CHAPTER IV

FATHER VASSALL

God, if there be any God, speaks daily in a new language, by the tongues of men; the thoughts and habits of each fresh generation and each new-coined spirit throw another light upon the universe, and contain another commentary on the printed Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse of something new, is a letter of God's alphabet; and though there is a grave responsibility for all who speak, is there none for those who unrighteously keep silence and conform? Is not that also to conceal and cloak God's counsel?--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: _Lay Morals_.

(1)

Mr. Tressor had not yet returned from lecturing, the man said in response to Paul's knock, but he had left word that he would not be more than a few minutes late. Would Mr. Kestern come in? Mr. Manning was also coming to luncheon.

As the door of the don's keeping-room closed behind him, Paul looked round eagerly. He walked over to the fireplace and stood on the rug, with his back to the fire as if he owned the place. His eyes roved round the remembered room. There were the bookshelves, with the hid electric lights at the top of them as he knew, in which, during just such a moment of waiting, he had once looked for Mr. Tressor's own works and found none. There were the few odd vivid little pictures--the amateur photograph of Tressor himself with a leaping pack of dogs, the cartoon from Vanity Fair, the water-colour of the old house in the Weald, Loggan's print of the College, an impression of the gorge at Ronda, and a pencil sketch of the Chelsea Embankment. There were the few big comfortable chairs; the little table with its fat cigarette-box, a new book or two, the ivory paper-cutter; the tall firescreen, not used now, of faded tapestry; the window-seat. He glanced through the high wide windows. The bare trees of the Fellows' garden were wet and dismal in a January mist, but seen so, Paul had an odd feeling that they were quiet and dignified. In short, it was the old room, with its air of serene, silent waiting, in which the boy had already seen visions and dreamed dreams.

Mr. Tressor came in, big, slow, kindly. He shook hands with Paul, smiling upon him. "Well, glad to be up again? Been writing more verses in the Vac., eh?"

Paul shook his head. "I could not write at home, somehow," he said.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I was too busy, perhaps, for one thing."

"Reading?"

"No, not much." (Paul hesitated. Then he spoke out.) "You see there's no end to do in a parish, Christmas-time."

The other nodded with a comprehension at which Paul wondered slightly. "I know. School treats, socials and prayer meetings. I admire the people who do them enormously. I suppose you had your full share?"

"Yes," said Paul, and was silent, remembering Edith. It was odd--Tressor and Edith. And he liked both.

Manning was announced.

Manning entered easily, nodded to Tressor, apologised for being late, and greeted Paul. "Hullo, Paul," he said, "had a good Vac.?"

"We were just talking of his manifold activities," said Tressor, "but I expect luncheon is ready. Let's go in."

Paul felt a little out of it during the meal. The others talked so easily of places, people and things which were foreign to him. Personalities were mentioned of whom you never heard at Claxted. He felt an absurd desire to retaliate in kind and tell of a restaurant lunch with Gipsy Smith after a big meeting in Westminster Chapel and of veteran Mr. Henry Hutchinson's visit to his father. But quite possibly neither Tressor nor Manning had ever heard of the World's Conference of Christian Endeavour or of the Children's Special Service Mission. Also, though he knew what to do at table of course, he was rather on his guard. He was self-conscious when he had to help himself from the dishes with which the man served him. At home, helpings were handed to you.

They went back to the study for coffee, and it was then that Manning remarked disconnectedly to the don: "I hear Father Vassall is coming into residence at the Catholic Church this term."

"Yes. He's a great preacher in his way. Have you heard him?"

"No, but I shall go. Catholicism interests me. There's so much more to be said for it than for any other form of religion it seems to me,--and just as much to be said against it."

Tressor laughed, and looked across at Paul. "What do you say to that, Kestern?" he asked.

Paul glanced from one to the other, and flushed slightly. "There seems to me nothing in the world to be said for it," he said bravely.

"There you are, Manning," laughed Tressor kindly. "And I must say I agree with Kestern in the main."

Manning crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette. "Do you?" he said, in his cool, attentive, but cynical way. "I suppose you would. But I shall divide my foes, after the Apostolic manner. You do not believe in dogma; Paul does."

"Surely----" began Paul, and stopped, wishing he had not begun.

"Well?" queried Tressor.

Paul took the plunge. "Well, you believe in our Lord, sir, don't you? And surely the Atonement and the Resurrection stand for dogmas."

Manning and Tressor exchanged a glance. Manning laughed. "'Now the Sadducees say there is no resurrection,'" he quoted.

Paul looked bewildered; the elder don a little grave. "I expect we do not both interpret the story in quite the same way, Kestern," he said.

"But, sir," said Paul earnestly, "what two ways can there be? The whole of Christianity is based on our Lord's Resurrection. 'If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain.'"

Manning settled himself into his chair. "Do go on," he said. "Theology interests me enormously. I told you, Tressor, that Paul here would convert you if he could."

