I offer myself wholly and without reserve to Thee Who didst count
nothing greater than my love:
My flesh is weak, as Thou knowest Who didst bear it,
But my spirit is willing, though sorrowful as Thine even
unto death.
Unite me then, body and soul with Thy Divinity;
My sins to Thy Redemption;
My weakness to Thy Strength;
My abyss of nothingness to Thy Plenitude.
I give myself to Thee, stained, shrinking and afraid;
Give Thyself to me, O my crucified God, and make me Thine.
Dear JESUS! Be to me not a Judge, but a Saviour!
"Dear Jesus! Be to me not a Judge, but a Saviour!"
He cried it again, and again. Tears blinded him. He choked them back. It was so still that he could not break the silence even with a sob.
(3)
The Truce of God held. It held so truly that for a brief succession of days Paul banished the major part of his doubts and haunting fears in the vivid atmosphere of Thurloe End. They did not sleep; they fled. He was not quiescent, but rather overwhelmingly alive. He drank a largely new and intoxicating drink.
It must be remembered for what, exactly, Claxted stood. Quite apart from the rights or wrongs of religion, there was a life in Claxted that was a sheer antithesis to this. It was an antithesis in small things as well as in big, in utterly unreasonable and stupid things as well as in vital ones. Thus, at Claxted, one never, at dinner or supper, sat down to boiled beans and bacon; if one had, it would not have been regarded as an adventure; moreover one never did sit down without potatoes. It is extraordinarily easy to make a mock of it, but there was a hid parable there. Food was food at Claxted; at Thurloe End it was a sacrament, and a merry sacrament of life. Nor was it less life because to Father Vassall it was Catholic life. Thus Father Vassall even ate fish and maigre soup on Fridays, and enjoyed disliking it. Most mornings there chanced to be early spring sunshine, and breakfast was served out of doors. Breakfast out of doors at Claxted would have seemed to verge on the profane, almost on the immoral. Tea, out of doors, in midsummer, yes; prepared for, with guests. At Thurloe End they ran in hastily for a little tea because they were so busy gardening, and the lights were not long. At Claxted wine was a mocker; at Thurloe End, the cask of Spanish Burgundy having just arrived, they bottled it with zest and solemnity.
At Claxted, again, the rooms were elect to their various ends. The drawing-room was for callers, tea and Sunday afternoons. The study was for sermons. The dining-room was the room in which one dined; in which Mr. Kestern rested for an hour after dinner; in which, after supper, all duly remained, with books or work, till prayers and bed. Moreover, there was routine order at Claxted, a pleasant, simple, kindly routine, but routine. A Puritan routine, too, it was of course. It had never struck Paul before, but no one laughed much at Claxted. The family was anything but solemn; possibly, temperamentally, it was inclined to be grave; but, then, on the other hand, it never, never rioted. Oh, except at a Christmas party, at hide and seek and blind man's buff. And now that one was grown up, one did not play such games.
On the other hand, at Thurloe, humour raced unrestrainedly. The morning's post brought laughter (and tears) with it always. The day's work was a perpetual surprise. Father Vassall would announce his intention of doing something with as solemn a determination as Mr. Kestern would have given to a month's holiday. "I shall wr-wr-write on the v-v-verandah all the morning," he would announce firmly. Or: "I shall r-r-read in the p-p-parlour for t-t-two hours." Sometimes he would go to his room, and not reappear till luncheon. Sometimes he would return to the chapel after breakfast for just as long. In the evenings, before the fire, he would read what he had written during the day, or Paul would read to him. Or they would make tapestry, or wood-carve, or Father Vassall would play the piano; or sit still, occasionally talking, but much more often sitting silently, while peace dripped slowly in on Paul's soul. One never did nothing at Claxted. He himself, in the mornings, usually strolled round till some corner seemed inevitable for a letter, a book, or a poem, or the little table in his bedroom beckoned inexorably to work. In a sentence, the day arranged itself; perhaps better, it presented itself arranged; at Claxted, as it was in the beginning, so it was, and ever would be.