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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15797-8.txt b/15797-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d78cc4b --- /dev/null +++ b/15797-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10397 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Seeker, by Harry Leon Wilson, Illustrated +by Rose Cecil O'Neill + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Seeker + + +Author: Harry Leon Wilson + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #15797] + +Language: english + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects, +Carla McDonald, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading +Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 15797-h.htm or 15797-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797/15797-h/15797-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797/15797-h.zip) + + + + + +THE SEEKER + +by + +HARRY LEON WILSON + +Author of _The Spenders_ +_The Lions of the Lord,_ etc. + +Illustrated by Rose Cecil O'Neill + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company + +1904 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!"] + + + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +WILLIAM CURTIS GIBSON + + + + +"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one +vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?"--Holy Writ. + + "John and Peter and Robert and Paul-- + God, in His wisdom, created them all. + John was a statesman and Peter a slave, + Robert a preacher and Paul was a knave. + Evil or good, as the case might be, + White or colored, or bond or free, + John and Peter and Robert and Paul-- + God, in His wisdom, created them all." + + The Chemistry of Character. + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +BOOK ONE--The Age Of Fable + +CHAPTER + + I. How the Christmas Saint was Proved + + II. An Old Man Faces Two Ways + + III. The Cult of the Candy Cane + + IV. The Big House of Portents + + V. The Life of Crime Is Appraised and Chosen + + VI. The Garden of Truth and the Perfect Father + + VII. The Superlative Cousin Bill J. + + VIII. Searching the Scriptures + + IX. On Surviving the Idols We Build + + X. The Passing of the Gratcher; and Another + + XI. The Strong Person's Narrative + + XII. A New Theory of a Certain Wicked Man + + +BOOK TWO--The Age of Reason + +CHAPTER + + I. The Regrettable Dementia of a Convalescent + + II. Further Distressing Fantasies of a Clouded Mind + + III. Reason Is Again Enthroned + + IV. A Few Letters + + V. "Is the Hand of the Lord Waxed Short?" + + VI. In the Folly of His Youth + + +BOOK THREE--The Age of Faith + +CHAPTER + + I. The Perverse Behaviour of an Old Man and a Young Man + + II. How a Brother Was Different + + III. How Edom Was Favoured of God and Mammon + + IV. The Winning of Browett + + V. A Belated Martyrdom + + VI. The Walls of St. Antipas Fall at the Third Blast + + VII. There Entereth the Serpent of Inappreciation + + VIII. The Apple of Doubt is Nibbled + + IX. Sinful Perverseness of the Natural Woman + + X. The Reason of a Woman Who Had No Reason + + XI. The Remorse of Wondering Nancy + + XII. The Flexible Mind of a Pleased Husband + + XIII. The Wheels within Wheels of the Great Machine + + XIV. The Ineffective Message + + XV. The Woman at the End of the Path + + XVI. In Which the Mirror Is Held Up to Human Nature + + XVII. For the Sake of Nancy + +XVIII. The Fell Finger of Calumny Seems to be Agreeably Diverted + + XIX. A Mere Bit of Gossip + + + + +SCENES + + +BOOK ONE--The Village of Edom + +BOOK TWO--The Same + +BOOK THREE--New York + + + +CHARACTERS + +ALLAN DELCHER, a retired Presbyterian clergyman. + +BERNAL LINFORD } +ALLAN LINFORD } his grandsons. + +CLAYTON LINFORD, Their father, of the artistic temperament, and versatile. + +CLYTEMNESTRA, Housekeeper for Delcher. + +COUSIN BILL J., a man with a splendid past. + +NANCY CREALOCK, A wondering child and woman. + +AUNT BELL, Nancy's worldly guide, who, having lived in Boston, has + "broadened into the higher unbelief." + +MISS ALVIRA ABNEY, Edom's leading milliner, captivated by Cousin Bill J. + +MILO BARRUS, The village atheist. + +THE STRONG PERSON, of the "Gus Levy All-star Shamrock Vaudeville." + +CALEB WEBSTER, a travelled Edomite. + +CYRUS BROWETT, a New York capitalist and patron of the Church. + +MRS. DONALD WYETH, an appreciative parishioner of Allan Linford. + +THE REV MR. WHITTAKER, a Unitarian. + +FATHER RILEY, of the Church of Rome. + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"'My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!'" (Frontispiece) + +"She could be made to believe that only he could protect her from the + Gratcher" + +"They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when he should + become a great and good man" + +"He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his" + + + + * * * * * + + + + +BOOK ONE + +The Age of Fable + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE SEEKER + + +BOOK ONE--THE AGE OF FABLE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +HOW THE CHRISTMAS SAINT WAS PROVED + + +The whispering died away as they heard heavy steps and saw a line of light +under the shut door. Then a last muffled caution from the larger boy on +the cot. + +"Now, remember! There ain't any, but don't you let _on_ there ain't--else +he won't bring you a single thing!" + +Before the despairing soul on the trundle-bed could pierce the vulnerable +heel of this, the door opened slowly to the broad shape of Clytemnestra. +One hand shaded her eyes from the candle she carried, and she peered into +the corner where the two beds were, a flurry of eagerness in her face, +checked by stoic self-mastery. + +At once from the older boy came the sounds of one who breathes labouredly +in deep sleep after a hard day. But the littler boy sat rebelliously up, +digging combative fists into eyes that the light tickled. Clytemnestra +warmly rebuked him, first simulating the frown of the irritated. + +"Now, Bernal! Wide awake! My days alive! You act like a wild Indian's +little boy. This'll _never_ do. Now you go right to sleep this minute, +while I watch you. Look how fine and good Allan is." She spoke low, not to +awaken the one virtuous sleeper, who seemed thereupon to breathe with a +more swelling and obtrusive rectitude. + +"Clytie--now--_ain't_ there any Santa Claus?" + +"Now what a sinful question _that_ is!" + +"But _is_ there?" + +"Don't he bring you things?" + +"Oh, there _ain't_ any!" There was a sullen desperation in this, as of one +done with quibbles. But the woman still paltered wretchedly. + +"Well, if you don't lie down and go to sleep quicker'n a wink I bet you +anything he won't bring you a single play-pretty." + +There came an unmistakable blare of triumph into the busy snore on the +cot. + +But the heart of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more +disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy regarded +her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came +his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will sometimes +reserve for his own destruction. There could no longer be any pretense +between them. Bravely he faced her. + +"Now--you just needn't try to keep it from me any longer! I _know_ there +ain't any--" One tensely tragic second he paused to gather himself--"_It's +all over town!_" There being nothing further to live for, he delivered +himself to grief--to be tortured and destroyed. + +Clytie set the candle on the bureau and came to hover him. Within the +pressing arms and upon the proffered bosom he wept out one of those griefs +that may not be told--that only the heart can understand. Yet, when the +first passion of it was spent she began to reassure him, begging him not +to be misled by idle gossip; to take not even her own testimony, but to +wait and see what he would see. At last he listened and was a little +soothed. It appeared that Santa Claus was one you might believe in or +might not. Even Clytie seemed to be puzzled about him. He could see that +she overflowed with belief in him, yet he could not make her confess it in +plain straight words. The meat of it was that good children found things +on Christmas morning which must have been left by some one--if not by +Santa Claus, then by whom? Did the little boy believe, for example, that +Milo Barrus did it? He was the village atheist, and so bad a man that he +loved to spell God with a little g. + +He mused upon this while his tears dried, finding it plausible. Of course +it couldn't be Milo Barrus, so it _must_ be Santa Claus. Was Clytie +certain some presents would be there in the morning? If he went directly +to sleep, she was. + +Hereupon the larger boy on the cot, who had for some moments listened in +forgetful silence, became again virtuously asleep in a public manner. + +But the littler boy must yet have talk. Could the bells of Santa Claus be +heard when he came? + +Clytie had known some children, of exceptional merit, it was true, who +claimed to have heard his bells on certain nights when they had gone early +to sleep. + +_Why_ would he never leave anything for a child that got up out of bed +and caught him at it? Suppose one had to get up for a drink. + +Because it broke the charm. + +But if a very, _very_ good child just _happened_ to wake up while he was +in the room, and didn't pay the least attention to him, or even look +sidewise or anything-- + +Even this were hazardous, it seemed; though if the child were indeed very +good all might not yet be lost. + +"Well, won't you leave the light for me? The dark gets in my eyes." + +But this was another adverse condition, making everything impossible. So +she chided and reassured him, tucked the covers once more about his neck, +and left him, with a final comment on the advantage of sleeping at once. + +When the room was dark and Clytie's footsteps had sounded down the hall, +he called softly to his brother; but that wise child was now truly asleep. +So the littler boy lay musing, having resolved to stay awake and solve +the mystery once for all. + +From wondering what he might receive he came to wondering if he were good. +His last meditation was upon the Sunday-school book his dear mother had +helped him read before they took her away with a new little baby that had +never amounted to much; before he and Allan came to Grandfather Delcher's +to live--where there was a great deal to eat. The name of the book was +"Ben Holt." He remembered this especially because a text often quoted in +the story said "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." He +had often wondered why Ben Holt should be considered an especially good +name; and why Ben Holt came to choose it instead of the goldpiece he found +and returned to the schoolmaster, before he fell sick and was sent away to +the country where the merry haymakers were. Of course, there were worse +names than Ben Holt. It was surely better than Eygji Watts, whose sanguine +parents were said to have named him with the first five letters they drew +from a hat containing the alphabet; Ben Holt was assuredly better than +Eygji, even had this not been rendered into "Hedge-hog" by careless +companions. His last confusion of ideas was a wondering if Bernal Linford +was as good a name as Ben Holt, and why he could not remember having +chosen it in preference to a goldpiece. Back of this, in his fading +consciousness was the high-coloured image of a candy cane, too splendid +for earth. + +Then, far in the night, as it might have seemed to the little boy, came +the step of slippered feet. This time Clytie, satisfying herself that both +boys slept, set down her candle and went softly out, leaving the door +open. There came back with her one bearing gifts--a tall, dark old man, +with a face of many deep lines and severe set, who yet somehow shed +kindness, as if he held a spirit of light prisoned within his darkness, so +that, while only now and then could a visible ray of it escape through +the sombre eye or through a sudden winning quality in the harsh voice, it +nevertheless radiated from him sensibly at all times, to belie his +sternness and puzzle those who feared him. + +Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him of the bundles and +bulky toys. In a silence broken only by their breathing they quickly +bestowed the gifts--some in the hanging stockings at the fire-place, +others beside each bed, in chairs or on the mantel. + +Then they were in the hall again, the door closed so that they could +speak. The old man took up his own candle from a stand against the wall. + +"The little one is like her," he said. + +"He's awful cunning and bright, but Allan is the handsomest. Never in my +born days did I see so beautiful a boy." + +"But he's like the father, line for line." There was a sudden savage +roughness in the voice, a sterner set to the shaven upper lip and +straight mouth, though he still spoke low. "Like the huckstering, godless +fiddle-player that took her away from me. What a mercy of God's he'll +never see her again--she with the saved and he--what a reckoning for him +when he goes!" + +"But he was not bad to let you take them." + +"He boasted to me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged him +with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great maudlin +tears raining down his face, when my own eyes were dry!" + +"How good if you can leave them both in the church, preaching the word +where you preached it so many years!" + +"I misdoubt the father's blood in them--at least, in the older. But it's +late. Good night, Clytie--a good Christmas to you." + +"More to you, Mr. Delcher! Good night!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +AN OLD MAN FACES TWO WAYS + + +His candle up, he went softly along the white hallway over the heavy red +carpet, to where a door at the end, half-open, let him into his study. +Here a wood fire at the stage of glowing coals made a searching warmth. +Blowing out his candle, he seated himself at the table where a shaded lamp +cast its glare upon a litter of books and papers. A big, white-breasted +gray cat yawned and stretched itself from the hearthrug and leaped lightly +upon him with great rumbling purrs, nosing its head under one of his hands +suggestively, and, when he stroked it, looking up at him with lazily +falling eye-lids. + +He crossed his knees to make a better lap for the cat, and fell to musing +backward into his own boyhood, when the Christmas Saint was a real +presence. Then he came forward to his youth, when he had obeyed the call +of the Lord against his father's express command that he follow the family +way and become a prosperous manufacturer. Truly there had been revolt in +him. Perhaps he had never enough considered this in excuse for his own +daughter's revolt. + +Again he dwelt in the days when he had preached with a hot passion such +truth as was his. For a long time, while the old clock ticked on the +mantel before him and the big cat purred or slept under his absent +pettings, his mind moved through an incident of that early ministry. +Clear in his memory were certain passages of fire from the sermon. In the +little log church at Edom he had felt the spirit burn in him and he had +movingly voiced its warnings of that dread place where the flames forever +blaze, yet never consume; where cries ever go up for one drop of water to +cool the parched tongues of those who sought not God while they lived. He +had told of one who died--one that the world called good, a moral man--but +not a Christian; one who had perversely neglected the way of life. How, on +his death-bed, this one had called in agony for a last glass of water, +seeming to know all at once that he would now be where no drop of water +could cool him through all eternity. + +So effective had been his putting of this that a terrified throng came +forward at his call for converts. + +The next morning he had ridden away from Edom toward Felton Falls to +preach there. A mile out of town he had been accosted by a big, bearded +man who had yet a singularly childish look--who urged that he come to his +cabin to minister to a sick friend. He knew the fellow for one that the +village of Edom called "daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless--to be +rather amusing, indeed, since he could be provoked to deliver curious +harangues upon the subject of revealed religion. He remembered now that +the man's face had stared at him from far back in the church the night +before--a face full of the liveliest terror, though he had not been among +those that fled to the mercy-seat. Acceding to the man's request, he +followed him up a wooded path to his cabin. Dismounting and tying his +horse, he entered and, turning to ask where the sick man was, found +himself throttled in the grasp of a giant. + +He was thrust into an inner room, windowless and with no door other than +the one now barred by his chuckling captor. And here the Reverend Allan +Delcher had lain three days and two nights captive of a madman, with no +food and without one drop of water. + +From the other side of the log partition his captor had declared himself +to be the keeper of hell. Even now he could hear the words maundered +through the chinks: "Never got another drop of water for a million years +and _still_ more, and him a burning up and a roasting up, and his tongue +a lolling out, all of a _sizzle_. Now wasn't that fine--because folks said +he'd likely gone crazy about religion!" + +Other times his captor would declare himself to be John the Baptist +making straight the paths in the wilderness. Again he would quote passages +of scripture, some of them hideous mockeries to the tortured prisoner, +some strangely soothing and suggestive. + +But a search had been made for the missing man and, quite by accident, +they had found him, at a time when it seemed to him his mind must go with +his captor's. His recovery from the physical blight of this captivity had +been prompt; but there were those who sat under him who insisted that +ever after he had been palpably less insistent upon the feature of divine +retribution for what might be called the merely technical sins of +heterodoxy. Not that unsound doctrine was ever so much as hinted of him; +only, as once averred a plain parishioner, "He seemed to bear down on hell +jest a _lee-tle_ less continuously." + +As for his young wife, she had ever after professed an unconquerable +aversion for those sermons in which God's punishment of sinners was set +forth; and this had strangely been true of their daughter, born but a +little time after the father's release from the maniac's cabin. She had +grown to womanhood submitting meekly to an iron rule; but none the less +betraying an acute repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her +father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; and then a +long way to come forward again, past the death of his girl-wife while +their child was still tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that +child's revolt, in her thirty-first year. Dumbly, dutifully, had she +submitted to all his restrictions and severities, stonily watching her +girlhood go, through a fading, lining and hardening of her prettiness. +Then all at once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had done the +monstrous thing. He awoke one day to know that his beloved child had +gone away to marry the handsome, swaggering, fiddle-playing +good-for-nothing who had that winter given singing lessons in the +village. + +Only once after that had he looked upon her face--the face of a withered +sprite, subdued by time. The hurt of that look was still fresh in him, +making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two +little boys asleep in the west bedroom. Had the seed of revolt been in +her, from his own revolt against his father? Would it presently bear some +ugly fruit in her sons? + +From a drawer in the table he took a little sheaf of folded sheets, and +read again the last letter that had come from her; read it not without +grim mutterings and oblique little jerks of the narrow old head, yet with +quick tender glows melting the sternness. + +"You must not think I have ever regretted my choice, though every day of +my life I have sorrowed at your decision not to see me so long as I stayed +by my husband. How many times I have prayed God to remind you that I took +him for better or worse, till death should us part." + +This made him mutter. + +"Clayton has never in his life failed of kindness and gentleness to +me"--so ran the letter--"and he has always provided for us as well as a +man of his _uncommon talents_ could." + +Here the old man sniffed in fine contempt. + +"All last winter he had quite a class to teach singing in the evening and +three day-scholars for the violin, one of whom paid him in hams. Another +offered to pay either in money or a beautiful portrait of me in pastel. +We needed money, but Clayton chose the portrait as a surprise to me. At +times he seems unpractical, but now he has started out in _business_ +again--" + +There were bitter shakings of the head here. Business! Standing in a buggy +at street-corners, jauntily urging a crowd to buy the magic +grease-eradicator, toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! first +playing a fiddle and rollicking out some ribald song to fetch them. +Business indeed! A pretty business! + +"The boys are delighted with the Bibles you sent and learn a verse each +day. I have told them they may some day preach as you did if they will be +as good men as you are and study the Bible. They try to preach like our +preacher in the cunningest way. I wish you could see them. You would love +them in spite of your feeling against their father. I did what you +suggested to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but perhaps the +lesson they chose to write about was not very edifying. It does not seem +a pretty lesson to me, and I did not pick it out. They heard about it at +Sabbath-school and had their papers all written as a surprise for me. Of +course, Bernal's is _very_ childish, but I think Allan's paper, for a +child of his age, shows a _grasp_ of religious matters that is _truly +remarkable_. I shall keep them studying the Bible daily. I should tell you +that I am now looking forward with great joy to--" + +With a long sigh he laid down the finely written sheet and took from the +sheaf the two papers she had spoken of. Then while the gale roared without +and shook his window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked down at him +from the book-case at his back, he followed his two grandsons on their +first incursion into the domain of speculative theology. + +He took first the paper of the older boy, painfully elaborated with heavy, +intricate capitals and headed "Elisha and the Wicked Children--by Mr. +Allan Delcher Linford, Esquire, aged nine years and six months." + + * * * * * + +"This lesson," it began, "is to teach us to love God and the prophets or +else we will likely get into trouble. It says Elisha went up from Bethel +and some children came out of the city and said go up thou Baldhead. +They said it Twice one after the other and so Elisha got mad right away +and turned around and cursed them good in the name of the Lord and so 2 +She Bears come along and et up 42 of them for Elisha was a holy prophet of +God and had not ought to of been yelled at. So of course the mothers would +Take on very much When they found their 42 Children et up but I think that +we had ought to learn from this that these 42 Little ones was not the +Elected. It says in our catchism God having out of his mere good pleasure +elected some to everlasting life. Now God being a Presbiterian would know +these 42 little ones had not been elected so they might as well be et up +by bears as anything else to show forth his honour and glory Forever Amen. +It should teach a Boy to be mighty carful about kidding old men unless he +is a Presbiterian. I spelled every word in this right. + +"Mr. Allan Delcher Linford." + +The second paper, which the old man now held long before him, was partly +printed and partly written with a lead-pencil, whose mark was now faint +and now heavy, as having gone at intervals to the writer's lips. As the +old man read, his face lost not a little of its grimness. + +"BEARS + +"It teaches the lord thy God is baldheaded. I ask my deer father what it +teeches he said it teeches who ever wrot that storry was baldheaded. He +says a man with thik long hair like my deer father would of said o let the +kids have their fun with old Elisha so I ask my deer mother who wrot this +lesson she said God wrot the holy word so that is how we know God is +baldheaded. It was a lot of children for only two 2 bears. I liked to of +ben there if the bears wold of known that I was a good child. mabe I cold +of ben on a high fense or up a tree. I climd the sor aple tree in our back +yard esy. + +"By Bernal Linford, aged neerly 8 yrs." + +Carefully he put back both papers with the mother's letter, his dark face +showing all its intricate net-work of lines in a tension that was both +pained and humorous. + +Two fresh souls were given to his care to be made, please God, the means +of grace by which thousands of other souls might be washed clean of the +stain of original sin. Yet, if revolt was there--revolt like his +daughter's and like his own? Would he forgive as his own father had +forgiven, who had called him back after many years to live out a tranquil +old age on the fortune that father's father had founded? He mused long on +this. The age was lax--true, but God's law was never lax. If one would +revolt from the right, one must suffer. For the old man was one of the few +last of a race of giants who were to believe always in the Printed Word. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CULT OF THE CANDY CANE + + +When the littler boy looked fairly into the frosty gray of that Christmas +morning, the trailed banner of his faith was snatched once more aloft; +and in the breast of his complacent brother there swelled the conviction +that one does ill to flaunt one's skepticism, when the rewards of belief +are substantial and imminent. For before them was an array of gifts such +as neither had ever looked upon before, save as forbidden treasure of the +few persons whose immense wealth enables them to keep toy-shops. + +The tale of the princely Saint was now authenticated delightfully. That +which had made him seem unreal in moments of spiritual laxity--the +impenetrable secrecy of his private life--was now seen to enhance manyfold +his wondrous givings. Here was a charm which could never have sat the +display before them had it been dryly bought in their presence from one of +the millionaire toy-shop keepers. For a wondering moment they looked from +their beds, sputtering, gibbering, gasping, with cautious calls one to +the other. Then having proved speech to be no disenchantment they shouted +and laughed crazily. There followed a scramble from the beds and a swift +return from the cold, each bearing such of the priceless bits as had +lain nearest. And while these were fondled or shot or blown upon or +tasted or wound up, each according to its wonderful nature, they looked +farther afield seeing other and ever new packages bulk mysteriously into +the growing light; bundles quickening before their eyes with every delight +to be imagined of a Saint with epicurean tastes and prodigal +habits--bundles that looked as if a mere twitch at the cord would expose +their hidden charms. + +The littler boy now wore a unique fur cap that let down to cover the neck +and face, with openings wonderfully contrived for the eyes, nose and +mouth--an easy triumph, surely, over the deadliest cold known to man. In +one hand he flourished a brass-handled knife with both of its blades open; +with the other he clasped a striped trumpet, into the china mouthpiece of +which he had blown the shreds of a caramel, not meaning to; and here he +was made to forget these trifles by discovering at the farther side of the +room a veritable rocking-horse, a creature that looked not only +magnificently willing, but superbly untamable, with a white mane and tail +of celestial flow, with alert, pointed ears of maroon leather nailed +nicely to the right spot. At this marvel he stared in that silence which +is the highest power of joy: a presentiment had been his that such a +horse, curveting on blue rockers, would be found on this very morning. Two +days before had he in an absent moment beheld a vision of this horse +poised near the door of the attic; but when he ran to make report of it +below, thinking to astound people by his power of insight, Clytemnestra, +bidding him wait in the kitchen where she was baking, had hurried to the +spot and found only some rolls of blue cambric. She had rather shamed him +for giving her such a start. A few rolls of shiny blue cambric against a +white wall did not, she assured him, make a rocking-horse; and, what was +more, they never would. Now the vision came back with a significance that +set him all a-thrill. Next time Clytie would pay attention to him. He +laughed to think of her confusion now. + +But here again, at the very zenith of a shout, was he frozen to silence by +a vision--this time one too obviously of no ponderable fabric. There in +the corner, almost at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed +of possessing only after he entered Heaven--a candy cane: one of fearful +length, thick of girth, vast of crook, and wide in the spiral stripe that +seemed to run a living flame before his ravished eyes, beginning at the +bottom and winding around and around the whole dizzy height. Fearfully in +nerve-braced silence he leaned far out of his bed to bring against this +amazing apparition one cool, impartial forefinger of skeptic research. It +did not vanish; it resisted his touch. Then his heart fainted with +rapture, for he knew the unimagined had become history. + +Standing before the windows of the great, he had gazed long at these +creations. They were suspended on a wire across the window in various +lengths, from little ones to sizes too awesome to compute. On one +occasion so long had he stood motionless, so deep the trance of his +contemplation, that the winter cold had cruelly bitten his ears and toes. +He had not supposed that these things were for mere vulgar ownership. He +had known of boys who had guns and building-blocks and rocking-horses as +well as candy in the lesser degrees; but never had he known, never had he +been able to hear of one who had owned a thing like this. Indeed, among +the boys he knew, it was believed that they were not even to be seen save +on their wire at Christmas time in the windows of the rich. One boy had +hinted that the "set" would not be broken even if a person should appear +with money enough to buy a single one. And here before him was the finest +of them all, receding neither from his gaze or his touch, one as long as +the longest of which Heaven had hitherto vouchsafed him a chilling vision +through glass; here was the same fascinating union of transcendent merit +with a playful suggestion of downright utility. And he had blurted out to +Clytie that the news of there being no Santa Claus was all over town! He +was ashamed, and the moment became for him one of chastening in which he +humbled his unbelieving spirit before this symbol of a more than earthly +goodness--a symbol in whose presence, while as yet no accident had +rendered it less than perfect, he would never cease to feel the spiritual +uplift of one who has weighed the fruits of faith and found them not +wanting. + +He issued from some bottomless stupor of ecstacy to hear the door open to +Allan's shouts; then to see the opening nicely filled again by the figure +of Clytemnestra, who looked over at them with eager, shining eyes. He was +at first powerless to do more than say "Oh, Clytie!" with little impotent +pointings toward the candy cane. But the action now in order served to +restore him to a state of working sanity. There was washing and dressing +after Clytie had the fire crackling; the forgetting of some treasures to +remember others; and the conveyance of them all down stairs to the big +sitting-room where the sun came in over the geraniums in the bay-window, +and where the Franklin heater made the air tropic. The rocking-horse was +led and pushed by both boys; but to Clytie's responsible hand alone was +intrusted the more than earthly candy cane. + +Downstairs there was the grandfather to greet--erect, fresh-shaven, +flashing kind eyes from under stern brows. He seemed to be awkwardly +pleased with their pleasure, yet scarce able to be one with them; as if +that inner white spirit of his fluttered more than its wont to be free, +yet found only tiny exits for its furtive flashes of light. + +Breakfast was a chattering and explosive meal, a severe trial, indeed, to +the patience of the littler boy, who decided that he wished never to eat +breakfast again. During the ten days that he had been a member of the +household a certain formality observed at the beginning of each meal had +held him in abject fascination, so that he looked forward to it with +pleased terror. This was that, when they were all seated, there ensued a +pause of precisely two seconds--no more and no less--a pause that became +awful by reason of the fact that every one grew instantly solemn and +expectant--even apprehensive. His tingling nerves had defined his spine +for him before this pause ended, and then, when the roots of his hair +began to crinkle, his grandfather would suddenly bow low over his plate +and rumble in his head. It was very curious and weirdly pleasurable, and +it lasted one minute. When it ceased the tension relaxed instantly, and +every one was friendly and cordial and safe again. + +This morning the little boy was actually impatient during the rumble, so +eager was he to talk. And not until he had been assured by both his +grandfather and Clytie that Santa Claus meant everything he left to be +truly kept; that he came back for nothing--not even for a cane--_of any +kind_--that he might have left at a certain house by mistake--not until +then would he heave the sigh of immediate security and consent to eat his +egg and muffins, of which latter Clytie had to bring hot ones from the +kitchen because both boys had let the first plate go cold. For Clytie, +like Grandfather Delcher, was also one of the last of a race of American +giants--in her case a race preceding servants, that called itself "hired +girls"--who not only ate with the family, but joyed and sorrowed with it +and for long terms of years was a part of it in devotion, responsibility +and self-respect. She had, it is true, dreaded the coming of these +children, but from the moment that the two cold, subdued little figures +had looked in doubting amazement at the four kinds of preserves and three +kinds of cake set out for their first collation in the new home, she had +rejoiced unceasingly in a vicarious motherhood. + +Within an hour after breakfast the morning's find had been examined, +appraised, and accorded perpetual rank by merit. Grandfather Delcher made +but one timid effort to influence decisions. + +"Now, Bernal, which do you like best of all your presents?" he asked. With +a heart too full for words the littler boy had pointed promptly but shyly +at his candy cane. Not once, indeed, had he been able to say the words +"candy cane." It was a creation which mere words were inadequate to name. +It was a presence to be pointed at. He pointed again firmly when the old +man asked, "Are you quite certain, now, you like it best of +all?"--suggestively--"better than this fine book with this beautiful +picture of Joseph being sold away by his wicked brothers?" + +The questioner had turned then to the older boy, who tactfully divined +that a different answer would have pleased the old man better. + +"And what do you like best, Allan?" + +"Oh, I like this fine and splendid book best of all!"--and he read from +the title-page, in the clear, confident tones of the pupil who knows that +the teacher's favour rests upon him--"'From Eden to Calvary; or through +the Bible in a year with our boys and girls; a book of pleasure and profit +for young persons on Sabbath Afternoon. By Grandpa Silas Atterbury, the +well-known author and writer for young people." + +His glance toward his brother at the close was meant to betray the +consciousness of his own superiority to one who dallied sensuously with +created objects. + +But the unspiritual one was riding the new horse at a furious gallop, and +the glance of reproof was unnoted save by the old man--who wondered if it +might be by any absurd twist that the boy most like the godless father +were more godly than the one so like his mother that every note of his +little voice and every full glance of his big blue eyes made the old heart +flutter. + +In the afternoon came callers from the next house; Dr. Crealock, rubicund +and portly, leaning on his cane, to pass the word of seasonable cheer with +his old friend and pastor; and with him his tiny niece to greet the +grandchildren of his friend. The Doctor went with his host to the study on +the second floor, where, as a Christmas custom, they would drink some +Madeira, ancient of days, from a cask prescribed and furnished long since +by the doctor. + +The little boy was for the moment left alone with the tiny niece; to stare +curiously, now that she was close, at one of whom he had caught glimpses +in a window of the big house next door. She was clad in a black velvet +cloak and hood, with pink satin next her face inside the hood, and she +carried a large closely-wrapped doll which she affected to think might +have taken cold. With great self-possession she doffed her cloak and +overshoes; then slowly and tenderly unwound the wrappings of the doll, +talking meanwhile in low mothering tones, and going with it to the fire +when she had it uncloaked. Of the boy who stared at her she seemed +unconscious, and he could do no more than stand timidly at a little +distance. An eye-flash from the maid may have perceived his abjectness, +for she said haughtily at length, "I'm astonished no one in this house +knows where Clytie is!" + +He drew nearer by as far as he could slowly spread his feet twice. + +"_I_ know--now--she went to get two glasses from the dresser to take to my +grandfather and that gentleman." He felt voluble from the mere ease of +the answer. But she affected to have heard nothing, and he was obliged to +speak again. + +"Now--why, _I_ know a doll that shuts up her eyes every time she lies +down." + +The doll at hand was promptly extended on the little lap and with a click +went into sudden sleep while the mother rocked it. He could have ventured +nothing more after this pricking of his inflated little speech. A moment +he stood, suffering moderately, and then would have edged cautiously away +with the air of wishing to go, only at this point, without seeming to see +him, she chirped to him quite winningly in a soft, warm little voice, and +there was free talk at once. He manfully let her tell of all her silly +little presents before talking of his own. He even listened about the +doll, whose name Santa Claus had thoughtfully painted on the box in which +she came; it was a French name, "Fragile." + +Then, being come to names, they told their own. Hers, she said, was +Lillian May. + +"But your uncle, now--that gentleman--he called you _Nancy_ when you came +in." He waited for her solving of this. + +"Oh, Uncle Doctor doesn't know it yet, what my _real_ name is. They call +me Nancy, but that's a very disagreeable name, so I took Lillian May for +my real name. But I tell _very_ few persons," she added, importantly. Here +he was at home; he knew about choosing a good name. + +"Did you give up the gold-piece you found?" he asked. But this puzzled +her. + +"'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,'" he reminded her. +"Didn't you find a gold-piece like Ben Holt did?" + +But it seemed she had never found anything. Indeed, once she had lost a +dime, even on the way to spending it for five candy bananas and five +jaw-breakers. Plainly she had chosen her good name without knowing of the +case of Ben Holt. Then he promised to show her something the most +wonderful in all the world, which she would never believe without seeing +it, and led her to where the candy cane towered to their shoulders in its +corner. He saw at once that it meant less to her than it did to him. + +"Oh, it's a candy cane!" she said, _calling_ it a candy cane commonly, +with not even a hush of tone, as one would say "a brick house" or "a gold +watch," or anything. She, promptly detecting his disappointment at her +coldness, tried to simulate the fervour of an initiate, but this may never +be done so as to deceive any one who has truly sensed the occult and +incommunicable virtue of the candy cane. For one thing, she kept repeating +the words "candy cane" baldly, whenever she could find a place for them in +her soulless praise; whereas an initiate would not once have uttered the +term, but would have looked in silence. Another initiate, equally silent +by his side, would have known him to be of the brotherhood. Perhaps at the +end there would have been respectful wonder expressed as to how long it +would stay unbroken and so untasted. Still he was not unkind to her, +except in ways requisite to a mere decent showing forth of his now +ascertained superiority. He helped her to a canter on the new horse; and +even pretended a polite and superficial interest in the doll, Fragile, +which she took up often. Being a girl, she had to be humoured in that +manner. But any boy could see that the thing went to sleep by turning its +eyes inside out, _and its garters were painted on its fat legs_. These +things he was, of course, too much the gentleman to point out. + +When the Doctor and his host came down stairs late in the afternoon, the +little boy and girl were fairly friendly. Only there was talk of kissing +at the door, started by the little girl's uncle, and this the little boy +of course could not consider, even though he suddenly wished it of all +things--for he had never kissed any one but his father and mother. He had +told Clytie it made him sick to be kissed. Now, when the little girl +called to him as if it were the simplest thing in the world, he could not +go. And then she stabbed him by falsely kissing the complacent Allan +standing by, who thereupon smirked in sickening deprecation and promptly +rubbed his cheek. + +Not until the pair were out in the street did his man-strength come back +to him, and then he could only burn with indignation at her and at Allan. +He wondered that no one was shocked at him for feeling as he did. But, as +they seemed not to notice him, he rode his horse again. No mad gallop now, +but a slow, moody jog--a pace ripe for any pessimism. + +"Clytie!" he called imperiously, after a little. "Do you think there's a +real bone in this horse--like a _regular_ horse?" + +Clytie responded from the dining-room with a placid "I guess so." + +"If I sawed into its neck, would the saw go right into a real _bone_?" + +"My suz! what talk! Well?" + +"I know there _ain't_ any bone in there, like a regular horse. It's just a +_wooden_ bone." + +Nor was this his last negative thought of the day. It came to him then and +there with cruel, biting plainness, that no one else in the house felt as +he did toward his chief treasure. Allan didn't. He had spent hardly a +moment with it. Clytie didn't; he had seen her pick it up when she dusted +the sitting-room; there was sacrilege in her very grasp of it; and his +grandfather seemed hardly to know of its existence. The little girl who +had chosen the good name of Lillian May might have been excused; but not +these others. If his grandfather was without understanding in such a +matter, in what, then, could he be trusted? + +He descended to a still lower plane before he fell asleep that night. Even +if he had _one_ of them, he would probably never have a whole row, +graduated from a pigmy to a mammoth, to hang on a wire across the front +window, after the manner of the rich, and dazzle the outer world into +envy. The mood was but slightly chastened when he remembered, as he now +did, that on last Christmas he had received only one pretentious candy +rooster, falsely hollow, and a very uninteresting linen handkerchief +embroidered with some initials not his own. He fell asleep on a brutal +reflection that the cane could be broken accidentally and eaten. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE BIG HOUSE OF PORTENTS + + +In this big white house the little boys had been born again to a life that +was all strange. Novel was the outer house with its high portico and +fluted pillars, its vast areas of white wall set with shutters of +relentless green; its stout, red chimneys; its surprises of gabled window; +its big front door with the polished brass knocker and the fan-light +above. Quite as novel was the inner house, and quite as novel was this new +life to its very center. + +For one thing, while the joy of living had hitherto been all but flawless +for the little boys, the disadvantages of being dead were now brought +daily to their notice. In morning and evening prayer, in formal homily, +informal caution, spontaneous warning, in the sermon at church, and the +lesson of the Sabbath-school, was their excessive liability to divine +wrath impressed upon them "when the memory is wax to receive and marble +to retain." + +Within the home Clytie proved to be an able coadjutor of the old man, who +was, indeed, constrained and awkward in the presence of the younger child, +and perhaps a thought too severe with the elder. But Clytie, who had said +"I'll make my own of them," was tireless and not without ingenuity in +opening the way of life to their little feet. + +Allan, the elder, gifted with a distinct talent for memorising, she taught +many instructive bits chosen from the scrap-book in which her literary +treasures were preserved. His rendition of a passage from one of Mr. +Spurgeon's sermons became so impressive under her drilling that the aroma +of his lost youth stole back to the nostrils of the old man while he +listened. + +"There is a place," the boy would declaim loweringly, and with fitting +gesture, with hypnotic eye fastened on the cowering Bernal, "where the +only music is the symphony of damned souls. Where howling, groaning, +moaning, and gnashing of teeth make up the horrible concert. There is a +place where demons fly swift as air, with whips of knotted burning wire, +torturing poor souls; where tongues on fire with agony burn the roofs of +mouths that shriek in vain for drops of water--that water all denied. When +thou diest, O Sinner--" + +But at this point the smaller boy usually became restless and would have +to go to the kitchen for a drink of water. Always he became thirsty here. +And he would linger over his drink till Clytie called him back to admire +his brother in the closing periods. + +--"but at the resurrection thy soul will be united to thy body and then +thou wilt have twin hells; body and soul will be tormented together, each +brimful of agony, the soul sweating in its utmost pores drops of blood, +thy body from head to foot suffused with pain, thy bones cracking in the +fire, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, every nerve a +string on which the devil shall play his diabolical tune of hell's +unutterable torment." + +Here the little boy always listened at his wrist to know if his pulse +rattled yet, and felt glad indeed that he was a Presbyterian, instead of +being in that dreadful place with Jews and Papists and Milo Barrus, who +spelled God with a little g. + +As to his own performance, Clytie found that he memorised prose with great +difficulty. A week did she labour to teach him one brief passage from a +lecture of Francis Murphy, depicting the fate of the drunkard. She bribed +him to fresh effort with every carnal lure the pantry afforded, but +invariably he failed at a point where the soul of the toper was going +"down--_down_--DOWN--into the bottomless depths of HELL!" Here he became +pitiful in his ineffectiveness, and Clytie had at last to admit that he +would never be the elocutionist Allan was. "But, my Land!" she would say, +at each of his failures, "if you only _could_ do it the way Mr. Murphy +did--and then he'd talk so plain and natural, too,--just like he was +associating with a body in their own parlour--and so pathetic it made a +body simply bawl. My suz! how I did love to set and hear that man tell +what a sot he'd been!" + +However, Clytie happily discovered that the littler boy's memory was more +tenacious of rhyme, so she successfully taught him certain metrical +conceits that had been her own to learn in girlhood, beginning with pithy +couplets such as: + + "Xerxes the Great did die + And so must you and I." + + "As runs the glass + Man's life must pass." + + "Thy life to mend + God's book attend." + +From these it was a step entirely practicable to longer warnings, one of +her favourites being: + +UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE + + "I in the burying-place may see + Graves shorter there than I. + From Death's arrest no age is free, + Young children, too, may die. + + "My God, may such an awful sight + Awakening be to me; + Oh, that by early grace, I might + For death prepared be!" + +She was not a little proud of Bernal the day he recited this to +Grandfather Delcher without a break, though he began the second stanza +somewhat timidly, because it sounded so much like swearing. + +Nor did she neglect to teach both boys the lessons of Holy Writ. + +Of a Sabbath afternoon she would read how God ordered the congregation to +stone the son of Shelomith for blasphemy; or, perhaps, how David fetched +the Ark of the Covenant from Kirjath-jearim on a new cart; and of how the +Lord "made a breach" upon Uzza for wickedly putting his hand upon the Ark +to save it when the oxen stumbled. The little boys were much impressed by +this when they discovered, after questioning, exactly what it meant to +Uzza to have "a breach" made upon him. The unwisdom of touching an Ark of +the Covenant, under any circumstances, could not have been more clearly +brought home to them. They liked also to hear of the instruments played +upon before the Lord by those that went ahead of the Ark; harps, +psalteries, and timbrels; cornets, cymbals, and instruments made of +fir-wood. + +Then there was David, who danced at the head of the procession "girded +with a linen ephod," which, somehow, sounded insufficient; and indeed, +it appeared that Clytie was inclined to side wholly with Michal, David's +wife, who looked through a window and despised him when she saw him +"leaping and dancing before the Lord," uncovered save for the presumably +inadequate ephod of linen. She, Clytie, thought it not well that a man of +David's years and honour should "make himself ridiculous that way." + +So it was early in this new life that the little boys came to walk as it +behooves those to walk who shall taste death. And to the littler boy, +prone to establish relations and likenesses among his mental images, the +big house itself would at times be more than itself to him. There was the +Front Room. Only the use of capital letters can indicate the manner in +which he was accustomed to regard it. Each Friday, when it was opened for +a solemn dusting, he timidly pierced its stately gloom from the threshold +of its door. It seemed to be an abode of dead joys--a place where they had +gone to reign forever in fixed and solemn festival. And while he could not +see God there, actually, neither in the horse-hair sofa nor the bleak +melodeon surmounted by tall vases of dyed grass, nor in the center-table +with its cemeterial top, nor under the empty horsehair and green-rep +chairs, set at expectant angles, nor in the cold, tall stove, ornately +set with jewels of polished nickel, and surely not in the somewhat +frivolous air-castle of cardboard and scarlet zephyr that fluttered from +the ceiling--yet in and over and through the dark of it was a forbidding +spirit that breathed out the cold mustiness of the tomb--an all-pervading +thing of gloom and majesty which was nothing in itself, yet a quality and +part of everything, even of himself when he looked in. And this quality or +spirit he conceived to be God--the more as it came to him in a flash of +divination that the superb and immaculate coal-stove must be like the Ark +of the Covenant. + +Thus the Front Room became what "Heaven" meant to him when he heard the +word--a place difficult of access, to be prized not so much for what it +actually afforded as for what it enabled one to avoid; a place whose very +joys, indeed, would fill with dismay any but the absolutely pure in heart; +a place of restricted area, moreover, while all outside was a speciously +pleasant hell, teeming with every potent solicitation of evil, of games +and sweets and joyous idleness. + +The word "God," then, became at this time a word of evil import to the +littler boy, as sinister as the rustle of black silk on a Sabbath +morning, when he must walk sedately to church with his hand in Clytie's, +with scarce an envious glance at the proud, happy loafers, who, +clean-shaven and in their own Sabbath finery, sat on the big boxes in +front of the shut stores and whittled and laughed and gossiped rarely, +like very princes. + +To Clytie he once said, of something for which he was about to ask her +permission, "Oh, it must be awful, _awful_ wicked--because I want to do +it very, very much!--not like, going to church." + +Yet the ascetic life was not devoid of compensation--particularly when +Milo Barrus, the village atheist, was pointed out to him among the +care-free Sabbath loafers. + +Clytie predicted most direly interesting things of him if he did not come +to the Feet before he died. "But I believe he _will_ come to the Feet," +she added, "even if it's on his very death-bed, with the cold sweat +standing on his brow. It would make a lovely tract--him coming to the +Feet at the very last moment and his face lighting up and everything." + +The little boy, however, rather hoped Milo Barrus wouldn't come to the +Feet. It was more worth while going to Heaven if he didn't, and if you +could look down and see him after it was too late for him to come. During +church that morning he chiefly wondered about the Feet. Once, long ago, +it seemed, he had been with his dear father in a very big city, and out of +the maze of all its tangled marvels of sound and sight he had brought and +made his own forever one image: the image of a mighty foot carved in +marble, set on a pedestal at the bottom of a dark stairway. It had been +severed at the ankle, and around the top was modestly chiselled a border +of lace. It was a foot larger than his whole body, and he had passed +eager, questioning hands over its whole surface, pressing it from heel to +each perfect toe. Of course, this must be one of the Feet to which Milo +Barrus might come; he wondered if the other would be up that dark +stairway, and if Milo Barrus would go up to look for it--and what did you +have to do when you got to the Feet? The possibility of not getting to +them, or of finding only one of them, began to fill his inner life quite +as the sombre shadows filled and made a presence of themselves in the +Front Room--particularly of a Sabbath, when one must be uncommonly good +because God seemed to take more notice than on week-days. + +During the week, indeed, Clytie often relaxed her austerity. She would +even read to him verses of her own composition, of which he never tired +and of which he learned to repeat not a few. One of her pastoral poems +told of a visit she had once made to the home of a relative in a +neighbouring State. It began thus: + + "New Hampshire is a pretty place, + I did go there to see + The maple-sugar being boiled + By one that's dear to me." + +Bernal came to know it all as far as the stanza-- + + "I loved to hear the banjo hum, + It sounds so very calmly; + If a happy home you wish to find, + Visit the Thompson family." + +After this the verses became less direct, and, to his mind, rather wordy +and purposeless, though he never failed of joy in the mere verbal music of +them when Clytie read, with sometimes a kind of warm tremble in her +voice-- + + "At lovers' promises fates grow merrilee; + Some are made on land, + Some on the deep sea. + Love does sometimes leave + Streams of tears." + +He thought she looked very beautiful when she read this, in a voice that +sounded like crying, with her big, square face, her fat cheeks that looked +like russet apples, her very tiny black moustache, her smooth, oily black +hair with a semicircle of tight little curls over her brow, and her +beautiful, big, rounded, shining forehead. + +Yet he preferred her poems of action, like that of Salmon Faubel, whose +bride became so homesick in Edom that she was in a way to perish, so that +Salmon took her to her home and found work there for himself. He even +sang one catchy couplet of this to music of his own: + + "For her dear sake whom he did pity, + He took her back to Jersey City." + +But the Sabbath came inexorably to bring his sinful nature before him, +just as the door of the Front Room was opened each week to remind him of +the awful joys of Heaven. And then his mind was like the desert of +shifting sands. There were so many things to be done and not done if one +were to avert the wrath of this God that made the Front Room a cavern of +terror, that rumbled threateningly in the prayer of his grandfather and +shook the young minister to a white passion each Sabbath. + +There was being good--which was not to commit murder or be an atheist like +Milo Barrus and spell God with a little g; and there was Coming to the +Feet--not so simple as it sounded, he could very well tell them; and there +was the matter of Blood. There were hymns, for example, that left him +confused. The "fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins" +sounded interesting. Vividly he saw the "sinners plunged beneath that +flood" losing all their guilty stains. It was entirely reasonable, and +with an assumption of carelessness he glanced cautiously over his own body +each morning to see if his guilty stains showed yet. But who was Immanuel? +And where was this excellent fountain? + +Then there was being "washed in the blood of the lamb," which was +considerably simpler--except for the matter of its making one "whiter +than snow." He was doubtful of this result, unless it was only +poetry-writing which doesn't mean everything it says. He meant to try +this sometime, when he could get a lamb, both as a means of grace and as +a desirable experiment. + +But plunging into the fountain filled with blood sounded far more +important and effectual--if it were only practicable. As the sinners came +out of this flood he thought they must look as Clytie did in her scarlet +flannel petticoat the night he was taken with croup and she came running +with the Magnetic Ointment--even redder! + +The big white house of Grandfather Delcher and Clytie, in short, was a +house in which to be terrified and happy; anxious and well-fed. And if its +inner recesses took on too much gloomy portent one could always fly to the +big yard where grew monarch elms and maples and a row of formal spruces; +where the lawn on one side was bordered with beds of petunias and +fuschias, tiger-lilies and dahlias; where were a great clump of white +lilacs and many bushes of yellow roses; a lawn that stretched unbrokenly +to the windows of the next big house where lived the gentle stranger with +the soft, warm little voice who had chosen the good name of Lillian May. + +Life was severely earnest but by no means impracticable. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE LIFE OF CRIME IS APPRAISED AND CHOSEN + + +It came to seem expedient to Bernal, however, in the first spring of his +new life, to make a final choice between early death and a life, of sin. +Matters came to press upon him, and since virtue was useful only to get +one into Heaven, it was not worth the effort unless one meant to die at +once. This was an alternative not without its lures, despite the warnings +preached all about him. It would surely be interesting to die, if one had +come properly to the Feet. Even coming to but one of the Feet, as he had, +might make it still more interesting. Perhaps he would not, for this +reason, be always shut up in Heaven. In his secret heart was a lively +desire to see just what they did to Milo Barrus, if he _should_ continue +to spell God with a little g on his very death-bed--that is, if he could +see it without disadvantage to himself: But then, you could save that up, +because you _must_ die sometime, like Xerxes the Great; and meantime, +there was the life of evil now opening wide to the vision with all +enticing refreshments. + +First, it meant no school. He had ceased to picture relief in this matter +by the school-house burning some morning, preferably a Monday morning, +one second after school had taken in. For a month he had daily dramatised +to himself the building's swift destruction amid the kind and merry +flames. But Allan, to whom he had one day hinted the possibility of this +gracious occurrence, had reminded him brutally that they would probably +have school in the Methodist church until a new school-house could be +built. For Allan loved his school and his teacher. + +But a life of evil promised other joys besides this negative one of no +school. In his latest Sunday-school book, Ralph Overton, the good boy, not +only attended school slavishly, so that at thirteen he "could write a +good business hand"; but he practised those little tricks of picking up +every pin, always untying the string instead of cutting it, keeping his +shoes neatly polished and his hands clean, which were, in a simpler day, +held to lay the foundations of commercial success in our republic. Besides +this, Ralph had to be bright and cheery to every one, to work for his +widowed mother after school; and every Saturday afternoon he went, +sickeningly of his own accord, to split wood for an aged and poor lady. +This lady seemed to Bernal to do nothing much but burn a tremendous lot of +stove-wood, but presently she turned out to be the long-lost cousin of Mr. +Granville Parkinson, the Great Banker from the City, who thereupon took +cheery Ralph there and gave him a position in the bank where he could be +honest and industrious and respectful to his superiors. Such was the +barren tale of Virtue's gain. But contrasted with Ralph Overton in this +book was one Budd Jackson, who led a life of voluptuous sloth, except at +times when the evil one moved him to activity. At these bad moments he +might go bobbing for catfish on a Sabbath, or purloin fruit from the +orchard of Farmer Haskins (who would gladly have given some to him if he +had but asked for it civilly, so the book said); or he might bully smaller +boys whom he met on their way to school, taking their sailor hats away +from them, or jeering coarsely at their neatly brushed garments. When +Budd broke a window in the Methodist parsonage with his slung-shot and +tried to lie it on to Ralph Overton, he seemed to have given way utterly +to his vicious nature. He was known soon thereafter to have drunk liquor +and played a game called pin-pool with a "flashy stranger" at the tavern; +hence no one was surprised when he presently ran off with a circus, became +an infidel, and perished miserably in the toils of vice. + +This touch about the circus, well-intended, to be sure, was yet fatal to +all good the tale might have done the little boy. Clytie, who read most of +the story to him, declared Budd Jackson to be "a regular mean one." But in +his heart Bernal, thinking all at once of the circus, sickened unutterably +of Virtue. To drive eight spirited white horses, seated high on one of +those gay closed wagons--those that went through the street with that +delicious hollow rumble--hearing perchance the velvet tread, or the +clawing and snarling of some pent ferocity--a leopard, a lion, what not; +to hear each day that muffled, flattened beating of a bass drum and +cymbals far within the big tent, quick and still more quickly, denoting to +the experienced ear that pink and spangled Beauty danced on the big white +horse at a deathless gallop; to know that one might freely enter that +tented elysium--if it were possible he would run off with a circus though +it meant that he had the morals of a serpent! + +Now, eastward from the big house lay the village and its churches: thither +was tame virtue. But westward lay a broad field stretching off to an +orchard, and beyond swelled a gentle hill, mellow in the distance. Still +more remotely far, at the hill's rim, was a blur of woods beyond which +the sun went down each night. This, in the little boy's mind, was the +highway to the glad free Life of Evil. Many days he looked to that western +wood when the sky was a gush of colour behind its furred edge, perceiving +all manner of allurements to beckon him, hearing them plead, feeling them +tug. Daily his spirit quickened within him to their solicitations, leaping +out and beyond him in some magic way to bring back veritable meanings and +values of the future. + +Then a day came when the desire to be off was no longer resistible. There +was a month of school yet; an especially bitter thought, for had he not +lately been out of school a week with mumps; and during that very week had +not the teacher's father died, so that he was cheated out of the resulting +three-days' vacation, other children being free while he lay on a bed of +pain--if you tasted pickles or any sour thing? Not only was it useless to +try to learn to write "a good business hand," like Ralph Overton--he took +the phrase to mean one of those pictured hands that were always pointing +to things in the newspaper advertisements--but there was the circus and +other evil things--and he was getting on in years. + +It was a Saturday afternoon. To-morrow would be too late. He knew he would +not be allowed to start on the Sabbath, even in a career that was to be +all wickedness. In the grape-arbour he massed certain articles necessary +for the expedition: a very small strip of carpet on which he meant to +sleep; a copy of "_Golden Days_," with an article giving elaborate +instructions for camping in the wilderness. He was compelled to disregard +all of them, but there was comfort and sustenance in the article itself. +Then there was the gun that came at Christmas. It shot a cork as far as +the string would let it go, with a fairly satisfying report (he would have +that string off, once he was in the woods!). Also there were three glass +alleys, two agate taws and thirty-eight commies. And to hold his outfit +there was a rather sizable box which he with his own hands had papered +inside and out from a remnant of gorgeously flowered wall-paper. + +When all was ready he went in to break the news to Clytie. She, busy with +her baking, heard him declare: + +"Now--I'm going to leave this place!" with the look of one who will not be +coaxed nor in any manner dissuaded. He thought she took it rather coolly, +though Allan ran, as promptly as he could have wished, to tell his +grandfather. + +"I'm going to be a regular mean one--_worse'n_ Budd Jackson!" he continued +to Clytie. He was glad to see that this brought her to her senses. + +"Will you stay if I give you--an orange?" + +"No, _sir;_--you'll never set eyes on _me_ again!" + +"Oh, now!--two oranges?" + +"I can't--I _got_ to go!" in a voice tense with effort. + +"All right! Then I'll give them to Allan." + +She continued to take brown loaves from the oven and to put other loaves +in to bake, while he stood awkwardly by, loath to part from her. Allan +came back breathless. + +"Grandpa says you can go as far as you like and you needn't come back till +you get ready!" + +He shifted from one foot to the other and absently ate a warm cookie from +the jarful at his hand. He thought this seemed not quite the correct +attitude to take toward him, yet he did not waver. They would be sorry +enough in a few days, when it was too late. + +"I guess I better take a few of these along with me," he said, stowing +cookies in the pockets of his jacket. He would have liked one of the big +preserved peaches all punctuated with cloves, but he saw no way to carry +it, and felt really unable to eat it on the spot. + +"Well, good-bye!" he called to Clytie, turning back to her from the door. + +"Good-bye! Won't you shake hands with me?" + +Very solemnly he shook her big, floury hand. + +"Now--could I take Penny along?" (Penny was an inconsequential dog that +had been given to Clytie by one whom she called Cousin Bill J.) + +"Yes, you'll need a dog to keep the animals off. Now be sure you write to +us--at least twice a year--don't forget!" And, brutally before his very +eyes, she handed the sniffing and virtuous Allan two of the largest, most +goldenly beautiful oranges ever beheld by man. + +Bitterly the self-exiled turned from this harrowing scene and strode +toward his box. + +Here ensued a fresh complication. Nancy, who had chosen the good name of +Lillian May, wanted to go with him. She, too, it appeared, was fresh from +a Sunday-school book--one in which a girl of her own age was so proud of +her long raven curls that she was brought to an illness and all her hair +came out. There was a distressing picture of this little girl after a just +Providence had done its work as a depilatory. And after she recovered from +the fever, it seemed, she had cared to do nothing but read the Scriptures +to bed-ridden old ladies--even after a good deal of her hair came in +again--though it didn't curl this time. The only pleasure she ever +experienced thereafter was that, by virtue of her now singularly angelic +character, she was enabled to convert an elderly female Papist--an +achievement the joys of which were problematic, both to Nancy and the +little boy. Certainly, whatever converting a Papist might be, it was +nothing comparable to driving a red-and-green-and-gold wagon in which was +caged the Scourge of the Jungle. + +But Nancy could not go with him. He told her so plainly. It was no place +for a girl beyond that hill where they commonly drove caged beasts, and no +one ever so much as thought of Coming to the Feet or washing in the blood +of the Lamb, or writing a good business hand with the first finger of it +pointing out, or anything. + +The little girl pleaded, promising to take her new pink silk parasol, her +buff buttoned shoes, a Christmas card with real snow on it, shining like +diamonds, and Fragile, her best doll. The thing was impossible. Then she +wept. + +He whistled to Penny, who came barking joyously--a pretender of a dog, if +there ever was one--and they moved off. Weeping after them went Nancy--as +far as the first fence, between two boards of which she put her head and +sobbed with a heavenly bitterness; for to the little boy, pushing sternly +on, her tears afforded that certain thrill of gratified brutality under +conscious rectitude, the capacity for which is among those matters by +which Heaven has set the male of our species apart from the female. The +sensation would have been flawless but for Allan's lack of dignity: from +the top board of the fence he held aloft in either hand a golden orange, +and he chanted in endless inanity: + + Chink, Chink Chiraddam! + Don't you wisht you had 'em? + Chink, Chink Chiraddam! + Don't you wisht you had 'em? + +Still he was actually and triumphantly off. + +And here should be recalled the saying of a certain wise, simple man: "If +our failures are made tragic by courage they are not different from +successes." For it came about that the subsequent dignity of this revolt +was to be wholly in its courage. + +The way led over a stretch of grassy prairie to a fence. This surmounted, +there came a ploughed field, of considerable extent to one carrying an +inconvenient box. At the farther end of this was another fence, and beyond +this an ancient orchard with a grassy floor, where lingered a few old +apple-trees, under which the recumbent cows, chewing and placid, dozed +like stout old ladies over their knitting. + +Nearest the fence was an aged, gnarled and riven tree, foolishly decked +in blossoms, like some faded, wrinkled dame, fatuously reluctant to leave +off girlish finery. Under its frivolous branches on the grassy sward would +be the place for his first night's halt--for the magic wood just this side +of the sun was now seen to be farther off than he had once supposed. So he +spread his carpet, arranged the contents of his box neatly, and ate half +his food-supply, for one's strength must be kept up in these affairs. As +he ate he looked back toward the big house--now left forever--and toward +the village beyond. The spires of the three churches were all pointing +sternly upward, as if they would mutely direct him aright, but in their +shelter one must submit to the prosaic trammels of decency. It was not to +be thought of. + +He longed for morning to come, so that he might be up and on. He lay down +on his mat to be ready for sleep, and watched a big bird far above, +cutting lazy graceful figures in the air, like a fancy skater. Then, on a +bough above him, a little dusty-looking bird tried to sing, but it sounded +only like a very small door creaking on tiny rusted hinges. A fat, +gluttonous robin that had been hopping about to peer at him, chirped far +more cheerfully as it flew away. + +Just at this point he suffered a real adventure. Eight cows sauntered up +interestedly and chewed their cuds at him in unison, standing +contemplative, calculating, determined. It is a fact in natural history +not widely enough recognised that the domestic cow is the most ferocious +appearing of all known beasts--a thing to be proved by any who will +survey one amid strange surroundings, with a mind cleanly disabused of +preconceptions. A visitor from another planet, for example, knowing +nothing of our fauna, and confronted in the forest simultaneously by a +common red milch cow and the notoriously savage black leopard of the +Himalyas, would instinctively shun the cow as a dangerous beast and +confidingly seek to fondle the pretty leopard, thus terminating his +natural history researches before they were fairly begun. + +It can be understood, then, that a moment ensued when the little boy +wavered under the steady questioning scrutiny of eight large and powerful +cows, all chewing at him in unison. Yet, even so, and knowing, moreover, +that strange cows are ever untrustworthy, only for a moment did he waver. +Then his new straw hat was off to be shaken at them and he heaved a fierce +"_H-a-y--y-u-p!_" + +At this they started, rather indignantly, seeming to meditate his swift +destruction; but another shout turned and routed them, and he even chased +them a little way, helped now by the inconsiderable dog who came up from +pretending to hunt gophers. + +After this there seemed nothing to do but eat the other half of the +provisions and retire again for the night. Long after the sun went down +behind the magic wood he lay uneasily on his lumpy bed, trying again and +again to shut his eyes and open them to find it morning--which was the way +it always happened in the west bedroom of the big house he had left +forever. + +But it was different here. And presently, when it seemed nearly dark +except for the stars, a disgraceful thing happened. He had pictured the +dog as faithful always to him, refusing in the end even to be taken from +over his dead body. But the treacherous Penny grew first restive, then +plainly desirous of returning to his home. At last, after many efforts to +corrupt the adventurer, he started off briskly alone--cornerwise, as +little dogs seem always to run--fleeing shamelessly toward that east +where shone the tame lights of Virtue. + +Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember certain phrases +from a tract that Clytie had tried to teach him--"the moment that will +close thy life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail in +hell"--"impossible to go from the haunts of sin and vice to the presence +of the Lamb"--"the torments of an eternal hell are awaiting thee"-- + + "To-night may be thy latest breath, + Thy little moment here be done. + Eternal woe, the second death, + Awaits the Christ-rejecting one." + +This was more than he had ever before been able to recall of such matters. +He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly. Yet so was he turned +again to better things. Gradually he began to have an inkling of a +possibility that made his blood icy--a possibility that not even the +spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could +mitigate--namely, a vision of himself in the same plight with that person. + +Now it was that he began to hear Them all about him. They walked +stealthily near, passed him with sinister rustlings, and whispered over +him. If They had only talked out--but they whispered--even laughing, +crying and singing in whispers. This horror, of course, was not long to +be endured. Yet, even so, with increasing myriads of Them all about, +rustling and whispering their awful laughs and cries--it was no +ignominious rout. With considerable deliberation he folded the carpet, +placed it in the box with his other treasure, and started at a pace which +may, perhaps, have quickened a little, yet was never undignified--never +more than a moderately fast trudge. + +He wondered sadly if Clytie would get up to unlock the door for him so +late at night. As for Penny, things could never be the same between them +again. + +He was astounded to see lights burning and the house open--how weird for +them to have supper at such an hour! He concealed his box in the +grape-arbour and slunk through the kitchen into the dining-room. Probably +they had gotten up in the middle of the night, out of tardy alarm for him. +It served them right. Yet they seemed hardly to notice him when he slid +awkwardly into his chair. He looked calculatingly over the table and +asked, in tones that somehow seemed to tell of injury, of personal +affront: + +"What you having supper for at this time of night?" + +His grandfather regarded him now not unkindly, while Clytie seemed +confused. + +"It's more'n long past midnight!" he insisted. + +"Huh! it ain't only a quarter past seven," put in his superior brother. +He seemed about to say more, but a glance from the grandfather silenced +him. + +So _that_ was as late as he had stayed--a quarter after seven? He was +ready now to rage at any taunt, and began to eat in haughty silence. He +was still eating when his grandfather and Allan left the table, and then +he began to feel a little grateful that they had not noticed or asked +annoying questions, or tried to be funny or anything. Over a final dish of +plum preserves and an imposing segment of marble cake he relented so far +as to tell Clytie something of his adventures--especially since she had +said that the big hall-clock was very likely slow--that it must surely be +a lot later than a quarter past seven. The circumstances had combined to +produce a narrative not entirely perspicuous--the two clear points being +that They do everything in a whisper, and that Clytie ought to get rid of +Penny at once, since he could not be depended upon at great moments. + +As to ever sleeping under a tree, Clytie discouraged him. She knew of +some Boys that once sat under a tree which was struck by lightning, all +being Killed save one, who had the rare good luck to be the son of a +Presbyterian clergyman. The little boy resolved next time to go beyond +the trees to sleep; perhaps if he went far enough he would come to the +other one of the Feet, and so have a safeguard against lightning, foreign +cows, and Those that walk with rustlings and whisper in the lonely places +at night. + +The little boy fell asleep, half-persuaded again to virtue, because of its +superior comforts. The air about his head seemed full of ghostly "good +business hands," each with its accusing forefinger pointed at him for that +he had not learned to write one as Ralph Overton did. + +Down the hall in his study the old man was musing backward to the +delicate, quiet girl with the old-fashioned aureole of curls, who would +now and then toss them with a little gesture eloquent of possibilities +for unrestraint when she felt the close-drawn rein of his authority. Again +he felt her rebellious little tugs, and the wrench of her final defiance +when she did the awful thing. He had been told by a plain speaker that her +revolt was the fault of his severity. And here was the flesh of her +flesh--was it in the same spirit of revolt against authority, a +thousandfold magnified? Might he not by according the boy a wise liberty +save him in after years from some mad folly akin to his mother's? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE GARDEN OF TRUTH AND THE PERFECT FATHER + + +It was a different summer from those that had gone before it. + +A little passionate Protestant had sallied out to make bed with the gods; +and the souls of such the just gods do truly take into certain shining +realms whither poor involatile bodies of flesh may not follow. The +requirement is that one feel his own potential godship enough to rebel. +For, having rebelled, he will assuredly venture beyond mortal domains into +that garden where stands the tree of Truth--this garden being that one to +the west just beyond the second fence (or whichever fence); that point +where the mortal of invertebrate soul is beset with the feeling that he +has already dared too far--that he had better make for home mighty quick +if he doesn't want Something to get him. The essence of this decision is +quite the same whether the mortal be eight years old or eighty. Now the +Tree of Truth stands just over this line at which all but the gods' own +turn to scamper back before supper. It is the first tree to the left--an +apple-tree, twisted, blackened, scathed, eaten with age, yet full of +blossoms as fresh and fertile as those first born of any young tree +whatsoever. Those able rightly to read this tree of Truth become at once +as the gods, keeping the faith of children while absorbing the wisdom of +the ages--lacking either of which, be it known, one may not become an +imperishable ornament of Time. + +But to him who is bravely faithful to the passing of that last fence, who +reclines under that tree even for so long as one aspiration, comes a +substantial gain: ever after, when he goes into any solitude, he becomes +more than himself. Then he reads the first lesson of the tree of Truth, +which is that the spirit of Life ages yet is ageless; and suffers yet is +joyous. This is no inconsiderable reward for passing that frontier, even +if one must live longer to comprehend reasons. It is worth while even if +the mortal become a mere dilettante in paradoxes and never learn even +feebly to spell the third lesson, which is the ultimate wisdom of the +gods. + +These matters being precisely so, the little boy knew quite as well as the +gods could know it, that a credit had been set down to his soul for what +he had ventured--even though what he had not done was, so far, more +stupendous than what he had, in the world of things and mere people. He +now became enamoured of life rather than death; and he studied the Shorter +Catechism with such effect that he could say it clear over to "_Every sin +deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to +come._" Each night he tried earnestly to learn two new answers; and glad +was he when his grandfather would sit by him, for the old man had now +become his image of God, and it seemed fitting to recite to him. Often as +they sat together the little boy would absently slip his hand into the +big, warm, bony hand of the old man, turning and twisting it there until +he felt an answering pressure. This embarrassed the old man. Though he +would really have liked to take the little boy up to his breast and hold +him there, he knew not how; and he would even be careful not to restrain +the little hand in his own--to hold it, yet to leave it free to withdraw +at its first uneasy wriggle. + +Of this shackled spirit of kindness, always striving within the old man, +the little boy had come to be entirely conscious. So real was it to him, +so dependable, that he never suspected that a certain little blow with the +open hand one day was meant to punish him for conduct he had persisted in +after three emphatic admonitions. + +"Oh! that _hurts_!" he had cried, looking up at the confused old man with +unimpaired faith in his having meant not more than a piece of friendly +roughness. This look of flawless confidence in the uprightness of his +purpose, the fine determination to save him chagrin by smiling even though +the hurt place tingled, left in the old man's mind a biting conviction +that he had been actually on the point of behaving as one gentleman may +not behave to another. Quick was he to make the encounter accord with the +child's happy view, even picking him up and forcing from himself the +gaiety to rally him upon his babyish tenderness to rough play. Not less +did he hold it true that "The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child +left to himself bringeth his mother to shame--" and with the older boy +he was not unconscientious in this matter. For Allan took punishment as +any boy would, and, indeed, was so careful that he seldom deserved it. But +the old man never ceased to be grateful that the littler boy had laughed +under that one blow, unable to suspect that it could have been meant in +earnest. + +From the first day that the little boy felt the tender cool grass under +his bare toes that summer, life became like perfectly played music. This +was after the long vacation began, when there was no longer any need to +remember to let his voice fall after a period, or to dread his lessons so +that he must learn them more quickly than any other pupil in school. There +would be no more of that wretched fooling until fall, a point of time +inconceivably far away. Before it arrived any one of a number of strange +things might happen to avert the calamity of education. For instance, he +might be born again, a thing of which he had lately heard talk; a +contingency by no means flawless in prospect, since it probably meant +having the mumps again, and things like that. But if it came on the very +last day of vacation, or on the first morning of school, just as he was +called on to recite, snatching him from the very jaws of the Moloch, and +if it fixed him so he need not be afraid in the night of going where Milo +Barrus was going, then it might not be so bad. + +Nancy, who had now discarded the good name of Lillian May for simple +Alice, disapproved heartily of being born again; unless, indeed, one could +be born a boy the second time. She was only too eager for the day when +she need not submit to having her hair brushed and combed so long every +morning of her life. Not for the world would she go through it again and +have to begin French all over, even at "_J'ai, tu as, il a_." Yet, if it +were certain she could be a boy-- + +He was too considerate to tell her that this was as good as +impossible--that she quite lacked the qualities necessary for that. +Instead, he reassured her with the chivalrous fiction that he, at least, +would like her as well as if she _were_ a boy. And, indeed, as a girl, she +was not wholly unsatisfactory. True, she played "school" (of all things!) +in preference to "wild animals," practised scales on the piano an hour +every day, wore a sun-hat frequently--spite of which she was +freckled--wore shoes and stockings on the hottest days, when one's feet +are so hungry for the cool, springy turf, and performed other acts +repugnant to a soul that has brought itself erect. But she was fresh and +dainty to look at, like an opened morning glory, with pretty frocks that +the French lady whose name was Madmasel made her wear every day, and her +eyes were much like certain flowers in the bed under the bay-window, with +very long, black lashes that got all stuck together when she cried; and +she made superb capital letters, far better than the little boy's, though +she was a year younger. + +Also, which was perhaps her chief charm, she could be made to believe that +only he could protect her from the Gratcher, a monstrous thing, half +beast, half human, which was often seen back of the house; sometimes +flitting through the grape-arbour, sometimes coming out of the dark +cellar, sometimes peering around corners. It was a thing that went on +enormous crutches, yet could always catch you if it saw you by daylight +out of its right eye, its left being serviceable only at night, when, if +you were wise, you kept in the house. Once the Gratcher saw you with its +right eye the crutches swung toward you and you were caught: it picked you +up and began to look you all over, with the eyes in the ends of its +fingers. This tickled you so that you went crazy in a minute. + +Nancy feared the Gratcher, and she became supremely lovely to the little +boy when she permitted him to guard her from it, instead of running home +across the lawn when it was surely coming;--a loveliness he felt more +poignantly at certain reflective times when he was not also afraid. For, +the Gratcher being his own invention, these moments of superiority to its +terrors would inevitably seize him. + +[Illustration: "She could be made to believe that only he could protect +her from the Gratcher."] + +Better than protecting Nancy did he love to report the Gratcher's +immediate presence to Allan, daring him to stay on that spot until it put +its dreadful head around the corner and shook one of its crutches at them. +In low throbbing tones he would report its fearful approach, stride by +stride, on the crutches. This he could do by means of the Gratcher-eye, +with which he claimed to be endowed. One having a Gratcher-eye can see +around any corner when a Gratcher happens to be coming--yet only then, not +at any other time, as Allan had proved by experiment on the first +disclosure of this phenomenon. He of the Gratcher-eye could positively not +see around a corner, if, for example, Allan himself was there; the +Gratcher-eye could not tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by +no means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise its magic function +when a Gratcher actually approached, and Allan knew it. He would stand +staunchly, with a fine incredulity, while the little boy called off the +strides, perhaps, until he announced "_Now_ he's just passed the +well-curb--_now_ he's--" but here, scoffing over an anxious shoulder, +Allan would go in where Clytie was baking, feigning a sudden great hunger. + +Nancy would stay, because she believed the little boy's protestations that +he could save her, and the little boy himself often believed them. + +"I love Allan best, because he is so comfortable, but I think you are the +most admirable," she would say to him at such times; and he thought well +of her if she had seemed very, very frightened. + +So life had become a hardy sport with him. No longer was he moved to wish +for early dissolution when Clytie's song floated to him: + + "'I should like to die,' said Willie, + If my papa could die, too; + But he says he isn't ready, + 'Cause he has so much to do!" + +This Willie had once seemed sweet and noble to him, but the words now made +him avid of new life by reminding him that his own dear father would soon +come to be with him one week, as he had promised when last they parted, +and as a letter written with magnificent flourishes now announced. + +Late in August this perfect father came--a fine laughing, rollicking, big +gentleman, with a great, loud voice, and beautiful long curls that touched +his velvet coat-collar. His sweeping golden moustache, wide-brimmed white +hat, the choice rings on his fingers, his magnificently ponderous gold +watch-chain and a watch of the finest silver, all proclaimed him a being +of such flawless elegance both in person and attire that the little boy +never grew tired of showing him to the village people and to Clytie. He +did not stay at the big house, for some reason, but at the Eagle Hotel, +whence he came to see his boys each day, or met them hurrying to see him. +And for a further reason which the little boys did not understand, their +grandfather continued to be too busy to see this perfect father once +during the week he stayed in the village. + +Deeming it a pity that two such choice spirits should not be brought +together, the little boy urged his father to bring his fiddle to the big +house and play and sing some of his fine songs, so that his grandfather +could have a chance to hear some good music. He knew well enough that if +the old man once heard this music he would have to give in and enjoy it, +even if he was too busy to come down. And if only his father would tune up +the fiddle and sing that very, very good song about, + + "The more she said 'Whoa!' + They cried, 'Let her go!' + And the swing went a little bit higher," + +if only his grandfather could hear this, one of the funniest and noisiest +songs in the world, perhaps he would come right down stairs. But his +father laughed away the suggestion, saying that the old gentleman had no +ear for music; which, of course, was a joke, for he had two, like any +person. + +Clytemnestra, too, was at first strangely cool to the incomparable father, +though at last she proved not wholly insensible to his charm, providing +for his refection her very choicest cake and the last tumbler of +crab-apple jelly. She began to suspect that a man of manners so engaging +must have good in him, and she gave him at parting the tracts of "The +Dying Drummer Boy" and "Sinner, what if You Die To-day?" for which he +professed warm gratitude. + +The little boy afterward saw his perfect father hand these very tracts to +Milo Barrus, when they met him on the street, saying, "Here, Barrus, get +your soul saved while you wait!" Then they laughed together. + +The little boy wondered if this meant that Milo Barrus had come to the +Feet, or been born again, or something. Or if it meant that his father +also spelled God with a little g. He did not think of it, however, until +it was too late to ask. + +The flawless father went away at the end of the week, "over the County +Fair circuit, selling Chief White Cloud's Great Indian Remedy," the little +boy heard him tell Clytie. Also he heard his grandfather say to Clytie, +"Thank God, not for another year!" + +The little boy liked Nancy better than ever after that, because she had +liked his father so much, saying he was exactly like a prince, giving +pennies and nickels to everybody and being so handsome and big and grand. +She wished her own Uncle Doctor could be as beautiful and great; and the +little boy was generous enough to wish that his own plain grandfather +might be _almost_ as fine. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SUPERLATIVE COUSIN BILL J. + + +A splendid new interest had now come into the household in the person of +one whom Clytemnestra had so often named as Cousin Bill J. Grandfather +Delcher having been ordered south for the winter by Dr. Crealock, Cousin +Bill J., upon Clytie's recommendation, was imported from up Fredonia way +to look after the cow and be a man about the place. Clytie assured +Grandfather Delcher that Cousin Bill J. had "never uttered an oath, though +he's been around horses all his life!" This made him at once an object of +interest to the little boy, though doubtless he failed to appraise the +restraint at anything like its true value. It had sufficed Grandfather +Delcher, however, and Cousin Bill J., securing leave of absence from the +livery-stable in Fredonia, arrived the day the old man left, making a +double excitement for the household. + +He proved to be a fascinating person; handsome, affable, a ready talker +upon all matters of interest--though sarcastic, withal--and fond of boys. +True, he had not long hair like the little boy's father. Indeed, he had +not much hair at all, except a sort of curtain of black curls extending +from ear to ear at the back of his bare, pink head. But the little boy had +to admit that Cousin Bill J.'s moustache was even grander than his +father's. It fell in two graceful festoons far below his chin, with a +little eyelet curled into each tip, and, like the ringlets, it showed the +blue-black lustre of the crow's wing. In the full sunlight, at times, it +became almost a royal purple. + +Later observation taught the little boy that this splendid hue was applied +at intervals by Cousin Bill J. himself. He did it daintily with a small +brush, every time the moustache began to show a bit rusty at the roots; +Bernal never failed to be present at this ceremony; nor to resolve that +his own moustache, when it came, should be as scrupulously cared for--not +left, like Dr. Crealock's, for example, to become speckled and gray. + +Cousin Bill J.'s garments were as splendid as his character. He had an +overcoat and cap made from a buffalo hide; his high-heeled boots had +maroon tops set with purple crescents; his watch-charm was a large gold +horse in full gallop; his cravat was an extensive area of scarlet satin in +the midst of which was caught a precious stone as large as a robin's egg; +and in smoking, which his physician had prescribed, he used a superb +meerschaum cigar-holder, all tinted a golden brown, upon which lightly +perched a carven angel dressed like those that ride the big white horse in +the circus. + +But aside from these mere matters of form, Cousin Bill J. was a man with a +history. Some years before he had sprained his back, since which time he +had been unable to perform hard labour; but prior to that mishap he had +been a perfect specimen of physical manhood--one whose prowess had been +the marvel of an extensive territory. He had split and laid up his three +hundred and fifty rails many a day, when strong men beside him had +blushingly to stop with three hundred or thereabouts; he had also cradled +his four acres of grain in a day, and he could break the wildest horse +ever known. Even the great Budd Doble, whom he personally knew, had said +more than once, and in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses, that in +some ways he, Budd Doble, knew less about a horse than Cousin Bill J. did. +The little boy was wrought to enthusiasm by this tribute, resolving always +to remember to say "hoss" for horse; and, though he had not heard of Budd +Doble before, the name was magnetic for him. After you said it over +several times he thought it made you feel as if you had a cold in your +head. + +Still further, Cousin Bill J. could throw his thumbs out of joint, sing +tenor in the choir, charm away warts, recite "Roger and I" and "The Death +of Little Nell," and he knew all the things that would make boys grow +fast, like bringing in wood, splitting kindling, putting down hay for the +cow, and other out-of-door exercises that had made him the demon of +strength he once was. The little boy was not only glad to perform these +acts for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the labours of his +hero, who wrenched his back anew nearly every time he tried to do +anything, and was always having to take a medicine for it which he called +"peach-and-honey." The little boy thought the name attractive, though his +heart bled for the sufferer each time he was obliged to take it; for after +every swallow of the stuff he made a face that told eloquently how +nauseous it must be. + +As for the satire and wit of Cousin Bill J., they were of the dry sort. He +would say to one he met on the street when the mud was deep, "Fine weather +overhead"--then adding dryly, after a significant pause--"_but few going +that way!"_ Or he would exclaim with feigned admiration, when the little +boy shot at a bird with his bow and arrow, "My! you made the feathers fly +_that_ time!"--then, after his terrible pause--_"only, the bird flew with +them_." Also he could call it "Fourth of Ju-New-Years" without ever +cracking a smile, though it cramped the little boy in helpless laughter. + +Altogether, Cousin Bill J. was a winning and lovely character of merits +both spiritual and spectacular, and he brought to the big house an exotic +atmosphere that was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this +hero might be made again the man he once was; not because of any flaw that +he could see in him--but only because the sufferer appeared somewhat less +than perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing could have been +superior to the noble melancholy with which Cousin Bill J. looked back +upon his splendid past. There was a perfect dignity in it. Surely no mere +electric belt could bring to him an attraction surpassing this--though +Cousin Bill J. insisted that he never expected any real improvement until +he could save up enough money to buy one. He showed the little boy a +picture cut from a newspaper--the picture of a strong, proud-looking man +with plenteous black whiskers, girded about with a wide belt that was +projecting a great volume of electricity into the air in every direction. +It was interesting enough, but the little boy thought this person by no +means so beautiful as Cousin Bill J., and said so. He believed, too, +though this he did not say, from tactful motives, that it would detract +from the dignity of Cousin Bill J. to go about clad only in an electric +belt, like the proud-looking gentleman in the picture--even if the belt +did send out a lot of electric wiggles all the time. But, of course, +Cousin Bill J. knew best. He looked forward to having his father meet this +new hero--feeling that each was perfect in his own way. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES + + +Around the evening lamp that winter the little boys studied Holy Writ, +while Allan made summaries of it for the edification of the proud +grandfather in far-off Florida. + +Tersely was the creation and the fall of man set forth, under promptings +and suggestions from Clytie and Cousin Bill J., who was no mean Bible +authority: how God, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," found +his first pair ashamed of their nakedness, and with his own hands made +them coats of skins and clothed them. "What a treasure those garments +would be in this evil day," said Clytie--"what a silencing rebuke to all +heretics!" But the Lord drove out the wicked pair, lest they "take also of +the tree of life and live forever," saying, "Behold, the man is become as +one of _us!_" This provoked a lengthy discussion the very first evening as +to whether it meant that there was more than one God. And Clytie's +view--that God called himself "Us" in the same sense that kings and +editors of newspapers do--at length prevailed over the polytheistic +hypothesis of Cousin Bill J. + +On they read to the Deluge, when man became so very bad indeed that God +was sorry for ever having made him, and said: "I will destroy man whom I +have created from the face of the earth; both man and the beast and the +creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have +made them." + +Hereupon Bernal suggested that all the white rabbits at least should have +been saved--thinking of his own two in the warm nest in the barn. He was +unable to see how white rabbits with twitching pink noses and pink rims +around their eyes could be an offense, or, indeed, other than a pure joy +even to one so good as God. But he gave in, with new admiration for the +ready mind of Cousin Bill J., who pointed out that white rabbits could not +have been saved because they were not fish. He even relished the dry quip +that maybe he, the little boy, thought white rabbits _were_ fish; but +Cousin Bill J. didn't, for his part. + +Past the Tower of Babel they went, when the Lord "came down to see the +city and the tower," and made them suddenly talk strange tongues to one +another so they could not build their tower actually into Heaven. + +The little boy thought this a fine joke to play on them, to set them all +"jabbering" so. + +After that there was a great deal of fighting, and, in the language of +Allan's summary, "God loved all the good people so he gave them lots of +wives and cattle and sheep and he let them go out and kill all the other +people they wanted to which was their enemies." But the little boy found +the butcheries rather monotonous. + +Occasionally there was something graphic enough to excite, as where the +heads of Ahab's seventy children were put into a basket and exposed in two +heaps at the city's gate; but for the most part it made him sleepy. + +True, when it came to getting the Children of Israel out of Egypt, as +Cousin Bill J. observed, "Things brisked up considerable." + +The plan of first hardening Pharaoh's heart, then scaring him by a +pestilence, then again hardening his heart for another calamity, quite +won the little boy's admiration for its ingenuity, and even Cousin Bill J. +would at times betray that he was impressed. Feverishly they followed the +miracles done to Egypt; the plague of frogs, of lice, of flies, of boils +and blains on man and beast; the plague of hail and lightning, of locusts, +and the three days of darkness. Then came the Lord's final triumph, which +was to kill all the first-born in the land of Egypt, "from the first-born +of Pharaoh, that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the first-born of the +maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts." +Again the little boy's heart ached as he thought pityingly of the +first-born of all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement to +dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was the manner in which the +Israelites identified themselves, by marking their doors with a sprig of +hyssop dipped in the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did he +see the good God gliding cautiously from door to door, looking for the +mark of blood, and passing the lucky doors where it was seen to be truly +of a male lamb without blemish. He thought it must have taken a lot of +lambs to mark up all the doors! + +Then came that master-stroke of enterprise, when God directed Moses to +"speak now in the ears of the people and let every man borrow of his +neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels +of gold," so that they might "spoil" the Egyptians. Cousin Bill J. +chuckled when he read this, declaring it to be "a regular Jew trick"; but +Clytie rebuked him quickly, reminding him that they were God's own words, +spoken in His own holy voice. + +"Well, it was mighty thoughtful in God," insisted Cousin Bill J., but +Clytie said, however that was, it served Pharaoh right for getting his +heart hardened so often. + +The little boy, not perceiving the exact significance of "spoil" in this +connection, wondered if Cousin Bill J. would spoil if some one borrowed +his gold horse and ran off with it. + +Then came that exciting day when the Lord said, "I will get me honour upon +Pharaoh and all his host," which He did by drowning them thoroughly in the +Red Sea. The little boy thought he would have liked to be there in a +boat--a good safe boat that would not tip over; also that he would much +like to have a rod such as Aaron had, that would turn into a serpent. It +would be a fine thing to take to school some morning. But Cousin Bill J. +thought it doubtful if one could be procured; though he had seen Heller +pour five colours of wine out of a bottle which, when broken, proved to +have a live guinea-pig in it. This seemed to the little boy more wonderful +than Aaron's rod, though he felt it would not reflect honour upon God to +say so. + +Another evening they spent before Sinai, Cousin Bill J. reading the verses +in a severe and loud tone when the voice of the Lord was sounding. Duly +impressed was the little boy with the terrors of the divine presence, a +thing so awful that the people must not go up into the mount nor even +touch its border--lest "the Lord break forth upon them: There shall not a +hand touch it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether it be +beast or man it shall not live." Clytie said the goodness of God was +shown herein. An evil God would not have warned them, and many worthy but +ignorant people would have been blasted. + +Then He came down in thunder and smoke and lightning and +earthquakes--which Cousin Bill J. read in tones that enabled Bernal to +feel every possible joy of terror; came to tell them that He was a very +jealous God and that they must not worship any of the other gods. He +commanded that "thou shalt not revile the Gods," also that they should +"make no mention of the names of other Gods," which Cousin Bill J. said +was as fair as you could ask. + +When they reached the directions for sacrificing, the little boy was +doubly alert--in the event that he should ever determine to be washed in +the blood of the lamb and have to do his own killing. + +"Then," read Cousin Bill J., in a voice meant to convey the augustness of +Deity, "thou shalt kill the ram and take of his blood and put it upon the +tip of the right ear of Aaron and upon the tip of the right ear of his +sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of +their right foot." So you didn't have to wash all over in the blood. He +agreed with Clytie, who remarked that no one could ever have found out how +to do it right unless God had told. The God-given directions that ensued +for making the water of separation from "the ashes of a red heifer" he did +not find edifying; but some verses after that seemed more practicable. +"And thou shalt take of the ram," continued the reader in majestic +cadence, "the fat and the rump and the fat that covereth the inwards, and +the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat that is upon +them--" + +Here was detail with a satisfying minuteness; and all this was for +"a wave-offering" to be waved before the Lord--which was indeed an +interesting thought. + +"If God was so careful of His children in these small matters," said +Clytie; "no wonder they believed He would care for them in graver matters, +and no wonder they looked forward so eagerly to the coming of His Son, +whom He promised should be sent to save them from His wrath." + +Through God's succeeding minute directions for the building and upholstery +of His tabernacle, "with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and +purple and scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them," +the interest of the little boys rather languished; likewise through His +regulations about such dry matters as slavery, divorce, and polygamy. His +directions for killing witches and for stoning the ox that gores a man or +woman had more of colour in them. But there was no real interest until the +good God promised His children to bring them in unto the Amorites and the +Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the +Jebusites, to "cut them off." It was not uninteresting to know that God +put Moses in a cleft of the rock and covered it with His hand when He +passed by, thus permitting Moses a partial view of the divine person. But +the actual fighting of battles was thereafter the chief source of +interest. For God was a mighty God of battles, never weary of the glories +of slaughter. When it was plain that He could make a handful of two +thousand Israelites slay two hundred thousand Midianites, in a moment, as +one might say, the wisdom of coming to the Feet, being born again, and +washing in the blood ceased to be debatable. It would seem very silly, +indeed, to neglect any precaution that would insure the favour of this +God, who slew cities full of men and women and little children off-hand. +The little boy thought Milo Barrus would begin to spell a certain word +with the very biggest "G" he could make, if any one were to bring these +matters to his notice. + +As to Allan, who made abstracts of the winter's study, Clytemnestra and +her transcendent relative agreed that he would one day be a power in the +land. Off to Florida each week they sent his writing to Grandfather +Delcher, who was proud of it, in spite of his heart going out chiefly to +the littler boy. + +"So this is all I know now about God," ran the conclusion, "except that He +loved us so that He gave His only Son to be crucified so that He could +forgive our sins as soon as He saw His Son nailed up on the cross, and +those that believed it could be with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and +those that didn't believe it, like the Jews and heathens, would have to be +in hell for ever and ever Amen. This proves His great love for us and that +He is the true God. So this is all I have learned this winter about God, +who is a spirit infinite eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom and +power holiness justice goodness and truth, and the word of God is +contained in the scriptures of the old and new testament which is the only +rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. In my next I will take +up the meek and lowly Jesus and show you how much I have learned about +him." + +They had been unable to persuade the littler boy into this species of +composition, his mind dwelling too much on the first-born of white rabbits +and such, but to show that his winter was not wholly lost, he submitted a +secular composition, which ran: + +"BIRDS + +"The Animl kindom is devided into birds and reguler animls. Our teacher +says we had ougt to obsurv so I obsurv there is three kinds of birds +Jingle birds Squeek birds and Clatter birds. Jingle birds has fat rusty +stumacks. I have not the trouble to obsurv any more kinds." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +ON SURVIVING THE IDOLS WE BUILD + + +It is the way of life to be forever building new idols in place of the +old. Into the fabric of these the most of us put so much of ourselves that +a little of us dies each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is +shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with +doubt. This is why we fade and wither as the leaf. Could we but sweep +aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing +certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree +in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword. +But this may not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new +creation--deeming that _here_, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond +the end of time. To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are +meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken. + +And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, +learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some +last idol triumphantly surviving us. For--and this is the third lesson +from that tree of Truth--we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our +idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is +quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his +creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful +dust. Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself--but this is +mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last +fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange +and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper. + +To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be +apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol +blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish +caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers--as if +we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to +this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt +for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol +go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a +better one. + +Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that +might wrench even youth's divine credulity. + +Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and +its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that +Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins +of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place +something unseen and unheard of any save himself--an idol discernible only +by him, but none the less real for that. + +The Imp with the hammer being no respecter of dignities, the idol of the +Front Room fell next, increasing the heap of ruins that was gathering +about his feet. Tragically came a day one spring, a cold, cloudy, +rational day, it seemed, when the Front Room went down; for the little +boy saw all its sanctities violated, its mysteries laid bare. And the +Front Room became a mere front room. Its shutters were opened and its +windows raised to let in light and common fresh air; its carpet was on the +line outside to be scourged of dust; the black, formidable furniture was +out on the wide porch to be re-varnished, like any common furniture, +plainly needing it; the vases of dyed grass might be handled without risk; +and the dark spirit that had seemed to be in and over all was vanished. +Even the majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza once died for +so much as touching reverently, was now seen to be an ordinary stove for +the burning of anthracite coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for +an extra quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had finished +whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little boy, grown somewhat bigger +now, walked among the débris of this idol, stamping the floor, sounding +the walls, detecting cracks in the ceiling, spots on the wall-paper and +cobwebs in the corners. Yet serene amid the ruins towered his valiant +spirit, conscious under the catastrophe of its power to build other and +yet stauncher idols. + +Thus was it one day to stretch itself with new power amid the base ruins +of Cousin Bill J., though the time was mercifully deferred--that his soul +might gain strength in worship to put away even that which it worshipped +when the day of new truth dawned. + +When Cousin Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually +to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments +with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath +desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the +little boy suspected no motive. He saw these works only as the outward +signs of an inward grace that must be ever increasing. So it came that his +amazement was above that of all other persons when, at Spring's first +breath of honeyed fragrance, Cousin Bill J. went to be the husband of +Miss Alvira Abney. He had not failed to observe that Miss Alvira sang +alto, in the choir, out of the same book from which Cousin Bill J. +produced his exquisite tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this, +beyond, perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor figure beside +her magnificent companion, even if her bonnet was always the gayest bonnet +in church, trembling through every season with the blossoms of some +ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira's face and hair and eyes +seemed to be all one colour, very pale, and her hands were long and thin, +with far too many bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought. + +Yet when he learned that the woman was not without merit in the sight of +his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave her his favour. At the marriage he felt +in his heart a certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that in +the bride's own heart, for their faces seemed to speak much alike. + +Tensely the little boy listened to the words that united these two, +understanding perfectly from questions that his hero endowed the woman at +his side with all his worldly goods. Even a less practicable person than +Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in this light--being endowed +with the gold horse, to say nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the +precious jewel in the scarlet cravat. Probably now she would be able to +throw her thumbs out of joint, too! + +But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that Cousin Bill J. would +stay close at hand, to be a joy forever in his sight and lend importance +to the town of Edom. For his hero was to go and live in the neat rooms of +Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking shop, and never return to +the scenes of his early prowess. + +After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would +watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high glass case +in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets. +And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not +irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back +at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts +deserved. He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, +or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which +time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be +had for the asking. Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject +of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County +marvelling at his strength. + +At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. Later he came to +rejoice in the very circumstance that had brought him pain. If his hero +could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he +had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences--yes, and smart +under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm. + +It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not +infrequently the fate of an idol. + +Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have +said "that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet +there came a moment when all was changed--a time of question, doubt, +conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, +he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even +esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J. + +He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss +Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs +and actually split her own kindlings--with that healthy loafer setting +around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that +drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been seen with +that eldest--" + +Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener, +whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He +pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss +Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up +the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He +would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be +lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her +back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist, +she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried +to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If _that_ was the kind +she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or +Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing +Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero." + +As for Cousin Bill J., of _course_ he was a loafer! Who wouldn't be if he +had the chance? But it was false and cruel to say that he was a healthy +loafer. When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to fell an ox +with one blow of his fist. + +Nor was he disturbed seriously by rumours that his hero was a +"come-outer"; that instead of attending church with Miss Alvira he could +be heard at the barbershop of a Sabbath morning, agreeing with Milo Barrus +that God might have made the world in six days and rested on the seventh; +but he couldn't have made the whale swallow Jonah, because it was against +reason and nature; and, if you found one part of the Bible wasn't so, how +could you tell the rest of it wasn't a lot of grandmother's tales? + +Nor did he feel anything but sympathy for a helpless man imposed upon when +he heard Mrs. Squire Cumpston say to Clytie, "Do you know that lazy brute +has her worked to a mere shadow; she just sits in that shop all day long +and lets tears fall every minute or so on her work. She spoiled +five-eighths of a yard of three-inch lavender satin ribbon that way, that +was going on to Mrs. Beasley's second-mourning bonnet. And she's had to +cut him down to twenty-five cents a day for spending-money, and order the +stores not to trust him one cent on her account." + +He was sorry to have Miss Alvira crying so much. It must be a sloppy +business, making her hats and things. But what did the woman _expect_ of a +man like Cousin Bill J., anyway? + +Yet somehow it came after a few years the new light upon his old idol. One +day he found that he neither resented nor questioned a thing he heard +Clytie herself say about Cousin Bill J.: "Why, he don't know as much as a +goat." Here she reconsidered, with an air of wanting to be entirely +fair:--"Well, not as much as a goat really _ought_ to know!" And when he +overheard old Squire Cumpston saying on the street, a few days later, "Of +all God's mean creatures, the meanest is a male human that can keep his +health on the money a woman earns!" it was no shock, though he knew that +Cousin Bill J. was meant. + +Departed then was the glory of his hero, his splendid dimensions shrunk, +his effective lustre dulled, his perfect moustache rusted and scraggly, +his chin weakened, his pale blue eyes seen to be in force like those of a +china doll. + +He heard with interest that Squire Cumpston had urged Miss Alvira to +divorce her husband, that she had refused, declaring God had joined her to +Cousin Bill J. and that no man might put them asunder; that marriage had +been raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament and was now +indissoluble--an emblem, indeed, of Christ's union with His Church; and +that, as she had made her bed, so would she lie upon it. + +Nor was the boy alone in regarding as a direct manifestation of Providence +the sudden removal of Cousin Bill J. from this life by means of pneumonia. +For Miss Alvira had ever been esteemed and respected even by those who +considered that she sang alto half a note off, while her husband had +gradually acquired the disesteem of almost the entire village of Edom. +Many, indeed, went so far as to consider him a reproach to his sex. + +Yet there were a few who said that even a pretended observance of the +decencies would have been better. Miss Alvira disagreed with them, +however, and after all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the +post-office next day, "It was _her_ funeral." For Miss Alvira had made no +pretense to God; and, what is infinitely harder, she would make none to +the world. She rode to the last resting-place of her husband--Elias also +made a funny joke about his having merely changed _resting-places_--decked +in a bonnet on which were many blossoms. She had worn it through years +when her heart mourned and life was bitter, when it seemed that God from +His infinity had chosen her to suffer the cruellest hurts a woman may +know--and now that He had set her free she was not the one to pretend +grief with some lying pall of crêpe. And on the new bonnet she wore to +church, the first Sabbath after, there still flowered above her somewhat +drawn face the blossoms of an endless girlhood, as if they were rooted in +her very heart. Beneath these blossoms she sang her alto--such as it +was--with just a hint of tossing defiance. Yet there was no need for that. +Edom thought well of her. + +No one was known to have mourned the departed save an inferior dog he had +made his own and been kind to; but this creature had little sympathy or +notice, though he was said to have waited three days and three nights on +the new earth that topped the grave of Cousin Bill J. For, quite aside +from his unfortunate connection, he had not been thought well of as a dog. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PASSING OF THE GRATCHER; AND ANOTHER + + +From year to year the perfect father came to Edom to be a week with his +children. And though from visit to visit there were external variations in +him, his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless. When his garments +were appreciably less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when +his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the +priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, +though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of +copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, +worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the +reverse. Yet he could not avoid being sensible of the fluctuations. + +One year the parent would come with the long hair of one who, having been +brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the +choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopæia, and who would out of love +for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all for a nominal +consideration. + +Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping moustache and much of the +tawny hair, and the little boy would understand that he had travelled +extensively with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in large +cities, and being spoken of as "the phenomenal California baritone." His +admiring son envied the fortunate people of those cities. + +Again he would be touring the world of cities with some simple article of +household use which, from his luxurious barouche, he was merely +introducing for the manufacturers--perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a +silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen knives and cut +glass, this being, indeed, one of his prized staples. It appeared--so the +little boy heard him tell Milo Barrus--that few men could resist buying a +tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into strips before their +eyes; that one beholding the sea of hands waving frantically up to him +with quarters in them, after his demonstration, would have reason to +believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of glass every day +or so. Instead of this, as an observer of domestic and professional life, +he believed that out of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not +ten had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would. + +There was another who continued indifferent to the personal estate of this +father. This was Grandfather Delcher, who had never seen him since that +bleak day when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter. When the +perfect father came to Edom the grandfather went to his room and kept +there so closely that neither ever beheld the other. The little boy was +much puzzled by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other by two +men of such rare distinction, and during the early visits of his father he +was fruitful of suggestion for bringing them together. But when he came to +understand that they remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was +troubled. He ceased then all efforts to arrange a meeting to which he had +looked forward with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage to +the other. But he was grieved toward his grandfather, becoming sharp and +even disdainful to the queer, silent old man, at those times when the +father was in the village. He could have no love and but little +friendliness for one who slighted his dear father. And so a breach +widened between them from year to year, as the child grew stouter fibre +into his sentiments of loyalty and justice. + +Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly depriving him of +this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant +vitality that could fashion others to be still more warmly cherished. + +With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between +their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had +not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of +humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, +she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken +wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was +more plausible now that a prince, "all dressed up in shiny Prince +Clothes," would come riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the +saddle in front of him and gallop off, calling her "My beautiful darling!" +while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the cook, danced up and down on the +front piazza impotently shouting "Help!" She suspected then, when it was +too late, that certain people would bitterly wish they had acted in a +different manner. If this did not happen soon, she meant to go into a +convent where she would not be forever told things for her own good by +those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where she could devote a +quiet life to the bringing up of her children. + +The little boy sympathised with her. He knew what it was to be +disappointed in one's family. The family he would have chosen for his own +was that of which two excellent views were given on the circus bills. In +one picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in their pink +tights, ranging from the tall father and mother down through four children +to a small boy that always looked much like himself. In the other picture +these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through the air at the very +top of the great tent, from trapeze to trapeze, with the littlest boy +happily in the greatest danger, midway in the air between the two proud +parents, who were hurling him back and forth. + +It was absurd to think of anything like this in connection with a family +of which only one member had either courage or ambition. One had only to +study Clytie or Grandfather Delcher a few moments to see how hopeless it +all was. + +The next best life to be aspired to was that of a house-painter, who could +climb about unchided on the frailest of high scaffolds, swing from the +dizziest cupola, or sway jauntily at the top of the longest ladder--always +without the least concern whether he spilled paint on his clothes or not. + +Then, all in a half-hour, one afternoon, both he and Nancy seemed to cross +a chasm of growth so wide that one thrilled to look back to the farther +side where all objects showed little and all interests were juvenile. And +this phenomenon, signalised by the passing of the Gratcher, came in this +wise. As they rested from play--this being a time when the Gratcher was +most likely to be seen approaching by him of the Gratcher-eye, the usual +alarm was given, followed by the usual unbreathing silence. The little boy +fixedly bent his magic eye around the corner of the house, the little girl +scrambling to him over the grass to clutch one of his arms, to listen +fearfully for the setting of the monster's crutches at the end of each +stride, to feel if the earth trembled, as it often distinctly did, under +his awful tread. + +Wider grew the eyes of both at each "Now he's nearer still!" of the little +boy, until at last the girl must hide her head lest she see that awful +face leering past the corner. For, once the Gratcher's eye met yours +fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will. This was to pick +you up and look at you on all sides at once with the eyes in his +finger-ends, which tickled you so that you lost your mind. + +But now, at the shrillest and tensest report of progress from the gifted +watcher, all in a wondrous second of realisation, they turned to look into +each other's eyes--and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick +little self-conscious laughs they gave. It was all at once as if two +grown-ups had in a flash divined that they had been playing at a childish +game under some spell. The moment was not without embarrassment, because +of their having caught themselves in the very act and frenzy of showing +terror of this clumsy fiction. Foolishly they averted their glances, after +that first little laugh of sudden realisation; but again their eyes met, +and this time they laughed loud and long with a joy that took away not +only all fears of the Gratcher forever, but their first embarrassment of +themselves. Then, with no word of the matter whatsoever, each knowing that +the other understood, they began to talk of life again, feeling older and +wiser, which truly they were. + +For, though many in time wax brave to beard their Gratcher even in his +lair, only the very wise learn this--that the best way to be rid of him is +to laugh him away--that no Gratcher ever fashioned by the ingenuity of +terror-loving humans can keep his evil power over one to whom he has +become funny. + +The passing of the Gratcher had left no pedestal crying for another idol. +In its stead, for his own chastening and with all reverence, the little +boy erected the spirit of that God which the Bible tells of, who is +all-wise and loving, yet no sentimentalist, as witness his sudden +devastations among the first-born of all things, from white rabbits to +men. + +But an idol next went down that not only left a wretched vacancy in the +boy's pantheon, but fell against his heart and made an ugly wound. It was +as if he had become suddenly clear-seeing on that day when the Gratcher +shrivelled in the blast of his laugh. + +A little later came the father on his annual visit, and the dire thing was +done. The most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A +perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, +street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby +smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, +and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things +without which the little boy now saw no one could be a gentleman. + +He cried in his bed that night, after futile efforts to believe that some +fearful change had been wrought in his father. But his memory of former +visits was scrupulously photographic--phonographic even. He recalled from +the past certain effects once keenly joyed in that now made his cheeks +burn. The things rioted brutally before him, until it seemed that +something inside of him strove to suppress them--as if a shamed hand +reached out from his heart to brush the whole offense into decent hiding +with one quick sweep. + +This time he took care that Nancy should not meet his father. Yet he +walked the streets with him as before--walking defiantly and with shame +those streets through which he had once led the perfect father in festal +parade, to receive the applause of a respectful populace. Now he went +forth awkwardly, doggedly, keen for signs that others saw what he did, and +quick to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he detected that +they did so. Once his father rallied him upon his "grumpiness"; then he +grew sullen--though trying to smile--thinking with mortification of his +grandfather. He understood the old man now. + +He was glad when the week came to an end. Bruised, bewildered, shamed, but +loyal still and resentful toward others who might see as he did, he was +glad when his father went--this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a +twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading with the Gus Levy +All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, playing the "ten-twenty-thirties," whatever +they were! + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE STRONG PERSON'S NARRATIVE + + +Near the close of the following winter came news of the father's death. +In some town of which the boy had never heard, in another State, a +ramshackle wooden theatre had burned one night and the father had perished +in the fire through his own foolhardiness. The news came by two channels: +first, a brief and unilluminating paragraph in the newspaper, giving +little more than the fact itself. + +But three days later came a friend of the father, bringing his few poor +effects and a full relation of the matter. He was a person of kind heart, +evidently, to whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom--a +bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of +the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a +portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand +piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable and busy violinists. + +He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather Delcher having +wished to hear no more of the occurrence. + +"You understan', it was like this now," he began, after having with a +calculating eye rejected two proffered chairs of delicate structure and +selected a stout wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as one +whom experience had taught to distrust most of the chairs in common use. + +"The people in front had got out all right, the fire havin' started on the +stage from the strip-light, and also our people had got out through the +little stage-entrance, though havin' to leave many of our props--a good +coat I had to lose meself, fur-lined around the collar, by way of helpin' +the Sisters Devere get out their box of accordions that they done a Dutch +Daly act with for an enn-core. Well, as I was sayin', we'd all hustled +down these back stairs--they was already red hot and smokin' up good, you +understan', and there we was shiverin' outside in the snow, kind of +rattled, and no wonder, at that, and the ladies of the troupe +histurrical--it had come like a quick-change, you understan', when all of +a sudden up in the air goes the Original Kelly. Say, he lets out a yell +for your life--'Oh, my God!' he says, 'my kids--up there,' pointin' to +where the little flames was spittin' out through the side like a +fire-eatin' act. Then down he flops onto his knees in the snow, prayin' +like the--prayin' like _mad_, you understan', and callin' on the blessed +Virgin to save little Patsy, who was just gittin' good with his drum-major +act and whirlin' a fake musket--and also little Joseph, who was learnin' +to do some card-tricks that wasn't so bad. Well, so everybody begins to +scream louder and run this way and that, you understan', callin' the kids +and thinkin' Kelly was nutty, because they must 'a got out. But Kelly +keeps right on prayin' to the holy Virgin, the tears runnin' down his +make-up--say, he looked awful, on the dead! And then we hears another +yell, and here was Prof. at the window with one of the kids, sure enough. +He'd got up them two flights of stairs, though they was all red smoky, +like when you see fire through smoke. Well, he motions to catch the kid, +so we snatches a cloak off one of the girls and holds it out between us, +you understan', while he leans out and drops the kid into it, all safe and +sound. + +"Just then we seen the place all light up back of him, and we yelled to +him to jump, too--he could 'a saved himself, you understan', but he waves +his hand and shook his head--say, lookin' funny, too, with his _mus_-tache +half burned off, and we seen him go back out of sight for the other little +Kelly--Kelly still promisin' to give up all he had to the Virgin if she +saved his boys. + +"Well, for a minute the crowd kep' still, kind 'a holdin' its breath, you +understan', till the Prof.'d come back with the other kid--and holdin' it +and holdin' it till the fire gits brighter and brighter through the +window--and--nothin' happens, you understan'--just the fire keeps on +gittin' busy. Honest, I begun to feel shaky, but then up comes one of +these day-after-to-morrow fire-departments, like they have in them towns, +with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, and there was +great doings with these Silases screamin' to each other a foot away +through their fire-trumpets, only the stairs had been ablaze ever since +the Prof. got up 'em, and before any one does anything the whole inside +caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky. + +"Well, of course, that settles it, you understan'--about the little Kelly +and the Prof. We drags the original Kelly away to a drug-store on the +corner of the next block, where they was workin' over the kid Prof. +saved--it was Patsy--and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. was bringin' the +kid around all right, when one of the Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty +all to once--say, she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park, +laughin' till you'd think she'd bust, only it sounded like she was cryin' +at the same time, and screamin' out at the top of her voice, 'Oh, he +looked so damned funny with his _mus_-tache burned off! Oh, he looked so +damned funny with his _mus_-tache burned off!'--way up high like that, +over and over. Well, so she has to be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm +full of knockouts. Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by that time, +what with the lady bein' that way I'm 'a tellin' you, and Kelly, the crazy +Irishman--I could hear him off in one corner givin' his reg'ler stunt +about his friend, O'Houlihan, lately landed and lookin' for work, comes to +a sausage factory and goes up to the boss and says, 'Begobs!'--_you_ know +the old gag--say, I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd +around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin' around in that dressin'-room +for Kelly's other kid, when he might 'a jumped after he got the first one, +and, say, this is no kid--first thing I knew I begin to bawl like a baby. + +"Well, as I was sayin', there I am and all I can see through the fog is +one 'a these here big lighted signs down the street with 'George's Place' +on it, and a pitcher of a big glass of beer. Me to George's, at once. When +Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, I'm tryin' to tell a gang of +Silases how it all happened and chokin' up every time so's I have to have +another. + +"Well, of course, we break up next day. Kelly tells me, after he gits +right again, that little Patsy was saved by havin' one 'a these here +scapulars on--he shows it to me hanging around the kid's neck, inside his +clothes. He says little Joseph must 'a left his off, or he'd 'a' been +saved, too. He showed me a piece in one 'a these little religious books +that says there was nothing annoyed the devil like a scapular--that a man +can't be burned or done dirt to in no way if he wears one. I says it's a +pity the Prof. didn't have one on, but Kelly says they won't work for +Protestants. But I don't know--I never _purtended_ to be good on these +propositions of religious matters. And there wasn't any chance of findin' +the kid to prove if Kelly had it right or not. + +"But the Prof. he was certainly a great boy for puttin' up three-sheets +about his own two kids; anybody that would listen--friend or +stranger--made no difference to _him_. He starred 'em to anybody, you +understan'--what corkers they was, and all like that. It seemed like +Kelly's havin' two kids also kind 'a touched on his feelin's. Honest, I +ain't ever got so worked up over anything before in me whole life." + +When this person had gone the old man called the two boys to his room and +prayed with them; keeping the younger to sit with him a long time +afterward, as if feeling that his was the heavier heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A NEW THEORY OF A CERTAIN WICKED MAN + + +The time of the first sorrow was difficult for the boy. There was that +first hard sleep after one we love has gone--in which we must always +dream that it is not true--a sleep from which we awaken to suffer all the +shock of it again. Then came black nights when the perfect love for the +perfect father came back in all its early tenderness to cry the little boy +to sleep. Yet it went rapidly enough at last, as times of sorrow go for +the young. There even came a day when he found in a secret place of his +heart a chastened, hopeful inquiry if all might not have been for the +best. He had loved his father--there had been between them an unbreakable +bond; yet this very love had made him suffer at every thought of him while +he was living, whereas now he could love him with all tender memories and +with no poisonous misgivings about future meetings with their +humiliations. Now his father was made perfect in Heaven, and even +Grandfather Delcher--whose aloofness here he had ceased to blame--would +not refuse to meet and know him there. + +Naturally, then, he turned to his grandfather in his great need for a new +idol to fill the vacant niche. Aforetime the old man in his study upstairs +had been little more than a gray shadow, a spirit of gloom, stubbornly +imprisoning another spirit that would have been kind if it could have +escaped. But the little boy drew near to him, and found him curiously +companionable. Where once he had shunned him, he now went freely to the +study with his lessons or his storybook, or for talk of any little matter. +His grandfather, it seemed, could understand many things which so old a +man could scarcely have been expected to understand. In token of this +there would sometimes creep over his brown old face a soft light that made +it seem as if there must still be within him somewhere the child he had +once been; as if, perhaps, he looked into the little boy as into a mirror +that threw the sunlight of his own boyhood into his time-worn face. Side +by side, before the old man's fire, they would talk or muse, since they +were friendly enough to be silent if they liked. Only one confidence the +little boy could not bring himself to make: he could not tell the old man +that he no longer felt hard toward him, as once he had done, for his +coldness to his father; that he had divined--and felt a great shame +for--the true reason of that coldness. But he thought the old man must +understand without words. It was hardly a matter to be talked of. + +About his other affairs, especially his early imaginings and difficulties, +he was free to talk; about coming to the Feet, and the Front Room, and +being washed in the blood, and born again--matters that made the old man +wish their intimacy had not been so long delayed. + +But now they made up for lost time. Patiently and ably he taught the +little boy those truths he needed to know; to seek for eternal life +through the atoning blood of the Saviour, whose part it had been to +purchase our redemption from God's wrath by his death on Calvary. Of other +matters more technical: of how the love that God of necessity has for His +own infinitely perfect being is the reason and the measure of the hatred +he has for sin. Above all did he teach the little boy how to pray for the +grace of effectual calling, in order that, being persuaded of his sin and +misery, he might thereafter partake of justification, adoption, +sanctification, and those several benefits which, in this life, do either +accompany or flow from them. They looked forward with equal eagerness to +the day when he should become a great and good man, preaching the gospel +of the crucified Son to spellbound throngs. + +[Illustration: "They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when +he should become a great and good man."] + +Together they began again the study of the Scriptures, the little boy now +entering seriously upon that work of writing commentaries which had once +engaged Allan. In one of these school-boyish papers the old man came upon +a passage that impressed him as notable. It seemed to him that there was +not only that vein of poetic imagination--without which one cannot be a +great preacher--but a certain individual boldness of approach, monstrous +in its naïve sentimentality, to be sure, but indicating a talent that +promised to mature splendidly. + +"Now Jesus told his disciples," it ran, "that he must be crucified before +he could take his seat on the right hand of God and send to hell those who +had rejected him. He told them that one of them would have to betray him, +because it must be like the Father had said. It says at the last supper +Jesus said, 'The Son of Man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto +that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man +if he had not been born.' + +"Now it says that Satan entered into Judas, but it looks to me more like +the angel of the Lord might have entered into him, he being a good man to +start with, or our Lord would not have chosen him to be a disciple. Judas +knew for sure, after the Lord said this, that one of the disciples had got +to betray the Saviour and go to hell, where the worm dieth not and the +fire is not quenched. Well, Judas loved all the disciples very much, so he +thought he would be the one and save one of the others. So he went out and +agreed to betray him to the rulers for thirty pieces of silver. He knew if +he didn't do it, it might have to be Peter, James, or John, or some one +the Saviour loved very dearly, because it _had_ to be one of them. So +after it was done and he knew the others were saved from this foul deed, +he went back to the rulers and threw down their money, and went out and +hung himself. If he had been a bad man, it seems more like he would have +spent that money in wicked indulgences, food and drink and entertainments, +etc. Of course, Judas knew he would go to hell for it, so he was not as +lucky as Jesus, who knew he would go to heaven and sit at the right hand +of God when he died, which was a different matter from Judas's, who would +not have any reward at all but going to hell. It looks to me like poor +Judas had ought to be brought out of hell-fire, and I shall pray Jesus to +do it when he gets around to it." + +However it might be with our Lord's betrayer, there was one soul now seen +to be deservedly in hell. Through the patient study of the Scriptures as +expounded by Grandfather Delcher, the little boy presently found himself +accepting without demur the old gentleman's unspoken but sufficiently +indicated opinion. His father was in everlasting torment--having been not +only unbaptised, but godless and a scoffer. With a quickening sense of the +majesty of that Spirit infinitely good, a new apprehension of His plan's +symmetry, he read the words meant to explain, to comfort him, silently +indicated one day by the old man: + +"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one +vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? + +"What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, +endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to +destruction? + +"And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of +mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory." + +It hurt at first, but the young mind hardened to it dutifully--the big, +laughing, swaggering, scoffing father--a device of God made for torment, +that the power of the All-loving might show forth! If the father had only +repented, he might have gone straight to heaven as did Cousin Bill J. For +the latter had obtained grace in his last days, and now sang acceptably +before the thrones of the Father and the Son. But the unbaptised scoffer +must burn forever--and the little boy knew at last what was meant by +"the majesty of God." + + + + +BOOK TWO + +The Age of Reason + + + +[Illustration] + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE REGRETTABLE DEMENTIA OF A CONVALESCENT + + +"You know you _please_ me--_really_ you do!" + +Allan, perfect youth of the hazel eyes and tawny locks, bent upon +inquiring Nancy a look of wholly pleasant reassurance, as one wishful to +persuade her from doubt. + +"I'm not joking a bit. When I say you please me, I mean it." + +His look became rather more expansive with a smile that seemed meant to +sympathise guardedly with her in her necessary rejoicing. + +Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black curtains of her eyes, +murmuring from out the friendly gloom: + +"It's very good of you, Allan!" + +Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, which she divined he +was about to do, the curtains were up and the eyes wide open to him with a +question about Bernal. + +He turned to the house and pointed up to the two open windows of the +study, in and out of which the warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains. + +"He's there, poor chap! He was able to get that far for the first time +yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie." + +"And to think I never knew he was sick until we came from town last night. +I'd surely have left the old school and come before if I'd heard. I +wouldn't have cared _what_ Aunt Bell said." + +"Eight weeks down, and you know we found he'd been sick long before he +found it out himself--walking typhoid, they called it. He came home from +college with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed the moment he +clapped eyes on him. Said it was walking typhoid, and that he must have +been worrying greatly about something, because his nervous system was all +run down." + +"And he was very ill?" + +"Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go and get back at all." + +"How dreadful--poor Bernal! Oh, if he _had_ died!" + +"Out of his head for three weeks at a time--raving fearfully. And you +know, he's quite like an infant now--says the simplest things. He laughs +at it himself. He says he's not sure if he knows how to read and write." + +"Poor, dear Bernal!" + +With some sudden arousing he studied her face swiftly as she spoke, then +continued: + +"Yes, Bernal's really an awfully good chap at bottom." He turned again to +look up at the study windows. "You know, I intend to stand by that fellow +always--no matter _what_ he does! Of course, I shall not let his being my +brother blind me to his faults--doubtless we _all_ have faults; but I tell +you, Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a man's make-up." + +She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he broke off--"Now I must +hurry to mail these letters It's good to be home for another summer. You +really _do_ please me, Nance!" + +She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome--more than handsome, +indeed. He left an immediate conviction of his superb vitality of body and +mind, the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail. Featured in almost +faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, unaffectedly proclaiming +its superior gravity among human masses, he was a planet destined to have +many satellites and be satellite to none; an _ego_ of genuine lordliness; +a presence at once masterly and decorative. + +And yet she was conscious of a note--not positively of discord, but one +still exciting a counter-stream of reflection. She had observed that each +time Allan turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning his +shoulders with it: the perfect head and shoulders were swung with almost a +studied unison. And this little thing had pricked her admiration with a +certain needle-like suspicion--a suspicion that the young man might be not +wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle. + +Yet this was no matter to permit in one's mind. For Nancy of the +lengthened skirts and the massed braids was now a person of reserves. Even +in that innocent insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively +malicious, half-conscious flauntings, she was one of reticences toward the +world including herself, with petticoats of decorum draping the child's +anarchy of thought--her luxuriant young emotions "done up" sedately with +her hair. She was now one to be cautious indeed of imputations so blunt as +this concerning Allan. Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal. Then +she wondered _why_ it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a +creature to wonder where another would accept. She saw it had seemed noble +because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry. + +This phrase would not be Nancy's--only she knew it to be the way her +uncle, for example, would translate Allan's praise of his brother. She +hoped Bernal had not been very bad--and wondered _how_ bad. + +Then she went to him. Her first little knock brought no answer, nor could +she be sure that the second did. But she knew it was loud enough to be +heard if the room were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack and +peeped in. He lay on the big couch across the room under the open window, +a scarlet wool dressing-gown on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower +part of his body. He seemed to be looking out and up to the tree that +appeared above the window. She thought he could not have heard her, but he +called: + +"Clytie!" + +She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his eyes when he +weakly turned his head on the pillow. + +"Nancy!" + +He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of hers. The laugh did +not end until there were tears in his eyes. She laughed with him as a +strong-voiced singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly +force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had found. + +"Don't be flattered, Nance--it's only typhoid emotion," he said at last, +in a voice that sounded strangely unused. "You don't really overcome me, +you know--the sight of you doesn't unman me as much as these fond tears +might make you suspect. I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, +too." He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him. + +"How plump and warm your hand is--all full of little whispering pulses. My +hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and _so_ uninterested! Doesn't fever +bring forward a man's bones in the most shameless way?" + +"Oh, Bernal--but you'll soon have them decently hidden again--indeed, +you're looking--quite--quite plump." She smiled encouragingly. A sudden +new look in his eyes made her own face serious again. + +"Why, Nance, you're rather lovely when you smile!" + +She smiled. + +"Only then?" + +He studied her, while she pretended to be grave. + +He became as one apart, giving her a long look of unbiassed appraisal. + +"Well--you know--now you have some little odds and ends of features--not +bad--no, not even half bad, for that matter. I can see thousands of miles +into your eyes--there's a fire smouldering away back in there--it's all +smoky and mysterious after you go the first few thousand miles--but, I +don't know--I believe the smile is _needed_, Nance. Poor child, I tell you +this as a friend, for your own good--it seems to make a fine big +perfection out of a lot of little imperfections that are only fairly +satisfactory." + +She smiled again, brushing an escaped lock of hair to its home. + +"Really, Nance, no one could guess that mouth till it melts." + +"I see--now I shall be going about with an endless, sickening grin. It +will come to that--doubtless I shall be murdered for it--people that do +grin that way always make _me_ feel like murder." + +"And they could never guess your eyes until the little smile runs up to +light their chandeliers." + +"Dear me!--Like a janitor!" + +"--or the chin, until the little smile does curly things all around +it--" + +"There, now--calm yourself--the doctor will be here presently--and you +know, you're among friends--" + +"--or the face itself until those little pink ripples get to chasing each +other up to hide in your hair, as they are now. You know you're blushing, +Nance, so stop it. Remember, it's when you smile; remember, also, that +smiles are born, not made. It's a long time since I've seen you, Nance." + +"Two years--we didn't come here last summer, you know." + +"But you've aged--you're twice the woman you were--so, on the whole, I'm +not in the least disappointed in you." + +"Your sickness seems to have left you--well--in a remarkably unprejudiced +state of mind." + +He laughed. "That's the funny part of it. Did they tell you this siege had +me foolish for weeks? Honest, now, Nance, here's a case--how many are two +times two?" He waited expectantly. + +"Are you serious?" + +"It seems silly to you, doesn't it--but answer as if I were a child." + +"Well--twice two are four--unless my own mind is at fault." + +"There!--now I begin to believe it. I suppose, now, it _couldn't_ be +anything else, could it? Yesterday morning the doctor said something was +as plain as twice two are four. You know, the thing rankled in me all day. +It seemed to me that twice two ought to be twenty-two. Then I asked Clytie +and she said it was four, but that didn't satisfy me. Of course, +Clytemnestra is a dear soul, and I truly, love her, but her advantages in +an educational way have been meagre. She could hardly be considered an +authority in mathematics, even if she is the ideal cook and friend. But I +have more faith in your learning, Nance. The doctor's solution seems +plausible, since you've sided with him. I suppose you could have no motive +for deceiving me?" + +She was regarding him with just a little anxiety, and this he detected. + +"It's nothing to worry about, Nance--it's only funny. I haven't lost my +mind or anything, you know--spite of my tempered enthusiasm for your +face--but this is it: first there came a fearful shock--something +terrible, that shattered me--then it seemed as if that sickness found my +brain like a school-boy's slate with all his little problems worked out on +it, and wickedly gave it a swipe each side with a big wet sponge. And now +I seem to have forgotten all I ever learned. Clytie was in to feed me the +inside of a baked potato before you came. After I'd fought with her to eat +the skin of it--such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious little +white particles still sticking to the inside where it hadn't all been dug +out--and after she had used her strength as no lady should, and got it +away from me, it came to me all at once that she was my mother. Then she +assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite reasonable, too. I told +her I loved her enough for a mother, anyway--and the poor thing giggled." + +"Still, you have your lucid moments." + +"Ah, still thinking about the face? You mean I'm lucid when you smile, and +daffy when you don't. But that's a case of it--your face--" + +"My face a case of _what?_ You're getting commercial--even shoppy. Really, +if this continues, Mr. Linford, I shall be obliged--" + +"A case of it--of this blankness of mine. Instead of continuing my early +prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey +you coldly for the first time. You know I'm afraid to look at print for +fear I've forgotten how to read." + +"Nonsense!" + +"No--I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another +planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G. Wells's stories--a +gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you--bland, +agreeable, scholarly--with marked distinction of bearing, and a personal +beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting of one's secretest bones +is held to betoken the only beauty--you understand _that?_--Well, I come +here, and everything is different--ideals of beauty, people absurdly +holding for flesh on their bones, for example--numbers, language, +institutions, everything. Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the +value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean +of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe's." + +"Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not--" + +"Also, why I could see that you _are_--that's it, smile! Nance, you _are_ +a dear, when you smile--you make a man feel so strong and protecting. But +if you knew all the queer things I've thought in the last week about time +and people and the world. This morning I woke up mad because I'd been +cheated out of the past. Where _is_ all the past, Nance? There's just as +much past somewhere as there is future--if one's soul has no end, it had +no beginning. Why not worry about the past as we do about the future? +First thing I'm going to do--start a Worry-About-the-Past Club, with dues +and a president, and by-laws and things!" + +"Don't you think I'd better send Clytie, now?" + +"No; please wait a minute." He clutched her hand with a new strength, and +raised on his elbow to face her, then, speaking lower: + +"Nance, you know I've had a feeling it wasn't the right thing to ask the +old gentleman this--he might think I hadn't been studying at college--but +_you_ tell me--what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ? It +was a phrase he used the other day, and it stuck in my mind." + +"Bernal--you surely know!" + +"Truly I don't--it seems a bad dream I've had some time--that's all--some +awful dream about my father." + +"It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our redemption by his death on +Calvary." + +"Our redemption from what?" + +"From sin, to be sure." + +"What sin?" + +"Why, our sin, of course--the sin of Adam which comes down to us." + +"You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from that sin by dying?" + +"Yes." + +"From whom did he purchase it?" + +"Oh, dear--this is like a catechism--from God, of course." + +"The God that made Adam?" + +"Certainly." + +"Oh, yes--now I seem to remember him--he was supposed to make people, and +then curse them, wasn't he? And so he had to have his son killed before he +could forgive Adam for our sins?" + +"No; before he could forgive _us_ for Adam's sin, which descended to us." + +"Came down like an entail, eh? ... Adam couldn't disinherit us? Well, how +did this God have his son die?" + +"Why, Bernal--you _must_ remember, dear--you knew so well--don't you know +he was crucified?" + +"To be sure I do--how stupid! And was God _very_ cheerful after that? No +more trouble about Adam or anything?" + +"You must hush--I can't tell you about these things--wait till your +grandfather comes." + +"No, I want to have it from you, Nance--grandad would think I'd been +slighting the classics." + +"Well, God takes to heaven with him those who believe." + +"Believe what?" + +"Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son." + +"What does he do with those who don't believe it?" + +"They--they--Oh, I don't know--really, Bernal, I must go now." + +"Just a minute, Nance!" He clutched more tightly the hand he had been +holding. "I see now! I must be remembering something I knew--something +that brought me down sick. If a man doesn't believe God was capable of +becoming so enraged with Adam that only the bloody death of his own son +would appease his anger toward _us_, he sends that man where--where the +worm doeth something or other--what is it? Oh, well!--of course, it's of +no importance--only it came to me it was something I ought to remember if +grandad should ask me about it. What a quaint belief it must have been." + +"Oh, I must go!--let me, now." + +"Don't you find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old +religions of a dead past--though I admit that this one is less pleasant to +study than most of the others. This god seems to lack the majesty and +beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods. In fact, he was +too crude to be funny--by the way, what is it I seem to recall, about +eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son?--'unless ye eat the +flesh of the son--'" + +She drew her hand from his now and arose in some dismay. He lay back upon +his pillow, smiling. + +"Not very agreeable, is it, Nance? Well, come again, and I'll tell you +about some of the pleasanter old faiths next time--I remember now that +they interested me a lot before I was sick." + +"You're sure I shouldn't send Clytie or some one?" She looked down at him +anxiously, putting her hand on his forehead. He put one of his own lightly +over hers. + +"No, no, thank you! It's not near time yet for the next baked potato. If +Clytie doesn't give up the skin of this one I shall be tempted to forget +that she's a woman. There, I hear grandad coming, so you won't be leaving +me alone." + +Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left the room. + +"Resting, my boy? That's good. You look brighter already--Nancy must come +often." + +He took Nancy's chair by the couch and began the reading of his morning's +mail. Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several +letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings +and pats, he turned to him. + +"Well, my boy?" + +"I've been thinking of something funny. You know, my memory is still +freakish, and things come back in splotches. Just now I was recalling a +primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also +'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also +'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man--we--good; not we--bad! I +suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human +nature--a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude +lines of it. + +"And this tribe--the Bakaïri, it is called--is equally crude in its +religion. It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the +savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites?" + +"Generally true. Human sacrifice was practised even by some who were well +advanced, like the Aztecs and Peruvians." + +"Well, sir, this Bakaïri tribe believed that its god demanded a sacrifice +yearly, and their priests taught them that a certain one of their number +had been sent by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by +butchering this particular member of the tribe and--incredible as it +sounds--eating his body and drinking his blood, could they avert drouth +and pestilence and secure favours for the year to come. I remember the +historian intimated that it were well not to incur the displeasure of any +priest; that one doing this might find it followed by an unpleasant +circumstance when the time came for the priests to designate the next +yearly sacrifice." + +"Curious, indeed, and most revolting," assented the old man, laying down +his paper. "You _are_ feeling more cheerful, aren't you--and you look so +much brighter. Ah, what a mercy of God's you were spared to me!--you know +you became my walking-stick when you were a very little boy--I could +hardly go far without you now, my son." + +"Yes, sir--thank you--I've just been recalling some of the older +religions--Nancy and I had quite a talk about the old Christian faith." + +"I'm glad indeed. I had sometimes been led to suspect that Nancy was the +least bit--well, frivolous--but I am an old man, and doubtless the things +that seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour subdued +through the years." + +"Nancy wasn't a bit frivolous this morning--on the contrary, she seemed +for some reason to consider me the frivolous one. She looked shocked at me +more than once. Now, about the old Christian faith, you know--their god +was content with one sacrifice, instead of one each year, though he +insisted on having the body eaten and the blood drunk perpetually. Yet I +suppose, sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the human +sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a distinct advance over the +god of the Bakaïri, though he seems to have been equally a tribal god, +whose chief function it was to make war upon neighbouring tribes." + +"Yes, my boy--quite so," replied the old man most soothingly. He stepped +gently to the door. Halfway down the hall Allan was about to turn into his +room. He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, in tones too low for +Bernal to hear: + +"Go quickly for Dr. Merritt. He's out of his head again." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +FURTHER DISTRESSING FANTASIES OF A CLOUDED MIND + + +When young Dr. Merritt came, flushed and important-looking, greatly +concerned by the reported relapse, he found his patient with normal pulse +and temperature--rational and joyous at his discovery that the secret of +reading Roman letters was still his. + +"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, smilingly, when +the little thermometer had been taken from between his lips, "but it's all +right--I didn't find a single strange letter--every last one of them meant +something--and I know figures, too--and now I'm as hungry for print as I +am for baked potatoes. You know, never in my life again, after I'm my own +master, shall I neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. When I think +of those I let go in my careless days of plenty, I grow heart-sick." + +"A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge as you'd like to +there would be no more use sending for me; you'd be a goner--that's what +you'd be! Head feel all right?" + +"Fine!--I've settled down to a pleasant reading of Holy Writ. This Old +Testament is mighty interesting to me, though doubtless I've read it all +before." + +"It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming on all right," the +doctor assured the alarmed old man outside the door. "He may be a little +flighty now and then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe him +over. He's getting back to himself--stronger every hour. We often have +these things to contend with." + +And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to puzzle over the case. + +Again the following morning, when Bernal had leaned his difficult way down +to the couch in the study, the old man was dismayed by his almost +unspeakable aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow and +placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of the mad. + +"You know, grandad," he began easily, looking up at the once more placid +old man who sat beside him, "I am just now recalling matters that were +puzzling me much before the sickness began to spin my head about so fast +on my shoulders. The harder I thought, the faster my head went around, +until it sent my mind all to little spatters in a circle about me. One +thing I happened to be puzzling over was how the impression first became +current that this god of the Jews was a being of goodness. Such an +impression seems to have been tacitly accepted for some centuries after +the iniquities so typical of him had been discountenanced by society--long +after human sacrifice was abhorred, and even after the sacrificing of +animals was held to be degrading. It's a point that escapes me, owing to +my addled brain; doubtless you can set me right. At present I can't +conceive how the notion could ever have occurred to any one. I now +remember this book well enough to know that not only is little good ever +recorded of him, but he is so continually barbarous, and so atrociously +cruel in his barbarities. And he was thought to be all-powerful when he is +so pitifully ineffectual, with all his crude power--the poor old fellow +was forever bungling--then bungling again in his efforts to patch up his +errors. Indeed, he would be rather a pathetic figure if he were not so +monstrous! Still, there is a kind of heathen grandeur about him at times. +He drowns his world full of people because his first two circumvented him; +then he saves another pair, but things go still worse, so he has to keep +smiting the world right and left, dumb beasts as well as men; and at last +he picks out one tribe, in whose behalf he works a series of miracles, +that devastated a wide area. How he did love to turn a city over to +destruction! And from the cloud's centre he was constantly boasting of his +awful power, and scaring people into butchering lambs and things in his +honour. Yet, doubtless, that heathen tribe found its god 'good,' and other +people formed the habit of calling him good, without thinking much about +it. They must have felt queer when they woke up to the fact that they were +calling infinitely good a god who was not good, even when judged by their +poor human standards." + +Remembering the physician's instructions to soothe the patient, the +distressed old man timidly began-- + +"'For God so loved the world'"--but he was interrupted by the vivacious +one on the couch. + +"That's it--I remember that tradition. He was even crude enough to beget a +son for human sacrifice, giving that son power to condemn thereafter those +who should not detect his godship through his human envelope! That was a +rather subtler bit of baseness than those he first perpetrated--to send +this saving son in such guise that the majority of his creatures would +inevitably reject him! Oh! he was bound to have his failures and his +tortures, wasn't he? You know, I dare say the ancient Christians called +him good because they were afraid to call him bad. Doubtless the one great +spiritual advance that we have made since the Christian faith prevailed +is, that we now worship without fearing what we worship." + +Once more the distressed old man had risen to stand with assumed +carelessness by the door, having writhed miserably in his chair until he +could no longer endure the profane flood. + +"But, truly, that god was, after all, a pathetic figure. Imagine him amid +the ruins of his plan, desolate, always foiled by his creatures--meeting +failure after failure from Eden to Calvary--for even the bloody expedient +of sending his son to be sacrificed did not avail to save his own chosen +people. They unanimously rejected the son, if I remember, and so he had to +be content with a handful of the despised Gentiles. A sorrowful old figure +of futility he is--a fine figure for a big epic, it seems to me. By the +way, what was the date that this religion was laughed away. I can remember +perfectly the downfall of the Homeric deities--how many years there were +when the common people believed in the divine origin of the Odyssey, while +the educated classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at last +the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. But strangely enough I do +not recall just the date when _we_ began to demand a god of dignity and +morality." + +The old man had been loath to leave the sufferer. He still stood by the +open door to call to the first passer-by. Now, shudderingly wishful to +stem the torrent of blasphemies, innocent though they were, he ventured +cautiously: + +"There was Sinai--you forget the tables--the moral law--the ten +commandments." + +"Sinai, to be sure. Christians used to regard that as an occasion of +considerable dignity, didn't they? The time when he gave directions about +slavery and divorce and polygamy--he was beautifully broad-minded in all +those matters, and to kill witches and to stone an ox that gored any one, +and how to disembowel the lambs used for sacrifice, and what colours to +use in the tabernacle." + +But the horrified old man had fled. Half an hour later he returned with +Dr. Merritt, relieving Clytie, who had watched outside the door and who +reported that there had been no signs of violence within. + +Again they found a normal pulse and temperature, and an appetite +clamouring for delicacies of strong meat. Young Dr. Merritt was greatly +puzzled. + +"I understand the case perfectly," he said to the old man; "he needs rest +and plenty of good nursing--and quiet. We often have these cases. Your +head feels all right, doesn't it?" he asked Bernal. + +"Fine, Doctor!" + +"I thought so." He looked shrewdly at the old man. "Your grandfather had +an idea you might be--perhaps a bit excited." + +"No--not a bit. We've had a fine morning chatting over some of the +primitive religions, haven't we, old man?" and he smiled affectionately up +to his grandfather. "Hello, Nance, come and sit by me." + +The girl had paused in the doorway while he spoke, and came now to take +his hand, after a look of inquiry at the two men. The latter withdrew, the +eyes of the old man sadly beseeching the eyes of the physician for some +definite sign of hope. + +Inside, the sufferer lay holding a hand of Nancy between his cheek and the +pillow--with intervals of silence and blithe speech. His disordered mind, +it appeared, was still pursuing its unfortunate tangent. + +"The first ideas are all funny, aren't they, Nance? Genesis in that +Christian mythology we were discussing isn't the only funny one. There was +the old northern couple who danced on the bones of the earth nine times +and made nine pairs of men and women; and there were the Greek and his +wife who threw stones out of their ark that changed to men; and the Hindu +that saved the life of a fish, and whom the fish then saved by fastening +his ship to his horn; and the South Sea fisherman who caught his hook in +the water-god's hair and made him so angry that he drowned all the world +except the offending fisherman. Aren't they nearly as funny as the god who +made one of his pair out of clay and one from a rib, and then became so +angry with them that he must beget a son for them to sacrifice before he +would forgive them? Let's think of the pleasanter ones. Do you know that +hymn of the Veda?--'If I go along trembling like a cloud, have mercy, +Almighty, have mercy!' + +"'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone +wrong. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!' + +"And Buddha was a pleasant soul, Nance--with stuff in him, too--born a +prince, yet leaving his palace to be poor and to study the ways of wisdom, +until enlightenment came to him sitting under his Bo tree. He said faith +was the best wealth here. And, 'Not to commit any sin, to do good and to +purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the awakened'; 'not hating +those who hate us,' 'free from greed among the greedy.' They must have +been glad of Buddhism in their day, teaching them to honour their parents, +to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, to forgive their enemies +and return good for evil. And there was funny old Confucius with his +'Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a +pillow--happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue, both +riches and honour seem to me like the passing cloud.' Another one of his +is 'In the book of Poetry are three hundred pieces--but the designs of +them all mean, "Have no depraved thoughts."' Rather good for a Chinaman, +wasn't it? + +"And there was old Zoroaster saying to his Ormuzd, 'I believe thee, O God! +to be the best thing of all!' and asking for guidance. Ormuzd tells him to +be pure in thought, word and deed; to be temperate, chaste and +truthful--and this Ormuzd would have no lambs sacrificed to him. Life, +being his gift, was dear to him. And don't forget Mohammed, Nance, that +fine old barbarian with the heart of a passionate child, counselling men +to live a good life and to strive after the mercy of God by fasting, +charity and prayer, calling this the 'Key of Paradise.' He went after a +poor blind man whom he had at first rebuffed, saying 'He is thrice welcome +on whose account my Lord hath reprimanded me.' He was a fine, stubborn old +believer, Nance. I wonder if it's not true that the Christians once +studied these old chaps to take the taste of their own cruder God out of +their minds. What a cruel people they must have been to make so cruel a +God! + +"But let's talk of you, Nance--that's it--light the chandeliers in your +eyes." + +He spoke drowsily now, and lay quiet, patting one of her hands. But +presently he was on one elbow to study her again. + +"Nance, the Egyptians worshipped Nature, the Greeks worshipped Beauty, the +Northern chaps worshipped Courage, and the Christians feared--well, the +hereafter, you know--but I'm a Catholic when you smile." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +REASON IS AGAIN ENTHRONED + + +Slowly the days brought new life to the convalescent, despite his +occasional attacks of theological astigmatism. And these attacks grew +less frequent and less marked as the poor bones once more involved +themselves in firm flesh--to the glad relief of a harried and scandalised +old gentleman whose black forebodings had daily moved him to visions of +the mad-house for his best-loved descendant. + +Yet there were still dreadful times when the young man on the couch +blasphemed placidly by the hour, with an insane air of assuming that those +about him held the same opinions; as if the Christian religion were a +pricked bubble the adherents of which had long since vanished. + +If left by himself he could often be heard chuckling and muttering +between chuckles: "I will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host. I +have hardened his heart and the heart of his host that I might show these +my signs before him." + +Entering the room, the old gentleman might be met with: + +"I certainly agree with you, sir, in every respect--Christianity was an +invertebrate materialism of separation--crude, mechanical separation--less +spiritual, less ethical, than almost any of the Oriental faiths. Affirming +the brotherhood of man, yet separating us into a heaven and a hell. +Christians cowering before a being of divided power, half-god and +half-devil. Indeed, I remember no religion so non-moral--none that is so +baldly a mere mechanical device for meeting the primitive mind's need to +set its own tribe apart from all others--or in the later growth to +separate the sheep from the goats, by reason of the opinion formed of +certain evidence. Even schoolboys nowadays know that no moral value +inheres in any opinion formed upon evidence. Yet, I dare say it was +doubtless for a long period an excellent religion for marauding nations." + +Or, again, after a long period of apparently rational talk, the +unfortunate young man would break out with, "And how childish its +wonder-tales were, of iron made to swim, of a rod turned to a serpent, of +a coin found in a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a +fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit out of season--how +childish that tale of a virgin mother, who conceived 'without sin,' as it +is somewhere naïvely put--an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity. Even +the great old painters were helpless before it. They were driven to make +mindless Madonnas, stupid bits of fleshy animality. It's not easy to +idealise mere physical motherhood. You see, that was the wrong, perverted +idea of motherhood--'conceiving without sin.' It's an unclean dogma in its +implications. I knew somewhere once a man named Milo Barrus--a sort of +cheap village atheist, I remember, but one thing I recall hearing him say +seems now to have a certain crude truth in it. He said: 'There's my old +mother, seventy-eight this spring, bent, gray, and wasted with the work of +raising us seven children; she's slaved so hard for fifty years that she's +worn her wedding-ring to a fine thread, and her hands look as if they had +a thousand knuckles and joints in them. But she smiles like a girl of +sixteen, she was never cross or bitter to one of us hounds, and I believe +she never even _wanted_ to complain in all her days. And there's a look of +noble capacity in her face, of soul dignity, that you never saw in any +Madonna's. I tell you no "virgin mother" could be as beautiful as my +mother, who bore seven children for love of my father and for love of the +thought of us.' Isn't it queer, sir, that I remember that--for it seemed +only grotesque at the time I heard it." + +It was after this extraordinary speech, uttered with every sign of +physical soundness, that young Dr. Merritt confided to the old man when +they had left the study: + +"He's coming on fine, Mr. Delcher. He'll eat himself into shape now in no +time; but--I don't know--seems to me you stand a lot better show of making +a preacher out of his brother. Of course, I may be mistaken--we doctors +often are." Then the young physician became loftily humble: "But it +doesn't strike me he'll ever get his ideas exactly into Presbyterian shape +again!" + +"But, man, he'll surely be rid of these devil's hallucinations?" + +"Well, well--perhaps, but I'm almost afraid they're what we doctors call +'fixed delusions.'" + +"But I set my heart so long ago on his preaching the Word. Oh, I've looked +forward to it so long--and so hard!" + +"Well, all you can do now is to feed him and not excite him. We often have +these cases." + +The very last of Bernal's utterances that could have been reprobated in a +well man was his telling Clytie in the old gentleman's presence that, +whereas in his boyhood he had pictured the hand of God as a big black hand +reaching down to "remove" people--"the way you weed an onion bed"--he now +conceived it to be like her own--"the most beautiful fat, red hand in the +world, always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you something +good or pointing to a jar of cookies." It was so dangerously close to +irreverence that it made Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she +arranged matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive, +considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher quite hopeful. + +Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent became +silent for the most part, yet cheerful and beautifully rational when he +did speak, so that fear came gradually to leave the old man's heart for +longer and longer intervals. Indeed, one day when Bernal had long lain +silent, he swept lingering doubts from the old man's mind by saying, with +a curious little air of embarrassment, yet with a return of that old-time +playful assumption of equality between them--"I'm afraid, old man, I may +have been a little queer in my talk--back there." + +The old man's heart leaped with hope at this, though the acknowledgment +struck him as being inadequate to the circumstance it referred to. + +"You _were_ flighty, boy, now and then," he replied, in quite the same +glossing strain of inadequacy. + +"I can't tell you how queerly things came back to me--some bits of +consciousness and memory came early and some came late--and they're still +struggling along in that disorderly procession. Even yet I've not been +able to take stock. Old man, I must have been an awful bore." + +"Oh, no--not _that_, boy!" Then, in glad relief, he fell upon his knees +beside the couch, praying, in discreetly veiled language, that the pure +heart of a babbler might not be held guilty for the utterances of an +irresponsible head. + +Yet, after many days of sane quiet and ever-renewing strength--days of +long walks in the summer woods or long readings in the hammock when the +shadows lay east of the big house, there came to be observed in the young +man a certain moody reticence. And when the time for his return to college +was near, he came again to his disquieted grandfather one day, saying: + +"I think there are some matters I should speak to you about, sir." Had he +used the term "old man," instead of "sir," there might still have been no +cause for alarm. As it was, the grandfather regarded him in a sudden, +heart-hurried fear. + +"Are the matters, boy, those--those about which you may have spoken during +your sickness?" + +"I believe so, sir." + +The old man winced again under the "sir," when his heart longed for the +other term of playful familiarity. But he quickly assumed a lightness of +manner to hide the eagerness of his heart's appeal: + +"_Don't_ talk now, boy--be advised by me. It's not well for you--you are +not strong. Please let me guide you now. Go back to your studies, put all +these matters from your mind--study your studies and play your play. Play +harder than you study--you need it more. Play out of doors--you must have +a horse to ride. You have thought too much before your time for thinking. +Put away the troublesome things, and live in the flesh as a healthy boy +should. Trust me. When you come to--to those matters again, they will not +trouble you." + +In his eagerness, first one hand had gone to the boy's shoulder, then the +other, and his tones grew warm with pleading, while the keen old eyes +played as a searchlight over the troubled young face. + +"I must tell you at least one thing, sir." + +The old man forced a smile around his trembling mouth, and again assumed +his little jaunty lightness. + +"Come, come, boy--not 'sir.' Call me 'old man' and you shall say +anything." + +But the boy was constrained, plainly in discomfort. "I--I can't call you +that--just now--sir." + +"Well, if you _must_, tell me one thing--but only one! only one, mind you, +boy!" In fear, but smiling, he waited. + +"Well, sir, it's a shock I suffered just before I was sick. It came to me +one night when I sat down to dinner--fearfully hungry. I had a thick +English chop on the plate before me; and a green salad, oily in its bowl, +and crisp, browned potatoes, and a mug of creamy ale. I'd gone to the +place for a treat. I'd been whetting my appetite with nibbles of bread and +sips of ale until the other things came; and then, even when I put my +knife to the chop--like a blade pushed very slowly into my heart came the +thought: 'My father is burning in hell--screaming in agony for a drop of +this water which I shall not touch because I have ale. He has been in this +agony for years; he will be there forever.' That was enough, sir. I had to +leave the little feast. I was hungry no longer, though a moment before it +had seemed that I couldn't wait for it. I walked out into the cold, raw +night--walked till near daylight, with the sweat running off me. And the +thing I knew all the time was this: that if I were in hell and my father +in heaven, he would blaspheme God to His face for a monster and come to +hell to burn with me forever--come with a joke and a song, telling me +never to mind, that we'd have a fine time there in hell in spite of +everything! That was what I knew of my poor, cheap, fiddle-playing +mountebank of a father. Just a moment more--this is what you must remember +of me, in whatever I have to say hereafter, that after that night I never +ceased to suffer all the hell my father could be suffering, and I suffered +it until my mind went out in that sickness. But, listen now: whatever has +happened--I'm not yet sure what it is--I no longer suffer. Two things only +I know: that our creed still has my godless, scoffing, unbaptised father +in hell, and that my love for him--my absolute _oneness_ with him--has not +lessened. + +"I'll stop there, if you wish, leaving you to divine what other change has +taken place." + +"There, there," soothed the old man, seizing the shoulders once more with +his strong grip--"no more now, boy. It was a hard thing, I know. The +consciousness of God's majesty comes often in that way, and often it +overwhelms the unprepared. It was hard, but it will leave you more a man; +your soul and your faith will both survive. Do what I have told you--as if +you were once more the puzzled little Bernal, who never could keep his +hair neatly brushed like Allan, and would always moon in corners. Go +finish your course. Another year, when your mind has new fortitude from +your recreated body, we will talk these matters as much as you like. Yet +I will tell you one thing to remember--just one, as you have told me one: +You are in a world of law, of unvarying cause and effect; and the +integrity of this law cannot be destroyed, nor even impaired, by any +conceivable rebellion of yours. Yet this material world of law is but the +shadow of the reality, and that reality is God--the moral law if you +please, as relentless, as inexorable, as immutable in its succession of +cause and effect as the physical laws more apparent to us; and as little +to be overthrown as physical law by any rebellion of disordered sentiment. +The word of this God and this Law is contained in the Scriptures of the +Old and New Testaments, wherein is the only rule to direct us how we may +glorify and enjoy Him. + +"Now," continued the old man, more lightly, "each of us has something to +remember--and let each of us pray for the other. Go, be a good boy--but +careless and happy--for a year." + +The old man had his way, and the two boys went presently back to their +studies. + +The girl, Nancy, remembered them well for the things each had said to her. + +Allan, who, though he constantly praised her, had always the effect of +leaving her small to herself. "Really, Nance," he said, "without any +joking, I believe you have a capacity for living life in its larger +aspects." + +And on the last day, Bernal had said, "Nance, you remember when we were +both sorry you couldn't be born again--a boy? Well, from what the old +gentleman says, one learns in time to bow to the ways of an inscrutable +Providence. I dare say he's right. I can see reasons now, my girl, why it +was well that you were not allowed to meddle with Heaven's allotment of +your sex. I'm glad you had to remain a girl." + +One compliment pleased her. The other made her tremble, though she laughed +at it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +A FEW LETTERS + + +(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.) + +_Dear Grandfather:_ The college year soon ends; also my course. I think +you hoped I wouldn't want again to talk of those matters. But it isn't so. +I am primed and waiting, and even you, old man, must listen to reason. The +world of thought has made many revolutions since you shut yourself into +that study with your weekly church paper. So be ready to hear me. + +Affectionately, +BERNAL LINFORD. + + +(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.) + +"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright, but they have +sought out many inventions." I am sending you a little book. + +GRANDFATHER. + + +(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.) + +_Dear Old Man:_ How am I going to thank you for the "little book"--for +Butler's Analogy? Or rather, how shall I forgive you for keeping it from +me all these years? I see that you acquired it in 1863--and I never knew! +I must tell you that I looked upon it with suspicion when I unwrapped +it--a suspicion that the title did not allay. For I recalled the last time +you gave me a book--the year before I came here. That book, my friend, was +"Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." I began it with deep respect for you. I +finished with a profound distrust of all Abyssinians and an overwhelming +grief for the untimely demise of Mrs. Johnson--for you had told me that +the good doctor wrote this book to get money to bury her. How the circle +of mourners for that estimable woman must have widened as Rasselas made +its way out into the world! Oh, Grandad, if only they had been able to +keep her going some way until he needn't have done it! If only she could +have been spared until her son got in a little money from the Dictionary +or something! + +All of which is why I viewed with unfriendly distrust your latest gift, +the Analogy of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham. But, honestly, +old man, did you know how funny it was when you sent it? It's funnier than +any of the books of Moses, without being bloody. What a dear, innocent old +soul the Bishop is! How sincerely he believes he is reasoning when he is +merely doing a roguish two-step down the grim corridor of the eternal +verities--with a little jig here and there, and a pause to flirt his frock +airily in the face of some graven image of Fact. Ah, he is so weirdly +innocent. Even when his logical toes go blithely into the air, his dear +old face is most resolutely solemn, and I believe he is never in the least +aware of his frivolous caperings over the floor of induction. Indeed, his +unconsciousness is what makes him an unfailing delight. He even makes his +good old short-worded Saxon go in lilting waltz-time. + +You will never know, Grandad, what this book has done for me. I am +stimulated in the beginning by this: "From the vast extent of God's +dominion there must be some things beyond our comprehension, and the +Christian scheme may be one of them." And at the last I am soothed with +this heart-rending _pas seul:_ "Concluding remarks by which it is clearly +shown that those men who can evade the force of arguments so probable for +the truth of Christianity undoubtedly possess dispositions to evil which +would cause them to reject it, were it based on the most absolute +demonstration." Is not that a pearl without price in this world of lawful +conclusions? + +By the way, Grandad--recalling the text you quote in your last--did you +know when you sent me to this university that the philosophy taught, in a +general way, is that of Kant; that most university scholars smile +pityingly at the Christian thesis? Did you know that belief in Genesis had +been laughed away in an institution like this? With no intention of +diverting you, but merely in order to acquaint you with the present state +of popular opinion on a certain matter, I will tell you of a picture +printed in a New York daily of yesterday. It's on the funny page. A +certain weird but funny-looking beast stands before an equally +funny-looking Adam, in a funny Eden, with a funny Eve and a funny Cain and +Abel in the background. The animal says, "Say, Ad., what did you say my +name was? I've forgotten it again." Our first male parent answers somewhat +testily, as one who has been vexed by like inquiries: "Icthyosaurus, you +darned fool! Can't you remember a little thing like that?" + +In your youth this would doubtless have been punished as a crime. In mine +it is laughed at by all classes. I tell you this to show you that the +Church to-day is in the position of upholding a belief which has become +meaningless because its foundation has been laughed away. Believing no +longer in the god of Moses who cursed them, Christians yet assume to +believe in their need of a Saviour to intercede between them and this +exploded idol of terror. Unhappily, I am so made that I cannot occupy that +position. To me it is not honest. + +Old man, do you remember a certain saying of Squire Cumpston? It was this: +"If you're going to cross the Rubicon, _cross_ it! Don't wade out to the +middle and stand there: you only get hell from both banks!" + +And so I have crossed; I find the Squire was right about standing in the +middle. Happily, or unhappily, I am compelled to believe my beliefs with +all my head and all my heart. But I am confident my reasons will satisfy +you when you hear them. You will see these matters _in a new light._ + +Believe me, Grandad, with all love and respect, + +Affectionately yours, +BERNAL LINFORD. + + +(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.) + +_My Boy:_ For one bitten with skepticism there is little +argument--especially if he be still in youth, which is a time of raw and +ready judgments and of great spiritual self-sufficiency. You wanted to go +to Harvard. I wanted you to go to Princeton, because of its +Presbyterianism and because, too, of Harvard's Unitarianism. We +compromised on Yale--my own alma mater, as it was my father's. To my +belief, this was still, especially as to its pulpit, the stronghold of +orthodox Congregationalism. Was I a weak old man, compromising with Satan? +Are you to break my heart in these my broken years? For love of me, as for +the love of your own soul, _pray_. Leave the God of Moses until your +soul's stomach can take the strong meat of him--for he _is_ strong +meat--and come simply to Jesus, the meek and gentle--the Redeemer, who +died that his blood might cleanse our sin-stained souls. Centre your +aspirations upon Him, for He is the rock of our salvation, if we believe, +_or the rock of our wrecking to endless torment if we disbelieve_. Do not +deny our God who is Jesus, nor disown Jesus who is our God, nor yet +question the inerrance of Holy Writ--yea, with its everlasting burnings. +"He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth +not shall be damned." + +I am sad. I have lived too long. + +GRANDFATHER. + + +(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.) + +_Grandad:_ It's all so plain, you must see it. I told you I had crossed to +the farther bank. Here is what one finds there: Taking him as God, Jesus +is ineffectual. Only as an obviously fallible human man does he become +beautiful; only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great--or even +plausible. + +The instinct of the Jews did not mislead them. Jesus was too fine, too +good, to have come from their tribal god; yet too humanly limited to have +come from God, save as we all come from Him. + +Since you insist that he be considered as God, I shall point out those +things which make him small--as a God. I would rather consider him as a +man and point out those things which make him great to me--things which I +cannot read without wet eyes--but you will not consider him as man, so let +him be a God, and let us see what we see. It is customary to speak of his +"sacrifice." What was it? Our catechism says, "Christ's humiliation +consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the +law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the cursed +death of the cross; in being buried and continuing under the power of +death for a time." + +As I write the words I wonder that the thing should ever have seemed to +any one to be more than a wretched piece of God-jugglery, devoid of +integrity. Are we to conceive God then as a being of carnal appetites, +humiliated by being born into the family of an honest carpenter, instead +of into the family of a King? This is the somewhat snobbish imputation. + +Let us be done with gods playing at being human, or at being half god and +half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church +must concede--nay, proclaim--the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from +that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a +primitive Hebrew mythology--and take him in the only way that he commands +attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. +Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern +mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one +day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the +universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will +save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin. +Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in +history--never one less meek than this carpenter's son who ranks himself +second only to God, with power to send into everlasting hell those who +disbelieve him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers and +the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, attacking what we +to-day call "the decent element." He called the people constantly "Fools," +"Blind Leaders of the Blind," "faithless and perverse," "a generation of +vipers," "sinful," "evil and adulterous," "wicked," "hypocrites," "whited +sepulchres." + +As the god he worshipped was a tribal god, so he at first believed himself +to be a tribal saviour. He directed his disciples thus: "Go not into the +way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But +go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"--(who emphatically +rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman of Canaan whose +daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: "It is not meet to take the +children's bread to cast it to dogs." Imagine a God calling a woman a dog +_because she was not of his own tribe!_ + +And the vital test of godhood he failed to meet: It is his own test, +whereby he disproves his godship out of his own mouth. Compare these +sayings of Jesus, each typical of him: + +"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn +to him the other also." Yet he said to his Twelve: + +"And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence +shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them." + +Is that the consistency of a God or a man? + +Again: "Blessed are the merciful," _but_ "Verily I say unto you it shall +be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for +that city." Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed? + +Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them +likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida ... +and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down +to hell." Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something +else, as a man might? + +Again: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that +hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. + +"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the +publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren, what do ye more than +others? Do not even the publicans so?" That, sir, is a sentiment that +proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here is one which, +placed beside it, proves him to have been a man. + +"_Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the son of man also +confess before the angels of God_; + +"_but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my +father, which is in heaven._" + +Is it God speaking--or man? "_Do not even the publicans so?_" + +Beside this very human contradiction, it is hardly worth while to hear him +say "Resist not evil," yet make a scourge of cords to drive the +money-changers from the temple in a fit of rage, human--but how ungodlike! + +Believe me, the man Jesus is better than the god Jesus; the man is worth +while, for all his inconsistencies, partly due to his creed and partly to +his emotional nature. Indeed, we have not yet risen to the splendour of +his ideal--even the preachers will not preach it. + +And the miracles? We need say nothing of those, I think. If a man disprove +his godship out of his own mouth, we shall not be convinced by a coin in a +fish's mouth or by his raising Lazarus, four days dead. So long as he +says, "I will confess him that confesseth me and deny him that denieth +me," we should know him for one of us, though he rose from the dead before +our eyes. + +Then at the last you will say, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Well, +sir, the fruits of Christianity are what one might expect. You will say it +stands for the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. That it has +always done the reverse is Christianity's fundamental defect, and its +chief absurdity in this day when the popular unchurchly conception of God +has come to be one of some dignity. + +"That ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the +Egyptians and Israel." There is the rock of separation upon which the +Church builded; the rock upon which it will presently split. The god of +the Jews set a difference between Israel and Egypt. So much for the +fatherhood of God. The Son sets the same difference, dividing the sheep +from the goats, according to the opinions they form of his claim to +godship. So much for the brotherhood of man. Christianity merely +caricatures both propositions. Nor do I see how we can attain any worthy +ideal of human brotherhood while this Christianity prevails: We must be +sheep and goats among ourselves, some in heaven, some in hell, still +seeking out reasons "Why the Saints in Glory Should Rejoice at the +Sufferings of the Damned." We shall be saints and sinners, sated and +starving. A God who separates them in some future life will have children +that separate themselves here upon His own very excellent authority. That +is why one brother of us must work himself to death while another idles +himself to death--because God has set a difference, and his Son after him, +and the Church after that. The defect in social Christendom to-day, sir, +is precisely this defect of the Christian faith--its separation, its +failure to teach what it chiefly boasts of teaching. We have, in +consequence, a society of thinly veneered predatoriness. And this, I +believe, is why our society is quite as unstable today as the Church +itself. They are both awakening to a new truth--which is _not_ separation. + +The man who is proud of our Christian civilisation has ideals susceptible +of immense elevation. Christianity has more souls in its hell and fewer in +its heaven than any other religion whatsoever. Naturally, Christian +society is one of extremes and of gross injustice--of oppression and +indifference to suffering. And so it will be until this materialism of +separation is repudiated: until we turn seriously to the belief that men +are truly brothers, not one of whom can be long happy while any other +suffers. + +Come, Grandad, let us give up this God of Moses. Doubtless he was good +enough for the early Jews, but man has always had to make God in his own +image, and you and I need a better one, for we both surpass this one in +all spiritual values--in love, in truth, in justice, in common decency--as +much as Jesus surpassed the unrepentant thief at his side. Remember that +an honest, fearless search for truth has led to all the progress we can +measure over the brutes. Why must it lose the soul? + +BERNAL. + + +(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.) + +My boy, I shall not believe you are sane until I have seen you face to +face. I cannot believe you have fallen a victim to Universalism, which is +like the vale of Siddim, full of slime-pits. I am an old man, and my mind +goes haltingly, yet that is what I seem to glean from your rambling + screed. Come when you are through, for I must see you once more. + +"For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that +the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not +condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath +not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God." + +Lastly--doubt in infinite things is often wise, but doubt of God must be +blasphemy, else he would not be God, the all-perfect. + +I pray it may be your mind is still sick--and recall to you these words of +one I will not now name to you: "Father, forgive them, for they know not +what they do." + +ALLAN DELCHER. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +"IS THE HAND OF THE LORD WAXED SHORT?" + + +A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, awaited the +home-coming of his grandsons at the beginning of that vacation. + +Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter a blasphemer--unless, +indeed, he were possessed of a devil--could walk in the eye of Jehovah, +and no breach be made upon him? Even was the world itself so lax in these +days that one speaking thus could go free? If so, then how could God +longer refrain from drowning the world again? The human baseness of the +blaspheming one and the divine toleration that permitted it were alike +incredible. + +A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh away his fears. It +could not be. The young mind was still disordered. + +On the night of the home-coming he greeted the youth quite as if all were +serene within him, determined to be in no haste and to approach the thing +lightly on the morrow--in the fond hope that a mere breath of authority +might blow it away. + +And when, the next morning, they both drifted to the study, the old man +called up the smile that made his wrinkles sunny, and said in light tones, +above the beating of an anxious heart: + +"So it's your theory, boy, that we must all be taken down with typhoid +before we can be really wise in matters of faith?" + +But the youth answered, quite earnestly: + +"Yes, sir; I really believe nothing less than that would clear most +minds--especially old ones. You see, the brain is a muscle and thought is +its physical exercise. It learns certain thoughts--to go through certain +exercises. These become a habit, and in time the muscle becomes stiff and +incapable of learning any new movements--also incapable of leaving off +the old. The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous +action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The individual's mind can +affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body new +suppleness." + +He spoke with a certain restrained nervousness that was not reassuring. +But the old man would not yet be rebuffed from his manner of lightness. + +"Then, wanting an epidemic of typhoid, we of the older generation must die +in error." + +"Yes, sir--I doubt even the efficacy of typhoid in most cases; it's as +difficult for an old person to change a habit of thought as to take the +wrinkles from his face. That is why what we very grandly call 'fighting +for the truth' or 'fighting for the Lord' is merely fighting for our own +little notions; they have become so vital to us and we call them 'truth.'" + +The youth stopped, with a palpable air of defiance, before which the old +man's assumption of ease and lightness was at last beaten down. He had +been standing erect by the table, still with the smile toning his +haggardness. Now the smile died; the whole man sickened, lost life +visibly, as if a dozen years of normal aging were condensed into the dozen +seconds. + +He let himself go into the big chair, almost as if falling, his head +bowed, his eyes dulled to a look of absence, his arms falling weakly over +the chair's sides. A sigh that was almost a groan seemed to tell of pain +both in body and mind. + +Bernal stood awkwardly regarding him, then his face lighted with a sudden +pity. + +"But I thought _you_ could understand, sir; I thought you were different; +you have been like a chum to me. When I spoke of old persons it never +occurred to me that you could fall into that class! I never knew you to be +unjust, or unkind, or--narrow--perhaps I should say, unsympathetic." + +The other gave no sign of hearing. + +"My body was breaking so fast--and you break my heart!" + +"There you are, sir," began the youth, a little excitedly. "Your heart is +breaking _not_ because I'm not good, but because I form a different +opinion from yours of a man rising from the dead, after he has been +crucified to appease the anger of his father." + +"God help me! I'm so human. I _can't_ feel toward you as I should. Boy, I +_won't_ believe you are sane." He looked up in a sudden passion of hope. +"I won't believe Christ died in vain for my girl's little boy. Bernal, +boy, you are still sick of that fever!" + +The other smiled, his youthful scorn for the moment overcoming his deeper +feeling for his listener. + +"Then I must talk more. Now, sir, for God's sake let us have the plain +truth of the crucifixion. Where was the sacrifice? Can you not picture the +mob that would fight for the honour of crucifixion to-morrow, if it were +known that the one chosen would sit at the right hand of God and judge all +the world? I say there was no sacrifice, even if Christian dogma be +literal truth. Why, sir, I could go into the street and find ten men in +ten minutes who would be crucified a hundred times to save the souls of us +from hell--_not_ if they were to be rewarded with a seat on the throne of +God where they could send into hell those who did not believe in them--but +for no reward whatever--out of a sheer love for humanity. Don't you see, +sir, that we have magnified that crucifixion out of all proportion to the +plainest truth of our lives? You know I would die on a cross to-day, not +to redeem the world, but to redeem one poor soul--your own. If you deny +that, at least you won't dare deny that you would go on the cross to +redeem _my_ soul from hell--the soul of one man--and do you think you +would demand a reward for doing it, beyond knowing that you had ransomed +me from torment? Would it be necessary to your happiness that you also +have the power to send into hell all those who were not able to believe +you had actually died for me? + +"One moment more, sir--" The thin, brown, old hand had been raised in +trembling appeal, while the lips moved without sound. + +"You see every day in the papers how men die for other men, for one man, +for two, a dozen! Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of +five little children--their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of +their immortal souls. I believe I'd die myself to save two thousand--I +_know_ I would to save three--if their faces were clean and they looked +funny enough and helpless. Here, in this morning's paper, a negro +labourer, going home from his work in New York yesterday, pushed into +safety one of those babies that are always crawling around on railroad +tracks. He had time to see that he could get the baby off but not himself, +and then he went ahead. Doubtless it was a very common baby, and certainly +he was a very common man. Why, I could go down to Sing Sing tomorrow, and +I'll stake my own soul that in the whole cageful of criminals there isn't +one who would not eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he +would thereby ransom the race from hell. And he wouldn't want the power to +damn the unbelievers, either. He would insist upon saving them with the +others." + +"Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!" + +"It was passion, sir--" he spoke with a sudden relenting--"but try to +remember that I've sought the truth honestly." + +"You degrade the Saviour." + +"No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian belief about him. If +common men all might live lives of greater sacrifice than Jesus did, +without any pretensions to the supernatural, it only means that we need a +new embodiment for our ideals. If we find it in man--in God's creature--so +much the better for man and so much the more glory to God, who has not +then bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches." + +"God forgive you this tirade--I know it is the sickness." + +"I shall try to speak calmly, sir--but how much longer can an educated +clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God? +Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the +Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh is gathering even now. +Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest--firm +wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will +go--from a laugh--not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called +higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of +this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to +its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the +sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurdities--its +vain bungling God of one tribe who crowns his career of impotencies--in +all but the art of slaughter--by instituting the sacrifice of a Son +begotten of a human mother, to appease his wrath toward his own creatures; +a God who even by this pitiful device can save but a few of us. Was ever +god so powerless? Do you think we who grow up now do not detect it? Is it +not time to demand a God of virtue, of integrity, of ethical dignity--a +religion whose test shall be moral, and not the opinion one forms of +certain alleged material phenomena?" + +When he had first spoken the old man cowered low and lower in his chair, +with little moans of protest at intervals, perhaps a quick, almost +gasping, "God forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the talk went +on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, +and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him +falter confusedly and stop. + +"I can say no more, sir; I should not have said so much. Oh, Grandad, I +wouldn't have hurt you for all the world, yet I had to let you know why I +could not do what you had planned--and I was fool enough to think I could +justify myself to you!" + +The old eyes still blazed upon him with a look of sorrow and of horror +that was yet, first of all, a look of power; the look of one who had +mastered himself to speak calmly while enduring uttermost pain. + +"I am glad you have spoken. You were honest to do so. It was my error not +to be convinced at first, and thus save myself a shock I could ill bear. +But you have been sick, and I felt that I should not believe without +seeing you. I had built so much--so many years--on your preaching the +gospel of--of my Saviour. This hope has been all my life these last +years--now it is gone. But I have no right to complain. You are free; I +have no claim upon you; and I shall be glad to provide for you--to educate +you further for any profession you may have chosen--to start you in any +business--away from here--from this house--" + +The young man flushed--wincing under this, but answered: + +"Thank you, sir. I could hardly take anything further. I don't know what I +want to do, what I can do--I'm at sea now. But I will go. I'm sure only +that I want to get out--away--I will take a small sum to go with--I know +you would be hurt more if I didn't; enough to get me away--far enough +away." + +He went out, his head bowed under the old man's stern gaze. But when the +latter had stepped to the door and locked it, his fortitude was gone. +Helplessly he fell upon his knees before the big chair--praying out his +grief in hard, dry sobs that choked and shook his worn body. + +When Clytie knocked at the door an hour later, he was dry-eyed and +apparently serene, but busy with papers at his table. + +"Is it something bad about Bernal, Mr. Delcher," she asked, "that he's +going away so queer and sudden?" + +"_You_ pray for him, too, Clytie--you love him--but it's nothing to talk +of." + +But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put down by this. + +"Oh, Mr. Delcher--" a look of horror grew big in her eyes--"You don't mean +to say he's gone and joined the Universalists?" + +The old man shook his head. + +"And he ain't a _Unitarian_?" + +"No, Clytie; but our boy has been to college and it has left him rather +un--unconforming in some little matters--some details--doubtless his +doctrine is sound at core." + +"But I supposed he'd learn everything off at that college, only I know he +never got fed half enough. What with all its studies and football and +clubs and things I thought it was as good as a liberal education." + +"Too liberal, sometimes! Pray for Bernal--and we won't talk about it +again, Clytie, if you please." + +Presently came Allan, who had heard the news. + +"Bernal tells me he will not enter the ministry, sir; that he is going +away." + +"We have decided that is best." + +"You know, sir, I have suspected for some time that Bernal was not as +sound doctrinally as you could wish. His mind, if I may say it, is a +peculiarly literal one. He seems to lack a certain spiritual +comprehensiveness--an enveloping intuition, so to say, of the spiritual +value in a material fact. During that unhappy agitation for the revision +of our creed, I have heard him, touching the future state of unbaptised +infants, utter sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate +in its sentimentality--sentiments which I shall not pain you by repeating. +He has often referred, moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality, +to the sad fate of our father--about whose present estate no churchman can +have any doubt. And then about our belief that even good works are an +abomination before God if performed by the unregenerate, the things I have +heard him--" + +"Yes--yes--let us not talk of it further. Did you wish to see me +especially, Allan?" + +"Well, yes, sir, I _had_ wished to, and perhaps now is the best moment. I +wanted to ask you, sir, how you would regard my becoming an Episcopalian. +I am really persuaded that its form of worship, translating as it does so +_much_ of the spiritual verity of life into visible symbols, is a form +better calculated than the Presbyterian to appeal to the great throbbing +heart of humanity. I hope I may even say, without offense, sir, that it +affords a wider scope, a broader sweep, a more stimulating field of +endeavour, to one who may have a capacity for the life of larger aspects. +In short, sir, I believe there is a great future for me in that church." + +"I shouldn't wonder if there was," answered the old man, who had studied +his face closely during the speech. Yet he spoke with an extreme dryness +of tone that made the other look quickly up. + +"It shall be as you wish," he continued, after a meditative pause--"I +believe you are better calculated for that church than for mine. Obey your +call." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE FOLLY OF HIS YOUTH + + +At early twilight Bernal, sore at heart for the pain he had been obliged +to cause the old man, went to the study-door for a last word with him. + +"I believe there is no one above whose forgiveness I need, sir--but I +shall always be grieved if I can't have yours. I _do_ need that." + +The old man had stood by the open door as if meaning to cut short the +interview. + +"You have it. I forgive you any hurt you have done me; it was due quite as +much to my limitations as to yours. For that other forgiveness, which you +will one day know is more than mine--I--I shall always pray for that." + +He stopped, and the other waited awkwardly, his heart rushing out in +ineffectual flood against the old man's barrier of stern restraint. For a +moment he made folds in his soft hat with a fastidious precision. Finally +he nerved himself to say calmly: + +"I thank you, sir, for all you have done--all you have ever done for me +and for Allan--and, good-bye!" + +"Good-bye!" + +Though there was no hint of unkindness in the old man's voice, something +formal in his manner had restrained the other from offering his hand. +Still loath to go without it, he said again more warmly: + +"Good-bye, sir!" + +"Good-bye!" + +This time he turned and went slowly down the dim hall, still making the +careful folds in his hat, as if he might presently recall something that +would take him back. At the foot of the stairs he stopped quickly to +listen, believing he had heard a call from above; but nothing came and he +went out. Still in the door upstairs was the old man--stern of face, save +that far back in his eyes a kind spirit seemed to strive ineffectually. + +Across the lawn from her hammock Nancy called to Bernal. He went slowly +toward her, still suffering from the old man's coldness--and for the hurts +he had unwittingly put upon him. + +The girl, as he went forward, stood to greet him, her gown, sleeveless, +neckless, taking the bluish tinge that early twilight gives to snow, a +tinge that deepened to dusk about her eyes and in her hair. She gave him +her hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured heart. After +all, men were born to hurt and be hurt. + +He sat in the rustic chair opposite the hammock, looking into Nancy's +black-lashed eyes of the Irish gray, noting that from nineteen to twenty +her neck had broadened at the base the least one might discern, that her +face was less full yet richer in suggestion--her face of the odds and ends +when she did not smile. At this moment she was not only unsmiling, but +excited. + +"Oh, Bernal, what is it? Tell me quick. Allan was so vague--though he said +he'd always stand by you, no matter what you did. What _have_ you done, +Bernal? Is it a college scrape?" + +"Oh, that's only Allan's big-hearted way of talking! He's so generous and +loyal I think he's often been disappointed that I didn't do something, so +he _could_ stand by me. No--no scrapes, Nance, honour bright!" + +"But you're leaving--" + +"Well, in a way I have done something. I've found I couldn't be a minister +as Grandad had set his heart on my being--" + +"But if you haven't done anything wicked, why not?" + +"Oh, I'm not a believer." + +"In what?" + +"In anything, I think--except, well, in you and Grandad and--and Allan and +Clytie--yes, and in myself, Nance. That's a big point. I believe in +myself." + +"And you're going because you don't believe in other things?" + +"Yes, or because I believe too much--just as you like to put it. I +demanded a better God of Grandad, Nance--one that didn't create hell and +men like me to fill it just for the sake of scaring a few timid mortals +into heaven." + +"You know Aunt Bell is an unbeliever. She says no one with an open +mind can live twenty years in Boston without being vastly +broadened--'broadening into the higher unbelief,' she calls it. She +says she has passed through nearly every stage of unbelief there is, +but that she feels the Lord is going to bring her back at last to rest +in the shadow of the Cross." + +As Aunt Bell could be heard creaking heavily in a willow rocker on the +piazza near-by, the young man suppressed a comment that arose within him. + +"Only, unbelievers are apt to be fatiguing" the girl continued, in a lower +tone. "You know Aunt Bell's husband, Uncle Chester--the meekest, dearest +little man in the world, he was--well, once he disappeared and wasn't +heard of again for over four years--except that they knew his bank account +was drawn on from time to time. Then, at last, his brother found him, +living quietly under an assumed name in a little town outside of +Boston--pretending that he hadn't a relative in the world. He told his +brother he was just beginning to feel rested. Aunt Bell said he was +demented. While he was away she'd been all through psychometry, the +planchette, clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology, and Unitarianism. What are +you, Bernal?" + +"Nothing, Nance--that's the trouble." + +"But where are you going, and what for?" + +"I don't know either answer--but I can't stay here, because I'm +blasphemous--it seems--and I don't want to stay, even if I weren't sent. +I want to be out--away. I feel as if I must be looking for something I +haven't found. I suspect it's a fourth dimension to religion. They have +three--even breadth--but they haven't found faith yet--a faith that +doesn't demand arbitrary signs, parlour-magic, and bloody, weird tales in +a book that becomes their idol." + +The girl looked at him long in silence, swaying a little in the hammock, a +bare elbow in one hand, her meditative chin in the other, the curtains of +her eyes half-drawn, as if to let him in a little at a time before her +wonder. Then, at last: + +"Why, you're another Adam--being sent out of the garden for your sin. Now +tell me--honest--was the sin worth it? I've often wondered." She gave an +eager little laugh. + +"Why, Nance, it's worth so much that you want to go of your own accord. Do +you suppose Adam could have stayed in that fat, lazy, silly garden after +he became alive--with no work, no knowledge, no adventure, no chance to do +wrong? As for earning his bread--the only plausible hell I've ever been +able to picture is one where there was nothing to do--no work, no +puzzling, no chances to take, no necessity of thinking. Now, isn't that an +ideal hell? And is it my fault if it happens to be a description of what +Christians look forward to as heaven? I tell you, Adam would have gone out +of that garden from sheer boredom after a few days. The setting of the +angel with the flaming sword to guard the gate shows that God still failed +to understand the wonderful creature he had made." + +She smiled, meditative, wondering. + +"I dare say, for my part, I'd have eaten that apple if the serpent had +been at all persuasive. Bernal, I wonder--and wonder--and wonder--I'm +never done. And Aunt Bell says I'll never be a sweet and wholesome and +stimulating companion to my husband, if I don't stop being so vague and +fantastic." + +"What does she call being vague and fantastic?" + +"Not wanting any husband." + +"Oh!" + +"Bernal, it's like the time that you ran off when you were a wee thing--to +be bad." + +"And you cried because I wouldn't take you with me." + +"I can feel the woe of it yet." + +"You're dry-eyed now, Nance." + +"Yes--and the pink parasol and the buff shoes I meant to take with me are +also things of the past. Mercy! The idea of going off with an unbeliever +to be bad and--everything! 'The happy couple are said to look forward to a +life of joyous wickedness, several interesting crimes having been planned +for the coming season. For their honeymoon infamy they will perpetrate a +series of bank-robberies along the Maine coast.' There--how would that +sound?" + +"You're right, Nance--I wouldn't take you this time either, even if you +cried. And your little speech is funny and all that--but Nance, I believe, +these last years, we've both thought of things now and then--things, you +know--things to think of and not talk of--and see here--The man was driven +out of the garden--but not the woman. She isn't mentioned. She could stay +there--" + +"Until she got tired of it herself?" + +"Until the man came back for her." + +He thought her face was glowing duskily in the twilight. + +"I wonder--wonder about so many things," she said softly. + +"I believe you're a sleeping rebel yourself, Nance. If ever you do eat +from that tree, there'll be no holding you. You won't wait to be driven +forth!" + +"And you are, a wicked young man--that kind never comes back in the +stories." + +"That may be no jest, Nance. I should surely be wicked, if I thought it +brings the happiness it's said to. Under this big sky I am free from any +moral law that doesn't come from right here inside me. Can you realize +that? Do I seem bad for saying it? What they call the laws of God are +nothing. I suspect them all, and I'll make every one of them find its +authority in me before I obey it." + +"It sounds--well--unpromising, Bernal." + +"I told you it was serious, Nance. I see but one law clearly--I am bound +to want happiness. Every man is bound always to want happiness, Nance. No +man can possibly want anything else. That's the only thing under heaven +I'm sure of at this moment--the one universal law under which we all make +our mistakes--good people and bad alike?" + +"But, Bernal, you wouldn't be bad--not really bad?" + +"Well, Nance, I've a vague, loose sort of notion that one isn't really +compelled to be bad in order to be happy right here on earth. I know the +Church rather intimates this, but I suspect that vice is not the delicious +thing the Church implies it to be." + +"You make me afraid, Bernal--" + +"But if I do come back, Nance, having toiled?" + +"--and you make me wonder." + +"I think that's all either of us can do, Nance, and I must go. I have to +say good-bye to Clytie yet. The poor soul is convinced that I have become +a Unitarian and that there's a conspiracy to keep the horrible truth from +her. She says grandad evaded her questions about it. She doesn't dream +there are depths below Unitarianism. I must try to convince her that I'm +not _that_ bad--that I may have a weak head and a defective heart, but not +that. Nance--girl!" + +He sat forward in the chair, reaching toward her. She turned her face +away, but their hands trembled toward each other, faltering fearfully, +tremulously, into a clasp that became at once firm and knowing when it +felt itself--as if it opened their blind eyes to a world of life and light +without end, a world in which they two were the first to live. + +Lingeringly, with slow, regretting fingers, the hands fell apart, to +tighten eagerly again into the clasp that made them one flesh. + +When at last they were put asunder both arose. The girl patted from her +skirts the hammock's little disarranging touches, while the youth again +made the careful folds in his hat. Then they shook hands very stiffly, and +went opposite ways out of a formal garden of farewell; the youth to sate +that beautiful, crude young lust for living--too fierce to be tamed save +by its own failures, hearing only the sagas of action, of form and colour +and sound made one by heat--the song Nature sings unendingly--but heard +only by young ears. + +The girl went back to the Crealock piazza to hear of one better set in the +grace of faith. + +"That elder young Linford," began Aunt Bell, ceasing to rock, "has a +future. You know I talked to him about the Episcopal Church, strongly +advising him to enter it. For all my broad views"--Aunt Bell sighed +here--"I really and truly believe, child, that no one not an Episcopalian +is ever thoroughly at ease in this world." + +Aunt Bell was beautifully, girlishly plump, with a sophisticated air of +smartness--of coquetry, indeed--as to her exquisitely small hands and +feet; and though a certain suggestion of melancholy in her tone +harmonised with the carefully dressed gray hair and with her apparent +years, she nevertheless breathed airs of perfect comfort. + +"Of course this young chap could see at once," she went on, "what +immensely better form it is than Calvinism. _Dear_ me! Imagine one being a +Presbyterian in this day!" It seemed here that the soul of Aunt Bell +poised a disdainful lorgnette before its eyes, through which to survey in +a fitting manner the unmodish spectacle of Calvinism. + +"And he tells me that he has his grandfather's consent. Really, my dear, +with his physique and voice and manner that fellow undoubtedly has a +future in the Episcopal Church. I dare say he'll be wearing the lawn +sleeves and rochet of a bishop before he's forty." + +"Did it ever occur to you, Aunt Bell, that he is--well, just the least +trifle--I was going to say, vain of his appearance--but I'll make it +'self-conscious'?" + +"Child, don't you know that a young man, really beautiful without being +effeminate, is bound to be conscious of it. But vain he is not. It +mortifies him dreadfully, though he pretends to make light of it." + +"But why speak of it so often? He was telling me to-day of an elderly +Englishman who addressed him on the train, telling him what a striking +resemblance he bore to the Prince of Wales when he was a youth." + +"Quite so; and he told me yesterday of hearing a lady in the drug-store +ask the clerk who 'that handsome stranger' was. But, my dear, he tells +them as jokes on himself, and he's so sheepish about it. And he's such a +splendid orator. I persuaded him to-day to read me one of his college +papers. I don't seem to recall much of the substance, but it was full of +the most beautiful expressions. One, I remember, begins, 'Oh, of all the +flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human +heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of--' you know I've +forgotten what it was--Civilisation or Truth or something. Anyway, +whatever it was, it had like a giant engine rolled the car of Civilisation +out from the maze of antiquity, where she now waits to be freighted with +the precious fruits of living genius, and so on." + +"That seems impressive and--mixed, perhaps?" + +"Of course I can't remember things in their order, but it was about the +essential nature of man being gregarious, and truth is a potent factor in +civilisation, and something would be a tear on the world's cold cheek to +make it burn forever--isn't that striking? And Greece had her Athens and +her Corinth, but where now is Greece with her proud cities? And Rome, +Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and splendour. Of course I can't recall +his words. There was a beautiful reference to America, I remember, from +the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen North to the +ever-tepid waters of the sunny South--and a perfectly splendid passage +about the world is and ever has been illiberal. Witness the lonely lamp of +Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, the scaffold of +Sidney--Sidney who, I wonder?" + +"Has it taken you that way, Aunt Bell?" + +"And France, the saddest example of a nation without a God, and succeeding +generations will only add a new lustre to our present resplendent glory, +bound together by the most sacred ties of goodwill; independent, yet +acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, and it was fraught with +vital interest to every thinking man--" + +"Spare me, Aunt Bell--it's like Coney Island, with all those carrousels +going around and five bands playing at once!" + +"But his peroration! I can't pretend to give you any idea of its +beauties--" + +"Don't!" + +"Get him to declaim it for you. It begins in the most impressive language +about his standing on top of the Rocky Mountains one day and placing his +feet upon a solid rock, he saw a tempest gathering in the valley far +below. So he watches the storm--in his own language, of course--while all +around him is sunshine. And such should be our aim in life, to plant our +feet on the solid rock of--how provoking! I can't remember what the rock +was--anyway, we are to bid those in the valley below to cease their +bickerings and come up to the rock--I think it was Intellectual +Greatness--No!--Unselfishness--that's it. And the title of the paper was a +sermon in itself--'The Temporal Advantage of the Individual No Norm of +Morality.' Isn't that a beautiful thought in itself? Nancy, that chap will +waste himself until he has a city parish." + +There was silence for a little time before Aunt Bell asked, as one having +returned to baser matters: + +"I wonder if the jacket of my gray suit came back from that clumsy tailor. +I forgot to ask Ellen if an express package came." + +And Nancy, whose look was bent far into the dusk, answered: + +"Oh, I wonder if he will come back!" + + + + +BOOK THREE + +The Age of Faith + + + +[Illustration] + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE PERVERSE BEHAVIOUR OF AN OLD MAN AND A YOUNG MAN + + +When old Allan Delcher slept with his fathers--being so found in the big +chair, with the worn, leather-bound Bible open in his lap--the revived +but still tender faith of Aunt Bell Hardwick was bitten as by frost. And +this though the Bible had lain open at that psalm in which David is said +to describe the corruption of a natural man--a psalm beginning, "The +fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" + +For it straightway appeared that the dead man had in life done a +perverse and inexplicable thing, to the bitter amazement of those who +had learned to trust him. On the day after he sent a blasphemous +grandson from his door he had called for Squire Cumpston, announcing to +the family his intention to make an entirely new will--a thing for which +there seemed to be a certain sad necessity. + +When he could no longer be reproached it transpired that he had left "to +Allan Delcher Linford, son of one Clayton Linford," a beggarly pittance +of five thousand dollars; and "to my beloved grandson, Bernal Linford, I +give, devise and bequeath the residue of my estate, both real and +personal." + +Though the husband of her niece wore publicly a look of faith +unimpaired, and was thereby an example to her, Aunt Bell declared +herself to be once more on the verge of believing that the proofs of an +overseeing Providence, all-wise and all-loving, were by no means +overwhelming; that they were, indeed, of so frail a validity that she +could not wonder at people falling away from the Church. It was a trying +time for Aunt Bell. She felt that her return to the shadow of the cross +was not being made enough of by the One above. After years of running +after strange gods, the Episcopal service as administered by Allan had +prevailed over her seasoned skepticism: through its fascinating leaven +of romance--with faint and, as it seemed to her, wholly reverent hints +of physical culture--the spirit may be said to have blandished her. And +now this turpitude in a man of God came to disturb the first tender +rootlings of her new faith. + +The husband of her niece had loyally endeavoured to dissuade her from +this too human reaction. + +"God has chosen to try me for a purpose, Aunt Bell," he said very +simply. "I ought to be proud of it--eager for any test--and I am. True, +in these last years I had looked upon grandfather's fortune as mine--not +only by implied promise, but by all standards of right--even of +integrity. For surely a man could not more nearly forfeit his own +rights, in every moral aspect, than poor Bernal has--though I meant +always to stand by him. So you see, I must conclude that God means to +distinguish me by a test. He may even subject me to others; but I shall +not wince. I shall welcome His trials. He turned upon her the face of +simple faith." + +"Did you speak to that lawyer about the possibility of a contest--of +proving unsound mind?" + +"I did, but he saw no chance whatever." + +Aunt Bell hereupon surveyed her beautifully dimpled knuckles minutely, +with an affectionate pride--a pride not uncritical, yet wholly +convinced. + +"Of course," added Allan after a moment's reflection, "there's no sense +in believing that every bit of one's hard luck is sent by God to test +one. One must in all reverence take every precaution to prove that the +disaster is not humanly remediable. And this, I may say, I have done +with thoroughness--with great thoroughness." + +"Bernal may be dead," suggested Aunt Bell, brightening now from an +impartial admiring of the toes of her small, plump slippers. + +"God forbid that he should be cut off in his unbelief--but then, God's +will be done. If that be true, of course, the matter is different. +Meantime we are advertising." + +"I wish I had your superb faith, Allan. I wish Nancy had it...." + +Her niece's husband turned his head and shoulders until she had the +three-quarters view of his face. + +"I have faith, Aunt Bell. God knows my unworthiness, even as you know it +and I know it--but I have faith!" + +The golden specks in his hazel eyes blazed with humility, and a flush of +the same virtue mantled his perfect brow. + +Such news of Bernal Linford as had come back to Edom, though meagre and +fragmentary, was of a character to confirm the worst fears of those who +loved him. The first report came within a year after his going, and +caused a shaking of many heads. + +An estimable farmer, one Caleb Webster, living on the outskirts of Edom, +had, in a blameless spirit of adventure, toured the Far West, at +excursion rates said to be astounding for cheapness. He had met the +unfortunate young man in one of the newer mining towns along his +exciting route. + +"He was kind of nursin' a feller that had the consumption," ran the +gossip of Mr. Webster, "some one he'd fell in with out in them parts, +that had gone there to git cured. But, High Mighty! the way them two +carried on at all hours wasn't goin' to cure no one of nothin'! +Specially gamblin', which was done right in public, you might say, +though the sharpers never skinned me none, I'll say that! But these two +was at it every night, and finally they done just like I told the young +fools they'd do--they lost all they had. They come into the Commercial +House one night where I was settin' lookin' over a time-table, both +seemin' down in the mouth. And all to once this sick young man--Mr. +Hoover, his name was--bust out cryin'--him bein' weak or mebbe in liquor +or somethin'. + +"'Every cent lost!' he says, the tears runnin' down those yellow, sunk +cheeks of his. But Bernal seems to git chipper again when he sees how +Mr. Hoover is takin' it, so he says, 'Haven't you got a cent left, +Hoover? Haven't you got anythin' at all left? Just think,' he says, +'what I stood to win on that last turn, if it'd come my way--at four to +one,' he says, or somethin' like that; them gamblin' terms is too much +for me. 'Hain't you got nothin' at all left?' he says. + +"Then this Hoover--still cryin', mind you--he says, 'Not a cent in the +world except forty dollars in my trunk upstairs that I saved out to bury +me with--and they won't send me another cent,' he says, 'because I tried +'em.' + +"It sounded awful to hear him talkin' like that about his own buryin', +but it didn't phase Bernal none. + +"'Forty dollars!' he says, kind of sniffy like. 'Why, man, what could +you do for forty dollars? Don't you know such things are very outrageous +in price here? Forty _dollars_--why,' he says, 'the very best you could +do would be one of these plain pine things with black cloth tacked on to +it, and pewter trimmin's if _any_,' he says. 'Think of _pewter_ +trimmin's!' + +"'Say,' he says, when Hoover begun to look up at him, 'you run and dig +up your old forty and I'll go back right now and win you out a full +satin-lined, silver-trimmed one, polished mahogany and gold name-plate, +and there'll be enough for a clock of immortelles with the hands stopped +at just the hour it happens,' he says. 'And you want to hurry,' he says, +'it ought to be done right away--with that cough of yours.' + +"Me? Gosh, I felt awful--I wanted to drop right through the floor, but +this Hoover, he says all at once, still snufflin', mind you: 'Say, +that's all right,' he says. 'If I'm goin' to do it at all, I ought to do +it right for the credit of my folks. I ought to give this town a flash +of the right thing,' he says. + +"Then he goes upstairs, leaning on the balusters, and gets his four +ten-dollar bills that had been folded away all neat at the bottom of his +trunk, and before I could think of anythin' wholesome to say--I was that +scandalised--they was goin' off across the street to the Horseshoe +Gamin' Parlour, this feller Hoover seemin' very sanguine and asking +Bernal whether he was sure they was a party in town could do it up right +after they'd went and won the money for it. + +"Well, sir, I jest set there thinkin' how this boy Bernal Linford was +brought up for a preacher, and 'Jest look at him now!' I says to +myself--and I guess it was mebbe an hour later I seen 'em comin' out of +the swingin' blinds in the door of this place, and a laffin' fit to kill +themselves. 'High Mighty! they done it!' I says, watchin' 'em laff and +slap each other on the back till Hoover had to stop in the middle of the +street to cough. Well, they come into the Commercial office where I am +and I says, 'Well, boys, how much did you fellers win?' and Hoover says, +'Not a cent! We lost our roll,' he says. 'It's the blamedest funniest +thing I ever heard of,' he says, just like that, laffin' again fit to +choke. + +"'_I_ don't see anythin' to laff at,' I says. 'How you goin' to live?' + +"'How's he goin' to die?' says Bernal, 'without a cent to do it on?' + +"'That's the funny part of it,' says Hoover. 'Linford thought of it +first. How _can_ I die now? It wouldn't be square,' he says--'me without +a cent!' + +"Then they both began to laugh--but me, I couldn't see nothin' funny +about it. + +"Wal, I left early next mornin', not wantin' to have to refuse 'em a +loan." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +HOW A BROTHER WAS DIFFERENT + + +In contrast with this regrettable performance of Bernal's, which, alas! +bore internal evidence of being a type of many, was the flawless career +of Allan, the dutiful and earnest. Not only did he complete his course +at the General Theological Seminary with great honour, but he was +ordained into the Episcopal ministry under circumstances entirely +auspicious. Aunt Bell confided to Nancy that his superior presence quite +dwarfed the bishop who ordained him. + +His ordination sermon, moreover, which his grandfather had been +persuaded into journeying to hear, was held by many to be a triumph of +pulpit oratory no less than an able yet not unpoetic handling of his +text, which was from John--"The Truth shall make you free." + +Truth, he declared, was the crowning glory in the diadem of man's +attributes, and a subject fraught with vital interest to every thinking +man. The essential nature of man being gregarious, how important that +the leader of men should hold Truth to be like a diamond, made only the +brighter by friction. The world is and ever has been illiberal. Witness +the lonely lamp of Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of +Pascal, the scaffold of Sidney--all fighters for truth against the +masses who cannot think for themselves. + +Truth was, indeed, a potent factor in civilisation. If only all +truth-lovers could feel bound together by the sacred ties of fraternal +good-will, independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, +succeeding ages could but add a new lustre to their present resplendent +glory. + +Truth, triumphant out of oppression, is a tear falling on the world's +cold cheek to make it burn forever. Why fear the revelation of truth? +Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but where is Greece to-day? Rome, +too, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and polish! They were, but they +are not--for want of Truth. But might not we hope for a land where Truth +would reign--from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the +frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South? + +Truth is the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled +the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity where it now +waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius. + +The young man's final flight was observed by Aunt Bell to impress +visibly even the bishop--a personage whom she had begun to suspect was +the least bit cynical, perhaps from having listened to many first +sermons. + +"Standing one day," it began, "near the summit of one of the grand old +Rocky Mountains that in primeval ages was elevated from ocean's depths +and now towers its snow-capped peak heavenward touching the azure blue, +I witnessed a scene which, for beauty of illustration of the thought in +hand, the world cannot surpass. Placing my feet upon a solid rock, I +saw, far down in the valley below, the tempest gathering. Soon the +low-muttered thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave token of +increasing turbulence with Nature's elements. Thus the storm raged far +below while all around me and above glittered the pure sunlight of +heaven, where I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought +came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified in Nature's own +impressive language the simple grandeurs of Truth. While we are in the +valley below, we have ebullitions of discontent and murmurings of +strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought becomes elevated. +Then placing our feet on the solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the +valley below to cease their bickerings and come up higher. + +"Truth! Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the +parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower +of Truth. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but +they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible. +But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out +through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the +mountain-side, _up_ and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all +along the cloudy corridors of the day, _up_ along the misty pathway to +the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the +breath of angels!" + +Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon--had, even +after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should +never have done. Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he +was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a +discreet housekeeper, as "the son of his father"--which was an invidious +circumlocution, amounting almost to an epithet. And he had most weakly +continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of his daughter--the +godless boy whom he had driven from his door. + +Not even the other bit of news that came a little later had sufficed to +make him repair his injustice; and this, though the report came by the +Reverend Arthur Pelham Gridley, incumbent of the Presbyterian pulpit at +Edom, who could preach sermons the old man liked. + +Mr. Gridley, returning from a certain gathering of the brethren at +Denver, had brought this news: That Bernal Linford had been last seen +walking south from Denver, like a common tramp, in the company of a poor +half-witted creature who had aroused some local excitement by declaring +himself to be the son of God, speaking familiarly of the Deity as +"Father." + +As this impious person had been of a very simple mind and behaved +inoffensively, rather shrinking from publicity than courting it, he had +at first attracted little attention. It appeared, however, that he had +presently begun an absurd pretence of healing the sick and the lame; +and, like all charlatans, he so cunningly worked upon the imaginations +of his dupes that a remarkable number of them believed that they +actually had been healed by him. In fact, the nuisance of his operations +had grown to an extent so alarming that thousands of people stood in +line from early morning until dusk awaiting their turn to be blessed and +"healed" by the impostor. Just as several of the clergy, said Mr. +Gridley, were on the point of denouncing this creature as anti-Christ +and thus exploding his pretensions; and when the city authorities, +indeed, appealed to by the local physicians, were on the point of +suppressing him for disorderly conduct, and a menace to the public +health, since he was encouraging the people to forsake their family +physicians; and just as the news came that a long train-load of the +variously suffering was on its way from Omaha, the wretched impostor had +himself solved the difficulty by quietly disappearing. As he had refused +to take money from the thousands of his dupes who had pressed it upon +him in their fancied relief from pain, it was known that he could not be +far off, and some curiosity was at first felt as to his +whereabouts--particularly by those superstitious ones who continued to +believe he had healed them of their infirmities, not a few of whom, it +appeared, were disposed to credit his blasphemous claim to have been +sent by God. + +According to the lookout thus kept for this person, it was reported that +he had been seen to pass on foot through towns lying south of Denver, +meanly dressed and accompanied by a young man named Linford. To all +inquiries he answered that he was on his way to fast in the desert as +his "Father" had commanded. His companion was even less communicative, +saying somewhat irritably that his goings and comings were nobody's +business but his own. + +Some six months later the remains of the unfortunate person were found +in a wild place far to the south, with his Bible and his blanket. It was +supposed that he had starved. Of Linford no further trace had been +discovered. + +The most absurd tales were now told, said Mr. Gridley, of the miracles +of healing wrought by this person--told, moreover, by persons of +intelligence whom in ordinary matters one would not hesitate to trust. +There had even been a story started, which was widely believed, that he +had raised the dead; moreover, many of those who had been deluded into +believing themselves healed, looked forward confidently to his own +resurrection. + +Mr. Gridley ventured the opinion that we should be thankful to the daily +press which now disseminates the news of such things promptly, instead +of allowing it to travel slowly by word of mouth, as it did in less +advanced times--a process in which a little truth becomes very shortly a +mighty untruth. Even between Denver and Omaha he had observed that the +wonder-tales of this person grew apace, thus proving the inaccuracy of +the human mind as a reporter of fact. Without the check of an +unemotional daily press Mr. Gridley suspected that the poor creature's +performances would have been magnified by credulous gossip until he +became the founder of a new religion--a thing especially to be dreaded +in a day when the people were crazed for any new thing--as Paul found +them in Athens. + +Mr. Gridley mentioned further that the person had suffered from what the +alienists called "morbid delusions of grandeur"--believing, indeed, that +but One other in the universe was greater than himself; that he would +sit at the right hand of Power to judge all the world. His most puerile +pretension, however, was that he meant to live, even if the work +required a thousand years, until such time as he could save all persons +into heaven, so that hell need have no occupants. + +But this distressing tale did not move old Allan Delcher to reconsider +his perverse decision, though there had been ample time for reparation. +Placidly he dropped off one day, a little while after he had cautioned +Clytie to keep the house ready for Bernal's coming; and to have always +on hand one of those fig layer-cakes of which he was so fond, since as +likely as not he would ask for this the first thing, just as he used to +do. It must seem homelike to him when he did come. + +Having betrayed the trust reposed in him by an unsuspecting grandson, it +seemed fitting that he should fall asleep over that very psalm wherein +David describeth the corruption of the natural man. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +HOW EDOM WAS FAVOURED OF GOD AND MAMMON + + +In the years gone, the village of Edom had matured, even as little boys +wax to manhood. Time was when all but two trains daily sped by it so +fast that from their windows its name over the station door was naught +but a blur. Now all was changed. Many trains stopped, and people of the +city mien descended from or entered smart traps, yellow depot-wagons or +immaculate victorias, drawn by short-tailed, sophisticated steeds +managed by liveried persons whose scraped faces were at once impassive +and alert. + +In its outlying parts, moreover, stately villas now stood in the midst +of grounds hedged, levelled, sprayed, shaven, trimmed and +garnished--grounds cherished sacredly with a reverence like unto that +once accorded the Front Room in this same village. Edom, indeed, had +outgrown its villagehood as a country boy in the city will often outgrow +his home ways. That is, it was still a village in its inmost heart; but +outwardly, at its edges, the distinctions and graces of urban +worldliness had come upon it. + +All this from the happy circumstance that Edom lay in a dale of beauty +not too far from the blessed centre of things requisite. First, one by +one, then by families, then by groups of families, then by cliques, the +invaders had come to promote Edom's importance; one being brought by the +gracious falling of its little hills; one by its narrow valleys where +the quick little waters come down; one by the clearness of its air; and +one by the cheapness with which simple old farms might be bought and +converted into the most city-like of country homes. + +The old stock of Edom had early learned not to part with any massive +claw-footed sideboard with glass knobs, or any mahogany four-poster, or +tall clock, or high-boy, except after feigning a distressed reluctance. +It had learned also to hide its consternation at the prices which this +behaviour would eventually induce the newcomers to pay for such junk. +Indeed, it learned very soon to be a shrewd valuer of old mahogany, +pewter, and china; even to suspect that the buyers might perceive +beauties in it that justified the prices they paid. + +Old Edom, too, has its own opinion of the relative joys of master and +servant, the latter being always debonair, their employers stiff, formal +and concerned. It conceives that the employers, indeed, have but one +pleasure: to stand beholding with anxious solemnity--quite as if it were +the performance of a religious rite--the serious-visaged men who daily +barber the lawns and hedges. It is suspected by old Edomites that the +menials, finding themselves watched at this delicate task, strive to +copy in face and demeanour the solemnity of the observing +employer--clipping the box hedge one more fraction of an inch with the +wariest caution--maintaining outwardly, in short, a most reverent +seriousness which in their secret hearts they do not feel. + +Let this be so or not. The point is that Edom had gone beyond its three +churches of Calvin, Wesley and Luther--to say nothing of one poor little +frame structure with a cross at the peak, where a handful of benighted +Romanists had long been known to perform their idolatrous rites. Now, +indeed, as became a smartened village, there was a perfect little +Episcopal church of redstone, stained glass and painted shingles, with a +macadam driveway leading under its dainty _porte-cochère_, and at the +base of whose stern little tower an eager ivy already aspired; a +toy-like, yet suggestively imposing edifice, quite in the manner of +smart suburban churches--a manner that for want of accurate knowledge +one might call confectioner's gothic. + +It was here, in his old home, that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford +found his first pastorate. Here from the very beginning he rendered +apparent those gifts that were to make him a power among men. It was +with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice began his first +service that June morning, before a congregation known to be +hypercritical, composed as it was of seasoned city communicants, +hardened listeners and watchers, who would appraise his vestments, +voice, manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light of a ripe +experience. + +Yet his success was instant. He knew it long before the service +ended--felt it infallibly all at once in the midst of his sermon on +Faith. From the reading of his text, "For God so loved the world that he +gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein might not +perish, but have everlasting life," the worldly people before him were +held as by invisible wires running from him to each of them. He felt +them sway in obedience to his tones; they warmed with him and cooled +with him; aspired with him, questioned, agreed, and glowed with him. +They were his--one with him. Their eyes saw a young man in the splendour +of his early prime, of a faultless, but truly masculine beauty, delicate +yet manfully rugged, square-chinned, straight-mouthed, with tawny hair +and hazel eyes full of glittering golden points when his eloquence +mounted; clear-skinned, brilliant, warm-voiced, yet always simple, +direct, earnest; a storehouse of power, yet ornate; a source of +refreshment both physical and spiritual to all within the field of his +magnetism. + +So agreed those who listened to that first sermon on Faith, in which +that virtue was said be like the diamond, made only the brighter by +friction. Motionless his listeners sat while he likened Faith to the +giant engine that has rolled the car of Religion out from the maze of +antiquity into the light of the present day, where it now waits to be +freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, then to speed on to +that hoped-for golden era when truth shall come forth as a new and +blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in +one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet acknowledging the +sovereignty of Omnipotence. + +Rapt were they when, with rare verbal felicity and unstudied eloquence, +the young man pictured himself standing upon a lofty sunlit mountain, +while a storm raged in the valley below, calling passionately to those +far down in the ebullition to come up to him and mingle in the blue +serene of Faith. Faith was, indeed, a tear dropped on the world's cold +cheek of Doubt to make it burn forever. + +Even those long since _blasé_ to pulpit oratory thrilled at the simple +beauty of his peroration, which ran: "_Faith!