"Going to the joss-house again, Sunday?" Strether had his own picturesque and blasphemous slang.
Paul smiled, understanding him. "Why?" he demanded.
"I'll come with you. It's more amusing than the 'Ciccu' or chapel. Is there a wander round with candles this week?"
"Gussie, you're incorrigible. But, heavens, what a tangle it all is! Does this look like the room of a Christian? Look at it!" Paul made a sweeping gesture.
Strether pushed back heavily from the fire. "Beastly cheap cake this evening, anyway."
Paul hurled a cushion at him. The two friends went down and out together.
"What's worrying you especially?" asked Manning, half an hour later.
"Oh, nothing much. At least, that's not right; it is much to me. Manning, it's awful. It's my father's attitude towards Catholicism."
"Ah! No time at all for it?"
"No. And he doesn'tunderstand."
"Complain in verse," said Manning, handing him a Swinburne, "and read that. 'E'en the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.' Leave the wise to wrangle. Your line is going to be literature, my son."
The sticks break, the stones crumble,The eternal altars tilt and tumble,Sanctions and tales dislimn like mistAbout the amazed evangelist.He stands unshook from age to youthUpon one pin-point of the truth.ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
(1)
Paul lay very still in the heather. An occasional bee buzzed past his face, and, high aloft, a towering hawk regarded him severely, until, satisfied that he was alive, it gave its wings an imperceptible tilt and glided swiftly away. The sun drew out the sweet scents from flowers and bracken, and a small wind brought up, now and again, a whiff of the sea.
Far below, Port o' Man nestled peacefully in its bay. A sort of toy town even in reality, from this height it appeared to the watcher as if modelled by a child in coloured clays, so remote and still and small it was. It looked no more than a thin moon of buildings between the fields and the sea. No sound came up so far, but now and again there was a sparkle on the edge of the brown rocks when the surf ran up a shade higher than usual, and in the wide expanse of sea itself, green and blue changed the one with the other perpetually. Moreover Paul's sharp eyes could detect a vivid spot of scarlet on the sands that was never still either. He knew it to be the banner of the Children's Special Service Mission, flapping in the wind.
He ought, of course, to have been there, and when he had announced to Mr. Stuart, the leader, his intention of playing truant for one whole, golden morning, he had been received with frowns. But that had not daunted Paul. It took a good deal more than a Mr. Stuart, in fact, to daunt him. And so he had risen before the sun and taken his stick and his breakfast, and departed for a long, solitary climb up South Barrule. Dick Hartley had offered to come as well, but Paul had refused. In the first place he wanted to be alone; in the second, he really did not want Dick of all people, however much he loved him, just then; and thirdly, he had still a sense of missionary responsibility, and he declined to deplete the staff for a single day by another worker.
Nevertheless, he was there himself on that day because he was rapidly reaching a frame of mind which would probably make the C.S.S.M., and many other evangelical activities, finally impossible. Mr. Stuart, for example—he reflected on Mr. Stuart. He was a nice, big, old gentleman whom parents liked. He had no visible vices of any sort. He liked a really big dinner in the midday on Sunday. He played cricket on the sands with a kindly smile and the aptitude of a rhinoceros. He told impossible school stories fifty years old when preaching on the sands, and the moral of them all was the same—the necessity for a clean heart. As for his own heart, he was quite sure that it was clean. He was Church of England, but he had only one definite theological belief—Salvation was by Faith Alone without Works. But he had one strong negation—he believed that Confirmation was unbiblical and wrong. And, instructively enough, it was over Confirmation that Paul was beginning to jib.
Possibly it is necessary, at this point, to say something as to the methods and devices of a C.S.S.M. There may yet be the uninitiated. In the first place, then, a staff of voluntary workers, female and male, is drawn together during a summer month at some popular seaside resort, which should, if possible, have sands rather than a beach, and be to some extent "select." This latter is partly due to the fact that the Mission aims more especially at the children of the better classes, but also because, whereas the C.S.S.M. can compete with the more ordinary nigger-minstrel troupe and itinerant show, nowadays these things are done, at the bigger holiday places, upon so lavish and Satanic a scale, that the funds of the Mission are scarcely large enough to provide adequate equipment for honest competition with them. However, if the staff be wisely chosen—a blue or two, or at least some men in recognised blazers, are necessary, as well as ladies with good voices—much may be done. On an ordinary day, after a prayer meeting, this staff proceeds to the sands. Some members wander up and down the seashore distributing attractive cards of invitation to children, and engaging parents in amiable conversation where possible. The others, chiefly the masculine section, throw off coats, and with hearty enthusiasm commence to build a pulpit. Some roving children will inevitably be persuaded to help, and the crowd grows as the pulpit is decorated with seaweed, flowers, shells, and stones, with a suitable text outlined upon it. "JESUS only," or "God is Love"; but occasionally the unusual is worth trying—"Ephphatha" or "Two Sparrows" or "Five Smooth Stones." And finally the banner is hoisted and the service merrily begins.
Choruses with variations play a large part—"Let the sunshine in," "Let the sunshine out," "Let the sunshine all round about"; "Step by step with Jesus"; "We are building day by day" (and there are actions in that); but the Scriptures are read to sword drill ("The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword"), and the addresses are short and breezy. The notices always take a long while. Walks for the girls, games for the boys, sports for both—excursions, picnics, competitions; cheery exhortations to "Watch for the Banner," or "Come to the House"; and lastly, special services for boys and girls indoors in the evenings. These latter are the ultimate hook. At them, many a man and woman has accepted Christ in youth with real sincerity and determination.
Paul threw himself heart and soul into all this. He did a great part in making religion seem to the holiday-makers what it was truly and happily to himself, the central joy and inspiration of life. If any were inclined to think that attendance at a mission might be a poor way of spending a holiday, they had only to watch Paul for a while. He was in love with Christ, and he was indifferent to the world's opinion that it might be indecent to show it as brazenly as a pair of Cockney lovers on the top of a motor-bus. In which conclusion both Paul and the lovers are undoubtedly and altogether right.
And yet Paul was troubled. Mr. Stuart's bland piety was new to him; the workers' robust ignorance had him by the throat; above all the scorning of a ceremony (he would not have said a sacrament) which he had come to feel had behind it the authority of an Institution that he was finding increasingly necessary to the interpretation of the Bible, while it might be a small thing in itself, worried him. And it worried him the more because nobody else—not even Dick—was worried; while behind everything, lay the ever-deepening shadow of his father's refusal to see one particle of evidence or necessity for the Church.
But still another influence had laid fingers on Paul's life, although he knew it not yet. He had come out that morning definitely to seek something, definitely to rest himself on something. Paul had always loved nature; he had always "been one" (as his mother would have said) for a country walk; and he had written verses to chestnut-trees in May and beech-trees in Autumn. Yet for all that, the beauty of the world had ever been a secondary thing—something you enjoyed because you were satisfied. But that morning he had come to it because he was not satisfied. And he lay now, almost immovable, introspective, peering at the tiny heather-bells, taking definite note of a fragment of moss, seeing with delight the veins of colour in the small stones. Things were beautiful, he told himself, beautiful in themselves; also they were unfathomable; and the joy of them was a caress to his troubled spirit.
