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