FATHER VASSALL
God, if there be any God, speaks daily in a new language, by the
tongues of men; the thoughts and habits of each fresh generation and
each new-coined spirit throw another light upon the universe, and
contain another commentary on the printed Bibles; every scruple, every
true dissent, every glimpse of something new, is a letter of God's
alphabet; and though there is a grave responsibility for all who speak,
is there none for those who unrighteously keep silence and conform? Is
not that also to conceal and cloak God's counsel?--ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON: _Lay Morals_.
(1)
Mr. Tressor had not yet returned from lecturing, the man said in
response to Paul's knock, but he had left word that he would not be
more than a few minutes late. Would Mr. Kestern come in? Mr. Manning
was also coming to luncheon.
As the door of the don's keeping-room closed behind him, Paul looked
round eagerly. He walked over to the fireplace and stood on the rug,
with his back to the fire as if he owned the place. His eyes roved
round the remembered room. There were the bookshelves, with the hid
electric lights at the top of them as he knew, in which, during just
such a moment of waiting, he had once looked for Mr. Tressor's own
works and found none. There were the few odd vivid little
pictures--the amateur photograph of Tressor himself with a leaping pack
of dogs, the cartoon from Vanity Fair, the water-colour of the old
house in the Weald, Loggan's print of the College, an impression of the
gorge at Ronda, and a pencil sketch of the Chelsea Embankment. There
were the few big comfortable chairs; the little table with its fat
cigarette-box, a new book or two, the ivory paper-cutter; the tall
firescreen, not used now, of faded tapestry; the window-seat. He
glanced through the high wide windows. The bare trees of the Fellows'
garden were wet and dismal in a January mist, but seen so, Paul had an
odd feeling that they were quiet and dignified. In short, it was the
old room, with its air of serene, silent waiting, in which the boy had
already seen visions and dreamed dreams.
Mr. Tressor came in, big, slow, kindly. He shook hands with Paul,
smiling upon him. "Well, glad to be up again? Been writing more
verses in the Vac., eh?"
Paul shook his head. "I could not write at home, somehow," he said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I was too busy, perhaps, for one thing."
"Reading?"
"No, not much." (Paul hesitated. Then he spoke out.) "You see
there's no end to do in a parish, Christmas-time."
The other nodded with a comprehension at which Paul wondered slightly.
"I know. School treats, socials and prayer meetings. I admire the
people who do them enormously. I suppose you had your full share?"
"Yes," said Paul, and was silent, remembering Edith. It was
odd--Tressor and Edith. And he liked both.
Manning was announced.
Manning entered easily, nodded to Tressor, apologised for being late,
and greeted Paul. "Hullo, Paul," he said, "had a good Vac.?"
"We were just talking of his manifold activities," said Tressor, "but I
expect luncheon is ready. Let's go in."
Paul felt a little out of it during the meal. The others talked so
easily of places, people and things which were foreign to him.
Personalities were mentioned of whom you never heard at Claxted. He
felt an absurd desire to retaliate in kind and tell of a restaurant
lunch with Gipsy Smith after a big meeting in Westminster Chapel and of
veteran Mr. Henry Hutchinson's visit to his father. But quite possibly
neither Tressor nor Manning had ever heard of the World's Conference of
Christian Endeavour or of the Children's Special Service Mission.
Also, though he knew what to do at table of course, he was rather on
his guard. He was self-conscious when he had to help himself from the
dishes with which the man served him. At home, helpings were handed to
you.
They went back to the study for coffee, and it was then that Manning
remarked disconnectedly to the don: "I hear Father Vassall is coming
into residence at the Catholic Church this term."
"Yes. He's a great preacher in his way. Have you heard him?"
"No, but I shall go. Catholicism interests me. There's so much more
to be said for it than for any other form of religion it seems to
me,--and just as much to be said against it."
Tressor laughed, and looked across at Paul. "What do you say to that,
Kestern?" he asked.
Paul glanced from one to the other, and flushed slightly. "There seems
to me nothing in the world to be said for it," he said bravely.
"There you are, Manning," laughed Tressor kindly. "And I must say I
agree with Kestern in the main."
Manning crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette. "Do you?" he said, in
his cool, attentive, but cynical way. "I suppose you would. But I
shall divide my foes, after the Apostolic manner. You do not believe
in dogma; Paul does."
"Surely----" began Paul, and stopped, wishing he had not begun.
"Well?" queried Tressor.
Paul took the plunge. "Well, you believe in our Lord, sir, don't you?
And surely the Atonement and the Resurrection stand for dogmas."
Manning and Tressor exchanged a glance. Manning laughed. "'Now the
Sadducees say there is no resurrection,'" he quoted.
Paul looked bewildered; the elder don a little grave. "I expect we do
not both interpret the story in quite the same way, Kestern," he said.
"But, sir," said Paul earnestly, "what two ways can there be? The
whole of Christianity is based on our Lord's Resurrection. 'If Christ
be not raised, your faith is vain.'"
Manning settled himself into his chair. "Do go on," he said.
"Theology interests me enormously. I told you, Tressor, that Paul here
would convert you if he could."
The boy felt uneasy. He did not want to argue and could not bring
himself to speak to the don as Manning did, though he was well aware
that Tressor would not in the least have resented it. But he felt he
must say something, and his evangelical upbringing taught him what to
say. "Surely the Bible story is simple enough," he said.