Presently he sighed, and rolled over on his back, staring up and away into the vast, distant blue, watching, as the minutes sped, a pin-point of white come out of nothing, gather, build itself with others, form a tiny cloud, and trail off across the sparkling sea. Paul felt himself incredibly small; saw himself, definitely, less than nothing, for the first time in his life. And was content.
(2)
When he entered the dining-room of the "House," the others were already at lunch. The Mission party were housed in a typical, tall flat-chested house on the front, of the kind that one finds inevitably along all the shores of Britain, houses of apparently one period, as if the English middle-class had found the sea simultaneously in a generation. That, indeed, did happen. The room itself was threadbare. Everything in it from the furniture to the wall-paper, was thin, and aped solidity. The very linen on the table knew that it was cheap. Only where a scarlet fuchsia flamed in an earthen pot on the window-ledge, was there depth.
Mr. and Mrs. Stuart, and the ladies, were not lodged there. The men of the party had it as much to themselves as the admiring followers of Henderson (who had played cricket for his county) and Leather, a Church Missionary Society Islington missionary from India, would allow them. But besides these two, and Dick, and a lad of seventeen whom Henderson tutored, a stranger was at lunch that day. Dick introduced him.
"Hullo, Paul," he said, "you're not so late as you might be. Let me introduce you to Mr. Childers."
"How do you do?" said Paul correctly, eyeing him.
The newcomer rose easily, and held out his hand. He was fair, slight, a little bowed, and perhaps forty. But it was hard to say his age. He took Paul's hand firmly, and met his glance with a curiously remote frankness.
"Mr. Childers is a storybook uncle from foreign parts, Paul," said Dick. "Aileen Childers introduced me this morning, and I persuaded him to come in to lunch. He is just back from India."
Paul, not in the least understanding why, was suddenly aware that there was hostility in the room, but it did not come from the stranger. He glanced round. Leather, who had finished his cold mutton, had pushed his plate back slightly after his manner, and was looking puzzled and a little annoyed.
"To escape the nephews and nieces," said Childers smiling, "and to meet Mr. Leather."
"How jolly," said Paul eagerly, taking his seat. "What part of India were you in?" He was always eager to hear of heathen lands.
"I've travelled pretty extensively," returned the other, "but recently I've been living in Bombay for some months."
"In the native quarter," said Dick, playing with his fork.
Something in his tone caught Paul's attention again. He looked more closely at the visitor. "Were you doing missionary work?" he asked.
Childers shook his head. "No," he said; "indeed, on the contrary, I went to learn."
"The language?" persisted Paul, still at sea.
"I learnt that at Cambridge years ago," said Childers.
"You don't say so. Did you take Oriental Languages, or whatever they call it?"
"No. The fact is, Mr. Kestern, I learnt it from Indian students, and I was out in India studying Indian religious mysticism."
"Oh!" said Paul, and glanced swiftly again at Leather. He understood at last. Little as he knew of the subject (though he had heard Father Vassall speak of it), he knew that a man who studied Indian mysticism, and the Rev. Herbert Leather, C.M.S., Benares, would not have much in common. Leather could play most games and preach a "downright" Gospel sermon, but the Apostles were the only mystics in whom he believed and he would not have called them by that title. Even less than Dick was he metaphysical, and even more than Paul at his worst was he dogmatic.
He spoke now. "As a matter of fact we are having a bit of an argument, Kestern," he said. "Mr. Childers seems to believe in Hinduism."
"I never said that, Mr. Leather," put in Childers.
The other shrugged his shoulders. There was something of contempt in the gesture, and the stranger seemed to read a challenge there.
"I did say that we often did the Brahmin less than justice, and that the Yogi adept had usually true spirituality," he said.
"Do you mean the fellows who sit on spikes and swing from hooks on festivals?" enquired Dick, bewildered.
The other laughed a little, pleasantly. "That is not all they do, and, put like that, it certainly sounds foolish, but still those who are genuine among them, do sometimes show the complete power of spirit over matter in that way," he replied.
"A pack of liars and scoundrels," said Leather hotly, brimming over.
Childers' eyes flamed suddenly, and as suddenly the light in them died down. He kept his temper perfectly. "I do not think so," he said with serene control.
"But you do not mean that they have any power which Christians have not got, surely?" queried Paul.
"I do indeed," said Childers, "if you mean by Christians the average followers of Christ."
Leather drummed with his fingers on the table.
Paul stared into the other's face. There was something so subdued and yet so powerful about it, that he was very deeply interested. "Will you explain a little?" he asked. "We don't hear of these things from that point of view."
"Well, Mr. Kestern, I do not know that there is much to explain. After all, prayer and fasting have a prominent place in all forms of Christian thought, have they not? And by prayer and fasting these men so subdue the body that the spirit in them can live almost independently of bodily aids, and even of itself affect material things."
"Prayer to a false god never did that for a man," retorted Leather.
"We should probably differ in our definition of false," returned Childers courteously.
"But look here,"—the missionary leant over the table—"do you mean you've ever seen them do anything that was not a clever conjuring trick?"
"Most certainly," said Childers.
Leather threw himself back. "You can do the same yourself, I suppose," he sneered.
"A little," said Childers, "though I am really a mere novice."
The other completely lost his temper. "Show us then," he said curtly.
"Oh yes, do," cried Paul, but in a wholly different tone.
The elder man glanced from one to the other, and then back again to Paul. He hesitated. "I would rather not," he said. "One ought not to play tricks."
"Exactly," cut in Leather. "Tricks."
Childers tightened his lips, and once again fire flashed in his eyes. "Oh, I say," cried Dick, and stopped. A little silence fell on them. The situation was distinctly strained.
It was odd, Paul thought afterwards, how time seemed to stand still. The little storm had come up so suddenly, and the commonplace meal and room had so swiftly taken on a new aspect. Leather was insufferably rude. It struck Paul that here, again, was the harsh dogmatic attitude that would not even allow that there could be anything else to see or to believe. He felt suddenly that he must end it. "Mr. Childers," he said, "if you could show us what you mean we should be very glad."
The eyes of the two met once more across the table, and Childers made up his mind. "I dislike this sort of thing," he said, "but perhaps sometimes it may be of value. Has Mr. Leather a pin?"
Leather got up and took one from a painted satin pincushion that hung on the wall by the fire. They were all so supremely grave that no one saw the humour of it, especially the visitor, who would have seen none in any case.
Childers pushed his chair back a few feet from the table. "Mr. Kestern," he said, "would you clear a place on the table? I would rather touch nothing myself. And then perhaps Mr. Leather would set the pin there. Let it lie on the cloth, please."
Bewildered, Paul obeyed. The others drew in eagerly. No one knew what was to be attempted, but all were eager to see. Even Leather showed keen interest.
Paul pushed back the potatoes and a tablespoon, and swept a few crumbs to one side. Leather dropped the pin into the cleared space, threw himself back into his chair, and thrust his hands into his pockets. Dick leant his elbows on the table and stared at their visitor.
