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 should have
known this, but he was in an unthinking mood
this Christmas, and did it.
His mother kindly said, " Very well, dear. Which
day do you want them to come ? "
"I'd rather like them to be here for New Year's
day, if you don't mind. They might come on the
thirty-first."
Eddy put down three twos in the first round, for
the excellent reason that he had collected them.
102
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 103
Daphne, disgusted, said, " Look at Teddy saving
six points off his damage ! I suppose that's the way
they play in your slum."
Mrs. Oliver said, " Very well. Remember the
Bellairs' are coming to dinner on New Year's Day.
It will make rather a large party, but we can
manage all right."
' Your turn, mother," said Daphne, who did not
like dawdling.
The Dean, who had been looking thoughtful, said,
" Le Moine, did you say one of your friends was
called ? No relation, I suppose, to that writer
Le Moine, whose play was censored not long
ago ? "
r ' Yes, that's her husband. But he's a delightful
person. And it was a delightful play, too. Not a
bit dull or vulgar or pompous, like some censored
plays. He only put in the parts they didn't like
just for fun, to see whether it would be censored or
not, and partly because someone had betted him
he couldn't get censored if he tried."
The Dean looked as if he thought that silly. But
he did not mean to talk about censored plays,
because of Daphne, who was young. So he only
said, " Playing with fire," and changed the subject.
" Is it raining outside, Daffy ? " he inquired with
humorous intention, as his turn came round to play.
As no one asked him why he wanted to know, he
told them. " Because, if you don't mind, I'm
thinking of going out," and he laid his hand on
the table.
104 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" Oh, I say, father ! Two jokers ! No wonder
you're out." (This jargon of an old-time but once
popular game perhaps demands apology ; anyhow
no one need try to understand it. Tout passe, tout
lasse . . . Even the Tango Tea will all too soon
be out of mode).
The Dean rose from the table. " Now I must
stop this frivolling. I've any amount of work to
get through."
" Don't go on too long, Everard." Mrs. Oliver
was afraid his head would ache.
" Needs must, I'm afraid, when a certain person
drives. The certain person in this case being
represented by poor old Taggert."
Poor old Taggert was connected with another
Church paper, higher than the Guardian, and he
had been writing in this paper long challenges to
the Dean " to satisfactorily explain " what he had
meant by certain expressions used by him in his
last letter on Revision. The Dean could satisfac-
torily explain anything, and found it an agreeable
exercise, but one that took time and energy.
" Frightful waste of time, 7 call it," said Daphne,
when the door was shut. " Because they never will
agree, and they don't seem to get any further by
talking. Why don't they toss up or something, to
see who's right ? Or draw lots. Long one, revise
it all, middle one, revise it as father and his lot
want, short one, let it alone, like the Church Times
and Canon Jackson want."
" Don't be silly, dear," said her mother, absently.
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 105
" Some day," added Eddy, " you may be old
enough to understand these difficult things, dear.
Till then, try and be seen and not heard."
" Anyhow," said Daphne, "I go out. ... I
believe this is rather a footling game, really. It
doesn't amuse one more than a week. I'd rather
play bridge, or hide and seek."
Christmas passed, as Christmas will pass, only
give it time. They kept it at the deanery much
as they keep it at other deaneries, and, indeed, in
very many homes not deaneries. They did up
parcels and ran short of brown paper, and bought
more string and many more stamps, and sent off
cards and cards, and received cards and cards and
cards, and hurried to send off more cards to make
up the difference (but some only arrived on Christ-
mas Day, a mean trick, and had to wait to be
returned till the new year) , and took round parcels,
and at last rested, and Christmas Day dawned. It
was a bright frosty day, with ice, etcetera, and the
Olivers went skating in the afternoon with the
Bellairs, round and round oranges. Eddy taught
Molly a new trick, or step, or whatever those who
skate call what they learn, and Daphne and the
Bellairs boys flew about hand-in-hand, graceful
and charming to watch. In the night it snowed,
and next day they all tobogganed.
" I haven't seen Molly looking so well for weeks,"
said Molly's mother to her father, though indeed
Molly usually looked well.
" Healthy weather," said Colonel Bellairs, " and
106 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
healthy exercise. I like to see all those children
playing together."
His wife liked it too, and beamed on them all
at tea, which the Olivers often came in to after
the healthy exercise.
Meanwhile Arnold Denison and Jane Dawn and
Eileen Le Moine all wrote to say they would come
on the thirty-first, which they proceeded to do.
They came by three different trains, and Eddy spent
the afternoon meeting them, instead of skating with
the Bellairs. First Arnold came, from Cambridge,
and twenty minutes later Jane, from Oxford, with-
out her bag, which she had mislaid at Rugby.
Meanwhile Eddy got a long telegram from Eileen
to the effect that she had missed her train and was
coming by the next. He took Jane and Arnold
home to tea.
Daphne was still skating. The Dean and his
wife were always charming to guests. The Dean
talked Cambridge to Arnold. He had been up
with Professor Denison, and many other people, and
had always kept in touch with Cambridge, as he
remarked. Sometimes, while a canon of Ely, he
had preached the University Sermon. He did not
wholly approve of the social and theological, or
non-theological, outlook of Professor Denison and
his family ; but still, the Denisons were able and
interesting and respect-worthy people, if cranky.
Arnold the Dean suspected of being very cranky
indeed ; not the friend he would have chosen for
Eddy in the improbable hypothesis of his having had
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 107
the selection of Eddy's friends. Certainly not the
person he would have chosen for Eddy to share
rooms with, as was now their plan. But nothing
of this appeared in his courteous, if not very effu-
sive, manner to his guest.
To Jane he talked about her father, a distinguished
Oxford scholar, and meanwhile eyed her a little
curiously, wondering why she looked somehow
different from the girls he was used to. His wife
could have told him it was because she had on a
grey-blue dress, rather beautifully embroidered on
the yoke and cuffs, instead of a shirt and coat and
skirt. She was not surprised, being one of those
people whose rather limited experience has taught
them that artists are often like that. She talked to
Jane about Welchester, and the Cathedral, and its
windows, some of which were good. Jane, with
her small sweet voice and pretty manners and
charming, friendly smile, was bound to make a
pleasant impression on anybody not too greatly
prejudiced by the grey-blue dress. And Mrs. Oliver
was artistic enough to see that the dress suited her,
though she herself preferred that girls should not
make themselves look like early Italian pictures of
St. Ursula. It might be all right in Oxford or
Cambridge (one understands that this style is still,
though with decreasing frequency, occasionally to
be met with in our older Universities), or no
doubt, at Letchworth and the Hampstead Garden
City, and possibly beyond Blackfriars Bridge (Mrs.
Oliver was vague as to this, not knowing that
io8 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
part of London well) ; but in Welchester, a midland
cathedral country town, it was unsuitable, and not
done. Mrs. Oliver wondered whether Eddy didn't
mind, but he didn't seem to. Eddy had never
minded the things most boys mind in those ways ;
he had never, when at school, betrayed the least
anxiety concerning his parents' clothes or manners
when they had visited him ; probably he thought
all clothes and all manners, like all ideas, were
very nice, in their different ways.
But when Daphne came in, tweed-skirted, and
clad in a blue golfer and cap, and prettily flushed
by the keen air to the colour of a pink shell, her
quick eyes took in every detail of Jane's attire
before she was introduced, and her mother guessed
a suppressed twinkle in her smile. Mrs. Oliver
hoped Daphne was going to be polite to these
visitors. She was afraid Daphne was in a rather
perverse mood towards Eddy's friends. Denison,
of course, she frankly disliked, and did not make
much secret of it. He was conceited, plain, his
hair untidy, his collar low, and his manners super-
cilious. Denison was well equipped for taking
care of himself ; those who came to blows with him
rarely came off best. He behaved very well at tea,
knowing, as Eddy had said, that it was a Deanery.
But he was annoying once. Someone had given
Mrs. Oliver at Christmas a certain book, containing
many beautiful and tranquil thoughts about this
world, its inhabitants, its origin, and its goal, by a
writer who had produced, and would, no doubt,
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 109
continue to produce, very many such books. Many
people read this writer constantly, and got help
therefrom, and often wrote and told him so ; others
did not read him at all, not finding life long enough ;
others, again, read him sometimes in an idle moment,
to get a little diversion. Of these last was Arnold
Denison. When he put his tea-cup down on the
table at his side, his eye chanced on the beautiful
book lying thereon, and he laughed a little.
" Which one is that ? Oh, Garden Paths.
That's the last but two, isn't it." He picked
it up and turned the leaves, and chuckled at
a certain passage, which he proceeded to read
aloud. It had, unfortunately, or was intended
to have, a philosophical and more or less religious
bearing (the writer was a vague but zealous seeker
after truth) ; also, more unfortunately still, the
Dean and his wife knew the author ; in fact, he had
stayed with them often. Eddy would have warned
Arnold of that had he had time, but it was too late.
He could only now say, " I call that very inter-
esting, and jolly well put."
The Dean said, genially, but with acerbity, " Ah,
you mustn't make game of Phil Underwood here,
you know ; he's a persona grata with us. A dear fellow.
And not in the least spoilt by all his tremendous
success. As candid and unaffected as he was when
we were at Cambridge together, five and thirty
years ago. And look at all he's done since then.
He's walked straight into the heart of the reading
public the more thoughtful and discriminating
no THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
part of it, that is, for of course he's not any man's
fare not showy enough ; he's not one of your
smart paradox-and-epigram-mongers. He leads one
by very quiet and delightful paths, right out of the
noisy world. A great rest and refreshment for
busy men and women ; we want more like him in
this hurrying age, when most people's chief object
seems to be to see how much they can get done in
how short a time."
" He's fairly good at that, you know," suggested
Arnold, innocently turning to the title-page of the
last but two, to find its date.
Mrs. Oliver said, gently, but a little distantly,
" I always feel it rather a pity to make fun of a
writer who has helped so many people so very
greatly as Philip Underwood has," which was
damping and final, and the sort of unfair thing,
Arnold felt, that shouldn't be said in conversation.
That is the worst of people who aren't clever ;
they suddenly turn on you and score heavily, and
you can't get even. So he said, bored, " Shall I
come down with you to meet Eileen, Eddy ? " and
Daphne thought he had rotten manners and had
cheeked her parents. He and Eddy went out to-
gether, to meet Eileen.
It was characteristic of Jane that she had given
no contribution to this conversation, never having
read any Philip Underwood, and only very vaguely
and remotely having heard of him. Jane was
marvellously good at concerning herself only with
the first-rate ; hence she never sneered at the
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY in
second or third-rate, for it had no existence for
her. She was not one of those artists who mock
at the Royal Academy ; she never saw most of the
pictures there exhibited, but only the few she
wished to see, and went on purpose to see. Neither
did she jeer at even our most popular writers of
fiction, nor at Philip Underwood. Jane was very
cloistered, very chaste. Whatsoever things were
lovely, she thought on these things, and on
no others. At the present moment she was
thinking of the Deanery hall, how beautifully it
was shaped, and how good was the curve of the oak
stairs up from it, and how pleasing and worth
drawing Daphne's long, irregular, delicately-tinted
face, with the humorous, one-sided, half-reluctant
smile, and the golden waves of hair beneath the blue
cap. She wondered if Daphne would let her make
a sketch. She would draw her as some little vaga-
bond, amused, sullen, elfish, half-tamed, wholly
spoilt, preferably in rags, and bare-limbed Jane's
fingers itched to be at work on her.
Rather a silent girl, Mrs. Oliver decided, and
said, " You must go over the Cathedral to-morrow."
Jane agreed that she must, and Daphne hoped
that Eddy would do that business. For her, she
was sick of showing people the Cathedral, and
conducting them to the Early English door and the
Norman arches, and the something else Lady-chapel,
and all the rest of the tiresome things the guide-
book superfluously put it into people's heads to
inquire after. One took aunts round. . . . But
H2 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
whenever Daphne could, she left it to the Dean, who
enjoyed it, and had, of course, very much more to
say about it, knowing not only every detail of its
architecture and history, but every detail of its
needed repairs and pinnings-up, and general im-
provements, and how long they would take to do,
and how little money was at present forthcoming to
do them with. The Dean was as keen on his
Cathedral as on revision. Mrs. Oliver had the
knowledge of it customary with people of culture
who live near cathedrals, and Eddy that and some-
thing more, added by a great affection. The
Cathedral for him had a glamour and glory.
The Dean began to tell Jane about it.
" You are an artist, Eddy tells us," he said,
presently ; " well, I think certain bits of our Cathe-
dral must be an inspiration to any artist. Do you
know Wilson Gavin's studies of details of Ely ?
Very exquisite and delicate work."
Jane thought so too.
" Poor Gavin," the Dean added, more gravely ;
" we used to see something of him when he came
down to Ely, five or six years ago. It's an extra-
ordinary thing that he could do work like that,
so marvellously pure and delicate, and full, ap-
parently, of such reverent love of beauty and at
the same time lead the life he has led since, and I
suppose is leading now."
Jane looked puzzled.
The Dean said, " Ah, of course, you don't know
him. But one hears sad stories. ,
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 113
" I know Mr. Gavin a little," said Jane. " I
always like him very much."
The Dean thought her either not nearly parti-
cular enough, or too ignorant to be credible. She
obviously either had never heard, had quite for-
gotten, or didn't mind, the sad stories. He hoped
for the best, and dropped the subject. He couldn't
well say straight out, before Miss Dawn and Daphne,
that he had heard that Mr. Gavin had eloped with
someone else's wife.
It was perhaps for the best that Eddy and Arnold
and Eileen arrived at this moment.
At a glance the Olivers saw that Mrs. Le
Moine was different from Miss Dawn. She was
charmingly dressed. She had a blue travelling-
coat, grey furs, deep blue eyes under black brows,
and an engaging smile. Certainly " rather beauti-
ful," as Eddy had said to Daphne, and of a charm
that they all felt, but especially the Dean.
Mrs. Oliver, catching Eddy's eye as he introduced
her, saw that he was proud of this one among his
visitors. She knew the look, radiant, half shy, the
look of a nice child introducing an admired school
friend to his people, sure they will get on, thinking
how jolly for both of them to know each other.
The less nice child has a different look, mistrustful,
nervous, anxious, lest his people should disgrace
themselves. . . .
Mrs. Oliver gave Mrs. Le Moine tea. They all
talked. Eileen had brought in with her a periodical
she had been reading in the train, which had in it
H
H4 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
a poem by Billy Raymond. Arnold picked it up
and read it, and said he was sorry about it. Eddy
then read it and said, " I rather like it. Don't you,
Eileen ? It's very much Billy in a certain mood,
of course."
Arnold said it was Billy reacting with such violence
against Masefield a very sensible procedure within
limits that he had all but landed himself in the
impressionist preciosity of the early Edwardians.
Eileen said, "It's Billy when he's been lunching
with Cecil. He's often taken like that then."
The Dean said, " And who's Cecil ? "
Eileen said, " My husband," and the Dean and
Mrs. Oliver weren't sure if, given one was living
apart from one's husband, it was quite nice to
mention him casually at tea like that ; more
particularly when he had just written a censored
play.
The Dean, in order not to pursue the subject of
Mr. Le Moine, held out his hand for the Blue Review,
and perused Billy's production, which was called
" The Mussel Picker."
He laid it down presently and said, " I can't say
I gather any very coherent thought from it."
Arnold said, " Quite. Billy hadn't any just then.
That is wholly obvious. Billy sometimes has, but
occasionally hasn't, you know. Billy is at times,
though by no means always, a shallow young man."
" Shallow young men produce a good deal of our
modern poetry, it seems to me from my slight
acquaintance with it," said the Dean. " One misses
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 115
the thought in it that made the Victorian giants
so fine."
As a good many of the shallow young producers
of our modern poetry were more or less intimately
known to his three guests, Arnold suspected the
Dean of trying to get back on him for his aspersions
on Philip Underwood. He with difficulty restrained
himself from saying, gently but aloofly, a la Mrs.
Oliver, " I always think it rather a pity to criticize
writers who have helped so many people so very
greatly as our Georgian poets have," and said
instead, " But the point about this thing of Billy's
is that it's not modern in the least. It breathes of
fifteen years back the time when people painted
in words, and were all for atmosphere. Surely
whatever you say about the best modern people,
you can't deny they're full of thought so full that
sometimes they forget the sound and everything
else. Of course you mayn't like the thought, that's
quite another thing ; but you can't miss it ; it
fairly jumps out at you. . . . Did you read John
Henderson's thing in this month's English Review ? "
This was one of the periodicals not taken in at
the Deanery, so the Dean hadn't read it. Nor did
he want to enter into an argument on modern poetry,
with which he was less familiar than with the
Victorian giants.
Arnold, talking too much, as he often did when
not talking too little, said across the room to Daphne,
" What do you think of John Henderson, Miss
Oliver ? "
n6 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
It amused him to provoke her, because she was
a match for him in rudeness, and drew him too by
her attractive face and abrupt speech. She wasn't
dull, though she might care nothing for John
Henderson or any other poet, and looked on and
yawned when she was bored.
" Never thought about him at all/' she said now.
" Who is he ? " though she knew quite well.
Arnold proceeded to tell her, with elaboration
and diffuseness.
" I can lend you his works, if you'd like," he
added.
She said, " No, thanks," and Mrs. Oliver said,
"I'm afraid we don't find very much time for
casual reading here, Mr. Denison," meaning that
she didn't think John Henderson proper for Daphne,
because he was sometimes coarse, and she suspected
him of being free-thinking, though as a matter of
fact he was ardently and even passionately religious,
in a way hardly fit for deaneries.
" / don't read John's things, you know, Arnold,"
put in Jane. " I don't like them much. He said
I'd better not try, as he didn't suppose I should ever
get to like them better."
" That's John all over," said Eileen. " He's so
nice and untouchy. Fancy Cecil saying that
except in bitter sarcasm. John's a dear, so he is.
Though he read worse last Tuesday at the Bookshop
than I've ever heard anyone. You'd think he had
a plum in his mouth."
Obviously these young people were much
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 117
interested in poets and poetry. So Mrs. Oliver said,
" On the last night of the year, the Dean usually
reads us some poetry, just before the clock strikes.
Very often he reads Tennyson's ' Ring out, wild
bells.' It is an old family custom of ours," she
added, and they all said what a good one, and how
nice it would be. Then Mrs. Oliver told them that
they weren't to dress for dinner, because there was
evensong afterwards in the Cathedral, on account
of New Year's Eve.
" But you needn't go unless you want to,"
Daphne added, enviously. Herself she had to go,
whether she wanted to or not.
" I'd like to," Eileen said.
"It's a way of seeing the Cathedral, of course,"
said Eddy. "It's rather beautiful by candle-
light."
So they all settled to go, even Arnold, who
thought that of all the ways of seeing the Cathe-
dral, that was the least good. However, he went,
and when they came back they settled down for a
festive night, playing coon-can and the pianola,
and preparing punch, till half-past eleven, when the
Dean came in from his study with Tennyson, and
read " Ring out, wild bells." At five minutes to
twelve they began listening for the clock to strike,
and when it had struck and been duly counted,
they drank each other a happy new year in punch,
except Jane, who disliked whisky too much to
drink it, and had lemonade instead. In short,
they formed one of the many happy homes of
Ii8 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
England who were seeing the old year out in the
same cheerful and friendly manner. Having done
so, they went to bed.
" Eddy in the home is entirely a dear," Eileen
said to Jane, lingering a moment by Jane's fire
before she went to her own. " He's such such
a good boy, isn't he ? " She leant on the words,
with a touch of tenderness and raillery. Then
she added, " But, Jane, we shall have his parents
shocked before we go. It would be easily done. In
fact, I'm not sure we've not done it already, a little.
Arnold is so reckless, and you so ingenuous, and
myself so ambiguous in position. I've a fear they
think us a little unconventional, no less, and are
nervous about our being too much with the pretty
little sulky sister. But I expect she'll see to that
herself ; we bore her, do you know. And Arnold
insists on annoying her, which is tiresome of him."
" She looks rather sweet when she's cross," said
Jane, regarding the matter professionally. " I
should like to draw her then. Eddy's people are
very nice, only not very peaceful, somehow, do you
think ? I don't know why, but one feels a little
tired after talking much to them ; perhaps it's
because of what you say, that they might easily
be shocked ; and besides, one doesn't quite always
understand what they say. At least, I don't ; but
I'm stupid at understanding people, I know."
Jane sighed a little, and let her wavy brown hair
fall in two smooth strands on either side of her
small pale face. The Deanery was full of strange
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 119
standards and codes and values, alien and unin-
telligible. Jane didn't know even what they were,
though Eileen and Arnold, living in a less rarefied,
more in-the-world atmosphere, could have en-
lightened her about many of them. It mattered
in the Deanery what one's father was ; quite
kindly but quite definitely note was taken of that ;
Mrs. Oliver valued birth and breeding, though she
was not snobbish, and was quite prepared to be
kind and friendly to those without it. Also it
mattered how one dressed ; whether one had on
usual, tidy, and sufficiently expensive clothes ;
whether, in fact, one displayed good taste in the
matter, and was neither cheap nor showy, but
suitable to the hour and occasion. These things
do matter, it is very certain. Also it mattered
that one should be able to find one's way about a
Church of England Prayer Book during a service,
a task at which Jane and Eileen were both incom-
petent. Jane had not been brought up to follow
services in a book, only to sit in college ante-chapels
and listen to anthems ; and Eileen, reared by an
increasingly anti-clerical father, had drifted fitfully
in and out of Roman Catholic churches as a child
in Ireland, and had since never attended any.
Consequently they had helplessly fumbled with
their books at evening service. Arnold, who had
received the sound Church education (sublimely
independent of personal fancies as to belief or
disbelief) of our English male youth at school and
college, knew all about it, and showed Jane how to
120 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
find the Psalms, while Eddy performed the same
office for Eileen. Daphne looked on with cynical
amusement, and Mrs. Oliver with genuine shocked
feeling.
" Anyhow," said Daphne to her mother after-
wards, " I should think they'll agree with father
that it wants revising."
Next day they all went tobogganing, and met the
Bellairs family. Eddy threw Molly and Eileen
together, because he wanted them to make friends,
which Daphne resented, because she wanted to
talk to Molly herself, and Eileen made her feel shy.
When she was alone with Molly she said, " What
do you think of Eddy's friends ? "
" Mrs. Le Moine is very charming," said Molly,
an appreciative person. " She's so awfully pretty,
isn't she ? And Miss Dawn seems rather sweet,
and Mr. Denison's very clever, I should think."
Daphne sniffed. " He thinks so, too. I expect
they all think they're jolly clever. But those
two " she indicated Eileen and Jane " can't
find their places in their Prayer Books without
being shown. I don't call that very clever."
" How funny," said Molly.
Acrimony was added to Daphne's view of Eileen
by Claude Bellairs, who looked at her as if he
admired her. Claude as a rule looked at Daphne
herself like that ; Daphne didn't want him to,
thinking it silly, but it was rather much to have
his admiration transferred to this Mrs. Le Moine.
Certainly anyone might have admired Eileen;
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 121
Daphne grudgingly admitted that, as she watched
her. Eileen's manner of accepting attentions was
as lazy and casual as Daphne's own, and con-
siderably less provocative ; she couldn't be said to
encourage them. Only there was a charm about
her, a drawing-power. . . .
" / don't think it's nice, a married person letting
men hang round her," said Daphne, who was rather
vulgar.
Molly, who was refined, coloured all over her
round, sensitive face.
" Daffy ! How can you ? Of course it's all
right."
" Well, Claude would be flirting in no time if
she let him."
" But of course she wouldn't. How could she ? "
Molly was dreadfully shocked.
Daphne gave her cynical, one-sided smile.
" Easily, I should think. Only probably she doesn't
think him worth while.'
" Daffy, I think it's horrible to talk like that.
I do wish you wouldn't."
" All right. Come on and have a go down the
hill, then."
The Bellairs' came to dinner that evening. Molly
was a little subdued, and with her usual flow of
childish high spirits not quite so spontaneous as
usual. She sat between Eddy and the Dean,
and was rather quiet with both of them. The
Dean took in Eileen, and on her other side
was Nevill Bellairs, who, having deduced in
122 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
the afternoon that she was partly Irish, very
naturally mentioned the Home Rule Bill, which he
had been spending last session largely in voting
against. Being Irish, Mrs. Le Moine presumably
felt strongly on this subject, which he introduced
with the complacency of one who had been fighting
in her cause. She listened to him with her half
railing, inscrutable smile, until Eddy said across
the table, " Mrs. Le Moine's a Home Ruler, Nevill ;
look out/' and Nevill stopped abruptly in full flow
and said, " You're not ! " and pretended not to
mind, and to be only disconcerted for himself, but
was really indignant with her for being such a thing,
and a little with Eddy for not having warned him.
It dried up his best conversation, as one couldn't
talk politics to a Home Ruler. He wondered was
she a Papist, too. So he talked about hunting in
Ireland, and found she knew nothing of hunting
there or indeed anywhere. Then he tried London,
but found that the London she knew was different
from his, except externally, and you can't talk for
ever about streets and buildings, especially if you
do not frequent the same eating-places. From
different eating-places the world is viewed from
different angles ; few things are a more significant
test of a person's point of view.
Meanwhile the Dean was telling Jane about places
of interest, such as Roman camps, in the neighbour-
hood. The Dean, like many deans, talked rather
well. He thought Jane prettily attentive, and
more educated than most young women, and that
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 123
it was a pity she wore such an old-fashioned dress.
He did not say so, but asked her if she had designed
it from Carpaccio's St. Ursula, and she said no,
from an angel playing the timbrel by Jacopo Bellini
in the Accademia. So after that they talked about
Venice, and he said he must show her his photo-
graphs of it after dinner. " It must be a wonderful
place for an artist/' he told her, and she agreed,
and then they compared notes and found that he
had stayed at the Hotel Europa, and had had a
lovely view of the Giudecca and Santa Maria Mag-
giore from the windows (" most exquisite on a grey
day "), and she had stayed in the flat of an artist
friend, looking on to the Rio delle Beccarie, which
is a rio of the poor. Like Eileen and Nevill, they had
eaten in different places ; but, unlike London,
Venice is a coherent whole, not rings within rings,
so they could talk, albeit with reservations and a
few cross purposes. The Dean liked talking about
pictures, and Torcello, and Ruskin, and St. Mark's,
and the other things one talks about when one has
been to Venice. Perhaps too he even wanted a
little to hear her talk about them, feeling interested
in the impressions of an artist. Jane was rather
disappointingly simple and practical on these sub-
jects ; artists, like other experts, are apt to leave
rhapsodies to the layman, and tacitly assume
admiration of the beauty that is dilated on by the
unprofessional. They are baffling people ; the Dean
remembered that about poor Wilson Gavin.
While he thus held Jane's attention, Eddy talked
124 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
to Molly about skating, a subject in which both
were keenly interested, Daphne sparred with Claude,
and Arnold entertained Mrs. Oliver, whom he found
a little difficile and rather the grande dame. Frankly,
Mrs. Oliver did not like Arnold, and he saw through
her courtesy as easily as through Daphne's rudeness.
She thought him conceited (which he was), irreverent
(which he was also), worldly (which he was not),
and a bad influence over Eddy (and whether he
was that depended on what you meant by " bad ").
On the whole it was rather an uncomfortable
dinner, as dinners go. There was a sense of misfit
about it. There were just enough people at cross-
purposes to give a feeling of strain, a feeling felt
most strongly by Eddy, who had perceptions, and
particularly wanted the evening to be a success.
Even Molly and he had somehow come up against
something, a rock below the cheerful, friendly
stream of their intercourse, that pulled him up,
though he didn't understand what it was. There
was a spiritual clash somewhere, between nearly
every two of them. Between him and Molly it was
all her doing ; he had never felt friendlier ; it was
she who had put up a queer, vague wall. He could
not see into her mind, so he didn't bother about it
much but went on being cheerful and friendly.
They were all happier after dinner, when playing
the pianola in the hall and dancing to it.
But on the whole the evening was only a moderate
success.
The Bellairs' told their parents afterwards that
VISITORS AT THE DEANERY 125
they didn't much care about the friends Eddy had
staying.
" / believe they're stuck up," said Dick (the
Guards), who hadn't been at dinner, but had met
them tobogganing. " That man Denison's for
ever trying to be clever. I can't stand that ; it's
such beastly bad form. Don't think he succeeds,
either, if you ask me. I can't see it's particularly
clever to be always sneering at things one knows
nothing about. Can't think why Eddy likes him.
He's not a bit keen on the things Eddy's keen on
hunting, or shooting, or games, or soldiering."
" There are lots like him at Oxford," said Claude.
" I know the type. Balliol's full of it. Awfully
unwholesome, and a great bore to meet. They
write things, and admire each other's. I suppose
it's the same at Cambridge. Only I should have
thought Eddy would have kept out of the way
of it."
Claude had been disgusted by what he considered
Arnold's rudeness to Daphne. " I thought Mrs.
Le Moine seemed rather nice, though," he added.
" Well, I must say," Nevill said, " she was a
little too much for me. English Home Rulers
are bad enough, but at least they know nothing
about it and are usually merely silly ; but Irish
ones are more than I can stand. Eddy told me
afterwards that her father was that fellow Conolly,
who runs the Hibernian the most disloyal rag
that ever throve in a Dublin gutter. It does more
harm than any other paper in Ireland, I believe.
126 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
What can you expect of his daughter, let alone a
woman married to a disreputable play-writer, and
not even living with him ? I rather wonder Mrs.
Oliver likes to have her in the house with Daphne."
" Miss what d'you call her Morning seemed
harmless, but a little off it," said Dick. " She
doesn't talk too much, anyhow, like Denison.
Queer things she wears, though. And she doesn't
know much about London, for a person who lives
there, I must say. Doesn't seem to have seen any
of the plays. Rather vague, somehow, she struck
me as being."
Claude groaned. " So would her father if you
met him. A fearful old dreamer. I coach with
him in Political Science. He's considered a great
swell ; I was told I was lucky to get him ; but I
can't make head or tail of him or his books. His
daughter has just his absent eye."
" Poor things," said Mrs. Bellairs, sleepily.