The boy felt uneasy. He did not want to argue and could not bring himself to speak to the don as Manning did, though he was well aware that Tressor would not in the least have resented it. But he felt he must say something, and his evangelical upbringing taught him what to say. "Surely the Bible story is simple enough," he said.

Tressor moved, for him, a trifle impatiently. "You think so, do you?" he said.

"Oh, yes," said Paul, much more sure of his ground now.

"I confess I do not. What of the discrepancies in the story? What of the late additions to the text? And what, still more, of the atmosphere in which it was written? But I grant you, in a different sense, that the Bible picture is simple enough. Jesus is to me a simple, brave, kindly man whose gospel has never been transcended and whose spirit will never die. If you allow for Eastern imagination and Catholic reductions, it is indeed simple enough."

Paul heard bewildered. He knew, of course, that Higher Critics existed, a strange, disloyal, un-Christian few, mostly to be found in Germany--and left there by sensible people. It ought, perhaps, to be explained that he had taken a scholarship in history and was reading for that Tripos. At Claxted, a theological degree seemed unnecessary. The Gospel was so simple that the Bishop's examination, to be taken in due course, was training all sufficient for a Christian minister. Gipsy Smith, for example, knew little theology.

"But," he stammered, "our Lord was God. He died to save us. If He had not been God, what power could there have been in the Cross? What merit in His Blood?"

A little silence fell on them all. Tressor, after his fashion, was smoking cigarettes in hasty puffs, extinguishing one after another in his ash-tray half burned. Manning stared thoughtfully and a little cynically into the fire. Paul's questions hung in the air, and his listeners' silence answered them.

"I wonder how long you will believe all that," queried Tressor gravely.

"All my life," answered Paul resolutely, his embarrassment gone. "I hope to spend it preaching the Gospel. It seems to me there is nothing else worth doing. What good is there in"--(he nearly said "all this," but checked himself in time)--"in learning, comfort, art, music, anything, except as aids to this? What else matters besides this? Sir, surely you see that!"

It was odd that the don should echo Maud Thornton, but he did. "You would make us all foreign missionaries, I suppose," he said.

Only for a moment did Paul hesitate. Then: "Yes," he said simply, "I suppose I would. Not all are called to the same sort of work, of course, but it should be all to that end."

Again his listeners exchanged glances, but this time they could afford to smile. "I fear I should make a poor missionary," said Tressor.

Paul looked at him, distressed. He had not meant to bring the conversation to such a head, but what else could he have said? The don saw his uneasiness, and rose, smiling.

"Well, Kestern," he said, "don't think I mind in the least your saying what you think. Besides you are flattering; I confess no one yet even thought he saw a potential missionary in me. But however tight you sit to your dogmas, I should give ear to the other side also, if I were you. After all, you are up here for that, aren't you? And now I'm walking with the Master this afternoon, and I fear I've got to go. Come again sometime. Look in any evening. If I'm busy, I'll say so. And bring me some more verses. Good-bye."

Paul, on his feet, ventured however one more direct question. "Good-bye, sir," he said, "but it worries me. Do tell me one thing. Do you honestly mean that, as you read your Bible, you do not think Christ dogmatic?"

"Honestly, I do not," said Tressor, and nodded kindly. "Good-bye," he said again.

(2)

It was Manning who enlightened Paul on the other's attitude, however, much later in the term. Spring had made an unexpectedly early appearance, and they took a Canader to paddle up the Backs. The sunlight lay soft and lovely on the mellow walls, the slow-moving black river, the willows just breaking into new green, and the trim lawns. Paul as yet, however, had not begun to attempt to find refuge in beauty and to rest his soul upon it. He even surveyed the Spring flowers on the banks of Trinity Fellows' garden with dissatisfaction. Tressor's kindly but obviously unmoved criticism of a rapture of his read to him the night before on the parallel of natural and supernatural resurrection, had occasioned more immediately his present attitude. "I don't understand it at all," he remarked to Manning, digging his paddle ferociously into the water and forcing his companion to lean hard on his in the stern to escape striking the centre arch of Trinity Bridge.

"Well, let us avoid a collision anyway," said Manning good-humouredly. "But look here, Paul, Tressor's position is simple enough. You read the Bible as if it were yesterday's _Times_; he doesn't. He considers, first, the difficulty of choosing between the variations in the many texts; then the difficulty of getting back behind fifth-century manuscripts to the original; then the difficulty of knowing how much the original owes to the unscientific mind and Eastern imagination of the writer. Heavens! You read history! Do you not do the same thing with Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and all the rest of the musty stuff? Well, then, in his mind the Christ shrinks to shadowy proportions. He remains possibly the most interesting and arresting figure in history, but that is all. You see, resurrection or no, all those events are nineteen hundred years behind us."

Paul leant back in his canoe and forgot to paddle. "Oh," he said at last, "I see."

The other looked at him curiously. "You're an odd fish, Paul," he said. "What do you see?"

"I see the difference between Tressor's Christianity and--and my father's."

"Which is?"

"Tressor reads about Christ, but my father knows Him. He is more real to my father, Manning, than I am."