_ Oh, of all the flowers +that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none +so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Faith. Other flowers there may +be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that +their fragrance become perceptible. But this flower--" + +In spite of this triumph, it had taken him still another year to prevail +over one of his hearers. True, she had met him after that first +triumphant ordination sermon with her black lashes but half-veiling the +admiration that shone warm in the gray of her eyes; and his low +assurance, "Nance, you _please_ me! Really you do!" as his yellow eyes +lingered down her rounded slenderness from summer bonnet to hem of +summer gown, rippled her face with a colour she had to laugh away. + +Yet she had been obstinate and wondering. There had to be a year in +which she knew that one she dreamed of would come back; another in which +she believed he might; another in which she hoped he would--and yet +another in which she realised that dreams and hopes alike were +vain--vain, though there were times in which she seemed to feel again +the tingling life of that last hand-clasp; times when he called to her; +times when she had the absurd consciousness that his mind pressed upon +hers. There had been so many years and so much wonder--and no one came. +It had been foolish indeed. And then came a year of wondering at the +other. The old wonder concerning this one, excited by a certain fashion +of rendering his head in unison with his shoulders--as might the statue +of Perfect Beauty turn upon its pedestal--with its baser residue of +suspicion, had been happily allayed by a closer acquaintance with Allan. +One must learn, it seemed, to distrust those lightning-strokes of +prejudice that flash but once at the first contact between human clouds. + +Yet in the last year there had come another wonder that excited a +suspicion whose troubling-power was absurdly out of all true proportion. + +It was in the matter of seeing things--that is, funny things. + +Doubtless she had told him a few things more or less funny that had +seemed to move him to doubt or perplexity, or to mere seriousness; but, +indeed, they had seemed less funny to her after that. For example, she +had told Aunt Bell the anecdote of the British lady of title who says to +her curate, concerning a worthy relative by marriage lately passed away, +toward whom she has felt kindly despite his inferior station: "Of course +I _couldn't_ know him here--but we shall meet in heaven." Aunt Bell had +been edified by this, remarking earnestly that such differences would +indeed be wiped out in heaven. Yet when Nancy went to Allan in a certain +bubbling condition over the anecdote itself and Aunt Bell's comment +thereon, he made her repeat it slowly, after the first hurried telling, +and had laughed but awkwardly with her, rather as if it were expected of +him--with an eye vacant of all but wonder--like a traveller not sure he +had done right to take the left-hand turn at the last cross-roads. + +Again, the bishop who ordained him had, in a relaxed and social moment +after the ceremony, related that little classic of Bishop Meade, who, +during the fight over a certain disestablishment measure, was asked by a +lobbyist how he would vote. The dignified prelate had replied that he +would vote for the bill, for he held that every man should have the +right to choose his own way to heaven. None the less, he would continue +to be certain that a gentleman would always take the Episcopal way. To +Nancy Allan retold this, adding, + +"You know, I'm going to use it in a sermon some time." + +"Yes--it's very funny," she answered, a little uncertainly. + +"Funny?" + +"Yes." + +"Do you think so?" + +"Of course--I've heard the bishop tell it myself--and I know _he_ thinks +it funny." + +"Well--then I'll use it as a funny story. Of course, it _is_ funny--I +only thought"--what it was he only thought Nancy never knew. + +Small bits of things to wonder at, these were, and the wonder brought no +illumination. She only knew there were times when they two seemed of +different worlds, bereft of power to communicate; and at these times his +superbly assured wooing left her slightly dazed. + +But there were other times, and different--and slowly she became used to +the idea of him--persuaded both by his own court and by the spirited +encomiums that he evoked from Aunt Bell. + +Aunt Bell was at that time only half persuaded by Allan to re-enter the +church of her blameless infancy. She was still minded to seek a little +longer outside the fold that _rapport_ with the Universal Mind which she +had never ceased to crave. In this process she had lately discarded +Esoteric Buddhism for Subliminal Monitions induced by Psychic Breathing +and correct breakfast-food. For all that, she felt competent to declare +that Allan was the only possible husband for her niece, and her niece +came to suspect that this might be so. + +When at last she had wondered herself into a state of inward +readiness--a state still governed by her outward habit of resistance, +this last was beaten down by a letter from Mrs. Tednick, who had been a +school friend as Clara Tremaine, and was now married, apparently with +results not too desirable. + +"Never, my dear," ran the letter to Nancy, "permit yourself to think of +marrying a man who has not a sense of humour. Do I seem flippant? Don't +think it. I am conveying to you the inestimable benefits of a trained +observation. Humour saves a man from being impossible in any number of +ways--from boring you to beating you. (You may live to realise that the +tragedy of _the first_ is not less poignant than that of the second.) +Whisper, dear!--All men are equally vain--at least in their ways with a +woman--but humour assuredly preserves many unto death from betraying it +egregiously. Beware of him if he lack it. He has power to crucify you +daily, and yet be in honest ignorance of your tortures. Don't think I am +cynical--and indeed, my own husband is one of the best and dearest of +souls in the world, _the biggest heart_--but be sure you marry no man +without humour. Don't think a man has it merely because he tells funny +stories; the humour I mean is a kind of sense of the fitness of things +that keeps a man from forgetting himself. And if he hasn't humour, don't +think he can make you happy, even if his vanity doesn't show. He +can't--after the expiration of that brief period in which the vanity of +each is a holy joy to the other. Remember now!" + +Curiously enough this well-intended homily had the effect of arousing in +Nancy an instant sense of loyalty to Allan. She suffered little flashes +of resentment at the thought that Clara Tremaine should seem to +depreciate one toward whom she felt herself turning with a sudden +defensive tenderness. And this, though it was clear to the level eye of +reason that Clara must have been generalising on observations made far +from Edom. But her loyal spirit was not less eager to resent an affront +because it might seem to have been aimless. + +And thereafter, though never ceasing to wonder, Nancy was won. Her +consent, at length, went to him in her own volume of Browning, a pink +rose shut in upon "A Woman's Last Word"--its petals bruised against the +verses: + + "What so false as truth is, + False to thee? + Where the serpent's tooth is, + Shun the tree. + + "Where the apple reddens, + Never pry-- + Lest we lose our Edens, + Eve and I. + + "Be a god and hold me + With a charm! + Be a man and fold me + With thine arm!" + +That was a moment of sweetness, of utter rest, of joyous peace--fighting +no longer. + +A little while and he was before her, proud as a conquerer may be--glad +as a lover should. + +"I always knew it, Nance--you _had_ to give in." + +Then as she drooped in his arms, a mere fragrant, pulsing, glad +submission-- + +"You have _always_ pleased me, Nancy. I know I shall never regret my +choice." + +And Nancy, scarce hearing, wondered happily on his breast. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE WINNING OF BROWETT + + +A thoughtful Pagan once reported dignity to consist not in possessing +honours, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. It is a theory +fit to console multitudes. Edom's young rector was not only consoled by +it, he was stimulated. To his ardent nature, the consciousness of +deserving honour was the first vital step toward gaining it. Those +things that he believed himself to deserve he forthwith subjected to the +magnetic rays of his desire: Knowing with the inborn certainty of the +successful, that they must finally yield to such silent, coercing +influence and soon or late gravitate toward him in obedience to the same +law that draws the apple to the earth's lap. In this manner had the +young man won his prizes for oratory; so had he won his wife; so had he +won his first pastorate; so now would he win that prize he was conscious +of meriting next--a city parish--a rectorate in the chief seat of his +church in America, where was all wealth and power as well as the great +among men, to be swayed by his eloquence and brought at last to the +Master's feet. And here, again, would his future enlarge to prospects +now but mistily surmised--prospects to be moved upon anon with +triumphant tread. Infinite aspiration opening ever beyond itself--this +was his. Meantime, step by step, with zealous care for the accuracy of +each, with eyes always ahead, leaving nothing undone--he was forever +fashioning the moulds into which the Spirit should materialise his +benefits. + +The first step was the winning of Browett--old Cyrus Browett, whose +villa, in the fashion of an English manor-house, was a feature of remark +even to the Edom summer dwellers--a villa whose wide grounds were so +swept, garnished, trimly flowered, hedge-bordered and shrub-upholstered +that, to old Edom, they were like stately parlours built foolishly out +of doors. + +Months had the rector of tiny St. Anne's waited for Browett to come to +him, knowing that Browett must come in the end. One less instinctively +wise would have made the mistake of going to Browett. Not this one, +whose good spirit warned him that his puissance lay rather with groups +of men than with individuals. From back of the chancel railing he could +sway the crowd and make it all his own; whereas, taking that same crowd +singly, and beyond his sacerdotal functions, he might be at the mercy of +each man composing it. He knew, in short, that Cyrus Browett as one of +his congregation on a Sabbath morning would be a mere atom in the +plastic cosmos below him; whereas Browett by himself, with the granite +hardness of his crag-like face, his cool little green eyes--unemotional +as two algebraic x's--would be a matter fearfully different. Even his +white moustache, close-clipped as his own hedges, and guarding a stiff, +chilled mouth, was a thing grimly repressed, telling that the man was +quite invulnerable to his own vanity. A human Browett would have +permitted that moustache to mitigate its surroundings with some flowing +grace. He was, indeed, no adversary to meet alone in the open field--for +one who could make him in a crowd a mere string of many to his harp. + +The morning so long awaited came on a second Sunday after Trinity. Cyrus +Browett, in whose keeping was the very ark of the money covenant, +alighted from his coupé under the _porte-cochère_ of candied Gothic and +humbly took seat in his pew like a mere worshipper of God. + +As such--a man among men--the young rector looked calmly down upon him, +letting him sink into the crowd-entity which always became subject to +him. + +His rare, vibrant tones--tones that somehow carried the subdued light +and warmth of stained glass--rolled out in moving volume: + +"The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before +him." + +Then, still as a mere worshipper of God, that Prince of the power of +Mammon down in front knelt humbly to say after the young rector above +him that he had erred and strayed like a lost sheep, followed too much +the devices of his own heart, leaving undone those things he ought to +have done, and doing those things which he ought not to have done; that +there was no health in him; yet praying that he might, thereafter, lead +a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of God's holy name. Even +to Allan there was something affecting in this--a sort of sardonic +absurdity in Browett's actually speaking thus. + +The kneeling financier was indeed a gracious and lovely spectacle to the +young clergyman, and in his next words, above the still-bended +congregation, his tones grew warmly moist with an unction that thrilled +his hearers as never before. Movingly, indeed, upon the authority that +God hath given to his ministers, did he declare and pronounce to his +people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. +Wonderful, in truth, had it been if his hearers did not thrill, for the +minister himself was thrilled as never before. He, Allan Delcher +Linford, was absolving and remitting the sins of a man whose millions +were counted by the hundred, a god of money and of power--who yet +cringed before him out there like one who feared and worshipped. + +Nor did he here make the mistake that many another would have made. +Instead of preaching to Cyrus Browett alone--preaching at him--he +preached as usual to his congregation. If his glance fell, now and then, +upon the face of Browett, he saw it only through the haze of his own +fervour--a patch of granite-gray holding two pricking points of light. +Not once was Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a crowd; +not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that +he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for +pew-rent. Yet, though the young rector regarded Browett as but one of +many, he knew infallibly the instant that invisible wire was strung +between them, and felt, thereafter, every tug of opposition or signal of +agreement that flashed from Browett's mind, knowing in the end, without +a look, that he had won Browett's approval and even excited his +interest. + +For the sermon had been strangely, wonderfully suited to Browett's +peculiar tastes. Hardly could a sermon have been better planned to win +him. The choice of the text itself: "And thou shalt take no gift: for +the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words of the righteous," +was perfect art. + +The plea was for intellectual honesty, for academic freedom, for +fearless independence, which were said to be the crowning glories in the +diadem of man's attributes. Fearlessly, then, did the speaker depreciate +both the dogmatism of religion and the dogmatism of science. "Much of +what we call religion," he said, "is only the superstition of the past; +much of what we call science is but the superstition of the present." He +pleaded that religion might be an ever-living growth in the human heart, +not a dead formulary of dogmatic origin. True, organisation was +necessary, but in the realm of spiritual essentials a creed drawn up in +the fourth century should not be treated as if it were the final +expression of the religious consciousness _in secula seculorum_. One +should, indeed, be prepared for the perpetual restatement of religious +truth, fearlessly submitting the most cherished convictions to the light +of each succeeding age. + +Yet, especially, should it not be forgotten in an age of +ultra-physicism, of social and economic heterodoxies, that there must +ever be in human society, according to the blessed ordinance of God, +princes and subjects, masters and proletariat, rich and poor, learned +and ignorant, nobles and plebeians--yet all united in the bonds of love +to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last +end in heaven;--all united in the bonds of fraternal good-will, +independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. + +He closed with these words of Voltaire: "We must love our country +whatever injustice we suffer in it, as we must love and serve the +Supreme Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so +often dishonour His worship." + +The sermon was no marked achievement in coherence, but neither was +Browett a coherent personality. It was, however, a swift, vivid +sermon--a short and a busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, +incoherent though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic doubter of his +own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire and a believer in the +Established Order of Things; despising a radical and a conservative +equally, but, hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He must be +preached to as one not yet brought into that flock purchased by God with +the blood of His Son; and at the same time, as one who had always been +of that flock and was now inalienable from it. In a word, Browett's +doubt and his belief had both to be fed from the same spoon, a fact that +all young preachers of God's word would not have fathomed. + +Thus our young rector proved his power. His future rolled visibly toward +him. During the rest of that service there sounded in his ears an +undertone from out the golden centre of that future: "_Reverend Father +in God, we present unto you this godly and well-learned man to be +ordained and consecrated Bishop--_" + +Rewarded, indeed, was he for the trouble he had taken long months before +to build that particular sermon to fit Browett, after specifications +confided to him by an obliging parishioner--keeping it ready to use at a +second's notice, on the first morning that Browett should appear. + +How diminished would be that envious railing at Success could we but +know the hidden pains by which alone its victories of seeming ease are +won! + +The young minister could now meet Browett as man to man, having +established a prestige. + +It had been said by those who would fain have branded him with the +stigma of disrepute that Browett's ethics were inferior to those of the +prairie wolf; meaning, perhaps, that he might kill more sheep than he +could possibly devour. + +Browett had views of his own in this matter. As a tentative evolutionist +he looked upon his survival as unimpeachable evidence of his +fitness,--as the eagle is fitter than the lamb it may fasten upon. +Again, as a believer in Revealed Religion, he accepted human society +according to the ordinance of God, deeming himself as Master to be but +the rightful, divinely-instituted complement of his humblest +servant--the two of them necessary poles in the world spiritual. + +One of the few fads of Browett being the memorial window, it was also +said by enviers that if he would begin to erect a window to every small +competitor his Trust had squeezed to death there would be an +unprecedented flurry in stained glass. But Browett knew, as an +evolutionist, that the eagle has a divine right to the lamb if it can +come safely off with it; as a Christian, that one carries out the will +of God as indubitably in preserving the established order of prince and +subject, of noble and plebeian, as in giving of his abundance to relieve +the necessitous--or in endowing universities which should teach the +perpetual sacredness of the established order of things in Church and +State. + +In short, he derived comfort from both poles of his belief--one the God +of Moses, a somewhat emotional god, not entirely uncarnal--the other the +god of Spencer, an unemotional and unimaginative god of Law. + +It followed that he was much taken with a preacher who could answer so +appositely to the needs of his soul as did this impressive young man in +a chance sermon of unstudied eloquence. + +There were social meetings in which Browett dispassionately confirmed +these early impressions gained under the spell of a matchless oratory, +and in due time there followed an invitation to the young rector of St. +Anne's of Edom to preach at the Church of St. Antipas, which was +Browett's city church. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +A BELATED MARTYRDOM + + +The rectory at Edom was hot with the fever of preparation. The +invitation to preach at St. Antipas meant an offer of that parish should +the preaching be approved. It was a most desirable parish--Browett's +city church being as smart as one of his steam yachts or his private +train (for nothing less than a train sufficed him now--though there were +those of the green eyes who pretended to remember, with heavy sarcasm, +the humbler day when he had but a beggarly private car, coupled to the +rear of a common Limited). It was, moreover, a high church, its last +rector having been put away for the narrowness of refusing to "enrich +the service." This was the church and this the patron above all others +that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford would have chosen, and earnestly +did he pray that God in His wisdom impart to him the grace to please +Browett and those whom Browett permitted to have a nominal voice in the +control of St. Antipas. + +Both Aunt Bell and Nancy came to feel the strain of it all. The former +promised to "go into the silence" each day and "hold the thought of +success," thereby drawing psychic power for him from the Reservoir of +the Eternal. + +Nancy could only encourage by wifely sympathy, being devoid of those +psychic powers that distinguished Aunt Bell. Tenderly she hovered about +Allan the morning he began to write the first of the three sermons he +was to preach. + +As for him, though heavy with the possibilities of the moment, he was +yet cool and centred; resigned to what might be, yet hopeful; his manner +was determined, yet gentle, almost sweet--the manner of one who has +committed all to God and will now put no cup from him, how bitter +soever. + +"I am so hopeful, dearest, for your sake," his wife said, softly, +wishing to reveal her sympathy yet fearful lest she might obtrude it. He +was arranging many sheets of notes before him. + +"What will the first one be?" she asked. He straightened in his chair. + +"I've made up my mind, Nance! It's a wealthy congregation--one of the +wealthiest in the city--but I shall preach first from the parable of +Dives and Lazarus." + +"Isn't that--a little--wouldn't something else do as well--something +that wouldn't seem quite so personal?" + +He smiled up with fond indulgence. "That's the woman of it--concession +for temporal advantage." Then more seriously he added, "I wouldn't be +true to myself, Nance, if I went down there in any spirit of truckling +to wealth. Public approval is a most desirable luxury, I grant +you--wealth and ease are desirable luxuries, and the favour of those in +power--but they're only luxuries. And I know in this matter but one real +necessity: my own self-approval. If consciously I preached a polite +sermon there, my own soul would accuse me and I should be as a leaf in +the wind for power. No, Nance--never urge me to be untrue to that divine +Christ-self within me! If I cannot be my best self before God, I am +nothing. I must preach Christ and Him crucified, whether it be to the +wealthy of St. Antipas or only to believing poverty." + +Stung with contrition, she was quick to say, "Oh, my dearest, I didn't +mean you to be untrue! Only it seemed unnecessary to affront them in +your very first sermon." + +"I have been divinely guided, Nance. No considerations of expediency can +deflect me now. This _had_ to be! I admit that I had my hour of +temptation--but that has gone, and thank God my integrity survives it." + +"Oh, how much bigger you are than I am, dearest!" She looked down at him +proudly as she stood close to his side, smoothing the tawny hair. Then +she laid one finger along his lips and made the least little kissing +noise with her own lips--a trick of affection learned in the early days +of their love. After a little she stole from his side, leaving him with +head bent in prayerful study--to be herself alone with her new +assurance. + +It was moments like this that she had come to long for and to feed her +love upon. Nor need it be concealed that there had not been one such for +many months. The situation had been graver than she was willing to +acknowledge to herself. Not only had she not ceased to wonder since the +first days of her marriage, but she had begun to smile in her wonder, +fancying from time to time that certain plain answers came to it--and +not at all realising that a certain kind of smile is love's unforgivable +blasphemy; conscious only that the smile left a strange hurt in her +heart. + +For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly turning the +light of her newly fed faith upon an idol whose clearness of line and +purity of tint had become blurred in a dusk of wondering--an idol that +had begun, she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely +through that deepening gloom of doubt. + +Now all was well again. In this new light the dear idol might even at +times show a dual personality--one kneeling beside her very earnestly to +worship the other with her. Why not, since the other showed itself truly +worthy of adoration? With faith made new in her husband--and, therefore, +in God--she went to Aunt Bell. + +She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, over her book, "The +Beautiful Within," her particular chapter being headed, "Psychology of +Rest: Rhythms and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism +with Subliminal Spontaneity." Over this frank revelation of hidden +truths Aunt Bell's handsome head was, for the moment, nodding in +sub-rhythms of psychic placidity--a state from which Nancy's animated +entrance sufficed to arouse her. As the proud wife spoke, she divested +herself of the psychic restraint with something very like a carnal yawn +behind her book. + +"Oh, Aunt Bell! Isn't Allan _fine_! Of course, in a way, it's too +bad--doubtless he'll spoil his chances for the thing I know he's set his +heart upon--and he knows it, too--but he's going calmly ahead as if the +day for martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, dear, +martyrs are _so_ dowdy and out-of-date--but there he is, a great, noble, +beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity and independence that is +stunning!" + +"What has Allan been saying now?" asked Aunt Bell, curiously unmoved. + +"_Said?_ It's what he's _doing!_ The dear, big, stupid thing is going +down there to preach the very first Sunday about Dives and Lazarus--the +poor beggar in Abraham's bosom and the rich man down below, you +remember?" she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to hover about the +centre of psychic repose. + +"Well?" + +"Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to _any one_ in this +age--then think of a young minister talking it to a church of rich men +and expecting to receive a call from them!" + +Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness of her small hands +with more than her usual studious complacence. "My dear," she said at +last, "no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have--but I've +observed that he usually knows what he's about." + +"Indeed, he knows what he's about now, Aunt Bell!" There was a swift +little warmth in her tones--"but he says he can't do otherwise. He's +going deliberately to spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a +piece of mere early-Christian quixotism. And you must see how _great_ he +is, Aunt Bell. Do you know--there have been times when I've misjudged +Allan. I didn't know his simple genuineness. He wants that church, yet +he will not, as so many in his place would do, make the least concession +to its people." + +Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to bear upon one small +foot which she thrust absently out until its profile could be seen. + +"Perhaps he will have his reward," she said. "Although it is many years +since I broadened into what I may call the higher unbelief, I have never +once suspected, my dear, that merit fails of its reward. And above all, +I have faith in Allan, in his--well, his psychic nature is so perfectly +attuned with the Universal that Allan simply _cannot_ harm himself. Even +when he seems deliberately to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead. +So cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence and holding +the thought of success for him. I think Allan will attend very +acceptably to the mere details." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE WALLS OF ST. ANTIPAS FALL AT THE THIRD BLAST + + +On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when the young minister faced +a thronged St. Antipas at eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at +him from Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward--the pew of Cyrus +Browett--looked up at him in trembling, loving wonder. Then a little +tender half-smile of perfect faith went dreaming along her just-parted +lips. Let the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas--she could see the +relentless profile of their chief at her right--be offended by his +rugged speech: he should find atoning comfort in her new love. Like +Luther, he must stand there to say out the soul of him, and she was +prostrate before his brave greatness. + +When, at last, he came to read the biting verses of the parable, her +heart beat as if it would be out to him, her face paled and hardened +with the strain of his ordeal. + + "And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by + the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died and + was buried. + + "And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and + seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. + + "And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and + send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water + and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.' + + "But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime + receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; + but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'" + +The sermon began. Unflinchingly the preacher pointed out that Dives, +apparently, lay in hell for no other reason than that he had been a rich +man; no sin was imputed to him; not even unbelief; he had not only +transgressed no law, but was doubtless a respectable, God-fearing man of +irreproachable morals--sent to hell for his wealth. + +And Lazarus appeared to have won heaven merely by reason of his poverty. +No virtue, no active good conduct, was accredited to him. + +Reading with the eye of common understanding, Jesus taught that the +rich merited eternal torment by reason of their riches, and the poor +merited eternal life by reason of their poverty, a belief that one +might hear declared even to-day. Nor was this view attested solely by +this parable. Jesus railed constantly at those in high places, at the +rich and at lawyers, and the chief priests and elders and those in +authority--declaring that he had been sent, not to them, but to the +poor who needed a physician. + +But was there not a seeming inconsistency here in the teachings of the +Master? If the poor achieved heaven automatically by their mere poverty, +_why were they still needing a physician?_ Under that view, why were not +the rich those who needed a physician--according to the literal words of +Jesus? + +Up to the close of this passage the orator's manner had been one of +glacial severity--of a sternness apparently checked by rare self-control +from breaking into a denunciation of the modern Dives. Then all was +changed. His face softened and lighted; the broad shoulders seemed to +relax from their uncompromising squareness; he stood more easily upon +his feet; he glowed with a certain encouraging companionableness. + +Was that, indeed, the teaching of Jesus--as if in New York to-day he +might say, "I have come to Third Avenue rather than to Fifth?" Can this +crudely literal reading of his words prevail? Does it not carry its own +refutation--the extreme absurdity of supposing that Jesus would come to +the squalid Jews of the East Side and denounce the better elements that +maintain a church like St. Antipas? + +The fallacy were easily probed. A modern intelligence can scarcely +prefigure heaven or hell as a reward or punishment for mere carnal +comfort or discomfort--as many literal-minded persons believe that +Jesus taught. The Son of Man was too subtle a philosopher to teach that +a rich man is lost by his wealth and a poor man saved by his poverty, +though primitive minds took this to be his meaning. Some primitive minds +still believe this--witness the frequent attempts to read a literal +meaning into certain other words of Jesus: the command, for example, +that a man should give up his cloak also, if he be sued for his coat. +Little acumen is required to see that no society could protect itself +against the depredations of the lawless under such a system of +non-resistance; and we may be sure that Jesus had no intention of +tearing down the social structure or destroying vested rights. Those who +demand a literal construction of the parable of Dives and Lazarus must +look for it in the Bowery melodrama, wherein the wealthy only are +vicious and poverty alone is virtuous. + +We have only to consider the rawness of this conception to perceive that +Jesus is not to be taken literally. + +Who, then, is the rich man and who the poor--who is the Dives and who +the Lazarus of this intensely dramatic parable? + +Dives is but the type of the spiritually rich man who has not charity +for his spiritually poor brother; of the man rich in faith who will not +trouble to counsel the doubting; of the one rich in humility who will +yet not seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him rich in +charity who indifferently views his uncharitable brethren; of the man +rich in hope who will not strive to make hopeful the despairing; of the +one rich in graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim the +unsanctified beggar at his gate. + +And who is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring--the soul-hungry, whether +he be a millionaire or a poor clerk--the determined seeker whose eye is +single and whose whole body is full of light? In this view, surely more +creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material wealth ceases +to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality may be the actual beggar rich +in faith yet indifferent to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor +Lazarus may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, day +after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the beggar, out of the +abundance of his faith, would never miss. + +Christianity has suffered much from our failure to give the Saviour due +credit for subtlety. So far as money--mere wealth--is a soul-factor at +all, it must be held to increase rather than to diminish its possessor's +chances of salvation, but not in merely providing the refinements of +culture and the elegances of modern luxury and good taste, important +though these are to the spirit's growth. The true value of wealth to the +soul--a value difficult to over-estimate--is that it provides +opportunity for, and encourages the cultivation of, that virtue which is +"the greatest of all these"; that virtue which "suffereth long and is +kind; which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up"--Charity, in +short. While not denying the simple joys of penury, nor forgetting the +Saviour's promises to the poor and meek and lowly, it is still easy to +understand that charity is less likely to be a vigorous soul-growth in a +poor man than in a rich. The poor man may possess it as a germ, a seed; +but the rich man is, through superior prowess in the struggle for +existence, in a position to cultivate this virtue; and who will say that +he has not cultivated it? Certainly no one acquainted with the efforts +of our wealthy men to uplift the worthy poor. A certain modern +sentimentality demands that poverty be abolished--ignoring those +pregnant words of Jesus--"the poor ye have _always_ with +you"--forgetting, indeed, that human society is composed of unequal +parts, even as the human body; that equality exists among the social +members only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, +have sinned in Adam, and have been, by the sacrificial blood of God's +only begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary, equally redeemed into +eternal life, if they will but accept Christ as their only true +Saviour;--forgetting indeed that to abolish poverty would at once +prevent all manifestations of human nature's most beauteous trait and +virtue--Charity. + +Present echoes from the business world indicate that the poor man +to-day, with his vicious discontent, his preposterous hopes of +trades-unionism, and his impracticable and very _un-Christian_ dreams of +an industrial millennium, is the true and veritable Dives, rich in +arrogance and poor in that charity of judgment which the millionaire has +so abundantly shown himself to possess. + +The remedy was for the world to come up higher. Standing upon one of the +grand old peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the speaker had once witnessed a +scene in the valley below which, for beauty of illustration of the +thought in hand, the world could not surpass. He told his hearers what +the scene was. And he besought them to come up to the rock of Charity +and mingle in the blue serene. Charity--a tear dropped on the world's +cold cheek of intolerance to make it burn forever! Or it was the grand +motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of +civilisation out from the maze of antiquity into the light of the +present day where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits +of living genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for golden era when +truth shall rise as a new and blazing star to light the splendid +pageantry of earth, bound together in one law of universal brotherhood, +independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. Charity +indeed was what Voltaire meant to inculcate when he declared: "Atheism +and fanaticism are the two poles of a universe of confusion and horror. +The narrow zone of virtue is between these two. March with a firm step +in that path; believe in a good God and do good." + +The peroration was beautifully simple, thrilling the vast throng with a +sudden deeper conviction of the speaker's earnestness: "_Charity!_ Oh, +of all the flowers that have swung their golden censers in the parterre +of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of charity. +Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be +crushed before their fragrance becomes perceptible; but _this_ flower at +early morn, at burning noon and when the dew of eve is on the flowers, +has coursed its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark +dell, over the burning plain, and up the mountain side--_up_, ever UP it +rises into the beautiful blue--up along the cloudy corridors of the day, +up along the misty pathway to the skies till it touches the beautiful +shore and mingles with the breath of angels." + +Hardly was there a dissenting voice in all St. Antipas that Sabbath upon +the proposal that this powerful young preacher be called to its pulpit. +The few who warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not +sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted the following +Sabbath by a very different sermon on certain flaws in the fashionable +drama. + +The one and only possible immorality in this world, contended the +speaker, was untruth. A sermon was as immoral as any stage play if the +soul of it was not Truth; and a stage play became as moral as a sermon +if its soul was truth. The special form of untruth he attacked was what +he styled "the drama of the glorified wanton." Warmly and ably did he +denounce the pernicious effect of those plays, that take the wanton for +a heroine and sentimentalise her into a morbid attractiveness. The stage +should show life, and the wanton, being of life, might be portrayed; but +let it be with ruthless fidelity. She must not be falsified into a +creature of fine sensibilities and lofty emotions--a thing of dangerous +plausibility to the innocent. + +The last doubter succumbed on the third Sabbath, when he preached from +the warning of Jesus that many would come after him, performing in his +name wonders that might deceive, were it possible, even the very elect. +The sermon likened this generation to the people Paul found in Athens, +running curiously after any new god; after Christian Science--which he +took the liberty of remarking was neither Christian nor scientific--or +mental science, spiritism, theosophy, clairvoyance, all black arts, +straying from the fold of truth into outer darkness--forgetting that +"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that +whosoever believed therein might not perish, but have everlasting life." +As this was the sole means of salvation that God had provided, the time +was, obviously, one fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. + +As a sagacious member of the Board of Trustees remarked, it would hardly +have been possible to preach three sermons better calculated, each in +its way, to win the approval of St. Antipas. + +The call came and was accepted after the signs of due and prayerful +consideration. But as for Nancy, she had left off certain of her +wonderings forever. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THERE ENTERETH THE SERPENT OF INAPPRECIATION + + +For the young rector of St. Antipas there followed swift, rich, +high-coloured days--days in which he might have framed more than one +triumphant reply to that poet who questioned why the spirit of mortal +should be proud, intimating that it should not be. + +Also was the handsome young rector's parish proud of him; proud of his +executive ability as shown in the management of its many organised +activities, religious and secular; its Brotherhood of St. Bartholomew, +its Men's Club, Women's Missionary Association, Guild and Visiting +Society, King's Daughters, Sewing School, Poor Fund, and still others; +proud of his decorative personality, his impressive oratory and the +modern note in his preaching; proud that its ushers must each Sabbath +morning turn away many late-comers. Indeed, the whole parish had been +born to a new spiritual life since that day when the worship at St. +Antipas had been kept simple to bareness by a stubborn and perverse +reactionary. In this happier day St. Antipas was known for its advanced +ritual, for a service so beautifully enriched that a new spiritual +warmth pervaded the entire parish. The doctrine of the Real Presence was +not timidly minced, but preached unequivocally, with dignified boldness. +Also there was a confessional, and the gracious burning of incense. In +short, St. Antipas throve, and the grace of the Holy Ghost palpably took +possession of its worshippers. The church was become the smartest church +in the diocese, and its communicants were held to have a tone. + +And to these communicants their rector of the flawless pulchritude was a +gracious spectacle, not only in the performance of his sacerdotal +offices, but on the thoroughfares of the city, where his distinction was +not less apparent than back of the chancel rail. + +A certain popular avenue runs between rows of once splendid mansions now +struggling a little awkwardly into trade on their lowest floors, like +impoverished but courageous gentlefolk. To these little tragedies, +however, the pedestrian throng is obtuse--blind to the pathos of those +still haughty upper floors, silent and reserved, behind drawn curtains, +while the lower two floors are degraded into shops. In so far as the +throng is not busied with itself, its attention is upon the roadway, +where is ever passing a festival procession of Success, its floats of +Worth Rewarded being the costliest and shiniest of the carriage-maker's +craft--eloquent of true dignity and fineness even in the swift silence +of their rubber tires. This is a spectacle to be viewed seriously; to be +mocked at only by the flippant, though the moving pedestrian mass on the +sidewalk is gayer of colour, more sentient--more companionable, more +understandably human. + +It was in this weaving mass on the walk that the communicants of St. +Antipas were often refreshed by the vision of their rector on pleasant +afternoons. Here the Reverend Doctor Linford loved to walk in God's +sunlight out of sheer simple joy in living--happily undismayed by any +possible consciousness that his progress turned all faces to regard him, +as inevitably as one would turn the spokes of an endless succession of +turnstyles. + +Habited with an obviously loving attention to detail, yet with tasteful +restraint, a precise and frankly confessed, yet never obtrusive, +elegance, bowing with a manner to those of his flock favoured by heaven +to meet him, superbly, masculinely handsome, he was far more than a mere +justification of the pride St. Antipas felt in him. He was a splendid +inspiration to belief in God and man. + +Nor was he of the type Pharasaic--the type to profess love for its kind, +yet stay scrupulously aloof from the vanquished and court only the +victors. Indeed, this was not so. + +In the full tide of his progress--it was indeed a progress and never a +mere walk--he would stop to address a few words of simple cheer to the +aged female mendicant--perhaps to make a joke with her--some pleasantry +not unbefitting his station, his mien denoting a tender chivalry which +has been agreeably subdued though not impaired by the experience +inevitable to a man of the world. When he dropped the coin into the +withered palm, he did it with a certain lingering hurriedness, as one +frankly unable to repress a human weakness, though nervously striving to +have it over quickly and by stealth. + +Young Rigby Reeves, generalising, as it later appeared, from inadequate +data, swore once that the rector of St. Antipas kept always an eye ahead +for the female mendicant in the tattered shawl and the bonnet of +inferior modishness; that, if the Avenue was crowded enough to make it +seem worth while, he would even cross from one side to the other for the +sake of speaking to her publicly. + +While the fact so declared may have been a fact, the young man's +corollary that the rector of St. Antipas sought this experience for the +sake of its mere publicity came from a prejudice which closer +acquaintance with Dr. Linford happily dissolved from his mind. As +reasonably might he have averred, as did another cynic, that the rector +of St. Antipas was actuated by the instincts of a mountebank when he +selected his evening papers each day--deliberately and with kind +words--from the stock of a newswoman at a certain conspicuous and +ever-crowded crossing. As reasonable was the imputation of this other +cynic, that in greeting friends upon the thronged avenue, the rector +never failed to use some word or phrase that would identify him to those +passing, giving the person addressed an unpleasant sense of being placed +in a lime-light, yet reducing him to an insignificance just this side +the line of obliteration. + +"You say, 'Ah, Doctor!' and shake hands, you know," said this +hypercritical observer, "and, ten to one, he says something about St. +Antipas directly, you know, or--'Tell him to call on Dr. Linford at the +rectory adjoining St. Antipas--I'm always there at eleven,' or 'Yes, +quite true, the bishop said to me, "My dear Linford, we depend on you in +this matter,"' or telling how Mrs. General Somebody-Something, you +know--I never could remember names--took him down dreadfully by calling +him the most dangerously fascinating man in New York. And there you are, +you know! It never fails, on my word! And all the time people are +passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, so that it's quite +rowdy--saying 'Yes--that's Linford--there he is,' quite as if they were +on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give +you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the +fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some kind gentleman +from the audience.'" + +It may be told that this other person was of a cynicism hopelessly +indurated. Not so with Rigby Reeves, even after Reeves alleged the other +discoveries that the rector of St. Antipas had "a walk that would be a +strut, by gad! if he was as short as I am"; also that he "walked like a +parade," which, as expounded by Mr. Reeves, meant that his air in +walking was that of one conscious always of leading a triumphal +procession in his own honour; and again, that one might read in his eyes +a keenly sensuous enjoyment in the tones of his own voice; that he +coloured these with a certain unction corresponding to the flourishes +with which people of a certain obliquity of mind love to ornament their +chirography; still again that he, Reeves, was "ready to lay a bet that +the fellow would continue to pose even at the foot of the Great White +Throne." + +Happily this young man was won out of his carping attitude by closer +acquaintance with the rector of St. Antipas, and learned to regard those +things as no more than the inseparable antennae of a nature unusually +endowed with human warmth and richness--mere meaningless projections +from a personality simple, rugged, genuine, never subtle, and entirely +likable. He came to feel that, while the rector himself was unaffectedly +impressed by that profusion of gifts with which it had pleased heaven to +distinguish him, he was yet constantly annoyed and embarrassed by the +fact that he was thus made so salient a man. Young Reeves found him an +appreciative person, moreover, one who betrayed a sensible interest in a +fellow's own achievements, finding many reasons to be impressed by a few +little things in the way of athletics, travel, and sport that had never +seemed at all to impress the many--not even the members of one's own +family. Rigby Reeves, indeed, became an ardent partisan of Dr. Linford, +attending services religiously with his mother and sisters--and nearly +making a row in the club café one afternoon when the other and more +obdurate cynic declared, with a fine assumption of the judicial, that +Linford was "the best actor in New York--on the stage or off!" + +It was concerning this habit of the daily stroll that Aunt Bell and her +niece also disagreed one afternoon. They were in the little dark-wooded, +red-walled library of the rectory, Aunt Bell with her book of devotion, +Nancy at her desk, writing. + +From her low chair near the window, Aunt Bell had just beheld the +Doctor's erect head, its hat of flawless gloss, and his beautifully +squared shoulders, progress at a moderate speed across her narrow field +of vision. In so stiffly a level line had they passed that a profane +thought seized her unawares: the fancy that the rector of St. Antipas +had been pulled by the window on rollers. But this was at once atoned +for. She observed that Allan was one of the few men who walk always like +those born to rule. Then she spoke: + +"Nancy, why do you never walk with Allan in the afternoon? Nothing would +please him better--the boy is positively proud to have you." + +"Oh, I had to finish this letter to Clara," Nancy answered abstractedly, +as if still intent upon her writing, debating a word with narrowed eyes +and pen-tip at her teeth. + +But Aunt Bell was neither to be misunderstood nor insufficiently +answered. + +"Not this afternoon, especially--_any_ afternoon. I can't remember when +you've walked with him. So many times I've heard you refuse--and I dare +say it doesn't please him, you know." + +"Oh, he has often told me so." + +"Well?" + +"Aunt Bell--I--Oh, _you've_ walked on the street with Allan!" + +"To be sure I have!" + +"Well!" + +"Well--of course--that _is_ true in a way--Allan _does_ attract +attention the moment he reaches the pavement--and of course every one +stares at one--but it isn't the poor fellow's fault. At least, if the +boy were at all conscious of it he might in very little ways here and +there prevent the very tiniest bit of it--but, my dear, your husband is +a man of most striking appearance--especially in the clerical garb--even +on that avenue over there where striking persons abound--and it's not to +be helped. And I can't wonder he's not pleased with you when it gives +him such pleasure to have a modish and handsome young woman at his side. +I met him the other day walking down from Forty-second Street with that +stunning-looking Mrs. Wyeth, and he looked as happy and bubbling as a +schoolboy." + +"Oh--Aunt Bell--but of course, if you don't see, I couldn't possibly +tell you." She turned suddenly to her letter, as if to dismiss the +hopeless task. + +Now Aunt Bell, being entirely human, would not keep silence under an +intimation that her powers of discernment were less than phenomenal. The +tone of her reply, therefore, hinted of much. + +"My child--I may see and gather and understand much more than I give any +sign of." + +It was a wretchedly empty boast. Doubtless it had never been true of +Aunt Bell at any time in her life, but she was nettled now: one must +present frowning fortifications at a point where one is attacked, even +if they be only of pasteboard. Then, too, a random claim to possess +hidden fruits of observation is often productive. Much reticence goes +down before it. + +Nancy turned to her again with a kind of relief in her face. + +"Oh, Aunt Bell, I was sure of it--I couldn't tell you, but I was sure +you must see!" Her pen was thrown aside and she drooped in her chair, +her hands listless in her lap. + +Aunt Bell looked sympathetically voluble but wisely refrained from +speech. + +"I wonder," continued the girl, "if you knew at the time, the time when +my eyes seemed to open--when I was deceived by his pretension into +thinking--you remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell--how independent and +noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, Aunt Bell--what a slump in my +faith that day! I think its foundations all went, and then naturally the +rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you realise it all the time?" + +So it was religious doubt--a loss of faith--heterodoxy? Having listened +until she gathered this much, Aunt Bell broke in--"My dear, you must let +me guide you in this. You know what I've been through. Study the higher +criticism, reverently, if you will--even broaden into the higher +unbelief. Times have changed since my youth; one may broaden into almost +anything now and still be orthodox, especially in our church. But beware +of the literal mind, the material view of things. Remember that the +essentials of Christianity are spiritually historic even if they aren't +materially historic--facts in the human consciousness if not in the +world of matter. You need not pretend to understand how God can be one +in essence and three in person--I grant you that is only a reversion to +polytheism and is so regarded by the best Biblical scholars--but never +surrender your belief in the atoning blood of the Son whom He sent a +ransom for many--at least as a spiritual fact. I myself have dismissed +the Trinity as one of those mysteries to be adoringly believed on earth +and comprehended only in heaven--but that God so loved the world that he +gave his only begotten Son--Child, do you think I could look forward +without fear to facing God, if I did not believe that the blood of his +only begotten Son had washed from my soul that guilt of the sin I +committed in Adam? Cling to these simple essentials, and otherwise +broaden even into the higher unbelief, if you like--" + +"But, Aunt Bell, it _isn't_ that! I never trouble about those +things--though you have divined truly that I have doubted them +lately--but the doubts don't distress me. Actually, Aunt Bell, for a +woman to lose faith in her God seems a small matter beside losing faith +in her husband. You can doubt and reason and speculate and argue about +the first--it's fashionable--people rather respect unbelievers +nowadays--but Oh, Aunt Bell, how the other hurts!" + +"But, my child--my preposterous child! How can you have lost faith in +that husband of yours? What nonsense! Do you mean you have taken +seriously those harmless jesting little sallies of his about the snares +and pitfalls of a clergyman's life, or his tales of how this or that +silly woman has allowed him to detect in her that pure reverence which +most women do feel for a clergyman, whether he's handsome or not? Take +Mrs. Wyeth, for example--" + +"Oh, Aunt Bell--no, no--how can you think--" + +"I admit Allan is the least bit--er--redundant of those +anecdotes--perhaps just the least bit insistent about the snares and +pitfalls that beset an attractive man in his position. But really, my +dear--I know men--and you need never feel a twinge of jealousy. For one +thing, Allan would be held in bounds by fear of the world, even if his +love for you were inadequate to hold him." + +"It's no use trying to make you understand, Aunt Bell--you _can't!_" + +Whereupon Aunt Bell neglected her former device of pretending that she +did, indeed, understand, and bluntly asked: + +"Well, what is it, child?" + +"Nothing, nothing, nothing, Aunt Bell--it's only what he _is_." + +"What he _is_? A handsome, agreeable, healthy, good-tempered, loyal, +upright, irreproachable--" + +"Aunt Bell, he's _killing_ me. I seem to want to laugh when I tell you, +because it's so funny that he should have the power to--but I tell you +he's killing out all the good in me--a little bit every day. I can't +even _want_ to be good. Oh, how stupid to think you could see--that any +one could see! Sometimes I do forget and laugh all at once. It's as +grotesque and unreal as an imaginary monster I used to be afraid +of--then I'm sick, for I remember we are bound together by the laws of +God and man. Of course, you can't see, Aunt Bell--the fire hasn't eaten +through yet--but I tell you it's burning inside day and night." + +She laughed a little, as if to reassure her puzzled listener. + +"A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell--burning out my goodness--if the +firemen would only come with engines and axes and hooks and things, and +water--I'd submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old house--it +hurts so!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE APPLE OF DOUBT IS NIBBLED + + +The rector of St. Antipas came from preaching his Easter sermon. He was +elated. Of the sermons delivered in New York that morning, he suspected +that his would be found not the least ingenious. Telling excerpts would +doubtless appear in the next day's papers, and at least one paper would +reprint his favourite likeness over the caption, "Dr. Allan Delcher +Linford, the Handsome and Up-to-Date Rector of St. Antipas." Under this +would be head-lines: "The Resurrection Proved; a Literal Fact in History +not less than a Spiritual Fact in the Human Consciousness. An Unbroken +Chain of Living Witnesses." + +He even worded scraps of the article on his way from the church to his +study: + +"An unusually rich Easter service was held at fashionable St. Antipas +yesterday morning. The sermon by its able and handsome young rector, the +Reverend Dr. Linford, was fraught with vital interest to every thinking +man. The Resurrection he declares to be a fact as well attested as the +Brooklyn Bridge is to thousands who have never seen it--yet who are +convinced of its existence upon the testimony of those who have. Thus +one who has never seen this bridge may be as certain of its existence as +a man who crosses it twice a day. In the same way, a witness to the +risen Christ tells the glorious truth to his son, a lad of fifteen, who +at eighty tells it to his grandson. 'Do you realise,' said the magnetic +young preacher, 'that the assurance of the Resurrection comes to you +this morning by word of mouth through a scant three thousand +witnesses--a living chain of less than three thousand links by which we +may trace our steps back to the presence of the first witness--so that, +in effect, we have the Resurrection on the word of a man who beheld the +living Saviour this very morning? Nay; further, in effect we ourselves +stand trembling before that stone rolled away from the empty but forever +hallowed tomb. As certainly as thousands know that a structure called +the Brooklyn Bridge exists, so upon testimony of the same validity do we +know that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, +that whosoever believed on him might not perish but have everlasting +life." God has not expected us to trust blindly: he has presented +tangible and compelling evidence of his glorious scheme of salvation.' +The speaker, who is always imbued with the magnetism of a striking +personality, was more than usually effective on this occasion, and +visibly moved the throng of fashionable worshippers that--" + +"Allan, you outdid yourself!" Aunt Bell had come in and, in the mirror +over the dining-room mantel, was bestowing glances of unaffected but +strictly impartial admiration upon the bonnet of lilac blossoms that +rested above the lustrous puffs of her plenteous gray hair. + +The young man looked up from his meditative pacing of the room. + +"Aunt Bell, I think I may say that I pleased myself this morning--and +you know that's not easy for me." + +"It's too bad Nance wasn't there!" + +"Nancy is not pleasing me," began her husband, in gentle tones. + +"I didn't feel equal to it, Allan," his wife called from the library. + +"Oh, you're there! My dear, you give up too easily to little +indispositions that another woman would make nothing of. I've repeated +that to you so often that, really, your further ignoring it appears +dangerously like perverseness--" + +"Is she crying?" he asked Aunt Bell, as they both listened. + +"Laughing!" replied that lady. + +"My dear, may I ask if you are laughing at me?" + +"Dear, no!--only at something I happened to think of." She came into the +dining-room, a morning paper in her hand. "Besides, in to-morrow's paper +I shall read all about what the handsome rector of St. Antipas said, in +his handsome voice, to his handsome hearers--" + +He had frowned at first, but now smiled indulgently, as they sat down to +luncheon. "You _will_ have your joke about my appearance, Nance! That +reminds me--that poor romantic little Mrs. Eversley--sister of Mrs. +Wyeth, you know--said to me after service this morning, 'Oh, Dr. +Linford, if I could only believe in Christian dogma as I believe in +_you_ as a man!' You know, she's such a painfully emotional, impulsive +creature, and then Colonel Godwin who stood by had to have _his_ joke: +'The symbol will serve you for worship, Madam!' he says; 'I'm sure no +woman's soul would ever be lost if all clergymen were as good to look +upon as our friend here!' Those things always make me feel so +awkward--they are said so bluntly--but what could I do?" + +"Mr. Browett's sister and her son were out with him this morning," began +Aunt Bell, charitably entering another channel of conversation from the +intuition that her niece was wincing. But, as not infrequently happened, +the seeming outlet merely gave again into the main channel. + +"And there's Browett," continued the Doctor. "Now I am said to have +great influence over women--women trust me, believe me--I may even say +look up to me--but I pledge you my word I am conscious of wielding an +immensely greater influence over men. There seems to be in my _ego_ the +power to prevail. Take Browett--most men are afraid of him--not physical +fear, but their inner selves, their _egos_, go down before him. Yet from +the moment I first saw that man I dominated him. It's all in having an +_ego_ that means mastery, Aunt Bell. Browett has it himself, but I have +a greater one. Every time Browett's eyes meet mine he knows in his soul +that I'm his master--his _ego_ prostrates itself before mine--and yet +that man"--he concluded in a tone of distinguishable awe--"is worth all +the way from two to three hundred millions!" + +"Mrs. Eversley is an unlucky little woman, from what I hear," began Aunt +Bell, once more with altruistic aims. + +"That reminds me," said the Doctor, recalling himself from a downward +look at the grovelling Browett, "she made me promise to be in at four +o'clock. Really I couldn't evade her--it was either four o'clock to-day +or the first possible day. What could I do? Aunt Bell, I won't pretend +that this being looked up to and sought out is always disagreeable. +Contrary to the Pharisee, I say 'Thank God I _am_ as other men are!' I +have my human moments, but mostly it bores me, and especially these +half-religious, half-sentimental confidences of emotional women who +imagine their lives are tragedies. Now this woman believes her marriage +is unhappy--" + +"Indeed, it is!" Aunt Bell broke in--this time effectually, for she +proceeded to relate of one Morris Upton Eversley a catalogue of +inelegancies that, if authoritative, left him, considered as a husband, +undesirable, not to say impracticable. His demerits, indeed, served to +bring the meal to a blithe and chatty close. + +Aunt Bell's practice each day after luncheon was, in her own +terminology, to "go into the silence and concentrate upon the thought of +the All-Good." She was recalled from the psychic state on this +afternoon, though happily not before a good half-hour, by Nancy's knock +at her door. + +She came in, cheerful, a small sheaf of papers in her hand. Aunt Bell, +finding herself restored and amiable, sat up to listen. + +Nancy threw herself on the couch, with the air of a woman about to chat +confidentially from the softness of many gay pillows, dropping into the +attitude of tranquil relaxation that may yet bristle with eager mental +quills. + +"The drollest thing, Aunt Bell! This morning instead of hearing Allan, I +went up to that trunk-room and rummaged through the chest that has all +those old papers and things of Grandfather Delcher's. And would you +believe it? For an hour or more there, I was reading bits of his old +sermons." + +"But he was a Presbyterian!" In her tone and inflection Aunt Bell ably +conveyed an exposition of the old gentleman's impossibility--lucidly +allotting him to spiritual fellowship with the head-hunters of Borneo. + +"I know it, but, Aunt Bell, those old sermons really did me good; all +full of fire they were, too, but you felt a _man_ back of them--a good +man, a real man. You liked him, and it didn't matter that his +terminology was at times a little eccentric. Grandfather's theology +fitted the last days of his life about as crinoline and hoop-skirts +would fit over there on the avenue to-day--but he always made me feel +religious. It seemed sweet and good to be a Christian when he talked. +With all his antiquated beliefs he never made me doubt as--as I doubt +to-day. But it was another thing I wanted to show you--something I +found--some old compositions of Bernal's that his grandfather must have +kept. Here's one about birds--'jingle-birds, squeak-birds and +clatter-birds.' No?--you wouldn't care for that?--well--listen to this." + +She read the youthful Bernal's effort to rehabilitate the much-blemished +reputation of Judas--a paper that had been curiously preserved by the +old man. + +"Poor Judas, indeed!" The novelty was not lost upon Aunt Bell, expert +that she was in all obliquities from accepted tradition. + +"The funny boy! Very ingenious, I'm sure. I dare say no one ever before +said a good word for Judas since the day of his death, and this lad +would canonise him out of hand. Think of it--St. Judas!" + +Nancy lay back among the cushions, talking idly, inconsequently. + +"You see, there was at least one man created, Aunt Bell, who could by no +chance be saved--one man who had to betray the Son of Man--one man to be +forever left out of the Christian scheme of salvation, even if every +other in the world were saved. There had to be one man to disbelieve, to +betray and to lie in hell for it, or the whole plan would have been +frustrated. There was a theme for Dante, Aunt Bell--not the one soul in +hell, but the other souls in heaven slowly awakening to the suffering of +that one soul--to the knowledge that he was suffering in order that they +might be saved. Do you think they would find heaven to be real heaven if +they knew he was burning? And don't you think a poet could make some +interesting talk between this solitary soul predestined to hell, and the +God who planned the scheme?" + +Aunt Bell looked bored and uttered a swift, low phrase that might have +been "Fiddlesticks!" + +"My dear, no one believes in hell nowadays." + +"Does any one believe in anything?" + +"Belief in the essentials of Christianity was never more apparent." + +It was a treasured phrase from the morning's sermon. + +"What are the essentials?" + +"Belief that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten +Son--you know as well as I, child--belief in the atoning blood of the +Christ." + +"Wouldn't it be awful, Aunt Bell, if you didn't believe in it, and had +to be in hell because the serpent persuaded Eve and Eve persuaded Adam +to eat the apple--that's the essential foundation of Christianity, isn't +it?" + +"Why, certainly--you must believe in original sin--" + +"I see--here's a note in Bernal's hand, on one of these old +papers--evidently written much later than the other: 'The old gentleman +says Christmas is losing its deeper significance. What is it? That the +Babe of Bethlehem was begotten by his Father to be a sacrifice to its +Father--that its blood might atone for the sin of his first pair--and so +save from eternal torment the offspring of that pair. God will no longer +be appeased by the blood of lambs; nothing but the blood of his son will +now atone for the sin of his own creatures. It seems to me the sooner +Christmas loses this deeper significance the better. Poor old loving +human nature gives it a much more beautiful significance.'" + +"My dear," began Aunt Bell, "before I broadened into what I have called +the higher unbelief, I should have considered that that young man had a +positive genius for blasphemy; now that I have again come into the +shadow of the cross, it seems to me that he merely lacks imagination." + +"Poor Bernal! Yet he made me believe, though he seemed to believe in +nothing himself. He makes me believe _now_. He _calls_ to me, Aunt +Bell--or is it myself calling to him that I hear? + +"And blasphemy--even the word is ridiculous, Aunt Bell. I was at the +day-nursery yesterday when all those babies were brought in to their +dinner. They are strictly forbidden to coo or to make any noise, and +they really behaved finely for two-and three-year-olds--though I did see +one outlaw reach over before the signal was given and lovingly pat the +big fat cookie beside its plate--thinking its insubordination would be +overlooked--but, Aunt Bell, do you suppose one of those fifty-two babies +could blaspheme you?" + +"Don't be silly!" + +"But can you imagine one of them capable of any disrespect to you that +would merit--say, burning or something severe like that?" + +"Of course not!" + +"Well, don't you really believe that God is farther beyond you or me or +the foolish boy that wrote this, than we are beyond those babies--with a +greater, bigger point of view, a fuller love? Imagine the God that made +everything--the worlds and birds and flowers and butterflies and babies +and mountains--imagine him feeling insulted because one of his wretched +little John Smiths or Bernal Linfords babbles little human words about +him, or even worries his poor little human heart with doubts of His +existence!" + +"My child, yours is but a finite mind, unable to limit or define the +Infinite. What is it, anyway--is it Christian Science taking hold of +you, or that chap who preaches that they have the Messiah re-incarnated +and now living in Syria--Babbists, aren't they--or is it theosophy--or +are you simply dissatisfied with Allan?" A sudden shrewd glance from +Aunt Bell's baby-blue eyes went with this last. + +Nancy laughed, then grew serious. "I think the last is it, Aunt Bell. A +woman seems to doubt God and everything else after she begins to doubt +the husband she has loved. Really, I find myself questioning +everything--every moral standard." + +"Nance, you are an ungrateful woman to speak like that of Allan!" + +"I never should have done it, dear, if you hadn't made me believe you +knew. I should have thought it out all by myself, and then acted, if I +found I could with any conscience." + +"Eh? Mercy! You couldn't. The _idea!_ And there's Allan, now. Come!" + +The Doctor was on the threshold. "So here you are! Well, I've just sent +Mrs. Eversley away in tears." + +He dropped into an arm-chair with a little half-humorous moan of +fatigue. + +"It's a relief, sometimes, to know you can relax and let your whole +weight absolutely down on to the broad earth!" he declared. + +"Mrs. Eversley?" suggested Aunt Bell. + +"Well, the short of it is, she told me her woes and begged me to give my +sanction to her securing a divorce!" + +Nancy sat up from her pillows. "Oh--and you _did?_" + +"_Nancy!_" It was low, but clear, quick-spoken, stern, and hurt. "You +forget yourself. At least you forget my view and the view of my Church. +Even were I out of the Church, I should still regard marriage as a +sacrament--indissoluble except by death. The very words--'Whom God hath +joined'"--he became almost oratorical in his warmth--"Surely you would +not expect me to use my influence in this parish to undermine the +sanctity of the home--to attack our emblem of Christ's union with His +Church!" + +With reproach in his eyes--a reproach that in some way seemed to be +bland and mellow, yet with a hurt droop to his handsome head, he went +from the room. Nancy looked after him, longingly, wonderingly. + +"The maddening thing is, Aunt Bell, that sometimes he actually has the +power to make me believe in him. But, oh, doesn't Christ's union with +his Church have some ghastly symbols!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SINFUL PERVERSENESS OF THE NATURAL WOMAN + + +Two months later a certain tension in the rectory of St. Antipas was +temporarily relieved. Like the spring of a watch wound too tightly, it +snapped one day at Nancy's declaration that she would go to Edom for a +time--would go, moreover, without a reason--without so much as a woman's +easy "because." This circumstance, while it froze in the bud every +available objection to her course, quelled none of the displeasure that +was felt at her woman's perversity. + +Her decision was announced one morning after a sleepless night, and +after she had behaved unaccountably for three days. + +"You are not pleasing Allan," was Aunt Bell's masterly way of putting +the situation. Nancy laughed from out of the puzzling reserve into which +she had lately settled. + +"So he tells me, Aunt Bell. He utters it with the air of telling me +something necessarily to my discredit--yet I wonder whose fault it +really is." + +"Well, of all things!" Aunt Bell made no effort to conceal her +amazement. + +"It isn't necessarily mine, you know." Before the mirror she brought the +veil nicely about the edge of her hat, with the strained and solemn +absorption of a woman in this shriving of her reflection so that it may +go out in peace. + +"My failure to please Allan, you know, may as easily be due to his +defects as to mine. I said so, but he only answered, 'Really, you're not +pleasing me.' And, as he often says of his own predicaments--'What could +I do?' But I'm glad he persists in it." + +"Why, if you resent it so?" + +"Because, Aunt Bell, I must be quite--_quite_ certain that Allan is +funny. It would be dreadful to make a mistake. If only I could be +certain--positive--convinced--sure--that Allan is the funniest thing in +all the world--" + +"It never occurred to me that Allan is funny." Aunt Bell paused for an +instant's retrospect. "Now, he doesn't joke much." + +"One doesn't have to joke to be a joke, Aunt Bell." + +"But what if he were funny? Why is that so important?" + +"Oh, it's important because of the other thing that you know you know +when you know that." + +"Mercy! Child, you should have a cup of cocoa or something before you +start off--really--" + +The last long hatpin seemingly pierced the head of Nancy and she turned +from the glass to fumble on her gloves. + +"Aunt Bell, if Allan tells me once more in that hurt, gentle tone that I +don't please him, I believe I shall be the freest of free women--ready +to live." + +She paused to look vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, you know, I seem +to wake up with a clear mind--but the day clouds it. We shouldn't +believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains +into it at a tender age. I should know Allan through and through at a +glance to-day, if I met him for the first time; but he kneaded my poor +girl's brain this way and that, till I'd have been done for, Aunt Bell, +if some one else hadn't kneaded and patted it into other ways, so that +little memories come back and stay with me--little bits of sweetness and +genuineness--of _realness_, Aunt Bell." + +"Nance, you are morbid--and I think you're wrong to go up there to be +alone with your sick fancies--why are you going, Nance?" + +"Aunt Bell, can I really trust you not to betray me? Will you promise to +keep the secret if I actually tell you?" + +Aunt Bell looked at once important and trustworthy, yet of an +incorruptible propriety. + +"I'm sure, my dear, you would not ask me to keep secret anything that +your husband would be--" + +"Dear, no! You can keep mum with a spotless conscience." + +"Of course; I was sure of that!" + +"What a fraud you are, Aunt Bell--you weren't sure at all--but I shall +disappoint you. Now my reason--" She came close and spoke low--"My +reason for going to Edom, whatever it is, is so utterly silly that I +haven't even dared to tell myself--so, you see--my _real_ reason for +going is simply to find out what my reason really is. I'm dying to know. +There! Now never say I didn't trust you." + +In the first shock of this fall from her anticipations Aunt Bell +neglected to remember that All is Good. Yet she was presently far enough +mollified to accompany her niece to the station. + +Returning from thence after she had watched Nancy through the gate to +the 3:05 Edom local, Aunt Bell lingered at the open study door of the +rector of St. Antipas. He looked up cordially. + +"You know, Allan, it may do the child good, after all, to be alone a +little while." + +"Nancy--has--not--pleased--me!" The words were clean-cut, with an +illuminating pause after each, so that Aunt Bell might by no chance +mistake their import, yet the tone was low and not without a quality of +winning sweetness--the tone of the injured good. + +"I've seen that, Allan. Nance undoubtedly has a vein of selfishness. +Instead of striving to please her husband, she--well, she has +practically intimated to me that a wife has the right to please herself. +Of course, she didn't say it brutally in just those words, but--" + +"It's the modern spirit, Aunt Bell--the spirit of unbelief. It has made +what we call the 'new woman'--that noxious flower on the stalk of +scientific materialism." + +He turned and wrote this phrase rapidly on a pad at his elbow, while +Aunt Bell waited expectantly for more. + +"There's a sermon that writes itself, Aunt Bell. 'Woman's deterioration +under Modern Infidelity to God.' As truly as you live, this thing called +the 'new woman' has grown up side by side with the thing called the +higher criticism. And it's natural. Take away God's word as revealed in +the Scriptures and you make woman a law unto herself. Man's state is +then wretched enough, but contemplate woman's! Having put aside Christ's +authority, she naturally puts aside _man's_, hence we have the creature +who mannishly desires the suffrage and attends club meetings and argues, +and has views--_views_, Aunt Bell, on the questions of the day--the +woman who, as you have just succinctly said of your niece, 'believes she +has a right to please herself!' There is the keynote of the modern +divorce evil, Aunt Bell--she has a right to please herself. Believing no +longer in God, she no longer feels bound by His commandment: 'Wives be +subject to your husbands!' Why, Aunt Bell, if you can imagine +Christianity shorn of all its other glories, it would still be the +greatest religion the world has ever known, because it holds woman +sternly in her sphere and maintains the sanctity of the home. Now, I +know nothing of the real state of Nancy's faith, but the fact that she +believes she has a right to please herself is enough to convince me. I +would stake my right arm this moment, upon just this evidence, that +Nancy has become an unbeliever. When I let her know as plainly as +English words can express it that she is not pleasing me, she looks +either sullen or flippant--thus showing distinctly a loss of religious +faith." + +"You ought to make a stunning sermon of that, Allan. I think society +needs it." + +"It does, Aunt Bell, it does! And we are going from bad to worse. I +foresee the time in this very age of ours when no woman will continue to +be wife to a man except by the dictates of her own lawless and corrupt +nature--when a wife will make so-called love her only rule--when she +will brazenly disregard the law of God and the word of his only begotten +crucified Son, unless she can continue to feel what she calls 'love and +respect' for the husband who chose her. We prize liberty, Aunt Bell, but +liberty with woman has become license since she lost faith in the word +of God that holds her subject to man. We should be thankful that the +mother Church still stands firm on that rock--the rock of woman's +subjection to man. Our own Church has quibbled, Aunt Bell, but look at +the fine consistency of the Church of Rome. As truly as you live, the +Catholic Church will one day hold the only women who subject themselves +to their husbands in all things because of God's command--regardless of +their anarchistic desire to 'please themselves.' There is the only +Christian Church left that knows woman is a creature to be ruled with an +iron hand--and has the courage to send them to hell for 'pleasing +themselves.'" + +He glowed in meditation a moment, then, in a burst of confidence, +continued: + +"This is not to be repeated, Aunt Bell, but I have more than once +questioned if I should always allow the Anglo-Catholic Church to modify +my true Catholicism. I have talked freely with Father Riley of St. +Clements at our weekly ministers' meetings--there's a bright chap for +you--and really, Aunt Bell, as to mere universality, the Church of Rome +has about the only claim worth considering. Mind you, this is not to be +repeated, but I am often so much troubled that I have to fall back on my +simple childish faith in the love of the Father earned of him for me by +the Son's death on the cross. But what if I err in making my faith too +simple? Even now I am almost persuaded that a priest ordained into the +Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a +sacrificial sense. Doubts like these are tragedies to an honest man, +Aunt Bell--they try his soul--they bring him each day to the foot of +that cross whereon the Son of God suffers his agony in order to ransom +our souls from God's wrath with us--and there are times, Aunt Bell, when +I find myself gazing longingly, like a little tired child, at the open +arms of the mother Church--on whose loving bosom of authority a man may +lay all his doubts and be never again troubled in his mind." + +Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully. + +"After all," she said briskly, "isn't Christianity the most fascinating +of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief? Isn't it +fine, Allan--doesn't the very thought excite you--that not only the +souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be +affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with +which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual +values--and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions. How +truly God has made us responsible for the souls of one another!" + +The rector of St. Antipas shrugged modestly at this bald wording of his +responsibility; then he sighed and bent his head as one honestly +conscious of the situation's gravity. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE REASON OF A WOMAN WHO HAD NO REASON + + +It was not a jest--Nancy's telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going +to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself. At least such reticence +to self is often sincerely and plausibly asserted by the very inner +woman. Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a +secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, then low like a voice +overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise +of the train did no more than confuse the words so that only she could +hear them. + +When the exciting time of this listening had gone and she stepped from +the train into the lazy spring silence of the village, her own heart +spelled the thing in quick, loud, hammering beats--a thing which, now +that she faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks burned at +the first second of actual realisation of its enormity; and her knees +weakened in a deathly tremble, quite as if they might bend +embarrassingly in either direction. + +Then in the outer spaces of her mind there grew, to save her, a sense of +her crass fatuity. She was quickly in a carriage, eager to avoid any +acquaintance, glad the driver was no village familiar who might amiably +seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up the western road +through its greening elms to where Clytie kept the big house--her own +home while she lived, and the home of the family when they chose to go +there. + +At last, the silent, cool house with its secretive green shutters rose +above her; the wheels made their little crisping over the fine metal of +the driveway. She hastily paid the man and was at the side door that +opened into the sitting-room. As she put her hand to the knob she was +conscious of Clytie passing the window to open the door. + +Then they were face to face over the threshold--Clytemnestra, of a +matronly circumference, yet with a certain prim consciousness of +herself, which despite the gray hair and the excellent maturity of her +face, was unmistakably maidenish--Clytie of the eyes always wise to +another's needs and beaming with that fine wisdom. + +She started back from the doorway by way of being playfully +dramatic--her hands on her hips, her head to one side at an astounded +angle. Yet little more than a second did she let herself simulate this +welcoming incredulity--this stupefaction of cordiality. There must be +quick speech--especially as to Nancy's face--which seemed strangely +unfamiliar, set, suppressed, breathless, unaccountably young--and there +had to be the splendid announcement of another matter. + +"Why, child, is it you or your ghost?" + +Nancy could only nod her head. + +"My suz! what ails the child?" + +Here the other managed a shake of the head and a made smile. + +"And of all things!--you'll never, never, never guess!--" + +"There--there!--yes, yes--yes! I know--know all about it--knew it--knew +it last night--" + +She had put out a hand toward Clytie and now reached the other from her +side, easing herself to the doorpost against which she leaned and +laughed, weakly, vacantly. + +"Some one told you--on the way up?" + +"Yes--I knew it, I tell you--that's what makes it so funny and +foolish--why I came, you know--" She had now gained a little in +coherence, and with it came a final doubt. She steadied herself in the +doorway to ask--"When did Bernal come?" + +And Clytie, somewhat relieved, became voluble. + +"Night before last on the six-fifteen, and me getting home late from the +Epworth meeting--fire out--not a stick of kindling-wood in--only two +cakes in the buttery, neither of them a layer--not a frying-size chicken +on the place--thank goodness he didn't have the appetite he used +to--though in another way it's just downright heartbreaking to see a +person you care for not be a ready eater--but I had some of the plum +jell he used to like, and the good half of an apple-John which I at once +het up--and I sent Mehitty Lykins down for some chops--" + +"Where is he?" + +There had seemed to be a choking in the question. Clytie regarded her +curiously. + +"He was lying down up in the study a while ago--kicking one foot up in +the air against the wall, with his head nearly off the sofy onto the +floor, just like he used to--there--that's his step--" + +"I can't see him now! Here--let me go into your room till I freshen and +rest a bit--quick--" + +Once more the indecisive knees seemed about to bend either way under +their burden. With an effort of will she drew the amazed Clytie toward +the open door of the latter's bedroom, then closed it quickly, and stood +facing her in the dusk of the curtained room. + +"Clytie--I'm weak--it's so strange--actually weak--I shake so--Oh, +Clytie--I've got to cry!" + +There was a mutual opening of arms and a head on Clytie's shoulder, wet +eyes close in a corner that had once been the good woman's neck--and +stifling sobs that seemed one moment to contract her body rigidly from +head to foot--the next to leave it limp and falling. From the nursing +shoulder she was helped to the bed, though she could not yet relax her +arms from that desperate grip of Clytie's neck. Long she held her so, +even after the fit of weeping passed, clasping her with arms in which +there was almost a savage intensity--arms that locked themselves more +fiercely at any little stirring of the prisoned one. + +At last, when she had lain quiet a long time, the grasp was suddenly +loosened and Clytie was privileged to ease her aching neck and cramped +shoulders. Then, even as she looked down, she heard from Nancy the +measured soft breathing of sleep. She drew a curtain to shut out one +last ray of light, and went softly from the room. + +Two hours later, as Clytemnestra attained ultimate perfection in the +arrangement of four glass dishes of preserves and three varieties of +cake upon her table--for she still kept to the sinfully complex fare of +the good old simple days--Nancy came out. Clytie stood erect to peer +anxiously over the lamp at her. + +"I'm all right--you were a dear to let me sleep. See how fresh I am." + +"You do look pearter, child--but you look different from when you came. +My suz! you looked so excited and kind of young when I opened that door, +it give me a start for a minute--I thought I'd woke out of a dream and +you was a Miss in short skirts again. But now--let me see you closer." +She came around the table, then continued: "Well, you look fresh and +sweet and some rested, and you look old and reasonable again--I mean as +old as you had ought to look. I never did know you to act that way +before, child. My neck ain't got the crick out of it yet." + +"Poor old Clytie--but you see yesterday all day I felt queer--very +queer, and wrought up, and last night I couldn't rest, and I lay awake +and excited all night--and something seemed to give way when I saw you +in the door. Of course it was nervousness, and I shall be all right +now--" + +She looked up and saw Bernal staring at her--standing in the doorway of +the big room, his face shading into the dusk back of him. She went to +him with both hands out and he kissed her. + +"Is it Nance?" + +"I don't know--but it's really Bernal." + +"Clytie says you knew I had come." + +"Clytie must have misunderstood. No one even intimated such a thing. I +came up to-day--I had to come--because--if I had known you were here, +wouldn't I have brought Allan?" + +"Of course I was going to let you know, and come down in a few +days--there was some business to do here. Dear old Allan! I'm aching to +get a stranglehold on him!" + +"Yes--he'll be so glad--there's so much to say!" + +"I didn't know whom I should find here." + +"We've had Clytie look after both houses--sometimes we've rented +mine--and almost every summer we've come here." + +"You know I didn't dream I was rich until I got here. The lawyer says +they've advertised, but I've been away from everything most of the +time--not looking out for advertisements. I can't understand the old +gentleman, when I was such a reprobate and Allan was always such a +thoroughly decent chap." + +"Oh, hardly a reprobate!" + +"Worse, Nance--an ass--think of my talking to that dear old soul as I +did--taking twenty minutes off to win him from his lifelong faith. I +shudder when I remember it. And yet I honestly thought he might be made +to see things my way." + +Their speech had been quick, and her eyes were fastened upon his with a +look from the old days striving in her to bring back that big moment of +their last parting--that singular moment when they blindly groped for +each other but had perforce to be content with one poor, trembling +handclasp! Had that trembling been a weakness or a strength? For all +time since--and increasingly during the later years--secret memories of +it had wonderfully quickened a life that would otherwise have tended to +fall dull, torpid, stubborn. It was not that their hands had met, but +that they had trembled--those two strange hands that had both repelled +and coerced each other--faltering at last into that long moment of +triumphant certainty. + +Under the first light words with Bernal this memory had welled up anew +in her with a mighty power before which she was as a leaf in the wind. +Then, all at once, she saw that they had become dazed and speechless +above this present clasp--the yielding, yet opposing, of those +all-knowing, never-forgetting hands. There followed one swift mutual +look of bewilderment. Then their hands fell apart and with little +awkward laughs they turned to Clytie. + +They were presently at table, Clytie in a trance of ecstatic +watchfulness for emptied plates, broken only by reachings and urgings of +this or that esteemed fleshpot. + +Under the ready talk that flowed, Nancy had opportunity to observe the +returned one. And now his strangeness vaguely hurt her. The voice and +the face were not those that had come to secret life in her heart during +the years of his absence. Here was not the laughing boy she had known, +with his volatile, Lucifer-like charm of light-hearted recklessness in +the face of destiny. Instead, a thinned, shy face rose before her, a +face full of awkwardness and dreaming, troubled and absent; a face that +one moment appealed by its defenseless forgetfulness, and the next, +coerced by a look eloquent of tested strength. + +As she watched him, there were two of her: one, the girl dreaming +forward out of the past, receptive of one knew not what secrets from +inner places; the other, the vivid, alert woman--listening, waiting, +judging. She it was whose laugh came often to make of her face the +perfect whole out of many little imperfections. + +Later, when they sat in the early summer night, under a moon blurred to +a phantom by the mist, when the changed lines of his face were no longer +relentless and they two became little more than voices and remembered +presences to each other, she began to find him indeed unchanged. Even +his voice had in an hour curiously lost that hurting strangeness. As she +listened she became absent, almost drowsy with memories of that far +night when his voice was quite the same and their hands had trembled +together--with such prescience that through all the years her hand was +to feel the groping of his. + +Yet awkward enough was that first half-hour of their sitting side by +side in the night, on the wide piazza of his old home. Before them the +lawn stretched unbroken to the other big house, where Nancy had wondered +her way to womanhood. Empty now it was, darkened as those years of her +dreaming girlhood must be to the present. Should she enter it, she knew +the house would murmur with echoes of other days; there would be the +wraith of the girl she once was flitting as of old through its peopled +rooms. + +And out there actually before her was the stretch of lawn where she had +played games of tragic pretense with the imperious, dreaming boy. +Vividly there came back that late afternoon when the monster of Bernal's +devising had frightened them for the last time--when in a sudden flash +of insight they had laughed the thing away forever and faced each other +with a certain half-joyous, half-foolish maturity of understanding. One +day long after this she had humorously bewailed to Bernal the loss of +their child's faith in the Gratcher. He had replied that, as an +institution, the Gratcher was imperishable--that it was brute humanity's +instinctive negation to the incredible perfections of life; that while +the child's Gratcher was not the man's, the latter was yet of the same +breed, however it might be refined by the subtleties of maturity: that +the man, like the child, must fashion some monster of horror to deter +him when he hears God's call to live. + +She had not been able to understand, nor did she now. She was looking +out to the two trees where once her hammock had swung--to the rustic +chair, now falling apart from age, from which Bernal had faced her that +last evening. Then with a start she was back in the present. Nancy of +the old days must be shut fat in the old house. There she might wander +and wonder endlessly among the echoes and the half-seen faces, but never +could she come forth; over the threshold there could pass only the wife +of Allan Linford. + +Quick upon this realisation came a sharp fear of the man beside her--a +fear born of his hand's hold upon hers when they had met. She shrank +under the memory of it, with a sudden instinct of the hunted. Then from +her new covert of reserve she dared to peer cautiously at him, seeking +to know how great was her peril--to learn what measure of defense would +best insure her safety--recognising fearfully the traitor in her own +heart. + +Their first idle talk had died, and she noted with new alarm that they +had been silent for many minutes. This could not safely be--this +insidious, barrier-destroying silence. She seemed to hear his heart +beating high from his own sense of peril. But would he help her? Would +he not rather side with that wretched traitor within her, crying out for +the old days--would he not still be the proud fool who would suffer no +man's law but his own? She shivered at the thought of his nearness--of +his momentous silence--of his treacherous ally. + +She stirred in her chair to look in where Clytie bustled between kitchen +and dining-room. Her movement aroused him from his own abstraction. For +a breathless stretch of time she was frozen to inertness by sheer +terror. Would that old lawless spirit utter new blasphemies, giving +fearful point to them now? Would the old eager hand come again upon hers +with a boy's pleading and a man's power? And what of her own secret +guilt? She had cherished the memory of him and across space had +responded to him through that imperious need of her heart. Swiftly in +this significant moment she for the first time saw herself with critical +eyes--saw that in her fancied security she had unwittingly enthroned the +hidden traitor. More and more poignant grew her apprehension as she felt +his eyes upon her and divined that he was about to speak. With a little +steadying of the lips, with eyes that widened at him in the dim light, +she waited for the sound of his voice--waited as one waits for something +"terrible and dear"--the whirlwind that might destroy utterly, or +pass--to leave her forever exulting in a new sense of power against +elemental forces. + +"Would you mind if I smoked, Nance?" + +She stared stupidly. So tense had been her strain that the words were +mere meaningless blows that left her quivering. He thought she had not +heard. + +"Would you mind my pipe--and this very mild mixture?" + +She blessed him for the respite. + +"Smoke, of course!" she managed to say. + +She watched him closely, still alert, as he stuffed the tobacco into his +pipe-bowl from a rubber pouch. Then he struck the match and in that +moment she suffered another shock. The little flame danced out of the +darkness, and wavering, upward shadows played over a face of utter +quietness. The relaxed shoulders drooped sideways in the chair, the body +placidly sprawled, one crossed leg gently waving. The shaded eye +surveyed some large and tranquil thought--and in that eye the soul sat +remote, aloof from her as any star. + +She sank back in her chair with a long, stealthy breath of relief--a +relief as cold as stone. She had not felt before that there was a chill +in the wide sweetness of the night. Now it wrapped her round and slowly, +with a soft brutality, penetrated to her heart. + +The silence grew too long. With a shrugging effort she surmounted +herself and looked again toward the alien figure looming unconcerned in +the gloom. A warm, super-personal sense of friendliness came upon her. +Her intellect awoke to inquiries. She began to question him of his days +away, and soon he was talking freely enough, between pulls of his pipe. + +"You know, Nance, I was a prodigal--only when I awoke I had no father to +go to. Poor grandad! What a brutal cub I was! That has always stuck in +my mind. I was telling you about that cold wet night in Denver. I had +found a lodging in the police station. There were others as forlorn--and +Nance--did you ever realise the buoyancy of the human mind? It's +sublime. We rejected ones sat there, warming ourselves, chatting, and +pretty soon one man found there were thirteen of us. You would have +thought that none of them could fear bad luck--worse luck--none of them +could have been more dismally situated. But, do you know? most of those +fellows became nervous--as apprehensive of bad luck as if they had been +pampered princes in a time of revolution. I was one of the two that +volunteered to restore confidence by bringing in another man. + +"We found an undersized, insignificant-looking chap toddling aimlessly +along the street a few blocks away from the station. We grappled with +him and hustled him back to the crowd. He slept with us on the floor, +and no one paid any further attention to him, except to remark that he +talked to himself a good bit. He and I awoke earliest next morning. I +asked him if he was hungry and he said he was. So I bought two fair +breakfasts with the money I'd saved for one good one, and we started out +of town. This chap said he was going that way, and I had made up my mind +to find a certain friend of mine--a chap named Hoover. The second day +out I discovered that this queer man was the one who'd been turning +Denver upside down for ten days, healing the halt and the blind. He was +running away because he liked a quieter life." + +He stopped, laughing softly, as if in remembrance--until she prompted +him. + +"Yes, he said, 'Father' had commanded him to go into the wilderness to +fast. He was always talking familiarly with 'Father,' as we walked. So I +stayed by him longer than I meant to--he seemed so helpless--and I +happened at that time to be looking for the true God." + +"Did you find him, Bernal?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +"In this strange man?" + +"In myself. It's the same old secret, Nance, that people have been +discovering for ages--but it is a secret only until after you learn it +for yourself. The only true revelation from God is here in man--in the +human heart. I had to be years alone to find it out, Nance--I'd had so +much of that Bible mythology stuffed into me--but I mustn't bore you +with it." + +"Oh, but I must know, Bernal--you don't dream how greatly I need at this +moment to believe _something_--more than you ever did!" + +"It's simple, Nance. It's the only revelation in which the God of +yesterday gives willing place to the better God of to-day--only here +does the God of to-day say, 'Thou shalt have no other God before me but +the God of to-morrow who will be more Godlike than I. Only in this way +can we keep our God growing always a little beyond us--so that to-morrow +we shall not find ourselves surpassing him as the first man you would +meet out there on the street surpasses the Christian God even in the +common virtues. That was the fourth dimension of religion that I wanted, +Nance--faith in a God that a fearless man could worship." + +He lighted his pipe again, and as the match blazed up she saw the absent +look still in his eyes. By it she realised how far away from her he +was--realised it with a little sharp sense of desolation. He smoked a +while before speaking. + +"Out there in the mountains, Nance, I thought about these things a long +time--the years went before I knew it. At first I stayed with this +healing chap, only after a while he started back to teach again and they +found him dead. He believed he had a mission to save the world, and that +he would live until he accomplished it. But there he was, dead for want +of a little food. Then I stayed a long time alone--until I began to feel +that I, too, had something for the world. It began to burn in my bones. +I thought of him, dead and the world not caring that he hadn't saved +it--not even knowing it was lost. But I kept thinking--a man can be so +much more than himself when he is alone--and it seemed to me that I saw +at least two things the world needed to know--two things that would +teach men to stop being cowards and leaners." + +Her sympathy was quick and ardent. + +"Oh, Bernal," she said warmly, "you made me believe when you believed +nothing--and now, when I need it above all other times, you make me +believe again! And you've come back with a message! How glorious!" + +He smiled musingly. + +"I started with one, Nance--one that had grown in me all those years +till it filled my life and made me put away everything. I didn't accept +it at first. It found me rebellious--wanting to live on the earth. Then +there came a need to justify myself--to show that I was not the mere +vicious unbeliever poor grandad thought me. And so I fought to give +myself up--and I won. I found the peace of the lone places." + +His voice grew dreamy--ceased, as if that peace were indeed too utter +for words. Then with an effort he resumed: + +"But after a while the world began to rumble in my ears. A man can't cut +himself off from it forever. God has well seen to that! As the message +cleared in my mind, there grew a need to give it out. This seemed easy +off there. The little puzzles that the world makes so much of solved +themselves for me. I saw them to be puzzles of the world's own +creating--all artificial--all built up--fashioned clumsily enough from +man's brute fear of the half-God, half-devil he has always made in his +own image. + +"But now that I'm here, Nance, I find myself already a little +bewildered. The solution of the puzzles is as simple as ever, but the +puzzles themselves are more complex as I come closer to them--so complex +that my simple answer will seem only a vague absurdity." + +He paused and she felt his eyes upon her--felt that he had turned from +his abstractions to look at her more personally. + +"Even since meeting you, Nance," he went on with an odd, inward note in +his voice, "I've been wondering if Hoover could by some chance have been +right. When I left, Hoover said I was a fool--a certain common variety +of fool." + +"Oh, I'm sure you're not--at least, not the common kind. I dare say that +a man must be a certain kind of fool to think he can put the world +forward by leaps and bounds. I think he must be a fool to assume that +the world wants truth when it wants only to be assured that it has +already found the truth for itself. The man who tells it what it already +believes is never called a fool--and perhaps he isn't. Indeed, I've come +to think he is less than a fool--that he's a mere polite echo. But oh, +Bernal, hold to your truth! Be the simple fool and worry the wise in the +cages they have built around themselves." + +She was leaning eagerly forward, forgetful of all save that her starved +need was feasting royally. + +"Don't give up; don't parrot the commoner fool's conceits back to him +for the sake of his solemn approval. Let those of his kind give him what +he wants, while you meet those who must have more. I'm one of them, +Bernal. At this moment I honestly don't know whether I'm a bad woman or +a good one. And I'm frightened--I'm so defenseless! Some little soulless +circumstance may make me decisively good or bad--and I don't want to be +bad! But give me what I want--I must have that, regardless of what it +makes me." + +He was silent for a time, then at last spoke: + +"I used to think you were a rebel, Nance. Your eyes betrayed it, and the +corners of your mouth went up the least little bit, as if they'd go +further up before they went down--as if you'd laugh away many solemn +respectabilities. But that's not bad. There are more things to laugh at +than are dreamed of. That's Hoover's entire creed, by the way." + +She remembered the name from that old tale of Caleb Webster's. + +"Is--is this friend of yours--Mr. Hoover--in good health?" + +"Fine--weighs a hundred and eighty. He and I have a ranch on the +Wimmenuche--only Hoover's been doing most of the work while I thought +about things. I see that. Hoover says one can't do much for the world +but laugh at it. He has a theory of his own. He maintains that God set +this planet whirling, then turned away for a moment to start another +universe or something. He says that when the Creator glances back at us +again, to find this poor, scrubby little earth-family divided over its +clod, the strong robbing the weak in the midst of plenty for +all--enslaving them to starve and toil and fight, spending more for war +than would keep the entire family in luxury; that when God looks closer, +in his amazement, and finds that, next to greed, the matter of +worshipping Him has made most of the war and other deviltry--the hatred +and persecution and killing among all the little brothers--he will laugh +aloud before he reflects, and this little ballful of funny, passionate +insects will be blown to bits. He says if the world comes to an end in +his lifetime, he will know God has happened to look this way, and +perhaps overheard a bishop say something vastly important about +Apostolic succession or the validity of the Anglican Orders or +Transubstantiation or 'communion in two kinds' or something. He insists +that a sense of humour is our only salvation--that only those will be +saved who happen to be laughing for the same reason that God laughs when +He looks at us--that the little Mohammedans and Christians and things +will be burned for their blasphemy of believing God not wise and good +enough to save them all, Mohammedan and Christian alike, though not +thinking excessively well of either; that only those laughing at the +whole gory nonsense will go into everlasting life by reason of their +superior faith in God." + +"Of course that's plausible, and yet it's radical. Hoover's father was a +bishop, and I think Hoover is just a bit narrow from early training. He +can't see that lots of people who haven't a vestige of humour are +nevertheless worth saving. I admit that saving them will be a thankless +task. God won't be able to take very much pleasure in it, but in strict +justice he will do it--even if Hoover does regard it as a piece of +extravagant sentimentality." + +A little later she went in. She left him gazing far off into the night, +filled with his message, dull to memory on the very scene that evoked in +her own heart so much from the old days. And as she went she laughed +inwardly at a certain consternation the woman of her could not wholly +put down; for she had blindly hurled herself against a wall--the wall of +his message. But it was funny, and the message chained her interest. She +could, she thought, strengthen his resolution to give it out--help him +in a thousand ways. + +As she fell asleep the thought of him hovered and drifted on her heart +softly, as darkness rests on tired eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE REMORSE OF WONDERING NANCY + + +She awoke to the sun, glad-hearted and made newly buoyant by one of +those soundless black sleeping-nights that come only to the town-tired +when they have first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the +restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation the +black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, +and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a +deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming +smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened +to a laugh as she looked--a little womanish chuckle of confident joy, as +one alone speaking aloud in an overflowing moment. + +An hour later she was greeting Bernal where the sun washed through the +big room. + +"Young life sings in me!" she said, and felt his lightening eyes upon +her lips as she smiled. + +There were three days of it--days in which, however, she grew to fear +those eyes, lest they fall upon her in judgment. She now saw that his +eyes had changed most. They gave the face its look of absence, of +dreaming awkwardness. They had the depth of a hazy sky at times, then +cleared to a coldly lucid glance that would see nothing ever to fear, +within or without; that would hide no falseness nor yet be deceived by +any--a deadly half-shut, appraising coolness that would know false from +true, even though they mated amicably and distractingly in one mind. + +The effect of this glance which she found upon herself from time to time +was to make Nancy suspect herself--to question her motives and try her +defenses. To her amazement she found these latter weak under Bernal's +gaze, and there grew in her a tender remorse for the injustice she had +done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she +came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had +opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged +a good man--good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely +lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's +eyes: she was less than she had thought--he was more. Bernal had proved +these things to her all unconsciously. Now her heart was flooded with +gratitude for his simple, ready, heartfelt praise of his brother--of his +unfailing good-temper, his loyalty, his gifts, his modesty so often +distressed by outspoken admiration of his personal graces. She listened +and applauded with a heart that renewed itself in all good resolves of +devotion. Even when Bernal talked of himself, he made her feel that she +had been unjust to Allan. + +Little by little she drew many things from him--the story of his +journeyings and of his still more intricate mental wanderings. And it +thrilled her to think he had come back with a message--even though he +already doubted himself. Sometimes he would be jocular about it and +again hot with a passion to express himself. + +"Nance," he said on another night, "when you have a real faith in God a +dead man is a miracle not less than a living--and a live man dying is +quite as wondrous as a dead man living. Do you know, I was staggered one +day by discovering that the earth didn't give way when I stepped on it? +The primitive man knowing little of physics doesn't know that a child's +hand could move the earth through space--but for a certain mysterious +resistance. That's God. I felt him all that day, at every step, pushing +the little globe back under me--counteracting me--resisting me--ever so +gently. Those are times when you feel you must tell it, Nance--when the +God-consciousness comes." + +"Oh, Bernal, if you could--if you could come back to do what your +grandfather really wanted you to do--to preach something worth while!" + +"I doubt the need for my message, Nance. I need for myself a God that +could no more spare a Hottentot than a Pope--but I doubt if the world +does. No one would listen to me--I'm only a dreamer. Once, when I was +small they gave me a candy cane for Christmas. It was a thing I had long +worshipped in shop-windows--actually worshipped as the primitive man +worshipped his idol. I can remember how sad I was when no one else +worshipped with me, or paid the least attention to my treasure. I +suspect I shall meet the same indifference now. And I hope I'll have the +same philosophy. I remember I brought myself to eat the cane, which I +suppose is the primary intention regarding them--and perhaps the fruits +of one's faith should be eaten quite as practically." + +They had sent no word to Allan, agreeing it were better fun to surprise +him. When they took the train together on the third day, the wife not +less than the brother looked forward to a joyous reunion with him. And +now that Nancy had proved in her heart the perverse unwifeliness of her +old attitude and was eager to begin the symbolic rites of her atonement, +it came to her to wonder how Bernal would have judged her had she +persisted in that first wild impulse of rebellion. She wanted to see +from what degree of his reprobation she had saved herself. She would be +circuitous in her approach. + +"You remember, Bernal, that night you went away--how you said there was +no moral law under the sky for you but your own?" + +He smiled, and above the noise of the train his voice came to her as his +voice of old came above the noise of the years. + +"Yes--Nance--that was right. No moral law but mine. I carried out my +threat to make them all find their authority in me." + +"Then you still believe yours is the only authority?" + +"Yes; it sounds licentious and horrible, doesn't it; but there are two +queer things about it--the first is that man quite naturally _wishes_ to +be decent, and the second is that, when he does come to rely wholly upon +the authority within himself, he finds it a stricter disciplinarian than +ever the decalogue was. One needs only ordinary good taste to keep the +ten commandments--the moral ones. A man may observe them all and still +be morally rotten! But it's no joke to live by one's own law, and yet +that's all anybody has to keep him right, if we only knew it, +Nance--barring a few human statutes against things like murder and +keeping one's barber-shop open on the Sabbath--the ruder offenses which +no gentleman ever wishes to commit. + +"And must poor woman be ruled by her own God, too?" + +"Why not?" + +"Well, it's not so long ago that the fathers of the Church were debating +in council whether she had a soul or not, charging her with bringing +sin, sickness and death into the world." + +"Exactly. St. John Damascene called her 'a daughter of falsehood and a +sentinel of hell'; St. Jerome came in with 'Woman is the gate of the +devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion'; St. Gregory, I +believe, considered her to have no comprehension of goodness; pious old +Tertullian complimented her with corrupting those whom Satan dare not +attack; and then there was St. Chrysostom--really he was much more +charitable than his fellow Saints--it always seemed to me he was not +only more humane but more human--more interested, you might say. You +know he said, 'Woman is a necessary evil, a domestic peril, a deadly +fascination, a painted ill.' It always seemed to me St. Chrysostom had a +past. But really, I think they all went too far. I don't know woman very +well, but I suspect she has to find her moral authority where man finds +his--within herself." + +"You know what made me ask--a little woman in town came to see Allan not +long ago to know if she mightn't leave her husband--she had what seemed +to her sufficient reason." + +"I imagine Allan said 'no.'" + +"He did. Would you have advised her differently?" + +"Bless you, no. I'd advise her to obey her priest. The fact that she +consulted him shows that she has no law of her own. St. Paul said this +wise and deep thing: 'I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that +there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything +unclean, to him it is unclean!'" + +"Then it lay in her own view of it. If she had felt free to go, she +would have done right to go." + +"Naturally." + +"Yet Allan talked to her about the sanctity of the home." + +"I doubt if the sanctity of the home is maintained by keeping unwilling +mates together, Nance. I can imagine nothing less sanctified than a home +of that sort--peopled by a couple held together against the desire of +either or both. The willing mates need no compulsion, and they're the +ones, it seems to me, that have given the home its reputation for +sanctity. I never thought much about divorce, but I can see that much at +once. Of course, Allan takes the Church's attitude, which survives from +a time when a woman was bought and owned; when the God of Moses classed +her with the ox and the ass as a thing one must not covet." + +"You really think if a woman has made a failure of her marriage she has +a right to break it." + +"That seems sound as a general law, Nance--better for her to make a +hundred failures, for that matter, than stay meekly in the first because +of any superstition. But, mind you, if she suspects that the Church may, +after all, have succeeded in tying up the infinite with red-tape and +sealing-wax--believes that God is a large, dark notary-public who has +recorded her marriage in a book--she will do better to stay. Doubtless +the conceit of it will console her--that the God who looks after the +planets has an eye on her, to see that she makes but one guess about so +uncertain a thing as a man." + +"Then you would advise--" + +"No, I wouldn't. The woman who has to be advised should never take +advice. I dare say divorce is quite as hazardous as marriage, though +possibly most people divorce with a somewhat riper discretion than they +marry with. But the point is that neither marriage nor divorce can be +considered a royal road to happiness, and a woman ought to get her +impetus in either case from her own inner consciousness. I should call +divorcing by advice quite as silly as marrying by it." + +"But it comes at last to her own law in her own heart?" + +"When she has awakened to it--when she honestly feels it. God's law for +woman is the same as for man--and he has but two laws for both that are +universal and unchanging: The first is, they are bound at all times to +desire happiness; the second is, that they can be happy only by being +wise--which is what we sometimes mean when we say 'good,' but of course +no one knows what wisdom is for all, nor what goodness is for all, +because we are not mechanical dolls of the same pattern. That's why I +reverence God--the scheme is so ingenious--so productive of variety in +goodness and wisdom. Probably an evil marriage is as hard to be quit of +as any vice. People persist long after the sanctity has gone--because +they lack moral courage. Hoover was quite that way with cigarettes. If +some one could only have made Jim believe that God had joined him to +cigarettes, and that he mustn't quit them or he'd shatter the +foundations of our domestic integrity--he'd have died in cheerful +smoke--very soon after a time when he says I saved his life. All he +wanted was some excuse to go on smoking. Most people are +so--slothful-souled. But remember, don't advise your friend in town. Her +asking advice is a sign that she shouldn't have it. She is not of the +coterie that Paul describes--if you don't mind Paul once more--'Happy is +he that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth.'" + +There had come to the woman a vast influx of dignity--a joyous increase +in the volume of that new feeling that called to her husband. She would +have gone back, but one of the reasons would have been because she +thought it "right"--because it was what the better world did! But +now--ah! now--she was going unhampered by that compulsion which galls +even the best. She was free to stay away, but of her own glad, loyal +will she was going back to the husband she had treated unjustly, judged +by too narrow a standard. + +"Allan will be so astonished and delighted," she said, when the coupé +rolled out of the train-shed. + +She remembered now with a sort of pride the fine, unflinching sternness +with which he had condemned divorce. In a man of principles so staunch +one might overlook many surface eccentricities. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE FLEXIBLE MIND OF A PLEASED HUSBAND + + +As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of +the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs. +Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable +feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she +was. + +The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, were quick for Allan's +face, resting fondly there during the seconds in which he was changing +from the dead astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal. +During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each +other's arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had +paused before her. + +"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys +go back there to have it out!" + +Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to +tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened +duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to +Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a +slow-moving elder. + +Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed +her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk. + +"--and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite +confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm sure he would wish you +to know. Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as +he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply +them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of +view. But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful +case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless +chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his +mind at all well before thirty-five. Of course, divorce is an evil that, +broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life--no one +understands that better than your husband--and re-marriage after divorce +is usually an outrageous scandal--one, indeed, altogether too +common--sometimes I wonder what we're coming to, it seems to be done so +thoughtlessly--but individual instances are different--'exceptions prove +the rule,' you know, as the old saying goes. Now Harold is ready to +settle down, and the girl is of excellent family and all that--quite the +social and moral brace he needs, in fact." + +Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled. + +"But--you speak of your son, Harold--is he not already married?" + +"That's it, my dear. You know what a funny, bright, mischievous boy +Harold is--even a little deliciously wild at times--doubtless you read +of his marriage when it occurred--how these newspapers do relish +anything of the sort--she was a theatrical young woman--what they call a +'show girl,' I believe. Humph!--with reason, I _must_ say! Of all the +egregious and inveterate showiness! My dear, she is positively a +creature! Oh, if they'd only invent a monocle that would let a young man +pierce the glamour of the footlights. I pledge you my word, she's--but +never mind that! Harold was a thoughtless, restless boy--not bad, you +know, but heedless. Why, he was quite the same about business. He began +to speculate, and of course, being brother Cyrus's nephew, his advantage +was considerable. But he suddenly declared he wouldn't be a broker any +more--and you'd never guess his absurd reason: simply because some stock +he held or didn't hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the +street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill! He said that this +brought him to his senses. He says to me, 'Mater, I've not met Mr. Sage, +you know, but from what I hear of him it would be irrational to place +myself in a position where I should have to experience emotion of any +sort at news of the old gentleman's taking-off. An event so agreeable to +the natural order of God's providence, so plausible, so seemly, should +not be endowed with any arbitrary and artificial significance, +especially of a monetary character--one must be able to view it +absolutely without emotion of any sort, either of regret or +rejoicing--one must remain conscientiously indifferent as to when this +excellent old gentleman passes on to the Golden Shore'--but you know +the breezy way in which Harold will sometimes talk. Only now he seems +really sobered by this new attachment--" + +"But if he is already married--" + +"Yes, yes--if you can call it married--a ceremony performed by one of +those common magistrates--quite without the sanction of the Church--but +all that is past, and he is now ready to marry one who can be a wife to +him--only my conscience did hurt me a little, and brother Cyrus said to +me, 'You see Linford and tell him I sent you. Linford is a man of +remarkable breadth, of rare flexibility.'" + +"Yes, and of course Allan was emphatically discouraging." Again she was +recalling the fervour with which he had declared himself on this point +on that last day when he actually made her believe in him. + +"Oh, the Doctor is broad! He is what I should call adaptable. He said by +all means to extricate Harold from this wretched predicament, not only +on account of the property interests involved, but on account of his +moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he holds deathlessly +to the indissolubility of the marriage tie, still it is unreasonable to +suppose that God ever joined Harold to a person so much his inferior, +and that we may look forward to the real marriage--that on which the +sanctity of the home is truly based--when the law has freed him from +this boyish entanglement. Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that +my boy can have a wife from his own class--and still have it right up +there--with Him, you know!" she concluded with an upward glance, as +Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost +steely--watched her as one might watch an ant. She had the look of one +whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great inner +tumult. + +When her caller had gone she dropped back into the chair, absently +pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand--her bag and parasol on +the floor at her feet. One might have thought her on the point of +leaving instead of having just come. The shadows were deepening in the +corners of the room and about her half-shut eyes. + +A long time she listened to the animated voices of the brothers. At last +the doors were pushed apart and they came out, Allan with his hand on +Bernal's shoulder. + +"There's your bag--now hurry upstairs--the maid will show you where." + +As Bernal went out, Nancy looked up at her husband with a manner +curiously quiet. + +"Well, Nance--" He stepped to the door to see if Bernal was out of +hearing--"Bernal pleases me in the way he talks about the old +gentleman's estate. Either he is most reasonable, or I have never known +my true power over men." + +Her face was inscrutable. Indeed, she only half heard. + +"Mrs. Covil has been telling me some of your broader views on divorce." + +The words shot from her lips with the crispness of an arrow, going +straight to the bull's-eye. + +He glanced quickly at her, the hint of a frown drawing about his eyes. + +"Mrs. Covil should have been more discreet. The authority of a priest in +these matters is a thing of delicate adjustment--the law for one may not +be the law for all. These are not matters to gossip of." + +"So it seems. I was thinking of your opposite counsel to Mrs. Eversley." + +"There--really, you know I read minds, at times--somehow I knew that +would be the next thing you'd speak of." + +"Yes?" + +"The circumstances are entirely different--I may add that--that any +intimation of inconsistency will be very unpleasing to me--very!" + +"I can see that the circumstances are different--the Eversleys are not +what you would call 'important factors' in the Church--and besides--that +is a case of a wife leaving her husband." + +"Nance--I'm afraid you're _not_ pleasing me--if I catch your drift. Must +I point out the difference--the spiritual difference? That misguided +woman wanted to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her +pride--her vanity--by certain alleged attentions to other women, +concerning the measure of which I had no knowledge. That was a case +where the cross must be borne for the true refining of that dross of +vanity from her soul. Her husband is of her class, and her life with him +will chasten her. While here--what have we here?" + +He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when he prepared a +sermon. + +"Here we have a flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual +miscegenation--that's it!--why didn't I think of that phrase +before--spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the +connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance +with a person inferior to him in every point of view--birth, breeding, +station, culture, wealth--a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad +to relinquish her so-called rights for a sum of money. Can that, I ask +you, be called a _marriage?