THE CHAPEL ON THE HILL

BY

ALFRED PRETOR

FELLOW OF ST. CATHARINE’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE AUTHOR OF ‘RONALD AND I’

“Some falls are means the happier to arise.” —Cymbeline, iv. 2 ad fin

CAMBRIDGE DEIGHTON BELL & CO. LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1904

p. ivCAMBRIDGE PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER ALEXANDRA STREET

p. vTo the memory of ‘Judy’ (Ob. Aug. 27, 1904)

“A soul she had on earth.” —Byron. “The more I learn to know man, the better I like dogs.” —German Philosopher.

p. viiPREFACE

To those, I think a lessening number, who may find themselves at variance with “my Rector’s” theology, I tender the following quotation from one of the ablest and deepest thinkers of the past century:

“If, instead of the ‘glad tidings’ that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that ‘the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving’ does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this Being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures.”—J. S. Mill, Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy, pp. 102, 103 (Criticism of Mansel).

p. viiiI have omitted from the above the author’s peroration, which is couched in language too strong to suit the taste of the present generation.

That the Bible is our one and only true guide, we believe; but we are nowhere instructed to make an idol and a fetish of the form in which it is presented. It was written to suit all times; we must read it in the language of to-day.

In the controversy between the Squire and himself the Rector is by no means guiltless of plagiarism. Ford, who knew Spain as intimately as an Englishman can ever know it, advances the self-same arguments in his comments on the national sport.

A word more and I have done. It is reported on good authority that one of our greatest divines—the author of ‘Butler’s Analogy’—held a confident belief in the re-existence of animals. They share our doom of suffering and death: why not our promise of happiness beyond? They have done nothing to forfeit their reward.

A. P.

Cambridge, August, 1904.

p. 1INTRODUCTION

Riverdale and I—to wit one Harold Stirling by name—had been close friends almost since life began, at our private school, our public school, and again at college. And we were meeting now for the last time as undergraduates in Riverdale’s rooms at Cambridge. For the choice that comes, once at any rate in a lifetime, to all, had come to us, and we had chosen divergent, to some it would appear antagonistic, careers.

To judge from his personal appearance, Riverdale at any rate had chosen wisely for himself when he elected to become an artist. Smoking at p. 2his ease, in a picturesque environment of flowers and ferns, pictures and statuettes, he looked like what he was—a well-to-do indolent dreamer, who might possibly succeed as a painter, but would never make much of life in any other line. Fortunately for him he had no need to trouble himself about the future. A kindly fate had settled all this in advance, when his only surviving relative, an uncle, had made him a comfortable allowance of a thousand a year, adding the still more comfortable assurance that the family estate of Riverdale should be his when the time came that he himself should have no further use for it.

Study him, as the glow from a reading-lamp falls full on his features, and you will say that his personality is concentrated in his eyes. Sapphire blue they would have been called by a casual observer, but it always seemed to me that they held in them a deeper tint, as of violet or purple. p. 3But whatever their colour, they are about as rare in humanity as is a blue rose or a green chrysanthemum among the creations of the floral world. Not that they betoken much character, I think. It is simply their beauty, and perhaps their rarity, that constitutes the attraction. At any rate, veiled by long lashes, and set in Italian features, as was the case with Riverdale, it is impossible to hold them indicative of energy or activity in life.

It was a strange coincidence that had made bosom friends of two natures so antagonistic, to all appearance, as Riverdale’s and mine. But it was a coincidence that occurs oftener than would at first sight seem possible. Perhaps it is explicable by the well-known theory that every character is on the search for its complement. If so, it may well be that my own sturdy directness found its natural relaxation in the captivating indifferentism of my friend. Anyhow, the companionship had p. 4begun early at school, where a mutual admiration for one’s opposite is often the secret of a lifelong friendship. And as Riverdale’s good looks and careless insouciance had always been found irresistible, it was my own commonplace personality that was envied by my schoolfellows for the dignity it had acquired by his friendship.

