"Why?"
"Many of us are," she equivocated.
"Why?" demanded Paul again, looking boldly at her.
She disdained further subterfuge. "You have made God real to me," she said, "and if you had gone, you would have had no opportunity to do that."
His eyes shone. "I'm very glad," he said softly. "Will you pray for me, Edith?"
She wanted to fling herself down beside him, to hide her flushed face in his coat, to shed the tears that would stupidly start behind her eyes for no reason at all, to tell him that she hardly dared to breathe his name, but that, when she prayed, she could think of scarcely anyone else; but she could not. Every instinct in her cried for him—religion, sex, passionate admiration. But she only clenched one little gloved hand tightly and said that she would. A daughter of Claxted could hardly do otherwise.
The minutes slipped by. Paul rolled over on his back and took out his watch. "My word," he exclaimed, "we ought to be going! We shall be late as it is. But what a topping morning it has been. Come on." And he jumped to his feet.
She got up slowly, and he dusted a few dry leaves from her skirt. Straightening himself, he stood looking at her. "I've known you such a little while," he said. "I wonder why?"
"Do you know me now?" she asked.
"Much better. When I come back, shall we have more rides like this?"
"I don't know," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"You may not want them. Your mother might not like it. And" (Eve will out, even in an Evangelical) "nor will Miss Ernest."
He flushed. "I shall do as I please," he said. "And I know I shall want you."
She lifted her dark eyes to his face. "Will you?" she cried. "Oh I hope you do! I can't help it. It means so much to me. Ask me just sometimes, Paul."
"Will you write to me at Cambridge?" he demanded.
She shook her head. "No," she said decidedly, "not yet, anyway. I can't write good enough letters for one thing, and for another you mustn't waste your time on me."
Paul stood considering her. He had an idea, but he was in truth rather frightened of it. It seemed to be going too far. But his desire won the battle with his caution. "Would you give me a photograph of yourself to take to Cambridge?" he asked.
"I haven't a good one," she said.
"But you've something—a snapshot, anything," he pressed eagerly.
She smiled radiantly and suddenly. "I've a rubbishy old thing they took on the river at Hampton Court last August," she said, "but my hair was down then."
"That'll be lovely!" he cried. "Do give me that."
"How? Shall I send it you?"
Paul's letters were not many, and fairly common property at the family breakfast table. He sought for an escape from that. "Will you be at the prayer meeting to-night?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Well, so shall I. In fact, I'm leading it. Write me a little letter and give it me afterwards, will you?"
She nodded. Neither of them were aware of incongruity. Possibly they were right, and there was none.
(4)
Paul's bedroom was a big attic at the top of the Vicarage, running the whole width of the house. It was entirely characteristic of him. In one corner was a large home-made cage for a pair of ring-doves, with a space in front for their perambulations, fitted with convenient perches. Under the window was what had been an aquarium, but was now, after many vicissitudes, temporarily doing duty as a vivarium. It was a third full of sand and pebbles and soil, and contained plants and a shallow pool of water, constituting, in its owner's imagination, a section of African forest for three water-tortoises, a family of green tree-frogs, and some half-developed tadpoles. Above a writing-desk was a bookshelf full of cheap editions of the English classics, purchased largely with prize money won by literary efforts in his school magazine. The books are worth reviewing, for his father's well-stocked shelves of Evangelical theology held none such. The great English poets were all there, with Carlyle, Emerson, Lamb, Machiavelli, Locke, Macaulay, and a further miscellaneous host. A smaller bookshelf held MSS. books—three slim volumes of his own verse, one of acrostics suitable for children's addresses, several of sermon notes, another of special hymns, choruses and tunes, and two of essays and short stories which had not seen the light in printer's ink. Paul would have added "as yet." Bound volumes of his school magazine shone resplendent in leather, and were sprinkled interiorly with his verse and prose. There were fencing sticks in a corner, and framed shooting and cadet groups. A cabinet contained glass jars and medicine bottles of chemicals, and a much-prized retort stood above it. The mantelpiece was fairly full with phials of spirit that had a home there, and in which had been preserved an embryo dog-fish, a newt with three legs, a small grass-snake, a treasured scorpion (the gift of an African missionary), and the like. Lastly, over the bed was a text. That, principally of all these treasures, was to go with its owner to Cambridge.
Paul that night sat on his little bed and looked around him. The last minutes of the eve of the great to-morrow had really come at last. He well remembered the hours in this room, during which the things that were now largely accomplished had seemed to him overwhelming obstacles in the race. The open scholarship, the school exhibitions, the Little Go—all these were past. There stretched ahead the Tripos and the Bishop's Examinations, but in imagination these were lesser difficulties than those already surmounted. Linked with them were his other ambitions, his writing, his preaching, and a vista of endless years. Like a traveller who has reached a hill-top, he viewed the peaks ahead.
Paul looked down on the letter in his hand. The ill-formed sprawling handwriting addressed it to P. Kestern, Esq., with several underlinings. He turned it over curiously, not in the least aware that the amazing thing was that this should be the first of its kind for him to handle. Then he broke the envelope and drew out first the photograph.
It had been badly and amateurishly snapped on a sunny day. The shadows were under-exposed, the lights far too strong. It showed part of a punt moored beneath the trees of a river bank, and one girl wholly, another in part, who lay stretched out at the far end. She in part, he decided, was Maud. Edith lay laughing unrestrainedly, one hand above her head gripping an overhanging branch, the other trailing in a black shade that was undoubtedly (from the context, so to speak) water. A plait of her hair lay across her shoulder. She did not look particularly pretty, but she did look jolly. Paul turned the photograph over. On the back he read: "From A. V." The inscription jarred on him. From Albert Vintner. Mentally, he could see Albert, in white flannels, a collar, a made tie, and brown shoes, taking it. A thoroughly good fellow, converted, earnest, but—— Yet he loathed himself for that "but."
He opened the half-sheet of paper that had enwrapped it. He was distinctly curious to see what she would say. He did not guess for a moment how long she had taken to say it.
"Here is the snap" (she had written, without introduction). "I look a lanky thing, and did not know that ('he' erased) it was being taken just then. Do you remember that you had gone on up the river, rowing your father and mother and Mr. and Miss Ernest? I did so wish I had been in your boat! And at tea you pretended I was not to have a cream bun! But it was a jolly day, wasn't it? and if the photo helps you to remember that and think kindly at Cambridge of all of us at Claxted, I am glad for you to have it.
"Yours sincerely,
"EDITH."
Paul smiled. Then he frowned. He re-read the letter several times and looked again at the photograph. Then he folded the one in the other, and placed them in the inner recess of a new pocket-book. Then he reached for a Bible from which to read his evening Scripture Union portion.
CHAPTER II