_ Can we suppose an all-wise God to have +joined two natures so ill-adapted, so mutually exclusive, so repellent +to each other after that first glamour is past. Really, such a +supposition is not only puerile but irreverent. It is the conventional +supposition, I grant, and theoretically, the unvarying supposition of +the Church; but God has given us reasoning powers to use fearlessly--not +to be kept superstitiously in the shackles of any tradition whatsoever. +Why, the very Church itself from its founding is an example of the +wisdom of violating tradition when it shall seem meet--it has always had +to do this." + +"I see, Allan--every case must be judged by itself; every marriage +requires a special ruling--" + +"Well--er--exactly--only don't get to fancying that you could solve +these problems. It's difficult enough for a priest." + +"Oh, I'm positive a mere woman couldn't grapple with them--she hasn't +the mind to! All she is capable of is to choose who shall think for +her." + +"And of course it would hardly do to announce that I had counselled a +certain procedure of divorce and re-marriage--no matter how flagrant the +abuse, nor how obvious the spiritual equity of the step. People at large +are so little analytical." + +"'Flexible,' Mr. Browett told his sister you were. He was right--you +_are_ flexible, Allan--more so than I ever suspected." + +"Nance--you _please_ me--you are a good girl. Now I'm going up to +Bernal. Bernal certainly pleases me. Of course I shall do the handsome +thing by him if he acts along the lines our talk has indicated." + +She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had taken two hours +before, when Aunt Bell came in, dressed for dinner. + +"Mercy, child! Do you know how late it is?" + +"What did you say, Aunt Bell?" + +"I say do you know how late it is?" + +"Oh--not too late!" + +"Not too late--for what?" + +There was a pause, then she said: "Aunt Bell, when a woman comes to make +her very last effort at self-deception, why does she fling herself into +it with such abandon--such pretentious flourishes of remorse--and +things? Is it because some under layer of her soul knows it will be the +last and will have it a thorough test? I wonder how much of an arrant +fraud a woman may really be to herself, even in her surest, happiest +moments." + +"There you are again, wondering, wondering--instead of accepting things +and dressing for dinner. Have you seen Allan?" + +"Oh, yes--I've been seeing him for three days--through a glass, darkly." + +Aunt Bell flounced on into the library, trailing something perilously +near a sniff. + +Bernal came down the stairs and stood in the door. + +"Well, Nance!" He went to stand before her and she looked up to him. +There was still light enough to see his eyes--enough to see, also, that +he was embarrassed. + +"Well--I've had quite a talk with Allan." He laughed a little +constrained, uneasy laugh, looking quickly at her to see if she might be +observing him. "He's the same fine old chap, isn't he?" Quickly his eyes +again sought her face. "Yes, indeed, he's the same old boy--a great old +Allan--only he makes me feel that I have changed, Nance." + +She arose from her chair, feeling cramped and restless from sitting so +long. + +"I'm sure you haven't changed, Bernal." + +"Oh, I must have!" + +He was looking at her very closely through the dusk. + +"Yes, we had an interesting talk," he said again. + +He reached out to take one of her hands, which he held an instant in +both his own. "He's a rare old Allan, Nance!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS OF THE GREAT MACHINE + + +For three days the brothers were inseparable. There were so many ancient +matters to bring forward of which each could remember but a half; so +many new ones, of which each must tell his own story. And there was a +matter of finance between them that had been brought forward by Allan +without any foolish delay. Each of them spoke to Nancy about it. + +"Bernal has pleased me greatly," said her husband. "He agrees that +Grandfather Delcher could not have been himself when he made that +will--being made as it was directly after he sent Bernal off. He finds +it absurd that the old man, so firm a Christian, should have +disinherited a Christian, one devoted to the ministry of Jesus, for an +unbeliever like Bernal. It is true, I talked to him in this strain +myself, and I cannot deny that I wield even a greater influence over men +than over women. I dare say I could have brought Bernal around even had +he been selfish and stubborn. By putting a proposition forward as a +matter of course, one may often induce another to accept it as such, +whereas he might dispute it if it were put forward as at all debatable. +But as a matter of fact he required no talking to; he accepted my views +readily. The boy doesn't seem to know the value of money. I really +believe he may decide to make over the whole of the property to me. That +is what I call a beautiful unselfishness. But I shall do handsomely by +him--probably he can use some money in that cattle business. I had +thought first of ten thousand dollars, but doubtless half that will be +wiser. I shall insist upon his taking at least half that. He will find +that unselfishness is a game two can play at." + +Nancy had listened to this absently, without comment. Nor had Bernal +moved her to speech when he said, "You know, Allan is such a sensitive +old chap--you wouldn't guess how sensitive. His feelings were actually +hurt because I'd kept him out of grandad's money all these years. He'd +forgotten that I didn't know I was doing it. Of course the old boy was +thinking what he'd have done in my place--but I think I can make it +right with him--I'm sure now he knows I didn't mean to wrong him." + +Yet during this speech he had shot furtive little questioning looks at +her face, as if to read those thoughts he knew she would not put into +words. + +But she only smiled at Bernal. Her husband, however, found her more +difficult than ever after communicating his news to her. He tried once +to imagine her being dissatisfied with him for some reason. But this +attempt he abandoned. Thereafter he attributed her coldness, aloofness, +silence, and moodiness to some nervous malady peculiar to the modern +woman. Bernal's presence kept him from noting how really pronounced and +unwavering her aversion had become. + +Nor did Bernal note her attitude. Whatever he may have read in Allan at +those times when the look of cold appraisement was turned full upon him, +he had come to know of his brother's wife only that she was Nancy of the +old days, strangely surviving to greet him and be silent with him, or to +wonder with him when he came in out of that preposterous machine of many +wheels that they called the town. No one but Nancy saw anything about it +to wonder at. + +To Bernal, after his years in the big empty places, it was a part of all +the world and of all times compacted in a small space. One might see in +it ancient Jerusalem, Syria, Persia, Rome and modern Babylon--with +something still peculiar and unclassifiable that one would at length +have to call New York. And to make it more absorbing, the figures were +always moving. Where so many were pressed together each was weighted by +a thousand others--the rich not less than the poor; each was stirred to +quick life and each was being visibly worn down by the ceaseless +friction. + +When he had walked the streets for a week, he saw the city as a huge +machine, a machine to which one might not even deliver a message without +becoming a part of it--a wheel of it. It was a machine always +readjusting, always perfecting, always repairing itself--casting out +worn or weak parts and taking in others--ever replacing old wheels with +new ones, and never disdaining any new wheel that found its place--that +could give its cogs to the general efficiency, consenting to be worn +down by the unceasing friction. + +Looking down Broadway early one evening--a shining avenue of joy--he +thought of the times when he had gazed across a certain valley of his +West and dreamed of bringing a message to this spot. + +Against the sky many electric signs flamed garishly. Beneath them were +the little grinding wheels of the machine--satisfied, joyous, wisely +sufficient unto themselves, needing no message--least of all the simple +old truth he had to give. He tried to picture his message blazing +against the sky among the other legends: from where he stood the three +most salient were the names of a popular pugilist, a malt beverage and a +theatre. The need of another message was not apparent. + +So he laughed at himself and went down into the crowd foregathered in +ways of pleasure, and there he drank of the beer whose name was flaunted +to the simple stars. Truly a message to this people must be put into a +sign of electric bulbs; into a phonograph to be listened to for a coin, +with an automatic banjo accompaniment; or it must be put upon the stage +to be acted or sung or danced! Otherwise he would be a wheel rejected--a +wheel ground up in striving to become a part of the machine at a place +where no wheel was needed. + +For another experience cooling to his once warm hopes, the second day of +his visit Allan had taken him to his weekly Ministers' Meeting--an +affair less formidable than its title might imply. + +A dozen or so good fellows of the cloth had luncheon together each +Tuesday at the house of one or another, or at a restaurant; and here +they talked shop or not as they chose, the thing insisted upon being +congeniality--that for once in the week they should be secure from +bores. + +Here Presbyterian and Unitarian met on common ground; Baptist, Catholic, +Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist--all became brothers over the +soup. Weekly they found what was common and helpful to all in discussing +details of church administration, matters of faith, methods of handling +their charitable funds; or the latest heresy trial. They talked of these +things amiably, often lightly. They were choice spirits relaxed, who +might be grave or gay, as they listed. + +Their vein was not too serious the day Bernal was his brother's guest, +sitting between the very delightful Father Riley and the exciting +Unitarian, one Whittaker. With tensest interest he listened to their +talk. + +At first there was a little of Delitzsch and his Babel-Bible addresses, +brought up by Selmour, an amiable Presbyterian of shining bare pate and +cheerful red beard, a man whom scandal had filliped ever so coyly with a +repute of leanings toward Universalism. + +This led to a brief discussion of the old and new theology--Princeton +standing for the old with its definition of Christianity as "a piece of +information given supernaturally and miraculously"; Andover standing for +the new--so alleged Whittaker--with many polite and ingenious evasions +of this proposition without actually repudiating it. + +The Unitarian, however, was held to be the least bit too literal in his +treatment of propositions not his own. + +Then came Pleydell, another high-church Episcopalian who, over his chop +and a modest glass of claret, declared earnest war upon the whole +Hegel-Darwinian-Wellhausen school. His method of attack was to state +baldly the destructive conclusions of that school--that most of the +books of the Old Testament are literary frauds, intentionally +misrepresenting the development of religion in Israel; that the whole +Mosaic code is a later fabrication and its claim to have been given in +the wilderness an historical falsehood. From this he deduced that a mere +glance at the Bible, as the higher critics explain it, must convince the +earnest Christian that he can have no share in their views. "Deprive +Christianity of its supernatural basis," he said, "and you would have a +mere speculative philosophy. Deny the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, +and the Atonement becomes meaningless. If we have not incurred God's +wrath through Adam's disobedience, we need no Saviour. That is the way +to meet the higher criticism," he concluded earnestly. + +As the only rule of the association was that no man should talk long +upon any matter, Floud, the fiery and aggressive little Baptist, +hereupon savagely reviewed a late treatise on the ethnic Trinities, put +out by a professor of ecclesiastical history in a New England +theological seminary. Floud marvelled that this author could retain his +orthodox standing, for he viewed the Bible as a purely human collection +of imperfect writings, the wonder-stories concerning the birth and death +of Jesus as deserving no credence, and denied to Christianity any +supernatural foundation. Polytheism was shown to be the soil from which +all trinitarian conceptions naturally spring--the Brahmanic, +Zoroastrian, Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity--the +latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish stalk. The author's +conclusion, by which he reached "an undogmatic gospel of the spirit, +independent of all creeds and forms--a gospel of love to God and man, +with another Trinity of Love, Truth and Freedom," was particularly +irritating to the disturbed Baptist, who spoke bitterly of the day +having dawned when the Church's most dangerous enemies were those +critical vipers whom she had warmed in her own bosom. + +Suffield, the gaunt, dark, but twinkling-eyed Methodist, also sniffed +at the conclusion of the ethnic-trinities person. "We have an age of +substitutes," he remarked. "We have had substitutes for silk and +sealskin--very creditable substitutes, so I have been assured by +a lady in whom I have every confidence--substitutes for coffee, +for diamonds--substitutes for breakfast which are widely +advertised--substitutes for medicine--and now we are coming to have +substitutes for religion--even a substitute for hell!" + +Hereupon he told of a book he had read, also written by an orthodox +professor of theology, in which the argument, advanced upon scriptural +evidence, was that the wicked do not go into endless torment, but +ultimately shrivel and sink into a state of practical unconsciousness. +Yet the author had been unable to find any foundation for universalism. +This writer, Suffield explained, holds that the curtain falls after the +judgment on a lost world. Nor is there probation for the soul after the +body dies. The Scriptures teach the ruin of the final rejecters of +Christ; Christ teaches plainly that they who reject the Gospel will +perish in the endless darkness of night. But eternal punishment does not +necessarily mean eternal suffering; hence the hypothesis of the soul +gradually shrivelling for the sin of its unbelief. + +The amiable Presbyterian sniffed at this as a sentimental quibble. +Punishment ceases to be punishment when it is not felt--one cannot +punish a tree or an unconscious soul. But this was the spirit of the +age. With the fires out in hell, no wonder we have an age of sugar-candy +morality and cheap sentimentalism. + +But here the Unitarian wickedly interrupted, to remind his Presbyterian +brother that his own church had quenched those very certain fires that +once burned under the pit in which lay the souls of infants unbaptised. + +The amiable Presbyterian, not relishing this, still amiably threw the +gauntlet down to Father Riley, demanding the Catholic view of the future +of unbaptised children. + +The speech of the latter was a mellow joy--a south breeze of liquid +consonants and lilting vowels finely articulated. Perhaps it was not a +little owing to the good man's love for what he called "oiling the rusty +hinges of the King's English with a wee drop of the brogue"; but, if so, +the oil was so deftly spread that no one word betrayed its presence. +Rather was his whole speech pervaded by this soft delight, especially +when his cherubic face, his pink cheeks glistening in certain lights +with a faint silvery stubble of beard, mellowed with his gentle smile. +It was so now, even when he spoke of God's penalties for the souls of +reprobate infants. + +"All theologians of the Mother Church are agreed," replied the gracious +father, "first, that infants dying unbaptised are excluded from the +Kingdom of Heaven. Second, that they will not enjoy the beatific vision +outside of heaven. Third, that they will arise with adults and be +assembled for judgment on the last day. And, fourth, that after the last +day there will be but two states, namely: a state of supernatural and +supreme felicity and a state of what, in a wide sense, we may call +damnation." + +Purlingly the good man went on to explain that damnation is a state +admitting of many degrees; and that the unbaptised infant would not +suffer in that state the same punishment as the adult reprobate. While +the latter would suffer positive pains of mind and body for his sins, +the unfortunate infant would doubtless suffer no pain of sense whatever. +As to their being exempt from the pain of loss, grieving over their +exclusion from the sight of God and the glories of His Kingdom, it is +more commonly held that they do not suffer even this; that even if they +know others are happier than themselves, they are perfectly resigned to +God's will and suffer no pain of loss in regard to happiness not suited +to their condition. + +The Presbyterian called upon them to witness that his church was thus +not unique in attaining this sentimentality regarding reprobate infants. + +Then little Floud cited the case of still another heretic within the +church, a professor in a western Methodist university, who declared that +biblical infallibility is a superstitious and hurtful tradition; that +all the miracles are mere poetic fancies, incredible and untrue--even +irreverent; and that all spiritual truth comes to man through his brain +and conscience. Modern preaching, according to the book of this heretic, +lacks power because so many churches cling to the tradition that the +Bible is infallible. It is the golden calf of their worship; the +palpable lie that gives the ring of insincerity to all their moral +exhortations. + +So the talk flowed on until the good men agreed that a peculiarity of +the time lay in this: that large numbers of ministers within the church +were publishing the most revolutionary heresies while still clinging to +some shred of their tattered orthodoxy. + +Also they decided that it would not be without interest to know what +belief is held by the man of common education and intelligence--the man +who behaves correctly but will not go to church. + +Here Father Riley sweetly reminded them--"No questions are asked in the +Mother Church, gentlemen, that may not be answered with authority. In +your churches, without an authority superior to mere reason, destructive +questions will be asked more and more frequently." + +Gravely they agreed that the church was losing its hold on the people. +That but for its social and charitable activities, its state would be +alarming. + +"Your churches!" Father Riley corrected with suave persistence. "No +church can endure without an infallible head." + +Again and again during the meal Bernal had been tempted to speak. But +each time he had been restrained by a sense of his aloofness. These men, +too, were wheels within the machine, each revolving as he must. They +would simply pity him, or be amused. + +More and more acutely was he coming to feel the futility, the crass, +absurd presumption of what he had come back to undertake. From the lucid +quiet of his mountain haunts he had descended into a vale where +antiquated cymbals clashed in wild discordance above the confusing +clatter of an intricate machinery--machinery too complicated to be +readjusted by a passing dreamer. In his years of solitude he had grown +to believe that the teachers of the world were no longer dominated by +that ancient superstition of a superhumanly malignant God. He had been +prepared to find that the world-ideal had grown more lofty in his +absence, been purified by many eliminations into a God who, as he had +once said to Nance, could no more spare the soul of a Hottentot than the +soul of a pope. Yet here was a high type of the priest of the Mother +Church, gentle, Godly, learned, who gravely and as one having authority +told how God would blight forever the soul of a child unbaptised, thus +imputing to Deity a regard for mechanical rites that would constitute +even a poor human father an incredible monster. + +Yet the marvel of it seemed to him to lie in this: that the priest +himself lived actually a life of loving devotion and sacrifice in marked +opposition to this doctrine of formal cruelty; that his church, more +successfully than any other in Christendom, had met the needs of +humanity, coming closer to men in their sin and sickness, ministering to +them with a deeper knowledge, a more affectionate intimacy, than any +other. That all these men of God should hold formally to dogmas belying +the humaneness of their actual practise--here was the puzzling anomaly +that might well give pause to any casual message-bringer. Struggle as he +might, it was like a tangling mesh cast over him--this growing sense of +his own futility. + +Along with this conviction of his powerlessness there came to him a new +sense of reliance upon Nancy. Unconsciously at first he turned to her +for sunlight, big views and quiet power, for the very stimulus he had +been wont to draw from the wide, high reaches of his far-off valley. +Later, came a conscious turning, an open-eyed bringing of all his needs, +to lay them in her waiting lap. Then it was he saw that on that first +night at Edom her confidence and enthusiasm had been things he leaned +upon quite naturally, though unwittingly. The knowledge brought him a +vague unrest. Furtive, elusive impulses, borne to him on the wings of +certain old memories--memories once resolutely put away in the face of +his one, big world-desire--now came to trouble him. + +It seemed that one must forever go in circles. With fine courage he had +made straight off to toil up the high difficult paths of the ideal. +Never had he consciously turned, nor even swerved. Yet here he was at +length upon his old tracks, come again to the wondering girl. + +Did it mean, then, that his soul was baffled--or did it mean that his +soul would not suffer him to baffle it, try as he might? Was that girl +of the old days to greet him with her wondering eyes at the end of every +high path? These and many other questions he asked himself. + +At the close of this day he sought her, eager for the light of her +understanding eyes--for a certain waiting sympathy she never withheld. +As she looked up now with a kind of composed gladness, it seemed to him +that they two alone, out of all the world, were sanely quiet. Silently +he sank into a chair near her and they sat long thus, feeling no need of +words. At last she spoke. + +"Are you coming nearer to it, Bernal?" + +He laughed. + +"I'm farther away than ever, Nance. Probably there's but one creature in +this city to-day as out of place as I am. He's a big, awkward, +country-looking dog, and he was lost on Broadway. Did you ever see a +lost dog in a city street? This fellow was actually in a panic, wholly +demoralised, and yet he seemed to know that he must conceal it for his +own safety. So he affected a fine air of confidence, of being very busy +about an engagement for which he feared he might be late. He would trot +swiftly along for half a block, then pause as if trying to recall the +street number; then trot a little farther, and stop to look back as if +the other party to his engagement might happen along from that +direction. It was a splendid bit of acting, and it deceived them all, in +that street of mutterers and hard faces. He was like one of them, busy +and hurried, but apparently cool, capable, and ominously alert. Only, in +his moments of indecision, his eyes shifted the least bit nervously, as +if to note whether the real fear he felt were detected, and then I could +read all his secret consternation. + +"I'm the same lost dog, Nance. I feel as he felt every time I go into +that street where the poor creatures hurry and talk to themselves from +sheer nervous fatigue." + +He ceased speaking, but she remained silent, fearing lest she say too +little or too much. + +"Nance," he said presently with a slow, whimsical glance, "I'm beginning +to suspect that I'm even more of a fool than Hoover thought me--and he +was rather enthusiastic about it, I assure you!" + +To which she at length answered musingly: + +"If God makes us fools, doubtless he likes to have us thorough. Be a +great fool, Bernal. Don't be a small one." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE INEFFECTIVE MESSAGE + + +The week had gone while he walked in the crowds, feeling his remoteness; +but he knew at last that he was not of the brotherhood of the zealots; +that the very sense of humour by which he saw the fallacies of one +zealot prevented him from becoming another. He lacked the zealot's +conviction of his unique importance, yet one must be such a zealot to +give a message effectively. He began to see that the world could not be +lost; that whatever might be vital in his own message would, soon or +late, be delivered by another. The time mattered not. Could he not be as +reposeful, as patient, as God? + +In spite of which, the impulse to speak his little word would recur; and +it came upon him stoutly one day on his way up town. As the elevated +train slowly rounded a curve he looked into the open window of a room +where a gloomy huddle of yellow-faced, sunken-cheeked, brown-bearded men +bent their heads over busy sewing-machines. Nearest the window, full +before it, was one that touched him--a young man with some hardy spirit +of hope still enduring in his starved face, some stubborn refusal to +recognise the odds against him. And fixed to his machine, where his eyes +might now and then raise to it from his work, was a spray of lilac--his +little spirit flaunting itself gaily even from the cross. The pathos of +it was somehow intensified by the grinding of the wheels that carried +him by it. + +The train creaked its way around the curve--but the face dreaming +happily over the lilac spray in that hopeless room stayed in his mind, +coercing him. + +As he entered the house, Nancy met him. + +"Do go and be host to those men. It's our day for the Ministers' +Meeting," she continued, as he looked puzzled, "and just as they sat +down Allan was called out to one of his people who is sick. Now run like +a good boy and 'tend to them." + +So it came that, while the impulse was still strong upon him, he went in +among the dozen amiable, feeding gentlemen who were not indisposed to +listen to whomsoever might talk--if he did not bore--which is how it +befell that they had presently cause to remark him. + +Not at first, for he mumbled hesitatingly, without authority of manner +or point to his words, but the phrase, "the fundamental defect of the +Christian religion" caused even the Unitarian to gasp over his glass of +mineral water. His green eyes glittered pleasantly upon Bernal from his +dark face with its scraggly beard. + +"That's it, Mr. Linford--tell us that--we need to know that--do we not, +gentlemen?" + +"Speak for yourself, Whittaker," snapped the aggressive little Baptist, +"but doubtless Mr. Linford has something to say." + +Bernal remained unperturbed by this. Very earnestly he continued: +"Christianity is defective, judged even by poor human standards; untrue +by the plain facts of human consciousness." + +"Ah! Now we shall learn!" Father Riley turned his most gracious smile +upon the speaker. + +"Your churches are losing their hold upon men because your religion is +one of separation, here and hereafter--while the one great tendency of +the age is toward brotherhood--oneness. Primitive man had individual +pride--family pride, city pride, state pride, national pride +followed--but we are coming now to the only permissible pride, a world +pride--in which the race feels its oneness. We are nearly there; even +now the spirit that denies this actual brotherhood is confined to the +churches. The people outside more generally than you dream know that God +does not discriminate among religions--that he has a scheme of a dignity +so true that it can no more permit the loss of one black +devil-worshipper than that of the most magnificent of archbishops." + +He stopped, looking inquiringly--almost wistfully, at them. + +Various polite exclamations assured him of their interest. + +"Continue, by all means," urged Whittaker. "I feel that you will have +even Father Riley edified in a moment." + +"The most cynical chap--even for a Unitarian," purled that good man. + +Bernal resumed. + +"Your God is a tribal God who performed his wonders to show that he had +set a difference between Israel and Egypt. Your Saviour continues to set +the same difference: Israel being those who believed his claim to +Godship; Egypt those who find his evidence insufficient. But we humans +daily practise better than this preaching of retaliation. The Church is +losing power because your creeds are fixed while man, never ceasing to +grow, has inevitably gone beyond them--even beyond the teachings of your +Saviour who threatened to separate father from son and mother from +daughter--who would distinguish sheep from goats by the mere +intellectual test of the opinion they formed of his miracles. The world +to-day insists on moral tests--which Christianity has never done." + +"Ah--now we are getting at it," remarked the Methodist, whose twinkling +eyes curiously belied his grimly solemn face. "Who was it that wished to +know the belief of the average unbeliever?" + +"The average unbeliever," answered Bernal promptly, "no longer feels the +need of a Saviour--he knows that he must save himself. He no longer +believes in the God who failed always, from Eden to Calvary, failed even +to save his chosen tribe by that last device of begetting a son of a +human mother who should be sacrificed to him. He no longer believes that +he must have a mediator between himself and that God." + +"Really, most refreshing," chortled Father Riley. "More, more!" and he +rapped for silence. + +"The man of to-day must have a God who never fails. Disguise it as you +will, your Christian God was never loved. No God can be loved who +threatens destruction for not loving him. We cannot love one whom we are +not free _not_ to love." + +"Where shall we find this God--outside of Holy Writ," demanded Floud, +who had once or twice restrained himself with difficulty, in spite of +his amusement. + +"The true God comes to life in your own consciousness, if you will clear +it of the blasphemous preconceptions imposed by Christianity," answered +Bernal so seriously that no one had the heart to interrupt him. "Of +course we can never personify God save as a higher power of self. Moses +did no more; Jesus did no more. And if we could stop with this--be +content with saying 'God is better than the best man'--we should have a +formula permitting endless growth, even as He permits it to us. God has +been more generous to us than the Church has been to Him. While it has +limited Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew, +He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him +morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable +malignity. + +"You see the world has demonstrated facts that disprove the Godship of +your God and your Saviour. We have come, indeed, into a sense of such +certain brotherhood that we know your hell is a falsity. We know--a +knowledge of even the rudiments of psychology proves--_that there will +be a hell for all as long as one of us is there_. Our human nature is +such that one soul in hell would put every other soul there. Daily this +becomes more apparent. We grow constantly more sensitive to the pain of +others. This is the distinctive feature of modern growth--our increasing +tendency to find the sufferings of others intolerable to ourselves. A +disaster now is felt around the world--we burn or starve or freeze or +drown with our remote brothers--and we do what we can to relieve them +because we suffer with them. It seems to me the existence of the +S.P.C.A. proves that hell is either for all of us or for none of +us--because of our oneness. If the suffering of a stray cat becomes our +suffering, do you imagine that the minority of the race which +Christianity saves could be happy knowing that the great majority lay in +torment? + +"Suppose but two were left in hell--Judas Iscariot and Herbert +Spencer--the first great sinner after Jesus and the last of any +consequence. One betrayed his master and the other did likewise, only +with far greater subtlety and wickedness--teaching thousands to +disbelieve his claims to godhood--to regard Christianity as a crude +compound of Greek mythology and Jewish tradition--a thing built of myth +and fable. Even if these two were damned and all the rest were +saved--can you not see that a knowledge of their suffering would +embitter heaven itself to another hell? Father Riley was good enough to +tell us last week of the state of unbaptised infants after death. Will +you please consider coldly the infinite, good God setting a difference +for all eternity between two babies, because over the hairless pate of +one a priest had sprinkled water and spoken words? Can you not see that +this is untrue because it is absurd to our God-given senses of humour +and justice? Do you not see that such a God, in the act of separating +those children, taking into heaven the one that had had its little head +wetted by a good man, and sending the reprobate into what Father Riley +terms, 'in a wide sense, a state of damnation'--" + +Father Riley smiled upon him with winning sweetness. + +"--do you not see that such a God would be shamed off his throne and +out of heaven by the pitying laugh that would go up--even from sinners? + +"You insist that the truth touching faith and morals is in your Bible, +despite its historical inaccuracies. But do you not see that you are +losing influence with the world because this is not so--because a higher +standard of ethics than yours prevails out in the world--a demand for a +veritable fatherhood of God and a veritable brotherhood of man--to +replace the caricatures of those doctrines that Christianity submits." + +"Our young friend seems to think exceeding well of human nature," +chirped Father Riley. + +"Yes," rejoined Bernal. "Isn't it droll that this poor, fallen human +nature, despised and reviled, 'conceived in sin and born in iniquity,' +should at last call the Christian God and Saviour to account, weigh them +by its own standard, find them wanting, and replace them with a greater +God born of itself? Is not that an eloquent proof of the living God that +abides in us?" + +"Has it ever occurred to you, young man, that human nature has its +selfish moments?" asked the high-church rector--between sips of claret +and water. + +"Has it ever occurred to you that human nature has _any_ but selfish +moments?" replied Bernal. "If so, your impression was incorrect." + +"Really, Mr. Linford, have you not just been telling us how glorious is +this nature of man--" + +"I know--I will explain to you," he went on, moving Father Riley to +another indulgent smile by his willingness to instruct the gray-bearded +Congregationalist who had interrupted. + +"When I saw that there must be a hell for all so long as there is a hell +for one--even for Spencer--I suddenly saw there was nothing in any man +to merit the place--unless it were the ignorance of immaturity. For I +saw that man by the very first law of his being can never have any but a +selfish motive. Here again practical psychology sustains me. You cannot +so much as raise your hand without an intention to promote your +happiness--nor are you less selfish if you give your all to the +needy--you are still equally doing that which promotes your happiness. +That it is more blessed to give than to receive is a terse statement of +a law scientifically demonstrable. You all know how far more exquisite +is the pleasure that comes from giving than that which comes from +receiving. Is not one who prefers to give then simply selfish with a +greater wisdom, a finer skill for the result desired--his own pleasure? +The man we call good is not less selfish than the man we call bad--only +wiser in the ways that bring his happiness--riper in that divine +sensitiveness to the feelings of his brother. Selfish happiness is +equally a law with all, though it send one of us to thieving and another +to the cross. + +"Ignorance of this primary truth has kept the world in spiritual +darkness--it has nurtured belief in sin--in a devil, in a God that +permits evil. For when you tell me that my assertion is a mere +quibble--that it matters not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely +selfish--you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there is +no longer any sin. 'Sin' is then seen to be but a mistaken notion of +what brings happiness. Last night's burglar and your bishop differ not +morally but intellectually--one knowing surer ways of achieving his own +happiness, being more sensitive to that oneness of the race which +thrills us all in varying degrees. When you know this--that the +difference is not moral but intellectual, self-righteousness disappears +and with it a belief in moral difference--the last obstacle to the +realisation of our oneness. It is in the church that this fiction of +moral difference has taken its final stand. + +"And not only shall we have no full realisation of the brotherhood of +man until this inevitable, equal selfishness is understood, but we shall +have no rational conception of virtue. There will be no sound morality +until it is taught for its present advantage to the individual, and not +for what it may bring him in a future world. Not until then will it be +taught effectively that the well-being of one is inextricably bound up +with the well-being of all; that while man is always selfish, his +selfish happiness is still contingent on the happiness of his brother." + +The moment of coffee had come. The Unitarian lighted a black cigar and +avidly demanded more reasons why the Christian religion was immoral. + +"Still for the reason that it separates," continued Bernal, "separates +not only hereafter but here. We have kings and serfs, saints and +sinners, soldiers to kill one another--God is still a God of Battle. +There is no Christian army that may not consistently invoke your God's +aid to destroy any other Christian army--none whose spiritual guides do +not pray to God for help in the work of killing other Christians. So +long as you have separation hereafter, you will have these absurd +divisions here. So long as you preach a Saviour who condemns to +everlasting punishment for disbelief, so long you will have men pointing +to high authority for all their schemes of revenge and oppression here. + +"Not until you preach a God big enough to save all can you arouse men to +the truth that all must be saved. Not until you have a God big enough to +love all can you have a church big enough to hold all. + +"An Indian in a western town must have mastered this truth. He had +watched a fight between drunken men in which one shot the other. He said +to me, 'When I see how bad some of my brothers are, I know how good the +Great Spirit must be to love them all!'" + +"Was--was he a member of any church?" inquired the amiable Presbyterian, +with a facetious gleam in his eyes. + +"I didn't ask him--of course we know he wasn't a Presbyterian." + +Hereupon Father Riley and the wicked Unitarian both laughed joyously. +Then the Congregationalist, gazing dreamily through the smoke of his +cigarette, remarked, "You have omitted any reference to the great fact +of Christianity--the sacrifice of the Son of Man." + +"Very well, I will tell you about it," answered the young man quite +earnestly, whereat the Unitarian fairly glowed with wicked +anticipations. + +"Let us face that so-called sacrifice honestly. Jesus died to save those +who could accept his claim to god-ship--believing that he would go to +sit at the right hand of God to judge the world. But look--an engineer +out here the other day died a horrible death to save the lives of a +scant fifty people--their mere physical lives--died out of that simple +sense of oneness which makes us selfishly fear for the suffering of +others--died without any hope of superior exaltation hereafter. Death of +this sort is common. I would not belittle him you call the Saviour--as a +man he is most beautiful and moving to me--but that shall not blind me +to the fact that the sacrificial element in his death is surpassed daily +by common, dull humans." + +A veiled uneasiness was evident on the part of his listeners, but the +speaker gave no heed. + +"This spectacle of sacrifice, of devotion to others, is needed as an +uplift," he went on earnestly, "but why dwell upon one remote--obscured +by claims of a God-jugglery which belittle it if they be true--when all +about you are countless plain, unpretentious men and women dying deaths +and--what is still greater,--living lives of cool, relentless devotion +out of sheer human love. + +"Preach this divineness of human nature and you will once more have a +living church. Preach that our oneness is so real that the best man is +forever shackled to the worst. Preach that sin is but ignorant +selfishness, less admirable than virtue only as ignorance is less +admirable than knowledge. + +"In these two plain laws--the individual's entire and unvarying +selfishness and his ever-increasing sensitiveness to the sufferings of +others--there is the promise not of a heaven and a hell, but of a heaven +for all--which is what the world is more and more emphatically +demanding--which it will eventually produce even here--for we have as +little sensed the possibilities of man's life here as we have divined +the attributes of God himself. + +"Once you drove away from your church the big men, the thinkers, the +fearless--the souls God must love most truly were it possible to +conceive him setting a difference among his creatures. Now you drive +away even the merely intelligent rabble. The average man knows your +defect--knows that one who believes Christ rose from the dead is not by +that fact the moral superior of one who believes he did not; knows, +indeed, of God, that he cannot be a fussy, vain, blustering creature who +is forever failing and forever visiting the punishment for his failures +upon his puppets. + +"This is why you are no longer considered a factor in civilisation, save +as a sort of police-guard upon the very ignorant. And you are losing +this prestige. Even the credulous day-labourer has come to weigh you and +find you wanting--is thrilling with his own God-assurance and stepping +forth to save himself as best he can. + +"But, if you would again draw man, heat him, weld him, hold him--preach +Man to him, show him his own goodness instead of loading him with that +vicious untruth of his conception in iniquity. Preach to him the +limitless devotion of his common dull brothers to one another through +their sense of oneness. Show him the common beautiful, wonderful, +selfish self-giving of humanity, not for an hour or for a day, but for +long hard life-times. Preach the exquisite adjustment of that human +nature which must always seek its own happiness, yet is slowly finding +that that happiness depends on the happiness of all. The lives of daily +crucifixion without hope of reward are abundant all about you--you all +know them. And if once you exploit these actual sublimities of human +nature--of the man in the street--no tale of devotion in Holy Writ will +ever again move you as these do. And when you have preached this long +enough, then will take place in human society, naturally, spontaneously, +that great thing which big men have dreamed of doing with their +artificial devices of socialism and anarchism. For when you have +demonstrated the race's eternal oneness man will be as little tempted to +oppress, starve, enslave, murder or separate his brothers as he is now +tempted to mutilate his own body. Then only will he love his neighbor as +himself--still with a selfish love. + +"Preach Man to man as a discovery in Godhood. You will not revive the +ancient glories of your Church, but you will build a new church to a God +for whom you will not need to quibble or evade or apologise. Then you +will make religion the one force, and you will rally to it those great +minds whose alienation has been both your reproach and your +embarrassment. You will enlist not only the scientist but the poet--and +all between. You will have a God to whom all confess instinctively." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE WOMAN AT THE END OF THE PATH + + +He stopped, noticing that the chairs were pushed back. There was an +unmistakeable air of boredom, though one or two of the men still smoked +thoughtfully. One of these, indeed--the high church rector--even came +back with a question, to the undisguised apprehension of several +brothers. + +"You have formulated a certain fashion of belief, Mr. Linford, one I +dare say appealing to minds that have not yet learned that even reason +must submit to authority; but you must admit that this revelation of God +in the human heart carries no authoritative assurance of immortality." + +Bernal had been sitting in some embarrassment, dismayed at his own +vehemence, but this challenge stirred him. + +"True," he answered, "but let us thank God for uncertainty, if it take +the place of Christian belief in a sparsely peopled heaven and a crowded +hell." + +"Really, you know--" + +"I know nothing of a future life; but I prefer ignorance to a belief +that the most heinous baby that ever died in sin is to languish in a +state of damnation--even 'in a wide sense' as our good friend puts it." + +"But, surely, that is the first great question of all people in all +ages--'If a man die shall he live again?' + +"Because there has never been any dignified conception of a Supreme +Being. I have tried to tell you what my own faith is--faith in a God +wiser and more loving than I am, who, being so, has devised no mean +little scheme of revenge such as you preach. A God more loving than my +own human father, a God whose plan is perfect whether it involve my +living or dying. Whether I shall die to life or to death is not within +my knowledge; but since I know of a truth that the God I believe in must +have a scheme of worth and dignity, I am unconcerned. Whether his plan +demand extinction or immortality, I worship him for it, not holding him +to any trivial fancy of mine. God himself can be no surer of his plan's +perfection than I am. I call this faith--faith the more perfect that it +is without condition, asking neither sign nor miracle." + +"And life is so good that I've no time to whine. If this _ego_ of mine +is presently to become unnecessary in the great Plan, my faith is still +triumphant. It would be interesting to know the end, but it's not so +important as to know that I am no better--only a little wiser in certain +ways--than yesterday's murderer. Living under the perfect plan of a +perfect Creator, I need not trouble about hidden details when so many +not hidden are more vital. When, in some far-off future, we learn to +live here as fully and beautifully as we have power to, I doubt not that +in the natural ways of growth we shall learn more of this detail of life +we call 'death'--but I can imagine nothing of less consequence to one +who has faith. + +"I saw a stanza the other day that tells it well: + + "'We know not whence is life, nor whither death, + Know not the Power that circumscribes our breath. + But yet we do not fear; what made us men, + What gave us love, shall we not trust again?'" + +While quoting the lines his eyes had been straight ahead, absently +dwelling upon the space between the slightly parted doors that gave into +the next room. But even as he spoke, the last line faltered and halted. +His glance slowly stiffened out of widening eyes to the face it had +caught there--a face new, strange, mesmeric, that all at once enchained +him soul and body. With a splendid, reckless might it assailed him--left +him dazed, deaf, speechless. + +It was the face of Nancy, for the first time all its guards down. Full +upon him flamed the illumined eyes that made the face a yielding +radiance; lifted a little was the chin of gentle curves, the under lip +caught as if in that quivering eagerness she no longer breathed--the +face of Nancy, no longer wondering, Nancy at last compelled and +compelling. A moment the warm light flashed from each to each. + +He stopped in a sudden bewilderment, looking blankly, questioningly at +the faces about him. Then out of the first chaos came the sense of +having awakened from some long, quiet sleep--of having suddenly opened +his eyes upon a world from which the morning mists had lifted, to see +himself--and the woman who stood always at the end of that upward +path--face to face for the first time. One by one his outer sensations +returned. At first he heard a blurred murmuring, then he became aware +that some of the men were looking at him curiously, that one of them had +addressed him. He smiled apologetically. + +"I beg your pardon. I--I couldn't have been listening." + +"I merely asked," repeated Floud, "how you expect to satisfy humanity +with the vague hope that you would substitute for the Christian promise +of eternal life." + +He stared stupidly at the questioner. + +"I--I don't know." He passed a hand slowly upward over his forehead. +"Really I can hardly trouble about those matters--there's so much life +to live. I think I knew a moment ago, but I seem to have forgotten, +though it's doubtless no great loss. I dare say it's more important to +be unafraid of life than to be unafraid of death." + +"You were full of reasons a moment ago," reminded Whittaker--"some of +them not uninteresting." + +"Was I? Oh, well, it's a small matter--I've somehow lost hold of it." He +laughed awkwardly. "It seems to have come to me just now that those who +study an apple until it falls from its stem and rots are even more +foolish than those who pluck and eat." + +Again he was silent, with a great hidden impatience for them to be gone. +But Whittaker, the wicked Unitarian, detained them still a moment +longer. + +"How hardly we should believe in a God who saved every one!" he breathed +softly to the remains of his cigar. + +"Humph! Such a God would be a mere mush of concession!" retorted Floud, +the Baptist. + +"And how true," pursued the unruffled Unitarian, "that we cannot worship +a 'mere mush of concession'--how true that our God must hate what we +hate, and punish what we would punish. We might stomach a God who would +save orthodox burglars along with orthodox bishops, but not one who +saved unbaptised infants and adults of unsound doctrine. Dear, dear, +yes! We must have a God with a little human spite in Him or He seems to +be spineless." + +"A hopeless cynic," declared the soft voice of the Catholic--"it's the +Unitarianism working out of him, mind you!" + +"So glad to have met you!" continued the same good man to Bernal. "Your +words are conducive to thought--you're an earnest, decent lad at all +events." + +But Bernal scarcely heard them or identified the speakers. They were to +him but so many noisy wheels of the vast machine, each revolving as it +must. His whole body seemed to send electric sparks of repulsion out to +them to drive them away as quickly as might be. All his energies were +centred to one mighty impulse. + +At last the door closed and he stood alone with the disordered table and +the pushed back chairs, doggedly gathering himself. Then he went to the +doors and with a hand to each, pushed them swiftly apart. + +She stood at the farther side of the room. She seemed to have fled +there, and yet she leaned toward him breathless, again with the under +lip caught fast in its quivering--helpless, piteously helpless. It was +this that stayed him. Had she utterly shrunk away, even had he found her +denying, defiant--the aroused man had prevailed. But seeing her so, he +caught at the back of a chair as if to hold himself. Then he gazed long +and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his. For a moment it +filled him to see and know, to be certain that she knew and did not +deny. But the man in him was not yet a reasoning man--too lately had he +come to life. + +He stepped eagerly toward her, to halt only when one weak white hand +faltered up with absurd pretension of a power to ward him off. Nor was +it her hand that made him stop then. That barrier confessed its +frailness in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary +submission of her whole poise--she had actually leaned a little further +toward him when he started, even as her hand went up. But the helpless +misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient. + +Then she spoke and his tension relaxed a little, the note of helpless +suffering in her voice making him wince and fall back a step. + +"Bernal, Bernal, Bernal! It hurts me so, hurts me so! It's the +Gratcher--isn't it hurting you, too? Oh, it must be!" + +He retreated a little, again grasping the back of the chair with one +hand, but there was no restraint in his voice. + +"Laugh, Nance, laugh! You know what laughing does to them!" + +"Not to this one, Bernal--oh, not to this one!" + +"But it's only a Gratcher, Nance! I've been asleep all these years. Now +I'm awake. I'm in the world again--here, do you understand, before you. +And it's a glad, good world. I'm full of its life--and I've money--think +of that! Yesterday I didn't know what money was. I was going to throw it +away--throw it away as lightly as I threw away all those good, precious +years. How much it seems now, and what fine, powerful stuff it is! And +I, like a sleeping fool, was about to let it go at a mere suggestion +from Allan." + +He stopped, as if under the thrust of a cold, keen blade. + +[Illustration: "He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so +abjectly to his."] + +"Allan--Allan!" he repeated dazedly while the look of pain deepened in +the woman's eyes. He stared back at her dumbly. Then another awakening +became visible in him and he laughed awkwardly. + +"It's funny, Nance--funny--and awful! Do you know that not until I spoke +his name then had a thought of Allan come to me? Can you comprehend it? +I can't now. But it's the truth. I woke up too suddenly. +Allan--Allan--." It sounded as if he were trying to recall some +forgotten personality. "Oh, Allan!" + +The last was more like a cry. He fell into the chair by which he had +stood. And now the woman erected herself, coming forward to stand before +him, her head bowed, her hands convulsively interlocked. + +"Do you see it all, Bernal? Is it plain now? Oh, how it tortured +me--that last Gratcher--the one we make in our own image and yet make to +be perfect. It never hurt me before, but now I know why. It couldn't +hurt me so long as I looked it straight in the eye--but just now my eyes +had to fall before it, and all in a second it was tearing me to pieces. +That's the only defense against this last Gratcher, Bernal, to look it +in the eyes unafraid. And oh, it hurts so--and it's all my own miserable +fault!" + +"No, it's your goodness, Nance." He spoke very quietly now. "Only the +good have a Gratcher that can't be laughed away. My own was late in +coming. Your Gratcher has saved us." + +He stood up and took her unresisting hands in both his own. They rested +there in peace, yielding themselves like tired children to caring arms. + +"Now I shall be healed," she said. + +"It will take me longer, Nance. My hurt is more stubborn, more +complicated. I can't help it. Something in me resists. I see now that I +know too much--too much of you, too much of--" + +She saw that he must have suffered some illumination upon Allan. There +was a look of bitter comprehension in his face as he broke off. She +turned away from it. + +When, an hour later, Allan came in, he found them chatting easily of the +few people of St. Antipas that Bernal had met. At the moment, they were +discussing Mrs. Wyeth, whose face, Bernal declared, was of a rare +perfection. Nance turned to her husband. + +"You must thank Bernal," she said, "for entertaining your guests this +afternoon." + +"He wouldn't if he knew what I said--or how it must have bored them. One +thing, Nance, they won't meet here again until you swear I've gone!" + +"Bernal's heart is right, even if his theology doesn't always please +me," said his brother graciously, examining some cards that lay on the +table. "I see Mrs. Wyeth has called," he continued to Nancy, looking up +from these. + +"Yes. She wanted me to see her sister, poor Mrs. Eversley, who is ill at +her house. I promised to look in to-morrow." + +"I've just been telling Nance how beautiful I think Mrs. Wyeth is," said +Bernal. "She's rare, with that face of the low-browed Greek. It's one of +the memories I shall take back to my Eve-less Eden." + +"She _is_ beautiful," said Nancy. "Of course her nose is the least bit +thin and long, but it rather adds zest to her face. Now I must dress for +dinner." + +When Nancy had gone, Bernal, who had been speaking with a marked +lightness of tone, turned to Allan with an equally marked seriousness. + +"Old chap, you know about that money of mine--of Grandfather's?" + +Allan instantly became attentive. + +"Of course, there's no hurry about that--you must take time to think it +over," he answered. + +"But there _is_ hurry! I shouldn't have waited so long to make up my +mind. + +"Then you _have_ made up your mind?" questioned his brother, with +guarded eagerness. + +"Definitely. It's all yours, Allan. It will help you in what you want to +do. And not having it will help me to do what I want to do--make it +simpler, easier. Take it--and for God's sake be good to Nancy." + +"I can't tell you how you please me, Bernal. Not that I'm avid for +money, but it truly seems more in accord with what must have been +grandfather's real wish. And Nancy--of course I shall be good to +her--though at times she seems unable to please me." + +There was a sanctified displeasure in his tone, as he spoke of Nancy. It +caused Bernal to turn upon him a keen, speculative eye, but only for a +moment. And his next words had to do with matters tangible. "To-morrow +I'll do some of the business that can be done here. Then I'll go up to +Edom and finish the transfers that have to be made there." After a brief +hesitation, he added: "Try to please _her_ a bit, Allan. That's all." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +IN WHICH THE MIRROR IS HELD UP TO HUMAN NATURE + + +When, the next day, Nancy went to pay her promised visit to Mrs. +Eversley, the rectory was steeped in the deep household peace of +mid-afternoon. Both Allan and Bernal had gone out soon after luncheon, +while Aunt Bell had withdrawn into the silence, there to meditate the +first letters of the alphabet of the inexpressible, to hover about the +pleasant line that divides the normal from the subliminal. + +Though bruised and torn, Nancy was still grimly upright in the eye of +duty, still a worthy follower of orthodox ways. Buried in her own +eventful thoughts in that mind-world where love is born and dies, where +beliefs rise and perish but no sound ever disturbs the stillness, she +made her way along the shaded side of the street toward the Wyeth +residence. Not until she had passed several doors beyond the house did +she recall her errand, remember that her walk led to a goal, that she +herself had matters in hand other than thinking, thinking, thinking. + +Retracing her steps, she rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Eversley. +Before the servant could reply, Mrs. Wyeth rustled prettily down the +hall from the library at the back. She wore a gown of primrose yellow. +An unwonted animation lighted the cold perfection of her face, like fire +seen through ice. + +"_So_ glad to see you!" she said with graceful effusion--"And the +Doctor? And that queer, fascinating, puzzling brother of yours, how are +they? So glad! Yes, poor sister keeps to her room and you really mustn't +linger with me an instant. I'm not even going to ask you to sit down. Go +right up. Her door's at the end of the hall, you know. You'll comfort +the poor thing beautifully, you dear!" + +She paused for breath, a vivid smile taking the place of words. Mrs. +Linford, rendered oddly, almost obstinately reserved by this excessive +cordiality, was conscious of something unnatural in that smile--a too +great intensity, like the greenness of artificial palms. + +"Thank you so much for coming, you angel," she went on playfully, "for +doubtless I shall not be visible when you go. You see Donald's off in +the back of the house re-arranging whole shelves of wretched, dusty +books and he fancies that he must have my suggestions." + +"The door at the end of the hall!" she trilled in sweet but unmistakable +dismissal, one arm pointing gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of +draperies, that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that even +Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had admitted to be all but +faultless. And the latter, wondering not a little at the stiff +disposition to have her quickly away, which she had somehow divined +through all the gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, went on +upstairs. As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley's door, the bell of the street +door sounded in her ears. + +Somewhat less than an hour after, she came softly out again, opening and +closing the door noiselessly. So effectually had she soothed the +invalid, that the latter had fallen into a much-needed sleep, and Nancy, +eager to escape to that mind-world where the happenings are so momentous +and the silence is so tense, had crept like a mouse from the room. + +At the top of the stairs she paused to gather up her skirts. Then her +ears seemed to catch the sound of voices on the floor below and she +remained motionless for a second, listening. She had no desire to +encounter for the second time the torrent of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, no +wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably gifted in the art of +arousing in her an aversion of which she was half ashamed. + +No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, deciding that the way +was clear, she descended the thickly carpeted stairs. Near the bottom, +opposite the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused to look +into the big mirror on the opposite wall. As she turned her head for a +final touch to the back of her veil, her eyes became alive to something +in that corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror--something +that held her frozen with embarrassment. + +Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, the gown of Mrs. +Wyeth showed unmistakably--Mrs. Wyeth abandoned to the close, still +embrace of an unrecognized man. + +Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy hesitated, not +knowing whether to retreat or go forward. She had decided to go on, +observing nothing--and of course she _had_ observed nothing save an +agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and Mrs. +Wyeth--when a further revelation arrested her. + +Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of Mrs. Wyeth was +lifted and Mrs. Wyeth's big eyes fastened upon hers through the +impartial mirror. But their expression was not that of the placid matron +observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness. Rather, it was one of +acute dismay--almost fear. Poor Mrs. Weyth, who had just said, +"Doubtless I shall not be visible when you go!" + +Even as she caught this look, Nancy started down the remaining steps, +her cheeks hot from her own wretched awkwardness. She wanted to +hurry--to run; she might still escape without having reason to suspect +that the obscured person was other than he should be in the opinion of +an exacting world. Then, as her hand was at the door, while the silken +rustling of that hurried disentanglement was in her ears, the voice of +Wyeth sounded remotely from the rear of the house. It seemed to come +from far back in the library, removed from them by the length of the +double drawing-rooms--a comfortable, smooth, high-pitched voice--lazy, +drawling-- + +"Oh, _Linford!_" + +_Linford!_ The name seemed to sink into the stillness of the great +house, leaving no ripple behind. Before an answer to the call could +come, she had opened the great door and pulled it sharply to behind her. + +Outside, she lingered a moment as if in serenely absent contemplation of +the street, with the air of one who sought to recall her next +engagement. Then, gathering up her skirts, she went leisurely down the +steps and passed unhurriedly from the view of those dismayed eyes that +she felt upon her from the Wyeth window. + +On the avenue she turned north and was presently alone in a shaded aisle +of the park--that park whose very trees and shrubs seem to have taken on +a hard, knowing look from having been so long made the recipients of +cynical confidences. They seemed to understand perfectly what had +happened, to echo Wyeth's high-pitched, friendly drawl, with an added +touch of mockery that was all their own--"Oh--Linford!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +FOR THE SAKE OF NANCY + + +It was toward six o'clock when she ascended the steps of the rectory. +Bernal, coming from the opposite direction, met her at the door. Back of +his glance, as they came together, was an intimation of hidden things, +and at sight of him she was smitten by an electric flash of wonder. The +voice of Wyeth, that friendly, untroubled voice, she now remembered had +called to no specific Linford. In the paralysis of embarrassment that +had seized her in that darkened hallway, she had failed to recall that +there were at least two Linfords in existence. In an instant her inner +world, wrought into something like order in the past two hours, was +again chaos. + +"Why, Nance--you look like night, when there are no stars--what is it?" +He scanned her with an assumption of jesting earnestness, palpably meant +to conceal some deeper emotion. She put a detaining hand on his arm as +he was about to turn the key in the lock. + +"Bernal, I haven't time to be indirect, or beat about, or anything--so +forgive the abruptness--were you at Mrs. Wyeth's this afternoon?" + +His ear caught the unusual note in her voice, and he was at once +concerned with this rather than with her question. + +"Why, what is it, Nance--what if I was? Are you seeing another +Gratcher?" + +"Bernal, quick, now--please! Don't worry me needlessly! Were you at Mrs. +Wyeth's to-day?" + +Her eyes searched his face. She saw that he was still either puzzled or +confused, but this time he answered plainly, + +"No--I haven't seen that most sightly cold lady to-day--more's the +pity!" + +She breathed one quick little sigh--it seemed to him strangely like a +sigh of relief. + +"I knew you couldn't have been." She laughed a little laugh of secrets. +"I was only wondering foolish wonders--you know how Gratchers must be +humoured right up to the very moment you puff them away with the deadly +laugh." + +Together they went in. Bernal stopped to talk with Aunt Bell, who was +passing through the hall as they entered; while Nancy, with the manner +of one not to be deflected from some set purpose, made straight for +Allan's study. + +In answer to her ominously crisp little knock, she heard his "Come!" and +opened the door. + +He sat facing her at his desk, swinging idly from side to side in the +revolving chair, through the small space the desk permitted. Upon the +blotter before him she saw that he had been drawing interminable +squares, oblongs, triangles and circles, joining them to one another in +aimless, wandering sequence--his sign of a perturbed mind. + +He glanced up with a look of waiting defiance which she knew but masked +all his familiar artillery. + +Instantly she determined to give him no opportunity to use this. She +would end matters with a rush. He was awaiting her attack. She would +make none. + +"I think there is nothing to say," she began quickly. "I could utter +certain words, but they would mean one thing to me and other things to +you--there is no real communication possible between us. Only remember +that this--to-day--matters little--I had already resolved that sooner or +later I must go. This only makes it necessary to go at once." + +She turned to the door which she had held ajar. At her words he sat +forward in his chair, the yellow stars blazing in his eyes. But the +opening was not the one he had counted upon, and before he could alter +his speech to fit it, or could do more than raise a hand to detain her, +she had gone. + +He sat back in his chair, calculating how to meet this mood. Then the +door resounded under a double knock and Bernal came in. + +"Well, old boy, I'll be off to-night. The lawyer is done with me here +and now I'll go to Edom and finish what's to be done there. Then in a +few days I'll be out of this machine and back to the ranche. You know +I've decided that my message to the world would best take the +substantial form of beef--a message which no one will esteem +unpractical." + +He paused, noting the other's general droop of gloom. + +"But what's the trouble, old chap? You look done up!" + +"Bernal--it's all because I am too good-hearted, too unsuspecting. Being +slow to think evil of others, I foolishly assume that others will be +equally charitable. And you don't know what women are--you don't know +how the sentimental ones impose upon a man in my office. I give you my +word of honour as a man--my word of _honour_, mind you!--there never has +been a thing between us but the purest, the most elevated--the loftiest, +most ideal--" + +"Hold on, old chap--I shall have to take the car ahead, you know, if you +won't let me on this one...." + +"--as pure a woman as God ever made, while as for myself, I think my +integrity of purpose and honesty of character, my sense of loyalty +should be sufficiently known--" + +"Say, old boy--" Bernal's face had lighted with a sudden flash of +insight--"is it--I don't wish to be indiscreet--but is it anything about +Mrs. Wyeth?" + +"Then you _do_ know?" + +"Nothing, except that Nance met me at the door just now and puzzled me a +bit by her very curious manner of asking if I had been at the Wyeth's +this afternoon." + +"_What_?" The other turned upon him, his eyes again blazing with the +yellow points, his whole figure alert. "She asked you _that--Really_?" + +"To be sure!" + +"And you said--" + +"'No'--of course--and she mumbled something about having been foolish to +think I could have been. You know, old man, Nance was troubled. I could +see that." + +His brother was now pacing the floor, his head bent from the beautifully +squared shoulders, his face the face of a mind working busily. + +"An idiot I was--she didn't know me--I had only to--" + +Bernal interrupted. + +"Are you talking to yourself, or to me?" + +The rector of St. Antipas turned at one end of his walk. + +"To both of us, brother. I tell you there has been nothing between +us--never anything except the most flawless idealism. I admit that at +the moment Nancy observed us the circumstances were unluckily such that +an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might have misconstrued them. I +will even admit that a woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments +might not unreasonably have been puzzled, but I would tear my heart open +to the world this minute--'Oh, be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as +snow, thou shalt not escape calumny!'" + +"If I follow you, old chap, Nancy observed some scene this afternoon in +which it occurred to her that I might have been an actor." There was +quick pain, a sinking in his heart. + +"She had reason to know it was one of us--and if I had denied it was +I--" + +"I _see_--why didn't you?" + +"I thought she must surely have seen me--and besides"--his voice +softened with affection--"do you think, old chap, I would have shifted a +misunderstanding like that on to _your_ shoulders. Thank God, I am not +yet reduced to shirking the penalties of my own blameless acts, even +when they will be cruelly misconstrued." + +"But you should have done so--It would mean nothing to me, and +everything to you--to that poor girl--poor Nance--always so helpless and +wondering and so pathetically ready to _believe_! She didn't deserve +that you take it upon yourself, Allan!" + +"No--no, don't urge! I may have made mistakes, though I will say that +few men of my--well, my attractions! Why not say it bluntly?--few men of +my attractions, placed as I have been, would have made so few--but I +shall never be found shirking their consequences--it is not in my +nature, thank God, to let another bear the burden--I can always be a +man!--" + +"But, old boy--you must think of poor Nancy--not of me!" Again he felt +the hurt of her suspicion. + +"True--compassion requires that I think of her rather than of my own +pride--and I have--but, you see, it's too late. I committed myself +before I knew she didn't _know_!" + +"Let her believe it is still a mistake--" + +"No, no--it would be trickery--and it's impracticable--I as good as +confessed to her, you see--unless"--he brightened here and stopped in +his walk--"unless she could be made to believe that I meant to shield +you!" + +"That's it! Really, you are an executor, Allan! Now we'll put the poor +girl easy in her mind again. I'll tell her you did it to shield me. You +know it's important--what Nancy thinks of you, old chap--she's your +wife--and--it doesn't matter a bit how meanly--she thinks of me--of +course not. I dare say it will be better for me if she _does_ think +meanly of me--I'll tell her at once--what was it I did?" + +"No--no--she wouldn't believe you now. I dislike to say this, Bernal, +but Nancy is not always so trusting as a good woman should be--she has a +habit of wondering--but--mind you, I could only consent to this for the +sake of her peace of mind--" + +"I understand perfectly, old chap--it will help the peace of mind of all +of us, I begin to see--hers and mine--and yours." + +"Well, then, if she can be made to suspect this other aspect of the +affair without being told directly--ah!--here's a way. Turn that +messenger-call. Now listen--I will have a note sent here addressed to +you by a certain woman. It will be handed to Nancy to give to you. She +will observe the writing--and she will recognise it,--she knows it. You +will have been anxious about this note--expecting it--inquiring for it, +you know. Get your dinner now, then stay in your room so the maid won't +see you when the note comes--she will have to ask Nance where you +are--" + +At dinner, which Bernal had presently with Aunt Bell and two empty +seats, his companion regaled him with comments upon the development of +the religious instinct in mankind, reminding him that should he ever +aspire to a cult of his own he would find Boston a more fertile field +than New York. + +"They're so much broader there, you know," she began. "Really, they'll +believe anything if you manage your effects artistically. And that is +the trouble with you, Bernal. You appeal too little to the imagination. +You must not only have a novelty to preach nowadays, but you must preach +it in a spectacular manner. Now, that assertion of yours that we are all +equally selfish is novel and rather interesting--I've tried to think of +some one's doing some act to make himself unhappy and I find I can't. +And your suggestion of Judas Iscariot and Mr. Spencer as the sole +inmates of hell is not without a certain piquancy. But, my dear boy, you +need a stage-manager. Let your hair grow, wear a red robe, do +healing--" + +He laughed protestingly. "Oh, I'm not a prophet, Aunt Bell--I've learned +that." + +"But you could be, with proper managing. There's that perfectly stunning +beginning with that wild healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you +make nothing of it--it might have happened to anybody and it never came +to anything, except that you went off into the wilderness and stayed +alone. You should tell how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he +told you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. Then get the +reporters about you and talk queerly so that they can make a good story +of it. Also live on rice and speak with an accent--_any_ kind of accent +would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach your message, and +I'd guarantee you a following of thousands in New York in a month. Of +course they'd leave you for the next fellow that came along with a key +to the book of Revelations, or a new diet or something, but you'd keep +them a while." + +Aunt Bell paused, enthusiastic, but somewhat out of breath. + +"I'll quit, Aunt Bell--that's enough--" + +"Mr. Spencer is an example for you. Contrast his hold on the masses with +Mrs. Eddy's, who appeals to the imagination. I'm told by those who have +read his works that he had quite the knack of logic, and yet the +President of Princeton Theological Seminary preaches a sermon in which +he calls him 'the greatest failure of the age.' I read it in this +morning's paper. His text was, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me.' +You see, there was an appeal to the imagination--the most audacious +appeal that the world has ever known--and the crowd will be with this +clergyman who uses it to refute the arguments of a man who worked hard +through forty years of ill-health to get at the mere dry common-sense of +things. If Jesus had descended to logic, he'd never have made a convert. +But he appealed magnificently to the imagination, and see the result!" + +His mind had been dwelling on Allan's trouble, but now he came back to +his gracious adviser. + +"You do me good, Aunt Bell--you've taken all that message nonsense out +of me. I suppose I _could_ be one of them, you know--one of those +fellows that get into trouble--if I saw it was needed; but it isn't. Let +the men who can't help it do it--they have no choice. Hereafter I shall +worry as little about the world's salvation as I do about my own." + +When they had finished dinner he let it be known that he was not a +little anxious concerning a message that was late in arriving, and he +made it a point, indeed, that the maid should advise Mrs. Linford to +this effect, with an inquiry whether she might not have seen the delayed +missive. + +Then, after a word with Allan, he went to his room and from his south +window smoked into the night--smoked into something approaching quietude +a mind that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed girl in +dusky white--the wondering, waiting girl whose hand had trembled into +his so long ago--so many years during which he had been a dreaming fool, +forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of +idealism--forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible +custom to eat one's candy cane instead of preserving it superstitiously +through barren years! + +He knew that he had awakened too late for more than a fleeting vision of +what would have made his life full. Now he must be off, up the path +again, this time knowing certainly that the woman would never more stand +waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations. The +woman was definitely gone. That was something, even though she went with +that absurd, unreasoning, womanish suspicion. And he had one free, dear +look from her to keep through the empty days. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE FELL FINGER OF CALUMNY SEEMS TO BE AGREEABLY DIVERTED + + +Shut in his study, the rector of St. Antipas paced the floor with nicely +measured steps, or sat at his desk to make endless squares, circles, and +triangles. He was engrossed in the latter diversion when he heard the +bell sound below. He sat back to hear the steps of the maid, the opening +of the door; then, after an interval, her steps ascending the stairs and +stopping at his own door; then her knock. + +"A letter for Mr. Bernal, sir!" + +He glanced at the envelope she held, noting its tint. + +"He's not here Nora. Take it to Mrs. Linford. She will know where he +is." + +He heard her go down the hall and knock at another door. She was +compelled to knock twice, and then there was delay before the door +opened. + +He drew some pages of manuscript before him and affected to be busy at a +work of revision, crossing out a word here, interlining one there, +scanning the result with undivided attention. + +When he heard a knock he did not look up, but said, "Come!" Though still +intent at his work, he knew that Nancy stood there, looking from the +letter to him. + +"Nora said you sent this letter to me--it's for Bernal--" + +He answered, still without looking up, + +"I thought he might be with you, or that you might know where he was." + +"I don't." + +He knew that she studied the superscription of the envelope. + +"Well, leave it here on my desk till he comes. I sent it to you only +because I heard him inquiring if a letter had not come for him--he +seemed rather anxious about some letter--troubled, in fact--doubtless +some business affair. I hoped this might be what he was expecting." + +His eyes were still on the page before him, and he crossed out a word +and wrote another above it, after a meditative pause. Still the woman at +the door hesitated. + +"Did you chance to notice the address on the envelope?" + +He glanced at her now for the first time, apparently in some surprise: +"No--it is not my custom to study addresses of letters not my own. Nora +said it was for Bernal and he had seemed really distressed about some +letter or message that didn't come--if you will leave it here--" + +"I wish to hand it to him myself." + +"As you like." He returned to his work, crossing out a whole line and a +half with broad, emphatic marks. Then he bent lower, and the interest in +his page seemed to redouble, for he heard the door of Bernal's room +open. Nancy called: + +"Bernal!" + +He came to the door where she stood and she stepped a little inside so +that he might enter. + +"I am anxious about a letter. Ah, you have it!" + +She was scanning him with a look that was acid to eat out any untruth in +his face. + +"Yes--it just came." She held it out to him. He looked at the front of +the envelope, then up to her half-shut eager eyes--eyes curiously +hardened now--then he blushed flagrantly--a thorough, riotous blush--and +reached for the letter with a pitiful confusion of manner, not again +raising his uneasy eyes to hers. + +"I was expecting--looking--for a message, you know--yes, yes--this is +it--thank you very much, you know!" + +He stammered, his confusion deepened. With the letter clutched eagerly +in his hand he went out. + +She looked after him, intently. When he had shut his own door she +glanced over at the inattentive Allan, once more busy at his manuscript +and apparently unconscious of her presence. + +A long time she stood in silence, trying to moderate the beating of her +heart. Once she turned as if to go, but caught herself and turned again +to look at the bent head of Allan. + +At last it seemed to her that she could trust herself to speak. Closing +the door softly, she went to the big chair at the end of the desk. As +she let herself go into this with a sudden joy in the strength of its +supporting arms, her husband looked up at her inquiringly. + +She did not speak, but returned his gaze; returned it, with such +steadiness that presently he let his own eyes go down before hers with +palpable confusion, as if fearing some secret might lie there plain to +her view. His manner stimulated the suspicion under which she now seemed +to labour. + +"Allan, I must know something at once very clearly. It will make a +mighty difference in your life and in mine." + +"What is it you wish to know?" His glance was oblique and his manner one +of discomfort, the embarrassed discomfort of a man who fears that the +real truth--the truth he has generously striven to withhold--is at last +to come out. + +"That letter which Bernal was so troubled about came from--from that +woman--how could I avoid seeing that when it was handed to me? Did you +know it, too?" + +"Why, Nancy--I knew--of course--I knew he expected--I mean the poor boy +told me--" Here he broke off in the same pitiful confusion that had +marked Bernal's manner at the door--the confusion of apprehended deceit. +Then he began again, as if with gathered wits--"What was I saying? I +know nothing whatever of Bernal's affairs or his letters. Really, how +should I? You see, I have work on my mind." As if to cover his +awkwardness, he seized his pen and hastily began to cross out a phrase +on the page before him. + +"Allan!" Though low, it was so near a cry that he looked up in what +seemed to be alarm. She was leaning forward in the chair, one hand +reaching toward him over the desk, and she spoke rapidly. + +"Allan, I find myself suspecting now that you tried to deceive me this +afternoon--that Bernal did, also, incredible as it sounds--that you +tried to take the blame of that wretched thing off his shoulders. That +letter to him indicates it, his own pitiful embarrassment just now--oh, +an honest man wouldn't have looked as he did!--your own manner at this +instant. You are both trying--Oh, tell me the truth now!--you'll never +dream how badly I need it, what it means to my whole life--tell me, +Allan--for God's sake be honest this instant--my poor head is whirling +with all the lies! Let me feel there is truth somewhere. Listen. I swear +I'll stay by it, wherever it takes me--here or away from here--but I +must have it. Oh, Allan, if it should be in you, after all--Allan! dear, +_dear_--Oh! I do see it now--you _can't_ deceive--you _can't_ deceive!" + +Slowly at first his head bent under her words, bent in cowardly evasion +of her sharp glance, the sidelong shiftings of his eyes portraying him, +the generous liar, brought at last to bay by his own honest clumsiness. +Then, as her appeal grew warmer, tenderer, more insistent, the fine head +was suddenly erected and proud confession was written plainly over the +glowing face--that beautiful contrition of one who has willed to bear a +brother's shame and failed from lack of genius in the devious ways of +deceit. + +Now he stood nobly from his chair and she was up with a little loving +rush to his arms. Then, as he would have held her protectingly, she +gently pushed away. + +"Don't--don't take me yet, dear--I should be crying in another +moment--I'm so--so _beaten_--and I want not to cry till I've told you, +oh, so many things! Sit again and let us talk calmly first. Now +why--_why_ did you pretend this wretched thing?" + +He faced her proudly, with the big, honest, clumsy dignity of a rugged +man--and there was a loving quiet in his tones that touched her +ineffably. + +"Poor Bernal had told me his--his _contretemps_. The rest is simple. He +is my brother. The last I remember of our mother is her straining me to +her poor breast and saying, 'Oh, take care of little Bernal!'" Tears +were glistening in his eyes. + +"From the very freedom of the poor boy's talk about religious matters, +it is the more urgent that his conduct be irreproachable. I could not +bear that even you should think a shameful thing of him." + +She looked at him with swimming eyes, yet held her tears in check +through the very excitement of this splendid new admiration for him. + +"But that was foolish--quixotic--" + +"You will never know, little woman, what a brother's love is. Don't you +remember years ago I told you that I would stand by Bernal, come what +might. Did you think that was idle boasting?" + +"But you were willing to have me suspect _that_ of you!" + +He spoke with a sad, sweet gentleness now, as one might speak who had +long suffered hurts in secret. + +"Dearest--dear little woman--I already knew that I had been unable to +retain your love--God knows I tried--but in some way I had proved +unworthy of it. I had come to believe--painful and humiliating though +that belief was--that you could not think less of me--your words +to-night proved that I was right--you would have gone away, even without +this. But at least my poor brother might still seem good to you." + +"Oh, you poor, foolish, foolish, man--And yet, Allan, nothing less than +this would have shown you truly to me. I can speak plainly now--indeed I +must, for once. Allan, you have ways--mannerisms--that are unfortunate. +They raised in me a conviction that you were not genuine--that you were +somehow false. Don't let it hurt now, dear, for see--this one little +unstudied, impetuous act of devotion, simple and instinctive with your +generous heart, has revealed your true self to me as nothing else could +have done. Oh, don't you see how you have given me at last what I had to +have, if we were to live on together--something in you to _hold_ to--a +foundation to rest upon--something I can know in my heart of hearts is +stable--despite any outward, traitorous _seeming_! Now forever I can be +loving, and loyal, in spite of all those signs which I see at last are +misleading." + +Again and again she sought to envelope him with acceptable praises, +while he gazed fondly at her from that justified pride in his own +stanchness--murmuring, "Nance, you please me--you _please_ me!" + +"Don't you see, dear? I couldn't reach you before. You gave me nothing +to believe in--not even God. That seeming lack of genuineness in you +stifled my soul. I could no longer even want to be good--and all that +for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness in you." + +"No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, +Nance--" + +"Say unfortunate, Allan--not faulty. I shall never again believe a fault +of you. How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments--and +what stupids they are who say she is intuitive! Do you know, I believed +in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me +believe in everything else--in God and goodness and virtue and truth--in +all the good things we like to believe in--yet see what he did!" + +"My dear, I know little of the circumstances, but--" + +"It isn't _that_--I can't judge him in that--but this I must +judge--Bernal, when he saw I did not know who had been there, was +willing I should think it was you. To retain my respect he was willing +to betray you." She laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in +pain. "You will never know just what the thought of that boy has been to +me all these years, and especially this last week. But now--poor weak +Bernal! Poor _Judas_, indeed!" There was a kind of anguished bitterness +in the last words. + +"My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy," remonstrated Allan +gently. "Remember that whatever his mistakes, he has a good heart--and +he is my brother." + +"Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you--Can't you see that is +precisely what he _lacks_--a good heart? Oh, dearest, I needed this--to +show Bernal to me not less than to show you to me. There were grave +reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you this moment." + +There were steps along the hall and a knock at the door. + +"It must be Bernal," he said--"he was to leave about this time." + +"I can't see him again." + +"Just this once, dear--for _my_ sake! Come!" + +Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at his feet. With his +hat he held a letter. Allan went forward to meet him. Nancy stood up to +study the lines of an etching on the wall. + +"I've come to say good-bye, you know." She heard the miserable +embarrassment of his tones, and knew, though she did not glance at him, +that there was a shameful droop to his whole figure. + +Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter he held. + +"Good-bye--old chap--God bless you!" + +He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of guilt, something about +being sorry to go. + +"And I don't want to preach, old chap," continued Allan, giving the hand +a farewell grip, "but remember there are always two pairs of arms that +will never be shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died to +save us,--and my own poor arms, hardly less loving." + +"Thank you, old boy--I'll go back to Hoover"--he looked hesitatingly at +the profile of Nancy--"Hoover thinks it's all rather droll, you +know--Good-bye, old boy! Good-bye, Nancy." + +"My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye." + +She turned and said "good-bye." He stepped toward her--seeming to her to +slink as he walked--but he held out his hand and she gave him her own, +cold, and unyielding. He went out, with a last awkward "Good-bye, old +chap!" to Allan. + +Nancy turned to face her husband, putting out her hands to him. He had +removed from its envelope the letter Bernal had left him, and seemed +about to put it rather hastily into his pocket, but she seized it +playfully, not noting that his hand gave it up with a certain +reluctance, her eyes upon his face. + +"No more business to-night--we have to talk. Oh, I must tell you so much +that has troubled me and made me doubt, my dear--and my poor mind has +been up and down like a see-saw. I wonder it's not a wreck. Come, put +away your business--there." She placed the letter and its envelope on +the desk. + +"Now sit here while I tell you things." + +An hour they were there, lingering in talk--talking in a circle; for at +regular intervals Nancy must return to this: "I believe no wife ever +goes away until there is absolutely no shred of possibility left--no +last bit of realness to hold her. But now I know your stanchness." + +"Really, Nance--I can't tell you how much you please me." + +There was a knock at the door. They looked at each other bewildered. + +"The telephone, sir," said the maid in response to Allan's tardy "Come +in." + +When he had gone, whistling cheerily, she walked nervously about the +room, studying familiar objects from out of her animated meditation. + +Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into his chair and gazed +fondly over its litter of papers. With a little instinctive move to +bring somewhat of order to the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow +brushed to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge of +the desk. + +As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left +lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly +legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it +was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of +it had flashed irrevocably to her mind's centre. + +When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, she was standing +by the desk. She held the letter in both hands and over it her eyes +flamed--blasted. + +Divining what she had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to +face this new emergency. But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her +hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched for +the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, hesitatingly, expecting +some word from her to guide him along the proper line of defense. + +"I am sure, my dear--if you had only--only trusted me--implicitly--your +opinion of this affair--" + +At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening into a wild, +grim intensity. + +"Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and it can't hurt me." + +"In the eyes?" he questioned, blankly. + +"I can _go_ now." + +"You will make me the laughing-stock of this town!" + +For the first time in their life together there was the heat of real +anger in his voice. Yet she did not seem to hear. + +"Yes--that last terrible Gratcher can't hurt me now." + +He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity which he felt was +demanded of him. + +"I don't understand you!" + +Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she heard at last. + +"But _he_ will--_he_ will!" she cried exultingly, and her eyes were wet +with an unexplained gladness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +A MERE BIT OF GOSSIP + + +The Ministers' Meeting of the following Tuesday was pleasantly enlivened +with gossip--retained, of course, within seemly bounds. There was absent +the Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, said lately to +have emerged from a state of spiritual chrysalis into a world made new +with truths that were yet old. It was concerning this circumstance that +discreet expressions were oftenest heard during the function. + +One brother declared that the Linfords were both extremists: one with +his absurdly radical disbelief in revealed religion; the other flying at +last to the Mother Church for that authority which he professed not to +find in his own. + +Another asserted that in talking with Dr. Linford now, one brought away +the notion that in renouncing his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he +had gone to the extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the Mother +Church might become his only bride. True, Linford said nothing at all +like this;--the idea was fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words +of his. Yet it left a track across the mind. It seemed to be the very +spirit of his speech upon the subject. Certainly no other reason had +been suggested for the regrettable, severance of this domestic tie. +Conjecture was futile and Mrs. Linford, secluded in her country home at +Edom, had steadfastly refused, so said the public prints, to give any +reason whatsoever. + +His soup finished, the Reverend Mr. Whittaker unfolded the early edition +of an evening paper to a page which bore an excellent likeness of Dr. +Linford. + +"I'll read you some things from his letter," he said, "though I'll +confess I don't wholly approve his taste in giving it to the press. +However--here's one bit: + +"'When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church I dreamed of +wielding an influence that would tend to harmonise the conflicting +schools of churchmanship. It seemed to me that my little life might be +of value, as I comprehended the essentials of church citizenship. I will +not dwell upon my difficulties. The present is no time to murmur. +Suffice it to say, I have long held, I have taught, nearly every +Catholic doctrine not actually denied by the Anglican formularies; and I +have accepted and revived in St. Antipas every Catholic practice not +positively forbidden. + +"But I have lately become convinced that the Anglican orders of the +ministry are invalid. I am persuaded that a priest ordained into the +Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a +sacrificial sense. Could I be less than true to my inner faith in a +matter touching the sacred verity of the Real Presence--the actual body +and blood of our Saviour? + +"After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly whither God has been +pleased to lead me. In my humble sight the only spiritual body that +actually claims to teach truth upon authority, the only body divinely +protected from teaching error, is the Holy, Catholic and Roman Church. + +"For the last time I have exercised my private judgment, as every man +must exercise it once, at least, and I now seek communion with this +largest and oldest body of Christians in the world. I have faced an +emergency fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. I have met +it; the rest is with my God. Praying that I might be adorned with the +splendours of holiness, and knowing that the prayer of him that humbleth +himself shall pierce the clouds, I took for my motto this sentence from +Huxley: 'Sit down before fact as a little child; be prepared to give up +every preconceived notion; follow humbly wherever and to whatever +abysses Nature leads.' Presently, God willing, I shall be in communion +with the See of Rome, where I feel that there is a future for me!" + +The reader had been absently stabbing at his fish with an aimless fork. +He now laid down his paper to give the food his entire attention. + +"You see," began Floud, "I say one brother is quite as extreme as the +other." + +Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker to finish the letter. + +"Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be stale before we +reach it--so hasten now--I've a presentiment that our friend goes still +farther afield." + +Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful look, and resumed +the reading. + +"May I conclude by reminding you that the issue between Christianity and +science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity +rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the +whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God +for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation +and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the +status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy--a peasant moralist +with certain delusions of grandeur--an agitator and heretic whom the +authorities of his time executed for stirring up the people. In short, +the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the divinity of the God of +Moses, and this in turn rests upon the historical truth of Genesis. If +the Fall of man be successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a +figment of the Jewish imagination--Jesus becomes man. And this is what +Science asserts, while we of the outer churches, through cowardice or +indolence--too often, alas! through our own skepticism--have allowed +Science thus to obscure the issue. We have fatuously thought to +surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour--not perceiving +that we must keep both or neither. + +"There is the issue. The Church says that man is born under the curse of +God and so remains until redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church, +by the blood of God's only begotten Son. + +"Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily from remote +brute ancestors. If science be right--and by _mere evidence_ its +contention is plausible--then original sin is a figment and natural man +is a glorious triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no +saviour--since he is under no curse of God--but having every reason to +believe that the divine favour has ever attended him in his upward +trend. + +"But if one finds _mere evidence_ insufficient to outweigh that most +glorious death on Calvary, if one regards that crucifixion as a tear of +faith on the world's cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then +one must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock of Original +Sin upon which the Christ is builded. For the ramparts of Protestantism +are honeycombed with infidelity--and what is most saddening, they are +giving way to blows from within. Protestantism need no longer fear the +onslaughts of atheistic outlaws: what concerns it is the fact that the +stronghold of destructive criticism is now within its own ranks--a +stronghold manned by teachers professedly orthodox. + +"It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found safety in the +Mother Church. Only there is one compelled by adequate authority to +believe. There alone does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot +relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating those that rest +upon it. + +"For another vital matter, only in the Catholic Church do I find +combated with uncompromising boldness that peculiarly modern and vicious +sentimentality which is preached as 'universal brotherhood.' It is a +doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses outside the true +Church, a chimera of visionaries who must be admitted to be dishonest, +since again and again has it been pointed out to them that their +doctrine is unchristian--impiously and preposterously unchristian. +Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, as to +God's divine ordinance of prince and subject, noble and plebeian, master +and proletariat, learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in +_material_ equality--only in the bonds of love to help one another +attain their _moral_ welfare on earth and their last end in heaven. Most +pointedly does his Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal +brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the social members +only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have +sinned in Adam, and have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the +sacrifice of our Lord. + +"Upon these two rocks--of original sin and of prince and subject, riches +and poverty--by divine right, the Catholic Church has taken its stand; +and within this church will the final battle be fought on these issues. +Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to fight upon His side +against the hordes of infidelity and the preachers of an unchristian +social equality!" + +There were little exclamations about the table as Whittaker finished and +returned at last to his fish. To Father Riley it occurred that these +would have been more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence. +In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent silence in lieu of remarks +that might too easily have been indiscreet. + +"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen--I'll listen blandly whilst I +disarticulate this beautiful bird." + +"I say one is quite as extreme as the other," again declared the +discoverer of this fact, feeling that his perspicacity had not been +sufficiently remarked. + +"I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism," suggested Father +Riley. + +"Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young man," remarked the +amiable Presbyterian--"I trust God's Providence to care for children and +fools--" + +"And yet I found his remarks suggestive," said the twinkling-eyed +Methodist. "That is, we asked for the belief of the average +non-church-goer--and I dare say he gave it to us. It occurs to me +further that he has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words +what so many of us declare with academic flourishes. We can all name a +dozen treatises written by theologians ostensibly orthodox which +actually justify his utterances. It seems to me, then, that we may +profit by his blasphemies." + +"How?" demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness. + +"Ah--that is what the Church must determine. We already know how to +reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking--but how reach the +educated--the science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest, +biggest minds are outside the Church--indifferentists or downright +opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men like +these to perish--I don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley, +or Spencer, or even Darwin--Question: has the Church power to save the +educated?" + +"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled Father Riley. + +"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," added Whittaker. + +"Gentlemen, you jest with me--but I shall continue to feel grateful to +our slightly dogmatic young friend for his artless brutalities. Now I +know what the business man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has +lost interest in the church." + +"There's a large class we can't take from you," said Father Riley--"that +class with whom religion is a mode of respectability." + +"And you can't take our higher critics, either--more's the pity!" + +"On my word, now, gentlemen," returned the Catholic, again, "that was a +dear, blasphemous young whelp! You know, I rather liked him. Bless the +soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I could punish +the guiltless indecence of a babe--he was that shockingly naïf!" + +"He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration," repeated the +high-church rector. + +"And he stands for our knottiest problem," said the Presbyterian. + +"A problem all the knottier, I suspect," began Whittaker-- + +"Didn't I _tell_ you?" interrupted Father Riley. "Oh, the outrageous +cynic! Be braced for him, now!" + +"I was only going to suggest," resumed the wicked Unitarian, calmly, +"that those people, Linford and his brother--and even that singularly +effective Mrs. Linford, with her inferable views about divorce--you know +I dare say that they--really you know--that they possess the courage +of--" + +"Their _convictions_!" concluded little Floud, impatient alike of the +speaker's hesitation and the expected platitude. + +"No--I was about to say--the courage--of ours." + +A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy. Father Riley +smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, "So cynical, even for a +Unitarian!" as if to himself in playful confidence. + +But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn beard and the +salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully to safe ground in a discussion +of the ethnic Trinities. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER*** + + +******* This file should be named 15797-8.txt or 15797-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Seeker</p> +<p>Author: Harry Leon Wilson</p> +<p>Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #15797]</p> +<p>Language: english</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER***</p> +<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell,<br> + Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects,<br> + Carla McDonald,<br> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br> + (https://www.pgdp.net)</h3><br><br> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Original Book Cover - 1904" width="363" height="580" border="0"> +</div> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="frontis"></a> +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<a href="images/frontis.jpg"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" +alt="My Dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!" width="300" border="0"></a><br> +My Dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!<br>(See page 331) +</div> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h1>THE SEEKER</h1> + +<br> +<br> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<br> +<br> + +<h2>HARRY LEON WILSON</h2> + +<br> +<br> + +<h3>Author of<br> +"The Spenders"<br> +"The Lions of the Lord," Etc.</h3> + +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h3>ILLUSTRATED BY<br> +ROSE CECIL O'NEILL</h3> + +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h4>1904</h4> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/verso.jpg" alt="Verso Image" width="442" height="349" border="0"> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<p style="text-align: center;">TO<br> +MY FRIEND<br> +WILLIAM CURTIS GIBSON</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</div> + +<div style="margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;"> +<p>"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same + lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?"<br> +—Holy Writ.</p> +</div> + +<div style="margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 20%;"> +<p> "John and Peter and Robert and Paul—<br> + God, in His wisdom, created them all.<br> + John was a statesman and Peter a slave,<br> + Robert a preacher and Paul was a knave.<br> + Evil or good, as the case might be,<br> + White or colored, or bond or free,<br> + John and Peter and Robert and Paul—<br> + God, in His wisdom, created them all."<br> + The Chemistry of Character.</p> +</div> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/contents.jpg" alt="Table of Contents" width="433" height="240" border="0"> +</div> + +<h2><a name="Toc"></a>CONTENTS</h2> +<h2><i>BOOK ONE—The Age Of Fable</i></h2> + +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<table width="502" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="0" summary="Table of Contents" align="center"> +<tr> +<td align="right">CHAPTER</td> +<td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">I.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIA">How the Christmas Saint was Proved</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">II.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIIA">An Old Man Faces Two Ways</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">III.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIIIA">The Cult of the Candy Cane</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">IV.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIVA">The Big House of Portents</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">V.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVA">The Life of Crime Is Appraised and Chosen</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VI.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIA">The Garden of Truth and the Perfect Father</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIIA">The Superlative Cousin Bill J.</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VIII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIIIA">Searching the Scriptures</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">IX.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIXA">On Surviving the Idols We Build</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">X.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXA">The Passing of the Gratcher; and Another</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XI.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIA">The Strong Person's Narrative</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIIA">A New Theory of a Certain Wicked Man</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<br> +<h2><a name="Toc2"></a><i>BOOK TWO—The Age of Reason</i></h2> + +<table width="502" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="0" summary="Book II Table of Contents" align="center"> +<tr> +<td align="right">CHAPTER</td> +<td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">I.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIB">The Regrettable Dementia of a Convalescent</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">II.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIIB">Further Distressing Fantasies of a Clouded Mind</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">III.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIIIB">Reason Is Again Enthroned</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">IV.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIVB">A Few Letters</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">V.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVB">"Is the Hand of the Lord Waxed Short?"</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VI.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIB">In the Folly of His Youth</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<br> + +<h2><a name="Toc3"></a><i>BOOK THREE—The Age of Faith</i></h2> +<table width="502" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="0" summary="Book III Table of Contents" align="center"> +<tr> +<td align="right">CHAPTER</td> +<td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">I.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIC">The Perverse Behaviour of an Old Man and a Young Man</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">II.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIIC">How a Brother Was Different</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">III.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIIIC">How Edom Was Favoured of God and Mammon</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">IV.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIVC">The Winning of Browett</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">V.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVC">A Belated Martyrdom</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VI.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIC">The Walls of St. Antipas Fall at the Third Blast</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIIC">There Entereth the Serpent of Inappreciation</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">VIII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterVIIIC">The Apple of Doubt is Nibbled</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">IX.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterIXC">Sinful Perverseness of the Natural Woman</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">X.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXC">The Reason of a Woman Who Had No Reason</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XI.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIC">The Remorse of Wondering Nancy</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIIC">The Flexible Mind of a Pleased Husband</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XIII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIIIC">The Wheels within Wheels of the Great Machine</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XIV.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIVC">The Ineffective Message</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XV.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXVC">The Woman at the End of the Path</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XVI.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXVIC">In Which the Mirror Is Held Up to Human Nature</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XVII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXVIIC">For the Sake of Nancy</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XVIII.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXVIIIC">The Fell Finger of Calumny Seems to be Agreeably Diverted</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td align="right">XIX.</td> +<td><a href="#ChapterXIXC">A Mere Bit of Gossip</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> +<br> +<br> + +<h2>SCENES</h2> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i>BOOK ONE—The Village of Edom</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i>BOOK TWO—The Same</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center;"><i>BOOK THREE—New York</i></p> + +<br> +<br> + +<h2>CHARACTERS</h2> + + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%;"> +<p>ALLAN DELCHER, a retired Presbyterian clergyman.</p> +<p>BERNAL LINFORD} +<br>ALLAN LINFORD } his grandsons.</p> +<p>CLAYTON LINFORD, Their father, of the artistic temperament, and versatile.</p> +<p>CLYTEMNESTRA, Housekeeper for Delcher.</p> +<p>COUSIN BILL J., a man with a splendid past.</p> +<p>NANCY CREALOCK, A wondering child and woman.</p> +<p>AUNT BELL, Nancy's worldly guide, who, having lived in Boston, + has "broadened into the higher unbelief."</p> +<p>MISS ALVIRA ABNEY, Edom's leading milliner, captivated by Cousin Bill J.</p> +<p>MILO BARRUS, The village atheist.</p> +<p>THE STRONG PERSON, of the "Gus Levy All-star Shamrock Vaudeville."</p> +<p>CALEB WEBSTER, a travelled Edomite.</p> +<p>CYRUS BROWETT, a New York capitalist and patron of the Church.</p> +<p>MRS. DONALD WYETH, an appreciative parishioner of Allan Linford.</p> +<p>THE REV MR. WHITTAKER, a Unitarian.</p> +<p>FATHER RILEY, of the Church of Rome.</p> +</div> + +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<br> +<br> +<img src="images/list.jpg" alt="List of Illustrations" width="447" height="237" border="0"><br> + +<h2>List of Illustrations</h2> + +<table width="600" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="0" summary="List of Illustrations" align="center"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#frontis">"'My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!'"</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#gratcher">"She could be made to believe that only he could +protect her from the Gratcher"</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#GreatMan">"They looked forward with equal eagerness to the +day when he should become a great and good man"</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#illp304">"He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes +yielded so abjectly to his"</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<p style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/halftitle.jpg" alt="Half Title: The Seeker" width="381" height="395" border="0"></p> + +<br> + +<p style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/book1.jpg" alt="BOOK ONE: The Age of Fable" width="451" height="513" border="0"></p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h1>THE SEEKER</h1> +<h1><i>BOOK ONE—THE AGE OF FABLE</i></h1> + +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIA"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">How the Christmas Saint was Proved</h3> + +<p>The whispering died away as they heard heavy +steps and saw a line of light under the shut +door. Then a last muffled caution from the +larger boy on the cot.</p> + +<p>"Now, remember! There ain't any, but don't you +let <i>on</i> there ain't—else he won't bring you a single +thing!</p> + +<p>"Before the despairing soul on the trundle-bed could +pierce the vulnerable heel of this, the door opened +slowly to the broad shape of Clytemnestra. One hand +shaded her eyes from the candle she carried, and she +peered into the corner where the two beds were, a +flurry of eagerness in her face, checked by stoic +self-mastery.</p> + +<p>At once from the older boy came the sounds of one +who breathes labouredly in deep sleep after a hard day. +But the littler boy sat rebelliously up, digging combative +fists into eyes that the light tickled. Clytemnestra +warmly rebuked him, first simulating the frown of the +irritated.</p> + +<p>"Now, Bernal! Wide awake! My days alive! You +act like a wild Indian's little boy. This'll <i>never</i> do. +Now you go right to sleep this minute, while I watch +you. Look how fine and good Allan is." She spoke +low, not to awaken the one virtuous sleeper, who +seemed thereupon to breathe with a more swelling and +obtrusive rectitude.</p> + +<p>"Clytie—now—<i>ain't</i> there any Santa Claus?"</p> + + <p>"Now what a sinful question <i>that</i> is!"</p> + +<p>"But <i>is</i> there?"</p> + +<p>"Don't he bring you things?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, there <i>ain't</i> any!" There was a sullen +desperation in this, as of one done with quibbles. But the +woman still paltered wretchedly.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you don't lie down and go to sleep quicker'n +a wink I bet you anything he won't bring you a single +play-pretty."</p> + +<p>There came an unmistakable blare of triumph into +the busy snore on the cot.</p> + +<p>But the heart of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion +was more disillusioning than downright confession. A +moment the little boy regarded her, wholly in sorrow, +with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came +his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior +will sometimes reserve for his own destruction. There +could no longer be any pretense between them. Bravely +he faced her.</p> + +<p>"Now—you just needn't try to keep it from me any +longer! I <i>know</i> there ain't any——" One tensely +tragic second he paused to gather himself—"<i>It's all +over town!</i>" There being nothing further to live for, he +delivered himself to grief—to be tortured and destroyed.</p> + +<p>Clytie set the candle on the bureau and came to +hover him. Within the pressing arms and upon the +proffered bosom he wept out one of those griefs that +may not be told—that only the heart can understand. +Yet, when the first passion of it was spent she began to +reassure him, begging him not to be misled by idle +gossip; to take not even her own testimony, but to wait +and see what he would see. At last he listened and was +a little soothed. It appeared that Santa Claus was one +you might believe in or might not. Even Clytie +seemed to be puzzled about him. He could see that +she overflowed with belief in him, yet he could not +make her confess it in plain straight words. The +meat of it was that good children found things on +Christmas morning which must have been left by +some one—if not by Santa Claus, then by whom? Did +the little boy believe, for example, that Milo Barrus +did it? He was the village atheist, and so bad a man +that he loved to spell God with a little g.</p> + +<p>He mused upon this while his tears dried, finding it +plausible. Of course it couldn't be Milo Barrus, so +it <i>must</i> be Santa Claus. Was Clytie certain some +presents would be there in the morning? If he went +directly to sleep, she was.</p> + +<p>Hereupon the larger boy on the cot, who had for +some moments listened in forgetful silence, became +again virtuously asleep in a public manner.</p> + +<p>But the littler boy must yet have talk. Could the +bells of Santa Claus be heard when he came?</p> + +<p>Clytie had known some children, of exceptional merit, +it was true, who claimed to have heard his bells on +certain nights when they had gone early to sleep.</p> + +<p><i>Why</i> would he never leave anything for a child that +got up out of bed and caught him at it? Suppose one +had to get up for a drink.</p> + +<p>Because it broke the charm.</p> + +<p>But if a very, <i>very</i> good child just <i>happened</i> to wake +up while he was in the room, and didn't pay the least +attention to him, or even look sidewise or anything——</p> + +<p>Even this were hazardous, it seemed; though if the +child were indeed very good all might not yet be lost.</p> + +<p>"Well, won't you leave the light for me? The dark +gets in my eyes."</p> + +<p>But this was another adverse condition, making +everything impossible. So she chided and reassured +him, tucked the covers once more about his neck, and +left him, with a final comment on the advantage of +sleeping at once.</p> + +<p>When the room was dark and Clytie's footsteps had +sounded down the hall, he called softly to his brother; +but that wise child was now truly asleep. So the littler +boy lay musing, having resolved to stay awake and solve +the mystery once for all.</p> + +<p>From wondering what he might receive he came to +wondering if he were good. His last meditation was +upon the Sunday-school book his dear mother had +helped him read before they took her away with a new +little baby that had never amounted to much; before he +and Allan came to Grandfather Delcher's to live— +where there was a great deal to eat. The name of the +book was "Ben Holt." He remembered this especially +because a text often quoted in the story said "A good +name is rather to be chosen than great riches." He +had often wondered why Ben Holt should be considered +an especially good name; and why Ben Holt +came to choose it instead of the goldpiece he found and +returned to the schoolmaster, before he fell sick and +was sent away to the country where the merry haymakers +were. Of course, there were worse names than +Ben Holt. It was surely better than Eygji Watts, +whose sanguine parents were said to have named him +with the first five letters they drew from a hat containing +the alphabet; Ben Holt was assuredly better than +Eygji, even had this not been rendered into "Hedge-hog" +by careless companions. His last confusion of +ideas was a wondering if Bernal Linford was as good a +name as Ben Holt, and why he could not remember +having chosen it in preference to a goldpiece. Back of +this, in his fading consciousness was the high-coloured +image of a candy cane, too splendid for earth.</p> + +<p>Then, far in the night, as it might have seemed to the +little boy, came the step of slippered feet. This time +Clytie, satisfying herself that both boys slept, set down +her candle and went softly out, leaving the door open. +There came back with her one bearing gifts—a tall, +dark old man, with a face of many deep lines and severe +set, who yet somehow shed kindness, as if he held a +spirit of light prisoned within his darkness, so that, +while only now and then could a visible ray of it escape +through the sombre eye or through a sudden winning +quality in the harsh voice, it nevertheless radiated from +him sensibly at all times, to belie his sternness and puzzle +those who feared him.</p> + +<p>Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him +of the bundles and bulky toys. In a silence broken +only by their breathing they quickly bestowed the gifts +—some in the hanging stockings at the fire-place, others +beside each bed, in chairs or on the mantel.</p> + +<p>Then they were in the hall again, the door closed so +that they could speak. The old man took up his own +candle from a stand against the wall.</p> + +<p>"The little one is like her," he said.</p> + +<p>"He's awful cunning and bright, but Allan is the +handsomest. Never in my born days did I see so +beautiful a boy."</p> + +<p>"But he's like the father, line for line." There was a +sudden savage roughness in the voice, a sterner set to +the shaven upper lip and straight mouth, though he +still spoke low. "Like the huckstering, godless fiddle-player +that took her away from me. What a mercy of +God's he'll never see her again—she with the saved +and he—what a reckoning for him when he goes!"</p> + +<p>"But he was not bad to let you take them."</p> + +<p>"He boasted to me that he'd not have done it, except +that she begged him with her last breath to promise +it. He said the words with great maudlin tears raining +down his face, when my own eyes were dry!"</p> + +<p>"How good if you can leave them both in the church, +preaching the word where you preached it so many +years!"</p> + +<p>"I misdoubt the father's blood in them—at least, in +the older. But it's late. Good night, Clytie—a good +Christmas to you."</p> + +<p>"More to you, Mr. Delcher! Good night!"</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIIA"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">An Old Man Faces Two Ways</h3> + +<p>His candle up, he went softly along the white hallway +over the heavy red carpet, to where a door at the +end, half-open, let him into his study. Here a wood +fire at the stage of glowing coals made a searching +warmth. Blowing out his candle, he seated himself +at the table where a shaded lamp cast its glare upon a +litter of books and papers. A big, white-breasted +gray cat yawned and stretched itself from the hearthrug +and leaped lightly upon him with great rumbling +purrs, nosing its head under one of his hands suggestively, +and, when he stroked it, looking up at him +with lazily falling eye-lids.</p> + +<p>He crossed his knees to make a better lap for the cat, +and fell to musing backward into his own boyhood, +when the Christmas Saint was a real presence. Then +he came forward to his youth, when he had obeyed the +call of the Lord against his father's express command +that he follow the family way and become a prosperous +manufacturer. Truly there had been revolt in him. +Perhaps he had never enough considered this in excuse +for his own daughter's revolt.</p> + +<p>Again he dwelt in the days when he had preached +with a hot passion such truth as was his. For a long +time, while the old clock ticked on the mantel before +him and the big cat purred or slept under his absent +pettings, his mind moved through an incident of that +early ministry. Clear in his memory were certain +passages of fire from the sermon. In the little log +church at Edom he had felt the spirit burn in him and +he had movingly voiced its warnings of that dread place +where the flames forever blaze, yet never consume; +where cries ever go up for one drop of water to cool the +parched tongues of those who sought not God while +they lived. He had told of one who died—one that the +world called good, a moral man—but not a Christian; +one who had perversely neglected the way of life. +How, on his death-bed, this one had called in agony +for a last glass of water, seeming to know all at once +that he would now be where no drop of water could +cool him through all eternity.</p> + +<p>So effective had been his putting of this that a +terrified throng came forward at his call for converts.</p> +<p>The next morning he had ridden away from Edom +toward Felton Falls to preach there. A mile out of +town he had been accosted by a big, bearded man who +had yet a singularly childish look—who urged that he +come to his cabin to minister to a sick friend. He +knew the fellow for one that the village of Edom called +"daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless—to be +rather amusing, indeed, since he could be provoked +to deliver curious harangues upon the subject of +revealed religion. He remembered now that the man's +face had stared at him from far back in the church the +night before—a face full of the liveliest terror, though +he had not been among those that fled to the mercy-seat. +Acceding to the man's request, he followed him +up a wooded path to his cabin. Dismounting and +tying his horse, he entered and, turning to ask where +the sick man was, found himself throttled in the grasp +of a giant.</p> + +<p>He was thrust into an inner room, windowless and +with no door other than the one now barred by his +chuckling captor. And here the Reverend Allan +Delcher had lain three days and two nights captive of a +madman, with no food and without one drop of water.</p> +<p>From the other side of the log partition his captor +had declared himself to be the keeper of hell. Even +now he could hear the words maundered through +the chinks: "Never got another drop of water for a +million years and <i>still</i> more, and him a burning up and +a roasting up, and his tongue a lolling out, all of a +<i>sizzle</i>. Now wasn't that fine—because folks said he'd +likely gone crazy about religion!"</p> + +<p>Other times his captor would declare himself to be +John the Baptist making straight the paths in the +wilderness. Again he would quote passages of +scripture, some of them hideous mockeries to the +tortured prisoner, some strangely soothing and suggestive.</p> + +<p>But a search had been made for the missing man +and, quite by accident, they had found him, at a time +when it seemed to him his mind must go with his +captor's. His recovery from the physical blight of +this captivity had been prompt; but there were those +who sat under him who insisted that ever after he had +been palpably less insistent upon the feature of divine +retribution for what might be called the merely technical +sins of heterodoxy. Not that unsound doctrine was +ever so much as hinted of him; only, as once averred a +plain parishioner, "He seemed to bear down on hell +jest a <i>lee-tle</i> less continuously."</p> + +<p>As for his young wife, she had ever after professed an +unconquerable aversion for those sermons in which +God's punishment of sinners was set forth; and this +had strangely been true of their daughter, born but a +little time after the father's release from the maniac's +cabin. She had grown to womanhood submitting +meekly to an iron rule; but none the less betraying an +acute repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her +father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look +back; and then a long way to come forward again, past +the death of his girl-wife while their child was still +tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that child's +revolt, in her thirty-first year. Dumbly, dutifully, had +she submitted to all his restrictions and severities, +stonily watching her girlhood go, through a fading, +lining and hardening of her prettiness. Then all at +once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had +done the monstrous thing. He awoke one day to +know that his beloved child had gone away to marry +the handsome, swaggering, fiddle-playing good-for-nothing +who had that winter given singing lessons in +the village.</p> + +<p>Only once after that had he looked upon her face— +the face of a withered sprite, subdued by time. The +hurt of that look was still fresh in him, making his +mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to +the two little boys asleep in the west bedroom. Had +the seed of revolt been in her, from his own revolt +against his father? Would it presently bear some ugly +fruit in her sons?</p> + +<p>From a drawer in the table he took a little sheaf of +folded sheets, and read again the last letter that had +come from her; read it not without grim mutterings and +oblique little jerks of the narrow old head, yet with +quick tender glows melting the sternness.