CHAPTER VII

THURLOE END

MADMAN.

The wild duck, stringing through the sky, Are south away. Their green necks glitter as they fly, The lake is grey. So still, so lone, the fowler never heeds. The wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.

* * * * *

Not thus, not thus are the wild souls of men. No peace for those Who step beyond the blindness of the pen To where the skies unclose. From them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns, The bull gone mad, the Saviour on his horns. JOHN MASEFIELD: _Good Friday_.

(1)

"Mr. Kestern, sir?" enquired the man, outside the little country station.

Paul nodded. "Yes," he said; "are you from Father Vassall?"

"Yes, sir. Been waiting 'arf an hower, sir. Trains that late. We've five mile to drive, sir, so if you'll get in...."

Paul deposited his suitcase in the dog-cart and climbed on to the seat alongside the driver. He was in the heart of the Midlands, and the lamps on the little country station were already being dimmed to save the Company's oil, since the next and last train of the day was not due for several hours. Outside the station enclosure, lights behind the red blinds of an inn threw a glow on the hard road, and from a cottage window or two came here and there a flicker; but these passed, they were speedily out into the open country. Trees loomed up against frosty stars; but for the most part high hedges hid even the fields on either side the narrow lane. A small moon, low on the horizon, swung up and down over them like a child's toy. The beast between the shafts kept up a steady trot, though now and again the steam of his exertion rose mistily in the radiance of the poor lamps of the dog-cart as he ploughed uphill at a walk. By his side, Paul's driver soon relapsed into the monotonous silence of the country. Paul himself, muffled up on his high seat, swaying a little with the motion, had time to think.

He was actually on his way to stay with Father Vassall, and he was aware that he was in doubt as to the issue of his journey. The last Christmas vacation and the ensuing Lent term had goaded him to the act. Christmas had been almost impossible at home, and the Lent term had shown him, every day more clearly, that he could not profess evangelical Anglicanism as a minister and a missionary. Claxted had stung him into that conclusion on every side. The atmosphere of the Mission Hall, sincere, earnest, zealous as it was, left him gasping now as a fish out of water. He had stood on its platform and not known what to say. The illogical inconclusiveness of the old attitude stared at him so starkly that he could no longer repeat the old shibboleths. The sermon in which one expounded a text as if the phrases of it and the entire context had dropped, verbally complete, like the image of the great goddess Diana, from the skies, and then exhorted, in words made as vivid and as practical as possible, to the vague sensationalism of "Come to Jesus" or "Accept Salvation," was now beyond him. The thing, left thus in the air, had become meaningless to him, and his very sincerity forbad his preaching anything in which he did not wholeheartedly believe. The Church and Sacraments, the old truths set in a practical system, these seemed necessary to the Gospel salvation. Yet a more thoughtful worker or two had already been offended by the vague and tentative phrasing in which he tried to hint at it.

Or again, though this he tried to suppress, the gorge of the poet in him would rise now against Moody and Sankey or Torrey and Alexander. Metre and rhyme had come to be things that he could not help subconsciously analysing, but it does not do to analyse mission hymn-books. Nor can one make a really successful evangelist if one is affected almost to desperation by a cornet out of tune, or tracts for distribution that are neither English nor common sense.

Lastly, the home atmosphere was electric with disagreement. He was out of tune with it all. There seemed no longer anything to talk about at table. Mr. Kestern was not interested in literature and art; with his politics Paul, feeling after Socialism, was in violent collision; the parish was no longer his world; and even into talk of the Second Coming of Christ would creep the voice of criticism, or into the Islington Conference the question of Rome. It was, of course, a common-place tragedy, but that did not make it the less tragic. The man had stood still, and the boy had gone on. Also, at the fork roads, he had taken the unfamiliar turn.

Full of it all, then, he was coming to stay with Father Vassall. He had determined to do that this once at least. He must talk things out with his friend. But should they come to a conclusion, and if so to what conclusion and with what results, that was the question.

"That's the 'ouse, sir."

Paul peered eagerly ahead. He could make out a dark, vague outline, and a wall on the left. "Wo-up, beauty," cried his driver to the horse. They came to a standstill before a big iron gate between tall red-brick gate-posts.

Paul climbed stiffly down, and swung his bag out. He found himself on a flagged path that ran up to a door set in a shallow portico in the front of a long, low, mellow Queen Anne house. It was not too dark to see a solid cornice and parapet. "The bell's on the right, sir," said the voice at the gate. "I'll drive on round to the stable."

Paul pulled the wrought-iron bell-pull, and somewhere in the black recesses a bell jangled. He heard a door open and the sound of feet. "All right, Bridget," called a familiar voice; "I'll let him in." A door opened somewhere. A faint glimmer of moving light shone through the glass panes and drew nearer. The front door swung open. Paul blinked in the light.

The priest stood with a lantern in his left hand. He wore his cassock, and was muffled in a cloak, with a black skull-cap on his head. His merry smiling face was turned up to Paul, clean shaven, youthful looking, the hair a little tumbled.

"Good evening, Father," said Paul. "Sorry I'm late. I've been longing to get here."

"H-how are you?" exploded the priest. "C-come in. It's splendid, your c-coming."

Paul passed in. He had the odd thought that it was all part of a dream. The passage was stone-flagged and the hall beautifully bare. An oak bench ran along one wall. There were a few carvings and weapons and curios about. A sombre print or two hung opposite: St. Francis Xavier in a high biretta, and an Entombment. The figure in black putting up the latch by the light of the lantern was mediæval and fantastic. Yet it was all real, and it was real that he, Paul Kestern, was there at last, in the house of a Catholic priest.