And now that I have given you an idea of my friend, let me for once attempt the impossible and try to describe myself. An athlete I think I may call myself, for I have raced and rowed and played cricket and football ever since I was a boy of ten—of the type which is welcomed in all our schools as the recognised trainer of youth. Not so very plain, I hope, and certainly well set up in the way of muscles and sinews. But quite as certainly not in any way striking like Riverdale, and without the faintest pretension to anything remarkable in the direction of beauty. Finally, and to complete p. 5the portrait, fair in complexion, with blue eyes and a slight tendency to freckles, which I abominate. In all respects a worthy foil to Riverdale’s dreamy picturesqueness.

Left an orphan at an early date, with a comfortable income of £300 a year, I had never known the want of money, though I had no large balance to waste on the luxuries that had become necessaries to my friend. Without any real talent, and notwithstanding my devotion to athletics, I had taken a fair degree, and learned something of theology under the guidance of one of the leading minds at Cambridge. Only as yet I had come to no conclusions outside the main doctrines of our faith; and to what end my views were shaping themselves I had never paused on my way to consider. Experience and circumstances, as they developed themselves, would, I supposed, answer the question, and, having been confronted as yet p. 6by no definite difficulties, I had not troubled to bethink me how I should meet them.

“And now tell me, Eric,” I asked, “where are all the Cupids and Psyches and Fauns to go while you are painting dusky Venetians and the fair-haired beauties of Genoa?”

“Oh, I’ve taken a flat, Harold, in a house overlooking Battersea Park, and they’ll all be transferred there as soon as I am off to-morrow. By the way, you must look in on them now and then, and see that they are all right. And you must have that little gladiator I brought from Rome for yourself. It would never do to separate you, for I’m sure you’d never be happy without him. Rather like you, I think he is, with his steady sturdy gaze, as if he knew he had a tough business before him, but intended to make the best of it, and worry through. Lucky we weren’t born in each other’s shoes, any way for me, Harold. I p. 7couldn’t have faced life without funds, but should have drifted down and down till I ended the business with a dose of morphia.”

“What nonsense, Eric. I do wish you wouldn’t cheapen yourself like that. You’ve talent enough for both of us, and will be exhibiting in the Academy while I’m a country curate, and a poor one at that. By the way, if you don’t mind, I’d sooner have that Antinous than the gladiator. I don’t particularly want a replica of myself, if it’s all the same to you, while you might have posed for the Antinous, if you’d been handy; and it will be better than nothing to have it to look at when I haven’t got the original on the other side of the table. And now, old friend, good-bye. It’s past twelve already, and I’ve all my packing to do before the morning. For I shall be off long before a sybarite like you thinks of stirring. Let me hear from you now and then, and don’t let the p. 8foreign signoras and Roman models steal all your heart from me.”

The next day we had parted; he to enjoy life and study art in all the best galleries on the continent, and I to prepare myself for Ordination in a quiet village of the West.

p. 9CHAPTER I

It was a cheerful scene on which my eye rested as I looked out upon it from the Rector’s study, while awaiting my introduction to the Rector himself. Two large bay windows opened on a terrace, from which a short flight of steps led down to a lawn, fringed with gaily-coloured flower beds. Through the open windows streamed into the room a veritable flood of light and air, creating an atmosphere in which sadness and depression would have been hopelessly out of place.

“Impossible,” I murmured, “to write a gloomy Calvinistic sermon in a room like this, though it’s strange, by the way, that his letters should have told me nothing of his views.”

p. 10The emerald lawn in the foreground contrasted pleasantly with the violet haze that rested on the far horizon, and the very air itself seemed steeped in quiet and repose. Only the song of birds and the mysterious hum of insect-life broke the stillness of the summer day, to which the chafing of a trout stream, as it murmured over its rocky bed at the foot of the Rectory garden, sounded a soft accompaniment.

