A QUESTION OF VOCATION

A QUESTZON OF VOCATZON

I. UKIE, dear, I think Zania most suitable.’ Lady ‘D Trevor tactfully withdrew after delivering the

blow. With one ingratiating look behind that might be interpreted, ‘Well , just think it over quietly,’ she swept out of the room.

Of course his mother had said much more than that. She had talked for half an hour and enjoyed herself enormously. Like the experienced general she was, she had given no indication that this was to be a great offensive. Lady Trevor began with a little preliminary skirmish round the pages of a Sunday paper, and closed in suddenly on the Society column. Wasn’t this photograph of Miss Zania Wilkins just too sweet ! Dukie must really look at it, and read what nice things they said about dear Zania. Sweet girl, of course she deserved every word of praise they could find to say about her. And they said it so cleverly, too. ‘This charming dCbutante ’ and ‘ this beautiful blonde ’ . . . what happy phrases, that hit off darling Zania too perfectly. Didn’t he think so? Of course he had met her several times recently (yes, she came out at the Wen- ham’s dance, and what a sensation she created too ! ‘I.

and he would be meeting her constantly through the season. If only Providence had blessed Lady Trevor with a daughter, she would have wished her to be like Zania, so fair and frolicsome, full of such high spirits. and bubbling over with life. I t was wonderful how t t t dear child kept it up so well. Lady Trevor supposrc it was youth, beautiful youth, and sighed.

I t was at this point in the monologue that the biz attack began to develop. Mother wanted to talk sef- ously to her big, bad boy. Well, he wasn’t really bz< at all, but the best big baby on earth. Just a little dE.-

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cult to understand sometimes, and not too sympathetic Towards her views on the great subject of life. But there, his dear father, the Baronet, had been just like chat, the strong, silent type of man she admired so much, although it was not easy to know exactly what he was thinking about. Still, she knew her dear hus- band would wish her to speak to Dukie as she was trying to speak now. She would put the matter quite Sluntly (it was always best to say what had to be said straight out, wasn’t it?). It was high time Dukie settled down. Oh, no, she didn’t mean he was wild or un- satisfactory, or anything like that, but the time came n-hen one had to face one’s life,didn’t it? when it was Eecessary to take one’s proper place in Society, and marry some nice girl, and have a comfy home of one’s Dmn. It was a duty one owed to one’s self, one’s family, and one’s country. (She must apologise for using those words. They were not her own. She had found them in Mudie’s latest novel. But they were apt, weren’t they?) What was she saying? Oh, yes. It was time Dukie got married. Of course that was, strictly speaking, his own affair, as she had no sym- pathy with designing mothers who tried to marry their dear children off, sometimes with disastrous results. She thanked God she was not a meddler. But the mar- riage was already a little overdue. Mr. Gossip, who seemed to know everything, bless him, had hinted only a few days ago that it would be a desirable event, and had asked when they were to expect, etc., etc. People xere so interested in these domestic affairs, and it did seem a pity to keep the dear things waiting. She supposed a society wedding, with really nice pictures and a list of the presents, did help to brighten their lives a little. And that was all that mattered, wasn’t it, to spread a few rays of sunshine in the gloomy lives of the masses? Mr. Speedwell (‘ our new curate, you bow, dear ’) had used the expression at tea yesterday.

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I t was a beautiful thought, that showed a beautiful soul. After hearing him say that, how could she have refused to open the Bazaar of Light in aid of the new electrical installation? In her opening speech she was going to make a great point of Light. Her text was to be ‘ Let there be Light’ . . . Was she rambling? Dukie shouldn’t let her get off the point. She hated incoherent women. She prided herself on always speaking with a simple directness uncommon to her sex. But he must settle down, and keep up the family name and traditions, and give her a darling daughter- in-law. That was his plain duty. I t sounded far more difficult than it was. He would not have to look very far for a bride. A little bird had whispered to her- but perhaps she had better not say that. I t would make him vain. She would only say that when he was nicely married his life would be full of interests, and she would always be at his beck and call if he wanted ad- vice about a little dinner or dance he proposed to give, and he would always be her big boy who wanted to do the right thing and make his old mother happy . . .

Then it was that Lady Trevor had put an arm round Dukie’s neck, and, in the voice of one imparting a state secret, whispered : ‘ Dukie, dear, I think Zania most suitable.’