Tressor moved, for him, a trifle impatiently. "You think so, do you?"
he said.
"Oh, yes," said Paul, much more sure of his ground now.
"I confess I do not. What of the discrepancies in the story? What of
the late additions to the text? And what, still more, of the
atmosphere in which it was written? But I grant you, in a different
sense, that the Bible picture is simple enough. Jesus is to me a
simple, brave, kindly man whose gospel has never been transcended and
whose spirit will never die. If you allow for Eastern imagination and
Catholic reductions, it is indeed simple enough."
Paul heard bewildered. He knew, of course, that Higher Critics
existed, a strange, disloyal, un-Christian few, mostly to be found in
Germany--and left there by sensible people. It ought, perhaps, to be
explained that he had taken a scholarship in history and was reading
for that Tripos. At Claxted, a theological degree seemed unnecessary.
The Gospel was so simple that the Bishop's examination, to be taken in
due course, was training all sufficient for a Christian minister.
Gipsy Smith, for example, knew little theology.
"But," he stammered, "our Lord was God. He died to save us. If He had
not been God, what power could there have been in the Cross? What
merit in His Blood?"
A little silence fell on them all. Tressor, after his fashion, was
smoking cigarettes in hasty puffs, extinguishing one after another in
his ash-tray half burned. Manning stared thoughtfully and a little
cynically into the fire. Paul's questions hung in the air, and his
listeners' silence answered them.
"I wonder how long you will believe all that," queried Tressor gravely.
"All my life," answered Paul resolutely, his embarrassment gone. "I
hope to spend it preaching the Gospel. It seems to me there is nothing
else worth doing. What good is there in"--(he nearly said "all this,"
but checked himself in time)--"in learning, comfort, art, music,
anything, except as aids to this? What else matters besides this?
Sir, surely you see that!"
It was odd that the don should echo Maud Thornton, but he did. "You
would make us all foreign missionaries, I suppose," he said.
Only for a moment did Paul hesitate. Then: "Yes," he said simply, "I
suppose I would. Not all are called to the same sort of work, of
course, but it should be all to that end."
Again his listeners exchanged glances, but this time they could afford
to smile. "I fear I should make a poor missionary," said Tressor.
Paul looked at him, distressed. He had not meant to bring the
conversation to such a head, but what else could he have said? The don
saw his uneasiness, and rose, smiling.
"Well, Kestern," he said, "don't think I mind in the least your saying
what you think. Besides you are flattering; I confess no one yet even
thought he saw a potential missionary in me. But however tight you sit
to your dogmas, I should give ear to the other side also, if I were
you. After all, you are up here for that, aren't you? And now I'm
walking with the Master this afternoon, and I fear I've got to go.
Come again sometime. Look in any evening. If I'm busy, I'll say so.
And bring me some more verses. Good-bye."
Paul, on his feet, ventured however one more direct question.
"Good-bye, sir," he said, "but it worries me. Do tell me one thing.
Do you honestly mean that, as you read your Bible, you do not think
Christ dogmatic?"
"Honestly, I do not," said Tressor, and nodded kindly. "Good-bye," he
said again.
(2)
It was Manning who enlightened Paul on the other's attitude, however,
much later in the term. Spring had made an unexpectedly early
appearance, and they took a Canader to paddle up the Backs. The
sunlight lay soft and lovely on the mellow walls, the slow-moving black
river, the willows just breaking into new green, and the trim lawns.
Paul as yet, however, had not begun to attempt to find refuge in beauty
and to rest his soul upon it. He even surveyed the Spring flowers on
the banks of Trinity Fellows' garden with dissatisfaction. Tressor's
kindly but obviously unmoved criticism of a rapture of his read to him
the night before on the parallel of natural and supernatural
resurrection, had occasioned more immediately his present attitude. "I
don't understand it at all," he remarked to Manning, digging his paddle
ferociously into the water and forcing his companion to lean hard on
his in the stern to escape striking the centre arch of Trinity Bridge.
"Well, let us avoid a collision anyway," said Manning good-humouredly.
"But look here, Paul, Tressor's position is simple enough. You read
the Bible as if it were yesterday's _Times_; he doesn't. He considers,
first, the difficulty of choosing between the variations in the many
texts; then the difficulty of getting back behind fifth-century
manuscripts to the original; then the difficulty of knowing how much
the original owes to the unscientific mind and Eastern imagination of
the writer. Heavens! You read history! Do you not do the same thing
with Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and all the rest of the musty
stuff? Well, then, in his mind the Christ shrinks to shadowy
proportions. He remains possibly the most interesting and arresting
figure in history, but that is all. You see, resurrection or no, all
those events are nineteen hundred years behind us."
Paul leant back in his canoe and forgot to paddle. "Oh," he said at
last, "I see."
The other looked at him curiously. "You're an odd fish, Paul," he
said. "What do you see?"
"I see the difference between Tressor's Christianity and--and my
father's."
"Which is?"
"Tressor reads about Christ, but my father knows Him. He is more real
to my father, Manning, than I am."
The curious look died out of Manning's face, but an affectionate ring
crept into his voice. "Lord, Paul, you're a rum ass, you know," he
said, "but you are rather an interesting one."
