That formal excommunication of the Wargraves and these eight priests should be issued in Norfolk and Westminster respectively, and no further notice taken.”
Percy laid down the sheet, gathered up the half dozen other papers that contained his extracts and running commentary, signed the last, and slipped the whole into the printed envelope that lay ready.
Then he took up his biretta and went to the lift.
The moment he came into the glass-doored parlour he saw that the crisis was come, if not passed already. Father Francis looked miserably ill, but there was a curious hardness, too, about his eyes and mouth, as he stood waiting. He shook his head abruptly.
“I have come to say good-bye, father. I can bear it no more.”
Percy was careful to show no emotion at all. He made a little sign to a chair, and himself sat down too. “It is an end of everything,” said the other again in a perfectly steady voice. “I believe nothing. I have believed nothing for a year now.”
“You have felt nothing, you mean,” said Percy.
“That won’t do, father,” went on the other. “I tell you there is nothing left. I can’t even argue now. It is just good-bye.”
Percy had nothing to say. He had talked to this man during a period of over eight months, ever since Father Francis had first confided in him that his faith was going. He understood perfectly what a strain it had been; he felt bitterly compassionate towards this poor creature who had become caught up somehow into the dizzy triumphant whirl of the New Humanity. External facts were horribly strong just now; and faith, except to one who had learned that Will and Grace were all and emotion nothing, was as a child crawling about in the midst of some huge machinery: it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of steel to keep steady. It was hard to know where blame could be assigned; yet Percy’s faith told him that there was blame due. In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy. And as regards Father Francis’s personal responsibility, he could not help feeling that the other had allowed ceremonial to play too great a part in his religion, and prayer too little. In him the external had absorbed the internal.
So he did not allow his sympathy to show itself in his bright eyes.
“You think it my fault, of course,” said the other sharply.
“My dear father,” said Percy, motionless in his chair, “I know it is your fault. Listen to me. You say Christianity is absurd and impossible. Now, you know, it cannot be that! It may be untrue — I am not speaking of that now, even though I am perfectly certain that it is absolutely true — but it cannot be absurd so long as educated and virtuous people continue to hold it. To say that it is absurd is simple pride; it is to dismiss all who believe in it as not merely mistaken, but unintelligent as well —— ”
“Very well, then,” interrupted the other; “then suppose I withdraw that, and simply say that I do not believe it to be true.”
“You do not withdraw it,” continued Percy serenely; “you still really believe it to be absurd: you have told me so a dozen times. Well, I repeat, that is pride, and quite sufficient to account for it all. It is the moral attitude that matters. There may be other things too —— ”
Father Francis looked up sharply.
“Oh! the old story!” he said sneeringly.
“If you tell me on your word of honour that there is no woman in the case, or no particular programme of sin you propose to work out, I shall believe you. But it is an old story, as you say.”
“I swear to you there is not,” cried the other.
“Thank God then!” said Percy. “There are fewer obstacles to a return of faith.”
There was silence for a moment after that. Percy had really no more to say. He had talked to him of the inner life again and again, in which verities are seen to be true, and acts of faith are ratified; he had urged prayer and humility till he was almost weary of the names; and had been met by the retort that this was to advise sheer self-hypnotism; and he had despaired of making clear to one who did not see it for himself that while Love and Faith may be called self-hypnotism from one angle, yet from another they are as much realities as, for example, artistic faculties, and need similar cultivation; that they produce a conviction that they are convictions, that they handle and taste things which when handled and tasted are overwhelmingly more real and objective than the things of sense. Evidences seemed to mean nothing to this man.
So he was silent now, chilled himself by the presence of this crisis, looking unseeingly out upon the plain, little old-world parlour, its tall window, its strip of matting, conscious chiefly of the dreary hopelessness of this human brother of his who had eyes but did not see, ears and was deaf. He wished he would say good-bye, and go. There was no more to be done.
Father Francis, who had been sitting in a lax kind of huddle, seemed to know his thoughts, and sat up suddenly.
“You are tired of me,” he said. “I will go.”
“I am not tired of you, my dear father,” said Percy simply. “I am only terribly sorry. You see I know that it is all true.”
The other looked at him heavily.
“And I know that it is not,” he said. “It is very beautiful; I wish I could believe it. I don’t think I shall be ever happy again — but — but there it is.”
Percy sighed. He had told him so often that the heart is as divine a gift as the mind, and that to neglect it in the search for God is to seek ruin, but this priest had scarcely seen the application to himself. He had answered with the old psychological arguments that the suggestions of education accounted for everything.
“I suppose you will cast me off,” said the other.
“It is you who are leaving me,” said Percy. “I cannot follow, if you mean that.”
“But — but cannot we be friends?”
A sudden heat touched the elder priest’s heart.
“Friends?” he said. “Is sentimentality all you mean by friendship? What kind of friends can we be?”
The other’s face became suddenly heavy.
“I thought so.”
“John!” cried Percy. “You see that, do you not? How can we pretend anything when you do not believe in God? For I do you the honour of thinking that you do not.”
Francis sprang up.
“Well —— ” he snapped. “I could not have believed — I am going.”
He wheeled towards the door.
“John!” said Percy again. “Are you going like this? Can you not shake hands?”
The other wheeled again, with heavy anger in his face.
“Why, you said you could not be friends with me!”
Percy’s mouth opened. Then he understood, and smiled. “Oh! that is all you mean by friendship, is it? — I beg your pardon. Oh! we can be polite to one another, if you like.”
He still stood holding out his hand. Father Francis looked at it a moment, his lips shook: then once more he turned, and went out without a word.
II
Percy stood motionless until he heard the automatic bell outside tell him that Father Francis was really gone, then he went out himself and turned towards the long passage leading to the Cathedral. As he passed out through the sacristy he heard far in front the murmur of an organ, and on coming through into the chapel used as a parish church he perceived that Vespers were