(2)
Paul acclimatised with astonishing rapidity. Within a fortnight his "square" was gloriously "bashed," no one thundered more boisterously up and down the stairs, and few strolled into Hall with more nonchalance. He tubbed daily and promisingly. He was poor, but he was learning to make his own porridge and fry his own breakfast eggs and bacon without an apology to Mrs. Rover. Donaldson and Strether (in brogues now) had taken to foregathering in his rooms as a regular thing. He was known at large to be "pi," but among the freshers he was shaping for a place which would discount that to some extent. A few literary men of his own year had already heard some of his verses and read a short story or two, and the three friends had begun to conceive of "The Literary Lounge," a free and easy club which was to gather from time to time for the encouragement of amateur talent. Cambridge was moulding him far more speedily than even Edith had expected.
The Chapel had been an unforgettable experience. His first Sunday, at the early service, Paul saw a vision of beauty which he had never associated with religion before. The small clean Gothic sanctuary, with its old oak stalls, its fourteenth-century chalice, its air of age and quiet, was a new thing to him. The Dean, with his flaming scarlet hood, "took up" the Eastward position it is true; but his reading was so scholarly, his rendering of the service so reserved, that Paul knew that here was an atmosphere which, if utterly familiar to most of the men, was completely foreign to himself. Fervour, loud congregational singing, intense pietism, all had gone; but in their stead had come a sober solemn figure of austere beauty who was a new interpreter in religion to him. The change entranced even while it repelled him. Robed in his white surplice in his stall, he was aware of a historic past which had scarcely concerned him religiously heretofore, and he was awed into reverence. Back in his own room, it is true he was chiefly conscious of a lack somewhere, a lack which, however, was made up to him by the Cambridge Intercollegiate Christian Union with its prayer meetings and its evening sermon to first year men in St. Saviour's Church. But even these struck a new note. There was an emphasis on the intellectual side of belief. That had been all but entirely absent in Claxted.
His growing friendship with Manning emphasised all this. Manning was a second year man who had rowed in his first year Lents and Mays, and was now coaching the new freshers. Paul had tubbed late one evening, and he and Manning had left the boathouse together. They bicycled back in company, and in the porch of the college, the great man invited Paul in to tea. He would scarcely have dared to refuse.
The other had ground-floor rooms, much finer and bigger than Paul's. They had been redecorated; a baby grand stood in one corner; a revolving bookcase by the fire held a terra-cotta Winged Victory; two or three gilt-framed pictures graced the white-papered walls. "Take a pew," said Manning carelessly, and shouted at the door for the kitchens.
He ordered "oils" and cakes lavishly, and when the buttered buns had duly arrived and tea was well forward, Paul ventured a word of praise.
"What topping rooms you have," he said.
"Yes. They are rather jolly, aren't they? That's a genuine Corot over there which I bamboozled the governor into letting me bring up. Are you fond of art?"
"Very," said Paul, "but I know so little about it. Literature's more in my line. I'm awfully keen. I say, I wonder if you'd come to 'The Literary Lounge' one night?"
The other smiled. "That's the new freshers' effort, isn't it? Still, I don't mind. What night?"
Paul was hugely delighted, and began to expand. "I'd love to know what you think of some of my things," he said.
"You should show them to Tressor. He'd help you."
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Paul, "I shouldn't dare."
"Why not? Not that I think much of Tressor's stuff myself. Of course he can write rattlin' English, and it all flows placidly enough, but there's nothing much in it. It's extraordinary what the public will read. He has huge sales. I know him quite a lot you know. Knew him at Winchester."
"He reads my essays, of course," said Paul, "but I never thought to show a don my verse, let alone a fellow with a reputation like Tressor's."
"Well, he's the man to help you obviously. And he would too. He's a jolly decent sort is Tressor. I spent a week last vac. at his place. He's got some rippin' stuff."
"Has he?" said Paul, eyeing with astonished awe the man who had stayed with a foremost literary lion and actually dared to criticise him.
"Yes, jolly fine. And it's a lovely old house and grounds, under the South Downs. I read quite a lot there, and we had some toppin' motoring and a little rough shooting. He keeps a good cellar, too, which is something these days. By the way, have you tried the college port?"
"No," said Paul shortly. He wondered if he ought to say that he was a teetotaler for life.
"Well, you should. It's damned good. Have a cigarette."
"I don't smoke," said Paul.
"Wise man," said the other. "By the way, there's a company bringing upThe MikadoandThe Gondoliersthis term, a good crowd, I think. I know a girl in it. Gilbert and Sullivan's stuff's great, I think. Don't you?"
"I'm afraid I haven't seen any," said Paul, who had never been to a theatre in his life. He began to wish he had got out of coming to tea, but he need not have done so, for the other seemed curiously unsurprised.
"Haven't you? Then you've a treat in store for you," he said. And he plunged into gossip in which Paul heard great names bandied about—Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, Galsworthy—almost for the first time in conversation. He said Yes and No at intervals; and if he had no contribution of his own to make, he was at least very obviously interested. Manning was attracted by the boy. He told Tressor, later, that Kestern knew nothing and had been nowhere, but that he had possibilities and was at any rate not consciously a prig. As for Paul, there opened before him a new heaven and a new earth. When he had departed, carrying volumes of thePlays Pleasant and Unpleasant, he found it hard to settle down to his books. In half an hour, he was, indeed, repolishing some verses entitled "The Backs in Autumn" with a view to getting Manning to read a fair copy.
At lunch next day, there came a knock on his door. "Come in," he called, expecting the arrival of Donaldson to fetch him for the river.
The door opened, and a stranger entered. "Kestern?" he said enquiringly, standing in the doorway. "How do you do. I must introduce myself—I'm Hartley of Jesus. Possibly you may know my name as I'm on the Committee of the C.I.C.C.U. I meant to call before, for I heard you were up at St. Mary's and you ought to be a great strength to us."
Paul got eagerly to his feet. "Do come in," he said. "Have you had lunch? Oh well, do have some. It's only a scratch affair, but there's enough to go round." (He burrowed in the cupboard for plates and a knife.) "I'm tubbing early, so I have to hurry. Awfully good of you to call. Of course I've heard of you."
The other took a seat at the table. He had frank keen eyes and paused a second for grace. Paul was suddenly aware that he himself had said none. He pushed the cheese towards his guest and began to cut bread.
"I'm glad you're up here," said Hartley. "We haven't a college secretary in St. Mary's and I hope you'll take it on. Then I've been wondering if you'd help me with something on Sunday. I run a children's service at St. Saviour's schools in the mornings, and I'd be awfully grateful if you'd lend me a hand. The Committee want to put your name down too for the open-airs on Parker's Piece. They hold one there every Sunday night, you know."
Paul smiled warmly. The atmosphere of Claxted had come in with the visitor. "I'll be delighted to help," he said, "but you've outlined a pretty tall programme for the first five minutes."
"Oh no," said Hartley. "You're used to all that kind of thing, I know."
"How did you come to hear of my being up?" queried Paul.
"I was on a Children's Seaside Mission at Eastbourne last August, and met Mr. Ernest. He told me you were coming up. Miss Ernest played for us sometimes. She sang your praises sky-high."
