Again Martin’s likeness to his father started to his face.
“You say, ‘easily,’” he said. “Take this, then. What would you do if in order to get Helen you had to tell a real, mortal, mean lie, the sort of lie that would make you blush in the dark?”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“Yes; just like that. I must. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know whether I know, except as regards what I said in Lady Sunningdale’s room, that, if in anything, in worship above all is beauty necessary. That is true, but it is only a sort of symbol of what I feel. Other people feel differently; they are less materialistic than I, and ugliness doesn’t get in their way. But if you happen to be gifted or cursed with the artistic temperament—Lord, how priggish that sounds!—I don’t see how you can help demanding beauty in the service of what is sublime.”
“I never knew you thought about these things,” said Frank, rather lamely.
Martin snapped his fingers impatiently.
“More fool you, old chap,” said he. “All the same, I don’t see why you should have. So I’ll apologise. Probably you thought that because one has high spirits, a really fine capacity for playing the fool, and also a certain leaning towards the piano, that I never took anything seriously. Nor did I till lately. In any case, this is really so much more my concern than anybody’s. I’ve got to lead my own life, not to be dragged about like a sheep. And I must.”
He paused a moment.
“I have only given you an external instance of what seems to me an underlying principle,” he said. “The difference in ‘form’ between the two churches is an illustration of the desire of the Roman Church to enlist beauty in the service of God. That desire is the spirit of Romanism. Now, English people, take them all round, are extremely deficient in the sense of beauty, and utterly blind to its importance. And in church I think it really seems to them slightly inappropriate. The Roman Church is mystical, romantic, poetical. The English is Puritan and ugly and literal. And, do you know, as soon as I began to think, I found I could not stand Puritanism. Heavens, how I have jawed!”
Martin got up briskly from his chair, with the unmistakable air of closing that particular topic. In his youthful, boyish manner there lurked a great deal of masterfulness, which those who came in contact with it might be disposed to call obstinacy. Though he never adopted any attitude so ungraceful as that of a donkey with its legs planted outwards towards the four quarters of the compass, the effect on such as pulled was about the same. If he chose, he would smilingly refuse to go in any direction whatever, certainly until all efforts to move him were relaxed. But as he knew himself, and as Frank suspected, there was just one person in the world with whom, hitherto, he had never adopted this attitude, and that was his father. Never yet in his life had he set his will calmly in opposition to Mr. Challoner’s. As he had once told his father, he was frightened at him, he feared his anger, but there was certainly no one else in the world whom he would radically disagree with, and yet obey. And some cold intimate knowledge of this had suddenly struck him when at this moment he stopped the conversation. All that he had said he had honestly felt, but vivid as was his imagination, when he flashed a light into his father’s study at home, he could not picture himself there saying this to him. His own figure wavered, as if blown by a draught.