Ivy Compton-Burnett - Dolores

Mr Blackwood twisted his moustache, and observed without altering his easy posture in his chair, “Ah! Ah! — an awful thing — the power of these priests — an awful thing — there’s no doubt of that.” Mr Billing dropped his eyes to the ground, and nodded once or twice, muttering, “Yes, yes — yes, yes,” as though he could well believe what he heard, but looked upon the subject as hardly a matter for words. Mr Hutton raised his eyes and met his wife’s, and perceiving an unsteadiness about her lips, dropped them and assumed an equivocal expression; and in a moment addressed the doctor.

“Well, but, Dr Cassell, you could hardly expect the priest to feel grateful to you, especially as you worded what you had to say as you did. I daresay he was an honest fellow, doing his best for what he thought to be right, as you were.”

“I once knew a Roman Catholic priest, and he was a de-ar man,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, with a vague sense of supporting Mr Hutton.

“It was not my object to make him grateful. My object was to bring him to a sense of the abominable wickedness of his course. It was the last thing I expected of him — that he should be grateful!” said Dr Cassell, ending with a grim little laugh.

“Well, on what ground do you find fault with him then?” said the Reverend Cleveland. “I hardly follow you.”

“I think I may retort,” said Dr Cassell, frankly militant, “that I do not follow you. I should not myself describe a man, whose habit it is to listen at doors, as ‘an honest fellow.’”

“Oh, but,” said Mr Hutton, with casual surprise at ignorance of a widespread truth, “the Catholic priests are considered justified in going to any length for the sake of their cause. A breach of morality committed in furtherance or their faith is righteous in their eyes. They would regard it as service for their religion.”

“I think that nothing could show more clearly than that — the superiority — of our religion — the religion of the majority of us here,” said Dr Cassell, with the quiver in his voice of temper kept when loss of it is to be expected, and a glance at the cross on the breast of Mr Hutton. “It is given to us to know, that it is not lawful to do evil — that good may come.”

“Oh, come, Vicar,” interposed Mr Blackwood in loud tones; “the doctor is right —as right as it is possible for a man to be. This spread of the Roman Catholics is an awful thing — an out-and-out awful thing — there’s no denying that. Of course there may be good people amongst them, mistaken through no fault of their own; we all admit that. But we can’t have you talking as if priests and people of that sort ought to be allowed to do their worst without any check. We can’t have that.”

The Reverend Cleveland just glanced at his host, and then looked out of the window with disengaged contemplativeness, tapping his fingertips together.

“Now, Mr Billing” suddenly observed Mr Blackwood, changing the topic with frankly exclusive regard to his own inclination, “I was glad to hear — from some one or other — that you were a Liberal. Now, if there is anything that makes me feel thoroughly rubbed up the wrong way, it is all this Toryism and Conservatism, and all those other “isms,” that really mean utter selfishness, and disregard of all classes but one’s own. If there is anything that makes me feel drawn towards a man, it is when I hear that he is a genuine Liberal. A grand word that — Liberal.”

“Well, I think I may claim to be genuine; I do not regard myself as a spurious article,” said Mr Billing, a sense of his effort at humour prompting him the next moment to turn a little red, glance at Mr Hutton, and look at his hands.

“Well, I am glad to hear it,” said Mr Blackwood. “You and I must have some walks and talks together.”

Mr Billing jumped, and looked towards Dr Cassell — feeling in the warmth of his emotions a desire to soothe that wounded gentleman and draw him again into converse.

“You are a Liberal too, I suppose, Dr Cassell?”

“No,” said Dr Cassell, pausing after this word, as though hardly able again to evince a generous loquaciousness; and then leaning towards Mr Billing, and speaking in hesitating, narrative tones, “I do not regard myself as belonging to any particular — political party. I have never been able to find — justification in the Bible — for a man’s giving of his time and interest to political matters; and I withhold mine. It seems to me that religion is so much the greatest thing in life, that energy bestowed upon other things is energy wasted.”

“But I meant on which side do you vote?” said Mr Billing, choosing what he supposed the most direct way of ridding himself of perplexity.

“I do not vote,” said Dr Cassell, pregnantly.

Mr Billing, not being a member of the doctors’ circle at Millfield, looked a little bewildered and glanced round the company.

“Ah, Mr Billing, now that is a subject upon which the doctor and I do not agree,” said Mr Blackwood loudly, coming to the help of his guest with the assignment of the local leaders of thought to their sides. “The doctor, you know, believes in that theory, that the world will go on getting worse and worse, and all that sort of thing, until at last it reaches the stage when the elect are caught up in the air,”—there was no suggestion of a flippant attitude towards Dr Cassell’s convictions in Mr Blackwood’s tone, rather the dropping that belongs to sacred reference—“and the world with every one else is left to the dealings of the Devil, and that sort of thing — you know those views, of course; and so he does not think it worth while to try and make things better—”

“I do not think it of any avail” broke in Dr Cassell, leaning forward.

“Well, it is all the same in practice, doctor,” said Mr Blackwood. “And it is practice we have to think of. Now, Mr Billing, what I believe is, that little by little the whole world will be evangelized, and that the gospel will be preached in every corner of it, as we are told in the Bible. That is what I believe; and that is what I think we ought to believe. I have no sympathy with this living for oneself, and not thinking of one’s duty to one’s fellow-creatures myself. I think—”

“If I had sympathy with that course, I do not think I should give all my spare time to — preaching the gospel to — and otherwise working for the good of — my fellow — creatures,” said Dr Cassell; just glancing at Mr Blackwood to make this rather bitterly-voiced observation; and then turning to Mr Billing, as though unable to refrain longer from putting his case for himself. “I regard it as impossible — I think I may say know it is impossible, from scriptural sources — to materially benefit the world — in its spiritual aspect — or to arrest its ultimate downfall; beyond endeavouring to — increase the number of the elect by evangelistic work. I think the true Christian should stand apart from the world.”

“Ruskin’s view — with religion in the place of letters and the arts,” said Mr Hutton, in a very low and somewhat caustic tone.

“Well,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, with a mingling of sadness and bitterness, “I am a Conservative myself, and so is my hus-band. Our fam-i-lies have been Conservative from the earliest times. Of course, we both come of such very old fam-i-lies. Lord Loftus was saying to me only yesterday, ‘My dear Mrs Merton-Vane, if every one held the opinions of your husband, the world would be a different place.’ That is what he said, Mr Hut-ton.”