"Himself is waiting you; Himself is waiting you; Himself is waiting you"—lower and even lower, a faint whisper of music, the little peal rang on. But she did not believe ... Yet for centuries on centuries, Paul had said, men had thought ... Martyrs had died ... Saints had seen.... He? Well, a Baby.... Like her last-arrived sister, tiny, puckered, remote, dear. He? Suppose that that small white circle was a little window, through which her soul could pass; could pass and pass; to His embrace, His tone, His heart.... Slowly, very slowly, Edith Thornton, who envied dear, eager, clever Paul since he had so much to give, slipped forward en her knees, and closed her eyes.
And then, in the fragrant, gleaming silence of her mind, there arose a little fear. She watched it come. It was very small at first, like a man's hand. Only it grew and grew, till it filled all her gaze and thundered in her soul's ear. Wave on wave it thundered, thundered and broke, this overwhelming mastery of fear. And she knew quite well why she was afraid. Her soul had passed through the little door, but it was lonely there. "Paul, Paul, dear, dear Paul!" she cried, striving so hard to see him. "Paul!"—the echoes went wandering down the corridors of her soul, and came reverberating back to her. She was alone—alone. And the light died, and the music died, and she was very sore afraid.
And then He came. Walking through the dark He came, seeking her. She saw Him, only there was no sight. The very scent of His robes was sweet, only there was no smell. He spoke, too; clearer than the noise of the water-floods that drowned her, louder than the great winds roaring through the lashed Hursley pines, she heard Him, only there was no sound. And she knew what He said, only there was no thought. "It is I," He said, "I, I; be not afraid."
She gripped the feet of Him, and marvelled as she did so that they should tread her down so ruthlessly, so immeasurably happy. And she cried up to Him—"Paul, Paul! Oh, Master, give me Paul! Don't take Paul away! I can't live without Paul!"
"Daughter," He said, "it is I—I; be not afraid."
She sobbed; she choked with sobs. "Paul!" she tried to cry, "Oh Master, dear dear Master, give me Paul—Paul!" And the sound, that was no sound, echoed away and away and out on great mountain places, vast and bare. The White Feet slowly died between her hands. She looked up. "It is I," He whispered, bending over her. She looked right into His eyes, down, down, down. She had not thought death could be so unutterably sweet.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Can I do anything for you?" said a man's voice. "Please excuse me asking, only you seemed in trouble."
She felt ashamed because her face was wet with tears. Also she did not know what to say. Long afterwards, she realised that what she had said was a second miracle. "Father, please," she said, like a child, "I want to—to come in."
(3)
Paul himself that night, whose soul's welfare was already so great a trouble to so may diverse persons, was, almost for the first time, not thinking of religion at all. To his lips the gods were early lifting the immortal chalice in whose draught lies utter bitterness. That which had been to him a kind of visionary thing, a holy grail floating on light between heaven and earth, had taken form between his hands. He had, indeed, hoped for something one day of the sort, but not that the laurel leaves should be plucked for his head before he had even taken his degree. True, they were as yet in shadow rather than in substance, but others were seeing that crowning shadow even more than he.
He was by this time in his last year, in the first autumn term of it, and that very term a firm of publishers had accepted his first book of poems. Tressor's name had brought it within the range of practical politics, but since then one or two critics had read the boy's verse and offered the usual qualified praise. But in the qualifications ran a sincere note. It had impressed the publishers. They had consented to publish at their own expense, and had even offered a royalty after a sale which they had estimated at the outside possible probability. For Paul's first cheque bugles should blow—in fairyland.
But then Paul was already in fairyland. Manning had suggested that the success of "The Literary Lounge" warranted an annual dinner, and Donaldson had added the corollary that this triumph of the club's first president ought to be celebrated in town. The idea suggested, it had seemed obvious and inevitable. Term over, Paul had gone down to Manning's home in Oxfordshire for a fortnight or so, and now both had come up together for the celebration. Paul was Manning's guest at the Balmoral for the night, and a private dining-room had been engaged at an hotel on the river side of the Strand. Finally, that there should be no lack of glory, Tressor himself was the guest of the evening.
The evening Manning and Paul arrived there was a wonderful sunset, as if the heaven itself would fling an earnest of the boy's success across the world. From the Strand, the great golden glow seemed to burn behind the Admiralty Arch, far off, behind the Park and the great Palace. The spire of St. Martin's and the incredible globe on the top of the Coliseum caught its radiance, and, looking east, the whole façade of the busy street shone with that unimaginable radiance. The great central column of the Square burgeoned black and monstrous against it. Whitehall was an avenue of glory washed with fairy gold.
Yet it was things undistinguished and unbeautiful in themselves that gave the best effects. Slipping through back streets to Leicester Square, the two friends were now and again brought to a complete stop. Between the great bulk of a towering house utterly blocked in with shadow and some tawdry outpost of a spreading theatre splashed with advertisement, they would see a patch of sky twisted into writhen cloud, royal, amber, impenetrable. Some Titan, striding through the heavenlies, had flung his Bacchic scarf from him. Stained with the purple of his feast, it fell across the world, an orange symbol of drunken ecstasy.
Said Paul: "Manning, God gave us eyes to see that."
The other's face remained immobile. It was odd to see how that splendour shone on his hair and eyes, odd, Paul thought, because his friend's face was hard, and no less hard for that caress. "Surely you must think so!" he exclaimed.
"'I am all that has been and that is and that shall be, and no mortal has ever raised my veil,'" quoted Manning.
Paul looked up and away. "We cannot even touch it," he said suddenly. "I've never thought of that."
A suggestion of the after-glow still hung suspended in the sky as he bathed and dressed. He ran his blind up to see it as he stood in his shirt-sleeves before the glass. But even the poet in him could not be holden by such beauty to-night. The earth was too real beneath his feet. It was so wonderful that he, Paul Kestern, should be standing dressing there. Memories came and went like meteors through his mind. He remembered his first sonnet. He remembered how, for the first time, in the harsh atmosphere of a school class-room and through the, to him, uncertain medium of a Latin poet, the first glimpse of fairy lands forlorn had come to him, and the magic casement opened. A new master had found them plodding wearily through Horace and had, by an impulse, stayed the halting construe of—of—(yes, it was old Lammick; he thought he had forgotten Lammick!)—of Lammick, to render the thing himself. As he spoke, it was plain that he had forgotten the boys, and so far as Paul was concerned, he had very soon forgotten the master. Only he saw the old Roman singing woven words of music about unutterable things.
And he saw himself going up for his scholarship exam. He had painstakingly read Macaulay's essays in the train for style. He remembered putting his old Waterbury on the desk before him so that each question might have fifteen minutes. He remembered—oh, he remembered the look of the commons on his first breakfast table, a ploughed field the first time he walked to Coton, the stained glass in the Round Church East window seen from the Union writing-room, villas in the Cherry Hinton Road, a print on David's stall in the market-place, rain on Garret Hostel Bridge, Clare Avenue one very early morning. Then he saw, suddenly, grotesquely stretched bodies and legs, sprawled fervently by praying men in the Henry Martyn Hall. He heard one of them speak: "O God, make all slack menkeen." Paul chuckled to himself, because he loved it so.
