Mark thanked Monseigneur Cripps for his hospitality and took a friendly
leave of him. An hour later he was walking back through the pleasant
vale of Wield toward the Cotswolds. As he went his way among the green
orchards, he thought over his late impulse to change allegiance,
marvelling at it now and considering it irrational, like one astonished
at his own behaviour in a dream. There came into his mind a story of
George Fox who drawing near to the city of Lichfield took off his shoes
in a meadow and cried three times in a loud voice "Woe unto the bloody
city of Lichfield," after which he put on his shoes again and proceeded
into the town. Mark looked back in amazement at his lunch with
Monseigneur Cripps and his own meditated apostasy. To his present mood
that intention to forsake his own Church appeared as remote from
actuality as the malediction of George Fox upon the city of Lichfield.
Here among these green orchards in the heart of England Roman
Catholicism presented itself to Mark's imagination as an exotic. The two
words "Roman Catholicism" uttered aloud in the quiet June sunlight gave
him the sensation of an allamanda or of a gardenia blossoming in an
apple-tree. People who talked about bringing the English Church into
line with the trend of Western Christianity lacked a sense of history.
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