When the World Shook | Page 4

very High Church for those days
he was not popular with the family that owned the Priory before me.
Indeed its head, a somewhat vulgar person of the name of Enfield who
had made money in trade, almost persecuted him, as he was in a
position to do, being the local magnate and the owner of the rectorial
tithes.
I mention this fact because owing to it as a boy I made up my mind that
one day I would buy that place and sit in his seat, a wild enough idea at
the time. Yet it became engrained in me, as do such aspirations of our
youth, and when the opportunity arose in after years I carried it out.
Poor old Enfield! He fell on evil fortunes, for in trying to bolster up a
favourite son who was a gambler, a spendthrift, and an ungrateful
scamp, in the end he was practically ruined and when the bad times
came, was forced to sell the Fulcombe estate. I think of him kindly now,
for after all he was good to me and gave me many a day's shooting and
leave to fish for trout in the river.
By the poor people, however, of all the district round, for the parish
itself is very small, my father was much beloved, although he did
practise confession, wear vestments and set lighted candles on the altar,
and was even said to have openly expressed the wish, to which
however he never attained, that he could see a censer swinging in the
chancel. Indeed the church which, as monks built it, is very large and
fine, was always full on Sundays, though many of the worshippers
came from far away, some of them doubtless out of curiosity because
of its papistical repute, also because, in a learned fashion, my father's
preaching was very good indeed.
For my part I feel that I owe much to these High-Church views. They
opened certain doors to me and taught me something of the mysteries
which lie at the back of all religions and therefore have their home in

the inspired soul of man whence religions are born. Only the pity is that
in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he never discovers, never even
guesses at that entombed aspiration, never sinks a shaft down on to this
secret but most precious vein of ore.
I have said that my father was learned; but this is a mild description, for
never did I know anyone quite so learned. He was one of those men
who is so good all round that he became preeminent-eminent in nothing.
A classic of the first water, a very respectable mathematician, an expert
in theology, a student of sundry foreign languages and literature in his
lighter moments, an inquirer into sociology, a theoretical musician
though his playing of the organ excruciated most people because it was
too correct, a really first-class authority upon flint instruments and the
best grower of garden vegetables in the county, also of apples--such
were some of his attainments. That was what made his sermons so
popular, since at times one or the other of these subjects would break
out into them, his theory being that God spoke to us through all of these
things.
But if I began to drift into an analysis of my father's abilities, I should
never stop. It would take a book to describe them. And yet mark this,
with them all his name is as dead to the world to-day as though he had
never been. Light reflected from a hundred facets dissipates itself in
space and is lost; that concentrated in one tremendous ray pierces to the
stars.
Now I am going to be frank about myself, for without frankness what is
the value of such a record as this? Then it becomes simply another
convention, or rather conventional method of expressing the octoroon
kind of truths with which the highly civilised races feed themselves, as
fastidious ladies eat cakes and bread from which all but the smallest
particle of nourishment has been extracted.
The fact is, therefore, that I inherited most of my father's abilities,
except his love for flint instruments which always bored me to
distraction, because although they are by association really the most
human of things, somehow to me they never convey any idea of
humanity. In addition I have a practical side which he lacked; had he

possessed it surely he must have become an archbishop instead of
dying the vicar of an unknown parish. Also I have a spiritual sense,
mayhap mystical would be a better term, which with all this religion
was missing from my father's nature.
For I think that notwithstanding his charity and devotion he never quite
got away from the shell of things, never