The curious look died out of Manning's face, but an affectionate ring crept into his voice. "Lord, Paul, you're a rum ass, you know," he said, "but you are rather an interesting one."

Paul was due at Dick Hartley's for tea, and as soon as they had landed, he rushed round to his friend. It was odd, he thought as he went, how one suddenly saw things, by some curious indefinable process, which one had known, one thought, for years. After all, he had preached on the Blind Beggar in St. John's Gospel a score of times one way and another, yet he had never really understood it until this afternoon. He had "known" Christ ever since he could well remember, but somehow it was the Christ of the printed page that he had known. Alive to-day, yes, but not alive in such a way that His living actually solved intellectual doubts. To Paul, the Cambridge streets had suddenly become the streets of a New Jerusalem. From old gables to modern shop-fronts, they had all at once become intimate and tender. He thought, even as he ran, that just as he had come to dwell tenderly on a mental image of Edward Street because Edith lived, moved, and had association there, so now the whole world was transfigured before him. Christ moved in it, and he knew Christ.

He rattled up the wooden stairs to his friend's room and burst in almost without knocking. Dick was reading in an arm-chair and a kettle hissed on the hob. He looked up from his book.

"Heavens! What's the matter?" he asked, smiling.

Paul slowed down, shut the door, and came over to the fire, his face shining. "I say, Dick," he said, "do you realise what it means that we know Christ?"

The older man stared, as well he might have done. Then a rather envious expression crept into his face. Wistfulness was scarcely what one thought of in connection with matter-of-fact, athletic, sober-minded Dick Hartley, but it was there at that moment.

"Ah," he said shortly, and was silent.

"Of course I thought I did," poured out Paul excitedly, walking up and down, "but I begin to think I never have till this afternoon. I see, now, what's the matter with Tressor and Manning and all the rest of them. They think Christ is a story out of a book, Dick. Even I" (all innocent of self-righteous priggishness was Paul), "even I thought of Him only as emotionally alive, so to speak. But He lives, Dick, He lives! We know Him! We aren't worried by criticism or any of their intellectual doubts, because we know Him. Don't you see?"

Dick closed Harnack's _Acts of the Apostles_ and put it on one side. "You have a great gift of faith, Paul," he said.

"Faith! It isn't faith! It's sight, I tell you. Why, man, look here, if Manning were to come gravely to my room to-night and argue that you were a myth, what the blazes do you think I should say? I should laugh in his face! 'Why, I had tea with him this afternoon,' I should say! And it's the same with Jesus. Dick"--the eager voice hushed a little--"we're having tea with _Him_ this afternoon."

Hartley did not laugh. He half glanced round. "Can one act on that altogether?" he queried.

Paul flung out his hand with an eager gesture. "Why not?" he cried. "One should act on it absolutely I think."

Hartley spoke slowly. "Well, but would Christ stay here, read Harnack, take in a newspaper" (his eyes roved the room), "row, get new window-curtains, and--and fall in love?" His gaze rested on a portrait on the mantelpiece.

Paul's hand fell to his side. He, too, glanced round the simple, commonplace, in the opinion of most people severely plain room. Then he dropped into a chair. "You must ask Him," he said slowly.

"Suppose I have?"

"Then you must do what He says."

Dick was altogether more slow, more solid, than Paul. He began to make tea. "It's odd," he said, busy over the cups, "but I'm not sure that I know."

"Ah," said Paul, still triumphant and impetuous, "I asked you if you really knew Him, Dick."

(3)

In Hursley Woods that vacation, Paul explained it all to Edith. They were seated side by side on a fallen log, and all around them the fresh blue of the wild hyacinths was unstained as Paradise. They lit the dull day with a radiance of their own. Brown and green and grey blent about them and faded into distance, and he held her hand. The two had just kissed with a solemn virginal innocence. They were glad, but not gay. Francis of Assisi would have wondered at them, had he been there. As it was one of his brethren, a big blackbird with a bright enquiring eye, emphatically did so. It probably struck him that these restrained humans were out of place in such a vivid, tingling, riotous life as that of a wood in spring. He hopped off to look for a worm.

Paul renewed the conversation that the kissing had interrupted. "You see, Edith, dear," he said, "it's so illogical to believe one thing and act another. What are the realities of life? God, and a lost world, and Christ our Saviour. What does anything matter beside them? Both Dick and I feel that everything--_everything_--ought to be surrendered to Him. Even things good in themselves must go down before the awful necessity of preaching the Gospel. Mind you, I don't speak of learning quite as I did. I see, for example, that if I get a first in my History, it will be of use in the Church. But all the rest--do you see?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes, in a way," she said.

"Look here"--he jumped up eagerly--"I'll give you an illustration. It's a silly one, in a way, but it's all the better for that. It's the commonplace things people won't see. In my rooms, last term, Donaldson and Strether and I--oh, and a man called Hannam--were discussing dress. Donaldson was saying that there was no reason why a Christian shouldn't wear decent socks--clocked, gay things like his own. There was nothing wrong in them, he said. I agreed, but I couldn't help it; I said: 'Would Christ have worn them? Would He have spent an extra shilling on a yellow stripe in His socks when that shilling would send a Testament to China?' Would He? What do you think?"

