章节正文
thing he had desired as he had supposed.
The world had become opaque and real again as he walked up St.
James's Street and past the Ritz. He had a feeling that he was
taking an afternoon off from God. The adventurous modernity of
the room in which he waited intensified that. One whole white
wall was devoted to a small picture by Wyndham Lewis. It was like
a picture of an earthquake in a city of aniline pink and grey and
keen green cardboard, and he wished it had never existed.
He turned his back upon it and stared out of the window over
the trees and greenery. The balcony was decorated with white and
pink geraniums in pots painted black and gold, and the railings
of the balcony were black and gold with crimson shape like
squares wildly out of drawing.
Lady Sunderbund kept him waiting perhaps five minutes. Then she
came sailing in to him.
She was dressed in a way and moved across the room in a way
that was more reminiscent of Botticelli's Spring than ever--
only with a kind of superadded stiffish polonaise of lace--and
he did not want to be reminded of Botticelli's Spring or wonder
why she had taken to stiff lace polonaises. He did not enquire
whether he had met Lady Sunderbund to better advantage at Mrs.
Garstein Fellows' or whether his memory had overrated her or
whether anything had happened to his standard of taste, but his
feeling now was decidedly one of disappointment, and all the talk
and self-examination he had promised himself seemed to wither and
hide away within him. For a time he talked of her view, and then
admired her room and its arrangement, which he thought really
were quite unbecomingly flippant and undignified for a room. Then
came the black tea-things on their orange tray, and he searched
in his mind for small talk to sustain their interview.
But he had already betrayed his disposition to "go on with our
talk" in his telephone enquiry, and Lady Sunderbund, perceiving
his shyness, began to make openings for him, at first just little
hinting openings, and then larger and larger ones, until at last
one got him.
"I'm so glad," she said, "to see you again. I'm so glad to go
on with oua talk. I've thought about it and thought about it."
She beamed at him happily.
"I've thought ova ev'y wo'd you said," she went on, when she
had finished conveying her pretty bliss to him. "I've been so
helped by thinking the k'eeds are symbols. And all you said. And
I've felt time after time, you couldn't stay whe' you we'. That
what you we' saying to me, would have to be said 'ight out."
That brought him in. He could not very well evade that opening
without incivility. After all he had asked to see her, and it was
a foolish thing to let little decorative accidentals put him off
his friendly purpose. A woman may have flower-pots painted gold
with black checkers and still be deeply understanding. He
determined to tell her what was in his mind. But he found
something barred him from telling that he had had an actual
vision of God. It was as if that had been a private and
confidential meeting. It wasn't, he felt, for him either to boast
a privilege or tell others of things that God had not chosen to
show them.
"Since I saw you," he said, "I have thought a great deal--of
the subject of our conversation."
"I have been t'ying to think," she said in a confirmatory tone,
as if she had co-operated.
"My faith in God grows," he said.
She glowed. Her lips fell apart. She flamed attention.
"But it grows less like the faith of the church, less and less.
I was born and trained in Anglicanism, and it is with a sort of
astonishment I find myself passing now out of every sort of
Catholicism--seeing it from the outside...."
"Just as one might see Buddhism," she supplied.
"And yet feeling nearer ?infinitely nearer to God," he said.
"Yes," she panted; "yes."
"I thought if one went out, one went out just to doubt and
darkness."
"And you don't?"
"No."
"You have gone at one step to a new 'iligion!"
He stared for a moment at the phrase.
"To religion," he said.
"It is so wondyful," she said, with her hands straight down
upon the couch upon which she was sitting, and leaning forward at
him, so as to seem almost as much out of drawing as a modern
picture.
"It seems," he reflected; "--as if it were a natural thing."
She came back to earth very slowly. She turned to the
tea-things with hushed and solemn movements as though she
administered a ceremony of peculiarsignificance. The bishop too
rose slowly out of the profundity of his confession. "No sugar
please," he said, arresting the lump in mid air.
It was only when they were embarked upon cups of tea and had a
little refreshed themselves, that she carried the talk further.
"Does it mean that you must leave the church?" she asked.
"It seemed so at first," he said. "But now I do not know. I do
not know what I ought to do."
She awaited his next thought.
