CHAPTER VI

MOUNT CARMEL

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 big _secretaire_ stood 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.

"Himself is waiting you; Himself is waiting you; Himself is waiting you"--lower and even lower, a faint whisper of music, the little peal rang on. But she did not believe ... Yet for centuries on centuries, Paul had said, men had thought ... Martyrs had died ... Saints had seen.... He? Well, a Baby.... Like her last-arrived sister, tiny, puckered, remote, dear. He? Suppose that that small white circle was a little window, through which her soul could pass; could pass and pass; to His embrace, His tone, His heart.... Slowly, very slowly, Edith Thornton, who envied dear, eager, clever Paul since he had so much to give, slipped forward en her knees, and closed her eyes.

And then, in the fragrant, gleaming silence of her mind, there arose a little fear. She watched it come. It was very small at first, like a man's hand. Only it grew and grew, till it filled all her gaze and thundered in her soul's ear. Wave on wave it thundered, thundered and broke, this overwhelming mastery of fear. And she knew quite well why she was afraid. Her soul had passed through the little door, but it was lonely there. "Paul, Paul, dear, dear Paul!" she cried, striving so hard to see him. "Paul!"--the echoes went wandering down the corridors of her soul, and came reverberating back to her. She was alone--alone. And the light died, and the music died, and she was very sore afraid.

And then He came. Walking through the dark He came, seeking her. She saw Him, only there was no sight. The very scent of His robes was sweet, only there was no smell. He spoke, too; clearer than the noise of the water-floods that drowned her, louder than the great winds roaring through the lashed Hursley pines, she heard Him, only there was no sound. And she knew what He said, only there was no thought. "It is I," He said, "I, I; be not afraid."

She gripped the feet of Him, and marvelled as she did so that they should tread her down so ruthlessly, so immeasurably happy. And she cried up to Him--"Paul, Paul! Oh, Master, give me Paul! Don't take Paul away! I can't live without Paul!"

"Daughter," He said, "it is I--I; be not afraid."

She sobbed; she choked with sobs. "Paul!" she tried to cry, "Oh Master, dear dear Master, give me Paul--Paul!" And the sound, that was no sound, echoed away and away and out on great mountain places, vast and bare. The White Feet slowly died between her hands. She looked up. "It is I," He whispered, bending over her. She looked right into His eyes, down, down, down. She had not thought death could be so unutterably sweet.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Can I do anything for you?" said a man's voice. "Please excuse me asking, only you seemed in trouble."

She felt ashamed because her face was wet with tears. Also she did not know what to say. Long afterwards, she realised that what she had said was a second miracle. "Father, please," she said, like a child, "I want to--to come in."

(3)

Paul himself that night, whose soul's welfare was already so great a trouble to so may diverse persons, was, almost for the first time, not thinking of religion at all. To his lips the gods were early lifting the immortal chalice in whose draught lies utter bitterness. That which had been to him a kind of visionary thing, a holy grail floating on light between heaven and earth, had taken form between his hands. He had, indeed, hoped for something one day of the sort, but not that the laurel leaves should be plucked for his head before he had even taken his degree. True, they were as yet in shadow rather than in substance, but others were seeing that crowning shadow even more than he.

He was by this time in his last year, in the first autumn term of it, and that very term a firm of publishers had accepted his first book of poems. Tressor's name had brought it within the range of practical politics, but since then one or two critics had read the boy's verse and offered the usual qualified praise. But in the qualifications ran a sincere note. It had impressed the publishers. They had consented to publish at their own expense, and had even offered a royalty after a sale which they had estimated at the outside possible probability. For Paul's first cheque bugles should blow--in fairyland.

But then Paul was already in fairyland. Manning had suggested that the success of "The Literary Lounge" warranted an annual dinner, and Donaldson had added the corollary that this triumph of the club's first president ought to be celebrated in town. The idea suggested, it had seemed obvious and inevitable. Term over, Paul had gone down to Manning's home in Oxfordshire for a fortnight or so, and now both had come up together for the celebration. Paul was Manning's guest at the Balmoral for the night, and a private dining-room had been engaged at an hotel on the river side of the Strand. Finally, that there should be no lack of glory, Tressor himself was the guest of the evening.

