THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

THE
MAKING OF A BIGOT

BY

ROSE MACAULAY

Author of "The Lee Shore," "Views and Vagabonds," etc.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

#025"

TO D. F. C.

" How various is man ! How multiplied his experience,
outlook, his conclusions ! " H. BELLOC.

" And every single one of them is right." R. KIPLING.

" The rational human faith must armour itself with pre-
judice in an age of prejudices." G. K. CHESTERTON

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I.
CAMBRIDGE - 9

CHAPTER II.

ST. GREGORY'S - 21

CHAPTER III.
PLEASANCE COURT - 38

CHAPTER IV.
HEATHERMERE - - 52

CHAPTER V.
DATCHERD AND THE VICAR - 62

CHAPTER VI.
THE DEANERY AND THE HALL - 80

CHAPTER VII.
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY - - IO2

CHAPTER VIII.
THE VISITORS GO - 127

CHAPTER IX.
THE CLUB 142

8

CONTENTS

CHAPTER X.

DATCHERD'S RETURN -

CHAPTER XI.

THE COUNTRY -

CHAPTER XII.
HYDE PARK TERRACE -

MOLLY

UNITY

ARNOLD

EILEEN

CONVERSION

CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.

PAGE

- I6 7

- 189

- 209

- 230

254

- 270

- 276

- 286

CHAPTER I.

CAMBRIDGE.

IT was Trinity Sunday, full of buttercups and
cuckoos and the sun. In Cambridge it was a
Scarlet Day. In colleges, people struggling through
a desert of Tripos papers or Mays rested their souls
for a brief space in a green oasis, and took their lunch
up the river. In Sunday schools, teachers were
telling of the shamrock, that ill-considered and
peculiarly inappropriate image conceived by a
hard-pressed saint. Everywhere people were being
ordained.

Miss Jamison met Eddy Oliver in Petty Cury,
while she was doing some house-to-house visiting
with a bundle of leaflets that looked like tracts.
She looked at him vaguely, then suddenly began
to take an interest in him.

" Of course," she said, with decision, " you've
got to join, too."

" Rather," he said. " Tell me what it is. I'm
sure it's full of truth."

io THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

" It's the National Service League. I'm a work-
ing associate, and I'm persuading people to join.
It's a good thing, really. Were you at the meeting
yesterday ? "

" No, I missed that. I was at another meeting,
in point of fact. I often am, you know." He said
it with a touch of mild perplexity. It was so true.

She was turning over the sheaf of tracts.

" Let me see : which will meet your case ?
Leaflet M, the Modern Sisyphus that's a picture
one, and more for the poor ; so simple and graphic.
P is better for you. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT what
war is, and what it would be like to have it raging
round your own home ? HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT
what your feelings would be if you heard that an
enemy had landed on these shores, and you knew
that you were ignorant of the means by which you
could help to defend your country and your home ?
You PROBABLY THINK that if you are a member of a
rifle club, and know how to shoot, you have done all
that is needed. But well, you haven't, and so on,
you know. You'd better take P. And Q. Q says
" Are you a Liberal ? Then join the League,
because, etc. Are you a Democrat ? Are you a
Socialist ? Are you a Conservative ? Are you

" Yes," said Eddy, " I'm everything of that
sort. It won't be able to think of anything I'm
not."

She thought he was being funny, though he
wasn't ; he was speaking the simple truth.

" Anyhow," she said, " you'll find good reasons

CAMBRIDGE n

there why you should join, whatever you are.
Just think, you know, suppose the Germans landed."
She supposed that for a little, then got on to physical
training and military discipline, how important
they are.

Eddy said when she paused, " Quite. I think
you are utterly right." He always did, when
anyone explained anything to him ; he was like
that ; he had a receptive mind.

" You can become," said Miss Jamison, getting
to the gist of the matter, " a guinea member, or a
penny adherent, or a shilling associate, or a more
classy sort of associate, that pays five shillings
and gets all kinds of literature."

"I'll be that," said Eddy Oliver, who liked
nearly all kinds of literature.

So Miss Jamison got out her book of vouchers
on the spot, and enrolled him, receiving five shillings
and presenting a blue button on which was inscribed
the remark, "The Path of Duty is the Path of
Safety."

"So true," said Eddy. "A jolly good motto.
A jolly good League. I'll tell everyone I meet to
join."

" There'll be another meeting," said Miss Jamison,
" next Thursday. Of course you'll come. We
want a good audience this time, if possible. We
never have one, you know. There'll be lantern
slides, illustrating invasion as it would be now, and
invasion as it would be were the National Service
League Bill passed. Tremendously exciting."

12 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

Eddy made a note of it in his Cambridge Pocke
Diary, a small^and profusely inscribed volume
without which he never moved, as his engagements
were numerous, and his head not strong.

He wrote below June 8th, " N.S.L., 8 p.m.,
Guildhall, small room." For the same date he had
previously inscribed, " Fabians, 7.15, Victoria
Assembly Rooms," " E.C.U. Protest Meeting, Guild-
hall, large room, 2.15," and " Primrose League
Fte, Great Shelford Manor, 3 p.m." He belonged
to all these societies (they are all so utterly right)
and many others more esoteric, and led a complex
and varied life, full of faith and hope. With so
many right points of view in the world, so many
admirable, if differing, faiths, whither, he demanded,
might not humanity rise ? Himself, he joined
everything that came his way, from Vegetarian
Societies to Heretic Clubs and Ritualist Guilds;
all, for him, were full of truth. This attitude of
omni-acceptance sometimes puzzled and worried
less receptive and more single-minded persons ;
they were known at times even to accuse him, with
tragic injustice, of insincerity. When they did so,
he saw how right they were; he entirely sym-
pathised with their point of view.

At this time he was nearly twenty-three, and
nearly at the end of his Cambridge career. In
person he was a slight youth, with intelligent hazel
eyes under sympathetic brows, and easily ruffled
brown hair, and a general air of receptive impres-
sionability. Clad not unsuitably in grey flannels

CAMBRIDGE 13

and the soft hat of the year (soft hats vary impor-
tantly from age to age), he strolled down King's
Parade. There he met a man of his own college ;
this was liable to occur in King's Parade. The
man said he was going to tea with his people, and
Eddy was to come too. Eddy did so. He liked
the Denisons ; they were full of generous enthusiasm
for certain things (not, like Eddy himself, for
everything). They wanted Votes for Women, and
Liberty for Distressed Russians, and spinning-
looms for everyone. They had inspired Eddy to
want these things, too ; he belonged, indeed, to
societies for promoting each of them. On the
other hand, they did not want Tariff Reform, or
Conscription, or Prayer Book Revision (for they
seldom read the Prayer Book), and if they had
known that Eddy belonged also to societies for
promoting these objects, they would have remon-
strated with him.

Professor Denison was a quiet person, who said
little, but listened to his wife and children. He
had much sense of humour, and some imagination.
He was fifty-five. Mrs. Denison was a small and
engaging lady, a tremendous worker in good causes ;
she had little sense of humour, and a vivid, if often
misapplied, imagination. She was forty-six. Her
son Arnold was tall, lean, cynical, intelligent,
edited a university magazine (the most interesting
of them), was president of a Conversation Society,
and was just going into his uncle's publishing house.
He had plenty of sense of humour (if he had had

14 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

less, he would have bored himself to death), and
imagination kept within due bounds. He was
twenty-three. His sister Margery was also intelli-
gent, but, notwithstanding this, had recently pub-
lished a book of verse ; some of it was not so bad
as a great many people's verse. She also designed
wall-papers, which on the whole she did better.
She had an unequal sense of humour, keen in certain
directions, blunt in others, like most people's ; the
same description applies to her imagination. She
was twenty-two.

Eddy and Arnold found them having tea in the
garden, with two brown undergraduates and a
white one. The Denisons belonged to the East
and West Society, which tries to effect a union
between the natives of these two quarters of the
globe. It has conversazioni, at which the brown
men congregate at one end of the room and the
white men at the other, and both, one hopes, are
happy. This afternoon Mrs. Denison and her
daughter were each talking to a brown young man
(Downing and Christ's), and the white young man
(Trinity Hall) was being silent with Professor
Denison, because East is East and West is West, and
never the twain shall meet, and really, you can't
talk to blacks. Arnold joined the West ; Eddy,
who belonged to the above-mentioned society,
helped Miss Denison to talk to her black.

Rather soon the East went, and the West became
happier.

Miss Denison said, " Dorothy Jamison came

CAMBRIDGE 15

round this afternoon, wanting us to join the National
Service League or something/'

Mrs. Denison said, snippily, " Dorothy ought to
know better," at the same moment that Eddy said,
" It's a jolly little League, apparently. Quite
full of truth."

The Hall man said that his governor was a
secretary or something at home, and kept having
people down to speak at meetings. So he and the
Denisons argued about it, till Margery said, "Oh,
well, of course, you're hopeless. But I don't know
what Eddy means by it. You don't want to en-
courage militarism, surely, Eddy."

Eddy said surely yes, shouldn't one encourage
everything ? But, really, and no ragging, Margery
persisted, he didn't belong to a thing like that ?

Eddy showed his blue button.

" Rather, I do. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT what
war is, and what it would be like to have it raging
round your own home ? Are you a democrat ?
Then join the League."

" Idiot," said Margery, who knew him well
enough to call him so.

" He believes in everything. I believe in nothing,
Arnold explained. " He accepts ; I refuse. He
likes three lumps of sugar in his tea ; I like none.
He had better be a journalist, and write for the
Daily Mail, the Clarion, and the Spectator."

" What are you going to do when you go down ? "
Margery asked Eddy, suspiciously.

Eddy blushed, because he was going for a time

16 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

to work in a Church settlement. A man he knew
was a clergyman there, and had convinced him
that it was his duty and he must. The Denisons
did not care about Church settlements, only secular
ones ; that, and because he had a clear, pale skin
that showed everything, was why he blushed.

" I'm going to work with some men in South-
wark," he said, embarrassed. " Anyhow, for a
time. Help with boys' clubs, you know, and so
on."

" Parsons ? " inquired Arnold, and Eddy ad-
mitted it, whereupon Arnold changed the subject ;
he had no concern with parsons.

The Denisons were so shocked at Eddy, that
they let the Hall man talk about the South African
match for quite two minutes. They were probably
afraid that if they didn't Eddy might talk about
the C.I.C.C.U., which would be infinitely worse.
Eddy was perhaps the only man at the moment
in Cambridge who belonged simultaneously to the
C.I.C.C.U., the Church Society, and the Heretics.
(It may be explained for the benefit of the un-
initiated that the C.I.C.C.U. is Low Church, and
the Church Society is High Church, and the
Heretics is no church at all. They are all admirable
societies).

Arnold said presently, interrupting the match,
" If I keep a second-hand bookshop in Soho, will
you help me, Eddy ? "

Eddy said he would like to.

" It will be awfully good training for both of us,"

CAMBRIDGE 17

said Arnold. " You'll see much more life that
way, you know, than at your job in Southwark."

Arnold had manfully overcome his distaste for
alluding to Eddy's job in Southwark, in order to
make a last attempt to snatch a brand from the
burning.

But Eddy, thinking he might as well be hanged
for a sheep as a lamb, said,

" You see, my people rather want me to take
Orders, and the Southwark job is by way of finding
out if I want to or not. I'm nearly sure I don't,
you know," he added, apologetically, because the
Denisons were looking so badly disappointed in him.

Mrs. Denison said kindly, " I think I should tell
your people straight out that you can't. It's a
tiresome little jar, I know, but honestly, I don't
believe it's a bit of use members of a family pre-
tending that they see life from the same angle when
they don't."

Eddy said, " Oh, but I think we do, in a way.
Only "

It was really rather difficult to explain. He did
indeed see life from the same angle as the rest of his
family, but from many other angles as well, which
was confusing. The question was, could one
select some one thing to be, clergyman or anything
else, unless one was very sure that it implied no
negations, no exclusions of the other angles ?
That was, perhaps, what his life in Southwark
would teach him. Most of the clergy round his
own home and, his father being a Dean, he knew

B

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

many hadn't, it seemed to him, learnt the art of
acceptance ; they kept drawing lines, making
sheep and goat divisions, like the Denisons.

The Hall man, feeling a little embarrassed because
they were getting rather intimate and personal,
and probably would like to get more so if he were
not there, went away. He had had to call on the
Denisons, but they weren't his sort, he knew. Miss
Denison and her parents frightened him, and he
didn't get on with girls who dressed artistically,
or wrote poetry, and Arnold Denison was a con-
ceited crank, of course. Oliver was a good sort,
only very thick with Denison for some reason. If
he was Oliver, and wanted to do anything so dull
as slumming with parsons in Southwark, he wouldn't
be put off by anything the Denisons said.

" Why don't you get your tie to match your
socks, Eddy ? " Arnold asked, with a yawn, when
Egerton had gone.

His mother, a hospitable lady, and kind to
Egertons and all others who came to her house,
told him not to be disagreeable. Eddy said, truly,
that he wished he did, and that it was a capital
idea and looked charming.

" Egertons do look rather charming, quite often,"
Margery conceded. " I suppose that's something
after all."

Mrs. Denison added, (exquisite herself, she had
a taste for neatness) : " Their hair and their clothes
are always beautifully brushed ; which is more
than yours are, Arnold."

CAMBRIDGE 19

Arnold lay back with his eyes shut, and groaned
gently. Egerton had fatigued him very much.

Eddy thought it was rather nice of Mrs. Denison
and Margery to be kind about Egerton because
he had been to tea. He realised that he himself
was the only person there who was neither kind
nor unkind about Egerton, because he really liked
him. This the Denisons would have hopelessly
failed to understand, or, probably, to believe ; it
he had mentioned it they would have thought he
was being kind, too. Eddy liked a number of
people who were ranked by the Denisons among
the goats ; even the rowing men of his own college,
which happened to be a college where one didn't row.

Mrs. Denison asked Eddy if he would come to
lunch on Thursday to meet some of the Irish players,
whom they were putting up for the week. The
Denisons, being intensely English and strong
Home Rulers, felt, besides the artistic admiration
for the Abbey Theatre players common to all, a
political enthusiasm for them as Nationalists,
so putting three of them up was a delightful hospi-
tality. Eddy, who shared both the artistic and
the political enthusiasm, was delighted to come
to lunch. Unfortunately he would have to hurry
away afterwards to the Primrose League F8te at
Great Shelford, but he did not mention this.

