ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

and offers proximity to the divine as compensation for, if not the consequence of, his
own physical and mental depredations.
Also as in “Time Passes,” this chapter does not lock itself in a literal
nighttime, but instead uses the nighttime walk as a theme which suffuses the daytime
content of the rest of the chapter. The following morning, Frobisher, who, like
Heppenstall, had flirted with Catholicism, enters a church after a three-year absence.
He describes his surroundings in precise material detail, but with little recognition of
their significance: “A doll in purple sat askew upon a cupboard top, her black hair
surmounted by an enormous crown set with pieces of coloured glass. It was three
years since I had been in such a place” (70). What was once familiar has become
strange—what was once a potential solution to Frobisher’s spiritual problems is now
a puzzle, a collection of objects and figures. Frobisher asks for a Father Tavener, but
“I did not know Father Tavener, except by name. I had asked for him because his was
the first priest’s name that came into my head, and I had known perfectly well that he
would not be there” (71). It is unclear, at this point, how in control of his actions
Frobisher is. He offers both a conscious and an unconscious motivation for asking
Father Tavener—and here we can see one of the splits in his personality. Strangely,
however, one of the priests knows Tavener, and, when Father Aspic arrives, “I knew
at once that I could tell my story to him” (71). Once again, however, Frobisher is of
two minds: when the two men speak, Frobisher tells Aspic that he is a Catholic, then,
when Aspic is obviously skeptical, that he is “under instruction” (72). Frobisher says
nothing more to his would-be providential confessor. By the end of the scene,
Frobisher-as-narrator puts Aspic’s very existence into doubt: “I turned to Father
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