"Come in," said Father Vassall again. "You must be cold. Come and get warm before supper. There's a t-t-topping fire in the p-parlour."

He led the way, bustling forward with a swish of cassock, welcoming, kind. Paul entered the long low library, hung with panels of green cloth, and took in its satisfactory furnishing at a glance. The room rested quietly, waiting for him. With a swift mental comparison, he saw himself arriving at Claxted instead. Then he, too, laughed eagerly, and moved forward to the big open Tudor fireplace.

A log burned there brightly, the "royal flames" leaping in the iron grate behind a high screen. A deep green-brocaded arm-chair stood back in an ingle, a litter of papers on the rug near by, a shaded candle in a tall twisted candlestick throwing a pool of light down upon them. Above the fireplace stood unfamiliar incongruous objects: a white skull-cap that had been Pius IX.'s, in a glass-fronted box, and a black Madonna hung with beads. There was an unframed water-colour too, and a pencil sketch. From the rug, he turned to survey the room. Its bare wood floor reached out into the shadows, save where a goat-skin caught the light. Bookcases with white shelves stood out from the walls. On a stand in a window recess were tall lilies growing in a pot. The marble head of Bernard of Clairvaux, wrapt in contemplation, stood on a bracket; he could just see the aquiline nose, and downcast eyes. There was a solid narrow oak table with a chest below. In a corner there was a hanging lamp, burning dimly, so that one could see to move over there. It glinted on a grand piano. A comfortable chintz-covered chair or two stood about.

His host pulled forward an arm-chair whose elbows ended in carved griffin-heads. "Sit down," he reiterated, "and toast yourself. It is jolly to see you here. How's C-Cambridge?"

Paul drew a deep breath and seated himself. "Fine," he said. "I suppose it exists, by the way," he went on, with a laugh. "We went up four in the Lents. I say, this is just heavenly."

"Good man. Have a cigarette. Supper won't be long."

"Are you very busy, Father? We miss you awfully at Cambridge. When's the next book to appear?"

"I'm so b-b-busy I don't know what to do. Preaching nearly every Sunday, and lectures. I've got to l-lecture to Anglicans on M-Mysticism in t-town on Monday. Oh, I say, they are coming in. Two conversions last week, both c-clergymen and such good fellows. And it's such fun here. There's heaps to do yet. You shall see to-morrow."

"Yes?"

He nodded, wrapping his hands in his cloak and laughing merrily. "Of course, when I came I built a chapel. It's an old barn, much older than the house, thirteenth century they say. It must have been a chapel before, I think; it feels like it. Well, all the village talked, of course. P-Popish treason and p-plot! Bridget told me, and Tim; all the servants are Catholic you know. But I wouldn't let anyone see it, for I'm not here regularly enough to start a new church like that. Perhaps we'll have another priest one day, and a Mission. Of course, if they enquire, that's another story. So, last week when several of them came to Tim and got him to ask me to have a service on Sunday evening, I did. It was full; p-packed. The Wesleyan local preacher came too. We had B-Benediction. Oh, you ought to have been here, my dear. They all sang 'Star of the Sea' b-b-beautifully!"

It was so like Father Vassall, Paul thought. He was as eager as a boy, and the Faith was a glorious kind of adventure with him. There was no checking his enthusiasm. In his company Paul always felt as if he were living in the times of the Apostles when Christians were a little persecuted, defiant, daring band, but the Cross and the Resurrection things of but yesterday. And although he always had a sense that the world of thought and action in which the priest lived was utterly remote from the world of the average man, still he had come to see that there was nothing of the poseur in his friend. He did not pose as a mediævalist; he simply was one. And he did not adapt his religion to the world; he adapted his world to his religion.

It was on that platform that the two met so readily. Paul was utterly accustomed to that point of view. Only at Claxted there was a different religion.

So now, at once, the little priest shot his swift question quite simply. "And how is it with you?" he asked. "Have you decided to l-l-let yourself g-go?" Not so differently does a Salvationist ask a sinner at the penitent form if he is saved.

Paul moved uneasily. "Don't, Father," he said; "don't ask me that yet. I can't say. I'm pulled all ways. Whenever I sit down to think, a great tangle grows and weaves in my mind till I'm in despair at ever deciding anything."

Father Vassall nodded. "I know," he said. "So it was with me. You're on the r-rack. Every n-nerve gives you pain. You've thought enough. You know enough really. If you went on reading and talking and arguing till d-d-doomsday, you'd get no c-clearer. You must turn simply to our Lord and do His W-Will."

"If I knew it!"

The priest watched him in silence. Then he rose and felt for a cigarette. "You do know it," he said. "What you don't know is whether you dare do it."

"My father says I'm too young to make such a decision. He wanted me to go and see Prebendary----"

Father Vassall interrupted him. "See no one," he said. "Don't see me if you like. Go away alone and ask our Lord, in the light of what He has shown you. Oh, my dear! It's as plain as the n-n-nose on your f-f-face!"

"My father says I'm utterly unstable and always changing my mind."

"That's not t-t-true. See here: I know exactly what's happened to you."

"What?"

"You began, as a boy, by turning to our Lord with all the love of which your heart was capable. You vowed to be His lover. And He weighed you, looked you through and through, and accepted you. Step by step He led you on. He showed you new things about Himself as you were ready to bear them. He trusted you. He never left you. And now at last, He has shown you Himself in His Church. You know He's there. I believe, in your heart of hearts, you have faith. And you hang back because you are afraid. You ought to be a Catholic. You ought to be a religious, a R-Redemptorist, I think. You're stamped and marked out for it. There! I've never said as much to anyone. God help you."