Consulting his watch, he found he was even
now due at a meeting of a Sunday Games Club to
which he belonged, so he said goodbye to the
Denisons and went.

20

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

" Mad as a hatter/' was Arnold's languid comment
on him when he had gone ; " but well-intentioned."

" But," said Margery, " I can't gather that he
intends anything at all. He's so absurdly indis-
criminate."

" He intends everything," her father inter-
preted. " You all, in this intense generation,
intend much too much ; Oh' ver carries it a little
further than most of you, that's all. His road
to his ultimate destination is most remarkably
well-paved."

" Oh, poor boy," said Mrs. Denison, remon-
strating. She went in to finish making arrange-
ments for a Suffrage meeting.

Margery went to her studio to hammer jewellery
for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition.

Professor Denison went to his study to look
over Tripos papers.

Arnold lay in the garden and smoked. He was
the least energetic of his family, and not indus-
trious.

CHAPTER II.
ST. GREGORY'S.

PROBABLY, Eddy decided, after working for a
week in Southwark, the thing to be was a clergy-
man. Clergymen get their teeth into something ;
they make things move ; you can see results,
which is so satisfactory. They can point to a
man, or a society, and say, " Here you are ; I
made this. I found him a worm and no man,
and left him a human being," or, "I found them
scattered and unmoral units, and left them a Band
of Hope, or a Mothers' Union." It is a great work.
Eddy caught the spirit of it, and threw himself
vigorously into men's clubs and lads' brigades,
and boy scouts, and all the other organisations
that flourished in the parish of St. Gregory, under
the Reverend Anthony Finch and his assistant
clergy. Father Finch, as he was called in the
parish, was a stout, bright man, shrewd, and merry,
and genial, and full of an immense energy and
power of animating the inanimate. He had set
all kinds of people and institutions on their feet,
and given them a push to start them and keep
them in motion. So his parish was a live parish,

21

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

in a state of healthy circulation. Father Fine!
was emphatically a worker. Dogma and ritual,
though certainly essential to his view of life, did
not occupy the prominent place given to them by,
for instance, his senior curate, Hillier. Hillier
was the supreme authority on ecclesiastical cere-
monial. It was he who knew, without referring
to a book, all the colours of all the festivals and
vigils ; and what cere-cloths and maniples were ;
it was he who decided how many candles were
demanded at the festal evensong of each saint,
and what vestments were suitable to be worn in
procession, and all the other things that lay people
are apt to think get done for themselves, but which
really give a great deal of trouble and thought
to some painstaking organiser.

Hillier had genial and sympathetic manners
with the poor, was very popular in the parish,
belonged to eight religious guilds, wore the badges
of all of them on his watch-chain, and had been
educated at a county school and a theological
college. The junior curate, James Peters, was a
jolly young cricketer of twenty-four, and had been
at Marlborough and Cambridge with Eddy ; he
was, in fact, the man who had persuaded Eddy to
come and help in St. Gregory's.

There were several young laymen working in
the parish. St. Gregory's House, which was some-
thing between a clergy house and a settlement,
spread wide nets to catch workers. Hither drifted
bank clerks in their leisure hours, eager to help

ST. GREGORY'S 23

with clubs in the evenings and Sunday school
classes on Sundays. Here also came undergraduates
in the vacations, keen to plunge into the mele*e,
and try their hands at social and philanthropic
enterprises ; some of them were going to take
Orders later, some were not ; some were stifling
with ardent work troublesome doubts as to the
object of the universe, others were not ; all were full
of the generous idealism of the first twenties.
When Eddy went there, there were no under-
graduates, but several visiting lay workers.

Between the senior and junior curates came the
second curate, Bob Traherne, an ardent person
who belonged to the Church Socialist League.
Eddy joined this League at once. It is an in-
teresting one to belong to, and has an exciting,
though some think old-fashioned, programme.
Seeing him inclined to join things, Hillier set
before him, diplomatically, the merits of the
various Leagues and Guilds and Fraternities whose
badges he wore, and for which new recruits are
so important.

" Anyone who cares for the principles of the
Church," he said, shyly eager, having asked Eddy
into his room to smoke one Sunday evening after
supper, " must support the objects of the G.S.C."
He explained . what they were, and why. "You
see, worship can't be complete without it not
so much because it's a beautiful thing in itself,
and certainly not from the aesthetic or sensuous
point of view, though of course there's that appeal

24 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

too, and particularly to the poor but because
it's used in the other branches, and we must join
up and come into line as far as we conscientiously
can."

" Quite," said Eddy, seeing it. "Of course
we must."

"You'll join the Guild, then?" said Hillier,
and Eddy said, " Oh, yes, I'll join," and did so.
So Hillier had great hopes for him, and told him
about the F.I.S., and the L.M.G.

But Traherne said afterwards to Eddy, " Don't
you go joining Hillier 's little Fraternities and
Incense Guilds. They won't do you any good.
Leave them to people like Robinson and Wilkes."
(Robinson and Wilkes were two young clerks who
came to work in the parish and adored Hillier.)
" They seem to find such things necessary to
their souls ; in fact, they tell me they are starved
without them ; so I suppose they must be allowed
to have them. But you simply haven't the time
to spend."

" Oh, I think it's right, you know," said Eddy,
who never rejected anything or fell in with nega-
tions. That was where he drew his line he went
along with all points of view so long as they were
positive : as soon as condemnation or rejection
came in, he broke off.

Traherne puffed at his pipe rather scornfully.

"It's not right," he grunted, "and it's not
wrong. It's neuter. Oh, have it as you like.
It's all very attractive, of course ; I'm entirely in

ST. GREGORY'S 25

sympathy with the objects of all these guilds, as
you know. It's only the guilds themselves I object
to a lot of able-bodied people wasting their forces
banding themselves together to bring about rela-
tively trivial and unimportant things, when there's
all the work of the shop waiting to be done. Oh,
I don't mean Hillier doesn't work of course he's
first-class but the more of his mind he gives to
incense and stoles, the less he'll have to give to the
work that matters and it's not as if he had such
an immense deal of it altogether mind, I mean."

" But after all," Eddy demurred, " if that sort
of thing appeals to anybody

"Oh, let 'em have it, let 'em have it," said
Traherne wearily. " Let 'em all have what they
like ; but don't you be dragged into a net of millinery
and fuss. Even you will surely admit that things
don't all matter equally that it's more impor-
tant, for instance, that people should learn a little
about profit-sharing than a great deal about church
ornaments; more important that they should use
leadless glaze than that they should use incense.
Well, then, there you are ; go for the essentials,
and let the incidentals look after themselves,"

" Oh, let's go for everything," said Eddy with
enthusiasm. " It's all worth having."

The second curate regarded him with a cynical
smile, and gave him up as a bad job. But anyhow,
he had joined the Church Socialist League, whose
members according to themselves, do go for the
essentials, and, according to some other people,

26 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

go to the devil ; anyhow go, or endeavour to go,
somewhere, and have no superfluous energy to
spend on toys by the roadside. Only Eddy Oliver
seemed to have energy to spare for every game that
turned up. He made himself rather useful, and
taught the boys' clubs single-stick and boxing,
and played billiards and football with them.

The only thing that young James Peters wanted
him to join was a Rugby football club. Teach
the men and boys of the parish to play Rugger
like sportsmen and not like cads, and you've taught
them most of what a boy or man need learn, James
Peters held. While the senior curate said, give
them the ritual of the Catholic '.Church, and the
second curate said, give them a minimum wage,
and the vicar said, put into them, by some means
or another, the fear of God, the junior curate led
them to the playing-field hired at great expense,
and tried to make sportsmen of them ; and grew
at times, but very seldom, passionate like a thwarted
child, because it was the most 'difficult thing he had
ever tried to do, and because they would lose their
tempers and kick one another on the shins, and walk
off the field, and send in their resignations, to-
gether with an intimation that St. Gregory's Church
would see them no more, because the referee was
a liar and didn't come it fair. Then James Peters
would throw back their resignations and their
intimations in their faces, and call them silly asses
and generally manage to smooth things down in
his cheerful, youthful, vigorous way. Eddy Oliver

ST. GREGORY'S 27

helped him in this. He and Peters were great
friends, though more unlike even than most people
are. Peters had a very single eye, and herded
people very easily and completely into sheep and
goats ; his particular nomenclature for them was
"sportsmen" and "rotters." He took the
Catholic Church, so to speak, in his swing, and
was one of her most loyal and energetic sons.

To him, Arnold Denison, whom he had known
slightly at Cambridge, was decidedly a goat. Arnold
Denison came, at Eddy's invitation, to supper at
St. Gregory's House one Sunday night. The visit
was not a success. Hillier, usually the life of
any party he adorned, was silent, and on his
guard. Arnold, at times a tremendous talker,
said hardly a word through the meal. Eddy knew
of old that he was capable, in uncongenial society,
of an unmannerly silence, which looked scornful
partly because it was scornful, and partly because
of Arnold's rather cynical physiognomy, which
sometimes unjustly suggested mockery. On this
Sunday evening he was really less scornful than
simply aloof ; he had no concern with these people,
nor they with him ; they made each other mutually
uncomfortable. Neither could have anything to
say to the other's point of view. Eddy, the con-
necting link, felt unhappy about it. What was
the matter with the idiots, that they wouldn't
understand each other ? It seemed to him extra-
ordinarily stupid. But undoubtedly the social
fault lay with Arnold, who was being rude. The

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

others, as hosts, tried to make themselves pleasant-
even Hillier, who quite definitely didn't like Arnold,
and who was one of those who as a rule think it
right and true to their colours to show disapproval
when they feel it. The others weren't like that
(the difference perhaps was partly between the
schools which had respectively reared them), so
they were agreeable with less effort.

But the meal was not a success. It began with
grace, which, in spite of its rapidity and its decent
cloak of Latin, quite obviously shocked and em-
barrassed Arnold. (" Stupid of him," thought
Eddy ; " he might have known we'd say it here/')
It went on with Peters talking about his Rugger
club, which bored Arnold. This being apparent,
the Vicar talked about some Cambridge men they
both knew. As the men had worked for a time
in St. Gregory's parish, Arnold had already given
them up as bad jobs, so hadn't much to say about
them, except one, who had turned over a new leaf,
and now helped to edit a new weekly paper. Arnold
mentioned this paper with approbation.

" Did you see last week's ? " he asked the Vicar.
" There were some extraordinarily nice things
in it."

As no one but Eddy had seen last week's, and
everyone but Eddy thought The Heretic in
thoroughly bad taste, if not worse, the subject
was not a general success. Eddy referred to a
play that had been reviewed in it. That seemed
a good subject ; plays are a friendly, uncontroversial

ST. GREGORY'S 29

topic. But between Arnold and clergymen no topic
seemed friendly. Hillier introduced a popular
play of the hour which had a religious trend. He
even asked Arnold if he had seen it. Arnold said
no, he had missed that pleasure. Hillier said it
was grand, simply grand ; he had been three
times.

" Of course/' he added, " one's on risky ground,
and one isn't quite sure how far one likes to see
such marvellous religious experiences represented
on the stage. But the spirit is so utterly reverent
that one can't feel anything but the Tightness of
the whole thing. It's a rather glorious triumph
of devotional expression."

And that wasn't a happy topic either, for no
one but he and Eddy liked the play at all. The
Vicar thought it cheap and tawdry ; Traherne
thought it sentimental and revolting ; Peters
thought it silly rot ; and Arnold had never thought
about it at all, but had just supposed it to be absurd,
the sort of play to which one would go, if one went
at all, to laugh ; like " The Sins of Society," or
" Everywoman," only rather coarse, too.

Hillier said to Eddy, who had seen the play with
him, " Didn't you think it tremendously fine,
Oliver ? "

Eddy said, "Yes, quite. I really did. But
Denison wouldn't like it, you know."

Denison, Hillier supposed, was one of the fools
who have said in their hearts, etc. In that case
the play in question would probably be an eye-

30 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

opener for him, and it was a pity he shouldn't
see it.

Hillier told him so. " You really ought to see
it, Mr. Denison."

Arnold said, " Life, unfortunately, is short/'

Hillier, nettled, said, "I'd much rather see
* The Penitent ' than all your Shaws put together.
I'm afraid I can't pretend to owe any allegiance
there."

Arnold, who thought Shaw common, not to
say Edwardian, looked unresponsive. Then Tra-
herne began to talk about ground-rents. When
Traherne began to talk he as a rule went on. Neither
Hillier nor Arnold, who had mutually shocked
one another, said much more. Arnold knew a little
about rents, ground and other, and if Traherne
had been a layman he would have been interested
in talking about them. But he couldn't and
wouldn't talk to clergymen ; emphatically, he did
not like them.

After supper, Eddy took him to his own room
to smoke. With his unlit pipe in his hand, Arnold
lay back and let out a deep breath of exhaustion.

' You were very rude and disagreeable at supper,"
said Eddy, striking a match. " It was awkward
for me. I (must apologise to-morrow for having
asked you. I shall say it's your country manners,
though I suppose you would like me to say that
you don't approve of clergymen .... Really,
Arnold, I was surprised you should be so very
rustic, even if you don't like them."

ST. GREGORY'S 31

Arnold groaned faintly.

" Chuck it," he murmured. " Come out of it
before it is too late, before you get sucked in irre-
vocably. I'll help you ; I'll tell the vicar for
you ; yes, I'll interview them all in turn, even
Hillier, if it will make it easier for you. Will it ? "

" No," said Eddy. " I'm not going to leave
at present. I like being here."

"That," said Arnold, "is largely why it's so
demoralising for you. Now for me it would be
distressing, but innocuous. For you it's poison."

" Well, now," Eddy reasoned with him, " what's
the matter with Traherne, for instance ? Of
course, I see that the vicar's too much the practical
man of the world for you, and Peters too much
the downright sportsman, and Hillier too much the
pious ass (though I like him, you know). But
Traherne's clever and all alive, and not in the
least reputable. What's the matter with him,
then ? "

Arnold grunted. " Don't know. Must be some-
thing, or he wouldn't be filling his present position
in life. Probably he labours under the delusion
that life is real, life is earnest. Socialists often
do. . . . Look here, come and see Jane one day,
will you ? She'd be a change for you."

