing—you know those views, of course; and so he does not think it worth while to try and make things better—”

  “I do not think it of any avail” broke in Dr Cassell, leaning forward.

  “Well, it is all the same in practice, doctor,” said Mr Blackwood. “And it is practice we have to think of. Now, Mr Billing, what I believe is, that little by little the whole world will be evangelized, and that the gospel will be preached in every corner of it, as we are told in the Bible. That is what I believe; and that is what I think we ought to believe. I have no sympathy with this living for oneself, and not thinking of one’s duty to one’s fellow-creatures myself. I think—”

  “If I had sympathy with that course, I do not think I should give all my spare time to—preaching the gospel to—and otherwise working for the good of—my fellow - creatures,” said Dr Cassell; just glancing at Mr Blackwood to make this rather bitterly-voiced observation; and then turning to Mr Billing, as though unable to refrain longer from putting his case for himself. “I regard it as impossible—I think
I may say know it is impossible, from scriptural sources—to materially benefit the world—in its spiritual aspect—or to arrest its ultimate downfall; beyond endeavouring to—increase the number of the elect by evangelistic work. I think the true Christian should stand apart from the world.”

  “Ruskin’s view—with religion in the place of letters and the arts,” said Mr Hutton, in a very low and somewhat caustic tone.

  “Well,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, with a mingling of sadness and bitterness, “I am a Conservative myself, and so is my hus-band. Our fam-i-lies have been Conservative from the earliest times. Of course, we both come of such very old fam-i-lies. Lord Loftus was saying to me only yesterday, ‘My dear Mrs Merton-Vane, if every one held the opinions of your husband, the world would be a different place.’ That is what he said, Mr Hut-ton.”

  “But—er—how do you suggest, Dr Cassell,” said Mr Billing, “that the necessary work in other matters, the work needful for the welfare of the nation, should be carried on, if no—er—righteous person must take part in it? Should we not all do our duty in the political system of our country, that the existing scheme may answer as well as possible? What of the practical results if everybody stood aside?”

  Dr Cassell leaned forward, looking somewhat ruffled. He had so long interpreted a conversation as a didactic utterance by himself, that argument on equal terms struck him as deliberate baiting. “I base,” he said, in a tone at once huffy and impressive, “all my actions and all—my opinions—as far as in me lies—upon scriptural grounds. The Bible—and nothing but the Bible—is my authority for them. I am answerable to no man for them.”

  Poor Mr Billing fidgeted, and looked as if he would like to apologise, if he could call to mind a definite ground for apology; and was much relieved by an appeal from his hostess.

  “Mr Billing, I really cannot agree with Dr Cassell in his view that Christians should stand apart from the world. It seems to me that they ought to mingle in the world, and do their best to lift it to a higher plane, and hasten the day when the gospel shall be known amongst all nations. You know all really great men have felt in that way. Socrates and Dr Johnson, and so many people like that, found their greatest pleasure in mingling with men. You know, Socrates would have saved his life if he had consented to go away from Athens—the city he loved. I think that standing apart from the world is the very last thing for a Christian.”