11. If Lady Trevor wanted this parting sentence to

penetrate into the inner recesses of her son’s mind, she certainly succeeded. But if she could have seen the effect her words produced she would have been the first to admit they were penetrating in exactly the opposite way she could have wished. I n spite of her tactful generalship, Lady Trevor had blundered. That lasr sentence about Zania, intended to be the coup de grace of her adroit manaeuvring, was, as it happened, juc: the wrong thing to say to her son in his present frame

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of mind. It summed up in neat tabloid form all the ihings he had ever hated, and hated at this moment more than ever. He hated being called ' Dukie.' If mything, he hated it more than his real name, M a m a - duke, of which it had always been the maternal diminu- ~ v e . He had appreciated the appalling affliction of being called Marmaduke when he went to his first pre- 'saratory school. Until then everyone, including himself, had taken it for granted, in the same way as his being the son of a baronet was taken for granted. But the boys z t the preparatory school did not take it for-granted. They resented the intrusion of a Marmaduke into their midst. They resented it at first with shocked surprise, because he was not a bit like a Marmaduke. He was dark and brawny and taller than most of them, and Marmadukes, well, anyhow, they were not supposed :o be like that, were they? If he had only been fair and pale and undersized . . . But he gave the lie direct TO all their preconceived notions of what a Marmaduke should be. Then the incongruous humour of the thing sruck them. In spite of all, he was one. This big boy .jf undoubted physical prowess and unflagging energy s-as a Marmaduke. The thing was ludicrous, the fun- niest thing that had happened to them. It was an eter- ra l joke.

Under their taunts Marmaduke discovered he had i sensitive soul. H e cbuld hold his own with the best zmong his fellows, but he fought shy of his name. It u-as the wrong name for him. So far everything in his life, including his name, had been agreeably pleasant. This was his first encounter with the rough edge of life, m d the injustice of it filled his young soul with an esaggerated resentment. Later on, when he began to chink, this hatred of his own name became a kind of si-mbol for all he detested in life as he found it. Of ,:':lurse, his school-fellows soon tired of teasing him &out his name. Now and again they would utter it

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with the unction of faint reproof, or break the news gently to newcomers that this swarthy giant was sad- dled with a name that was unspeakable ; and later still, polite young ladies, to whom he was introduced, would register mild surprise with a lifted eyebrow. There was no escape from it in his Oxford days. Had he been a plain ‘ Mister ’ it need not have come into prominence at all. But unfortunately his father had died some years before, and he had to carry the family title. So he would never cease to be a Marmaduke, and he felt he would never be able to bear it patiently.

H e had once complained bitterly to his mother of the terrible handicap his name was to him. H e said it was undignified, un-Christian. Lady Trevor had assumed a look of pained surprise, and finished the matter once and for all by remarking piously that it was his dear, dead father’s name, and she was sure no one could have called him anything but thoroughly dignified and an exemplary Christian. ‘An Arm!- man, my dear Dukie, and a regular Churchman.’ So Marmaduke dropped the matter, and for the first time in his life pitied his father.

I t was when he was up at Oxfortl that he evolved the idea of his name being a symbol of unrest and un- happiness to him. By that time he had tasted the kind of life he was expected to live. That happened durinr the prolonged vacations with their endless round of dinners, dances, and social calls. At first he had welcomed this emancipation from his boyhood with a certain degree of zest. The novelty of the thing carried him along smoothly enough for the first year or sc. Then suddenly had come the realisation that this kind of life was going to be his until he was carried to the family vault, and with the awful realisation came E

revulsion of feeling. He could not explain this quick change in his mental outlook. Self-analysis was ncc his strong point. But when any truth happened to hi:

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him he accepted it simply, and did not bother to find out how it came. T h e first great truth that struck him, apart from the tragedy of his name, was that he hated the particular kind of life he was expected to lead. T h e thought of it made him go hot and cold. He looked at the endless programme critically. It would be like this. Marmaduke would bathe, dress for dinner, dine, do a show, dance, sup and sleep. Marma- duke would stroll round to his club, drink a cocktail, and go to luncheon. Then there would be more club, or a matinke, or flower-show or something, and tea. Then everything would begin all over again. And it would go on for ever. There would be no escape from it. Marmadukes did not want to escape from it. It was their life. Their name was a symbol of their life. And he hated both.

On the other hand, he knew quite definitely what he did like. Once, in a burst of filial confidence, he had even confided his likes to his mother. But she had not been encouraging. She had smiled wanly and spoken of ‘certain phases of youth,’ and ‘growing out of things,’ and ended with a reference to ‘ one’s position.’ And after that Marmaduke knew she would never understand him. How could she ? Her life was bounded by an endless circle of social engagements, her mental food and conversation were a replica of Mr. Gossip’s daily prattlings. She had never known any other kind of life, and therefore could imagine none. Marmaduke had sense enough not to attempt the impossible by trying to explain, and went his own way. He welcomed Oxford as a temporary refuge. If he found there a veneer of artificiality in talk and manners, at any rate life there was on the whole simple and natural. It was possible, for instance, within certain limits, to dress as one pleased. There was a welcome touch of Bohem- ian freedom about it. One could, again, lead a perfectly quiet, healthy life according to one’s tastes.