" And poor Mrs. Oliver and the Dean. I wonder
how long these unfortunate people are staying, and
if we ought to ask them over one day ? "
But none of her children appeared to think they
ought. Even Molly, always loyal, always hospit-
able, always generous, didn't think so. For stronger
in Molly's child-like soul than even her loyalty and
her hospitality, and her generosity, was her moral
sense, and this was questioning, shamefacedly,
reluctantly, whether these friends of Eddy's were
reaUy " good."
So they didn't ask them over.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VISITORS GO.
NEXT morning Eileen got a letter. She read it
before breakfast, turned rather paler, and looked
up at Eddy as if she was trying to bring her mind
back from a great distance. In her eyes was fear,
and that look of brooding, soft pity that he had
learnt to associate with one only of Eileen's friends.
She said, " Hugh's ill," frowning at him absently,
and added, " I must go to him, this morning. He's
alone," and Eddy remembered a paragraph he had
seen in the Morning Post about Lady Dorothy
Datcherd and the Riviera. Lady Dorothy never
stayed with Datcherd when he was ill. Periodi-
cally his lungs got much worse, and he had to lie
up, and he hated that.
" Does he write himself ? " Arnold asked. He
was fond of Hugh Datcherd.
' Yes oh, he doesn't say he's ill, he never will,
but I know it by his writing I must go by the next
train, I'm afraid " ; she remembered to turn to
Mrs. Oliver and speak apologetically. " I'm very
sorry to be so sudden."
127
128 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" We are so sorry for the cause/' said Mrs. Oliver,
courteously. "Is it your brother ? " (Surely it
wouldn't be her husband, in the circumstances ?)
" It is not," said Eileen, still abstracted. " It's
a friend. He's alone, and consumptive, and if he's
not looked after he destroys himself doing quite
mad things. His wife's gone away."
Mrs. Oliver became a shade less sympathetic.
It was a pity it was not a brother, which would
have been more natural. However, Mrs. Le Moine
was, of course, a married woman, though under
curious circumstances. She began to discuss trains,
and the pony-carriage, and sandwiches.
Eddy explained afterwards while Eileen was
upstairs.
"It's Hugh Datcherd, a great friend of hers ;
poor chap, his lungs are frightfully gone, I'm afraid.
He's an extraordinarily interesting and capable
man ; runs an enormous settlement in North-East
London, and has any number of different social
schemes all over the place. He edits Further do
you ever see it, father ? "
" Further ? Yes, it's been brought to my notice
once or twice. It goes a good way ' further ' than
even our poor heretical deans, doesn't it ? "
It went in a quite different direction, Eddy
thought. Our heretical deans do not always go
very far along the road which leads to social better-
ment and slum-destroying ; they are often too busy
improving theology to have much time to improve
houses.
THE VISITORS GO 129
" An able man, I daresay/ 1 said the Dean. " Like
all the Datcherds. Most of them have been Parlia-
mentary, of course. Two Datcherds were at Cam-
bridge with me Roger and Stephen ; this man's
uncles, I suppose ; his father would be before my
time. They were both very brilliant fellows, and
fine speakers at the Union, and have become capable
Parliamentary speakers now. A family of here-
ditary Whigs ; but this man's the only out and out
Radical, I should say. A pity he's so bitter against
Christianity."
"He's not bitter/' said Eddy. "He's very
gentle. Only he disbelieves in it as a means of
progress."
" Surely," said Mrs. Oliver, " he married one of
Lord Ulverstone's daughters Dorothy, wasn't it."
(Lord Ulverstone and Mrs. Oliver's family were both
of Westmorland, where there is strong clannish
feeling.)
" He and Dorothy don't seem to be hitting it off,
do they," put in Daphne, and her mother said,
" Daphne, dear," and changed the subject. Daphne
ought not, by good rights, to have heard that about
Hugh Datcherd being ill and alone, and Mrs. Le
Moine going to him.
" She's a trying woman, I fancy," said Eddy,
who did not mean to be tactless, but had been
absorbed in his own thoughts and had got left
behind when his mother started a new subject.
" Hard, and selfish, and extravagant, and thinks
of nothing but amusing herself, and doesn't care a
I
130 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
hang for any of Datcherd's schemes, or for Datcherd
himself, for that matter. She just goes off and
leaves him to be ill by himself. He nearly died last
year ; he was awfully cut up, too, about their little
girl dying- she was the only child, and Datcherd
was absolutely devoted to her, and I believe her
mother neglected her when he was ill, just as she
does Datcherd.
" These stories get exaggerated, of course," said
Mrs. Oliver, because Lady Dorothy was one of the
Westmorland Ulverstones, because Daphne was
listening, and because she suspected the source of
the stories to be Eileen Le Moine.
" Oh, I've no doubt there's her side of it, too,
if one knew it," admitted Eddy, ready, as usual,
to see everyone's point of view. " It would be a
frightful bore being married to a man who was
interested in all the things you hated most, and gave
his whole time and money and energy to them.
But anyhow, you see why his friends, and par-
ticularly Eileen, who's his greatest friend, feel
responsible for him."
" A very sad state of things," said Mrs. Oliver.
" Anyhow," said Daphne, " here's the pony-
trap."
Eileen came downstairs, hand-in-hand with Jane,
and said goodbye to the Dean, and Mrs. Oliver,
and Daphne, and " Thank you so much for having
me," and drove off with Eddy and Jane, still with
that look of troubled wistfulness in her face.
She smiled faintly at Eddy from the train.
THE VISITORS GO 131
"I'm sorry, Eddy. It's a shame I have to go/'
but her thoughts were not for him, as he knew.
Outside the station they met Arnold, and he and
Jane walked off together to see something in the
Cathedral, while Eddy drove home.
Jane gave a little pitiful sigh. " Poor dears,"
she murmured.
" H'm ? " questioned Arnold, who was interested
in the streets.
" Poor Eileen," Jane amplified ; " poor Hugh."
" Oh, quite," Arnold nodded. But, feeling more
interested in ideas than in people, he talked about
Welchester.
" The stuffiness of the place ! " he commented,
with energy of abuse. " The stodginess. The
canons and their wives. The the enlightened
culture of the Deanery. The propriety. The
correctness. The intelligence. The cathedralism.
The good breeding. How can Eddy bear it, Jane ?
Why doesn't he kick someone or something over
and run ? "
" Eddy likes it," said Jane. " He's very fond
of it. After all, it is rather exquisite ; look "
They had stopped at the end of Church Street, and
looked along its narrow length to the square that
opened out before the splendid West Front. Arnold
screwed up his eyes at it, appreciatively.
" That's all right. It's the people I'm thinking
of."
" But you know, Arnold, Eddy's not exclusive
like most people, like you and me, and and Mrs.
132 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
Oliver, and those nice Bellairs'. He likes everyone
and everything. Things are delightful to him
merely because they exist/*
Arnold groaned. " Whitman said that before
you, the brute. If I thought Eddy had anything
in common with Walt, our friendship would end
forthwith."
" He has nothing whatever," Jane reassured him,
placidly. " Whitman hated all sorts of things.
Whitman's more like you ; he'd have hated Wel-
chester."
" Yes, I'm afraid that's true. The cleanliness,
the cant, the smug faces of men and women in the
street, the worshippers in cathedrals, the keepers
of Sabbaths, the respectable and the well-to-do,
the Sunday hats and black coats of the men, the
panaches and tight skirts of the women, the tea-
fights, the well-read deans and their lady-like
wives what have I to do with these or these with
me ? All, all of them I loathe ; away with them,
I will not have them near me any more. Allans,
earner ado, I will take to the open road beneath the
stars . . . What a pity he would have said that ;
but I can't alter my opinion, even for him . . . How
at home dear old Phil Underwood would be here,
wouldn't he. How he must enjoy his visits to the
Deanery, where he's a persona grata. And how he
must bore the young sister. She's all right, you
know, Jane. I rather like her. And she hates
me. She's quite genuine, and free from cant ;
just as worldly as they make 'em, and never
THE VISITORS GO 133
pretends to be anything else. Besides, she's all
alive ; rather like a young wild animal. It's queer
she and Eddy being brother and sister, she so
decided and fixed in all her opinions and rejections,
and he so impressionable. Oh, another thing I
have an unhappy feeling that Eddy is going, eventu-
ally, to marry that little yellow-eyed girl Miss
Bellairs. Somehow I feel it."
Jane said, " Nonsense/' and laughed. " She's
not a bit the sort."
" Of course she's not. But to Eddy, as you
observed, all sorts are acceptable. She's one sort,
you'll admit. And one he's attached to wind and
weather and jolly adventures and old companion-
ship, she stands for to him. Not a subtle appeal,
but still, an appeal. They're fond of each other,
and it will turn to that, you'll see. Eddy never
says, " That's not the sort of thing, or the sort of
person, for me." Because they all are. Look at
the way he swallowed those parsons down in his
slum. Swallowed them why, he loves them.
Look at the way he accepts Welchester, stodginess
and all, and likes it. He was the same at Cam-
bridge ; nothing was outside the range for him ;
he never drew the line. I'm really not particular "
-Jane laughed at him again " but I tell you he
consorted sometimes with the most utterly utter,
and didn't seem to mind. Kept very bad company
indeed on occasion ; company the Dean wouldn't
at all have approved of, I'm sure. Many times
I've had to step in and try in vain to haul
134 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
him by force out of some select set. Nuts, smugs,
pious men, betting rouls, beefy hulks all were grist
to his mill. And still it's the same. Miss Bellairs,
no doubt, is a very nice girl, quite genuine and
natural, and rather like a jolly kitten, which is
always attractive. But she's rigid within ; she
won't mix with the people Eddy will want to mix
with. She's not comprehensive. She wouldn't like
us much, for instance ; she'd think us rather queer
and shady beings, not what she's used to or under-
stands. We should worry and puzzle her. She's
gay and sweet and unselfish, and good, sweet maid,
and lets who will be clever. Lets them, but doesn't
want to have much to do with them. She'll shut
us all out, and try to shut Eddy in with her. She
won't succeed, because he'll go on wanting a little
bit of all there is, and so they'll both be miserable.
Her share of the world, you see all the share she
asks for is homogeneous ; his is heterogeneous, a
sort of gypsy stew with everything in it. You may
say that he's greedy for mixed fare, while she has
a simple and fastidious appetite. There are the
materials for another unhappy marriage ready
provided."
Jane was looking at the Prior's Door with her
head on one side. She smiled at it peacefully.
" Really, Arnold "
" Oh, I know. You're going to say, what reason
have I for supposing that Eddy has ever thought
of this young girl in that way, as they say in fiction.
I don't say he has yet. But he will. Propinquity
THE VISITORS GO 135
will do it, and common tastes, and old affection.
You'll see, Jane. I'm not often wrong about these
unfortunate affairs. I dislike them so much that
it gives me an instinct."
Jane shook her head. " I think Welchester is
affecting you for bad, Arnold. That, you know, is
what the people who annoy you so much here
would do, I expect look at all affection and friend-
ship like that."
" That's true." Arnold looked at her in surprise.
" But I shouldn't have expected you to know it.
You are improving in perspicacity, Jane ; it's the
first time I have known you aware of the vulgarity
about you."
Jane looked a little proud of herself, as she only
did when she had displayed a piece of worldly know-
ledge. She did not say that she had obtained her
knowledge from Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, who,
watching Eddy and Eileen, had too obviously done
so with troubled eyes, so that she longed to comfort
them with explanations they would never under-
stand.
It was certain that they were relieved that Eileen
had gone, though the reason of her going had placed
her in a more dubious light. Also, she forgot,
unfortunately, to write her bread and butter letter.
" I suppose she can't spare the time from Hugh,"
said Daphne. But she wrote to Jane, telling her
that Hugh was laid up with hemorrhage, and had
been ordered to go away directly he was fit. " They
say Davos, but he won't. I don't know where it
136 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
will be." Jane, whose worldly shrewdness after all
had narrow limits, repeated this to Eddy in his
mother's presence.
" Has his wife got back yet ? " Mrs. Oliver in-
quired gravely, and Jane shook her head. " Oh
no. She won't. She's spending the winter on the
Riviera."
" I should think Mr. Datcherd too had better
spend the winter on the Riviera," suggested Mrs.
Oliver.
" Isn't it rather bad for consumption ? " said
Eddy, shirking issues other than hygienic.
" I believe," said Jane, not shirking them, " his
wife isn't coming back to him at all again. She's
tired of him, I'm afraid. I daresay it's a good
thing ; she is very irritating and difficult."
Mrs. Oliver changed the subject. These seemed
to her what women in her district would have called
strange goings on. She commented on them to
the Dean, who, more tolerant, said, " One must
allow some licence to genius, I suppose." Perhaps :
but the question was, how much. Genius might
alter manners (for the worse, Mrs. Oliver thought)
but it shouldn't be allowed to alter morals.
" Anyhow," said Mrs. Oliver, " I am rather
troubled that Eddy should be so intimate with
these people."
" Eddy is a steady-headed boy," said the Dean.
" He knows where to draw the line." Which is
what parents often think of their children, with
how little warrant ! Drawing the line was precisely
THE VISITORS GO 137
the art which, Arnold complained, Eddy had not
learnt at all.
Jane and Arnold stayed three days more at the
Deanery. Jane drew details of the Cathedral and
studies of Daphne. The Dean thought, as he had
often thought before, that artists were interesting,
child-like, but rather baffling people, incredibly
innocent, or else incredibly apt to accept moral evil
with indifference ; also that, though, he feared,
quite outside the Church, and what he considered
to be pagan in outlook, she displayed, like poor
Wilson Gavin, a very delicate appreciation of
ecclesiastical architecture and religious art.
Mrs. Oliver thought her more unconventional and
lacking in knowledge of the world than any girl
had a right to be.
Daphne and the Bellairs family thought her
a harmless crank, who took off her hat in the
road.
The Bellairs' supposed she must Want a Vote,
till she announced her indifference on that subject,
which disgusted Daphne, an ardent and potentially
militant suffragist, and disappointed her mother, a
calm but earnest member of the National Union for
Women's Suffrage, who went to meetings Daphne
was not allowed at. Jane perhaps it was because
of the queer sexlessness which was part of her charm,
perhaps because of being an artist, and other-worldly
seemed to care little for women's rights or women's
wrongs. Mrs. Oliver noted that her social conscience
was unawakened, and thought her selfish. Artists
138 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
were perhaps like that wrapped up in their own
joy of the lovely world, so that they never turned
and looked into the shadows. Eddy, a keen
suffragist himself, said it was because Jane had
never lived among the very poor.
" She should use her power of vision/' said the
Dean. " She's got plenty. 1 '
" She's one- windowed," Eddy explained. " She
only looks out on to the beautiful things ; she has
a blank wall between her and the ugly."
" In plain words, a selfish young woman," said
Mrs. Oliver, but to herself.
So much for Jane. Arnold was more severely
condemned. The more they all saw of him, the
less they liked him, and the more supercilious he
grew. Even at times he stopped remembering it
was a Deanery, though he really tried to do this.
But the atmosphere did annoy him.
" Mr. Denison has really very unfortunate ways
of expressing himself at times," said Mrs. Oliver,
who had too, Arnold thought.
" Oh, he means well, said Eddy apologetic.
" You mustn't mind him. He's got corns, and if
anyone steps on them he turns nasty. He's always
like that."
" In fact, a conceited pig," said Daphne, not to
herself.
Personally Daphne thought the best of the three
was Mrs. Le Moine, who anyhow dressed well and
could dance, though her habits might be queer.
Better queer habits than queer clothes, any day,
THE VISITORS GO 139
thought Daphne, innately a pagan, with the artist's
eye and the materialist's soul.
Anyhow, Jane and Arnold departed on Monday.
From the point of view of Mrs. Oliver and the
Dean, it might have been better had it been Satur-
day, as their ideas of how to spend Sunday had
been revealed as unfitting a Deanery. The Olivers
were not in the least Sabbatarian, they were much
too wide-minded for that, but they thought their
visitors should go to church once during the day.
Perhaps Jane had been discouraged by her experi-
ences with the Prayer Book on New Year's Eve.
Perhaps it never occurred to her to go. Anyhow
in the morning she stayed at home and drew, and
in the evening wandered into the Cathedral during
the collects, stayed for the anthem, and wandered
out, peaceful and content, with no suspicion of
having done the wrong or unusual thing. Arnold
lay in the hall all the morning and smoked and read
The New Machiavelli, which was one of the books
not liked at the Deanery. (Arnold, by the way,
didn't like it much either, but dipped in and out of
it, grunting when bored.) In consequence (not in
consequence of The New Machiavelli, which she
would have found dull, but of being obliged
herself to go to church), Daphne was cross and
envious, the Dean and his wife slightly dis-
approving, and Eddy sorry about the misunder-
standing.
On the whole, the visit had not been the success
Eddy had wished for. He felt that. In spite of
140 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
some honest endeavour on both sides, the hosts and
guests had not fitted into each other.
Coming back into Welchester from a walk, and
seeing its streets full of peace and blue winter twi-
light and starred with yellow lamps, Eddy thought
it queer that there should be disharmonies in such
a place. It had peace, and a wistful, ordered
beauty, and dignity, and grace. . . .
They were singing in the Cathedral, and lights
glowed redly through the stained windows.
Strangely the place transcended all factions, all
barriers, proving them illusions in the still light of
the Real. Eddy, beneath all his ineffectualities, his
futilities of life and thought, had a very keen sense
of unity, of the coherence of all beauty and good ;
in a sense he did really transcend the barriers recog-
nised by less shallow people. With a welcoming
leap his heart went out to embrace all beauty, all
truth. Surely one could afford to miss no aspect
of it through blindness. Open-eyed he looked into
the blue night of lamps and shadows and men and
women, and beyond it to the stars and the sickle
of the moon, and all of it crowded into his vision,
and he caught his breath a little and smiled, because
it was so good and so much.
When he got home he saw his mother sitting in
the hall, reading the Times. Moved by love and
liking, he put his arm round her shoulders and
bent over her and kissed her. The grace, the breed-
ing, the culture she was surely part of it all, and
should make, like the Cathedral, for harmony.
THE VISITORS GO 141
Arnold had found Mrs. Oliver commonplace. Eddy
found her admirable. Jane had not found her at
all. There was the difference between them.
Undoubtedly Eddy's, whether the most truthful
way or not, was the least wasteful.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CLUB.
SOON after Eddy's return to London, Eileen Le
Moine wrote and asked him to meet her at lunch
at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was a
rather more select restaurant than they and their
friends usually frequented in Soho, so Eddy divined
that she wanted to speak to him alone and unin-
terrupted. She arrived late, as always, and pale,
and a little abstracted, as if she were tired in mind
or body, but her smile flashed out at him, radiant
and kind. Direct and to the point, as usual, she
began at once, as they began to eat risotto, " I
wonder would you do something for Hugh ? "
Eddy said, " I expect so," and added, " I hope
he's much better ? "
" He is not," she told him. " The doctor says
he must go away out of England for quite a
month, and have no bother or work at all. It's
partly nerves, you see, and over-work. Someone
will have to go with him, to look after him, but
they've not settled who yet. He'll probably go
to Greece, and walk about. . . . Anyhow he's to be
away somewhere. . . . And he's been destroying
142
THE CLUB 143
himself with worry because he must leave his work
the settlement and everything and he's afraid
it will go to pieces. You know he has the Club
House open every evening for the boys and young
men, and goes down there himself several nights a
week. What we thought was that perhaps you
wouldn't mind taking charge, being generally res-
ponsible, in fact. There are several helpers, of
course, but Hugh wants someone to see after it and
get people to give lectures and keep the thing
going. We thought you'd perhaps have the time,
and we knew you had the experience and could do
it. It's very important to have someone at the top
that they like ; it just makes all the difference.
And Hugh thinks it so hopeful that they turned
you out of St. Gregory's ; he doesn't entirely
approve of St. Gregory's, as you know. Now will
you ? "
Eddy, after due consideration, said he would do
the best he could.
" I shall be very inept, you know. Will it matter
much ? I suppose the men down there Pollard
and the rest will see me through. And you'll be
coming down sometimes, perhaps."
She said " I may," then looked at him for a
moment speculatively, and added, " But I may not.
I might be away, with Hugh."
" Oh," said Eddy.
" If no one else satisfactory can go with him,"
she said. " He must have the right person. Some-
one who, besides looking after him, will make him
144 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
like living and travelling and seeing things. That's
very important, the doctor says. He is such a
terribly depressed person, poor Hugh. I can
brighten him up. So I rather expect I will go, and
walk about Greece with him. We would both like
it, of course."
" Of course," said Eddy, his chin on his hand,
looking out of the window at the orange trees that
grew in tubs by the door.
" And, lest we should have people shocked,"
added Eileen, " Bridget's coming too. Not that
we mind people with that sort of horrible mind
being shocked but it wouldn't do to spoil Hugh's
work by it, and it might. Hugh, of course, doesn't
want things said about me, either. People are so
stupid. I wonder will the time ever come when
two friends can go about together the way no harm
will be said. Bridget thinks never. But after all,
if no one's prepared to set an example of common-
sense, how are we to move on ever out of all this
horrid, improper tangle and muddle ? Jane, of
course, says, what does it matter, no one who
counts would mind ; but then for Jane so few people
count. Jane would do it herself to-morrow, and
never even suspect that anyone was shocked. But
one can't have people saying things about Hugh,
and he running clubs and settlements and things ;
it would destroy him and them ; he's one of the
people who've got to be careful ; which is a bore,
but can't be helped."
" No, it can't be helped," Eddy agreed. " One
THE CLUB 145
doesn't want people to be hurt or shocked, even
apart from clubs and things ; and so many even
of the nicest people would be."
There she differed from him. " Not the nicest.
The less nice. The foolish, the coarse-minded, the
shut-in, the the tiresome."
Eddy smiled disagreement, and she remembered
that they would be shocked at the Deanery,
doubtless.
" Ah well," she said, " have it your own way.
The nicest, then, as well as the least nice, because
none of them know any better, poor dears. For that
matter, Bridget said she'd be shocked herself if we
went alone. Bridget has moods, you know, when
she prides herself on being proper the British female
guarding the conventions. She's in one of them
now. . . . Well, go and see Hugh to-morrow, will
you, and talk about the Settlement. He'll have a
lot to say, but don't have him excited. It's wonder-
ful what a trust he has in you, Eddy, since you left
St. Gregory's."
" An inadequate reason," said Eddy, " but leading
to a very proper conclusion. Yes, I'll go and see
him, then."
He did so, next day. He found Datcherd at the
writing-table in his library. It was a large and
beautiful library in a large and beautiful house.
The Datcherds were rich (or would have been had
not Datcherd spent much too much money on
building houses for the poor, and Lady Dorothy
Datcherd rather too much on cards and clothes and
K
146 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
other luxuries), and there was about their belongings
that air of caste, of inherited culture, of transmitted
intelligence and recognition of social and political
responsibilities, that is perhaps only to be found
in families with a political tradition of several
generations. Datcherd wasn't a clever literary
free-lance ; he was a hereditary Whig ; that was
why he couldn't be detached, why, about his break-
ing with custom and convention, there would always
be a wrench and strain, a bitterness of hostility,
instead of the light ease of Eileen Le Home's set,
that could gently mock at the heavy-handed world
because it had never been under its dominance,
never conceived anything but freedom. That, and
because of their finer sense of responsibility, is why
it is aristocrats who will always make the best
social revolutionaries. They know that life is real,
life is earnest ; they are bound up with the estab-
lished status by innumerable ties, which either to
keep or to break means purpose. They are, in
fact, heavily involved, all round ; they cannot
escape their liabilities ; they are the grown-up people
in a light-hearted world of children. Surely, then,
they should have more of the reins in their hands,
less jerking of them from below. . . . Such, at
least, were Eddy's reflections in Datcherd's library,
while he waited for Datcherd to finish a letter and
thought how ill he looked.
Their ensuing conversation need not be detailed.
Datcherd told Eddy about arranging lectures at the
Club House whenever he could, about the reading-
THE CLUB 147
room, the gymnasium, the billiard-room, the wood-
work, and the other diversions and educational
enterprises which flourish in such institutions.
Eddy was familiar with them already, having some-
times been down to the Club House. It was in
its main purpose educational. To it came youths
between the ages of fifteen and five and twenty, and
gave their evenings to acquiring instruction in
political economy, sociology, history, art, physical
exercises, science, and other branches of learning.
They had regular instructors ; and besides these,
irregular lecturers came down once or twice a week,
friends of Datcherd's, politicians, social workers,
writers, anyone who would come and was considered
by Datcherd suitable. The Fabian Society, it
seemed, throve still among the Club members, and
was given occasional indulgences such as Mr. Shaw
or Mr. Sidney Webb, and lesser treats frequently.
They had debates, and other habits such as will be
readily imagined. Having indicated these, Datcherd
proceeded to tell Eddy something about his assistant
workers, in what ways each needed firm or tender
handling.
While they were talking, Billy Raymond came
in, to tell Datcherd about a new poet he had found,
who wrote verse that seemed suitable for Further.
Billy Raymond, a generous and appreciative person,
was given to finding new poets, usually in cellars,
attics, or workmen's flats. It was commonly said
that he less found them than made them, by some
transmuting magic of his own touch. Anyhow
148 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
they quite often produced poetry, for longer or
shorter periods. This latest one was a Socialist in
conviction and expression ; hence his suitability for
Further. Eddy wasn't sure that they ought to
talk of Further ; it obviously had Hugh excited.
He and Billy Raymond came away together,
which rather pleased Eddy, as he liked Billy better
than most people of his acquaintance, which was
saying much. There was a breadth about Billy, a
large and gentle tolerance, a courtesy towards all
sorts and conditions of men and views, that made
him restful, as compared, for instance, with the
intolerant Arnold Denison. Perhaps the difference
was partly that Billy was a poet, with the artist's
vision, which takes in, and Arnold only a critic,
whose function it is to select and exclude. Billy,
in short, was a producer, and Arnold a publisher ;
and publishers have to be for ever saying that
things won't do, aren't good enough. If they can't
say that, they are poor publishers indeed. Billy,
in Eddy's view, approached more nearly than most
people to that synthesis which, Eddy believed,
unites all factions and all sections of truth.
Billy said, " Poor dear Hugh. I am extraordi-
narily sorry for him. I am glad you are going to
help in the Settlement. He hates leaving it so
much. I'm sure I couldn't worry about my work
or anything else if I was going to walk about Greece
for a month ; but he's so so ascetic. I think I
respect Datcherd more than almost anyone ; he's
so absolutely single-minded. He won't enjoy Greece
THE CLUB 149
a bit, I believe, because of all the people in slums
who can't be there, and wouldn't if they could. It
will seem to him wicked waste of money. Waste,
you know ! My word ! "
" Perhaps/' said Eddy, " he'll learn how to enjoy
life more now his wife has left him. She must have
been a weight on his mind."
" Oh, well," said Billy, " I don't know. Perhaps
so. ... One never really felt that she quite existed,
and I daresay he didn't either, so I don't suppose
her being gone will make so very much difference.
She was a sort of unreal thing a shadow. I
always got on with her pretty well ; in fact, I
rather liked her in a way ; but I never felt she was
actually there."
" She'd be there to Datcherd, though," Eddy said,
feeling that Billy's wisdom hardly embraced the
peculiar circumstances of married life, and Billy,
never much interested in personal relations, said,
" Perhaps."
They were in Kensington, and Billy went to call
on his grandmother, who lived in Gordon Place, and
to whom he went frequently to play backgammon
and relate the news. Billy was a very affectionate
and dutiful young man, and also nearly as fond
of backgammon as his grandmother was. With
his grandmother lived an aunt, who didn't care for
his poetry much, and Billy was very fond of her
too. He sometimes went with his grandmother to
St. Mary Abbot's Church, to help her to see weddings
(which she preferred even to backgammon), or
150 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
attend services. She was proud of Billy, but, for
poets to read, preferred Scott, Keble, or Doctor
Watts. She admitted herself behind modern times,
but loved to see and hear what young people were
doing, though it usually seemed rather silly. To
her Billy went this afternoon, and Eddy meanwhile
called on Mrs. Le Moine and Miss Hogan in Campden
Hill Road. He found Miss Hogan in, just returned
from a picture-show, and she gave him tea and
conversation.
" Of course you've heard all about our inten-
tions. Actually we're off on Thursday. . . . Last
time Eileen went abroad, the people she was with
took a maniac by mistake ; so very uncomfortable.
I quite thought after that she had decided that
travel was not for her. However, it seems not.
You know I'm sure she told you she was for
going just he and she, tout simple. Most improper,
of course, not to say unwholesome. They meant
no harm, dear children, but who would believe
that, and even so, what are the convenances for but
to be observed ? I put it before Eileen in my most
banal and borne manner, but, needless to say, how
fruitless ! So at last I had to offer to go too. Of
course from kindness she had to accept that,
though it won't be at all the same, particularly not
to Hugh. Anyhow there we are, and we're off on
Thursday. Hugh will be very much upset by the
Channel ; I believe he always is ; no constitution
whatever, poor creature. Also I believe he is of
those with whom it lasts on between Calais and
THE CLUB 151
Paris a most unhappy class, but to be avoided as
travelling companions. I know too well, because
of an aunt of mine. . . . Well, anyhow we're going
to take the train to Trieste, and then a ship to
Kalamata, and then take to our feet and walk
across Greece. Hitherto I have only done Greece
on the Dunnottar Castle, in the care of Sir Henry
Lunn, which, if less thrilling, is safer, owing to the
wild dogs that tear the pedestrian on the Greek
hills, one is given to understand. I only hope we
may be preserved. . . . And meanwhile you're
going to run those wonderful clubs of Hugh's. I
wonder if you'll do it at all as he would wish ! It
is beautiful to see how he trusts you why, I can't
imagine. In his place I wouldn't ; I would rather
hand over my clubs to some unlettered subordinate
after my own heart and bred in my own faith. As
for you, you have so many faiths that Hugh's will
be swamped in the crowd. But you feel confident
that you will do it well ? That is good, and the
main qualification for success."
