The Inside of the Cup — Complete. Winston Churchill

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      Nature and man seemed to have conspired to make this place vividly unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop. There were no half-tones, no poverty—in sight, at least; no litter. On the streets and roads, at the casino attached to the swimming-pool and at the golf club were to be seen bewildering arrays of well-dressed, well-fed women intent upon pleasure and exercise. Some of them gave him glances that seemed to say, “You belong to us,” and almost succeeded in establishing the delusion. The whole effect upon Hodder, in the state of mind in which he found himself, was reacting, stimulating, disquieting. At luncheons and dinners, he was what is known as a “success”—always that magic word.

      He resisted, and none so quick as women to scent resistance. His very unbending attitude aroused their inherent craving for rigidity in his profession; he was neither plastic, unctuous, nor subservient; his very homeliness, redeemed by the eyes and mouth, compelled their attention. One of them told Mrs. Larrabbee that that rector of hers would “do something.”

      But what, he asked himself, was he resisting? He was by no means a Puritan; and while he looked upon a reasonable asceticism as having its place in the faith that he professed, it was no asceticism that prevented a more complete acquiescence on his part in the mad carnival that surrounded him.

      “I'm afraid you don't wholly approve of Bar Harbor,” his hostess remarked; one morning.

      “At first sight, it is somewhat staggering to the provincial mind,” he replied.

      She smiled at him, yet with knitted brows.

      “You are always putting me off—I never can tell what you think. And yet I'm sure you have opinions. You think these people frivolous, of course.”

      “Most of them are so,” he answered, “but that is a very superficial criticism. The question is, why are they so? The sight of Bar Harbor leads a stranger to the reflection that the carnival mood has become permanent with our countrymen, and especially our countrywomen.”

      “The carnival mood,” she repeated thoughtfully, “yes, that expresses it. We are light, we are always trying to get away from ourselves, and sometimes I wonder whether there are any selves to get away from. You ought to atop us,” she added, almost accusingly, “to bring us to our senses.”

      “That's just it,” he agreed, “why don't we? Why can't we?”

      “If more clergymen were like you, I think perhaps you might.”

      His tone, his expression, were revelations.

      “I—!” he exclaimed sharply, and controlled himself. But in that moment Grace Larrabbee had a glimpse of the man who had come to arouse in her an intense curiosity. For an instant a tongue of the fires of Vulcan had shot forth, fires that she had suspected.

      “Aren't you too ambitious?” she asked gently. And again, although she did not often blunder, she saw him wince. “I don't mean ambitious for yourself. But surely you have made a remarkable beginning at St. John's. Everybody admires and respects you, has confidence in you. You are so sure of yourself,” she hesitated a moment, for she had never ventured to discuss religion with him, “of your faith. Clergymen ought not to be apologetic, and your conviction cannot fail, in the long run, to have its effect.”

      “Its effect—on what?” he asked.

      Mrs. Larrabbee was suddenly, at sea. And she prided herself on a lack of that vagueness generally attributed to her sex.

      “On—on everything. On what we were talking about—the carnival feeling, the levity, on the unbelief of the age. Isn't it because the control has been taken off?”

      He saw an opportunity to slip into smoother waters.

      “The engine has lost its governor?”

      “Exactly!” cried Mrs. Larrabbee. “What a clever simile!”

      “It is Mr. Pares,” said Hodder. “Only he was speaking of other symptoms, Socialism, and its opposite, individualism—not carnivalism.”

      “Poor man,” said Mrs. Larrabbee, accepting the new ground as safer, yet with a baffled feeling that Hodder had evaded her once more, “he has had his share of individualism and carnivalism. His son Preston was here last month, and was taken out to the yacht every night in an unspeakable state. And Alison hasn't been what might be called a blessing.”

      “She must be unusual,” said the rector, musingly.

      “Oh, Alison is a Person. She has become quite the fashion, and has more work than she can possibly attend to. Very few women with her good looks could have done what she has without severe criticism, and something worse, perhaps. The most extraordinary thing about her is her contempt for what her father has gained, and for conventionalities. It always amuses me when I think that she might have been the wife of Gordon Atterbury. The Goddess of Liberty linked to—what?”

      Hodder thought instinctively of the Church. But he remained silent.

      “As a rule, men are such fools about the women they wish to marry,” she continued. “She would have led him a dance for a year or two, and then calmly and inexorably left him. And there was her father, with all his ability and genius, couldn't see it either, but fondly imagined that Alison as Gordon Atterbury's wife, would magically become an Atterbury and a bourgeoise, see that the corners were dusted in the big house, sew underwear for the poor, and fast in Lent.”

      “And she is happy—where she is?” he inquired somewhat naively.

      “She is self-sufficient,” said Mrs. Larrabbee, with unusual feeling, “and that is just what most women are not, in these days. Oh, why has life become such a problem? Sometimes I think, with all that I have, I'm not, so well off as one of those salesgirls in Ferguson's, at home. I'm always searching for things to do—nothing is thrust on me. There are the charities—Galt House, and all that, but I never seem to get at anything, at the people I'd like to help. It's like sending money to China. There is no direct touch any more. It's like seeing one's opportunities through an iron grating.”

      Hodder started at the phrase, so exactly had she expressed his own case.

      “Ah,” he said, “the iron grating bars the path of the Church, too.”

      And just what was the iron grating?

      They had many moments of intimacy during that fort night, though none in which the plumb of their conversation descended to such a depth. For he was, as she had said, always “putting her off.” Was it because he couldn't satisfy her craving? give her the solution for which—he began to see—she thirsted? Why didn't that religion that she seemed outwardly to profess and accept without qualification—the religion he taught set her at rest? show her the path?

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