' What's Jane like ? "

" I don't know. . . . Not like anyone here,
anyhow. She draws in pen and ink, and lives in a
room in a little court out of Blackfriars Road, with
a little 'fat fair girl called SaUy. Sally Peters ;

32 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

she's a cousin of young James here, I believe.
Rather like him, too, only rounder and jollier,
with bluer eyes and yellower hair. Much more
of a person, I imagine ; more awake to things in
general, and not a bit rangie, though quite crude.
But the same sort of cheery exuberance ; person-
ally, I couldn't live with either ; but Jane manages
it quite serenely. Sally isn't free of the good-
works taint herself, though we hope she is out-
growing it."

" Oh, I've met her. She comes and helps Jimmy
with the children's clubs sometimes."

" I expect she does. But, as I say, we're educa-
ting her. She's young yet. . . . Jane is good for
her. So are Miss Hogan, and the two Le Moines,
and I. We should also be good for you, if you
could spare us some of your valuable time between
two Sunday school classes. Good night. I'm
going home now, because it makes me rather sad
to be here."

He went home.

The clergy of St. Gregory's thought him (re-
spectively) an ill-mannered and irritating young
man, probably clever enough to learn better some
day ; an infidel, very likely too proud ever to learn
better at all, this side the grave ; a dilettante
slacker, for whom the world hadn't much use ;
and a conceited crank, for whom James Peters
had no use at all. But they didn't like to tell
Eddy so.

James Peters, a transparent youth, threw only

ST. GREGORY'S 33

a thin veil over his opinions, however, when he
talked to Eddy about his cousin Sally. He was,
apparently, anxious about Sally. Eddy had met
her at children's clubs, and thought her a cheery
young person, and admired the amber gold of her
hair, and her cornflower-blue eyes, and her power
of always thinking of a fresh game at the right
moment.

" I'm supposed to be keeping an eye upon her,"
James said. " She has to earn her living, you
know, so she binds books and lives in a room off
the Blackf riars Road with another girl. ... I'm
not sure I care about the way they live, to say the
truth. They have such queer people in, to supper
and so on. Men, you know, of all sorts. I believe
Denison goes. They sit on a bed that's meant
to look like a sofa and doesn't. And they're only
girls Miss Dawn's older than Sally, but not very
old and they've no one to look after them ; it
doesn't seem right. And they do know the most
extraordinary people. Miss Dawn's rather a queer
girl herself, I think ; unlike other people, somehow.
Very very detached, if you understand ; and
doesn't care a rap for the conventions, I should say.
That's all very well in its way, and she's a very
quiet-mannered person can't think how she and
Sally made friends but it's a dangerous plan for
most people. And some of their friends are . . .
well, rather rotters, you know. Look like artists,
or Fabians, without collars, and so on. ... Oh,
I forgot you're a Fabian, aren't you ? . . . Well,

c

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

anyhow, I should guess that some of them are
without morals either ; in my experience the two
things are jolly apt to go together. There are the
Le Moines, now. Have you ever come across
either of them ? "

" I've just met Cecil Le Moine. He's rather
charming, isn't he ? "

" The sort of person," said James Peters, " for
whom I have no use whatever. No, he doesn't
appear to me charming. An effeminate ass, I
call him. Oh, I know he calls himself frightfully
clever and all that, and I suppose he thinks he's
good-looking . . . but as selfish as sin. Anyhow,
he and his wife couldn't live together, so they
parted before their first year was over. Her music
worried him or something, and prevented him
concentrating his precious brain on his literary
efforts ; and I suppose he got on her nerves, too.
I believe they agreed quite pleasantly to separate,
and are quite pleased to meet each other about
the place, and are rather good friends. But I call
it pretty beastly, looking at marriage like that.
If they'd hated each other there'd have been more
excuse. And she's a great friend of Miss Dawn's,
and Sally's developed what I consider an inor-
dinate affection for her ; and she and Miss Dawn
between them have simply got hold of her Sally,
I mean and are upsetting her and giving her
all kinds of silly new points of view. She doesn't
come half as often to the clubs as she used. And
she was tremendously keen on the Church, and

ST. GREGORY'S 35

and really religious, you know and she's getting
quite different. I feel sort of responsible, and it's
worrying me rather."

He puffed discontentedly at his pipe.

" Pity to get less keen on anything," Eddy mused.
" New points of view seem to me all to the good ;
it's losing hold of the old that's a mistake. Why
let anything go, ever ? "

" She's getting to think it doesn't matter,"
James complained ; " Church, and all that. I
know she's given up things she used to do. And
really, the more she's surrounded by influences
such as Mrs. Le Moine's, the more she needs the
Church to pull her through, if only she'd see it.
Mrs. Le Moine's a wonderful musician, I suppose,
but she has queer ideas, rather ; I shouldn't trust
her. She and Hugh Datcherd the editor of
Further, you know are hand and glove. And
considering he has a wife and she a husband . . .
well, it seems pretty futile, doesn't it ? "

" Does it ? " Eddy wondered. " It depends so
much on the special circumstances. If the husband
and the wife don't mind "

" Rot," said James. " And the husband ought
to mind, and I don't know that the wife doesn't.
And, anyhow, it doesn't affect the question of
right and wrong."

That was too difficult a proposition for Eddy
to consider ; he gave it up.

" I'm going to the Blackfriars Road flat with
Denison one day, I believe," he said. " I shall

36 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

be one of the Fabians that sit on the bed that
doesn't look like a sofa."

James sighed. " I wish, if you get to know
Sally at all, you'd encourage her to come down
here more, and try to put a few sound ideas into
her head. She's taking to scorning my words of
wisdom. I believe she's taken against parsons. . . .
Oh, you're going with Denison."

" Arnold won't do anyone any harm," Eddy
reassured him. " He's so extraordinarily inno-
cent. About the most innocent person I know.
We should shock him frightfully down here if he
saw much of us ; he'd think us indecent and coarse.
Hillier and I did shock him rather, by liking " The
Penitent."

" I wonder if you like everything," grumbled
Peters.

"Most things, I expect," said Eddy. "Well,
most things are rather nice, don't you think ? "

" I suppose you'll like the Le Moines and Miss
Dawn if you get to know them. And all the rest
of that crew."

Eddy certainly expected to do so.

Six o'clock struck, and Peters went to church
to hear confessions, and Eddy to the Institute to
play billiards with the Church Lads' Brigade,
of which he was an officer. A wonderful life of
varied active service, this Southwark life seemed
to Eddy ; full and splendid, and gloriously single-
eyed. Arnold, in sneering at it, showed himself
a narrow prig. More and more it was becoming

ST. GREGORY'S 37

clear to Eddy that nothing should be sneered at
and nothing condemned, not the Catholic Church,
nor the Salvation Army, nor the views of artists,
Fabians, and Le Moines, without collars and without
morals.

CHAPTER III.

PLEASANCE COURT.

ONE evening Arnold took Eddy to supper with his
cousin Jane Dawn and James Peters' cousin Sally.
They lived in Pleasance Court, a small square with
a garden. After supper they were all going to a
first performance of a play by Cecil Le Moine, called
" Squibs."

" You always know which their window is,"
Arnold told Eddy as they turned into the square,
" by the things on the sill. They put the food and
drink there, to keep cool, or be out of the way, or
something." Looking up, they saw outside an
upper window a blue jug and a white bowl, keeping
cool in the moonlight. As they rang at the door,
the window was pushed up, and hands reached out
to take the jug and bowl in. A cheerful face looked
down at the tops of their heads, and a cheerful voice
said clearly, " They've come, Jane. They're very
early, aren't they ? They'll have to help buttering
the eggs."

Arnold called up, " If you would prefer it, we will
walk round the square till the eggs are buttered."

38

PLEASANCE COURT 39

" Oh, no, please. We'd like you to come up and
help, if you don't mind." The voice was a little
doubtful because of Eddy, the unknown quantity.
The door was opened by an aged door-keeper,
and they climbed breathlessly steep stairs to the
room.

In the room was the smell of eggs buttering over
a spirit-lamp, and of cocoa boiling over a fire.
There was also a supper-table, laid with cups
and plates and oranges and butter and honey, and
brown, green-wainscotted walls, and various sorts
of pictures hanging on them, and various sorts of
pots and jugs from various sorts of places, such as
Spain, New Brighton, and Bruges, and bronze
chrysanthemums in jars, and white shoots of bulbs
pricking up out of cocoa-nut fibre in bowls, and
a book-case with books in it, and a table in a
corner littered with book-binding plant, and two
girls cooking. One of them was soft and round
like a puppy, and had fluffy golden hair and
a cornflower-blue pinafore to match cornflower-blue
eyes. The other was small, and had a pale,
pointed face and a large forehead and brown
hair waving back from it, and a smile of won-
derfully appealing sweetness, and a small, gentle
voice. She looked somehow as if she had lived in
a wood, and had intimately and affectionately
known all the little live wild things in it, both birds
and beasts and flowers : a queer unearthliness there
was about her, that suggested the morning winds
and the evening stars. Eddy, who knew some of

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

her drawings, had noted that chaste, elfin quality
in them ; he was rather pleased to find it meet him
so obviously in her face and bearing. Seeing the
two girls, he was disposed to echo James Peters'
comment, " Can't think how she and Sally made
friends/' and to set it down tritely to that law of
contrasts which some people, in the teeth of experi-
ence, appear to believe in as the best basis of
friendship.

Sally Peters was stirring the buttered egg
vigorously, lest it should stand still and burn.
Jane Dawn was watching the cocoa, lest it should
run over and burn. Arnold wandered round the
room peering at the pictures mostly drawings and
etchings with his near-sighted eyes, to see if there
was anything new. Jane had earned a little money
lately, so there were two new Duncan Grants and
a Muirhead Bone, which he examined with critical
approval.

" You've still got this up," he remarked, tapping
Beardsley's " Ave Atque Vale " with a disparaging
finger. " The one banal thing Beardsley ever. . . .
Besides, anyhow Beardsley's passL"

Jane Dawn, who looked as if she belonged not
to time at all, seemed peacefully undisturbed by
this fact. Only Sally, in her young ingenuousness,
looked a little concerned.

" I love the Ave," Jane murmured over the
saucepan, and then looked up at Eddy with her
small, half-affectionate smile a likeable way she
had with her.

PLEASANCE COURT 41

He said, " I do too," and Arnold snorted.

" You don't know him yet, Jane. He loves
everything. He loves ' Soap-bubbles/ and ' The
Monarch of the Glen/ and problem pictures in the
Academy. Not to mention ' The Penitent/ which,
Jane, is a play of which you have never heard, but
to which you and I will one day go, to complete
our education. Only we won't take Sally ; it
would be bad for her. She isn't old enough for it
yet and it might upset her mind ; besides, it isn't
proper, I believe."

"I'm sure I don't want to go," said Sally, pouring
out the egg into a dish. " It must be idiotic. Even
Jimmy thinks so."

Arnold's eyebrows went up. " In that case I
may revise my opinion of it," he murmured. " Well,
anyhow Eddy loves it , like everything else . Nothing
is beyond the limit of his tolerance."

" Does he like nice things too ? " Sally naively
asked. " Will he like ' Squibs ' ? "

"Oh, yes, he'll like 'Squibs.' His taste is
catholic ; he'll probably be the only person in
London who likes both ' Squibs ' and ' The Peni-
tent/ ... I suppose we shan't see Eileen to-night ;
she'll have been given one of the seats of the great.
She shall come and talk to us between the acts,
though."

" We wanted Eileen and Bridget to come to
supper," said Sally. "It's quite ready now, by the
way ; let's have it. But they were dining with
Cecil, and then going on to the theatre. Do you

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

like cocoa, Mr. Oliver ? Because if you don't
there's milk, or lemonade."

Eddy said he liked them all, but would have cocoa
at the moment. Jane poured it out, with the most
exquisitely-shaped thin small hands he had ever
seen, and passed it to him with her little smile,
that seemed to take him at once into the circle of
her accepted friends. A rare and delicate person-
ality she seemed to him, curiously old and young,
affectionate and aloof, like a spring morning on a
hill. There was something impersonal and sexless
about her. Eddy felt inclined at once to call her
Jane, and was amused and pleased when she slipped
unconsciously once or twice into addressing him as
Eddy. The ordinary conventions in such matters
would never, one felt, weigh with her at all, or even
come into consideration* any more than with a
child.

" I was to give you James* love," Eddy said to
Sally, " and ask you when you are coming to St.
Gregory's again. The school-teachers, he tells me
to inform you, cannot run the Band of Hope basket-
making class without you."

Sally got rather pink, and glanced at Arnold, who
looked cynically interested.

" What is the Band of Hope ? " he inquired.

" Temperance girls, temperance boys, always
happy, always free," Eddy answered, in the words
of their own song.

" Oh, I see. Fight the drink. And does making
baskets help them to fight it ? "

PLEASANCE COURT 43

" Well, of course if you have a club and it has
to meet once a week, it must do something/' said
Sally, stating a profound and sad truth. " But I
told Jimmy I was frightfully busy ; I don't think I
can go, really. ... I wish Jimmy wouldn't go on
asking me. Do tell him not to, Mr. Oliver. Jimmy
doesn't understand ; one can't do everything."

" No/' said Eddy dubiously, thinking that perhaps
one could, almost, and that anyhow the more
things the more fun.

" It's a pity one can't," he added, from his heart.

Arnold said that doing was a deadly thing, doing
ends in death. " Only that, I believe, is the
Evangelical view, and you're High Church at St.
Gregory's."

Jane laughed at him. " Imagine Arnold knowing
the difference ! I don't believe he does in the least.
I do," she added, with a naive touch of vanity,
" because I met a clergyman once, when I was
drawing in the Abbey, and he told me a lot about
it. About candles, and ornaments, and robes that
priests wear in church. It must be much nicer
than being Low Church, I should think." She
referred to Eddy, with her questioning smile.

" They're both rather nice," Eddy said. " I'm
both, I think."