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Before everything else Marmaduke was a sportsman, who went up to his college with a certain reputation earned on the playing-fields at Eton. He never attained to brilliance in any particular game, but he was always solid and reliable, a man who could be re- lied upon to put plenty of brain into his play. An innate thoroughness and honesty of mind, which made him think as he read, carried him through his Schools with sufficient credit. And he welcomed this oppor- tunity of quiet thinking as one of the simple, natural things he loved. There was nothing artificial about reading and thinking, like there was about the London life he had to take up at intervals. That could inspire no new interests nor give birth to new ideas in his mind. It was a husk, a sham, a travesty of existence. What he read about the lives of people whom his mother always called ‘ the masses’ did not improve his opinion of the kind of life his ‘position’ (hateful word!) dcmanded of him. He rebelled against its invented pleasures and the artificial routine it imposed upon its brainless devotees. After all, to work, and be- come tired with work that was honest, to eat and sleep normally were man’s natural inheritance. Everything else was unnatural and despicable. No wonder people talked about ‘ the idle rich.’ He could see and sym- pathise with their point of view. Life as he knew it was unhealthy, an insult to his manhood. It was impossible to see himself one of its puppets.

But while Marmadukc was conscious of a strong an- tagonism towards the kind of life that was waiting to swallow him up, he had no wild ideas of trying to sweep away the life he hated from the face of the earth. He felt that it was all wrong, a blot on the world of hills and fields and flowing streams (and how much he loved all these), but he had no revolutionary visions of devoting his life to its overthrow. His quarrel with the aristocratic system was purely personal. He had

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been born into it, and had come to hate it. Others had been born in it and had worshipped it. Marmadukes, and men he knew with similar names, wallowed in it. As a Marmaduke himself he should love it. But some- how he didn’t, and he must try to escape from it before it was too late.

111. When Marmaduke had arrived at this stage in his

mental development, he came face to face with another great truth. He became aware of the Catholic Church. H e could never say afterwards precisely why he had gone into the Town Hall and listened to a lecture on Infallibility. I t was merely one of those things that happen in life, and, like many casual happenings, have far-reaching results. Marmaduke’s previous ideas on things Catholic were toppled over by the sane reason- ing he heard that night. Any appeal to his reason was sure of a hearing, and the necessity for an infallible guide in faith and morals struck him as about the most reasonable demand he had ever encountered. After the lecture he found himself buying a book on Catholic belief at the little stall at the door. Then he went home and read it.

When he had read a few chapters he became curi- ously aware that here was a body of truth the existence of which he had never suspected before. Apart from being a wonderful system of thought (it was sheer logic, he told himself, from beginning to end), this strange Church offered an absolutely new kind of inner life, a life of the soul bestowed and nurtured by God, something supernatural that was ordinarily sus- tained by things called Sacraments. This supernatural life opened up a new world of thought and contact, a world utterly unearthly in its nature. And the amazing part about it all was that even while living in this world

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and doing the usual things, it was quite possible to be participating in a spiritual life that was eternal. For this Catholic religion was not just a system of thought or code of morality, but a life. I t was something that had to be lived. And Marmaduke was only too ready to welcome a religion that claimed to bring a fulness of life.

A few months after he became a Catholic, he discovered that this new Church offered a solution to the personal difficulties of his life. I t invited certain men and women to take Christ’s words literally by givins up ail they possessed and leaving the world. This Church understood human nature pretty thoroughly. he reflected, if it knew that some people would feel the need of getting away from life as they found it. 0: course he realised that by leaving the world was meaz: far more than just running away from things : it mear: going in for a higher kind of life altogether, a life t h z gave up willingly all sorts of legitimate things like marrying, and possessing money, and doing as o ~ t wanted to. It meant the complete sacrifice of the k- dividual to a divine ideal. H e could imagine men a r i women making this supreme sacrifice in obedience t i L higher call even when their natural inclinations n - e i against it, when every day of their religious life ITS

a living martyrdom to their flesh and will, a permane= crucifixion. But what would such a life mean to hirr. 5 he stripped himself of his possessions and undenr.:k i t? Would it involve a terrible uprooting of n a t s i inclinations, ambitions? No. From his point of \-leu who only craved deliverance from a life he hated. s was a way of escape. It looked easy. Without Z J X regret he could cast everything aside and seek 5 refuge of the cloister. That represented to hi= % ideal he had been seeking for the last couple of 1-5:~ I t embodied all the essential elements of a man’- 2% the service of God and man with a simplicity of

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pose that solved all the artificial complexities of existence. It was the realisation of the ‘ one thing necessary ’ beyond which nothing else mattered.

