Читать книгу Babes in the Darkling Woods - H.G. Wells - Страница 12

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By that time the party in the living room were well away upon other topics.

"Did I," said the vicar, "did I hear you say your name was Kentlake? Have you any relationship, by any chance, to the— rather—well—conspicuous—well-known—".

"The philosophical psychologist," said Stella. "He's my favourite uncle. It was he, had me sent to Cambridge?

"Cambridge?"

"Newnham."

"I was a Trinity man," said the vicar. "But long before your time. Dear me. How the years slip by! Just in time to be a padre. But you, you can't have taken your degree yet?"

"Second year. Whether I take the tripos now, depends.... It all depends on all sorts of things.... Obviously."

"Obviously. Now. Forgive me for saying it but don't you think you should have thought of that before?" said the vicar.

"If people, if the authorities at Newnham, chose to put an uncharitable interpretation upon this—this little adventure of yours—it might interfere rather seriously-".

"You can't always think of a situation until you've made it," said the young lady, with a faint touch of defensive acidity. "You were speaking of my uncle."

"I was thinking of his ideas," said the vicar, regarding the dogs and logs in the fireplace with an unworldly, kindly expression and beginning to triturate his hands again.

"He's always so Right," said Stella.

"You say he sent you to Cambridge. Forgive my curiosity, but why was it he sent you?"

"My mother wasn't in a position to send me. But need we go into that?"

"Certainly not. Not unless you wish it. If I were asked to advise... mediate.... I was only thinking—. So many issues...."

"You were thinking, you said, of my uncle's ideas. I warn you we're full of them, both of us. It's that brought us together. And rather encouraged us. We believe in him solidly. Almost solidly."

"You must forgive me if my admiration is more—critical. In this world there has of course to be variety-variety of standpoints-variety of opinions. Different aspects."

"We both feel that acutely," said Gemini. "Of course we of the younger generation, in these urgent times, find the variety of opinions rather perplexing. It's we who have to decide among them and we don't seem to have so very much time. Not so easy, Sir. We'd like any criticism of Doctor Kentlake and his sort of thinking, if you could give it us, above all things. Sometimes I feel when I'm reading him that he's so completely convincing, as far as he goes, that there must be a trick in it somewhere. His literary style may carry one over things...."

"A very, very good comment," said the vicar. "A very penetrating comment."

"Yes, Sir," said Gemini and stopped attentively.

"I must confess," said the vicar, smiling faintly, "that, come to think of it, I find an impromptu critique of the writings and philosophy of Doctor Kentlake rather a large order. On the spur of the moment. Don't you think?"

"Not from you, Sir. Isn't it after all your particular business—?"

"Literary criticism?"

"No, Sir. The teaching of the Church which Doctor Kentlake flouts and attacks. If he is right; then, Sir, forgive me, you have no justification for being what you are?"

"Yes. Yes. Perhaps so."

"We expect it from you, Sir," said Gemini, with the shadow of a grin in his voice. "For what else are you for? You are here to embody the real truth and the right way. A sort of sanitary inspector of conduct and ideas. Just as you were able to tell us just now when the truth ought to be handled—well—with gloves on—."

'That wasn't quite how we settled it; was it?" said the vicar.

"Anyhow, now, you ought to give us at least an idea of the reply, the orthodox right reply, to what Doctor Kentlake says about orthodox religion and morals. And I can assure you, Sir, from the things I've heard Stella say and the things she's heard me say, you don't come any too soon here...."

The vicar made that noise which is usually indicated in print by "Chirm." He grasped the arms of his chair firmly, sat a little lower and longer in it, and regarded the fireplace now with a certain mournful sternness. "Of course," he said, "you must not regard me as a compendium of theological controversy."

"Still, Sir, you must admit; it's your job," said Gemini.

"Well, among other things."

"Surely, Sir, above other things. The faith must be maintained. Our generation is drifting away. You come just in the nick of time. I hesitate to tell you how far out to sea we are. We hardly believe a thing you believe, according to your creeds. We just don't take the Bible story. And people who give serious thought to life, they are reading these sceptical writers, Kentlake and Shaw and Bertrand Russell and Joad, the two Huxleys, Hogben, Levy, J.B.S. Haldane—in preference to any orthodox authorities. Even when it comes to belief they seem to prefer mathematicians—mystical mathematicians—Jeans and Eddington for example, Captain Dunne and Whitehead—to people like Cosmo Gordon Lang and Temple. They'd almost rather have Uspensky than a bishop. And can you wonder at it? Such a lot of the Anglican Church seems to be deliberate talking beside the mark. That fat book, The Study of Theology, the other day. I got it and read it. That shows I'm up-to-date. Published quite recently and I— well I saw a review of it. You may have missed it, Sir.... It isn't exposition, Sir; it isn't any sort of fundamental discussion; it's stuff got up to look like exposition and discussion. The Catholics put up a better sort of fight. There's Belloc with his impudent assertiveness; he has the creative gift, he makes his own biology as he goes along; and there's this Professor Karl Adam coming up. Have you read Professor Karl Adam at all, Sir? There's a boldness about him....

