‘Well, then, why not?’
‘The music is so tender, so overwhelming, that thinking is impossible.’
‘Is thinking the only way to the truth—putting two and two together? The noblest truth comes with music. More solid truth has been demonstrated by a song, a march, or a hymn, than by famous political and theological treatises. But I am not a Roman Catholic.’
‘Oh yes! I know what you mean: it is a poetical way of saying that music stimulates aspiration.’
‘No, that is not what I mean. If there be such a mental operation as passionless thinking it does not lead to much. Emotion makes intellectual discoveries.’
‘I do not understand you. Revealed religion rests on intelligent conviction. It is the doctrine of a Creator, of law, of sin, of redemption, of future happiness and misery.’
‘That is to say, your religion stands on authority or logic. But I cannot dispute with you. The beliefs by which some of us live—“belief” is not the right word—are not begotten or strengthened and cannot be overthrown by argument. We dare not expose them, but if they were to fail, we should welcome death and annihilation. I repeat, I am not a Roman Catholic.’
Kate went back to her father and her native hills. The drama of Saint Mary Moorfields was continually before her eyes, and Mozart’s music was continually in her ears. An ideal human being had been revealed to her who understood her, pitied her, and loved her. She was no longer a mere atom of dust, unnoticed amongst millions of millions. But the intensity of her faith gave birth to fear and doubt. Her own words recurred to her, but she was forced to admit that she must depend upon evidence. If Christ were nothing but a legend, she might as well kneel to a mist.
In those days, within five miles of her father’s house was a small Roman Catholic chapel. The priest had been well educated, but he had never questioned any of the dogmas imposed on him as a child. One Sunday morning, when her father did not go to church, Kate walked over to the chapel and heard mass. The contrast with Saint Mary Moorfields was great. The sermon disappointed her. It was little more than simple insistence on ritual duty. She reflected, however, that it was not addressed to her, but to those who had been brought up to believe. As she walked home a strange conflict arose in her. On the one hand were her imperious needs, which almost compelled assumption of fact; but the wind blew, and when she looked up the clouds sailed over the mountains. She sat on a grey rock to rest. It had lain there for thousands of years, and she was reminded of the Druid circle above the Greta. She could get no further with her thinking, and knelt down and prayed for light. It is of all prayers the most sincere, but she was not answered—at least not then. The next Sunday she went again to mass, and she had half a mind to signify her wish to confess, but what could she confess? She was burdened with no sins, and in confession she could not fully explain her case. She determined she would write to the priest and ask him to grant her an interview.
Her desertion of the parish church was observed, and of course nobody was surprised that Miss Radcliffe had turned Papist. The old Radcliffes were all Papists; there was Popery in the blood, and it came out like the gout, missing a couple of generations. Then again there was the scar, and Miss Radcliffe would never be married. One of the neighbours who suggested the scar and maidenhood as a sufficient reason for apostasy was a retired mill-owner, who was a Wesleyan Methodist when he was in business in Manchester, but had become ostentatiously Anglican when he retired into the country. The village blacksmith, whose ancestors had worked at the same forge since the days of Queen Elizabeth, was a fearless gentleman, and hated the mill-owner as an upstart. He therefore made reply that ‘other people changed their religion because they wanted to be respectable and get folk like the Radcliffes to visit them—which they won’t,’ the last words being spoken with emphasis and scorn.