</p> + +<p>"You must not think I have ever regretted my choice, +though every day of my life I have sorrowed at your +decision not to see me so long as I stayed by my husband. +How many times I have prayed God to remind you +that I took him for better or worse, till death should us +part."</p> + +<p>This made him mutter.</p> + +<p>"Clayton has never in his life failed of kindness and +gentleness to me"—so ran the letter—"and he has +always provided for us as well as a man of his <i>uncommon +talents</i> could."</p> + +<p>Here the old man sniffed in fine contempt.</p> + +<p>"All last winter he had quite a class to teach singing +in the evening and three day-scholars for the violin, one +of whom paid him in hams. Another offered to pay +either in money or a beautiful portrait of me in pastel. +We needed money, but Clayton chose the portrait as a +surprise to me. At times he seems unpractical, but +now he has started out in <i>business</i> again—"</p> + +<p>There were bitter shakings of the head here. Business! +Standing in a buggy at street-corners, jauntily +urging a crowd to buy the magic grease-eradicator, +toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! +first playing a fiddle and rollicking out some ribald +song to fetch them. Business indeed! A pretty +business!</p> + +<p>"The boys are delighted with the Bibles you sent and +learn a verse each day. I have told them they may +some day preach as you did if they will be as good men +as you are and study the Bible. They try to preach +like our preacher in the cunningest way. I wish you +could see them. You would love them in spite of your +feeling against their father. I did what you suggested +to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but +perhaps the lesson they chose to write about was not +very edifying. It does not seem a pretty lesson to me, +and I did not pick it out. They heard about it at +Sabbath-school and had their papers all written as a +surprise for me. Of course, Bernal's is <i>very</i> childish, +but I think Allan's paper, for a child of his age, shows a +<i>grasp</i> of religious matters that is <i>truly remarkable</i>. I +shall keep them studying the Bible daily. I should tell +you that I am now looking forward with great joy +to——"</p> + +<p>With a long sigh he laid down the finely written sheet +and took from the sheaf the two papers she had spoken +of. Then while the gale roared without and shook his +window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked +down at him from the book-case at his back, he followed +his two grandsons on their first incursion into +the domain of speculative theology.</p> + +<p>He took first the paper of the older boy, painfully +elaborated with heavy, intricate capitals and headed +"Elisha and the Wicked Children—by Mr. Allan +Delcher Linford, Esquire, aged nine years and six +months."</p> + +<br> + +<blockquote><p>"This lesson," it began, "is to teach us to love God +and the prophets or else we will likely get into trouble. +It says Elisha went up from Bethel and some children +came out of the city and said go up thou Baldhead. +They said it Twice one after the other and so Elisha got +mad right away and turned around and cursed them +good in the name of the Lord and so 2 She Bears come +along and et up 42 of them for Elisha was a holy +prophet of God and had not ought to of been yelled at. +So of course the mothers would Take on very much +When they found their 42 Children et up but I think +that we had ought to learn from this that these 42 +Little ones was not the Elected. It says in our catchism +God having out of his mere good pleasure +elected some to everlasting life. Now God being a +Presbiterian would know these 42 little ones had not +been elected so they might as well be et up by bears as +anything else to show forth his honour and glory Forever +Amen. It should teach a Boy to be mighty +carful about kidding old men unless he is a Presbiterian. +I spelled every word in this right.</p> + +<p style="text-indent: 15em; font-variant: small-caps;">Mr. Allan Delcher Linford."</p> +</blockquote> + +<br> + +<p>The second paper, which the old man now held long +before him, was partly printed and partly written with +a lead-pencil, whose mark was now faint and now +heavy, as having gone at intervals to the writer's lips. +As the old man read, his face lost not a little of its +grimness.</p> + +<br> + +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center; font-variant: small-caps;">"Bears</p> + +<p>"It teaches the lord thy God is baldheaded. I ask +my deer father what it teeches he said it teeches who +ever wrot that storry was baldheaded. He says a man +with thik long hair like my deer father would of said +o let the kids have their fun with old Elisha so I ask +my deer mother who wrot this lesson she said God wrot +the holy word so that is how we know God is baldheaded. +It was a lot of children for only two 2 bears. +I liked to of ben there if the bears wold of known that I +was a good child. mabe I cold of ben on a high +fense or up a tree. I climd the sor aple tree in our back yard esy.</p> +<p style="text-indent: 15em;">By <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Bernal Linford</span>, aged neerly 8 yrs."</p> +</blockquote> + +<br> + +<p>Carefully he put back both papers with the mother's +letter, his dark face showing all its intricate net-work of +lines in a tension that was both pained and humorous.</p> + +<p>Two fresh souls were given to his care to be made, +please God, the means of grace by which thousands of +other souls might be washed clean of the stain of +original sin. Yet, if revolt was there—revolt like his +daughter's and like his own? Would he forgive as his +own father had forgiven, who had called him back after +many years to live out a tranquil old age on the fortune +that father's father had founded? He mused long on +this. The age was lax—true, but God's law was never +lax. If one would revolt from the right, one must +suffer. For the old man was one of the few last of a +race of giants who were to believe always in the Printed +Word.</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIIIA"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Cult of the Candy Cane</h3> + +<p>When the littler boy looked fairly into the frosty +gray of that Christmas morning, the trailed banner +of his faith was snatched once more aloft; and in the breast +of his complacent brother there swelled the conviction +that one does ill to flaunt one's skepticism, when the +rewards of belief are substantial and imminent. For +before them was an array of gifts such as neither had +ever looked upon before, save as forbidden treasure of +the few persons whose immense wealth enables them +to keep toy-shops.</p> + +<p>The tale of the princely Saint was now authenticated +delightfully. That which had made him seem unreal +in moments of spiritual laxity—the impenetrable +secrecy of his private life—was now seen to enhance +manyfold his wondrous givings. Here was a charm +which could never have sat the display before them +had it been dryly bought in their presence from one +of the millionaire toy-shop keepers. For a wondering +moment they looked from their beds, sputtering, +gibbering, gasping, with cautious calls one to the +other. Then having proved speech to be no disenchantment +they shouted and laughed crazily. There +followed a scramble from the beds and a swift return +from the cold, each bearing such of the priceless bits as +had lain nearest. And while these were fondled or +shot or blown upon or tasted or wound up, each according +to its wonderful nature, they looked farther +afield seeing other and ever new packages bulk mysteriously +into the growing light; bundles quickening +before their eyes with every delight to be imagined of a +Saint with epicurean tastes and prodigal habits— +bundles that looked as if a mere twitch at the cord +would expose their hidden charms.</p> + +<p>The littler boy now wore a unique fur cap that let +down to cover the neck and face, with openings wonderfully +contrived for the eyes, nose and mouth—an easy +triumph, surely, over the deadliest cold known to man. +In one hand he flourished a brass-handled knife with +both of its blades open; with the other he clasped a +striped trumpet, into the china mouthpiece of which +he had blown the shreds of a caramel, not meaning to; +and here he was made to forget these trifles by discovering +at the farther side of the room a veritable +rocking-horse, a creature that looked not only magnificently +willing, but superbly untamable, with a white +mane and tail of celestial flow, with alert, pointed ears +of maroon leather nailed nicely to the right spot. At +this marvel he stared in that silence which is the +highest power of joy: a presentiment had been his that +such a horse, curveting on blue rockers, would be found +on this very morning. Two days before had he in an +absent moment beheld a vision of this horse poised near +the door of the attic; but when he ran to make report of +it below, thinking to astound people by his power of +insight, Clytemnestra, bidding him wait in the kitchen +where she was baking, had hurried to the spot and +found only some rolls of blue cambric. She had +rather shamed him for giving her such a start. A few +rolls of shiny blue cambric against a white wall did not, +she assured him, make a rocking-horse; and, what was +more, they never would. Now the vision came back +with a significance that set him all a-thrill. Next time +Clytie would pay attention to him. He laughed to +think of her confusion now.</p> + +<p>But here again, at the very zenith of a shout, was he +frozen to silence by a vision—this time one too obviously +of no ponderable fabric. There in the corner, almost +at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed +of possessing only after he entered Heaven—a candy +cane: one of fearful length, thick of girth, vast of crook, +and wide in the spiral stripe that seemed to run a +living flame before his ravished eyes, beginning at the +bottom and winding around and around the whole +dizzy height. Fearfully in nerve-braced silence he +leaned far out of his bed to bring against this amazing +apparition one cool, impartial forefinger of skeptic +research. It did not vanish; it resisted his touch. +Then his heart fainted with rapture, for he knew the +unimagined had become history.</p> + +<p>Standing before the windows of the great, he had +gazed long at these creations. They were suspended on +a wire across the window in various lengths, from little +ones to sizes too awesome to compute. On one occasion +so long had he stood motionless, so deep the trance +of his contemplation, that the winter cold had cruelly +bitten his ears and toes. He had not supposed that +these things were for mere vulgar ownership. He had +known of boys who had guns and building-blocks and +rocking-horses as well as candy in the lesser degrees; +but never had he known, never had he been able to hear +of one who had owned a thing like this. Indeed, +among the boys he knew, it was believed that they +were not even to be seen save on their wire at Christmas +time in the windows of the rich. One boy had hinted +that the "set" would not be broken even if a person +should appear with money enough to buy a single one. +And here before him was the finest of them all, receding +neither from his gaze or his touch, one as long as the +longest of which Heaven had hitherto vouchsafed him +a chilling vision through glass; here was the same +fascinating union of transcendent merit with a playful +suggestion of downright utility. And he had blurted +out to Clytie that the news of there being no Santa +Claus was all over town! He was ashamed, and the +moment became for him one of chastening in which he +humbled his unbelieving spirit before this symbol of a +more than earthly goodness—a symbol in whose presence, +while as yet no accident had rendered it less than +perfect, he would never cease to feel the spiritual +uplift of one who has weighed the fruits of faith and +found them not wanting.</p> + +<p>He issued from some bottomless stupor of ecstacy to +hear the door open to Allan's shouts; then to see +the opening nicely filled again by the figure of Clytemnestra, +who looked over at them with eager, shining +eyes. He was at first powerless to do more than say +"Oh, Clytie!" with little impotent pointings toward +the candy cane. But the action now in order served +to restore him to a state of working sanity. There was +washing and dressing after Clytie had the fire crackling; +the forgetting of some treasures to remember others; +and the conveyance of them all down stairs to the big +sitting-room where the sun came in over the geraniums +in the bay-window, and where the Franklin heater +made the air tropic. The rocking-horse was led and +pushed by both boys; but to Clytie's responsible hand +alone was intrusted the more than earthly candy cane.</p> + +<p>Downstairs there was the grandfather to greet— +erect, fresh-shaven, flashing kind eyes from under +stern brows. He seemed to be awkwardly pleased +with their pleasure, yet scarce able to be one with +them; as if that inner white spirit of his fluttered more +than its wont to be free, yet found only tiny exits for +its furtive flashes of light.</p> + +<p>Breakfast was a chattering and explosive meal, a +severe trial, indeed, to the patience of the littler boy, +who decided that he wished never to eat breakfast again. +During the ten days that he had been a member of the +household a certain formality observed at the beginning +of each meal had held him in abject fascination, so that +he looked forward to it with pleased terror. This was +that, when they were all seated, there ensued a pause +of precisely two seconds—no more and no less—a pause +that became awful by reason of the fact that every one +grew instantly solemn and expectant—even apprehensive. +His tingling nerves had defined his spine for him +before this pause ended, and then, when the roots of his +hair began to crinkle, his grandfather would suddenly +bow low over his plate and rumble in his head. It was +very curious and weirdly pleasurable, and it lasted one +minute. When it ceased the tension relaxed instantly, +and every one was friendly and cordial and safe again.</p> + +<p>This morning the little boy was actually impatient +during the rumble, so eager was he to talk. And not +until he had been assured by both his grandfather and +Clytie that Santa Claus meant everything he left to be +truly kept; that he came back for nothing—not even +for a cane—<i>of any kind</i>—that he might have left at a +certain house by mistake—not until then would he +heave the sigh of immediate security and consent to +eat his egg and muffins, of which latter Clytie had to +bring hot ones from the kitchen because both boys +had let the first plate go cold. For Clytie, like Grandfather +Delcher, was also one of the last of a race of +American giants—in her case a race preceding servants, +that called itself "hired girls"—who not only ate with +the family, but joyed and sorrowed with it and for +long terms of years was a part of it in devotion, +responsibility and self-respect. She had, it is true, +dreaded the coming of these children, but from the +moment that the two cold, subdued little figures had +looked in doubting amazement at the four kinds of +preserves and three kinds of cake set out for their first +collation in the new home, she had rejoiced unceasingly +in a vicarious motherhood.</p> + +<p>Within an hour after breakfast the morning's find +had been examined, appraised, and accorded perpetual +rank by merit. Grandfather Delcher made but one +timid effort to influence decisions.</p> + +<p>"Now, Bernal, which do you like best of all your +presents?" he asked. With a heart too full for words +the littler boy had pointed promptly but shyly at his +candy cane. Not once, indeed, had he been able to +say the words "candy cane." It was a creation which +mere words were inadequate to name. It was a +presence to be pointed at. He pointed again firmly +when the old man asked, "Are you quite certain, now, +you like it best of all?"—suggestively—"better than +this fine book with this beautiful picture of Joseph +being sold away by his wicked brothers?"</p> + +<p>The questioner had turned then to the older boy, +who tactfully divined that a different answer would +have pleased the old man better.</p> + +<p>"And what do you like best, Allan?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I like this fine and splendid book best of all!" +—and he read from the title-page, in the clear, confident +tones of the pupil who knows that the teacher's favour +rests upon him—"'From Eden to Calvary; or through +the Bible in a year with our boys and girls; a book of +pleasure and profit for young persons on Sabbath +Afternoon. By Grandpa Silas Atterbury, the well-known +author and writer for young people."</p> + +<p>His glance toward his brother at the close was meant +to betray the consciousness of his own superiority to +one who dallied sensuously with created objects.</p> + +<p>But the unspiritual one was riding the new horse +at a furious gallop, and the glance of reproof was +unnoted save by the old man—who wondered if it +might be by any absurd twist that the boy most like +the godless father were more godly than the one so like +his mother that every note of his little voice and every +full glance of his big blue eyes made the old heart +flutter.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon came callers from the next house; +Dr. Crealock, rubicund and portly, leaning on his +cane, to pass the word of seasonable cheer with his old +friend and pastor; and with him his tiny niece to greet +the grandchildren of his friend. The Doctor went +with his host to the study on the second floor, where, +as a Christmas custom, they would drink some Madeira, +ancient of days, from a cask prescribed and furnished +long since by the doctor.</p> + +<p>The little boy was for the moment left alone with +the tiny niece; to stare curiously, now that she was +close, at one of whom he had caught glimpses in a +window of the big house next door. She was clad in +a black velvet cloak and hood, with pink satin next her +face inside the hood, and she carried a large closely-wrapped +doll which she affected to think might have +taken cold. With great self-possession she doffed her +cloak and overshoes; then slowly and tenderly unwound +the wrappings of the doll, talking meanwhile in low +mothering tones, and going with it to the fire when she +had it uncloaked. Of the boy who stared at her she +seemed unconscious, and he could do no more than +stand timidly at a little distance. An eye-flash from +the maid may have perceived his abjectness, for she +said haughtily at length, "I'm astonished no one in this +house knows where Clytie is!"</p> + +<p>He drew nearer by as far as he could slowly spread +his feet twice.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> know—now—she went to get two glasses from +the dresser to take to my grandfather and that gentleman." +He felt voluble from the mere ease of the +answer. But she affected to have heard nothing, and +he was obliged to speak again.</p> + +<p>"Now—why, <i>I</i> know a doll that shuts up her eyes +every time she lies down."</p> + +<p>The doll at hand was promptly extended on the little +lap and with a click went into sudden sleep while the +mother rocked it. He could have ventured nothing +more after this pricking of his inflated little speech. A +moment he stood, suffering moderately, and then would +have edged cautiously away with the air of wishing to +go, only at this point, without seeming to see him, she +chirped to him quite winningly in a soft, warm little +voice, and there was free talk at once. He manfully let +her tell of all her silly little presents before talking of +his own. He even listened about the doll, whose name +Santa Claus had thoughtfully painted on the box in +which she came; it was a French name, "Fragile."</p> + +<p>Then, being come to names, they told their own. +Hers, she said, was Lillian May.</p> + +<p>"But your uncle, now—that gentleman—he called +you <i>Nancy</i> when you came in." He waited for her +solving of this.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Uncle Doctor doesn't know it yet, what my +<i>real</i> name is. They call me Nancy, but that's a very +disagreeable name, so I took Lillian May for my real +name. But I tell <i>very</i> few persons," she added, importantly. +Here he was at home; he knew about +choosing a good name.</p> + +<p>"Did you give up the gold-piece you found?" he +asked. But this puzzled her.</p> + +<p>"'A good name is rather to be chosen than great +riches,'" he reminded her. "Didn't you find a gold-piece +like Ben Holt did?"</p> + +<p>But it seemed she had never found anything. Indeed, +once she had lost a dime, even on the way to spending +it for five candy bananas and five jaw-breakers. +Plainly she had chosen her good name without knowing +of the case of Ben Holt. Then he promised to show +her something the most wonderful in all the world, +which she would never believe without seeing it, and led +her to where the candy cane towered to their shoulders +in its corner. He saw at once that it meant less to her +than it did to him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's a candy cane!" she said, <i>calling</i> it a candy +cane commonly, with not even a hush of tone, as one +would say "a brick house" or "a gold watch," or +anything. She, promptly detecting his disappointment +at her coldness, tried to simulate the fervour of an +initiate, but this may never be done so as to deceive any +one who has truly sensed the occult and incommunicable +virtue of the candy cane. For one thing, she kept +repeating the words "candy cane" baldly, whenever she +could find a place for them in her soulless praise; +whereas an initiate would not once have uttered the +term, but would have looked in silence. Another +initiate, equally silent by his side, would have known +him to be of the brotherhood. Perhaps at the end +there would have been respectful wonder expressed as +to how long it would stay unbroken and so untasted. +Still he was not unkind to her, except in ways requisite +to a mere decent showing forth of his now ascertained +superiority. He helped her to a canter on the new +horse; and even pretended a polite and superficial +interest in the doll, Fragile, which she took up often. +Being a girl, she had to be humoured in that manner. +But any boy could see that the thing went to sleep by +turning its eyes inside out, <i>and its garters were painted +on its fat legs</i>. These things he was, of course, too +much the gentleman to point out.</p> + +<p>When the Doctor and his host came down stairs late +in the afternoon, the little boy and girl were fairly +friendly. Only there was talk of kissing at the door, +started by the little girl's uncle, and this the little boy +of course could not consider, even though he suddenly +wished it of all things—for he had never kissed any +one but his father and mother. He had told Clytie it +made him sick to be kissed. Now, when the little girl +called to him as if it were the simplest thing in the world, +he could not go. And then she stabbed him by falsely +kissing the complacent Allan standing by, who thereupon +smirked in sickening deprecation and promptly +rubbed his cheek.</p> + +<p>Not until the pair were out in the street did his man-strength +come back to him, and then he could only burn +with indignation at her and at Allan. He wondered +that no one was shocked at him for feeling as he did. +But, as they seemed not to notice him, he rode his horse +again. No mad gallop now, but a slow, moody jog—a +pace ripe for any pessimism.</p> + +<p>"Clytie!" he called imperiously, after a little. "Do +you think there's a real bone in this horse—like a +<i>regular</i> horse?"</p> + +<p>Clytie responded from the dining-room with a +placid "I guess so."</p> + +<p>"If I sawed into its neck, would the saw go right +into a real <i>bone</i>?"</p> + +<p>"My suz! what talk! Well?"</p> + +<p>"I know there <i>ain't</i> any bone in there, like a regular +horse. It's just a <i>wooden</i> bone."</p> + +<p>Nor was this his last negative thought of the day. +It came to him then and there with cruel, biting plainness, +that no one else in the house felt as he did toward +his chief treasure. Allan didn't. He had spent +hardly a moment with it. Clytie didn't; he had seen +her pick it up when she dusted the sitting-room; there +was sacrilege in her very grasp of it; and his grandfather +seemed hardly to know of its existence. The little +girl who had chosen the good name of Lillian May +might have been excused; but not these others. If +his grandfather was without understanding in such a +matter, in what, then, could he be trusted?</p> + +<p>He descended to a still lower plane before he fell +asleep that night. Even if he had <i>one</i> of them, he +would probably never have a whole row, graduated +from a pigmy to a mammoth, to hang on a wire across +the front window, after the manner of the rich, and +dazzle the outer world into envy. The mood was but +slightly chastened when he remembered, as he now did, +that on last Christmas he had received only one pretentious +candy rooster, falsely hollow, and a very +uninteresting linen handkerchief embroidered with +some initials not his own. He fell asleep on a brutal +reflection that the cane could be broken accidentally +and eaten.</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIVA"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Big House of Portents</h3> + +<p>In this big white house the little boys had been born +again to a life that was all strange. Novel was the outer +house with its high portico and fluted pillars, its vast +areas of white wall set with shutters of relentless green; +its stout, red chimneys; its surprises of gabled window; +its big front door with the polished brass knocker and +the fan-light above. Quite as novel was the inner +house, and quite as novel was this new life to its very +center.</p> + +<p>For one thing, while the joy of living had hitherto been +all but flawless for the little boys, the disadvantages of +being dead were now brought daily to their notice. In +morning and evening prayer, in formal homily, informal +caution, spontaneous warning, in the sermon at church, +and the lesson of the Sabbath-school, was their excessive +liability to divine wrath impressed upon them +"when the memory is wax to receive and marble +to retain."</p> + +<p>Within the home Clytie proved to be an able coadjutor +of the old man, who was, indeed, constrained and +awkward in the presence of the younger child, and +perhaps a thought too severe with the elder. But +Clytie, who had said "I'll make my own of them," was +tireless and not without ingenuity in opening the way +of life to their little feet.</p> + +<p>Allan, the elder, gifted with a distinct talent for +memorising, she taught many instructive bits chosen +from the scrap-book in which her literary treasures +were preserved. His rendition of a passage from one of +Mr. Spurgeon's sermons became so impressive under +her drilling that the aroma of his lost youth stole back +to the nostrils of the old man while he listened.</p> + +<p>"There is a place," the boy would declaim loweringly, +and with fitting gesture, with hypnotic eye fastened on +the cowering Bernal, "where the only music is the +symphony of damned souls. Where howling, groaning, +moaning, and gnashing of teeth make up the horrible +concert. There is a place where demons fly swift as +air, with whips of knotted burning wire, torturing poor +souls; where tongues on fire with agony burn the roofs +of mouths that shriek in vain for drops of water—that +water all denied. When thou diest, O Sinner——"</p> + +<p>But at this point the smaller boy usually became restless +and would have to go to the kitchen for a drink of +water. Always he became thirsty here. And he would +linger over his drink till Clytie called him back to admire +his brother in the closing periods.</p> + +<p>—"but at the resurrection thy soul will be united to +thy body and then thou wilt have twin hells; body and +soul will be tormented together, each brimful of agony, +the soul sweating in its utmost pores drops of blood, thy +body from head to foot suffused with pain, thy bones +cracking in the fire, thy pulse rattling at an enormous +rate in agony, every nerve a string on which the devil +shall play his diabolical tune of hell's unutterable +torment."</p> + +<p>Here the little boy always listened at his wrist to +know if his pulse rattled yet, and felt glad indeed that +he was a Presbyterian, instead of being in that dreadful +place with Jews and Papists and Milo Barrus, who +spelled God with a little g.</p> + +<p>As to his own performance, Clytie found that he +memorised prose with great difficulty. A week did +she labour to teach him one brief passage from a +lecture of Francis Murphy, depicting the fate of the +drunkard. She bribed him to fresh effort with every +carnal lure the pantry afforded, but invariably he +failed at a point where the soul of the toper was going +"down—<i>down</i>—DOWN—into the bottomless depths +of HELL!" Here he became pitiful in his ineffectiveness, +and Clytie had at last to admit that he would +never be the elocutionist Allan was. "But, my Land!" +she would say, at each of his failures, "if you only <i>could</i> +do it the way Mr. Murphy did—and then he'd talk +so plain and natural, too,—just like he was associating +with a body in their own parlour—and so pathetic it +made a body simply bawl. My suz! how I did love to +set and hear that man tell what a sot he'd been!"</p> +<p>However, Clytie happily discovered that the littler +boy's memory was more tenacious of rhyme, so she +successfully taught him certain metrical conceits that +had been her own to learn in girlhood, beginning with +pithy couplets such as:</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"Xerxes the Great did die<br> + And so must you and I."</p> +<p>"As runs the glass<br> + Man's life must pass."</p> +<p>"Thy life to mend<br> + God's book attend."</p> +</div> + +<p>From these it was a step entirely practicable to +longer warnings, one of her favourites being:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p class="sc">Uncertainty Of Life</p> +<p>"I in the burying-place may see<br> + Graves shorter there than I.<br> + From Death's arrest no age is free,<br> + Young children, too, may die.</p> +<p>"My God, may such an awful sight<br> + Awakening be to me;<br> + Oh, that by early grace, I might<br> + For death prepared be!"</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>She was not a little proud of Bernal the day he +recited this to Grandfather Delcher without a break, +though he began the second stanza somewhat timidly, +because it sounded so much like swearing.</p> + +<p>Nor did she neglect to teach both boys the lessons of +Holy Writ.</p> + +<p>Of a Sabbath afternoon she would read how God +ordered the congregation to stone the son of Shelomith +for blasphemy; or, perhaps, how David fetched the +Ark of the Covenant from Kirjath-jearim on a new +cart; and of how the Lord "made a breach" upon Uzza +for wickedly putting his hand upon the Ark to save it +when the oxen stumbled. The little boys were much +impressed by this when they discovered, after questioning, +exactly what it meant to Uzza to have "a breach" +made upon him. The unwisdom of touching an Ark +of the Covenant, under any circumstances, could not +have been more clearly brought home to them. They +liked also to hear of the instruments played upon before +the Lord by those that went ahead of the Ark; harps, +psalteries, and timbrels; cornets, cymbals, and instruments +made of fir-wood.</p> + +<p>Then there was David, who danced at the head of +the procession "girded with a linen ephod," which, +somehow, sounded insufficient; and indeed, it appeared +that Clytie was inclined to side wholly with Michal, +David's wife, who looked through a window and despised +him when she saw him "leaping and dancing before the +Lord," uncovered save for the presumably inadequate +ephod of linen. She, Clytie, thought it not well that +a man of David's years and honour should "make +himself ridiculous that way."</p> + +<p>So it was early in this new life that the little boys came +to walk as it behooves those to walk who shall taste +death. And to the littler boy, prone to establish relations +and likenesses among his mental images, the +big house itself would at times be more than itself to +him. There was the Front Room. Only the use of +capital letters can indicate the manner in which he was +accustomed to regard it. Each Friday, when it was +opened for a solemn dusting, he timidly pierced its +stately gloom from the threshold of its door. It +seemed to be an abode of dead joys—a place where they +had gone to reign forever in fixed and solemn festival. +And while he could not see God there, actually, neither +in the horsehair sofa nor the bleak melodeon surmounted +by tall vases of dyed grass, nor in the center-table +with its cemeterial top, nor under the empty horsehair +and green-rep chairs, set at expectant angles, nor +in the cold, tall stove, ornately set with jewels of +polished nickel, and surely not in the somewhat frivolous +air-castle of cardboard and scarlet zephyr that +fluttered from the ceiling—yet in and over and through +the dark of it was a forbidding spirit that breathed out +the cold mustiness of the tomb—an all-pervading thing +of gloom and majesty which was nothing in itself, yet a +quality and part of everything, even of himself when he +looked in. And this quality or spirit he conceived to be +God—the more as it came to him in a flash of divination +that the superb and immaculate coal-stove must +be like the Ark of the Covenant.</p> + +<p>Thus the Front Room became what "Heaven" +meant to him when he heard the word—a place +difficult of access, to be prized not so much for +what it actually afforded as for what it enabled +one to avoid; a place whose very joys, indeed, +would fill with dismay any but the absolutely pure +in heart; a place of restricted area, moreover, while +all outside was a speciously pleasant hell, teeming +with every potent solicitation of evil, of games and +sweets and joyous idleness.</p> + +<p>The word "God," then, became at this time a word +of evil import to the littler boy, as sinister as the +rustle of black silk on a Sabbath morning, when +he must walk sedately to church with his hand in +Clytie's, with scarce an envious glance at the proud, +happy loafers, who, clean-shaven and in their own +Sabbath finery, sat on the big boxes in front of the +shut stores and whittled and laughed and gossiped +rarely, like very princes.</p> + +<p>To Clytie he once said, of something for which he was +about to ask her permission, "Oh, it must be awful, +<i>awful</i> wicked—because I want to do it very, very much! +—not like, going to church."</p> + +<p>Yet the ascetic life was not devoid of compensation— +particularly when Milo Barrus, the village atheist, was +pointed out to him among the care-free Sabbath loafers.</p> + +<p>Clytie predicted most direly interesting things of him +if he did not come to the Feet before he died. "But +I believe he <i>will</i> come to the Feet," she added, "even if +it's on his very death-bed, with the cold sweat standing +on his brow. It would make a lovely tract—him +coming to the Feet at the very last moment and his +face lighting up and everything."</p> + +<p>The little boy, however, rather hoped Milo Barrus +wouldn't come to the Feet. It was more worth while +going to Heaven if he didn't, and if you could look +down and see him after it was too late for him to come. +During church that morning he chiefly wondered about +the Feet. Once, long ago, it seemed, he had been with +his dear father in a very big city, and out of the maze +of all its tangled marvels of sound and sight he had +brought and made his own forever one image: the +image of a mighty foot carved in marble, set on a +pedestal at the bottom of a dark stairway. It had been +severed at the ankle, and around the top was modestly +chiselled a border of lace. It was a foot larger than his +whole body, and he had passed eager, questioning hands +over its whole surface, pressing it from heel to each +perfect toe. Of course, this must be one of the Feet +to which Milo Barrus might come; he wondered if the +other would be up that dark stairway, and if Milo +Barrus would go up to look for it—and what did you +have to do when you got to the Feet? The possibility +of not getting to them, or of finding only one of them, +began to fill his inner life quite as the sombre shadows +filled and made a presence of themselves in the Front +Room—particularly of a Sabbath, when one must be +uncommonly good because God seemed to take more +notice than on week-days.</p> + +<p>During the week, indeed, Clytie often relaxed her +austerity. She would even read to him verses of her +own composition, of which he never tired and of which +he learned to repeat not a few. One of her pastoral +poems told of a visit she had once made to the home +of a relative in a neighbouring State. It began thus:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"New Hampshire is a pretty place,<br> + I did go there to see<br> + The maple-sugar being boiled<br> + By one that's dear to me."</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>Bernal came to know it all as far as the stanza——</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"I loved to hear the banjo hum,<br> + It sounds so very calmly;<br> + If a happy home you wish to find,<br> + Visit the Thompson family."</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>After this the verses became less direct, and, to his +mind, rather wordy and purposeless, though he never +failed of joy in the mere verbal music of them when +Clytie read, with sometimes a kind of warm tremble +in her voice—</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"At lovers' promises fates grow merrilee;<br> + Some are made on land,<br> + Some on the deep sea.<br> + Love does sometimes leave<br> + Streams of tears."</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>He thought she looked very beautiful when she read +this, in a voice that sounded like crying, with her big, +square face, her fat cheeks that looked like russet +apples, her very tiny black moustache, her smooth, oily +black hair with a semicircle of tight little curls over her +brow, and her beautiful, big, rounded, shining forehead.</p> + +<p>Yet he preferred her poems of action, like that of +Salmon Faubel, whose bride became so homesick in +Edom that she was in a way to perish, so that Salmon +took her to her home and found work there for himself. +He even sang one catchy couplet of this to music of his +own:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"For her dear sake whom he did pity,<br> + He took her back to Jersey City."</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>But the Sabbath came inexorably to bring his sinful +nature before him, just as the door of the Front Room +was opened each week to remind him of the awful joys +of Heaven. And then his mind was like the desert of +shifting sands. There were so many things to be done +and not done if one were to avert the wrath of this God +that made the Front Room a cavern of terror, that +rumbled threateningly in the prayer of his grandfather +and shook the young minister to a white passion each +Sabbath.</p> + +<p>There was being good—which was not to commit +murder or be an atheist like Milo Barrus and spell God +with a little g; and there was Coming to the Feet—not +so simple as it sounded, he could very well tell them; +and there was the matter of Blood. There were +hymns, for example, that left him confused. The " +fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's +veins" sounded interesting. Vividly he saw the +"sinners plunged beneath that flood" losing all their +guilty stains. It was entirely reasonable, and with +an assumption of carelessness he glanced cautiously +over his own body each morning to see if his guilty +stains showed yet. But who was Immanuel? And +where was this excellent fountain?</p> + +<p>Then there was being "washed in the blood of the +lamb," which was considerably simpler—except for the +matter of its making one "whiter than snow." He was +doubtful of this result, unless it was only poetry-writing +which doesn't mean everything it says. He meant to +try this sometime, when he could get a lamb, both as a +means of grace and as a desirable experiment.</p> + +<p>But plunging into the fountain filled with blood +sounded far more important and effectual—if it were +only practicable. As the sinners came out of this flood +he thought they must look as Clytie did in her scarlet +flannel petticoat the night he was taken with croup and +she came running with the Magnetic Ointment—even +redder!</p> + +<p>The big white house of Grandfather Delcher and +Clytie, in short, was a house in which to be terrified and +happy; anxious and well-fed. And if its inner recesses +took on too much gloomy portent one could always fly +to the big yard where grew monarch elms and maples +and a row of formal spruces; where the lawn on one side +was bordered with beds of petunias and fuschias, tiger-lilies +and dahlias; where were a great clump of white +lilacs and many bushes of yellow roses; a lawn that +stretched unbrokenly to the windows of the next big +house where lived the gentle stranger with the soft, +warm little voice who had chosen the good name of +Lillian May.</p> + +<p>Life was severely earnest but by no means impracticable.</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterVA"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Life of Crime is Appraised and Chosen</h3> + +<p>It came to seem expedient to Bernal, however, in the +first spring of his new life, to make a final choice between +early death and a life, of sin. Matters came to press +upon him, and since virtue was useful only to get one +into Heaven, it was not worth the effort unless one +meant to die at once. This was an alternative not +without its lures, despite the warnings preached all +about him. It would surely be interesting to die, if one +had come properly to the Feet. Even coming to but +one of the Feet, as he had, might make it still more +interesting. Perhaps he would not, for this reason, be +always shut up in Heaven. In his secret heart was a +lively desire to see just what they did to Milo Barrus, if +he <i>should</i> continue to spell God with a little g on his +very death-bed—that is, if he could see it without disadvantage +to himself: But then, you could save that +up, because you <i>must</i> die sometime, like Xerxes the +Great; and meantime, there was the life of evil now +opening wide to the vision with all enticing refreshments.</p> + +<p>First, it meant no school. He had ceased to picture +relief in this matter by the school-house burning some +morning, preferably a Monday morning, one second +after school had taken in. For a month he had daily +dramatised to himself the building's swift destruction +amid the kind and merry flames. But Allan, to whom +he had one day hinted the possibility of this gracious +occurrence, had reminded him brutally that they would +probably have school in the Methodist church until a +new school-house could be built. For Allan loved his +school and his teacher.</p> + +<p>But a life of evil promised other joys besides this +negative one of no school. In his latest Sunday-school +book, Ralph Overton, the good boy, not only attended +school slavishly, so that at thirteen he "could write a +good business hand"; but he practised those little tricks +of picking up every pin, always untying the string instead +of cutting it, keeping his shoes neatly polished and his +hands clean, which were, in a simpler day, held to lay +the foundations of commercial success in our republic. +Besides this, Ralph had to be bright and cheery to every +one, to work for his widowed mother after school; and +every Saturday afternoon he went, sickeningly of his +own accord, to split wood for an aged and poor lady. +This lady seemed to Bernal to do nothing much but burn +a tremendous lot of stove-wood, but presently she +turned out to be the long-lost cousin of Mr. Granville +Parkinson, the Great Banker from the City, who thereupon +took cheery Ralph there and gave him a position +in the bank where he could be honest and industrious +and respectful to his superiors. Such was the barren +tale of Virtue's gain. But contrasted with Ralph +Overton in this book was one Budd Jackson, who led a +life of voluptuous sloth, except at times when the evil +one moved him to activity. At these bad moments he +might go bobbing for catfish on a Sabbath, or purloin +fruit from the orchard of Farmer Haskins (who would +gladly have given some to him if he had but asked for +it civilly, so the book said); or he might bully smaller +boys whom he met on their way to school, taking their +sailor hats away from them, or jeering coarsely at their +neatly brushed garments. When Budd broke a window +in the Methodist parsonage with his slung-shot and +tried to lie it on to Ralph Overton, he seemed to have +given way utterly to his vicious nature. He was known +soon thereafter to have drunk liquor and played a game +called pin-pool with a "flashy stranger" at the tavern; +hence no one was surprised when he presently ran off +with a circus, became an infidel, and perished miserably +in the toils of vice.</p> + +<p>This touch about the circus, well-intended, to be sure, +was yet fatal to all good the tale might have done the +little boy. Clytie, who read most of the story to him, +declared Budd Jackson to be "a regular mean one." +But in his heart Bernal, thinking all at once of the +circus, sickened unutterably of Virtue. To drive +eight spirited white horses, seated high on one of those +gay closed wagons—those that went through the street +with that delicious hollow rumble—hearing perchance +the velvet tread, or the clawing and snarling of some +pent ferocity—a leopard, a lion, what not; to hear each +day that muffled, flattened beating of a bass drum and +cymbals far within the big tent, quick and still more +quickly, denoting to the experienced ear that pink and +spangled Beauty danced on the big white horse at a +deathless gallop; to know that one might freely enter +that tented elysium—if it were possible he would run +off with a circus though it meant that he had the +morals of a serpent!</p> + +<p>Now, eastward from the big house lay the village +and its churches: thither was tame virtue. But westward +lay a broad field stretching off to an orchard, and +beyond swelled a gentle hill, mellow in the distance. +Still more remotely far, at the hill's rim, was a blur of +woods beyond which the sun went down each night. +This, in the little boy's mind, was the highway to the +glad free Life of Evil. Many days he looked to that +western wood when the sky was a gush of colour +behind its furred edge, perceiving all manner of allurements to +beckon him, hearing them plead, feeling them tug. +Daily his spirit quickened within him to their solicitations, +leaping out and beyond him in some magic way +to bring back veritable meanings and values of the +future.</p> + +<p>Then a day came when the desire to be off was no +longer resistible. There was a month of school yet; an +especially bitter thought, for had he not lately been out +of school a week with mumps; and during that very +week had not the teacher's father died, so that he was +cheated out of the resulting three-days' vacation, other +children being free while he lay on a bed of pain—if +you tasted pickles or any sour thing? Not only was +it useless to try to learn to write "a good business hand," +like Ralph Overton—he took the phrase to mean one of +those pictured hands that were always pointing to +things in the newspaper advertisements—but there +was the circus and other evil things—and he was getting +on in years.</p> + +<p>It was a Saturday afternoon. To-morrow would be +too late. He knew he would not be allowed to start +on the Sabbath, even in a career that was to be all +wickedness. In the grape-arbour he massed certain +articles necessary for the expedition: a very small strip +of carpet on which he meant to sleep; a copy of "<i>Golden +Days</i>," with an article giving elaborate instructions for +camping in the wilderness. He was compelled to +disregard all of them, but there was comfort and sustenance +in the article itself. Then there was the gun +that came at Christmas. It shot a cork as far as the +string would let it go, with a fairly satisfying report +(he would have that string off, once he was in the +woods!). Also there were three glass alleys, two agate +taws and thirty-eight commies. And to hold his outfit +there was a rather sizable box which he with his own +hands had papered inside and out from a remnant of +gorgeously flowered wall-paper.</p> + +<p>When all was ready he went in to break the news to +Clytie. She, busy with her baking, heard him declare:</p> + +<p>"Now—I'm going to leave this place!" with the +look of one who will not be coaxed nor in any manner +dissuaded. He thought she took it rather coolly, +though Allan ran, as promptly as he could have wished, +to tell his grandfather.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to be a regular mean one—<i>worse'n</i> +Budd Jackson!" he continued to Clytie. He was glad +to see that this brought her to her senses.</p> + +<p>"Will you stay if I give you—an orange?"</p> + +<p>"No, <i>sir</i>;—you'll never set eyes on <i>me</i> again!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, now!—two oranges?"</p> + +<p>"I can't—I <i>got</i> to go!" in a voice tense with effort.</p> + +<p>"All right! Then I'll give them to Allan."</p> + +<p>She continued to take brown loaves from the oven +and to put other loaves in to bake, while he stood +awkwardly by, loath to part from her. Allan came +back breathless.</p> + +<p>"Grandpa says you can go as far as you like and you +needn't come back till you get ready!"</p> + +<p>He shifted from one foot to the other and absently ate +a warm cookie from the jarful at his hand. He +thought this seemed not quite the correct attitude to take +toward him, yet he did not waver. They would be +sorry enough in a few days, when it was too late.</p> + +<p>"I guess I better take a few of these along with me," +he said, stowing cookies in the pockets of his jacket. +He would have liked one of the big preserved peaches +all punctuated with cloves, but he saw no way to carry +it, and felt really unable to eat it on the spot.</p> + +<p>"Well, good-bye!" he called to Clytie, turning back +to her from the door.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye! Won't you shake hands with me?"</p> + +<p>Very solemnly he shook her big, floury hand.</p> + +<p>"Now—could I take Penny along?" (Penny was an +inconsequential dog that had been given to Clytie by one +whom she called Cousin Bill J.)</p> + +<p>"Yes, you'll need a dog to keep the animals off. +Now be sure you write to us—at least twice a year— +don't forget!" And, brutally before his very eyes, she +handed the sniffing and virtuous Allan two of the +largest, most goldenly beautiful oranges ever beheld by +man.</p> + +<p>Bitterly the self-exiled turned from this harrowing +scene and strode toward his box.</p> + +<p>Here ensued a fresh complication. Nancy, who had +chosen the good name of Lillian May, wanted to go +with him. She, too, it appeared, was fresh from a +Sunday-school book—one in which a girl of her own age +was so proud of her long raven curls that she was brought +to an illness and all her hair came out. There was a +distressing picture of this little girl after a just Providence +had done its work as a depilatory. And after +she recovered from the fever, it seemed, she had cared to +do nothing but read the Scriptures to bed-ridden old +ladies—even after a good deal of her hair came in again +—though it didn't curl this time. The only pleasure she +ever experienced thereafter was that, by virtue of her +now singularly angelic character, she was enabled to +convert an elderly female Papist—an achievement the +joys of which were problematic, both to Nancy and the +little boy. Certainly, whatever converting a Papist +might be, it was nothing comparable to driving a +red-and-green-and-gold wagon in which was caged the +Scourge of the Jungle.</p> + +<p>But Nancy could not go with him. He told her so +plainly. It was no place for a girl beyond that hill +where they commonly drove caged beasts, and no one +ever so much as thought of Coming to the Feet or +washing in the blood of the Lamb, or writing a good +business hand with the first finger of it pointing out, or +anything.</p> + +<p>The little girl pleaded, promising to take her new pink +silk parasol, her buff buttoned shoes, a Christmas card +with real snow on it, shining like diamonds, and +Fragile, her best doll. The thing was impossible. +Then she wept.</p> + +<p>He whistled to Penny, who came barking joyously— +a pretender of a dog, if there ever was one—and they +moved off. Weeping after them went Nancy—as far +as the first fence, between two boards of which she put +her head and sobbed with a heavenly bitterness; for to +the little boy, pushing sternly on, her tears afforded that +certain thrill of gratified brutality under conscious +rectitude, the capacity for which is among those matters +by which Heaven has set the male of our species apart +from the female. The sensation would have been +flawless but for Allan's lack of dignity: from the top +board of the fence he held aloft in either hand a golden +orange, and he chanted in endless inanity:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>Chink, Chink Chiraddam!<br> +Don't you wisht you had 'em?<br> + Chink, Chink Chiraddam!<br> + Don't you wisht you had 'em?</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>Still he was actually and triumphantly off.</p> + +<p>And here should be recalled the saying of a certain +wise, simple man: "If our failures are made tragic by +courage they are not different from successes." For it +came about that the subsequent dignity of this revolt +was to be wholly in its courage.</p> + +<p>The way led over a stretch of grassy prairie to a +fence. This surmounted, there came a ploughed field, +of considerable extent to one carrying an inconvenient +box. At the farther end of this was another fence, +and beyond this an ancient orchard with a grassy +floor, where lingered a few old apple-trees, under +which the recumbent cows, chewing and placid, dozed +like stout old ladies over their knitting.</p> + +<p>Nearest the fence was an aged, gnarled and riven +tree, foolishly decked in blossoms, like some faded, +wrinkled dame, fatuously reluctant to leave off girlish +finery. Under its frivolous branches on the grassy +sward would be the place for his first night's halt—for +the magic wood just this side of the sun was now seen +to be farther off than he had once supposed. So he +spread his carpet, arranged the contents of his box +neatly, and ate half his food-supply, for one's strength +must be kept up in these affairs. As he ate he looked +back toward the big house—now left forever—and +toward the village beyond. The spires of the three +churches were all pointing sternly upward, as if they +would mutely direct him aright, but in their shelter one +must submit to the prosaic trammels of decency. It +was not to be thought of.</p> + +<p>He longed for morning to come, so that he might be +up and on. He lay down on his mat to be ready for +sleep, and watched a big bird far above, cutting lazy +graceful figures in the air, like a fancy skater. Then, +on a bough above him, a little dusty-looking bird +tried to sing, but it sounded only like a very small door +creaking on tiny rusted hinges. A fat, gluttonous robin +that had been hopping about to peer at him, chirped far +more cheerfully as it flew away.</p> + +<p>Just at this point he suffered a real adventure. Eight +cows sauntered up interestedly and chewed their cuds +at him in unison, standing contemplative, calculating, +determined. It is a fact in natural history not widely +enough recognised that the domestic cow is the most +ferocious appearing of all known beasts—a thing to be +proved by any who will survey one amid strange surroundings, +with a mind cleanly disabused of preconceptions. +A visitor from another planet, for example, +knowing nothing of our fauna, and confronted in the +forest simultaneously by a common red milch cow and +the notoriously savage black leopard of the Himalyas, +would instinctively shun the cow as a dangerous beast +and confidingly seek to fondle the pretty leopard, thus +terminating his natural history researches before they +were fairly begun.</p> + +<p>It can be understood, then, that a moment ensued +when the little boy wavered under the steady questioning +scrutiny of eight large and powerful cows, all chewing +at him in unison. Yet, even so, and knowing, moreover, +that strange cows are ever untrustworthy, only for +a moment did he waver. Then his new straw hat was +off to be shaken at them and he heaved a fierce +"<i>H-a-y—y-u-p!</i>"</p> + +<p>At this they started, rather indignantly, seeming to +meditate his swift destruction; but another shout +turned and routed them, and he even chased them a +little way, helped now by the inconsiderable dog who +came up from pretending to hunt gophers.</p> + +<p>After this there seemed nothing to do but eat the +other half of the provisions and retire again for the +night. Long after the sun went down behind the +magic wood he lay uneasily on his lumpy bed, trying +again and again to shut his eyes and open them to find +it morning—which was the way it always happened in +the west bedroom of the big house he had left forever.</p> + +<p>But it was different here. And presently, when it +seemed nearly dark except for the stars, a disgraceful +thing happened. He had pictured the dog as faithful +always to him, refusing in the end even to be taken from +over his dead body. But the treacherous Penny grew +first restive, then plainly desirous of returning to his +home. At last, after many efforts to corrupt the +adventurer, he started off briskly alone—cornerwise, as +little dogs seem always to run—fleeing shamelessly +toward that east where shone the tame lights of Virtue.</p> + +<p>Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember +certain phrases from a tract that Clytie had +tried to teach him—"the moment that will close thy +life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail +in hell"—"impossible to go from the haunts of sin and +vice to the presence of the Lamb"—"the torments of +an eternal hell are awaiting thee"——</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"To-night may be thy latest breath, <br> + Thy little moment here be done.<br> + Eternal woe, the second death,<br> + Awaits the Christ-rejecting one."</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>This was more than he had ever before been able +to recall of such matters. He wished that he might +have forgotten them wholly. Yet so was he turned +again to better things. Gradually he began to have +an inkling of a possibility that made his blood icy +—a possibility that not even the spectacle of Milo +Barrus having interesting things done to him could +mitigate—namely, a vision of himself in the same +plight with that person.</p> + +<p>Now it was that he began to hear Them all about +him. They walked stealthily near, passed him with +sinister rustlings, and whispered over him. If +They had only talked out—but they whispered—even +laughing, crying and singing in whispers. This +horror, of course, was not long to be endured. Yet, +even so, with increasing myriads of Them all about, +rustling and whispering their awful laughs and cries +—it was no ignominious rout. With considerable deliberation +he folded the carpet, placed it in the box with his +other treasure, and started at a pace which may, perhaps, +have quickened a little, yet was never undignified +—never more than a moderately fast trudge.</p> + +<p>He wondered sadly if Clytie would get up to unlock +the door for him so late at night. As for Penny, things +could never be the same between them again.</p> + +<p>He was astounded to see lights burning and the +house open—how weird for them to have supper at +such an hour! He concealed his box in the grape-arbour +and slunk through the kitchen into the dining-room. +Probably they had gotten up in the middle of +the night, out of tardy alarm for him. It served them +right. Yet they seemed hardly to notice him when he +slid awkwardly into his chair. He looked calculatingly +over the table and asked, in tones that somehow seemed +to tell of injury, of personal affront:</p> + +<p>"What you having supper for at this time of night?"</p> + +<p>His grandfather regarded him now not unkindly, +while Clytie seemed confused.</p> + +<p>"It's more'n long past midnight!" he insisted.</p> + +<p>"Huh! it ain't only a quarter past seven," put in his +superior brother. He seemed about to say more, but +a glance from the grandfather silenced him.</p> + +<p>So <i>that</i> was as late as he had stayed—a quarter after +seven? He was ready now to rage at any taunt, and +began to eat in haughty silence. He was still eating +when his grandfather and Allan left the table, and +then he began to feel a little grateful that they had not +noticed or asked annoying questions, or tried to be +funny or anything. Over a final dish of plum preserves +and an imposing segment of marble cake he +relented so far as to tell Clytie something of his adventures +—especially since she had said that the big +hall-clock was very likely slow—that it must surely be +a lot later than a quarter past seven. The circumstances +had combined to produce a narrative not +entirely perspicuous—the two clear points being that +They do everything in a whisper, and that Clytie ought +to get rid of Penny at once, since he could not be +depended upon at great moments.</p> + +<p>As to ever sleeping under a tree, Clytie discouraged +him. She knew of some Boys that once sat under a +tree which was struck by lightning, all being killed save +one, who had the rare good luck to be the son of a +Presbyterian clergyman. The little boy resolved next +time to go beyond the trees to sleep; perhaps if he went +far enough he would come to the other one of the Feet, +and so have a safeguard against lightning, foreign cows, +and Those that walk with rustlings and whisper in the +lonely places at night.</p> + +<p>The little boy fell asleep, half-persuaded again to +virtue, because of its superior comforts. The air about +his head seemed full of ghostly "good business hands," +each with its accusing forefinger pointed at him for +that he had not learned to write one as Ralph Overton +did.</p> + +<p>Down the hall in his study the old man was musing +backward to the delicate, quiet girl with the old-fashioned +aureole of curls, who would now and then +toss them with a little gesture eloquent of possibilities +for unrestraint when she felt the close-drawn rein of +his authority. Again he felt her rebellious little tugs, +and the wrench of her final defiance when she did the +awful thing. He had been told by a plain speaker that +her revolt was the fault of his severity. And here was +the flesh of her flesh—was it in the same spirit of revolt +against authority, a thousandfold magnified? Might +he not by according the boy a wise liberty save him in +after years from some mad folly akin to his mother's?</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h2><a name="ChapterVIA"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Garden of Truth and the Perfect Father</h3> + +<p>It was a different summer from those that had gone +before it.</p> + +<p>A little passionate Protestant had sallied out to +make bed with the gods; and the souls of such the +just gods do truly take into certain shining realms +whither poor involatile bodies of flesh may not follow. +The requirement is that one feel his own potential +godship enough to rebel. For, having rebelled, he will +assuredly venture beyond mortal domains into that +garden where stands the tree of Truth—this garden +being that one to the west just beyond the second fence +(or whichever fence); that point where the mortal of +invertebrate soul is beset with the feeling that he has +already dared too far—that he had better make for +home mighty quick if he doesn't want Something to +get him. The essence of this decision is quite the same +whether the mortal be eight years old or eighty. Now +the Tree of Truth stands just over this line at which +all but the gods' own turn to scamper back before +supper. It is the first tree to the left—an apple-tree, +twisted, blackened, scathed, eaten with age, yet full +of blossoms as fresh and fertile as those first born of +any young tree whatsoever. Those able rightly to read +this tree of Truth become at once as the gods, keeping +the faith of children while absorbing the wisdom of the +ages—lacking either of which, be it known, one may +not become an imperishable ornament of Time.</p> + +<p>But to him who is bravely faithful to the passing of +that last fence, who reclines under that tree even for +so long as one aspiration, comes a substantial gain: +ever after, when he goes into any solitude, he becomes +more than himself. Then he reads the first lesson of +the tree of Truth, which is that the spirit of Life ages +yet is ageless; and suffers yet is joyous. This is no +inconsiderable reward for passing that frontier, even +if one must live longer to comprehend reasons. It is +worth while even if the mortal become a mere dilettante +in paradoxes and never learn even feebly to spell the +third lesson, which is the ultimate wisdom of the gods.</p> + +<p>These matters being precisely so, the little boy knew +quite as well as the gods could know it, that a credit had +been set down to his soul for what he had ventured— +even though what he had not done was, so far, more +stupendous than what he had, in the world of things and +mere people. He now became enamoured of life rather +than death; and he studied the Shorter Catechism with +such effect that he could say it clear over to "<i>Every sin +deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and +that which is to come.</i>" Each night he tried earnestly +to learn two new answers; and glad was he when his +grandfather would sit by him, for the old man had now +become his image of God, and it seemed fitting to +recite to him. Often as they sat together the little +boy would absently slip his hand into the big, warm, +bony hand of the old man, turning and twisting it there +until he felt an answering pressure. This embarrassed +the old man. Though he would really have +liked to take the little boy up to his breast and hold him +there, he knew not how; and he would even be careful +not to restrain the little hand in his own—to hold it, +yet to leave it free to withdraw at its first uneasy wriggle.</p> + +<p>Of this shackled spirit of kindness, always striving +within the old man, the little boy had come to be +entirely conscious. So real was it to him, so dependable, +that he never suspected that a certain little blow with +the open hand one day was meant to punish him for +conduct he had persisted in after three emphatic +admonitions.</p> + +<p>"Oh! that <i>hurts</i>!" he had cried, looking up at the +confused old man with unimpaired faith in his having +meant not more than a piece of friendly roughness. +This look of flawless confidence in the uprightness of +his purpose, the fine determination to save him chagrin +by smiling even though the hurt place tingled, left in +the old man's mind a biting conviction that he had been +actually on the point of behaving as one gentleman +may not behave to another. Quick was he to make +the encounter accord with the child's happy view, even +picking him up and forcing from himself the gaiety to +rally him upon his babyish tenderness to rough play. +Not less did he hold it true that "The rod and reproof +give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his +mother to shame——" and with the older boy he was +not unconscientious in this matter. For Allan took +punishment as any boy would, and, indeed, was so +careful that he seldom deserved it. But the old man +never ceased to be grateful that the littler boy had +laughed under that one blow, unable to suspect that +it could have been meant in earnest.</p> + +<p>From the first day that the little boy felt the tender +cool grass under his bare toes that summer, life became +like perfectly played music. This was after the long +vacation began, when there was no longer any need to +remember to let his voice fall after a period, or to dread +his lessons so that he must learn them more quickly than +any other pupil in school. There would be no more +of that wretched fooling until fall, a point of time +inconceivably far away. Before it arrived any one of +a number of strange things might happen to avert the +calamity of education. For instance, he might be born +again, a thing of which he had lately heard talk; a contingency +by no means flawless in prospect, since it probably +meant having the mumps again, and things like that. +But if it came on the very last day of vacation, or on the +first morning of school, just as he was called on to +recite, snatching him from the very jaws of the Moloch, +and if it fixed him so he need not be afraid in the night +of going where Milo Barrus was going, then it might not +be so bad.</p> + +<p>Nancy, who had now discarded the good name of +Lillian May for simple Alice, disapproved heartily of +being born again; unless, indeed, one could be born a +boy the second time. She was only too eager for the +day when she need not submit to having her hair +brushed and combed so long every morning of her life. +Not for the world would she go through it again and +have to begin French all over, even at "<i>J'ai, tu as, il +a</i>." Yet, if it were certain she could be a boy——</p> + +<p>He was too considerate to tell her that this was as +good as impossible—that she quite lacked the qualities +necessary for that. Instead, he reassured her with the +chivalrous fiction that he, at least, would like her as +well as if she <i>were</i> a boy. And, indeed, as a girl, she +was not wholly unsatisfactory. True, she played +"school" (of all things!) in preference to "wild animals," +practised scales on the piano an hour every day, wore +a sun-hat frequently—spite of which she was freckled— +wore shoes and stockings on the hottest days, when +one's feet are so hungry for the cool, springy turf, and +performed other acts repugnant to a soul that has +brought itself erect. But she was fresh and dainty to +look at, like an opened morning glory, with pretty +frocks that the French lady whose name was Madmasel +made her wear every day, and her eyes were much like +certain flowers in the bed under the bay-window, with +very long, black lashes that got all stuck together when +she cried; and she made superb capital letters, far better +than the little boy's, though she was a year younger.</p> + +<p>Also, which was perhaps her chief charm, she could +be made to believe that only he could protect her from +the Gratcher, a monstrous thing, half beast, half human, +which was often seen back of the house; sometimes +flitting through the grape-arbour, sometimes coming +out of the dark cellar, sometimes peering around corners. +It was a thing that went on enormous crutches, yet +could always catch you if it saw you by daylight out of +its right eye, its left being serviceable only at night, when, +if you were wise, you kept in the house. Once the +Gratcher saw you with its right eye the crutches swung +toward you and you were caught: it picked you up and +began to look you all over, with the eyes in the ends of +its fingers. This tickled you so that you went crazy in +a minute.</p> + +<p>Nancy feared the Gratcher, and she became supremely +lovely to the little boy when she permitted him +to guard her from it, instead of running home across +the lawn when it was surely coming;—a loveliness he +felt more poignantly at certain reflective times when +he was not also afraid. For, the Gratcher being his own +invention, these moments of superiority to its terrors +would inevitably seize him.</p> + +<a name="gratcher"></a> +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<a href="images/gratcher.jpg"><img src="images/gratcher.jpg" +alt="" width="600" border="0"></a><br> +"She could be made to believe that only he could protect her from the Gratcher." +</div> + +<p>Better than protecting Nancy did he love to report +the Gratcher's immediate presence to Allan, daring him +to stay on that spot until it put its dreadful head around +the corner and shook one of its crutches at them. In +low throbbing tones he would report its fearful approach, +stride by stride, on the crutches. This he +could do by means of the Gratcher-eye, with which he +claimed to be endowed. One having a Gratcher-eye +can see around any corner when a Gratcher happens +to be coming—yet only then, not at any other time, as +Allan had proved by experiment on the first disclosure +of this phenomenon. He of the Gratcher-eye could +positively not see around a corner, if, for example, +Allan himself was there; the Gratcher-eye could not +tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by no +means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise +its magic function when a Gratcher actually approached, +and Allan knew it. He would stand staunchly, with a +fine incredulity, while the little boy called off the +strides, perhaps, until he announced "<i>Now</i> he's just +passed the well-curb—<i>now</i> he's——" but here, scoffing +over an anxious shoulder, Allan would go in where +Clytie was baking, feigning a sudden great hunger.</p> + +<p>Nancy would stay, because she believed the little +boy's protestations that he could save her, and the +little boy himself often believed them.</p> + +<p>"I love Allan best, because he is so comfortable, but +I think you are the most admirable," she would say to +him at such times; and he thought well of her if she +had seemed very, very frightened.</p> + +<p>So life had become a hardy sport with him. No +longer was he moved to wish for early dissolution when +Clytie's song floated to him:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"'I should like to die,' said Willie,<br> + If my papa could die, too;<br> + But he says he isn't ready,<br> + 'Cause he has so much to do!"</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>This Willie had once seemed sweet and noble to him, +but the words now made him avid of new life by reminding +him that his own dear father would soon come +to be with him one week, as he had promised when last +they parted, and as a letter written with magnificent +flourishes now announced.</p> + +<p>Late in August this perfect father came—a fine +laughing, rollicking, big gentleman, with a great, loud +voice, and beautiful long curls that touched his velvet +coat-collar. His sweeping golden moustache, wide-brimmed +white hat, the choice rings on his fingers, his +magnificently ponderous gold watch-chain and a watch +of the finest silver, all proclaimed him a being of such +flawless elegance both in person and attire that the +little boy never grew tired of showing him to the village +people and to Clytie. He did not stay at the big house, +for some reason, but at the Eagle Hotel, whence he +came to see his boys each day, or met them hurrying to +see him. And for a further reason which the little +boys did not understand, their grandfather continued +to be too busy to see this perfect father once during the +week he stayed in the village.</p> + +<p>Deeming it a pity that two such choice spirits should +not be brought together, the little boy urged his father +to bring his fiddle to the big house and play and sing +some of his fine songs, so that his grandfather could +have a chance to hear some good music. He knew +well enough that if the old man once heard this music +he would have to give in and enjoy it, even if he was too +busy to come down. And if only his father would tune +up the fiddle and sing that very, very good song about,</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"The more she said 'Whoa!'<br> + They cried, 'Let her go!'<br> + And the swing went a little bit higher,"</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>if only his grandfather could hear this, one of the +funniest and noisiest songs in the world, perhaps he +would come right down stairs. But his father laughed +away the suggestion, saying that the old gentleman had +no ear for music; which, of course, was a joke, for he +had two, like any person.</p> + +<p>Clytemnestra, too, was at first strangely cool to the +incomparable father, though at last she proved not +wholly insensible to his charm, providing for his +refection her very choicest cake and the last tumbler +of crab-apple jelly. She began to suspect that a man +of manners so engaging must have good in him, and +she gave him at parting the tracts of "The Dying +Drummer Boy" and "Sinner, what if You Die To-day?" +for which he professed warm gratitude.</p> + +<p>The little boy afterward saw his perfect father hand +these very tracts to Milo Barrus, when they met him +on the street, saying, "Here, Barrus, get your soul +saved while you wait!" Then they laughed together.</p> + +<p>The little boy wondered if this meant that Milo +Barrus had come to the Feet, or been born again, or +something. Or if it meant that his father also spelled +God with a little g. He did not think of it, however, +until it was too late to ask.</p> + +<p>The flawless father went away at the end of the +week, "over the County Fair circuit, selling Chief +White Cloud's Great Indian Remedy," the little boy +heard him tell Clytie. Also he heard his grandfather +say to Clytie, "Thank God, not for another year!"</p> + +<p>The little boy liked Nancy better than ever after +that, because she had liked his father so much, saying +he was exactly like a prince, giving pennies and nickels +to everybody and being so handsome and big and +grand. She wished her own Uncle Doctor could be as +beautiful and great; and the little boy was generous +enough to wish that his own plain grandfather might +be <i>almost</i> as fine.</p> + + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h2><a name="ChapterVIIA"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Superlative Cousin Bill J.</h3> + +<p>A splendid new interest had now come into the +household in the person of one whom Clytemnestra had +so often named as Cousin Bill J. Grandfather Delcher +having been ordered south for the winter by Dr. +Crealock, Cousin Bill J., upon Clytie's recommendation, +was imported from up Fredonia way to look after +the cow and be a man about the place. Clytie assured +Grandfather Delcher that Cousin Bill J. had "never +uttered an oath, though he's been around horses all +his life!" This made him at once an object of interest +to the little boy, though doubtless he failed to appraise +the restraint at anything like its true value. It had +sufficed Grandfather Delcher, however, and Cousin +Bill J., securing leave of absence from the livery-stable +in Fredonia, arrived the day the old man left, making +a double excitement for the household.</p> + +<p>He proved to be a fascinating person; handsome, +affable, a ready talker upon all matters of interest— +though sarcastic, withal—and fond of boys. True, he +had not long hair like the little boy's father. Indeed, +he had not much hair at all, except a sort of curtain of +black curls extending from ear to ear at the back of his +bare, pink head. But the little boy had to admit that +Cousin Bill J.'s moustache was even grander than his +father's. It fell in two graceful festoons far below his +chin, with a little eyelet curled into each tip, and, like +the ringlets, it showed the blue-black lustre of the +crow's wing. In the full sunlight, at times, it became +almost a royal purple.</p> + +<p>Later observation taught the little boy that this +splendid hue was applied at intervals by Cousin Bill J. +himself. He did it daintily with a small brush, every +time the moustache began to show a bit rusty at the +roots; Bernal never failed to be present at this ceremony; +nor to resolve that his own moustache, when it +came, should be as scrupulously cared for—not left, +like Dr. Crealock's, for example, to become speckled +and gray.</p> + +<p>Cousin Bill J.'s garments were as splendid as his +character. He had an overcoat and cap made from a +buffalo hide; his high-heeled boots had maroon tops +set with purple crescents; his watch-charm was a large +gold horse in full gallop; his cravat was an extensive +area of scarlet satin in the midst of which was caught +a precious stone as large as a robin's egg; and in +smoking, which his physician had prescribed, he used a +superb meerschaum cigar-holder, all tinted a golden +brown, upon which lightly perched a carven angel +dressed like those that ride the big white horse in the +circus.</p> + +<p>But aside from these mere matters of form, Cousin +Bill J. was a man with a history. Some years before he +had sprained his back, since which time he had been +unable to perform hard labour; but prior to that mishap +he had been a perfect specimen of physical manhood— +one whose prowess had been the marvel of an extensive +territory. He had split and laid up his three hundred +and fifty rails many a day, when strong men beside him +had blushingly to stop with three hundred or thereabouts; +he had also cradled his four acres of grain in a +day, and he could break the wildest horse ever known. +Even the great Budd Doble, whom he personally knew, +had said more than once, and in the presence of unimpeachable +witnesses, that in some ways he, Budd Doble, +knew less about a horse than Cousin Bill J. did. +The little boy was wrought to enthusiasm by this tribute, +resolving always to remember to say "hoss" for +horse; and, though he had not heard of Budd Doble +before, the name was magnetic for him. After you +said it over several times he thought it made you +feel as if you had a cold in your head.</p> + +<p>Still further, Cousin Bill J. could throw his thumbs +out of joint, sing tenor in the choir, charm away warts, +recite "Roger and I" and "The Death of Little Nell," +and he knew all the things that would make boys grow +fast, like bringing in wood, splitting kindling, putting +down hay for the cow, and other out-of-door exercises +that had made him the demon of strength he once was. +The little boy was not only glad to perform these acts +for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the +labours of his hero, who wrenched his back anew +nearly every time he tried to do anything, and was +always having to take a medicine for it which he called "peach-and-honey." +The little boy thought the name attractive, +though his heart bled for the sufferer each time +he was obliged to take it; for after every swallow of the +stuff he made a face that told eloquently how nauseous +it must be.</p> + +<p>As for the satire and wit of Cousin Bill J., they were +of the dry sort. He would say to one he met on the +street when the mud was deep, "Fine weather overhead"— +then adding dryly, after a significant pause— +"<i>but few going that way!</i>" Or he would exclaim with +feigned admiration, when the little boy shot at a bird +with his bow and arrow, "My! you made the feathers +fly <i>that</i> time!"—then, after his terrible pause—<i>"only, +the bird flew with them</i>." Also he could call it +"Fourth of Ju-New-Years" without ever cracking a +smile, though it cramped the little boy in helpless +laughter.</p> + +<p>Altogether, Cousin Bill J. was a winning and lovely +character of merits both spiritual and spectacular, and +he brought to the big house an exotic atmosphere that +was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this +hero might be made again the man he once was; not +because of any flaw that he could see in him—but only +because the sufferer appeared somewhat less than +perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing +could have been superior to the noble melancholy with +which Cousin Bill J. looked back upon his splendid +past. There was a perfect dignity in it. Surely no +mere electric belt could bring to him an attraction +surpassing this—though Cousin Bill J. insisted that he +never expected any real improvement until he could save +up enough money to buy one. He showed the little +boy a picture cut from a newspaper—the picture of a +strong, proud-looking man with plenteous black +whiskers, girded about with a wide belt that was projecting +a great volume of electricity into the air in +every direction. It was interesting enough, but the +little boy thought this person by no means so beautiful +as Cousin Bill J., and said so. He believed, too, though +this he did not say, from tactful motives, that it would +detract from the dignity of Cousin Bill J. to go about +clad only in an electric belt, like the proud-looking +gentleman in the picture—even if the belt did send out +a lot of electric wiggles all the time. But, of course, +Cousin Bill J. knew best. He looked forward to +having his father meet this new hero—feeling that each +was perfect in his own way.</p> + + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h2><a name="ChapterVIIIA"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc"></a>Table of Contents]</div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">Searching the Scriptures</h3> + +<p>Around the evening lamp that winter the little boys +studied Holy Writ, while Allan made summaries of it +for the edification of the proud grandfather in far-off +Florida.</p> + +<p>Tersely was the creation and the fall of man set forth, +under promptings and suggestions from Clytie and +Cousin Bill J., who was no mean Bible authority: how +God, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," +found his first pair ashamed of their nakedness, and +with his own hands made them coats of skins and +clothed them. "What a treasure those garments would +be in this evil day," said Clytie—"what a silencing +rebuke to all heretics!" But the Lord drove out the +wicked pair, lest they "take also of the tree of life and +live forever," saying, "Behold, the man is become as +one of <i>us!</i>" This provoked a lengthy discussion the +very first evening as to whether it meant that there was +more than one God. And Clytie's view—that God +called himself "Us" in the same sense that kings and +editors of newspapers do—at length prevailed over the +polytheistic hypothesis of Cousin Bill J.</p> + +<p>On they read to the Deluge, when man became so +very bad indeed that God was sorry for ever having +made him, and said: "I will destroy man whom I have +created from the face of the earth; both man and the +beast and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, +for it repenteth me that I have made them."</p> + +<p>Hereupon Bernal suggested that all the white +rabbits at least should have been saved—thinking of +his own two in the warm nest in the barn. He was +unable to see how white rabbits with twitching pink +noses and pink rims around their eyes could be an +offense, or, indeed, other than a pure joy even to one +so good as God. But he gave in, with new admiration +for the ready mind of Cousin Bill J., who pointed out +that white rabbits could not have been saved because +they were not fish. He even relished the dry quip that +maybe he, the little boy, thought white rabbits <i>were</i> fish; +but Cousin Bill J. didn't, for his part.</p> + +<p>Past the Tower of Babel they went, when the Lord +"came down to see the city and the tower," and made +them suddenly talk strange tongues to one another so +they could not build their tower actually into Heaven.</p> + +<p>The little boy thought this a fine joke to play on +them, to set them all "jabbering" so.</p> + +<p>After that there was a great deal of fighting, and, in +the language of Allan's summary, "God loved all the +good people so he gave them lots of wives and cattle +and sheep and he let them go out and kill all the other +people they wanted to which was their enemies." But +the little boy found the butcheries rather monotonous.</p> + +<p>Occasionally there was something graphic enough to +excite, as where the heads of Ahab's seventy children +were put into a basket and exposed in two heaps at the +city's gate; but for the most part it made him sleepy.</p> + +<p>True, when it came to getting the Children of Israel +out of Egypt, as Cousin Bill J. observed, "Things +brisked up considerable."</p> + +<p>The plan of first hardening Pharaoh's heart, then +scaring him by a pestilence, then again hardening his +heart for another calamity, quite won the little boy's +admiration for its ingenuity, and even Cousin Bill J. +would at times betray that he was impressed. Feverishly +they followed the miracles done to Egypt; the +plague of frogs, of lice, of flies, of boils and blains on +man and beast; the plague of hail and lightning, of +locusts, and the three days of darkness. Then came +the Lord's final triumph, which was to kill all the first-born +in the land of Egypt, "from the first-born of +Pharaoh, that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the +first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; +and all the first-born of beasts." Again the little boy's +heart ached as he thought pityingly of the first-born of +all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement +to dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was +the manner in which the Israelites identified themselves, +by marking their doors with a sprig of hyssop dipped in +the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did +he see the good God gliding cautiously from door to +door, looking for the mark of blood, and passing the +lucky doors where it was seen to be truly of a male lamb +without blemish. He thought it must have taken a lot +of lambs to mark up all the doors!</p> + +<p>Then came that master-stroke of enterprise, when +God directed Moses to "speak now in the ears of the +people and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and +every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and +jewels of gold," so that they might "spoil" the Egyptians. +Cousin Bill J. chuckled when he read this, +declaring it to be "a regular Jew trick"; but Clytie +rebuked him quickly, reminding him that they were +God's own words, spoken in His own holy voice.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was mighty thoughtful in God," insisted +Cousin Bill J., but Clytie said, however that was, it +served Pharaoh right for getting his heart hardened so +often.</p> + +<p>The little boy, not perceiving the exact significance +of "spoil" in this connection, wondered if Cousin Bill J. +would spoil if some one borrowed his gold horse and +ran off with it.</p> + +<p>Then came that exciting day when the Lord said, "I +will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host," +which He did by drowning them thoroughly in the Red +Sea. The little boy thought he would have liked to +be there in a boat—a good safe boat that would not tip +over; also that he would much like to have a rod such +as Aaron had, that would turn into a serpent. It +would be a fine thing to take to school some morning. +But Cousin Bill J. thought it doubtful if one could be +procured; though he had seen Heller pour five colours +of wine out of a bottle which, when broken, proved to +have a live guinea-pig in it. This seemed to the little +boy more wonderful than Aaron's rod, though he felt +it would not reflect honour upon God to say so.</p> + +<p>Another evening they spent before Sinai, Cousin +Bill J. reading the verses in a severe and loud tone when +the voice of the Lord was sounding. Duly impressed +was the little boy with the terrors of the divine presence, +a thing so awful that the people must not go up into +the mount nor even touch its border—lest "the Lord +break forth upon them: There shall not a hand touch +it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether +it be beast or man it shall not live." Clytie said the +goodness of God was shown herein. An evil God +would not have warned them, and many worthy but +ignorant people would have been blasted.</p> + +<p>Then He came down in thunder and smoke and +lightning and earthquakes—which Cousin Bill J. read +in tones that enabled Bernal to feel every possible joy +of terror; came to tell them that He was a very jealous +God and that they must not worship any of the other +gods. He commanded that "thou shalt not revile the +Gods," also that they should "make no mention of the +names of other Gods," which Cousin Bill J. said was +as fair as you could ask.</p> + +<p>When they reached the directions for sacrificing, the +little boy was doubly alert—in the event that he should +ever determine to be washed in the blood of the lamb +and have to do his own killing.</p> + +<p>"Then," read Cousin Bill J., in a voice meant to +convey the augustness of Deity, "thou shalt kill the +ram and take of his blood and put it upon the tip of the +right ear of Aaron and upon the tip of the right ear of +his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and +upon the great toe of their right foot." So you didn't +have to wash all over in the blood. He agreed with +Clytie, who remarked that no one could ever have +found out how to do it right unless God had told. The +God-given directions that ensued for making the water +of separation from "the ashes of a red heifer" he did not +find edifying; but some verses after that seemed more +practicable. "And thou shalt take of the ram," continued +the reader in majestic cadence, "the fat and the +rump and the fat that covereth the inwards, and the +caul above the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat +that is upon them——"</p> + +<p>Here was detail with a satisfying minuteness; and +all this was for "a wave-offering" to be waved before +the Lord—which was indeed an interesting thought.</p> + +<p>"If God was so careful of His children in these small +matters," said Clytie; "no wonder they believed He +would care for them in graver matters, and no wonder +they looked forward so eagerly to the coming of His Son, +whom He promised should be sent to save them from +His wrath."</p> + +<p>Through God's succeeding minute directions for the +building and upholstery of His tabernacle, "with ten +curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and +scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou +make them," the interest of the little boys rather +languished; likewise through His regulations about such +dry matters as slavery, divorce, and polygamy. His +directions for killing witches and for stoning the ox that +gores a man or woman had more of colour in them. +But there was no real interest until the good God +promised His children to bring them in unto the +Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the +Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, to "cut them +off." It was not uninteresting to know that God put +Moses in a cleft of the rock and covered it with His +hand when He passed by, thus permitting Moses a +partial view of the divine person. But the actual fighting +of battles was thereafter the chief source of +interest. For God was a mighty God of battles, never weary of +the glories of slaughter. When it was plain that He +could make a handful of two thousand Israelites slay +two hundred thousand Midianites, in a moment, as one +might say, the wisdom of coming to the Feet, being +born again, and washing in the blood ceased to be +debatable. It would seem very silly, indeed, to +neglect any precaution that would insure the favour of +this God, who slew cities full of men and women and +little children off-hand. The little boy thought Milo +Barrus would begin to spell a certain word with the +very biggest "G" he could make, if any one were to +bring these matters to his notice.</p> + +<p>As to Allan, who made abstracts of the winter's +study, Clytemnestra and her transcendent relative +agreed that he would one day be a power in the land. +Off to Florida each week they sent his writing to +Grandfather Delcher, who was proud of it, in spite of +his heart going out chiefly to the littler boy.</p> + +<p>"So this is all I know now about God," ran the conclusion, +"except that He loved us so that He gave His +only Son to be crucified so that He could forgive our +sins as soon as He saw His Son nailed up on the cross, +and those that believed it could be with the Father, +Son, and Holy Ghost, and those that didn't believe it, +like the Jews and heathens, would have to be in hell +for ever and ever Amen. This proves His great love +for us and that He is the true God. So this is +all I have learned this winter about God, who is +a spirit infinite eternal and unchangeable in his being, +wisdom and power holiness justice goodness and truth, +and the word of God is contained in the scriptures of +the old and new testament which is the only rule to +direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. In my +next I will take up the meek and lowly Jesus and show +you how much I have learned about him."</p> +<p>They had been unable to persuade the littler boy +into this species of composition, his mind dwelling too +much on the first-born of white rabbits and such, but +to show that his winter was not wholly lost, he submitted +a secular composition, which ran:</p> +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<p>"B<font size="-1">IRDS</font></p> +</div> +<p>"The Animl kindom is devided into birds and +reguler animls. Our teacher says we had ougt to +obsurv so I obsurv there is three kinds of birds Jingle +birds Squeek birds and Clatter birds. Jingle birds has +fat rusty stumacks. I have not the trouble to obsurv +any more kinds."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIXA"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">On Surviving the Idols We Build</h3> + +<p>It is the way of life to be forever building new idols +in place of the old. Into the fabric of these the most +of us put so much of ourselves that a little of us dies +each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is +shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud +electric with doubt. This is why we fade and wither +as the leaf. Could we but sweep aside the wreck without +dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing +certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten +from that other tree in Eden, for the defence of which is +set the angel with the flaming sword. But this may +not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new +creation—deeming that <i>here</i>, in sooth, is one that shall +endure beyond the end of time. To the last we are +dull to the truth that our idols are meant to be broken, +to give way to other idols still to be broken.</p> + +<p>And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an +idol falls; and, learning thus to doubt, wistfully, +stoically we learn to die, leaving some last idol triumphantly +surviving us. For—and this is the third +lesson from that tree of Truth—we learn to doubt, not +the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their +creator. And it would seem that this is quite as it +should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to +his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the +maker go back to useful dust. Whereas, did he doubt +his idols and never himself—but this is mostly a secret, +for not many common idolmongers will cross that last +fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the +cattle are strange and the hour so late that one must +turn back for bed and supper.</p> + +<p>To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down +precisely, it will be apparent that the little boy was +destined to see more than one idol blasted before his +eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish +caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their +own powers—as if we were not meant to fail in our +idols forever! Being, then, not come to this spiritual +decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt for +the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet +see an idol go to bits without dismay, conscious only +of the need for a new and a better one.</p> + +<p>Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This +were a catastrophe that might wrench even youth's divine +credulity.</p> + +<p>Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited +school-months and its galloping vacation-days, +did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus +was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over +the ruins of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to +bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard +of any save himself—an idol discernible only +by him, but none the less real for that.</p> + +<p>The Imp with the hammer being no respecter of +dignities, the idol of the Front Room fell next, increasing +the heap of ruins that was gathering about his feet. +Tragically came a day one spring, a cold, cloudy, +rational day, it seemed, when the Front Room went +down; for the little boy saw all its sanctities violated, +its mysteries laid bare. And the Front Room became +a mere front room. Its shutters were opened and its +windows raised to let in light and common fresh air; +its carpet was on the line outside to be scourged of dust; +the black, formidable furniture was out on the wide +porch to be re-varnished, like any common furniture, +plainly needing it; the vases of dyed grass might be +handled without risk; and the dark spirit that had +seemed to be in and over all was vanished. Even the +majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza +once died for so much as touching reverently, was now +seen to be an ordinary stove for the burning of anthracite +coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for an extra +quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had +finished whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little +boy, grown somewhat bigger now, walked among the +débris of this idol, stamping the floor, sounding the +walls, detecting cracks in the ceiling, spots on the wall-paper +and cobwebs in the corners. Yet serene amid +the ruins towered his valiant spirit, conscious under +the catastrophe of its power to build other and yet +stauncher idols.</p> + +<p>Thus was it one day to stretch itself with new power +amid the base ruins of Cousin Bill J., though the time +was mercifully deferred—that his soul might gain +strength in worship to put away even that which it +worshipped when the day of new truth dawned.</p> + +<p>When Cousin Bill J., in the waning of that first +winter, began actually to refine his own superlative +elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, +by munching tiny confections reputed to scent +the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of +the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected +no motive. He saw these works only as the outward +signs of an inward grace that must be ever increasing. +So it came that his amazement was above that of all +other persons when, at Spring's first breath of honeyed +fragrance, Cousin Bill J. went to be the husband of +Miss Alvira Abney. He had not failed to observe that +Miss Alvira sang alto, in the choir, out of the same +book from which Cousin Bill J. produced his exquisite +tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this, beyond, +perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor +figure beside her magnificent companion, even if her +bonnet was always the gayest bonnet in church, trembling +through every season with the blossoms of some +ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira's face +and hair and eyes seemed to be all one colour, very pale, +and her hands were long and thin, with far too many +bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought.</p> + +<p>Yet when he learned that the woman was not without +merit in the sight of his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave +her his favour. At the marriage he felt in his heart a +certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that +in the bride's own heart, for their faces seemed to +speak much alike.</p> + +<p>Tensely the little boy listened to the words that +united these two, understanding perfectly from questions +that his hero endowed the woman at his side with +all his worldly goods. Even a less practicable person +than Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in +this light—being endowed with the gold horse, to say +nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the precious +jewel in the scarlet cravat. Probably now she would +be able to throw her thumbs out of joint, too!</p> + +<p>But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that +Cousin Bill J. would stay close at hand, to be a joy +forever in his sight and lend importance to the town of +Edom. For his hero was to go and live in the neat +rooms of Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking +shop, and never return to the scenes of his +early prowess.</p> + +<p>After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school +of a morning, would watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel +out on the sidewalk the high glass case in which Miss +Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered +bonnets. And slowly it came to life in his understanding +that between the not irksome task of wheeling +out this case in the morning and wheeling it back at +night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man +of his parts deserved. He was free at last to sit about +in the stores of the village, or to enthrone himself +publicly before them in clement weather, at which +time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter +whatsoever, could be had for the asking. Nor would +he be invincibly reticent upon the subject of those early +exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County +marvelling at his strength.</p> + +<p>At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. +Later he came to rejoice in the very circumstance that +had brought him pain. If his hero could not be all his, +at least the world would have to blink even as he had +blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences—yes, +and smart under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm.</p> + +<p>It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow +poison is not infrequently the fate of an idol.</p> + +<p>Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the +little boy could have said "that was the first time +Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet there +came a moment when all was changed—a time of +question, doubt, conviction; a terrible hour, in short, +when, face to face with his hero, he suffered the deep +hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even +esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J.</p> + +<p>He could remember that first he had heard a caller +say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor +thing has to go down those back stairs and actually +split her own kindlings—with that healthy loafer setting +around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back +room of that drug-store from morning till night. And +what's worse, he's been seen with that eldest——"</p> + +<p>Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at +the small listener, whereupon Clytie had urged him to +run along and play like a good boy. He pondered at +length that which he had overheard and then he went to +Miss Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, +reached by turning up the alley from Main Street. He +split a large pile of kindling for her. He would have +been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira +proved to be lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring +him, when she saw him from her back window, where +she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist, +she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him +five cents and tried to kiss him. Of course, he never +went back again. If <i>that</i> was the kind she was she +could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph +Overton or Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made +to feel that he had been Doing Good, and be spoken of +all the time as "our Hero."</p> + +<p>As for Cousin Bill J., of <i>course</i> he was a loafer! +Who wouldn't be if he had the chance? But it was +false and cruel to say that he was a healthy loafer. +When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to +fell an ox with one blow of his fist.</p> + +<p>Nor was he disturbed seriously by rumours that his +hero was a "come-outer"; that instead of attending +church with Miss Alvira he could be heard at the barber-shop +of a Sabbath morning, agreeing with Milo Barrus +that God might have made the world in six days and +rested on the seventh; but he couldn't have made the +whale swallow Jonah, because it was against reason +and nature; and, if you found one part of the Bible +wasn't so, how could you tell the rest of it wasn't a lot +of grandmother's tales?</p> + +<p>Nor did he feel anything but sympathy for a helpless +man imposed upon when he heard Mrs. Squire Cumpston +say to Clytie, "Do you know that lazy brute has +her worked to a mere shadow; she just sits in that shop +all day long and lets tears fall every minute or so on her +work. She spoiled five-eighths of a yard of three-inch +lavender satin ribbon that way, that was going on to +Mrs. Beasley's second-mourning bonnet. And she's +had to cut him down to twenty-five cents a day for +spending-money, and order the stores not to trust him +one cent on her account."</p> + +<p>He was sorry to have Miss Alvira crying so much. +It must be a sloppy business, making her hats and +things. But what did the woman <i>expect</i> of a man like +Cousin Bill J., anyway?</p> + +<p>Yet somehow it came after a few years—the new +light upon his old idol. One day he found that he +neither resented nor questioned a thing he heard +Clytie herself say about Cousin Bill J.: "Why, he don't +know as much as a goat." Here she reconsidered, +with an air of wanting to be entirely fair:—"Well, not +as much as a goat really <i>ought</i> to know!" And when +he overheard old Squire Cumpston saying on the +street, a few days later, "Of all God's mean creatures, +the meanest is a male human that can keep his health +on the money a woman earns!" it was no shock, +though he knew that Cousin Bill J. was meant.</p> + +<p>Departed then was the glory of his hero, his splendid +dimensions shrunk, his effective lustre dulled, his +perfect moustache rusted and scraggly, his chin +weakened, his pale blue eyes seen to be in force like +those of a china doll.</p> + +<p>He heard with interest that Squire Cumpston had +urged Miss Alvira to divorce her husband, that she +had refused, declaring God had joined her to Cousin +Bill J. and that no man might put them asunder; that +marriage had been raised by Christ to the dignity of a +sacrament and was now indissoluble—an emblem, +indeed, of Christ's union with His Church; and that, +as she had made her bed, so would she lie upon it.</p> + +<p>Nor was the boy alone in regarding as a direct +manifestation of Providence the sudden removal of +Cousin Bill J. from this life by means of pneumonia. +For Miss Alvira had ever been esteemed and respected +even by those who considered that she sang alto half a +note off, while her husband had gradually acquired the +disesteem of almost the entire village of Edom. Many, +indeed, went so far as to consider him a reproach to his +sex.</p> + +<p>Yet there were a few who said that even a pretended +observance of the decencies would have been better. +Miss Alvira disagreed with them, however, and after +all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the post-office +next day, "It was <i>her</i> funeral." For Miss +Alvira had made no pretense to God; and, what is +infinitely harder, she would make none to the world. +She rode to the last resting-place of her husband— +Elias also made a funny joke about his having merely +changed <i>resting-places</i>—decked in a bonnet on which +were many blossoms. She had worn it through years +when her heart mourned and life was bitter, when it +seemed that God from His infinity had chosen her to +suffer the cruellest hurts a woman may know—and +now that He had set her free she was not the one to +pretend grief with some lying pall of crêpe. And on +the new bonnet she wore to church, the first Sabbath +after, there still flowered above her somewhat drawn +face the blossoms of an endless girlhood, as if they were +rooted in her very heart. Beneath these blossoms she +sang her alto—such as it was—with just a hint of +tossing defiance. Yet there was no need for that. +Edom thought well of her.</p> + +<p>No one was known to have mourned the departed +save an inferior dog he had made his own and been kind +to; but this creature had little sympathy or notice, +though he was said to have waited three days and three +nights on the new earth that topped the grave of Cousin +Bill J. For, quite aside from his unfortunate connection, +he had not been thought well of as a dog.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXA"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Passing of the Gratcher; and Another</h3> + +<p>From year to year the perfect father came to Edom +to be a week with his children. And though from +visit to visit there were external variations in him, +his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless. +When his garments were appreciably less regal, even +to the kind eye of his younger son; when his hat was not +all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the +priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere +bunch of aimless keys, though the bounty from his +pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of copper +exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his +side, worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer +affairs were quite the reverse. Yet he could not avoid +being sensible of the fluctuations.</p> + +<p>One year the parent would come with the long hair +of one who, having been brother to the red Indian +for years, has wormed from his medicine man the +choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopæia, and +who would out of love for suffering humanity place this +within the reach of all for a nominal consideration.</p> + +<p>Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping +moustache and much of the tawny hair, and the little +boy would understand that he had travelled extensively +with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in +large cities, and being spoken of as "the phenomenal +California baritone." His admiring son envied the +fortunate people of those cities.</p> + +<p>Again he would be touring the world of cities +with some simple article of household use which, +from his luxurious barouche, he was merely introducing +for the manufacturers—perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a +silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen +knives and cut glass, this being, indeed, one of his +prized staples. It appeared—so the little boy heard him +tell Milo Barrus—that few men could resist buying a +tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into +strips before their eyes; that one beholding the sea of +hands waving frantically up to him with quarters in +them, after his demonstration, would have reason to +believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of +glass every day or so. Instead of this, as an observer +of domestic and professional life, he believed that out +of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not ten +had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would.</p> + +<p>There was another who continued indifferent to the +personal estate of this father. This was Grandfather +Delcher, who had never seen him since that bleak day +when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter. +When the perfect father came to Edom the grandfather +went to his room and kept there so closely that neither +ever beheld the other. The little boy was much puzzled +by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other +by two men of such rare distinction, and during the +early visits of his father he was fruitful of suggestion +for bringing them together. But when he came to +understand that they remained apart by wish of the +elder man, he was troubled. He ceased then all efforts +to arrange a meeting to which he had looked forward +with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage +to the other. But he was grieved toward his grandfather, +becoming sharp and even disdainful to the queer, +silent old man, at those times when the father was in +the village. He could have no love and but little +friendliness for one who slighted his dear father. And +so a breach widened between them from year to year, +as the child grew stouter fibre into his sentiments of +loyalty and justice.</p> + +<p>Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly +depriving him of this or that beloved idol, yet not +unkindly leaving with him the pliant vitality that could +fashion others to be still more warmly cherished.</p> + +<p>With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay +across the lawn between their houses, he often discussed +these matters of life. Nancy herself had not been +spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless +rudiment of humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save +for a puckered, freckled face, she was past the witless +time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken wing +and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three +wishes. It was more plausible now that a prince, "all +dressed up in shiny Prince Clothes," would come +riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the saddle +in front of him and gallop off, calling her "My beautiful +darling!" while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the +cook, danced up and down on the front piazza impotently +shouting "Help!" She suspected then, when it +was too late, that certain people would bitterly wish +they had acted in a different manner. If this did not +happen soon, she meant to go into a convent where she +would not be forever told things for her own good by +those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where +she could devote a quiet life to the bringing up of her +children.</p> + +<p>The little boy sympathised with her. He knew what +it was to be disappointed in one's family. The family +he would have chosen for his own was that of which two +excellent views were given on the circus bills. In one +picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in +their pink tights, ranging from the tall father and +mother down through four children to a small boy that +always looked much like himself. In the other picture +these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through +the air at the very top of the great tent, from trapeze to +trapeze, with the littlest boy happily in the greatest +danger, midway in the air between the two proud +parents, who were hurling him back and forth.</p> + +<p>It was absurd to think of anything like this in connection +with a family of which only one member had +either courage or ambition. One had only to study +Clytie or Grandfather Delcher a few moments to +see how hopeless it all was.</p> + +<p>The next best life to be aspired to was that of a house-painter, +who could climb about unchided on the frailest +of high scaffolds, swing from the dizziest cupola, or +sway jauntily at the top of the longest ladder—always +without the least concern whether he spilled paint on his +clothes or not.</p> + +<p>Then, all in a half-hour, one afternoon, both he and +Nancy seemed to cross a chasm of growth so wide that +one thrilled to look back to the farther side where all +objects showed little and all interests were juvenile. +And this phenomenon, signalised by the passing of the +Gratcher, came in this wise. As they rested from +play—this being a time when the Gratcher was most +likely to be seen approaching by him of the Gratcher-eye, +the usual alarm was given, followed by the usual +unbreathing silence. The little boy fixedly bent his +magic eye around the corner of the house, the little girl +scrambling to him over the grass to clutch one of his +arms, to listen fearfully for the setting of the monster's +crutches at the end of each stride, to feel if the earth +trembled, as it often distinctly did, under his awful +tread.</p> + +<p>Wider grew the eyes of both at each "Now he's nearer +still!" of the little boy, until at last the girl must hide +her head lest she see that awful face leering past the +corner. For, once the Gratcher's eye met yours +fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will. +This was to pick you up and look at you on all sides +at once with the eyes in his finger-ends, which tickled +you so that you lost your mind.</p> + +<p>But now, at the shrillest and tensest report of progress +from the gifted watcher, all in a wondrous second of +realisation, they turned to look into each other's eyes— +and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick little +self-conscious laughs they gave. It was all at once +as if two grown-ups had in a flash divined that they had +been playing at a childish game under some spell. The +moment was not without embarrassment, because of +their having caught themselves in the very act and +frenzy of showing terror of this clumsy fiction. Foolishly +they averted their glances, after that first little laugh of +sudden realisation; but again their eyes met, and this +time they laughed loud and long with a joy that took +away not only all fears of the Gratcher forever, but +their first embarrassment of themselves. Then, with +no word of the matter whatsoever, each knowing that +the other understood, they began to talk of life again, +feeling older and wiser, which truly they were.</p> + +<p>For, though many in time wax brave to beard their +Gratcher even in his lair, only the very wise learn this— +that the best way to be rid of him is to laugh him away +—that no Gratcher ever fashioned by the ingenuity of +terror-loving humans can keep his evil power over one +to whom he has become funny.</p> + +<p>The passing of the Gratcher had left no pedestal +crying for another idol. In its stead, for his own +chastening and with all reverence, the little boy erected +the spirit of that God which the Bible tells of, who is +all-wise and loving, yet no sentimentalist, as witness +his sudden devastations among the first-born of all +things, from white rabbits to men.</p> + +<p>But an idol next went down that not only left a +wretched vacancy in the boy's pantheon, but fell +against his heart and made an ugly wound. It was as +if he had become suddenly clear-seeing on that day +when the Gratcher shrivelled in the blast of his laugh.</p> + +<p>A little later came the father on his annual visit, and +the dire thing was done. The most ancient and +honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A perfect +father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, +street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, +of a cheap, shabby smartness, who came +flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, and +proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack +of those things without which the little boy now saw no +one could be a gentleman.</p> + +<p>He cried in his bed that night, after futile efforts to +believe that some fearful change had been wrought in his +father. But his memory of former visits was scrupulously +photographic—phonographic even. He recalled +from the past certain effects once keenly joyed in that +now made his cheeks burn. The things rioted brutally +before him, until it seemed that something inside of +him strove to suppress them—as if a shamed hand +reached out from his heart to brush the whole offense +into decent hiding with one quick sweep.</p> + +<p>This time he took care that Nancy should not meet +his father. Yet he walked the streets with him as +before—walking defiantly and with shame those streets +through which he had once led the perfect father in +festal parade, to receive the applause of a respectful +populace. Now he went forth awkwardly, doggedly, +keen for signs that others saw what he did, and quick +to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he +detected that they did so. Once his father rallied him +upon his "grumpiness"; then he grew sullen—though +trying to smile—thinking with mortification of his +grandfather. He understood the old man now.</p> + +<p>He was glad when the week came to an end. Bruised, +bewildered, shamed, but loyal still and resentful toward +others who might see as he did, he was glad when his +father went—this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a +twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading +with the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, +playing the "ten-twenty-thirties," whatever they were!</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIA"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Strong Person's Narrative</h3> + +<p>Near the close of the following winter came news of +the father's death. In some town of which the boy +had never heard, in another State, a ramshackle wooden +theatre had burned one night and the father had +perished in the fire through his own foolhardiness. +The news came by two channels: first, a brief and unilluminating +paragraph in the newspaper, giving little +more than the fact itself.</p> + +<p>But three days later came a friend of the father, +bringing his few poor effects and a full relation of the +matter. He was a person of kind heart, evidently, to +whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom +—a bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on +the advertising posters of the Gus Levy All-Star +Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with +a portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch +of his chest a grand piano, upon which were superimposed +three sizable and busy violinists.</p> + +<p>He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather +Delcher having wished to hear no more of the occurrence.</p> + +<p>"You understan', it was like this now," he began, +after having with a calculating eye rejected two proffered +chairs of delicate structure and selected a stout +wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as +one whom experience had taught to distrust most +of the chairs in common use.</p> + +<p>"The people in front had got out all right, the fire +havin' started on the stage from the strip-light, and also +our people had got out through the little stage-entrance, +though havin' to leave many of our props—a good coat +I had to lose meself, fur-lined around the collar, by +way of helpin' the Sisters Devere get out their box of +accordions that they done a Dutch Daly act with for +an enn-core. Well, as I was sayin', we'd all hustled +down these back stairs—they was already red hot and +smokin' up good, you understan', and there we was +shiverin' outside in the snow, kind of rattled, and no +wonder, at that, and the ladies of the troupe histurrical +—it had come like a quick-change, you understan', +when all of a sudden up in the air goes the Original +Kelly. Say, he lets out a yell for your life—'Oh, my +God!' he says, 'my kids—up there,' pointin' to where +the little flames was spittin' out through the side like a +fire-eatin' act. Then down he flops onto his knees in +the snow, prayin' like the—prayin' like <i>mad</i>, you understan', +and callin' on the blessed Virgin to save little +Patsy, who was just gittin' good with his drum-major +act and whirlin' a fake musket—and also little Joseph, +who was learnin' to do some card-tricks that wasn't so +bad. Well, so everybody begins to scream louder and +run this way and that, you understan', callin' the kids +and thinkin' Kelly was nutty, because they must 'a got +out. But Kelly keeps right on prayin' to the holy +Virgin, the tears runnin' down his make-up—say, he +looked awful, on the dead! And then we hears another +yell, and here was Prof. at the window with one of +the kids, sure enough. He'd got up them two flights +of stairs, though they was all red smoky, like when you +see fire through smoke. Well, he motions to catch the +kid, so we snatches a cloak off one of the girls and holds +it out between us, you understan', while he leans out +and drops the kid into it, all safe and sound.</p> + +<p>"Just then we seen the place all light up back of him, +and we yelled to him to jump, too—he could 'a saved +himself, you understan', but he waves his hand and +shook his head—say, lookin' funny, too, with his +<i>mus</i>-tache half burned off, and we seen him go back +out of sight for the other little Kelly—Kelly still +promisin' to give up all he had to the Virgin if she +saved his boys.</p> + +<p>"Well, for a minute the crowd kep' still, kind 'a +holdin' its breath, you understan', till the Prof.'d come +back with the other kid—and holdin' it and holdin' it +till the fire gits brighter and brighter through the +window—and—nothin' happens, you understan'—just +the fire keeps on gittin' busy. Honest, I begun to feel +shaky, but then up comes one of these day-after-to-morrow +fire-departments, like they have in them towns, +with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, +and there was great doings with these Silases screamin' +to each other a foot away through their fire-trumpets, +only the stairs had been ablaze ever since the Prof. got +up 'em, and before any one does anything the whole +inside caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course, that settles it, you understan'—about +the little Kelly and the Prof. We drags the original +Kelly away to a drug-store on the corner of the next +block, where they was workin' over the kid Prof. saved +—it was Patsy—and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. +was bringin' the kid around all right, when one of the +Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty all to once—say, +she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park, +laughin' till you'd think she'd bust, only it sounded like +she was cryin' at the same time, and screamin' out at +the top of her voice, 'Oh, he looked so damned funny +with his <i>mus</i>-tache burned off! Oh, he looked so +damned funny with his <i>mus</i>-tache burned off!'—way +up high like that, over and over. Well, so she has to +be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm full of knockouts. +Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by +that time, what with the lady bein' that way I'm 'a +tellin' you, and Kelly, the crazy Irishman—I could +hear him off in one corner givin' his reg'ler stunt about +his friend, O'Houlihan, lately landed and lookin' for +work, comes to a sausage factory and goes up to the +boss and says, 'Begobs!'—<i>you</i> know the old gag—say, +I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd +around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin' around in +that dressin'-room for Kelly's other kid, when he +might 'a jumped after he got the first one, and, say, +this is no kid—first thing I knew I begin to bawl like +a baby.</p> + +<p>"Well, as I was sayin', there I am and all I can see +through the fog is one 'a these here big lighted signs +down the street with 'George's Place' on it, and a +pitcher of a big glass of beer. Me to George's, at once. +When Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, +I'm tryin' to tell a gang of Silases how it all happened +and chokin' up every time so's I have to have another.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course, we break up next day. Kelly tells +me, after he gits right again, that little Patsy was +saved by havin' one 'a these here scapulars on—he +shows it to me hanging around the kid's neck, inside +his clothes. He says little Joseph must 'a left his off, +or he'd 'a' been saved, too. He showed me a piece in +one 'a these little religious books that says there was +nothing annoyed the devil like a scapular—that a man +can't be burned or done dirt to in no way if he wears +one. I says it's a pity the Prof. didn't have one on, but +Kelly says they won't work for Protestants. But I +don't know—I never <i>purtended</i> to be good on these +propositions of religious matters. And there wasn't +any chance of findin' the kid to prove if Kelly had it +right or not.</p> + +<p>"But the Prof. he was certainly a great boy for +puttin' up three-sheets about his own two kids; anybody +that would listen—friend or stranger—made no difference +to <i>him</i>. He starred 'em to anybody, you +understan'—what corkers they was, and all like that. +It seemed like Kelly's havin' two kids also kind 'a +touched on his feelin's. Honest, I ain't ever got so +worked up over anything before in me whole life."</p> + +<p>When this person had gone the old man called the +two boys to his room and prayed with them; keeping +the younger to sit with him a long time afterward, as if +feeling that his was the heavier heart.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIIA"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">A New Theory of a Certain Wicked Man</h3> + +<p>The time of the first sorrow was difficult for the boy. +There was that first hard sleep after one we love has +gone—in which we must always dream that it is not +true—a sleep from which we awaken to suffer all the +shock of it again. Then came black nights when the +perfect love for the perfect father came back in all its +early tenderness to cry the little boy to sleep. Yet it +went rapidly enough at last, as times of sorrow go for +the young. There even came a day when he found in +a secret place of his heart a chastened, hopeful inquiry +if all might not have been for the best. He had loved +his father—there had been between them an unbreakable +bond; yet this very love had made him suffer at every +thought of him while he was living, whereas now he +could love him with all tender memories and with no +poisonous misgivings about future meetings with their +humiliations. Now his father was made perfect in +Heaven, and even Grandfather Delcher—whose aloofness +here he had ceased to blame—would not refuse to +meet and know him there.</p> + +<p>Naturally, then, he turned to his grandfather in his +great need for a new idol to fill the vacant niche. +Aforetime the old man in his study upstairs had been +little more than a gray shadow, a spirit of gloom, +stubbornly imprisoning another spirit that would have +been kind if it could have escaped. But the little boy +drew near to him, and found him curiously companionable. +Where once he had shunned him, he now +went freely to the study with his lessons or his storybook, +or for talk of any little matter. His grandfather, +it seemed, could understand many things which so old +a man could scarcely have been expected to understand. +In token of this there would sometimes creep +over his brown old face a soft light that made it seem +as if there must still be within him somewhere the child +he had once been; as if, perhaps, he looked into the +little boy as into a mirror that threw the sunlight of his +own boyhood into his time-worn face. Side by side, +before the old man's fire, they would talk or muse, +since they were friendly enough to be silent if they +liked. Only one confidence the little boy could not +bring himself to make: he could not tell the old man +that he no longer felt hard toward him, as once he had +done, for his coldness to his father; that he had divined +—and felt a great shame for—the true reason of that +coldness. But he thought the old man must understand +without words. It was hardly a matter to be +talked of.