"C. OF E., NOW AND ALWAYS"
§1
Awaking at 5.30 the next morning, I heard a noise as of the anchor's cable being hauled in. The engines, too, were throbbing, and overhead there were rattling and movement. I tumbled Doe out of his top bunk, telling him to get up and see the last of England. Slipping a British warm over my blue silk pyjamas—mother always made me wear pale blue—I went on deck. Doe covered his pink-striped pyjamas with a grey silk kimono embroidered with flowers—the chance of wearing which garment reconciled him to this cold and early rising—and followed me sleepily. In a minute we were leaning over the deck-rails, and watching the sea, as it raced past the ship's hull.
Our Rangoon was really off now. As we left Devonport, two devilish little destroyers gave us fifty in the hundred, caught us up, and passed us, before we were in the open sea. Then they waited for us like dogs who have run ahead of their master, and finally took up positions one on either side of us. We felt it was now a poor look out for all enemy submarines.
"Well, ta-ta, England," said Doe, looking towards a long strip of Devon and Cornwall. "See, there, Rupert? Falmouth's there somewhere. In a year's time I'll be back, with you as my guest. We'll have the great times over again. We'll go mackerel-fishing, when the wind is fresh. We'll put a sail on the Lady Fal, and blow down the breeze on the estuary. We'll—"
"And when's all this to be?" broke in a languid voice. We turned and saw our exhausted young table companion, Jimmy Doon, who had arrived on deck, yawning, to assume the duties of Officer on Submarine Watch.
"After the war, sure," answered Doe.
Mr. Doon looked pained at such folly.
"My tedious lad," he said, "do I gather that you are in the cavalry?"
"You do not, Jimmy," said Doe.
"Nor yet in the artillery?"
"No, Jimmy."
"Then I conceive you to be in the infantry."
"You conceive aright, Jimmy."
"Well, then, don't be an unseemly ass. There'll be no 'after the war' for the infantry."
"In that case," laughed Doe, who had been offensively classical, ever since he won the Horace Prize, "Ave, atque vale, England."
After gazing down the wake of the Rangoon a little longer, we decided that England was finished with, and returned to our cabins to dress in silence. And then, having read through twice the directions provided with Mothersill's Sea-sick Remedy, we went down to breakfast.
At this meal the chief entertainment was the arrival of Major Hardy, limping from injuries sustained the previous night, and with an eye the colour of a Victoria plum. "The old sport!" whispered the subalterns. And that's just what he was; for he was a major, who could run amok like any second lieutenant, and he was forty, if a day.
In the afternoon, when the sea was very lonely, the destroyers left us, which we thought amazingly thin of them. So we searched out Jimmy Doon, and told him that, as Officer on Submarine Watch, he ought to swim alongside in their place.
Jimmy was much aggrieved, it appeared, at being detailed for the tiresome duty of looking for submarines. It was the unseemly limit, he said, to watch all day for a periscope, and it would be the very devil suddenly to see one. Besides, he had hoped that by losing his draft of men he would be freed from all duties, and a passenger for a fortnight. He would have just sat down, and drawn his pay. As it was, he assured us, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do if he should sight a submarine—whether to shoot it, or tell the skipper. He was nervous lest in his excitement he should shoot the skipper. At any rate, he had a firing-party of twenty in the bows, and was determined to shoot someone, if he spotted a periscope. And, moreover, the whole thing made him tediously homesick, and he wanted his mother.
He was mouching off quite sad and sulky about it all, when the ship's clock pointed to 4 p.m. (and no one ever argues with a ship's clock), eight bells rang out, and all the junior officers were impressed into a lecture on Turkey—even including Jimmy Doon, who thought that his important duties ought to have secured him exemption from such an ordeal. The lecturer was Major Hardy, who, being a man of the wanderlust, had planted in Assam, done some shady gun-running in Mexico, fought for one, or both, or all sides in the late Balkan War, and sauntered, with a hammock to hang under the trees, in all parts of Turkey, Anatolia, and the Ottoman world. He limped to the lecturer's table, in the lounge, and, holding his monocle in his hand from the first word to the last, delivered a discourse of which this was the gist:
Before Christmas we should be in Constantinople—what. (Laughter, rather at the what than at the substance of the sentence.) He was confident the Dardanelles would be conquered any day now, and wished the ship would go a bit faster, so that we should not be too late to miss all the fun. (Hear, hear.) The only thing that was holding up our army at Cape Helles was the hill of Achi Baba. Now he had stood on Achi Baba and looked down upon the Straits at that point where they became the silver Narrows: and he knew that old Achi was a wee pimple, which he could capture before breakfast, given a fighting crowd of blaspheming heathens, like those he saw before him. (Loud cheers.) When we penetrated Turkey, we were to understand that the Turk with a beard was a teetotaller, like himself, Major Hardy. (Cheers.) We were never to kick a dog in Turkey—what (laughter), and, above all, never to raise our eyes to a Turkish woman, whether veiled or not, if we would keep our lives worth the value of a tram ticket. "One thinks," he concluded, "of the crowd of susceptible Tommies reclining on the decks outside, and fears the worst." (Loud laughter, cheers, and Jimmy Doon's weary voice: "Good-bye-ee.")
