Part 30 (1/2)

”With these precautions,” said Charles, ”I really think you might have ventured on your surplice in the pulpit every Sunday. Are your paris.h.i.+oners contented?”

”Oh, not at all, far from it,” cried Bateman; ”but they can do nothing.

The alteration is so simple.”

”Nothing besides?” asked Charles.

”Nothing in the architectural way,” answered he; ”but one thing more in the way of observances. I have fortunately picked up a very fair copy of Jewell, black-letter; and I have placed it in church, securing it with a chain to the wall, for any poor person who wishes to read it. Our church is emphatically the 'poor man's church,' Mrs. Reding.”

”Well,” said Charles to himself, ”I'll back the old parsons against the young ones any day, if this is to be their cut.” Then aloud: ”Come, you must see our garden; take up your hat, and let's have a turn in it.

There's a very nice terrace-walk at the upper end.”

Bateman accordingly, having been thus trotted out for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the ladies, was now led off again, and was soon in the aforesaid terrace-walk, pacing up and down in earnest conversation with Charles.

”Reding, my good fellow,” said he, ”what is the meaning of this report concerning you, which is everywhere about?”

”I have not heard it,” said Charles abruptly.

”Why, it is this,” said Bateman; ”I wish to approach the subject with as great delicacy as possible: don't tell me if you don't like it, or tell me just as much as you like; yet you will excuse an old friend. They say you are going to leave the Church of your baptism for the Church of Rome.”

”Is it widely spread?” asked Charles coolly.

”Oh, yes; I heard it in London; have had a letter mentioning it from Oxford; and a friend of mine heard it given out as positive at a visitation dinner in Wales.”

”So,” thought Charles, ”you are bringing _your_ witness against me as well as the rest.”

”Well but, my good Reding,” said Bateman, ”why are you silent? is it true--is it true?”

”What true? that I am a Roman Catholic? Oh, certainly; don't you understand, that's why I am reading so hard for the schools?” said Charles.

”Come, be serious for a moment, Reding,” said Bateman, ”do be serious.

Will you empower me to contradict the report, or to negative it to a certain point, or in any respect?”

”Oh, to be sure,” said Charles, ”contradict it, by all means, contradict it entirely.”

”May I give it a plain, unqualified, unconditional, categorical, flat denial?” asked Bateman.

”Of course, of course.”

Bateman could not make him out, and had not a dream how he was teasing him. ”I don't know where to find you,” he said. They paced down the walk in silence.

Bateman began again. ”You see,” he said, ”it would be such a wonderful blindness, it would be so utterly inexcusable in a person like yourself, who had known _what_ the Church of England was; not a Dissenter, not an unlettered layman; but one who had been at Oxford, who had come across so many excellent men, who had seen what the Church of England could be, her grave beauty, her orderly and decent activity; who had seen churches decorated as they should be, with candlesticks, ciboriums, faldstools, lecterns, antependiums, piscinas, rood-lofts, and sedilia; who, in fact, had seen the Church Service _carried out_, and could desiderate nothing;--tell me, my dear good Reding,” taking hold of his b.u.t.ton-hole, ”what is it you want--what is it? name it.”

”That you would take yourself off,” Charles would have said, had he spoken his mind; he merely said, however, that really he desiderated nothing but to be believed when he said that he had no intention of leaving his own Church. Bateman was incredulous, and thought him close.

”Perhaps you are not aware,” he said, ”how much is known of the circ.u.mstances of your being sent down. The old Princ.i.p.al was full of the subject.”

”What! I suppose he told people right and left,” said Reding.