Helbeck of Bannisdale Volume Ii Part 27

"... The fact is, the Catholic, who is in love with his Church, _cannot_ let himself realise truly what the Home of the Renaissance meant: But turn your back on all the Protestant crew--even on Erasmus. Ask only those Catholic witnesses who were at the fountain-head, who saw the truth face to face. And then--ponder a little, what it was that really happened in those forty-five years of Elizabeth....

"Can Leadham, can anyone deny that the nation rose in them to the full stature of its manhood--to a buoyant and fruitful maturity? And more--if it had not been for some profound movement of the national life,--some irresistible revolt of the common intelligence, the common conscience--does anyone suppose that the whims and violences of any trumpery king could have broken the links with Rome?--that such a life and death as More's could have fallen barren on English hearts?

Never!--How shallow are all the official explanations--how deep down lies the truth!"

Out of the monologues that followed, broken often by the impatience or the eagerness of Dalton, Molly, at least, who worked much with her father, remembered fragments like the following:

"... The figure of the Church,--spouse or captive, bride or martyr,--as she has become personified in Catholic imagination, is surely among the greatest, the most ravishing, of human conceptions. It ranks with the image of 'Jahve's Servant' in the poetry of Israel. And yet behind her, as she moves through history, the modern sees the rising of something more majestic still--the free human spirit, in its contact with the infinite sources of things!--the Jerusalem which is the mother of us all--the Greater, the Diviner Church.... Into her Ursula-robe all lesser forms are gathered. But she is not only a maternal, a generative power--she is chastis.e.m.e.nt and convulsion.

"... Look back again to that great rising of the North against the South, that we call the Reformation.--Catholicism of course is saved with the rest.--One may almost say that Newman's own type is made possible--all that touches and charms us in English Catholics has its birth, because York, Canterbury, and Salisbury are lost to the Ma.s.s.

"And abroad?--I always find a sombre fascination in the spectacle of the Tridentine reform. The Church in her stern repentance breaks all her toys, burns all her books! She shakes herself free from Guicciardini's 'herd of wretches.' She shuts her gates on the knowledge and the freedom that have rent her--and within her strengthened walls she sits, pondering on judgment to come. In so far as her submission is incomplete, she is raising new reckonings against herself every hour.--But for the moment the moralising influence of the lay intelligence has saved her--a new strength flows through her old veins.

"... And so with scholarship.--The great fabric of Gallican and Benedictine learning rises into being, under the hammer blows of a hostile research. The Catholics of Germany, says Renan, are particularly distinguished for acuteness and breadth of ideas. Why? Because of the 'perpetual contact of Protestant criticism.'--

"... More and more we shall come to see that it is the World that is the salt of the Church! She owes far more to her enemies than to any of her canonised saints. One may almost say that she lives on what the World can spare her of its virtues."

Laura, in her dark corner, had almost disappeared from sight. Molly, the soft, round-faced, spectacled Molly, turned now and then from her friend to her father. She would give Friedland sometimes a gentle restraining touch--her lips shaped themselves, as though she said, "Take care!"

And gradually Friedland fell upon things more intimate--the old topics of the relation between Catholicism and the will, Catholicism and conscience.

"... I often think we should be the better for some chair of 'The Inner Life,' at an English University!" he said presently, with a smile at Molly.--"What does the ordinary Protestant know of all those treasures of spiritual experience which Catholicism has secreted for centuries?

_There_ is the debt of debts that we all owe to the Catholic Church.

"Well!--Some day, no doubt, we shall all be able to make a richer use of what she has so abundantly to give.--

"At present what one sees going on in the modern world is a vast transformation of moral ideas, which for the moment holds the field.

Beside the older ethical fabric--the fabric that the Church built up out of Greek and Jewish material--a new is rising. We think a hundred things unlawful that a Catholic permits; on the other hand, a hundred prohibitions of the older faith have lost their force. And at the same time, for half our race, the old terrors and eschatologies are no more.

We fear evil for quite different reasons; we think of it in quite different ways. And the net result in the best moderns is at once a great elaboration of conscience--and an almost intoxicating sense of freedom.--

"Here, no doubt, it is the _personal abjection_ of Catholicism, that jars upon us most--that divides it deepest from the modern spirit.--Molly!--don't frown!--Abjection is a Catholic word--essentially a Catholic temper. It means the ugliest and the loveliest things. It covers the most various types--from the nauseous hysteria of a Margaret Mary Alacoque, to the exquisite beauty of the _Imitation_.... And it derives its chief force, for good and evil, from the belief in the Ma.s.s.

There again, how little the Protestant understands what he reviles! In one sense he understands it well enough. Catholicism would have disappeared long ago but for the Ma.s.s. Marvellous indestructible belief!--that brings G.o.d to Man, that satisfies the deepest emotions of the human heart!--

"What will the religion of the free mind discover to put in its place?

Something, it must find. For the hold of Catholicism--or its a.n.a.logues--upon the guiding forces of Christendom is irretrievably broken. And yet the needs of the soul remain the same....