The evening Manning and Paul arrived there was a wonderful sunset, as if the heaven itself would fling an earnest of the boy's success across the world. From the Strand, the great golden glow seemed to burn behind the Admiralty Arch, far off, behind the Park and the great Palace. The spire of St. Martin's and the incredible globe on the top of the Coliseum caught its radiance, and, looking east, the whole façade of the busy street shone with that unimaginable radiance. The great central column of the Square burgeoned black and monstrous against it. Whitehall was an avenue of glory washed with fairy gold.

Yet it was things undistinguished and unbeautiful in themselves that gave the best effects. Slipping through back streets to Leicester Square, the two friends were now and again brought to a complete stop. Between the great bulk of a towering house utterly blocked in with shadow and some tawdry outpost of a spreading theatre splashed with advertisement, they would see a patch of sky twisted into writhen cloud, royal, amber, impenetrable. Some Titan, striding through the heavenlies, had flung his Bacchic scarf from him. Stained with the purple of his feast, it fell across the world, an orange symbol of drunken ecstasy.

Said Paul: "Manning, God gave us eyes to see that."

The other's face remained immobile. It was odd to see how that splendour shone on his hair and eyes, odd, Paul thought, because his friend's face was hard, and no less hard for that caress. "Surely you must think so!" he exclaimed.

"'I am all that has been and that is and that shall be, and no mortal has ever raised my veil,'" quoted Manning.

Paul looked up and away. "We cannot even touch it," he said suddenly. "I've never thought of that."

A suggestion of the after-glow still hung suspended in the sky as he bathed and dressed. He ran his blind up to see it as he stood in his shirt-sleeves before the glass. But even the poet in him could not be holden by such beauty to-night. The earth was too real beneath his feet. It was so wonderful that he, Paul Kestern, should be standing dressing there. Memories came and went like meteors through his mind. He remembered his first sonnet. He remembered how, for the first time, in the harsh atmosphere of a school class-room and through the, to him, uncertain medium of a Latin poet, the first glimpse of fairy lands forlorn had come to him, and the magic casement opened. A new master had found them plodding wearily through Horace and had, by an impulse, stayed the halting construe of--of--(yes, it was old Lammick; he thought he had forgotten Lammick!)--of Lammick, to render the thing himself. As he spoke, it was plain that he had forgotten the boys, and so far as Paul was concerned, he had very soon forgotten the master. Only he saw the old Roman singing woven words of music about unutterable things.

And he saw himself going up for his scholarship exam. He had painstakingly read Macaulay's essays in the train for style. He remembered putting his old Waterbury on the desk before him so that each question might have fifteen minutes. He remembered--oh, he remembered the look of the commons on his first breakfast table, a ploughed field the first time he walked to Coton, the stained glass in the Round Church East window seen from the Union writing-room, villas in the Cherry Hinton Road, a print on David's stall in the market-place, rain on Garret Hostel Bridge, Clare Avenue one very early morning. Then he saw, suddenly, grotesquely stretched bodies and legs, sprawled fervently by praying men in the Henry Martyn Hall. He heard one of them speak: "O God, make all slack men _keen_." Paul chuckled to himself, because he loved it so.

Then he wished vividly and acutely that he had finally rewritten that line in the proof of his book. It was about brown withered ivy on the trunk of a pine in Hursley Woods. There was a little curl of brown hair too that slipped always under Edith's ear. He would give her the first copy himself, if he had to go to Claxted personally and especially to do it. He would give it her in Hursley Woods. No he wouldn't; he would give it her in Lambeth Court. He would take her for a walk. They would go past the "South Pole." They would walk up to the lamp-post, and he would hand her the book. "That's yours," he would say, "all of it. And I still want to preach in Lambeth Court though I did write it. Now what do you say?"