He ended abruptly, utterly earnest, and stared at the fire, stretching a hand out to it.

"I shall break my father's heart. How can I?" cried Paul, all the bitter agony of days at home and hours of prayer, sweeping down upon him.

The priest made a gesture. "Excuses. You know that too. 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me...' And would you break His heart?"

"It's so cruel, so awfully hard."

"Of course it's cruel. Wasn't the Cross cruel? Do you think Christianity is a d-drawing-room g-game? It's fire. It's a sword. It's death or life. Good Lord, what else has it been from the first martyr to the last, yesterday? And you k-k-know it."

"It's more than I can bear," the boy burst out.

"It's n-n-not," stuttered the priest instantly. "Our Lord never offers anyone a heavier cross than he can b-b-bear."

The passion of the declaration silenced Paul. But only for a few seconds. Then the full force of what it would mean to his people overcame him.

"You don't know my father," he half whispered. "He says he would rather see me dead. Oh, he says terrible things! Father, he will see nothing, nothing. And he always harps on the strain of my past religious experiences. I deny them, he says, if I become a Catholic."

"You do no such thing. What does he himself think, for example, happened at your Communions? He thinks Christ came to you spiritually and fed your s-s-soul with His S-Spirit. And so He did. The Church doesn't deny that. The Church says you will receive something within her that outside they do not even pretend to give. You are not asked to deny one whit of the past. And you know that too."

Paul sprang to his feet. "With you, it looks inevitable. You hypnotise me into believing. But there are heaps of things to be said. I do see the need for authority; I do understand the reasonableness of the whole philosophy--from the Incarnation to relics and indulgences--it's reasonable enough, it's logical; but is it true? Is Peter true? Is the Church what you say? Come to that, is the Gospel story itself true? Is it? Is it? Oh, my God, I would give everything to know!"

He stood there, hands flung out, his whole soul in his face. And as his tense voice ceased, the silence of the room hemmed them in.

Slowly Father Vassall got, too, to his feet. They faced each other across the rug, and the black Madonna, hung with dripping beads, thrust her Son out before them.

"Oh, my dear, I'm afraid for you!" whispered the priest, staring.

"Afraid?"

He nodded. "You see, you have the soul of a r-religious and that's no t-t-trifle. And there you dare to stand, asking if the story of B-Bethlehem and C-Calvary is true!"

"Well?" Paul was defiant.

The priest crossed the room, and came back from a little search on the table with a paper in his hand. All the merriment had died out of his face; it looked years older, wan. "I w-want you to p-promise me something," he said, stammering much again in his emotion.

Paul leant back against the mantelpiece, wearily. "What, Father?" he asked; "I'll do anything I can."

"You c-c-can do this, ea-easily. Don't let's argue any more all the time you're here. Don't read books, except the N-N-New T-T-Testament. And promise me to pray this every day in the chapel before the S-Sacrament with all your heart."

He held out a paper. "I've w-w-written it out for you," he said.

Paul took the half-sheet of notepaper, written in the clear print of the priest's hand. He read it through once, and then he read it through again, only, this time, the letters were a little blurred. Then he looked up at his friend.

"Father," he said, "I can't help it. I know this, whatever anyone says. You bring our Lord to me as no one and nothing else has ever done."

"Ah, then," cried the priest, "if you turn back now!"

Bridget put her head in. "Supper's ready, your reverence," she said.

Father Vassall nodded swiftly at her. "You promise?" he said, turning to Paul.

"Oh, yes. And you'll pray for me?"

Father Vassall laughed meaningly. "Come to supper," he said gaily. "It's p-p-pork and b-b-beans. But I can give you a glass of Sp-Sp-Spanish B-B-Burgundy!"

(2)

In the chapel that night Paul prayed his prayer for the first time. The priest walked in before him and showed him to his chair and a prayer-desk with a courtly little gesture. The three servants sat behind. A candle was already lit for Paul, and one burned also for the priest in his corner. There was a white sanctuary lamp before the altar, and a red one on the left. Otherwise there was no light.

Prayers began with Scripture reading. Father Vassall had announced the fact with his odd air of almost playing with the thing. "We read the B-B-Bible every night," he had said. "Do you m-m-mind? We read for t-t-ten m-m-minutes!"

Paul had said, smilingly, that he did not mind.

So now he sat back in his chair and composed himself to listen and to look. The priest opposite, a little black hunched-up figure, half turned on one side to allow the candlelight to fall on his book, had announced: "The Acts of the Holy Apostles" and begun in a matter-of-fact, rather rapid tone, to read. As when he preached, so when he read, he did not stammer, being shortly utterly engrossed in his subject. He read on, chapter after chapter, without break or division. Paul grew interested in the manner of it. The narrative rolled out before him as a whole, a simple, nervous, obvious story which singularly held even the attention of a listener who could have gone on, pretty well, wherever the reader had cared to stop. But after a while the boy allowed his eyes to rove. This story of Peter's doings--odd, how Peter dominated the early chapters--did not somehow seem out of place here. He began to apprise the details of the building and its furniture.

It was plainly a barn. It had a barn roof of ancient unstained timber, and a stone floor. The windows were irregular, uncurtained; he saw his little moon again, steady now, shining through the bare casement, just touching rough beams that spanned the irregular rectangle as a rood-screen. In the centre rose a cross with flanking figures. They were rudely carved, by the priest himself, but there was death in the white nude body of the Christ and passionate life in the upturned head of the Mary. John stood acquiescent; Paul wondered at his attitude. It hid him; perhaps there was conflict in his heart. Perhaps he understood. Perhaps, if one understood, conflict died down to peace.