Sally looked at him inquiringly with her blue
eyes under their thick black lashes. Was he
advanced, this plausible, intelligent-looking young
man, who was a friend of Arnold Denison's and
liked " The Penitent," and, indeed, everything

44 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

else ? Was he free and progressive and on the side
of the right things, or was he merely an amiable
stick-in-the-mud hke Jimmy ? She couldn't gather,
from his alert, expressive face and bright hazel eyes
and rather sensitive mouth : they chiefly conveyed
a capacity for reception, an openness to all im-
pressions, a readiness to spread sails to any wind.
If he were a person of parts, if he had a brain and
a mind and a soul, and if at the same time he
were an ardent server of the Church that, Sally
thought unconsciously, might be a witness in the
Church's favour. Only here she remembered Jimmy's
friend at St. Gregory's, Bob Traherne ; he was all
that and more, he had brain and mind and soul and
an ardent fire of zeal for many of the right things
(Sally, a little behind the times here, was a Socialist
by conviction), and yet in spite of him one was
sure that somehow the Church wouldn't do, wouldn't
meet all the requirements of this complex life.
Sally had learnt that lately, and was learning it
more and more. She was proud of having learnt
it ; but still, she had occasional regrets.

She made a hole in an orange, and put a lump of
sugar in it and sucked it.

"The great advantage of that way," she ex-
plained, " is that all the juice goes inside you, and
doesn't mess the plates or anything else. You see,
Mrs. Jones is rather old, and not fond of washing
up."

So they all made holes and put in sugar, and
put the juice inside them. Then Jane and Sally

PLEASANCE COURT 45

retired to exchange their cooking pinafores for
out-door things, and then they all rode to " Squibs "
on the top of a bus. They were joined at the pit
door by one Billy Raymond, a friend of theirs a
tall, tranquil young man, by trade a poet, with
an attractive smile and a sweet temper, and a gentle,
kind, serenely philosophical view of men and things
that was a little like Jane's, only more human and
virile. He attracted Eddy greatly, as his poems
had already done.

To remove anxiety on the subject, it may be
stated at once that the first night of " Squibs " was
neither a failure nor a triumphant success. It was
enjoyable, for those who enjoyed the sort of thing
(fantastic wit, clever dialogue, much talk, little
action, and less emotion) and dull for those who
didn't. It would certainly never be popular, and
probably the author would have been shocked and
grieved if it had been. The critics approved it as
clever, and said it was rather lengthy and highly
improbable. Jane, Sally, Arnold, Billy Raymond,
and Eddy enjoyed it extremely. So did Eileen
Le Moine and her companion Bridget Hogan, who
watched it from a box. Cecil Le Moine wandered
in and out of the box, looking plaintive. He told
Eileen that they were doing it even worse than he
had feared. He was rather an engaging-looking
person, with a boyish, young-Napoleonic beauty of
face and a velvet smoking- jacket, and a sweet,
plaintive voice, and the air of an injured child about
him. A child of genius, perhaps ; anyhow a gifted

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

child, and a lovable one, and at the same time as
selfish as even a child can be.

Eileen Le Moine and Miss Hogan came to speak
to their friends in the pit before taking their seats.
Eddy was introduced to them, and they talked for
a minute or two. When they had gone, Sally said
to him, " Isn't Eileen attractive ? "

" Very," he said.

" And Bridget's a dear," added Sally, childishly
boasting of her friends.

" I can imagine she would be/' said Eddy. Miss
Hogan had amused him during their short interview.
She was older than the rest of them ; she was per-
haps thirty-four, and very well dressed, and with
a shrewd, woman-of-the-world air that the others
quite lacked, and dangling pince-nez, and ironic
eyes, and a slight stutter. Eddy regretted that
she was not sitting among them ; her caustic
comments would have added salt to the even-
ing.

" Bridget's worldly, you know," Sally said.
' She's the only one of us with money, and she goes
out a lot. You see how smartly she's dressed.
She's the only person I'm really friends with who's
like that. She's awfully clever, too, though she
doesn't do anything."

" Doesn't she do anything ? " Eddy asked scepti-
cally, and Arnold answered him.

" Our Bridget ? Sally only means she's a lily of
the field. She writes not, neither does she paint.
She only mothers those who do, and hauls them

PLEASANCE COURT 47

out of scrapes. Eileen lives with her, you know, in
a flat in Kensington. She tries to look after Eileen.
Quite enough of a job, besides tending all the other
ingenuous young persons of both sexes she has
under her wing/'

Eddy watched her as she talked to Eileen
Le Moine ; a vivid, impatient, alive person, full of
quips and cranks and quiddities and a constant
flow of words. He could see, foreshortened, Eileen
Le Moine's face very attractive, as Sally had said ;
broad brows below dark hair, rounded cheeks with
deep dimples that came and went in them, great
deep blue, black-lashed eyes, a wide mouth of soft,
generous curves, a mouth that could look sulky but
always had amusement lurking in it, and a round,
decisive chin. She was perhaps four or five and
twenty ; a brilliant, perverse young person, full of
the fun of living, an artist, a pleasure-lover, a spoilt
child, who probably could be sullen, who certainly
was wayward and self-willed, who had genius and
charm and ideas and a sublime independence of
other people's codes, and possibly an immense
untapped spring of generous self-sacrifice. She had
probably been too like Cecil Le Moine (only more
than he was, every way) to live with him ; each
would need something more still and restful as a
permanent companion. They had no doubt been
well advised to part, thought Eddy, who did not
agree with James Peters about that way of regarding
marriage.

" Isn't Miss Carruthers ripping as Myra/

48 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

whispered Sally. " Cecil wrote it for her, you
know. He says there's no one else on the
stage/'

Jane put up a hand to silence her, because the
curtain had risen.

At the end the author was called and had a good
reception ; on the whole " Squibs " had been a
success. Eddy looked up and saw Eileen Le Moine
looking pleased and smiling as they clapped her
boyish-looking husband an amused, sisterly, half
ironic smile. It struck Eddy as the smile she must
inevitably give Cecil, and it seemed to illumine
their whole relations. She couldn't, certainly, be
the least in love with him, and yet she must like
him very much, to smile like that now that they
were parted.

As Jane and Sally and Eddy and Billy Raymond
rode down Holborn on their bus (Arnold had walked
to Soho, where he lived) Eddy, sitting next Jane,
asked " Did you like it ? " being curious about
Jane's point of view.

She smiled. " Yes, of course. Wouldn't any-
one ? " Eddy could have answered the question,
instancing Hillier or James Peters, or his own parents
or, indeed, many other critics. But Jane's " any-
one " he surmised to have a narrow meaning ;
anyone, she meant, of our friends ; anyone of the
sort one naturally comes into contact with. (Jane's
outlook was through a narrow gate on to woods
unviolated by the common tourist; her experience
was delicate, exquisite, and limited).

PLEASANCE COURT 49

She added, " Of course it's just a baby's thing.
He is just a baby, you know/'

" I should like to get to know him/' said Eddy.
" He's extraordinarily pleasing," and she nodded.

" Of course you'll get to know him. Why not ?
And Eileen, too." In Jane's world, the admitted
dwellers all got to know each other, as a matter
of course.

"A lot of us are going down into the country
next Sunday," Jane added. " Won't you come ? "

" Oh, thanks ; if I'm not needed in the parish
I'd love to. Yes, I'm almost sure I can."

" We all meet at Waterloo for the nine-thirty.
We shall have breakfast at Heathermere (but you
can have had some earlier, too, if you like), and
then walk somewhere from there. Bring a thick
coat, because we shall be sitting about on the heath,
and it's not warm."

" Thanks awfully, if you're sure I may come."

Jane wasted no more words on that ; she probably
never asked people to come unless she was sure
they might. She merely waved an appreciative
hand, like a child, at the blue night full of lights,
seeking his sympathy in the wonder of it. Then
she and Sally had to change into the Blackfriars
Bridge bus, and Eddy sought London Bridge and
the Borough on foot. Billy Raymond, who lived
in Beaufort Street, but was taking a walk, came
with him. They talked on the way about the
play. Billy made criticisms and comments that
seemed to Eddy very much to the point, though

D

50 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

they wouldn't have occurred to him. There was
an easy ability, a serene independence of outlook,
about this young man, that was attractive. Like
many poets, he was singularly fresh and unspoilt,
though in his case (unlike many poets) it wasn't
because he had nothing to spoil him ; he enjoyed,
in fact, some reputation among critics and the
literary public. He figured in many an anthology
of verse, and those who gave addresses on modern
poetry were apt to read his things aloud, which
habit annoys some poets and gratifies others.
Further, he had been given a reading all to himself
at the Poetry Bookshop, which had rather displeased
him, because he had not liked the voice of the lady
who read him. But enough has been said to
indicate that he was a promising young poet.

When Eddy got in, he found the vicar and Hillier
smoking by the common-room fire. The vicar was
nodding over Pickwick, and Hillier perusing the
Church Times. The vicar, who had been asleep,
said, " Hullo, Oliver. Want anything to eat or
drink ? Had a nice evening ? "

" Very, thanks. No, I've been fed sufficiently."

" Play good ? "

" Yes, quite clever ... I say, would it be awfully
inconvenient if I was to be out next Sunday ? Some
people want me to go out for the day with them.
Of course there's my class. But perhaps Wilkes
... He said he wouldn't mind, sometimes."

" No ; that'll be all right. Speak to Wilkes,
will you. . . . Shall you be away all day ? "

PLEASANCE COURT 51

" I expect so," said Eddy, feeling that Hillier
looked at him askance, though the vicar didn't.
Probably Hillier didn't approve of Sunday outings,
thought one should be in church.

He sat down and began to talk about " Squibs."

Hillier said presently, "He's surely rather a
mountebank, that Le Moine ? Full of cheap sneers
and clap-trap, isn't he ? "

" Oh, no," said Eddy. " Certainly not clap-trap.
He's very genuine, I should say ; expresses his
personality a good deal more successfully than most
play writers."

"Oh, no doubt," Hillier said. "It's his per-
sonality, I should fancy, that's wrong."

Eddy said, " He's delightful," rather warmly,
and the vicar said, " Well, now, I'm going to bed,"
and went, and Eddy went, too, because he didn't
want to argue with Hillier, a difficult feat, and no
satisfaction when achieved.

CHAPTER IV.

HEATHERMERE.

SUNDAY was the last day but one of October. They
all met at Waterloo in a horrid fog, and missed the
nine-thirty because Cecil Le Moine was late. He
sauntered up at 9.45, tranquil and at ease, the
MS. of his newest play under his arm (he obviously
thought to read it to them in the course of the day
" which must be prevented," Arnold remarked).
So they caught a leisured train at 9.53, and got out
of it at a little white station about 10.20, and the
fog was left behind, and a pure blue October sky
arched over a golden and purple earth, and the air
was like iced wine, thin and cool and thrilling, and
tasting of heather and pinewoods. They went
first to the village inn, on the edge of the woods,
where they had ordered breakfast for eight. Their
main object at breakfast was to ply Cecil with
food, lest in a leisure moment he should say, " What
if I begin my new play to you while you eat ? "

" Good taste and modesty," Arnold remarked,
a propos of nothing, " are so very important. We
have all achieved our little successes (if we prefer
to regard them in that light, rather than to take

52

HEATHERMERE 53

the consensus of the unintelligent opinion of our
less enlightened critics). Jane has some very well-
spoken of drawings even now on view in Grafton
Street, and doubtless many more in Pleasance
Court. Have you brought them, or any of them,
with you, Jane ? No ? I thought as much.
Eileen last night played a violin to a crowded
and breathless audience. Where is the violin
to-day ? She has left it at home ; she does not
wish to force the fact of her undoubted musical
talent down our throats. Bridget has earned
deserved recognition as an entertainer of the great ;
she has a social cachet that we may admire without
emulation. Look at her now ; her dress is sim-
plicity itself, and she deigns to play in a wood with
the humble poor. Even the pince-nez is in abeyance.
Billy had a selection from his works read aloud only
last week to the elite of our metropolitan poetry-
lovers by a famous expert, who alluded in the most
flattering terms to his youthful promise. Has he
his last volume in his breast-pocket ? I think not.
Eddy has made a name in proficiency in vigorous
sports with youths]; he has taught them to box
and play billiards ; does he come armed with
- gloves and a cue ? I have written an essay of some
merit that I have every hope will find itself in next
month's English Review. I am sorry to disappoint
you, but I have not brought it with me. When
the well-bred come out for a day of well-earned
recreation, they leave behind them the insignia
of their several professions. For the time being

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

they are merely individuals, without fame and
without occupation, whose one object is to enjoy
what is set before them by the gods. Have some
more bacon, Cecil."

Cecil started. " Have you been talking, Arnold ?
I'm so sorry I missed it all. I expect it was good,
wasn't it ? "

" No one is deceived/' Arnold said, severely.
" Your ingenuous air, my young friend, is over-
done."

Cecil was looking at him earnestly. Eileen said,
" He's wondering was it you that reviewed ' Squibs '
in Poetry and Drama, Arnold. He always looks
like |that when he's thinking about reviews."

" The same phrases," Cecil murmured " (meant
to be witty, you know) that Arnold used when
commenting on ' Squibs ' in private life to me.
Either he used them again afterwards, feeling
proud of them, to the reviewer (possibly Billy ?)
or the reviewer had just used them to him before
he met me, and he cribbed them, or ... But I
won't ask. I mustn't know. I prefer not to know.
I will preserve our friendship intact."

" What does the conceited child expect ? " ex-
claimed Miss Hogan. " The review said he was
more alive than Barker, and wittier than Wilde.
The grossest flattery I ever read ! "

" A bright piece," Cecil remarked. " He said
it was a bright piece. He did, I tell you. A
bright piece."

"Well, lots of the papers didn't," said Sally,

HEATHERMERE 55

consoling him. " The Daily Comment said it was
long-winded, incoherent, and dull."

" Thank you, Sally. That is certainly a cheering
memory. To be found bright by the Daily Comment
would indeed be the last stage of degradation ... I
wonder what idiocy they will find to say of my
next ... I wonder "

" Have we all finished eating ? " Arnold hastily
intercepted. " Then let us pay, and go out for a
country stroll, to get an appetite for lunch, which
will very shortly be upon us."