"He would not," she said.

"Exactly." In his triumph, Paul sobered and sat down. "There's no escape," he said.

Edith leant forward and prodded the soft earth with a stick. "Then you'd wear the oldest clothes and live on just anything and have no home and go about preaching," she said.

"Exactly," said Paul again.

"But what would happen to the world if everyone did that?" queried Edith.

"That is not our concern," said Paul gravely. "I do not know and I do not care. But this I do know, if Christians started in to do that, they'd--they'd--well, they'd turn the world upside down. Which is exactly what the world said Paul and Barnabas were doing."

"And so it stoned them."

"So it stoned them. You're quite right. It was the Apostles' lives or their own. Heathen Rome saw the issue admirably. Heathen England doesn't. Why not? Because Christians are no longer Apostolic."

The girl turned wide eyes on him. "But oh! Paul," she cried, "think what that means! It would mean giving up everything; it would mean death!"

"'I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me'," quoted Paul gravely.

The girl looked away. The heart of the rich woods grew dim before her. She fumbled for her handkerchief.

Very tenderly the boy put his arm about her. "Edith, darling," he said, "don't think I don't love you. I don't think I've ever loved you more than I do now. But if Christ told us to put our love aside,--for a while, down here perhaps,--could we refuse Him?"

All the woman in her revolted. "I don't know!" she sobbed. "I don't mind giving up everything else. But I could help you."

Paul's own eyes clouded. "Dear, darling Edith," he said, "I know you could. And you would help too. I expect you will. Oh, I hope so--you don't know how much! But we ought to face the full bitterness of the Cross, and then, if God makes it possible, take what He gives us very gratefully. Surely you see that?"

The girl dabbed at her eyes and rolled her handkerchief into a hard ball. Then she looked up at him with a wintry smile. "I shouldn't love you so much if you weren't so awfully right always, Paul," she said.

(4)

In his new eagerness, Paul sprang a mine on his father. He went up to town to meet Strether who had taken a couple of tickets for a matinée of _Peter Pan_, with which play his friend's curious personality was violently intrigued. The artist in Paul revelled in the fairy tale, and deep called to deep before the boy who would not grow up. But his passionate creed would not let him alone.

"It's all very well, Gus Strether," he said, arm in arm in Regent Street, "but do you think a girl ought to dress up like that in boy's clothes? And what good does it do? It's like sitting down to play a round game while the house is on fire!"

Strether grunted. He was between the devil and the deep sea. He loved Peter Pan with a deep love that was all the fonder for being buried so deep in his queer hidden self, but he hated Pauline Chase--at least on the picture postcards. That, then, he passed over. But the other he would not pass. "You row, and eat chocolate biscuits in my rooms while the house is on fire," he retorted.

"Only while waiting to get to work," persisted Paul.

"Might be at a prayer meeting," growled the other.

Paul assented sadly. "I admit that's logical," he said.

Strether lengthened his ungainly stride. "Balderdash," he muttered. "If you tried to live at prayer meetings, you'd soon cease to live at all. Go and see Peter Pan while you're waiting to get to work."

"It's a bad example. People wouldn't understand. But it's awfully jolly."

"Thought you'd got a bloomin' text up in your rooms to make 'em understand."

Paul stopped in the middle of Regent Street. "I've got it," he cried excitedly. "I'll put a cross up as well--a big, plain, empty cross over my writing-table."

"Thought that was Popish."

"I don't care if it's Popish or not. It's a symbol of Christ. The shadow of it ought to lie everywhere and touch everything. Come on, let's go and get one now. Mowbray's have them. Come on. There's time before tea."

The odd pair explored the premises of the Margaret Street shop. Secretly, Paul was moved by the beauty of the crucifixes, though his soul was stirred by a host of Madonnas which should have been painted, he said, quoting a Protestant tract, as if the Virgin were a woman of fifty, and were not. Strether lurched around, grunting to himself. He was curious over most things. Paul bought a big plain cross for his rooms, and, on second thoughts, a small silver one for his watchchain.

"Thought you ought to give all your money to the Chinese," said Strether.

Paul laughed. "Old ass," he said; "this is missionary work."

Miss Bishop happened to be at his home as he unrolled his parcel. She was caustic and cynical. "My experience is that if you wear the cross on your watch-chain, you soon cease to bear it in your heart," she said.

Paul retorted hotly. "Why?" he demanded. "It's that kind of saying that we have got to disprove. Christ is real to me. I want to feel Him at every turn. I want to give up all my life to the Cross. This is only the sign of it, I know, but why should you argue that my wearing of the sign will make the thing itself unreal to me, just because some people wear it and have forgotten its meaning?"

"But is it necessary, Paul?" queried his mother gently.

"You don't understand, mother," said Paul. "Is it necessary to put up your portrait in my rooms at Cambridge? Can't I remember you without?"

