Then again, at Thurloe End, the house was invested with a personality. Paul used to wander around at first, making friends. The rooms stood back, gravely, but with a smile hidden in them. The furniture belonged to the house, and had been selected by it, he felt, with care. It had chosen unvarnished oak, for the most part, because its tall, clear windows were looking up always to the light, and old oak is wise about light, taking its measure and passing the rest on enriched. Its chairs, forms, tables, bookcases, were like open hands, holding much graciousness. Moreover it was gravely proud of itself, and not ashamed of its wide walls and the pools of its floors. Where it held out a picture or a print, it did so with a curious restraint, yet with a kind of courtesy. It wore pictures like a beautiful woman wears jewels.
At Claxted there was no house at all. There was a middle-class home. Everything that the family had ever possessed, for three generations, was collected in it. The Kesterns said about a new possession that it would "go" there or there, and new possessions constantly poured in—testimonials, seasonable gifts, kindly presents from workers after summer holidays, another antimacassar after the Sale of Work, photographs, texts, missionary curios. Things overflowed on to each other: an occasional table on a rug; a crochet mat on a table; a pot on the crochet mat; a fern in the pot; a cover about them both; a picture above the fern; framed photographs below the picture; as like as not, in the end, a small basket under the table. Small baskets were always so useful for putting odds and ends in. And all the furniture and carpets and mats and pictures, jostled each other, and cried to heaven that here was no continuing city. Which, of course, is quite true, for we seek one to come.
Clocks were all over the house at Claxted; at Thurloe End there was one over the stable that struck the hours with much solemnity. Moreover it had its own views as to correct time-telling which, as Father Vassall said, was wholly right, since t-t-time was r-r-relative.
Paul told himself that religion had nothing to do with all this; that there were Catholic middle-class homes, and Protestant houses. He was not such a fool as not to know, too, that his own temperament liked the one and disliked the other, but was not necessarily right or wrong because of that. Yet after all we are all of us concerned with things as we meet them, and religion and philosophy, speaking in generalities, do shape people's houses, occupations and dress. Here, then, came the Greeks bringing gifts, generous gifts for which he felt he had been searching, at one time blindly, lately more definitely, all his days. If the gifts were of God, they would leave little room for doubt.
The days of truce, however, were not without event. The pair of them did portentous things. Up the centre of the garden ran an ancient overgrown hedge, tangled, vast; and through it, with axe and saw, they cut a leafy tunnel. In old flannel trousers, and shirts without collars, they laboured in the sweat of their brows, and cut their hands and scratched their faces and lost their way and despaired of finishing and finally attained. Just before sunset they emerged one warm delirious day, the scent of rising sap overflowing from the broken twigs and boughs about them, a mellow light on the wall across a small green ahead. Father Vassall cut the last impeding growth away, as was fit, but Paul dragged it behind. They stepped out together. The little priest looked about him with triumph, excitement and discovery on his face. So Bilboa hailed the Pacific, and Pizarro climbed the Andes. And so, also, Father Vassall had some such thought as they.
"A cross, just here, in the middle of that green," he cried. "One will b-burrow through the tunnel, and find the c-cross at the end!"
And then, suddenly, the merriment died out of his face, and the two looked at each other.
"I will go for the saw and the hammer," said Paul, after a second.
"Yes," cried Father Vassall, animation again. "I know of two s-saplings which will just do."
Paul turned back. "N-N-No!" spluttered his friend; "n-n-not through the tunnel now!"