Paul began to sing the Glory Song.

Manning put his head in. "Great Scott, Paul," he said, "what's all the noise about?"

Paul flushed guiltily. Then he laughed. "I can't help it, Manning," he said. "I feel too bucked for words. I know I'm quite mad, but I can't help it."

And it was jolly threading the busy Christmas streets in a taxi, arriving at the hotel door, having a man in uniform open it for you so importantly, hearing the girl in the office tell the page to take the gentlemen to the Literary Lounge dining-room, and the finding of it full of men awaiting them. There was Donaldson, explosive but genial, warmed with excitement already. "Hullo, Kestern! Damned glad to see you again. I say, I congratulate you, you know, but didn't I always say you'd do it?" And Strether, looking big and ungainly in his black clothes that never fitted particularly, but smiling grimly. "Felicitations, Kestern, and all that sort of thing." ("By Gad, Gussie, felicitations! Keep that for your speech, old horse. What's that? Always making a row? Ha, ha, ha--that's damned good! Good old Gussie!")

Tressor put Paul at his ease. He was so big and smiling; he talked so easily; it was all so natural to him. He was on Paul's right, of course, and Paul could look past him, down the table, at them all, Manning at the other end, glancing up now and again, with a reassuring nod. Judson, by the way, was there, for he had insisted on admission to the club and had turned out the coolest critic of them all. Paul smiled to see how he enjoyed himself; and he drank his unaccustomed wine and leaned back in his chair at last, when he had made his speech, with all self-consciousness gone from him.

But it was hard to sit still and listen to Tressor. The chief guest of the evening rose to respond to the toast in his slightly heavy way, but he smiled down the disordered table and met the eyes turned to him as if he were no more than an undergraduate himself. He talked of the college and of literature, as he was in duty bound to do; he introduced an anecdote or two; at last he turned slightly to Paul. Well, at any rate, they had reason to hope great things from the president. He might perhaps say there that from the first he had detected in the verses the president had been good enough to show him, the true mark, the real spirit of a poet. He was very grateful for the part he had been able to play in advising and reading, but it was genuine recognition that had led to the acceptance for publication of the book which they all expected so eagerly. It was a first book, and a youthful book, but he was not exaggerating when he said that he looked forward to the day when they would all be proud of having been among the first to recognise the author's undoubted genius and greet his first appearance in print. He anticipated that, in the days to come, they would remember this night with real pride. He thanked the club for having invited him to share in that. They had been good enough to say that they were honoured by his presence, but he assured them that he felt honoured to be there.

They toasted him. They toasted Paul. They toasted each other. Excitement, the toasts, the ring of friendly faces, the hot room, his own achievement--all these things intoxicated Paul. Tressor left. Donaldson proposed a music hall; Paul hardly realised that he agreed. In Leicester Square, people smiled as they tumbled out of their taxis, and the lights were blurred. Paul scarcely knew where he was till he found himself in the stalls.

Then came the gradual awakening. They were too near the footlights for one thing. The orchestra blared and crashed at them, and the solemn, tired faces of the men behind the fiddles began to obsess Paul. They laughed at no jokes, these fellows. They had heard them all a score of times before. There was no honest laughter on the stage, and Donaldson, next him, lolled about and held his sides at a painted travesty of humour. When a turn allowed, these performers crept out by a small black hole and returned presently wiping their lips. Of course, it was, it had to be, a business, but Paul saw it all through innocent eyes. Essential glory had glowed upon him from the sky; genuine tributes had blessed him on Tressor's lips; this began to shape itself as a horrible thing.

