Peradventure; or, The Silence of God. Robert Keable

      (3)

      In truth Mr. Kestern was both right and wrong. The next morning, departing on his bicycle with a mere statement that he wanted a last ride, Paul was very conscious of doing something he had never done before. He had no sister, and his girl friends were mainly a family of cousins so closely interested in each other, that, although they were friendly enough and admitted him to the family circle on long summer holidays together, he was not really intimate with any one of them. Nor had he wanted any girl in his life. He and his father were great friends, and the two shared pleasures and work with a rare companionship. Paul, with his natural gifts, had thus been drawn into active religious life much earlier than is common, and he was naturally studious, fond of nature and of a literary bent. What with one thing and another, his life was full. With his father he departed on Saturday afternoons for the woods and the ponds, and Sunday was the best day of the week to him despite its strict observance in that Evangelical atmosphere. But nature is not easily defeated. He rode, now, to meet Edith, with a virgin stirring of his pulses.

      She was wearing a little fur cap that sat piquantly on her brown hair, and was flushed and eager. Her slim figure, neatly dressed in a brown cloth coat and skirt, pleased him, with the tan stockings and shoes below at which he scarcely dared to glance. As they spun along the dry road together, under the autumnal trees whose brown twisted leaves fluttered to the ground with every breath that crossed the pale blue sky flecked with little white clouds above, she seemed to him a fitting part of the beauty of the world. Near the woods, the sun caught the slim trunks of the silver birches in a spinney there, and their silver contrasted exquisitely with the stretch of dying bracken beyond. A lark cried the ecstasy of living in the untroubled spaces of light and air.

      The road climbed steeply to the woods, and they walked to the summit, he pushing her machine. They hesitated at the leafy glade that invited to the undulating heathery expanse of Hursley, but the artist in Paul decided against the temptation. "No," he said, "don't let's go in there. Everyone goes there. Let's coast down to Allington, and turn to the left. I know a lovely place up there where there will be no trace of Saturday afternoon's visitors. What do you say?"

      She shot a look at him, and made a grace of submission. "Just as you like," she said.

      So they mounted on the crest and were away down the long hill together. Oaks leant over the road at first, but beyond them the tall hedges were lovely with scarlet October hips and haws, masses of trailing Old Man's Beard, and sprays of purple blackberries. To the right the fields stretched away to a far distant ridge scarred with chalk where one might dig for fossils. Ahead clustered the old roofs of Allington, and the little church that stood below estates linked for centuries with Lambeth and Canterbury.

      "After Lambeth Court, Allington Church," cried Paul gaily. "Let's go in."

      They left their bicycles at the lych-gate and walked into the silent clean-swept place. She followed him in silence, and marvelled inwardly that he seemed to know so much. "That," he said, towards the end of the inspection, "is the coat of arms of Archbishop Whitgift. He was a poor man's son and had no armorial bearings, so he took a cross and inserted five little Maltese crosses for the Five Wounds of Christ, quartering it with the arms of Canterbury. It's very lovely here, isn't it?"

      She glanced dubiously at the two candles and the cross on the altar. "It's rather 'high,' don't you think?"

      He looked judicially at the simple neat sanctuary. "There is no harm in the things themselves," he said. "After all, they make for a sort of beauty, don't they? It's the Spirit that matters. When I'm ordained, I shall be willing to preach in a coloured stole if I can preach the gospel."

      The daring heresy of it secretly astonished her. But it was like Paul, she thought. He stepped into a pew, and moved up to make room for her. "Let us pray a little, shall we?" he said simply.

      She knelt by his side, her heart beating violently. In the hush of the place, it sounded so loud to her that she thought he must hear. She dared not look at him, but she knew what he was doing. Kneeling erect, his eyes would be open, seeing and yet not seeing. She felt very humble to be allowed to be there. That in itself was enough just now. She wished they might be there for ever and ever, just they two, and God.

      Ten minutes later, in the heart of the deserted woods, he flung himself on the moss at her feet. "I love to lie like this and look right away into the depths of the trees," he said. "If you come alone and lie very still, rabbits come out and squirrels, and you begin to hear a hundred little noises that you never heard before. And I love the tiny insects that crawl up the blades of grass and find a world in a single tuft. Edith, how wonderfully beautiful the world is, isn't it?"

      She did not want to speak at all, but he seemed to expect it. "Not everyone can see all that," she said. "But it is like you to feel it. And when you talk, I feel it too. Always, when you talk, you show me wonderful things."

      "Do I?" he queried dreamily. "I don't mean to particularly. It's all so plain to me."

      "That's just it," she said.

      In a thicket close at hand, a thrush broke out into song. His praise ended, he flew down to a soft bit of ground and began busily to look for worms. Paul moved his head ever so slightly, and the bird and the boy looked at each other. The thrush eyed him boldly, summed him up with a quick little pipe, and flew away.

      Paul sighed. "I almost wish I were not going to Cambridge," he said.

      "Why?" she asked.

      He reached out for a broken stick and began to play with it. "Oh, I don't know," he said restlessly. "Perhaps because it's so good to be here. Cambridge is a new world. I want to do great things, of course, but it's leaving things that I can do behind. Suppose I fail? I wish I could be ordained to-morrow and go to the Mission Hall to work at once. Or no, I'd like to go to Africa at once. Do you remember that man who came and spoke for the South American Missionary Society?"

      "Yes."

      "Well, I carried his bag to the station. He had pleaded for missionaries, and had said that he had been speaking at meetings for six months up and down the country, asking for help, and had not had a single volunteer. He was about to go back alone. So, on the station, I offered to go. I said he should not say again that he had had no offer of service. I was sixteen."

      "What did he say?"

      "Oh, the usual things. That I must be trained first. I asked what more was necessary than that one loved Jesus, and had been saved, and wanted to serve."

      "Yes?"

      "Well, I thought he half believed that I was right. But he didn't dare say so, like all the rest of them. I must wait God's time, he said. God's time! He meant man's time."

      She said nothing. "It's so hard to wait," he added restlessly.

      "I'm