Thus Miss Hogan babbled on, partly because she
always did, partly because the young man looked
rather strained, and she was afraid if she paused
that he might say how sad he was at Eileen's going,
and she believed these things better unexpressed.
He wasn't the only young man who was fond of
Eileen, and Miss Hogan had her own ideas as to
how to deal with such emotions. She didn't believe
it went deep with Eddy, or that he would admit
to himself any emotion at all beyond friendship,
152 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
owing to his own views as to what was right, not
to speak of what was sensible ; and no doubt if
left to himself for a month or so, he would manage
to recover entirely. It would be so obviously silly,
as well as wrong, to fall in love with Eileen Le
Moine, and Bridget did not believe Eddy, in spite
of some confusion in his mental outlook, to be
really silly.
She directed the conversation on to the picture-
show she had just been to, and that reminded her
of SaUy Peters.
" Did you hear what the stupid child's done ?
Joined the Wild Women, and jabbed her umbrella
into a lot of Post Impressionists in the Grafton
Galleries. Of course they caught her at it the
elumsiest child ! and took her up on the spot, and
she's coming up for trial to-morrow with three other
lunatics, old enough to know better than to lead
an ignorant baby like that into mischief. I expect
she'll get a month, and serve her right. I suppose
she'll go on hunger-strike ; but she's so plump that
it will probably affect her health not unfavourably.
I don't know who got hold of her ; doubtless some
mad and bad creatures who saw she had no more
sense than a little owl, and set her blundering into
shop-windows and picture-glasses like a young
blue-bottle. ... By the way, though you are, I
know, so many things, I feel sure you draw the
line at the militants."
Eddy said he thought he saw their point of view.
" Point of view ! They've not one," Miss Hogan
THE CLUB 153
cried. " I suppose, like other decent people, you
want women to have votes ! Well, you must grant
they've spoilt any chance of that, anyhow smashed
up the whole suffrage campaign with their horrible
jabbing umbrellas and absurd little bombs."
Eddy granted that. " They've smashed the
suffrage, for the present, yes. Poor things." He
reflected for a moment on these unfortunate
persons, and added, " But I do see what they
mean, all the same. They smash and spoil and
hurt things and people and causes, because they
are stupid with anger; but they've got things
to be angry about, after all. Oh, I admit they're
very, very stupid and inartistic, and hopelessly
unaesthetic and British and unimaginative and
cruel and without any humour at all but I do see
what they mean, in a way."
" Well, don't explain it to me, then, because I've
heard it at first-hand far too often lately."
Eddy went round to the rooms in Old Compton
Street which he shared with Arnold Denison.
Arnold had chosen Soho for residence partly because
he liked it, partly to improve his knowledge of
languages, and partly to study the taste of the
neighbourhood in literature, as it was there that he
intended, when he had more leisure, to start a
bookshop. Eddy, too, liked it. (This is a superfluous
observation, because anybody would.) In fact, he
liked his life in general just now. He liked reviewing
for the Daily Post and writing for himself (himself
via the editors of various magazines who met with
154 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
his productions on their circular route and pushed
them on again). He liked getting review copies of
books to keep ; his taste was catholic and omni-
verous, and boggled at nothing. With joy he perused
everything, even novels which had won prizes in
novel competitions, popular discursive works called
" About the Place/ 1 and books of verse (to do them
justice, not even popular) called " Pipings," and
such. He wrote appreciative reviews of all of them,
because he appreciated them all. It may fairly be
said that he saw each as its producer saw it, which
may or may not be what a reviewer should try to
do, but is anyhow grateful and comforting to the
reviewed. Arnold, who did not do this, in vain
protested that he would lose his job soon. " No
literary editor will stand such indiscriminate ful-
someness for long. . . . It's a dispensation of provi-
dence that you didn't come and read for us, as I
once mistakenly wished. You would, so far as
your advice carried any weight, have dragged us
down into the gutter. Have you no sense of values
or of decency ? Can you really like these florid
effusions of base minds ? " He was reading through
Eddy's last review, which was of a book of verse
by a lady gifted with emotional tendencies and an
admiration for landscape. Arnold shook his head
and laughed as he put the review down.
" The queer thing about it is that it's not a bad
review, in spite of everything you say in apprecia-
tion of the lunatic who wrote the book. That's
what I can't understand ; how you can be so
THE CLUB
155
intelligent and yet so idiotic. You've given the
book exactly, in a few phrases no one could
possibly mistake its nature and then you make
several quite true, not to say brilliant remarks
about it and then you go on and say how good
it is. ... Well, I shall be interested to see how
long they keep you on."
" They like me/' Eddy assured him, complacently.
" They think I write well. The authors like me,
too. Many a heartfelt letter of thanks do I get
from those whom there are few to praise and fewer
still to love. As you may have noticed, they strew
the breakfast table. Is it comme il faut for me to
answer ? I do I mean, I did, both times
because it seemed politer, but it was perhaps a
mistake, because the correspondence between me
and one of them has not ceased yet, and possibly
never will, since neither of us likes to end it. How
involving life is ! "
Meanwhile he went to the Club House by the Lea
most evenings. That, too, he liked. He had a
gift which Datcherd had detected in him, the gift
of getting on well with all sorts of people, irrespec-
tive of their incomes, breeding, social status, in-
telligence, or respectability. He did not, like Arnold,
rule out the unintelligent, the respectable, the
commonplace ; nor, like Datcherd, the orthodoxly
religious ; nor, as Jane did, without knowing it,
the vulgar ; nor, like many delightful and com-
panionable and well-bred people, the uneducated,
those whom we, comprehensively and rightly, call
156 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
the poor rightly, because, though poverty may
seem the merest superficial and insignificant attri-
bute of the completed product, it is also the original,
fundamental cause of all the severing differences.
Molly Bellairs thought Eddy would have made a
splendid clergyman, a better one than his father,
who was unlimitedly kind, but ill at ease, and talked
above poor people's heads. Eddy, with less grip
of theological problems, had a surer hold of points
of view, and apprehended the least witty of jokes,
the least pathetic of quarrels, the least picturesque
of emotions. Hence he was popular.
He found that the sort of lectures Datcherd's
clubs were used to expect were largely on subjects
like the Minimum Wage, Capitalism versus In-
dustrialism, Organised Labour, the Eight Hours
Day, Poor Law Reform, the Endowment of Mothers,
Co-partnership, and such ; all very interesting and
profitable if well treated. So Eddy wrote to Bob
Traherne, the second curate at St. Gregory's, to
ask him to give one. Traherne replied that he
would, if Eddy liked, give a course of six. He
proceeded to do so, and as he was a good, concise,
and pungent speaker, drew large audiences and was
immensely popular. At the end of his lecture
he sold penny tracts by Church Socialists;
really sold them, in large numbers. After his
third lecture, which was on the Minimum Wage,
he said he would be glad to receive the names of
any persons who would like to join the Church
Socialist League, the most effective society he knew
THE CLUB 157
of for furthering these objects. He received seven
forthwith, and six more after the next.
Protests reached Eddy from a disturbed secretary,
a pale, red-haired young man, loyal to Datcherd' s
spirit.
" It's not what Mr. Datcherd would like, Mr.
Oliver."
Eddy said, " Why on earth shouldn't he ? He
likes the men to be Socialists, doesn't he ? "
" Not that sort, he doesn't. At least, he wouldn't.
He likes them to think for themselves, not to be
tied up with the Church."
" Well, they are thinking for themselves. He
wouldn't like them to be tied up to his beliefs
either, surely. I feel sure it's all right, Pollard.
Anyhow, I can't stop them joining the League if
they want to, can I ? "
" We ought to stop the Reverend Traherne
that's where it is. He'd talk the head off an ele-
phant. He gets a hold of them, and abuses it. It
isn't right, and it isn't fair, nor what Mr. Datcherd
would like in the Club."
" Nonsense," said Eddy. " Mr. Datcherd would
be delighted. Mr. Traherne's a first-rate lecturer,
you know ; they learn more from him than they
do from all the Socialist literature they get out of
the library."
Worse than this, several young men who despised
church-going, quite suddenly took to it, bicycling
over to the Borough to hear the Reverend Traherne
preach. Datcherd had no objection to anyone
158 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
going to church if from conviction, but this sort of
unbalanced, unreasoning yielding to a personal
influence he would certainly consider degrading
and unworthy of a thinking citizen. Be a man's
convictions what they might, Datcherd held, let
them be convictions, based on reason and principle,
not incoherent impulses and chance emotions. It
was almost certain that he would not have approved
of Traherne's influence over his clubs.
Still less, Pollard thought, would he have ap-
proved oi Captain Greville's. Captain Greville was
a retired captain, who needs no description here.
His mission in life was to talk about the National
Service League. Eddy, who, it may be remem-
bered, belonged among other leagues to this, met
him somewhere, and requested him to come and
address the club on the subject one evening. He
did so. He made a very good speech, for thirty-
five minutes, which is exactly the right length for
this topic. (Some people err, and speak too long,
on this as on many other subjects, and miss their
goal in consequence.) Captain Greville said, How
delightful to strengthen the national fibre and the
sense of civic duty by bringing all men into relation
with national ideas through personal training dur-
ing youth ; to strengthen the national health by
sound physical development and discipline, et-
cetera ; to bring to bear upon the most important
business with which a nation can have to deal,
namely, National Defence, the knowledge, the
interest, and the criticism of the national mind;
THE CLUB 159
to safeguard the nation against war by showing
that we are prepared for it, and ensure that, should
war break out, peace may be speedily re-estab-
lished ; in short, to Organize our Man Power ;
further, not to be shot in time of invasion for
carrying a gun unlawfully, which is a frequent
incident (sensation). He said a good deal more,
which need not be specified, as it is doubtless
familiar to many, and would be unwelcome to
others. At the end he said, " Are you Democrats ?
Then join the League, which advocates the only
democratic system of defence. Are you Socialists ? "
(this was generous, because he disliked Socialists
very much) " Then join the League, which aims
at a reform strictly in accordance with the princi-
ples of co-operative socialism ; in fact, many
people base their opposition to it on the grounds
that it is too socialistic. Finally (he observed),
what we want is not a standing army, and not a
war God forbid but men capable of fighting
like men in defence of their wives, their children,
and their homes/'
The Club apparently realised suddenly that this
was what they did want, and crowded up to sign
cards and receive buttons inscribed with the in-
spiring motto : " The Path of Duty is the Path of
Safety." In short, quite a third of the young
men became adherents of the League, encouraged
thereto by Eddy, and congratulated by the en-
thusiastic captain. They were invited to ask
questions, so they did. They asked, What about
i6o THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
employers chucking a man for good because he had
to be away for his four months camp ? Answer :
This would not happen ; force would be exerted
over the employer. (Some scepticism, but a general
sentiment of approval for this, as for something
which would indeed be grand if it could be worked,
and which might in itself be worth joining the
League for, merely to score off the employer.)
Further answer : The late Sir Joseph Whitworth
said, " The labour of a man who has gone through
a course of military drill is worth eighteen-pence a
week more than that of one untrained, as through
the training received in military drill men learn
ready obedience, attention, and combination, all
of which are so necessary in work." Question :
Would they get it ? Answer : Get what ? Ques-
tion : The eighteen-pence. Answer : In justice they
certainly should. Question : Would employers be
forced to give it them ? Answer : All these details
are left to be worked out later in the Bill. Con-
clusion : The Bill would not be popular among
employers. Further conclusion : Let us join it.
Which they did.
Before he departed, Captain Greville said that
he was very pleased with the encouraging results
of the evening, and he hoped that as many as would
be interested would come and see a cinematograph
display he was giving in Hackney next week, called
" In Time of Invasion." From that he would
venture to say they would learn something of the
horrors of unprepared attack. The Club went to
THE CLUB 161
that. It was a splendid show, well worth three-
pence. It abounded in men being found unlawfully
with guns and being shot like rabbits ; in un-
trained and incompetent soldiers fleeing from the
foe ; abandoned mothers defending their cottage
homes to the last against a brutal soldiery ; corpses
of children tossed on pikes to make a Prussian
holiday ; Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the one
saving element in the terrible display of national
incompetence, performing marvellous feats of skill
and heroism, and dying like flies in discharge of
their duties. Afterwards there was a very different
series to illustrate the Invasion as it would be had
the National Service Act been passed. " The
Invaders realise their Mistake," was inscribed on
the preliminary curtain. Well-trained, efficient,
and courageous young men then sallied into the
field, proud in the possession of fire-arms they had
a right to, calm in their perfect training, temerity,
and discipline, presenting an unflinching and im-
pregnable front to the cowering foe, who retreated
in broken disorder, realising their mistake (cheers).
Then on the Finis curtain blazed out the grand
moral of it all : " The Path of Duty is the Path of
Safety. Keep your homes inviolate by learning
to Defend them." (Renewed cheers, and " God Save
the King").
A very fine show, to which, it may be added, Mr.
Sidney Pollard, the Club Secretary, did not go.
It was soon after this that Captain Greville,
having been much pleased very pleased, as he
L
162 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
said by the Lea-side Club, presented its library
with a complete set of Kipling. Kipling, since
the Kipling period was some years past, was not
well known by the Club ; appearing among them
suddenly, on the top of the Cinema, he made some-
thing of a furore. If Mr. Datcherd would get him
to write poetry for Further, now, instead of Mr.
Henderson and Mr. Raymond, and all the people
he did get, that would be something like. Finding
Kipling so popular, and yielding to a request, Eddy,
who read rather well, gave some Kipling readings,
which were much enjoyed by a crowded audience.
" Might as well take them to a music hall at
once/' complained Mr. Pollard.
" Would they like it ? I will," returned Eddy,
and did so, paying for a dozen boys at the Empire.
It must not be supposed that Eddy neglected,
in the cult of a manly patriotism, the other aspects
of life. On the contrary, he induced Billy Ray-
mond, a good-natured person, to give a lecture
on the Drama, and after it, took a party to the
Savoy Theatre, to see Granville Barker's Shake-
speare, which bored them a good deal. Then he
got Jane to give an address on drawings, and, to
illustrate it, took some rather apathetic youths to
see Jane's own exhibition. Also he conducted a
party to where Mr. Roger Fry was speaking on
Post-Impressionism, and then, when they had
thoroughly grasped it, to the gallery where it was just
then being exemplified. First he told them that they
could laugh at the pictures if they choose, of course,
THE CLUB 163
but that that was an exceedingly stupid way of
looking at them ; so they actually did not, such was
his influence over them at this time. Instead,
when he pointed out to them the beauties of Matisse,
they pretended to agree with him, and listened
tolerant, if bored, while he had an intelligent dis-
cussion with an artist friend whom he met.
All this is to say that Eddy had his young men
well in hand better in hand than Datcherd, who
was less cordial and hail-fellow-well-met with them,
had ever had them. It was great fun. Influencing
people in a mass always is ; it feels rather like
driving a large and powerful car, which is sent
swerving to right or left by a small turn of the
wrist. Probably actors feel like this when acting,
only more so ; perhaps speakers feel like this when
speaking. Doing what you like with people, the
most interesting and absorbing of the plastic
materials ready to the hand that is better than
working with clay, paints, or words. Not that
Eddy was consciously aware of what he was doing
in that way ; only about each fresh thing as it
turned up he was desirous to make these lads that
he liked feel keen and appreciative, as he felt him-
self ; and he was delighted that they did so, showing
themselves thereby so sane, sensible, and intelligent.
He had found them keen enough on some impor-
tant things industrial questions, certain aspects
of Socialism, the Radical Party in politics ; it was
for him to make them equally keen on other things,
hitherto apparently rather overlooked by them.
THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
One of these things was the Church ; here his
success was only partial, but distinctly encourag-
ing. Another was the good in Toryism, which
they were a little blind to. To open their eyes,
he had a really intelligent Conservative friend of
his to address them on four successive Tuesdays on
politics. He did not want in the least to change
their politics what can be better than to be a
Radical ? (this was as well, because it would
have been a task outside even his sphere of influ-
ence) but certainly they should see both sides.
So both sides were set before them ; and the result
was certainly that they looked much less intoler-
antly than before upon the wrong side, because Mr.
Oliver, who was a first-rater, gave it his counten-
ance, as he had to Matisse and that tedious thing
at the Savoy. Matisse, Shakespeare, Tariff Reform,
they all seemed silly, but there, they pleased a
good chap and a pleasant friend, who could also
appreciate Harry Lauder, old Victor Gray son,
Kipling, and the Minimum Wage.
Such were the interests of a varied and crowded
life on club nights by the Lea. Distraught by
them, Mr. Sidney Pollard wrote to his master in
Greece (address, Poste-Restante, Athens, where
eventually his wanderings would lead him and he
would call for letters) to say that all was going to
sixes and sevens, and here was a Tariff Reformer let
loose on the Club on Tuesday evenings, and a parson
to rot about his fancy Socialism on Wednesdays,
and another parson holding a mission service in
THE CLUB 165
the street last Sunday afternoon, not even about
Socialism (this was Father Dempsey) and half
the club hanging about him and asking him posers,
which is always the beginning of the end, because
any parson, having been bred to it, can answer
posers so much more posingly than anyone can ask
them ; and some captain or other talking that
blanked nonsense about National Service, and
giving round his silly buttons as if they were choco-
late drops at a school-feast, and leading them on
to go to an idiot Moving Picture Show, calculated
to turn them all into Jingoes of the deepest dye ;
and some Blue Water maniac gassing about Dread-
noughts, so that " We want eight and we won't
wait " was sung by the school-children in the streets
instead of " Every nice girl loves a sailor," which
may mean, emotionally, much the same, but is
politically offensive. Further, Mr. Oliver had been
giving Kipling readings, and half the lads were
Kipling-mad, and fought to get Barrack-room
Ballads out of the library. Finally, " Mr. Oliver
may mean no harm, but he is doing a lot," said Mr.
Pollard. " If he goes on here, the tone of the Club
will be spoilt, he is personally popular, owing to
being a friend to all in his manner and having
pleasant ways, and that is the worst sort. If you
are not coming home yourself soon, perhaps you
will make some change by writing, and tell Mr.
Oliver if you approve of above things or not. I
have thought it right to let you know all, and you
will act according as you think. I very much
166 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
trust your health is on the mend, you are badly
missed here."
Datcherd got that letter at last, but not just yet,
for he was then walking inland across the Plain of
Thessaly between Volo and Tempe.
CHAPTER X.
DATCHERD'S RETURN.
ON the last day of April, Eddy procured an Irish
Nationalist to address the Club on Home Rule.
He was a hot-tempered person, and despised English
people and said so ; which was foolish in a speaker,
and rather discounted his other remarks, because
the Club young men preferred to be liked, even by
those who made speeches to them. His cause,
put no doubt over-vehemently, was on the whole
approved of by the Club, Radically inclined as it in
the main was ; but it is a noticeable fact that this
particular subject is apt to fall dead on English
working-class audiences, who have, presumably,
a deeply-rooted feeling that it does not seriously
affect them either way. Anyhow, this Nationalist
hardly evoked the sympathy he deserved in the
Club. Also they were inclined to be amused
at his accent, which was unmodified Wexford.
Probably Eddy appreciated him and his arguments
more than anyone else did.
So, when on the second day of May Eddy introduced
an Orangeman to speak on the same subject from
167
168 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
another point of view, the audience was inclined to
receive him favourably. The Orangeman was
young, much younger than the Nationalist, and
equally Irish, though from another region, both
geographically and socially. His accent, what he
had of it, is best described as polite North of Ire-
land, and he had been at Cambridge with Eddy.
Though capable of fierceness, and with an Ulster-
will-fight look in the eye, the fierceness was directed
rather against his disloyal compatriots than against
his audience, which was more satisfactory to the
audience. And whenever he liked he could make
them laugh, which was more satisfactory still.
From his face you might, before he spoke, guess
him to be a Nationalist, so essentially and indubit-
ably south-west Irish was the look of it. To avert
so distressing an error he did speak, as a rule, quite
a lot.
He spoke this evening with energy, lucidity,
humour, and vehemence, and the Club listened
appreciatively. Gradually he worked them up
from personal approval of himself to partial ap-
proval of, or at least sympathy with, his cause.
He went into the financial question with an impos-
ing production of figures. He began several times,
" The Nationalists will tell you/' and then proceeded
to repeat precisely what the Nationalist the other
night had told them, only to knock it down with an
argument that was sometimes conclusive, often
would just do, and occasionally just wouldn't;
and the Club cheered the first sort, accepted the
DATCHERD'S RETURN 169
second as ingenious, and said " Oh," good-humour-
edly, to the third. Altogether it was an excellent
speech, full of profound conviction, with some
incontrovertible sense, and a smattering of in-
telligent nonsense. Not a word was dull, and
not a word was unkind to the Pope of Rome or
his adherents, as is usual, and perhaps essential,
in such speeches when produced in Ireland, and
necessitates their careful expurgating before they
are delivered to English audiences, who have a
tolerant, if supercilious, feeling towards that mis-
guided Church. The young man spoke for half
an hour, and held his audience. He held them even
when he said, drawing to the end, " I wonder do
any of you here know anything at all about Ireland
and Irish politics, or do you get it all second-hand
from the English Radical papers ? Do you know
at all what you're talking about ? Bad govern-
ment, incompetent economy, partiality, prejudice,
injustice, tyranny that's what the English Radicals
want to hand us over to. And that is what they
will not hand us over to, because we in Ulster, the
most truly and nationally Irish part of Ireland,
have signed this." He produced from his breast-
pocket the Covenant, and held it up before them,
so that they all saw the Red Hand that blazed out
on it. He read it through to them, and sat down.
Cheers broke out, stamping of feet, clapping of
hands ; it was the most enthusiastic reception a
speaker had ever had at the Club.
Someone began singing " Rule Britannia," as the
i;o THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
nearest expression that occurred to him of the
patriotic and anti-disruptive sentiments that filled
him, and it was taken up and shouted all over the
room. It was as if the insidious influence of Kipling,
the National Service League, the Invasion Pictures,
the Primrose League, and the Blue Water School,
which had been eating with gradual corruption
into the sound heart of the Club, was breaking
out at last, under the finishing poison of Orangeism,
into an eruption which could only be eased by song
and shout. So they sang and shouted, some from
enthusiasm, some for fun, and Eddy said to his
friend the speaker, " You've fairly fetched them
this time," and looked smiling over the jubilant
crowd, from the front chairs to the back, and, at
the back of all, met the eyes of Datcherd. He
stood leaning against the door, unjubilant, songless,
morose, his hands in his pockets, a cynical smile
faintly touching his lips. At his side was Sidney
Pollard, with very bright eyes in a white face, and
a " There, you see for yourself " air about him.
Eddy hadn't known Datcherd was coming down
to the Club to-night, though he knew he had arrived
in England, three weeks before he had planned.
Seeing him, he rose to his feet and smiled, and the
audience, following his eyes, turned round and saw
their returned president and master. Upon that
they cheered again, louder if possible than before.
Datcherd's acknowledgment was of the faintest.
He stood there for a moment longer, then turned
and left the room.
DATCHERD'S RETURN 171
The meeting ended, after the usual courtesies
and votes of thanks, and Eddy took his friend
away.
" You must come and be introduced to Datcherd,"
he said. " I wonder where he's got to."
His friend looked doubtful. " He could have
come and spoken to me in the room if he'd wanted.
Perhaps he didn't. Perhaps he'd be tired after his
journey. He didn't look extraordinarily cheery,
somehow. I think I'll not bother him."
" Oh, he's all right. He only looked like a Home
Ruler listening to Orange cheering. I expect they
don't, as a rule, look very radiant, do they ? "
" They do not. But you don't mean he'd mind
my coming to speak, surely ? Because, if he does,
I ought never to have come. You told me they had
lectures from all sorts of people on all sorts of
things."
" So they do. No, of course he wouldn't mind.
But that's the way he's bound to look in public,
as a manifesto, don't you see. Like a clergyman
listening to a Nonconformist preacher. He has to
assert his principles."
" But a Church clergyman probably wouldn't
get a Nonconformist to preach in his church.
They don't, I believe, as a rule."
Eddy was forced to admit that, unfortunately,
they didn't.
His friend, a person of good manners, was a little
cross. " We've had him offended now, and I don't
blame him. You should have told me. I should
172 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
never have come. It's such rustic manners, to
break into a person's Club and preach things he
hates. I could tell he hated it, by the look in his
eye. He kept the other end of the room, the way
he wouldn't break out at me and say anything
ferocious. No, I'm not coming to look for him ; I
wouldn't dare look him in the face ; you can go
by yourself. You've fairly let me in, Oliver. I
hate being rude to the wrong side, it gives them
such an advantage. They're rude enough to us, as
a rule, to do for the two. / don't want to have
anything to do with his little Radical Club ; if he
wants to keep it to himself and his Radical friends,
he's welcome."
" You're talking nonsense," Eddy said. " Did
it behave like a Radical club to-night ? "
" It did not. Which is exactly why Datcherd
has every reason to be annoyed. Well, you can
tell him from me that it was no one's fault but
your own. Good-night."
He departed, more in anger than in sorrow (it
had really been rather fun to-night, though rude)
and Eddy went to find Datcherd.
But he didn't find Datcherd. He was told that
Datcherd had left the Club and gone home. His
friend's remark came back to him. " He kept the
other end of the room, the way he wouldn't break
out at me and say anything ferocious." Was that
what Datcherd was doing to him, or was he tired
after his journey ? Eddy hoped for the best, but
felt forebodings. Datcherd certainly had not looked
DATCHERD'S RETURN 173
cordial or cheerful. The way he had looked had
disappointed and rather hurt the Club. They felt
that another expression, after three months absence,
would have been more suitable. After all, for
pleasantness of demeanour, Mr. Datcherd, even at
the best of times (which this, it seemed, hardly was)
wasn't a patch on Mr. Oliver.
These events occurred on a Friday evening. It
so happened that Eddy was going out of town next
morning for a Cambridge week-end, so he would
not see Datcherd till Monday evening. He and
Arnold spent the week-end at Arnold's home.
Whenever Eddy visited the Denisons he was struck
afresh by the extreme and rarefied refinement of
their atmosphere ; they (except Arnold, who had
been coarsened, like himself, by contact with the
world) were academic in the best sense ; theoretical
philosophical, idealistic, serenely sure of truth,
making up in breeding what, possibly, they a little
lacked (at least Mrs. Denison and her daughter
lacked) in humour ; never swerving from the politi-
cal, religious, and economic position they had
taken up once and for all. A trifle impenetrable
and closed to new issues, they were ; the sort of
Liberal one felt would never, however changed the
circumstances, become Conservative. A valuable
type, representing breeding and conscience in a
rough-and-tumble world ; if Christian and Anglican,
it often belongs to the Christian Social Union ; if
not, like the Denisons, it will surely belong to some
other well-intentioned and high-principled society
174 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
for bettering the poor. They are, in brief, gentle-
men and ladies. Life in the country is too sleepy
for them and their progressive ideas ; London is
quite too wide awake ; so they flourish like
exquisite flowers in our older Universities and in
Manchester, and visit Greece and Italy in the
vacations.
Eddy found it peaceful to be with the Denisons.
To come back to London on Monday morning was
a little disturbing. He could not help a slight feel-
ing of anxiety about his meeting with Datcherd.
Perhaps it was just as well, he thought, to have given
Datcherd two days to recover from the shock of
the Unionist meeting. He hoped that Datcherd,
when he met him, would look less like a Home
Ruler listening to Orange cheering (a very unpleasant
expression of countenance) than he had on Friday
evening. Thinking that he might as well find out
about this as soon as possible, he called at Datcherd's
house that afternoon.
Datcherd was in his library, as usual, writing.
He got up and shook hands with Eddy, and said,
" I was coming round to see you/* which relieved
Eddy. But he spoke rather gravely, and added,
" There are some things I want to talk to you
about/' and sat down and nursed his gaunt knee
in his thin hands and gnawed his lips.
Eddy asked him if he was much better, thinking
he didn't look it, and if he had had a good time.
Datcherd scarcely answered ; he was one of those
people who only think of one thing at once, and
DATCHERD'S RETURN 175
he was thinking just now of something other than
his health or his good time.
He said, after a moment's silence, " It's been
extremely kind of you to manage the Club all this
time."
Eddy, with a wan smile, said apologetically,
" You know, we really did have a Home Ruler to
speak on Wednesday."
Datcherd relaxed a little, and smiled in his turn.
" I know. In fact, I gather that there are very
few representatives of any causes whatever whom
you have not had to speak."
" I see," said Eddy, " that Pollard has told you
all."
" Pollard has told me some things. And you
must remember that I spent both Saturday and
Sunday evenings at the Club."
" What/' inquired Eddy hopefully, " did you
think of it ? "
Datcherd was silent for a moment. Perhaps he
was remembering again how kind it had been of
Eddy to manage the Club all this time. When he
spoke, it was with admirable moderation.
" It hardly," he said, " seems quite on the lines
I left it on. I was a little surprised, I must own.
We had a very small Club on Sunday night, because
a lot of them had gone off to some service in church.
That surprised me rather. They never used to do
that. Of course I don't mind, but "
"That's Traherne," said Eddy. "He got a
tremendous hold on some of them when he came
176 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
down to speak. He's always popular, you know,
with men and lads."
" I daresay. What made you get him ? "
" Oh, to speak about rents and wages and things.
He's very good. They liked him."
" That is apparent. He's dragged some of them
into the Church Socialist League, and more to
church after him. Well, it's their own business, of
course ; if they like the sort of thing, I've no
objection. They'll get tired of it soon, I expect. . . .
But, if you'll excuse my asking, why on earth have
you been corrupting their minds with lectures on
Tariff Reform, National Service, Ulsterism and
Dreadnoughts ? Didn't you realise that one can't
let in that sort of influence without endangering
the sanity of a set of half-educated lads ? I left
them reading Mill ; I find them reading Kipling.
Upon my word, anyone would think you belonged
to the Primrose League, from the way you've been
going on."
" I do," said Eddy simply.
Datcherd stared at him, utterly taken aback.
" You what ? "
" I belong to the Primrose League," Eddy re-
peated. " Why shouldn't I ? "
Datcherd pulled his startled wits together, and
laughed shortly.