Then he wished vividly and acutely that he had finally rewritten that line in the proof of his book. It was about brown withered ivy on the trunk of a pine in Hursley Woods. There was a little curl of brown hair too that slipped always under Edith's ear. He would give her the first copy himself, if he had to go to Claxted personally and especially to do it. He would give it her in Hursley Woods. No he wouldn't; he would give it her in Lambeth Court. He would take her for a walk. They would go past the "South Pole." They would walk up to the lamp-post, and he would hand her the book. "That's yours," he would say, "all of it. And I still want to preach in Lambeth Court though I did write it. Now what do you say?"
Paul began to sing the Glory Song.
Manning put his head in. "Great Scott, Paul," he said, "what's all the noise about?"
Paul flushed guiltily. Then he laughed. "I can't help it, Manning," he said. "I feel too bucked for words. I know I'm quite mad, but I can't help it."
And it was jolly threading the busy Christmas streets in a taxi, arriving at the hotel door, having a man in uniform open it for you so importantly, hearing the girl in the office tell the page to take the gentlemen to the Literary Lounge dining-room, and the finding of it full of men awaiting them. There was Donaldson, explosive but genial, warmed with excitement already. "Hullo, Kestern! Damned glad to see you again. I say, I congratulate you, you know, but didn't I always say you'd do it?" And Strether, looking big and ungainly in his black clothes that never fitted particularly, but smiling grimly. "Felicitations, Kestern, and all that sort of thing." ("By Gad, Gussie, felicitations! Keep that for your speech, old horse. What's that? Always making a row? Ha, ha, ha—that's damned good! Good old Gussie!")
Tressor put Paul at his ease. He was so big and smiling; he talked so easily; it was all so natural to him. He was on Paul's right, of course, and Paul could look past him, down the table, at them all, Manning at the other end, glancing up now and again, with a reassuring nod. Judson, by the way, was there, for he had insisted on admission to the club and had turned out the coolest critic of them all. Paul smiled to see how he enjoyed himself; and he drank his unaccustomed wine and leaned back in his chair at last, when he had made his speech, with all self-consciousness gone from him.
But it was hard to sit still and listen to Tressor. The chief guest of the evening rose to respond to the toast in his slightly heavy way, but he smiled down the disordered table and met the eyes turned to him as if he were no more than an undergraduate himself. He talked of the college and of literature, as he was in duty bound to do; he introduced an anecdote or two; at last he turned slightly to Paul. Well, at any rate, they had reason to hope great things from the president. He might perhaps say there that from the first he had detected in the verses the president had been good enough to show him, the true mark, the real spirit of a poet. He was very grateful for the part he had been able to play in advising and reading, but it was genuine recognition that had led to the acceptance for publication of the book which they all expected so eagerly. It was a first book, and a youthful book, but he was not exaggerating when he said that he looked forward to the day when they would all be proud of having been among the first to recognise the author's undoubted genius and greet his first appearance in print. He anticipated that, in the days to come, they would remember this night with real pride. He thanked the club for having invited him to share in that. They had been good enough to say that they were honoured by his presence, but he assured them that he felt honoured to be there.
They toasted him. They toasted Paul. They toasted each other. Excitement, the toasts, the ring of friendly faces, the hot room, his own achievement—all these things intoxicated Paul. Tressor left. Donaldson proposed a music hall; Paul hardly realised that he agreed. In Leicester Square, people smiled as they tumbled out of their taxis, and the lights were blurred. Paul scarcely knew where he was till he found himself in the stalls.
Then came the gradual awakening. They were too near the footlights for one thing. The orchestra blared and crashed at them, and the solemn, tired faces of the men behind the fiddles began to obsess Paul. They laughed at no jokes, these fellows. They had heard them all a score of times before. There was no honest laughter on the stage, and Donaldson, next him, lolled about and held his sides at a painted travesty of humour. When a turn allowed, these performers crept out by a small black hole and returned presently wiping their lips. Of course, it was, it had to be, a business, but Paul saw it all through innocent eyes. Essential glory had glowed upon him from the sky; genuine tributes had blessed him on Tressor's lips; this began to shape itself as a horrible thing.
The great curtain went up and down inexorably. In the dazzling glow of the searchlights a couple of dancers pirouetted before him, painted, half-naked. His own face flushed; he glanced guiltily round. "By Gad, look at that girl's thighs," whispered Donaldson. Strether was bolt upright, cynical, his lips pursing in a way he had. The light glowed red, shadowed. In and out of the shadows, while the music rose and fell, those white legs twinkled and danced. Now back, now out again. A twirl of short skirts, and in a cascade of white, one throws herself backward in a man's arms. Paul seemed to meet her eyes as she looked out across the footlights, with the powder and rouge on her cheeks and her bosom all but bared. Thunder of applause; smiles, bows, a hand-in-hand appearance in the naked light of the great hall; Donaldson half on his feet, staring; even Judson clapping vigorously.
Paul turned to Manning. "I'm going," he said thickly. "I must, Manning."
The other looked at him closely. "I'll come too," he said, and rose. "I don't want to see any more."
"No, no," said Paul, vehemently, "I'd rather go alone. Do you mind, Manning? I'm all right, only I'd like to walk back."
Manning nodded. "I see," he said. "We'll meet at breakfast. Good-night."
"Oh, I say, damn it all, you can't go, Paul. 'Tisn't done, my dear chap. Eyes in the boat, four! Sit still, sir."
"Shut up," whispered Paul savagely. "Everybody can hear you. Let me get out of this."
The loungers in the promenade looked at him curiously. A girl nudged against him; "Get me a drink, dear," she said in a low tone, and even half-rested a hand upon his arm. A feeling of all but physical sickness nauseated the boy. In the cloak-room, he thought that the attendant leered at him. In the street he dared not look at the folk lingering and passing below the steps.
Swiftly, drinking great draughts of the night air, he set off home. It was drizzling slightly, but he did not notice it. Staring straight ahead, he found himself hardly able to think, only dimly aware of street-lamps and great, black, velvet spaces. He was plainly not to be accosted in Piccadilly. In Knightsbridge, the streets emptier, he began to feel released. But not till he was in his own room at the hotel, and had thrown off his coat and bathed his face and sunk by his bed with his head in his hands, was he able to formulate his thoughts.
Then they came, in a torrential flood. He, Paul Kestern, called of God, destined for the ministry, even now at odds in his own inmost heart and with his best-beloved parents for the truth of Christ, had been drunk and had gone to a music hall. He was all superlatives and saw no door of escape for his soul. But to do him justice, it was not his own soul that he worried about. He scarcely thought of himself. He had indeed been thinking of himself most of the evening, but now he thought of his Master. "One is your Master, even Christ." His tortured conscience painted vividly to him the scene upon which he had dwelt often enough—the open courtyard; the fire in the corner, where the light leaped and danced on wall and gate; the sudden opening of a door; the buzz of voices, cries, torch-lights; the coward Apostle starting to his feet, while the guard felt for spears and came to attention; the passing of a young erect Figure with set face, Whose cheek was already reddened with a blow; and the turning of the head, so that the eyes of prisoner and betrayer met on an instant. He, Paul, had forgotten his Master. He, Paul, had denied his Master. He, Paul, had been shown the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and had fallen at the feet of the tempter.