The thin supports of the rood dropped down through the shadows to the floor. A little figure stood half-way up one of them. Oh, and in the corner, between the far support and the wall, stood another statue. Paul stared at it. Something writhed in the candlelight. Then he saw that it should do so. St. Michael trod down the dragon there.

Paul looked through the rood to the altar. High hangings ran up into the canopy, but it and they were lost in the shadows. In the centre, a cartoon was appliquéd upon them; a Madonna and Child; it was just visible. There were four candlesticks, silver; the candles were burned low in them. A silver figure hung on an ebony cross--or it looked like ebony. The tabernacle was a blur of white silk. A white cloth glimmered there; and below, under the altar, a row of painted carven shields. Paul could not distinguish more, but he knew them. He had seen Father Vassall at work upon them in his study at Cambridge. They emblazoned symbols of the Passion.

Then he began to concentrate on the gloom to the left, where the red light burned. The shadows were all confused and blurred. There were irregular outlines, streaks, shadowy lines. He puzzled out a small altar, with tiny candlesticks and a biggish case upon it, that shone fitfully. The lines radiated from the case, stuck through it, behind it, as though they were a bundle of spears. Spears! It was a spear; he could see, now, a gleam on the blade. Another was headed with a bunched object. And then he knew.

A small ladder, a sponge on a reed, a spear, a shorter stick dripping with the knotted cords of a scourge; these he could see now. And he knew too what the reliquary held.

If it was true, that little heavily guarded splinter within had once been stained with the Blood, the real, literal Blood, about which he had so often preached and sung. Just such thongs as those had bit into the reddening flesh, curled and twisted and hissed on white thighs and shoulders that shrank to the utmost limit of the cords in the human writhe and agony of Christ.... "But Peter and the Apostles answering, said" (the reader read on): "We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging Him upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things: and the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to all that obey Him."

Paul stared out before him motionless, with set lips. Before him, plain, far far too plain against the dim wall, the twisting whips rose and fell.

"'In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen,'" said Father Vassall, and there was a little shuffling as they all knelt down.

Acts of Faith, Hope, Charity and Contrition; the Creed; Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be; odd-Englished prayers for night protection; more shuffling; now Paul and the priest were alone. It grew utterly still. Paul fumbled for his slip of paper and drew it out. The rustling dominated the whole chapel; it even seemed to stir the shadows that shifted always, silently, in the candlelight. He spread the paper on the desk before him. Slowly he prayed each sentence.

AN ACT OF CONSECRATION.

O Lord JESUS Christ, Who art the Way, the Truth and the Life, Without Whom no man cometh to the Father, No man is free, And no man lives eternally, Unite me wholly to Thyself that I may walk in light and truly live.

But Thy Way must be the Way of Sorrows, Thy Truth sharper than scourges, And Thy Life a losing of my own....

Give me therefore Grace--or rather Thyself, the Fount of Grace; Carry me, for I cannot walk alone; Enlighten me, for I am all darkness; Live in me, for I cannot live except in Thee.

Let me count all things loss but Thee, since Thou didst count all things loss except my love. For me Thou didst leave the joys of heaven; For me Thou wast born in cold and nakedness; For me Thou didst bear the contempt of Thy creatures and hadst not where to lay Thy head; For me Thou didst die daily in the souls of those that rejected Thee, and in the souls of them that loved Thee; die therefore in mine that Thou mayst live and I in Thee; For me Thou didst suffer Thy Mother to be pierced with swords, Who wast Thyself pierced with nails; pierce me then too, and nail me to Thy Cross.

I offer myself wholly and without reserve to Thee Who didst count nothing greater than my love: My flesh is weak, as Thou knowest Who didst bear it, But my spirit is willing, though sorrowful as Thine even unto death.

Unite me then, body and soul with Thy Divinity; My sins to Thy Redemption; My weakness to Thy Strength; My abyss of nothingness to Thy Plenitude.

I give myself to Thee, stained, shrinking and afraid; Give Thyself to me, O my crucified God, and make me Thine. Dear JESUS! Be to me not a Judge, but a Saviour!

"Dear Jesus! Be to me not a Judge, but a Saviour!"

He cried it again, and again. Tears blinded him. He choked them back. It was so still that he could not break the silence even with a sob.

(3)

The Truce of God held. It held so truly that for a brief succession of days Paul banished the major part of his doubts and haunting fears in the vivid atmosphere of Thurloe End. They did not sleep; they fled. He was not quiescent, but rather overwhelmingly alive. He drank a largely new and intoxicating drink.

It must be remembered for what, exactly, Claxted stood. Quite apart from the rights or wrongs of religion, there was a life in Claxted that was a sheer antithesis to this. It was an antithesis in small things as well as in big, in utterly unreasonable and stupid things as well as in vital ones. Thus, at Claxted, one never, at dinner or supper, sat down to boiled beans and bacon; if one had, it would not have been regarded as an adventure; moreover one never did sit down without potatoes. It is extraordinarily easy to make a mock of it, but there was a hid parable there. Food was food at Claxted; at Thurloe End it was a sacrament, and a merry sacrament of life. Nor was it less life because to Father Vassall it was Catholic life. Thus Father Vassall even ate fish and maigre soup on Fridays, and enjoyed disliking it. Most mornings there chanced to be early spring sunshine, and breakfast was served out of doors. Breakfast out of doors at Claxted would have seemed to verge on the profane, almost on the immoral. Tea, out of doors, in midsummer, yes; prepared for, with guests. At Thurloe End they ran in hastily for a little tea because they were so busy gardening, and the lights were not long. At Claxted wine was a mocker; at Thurloe End, the cask of Spanish Burgundy having just arrived, they bottled it with zest and solemnity.

