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"For a time," said Hoppart, "I read nothing but the papers. I bought from a dozen to twenty a day." "That is wearing off," said the bishop. "The first thing I began to read again," said Mrs. Garstein Fellows, " I'm not saying it for your sake, Bishop was the Bible." "I went to the Bible," said Bent as if he was surprised.
Garstein Fellows reckoned without the morbid sensibility of the bishop's disorganized nervous system and the unsuspected theological stirrings beneath the apparent worldliness of Hoppart and Bent. The trouble began in the drawing-room after dinner.
"I've had no rows of penitents yet." "We may be coming," said Hoppart. He turned sideways to face the bishop. "I think we should be coming if if it wasn't for old entangled difficulties. I don't know if you will mind my saying it to you, but...." The bishop returned his frank glance. "I'd like to know above all things," he said. "If Mrs. Garstein Fellow will permit us. It's my business to know."
"And you give them three!" cried Bent rather cheaply. "I confess I find the way encumbered by these Alexandrian elaborations," Hoppart completed. "Need it be?" whispered Lady Sunderbund very softly. "Well," said the bishop, and leant back in his armchair and knitted his brow at the fire. "I do not think," he said, "that men coming to God think very much of the nature of God.
Garstein Fellows did not know that Professor Hoppart, who so amusingly combined a professorship of political economy with the writing of music-hall lyrics, was a keen amateur theologian, nor that Bent, the sentimental novelist, had a similar passion. She did not know that her own eldest son, a dark, romantic-looking youngster from Eton, had also come to the theological stage of development.
"We all want to know," said Lady Sunderbund, speaking from the low chair on the other side of the fireplace. There was a vibration in her voice and a sudden gleam of enthusiasm in her face. "Why shouldn't people talk se'iously sometimes?" "Well, take my own case," said Hoppart. "In the last few weeks, I've been reading not only in the Bible but in the Fathers.
Nevertheless," he spoke slowly and patted the arm of his chair, "nevertheless the church insists that certain vitally important truths have to be conveyed, certain mortal errors are best guarded against, by these symbols." "You admit they are symbols." "So the church has always called them." Hoppart showed by a little movement and grimace that he thought the bishop quibbled.
Lady Sunderbund nodded eagerly. "Yes," she said, "oh, yes," and held up an expectant face for more. "Our utmost words, our most elaborately phrased creeds, can at the best be no better than the shadow of something unseen thrown upon the screen of experience." He raised his rather weary eyes to Hoppart as if he would know what else needed explanation.
I've read most of Athanasius, most of Eusebius, and I'll confess it Gibbon. I find all my old wonder come back. Why are we pinned to to the amount of creed we are pinned to? Why for instance must you insist on the Trinity?" "Yes," said the Eton boy explosively, and flushed darkly to find he had spoken. "Here is a time when men ask for God," said Hoppart.
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