" My dear Arnold, one doesn't stroll immediately
after breakfast ; how crude you are. One smokes
a cigarette first."

" Well, catch us up when you've smoked it. We
came out for a day in the country, and we must
have it. We're going to walk several miles now
without a stop, to get warm." Arnold was occa-
sionally seized with a fierce attack of energy, and
would walk all through a day, or more probably
a night, to get rid of it, and return cured for the
time being.

The sandy road led first through a wood that
sang in a fresh wind. The cool air was sweet with
pines and bracken and damp earth. It was a
glorious morning of odours and joy, and the hilarity
of the last days of October, when the end seems
near and the present poignantly gay, and life a
bright piece nearly played out. Arnold and Bridget
Hogan walked on together ahead, both talking at
once, probably competing as to which could get in

56 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

most remarks in the shortest time. After th
came Billy Raymond and Cecil Le Moine, and
with them Jane and Sally hand-in-hand. Eddy
found himself walking in the rear side by side with
Eileen Le Moine.

Eileen, who was capable, ignoring all polite
conventions, of walking a mile with a slight acquaint-
ance without uttering a word, because she was
feeling lazy, or thinking of something interesting,
or because her companion bored her, was just now
in a conversational mood. She rather liked Eddy ;
also she saw in him an avenue for an idea she had
in mind. She told him so.

" You work in the Borough, don't you ? I
wish you'd let me come and play folk-music to your
clubs sometimes. It's a thing I'm rather keen
on getting the old folk melodies into the streets,
do you see, the way errand boys will whistle them.
Do you know Hugh Datcherd ? He has musical
evenings in his Lea-side settlement ; I go there a
good deal. He has morris dancing twice a week
and folk-music once."

Eddy had heard much of Hugh Datcherd's
Lea-side settlement. According to St. Gregory's,
it was run on very regrettable lines. Hillier said,
" They teach rank atheism there." However, it
was something that they also taught morris dancing
and folk-music.

" It would be splendid if you'd come sometimes,"
he said, gratefully. " Just exactly what we should
most like, We've had a little morris dancing, of

HEATHERMERE 57

course who hasn't ? but none of the other thing."

" Which evening will I come ?" she asked. A
direct young person ; she liked to settle things
quickly.

Eddy, consulting his little book, said, " To-
morrow, can you ? "

She said, " No, I can't ; but I will," having
apparently a high-handed method of dealing with
previous engagements.

" It's the C.L.B. club night," said Eddy. " Hillier
one of the curates is taking it to-morrow, and
I'm helping. I'll speak to him, but I'm sure it will
be all right. It will be a delightful change from
billiards and boxing. Thanks so much."

" And Mr. Datcherd may come with me, mayn't
he ? He's interested in other people's clubs. Do
you read Further ? And do you like his books ? "

' Yes, rather," Eddy comprehensively answered
all three questions. All the same he was smitten
with a faint doubt as to Mr. Datcherd's coming.
Probably Hillier's answer to the three questions
would have been " Certainly not." But after all,
St. Gregory's didn't belong to Hillier but to the
vicar, and the vicar was a man of sense. And
anyhow anyone who saw Mrs. Le Moine must be
glad to have a visit from her, and anyone who
heard her play must thank the gods for it.

" I do like his books," Eddy amplified ; " only
they're so awfully sad, and so at odds with life."

A faint shadow seemed to cloud her face.

" He is awfully sad," she said, after a moment.

58 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

" And he is at odds with life. He feels it hideous,
and he minds. He spends all his time trying and
trying can he change it for people. And the more
he tries and fails, the more he minds/' She stopped
abruptly, as if she had gone too far in explaining
Hugh Datcherd to him. Eddy had a knack of
drawing confidences ; probably it was his look of
intelligent sympathy and his habit of listening.

He wondered for a moment whether Hugh
Datcherd's sadness was all altruistic, or did he
find his own life hideous too ? From what Eddy
had heard of Lady Dorothy, his wife, that might
easily be so, he thought, for they didn't sound
compatible.

Instinctively, anyhow, he turned away his eyes
from the queer, soft look of brooding pity that
momentarily shadowed Hugh Datcherd's friend.

From in front, snatches of talk floated back to
them through the clear, thin air. Miss Hogan's
voice, with its slight stutter, seemed to be concluding
an interesting anecdote.

" And so they both committed suicide from the
library window. And his wife was paralysed from
the waist up is still, in fact. Most unwholesome,
it all was. And now it's so on Charles Harker's
mind that he writes novels about nothing else, poor
creature. Very natural, if you think what he went
through. I hear he's another just coming out now,
on the same."

"He sent it to us," said Arnold, "but Uncle
Wilfred and I weren't sure it was proper. I am

HEATHERMERE 59

engaged in trying to broaden Uncle Wilfred's mind.
Not that I want him to take Barker's books, now
or at any time. . . . You know, I want Eddy in
our business. We want a new reader, and it would
be so much better for his mind and moral nature
than messing about as he's doing now."

Cecil was saying to Billy and Jane, " He wants
me to put Lesbia behind the window-curtain, and
make her overhear it all. Behind the window-
curtain, you know ! He really does. Could you
have suspected even our Musgrave of being so
banal, Billy ? He's not even Edwardian he's
late -Victorian. . . ."

Arnold said over his shoulder, " Can't somebody
stop him ? Do try, Jane. He's spoiling our day
with his egotistic babbling. Bridget and I are
talking exclusively about others, their domestic
tragedies, their literary productions, and their un-
suitable careers ; never a word about ourselves.
I'm sure Eileen and Eddy are doing the same ; and
sandwiched between us, Cecil flows on fluently
about his private grievances and his highly un-
suitable plays. You'd think he might remember
what day it is, to say the least of it. I wonder how
he was brought up, don't you, Bridget ? "

" I don't wonder ; I know," said Bridget. " His
parents not only wrote for the Yellow Book, but
gave it him to read in the nursery, and it corrupted
him for life. He would, of course, faint if one
suggested that he carried the taint of anything so
antiquated, but infant impressions are hard to eradi-

60 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

cate. I know of old that the only way to stop
him is to feed him, so let's have lunch, however
unsuitable the hour and the place may be."

Sally said, " Hurrah, let's. In this sand-pit."
So they got into the sand-pit and produced seven
packets of food, which is to say that they each
produced one except Cecil, who had omitted to
bring his, and undemurringly accepted a little bit
of everyone else's. They then played hide and seek,
dumb crambo, and other vigorous games, because
as Arnold said, " A moment's pause, and we are
undone," until for weariness the pause came upon
them, and then Cecil promptly seized the moment
and produced the play, and they had to listen.
Arnold succumbed, vanquished, and stretched him-
self on the heather.

" You have won ; I give in. Only leave out the
parts that are least suitable for Sally to hear."

So, like other days in the country, the day wore
through, and they caught the 5.10 back to Waterloo.

At supper that evening Eddy told the vicar about
Mrs. Le Moine's proposal.

" So she's coming to-morrow night, with Datcherd. "

Hillier looked up sharply.

" Datcherd ! That man ! " He caught himself
up from a scornful epithet.

" Why not ? " said the vicar tolerantly. " He's
very keen on social work, you know."

Peters and Hillier both looked cross.

" I know personally," said Hillier, " of cases
where his influence has been ruinous,"

HEATHERMERE 61

Peters said, " What does he want down here ? "

Eddy said, " He won't have much influence
during one evening. I suppose he wants to watch
how they take the music, and, generally, to see
what our clubs are like. Besides, he and Mrs.
Le Moine are great friends, and she naturally
likes to have someone to come with."

" Datcherd's a tremendously interesting person,"
said Traherne. " I've met him once or twice ; I
should like to see more of him."

" A very able man," said the vicar, and said grace.

CHAPTER V.

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR.

DATCHERD looked ill ; that was the predominant
impression Eddy got of him. An untidy, pale,
sad-eyed person of thirty-five, with a bad temper
and an extraordinarily ardent fire of energy, at
once determined and rather hopeless. The evils
of the world loomed, it seemed, even larger in his
eyes than their possible remedies ; but both loomed
large. He was a pessimist and a reformer, an
untiring fighter against overwhelming odds. He
was allied both by birth and marriage (the marriage
had been a by-gone mistake of the emotions, for
which he was dearly paying) with a class which,
without intermission, and by the mere fact of its
existence, incurred his vindictive wrath. (See Fur-
ther, month by month.) He had tried and failed
to get into Parliament ; he had now given up hopes
of that field of energy, and was devoting himself
to philanthropic social schemes and literary work.
He was not an attractive person, exactly ; he
lacked the light touch, and the ordinary human
amenities ; but there was a drawing-power in the
impetuous ardour of his convictions and purposes,

62

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 63

in his acute and brilliant intelligence, in his immense,
quixotic generosity, and, to some natures, in his
unhappiness and his ill-health. And his smile,
which came seldom, would have softened any heart.
Perhaps he did not smile at Hillier on Monday
evening ; anyhow Hillier's heart remained hard
towards him, and his towards Hillier. He was
one of the generation who left the universities
fifteen years ago ; they are often pronounced and
thoughtful agnostics, who have thoroughly gone
into the subject of Christianity as taught by the
Churches, and decided against it. They have not
the modern way of rejection, which is to let it alone
as an irrelevant thing, a thing known (and perhaps
cared) too little about to pronounce upon ; or the
modern way of acceptance, which is to embark
upon it as an inspiring and desirable adventure.
They of that old generation think that religion
should be squared with science, and, if it can't be,
rejected finally. Anyhow Datcherd thought so ;
he had rejected it finally as a Cambridge under-
graduate, and had not changed his mind since.
He believed freedom of thought to be of immense
importance, and, a dogmatic person himself, was
anxious to free the world from the fetters of dogma.
Hillier (also a dogmatic person ; there are so many)
preached a sermon the Sunday after he had met
Datcherd about those who would find themselves
fools at the Judgment Day. Further, Hillier
agreed with James Peters that the relations of
Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine were unfitting, con-

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

sidering that everyone knew that Datcherd didn't
get on with his wife nor Mrs. Le Moine live with her
husband. People in either of those unfortunate
positions cannot be too careful of appearances.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Le Moine's fiddling held the
club spell-bound. She played English folk-melodies
and Hungarian dances, and the boys' feet shuffled
in tune. Londoners are musical people, on the
whole ; no one can say that, though they like bad
music, they don't like good music, too ; they are
catholic in taste. Eddy Oliver, who liked anything
he heard, from a barrel-organ to a Beethoven Sym-
phony, was a typical specimen. His foot, too,
tapped in tune ; his blood danced in him to the
lilt of laughter and passion and gay living that the
quick bow tore from the strings. He knew enough,
technically, about music, to know that this was
wonderful playing ; and he remembered what he
had heard before, that this brilliant, perverse,
childlike-looking person, with her great brooding
eyes and half-sullen brows, and the fiddle tucked
away under her round chin, was a genius. He
believed he had heard that she had some Hun-
garian blood in her, besides the Irish strain. Cer-
tainly the passion and the fire in her, that was
setting everyone's blood stirring so, could hardly
be merely English.

At the end of a wild dance tune, and during
riotous applause, Eddy turned to Datcherd, who
stood close to him, and laughed.

" My word ! " was all he said.

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 65

Datcherd smiled a little at him, and Eddy liked
him more than ever.

" They like it, don't they ? " said Dateherd.
" Look how they like it. They like this ; and
then we go and give them husks ; vulgarities from
the comic operas."

" Oh, but they like those, too," said Eddy.

Datcherd said impatiently, " They'd stop liking
them if they could always get anything decent."

" But surely," said Eddy, " the more things they
like the better."

Datcherd, looking round at him to see if he meant
it, said, " Good heavens ! " and was frowningly
silent.

An intolerant man, and ill-tempered at that,
Eddy decided, but liked him very much all the
same.

Mrs. Le Moine was playing again, quite differ-
ently ; all the passion and the wildness were gone
now ; she was playing a sixteenth century tune,
curiously naif and tender and engaging, and objec-
tive, like a child's singing, or Jane Dawn's drawings.
The detachment of it, the utter self -obliteration,
pleased Eddy even more than the passion of the
dance ; here was genius at its highest. It seemed
to him very wonderful that she should be giving of
her best so lavishly to a roomful of ignorant Borough
lads ; very wonderful, and at the same time very
characteristic of her wayward, quixotic, seli-
pleasing generosity, that he fancied was neither
based on any principle, nor restrained by any

E

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

considerations of prudence. She would always, he
imagined, give just what she felt inclined, and
when she felt inclined, whatever the gifts she dealt
in. Anyhow she had become immensely popular
in the club-room. The admiration roused by her
music was increased by the queer charm she carried
with her. She stood about among the boys for a
little, talking. She told them about the tunes,
what they were and whence they came ; she whistled
a bar here and there, and they took it up from her ;
she had asked which they had liked, and why.

" In my Settlement up by the Lea," said Datcherd
to Eddy, " she's got some of the tunes out into the
streets already. You hear them being whistled as
the men go to work."

Eddy looked at Hillier, to see if he hadn't been
softened by this wonderful evening. Hillier, of
course, had liked the music ; anyone would. But
his moral sense had a fine power of holding itself
severely aloof from conversion by any but moral
suasions. He was genially chatting with the boys,
as usual Hillier was delightful with boys and girls,
and immensely popular but Eddy suspected him
unchanged in his attitude towards the visitors.
Eddy, for music like that, would have loved a Mrs.
Pendennis (had she been capable of producing it)
let alone anyone so likeable as Eileen Le Moine.
Hillier, less susceptible to influence, still sat in
judgment.

Flushed and bright-eyed, Eddy made his way to
Mrs. Le Moine,

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 67

" I say, thanks most awfully/ 1 he said. " I knew
it was going to be wonderful, but I didn't know
how wonderful. I shall come to all your concerts
now."

Hillier overheard that, and his brows rose a
little. He didn't see how Eddy was going to make
the time to attend all Mrs. Le Moine's concerts ;
it would mean missing club nights, and whole
afternoons. In his opinion, Eddy, for a parish
worker, went too much out of the parish already.