"Now," said Childers, "would you mind keeping quiet? I will not ask you to keep your eyes wholly on the pin, or you will say you have been hypnotised or something of that sort, but please watch it and me, and do not speak."
In the tense quiet that followed, Paul threw a look at his companions. Dick was puzzled, Leather sceptical and attempting indifference, Henderson and his pupil a-quiver with equal curiosity. Only Childers sat on serene, his eyes on the commonplace pin that lay so still on the table. From without, the sea's murmur came softly in. There was a patch of sunlight on the white cloth. The pin lay clearly in the very centre of it. It lay quite still, naturally, and shone in the light.
Still? Was it still? Paul caught his breath.
For then, as they watched, as the clock ticked the minutes loudly on the mantelshelf, as the boy beside him breathed hard, and Paul himself clasped and unclasped his hands, the tiny shining thing stirred, trembled, flickered as it were, made spasmodic movements, and finally rose, trembling, to stand on its point. Paul swallowed in his throat, and Leather cried out. "It's a trick," he exclaimed sharply. The pin fell back silently.
"Oh no, how could it be?" said Childers quietly. "I am not so good a conjurer as all that."
"How on earth——" began Dick.
Leather stood up. "I am playing cricket at three," he said abruptly. "I fear I must go. I—I beg your pardon if I was—was rude, Mr. Childers. But—but——"
"That is quite all right. Perhaps I should not have said what I did. But there is nothing really strange in what you have seen, Mr. Leather. I hope I have not put you off your game."
All that afternoon, Paul and the visitor sat by the sea on the sand and talked together. The elder man was a quiet, serious, thoughtful person who made no attempt whatever to destroy any of his young companion's beliefs, and really very little to instruct him. But Paul was inexorable. His inchoate eyes fastened on the other, he heard of auras and astral bodies and familiar spirits with an ever-deepening amazement. It was not that the things themselves made much of a contribution to his mind; he was not, perhaps, ready for them; but it was Childers himself, especially in contrast to Mr. Stuart, Leather, Henderson, Dick, who affected him profoundly. It was his first contact with a true but alien spirituality, his first lesson in comparative religion. He saw at once how closely a scheme of things that allowed for transition planes of spiritual life, the interweaving of the material and spiritual, and the help of unseen beings, fitted in with Catholicism. Here, from another source, came confirmation of his new surmises. And above all, here was lacking that ignorant, dogmatic temper of evangelicalism, indifferent to beauty and living, with which he was finding himself increasingly at odds.
Towards the end of the afternoon, he ventured the supreme question which had been on his lips for long, but which he was more than half-afraid to speak.
"Mr. Childers," he asked, "what do your spirit-guides say of Christ?"
The clear blue eyes looked into his serenely. "They do not say much," he said.
"But why not?"
"He was strikingly adept," said Childers, "and has advanced far beyond us. But we shall see Him at some distant time, if we continue steadily to progress."
"But we know Him," objected Paul, "here and now."
"You feel the influence of His Spirit, for all spiritual living has left its impress which those who follow after may enjoy along the road."
"Along the road?"
"Yes. Prayer, Fasting, Self-discipline. It is very hard."
Paul shook his head. "'My yoke is easy and My burden is light,'" he quoted.
"That was not all He said," said Childers gravely.
And Paul, stricken by a host of texts, sat on very still.
"Do you yourself find God?" he asked at last.
"He is very far above us," replied Childers. "It is scarcely a question of God."
"'He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,'" returned the boy eagerly.
"And what precisely does that mean?" asked Childers, rather tenderly.
Paul leapt to his feet. "Ah, what!" he cried. "I see that that's the question. But I will not believe that God is far, Mr. Childers; He is near, very near, in the Person of His Son."
After a moment, Childers, too, got up. He had decided not to speak. He linked his arm in the other's affectionately. "Let us go," he said.
(3)
The month drew to its close; fair success attended the Mission; and one day Dick and Paul said good-bye to the rest, and to a smiling, cheering crowd of children on the station platform, setting off in the toy train which steamed importantly by the fuchsia-hedges and the old tin mines, to Douglas and civilisation. They were off to Keswick, for the great Convention. Paul had long wanted to go, and was all eagerness for it. His companion had been several times before, and, as always, was the more steady and self-contained. At Liverpool they stayed a night with friends, and were walking through the little Westmoreland town the following evening.
The streets were fairly full. Clergymen in semi-clerical dress—black coat and grey trousers, or vice versa—and moustaches abounded, but still more, young earnest men in grey flannels and bright smiling young women. Little parties moved up and down the street, frequently singing or humming hymns. Fragments of hymn-tunes drifted out of open windows, and a party leisurely rowing shorewards, were singing well in unison. Paul began himself to sing. "'Oh that will be Glory for me,'" he hummed, his head high, scenting the pine-woods.
"You old crow," said Dick.
"Well, if I can't sing," retorted Paul, "I can at least make a joyful noise."
"Well, then, make it in company where it's drowned, and not alone," said Dick, grinning at him.
Next morning Paul did sing in company. The friends stayed at a house taken regularly for the period of the Convention by an elderly lady, and charitably filled with missionaries, ordinands, and young clergymen. She called them all her "boys," and they took it in turns to conduct family prayers. Moreover they went with her in a body wherever she went, and, truth to tell, she was rather proud of them. One carried her umbrella, another her Bible, a third her hymn-book, and so on. This year two of them were coloured. Thus went Paul and Dick to the big tent for the first morning's meeting.
It was packed with several thousand people drawn from a large variety of Protestant denominations, and the speakers were a Church of England bishop, a Baptist layman, and a Methodist missionary. An Adventist led in prayer, or at least Paul gathered that he was an Adventist from the intimate information he volunteered in the course of it, as to the details and date of the Second Coming of Christ. The vast congregation adopted many attitudes for prayer, but, chiefly, that of the half-bend; the chairman announced that he trusted the utmost unity and harmony would prevail throughout the several meetings; it was understood that the subject of the Sacraments and such-like controversies was to be avoided; and a motto in red and white burgeoned immense over the platform: "ALL ONE in Christ Jesus."
Throughout the week, Paul followed the usual course of a member of the Convention. He bought a new hymn-book of "The Hymns of Consecration and Faith," and a new Bible, a "Baxter," whose leaves were also neatly cut away in index form to facilitate the finding of the more minor Minor Prophets. He also bought a small text framed in straws for his mother, but, the exultation of the moment which had prompted the purchase having worked off, gave it away next day. He went to Friar's Crag by moonlight, and sang (in company) "There'll be no shadows," and "When the mists have rolled away." On the Sunday he went to outdoor meetings. There was an official Convention open-air, but the market-place was quite full of other open-airs, conducted by people whose ideas were not sufficiently expressed in the central one; and there was also to be seen a somewhat dirty, very ragged and unkempt prophet who had come all the way from the South on foot to denounce modern Christianity in the cause of Humanitarian Deism, and whose rabid sincerity attracted Paul. Finally he went (out of curiosity) to a meeting for men only addressed by a prominent evangelical lady whose subject was "The Personal Devil," and to a series of meetings in which a new baptism of the Spirit was being taught, the idea of the pastor who conducted them being that if one only claimed the promise, one would become full—the emphasis lay there—full of the Holy Spirit. These meetings continued sometimes until midnight and were occasionally noteworthy for the Gift of Tongues. But as there were not found any who could interpret, the authorities, remembering St. Paul, rather cold-shouldered them.