"I can tell you, Sir, that making up our minds about—about what is truth and what are the right principles of living for us-; it's a frightful task. The ideas we are expected to know about. The stuff we have to read. The stuff we have to keep up with. And whatever of it is right, makes all the rest wrong. Somebody must be right. Nobody grips it and holds it still and digests it all for us. And the Church, they tell me, goes on. Empty pews, silent pulpits—sermons cut to nothing. Yet preventing anything else from taking its place. Why is it, Sir? Why does the Church have nothing definite to say for itself? We sheep are all astray. We—the young. It isn't for nothing that a bishop carries a pastoral crook, surely? But does he try to use it? Have I ever felt a bishop pulling my leg, Sir? Never. Sorry to seem so critical, Sir. I'm garrulous. My ideas run away with me."

"Little you know of a parson's duties," said the vicar, "to demand this of him. Births, marriages and deaths. The coal club, the rummage sale, the choir, the bell-ringers, the charities, the school treat and the church wardens. The constant calls for advice, temporal as well as spiritual. The sick and dying in need of consolation...."

"But what do you tell them, Sir? What is the consolation?"

"Simple things. The restoration of faith."

"But what faith, Sir? What is the faith? That's the question."

The vicar was evidently doing his best to be frank and honest. He continued to stare into the fireplace and there was a flavour of soliloquy in his voice.

"In the case of the sick and dying, I will make no bones about it, and I am speaking as an experienced priest, you have to use the faith you find there already. Whatever it is. You must. To help, and I assure you I want to help, I make myself all things to all men, to all failing and dying souls.... You would too...." He stopped short and resumed more briskly.

"Wel1, all these things keep one busy. So that when you pull me back to theology.... I admit it is what you call my job—but don't expect me to be a specialist. I'll answer to the best of my ability."

He paused.

"All these other things are frightfully important things," said Stella. "But as my—as Twain, there, says, they aren't the essential jobs of the Church. Surely. Some of that is civil administration; some might be better done by a medical or psychic or educational adviser—or a parish clerk. Or a glorified community schoolmaster. As my uncle is always saying. But the essential claim of the Church is its religion, its belief that is, the right theory and the right practice of living. If that is wrong, then what is its authority?"

"If," said the inexorable Gemini, "if you have to—well, Sir, not to put too fine a point on it—prevaricate, to the distressed and sick and dying, isn't that because you haven't established —how is it Kentlake puts it?—a high right-mindedness in them, when they were well?"

"You put me on the defensive, young people.... I stand by my creed."

"It is your Church, Sir, that is on the defensive. We have to ask you. What are the sure and irreducible verities that justify your practical control of social conduct? You do control it a lot, you know. You interfere a lot. Practical morals. Judgments on people. Education. The Abdication. You stand for all that, and this country is largely what you have made it. It isn't an uneducated country now, but it's about as badly educated as it can be. So Kentlake says. At the back of it all surely there has to be a creed, a fundamental statement, put in language that does not jar with every reality we know about the world. We don't want to be put off with serpents and fig-leaves and sacrificial lambs. We want a creed in modern English, Sir. And we can't find it. You must have a foundation or you would resign. Mr Gladstone wrote of the Impregnable Rock of Holy Scriptures. But it isn't quite like that, Sir, now, is it? The Rock's all at sea. Still—there ought to be some sort of rock bottom...?"

For the better part of a minute the vicar said nothing and the two young people remained in a state of mercilessly silent expectation. Gemini studied the ascetic face before him with a vivid, new-born curiosity. He seemed to be seeing something that had always been under his eyes but which he had never clearly observed before. His brain was already acquiring many of the habitual vices of a writer's. A riot of stereotyped phrases ran through his mind and were rejected-"wily ecclesiastic," "priestly domination," "professional churchman" for example. He pushed these confusing suggestions aside in his determination to see for himself. This face, he realised, was neither a good face nor a bad face, neither a saint's nor a sinner's, but it was at one and the same time an extremely usual face and also a profoundly unreal one. It was a made and disciplined face. It betrayed nothing inadvertently. It expressed what it was intended to express. It had never struck Gemini before but now it came to him as something very important that this was the case with almost all the faces he had encountered of teachers, professors, doctors, magistrates and all those set in authority over their fellow-men, they were all definitely determined facades not assumed to deceive but to maintain a definite line under difficulties and to suppress and conceal as completely as possible whatever complex inconsistencies might still be stirring within. It seemed to him now that he was apprehending for the first time how high and deep and far-reaching and necessary is the artificiality of social life.... When at last the vicar spoke he went off at a tangent. He attempted no statement of his creed in modern terms. "My main objection to Doctor Kentlake's views," he began, "is his one-sided materialism, his deliberate disregard of any spiritual values whatever...."

This led to a complicated metaphysical digression that began badly and degenerated towards the end.