B00DRI1ZYC EBOK

  “The kingdom of heaven is a queer name to give to the ‘huge debt of pain’ that ‘mounts over all the earth,’ ” said Sebastian dryly. “I am quoting now, you notice.”

  “I noticed,” said Hilary. “I also noticed that you used the word debt. It is the right word. Pain and death are owed for sin. Christ paid the debt, and He is the debt, for it was His own life that He put down in payment. We offer His pain and death, and our own within His—of no value apart from His—for the redemption of the world. Forgive me for putting extremely badly what you have probably known all your life.”

  “Heard all my life,” corrected Sebastian. “Heard, but not known. You have to relate information to experience before you can be said to know.”

  “Do you think now that you and I both know the same incommunicable thing?” asked Hilary.

  “I think the occasional shaft of light in my darkness may have pierced its way through from your sun,” said Sebastian. “I would not say that anything I have known approaches anywhere near what I believe is called the mystical experience; for that, as I understand it, is a direct apprehension of God by the mind, leading to a process of purging through which the loathsome demon of self in a man is done to death. If that had been so I should have recognized your Christ and He would have made something of me by this time.”

  “No man can form any judgement as to his own state,” said Hilary, smiling.

  “I still hate,” said Sebastian.

  “The last of the chaff,” said Hilary. “You use strong words about that substratum of our being which is usually referred to with tender consideration as the lower self.”

  “I have seen it, corrupted by great evil, at close quarters,” said Sebastian grimly.

  “You saw it in others?” asked Hilary.

  “In others,” said Sebastian. “But now, God help me, I am beginning to see it in my own hatred.”

  “If you hated your persecutors, then there was not much to choose between you. If you hate a man more fortunate than yourself, then you deserve your misfortune. Is that how you feel now?” asked Hilary.

  “Not quite as far as that yet,” said Sebastian, smiling.

  “Getting on,” murmured Hilary. “The grain lies sheer and clear. And if it is David whom you imagine you hate, I doubt if the contrasts between you are quite so deep as you imagine. Much like yourself. Much the same temperament. Always in trouble of one sort or the other.”

  Sebastian smiled. “And now, perhaps, in what seems to him the worst yet.”

  Hilary took his pipe from his mouth and was still and attentive.

  “Merely my fancy, perhaps,” said Sebastian.

  “What made you fancy it?” asked Hilary gently.

  “Merely a feeling I had that the man I hated was a dying man,” said Sebastian. “Not in the physical sense, you understand. And then I read a poem I found in my room. You may know it, for you spoke of the chaff and the grain. Merely conjecture, as you see.”

  “You are probably right,” said Hilary soberly.

  Sebastian fancied that he felt deep hurt in him. “Forgive it that a stranger—” he murmured.

  “No, it is not that,” said Hilary quickly. “I am glad that your intuition has convicted me of blindness and dullness. Very good for me. I am troubled because I happen to be fairly comfortable myself at present, and I’ll feel the worst sort of hypocrite if I try to tell him about the right and wrong way to endure. That had better be your job.”

  “Impossible to my ignorance,” said Sebastian, smiling. “For myself, I have merely endured because there was nothing else to do.”

  “That is what he did before,” said Hilary. “And broke.”

  “Had he a bad war?” asked Sebastian.

  “A great deal better than most,” said Hilary. “But the bombing of other men’s homes and children was not the best war service for a man of his type.”

  Sebastian felt a little dizzy. Hamburg and the walls of flame. Hatred of David and a surge of sympathy for him, deeper than anything he had felt yet, had hold of him together.

  “Thought about it too much,” said Hilary.

  “Yes,” said Sebastian. “We do, men of our type. We think about the harm we do until we become monsters in our own eyes. That is good, you’ll say; but we think about the monster until he has us circling about him as though he were some hideous little heathen god. If it stops there it can become almost a form of devil-worship, and it is not worship the devil in us needs. But I am wandering from the subject of endurance.”

  “Not at all,” said Hilary. “The right kind of self-knowledge calls for a good deal.”

  “In your war, the first, how did you endure?” asked Sebastian.

  “My war was nothing,” said Hilary hastily, “nothing at all compared with yours, or even David’s. Yet I had a way, then, that helped with other things later. For there is always the Thing, you know, the hidden Thing, some fear or pain or shame, temptation or bit of self-knowledge that you can never explain to another . . . And even in those very few healthy insensitives who do not seem to suffer, a love of something—of their work, perhaps—that they would not want to talk about and could not if they would. For it is the essence of it that it is, humanly speaking, a lonely thing . . . Returning to the sensitives, if you just endure it simply because you must, like a boil on the neck, or fret yourself to pieces trying to get rid of it, or cadge sympathy for it, then it can break you. But if you accept it as a secret burden borne secretly for the love of Christ, it can become your hidden treasure. For it is your point of contact with Him, your point of contact with that fountain of refreshment down at the roots of things. ‘Oh Lord, thou fountain of living waters.’ That fountain of life is what Christians mean by grace. That is all. Nothing new, for it brings us back to where we were before. In those deep green pastures where cool waters are there is no separation. Our point of contact with the suffering Christ is our point of contact with every other suffering man and woman, and is the source of our life.”