" I beg your pardon. The mistake, I suppose,
was mine. I had somehow got it into my head
that you were a Fabian."
" So I am," said Eddy, patiently explaining.
DATCHERD'S RETURN 177
" All those old things, you know. And most of the
new ones as well. I'm sorry if you didn't know ;
I suppose I ought to have mentioned it, but I never
thought about it. Does it matter ? "
Datcherd was gazing at him with grave, startled
eyes, as at a maniac.
" Matter ? Well, I don't know. Yes, I suppose
it would have mattered, from my point of view, if
I'd known. Because it just means that you've
been playing when I thought you were in earnest ;
that, whereas I supposed you took your convictions
and mine seriously and meant to act on them, really
they're just a game to you. You take no cause
seriously, I suppose."
" I take all causes seriously," Eddy corrected
him quickly. He got up, and walked about the
room, his hands deep in his pockets, frowning a
little because life was so serious.
' You see," he explained, stopping in front of
Datcherd and frowning down on him, " truth is so
pervasive ; it gets everywhere ; leaks into every-
thing. Like cod-liver oil spilt in a trunk of clothes ;
everything's saturated with it. (Is that a nasty
comparison ? I thought of it because it happened
to me the other day.) The clothes are all different
from each other, but the cod-liver oil is in all
of them for ever and ever. Truth is like that
pervasive. Isn't it ? "
" No," said Datcherd, with vehemence. " No.
Truth is not like that. If it were, it would mean
that one thing was no better and no worse than
M
178 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
another ; that all progress, moral and otherwise,
was illusive. We should all become fatalists, torpid,
uncaring, dead, sitting with our hands before us and
drifting with the tide. There'd be an end of all
fight, all improvement, all life. But truth is not
like that. One thing is better than another, and
always will be. Democracy is a better aim than
oligarchy ; freedom is better than tyranny ; work
is better than idleness. And, because it fights,
however slowly and hesitatingly, on the side of
those better things, Liberalism is better than
Toryism, the League of Young Liberals a better
thing to encourage among the young men of the
country than the Primrose League. You say truth
is everywhere. Frankly, I look at the Primrose
League, and all your Tory Associations, and I can't
find it. I see only a monumental tissue of lies.
Lying to the people for their good that's what all
honest Tories would admit they do. Lying to them
for their harm that's what we say they do. Truth !
It isn't named among them. They've not got
minds that can know truth when they see it. It's
not their fault. They're mostly good men warped
by a bad creed. And you say one creed is as good
as another."
" I say there's truth in all of them/' said Eddy.
" Can't you see the truth in Toryism ? I can, so
clearly. It's all so hackneyed, so often repeated,
but it's true in spite of that. Isn't there truth in
government by the best for the others ? If that isn't
good what is ? If it's not true that one man's more
DATCHERD'S RETURN 179
fitted by nature and training to manage difficult
political affairs than another, nothing's true. And
it's true that he can do it best without a mass of
ignorant, uninstructed, sentimental people for ever
jerking at the reins. Put the best on top that's
the gist of Toryism." Datcherd was looking at
him cynically.
" And yet you belong to the Young Liberals'
League."
" Of course I do. Do you want me to enlarge on
the gist and the beauties of Liberalism too ? I
could, only I won't, because you've just done so
yourself. All that you've said about its making
for freedom and enlightenment is profoundly true,
and is why I am a Liberal. I insist on my right to
be both. I am both. I hope I shall always be both."
Datcherd said, after a thoughtful moment, " I
wish we had had this conversation three months
ago. We didn't ; I was reckless and hasty, and
so we've made this mess of things."
" Is it a mess ? " asked Eddy. " I'm sorry if so.
It hasn't struck me in that light all this time."
" Don't think me ungrateful, Oliver," said
Datcherd, quickly. "I'm not. Looking at things
as you do, I suppose it was natural that you should
have done as you have. Perhaps you might have
let me a little more into your views beforehand
than you did but never mind that now. The
fact that matters is that I find the Club in a state
of mental confusion that I never expected, and it
will take some time to settle it again, if we ever do.
180 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
We want, as you know, to make the Club the
nucleus of a sound Radical constituency. Well,
upon my word, if there was an election now, I
couldn't say which way some of them would vote.
You may answer that it doesn't matter, as so few
are voters yet ; but it does. It's what I call a
mess ; and a silly mess, too. They've been play-
ing the fool with things they ought to be keen
enough about to take in deadly earnest. That's
your doing. You seem to have become pretty
popular, I must say ; which is just the mischief
of it. All I can do now is to try and straighten
things out by degrees."
" You'd rather I didn't come and help any more,
I suppose," said Eddy.
" To be quite frank, I would. In fact, I wouldn't
have you at any price. You don't mind my speak-
ing plainly ? The mistake's been mine ; but it has
been a pretty idiotic mistake, and we mustn't have
any more of it. ... I ought never to have gone
away. I shan't again, whatever any fools of doctors
say." ,
Eddy held out his hand. " Goodbye. I'm really
very sorry, Datcherd. I suppose I ought to have
guessed what you would feel about all this."
" Honestly, I think you ought. But thank you
very much, all the same, for all the trouble you've
taken. . . . You're doing some reviewing work
now, aren't you ? " His tone implied that Eddy
had better go on doing reviewing work, and desist
from doing anything else.
DATCHERD'S RETURN 181
Eddy left the house. He was sorry, and rather
angry, and badly disappointed. He had been
keen on the Club ; he had hoped to go on helping
with it. It seemed that he was not considered fit
by anyone to have anything to do with clubs and
such philanthropic enterprises. First the Vicar
of St. Gregory's had turned him out because he had
too many interests besides (Datcherd being one),
and now Datcherd turned him out because he had
tried to give the Club too many interests (the cause
the vicar stood for being one). Nowhere did he
seem to be wanted. He was a failure and an out-
cast. Besides which, Datcherd thought he had
behaved dishonourably. Perhaps he had. Here
he saw Datcherd's point of view. Even his friend
the Ulsterman had obviously had the same thought
about that. Eddy ruefully admitted that he had
been an idiot not to know just how Datcherd would
feel. But he was angry with Datcherd for feeling
like that. Datcherd was narrow, opinionated, and
unfair. So many people are, in an unfair world.
He went home and told Arnold, who said, " Of
course. I can't think why you didn't know how
it would be. I always told you you were being
absurd, with your Blue Water lunatics, and your
Food Tax ante-diluvians, and your conscription
captains. (No, don't tell me about it's not being
conscription ; now is not the moment. You are
down, and it is for me to talk.) You had better
try your hand at no more good works, but stick
to earning an honest livelihood, as long as they
182 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
will give you any money for what you do. I daresay
from a rumour I heard from Innes to-day, that it
won't be long. I believe the Daily Post are con-
templating a reduction in their literary staff, and
they will very probably begin with you, unless you
learn to restrain your redundant appreciations
a little. No paper could bear up under that weight
of indiscriminate enthusiasm for long."
" Hulbert told me I was to criticize more
severely/' said Eddy. " So I try to now. It's
difficult, when I like a thing, to be severe about it.
I wonder if one ought."
But he was really wondering more what Eileen
Le Moine thought and would say about his differ-
ence with Datcherd.
He didn't discover this for a week. He called
at 3, Campden Hill Road, and found both its
occupants out. They did not write, as he had half
expected, to ask him to come again, or to meet
them anywhere. At last he met Eileen alone,
coming out of an exhibition of Max Beerbohm car-
toons. He had been going in, but he turned back
on seeing her. She looked somehow altered, and
grave, and she was more beautiful even than he
had known, but tired, and with shadowed eyes
of fire and softness ; to him she seemed, vaguely,
less of a child, and more of a woman. Perhaps it
was Greece. . . . Somehow Greece, and all the
worlds old and new, and all the seas, seemed between
them as she looked at him with hardening eyes.
An observer would have said from that look that
DATCHERD'S RETURN 183
she didn't like him ; yet she had always liked him
a good deal. A capricious person she was ; all her
friends knew that.
He turned back from the entrance door to walk
with her, though she said, " Aren't you going in ? "
" No," he said. " I've seen them once already.
I'd rather see you now, if you don't mind. I
suppose you're going somewhere ? You wouldn't
come and have tea with me first ? "
She hesitated a moment, as if wondering whether
she would, then said, " No ; I'm going to tea with
Billy's grandmother ; she wants to hear about
Greece. Then Billy and I are taking Jane to the
Academy, to broaden her mind. She's never seen
it yet, and it's time her education was completed."
She said it coldly, even the little familiar mockery
of Jane and the Academy, and Eddy knew that she
was angry with him. That he did not like, and he
said quickly, " May I go with you as far as Gordon
Place ? " (which was where Billy's grandmother
lived), and she answered with childish sullenness,
" If we're going the one way at the one time I
suppose we will be together," and said no more till
he broke the silence as they crossed Leicester
Square in the sunshine with, " Please, is anything
the matter, Eileen ? "
She turned and looked at him, her face hard in
the shadow of the sweeping hat-brim, and flung
back ironically, "It is not. Of course not ; how
would it be ? "
Eddy made a gesture of despair with his hands.
184 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" You're angry too. I knew it. You're all
angry, because I had Tariff Reformers and Orange-
men to lecture to the Club/'
" D'you tell me so ? " She still spoke in uncom-
fortable irony. " I expect you hoped we would
be grateful and delighted at being dragged back
from Greece just when Hugh was beginning to be
better, and to enjoy things, by a letter from that
miserable Pollard all about the way you had the
Club spoilt. Why, we hadn't been to Olympia
yet. We were just going there when Hugh insisted
on calling for letters at Athens and got this. Letters
indeed ! Bridget and I didn't ask were there any
for us ; but Hugh always will. And of course,
when he'd read it nothing would hold him ; he must
tear off home by the next train and arrive in London
three weeks sooner than we'd planned. Now why,
if you felt you had to go to spoil Hugh's club,
couldn't you have had Pollard strangled first, the
way he wouldn't be writing letters ? "
" I wish I had," said Eddy, with bitter fervour.
" I was a fool."
" And worse than that, so you were," said Eileen,
unsparingly. ' You were unprincipled, and then
so wanting foresight that you wrecked your own
schemes. Three weeks more, and you might have
had twenty-one more captains and clergymen and
young men from Ulster to complete the education of
Hugh's young Liberals. As it is, Hugh thinks
you've not done them much harm, though you did
your best, and he's slaving away to put sense into
DATCHERD'S RETURN 185
them again. The good of Greece is all gone from
him already ; worry was just what he wasn't to
do, and you've made him do it. He's living already
again at top speed, and over-working, and being
sad because it's all in such a silly mess. Hugh
cares for his work more than for anything in the
world," her voice softened to the protective cadence
familiar to Eddy, " and you've hurt him in it.
No one should hurt Hugh in his work, even a little.
Didn't you know that ? "
She looked at him now with eyes less hostile but
more sad, as if her thoughts had left him and
wandered to some other application of this principle.
Indeed, as she said it, it had the effect of a creed,
a statement of a governing principle of life, that
must somehow be preserved intact while all else
broke.
" Could I have known it would have hurt him
a few lectures ? " Eddy protested against the
unfairness of it, losing his temper a little. " You
all talk as if Datcherd was the mistress of a girls'
school, who is expected to protect her pupils from
the contamination of degrading influences and finds
they have been reading Nietsche or Tom Jones."
It was a mistake to say that. He might have
known it. Eileen flushed pink with a new rush
of anger.
" Is that so ? Is that the way we speak of
Hugh ? I'll tell him you said so. No, I wouldn't
trouble his ears with anything so paltry. I wonder
do you know the way he speaks of you ? He thinks
i86 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
you must be weak in the head, and he makes excuses
for you, so he does ; he never says an unkind word
against you, only how you ought to be locked up
and not let loose like ordinary people, and how he
ought to have known you were like that and ex-
plained to you in so many words beforehand the
principles he wanted maintained. As if he hadn't
been too ill to explain anything, and as if any baby
wouldn't have known, and as if any honourable
person wouldn't have taken particular care, just
when he was ill and away, to run things just the
way he would like. And after that you call him a
girls' school mistress . . . ."
" On the contrary," said Eddy, crossly, " I said
he wasn't. You are horribly unfair. Is it any
use continuing this conversation ? "
" It is not. Nor any other."
So, in her excitement, she got into a bus that was
not going to Billy's grandmother, and he Swallowed
his pride and told her so, but she would not swallow
hers and listen to him, but climbed on to the top^
and was carried down Piccadilly, and would have to
change at Hyde Park Corner.
Eileen was singularly poor at buses, Eddy re-
flected bitterly. He walked down to the Embank-
ment, too crushed and unhappy to go home and
risk meeting Arnold. He had been rude and ill-
tempered to Eileen, and sneered at Datcherd to her,
and she had been rude and ill-tempered to him,
and would never forgive him, because it had been
about Datcherd, her friend, loyalty to whom was
DATCHERD'S RETURN 187
the mainspring of her life. All her other friends
might go by the board, if Datcherd but prospered.
How much she cared, Eddy reflected, his anger fast
fading into a pity and regret that hurt. For all
her bitter words to him had that basis a poignant
caring for Datcherd, with his wrecked health, and
his wrecked home, and his hopeless, unsatisfied
love for her a love which would never be satisfied,
because he had principles which forbade it, and
she had a love for him which would always preserve
his principles and his life's work intact. And they
were growing to care so much Eddy had seen
that in Eileen's face when first he met her at the
Leicester Galleries with such intensity, such ab-
sorbing flame, that it hurt and burnt. . . . Eddy
did not want to watch it.
But one thing it had done for him ; it had killed
in him the last vestiges of that absurd emotion he
had had for her, an emotion which had always
been so hopeless, and for that very reason had never
become, and never would become, love.
But he wanted to be friends. However much
she had been the aggressor in the quarrel, however
unfair, and unjust, and unkind she had been, still
he was minded to write and say he was sorry, and
would she please come to lunch and go on being
friends.
He turned into Soho Square, and went back to
his rooms. There he found a letter from his editor
telling him that his services on the Daily Post would
not be required after the end of May. It was not
i88 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
unexpected. The Post was economising in its
literary staff, and starting on him. It was very
natural, even inevitable, that they should ; for his
reviewing lacked discrimination, and his interest
in the Club had often made him careless about his
own job. He threw the letter at Arnold, who had
just come in.
Arnold said, " I feared as much."
" What now, I wonder ? " said Eddy, not caring
particularly.
Arnold looked at him thoughtfully.
" Really, it's very difficult. I don't know. . . .
You do so muddle things up, don't you ? I wish
you'd learn to do only one job at once and stick to
it."
Eddy said bitterly, " It won't stick to me, un-
fortunately."
Arnold said, " If Uncle Wilfred would have you,
would you come to us ? "
Eddy supposed he would. Only probably Uncle
Wilfred wouldn't have him. Later in the evening
he got a telegram to say that his father had had a
stroke, and could he come home at once. He
caught a train at half-past eight, and was at Wei-
chest er by ten.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNTRY.
THE Dean was paralysed up the right side, his wife
agitated and anxious, his daughter cross.
" It's absurd," said Daphne to Eddy, the morning
after his arrival. " Father's no more sense than a
baby. He insists on bothering about some article
he hasn't finished for the Church Quarterly on the
Synoptic Problem. As if one more like that mat-
tered ! The magazines are too full of them already."
But the Dean made it obvious to Eddy that it
did matter, and induced him to find and decipher
his rough notes for the end of the article, and write
them out in proper form. He was so much better
after an afternoon of that that the doctor said to
Eddy, " How long can you stop at home ? "
" As long as I can be any use. I have just given
up one job and haven't begun another yet, so at
present I am free."
" The longer you stay the better, both for your
father and your mother," the doctor said. ' You
can take a lot of strain off Mrs. Oliver. Miss
Daphne's very young too young for much sick-
nursing, I fancy ; and the nurse can only do what
189
igo THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
nurses can do. He wants companionship, and
someone who can do for him the sort of job you've
been doing to-day."
So Eddy wrote to Arnold that he didn't know
when he would be coming back to London. Arnold
replied that whenever he did he could come into his
uncle's publishing house. He added in a post-
script that he had met Eileen and Datcherd at the
Moulin d'Or, and Eileen had said, " Give Eddy my
love, and say I'm sorry. Don't forget." Sorry
about his father, Arnold understood, of course ;
but Eddy believed that more was meant by it than
that, and that Eileen was throwing him across space
her characteristically sweet and casual amends for
her bitter words.
He went on with the Synoptic Problem. The
Dean's notes were lucid and coherent, like all his
work. It seemed to Eddy an interesting article,
and the Dean smiled faintly when he said so. Eddy
was appreciative and intelligent, if not learned or
profound. The Dean had been afraid for a time
that he was going to turn into a cleric of that active
sort which is so absorbed in practical energies that
it does not give due value to thoughtful theology.
The Dean had reason to fear that too many
High Church clergy were like this. But he had
hopes now that Eddy, if in the end he did
take Orders, might be of those who think out
the faith that is in them, and tackle the problem
of the Fourth Gospel. Perhaps he had had to,
while managing Datcherd's free-thinking club.
THE COUNTRY 191
" Are you still helping Datcherd ? " the Dean
asked, in the slow, hindered speech that was all
he could use now.
" No. Datcherd has done with me. I managed
things badly there, from his point of view. I
wasn't exclusive enough for him," and Eddy, to
amuse his father, told the story of that fiasco.
Daphne said, " Serve you right for getting an
anti-suffragist to speak. How could you ? They're
always so deadly silly, and so dull. Worse, almost,
than the other side, though that's saying a lot. I
do think, Tedders, you deserved to be chucked out,"
Daphne had blossomed into a militant. Mrs.
Oliver had been telling Eddy about that the day
before. Mrs. Oliver herself belonged to the res-
pectable National Union for Women's Suffrage,
the pure and reformed branch of it in Welchester
established, non-militant, non-party, non-exciting.
Daphne, and a few other bright and ardent young
spirits, had joined the W.S.P.U., and had been
endeavouring to militate in Welchester. Daphne
had dropped some Jeye's disinfectant fluid, which
is sticky and brown, into the pillar-box at the
corner of the Close, and made disagreeable thereby
a letter to herself from a neighbour asking her
to tennis, and a letter to the Dean from a canon
fixing the date (which was indecipherable) of a
committee meeting.
Daphne looked critically at breakfast next day
at these two results of her tactics, and called them
" Jolly fine."
192 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" Disgusting," said the Dean. " I didn't know
we had these wild women in Welchester. Who on
earth can it have been ? "
" Me," said Daphne. " Alone I did it."
Scene : the Dean horrified, stern, and ashamed ;
Mrs. Oliver shocked and repressive ; Daphne sulky
and defiant, and refusing to promise not to do it
again.
" We've joined the militants, several of us," she
said.
" Who ? " inquired her mother. " I'm sure
Molly hasn't."
" No, Molly hasn't," said Daphne, with disgust.
" AU the BeUairs' are too frightfuUy well-bred to
fight for what they ought to have. They're
antis, all of them. Nevill approves of forcible
feeding."
" So does anyone, of course," said the Dean.
" Prisoners can't be allowed to die on our hands
just because they are criminally insane. Once for
all, Daphne, I will not have a repetition of this
disgusting episode. Other people's daughters can
make fools of themselves if they like, but mine
isn't going to. Is that quite clear ? "
Daphne muttered something and looked rebel-
lious ; but the Dean did not think she would flatly
disobey him. She did not, in fact, repeat the dis-
gusting episode of the Jeye, but she was found a
few evenings later trying to set fire to a workmen's
shelter after dark, and arrested. She was naturally
anxious to go to prison, to complete her experiences,
THE COUNTRY 193
but she was given the option of a fine (which the
Dean insisted, in spite of her protests, on paying),
and bound over not to do it again. The Dean
said after that that he was ashamed to look his
neighbours in the face, and very shortly he had a
stroke. Daphne decided reluctantly that mili-
tant methods must be in abeyance till he was
recovered, and more fit to face shocks. To
relieve herself, she engaged in a violent quarrel
with Nevill Bellairs, who was home for Whitsun-
tide and ventured to remonstrate with her on her
proceedings. They parted in sorrow and anger,
and Daphne came home very cross, and abused
Nevill to Eddy as a stick-in-the-mud.
" But it is silly to burn and spoil things," said
Eddy. " Very few things are silly, I think, but that
is, because it's not the way to get anything. You're
merely putting things back ; you're reactionaries.
All the sane suffragists hate you, you know."
Daphne was not roused to say anything about
peaceful methods having failed, and the time having
come for violence, or any of the other things that
are natural and usual to say in the circumstances ;
she was sullenly silent, and Eddy, glancing at- her
in surprise, saw her sombre and angry.
Wondering a little, he put it down to her dis-
agreement with Nevill. Perhaps she really felt
that badly. Certainly she and Nevill had been
great friends during the last year. It was a pity
they should quarrel over a difference of opinion ;
anything in the world, to Eddy, seemed a more
N
I 9 4 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
reasonable cause of alienation. He looked at his
young sister with a new respect, however ; after
all, it was rather respectable to care as much as that
for a point of view.
Molly Bellairs threw more light on the business
next day when Eddy went to tennis there (Daphne
had refused to go).
" Poor Daffy," Molly said to Eddy when they
were sitting out. " She's frightfully cross with
Nevill for being anti-suffragist, and telling her
she's silly to militate. And he's cross with her.
She told him, I believe, that she wasn't going to be
friends with him any more till he changed. And
he never does change about anything, and she
doesn't either, so there they are. It's such a pity,
because they're really so awfully fond of each other.
NeviU's miserable. Look at him."
Eddy looked, and saw Nevill, morose and graceful
in flannels, smashing double faults into the net.
" He always does that when he's out of temper,"
Molly explained.
" Why does he care so much ? " Eddy asked,
with brotherly curiosity. " Do you mean he's
really fond of Daffy ? Fonder, I mean, than the
rest of you are ? "
" Quite differently." Molly became motherly
and wise. " Haven't you seen it ? It's been
coming on for quite a year. / believe, Eddy,
they'd be engaged by now if it wasn't for this."
" Oh, would they ? " Eddy was interested.
" But would they be such donkeys as to let this get
THE COUNTRY 195
in the way, if they want to be engaged ? I thought
Daffy had more sense/'
Molly shook her head. " They think each other
so wrong, you see, and they've got cross about it. ...
Well, I don't know. I suppose they're right, if
they really do feel it's a question of right and
wrong. You can't go on being friends with a
person, let alone get engaged to them, if you feel
they're behaving frightfully wrongly. You see, Daffy
thinks it immoral of Nevill to be on the anti side in
Parliament, and to approve of what she calls
organised bullying, and he thinks it immoral of her
to be a militant. / think Daffy's wrong, of course,
but I can quite see that she couldn't get engaged to
Nevill feeling as she does."
" Why," Eddy pondered, " can't they each see
the other's point of view, the good in it, not the
bad ? It's so absurd to quarrel about the respec-
tive merits of different principles, when all are so
excellent."
" They're not," said Molly, rather sharply.
"That's so like you, Eddy, and it's nonsense.
What else should one quarrel about ? What /
think is absurd is to quarrel about personal things,
like some people do."
" It's absurd to quarrel at all," said Eddy, and
there they left it, and went to play tennis.
Before he went home, Colonel Bellairs proposed
a scheme to him. His youngest boy, Bob, having
been ill, had been ordered to spend the summer
at home, and was not to go back to Eton till
196 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
September. Meanwhile he wanted to keep up with
his work, and they had been looking out for a tutor
for him, some intelligent young public-school man
who would know what he ought to be learning.
As Eddy intended to be at home for the present,
would he take up this job ? The Colonel proposed a
generous payment, and Eddy thought it an excellent
plan. He went home engaged for the job, and
started it next morning. Bob, who was sixteen,
was, like all the Bellairs', neither clever nor stupid ;
his gifts were practical rather than literary, but he
had a fairly serviceable head. Eddy found that he
rather liked teaching. He had a certain power
of transmitting his own interest in things to other
people that was useful.
As the Dean got better, Eddy sometimes stayed
on at the Hall after work hours, and played tennis
or bumble-puppy with Molly and Bob before lunch,
or helped Molly to feed the rabbits, or wash one of
the dogs. There was a pleasant coherence and
unity about these occupations, and about Molly
and Bob, which Eddy liked. Meanwhile he acted
as amanuensis and secretary to his father, and was
useful and agreeable in the home.
Coherence and unity ; these qualities seemed in
the main sadly lacking in Welchester, as in other
places. It was country life is, life in Cathedral
or any other cities is a chaos of warring elements,
disturbing to the onlooker. There are no communi-
ties now, village or other. In Welchester, and in
the country round about it, there was the continuous
THE COUNTRY 197
strain of opposing interests. You saw it on the
main road into Welchester, where villas and
villa people ousted cottages and small farmers;
ousted them, and made a different demand on
life, set up a different, opposing standard. Then,
in the heart of the town, was the Cathedral, stand-
ing on a hill and for a set of interests quite differ-
ent again, and round about it were the canons'
houses of old brick, and the Deanery, and they
were imposing on life standards of a certain dignity
and beauty and tradition and order, not in the
least accepted either by the slum-yards behind
Church Street, or by Beulah, the smug tabernacle
just outside the Close. And the Cathedral society,
the canons and their families, the lawyers, doctors,
and unemployed gentry, kept themselves apart
with satisfied gentility from the townspeople, the
keepers of shops, the dentists, the auctioneers.
Sentiment and opinion in Welchester was, in short,
disintegrated, rent, at odds within itself. It
returned a Conservative member, but only by a
small majority ; the large minority held itself
neglected, unrepresented.
Out in the rolling green country beyond the
town gates, the same unwholesome strife saddened
field and lane and park. Land-owners, great
and small, fought to the last ditch, the last un-
generous notice-board, with land-traversers ; squires
and keepers disagreed bitterly with poachers ;
tenant farmers saw life from an opposite angle to that
of labourers ; the parson differed from the minister,
i 9 8 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
and often, alas, from his flock. It was as if all these
warring elements, which might, from a common
vantage-ground, have together conducted the ex-
ploration into the promised land, were staying at
home disputing with one another as to the nature
of that land. Some good, some better state of
things, was in most of their minds to seek ; but
their paths of approach, all divergent, seemed to
run weakly into waste places for want of a common
energy. It was a saddening sight. The great
heterogeneous unity conceived by civilised idealists
seemed inaccessibly remote.
Eddy this summer took to writing articles for the
Vineyard about the breaches in country life and
how to heal them. The breach, for instance,
between tenant-farmer and labourer ; that was
much on his mind. But, when he had written
and written, and suggested and suggested, like
many before him and since, the breach was no
nearer being healed. He formed in his mind at
this time a scheme for a new paper which he would
like to start some day if anyone would back it, and
if Denison's firm would publish it. And, after all,
so many new papers are backed, but how inade-
quately, and started, and published, and flash like
meteors across the sky, and plunge fizzling into the
sea of oblivion to perish miserably so why not
this ? He thought he would like it to be called
Unify, and to have that for its glorious aim. All
papers have aims beforehand (one may find them
set forth in many a prospectus) ; how soon, alas,
THE COUNTRY 199
in many cases to be disregarded or abandoned in
response to the exigencies of circumstance and
demand. But the aim of Unity should persist,
and, if heaven was kind, reach its mark.
Pondering on this scheme, Eddy could watch
chaos with more tolerant eyes, since nothing is so
intolerable if one is thinking of doing something,
even a very little, to try and alleviate it. He
carried on a correspondence with Arnold about it.
Arnold said he didn't for a moment suppose his
Uncle Wilfred would be so misguided as to have
anything to do with such a scheme, but he might,
of course. The great dodge with a new paper, was,
Arnold said, the co-operative system ; you collect
a staff of eager contributors who will undertake to
write for so many months without pay, and not
want to get their own back again till after the thing
is coining money, and then they share what profits
there are, if any. If they could collect a few useful
people for this purpose, such as Billy Raymond,
and Datcherd, and Cecil Le Moine (only probably
Cecil was too selfish), and John Henderson, and
Margaret Clinton (a novelist friend of Arnold's),
and various other intelligent men and women, the
thing might be worked. And Bob Traherne and
Dean Oliver, to represent two different Church
standpoints, Eddy added to the list, and a field
labourer he knew who would talk about small
holdings, and a Conservative or two (Conservatives
were conspicuously lacking in Arnold's list). En-
couraged by Arnold's reception of the idea, Eddy
200 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
replied by sketching his scheme for Unity more
elaborately. Arnold answered, "If we get all or
any of the people we've thought of to write for it,
Unity will go its own way, regardless of schemes
beforehand. . . . Have your Tories and parsons
in if you must, only don't be surprised if they sink
it. ... The chief thing to mind about with a
writer is, has he anything new to say ? I hate
all that sentimental taking up and patting on the
back of ploughmen and navvies and tramps merely
as such ; it's silly, inverted snobbery. It doesn't
follow that a man has anything to say that's worth
hearing merely because he says it ungrammati-
cally. Get day labourers to write about land-
tenure if they have anything to say about it that's
more enlightening than what you or I would say ;
but not unless ; because they won't put it so well,
by a long way. If ever I have anything to do with
a paper, I shall see that it avoids sentimentality so
far as is consistent with just enough popularity to
live by/'
It was still all in the air, of course, but Eddy
felt cheered by the definite treatment Arnold was
giving to his idea.
About the middle of June Arnold wrote that
Datcherd had hopelessly broken down at last, and
there seemed no chance for him, and he had given
up everything and gone down to a cottage in Devon-
shire, probably to die there.
" Eileen has gone with him," Arnold added, in
graver vein than usual. " I suppose she wants to
THE COUNTRY 201
look after him, and they both want not to waste
the time that's left. ... Of course, many people
will be horrified, and think the worst. Personally,
I think it a pity she should do it, because it means,
for her, giving up a great deal, now and afterwards,
though for him nothing now but a principle. The
breaking of the principle is surprising in him, and
really, if one comes to think of it, pretty sad, and
a sign of how he's broken up altogether. Because
he has always held these things uncivilised and
wrong, and said so. I suppose he's too weak in
body to say so any more, or to stand against his
need and hers any longer. I think it a bad mis-
take, and I wish they wouldn't do it. Besides,
she's too fine, and has too much to give, to throw
it all at one dying man, as she's doing. What's it
been in Datcherd all along that's so held her he
so sickly and wrecked and morose, she so brilliant
and alive and young and full of genius and joy ?