Paul blushed, but it was very pleasant to hear of the home folk this way. They were deep in talk when a clamour of ascending feet sounded on the stairs and Donaldson was heard without shouting breezily: "Kestern! Kestern! Four, you're late! Damn it all, sir" (bursting open the door), "you're late again. Oh—I beg your pardon."
"May I introduce you?" said Paul. "Mr. Hartley of Jesus, Mr. Donaldson of this college."
"How do you do?" said Donaldson, smiling characteristically. "Awfully sorry. Didn't know anyone was here."
"Oh, that's all right," replied Hartley. "I was just going. You are both tubbing, are you? Well, Kestern, Sunday at eleven, eh? Will you give the address?"
"Right," said Paul. "Ten minutes?"
"Yes—not longer. Cheerio. Good luck on the river." And he went out.
"Who's that?" demanded Donaldson. "Pal of yours? He looks a bit of an ass to me."
Paul explained, reaching for his cap and stick.
"Gosh! So you're preaching on Sunday, are you? He won't get me, anyway."
"Don't suppose he'll ask you," said Paul. "Where's Gus Strether?"
"Gussie? Waiting below, I expect. He was ordering tea for three at the kitchens when I came up."
"Well, let's go. We haven't much time if we're walking down together."
The three friends foregathered in the Court, Donaldson chaffing Strether whom he had christened "Gus" by way of a comical allusion to the other's very undandified dress. He himself wore socks and ties that proclaimed themselves, a Norfolk jacket of a light tweed and a fancy waistcoat. As they went, Paul was a little silent. He was wondering whether he liked Donaldson. And if so, why? He was aware that the meeting with Hartley had been significant, that the two would never get on together, that he was proposing to get on with both. It was puzzling....
By Jesus Bridge they chanced to meet a girl. Donaldson smiled at her, after the manner of his kind, and she smiled back at him after the manner of hers. Strether snorted after a fashion of his own. Donaldson took up his parable.
"I say, Kestern, did you see that? Gus, that girl made eyes at you. Yes, by Jove, she's looking back at you. Oh I say, Gussie, this won't do, my boy! It's those new brogues of yours. I've seen her along here before, and I bet she's on the lookout for you. Here, you aren't tubbing; go and pick her up, and tell us all about it at tea."
Strether snorted again. "Opprobrious conduct," he muttered stormily.
Donaldson roared with laughter and Paul could not help smiling. Strether loved long words, and it was characteristic of him that he made odd noises. He retorted now, fiercely. "Don't bray like an ass," he said. "Do you want all the street to hear you?"
"Gus, you'll be the death of me! Opprobrious conduct! But did you see her ankles—pretty little ankles and a neat little waist. I must say you've got quite good taste."
"Some hussy of a shop-girl," growled the other. "Disgusting, I call it. Why can't you leave females alone?"
Paul chuckled again. "Come on you two," he said. "Let him alone, Donaldson. We've still to change, and it's past two now."
Next day the intrigue so lightly begun developed. Manning had consented to tea with Paul, and Donaldson, who was there, told him the story with certain emendations natural to him. Manning was highly amused. "Write Strether a letter," he suggested, "pretending that it comes from the girl and asking him to meet her on Jesus Bridge some night. Very likely he'll bite out of sheer funk of what she might do if he does not. You can go and watch. He'll walk up and down snorting. It'd be rather a joke."
"By Jove, we will," cried Donaldson. "It'll be no end of a rag. But look here, he knows our handwriting. Will you write it?"
"Yes, if you like. Give me some paper, Kestern."
Paul got up for the materials with some reluctance. "But I like old Strether," he objected. "He may be an ass, but he's a good sort. It mustn't go further."
"The more the merrier," said Donaldson. "Don't spoil sport."
Paul shook his head, hesitating. But Manning supported him. "You're right, Kestern," he said. "We'll keep the joke to ourselves. You three are pretty thick, and it would be low down to split on a pal."
So the letter was written and posted, and Paul was at breakfast next morning when Strether came in with it. He flung himself into an arm-chair and tossed the note on the table. "Who wrote that?" he demanded savagely, his limbs sprawling all over the place.
Paul, feigning surprise, opened it. "'Elsie Dawson,'" he read, as one bewildered. "Great Scott, Gussie, I shouldn't have thought you'd have had a correspondence with girls! Why, she's the girl we met yesterday! Good Lord—'Will you meet me to-night at 9.30 on Jesus Bridge?' What are you going to do? My aunt, fancy her having the cheek!"
Strether kicked out at a footstool. "I don't know the girl," he exclaimed bitterly.
For the life of him, Paul couldn't help playing up to the game now that the victim had risen so well. He got up and went over to the fire. "But look here," he said seriously, "she's seen you and she's plainly after you. Well, hang it all, man, we don't want her sort hanging about whenever we go down to the river. You'd better meet her once and choke her off. Take Donaldson with you; he'll take her off your hands."
Strether growled, muttered, and kicked out at the footstool again, the while Paul, intensely amused but outwardly serious, gathered at last that he was cursing Donaldson, declining to tell that worthy a thing about the letter, and demanding how the girl could have learnt his name.
"She overheard Donaldson saying it, I expect," invented the resourceful Paul.
He was cut short by the noise on the stair that usually heralded that gentleman's approach. "Give me the letter," said Strether hurriedly, "and don't say anything."
"If you go, come in here afterwards and tell me what happens," replied Paul quickly, tossing it him. The other nodded.
"Has he got it?" demanded Donaldson eagerly, as soon as they were alone at the boathouse that afternoon.
Paul nodded.
"Oh my holy aunt, what a spree! What did he say? What's he going to do?"
Paul explained, smiling. "You're not to know. I kidded him all right, and I think he's going to-night."
"Lor! what an ass! Well, we'll be there anyway. Wonder if Manning would care to come?"
"Don't ask him," said Paul. "After all Gussie's our pal, and Manning's not our year. I wish he knew nothing about it."
Donaldson stared. "He's a damned good sport, anyway."
"May be," retorted Paul. "So's old Gussie, if it comes to that."
"All right," conceded the other. "But we'll go. We'll go out at nine. It'll need a bit of reconnoitring."
Paul showed admirable strategy by suggesting to Strether that he, Paul, should take Donaldson out of college before the arranged hour for the rendezvous to avoid any awkward questions as to the other getting away from them. In the shadow of a tree, with coat collars turned up, they watched their victim arrive, cross and recross the bridge nervously; advance, obviously fuming, some way into the Common; return; look at his watch; fume some more; stamp about for a quarter of an hour; and finally make off for home. The conspirators returned another way, and Donaldson went to his own room. Paul found Strether in his, awaiting him.
"Hullo! Back?" queried Paul. "What happened, Gussie?"
No answer.
"Oh come on," said Paul, "what did she say? Did you get rid of her easily?"
"All this fuss about beastly females," muttered Strether. Then he flung himself back in his chair and half bellowed: "She wasn't there!"