Mrs. Le Moine said, with her usual lack of cir-
cumlocution, " I'll come again next Monday.
Shall I ? I would like to get the music thoroughly
into their heads; they're keen enough to make it
worth while.'*

Eddy said promptly, " Oh, will you really ? How
splendid."

Hillier, coming up to them, said courteously,
" This has been extremely good of you, Mrs.
Le Moine. We have all had a great treat. But you
really mustn't waste more of your valuable time
on our uncultivated ears. We're not worth it, I'm
afraid."

Eileen looked at him with a glint of amusement
in the gloomy blue shadowiness of her eyes.

" I won't come," she said, " unless you want me
to, of course."

Hillier protested. "It's delightful for us, natur-
ally far more than we deserve. It was your time
I was thinking of."

"That will be all right. I'll come, then, for

68 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

half an hour, next Monday.' 1 She turned to Eddy.
" Will you come to lunch with us Miss Hogan
and me, you know next Sunday ? Arnold Deni-
son's coming, and Karl Lovinski, the violinist,
and two or three other people. 3, Campden Hill
Road, at 1.30."

" Thanks ; I should like to."

Datcherd came up from the back of the room
where he had been talking to Traherne, who had
come in lately. They said goodbye, and the club
took to billiards.

" Is Mr. Datcherd coming, too, next Monday ?"
Hillier inquired gloomily of Eddy.

" Oh, I expect so. I suppose it's less of a bore
for Mrs. Le Moine not to have to come all that way
alone. Besides, he's awfully interested in it all."

" A first-class man," said Traherne, who was an
enthusiast, and had found in Datcherd another
Socialist, though not a Church one.

Eddy and the curates walked back together
later in the evening. Eddy felt vaguely jarred by
Hillier to-night ; probably because Hillier was, in
his mind, opposing something, and that was the
one thing that annoyed Eddy. Hillier was, he
felt, opposing these delightful people who had
provided the club with such a glorious evening,
and were going to do so again next Monday ; these
brilliant people, who spilt their genius so lavishly
before the poor and ignorant ; these charming,
friendly people, who had asked Eddy to lunch next
Sunday.

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 69

What Hillier said was, " Shall you get Wilkes to
take your class again on Sunday afternoon, Oliver ? "

" Yes, I suppose so. He doesn't mind, does he ?
I believe he really takes it a lot better than I do."

Hillier believed so, too, and made no comment.
Traherne laughed. " Wilkes ! Oh, he means well,
no doubt. But I wouldn't turn up on Sunday
afternoon if I was going to be taught by Wilkes.
What an ass you are, Oliver, going to lunch parties
on Sundays."

With Traherne, work came first, and everything
else, especially anything social, an immense number
of lengths behind. With Eddy a number of things
ran neck to neck all the time. He wouldn't,
Traherne thought, a trifle contemptuously, ever
accomplish much in any sphere of life at that rate.

He said to the vicar that night, " Oliver's being
caught in the toils of Society, I fear. For such a
keen person, he's oddly slack about sticking to his
job when anything else turns up."

But Hiliier said, at a separate time, " Oliver's
being dragged into a frightfully unwholesome set,
vicar. I hate those people ; that man Datcherd
is an aggressive unbeliever, you know ; he does
more harm, I believe, than anyone quite realises.
And one hears things said, you know, about him
and Mrs. Le Moine oh, no harm, I daresay, "but
one has to think of the effect on the weaker brethren.
And Oliver's bringing them into the parish, and I
wouldn't care to answer for the effects. ... It
made me a little sick, I don't mind saying to you,

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

to see Datcherd talking to the lads to-night ; a
word dropped here, a sneer there, and the seed is
sown from which untold evil may spring. Of
course, Mrs. Le Moine is a wonderful player, but
that makes her influence all the more dangerous,
to my mind. The lads were fascinated this evening ;
one saw them hanging on her words."

" I don't suppose," said the vicar, " that she, or
Datcherd either, would say anything to hurt them."

Hillier caught him up sharply.
" You approve, then ? You won't discourage
Oliver's intimacy with them, or his bringing them
into the parish ? "

" Most certainly 1 shall, if it gets beyond a certain
point. There's a mean in all things . . . But it's
their effect on Oliver rather than on the parish
that I should be afraid of. He's got to realise that
a man can't profitably have too many irons in the
fire at once. If he's going perpetually to run about
London seeing friends, he'll do no good as a worker.
Also, it's not good for his soul to be continually
with people who are unsympathetic with the Church.
He's not strong enough or grown-up enough to
stand it."

But Eddy had a delightful lunch on Sunday, and
Wilkes took his class.

Other Sundays followed, and other week-days,
and more delightful lunches, and many concerts
and theatres, and expeditions into the country,
and rambles about the town, and musical evenings
in St. Gregory's parish, and, in general, a jolly life.

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 71

Eddy loved the whole of life, including his work
in St. Gregory's, which he was quite as much
interested in as if it had been his exclusive occupa-
tion. Ingenuously, he would try to draw his friends
into pleasures which they were by temperament
and training little fitted to enjoy. For instance,
he said to Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine one day,
" We've got a mission on now in the parish. There's
an eight o'clock service on Monday night, so there'll
be no club. I wish you'd come to the service
instead ; it's really good, the mission. Father
Dempsey, of St. Austin's, is taking it. Have you
ever heard him ? "

Datcherd, in his grave, melancholy way, shook
his head. Eileen smiled at Eddy, and patted his
arm in the motherly manner she had for him.

" Now what do you think ? No, we never have.
Would we understand him if we did ? I expect
not, do you know. Tell us when the mission (is
that what you call it ? But I thought they were
for blacks and Jews) is over, and I'll come again
and play to the clubs. Till then, oughtn't you to
be going to services every night, and I wonder
ought you to be dining and theatreing with us on
Thursday ? "

" Oh, I can fit it in easily," said Eddy, cheer-
fully. " But, seriously, I do wish you'd come one
night. You'd like Father Dempsey. He's an ex-
traordinarily alive and stimulating person. Hillier
thinks him flippant ; but that's rubbish. He's the
best man in the Church."

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

All the same, they didn't come. How difficult
it is to make people do what they are not used to !
How good it would be for them if they would ; if
Hillier would but sometimes spend an evening at
Datcherd's settlement ; if James Peters would
but come, at Eddy's request, to shop at the Poetry
Bookshop ; if Datcherd would but sit under Father
Dempsey, the best man in the Church ! It some-
times seemed to Eddy that it was he alone, in a
strange, uneclectic world, who did all these things
with impartial assiduity and fervour.

And he found, which was sad and bewildering,
that those with less impartiality of taste got annoyed
with him. The vicar thought, not unnaturally,
that during the mission he ought to have given up
other engagements, and devoted himself exclu-
sively to the parish, getting them to come. All
the curates thought so too. Meanwhile Arnold
Denison thought that he ought to have stayed to
the end of the debate on Impressionism in Poetry
at the Wednesday Club that met in Billy Raymond's
rooms, instead of going away in the middle to be in
time for the late service at St. Gregory's. Arnold
thought so particularly because he hadn't yet
spoken himself, and it would obviously have been
more becoming in Eddy to wait and hear him. Eddy
grew to have an uncomfortable feeling of being a
little wrong with everyone ; he felt aggrieved
under it.

At last, a fortnight before Christmas, the vicar

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 73

spoke to him. It was on a Sunday evening. Eddy
had had supper with Cecil Le Moine, as it was
Cecil's turn to have the Sunday Games Club, a
childish institution that flourished just then among
them, meet at his house. Eddy returned to St.
Gregory's late.

The vicar said, at bedtime, " I want to speak to
you, Oliver, if you can spare a minute or two,"
and they went into his study. Eddy felt rather
like a schoolboy awaiting a jawing. He watched
the vicar's square, sensible, kind face, through a
cloud of smoke, and saw his point of view precisely.
He wanted certain work done. He didn't think the
work was so well done if a hundred other things
were done also. He believed in certain things.
He didn't think belief in those things could be
quite thorough if those who held it had constant
and unnecessary traffic with those who quite
definitely didn't. Well, it was of course a point of
view ; Eddy realised that.

The vicar said, " I don't want to be interfering,
Oliver. But, frankly, are you as keen on this job
as you were two months ago ? "

" Yes, rather/' said Eddy. " Keener, I think.
One gets into it, you see."

The vicar nodded, patient and a little cynical.

" Quite. Well, it's a full man's job, you know ;
one can't take it easy. One's got to put every bit
of oneself into it, and even so there isn't near
enough of most of us to get upsides with it. ...
Oh, I don't mean don't take off times, or don't

74 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

have outside interests and plenty of friends ; of
course I don't. But one's got not to fritter and
squander one's energies. And one's got to have
one's whole heart in the work, or it doesn't get
done as it should. It's a job for the keen ; for the
enthusiasts ; for the single-minded. Do you think,
Oliver, that it's quite the job for you ? "

" Yes," said Eddy, readily, though crest-fallen.

" I'm keen. I'm an enthusiast. I'm " He

couldn't say single-minded, so he broke off.

" Really," he added, " I'm awfully sorry if I've
scamped the work lately, and been out of the parish
too much. I've tried not to, honestly I mean
I've tried to fit it all in and not scamp things."

" Fit it all in ! " The vicar took him up. " Pre-
cisely. There you are. Why do you try to fit in
so much more than you've properly room for ?
Life's limited, you see. One's got to select one
thing or another."

" Oh," Eddy murmured, " what an awful thought !
I want to select lots and lots of things ! "

" It's greedy," said the vicar. " What's more,
it's silly. You'll end by getting nothing. . . . And
now there's another thing. Of course you choose
your own friends ; it's no business of mine. But
you bring them a good deal into the parish, and
that's my business, of course. Now, I don't want
to say anything against friends of yours ; still less
to repeat the comments of ignorant and prejudiced
people ; but I expect you know the sort of things
such people would say about Mr. Datcherd and Mrs.

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 75

Le Moine. After all, they're both married to some-
one else. You'll admit that they are very reckless
of public opinion, and that that's a pity." He
spoke cautiously, saying less than he felt, in order
not to be annoying. But Eddy flushed, and for
the first time looked cross.

" Surely, if people are low-minded enough "

he began.

" That," said the vicar, " is part of one's work,
to consider low minds. Besides my dear Oliver,
I don't want to be censorious but why doesn't
Mrs. Le Moine live with her husband ? And why
isn't Datcherd ever to be seen with his wife ? And
why are those two perpetually together ? "

Eddy grew hotter. His hand shook a little as
he took out his pipe.

" The Le Moines live apart because they prefer
it. Why not ? Datcherd, I presume, doesn't
go about with his wife because they are hopelessly
unsuited to each other in every way, and bore
each other horribly. I've seen Lady Dorothy
Datcherd. The thought of her and Datcherd
as companions is absurd. She disapproves of all he
is and does. She's a worldly, selfish woman. She
goes her way and he his. Surely it's best. As
for Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine they aren't
perpetually together. They come down here to-
gether because they're both interested ; but they're
in quite different sets, really. His friends are
mostly social workers, and politicians, and writers
of leading articles, and contributors to the quarterlies

76 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

and the political press what are called able men
you know ; his own family, of course, are all that
sort. Her friends are artists and actors and musi-
cians, and poets and novelists and journalists, and
casual, irresponsible people who play round and
have a good time and do clever work I mean,
her set and his haven't very much to do with one
another really/' Eddy spoke rather eagerly, as
if he was anxious to impress this on the vicar and
himself.

The vicar heard him out patiently, then said,
" I never said anything about sets. It's him and
her I'm talking about. You won't deny they're
great friends. Well, no man and woman are
' great friends ' in the eyes of poor people ; they're
something quite different. And that's not whole-
some. It starts talk. And your being hand and
glove with them does no good to your influence in
the parish. For one thing, Datcherd's known to
be an atheist. These constant Sunday outings of
yours you're always missing church, you see,
and that's a poor example. I've been spoken to
about it more than once by the parents of your
class-boys. They think it strange that you should
be close friends with people like that."

Eddy started up. " People like that ? People
like Hugh Datcherd and Eileen Le Moine ? Good
heavens ! I'm not fit to black their boots, and nor
are the idiots who talk about them like that.
Vulgar-mouthed lunatics ! "

This was unlike Eddy ; he never called people

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 77

vulgar, nor despised them ; that was partly why
he made a good church worker. The vicar looked
at him over his pipe, a little irritated in his turn.
He had not reckoned on the boy being so hot
about these friends of his.

"It's a clear choice/' said the vicar, rather
sharply. ' ' Either you give up seeing so much of these
people, and certainly give up bringing them into
the parish ; or I'm very sorry, because I
don't want to lose you you must give up St.
Gregory's."

Eddy stood looking on the floor, angry, unhappy,
uncertain.

" It's no choice at all," he said at last. " You
know I can't give them up. Why can't I have
them and St. Gregory's, too ? What's the inconsis-
tency ? I don't understand."

The vicar looked at him impatiently. His
faculty of sympathy, usually so kind, humorous,
and shrewd, had run up against one ot those limiting
walls that very few people who are supremely in
earnest over one thing are quite without. He
occasionally (really not often) said a stupid thing ;
he did so now.

" You don't understand ? Surely it's extremely
simple. You can't serve God and Mammon ;
that's the long and the short of it. You've got to
choose which."

That, of course, was final. Eddy said, " Natur-
ally, if it's like that, I'll leave St. Gregory's at once.
That is, directly it's convenient for you that I

78 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

should," he added, considerate by instinct, though
angry.

The vicar turned to face him. He was bitterly
disappointed.

" You mean that, Oliver ? You won't give it
another trial, on the lines I advise ? Mind, I don't
mean I want you to have no friends, no outside
interests. . . . Look at Traherne, now ; he's full
of them. ... I only want, for your own sake
and our people's, that your heart should be in your
job."

" I had better go," said Eddy, knowing it for
certain. He added, " Please don't think I'm going
off in a stupid huff or anything. It's not that.
Of course, you've every right to speak to me as you
did ; but it's made my position quite clear to me.
I see this isn't really my job at all. I must find
another."