§2
So the first afternoon at sea declined into evening. I had been looking forward all day to the starlight night, in which we should discuss again with Monty the things that had crept into our conversation the night before. I had gone to bed, happy in the thought that the breastworks had been broken down, and the way made easier for further unburdening. I had fallen asleep, contented in the conviction that Monty had been sent into my life to help me to put things straight. In my simple theology, I was pleased to imagine I saw how God was working. Somewhere in that old world behind the dockyard lay my shattered ideals, shattered morals, shattered religion. Monty was to rebuild my faith in humanity and in God. Some where in that rosy year which was past lay the anchor that I had cast away. Monty was to find me drifting to the Dardanelles with no anchor aboard, and to give me one that would hold. Yes, I saw a ruling Hand. Radley had been the great influence of my schooldays; and, now that he was fast fading into the memories of a remote past, Monty, this lean and whimsical priest, had stepped in to fill the stage. The story of our spiritual development must ever be the story of other people's influence over us. I could see it all, and went to sleep lonely but happy.
It is difficult to say why I wanted to set my life aright. The thought of my mother; the peaceful movement of the ship away from England; Monty's stories of his lovable boy officers; and the beauty of the seascape—all had something to do with it. At any rate, I found myself longing for the time when, after dinner, Doe and I, with Monty between us, should recline in deck-chairs under the stars, and speak of intimate things.
When the time came, it was very dark, for deck-lamps were not allowed, and every port-hole was obscured, so that no chink of light should betray our whereabouts to a prowling submarine. We began by star-gazing. Then we brought eyes and faces downwards, and watched the wide, rippling sea. Monty, having refilled his pipe on his knees, lit it with some difficulty in the gentle wind, before he remembered that, after dark, smoking was forbidden on deck. The match flared up, and illuminated the world alarmingly.... We listened for the torpedo.
Nothing evil coming from the darkness, Monty knocked out the forbidden tobacco, and placed an empty pipe between his teeth.
"I suppose you fellows know," he said, "that we've got a daily Mass on board."
"What's that?" asked Doe.
Monty removed his pipe and gazed with affected horror at his questioner. Certainly he would hold forth now.
"Bah!" he began, but he changed it with quick generosity to "Ah well, ah well, ah well! I know the sort of religion you've enjoyed—and, for that matter, adorned. It's a wonderful creed! Have a bath every morning, and go to church with your people. It saves you from bad form, but can't save you from vice."
Doe moved slightly in his chair, as one does when a dentist touches a nerve. Monty stopped, and then added:
"'A daily Mass' is my short way of saying 'A daily celebration of the Holy Communion.'"
"Heavens!" thought I. "He's an R.C."
I felt as though I had lost a friend. Doe, however, was quicker in appraising the terrible facts.
"I s'pose you're a High Churchman," he said; and I've little doubt that he thereupon made up his mind to be a High Churchman too. Monty groaned. He placed in front of Doe his left wrist on which was clasped a bracelet identity disc. He switched on to the disc a shaft of light from an electric torch, and we saw engraved on it his name and the letters "C.E."
"That's what I am, Gazelle," said he, as the light went out, "C. of E., now and always."
("Gazelle" was ostensibly a silly play on my friend's name, but, doubtless, Doe's sleek figure and brown eyes, which had made the name of "The Grey Doe" so appropriate, inspired Monty to style him "Gazelle.")
"C. of E.," muttered I, audibly. "What a relief!"
"You beastly, little, supercilious snob!" exclaimed Monty, who was easily the rudest man I have ever met.
I didn't mind him calling me "little," for he so overtopped me intellectually that in his presence I never realised that I had grown tall. I felt about fourteen.
"You beastly, little, intolerant, mediæval humbug. I suppose you think 'C. of E.' is the only respectable thing to be. And yet your C. of E.-ism hasn't—" He stopped abruptly, as if he had just arrested himself in a tactless remark.
"Go on," I said.
"And yet your religion," he continued gently, "hasn't proved much of a vital force in your life, has it? Didn't it go to pieces at the first assault of the world?"
"I s'pose it did," I confessed humbly.
"Shall I tell you the outstanding religious fact of the war?" asked he. "Let me recover my breath which your unspeakable friend here put out by calling me a 'High Churchman,' and then I'll begin. It begins eighty years ago."
So Monty began the great story of the Catholic movement in the Church of England. He told us of Keble and Pusey; he made heroes for us of Father Mackonochie dying amongst his dogs in the Scotch snows, and of Father Stanton, whose coffin was drawn through London on a barrow. He knew how to capture the interest and sympathy of boy minds. At the end of his stories about the heroes and martyrs of the Catholic movement, though we hadn't grasped the theology of it, yet we knew we were on the side of Keble and Pusey, Mackonochie and Stanton. We would have liked to be sent to prison for wearing vestments.