Of course he's brilliant too, in his own way, and
lovable, and interesting; but a failure for all that,
and an unhappy failure, and now at the last a failure
even as to his own principles of life. I suppose it
has been always just that that has held her ; his
failure and need. These things are dark ; but
anyhow there it is ; one never saw two people care
for each other more or need each other more. . . .
She was afraid of hurting his work by coming to
him before ; but the time for thinking of that is
past, and I suppose she will stay with him now till
the end, and it will be their one happy time. You
202 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
know I think these things mostly a mistake, and
these absorbing emotions uncivilised, and nearly
all alliances ill-assorted, and this one will be con-
demned. But much she'll care for that when it is
all over and he has gone. What will happen to
her then I can't guess ; she won't care much for
anything any of us can do to help, for a long time.
It is a pity. But such is life, a series of futile
wreckages." He went on to other topics. Eddy
didn't read the rest just then, but went out for a
long and violent walk across country with his
incredibly mongrel dog.
Confusion, with its many faces, its shouting of
innumerable voices, overlay the green June country.
For him in that hour the voice of pity and love rose
dominant, drowning the other voices, that ques-
tioned and wondered and denied, as the cuckoos
from every tree questioned and commented on life
in their strange, late note. Love and pity ; pity
and love ; mightn't these two resolve all discord at
last ? Arnold's point of view, that of the civilised
person of sense, he saw and shared ; Eileen's and
Datcherd's he saw and felt ; his own mother's, and
the Bellairs', and that of those like-minded with
them, he saw and appreciated ; all were surely
right, yet they did not make for harmony.
Meanwhile, a background to discord, the woods
were green and the hedges starred pink with wild
roses and the cow-parsley a white foam in the ditches,
and the clouds shreds of white fleece in the blue
above, and cows knee-deep in cool pools beneath
THE COUNTRY 203
spreading trees, and, behind the jubilance of larks
and the other jocund little fowls, cried the per-
petual questioning of the unanswered grey bird. . .
In the course of July, Eddy became engaged to
Molly Bellairs, an event which, with all its preli-
minary and attendant circumstances, requires and
will receive little treatment here. Proposals and
their attendant emotions, though more interesting
even than most things to those principally con-
cerned, are doubtless so familiar to all as to be
readily imagined, and can occupy no place in
these pages. The fact emerges that Eddy and
Molly, after the usual preliminaries, did become
engaged. It must not be surmised that their emo-
tions, because passed lightly over, were not of the
customary and suitable fervour ; in point of fact,
both were very much in love. Both their families
were pleased. The marriage, of course, was not to
occur till Eddy was settled definitely into a pro-
mising profession, but that he hoped to be in the
autumn, if he entered the Denisons' publishing firm
and at the same time practised journalism.
" You should get settled with something perma-
nent, my boy," said the Dean, who was by now well
enough to talk like that. " I don't like this taking
things up and dropping them."
" They drop me/' Eddy explained, much as he
had to Arnold once, but the Dean did not like him
to put it like that, as anyone would rather his son
dropped than was dropped.
" You know you can do well if you like," he said,
204 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
being fairly started in that vein. ' You did well
at school and Cambridge, and you can do well now.
And now that you're going to be married, you must
give up feeling your way and occupying yourself
with jobs that aren't your regular career, and get
your teeth into something definite. It wouldn't be
fair to Molly to play about with odd jobs, even
useful and valuable ones, as you have been doing.
You wouldn't think of schoolmastering at all, I
suppose ? With your degree you could easily get
a good place." The Dean hankered after a scho-
lastic career for his son ; besides, schoolmasters so
often end in Orders. But Eddy said he thought
he would prefer publishing or journalism, though
it didn't pay so well at first. He told the Dean
about the proposed paper and the co-operative
system, which was sure to work so well.
The Dean said, " I haven't any faith in all these
new papers, whatever the system. Even the best
die. Look at the Pilot. And the Tribune."
Eddy looked back across the ages at the Pilot
and the Tribune, whose deaths he just remembered.
" There 've been plenty died since those," he
remarked. " Those whom the gods love, etcetera.
But lots have lived, too. If you come to that,
look at the Times, the Spectator, and the Daily
Mirror. They were new once. So was the English
Review ; so was Poetry and Drama ; so was the
New Statesman ; so was the Blue Review. They're
alive yet. Then why not Unity ? Even if it has a
short life, it may be a merry one."
THE COUNTRY 205
" To heal divisions," mused the Dean. " A good
aim, of course. Though probably a hopeless one.
One makes it one's task, you know, to throw
bridges, as far as one can, between the Church and
the agnostics, and the Church and dissent. And
look at the result. A friendly act of conciliation
on the part of one of our bishops calls forth tor-
rents of bitter abuse in the columns of our Church
papers. The High Church party is so unmanageable :
it's stiff : it stands out for differences : it won't
be brought in. How can we ever progress towards
unity if the extreme left remains in that state of
wilful obscurantism and unchristian intolerance ? . .
Of course, mind, there are limits ; one would fight
very strongly against disestablishment or disen-
dowment ; but the ritualists seem to be out for
quarrels over trifles." He added, because Eddy
had worked in St. Gregory's, " Of course, indivi-
dually, there are numberless excellent High Church-
men ; one doesn't want to run down their work.
But they'll never stand for unity."
" Quite," said Eddy, meditating on unity.
" That's exactly what Finch and the rest say about
the Broad Church party, you know. And it's
what dissenters say about Church people, and Church
people about dissenters. The fact is, so few parties
do stand for unity. They nearly all stand for
faction."
" I don't think we Broad Churchmen stand for
faction." said the Dean, and Eddy replied that nor
did the High Churchmen think they did, nor
206 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
dissenters either. They all thought they were
aiming at unity, but it was the sort of unity attained
by the survivor of the Nancy brig, or the tiger of
Riga, that was the ideal of most parties ; it was
doubtless also the ideal of a boa-constrictor. Mrs.
Oliver, who had come into the room and wasn't
sure it was in good taste to introduce light verse
and boa-constrictors into religious discussions, said,
' You seem to be talking a great deal of nonsense,
dear boy. Everard, have you had your drops
yet ? "
In such fruitful family discourse they wiled away
the Dean's convalescence.
Meanwhile Molly, jolly and young and alive,
with her brown hair curling in the sun, and her
happy infectious laugh and her bright, eager, amber
eyes full of friendly mirth, was a sheer joy. If she
too " stood for " anything beyond herself, it was
for youth and mirth and jollity and country life in
the open ; all sweet things. Eddy and she liked
each other rather more each day. They made a plan
for Molly to spend a month or so in the autumn with
her aunt that lived in Hyde Park Terrace, so that
she and Eddy should be near each other.
" They're darlings," said Molly, of her uncle
and aunt and cousins. " So jolly and hospitable.
You'll love them."
"I'm sure I shall. And will they love me ? "
inquired Eddy, for this seemed even more impor-
tant.
Molly said of course they would.
THE COUNTRY 207
" Do they love most people ? " Eddy pursued his
investigations.
Molly considered that. " Well . . . most . . .
that's a lot, isn't it. No, Aunt Vyvian doesn't do
that, I should think. Uncle Jimmy more. He's a
bailor, you know ; a captain, retired. He seems
awfully young, always ; much younger than me. . . .
One thing about Aunt Vyvian is, I should think
you'd know it pretty quick if she didn't like you."
" She'd say so, would she ? "
" She'd snub you. She's rather snippy some-
times, even to me and people she's fond of. Only
one gets used to it, and it doesn't mean anything
except that she likes to amuse herself. But she's
frightfully particular, and if she didn't like you she
wouldn't have anything to do with you."
" I see. Then it's most important that she should.
What can I do about it ? "
" Oh, just be pleasant, and make yourself as
entertaining as you can, and pretend to be fairly
sensible and intelligent. . . . She wouldn't like it
if she thought you were, well, a socialist, or an
anarchist, or a person who was trying to do some-
thing and couldn't, like people who try and get
plays taken ; or if I was a suffragette. She thinks
people oughtn't to be like that, because they don't
get on. And, too, she likes very much to be amused.
You'll be all right, of course."
" Sure to be. I'm such a worldly success. Well,
I shall haunt her doorstep whether she likes me or
not,"
208 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" If she dared not to," said Molly indignantly,
" I should walk straight out of her house and never
go into it again, and make Nevill take me into his
rooms instead. I should jolly well think she would
like you ! "
CHAPTER XII.
HYDE PARK TERRACE.
FORTUNATELY Mrs. Crawford did like Eddy (he
presumed, therefore, that she did not know he was
a socialist and a suffragist, and had tried to do
many things he couldn't), so Molly did not have to
walk out of the house. He liked her too, and went
to her house very frequently. She was pretty and
clever and frankly worldly, and had a sweet trailing
voice, a graceful figure, and two daughters just out,
one of whom was engaged already to a young man
in the Foreign Office.
She told Molly, " I like your young man, dear ;
he has pleasant manners, and seems to appreciate
me/' and asked him to come to the house as often
as he could. Eddy did so. He came to lunch and
dinner, and met pleasant, polite, well-dressed people.
(You had to be rather well-dressed at the Crawfords':
they expected it, as so many others do, with what
varying degrees of fulfilment ! ) It is, of course, as
may before have been remarked in these pages,
exceedingly important to dress well. Eddy knew
this, having been well brought up, and did dress
209 o
210 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
as well as accorded with his station and his duties.
He quite saw the beauty of the idea, as of the
other ideas presented to him. He also, however,
saw the merits of the opposite idea held by some
of his friends, that clothes are things not worth
time, money, or trouble, and fashion an irrelevant
absurdity. He always assented sincerely to Arnold
when he delivered himself on this subject, and with
equal sincerity to the tacit recognition of high
standards that he met at the Crawfords' and else-
where.
He also met at the Crawfords' their nephew Nevill
Bellairs, who was now parliamentary secretary
to an eminent member, and more than ever admir-
able in his certainty about what was right and what
wrong. The Crawfords too were certain about
that. To hear Nevill on Why Women should Not
Vote was to feel that he and Daphne must be for
ever sundered, and, in fact, were best apart. Eddy
came to that melancholy conclusion, though he
divined that their mutual and unhappy love still
flourished.
" You're unfashionable, Nevill," his aunt ad-
monished him. " You should try and not be that
more than you can help."
Captain Crawford, a simple, engaging, and
extraordinarily youthful sailor man of forty-six,
said, "Don't be brow-beaten, Nevill; I'm with
you," for that was the sort of man he was ; and the
young man from the Foreign Office said how a little
while ago he had approved of a limited women's
HYDE PARK TERRACE 211
suffrage, but since the militants, etc. etc., and every-
one he knew was saying the same.
" I am sure they are/' Mrs. Crawford murmured
to Eddy. " What a pity it does not seem to him
a sufficient reason for abstaining from the remark
himself. I do so dislike the subject of the suffrage ;
it makes everyone so exceedingly banal and obvious.
I never make any remarks about it myself, for I
have a deep fear that if I did so they might not be
more original than that."
" Mine certainly wouldn't," Eddy agreed.
" Militant suffragism is like the weather, a safety-
valve for all our worst commonplaces. Only it's
unlike the weather in being a little dull in itself,
whereas the weather is an agitatingly interesting
subject, as a rule inadequately handled. . . . You
know, I've no objection to commonplace remarks
myself, I rather like them. That's why I make
them so often, I suppose."
" I think you have no objection to any kind of
remarks," Mrs. Crawford commented. " You are
fortunate."
Nevill said from across the room, " How's the
paper getting on, Eddy ? Is the first number
launched yet ? "
" Not yet. Only the dummy. I have a copy of
the dummy here ; look at it. We have filled it
with the opinions of eminent persons on the great
need that exists for our paper. We wrote to many.
Some didn't answer. I suppose they were not aware
of this great need, which is recognised so clearly by
212 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
others. The strange thing is that Unity has
never been started before, considering how badly
it is obviously wanted. We have here encouraging
words from politicians, authors, philanthropists,
a bishop, an eminent rationalist, a fellow of All
Souls, a landlord, a labour member, and many
others. The bishop says, ' I am greatly interested
in the prospectus you have sent me of your proposed
new paper. Without committing myself to agree-
ment with every detail, I may say that the lines on
which it is proposed to conduct Unity promise a
very useful and attractive paper, and one which
should meet a genuine need and touch an extensive
circle/ The labour member says, ' Your new paper
is much needed, and with such fine ideals should
be of great service to all.' The landlord says,
' Your articles dealing with country matters should
meet a long-felt demand, and make for good feeling
between landlords, tenants and labourers/ The
rationalist says, ' Precisely what we want/ The
Liberal politician says, ' I heartily wish all success
to Unity. A good new paper on those lines cannot
fail to be of inestimable service/ The Unionist
says, ' A capital paper, with excellent ideals/ The
philanthropist says, ' I hope it will wage relentless
war against the miserable internal squabbles which
retard our social efforts/ Here's a more tepid one
he's an author. He only says, ' There may be scope
for such a paper, amid the ever-increasing throng
of new journalistic enterprises. Anyhow there is
no harm in trying/ A little damping, he was.
HYDE PARK TERRACE 213
Denison was against putting it in, but I think it so
rude, when you've asked a man for a word of
encouragement, and he gives it you according to his
means, not to use it. Of course we had to draw the
line somewhere. Shore merely said, 'It's a free
country. You can hang yourselves if you like/
We didn't put in that. But on the whole people
are obviously pining for the paper, aren't they.
Of course they all think we're going to support their
particular pet party and project. And so we are.
That is why I think we shall sell so well touch so
extensive a circle, as the bishop puts it."
" As long as you help to knock another plank
from beneath the feet of this beggarly government,
I'll back you through thick and thin," said Captain
Crawford.
" Are you going on the Down-with-the-Jews
tack ? " Nevill asked. " That's been overdone, I
think ; it's such beastly bad form."
" All the same," murmured Captain Crawford,
" I don't care about the Hebrew."
" We're not," said Eddy, " going on a down-with-
anybody tack. Our mitier is to encourage the good,
not to discourage anyone. That, as I remarked
before, is why we shall sell so extremely well."
Mrs. Crawford said, " Humph. It sounds to me
a trifle savourless. A little abuse hasn't usually
been found, I believe, to reduce the sales of a paper
appreciably. We most of us like to see our enemies
hauled over the coals ; or, failing our enemies,
some innocuous and eminent member of an
214 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
unpopular and over-intelligent race. In short, we
like to see a fine hot quarrel going on. If Unity
isn't going to quarrel with anyone, I shall certainly
not subscribe."
" You shall have it gratis," said Eddy. " It is
obviously, as the eminent rationalist puts it,
precisely what you need."
Nevill said, " By the way, what's happening to
that Radical paper of poor Hugh Datcherd's ?
Is it dead ? "
" Yes. It couldn't have survived Datcherd ;
no one else could possibly take it on. Besides, he
financed it entirely himself ; it never anything near
paid its way, of course. It's a pity ; it was interest-
ing/'
" Like it's owner," Mrs. Crawford remarked.
" He too, one gathers, was a pity, though no doubt
an interesting one. The one failure in a distin-
guished family."
" I should call all the Datcherds a pity, if you ask
me," said Nevill. " They're wrong-headed Radicals.
All agnostics, too, and more or less anti-church."
"All the same," said his aunt, "they're not
failures, mostly. They achieve success ; even
renown. They occasionally become cabinet
ministers. I ask no more of a family than that.
You may be as wrong-headed, radical, and anti-
church as you please, Nevill, if you attain to being
a cabinet minister. Of course they have dis-
advantages, such as England expecting them not to
invest their money as they would prefer, and so on ;
HYDE PARK TERRACE 215
but on the whole an enviable career. Better even
than running a paper which meets a long-felt
demand/'
" But the paper's much more fun," Molly put in,
and her aunt returned, " My dear child, we are not
put into this troubled world to have fun, though I
have noticed that you labour under that delusion."
The young man from the Foreign Office said,
"It's not a delusion that can survive in my pro-
fession, anyhow. I must be getting back, I'm
afraid," and they all went away to do something
else. Eddy arranged to meet Molly and her aunt
at tea-time, and take them to Jane Dawn's studio ;
he had asked her if he might bring them to see her
drawings.
They met at Mrs. Crawford's club, and drove to
Blackfriars' Road.
" Where ? " inquired Mrs. Crawford, after Eddy's
order to the driver.
"Pleasance Court, Blackfriars' Road," Eddy
repeated.
" Oh ! I somehow had an idea it was Chelsea.
That's where one often finds studios ; but, after
all, there must be many others, if one comes to think
of it."
" Perhaps Jane can't afford Chelsea. She's not
poor, but she spends her money like a child. She
takes after her father, who is extravagant, like so
many professors."
" Chelsea's supposed to be cheap, my dear boy.
That's why it's full of struggling young artists."
216 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" I daresay Pleasance Court is cheaper. Besides,
it's pleasant. They like it."
" They ? "
" Jane and her friend Miss Peters, who shares
rooms with her. Rather a jolly sort of girl ;
though " On second thoughts Eddy refrained
from mentioning that Sally Peters was a militant
and had been in prison ; he remembered that Mrs.
Crawford found the subject tedious.
But militancy will out, as must have been noticed
by many. Before the visitors had been there ten
minutes, Sally referred to the recent destruction
of the property of a distinguished widowed lady in
such laudatory terms that Mrs. Crawford discerned
her in a minute, raised a disapproving lorgnette
at her, murmured, " They devour widows' houses,
and for a pretence make long speeches," and turned
her back on her. Jolly sorts of girls who were also
criminal lunatics were not suffered in the sphere of
her acquaintance.
Jane's drawings were obviously charming ; also
they were the drawings of an artist, not of a young
lady of talent. Mrs. Crawford, who knew the
difference, perceived that, and gave them the tribute
she always ceded to success. She thought she would
ask Jane to lunch one day, without, of course, the
blue-eyed child who devoured widows' houses.
She did so presently.
Jane said, " Thank you so much, but I'm afraid
I can't," and knitted her large forehead a little, in
her apologetic way, so obviously trying to think of a
HYDE PARK TERRACE 217
suitable reason why she couldn't, that Mrs. Crawford
came to her rescue with " Perhaps you Ye too busy/'
which was gratefully accepted.
" I am rather busy just now." Jane was very
polite, very deprecating, but inwardly she reproached
Eddy for letting in on her strange ladies who asked
her to lunch.
That no one ought to be too busy for social engage-
ments, was what Mrs. Crawford thought, and she
turned a little crisper and cooler in manner. Molly
was standing before a small drawing in a corner
a drawing of a girl, bare-legged, childish, half elfin,
lying among sedges by a stream, one leg up to the
knee in water, and one arm up to the elbow. Admir-
ably the suggestion had been caught of a small wild
thing, a little half-sulky animal. Molly laughed at
it.
" That's Daffy, of course. It's not like her
and yet it is her. A sort of inside look it's got of
her ; hasn't it, Eddy ? I suppose it looks different
because Daffy's always so neat and tailor-made,
and never would be like that. It's a different
Daffy, but it is Daffy."
" Your pretty little sister, isn't it, Eddy," said
Mrs. Crawford, who had met Daphne at Welchester.
" Yes, that's clever. ' Undine/ you call it. Why ?
Has she no soul ? "
Jane smiled and retired from this question.
She seldom explained why her pictures were so
called ; they just were.
Molly was not looking at Undine. Her glance
218 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
had fallen on a drawing near it. It was another
drawing of a girl ; a very beautiful girl, playing a
violin. It was called " Life." No one would have
asked why about this ; the lightly poised figure,
the glowing eyes under their shadowing black brows,
the fiddle tucked away under the round chin, and
the dimples tucked away in the round cheeks, the
fine supple hands, expressed the very spirit of life,
all its joy and brilliance and genius and fire,
and all its potential tragedy. Molly looked at it
without comment, as she might have looked at a
picture of some friend of the artist's who had died
a sad death. She knew that Eileen Le Moine had
died, from her point of view ; she knew that she had
spent the last months of Hugh Datcherd's life with
him, for Eddy had told her. She had said to Eddy
that this was dreadful and wicked. Eddy had said,
" They don't think it is, you see/' MoUy had said
that what they thought made no difference to
right and wrong ; Eddy had replied that it made all
the difference in the world. She had finally turned
on him with, " But you think it dreadful, Eddy ? "
and he had, to her dismay, shaken his head.
" Not as they're doing it, I don't. It's all right.
You'd know it was all right if you knew them,
Molly. It's been, all along, the most faithful,
loyal, fine, simple, sad thing in the world, their love.
They've held out against it just so long as to give in
would have hurt anyone but themselves ; now it
won't, and she's giving herself to him that he may
die in peace. Don't judge them, Molly."
HYDE PARK TERRACE 219
But she had judged them so uncompromisingly,
so unyieldingly, that she had never referred to the
subject again, for fear it should come between
Eddy and her. A difference of principle was the
one thing Molly could not bear. To her this thing,
whatever its excuse, was wrong, against the laws of
the Christian Church, in fine, wicked. And it was
Eddy's friends who had done it, and he didn't want
her to judge them ; she must say nothing, therefore.
Molly's ways were ways of peace.
Mrs. Crawford peered through her lorgnette at
the drawing. " What's that delicious thing ? ' Life/
Quite ; just that. That is really utterly charming.
Who's the original ? Why, it's " She stopped
suddenly.
" It's Mrs. Le Moine, the violinist," said Jane.
" She's a great friend of ours," Sally interpolated,
in childish pride, from behind. " I expect you've
heard her play, haven't you ? "
Mrs. Crawford had. She recognised the genius
of the picture, which had so exquisitely caught and
imprisoned the genius of the subject.
" Of course ; who hasn't ? A marvellous player.
And a marvellous picture."
" It's Eileen all over," said Eddy, who knew it of
old.
" Hugh bought it, you know," said Jane. " And
when he died Eileen sent it back to me. I thought
perhaps you and Eddy," she turned to Molly,
" might care to have it for a wedding-present, with
' Undine. ' "
220 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
Molly thanked her shyly, flushing a little. She
would have preferred to refuse ' Life/ but her
never-failing courtesy and tenderness for people's
feelings drove her to smile and accept.
It was then that someone knocked on the studio
door. Sally went to open it ; cried, " Oh, Eileen,"
and drew her in, an arm about her waist.
She was not very like Jane's drawing of her just
now. The tragic elements of Life had conquered
and beaten down its brilliance and joy ; the rounded
white cheeks were thin, and showed, instead of
dimples, the fine structure of the face and jaw ; the
great deep blue eyes brooded sombrely under sad
brows ; she drooped a little as she stood. It was
as if something had been quenched in her, and left
her as a dead fire. The old flashing smile had left
only the wan, strange ghost of itself. If Jane had
drawn her now, or any time since the middle of
August, she would rather have called the drawing
"Wreckage." To Eddy and all her friends she and
her wrecked joy, her quenched vividness, stabbed
at a pity beyond tears.
Molly looked at her for a moment, and turned
rosy red all over her wholesome little tanned face,
and bent over a picture near her.
Mrs. Crawford looked at her, through her, above
her, and said to Jane, " Thank you so much for a
delightful afternoon. We really must go now."
Jane said, slipping a hand into Eileen's, " Oh,
but you'll have tea, won't you ? I'm so sorry ;
we ought to have had it earlier. ... Do you know
HYDE PARK TERRACE 221
Mrs. Le Moine ? Mrs. Crawford ; and you know
each other, of course," she connected Eileen and
Molly with a smile, and Molly put out a timid hand.
Mrs. Crawford's bow was so slight that it might
have been not a bow at all. " Thank you, but I'm
afraid we mustn't stop. We have enjoyed your
delightful drawings exceedingly. Goodbye."
" Must you both go ? " said Eddy to Molly.
" Can't you stop and have tea and go home with
me afterwards ? "
" I'm afraid not," Molly murmured, still rosy.
" Are you coming with us, Eddy ? " asked Molly's
aunt, in her sweet, sub-acid voice. " No ? Good-
bye then, Oh, don't trouble, please, Miss Dawn ;
Eddy will show us out." Her faint bow compre-
hended the company.
Eddy came with them to their carriage.
" I'm sorry you won't stop," he said.
Mrs. Crawford's fine eyebrows rose a little.
' You could hardly expect me to stop, still less
to let Molly stop, in company with a lady of Mrs.
Le Moine's reputation. She has elected to become,
as you of course are aware, one of the persons
whose acquaintance must be dispensed with by all
but the unfastidious. You are not going to dispense
with it, I perceive ? Very well ; but you must allow
Molly and me to take the ordinary course of the world
in such matters. Goodbye."
Eddy, red as if her words had been a whip in his
face, turned back into the house and shut the door
rather violently behind him, as if by the gesture
222 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
he would shut out all the harsh, coarse judgments
of the undiscriminating world. He climbed the
stairs to the studio, and found them having tea and
discussing pictures, from their own several points of
view, not the world's. It was a rest.
Mrs. Crawford, as they drove over the jolting
surface of Blackfriars' Road, said, " Very odd friends
your young man has, darling. And what a very
unpleasant region they live in. It is just as well
for the sake of the carriage wheels that we shall
never have to go there again. We can't, of course,
if we are liable to meet people of no reputation there.
I'm sure you know nothing about things like that,
but I'm sorry to say that Mrs. Le Moine has done
things she ought not to have done. One may
continue to admire her music, as one may admire
the acting of those who lead such unfortunate lives
on the stage ; but one can't meet her. Eddy ought
to know that. Of course it's different for him.
Men may meet anyone ; in fact, I believe they do ;
and no one thinks the worse of them. But I can't ;
still less, of course, you. I don't suppose your
dear mother would like me to tell you about her, so
I won't."
" I know," said Molly, blushing again and feel-
ing she oughtn't to. " Eddy told me. He's a
great friend of hers, you see."
" Oh, indeed. Well, girls know everything now-a-
days, of course. In fact, everyone knows this ;
both she and Hugh Datcherd were such well-
known people. I don't say it was so very dread-
HYDE PARK TERRACE 223
fully wrong, what they did ; and of course Dorothy
Datcherd left Hugh in the lurch firstbut you
wouldn't have heard of that, no only it does put
Mrs. Le Moine beyond the pale. And, in fact, it
is dreadfully wrong to fly in the face of everybody's
principles and social codes ; of course it is."
Molly cared nothing for everyone's principles
and social codes ; but she knew it was dreadfully
wrong, what they had done. She couldn't even
reason it out ; couldn't formulate the real reason
why it was wrong ; couldn't see that it was because
it was giving rein to individual desire at the expense
of the violation of a system which on the whole,
however roughly and crudely, made for civilisa-
tion, virtue, and intellectual and moral progress ;
that it was, in short, a step backwards into savagery,
a giving up of ground gained. Arnold Denison,
more clear-sighted, saw that ; Molly, with only
her childlike, unphilosophical, but intensely vivid
recognition of right and wrong to help her, merely
knew it was wrong. From three widely different
standpoints those three, Molly, Arnold Denison,
Mrs. Crawford, joined in that recognition. Against
them stood Eddy, who saw only the right in it,
and the stabbing, wounding pity of it. . . .
" It is extremely fortunate," said Mrs. Crawford,
" that that young woman Miss Dawn refused to
come to lunch. I daresay she knew she wasn't fit
for lunch, with such people straying in and out
of her rooms and she holding their hands. I give
her credit so far. As for the plump fair child, she
224 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
is obviously one of those vulgarians I insist on not
hearing mentioned. Very strange friends, darling,
your. . . ."
" I'm sure nearly all Eddy's friends are very
nice," Molly broke in. " Miss Dawn was staying
at the Deanery at Christmas, you know. I'm sure
she's nice, and she draws beautifully. And I expect
Miss Peters is nice too ; she's so friendly and jolly,
and has such pretty hair and eyes. And. ..."
" You can stop there, dearest. If you are pro-
ceeding to say that you are sure Mrs. Le Moine
is nice too, you can spare yourself the trouble."
" I wasn't," said Molly unhappily, and lifted her
shamed, honest, amber eyes to her aunt's face.
" Of course ... I know . . . she can't be."
Her aunt gave her a soothing pat on the shoulder.
" Very well, pet : don't worry about it. I'm afraid
you will find that there are a large number of people
in the world, and only too many of them aren't at
all nice. Shockingly sad, of course ; but if one
took them all to heart one would sink into an early
grave. The worst of this really is that we have
lost our tea. We might drop in on the Tommy
Durnfords ; it's their day, surely. . . . When shall
you see Eddy next, by the way ? "
" I think doesn't he come to dinner to-morrow ? "
" So he does. Well, he and I must have a good
talk."
Molly looked at her doubtfully. " Aunt Vyvian,
I don't think so. Truly I don't."
" Well, I do, my dear. I'm responsible to your
HYDE PARK TERRACE 225
parents for you, and your young man's got to be
careful of you, and I shall tell him so."
She told him so in the drawing-room after dinner
next evening. She sat out from bridge on purpose
to tell him. She said, " I was surprised and shocked
yesterday afternoon, Eddy, as no doubt you
gathered."
Eddy admitted that he had gathered that. " Do
you mind if I say that I was too, a little ? " he
added. " Is that rude ? I hope not/'
" Not in the least. I've no doubt you were
shocked ; but I don't think really that you can
have been much surprised, you know. Did you
honestly expect me and Molly to stay and have
tea with Mrs. Le Moine ? She's not a person whom
Molly ought to know. She's stepped deliberately
outside the social pale, and must stay there.
Seriously, Eddy, you mustn't bring her and Molly
together."
" Seriously," said Eddy, " I mean to. I want
Molly to know and care for all my friends. Of
course she'll find in lots of them things she wouldn't
agree with ; but that's no barrier. I can't shut
her out, don't you see ? I know all these people
so awfully well, and see so much of them ; of
course she must know them too. As for Mrs. Le
Moine, she's one of the finest people I know ; I
should think anyone would be proud to know her.
