Free George Passant by C. P. Snow

burst into a breathless, friendly, excited account of how, that morning at the post office, a money order had nearly gone astray. He spoke in a kindly hurry, his voice husky and high-pitched. He said: ‘Do you play cards, Mr – er – Lewis? Of course you must play cards. George, we ought to play something with him now.’
    It was impossible to resist Mr Passant’s enormous zest, to prevent him doing a service. He fetched out a pack of cards from the sideboard, and we played three-handed solo. Mr Passant, who had been brought up in the strictest Puritan discipline, was middle-aged before he touched a card; now he played with tremendous enjoyment, with a gusto that was laughable and warmed us all.
    When we finished the game, Mr Passant suddenly got up and brought a book to the table.
    ‘Just a minute, Mr – er – Lewis, there’s something I thought of when I was playing. It won’t take long, but I mustn’t forget.’
    The book was a Bible. He moistened a pencil in his lips, drew a circle round a word, and connected it by a long line to another encircled word.
    I moved to give him more room at the table, but he protested.
    ‘No, please, no. I just do a little preparation each night to be ready for Sunday, you know. I’m allowed to tell the good news, I go round the villages, I don’t suppose George has told you.’ (Of course, I knew long since that he devoted his spare hours to local preaching.) ‘And it’s easier if I do a little work every night. I’m only doing it before supper so that afterwards–’
    George and I spread out the evening paper and whispered comments to each other. In a few moments Mr Passant sighed and put a marker into the Bible.
    ‘Ready for Sunday?’ said George.
    ‘A little more tomorrow.’ Mr Passant smiled.
    ‘I suppose you won’t have a big congregation,’ George said. His tone was both intimate and constrained. ‘As it’s a slack time of the year.’
    Mr Passant said: ‘No, we can’t hope for many, but that’s not the worst thing. What grieves me is that we don’t get as many as we used to. We’re losing, we’ve been losing ever since the war.’
    ‘So has the Church of England,’ I observed.
    ‘Yes, you’re losing too,’ Mr Passant smiled at me. ‘It isn’t only one of us. Which way are you going to win them back?’
    I gained some amusement from being taken as a spokesman of the Church of England. I did not obtrude my real beliefs: we proceeded to discuss on what basis the Christian Churches could unite. There I soon made a mistake; for I suggested that Mr Passant might not find confirmation an insurmountable obstacle.
    Mr Passant pushed his face forward. He looked more like George than I had seen him. ‘That is the mistake you would have to understand before we could come together,’ he said. ‘Can’t I make you see how dangerous a mistake it is, Mr – Lewis? A man is responsible for his own soul. Religion is the choice of a man’s soul before his God. At some time in his life, sooner or later, a man must choose to stay in sin or be converted. That is the most certain fact I know, you see, and I could not bring myself to associate in worship with anyone who doesn’t want to know it as I do.’
    ‘I understand what you mean by a man being responsible for his soul.’ George rammed tobacco into his pipe. ‘That’s the basis of Protestantism, naturally. And, though you might choose to put it in other words’ – he looked at me – ‘it’s the basis of any human belief that isn’t completely trivial or absurdly fatalistic. But I never have been able to see why you should make conversion so definite an act. It doesn’t happen like that – irrevocably and once for all.’
    ‘It does,’ said Mr Passant.
    ‘I challenge it,’ said George.
    ‘My dear,’ said Mr Passant, ‘you know all sorts of matters that I don’t know, and on every one of these I will defer to your judgment or knowledge, and be glad to. But you see, I have been living amongst