The Challoners. E. F. Benson
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for the early celebration in the parish-church, and he had still twenty minutes, enough, if he was quick, in which to dress in the prescribed Sunday garb (though why black was suitable to Sunday he had long given up trying to guess, leaving it to rot away among the unconjecturable riddles of life), and, a thing which pleased his father so intensely, play the hymn on the melancholy one-manualled organ, the curious quavering tones of which formed so remarkable a contrast to the nasal notes of village voices. So with something of a sigh for his renunciation of the river-bank, he hurried back home, and before the bell had ceased ringing passed through the church-yard where yew-trees of noble growth looked down upon the horrors of the modern stone-mason with his “chaste” designs and “handsome” crosses into the grey, cool church.
To judge by the interior it is probable that the mouth which Lady Sunningdale so much admired in the vicar and the Bishop of Tavistock was a low-church mouth, for Mr. Challoner at any rate did not attempt to make any appeal to the souls of his parishioners by means of the senses. Two brass flower-vases, of that curiously feeble design that somehow suggests at once low-church ecclesiasticism, stood on the altar, over which a flood of mauve and magenta light poured in through misshapen figures of apostles and prophets in the east window. In one transept stood the organ to which Martin directed his steps, the pipes of which, framed in a wooden border ornamented with fretsaw work, were painted white with a scroll of red pattern in line embellishing their top ends. Behind the organ-bench was a red plush curtain with golden fleurs-de-lys stamped on it, to screen the person of the organist from the eyes of the congregation. The seats for the people, who were thinly scattered over the church, were faced eastwards, and were made of shiny, varnished pitch-pine, while the floor of the aisles and accesses was tiled with a cheerful ecclesiastical pattern in violent blue and Indian red, and pierced here and there with gratings of cast-iron work through which, in winter, came the hot, stale blasts from the warming apparatus. A black iron stove stood near the font at the west end of the church, and rows of somewhat dilapidated rush-bottomed chairs denoted the place allotted to the school-children.
To Martin, who for the last two months had been accustomed to the grey dimness and carved spaciousness of King’s Chapel, the first sight of these staring crudenesses came with a shock of almost physical repulsion. Why had it been done? What did it all mean? What emotions were the ill-coloured, badly designed windows intended to arouse or what was the affinity between pitch-pine and worship? Impressionable and impatient as he always was, he nearly turned back after he had opened the door and was confronted by this half-forgotten tawdry brilliance. Then the motive which had made him forsake the cool riverside, the desire to please his father, prevailed.
The organ was blown by a small boy with a highly polished face, who stood directly by the player’s left-hand, and, since the bellows were not powerful enough to supply the lungs of the organ, unless plied by an energetic arm, was often blown too, and breathed heavily into the organist’s ear. It was still a few minutes to eight when Martin came in, and found the village school-master preparing to begin that series of somewhat elementary harmonies to which is given the vague title of a “voluntary.” But he slid quickly off the seat with a smile of welcome to the other, and in a searching whisper told him what the hymns were going to be, and what “Kyrie” would be sung between the commandments. This later information was given with a self-depreciatory blush, for Mr. Milton was not at all mute and inglorious, but composed chants and hymn-tunes with so many accidentals that the choir quailed before them, and garnished them with accidents.
Martin glanced at the organ-stops: there were “Bourdon” (which sounded as if you were playing pedals when you were not, and was much in request), “Open Diapason,” “Flute,” “Cor Anglais,” and a few others of more doubtful import. He added “Tremolo” to certain other soft stops, in curiosity as to what it meant, and began the first bar of the prelude to “Lohengrin.” But as “Tremolo” seemed to convert other sounds into a distant bleating of sheep, he hastily put it in. Five minutes later the vestry-door in the transept opposite opened and the curate, followed by his father, came out. Mr. Challoner looked up as he entered, saw Martin’s head above the curtains of the organ, and a sudden warm tide of thankfulness and love glowed in his heart. Surely the dear lad could not go very far wrong, if he sought strength here.
The worshippers were but few, and it was not long before Martin was out in the sunshine again, but with all the joy and exhilaration of the earlier hour by the river driven out of him. Like most very emotional people, religion was as essential to him as breathing, but in him it was a natural, child-like religion that springs primarily from the huge enjoyment of the beautiful things in this world, for which he had to thank somebody. And though it would be impossible to say that it was not real to him, yet a London fog, so to speak, would make a pagan of him for the time being. And now, though he did believe in the truth and reality of the service in which he had taken part, the deadly ugliness of the church, the melancholy voices, Mr. Milton’s “Kyrie” ten times repeated, the intolerable voices singing absurd tunes had risen like a London fog between him and it. The service had passed over his head like a flight of birds unseen in this dreadful atmosphere, he had heard only the rustle of their wings. But what he had been conscious of with every jarred fibre in his being was the gross material ugliness of the sights and sounds of this last hour. Why should “throne” be allowed to rhyme with “join” in sacred subjects, whereas it would be admissible in no other class of poetry? Was it because anything was good enough in a hymn, or because those who were responsible for the “form” of English worship were entirely without any sense of “form” themselves? Or why in church allow music that would be tolerated nowhere else? Or why have windows in the house of God which for colouring and design could only be paralleled in the worst type of suburban villa? Pitch-pine seats, tiles again only to be found in the fireplaces of villas and the aisles of churches! Often before, though never perhaps so vividly, had the ugliness of Protestantism struck him; often before, though never perhaps so insistently, had his nature, wishing to aspire, demanded beauty as its ladder. Most of all here was beauty necessary, for the sublimest act of all was here performed, the worship and praise of God, the sacramental approach to him. Even as a little thing, a little rhythmical noise, may utterly distract a man’s attention from a subject which requires concentration, so this ambient ugliness utterly distracted Martin. Only ugliness was no little thing to him.
He had not long to wait for his father, for he followed him almost immediately out of the vestry, and his face lit up with extraordinary pleasure when he saw that Martin had waited for him. Here was his highest joy: to see his children with him in that divine act, and find them caring, lingering for him, and the consciousness of that compact the night before was as vividly present in his mind as it had been in Martin’s when he left the delights of the river-bank at the sound of the church-bell.
“Dear lad,” he said, “the first thing I saw when I came into church was you, and I was so thankful.”
Then with the active desire to get into Martin’s sympathy he went on.
“And what was that beautiful, exquisite tune you played us before service?”
Martin brightened.
“Ah, I am glad you liked it,” he said, cordially. “Is it not beautiful? It was Wagner—the beginning of the overture to ‘Lohengrin.’”
Mr. Challoner’s face grew suddenly grave. Wagner was identified with “Tannhäuser” to him.
“Certainly it was most, beautiful,” he said; “but do you think it is quite—quite suitable to play something from an opera in church, before the Holy Communion, too? One wants everything, is it not so, to be of the highest?”
Mr. Milton’s “Kyrie” occurred to Martin, but he dismissed it.
“I don’t see why one shouldn’t play an opera overture, father,” he said. “Does not the fact that it is beautiful make it suitable?”
“But the associations of it?” said his father.
“I don’t suppose anybody knew what it was except me,” said Martin. “I am sorry if you think I should not have played it. But really I had no time to think. I was nearly late, and on the organ there was only a book of dreadful extracts, chiefly by organists. But I will