The great curtain went up and down inexorably. In the dazzling glow of the searchlights a couple of dancers pirouetted before him, painted, half-naked. His own face flushed; he glanced guiltily round. "By Gad, look at that girl's thighs," whispered Donaldson. Strether was bolt upright, cynical, his lips pursing in a way he had. The light glowed red, shadowed. In and out of the shadows, while the music rose and fell, those white legs twinkled and danced. Now back, now out again. A twirl of short skirts, and in a cascade of white, one throws herself backward in a man's arms. Paul seemed to meet her eyes as she looked out across the footlights, with the powder and rouge on her cheeks and her bosom all but bared. Thunder of applause; smiles, bows, a hand-in-hand appearance in the naked light of the great hall; Donaldson half on his feet, staring; even Judson clapping vigorously.

Paul turned to Manning. "I'm going," he said thickly. "I must, Manning."

The other looked at him closely. "I'll come too," he said, and rose. "I don't want to see any more."

"No, no," said Paul, vehemently, "I'd rather go alone. Do you mind, Manning? I'm all right, only I'd like to walk back."

Manning nodded. "I see," he said. "We'll meet at breakfast. Good-night."

"Oh, I say, damn it all, you can't go, Paul. 'Tisn't done, my dear chap. Eyes in the boat, four! Sit still, sir."

"Shut up," whispered Paul savagely. "Everybody can hear you. Let me get out of this."

The loungers in the promenade looked at him curiously. A girl nudged against him; "Get me a drink, dear," she said in a low tone, and even half-rested a hand upon his arm. A feeling of all but physical sickness nauseated the boy. In the cloak-room, he thought that the attendant leered at him. In the street he dared not look at the folk lingering and passing below the steps.

Swiftly, drinking great draughts of the night air, he set off home. It was drizzling slightly, but he did not notice it. Staring straight ahead, he found himself hardly able to think, only dimly aware of street-lamps and great, black, velvet spaces. He was plainly not to be accosted in Piccadilly. In Knightsbridge, the streets emptier, he began to feel released. But not till he was in his own room at the hotel, and had thrown off his coat and bathed his face and sunk by his bed with his head in his hands, was he able to formulate his thoughts.

Then they came, in a torrential flood. He, Paul Kestern, called of God, destined for the ministry, even now at odds in his own inmost heart and with his best-beloved parents for the truth of Christ, had been drunk and had gone to a music hall. He was all superlatives and saw no door of escape for his soul. But to do him justice, it was not his own soul that he worried about. He scarcely thought of himself. He had indeed been thinking of himself most of the evening, but now he thought of his Master. "One is your Master, even Christ." His tortured conscience painted vividly to him the scene upon which he had dwelt often enough--the open courtyard; the fire in the corner, where the light leaped and danced on wall and gate; the sudden opening of a door; the buzz of voices, cries, torch-lights; the coward Apostle starting to his feet, while the guard felt for spears and came to attention; the passing of a young erect Figure with set face, Whose cheek was already reddened with a blow; and the turning of the head, so that the eyes of prisoner and betrayer met on an instant. He, Paul, had forgotten his Master. He, Paul, had denied his Master. He, Paul, had been shown the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and had fallen at the feet of the tempter.

Peter had gone out and wept bitterly, with the memory of a look.

Paul, then, tried to pierce the darkness and see. He did not sit by the fire and wait; he was up, in his soul, and out, searching for Him. In broken sentences, he was crying his confession, renewing his pledges, seeking for pardon. But it was to-night as though for long he sought in vain. "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow," he prayed, and Manning's voice came echoing back: "How in the world can blood wash me clean?" He turned to stray phrases of the old hymns: "While others Thou art saving, do not pass me by," and Mr. Stuart presented himself before him, suave, smiling, and with the ghost of a voice: "Well, dear boys, have you given your hearts to Jesus? Is there one here who has not?"

He writhed upon the rack. He hated himself for all that he would not allow himself to think. Somehow Father Vassall crept into his mind, sitting in his old arm-chair at the presbytery in his ancient cassock, smoking a cigarette, looking at him with kindly eyes through the smoke. "Concubinage is a regular thing in Spain," said a clear, scholarly voice, with just that suspicion of veiled triumph in it that had goaded the boy to madness in the train.