Surely one can't be rigid about things ? "
" One can," Mrs. Crawford asserted. " One can,
and one is. One draws one's line. Or rather the
226 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
world draws it for one. Those who choose to step
outside it must remain outside it."
Eddy said softly, " Bother the world 1 "
"I'm not going/' she returned, "to do any such
thing. I belong to the world, and am much attached
to it. And about this sort of thing it happens to
be entirely right. I abide by its decrees, and so
must Molly, and so must you."
" I had hoped," he said, " that you, as well as
Molly, would make friends with Eileen. She needs
friendship rather. She's hurt and broken ; you
must have seen that yesterday."
" Indeed, I hardly looked. But I've no doubt
she would be. I'm sorry for your unfortunate
friend, Eddy, but I really can't know her. You
didn't surely expect me to ask her here, to meet
Chrissie and Dulcie and my innocent Jimmy, did
you ? What will you think of next ? Well, well,
I'm going to play bridge now, and you can go and
talk to Molly. Only don't try and persuade her to
meet your scandalous friends, because I shall not
allow her to, and she has no desire to if I did. Molly,
I am pleased to say, is a very right-minded and
well-conducted girl."
Eddy discovered that this was so. Molly evinced
no desire to meet Eileen Le Moine. She said
" Aunt Vyvian doesn't want me to."
" But," Eddy expostulated, " she's constantly
with the rest Jane and Sally, and Denison, and
Billy Raymond, and Cecil Le Moine, and all that set
you can't help meeting her sometimes.''
HYDE PARK TERRACE 227
" I needn't meet any of them much, really/' said
Molly.
Eddy disagreed. " Of course you need. They're
some of my greatest friends. They've got to be your
friends too. When we're married they'll come and
see us constantly, I hope, and we shall go and see
them. We shall always be meeting. I awfully want
you to get to know them quickly. They're such
good sorts, Molly ; you'll like them all, and they'll
love you."
There was an odd doubtful look in Molly's eyes.
" Eddy," she said after a moment, painfully
blushing, " I'm awfully sorry, and it sounds priggish
and silly but I can't like people when I think they
don't feel rightly about right and wrong. I suppose
I'm made like that. I'm sorry."
' You precious infant." He smiled at her dis-
tressed face. ' You're made as I prefer. But you
see, they do feel rightly about things ; they really
do, Molly."
" Then," her shamed, averted eyes seemed to say,
" why don't they act rightly ? "
"Just try," he besought her, "to understand their
points of view everyone's point of view. Or
rather, don't bother about points of view ; just know
the people, and you won't be able to help caring
for them. People are like that so much more alive
and important than what they think or do, that none
of that seems to matter. Oh, don't put up barriers,
Molly. Do love my friends. I want you to. I'll
love all yours ; I will indeed, whatever dreadful
228 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
things they've done or are doing. I'll love them
even if they burn widows' houses, or paint problem
pictures for the Academy, or write prize novels, or
won't take in Unity. I'll love them through every-
thing. Won't you love mine a little, too ? "
She laughed back at him, unsteadily.
"Idiot, of course I will. I will indeed. I'll
love them nearly all. Only I can't love things I
hate, Eddy. Don't ask me to do that, because I
can't/'
" But you mustn't hate, Molly. Why hate ?
It isn't what things are there for, to be hated. Look
here. Here are you and I set down in the middle
of all this jolly, splendid, exciting jumble of things,
just like a toy-shop, and we can go round looking
at everything, touching everything, tasting every-
thing (I used always to try to taste tarts and things
in shops, didn't you ?) Well isn't it all jolly and
nice, and don't you like it ? And here you sit and
talk of hating ! "
Molly was looking at him with her merry eyes
unusually serious.
" But Eddy you're just pretending when you talk
of hating nothing. You know you hate some things
yourself ; there are some things everyone must
hate. You know you do."
"Do I ? " Eddy considered it. " Why, yes, I
suppose so ; some things. But very few."
" There's good," said Molly, with a gesture of one
hand, " and there's bad . . . ." she swept the other.
" They're quite separate, and they're fighting."
HYDE PARK TERRACE 229
Eddy observed that she was a Manichean Dualist.
" Don't know what that is. But it seems to mean
an ordinary sensible person, so I hope I am. Aren't
you ? "
" I think not. Not to your extent, anyhow. But
I quite see your point of view. Now will you see
mine ? And Eileen's ? And all the others ? Any-
how, will you think it over, so that by the time
we're married you'll be ready to be friends ? "
Molly shook her head.
" It's no use, Eddy. Don't let's talk about it any
more. Come and play coon-can ; I do like it
such a lot better than bridge ; it's so much sillier."
" I like them all," said Eddy.
CHAPTER XIII.
MOLLY.
EDDY next Sunday collected a party to row up to
Kew. They were Jane Dawn, Bridget Hogan,
Billy Raymond, Arnold Denison, Molly and himself,
and they embarked in a boat at Crabtree Lane at
two o'clock, and all took turns of rowing except
Bridget, who, as has been observed before, was a
lily of the field, and insisted on remaining so. She,
Molly, and Eddy may be called the respectable-
looking members of the party ; Jane, Arnold, and
Billy were sublimely untidy, which Eddy knew was
a pity, because of Molly, who was always a daintily
arrayed, fastidiously neat child. But it did not
really matter. They were all very happy. The
others made a pet and plaything of Molly, whose
infectious, whole-hearted chuckle and naive high
spirits pleased them. She and Eddy decided to live
in a river-side house, and made selections as they
rowed by.
"You'd be better off in Soho," said Arnold.
" Eddy would be nearer his business, and nearer
230
MOLLY 231
the shop we're going to start presently. Besides,
it's more select. You can't avoid the respectable
resident, up the river."
" The cheery non-resident, too, which is worse,"
added Miss Hogan. " Like us. The river on a
holiday is unthinkable. We were on it all Good
Friday last year, which seems silly, but I suppose
we must have had some wise purpose. Why was
it, Billy ? Do you remember ? You came, didn't
you ? And you, Jane. And Eileen and Cecil, I
think. Anyhow never again. Oh yes, and we
took some poor starved poet of Billy's a most
unfortunate creature, who proved, didn't he, to
be unable even to write poetry. Or, indeed, to sit
still in a boat. One or two very narrow shaves we
had I remember. He's gone into Peter Robinson's
since, I believe, as walker. So much nicer for him
in every way. I saw him there last Tuesday. I
gave him a friendly smile and asked how he was, but
I think he had forgotten his past life, or else he had
understood me to be asking the way to the stocking
department, for he only replied, " Hose, madam? "
Then I remembered that that was partly why he had
failed to be a poet, because he would call stockings
hose, and use similar unhealthy synonyms. So I
concluded with pleasure that he had really found his
vocation, the one career where such synonyms are
suitable, and, in fact, necessary."
" He's a very nice person, Nichols," Billy said ;
" he stiU writes a little, but I don't think he'll ever
get anything taken. He can't get rid of the idea
232 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
that he's got to be elegant. It's a pity, because he's
really got a little to say."
" Yes ; quite a little, isn't it. Poor dear."
Eddy asked hopefully, " Would he do us an article
for Unity from the shop walker's point of view,
about shop life, and the relations between customers
and shop people ? "
Billy shook his head. "I'm sure he wouldn't.
He'd want to write you a poem about something
quite different instead. He hates the shop, and he
won't write prose ; he finds it too homely. And if
he did, it would be horrible stuff, full of commencing,
and hose, and words like that."
" And corsets, and the next pleasure, and kindly
walk this way. It might be rather delightful really.
I should try to get him to, Eddy."
" I think I will. We rather want the shopman's
point of view, and it's not easy to get."
They were passing Chiswick Mall. Molly saw
there the house she preferred.
" Look, Eddy. That one with wistaria over it,
and the balcony. What's it called ? The Osiers.
What a nice name. Do let's stop and find out if we
can have it."
" Well, someone obviously lives there ; in fact,
I see someone on the balcony. He might think it
odd of us, do you think ? "
" But perhaps he's leaving. Or perhaps he'd as
soon live somewhere else, if we found a nice place for
him. I wonder who it is ? "
" I don't know. We might find out who his
MOLLY 233
doctor is, and get him to tell him it's damp and
unhealthy. It looks fairly old."
" And they say those osier beds are most unwhole-
some," Bridget added.
"It's heavenly. And look, there's a heron. . . .
Can't we land on the island ? "
" No. Bridget says it's unwholesome."
So they didn't, but went on to Kew. There they
landed and went to look for the badger in the
gardens. They did not find him. One never does.
But they had tea. Then they rowed down again
to Crabtree Lane, and their ways diverged.
Eddy went home with Molly. She said, " It's
been lovely, Eddy," and he said " Hasn't it." He
was pleased, because Molly and the others had got
on so well and made such a happy party. He said,
" When we're at the Osiers we'll often do that."
She said " Yes," thoughtfully, and he saw that
something was on her mind.
" And when Daffy and Nevill have stopped
quarrelling," added Eddy, " we'll have them
established somewhere near by, and they shall come
on the river too. We must fix that up somehow."
Molly said " Yes," again, and he asked, " And
what's the matter now ? " and touched a little
pucker on her forehead with his finger. She smiled.
" I was only thinking, Eddy. ... It was some-
thing Miss Hogan said, about spending Good Friday
on the river. Do you think they really did ? "
He laughed a little at her wide, questioning eyes
and serious face.
234 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" I suppose so. But Bridget said ' Never again '
didn't you hear ? "
" Oh yes. But that was only because of the
crowd. ... Of course it may be all right but
I just wished she hadn't said it, rather. It sounded
as if they didn't care much, somehow. I'm sure
they do, but . . . ."
" I'm sure they don't," Eddy said. " Bridget
isn't what you would call a Churchwoman, you see.
Nor are Jane, or Arnold, or Billy. They see things
differently, that's all."
" But they're not dissenters, are they ? "
Eddy laughed. "No. That's the last thing
any of them are."
Molly's wide gaze became startled.
" Do you mean they're heathens ? Oh, how
dreadfully sad, Eddy. Can't you . . . can't you help
them somehow ? Couldn't you ask some clergyman
you know to meet them ? "
Eddy chuckled again. " I'm glad I'm engaged
to you, Molly. You please me. But I'm afraid
the clergyman would be no more likely to convert
them than they him."
Molly remembered something Daphne had once
told her about Miss Dawn and Mrs. Le Moine and the
prayer book. " It 's so dreadfully sad, ' ' she repeated.
There was a little silence. The revelation was
working in Molly's mind. She turned it over and
over.
" Eddy."
" Molly ? "
MOLLY 235
" Don't you find it matters ? In being friends,
I mean ? "
" What ? Oh, that. No, not a bit. How should
it matter, that I happen to believe certain things
they don't ? How could it ? "
" It would to me." Molly spoke with conviction.
" I might try, but I know I couldn't really be friends
not close friends with an unbeliever."
" Oh yes, you could. You'd get over all that,
once you knew them. It doesn't stick out of them,
what they don't believe ; it very seldom turns up.
Besides theirs is such an ordinary, and such a
comprehensible and natural point of view. Have
you always believed what you do now about such
things ? "
" Why, of course. Haven't you ? "
" Oh dear no. For quite a long time I didn't.
After all, it's pretty difficult. . . . And particularly
at my home I think it was a little difficult for me,
anyhow. I suppose I wanted more of the Catholic
Church standpoint. I didn't come across that much
till Cambridge; then suddenly I caught on to the
point of view, and saw how fine it was."
" It's more than fine," said Molly. " It's true."
" Rather, of course it is. So are all fine things.
If once all these people who don't believe saw the
fineness of it, they'd see it must be true. Meanwhile,
I don't see that the fact that one believes one's
friends to be missing something they might have is
any sort of reason for not being friends. Is it now ?
Billy might as well say he couldn't be friends with
236 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
you because you said you didn't care about Mase-
field. You miss something he's got ; that's all the
difference it makes, in either case."
" Masefield isn't so important as " Molly
left a shy hiatus.
" No ; of course ; but, it's the same prin-
ciple. . . . Well, anyhow you like them, don't
you ? " said Eddy shifting his ground.
" Oh, yes, I do. But I expect they think me a
duffer. I don't know anything about their things,
you see. They're awfully nice to me."
" That seems odd, certainly. And they may come
and visit us at the Osiers, mayn't they ? "
" Of course. And we'll all have tea on the
balcony there. Oh, do let's begin turning out the
people that live there at once."
Meanwhile Jane and Arnold and Billy, walking
along the embankment, when they had discussed
the colour of the water, the prospects of the weather,
the number of cats on the wall, and other interesting
subjects, commented on Molly. Jane said, " She's
a little sweetmeat. I love her yellow eyes and her
rough curly hair. She's like a spaniel puppy we've
got at home."
Billy said, " She's quite nice to talk to, too. I
like her laugh."
Arnold said, maliciously, " She'll never read your
poetry, Billy. She probably only reads Tennyson's
and Scott's and the Anthology of Nineteenth
Century Verse."
" Well," said Billy, placidly, " I'm in that. If
MOLLY 237
she knows that, she knows all the best twentieth
century poets. You seem to be rather acrimonious
about her. Hadn't she read your ' Latter Day
Leavings/ or what ? "
" I'm sure I trust not. She'd hate them. . . .
It's all very well, and I've no doubt she's a very nice
little girl but what does Eddy want with marry-
ing her ? Or, indeed, anyone else ? He's not old
enough to settle down. And marrying that spaniel-
child will mean settling down in a sense."
" Oh, I don't know. She's got plenty of fun, and
can play all right."
Arnold shook his head over her. " All the same,
she's on the side of darkness and the conventions.
She mayn't know it yet, being still half a child, and
in the playing puppy stage, but give her ten years
and you'll see. She'll become proper. Even now,
she's not sure we're quite nice or very good. 1
spotted that. . . . Don't you remember, Jane,
what I said to you at Welchester about it ? With
my never-failing perspicacity, I foresaw the turn
events would take, and I foresaw also exactly how
she would affect Eddy. You will no doubt recollect
what I said (I hope you always do) ; therefore I
won't repeat it now, even for Billy's sake. But I
may tell you, Billy, that I prophesied the worst.
I still prophesy it."
' You're too frightfully particular to live, Arnold,"
Billy told him. " She's a very good sort and a very
pleasant person. Rather like a brook in sunlight,
I thought her ; her eyes are that colour, and her
238 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
hair and dress are the shadowed parts, and her laugh
is like the water chuckling over a stone. I like
her."
" Oh, heavens/' Arnold groaned. " Of course you
do. You and Jane are hopeless. You may like
brooks in sunlight or puppies or anything else in the
universe but you don't want to go and marry
them because of that."
" I don't/' Billy admitted, peacefully. " But
many people do. Eddy obviously is one of them.
And I should say it's quite a good thing for him to
do."
" Of course it is," said Jane, who was more
interested at the moment in the effect of the evening
mist on the river.
" Perhaps they'll think better of it and break it
off before the wedding-day," Arnold gloomily sug-
gested. " There's always that hope ... I see no
place for this thing called love in a reasonable life.
It will smash up Eddy, as it's smashed up Eileen.
I hate the thing."
" Eileen's a little better lately," said Jane
presently. " She's going to play at Lovinski's
concert next week."
" She's rather worse really," said Billy, a singu-
larly clear-sighted person ; and they left it at that.
Billy was very likely right. At that moment
Eileen was lying on the floor of her room, her head
on her flung-out arms, tearless and still, muttering
a name over and over, through clenched teeth. The
passage of time took her further from him, slow
MOLLY 239
hour by slow hour ; took her out into cold, lonely
seas of pain, to drown uncomforted. She was not
rather better.
She would spend long mornings or evenings in the
fields and lanes by the Lea, walking or sitting, silent
and alone. She never went to the disorganised,
lifeless remnant of Datcherd's settlement ; only
she would travel by the tram up Shoreditch and Mare
Street to the north east, and walk along the narrow
path by the Lea-side wharf cottages, little and old
and jumbled, and so over the river on to Leyton
Marsh, where sheep crop the grass. Here she and
Datcherd had often walked, after an evening at the
Club, and here she now wandered alone. These
regions have a queer, perhaps morbid, peace ; they
brood, as it were, on the fringe of the huge world of
London ; they divide it, too, from that other stranger,
sadder world beyond the Lea, Walthamstow and its
endless drab slums.
Here, in the November twilight on Leyton Marsh,
Eddy found her once. He himself was bicycling
back from Walthamstow, where he had been to see
one of his Club friends (he had made many) who
lived there. Eileen was leaning on a stile at the
end of one of the footpaths that thread this strange
borderland. They met face to face ; and she looked
at him as if she did not see him, as if she was expect-
ing someone not him. He got off his bicycle, and
said " Eileen."
She looked at him dully, and said, "I'm waiting
for Hugh."
240 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
He gently took her hand. " You're cold. Come
home with me."
Her dazed eyes upon his face slowly took percep-
tion and meaning, and with them pain rushed in.
She shuddered horribly, and caught away her hand.
" Oh ... I was waiting . . . but it's no use. . .
I suppose I'm going mad. . . ."
" No. You're only tired and unstrung. Come
home now, won't you. Indeed you mustn't stay."
The mists were white and chilly about them ;
it was a strange phantom world, set between the
million-eyed monster to the west, and the smaller,
sprawling, infinitely sad monster to the east.
She flung out her arms to the red-eyed city, and
moaned, " Hugh, Hugh, Hugh," till she choked
and cried.
Eddy bit his own lips to steady them. " Eileen
dear Eileen come home. He'd want you to."
She returned, through sobs that rent her. " He
wants nothing any more. He always wanted
things, and never got them ; and now he's dead,
the way he can't even want. But I want him ;
I want him ; I want him oh, Hugh ! "
So seldom she cried, so strung up and tense had
she long been, even to the verge of mental delusion,
that now that a breaking-point had come, she broke
utterly, and cried and cried, and could not stop.
He stood by her, saying nothing, waiting till he
could be of use. At last from very weariness she
quieted, and stood very still, her head bowed on her
arms that were flung across the stile.
MOLLY 241
He said then, " Dear, you will come now, won't
you," and apathetically she lifted her head, and her
dim, wet, distorted face was strange in the mist-
swathed moonlight.
Together they took the little path back over the
grass-grown marsh, where phantom sheep coughed
in the fog, and so across the foot-bridge to the
London side of the Lea, and the little wharfside
cottages, and up on to the Lea Bridge Road, and into
Mare Street, and there, by unusual good fortune
there strayed a taxi, a rare phenomenon north of
Shoreditch, and Eddy put Eileen and himself and
his bicycle in it and on it, and so they came back
out of the wilds of the east, by Liverpool Street and
the city, across London to Campden Hill Road in
the further west. And all the way Eileen leant
back exhausted and very still, only shuddering
from time to time, as one does after a fit of crying
or of sickness. But by the end of the journey she
was a little restored. Listlessly she touched Eddy's
hand with her cold one.
" Eddy, you are a dear. You've been good to
me, and I such a great fool. I'm sorry. It isn't
often I am. . . . But I think if you hadn't come
to-night I would have gone mad, no less. I was on
the way there, I believe. Thank you for saving me.
And now you'll come in and have something, won't
you."
He would not come in. He should before this
have been at Mrs. Crawford's for dinner. He
waited to see her in, then hurried back to Soho to
242 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
dress. His last sight of her was as she turned to
him in the doorway, the light on her pale, tear-
marred face, trying to smile to cheer him. That
was a good sign, he believed, that she could think
even momentarily of anyone but herself and the
other who filled her being.
Heavy-hearted for pity and regret, he drove back
to his rooms and hurriedly dressed, and arrived
in Hyde Park Terrace desperately late, a thing Mrs.
Crawford found it hard to forgive. In fact, she did
not try to forgive it. She said, " Oh, we had quite
given up hope. Hardwick, some soup for Mr.
Oliver."
Eddy said he would rather begin where they had
got to. But he was not allowed thus to evade his
position, and had to hurry through four courses
before he caught them up. They were a small party,
and he apologised across the table to his hostess
as he ate.
"I'm frightfully sorry ; simply abject. The
fact is, I met a friend on Ley ton Marsh/'
" On what ? "
" Leyton Marsh. Up in the north east, by the
Lea, you know."
" I certainly don't know. Is that where you
usually take your evening walks when dining in
Kensington ? "
" Well, sometimes. It's the way to Walthamstow,
you see. I know some people there."
" Really. You do, as the rationalist bishop told
you, touch a very extensive circle, certainly. And
MOLLY 243
so you met one of them on this marsh, and the
pleasure of their society was such "
" She wasn't well, and I took her back to where
she lived. She lives in Kensington, so it took
ages ; then I had to get back to Compton Street
to dress. Really, I'm awfully sorry."
Mrs. Crawford's eyebrows conveyed attention
to the sex of the friend ; then she resumed conversa-
tion with the barrister on her right.
Molly said consolingly, " Don't you mind,
Eddy. She doesn't really. She only pretends to,
for fun. She knows it wasn't your fault. Of course
you had to take your friend home if she wasn't
well."
" I couldn't have left her, as a matter of fact.
She was frightfully unhappy and unhinged. . . .
It was Mrs. Le Moine." He conquered a vague
reluctance and added this. He was not going to
have the vestige of a secret from Molly.
She flushed quickly and said nothing, and he knew
that he had hurt her. Yet it was an unthinkable
alternative to conceal the truth from her ; equally
unthinkable not to do these things that hurt her.
What then, would be the solution ? Simply he did
not know. A change of attitude on her part seemed
to him the only possible one, and he had waited now
long for that in vain. To avert her sombreness and
his, he began to talk cheerfully to her about all
manner of things, and she responded, but not
quite spontaneously. A shadow lay between
them.
244 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
So obvious was it that after dinner he told her so,
in those words.
She tried to smile. " Does it ? How silly you
are/'
" You'd better tell me the worst, you know.
You think it was ill-bred of me to be late for dinner."
" What rubbish; I don't. As if you could help
it."
But he knew she thought he could have helped
it. So they left it at that, and the shadow remained.
Eddy, it may have been mentioned, had the
gift of sympathy largely developed the quality
of his defect of impressionability. He had it more
than is customary. People found that he said and
felt the most consoling thing, and left unsaid the
less. It was because he found realisation easy.
So people in trouble often came to him. Eileen Le
Moine, reaching out in her desperate need on the
mist-bound marshes, had, as it were, met the saving
grasp of his hand. Half-consciously she had let it
draw her out of the deep waters where she was
sinking, on to the shores of sanity. She reached out
to him again. He had cared for Hugh ; he cared
for her ; he understood how nothing in heaven
and earth now mattered ; he did not try to give
her interests ; he simply gave her his sorrow and
understanding and his admiration of Hugh. So she
claimed it, as a drowning man clutches instinc-
tively at the thing which will best support him.
And as she claimed he gave. He gave of his best.
He tried to make Molly give too, but she would not.
MOLLY 245
There came a day when Bridget Hogan wrote
and said that she had to go out of town for Sunday,
and didn't want to leave Eileen alone in the flat
all day, and would Eddy come and see her there
come to lunch, perhaps, and stay for the after-
noon.
" You are good for her ; better than anyone else,
I think/' Bridget wrote. " She feels she can talk
about Hugh to you, though to hardly anyone
not even to me much. I am anxious about her
just now. Please do come if you can."
Eddy, who had been going to lunch and spend
the afternoon at the Crawfords', made no question
about it. He went to Molly and told her how it was.
She listened silently. The room was strange with
fog and blurred lights, and her small grave face
was strange and pale too.
Eddy said, " Molly, I wish you would come too,
just this once. She would love it ; she would
indeed. . . . Just this once, Molly, because she's
in such trouble. Will you ? "
Molly shook her head, and he somehow knew it
was because she did not trust her voice.
" Well, never mind, then, darling. I'll go alone."
Still she did not speak. After a moment he rose
to go. He took her cold hands in his, and would
have kissed her, but she pushed him back, still
wordless. So for a moment they stood, silent and
strange and perplexed in the blurred fog-bound
room, hands locked in hands.
Then Molly spoke, steady- voiced at last.
246 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" I want to say something, Eddy. I must,
please."
" Do, sweetheart."
She looked at him, as if puzzled by herself and him
and the world, frowning a little, childishly.
'' We can't go on, Eddy. I ... I can't go on."
Cold stillness fell over him like a pall. The fog-
shadows huddled up closer round them.
" What do you mean, Molly ? "
"Just that. I can't do it. ... We mustn't
be engaged any more."
" Oh, yes, we must. I must, you must. Molly,
don't talk such ghastly nonsense. I won't have it.
Those aren't things to be said between you and me,
even in. fun."
" It's not in fun. We mustn't be engaged any
more, because we don't fit. Because we make each
other unhappy. Because, if we married, it would be
worse. No listen now ; it's only this once and for
all, and I must get it all out ; don't make it more
difficult than it need be, Eddy. It's because you
have friends I can't ever have ; you care for people
I must always think bad ; I shall never fit into
your set. . . . The very fact of your caring for
them and not minding what they've done, proves
we're miles apart really."
" We're not miles apart." Eddy's hands on her
shoulders drew her to him. " We're close together
like this. And all the rest of the world can go and
drown itself. Haven't we each other, and isn't it
enough ? "
MOLLY 247
She pulled away, her two hands against his
breast.
" No, it isn't enough. Not enough for either of
us. Not for me, because I can't not mind that you
think differently from me about things. And not
for you, because you want you need to have
all the rest of the world too. You don't mean that
about its drowning itself. If you did, you wouldn't
be going to spend Sunday with "
" No, I suppose I shouldn't. You're right. The
rest of the world mustn't drown itself, then ; but
it must stand well away from us and not get in our
way."
" And you don't mean that, either," said Molly,
strangely clear-eyed. " You're not made to care
only for one person you need lots. And if we were
married, you'd either have them, or you'd be
cramped and unhappy. And you'd want the people
I can't understand or like. And you'd want me to
like them, and I couldn't. And we should both
be miserable."
" Oh, Molly, Molly, are we so silly as all that ?
Just trust life just live it don't let's brood over
it and map out all its difficulties beforehand. Just
trust it and trust love isn't love good enough
for a pilot ? and we'll take the plunge together."
She still held him away with her pressing
hands, and whispered, " No, love isn't good enough.
Not not your love for me, Eddy."
" Not ? "
"No." Quite suddenly she weakened and
248 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
collapsed, and her hands fell from him, and she
hid her face in them and the tears came.
" No don't touch me, or I can't say it. I know
you care . . . but there are so many ways of caring.
There's the way you care for me . . . and the
way . . . the way you've always cared for . . .
her . . ."
Eddy stood and looked down at her as she crouched
huddled in a chair, and spoke gently.
" There are many ways of caring. Perhaps one
cares for each of one's friends rather differently I
don't know. But love is different from them all.
And I love you, Molly. I have loved no one else,
ever, in that sense. . . . I'm not going to pretend
I don't understand you. By ' her ' I believe you
mean Eileen Le Moine. Now can you look me in
the face and say you think I care for Eileen Le
Moine in in that way ? No, of course you can't.
You know I don't ; what's more, you know I never
did. I have always admired her, liked her, been
fond of her, attracted to her. If you asked why I
have never fallen in love with her, I suppose I
should answer that it was, in the first instance,
because she never gave me the chance. She has
always, since I knew her, been so manifestly given
over, heart and soul, to someone else. To fall in
love with her would have been absurd. Love needs
just the element of potential reciprocity ; at least,
for me it does. There was never that element with
Eileen. So I never quite fell in love with her.
That perhaps was my reason before I found I cared
MOLLY 249
for you. After that, no reason was needed. I had
found the real thing. . . . And now you talk of
taking it away from me. Molly, say you don't
mean it ; say so at once, please/' She had stopped
crying, and sat huddled in the big chair, with
downbent, averted face.
" But I do mean it, Eddy." Her voice came
small and uncertain through the fog-choked air.
" Truly I do. You see, the things I hate and can't
get over are just nothing at all to you. We don't
feel the same about right and wrong. . . . There's
religion, now. You want me, and you'd want me
more if we were married, to be friends with people
who haven't any, in the sense I mean, and don't
want any. Well, I can't. I've often told you. I
suppose I'm made that way. So there it is ; it
wouldn't be happy a bit, for either of us. ... And
then there are the wrong things people do, and which
you don't mind. Perhaps I'm a prig, but anyhow
we're different, and I do mind. I shall always
mind. And I shouldn't like to feel I was getting in
the way of your having the friends you liked, and
we should have to go separate ways, and though
you could be friends with all my friends because
you can with everyone I couldn't with all yours,
and we should hate it. You want so many more
kinds of things and people than I do ; I suppose
that's it." (Arnold Denison, who had once said,
" Her share of the world is homogeneous ; his is
heterogeneous," would perhaps have been surprised
at her discernment, confirming his.)
250 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
Eddy said, " I want you. Whatever else I want,
I want you. If you want me if you did want me,
as I thought you did it would be enough. If you
don't. . . . But you do, you must, you do."
And it was no argument. And she had reason
and logic on her side, and he nothing but the un-
reasoning reason of love. And so through the dim
afternoon they fought it out, and he came up against
a will firmer than his own, holding both their loves
in check, a vision clearer than his own, seeing life
steadily and seeing it whole, till at last the vision
was drowned in tears, and she sobbed to him to
go, because she would talk no more. He went,
vanquished and angry, out into the black, muffled
city, and groped his way to Soho, like a man who
has been robbed of his all and is full of bitterness
but unbeaten, and means to get it back by artifice
or force.
He went back next day, and the day after that,
hammering desperately on the shut door of her
resolve. The third day she left London and went
home. He only saw Mrs. Crawford, who looked at
him speculatively and with an odd touch of pity,
and said, " So it's all over. Molly seems to know
her own mind. I dislike broken engagements
exceedingly ; they are so noticeable, and give so
much trouble. One would have thought that in
all the years you have known each other one of
you might have discovered your incompatability
before entering into rash compacts. But dear
Molly only sees a little at a time, and that extremely
MOLLY 251
clearly. She tells me you wouldn't suit each other.
Well, she may be right, and anyhow I suppose she
must be allowed to judge. But I am sorry."
She was kind ; she hoped he would still come
and see them ; she talked, and her voice was far
away and irrelevant. He left her. He was like a
man who has been robbed of his all and knows he
will never get it back, by any artifice or any force.
