“Don’t,” said the gardener. “You’re too excited. Don’t tremble like that. Don’t hate God. After all, He made the world—a green sane world—with you and me in it....”
“He made it with you in it. But I got in by mistake.”
“What a happy mistake!” said the gardener. “Come into the church, my dear, and rest for a moment. Don’t try to look too deep into the reasons of things, you’ll only get giddy.”
He took her hand, and they went up the steps together.
“It’s a fine church,” he said. “That screen’s a fine bit of carving.” He felt as if he had taken charge of his suffragette’s nerves, and he busied his brain in the composition of cool and commonplace remarks.
“That chancel screen is dirty. It’s the gift of foul hands, bought with foul money. Do you think me mad?”
“You are, rather, you know. Pull yourself together. Surely you’re not frightened of getting married to me?”
The suffragette laughed. “You wonderfully faithful friend,” she said.
The gardener was not a religious young man. He was not quite rare enough in texture for that, and he was a little too clever for the religion of his fathers. The Christian pose had never appealed to him, it was not unique enough. All his life he had seen prayer used as a method of commercial telegraphy. You wanted a thing, and from a kneeling position you informed Heaven of your order. If it was complied with, you knew that you must be appreciated in high quarters; if it was ignored, you supposed that your message had miscarried, and despatched another. At any rate it cost nothing.
But the gardener had a vague reverence inborn in him. During his everyday life he posed as an unbeliever. When in his own unposing company he passively believed in something he had never defined. But under stained-glass windows or the benediction of music, under arched forests and a sinless sky, under the passionate sane spell of the sea, under the charm of love, he knew that he worshipped. For he was a poet without the means of proving it, and to such God is a secret mouthpiece, and a salvation.