Two days before the friends were to leave, as they were coming from a service in the tent, they ran straight into Edith Thornton. Paul gave a shout of surprise and ran forward eagerly. "You here!" he exclaimed.
She turned, and he saw that her sister Maud was with her.
"Oh, Mr. Kestern," cried the elder girl, "we wondered if we should see you! We heard that you were coming on to Keswick after Port o' Man, but it was only just the other day that we got the chance of coming ourselves."
"But how topping to see you," said Paul, delighted, shaking hands. "I say, do let me introduce my friend. Mr. Hartley; Miss Thornton, Miss Edith Thornton. Where are you staying?"
"At 'The Pines.'"
"I know—the Y.W.C.A. house. When did you arrive?"
"Saturday. We might have met before, only really there are so many girls in the house, and the Matron arranges a full programme for us each day. Where are you staying, Mr. Hartley?"
Paul turned more directly to Edith, who had scarcely spoken. "What luck!" he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling.
Edith glanced cautiously at her sister, who was talking now animatedly to Dick. "Paul, isn't it?" she said. "And I do want to see you so much."
"We must fix up something. What are you doing this afternoon?"
"We're all going for a picnic on the lake."
"Then we'll come too."
She laughed. "You can't, you know. Unless you come and be introduced to Matron and she invites you. And that she won't do unless you please her immensely—which I fear is not likely."
"Oh, I say—why ever not?"
The girl flushed, and laughed again.
"Why?" cried the intrigued Paul.
"I shan't tell you."
"Oh, do!"
"Well, if you must know, because you won't behave. You give yourself away too openly. Girls, staying at the Y.W.C.A. in Keswick Week, are supposed to—to—to——"
"To what?"
"To get on without men, anyway. Unless they're properly engaged."
"But aren't you ever free?"
"I might be."
"When? I know—to-morrow morning, early. We'll cut the prayer meeting for once, and go and walk by the lake."
"Oh, Paul, if we could!"
"Will you try?"
(4)
And so, on that last day, Paul and Edith wandered off in the early morning by the road that leads along the lake, and exchanged impressions. It was a cold summer that year in the North, and there was a drifting mist over the water which the sun had not yet dispersed. High above it, the great hills lifted themselves, and there was a sound of tinkling water on the air, for it had rained heavily the night before and the little rills were full. The sky, too, was alive with soft lights of grey and white and blue. Where the road bends out of sight of the last houses, Paul took the hand that swung by the girl's side, and, remote and virginal, they walked together hand in hand.
"Well, Paul dear," she said, "tell me everything." And Paul tried to tell her....
"And Keswick," he said at last, "only sums it all up. You can't escape from it, Edith. People believe all sorts of different things even here. 'All one in Christ'—but they aren't. And how can they be, unless there is some voice to interpret Him to us?"
"But it can't be the Church of Rome, Paul!" she cried, in real distress.
"You say that," said Paul, "but why? Because you've a distorted notion of the Church of Rome. Look here, Edith, we won't go into it now, but I tell you thateverythingI was told about Rome, turns out to be wrong. The more I see, the more I hear, the more I think, the more reasonable it is."
"But you can't, can't, can't, give up all you've believed and taught about Jesus."
"Dear, one isn't asked to give up anything. Father Vassall believes in Him just as much as you or I or my father. Indeed, he believes more, Edith. I feel that in this place. These people say they believe in Him, but they don't think out what they mean. He is God, Edith, truly, really, altogether God. And if the Baby in the cradle could be God, why shouldn't the Sacrament be Jesus? Why shouldn't he choose that veil as He chose the other? And see what it would mean! There He would be, for our worship, our service, really, bodily, spiritually too. As He was in Bethlehem, He would be the same there for ever. And there is His Church speaking for Him, guarding Him."
"How can it speak for Him?"
Paul made a characteristic gesture. "'He that heareth you, heareth Me,'" he quoted. "And the first Council—'It seems good to the Holy Ghost, and to us.' Think of the arrogance of that! And St. Paul—'The Church, the Pillar (that is the Upholder), and the Ground (that is the Basis) of the Faith.' The Church, not the Bible. And: 'We have the Spirit of God.'"
"Mr. Irving said that of us all in the tent last night."
"I know. But 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' Have we unity? And who was teaching Mr. Irving's particular gospel of the fulness of the Spirit, a hundred, no, ten years ago? Whereas the Catholic Church——"
He broke off, and loosed her hand. They stood on the fragrant, peaty soil, strewn with brown pine needles, under the crags above the lake, and the further rocks were just breaking through the mist. A faint sound of early singing floated over to them. They listened.
Let me come closer to Thee, Jesus,Yes, closer day by day;Let me lean harder on Thee, Jesus,Yes, harder all the way.
"Do you know who wrote that?" Paul queried.
"No."
"A monk, who believed that our Lord was in the Sacrament on the Altar."
"Oh, Paul!"
"It's true. It's a kind of omen. Edith, do you know I see a sort of vision nowadays. I see Jesus, planning, choosing, endowing His little band, and making them His Church. 'As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.' I see that same Church growing all down the years, always misunderstood, always persecuted, always other-worldly at bottom, and always teaching the same one faith. Its voice, His voice; its power, His power; its heart, His heart. And I seem to see Jesus beckoning me there."
"Oh, Paul, don't, don't. Pray, pray!"
"I have prayed, dear, and as I pray—oh, Edith, I don't know! But nothingstopsmy seeing. It just gets clearer. Everything fits. Little things sort of seem to come my way. If it's wrong, surely our Lord Whom Idolove, Edith, and Whom I have tried to serve, won't let me go wrong."
"But suppose,—suppose it's a temptation?"
"I know. Dad says it's the Devil. Exactly. 'They called the Master of the House Beelzebub, and how much more they of His Household?'Everythingfits."
"Oh, Paul," she cried, "there you go again! I can't argue with you. I——"
"No, because it's unanswerable. And it's been so for two thousand years."
"Paul, Paul, dopray!"
"Darling, I do pray. But what can I do? Mother says: 'Cling to the Book—Don't let go the Word,' but the Word itself seems to me to point that way. I can't help it; it does. I don'twantto be a Roman Catholic. I'dhateto be. But, Edith, oh Edith, Edith, why is there noanswerwhen one prays?"
"Paul, there is, there is!"
He turned on her. "Then you pray. Now. Here. God will answer you, perhaps."
"Oh, I can't, Paul. Not with you here. I wouldn't dare."
He caught her hands. "Oh, darling, do. I'm so tired of begging and crying for light. I seem always to have to be the leader, and I do so want to be led."
The girl's eyes filled with swift tears. "Paul, darling," she whispered.... "Well, I will."
