“Why, you look quite like a priest,” she said. “Do your bishops, or whatever you call them, allow that dress? I thought you had done away with it all.”
Mr. Dent looked at her, but seeing nothing but geniality and interest in her face, explained elaborately in the porch that he was a Catholic priest, practically; though the word minister was more commonly used; and that it was the old Church still, only cleansed from superstitions. Mary shook her head at him cheerfully, smiling like a happy, puzzled child.
“It is all too difficult for me,” she said. “It cannot be the same Church, or why should we poor Catholics be so much abused and persecuted? Besides, what of the Pope?”
Mr. Dent explained that the Pope was one of the superstitions in question.
“Ah! I see you are too sharp for me,” said Mary, beaming at him.
Then they entered the church; and Mary began immediately on a running comment.
“How sad that little niche looks,” she said. “I suppose Our Lady is in pieces somewhere on a dunghill. Surely, father—I beg your pardon, Mr. Dent—it cannot be the same religion if you have knocked Our Lady to pieces. But then I suppose you would say that she was a superstition, too. And where is the old altar? Is that broken, too? And is that a superstition, too? What a number there must have been! And the holy water, too, I see. But that looks a very nice table up there you have instead. Ah! And I see you read the new prayers from a new desk outside the screen, and not from the priest’s stall. Was that a superstition too? And the mass vestments? Has your wife had any of them made up to be useful? The stoles are no good, I fear; but you could make charming stomachers out of the chasubles.”
They were walking slowly up the centre aisle now. Mr. Dent had to explain that the vestments had been burnt on the green.
“Ah! yes; I see,” she said, “and do you wear a surplice, or do you not like them? I see the chancel roof is all broken—were there angels there once? I suppose so. But how strange to break them all! Unless they are superstitions, too? I thought Protestants believed in them; but I see I was wrong. What do you believe in, Mr. Dent?” she asked, turning large, bright, perplexed eyes upon him for a moment: but she gave him no time to answer.
“Ah!” she cried suddenly, and her voice rang with pain, “there is the altar-stone.” And she went down on her knees at the chancel entrance, bending down, it seemed, in an agony of devout sorrow and shame; and kissed with a gentle, lingering reverence the great slab with its five crosses, set in the ground at the destruction of the altar to show there was no sanctity attached to it.