"Some compensation, no doubt, we shall reap from that added sense of power and wealth, which the change in the root ideas of life has brought with it for many people. Humanity has walked for centuries under the shadow of the Fall, with all that it involves. Now, a precisely opposite conception is slowly incorporating itself with all the forms of European thought. It is the disappearance--the rise--of a world. At the beginning of the century, Coleridge foresaw it.

"... The transformation affects the whole of personality! The ma.s.s of men who read and think, and lead straight lives to-day, are often conscious of a dignity and range their fathers never knew. The spiritual stature of civilised man has risen--like his physical stature! We walk to-day a n.o.bler earth. We come--not as outcasts, but as sons and freemen, into the House of G.o.d.--But all the secrets and formulae of a new mystical union have to be worked out. And so long as pain and death remain, humanity will always be at heart a mystic!"

Gradually, as the old man touched these more penetrating and personal matters, the head among the shadows had emerged. The beautiful eyes, so full--unconsciously full--of sad and torturing thought, rested upon the speaker. Friedland became sensitively conscious of them. The grey-haired scholar was in truth one of the most religious of men and optimists. The negations of his talk began to trouble him--in sight of this young grief and pa.s.sion. He drew upon all that his heart could find to say of things fruitful and consoling. After the liberating joys of battle, he must needs follow the perennial human instinct and build anew the "Civitas Dei."

When Friedland and his wife were left alone, Friedland said with timidity:

"Jane, I played the preacher to-night, and preaching is foolishness. But I would willingly brace that poor child's mind a little. And it seemed to me she listened."

Mrs. Friedland laughed under her breath--the saddest laugh.

"Do you know what the child was doing this afternoon?"

"No."

"She went to the Oratory--to Benediction." Friedland looked up startled--then understood--raised his hands and let them drop despairingly.

CHAPTER II

"Missie--are yo ben?"

The outer door of Browhead Farm was pushed inwards, and old Daffady's head and face appeared.

"Come in, Daffady--please come in!"

Miss Fountain's tone was of the friendliest. The cow-man obeyed her. He came in, holding his battered hat in his hand.

"Missie--A thowt I'd tell yo as t' rain had cleared oop--yo cud take a bit air verra weel, if yo felt to wish it."

Laura turned a pale but smiling face towards him. She had been pa.s.sing through a week of illness, owing perhaps to the April bleakness of this high fell, and old Daffady was much concerned. They had made friends from the first days of her acquaintance with the farm. And during these April weeks since she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown her a hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided with Mrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised, by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'm towd as doon i' Lunnon town, yo'll find scores o' this mak"--he would say to his intimate the old shepherd--"what th' Awmighty med em for, bets me.

Now Miss Polly, she can sarve t' beese"--(by which the old North Countryman meant "cattle")--"and mek a hot mash for t' cawves, an cook an milk, an ivery oother soart o' thing as t' Lord give us t' wimmen for--bit Missie!--yo've n.o.bbut to luke ut her 'ands. n.o.bbut what theer's soomat endearin i' these yoong flibberties--yo conno let em want for owt--bit it's the use of em worrits me above a bit."

Certainly all that old Daffady could do to supply the girl's wants was done. Whether it was a continuous supply of peat for the fire in these chilly April days; or a newspaper from the town; or a bundle of daffodils from the wood below--some signs of a fatherly mind he was always showing towards this little drone in the hive. And Laura delighted in him--racked her brains to keep him talking by the fireside.

"Well, Daffady, I'll take your advice.--I'm hungering to be out again.

But come in a bit first. When do you think the mistress will be back?"

Daffady awkwardly established himself just inside the door, looking first to see that his great nailed boots were making no unseemly marks upon the flags.

Laura was alone in the house. Mrs. Mason and Polly were gone to Whinthorpe, where they had some small sales to make. Mrs. Mason moreover was discontented with the terms under which she sold her milk; and there were inquiries to be made as to another factor, and perhaps a new bargain to be struck.

"Oh, the missis woan't be heam till dark," said Daffady. "She's not yan to do her business i' haaste. She'll see to 't aa hersen. An she's reet there. Them as ladles their wits oot o' other foak's brains gits n.o.bbut middlin sarved."

"You don't seem to miss Mr. Hubert very much?" said Laura, with a laughing look.

Daffady scratched his head.

"Noa--they say he's doin wonnerfu well, dean i' Froswick, an I'm juist glad on 't; for he wasna yan for work."

"Why, Daffady, they say now he's killing himself with work!"

Daffady grinned--a cautious grin.

"They'll deave yo, down i' th' town, wi their noise.--Yo'd think they were warked to death.--Bit, yo can see for yorsen. Why, a farmin mon mut be allus agate: in t' mornin, what wi' cawves to serve, an t' coos to feed, an t' horses to fodder, yo're fair run aff your legs. Bit down i'

Whinthorpe--or Froswick ayder, fer it's noa odds--why, theer's nowt stirrin for a yoong mon. If cat's loose, that's aboot what!"