They knelt in the shadow of the pines, unashamed, and in the air there was a tremble of a sound—the ripple of the tiny wavelets on the beach beneath, and the sough of the pines above. They knelt hand in hand, like two children; and after a moment or two she prayed aloud, in a hushed whisper.
"Oh God" (she said), "Thou canst see us. Thou art here. Do, do, show Paul—show us both, what is right and true, and what we ought to do. Don't let us be led astray from Thee. Don't let us be frightened of following Thee. Just let us—let us draw closer to Thee and lean harder on Thee, all the way. For Jesus Christ's sake."
Sobs choked her Amen, and Paul, his eyes wet, put his arm about her. So clasped they knelt. And the little waves rippled on the shore and the wind soughed in the pines above.
They walked home soberly. At the entrance to the town, Edith put another question. "Paul," she said, "tell me, haven't youlikedKeswick?"
He was silent for a moment. Then: "Edith, shall I tell you the truth?"
"Yes—and always."
"Well, I've loved it so much that I've almost hated it. Our friends are so sincere, so good, and I seem to know it all so well. It's myhome, but I'm beginning to feel myself a stranger among my own people."
The girl swallowed that stupid lump that would keep rising in her throat. "Dear," she said, "will you promise me one thing?"
"What?"
"Promise."
"You must tell me what it is first. I can't tie my hands, even for you."
"Well, promise that whatever happens to you, you'll never laugh at all this."
They were at her corner, and the boy looked into her grave face. "I won't," he said. "I promise. I owe it too much. But, Edith, one thing I won't promise. I won't promise that, if I ever see it to be false, I won't fight it with every weapon on which I can lay hand."
And she dropped her eyes from his, forlorn, for she saw that it was not in him to say more.
(5)
Paul went to Ripon, and Dick, saying good-bye for some time, to the South. He was to be ordained in September, and had to interview his prospective Vicar, somewhere in North London. Paul was staying with Judson for a few days, that Judson whom he had hardly known at the college feast, but who had come rather more intimately into his life of late.
Judson was a Congregationalist, and his father was a minister of the denomination in Ripon. He himself was a short, bullet-headed sort of person, whom Paul usually thought of as a bullet. At any rate, there did not seem to be much room for emotionalism or sentiment in his make-up, and he had a bullet-like way of boring into things. He had bored straight into Paul. Blunt, definite, ready, he had liked Paul, and had started to call and to demand to be called upon. His rooms reflected in a negative way his personality. Being poor, they remained poorly furnished, but even on tuppence-halfpenny they might have been less hard. On either side of the mantelpiece were two humorous coloured plates out ofPrinters' Pie. Paul thought they symbolised the man. How anyone could look at the same two jokes for ever, one on each side of the mantel-piece, used to strike him as an incredible mystery. He thought at first that it meant that Judson had no soul at all.
It was when he discovered his mistake that he began to like the man. For Judson had a soul. He went regularly, without any advertisement of it, to a Congregational chapel. He addressed Congregational meetings in villages at considerable inconvenience and quite unobtrusively. He and Paul alone at St. Mary's had the sin of public preaching to their charge. And Paul was beginning to find out that he alone neither mocked at nor disregarded his own religious struggles. Judson surveyed the Catholic Church with a shrewd eye. He left Paul to make enquiries, but he took them seriously. In his rooms he wore carpet slippers and a blazer, and smoked an ugly pipe, but, feet on his mantelpiece and hands in his pockets, he was prepared to admit that there were many points of view.
Hearing, then, that Paul was going to the Isle of Man and Keswick, he had persuaded him to come for a few days to Ripon on his way South. It was inconvenient that, at the time, a Congregational conference was taking place in Ripon, but as money for train fares was a consideration to both friends, Paul's visit was not delayed. He himself was glad, as a matter of fact, that the conference was sitting. Congregationalism was not immediately on his road, but he thought he would turn off to see a little of it as he passed.
Three ministers were staying in the house, and the friends were out of it most days. They made sundry excursions, and lunched away. That first afternoon, Paul was taken to his friend's father's chapel. He was shown affectionately round. Judson opened the door of the roomy, clean, pitch-pine vestry with an air, and took obvious pride in a new pulpit of considerable dimensions. He explained the heating apparatus with the same sponsorial solicitude that a priest takes when he shows a visitor a new altar. He opened and played the new American organ. He exhibited, in short, an unhushed genial interest in and affection for a series of what already seemed to Paul incredibly ugly and unattractive things. For Paul had never admired his own mission hall. He had never even thought of admiration, or the reverse, in connection with it. It had stood for use, not for ornament. But Judson evidently saw in his chapel beautiful and holy ground. He did not take off his shoes, because he was not a ritualist and that was not his way, but he liked the heating apparatus to shine brightly and to burn the best coal.
It was much the same in the Minster. There had been a time when Paul had thought all cathedrals "high" and tending to Popery. Now he saw in Ripon a lovely thing misused and defaced. The choir was full of cane chairs, rank on rank, for it alone was chiefly used. They stood in platoons on the wide, dignified steps leading up to the altar, steps the stone of whose very approach was all but entirely concealed by an expensive red Turkey carpet, presented, they were impressively informed, by a lesser Royalty, when staying with the Bishop who had been popular at Court. The altar frontal had the appearance of red plush, with a multi-coloured Maltese cross worked upon it, flanked by lilies. It had cost seventy-five pounds sixteen shillings. They were told so. Also the two shades of red were locked in a violent argument.
They saw the high, oak-roofed Lady Chapel, which was lined with never-opened books, called a library, and used for a choir vestry. The light streamed through its lovely window upon dog-eared piles of Tallis's chant-books. And in the North Transept, they stood in front of an immense and decorated Georgian memorial for which pillars had been broken and carvings cut away, a memorial which was approached still by ancient altar steps, and on the top of which reposed a Georgian figure in coloured stone who reclined upon his side, one elbow propping up his bewigged head, and one hand, with lace at the wrist, frozen for ever in a timeless pat upon a bulging stomach.
Judson saw pleasant humanity in the effigy, the verger magnificence, Paul an artistic and religious abomination of desolation, and they all three ascribed their own feelings to the all-seeing deity. The sunlight continued to dapple the stone which ever way it was.
They went, also, to Fountains Abbey. Judson expressed contempt for the decadent English aristocracy, excited thereto by some subtle influence arising from the well-cut, trim lawns, and much admired the view of a classical temple which is to be seen through a well-placed gap. He admired it to the extent of a pipe upon the spot. Within the ruin, Paul sat on a fallen stone, and fell on silence. Returning from a tour of inspection, Judson surveyed him with amusement.
"Are you brooding upon a sonnet, Kestern?" he enquired, feeling for his matches again.
Paul's tragic youth forbade him to reply.
"Well, those blessed monks of yours did themselves proud, anyway," continued his companion. Puff-puff. "Wonder if we could get up a picnic here."
The distant hoot of a char-a-banc appeared more or less to answer him.
"Thank God it's a ruin," said Paul savagely; "let's go."
"Wonder how long it took 'em to build it," remarked Judson as they walked away.