And out past the Rectory grounds, past the cheery meadow-land beyond, where reaping was now in progress, I caught a glimpse of the far off sea and the Isle of Portland lying on the line of the horizon, with a delicate veil of summer gauze folded about its head. The charm of it all wove a spell upon me like a dream.

“If the Rector is as nice as his Rectory, I shall have a pleasant time of it,” I said to myself. And the next moment the unspoken thought was p. 11answered in the affirmative, for I felt my hand warmly grasped by the gentlest-looking and most benevolent of men. And my heart went out to him on the instant, as to one whose help and guidance I knew would never fail me, even when my work under him should be ended, and, whether for good or evil, laid behind me among the retrospects of life.

“Yes, you’ll do,” he said, after studying me keenly for half-a-minute with eyes that pierced me through and through. “You look as if you’d work hard in the right way, and make friends with my villagers and parishioners. They are a queer lot—to be led, not driven. Above all, you look as if you had no foolish fads or fancies—the only things I can’t tolerate when there is so much real work to be done. And you’ll be content to do it closely on the lines laid down for us all in the Sermon on the Mount, before Christianity, as p. 12Christ left it, had lost its identity among a crowd of sects and superstitions. By the way, you must have been surprised, I imagine, that I asked no questions in my letters as to your opinions, and gave you no hints about my own.

“The fact is,” he continued, “I care more for what a man does than for what he thinks, and if you will look after my cottagers, soul and body—beginning with the body first—you and I will get on well together, no matter what opinions you hold on all the open questions of the day. Of course I don’t use the term ‘open’ of anything plainly taught us in the Gospel narrative and the precepts of our Church. Though even the latter, as it seems to me, might have been conceived in a somewhat wider spirit without being wide enough to embrace the Christianity of Christ. And for this reason I am altogether opposed to commissions and enquiries of any kind that might impose p. 13still further limits and restrictions where He Himself has made none. What are wanted for the Church are active energetic workmen, and the wider the doors are thrown open the more of them we shall get for the work. Think what missionary effort itself could accomplish if all its labourers were content to waive, one and all of them, their private specifics, and preach only the clear unquestioned truths

which the Master Himself has sanctioned.

“On all questions but these you may hold what theories you will—that the world was created in six days or in six times as many millions of years; that the Old Testament miracles were literal facts, or allegories for the suggestion of much-needed truths. And you may hold, if you will, that no creature that has life will perish. We are told, are we not? that He ‘will save both man and beast,’ which means, if its means anything, that p. 14other creatures besides man will have a portion in the future state.

“But think well and carefully before you teach an Eternity of Punishment. The responsibility of doing so is far too grave to be carelessly incurred in the light of a wider and clearer-sighted knowledge. Almost it seems that the guess which Charlotte Brontë hazarded in the mouth of one of her characters will before long have crystallized into doctrine: ‘No; I cannot believe that. I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I never mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.’

“Above all things, do not confuse your mind and paralyse your energies with the question, so all-engrossing now-a-days, of the co-existence of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, in the world, p. 15which is after all no mystery at all. Or, if there be a mystery, surely it lies in the fact that anyone should have thought a world of infinite perfection possible. Why, the fallacy was refuted by Plato himself, to whom it was a self-evident truth that the creations of The Infinite must needs be finite and imperfect: in other words, not ‘infinitely’ but only ‘very’ good.

“Limitation, imperfection and (by consequence) evil, with their natural development in sin and suffering and death, were the inevitable portion of created life, but accompanied (thank heaven!) with a birthright of possibilities for good, that, rightly used here and hereafter, shall make us worthy of association, at the last perhaps of union, with the Infinite Itself.

“Forgive me if my sermon has wearied you. I can at any rate summarise it in brief. Teach mainly what has come to us directly p. 16from our Master’s lips—first and foremost, the paramount duty of unselfishness; it embodies the whole duty of man to man, and a part at least of his duty to his Creator. And remember that those who came after Him were after all but men, not exempt from the bias of inclination and judgment, who sometimes (it is quite possible) may have obscured where they thought to enlighten. To be followed therefore with all care and caution whenever they defined or limited what He left wide enough to embrace the world.