</p> + +<p>About his other affairs, especially his early imaginings +and difficulties, he was free to talk; about coming to +the Feet, and the Front Room, and being washed in the +blood, and born again—matters that made the old man +wish their intimacy had not been so long delayed.</p> + +<p>But now they made up for lost time. Patiently and +ably he taught the little boy those truths he needed to +know; to seek for eternal life through the atoning blood +of the Saviour, whose part it had been to purchase our +redemption from God's wrath by his death on Calvary. +Of other matters more technical: of how the love that +God of necessity has for His own infinitely perfect being +is the reason and the measure of the hatred he has for +sin. Above all did he teach the little boy how to pray +for the grace of effectual calling, in order that, being +persuaded of his sin and misery, he might thereafter +partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and +those several benefits which, in this life, do either +accompany or flow from them. They looked forward +with equal eagerness to the day when he should become +a great and good man, preaching the gospel of the +crucified Son to spellbound throngs.</p> + +<a name="GreatMan"></a> +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<a href="images/greatman.jpg"><img src="images/greatman.jpg" +alt=""They looked forward..."" width="600" border="0"></a> +<br> +"They looked forward with equal eagerness +to the day when he should become a great and good man." +</div> + +<p>Together they began again the study of the Scriptures, +the little boy now entering seriously upon that work of +writing commentaries which had once engaged Allan. +In one of these school-boyish papers the old man came +upon a passage that impressed him as notable. It +seemed to him that there was not only that vein of poetic +imagination—without which one cannot be a great +preacher—but a certain individual boldness of approach, +monstrous in its naïve sentimentality, to be +sure, but indicating a talent that promised to mature +splendidly.</p> + +<p>"Now Jesus told his disciples," it ran, "that he must +be crucified before he could take his seat on the right +hand of God and send to hell those who had rejected +him. He told them that one of them would have to +betray him, because it must be like the Father had said. +It says at the last supper Jesus said, 'The Son of Man +goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto that man by +whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for +that man if he had not been born.'</p> + +<p>"Now it says that Satan entered into Judas, but it +looks to me more like the angel of the Lord might have +entered into him, he being a good man to start with, or +our Lord would not have chosen him to be a disciple. +Judas knew for sure, after the Lord said this, that one +of the disciples had got to betray the Saviour and go to +hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not +quenched. Well, Judas loved all the disciples very +much, so he thought he would be the one and save one +of the others. So he went out and agreed to betray him +to the rulers for thirty pieces of silver. He knew if he +didn't do it, it might have to be Peter, James, or John, +or some one the Saviour loved very dearly, because it +<i>had</i> to be one of them. So after it was done and he +knew the others were saved from this foul deed, he went +back to the rulers and threw down their money, and +went out and hung himself. If he had been a bad man, +it seems more like he would have spent that money in +wicked indulgences, food and drink and entertainments, +etc. Of course, Judas knew he would go to hell +for it, so he was not as lucky as Jesus, who knew he +would go to heaven and sit at the right hand of God +when he died, which was a different matter from Judas's, +who would not have any reward at all but going to hell. +It looks to me like poor Judas had ought to be brought +out of hell-fire, and I shall pray Jesus to do it when he +gets around to it."</p> + +<p>However it might be with our Lord's betrayer, there +was one soul now seen to be deservedly in hell. Through +the patient study of the Scriptures as expounded by +Grandfather Delcher, the little boy presently found himself +accepting without demur the old gentleman's unspoken +but sufficiently indicated opinion. His father +was in everlasting torment—having been not only unbaptised, +but godless and a scoffer. With a quickening +sense of the majesty of that Spirit infinitely good, a new +apprehension of His plan's symmetry, he read the words +meant to explain, to comfort him, silently indicated one +day by the old man:</p> + +<p>"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same +lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto +dishonour?</p> + +<p>"What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to +make His power known, endured with much long suffering +the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?</p> + +<p>"And that he might make known the riches of his +glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared +unto glory."</p> + +<p>It hurt at first, but the young mind hardened to it +dutifully—the big, laughing, swaggering, scoffing father +—a device of God made for torment, that the power of +the All-loving might show forth! If the father had only +repented, he might have gone straight to heaven as did +Cousin Bill J. For the latter had obtained grace +in his last days, and now sang acceptably before the +thrones of the Father and the Son. But the unbaptised +scoffer must burn forever—and the little boy knew at +last what was meant by "the majesty of God."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<p style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/book2.jpg" alt="BOOK TWO: The Age of Reason" width="486" height="426" border="0"></p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h1><i>BOOK TWO—THE AGE OF REASON</i></h1> + +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIB"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc2">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Regrettable Dementia of a Convalescent</h3> + +<p>"You know you <i>please</i> me—<i>really</i> you do!"</p> + +<p>Allan, perfect youth of the hazel eyes and tawny +locks, bent upon inquiring Nancy a look of wholly +pleasant reassurance, as one wishful to persuade her +from doubt.</p> + +<p>"I'm not joking a bit. When I say you please me, I +mean it."</p> + +<p>His look became rather more expansive with a smile +that seemed meant to sympathise guardedly with her in +her necessary rejoicing.</p> + +<p>Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black +curtains of her eyes, murmuring from out the friendly +gloom:</p> + +<p>"It's very good of you, Allan!"</p> + +<p>Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, +which she divined he was about to do, the curtains were +up and the eyes wide open to him with a question about +Bernal.</p> + +<p>He turned to the house and pointed up to the two +open windows of the study, in and out of which the +warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains.</p> + +<p>"He's there, poor chap! He was able to get that far +for the first time yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie."</p> + +<p>"And to think I never knew he was sick until we +came from town last night. I'd surely have left the old +school and come before if I'd heard. I wouldn't have +cared <i>what</i> Aunt Bell said."</p> + +<p>"Eight weeks down, and you know we found he'd +been sick long before he found it out himself—walking +typhoid, they called it. He came home from college +with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed +the moment he clapped eyes on him. Said it was walking +typhoid, and that he must have been worrying +greatly about something, because his nervous system +was all run down."</p> + +<p>"And he was very ill?"</p> + +<p>"Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go +and get back at all."</p> + +<p>"How dreadful—poor Bernal! Oh, if he <i>had</i> died!"</p> + +<p>"Out of his head for three weeks at a time—raving +fearfully. And you know, he's quite like an infant now +—says the simplest things. He laughs at it himself. +He says he's not sure if he knows how to read and write."</p> + +<p>"Poor, dear Bernal!"</p> + +<p>With some sudden arousing he studied her face +swiftly as she spoke, then continued:</p> + +<p>"Yes, Bernal's really an awfully good chap at bottom. +" He turned again to look up at the study windows. +"You know, I intend to stand by that fellow +always—no matter <i>what</i> he does! Of course, I shall +not let his being my brother blind me to his faults— +doubtless we <i>all</i> have faults; but I tell you, +Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a +man's make-up."</p> + +<p>She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he +broke off—"Now I must hurry to mail these letters +It's good to be home for another summer. You really +<i>do</i> please me, Nance!"</p> + +<p>She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome +—more than handsome, indeed. He left an immediate +conviction of his superb vitality of body and mind, +the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail. Featured +in almost faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, +unaffectedly proclaiming its superior gravity among +human masses, he was a planet destined to have many +satellites and be satellite to none; an <i>ego</i> of genuine +lordliness; a presence at once masterly and decorative.</p> + +<p>And yet she was conscious of a note—not positively +of discord, but one still exciting a counter-stream of +reflection. She had observed that each time Allan +turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning +his shoulders with it: the perfect head and shoulders +were swung with almost a studied unison. And this +little thing had pricked her admiration with a certain +needle-like suspicion—a suspicion that the young man +might be not wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle.</p> + +<p>Yet this was no matter to permit in one's mind. For +Nancy of the lengthened skirts and the massed braids +was now a person of reserves. Even in that innocent +insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively malicious, +half-conscious flauntings, she was one of reticences +toward the world including herself, with petticoats +of decorum draping the child's anarchy of thought +—her luxuriant young emotions "done up" sedately +with her hair. She was now one to be cautious indeed +of imputations so blunt as this concerning Allan. Besides, +how nobly he had spoken of Bernal. Then she +wondered <i>why</i> it should seem noble, for Nancy would +be always a creature to wonder where another would +accept. She saw it had seemed noble because Bernal +must have been up to some deviltry.</p> + +<p>This phrase would not be Nancy's—only she knew it +to be the way her uncle, for example, would translate +Allan's praise of his brother. She hoped Bernal had +not been very bad—and wondered <i>how</i> bad.</p> + +<p>Then she went to him. Her first little knock brought +no answer, nor could she be sure that the second did. +But she knew it was loud enough to be heard if the room +were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack +and peeped in. He lay on the big couch across the +room under the open window, a scarlet wool dressing-gown +on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower part +of his body. He seemed to be looking out and up to +the tree that appeared above the window. She thought +he could not have heard her, but he called:</p> + +<p>"Clytie!"</p> + +<p>She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his +eyes when he weakly turned his head on the pillow.</p> + +<p>"Nancy!"</p> + +<p>He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of +hers. The laugh did not end until there were tears in +his eyes. She laughed with him as a strong-voiced +singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly +force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had +found.</p> + +<p>"Don't be flattered, Nance—it's only typhoid emotion, +" he said at last, in a voice that sounded strangely +unused. "You don't really overcome me, you know +—the sight of you doesn't unman me as much as these +fond tears might make you suspect. I shall feel that +way when Clytie brings my lunch, too." He smiled +and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside +him.</p> + +<p>"How plump and warm your hand is—all full of +little whispering pulses. My hands are cold and +drowsy and bony, and <i>so</i> uninterested! Doesn't +fever bring forward a man's bones in the most +shameless way?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Bernal—but you'll soon have them decently +hidden again—indeed, you're looking—quite—quite +plump." She smiled encouragingly. A sudden new +look in his eyes made her own face serious again.</p> + +<p>"Why, Nance, you're rather lovely when you smile!"</p> + +<p>She smiled.</p> + +<p>"Only then?"</p> + +<p>He studied her, while she pretended to be grave.</p> + +<p>He became as one apart, giving her a long look of +unbiassed appraisal.</p> + +<p>"Well—you know—now you have some little odds +and ends of features—not bad—no, not even half bad, +for that matter. I can see thousands of miles into your +eyes—there's a fire smouldering away back in there +—it's all smoky and mysterious after you go the first few +thousand miles—but, I don't know—I believe the +smile is <i>needed</i>, Nance. Poor child, I tell you this as a +friend, for your own good—it seems to make a fine big +perfection out of a lot of little imperfections that are +only fairly satisfactory."</p> + +<p>She smiled again, brushing an escaped lock of hair to +its home.</p> + +<p>"Really, Nance, no one could guess that mouth till it +melts."</p> + +<p>"I see—now I shall be going about with an endless, +sickening grin. It will come to that—doubtless I shall +be murdered for it—people that do grin that way always +make <i>me</i> feel like murder."</p> + +<p>"And they could never guess your eyes until the little +smile runs up to light their chandeliers."</p> + +<p>"Dear me!—Like a janitor!"</p> + +<p>"—or the chin, until the little smile does curly things +all around it——"</p> + +<p>"There, now—calm yourself—the doctor will be here +presently—and you know, you're among friends——"</p> + +<p>"—or the face itself until those little pink ripples get +to chasing each other up to hide in your hair, as they are +now. You know you're blushing, Nance, so stop it. +Remember, it's when you smile; remember, also, that +smiles are born, not made. It's a long time since I've +seen you, Nance."</p> + +<p>"Two years—we didn't come here last summer, you +know."</p> + +<p>"But you've aged—you're twice the woman you were +—so, on the whole, I'm not in the least disappointed in +you."</p> + +<p>"Your sickness seems to have left you—well—in a +remarkably unprejudiced state of mind."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "That's the funny part of it. Did +they tell you this siege had me foolish for weeks? +Honest, now, Nance, here's a case—how many are +two times two?" He waited expectantly.</p> + +<p>"Are you serious?"</p> + +<p>"It seems silly to you, doesn't it—but answer as if I +were a child."</p> + +<p>"Well—twice two are four—unless my own mind is +at fault."</p> + +<p>"There!—now I begin to believe it. I suppose, now, +it <i>couldn't</i> be anything else, could it? Yesterday morning +the doctor said something was as plain as twice two +are four. You know, the thing rankled in me all day. +It seemed to me that twice two ought to be twenty-two. +Then I asked Clytie and she said it was four, but that +didn't satisfy me. Of course, Clytemnestra is a dear +soul, and I truly, love her, but her advantages in an +educational way have been meagre. She could hardly +be considered an authority in mathematics, even if she +is the ideal cook and friend. But I have more faith in +your learning, Nance. The doctor's solution seems +plausible, since you've sided with him. I suppose you +could have no motive for deceiving me?"</p> + +<p>She was regarding him with just a little anxiety, and +this he detected.</p> + +<p>"It's nothing to worry about, Nance—it's only funny. +I haven't lost my mind or anything, you know—spite +of my tempered enthusiasm for your face—but this is it: +first there came a fearful shock—something terrible, +that shattered me—then it seemed as if that sickness +found my brain like a school-boy's slate with all his little +problems worked out on it, and wickedly gave it a +swipe each side with a big wet sponge. And now I +seem to have forgotten all I ever learned. Clytie was +in to feed me the inside of a baked potato before you +came. After I'd fought with her to eat the skin of it— +such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious +little white particles still sticking to the inside where it +hadn't all been dug out—and after she had used her +strength as no lady should, and got it away from me, it +came to me all at once that she was my mother. Then +she assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite +reasonable, too. I told her I loved her enough for a +mother, anyway—and the poor thing giggled."</p> + +<p>"Still, you have your lucid moments."</p> + +<p>"Ah, still thinking about the face? You mean I'm +lucid when you smile, and daffy when you don't. But +that's a case of it—your face——"</p> + +<p>"My face a case of <i>what</i>? You're getting commercial +—even shoppy. Really, if this continues, Mr. Linford, +I shall be obliged——"</p> + +<p>"A case of it—of this blankness of mine. Instead of +continuing my early prejudice, which I now recall was +preposterously in your favour, I survey you coldly for +the first time. You know I'm afraid to look at print +for fear I've forgotten how to read."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!"</p> + +<p>"No—I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps +from another planet, who are always reaching here in +the H.G. Wells's stories—a gentleman of fine attainments +in his own planet, mind you—bland, agreeable, +scholarly—with marked distinction of bearing, and a +personal beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting +of one's secretest bones is held to betoken the only +beauty—you understand <i>that</i>?——Well, I come +here, and everything is different—ideals of beauty, people +absurdly holding for flesh on their bones, for example +—numbers, language, institutions, everything. Of +course, it puzzles me a little, but see the value I ought +to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as +clean of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born +babe's."</p> + +<p>"Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not——"</p> + +<p>"Also, why I could see that you <i>are</i>—that's it, smile! +Nance, you <i>are</i> a dear, when you smile—you make a +man feel so strong and protecting. But if you knew all +the queer things I've thought in the last week about +time and people and the world. This morning I woke +up mad because I'd been cheated out of the past. +Where <i>is</i> all the past, Nance? There's just as much +past somewhere as there is future—if one's soul has no +end, it had no beginning. Why not worry about the +past as we do about the future? First thing I'm going +to do—start a Worry-About-the-Past Club, with dues +and a president, and by-laws and things!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you think I'd better send Clytie, now?"</p> + +<p>"No; please wait a minute." He clutched her hand +with a new strength, and raised on his elbow to face her, +then, speaking lower:</p> + +<p>"Nance, you know I've had a feeling it wasn't the +right thing to ask the old gentleman this—he might +think I hadn't been studying at college—but <i>you</i> tell +me—what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus +Christ? It was a phrase he used the other day, and it +stuck in my mind."</p> + +<p>"Bernal—you surely know!"</p> + +<p>"Truly I don't—it seems a bad dream I've had +some time—that's all—some awful dream about my +father."</p> + +<p>"It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our +redemption by his death on Calvary."</p> + +<p>"Our redemption from what?"</p> + +<p>"From sin, to be sure."</p> + +<p>"What sin?"</p> + +<p>"Why, our sin, of course—the sin of Adam which +comes down to us."</p> + +<p>"You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from +that sin by dying?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"From whom did he purchase it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear—this is like a catechism—from God, of +course."</p> + +<p>"The God that made Adam?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes—now I seem to remember him—he was supposed +to make people, and then curse them, wasn't he? +And so he had to have his son killed before he could +forgive Adam for our sins?"</p> + +<p>"No; before he could forgive <i>us</i> for Adam's sin, +which descended to us."</p> + +<p>"Came down like an entail, eh?... Adam +couldn't disinherit us? Well, how did this God have +his son die?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Bernal—you <i>must</i> remember, dear—you +knew so well—don't you know he was crucified?"</p> + +<p>"To be sure I do—how stupid! And was God <i>very</i> +cheerful after that? No more trouble about Adam or +anything?"</p> + +<p>"You must hush—I can't tell you about these things +—wait till your grandfather comes."</p> + +<p>"No, I want to have it from you, Nance—grandad +would think I'd been slighting the classics."</p> + +<p>"Well, God takes to heaven with him those who +believe."</p> + +<p>"Believe what?"</p> + +<p>"Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son."</p> + +<p>"What does he do with those who don't believe it?"</p> + +<p>"They—they——Oh, I don't know—really, +Bernal, I must go now."</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, Nance!" He clutched more tightly +the hand he had been holding. "I see now! I must +be remembering something I knew—something that +brought me down sick. If a man doesn't believe God +was capable of becoming so enraged with Adam that +only the bloody death of his own son would appease +his anger toward <i>us</i>, he sends that man where +—where the worm doeth something or other—what is it? Oh, +well!—of course, it's of no importance—only it came to +me it was something I ought to remember if grandad +should ask me about it. What a quaint belief it must +have been."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I must go!—let me, now."</p> + +<p>"Don't you find it interesting, Nance, rummaging +among these musty old religions of a dead past— +though I admit that this one is less pleasant to study +than most of the others. This god seems to lack the +majesty and beauty of the Greek and the integrity of +the Norse gods. In fact, he was too crude to be funny +—by the way, what is it I seem to recall, about eating +the flesh and drinking the blood of the son?—'unless +ye eat the flesh of the son—'"</p> + +<p>She drew her hand from his now and arose in some +dismay. He lay back upon his pillow, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Not very agreeable, is it, Nance? Well, come +again, and I'll tell you about some of the pleasanter +old faiths next time—I remember now that they interested +me a lot before I was sick."</p> + +<p>"You're sure I shouldn't send Clytie or some one?" +She looked down at him anxiously, putting her hand +on his forehead. He put one of his own lightly over +hers.</p> + +<p>"No, no, thank you! It's not near time yet for the +next baked potato. If Clytie doesn't give up the skin +of this one I shall be tempted to forget that she's a +woman. There, I hear grandad coming, so you won't +be leaving me alone."</p> + +<p>Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left +the room.</p> + +<p>"Resting, my boy? That's good. You look brighter +already—Nancy must come often."</p> + +<p>He took Nancy's chair by the couch and began the +reading of his morning's mail. Bernal lay still with +eyes closed during the reading of several letters; but +when the old man opened out a newspaper with little +rustlings and pats, he turned to him.</p> + +<p>"Well, my boy?"</p> + +<p>"I've been thinking of something funny. You know, +my memory is still freakish, and things come back in +splotches. Just now I was recalling a primitive Brazilian +tribe in whose language the word 'we' means +also 'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying +'not we,' means also 'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of +early man—we—good; not we—bad! I suppose our +own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of +human nature—a training of polite vines and flowering +shrubs over the crude lines of it.</p> + +<p>"And this tribe—the Bakaïri, it is called—is equally +crude in its religion. It is true, sir, is it not, that the +most degraded of the savages tribes resort to human +sacrifice in their religious rites?"</p> + +<p>"Generally true. Human sacrifice was practised +even by some who were well advanced, like the Aztecs +and Peruvians."</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, this Bakaïri tribe believed that its god +demanded a sacrifice yearly, and their priests taught +them that a certain one of their number had been sent +by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by +butchering this particular member of the tribe and— +incredible as it sounds—eating his body and drinking +his blood, could they avert drouth and pestilence and +secure favours for the year to come. I remember the +historian intimated that it were well not to incur the +displeasure of any priest; that one doing this might +find it followed by an unpleasant circumstance when +the time came for the priests to designate the next +yearly sacrifice."</p> + +<p>"Curious, indeed, and most revolting," assented the +old man, laying down his paper. "You <i>are</i> feeling +more cheerful, aren't you—and you look so much +brighter. Ah, what a mercy of God's you were spared +to me!—you know you became my walking-stick when +you were a very little boy—I could hardly go far without +you now, my son."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir—thank you—I've just been recalling some +of the older religions—Nancy and I had quite a talk +about the old Christian faith."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad indeed. I had sometimes been led to +suspect that Nancy was the least bit—well, frivolous— +but I am an old man, and doubtless the things that +seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour +subdued through the years."</p> + +<p>"Nancy wasn't a bit frivolous this morning—on the +contrary, she seemed for some reason to consider me +the frivolous one. She looked shocked at me more +than once. Now, about the old Christian faith, you +know—their god was content with one sacrifice, instead +of one each year, though he insisted on having the body +eaten and the blood drunk perpetually. Yet I suppose, +sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the +human sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a +distinct advance over the god of the Bakaïri, though +he seems to have been equally a tribal god, whose chief +function it was to make war upon neighbouring +tribes."</p> + +<p>"Yes, my boy—quite so," replied the old man most +soothingly. He stepped gently to the door. Halfway +down the hall Allan was about to turn into his +room. He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, +in tones too low for Bernal to hear:</p> + +<p>"Go quickly for Dr. Merritt. He's out of his head +again."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIIB"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc2">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">Further Distressing Fantasies of a Clouded Mind</h3> + +<p>When young Dr. Merritt came, flushed and important-looking, +greatly concerned by the reported relapse, +he found his patient with normal pulse and temperature +—rational and joyous at his discovery that the secret +of reading Roman letters was still his.</p> + +<p>"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, +smilingly, when the little thermometer had been taken +from between his lips, "but it's all right—I didn't find +a single strange letter—every last one of them meant +something—and I know figures, too—and now I'm as +hungry for print as I am for baked potatoes. You +know, never in my life again, after I'm my own master, +shall I neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. +When I think of those I let go in my careless days of +plenty, I grow heart-sick."</p> + +<p>"A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge +as you'd like to there would be no more use sending for +me; you'd be a goner—that's what you'd be! Head +feel all right?"</p> + +<p>"Fine!—I've settled down to a pleasant reading of +Holy Writ. This Old Testament is mighty interesting +to me, though doubtless I've read it all before."</p> + +<p>"It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming +on all right," the doctor assured the alarmed old man +outside the door. "He may be a little flighty now and +then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe +him over. He's getting back to himself—stronger +every hour. We often have these things to contend +with."</p> + +<p>And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to +puzzle over the case.</p> + +<p>Again the following morning, when Bernal had +leaned his difficult way down to the couch in the study, +the old man was dismayed by his almost unspeakable +aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow +and placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of +the mad.</p> + +<p>"You know, grandad," he began easily, looking up +at the once more placid old man who sat beside him, +"I am just now recalling matters that were puzzling +me much before the sickness began to spin my head +about so fast on my shoulders. The harder I thought, +the faster my head went around, until it sent my mind +all to little spatters in a circle about me. One thing I +happened to be puzzling over was how the impression +first became current that this god of the Jews was a +being of goodness. Such an impression seems to have +been tacitly accepted for some centuries after the +iniquities so typical of him had been discountenanced +by society—long after human sacrifice was abhorred, +and even after the sacrificing of animals was held to be +degrading. It's a point that escapes me, owing to my +addled brain; doubtless you can set me right. At +present I can't conceive how the notion could ever have +occurred to any one. I now remember this book well +enough to know that not only is little good ever recorded +of him, but he is so continually barbarous, and so +atrociously cruel in his barbarities. And he was +thought to be all-powerful when he is so pitifully ineffectual, +with all his crude power—the poor old fellow +was forever bungling—then bungling again in his efforts +to patch up his errors. Indeed, he would be rather +a pathetic figure if he were not so monstrous! Still, +there is a kind of heathen grandeur about him at times. +He drowns his world full of people because his first two +circumvented him; then he saves another pair, but things +go still worse, so he has to keep smiting the world right +and left, dumb beasts as well as men; and at last he +picks out one tribe, in whose behalf he works a series of +miracles, that devastated a wide area. How he did +love to turn a city over to destruction! And from the +cloud's centre he was constantly boasting of his awful +power, and scaring people into butchering lambs and +things in his honour. Yet, doubtless, that heathen +tribe found its god 'good,' and other people formed +the habit of calling him good, without thinking much +about it. They must have felt queer when they woke +up to the fact that they were calling infinitely good a god +who was not good, even when judged by their poor +human standards."</p> + +<p>Remembering the physician's instructions to soothe +the patient, the distressed old man timidly began—</p> + +<p>"'For God so loved the world'"—but he was interrupted +by the vivacious one on the couch.</p> + +<p>"That's it—I remember that tradition. He was +even crude enough to beget a son for human sacrifice, +giving that son power to condemn thereafter those who +should not detect his godship through his human +envelope! That was a rather subtler bit of baseness +than those he first perpetrated—to send this saving son +in such guise that the majority of his creatures would +inevitably reject him! Oh! he was bound to have his +failures and his tortures, wasn't he? You know, I dare +say the ancient Christians called him good because they +were afraid to call him bad. Doubtless the one great +spiritual advance that we have made since the Christian +faith prevailed is, that we now worship without fearing +what we worship."</p> + +<p>Once more the distressed old man had risen to stand +with assumed carelessness by the door, having writhed +miserably in his chair until he could no longer endure +the profane flood.</p> + +<p>"But, truly, that god was, after all, a pathetic figure. +Imagine him amid the ruins of his plan, desolate, always +foiled by his creatures—meeting failure after failure +from Eden to Calvary—for even the bloody expedient +of sending his son to be sacrificed did not avail to save +his own chosen people. They unanimously rejected +the son, if I remember, and so he had to be content +with a handful of the despised Gentiles. A sorrowful +old figure of futility he is—a fine figure for a big epic, + it seems to me. By the way, what was the date that + this religion was laughed away. I can remember perfectly + the downfall of the Homeric deities—how many + years there were when the common people believed in + the divine origin of the Odyssey, while the educated + classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at + last the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. + But strangely enough I do not recall just the date when + <i>we</i> began to demand a god of dignity and morality."</p> + +<p>The old man had been loath to leave the sufferer. +He still stood by the open door to call to the first passer-by. +Now, shudderingly wishful to stem the torrent +of blasphemies, innocent though they were, he ventured +cautiously:</p> + +<p>"There was Sinai—you forget the tables—the +moral law—the ten commandments."</p> + +<p>"Sinai, to be sure. Christians used to regard that +as an occasion of considerable dignity, didn't they? +The time when he gave directions about slavery and +divorce and polygamy—he was beautifully broad-minded +in all those matters, and to kill witches and to +stone an ox that gored any one, and how to disembowel +the lambs used for sacrifice, and what colours to use +in the tabernacle."</p> + +<p>But the horrified old man had fled. Half an hour +later he returned with Dr. Merritt, relieving Clytie, +who had watched outside the door and who reported +that there had been no signs of violence within.</p> + +<p>Again they found a normal pulse and temperature, +and an appetite clamouring for delicacies of strong +meat. Young Dr. Merritt was greatly puzzled.</p> + +<p>"I understand the case perfectly," he said to the old +man; "he needs rest and plenty of good nursing—and +quiet. We often have these cases. Your head feels +all right, doesn't it?" he asked Bernal.</p> + +<p>"Fine, Doctor!"</p> + +<p>"I thought so." He looked shrewdly at the old man. " +Your grandfather had an idea you might be—perhaps +a bit excited."</p> + +<p>"No—not a bit. We've had a fine morning chatting +over some of the primitive religions, haven't we, old +man?" and he smiled affectionately up to his grandfather. +"Hello, Nance, come and sit by me."</p> + +<p>The girl had paused in the doorway while he spoke, +and came now to take his hand, after a look of inquiry +at the two men. The latter withdrew, the eyes of the old +man sadly beseeching the eyes of the physician for some +definite sign of hope.</p> + +<p>Inside, the sufferer lay holding a hand of Nancy +between his cheek and the pillow—with intervals of +silence and blithe speech. His disordered mind, it +appeared, was still pursuing its unfortunate tangent.</p> + +<p>"The first ideas are all funny, aren't they, Nance? +Genesis in that Christian mythology we were discussing +isn't the only funny one. There was the old northern +couple who danced on the bones of the earth nine times +and made nine pairs of men and women; and there were +the Greek and his wife who threw stones out of their +ark that changed to men; and the Hindu that saved the +life of a fish, and whom the fish then saved by fastening +his ship to his horn; and the South Sea fisherman who +caught his hook in the water-god's hair and made him +so angry that he drowned all the world except the +offending fisherman. Aren't they nearly as funny as +the god who made one of his pair out of clay and one +from a rib, and then became so angry with them that +he must beget a son for them to sacrifice before he would +forgive them? Let's think of the pleasanter ones. Do +you know that hymn of the Veda?—'If I go along trembling +like a cloud, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!'</p> + +<p>"'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright +God, have I gone wrong. Have mercy, Almighty, have +mercy!'</p> + +<p>"And Buddha was a pleasant soul, Nance—with +stuff in him, too—born a prince, yet leaving his palace +to be poor and to study the ways of wisdom, until +enlightenment came to him sitting under his Bo tree. +He said faith was the best wealth here. And, 'Not to +commit any sin, to do good and to purify one's mind, +that is the teaching of the awakened'; 'not hating those +who hate us,' 'free from greed among the greedy.' +They must have been glad of Buddhism in their day, +teaching them to honour their parents, to be kind to the +sick and poor and sorrowing, to forgive their enemies +and return good for evil. And there was funny old +Confucius with his 'Coarse rice for food, water to +drink, the bended arm for a pillow—happiness may be +enjoyed even with these; but without virtue, both +riches and honour seem to me like the passing cloud.' +Another one of his is 'In the book of Poetry are three +hundred pieces—but the designs of them all mean, +"Have no depraved thoughts."' Rather good for a +Chinaman, wasn't it?</p> + +<p>"And there was old Zoroaster saying to his Ormuzd, +'I believe thee, O God! to be the best thing of all!' and +asking for guidance. Ormuzd tells him to be pure in +thought, word and deed; to be temperate, chaste and +truthful—and this Ormuzd would have no lambs sacrificed +to him. Life, being his gift, was dear to him. +And don't forget Mohammed, Nance, that fine old +barbarian with the heart of a passionate child, counselling +men to live a good life and to strive after the mercy +of God by fasting, charity and prayer, calling this the +'Key of Paradise.' He went after a poor blind man +whom he had at first rebuffed, saying 'He is thrice +welcome on whose account my Lord hath reprimanded +me.' He was a fine, stubborn old believer, Nance. I +wonder if it's not true that the Christians once studied +these old chaps to take the taste of their own cruder +God out of their minds. What a cruel people they +must have been to make so cruel a God!</p> + +<p>"But let's talk of you, Nance—that's it—light the +chandeliers in your eyes."</p> + +<p>He spoke drowsily now, and lay quiet, patting one of +her hands. But presently he was on one elbow to study +her again.</p> + +<p>"Nance, the Egyptians worshipped Nature, the +Greeks worshipped Beauty, the Northern chaps worshipped +Courage, and the Christians feared—well, the +hereafter, you know—but I'm a Catholic when you +smile."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIIIB"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc2">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">Reason Is Again Enthroned</h3> + +<p>Slowly the days brought new life to the convalescent, +despite his occasional attacks of theological astigmatism. +And these attacks grew less frequent and less +marked as the poor bones once more involved themselves +in firm flesh—to the glad relief of a harried and +scandalised old gentleman whose black forebodings +had daily moved him to visions of the mad-house for +his best-loved descendant.</p> + +<p>Yet there were still dreadful times when the young +man on the couch blasphemed placidly by the hour, +with an insane air of assuming that those about him +held the same opinions; as if the Christian religion were +a pricked bubble the adherents of which had long since +vanished.</p> + +<p>If left by himself he could often be heard chuckling +and muttering between chuckles: "I will get me honour +upon Pharaoh and all his host. I have hardened his +heart and the heart of his host that I might show these +my signs before him."</p> + +<p>Entering the room, the old gentleman might be met +with:</p> + +<p>"I certainly agree with you, sir, in every respect— +Christianity was an invertebrate materialism of separation +—crude, mechanical separation—less spiritual, less +ethical, than almost any of the Oriental faiths. Affirming +the brotherhood of man, yet separating us into a +heaven and a hell. Christians cowering before a being +of divided power, half-god and half-devil. Indeed, I +remember no religion so non-moral—none that is so +baldly a mere mechanical device for meeting the primitive +mind's need to set its own tribe apart from all +others—or in the later growth to separate the sheep +from the goats, by reason of the opinion formed of certain +evidence. Even schoolboys nowadays know that +no moral value inheres in any opinion formed upon +evidence. Yet, I dare say it was doubtless for a long +period an excellent religion for marauding nations."</p> + +<p>Or, again, after a long period of apparently rational +talk, the unfortunate young man would break out with, +"And how childish its wonder-tales were, of iron made +to swim, of a rod turned to a serpent, of a coin found in +a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a +fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit +out of season—how childish that tale of a virgin mother, +who conceived 'without sin,' as it is somewhere +naïvely put—an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity. +Even the great old painters were helpless before it. +They were driven to make mindless Madonnas, stupid +bits of fleshy animality. It's not easy to idealise mere +physical motherhood. You see, that was the wrong, +perverted idea of motherhood—'conceiving without +sin.' It's an unclean dogma in its implications. I +knew somewhere once a man named Milo Barrus—a +sort of cheap village atheist, I remember, but one thing +I recall hearing him say seems now to have a certain +crude truth in it. He said: 'There's my old mother, +seventy-eight this spring, bent, gray, and wasted with +the work of raising us seven children; she's slaved so +hard for fifty years that she's worn her wedding-ring +to a fine thread, and her hands look as if they had a +thousand knuckles and joints in them. But she smiles +like a girl of sixteen, she was never cross or bitter to +one of us hounds, and I believe she never even +<i>wanted</i> to complain in all her days. And there's a look +of noble capacity in her face, of soul dignity, that you +never saw in any Madonna's. I tell you no "virgin +mother" could be as beautiful as my mother, who bore +seven children for love of my father and for love of the +thought of us.' Isn't it queer, sir, that I remember +that—for it seemed only grotesque at the time I heard +it."</p> + +<p>It was after this extraordinary speech, uttered with +every sign of physical soundness, that young Dr. Merritt +confided to the old man when they had left the study:</p> + +<p>"He's coming on fine, Mr. Delcher. He'll eat himself +into shape now in no time; but—I don't know— +seems to me you stand a lot better show of making a +preacher out of his brother. Of course, I may be mistaken +—we doctors often are." Then the young physician +became loftily humble: "But it doesn't strike me +he'll ever get his ideas exactly into Presbyterian shape +again!"</p> + +<p>"But, man, he'll surely be rid of these devil's hallucinations?"</p> + +<p>"Well, well—perhaps, but I'm almost afraid they're + what we doctors call 'fixed delusions.'"</p> + +<p>"But I set my heart so long ago on his preaching the +Word. Oh, I've looked forward to it so long—and so +hard!"</p> + +<p>"Well, all you can do now is to feed him and not +excite him. We often have these cases."</p> + +<p>The very last of Bernal's utterances that could have +been reprobated in a well man was his telling Clytie in +the old gentleman's presence that, whereas in his boyhood +he had pictured the hand of God as a big black +hand reaching down to "remove" people—"the way you +weed an onion bed"—he now conceived it to be like her +own—"the most beautiful fat, red hand in the world, +always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you +something good or pointing to a jar of cookies." It +was so dangerously close to irreverence that it made +Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she arranged +matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive, +considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher +quite hopeful.</p> + +<p>Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent +became silent for the most part, yet cheerful +and beautifully rational when he did speak, so that fear +came gradually to leave the old man's heart for longer +and longer intervals. Indeed, one day when Bernal +had long lain silent, he swept lingering doubts from the +old man's mind by saying, with a curious little air of +embarrassment, yet with a return of that old-time playful +assumption of equality between them—"I'm afraid, +old man, I may have been a little queer in my talk— +back there."</p> + +<p>The old man's heart leaped with hope at this, though +the acknowledgment struck him as being inadequate +to the circumstance it referred to.</p> + +<p>"You <i>were</i> flighty, boy, now and then," he replied, +in quite the same glossing strain of inadequacy.</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you how queerly things came back to +me—some bits of consciousness and memory came early +and some came late—and they're still struggling along +in that disorderly procession. Even yet I've not been +able to take stock. Old man, I must have been an +awful bore."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no—not <i>that</i>, boy!" Then, in glad relief, he +fell upon his knees beside the couch, praying, in discreetly +veiled language, that the pure heart of a babbler +might not be held guilty for the utterances of an +irresponsible head.</p> + +<p>Yet, after many days of sane quiet and ever-renewing +strength—days of long walks in the summer woods or +long readings in the hammock when the shadows lay +east of the big house, there came to be observed in the +young man a certain moody reticence. And when the +time for his return to college was near, he came again +to his disquieted grandfather one day, saying:</p> + +<p>"I think there are some matters I should speak to +you about, sir." Had he used the term "old man," +instead of "sir," there might still have been no cause +for alarm. As it was, the grandfather regarded him in +a sudden, heart-hurried fear.</p> + +<p>"Are the matters, boy, those—those about which +you may have spoken during your sickness?"</p> + +<p>"I believe so, sir."</p> + +<p>The old man winced again under the "sir," when +his heart longed for the other term of playful familiarity. +But he quickly assumed a lightness of manner to hide +the eagerness of his heart's appeal:</p> + +<p>"<i>Don't</i> talk now, boy—be advised by me. It's not +well for you—you are not strong. Please let me guide +you now. Go back to your studies, put all these matters +from your mind—study your studies and play your +play. Play harder than you study—you need it more. +Play out of doors—you must have a horse to ride. You +have thought too much before your time for thinking. +Put away the troublesome things, and live in the flesh +as a healthy boy should. Trust me. When you come +to—to those matters again, they will not trouble you."</p> + +<p>In his eagerness, first one hand had gone to the boy's +shoulder, then the other, and his tones grew warm with +pleading, while the keen old eyes played as a searchlight +over the troubled young face.</p> + +<p>"I must tell you at least one thing, sir."</p> + +<p>The old man forced a smile around his trembling +mouth, and again assumed his little jaunty lightness.</p> + +<p>"Come, come, boy—not 'sir.' Call me 'old man' +and you shall say anything."</p> + +<p>But the boy was constrained, plainly in discomfort. +"I—I can't call you that—just now—sir."</p> + +<p>"Well, if you <i>must</i>, tell me one thing—but only one! +only one, mind you, boy!" In fear, but smiling, he +waited.</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, it's a shock I suffered just before I was +sick. It came to me one night when I sat down to dinner +—fearfully hungry. I had a thick English chop on the +plate before me; and a green salad, oily in its bowl, and +crisp, browned potatoes, and a mug of creamy ale. I'd +gone to the place for a treat. I'd been whetting my +appetite with nibbles of bread and sips of ale until the +other things came; and then, even when I put my knife +to the chop—like a blade pushed very slowly into my +heart came the thought: 'My father is burning in hell— +screaming in agony for a drop of this water which I shall +not touch because I have ale. He has been in this agony +for years; he will be there forever.' That was enough, +sir. I had to leave the little feast. I was hungry no +longer, though a moment before it had seemed that +I couldn't wait for it. I walked out into the cold, raw +night—walked till near daylight, with the sweat running +off me. And the thing I knew all the time was this: +that if I were in hell and my father in heaven, he would +blaspheme God to His face for a monster and come to +hell to burn with me forever—come with a joke and a +song, telling me never to mind, that we'd have a fine +time there in hell in spite of everything! That was +what I knew of my poor, cheap, fiddle-playing mountebank +of a father. Just a moment more—this is what +you must remember of me, in whatever I have to say +hereafter, that after that night I never ceased to suffer +all the hell my father could be suffering, and I suffered +it until my mind went out in that sickness. But, listen +now: whatever has happened—I'm not yet sure what +it is—I no longer suffer. Two things only I know: +that our creed still has my godless, scoffing, unbaptised +father in hell, and that my love for him—my absolute +<i>oneness</i> with him—has not lessened.</p> + +<p>"I'll stop there, if you wish, leaving you to divine +what other change has taken place."</p> + +<p>"There, there," soothed the old man, seizing the +shoulders once more with his strong grip—"no more +now, boy. It was a hard thing, I know. The consciousness +of God's majesty comes often in that way, +and often it overwhelms the unprepared. It was hard, +but it will leave you more a man; your soul and your +faith will both survive. Do what I have told you—as +if you were once more the puzzled little Bernal, +who never could keep his hair neatly brushed like +Allan, and would always moon in corners. Go finish +your course. Another year, when your mind has new +fortitude from your recreated body, we will talk +these matters as much as you like. Yet I will +tell you one thing to remember—just one, as you have +told me one: You are in a world of law, of unvarying +cause and effect; and the integrity of this law cannot +be destroyed, nor even impaired, by any conceivable +rebellion of yours. Yet this material world of law is +but the shadow of the reality, and that reality is God— +the moral law if you please, as relentless, as inexorable, +as immutable in its succession of cause and effect as the +physical laws more apparent to us; and as little to be +overthrown as physical law by any rebellion of disordered +sentiment. The word of this God and this Law +is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New +Testaments, wherein is the only rule to direct us how +we may glorify and enjoy Him.</p> + +<p>"Now," continued the old man, more lightly, "each +of us has something to remember—and let each of us +pray for the other. Go, be a good boy—but careless +and happy—for a year."</p> + +<p>The old man had his way, and the two boys went +presently back to their studies.</p> + +<p>The girl, Nancy, remembered them well for the +things each had said to her.</p> + +<p>Allan, who, though he constantly praised her, had +always the effect of leaving her small to herself. "Really, +Nance," he said, "without any joking, I believe you have +a capacity for living life in its larger aspects."</p> + +<p>And on the last day, Bernal had said, "Nance, you +remember when we were both sorry you couldn't be +born again—a boy? Well, from what the old gentleman +says, one learns in time to bow to the ways of +an inscrutable Providence. I dare say he's right. I +can see reasons now, my girl, why it was well that +you were not allowed to meddle with Heaven's allotment +of your sex. I'm glad you had to remain a +girl."</p> + +<p>One compliment pleased her. The other made her +tremble, though she laughed at it.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIVB"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc2">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">A Few Letters</h3> + +<p>(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)</p> + +<p><i>Dear Grandfather:</i> The college year soon ends; also my +course. I think you hoped I wouldn't want again to talk +of those matters. But it isn't so. I am primed and waiting, +and even you, old man, must listen to reason. The +world of thought has made many revolutions since you shut +yourself into that study with your weekly church paper. +So be ready to hear me.</p> + +<p>Affectionately,<br> +BERNAL LINFORD.</p> + +<p>(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)</p> + +<p>"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man +upright, but they have sought out many inventions." I am +sending you a little book.</p> + +<p>GRANDFATHER.</p> + +<p>(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)</p> + +<p><i>Dear Old Man</i>: How am I going to thank you for the +"little book"—for Butler's Analogy? Or rather, how shall +I forgive you for keeping it from me all these years? I see +that you acquired it in 1863—and I never knew! I must +tell you that I looked upon it with suspicion when I unwrapped +it—a suspicion that the title did not allay. For +I recalled the last time you gave me a book—the year before +I came here. That book, my friend, was "Rasselas, Prince +of Abyssinia." I began it with deep respect for you. I +finished with a profound distrust of all Abyssinians and an +overwhelming grief for the untimely demise of Mrs. Johnson +—for you had told me that the good doctor wrote this +book to get money to bury her. How the circle of mourners +for that estimable woman must have widened as Rasselas +made its way out into the world! Oh, Grandad, if only they +had been able to keep her going some way until he needn't +have done it! If only she could have been spared until her +son got in a little money from the Dictionary or something!</p> + +<p>All of which is why I viewed with unfriendly distrust your +latest gift, the Analogy of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop +of Durham. But, honestly, old man, did you know how +funny it was when you sent it? It's funnier than any of the +books of Moses, without being bloody. What a dear, innocent +old soul the Bishop is! How sincerely he believes he +is reasoning when he is merely doing a roguish two-step +down the grim corridor of the eternal verities—with a little +jig here and there, and a pause to flirt his frock airily in the +face of some graven image of Fact. Ah, he is so weirdly +innocent. Even when his logical toes go blithely into the +air, his dear old face is most resolutely solemn, and I believe +he is never in the least aware of his frivolous caperings over +the floor of induction. Indeed, his unconsciousness is what +makes him an unfailing delight. He even makes his good +old short-worded Saxon go in lilting waltz-time.</p> + +<p>You will never know, Grandad, what this book has done +for me. I am stimulated in the beginning by this: "From +the vast extent of God's dominion there must be some +things beyond our comprehension, and the Christian scheme +may be one of them." And at the last I am soothed with +this heart-rending <i>pas seul</i>: "Concluding remarks by which +it is clearly shown that those men who can evade the force of +arguments so probable for the truth of Christianity undoubtedly +possess dispositions to evil which would cause them to +reject it, were it based on the most absolute demonstration." +Is not that a pearl without price in this world of lawful conclusions?</p> + +<p>By the way, Grandad—recalling the text you quote in your +last—did you know when you sent me to this university that +the philosophy taught, in a general way, is that of Kant; that +most university scholars smile pityingly at the Christian +thesis? Did you know that belief in Genesis had been +laughed away in an institution like this? With no intention +of diverting you, but merely in order to acquaint you with +the present state of popular opinion on a certain matter, I +will tell you of a picture printed in a New York daily of yesterday. +It's on the funny page. A certain weird but funny-looking +beast stands before an equally funny-looking Adam, +in a funny Eden, with a funny Eve and a funny Cain and +Abel in the background. The animal says, "Say, Ad., +what did you say my name was? I've forgotten it again." +Our first male parent answers somewhat testily, as one who +has been vexed by like inquiries: "Icthyosaurus, you +darned fool! Can't you remember a little thing like that?"</p> + +<p>In your youth this would doubtless have been punished as +a crime. In mine it is laughed at by all classes. I tell you +this to show you that the Church to-day is in the position of +upholding a belief which has become meaningless because +its foundation has been laughed away. Believing no longer +in the god of Moses who cursed them, Christians yet assume +to believe in their need of a Saviour to intercede between +them and this exploded idol of terror. Unhappily, I am so +made that I cannot occupy that position. To me it is not +honest.</p> + +<p>Old man, do you remember a certain saying of Squire +Cumpston? It was this: "If you're going to cross the +Rubicon, <i>cross</i> it! Don't wade out to the middle and stand +there: you only get hell from both banks!"</p> + +<p>And so I have crossed; I find the Squire was right about +standing in the middle. Happily, or unhappily, I am compelled +to believe my beliefs with all my head and all my +heart. But I am confident my reasons will satisfy you when +you hear them. You will see these matters <i>in a new light</i>.</p> + +<p>Believe me, Grandad, with all love and respect,</p> + +<p>Affectionately yours,<br> +BERNAL LINFORD.</p> + +<p>(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)</p> + +<p><i>My Boy:</i> For one bitten with skepticism there is little +argument—especially if he be still in youth, which is a time +of raw and ready judgments and of great spiritual self-sufficiency. +You wanted to go to Harvard. I wanted you +to go to Princeton, because of its Presbyterianism and +because, too, of Harvard's Unitarianism. We compromised +on Yale—my own alma mater, as it was my father's. To +my belief, this was still, especially as to its pulpit, the stronghold +of orthodox Congregationalism. Was I a weak old +man, compromising with Satan? Are you to break my heart +in these my broken years? For love of me, as for the love of +your own soul, <i>pray</i>. Leave the God of Moses until your +soul's stomach can take the strong meat of him—for he <i>is</i> +strong meat—and come simply to Jesus, the meek and gentle— +the Redeemer, who died that his blood might cleanse +our sin-stained souls. Centre your aspirations upon Him, +for He is the rock of our salvation, if we believe, <i>or the rock +of our wrecking to endless torment if we disbelieve</i>. Do not +deny our God who is Jesus, nor disown Jesus who is our +God, nor yet question the inerrance of Holy Writ—yea, with +its everlasting burnings. "He that believeth and is baptised +shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be +damned."</p> + +<p>I am sad. I have lived too long.</p> + +<p>GRANDFATHER.</p> + +<p>(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)</p> + +<p><i>Grandad:</i> It's all so plain, you must see it. I told you I +had crossed to the farther bank. Here is what one finds +there: Taking him as God, Jesus is ineffectual. Only as +an obviously fallible human man does he become beautiful; +only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great—or even plausible.</p> + +<p>The instinct of the Jews did not mislead them. Jesus +was too fine, too good, to have come from their tribal god; +yet too humanly limited to have come from God, save as +we all come from Him.</p> + +<p>Since you insist that he be considered as God, I shall point +out those things which make him small—as a God. I would +rather consider him as a man and point out those things +which make him great to me—things which I cannot read +without wet eyes—but you will not consider him as man, so +let him be a God, and let us see what we see. It is customary +to speak of his "sacrifice." What was it? Our +catechism says, "Christ's humiliation consisted in his being +born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing +the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the +cursed death of the cross; in being buried and continuing +under the power of death for a time."</p> + +<p>As I write the words I wonder that the thing should ever +have seemed to any one to be more than a wretched piece of +God-jugglery, devoid of integrity. Are we to conceive God +then as a being of carnal appetites, humiliated by being +born into the family of an honest carpenter, instead of into +the family of a King? This is the somewhat snobbish +imputation.</p> + +<p>Let us be done with gods playing at being human, or at +being half god and half human. The time has come when, +to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede—nay, +proclaim—the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from +that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension +of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in +the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one +of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his +godship can only make him preposterous to the modern +mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, +declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the +Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a +cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting +life those who believe him to be of divine origin. +Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more +arrogant character in history—never one less meek than +this carpenter's son who ranks himself second only to God, +with power to send into everlasting hell those who disbelieve +him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers +and the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, +attacking what we to-day call "the decent element." He +called the people constantly "Fools," "Blind Leaders of +the Blind," "faithless and perverse," "a generation of +vipers," "sinful," "evil and adulterous," "wicked," "hypocrites," +"whited sepulchres."</p> + +<p>As the god he worshipped was a tribal god, so he at first +believed himself to be a tribal saviour. He directed his +disciples thus: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and +into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather +to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"—(who emphatically +rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman +of Canaan whose daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: +"It is not meet to take the children's bread to cast it to dogs." +Imagine a God calling a woman a dog <i>because she was not of +his own tribe!</i></p> + +<p>And the vital test of godhood he failed to meet: It is his +own test, whereby he disproves his godship out of his own +mouth. Compare these sayings of Jesus, each typical of +him:</p> + +<p>"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy +right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yet he said to his +Twelve:</p> + +<p>"And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when +you depart thence shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony +against them."</p> + +<p>Is that the consistency of a God or a man?</p> + +<p>Again: "Blessed are the merciful," <i>but</i> "Verily I say +unto you it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah +in the day of judgment than for that city." Is this the +mercy which he tells us is blessed?</p> + +<p>Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do +ye also to them likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, +Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida... and thou, +Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought +down to hell." Is not this preaching the golden rule and +practicing something else, as a man might?</p> + +<p>Again: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, +do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which +despitefully use you and persecute you.</p> + +<p>"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have +ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye +salute your brethren, what do ye more than others? Do not +even the publicans so?" That, sir, is a sentiment that +proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here +is one which, placed beside it, proves him to have been a +man.</p> + +<p><i>"Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the son +of man also confess before the angels of God;</i></p> + +<p><i>"but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also +deny before my father, which is in heaven."</i></p> + +<p>Is it God speaking—or man? <i>"Do not even the publicans +so?"</i></p> + +<p>Beside this very human contradiction, it is hardly worth +while to hear him say "Resist not evil," yet make a scourge +of cords to drive the money-changers from the temple in a +fit of rage, human—but how ungodlike!</p> + +<p>Believe me, the man Jesus is better than the god Jesus; +the man is worth while, for all his inconsistencies, partly due +to his creed and partly to his emotional nature. Indeed, +we have not yet risen to the splendour of his ideal—even the +preachers will not preach it.</p> + +<p>And the miracles? We need say nothing of those, I think. +If a man disprove his godship out of his own mouth, we shall +not be convinced by a coin in a fish's mouth or by his raising +Lazarus, four days dead. So long as he says, "I will confess +him that confesseth me and deny him that denieth me," +we should know him for one of us, though he rose from the +dead before our eyes.</p> + +<p>Then at the last you will say, "By their fruits ye shall +know them." Well, sir, the fruits of Christianity are what +one might expect. You will say it stands for the fatherhood +of God and the brotherhood of man. That it has always +done the reverse is Christianity's fundamental defect, and +its chief absurdity in this day when the popular unchurchly +conception of God has come to be one of some dignity.</p> + +<p>"That ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference +between the Egyptians and Israel." There is the rock +of separation upon which the Church builded; the rock +upon which it will presently split. The god of the Jews set +a difference between Israel and Egypt. So much for the +fatherhood of God. The Son sets the same difference, +dividing the sheep from the goats, according to the opinions +they form of his claim to godship. So much for the brotherhood +of man. Christianity merely caricatures both propositions. +Nor do I see how we can attain any worthy ideal +of human brotherhood while this Christianity prevails: We +must be sheep and goats among ourselves, some in heaven, +some in hell, still seeking out reasons "Why the Saints in +Glory Should Rejoice at the Sufferings of the Damned." +We shall be saints and sinners, sated and starving. A God +who separates them in some future life will have children +that separate themselves here upon His own very excellent +authority. That is why one brother of us must work himself +to death while another idles himself to death—because +God has set a difference, and his Son after him, and the +Church after that. The defect in social Christendom +to-day, sir, is precisely this defect of the Christian faith— +its separation, its failure to teach what it chiefly boasts of +teaching. We have, in consequence, a society of thinly +veneered predatoriness. And this, I believe, is why our +society is quite as unstable to-day as the Church itself. +They are both awakening to a new truth—which is <i>not</i> +separation.</p> + +<p>The man who is proud of our Christian civilisation has +ideals susceptible of immense elevation. Christianity +has more souls in its hell and fewer in its heaven than any +other religion whatsoever. Naturally, Christian society is +one of extremes and of gross injustice—of oppression and +indifference to suffering. And so it will be until this materialism +of separation is repudiated: until we turn seriously +to the belief that men are truly brothers, not one of whom +can be long happy while any other suffers.</p> + +<p>Come, Grandad, let us give up this God of Moses. Doubtless +he was good enough for the early Jews, but man has +always had to make God in his own image, and you and I +need a better one, for we both surpass this one in all spiritual +values—in love, in truth, in justice, in common decency—as +much as Jesus surpassed the unrepentant thief at his side. +Remember that an honest, fearless search for truth has led +to all the progress we can measure over the brutes. Why +must it lose the soul?</p> + +<p>BERNAL.</p> + +<p>(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)</p> + +<p>My boy, I shall not believe you are sane until I have seen +you face to face. I cannot believe you have fallen a victim +to Universalism, which is like the vale of Siddim, full of +slime-pits. I am an old man, and my mind goes haltingly, +yet that is what I seem to glean from your rambling screed. +Come when you are through, for I must see you once more.</p> + +<p>"For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the +world, but that the world through him might be saved. He +that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth +not is condemned already because he hath not believed in +the name of the only begotten son of God."</p> + +<p>Lastly—doubt in infinite things is often wise, but doubt +of God must be blasphemy, else he would not be God, the +all-perfect.</p> + +<p>I pray it may be your mind is still sick—and recall to you +these words of one I will not now name to you: "Father, +forgive them, for they know not what they do."</p> + +<p>ALLAN DELCHER.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h2><a name="ChapterVB"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc2">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">"Is the Hand of the Lord Waxed Short?"</h3> + +<p>A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, +awaited the home-coming of his grandsons at the +beginning of that vacation.</p> + +<p>Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter +a blasphemer—unless, indeed, he were possessed of a +devil—could walk in the eye of Jehovah, and no breach +be made upon him? Even was the world itself so lax +in these days that one speaking thus could go free? If +so, then how could God longer refrain from drowning +the world again? The human baseness of the blaspheming +one and the divine toleration that permitted +it were alike incredible.</p> + +<p>A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh +away his fears. It could not be. The young mind was +still disordered.</p> + +<p>On the night of the home-coming he greeted the +youth quite as if all were serene within him, determined +to be in no haste and to approach the thing lightly on +the morrow—in the fond hope that a mere breath of +authority might blow it away.</p> + +<p>And when, the next morning, they both drifted to the +study, the old man called up the smile that made his +wrinkles sunny, and said in light tones, above the beating +of an anxious heart:</p> + +<p>"So it's your theory, boy, that we must all be taken +down with typhoid before we can be really wise in matters +of faith?"</p> + +<p>But the youth answered, quite earnestly:</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir; I really believe nothing less than that would +clear most minds—especially old ones. You see, the +brain is a muscle and thought is its physical exercise. +It learns certain thoughts—to go through certain exercises. +These become a habit, and in time the muscle +becomes stiff and incapable of learning any new movements +—also incapable of leaving off the old. The +religion of an old person is merely so much reflex +nervous action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The +individual's mind can affect it as little as it can teach +the other muscles of his body new suppleness."</p> + +<p>He spoke with a certain restrained nervousness that +was not reassuring. But the old man would not yet +be rebuffed from his manner of lightness.</p> + +<p>"Then, wanting an epidemic of typhoid, we of the +older generation must die in error."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir—I doubt even the efficacy of typhoid in +most cases; it's as difficult for an old person to change +a habit of thought as to take the wrinkles from his face. +That is why what we very grandly call 'fighting for the +truth' or 'fighting for the Lord' is merely fighting for +our own little notions; they have become so vital to us +and we call them 'truth.'"</p> + +<p>The youth stopped, with a palpable air of defiance, +before which the old man's assumption of ease and +lightness was at last beaten down. He had been standing +erect by the table, still with the smile toning his +haggardness. Now the smile died; the whole man +sickened, lost life visibly, as if a dozen years of normal +aging were condensed into the dozen seconds.</p> + +<p>He let himself go into the big chair, almost as if +falling, his head bowed, his eyes dulled to a look of +absence, his arms falling weakly over the chair's sides. +A sigh that was almost a groan seemed to tell of pain +both in body and mind.</p> + +<p>Bernal stood awkwardly regarding him, then his +face lighted with a sudden pity.</p> + +<p>"But I thought <i>you</i> could understand, sir; I thought +you were different; you have been like a chum to me. +When I spoke of old persons it never occurred to me +that you could fall into that class! I never knew you +to be unjust, or unkind, or—narrow—perhaps I should +say, unsympathetic."</p> + +<p>The other gave no sign of hearing.</p> + +<p>"My body was breaking so fast—and you break my +heart!"</p> + +<p>"There you are, sir," began the youth, a little excitedly. +"Your heart is breaking <i>not</i> because I'm not +good, but because I form a different opinion from yours +of a man rising from the dead, after he has been +crucified to appease the anger of his father."</p> + +<p>"God help me! I'm so human. I <i>can't</i> feel toward +you as I should. Boy, I <i>won't</i> believe you are sane." +He looked up in a sudden passion of hope. "I won't +believe Christ died in vain for my girl's little boy. Bernal, boy, +you are still sick of that fever!"</p> + +<p>The other smiled, his youthful scorn for the moment +overcoming his deeper feeling for his listener.</p> + +<p>"Then I must talk more. Now, sir, for God's sake +let us have the plain truth of the crucifixion. Where +was the sacrifice? Can you not picture the mob that +would fight for the honour of crucifixion to-morrow, +if it were known that the one chosen would sit at the +right hand of God and judge all the world? I say +there was no sacrifice, even if Christian dogma be literal +truth. Why, sir, I could go into the street and find ten +men in ten minutes who would be crucified a hundred +times to save the souls of us from hell—<i>not</i> if they were +to be rewarded with a seat on the throne of God where +they could send into hell those who did not believe in +them—but for no reward whatever—out of a sheer love +for humanity. Don't you see, sir, that we have magnified +that crucifixion out of all proportion to the plainest +truth of our lives? You know I would die on a cross +to-day, not to redeem the world, but to redeem one poor +soul—your own. If you deny that, at least you won't +dare deny that you would go on the cross to redeem <i>my</i> +soul from hell—the soul of one man—and do you think +you would demand a reward for doing it, beyond knowing +that you had ransomed me from torment? Would +it be necessary to your happiness that you also have +the power to send into hell all those who were not able +to believe you had actually died for me?</p> + +<p>"One moment more, sir—" The thin, brown, +old hand had been raised in trembling appeal, while +the lips moved without sound.</p> + +<p>"You see every day in the papers how men die for +other men, for one man, for two, a dozen! Why, sir, +you know you would die to save the lives of five little +children—their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing +of their immortal souls. I believe I'd die myself to +save two thousand—I <i>know</i> I would to save three—if +their faces were clean and they looked funny enough +and helpless. Here, in this morning's paper, a negro +labourer, going home from his work in New York +yesterday, pushed into safety one of those babies that +are always crawling around on railroad tracks. He +had time to see that he could get the baby off but not +himself, and then he went ahead. Doubtless it was a +very common baby, and certainly he was a very common +man. Why, I could go down to Sing Sing to-morrow, +and I'll stake my own soul that in the whole +cageful of criminals there isn't one who would not +eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he +would thereby ransom the race from hell. And he +wouldn't want the power to damn the unbelievers, +either. He would insist upon saving them with the +others."</p> + +<p>"Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!"</p> + +<p>"It was passion, sir—" he spoke with a sudden +relenting—"but try to remember that I've sought the +truth honestly."</p> + +<p>"You degrade the Saviour."</p> + +<p>"No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian +belief about him. If common men all might live lives +of greater sacrifice than Jesus did, without any pretensions +to the supernatural, it only means that we +need a new embodiment for our ideals. If we find it +in man—in God's creature—so much the better for man +and so much the more glory to God, who has not then +bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches."</p> + +<p>"God forgive you this tirade—I know it is the sickness."</p> + +<p>"I shall try to speak calmly, sir—but how much +longer can an educated clergy keep a straight face to +speak of this wretchedly impotent God? Christians +of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as +the Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh +is gathering even now. Your religion is like a tree +that has lain long dead in the forest—firm wood to the +eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will +go—from a laugh—not through the solemn absurdities +of the so-called higher criticism, the discussing of this +or that miracle, the tracing of this or that myth of fall +or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to its +pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring +mind rises the sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, +bristling with absurdities—its vain bungling God of one +tribe who crowns his career of impotencies—in all but +the art of slaughter—by instituting the sacrifice of a Son +begotten of a human mother, to appease his wrath +toward his own creatures; a God who even by this +pitiful device can save but a few of us. Was ever god +so powerless? Do you think we who grow up now do +not detect it? Is it not time to demand a God of +virtue, of integrity, of ethical dignity—a religion whose +test shall be moral, and not the opinion one forms of +certain alleged material phenomena?"</p> + +<p>When he had first spoken the old man cowered low +and lower in his chair, with little moans of protest at +intervals, perhaps a quick, almost gasping, "God +forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the +talk went on he became slowly quieter, his face grew +firmer, he sat up in his chair, and at the last he came to +bend upon the speaker a look that made him falter +confusedly and stop.</p> + +<p>"I can say no more, sir; I should not have said so +much. Oh, Grandad, I wouldn't have hurt you for +all the world, yet I had to let you know why I could +not do what you had planned—and I was fool enough +to think I could justify myself to you!"</p> + +<p>The old eyes still blazed upon him with a look +of sorrow and of horror that was yet, first of all, +a look of power; the look of one who had mastered +himself to speak calmly while enduring uttermost +pain.</p> + +<p>"I am glad you have spoken. You were honest to +do so. It was my error not to be convinced at first, +and thus save myself a shock I could ill bear. But +you have been sick, and I felt that I should not believe +without seeing you. I had built so much—so many +years—on your preaching the gospel of—of my Saviour. +This hope has been all my life these last years—now it +is gone. But I have no right to complain. You are +free; I have no claim upon you; and I shall be glad to +provide for you—to educate you further for any profession +you may have chosen—to start you in any +business—away from here—from this house——"</p> + +<p>The young man flushed—wincing under this, but +answered:</p> + +<p>"Thank you, sir. I could hardly take anything +further. I don't know what I want to do, what I can +do—I'm at sea now. But I will go. I'm sure only +that I want to get out—away—I will take a small sum +to go with—I know you would be hurt more if I didn't; +enough to get me away—far enough away."</p> + +<p>He went out, his head bowed under the old man's +stern gaze. But when the latter had stepped to the +door and locked it, his fortitude was gone. Helplessly +he fell upon his knees before the big chair—praying out +his grief in hard, dry sobs that choked and shook his +worn body.</p> + +<p>When Clytie knocked at the door an hour later, he +was dry-eyed and apparently serene, but busy with +papers at his table.</p> + +<p>"Is it something bad about Bernal, Mr. Delcher," +she asked, "that he's going away so queer and sudden?"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> pray for him, too, Clytie—you love him—but +it's nothing to talk of."</p> + +<p>But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put +down by this.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Delcher—" a look of horror grew big +in her eyes—"You don't mean to say he's gone and +joined the Universalists?"</p> + +<p>The old man shook his head.</p> + +<p>"And he ain't a <i>Unitarian</i>?"</p> + +<p>"No, Clytie; but our boy has been to college and it +has left him rather un—unconforming in some little +matters—some details—doubtless his doctrine is sound +at core."</p> + +<p>"But I supposed he'd learn everything off at that +college, only I know he never got fed half enough. +What with all its studies and football and clubs and +things I thought it was as good as a liberal education."</p> + +<p>"Too liberal, sometimes! Pray for Bernal—and we +won't talk about it again, Clytie, if you please."</p> + +<p>Presently came Allan, who had heard the news.</p> + +<p>"Bernal tells me he will not enter the ministry, sir; +that he is going away."</p> + +<p>"We have decided that is best."</p> + +<p>"You know, sir, I have suspected for some time that +Bernal was not as sound doctrinally as you could wish. +His mind, if I may say it, is a peculiarly literal one. +He seems to lack a certain spiritual comprehensiveness +—an enveloping intuition, so to say, of the spiritual +value in a material fact. During that unhappy agitation +for the revision of our creed, I have heard him, +touching the future state of unbaptised infants, utter +sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate +in its sentimentality—sentiments which I shall +not pain you by repeating. He has often referred, +moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality, to +the sad fate of our father—about whose present estate +no churchman can have any doubt. And then about +our belief that even good works are an abomination +before God if performed by the unregenerate, the +things I have heard him——"</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes—let us not talk of it further. Did you +wish to see me especially, Allan?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yes, sir, I <i>had</i> wished to, and perhaps now is +the best moment. I wanted to ask you, sir, how you +would regard my becoming an Episcopalian. I am +really persuaded that its form of worship, translating +as it does so <i>much</i> of the spiritual verity of life into +visible symbols, is a form better calculated than the +Presbyterian to appeal to the great throbbing heart of +humanity. I hope I may even say, without offense, sir, +that it affords a wider scope, a broader sweep, a more +stimulating field of endeavour, to one who may have a +capacity for the life of larger aspects. In short, sir, I +believe there is a great future for me in that church."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't wonder if there was," answered the +old man, who had studied his face closely during the +speech. Yet he spoke with an extreme dryness of tone +that made the other look quickly up.</p> + +<p>"It shall be as you wish," he continued, after a meditative +pause—"I believe you are better calculated for +that church than for mine. Obey your call."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterVIB"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc2">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">In the Folly of His Youth</h3> + +<p>At early twilight Bernal, sore at heart for the pain +he had been obliged to cause the old man, went to the +study-door for a last word with him.</p> + +<p>"I believe there is no one above whose forgiveness I +need, sir—but I shall always be grieved if I can't have +yours. I <i>do</i> need that."</p> + +<p>The old man had stood by the open door as if meaning +to cut short the interview.</p> + +<p>"You have it. I forgive you any hurt you have done +me; it was due quite as much to my limitations as to +yours. For that other forgiveness, which you will one +day know is more than mine—I—I shall always pray +for that."</p> + +<p>He stopped, and the other waited awkwardly, his +heart rushing out in ineffectual flood against the old +man's barrier of stern restraint. For a moment he made +folds in his soft hat with a fastidious precision. Finally +he nerved himself to say calmly:</p> + +<p>"I thank you, sir, for all you have done—all you +have ever done for me and for Allan—and, good-bye!"</p> + +<p>"Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>Though there was no hint of unkindness in the old +man's voice, something formal in his manner had +restrained the other from offering his hand. Still loath +to go without it, he said again more warmly:</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, sir!"</p> + +<p>"Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>This time he turned and went slowly down the dim +hall, still making the careful folds in his hat, as if he +might presently recall something that would take him +back. At the foot of the stairs he stopped quickly to +listen, believing he had heard a call from above; but +nothing came and he went out. Still in the door upstairs +was the old man—stern of face, save that far +back in his eyes a kind spirit seemed to strive ineffectually.</p> + +<p>Across the lawn from her hammock Nancy called to +Bernal. He went slowly toward her, still suffering +from the old man's coldness—and for the hurts he had +unwittingly put upon him.</p> + +<p>The girl, as he went forward, stood to greet him, +her gown, sleeveless, neckless, taking the bluish tinge +that early twilight gives to snow, a tinge that deepened to +dusk about her eyes and in her hair. She gave him her +hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured +heart. After all, men were born to hurt and be hurt.</p> + +<p>He sat in the rustic chair opposite the hammock, +looking into Nancy's black-lashed eyes of the Irish gray, +noting that from nineteen to twenty her neck had +broadened at the base the least one might discern, that +her face was less full yet richer in suggestion—her face +of the odds and ends when she did not smile. At this +moment she was not only unsmiling, but excited.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Bernal, what is it? Tell me quick. Allan +was so vague—though he said he'd always stand by +you, no matter what you did. What <i>have</i> you done, +Bernal? Is it a college scrape?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's only Allan's big-hearted way of talking! +He's so generous and loyal I think he's often been disappointed +that I didn't do something, so he <i>could</i> stand +by me. No—no scrapes, Nance, honour bright!"</p> + +<p>"But you're leaving——"</p> + +<p>"Well, in a way I have done something. I've found +I couldn't be a minister as Grandad had set his heart on +my being——"</p> + +<p>"But if you haven't done anything wicked, why +not?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not a believer."</p> + +<p>"In what?"</p> + +<p>"In anything, I think—except, well, in you and +Grandad and—and Allan and Clytie—yes, and in myself, +Nance. That's a big point. I believe in myself."</p> + +<p>"And you're going because you don't believe in other +things?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, or because I believe too much—just as you +like to put it. I demanded a better God of Grandad, +Nance—one that didn't create hell and men like me to +fill it just for the sake of scaring a few timid mortals +into heaven."</p> + +<p>"You know Aunt Bell is an unbeliever. She says no +one with an open mind can live twenty years in Boston +without being vastly broadened—'broadening into the +higher unbelief,' she calls it. She says she has passed +through nearly every stage of unbelief there is, but that +she feels the Lord is going to bring her back at last +to rest in the shadow of the Cross."</p> + +<p>As Aunt Bell could be heard creaking heavily in a +willow rocker on the piazza near-by, the young man +suppressed a comment that arose within him.</p> + +<p>"Only, unbelievers are apt to be fatiguing" the girl +continued, in a lower tone. "You know Aunt Bell's +husband, Uncle Chester—the meekest, dearest little +man in the world, he was—well, once he disappeared +and wasn't heard of again for over four years—except +that they knew his bank account was drawn on from +time to time. Then, at last, his brother found him, +living quietly under an assumed name in a little town +outside of Boston—pretending that he hadn't a relative +in the world. He told his brother he was just beginning +to feel rested. Aunt Bell said he was demented. +While he was away she'd been all through psychometry, +the planchette, clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology, and +Unitarianism. What are you, Bernal?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, Nance—that's the trouble."</p> + +<p>"But where are you going, and what for?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know either answer—but I can't stay here, +because I'm blasphemous—it seems—and I don't +want to stay, even if I weren't sent. I want to be out— +away. I feel as if I must be looking for something I +haven't found. I suspect it's a fourth dimension to +religion. They have three—even breadth—but they +haven't found faith yet—a faith that doesn't demand +arbitrary signs, parlour-magic, and bloody, weird tales +in a book that becomes their idol."</p> + +<p>The girl looked at him long in silence, swaying a +little in the hammock, a bare elbow in one hand, her +meditative chin in the other, the curtains of her eyes +half-drawn, as if to let him in a little at a time before +her wonder. Then, at last:</p> + +<p>"Why, you're another Adam—being sent out of the +garden for your sin. Now tell me—honest—was the +sin worth it? I've often wondered." She gave an eager +little laugh.</p> + +<p>"Why, Nance, it's worth so much that you want to +go of your own accord. Do you suppose Adam could +have stayed in that fat, lazy, silly garden after he +became alive—with no work, no knowledge, no adventure, +no chance to do wrong? As for earning his +bread—the only plausible hell I've ever been able to +picture is one where there was nothing to do—no work, +no puzzling, no chances to take, no necessity of thinking. +Now, isn't that an ideal hell? And is it my fault if it +happens to be a description of what Christians look +forward to as heaven? I tell you, Adam would have +gone out of that garden from sheer boredom after a few +days. The setting of the angel with the flaming sword +to guard the gate shows that God still failed to understand +the wonderful creature he had made."</p> + +<p>She smiled, meditative, wondering.</p> + +<p>"I dare say, for my part, I'd have eaten that apple +if the serpent had been at all persuasive. Bernal, I +wonder—and wonder—and wonder—I'm never done. +And Aunt Bell says I'll never be a sweet and wholesome +and stimulating companion to my husband, if I don't +stop being so vague and fantastic."</p> + +<p>"What does she call being vague and fantastic?"</p> + +<p>"Not wanting any husband."</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"Bernal, it's like the time that you ran off when you +were a wee thing—to be bad."</p> + +<p>"And you cried because I wouldn't take you with +me."</p> + +<p>"I can feel the woe of it yet."</p> + +<p>"You're dry-eyed now, Nance."</p> + +<p>"Yes—and the pink parasol and the buff shoes I +meant to take with me are also things of the past. +Mercy! The idea of going off with an unbeliever to +be bad and—everything! 'The happy couple are +said to look forward to a life of joyous wickedness, +several interesting crimes having been planned for the +coming season. For their honeymoon infamy they +will perpetrate a series of bank-robberies along the +Maine coast.' There—how would that sound?"</p> + +<p>"You're right, Nance—I wouldn't take you this +time either, even if you cried. And your little speech +is funny and all that—but Nance, I believe, these +last years, we've both thought of things now and then— +things, you know—things to think of and not talk of— +and see here—The man was driven out of the +garden—but not the woman. She isn't mentioned. +She could stay there——"</p> + +<p>"Until she got tired of it herself?"</p> + +<p>"Until the man came back for her."</p> + +<p>He thought her face was glowing duskily in the +twilight.</p> + +<p>"I wonder—wonder about so many things," she +said softly.</p> + +<p>"I believe you're a sleeping rebel yourself, Nance. +If ever you do eat from that tree, there'll be no holding +you. You won't wait to be driven forth!"</p> + +<p>"And you are, a wicked young man—that kind +never comes back in the stories."</p> + +<p>"That may be no jest, Nance. I should surely be +wicked, if I thought it brings the happiness it's said to. +Under this big sky I am free from any moral law that +doesn't come from right here inside me. Can you +realize that? Do I seem bad for saying it? What +they call the laws of God are nothing. I suspect them +all, and I'll make every one of them find its authority +in me before I obey it."</p> + +<p>"It sounds—well—unpromising, Bernal."</p> + +<p>"I told you it was serious, Nance. I see but one +law clearly—I am bound to want happiness. Every +man is bound always to want happiness, Nance. No +man can possibly want anything else. That's the only +thing under heaven I'm sure of at this moment—the +one universal law under which we all make our +mistakes—good people and bad alike?"</p> + +<p>"But, Bernal, you wouldn't be bad—not really bad?"</p> + +<p>"Well, Nance, I've a vague, loose sort of notion that +one isn't really compelled to be bad in order to be +happy right here on earth. I know the Church rather +intimates this, but I suspect that vice is not the delicious +thing the Church implies it to be."</p> + +<p>"You make me afraid, Bernal——"</p> + +<p>"But if I do come back, Nance, having toiled?"</p> + +<p>"——and you make me wonder."</p> + +<p>"I think that's all either of us can do, Nance, and I +must go. I have to say good-bye to Clytie yet. The +poor soul is convinced that I have become a Unitarian +and that there's a conspiracy to keep the horrible truth +from her. She says grandad evaded her questions +about it. She doesn't dream there are depths below +Unitarianism. I must try to convince her that I'm not +<i>that</i> bad—that I may have a weak head and a defective +heart, but not that. Nance—girl!"</p> + +<p>He sat forward in the chair, reaching toward her. +She turned her face away, but their hands trembled +toward each other, faltering fearfully, tremulously, +into a clasp that became at once firm and knowing when +it felt itself—as if it opened their blind eyes to a world +of life and light without end, a world in which they two +were the first to live.</p> + +<p>Lingeringly, with slow, regretting fingers, the hands +fell apart, to tighten eagerly again into the clasp that +made them one flesh.</p> + +<p>When at last they were put asunder both arose. The +girl patted from her skirts the hammock's little disarranging +touches, while the youth again made the careful +folds in his hat. Then they shook hands very stiffly, +and went opposite ways out of a formal garden of +farewell; the youth to sate that beautiful, crude young +lust for living—too fierce to be tamed save by its own +failures, hearing only the sagas of action, of form and +colour and sound made one by heat—the song Nature +sings unendingly—but heard only by young ears.</p> + +<p>The girl went back to the Crealock piazza to hear of +one better set in the grace of faith.</p> + +<p>"That elder young Linford," began Aunt Bell, +ceasing to rock, "has a future. You know I talked +to him about the Episcopal Church, strongly advising +him to enter it. For all my broad views"—Aunt Bell +sighed here—"I really and truly believe, child, that no +one not an Episcopalian is ever thoroughly at ease +in this world."</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell was beautifully, girlishly plump, with a +sophisticated air of smartness—of coquetry, indeed—as +to her exquisitely small hands and feet; and though a +certain suggestion of melancholy in her tone harmonised +with the carefully dressed gray hair and with her +apparent years, she nevertheless breathed airs of perfect +comfort.</p> + +<p>"Of course this young chap could see at once," she +went on, "what immensely better form it is than Calvinism. +<i>Dear</i> me! Imagine one being a Presbyterian +in this day!" It seemed here that the soul of +Aunt Bell poised a disdainful lorgnette before its eyes, +through which to survey in a fitting manner the unmodish +spectacle of Calvinism.</p> + +<p>"And he tells me that he has his grandfather's consent. +Really, my dear, with his physique and voice and +manner that fellow undoubtedly has a future in the +Episcopal Church. I dare say he'll be wearing the +lawn sleeves and rochet of a bishop before he's forty."</p> + +<p>"Did it ever occur to you, Aunt Bell, that he is—well, +just the least trifle—I was going to say, vain of his +appearance—but I'll make it 'self-conscious'?"</p> + +<p>"Child, don't you know that a young man, really +beautiful without being effeminate, is bound to be conscious +of it. But vain he is not. It mortifies him +dreadfully, though he pretends to make light of it."</p> + +<p>"But why speak of it so often? He was telling me +to-day of an elderly Englishman who addressed him on +the train, telling him what a striking resemblance he +bore to the Prince of Wales when he was a youth."</p> + +<p>"Quite so; and he told me yesterday of hearing a +lady in the drug-store ask the clerk who 'that handsome +stranger' was. But, my dear, he tells them as jokes +on himself, and he's so sheepish about it. And he's +such a splendid orator. I persuaded him to-day to +read me one of his college papers. I don't seem to +recall much of the substance, but it was full of the most +beautiful expressions. One, I remember, begins, 'Oh, +of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the +parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as +this one flower of—' you know I've forgotten what it +was—Civilisation or Truth or something. Anyway, +whatever it was, it had like a giant engine rolled the +car of Civilisation out from the maze of antiquity, where +she now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits +of living genius, and so on."</p> + +<p>"That seems impressive and—mixed, perhaps?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I can't remember things in their order, +but it was about the essential nature of man being +gregarious, and truth is a potent factor in civilisation, +and something would be a tear on the world's cold +cheek to make it burn forever—isn't that striking? +And Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but +where now is Greece with her proud cities? And +Rome, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and splendour. +Of course I can't recall his words. There was a beautiful +reference to America, I remember, from the +Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen +North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South—and +a perfectly splendid passage about the world is and ever +has been illiberal. Witness the lonely lamp of Erasmus, +the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, the scaffold +of Sidney—Sidney who, I wonder?"</p> + +<p>"Has it taken you that way, Aunt Bell?"</p> + +<p>"And France, the saddest example of a nation without +a God, and succeeding generations will only add +a new lustre to our present resplendent glory, bound +together by the most sacred ties of goodwill; independent, +yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, +and it was fraught with vital interest to every thinking +man——"</p> + +<p>"Spare me, Aunt Bell—it's like Coney Island, with +all those carrousels going around and five bands playing +at once!"</p> + +<p>"But his peroration! I can't pretend to give you +any idea of its beauties——"</p> + +<p>"Don't!"</p> + +<p>"Get him to declaim it for you. It begins in the +most impressive language about his standing on top of +the Rocky Mountains one day and placing his feet +upon a solid rock, he saw a tempest gathering in the +valley far below. So he watches the storm—in his own +language, of course—while all around him is sunshine. +And such should be our aim in life, to plant our feet +on the solid rock of—how provoking! I can't remember +what the rock was—anyway, we are to bid those +in the valley below to cease their bickerings and come +up to the rock—I think it was Intellectual Greatness— +No!—Unselfishness—that's it. And the title of the +paper was a sermon in itself—'The Temporal Advantage +of the Individual No Norm of Morality.' Isn't +that a beautiful thought in itself? Nancy, that chap +will waste himself until he has a city parish."</p> + +<p>There was silence for a little time before Aunt Bell +asked, as one having returned to baser matters:</p> + +<p>"I wonder if the jacket of my gray suit came back +from that clumsy tailor. I forgot to ask Ellen if an +express package came."</p> + +<p>And Nancy, whose look was bent far into the dusk, +answered:</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wonder if he will come back!"</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<p style="text-align: center;"> +<img src="images/book3.jpg" alt="BOOK THREE: The Age of Faith" width="356" height="598" border="0"></p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h1><i>BOOK THREE—The Age of Faith</i></h1> + +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIC"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Perverse Behaviour of an Old Man and a Young Man</h3> + +<p>When old Allan Delcher slept with his fathers— +being so found in the big chair, with the worn, leather-bound +Bible open in his lap—the revived but still tender +faith of Aunt Bell Hardwick was bitten as by frost. +And this though the Bible had lain open at that psalm +in which David is said to describe the corruption of a +natural man—a psalm beginning, "The fool hath said +in his heart, 'There is no God.'"</p> + +<p>For it straightway appeared that the dead man had +in life done abperverse and inexplicable thing, to the +bitter amazement of those who had learned to trust +him. On the day after he sent a blasphemous grandson +from his door he had called for Squire Cumpston, +announcing to the family his intention to make an entirely +new will—a thing for which there seemed to be a +certain sad necessity.</p> + +<p>When he could no longer be reproached it transpired +that he had left "to Allan Delcher Linford, son of one +Clayton Linford," a beggarly pittance of five thousand +dollars; and "to my beloved grandson, Bernal Linford, +I give, devise and bequeath the residue of my estate, +both real and personal."</p> + +<p>Though the husband of her niece wore publicly a +look of faith unimpaired, and was thereby an example +to her, Aunt Bell declared herself to be once more on +the verge of believing that the proofs of an overseeing +Providence, all-wise and all-loving, were by no means +overwhelming; that they were, indeed, of so frail a +validity that she could not wonder at people falling +away from the Church. It was a trying time for Aunt +Bell. She felt that her return to the shadow of the +cross was not being made enough of by the One above. +After years of running after strange gods, the Episcopal +service as administered by Allan had prevailed over her +seasoned skepticism: through its fascinating leaven of +romance—with faint and, as it seemed to her, wholly +reverent hints of physical culture—the spirit may be +said to have blandished her. And now this turpitude +in a man of God came to disturb the first tender rootlings +of her new faith.</p> + +<p>The husband of her niece had loyally endeavoured +to dissuade her from this too human reaction.</p> + +<p>"God has chosen to try me for a purpose, Aunt Bell," +he said very simply. "I ought to be proud of it— +eager for any test—and I am. True, in these last years +I had looked upon grandfather's fortune as mine— +not only by implied promise, but by all standards of +right—even of integrity. For surely a man could not +more nearly forfeit his own rights, in every moral aspect, +than poor Bernal has—though I meant always to stand +by him. So you see, I must conclude that God means +to distinguish me by a test. He may even subject me +to others; but I shall not wince. I shall welcome His +trials. He turned upon her the face of simple faith."</p> + +<p>"Did you speak to that lawyer about the possibility +of a contest—of proving unsound mind?"</p> + +<p>"I did, but he saw no chance whatever."</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell hereupon surveyed her beautifully dimpled +knuckles minutely, with an affectionate pride—a pride +not uncritical, yet wholly convinced.</p> + +<p>"Of course," added Allan after a moment's reflection, +"there's no sense in believing that every bit of one's +hard luck is sent by God to test one. One must in all +reverence take every precaution to prove that the disaster +is not humanly remediable. And this, I may say, +I have done with thoroughness—with great thoroughness."</p> + +<p>"Bernal may be dead," suggested Aunt Bell, brightening +now from an impartial admiring of the toes of her +small, plump slippers.</p> + +<p>"God forbid that he should be cut off in his unbelief +—but then, God's will be done. If that be +true, of course, the matter is different. Meantime we +are advertising."</p> + +<p>"I wish I had your superb faith, Allan. I wish +Nancy had it...."</p> + +<p>Her niece's husband turned his head and shoulders +until she had the three-quarters view of his face.</p> + +<p>"I have faith, Aunt Bell. God knows my unworthiness, +even as you know it and I know it—but I have +faith!"</p> + +<p>The golden specks in his hazel eyes blazed with +humility, and a flush of the same virtue mantled his +perfect brow.</p> + +<p>Such news of Bernal Linford as had come back to +Edom, though meagre and fragmentary, was of a character +to confirm the worst fears of those who loved him. +The first report came within a year after his going, and +caused a shaking of many heads.</p> + +<p>An estimable farmer, one Caleb Webster, living on +the outskirts of Edom, had, in a blameless spirit of +adventure, toured the Far West, at excursion rates +said to be astounding for cheapness. He had met the +unfortunate young man in one of the newer mining +towns along his exciting route.</p> + +<p>"He was kind of nursin' a feller that had the consumption, +" ran the gossip of Mr. Webster, "some one +he'd fell in with out in them parts, that had gone there +to git cured. But, High Mighty! the way them two +carried on at all hours wasn't goin' to cure no one of +nothin'! Specially gamblin', which was done right in +public, you might say, though the sharpers never +skinned me none, I'll say that! But these two was at it +every night, and finally they done just like I told the +young fools they'd do—they lost all they had. They +come into the Commercial House one night where I was +settin' lookin' over a time-table, both seemin' down in +the mouth. And all to once this sick young man—Mr. +Hoover, his name was—bust out cryin'—him bein' +weak or mebbe in liquor or somethin'.</p> + +<p>"'Every cent lost!' he says, the tears runnin' down +those yellow, sunk cheeks of his. But Bernal seems to +git chipper again when he sees how Mr. Hoover is takin' +it, so he says, 'Haven't you got a cent left, Hoover? +Haven't you got anythin' at all left? Just think,' he +says, 'what I stood to win on that last turn, if it'd come +my way—at four to one,' he says, or somethin' like +that; them gamblin' terms is too much for me. 'Hain't +you got nothin' at all left?' he says.</p> + +<p>"Then this Hoover—still cryin', mind you—he says, +'Not a cent in the world except forty dollars in my trunk +upstairs that I saved out to bury me with—and they +won't send me another cent,' he says, 'because I tried +'em.'</p> + +<p>"It sounded awful to hear him talkin' like that about +his own buryin', but it didn't phase Bernal none.</p> + +<p>"'Forty dollars!' he says, kind of sniffy like. 'Why, +man, what could you do for forty dollars? Don't you +know such things are very outrageous in price here? +Forty <i>dollars</i>—why,' he says, 'the very best you could +do would be one of these plain pine things with black +cloth tacked on to it, and pewter trimmin's if <i>any</i>,' he +says. 'Think of <i>pewter</i> trimmin's!'</p> + +<p>"'Say,' he says, when Hoover begun to look up at +him, 'you run and dig up your old forty and I'll go back +right now and win you out a full satin-lined, silver-trimmed +one, polished mahogany and gold name-plate, +and there'll be enough for a clock of immortelles with the +hands stopped at just the hour it happens,' he says. +'And you want to hurry,' he says, 'it ought to be done +right away—with that cough of yours.'</p> + +<p>"Me? Gosh, I felt awful—I wanted to drop right +through the floor, but this Hoover, he says all at once, +still snufflin', mind you: 'Say, that's all right,' he says. +'If I'm goin' to do it at all, I ought to do it right for the +credit of my folks. I ought to give this town a flash of +the right thing,' he says.</p> + +<p>"Then he goes upstairs, leaning on the balusters, and +gets his four ten-dollar bills that had been folded away +all neat at the bottom of his trunk, and before I could +think of anythin' wholesome to say—I was that scandalised +—they was goin' off across the street to the +Horseshoe Gamin' Parlour, this feller Hoover seemin' +very sanguine and asking Bernal whether he was sure +they was a party in town could do it up right after they'd +went and won the money for it.</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, I jest set there thinkin' how this boy Bernal +Linford was brought up for a preacher, and 'Jest +look at him now!' I says to myself—and I guess it was +mebbe an hour later I seen 'em comin' out of the +swingin' blinds in the door of this place, and a laffin' +fit to kill themselves. 'High Mighty! they done it!' I +says, watchin' 'em laff and slap each other on the back +till Hoover had to stop in the middle of the street to +cough. Well, they come into the Commercial office +where I am and I says, 'Well, boys, how much did you +fellers win?' and Hoover says, 'Not a cent! We lost +our roll,' he says. 'It's the blamedest funniest thing I +ever heard of,' he says, just like that, laffin' again fit +to choke.</p> + +<p>"'<i>I</i> don't see anythin' to laff at,' I says. 'How you +goin' to live?'</p> + +<p>"'How's he goin' to die?' says Bernal, 'without a +cent to do it on?'</p> + +<p>"'That's the funny part of it,' says Hoover. 'Linford +thought of it first. How <i>can</i> I die now? It +wouldn't be square,' he says—'me without a cent!'</p> + +<p>"Then they both began to laugh—but me, I couldn't +see nothin' funny about it.</p> + +<p>"Wal, I left early next mornin', not wantin' to have +to refuse 'em a loan."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIIC"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">How a Brother was Different</h3> + +<p>In contrast with this regrettable performance of Bernal's, +which, alas! bore internal evidence of being a +type of many, was the flawless career of Allan, the dutiful +and earnest. Not only did he complete his course +at the General Theological Seminary with great honour, +but he was ordained into the Episcopal ministry under +circumstances entirely auspicious. Aunt Bell confided +to Nancy that his superior presence quite dwarfed +the bishop who ordained him.</p> + +<p>His ordination sermon, moreover, which his grandfather +had been persuaded into journeying to hear, was +held by many to be a triumph of pulpit oratory no less +than an able yet not unpoetic handling of his text, +which was from John—"The Truth shall make you +free."</p> + +<p>Truth, he declared, was the crowning glory in +the diadem of man's attributes, and a subject fraught +with vital interest to every thinking man. The essential +nature of man being gregarious, how important that +the leader of men should hold Truth to be like a diamond, +made only the brighter by friction. The world is and +ever has been illiberal. Witness the lonely lamp of +Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, +the scaffold of Sidney—all fighters for truth against the +masses who cannot think for themselves.</p> + +<p>Truth was, indeed, a potent factor in civilisation. If +only all truth-lovers could feel bound together by the +sacred ties of fraternal good-will, independent yet +acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, succeeding +ages could but add a new lustre to their present +resplendent glory.</p> + +<p>Truth, triumphant out of oppression, is a tear falling +on the world's cold cheek to make it burn forever. Why +fear the revelation of truth? Greece had her Athens +and her Corinth, but where is Greece to-day? Rome, +too, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and polish! +They were, but they are not—for want of Truth. But +might not we hope for a land where Truth would reign +—from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the +frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny +South?</p> + +<p>Truth is the grand motor-power which, like a giant +engine, has rolled the car of civilisation out from the +maze of antiquity where it now waits to be freighted +with the precious fruits of living genius.</p> + +<p>The young man's final flight was observed by Aunt +Bell to impress visibly even the bishop—a personage +whom she had begun to suspect was the least bit cynical, +perhaps from having listened to many first sermons.</p> + +<p>"Standing one day," it began, "near the summit of +one of the grand old Rocky Mountains that in primeval +ages was elevated from ocean's depths and now towers +its snow-capped peak heavenward touching the azure +blue, I witnessed a scene which, for beauty of illustration +of the thought in hand, the world cannot surpass. +Placing my feet upon a solid rock, I saw, far down in +the valley below, the tempest gathering. Soon the low-muttered +thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave +token of increasing turbulence with Nature's elements. +Thus the storm raged far below while all around me +and above glittered the pure sunlight of heaven, where +I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought +came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified +in Nature's own impressive language the simple +grandeurs of Truth. While we are in the valley below, +we have ebullitions of discontent and murmurings of +strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought +becomes elevated. Then placing our feet on the +solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the valley +below to cease their bickerings and come up +higher.</p> + +<p>"Truth! Oh, of all the flowers that swing their +golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none +so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth. Other +flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but +they must be crushed in order that their fragrance +become perceptible. But the soul of this flower courses +its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, +dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, +<i>up</i> and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along +the cloudy corridors of the day, <i>up</i> along the misty +pathway to the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore +and mingles with the breath of angels!"</p> + +<p>Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon +—had, even after so effective a baptism, neglected +to undo that which he should never have done. Moreover, +even on the day of this notable sermon, he was +known to have referred to the young man, within the +hearing of a discreet housekeeper, as "the son of his +father"—which was an invidious circumlocution, +amounting almost to an epithet. And he had most +weakly continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of +his daughter—the godless boy whom he had driven +from his door.</p> + +<p>Not even the other bit of news that came a little later +had sufficed to make him repair his injustice; and this, +though the report came by the Reverend Arthur Pelham +Gridley, incumbent of the Presbyterian pulpit at Edom, +who could preach sermons the old man liked.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gridley, returning from a certain gathering of +the brethren at Denver, had brought this news: That +Bernal Linford had been last seen walking south from +Denver, like a common tramp, in the company of a +poor half-witted creature who had aroused some local +excitement by declaring himself to be the son of God, +speaking familiarly of the Deity as "Father."</p> + +<p>As this impious person had been of a very simple +mind and behaved inoffensively, rather shrinking from +publicity than courting it, he had at first attracted little +attention. It appeared, however, that he had presently +begun an absurd pretence of healing the sick and the +lame; and, like all charlatans, he so cunningly worked +upon the imaginations of his dupes that a remarkable +number of them believed that they actually had been +healed by him. In fact, the nuisance of his operations +had grown to an extent so alarming that thousands of +people stood in line from early morning until dusk +awaiting their turn to be blessed and "healed" by the +impostor. Just as several of the clergy, said Mr. Gridley, +were on the point of denouncing this creature as +anti-Christ and thus exploding his pretensions; and when +the city authorities, indeed, appealed to by the local +physicians, were on the point of suppressing him for +disorderly conduct, and a menace to the public health, +since he was encouraging the people to forsake their +family physicians; and just as the news came that a +long train-load of the variously suffering was on its way +from Omaha, the wretched impostor had himself solved +the difficulty by quietly disappearing. As he had +refused to take money from the thousands of his dupes +who had pressed it upon him in their fancied relief from +pain, it was known that he could not be far off, and +some curiosity was at first felt as to his whereabouts— +particularly by those superstitious ones who continued +to believe he had healed them of their infirmities, not a +few of whom, it appeared, were disposed to credit his +blasphemous claim to have been sent by God.</p> + +<p>According to the lookout thus kept for this person, it +was reported that he had been seen to pass on foot +through towns lying south of Denver, meanly dressed +and accompanied by a young man named Linford. +To all inquiries he answered that he was on his way to +fast in the desert as his "Father" had commanded. +His companion was even less communicative, saying +somewhat irritably that his goings and comings were +nobody's business but his own.</p> + +<p>Some six months later the remains of the unfortunate +person were found in a wild place far to the south, with +his Bible and his blanket. It was supposed that he had +starved. Of Linford no further trace had been discovered.</p> + +<p>The most absurd tales were now told, said Mr. +Gridley, of the miracles of healing wrought by this +person—told, moreover, by persons of intelligence +whom in ordinary matters one would not hesitate to +trust. There had even been a story started, which was +widely believed, that he had raised the dead; moreover, +many of those who had been deluded into believing +themselves healed, looked forward confidently to his +own resurrection.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gridley ventured the opinion that we should be +thankful to the daily press which now disseminates the +news of such things promptly, instead of allowing it to +travel slowly by word of mouth, as it did in less advanced +times—a process in which a little truth becomes very +shortly a mighty untruth. Even between Denver and +Omaha he had observed that the wonder-tales of this +person grew apace, thus proving the inaccuracy of the +human mind as a reporter of fact. Without the check +of an unemotional daily press Mr. Gridley suspected +that the poor creature's performances would have been +magnified by credulous gossip until he became the +founder of a new religion—a thing especially to be +dreaded in a day when the people were crazed for any +new thing—as Paul found them in Athens.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gridley mentioned further that the person had +suffered from what the alienists called "morbid delusions +of grandeur"—believing, indeed, that but One +other in the universe was greater than himself; that he +would sit at the right hand of Power to judge all the +world. His most puerile pretension, however, was that +he meant to live, even if the work required a thousand +years, until such time as he could save all persons into +heaven, so that hell need have no occupants.</p> + +<p>But this distressing tale did not move old Allan Delcher +to reconsider his perverse decision, though there +had been ample time for reparation. Placidly he +dropped off one day, a little while after he had cautioned +Clytie to keep the house ready for Bernal's coming; +and to have always on hand one of those fig layer-cakes +of which he was so fond, since as likely as not he would +ask for this the first thing, just as he used to do. It +must seem homelike to him when he did come.</p> + +<p>Having betrayed the trust reposed in him by an +unsuspecting grandson, it seemed fitting that he should +fall asleep over that very psalm wherein David describeth +the corruption of the natural man.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIIIC"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">How Edom was Favoured of God and Mammon</h3> + +<p>In the years gone, the village of Edom had matured, +even as little boys wax to manhood. Time was when +all but two trains daily sped by it so fast that from +their windows its name over the station door was naught +but a blur. Now all was changed. Many trains +stopped, and people of the city mien descended from or +entered smart traps, yellow depot-wagons or immaculate +victorias, drawn by short-tailed, sophisticated steeds +managed by liveried persons whose scraped faces were +at once impassive and alert.</p> + +<p>In its outlying parts, moreover, stately villas now +stood in the midst of grounds hedged, levelled, sprayed, +shaven, trimmed and garnished—grounds cherished +sacredly with a reverence like unto that once accorded +the Front Room in this same village. Edom, indeed, +had outgrown its villagehood as a country boy in the +city will often outgrow his home ways. That is, it +was still a village in its inmost heart; but outwardly, +at its edges, the distinctions and graces of urban worldliness +had come upon it.</p> + +<p>All this from the happy circumstance that Edom lay +in a dale of beauty not too far from the blessed centre of +things requisite. First, one by one, then by families, +then by groups of families, then by cliques, the invaders +had come to promote Edom's importance; one being +brought by the gracious falling of its little hills; one by +its narrow valleys where the quick little waters come +down; one by the clearness of its air; and one by the +cheapness with which simple old farms might be +bought and converted into the most city-like of country +homes.</p> + +<p>The old stock of Edom had early learned not to part +with any massive claw-footed sideboard with glass +knobs, or any mahogany four-poster, or tall clock, or +high-boy, except after feigning a distressed reluctance. +It had learned also to hide its consternation at the +prices which this behaviour would eventually induce +the newcomers to pay for such junk. Indeed, it learned +very soon to be a shrewd valuer of old mahogany, +pewter, and china; even to suspect that the buyers might +perceive beauties in it that justified the prices they paid.</p> + +<p>Old Edom, too, has its own opinion of the relative +joys of master and servant, the latter being always +debonair, their employers stiff, formal and concerned. +It conceives that the employers, indeed, have but one +pleasure: to stand beholding with anxious solemnity— +quite as if it were the performance of a religious rite— +the serious-visaged men who daily barber the lawns +and hedges. It is suspected by old Edomites that the +menials, finding themselves watched at this delicate +task, strive to copy in face and demeanour the solemnity +of the observing employer—clipping the box hedge one +more fraction of an inch with the wariest caution— +maintaining outwardly, in short, a most reverent seriousness +which in their secret hearts they do not feel.</p> + +<p>Let this be so or not. The point is that Edom had +gone beyond its three churches of Calvin, Wesley and +Luther—to say nothing of one poor little frame structure +with a cross at the peak, where a handful of benighted +Romanists had long been known to perform their +idolatrous rites. Now, indeed, as became a smartened +village, there was a perfect little Episcopal church of +redstone, stained glass and painted shingles, with a +macadam driveway leading under its dainty <i>porte-cochère</i>, +and at the base of whose stern little tower an +eager ivy already aspired; a toy-like, yet suggestively +imposing edifice, quite in the manner of smart suburban +churches—a manner that for want of accurate knowledge +one might call confectioner's gothic.</p> + +<p>It was here, in his old home, that the Reverend Allan +Delcher Linford found his first pastorate. Here from +the very beginning he rendered apparent those gifts +that were to make him a power among men. It was +with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice +began his first service that June morning, before a congregation +known to be hypercritical, composed as it +was of seasoned city communicants, hardened listeners +and watchers, who would appraise his vestments, voice, +manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light of a ripe +experience.</p> + +<p>Yet his success was instant. He knew it long before +the service ended—felt it infallibly all at once in the +midst of his sermon on Faith. From the reading of +his text, "For God so loved the world that he gave his +only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein +might not perish, but have everlasting life," the worldly +people before him were held as by invisible wires running +from him to each of them. He felt them sway in +obedience to his tones; they warmed with him and +cooled with him; aspired with him, questioned, agreed, +and glowed with him. They were his—one with him. +Their eyes saw a young man in the splendour of his +early prime, of a faultless, but truly masculine beauty, +delicate yet manfully rugged, square-chinned, straight-mouthed, +with tawny hair and hazel eyes full of +glittering golden points when his eloquence mounted; +clear-skinned, brilliant, warm-voiced, yet always simple, +direct, earnest; a storehouse of power, yet ornate; a +source of refreshment both physical and spiritual to +all within the field of his magnetism.</p> + +<p>So agreed those who listened to that first sermon on +Faith, in which that virtue was said be like the +diamond, made only the brighter by friction. Motionless +his listeners sat while he likened Faith to the giant +engine that has rolled the car of Religion out from the +maze of antiquity into the light of the present day, +where it now waits to be freighted with the precious +fruits of living genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for +golden era when truth shall come forth as a new and +blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, +bound together in one law of universal brotherhood, +independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of +Omnipotence.</p> + +<p>Rapt were they when, with rare verbal felicity and +unstudied eloquence, the young man pictured himself +standing upon a lofty sunlit mountain, while a storm +raged in the valley below, calling passionately to those +far down in the ebullition to come up to him and mingle +in the blue serene of Faith. Faith was, indeed, a tear +dropped on the world's cold cheek of Doubt to make +it burn forever.</p> + +<p>Even those long since <i>blasé</i> to pulpit oratory thrilled +at the simple beauty of his peroration, which ran: +"<i>Faith!</i> Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden +censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so +rich, so rare, as this one flower of Faith. Other flowers +there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must +be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible. +But this flower——"</p> + +<p>In spite of this triumph, it had taken him still another +year to prevail over one of his hearers. True, she had +met him after that first triumphant ordination sermon +with her black lashes but half-veiling the admiration +that shone warm in the gray of her eyes; and his low +assurance, "Nance, you <i>please</i> me! Really you do!" +as his yellow eyes lingered down her rounded slenderness +from summer bonnet to hem of summer gown, rippled +her face with a colour she had to laugh away.</p> + +<p>Yet she had been obstinate and wondering. There +had to be a year in which she knew that one she dreamed +of would come back; another in which she believed he +might; another in which she hoped he would—and yet +another in which she realised that dreams and hopes +alike were vain—vain, though there were times in +which she seemed to feel again the tingling life of that +last hand-clasp; times when he called to her; times +when she had the absurd consciousness that his mind +pressed upon hers. There had been so many years +and so much wonder—and no one came. It had been +foolish indeed. And then came a year of wondering +at the other. The old wonder concerning this one, +excited by a certain fashion of rendering his head in +unison with his shoulders—as might the statue of +Perfect Beauty turn upon its pedestal—with its baser +residue of suspicion, had been happily allayed by a +closer acquaintance with Allan. One must learn, it +seemed, to distrust those lightning-strokes of prejudice +that flash but once at the first contact between human +clouds.</p> + +<p>Yet in the last year there had come another wonder +that excited a suspicion whose troubling-power was +absurdly out of all true proportion.</p> + +<p>It was in the matter of seeing things—that is, funny +things.</p> + +<p>Doubtless she had told him a few things more or less +funny that had seemed to move him to doubt or perplexity, +or to mere seriousness; but, indeed, they had +seemed less funny to her after that. For example, she +had told Aunt Bell the anecdote of the British lady of +title who says to her curate, concerning a worthy relative +by marriage lately passed away, toward whom she +has felt kindly despite his inferior station: "Of course +I <i>couldn't</i> know him here—but we shall meet in heaven." +Aunt Bell had been edified by this, remarking earnestly +that such differences would indeed be wiped out in +heaven. Yet when Nancy went to Allan in a certain +bubbling condition over the anecdote itself and Aunt +Bell's comment thereon, he made her repeat it slowly, +after the first hurried telling, and had laughed but +awkwardly with her, rather as if it were expected of +him—with an eye vacant of all but wonder—like a +traveller not sure he had done right to take the left-hand +turn at the last cross-roads.</p> + +<p>Again, the bishop who ordained him had, in a relaxed +and social moment after the ceremony, related that +little classic of Bishop Meade, who, during the fight +over a certain disestablishment measure, was asked +by a lobbyist how he would vote. The dignified prelate +had replied that he would vote for the bill, for he +held that every man should have the right to choose his +own way to heaven. None the less, he would continue +to be certain that a gentleman would always take the +Episcopal way. To Nancy Allan retold this, adding,</p> + +<p>"You know, I'm going to use it in a sermon some +time."</p> + +<p>"Yes—it's very funny," she answered, a little uncertainly.</p> + +<p>"Funny?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Of course—I've heard the bishop tell it myself— +and I know <i>he</i> thinks it funny."</p> + +<p>"Well—then I'll use it as a funny story. Of course, +it <i>is</i> funny—I only thought"—what it was he only +thought Nancy never knew.