Peter had gone out and wept bitterly, with the memory of a look.
Paul, then, tried to pierce the darkness and see. He did not sit by the fire and wait; he was up, in his soul, and out, searching for Him. In broken sentences, he was crying his confession, renewing his pledges, seeking for pardon. But it was to-night as though for long he sought in vain. "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow," he prayed, and Manning's voice came echoing back: "How in the world can blood wash me clean?" He turned to stray phrases of the old hymns: "While others Thou art saving, do not pass me by," and Mr. Stuart presented himself before him, suave, smiling, and with the ghost of a voice: "Well, dear boys, have you given your hearts to Jesus? Is there one here who has not?"
He writhed upon the rack. He hated himself for all that he would not allow himself to think. Somehow Father Vassall crept into his mind, sitting in his old arm-chair at the presbytery in his ancient cassock, smoking a cigarette, looking at him with kindly eyes through the smoke. "Concubinage is a regular thing in Spain," said a clear, scholarly voice, with just that suspicion of veiled triumph in it that had goaded the boy to madness in the train.
"She has g-g-gentle fingers that nevertheless d-d-draw men to God." Father Vassall had quoted the words once, with his little stammer that somehow did away with all suspicion of effeminacy. The specks of light ceased to dance before Paul's closed eyes. It was as if he was in a very wide room. He grew still. His mind settled down to the great question. Did God really will that men should come to Him that way? What if he took a step forward? "Faith is a step in the dark." In the dark? But this was light! That glare over the footlights, that searching limelight, that had been darkness. In an audible whisper, his face hidden in his hands upon his bed, Paul made his experiment.
"Hail Mary" (he whispered) "full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Well, but that was merely a confession of faith that he might have made at any time. There was more. Should he dare it?
"Holy Mary"—it was like a solemn oath—"Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death. Amen."
Silence, above, about, beneath. A veil of silence. But there was peace in the silence, surely, surely, the peace of God.
In the silence, Paul Kestern crept into bed, and believed himself comforted.
(4)
A few hours before, at Claxted, Madeline Ernest had been sitting alone by the fire, putting a few finishing touches to a blouse. It was a Christmas present for Ethel Cator, and it had to be finished that night. That was the worst of making Christmas presents. In a way it was rather fun, but before you had finished, the days had nearly always all but run out and you had to go on working when you were tired. Madeline was tired, but she wished she could afford to buy presents. Also to buy a few more things for herself—some silk stockings, for example; she put her head on one side to consider that. She looked very pretty as she did so. The lamplight shone on her fair abundant hair and her white skin. Big eyes, too, she had, and lovely lashes. It was a pity there was nobody more appreciative than the old purring tabby by the fire to see her.
She dabbed with her needle once or twice, and lifted the shining stuff. Through her pretty head a current of thoughts was flowing inconsequently. Then the door opened, and Mrs. Ernest came in.
Mrs. Ernest was short, comfortably stout, a little bent. She had been pretty, and she was growing grey. She was almost always tired, and with good reason. Mr. Ernest was not even a Vicar, and, truth to tell, she had ceased to hope that he ever would be.
"Still working, Madeline?"
"Yes, mother. I must finish this. Ethel always sends me something and I must remember her."
"Have you put the clean things away?"
"No. I'm so sorry. I'll go at once. I forgot all about them."
"Never mind. Sit down a minute. Madeline, have you heard about Paul?"
"What, mother?" Madeline bent earnestly over her work.
"He's written a book of poems and it's going to be published early next year. Mrs. Kestern told me this afternoon."
"Mother! You don't say so. How splendid!" The girl flushed with genuine pleasure and excitement.
"Yes, dear. He is clever, is Paul. I expect he'll do great things one day."
The eyes of mother and daughter met. "I always thought so," said Madeline.
Mrs. Ernest sat down in an arm-chair, and reached for her work-basket. She opened it with a little sigh. There were always socks or stockings in it, and no more than her daughter did she like mending them. She threaded her needle, and fitted the wooden heel into a sock. "Father had a talk with Mr. Kestern this morning," she said, vaguely.
Madeline straightened out her work. "Yes?" she queried, critically, as if to the blouse.
"Yes. Mr. Kestern is troubled about Paul."
"Really? Why?"
"He's getting High Church."
"Well, what about it? I like things a bit higher than father and Mr. Kestern myself."
"I know. You are so musical. I wish Tom didn't wear out his socks quite so fast. But Paul's getting very High Church."
"Very?" Madeline looked up meditatively.
"Yes, very. Of course your father would not wish you to know anything. Mr. Kestern told him privately. He's very worried about it."
"It's that Father Vassall," said Madeline.
"How do you know about Father Vassall?"
"Paul told me. He likes him very much."
"Well, I'm sure it would be too dreadful for the Kesterns if Paul became a Roman Catholic."
"It won't matter much if he's a poet."
"Madeline! It would. I'm sure Roman Catholicism is very dreadful—there's the confessional. Though I must say it's worse for a woman than a man. And the Pope too. But that's the point. Suppose Paul became a priest. They'll get him if they can. Jesuits always try for clever young men."
Madeline laughed. "Mother! As if Paul would be a Roman Catholic priest!"
"Why not? Father says he would not be surprised."
"Well, I should. Paul! He's so very evangelical."
"I know. But——" (There was a little pause.) "Madeline, does he see much of that girl, Edith Thornton?"
The girl put down her work and looked into the fire. She was silent. "Oh, I don't know," she exclaimed suddenly.
"Well, dear, I've thought once or twice he looked at her rather as if he liked her. I'm sure I don't know what he can see in her. But of course if he's a priest, he won't be able to marry at all."
"No, mother, I suppose not."
"Well, my dear, I think it would be terrible for the Kesterns, Paul doing so well and all. Just too terrible. I am sure all their friends ought to try and prevent it. And if he becomes an author too, he's not likely to be a missionary after all. He ought to be a great preacher one day, and if he writes as well, I suppose it would help a great deal."
"Yes, I suppose it would." The girl propped her head on her hands, and stared into the flames.
Mrs. Ernest finished her sock. "What's the time?" she asked.
The girl looked up. "Ten o'clock," she said.
"Dear, you ought to be going up. You look tired. Give me a kiss, Madeline."
For once, the girl got up at once and went over to her mother. Mrs. Ernest put her arms round her, and smoothed back her hair. She sighed. "I do hope you'll be happy," she said. "I'm sure I don't want anything except the best for my girl."
"I know, mumsie. Don't worry, darling."
"No, dear, I won't. Only—— Dear girl, I expect Paul is very easily led. That Father Vassall now. And a good woman can have such an influence on a man, Madeline."
The girl kissed her again, and hid her face on her shoulder.
"Your father and I have prayed for you ever since you were a wee girl, darling, that you might marry the right man. Good-night, dear child."
"Good-night, mumsie. Is daddy in the study?"
"Yes, dear. Tell him it's ten, will you? Paul comes home to-morrow, Madeline."
"Does he?"
"Yes. Take those cards round to the Kesterns in the afternoon, will you. If you see him, tell him how pleased we are about the book."