On Sunday he went to Eileen. It seemed about
a month ago that he had heard from Bridget asking
him to do so. He found her listless and heavy-eyed,
and yawning from lack of sleep. Gently he led her
to talk, till Hugh Datcherd seemed to stand alive
in the room, caressed by their allusions. He told
her of people who missed him ; quoted what working-
men of the Settlement had said of him ; discussed
his work. She woke from apathy. It was as if,
among a world that, meaning kindness, bade her
forget, this one voice bade her remember, and
remembered with her ; as if, among many voices
that softened over his name as with pity for sadness
and failure, this one voice rang glorying in his
success. Sheer intuition had told Eddy that that
was what she wanted, what she was sick for some
recognition, some triumph for him whose gifts had
seemed to be broken and wasted, whose life had set
in the greyness of unsuccess. As far as one man
could give her what she wanted, he gave it, with
both hands, and so she clung to him out of all the
kind, uncomprehending world.
They talked far into the grey afternoon. And
252 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
she grew better. She grew so much better that she
said to him suddenly, " You look tired to death, do
you know. What have you been doing to yourself ? ' '
With the question and her concerned eyes, the
need came to him in his turn for sympathy.
" I've been doing nothing. Molly has. She has
broken off our engagement."
" Do you say so ? " She was startled, sorry,
pitiful. She forgot her own grief. " My dear and
I bothering you with my own things and never
seeing how it was with you ! How good you've
been to me, Eddy. I wonder is there anyone else
in the world would be so patient and so kind. Oh,
but I'm sorry/'
She asked no questions, and he did not tell her
much. But to talk of it was good for both of them.
She tried to give him back some of the sympathy
she had had of him ; she was only partly successful,
being still half numbed and bound by her own
sorrow ; but the effort a little loosened the bands.
And part of him watched their loosening with
interest, as a doctor watches a patient's first motions
of returning health, while the other part found
relief in talking to her. It was a strange, half
selfish, half unselfish afternoon they both had, and
a little light crept in through the fogs that brooded
about both of them. Eileen said as he went, "It's
been dear of you to come like this. ... I'm going
to spend next Sunday at Holmbury St. Mary. If
you're doing nothing else, I wish you'd come there
too, and we'll spend the day tramping."
MOLLY 253
Her thought was to comfort both of them, and
he accepted it gladly. The thought came to him
that there was no one now to mind how he spent
his Sundays. Molly would have minded. She
would have thought it odd, not proper, hardly
right. Having lost her partty on this very account,
he threw himself with the more fervour into this
mission of help and healing to another and himself.
His loss did not thus seem such utter waste, the
emptiness of the long days not so blank.
CHAPTER XIV.
UNITY.
THE office of Unity was a room on the top floor of
the Denisons' publishing house. It looked out on
Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane. Sitting
there, Eddy ; when not otherwise engaged (he and
Arnold were joint editors of Unity) watched the
rushing tide far below, the people crowding by.
There with the tide went the business men, the
lawyers, the newspaper people, who made thought
and ensued it, the sellers and the buyers. Each had
his and her own interests, his and her own irons in
the fire. They wanted none of other people's ;
often they resented other people's. Yet, looked at
long enough ahead (one of the editors in his trite
way mused) all interests must be the same in the
end. No state, surely, could thrive, divided into
factions, one faction spoiling another. They must
needs have a common aim, find a heterogeneous
city of peace. So Unity, gaily flinging down bar-
riers, cheerily bestriding walls, with one foot planted
in each neighbouring and antagonistic garden
Unity, so sympathetic with all causes, so ably
written, so versatile, must surely succeed.
254
UNITY 255
Unity really was rather well written, rather
interesting. New magazines so often are. The
co-operative contributors, being clever people, and
fresh-minded, usually found some new, unstaled
aspect of the topics they touched, and gave them
life. The paper, except for a few stories and
poems and drawings, was frankly political and
social in trend ; it dealt with current questions,
not in the least impartially (which is so dull), but
taking alternate and very definite points of view.
Some of these articles were by the staff, others by
specialists. Not afraid to aim high, they en-
deavoured to get (in a few cases succeeded, in
most failed) articles by prominent supporters and
opponents of the views they handled ; as, for
example, Lord Hugh Cecil and Dr. Clifford on
Church Disestablishment ; Mr. Harold Cox and Sir
William Robertson Nicholl on Referendums, Dr.
Cunningham and Mr. Strachey on Tariff Reform ;
Mr. Roger Fry and Sir William Richmond on Art ;
Lord Robert Cecil and the Sidney Webbs on the
Minimum Wage ; the Dean of Welchester and Mr.
Hakluyt Egerton on Prayer Book Revision ; Mr.
Conrad Noel and Mr. Victor Grayson on Socialism
as Synonymous with Christianity, an Employer, a
Factory Hand, and Miss Constance Smith, on the
Inspection of Factories ; Mrs. Fawcett and Miss
Violet Markham on Women as Political Creatures ;
Mr. J. M. Robertson and Monsignor R. H. Benson
on the Church as an Agent for Good ; land-owners,
farmers, labourers, and Mr. F. E. Greene, on Land
256 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
Tenure. (The farmers' and labourers' articles were
among the failures, and had to be editorially supplied.)
A paper's reach must exceed its grasp, or what are
enterprising editors for ? But Unity did actually
grasp some writers of note, and some of unlettered
ardour, and supplied, to fill the gaps in these, con-
tributors of a certain originality and vividness
of outlook. On the whole it was a readable produc-
tion, as productions go. There were several adver-
tisements on the last page ; most, of course, were
of books published by the Denisons, but there were
also a few books published by other people, and, one
proud week, " Darn No More," " Why Drop Ink,"
and " Dry Clean Your Dog." " Dry Clean Your
Dog " seemed to the editors particularly promising ;
dogs, though led, indeed, by some literary people
about the book-shops of towns, suggest in the main
a wider, more breezy, less bookish class of reader ; the
advertisement called up a pleasant picture of Unity
being perused in the country, perhaps even as far
away as Weybridge ; lying on hall tables along
with the Field and Country Life, while its readers
obediently repaired to the kennels with a dry sham-
poo. . . . It was an encouraging picture. For, though
any new journal can get taken in (for a time) by
the bookier cliques of cities, who read and write
so much that they do not need to be very careful,
in either case, what it is, how few shall force a
difficult entrance into our fastidious country homes.
The editors of Unity could not, indeed, persuade
themselves that they had a large circulation in the
UNITY 257
country as yet. Arnold said from the first, " We
never shall have. That is very certain."
Eddy said, " Why ? " He hoped they would
have. It was his hope that Unify would circulate
all round the English-speaking world.
" Because we don't stand for anything/' said
Arnold, and Eddy returned, " We stand for every-
thing. We stand for Truth. We are of Use."
" We stand for a lot of lies, too," Arnold pointed
out, because he thought it was lies to say that
Tariff Reform and Referendums and Democracies
were good things, and that Everyone should Vote, and
that Plays should be Censored, and the Prayer Book
Revised, and lots of other things. Eddy, who
knew that Arnold knew that he for his part
thought these things true, did not trouble to say so
again.
Arnold added, " Not, of course, that standing for
lies is any check on circulation ; quite the contrary ;
but it's dangerous to mix them up with the truth ;
you confuse people's minds. The fact that I do not
approve of any existing form of government or con-
stitution of society, and that you approve of all,
makes us harmonious collaborators, but hardly
gives us, as an editorial body, enough insight into
the mind of the average potential reader, who as a
rule prefers, quite definitely prefers, one party or one
state of things to another ; has, in fact, no patience
with any other, and does not in the least wish to be
told how admirable it is. And if he does if a
country squire, for instance, really does want to
R
;8 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
hear a eulogy of Free Trade (there may be a few
such squires, possibly, hidden in the home counties ;
I doubt it, but there may) well, there is the
Spectator ready to his hand. The Spectator, which
has the incidental advantage of not disgusting him
on the next page with ' A Word for a Free Drama/
or ' Socialism as Synonymous with Christianity.'
If, on the other hand, as might conceivably happen,
he desired to hear the praises of Tariff Reform-
well, there are the Times and the Morning Post,
both organs that he knows and trusts. And if, by
any wild chance, in an undisciplined mood, he
craved for an attack on the censorship, or other
insubordinate sentiments, he might find at any rate
a few to go on with in, say, the English Review.
Or, if it is Socialism he wants to hear about (and I
never yet met the land-owner, did you, who hadn't
Socialism on the brain ; it's a class obsession),
there is the New Statesman, so bright, thorough,
and reliable. Or, if he wants to learn the point
of view and the grievances of his tenant farmers or
his agricultural labourers, without asking them, he
can read books on ' The Tyranny of the Country-
side/ or take in the Vineyard. Anyhow, where
does Unity come in ? I don't see it, I'm afraid.
It would be different if we were merely or mainly
literary, but we're frankly political. To be political
without being partisan is savourless, like an egg
without salt. It doesn't go down. Liberals don't
like, while reading a paper, to be hit in the eye by
long articles headed ' Toryism as the only Basis/
UNITY 259
Unionists don't care to open at a page inscribed
' The Need for Home Rule/ Socialists object to
being confronted by articles on ' Liberty as an
Ideal.' No one wants to see exploited and held
up for admiration the ideals of others antagonistic
to their own. You yourself wouldn't read an
article not a long article, anyhow called ' Party
Warfare as the Ideal.' At least you might, because
you're that kind of lunatic, but few would. That
is why we shall not sell well, when people have got
over buying us because we're new."
Eddy merely said, " We're good. We're inter-
esting. Look at this drawing of Jane's ; and this
thing of Le Moine's. They by themselves should
sell us, as mere art and literature. There are lots
of people who'll let us have any politics we like if we
give them things as good as that with them."
But Arnold jeered at the idea of there being
enough readers who cared for good work to make a
paper pay. " The majority care for bad, unfortu-
nately."
" Well, anyhow," said Eddy, " the factory articles
are making a stir among employers. Here's a letter
that came this morning."
Arnold read it.
" He thinks it's his factory we meant, apparently.
Rather annoyed, he sounds. ' Does not know if we
purpose a series on the same subject 'nor if so what's
going to get put into it, I suppose. I imagine he
suspects one of his own hands of being the author.
It wasn't, though, was it ; it was a jam man. And
26o THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
very temperate in tone it was ; most unreasonable
of any employer to cavil at it. The remarks were
quite general, too ; mainly to the effect that all
factories were unwholesome, and all days too long ;
statements that can hardly be disputed even by the
proudest employer. I expect he's more afraid of
what's coming than of what's come already."
" Anyhow/' said Eddy, " he's coming. In about
ten minutes, too. Shall I see him, or you ? "
" Oh, you can. What does he want out of
us?"
" I suppose he wants to know who wrote the
article, and if we purpose a series. I shall tell him
we do, and that I hope the next number of it will
be an article by him on the Grievances of Employers.
We need one, and it ought to sweeten him. Anyhow
it will show him we've no prejudice in the matter.
He can say all workers are pampered and all days
too short, if he likes. I should think that would
be him coming up now."
It was not him, but a sturdy and sweet-faced
young man with an article on the Irrelevance of the
Churches to the World's Moral Needs. The editors,
always positive, never negative, altered the title to
the Case for Secularism. It was to be set next to
an article by a Church Socialist on Christianity the
Only Remedy. The sweet-faced young man ob-
jected to this, but was over-ruled. In the middle
of the discussion came the factory owner, and Eddy
was left alone to deal with him. After that as many
of the contributors as found it convenient met at
UNITY 261
lunch at the Town's End Tavern, as they generally
did on Fridays, to discuss the next week's work.
This was at the end of January, when Unity had
been running for two months. The first two months
of a weekly paper may be significant, but are not
conclusive. The third month is more so. Mr.
Wilfred Denison, who published Unity, found the
third month conclusive enough for him. He said
so. At the Town's End on a foggy Friday towards
the end of February, Arnold and Eddy announced
at lunch that Unity was going to stop. No one was
surprised. Most of these people were journalists,
and used to these catastrophic births and deaths,
so radiant or so sad, and often so abrupt. It is
better when they are abrupt. Some die a long and
lingering death, with many recuperations, artificial
galvanisations, desperate recoveries, and relapses.
The end is the same in either case ; better that it
should come quickly. It was an expected moment
in this case, even to the day, for the contract with
the contributors had been that the paper should
run on its preliminary trial trip for three months,
and then consider its position.
Arnold, speaking for the publishers, announced
the result of the consideration.
"It's no good. We've got to stop. We're not
increasing. In fact, we're dwindling. Now that
people's first interest in a new thing is over, they
don't buy us enough to pay our way."
" The advertisements are waning, certainly,"
said someone. " They're nearly all books and
262 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
author's agencies and fountain pens now. That's
a bad sign."
Arnold agreed. " We're mainly bought now by
intellectuals and non-political people. As a political
paper, we can't grow fat on that ; there aren't
enough of them. . . - We've discussed whether we
should change our aim and become purely literary ;
but after all, that's not what we're out for, and there
are too many of such papers already. We're essen-
tially political and practical, and if we're to succeed
as that, we've got to be partisan too, there's no
doubt about it. Numbers of people have told us
they don't understand our line, and want to know
precisely what we're driving at politically. We
reply we're driving at a union of parties, a throwing
down of barriers. No one cares for that ; they think
it silly, and so do I. So, probably, do most of us ;
perhaps all of us except Oliver. Ned Jackson, for
instance, was objecting the other day to my anti-
Union article on the Docks strike appearing side
by side with his own remarks of an opposite ten-
dency. He, very naturally, would like Unity not
merely to sing the praise of the Unions, but to give
no space to the other side. I quite understand it ;
I felt the same myself. I extremely disliked his
article; but the principles of the paper compelled
us to take it. Why, my own father dislikes his
essays on the Monistic Basis to be balanced by Pro-
fessor Wedgewood's on Dualism as a Necessity of
Thought. A philosophy, according to him, is either
good or bad, true or false. So, to most people, are
UNITY 263
all systems of thought and principles of conduct.
Very naturally, therefore, they prefer that the papers
they read should eschew evil as well as seeking
good. And so, since one can't (fortunately) read
everything, they read those which seem to them to
do so. I should myself, if I could find one which
seemed to me to do so, only I never have. . . . Well,
I imagine that's the sort of reason Unity's failing ;
it's too comprehensive."
"It's too uneven on the literary and artistic
side," suggested a contributor. " You can't ex-
pect working-men, for instance, who may be in-
terested in the more practical side of the paper, to
read it if it's liable to be weighted by Raymond's
verse, or Le Moine's essays, or Miss Dawn's drawings.
On the other hand, the clever people are occasionally
shocked by coming on verse and prose suitable for
working men. I expect it's that ; you can't rely
on it ; it's not all of a piece, even on its literary
side, like Tit-Bits, for instance. People like to
know what to expect."
Cecil Le Moine said wearily in his high sweet
voice, " Considering how few things do pay, I can't
imagine why any of you ever imagined Unity would
pay. I said from the first . . . but no one listened
to me ; they never do. It's not Unity's fault ; it's
the fault of all the other papers. There are hundreds
too many already ; millions too many. They want
thinning, like dandelions in a garden, and instead,
like dandelions, they spread like a disease. Some-
thing ought to be done about it. I hate Acts of
264 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
Parliament, but this is really a case for one. It is
surely Mr. McKenna's business to see to it ; but I
suppose he is kept too busy with all these vulgar
disturbances. Anyhow, we have done our best now
to stem the tide. There will be one paper less.
Perhaps some of the others will follow our example.
Perhaps the Record will. I met a woman in the
train yesterday (between Hammersmith and Turn-
ham Green it was), and I passed her my copy of
Unity to read. I thought she would like to read my
Dramatic Criticism, so it was folded back at that,
but she turned over the pages till she came to some-
thing about the Roman Catholic Church, by some
Monsignor ; then she handed it back to me and said
she always took the Record. She obviously sup-
posed Unity to be a Popish organ. I hunted
through it for some Dissenting sentiments, and found
an article by a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist on Dis-
establishment, but it was too late ; she had got out.
But there it is, you see ; she always took the Record.
They all always take something. There are too
many. . . . Well, anyhow, can't we all ask each
other to dinner one night, to wind ourselves up ?
A sort of funeral feast. Or ought the editors to
ask the rest of us ? Perhaps I shouldn't have
spoken."
" You should not," Eddy said. " We were going
to introduce that subject later on."
The company, having arranged the date of the
dinner, and of the final business meeting, dispersed
and got back to their several jobs. No one minded
UNITY 265
particularly about Unity's death, except Eddy.
They were so used to that sort of thing, in the
world of shifting fortunes in which writers for
papers move.
But Eddy minded a good deal. For several
months he had lived in and for this paper ; he had
loved it extraordinarily. He had loved it for
itself, and for what, to him, it stood for. It had
been his contribution to the cause that seemed to
him increasingly of enormous importance ; increas-
ingly, as the failure of the world at large to appreciate
it flung him from failure to failure, wrested oppor-
tunities one by one out of his grasp. People wouldn't
realise that they were all one ; that, surely, was the
root difficulty of this distressed world. They would
think that one set of beliefs excluded another ; they
were blind, they were rigid, they were mad. So
they wouldn't read Unity, surely a good paper ; so
Unity must perish for lack of being wanted, poor
lonely waif. Eddy rebelled against the sinking of
the little ship he had launched and loved ; it might,
it would, had it been given a chance, have done good
work. But its chance was over ; he must find some
other way.
To cheer himself up when he left the office at six
o'clock, he went eastward, to see some friends he had
in Stepney. But it did not cheer him up, for they
were miserable, and he could not comfort them. He
found a wife alone, waiting for her husband and sons,
who were still out at the docks where they worked,
though they ought to have been back an hour since.
266 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
And they were blacklegs, and had refused to come
out with the strikers. The wife was white, and
red-eyed.
" They watch for them/' she whimpered. " They
lay and wait for them, and set on them, many to one,
and do for them. There was someone 'eard a Union
man say he meant to do for my men one day. I
begged my man to come out, or anyhow to let the
boys, but he wouldn't, and he says the Union men
may go to 'ell for 'im. I know what '11 be the end.
There was a man drowned yesterday ; they found
'im in the canal, 'is 'ands tied up ; 'e wouldn't come
out, and so they did for 'im, the devils. And it's
just seven, and they stop at six."
" They've very likely stopped at the public for a
bit on the way home," Eddy suggested gently, but
she shook her head.
" They've not bin stoppin' anywhere since the
strike began. Them as won't come out get no peace
at the public. . . . The Union's a cruel thing, that
it is, and my man and lads that never do no 'urt to
nobody, they'll lay and wait for 'em till they can do
for 'em. . . . There's Mrs. Japhet, in Jubilee Street ;
she's lost her young man ; they knocked 'im down
and kicked 'im to death on 'is way 'ome the other
day. Of course 'e was a Jew, too, which made 'im
more rightly disliked as it were ; but it were because
'e wouldn't come out they did it. And there was
Mrs. Jim Turner ; they laid for 'er and bashed 'er
'ead in at the corner of Salmon Lane, to spite Turner.
And they're so sly, the police can't lay 'ands on them,
UNITY 267
scarcely ever. . . . And it's gone seven, and as dark
as f ats."
She opened the door and stood listening and cry-
ing. At the end of the squalid street the trams
jangled by along Commercial Road, bringing men
and women home from work.
" They'll be all right if they come by tram/' said
Eddy.
" There's all up Jamaica Street to walk after they
get out," she wailed.
Eddy went down the street and met them at the
corner, a small man and two big boys, slouching
along the dark street, Fred Webb and his sons, Sid
and Perce. He had known them well last year
at Datcherd's club ; they were uncompromising
individualists, and liberty was their watchword.
They loathed the Union like poison.
Fred Webb said that there had been a bit of a row
down at the docks, which had kept them. " There
was Ben Tillett speaking, stirring them up all. They
began hustling about a bit but we got clear. The
missus wants me to come out, but I'm not having
any."
" Come out with that lot ! " Sid added, in a rather
unsteady voice. " I'd see them all damned first.
You wouldn't say we ought to come out, Mr. Oliver,
would you ? "
Eddy said, " Well, not just now, of course. In a
general way, I suppose there's some sense in it."
" Sense ! " growled Webb. " Don't you go talk-
ing to my boys like that, sir, if you please. You're
268 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
not going to come out, Sid, so you needn't think
about it. Good night, Mr. Oliver."
Eddy, dismissed, went to see another Docks
family he knew, and heard how the strike was being
indefinitely dragged out and its success jeopardised
by the blacklegs, who thought only for them-
selves.
" I hate a man not to have public spirit. The
mean skunks. They'd let all the rest go to the
devil just to get their own few shillings regular
through the bad times."
" They've a right to judge for themselves, I sup-
pose/' said Eddy, and added a question as to the
powers of the decent men to prevent intimidation
and violence.
The man looked at him askance.
" Ain't no 'timidation or violence, as I know of.
'Course they say so ; they'll say anything. When-
ever a man gets damaged in a private quarrel they
blame it on the Union chaps now. It's their oppor-
tunity. Pack o* liars, they are. 'Course a man may
get hurt in a row sometimes ; you can't help rows ;
but that's six of one and 'alf a dozen of the other,
and it's usually the blacklegs as begin it. We only
picket them, quite peaceful. . . . Judge for them-
selves, did you say ? No, dang them ; that's just
what no man's a right to do. It's selfish ; that's
what it is. ... I've no patience with these 'ere
individualists."
Discovering that Eddy had, he shut up sullenly
and suspiciously, and ceased to regard him as a
UNITY 269
friend, so Eddy left him. On the whole, it had not
been a cheery evening.
He told Arnold about it when he got home.
" There's such a frightful lot to be said on both
sides," he added.
Arnold said, " There certainly is. A frightful
lot. If one goes down to the Docks any day one may
hear a good deal of it being said ; only that's nearly
all on one side, and the wrong side. ... I loathe
the Unions and their whole system ; it's revolting,
the whole theory of the thing, quite apart from the
bullying and coercion."
" I should rather like," said Eddy, "to go down
to the Docks to-morrow and hear the men speaking.
Will you come ? "
" Well, I can't answer for myself ; I may murder
someone ; but I'll come if you'll take the risk of
that."
Eddy hadn't known before that Arnold, the
cynical and negligent, felt so strongly about any-
thing. He was rather interested.
' You've got to have Unions, surely you'd admit
that," he argued. This began a discussion too
familiar in outline to be retailed ; the reasons for
Unions and against them are both exceedingly
obvious, and may be imagined as given. It lasted
them till late at night.
They went down to the Docks next day, about
six o'clock in the evening.
CHAPTER XV.
ARNOLD.
THERE was a crowd outside the Docks gates. Some,
under the eyes of vigilant policemen, were picket-
ing the groups of workmen as they came sullenly,
nervously, defiantly, or indifferently out from the
Docks. Others were listening to a young man
speaking from a cart. Arnold and Eddy stopped
to listen, too. It was poor stuff ; not at all in-
teresting. But it was adapted to its object and its
audience, and punctuated by vehement applause.
At the cheering, Arnold looked disgustedly on the
ground ; no doubt he was ashamed of the human
race. But Eddy thought, " The man's a fool,
but he's got hold of something sound. The man's
a stupid man, but he's got brains on his side, and
strength, and organisation ; all the forces that
make for civilisation. They're crude, they're brutal,
they're revolting, these people, but they do look
ahead, and that's civilisation." The Tory-Socialist
side of him thus appreciated, while the Liberal-
Individualist side applauded the blacklegs coming
270
ARNOLD 271
up from work. The human side applauded them,
too ; they were few among many, plucky men sur-
rounded by murderous bullies, who would as likely
as not track some of them home and bash their
heads in on their own doorsteps, and perhaps their
wives' heads too.
Eddy caught sight of Fred Webb and his two
sons walking in a group, surrounded by picketters.
Suddenly the scene became a nightmare to him,
impossibly dreadful. Somehow he knew that
people were going to hurt and be hurt very soon.
He looked at the few police, and wondered at the
helplessness or indifference of the law, that lets such
things be, that is powerless to guard citizens from
assault and murder.
He heard Arnold give a short laugh at his side,
and recalled his attention to what the man on the
cart was saying.
" The poor lunatic can't even make sense and
logic out of his own case," Arnold remarked. " I
could do it better myself."
Eddy listened. It was indeed pathetically stupid,
pointless, sentimental.
After another minute of it, Arnold said, " Since
they're so ready to listen, why shouldn't they listen
to me for a change ? " and scrambled up on to a
cart full of barrels and stood for a moment look-
ing round. The speaker went on speaking, but
someone cried, " Here's another chap with some-
thing to say. Let 'im say it, mate ; go on, young
feller."
272 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
Arnold did go on. He had certainly got some-
thing to say, and he said it. For a minute or two
the caustic quality of his utterances was missed ;
then it was slowly apprehended. Someone groaned,
and someone else shouted, " Chuck it. Pull him
down."
Arnold had a knack of biting and disagreeable
speech, and he was using it. He was commenting
on the weak points in the other man's speech. But
if he had thought to persuade any, he was disillu-
sioned. Like an audience of old, they cried out
with a loud voice, metaphorically stopped their
ears, and ran at him with one accord. Someone
threw a brick at him. The next moment hands
dragged him down and hustled him away. A voice
Eddy recognised as Webb's cried, " Fair play ; let
'im speak, can't you. 'E was talking sense, which
is more than most here do."
The scuffling and hustling became excited and
violent. It was becoming a free fight. Blacklegs
were surrounded threateningly by strikers ; the
police drew nearer. Eddy pushed through shoving,
angry men to get to Arnold. They recognised him
as Arnold's companion, and hustled him about.
Arnold was using his fists. Eddy saw him hit a
man on the mouth. Someone kicked Eddy on the
shin. He shot out his fist mechanically, and hit
the man in the face, and thought, " I must have
hurt him a lot, what a lot of right he's got on his
side," before the blow was returned, cutting his lip
open.
ARNOLD 273
He saw Arnold disappear, borne down by an angry
group ; he pushed towards him, jostling through
the men in his way, who were confusedly giving
now before the mounted police. He could not
reach Arnold ; he lost sight of where he was ; he
was carried back by the swaying crowd. He heard
a whimpering boy's voice behind him, " Mr. Oliver,
sir," and looked round into young Sid Webb's sick,
frightened face.
" They 've downed dad. . . . And I think they've
done for him. . . . They kicked him on the head. . . .
They're after me now "
Eddy said, " Stick near me," and the next moment
Sid gave an angry squeal, because someone was
twisting his arm back. Eddy turned round and hit
a man under the chin, sending him staggering
back under the feet of a plunging horse. The sight
of the trampling hoofs so near the man's head turned
Eddy sick ; he swore and caught at the rein, and
dragged the horse sharply sideways. The police-
man riding it brought down his truncheon violently
on his arm, which dropped nerveless and heavy at
his side. Hands caught at his knees from below ;
he was dragged suddenly to the ground, and saw,
looking up, the bleeding face of the man he had
knocked down close to his own. The next moment
the man was up, trampling him, pushing out of the
way of the plunging horse. Eddy struggled to his
knees, tried to get up, and could not. He was
beaten down by a writhing forest of legs and heavy
boots. He gave it up, and fell over on his side into
s
274 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
the slimy, trodden mud. Everything hurt des-
perately other people's feet, his own arm, his face,
his body. The forest smelt of mud and haman
clothes, and suddenly became quite dark.
Someone was lifting his head, and trying to make
him drink brandy. He opened his eyes and said,
moving his cut lips stiffly and painfully, " Their
principles are right, but their methods are rotten,"
Someone else said, " He's coming round/' and he
came.
He could breathe and see now, for the forest
had gone. There were people still, and gas-lamps,
and stars, but all remote. There were policemen,
and he remembered how they had hurt him. It
seemed, indeed, that everyone had hurt him. All
their principles were no doubt right ; but all their
methods were certainly rotten.
"I'm going to get up," he said, and lay still.
" Where do you live ? " asked someone. " Per-
haps he'd better be taken to hospital."
Eddy said, " Oh, no. I live somewhere all
right. Besides, I'm not hurt," but he could not
talk well, because his mouth was so swollen.
In another moment he remembered where he did
live. " 22A, Old Compton Street, of course." That
reminded him of Arnold. Things were coming
back to him.
" Where's my friend ? " he mumbled. " He was
knocked down, too."
They said, " Don't you worry about him ; he'll
be looked after all right," and Eddy sat up and said,
ARNOLD 275
" I suppose you mean he's dead," quietly, and with
conviction.
Since that was what they did mean, they hushed
him and told him not to worry, and he lay back in
the mud and was quiet.
CHAPTER XVI.
EILEEN.
EDDY lay for some days in bed, battered and brui<
and slightly broken. He was not seriously damaged ;
not irreparably like Arnold ; Arnold, who was
beyond piecing together.
Through the queer, dim, sad days and nights,
Eddy's weakened thoughts were of Arnold; Arnold the
cynical, the sceptical, the supercilious, the scornful ;
Arnold, who had believed in nothing, and had yet
been murdered for believing in something, and saying
so. Arnold had hated democratic tyranny, and his
hatred had given his words and his blows a force
that had recoiled on himself and killed him. Eddy's
blows on that chaotic, surprising evening had lacked
this energy ; his own consciousness of hating nothing
had unnerved him ; so he hadn't died. He had
merely been buffeted about and knocked out of the
way like so much rubbish by both combatant sides
in turn. He bore the scars of the strikers' fists and
boots, and of the heavy truncheon of the law. Both
sides had struck him!: as an enemy, because he was
not whole-heartedly for them. It was, surely, an
276
EILEEN 277
ironical epitome, a brief summing-up in terms of
blows, of the story of his life. What chaos, what
confusion, what unheroic shipwreck of plans and
work and career dogged those who fought under
many colours ! One died for believing in something ;
one didn't die for believing in everything ; one lived
on incoherently, from hand to mouth, despised of
all, accepted of none, fruitful of nothing. For these
the world has no use ; the piteous, travailing world
that needs all the helpers, all the workers it can get.