At Claxted, again, the rooms were elect to their various ends. The drawing-room was for callers, tea and Sunday afternoons. The study was for sermons. The dining-room was the room in which one dined; in which Mr. Kestern rested for an hour after dinner; in which, after supper, all duly remained, with books or work, till prayers and bed. Moreover, there was routine order at Claxted, a pleasant, simple, kindly routine, but routine. A Puritan routine, too, it was of course. It had never struck Paul before, but no one laughed much at Claxted. The family was anything but solemn; possibly, temperamentally, it was inclined to be grave; but, then, on the other hand, it never, never _rioted_. Oh, except at a Christmas party, at hide and seek and blind man's buff. And now that one was grown up, one did not play such games.

On the other hand, at Thurloe, humour raced unrestrainedly. The morning's post brought laughter (and tears) with it always. The day's work was a perpetual surprise. Father Vassall would announce his intention of doing something with as solemn a determination as Mr. Kestern would have given to a month's holiday. "I shall wr-wr-write on the v-v-verandah all the morning," he would announce firmly. Or: "I shall r-r-read in the p-p-parlour for t-t-two hours." Sometimes he would go to his room, and not reappear till luncheon. Sometimes he would return to the chapel after breakfast for just as long. In the evenings, before the fire, he would read what he had written during the day, or Paul would read to him. Or they would make tapestry, or wood-carve, or Father Vassall would play the piano; or sit still, occasionally talking, but much more often sitting silently, while peace dripped slowly in on Paul's soul. One never did nothing at Claxted. He himself, in the mornings, usually strolled round till some corner seemed inevitable for a letter, a book, or a poem, or the little table in his bedroom beckoned inexorably to work. In a sentence, the day arranged itself; perhaps better, it presented itself arranged; at Claxted, as it was in the beginning, so it was, and ever would be.

Then again, at Thurloe End, the house was invested with a personality. Paul used to wander around at first, making friends. The rooms stood back, gravely, but with a smile hidden in them. The furniture belonged to the house, and had been selected by it, he felt, with care. It had chosen unvarnished oak, for the most part, because its tall, clear windows were looking up always to the light, and old oak is wise about light, taking its measure and passing the rest on enriched. Its chairs, forms, tables, bookcases, were like open hands, holding much graciousness. Moreover it was gravely proud of itself, and not ashamed of its wide walls and the pools of its floors. Where it held out a picture or a print, it did so with a curious restraint, yet with a kind of courtesy. It wore pictures like a beautiful woman wears jewels.

At Claxted there was no house at all. There was a middle-class home. Everything that the family had ever possessed, for three generations, was collected in it. The Kesterns said about a new possession that it would "go" there or there, and new possessions constantly poured in--testimonials, seasonable gifts, kindly presents from workers after summer holidays, another antimacassar after the Sale of Work, photographs, texts, missionary curios. Things overflowed on to each other: an occasional table on a rug; a crochet mat on a table; a pot on the crochet mat; a fern in the pot; a cover about them both; a picture above the fern; framed photographs below the picture; as like as not, in the end, a small basket under the table. Small baskets were always so useful for putting odds and ends in. And all the furniture and carpets and mats and pictures, jostled each other, and cried to heaven that here was no continuing city. Which, of course, is quite true, for we seek one to come.

Clocks were all over the house at Claxted; at Thurloe End there was one over the stable that struck the hours with much solemnity. Moreover it had its own views as to correct time-telling which, as Father Vassall said, was wholly right, since t-t-time was r-r-relative.

Paul told himself that religion had nothing to do with all this; that there were Catholic middle-class homes, and Protestant houses. He was not such a fool as not to know, too, that his own temperament liked the one and disliked the other, but was not necessarily right or wrong because of that. Yet after all we are all of us concerned with things as we meet them, and religion and philosophy, speaking in generalities, do shape people's houses, occupations and dress. Here, then, came the Greeks bringing gifts, generous gifts for which he felt he had been searching, at one time blindly, lately more definitely, all his days. If the gifts were of God, they would leave little room for doubt.

The days of truce, however, were not without event. The pair of them did portentous things. Up the centre of the garden ran an ancient overgrown hedge, tangled, vast; and through it, with axe and saw, they cut a leafy tunnel. In old flannel trousers, and shirts without collars, they laboured in the sweat of their brows, and cut their hands and scratched their faces and lost their way and despaired of finishing and finally attained. Just before sunset they emerged one warm delirious day, the scent of rising sap overflowing from the broken twigs and boughs about them, a mellow light on the wall across a small green ahead. Father Vassall cut the last impeding growth away, as was fit, but Paul dragged it behind. They stepped out together. The little priest looked about him with triumph, excitement and discovery on his face. So Bilboa hailed the Pacific, and Pizarro climbed the Andes. And so, also, Father Vassall had some such thought as they.

"A cross, just here, in the middle of that green," he cried. "One will b-burrow through the tunnel, and find the c-cross at the end!"

And then, suddenly, the merriment died out of his face, and the two looked at each other.

"I will go for the saw and the hammer," said Paul, after a second.

"Yes," cried Father Vassall, animation again. "I know of two s-saplings which will just do."

Paul turned back. "N-N-No!" spluttered his friend; "n-n-not through the tunnel now!"

So Paul went back another way.

Or, intermittently, they laboured at a rockery. The priest had been engaged upon it, but he took a dislike to the job soon after Paul's arrival. One day, after half an hour's work, he flung down his spade. Paul grounded a loaded wheelbarrow, and laughed.

"What in the world is the matter?" he demanded.