"Yes. Good-night, mother."
"Good-night, dear. Sleep sound."
Madeline undressed slowly. Then she slipped on her dressing-gown and knelt by her bed. She habitually said the prayers that she had said since she was a little girl, and she said them now. But she said them a little more slowly than usual, and when she had finished, she did not jump at once between the sheets as she usually did. She knelt on, thinking.
She did not want to be a clergyman's wife anywhere really, in England or abroad. Yet she couldn't tell God that. But she did want to be a successful author's wife, only she could not tell God that either. She had never even told God properly about Paul, partly because she had never known quite what to tell. Now, however, she was realising just what it would mean to her if he became a Roman Catholic priest, utterly preposterous as it seemed. Besides, in her heart of hearts, it did not seem quite so preposterous as she had said. Paul was like that. Also, he was rather nice. Such a boy. Much to good for that Edith Thornton, only that also you couldn't tell God.
And then, quite suddenly, she did begin to tell God things. She really prayed. She said she was sorry for lots of things and that she would give them up. She prayed not to be always wanting nice clothes, and she prayed to have more faith. It was an expression, and she used it as such. For more grace too, she prayed, not really knowing what grace might be. And she meant that also. But her soul, not very big, at the best, truly immolated itself, and she did the very utmost she could with it. And when she had leaped upon the altar as well as she was able, and had gashed herself with great horrid knives of renunciation, she preferred her request. "Make Paul love me, O God," she whispered, "and make me love him very, very much."
So, then, at last, the pall of deep night settled down on half the world. Even Donaldson got to bed somehow. Manning, like Paul, walked back under the stars, whistling gently to himself in the more empty stretches. The dancer who had looked at Paul across the footlights slept, and the girl who had asked for a drink. Yet dancing and drinking and praying never cease altogether, nor does the voiceless cry of the world ever cease to echo through the silences.
MADMAN.
The wild duck, stringing through the sky,Are south away.Their green necks glitter as they fly,The lake is grey.So still, so lone, the fowler never heeds.The wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.
*****
Not thus, not thus are the wild souls of men.No peace for thoseWho step beyond the blindness of the penTo where the skies unclose.From them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns,The bull gone mad, the Saviour on his horns.JOHN MASEFIELD:Good Friday.
(1)
"Mr. Kestern, sir?" enquired the man, outside the little country station.
Paul nodded. "Yes," he said; "are you from Father Vassall?"
"Yes, sir. Been waiting 'arf an hower, sir. Trains that late. We've five mile to drive, sir, so if you'll get in...."
Paul deposited his suitcase in the dog-cart and climbed on to the seat alongside the driver. He was in the heart of the Midlands, and the lamps on the little country station were already being dimmed to save the Company's oil, since the next and last train of the day was not due for several hours. Outside the station enclosure, lights behind the red blinds of an inn threw a glow on the hard road, and from a cottage window or two came here and there a flicker; but these passed, they were speedily out into the open country. Trees loomed up against frosty stars; but for the most part high hedges hid even the fields on either side the narrow lane. A small moon, low on the horizon, swung up and down over them like a child's toy. The beast between the shafts kept up a steady trot, though now and again the steam of his exertion rose mistily in the radiance of the poor lamps of the dog-cart as he ploughed uphill at a walk. By his side, Paul's driver soon relapsed into the monotonous silence of the country. Paul himself, muffled up on his high seat, swaying a little with the motion, had time to think.
He was actually on his way to stay with Father Vassall, and he was aware that he was in doubt as to the issue of his journey. The last Christmas vacation and the ensuing Lent term had goaded him to the act. Christmas had been almost impossible at home, and the Lent term had shown him, every day more clearly, that he could not profess evangelical Anglicanism as a minister and a missionary. Claxted had stung him into that conclusion on every side. The atmosphere of the Mission Hall, sincere, earnest, zealous as it was, left him gasping now as a fish out of water. He had stood on its platform and not known what to say. The illogical inconclusiveness of the old attitude stared at him so starkly that he could no longer repeat the old shibboleths. The sermon in which one expounded a text as if the phrases of it and the entire context had dropped, verbally complete, like the image of the great goddess Diana, from the skies, and then exhorted, in words made as vivid and as practical as possible, to the vague sensationalism of "Come to Jesus" or "Accept Salvation," was now beyond him. The thing, left thus in the air, had become meaningless to him, and his very sincerity forbad his preaching anything in which he did not wholeheartedly believe. The Church and Sacraments, the old truths set in a practical system, these seemed necessary to the Gospel salvation. Yet a more thoughtful worker or two had already been offended by the vague and tentative phrasing in which he tried to hint at it.
Or again, though this he tried to suppress, the gorge of the poet in him would rise now against Moody and Sankey or Torrey and Alexander. Metre and rhyme had come to be things that he could not help subconsciously analysing, but it does not do to analyse mission hymn-books. Nor can one make a really successful evangelist if one is affected almost to desperation by a cornet out of tune, or tracts for distribution that are neither English nor common sense.
Lastly, the home atmosphere was electric with disagreement. He was out of tune with it all. There seemed no longer anything to talk about at table. Mr. Kestern was not interested in literature and art; with his politics Paul, feeling after Socialism, was in violent collision; the parish was no longer his world; and even into talk of the Second Coming of Christ would creep the voice of criticism, or into the Islington Conference the question of Rome. It was, of course, a common-place tragedy, but that did not make it the less tragic. The man had stood still, and the boy had gone on. Also, at the fork roads, he had taken the unfamiliar turn.
Full of it all, then, he was coming to stay with Father Vassall. He had determined to do that this once at least. He must talk things out with his friend. But should they come to a conclusion, and if so to what conclusion and with what results, that was the question.
"That's the 'ouse, sir."
Paul peered eagerly ahead. He could make out a dark, vague outline, and a wall on the left. "Wo-up, beauty," cried his driver to the horse. They came to a standstill before a big iron gate between tall red-brick gate-posts.
Paul climbed stiffly down, and swung his bag out. He found himself on a flagged path that ran up to a door set in a shallow portico in the front of a long, low, mellow Queen Anne house. It was not too dark to see a solid cornice and parapet. "The bell's on the right, sir," said the voice at the gate. "I'll drive on round to the stable."
Paul pulled the wrought-iron bell-pull, and somewhere in the black recesses a bell jangled. He heard a door open and the sound of feet. "All right, Bridget," called a familiar voice; "I'll let him in." A door opened somewhere. A faint glimmer of moving light shone through the glass panes and drew nearer. The front door swung open. Paul blinked in the light.
The priest stood with a lantern in his left hand. He wore his cassock, and was muffled in a cloak, with a black skull-cap on his head. His merry smiling face was turned up to Paul, clean shaven, youthful looking, the hair a little tumbled.
"Good evening, Father," said Paul. "Sorry I'm late. I've been longing to get here."
"H-how are you?" exploded the priest. "C-come in. It's splendid, your c-coming."