"Generations," said Paul. "When they first came, they starved in the forest on berries while they ploughed and planted lands, and lived in daub and wattle huts. Slowly, piece by piece, they raised all that, to the honour and glory of God. The place was a prayer in stone."
"They knew how to choose a site," remarked the practical Judson. "Wonder if it could be repaired?"
"And I wonder if it was answered," said Paul.
"What?"
"The prayer. Does the ruin look like it?"
"You're a rum ass," said Judson affectionately.
Paul kicked a stone savagely from his path. "I'm sick of being called a rum ass by everyone," he said. "I see nothing rum or asinine in what I said."
"You wouldn't," said Judson. "But then we aren't all poets," he added.
"Nor am I," retorted Paul gloomily, "and anyhow what I said had nothing to do with poetry."
"Well, let's get lunch at that place by the gate. The poetry in a ham sandwich is what I want at present."
Paul returned to earth. "I could do with two," he echoed with enthusiasm.
(6)
That night, over and after a "high" Yorkshire tea, Paul was able to study Congregational ministers. A round dozen of them sat in Mr. Judson's study beneath a large engraving of the late Mr. Spurgeon in the act of preaching from the pulpit of his Tabernacle. Paul was interested in their apparently infinite variety. There was the type he knew well in the Church of England Claxted circles, the sincere, lovable, earnest, bearded sort who do not smoke and are rather silent in a general conversation. There was the hearty, bluff, unclerical sort, who do smoke and who talk a good deal and tell humorous anecdotes. One such related with great good humour how he had been knocked up one rainy night in mistake for a High Church parson, and asked to bicycle five miles to baptize a dying baby a few hours old. A young man in a corner, in a Roman collar and a frock coat, asked if he went.
"Go? Not I! D'you suppose I'd go out on a cold night to sprinkle half a dozen drops of water over a baby? I told the fellow I was sorry, but that if he was wise, he'd go home to bed, as I proposed to go. And I shut the window before he answered."
Two or three laughed, Paul could not see why. "That's like you, Joe," said Mr. Judson.
"I should have gone," said the young man in the corner gravely.
"More fool you then," retorted Joe, apparently living up to his reputation for bluff good humour.
"I do not think so," said the young man. "The ceremony may mean a great deal to the mother, and the Church ought to be human enough to cater for all. That kind of attitude gives people a wrong impression of Nonconformity."
"Not so wrong as the impression you'd give," put in a third missionary hotly. "The Church of Christ cannot cater for sacerdotalism."
"What did you think of the Moderator's address?" asked Mr. Judson of the company in general, a little too quickly, Paul thought. But he thought also that he had seen yet another type in ministerial Congregationalism.
(7)
Rolling Londonwards, watching the speeding fields and the quiet sleepy Midland villages, Paul turned over the kaleidoscope of his vacation and realised that he was approaching a return to Claxted with something like dismay. Dismay, however, did not last long. He was determining at all costs to preach something of the new spirit that was in him, and to show Lambeth Court and Apple Orchard Road that with broader sympathies and a more theological outlook could also march all the zeal and fervour of evangelicalism. The train slowed down for Leicester. A figure of outstanding dress and height detached itself from the little throng of waiting passengers, and selected his compartment. The newcomer carried an attaché case, a leather package of odd and awkward size, a suitcase, and a box of lantern slides, and he was moreover encumbered with a travelling rug, a silk hat, an overcoat, and a stick. Paul assisted with these, and the stranger sat down opposite him. Paul's eyes took in his gaitered legs and his silk apron, and rested even more enquiringly on his purple stock. It was his first personal meeting with a bishop. They two were alone in the carriage.
"Thanks," said the Bishop. "I'm sorry to be hung about with things like this, but I don't seem able to dispense with any of them."
He sounded quite human, and even friendly. Paul wondered who he was and if he ought to introduce "my lord" at once into the conversation. However he blackballed the idea. "I know," he said. "I always seem to accumulate heaps of things myself."
"Well," said the other, a twinkle in his eye, "it's a nuisance, you know, being a bishop, and especially a bishop from abroad, home on leave. You've got to fit in so much. There's lecturing and passing proofs and preaching, and a bishop has to carry so many things around with him."
"Does he?" said Paul, smiling and meeting the other's mood, "I fear I don't know what he wants. But—er—may we introduce ourselves—er—my lord?"
The big, clean-shaven, young-looking prelate chuckled pleasantly. "Certainly," he said. "I'm the Bishop of Mozambique, and as I'm only a colonial, you needn't call me 'my lord,' you know, unless you like."
Paul looked at him with increased interest. Of course; he ought to have recognised him. He was an extreme High Church bishop, not unknown to controversial fame. "I'm Paul Kestern, of St. Mary's," he said.
"Oxford?"
"No, Cambridge. I'm sorry. Or at least I'm not really."
The other laughed outright. "We'll agree to differ, and get on famously," he said. "And where do you come from just now, Mr. Kestern?"
Paul determined in a moment to be quite frank. "A Children's Special Service Mission in the Isle of Man, the Keswick Convention, and the Congregationalist Congress in Ripon," he said, very gravely.
"Good," said the other. "From which I gather you are a Nonconformist candidate for the ministry."
"Wrong," said Paul. "I'm Church of England, or I think I am still. And I'm going to be a missionary, or"—and suddenly for the first time he saw, clearly, the gulf that might be ahead—"I pray God that I am."
The Bishop's smile died away, but his tone was none the less kindly when he spoke after a few minutes' quiet scrutiny of the other's face. Then: "Mr. Kestern," he said, "I take it, if you won't think me rude, that you are going through the mill like the rest of us have had to do."
And Paul, impulsively, nodded, and in a few minutes was opening his heart, while the miles slipped fast away and the train rushed as easily as destiny along its railed road.
"You can't be a Roman Catholic," said the Bishop decisively when Paul had finished.
"Why not?"
"Because you know too much history to believe in the Pope."
"Honestly," said Paul, "I see no reason in history to disbelieve in the Pope."
"His infallibility?"
"Vox corporis, vox capitis," retorted Paul; "and if the Church has no head, no ultimate authority, how can it speak?"
"The Church has ultimate authority. It resides in the whole college of bishops dispersed throughout the world. The Papal power is a growth due to various human circumstances, and in its final definition is contrary to the true Catholic faith."
"Surely that's what every heretic has said of every definition. That's what was said when every creed came to be formulated in order to safeguard the faith against the increasing theorising of men. That's what the Congregationalists say about the Sacraments."
"But the test lies in the acceptance of the new statement by the whole Catholic body."
Paul nodded eagerly. "And for four hundred years at least the whole Catholic body accepted Pope Leo's definition of the Papacy, which is good enough to justify it, and, sir, has the whole Church accepted your theory? Have even the English bishops accepted it? Are you not almost alone on the bench in your views?"
"Well, but judge for yourself. Read your Bible and pray. Is there a Pope in the Holy Scriptures? Wasn't the First Council of Jerusalem a meeting of the college of bishops?"
"And that," retorted Paul, "is what they said at Keswick. 'Read your Bible and pray.' Only, let alone the Pope, most of them don't see even a bishop at Jerusalem!"