Paul could have screamed. It was irresistibly comic, but he maintained his composure by an effort. "Not there!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
The other explained. Paul suggested that she might have been kept at home. Hadn't he, Strether, left the Bridge a bit too soon? Strether emphatically thought not, and gloom descended upon him. What if she wrote again? What if the porters spotted her hanging around? What if—but further speculation was cut off, the wooden stairs betraying approaching visitors. Manning and Donaldson came in together.
"Hullo, Gus Strether," cried the latter noisily, "where've you been? We've been searching the place for you."
"Shut up," growled Strether suspiciously.
Manning smiled at both of them. "What a bally row you do make, Donaldson," he said. "Can you give us some coffee, Kestern? Look here, I thought those verses of yours the other night jolly good."
The talk drifted into literature, but ten minutes later there was a further knock on the door. "Come in," called Paul.
The door opened, and "old Sam," an under-porter, put in his head. He was an ancient mariner, short, red-faced, with smiling eyes, a genial old boy and popular, since he was ready for anything that included a tip. "Beggin' your pardon, sir," he said to Paul, "but is Mr. Strether 'ere? I couldn't find 'im in 'is rooms."
Strether made a noise of some sort, indicative of his presence, from his chair. His face was a study.
"Oh there you are, sir. 'Xcuse me, but there's a young lady in the porch a-arskin' after you."
Pandemonium. Donaldson attempted to rush out and Strether closed with him. Manning sprang to the lamp, laughing so much that he could hardly hold it. An arm-chair was overturned. Paul caught Donaldson, and Strether freed himself. Sam beamed beneficently on them all and closed the door with a wink as Strether went out.
"Oh my holy aunt," roared Donaldson. "Gussie will be the death of me. Did you see his face? But what's the next move, Manning?"
"Wait for him to come back. Then pull his leg."
They waited a long ten minutes, and then went off to Strether's rooms. His oak was sported, and no amount of banging, not even Donaldson's uproarious "Gus Strether! Open, you old blighter. Come on, Gussie! Pull up your socks. Who's your lady friend?" echoing through the night, was of any use.
The three departed together, Donaldson to Manning's rooms for a drink. But Paul refused the invitation. He climbed his stairway, a bit conscious-stricken, and sported his own door. He glanced round the little room, and drew consolation from its remote comfortable air. Then he remembered that it was Saturday night and he had an address for the morrow to prepare. He sighed and sat down to think.
(3)
The children's service proved to be a small affair compared with his own at Claxted and requires no further notice, but the open-air meeting on Parker's Piece was a different matter. When Paul at last found himself on a chair beneath the central lamp-post, it was with feelings he had never had before. A big crowd of townsfolk surrounded him, but among them were 'Varsity men, some members of the C.I.C.C.U., but others who were not. Paul realised himself and his position as he had never done in Lambeth Court. He was not merely preaching repentance to obvious and ignorant sinners; he was challenging life and thought which could meet him on equal terms. The sense of it surged through him as he stood there and read the curious faces, yellow in the lamplight, that ringed him round against the foggy gloom behind. Even these town's men were a new audience to him. They had caught something of the criticism, the independence, of the University; and they were also sarcastic, as Mr. Mavis and Mrs. Roper might be, having seen in their day many things. This particular young gentleman's whim was religion, just as another's might be the breaking of windows, or the purchase of a certain kind of picture, or some form of sport, or highly coloured socks. One had to take these phenomena philosophically, thankful if one's own young gentleman had the more harmless crazes.
The sensitive Paul was aware that this was the temper of the greater part of his audience, while the lesser part would be critical, amused, or ragging undergraduates. He faced the crowd uncertainly for a few moments. And then the blinding conviction in which he had been nurtured swept down on him that, after all, these were but sinful souls needing the Saviour, their very complexity but making the more necessary His divine simplicity. Indecision went to the winds. As he wrote home later to his father, he, thereafter, "preached unto them Jesus."
When the circle broke up, a man bore down upon him. Paul saw him, started, hesitated, blushed and would have escaped. But it was too late. "Comin' back now?" queried Manning with a smile. "I was returning from calling on some people who live across the Piece, and saw you. We might as well walk back together and I'll brew some coffee. You'll want it after that effort."
Reassured to some extent, Paul thanked him, exchanged a word or two with Dick Hartley in explanation, and set off with the other. Clear of the crowd, they fell into step. "I congratulate you on your sermon, Kestern," said Manning. "It was a great effort."
Paul thought he detected a note of mockery in the words. He pulled himself together and mustered up all his courage. He must not, he told himself, be ashamed of his Master. "I spoke what I believe with all my heart," he said simply.
The senior man was instantly aware of the other's implied reproach. He slipped his arm into Paul's familiarly. "Exactly," he said. "No one with a grain of sense could doubt that. If you don't mind my saying so, it was a sincere, genuine and remarkable performance. It was, honestly, the best sermon I've heard for a long time."
Paul warmed naturally to the praise. The friendly appreciation cheered and encouraged him. "That's jolly good of you," he exclaimed boyishly. "I thought at first you were pulling my leg."
"My dear fellow, I know true art when I see it," protested Manning.
"Art?" queried Paul, bewildered.
"Yes, art. Skilful execution. A fine art, too, for your imagination was at work. And I'm inclined to think that you have a great gift of imagination, Kestern. You felt strongly, you saw vividly, and you knew instinctively how to express yourself. In the superlative, that's genius. That's how the great pictures come to be painted, the great books to be written, and the great orations to be made. The interesting thing about you is that one is not yet sure which you will do."
Paul was silent. He was at once elated, bewildered and disappointed. Gradually the humbler feeling predominated. He had never thought of himself as an artist, and as an evangelist he knew instinctively that he had failed with Manning. "The Gospel is not a work of art," he said shortly, and shrewdly.
"But your presentation of it was a distincttour de force," said Manning.
Paul took his courage in both hands. "You praise the presentation, not the thing," he said. "What is the Gospel to you, Manning?"
The other smiled genially. "Ah well," he said, "if I invite an evangelist to coffee, I suppose I must expect to be asked if I am saved."
"Don't!" cried Paul. "You laugh at it. I cannot do that."
"You're wrong there," replied the other quickly. "I do not laugh at it. A man is a fool who does that. It is impossible to deny that Christianity was, and probably is, a great dynamic in the world's affairs. You cannot dismiss St. Paul, Augustine, Francis of Assisi, or even Luther and Wesley or Moody, with a gesture. But I confess that to-night's affair interested me most as an observer of men. You interest me more than your religion. But here we are. Let's talk over coffee."
Paul, in his arm-chair by the fireplace, glanced round the now familiar room with an air of hostility of which his subconscious more than his conscious mind was aware. But he had had tea that day with Hartley, and he definitely compared his friend's room at Jesus with this, for the first time. He had yet to discover that he was sensitive to an "atmosphere," but he was already well on the road to that discovery. Hartley's room was big and rather bare. He was athletic, and the wall-space was almost wholly given up to a number of oars, and a dozen or so plainly-framed groups with a cricket cap hanging from the corner of one. The exceptions were two other photographs, one of the service on the sands at Eastbourne (in which Paul had discovered Madeline) and one of the Cambridge University Missionary Campaigners in some Midland town. The mantelshelf was overcrowded with photographs of men, snapshots of children, and the cards of a variety of chiefly religious societies and activities among which a Bump Supper menu seemed out of place. The electric lights were naked; the window-curtains commonplace; the tea had been homely. The room focussed activities. It had made Paul feel instinctively "keen," as they said at the Christian Union.
