Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
She used, after she went to the High School, and wanted to be a lady,
wanted to fulfil some mysterious ideal, always to listen to the sermon
and to try to gather suggestions. That was all very well for a while.
The vicar told her to be good in this way and in that. She went away
feeling it was her highest aim to fulfil these injunctions.
But quickly this palled. After a short time, she was not very much
interested in being good. Her soul was in quest of something, which was
not just being good, and doing one’s best. No, she wanted something
else: something that was not her ready-made duty. Everything seemed to
be merely a matter of social duty, and never of her self. They talked
about her soul, but somehow never managed to rouse or to implicate her
soul. As yet her soul was not brought in at all.
So that whilst she had an affection for Mr. Loverseed, the vicar, and a
protective sort of feeling for Cossethay church, wanting always to help
it and defend it, it counted very small in her life.
Not but that she was conscious of some unsatisfaction. When her husband
was roused by the thought of the churches, then she became hostile to
the ostensible church, she hated it for not fulfilling anything in her.
The Church told her to be good: very well, she had no idea of
contradicting what it said. The Church talked about her soul, about the
welfare of mankind, as if the saving of her soul lay in her performing
certain acts conducive to the welfare of mankind. Well and good—it was
so, then.
Nevertheless, as she sat in church her face had a pathos and poignancy.
Was this what she had come to hear: how by doing this thing and by not
doing that, she could save her soul? She did not contradict it. But the
pathos of her face gave the lie. There was something else she wanted to
hear, it was something else she asked for from the Church.
But who was _she_ to affirm it? And what was she doing with unsatisfied
desires? She was ashamed. She ignored them and left them out of count
as much as possible, her underneath yearnings. They angered her. She
wanted to be like other people, decently satisfied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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