Paul passed in. He had the odd thought that it was all part of a dream. The passage was stone-flagged and the hall beautifully bare. An oak bench ran along one wall. There were a few carvings and weapons and curios about. A sombre print or two hung opposite: St. Francis Xavier in a high biretta, and an Entombment. The figure in black putting up the latch by the light of the lantern was mediæval and fantastic. Yet it was all real, and it was real that he, Paul Kestern, was there at last, in the house of a Catholic priest.
"Come in," said Father Vassall again. "You must be cold. Come and get warm before supper. There's a t-t-topping fire in the p-parlour."
He led the way, bustling forward with a swish of cassock, welcoming, kind. Paul entered the long low library, hung with panels of green cloth, and took in its satisfactory furnishing at a glance. The room rested quietly, waiting for him. With a swift mental comparison, he saw himself arriving at Claxted instead. Then he, too, laughed eagerly, and moved forward to the big open Tudor fireplace.
A log burned there brightly, the "royal flames" leaping in the iron grate behind a high screen. A deep green-brocaded arm-chair stood back in an ingle, a litter of papers on the rug near by, a shaded candle in a tall twisted candlestick throwing a pool of light down upon them. Above the fireplace stood unfamiliar incongruous objects: a white skull-cap that had been Pius IX.'s, in a glass-fronted box, and a black Madonna hung with beads. There was an unframed water-colour too, and a pencil sketch. From the rug, he turned to survey the room. Its bare wood floor reached out into the shadows, save where a goat-skin caught the light. Bookcases with white shelves stood out from the walls. On a stand in a window recess were tall lilies growing in a pot. The marble head of Bernard of Clairvaux, wrapt in contemplation, stood on a bracket; he could just see the aquiline nose, and downcast eyes. There was a solid narrow oak table with a chest below. In a corner there was a hanging lamp, burning dimly, so that one could see to move over there. It glinted on a grand piano. A comfortable chintz-covered chair or two stood about.
His host pulled forward an arm-chair whose elbows ended in carved griffin-heads. "Sit down," he reiterated, "and toast yourself. It is jolly to see you here. How's C-Cambridge?"
Paul drew a deep breath and seated himself. "Fine," he said. "I suppose it exists, by the way," he went on, with a laugh. "We went up four in the Lents. I say, this is just heavenly."
"Good man. Have a cigarette. Supper won't be long."
"Are you very busy, Father? We miss you awfully at Cambridge. When's the next book to appear?"
"I'm so b-b-busy I don't know what to do. Preaching nearly every Sunday, and lectures. I've got to l-lecture to Anglicans on M-Mysticism in t-town on Monday. Oh, I say, they are coming in. Two conversions last week, both c-clergymen and such good fellows. And it's such fun here. There's heaps to do yet. You shall see to-morrow."
"Yes?"
He nodded, wrapping his hands in his cloak and laughing merrily. "Of course, when I came I built a chapel. It's an old barn, much older than the house, thirteenth century they say. It must have been a chapel before, I think; it feels like it. Well, all the village talked, of course. P-Popish treason and p-plot! Bridget told me, and Tim; all the servants are Catholic you know. But I wouldn't let anyone see it, for I'm not here regularly enough to start a new church like that. Perhaps we'll have another priest one day, and a Mission. Of course, if they enquire, that's another story. So, last week when several of them came to Tim and got him to ask me to have a service on Sunday evening, I did. It was full; p-packed. The Wesleyan local preacher came too. We had B-Benediction. Oh, you ought to have been here, my dear. They all sang 'Star of the Sea' b-b-beautifully!"
It was so like Father Vassall, Paul thought. He was as eager as a boy, and the Faith was a glorious kind of adventure with him. There was no checking his enthusiasm. In his company Paul always felt as if he were living in the times of the Apostles when Christians were a little persecuted, defiant, daring band, but the Cross and the Resurrection things of but yesterday. And although he always had a sense that the world of thought and action in which the priest lived was utterly remote from the world of the average man, still he had come to see that there was nothing of the poseur in his friend. He did not pose as a mediævalist; he simply was one. And he did not adapt his religion to the world; he adapted his world to his religion.
It was on that platform that the two met so readily. Paul was utterly accustomed to that point of view. Only at Claxted there was a different religion.
So now, at once, the little priest shot his swift question quite simply. "And how is it with you?" he asked. "Have you decided to l-l-let yourself g-go?" Not so differently does a Salvationist ask a sinner at the penitent form if he is saved.
Paul moved uneasily. "Don't, Father," he said; "don't ask me that yet. I can't say. I'm pulled all ways. Whenever I sit down to think, a great tangle grows and weaves in my mind till I'm in despair at ever deciding anything."
Father Vassall nodded. "I know," he said. "So it was with me. You're on the r-rack. Every n-nerve gives you pain. You've thought enough. You know enough really. If you went on reading and talking and arguing till d-d-doomsday, you'd get no c-clearer. You must turn simply to our Lord and do His W-Will."
"If I knew it!"
The priest watched him in silence. Then he rose and felt for a cigarette. "You do know it," he said. "What you don't know is whether you dare do it."
"My father says I'm too young to make such a decision. He wanted me to go and see Prebendary——"
Father Vassall interrupted him. "See no one," he said. "Don't see me if you like. Go away alone and ask our Lord, in the light of what He has shown you. Oh, my dear! It's as plain as the n-n-nose on your f-f-face!"
"My father says I'm utterly unstable and always changing my mind."
"That's not t-t-true. See here: I know exactly what's happened to you."
"What?"
"You began, as a boy, by turning to our Lord with all the love of which your heart was capable. You vowed to be His lover. And He weighed you, looked you through and through, and accepted you. Step by step He led you on. He showed you new things about Himself as you were ready to bear them. He trusted you. He never left you. And now at last, He has shown you Himself in His Church. You know He's there. I believe, in your heart of hearts, you have faith. And you hang back because you are afraid. You ought to be a Catholic. You ought to be a religious, a R-Redemptorist, I think. You're stamped and marked out for it. There! I've never said as much to anyone. God help you."
He ended abruptly, utterly earnest, and stared at the fire, stretching a hand out to it.
"I shall break my father's heart. How can I?" cried Paul, all the bitter agony of days at home and hours of prayer, sweeping down upon him.
The priest made a gesture. "Excuses. You know that too. 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me...' And would you break His heart?"
"It's so cruel, so awfully hard."
"Of course it's cruel. Wasn't the Cross cruel? Do you think Christianity is a d-drawing-room g-game? It's fire. It's a sword. It's death or life. Good Lord, what else has it been from the first martyr to the last, yesterday? And you k-k-know it."
"It's more than I can bear," the boy burst out.
"It's n-n-not," stuttered the priest instantly. "Our Lord never offers anyone a heavier cross than he can b-b-bear."
The passion of the declaration silenced Paul. But only for a few seconds. Then the full force of what it would mean to his people overcame him.
"You don't know my father," he half whispered. "He says he would rather see me dead. Oh, he says terrible things! Father, he will see nothing, nothing. And he always harps on the strain of my past religious experiences. I deny them, he says, if I become a Catholic."
"You do no such thing. What does he himself think, for example, happened at your Communions? He thinks Christ came to you spiritually and fed your s-s-soul with His S-Spirit. And so He did. The Church doesn't deny that. The Church says you will receive something within her that outside they do not even pretend to give. You are not asked to deny one whit of the past. And you know that too."
