“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 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 relatively 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 important, 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, 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, together 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 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 connecting link, felt unhappy about it. What was the matter with the idiots, that they wouldn’t understand each other? It seemed to him extraordinarily stupid. But undoubtedly the social fault lay with Arnold, who was being rude. The 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 embarrassed 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 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.