"It is as if one had lived in a room all one's life and thought
it the world--and then suddenly walked out through a door and
discovered the sea and the mountains and stars. So it was with me
and the Anglican Church. It seems so extraordinary now--and it
would have seemed the most natural thing a year ago--to think
that I ever believed that the Anglican Compromise was the final
truth of religion, that nothing more until the end of the world
could ever be known that Cosmo Gordon Lang did not know, that
there could be no conception of God and his quality that Randall
Davidson did not possess."
He paused.
"I did," he said.
"I did," she responded with round blue eyes of wonder.
"At the utmost the Church of England is a tabernacle on a
road."
"A 'oad that goes whe'?" she rhetorized.
"Exactly," said the bishop, and put down his cup.
"You see, my dear Lady Sunderbund," he resumed, "I am exactly
in the same position of that man at the door."
She quoted aptly and softly: "The wo'ld was all befo' them whe'
to choose."
He was struck by the aptness of the words.
"I feel I have to come right out into the bare truth. What
exactly then do I become? Do I lose my priestly function because
I discover how great God is? But what am I to do?"
He opened a new layer of his thoughts to her.
"There is a saying," he remarked, "once a priest, always a
priest. I cannot imagine myself as other than what I am."
"But o'thodox no maw," she said.
"Orthodox--self-satisfied, no longer. A priest who seeks, an
exploring priest."
"In a Chu'ch of P'og'ess and B'othe'hood," she carried him on.
"At any rate, in a progressive and learning church."
She flashed and glowed assent.
"I have been haunted," he said, "by those words spoken at
Athens. 'Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto
you.' That comes to me with an effect of--guidance is an
old-fashioned word--shall I say suggestion? To stand by the
altar bearing strange names and ancient symbols, speaking plainly
to all mankind of the one true God--!"
(4)
He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he
remained talking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer.
The rest was merely a beating out of what had already been said.
But insensibly she renewed her original charm, and as he became
accustomed to her he forgot a certain artificiality in her manner
and the extreme modernity of her costume and furniture. She was a
wonderful listener; nobody else could have helped him to
expression in quite the same way, and when he left her he felt
that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherent and
acceptable form to almost any intelligenthearer. He had a point
of view now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate
golden presence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic;
his problem had diminished to the scale of any other great human
problem, to the scale of political problems and problems of
integrity and moral principle, problems about which there is no
such urgency as there is about a house on fire, for example.
And now the desire for expression was running strong. He wanted
to state his situation; if he did not state he would have to act;
and as he walked back to the club dinner he turned over possible
interlocutors in his thoughts. Lord Rampound sat with him at
dinner, and he came near broaching the subject with him. But Lord
Rampound that evening had that morbid running of bluish legal
anecdotes which is so common an affliction with lawyers, and
theology sinks and dies in that turbid stream.
But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend
and helper Bishop Likeman, and it was borne in upon him that he
should consult him. And this he did next day.
Since the days when the bishop had been only plain Mr. Scrope,
the youngest and most helpful of Likeman's historical band of
curates, their friendship had continued. Likeman had been a
second father to him; in particular his tact and helpfulness had
shone during those days of doubt and anxiety when dear old Queen
Victoria, God's representative on earth, had obstinately refused,
at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop. She had those
pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops. She had
liked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German
pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs
--nobody could ever find out who wrote them and nobody could
ever find out who showed them to the old lady--anticipating his
elevation. She had gone very red in the face and stiffened in the
Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was mentioned, and so a rich
harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled for some months.
Likeman had brought her round.
It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman
before he came to any open breach with the Establishment.
He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on
account of the war, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as
ever. His voice sounded more than ever like a kind old woman's.
He sat buried in his cushions--for "nowadays I must save
every scrap of vitality"--and for a time contented himself with
drawing out his visitor's story.
Of course, one does not talk to Likeman of visions or
intuitions. "I am disturbed, I find myself getting out of touch;"
that was the bishop's tone.
Occasionally Likeman nodded slowly, as a physician might do at
the recital of familiar symptoms. "Yes," he said, "I have been
through most of this.... A little different in the
inessentials.... How clear you are!"
"You leave our stupid old Trinities--as I left them long
ago," said old Likeman, with his lean hand feeling and clawing at
the arm of his chair.
"But--!"
The old man raised his hand and dropped it. "You go away from
it all--straight as a line. I did. You take the wings of the
morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. And there
you find--"
He held up a lean finger, and inclined it to tick off each
point.