“Of course you will dine with me to-night,” he added cheerily, “and I’ll try to make amends for the penance I have inflicted on you. Besides, I want your opinion on the trout from the Rectory stream.”

p. 17CHAPTER II

Like his brother at the Manor House hard by, my Rector, Mr. Richardson, was a widower, having lost his wife only six months before my arrival. His family was comprised of four children, whose ages descended by even gradations from Reginald, the eldest, a handsome lad of eighteen whose school-life had just ended, down to Aggie the youngest, a wild little maiden of twelve.

As yet their characters were still unformed, and had been entrusted for their development to a clever little Belgian, Josephine Armand by name, p. 18who, in addition to the superintendence of their education, managed the Rector’s household for him, and ruled the domestics with a rod of iron.

On the day after my arrival I was studying the church and the streets of the village, which radiated like a fan from the foot of the hill where I stood, when I was met by Reginald who had dined with us the evening before. He was to start early the next day for the continent, where he was to pick up what foreign languages he could before he entered at Cambridge in the following October.

By the gate of the churchyard, through which we passed to the Rectory, stood a time-worn placard requesting visitors not to touch any of the flowers “excepting those on their own graves.”

“A remarkable instance of realistic prevision,” said Reggie, “and far too good to be improved away. Fortunately our villagers are not keenly appreciative of humour, else the best joke in the p. 19county would have been lost to us long ago. And what are you up to, my children?” he added, looking in at the window of the Rectory schoolroom, where his sisters were busily writing at the untidiest of tables, forgetful for once of the glorious sunshine that blazed down upon the world outside. “Some mischief, I’ll be bound, else you’d never be so abnormally quiet.”

“You go on, and don’t disturb us, Reggie,” said Agnes, a lean wiry girl, with hair much dishevelled under the excitement of composition. “We are busy preparing verses for the Attar competition prize, the new dentifrice, you know; you may hear mine if you like. I go in for plain and simple fact—‘beauty unadorned’ you see:

‘Carbolic, camphor, chalk are done; Attar is all and all in one.’”

“Admirable, Aggie. Good solid sense, and no foolish striving after the artistic. And now for p. 20yours, Gertie. Being the poetess of the family, you won’t be content with stern simplicity like that. There’s love and lovemaking in yours, I’ll be bound.”

“Well, Reggie, I have tried to add a little romance to it. But somehow or other the teeth don’t seem to lend themselves readily to the genius of poetry:

‘If Attar you had used in time, Your teeth would have been white—like mine; But now my love for you is dead: Another, ’nother girl I’ll wed.’”

“Bravo, Gertie! You’re really brilliant. ‘Time’ rhymes admirably with ‘mine,’ and it’s a stroke of true genius to intensify grief by the simple process of prodelision.”

“I’m glad you like it, Reggie, though I haven’t the faintest notion of what ‘prodelision’ means.”

“And now, Nellie, for yours. I’ve a rooted belief that yours will be the prize-winner. You’ve p. 21a clever head on your shoulders, and can make a good guess at what will pay.”

“Well, mine is rather a bold venture, Reggie. I want, you see, to combine the allied arts of painting and poetry. There’s to be a picture of King Attar at the top, launching thunderbolts at a crowd of flying dentists. Off they go in the distance, with their implements of torture in their hands, and at the bottom of the picture these words are written:

‘King Attar and the dentists see; Choose Attar—and the dentists flee!’

But I wish I were handier at drawing. King Attar in his chair of state is all out of perspective. And the flying dentists look like a lot of daddy-longlegs; while as for their implements, they might be anything you please. However, I can easily remedy that by drawing lines to the margin with an explanation of each particular instrument—p. 22‘these are tweezers,’ ‘this is a file’—like Melton Prior does in his war pictures, you know.”