Manning, kneeling before the fire, was carefully pouring boiling water into a Turkish coffee-pot of burnished copper. Delicate china coffee-cups stood by a silver cigarette-box on an Indian lacquered table. A diffused light filtered through silken lamp-shades, and two wall-sconces of candles lit the pictures with a faint radiance. The corners and distances of the room were heavy with shadows. Bronze chrysanthemums stood in a tall vase on an otherwise bare overmantel. The chairs the big footstools, the lounge, the carpet—all were soft, rich, heavy. The firelight glinted on the tooled leather bindings of books in a case opposite him. The room made him feel comfortable and introspective. Parker's Piece seemed to belong to a different world.
He pulled himself together, and deliberately continued the conversation. "But it is Christ Who matters, Manning," he said with real bravery.
The other replaced the kettle and set the coffee-pot on the table. He selected a cigarette and lit it over the lamp. Then he settled himself comfortably on the lounge. "Matters?" he queried. "Your technicalities are new to me, Kestern."
But Paul was not going to shirk issues. "Yes," he said, "matters to your soul, for life or death."
"That, then," said Manning, "is my business. My soul is my own, at any rate."
"No," said Paul, "it was bought with a price. 'Ye are not your own.'"
"I was not aware that I had put mine up for sale," retorted Manning, "and if it was purchased, on your own showing, some nineteen hundred years before it came into my possession at all, it seems to me that I don't get much of a chance."
"Christ bought you to set you free," said Paul, and he mentally recalled a favourite anecdote of his concerning a travelling Englishman and a freed slave. For the first time, perhaps, he decided not to use it in this connection.
"Thanks," said Manning drily. "Then I claim my freedom."
"But," capped Paul, "you have to choose whom you will serve."
Manning flicked off his cigarette ash with a little gesture. "Look here," he said, "words are words. They serve a purpose, but they are not ends in themselves. St. Paul used Jewish and Rabbinic phraseology, and appealed to his day with metaphors. Thus—it's as old as the hills—if you talk of purchase, you imply a seller. Did Christ buy me from Satan or from Almighty God or from whom? So far as I am aware, the point is not even yet settled. Nor is it meant to be settled. It implies a conception of the universe generally that is outworn. Neither you nor I are ancient Jews. A good deal of water has flowed under the bridges since Habakkuk."
Paul said nothing. In point of fact, he hardly understood. This was all new to him.
"Well, I see God in art and beauty. He has given me a soul that finds Him there, rather than in sacrifice of the fat of rams and the thunder of Sinai. I take it, even you do not regard Him as tied to pitch-pine, corrugated iron and Moody and Sankey's hymns. He is not to me a tribal deity, needing propitiation and ordering the slaughter of women and children, flocks and herds. 'Nothing but the Blood of Jesus,' sounded all right on Parker's Piece and offers an emotional stimulus to uneducated people. But when you come to definitions, the thought of the Old Testament leaves me rather cold. How in the world can blood wash me clean?"
"But you believe in the Bible, surely?" queried Paul, puzzled and honestly grieved.
"My dear fellow, what in the world do you mean by 'believe in'? I believe in Browning. Personally, I believe in the present Government. As a matter of fact, I believe in you."
Paul flushed. "But the Bible is the 'verbally inspired Word of God,'" he ventured to quote.
"Which of the ten-score different versions?" queried Manning calmly. "By the way, have you shown your verses to Tressor yet?"
If his visitor accepted the change of subject, it was because he was, for the moment, clean bowled.
(4)
Paul had left a note asking Strether to breakfast, and he rather wondered if, after the previous day's rag, his friend would come. But he came. To mark the occasion, Paul had fish and an omelette sent up from the kitchens, and over these burnt sacrifices he made his apology.
"Look here, Gussie," he said, "I'm sorry that rag ended as it did. I had no idea the others had arranged it with old Sam like that, and I couldn't help Donaldson kicking up all that row on the stairs. That was beastly, I admit. I'm awfully sorry. Hope it won't make any difference to our friendship."
Strether growled in his throat. "Who bagged my boots?" he demanded, with a sense of humour.
Paul laughed. "Let's rag Donaldson somehow," he suggested, "and I'll give them back."
Strether smiled. Then frowned. "Always talking about girls," he muttered. Then, dropping the subject for good and all, "Come toThe Mikadothis week," he invited.
"I've never been to the theatre," said Paul frankly.
The other nodded slowly in his meditative fashion. "So?" he queried.
"Yes," said Paul. "My people are against it. They say the stage is immoral. I don't know...."
"Then so are newspapers," said Strether, "and so's Cambridge too for the matter of that."
"That's different," objected Paul.
Strether laid down his knife and fork. "Going to the P.M., Sunday?" he queried.
"Yes, I expect so," said Paul. "Why?"
"I'll come with you, if you'll come with me toThe Mikado. I've never been to a P.M. My people say prayer meetings make religion too emotional."
Paul got up dubiously. He looked out of the window.
After all, there were, it seemed, many points of view in the world. Ought he to see none other than his father's? And besides, if this would get Gus Strether to a prayer meeting ...
"I'll go," he said. "I see that it is certainly foolish to condemn a thing you haven't seen."
That night, over his fire in his own beloved room, he got out a secret and personal diary which an evangelical missioner had urged him to keep, and sat thoughtfully over it, pencil in hand. Then he wrote slowly: "Nov. 13. I have decided to go to a theatre, since it is obviously unfair to condemn anything unseen. I wish to be sure of the spirit in which I go and for what I ought to look. Therefore I shall ask myself afterwards three questions, and I write these down now to make certain that I do not forget:
1. If Christ came while I was there, should I mind?2. Do I see anything bad in this play?3. Has it helped my Christian life?"
Years later he turned up his old answers, written late on the Wednesday night of the play, and smiled at their amazing and yet serious youthfulness. "1. I should mind Christ's advent while I was in the theatre no more than I should mind His coming while I was laughing over a humorous novel," so ran the first answer.
"2. Honestly, I see nothing bad in the play. It was beautiful, the colour and music bewitching, and the only fault, overmuch foolishness. But in the bar and lounge, one felt that the men about were mostly of the sort who are careless about their souls. Query: But what about a bump supper or a smoking carriage?
"3. No, it has not helped my Christian life, but it has not, so far as I can see, hindered it. Indirectly, it has perhaps helped me, just as exercise, music, poetry and ordinary conversation, may be said to do.
"Note. Honestly, I have never enjoyed myself more in all my life."
Poor Paul!