"Fate--which is God the Father, the Power of the Heart, which
is God the Son, and that Light which comes in upon us from the
The world had become opaque and real again as he walked up St.
James's Street and past the Ritz. He had a feeling that he was
taking an afternoon off from God. The adventurous modernity of
the room in which he waited intensified that. One whole white
wall was devoted to a small picture by Wyndham Lewis. It was like
a picture of an earthquake in a city of aniline pink and grey and
keen green cardboard, and he wished it had never existed.
He turned his back upon it and stared out of the window over
the trees and greenery. The balcony was decorated with white and
pink geraniums in pots painted black and gold, and the railings
of the balcony were black and gold with crimson shape like
squares wildly out of drawing.
Lady Sunderbund kept him waiting perhaps five minutes. Then she
came sailing in to him.
She was dressed in a way and moved across the room in a way
that was more reminiscent of Botticelli's Spring than ever--
only with a kind of superadded stiffish polonaise of lace--and
he did not want to be reminded of Botticelli's Spring or wonder
why she had taken to stiff lace polonaises. He did not enquire
whether he had met Lady Sunderbund to better advantage at Mrs.
Garstein Fellows' or whether his memory had overrated her or
whether anything had happened to his standard of taste, but his
feeling now was decidedly one of disappointment, and all the talk
and self-examination he had promised himself seemed to wither and
hide away within him. For a time he talked of her view, and then
admired her room and its arrangement, which he thought really
were quite unbecomingly flippant and undignified for a room. Then
came the black tea-things on their orange tray, and he searched
in his mind for small talk to sustain their interview.
But he had already betrayed his disposition to "go on with our
talk" in his telephone enquiry, and Lady Sunderbund, perceiving
his shyness, began to make openings for him, at first just little
hinting openings, and then larger and larger ones, until at last
one got him.
"I'm so glad," she said, "to see you again. I'm so glad to go
on with oua talk. I've thought about it and thought about it."
She beamed at him happily.
"I've thought ova ev'y wo'd you said," she went on, when she
had finished conveying her pretty bliss to him. "I've been so
helped by thinking the k'eeds are symbols. And all you said. And
I've felt time after time, you couldn't stay whe' you we'. That
what you we' saying to me, would have to be said 'ight out."
That brought him in. He could not very well evade that opening
without incivility. After all he had asked to see her, and it was
a foolish thing to let little decorative accidentals put him off
his friendly purpose. A woman may have flower-pots painted gold
with black checkers and still be deeply understanding. He
determined to tell her what was in his mind. But he found
something barred him from telling that he had had an actual
vision of God. It was as if that had been a private and
confidential meeting. It wasn't, he felt, for him either to boast
a privilege or tell others of things that God had not chosen to
show them.
"Since I saw you," he said, "I have thought a great deal--of
the subject of our conversation."
"I have been t'ying to think," she said in a confirmatory tone,
as if she had co-operated.
"My faith in God grows," he said.
She glowed. Her lips fell apart. She flamed attention.
"But it grows less like the faith of the church, less and less.
I was born and trained in Anglicanism, and it is with a sort of
astonishment I find myself passing now out of every sort of
Catholicism--seeing it from the outside...."
"Just as one might see Buddhism," she supplied.
"And yet feeling nearer ?infinitely nearer to God," he said.
"Yes," she panted; "yes."
"I thought if one went out, one went out just to doubt and
darkness."
"And you don't?"
"No."
"You have gone at one step to a new 'iligion!"
He stared for a moment at the phrase.
"To religion," he said.
"It is so wondyful," she said, with her hands straight down
upon the couch upon which she was sitting, and leaning forward at
him, so as to seem almost as much out of drawing as a modern
picture.
"It seems," he reflected; "--as if it were a natural thing."
She came back to earth very slowly. She turned to the
tea-things with hushed and solemn movements as though she
administered a ceremony of peculiarsignificance. The bishop too
rose slowly out of the profundity of his confession. "No sugar
please," he said, arresting the lump in mid air.
It was only when they were embarked upon cups of tea and had a
little refreshed themselves, that she carried the talk further.
"Does it mean that you must leave the church?" she asked.
"It seemed so at first," he said. "But now I do not know. I do
not know what I ought to do."
She awaited his next thought.