His mother sighed; that was so like Paul. His father looked troubled. "It's the thin end of the wedge, laddie," he said, "so often. We don't, of course, object to the thing itself; it's only that we hate the religion that has destroyed the truth of Christ while it has decked itself out with crosses. Isn't the Saviour without the symbol enough for you, my boy? The old devil is so cunning, Paul, lad."

"And the cocksure folk are the people he gets first," added Miss Bishop.

"Then," said Paul shrewdly, "you ought to look out, Miss Bishop."

"Paul," said his father sternly, "you forget yourself."

(5)

Yet one might almost have supposed that Miss Bishop had indeed stirred the devil into action. She would have said that he was positively waiting for cocksure Paul that very first afternoon of the May term. His emissary was a youthful-looking man, rather small, light and quick in movement, fair of complexion, with alert, keen, grey-blue eyes that perpetually brimmed over with humour, although the home of it was low down in them, out of sight. He was decorously dressed in black, but with a rather shabby buttoned frock-coat, for he was careless of appearances, and when he spoke at first to strangers, or if he were unusually moved, there was often a little stammer in his voice. He was, in short, the Rev. Father Vassall, a Popish priest.

Paul found him in Hannam's rooms, Hannam being the new acquaintance of the previous term. He kept in the rooms below Paul, who did not care for him particularly, and had, indeed, done no more than call the first term. But Hannam was a lonely individual, of somewhat eccentric tastes, one of which was for verse. He, therefore, admired Paul and Paul's writings, and latterly the two had seen more of each other. Paul knew, that he was a Catholic, but as one did not exactly associate religion of any sort with Hannam, who, nevertheless, was tolerant of Paul's ardent faith, this fact had not obtruded as one might have expected.

Thus, then, it chanced that Kestern arrived at St. Mary's a day before Manning, and by an earlier train than that of any of his more intimate friends. He was chaffing old Tom about four of the clock in the First Court, and on his way to his rooms knocked by an impulse at Hannam's door.

"Hallo, Kestern," cried Hannam joyfully as he entered, "glad you're up early. Want some tea? Do come in. Let me introduce you--Father Vassall, Mr. Kestern of this college."

Paul found himself shaking hands with the Popish priest. He did it nervously, but with obvious interest. Odd as it may seem, Popish priests were as rare and as strange to Paul as Buddhist monks. The stranger seemed to appreciate the fact. His eyes twinkled. "H-H-Hannam has t-told me a little about you, Mr. K-Kestern," he said.

Paul laughed engagingly, and much more pleasantly than one ought to do with the devil. But then there was an air about this priest that was amazingly boyish, eager and attractive. You felt at once, as it were, his radiant personality. Besides there were no hypocrisies about Father Vassall, and he always came straight to the point. His tone suggested to Paul what he meant.

"That I am a fierce Protestant, I suppose you mean," smiled Paul.

"And a p-p-poet," stammered the little priest, "which is very much nicer, Mr. Kestern."

"You two ought to have a lot in common," put in Hannam with lazy interest. "Father Vassall was once a Protestant, Kestern, and he is still a poet."

"Much b-better P-P-Protestant than p-p-poet," exploded the accused merrily.

They drew round the fire with their tea. Conversation ranged over their doings in the vacation and the prospects of the term, and Paul learned that Father Vassall had been a wet Bob at Eton and cox of his college crew at the University. Absurdly enough, he had never associated such healthy doings with Papistry. But Father Vassall had been a Protestant then. This amazing fact held Paul's mind. It staggered him to think that Protestants could ever become Catholics. He looked on the priest with amazement and real sorrow. For one thing he could never have known Christ....

Hannam asked Paul if he had been to the theatre; Paul confessed to _Peter Pan_; Father Vassall said that above all things he would like to see it.

"Why don't you go then?" enquired Paul carelessly.

"P-priests are forbidden to go to p-plays," said Father Vassall.

"What!" cried Paul. Ridiculously, it was his first shock. He had always understood that actors, actresses and Roman Catholics owned the same master and were as thick as thieves, and here was a priest professing to be forbidden by his Church to go to the theatre at all! Father Vassall explained. "But we can go to m-m-music halls," he stammered, his eyes alight with mischief.

"Kestern prefers missionary meetings," said Hannam.

"Why," exclaimed the priest eagerly, his stutter all but disappearing in his enthusiasm; "you should come and hear Father Kenelm then, Mr. Kestern. He has been t-thirty years in South America, and is utterly devoted to our Lord and the Church's work out there. He is over here arranging for the publication of the B-Bible in one of the native tongues and is speaking in Cambridge this week."

"The Bible!" cried Paul aghast. "But the Roman Catholic Church does not allow people to read the Bible!"

Hannam grinned, and threw himself back in his chair. He anticipated enjoyment.

"Father Kenelm has himself translated, published and distributed some half-million B-Bibles in two or three l-l-languages," retorted the priest.

"But, Father," said Paul, utterly serious, copying Hannam's mode of address and scarcely noticing it in his eagerness, "you can't deny that your Church burnt Bibles openly in St. Paul's Churchyard at the Reformation."