"She has g-g-gentle fingers that nevertheless d-d-draw men to God." Father Vassall had quoted the words once, with his little stammer that somehow did away with all suspicion of effeminacy. The specks of light ceased to dance before Paul's closed eyes. It was as if he was in a very wide room. He grew still. His mind settled down to the great question. Did God really will that men should come to Him that way? What if he took a step forward? "Faith is a step in the dark." In the dark? But this was light! That glare over the footlights, that searching limelight, that had been darkness. In an audible whisper, his face hidden in his hands upon his bed, Paul made his experiment.

"Hail Mary" (he whispered) "full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Well, but that was merely a confession of faith that he might have made at any time. There was more. Should he dare it?

"Holy Mary"--it was like a solemn oath--"Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death. Amen."

Silence, above, about, beneath. A veil of silence. But there was peace in the silence, surely, surely, the peace of God.

In the silence, Paul Kestern crept into bed, and believed himself comforted.

(4)

A few hours before, at Claxted, Madeline Ernest had been sitting alone by the fire, putting a few finishing touches to a blouse. It was a Christmas present for Ethel Cator, and it had to be finished that night. That was the worst of making Christmas presents. In a way it was rather fun, but before you had finished, the days had nearly always all but run out and you had to go on working when you were tired. Madeline was tired, but she wished she could afford to buy presents. Also to buy a few more things for herself--some silk stockings, for example; she put her head on one side to consider that. She looked very pretty as she did so. The lamplight shone on her fair abundant hair and her white skin. Big eyes, too, she had, and lovely lashes. It was a pity there was nobody more appreciative than the old purring tabby by the fire to see her.

She dabbed with her needle once or twice, and lifted the shining stuff. Through her pretty head a current of thoughts was flowing inconsequently. Then the door opened, and Mrs. Ernest came in.

Mrs. Ernest was short, comfortably stout, a little bent. She had been pretty, and she was growing grey. She was almost always tired, and with good reason. Mr. Ernest was not even a Vicar, and, truth to tell, she had ceased to hope that he ever would be.

"Still working, Madeline?"

"Yes, mother. I must finish this. Ethel always sends me something and I must remember her."

"Have you put the clean things away?"

"No. I'm so sorry. I'll go at once. I forgot all about them."

"Never mind. Sit down a minute. Madeline, have you heard about Paul?"

"What, mother?" Madeline bent earnestly over her work.

"He's written a book of poems and it's going to be published early next year. Mrs. Kestern told me this afternoon."

"Mother! You don't say so. How splendid!" The girl flushed with genuine pleasure and excitement.

"Yes, dear. He is clever, is Paul. I expect he'll do great things one day."

The eyes of mother and daughter met. "I always thought so," said Madeline.

Mrs. Ernest sat down in an arm-chair, and reached for her work-basket. She opened it with a little sigh. There were always socks or stockings in it, and no more than her daughter did she like mending them. She threaded her needle, and fitted the wooden heel into a sock. "Father had a talk with Mr. Kestern this morning," she said, vaguely.

Madeline straightened out her work. "Yes?" she queried, critically, as if to the blouse.

"Yes. Mr. Kestern is troubled about Paul."

"Really? Why?"

"He's getting High Church."

"Well, what about it? I like things a bit higher than father and Mr. Kestern myself."

"I know. You are so musical. I wish Tom didn't wear out his socks quite so fast. But Paul's getting very High Church."

"Very?" Madeline looked up meditatively.

"Yes, very. Of course your father would not wish you to know anything. Mr. Kestern told him privately. He's very worried about it."

"It's that Father Vassall," said Madeline.

"How do you know about Father Vassall?"

"Paul told me. He likes him very much."

"Well, I'm sure it would be too dreadful for the Kesterns if Paul became a Roman Catholic."

"It won't matter much if he's a poet."

"Madeline! It would. I'm sure Roman Catholicism is very dreadful--there's the confessional. Though I must say it's worse for a woman than a man. And the Pope too. But that's the point. Suppose Paul became a priest. They'll get him if they can. Jesuits always try for clever young men."

