If his visitor accepted the change of subject, it was because he was, for the moment, clean bowled.
(4)
Paul had left a note asking Strether to breakfast, and he rather wondered if, after the previous day's rag, his friend would come. But he came. To mark the occasion, Paul had fish and an omelette sent up from the kitchens, and over these burnt sacrifices he made his apology.
"Look here, Gussie," he said, "I'm sorry that rag ended as it did. I had no idea the others had arranged it with old Sam like that, and I couldn't help Donaldson kicking up all that row on the stairs. That was beastly, I admit. I'm awfully sorry. Hope it won't make any difference to our friendship."
Strether growled in his throat. "Who bagged my boots?" he demanded, with a sense of humour.
Paul laughed. "Let's rag Donaldson somehow," he suggested, "and I'll give them back."
Strether smiled. Then frowned. "Always talking about girls," he muttered. Then, dropping the subject for good and all, "Come to The Mikado this week," he invited.
"I've never been to the theatre," said Paul frankly.
The other nodded slowly in his meditative fashion. "So?" he queried.
"Yes," said Paul. "My people are against it. They say the stage is immoral. I don't know. … "
"Then so are newspapers," said Strether, "and so's Cambridge too for the matter of that."
"That's different," objected Paul.
Strether laid down his knife and fork. "Going to the P.M., Sunday?" he queried.
"Yes, I expect so," said Paul. "Why?"
"I'll come with you, if you'll come with me to The Mikado. I've never been to a P.M. My people say prayer meetings make religion too emotional."
Paul got up dubiously. He looked out of the window.
After all, there were, it seemed, many points of view in the world. Ought he to see none other than his father's? And besides, if this would get Gus Strether to a prayer meeting …
"I'll go," he said. "I see that it is certainly foolish to condemn a thing you haven't seen."
That night, over his fire in his own beloved room, he got out a secret and personal diary which an evangelical missioner had urged him to keep, and sat thoughtfully over it, pencil in hand. Then he wrote slowly: "Nov. 13. I have decided to go to a theatre, since it is obviously unfair to condemn anything unseen. I wish to be sure of the spirit in which I go and for what I ought to look. Therefore I shall ask myself afterwards three questions, and I write these down now to make certain that I do not forget:
1. If Christ came while I was there, should I mind?
2. Do I see anything bad in this play?
3. Has it helped my Christian life?"
Years later he turned up his old answers, written late on the Wednesday night of the play, and smiled at their amazing and yet serious youthfulness. "1. I should mind Christ's advent while I was in the theatre no more than I should mind His coming while I was laughing over a humorous novel," so ran the first answer.
"2. Honestly, I see nothing bad in the play. It was beautiful, the colour and music bewitching, and the only fault, overmuch foolishness. But in the bar and lounge, one felt that the men about were mostly of the sort who are careless about their souls. Query: But what about a bump supper or a smoking carriage?
"3. No, it has not helped my Christian life, but it has not, so far as I can see, hindered it. Indirectly, it has perhaps helped me, just as exercise, music, poetry and ordinary conversation, may be said to do.
"Note. Honestly, I have never enjoyed myself more in all my life."
Poor Paul!
(5)
But he was to enjoy himself still more that memorable term. Towards its close, as a scholar, he received an invitation to the big college Feast of St. Mary's, a commemoration to which some distinguished outsider was always invited and which celebrated itself with the aid of a classic menu and some historic music. Neither Strether nor Donaldson were asked, for neither had achieved scholarship fame, and Manning was separated from the fresher by an impassable gulf of table. Paul, in fact, sat between Judson and the wall farthest from the High Table. Judson, cox of his boat, was a genial person, but no particular friend of Paul's, and Judson, moreover, was frankly there to eat and drink. Paul functioned merely automatically in regard to these. It was the splendour, the glamour, that he feasted upon, and his imagination saw to it that neither lacked. Even the sheer beauty of the shining plate, the silver candelabra, the ancient hall and the glittering tables, touched, here and there, with the orange and yellow and green and gold of the piled dessert, was all but forgotten as he read his list of distinguished names, caught the gleam of ribbons across this and that shirt-front, listened to the clever short speeches, delighted in the historic music, shared, timidly, in the ceremonies of toast and loving-cup. He saw a world worth entering. He was intoxicated, though he drank no more than a shy glass of lemonade. If, in the dark shadowed gallery away from the bustling waiters, there lingered understanding spirits, as like as not Paul Kestern was the most entertaining person present.
In the library, the great Tressor singled him out. "Well, Kestern," he said smiling, "what did you think of it all?"
The boy looked at him gravely. "It was all rather wonderful to me, sir," he said.
"It was a good feast, certainly," said the other. "By the way, I fear I can't get away from all this now, but I wanted to say a word to you about those verses of yours. They are very distinctly good, I think. The shortest is the best—The Spent Day. You'll do much better work, but in its own way, it's a perfect poem."
Paul could hardly believe his ears. "It is awfully good of you to read them," he managed to say.
"Oh not at all. I'm delighted. Look here, are you engaged to-morrow? Come to luncheon, will you? You row, don't you? so you'll want to leave early. I won't invite anybody else, and we can discuss them then. Good-night."
The big man, with the heavy eyebrows, slightly bowed shoulders and kindly eyes, smiled, nodded, and passed on. Manning followed him up to Paul. "What did he say?" he asked.
Paul hardly liked to tell him. It seemed fantastic as he said it.
Manning nodded. "I thought as much," he said, smiling. "Remember me, Kestern, when you're a big man. I at any rate put one of your feet on the ladder."
Paul mumbled something, and soon escaped. His fire was out in his room, but it mattered little; he could not sit down to read or think quietly after all this. Up and down he paced, repeating Tressor's words: "In its own way, it's a perfect poem." A perfect poem! And Tressor had said it! Said it after those songs, those speeches; said it in that company.
Then, as the boy passed and repassed, his eye fell on his text. He looked at it critically: the frame and flowers and lettering were so extraordinarily bad. A few weeks ago he had not remarked that. Still, it was the words that mattered. What would the Master have thought of the college feast? Cana of Galilee? Yes, but He would have been but a visitor. Could He have had a real part in it?
Paul swung into a new train of thought. He considered the cost of it all. Why, when he had refused the first cigar, Judson had said he never refused a half-crown smoke. Half a crown for a cigar!—the thing was monstrous to evangelical Paul. The smokes of the dinner alone would have kept a catechist in India for a year! Probably the wines would have paid the annual salary of a white missionary in China. And with every tick of the clock, a heathen soul passed into eternity. How often he had said it! What, then, was he doing among such things? What part had he in such extravagance? "One is your Master, even Christ."
Paul sighed, and reached for his diary.