Book III
Book III — Lead, Kindly Light
Chapter I (1)
The strains of the violin lingered and died away in the October twilight, and the musician, sitting on the deep window-seat of Dormer’s rooms at Oriel, took the instrument from under his chin.
“Go on,” said his listener, who lay full length on the sofa. But the player shook his head.
“Music is the worst trade under the sun in a blow-up,” he observed. “The lyre is only heard in feasts.”
Dormer moved. “My dear fellow, you sound gloomy! The present is not a feast, granted, but neither is it a blow-up.”
John Henry Newman said nothing, but, with a little sigh, laid the violin and the bow carefully on the window-seat. The fading light gleamed for a moment on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and threw up, as he turned, the great nose and the rather prominent underlip of his lean face.
“I could wish, after all,” he said, “that I had not fallen in with the Froudes’ plan. I do not really want to leave England just now. I grudge the time, the expense, the trouble. Then suppose I were to fall ill, too. It is quite enough that Hurrell should be an invalid. And yet I suppose it may be a duty to consult for one’s health, to enlarge one’s ideas, to break one’s studies, and to have the name of a travelled man.”
“Yet a few weeks ago,” commented Dormer, undisturbed, “you seemed pleased about it.”
“So I was; in fact, the prospect fairly unsettled me. I remember feeling quite ashamed to be so excited, for it showed me how little real stability of mind I had yet attained.—But I shall go, of course, when term is over.”
“It will do you good, now that the Arians are off your hands,” said Dormer—“provided that you don’t meet with a mishap like mine. Still more, must we hope, will it do Froude good.”
“Indeed, we must hope that,” answered Froude’s friend very gravely, and in the darkening room the shadow of a great apprehension seemed to float for a moment between the two men.
“I wish I were not going to be away from England when the Reformed Parliament meets,” resumed the silver-clear voice. “Reform apparently connoting nowadays change at any price, without regard to its direction, we need have no delusions that the threats against the Church which have been dinned into our ears for so long will not be put into execution. I know that Keble is preaching the duty of passivity for us clergy until the Liturgy itself is actually attacked, but if that is what he is waiting for, I don’t think he will have to wait long. Revenues to-day, creeds to-morrow. I really incline to the hope that the Whig spirit will keep in, and the Church be set adrift. If this were the case we should be so very independent of things temporal, for we only, as individuals, should suffer.”
“You will probably be confirmed in that hope, then,” remarked his friend, “when you get abroad and see with your own eyes, as I did, the whole Western Catholic world suffering from the same lack of power because it has compromised with the State for the sake of its endowments.”
“That was what struck you in Italy?”
“That, and the infidelity of most of the thinking laity.”
“It seems sometimes,” said Newman despondently, “as if the gift of truth once lost was lost for ever, and that, with so much infidelity and profaneness, the whole world is tending towards some dreadful crisis.”
“Yes,” said Dormer, “one is rather tempted to think so sometimes. But perhaps that feeling is an incentive, if we needed one, to set our own house in order.”
Newman sighed. “I do believe what you say, in my heart, but there are times, as you know, when it looks as if the Almighty had forsaken His habitation.”
Dormer got off the sofa, and came and sat down by him on the window-seat. “You know that you do not really think that, Neander. You are only tired and overworked. I will show you that you don’t think it. What was it that you wrote to me in July when the cholera was at its worst here? You said, if I remember rightly, that one’s time had come, or it had not come, and that in your case you were sure that it had not, because you felt you were destined for some work which you had not yet accomplished. Do you remember writing that?”
Looking at him, Newman seemed to rouse himself. “I do remember. It was a strong impression that I had just after the fatal case of cholera at Littlemore. I know that a strong impression is not a good argument, yet I have the feeling still at times. But why do you ask me?”