(5)
But he was to enjoy himself still more that memorable term. Towards its close, as a scholar, he received an invitation to the big college Feast of St. Mary's, a commemoration to which some distinguished outsider was always invited and which celebrated itself with the aid of a classic menu and some historic music. Neither Strether nor Donaldson were asked, for neither had achieved scholarship fame, and Manning was separated from the fresher by an impassable gulf of table. Paul, in fact, sat between Judson and the wall farthest from the High Table. Judson, cox of his boat, was a genial person, but no particular friend of Paul's, and Judson, moreover, was frankly there to eat and drink. Paul functioned merely automatically in regard to these. It was the splendour, the glamour, that he feasted upon, and his imagination saw to it that neither lacked. Even the sheer beauty of the shining plate, the silver candelabra, the ancient hall and the glittering tables, touched, here and there, with the orange and yellow and green and gold of the piled dessert, was all but forgotten as he read his list of distinguished names, caught the gleam of ribbons across this and that shirt-front, listened to the clever short speeches, delighted in the historic music, shared, timidly, in the ceremonies of toast and loving-cup. He saw a world worth entering. He was intoxicated, though he drank no more than a shy glass of lemonade. If, in the dark shadowed gallery away from the bustling waiters, there lingered understanding spirits, as like as not Paul Kestern was the most entertaining person present.
In the library, the great Tressor singled him out. "Well, Kestern," he said smiling, "what did you think of it all?"
The boy looked at him gravely. "It was all rather wonderful to me, sir," he said.
"It was a good feast, certainly," said the other. "By the way, I fear I can't get away from all this now, but I wanted to say a word to you about those verses of yours. They are very distinctly good, I think. The shortest is the best—The Spent Day. You'll do much better work, but in its own way, it's a perfect poem."
Paul could hardly believe his ears. "It is awfully good of you to read them," he managed to say.
"Oh not at all. I'm delighted. Look here, are you engaged to-morrow? Come to luncheon, will you? You row, don't you? so you'll want to leave early. I won't invite anybody else, and we can discuss them then. Good-night."
The big man, with the heavy eyebrows, slightly bowed shoulders and kindly eyes, smiled, nodded, and passed on. Manning followed him up to Paul. "What did he say?" he asked.
Paul hardly liked to tell him. It seemed fantastic as he said it.
Manning nodded. "I thought as much," he said, smiling. "Remember me, Kestern, when you're a big man. I at any rate put one of your feet on the ladder."
Paul mumbled something, and soon escaped. His fire was out in his room, but it mattered little; he could not sit down to read or think quietly after all this. Up and down he paced, repeating Tressor's words: "In its own way, it's a perfect poem." A perfect poem! And Tressor had said it! Said it after those songs, those speeches; said it in that company.
Then, as the boy passed and repassed, his eye fell on his text. He looked at it critically: the frame and flowers and lettering were so extraordinarily bad. A few weeks ago he had not remarked that. Still, it was the words that mattered. What would the Master have thought of the college feast? Cana of Galilee? Yes, but He would have been but a visitor. Could He have had a real part in it?
Paul swung into a new train of thought. He considered the cost of it all. Why, when he had refused the first cigar, Judson had saidhenever refused a half-crown smoke. Half a crown for a cigar!—the thing was monstrous to evangelical Paul. The smokes of the dinner alone would have kept a catechist in India for a year! Probably the wines would have paid the annual salary of a white missionary in China. And with every tick of the clock, a heathen soul passed into eternity. How often he had said it! What, then, was he doing among such things? What part had he in such extravagance? "One is your Master, even Christ."
Paul sighed, and reached for his diary. "The feast was wonderful (he wrote), extraordinarily beautiful I thought.... But..." Then he went to bed.
Wonder on wonders. The morning's post brought him a letter from the editor ofThe Granta, accepting, magnanimously, a short story of an imaginative nature that he had placed in Egypt with the aid of a Baedeker. The editor asked, interestedly, if he had been there. He supposed that Paul must have been, for the descriptions were so vivid.
Paul's porridge grew cold. He sat on with the letter in his hand. Donaldson found him so, calling to go with him to a distant lecture. "Hullo," he said, "not finished brekker? You're late again, four!"
"I say," said Paul, "The Granta's taken that yarn of mine about Egypt."
"By Jove, that's topping." Donaldson spoke enviously, staring at him. "But I told you it was jolly good, didn't I?"
"You did," said Paul, "but I say, what do you think Tressor said last night about my verse?"
"Can't say," said Donaldson.
Then Paul told him.
His friend whistled. "Damn it all, Paul," he said—"by the way, let me call you 'Paul,' may I?—I should chuck all those preaching and praying stunts of yours now."
"Why on earth——" began Paul, utterly surprised.
"Oh well, do as you think best. But it'll spoil you for literature. Didn't Tressor tell you the other day that your essays were too like sermons? And if you get in with Manning and all that set, Hartley and his crowd won't be of any use."
Paul got up slowly and walked to the fire. He stood still awhile, gazing into it. The other fidgeted. "Come on now, anyway," he said. "We shall be late for that lekker."
"I shan't go this morning. I shall cut it."
"Right-o. Good-bye. I'm off," retorted the other, and departed, a little huffed.
Mrs. Roper came in to clear away. "Aren't you a-going to finish your breakfuss, sir?" she asked.
"I've done, thanks," said Paul. "I don't want any more."
"Off 'is feed," said Mrs. Roper outside to her "help." "'Ad too much at that there feast, I expect. 'Ere, you can 'ave them eggs."
As for Paul, he mounted his bicycle and rode out into the country. A wintry sun lay on the bare woods and stubble fields, and it was all very lovely. Even the close-cropped hedges were beautiful. The fallen beech-leaves were a spread of old gold under the trees by Madingley.
... Doubt, which, like a ghost,In the brain's darkness haunted me,Was thus resolved: Him loved I most,But her I loved most sensibly.Lastly, my giddiest hope allow'dNo selfish thought, or earthly smirch;And forth I went, in peace, and proudTo take my passion into Church;Grateful and glad to think that allSuch doubts would seem entirely vainTo her whose nature's lighter fallMade no divorce of heart from brain.COVENTRY PATMORE:The Angel in the House.
(1)
Paul, walking home from Claxted Station down Edward Street and past Mr. Thornton's "Elite Photographic Studio," was puzzled. Some bewildering spell had fallen upon Claxted in a couple of months. The suburban station had a strange respectable air that sat ill on it, and whereas a station may smell of dirt or smoke, it should not smell of stale paint. Edward Street was horribly tidy, and gaped. The Town Hall and its Libraries, once majestic centres of learning and authority, had been cheapened. And the familiar road to his home appeared to have been newly washed and to have shrunk in the process.
His father's house had only escaped the snare by a miracle, and Paul was obsessed by a sense of that miracle. The case of stuffed birds in the hall, the gilt presentation clock in the drawing-room, the old arm-chair in the dining-room, the yards of commentaries and sermons in the study, with the illuminated addresses above them, were miraculously pleasant. For days after his return, he kept looking at them, and marvelling inwardly that they were just the same. The furniture of Manning's and Mr. Tressor's rooms had already made him feel that in his home recollections there must be some mistake. But he knew now, staring about him, that there was not. And he was still quite glad, and a little subdued.