Paul sprang to his feet. "With you, it looks inevitable. You hypnotise me into believing. But there are heaps of things to be said. I do see the need for authority; I do understand the reasonableness of the whole philosophy—from the Incarnation to relics and indulgences—it's reasonable enough, it's logical; but is it true? Is Peter true? Is the Church what you say? Come to that, is the Gospel story itself true? Is it? Is it? Oh, my God, I would give everything to know!"
He stood there, hands flung out, his whole soul in his face. And as his tense voice ceased, the silence of the room hemmed them in.
Slowly Father Vassall got, too, to his feet. They faced each other across the rug, and the black Madonna, hung with dripping beads, thrust her Son out before them.
"Oh, my dear, I'm afraid for you!" whispered the priest, staring.
"Afraid?"
He nodded. "You see, you have the soul of a r-religious and that's no t-t-trifle. And there you dare to stand, asking if the story of B-Bethlehem and C-Calvary is true!"
"Well?" Paul was defiant.
The priest crossed the room, and came back from a little search on the table with a paper in his hand. All the merriment had died out of his face; it looked years older, wan. "I w-want you to p-promise me something," he said, stammering much again in his emotion.
Paul leant back against the mantelpiece, wearily. "What, Father?" he asked; "I'll do anything I can."
"You c-c-can do this, ea-easily. Don't let's argue any more all the time you're here. Don't read books, except the N-N-New T-T-Testament. And promise me to pray this every day in the chapel before the S-Sacrament with all your heart."
He held out a paper. "I've w-w-written it out for you," he said.
Paul took the half-sheet of notepaper, written in the clear print of the priest's hand. He read it through once, and then he read it through again, only, this time, the letters were a little blurred. Then he looked up at his friend.
"Father," he said, "I can't help it. I know this, whatever anyone says. You bring our Lord to me as no one and nothing else has ever done."
"Ah, then," cried the priest, "if you turn back now!"
Bridget put her head in. "Supper's ready, your reverence," she said.
Father Vassall nodded swiftly at her. "You promise?" he said, turning to Paul.
"Oh, yes. And you'll pray for me?"
Father Vassall laughed meaningly. "Come to supper," he said gaily. "It's p-p-pork and b-b-beans. But I can give you a glass of Sp-Sp-Spanish B-B-Burgundy!"
(2)
In the chapel that night Paul prayed his prayer for the first time. The priest walked in before him and showed him to his chair and a prayer-desk with a courtly little gesture. The three servants sat behind. A candle was already lit for Paul, and one burned also for the priest in his corner. There was a white sanctuary lamp before the altar, and a red one on the left. Otherwise there was no light.
Prayers began with Scripture reading. Father Vassall had announced the fact with his odd air of almost playing with the thing. "We read the B-B-Bible every night," he had said. "Do you m-m-mind? We read for t-t-ten m-m-minutes!"
Paul had said, smilingly, that he did not mind.
So now he sat back in his chair and composed himself to listen and to look. The priest opposite, a little black hunched-up figure, half turned on one side to allow the candlelight to fall on his book, had announced: "The Acts of the Holy Apostles" and begun in a matter-of-fact, rather rapid tone, to read. As when he preached, so when he read, he did not stammer, being shortly utterly engrossed in his subject. He read on, chapter after chapter, without break or division. Paul grew interested in the manner of it. The narrative rolled out before him as a whole, a simple, nervous, obvious story which singularly held even the attention of a listener who could have gone on, pretty well, wherever the reader had cared to stop. But after a while the boy allowed his eyes to rove. This story of Peter's doings—odd, how Peter dominated the early chapters—did not somehow seem out of place here. He began to apprise the details of the building and its furniture.
It was plainly a barn. It had a barn roof of ancient unstained timber, and a stone floor. The windows were irregular, uncurtained; he saw his little moon again, steady now, shining through the bare casement, just touching rough beams that spanned the irregular rectangle as a rood-screen. In the centre rose a cross with flanking figures. They were rudely carved, by the priest himself, but there was death in the white nude body of the Christ and passionate life in the upturned head of the Mary. John stood acquiescent; Paul wondered at his attitude. It hid him; perhaps there was conflict in his heart. Perhaps he understood. Perhaps, if one understood, conflict died down to peace.
The thin supports of the rood dropped down through the shadows to the floor. A little figure stood half-way up one of them. Oh, and in the corner, between the far support and the wall, stood another statue. Paul stared at it. Something writhed in the candlelight. Then he saw that it should do so. St. Michael trod down the dragon there.
Paul looked through the rood to the altar. High hangings ran up into the canopy, but it and they were lost in the shadows. In the centre, a cartoon was appliquéd upon them; a Madonna and Child; it was just visible. There were four candlesticks, silver; the candles were burned low in them. A silver figure hung on an ebony cross—or it looked like ebony. The tabernacle was a blur of white silk. A white cloth glimmered there; and below, under the altar, a row of painted carven shields. Paul could not distinguish more, but he knew them. He had seen Father Vassall at work upon them in his study at Cambridge. They emblazoned symbols of the Passion.
Then he began to concentrate on the gloom to the left, where the red light burned. The shadows were all confused and blurred. There were irregular outlines, streaks, shadowy lines. He puzzled out a small altar, with tiny candlesticks and a biggish case upon it, that shone fitfully. The lines radiated from the case, stuck through it, behind it, as though they were a bundle of spears. Spears! It was a spear; he could see, now, a gleam on the blade. Another was headed with a bunched object. And then he knew.
A small ladder, a sponge on a reed, a spear, a shorter stick dripping with the knotted cords of a scourge; these he could see now. And he knew too what the reliquary held.
If it was true, that little heavily guarded splinter within had once been stained with the Blood, the real, literal Blood, about which he had so often preached and sung. Just such thongs as those had bit into the reddening flesh, curled and twisted and hissed on white thighs and shoulders that shrank to the utmost limit of the cords in the human writhe and agony of Christ.... "But Peter and the Apostles answering, said" (the reader read on): "We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging Him upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things: and the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to all that obey Him."
Paul stared out before him motionless, with set lips. Before him, plain, far far too plain against the dim wall, the twisting whips rose and fell.
"'In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen,'" said Father Vassall, and there was a little shuffling as they all knelt down.
Acts of Faith, Hope, Charity and Contrition; the Creed; Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be; odd-Englished prayers for night protection; more shuffling; now Paul and the priest were alone. It grew utterly still. Paul fumbled for his slip of paper and drew it out. The rustling dominated the whole chapel; it even seemed to stir the shadows that shifted always, silently, in the candlelight. He spread the paper on the desk before him. Slowly he prayed each sentence.
AN ACT OF CONSECRATION.
O Lord JESUS Christ, Who art the Way, the Truth and the Life,Without Whom no man cometh to the Father,No man is free,And no man lives eternally,Unite me wholly to Thyself that I may walk in light and truly live.
But Thy Way must be the Way of Sorrows,Thy Truth sharper than scourges,And Thy Life a losing of my own....
Give me therefore Grace—or rather Thyself, the Fount of Grace;Carry me, for I cannot walk alone;Enlighten me, for I am all darkness;Live in me, for I cannot live except in Thee.