The vicar said, holding out his hand, "I'm very
sorry, Oliver. I don't want to lose you. Think
it over for a week, will you, and tell me then what
you have decided. Don't be hasty over it.
Remember, we've all grown fond of you here ; you'll
be throwing away a good deal of valuable oppor-
tunity if you leave us. I think you may be missing
the best in life. But I mustn't take back what I
said. It is a definite choice between two ways of
life. They won't mix."

" They will, they will," said Eddy to himself,
and went to bed. If the vicar thought they
wouldn't, the vicar's way of life could not be his.

DATCHERD AND THE VICAR 79

He had no need to think it over for a week. He
was going home for Christmas, and he would not
come back after that. This job was not for him.
And he could not, he knew now, be a clergyman.
They drew lines ; they objected to people and
things ; they failed to accept. The vicar, when
he had mentioned Datcherd, had looked as Datcherd
had looked when Eddy had mentioned Father
Dempsey and the mission ; Eddy was getting to
know that critical, disapproving look too well.
Everywhere it met him. He hated it. It seemed
to him even stranger in clergymen than in others,
because clergymen are Christians, and, to Eddy's
view, there were no negations in that vivid and
intensely positive creed. Its commands were al-
ways, surely, to go and do, not to abstain and reject.
And look, too, at the sort of people who were
of old accepted in that generous, all-embracing
circle.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL.

EDDY was met at the station by his sister Daphne,
driving the dog-cart. Daphne was twenty ; a
small, neat person in tailor-made tweeds, bright-
Chaired, with an attractive brown-tanned face, and
alert blue eyes, and a decisively-cut mouth, and
long, straight chin. Daphne was off-hand, quick-
witted, intensely practical, spoilt, rather selfish,
very sure of herself, and with an unveiled youthful
contempt for manners and people that failed to
meet with her approval. Either people were " all
right," and " pretty decent/' or they were cursorily
dismissed as " queer," " messy/' or " stodgy."
She was very good at all games requiring activity,
speed, and dexterity of hand, and more at home
out of doors than in. She had quite enough sense
of humour, a sharp tongue, some cleverness, and
very little imagination indeed. A confident young
person, determined to get and keep the best out of
life. With none of Eddy's knack of seeing a num-
ber of things at once, she saw a few things very
clearly, and went straight towards them.

80

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 81

" Hullo, young Daffy/' Eddy called out to her,
as he came out of the station.

She waved her whip at him.

" Hullo. I've brought the new pony along. Come
and try him. He shies at cats and small children,
so look out through the streets. How are you,
Tedders ? Pretty fit ?

' Yes, rather. How's everyone ? "

" Going strong, as usual. Father talks Prayer
Book revision every night at dinner till I drop
asleep. He's got it fearfully hot and strong just
now ; meetings about it twice a week, and letters
to the Guardian in between. I wish they'd hurry
up and get it revised and have done. Oh, by the
way, he says you'll want to fight him about that
now because you'll be too High to want it touched,
or something. Are you High ? "

" Oh, I think so. But I should like the Prayer
Book to be revised, too."

Daphne sighed. " It's a bore if you're High.
Father'll want to argue at meals. I do hope you
don't want to keep the Athanasian Creed, anyhow."

" Yes, rather. I like it, except the bits slanging
other people."

" Oh, well," Daphne looked relieved. " As long
as you don't like those bits, I daresay it'll be all
right. Canon Jackson came to lunch yesterday,
and he liked it, slanging and all, and oh, my word,
how tired I got of him and father ! What can it
matter whether one has it or not ? It's only a
few times a year, anyhow. Oh, and father's keen

F

82 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

on a new translation of the Bible, too. I daresay
you've seen about it ; he keeps writing articles in
the Spectator about it ... And the Bellairs have
got a new car, a Panhard ; Molly's learning to drive
it. Nevill let me the other day ; it was ripping.
I do wish father'd keep a car. I should think he
might now. It would be awfully useful for him
for touring round to committee meetings. Mind that
corner ; Timothy always funks it a bit."

They turned into the drive. It may or may not
have hitherto been mentioned that Eddy's home
was a Deanery, because his father was a Dean.
The Cathedral under his care was in a midland
county, in fine, rolling, high-hedged country,
suitable for hunting, and set with hard-working
squires. The midlands may not be picturesque or
romantic, but they are wonderfully healthy, and
produce quite a number of sane, level-headed,
intelligent people.

Eddy's father and mother were in the hall.

" You look a little tired, dear," said his mother,
after the greetings that may be imagined. " I
expect it will be good for you to get a rest at
home."

" Trust Finch to keep his workers on the run,
said the Dean, who had been at Cambridge with
Finch, and hadn't liked him particularly. Finch
had been too High Church for his taste even then ;
he himself had always been Broad, which was, no
doubt, why he was now a dean.

" Christmas is a busy time," said Eddy, tritely.

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 83

The Dean shook his head. " They overdo it,
you know, those people. Too many services, and
meetings, and guilds, and I don't know what. They
spoil their own work by it."

He was, naturally, anxious about Eddy. He
didn't want him to get involved with the ritualist
set and become that sort of parson ; he thought it
foolish, obscurantist, childish, and unintelligent,
not to say a little unmanly.

They went into lunch. The Dean was rather
vexed because Eddy, forgetting where he was,
crossed himself at grace. Eddy perceived this,
and registered a note not to do it again.

" And when have you to be back, dear ? " said
his mother. She, like many deans' wives, was a
dignified, intelligent, and courteous lady, with
many social claims punctually and graciously ful-
filled, and a great love of breeding, nice manners,
and suitable attire. She had many anxieties,
finely restrained. She was anxious lest the Dean
should overwork himself and get a bad throat ;
lest Daphne should get a tooth knocked out at
mixed hockey, or a leg broken in the hunting-
field ; lest Eddy should choose an unsuitable career
or an unsuitable wife, or very unsuitable ideas.
These were her negative anxieties. Her positive
ones were that the Dean should be recognised
according to his merits ; that Daphne should
marry the right man ; that Eddy should be a
success, and also please his father ; that the Prayer
Book might be revised very soon.

MAKING OF A BIGOT

One of her ambitions for Eddy was satisfied
forthwith, for he pleased his father.

" I'm not going back to St. Gregory's at all."

The Dean looked up quickly.

" Oh, you've given that up, have you ? Well,
it couldn't go on always, of course." He wanted
to ask, " What have you decided about Orders ? "
but, as fathers go, he was fairly tactful. Besides,
he knew Daphne would.

" Are you going into the Church, Tedders ? "

Her mother, as always when she put it like that,
corrected her. " You know father hates you to
say that, Daphne. Take Orders."

" Well, take Orders, then. Are you, Tedders ? "

" I think not," said Eddy, good-tempered as
brothers go. " At present I've been offered a small
reviewing job on the Daily Post. I was rather
lucky, because it's awfully hard to get on the Post,
and, of course, I've had no experience except at
Cambridge ; but I know Maine, the literary editor.
I used to review a good deal for the Cambridge
Weekly when his brother ran it. I think it will be
rather fun. You get such lots of nice books to
keep for your own if you review."

" Nice and otherwise, no doubt," said the Dean.
" You'll want to get rid of most of them, I expect.
Well, reviewing is an interesting side of journalism,
of course, if you are going to try journalism. You
genuinely feel you want to do this, do you ? "

He still had hopes that Eddy, once free of the
ritualistic set, would become a Broad Church

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 85

clergyman in time. But clergymen are the broader,
he believed, for knocking about the world a little
first.

Eddy said he did genuinely feel he wanted to
doit.

"I'm rather keen to do a little writing of my
own as well/' he added, " and it will leave me some
time for that, as well as time for other work. I want
to go sometimes to work in the settlement of a man
I know, too."

" What shall you write ? " Daphne wanted to
know.

" Oh, much what every one else writes, I suppose.
I leave it to your imagination."

" H'm. Perhaps it will stay there," Daphne
speculated, which was superfluously unkind, con-
sidering that Eddy used to write quite a lot at
Cambridge, in the Review, the Magazine, the
Granta, the Basileon, and even the Tripod.

" An able journalist," said the Dean, " has a great
power in his hands. He can do more than the
politicians to mould public opinion. It's a great
responsibility. Look at the Guardian, now ; and
the Times."

Eddy looked at them, where they lay on the table
by the window. He looked also at the Spectator,
Punch, the Morning Post, the Saturday Westminster,
the Quarterly, the Church Quarterly, the Hibbert, the
Cornhill, the Commonwealth, the Common Cause,
and Country Life. These were among the periodicals
taken in at the Deanery. Among those not taken

86 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

in were the Clarion, the Eye-Witness (as it was called
in those bygone days) the Church Times, Poetry
and Drama, the Blue Review, the English Review,
the Suffragette, Further, and all the halfpenny dailies.
All the same, it was a well-read home, and broad-
minded, too, and liked to hear two sides (but not
more) of a question, as will be inferred from the
above list of its periodical literature.

They had coffee in the hall after lunch. Grace,
ease, spaciousness, a quiet, well-bred luxury,
characterised the Deanery. It was a well-marked
change to Eddy, both from the asceticism of St.
Gregory's, and the bohemianism (to use an idiotic,
inevitable word) of many of his other London
friends. This was a true gentleman's home, one
of the stately homes of England, how beautiful
they stand.

Daphne proposed that they should visit another
that afternoon. She had to call at the Bellairs'
for a puppy. Colonel Bellairs was a land-owner
and J.P., whose home was two miles out of the
town. His children and the Dean's children had
been intimate friends since the Dean came to
Welchester from Ely, where he had been a Canon,
five years ago. Molly Bellairs was Daphne Oliver's
greatest friend. There were also several boys,
who flourished respectively in Parliament, the
Army, Oxford, Eton, and Dartmouth. They were
fond of Eddy, but did not know why he did not
enter one of the Government services, which seems
the obvious thing to do.

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 87

Before starting on this expedition, Daphne and
Eddy went round the premises, as they always
did on Eddy's first day at home. They played
a round of bumble-puppy on the small lawn, in-
spected the new tennis court that had just been
laid, and was in danger of not lying quite flat, and
visited the kennels and the stables, where Eddy
fed his horse with a carrot and examined his legs,
and discussed with the groom the prospects of
hunting weather next week, and Daphne petted
the nervous Timothy, who shied at children
and cats.

These pleasing duties done, they set out briskly
for the Hall, along the field path. It was just not
freezing. The air blew round them crisp and cool
and stinging, and sang in the bare beech woods
that their path skirted. Above them white clouds
sailed about a blue sky. The brown earth was full
of a repressed yet vigorous joy. Eddy and Daphne
swung along quickly through fields and lanes.
Eddy felt the exuberance of the crisp weather
and the splendid earth tingle through him. It
was one of the many things he loved, and felt utterly
at home with, this motion across open country, on
foot or on horse-back. Daphne, too, felt and looked
at home, with her firm, light step, and her neat,
useful stick, and her fair hair blowing in strands
under her tweed hat, and all the competent, whole-
some young grace of her. Daphne was rather
charming, there was no doubt about that. It
sometimes occurred to Eddy when he met her after

88 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

an absence. There was a sort of a drawing-power
about her that was quite apart from beauty, and
that made her a popular and sought-after person,
in spite of her casual manners and her frequent
selfishnesses. The young men of the neighbourhood
all liked Daphne, and consequently she had a very
good time, and was decidedly spoilt, and, in a cool,
not unattractive way, rather conceited. She seldom
had any tumbles mortifying to her self-confidence,
partly because she was in general clever and com-
petent at the things that came in her way to do,
and partly because she did not try to do those
she would have been less good at, not from any fear
of failure, but simply because she was bored by them.
But a clergyman's daughter, even a dean's, has,
unfortunately, to do a few things that bore her.
One is bazaars. Another is leaving things at cot-
tages. Mrs. Oliver had given them a brown paper
parcel to leave at a house in the lane. They left
it, and Eddy stayed for a moment to talk with the
lady of the house. Master Eddy was generally
beloved in Welchester, because he always had
plenty of attention to bestow even on the poorest
and dullest. Miss Daphne was beloved, too, and
admired, but was usually more in a hurry. She
was in a hurry to-day, and wouldn't let Eddy stay
long.

" If you let Mrs. Tom Clark start on Tom's
abscess, we should never get to the Hall to-day,"
she said, as they left the cottage. " Besides, I
hate abscesses."

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 89

" But I like Tom and his wife," said Eddy.

" Oh, they're all right. The cottage is awfully
stuffy, and always in a mess. I should think she
might keep it cleaner, with a little perseverance
and carbolic soap. Perhaps she doesn't because
Miss Harris is always jawing to her about it. I
wouldn't tidy up, I must say, if Miss Harris was
on to me about my room. What do you think,
she's gone and made mother promise I shall take
the doll stall at the Assistant Curates' Bazaar.
It's too bad. I'd have dressed any number of dolls,
but I do bar selling them. It's a hunting day, too.
It's an awful fate to be a parson's daughter. It's
all right for you ; parsons' sons don't have to sell
dolls."

" Look here," said Eddy, " are we having people
to stay after Christmas ? "

" Don't think so. Only casual droppers-in here
and there ; Aunt Maimie and so on. Why ? "

" Because, if we've room, I want to ask some
people; friends of mine in London. Denison's
one."

Daphne, who knew Denison slightly, and did
not like him, received this without joy. They had
met last year at Cambridge, and he had annoyed her
in several ways. One was his clothes ; Daphne
liked men to be neat. Another was, that at the
dance given by the college which he and Eddy
adorned, he had not asked her to dance, though
introduced for that purpose, but had stood at her
side while she sat partnerless through her favourite

90 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

waltz, apparently under the delusion that what
was required of him was interesting conversation.
Even that had failed before long, as Daphne had
neither found it interesting nor pretended to do so,
and they remained in silence together, she indig-
nant and he unperturbed, watching the festivities
with an indulgent, if cynical, eye. A disagreeable,
useless, superfluous person, Daphne considered
him. He gathered this ; it required no great
subtlety to gather things from Daphne ; and
accommodated himself to her idea of him, laying
himself out to provoke and tease. He was one
of the few people who could sting Daphne to real
temper.

So she said, " Oh."