The big man took it in good part. "Someone has been prompting you, young man," he said kindly.
"Father Vassall," replied Paul instantly.
"Ah! Have you ever been abroad?" The elder man's voice hardened subtly.
"No."
"Well, don't judge Roman Catholicism by its appearance in England. It's at its best here. It wears Sunday clothes. Priests don't keep mistresses in England, and the worship of the saints is not quite the idolatry it is in Italy."
Paul flushed suddenly, but sat silent.
"Concubinage is a regular thing in Spain," went on the other suavely. "In France they're very dubious about the Pope. In England, below the surface, they are as disunited pretty nearly as we are. In South America, the people would have more religion if they were still heathen."
Paul recalled, in a swift flood of memory, his meeting with Father Kenelm at Cambridge. He recalled his stories of immense adoring crowds, of persecution willingly endured, of heroic self-sacrifices for the propagation of the faith. Still more he remembered how the father, eagerly talking to him, had seemed to take it for granted that he was a Catholic; and how he, feeling that he must be honest, had said he was not; and how instantly, across the crowded drawing-room, without a trace of nervousness or any sense of indecorum, the sudden stab of the poignant question had flashed—"Oh, but Mr. Kestern, surely you love our Lord?" Would such a man condone immorality?
The boy's face hardened. "There was an Iscariot among the Apostles, Bishop," he said.
"Yes, one. Not eleven out of twelve."
The train began to slow down, and the Bishop stirred to gather his traps. "My lord," said Paul, curt in his ardour, "you merely propound a dilemma. Either the Holy Ghost has kept silence as to the essential central authority of the Church till He showed it to Anglo-Catholics seventy years ago, the devil triumphing meanwhile, or—or——"
"Eh?" queried the astonished Bishop.
"Or it is all a lie."
Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.—ISA. xlv.
Then Job answered and said: "Oh that I knew where I might find Him."—JOB xxiii.
There is no proof of God's existence, and you must first of all believe in it if you want to prove it. Where does he show himself? What does he save? What tortures of the heart, what disasters does he turn aside from all and each in the ruin of hearts? Where have we known or handled or embraced anything but his name? God's absence surrounds infinitely and even actually each kneeling suppliant, athirst for some humble personal miracle, and each seeker who bends over his papers as he watches for proofs like a creator; it surrounds the pitiful antagonism of all religions, armed against each other, enormous and bloody. God's absence rises like the sky over the agonising conflicts between good and evil, over the trembling heedfulness of the upright, over the immensity—still haunting me—of the cemeteries of agony, the charnal-heaps of innocent soldiers, the heavy cries of the shipwrecked. Absence! Absence! In the hundred thousand years that life has tried to delay death, there has been nothing on earth more fruitless than man's cries to divinity, nothing which gives so perfect an idea of silence.—HENRI BARBUSSE: Light (translated by Fitzwater Wray).
(1)
In Mr. Kestern's study the curtains were close drawn and no gas had been lit. They were heavy crimson curtains, thick and old-fashioned, and they hung motionless, completely screening the windows. A fire flickered fitfully in the grate, with so little light that the army of dancing invading shadows rushed even more and more tempestuously and overwhelmingly forward towards it. They leapt over the sombre-backed books in their close rows on the shelves around the room, flicking a letter tooled in gold here and there as they passed. In the corners they already ruled supreme. High upon the walls they hung, like gathered clouds. Only immediately before the grate, where the bigsecretairestood with its roll-top lid pushed back, was their kingdom not yet.
The little light showed the open desk, its half-filled and neatly-labelled pigeon-holes, its inkstand, blotter and loose papers. Left and right of the centre, the big drawers were all shut, save one, that gaped half-open. The heavy piece seemed almost as it were to brood over that drawer. It was seldom open. It held Paul's old school reports and essays and some ancient sermon notes, chiefly things he did not guess were still in existence. A few of them, disordered, lay half in, half out, tossed down there by a quick movement. One lay on the floor, white in the gloom, as it had fallen from the reader's hand.
The reader himself had slipped from his seat. The revolving chair in which he had been sitting, was pushed slightly back, and he himself was kneeling, head forward, face hid in his hands. Mr. Kestern often prayed there thus, busy at his sermons, and there was a footstool below the desk for him to kneel upon. But he was not kneeling on it now. His was no premeditated praying. He had dropped the manuscript, turned the gas hastily out, and fallen forward there, in one swift motion, some half-hour or more ago. The fire had thus begun to die, but he paid no heed. His head, with its hair already more nearly white than grey, had scarcely moved in his hands for all that time.
Yet if the man's bowed shoulders were all but motionless, the rapid agonised thoughts lanced this way and that without ceasing through his tortured soul. Now they were flying back down the years, revealing, like lightning flashes, other great moments in the drama of his son: the moment he had knelt praying—good God, how he had prayed!—and waiting for the news of the birth in the room above; the moment when he, and his wife with him this time, had knelt and wrestled with God in an agony for the life of the lad upon whom the consulting doctors were even then pronouncing a final decision. In each case, there had been steps at last outside announcing what had seemed and what he had acclaimed to be a veritable miracle. But now—ah! now....
"'Father, if it be possible...' 'The Lord, Who hath redeemed us from all evil, bless the lad...' 'Lord of All power and might...' 'Master...'"—it was in broken phrases that he prayed. It was, indeed, a prayer not truly of words at all. Mr. Kestern, stricken as he had never dreamed he could be stricken, flung his racked and aching soul at the feet of his God.
And it was all so still: the silent dance of the shadows, the silent existing of the heavy curtains and old-fashioned furniture, the silent, broken man. It was still outside in the suburban street, dank and unlovely in the dull December evening. It was still high up where the lowering clouds, heavy with snow that year, hid the moon. And God on His throne sat still.
"Oh, my God, spare me this thing.... Thou knowest.... Let not Satan triumph over me.... The boy is Thine—given, dedicated, bought;—save Thou my son, my only son. Yet not my will, but Thine be done.... Ah, but it cannot be Thy will—this deceit, this lie! O God of Truth, open his eyes that he may see wondrous things out of Thy Word...."
Knives, lances—each broken sentence was one such. And truly Mr. Kestern would have counted his heart's blood a light offering if thereby he might have saved his son. His heart's blood! He was offering even more as he knelt there now. His faith and love were breaking his soul upon the wheel, and not one blow would he spare himself.
And within, without, above, silences, interwoven silences, a veil—inscrutable.
But God must be made to hear... "'Father, if it be possible....'"
The handle of the door turned, futilely since the door was locked. Mr. Kestern rose slowly, and opened it. Mrs. Kestern came in. "Father!" she exclaimed. "Your fire's nearly out! And no gas? Whatever— Oh, father dear, what is it? How long have you been here alone? Why didn't you call me in? Let me light the gas for you."
She walked over and lit the yellow jet, turning again to the man who stood, silent and motionless, by the table. Her eyes took in the drawn face, the haggard brow, even the signs of a man's difficult tears. She moved swiftly to him. "Father!" she cried again, "what is it? Has anything happened to Paul?" One hand reached up to his shoulder and the other was pressed hard on her heart.