"It is as if one had lived in a room all one's life and thought
it the world--and then suddenly walked out through a door and
discovered the sea and the mountains and stars. So it was with me
and the Anglican Church. It seems so extraordinary now--and it
would have seemed the most natural thing a year ago--to think
that I ever believed that the Anglican Compromise was the final
truth of religion, that nothing more until the end of the world
could ever be known that Cosmo Gordon Lang did not know, that
there could be no conception of God and his quality that Randall
Davidson did not possess."
He paused.
"I did," he said.
"I did," she responded with round blue eyes of wonder.
"At the utmost the Church of England is a tabernacle on a
road."
"A 'oad that goes whe'?" she rhetorized.
"Exactly," said the bishop, and put down his cup.
"You see, my dear Lady Sunderbund," he resumed, "I am exactly
in the same position of that man at the door."
She quoted aptly and softly: "The wo'ld was all befo' them whe'
to choose."
He was struck by the aptness of the words.
"I feel I have to come right out into the bare truth. What
exactly then do I become? Do I lose my priestly function because
I discover how great God is? But what am I to do?"
He opened a new layer of his thoughts to her.
"There is a saying," he remarked, "once a priest, always a
priest. I cannot imagine myself as other than what I am."
"But o'thodox no maw," she said.
"Orthodox--self-satisfied, no longer. A priest who seeks, an
exploring priest."
"In a Chu'ch of P'og'ess and B'othe'hood," she carried him on.
"At any rate, in a progressive and learning church."
She flashed and glowed assent.
"I have been haunted," he said, "by those words spoken at
Athens. 'Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto
you.' That comes to me with an effect of--guidance is an
old-fashioned word--shall I say suggestion? To stand by the
altar bearing strange names and ancient symbols, speaking plainly
to all mankind of the one true God--!"
(4)
He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he
remained talking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer.
The rest was merely a beating out of what had already been said.
But insensibly she renewed her original charm, and as he became
accustomed to her he forgot a certain artificiality in her manner
and the extreme modernity of her costume and furniture. She was a
wonderful listener; nobody else could have helped him to
expression in quite the same way, and when he left her he felt
that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherent and
acceptable form to almost any intelligenthearer. He had a point
of view now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate
golden presence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic;
his problem had diminished to the scale of any other great human
problem, to the scale of political problems and problems of
integrity and moral principle, problems about which there is no
such urgency as there is about a house on fire, for example.
And now the desire for expression was running strong. He wanted
to state his situation; if he did not state he would have to act;
and as he walked back to the club dinner he turned over possible
interlocutors in his thoughts. Lord Rampound sat with him at
dinner, and he came near broaching the subject with him. But Lord
Rampound that evening had that morbid running of bluish legal
anecdotes which is so common an affliction with lawyers, and
theology sinks and dies in that turbid stream.
But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend
and helper Bishop Likeman, and it was borne in upon him that he
should consult him. And this he did next day.
Since the days when the bishop had been only plain Mr. Scrope,
the youngest and most helpful of Likeman's historical band of
curates, their friendship had continued. Likeman had been a
second father to him; in particular his tact and helpfulness had
shone during those days of doubt and anxiety when dear old Queen
Victoria, God's representative on earth, had obstinately refused,
at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop. She had those
pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops. She had
liked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German
pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs
--nobody could ever find out who wrote them and nobody could
ever find out who showed them to the old lady--anticipating his
elevation. She had gone very red in the face and stiffened in the
Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was mentioned, and so a rich
harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled for some months.
Likeman had brought her round.
It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman
before he came to any open breach with the Establishment.
He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on
account of the war, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as
ever. His voice sounded more than ever like a kind old woman's.
He sat buried in his cushions--for "nowadays I must save
every scrap of vitality"--and for a time contented himself with
drawing out his visitor's story.
Of course, one does not talk to Likeman of visions or
intuitions. "I am disturbed, I find myself getting out of touch;"
that was the bishop's tone.
Occasionally Likeman nodded slowly, as a physician might do at
the recital of familiar symptoms. "Yes," he said, "I have been
through most of this.... A little different in the
inessentials.... How clear you are!"
"You leave our stupid old Trinities--as I left them long
ago," said old Likeman, with his lean hand feeling and clawing at
the arm of his chair.
"But--!"
The old man raised his hand and dropped it. "You go away from
it all--straight as a line. I did. You take the wings of the
morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. And there
you find--"
He held up a lean finger, and inclined it to tick off each
point.