</p> + +<p>Small bits of things to wonder at, these were, and +the wonder brought no illumination. She only knew +there were times when they two seemed of different +worlds, bereft of power to communicate; and at these +times his superbly assured wooing left her slightly +dazed.</p> + +<p>But there were other times, and different—and +slowly she became used to the idea of him—persuaded +both by his own court and by the spirited encomiums +that he evoked from Aunt Bell.</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell was at that time only half persuaded by +Allan to re-enter the church of her blameless infancy. +She was still minded to seek a little longer outside the +fold that <i>rapport</i> with the Universal Mind which she +had never ceased to crave. In this process she had +lately discarded Esoteric Buddhism for Subliminal +Monitions induced by Psychic Breathing and correct +breakfast-food. For all that, she felt competent to +declare that Allan was the only possible husband for her +niece, and her niece came to suspect that this might +be so.</p> + +<p>When at last she had wondered herself into a state +of inward readiness—a state still governed by her outward +habit of resistance, this last was beaten down by +a letter from Mrs. Tednick, who had been a school +friend as Clara Tremaine, and was now married, apparently +with results not too desirable.</p> + +<p>"Never, my dear," ran the letter to Nancy, "permit +yourself to think of marrying a man who has +not a sense of humour. Do I seem flippant? Don't +think it. I am conveying to you the inestimable benefits +of a trained observation. Humour saves a man +from being impossible in any number of ways—from +boring you to beating you. (You may live to realise +that the tragedy of <i>the first</i> is not less poignant than that +of the second.) Whisper, dear!—All men are equally +vain—at least in their ways with a woman—but humour +assuredly preserves many unto death from betraying +it egregiously. Beware of him if he lack it. He has +power to crucify you daily, and yet be in honest ignorance +of your tortures. Don't think I am cynical—and +indeed, my own husband is one of the best and dearest +of souls in the world, <i>the biggest heart</i>—but be sure you +marry no man without humour. Don't think a man +has it merely because he tells funny stories; the humour +I mean is a kind of sense of the fitness of things that +keeps a man from forgetting himself. And if he +hasn't humour, don't think he can make you happy, +even if his vanity doesn't show. He can't—after the +expiration of that brief period in which the vanity of +each is a holy joy to the other. Remember now!"</p> + +<p>Curiously enough this well-intended homily had the +effect of arousing in Nancy an instant sense of loyalty +to Allan. She suffered little flashes of resentment at +the thought that Clara Tremaine should seem to depreciate +one toward whom she felt herself turning with +a sudden defensive tenderness. And this, though it +was clear to the level eye of reason that Clara must +have been generalising on observations made far from +Edom. But her loyal spirit was not less eager to resent +an affront because it might seem to have been aimless.</p> + +<p>And thereafter, though never ceasing to wonder, +Nancy was won. Her consent, at length, went to him +in her own volume of Browning, a pink rose shut in +upon "A Woman's Last Word"—its petals bruised +against the verses:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"What so false as truth is,<br> + False to thee?<br> + Where the serpent's tooth is, <br> + Shun the tree.</p> + +<p>"Where the apple reddens,<br> + Never pry—<br> + Lest we lose our Edens,<br> + Eve and I.</p> + +<p>"Be a god and hold me<br> + With a charm!<br> + Be a man and fold me<br> + With thine arm!"</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>That was a moment of sweetness, of utter rest, of +joyous peace—fighting no longer.</p> + +<p>A little while and he was before her, proud as a +conquerer may be—glad as a lover should.</p> + +<p>"I always knew it, Nance—you <i>had</i> to give in."</p> + +<p>Then as she drooped in his arms, a mere fragrant, +pulsing, glad submission——</p> + +<p>"You have <i>always</i> pleased me, Nancy. I know I +shall never regret my choice."</p> + +<p>And Nancy, scarce hearing, wondered happily on his +breast.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIVC"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Winning of Browett</h3> + +<p>A thoughtful Pagan once reported dignity to consist +not in possessing honours, but in the consciousness +that we deserve them. It is a theory fit to console +multitudes. Edom's young rector was not only consoled +by it, he was stimulated. To his ardent nature, +the consciousness of deserving honour was the first +vital step toward gaining it. Those things that he +believed himself to deserve he forthwith subjected +to the magnetic rays of his desire: Knowing with the +inborn certainty of the successful, that they must finally +yield to such silent, coercing influence and soon or +late gravitate toward him in obedience to the same law +that draws the apple to the earth's lap. In this manner +had the young man won his prizes for oratory; so had +he won his wife; so had he won his first pastorate; so +now would he win that prize he was conscious of meriting +next—a city parish—a rectorate in the chief seat +of his church in America, where was all wealth and +power as well as the great among men, to be swayed by +his eloquence and brought at last to the Master's feet. +And here, again, would his future enlarge to prospects +now but mistily surmised—prospects to be moved upon +anon with triumphant tread. Infinite aspiration opening +ever beyond itself—this was his. Meantime, step +by step, with zealous care for the accuracy of each, +with eyes always ahead, leaving nothing undone—he +was forever fashioning the moulds into which the +Spirit should materialise his benefits.</p> + +<p>The first step was the winning of Browett—old +Cyrus Browett, whose villa, in the fashion of an English +manor-house, was a feature of remark even to the +Edom summer dwellers—a villa whose wide grounds +were so swept, garnished, trimly flowered, hedge-bordered +and shrub-upholstered that, to old Edom, +they were like stately parlours built foolishly out of +doors.</p> + +<p>Months had the rector of tiny St. Anne's waited for +Browett to come to him, knowing that Browett must +come in the end. One less instinctively wise would +have made the mistake of going to Browett. Not this +one, whose good spirit warned him that his puissance +lay rather with groups of men than with individuals. +From back of the chancel railing he could sway the +crowd and make it all his own; whereas, taking that +same crowd singly, and beyond his sacerdotal functions, +he might be at the mercy of each man composing it. +He knew, in short, that Cyrus Browett as one of his +congregation on a Sabbath morning would be a mere +atom in the plastic cosmos below him; whereas Browett +by himself, with the granite hardness of his crag-like +face, his cool little green eyes—unemotional as two +algebraic x's—would be a matter fearfully different. +Even his white moustache, close-clipped as his own +hedges, and guarding a stiff, chilled mouth, was a thing +grimly repressed, telling that the man was quite invulnerable +to his own vanity. A human Browett would +have permitted that moustache to mitigate its surroundings +with some flowing grace. He was, indeed, +no adversary to meet alone in the open field—for one +who could make him in a crowd a mere string of many +to his harp.</p> + +<p>The morning so long awaited came on a second +Sunday after Trinity. Cyrus Browett, in whose keeping +was the very ark of the money covenant, alighted +from his coupé under the <i>porte-cochère</i> of candied +Gothic and humbly took seat in his pew like a mere +worshipper of God.</p> + +<p>As such—a man among men—the young rector +looked calmly down upon him, letting him sink into +the crowd-entity which always became subject to him.</p> + +<p>His rare, vibrant tones—tones that somehow carried +the subdued light and warmth of stained glass—rolled +out in moving volume:</p> + +<p>"The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth +keep silence before him."</p> + +<p>Then, still as a mere worshipper of God, that Prince +of the power of Mammon down in front knelt humbly +to say after the young rector above him that he had +erred and strayed like a lost sheep, followed too much +the devices of his own heart, leaving undone those +things he ought to have done, and doing those things +which he ought not to have done; that there was no +health in him; yet praying that he might, thereafter, +lead a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of +God's holy name. Even to Allan there was something +affecting in this—a sort of sardonic absurdity in +Browett's actually speaking thus.</p> + +<p>The kneeling financier was indeed a gracious and +lovely spectacle to the young clergyman, and in his +next words, above the still-bended congregation, his +tones grew warmly moist with an unction that thrilled +his hearers as never before. Movingly, indeed, upon +the authority that God hath given to his ministers, did +he declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, +the absolution and remission of their sins. Wonderful, +in truth, had it been if his hearers did not thrill, for the +minister himself was thrilled as never before. He, +Allan Delcher Linford, was absolving and remitting +the sins of a man whose millions were counted by the +hundred, a god of money and of power—who yet +cringed before him out there like one who feared and +worshipped.</p> + +<p>Nor did he here make the mistake that many another +would have made. Instead of preaching to Cyrus +Browett alone—preaching at him—he preached as +usual to his congregation. If his glance fell, now and +then, upon the face of Browett, he saw it only through +the haze of his own fervour—a patch of granite-gray +holding two pricking points of light. Not once was +Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a +crowd; not once was he permitted to rise above his mere +atomship, nor feel that he received more attention than +the humblest worshipper in arrears for pew-rent. Yet, +though the young rector regarded Browett as but +one of many, he knew infallibly the instant that invisible +wire was strung between them, and felt, thereafter, +every tug of opposition or signal of agreement that +flashed from Browett's mind, knowing in the end, +without a look, that he had won Browett's approval +and even excited his interest.</p> + +<p>For the sermon had been strangely, wonderfully +suited to Browett's peculiar tastes. Hardly could a +sermon have been better planned to win him. The +choice of the text itself: "And thou shalt take no gift: +for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words +of the righteous," was perfect art.</p> + +<p>The plea was for intellectual honesty, for academic +freedom, for fearless independence, which were said +to be the crowning glories in the diadem of man's +attributes. Fearlessly, then, did the speaker depreciate +both the dogmatism of religion and the dogmatism +of science. "Much of what we call religion," he said, +"is only the superstition of the past; much of what we +call science is but the superstition of the present." He +pleaded that religion might be an ever-living growth +in the human heart, not a dead formulary of dogmatic +origin. True, organisation was necessary, but in the +realm of spiritual essentials a creed drawn up in the +fourth century should not be treated as if it were the +final expression of the religious consciousness <i>in secula +seculorum</i>. One should, indeed, be prepared for the +perpetual restatement of religious truth, fearlessly +submitting the most cherished convictions to the light +of each succeeding age.</p> + +<p>Yet, especially, should it not be forgotten in an age of +ultra-physicism, of social and economic heterodoxies, +that there must ever be in human society, according to +the blessed ordinance of God, princes and subjects, +masters and proletariat, rich and poor, learned and +ignorant, nobles and plebeians—yet all united in the +bonds of love to help one another attain their moral +welfare on earth and their last end in heaven;—all +united in the bonds of fraternal good-will, independent +yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence.</p> + +<p>He closed with these words of Voltaire: "We must +love our country whatever injustice we suffer in it, as +we must love and serve the Supreme Being, notwithstanding +the superstitions and fanaticism which so +often dishonour His worship."</p> + +<p>The sermon was no marked achievement in coherence, +but neither was Browett a coherent personality. +It was, however, a swift, vivid sermon—a short and a +busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, incoherent +though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic +doubter of his own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire +and a believer in the Established Order of Things; +despising a radical and a conservative equally, but, +hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He +must be preached to as one not yet brought into that +flock purchased by God with the blood of His Son; +and at the same time, as one who had always been of +that flock and was now inalienable from it. In a word, +Browett's doubt and his belief had both to be fed from +the same spoon, a fact that all young preachers of God's +word would not have fathomed.</p> + +<p>Thus our young rector proved his power. His future +rolled visibly toward him. During the rest of that +service there sounded in his ears an undertone from +out the golden centre of that future: "<i>Reverend Father +in God, we present unto you this godly and well-learned +man to be ordained and consecrated Bishop——</i>"</p> + +<p>Rewarded, indeed, was he for the trouble he had +taken long months before to build that particular sermon +to fit Browett, after specifications confided to him +by an obliging parishioner—keeping it ready to use at +a second's notice, on the first morning that Browett +should appear.</p> + +<p>How diminished would be that envious railing at +Success could we but know the hidden pains by which +alone its victories of seeming ease are won!</p> + +<p>The young minister could now meet Browett as man +to man, having established a prestige.</p> + +<p>It had been said by those who would fain have +branded him with the stigma of disrepute that Browett's +ethics were inferior to those of the prairie wolf; meaning, +perhaps, that he might kill more sheep than he could +possibly devour.</p> + +<p>Browett had views of his own in this matter. As a +tentative evolutionist he looked upon his survival as +unimpeachable evidence of his fitness,—as the eagle is + fitter than the lamb it may fasten upon. Again, as a + believer in Revealed Religion, he accepted human + society according to the ordinance of God, deeming + himself as Master to be but the rightful, divinely-instituted + complement of his humblest servant—the + two of them necessary poles in the world spiritual.</p> + +<p>One of the few fads of Browett being the memorial +window, it was also said by enviers that if he would +begin to erect a window to every small competitor his +Trust had squeezed to death there would be an unprecedented +flurry in stained glass. But Browett knew, +as an evolutionist, that the eagle has a divine right to +the lamb if it can come safely off with it; as a Christian, +that one carries out the will of God as indubitably in +preserving the established order of prince and subject, +of noble and plebeian, as in giving of his abundance to +relieve the necessitous—or in endowing universities +which should teach the perpetual sacredness of the +established order of things in Church and State.</p> + +<p>In short, he derived comfort from both poles of his +belief—one the God of Moses, a somewhat emotional +god, not entirely uncarnal—the other the god of Spencer, +an unemotional and unimaginative god of Law.</p> + +<p>It followed that he was much taken with a preacher +who could answer so appositely to the needs of his soul +as did this impressive young man in a chance sermon +of unstudied eloquence.</p> + +<p>There were social meetings in which Browett dispassionately +confirmed these early impressions gained +under the spell of a matchless oratory, and in due time +there followed an invitation to the young rector of +St. Anne's of Edom to preach at the Church of St. +Antipas, which was Browett's city church.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterVC"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">A Belated Martyrdom</h3> + +<p>The rectory at Edom was hot with the fever of preparation. +The invitation to preach at St. Antipas +meant an offer of that parish should the preaching be +approved. It was a most desirable parish—Browett's +city church being as smart as one of his steam yachts +or his private train (for nothing less than a train sufficed +him now—though there were those of the green eyes +who pretended to remember, with heavy sarcasm, the +humbler day when he had but a beggarly private +car, coupled to the rear of a common Limited). It +was, moreover, a high church, its last rector having +been put away for the narrowness of refusing to "enrich +the service." This was the church and this the patron +above all others that the Reverend Allan Delcher +Linford would have chosen, and earnestly did he pray +that God in His wisdom impart to him the grace to +please Browett and those whom Browett permitted to +have a nominal voice in the control of St. Antipas.</p> + +<p>Both Aunt Bell and Nancy came to feel the strain of +it all. The former promised to "go into the silence" +each day and "hold the thought of success," thereby +drawing psychic power for him from the Reservoir of the Eternal.</p> + +<p>Nancy could only encourage by wifely sympathy, +being devoid of those psychic powers that distinguished +Aunt Bell. Tenderly she hovered about Allan the +morning he began to write the first of the three sermons +he was to preach.</p> + +<p>As for him, though heavy with the possibilities of +the moment, he was yet cool and centred; resigned to +what might be, yet hopeful; his manner was determined, +yet gentle, almost sweet—the manner of one who has +committed all to God and will now put no cup from +him, how bitter soever.</p> + +<p>"I am so hopeful, dearest, for your sake," his wife +said, softly, wishing to reveal her sympathy yet fearful +lest she might obtrude it. He was arranging many +sheets of notes before him.</p> + +<p>"What will the first one be?" she asked. He +straightened in his chair.</p> + +<p>"I've made up my mind, Nance! It's a wealthy +congregation—one of the wealthiest in the city—but +I shall preach first from the parable of Dives and Lazarus."</p> + +<p>"Isn't that—a little—wouldn't something else do as +well—something that wouldn't seem quite so personal?"</p> + +<p>He smiled up with fond indulgence. "That's the +woman of it—concession for temporal advantage." +Then more seriously he added, "I wouldn't be true to +myself, Nance, if I went down there in any spirit of +truckling to wealth. Public approval is a most desirable +luxury, I grant you—wealth and ease are desirable +luxuries, and the favour of those in power—but they're +only luxuries. And I know in this matter but one real +necessity: my own self-approval. If consciously I +preached a polite sermon there, my own soul would +accuse me and I should be as a leaf in the wind for +power. No, Nance—never urge me to be untrue to +that divine Christ-self within me! If I cannot be my +best self before God, I am nothing. I must preach +Christ and Him crucified, whether it be to the wealthy +of St. Antipas or only to believing poverty."</p> + +<p>Stung with contrition, she was quick to say, "Oh, +my dearest, I didn't mean you to be untrue! Only it +seemed unnecessary to affront them in your very first +sermon."</p> + +<p>"I have been divinely guided, Nance. No considerations +of expediency can deflect me now. This <i>had</i> to be! +I admit that I had my hour of temptation—but that +has gone, and thank God my integrity survives it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, how much bigger you are than I am, dearest!" +She looked down at him proudly as she stood close to +his side, smoothing the tawny hair. Then she laid one +finger along his lips and made the least little kissing +noise with her own lips—a trick of affection learned in +the early days of their love. After a little she stole from +his side, leaving him with head bent in prayerful study +—to be herself alone with her new assurance.</p> + +<p>It was moments like this that she had come to long +for and to feed her love upon. Nor need it be concealed +that there had not been one such for many +months. The situation had been graver than she +was willing to acknowledge to herself. Not only had +she not ceased to wonder since the first days of her marriage, +but she had begun to smile in her wonder, fancying +from time to time that certain plain answers came +to it—and not at all realising that a certain kind of +smile is love's unforgivable blasphemy; conscious only +that the smile left a strange hurt in her heart.</p> + +<p>For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly +turning the light of her newly fed faith upon an idol +whose clearness of line and purity of tint had become +blurred in a dusk of wondering—an idol that had begun, +she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely +through that deepening gloom of doubt.</p> + +<p>Now all was well again. In this new light the dear +idol might even at times show a dual personality—one +kneeling beside her very earnestly to worship the other +with her. Why not, since the other showed itself truly +worthy of adoration? With faith made new in her +husband—and, therefore, in God—she went to Aunt +Bell.</p> + +<p>She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, +over her book, "The Beautiful Within," her particular +chapter being headed, "Psychology of Rest: Rhythms +and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism +with Subliminal Spontaneity." Over this +frank revelation of hidden truths Aunt Bell's handsome +head was, for the moment, nodding in sub-rhythms of +psychic placidity—a state from which Nancy's animated +entrance sufficed to arouse her. As the proud wife +spoke, she divested herself of the psychic restraint with +something very like a carnal yawn behind her book.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Aunt Bell! Isn't Allan <i>fine</i>! Of course, in a +way, it's too bad—doubtless he'll spoil his chances for +the thing I know he's set his heart upon—and he knows +it, too—but he's going calmly ahead as if the day for +martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, +dear, martyrs are <i>so</i> dowdy and out-of-date—but there +he is, a great, noble, beautiful soul, with a sense of +integrity and independence that is stunning!"</p> + +<p>"What has Allan been saying now?" asked Aunt +Bell, curiously unmoved.</p> + +<p>"<i>Said?</i> It's what he's <i>doing!</i> The dear, big, stupid +thing is going down there to preach the very first Sunday +about Dives and Lazarus—the poor beggar in +Abraham's bosom and the rich man down below, you +remember?" she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to +hover about the centre of psychic repose.</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to + <i>any one</i> in this age—then think of a young minister + talking it to a church of rich men and expecting to + receive a call from them!"</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness +of her small hands with more than her usual +studious complacence. "My dear," she said at last, +"no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have +—but I've observed that he usually knows what he's +about."</p> + +<p>"Indeed, he knows what he's about now, Aunt Bell!" +There was a swift little warmth in her tones—"but he +says he can't do otherwise. He's going deliberately to +spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a piece of +mere early-Christian quixotism. And you must see +how <i>great</i> he is, Aunt Bell. Do you know—there have +been times when I've misjudged Allan. I didn't know +his simple genuineness. He wants that church, yet he +will not, as so many in his place would do, make the +least concession to its people."</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to +bear upon one small foot which she thrust absently out +until its profile could be seen.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he will have his reward," she said. "Although +it is many years since I broadened into what I may +call the higher unbelief, I have never once suspected, +my dear, that merit fails of its reward. And above all, +I have faith in Allan, in his—well, his psychic nature is +so perfectly attuned with the Universal that Allan simply +<i>cannot</i> harm himself. Even when he seems deliberately +to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead. So +cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence +and holding the thought of success for him. I think +Allan will attend very acceptably to the mere details."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterVIC"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Walls of St. Antipas Fall at the Third Blast</h3> + +<p>On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when +the young minister faced a thronged St. Antipas at +eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at him from +Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward—the pew of +Cyrus Browett—looked up at him in trembling, loving +wonder. Then a little tender half-smile of perfect +faith went dreaming along her just-parted lips. Let +the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas—she could +see the relentless profile of their chief at her right—be +offended by his rugged speech: he should find atoning +comfort in her new love. Like Luther, he must stand +there to say out the soul of him, and she was prostrate +before his brave greatness.</p> + +<p>When, at last, he came to read the biting verses of the +parable, her heart beat as if it would be out to him, her +face paled and hardened with the strain of his ordeal.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried +by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also +died and was buried.</p> + +<p>"And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and +seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.</p> + +<p>"And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on +me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in +water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'</p> + +<p>"But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy +lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus +evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The sermon began. Unflinchingly the preacher +pointed out that Dives, apparently, lay in hell for no +other reason than that he had been a rich man; no sin +was imputed to him; not even unbelief; he had not only +transgressed no law, but was doubtless a respectable, +God-fearing man of irreproachable morals—sent to +hell for his wealth.</p> + +<p>And Lazarus appeared to have won heaven merely +by reason of his poverty. No virtue, no active good +conduct, was accredited to him.</p> + +<p>Reading with the eye of common understanding, +Jesus taught that the rich merited eternal torment by +reason of their riches, and the poor merited eternal life +by reason of their poverty, a belief that one might hear +declared even to-day. Nor was this view attested solely +by this parable. Jesus railed constantly at those in high +places, at the rich and at lawyers, and the chief priests +and elders and those in authority—declaring that he +had been sent, not to them, but to the poor who needed +a physician.</p> + +<p>But was there not a seeming inconsistency here in the +teachings of the Master? If the poor achieved heaven +automatically by their mere poverty, <i>why were they +still needing a physician?</i> Under that view, why were +not the rich those who needed a physician—according +to the literal words of Jesus?</p> + +<p>Up to the close of this passage the orator's manner +had been one of glacial severity—of a sternness apparently +checked by rare self-control from breaking into a +denunciation of the modern Dives. Then all was +changed. His face softened and lighted; the broad +shoulders seemed to relax from their uncompromising +squareness; he stood more easily upon his feet; he +glowed with a certain encouraging companionableness.</p> + +<p>Was that, indeed, the teaching of Jesus—as if in +New York to-day he might say, "I have come to Third +Avenue rather than to Fifth?" Can this crudely +literal reading of his words prevail? Does it not carry +its own refutation—the extreme absurdity of supposing +that Jesus would come to the squalid Jews of the East +Side and denounce the better elements that maintain a +church like St. Antipas?</p> + +<p>The fallacy were easily probed. A modern intelligence +can scarcely prefigure heaven or hell as a reward +or punishment for mere carnal comfort or discomfort +—as many literal-minded persons believe that Jesus +taught. The Son of Man was too subtle a philosopher +to teach that a rich man is lost by his wealth and a poor +man saved by his poverty, though primitive minds took +this to be his meaning. Some primitive minds still +believe this—witness the frequent attempts to read a +literal meaning into certain other words of Jesus: the +command, for example, that a man should give up his +cloak also, if he be sued for his coat. Little acumen is +required to see that no society could protect itself against +the depredations of the lawless under such a system of +non-resistance; and we may be sure that Jesus had no +intention of tearing down the social structure or destroying +vested rights. Those who demand a literal construction +of the parable of Dives and Lazarus must +look for it in the Bowery melodrama, wherein +the wealthy only are vicious and poverty alone +is virtuous.</p> + +<p>We have only to consider the rawness of this conception +to perceive that Jesus is not to be taken literally.</p> + +<p>Who, then, is the rich man and who the poor—who is +the Dives and who the Lazarus of this intensely dramatic +parable?</p> + +<p>Dives is but the type of the spiritually rich man who +has not charity for his spiritually poor brother; of the +man rich in faith who will not trouble to counsel the +doubting; of the one rich in humility who will yet not +seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him +rich in charity who indifferently views his uncharitable +brethren; of the man rich in hope who will not strive +to make hopeful the despairing; of the one rich in +graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim +the unsanctified beggar at his gate.</p> + +<p>And who is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring—the +soul-hungry, whether he be a millionaire or a poor clerk +—the determined seeker whose eye is single and whose +whole body is full of light? In this view, surely more +creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material +wealth ceases to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality +may be the actual beggar rich in faith yet indifferent +to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor Lazarus +may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, +day after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the +beggar, out of the abundance of his faith, would never +miss.</p> + +<p>Christianity has suffered much from our failure to +give the Saviour due credit for subtlety. So far as +money—mere wealth—is a soul-factor at all, it must be +held to increase rather than to diminish its possessor's +chances of salvation, but not in merely providing the +refinements of culture and the elegances of modern +luxury and good taste, important though these are to +the spirit's growth. The true value of wealth to the +soul—a value difficult to over-estimate—is that it provides +opportunity for, and encourages the cultivation +of, that virtue which is "the greatest of all these"; that +virtue which "suffereth long and is kind; which vaunteth +not itself and is not puffed up"—Charity, in short. +While not denying the simple joys of penury, nor forgetting +the Saviour's promises to the poor and meek and +lowly, it is still easy to understand that charity is less +likely to be a vigorous soul-growth in a poor man than +in a rich. The poor man may possess it as a germ, a +seed; but the rich man is, through superior prowess in +the struggle for existence, in a position to cultivate this +virtue; and who will say that he has not cultivated it? +Certainly no one acquainted with the efforts of our +wealthy men to uplift the worthy poor. A certain +modern sentimentality demands that poverty be abolished +—ignoring those pregnant words of Jesus—"the +poor ye have <i>always</i> with you"—forgetting, indeed, +that human society is composed of unequal parts, even +as the human body; that equality exists among the +social members only in this: that all men have their +origin in God the Creator, have sinned in Adam, and +have been, by the sacrificial blood of God's only begotten +Son, born of the Virgin Mary, equally redeemed into +eternal life, if they will but accept Christ as their only +true Saviour;—forgetting indeed that to abolish poverty +would at once prevent all manifestations of human +nature's most beauteous trait and virtue—Charity.</p> + +<p>Present echoes from the business world indicate that +the poor man to-day, with his vicious discontent, his +preposterous hopes of trades-unionism, and his impracticable +and very <i>un-Christian</i> dreams of an industrial +millennium, is the true and veritable Dives, rich in arrogance +and poor in that charity of judgment which the +millionaire has so abundantly shown himself to possess.</p> + +<p>The remedy was for the world to come up higher. +Standing upon one of the grand old peaks of the Rocky +Mountains, the speaker had once witnessed a scene in +the valley below which, for beauty of illustration of the +thought in hand, the world could not surpass. He told +his hearers what the scene was. And he besought +them to come up to the rock of Charity and mingle in +the blue serene. Charity—a tear dropped on the world's +cold cheek of intolerance to make it burn forever! Or +it was the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, +has rolled the car of civilisation out from the maze of +antiquity into the light of the present day where it now +waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living +genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for golden era +when truth shall rise as a new and blazing star to light +the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in +one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet +acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. Charity +indeed was what Voltaire meant to inculcate when +he declared: "Atheism and fanaticism are the two poles +of a universe of confusion and horror. The narrow +zone of virtue is between these two. March with a +firm step in that path; believe in a good God and do +good."</p> + +<p>The peroration was beautifully simple, thrilling the +vast throng with a sudden deeper conviction of the +speaker's earnestness: "<i>Charity!</i> Oh, of all the flowers +that have swung their golden censers in the parterre of +the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower +of charity. Other flowers there may be that yield as +rich perfume, but they must be crushed before their +fragrance becomes perceptible; but <i>this</i> flower at early +morn, at burning noon and when the dew of eve is on +the flowers, has coursed its way down the garden walk, +out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, +and up the mountain side—<i>up</i>, ever UP it rises into the +beautiful blue—up along the cloudy corridors of the +day, up along the misty pathway to the skies till it +touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the breath +of angels."</p> + +<p>Hardly was there a dissenting voice in all St. Antipas +that Sabbath upon the proposal that this powerful +young preacher be called to its pulpit. The few who +warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not +sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted +the following Sabbath by a very different sermon on +certain flaws in the fashionable drama.</p> + +<p>The one and only possible immorality in this world, +contended the speaker, was untruth. A sermon was +as immoral as any stage play if the soul of it was not +Truth; and a stage play became as moral as a sermon +if its soul was truth. The special form of untruth he +attacked was what he styled "the drama of the glorified +wanton." Warmly and ably did he denounce the pernicious +effect of those plays, that take the wanton for +a heroine and sentimentalise her into a morbid attractiveness. +The stage should show life, and the wanton, +being of life, might be portrayed; but let it be with +ruthless fidelity. She must not be falsified into a +creature of fine sensibilities and lofty emotions—a +thing of dangerous plausibility to the innocent.</p> + +<p>The last doubter succumbed on the third Sabbath, +when he preached from the warning of Jesus that +many would come after him, performing in his name +wonders that might deceive, were it possible, even the +very elect. The sermon likened this generation to +the people Paul found in Athens, running curiously +after any new god; after Christian Science—which he +took the liberty of remarking was neither Christian nor +scientific—or mental science, spiritism, theosophy, +clairvoyance, all black arts, straying from the fold of +truth into outer darkness—forgetting that "God so +loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that +whosoever believed therein might not perish, but have +everlasting life." As this was the sole means of salvation +that God had provided, the time was, obviously, +one fraught with vital interest to every thinking man.</p> + +<p>As a sagacious member of the Board of Trustees +remarked, it would hardly have been possible to preach +three sermons better calculated, each in its way, to +win the approval of St. Antipas.</p> + +<p>The call came and was accepted after the signs of +due and prayerful consideration. But as for Nancy, +she had left off certain of her wonderings forever.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterVIIC"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">There Entereth the Serpent of Inappreciation</h3> + +<p>For the young rector of St. Antipas there followed +swift, rich, high-coloured days—days in which he +might have framed more than one triumphant reply +to that poet who questioned why the spirit of mortal +should be proud, intimating that it should not be.</p> + +<p>Also was the handsome young rector's parish proud +of him; proud of his executive ability as shown in the +management of its many organised activities, religious +and secular; its Brotherhood of St. Bartholomew, its +Men's Club, Women's Missionary Association, Guild +and Visiting Society, King's Daughters, Sewing School, +Poor Fund, and still others; proud of his decorative +personality, his impressive oratory and the modern note +in his preaching; proud that its ushers must each Sabbath +morning turn away many late-comers. Indeed, +the whole parish had been born to a new spiritual life +since that day when the worship at St. Antipas had +been kept simple to bareness by a stubborn and perverse +reactionary. In this happier day St. Antipas +was known for its advanced ritual, for a service so +beautifully enriched that a new spiritual warmth pervaded +the entire parish. The doctrine of the Real +Presence was not timidly minced, but preached unequivocally, +with dignified boldness. Also there was a +confessional, and the gracious burning of incense. In +short, St. Antipas throve, and the grace of the Holy +Ghost palpably took possession of its worshippers. +The church was become the smartest church in the +diocese, and its communicants were held to have a +tone.</p> + +<p>And to these communicants their rector of the flawless +pulchritude was a gracious spectacle, not only in +the performance of his sacerdotal offices, but on the +thoroughfares of the city, where his distinction was +not less apparent than back of the chancel rail.</p> + +<p>A certain popular avenue runs between rows of once +splendid mansions now struggling a little awkwardly +into trade on their lowest floors, like impoverished but +courageous gentlefolk. To these little tragedies, however, +the pedestrian throng is obtuse—blind to the +pathos of those still haughty upper floors, silent and +reserved, behind drawn curtains, while the lower two +floors are degraded into shops. In so far as the throng +is not busied with itself, its attention is upon the roadway, +where is ever passing a festival procession of +Success, its floats of Worth Rewarded being the costliest +and shiniest of the carriage-maker's craft—eloquent +of true dignity and fineness even in the swift silence of +their rubber tires. This is a spectacle to be viewed +seriously; to be mocked at only by the flippant, though +the moving pedestrian mass on the sidewalk is gayer +of colour, more sentient—more companionable, more +understandably human.</p> + +<p>It was in this weaving mass on the walk that the +communicants of St. Antipas were often refreshed by +the vision of their rector on pleasant afternoons. Here +the Reverend Doctor Linford loved to walk in God's +sunlight out of sheer simple joy in living—happily +undismayed by any possible consciousness that his +progress turned all faces to regard him, as inevitably +as one would turn the spokes of an endless succession +of turnstyles.</p> + +<p>Habited with an obviously loving attention to detail, +yet with tasteful restraint, a precise and frankly confessed, +yet never obtrusive, elegance, bowing with a +manner to those of his flock favoured by heaven to +meet him, superbly, masculinely handsome, he was far +more than a mere justification of the pride St. Antipas +felt in him. He was a splendid inspiration to belief +in God and man.</p> + +<p>Nor was he of the type Pharasaic—the type to profess +love for its kind, yet stay scrupulously aloof from the +vanquished and court only the victors. Indeed, this +was not so.</p> + +<p>In the full tide of his progress—it was indeed a +progress and never a mere walk—he would stop to +address a few words of simple cheer to the aged female +mendicant—perhaps to make a joke with her—some +pleasantry not unbefitting his station, his mien denoting +a tender chivalry which has been agreeably subdued +though not impaired by the experience inevitable to +a man of the world. When he dropped the coin into +the withered palm, he did it with a certain lingering +hurriedness, as one frankly unable to repress a human +weakness, though nervously striving to have it over +quickly and by stealth.</p> + +<p>Young Rigby Reeves, generalising, as it later appeared, +from inadequate data, swore once that the +rector of St. Antipas kept always an eye ahead for the +female mendicant in the tattered shawl and the bonnet +of inferior modishness; that, if the Avenue was crowded +enough to make it seem worth while, he would even +cross from one side to the other for the sake of speaking +to her publicly.</p> + +<p>While the fact so declared may have been a fact, +the young man's corollary that the rector of St. Antipas +sought this experience for the sake of its mere publicity +came from a prejudice which closer acquaintance with +Dr. Linford happily dissolved from his mind. As +reasonably might he have averred, as did another cynic, +that the rector of St. Antipas was actuated by the instincts +of a mountebank when he selected his evening +papers each day—deliberately and with kind words— +from the stock of a newswoman at a certain conspicuous +and ever-crowded crossing. As reasonable was the +imputation of this other cynic, that in greeting friends +upon the thronged avenue, the rector never failed to +use some word or phrase that would identify him to +those passing, giving the person addressed an unpleasant +sense of being placed in a lime-light, yet reducing +him to an insignificance just this side the line of obliteration.</p> + +<p>"You say, 'Ah, Doctor!' and shake hands, you +know," said this hypercritical observer, "and, ten to +one, he says something about St. Antipas directly, you +know, or—'Tell him to call on Dr. Linford at the rectory +adjoining St. Antipas—I'm always there at eleven,' or +'Yes, quite true, the bishop said to me, "My dear Linford, +we depend on you in this matter,"' or telling how +Mrs. General Somebody-Something, you know—I +never could remember names—took him down dreadfully +by calling him the most dangerously fascinating +man in New York. And there you are, you know! +It never fails, on my word! And all the time people +are passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, +so that it's quite rowdy—saying 'Yes—that's Linford— +there he is,' quite as if they were on one of those coaches +seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give you my +word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to +help the fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls +for 'some kind gentleman from the audience.'"</p> + +<p>It may be told that this other person was of a cynicism +hopelessly indurated. Not so with Rigby Reeves, +even after Reeves alleged the other discoveries that +the rector of St. Antipas had "a walk that would be a +strut, by gad! if he was as short as I am"; also that he +"walked like a parade," which, as expounded by Mr. +Reeves, meant that his air in walking was that of one +conscious always of leading a triumphal procession in +his own honour; and again, that one might read in his +eyes a keenly sensuous enjoyment in the tones of his +own voice; that he coloured these with a certain unction +corresponding to the flourishes with which people of a +certain obliquity of mind love to ornament their chirography; +still again that he, Reeves, was "ready to lay +a bet that the fellow would continue to pose even at +the foot of the Great White Throne."</p> + +<p>Happily this young man was won out of his carping +attitude by closer acquaintance with the rector of St. +Antipas, and learned to regard those things as no more +than the inseparable antennae of a nature unusually +endowed with human warmth and richness—mere +meaningless projections from a personality simple, +rugged, genuine, never subtle, and entirely likable. +He came to feel that, while the rector himself was unaffectedly +impressed by that profusion of gifts with which +it had pleased heaven to distinguish him, he was yet +constantly annoyed and embarrassed by the fact that +he was thus made so salient a man. Young Reeves +found him an appreciative person, moreover, one +who betrayed a sensible interest in a fellow's own +achievements, finding many reasons to be impressed by +a few little things in the way of athletics, travel, and +sport that had never seemed at all to impress the +many—not even the members of one's own family. +Rigby Reeves, indeed, became an ardent partisan of Dr. +Linford, attending services religiously with his mother +and sisters—and nearly making a row in the club café +one afternoon when the other and more obdurate cynic +declared, with a fine assumption of the judicial, that +Linford was "the best actor in New York—on the +stage or off!"</p> + +<p>It was concerning this habit of the daily stroll that +Aunt Bell and her niece also disagreed one afternoon. +They were in the little dark-wooded, red-walled library +of the rectory, Aunt Bell with her book of devotion, +Nancy at her desk, writing.</p> + +<p>From her low chair near the window, Aunt Bell had +just beheld the Doctor's erect head, its hat of flawless +gloss, and his beautifully squared shoulders, progress +at a moderate speed across her narrow field of vision. +In so stiffly a level line had they passed that a profane +thought seized her unawares: the fancy that the rector +of St. Antipas had been pulled by the window on rollers. +But this was at once atoned for. She observed that +Allan was one of the few men who walk always like +those born to rule. Then she spoke:</p> + +<p>"Nancy, why do you never walk with Allan in the +afternoon? Nothing would please him better—the +boy is positively proud to have you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I had to finish this letter to Clara," Nancy +answered abstractedly, as if still intent upon her writing, +debating a word with narrowed eyes and pen-tip at +her teeth.</p> + +<p>But Aunt Bell was neither to be misunderstood nor +insufficiently answered.</p> + +<p>"Not this afternoon, especially—<i>any</i> afternoon. I +can't remember when you've walked with him. So +many times I've heard you refuse—and I dare say it +doesn't please him, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, he has often told me so."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"Aunt Bell—I—Oh, <i>you've</i> walked on the street +with Allan!"</p> + +<p>"To be sure I have!"</p> + +<p>"Well!"</p> + +<p>"Well—of course—that <i>is</i> true in a way—Allan <i>does</i> +attract attention the moment he reaches the pavement— +and of course every one stares at one—but it isn't the +poor fellow's fault. At least, if the boy were at all +conscious of it he might in very little ways here and +there prevent the very tiniest bit of it—but, my dear, +your husband is a man of most striking appearance— +especially in the clerical garb—even on that avenue +over there where striking persons abound—and it's +not to be helped. And I can't wonder he's not pleased +with you when it gives him such pleasure to have a +modish and handsome young woman at his side. I +met him the other day walking down from Forty-second +Street with that stunning-looking Mrs. Wyeth, +and he looked as happy and bubbling as a schoolboy."</p> + +<p>"Oh—Aunt Bell—but of course, if you don't see, I +couldn't possibly tell you." She turned suddenly to +her letter, as if to dismiss the hopeless task.</p> + +<p>Now Aunt Bell, being entirely human, would not +keep silence under an intimation that her powers of +discernment were less than phenomenal. The tone of +her reply, therefore, hinted of much.</p> + +<p>"My child—I may see and gather and understand +much more than I give any sign of."</p> + +<p>It was a wretchedly empty boast. Doubtless it had +never been true of Aunt Bell at any time in her life, +but she was nettled now: one must present frowning +fortifications at a point where one is attacked, even if +they be only of pasteboard. Then, too, a random +claim to possess hidden fruits of observation is often +productive. Much reticence goes down before it.</p> + +<p>Nancy turned to her again with a kind of relief in +her face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Aunt Bell, I was sure of it—I couldn't tell you, +but I was sure you must see!" Her pen was thrown +aside and she drooped in her chair, her hands listless +in her lap.</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell looked sympathetically voluble but wisely +refrained from speech.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," continued the girl, "if you knew at the +time, the time when my eyes seemed to open—when I +was deceived by his pretension into thinking—you +remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell—how independent +and noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, +Aunt Bell—what a slump in my faith that day! I +think its foundations all went, and then naturally the +rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you realise it all +the time?"</p> + +<p>So it was religious doubt—a loss of faith—heterodoxy? +Having listened until she gathered this much, +Aunt Bell broke in—"My dear, you must let me guide +you in this. You know what I've been through. +Study the higher criticism, reverently, if you will— +even broaden into the higher unbelief. Times have +changed since my youth; one may broaden into almost +anything now and still be orthodox, especially in our +church. But beware of the literal mind, the material +view of things. Remember that the essentials of +Christianity are spiritually historic even if they aren't +materially historic—facts in the human consciousness +if not in the world of matter. You need not pretend +to understand how God can be one in essence and three +in person—I grant you that is only a reversion to polytheism +and is so regarded by the best Biblical scholars— +but never surrender your belief in the atoning blood of +the Son whom He sent a ransom for many—at least as +a spiritual fact. I myself have dismissed the Trinity +as one of those mysteries to be adoringly believed on +earth and comprehended only in heaven—but that +God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten +Son—Child, do you think I could look forward without +fear to facing God, if I did not believe that the blood +of his only begotten Son had washed from my soul +that guilt of the sin I committed in Adam? Cling to +these simple essentials, and otherwise broaden even +into the higher unbelief, if you like——"</p> + +<p>"But, Aunt Bell, it <i>isn't</i> that! I never trouble about +those things—though you have divined truly that I have +doubted them lately—but the doubts don't distress me. +Actually, Aunt Bell, for a woman to lose faith in her +God seems a small matter beside losing faith in her +husband. You can doubt and reason and speculate +and argue about the first—it's fashionable—people +rather respect unbelievers nowadays—but Oh, Aunt +Bell, how the other hurts!"</p> + +<p>"But, my child—my preposterous child! How can +you have lost faith in that husband of yours? What +nonsense! Do you mean you have taken seriously +those harmless jesting little sallies of his about the +snares and pitfalls of a clergyman's life, or his tales of +how this or that silly woman has allowed him to detect +in her that pure reverence which most women do feel +for a clergyman, whether he's handsome or not? Take +Mrs. Wyeth, for example——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Aunt Bell—no, no—how can you think——"</p> + +<p>"I admit Allan is the least bit—er—redundant of +those anecdotes—perhaps just the least bit insistent +about the snares and pitfalls that beset an attractive +man in his position. But really, my dear—I know +men—and you need never feel a twinge of jealousy. +For one thing, Allan would be held in bounds by fear of +the world, even if his love for you were inadequate to +hold him."</p> + +<p>"It's no use trying to make you understand, Aunt +Bell—you <i>can't!</i>"</p> + +<p>Whereupon Aunt Bell neglected her former device of +pretending that she did, indeed, understand, and bluntly +asked:</p> + +<p>"Well, what is it, child?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, nothing, nothing, Aunt Bell—it's only +what he <i>is</i>."</p> + +<p>"What he <i>is</i>? A handsome, agreeable, healthy, +good-tempered, loyal, upright, irreproachable——"</p> + +<p>"Aunt Bell, he's <i>killing</i> me. I seem to want to laugh +when I tell you, because it's so funny that he should +have the power to—but I tell you he's killing out all the +good in me—a little bit every day. I can't even <i>want</i> +to be good. Oh, how stupid to think you could see— +that any one could see! Sometimes I do forget and +laugh all at once. It's as grotesque and unreal as an +imaginary monster I used to be afraid of—then I'm +sick, for I remember we are bound together by the laws +of God and man. Of course, you can't see, Aunt Bell— +the fire hasn't eaten through yet—but I tell you it's +burning inside day and night."</p> + +<p>She laughed a little, as if to reassure her puzzled +listener.</p> + +<p>"A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell—burning out +my goodness—if the firemen would only come with +engines and axes and hooks and things, and water— +I'd submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old +house—it hurts so!"</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterVIIIC"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Apple of Doubt Is Nibbled</h3> + +<p>The rector of St. Antipas came from preaching his +Easter sermon. He was elated. Of the sermons delivered +in New York that morning, he suspected that his +would be found not the least ingenious. Telling +excerpts would doubtless appear in the next day's +papers, and at least one paper would reprint his favourite +likeness over the caption, "Dr. Allan Delcher Linford, +the Handsome and Up-to-Date Rector of St. Antipas." +Under this would be head-lines: "The Resurrection +Proved; a Literal Fact in History not less than a Spiritual +Fact in the Human Consciousness. An Unbroken +Chain of Living Witnesses."</p> + +<p>He even worded scraps of the article on his way from +the church to his study:</p> + +<p>"An unusually rich Easter service was held at fashionable +St. Antipas yesterday morning. The sermon by +its able and handsome young rector, the Reverend Dr. +Linford, was fraught with vital interest to every thinking +man. The Resurrection he declares to be a fact as +well attested as the Brooklyn Bridge is to thousands +who have never seen it—yet who are convinced of its +existence upon the testimony of those who have. Thus +one who has never seen this bridge may be as certain of +its existence as a man who crosses it twice a day. In +the same way, a witness to the risen Christ tells the +glorious truth to his son, a lad of fifteen, who at eighty +tells it to his grandson. 'Do you realise,' said the +magnetic young preacher, 'that the assurance of the +Resurrection comes to you this morning by word of +mouth through a scant three thousand witnesses—a +living chain of less than three thousand links by which +we may trace our steps back to the presence of the first +witness—so that, in effect, we have the Resurrection +on the word of a man who beheld the living Saviour this +very morning? Nay; further, in effect we ourselves +stand trembling before that stone rolled away from the +empty but forever hallowed tomb. As certainly as +thousands know that a structure called the Brooklyn +Bridge exists, so upon testimony of the same validity +do we know that "God so loved the world that he gave +his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on him +might not perish but have everlasting life." God has +not expected us to trust blindly: he has presented tangible +and compelling evidence of his glorious scheme +of salvation.' The speaker, who is always imbued with +the magnetism of a striking personality, was more than +usually effective on this occasion, and visibly moved the +throng of fashionable worshippers that——"</p> + +<p>"Allan, you outdid yourself!" Aunt Bell had come +in and, in the mirror over the dining-room mantel, was +bestowing glances of unaffected but strictly impartial +admiration upon the bonnet of lilac blossoms that +rested above the lustrous puffs of her plenteous gray +hair.</p> + +<p>The young man looked up from his meditative pacing +of the room.</p> + +<p>"Aunt Bell, I think I may say that I pleased myself +this morning—and you know that's not easy for me."</p> + +<p>"It's too bad Nance wasn't there!"</p> + +<p>"Nancy is not pleasing me," began her husband, in +gentle tones.</p> + +<p>"I didn't feel equal to it, Allan," his wife called from +the library.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're there! My dear, you give up too easily +to little indispositions that another woman would make +nothing of. I've repeated that to you so often that, +really, your further ignoring it appears dangerously like +perverseness——"</p> + +<p>"Is she crying?" he asked Aunt Bell, as they both +listened.</p> + +<p>"Laughing!" replied that lady.</p> + +<p>"My dear, may I ask if you are laughing at me?"</p> + +<p>"Dear, no!—only at something I happened to think +of." She came into the dining-room, a morning paper +in her hand. "Besides, in to-morrow's paper I +shall read all about what the handsome rector of St. +Antipas said, in his handsome voice, to his handsome +hearers——"</p> + +<p>He had frowned at first, but now smiled indulgently, +as they sat down to luncheon. "You <i>will</i> have your +joke about my appearance, Nance! That reminds +me—that poor romantic little Mrs. Eversley—sister of +Mrs. Wyeth, you know—said to me after service this +morning, 'Oh, Dr. Linford, if I could only believe in +Christian dogma as I believe in <i>you</i> as a man!' You +know, she's such a painfully emotional, impulsive +creature, and then Colonel Godwin who stood by had +to have <i>his</i> joke: 'The symbol will serve you for worship, +Madam!' he says; 'I'm sure no woman's soul +would ever be lost if all clergymen were as good to look +upon as our friend here!' Those things always make +me feel so awkward—they are said so bluntly—but +what could I do?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Browett's sister and her son were out with him +this morning," began Aunt Bell, charitably entering +another channel of conversation from the intuition +that her niece was wincing. But, as not infrequently +happened, the seeming outlet merely gave again into +the main channel.</p> + +<p>"And there's Browett," continued the Doctor. "Now +I am said to have great influence over women—women +trust me, believe me—I may even say look up to me— +but I pledge you my word I am conscious of wielding an +immensely greater influence over men. There seems +to be in my <i>ego</i> the power to prevail. Take Browett— +most men are afraid of him—not physical fear, but their +inner selves, their <i>egos</i>, go down before him. Yet from +the moment I first saw that man I dominated him. It's +all in having an <i>ego</i> that means mastery, Aunt Bell. +Browett has it himself, but I have a greater one. Every +time Browett's eyes meet mine he knows in his soul that +I'm his master—his <i>ego</i> prostrates itself before mine— +and yet that man"—he concluded in a tone of distinguishable +awe—"is worth all the way from two to +three hundred millions!"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Eversley is an unlucky little woman, from what +I hear," began Aunt Bell, once more with altruistic aims.</p> + +<p>"That reminds me," said the Doctor, recalling himself +from a downward look at the grovelling Browett, +"she made me promise to be in at four o'clock. Really +I couldn't evade her—it was either four o'clock to-day +or the first possible day. What could I do? Aunt +Bell, I won't pretend that this being looked up to and +sought out is always disagreeable. Contrary to the +Pharisee, I say 'Thank God I <i>am</i> as other men are!' I +have my human moments, but mostly it bores me, and +especially these half-religious, half-sentimental confidences +of emotional women who imagine their lives +are tragedies. Now this woman believes her marriage +is unhappy——"</p> + +<p>"Indeed, it is!" Aunt Bell broke in—this time effectually, +for she proceeded to relate of one Morris Upton +Eversley a catalogue of inelegancies that, if authoritative, +left him, considered as a husband, undesirable, not to +say impracticable. His demerits, indeed, served to +bring the meal to a blithe and chatty close.</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell's practice each day after luncheon was, in +her own terminology, to "go into the silence and concentrate +upon the thought of the All-Good." She was +recalled from the psychic state on this afternoon, though +happily not before a good half-hour, by Nancy's knock +at her door.</p> + +<p>She came in, cheerful, a small sheaf of papers in her +hand. Aunt Bell, finding herself restored and amiable, +sat up to listen.</p> + +<p>Nancy threw herself on the couch, with the air of a +woman about to chat confidentially from the softness +of many gay pillows, dropping into the attitude of tranquil +relaxation that may yet bristle with eager mental +quills.</p> + +<p>"The drollest thing, Aunt Bell! This morning +instead of hearing Allan, I went up to that trunk-room +and rummaged through the chest that has all +those old papers and things of Grandfather Delcher's. +And would you believe it? For an hour or more +there, I was reading bits of his old sermons."</p> + +<p>"But he was a Presbyterian!" In her tone and +inflection Aunt Bell ably conveyed an exposition of the +old gentleman's impossibility—lucidly allotting him to +spiritual fellowship with the head-hunters of Borneo.</p> + +<p>"I know it, but, Aunt Bell, those old sermons really +did me good; all full of fire they were, too, but you felt +a <i>man</i> back of them—a good man, a real man. You +liked him, and it didn't matter that his terminology +was at times a little eccentric. Grandfather's theology +fitted the last days of his life about as crinoline and +hoop-skirts would fit over there on the avenue to-day— +but he always made me feel religious. It seemed sweet +and good to be a Christian when he talked. With all +his antiquated beliefs he never made me doubt as—as +I doubt to-day. But it was another thing I wanted to +show you—something I found—some old compositions +of Bernal's that his grandfather must have kept. +Here's one about birds—'jingle-birds, squeak-birds and +clatter-birds.' No?—you wouldn't care for that?— +well—listen to this."</p> + +<p>She read the youthful Bernal's effort to rehabilitate +the much-blemished reputation of Judas—a paper that +had been curiously preserved by the old man.</p> + +<p>"Poor Judas, indeed!" The novelty was not lost +upon Aunt Bell, expert that she was in all obliquities +from accepted tradition.</p> + +<p>"The funny boy! Very ingenious, I'm sure. I dare +say no one ever before said a good word for Judas since +the day of his death, and this lad would canonise him +out of hand. Think of it—St. Judas!"</p> + +<p>Nancy lay back among the cushions, talking idly, +inconsequently.</p> + +<p>"You see, there was at least one man created, Aunt +Bell, who could by no chance be saved—one man who +had to betray the Son of Man—one man to be forever +left out of the Christian scheme of salvation, even if +every other in the world were saved. There had to be +one man to disbelieve, to betray and to lie in hell for it, +or the whole plan would have been frustrated. There +was a theme for Dante, Aunt Bell—not the one soul in +hell, but the other souls in heaven slowly awakening to +the suffering of that one soul—to the knowledge that +he was suffering in order that they might be saved. Do +you think they would find heaven to be real heaven if +they knew he was burning? And don't you think a +poet could make some interesting talk between this +solitary soul predestined to hell, and the God who +planned the scheme?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell looked bored and uttered a swift, low phrase +that might have been "Fiddlesticks!"</p> + +<p>"My dear, no one believes in hell nowadays."</p> + +<p>"Does any one believe in anything?"</p> + +<p>"Belief in the essentials of Christianity was never +more apparent."</p> + +<p>It was a treasured phrase from the morning's sermon.</p> + +<p>"What are the essentials?"</p> + +<p>"Belief that God so loved the world that he gave his +only begotten Son—you know as well as I, child—belief +in the atoning blood of the Christ."</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't it be awful, Aunt Bell, if you didn't +believe in it, and had to be in hell because the serpent +persuaded Eve and Eve persuaded Adam to eat the +apple—that's the essential foundation of Christianity, +isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, certainly—you must believe in original sin——"</p> + +<p>"I see—here's a note in Bernal's hand, on one of +these old papers—evidently written much later than the +other: 'The old gentleman says Christmas is losing its +deeper significance. What is it? That the Babe of +Bethlehem was begotten by his Father to be a sacrifice +to its Father—that its blood might atone for the sin of +his first pair—and so save from eternal torment the offspring +of that pair. God will no longer be appeased +by the blood of lambs; nothing but the blood of his son +will now atone for the sin of his own creatures. It +seems to me the sooner Christmas loses this deeper significance +the better. Poor old loving human nature +gives it a much more beautiful significance.'"</p> + +<p>"My dear," began Aunt Bell, "before I broadened +into what I have called the higher unbelief, I should +have considered that that young man had a positive +genius for blasphemy; now that I have again come into +the shadow of the cross, it seems to me that he merely +lacks imagination."</p> + +<p>"Poor Bernal! Yet he made me believe, though he +seemed to believe in nothing himself. He makes me +believe <i>now</i>. He <i>calls</i> to me, Aunt Bell—or is it myself +calling to him that I hear?</p> + +<p>"And blasphemy—even the word is ridiculous, Aunt +Bell. I was at the day-nursery yesterday when all +those babies were brought in to their dinner. They +are strictly forbidden to coo or to make any noise, and +they really behaved finely for two-and three-year-olds +—though I did see one outlaw reach over before +the signal was given and lovingly pat the big fat +cookie beside its plate—thinking its insubordination +would be overlooked—but, Aunt Bell, do you +suppose one of those fifty-two babies could blaspheme +you?"</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly!"</p> + +<p>"But can you imagine one of them capable of any +disrespect to you that would merit—say, burning or +something severe like that?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not!"</p> + +<p>"Well, don't you really believe that God is farther +beyond you or me or the foolish boy that wrote this, than +we are beyond those babies—with a greater, bigger +point of view, a fuller love? Imagine the God that +made everything—the worlds and birds and flowers +and butterflies and babies and mountains—imagine +him feeling insulted because one of his wretched little +John Smiths or Bernal Linfords babbles little human +words about him, or even worries his poor little human +heart with doubts of His existence!"</p> + +<p>"My child, yours is but a finite mind, unable to limit +or define the Infinite. What is it, anyway—is it Christian +Science taking hold of you, or that chap who preaches +that they have the Messiah re-incarnated and now living +in Syria—Babbists, aren't they—or is it theosophy— +or are you simply dissatisfied with Allan?" A sudden +shrewd glance from Aunt Bell's baby-blue eyes went +with this last.</p> + +<p>Nancy laughed, then grew serious. "I think the last +is it, Aunt Bell. A woman seems to doubt God and +everything else after she begins to doubt the husband +she has loved. Really, I find myself questioning everything +—every moral standard."</p> + +<p>"Nance, you are an ungrateful woman to speak like +that of Allan!"</p> + +<p>"I never should have done it, dear, if you hadn't made +me believe you knew. I should have thought it out all +by myself, and then acted, if I found I could with any +conscience."</p> + +<p>"Eh? Mercy! You couldn't. The <i>idea!</i> And +there's Allan, now. Come!"</p> + +<p>The Doctor was on the threshold. "So here you are! +Well, I've just sent Mrs. Eversley away in tears."</p> + +<p>He dropped into an arm-chair with a little half-humorous +moan of fatigue.</p> + +<p>"It's a relief, sometimes, to know you can relax and +let your whole weight absolutely down on to the broad +earth!" he declared.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Eversley?" suggested Aunt Bell.</p> + +<p>"Well, the short of it is, she told me her woes +and begged me to give my sanction to her securing a divorce!"</p> + +<p>Nancy sat up from her pillows. "Oh—and you +<i>did?</i>"</p> + +<p>"<i>Nancy!</i>" It was low, but clear, quick-spoken, +stern, and hurt. "You forget yourself. At least you +forget my view and the view of my Church. Even +were I out of the Church, I should still regard marriage +as a sacrament—indissoluble except by death. The + very words—'Whom God hath joined'"—he became + almost oratorical in his warmth—"Surely you would + not expect me to use my influence in this parish to undermine + the sanctity of the home—to attack our emblem + of Christ's union with His Church!"</p> + +<p>With reproach in his eyes—a reproach that in some +way seemed to be bland and mellow, yet with a hurt +droop to his handsome head, he went from the room. +Nancy looked after him, longingly, wonderingly.</p> + +<p>"The maddening thing is, Aunt Bell, that sometimes +he actually has the power to make me believe in +him. But, oh, doesn't Christ's union with his Church +have some ghastly symbols!"</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterIXC"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">Sinful Perverseness of the Natural Woman</h3> + +<p>Two months later a certain tension in the rectory of +St. Antipas was temporarily relieved. Like the spring +of a watch wound too tightly, it snapped one day at +Nancy's declaration that she would go to Edom for a +time—would go, moreover, without a reason—without +so much as a woman's easy "because." This circumstance, +while it froze in the bud every available objection +to her course, quelled none of the displeasure that was +felt at her woman's perversity.</p> + +<p>Her decision was announced one morning after a +sleepless night, and after she had behaved unaccountably +for three days.</p> + +<p>"You are not pleasing Allan," was Aunt Bell's masterly +way of putting the situation. Nancy laughed +from out of the puzzling reserve into which she had +lately settled.</p> + +<p>"So he tells me, Aunt Bell. He utters it with the air +of telling me something necessarily to my discredit— +yet I wonder whose fault it really is."</p> + +<p>"Well, of all things!" Aunt Bell made no effort to +conceal her amazement.</p> + +<p>"It isn't necessarily mine, you know." Before the +mirror she brought the veil nicely about the edge of her +hat, with the strained and solemn absorption of a woman +in this shriving of her reflection so that it may go out in peace.</p> + +<p>"My failure to please Allan, you know, may as easily +be due to his defects as to mine. I said so, but he only +answered, 'Really, you're not pleasing me.' And, as +he often says of his own predicaments—'What could I +do?' But I'm glad he persists in it."</p> + +<p>"Why, if you resent it so?"</p> + +<p>"Because, Aunt Bell, I must be quite—<i>quite</i> certain +that Allan is funny. It would be dreadful to make a +mistake. If only I could be certain—positive—convinced— +sure—that Allan is the funniest thing in all the +world——"</p> + +<p>"It never occurred to me that Allan is funny." Aunt +Bell paused for an instant's retrospect. "Now, he +doesn't joke much."</p> + +<p>"One doesn't have to joke to be a joke, Aunt Bell."</p> + +<p>"But what if he were funny? Why is that so important?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's important because of the other thing that +you know you know when you know that."</p> + +<p>"Mercy! Child, you should have a cup of cocoa or +something before you start off—really——"</p> + +<p>The last long hatpin seemingly pierced the head of +Nancy and she turned from the glass to fumble on her +gloves.</p> + +<p>"Aunt Bell, if Allan tells me once more in that hurt, +gentle tone that I don't please him, I believe I shall be +the freest of free women—ready to live."</p> + +<p>She paused to look vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, +you know, I seem to wake up with a clear mind— +but the day clouds it. We shouldn't believe so many +falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains into +it at a tender age. I should know Allan through and +through at a glance to-day, if I met him for the first +time; but he kneaded my poor girl's brain this way and +that, till I'd have been done for, Aunt Bell, if some one +else hadn't kneaded and patted it into other ways, so +that little memories come back and stay with me— +little bits of sweetness and genuineness—of <i>realness</i>, +Aunt Bell."</p> + +<p>"Nance, you are morbid—and I think you're wrong +to go up there to be alone with your sick fancies—why +are you going, Nance?"</p> + +<p>"Aunt Bell, can I really trust you not to betray me? +Will you promise to keep the secret if I actually tell +you?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell looked at once important and trustworthy, +yet of an incorruptible propriety.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure, my dear, you would not ask me to keep +secret anything that your husband would be——"</p> + +<p>"Dear, no! You can keep mum with a spotless conscience."</p> + +<p>"Of course; I was sure of that!"</p> + +<p>"What a fraud you are, Aunt Bell—you weren't sure +at all—but I shall disappoint you. Now my reason——" +She came close and spoke low——"My reason for +going to Edom, whatever it is, is so utterly silly that I +haven't even dared to tell myself—so, you see—my +<i>real</i> reason for going is simply to find out what my +reason really is. I'm dying to know. There! Now +never say I didn't trust you."</p> + +<p>In the first shock of this fall from her anticipations +Aunt Bell neglected to remember that All is Good. +Yet she was presently far enough mollified to accompany +her niece to the station.</p> + +<p>Returning from thence after she had watched Nancy +through the gate to the 3:05 Edom local, Aunt Bell +lingered at the open study door of the rector of St. +Antipas. He looked up cordially.</p> + +<p>"You know, Allan, it may do the child good, after +all, to be alone a little while."</p> + +<p>"Nancy—has—not—pleased—me!" The words +were clean-cut, with an illuminating pause after each, +so that Aunt Bell might by no chance mistake their +import, yet the tone was low and not without a quality +of winning sweetness—the tone of the injured good.</p> + +<p>"I've seen that, Allan. Nance undoubtedly has a +vein of selfishness. Instead of striving to please her +husband, she—well, she has practically intimated to +me that a wife has the right to please herself. Of +course, she didn't say it brutally in just those words, +but——"</p> + +<p>"It's the modern spirit, Aunt Bell—the spirit of +unbelief. It has made what we call the 'new woman' +—that noxious flower on the stalk of scientific materialism."</p> + +<p>He turned and wrote this phrase rapidly on a pad at +his elbow, while Aunt Bell waited expectantly for more.</p> + +<p>"There's a sermon that writes itself, Aunt Bell. ' +Woman's deterioration under Modern Infidelity to +God.' As truly as you live, this thing called the 'new +woman' has grown up side by side with the thing called +the higher criticism. And it's natural. Take away +God's word as revealed in the Scriptures and you make + woman a law unto herself. Man's state is then wretched + enough, but contemplate woman's! Having put aside + Christ's authority, she naturally puts aside <i>man's</i>, hence + we have the creature who mannishly desires the suffrage + and attends club meetings and argues, and has views— + <i>views</i>, Aunt Bell, on the questions of the day—the + woman who, as you have just succinctly said of your + niece, 'believes she has a right to please herself!' There + is the keynote of the modern divorce evil, Aunt Bell— + she has a right to please herself. Believing no longer + in God, she no longer feels bound by His commandment: + 'Wives be subject to your husbands!' Why, + Aunt Bell, if you can imagine Christianity shorn of all + its other glories, it would still be the greatest religion + the world has ever known, because it holds woman + sternly in her sphere and maintains the sanctity of the + home. Now, I know nothing of the real state of Nancy's + faith, but the fact that she believes she has a right + to please herself is enough to convince me. I would + stake my right arm this moment, upon just this evidence, + that Nancy has become an unbeliever. When I + let her know as plainly as English words can express it + that she is not pleasing me, she looks either sullen or + flippant—thus showing distinctly a loss of religious + faith."</p> + +<p>"You ought to make a stunning sermon of that, +Allan. I think society needs it."</p> + +<p>"It does, Aunt Bell, it does! And we are going from +bad to worse. I foresee the time in this very age of ours +when no woman will continue to be wife to a man +except by the dictates of her own lawless and corrupt +nature—when a wife will make so-called love her only +rule—when she will brazenly disregard the law of God +and the word of his only begotten crucified Son, unless +she can continue to feel what she calls 'love and respect' +for the husband who chose her. We prize liberty, +Aunt Bell, but liberty with woman has become license +since she lost faith in the word of God that holds her +subject to man. We should be thankful that the mother +Church still stands firm on that rock—the rock of +woman's subjection to man. Our own Church has +quibbled, Aunt Bell, but look at the fine consistency of +the Church of Rome. As truly as you live, the Catholic +Church will one day hold the only women who subject +themselves to their husbands in all things because of +God's command—regardless of their anarchistic desire +to 'please themselves.' There is the only Christian +Church left that knows woman is a creature to be ruled +with an iron hand—and has the courage to send them +to hell for 'pleasing themselves.'"</p> + +<p>He glowed in meditation a moment, then, in a burst +of confidence, continued:</p> + +<p>"This is not to be repeated, Aunt Bell, but I have +more than once questioned if I should always allow the +Anglo-Catholic Church to modify my true Catholicism. +I have talked freely with Father Riley of St. Clements +at our weekly ministers' meetings—there's a bright +chap for you—and really, Aunt Bell, as to mere universality, +the Church of Rome has about the only claim +worth considering. Mind you, this is not to be repeated, +but I am often so much troubled that I have to fall back +on my simple childish faith in the love of the Father +earned of him for me by the Son's death on the cross. +But what if I err in making my faith too simple? Even +now I am almost persuaded that a priest ordained into +the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements +of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense. Doubts like +these are tragedies to an honest man, Aunt Bell—they +try his soul—they bring him each day to the foot of that +cross whereon the Son of God suffers his agony in order +to ransom our souls from God's wrath with us—and +there are times, Aunt Bell, when I find myself gazing +longingly, like a little tired child, at the open arms of the +mother Church—on whose loving bosom of authority +a man may lay all his doubts and be never again troubled +in his mind."</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"After all," she said briskly, "isn't Christianity the +most fascinating of all beliefs, if one comes into it from +the higher unbelief? Isn't it fine, Allan—doesn't the +very thought excite you—that not only the souls of +thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will +be affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the +clearness with which you, here at this moment, perceive +and reason out these spiritual values—and the honesty +with which you act upon your conclusions. How truly +God has made us responsible for the souls of one +another!"</p> + +<p>The rector of St. Antipas shrugged modestly at this +bald wording of his responsibility; then he sighed and +bent his head as one honestly conscious of the situation's +gravity.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXC"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Reason of a Woman Who Had No Reason</h3> + +<p>It was not a jest—Nancy's telling Aunt Bell that her +reason for going to Edom was too foolish to give even +to herself. At least such reticence to self is often sincerely +and plausibly asserted by the very inner woman. +Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret +within a secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, +then low like a voice overheard through leafy trees; +then loud and louder until all the noise of the train +did no more than confuse the words so that only she could +hear them.</p> + +<p>When the exciting time of this listening had gone and +she stepped from the train into the lazy spring silence +of the village, her own heart spelled the thing in quick, +loud, hammering beats—a thing which, now that she +faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks +burned at the first second of actual realisation of its +enormity; and her knees weakened in a deathly tremble, +quite as if they might bend embarrassingly in either +direction.</p> + +<p>Then in the outer spaces of her mind there grew, to +save her, a sense of her crass fatuity. She was quickly +in a carriage, eager to avoid any acquaintance, glad +the driver was no village familiar who might amiably +seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up +the western road through its greening elms to where +Clytie kept the big house—her own home while she +lived, and the home of the family when they chose to go +there.</p> + +<p>At last, the silent, cool house with its secretive green +shutters rose above her; the wheels made their little +crisping over the fine metal of the driveway. She hastily +paid the man and was at the side door that opened +into the sitting-room. As she put her hand to the knob +she was conscious of Clytie passing the window to open +the door.</p> + +<p>Then they were face to face over the threshold— +Clytemnestra, of a matronly circumference, yet with +a certain prim consciousness of herself, which despite +the gray hair and the excellent maturity of her face, +was unmistakably maidenish—Clytie of the eyes always +wise to another's needs and beaming with that fine +wisdom.</p> + +<p>She started back from the doorway by way of being +playfully dramatic—her hands on her hips, her head +to one side at an astounded angle. Yet little +more than a second did she let herself simulate this +welcoming incredulity—this stupefaction of cordiality. +There must be quick speech—especially as to Nancy's +face—which seemed strangely unfamiliar, set, suppressed, +breathless, unaccountably young—and there +had to be the splendid announcement of another +matter.</p> + +<p>"Why, child, is it you or your ghost?"</p> + +<p>Nancy could only nod her head.</p> + +<p>"My suz! what ails the child?"</p> + +<p>Here the other managed a shake of the head and a +made smile.</p> + +<p>"And of all things!—you'll never, never, never +guess!——"</p> + +<p>"There—there!—yes, yes—yes! I know—know all +about it—knew it—knew it last night——"</p> + +<p>She had put out a hand toward Clytie and now reached +the other from her side, easing herself to the doorpost +against which she leaned and laughed, weakly, +vacantly.</p> + +<p>"Some one told you—on the way up?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—I knew it, I tell you—that's what makes it so +funny and foolish—why I came, you know——" She +had now gained a little in coherence, and with it came +a final doubt. She steadied herself in the doorway to +ask—"When did Bernal come?"</p> + +<p>And Clytie, somewhat relieved, became voluble.</p> + +<p>"Night before last on the six-fifteen, and me getting +home late from the Epworth meeting—fire out—not a +stick of kindling-wood in—only two cakes in the buttery, +neither of them a layer—not a frying-size chicken +on the place—thank goodness he didn't have the appetite +he used to—though in another way it's just +downright heartbreaking to see a person you care for +not be a ready eater—but I had some of the plum +jell he used to like, and the good half of an apple-John +which I at once het up—and I sent Mehitty Lykins +down for some chops——"</p> + +<p>"Where is he?"</p> + +<p>There had seemed to be a choking in the question. +Clytie regarded her curiously.</p> + +<p>"He was lying down up in the study a while ago— +kicking one foot up in the air against the wall, with his +head nearly off the sofy onto the floor, just like he +used to—there—that's his step——"</p> + +<p>"I can't see him now! Here—let me go into your +room till I freshen and rest a bit—quick——"</p> + +<p>Once more the indecisive knees seemed about to +bend either way under their burden. With an effort +of will she drew the amazed Clytie toward the +open door of the latter's bedroom, then closed it +quickly, and stood facing her in the dusk of the +curtained room.</p> + +<p>"Clytie—I'm weak—it's so strange—actually weak— +I shake so—Oh, Clytie—I've got to cry!"</p> + +<p>There was a mutual opening of arms and a head on +Clytie's shoulder, wet eyes close in a corner that had +once been the good woman's neck—and stifling sobs +that seemed one moment to contract her body rigidly +from head to foot—the next to leave it limp and falling. +From the nursing shoulder she was helped to the bed, +though she could not yet relax her arms from that +desperate grip of Clytie's neck. Long she held her so, +even after the fit of weeping passed, clasping her with +arms in which there was almost a savage intensity— +arms that locked themselves more fiercely at any little +stirring of the prisoned one.</p> + +<p>At last, when she had lain quiet a long time, the +grasp was suddenly loosened and Clytie was privileged +to ease her aching neck and cramped shoulders. Then, +even as she looked down, she heard from Nancy the +measured soft breathing of sleep. She drew a curtain +to shut out one last ray of light, and went softly from +the room.</p> + +<p>Two hours later, as Clytemnestra attained ultimate +perfection in the arrangement of four glass dishes of +preserves and three varieties of cake upon her table— +for she still kept to the sinfully complex fare of the good +old simple days—Nancy came out. Clytie stood erect +to peer anxiously over the lamp at her.</p> + +<p>"I'm all right—you were a dear to let me sleep. +See how fresh I am."</p> + +<p>"You do look pearter, child—but you look different +from when you came. My suz! you looked so excited +and kind of young when I opened that door, it give me +a start for a minute—I thought I'd woke out of a dream +and you was a Miss in short skirts again. But now— +let me see you closer." She came around the table, +then continued: "Well, you look fresh and sweet and +some rested, and you look old and reasonable again— +I mean as old as you had ought to look. I never did +know you to act that way before, child. My neck ain't +got the crick out of it yet."</p> + +<p>"Poor old Clytie—but you see yesterday all day I +felt queer—very queer, and wrought up, and last night +I couldn't rest, and I lay awake and excited all night— +and something seemed to give way when I saw you in +the door. Of course it was nervousness, and I shall +be all right now——"</p> + +<p>She looked up and saw Bernal staring at her— +standing in the doorway of the big room, his face +shading into the dusk back of him. She went to him +with both hands out and he kissed her.</p> + +<p>"Is it Nance?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know—but it's really Bernal."</p> + +<p>"Clytie says you knew I had come."</p> + +<p>"Clytie must have misunderstood. No one even +intimated such a thing. I came up to-day—I had to +come—because—if I had known you were here, +wouldn't I have brought Allan?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I was going to let you know, and come +down in a few days—there was some business to do +here. Dear old Allan! I'm aching to get a stranglehold +on him!"</p> + +<p>"Yes—he'll be so glad—there's so much to say!"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know whom I should find here."</p> + +<p>"We've had Clytie look after both houses—sometimes +we've rented mine—and almost every summer +we've come here."</p> + +<p>"You know I didn't dream I was rich until I got +here. The lawyer says they've advertised, but I've +been away from everything most of the time—not +looking out for advertisements. I can't understand +the old gentleman, when I was such a reprobate +and Allan was always such a thoroughly decent +chap."</p> + +<p>"Oh, hardly a reprobate!"</p> + +<p>"Worse, Nance—an ass—think of my talking to that +dear old soul as I did—taking twenty minutes off to +win him from his lifelong faith. I shudder when I +remember it. And yet I honestly thought he might +be made to see things my way."</p> + +<p>Their speech had been quick, and her eyes were +fastened upon his with a look from the old days striving +in her to bring back that big moment of their last parting +—that singular moment when they blindly groped for +each other but had perforce to be content with one +poor, trembling handclasp! Had that trembling been +a weakness or a strength? For all time since—and +increasingly during the later years—secret memories +of it had wonderfully quickened a life that would otherwise +have tended to fall dull, torpid, stubborn. It was +not that their hands had met, but that they had trembled +—those two strange hands that had both repelled +and coerced each other—faltering at last into that long +moment of triumphant certainty.</p> + +<p>Under the first light words with Bernal this memory +had welled up anew in her with a mighty power before +which she was as a leaf in the wind. Then, all at once, +she saw that they had become dazed and speechless +above this present clasp—the yielding, yet opposing, +of those all-knowing, never-forgetting hands. There +followed one swift mutual look of bewilderment. Then +their hands fell apart and with little awkward laughs +they turned to Clytie.</p> + +<p>They were presently at table, Clytie in a trance of +ecstatic watchfulness for emptied plates, broken only +by reachings and urgings of this or that esteemed fleshpot.</p> + +<p>Under the ready talk that flowed, Nancy had opportunity +to observe the returned one. And now his +strangeness vaguely hurt her. The voice and the face +were not those that had come to secret life in her heart +during the years of his absence. Here was not the +laughing boy she had known, with his volatile, Lucifer-like +charm of light-hearted recklessness in the face of +destiny. Instead, a thinned, shy face rose before her, +a face full of awkwardness and dreaming, troubled and +absent; a face that one moment appealed by its defenseless +forgetfulness, and the next, coerced by a look eloquent +of tested strength.</p> + +<p>As she watched him, there were two of her: one, the +girl dreaming forward out of the past, receptive of one +knew not what secrets from inner places; the other, +the vivid, alert woman—listening, waiting, judging. +She it was whose laugh came often to make of her face +the perfect whole out of many little imperfections.</p> + +<p>Later, when they sat in the early summer night, under +a moon blurred to a phantom by the mist, when the +changed lines of his face were no longer relentless and +they two became little more than voices and remembered +presences to each other, she began to find him +indeed unchanged. Even his voice had in an hour +curiously lost that hurting strangeness. As she listened +she became absent, almost drowsy with memories of +that far night when his voice was quite the same and +their hands had trembled together—with such prescience +that through all the years her hand was to feel +the groping of his.</p> + +<p>Yet awkward enough was that first half-hour of +their sitting side by side in the night, on the wide piazza +of his old home. Before them the lawn stretched +unbroken to the other big house, where Nancy had +wondered her way to womanhood. Empty now it was, +darkened as those years of her dreaming girlhood must +be to the present. Should she enter it, she knew the +house would murmur with echoes of other days; there +would be the wraith of the girl she once was flitting as +of old through its peopled rooms.</p> + +<p>And out there actually before her was the stretch of +lawn where she had played games of tragic pretense +with the imperious, dreaming boy. Vividly there came +back that late afternoon when the monster of Bernal's +devising had frightened them for the last time—when +in a sudden flash of insight they had laughed the thing +away forever and faced each other with a certain half-joyous, +half-foolish maturity of understanding. One +day long after this she had humorously bewailed to +Bernal the loss of their child's faith in the Gratcher. +He had replied that, as an institution, the Gratcher was +imperishable—that it was brute humanity's instinctive +negation to the incredible perfections of life; that while +the child's Gratcher was not the man's, the latter was +yet of the same breed, however it might be refined by +the subtleties of maturity: that the man, like the child, +must fashion some monster of horror to deter him +when he hears God's call to live.</p> + +<p>She had not been able to understand, nor did she +now. She was looking out to the two trees where once +her hammock had swung—to the rustic chair, now falling +apart from age, from which Bernal had faced her +that last evening. Then with a start she was back in +the present. Nancy of the old days must be shut fat +in the old house. There she might wander and wonder +endlessly among the echoes and the half-seen faces, but +never could she come forth; over the threshold there +could pass only the wife of Allan Linford.</p> + +<p>Quick upon this realisation came a sharp fear of the +man beside her—a fear born of his hand's hold upon +hers when they had met. She shrank under the memory +of it, with a sudden instinct of the hunted. Then +from her new covert of reserve she dared to peer cautiously +at him, seeking to know how great was her peril +—to learn what measure of defense would best insure +her safety—recognising fearfully the traitor in her own +heart.</p> + +<p>Their first idle talk had died, and she noted with new +alarm that they had been silent for many minutes. +This could not safely be—this insidious, barrier-destroying +silence. She seemed to hear his heart beating +high from his own sense of peril. But would he +help her? Would he not rather side with that wretched +traitor within her, crying out for the old days—would +he not still be the proud fool who would suffer no man's +law but his own? She shivered at the thought of his +nearness—of his momentous silence—of his treacherous +ally.</p> + +<p>She stirred in her chair to look in where Clytie bustled +between kitchen and dining-room. Her movement +aroused him from his own abstraction. For a +breathless stretch of time she was frozen to inertness by +sheer terror. Would that old lawless spirit utter new +blasphemies, giving fearful point to them now? Would +the old eager hand come again upon hers with a boy's +pleading and a man's power? And what of her own +secret guilt? She had cherished the memory of him and +across space had responded to him through that imperious +need of her heart. Swiftly in this significant +moment she for the first time saw herself with critical +eyes—saw that in her fancied security she had unwittingly +enthroned the hidden traitor. More and more +poignant grew her apprehension as she felt his eyes +upon her and divined that he was about to speak. With +a little steadying of the lips, with eyes that widened at +him in the dim light, she waited for the sound of his +voice—waited as one waits for something "terrible and +dear"—the whirlwind that might destroy utterly, or +pass—to leave her forever exulting in a new sense of +power against elemental forces.</p> + +<p>"Would you mind if I smoked, Nance?"</p> + +<p>She stared stupidly. So tense had been her strain +that the words were mere meaningless blows that left her +quivering. He thought she had not heard.</p> + +<p>"Would you mind my pipe—and this very mild +mixture?"</p> + +<p>She blessed him for the respite.</p> + +<p>"Smoke, of course!" she managed to say.</p> + +<p>She watched him closely, still alert, as he stuffed the +tobacco into his pipe-bowl from a rubber pouch. Then +he struck the match and in that moment she suffered +another shock. The little flame danced out of the darkness, +and wavering, upward shadows played over a face +of utter quietness. The relaxed shoulders drooped sideways +in the chair, the body placidly sprawled, one +crossed leg gently waving. The shaded eye surveyed +some large and tranquil thought—and in that eye the +soul sat remote, aloof from her as any star.</p> + +<p>She sank back in her chair with a long, stealthy +breath of relief—a relief as cold as stone. She had not +felt before that there was a chill in the wide sweetness of +the night. Now it wrapped her round and slowly, +with a soft brutality, penetrated to her heart.</p> + +<p>The silence grew too long. With a shrugging effort +she surmounted herself and looked again toward the +alien figure looming unconcerned in the gloom. A +warm, super-personal sense of friendliness came upon +her. Her intellect awoke to inquiries. She began to +question him of his days away, and soon he was talking +freely enough, between pulls of his pipe.</p> + +<p>"You know, Nance, I was a prodigal—only when I +awoke I had no father to go to. Poor grandad! What +a brutal cub I was! That has always stuck in my mind. +I was telling you about that cold wet night in Denver. +I had found a lodging in the police station. There +were others as forlorn—and Nance—did you ever realise +the buoyancy of the human mind? It's sublime. +We rejected ones sat there, warming ourselves, chatting, +and pretty soon one man found there were thirteen of us. +You would have thought that none of them could fear +bad luck—worse luck—none of them could have been +more dismally situated. But, do you know? most of +those fellows became nervous—as apprehensive of bad +luck as if they had been pampered princes in a time of +revolution. I was one of the two that volunteered to +restore confidence by bringing in another man.</p> + +<p>"We found an undersized, insignificant-looking chap +toddling aimlessly along the street a few blocks away +from the station. We grappled with him and hustled +him back to the crowd. He slept with us on the floor, +and no one paid any further attention to him, except +to remark that he talked to himself a good bit. He and +I awoke earliest next morning. I asked him if he was +hungry and he said he was. So I bought two fair breakfasts +with the money I'd saved for one good one, and we +started out of town. This chap said he was going that +way, and I had made up my mind to find a certain friend +of mine—a chap named Hoover. The second day out +I discovered that this queer man was the one who'd +been turning Denver upside down for ten days, healing +the halt and the blind. He was running away because +he liked a quieter life."</p> + +<p>He stopped, laughing softly, as if in remembrance— +until she prompted him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he said, 'Father' had commanded him to go +into the wilderness to fast. He was always talking +familiarly with 'Father,' as we walked. So I stayed +by him longer than I meant to—he seemed so helpless— +and I happened at that time to be looking for the true +God."</p> + +<p>"Did you find him, Bernal?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes!"</p> + +<p>"In this strange man?"</p> + +<p>"In myself. It's the same old secret, Nance, that +people have been discovering for ages—but it is a secret +only until after you learn it for yourself. The only +true revelation from God is here in man—in the human +heart. I had to be years alone to find it out, Nance— +I'd had so much of that Bible mythology stuffed into +me—but I mustn't bore you with it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I must know, Bernal—you don't dream how +greatly I need at this moment to believe <i>something</i>— +more than you ever did!"</p> + +<p>"It's simple, Nance. It's the only revelation in +which the God of yesterday gives willing place to the +better God of to-day—only here does the God of to-day +say, 'Thou shalt have no other God before me but the +God of to-morrow who will be more Godlike than I. +Only in this way can we keep our God growing always +a little beyond us—so that to-morrow we shall not find +ourselves surpassing him as the first man you would meet +out there on the street surpasses the Christian God even +in the common virtues. That was the fourth dimension +of religion that I wanted, Nance—faith in a God +that a fearless man could worship."</p> + +<p>He lighted his pipe again, and as the match blazed +up she saw the absent look still in his eyes. By it she +realised how far away from her he was—realised it +with a little sharp sense of desolation. He smoked +a while before speaking.</p> + +<p>"Out there in the mountains, Nance, I thought about +these things a long time—the years went before I knew +it. At first I stayed with this healing chap, only after +a while he started back to teach again and they found +him dead. He believed he had a mission to save the +world, and that he would live until he accomplished it. +But there he was, dead for want of a little food. Then +I stayed a long time alone—until I began to feel that I, +too, had something for the world. It began to burn in +my bones. I thought of him, dead and the world not +caring that he hadn't saved it—not even knowing it was +lost. But I kept thinking—a man can be so much more +than himself when he is alone—and it seemed to me +that I saw at least two things the world needed to know +—two things that would teach men to stop being +cowards and leaners."</p> + +<p>Her sympathy was quick and ardent.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Bernal," she said warmly, "you made me +believe when you believed nothing—and now, when I +need it above all other times, you make me believe +again! And you've come back with a message! How +glorious!"</p> + +<p>He smiled musingly.</p> + +<p>"I started with one, Nance—one that had grown in +me all those years till it filled my life and made me put +away everything. I didn't accept it at first. It found +me rebellious—wanting to live on the earth. Then +there came a need to justify myself—to show that I was +not the mere vicious unbeliever poor grandad thought +me. And so I fought to give myself up—and I won. I +found the peace of the lone places."</p> + +<p>His voice grew dreamy—ceased, as if that peace were +indeed too utter for words. Then with an effort he +resumed:</p> + +<p>"But after a while the world began to rumble in my +ears. A man can't cut himself off from it forever. God +has well seen to that! As the message cleared in my +mind, there grew a need to give it out. This seemed +easy off there. The little puzzles that the world makes +so much of solved themselves for me. I saw them to be +puzzles of the world's own creating—all artificial—all +built up—fashioned clumsily enough from man's brute +fear of the half-God, half-devil he has always made in +his own image.</p> + +<p>"But now that I'm here, Nance, I find myself already +a little bewildered. The solution of the puzzles is as +simple as ever, but the puzzles themselves are more +complex as I come closer to them—so complex that my +simple answer will seem only a vague absurdity."</p> + +<p>He paused and she felt his eyes upon her—felt that he +had turned from his abstractions to look at her more +personally.</p> + +<p>"Even since meeting you, Nance," he went on with +an odd, inward note in his voice, "I've been wondering +if Hoover could by some chance have been right. When +I left, Hoover said I was a fool—a certain common +variety of fool."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm sure you're not—at least, not the common +kind. I dare say that a man must be a certain kind of +fool to think he can put the world forward by leaps and +bounds. I think he must be a fool to assume that the +world wants truth when it wants only to be assured that +it has already found the truth for itself. The man who +tells it what it already believes is never called a fool— +and perhaps he isn't. Indeed, I've come to think he is +less than a fool—that he's a mere polite echo. But oh, +Bernal, hold to your truth! Be the simple fool and +worry the wise in the cages they have built around +themselves."</p> + +<p>She was leaning eagerly forward, forgetful of all save +that her starved need was feasting royally.</p> + +<p>"Don't give up; don't parrot the commoner fool's +conceits back to him for the sake of his solemn approval. +Let those of his kind give him what he wants, while +you meet those who must have more. I'm one of them, +Bernal. At this moment I honestly don't know whether +I'm a bad woman or a good one. And I'm frightened— +I'm so defenseless! Some little soulless circumstance +may make me decisively good or bad—and I don't +want to be bad! But give me what I want—I must +have that, regardless of what it makes me."</p> + +<p>He was silent for a time, then at last spoke:</p> + +<p>"I used to think you were a rebel, Nance. Your +eyes betrayed it, and the corners of your mouth went up +the least little bit, as if they'd go further up before they +went down—as if you'd laugh away many solemn +respectabilities. But that's not bad. There are more +things to laugh at than are dreamed of. That's +Hoover's entire creed, by the way."</p> + +<p>She remembered the name from that old tale of +Caleb Webster's.</p> + +<p>"Is—is this friend of yours—Mr. Hoover—in good +health?"</p> + +<p>"Fine—weighs a hundred and eighty. He and I +have a ranch on the Wimmenuche—only Hoover's +been doing most of the work while I thought about +things. I see that. Hoover says one can't do much +for the world but laugh at it. He has a theory of his +own. He maintains that God set this planet whirling, +then turned away for a moment to start another universe +or something. He says that when the Creator +glances back at us again, to find this poor, scrubby little +earth-family divided over its clod, the strong robbing +the weak in the midst of plenty for all—enslaving them +to starve and toil and fight, spending more for war than +would keep the entire family in luxury; that when God +looks closer, in his amazement, and finds that, next to +greed, the matter of worshipping Him has made most of +the war and other deviltry—the hatred and persecution +and killing among all the little brothers—he will laugh +aloud before he reflects, and this little ballful of funny, +passionate insects will be blown to bits. He says if the +world comes to an end in his lifetime, he will know God +has happened to look this way, and perhaps overheard +a bishop say something vastly important about Apostolic +succession or the validity of the Anglican Orders +or Transubstantiation or 'communion in two kinds' +or something. He insists that a sense of humour is our +only salvation—that only those will be saved who happen +to be laughing for the same reason that God laughs +when He looks at us—that the little Mohammedans +and Christians and things will be burned for their +blasphemy of believing God not wise and good enough +to save them all, Mohammedan and Christian alike, +though not thinking excessively well of either; that only +those laughing at the whole gory nonsense will go into +everlasting life by reason of their superior faith in God."</p> + +<p>"Of course that's plausible, and yet it's radical. +Hoover's father was a bishop, and I think Hoover is just +a bit narrow from early training. He can't see that lots +of people who haven't a vestige of humour are nevertheless +worth saving. I admit that saving them will be a +thankless task. God won't be able to take very much +pleasure in it, but in strict justice he will do it—even +if Hoover does regard it as a piece of extravagant +sentimentality."</p> + +<p>A little later she went in. She left him gazing far +off into the night, filled with his message, dull to memory +on the very scene that evoked in her own heart so +much from the old days. And as she went she laughed +inwardly at a certain consternation the woman of her +could not wholly put down; for she had blindly hurled +herself against a wall—the wall of his message. But it +was funny, and the message chained her interest. She +could, she thought, strengthen his resolution to give it +out—help him in a thousand ways.</p> + +<p>As she fell asleep the thought of him hovered and +drifted on her heart softly, as darkness rests on tired +eyes.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIC"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Remorse of Wondering Nancy</h3> + +<p>She awoke to the sun, glad-hearted and made newly +buoyant by one of those soundless black sleeping-nights +that come only to the town-tired when they have +first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the restoration +she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation +the black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed +back of the temple, and held there, a tangled skein of +hair that had thrown the dusk of a deep wood about her +eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming +smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile +that wakened to a laugh as she looked—a little womanish +chuckle of confident joy, as one alone speaking +aloud in an overflowing moment.</p> + +<p>An hour later she was greeting Bernal where the sun +washed through the big room.</p> + +<p>"Young life sings in me!" she said, and felt his lightening +eyes upon her lips as she smiled.</p> + +<p>There were three days of it—days in which, however, +she grew to fear those eyes, lest they fall upon her +in judgment. She now saw that his eyes had changed +most. They gave the face its look of absence, of dreaming +awkwardness. They had the depth of a hazy sky +at times, then cleared to a coldly lucid glance that would +see nothing ever to fear, within or without; that would +hide no falseness nor yet be deceived by any—a deadly +half-shut, appraising coolness that would know false +from true, even though they mated amicably and distractingly +in one mind.</p> + +<p>The effect of this glance which she found upon herself +from time to time was to make Nancy suspect herself— +to question her motives and try her defenses. To +her amazement she found these latter weak under +Bernal's gaze, and there grew in her a tender remorse +for the injustice she had done her husband. From little +pricking suspicions on the first day she came on the +last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal +had opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, +flippantly misjudged a good man—good in all essentials. +She was contrite for her unwifely lack of abnegation. +She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's eyes: +she was less than she had thought—he was more. +Bernal had proved these things to her all unconsciously. +Now her heart was flooded with gratitude for his simple, +ready, heartfelt praise of his brother—of his unfailing +good-temper, his loyalty, his gifts, his modesty so often +distressed by outspoken admiration of his personal +graces. She listened and applauded with a heart that +renewed itself in all good resolves of devotion. Even +when Bernal talked of himself, he made her feel that +she had been unjust to Allan.</p> + +<p>Little by little she drew many things from him—the +story of his journeyings and of his still more intricate +mental wanderings. And it thrilled her to think he +had come back with a message—even though he already +doubted himself. Sometimes he would be jocular +about it and again hot with a passion to express himself.</p> + +<p>"Nance," he said on another night, "when you have +a real faith in God a dead man is a miracle not less than +a living—and a live man dying is quite as wondrous as +a dead man living. Do you know, I was staggered one +day by discovering that the earth didn't give way when +I stepped on it? The primitive man knowing little of +physics doesn't know that a child's hand could move +the earth through space—but for a certain mysterious +resistance. That's God. I felt him all that day, at +every step, pushing the little globe back under me— +counteracting me—resisting me—ever so gently. Those +are times when you feel you must tell it, Nance—when +the God-consciousness comes."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Bernal, if you could—if you could come back +to do what your grandfather really wanted you to do— +to preach something worth while!"</p> + +<p>"I doubt the need for my message, Nance. I need +for myself a God that could no more spare a Hottentot +than a Pope—but I doubt if the world does. No one +would listen to me—I'm only a dreamer. Once when +I was small they gave me a candy cane for Christmas. +It was a thing I had long worshipped in shop-windows +—actually worshipped as the primitive man worshipped +his idol. I can remember how sad I was when no one +else worshipped with me, or paid the least attention +to my treasure. I suspect I shall meet the same +indifference now. And I hope I'll have the same philosophy. +I remember I brought myself to eat the cane, +which I suppose is the primary intention regarding +them—and perhaps the fruits of one's faith should be +eaten quite as practically."</p> + +<p>They had sent no word to Allan, agreeing it were better +fun to surprise him. When they took the train together +on the third day, the wife not less than the brother +looked forward to a joyous reunion with him. And +now that Nancy had proved in her heart the perverse +unwifeliness of her old attitude and was eager to begin +the symbolic rites of her atonement, it came to her to +wonder how Bernal would have judged her had she +persisted in that first wild impulse of rebellion. She +wanted to see from what degree of his reprobation she +had saved herself. She would be circuitous in her +approach.</p> + +<p>"You remember, Bernal, that night you went away +—how you said there was no moral law under the sky +for you but your own?"</p> + +<p>He smiled, and above the noise of the train his voice +came to her as his voice of old came above the noise of +the years.</p> + +<p>"Yes—Nance—that was right. No moral law but +mine. I carried out my threat to make them all find +their authority in me."</p> + +<p>"Then you still believe yours is the only authority?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; it sounds licentious and horrible, doesn't it; +but there are two queer things about it—the first is that +man quite naturally <i>wishes</i> to be decent, and the second +is that, when he does come to rely wholly upon the +authority within himself, he finds it a stricter disciplinarian +than ever the decalogue was. One needs only +ordinary good taste to keep the ten commandments— +the moral ones. A man may observe them all and still +be morally rotten! But it's no joke to live by one's own +law, and yet that's all anybody has to keep him right, +if we only knew it, Nance—barring a few human statutes +against things like murder and keeping one's +barber-shop open on the Sabbath—the ruder offenses +which no gentleman ever wishes to commit.</p> + +<p>"And must poor woman be ruled by her own God, +too?"</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Well, it's not so long ago that the fathers of the +Church were debating in council whether she had a +soul or not, charging her with bringing sin, sickness +and death into the world."</p> + +<p>"Exactly. St. John Damascene called her 'a daughter +of falsehood and a sentinel of hell'; St. Jerome came +in with 'Woman is the gate of the devil, the road to +iniquity, the sting of the scorpion'; St. Gregory, I +believe, considered her to have no comprehension of +goodness; pious old Tertullian complimented her with +corrupting those whom Satan dare not attack; and then +there was St. Chrysostom—really he was much more +charitable than his fellow Saints—it always seemed to +me he was not only more humane but more human— +more interested, you might say. You know he said, +'Woman is a necessary evil, a domestic peril, a deadly +fascination, a painted ill.' It always seemed to me St. +Chrysostom had a past. But really, I think they all +went too far. I don't know woman very well, but I +suspect she has to find her moral authority where man +finds his—within herself."</p> + +<p>"You know what made me ask—a little woman in +town came to see Allan not long ago to know if she +mightn't leave her husband—she had what seemed to +her sufficient reason."</p> + +<p>"I imagine Allan said 'no.'"</p> + +<p>"He did. Would you have advised her differently?"</p> + +<p>"Bless you, no. I'd advise her to obey her priest. +The fact that she consulted him shows that she +has no law of her own. St. Paul said this wise +and deep thing: 'I know and am persuaded by the +Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; +but to him that esteemeth anything unclean, to him it +is unclean!'"</p> + +<p>"Then it lay in her own view of it. If she had felt +free to go, she would have done right to go."</p> + +<p>"Naturally."</p> + +<p>"Yet Allan talked to her about the sanctity of the +home."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if the sanctity of the home is maintained by +keeping unwilling mates together, Nance. I can +imagine nothing less sanctified than a home of that +sort—peopled by a couple held together against the +desire of either or both. The willing mates need no +compulsion, and they're the ones, it seems to me, that +have given the home its reputation for sanctity. I never +thought much about divorce, but I can see that much +at once. Of course, Allan takes the Church's attitude, +which survives from a time when a woman was +bought and owned; when the God of Moses classed +her with the ox and the ass as a thing one must not +covet."</p> + +<p>"You really think if a woman has made a failure of +her marriage she has a right to break it."</p> + +<p>"That seems sound as a general law, Nance—better +for her to make a hundred failures, for that matter, +than stay meekly in the first because of any superstition. +But, mind you, if she suspects that the Church may, +after all, have succeeded in tying up the infinite with +red-tape and sealing-wax—believes that God is a large, +dark notary-public who has recorded her marriage in a +book—she will do better to stay. Doubtless the conceit +of it will console her—that the God who looks after the +planets has an eye on her, to see that she makes but one +guess about so uncertain a thing as a man."</p> + +<p>"Then you would advise—"</p> + +<p>"No, I wouldn't. The woman who has to be advised +should never take advice. I dare say divorce is quite as +hazardous as marriage, though possibly most people +divorce with a somewhat riper discretion than they +marry with. But the point is that neither marriage nor +divorce can be considered a royal road to happiness, and +a woman ought to get her impetus in either case from +her own inner consciousness. I should call divorcing +by advice quite as silly as marrying by it."</p> + +<p>"But it comes at last to her own law in her own +heart?"</p> + +<p>"When she has awakened to it—when she honestly +feels it. God's law for woman is the same as for man— +and he has but two laws for both that are universal and +unchanging: The first is, they are bound at all times +to desire happiness; the second is, that they can be +happy only by being wise—which is what we sometimes +mean when we say 'good,' but of course no one knows +what wisdom is for all, nor what goodness is for all, +because we are not mechanical dolls of the same pattern. +That's why I reverence God—the scheme is so +ingenious—so productive of variety in goodness and +wisdom. Probably an evil marriage is as hard to be +quit of as any vice. People persist long after the +sanctity has gone—because they lack moral courage. +Hoover was quite that way with cigarettes. If some +one could only have made Jim believe that God had +joined him to cigarettes, and that he mustn't quit them +or he'd shatter the foundations of our domestic integrity +—he'd have died in cheerful smoke—very soon after a +time when he says I saved his life. All he wanted was +some excuse to go on smoking. Most people are so— +slothful-souled. But remember, don't advise your +friend in town. Her asking advice is a sign that she +shouldn't have it. She is not of the coterie that Paul +describes—if you don't mind Paul once more—'Happy +is he that condemneth not himself in that which he +alloweth.'"</p> + +<p>There had come to the woman a vast influx of dignity +—a joyous increase in the volume of that new feeling +that called to her husband. She would have gone back, +but one of the reasons would have been because she +thought it "right"—because it was what the better +world did! But now—ah! now—she was going unhampered +by that compulsion which galls even the best. +She was free to stay away, but of her own glad, loyal +will she was going back to the husband she had treated +unjustly, judged by too narrow a standard.</p> + +<p>"Allan will be so astonished and delighted," she said, +when the coupé rolled out of the train-shed.</p> + +<p>She remembered now with a sort of pride the fine, +unflinching sternness with which he had condemned +divorce. In a man of principles so staunch one might +overlook many surface eccentricities.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIIC"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Flexible Mind of a Pleased Husband</h3> + +<p>As they entered the little reception-room from the +hall, the doors of the next room were pushed apart and +they saw Allan bowing out Mrs. Talwin Covil, a meek, +suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable feminine +corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose +only sister she was.</p> + +<p>The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, +were quick for Allan's face, resting fondly there during +the seconds in which he was changing from the dead +astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal. +During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, +the pumping of each other's arms that followed, Nancy +turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had paused before her.</p> + +<p>"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she +urged, "while those boys go back there to have it out!"</p> + +<p>Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, +seeming not loath to tell those things she had, while +Nancy leaned back and listened duteously for a perfunctory +ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to +Allan—and to Bernal—as children will run little journeys +ahead of a slow-moving elder.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly something that the troubled little +woman was saying fixed her attention, pulling up her +wandering thoughts with a jerk.</p> + +<p>"——and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it +quite confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm +sure he would wish you to know. Of course it is a +delicate matter—I can readily understand, as he +says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's +words and apply them generally—forgetting that each +case requires a different point of view. But with Harold +it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful case of +mismating—due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless +chivalry—barely twenty-eight, mind you—as if a man +nowadays knows his mind at all well before thirty-five. +Of course, divorce is an evil that, broadly speaking, +threatens the sanctity of our home life—no one understands +that better than your husband—and re-marriage +after divorce is usually an outrageous scandal—one, +indeed, altogether too common—sometimes I wonder +what we're coming to, it seems to be done so thoughtlessly +—but individual instances are different—'exceptions +prove the rule,' you know, as the old saying goes. +Now Harold is ready to settle down, and the girl is of +excellent family and all that—quite the social and +moral brace he needs, in fact."</p> + +<p>Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled.</p> + +<p>"But—you speak of your son, Harold—is he not +already married?"</p> + +<p>"That's it, my dear. You know what a funny, +bright, mischievous boy Harold is—even a little deliciously +wild at times—doubtless you read of his marriage +when it occurred—how these newspapers do relish +anything of the sort—she was a theatrical young woman +—what they call a 'show girl,' I believe. Humph!— +with reason, I <i>must</i> say! Of all the egregious and +inveterate showiness! My dear, she is positively a +creature! Oh, if they'd only invent a monocle that +would let a young man pierce the glamour of the footlights. +I pledge you my word, she's—but never mind +that! Harold was a thoughtless, restless boy—not bad, +you know, but heedless. Why, he was quite the same +about business. He began to speculate, and of course, +being brother Cyrus's nephew, his advantage was considerable. +But he suddenly declared he wouldn't be a +broker any more—and you'd never guess his absurd +reason: simply because some stock he held or didn't +hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the +street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill! He +said that this brought him to his senses. He says to +me, 'Mater, I've not met Mr. Sage, you know, but from +what I hear of him it would be irrational to place myself +in a position where I should have to experience emotion +of any sort at news of the old gentleman's taking-off. +An event so agreeable to the natural order of God's +providence, so plausible, so seemly, should not be +endowed with any arbitrary and artificial significance, +especially of a monetary character—one must be able +to view it absolutely without emotion of any sort, either +of regret or rejoicing—one must remain conscientiously +indifferent as to when this excellent old gentleman +passes on to the Golden Shore'——but you know the +breezy way in which Harold will sometimes talk. Only +now he seems really sobered by this new attachment——"</p> + +<p>"But if he is already married——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes—if you can call it married—a ceremony +performed by one of those common magistrates—quite +without the sanction of the Church—but all that is +past, and he is now ready to marry one who can be a +wife to him—only my conscience did hurt me a little, +and brother Cyrus said to me, 'You see Linford and tell +him I sent you. Linford is a man of remarkable breadth, +of rare flexibility.'"</p> + +<p>"Yes, and of course Allan was emphatically discouraging. +" Again she was recalling the fervour with +which he had declared himself on this point on that last +day when he actually made her believe in him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the Doctor is broad! He is what I should call +adaptable. He said by all means to extricate Harold +from this wretched predicament, not only on account of +the property interests involved, but on account of his +moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he +holds deathlessly to the indissolubility of the marriage +tie, still it is unreasonable to suppose that God ever +joined Harold to a person so much his inferior, and +that we may look forward to the real marriage—that +on which the sanctity of the home is truly based—when +the law has freed him from this boyish entanglement. +Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that my boy can +have a wife from his own class—and still have it right +up there—with Him, you know!" she concluded with +an upward glance, as Nancy watched her with eyes +grown strangely quiet, almost steely—watched her as +one might watch an ant. She had the look of one whose +will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some +great inner tumult.</p> + +<p>When her caller had gone she dropped back into the +chair, absently pulling a glove through the fingers of +one hand—her bag and parasol on the floor at her feet. +One might have thought her on the point of leaving +instead of having just come. The shadows were +deepening in the corners of the room and about her +half-shut eyes.</p> + +<p>A long time she listened to the animated voices of the +brothers. At last the doors were pushed apart and they +came out, Allan with his hand on Bernal's shoulder.</p> + +<p>"There's your bag—now hurry upstairs—the maid +will show you where."</p> + +<p>As Bernal went out, Nancy looked up at her husband +with a manner curiously quiet.</p> + +<p>"Well, Nance—" He stepped to the door to see +if Bernal was out of hearing—"Bernal pleases me +in the way he talks about the old gentleman's estate. +Either he is most reasonable, or I have never known my +true power over men."</p> + +<p>Her face was inscrutable. Indeed, she only half +heard.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Covil has been telling me some of your broader +views on divorce."</p> + +<p>The words shot from her lips with the crispness of +an arrow, going straight to the bull's-eye. </p> + +<p>He glanced quickly at her, the hint of a frown drawing +about his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Covil should have been more discreet. The +authority of a priest in these matters is a thing of delicate +adjustment—the law for one may not be the law +for all. These are not matters to gossip of."</p> + +<p>"So it seems. I was thinking of your opposite counsel +to Mrs. Eversley."</p> + +<p>"There—really, you know I read minds, at times— +somehow I knew that would be the next thing you'd +speak of."</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"The circumstances are entirely different—I may +add that—that any intimation of inconsistency will be +very unpleasing to me—very!"</p> + +<p>"I can see that the circumstances are different—the +Eversleys are not what you would call 'important factors' +in the Church—and besides—that is a case of a +wife leaving her husband."</p> + +<p>"Nance—I'm afraid you're <i>not</i> pleasing me—if I +catch your drift. Must I point out the difference—the +spiritual difference? That misguided woman wanted +to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her +pride—her vanity—by certain alleged attentions to +other women, concerning the measure of which I had +no knowledge. That was a case where the cross must +be borne for the true refining of that dross of vanity +from her soul. Her husband is of her class, and her +life with him will chasten her. While here—what have +we here?"</p> + +<p>He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when +he prepared a sermon.</p> + +<p>"Here we have a flagrant example of what is nothing +less than spiritual miscegenation—that's it!—why didn't +I think of that phrase before—spiritual miscegenation. +A rattle-brained boy, with the connivance of a common +magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance with a person +inferior to him in every point of view—birth, breeding, +station, culture, wealth—a person, moreover, who +will doubtless be glad to relinquish her so-called rights +for a sum of money. Can that, I ask you, be called a +<i>marriage?</i> Can we suppose an all-wise God to have +joined two natures so ill-adapted, so mutually exclusive, +so repellent to each other after that first glamour is past. +Really, such a supposition is not only puerile but irreverent. +It is the conventional supposition, I grant, and +theoretically, the unvarying supposition of the Church; +but God has given us reasoning powers to use fearlessly +—not to be kept superstitiously in the shackles of +any tradition whatsoever. Why, the very Church +itself from its founding is an example of the wisdom of +violating tradition when it shall seem meet—it has +always had to do this."</p> + +<p>"I see, Allan—every case must be judged by itself; +every marriage requires a special ruling——"</p> + +<p>"Well—er—exactly—only don't get to fancying that +you could solve these problems. It's difficult enough +for a priest."