"Never one," said Father Vassall.

Paul stiffened angrily, though his anger relaxed into bewilderment at the other's laughing face. The priest leant forward.

"Have you ever seen a copy of what we did b-burn?" asked the other.

Paul shook his head.

"Well, I could show you one at the Presbytery. We burnt P-Protestant copies of the Holy Scripture which had been mutilated by the removal of whole books and made worse than valueless by the bias of the translation and the m-marginal notes that had been added."

"Ah," said Paul, relieved, "I see. But that depends on what view you take of the notes."

"Excuse me," retorted the other, "it does not. We burnt annotated and mis-translated portions of the Scriptures, not the Holy Bible. Those are indisputable historical f-facts. The annotation cannot be denied and the mis-translation is proved even by your own Revised Version. And as for motive, may I ask what you would advise a heathen convert of yours to do who was given a Bible containing notes which taught T-Transubstantiation and M-m-mariolatry?"

"Burn it," said Paul instantly.

The little priest laughed. "Q-q-quite so," he exploded.

"He has you, Kestern," put in Hannam; "admit it. Have a cigarette, Father."

Paul glanced from one to the other. "I do," he said frankly. "But, Father, you interest me enormously." (He hesitated.) "May I speak frankly?"

The priest nodded, with a little quick gesture, his eyes searching the other's face.

"Well, you don't speak of Christ and--and so on, one little bit as I expected a Roman Catholic to speak. Missionaries too--I hardly knew you had any. And--well, aren't they nearly always political? Aren't Catholic conversions nearly always forced?"

The priest no longer smiled. He looked away into the fire. "Do you suppose it was force," he queried solemnly, "which made South American Indians dig up their buried treasures valued at two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to give to Father Kenelm for the conversion of P-Protestant England?"

There was magic in Father Vassall, and Paul's imagination saw a story in which, had the boot been on the other foot, he would have gloried.

A little silence fell on the conversation. Suddenly: "What about the Inquisition?" he queried.

"You read h-history?" the priest asked, a trifle sharply.

Paul nodded.

"Then you ought to know that the Spanish Inquisition was political and national, not Catholic. You ought to know that some of the most disreputable Popes protected such people as the Jews from the fury of fanatics. You ought to know that the long-suffering of the average Bishop in heresy trials was amazing. Read Gairdner. But waive all that. See here, would you hang a murderer?"

"Of course."

"Then if you honestly b-believed that the teaching of heresy was the murdering of innocent souls, and if you had the power, what would you do to heretics?"

Paul's silence was sufficient answer to the old dilemma.

"As to actual penalties, the age did not see or feel as ours does. Torture was English law, remember, and boiling alive or pressing to death or breaking on the wheel ordinary legal p-punishments."

"Perhaps," said Paul, "but such things were the punishments of crime. Mary burnt Protestants for religion."

"Elizabeth r-racked and hung and disembowelled more Catholics than Mary Protestants," retorted Father Vassall. "Besides, ten times, no, thirty times as many suffered for Catholicism under Henry VIII. and Edward VI. than for Protestantism all the way through English history."

Paul looked hopelessly round the little room. He saw himself, as it were, hemmed in and overwhelmed by inexorable fact. Besides, it was all so unexpected. Did Claxted know nothing of these as of other things? Why, indeed, had he himself never seen them in this light?

"P-Protestantism," went on Father Vassall, "taught that it belonged to every man to pick and choose for himself among doctrines, and it therefore had no m-manner of reason for what it did. Calvin's burning of Servetus at Geneva really outrages d-d-decency. And the P-Pilgrim Fathers burnt more witches in a year in New England than the Catholic Church heretics in pre-Reformation England in a c-century."

Paul drew a long breath. "I--I must think," he said confusedly. "I had no idea there was anything on your side." He moved restlessly. "But tell me one thing, don't you teach that all Protestants go to hell?"

Hannam laughed outright.

But the priest did not. He glanced up sharply. "Don't you evangelicals teach," he demanded with the quickness of a rapier thrust, "that all unbelievers go to hell?"

Paul's face was a study. Father Vassall chuckled youthfully as he looked at him. Then his own face changed and his eyes grew tender. "I'm s-sorry," he said, stammering again. "That wasn't q-quite fair. But we do not teach that, and I think you do. No; when you get to P-Purgatory, I'll say to St. Peter: 'Let K-Kestern in; he's a g-g-good boy!'"

He stood up and reached for his hat and stick. "Are you going home?" asked Paul. "Might I walk a little way with you?"

The priest nodded, and turned for a word with Hannam as Paul went to the door.

They were an odd pair as they walked together through the streets. Paul was a good deal taller than his companion, and very serious. The little priest was gay again, and chattered about odd subjects and Cambridge topics. When a don nodded to Vassall, it struck the undergraduate as something he had scarcely realised, that his new acquaintance had a great and growing reputation. But not until they were at the door of the Catholic church could Paul speak his mind.