“Because what you feel about yourself—and feel, I am convinced, most rightly—I feel about the English Church. I think that God, instead of leaving His sanctuary, is about to come into it with power. I think that this will mean purgation and suffering for all of us, but that we have deserved. Do you remember the profession of faith that Bishop Ken made in his will?”
“No, I was not brought up on Ken; as I know you were.”
“Well, I know it by heart,” said Dormer. “‘I die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith, professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West, more particularly I die in the communion of the Church of England as it stands distinguished from all papal and puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.’ That seems to me to be not only a profession of belief, but a vision of what the Church of England might be if she awoke to the knowledge of what it is really to possess the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith.”
“Yes, it is a vision, and a ‘vision splendid,’” assented Newman, “but—since I have used the phrase—you know how Mr. Wordsworth continues, how—
‘At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day.’”
“It has not really faded; it cannot fade. It is our eyes that have forgotten how to look at it. No,” went on Dormer with a sudden smile, “I would rather think that the vision seems to have faded because its guardians have shrouded it up, and then gone to sleep.”
“You think, then,” said Newman, with an answering smile, “that it is for us to wake them up?”
“Yes,” confessed his friend, “or, if that is impossible, to break through ourselves and unveil the vision.”
“Sometimes you remind me of Froude,” said Newman musingly, “except that he has more of the schoolboy about him.... I think you have the real light, and I only a glimmer that comes and goes, and gives me just enough guidance for the day’s journey and no more.... But as to these slumbering guardians,” he continued, rousing himself from his own reflections, “have you ever thought any more about that idea of yours, the publishing something in a cheap short form—a sort of tracts—to stir people up?”
“No,” said Dormer, “I made a present of it to you. In fact I have been wondering if you had thought of it again. It’s not in my line, you know.”
“My dear fellow, what nonsense! Yes, it did occur to me the other day how it would be exactly the kind of thing that a group of friends like ourselves might manage very well—sharpshooting, as it were. I will talk seriously of it to Froude when we meet. I have another scheme, however, that is more feasible at present. Now that Rose has started the ‘British Magazine’ I thought we might have a poetical section in it to rouse people to realise that there is a crisis. I am going to look for recruits. We will get Keble to write for it, of course, and you and I, and Isaac Williams, and I shall enlist Rogers if I can—and what about your friend Hungerford?”
“Tristram may have his faults,” said Dormer, laughing, “but of the crime of writing verses he is, so far as I know, absolutely guiltless.”
“Oh, anybody can write verses,” pronounced Newman cheerfully, taking up his violin.
When Newman had gone Dormer lit a lamp and sat down to his translation of Andrewes (having the habit of forcing himself, regardless of his own inclinations, to work at stated hours). But he had not got very far before he suddenly pushed books and papers away, and flinging out his arms on the table, buried his face in them. How dared he think that he was worthy to set his hand to the unveiling of that shrouded vision! And yet, and yet...
Later, he was standing looking out of the window across the dark quadrangle, where, against a clear sky already pierced with one or two stars, Merton tower lifted its crown of pinnacles. He felt rather lonely, and wished that Tristram would come in. But Tristram was in London. Then he remembered, with pleasure, that they would meet to-morrow at Compton, where he himself was going over to preach for Mr. Grenville, and where Tristram also had arranged to spend a couple of nights on his homeward journey to Oxford.
He went back to his writing-table, but he was still thinking of the same person. Since Tristram, having yielded to Keble’s and Newman’s wish that he should not leave Oxford, was working in the parish of S. Thomas’s he had taken his place naturally among the little group of Oriel friends. Yet, in spite of all this, Dormer felt that somehow or other he knew less about him. He could not but observe that he seemed happier and more settled, and when, after the death of Horatia’s husband, he heard him discussing with Froude the idea of a college of unmarried priests he was not so very greatly surprised. He wished that Tristram would talk sometimes about his own affairs, but he would comfort himself with the thought that Tristram could always now, if he desired it, have access to that guide and inspiration of them all, John Keble.