Paul was due at Dick Hartley's for tea, and as soon as they had landed,
he rushed round to his friend. It was odd, he thought as he went, how
one suddenly saw things, by some curious indefinable process, which one
had known, one thought, for years. After all, he had preached on the
Blind Beggar in St. John's Gospel a score of times one way and another,
yet he had never really understood it until this afternoon. He had
"known" Christ ever since he could well remember, but somehow it was
the Christ of the printed page that he had known. Alive to-day, yes,
but not alive in such a way that His living actually solved
intellectual doubts. To Paul, the Cambridge streets had suddenly
become the streets of a New Jerusalem. From old gables to modern
shop-fronts, they had all at once become intimate and tender. He
thought, even as he ran, that just as he had come to dwell tenderly on
a mental image of Edward Street because Edith lived, moved, and had
association there, so now the whole world was transfigured before him.
Christ moved in it, and he knew Christ.
He rattled up the wooden stairs to his friend's room and burst in
almost without knocking. Dick was reading in an arm-chair and a kettle
hissed on the hob. He looked up from his book.
"Heavens! What's the matter?" he asked, smiling.
Paul slowed down, shut the door, and came over to the fire, his face
shining. "I say, Dick," he said, "do you realise what it means that we
know Christ?"
The older man stared, as well he might have done. Then a rather
envious expression crept into his face. Wistfulness was scarcely what
one thought of in connection with matter-of-fact, athletic,
sober-minded Dick Hartley, but it was there at that moment.
"Ah," he said shortly, and was silent.
"Of course I thought I did," poured out Paul excitedly, walking up and
down, "but I begin to think I never have till this afternoon. I see,
now, what's the matter with Tressor and Manning and all the rest of
them. They think Christ is a story out of a book, Dick. Even I" (all
innocent of self-righteous priggishness was Paul), "even I thought of
Him only as emotionally alive, so to speak. But He lives, Dick, He
lives! We know Him! We aren't worried by criticism or any of their
intellectual doubts, because we know Him. Don't you see?"
Dick closed Harnack's _Acts of the Apostles_ and put it on one side.
"You have a great gift of faith, Paul," he said.
"Faith! It isn't faith! It's sight, I tell you. Why, man, look here,
if Manning were to come gravely to my room to-night and argue that you
were a myth, what the blazes do you think I should say? I should laugh
in his face! 'Why, I had tea with him this afternoon,' I should say!
And it's the same with Jesus. Dick"--the eager voice hushed a
little--"we're having tea with _Him_ this afternoon."
Hartley did not laugh. He half glanced round. "Can one act on that
altogether?" he queried.
Paul flung out his hand with an eager gesture. "Why not?" he cried.
"One should act on it absolutely I think."
Hartley spoke slowly. "Well, but would Christ stay here, read Harnack,
take in a newspaper" (his eyes roved the room), "row, get new
window-curtains, and--and fall in love?" His gaze rested on a portrait
on the mantelpiece.
Paul's hand fell to his side. He, too, glanced round the simple,
commonplace, in the opinion of most people severely plain room. Then
he dropped into a chair. "You must ask Him," he said slowly.
"Suppose I have?"
"Then you must do what He says."
Dick was altogether more slow, more solid, than Paul. He began to make
tea. "It's odd," he said, busy over the cups, "but I'm not sure that I
know."
"Ah," said Paul, still triumphant and impetuous, "I asked you if you
really knew Him, Dick."
(3)
In Hursley Woods that vacation, Paul explained it all to Edith. They
were seated side by side on a fallen log, and all around them the fresh
blue of the wild hyacinths was unstained as Paradise. They lit the
dull day with a radiance of their own. Brown and green and grey blent
about them and faded into distance, and he held her hand. The two had
just kissed with a solemn virginal innocence. They were glad, but not
gay. Francis of Assisi would have wondered at them, had he been there.
As it was one of his brethren, a big blackbird with a bright enquiring
eye, emphatically did so. It probably struck him that these restrained
humans were out of place in such a vivid, tingling, riotous life as
that of a wood in spring. He hopped off to look for a worm.
Paul renewed the conversation that the kissing had interrupted. "You
see, Edith, dear," he said, "it's so illogical to believe one thing and
act another. What are the realities of life? God, and a lost world,
and Christ our Saviour. What does anything matter beside them? Both
Dick and I feel that everything--_everything_--ought to be surrendered
to Him. Even things good in themselves must go down before the awful
necessity of preaching the Gospel. Mind you, I don't speak of learning
quite as I did. I see, for example, that if I get a first in my
History, it will be of use in the Church. But all the rest--do you
see?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes, in a way," she said.
"Look here"--he jumped up eagerly--"I'll give you an illustration.
It's a silly one, in a way, but it's all the better for that. It's the
commonplace things people won't see. In my rooms, last term, Donaldson
and Strether and I--oh, and a man called Hannam--were discussing dress.
Donaldson was saying that there was no reason why a Christian shouldn't
wear decent socks--clocked, gay things like his own. There was nothing
wrong in them, he said. I agreed, but I couldn't help it; I said:
'Would Christ have worn them? Would He have spent an extra shilling on
a yellow stripe in His socks when that shilling would send a Testament
to China?' Would He? What do you think?"
"He would not," she said.
"Exactly." In his triumph, Paul sobered and sat down. "There's no
escape," he said.
