"Father," he burst out, "you've no right to speak so. You've no right to judge the theatre as you do. You know nothing about it. You've not seen my play."
"I haven't, thank God, I haven't. But I've read about it. I've read about it with utter shame and dismay. Yet I can't, I won't at least, believe all that the paper hints at. Is it true that you have parodied the Gospel?"
"Parodied?" Paul was utterly bewildered again.
"Yes, parodied. I gather you have taken a story that you learned as a boy at your mother's knee, upon which I have even heard you preach, and have reset it, rewritten it, pushing the Master into the background, denying, so far as I can see, the Son of God."
"Father——" sobbed Mrs. Kestern.
"Mother, that will do. Paul and I must thrash this thing out. Tell me, Paul, once and for all, what is Jesus Christ now to you?"
Paul stared at him. Mr. Kestern, flushed, vehement, terrible, was the father of the old Catholic controversial days, the father from whom he was divided by an impassable gulf. What could he say? How could he explain? He made an involuntary hopeless gesture that was immediately misunderstood, and turned back to the fireplace.
"Ah," cried Mr. Kestern, "you will not answer. This is what your Catholic friends have done for you! I told you so, but you would never believe me. Rome was so reasonable and fair, wasn't it?—an angel of light. Father Vassall believed in Christ as earnestly as I did—did you not say that? But this is the end! You deny the Master who bought you with His own blood!"
The utter injustice of that charge broke down Paul's last reserve. He turned swiftly back, as vehement as the other, the true son of his father if the elder could only have seen it. "You don't know what you say," he cried. "This is utter madness, utter childish folly. Father Vassall has nothing whatever to do with all this. How could he? Do you think he wanted me to go to Fordham, though you did. Why, if he had had his way, I should be a Catholic priest by now, or well on the way to it."
"Just so," stormed his father, "a Catholic priest indeed! Then he would have trapped you finely. As it is, baulked in that, he will send your soul to hell by another road!"