"I must g-go in here now," said Father Vassall. "I've got to hear the confessions of a lot of nuns much holier than I should be if I lived for a c-century."

Later on, Paul realised what an amazing light that threw upon the Sacrament of Penance, but just at present he was too much occupied to consider it. "Father," he said abruptly, "will you forgive me if I ask you one thing? It isn't a usual thing, I know, and it's awfully personal, but I can't help it."

The elder looked into the flushed, serious face of the undergraduater and kept his eyes upon him.

"W-what is it?" he asked.

"Do you believe in the reality of Christ, here and now, on earth? Could you say you know Him?"

"With all my heart," said the priest simply and unhesitatingly.

"Then may I call and see you some time?" asked the boy, with a little catch in his throat.

Father Vassall named a day and time.

(6)

Paul's new friendship soon became the dominant interest of the term for him. Even the prospects of the May eight in which he rowed were less prominent in his mind. His father's letters vigorously denouncing any intercourse with a Papist at all, only aroused his hostility. Of what use was he, if by this time he was not able to defend evangelical religion? Besides, he had rapidly become whole-heartedly aware that there was no sort of question that Father Vassall loved Christ with a sincerity not exceeded by that of his own father. Paul grew ever more certain of that. He wrote as much to Mr. Kestern, but Mr. Kestern would not admit the other's sincerity at all. At best, the priest was a deluded, scheming fanatic out to trap his son. The home letters grew passionate; Paul the more bewildered. Authority and experience were at their first serious conflict within him, though he never phrased it so. Instead he opened his heart to the priest, who was enormously more charitable to the boy's father than Mr. Kestern was to him. And Paul read books, and talked to Dick.

Possibly he reached a spiritual climax as early as that bright midsummer day that the two of them took on the Upper River. They had started in a Canader, and got as far as Haslingfield. They had stripped among the gold of buttercups, and plunged down into the cool, clear water where the mazy reeds twisted this way and that in the slow current. They had lunched, and bathed again, and lying side by side in the sun on the grass, had fixed up in common a good deal of the coming Long Vacation. Then, settling into the canoe, they had drifted slowly down-stream, Dick on his back lazily dipping a paddle now and again to avoid an obstacle, and Paul reading. Now the latter tossed the book down, and spoke.

"Dick," he said vehemently, "I can't help it. They're right."

"Who are?"

"Roman Catholics."

"Don't be an ass."

"I'm not an ass, or at least not over this. Besides I don't mean that all they say and do is right. Some things obviously can't be. I shall never be a Catholic. But there is no way out of the difficulty about authority."

"No? Well, chuck me over that toffee, and for goodness sake don't say so at Port o' Man."

"But I say, Dick," said Paul earnestly, "do listen. It's worrying me no end. You can't answer the dilemma, either."

"Don't want to," ejaculated the other.

Paul stared at him. "But why not?" he demanded. "Your attitude amazes me, and oddly enough, you are not unlike my father. But anyway that _attitude's_ plainly wrong. There must be a way out. The fellow who says: 'I'm an evangelical, and I won't discuss the question or hear another side,' _must_ be wrong."

Dick grunted.

"Listen. The very first time I called on Father Vassall, he had me. He was frightfully kind; he understood about our Lord being real as next to nobody seems to do, and he was entirely sympathetic about the Cross just dominating everything. In fact, he was evangelical over it. He admitted he was. He said Catholics were at one with evangelicals on that point, and that their Religious Orders were composed of people who simply lived the Gospel life. But let's waive that. He went on to ask me how, despite all that, I knew what our Lord had meant by His words.

"I said: 'Because it's in the Bible.'

"He said: 'Granted.' (Notice there's nothing of Manning or Tressor about him, belittling the Bible.) 'But' (he went on) 'let's be definite. Take a text: _This is My Body_--what does it mean?'

"I said: 'It means the bread represents His Body broken for us.'

"He said: 'How do you know? At any rate for fifteen hundred years nobody thought so.'

"I said: 'By prayer, by reason, and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.'

"And then he said: 'That's what Luther said, and taught Consubstantiation. That's what Calvin said and denied it. That's what Wesley said and taught the Real Presence, but not Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation. That's what Spurgeon said and denied all three. And that's what General Booth said and dispensed with sacraments altogether. If you care to shut yourself up with your Bible and pray, you will probably arrive at some further opinion. There are about three hundred and sixty-five Protestant sects, and there is no reason why there should not be three hundred and sixty-six.'"

"None at all," said Dick; "and I say, sit steady, or you'll upset this bally canoe."

"But look here, Dick--hang it all, be serious. He's right. The Bible, being nineteen hundred years old and a written book, _is_ open to scores of different interpretations. Mere praying obviously does not prevent such differences of opinion; it almost seems to increase them. And consequently, if there is not some one authoritative voice to interpret, we might as well not have the Bible at all. Or, like Tressor, we must chuck dogma overboard. Either way our position goes."

"And so?"