Edith leant forward and prodded the soft earth with a stick. "Then
you'd wear the oldest clothes and live on just anything and have no
home and go about preaching," she said.
"Exactly," said Paul again.
"But what would happen to the world if everyone did that?" queried
Edith.
"That is not our concern," said Paul gravely. "I do not know and I do
not care. But this I do know, if Christians started in to do that,
they'd--they'd--well, they'd turn the world upside down. Which is
exactly what the world said Paul and Barnabas were doing."
"And so it stoned them."
"So it stoned them. You're quite right. It was the Apostles' lives or
their own. Heathen Rome saw the issue admirably. Heathen England
doesn't. Why not? Because Christians are no longer Apostolic."
The girl turned wide eyes on him. "But oh! Paul," she cried, "think
what that means! It would mean giving up everything; it would mean
death!"
"'I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me'," quoted
Paul gravely.
The girl looked away. The heart of the rich woods grew dim before her.
She fumbled for her handkerchief.
Very tenderly the boy put his arm about her. "Edith, darling," he
said, "don't think I don't love you. I don't think I've ever loved you
more than I do now. But if Christ told us to put our love aside,--for
a while, down here perhaps,--could we refuse Him?"
All the woman in her revolted. "I don't know!" she sobbed. "I don't
mind giving up everything else. But I could help you."
Paul's own eyes clouded. "Dear, darling Edith," he said, "I know you
could. And you would help too. I expect you will. Oh, I hope so--you
don't know how much! But we ought to face the full bitterness of the
Cross, and then, if God makes it possible, take what He gives us very
gratefully. Surely you see that?"
The girl dabbed at her eyes and rolled her handkerchief into a hard
ball. Then she looked up at him with a wintry smile. "I shouldn't
love you so much if you weren't so awfully right always, Paul," she
said.
(4)
In his new eagerness, Paul sprang a mine on his father. He went up to
town to meet Strether who had taken a couple of tickets for a matinée
of _Peter Pan_, with which play his friend's curious personality was
violently intrigued. The artist in Paul revelled in the fairy tale,
and deep called to deep before the boy who would not grow up. But his
passionate creed would not let him alone.
"It's all very well, Gus Strether," he said, arm in arm in Regent
Street, "but do you think a girl ought to dress up like that in boy's
clothes? And what good does it do? It's like sitting down to play a
round game while the house is on fire!"
Strether grunted. He was between the devil and the deep sea. He loved
Peter Pan with a deep love that was all the fonder for being buried so
deep in his queer hidden self, but he hated Pauline Chase--at least on
the picture postcards. That, then, he passed over. But the other he
would not pass. "You row, and eat chocolate biscuits in my rooms while
the house is on fire," he retorted.
"Only while waiting to get to work," persisted Paul.
"Might be at a prayer meeting," growled the other.
Paul assented sadly. "I admit that's logical," he said.
Strether lengthened his ungainly stride. "Balderdash," he muttered.
"If you tried to live at prayer meetings, you'd soon cease to live at
all. Go and see Peter Pan while you're waiting to get to work."
"It's a bad example. People wouldn't understand. But it's awfully
jolly."
"Thought you'd got a bloomin' text up in your rooms to make 'em
understand."
Paul stopped in the middle of Regent Street. "I've got it," he cried
excitedly. "I'll put a cross up as well--a big, plain, empty cross
over my writing-table."
"Thought that was Popish."
"I don't care if it's Popish or not. It's a symbol of Christ. The
shadow of it ought to lie everywhere and touch everything. Come on,
let's go and get one now. Mowbray's have them. Come on. There's time
before tea."
The odd pair explored the premises of the Margaret Street shop.
Secretly, Paul was moved by the beauty of the crucifixes, though his
soul was stirred by a host of Madonnas which should have been painted,
he said, quoting a Protestant tract, as if the Virgin were a woman of
fifty, and were not. Strether lurched around, grunting to himself. He
was curious over most things. Paul bought a big plain cross for his
rooms, and, on second thoughts, a small silver one for his watchchain.
"Thought you ought to give all your money to the Chinese," said
Strether.
Paul laughed. "Old ass," he said; "this is missionary work."
Miss Bishop happened to be at his home as he unrolled his parcel. She
was caustic and cynical. "My experience is that if you wear the cross
on your watch-chain, you soon cease to bear it in your heart," she said.
Paul retorted hotly. "Why?" he demanded. "It's that kind of saying
that we have got to disprove. Christ is real to me. I want to feel
Him at every turn. I want to give up all my life to the Cross. This
is only the sign of it, I know, but why should you argue that my
wearing of the sign will make the thing itself unreal to me, just
because some people wear it and have forgotten its meaning?"
"But is it necessary, Paul?" queried his mother gently.
"You don't understand, mother," said Paul. "Is it necessary to put up
your portrait in my rooms at Cambridge? Can't I remember you without?"
His mother sighed; that was so like Paul. His father looked troubled.
"It's the thin end of the wedge, laddie," he said, "so often. We
don't, of course, object to the thing itself; it's only that we hate
the religion that has destroyed the truth of Christ while it has decked
itself out with crosses. Isn't the Saviour without the symbol enough
for you, my boy? The old devil is so cunning, Paul, lad."
"And the cocksure folk are the people he gets first," added Miss Bishop.
"Then," said Paul shrewdly, "you ought to look out, Miss Bishop."