"Oh, Paul," cried his mother, hurrying into the hall to meet him, "how well you're looking! Are you glad to be back?"
"Very glad, mother darling," said Paul, kissing her. "Where's dad?"
"It's the Band of Hope night, dear, don't you remember? He's not back yet. But he said he wouldn't be late for supper. Sit down over there where I can see you, and tell me all about Cambridge."
Paul laughed. "That's a big order," he said. "I don't know where to begin."
"Tell me about your children's service and the open air meetings, Paul," said his mother. "Is Mr. Hartley nice? Your father and I are so glad you've made such friends."
Paul thrust "The Literary Lounge," the College Feast, the Theatre, Donaldson, Strether and Manning, into the back of his mind, and told her.
"And do you find the lectures hard?" she queried.
Paul laughed gaily. What a topsy-turvy notion of Cambridge his mother, after all, must have!
His father's key grated in the door and Paul ran out into the hall. The clergyman came in, followed by Mr. Derrick. "Ah, Paul," he said, "it is good to see you home again. Come in, Mr. Derrick. Paul's just back. I'll get you the books at once."
He entered the study, and Mr. Derrick held out his hand. Paul took in the dapper little man, from his spotless tall linen collar to his neat black boots. "How are you?" he said genially. "How goes things?"
"How do you do, Mr. Paul," said Mr. Derrick nervously. "We are all very well, thank you. Have you had a good time at college? How short the terms are! You seem scarcely to have gone away at all."
"Eh?" queried Paul, momentarily astonished. Then he recollected. "Yes," he confessed, "I suppose they do seem short. We read more in the vacs. than in the terms, you know."
"I hope you will still be able to lend us a hand, however," said his visitor.
"Rather," said Paul. "Who's taking the children on Sunday?"
"I am, unless you'd rather."
"I put Paul down for the evening," said his father, returning. "I rather hope he'll go to church with his mother in the morning. She'd enjoy having him. You know what mothers are, Derrick."
"Yes, yes, to be sure," said the little man quickly. "I should have thought of it. But I expect we shall see a good deal of you, Mr. Paul."
"Rather," said the young man again. "Are all the folk going strong?"
"Yes. Mr. Vintner is secretary of the Missionary Committee in your place. He's coming on well."
"Vintner!" exclaimed Paul. But he was ashamed of his instinctive thought the next moment. "Splendid," he said.
Mr. Derrick nodded. "He gave a most helpful address on Henry Martyn last week.... Thank you, Mr. Kestern. Are those the books? I'll go through them to-night and let you have them on Sunday. I don't suppose it'll take me long. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Paul."
The clergyman thanked him and saw him out. "Capital fellow," he said, entering the dining-room. "Wait till you're ordained, Paul, and you'll know what such lay help means to a clergyman. Well, dear boy, and how are you? Really I think you've grown. What do you think, mother?"
"I've been admiring his fancy waistcoat," said Mrs. Kestern. "Where did you get it, Paul?"
(2)
Paul was soon aware that he was in for a delightful vacation. Not many young men in their circle went to the University, and none at all, naturally, from among "the workers." Paul was, therefore, lionised. It was impossible for him not to be aware of it. He had always been a kind of natural leader, but he was now something more. A glamour sat about him. It was possibly Miss Ernest who made him aware of it first.
She was to play at the Mission Hall that first Sunday night, and Paul called for her to take her down through the dark, slummy streets. She kept him waiting some minutes, and when she came down, she was most unusually resplendent even for her.
"How do you do?" she said, shaking hands and smiling. "Do you know, I hardly dare call you Paul now?"
"Why ever not?" he asked, closing the house door behind her.
"You're so much older," she said.
"Two months, Madeline," he protested, using her name deliberately.
"Is that all? It seems to me that you've been away ages."
Paul glanced at her. She was entirely demure, and did not look at him.
"Well," he confessed, "it seems a long time to me too. It's curious how quickly Cambridge changes things. I hardly feel the same as I did two months ago."
"I suppose you've met all sorts of ripping people."
"Rather. Do you know Mr. Tressor's at our college, and I've shown him my verses. He said—he was awfully nice about them. AndThe Grantahas taken a story of mine."
"I'm not surprised," she said. "I always thought you had it in you."
Paul was a little piqued that she took it so easily, though on reflection he perceived that this was a compliment. "It is impossible not to write at St. Mary's," he said.
"Is it very lovely?" she asked softly.
"Oh, exquisite. You must see. Do you think you could come up in the summer term? My rooms are small and high up you know, but perfect I think. And the Hall and Chapel thrill me every time I see them. If you could see the moonlight on our First Court!"
"Doesn't Claxted bore you after all that?"
Paul laughed. "It's rather quaint," he confessed. "It's really rather like another world. Do you know, I've been to the theatre."
"Have you? Oh how splendid! I'd love to go."
"Don't tell anyone," said Paul, cautiously.
"Of course not. What did you see?"
"The Mikado."
"Oh don't—I can't bear it. You make me so jealous. There you are, leading your own life, and I'm tied down to this. You don't know how things bore me at times."
Paul grew suddenly grave. "I think perhaps I am beginning to," he said, and lapsed into silence.
A lay-reader took the service, and Paul, in cassock and surplice on the platform of the little mission church, had leisure to observe. He had been there a thousand times; very dear memories linked him to it; but not till now had he looked about him critically. The place was an iron building of good size, garishly lit with gas, and at one end was a platform which could be screened off from the body of the hall. The curtains were drawn apart for this service, and Paul from where he sat, stared sideways at the varnished Table within the encircling wood railings; at the text above it; at the harmonium opposite him, with the back of Miss Ernest visible, and the side of her face, under its big hat, when she occasionally glanced at the lay-reader who was taking the prayers and announcing the hymns. Below her sat the choir of working men, and near them a couple of forms of girls who "strengthened" their efforts. Paul scanned their faces surreptitiously with amusement. There, against the wall, was old Miller who invariably started each verse a word ahead of the rest, and got steadily more flat as the hymn continued. Among the girls, he was surprised to see Miss Tillings. He supposed she had been converted in his absence. In the front row was Hodgson, a police-sergeant and a thoroughly good fellow. Next him, McArthur, who played a cornet when he knew the tune. And then the congregation, among them Mrs. Reynolds. If Edith Thornton were present, he could not see her. But he looked.
The lay-reader was occasionally doubtful about his aspirates. He also read an unduly large selection of collects. His voice, too, got on Paul's nerves. He read for the hundredth time the short, staring gilt text above the Table. "Till He Come." Except for the hymn notices, there was nothing else to catch the attention. Oh yes, I.H.S. in a monogram under the text. Paul wondered if the lay-reader knew what the letters meant. He wondered if any of them knew what they meant. Then, as the reader began the prayer for Parliament, if anyone knew what anything meant. Mrs. Reynolds, for example. "That all things may be bordered and settled by their hendeavours, upon the best and surest foundations...." "Amen"—very loudly from old Miller. But he had heard that old Miller was a strong Conservative and concerned with politics in his off hours. Curious; it struck Paul suddenly that "the workers" never seemed to have politics. Oh, at last—Hymn 148.