"No, no, Clara," said the man. "He's written, that's all. In advance of his coming, I suppose, so as to prepare us. You had better read what he says."
His wife detected the bitter, hopeless pain that underlay the words. Her glance, too, read aright the open drawer and the disordered papers. Mechanically she reached out for the letter. "He's still our boy," she cried, inconsequently.
The old Puritan straightened himself. "A son of mine a Roman Catholic!" he cried. "What is my sin that God should bring this upon me? Would God he had died first!"
"Father!—no!—oh, don't say that! I can't bear it, I can't bear it. Oh, God help us, God help us——" She sank heavily into a chair, her body shaken with sobs.
Mr. Kestern moved over, and laid his hand on her shoulder. It was an utterly pathetic gesture that he made, as if, whatever her grief, they were both of them powerless before it. "He's not taken the step yet," he said as one catching at a straw. Then, bitterly, "Or he says not. He wishes to consult us first. But you can read that his mind is made up. They have trapped my boy."
Through her tears, his wife asked for the letter to be read.
"It's quite short," said Mr. Kestern heavily, as he recrossed the room and seated himself in his chair, and then, with that new bitterness, "short and sweet. You can read between the lines.
"'MY DEAR, DEAR FATHER,
"'I know that what I am going to say will give you terrible pain, and believe me, it is only after hours of real agony in prayer for light that I have come to something of a decision. Not by the way that I have really come to a decision at all, for I shall take no step, now or at any time, without consulting you first. Please, please, believe that. But I feel I must tell you definitely that it seems to me very likely that I shall make my submission to the Church of Rome.' ('Make his submission!'—do you notice that? Submit to the Devil! Our Paul!) 'I do not love our Lord one whit less than I ever did; indeed I think I love Him more. It is because I love Him that I shall take this step, if I feel it to be finally right. If I go, I shall go because it seems to me to be His Will and that the Catholic Church is His one True Church. I know you will find it all but impossible to understand, but, dear father, for God's sake believe me when I say that I believe I go to Him because He is the Truth and because I believe that that is His Truth.'"
"'Truth!' That tissue of lies and Devil's deceits! Oh, the power of the old Enemy! I would never have believed it possible of our boy, the son of our prayers, our Paul. But no son of mine——"
"Father, father, don't! For my sake, stop. He won't go—he can't go. You will be able to talk to him. He knows the Word of God too well to be led so awfully astray. Don't get angry, dearest, don't, I beg you. It—it'll pass, this trial. It breaks my heart to see you look like that."
"My heart is broken already, I think, Clara. 'His one true Church!' If anyone had told me that Paul, Paul——"
"Father, let's pray. God will help us. He won't allow the Devil to take our boy. Let's pray, and trust Him, dearest. He's never failed us yet. Do you remember when Paul was so ill——"
And once more, this time together, father and mother cried upon their God.
(2)
That night, too, as if the odd development of life wished to make a secret jest of it, Edith Thornton made her great resolve. She put on her coat and hat, made an excuse about some Christmas shopping, and went out into the foggy air. The shop-fronts were gay and tempting, but she had no eyes for them to-night. Edward Street was full of hurrying foot passengers, intent on their own business, but cheerful with the good-will of the season when they blundered into each other or dropped their parcels. She steered through them scarcely aware that they were there. Her own eyes, if any had looked into them, would have revealed a tension of spirit and a high purpose which accounted for all that. Deep down in her, unreasoning and unreasonably, she knew that she was about no light adventure. Yet it was all so absurdly simple and commonplace.
In Wellington Road the stripped trees dripped gloomily in the dark. Little sharp pats of falling moisture were distinctly audible on the carpet of dead leaves that strewed the long old-fashioned gardens on either side. This street, but little used, was almost deserted, and the lamps gleamed at rare intervals. Edith lived, as it were, from lamp-post to lamp-post. She bade her unwilling feet reach that next one, and that next, and that next; and so she passed.
Within St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church lights shone gaily. The building, of no great size, laid no claim to architectural glory and harboured no air of mystery or double-dealing. But Edith's heart beat fiercely as she went up the path. In the porch, she stared at the untidy notice-board stuck with black-edged funeral cards requesting prayers for the dead, at the poster of a New Year whist drive, and at the stoup of holy water. This Christ's Church! But even as she looked, her simple mind swiftly adjusted values. Paul's letters, and her own secret reading, had taught her to do so. She understood how one might, for example, come to believe in prayers for the dead, and how, if so, there would be nothing against printed reminders, and how, if so, such reminders would naturally be placed in the church and might, equally naturally, get a little dirty. Holy water too; well, it was in the Old Testament, more or less, and its saving logic adumbrated in the New. But the whist drive was a stickler. Would the Apostles have tolerated cards? ... But she would go through with her visit of enquiry now.
She pushed open the door and looked in. Then, with a quick little gesture, entered, and let it swing to behind her. And there she stood, looking curiously round the place, with that unreasoning fear taking ever more steadily possession of her heart.
The altar was lit with many candles. She stared at it almost literally with a sort of horror, as if it were a monstrous thing. The statues about, the odd pictures, the praying people here and there, even the entry of a man into a confessional and the fleeting glimpse of the head and shoulders of the priest, were small things. That altar stood to her for everything. Authority, logic, history—what were they to a girl? Oh, well, these had a place, perhaps; she liked to hear Paul speak of them; she assented to what he had to say; but one thing more than any other had gripped her, how or why she knew not, in all this strange talk of this incredible religion. The Baby in the Manger, the Sacrament on the altar—suppose that were true? And she had come to see; come up out of Galilee of the Gentiles to Jerusalem that is from above; come up from afar like the Wise Kings. Where is He that is born King of the Jews? she asked, trembling, in her heart. Here! What, among those candles, under that strange canopy—He?
So she stood hesitating. An old woman, bent, clean, made a deep curtsey in the aisle and came noisily down to the door. As she passed Edith, she looked up, surveyed her for a moment, and smiled. "A happy Christmas, honey," she said. "Go forward, and sit down. Himself is waiting you."
Edith smiled an answer, mechanically. She did not question the odd saying. Neither then nor later did she doubt that the thing was a miracle. She went forward. "Himself is waiting you," she repeated wonderingly. It was as if a deep musical bell had pealed within her, and a whole sweet carillon broken out. "Himself is waiting you, Himself is waiting you, Himself is waiting you," rang the merry bells. She actually flushed a little. She sat down in a pew and stared at the altar.
Amid a host of confused unknown objects which shone and blended the one in the other, she perceived a kind of box. It had curtains, she saw, and they were drawn. Why drawn? Her eyes wandered upwards. She perceived that from the four corners sprang metals which met above after an interval and upheld a cross. The little gold, shining thing held her for a moment. Then she looked into the space beneath. Candlelight gleamed, sparkled, leapt, on a brilliant, glittering something not unlike a vase filled with scintillating flowers. In the very heart of the flowers gleamed a living white. She stared at it. And then, suddenly, all untaught, she knew.