"Paul," said his father sternly, "you forget yourself."
(5)
Yet one might almost have supposed that Miss Bishop had indeed stirred
the devil into action. She would have said that he was positively
waiting for cocksure Paul that very first afternoon of the May term.
His emissary was a youthful-looking man, rather small, light and quick
in movement, fair of complexion, with alert, keen, grey-blue eyes that
perpetually brimmed over with humour, although the home of it was low
down in them, out of sight. He was decorously dressed in black, but
with a rather shabby buttoned frock-coat, for he was careless of
appearances, and when he spoke at first to strangers, or if he were
unusually moved, there was often a little stammer in his voice. He
was, in short, the Rev. Father Vassall, a Popish priest.
Paul found him in Hannam's rooms, Hannam being the new acquaintance of
the previous term. He kept in the rooms below Paul, who did not care
for him particularly, and had, indeed, done no more than call the first
term. But Hannam was a lonely individual, of somewhat eccentric
tastes, one of which was for verse. He, therefore, admired Paul and
Paul's writings, and latterly the two had seen more of each other.
Paul knew, that he was a Catholic, but as one did not exactly associate
religion of any sort with Hannam, who, nevertheless, was tolerant of
Paul's ardent faith, this fact had not obtruded as one might have
expected.
Thus, then, it chanced that Kestern arrived at St. Mary's a day before
Manning, and by an earlier train than that of any of his more intimate
friends. He was chaffing old Tom about four of the clock in the First
Court, and on his way to his rooms knocked by an impulse at Hannam's
door.
"Hallo, Kestern," cried Hannam joyfully as he entered, "glad you're up
early. Want some tea? Do come in. Let me introduce you--Father
Vassall, Mr. Kestern of this college."
Paul found himself shaking hands with the Popish priest. He did it
nervously, but with obvious interest. Odd as it may seem, Popish
priests were as rare and as strange to Paul as Buddhist monks. The
stranger seemed to appreciate the fact. His eyes twinkled.
"H-H-Hannam has t-told me a little about you, Mr. K-Kestern," he said.
Paul laughed engagingly, and much more pleasantly than one ought to do
with the devil. But then there was an air about this priest that was
amazingly boyish, eager and attractive. You felt at once, as it were,
his radiant personality. Besides there were no hypocrisies about
Father Vassall, and he always came straight to the point. His tone
suggested to Paul what he meant.
"That I am a fierce Protestant, I suppose you mean," smiled Paul.
"And a p-p-poet," stammered the little priest, "which is very much
nicer, Mr. Kestern."
"You two ought to have a lot in common," put in Hannam with lazy
interest. "Father Vassall was once a Protestant, Kestern, and he is
still a poet."
"Much b-better P-P-Protestant than p-p-poet," exploded the accused
merrily.
They drew round the fire with their tea. Conversation ranged over
their doings in the vacation and the prospects of the term, and Paul
learned that Father Vassall had been a wet Bob at Eton and cox of his
college crew at the University. Absurdly enough, he had never
associated such healthy doings with Papistry. But Father Vassall had
been a Protestant then. This amazing fact held Paul's mind. It
staggered him to think that Protestants could ever become Catholics.
He looked on the priest with amazement and real sorrow. For one thing
he could never have known Christ....
Hannam asked Paul if he had been to the theatre; Paul confessed to
_Peter Pan_; Father Vassall said that above all things he would like to
see it.
"Why don't you go then?" enquired Paul carelessly.
"P-priests are forbidden to go to p-plays," said Father Vassall.
"What!" cried Paul. Ridiculously, it was his first shock. He had
always understood that actors, actresses and Roman Catholics owned the
same master and were as thick as thieves, and here was a priest
professing to be forbidden by his Church to go to the theatre at all!
Father Vassall explained. "But we can go to m-m-music halls," he
stammered, his eyes alight with mischief.
"Kestern prefers missionary meetings," said Hannam.
"Why," exclaimed the priest eagerly, his stutter all but disappearing
in his enthusiasm; "you should come and hear Father Kenelm then, Mr.
Kestern. He has been t-thirty years in South America, and is utterly
devoted to our Lord and the Church's work out there. He is over here
arranging for the publication of the B-Bible in one of the native
tongues and is speaking in Cambridge this week."
"The Bible!" cried Paul aghast. "But the Roman Catholic Church does
not allow people to read the Bible!"
Hannam grinned, and threw himself back in his chair. He anticipated
enjoyment.
"Father Kenelm has himself translated, published and distributed some
half-million B-Bibles in two or three l-l-languages," retorted the
priest.
"But, Father," said Paul, utterly serious, copying Hannam's mode of
address and scarcely noticing it in his eagerness, "you can't deny that
your Church burnt Bibles openly in St. Paul's Churchyard at the
Reformation."
"Never one," said Father Vassall.
Paul stiffened angrily, though his anger relaxed into bewilderment at
the other's laughing face. The priest leant forward.
"Have you ever seen a copy of what we did b-burn?" asked the other.
Paul shook his head.
"Well, I could show you one at the Presbytery. We burnt P-Protestant
copies of the Holy Scripture which had been mutilated by the removal of
whole books and made worse than valueless by the bias of the
translation and the m-marginal notes that had been added."
"Ah," said Paul, relieved, "I see. But that depends on what view you
take of the notes."