"I will not have a r-r-rockery in my garden," said the priest, "not a made rockery anyway. I knew it was a bad idea."

"Why ever?" asked Paul, frankly puzzled.

"The d-d-devil makes r-rockeries," said Father Vassall, "not G-G-God."

One evening Paul related at length the incidents of the Port o' Man mission, and particularly that of Mr. Childers. Father Vassall heard him gravely. At the close he asked: "Do you know David Etheridge?"

Paul shook his head.

"Ever heard of him?"

"No. Who is he?"

"We'll go and see him to-morrow. Shall we? You'll like him. He lives about two miles off."

"Good," said Paul, smiling. "But who in the world is he?"

"He's a Catholic. He was a Spiritualist. He became converted because it was the d-d-devil."

"Oh, I'd love to meet him then," cried Paul.

They went, then, luncheon being over, the priest in his rusty country ulster, a little bent, preoccupied, grave; Paul swinging along in a tweed jacket eagerly. The few passers-by saluted the priest, and a clergyman on a bicycle looked at Paul intently. "He's the V-V-Vicar," said Father Vassall, bubbling with laughter. "He's a g-g-good man; I like him; but I expect he'd like to r-r-rescue you!"

(4)

David Etheridge lived in a small cottage, and he was pottering about the garden when they arrived. Paul had received no description of him and had no reason to expect one thing more than another, but the ex-Spiritualist's short, rather tubby figure and round, smiling, pink face, tickled him. He looked the last man in the world to have met with the devil. Anyway he seemed to have come well out of the encounter.

He greeted the priest eagerly, and was introduced to Paul without explanations. First he must show them round the garden. He had bulbs in the grass, and others hidden cunningly among tree-roots, and these he discovered with triumph. New green had been made, he declared, since yesterday, and in one spot there were six tiny thrusting points, when the brown leaves were raked away with discerning fingers, where at the last visit there had been but five. They bent lingeringly over them. "Wonderful, wonderful," cried Etheridge, in a subdued ecstasy. "I don't care how many times one sees them, they're wonderful!"

Paul looked from the face of the priest to that of his friend. There was genuine awe written on them both. It was odd, he thought, the outlook of everyone down here. He himself loved the beauty of that new determined virginal life, but these two saw more. They saw holy things.

Back in the cottage at tea, Paul's visit was frankly expounded. "I b-brought K-K-Kestern to see you, Etheridge," said Father Vassall, "because he's met a clairvoyant and seen a m-m-miracle. He's impressed, naturally. And the fellow talked to him no end. I want him to hear your side of the c-case."

"What was it you saw, Mr. Kestern?" asked Etheridge. "Was it at a séance?"

"No," said Paul, "and that's what seems to me particularly interesting. It was in a very ordinary house at a very ordinary luncheon, and in the presence of four or five men who, as certainly as anything is certain, were neither accomplices nor credulous nor open to hypnotic influence. And it happened in broad daylight in about two minutes, while we all sat round and watched."

"What happened?" queried Mr. Etheridge, with a serious air that did not go so strangely with his face as a stranger would suppose.

"A pin, an ordinary pin, wobbled on a white tablecloth and stood on end, all by itself."

"W-W-Wobbled?" exploded Father Vassall, earnestly.

Paul, looking at him, loved him suddenly with a great passionate movement towards his childlike sincerity and profound faith. "Yes, Father," he said as gravely, "wobbled."

"Do you mind telling me all about it?" put in their host. "You've really begun at the wrong end of the stick, you know, Mr. Kestern."

And Paul told him. He told him everything, including the clairvoyant's statement that God was very far off.

When he had finished, David Etheridge nodded. "That would be it," he said. "So much of truth, so much of plausibility, a little release of power, and the grain of error that would, without God, crack even Peter's rock."

"But the p-pin?" asked Father Vassall. "How did he do that?"

"It's simple, Father. He was perfectly right. It is no miracle, really, as he himself said. There is psychic power. It is as real a thing as that of my muscles, perhaps in a sense more real because more fundamental. All ultimate power may be psychic. And what he did with a pin, all the mystic saints have done, when necessary, again and again. Only they have done so under God and at His direction. Maybe God Himself, incarnate, only made use of some such hidden human power of His creation, when He walked the waves."

"Then Childers was right?" asked Paul, glancing at the priest however. Etheridge seemed to be contradicting the verdict of his friend.

"Right, and from our standpoint wrong too, Mr. Kestern. So far as his explanation of the pin went, he was right, but he was in the wrong since he was playing with a power only to be exercised along the lines revealed; and he was deluded by Satan when he spoke as he did of God."

"By Satan?"

"I have no doubt at all. It always begins so. He lies in wait to deceive."

"I don't understand," said Paul, bewildered. "Childers was a man of prayer and of great reverence. He spoke very kindly even of Catholicism."

"That," said Etheridge gravely, "I fear the most."

Paul studied his face intently. He was looking out of the cottage window at the broad high-road, his features very set and grave, and with a strange mask of pain lying upon their cheery commonplace exterior that was not good to see.

He seemed to become aware of the other's examination, and turned to him. "It is like this," he said. "God has marked out the spiritual way. He has hedged and protected it. Souls may go safely there very, very far, even here, towards the celestial city. But if they stray off that path for any reason, why, Mr. Kestern, in the woods and hollows lurk enemies that let none escape."

"How do you know?" burst out Paul, vehemently. "Does the Church definitely say so?"

Etheridge nodded towards the priest, with a faint smile that only lingered a second however. "That's a question for his reverence," he said, "but I can offer you an authority, if you like."

"Please," said Paul. There was something in the other's tone that awed him.