Let me count all things loss but Thee, since Thou didst count allthings loss except my love.For me Thou didst leave the joys of heaven;For me Thou wast born in cold and nakedness;For me Thou didst bear the contempt of Thy creatures andhadst not where to lay Thy head;For me Thou didst die daily in the souls of those thatrejected Thee, and in the souls of them that loved Thee;die therefore in mine that Thou mayst live and I inThee;For me Thou didst suffer Thy Mother to be pierced withswords, Who wast Thyself pierced with nails; pierce methen too, and nail me to Thy Cross.
I offer myself wholly and without reserve to Thee Who didst countnothing greater than my love:My flesh is weak, as Thou knowest Who didst bear it,But my spirit is willing, though sorrowful as Thine evenunto death.
Unite me then, body and soul with Thy Divinity;My sins to Thy Redemption;My weakness to Thy Strength;My abyss of nothingness to Thy Plenitude.
I give myself to Thee, stained, shrinking and afraid;Give Thyself to me, O my crucified God, and make me Thine.Dear JESUS! Be to me not a Judge, but a Saviour!
"Dear Jesus! Be to me not a Judge, but a Saviour!"
He cried it again, and again. Tears blinded him. He choked them back. It was so still that he could not break the silence even with a sob.
(3)
The Truce of God held. It held so truly that for a brief succession of days Paul banished the major part of his doubts and haunting fears in the vivid atmosphere of Thurloe End. They did not sleep; they fled. He was not quiescent, but rather overwhelmingly alive. He drank a largely new and intoxicating drink.
It must be remembered for what, exactly, Claxted stood. Quite apart from the rights or wrongs of religion, there was a life in Claxted that was a sheer antithesis to this. It was an antithesis in small things as well as in big, in utterly unreasonable and stupid things as well as in vital ones. Thus, at Claxted, one never, at dinner or supper, sat down to boiled beans and bacon; if one had, it would not have been regarded as an adventure; moreover one never did sit down without potatoes. It is extraordinarily easy to make a mock of it, but there was a hid parable there. Food was food at Claxted; at Thurloe End it was a sacrament, and a merry sacrament of life. Nor was it less life because to Father Vassall it was Catholic life. Thus Father Vassall even ate fish and maigre soup on Fridays, and enjoyed disliking it. Most mornings there chanced to be early spring sunshine, and breakfast was served out of doors. Breakfast out of doors at Claxted would have seemed to verge on the profane, almost on the immoral. Tea, out of doors, in midsummer, yes; prepared for, with guests. At Thurloe End they ran in hastily for a little tea because they were so busy gardening, and the lights were not long. At Claxted wine was a mocker; at Thurloe End, the cask of Spanish Burgundy having just arrived, they bottled it with zest and solemnity.
At Claxted, again, the rooms were elect to their various ends. The drawing-room was for callers, tea and Sunday afternoons. The study was for sermons. The dining-room was the room in which one dined; in which Mr. Kestern rested for an hour after dinner; in which, after supper, all duly remained, with books or work, till prayers and bed. Moreover, there was routine order at Claxted, a pleasant, simple, kindly routine, but routine. A Puritan routine, too, it was of course. It had never struck Paul before, but no one laughed much at Claxted. The family was anything but solemn; possibly, temperamentally, it was inclined to be grave; but, then, on the other hand, it never, neverrioted. Oh, except at a Christmas party, at hide and seek and blind man's buff. And now that one was grown up, one did not play such games.
On the other hand, at Thurloe, humour raced unrestrainedly. The morning's post brought laughter (and tears) with it always. The day's work was a perpetual surprise. Father Vassall would announce his intention of doing something with as solemn a determination as Mr. Kestern would have given to a month's holiday. "I shall wr-wr-write on the v-v-verandah all the morning," he would announce firmly. Or: "I shall r-r-read in the p-p-parlour for t-t-two hours." Sometimes he would go to his room, and not reappear till luncheon. Sometimes he would return to the chapel after breakfast for just as long. In the evenings, before the fire, he would read what he had written during the day, or Paul would read to him. Or they would make tapestry, or wood-carve, or Father Vassall would play the piano; or sit still, occasionally talking, but much more often sitting silently, while peace dripped slowly in on Paul's soul. One never did nothing at Claxted. He himself, in the mornings, usually strolled round till some corner seemed inevitable for a letter, a book, or a poem, or the little table in his bedroom beckoned inexorably to work. In a sentence, the day arranged itself; perhaps better, it presented itself arranged; at Claxted, as it was in the beginning, so it was, and ever would be.
Then again, at Thurloe End, the house was invested with a personality. Paul used to wander around at first, making friends. The rooms stood back, gravely, but with a smile hidden in them. The furniture belonged to the house, and had been selected by it, he felt, with care. It had chosen unvarnished oak, for the most part, because its tall, clear windows were looking up always to the light, and old oak is wise about light, taking its measure and passing the rest on enriched. Its chairs, forms, tables, bookcases, were like open hands, holding much graciousness. Moreover it was gravely proud of itself, and not ashamed of its wide walls and the pools of its floors. Where it held out a picture or a print, it did so with a curious restraint, yet with a kind of courtesy. It wore pictures like a beautiful woman wears jewels.
At Claxted there was no house at all. There was a middle-class home. Everything that the family had ever possessed, for three generations, was collected in it. The Kesterns said about a new possession that it would "go" there or there, and new possessions constantly poured in—testimonials, seasonable gifts, kindly presents from workers after summer holidays, another antimacassar after the Sale of Work, photographs, texts, missionary curios. Things overflowed on to each other: an occasional table on a rug; a crochet mat on a table; a pot on the crochet mat; a fern in the pot; a cover about them both; a picture above the fern; framed photographs below the picture; as like as not, in the end, a small basket under the table. Small baskets were always so useful for putting odds and ends in. And all the furniture and carpets and mats and pictures, jostled each other, and cried to heaven that here was no continuing city. Which, of course, is quite true, for we seek one to come.
Clocks were all over the house at Claxted; at Thurloe End there was one over the stable that struck the hours with much solemnity. Moreover it had its own views as to correct time-telling which, as Father Vassall said, was wholly right, since t-t-time was r-r-relative.
Paul told himself that religion had nothing to do with all this; that there were Catholic middle-class homes, and Protestant houses. He was not such a fool as not to know, too, that his own temperament liked the one and disliked the other, but was not necessarily right or wrong because of that. Yet after all we are all of us concerned with things as we meet them, and religion and philosophy, speaking in generalities, do shape people's houses, occupations and dress. Here, then, came the Greeks bringing gifts, generous gifts for which he felt he had been searching, at one time blindly, lately more definitely, all his days. If the gifts were of God, they would leave little room for doubt.
The days of truce, however, were not without event. The pair of them did portentous things. Up the centre of the garden ran an ancient overgrown hedge, tangled, vast; and through it, with axe and saw, they cut a leafy tunnel. In old flannel trousers, and shirts without collars, they laboured in the sweat of their brows, and cut their hands and scratched their faces and lost their way and despaired of finishing and finally attained. Just before sunset they emerged one warm delirious day, the scent of rising sap overflowing from the broken twigs and boughs about them, a mellow light on the wall across a small green ahead. Father Vassall cut the last impeding growth away, as was fit, but Paul dragged it behind. They stepped out together. The little priest looked about him with triumph, excitement and discovery on his face. So Bilboa hailed the Pacific, and Pizarro climbed the Andes. And so, also, Father Vassall had some such thought as they.