  “You could put it another way,” said Sebastian. “We are all the branches of the vine, and the wine runs red for the cleansing of the world.”

  “The symbols are endless,” agreed Hilary. “Too many, perhaps. They complicate the simplicity of that one act of secret acceptance and dedication.”

  They were silent, and then Hilary said, “We have talked too much of the demon in men. There is the child, too. It is an antidote against hatred to think of the child. The mask that a man shows to the world hides a frightened child, and the child hides the demon. But it is the child who wins. The mask drops at death, and the demon is finally destroyed either in this life or another, but the eternal child in us lives on.”

  “Invariably?” asked Sebastian grimly.

  “You are right. I am speaking too confidently,” said Hilary slowly. “I believe it to be a matter for our choice.”

  “The demon might live on and the child die?”

  The bright landscape seemed a little shadowed to them both, and Hilary did not answer for a moment.

  “That is why the child is afraid,” he said at last. “While the outcome is still in question the child is always afraid. I believe that that appalling possibility is the source of all fear.”

  “All frightened children need the comforting of love,” said Sebastian. “To deny it to them is the worst of sins. I see that now.”

  — 3 —

  From where they sat they could see Knyghtwood upon the other side of the lane. A flight of steps led up to a green gate that opened into the wood. As they sat in silence, with no more to say for the moment and yet unwilling to break the intimacy that had come between them, they saw a tall young man in grey flannels and a girl in a gay frock with roses on it come up the steps, lift the latch of the gate and go together into the wood. They followed a path through the trees, walking slowly, yet with a buoyancy that seemed almost
to diminish the bright sparkle of the sun on the water and the shimmer of the leaves in the wind. The girl’s light feet were almost dancing, but the man held her where he wanted her with his hand within her arm. Yet the grace of his movement, too, was almost that of a dancer. She swayed away from him for a moment, seeing a flower she wanted, but with one quick pirouette she had picked it and swung back to him again, and this time his arm was lightly about her shoulders. They moved a little deeper into the green and gold of the wood and looked like the wraiths of lovers in a forgotten story; they drifted farther and were gone. The two who watched, the old man with his bald head and his paunch and the middle-aged man with his bony parched grey face, could not take their eyes from the spot in the wood where they had vanished. Their stiff limbs weighed heavily upon them and the blood seemed sluggish in their veins. They felt a little cold, though the sun was so hot. They might have stayed there until they became fossilized had Sebastian not forced himself to say something.

  “It had an almost incredible delicacy,” he said gently.

  “As though it had never happened before,” said Hilary with gloom.

  “For them it has not,” said Sebastian. “For them it is the unbelievable miracle.”

  “It will need more than a miracle to bring his mother round,” growled Hilary with increasing gloom.

  “She is hard to please, this Nadine?” asked Sebastian.

  “She asks conformity of her children,” said Hilary. “Though a less conforming woman than Nadine in her youth we’ve never had in the family. George does not demand it quite so inexorably, though he himself did consistently conform, good fellow that he is. Tommy conforms, but not Ben. The eldest seldom does, it seems to me. I take it they are not so strong physically, these first-born, and there is a waywardness in them. You agree?”

  “I agree,” said Sebastian. “But waywardness in a boy can become genius in a man. Only the flowering is slow, and parents are not naturally patient.”

  “No?” asked Hilary, surprised.

  “The sands run out so fast,” explained Sebastian. “They are afraid they may die before the children have reached a place of safety.”

  “A place of safety?” asked Hilary, incredulous. “Is there such a thing in this world?”

  “Parents always believe,” said Sebastian, “that for their children, just theirs only, the Almighty will bestir Himself in a particular way. Their children being, you understand, quite exceptional.”

  His voice had a rasping dryness. He has had children and lost them, thought Hilary. He would have changed the subject, but Sebastian seemed to want to go on with it.

  “Parents think conformity is safer for the children,” he said. “They do not always realize that genius, suppressed and denied, can twist the whole nature.”

  Hilary saw now why Sebastian had wanted to pursue the subject of the children. “You might explain that to my sister-in-law,” he said dryly.

  “I should not presume to encroach upon your office,” said Sebastian, smiling.

  “If you think that the priest in an English family is by way of being that family’s father confessor and adviser, you’ve got it wrong,” said Hilary. “In France, possibly, in England, no. None of my family ever pay the slightest attention to a word I say. Nor do my parishioners either, for that matter. I don’t blame them. Though I happen to be the eldest of my family, I’m the exception that proves the rule, for genius missed me over altogether, and one is powerless without a spark of the stuff.”

  He spoke with humorous resignation, and Sebastian, still smiling, knew he believed what he said. They never know, he thought—they never know what they are and what they do, and that is of the essence of them.

  “What you call a genius can make a noise with his fiddle or his powers of oratory,” he said, “but it’s not the sound that is powerful, but the silence in it. The silent word can be spoken in men’s souls just as well, or better, in ways that are silent.”