" The others/' went on Eddy, hastily, " are two
girls I know ; they've been over-working rather
and are run down, and I thought it might be rather
good for them to come here. Besides, they're
great friends of mine, and of Denison's (one of
them's his cousin) and awfully nice. I've written
about them sometimes, I expect Jane Dawn and
Eileen Le Moine. Jane draws extraordinarily nice
things in pen and ink, and is altogether rather a
refreshing person. Eileen plays the violin you
must have heard her name Mrs. Le Moine. Every-
one's going to hear her just now ; she's wonder-
ful."

" She'd better play at the bazaar, I should think,"
suggested Daphne, who didn't see why parsons'
daughters should be the only ones involved in this

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 91

bazaar business. She wasn't very fond of artists
and musicians and literary people, for the most
part ; so often their conversation was about things
that bored one.

" Are they pretty ? " she inquired, wanting to
know if Eddy was at all in love with either of them.
It might be amusing if he was.

Eddy considered. " I don't know that you'd call
Jane pretty, exactly. Very nice to look at. Sweet-
looking, and extraordinarily innocent."

" I don't like sweet innocent girls," said Daphne.
" They're so inept, as a rule."

" Well, Jane's very ept. She's tremendously
clever at her own things, you know ; in fact, clever
all round, only clever's not a bit the word as a
matter of fact. She's a genius, I suppose a sort
of inspired child, very simple about everything,
and delightful to talk to. Not the least conven-
tional."

" No ; I didn't suppose she'd be that. And
what's Mrs. the other one like ? "

" Mrs. Le Moine. Oh, well she's she's very
nice, too."

" Pretty ? "

" Rather beautiful, she is. Irish, and a little
Hungarian, I believe. She plays marvellously."

" Yes, you said that."

Daphne's thoughts on Mrs. Le Moine produced
the question, " Is she married, or a widow ? "

" Married. She's quite friends with her husband."

" Well, I suppose she would be. Ought to be,

92 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

anyhow. Can we have her without him, by the
way ? "

" Oh, they don't live together. That's why
they're friends. They weren't till they parted.
Everyone asks them about separately of course.
She lives with a Miss Hogan, an awfully charming
person. I'd love to ask her, too, but there wouldn't
be room. I wonder if mother'll mind my asking
those three ? "

" You'd better find out," advised Daphne.
" They won't rub father the wrong way, I suppose,
will they ? He doesn't like being surprised, remember.
You'd better warn Mr. Denison not to talk against
religion or anything."

" Oh, Denison will be all right. He knows it's
a Deanery."

" Will the others know it's a Deanery, too ? "

Eddy, to say the truth, had a shade of doubt as
to that. They were both so innocent. Arnold
had learnt a little at Cambridge about the attitude
of the superior clergy, and what not to say to them,
though he knew more than he always practised. Jane
had been at Somerville College, Oxford, but this
particular branch of learning is not taught there.
Eileen had never adorned any institution for the
higher education. Her father was an Irish poet,
and the editor of a Nationalist paper, and did not
like any of the many Deans of his acquaintance.
In Ireland, Deans and Nationalists do not always
see eye to eye. Eddy hoped that Eileen had not
any hereditary distaste for the profession.

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 93

" Father and mother'll think it funny, Mrs. Le
Moine not living with her husband/' said Daphne,
who had that insight into her parents' minds which
comes of twenty years co-residence.

Eddy was afraid they would.

" But it's not funny, really, and they'll soon see
it's quite all right. They'll like her, I know. Every-
one who knows her does."

He remembered as he spoke that Hillier didn't,
and James Peters didn't much. But surely the
Dean wouldn't be found on any point in agreement
with Hillier, or even with the cheery, unthinking
Peters, innocent of the Higher Criticism. Perhaps
it might be diplomatic to tell the Dean that these
two young clergymen didn't much like Eileen Le
Moine.

While Eddy ruminated on this question, they
reached the Hall. The Hall was that type of hall
they erected in the days of our earlier Georges ; it
had risen on the site of an Elizabethan house
belonging to the same family. This is mentioned
in order to indicate that the Bellairs' had long been
of solid worth in the country. In themselves, they
were pleasant, hospitable, clean-bred, active people,
of a certain charm, which those susceptible to all
kinds of charm, like Eddy, felt keenly. Finally,
none of them were clever, all of them were nicely
dressed, and most of them were on the lawn, hitting
at a captive golf-ball, which was one of the many
things they did well, though it is at best an un-
satisfactory occupation, achieving little in the way

94 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

of showy results. They left it readily to welcome
Eddy and Daphne.

Dick (the Guards) said, " Hullo, old man,
home for Christmas ? Good for you. Come
and shoot on Wednesday, will you ? Not a
parson yet, then ? "

Daphne said, " He's off that just now."
Eddy said, " I'm going on a paper for the present."
Claude (Magdalen) said, " A what ? What a
funny game ! Shall you have to go to weddings
and sit at the back and write about the bride's
clothes ? What a rag ! "

Nevill (the House of Commons) said, " What
paper ? " in case it should be one on the wrong
side. It may here be mentioned (what may or may
not have been inferred) that the Bellairs' belonged
to the Conservative party in the state. Nevill
a little suspected Eddy's soundness in this matter
(though he did not know that Eddy belonged to
the Fabian Society as well as to the Primrose
League). Also he knew well the sad fact that our
Liberal organs are largely served by Conservative
journalists, and our great Tory press fed by Radicals
from Balliol College, Oxford, King's College, Cam-
bridge, and many other less refined homes of sophis-
try. This fact Nevill rightly called disgusting. He
did not think these journalists honest or good men.
So he asked, " What paper ? " rather suspiciously.

Eddy said, " The Daily Post," which is a Conserva-
tive organ, and also costs a penny, a highly respect-
able sum, so Nevill was relieved.

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 95

" Afraid you might be going on some Radical
rag/' he said, quite superfluously, as it had been
obvious he had been afraid of that. " Some
Unionists do. Awfully unprincipled, I call it.
I can't see how they square it with themselves."

" I should think quite easily," said Eddy ; but
added, to avert an argument (he had tried arguing
with Nevill often, and failed), " But my paper's
politics won't touch me. I'm going as literary
reviewer, entirely."

" Oh, I see." Nevill lost interest, because litera-
ture isn't interesting, like politics. " Novels and
poetry, and all that." Novels and poetry and all
that of course must be reviewed, if written ; but
neither the writing of them nor the reviewing (per-
haps not the reading either, only that takes less
time) seems quite a man's work.

Molly (the girl) said, " / think it's an awfully
interesting plan, Eddy," though she was a little
sorry Eddy wasn't going into the Church. (The
Bellairs were allowed to call it that, though Daphne
wasn't.)

Molly could be relied on always to be sympathetic
and nice. She was a sunny, round-faced person
f twenty, with clear, amber-brown eyes and curly
brown hair, and a merry infectious laugh. People
thought her a dear little girl ; she was so
sweet-tempered, and unselfish, and charmingly
polite, and at the same time full of hilarious high
spirits, and happy, tomboyish energies. Though
less magnetic, she was really much nicer than

96 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

Daphne. The two were very fond of one anot]
Everyone, including her brothers and Eddy Oliver,
was fond of Molly. Eddy and she had become, in
the last two years, since Molly grew up, close
friends.

" Well, look here," said Daphne, " we've come for
the puppy/' and so they all went to the yard, where
the puppy lived.

The puppy was plump and playful and amber-
eyed, and rather like Molly, as Eddy remarked.

" The Diddums ! I wish I was like him/' Molly
returned, hugging him, while his brother and sister
tumbled about her ankles. "He's rather fatter
than Wasums, Daffy, but not quite so tubby as
Babs. I thought you should have the middle
one."

" He's an utter joy," said Daphne, taking him.

" Perhaps I'd better walk down the lane with
you when you go," said Molly, "so as to break the
parting for him. But come in to tea now, won't
you."

"Shall we, Eddy?" said Daphne. " D'you
think we should ? There'll be canons' wives at
home."

"That settles it," said Eddy. "There won't
be us. Much as I like canons' wives, it's rather
much on one's very first day. I have to get used
to these things gradually, or I get upset. Come
on, Molly, there's time for one go at bumble-puppy
before tea."

They went off together, and Daphne stayed

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 97

about the stables and yard with the boys and the
dogs.

The Bellairs' had that immensely preferable
sort of tea which takes place round a table, and has
jam and knives. They didn't have this at the
Deanery, because people do drop in so at Deaneries,
and there mightn't be enough places laid, besides,
drawing-room tea is politer to canons and their
wives. So that alone would have been a reason
why Daphne and Eddy liked tea with the Bellairs'.
Also, the Bellairs' en famille were a delightful and
jolly party. Colonel Bellairs was hospitable, genial,
and entertaining ; Mrs. Bellairs was most wonder-
fully kind, and rather like Molly on a sobered,
motherly, and considerably filled-out scale. They
were less enlightened than at the Deanery, but
quite prepared to admit that the Prayer Book
ought to be revised, if the Dean thought so, though
for them, personally, it was good enough as it stood.
There were few people so kind-hearted, so genuinely
courteous and well-bred.

Colonel Bellairs, though a little sorry for the
Dean because Eddy didn't seem to be settling
down steadily into a sensible profession (in his
own case the " What to do with our boys " problem
had always been very simple) was fond of his
friend's son, and very kind to him, and thought
him a nice, attractive lad, even if he hadn't yet
found himself. He and his wife both hoped that
Eddy would make this discovery before long, for
a reason they had.

G

9 8 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

After tea Claude and Molly started back wil
the Olivers, to break the parting for Diddums.
Eddy wanted to tell Molly about his prospects,
and for her to tell him how interesting they were
(Molly was always so delightfully interested in
anything one told her), so he and she walked on
ahead down the lane, in the pale light of the Christ-
mas moon, that rose soon after tea. (It was a year
when this occurred).

" I expect," he said, " you think it's fairly feeble
to have begun a thing and be dropping it so soon.
But I suppose one has to try round a little, to find
out what one's job really is."

" Why, of course. It would be absurd to stick
on if it isn't really what you like to do."

" I did like it, too. Only I found I didn't want
to give it quite all my time and interest. I can't
be that sort of thorough, one-job man. The men
there are. Traherne, now I wish you knew him ;
he's splendid. He simply throws himself into it
body and soul, and says no to everything else. I
can't. I don't think I even want to. Life's too
rnany-sided for that, it seems to me, and one wants
to have it all or lots of it, anyhow. The conse-
quence was that I was chucked out. Finch told
me I was to cut off those other things, or get out.
So I got out. I quite see his point of view, and
that he was right in a way ; but I couldn't do it.
He wanted me to see less of my friends, for one
thing ; thought they got in the way of work, which
perhaps they may have sometimes ; also he didn't

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 99

much approve of all of them. That's so funny.
Why shouldn't one be friends with anyone one can,
even if their point of view isn't altogether one's
own ? "

" Of course." Molly considered it for a moment,
and added, " I believe I could be friends with any-
one, except a heathen."

" A what ? "

" A heathen. An unbeliever, you know."

" Oh, I see. I thought you meant a black.
Well, it partly depends on what they don't believe,
of course. I think, personally, one should try to
believe as many things as one can, it's more interest-
ing ; but I don't feel any barrier between me and
those who believe much less. Nor would you, if
you got to know them and like them. One doesn't
like people for what they believe, or dislike them
for what they don't believe. It simply doesn't
come in at all."

All the same, Molly did not think she could be
real friends with a heathen. The fact that Eddy
did, very slightly worried her ; she preferred to
agree with Eddy. But she was always staunch to
her own principles, and didn't attempt to do so
in this matter.

" I want you to meet some friends of mine who
I hope are coming to stay after Christmas," went
on Eddy, who knew he could rely on a much more
sympathetic welcome for his friends from Molly
than from Daphne. "I'm sure you'll like them
immensely. One's Arnold Denison, whom I expect

THE MAKING OF A BIGOT

you've heard of." (Molly had, from Daphne.)
" The others are girls Jane Dawn and Eileen Le
Moine." He talked a little about Jane Dawn and
Eileen Le Moine, as he had talked to Daphne, but
more fully, because Molly was a more gratifying
listener.

" They sound awfully nice. So original and
clever," was her comment. " It must be perfectly
ripping to be able to do anything really well. I
wish I could."

" So do I," said Eddy. " I love the people who

can. They're so well, alive, somehow. Even

more than most people, I mean ; if possible," he
added, conscious of Molly's intense aliveness, and
Daphne's, and his own, and Diddums'. But the
geniuses, he knew, had a sort of white-hot flame of
living beyond even that. . . .

" We'd better wait here for the others," said
Molly, stopping at the field gate, " and 111 hand
over Diddums to Daffy. He'll feel it's all right if
I put him in her arms and tell him to stay there."

They waited, sitting on the stile. The silver
light flooded the brown fields, turning them grey
and pale. It silvered Diddums' absurd brown
body as he snuggled in Molly's arms, and Molly's
curly, escaping waves of hair and small sweet face,
a little paled by its radiance. To Eddy the grey
fields and woods and Molly and Diddums beneath
the moon made a delightful home-like picture, of
which he himself was very much part. Eddy cer-
tainly had a convenient knack of fitting into any

THE DEANERY AND THE HALL 101

picture without a jar, whether it was a Sunday
School class at St. Gregory's, a Sunday Games Club
in Chelsea, a canons' tea at the Deanery, the stables
and kennels at the Hall, or a walk with a puppy
over country fields. He belonged to all of them,
and they to him, so that no one ever said " What
is he doing in that galore ? " as is said from time
to time of most of us.

Eddy, as they waited for Claude and Daphne at
the gate, was wondering a little whether his new
friends would fit easily into this picture. He hoped
so, very much.

The others came up, bickering as usual. Molly
put Diddums into Daphne's arms and told him to
stay there, and they parted.

CHAPTER VII.

VISITORS AT THE DEANERY.

EDDY, while they played coon-can that evening
(a horrid game prevalent at this time) approached
his parents on the subject of the visitors he wanted.
He mentioned to them the facts already retailed to
Daphne and Molly concerning their accomplish-
ments and virtues (omitting those concerning their
domestic arrangements). And these eulogies are
a mistake when one is asking friends to stay. One
should not utter them. To do so starts a prejudice
hard to eradicate in the minds of parents and
brothers and sisters, and the visit may prove a
failure. Eddy was intelligent and shou