"Well, so, if you will have it, we've got to find some better reason than our view of the Bible for condemning the Catholic Church. We've got to find some further basis for our position."

Dick sat up and fell to paddling. Paul watched him anxiously. After a while, his companion began to whistle, and at that Paul could stand it no more. "Dick," he cried, "do you mean to say you don't see it at all?"

Dick Hartley trailed his paddle behind him and laughed a little. "Look here, Paul," he said, "you're too logical. Religion is not a primary textbook. You and I know and love Christ, and we know that Roman Catholicism is not His Gospel. The thing is so obvious that it isn't worth discussion. Chuck it, then. Pitch that book overboard and say your prayers." And he recommenced to paddle.

Paul flushed beneath his summer tan. He leant back and stared up through the weave of leaves and twigs above them, and when he spoke, he was deliberate and cool. "Dick," he said, "Christ is the truth, and your attitude to truth seems to me simple blasphemy."

Dick laughed again. "You're a nice old ass," he said.

Paul's letters were full of the burning subject, and he wrote at length to his father and to Edith. His father was both incredulous and indignant at the boy's attitude, and his replies threw his son into despair. The elder man would admit nothing at all. He declined to argue; he refused even to consider what seemed to Paul reasonable historical evidence. Rome was the great Babylon, the Scarlet Woman, Anti-Christ; it had lied, tricked, tortured and sold its Master all down the centuries. "I would sooner see a son of mine dead," wrote Mr. Kestern, "than a Roman Catholic."

Paul, in an agony of doubts and fears, lived a tempestuous life. To Edith he unburdened at length, and she, though utterly bewildered at these new things, was at least sympathetic and understanding. The burden of her cry was: "How can it be, dear?" but with the undercurrent--"You must face it"; "your father is wrong to denounce your honesty"; but "Don't be rash or act in a hurry." To her, then, the boy turned as to a new anchorage.

(7)

Donaldson and Strether saw the conflict only superficially; Manning more truly, but as a cynic. Thus one riotous night of a meeting of the new Literary Society, Paul had had something of an ovation. His little room--its text still on the wall and the cross over the writing bureau in the corner--was beginning to reflect the growth of his artistic sense. Landseer's pictures had gone, and in their place hung some engravings, rescued from old books dug out of the boxes in Charing Cross Road, in neat ebony frames. A "Falkland" graced one side of the mantelshelf, and quite a good "Melanchthon" by Holl the other. The room was lit with candles, and tobacco smoke drifted thickly, since a childish rule of the society enforced smoking out of churchwardens. Paul, as president, had been overruled, and now always smoked one pipe. On this particular occasion, he was smoking a second in great exultation, having just read his last and lengthiest poetical effort to a really appreciative audience. Not without significance, it dealt with an Indian legend of the search for the white bird of truth.

"By Jove, damned good," burst out Donaldson. "Paul, you've the makings of a real poet. What do you think, Manning?"

"He may do stuff worth reading yet, if he'll take good advice."

"Which is?" asked Paul.

Manning lit a cigarette, cigarettes being allowed after the solemn preliminaries. "You won't like it, Kestern," he said, "but here it is. Burn that. Get rid of it. It's been good practice, and I should judge it's not at all bad, but don't sit tight to it. Anything good in it will stick and come out again; the second and third rate had better go up in smoke."

"Oh, cheese it all, Manning! Show it to Tressor and get it pushed into some magazine"; and chorus of assent from the members backed Donaldson up.

Manning shook his head. "I know I'm right," he said. "Pass the cake, Strether."

Strether disengaged his long form from the chair he occupied, and passed it. "More coffee?" he grunted at Paul.

Paul was watching Manning closely. Then, suddenly: "You are right," he said, and with a swift movement tore the thing in halves.

Donaldson swore.

"Well, I'm damned!" put in a member. "You silly blighter!"

Manning finished his cake, and stood up. He looked round amusedly, stretching himself. "I reckon that finishes the sitting anyway," he said. "Come over to my rooms a little later, Kestern, will you? Good-night, you people."

The company dispersed, all save Strether, who sat on imperturbably, his eyes on the ceiling. He refused to smoke, and had returned to dull suits and heavy boots, with an occasional concession to society in the shape of a tie or waistcoat. Paul, having seen the last down the stairs, and exchanged a fusillade of sugar with the departing Donaldson, re-entered the room. He shut the door and looked round dispiritedly. A candle was guttering on the bureau; heavy smoke hung in the air; dirty plates and cups littered the table; one picture was awry. He walked to the window and opened it wide, to let in the clear night air. Stars shone serenely aloft and mirrored themselves in the still river.

"Another letter from my pater to-day, Gussie," he said at last, turning back to the fire. "He'll not see, or understand."

Strether grunted.

"It's so odd," went on Paul wearily. "In some ways, he's the gentlest and most lovable of men. He's full of the love of God. He is a hundred times better than I shall ever be. But over this, he's mad, rabid. He seems to picture Father Vassall as a mixture of Torquemada and Judas Iscariot. If only I could get them to meet...."

"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't _understand_."

"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."