l left Bournemouth, Mr. Prout promised to come and see him
in London, and Mr. Moneypenny said he would write to a priest who would
be glad to prepare him for Confirmation. When Michael reached school
again, he felt shy at meeting Alan who would talk about nothing but
football and was dismayed to find Michael indifferent to the delights of
playing three-quarter on Middle Side. Michael deplored Alan's failure to
advance intellectually beyond mere football and the two of them
temporarily lost touch with each other's ambitions. Michael now read
nothing but ecclesiastical books and was greatly insulted by Mr. Viner's
elementary questions. Mr. Viner was the priest to whom Mr. Moneypenny
had written about Michael. He had invited him to tea and together they
had settled that Michael should be confirmed early in the spring.
Michael borrowed half a dozen books from Mr. Viner and returned home to
make an attempt to convert the cook and the housemaid to the Catholic
faith as a preliminary to converting his mother and Alan. In the end he
did actually convert a boy in the Lower Fifth who for his strange
beliefs suffered severely at the hands of his father, a Plymouth
Brother. Michael wished that Stella had not gone back to Germany, for he
felt that in her he would have had a splendid object on whom to practise
his power of controversy. At Mr. Viner's house Michael met another
Jacobean called Chator in whom he found a fellow-enthusiast. Chator knew
of two other Jacobeans interested in Church matters, Martindale and
Rigg, and the four of them founded a society called De Rebus
Ecclesiasticis which met every Friday evening in Michael's room to
discuss the Catholic Church in all her aspects. The discussions were
often heated because Michael had violently Ultra-montane leanings,
Chator was narrowly Sarum, Martindale tried to preserve a happy mean and
Rigg always agreed with the last speaker. The Society De Rebus
Ecclesiasticis was splendidly quixotic and gloriously unrelated to the
dead present. To the quartette of members Archbishop Laud was a far more
more vital proposition than Archbishop Temple, the society of cavaliers
was more vividly realized than the Fabian Society. As was to be expected
from Michael's preoccupation with the past, he became very anxious again
about his parentage. He longed to hear that in some way he was connected
with Jacobite heroes and the romantic Stuarts. Mrs. Fane was no longer
able to put him off with contradi