"But hang the vestments!" cried Monty in his vigorous way. "Hang the cottas, the candles, and the incense! What the Catholic movement really meant was the recovery for our Church of England—God bless her—of the old exalted ideas of the Mass and of the great practice of private confession. 'What we want,' said the Catholic movement, 'is the faith of St. Augustine of Canterbury, and of St. Aidan of the North; the faith of the saints who built the Church of England, and not the faith of Queen Elizabeth, nor even of the Pope of Rome.'"
We thought this very fine, and Doe, who generally carried on these conversations while I was silent, inquired what exactly this faith might be, which was neither Protestantism nor Romanism.
"Rehearse the articles of my belief, eh?" laughed Monty. "Well, I believe in the Mass, and I believe in confession, and I believe that where you've those, you've everything else."
"And what's the outstanding fact of the war?" asked Doe.
"The outstanding fact of my experience at least, Gazelle, has been the astonishing loyalty to his chaplains and his church of that awful phenomenon, the young High Church fop, the ecclesiastical youth. He has known what his chaplains are for, and what they can give him; he hasn't needed to be looked up and persuaded to do his religious duties, but has rather looked up his chaplains and persuaded them to do theirs—confound his impudence! He has got up early and walked a mile for his Mass. His faith, for all its foppery, has stood four-square."
Monty started to relight his pipe, forgetting again in his enthusiasm all routine orders. He tossed the match away, and added:
"Yes: and there's another whose religion is vital—the extreme Protestant. He's a gem! I disagree with him on every point, and I love him."
Monty held the floor. We were content to wait in silence for him to continue. He looked at a bright star and murmured, as if thinking aloud:
"Out there—out there the spike has come into his own."
"What's a spike?" interrupted Doe, intent on learning his part.
"They called those High Church boys who before the war could talk of nothing but cottas and candles, 'spikes.' They were a bit insufferable. But, by Jove, they've had to do without all those pretty ornaments out there, and they've proved that they had the real thing. My altar has generally been two ration boxes, marked 'Unsweetened Milk,' but the spike has surrounded it. And, look here, Gazelle, the spike knows how to die. He just asks for his absolution and his last sacrament, and—and dies."
There was silence again. All we heard was the ship chopping along through the dark sea, and distant voices in the saloons below. And we thought of the passing of the spike, shriven, and with food for his journey.
"And what are we to believe about the Mass?" asked Doe, who, deeply interested, had turned in his chair towards Monty.
Monty told us. He told us things strange for us to hear. We were to believe that the bread and wine, after consecration, were the same Holy Thing as the Babe of Bethlehem; and we could come to Mass, not to partake, but to worship like the shepherds and the magi; and there, and there only, should we learn how to worship. He told us that the Mass was the most dramatic service in the world, for it was the acting before God of Calvary's ancient sacrifice; and under the shadow of that sacrifice we could pray out all our longings and all our loneliness.
"Now, come along to daily Mass," he pleaded. "Just come and see how they work out, these ideas of worshipping like the shepherds and of kneeling beneath the shadow of a sacrifice. You'll find the early half-hour before the altar the happiest half-hour of the day. You'll find your spiritual recovery there. It'll be your healing spring."
Turning with the Monty suddenness to Doe, he proved by his next words how quickly he had read my friend's character.
"You boys are born hero-worshippers," he said. "And there's nothing that warm young blood likes better than to do homage to its hero, and mould itself on its hero's lines. In the Mass you simply bow the knee to your Hero, and say: 'I swear fealty. I'm going to mould myself on you.'"
He had not known Edgar Doe forty-eight hours, but he had his measure.
"All right," said Doe, "I'll come."
"Tell us about the other thing, confession," I suggested.
"Not now, Rupert. 'Ye are babes,' and I've fed you with milk. Confession'll come, but it's strong meat for you yet."
"I don't know," demurred I.
Monty's face brightened, as the fact of one who sees the dawn of victory. But Doe, though his whole nature moved him to be a picturesque High Churchman, yet, because he wanted Monty to think well of him, drew up abruptly at the prospect of a detailed confession.
"You'll never get me to come to confession," he laughed, "never—never—never."
"My dear Gazelle, don't be silly," rejoined Monty. "I'll have you within the week."
"You won't!"
"I will! Oh, I admit I'm out to win you two. I want to prove that the old Church of England has everything you public schoolboys need, and capture you and hold you. I want all the young blood for her. I want to prove that you can be the pride of the Church of England. And I'll prove it. I'll prove it on this ship."
Whether he proved it, I can't say. I am only telling a tale of what happened. I dare say that, if instead of Monty, the Catholic, some militant Protestant had stepped at this critical moment into our lives, full of enthusiasm for his cause and of tales of the Protestant martyrs, he would have won us to his side, and provided a different means of spiritual recovery. I don't know.
For the tale I'm telling is simply this: that in these moments, when every turn of the ship's screw brought us nearer Gibraltar, the gate of the Great Sea, and God alone knew what awaited us in the Gallipoli corner of that Mediterranean arena, came Padre Monty, crashing up to us with his Gospel of the saints. It was the ideal moment for a priest to do his priestly work, and bring our Mother Church to our side. And Monty failed neither her nor us.