The dim shadows of his room through the long,
strange nights seemed to be walls pressing round,
pressing in closer and closer, pushed by the insistent
weight of the unredressed evil without. Here he
saw himself lying, shut by the shadow walls into a
little secluded place, allowed to do nothing, because
he was no use. The evil without haunted his night-
mares ; it must have bitten more deeply into his
active waking moments than he had known. It
seemed hideous to lie and do nothing. And when
he wanted to get up at once and go out and do some-
thing to help, they would not let him. He was no
use. He never would be any use.
More and more it seemed to him clear that the
one way to be of use in this odd world of the
oddity of the world he was becoming increasingly
convinced, comparing it with the many worlds he
could more easily have imagined the one way, it
seemed, to be of use was to take a definite line and
stick to it and reject all others ; to be single-minded
and ardent, and exclusive ; to be, in brief, a partisan,
278 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
if necessary a bigot. In procession there moved
before him the fine, strong, ardent people he had
known, who had spent themselves for an idea, and
for its inherent negations, and he saw them all as
martyrs ; Eileen, living on broken and dead because
so utter had been her caring for one person that no
one else was any good ; Molly, cutting two lives
apart for a difference of principle ; Billy Raymond,
Jane Dawn, all the company of craftsmen and
artists, fining words and lines to their utmost,
fastidiously rejecting, laying down insuperable
barriers between good and bad, so that never the
twain should meet ; priests and all moral reformers,
working against odds for these same barriers in a
different sphere ; all workers, all artists, all healers
of evil, all makers of good ; even Daphne and Nevill,
parted for principles that could not join ; and
Arnold, dead for a cause. Only the aimless
drifters, the ineptitudes, content to slope through
the world on thoughts, were left outside the workshop
unused.
In these dark hours of self -disgust, Eddy half
thought of becoming a novelist, that last resource
of the spiritually destitute. For novels are not life,
that immeasurably important thing that has to be
so sternly approached ; in novels one may take as
many points of view as one likes, all at the same
time ; instead of working for life, one may sit and
survey it from all angles simultaneously. It is
only when one starts walking on a road that one finds
it excludes the other roads. Yes ; probably he
EILEEN 279
would end a novelist. An ignoble, perhaps even a
fatuous career ; but it is, after all, one way through
this queer, shifting chaos of unanswerable riddles.
When solutions are proved unattainable, some spend
themselves and their all on a rough-and-ready shot
at truth, on doing what they can with the little
they know ; others give it up and talk about it. It
was as a refuge for such as these that the novelist's
trade was presented to man, we will not speculate
from whence or by whom. . . .
Breaking into these dark reflections came friends
to see him, dropping in one by one. The first was
Professor Denison, the morning after the accident.
A telegram had brought him up from Cambridge,
late last night. Seeing his grey, stricken face, Eddy
felt miserably disloyal, to have come out of it alive.
Dr. Denison patted him on the shoulder and said,
" Poor boy, poor boy. It is hard for you/* and it
was Eddy who had tears in his eyes.
" I took him there," he muttered ; but Dr.
Denison took no notice of that.
Eddy said next, " He spoke so splendidly/' then
remembered that Arnold had spoken on the wrong
side, and that that, too, must be bitter to his father.
Professor Denison made a queer, hopeless, depre-
catory gesture with his hands.
" He was murdered by a cruel system," he said,
in his remote, toneless voice. " Don't think I
blame those ignorant men who did him to death.
What killed him was the system that made those
men what they are the cruel oppression, the
280 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
economic grinding what can you expect ..." He
broke off, and turned helplessly away, remembering
only that he had lost his son.
Every day as long as he stayed in London he
came into Eddy's room after visiting Arnold's, and
sat with him, infinitely gentle, silent, and sad.
Mrs. Oliver said, " Poor man, one's too dreadfully
sorry for him to suggest it, but it's not the best thing
for you to have him, dear."
The other visitors who came were probably better
for Eddy, but Mrs. Oliver thought he had too many.
All his friends seemed to come all day.
And once Eileen Le Moine came, and that was
not as it should be. Mrs. Oliver, when the message
was sent up, turned to Eddy doubtfully ; but he
said at once, " Ask her if she'll come up," and she
had to bear it.
Mrs. Le Moine came in. Mrs. Oliver slightly
touched her hand. For a moment her look hung
startled on the changed, dimmed brilliance she
scarcely recognised. Mrs. Le Moine, whatever her
sins, had, it seemed, been through desperate times
since they had parted at Welchester fourteen months
ago. There was an absent look about her, as if
she scarcely took in Eddy's mother. But for Eddy
himself, stretched shattered on the couch by the
fire, her look was pitiful and soft.
Mrs. Oliver's eyes wavered from her to Eddy.
Being a lady of kind habits, she usually left Eddy
alone with his friends for a little. In this instance
she was doubtful ; but Eddy's eyes, unconsciously
EILEEN 281
wistful, decided her, and she yielded. After all, a
three-cornered interview between them would have
been a painful absurdity. If Eddy must have such
friends, he must have them to himself. . . .
When they were alone, Eileen sat down by him,
still a little absent and thoughtful, though, bending
compassionate eyes on him, she said softly, of him
and Arnold, " You poor boys. ..." Then she was
broodingly silent, and seemed to be casting about
how to begin.
Suddenly she pulled herself together.
" We've not much time, have we ? I must be
quick. I've something I want to say to you, Eddy.
. . . Do you know Mrs. Crawford came to see
me the other day ? "
Eddy shook his head, languidly, moved only with
a faint surprise at Mrs. Crawford's unexpectedness.
Eileen went on, "I just wondered had she told
you. But I thought perhaps not. ... I like her, Eddy.
She was nice to me. I don't know why, because I
supposed but never mind. What she came for
was to tell me some things. Things I think I ought
to have guessed for myself. I think I've been very
stupid and very selfish, and I complaining to you
about my troubles all this long while, and never
thinking how it might be doing you harm. I ought
to have known why Molly broke your engagement."
" There were a number of reasons," said Eddy.
" She thought we didn't agree about things and
couldn't pull together."
Eileen shook her head. " She may have. But
282 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
I think there was only one reason that mattered
very much. She didn't approve of me, and didn't
like it that you were my friend. And she was
surely right. A man shouldn't have friends his
wife can't be friends with too ; it spoils it all. And
of course she knew she couldn't be friends with me ;
she thinks me bad. Molly would find it impossible
even if it wasn't wrong, to be friends with a bad
person. So of course she had the engagement
ended ; there was no other way. . . . And you never
told me it was that. . . . You should have told me,
you foolish boy. Instead, you went on seeing me and
being good to me, and letting me talk about my own
things, and and being just the one comfort I had,
(for you have been that ; it's the way you under-
stand things, I suppose) and I all the time spoil-
ing your life. When Mrs. Crawford told me how it
was I was angry with you. You had a right to have
told me. And now I've come to tell you something.
You're to go to Molly and mend what's broken, and
tell her you and I aren't going to be friends any
more. That will be the plain truth. We are not.
Not friends to matter, I mean. We won't be seeing
each other alone and meeting the way we've been
doing. If we meet it will be by chance, and with
other people ; that won't hurt."
Eddy, red-faced and indignant, said weakly,
" It will hurt. It will hurt me. Haven't I lost
enough friends, then, that I must lose you, too ? "
A queer little smile touched her lips.
" You have not. Not enough friends yet. Eddy,
EILEEN 283
what's the best thing of all in this world of good
things ? Don't you and I both know it ? Isn't it
love, no less ? And isn't love good enough to pay
a price for ? And if the price must be paid in coin
you value in friendship, and in some other good
things still, isn't it worth it ? Ah, you know, and
I know, that it is ! "
The firelight, flickering across her white face, lit
it swiftly to passion. She, who had paid so heavy
a price herself, was saying what she knew.
" So you'll pay it, Eddy. You'll pay it. You'll
have to pay more than you know, before you've
done with love. I wonder will you have to pay
your very soul away ? Many people have to do
that ; pay away their own inmost selves, the things
in them they care for most, their secret dreams.
' I have laid my dreams under your feet. Tread
softly, because you tread on my dreams.' . . . It's like
that so often ; and then she or he doesn't always
tread softly ; they may tread heavily, the way the
dreams break and die. Still, it's worth it . ..."
She fell into silence, brooding with bent head and
locked hands. Then she roused herself, and said
cheerfully, " You may say just what you like, Eddy,
but I'm not going to spoil your life any more. That's
gone on too long already. If it was only by way of
saying thank you, I would stop it now. For you've
been a lot of use to me, you know. I don't think
I could easily tell you how much. I'm not going to
try ; only I am going to do what I can to help you
patch up your affairs that you've muddled so. So
284 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
you go to Molly directly you get home, and make
her marry you. And you'll pay the price she asks,
and you'll go on, both of you, paying it and paying
it, more and more of it, as long as you both live."
" She won't have me," said Eddy. " No one
would have me, I should think. Why should they ?
I'm nothing. Everyone else is something ; but I'm
nothing. I can do nothing, and be nothing. I am
a mere muddle. Why should Molly, who is straight
and simple and direct, marry a muddle ? "
" Because," said Eileen, " she cares for it. And
she'll probably straighten it out a bit ; that's what
I mean, partly, by the price . . . you'll have to become
straight and simple and direct too, I wouldn't
wonder, in the end. You may die a Tory country
gentleman, no less, saying, ' To hell with these
Socialist thieves ' no, that's the horrid language
we use in Ireland alone isn't it, but I wouldn't
wonder if the English squires meant the same. Or
you might become equally simple and direct in
another direction, and say, ' Down with the landed
tyrants,' only Molly wouldn't like that so well.
But it'll be a wonder if you don't, once you're
married to Molly, have to throw overboard a few
creeds, as well as a few people. Anyhow, that's
not your business now. What you've got to do
now is to get your health again and go down to Wei-
chest er and talk to Molly the way she'll see
reason. . . . And now I must go. Your mother
doesn't care for me to be here, but I had to come
this once ; it's never again, you can tell her that."
EILEEN 285
Eddy sat up and frowned. " Don't go on like
that, Eileen. I've not the least intention of having
my friendships broken for me like this. If Molly
ever marries me only she won't it will be to take
my friends ; that is certain."
She shook her head and smiled down on him as
she rose.
" You'll have to let your friends settle whether
they want to be taken or not, Eddy. . . . Dear,
kind, absurd boy, that's been so good to me, I'm
going now. Goodbye, and get well."
Her fingers lightly touched his forehead, and she
left him ; left him alone in a world become poor
and thin and ordinary, shorn of some beauty, of
certain dreams and laughter and surprises.
Into it came his mother.
" Is Mrs. Le Moine gone, then, dear ? "
" Yes," he said. " She is gone."
So flatly he spoke, so apathetically, that she looked
at him in anxiety.
" She has tired you. You have been talking too
much. Really, this mustn't happen again. ..."
He moved restlessly over on to his side.
" It won't happen again, mother. Never again."
CHAPTER XVII.
CONVERSION.
ON Midsummer Eve, which was the day before his
marriage, Eddy had a number of his friends to
dinner at the Moulin d'Or. It had amused him to ask
a great many, and to select them from many differ-
ent quarters and sets, and to watch how they all got
on together. For many of them were not in the
habit of meeting one another. The Vicar of St.
Gregory's, for instance, did not, in the normal
course of his days, as a rule come across Billy Ray-
mond, or Cecil Le Moine, with whom he was con-
versing courteously across the table ; Bob Traherne,
his curate, seldom chatted affably with Conservative
young members of Parliament such as Nevill Bel-
lairs ; Mrs. Crawford had long since irrevocably
decided against social intercourse with Eileen Le
Moine, to whom she was talking this evening as if
she was rather pleased to have the opportunity ;
Bridget Hogan was wont to avoid militant desirers
of votes, but to-night she was garrulously holding
forth to a lady novelist of these habits who resided
286
CONVERSION 287
in a garden city ; Eddy's friend, the young Irish
Unionist, was confronted and probably outraged by
Blake Connolly, Eileen's father, the Nationalist
editor of the Hibernian, a vehement-tongued, hot-
tempered, rather witty person, with deep blue eyes
like Eileen's, and a flexible, persuasive voice. At
the same table with Bob Traherne and Jane
Dawn was a beautiful young man in a soft frilly
shirt, an evangelical young man who at Cam-
bridge had belonged to the C.I.C.C.U., and had
preached in the Market Place. If he had known
enough about them, he would have thought Jane
Dawn's attitude towards religion and life a pity,
and Bob Traherne's a bad mistake. But on this
harmonious occasion they all met as friends. Even
James Peters, sturdy and truthful, forbore to show
Cecil Le Moine that he did not like him. Even
Hillier, though it was pain and grief to him, kept
silence from good words, and did not denounce
Eileen Le Moine.
And Eddy, looking round the room at all of them,
thought how well they all got on for one evening,
because they were wanting to, and because one even-
ing did not matter, and how they would not, many
of them, get on at all, and would not even want to,
if they were put to a longer test. And once again, at
this, that he told himself was not the last, gathering
of the heterogeneous crowd of his friends together,
he saw how right they all were, in their different ways
and yet at odds. He remembered how someone
had said, " The interesting quarrels of the world
288 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
are never between truth and falsehood, but between
different truths/' Ah, but must there be quarrels ?
More and more clearly he had come to see lately that
there must ; that through the fighting of extremes
something is beaten out. . . .
Someone thumped the table for silence, and Billy
Raymond was on his feet, proposing their host's
health and happiness. Billy was rather a charming
speaker, in his unself conscious, unfluent, amused,
quietly allusive way, that was rather talk than
speechifying. After him came Nevill Bellairs,
Eddy's brother-in-law to be, who said the right
things in his pleasant, cordial, well-bred, young
member's manner. Then they drank Eddy's health,
and after that Eddy got on to his feet to return
thanks. But all he said was " Thanks very much.
It was very nice of all of you to come. I hope you've
all enjoyed this evening as much as I have, and I
hope we shall have many more like it in future,
after. ..." When he paused someone broke in
with "He's a jolly good fellow," and they shouted
it till the passers by in the Soho streets took it up
and sang and whistled in chorus. That was the
answer they unanimously gave to the hope he had
expressed. It was an answer so cheerful and so
friendly that it covered the fact that no one had
echoed the hope, or even admitted it as a possibility.
After all, it was an absurd thing to hope, for one
dinner-party never is exactly like another ; how
should] it be, with so much of life and death
between ?
CONVERSION 289
When the singing and the cheering and the toast-
ing was over, they all sat on and talked and smoked
till late. Eddy talked too. And under his talking
his perceptions were keenly working. The vivid,
alive personalities of all these people, these widely
differing men and women, boys and girls, struck
sharply on his consciousness. There were vast
differences between them, yet in nearly all was a
certain fine, vigorous effectiveness, a power of
achieving, getting something done. They all had
their weapons, and used them in the battles of the
world. They all, artists and philosophers, journa-
lists and politicians, poets and priests, workers
among the poor, players among the rich, knew what
they would be at, where they thought they were
going and how, and what they were up against.
They made their choices ; they selected, preferred,
rejected . . . hated. . . . The sharp, hard word
brought him up. That was it ; they hated. They
all, probably, hated something or other. Even the
tolerant, large-minded Billy, even the gentle Jane,
hated what they considered bad literature, bad art.
They not only sought good, but eschewed evil ;
if they had not realised the bad, the word " good "
would have been meaningless to them.
With everyone in the room it was the same.
Blake Connolly hated the Union that was why he
could be the force for Nationalism that he was ;
John Macleod, the Ulsterman, hated Nationalists
and Papists that was why he spoke so well on
platforms for the Union; Bob Traherne hated
2QO THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
capitalism that was why he could fight so effec-
tively for the economic betterment that he believed
in ; Nevill Bellairs hated Liberalism that was why
he got in at elections ; the vicar of St. Gregory's
hated disregard of moral laws that was why he was
a potent force for their observance among his
parishioners ; Hillier hated agnosticism that was
why he could tell his people without flinching that
they would go to hell if they didn't belong to the
Church ; (he also, Eddy remembered, hated some
writers of plays and that, no doubt, was why he
looked at Cecil Le Moine as he did ;) Cecil Le Moine
hated the commonplace and the stupid that was
why he never lapsed into either in his plays ; Mrs.
Crawford hated errors of breeding (such as discor-
dant clothes, elopements, incendiarism, and other
vulgar violence) that was why her house was so
select ; Bridget Hogan hated being bored that
was why she succeeded in finding life consistently
amusing ; James Peters hated men of his own
class without collars, men of any class without
backbones, as well as lies, unwholesomeness, and
all morbid rot that was probably why his short,
unsubtle, boyish sermons had a force, a driving-
power, that made them tell, and why the men and
boys he worked and played with loved him.
And Arnold, who was not there but ought to have
been, had hated many things, and that was why he
wasn't there.
Yes, they all hated something ; they all rejected ;
all recognised without shirking the implied negations
CONVERSION 291
in what they loved. That was how and why they
got things done, these vivid, living people. That
was how and why anyone ever got anything done,
in this perplexing, unfinished, rough-hewn world,
with so much to do to it, and for it. An imperfect
world, of course ; if it were not, hate and rejections
would not be necessary ; a rough and ready, stupid
muddle of a world, an incoherent, astonishing
chaos of contradictions but, after all, the world
one has to live in and work in and fight in, using the
weapons ready to hand. If one does not use them,
if one rejects them as too blunt, too rough and
ready, too inaccurate, for one's fine sense of truth,
one is left weaponless, a non-combatant, a useless
drifter from company to company, cast out of all in
turn. . . . Better than that, surely, is any absur-
dity of party and creed, dogma and system. After
all, when all is said in their despite, it is these that
do the work.
Such were Eddy's broken and detached reflections in
the course of this cheerful evening. The various pieces
of counsel offered him by others were to the same
effect. Blake Connolly, who, meeting him to-night
for the first time, had taken a strong fancy to him,
said confidentially and regretfully, " I hear the
bride's a Tory ; that's a pity, now. Don't let her
have you corrupted. You've some fine Liberal
sentiments ; I used to read them in that queer
paper of yours." (He ignored the fine Unionist
sentiments he had also read in the queer paper.)
" Don't let them run to waste. You should go on
292 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
writing ; you've a gift. Go on writing for the right
things, sticking up for the right side. Be practical ;
get something done. As they used to say in the
old days :
' Take a business tour through Munster,
Shoot a landlord ; be of use.' "
" I will try," said Eddy, modestly. " Though
I don't know that that is exactly in my line at
present ... I'm not sure what I'm going to do,
but I want to get some newspaper work."
" That's right. Write, the way you'll have public
interest stirred up in the right things. I know you're
of good dispositions from what Eily's told me of
you. And why you want to go marrying a Tory
passes me. But if you must you must, and I
wouldn't for the world have you upset about it now
at the eleventh hour."
Then came Traherne, wanting him to help in a
boys' camp in September and undertake a night a
week with clubs in the winter ; and the elegant
C.I.C.C.U. young man wanted him to promise his
assistance to a Prayer-and-Total- Abstinence mission
in November ; and Nevill Bellairs wanted to intro-
duce him to-morrow morning before the wedding
to the editor of the Conservative, who had vacancies
on his staff. To all these people who offered him
fields for his energies he gave, not the ready accep-
tance he would have given of old, but indefinite
answers.
CONVERSION 293
" I can't tell you yet. I don't know. I'm going
to think about it." For though he still knew that
all of them were right, he knew also that he was
going to make a choice, a series of choices, and
he didn't know yet what in each case he would
choose.
The party broke up at midnight. When the rest
had dispersed, Eddy went home with Billy to
Chelsea. He had given up the rooms he had shared
with Arnold in Soho, and was staying with Billy
till his marriage. They walked to Chelsea by way
of the Embankment. By the time they got to
Battersea Bridge (Billy lived at the river end of
Beaufort Street) the beginnings of the dawn were
paling the river. They stood for a little and
watched it ; watched London sprawling east and
west in murmuring sleep, vast and golden-eyed.
" One must," speculated Eddy aloud, after a long
silence, "be content, then, to shut one's eyes to
all of it to all of everything except one little
piece. One has got to be deaf and blind a bigot,
seeing only one thing at once. That, it seems, is
the only way to get to work in this extraordinary
world. One's got to turn one's back on nearly all
truth. One leaves it, I suppose, to the philosophers
and artists and poets. Truth is for them. Truth,
Billy, is perhaps for you. But it's not for the
common person like me. For us it is a choice
between truth and life ; they're not compatible.
Well, one's got to live ; that seems certain. . . .
What do you think ? "
294 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" I'm not aware," said Billy, drowsily watching
the grey dream-city, " of the incompatibility you
mention."
" I didn't suppose you were," said Eddy. " Your
business is to see and record. You can look at all
life at once all of it you can manage, that is. My
job isn't to see or talk, but (I am told) to ' take a
business tour through Munster, shoot a landlord,
be of use/ . . . Well, I suppose truth can look
after itself without my help ; that's one comfort.
The synthesis is there all right, even if we all say
it isn't. . . . After to-night I am going to talk, not
of Truth but of the Truth ; my own particular
brand of it."
Billy looked sceptical. " And which is your own
particular brand ? "
"I'm not sure yet. But I'm going to find out
before morning. I must know before to-morrow.
Molly must have a bigot to marry."
" I take it your marriage is upsetting your mental
balance," said Billy tranquilly, with the common
sense of the poet. " You'd better go to bed."
Eddy laughed. " Upsetting my balance ! Well,
it reasonably might. What should, if not marriage ?
After all, it has its importance. Come in, Billy,
and while you sleep I will decide on my future
opinions. It will be much more exciting than
choosing a new suit of clothes, because I'm going to
wear them for always."
Billy murmured some poetry as they turned up
Beaufort Street.
CONVERSION 295
" The brute, untroubled by gifts of soul,
Sees life single and sees it whole.
Man, the better of brutes by wit,
Sees life double and sees it split."
" I don't see/' he added, " that it can matter
very much what opinions one has, if any, about
party politics, for instance." .
Eddy said, " No, you wouldn't see it, of course,
because you're a poet. I'm not."
" You'd better become one," said Billy, " if it
would solve your difficulties. It's very little trouble
indeed really, you know. Anyone can be a poet ;
in fact, practically all Cambridge people are, except
you ; I can't imagine why you're not. It's really
rather a refreshing change ; only I should think it
often leads people to mistake you for an Oxford
man, which must be rather distressing for you.
Now I'm going to bed. Hadn't you better,
too ? "
But Eddy had something to do before he went to
bed. By the grey light that came through the
open window of the sitting-room, he found a pack
of cards, and sat down to decide his opinions.
First he wrote a list of all the societies he belonged
to ; they filled a sheet of note-paper. Then he
went through them, coupling each two which, he
had discovered, struck the ordinary person as
incompatible ; then, if he had no preference for
either of the two, he cut. He cut, for instance,
between the League of Young Liberals and the
Primrose League. The Young Liberals had it.
296 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
" Molly will be a little disappointed in me," he
murmured, and crossed off the Primrose League
from his list. " And I expect it would be generally
thought that I ought to cross off the Tariff Reform
League, too." He did so, then proceeded to weigh
the Young Liberals against all the Socialist societies
he belonged to (such as the Anti-sweating League,
the National Service League, the Eugenics Society,
and many others), for even he could see that these
two ways of thought did not go well together. He
might possibly have been a Socialist and a Primrose
Leaguer, but he could not, as the world looks at
such things, be a Socialist and a Liberal. He chose
to be a Socialist, believing that that was the way,
at the moment, to get most done.
" Very good," he commented, writing it down.
11 A bigoted Socialist. That will have the advantage
that Traherne will let me help with the clubs. Now
for the Church."
The Church question also he decided without
recourse to chance. As he meant to continue to
belong to the Church of England, he crossed off
from the list the Free Thought League and the
Theosophist Society. It remained that he should
choose between the various Church societies he
belonged to, such as the Church Progress Society
(High and Modernist), the E. C. U. (High and not
Modernist), the Liberal Churchmen's League (Broad),
and the Evangelical Alliance (Low). Of these he
selected that system of thought that seemed to
him to go most suitably with the Socialism he was
CONVERSION 297
already pledged to ; he would be a bigoted High
Church Modernist, and hate Broad Churchmen,
Evangelicals, Anglican Individualists, Ultramontane
Romans, Atheists, and (particularly) German Liberal
Protestants.
" Father will be disappointed in me, I'm afraid,"
he reflected.
Then he weighed the Church Defence Society
against the Society for the Liberation of Religion
from State Patronage and Control, found neither
wanting, but concluded that as a Socialist he ought
to support the former, so wrote himself down an
enemy of Disestablishment, remarking, " Father
will be better pleased this time." Then he dealt
with the Sunday Society (for the opening of
museums, etc., on that day) as incongruous with
the Lord's Day Observance Society ; the Sunday
Society had it. Turning to the arts, he supposed
regretfully that some people would think it incon-
sistent to belong both to the League for the En-
couragement and Better Appreciation of Post
Impressionism, and to that for the Maintenance of
the Principles of Classical Art ; or to the Society
for Encouraging the Realistic School of Modern
Verse, and to the Poetry Society (which does not do
this.) Then it struck him that the Factory Increase
League clashed with the Coal Smoke Abatement
Society, that the Back to the Land League was
perhaps incompatible with the Society for the
Preservation of Objects of Historic Interest in the
Countryside; that one should not subscribe both to
298 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
the National Arts Collections Fund, and to the
Maintenance of Cordial Trans- Atlantic Relations ;
to the Charity Organisation Society, and to the
Salvation Army Shelters Fund.
Many other such discrepancies of thought and
ideal he found in himself and corrected, either by
choice or, more often (so equally good did both
alternatives as a rule seem to him to be) by the hand
of chance. It was not till after four o'clock on his
wedding morning, when the midsummer-day sunrise
was gilding the river and breaking into the room,
that he stood up, cramped and stiff and weary, but
a homogeneous and consistent whole, ready at last
for bigotry to seal him for her own. He would
yield himself unflinchingly to her hand ; she should,
in the course of the long years, stamp him utterly
into shape. He looked ahead, as he leant out of the
window and breathed in the clear morning air, and
saw his future life outspreading. What a lot he
would be able to accomplish, now that he was going
to see one angle only of life and believe in it so
exclusively that he would think it the whole.
Already he felt the approaches of this desirable state.
It would approach, he believed, rapidly, now that
he was no longer to be distracted by divergent
interests, torn by opposing claims on his sympathy.
He saw himself a writer for the press (but he really
must remember to write no more for the Conservative
press, or the Liberal). He would hate Conservatism,
detest Liberalism; he would believe that Socialists
alone were actuated by their well-known sense of
CONVERSION 299
political equity and sound economics. In work-
ing, as he meant to do, in Datcherd's settlement,
he would be as fanatically political as Datcherd
himself had been. Molly might slightly regret
this, because of the different tenets of Nevill
and the rest of her family ; but she was too
sensible really to mind. He saw her and himself
living their happy, and, he hoped, not useless life,
in the little house they had taken in Elm Park
Road, Chelsea (they had not succeeded in ousting
the inhabitants of the Osiers). He would be writing
for some paper, and working every evening in
the Lea Bridge Settlement, and Molly would help
him there with the girls' clubs ; she was keen on that
sort of thing, and did it well. They would have
many friends; the Bellairs' relations and connections
were numerous, and often military or naval ;
and there would be Nevill and his friends, so hard-
working, so useful, so tidy, so well-bred ; and their
own friends, the friends they made, the friends they
had had before. ... It was at this point that the
picture grew a little less vivid and clearly-outlined,
and had to be painted in with great decision. Of
course they came into the picture, Jane and Billy
and the rest, and perhaps sometime, when she and
Molly had both changed their minds about it, Eileen ;
of course they would all be there, coming in and out
and mixing up amicably with the Bellairs contingent,
and pleasing and being pleased by Nevill and his
well-behaved friends, and liking to talk to Molly
and she to them. Why not ? Eileen had surely
300 THE MAKING OF A BIGOT
been wrong about that ; his friendships weren't,
couldn't be, part of the price he had to pay for his
marriage, or even for his bigotry. With a deter-
mined hand he painted them into the picture, and
produced a surprising, crowded jumble of visitors
in the little house artists, colonels, journalists, civil
servants, poets, members of Parliament, settlement
workers, actors, and clergymen. ... He must
remember, of course, that he disliked Conservatism,
Atheism, and Individualism ; but that, he thought,
need be no barrier between him and the holders
of these unfortunate views. And any surprising-
ness, any lack of realism, in the picture he had
painted, he was firmly blind to.
So Molly and he would live and work together ;
work for the right things, war against the wrong.
He had learnt how to set about working now ;
learnt to use the weapons ready to hand, the only
weapons provided by the world for its battles.
Using them, he would get accustomed to them ;
gradually he would become the Complete Bigot,
as to the manner born, such a power has doing to
react on the vision of those who do. Then and only
then, when, for him, many-faced Truth had resolved
itself into one, when he should see but little here
below but see that little clear, when he could say
from the heart, " I believe Tariff Reformers,
Unionists, Liberals, Individualists, Roman Catholics,
Protestants, Dissenters, Vegetarians, and all others
with whom I disagree, to be absolutely in the
wrong ; I believe that I and those who think like
CONVERSION 301
me possess not merely truth but the truth " then,
and only then would he be able to set to work
and get something done. . . .
Who should say it was not worth the price ?
Having completed the task he had set himself,
Eddy was now free to indulge in reflections more
suited to a wedding morning. These reflections
were of the happy and absorbing nature customary
in a person in his situation ; they may, in fact, be so
easily imagined that they need not here be set down.
Having abandoned himself to them for half an hour,
he went to bed, to rest before his laborious life. For
let no one think he can become a bigot without much
energy of mind and will. It is not a road one can
slip into unawares, as it were, like the primrose
paths of life the novelist's, for example, the poet's,
or the tramp's. It needs fibre ; a man has to brace
himself, set his teeth, shut his eyes, and plunge with a
courageous blindness.
Five o'clock struck before Eddy went to bed.
He hoped to leave it at seven, in order to start
betimes upon so strenuous a career.
Jarrold 6- Sans, Ltd., Printers, The Empire Press, Norwich.
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