After reading several books on the aims and lives of various religious Orders, Marmaduke felt inclined to offer himself immediately as a postulant. Without deciding which particular Order he would try to enter (for they all offered the same means of escape), he allowed himself the luxury of contemplating the sensation his defection from high society would create. At first, of course, Lady Trevor would be furious. She would weep angry tears and say all the obvious things about the family being disgraced, and how she thanked heaven his dear father had been spared this cruel un- grateful blow, and how it would be impossible for her to show her face in public again. She had already said something like this when her son had ‘gone over to Rome,’ as she put it. But if Marmaduke entered a religious Order the scene would be far worse. He knew his mother well enough to foresee that she would take his action as a personal insult. It would mean the end of all her hopes and dreams for his future. Even if he pointed out that he was not asking her to give up her present life and enter the cloister, she would still make it clear that he was wronging her by what he wanted to do. A11 her plans for him would collapse like a pack of cards. That Zania business would come to a premature end. Zania. His mother certainly intended him to marry the girl. She was ‘suitable.’ She had been picked out for him, just as suitable wives, always described as ‘ really nice girls,’ were selected for other Marmadukes. H e wondered what his mother would have said if he had married a tobacconist’s daughter? That was the whole point of the matter. H e was a slave, just as everyone in his set was a slave. They had to marry suitable people. But he felt that if he ever wanted to marry anyone, it would not be Zania.

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She was the exact opposite of what he considered the girl he might marry should be. It was not her fault, of course, but she was too fair and fluffy for his liking. She was entirely typical of the kind of life he disliked so much. She was the kind of girl who describes everything as ‘ too perfectly adorable,’ or ‘ just too sweet, don’t you think? ’ And she would go on being like that until she died. No. Zania would no doubt find a part- ner to share the fortune made by her father in ‘ something in nails,’ but Marmaduke would not be the luck- less man. Well, his mother would take very much to heart the failure of this little matrimonial scheme. She had fixed her mind on it very much lately. But if anything could have given him the last push into the cloister it was his mother’s gentle hint that Zania was most suitable . . .

IV. When the ceremony in the chapel was over and Mar-

maduke knew himself to be on the threshold of his new life, he seemed to realise with a sudden flash of en- lightenment everything that the future held for him. Quite calmly he surveyed the routine of every day, with its round of duties and obligations, and knew, as if God Himself had told him, that this was the kind of life in which he was destined to save his soul. A few years ago he would have thought otherwise ; he would have shrunk from the very thought of doing what evi- dently he was intended to’do . . . The last month or two were rather blurred in his mind. They had been so crowded with strange events. The interview with his mother stood out with some prominence. He had certainly been a coward in that matter. H e had put it off from day to day, until with a great effort he forced himself to face the ordeal. I t was not that he had anything to be ashamed of, but his heart sank as he entered

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the room . . . H e was so much afraid his mother rrould make a scene, and he was not in the mood for scenes. Then affairs had to be arranged and prepara- tions made. All kinds of unforeseen details claimed his attention . . . But at last everything was ready, and he had only to wait for the car to come round to take him away . . . to the church to marry Zania.

For the priest had been right. Marmaduke had no real vocation to the religious life. That idea of escap- ing from things, said the priest, was all wrong. Much more than that was needed for a true vocation, and Marmaduke gave no sign of what was really necessary. Besides, merely to get away from what was hateful did seem rather cowardly . . . it didn’t sound like sacrifice, and sacrifice was practically the essence of Catholic life. Marmaduke knew that, did he? Well, if he really wanted sacrifice in his life, something that mould be an abiding penance, a lasting purification, there was something waiting ready to his hand. He did want a life of sacrifice, a man’s life, something that the other Marmadukes never dreamed o f? Exactly. Here it was then, his life in the world, keeping up his position . . . and Zania. Could anything be more difficult for him? T h e priest thought not. It was his vocation.

So the wedding was over. A voice that seemed to come from a thousand miles away was saying to Mar- maduke :

‘ Dukie, dear, isn’t Zania iust perfect? I do hope Mr. Gossip is here.’

EDWIN ESSEX, O.P.

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A QUESTION OF VOCATION