Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

own. He came in eagerly at Michael’s invitation, and so much had he still to ask and tell that it was a long time before he wanted to know what had brought Michael to Leppard Street.

“How extraordinary to find you here, my dear fellow! This isn’t my district, you know. But the Senior Curate is ill. Greenarbor Court! I say, what a dreadful slum!” Chator looked very intensely at Michael, as if he expected he would offer to raze it to the ground immediately. “I never realized we had anything quite so bad in the parish. But what really is extraordinary about running across you like this is that a man who’s just come to us from Ely was talking about you only yesterday. My goodness, how⁠ ⁠…”

“It’s no larger than a grain of sand,” Michael interrupted quickly.

“What is?” asked Chator, with his familiar expression of perplexity at Michael.

“You were going to comment on the size of the world, weren’t you?”

“I suppose you’ll rag me just as much as ever, you old brute.” Chator was beaming with delight at the prospect. “But seriously, this man Stewart⁠—Nigel Stewart. I think he was at Trinity, Oxford. You do know him?”

“Nigel isn’t here, too?” Michael exclaimed.

“He’s our deacon.”

“Oh, how priceless you’ll both be in the pulpit,” said Michael. “And tomorrow’s Sunday. Which of you will be preaching at Mass?”

“My dear fellow, the Vicar always preaches at Mass. I shall be preaching at Evening Prayer. Why don’t you come to supper in the Clergy House afterward?”

“How do you like your Vicar?”

“Oh, very sound, very sound,” said Chator, shaking his head.

“Does he take the ablutions at the right moment?” asked Michael, twinkling.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. He’s very sound. Quite all right. I was afraid at first he was going to be a leetle High Church. But he’s not. Not a bit. We had a procession this June on Corpus Christi. The people liked it. And of course we’ve got the children.”

They talked for an hour of old friends, of Viner, of Dom Cuthbert and Clere Abbey and schooldays, until at last Chator had to be going.

“You will come on Sunday?”

“Of course. But what’s the name of your church?”

“My dear fellow, that shows you haven’t heard your parochial Mass,” said Chator, with mock seriousness. “St. Chad’s is our church.”

“It sounds as if you had a saintly fish for Patron,” said Michael.

“I say, steady. Steady. St. Chad, you know, of Lichfield.”

Michael laughed loudly.

“My dear old Chator, you are just as inimitable as ever. You haven’t changed a bit. Well, Saint Chad’s⁠—Sunday.”

From the window he watched Chator hurrying along beside the brindled walls. He thought how every excited step he took showed him to be bubbling over with the joy of telling Nigel Stewart of such a coincidence in the district of the Senior Curate.

Michael suggested to Barnes that he should come with him to church on Sunday, and Barnes, who evidently thought his salary demanded deference to Michael’s wishes, made no objection. It was an October evening through which a wintry rawness had already penetrated, and the interior of St. Chad’s with its smell of people and warm wax and stale incense was significant of comfort and shelter. The church, a dreary Byzantine edifice, was nevertheless a very essential piece of London, being built of the yellow bricks whose texture and color more than that of any other material adapt themselves to the grime of the city. Nothing deliberately beautiful would have had power here. These people who sat thawing in a stupor of waiting felt at home. They were submerged in London streets, and their church was as deeply engulfed as themselves. The Stations of the Cross did not seem much more strange here than the lithographs in their own kitchens, and the raucous drone of Gregorians was familiar music.

As the Office proceeded, Michael glanced from time to time toward his companion. At first Barnes had kept an expression of injured boredom, but with each chant he seemed less able to resist the habits of the past. Michael felt bound to ascribe to habit his compliance with the forms and ceremonies, for it was scarcely conceivable that he could any longer be moved by the appeal of a sensuous worship, still less by the craving of his soul for God.

Chator’s discourse was a simple one delivered with all the spluttering simplicity he could bring to it. Michael was not sure of the effect upon the congregation, but himself found it moving in a gently pathetic way. The sermon had the naive obviousness and the sweet seriousness of a child telling a long tale of imaginary adventure. It was easy to see that Chator had never known from the moment of his Ordination, or indeed from the moment he began to suppose he was thinking for himself, a single doubt of the absolute truth of his religion, still less of its expediency. Michael wondered again what effect the sermon was having upon the congregation, which was sitting all round him woodenly in a sort of browse. Did one sentence reach it, or was the whole business of the sermon merely an excuse to sit here basking in the stuffiness of the homely church? Michael turned a sidelong look at Barnes. Tears were in his eyes, and he was staring into the gloom of the dingy apse with its tesselations of dull gold. This was disconcerting to Michael’s opinion of the sermon, for Chator could not be shaking Barnes by his eloquence: these splutterings of dogma were surely not able to rouse one so deep in the quagmire of his own corruption. Must he confess that a positive sanctity abode in this church? He would be glad to believe it did; he would be glad to imagine that an imperishable temple of truth was posited among these perishable streets.

The sermon was over, and as the congregation rose to sing the hymn, Michael was aware, he could not have said how, that these people pouring forth this sacred jingle were all very weary.