"A cross, just here, in the middle of that green," he cried. "One will b-burrow through the tunnel, and find the c-cross at the end!"
And then, suddenly, the merriment died out of his face, and the two looked at each other.
"I will go for the saw and the hammer," said Paul, after a second.
"Yes," cried Father Vassall, animation again. "I know of two s-saplings which will just do."
Paul turned back. "N-N-No!" spluttered his friend; "n-n-not through the tunnel now!"
So Paul went back another way.
Or, intermittently, they laboured at a rockery. The priest had been engaged upon it, but he took a dislike to the job soon after Paul's arrival. One day, after half an hour's work, he flung down his spade. Paul grounded a loaded wheelbarrow, and laughed.
"What in the world is the matter?" he demanded.
"I will not have a r-r-rockery in my garden," said the priest, "not a made rockery anyway. I knew it was a bad idea."
"Why ever?" asked Paul, frankly puzzled.
"The d-d-devil makes r-rockeries," said Father Vassall, "not G-G-God."
One evening Paul related at length the incidents of the Port o' Man mission, and particularly that of Mr. Childers. Father Vassall heard him gravely. At the close he asked: "Do you know David Etheridge?"
Paul shook his head.
"Ever heard of him?"
"No. Who is he?"
"We'll go and see him to-morrow. Shall we? You'll like him. He lives about two miles off."
"Good," said Paul, smiling. "But who in the world is he?"
"He's a Catholic. He was a Spiritualist. He became converted because it was the d-d-devil."
"Oh, I'd love to meet him then," cried Paul.
They went, then, luncheon being over, the priest in his rusty country ulster, a little bent, preoccupied, grave; Paul swinging along in a tweed jacket eagerly. The few passers-by saluted the priest, and a clergyman on a bicycle looked at Paul intently. "He's the V-V-Vicar," said Father Vassall, bubbling with laughter. "He's a g-g-good man; I like him; but I expect he'd like to r-r-rescue you!"
(4)
David Etheridge lived in a small cottage, and he was pottering about the garden when they arrived. Paul had received no description of him and had no reason to expect one thing more than another, but the ex-Spiritualist's short, rather tubby figure and round, smiling, pink face, tickled him. He looked the last man in the world to have met with the devil. Anyway he seemed to have come well out of the encounter.
He greeted the priest eagerly, and was introduced to Paul without explanations. First he must show them round the garden. He had bulbs in the grass, and others hidden cunningly among tree-roots, and these he discovered with triumph. New green had been made, he declared, since yesterday, and in one spot there were six tiny thrusting points, when the brown leaves were raked away with discerning fingers, where at the last visit there had been but five. They bent lingeringly over them. "Wonderful, wonderful," cried Etheridge, in a subdued ecstasy. "I don't care how many times one sees them, they're wonderful!"
Paul looked from the face of the priest to that of his friend. There was genuine awe written on them both. It was odd, he thought, the outlook of everyone down here. He himself loved the beauty of that new determined virginal life, but these two saw more. They saw holy things.
Back in the cottage at tea, Paul's visit was frankly expounded. "I b-brought K-K-Kestern to see you, Etheridge," said Father Vassall, "because he's met a clairvoyant and seen a m-m-miracle. He's impressed, naturally. And the fellow talked to him no end. I want him to hear your side of the c-case."
"What was it you saw, Mr. Kestern?" asked Etheridge. "Was it at a séance?"
"No," said Paul, "and that's what seems to me particularly interesting. It was in a very ordinary house at a very ordinary luncheon, and in the presence of four or five men who, as certainly as anything is certain, were neither accomplices nor credulous nor open to hypnotic influence. And it happened in broad daylight in about two minutes, while we all sat round and watched."
"What happened?" queried Mr. Etheridge, with a serious air that did not go so strangely with his face as a stranger would suppose.
"A pin, an ordinary pin, wobbled on a white tablecloth and stood on end, all by itself."
"W-W-Wobbled?" exploded Father Vassall, earnestly.
Paul, looking at him, loved him suddenly with a great passionate movement towards his childlike sincerity and profound faith. "Yes, Father," he said as gravely, "wobbled."
"Do you mind telling me all about it?" put in their host. "You've really begun at the wrong end of the stick, you know, Mr. Kestern."
And Paul told him. He told him everything, including the clairvoyant's statement that God was very far off.
When he had finished, David Etheridge nodded. "That would be it," he said. "So much of truth, so much of plausibility, a little release of power, and the grain of error that would, without God, crack even Peter's rock."
"But the p-pin?" asked Father Vassall. "How did he do that?"
"It's simple, Father. He was perfectly right. It is no miracle, really, as he himself said. There is psychic power. It is as real a thing as that of my muscles, perhaps in a sense more real because more fundamental. All ultimate power may be psychic. And what he did with a pin, all the mystic saints have done, when necessary, again and again. Only they have done so under God and at His direction. Maybe God Himself, incarnate, only made use of some such hidden human power of His creation, when He walked the waves."
"Then Childers was right?" asked Paul, glancing at the priest however. Etheridge seemed to be contradicting the verdict of his friend.
"Right, and from our standpoint wrong too, Mr. Kestern. So far as his explanation of the pin went, he was right, but he was in the wrong since he was playing with a power only to be exercised along the lines revealed; and he was deluded by Satan when he spoke as he did of God."
"By Satan?"
"I have no doubt at all. It always begins so. He lies in wait to deceive."
"I don't understand," said Paul, bewildered. "Childers was a man of prayer and of great reverence. He spoke very kindly even of Catholicism."
"That," said Etheridge gravely, "I fear the most."
Paul studied his face intently. He was looking out of the cottage window at the broad high-road, his features very set and grave, and with a strange mask of pain lying upon their cheery commonplace exterior that was not good to see.
He seemed to become aware of the other's examination, and turned to him. "It is like this," he said. "God has marked out the spiritual way. He has hedged and protected it. Souls may go safely there very, very far, even here, towards the celestial city. But if they stray off that path for any reason, why, Mr. Kestern, in the woods and hollows lurk enemies that let none escape."
"How do you know?" burst out Paul, vehemently. "Does the Church definitely say so?"
Etheridge nodded towards the priest, with a faint smile that only lingered a second however. "That's a question for his reverence," he said, "but I can offer you an authority, if you like."
"Please," said Paul. There was something in the other's tone that awed him.
"Well, Mr. Kestern, there was a young man who knew nothing of that divine road save that, by Providence, his feet were placed upon it at his baptism. But he was enticed aside. He was shown a seemingly fair and direct path to the same bourne. He followed it. At first all went well. To be precise, he, too, obtained something of the powers of which you have seen a sample. He became adept at seeking escape in trance. The pencil wrote for him automatically, and wrote good and wise things. He made the practice of these things his life, and finally they dominated him. He became all but their slave."