  He was not surprised to find that Hilary had remained impervious to his suggestion. He merely looked puzzled, and then indicated with his pipe-stem a second party going towards the wood. A sophisticated white pekinese bustled importantly before the twins in their scarlet sun-suits, both of them gloriously gay and so noisily informative that what they were saying was lost in the row they made saying it. Tommy, whistling piercingly, followed after with Robin bouncing on his back and Meg holding timidly to the forefinger of his right hand. Mouse followed in the rear, looking very miserable.

  “Getting the kids out of Mother’s way,” shouted Tommy good-humoredly to the two poor old blokes in the sunny garden. “Zelle should do it, but she’s vanished. Get along, kids. Put a sock in it, Jerry.”

  “I will say for my nephew Tommy,” said Hilary approvingly, “that he loves his mother. To the extent, mark you, that at the age of twenty-one he will spend a summer afternoon amusing four little children in a wood just to give her an hour of rest. Though he likes children. He takes a good deal of care to keep the fact hidden, but I’ve noticed it, and upon that and his love of life and work I build my hopes for the eventual salvation of the soul to which he will never pay the slightest attention.”

  But Sebastian was not interested in Tommy’s soul. “Meg is not happy,” he said sharply.

  “No more she is,” said Hilary, adjusting his glasses. “Nor Mouse. Tommy! Stop! Mr. Weber has not seen the wood. Send Meg back as escort.”

  “O.K.,” shouted Tommy. “Get along, Meg.”

  Meg let go of his finger very politely, being careful he should not see how glad she was to do so, and gave him a shy sweet smile from inside her bonnet. He meant to be very kind to her, she knew, and so did Jerry and José, but she just did not feel comfortable with them, and there it was. With Maria Flinders in her arms, and Mouse at her heels, she climbed the steps into the garden and ran along the flagged paths between the clumps of michaelmas daisies and golden-rod, and the lavender and rosemary bushes until she came to the two elderly gentlemen on the garden seat. Beaming at them, she scrambled up and sat herself down between them with a deep sigh of relief

  “What can she see in us?” wondered Hilary over the top of Meg’s bonnet. “You would expect her to prefer Tommy.”

  “Females of this age have very little eye for personal beauty,” said Sebastian.

  “So it seems,” said Hilary. “Mouse, too. She’s on my feet. Am I worried about anything?”

  “You must have many worries,” said Sebastian gently. “What is the phrase? The cure of souls.”

  “I wouldn’t lay it down,” said Hilary hastily. “A parson’s job is so profoundly satisfying because it is just that. We handle eternal stuff, and are the only men who do not lose our jobs at death.” He paused. “Except, of course, musicians like yourself. Now, I had not thought of that. A priest at the altar or a great pianist at his piano, both of them lifted up above the people, giving souls to heaven and heaven to souls. Should you say that is why Meg likes us?”

  “Daddy,” said Meg in a small sad voice.

  Another couple were going together to the wood, and they, too, walked with the grace of dancers, well matched in beauty. They were deep in talk, the man’s hand in the woman’s arm, and Sebastian felt hatred surge up in him again. But nothing to do with himself this time. For Meg’s sake. For Sally’s sake. What was Nadine to David, that he should take her into the wood where he had once walked with Sally? And who was Nadine, that she this afternoon should be preferred to Meg, to Meg’s hurt? He looked across at Hilary and saw that he, too, was watching the tall graceful figures, but placidly, with a merely reminiscent eye. He heard a step behind him and saw the General strolling towards them and he, too, was watching his wife, and in his eye there was not even reminiscence, merely a proprietorship that dismissed David as a mere appendage to a beauty that was all his own. It had passed, Sebastian realized, and Hilary had known, but not Nadine’s husband. It had b
een, but they had denied themselves so completely that now they could go together into the wood. He felt respect for them both, for it must have gone deep; never had he seen a man and woman who walking together with that dancer’s grace looked so perfectly the complement each of the other. The green shade of the strange wood took them and they vanished. It was certainly a wood for lovers. No matter how many couples it absorbed they would feel themselves alone in it. He looked down and saw Meg’s hand lying on his knee.

  “Shall we go into the wood, Meg?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Meg, levering herself forward on the seat. She smiled sweetly at him when he had assisted her to reach the ground, and took his hand. She would have preferred to go into the wood with Daddy, but, since she couldn’t, she would like next best to show Mr. Weber where the stream was.

  “Where is Zelle? Where is Jill?” asked the General, a worried host. “Why must our young be inflicted on Mr. Weber? Or, for that matter, the wood either?”

  “All visitors to The Herb of Grace visit the wood,” said Hilary firmly. “And I fancy he will experience the one with greater delight in the company of the other. Is that right, Weber?”

  “Quite right,” said Sebastian, and bowing to the courtesy in George and the discernment in Hilary, he followed the path into the wood with Meg and Mouse and Maria Flinders.

  CHAPTER

  8

  In the beautiful kitchen-living-room of The Herb of Grace, Caroline and Jill were getting tea ready while Lucilla sat by the wood fire and alternately watched them and slept a little. The guests who were staying at the inn had taken tea on the river, and Jill’s Auntie Rose, who was cook at The Herb of Grace, was out for her half-day, so it was for the family only.