"Excuse me," retorted the other, "it does not. We burnt annotated and
mis-translated portions of the Scriptures, not the Holy Bible. Those
are indisputable historical f-facts. The annotation cannot be denied
and the mis-translation is proved even by your own Revised Version.
And as for motive, may I ask what you would advise a heathen convert of
yours to do who was given a Bible containing notes which taught
T-Transubstantiation and M-m-mariolatry?"
"Burn it," said Paul instantly.
The little priest laughed. "Q-q-quite so," he exploded.
"He has you, Kestern," put in Hannam; "admit it. Have a cigarette,
Father."
Paul glanced from one to the other. "I do," he said frankly. "But,
Father, you interest me enormously." (He hesitated.) "May I speak
frankly?"
The priest nodded, with a little quick gesture, his eyes searching the
other's face.
"Well, you don't speak of Christ and--and so on, one little bit as I
expected a Roman Catholic to speak. Missionaries too--I hardly knew
you had any. And--well, aren't they nearly always political? Aren't
Catholic conversions nearly always forced?"
The priest no longer smiled. He looked away into the fire. "Do you
suppose it was force," he queried solemnly, "which made South American
Indians dig up their buried treasures valued at two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds to give to Father Kenelm for the conversion of
P-Protestant England?"
There was magic in Father Vassall, and Paul's imagination saw a story
in which, had the boot been on the other foot, he would have gloried.
A little silence fell on the conversation. Suddenly: "What about the
Inquisition?" he queried.
"You read h-history?" the priest asked, a trifle sharply.
Paul nodded.
"Then you ought to know that the Spanish Inquisition was political and
national, not Catholic. You ought to know that some of the most
disreputable Popes protected such people as the Jews from the fury of
fanatics. You ought to know that the long-suffering of the average
Bishop in heresy trials was amazing. Read Gairdner. But waive all
that. See here, would you hang a murderer?"
"Of course."
"Then if you honestly b-believed that the teaching of heresy was the
murdering of innocent souls, and if you had the power, what would you
do to heretics?"
Paul's silence was sufficient answer to the old dilemma.
"As to actual penalties, the age did not see or feel as ours does.
Torture was English law, remember, and boiling alive or pressing to
death or breaking on the wheel ordinary legal p-punishments."
"Perhaps," said Paul, "but such things were the punishments of crime.
Mary burnt Protestants for religion."
"Elizabeth r-racked and hung and disembowelled more Catholics than Mary
Protestants," retorted Father Vassall. "Besides, ten times, no, thirty
times as many suffered for Catholicism under Henry VIII. and Edward VI.
than for Protestantism all the way through English history."
Paul looked hopelessly round the little room. He saw himself, as it
were, hemmed in and overwhelmed by inexorable fact. Besides, it was
all so unexpected. Did Claxted know nothing of these as of other
things? Why, indeed, had he himself never seen them in this light?
"P-Protestantism," went on Father Vassall, "taught that it belonged to
every man to pick and choose for himself among doctrines, and it
therefore had no m-manner of reason for what it did. Calvin's burning
of Servetus at Geneva really outrages d-d-decency. And the P-Pilgrim
Fathers burnt more witches in a year in New England than the Catholic
Church heretics in pre-Reformation England in a c-century."
Paul drew a long breath. "I--I must think," he said confusedly. "I
had no idea there was anything on your side." He moved restlessly.
"But tell me one thing, don't you teach that all Protestants go to
hell?"
Hannam laughed outright.
But the priest did not. He glanced up sharply. "Don't you
evangelicals teach," he demanded with the quickness of a rapier thrust,
"that all unbelievers go to hell?"
Paul's face was a study. Father Vassall chuckled youthfully as he
looked at him. Then his own face changed and his eyes grew tender.
"I'm s-sorry," he said, stammering again. "That wasn't q-quite fair.
But we do not teach that, and I think you do. No; when you get to
P-Purgatory, I'll say to St. Peter: 'Let K-Kestern in; he's a g-g-good
boy!'"
He stood up and reached for his hat and stick. "Are you going home?"
asked Paul. "Might I walk a little way with you?"
The priest nodded, and turned for a word with Hannam as Paul went to
the door.
They were an odd pair as they walked together through the streets.
Paul was a good deal taller than his companion, and very serious. The
little priest was gay again, and chattered about odd subjects and
Cambridge topics. When a don nodded to Vassall, it struck the
undergraduate as something he had scarcely realised, that his new
acquaintance had a great and growing reputation. But not until they
were at the door of the Catholic church could Paul speak his mind.
"I must g-go in here now," said Father Vassall. "I've got to hear the
confessions of a lot of nuns much holier than I should be if I lived
for a c-century."
Later on, Paul realised what an amazing light that threw upon the
Sacrament of Penance, but just at present he was too much occupied to
consider it. "Father," he said abruptly, "will you forgive me if I ask
you one thing? It isn't a usual thing, I know, and it's awfully
personal, but I can't help it."
The elder looked into the flushed, serious face of the undergraduater
and kept his eyes upon him.
"W-what is it?" he asked.
"Do you believe in the reality of Christ, here and now, on earth?
Could you say you know Him?"
"With all my heart," said the priest simply and unhesitatingly.
"Then may I call and see you some time?" asked the boy, with a little
catch in his throat.
