He's done me one good turn, at any rate. Scribbling down all this has made me deliciously drowsy. So now to make up all those arrears of sleep.
Such a sweet morning! I got up at seven and took Susan with me to Low Mass. The sunlight streaming through the windows of the choir was divine.
How different this Latin mass in France from last Sunday morning's service in Traxelby church! At Traxelby we are always so orderly, so dignified. Here at Dieppe the people grab each a chair and put it down where they like, so that they're all higgledy-piggledy instead of sitting in decorous ranks and rows. And, except for the Gospel and Credo and the Canon, they make no pretence at sitting and standing and kneeling according to any fixed usage or principle. Some seem to be following the Proper in their missals, while others just pray, or think, or finger their beads. Susan says they behaved dreadfully, and that it didn't seem a bit like proper Church.
I felt differently. The roughness and freedom and individuality were less soothing than our elegant orderliness at Traxelby; but the realities that underlie religion seemed nearer and warmer. These faithful Dieppois looked more like the men and women of old who thronged the hillsides of Palestine and sat down entranced upon the grass; and they looked less like that chilly, respectable, dull-souled thing---- How shall I put it? Perhaps it's this. They looked more like "the multitude" of the Gospels, and less like "a congregation."
If I were not already an excommunicate heretic and schismatic, I should have surely lost my soul for my inattention to Mass. I couldn't help comparing this Sunday with last. Last Sunday, Alice was with me as in the old days. And Susan hadn't had her letter. And Gibson hadn't talked to me in the garden. Everything was orderly, dignified, low-pulsed, soothing, like last Sunday's matins in Traxelby church. But to-day, Susan's letter is a fact. So is Gibson's oath. And Ruddington is at the Cheval d'Or. My life is suddenly disordered--just as Traxelby church would be if these Dieppois were suddenly turned loose among the chairs. Yet I'm not sure that last Sunday was better. Realities, glowing human realities, have suddenly began to crowd, living and breathing, all around me--just as I felt reality, warm and near, in the rough and unpunctiliously celebrated Mass.