Afterwards, they were all very kind. He shook hands with the departing congregation, including Hilda Tillings. Hodgson was unfeignedly glad to see him back. But outside, while Paul was smilingly making his way back to the platform by which Madeline was standing drawing on her gloves, the sergeant was rebuffed by old Miller.
"Good sermon, Miller," he said. "He's a fine young chap, and I'm glad he's back."
"Eh, eh, sergeant, but I dunno as I 'olds with all this 'ere book-larning. 'E's got more grammar nor ever, and, seems ter me, less grace."
"Doesn't it all seem rather queer to you now?" asked Madeline, as they walked home.
Paul shrugged his shoulders. "They're rattling good people," he said, enigmatically.
"Yes, of course. By the way, do you remember that the Sale of Work is to be this week. You will help me decorate our stall, won't you, Paul?"
"Rather. Is it this week? I'd forgotten. Do you want all that muslin stuff tacked up again?"
"Yes. But we'll get you a step-ladder this year. The boxes collapsed last time—remember?"
He nodded, amused. "But why don't you try a new idea?" he suggested. "Why always keep to the same old muslin?"
Madeline sighed. "We do always keep to the same old things, don't we? But what could we do? Suggest something."
"Have a background of palms and cover the framework with ivy."
"That'd be lovely. But how could we get the ivy?"
"Leave that to me. I'll get it for you."
"Will you? Thanks so much. Could I help?"
Paul glanced at her carefully. She walked gracefully, but with her eyes on the pavement. He admired her fair hair and her new hat, her trim figure. After all, why not?
"Bicycle out with me on Friday and get some," he suggested. "There's lots at Hursley."
Her voice was even as ever as she replied. "That would be delightful," she said. "Come in now and ask father, will you? Perhaps he'd come too. And I say, do let me read your verses. I'd like to so much."
Paul was suddenly shy. "Oh they're nothing," he said.
She smiled. "Mr. Tressor did not think so," she retorted. "Paul, I wonder if you're going to be a poet."
"I'm going to be a foreign missionary," he said.
"Well, you can be both. I expect abroad you would have no end of inspiration. You're not likely to be sent among utter savages. You're more likely to be made the head of some college or another, perhaps in India. You could write too. I should think Calcutta or Delhi, or some place like that, would be heavenly. And you'd go to the mountains in the summer. It makes me envious to think of you. You'll have a glorious life."
Paul grew grave. "I'd prefer to be among savages," he said.
"Why? Besides, do you think that's altogether right? God didn't give you your gifts for you to waste them. And they want the other sort of missionary just as much."
"I suppose they do," said Paul. "And if I lived that sort of life, I should marry. One could. I've always doubted if a pioneer missionary ought to marry."
Madeline nodded. "I think you're right. And besides, the wives of that sort of missionary do get so awfully dowdy. I suppose it doesn't matter what you wear among savages, and so they don't care any more about dressing. I'm afraid I could never be so good as all that."
Paul laughed. "Honestly, I can't see you dowdy, Madeline," he said.
She smiled, but said nothing. He glanced at her shyly. "Summery frocks and Indian Society would suit you," he said.
"Do you think so?" she said easily.
"Yes. By the way, you just must come up for the Mays. Will you promise?"
"I'll come if I possibly can," she said, "and thank you ever so much for asking me. Here we are. Now come in and settle with father about the ivy, will you?"
(3)
The Annual Sale of Work was the parochial Feast of Claxted. A distinguished visitor was always invited to open it; the stalls through which one wandered, were so many courses, so to speak; and in the evening, there were always songs, a few speeches, and light refreshments. So far as the Mission Hall of the church was concerned, only the more superior members were expected to put in an appearance, and these chiefly in the evening. Thus Hodgson always came, but not old Miller. The Christian Endeavour arranged little side-show concerts from six o'clock onwards, at half-hour intervals, but even the Endeavourers were not seen in the afternoon. During those sacred hours, the carriages drew up outside the Parish Room in Edward Street, and there descended from them the elite and the wealthy of the congregation. These, entering the half-empty room, caused a ripple of comment to run through the stall-holders proportionate to their importance. "Old Mrs. Wherry," Mrs. Ernest would whisper enthusiastically to Madeline. "Oh, my dear, try to get her here at once. She always spends such a lot, and she's so blind, she can't see what she buys. She just decides to spend so much, I believe, and when it's spent, no one can get another penny out of her. Do fetch her here."
"How can I, mother?" retorted Madeline, on this occasion.
"I'll try," said Paul, good-humouredly, and strolled off in her direction.
"Madeline, I saw you fastening that ivy with Paul," said Mrs. Ernest, as he went.
"Well, mother?"
"My dear, anyone might have seen. I thought I saw Mrs. Cator watching. And you know what she is likely to say."
Madeline tossed her pretty head. "I know what I am about, mother," she said.
"I hope you do," sighed Mrs. Ernest. Her husband was a good man, but without distinction, and truth to tell, she was tired of living on a curate's stipend.
Paul came up with Mrs. Wherry. The old lady had been genuinely glad to see him, and, since her own sons had been at Cambridge, she showed him caustic good humour. "You want me to spend my money here, I suppose, do you? Well, it doesn't much matter to me. Good afternoon, Mrs. Ernest. I see you've adopted a system of pickets. Or is it Miss Ernest? Still everything's fair in love and war, and certainly a Sale of Work is war. What have you? I shall only buy things that I can send elsewhere."
Paul stood chatting with Madeline again while the old lady did her shopping. A little hum of talk covered their conversation, which was broken now and again as someone nodded and spoke to him, or he was sent off by his father on some trivial errand. He was not as bored as usual, but drifted back to the ivy-hung stall fairly regularly. At half past four he suggested tea. "You can go, Madeline," said Mrs. Ernest. "I'll wait a little. Someone must watch the stall."
"Come on then," said Paul, catching Madeline's eye, and she moved off with him.
Formerly it had been hard to get Madeline for tea. Young men, who had recently started going to the City, used to drop in about this time and take her off. There were one or two about now, but she had no eyes for them. He piloted her into a corner, and went to get the tea from the buffet which was presided over by Mrs. Cator herself. She kept him chatting while a fresh pot was made, and he was steering his way back to Madeline with the little tray when he saw Edith.
It was early for her, for she arrived, as a rule, with the rest of the Endeavourers. There she was, however, with her mother in a black dress and a bead bonnet. Mrs. Thornton was well known in the congregation. She aspired to rather a high estate, which was impossible for her, socially, with her husband's shop in Edward Street.
Paul watched Edith bring her in. The girl was quiet and self-possessed, and did not, apparently, see him. She steered her mother to a little table and sat down by her. One of the Miss Cators, acting waitress, went up for the order.
"Here's the tea," said Paul. "Sorry I was so long. You must want it."
"I do. Oh, and you've got eclairs! How delicious; I love them."
"I remembered that you did at the school-treat last August."
"That terrible day! Do you remember how Mrs. Thornton would have lunch at our table? Look—there she is. I do hope she doesn't see you. She's sure to come over if she does. ''Ow do you do, Mr. Paul, and 'ow do you like Cambridge? We're glad to see you back, I'm sure.'"