Madeline laughed. "Mother! As if Paul would be a Roman Catholic priest!"

"Why not? Father says he would not be surprised."

"Well, I should. Paul! He's so very evangelical."

"I know. But----" (There was a little pause.) "Madeline, does he see much of that girl, Edith Thornton?"

The girl put down her work and looked into the fire. She was silent. "Oh, I don't know," she exclaimed suddenly.

"Well, dear, I've thought once or twice he looked at her rather as if he liked her. I'm sure I don't know what he can see in her. But of course if he's a priest, he won't be able to marry at all."

"No, mother, I suppose not."

"Well, my dear, I think it would be terrible for the Kesterns, Paul doing so well and all. Just too terrible. I am sure all their friends ought to try and prevent it. And if he becomes an author too, he's not likely to be a missionary after all. He ought to be a great preacher one day, and if he writes as well, I suppose it would help a great deal."

"Yes, I suppose it would." The girl propped her head on her hands, and stared into the flames.

Mrs. Ernest finished her sock. "What's the time?" she asked.

The girl looked up. "Ten o'clock," she said.

"Dear, you ought to be going up. You look tired. Give me a kiss, Madeline."

For once, the girl got up at once and went over to her mother. Mrs. Ernest put her arms round her, and smoothed back her hair. She sighed. "I do hope you'll be happy," she said. "I'm sure I don't want anything except the best for my girl."

"I know, mumsie. Don't worry, darling."

"No, dear, I won't. Only---- Dear girl, I expect Paul is very easily led. That Father Vassall now. And a good woman can have such an influence on a man, Madeline."

The girl kissed her again, and hid her face on her shoulder.

"Your father and I have prayed for you ever since you were a wee girl, darling, that you might marry the right man. Good-night, dear child."

"Good-night, mumsie. Is daddy in the study?"

"Yes, dear. Tell him it's ten, will you? Paul comes home to-morrow, Madeline."

"Does he?"

"Yes. Take those cards round to the Kesterns in the afternoon, will you. If you see him, tell him how pleased we are about the book."

"Yes. Good-night, mother."

"Good-night, dear. Sleep sound."

Madeline undressed slowly. Then she slipped on her dressing-gown and knelt by her bed. She habitually said the prayers that she had said since she was a little girl, and she said them now. But she said them a little more slowly than usual, and when she had finished, she did not jump at once between the sheets as she usually did. She knelt on, thinking.

She did not want to be a clergyman's wife anywhere really, in England or abroad. Yet she couldn't tell God that. But she did want to be a successful author's wife, only she could not tell God that either. She had never even told God properly about Paul, partly because she had never known quite what to tell. Now, however, she was realising just what it would mean to her if he became a Roman Catholic priest, utterly preposterous as it seemed. Besides, in her heart of hearts, it did not seem quite so preposterous as she had said. Paul was like that. Also, he was rather nice. Such a boy. Much to good for that Edith Thornton, only that also you couldn't tell God.

And then, quite suddenly, she did begin to tell God things. She really prayed. She said she was sorry for lots of things and that she would give them up. She prayed not to be always wanting nice clothes, and she prayed to have more faith. It was an expression, and she used it as such. For more grace too, she prayed, not really knowing what grace might be. And she meant that also. But her soul, not very big, at the best, truly immolated itself, and she did the very utmost she could with it. And when she had leaped upon the altar as well as she was able, and had gashed herself with great horrid knives of renunciation, she preferred her request. "Make Paul love me, O God," she whispered, "and make me love him very, very much."

So, then, at last, the pall of deep night settled down on half the world. Even Donaldson got to bed somehow. Manning, like Paul, walked back under the stars, whistling gently to himself in the more empty stretches. The dancer who had looked at Paul across the footlights slept, and the girl who had asked for a drink. Yet dancing and drinking and praying never cease altogether, nor does the voiceless cry of the world ever cease to echo through the silences.