Father Vassall named a day and time.
(6)
Paul's new friendship soon became the dominant interest of the term for
him. Even the prospects of the May eight in which he rowed were less
prominent in his mind. His father's letters vigorously denouncing any
intercourse with a Papist at all, only aroused his hostility. Of what
use was he, if by this time he was not able to defend evangelical
religion? Besides, he had rapidly become whole-heartedly aware that
there was no sort of question that Father Vassall loved Christ with a
sincerity not exceeded by that of his own father. Paul grew ever more
certain of that. He wrote as much to Mr. Kestern, but Mr. Kestern
would not admit the other's sincerity at all. At best, the priest was
a deluded, scheming fanatic out to trap his son. The home letters grew
passionate; Paul the more bewildered. Authority and experience were at
their first serious conflict within him, though he never phrased it so.
Instead he opened his heart to the priest, who was enormously more
charitable to the boy's father than Mr. Kestern was to him. And Paul
read books, and talked to Dick.
Possibly he reached a spiritual climax as early as that bright
midsummer day that the two of them took on the Upper River. They had
started in a Canader, and got as far as Haslingfield. They had
stripped among the gold of buttercups, and plunged down into the cool,
clear water where the mazy reeds twisted this way and that in the slow
current. They had lunched, and bathed again, and lying side by side in
the sun on the grass, had fixed up in common a good deal of the coming
Long Vacation. Then, settling into the canoe, they had drifted slowly
down-stream, Dick on his back lazily dipping a paddle now and again to
avoid an obstacle, and Paul reading. Now the latter tossed the book
down, and spoke.
"Dick," he said vehemently, "I can't help it. They're right."
"Who are?"
"Roman Catholics."
"Don't be an ass."
"I'm not an ass, or at least not over this. Besides I don't mean that
all they say and do is right. Some things obviously can't be. I shall
never be a Catholic. But there is no way out of the difficulty about
authority."
"No? Well, chuck me over that toffee, and for goodness sake don't say
so at Port o' Man."
"But I say, Dick," said Paul earnestly, "do listen. It's worrying me
no end. You can't answer the dilemma, either."
"Don't want to," ejaculated the other.
Paul stared at him. "But why not?" he demanded. "Your attitude amazes
me, and oddly enough, you are not unlike my father. But anyway that
_attitude's_ plainly wrong. There must be a way out. The fellow who
says: 'I'm an evangelical, and I won't discuss the question or hear
another side,' _must_ be wrong."
Dick grunted.
"Listen. The very first time I called on Father Vassall, he had me.
He was frightfully kind; he understood about our Lord being real as
next to nobody seems to do, and he was entirely sympathetic about the
Cross just dominating everything. In fact, he was evangelical over it.
He admitted he was. He said Catholics were at one with evangelicals on
that point, and that their Religious Orders were composed of people who
simply lived the Gospel life. But let's waive that. He went on to ask
me how, despite all that, I knew what our Lord had meant by His words.
"I said: 'Because it's in the Bible.'
"He said: 'Granted.' (Notice there's nothing of Manning or Tressor
about him, belittling the Bible.) 'But' (he went on) 'let's be
definite. Take a text: _This is My Body_--what does it mean?'
"I said: 'It means the bread represents His Body broken for us.'
"He said: 'How do you know? At any rate for fifteen hundred years
nobody thought so.'
"I said: 'By prayer, by reason, and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.'
"And then he said: 'That's what Luther said, and taught
Consubstantiation. That's what Calvin said and denied it. That's what
Wesley said and taught the Real Presence, but not Consubstantiation or
Transubstantiation. That's what Spurgeon said and denied all three.
And that's what General Booth said and dispensed with sacraments
altogether. If you care to shut yourself up with your Bible and pray,
you will probably arrive at some further opinion. There are about
three hundred and sixty-five Protestant sects, and there is no reason
why there should not be three hundred and sixty-six.'"
"None at all," said Dick; "and I say, sit steady, or you'll upset this
bally canoe."
"But look here, Dick--hang it all, be serious. He's right. The Bible,
being nineteen hundred years old and a written book, _is_ open to
scores of different interpretations. Mere praying obviously does not
prevent such differences of opinion; it almost seems to increase them.
And consequently, if there is not some one authoritative voice to
interpret, we might as well not have the Bible at all. Or, like
Tressor, we must chuck dogma overboard. Either way our position goes."
"And so?"
"Well, so, if you will have it, we've got to find some better reason
than our view of the Bible for condemning the Catholic Church. We've
got to find some further basis for our position."
Dick sat up and fell to paddling. Paul watched him anxiously. After a
while, his companion began to whistle, and at that Paul could stand it
no more. "Dick," he cried, "do you mean to say you don't see it at
all?"
Dick Hartley trailed his paddle behind him and laughed a little. "Look
here, Paul," he said, "you're too logical. Religion is not a primary
textbook. You and I know and love Christ, and we know that Roman
Catholicism is not His Gospel. The thing is so obvious that it isn't
worth discussion. Chuck it, then. Pitch that book overboard and say
your prayers." And he recommenced to paddle.
Paul flushed beneath his summer tan. He leant back and stared up
through the weave of leaves and twigs above them, and when he spoke, he
was deliberate and cool. "Dick," he said, "Christ is the truth, and
your attitude to truth seems to me simple blasphemy."