Paul sat down deliberately in such a position that he could see Edith. "Don't, Madeline," he said. "She's a thoroughly good sort really, and means well."
"Paul, you know perfectly well you used to laugh at her as much as any of us."
"Did I? Then I was wrong. I'm beginning to see that the world is full of queer sorts of people, and that the only real test is their sincerity."
"Well, then, some sincere people are impossible. You know they are. At any rate I'm sincere enough to tell you that I think so."
Ethel Cator came up to them. She was a brunette, tall and thin, and in a cap and apron she looked pretty. She was one of Madeline's friends. "Hullo, Madeline," she said. "How are you two getting on? Have some more tea?"
"My dear, aren't you worn out with this tea business? Can't I give you a hand? It's a slack time at the stall."
"Oh no. It's all right. But it's our busy time, of course. Have some more eclairs. We're running a bit short, but I can get some for you."
"I couldn't. Really, I couldn't. Will you, Paul? I say, Ethel, are you going to the school dance? Grace said yesterday she didn't know what you had decided. Do come, my dear. I've said I'll go, and you must be there. I've positively got a new frock for it."
"Look here," said Paul, laughing, "this is no place for me. I'm off. I'll tell your mother to expect you in half an hour, Madeline. Good-bye. Good-bye, Miss Cator. Your tea's topping. I'll send in everyone I see." And he walked off.
Madeline glanced quickly across the room; Mrs. Thornton and Edith were making their way to the door; Paul caught them up as she watched. She flushed slightly. Ethel Cator slipped into the empty place by her side, and dropped her voice a little. "He's not keen on that girl, surely," she said.
Madeline shrugged her shoulders. "How should I know?" she asked, with an assumption of indifference.
Ethel laughed. "Well, my dear, of course it's not my business, but I thought you saw a good deal of him."
"Well, naturally, seeing what our fathers are."
"Has Cambridge changed him? I should have thought he'd have dropped the Mission Hall now."
Ethel's tone was a little contemptuous, and it roused Madeline to the defensive.
"My dear, you don't know Paul," she said coolly. "He doesn't play at religion. He probably wants to speak to Miss Thornton about the Christian Endeavour. It would take more than a term at Cambridge to make Paul throw that over. And I like him for it."
Her friend got up. "I must go," she said. "I didn't mean to be a cat, Madeline. Everybody knows Paul's a born parson, and of course he'll make a good one."
"He wants to go to India," said Madeline, mollified and inconsequent, and not realising that she lied. "He'll be a bishop one day, I expect."
Ethel looked envious, and rewarded her. "India!" she exclaimed, and sat down again for a minute or two. The girls fell to discussing Simla with a suburban imagination.
Mrs. Thornton had asked him "'Ow he liked Cambridge?" and Paul had replied at length. But she had gone off at last, and left him with the tall girl whose brown eyes had been alight with a flicker of amusement the while he had talked to her mother. They were standing near the platform at the top of the room, and a not yet opened "fishpond" with its appurtenances screened them slightly. He was able to look her full in the face now and realise how good she looked, though the little fur hat was slightly out of place there, and her coat a little shabby.
"Mother's a dear," she said.
He nodded. "I know. Edith, I've longed to see you again. Why weren't you at the Mission Hall on Sunday?"
"I couldn't go. I was ever so sorry."
"Really?"
She nodded. "I knew you were preaching. Mr. Derrick told us. But I had to stay and help mother with the kiddies."
Paul saw a mental vision of the little rooms over the shop and the three small Thornton children sprawling everywhere. Once or twice he had been in on business for the Society, and he knew it well. Edith in that setting had always puzzled him a little. She did not seem quite to belong to it, and yet she moved about household jobs with a quiet dignity that did not in the least suggest resentment or incongruity.
"You'll be here to-night?" he questioned.
She shook her head. "That's why I've come this afternoon."
"When are we going to meet then? I do so want to talk to you. Cambridge is wonderful, Edith. There's heaps to say. I don't know why, but I want to tell you things."
He couldn't know that she had to make a little effort to steady her voice. "Do you, Paul," she said. "That's awfully good of you."
He studied her a minute, thinking rapidly. "Tell me what you're doing this week," he demanded.
"Oh, the usual things. Band of Hope, a committee Thursday, prayer meeting Friday, and Saturday, some cousins of ours are coming over."
"Sunday?"
"You silly! You know as well as I do!"
Paul reflected. He would have to call for Madeline for the children's service. Afternoon Sunday school—no good, he knew. Evening, his mother would be going down to the Mission Hall. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "Monday?" he queried.
She smiled. "Monday's the first night of carol singing," she said.
"No!" he cried eagerly. "I'll come. What time do you start?"
"You know younevercome," she said laughing. "Have you learned to sing so much better at Cambridge?"
A little thrill of pleasure at her laughter ran through him. "You shall hear," he said. "I shall be there. And when we've finished, I shall see you home."
"I half promised Mr. Vintner," she said, "but perhaps—— There's mother looking for me. I must go."
And Paul, alone, could not get Albert Vintner out of his mind while he discoursed of the University to his father's senior churchwarden.
Mrs. Kestern left before the conclusion of the proceedings, and Paul stood by the table alone, watching his father, Mr. Derrick and a warden make neat piles of silver and gold, enter totals on slips of paper and finally arrive at the exact figure taken. Conversation among the waiting onlookers died down while the final immense calculation was being made, and it was in a solemn silence that at last Mr. Kestern stood erect, beaming and triumphant, to announce that the result exceeded by five pounds, seven and fourpence the previous year's figure, and to say that he thanked all who had in any way assisted at this magnificent result with all his heart. They would now join in singing the Doxology. Madeline went to the piano; "Thank God from whom all blessings flow," they sang. Paul joined in heartily, but a little self-consciously. It was odd, but the familiar words did not come as naturally as they had used to do. Five pounds, seven and fourpence! But his father was a saint, Paul thought, as he looked at him.
(4)
Paul, Mr. Kestern and Miss Bishop walked home together, the latter a great friend of the Church. She was angular, tall, a little caustic and an able speaker, and she had a great reputation for knowledge. She felt deeply and expressed herself strongly. Paul liked her immensely.
She led the conversation now, in her clear, incisive, deep voice. It appeared that a newly-appointed neighbouring vicar had accepted the offer of a cross and two candlesticks for the Holy Table in his church. It was known, at last, that he had definitely accepted; it was not known, yet, what would be done about it—whether appeal would be made by some aggrieved members of the congregation against the granting of a faculty, or whether Mr. Kensit would be called in. Miss Bishop was wholly in favour of this latter.
"What is the good of faculties and appeals?" she demanded. "They always confuse the real issue. Kensit knocks the nail on the head anyway. It's not a case of legal or illegal ornaments; it's a case of Rome. Do they take us all for fools? Church after church has begun that way, and ended with Mass and the confessional!"
"Mr. Duncan," observed Mr. Kestern mildly, "is entirely against all that. This is a mistake, of course, but he seems to me a sincere, earnest evangelical at bottom."