"Well, Mr. Kestern, there was a young man who knew nothing of that divine road save that, by Providence, his feet were placed upon it at his baptism. But he was enticed aside. He was shown a seemingly fair and direct path to the same bourne. He followed it. At first all went well. To be precise, he, too, obtained something of the powers of which you have seen a sample. He became adept at seeking escape in trance. The pencil wrote for him automatically, and wrote good and wise things. He made the practice of these things his life, and finally they dominated him. He became all but their slave."

"Yes--and then?"

"Well, first, the character of the messages changed a little. His friends in the _gnosis_ warned him of mischievous spirits, even of bad ones, but he was not to be afraid. He would not be afraid. For a while the good returned--and riveted his chains more firmly. Then the shadow crept in again. He was told of a new morality, led on to seek relief in stimulants, encouraged to voyage far and often in trance. At last only there, in trance, was there full escape. He loathed himself, but his waking life was beset with devils, prurient curiosity, perverted sensuality, a desire to inflict pain. He struggled, but in vain. But in the trance-sleep he was free."

A motor car hummed up the hill and buzzed over the crest. Etheridge "waited till the sound died away. Neither of his listeners moved.

"And then one day, Mr. Kestern," went on the narrator at last evenly, "having gone over in trance, he found his return barred. He could see his own body on the couch and he longed to re-enter it. But he could not. A Watcher stood on the Threshold. For an eternity there seemed no possibility of return."

Paul moistened dry lips. "A watcher?" he managed to ask.

"Yes. Beyond telling. Do you loathe anything? Have you ever felt Fear? Do you shrink from corruption, its scent and sight? You cannot imagine all those incarnate, but it was that."

"My G-G-God," said Father Vassall. "That's enough, Etheridge."

"But you are here," cried Paul. "What saved you?"

"The grace of God, which is beyond telling, at the moment, and, under Him, Father Vassall afterwards. He may tell you if he please."

Paul glanced at the priest. But he shook his head. "I t-t-told you it was the d-d-devil," he said.

"Father Vassall, perhaps, can hardly speak of it, Mr. Kestern. He fought for my soul. He held me all one night, and a crucifix in my hands, while Satan shook my body, my bed, the very room, but could not prevail."

And silence drew in and sat between the three of them.

Paul broke it. He sighed. "Forgive me," he said, "but what is one to believe? You explain one thing by an unknown force; why not so explain this? And--I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Etheridge--I suppose we all have a side to our character which, supposing it were for any reason developed and released, might do terrible things."

The ex-Spiritualist bowed slightly. "You are quite right," he said tranquilly. "That is one explanation. You can explain the Gospels and the Incarnation and Lourdes and--and Spiritualism that way. Men even explain man. If there were no explanation possible, there would be no need of faith."

"But I haven't----" began Paul.

Father Vassall made a quick gesture. "'_Si scires donum Dei_,'" he said. "Don't t-t-tempt God, Kestern."

Etheridge rose as if he had not heard. "Let us walk in the garden a little," he said, "and breathe clean air."

That evening, Father Vassall varied the order of night prayers somewhat. He crossed over the chapel to Paul, after the Scripture reading, and put a little manual in his hand. It was not wholly unfamiliar to the boy, but for the first time the real significance of the Office of Compline dawned on him. He saw the long dark corridors leading from chapel, the silent shut-off monastic cells, the peasant on his lonely road home, the soldier on sentry guard while the camp slept. He saw that the night had been alive to such, and that their faith had made these prayers for a shield. And he was not sorry for that shield himself that night.

Grant us, O Lord, a quiet night and a perfect end. Your adversary the devil, goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Thou shalt not be afraid for the Terror by night, For He shall give His angels charge over thee. Visit this house, we beseech Thee, O Lord. Drive far from it all snares of the enemy. Let Thy holy angels dwell therein....

All his imagination astir, Paul listened, in his secret heart, for the drift of pinions. Nor, then, did he wonder that he failed to hear them; he only marvelled a little at the impenetrability of clay-shuttered doors.

(5)

Thus, then, came Paul Kestern to his last night at Thurloe End. Judge ye, who may. This, at least, was the manner of it.

The Father had read aloud _The Holy Grail_, and Paul _The Hound of Heaven_. He had himself chosen it; he had no one to blame for that.

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest (he read), I am He Whom thou seekest; Thou drivest Love from thee, Who drivest Me.

He shut the book. The little priest was nursing his knees against the tall fender, and the boy looked from him to the candlelight on the white of the uncanonised saint's hat on the mantelshelf. It rather fascinated him, that round skull-cap. It was a child's trick to put it there, the little white satiny thing in its glass-fronted box--a child's trick, lovable. He looked at the priest again. The other stirred.

"My dear," he said, stammering badly, "you g-g-go to-m-m-morrow. And we've kept the tr-truce."

Paul nodded.

Silence.

The priest spoke again. "I don't know," he said. "I can't stick my fingers into your soul. I d-d-don't want to. Only God's been good to you, you know. And--and He's a j-j-jealous God."

"Oh, I don't know," burst out the boy. "Father, I don't know. There's so much for and against. And I've prayed and prayed and prayed, and--and God hides Himself."

"He's given you all the l-l-light you need. He's shown you! He's sent His Son and appointed His Church and p-p-put it b-b-bang in your p-path. What else do you want? Do you want a special r-r-revelation?"

"Oh, I don't know," wailed Paul. "I don't KNOW."

His voice broke a little. Father Vassall dropped his knees and jumped up, catching his robe about him. His eyes shone, though his face was grave. "L-look here," he said. "Here's a bit of paper. I'll put here all the things that make for the Church, unless you feel honestly, in your own mind, that the balance of evidence on a point puts it on the other side. Now."