"Fate--which is God the Father, the Power of the Heart, which
is God the Son, and that Light which comes in upon us from the
- waiting [´weitiŋ]
n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词) - advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；利益 (初中英语单词)
- disappointment [,disə´pɔintmənt] n.失望；挫折 (初中英语单词)
- arrangement [ə´reindʒmənt] n.整理；排列；筹备 (初中英语单词)
- sustain [sə´stein] vt.支撑；蒙受；确认 (初中英语单词)
- disposition [,dispə´ziʃən] n.安排；性情；倾向 (初中英语单词)
- privilege [´privilidʒ] n.特权 vt.给....特权 (初中英语单词)
- solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- ceremony [´seriməni] n.典礼；礼仪；客气 (初中英语单词)
- peculiar [pi´kju:liə] a.特有的；奇异的 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- extraordinary [ik´strɔ:dinəri] a.非常的；额外的 (初中英语单词)
- utmost [´ʌtməust] a.最大的 n.极端 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- function [´fʌŋkʃən] n.机能；职责 vi.活动 (初中英语单词)
- priest [pri:st] n.教士；牧师；神父 (初中英语单词)
- learning [´lə:niŋ] n.学习；学问；知识 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- worship [´wə:ʃip] n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词)
- suggestion [sə´dʒestʃən] n.建议，提议；暗示 (初中英语单词)
- extreme [ik´stri:m] a.尽头的 n.极端 (初中英语单词)
- costume [´kɔstju:m] n.服装(试样)；女装 (初中英语单词)
- capable [´keipəbəl] a.有能力；能干的 (初中英语单词)
- intelligent [in´telidʒənt] a.聪明的；理智的 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- consult [kən´sʌlt] v.商量；磋商；请教 (初中英语单词)
- anxiety [æŋ´zaiəti] n.挂念；渴望；焦虑的事 (初中英语单词)
- account [ə´kaunt] vi.说明 vt.认为 n.帐目 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- spiritual [´spiritʃuəl] a.精神(上)的；神圣的 (初中英语单词)
- explanation [,eksplə´neiʃən] n.解释；说明；辩解 (初中英语单词)
- physician [fi´ziʃən] n.(内科)医生 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- earthquake [´ə:θkweik] n.地震；大变动 (高中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- decidedly [di´saididli] ad.坚决地，果断地 (高中英语单词)
- wither [´wiðə] v.(使)枯萎(衰弱) (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- significance [sig´nifikəns] n.意义；重要性 (高中英语单词)
- confession [kən´feʃən] n.招供；认错；交待 (高中英语单词)
- compromise [´kɔmprəmaiz] n.妥协，和解 (高中英语单词)
- conception [kən´sepʃən] n.构思；概念；怀孕 (高中英语单词)
- progressive [prə´gresiv] a.进步的；前进的 (高中英语单词)
- bearing [´beəriŋ] n.举止；忍耐；关系 (高中英语单词)
- helper [´helpə] n.帮助者，助手 (高中英语单词)
- historical [his´tɔrikəl] a.历史(上)的 (高中英语单词)
- breach [bri:tʃ] n.&v.破坏；违犯 (高中英语单词)
- contented [kən´tentid] a.满足的；心满意足的 (高中英语单词)
- adventurous [əd´ventʃərəs] a.冒险的；惊险的 (英语四级单词)
- devoted [di´vəutid] a.献身...的，忠实的 (英语四级单词)
- cardboard [´kɑ:dbɔ:d] n.纸板；卡纸 (英语四级单词)
- balcony [´bælkəni] n.阳台；(戏院的)楼厅 (英语四级单词)
- decorative [´dekərətiv] a.装饰的 (英语四级单词)
- infinitely [´infinitli] ad.无限地；无穷地 (英语四级单词)
- drawing [´drɔ:iŋ] n.画图；制图；图样 (英语四级单词)
- listener [´lisənə] n.(收)听者，听众之一 (英语四级单词)
- excellence [´eksələns] n.优秀；杰出；优点 (英语四级单词)
- tabernacle [´tæbənækəl] n.临时住房，帐篷 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- hearer [´hiərə] n.听者 (英语六级单词)
- affliction [ə´flikʃən] n.痛苦，苦恼；折磨 (英语六级单词)
- recital [ri´saitl] n.背诵；叙述；音乐会 (英语六级单词)
- uttermost [´ʌtəməust] a.&n.=utmost (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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