Dick laughed again. "You're a nice old ass," he said.
Paul's letters were full of the burning subject, and he wrote at length
to his father and to Edith. His father was both incredulous and
indignant at the boy's attitude, and his replies threw his son into
despair. The elder man would admit nothing at all. He declined to
argue; he refused even to consider what seemed to Paul reasonable
historical evidence. Rome was the great Babylon, the Scarlet Woman,
Anti-Christ; it had lied, tricked, tortured and sold its Master all
down the centuries. "I would sooner see a son of mine dead," wrote Mr.
Kestern, "than a Roman Catholic."
Paul, in an agony of doubts and fears, lived a tempestuous life. To
Edith he unburdened at length, and she, though utterly bewildered at
these new things, was at least sympathetic and understanding. The
burden of her cry was: "How can it be, dear?" but with the
undercurrent--"You must face it"; "your father is wrong to denounce
your honesty"; but "Don't be rash or act in a hurry." To her, then,
the boy turned as to a new anchorage.
(7)
Donaldson and Strether saw the conflict only superficially; Manning
more truly, but as a cynic. Thus one riotous night of a meeting of the
new Literary Society, Paul had had something of an ovation. His little
room--its text still on the wall and the cross over the writing bureau
in the corner--was beginning to reflect the growth of his artistic
sense. Landseer's pictures had gone, and in their place hung some
engravings, rescued from old books dug out of the boxes in Charing
Cross Road, in neat ebony frames. A "Falkland" graced one side of the
mantelshelf, and quite a good "Melanchthon" by Holl the other. The
room was lit with candles, and tobacco smoke drifted thickly, since a
childish rule of the society enforced smoking out of churchwardens.
Paul, as president, had been overruled, and now always smoked one pipe.
On this particular occasion, he was smoking a second in great
exultation, having just read his last and lengthiest poetical effort to
a really appreciative audience. Not without significance, it dealt
with an Indian legend of the search for the white bird of truth.
"By Jove, damned good," burst out Donaldson. "Paul, you've the makings
of a real poet. What do you think, Manning?"
"He may do stuff worth reading yet, if he'll take good advice."
"Which is?" asked Paul.
Manning lit a cigarette, cigarettes being allowed after the solemn
preliminaries. "You won't like it, Kestern," he said, "but here it is.
Burn that. Get rid of it. It's been good practice, and I should judge
it's not at all bad, but don't sit tight to it. Anything good in it
will stick and come out again; the second and third rate had better go
up in smoke."
"Oh, cheese it all, Manning! Show it to Tressor and get it pushed into
some magazine"; and chorus of assent from the members backed Donaldson
up.
Manning shook his head. "I know I'm right," he said. "Pass the cake,
Strether."
Strether disengaged his long form from the chair he occupied, and
passed it. "More coffee?" he grunted at Paul.
Paul was watching Manning closely. Then, suddenly: "You are right," he
said, and with a swift movement tore the thing in halves.
Donaldson swore.
"Well, I'm damned!" put in a member. "You silly blighter!"
Manning finished his cake, and stood up. He looked round amusedly,
stretching himself. "I reckon that finishes the sitting anyway," he
said. "Come over to my rooms a little later, Kestern, will you?
Good-night, you people."
The company dispersed, all save Strether, who sat on imperturbably, his
eyes on the ceiling. He refused to smoke, and had returned to dull
suits and heavy boots, with an occasional concession to society in the
shape of a tie or waistcoat. Paul, having seen the last down the
stairs, and exchanged a fusillade of sugar with the departing
Donaldson, re-entered the room. He shut the door and looked round
dispiritedly. A candle was guttering on the bureau; heavy smoke hung
in the air; dirty plates and cups littered the table; one picture was
awry. He walked to the window and opened it wide, to let in the clear
night air. Stars shone serenely aloft and mirrored themselves in the
still river.
"Another letter from my pater to-day, Gussie," he said at last, turning
back to the fire. "He'll not see, or understand."
Strether grunted.
"It's so odd," went on Paul wearily. "In some ways, he's the gentlest
and most lovable of men. He's full of the love of God. He is a
hundred times better than I shall ever be. But over this, he's mad,
rabid. He seems to picture Father Vassall as a mixture of Torquemada
and Judas Iscariot. If only I could get them to meet...."
"Going to the joss-house again, Sunday?" Strether had his own
picturesque and blasphemous slang.
Paul smiled, understanding him. "Why?" he demanded.
"I'll come with you. It's more amusing than the 'Ciccu' or chapel. Is
there a wander round with candles this week?"
"Gussie, you're incorrigible. But, heavens, what a tangle it all is!
Does this look like the room of a Christian? Look at it!" Paul made a
sweeping gesture.
Strether pushed back heavily from the fire. "Beastly cheap cake this
evening, anyway."
Paul hurled a cushion at him. The two friends went down and out
together.
"What's worrying you especially?" asked Manning, half an hour later.
"Oh, nothing much. At least, that's not right; it is much to me.
Manning, it's awful. It's my father's attitude towards Catholicism."
"Ah! No time at all for it?"
"No. And he doesn't _understand_."
"Complain in verse," said Manning, handing him a Swinburne, "and read
that. 'E'en the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.' Leave
the wise to wrangle. Your line is going to be literature, my son."