When the paper was written it appeared thus:

WHICH is TRUE?

_R.C._ _Anglican._

Emotions in Catholic Church. Emotions at Claxted, Keswick, etc. Reason? History? Which Works? Scripture? Tradition? Catholic Idea? Consistency? Gospel of the Poor? Beauty? Common sense? Miracles? Peter?

(After the first, Paul had objected: "But Christianity may not be reasonable at all." "T-t-that hardly makes for Anglicanism," retorted Father Vassall. "Is _it_, the Via Media, reasonable?" And Paul had been silent thereafter.)

"That's enough, Father," said Paul, in a still voice.

"It is, only this." (He added, last on the list--Peter.) "Now, here you are. To-morrow, after breakfast, go into the chapel, put this before you, and pray. Pray. PRAY. Hear? I'll say no more, now or ever. You're alone, you know, you must be.... If it's 'yes,' after that, come and tell me, and I'll get the faculties and receive you. If it's 'no,' then don't say anything. Just 'good-bye.' And G-God bless you, anyway."

He had his way. The boy went almost silently to bed, heard Mass, ate breakfast quietly, went into the chapel, and knelt down. He propped his papers before him. He chose to kneel before the red lamp.

He read his paper, but he could not think. Confused

images buzzed through his head, and voices. "I'd rather see a son of mine dead," said Mr. Kestern. "God is very far off," said Childers. "He was deluded by Satan," said David Etheridge. "Oh, don't break your father's heart, Paul," cried his mother. "Concubinage is a regular thing in Spain," said the Bishop of Mozambique. "Christ is the most arresting figure in history," said Manning coolly. "He's a j-j-jealous God," said Father Vassall.

Paul shut his eyes. He was so tired. He turned deliberately away and thought of Edith. He remembered Hursley Woods, and the little brown cap, and the brown leaves, and the blue sky. A thrush, too, that looked at them out of beady eyes. And here he was, in a Popish chapel, Father Vassall's chapel.

He looked up. In the clear morning light, the chapel was all so plain. In front of him, as plain as plain, was a sponge on reed, a spear, a ladder, a scourge. He noticed that they were a little dusty. The glass reliquary reminded him of wax flowers under a glass case belonging to his great-aunt Sophie; no, it did not remind him of the flowers, it was just the case, with its plush fringe, that it brought ridiculously to his mind. But inside the case was that small splinter the priest had described, a fragment splintered from Calvary with its sweat and turmoil and blood.

It had been, of course, like that figure on the rood. He had hung dead. Dead. Drained of blood. Dead.

Dead? A little to the right the white tabernacle veil hung in the folds to which Father Vassall had adjusted it this morning. And behind lay the mystery. If only he KNEW.

And then, suddenly, he saw it all as clearly as the day through the chapel window: his broken home, his mother's tears, Edith lost to him, his ambition to write poetry blocked out, and instead, instead--that silver Cup behind the white curtain thrust into his hand. A half-remembered line shot into his head:

And down the shaft of light Blood-red...

And suppose, after all, it were _not_ true....

If it were true, surely God would show him. If He were a Father, surely, surely...

(6)

That, then, was the manner in which Paul Kestern grew afraid. The utter silence of the chapel grew on him, bore down on him, wave on wave. Was it not time for the trap? Oh, but they would call him. Meantime, why wouldn't God speak? Just a word, a flicker of a curtain.... It was all so still. Not even a wind. The silence listened, that was the awful thing; it listened for him to pray. And if he prayed--oh, if he prayed, he would break down like a baby, and surrender, and he would never really have known.

Then Paul knew he could not pray.

But he shut his eyes; he groped into the blackness; he pressed against the silence; he knew he was alone, all alone; he knew if he could have fled, he would have done so, but that he could not move. He must fight it out alone, endure alone; and though that awful silence terrorised his very thought, he must still try to think....

"It's t-t-time to go," whispered a voice in his ear.

He got up, and stumbled out. "Thank you so much, Father," he said. There was utter terror in his soul, but that was what he said. He saw the other's face, tender and grave, and his quaint black gown, and the bare hall, and the little flagged path, and the iron gate, and the trap. Oh, he was glad to see the trap. He mustn't be afraid; it was absurd; he could walk out. "Really I've loved being here," he heard himself saying.

"C-come again s-s-some t-time," stammered Father Vassall.

"Thanks, I will, Father. Good-bye."

"G-g-good-bye."

He balanced himself as the horse started forward, and then turned and waved. The little priest waved too. They swung round the turn.

Paul looked at the clouds, moving serenely across the sky. He peered into the bare twigs of an oak. Some palm was in bloom, soft, yellow, feathery.

"Truth, it's real mild spring, sir," said Tim.

"Yes," said Paul. "I must say I'm glad summer is coming."

"London, single," he said through the wicket at the booking office. It was real, that funny little window, and odd, how absurd the man looked, peering at him! A couple of turns up the platform, a good asphalted platform, with staring advertisements, rather jolly--about pens, Easter in Normandy, Nestle's Milk. And there was the train at last, swinging merrily round the corner, noisy, fussy, _real_.

Third class, smoker, empty, that would do. Paul flung himself into a far corner. "Thank God," he said to himself, "thank _God_."

A tall dark girl walked up the train. She looked in at Paul's window. He didn't see her, but she saw him, hesitated a moment, and decided, after all, she wouldn't travel to town with him. If perhaps, the next compartment was empty, she would prefer that. It was. She got in and shut the door. She had a newspaper and a novel to read, but she settled herself to stare out of the window instead. The country was so unimaginably lovely.