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm positive a mere woman couldn't grapple +with them—she hasn't the mind to! All she is capable +of is to choose who shall think for her."</p> + +<p>"And of course it would hardly do to announce that +I had counselled a certain procedure of divorce and +re-marriage—no matter how flagrant the abuse, nor +how obvious the spiritual equity of the step. People at +large are so little analytical."</p> + +<p>"'Flexible,' Mr. Browett told his sister you were. +He was right—you <i>are</i> flexible, Allan—more so than I +ever suspected."</p> + +<p>"Nance—you <i>please</i> me—you are a good girl. Now +I'm going up to Bernal. Bernal certainly pleases me. +Of course I shall do the handsome thing by him if he +acts along the lines our talk has indicated."</p> + +<p>She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had +taken two hours before, when Aunt Bell came in, +dressed for dinner.</p> + +<p>"Mercy, child! Do you know how late it is?"</p> + +<p>"What did you say, Aunt Bell?"</p> + +<p>"I say do you know how late it is?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—not too late!"</p> + +<p>"Not too late—for what?"</p> + +<p>There was a pause, then she said: "Aunt Bell, when +a woman comes to make her very last effort at self-deception, +why does she fling herself into it with such +abandon—such pretentious flourishes of remorse— +and things? Is it because some under layer of her soul +knows it will be the last and will have it a thorough +test? I wonder how much of an arrant fraud a woman +may really be to herself, even in her surest, happiest +moments."</p> + +<p>"There you are again, wondering, wondering— +instead of accepting things and dressing for dinner. +Have you seen Allan?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes—I've been seeing him for three days— +through a glass, darkly."</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell flounced on into the library, trailing something +perilously near a sniff.</p> + +<p>Bernal came down the stairs and stood in the door.</p> + +<p>"Well, Nance!" He went to stand before her and +she looked up to him. There was still light enough to +see his eyes—enough to see, also, that he was embarrassed.</p> + +<p>"Well—I've had quite a talk with Allan." He +laughed a little constrained, uneasy laugh, looking +quickly at her to see if she might be observing him. +"He's the same fine old chap, isn't he?" Quickly his +eyes again sought her face. "Yes, indeed, he's the +same old boy—a great old Allan—only he makes me +feel that I have changed, Nance."</p> + +<p>She arose from her chair, feeling cramped and restless +from sitting so long.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure you haven't changed, Bernal."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I must have!"</p> + +<p>He was looking at her very closely through the dusk.</p> + +<p>"Yes, we had an interesting talk," he said again.</p> + +<p>He reached out to take one of her hands, which he +held an instant in both his own. "He's a rare old +Allan, Nance!"</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIIIC"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Wheels within Wheels of the Great Machine</h3> + +<p>For three days the brothers were inseparable. There +were so many ancient matters to bring forward of which +each could remember but a half; so many new ones, of +which each must tell his own story. And there was a +matter of finance between them that had been brought +forward by Allan without any foolish delay. Each of +them spoke to Nancy about it.</p> + +<p>"Bernal has pleased me greatly," said her husband. +"He agrees that Grandfather Delcher could not have +been himself when he made that will—being made as it +was directly after he sent Bernal off. He finds it +absurd that the old man, so firm a Christian, should +have disinherited a Christian, one devoted to the ministry +of Jesus, for an unbeliever like Bernal. It is true, I +talked to him in this strain myself, and I cannot deny +that I wield even a greater influence over men than +over women. I dare say I could have brought Bernal +around even had he been selfish and stubborn. By +putting a proposition forward as a matter of course, +one may often induce another to accept it as such, +whereas he might dispute it if it were put forward as at +all debatable. But as a matter of fact he required no +talking to; he accepted my views readily. The boy +doesn't seem to know the value of money. I really believe +he may decide to make over the whole of the property +to me. That is what I call a beautiful unselfishness. +But I shall do handsomely by him—probably he can +use some money in that cattle business. I had thought +first of ten thousand dollars, but doubtless half that +will be wiser. I shall insist upon his taking at least +half that. He will find that unselfishness is a game +two can play at."</p> + +<p>Nancy had listened to this absently, without comment. +Nor had Bernal moved her to speech when he +said, "You know, Allan is such a sensitive old chap— +you wouldn't guess how sensitive. His feelings were +actually hurt because I'd kept him out of grandad's +money all these years. He'd forgotten that I didn't +know I was doing it. Of course the old boy was thinking +what he'd have done in my place—but I think I can +make it right with him—I'm sure now he knows I +didn't mean to wrong him."</p> + +<p>Yet during this speech he had shot furtive little questioning +looks at her face, as if to read those thoughts he +knew she would not put into words.</p> + +<p>But she only smiled at Bernal. Her husband, however, +found her more difficult than ever after communicating +his news to her. He tried once to imagine +her being dissatisfied with him for some reason. But +this attempt he abandoned. Thereafter he attributed +her coldness, aloofness, silence, and moodiness to some +nervous malady peculiar to the modern woman. Bernal's +presence kept him from noting how really pronounced +and unwavering her aversion had become.</p> + +<p>Nor did Bernal note her attitude. Whatever he may +have read in Allan at those times when the look of cold +appraisement was turned full upon him, he had come +to know of his brother's wife only that she was Nancy of +the old days, strangely surviving to greet him and be +silent with him, or to wonder with him when he came +in out of that preposterous machine of many wheels that +they called the town. No one but Nancy saw anything +about it to wonder at.</p> + +<p>To Bernal, after his years in the big empty places, it +was a part of all the world and of all times compacted +in a small space. One might see in it ancient Jerusalem, +Syria, Persia, Rome and modern Babylon—with something +still peculiar and unclassifiable that one would +at length have to call New York. And to make it more +absorbing, the figures were always moving. Where so +many were pressed together each was weighted by a +thousand others—the rich not less than the poor; each +was stirred to quick life and each was being visibly worn +down by the ceaseless friction.</p> + +<p>When he had walked the streets for a week, he saw the +city as a huge machine, a machine to which one might +not even deliver a message without becoming a part of +it—a wheel of it. It was a machine always readjusting, +always perfecting, always repairing itself—casting out +worn or weak parts and taking in others—ever replacing +old wheels with new ones, and never disdaining any new +wheel that found its place—that could give its cogs to +the general efficiency, consenting to be worn down by +the unceasing friction.</p> + +<p>Looking down Broadway early one evening—a shining +avenue of joy—he thought of the times when he +had gazed across a certain valley of his West and +dreamed of bringing a message to this spot.</p> + +<p>Against the sky many electric signs flamed garishly. +Beneath them were the little grinding wheels of the +machine—satisfied, joyous, wisely sufficient unto themselves, +needing no message—least of all the simple old +truth he had to give. He tried to picture his message +blazing against the sky among the other legends: from +where he stood the three most salient were the names of +a popular pugilist, a malt beverage and a theatre. The +need of another message was not apparent.</p> + +<p>So he laughed at himself and went down into the +crowd foregathered in ways of pleasure, and there he +drank of the beer whose name was flaunted to the simple +stars. Truly a message to this people must be put +into a sign of electric bulbs; into a phonograph to be +listened to for a coin, with an automatic banjo accompaniment; +or it must be put upon the stage to be acted +or sung or danced! Otherwise he would be a wheel +rejected—a wheel ground up in striving to become a +part of the machine at a place where no wheel was +needed.</p> + +<p>For another experience cooling to his once warm +hopes, the second day of his visit Allan had taken him +to his weekly Ministers' Meeting—an affair less formidable +than its title might imply.</p> + +<p>A dozen or so good fellows of the cloth had luncheon +together each Tuesday at the house of one or another, +or at a restaurant; and here they talked shop or not as +they chose, the thing insisted upon being congeniality +—that for once in the week they should be secure from +bores.</p> + +<p>Here Presbyterian and Unitarian met on common +ground; Baptist, Catholic, Episcopalian, Congregationalist, +Methodist—all became brothers over the +soup. Weekly they found what was common and helpful +to all in discussing details of church administration, +matters of faith, methods of handling their charitable +funds; or the latest heresy trial. They talked of these +things amiably, often lightly. They were choice +spirits relaxed, who might be grave or gay, as they +listed.</p> + +<p>Their vein was not too serious the day Bernal was his +brother's guest, sitting between the very delightful +Father Riley and the exciting Unitarian, one Whittaker. +With tensest interest he listened to their talk.</p> + +<p>At first there was a little of Delitzsch and his Babel-Bible +addresses, brought up by Selmour, an amiable +Presbyterian of shining bare pate and cheerful red +beard, a man whom scandal had filliped ever so coyly +with a repute of leanings toward Universalism.</p> + +<p>This led to a brief discussion of the old and new +theology—Princeton standing for the old with its +definition of Christianity as "a piece of information +given supernaturally and miraculously"; Andover +standing for the new—so alleged Whittaker—with +many polite and ingenious evasions of this proposition +without actually repudiating it.</p> + +<p>The Unitarian, however, was held to be the least bit +too literal in his treatment of propositions not his own.</p> + +<p>Then came Pleydell, another high-church Episcopalian +who, over his chop and a modest glass of claret, +declared earnest war upon the whole Hegel-Darwinian-Wellhausen +school. His method of attack was to state +baldly the destructive conclusions of that school—that +most of the books of the Old Testament are literary +frauds, intentionally misrepresenting the development +of religion in Israel; that the whole Mosaic code is a +later fabrication and its claim to have been given in the +wilderness an historical falsehood. From this he +deduced that a mere glance at the Bible, as the higher +critics explain it, must convince the earnest Christian +that he can have no share in their views. "Deprive +Christianity of its supernatural basis," he said, "and +you would have a mere speculative philosophy. Deny +the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, and the Atonement +becomes meaningless. If we have not incurred +God's wrath through Adam's disobedience, we need +no Saviour. That is the way to meet the higher criticism, +" he concluded earnestly.</p> + +<p>As the only rule of the association was that no man +should talk long upon any matter, Floud, the fiery and +aggressive little Baptist, hereupon savagely reviewed a +late treatise on the ethnic Trinities, put out by a professor +of ecclesiastical history in a New England theological +seminary. Floud marvelled that this author +could retain his orthodox standing, for he viewed the +Bible as a purely human collection of imperfect writings, +the wonder-stories concerning the birth and death of +Jesus as deserving no credence, and denied to Christianity +any supernatural foundation. Polytheism was +shown to be the soil from which all trinitarian conceptions +naturally spring—the Brahmanic, Zoroastrian, +Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity— +the latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish +stalk. The author's conclusion, by which he reached +"an undogmatic gospel of the spirit, independent of all +creeds and forms—a gospel of love to God and man, +with another Trinity of Love, Truth and Freedom," +was particularly irritating to the disturbed Baptist, +who spoke bitterly of the day having dawned when +the Church's most dangerous enemies were those +critical vipers whom she had warmed in her own +bosom.</p> + +<p>Suffield, the gaunt, dark, but twinkling-eyed Methodist, +also sniffed at the conclusion of the ethnic-trinities +person. "We have an age of substitutes," he remarked. +"We have had substitutes for silk and sealskin—very +creditable substitutes, so I have been assured by a lady +in whom I have every confidence—substitutes for coffee, +for diamonds—substitutes for breakfast which are +widely advertised—substitutes for medicine—and now +we are coming to have substitutes for religion—even +a substitute for hell!"</p> + +<p>Hereupon he told of a book he had read, also written +by an orthodox professor of theology, in which the argument, +advanced upon scriptural evidence, was that the +wicked do not go into endless torment, but ultimately +shrivel and sink into a state of practical unconsciousness. +Yet the author had been unable to find any foundation +for universalism. This writer, Suffield explained, +holds that the curtain falls after the judgment on a lost +world. Nor is there probation for the soul after the +body dies. The Scriptures teach the ruin of the final +rejecters of Christ; Christ teaches plainly that they who +reject the Gospel will perish in the endless darkness of +night. But eternal punishment does not necessarily +mean eternal suffering; hence the hypothesis of the soul +gradually shrivelling for the sin of its unbelief.</p> + +<p>The amiable Presbyterian sniffed at this as a sentimental +quibble. Punishment ceases to be punishment +when it is not felt—one cannot punish a tree or an +unconscious soul. But this was the spirit of the age. +With the fires out in hell, no wonder we have an age of +sugar-candy morality and cheap sentimentalism.</p> + +<p>But here the Unitarian wickedly interrupted, to +remind his Presbyterian brother that his own church +had quenched those very certain fires that once burned +under the pit in which lay the souls of infants unbaptised.</p> + +<p>The amiable Presbyterian, not relishing this, still +amiably threw the gauntlet down to Father Riley, demanding +the Catholic view of the future of unbaptised +children.</p> + +<p>The speech of the latter was a mellow joy—a south +breeze of liquid consonants and lilting vowels finely +articulated. Perhaps it was not a little owing to the +good man's love for what he called "oiling the rusty +hinges of the King's English with a wee drop of the +brogue"; but, if so, the oil was so deftly spread that no +one word betrayed its presence. Rather was his whole +speech pervaded by this soft delight, especially when +his cherubic face, his pink cheeks glistening in certain +lights with a faint silvery stubble of beard, mellowed with +his gentle smile. It was so now, even when he spoke of +God's penalties for the souls of reprobate infants.</p> + +<p>"All theologians of the Mother Church are agreed," +replied the gracious father, "first, that infants dying +unbaptised are excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven. +Second, that they will not enjoy the beatific vision outside +of heaven. Third, that they will arise with adults +and be assembled for judgment on the last day. And, +fourth, that after the last day there will be but two +states, namely: a state of supernatural and supreme +felicity and a state of what, in a wide sense, we may +call damnation."</p> + +<p>Purlingly the good man went on to explain that +damnation is a state admitting of many degrees; and +that the unbaptised infant would not suffer in that state +the same punishment as the adult reprobate. While +the latter would suffer positive pains of mind and body +for his sins, the unfortunate infant would doubtless +suffer no pain of sense whatever. As to their being +exempt from the pain of loss, grieving over their exclusion +from the sight of God and the glories of His Kingdom, +it is more commonly held that they do not suffer +even this; that even if they know others are happier than +themselves, they are perfectly resigned to God's will and +suffer no pain of loss in regard to happiness not suited +to their condition.</p> + +<p>The Presbyterian called upon them to witness that his +church was thus not unique in attaining this sentimentality +regarding reprobate infants.</p> + +<p>Then little Floud cited the case of still another heretic +within the church, a professor in a western Methodist +university, who declared that biblical infallibility is a +superstitious and hurtful tradition; that all the miracles +are mere poetic fancies, incredible and untrue—even +irreverent; and that all spiritual truth comes to man +through his brain and conscience. Modern preaching, +according to the book of this heretic, lacks power +because so many churches cling to the tradition that +the Bible is infallible. It is the golden calf of their +worship; the palpable lie that gives the ring of insincerity +to all their moral exhortations.</p> + +<p>So the talk flowed on until the good men agreed that a +peculiarity of the time lay in this: that large numbers +of ministers within the church were publishing the +most revolutionary heresies while still clinging to some +shred of their tattered orthodoxy.</p> + +<p>Also they decided that it would not be without interest +to know what belief is held by the man of common +education and intelligence—the man who behaves correctly +but will not go to church.</p> + +<p>Here Father Riley sweetly reminded them—"No +questions are asked in the Mother Church, gentlemen, +that may not be answered with authority. In your +churches, without an authority superior to mere reason, +destructive questions will be asked more and more +frequently."</p> + +<p>Gravely they agreed that the church was losing its +hold on the people. That but for its social and charitable +activities, its state would be alarming.</p> + +<p>"<i>Your</i> churches!" Father Riley corrected with suave +persistence. "No church can endure without an infallible +head."</p> + +<p>Again and again during the meal Bernal had been +tempted to speak. But each time he had been +restrained by a sense of his aloofness. These men, +too, were wheels within the machine, each revolving as +he must. They would simply pity him, or be amused.</p> + +<p>More and more acutely was he coming to feel the +futility, the crass, absurd presumption of what he had +come back to undertake. From the lucid quiet of his +mountain haunts he had descended into a vale where +antiquated cymbals clashed in wild discordance above +the confusing clatter of an intricate machinery—machinery +too complicated to be readjusted by a passing +dreamer. In his years of solitude he had grown to +believe that the teachers of the world were no longer +dominated by that ancient superstition of a superhumanly +malignant God. He had been prepared to +find that the world-ideal had grown more lofty in his +absence, been purified by many eliminations into a +God who, as he had once said to Nance, could no more +spare the soul of a Hottentot than the soul of a pope. +Yet here was a high type of the priest of the Mother +Church, gentle, Godly, learned, who gravely and as +one having authority told how God would blight forever +the soul of a child unbaptised, thus imputing to +Deity a regard for mechanical rites that would constitute +even a poor human father an incredible monster.</p> + +<p>Yet the marvel of it seemed to him to lie in this: that +the priest himself lived actually a life of loving devotion +and sacrifice in marked opposition to this doctrine of +formal cruelty; that his church, more successfully than +any other in Christendom, had met the needs of humanity, +coming closer to men in their sin and sickness, ministering +to them with a deeper knowledge, a more affectionate +intimacy, than any other. That all these men of +God should hold formally to dogmas belying the humaneness +of their actual practise—here was the puzzling +anomaly that might well give pause to any casual +message-bringer. Struggle as he might, it was like a +tangling mesh cast over him—this growing sense of +his own futility.</p> + +<p>Along with this conviction of his powerlessness there +came to him a new sense of reliance upon Nancy. +Unconsciously at first he turned to her for sunlight, +big views and quiet power, for the very stimulus he had +been wont to draw from the wide, high reaches of his +far-off valley. Later, came a conscious turning, an +open-eyed bringing of all his needs, to lay them in her +waiting lap. Then it was he saw that on that first night +at Edom her confidence and enthusiasm had been +things he leaned upon quite naturally, though unwittingly. +The knowledge brought him a vague unrest. +Furtive, elusive impulses, borne to him on the wings +of certain old memories—memories once resolutely +put away in the face of his one, big world-desire—now +came to trouble him.</p> + +<p>It seemed that one must forever go in circles. With +fine courage he had made straight off to toil up the high +difficult paths of the ideal. Never had he consciously +turned, nor even swerved. Yet here he was at length +upon his old tracks, come again to the wondering girl.</p> + +<p>Did it mean, then, that his soul was baffled—or did +it mean that his soul would not suffer him to baffle it, +try as he might? Was that girl of the old days to greet +him with her wondering eyes at the end of every high +path? These and many other questions he asked +himself.</p> + +<p>At the close of this day he sought her, eager for the +light of her understanding eyes—for a certain waiting +sympathy she never withheld. As she looked up now +with a kind of composed gladness, it seemed to him +that they two alone, out of all the world, were sanely +quiet. Silently he sank into a chair near her and they +sat long thus, feeling no need of words. At last she +spoke.</p> + +<p>"Are you coming nearer to it, Bernal?"</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>"I'm farther away than ever, Nance. Probably +there's but one creature in this city to-day as out of +place as I am. He's a big, awkward, country-looking +dog, and he was lost on Broadway. Did you ever see +a lost dog in a city street? This fellow was actually +in a panic, wholly demoralised, and yet he seemed to +know that he must conceal it for his own safety. So +he affected a fine air of confidence, of being very busy +about an engagement for which he feared he might be +late. He would trot swiftly along for half a block, +then pause as if trying to recall the street number; +then trot a little farther, and stop to look back as if +the other party to his engagement might happen along +from that direction. It was a splendid bit of acting, +and it deceived them all, in that street of mutterers +and hard faces. He was like one of them, busy and +hurried, but apparently cool, capable, and ominously +alert. Only, in his moments of indecision, his eyes +shifted the least bit nervously, as if to note whether +the real fear he felt were detected, and then I could +read all his secret consternation.</p> + +<p>"I'm the same lost dog, Nance. I feel as he felt +every time I go into that street where the poor creatures +hurry and talk to themselves from sheer nervous +fatigue."</p> + +<p>He ceased speaking, but she remained silent, fearing +lest she say too little or too much.</p> + +<p>"Nance," he said presently with a slow, whimsical +glance, "I'm beginning to suspect that I'm even more +of a fool than Hoover thought me—and he was rather +enthusiastic about it, I assure you!"</p> + +<p>To which she at length answered musingly:</p> + +<p>"If God makes us fools, doubtless he likes to have +us thorough. Be a great fool, Bernal. Don't be a +small one."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIVC"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Ineffective Message</h3> + +<p>The week had gone while he walked in the crowds, +feeling his remoteness; but he knew at last that he was +not of the brotherhood of the zealots; that the very +sense of humour by which he saw the fallacies of one +zealot prevented him from becoming another. He +lacked the zealot's conviction of his unique importance, +yet one must be such a zealot to give a message effectively. +He began to see that the world could not be +lost; that whatever might be vital in his own message +would, soon or late, be delivered by another. The +time mattered not. Could he not be as reposeful, as +patient, as God?</p> + +<p>In spite of which, the impulse to speak his little word +would recur; and it came upon him stoutly one day +on his way up town. As the elevated train slowly +rounded a curve he looked into the open window of +a room where a gloomy huddle of yellow-faced, sunken-cheeked, +brown-bearded men bent their heads over +busy sewing-machines. Nearest the window, full +before it, was one that touched him—a young man +with some hardy spirit of hope still enduring in his +starved face, some stubborn refusal to recognise the +odds against him. And fixed to his machine, where +his eyes might now and then raise to it from his work, +was a spray of lilac—his little spirit flaunting itself +gaily even from the cross. The pathos of it was +somehow intensified by the grinding of the wheels +that carried him by it.</p> + +<p>The train creaked its way around the curve—but +the face dreaming happily over the lilac spray in that +hopeless room stayed in his mind, coercing him.</p> + +<p>As he entered the house, Nancy met him.</p> + +<p>"Do go and be host to those men. It's our day for +the Ministers' Meeting," she continued, as he looked +puzzled, "and just as they sat down Allan was called +out to one of his people who is sick. Now run like +a good boy and 'tend to them."</p> + +<p>So it came that, while the impulse was still strong +upon him, he went in among the dozen amiable, feeding +gentlemen who were not indisposed to listen to whomsoever +might talk—if he did not bore—which is how +it befell that they had presently cause to remark him.</p> + +<p>Not at first, for he mumbled hesitatingly, without +authority of manner or point to his words, but the +phrase, "the fundamental defect of the Christian +religion" caused even the Unitarian to gasp over his +glass of mineral water. His green eyes glittered pleasantly +upon Bernal from his dark face with its scraggly +beard.</p> + +<p>"That's it, Mr. Linford—tell us that—we need to +know that—do we not, gentlemen?"</p> + +<p>"Speak for yourself, Whittaker," snapped the aggressive +little Baptist, "but doubtless Mr. Linford has +something to say."</p> + +<p>Bernal remained unperturbed by this. Very earnestly +he continued: "Christianity is defective, judged +even by poor human standards; untrue by the plain +facts of human consciousness."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Now we shall learn!" Father Riley turned +his most gracious smile upon the speaker.</p> + +<p>"Your churches are losing their hold upon men +because your religion is one of separation, here and +hereafter—while the one great tendency of the age is +toward brotherhood—oneness. Primitive man had +individual pride—family pride, city pride, state pride, +national pride followed—but we are coming now to +the only permissible pride, a world pride—in which +the race feels its oneness. We are nearly there; even +now the spirit that denies this actual brotherhood is +confined to the churches. The people outside more +generally than you dream know that God does not discriminate +among religions—that he has a scheme of +a dignity so true that it can no more permit the loss of +one black devil-worshipper than that of the most magnificent +of archbishops."</p> + +<p>He stopped, looking inquiringly—almost wistfully, +at them.</p> + +<p>Various polite exclamations assured him of their +interest.</p> + +<p>"Continue, by all means," urged Whittaker. "I +feel that you will have even Father Riley edified in a +moment."</p> + +<p>"The most cynical chap—even for a Unitarian," +purled that good man.</p> + +<p>Bernal resumed.</p> + +<p>"Your God is a tribal God who performed his wonders +to show that he had set a difference between Israel +and Egypt. Your Saviour continues to set the same +difference: Israel being those who believed his claim +to Godship; Egypt those who find his evidence insufficient. +But we humans daily practise better than +this preaching of retaliation. The Church is losing +power because your creeds are fixed while man, never +ceasing to grow, has inevitably gone beyond them— +even beyond the teachings of your Saviour who threatened +to separate father from son and mother from +daughter—who would distinguish sheep from goats +by the mere intellectual test of the opinion they formed +of his miracles. The world to-day insists on moral +tests—which Christianity has never done."</p> + +<p>"Ah—now we are getting at it," remarked the +Methodist, whose twinkling eyes curiously belied his +grimly solemn face. "Who was it that wished to +know the belief of the average unbeliever?"</p> + +<p>"The average unbeliever," answered Bernal promptly, +"no longer feels the need of a Saviour—he knows +that he must save himself. He no longer believes +in the God who failed always, from Eden to Calvary, +failed even to save his chosen tribe by that last +device of begetting a son of a human mother who +should be sacrificed to him. He no longer believes +that he must have a mediator between himself and +that God."</p> + +<p>"Really, most refreshing," chortled Father Riley. +"More, more!" and he rapped for silence.</p> + +<p>"The man of to-day must have a God who never +fails. Disguise it as you will, your Christian God was +never loved. No God can be loved who threatens +destruction for not loving him. We cannot love one +whom we are not free <i>not</i> to love."</p> + +<p>"Where shall we find this God—outside of Holy +Writ," demanded Floud, who had once or twice restrained +himself with difficulty, in spite of his amusement.</p> + +<p>"The true God comes to life in your own consciousness, +if you will clear it of the blasphemous preconceptions +imposed by Christianity," answered Bernal so +seriously that no one had the heart to interrupt him. +"Of course we can never personify God save as a higher +power of self. Moses did no more; Jesus did no more. +And if we could stop with this—be content with saying +'God is better than the best man'—we should have a +formula permitting endless growth, even as He permits +it to us. God has been more generous to us than the +Church has been to Him. While it has limited Him to +that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric +Jew, He has permitted us to grow so that now any man +who did not surpass him morally, as the scriptures portray +him, would be a man of inconceivable malignity.</p> + +<p>"You see the world has demonstrated facts that disprove +the Godship of your God and your Saviour. We +have come, indeed, into a sense of such certain brotherhood +that we know your hell is a falsity. We know +—a knowledge of even the rudiments of psychology +proves—<i>that there will be a hell for all as long as one of +us is there</i>. Our human nature is such that one soul +in hell would put every other soul there. Daily this +becomes more apparent. We grow constantly more +sensitive to the pain of others. This is the distinctive +feature of modern growth—our increasing tendency to +find the sufferings of others intolerable to ourselves. +A disaster now is felt around the world—we burn or +starve or freeze or drown with our remote brothers— +and we do what we can to relieve them because we +suffer with them. It seems to me the existence of the +S.P.C.A. proves that hell is either for all of us or for +none of us—because of our oneness. If the suffering +of a stray cat becomes our suffering, do you imagine +that the minority of the race which Christianity saves +could be happy knowing that the great majority lay in +torment?</p> + +<p>"Suppose but two were left in hell—Judas Iscariot +and Herbert Spencer—the first great sinner after Jesus +and the last of any consequence. One betrayed his +master and the other did likewise, only with far greater +subtlety and wickedness—teaching thousands to disbelieve +his claims to godhood—to regard Christianity +as a crude compound of Greek mythology and Jewish +tradition—a thing built of myth and fable. Even if +these two were damned and all the rest were saved— +can you not see that a knowledge of their suffering +would embitter heaven itself to another hell? Father +Riley was good enough to tell us last week of the state of +unbaptised infants after death. Will you please consider +coldly the infinite, good God setting a difference +for all eternity between two babies, because over the +hairless pate of one a priest had sprinkled water and +spoken words? Can you not see that this is untrue +because it is absurd to our God-given senses of humour +and justice? Do you not see that such a God, in the +act of separating those children, taking into heaven the +one that had had its little head wetted by a good man, +and sending the reprobate into what Father Riley terms, +'in a wide sense, a state of damnation'——"</p> + +<p>Father Riley smiled upon him with winning sweetness.</p> + +<p>"——do you not see that such a God would be shamed +off his throne and out of heaven by the pitying laugh +that would go up—even from sinners?</p> + +<p>"You insist that the truth touching faith and morals +is in your Bible, despite its historical inaccuracies. But +do you not see that you are losing influence with the +world because this is not so—because a higher standard +of ethics than yours prevails out in the world—a demand +for a veritable fatherhood of God and a veritable +brotherhood of man—to replace the caricatures of +those doctrines that Christianity submits."</p> + +<p>"Our young friend seems to think exceeding well of +human nature," chirped Father Riley.</p> + +<p>"Yes," rejoined Bernal. "Isn't it droll that this +poor, fallen human nature, despised and reviled, 'conceived +in sin and born in iniquity,' should at last call +the Christian God and Saviour to account, weigh them +by its own standard, find them wanting, and replace +them with a greater God born of itself? Is not that an +eloquent proof of the living God that abides in us?"</p> + +<p>"Has it ever occurred to you, young man, that human +nature has its selfish moments?" asked the high-church +rector—between sips of claret and water.</p> + +<p>"Has it ever occurred to you that human nature has +<i>any</i> but selfish moments?" replied Bernal. "If so, +your impression was incorrect."</p> + +<p>"Really, Mr. Linford, have you not just been telling +us how glorious is this nature of man——"</p> + +<p>"I know—I will explain to you," he went on, moving +Father Riley to another indulgent smile by his willingness +to instruct the gray-bearded Congregationalist +who had interrupted.</p> + +<p>"When I saw that there must be a hell for all so long +as there is a hell for one—even for Spencer—I suddenly +saw there was nothing in any man to merit the place— +unless it were the ignorance of immaturity. For I saw +that man by the very first law of his being can never have +any but a selfish motive. Here again practical psychology +sustains me. You cannot so much as raise your +hand without an intention to promote your happiness— +nor are you less selfish if you give your all to the needy +—you are still equally doing that which promotes your +happiness. That it is more blessed to give than to +receive is a terse statement of a law scientifically demonstrable. +You all know how far more exquisite is the +pleasure that comes from giving than that which comes +from receiving. Is not one who prefers to give then +simply selfish with a greater wisdom, a finer skill for the +result desired—his own pleasure? The man we call +good is not less selfish than the man we call bad—only +wiser in the ways that bring his happiness—riper in +that divine sensitiveness to the feelings of his brother. +Selfish happiness is equally a law with all, though it +send one of us to thieving and another to the cross.</p> + +<p>"Ignorance of this primary truth has kept the world +in spiritual darkness—it has nurtured belief in sin—in +a devil, in a God that permits evil. For when you tell +me that my assertion is a mere quibble—that it matters +not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely selfish— +you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there +is no longer any sin. 'Sin' is then seen to be but a mistaken +notion of what brings happiness. Last night's +burglar and your bishop differ not morally but intellectually +—one knowing surer ways of achieving his +own happiness, being more sensitive to that oneness of +the race which thrills us all in varying degrees. When +you know this—that the difference is not moral but +intellectual, self-righteousness disappears and with it a +belief in moral difference—the last obstacle to the +realisation of our oneness. It is in the church that this +fiction of moral difference has taken its final stand.</p> + +<p>"And not only shall we have no full realisation of the +brotherhood of man until this inevitable, equal selfishness +is understood, but we shall have no rational conception +of virtue. There will be no sound morality +until it is taught for its present advantage to the individual, +and not for what it may bring him in a future +world. Not until then will it be taught effectively that +the well-being of one is inextricably bound up with the + well-being of all; that while man is always selfish, his + selfish happiness is still contingent on the happiness of + his brother."</p> + +<p>The moment of coffee had come. The Unitarian +lighted a black cigar and avidly demanded more reasons +why the Christian religion was immoral.</p> + +<p>"Still for the reason that it separates," continued +Bernal, "separates not only hereafter but here. We +have kings and serfs, saints and sinners, soldiers to kill +one another—God is still a God of Battle. There is +no Christian army that may not consistently invoke +your God's aid to destroy any other Christian army— +none whose spiritual guides do not pray to God for help +in the work of killing other Christians. So long as you +have separation hereafter, you will have these absurd +divisions here. So long as you preach a Saviour who +condemns to everlasting punishment for disbelief, so +long you will have men pointing to high authority for +all their schemes of revenge and oppression here.</p> + +<p>"Not until you preach a God big enough to save all +can you arouse men to the truth that all must be saved. +Not until you have a God big enough to love all can +you have a church big enough to hold all.</p> + +<p>"An Indian in a western town must have mastered +this truth. He had watched a fight between drunken +men in which one shot the other. He said to me, 'When +I see how bad some of my brothers are, I know how +good the Great Spirit must be to love them all!'"</p> + +<p>"Was—was he a member of any church?" inquired +the amiable Presbyterian, with a facetious gleam in his +eyes.</p> + +<p>"I didn't ask him—of course we know he wasn't a +Presbyterian."</p> + +<p>Hereupon Father Riley and the wicked Unitarian +both laughed joyously. Then the Congregationalist, +gazing dreamily through the smoke of his cigarette, +remarked, "You have omitted any reference to the +great fact of Christianity—the sacrifice of the Son of +Man."</p> + +<p>"Very well, I will tell you about it," answered the +young man quite earnestly, whereat the Unitarian fairly +glowed with wicked anticipations.</p> + +<p>"Let us face that so-called sacrifice honestly. Jesus +died to save those who could accept his claim to godship +—believing that he would go to sit at the right hand +of God to judge the world. But look—an engineer out +here the other day died a horrible death to save the lives +of a scant fifty people—their mere physical lives—died +out of that simple sense of oneness which makes us selfishly +fear for the suffering of others—died without any +hope of superior exaltation hereafter. Death of this +sort is common. I would not belittle him you call the +Saviour—as a man he is most beautiful and moving to +me—but that shall not blind me to the fact that the +sacrificial element in his death is surpassed daily by +common, dull humans."</p> + +<p>A veiled uneasiness was evident on the part of his +listeners, but the speaker gave no heed.</p> + +<p>"This spectacle of sacrifice, of devotion to others, +is needed as an uplift," he went on earnestly, "but +why dwell upon one remote—obscured by claims of +a God-jugglery which belittle it if they be true—when +all about you are countless plain, unpretentious men +and women dying deaths and—what is still greater,— +living lives of cool, relentless devotion out of sheer +human love.</p> + +<p>"Preach this divineness of human nature and you +will once more have a living church. Preach that our +oneness is so real that the best man is forever shackled +to the worst. Preach that sin is but ignorant selfishness, +less admirable than virtue only as ignorance is +less admirable than knowledge.</p> + +<p>"In these two plain laws—the individual's entire +and unvarying selfishness and his ever-increasing +sensitiveness to the sufferings of others—there is the +promise not of a heaven and a hell, but of a heaven for +all—which is what the world is more and more emphatically +demanding—which it will eventually produce even +here—for we have as little sensed the possibilities of +man's life here as we have divined the attributes of +God himself.</p> + +<p>"Once you drove away from your church the big +men, the thinkers, the fearless—the souls God must +love most truly were it possible to conceive him setting +a difference among his creatures. Now you drive +away even the merely intelligent rabble. The average +man knows your defect—knows that one who believes +Christ rose from the dead is not by that fact the moral +superior of one who believes he did not; knows, +indeed, of God, that he cannot be a fussy, vain, +blustering creature who is forever failing and forever +visiting the punishment for his failures upon his +puppets.</p> + +<p>"This is why you are no longer considered a factor +in civilisation, save as a sort of police-guard upon the +very ignorant. And you are losing this prestige. +Even the credulous day-labourer has come to weigh +you and find you wanting—is thrilling with his own +God-assurance and stepping forth to save himself +as best he can.</p> + +<p>"But, if you would again draw man, heat him, weld +him, hold him—preach Man to him, show him his own +goodness instead of loading him with that vicious +untruth of his conception in iniquity. Preach to him +the limitless devotion of his common dull brothers to +one another through their sense of oneness. Show +him the common beautiful, wonderful, selfish self-giving +of humanity, not for an hour or for a day, but +for long hard life-times. Preach the exquisite adjustment +of that human nature which must always seek +its own happiness, yet is slowly finding that that happiness +depends on the happiness of all. The lives of +daily crucifixion without hope of reward are abundant +all about you—you all know them. And if once you +exploit these actual sublimities of human nature—of +the man in the street—no tale of devotion in Holy Writ +will ever again move you as these do. And when you +have preached this long enough, then will take place +in human society, naturally, spontaneously, that great +thing which big men have dreamed of doing with their +artificial devices of socialism and anarchism. For +when you have demonstrated the race's eternal oneness +man will be as little tempted to oppress, starve, +enslave, murder or separate his brothers as he is now +tempted to mutilate his own body. Then only will +he love his neighbor as himself—still with a selfish +love.</p> + +<p>"Preach Man to man as a discovery in Godhood. +You will not revive the ancient glories of your Church, +but you will build a new church to a God for whom +you will not need to quibble or evade or apologise. +Then you will make religion the one force, and you will +rally to it those great minds whose alienation has been +both your reproach and your embarrassment. You +will enlist not only the scientist but the poet—and all +between. You will have a God to whom all confess +instinctively."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXVC"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Woman at the End of the Path</h3> + +<p>He stopped, noticing that the chairs were pushed +back. There was an unmistakeable air of boredom, +though one or two of the men still smoked thoughtfully. +One of these, indeed—the high church rector— +even came back with a question, to the undisguised +apprehension of several brothers.</p> + +<p>"You have formulated a certain fashion of belief, +Mr. Linford, one I dare say appealing to minds that +have not yet learned that even reason must submit to +authority; but you must admit that this revelation of +God in the human heart carries no authoritative assurance +of immortality."</p> + +<p>Bernal had been sitting in some embarrassment, dismayed +at his own vehemence, but this challenge stirred him.</p> + +<p>"True," he answered, "but let us thank God for +uncertainty, if it take the place of Christian belief in +a sparsely peopled heaven and a crowded hell."</p> + +<p>"Really, you know——"</p> + +<p>"I know nothing of a future life; but I prefer ignorance +to a belief that the most heinous baby that ever +died in sin is to languish in a state of damnation—even +'in a wide sense' as our good friend puts it."</p> + +<p>"But, surely, that is the first great question of all +people in all ages—'If a man die shall he live again?'</p> + +<p>"Because there has never been any dignified conception +of a Supreme Being. I have tried to tell you +what my own faith is—faith in a God wiser and more +loving than I am, who, being so, has devised no mean +little scheme of revenge such as you preach. A God +more loving than my own human father, a God whose +plan is perfect whether it involve my living or dying. +Whether I shall die to life or to death is not within +my knowledge; but since I know of a truth that the +God I believe in must have a scheme of worth and dignity, +I am unconcerned. Whether his plan demand extinction +or immortality, I worship him for it, not holding +him to any trivial fancy of mine. God himself can be +no surer of his plan's perfection than I am. I call this +faith—faith the more perfect that it is without condition, +asking neither sign nor miracle."</p> + +<p>"And life is so good that I've no time to whine. If +this <i>ego</i> of mine is presently to become unnecessary +in the great Plan, my faith is still triumphant. It +would be interesting to know the end, but it's not so +important as to know that I am no better—only a little +wiser in certain ways—than yesterday's murderer. +Living under the perfect plan of a perfect Creator, I +need not trouble about hidden details when so many +not hidden are more vital. When, in some far-off +future, we learn to live here as fully and beautifully as +we have power to, I doubt not that in the natural ways +of growth we shall learn more of this detail of life we +call 'death'—but I can imagine nothing of less consequence +to one who has faith.</p> + +<p>"I saw a stanza the other day that tells it well:</p> + +<br> + +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p>"'We know not whence is life, nor whither death, <br> + Know not the Power that circumscribes our breath.<br> + But yet we do not fear; what made us men,<br> + What gave us love, shall we not trust again?'"</p> +</div> + +<br> + +<p>While quoting the lines his eyes had been straight +ahead, absently dwelling upon the space between the +slightly parted doors that gave into the next room. +But even as he spoke, the last line faltered and halted. +His glance slowly stiffened out of widening eyes to +the face it had caught there—a face new, strange, +mesmeric, that all at once enchained him soul and +body. With a splendid, reckless might it assailed +him—left him dazed, deaf, speechless.</p> + +<p>It was the face of Nancy, for the first time all its +guards down. Full upon him flamed the illumined +eyes that made the face a yielding radiance; lifted +a little was the chin of gentle curves, the under lip +caught as if in that quivering eagerness she no longer +breathed—the face of Nancy, no longer wondering, +Nancy at last compelled and compelling. A moment +the warm light flashed from each to each.</p> + +<p>He stopped in a sudden bewilderment, looking +blankly, questioningly at the faces about him. Then +out of the first chaos came the sense of having awakened +from some long, quiet sleep—of having suddenly +opened his eyes upon a world from which the morning +mists had lifted, to see himself—and the woman who +stood always at the end of that upward path—face to +face for the first time. One by one his outer sensations +returned. At first he heard a blurred murmuring, +then he became aware that some of the men were +looking at him curiously, that one of them had addressed +him. He smiled apologetically.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon. I—I couldn't have been +listening."</p> + +<p>"I merely asked," repeated Floud, "how you expect +to satisfy humanity with the vague hope that you would +substitute for the Christian promise of eternal life."</p> + +<p>He stared stupidly at the questioner.</p> + +<p>"I—I don't know." He passed a hand slowly +upward over his forehead. "Really I can hardly +trouble about those matters—there's so much life to +live. I think I knew a moment ago, but I seem to +have forgotten, though it's doubtless no great loss. I +dare say it's more important to be unafraid of life than +to be unafraid of death."</p> + +<p>"You were full of reasons a moment ago," reminded +Whittaker—"some of them not uninteresting."</p> + +<p>"Was I? Oh, well, it's a small matter—I've somehow +lost hold of it." He laughed awkwardly. "It +seems to have come to me just now that those who +study an apple until it falls from its stem and rots +are even more foolish than those who pluck and eat."</p> + +<p>Again he was silent, with a great hidden impatience +for them to be gone. But Whittaker, the wicked +Unitarian, detained them still a moment longer.</p> + +<p>"How hardly we should believe in a God who saved +every one!" he breathed softly to the remains of his +cigar.</p> + +<p>"Humph! Such a God would be a mere mush of +concession!" retorted Floud, the Baptist.</p> + +<p>"And how true," pursued the unruffled Unitarian, +"that we cannot worship a 'mere mush of concession' +—how true that our God must hate what we hate, and +punish what we would punish. We might stomach a +God who would save orthodox burglars along with +orthodox bishops, but not one who saved unbaptised +infants and adults of unsound doctrine. Dear, dear, +yes! We must have a God with a little human spite +in Him or He seems to be spineless."</p> + +<p>"A hopeless cynic," declared the soft voice of the +Catholic—"it's the Unitarianism working out of him, +mind you!"</p> + +<p>"So glad to have met you!" continued the same +good man to Bernal. "Your words are conducive to +thought—you're an earnest, decent lad at all events."</p> + +<p>But Bernal scarcely heard them or identified the +speakers. They were to him but so many noisy wheels +of the vast machine, each revolving as it must. His +whole body seemed to send electric sparks of repulsion +out to them to drive them away as quickly as might be. +All his energies were centred to one mighty impulse.</p> + +<p>At last the door closed and he stood alone with the +disordered table and the pushed back chairs, doggedly +gathering himself. Then he went to the doors and +with a hand to each, pushed them swiftly apart.</p> + +<p>She stood at the farther side of the room. She seemed +to have fled there, and yet she leaned toward him +breathless, again with the under lip caught fast in its +quivering—helpless, piteously helpless. It was this +that stayed him. Had she utterly shrunk away, even +had he found her denying, defiant—the aroused man +had prevailed. But seeing her so, he caught at the +back of a chair as if to hold himself. Then he gazed +long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to +his. For a moment it filled him to see and know, to be +certain that she knew and did not deny. But the man +in him was not yet a reasoning man—too lately had he +come to life.</p> + +<p>He stepped eagerly toward her, to halt only when +one weak white hand faltered up with absurd pretension +of a power to ward him off. Nor was it her hand that +made him stop then. That barrier confessed its frailness +in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary +submission of her whole poise—she had actually +leaned a little further toward him when he started, even +as her hand went up. But the helpless misery in her +eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient.</p> + +<p>Then she spoke and his tension relaxed a little, the +note of helpless suffering in her voice making him wince +and fall back a step.</p> + +<p>"Bernal, Bernal, Bernal! It hurts me so, hurts me +so! It's the Gratcher—isn't it hurting you, too? Oh, +it must be!"</p> + +<p>He retreated a little, again grasping the back of the +chair with one hand, but there was no restraint in his +voice.</p> + +<p>"Laugh, Nance, laugh! You know what laughing +does to them!"</p> + +<p>"Not to this one, Bernal—oh, not to this one!"</p> + +<p>"But it's only a Gratcher, Nance! I've been asleep +all these years. Now I'm awake. I'm in the world +again—here, do you understand, before you. And it's +a glad, good world. I'm full of its life—and I've money +—think of that! Yesterday I didn't know what money +was. I was going to throw it away—throw it away as +lightly as I threw away all those good, precious years. +How much it seems now, and what fine, powerful stuff it +is! And I, like a sleeping fool, was about to let it go at +a mere suggestion from Allan."</p> + +<p>He stopped, as if under the thrust of a cold, keen +blade.</p> +<a name="illp304"></a> + +<div style="text-align: center;"> +<a href="images/illp304.jpg"><img src="images/illp304.jpg" +alt=""He gazed long and exultingly ..."" width="600" border="0"></a><br> +"He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his."</div> + +<p>"Allan—Allan!" he repeated dazedly while the look +of pain deepened in the woman's eyes. He stared back +at her dumbly. Then another awakening became +visible in him and he laughed awkwardly.</p> + +<p>"It's funny, Nance—funny—and awful! Do you +know that not until I spoke his name then had a thought +of Allan come to me? Can you comprehend it? I +can't now. But it's the truth. I woke up too suddenly. +Allan—Allan—." It sounded as if he were +trying to recall some forgotten personality. "Oh, +Allan!"</p> + +<p>The last was more like a cry. He fell into the chair +by which he had stood. And now the woman erected +herself, coming forward to stand before him, her head +bowed, her hands convulsively interlocked.</p> + +<p>"Do you see it all, Bernal? Is it plain now? Oh, +how it tortured me—that last Gratcher—the one we +make in our own image and yet make to be perfect. It +never hurt me before, but now I know why. It couldn't +hurt me so long as I looked it straight in the eye—but +just now my eyes had to fall before it, and all in a second +it was tearing me to pieces. That's the only defense +against this last Gratcher, Bernal, to look it in the eyes +unafraid. And oh, it hurts so—and it's all my own +miserable fault!"</p> + +<p>"No, it's your goodness, Nance." He spoke very +quietly now. "Only the good have a Gratcher that +can't be laughed away. My own was late in coming. +Your Gratcher has saved us."</p> + +<p>He stood up and took her unresisting hands in both +his own. They rested there in peace, yielding themselves +like tired children to caring arms.</p> + +<p>"Now I shall be healed," she said.</p> + +<p>"It will take me longer, Nance. My hurt is more +stubborn, more complicated. I can't help it. Something +in me resists. I see now that I know too much— +too much of you, too much of——"</p> + +<p>She saw that he must have suffered some illumination +upon Allan. There was a look of bitter comprehension +in his face as he broke off. She turned away from it.</p> + +<p>When, an hour later, Allan came in, he found them +chatting easily of the few people of St. Antipas +that Bernal had met. At the moment, they were discussing +Mrs. Wyeth, whose face, Bernal declared, was of a rare +perfection. Nance turned to her husband.</p> + +<p>"You must thank Bernal," she said, "for entertaining +your guests this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"He wouldn't if he knew what I said—or how it must +have bored them. One thing, Nance, they won't meet +here again until you swear I've gone!"</p> + +<p>"Bernal's heart is right, even if his theology doesn't +always please me," said his brother graciously, examining +some cards that lay on the table. "I see Mrs. +Wyeth has called," he continued to Nancy, looking up +from these.</p> + +<p>"Yes. She wanted me to see her sister, poor Mrs. +Eversley, who is ill at her house. I promised to look +in to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"I've just been telling Nance how beautiful I think +Mrs. Wyeth is," said Bernal. "She's rare, with that +face of the low-browed Greek. It's one of the memories +I shall take back to my Eve-less Eden."</p> + +<p>"She <i>is</i> beautiful," said Nancy. "Of course her +nose is the least bit thin and long, but it rather adds zest +to her face. Now I must dress for dinner."</p> + +<p>When Nancy had gone, Bernal, who had been speaking +with a marked lightness of tone, turned to Allan +with an equally marked seriousness.</p> + +<p>"Old chap, you know about that money of mine— +of Grandfather's?"</p> + +<p>Allan instantly became attentive.</p> + +<p>"Of course, there's no hurry about that—you must +take time to think it over," he answered.</p> + +<p>"But there <i>is</i> hurry! I shouldn't have waited so +long to make up my mind.</p> + +<p>"Then you <i>have</i> made up your mind?" questioned +his brother, with guarded eagerness.</p> + +<p>"Definitely. It's all yours, Allan. It will help +you in what you want to do. And not having it will +help me to do what I want to do—make it simpler, +easier. Take it—and for God's sake be good to +Nancy."</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you how you please me, Bernal. Not +that I'm avid for money, but it truly <i>seems</i> more in +accord with what must have been grandfather's real +wish. And Nancy—of course I shall be good to her— +though at times she seems unable to please me."</p> + +<p>There was a sanctified displeasure in his tone, as +he spoke of Nancy. It caused Bernal to turn upon +him a keen, speculative eye, but only for a moment. +And his next words had to do with matters tangible. +"To-morrow I'll do some of the business that can +be done here. Then I'll go up to Edom and finish +the transfers that have to be made there." After a +brief hesitation, he added: "Try to please <i>her</i> a bit, +Allan. That's all."</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXVIC"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">In Which the Mirror is Held up to Human Nature</h3> + +<p>When, the next day, Nancy went to pay her promised +visit to Mrs. Eversley, the rectory was steeped +in the deep household peace of mid-afternoon. Both +Allan and Bernal had gone out soon after luncheon, +while Aunt Bell had withdrawn into the silence, there +to meditate the first letters of the alphabet of the inexpressible, +to hover about the pleasant line that divides +the normal from the subliminal.</p> + +<p>Though bruised and torn, Nancy was still grimly upright +in the eye of duty, still a worthy follower of orthodox +ways. Buried in her own eventful thoughts in that +mind-world where love is born and dies, where beliefs +rise and perish but no sound ever disturbs the stillness, +she made her way along the shaded side of the street +toward the Wyeth residence. Not until she had +passed several doors beyond the house did she recall +her errand, remember that her walk led to a goal, that +she herself had matters in hand other than thinking, +thinking, thinking.</p> + +<p>Retracing her steps, she rang the bell and asked for +Mrs. Eversley. Before the servant could reply, Mrs. +Wyeth rustled prettily down the hall from the library +at the back. She wore a gown of primrose yellow. +An unwonted animation lighted the cold perfection +of her face, like fire seen through ice.</p> + +<p>"<i>So</i> glad to see you!" she said with graceful effusion— +"And the Doctor? And that queer, fascinating, +puzzling brother of yours, how are they? So glad! +Yes, poor sister keeps to her room and you really +mustn't linger with me an instant. I'm not even going +to ask you to sit down. Go right up. Her door's at +the end of the hall, you know. You'll comfort the +poor thing beautifully, you dear!"</p> + +<p>She paused for breath, a vivid smile taking the place +of words. Mrs. Linford, rendered oddly, almost +obstinately reserved by this excessive cordiality, was +conscious of something unnatural in that smile—a too +great intensity, like the greenness of artificial palms.</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much for coming, you angel," she +went on playfully, "for doubtless I shall not be visible +when you go. You see Donald's off in the back of +the house re-arranging whole shelves of wretched, +dusty books and he fancies that he must have my +suggestions."</p> + +<p>"The door at the end of the hall!" she trilled in +sweet but unmistakable dismissal, one arm pointing +gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of draperies, +that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that +even Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had +admitted to be all but faultless. And the latter, wondering +not a little at the stiff disposition to have her quickly +away, which she had somehow divined through all the +gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, went on +upstairs. As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley's door, +the bell of the street door sounded in her ears.</p> + +<p>Somewhat less than an hour after, she came softly +out again, opening and closing the door noiselessly. +So effectually had she soothed the invalid, that the +latter had fallen into a much-needed sleep, and Nancy, +eager to escape to that mind-world where the happenings +are so momentous and the silence is so tense, had +crept like a mouse from the room.</p> + +<p>At the top of the stairs she paused to gather up her +skirts. Then her ears seemed to catch the sound of +voices on the floor below and she remained motionless +for a second, listening. She had no desire to encounter +for the second time the torrent of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, +no wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably +gifted in the art of arousing in her an aversion of which +she was half ashamed.</p> + +<p>No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, +deciding that the way was clear, she descended the +thickly carpeted stairs. Near the bottom, opposite +the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused +to look into the big mirror on the opposite wall. +As she turned her head for a final touch to the back of +her veil, her eyes became alive to something in that +corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror +—something that held her frozen with embarrassment.</p> + +<p>Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, +the gown of Mrs. Wyeth showed unmistakably +—Mrs. Wyeth abandoned to the close, still embrace +of an unrecognized man.</p> + +<p>Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy +hesitated, not knowing whether to retreat or go forward. +She had decided to go on, observing nothing—and of +course she <i>had</i> observed nothing save an agreeable +incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and +Mrs. Wyeth—when a further revelation arrested her.</p> + +<p>Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of +Mrs. Wyeth was lifted and Mrs. Wyeth's big eyes fastened +upon hers through the impartial mirror. But +their expression was not that of the placid matron +observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness. Rather, +it was one of acute dismay—almost fear. Poor Mrs. +Weyth, who had just said, "Doubtless I shall not be +visible when you go!"</p> + +<p>Even as she caught this look, Nancy started down +the remaining steps, her cheeks hot from her own +wretched awkwardness. She wanted to hurry—to +run; she might still escape without having reason to +suspect that the obscured person was other than he +should be in the opinion of an exacting world. Then, +as her hand was at the door, while the silken rustling +of that hurried disentanglement was in her ears, the +voice of Wyeth sounded remotely from the rear of the +house. It seemed to come from far back in the library, +removed from them by the length of the double drawing-rooms +—a comfortable, smooth, high-pitched voice— +lazy, drawling——</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>Linford!</i>"</p> + +<p><i>Linford!</i> The name seemed to sink into the stillness +of the great house, leaving no ripple behind. Before +an answer to the call could come, she had opened the +great door and pulled it sharply to behind her.</p> + +<p>Outside, she lingered a moment as if in serenely +absent contemplation of the street, with the air of one +who sought to recall her next engagement. Then, +gathering up her skirts, she went leisurely down the +steps and passed unhurriedly from the view of those +dismayed eyes that she felt upon her from the Wyeth +window.</p> + +<p>On the avenue she turned north and was presently +alone in a shaded aisle of the park—that park whose +very trees and shrubs seem to have taken on a hard, +knowing look from having been so long made the recipients +of cynical confidences. They seemed to understand +perfectly what had happened, to echo Wyeth's +high-pitched, friendly drawl, with an added touch of +mockery that was all their own—"Oh—Linford!"</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXVIIC"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">For the Sake of Nancy</h3> + +<p>It was toward six o'clock when she ascended the +steps of the rectory. Bernal, coming from the opposite +direction, met her at the door. Back of his glance, +as they came together, was an intimation of hidden +things, and at sight of him she was smitten by an electric +flash of wonder. The voice of Wyeth, that friendly, +untroubled voice, she now remembered had called to no +specific Linford. In the paralysis of embarrassment +that had seized her in that darkened hallway, she had +failed to recall that there were at least two Linfords in +existence. In an instant her inner world, wrought +into something like order in the past two hours, was +again chaos.</p> + +<p>"Why, Nance—you look like night, when there are +no stars—what is it?" He scanned her with an assumption +of jesting earnestness, palpably meant to conceal +some deeper emotion. She put a detaining hand on +his arm as he was about to turn the key in the +lock.</p> + +<p>"Bernal, I haven't time to be indirect, or beat about, +or anything—so forgive the abruptness—were you at +Mrs. Wyeth's this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>His ear caught the unusual note in her voice, and he +was at once concerned with this rather than with her +question.</p> + +<p>"Why, what is it, Nance—what if I was? Are you +seeing another Gratcher?"</p> + +<p>"Bernal, quick, now—please! Don't worry me +needlessly! Were you at Mrs. Wyeth's to-day?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes searched his face. She saw that he was +still either puzzled or confused, but this time he +answered plainly,</p> + +<p>"No—I haven't seen that most sightly cold lady +to-day—more's the pity!"</p> + +<p>She breathed one quick little sigh—it seemed to him +strangely like a sigh of relief.</p> + +<p>"I knew you couldn't have been." She laughed a +little laugh of secrets. "I was only wondering foolish +wonders—you know how Gratchers must be humoured +right up to the very moment you puff them away with +the deadly laugh."</p> + +<p>Together they went in. Bernal stopped to talk +with Aunt Bell, who was passing through the hall as +they entered; while Nancy, with the manner of one +not to be deflected from some set purpose, made straight +for Allan's study.</p> + +<p>In answer to her ominously crisp little knock, she +heard his "Come!" and opened the door.</p> + +<p>He sat facing her at his desk, swinging idly from +side to side in the revolving chair, through the small +space the desk permitted. Upon the blotter before +him she saw that he had been drawing interminable +squares, oblongs, triangles and circles, joining them +to one another in aimless, wandering sequence—his +sign of a perturbed mind.</p> + +<p>He glanced up with a look of waiting defiance which +she knew but masked all his familiar artillery.</p> + +<p>Instantly she determined to give him no opportunity +to use this. She would end matters with a rush. He +was awaiting her attack. She would make none.</p> + +<p>"I think there is nothing to say," she began quickly. +"I could utter certain words, but they would mean +one thing to me and other things to you—there is no +real communication possible between us. Only remember +that this—to-day—matters little—I had already +resolved that sooner or later I must go. This only +makes it necessary to go at once."</p> + +<p>She turned to the door which she had held ajar. At +her words he sat forward in his chair, the yellow +stars blazing in his eyes. But the opening was not the +one he had counted upon, and before he could alter his +speech to fit it, or could do more than raise a hand to +detain her, she had gone.</p> + +<p>He sat back in his chair, calculating how to meet this +mood. Then the door resounded under a double +knock and Bernal came in.</p> + +<p>"Well, old boy, I'll be off to-night. The lawyer is +done with me here and now I'll go to Edom and finish +what's to be done there. Then in a few days I'll be +out of this machine and back to the ranche. You +know I've decided that my message to the world would +best take the substantial form of beef—a message which +no one will esteem unpractical."</p> + +<p>He paused, noting the other's general droop of gloom.</p> + +<p>"But what's the trouble, old chap? You look done +up!"</p> + +<p>"Bernal—it's all because I am too good-hearted, +too unsuspecting. Being slow to think evil of others, +I foolishly assume that others will be equally charitable. +And you don't know what women are—you don't know +how the sentimental ones impose upon a man in my +office. I give you my word of honour as a man—my +word of <i>honour</i>, mind you!—there never has been a +thing between us but the purest, the most elevated— +the loftiest, most ideal——"</p> + +<p>"Hold on, old chap—I shall have to take the car +ahead, you know, if you won't let me on this one...."</p> + +<p>"—as pure a woman as God ever made, while as for +myself, I think my integrity of purpose and honesty of +character, my sense of loyalty should be sufficiently +known——"</p> + +<p>"Say, old boy—" Bernal's face had lighted with a +sudden flash of insight—"is it—I don't wish to be indiscreet— +but is it anything about Mrs. Wyeth?"</p> + +<p>"Then you <i>do</i> know?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, except that Nance met me at the door +just now and puzzled me a bit by her very curious manner +of asking if I had been at the Wyeth's this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i>?" The other turned upon him, his eyes +again blazing with the yellow points, his whole figure +alert. "She asked you <i>that—Really</i>?"</p> + +<p>"To be sure!"</p> + +<p>"And you said—"</p> + +<p>"'No'—of course—and she mumbled something +about having been foolish to think I could have been. +You know, old man, Nance was troubled. I could +see that."</p> + +<p>His brother was now pacing the floor, his head bent +from the beautifully squared shoulders, his face the +face of a mind working busily.</p> + +<p>"An idiot I was—she didn't know me—I had only +to——"</p> + +<p>Bernal interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Are you talking to yourself, or to me?"</p> + +<p>The rector of St. Antipas turned at one end of his +walk.</p> + +<p>"To both of us, brother. I tell you there has been +nothing between us—never anything except the most +flawless idealism. I admit that at the moment Nancy +observed us the circumstances were unluckily such +that an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might +have misconstrued them. I will even admit that a +woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments +might not unreasonably have been puzzled, but I would +tear my heart open to the world this minute—'Oh, be +thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not +escape calumny!'"</p> + +<p>"If I follow you, old chap, Nancy observed some +scene this afternoon in which it occurred to her that I +might have been an actor." There was quick pain, a +sinking in his heart.</p> + +<p>"She had reason to know it was one of us—and if I +had denied it was I——"</p> + +<p>"I <i>see</i>—why didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"I thought she must surely have seen me—and +besides"—his voice softened with affection—"do you +think, old chap, I would have shifted a misunderstanding +like that on to <i>your</i> shoulders. Thank God, I am +not yet reduced to shirking the penalties of my own +blameless acts, even when they will be cruelly misconstrued."</p> + +<p>"But you should have done so—It would +mean nothing to me, and everything to you—to that +poor girl—poor Nance—always so helpless and wondering +and so pathetically ready to <i>believe</i>! She didn't +deserve that you take it upon yourself, Allan!"</p> + +<p>"No—no, don't urge! I may have made mistakes, +though I will say that few men of my—well, my attractions! +Why not say it bluntly?—few men of my attractions, +placed as I have been, would have made so few— +but I shall never be found shirking their consequences +—it is not in my nature, thank God, to let another bear +the burden—I can always be a man!——"</p> + +<p>"But, old boy—you must think of poor Nancy— +not of me!" Again he felt the hurt of her suspicion.</p> + +<p>"True—compassion requires that I think of her +rather than of my own pride—and I have—but, you +see, it's too late. I committed myself before I knew +she didn't <i>know</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Let her believe it is still a mistake——"</p> + +<p>"No, no—it would be trickery—and it's impracticable +—I as good as confessed to her, you see—unless +"—he brightened here and stopped in his walk—"unless +she could be made to believe that I meant to shield +you!"</p> + +<p>"That's it! Really, you are an executor, Allan! +Now we'll put the poor girl easy in her mind again. +I'll tell her you did it to shield me. You know it's +important—what Nancy thinks of you, old chap— +she's your wife—and—it doesn't matter a bit how +meanly—she thinks of me—of course not. I dare say +it will be better for me if she <i>does</i> think meanly of me— +I'll tell her at once—what was it I did?"</p> + +<p>"No—no—she wouldn't believe you now. I dislike +to say this, Bernal, but Nancy is not always so +trusting as a good woman should be—she has a habit of +wondering—but—mind you, I could only consent to +this for the sake of her peace of mind——"</p> + +<p>"I understand perfectly, old chap—it will help the +peace of mind of all of us, I begin to see—hers and +mine—and yours."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, if she can be made to suspect this other +aspect of the affair without being told directly—ah!— +here's a way. Turn that messenger-call. Now listen— +I will have a note sent here addressed to you by a certain +woman. It will be handed to Nancy to give to you. +She will observe the writing—and she will recognise +it,—she knows it. You will have been anxious about +this note—expecting it—inquiring for it, you know. +Get your dinner now, then stay in your room so the +maid won't see you when the note comes—she will have +to ask Nance where you are——"</p> + +<p>At dinner, which Bernal had presently with Aunt +Bell and two empty seats, his companion regaled him +with comments upon the development of the religious +instinct in mankind, reminding him that should he +ever aspire to a cult of his own he would find Boston +a more fertile field than New York.</p> + +<p>"They're so much broader there, you know," she +began. "Really, they'll believe anything if you manage +your effects artistically. And that is the trouble with +you, Bernal. You appeal too little to the imagination. +You must not only have a novelty to preach nowadays, +but you must preach it in a spectacular manner. Now, +that assertion of yours that we are all equally selfish +is novel and rather interesting—I've tried to think of +some one's doing some act to make himself unhappy +and I find I can't. And your suggestion of Judas +Iscariot and Mr. Spencer as the sole inmates of hell is +not without a certain piquancy. But, my dear boy, you +need a stage-manager. Let your hair grow, wear a +red robe, do healing——"</p> + +<p>He laughed protestingly. "Oh, I'm not a prophet, +Aunt Bell—I've learned that."</p> + +<p>"But you could be, with proper managing. There's +that perfectly stunning beginning with that wild +healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you make +nothing of it—it might have happened to anybody and +it never came to anything, except that you went off +into the wilderness and stayed alone. You should tell +how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he told +you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. +Then get the reporters about you and talk queerly so +that they can make a good story of it. Also live on +rice and speak with an accent—<i>any</i> kind of accent +would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach +your message, and I'd guarantee you a following of +thousands in New York in a month. Of course they'd +leave you for the next fellow that came along with a +key to the book of Revelations, or a new diet or something, +but you'd keep them a while."</p> + +<p>Aunt Bell paused, enthusiastic, but somewhat out of +breath.</p> + +<p>"I'll quit, Aunt Bell—that's enough——"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Spencer is an example for you. Contrast his +hold on the masses with Mrs. Eddy's, who appeals to +the imagination. I'm told by those who have read +his works that he had quite the knack of logic, and +yet the President of Princeton Theological Seminary +preaches a sermon in which he calls him 'the greatest +failure of the age.' I read it in this morning's paper. +His text was, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me.' +You see, there was an appeal to the imagination—the +most audacious appeal that the world has ever known +—and the crowd will be with this clergyman who uses +it to refute the arguments of a man who worked hard +through forty years of ill-health to get at the mere dry +common-sense of things. If Jesus had descended to +logic, he'd never have made a convert. But he appealed +magnificently to the imagination, and see the +result!"</p> + +<p>His mind had been dwelling on Allan's trouble, but +now he came back to his gracious adviser.</p> + +<p>"You do me good, Aunt Bell—you've taken all that +message nonsense out of me. I suppose I <i>could</i> be one +of them, you know—one of those fellows that get into +trouble—if I saw it was needed; but it isn't. Let the +men who can't help it do it—they have no choice. +Hereafter I shall worry as little about the world's salvation +as I do about my own."</p> + +<p>When they had finished dinner he let it be known that +he was not a little anxious concerning a message that +was late in arriving, and he made it a point, indeed, that +the maid should advise Mrs. Linford to this effect, +with an inquiry whether she might not have seen +the delayed missive.</p> + +<p>Then, after a word with Allan, he went to his room +and from his south window smoked into the night— +smoked into something approaching quietude a mind +that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed +girl in dusky white—the wondering, waiting girl +whose hand had trembled into his so long ago—so many +years during which he had been a dreaming fool, forgetting +the world to worship certain impalpable +gods of idealism—forgetting a world in which it was the +divinely sensible custom to eat one's candy cane instead +of preserving it superstitiously through barren years!</p> + +<p>He knew that he had awakened too late for more than +a fleeting vision of what would have made his life full. +Now he must be off, up the path again, this time knowing +certainly that the woman would never more stand +waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations. +The woman was definitely gone. That was +something, even though she went with that absurd, +unreasoning, womanish suspicion. And he had one +free, dear look from her to keep through the empty +days.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXVIIIC"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Fell Finger of +Calumny Seems to be Agreeably Diverted</h3> + +<p>Shut in his study, the rector of St. Antipas paced the +floor with nicely measured steps, or sat at his desk to +make endless squares, circles, and triangles. He was +engrossed in the latter diversion when he heard the +bell sound below. He sat back to hear the steps of the +maid, the opening of the door; then, after an interval, +her steps ascending the stairs and stopping at his own +door; then her knock.</p> + +<p>"A letter for Mr. Bernal, sir!"</p> + +<p>He glanced at the envelope she held, noting its tint.</p> + +<p>"He's not here Nora. Take it to Mrs. Linford. She +will know where he is."</p> + +<p>He heard her go down the hall and knock at another +door. She was compelled to knock twice, and then +there was delay before the door opened.</p> + +<p>He drew some pages of manuscript before him and +affected to be busy at a work of revision, crossing out a +word here, interlining one there, scanning the result +with undivided attention.</p> + +<p>When he heard a knock he did not look up, but said, +"Come!" Though still intent at his work, he knew +that Nancy stood there, looking from the letter to him.</p> + +<p>"Nora said you sent this letter to me—it's for +Bernal——"</p> + +<p>He answered, still without looking up,</p> + +<p>"I thought he might be with you, or that you might +know where he was."</p> + +<p>"I don't."</p> + +<p>He knew that she studied the superscription of the +envelope.</p> + +<p>"Well, leave it here on my desk till he comes. I sent +it to you only because I heard him inquiring if a letter +had not come for him—he seemed rather anxious about +some letter—troubled, in fact—doubtless some business +affair. I hoped this might be what he was expecting."</p> + +<p>His eyes were still on the page before him, and he +crossed out a word and wrote another above it, after a +meditative pause. Still the woman at the door hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Did you chance to notice the address on the envelope?"</p> + +<p>He glanced at her now for the first time, apparently +in some surprise: "No—it is not my custom to study +addresses of letters not my own. Nora said it was for +Bernal and he had seemed really distressed about some +letter or message that didn't come—if you will leave it +here——"</p> + +<p>"I wish to hand it to him myself."</p> + +<p>"As you like." He returned to his work, crossing +out a whole line and a half with broad, emphatic marks. +Then he bent lower, and the interest in his page seemed +to redouble, for he heard the door of Bernal's room +open. Nancy called:</p> + +<p>"Bernal!"</p> + +<p>He came to the door where she stood and she stepped +a little inside so that he might enter.</p> + +<p>"I am anxious about a letter. Ah, you have it!"</p> + +<p>She was scanning him with a look that was acid to +eat out any untruth in his face.</p> + +<p>"Yes—it just came." She held it out to him. He +looked at the front of the envelope, then up to her half-shut +eager eyes—eyes curiously hardened now—then +he blushed flagrantly—a thorough, riotous blush—and +reached for the letter with a pitiful confusion of manner, +not again raising his uneasy eyes to hers.</p> + +<p>"I was expecting—looking—for a message, you +know—yes, yes—this is it—thank you very much, +you know!"</p> + +<p>He stammered, his confusion deepened. With the +letter clutched eagerly in his hand he went out.</p> + +<p>She looked after him, intently. When he had shut +his own door she glanced over at the inattentive Allan, +once more busy at his manuscript and apparently unconscious +of her presence.</p> + +<p>A long time she stood in silence, trying to moderate the +beating of her heart. Once she turned as if to go, but +caught herself and turned again to look at the bent +head of Allan.</p> + +<p>At last it seemed to her that she could trust herself to +speak. Closing the door softly, she went to the big +chair at the end of the desk. As she let herself go into +this with a sudden joy in the strength of its supporting +arms, her husband looked up at her inquiringly.</p> + +<p>She did not speak, but returned his gaze; returned it, +with such steadiness that presently he let his own eyes +go down before hers with palpable confusion, as if fearing +some secret might lie there plain to her view. His +manner stimulated the suspicion under which she now +seemed to labour.</p> + +<p>"Allan, I must know something at once very clearly. +It will make a mighty difference in your life and in +mine."</p> + +<p>"What is it you wish to know?" His glance was +oblique and his manner one of discomfort, the embarrassed +discomfort of a man who fears that the real +truth—the truth he has generously striven to withhold +—is at last to come out.</p> + +<p>"That letter which Bernal was so troubled about +came from—from that woman—how could I avoid +seeing that when it was handed to me? Did you know +it, too?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Nancy—I knew—of course—I knew he +expected—I mean the poor boy told me——" Here +he broke off in the same pitiful confusion that had +marked Bernal's manner at the door—the confusion of +apprehended deceit. Then he began again, as if with +gathered wits—"What was I saying? I know nothing +whatever of Bernal's affairs or his letters. Really, how +should I? You see, I have work on my mind." As if +to cover his awkwardness, he seized his pen and hastily +began to cross out a phrase on the page before him.</p> + +<p>"Allan!" Though low, it was so near a cry that he +looked up in what seemed to be alarm. She was leaning +forward in the chair, one hand reaching toward him +over the desk, and she spoke rapidly.</p> + +<p>"Allan, I find myself suspecting now that you tried +to deceive me this afternoon—that Bernal did, also, +incredible as it sounds—that you tried to take the +blame of that wretched thing off his shoulders. That +letter to him indicates it, his own pitiful embarrassment +just now—oh, an honest man wouldn't have looked as +he did!—your own manner at this instant. You are +both trying—Oh, tell me the truth now!—you'll never +dream how badly I need it, what it means to my whole +life—tell me, Allan—for God's sake be honest this +instant—my poor head is whirling with all the lies! +Let me feel there is truth somewhere. Listen. I +swear I'll stay by it, wherever it takes me—here or away +from here—but I must have it. Oh, Allan, if it should +be in you, after all—Allan! dear, <i>dear</i>—Oh! I do see +it now—you <i>can't</i> deceive—you <i>can't</i> deceive!"</p> + +<p>Slowly at first his head bent under her words, bent in +cowardly evasion of her sharp glance, the sidelong +shiftings of his eyes portraying him, the generous liar, +brought at last to bay by his own honest clumsiness. +Then, as her appeal grew warmer, tenderer, more +insistent, the fine head was suddenly erected and proud +confession was written plainly over the glowing face— +that beautiful contrition of one who has willed to bear +a brother's shame and failed from lack of genius in the +devious ways of deceit.</p> + +<p>Now he stood nobly from his chair and she was +up with a little loving rush to his arms. Then, as he +would have held her protectingly, she gently pushed +away.</p> + +<p>"Don't—don't take me yet, dear—I should be crying +in another moment—I'm so—so <i>beaten</i>—and I want +not to cry till I've told you, oh, so many things! Sit +again and let us talk calmly first. Now why—<i>why</i> did +you pretend this wretched thing?"</p> + +<p>He faced her proudly, with the big, honest, clumsy +dignity of a rugged man—and there was a loving quiet +in his tones that touched her ineffably.</p> + +<p>"Poor Bernal had told me his—his <i>contretemps</i>. The +rest is simple. He is my brother. The last I remember +of our mother is her straining me to her poor breast +and saying, 'Oh, take care of little Bernal!'" Tears +were glistening in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"From the very freedom of the poor boy's talk about +religious matters, it is the more urgent that his conduct +be irreproachable. I could not bear that even you +should think a shameful thing of him."</p> + +<p>She looked at him with swimming eyes, yet held her +tears in check through the very excitement of this splendid +new admiration for him.</p> + +<p>"But that was foolish—quixotic——"</p> + +<p>"You will never know, little woman, what a brother's +love is. Don't you remember years ago I told you that +I would stand by Bernal, come what might. Did you +think that was idle boasting?"</p> + +<p>"But you were willing to have me suspect <i>that</i> of +you!"</p> + +<p>He spoke with a sad, sweet gentleness now, as one +might speak who had long suffered hurts in secret.</p> + +<p>"Dearest—dear little woman—I already knew that +I had been unable to retain your love—God knows I +tried—but in some way I had proved unworthy of it. +I had come to believe—painful and humiliating though +that belief was—that you could not think less of me— +your words to-night proved that I was right—you +would have gone away, even without this. But at +least my poor brother might still seem good to you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you poor, foolish, foolish, man—And yet, +Allan, nothing less than this would have shown you +truly to me. I can speak plainly now—indeed I must, +for once. Allan, you have ways—mannerisms—that +are unfortunate. They raised in me a conviction that +you were not genuine—that you were somehow false. +Don't let it hurt now, dear, for see—this one little unstudied, +impetuous act of devotion, simple and instinctive +with your generous heart, has revealed your true +self to me as nothing else could have done. Oh, don't +you see how you have given me at last what I had to +have, if we were to live on together—something in you +to <i>hold</i> to—a foundation to rest upon—something I can +know in my heart of hearts is stable—despite any outward, +traitorous <i>seeming</i>! Now forever I can be loving, +and loyal, in spite of all those signs which I see at +last are misleading."</p> + +<p>Again and again she sought to envelope him with +acceptable praises, while he gazed fondly at her from +that justified pride in his own stanchness—murmuring, +"Nance, you please me—you <i>please</i> me!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you see, dear? I couldn't reach you before. +You gave me nothing to believe in—not even God. +That seeming lack of genuineness in you stifled my +soul. I could no longer even want to be good—and +all that for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness +in you."</p> + +<p>"No one can know better than I that my nature is +a faulty one, Nance——"</p> + +<p>"Say unfortunate, Allan—not faulty. I shall never +again believe a fault of you. How stupid a woman can +be, how superficial in her judgments—and what stupids +they are who say she is intuitive! Do you know, I +believed in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, +and Bernal made me believe in everything else—in +God and goodness and virtue and truth—in all the good +things we like to believe in—yet see what he did!"</p> + +<p>"My dear, I know little of the circumstances, +but——"</p> + +<p>"It isn't <i>that</i>—I can't judge him in that—but this I +must judge—Bernal, when he saw I did not know who +had been there, was willing I should think it was you. To +retain my respect he was willing to betray you." She +laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in pain. +"You will never know just what the thought of that +boy has been to me all these years, and especially this +last week. But now—poor weak Bernal! Poor <i>Judas</i>, +indeed!" There was a kind of anguished bitterness +in the last words.</p> + +<p>"My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy," +remonstrated Allan gently. "Remember that whatever +his mistakes, he has a good heart—and he is my +brother."</p> + +<p>"Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you— +Can't you see that is precisely what he <i>lacks</i>—a good +heart? Oh, dearest, I needed this—to show Bernal +to me not less than to show you to me. There were +grave reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you +this moment."</p> + +<p>There were steps along the hall and a knock at the +door.</p> + +<p>"It must be Bernal," he said—"he was to leave +about this time."</p> + +<p>"I can't see him again."</p> + +<p>"Just this once, dear—for <i>my</i> sake! Come!"</p> + +<p>Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at +his feet. With his hat he held a letter. Allan went +forward to meet him. Nancy stood up to study the +lines of an etching on the wall.</p> + +<p>"I've come to say good-bye, you know." She heard +the miserable embarrassment of his tones, and knew, +though she did not glance at him, that there was a +shameful droop to his whole figure.</p> + +<p>Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter +he held.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye—old chap—God bless you!"</p> + +<p>He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of +guilt, something about being sorry to go.</p> + +<p>"And I don't want to preach, old chap," continued +Allan, giving the hand a farewell grip, "but remember +there are always two pairs of arms that will never be +shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died +to save us,—and my own poor arms, hardly less loving."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, old boy—I'll go back to Hoover"— +he looked hesitatingly at the profile of Nancy—"Hoover +thinks it's all rather droll, you know—Good-bye, old +boy! Good-bye, Nancy."</p> + +<p>"My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye."</p> + +<p>She turned and said "good-bye." He stepped +toward her—seeming to her to slink as he walked—but +he held out his hand and she gave him her own, cold, +and unyielding. He went out, with a last awkward +"Good-bye, old chap!" to Allan.</p> + +<p>Nancy turned to face her husband, putting out her +hands to him. He had removed from its envelope the +letter Bernal had left him, and seemed about to put it +rather hastily into his pocket, but she seized it playfully, +not noting that his hand gave it up with a certain +reluctance, her eyes upon his face.</p> + +<p>"No more business to-night—we have to talk. Oh, +I must tell you so much that has troubled me and made +me doubt, my dear—and my poor mind has been up +and down like a see-saw. I wonder it's not a wreck. +Come, put away your business—there." She placed +the letter and its envelope on the desk.</p> + +<p>"Now sit here while I tell you things."</p> + +<p>An hour they were there, lingering in talk—talking +in a circle; for at regular intervals Nancy must return +to this: "I believe no wife ever goes away until there +is absolutely no shred of possibility left—no last bit +of realness to hold her. But now I know your stanchness."</p> + +<p>"Really, Nance—I can't tell you how much you +please me."</p> + +<p>There was a knock at the door. They looked at +each other bewildered.</p> + +<p>"The telephone, sir," said the maid in response to +Allan's tardy "Come in."</p> + +<p>When he had gone, whistling cheerily, she walked +nervously about the room, studying familiar objects +from out of her animated meditation.</p> + +<p>Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into +his chair and gazed fondly over its litter of papers. With +a little instinctive move to bring somewhat of order to +the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow brushed +to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge +of the desk.</p> + +<p>As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter +Bernal had left lay open before her, a letter written in +long, slanting but vividly legible characters. And then, +quite before she recognised what letter it was, or could +feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of +it had flashed irrevocably to her mind's centre.</p> + +<p>When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes +later, she was standing by the desk. She held the letter +in both hands and over it her eyes flamed—blasted.</p> + +<p>Divining what she had done, his mind ran with +lightning quickness to face this new emergency. But +he was puzzled and helpless, for now her hands fell and +she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched +for the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, +hesitatingly, expecting some word from her to guide +him along the proper line of defense.</p> + +<p>"I am sure, my dear—if you had only—only trusted +me—implicitly—your opinion of this affair——"</p> + +<p>At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening +into a wild, grim intensity.</p> + +<p>"Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and +it can't hurt me."</p> + +<p>"In the eyes?" he questioned, blankly.</p> + +<p>"I can <i>go</i> now."</p> + +<p>"You will make me the laughing-stock of this town!"</p> + +<p>For the first time in their life together there was the +heat of real anger in his voice. Yet she did not seem +to hear.</p> + +<p>"Yes—that last terrible Gratcher can't hurt me +now."</p> + +<p>He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity +which he felt was demanded of him.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you!"</p> + +<p>Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she +heard at last.</p> + +<p>"But <i>he</i> will—<i>he</i> will!" she cried exultingly, and +her eyes were wet with an unexplained gladness.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<h2><a name="ChapterXIXC"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<div class="totoc"> +<a href="#Toc3">[back to Table of Contents]</a></div> + +<h3 style="font-variant: small-caps;">A Mere Bit of Gossip</h3> + +<p>The Ministers' Meeting of the following Tuesday +was pleasantly enlivened with gossip—retained, of +course, within seemly bounds. There was absent the +Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, +said lately to have emerged from a state of spiritual +chrysalis into a world made new with truths that were +yet old. It was concerning this circumstance that discreet +expressions were oftenest heard during the +function.</p> + +<p>One brother declared that the Linfords were both +extremists: one with his absurdly radical disbelief in +revealed religion; the other flying at last to the Mother +Church for that authority which he professed not to find +in his own.</p> + +<p>Another asserted that in talking with Dr. Linford +now, one brought away the notion that in renouncing +his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he had gone to the +extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the +Mother Church might become his only bride. True, +Linford said nothing at all like this;—the idea was +fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words of +his. Yet it left a track across the mind. It seemed +to be the very spirit of his speech upon the subject. +Certainly no other reason had been suggested for the +regrettable, severance of this domestic tie. Conjecture +was futile and Mrs. Linford, secluded in her country +home at Edom, had steadfastly refused, so said the public +prints, to give any reason whatsoever.</p> + +<p>His soup finished, the Reverend Mr. Whittaker +unfolded the early edition of an evening paper to a page +which bore an excellent likeness of Dr. Linford.</p> + +<p>"I'll read you some things from his letter," he said, +"though I'll confess I don't wholly approve his taste +in giving it to the press. However—here's one bit:</p> + +<p>"'When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal +Church I dreamed of wielding an influence that would +tend to harmonise the conflicting schools of churchmanship. +It seemed to me that my little life might be of +value, as I comprehended the essentials of church +citizenship. I will not dwell upon my difficulties. +The present is no time to murmur. Suffice it to say, +I have long held, I have taught, nearly every Catholic +doctrine not actually denied by the Anglican formularies; +and I have accepted and revived in St. Antipas +every Catholic practice not positively forbidden.</p> + +<p>"But I have lately become convinced that the Anglican +orders of the ministry are invalid. I am persuaded +that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church +cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a +sacrificial sense. Could I be less than true to my inner +faith in a matter touching the sacred verity of the Real +Presence—the actual body and blood of our Saviour?</p> + +<p>"After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly +whither God has been pleased to lead me. In my +humble sight the only spiritual body that actually +claims to teach truth upon authority, the only body +divinely protected from teaching error, is the Holy, +Catholic and Roman Church.</p> + +<p>"For the last time I have exercised my private judgment, +as every man must exercise it once, at least, and +I now seek communion with this largest and oldest +body of Christians in the world. I have faced an emergency +fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. +I have met it; the rest is with my God. Praying that +I might be adorned with the splendours of holiness, +and knowing that the prayer of him that humbleth himself +shall pierce the clouds, I took for my motto this sentence +from Huxley: 'Sit down before fact as a little +child; be prepared to give up every preconceived notion; +follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses +Nature leads.' Presently, God willing, I shall be in +communion with the See of Rome, where I feel that +there is a future for me!"</p> + +<p>The reader had been absently stabbing at his fish +with an aimless fork. He now laid down his paper to +give the food his entire attention.</p> + +<p>"You see," began Floud, "I say one brother is quite +as extreme as the other."</p> + +<p>Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker +to finish the letter.</p> + +<p>"Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be +stale before we reach it—so hasten now—I've a presentiment +that our friend goes still farther afield."</p> + +<p>Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful +look, and resumed the reading.</p> + +<p>"May I conclude by reminding you that the issue +between Christianity and science falsely so called has +never been enough simplified? Christianity rests +squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis +and the whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be +not under the curse of God for Adam's sin, there was +never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation and the +Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is +reduced to the status of a human teacher of a disputable +philosophy—a peasant moralist with certain delusions +of grandeur—an agitator and heretic whom the authorities +of his time executed for stirring up the people. In +short, the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the +divinity of the God of Moses, and this in turn rests upon +the historical truth of Genesis. If the Fall of man be +successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a +figment of the Jewish imagination—Jesus becomes man. +And this is what Science asserts, while we of the outer +churches, through cowardice or indolence—too often, +alas! through our own skepticism—have allowed Science +thus to obscure the issue. We have fatuously thought +to surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour +—not perceiving that we must keep both or neither.</p> + +<p>"There is the issue. The Church says that man is +born under the curse of God and so remains until +redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church, by +the blood of God's only begotten Son.</p> + +<p>"Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily +from remote brute ancestors. If science be right— +and by <i>mere evidence</i> its contention is plausible—then +original sin is a figment and natural man is a glorious +triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no saviour +—since he is under no curse of God—but having every +reason to believe that the divine favour has ever attended +him in his upward trend.</p> + +<p>"But if one finds <i>mere evidence</i> insufficient to outweigh +that most glorious death on Calvary, if one +regards that crucifixion as a tear of faith on the world's +cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then one +must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock +of Original Sin upon which the Christ is builded. For +the ramparts of Protestantism are honeycombed with +infidelity—and what is most saddening, they are giving +way to blows from within. Protestantism need no +longer fear the onslaughts of atheistic outlaws: what +concerns it is the fact that the stronghold of destructive +criticism is now within its own ranks—a stronghold +manned by teachers professedly orthodox.</p> + +<p>"It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found +safety in the Mother Church. Only there is one compelled +by adequate authority to believe. There alone +does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot +relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating +those that rest upon it.</p> + +<p>"For another vital matter, only in the Catholic +Church do I find combated with uncompromising boldness +that peculiarly modern and vicious sentimentality +which is preached as 'universal brotherhood.' It is a +doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses +outside the true Church, a chimera of visionaries who +must be admitted to be dishonest, since again and +again has it been pointed out to them that their doctrine +is unchristian—impiously and preposterously unchristian. +Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, +Pope Pius X, as to God's divine ordinance of prince and +subject, noble and plebeian, master and proletariat, +learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in +<i>material</i> equality—only in the bonds of love to help +one another attain their <i>moral</i> welfare on earth and +their last end in heaven. Most pointedly does his +Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal +brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the +social members only in this: that all men have their +origin in God the Creator, have sinned in Adam, and +have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the +sacrifice of our Lord.</p> + +<p>"Upon these two rocks—of original sin and of prince +and subject, riches and poverty—by divine right, the +Catholic Church has taken its stand; and within this +church will the final battle be fought on these issues. +Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to +fight upon His side against the hordes of infidelity and +the preachers of an unchristian social equality!"</p> + +<p>There were little exclamations about the table as +Whittaker finished and returned at last to his fish. To +Father Riley it occurred that these would have been +more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence. +In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent +silence in lieu of remarks that might too easily have +been indiscreet.</p> + +<p>"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen—I'll listen +blandly whilst I disarticulate this beautiful bird."</p> + +<p>"I say one is quite as extreme as the other," again +declared the discoverer of this fact, feeling that his +perspicacity had not been sufficiently remarked.</p> + +<p>"I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism," +suggested Father Riley.</p> + +<p>"Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young +man," remarked the amiable Presbyterian—"I trust +God's Providence to care for children and fools—"</p> + +<p>"And yet I found his remarks suggestive," said the +twinkling-eyed Methodist. "That is, we asked for +the belief of the average non-church-goer—and I dare +say he gave it to us. It occurs to me further that he +has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words +what so many of us declare with academic flourishes. +We can all name a dozen treatises written by theologians +ostensibly orthodox which actually justify his +utterances. It seems to me, then, that we may profit +by his blasphemies."</p> + +<p>"How?" demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness.</p> + +<p>"Ah—that is what the Church must determine. We +already know how to reach the heathen, the unbookish, +the unthinking—but how reach the educated—the +science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest, +biggest minds are outside the Church—indifferentists +or downright opponents of it. I am not willing to +believe that God meant men like these to perish—I +don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley, +or Spencer, or even Darwin—Question: has the Church +power to save the educated?"</p> + +<p>"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled +Father Riley.</p> + +<p>"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," +added Whittaker.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen, you jest with me—but I shall continue +to feel grateful to our slightly dogmatic young friend for +his artless brutalities. Now I know what the business +man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has lost +interest in the church."</p> + +<p>"There's a large class we can't take from you," said +Father Riley—"that class with whom religion is a +mode of respectability."</p> + +<p>"And you can't take our higher critics, either— +more's the pity!"</p> + +<p>"On my word, now, gentlemen," returned the +Catholic, again, "that was a dear, blasphemous young +whelp! You know, I rather liked him. Bless the +soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I +could punish the guiltless indecence of a babe—he was +that shockingly naïf!"</p> + +<p>"He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration," +repeated the high-church rector.</p> + +<p>"And he stands for our knottiest problem," said the +Presbyterian.</p> + +<p>"A problem all the knottier, I suspect," began +Whittaker—</p> + +<p>"Didn't I <i>tell</i> you?" interrupted Father Riley. "Oh, +the outrageous cynic! Be braced for him, now!"</p> + +<p>"I was only going to suggest," resumed the wicked +Unitarian, calmly, "that those people, Linford and his +brother—and even that singularly effective Mrs. +Linford, with her inferable views about divorce—you +know I dare say that they—really you know—that they +possess the courage of——"</p> + +<p>"Their <i>convictions</i>!" concluded little Floud, impatient +alike of the speaker's hesitation and the expected platitude.</p> + +<p>"No—I was about to say—the courage—of ours."</p> + +<p>A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable +flippancy. Father Riley smiled with rare sweetness and +murmured, "So cynical, even for a Unitarian!" as if +to himself in playful confidence.</p> + +<p>But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn +beard and the salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully +to safe ground in a discussion of the ethnic Trinities.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<hr class="full" noshade> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 15797-h.txt or 15797-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/7/9/15797</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Seeker + + +Author: Harry Leon Wilson + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #15797] + +Language: english + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects, +Carla McDonald, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading +Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 15797-h.htm or 15797-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797/15797-h/15797-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797/15797-h.zip) + + + + + +THE SEEKER + +by + +HARRY LEON WILSON + +Author of _The Spenders_ +_The Lions of the Lord,_ etc. + +Illustrated by Rose Cecil O'Neill + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company + +1904 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!"] + + + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +WILLIAM CURTIS GIBSON + + + + +"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one +vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?"--Holy Writ. + + "John and Peter and Robert and Paul-- + God, in His wisdom, created them all. + John was a statesman and Peter a slave, + Robert a preacher and Paul was a knave. + Evil or good, as the case might be, + White or colored, or bond or free, + John and Peter and Robert and Paul-- + God, in His wisdom, created them all." + + The Chemistry of Character. + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +BOOK ONE--The Age Of Fable + +CHAPTER + + I. How the Christmas Saint was Proved + + II. An Old Man Faces Two Ways + + III. The Cult of the Candy Cane + + IV. The Big House of Portents + + V. The Life of Crime Is Appraised and Chosen + + VI. The Garden of Truth and the Perfect Father + + VII. The Superlative Cousin Bill J. + + VIII. Searching the Scriptures + + IX. On Surviving the Idols We Build + + X. The Passing of the Gratcher; and Another + + XI. The Strong Person's Narrative + + XII. A New Theory of a Certain Wicked Man + + +BOOK TWO--The Age of Reason + +CHAPTER + + I. The Regrettable Dementia of a Convalescent + + II. Further Distressing Fantasies of a Clouded Mind + + III. Reason Is Again Enthroned + + IV. A Few Letters + + V. "Is the Hand of the Lord Waxed Short?" + + VI. In the Folly of His Youth + + +BOOK THREE--The Age of Faith + +CHAPTER + + I. The Perverse Behaviour of an Old Man and a Young Man + + II. How a Brother Was Different + + III. How Edom Was Favoured of God and Mammon + + IV. The Winning of Browett + + V. A Belated Martyrdom + + VI. The Walls of St. Antipas Fall at the Third Blast + + VII. There Entereth the Serpent of Inappreciation + + VIII. The Apple of Doubt is Nibbled + + IX. Sinful Perverseness of the Natural Woman + + X. The Reason of a Woman Who Had No Reason + + XI. The Remorse of Wondering Nancy + + XII. The Flexible Mind of a Pleased Husband + + XIII. The Wheels within Wheels of the Great Machine + + XIV. The Ineffective Message + + XV. The Woman at the End of the Path + + XVI. In Which the Mirror Is Held Up to Human Nature + + XVII. For the Sake of Nancy + +XVIII. The Fell Finger of Calumny Seems to be Agreeably Diverted + + XIX. A Mere Bit of Gossip + + + + +SCENES + + +BOOK ONE--The Village of Edom + +BOOK TWO--The Same + +BOOK THREE--New York + + + +CHARACTERS + +ALLAN DELCHER, a retired Presbyterian clergyman. + +BERNAL LINFORD } +ALLAN LINFORD } his grandsons. + +CLAYTON LINFORD, Their father, of the artistic temperament, and versatile. + +CLYTEMNESTRA, Housekeeper for Delcher. + +COUSIN BILL J., a man with a splendid past. + +NANCY CREALOCK, A wondering child and woman. + +AUNT BELL, Nancy's worldly guide, who, having lived in Boston, has + "broadened into the higher unbelief." + +MISS ALVIRA ABNEY, Edom's leading milliner, captivated by Cousin Bill J. + +MILO BARRUS, The village atheist. + +THE STRONG PERSON, of the "Gus Levy All-star Shamrock Vaudeville." + +CALEB WEBSTER, a travelled Edomite. + +CYRUS BROWETT, a New York capitalist and patron of the Church. + +MRS. DONALD WYETH, an appreciative parishioner of Allan Linford. + +THE REV MR. WHITTAKER, a Unitarian. + +FATHER RILEY, of the Church of Rome. + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"'My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye!'" (Frontispiece) + +"She could be made to believe that only he could protect her from the + Gratcher" + +"They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when he should + become a great and good man" + +"He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his" + + + + * * * * * + + + + +BOOK ONE + +The Age of Fable + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE SEEKER + + +BOOK ONE--THE AGE OF FABLE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +HOW THE CHRISTMAS SAINT WAS PROVED + + +The whispering died away as they heard heavy steps and saw a line of light +under the shut door. Then a last muffled caution from the larger boy on +the cot. + +"Now, remember! There ain't any, but don't you let _on_ there ain't--else +he won't bring you a single thing!" + +Before the despairing soul on the trundle-bed could pierce the vulnerable +heel of this, the door opened slowly to the broad shape of Clytemnestra. +One hand shaded her eyes from the candle she carried, and she peered into +the corner where the two beds were, a flurry of eagerness in her face, +checked by stoic self-mastery. + +At once from the older boy came the sounds of one who breathes labouredly +in deep sleep after a hard day. But the littler boy sat rebelliously up, +digging combative fists into eyes that the light tickled. Clytemnestra +warmly rebuked him, first simulating the frown of the irritated. + +"Now, Bernal! Wide awake! My days alive! You act like a wild Indian's +little boy. This'll _never_ do. Now you go right to sleep this minute, +while I watch you. Look how fine and good Allan is." She spoke low, not to +awaken the one virtuous sleeper, who seemed thereupon to breathe with a +more swelling and obtrusive rectitude. + +"Clytie--now--_ain't_ there any Santa Claus?" + +"Now what a sinful question _that_ is!" + +"But _is_ there?" + +"Don't he bring you things?" + +"Oh, there _ain't_ any!" There was a sullen desperation in this, as of one +done with quibbles. But the woman still paltered wretchedly. + +"Well, if you don't lie down and go to sleep quicker'n a wink I bet you +anything he won't bring you a single play-pretty." + +There came an unmistakable blare of triumph into the busy snore on the +cot. + +But the heart of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more +disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy regarded +her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came +his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will sometimes +reserve for his own destruction. There could no longer be any pretense +between them. Bravely he faced her. + +"Now--you just needn't try to keep it from me any longer! I _know_ there +ain't any--" One tensely tragic second he paused to gather himself--"_It's +all over town!_" There being nothing further to live for, he delivered +himself to grief--to be tortured and destroyed. + +Clytie set the candle on the bureau and came to hover him. Within the +pressing arms and upon the proffered bosom he wept out one of those griefs +that may not be told--that only the heart can understand. Yet, when the +first passion of it was spent she began to reassure him, begging him not +to be misled by idle gossip; to take not even her own testimony, but to +wait and see what he would see. At last he listened and was a little +soothed. It appeared that Santa Claus was one you might believe in or +might not. Even Clytie seemed to be puzzled about him. He could see that +she overflowed with belief in him, yet he could not make her confess it in +plain straight words. The meat of it was that good children found things +on Christmas morning which must have been left by some one--if not by +Santa Claus, then by whom? Did the little boy believe, for example, that +Milo Barrus did it? He was the village atheist, and so bad a man that he +loved to spell God with a little g. + +He mused upon this while his tears dried, finding it plausible. Of course +it couldn't be Milo Barrus, so it _must_ be Santa Claus. Was Clytie +certain some presents would be there in the morning? If he went directly +to sleep, she was. + +Hereupon the larger boy on the cot, who had for some moments listened in +forgetful silence, became again virtuously asleep in a public manner. + +But the littler boy must yet have talk. Could the bells of Santa Claus be +heard when he came? + +Clytie had known some children, of exceptional merit, it was true, who +claimed to have heard his bells on certain nights when they had gone early +to sleep. + +_Why_ would he never leave anything for a child that got up out of bed +and caught him at it? Suppose one had to get up for a drink. + +Because it broke the charm. + +But if a very, _very_ good child just _happened_ to wake up while he was +in the room, and didn't pay the least attention to him, or even look +sidewise or anything-- + +Even this were hazardous, it seemed; though if the child were indeed very +good all might not yet be lost. + +"Well, won't you leave the light for me? The dark gets in my eyes." + +But this was another adverse condition, making everything impossible. So +she chided and reassured him, tucked the covers once more about his neck, +and left him, with a final comment on the advantage of sleeping at once. + +When the room was dark and Clytie's footsteps had sounded down the hall, +he called softly to his brother; but that wise child was now truly asleep. +So the littler boy lay musing, having resolved to stay awake and solve +the mystery once for all. + +From wondering what he might receive he came to wondering if he were good. +His last meditation was upon the Sunday-school book his dear mother had +helped him read before they took her away with a new little baby that had +never amounted to much; before he and Allan came to Grandfather Delcher's +to live--where there was a great deal to eat. The name of the book was +"Ben Holt." He remembered this especially because a text often quoted in +the story said "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." He +had often wondered why Ben Holt should be considered an especially good +name; and why Ben Holt came to choose it instead of the goldpiece he found +and returned to the schoolmaster, before he fell sick and was sent away to +the country where the merry haymakers were. Of course, there were worse +names than Ben Holt. It was surely better than Eygji Watts, whose sanguine +parents were said to have named him with the first five letters they drew +from a hat containing the alphabet; Ben Holt was assuredly better than +Eygji, even had this not been rendered into "Hedge-hog" by careless +companions. His last confusion of ideas was a wondering if Bernal Linford +was as good a name as Ben Holt, and why he could not remember having +chosen it in preference to a goldpiece. Back of this, in his fading +consciousness was the high-coloured image of a candy cane, too splendid +for earth. + +Then, far in the night, as it might have seemed to the little boy, came +the step of slippered feet. This time Clytie, satisfying herself that both +boys slept, set down her candle and went softly out, leaving the door +open. There came back with her one bearing gifts--a tall, dark old man, +with a face of many deep lines and severe set, who yet somehow shed +kindness, as if he held a spirit of light prisoned within his darkness, so +that, while only now and then could a visible ray of it escape through +the sombre eye or through a sudden winning quality in the harsh voice, it +nevertheless radiated from him sensibly at all times, to belie his +sternness and puzzle those who feared him. + +Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him of the bundles and +bulky toys. In a silence broken only by their breathing they quickly +bestowed the gifts--some in the hanging stockings at the fire-place, +others beside each bed, in chairs or on the mantel. + +Then they were in the hall again, the door closed so that they could +speak. The old man took up his own candle from a stand against the wall. + +"The little one is like her," he said. + +"He's awful cunning and bright, but Allan is the handsomest. Never in my +born days did I see so beautiful a boy." + +"But he's like the father, line for line." There was a sudden savage +roughness in the voice, a sterner set to the shaven upper lip and +straight mouth, though he still spoke low. "Like the huckstering, godless +fiddle-player that took her away from me. What a mercy of God's he'll +never see her again--she with the saved and he--what a reckoning for him +when he goes!" + +"But he was not bad to let you take them." + +"He boasted to me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged him +with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great maudlin +tears raining down his face, when my own eyes were dry!" + +"How good if you can leave them both in the church, preaching the word +where you preached it so many years!" + +"I misdoubt the father's blood in them--at least, in the older. But it's +late. Good night, Clytie--a good Christmas to you." + +"More to you, Mr. Delcher! Good night!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +AN OLD MAN FACES TWO WAYS + + +His candle up, he went softly along the white hallway over the heavy red +carpet, to where a door at the end, half-open, let him into his study. +Here a wood fire at the stage of glowing coals made a searching warmth. +Blowing out his candle, he seated himself at the table where a shaded lamp +cast its glare upon a litter of books and papers. A big, white-breasted +gray cat yawned and stretched itself from the hearthrug and leaped lightly +upon him with great rumbling purrs, nosing its head under one of his hands +suggestively, and, when he stroked it, looking up at him with lazily +falling eye-lids. + +He crossed his knees to make a better lap for the cat, and fell to musing +backward into his own boyhood, when the Christmas Saint was a real +presence. Then he came forward to his youth, when he had obeyed the call +of the Lord against his father's express command that he follow the family +way and become a prosperous manufacturer. Truly there had been revolt in +him. Perhaps he had never enough considered this in excuse for his own +daughter's revolt. + +Again he dwelt in the days when he had preached with a hot passion such +truth as was his. For a long time, while the old clock ticked on the +mantel before him and the big cat purred or slept under his absent +pettings, his mind moved through an incident of that early ministry. +Clear in his memory were certain passages of fire from the sermon. In the +little log church at Edom he had felt the spirit burn in him and he had +movingly voiced its warnings of that dread place where the flames forever +blaze, yet never consume; where cries ever go up for one drop of water to +cool the parched tongues of those who sought not God while they lived. He +had told of one who died--one that the world called good, a moral man--but +not a Christian; one who had perversely neglected the way of life. How, on +his death-bed, this one had called in agony for a last glass of water, +seeming to know all at once that he would now be where no drop of water +could cool him through all eternity. + +So effective had been his putting of this that a terrified throng came +forward at his call for converts. + +The next morning he had ridden away from Edom toward Felton Falls to +preach there. A mile out of town he had been accosted by a big, bearded +man who had yet a singularly childish look--who urged that he come to his +cabin to minister to a sick friend. He knew the fellow for one that the +village of Edom called "daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless--to be +rather amusing, indeed, since he could be provoked to deliver curious +harangues upon the subject of revealed religion. He remembered now that +the man's face had stared at him from far back in the church the night +before--a face full of the liveliest terror, though he had not been among +those that fled to the mercy-seat. Acceding to the man's request, he +followed him up a wooded path to his cabin. Dismounting and tying his +horse, he entered and, turning to ask where the sick man was, found +himself throttled in the grasp of a giant. + +He was thrust into an inner room, windowless and with no door other than +the one now barred by his chuckling captor. And here the Reverend Allan +Delcher had lain three days and two nights captive of a madman, with no +food and without one drop of water. + +From the other side of the log partition his captor had declared himself +to be the keeper of hell. Even now he could hear the words maundered +through the chinks: "Never got another drop of water for a million years +and _still_ more, and him a burning up and a roasting up, and his tongue +a lolling out, all of a _sizzle_. Now wasn't that fine--because folks said +he'd likely gone crazy about religion!" + +Other times his captor would declare himself to be John the Baptist +making straight the paths in the wilderness. Again he would quote passages +of scripture, some of them hideous mockeries to the tortured prisoner, +some strangely soothing and suggestive. + +But a search had been made for the missing man and, quite by accident, +they had found him, at a time when it seemed to him his mind must go with +his captor's. His recovery from the physical blight of this captivity had +been prompt; but there were those who sat under him who insisted that +ever after he had been palpably less insistent upon the feature of divine +retribution for what might be called the merely technical sins of +heterodoxy. Not that unsound doctrine was ever so much as hinted of him; +only, as once averred a plain parishioner, "He seemed to bear down on hell +jest a _lee-tle_ less continuously." + +As for his young wife, she had ever after professed an unconquerable +aversion for those sermons in which God's punishment of sinners was set +forth; and this had strangely been true of their daughter, born but a +little time after the father's release from the maniac's cabin. She had +grown to womanhood submitting meekly to an iron rule; but none the less +betraying an acute repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her +father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; and then a +long way to come forward again, past the death of his girl-wife while +their child was still tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that +child's revolt, in her thirty-first year. Dumbly, dutifully, had she +submitted to all his restrictions and severities, stonily watching her +girlhood go, through a fading, lining and hardening of her prettiness. +Then all at once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had done the +monstrous thing. He awoke one day to know that his beloved child had +gone away to marry the handsome, swaggering, fiddle-playing +good-for-nothing who had that winter given singing lessons in the +village. + +Only once after that had he looked upon her face--the face of a withered +sprite, subdued by time. The hurt of that look was still fresh in him, +making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two +little boys asleep in the west bedroom. Had the seed of revolt been in +her, from his own revolt against his father? Would it presently bear some +ugly fruit in her sons? + +From a drawer in the table he took a little sheaf of folded sheets, and +read again the last letter that had come from her; read it not without +grim mutterings and oblique little jerks of the narrow old head, yet with +quick tender glows melting the sternness. + +"You must not think I have ever regretted my choice, though every day of +my life I have sorrowed at your decision not to see me so long as I stayed +by my husband. How many times I have prayed God to remind you that I took +him for better or worse, till death should us part." + +This made him mutter. + +"Clayton has never in his life failed of kindness and gentleness to +me"--so ran the letter--"and he has always provided for us as well as a +man of his _uncommon talents_ could." + +Here the old man sniffed in fine contempt. + +"All last winter he had quite a class to teach singing in the evening and +three day-scholars for the violin, one of whom paid him in hams. Another +offered to pay either in money or a beautiful portrait of me in pastel. +We needed money, but Clayton chose the portrait as a surprise to me. At +times he seems unpractical, but now he has started out in _business_ +again--" + +There were bitter shakings of the head here. Business! Standing in a buggy +at street-corners, jauntily urging a crowd to buy the magic +grease-eradicator, toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! first +playing a fiddle and rollicking out some ribald song to fetch them. +Business indeed! A pretty business! + +"The boys are delighted with the Bibles you sent and learn a verse each +day. I have told them they may some day preach as you did if they will be +as good men as you are and study the Bible. They try to preach like our +preacher in the cunningest way. I wish you could see them. You would love +them in spite of your feeling against their father. I did what you +suggested to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but perhaps the +lesson they chose to write about was not very edifying. It does not seem +a pretty lesson to me, and I did not pick it out. They heard about it at +Sabbath-school and had their papers all written as a surprise for me. Of +course, Bernal's is _very_ childish, but I think Allan's paper, for a +child of his age, shows a _grasp_ of religious matters that is _truly +remarkable_. I shall keep them studying the Bible daily. I should tell you +that I am now looking forward with great joy to--" + +With a long sigh he laid down the finely written sheet and took from the +sheaf the two papers she had spoken of. Then while the gale roared without +and shook his window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked down at him +from the book-case at his back, he followed his two grandsons on their +first incursion into the domain of speculative theology. + +He took first the paper of the older boy, painfully elaborated with heavy, +intricate capitals and headed "Elisha and the Wicked Children--by Mr. +Allan Delcher Linford, Esquire, aged nine years and six months." + + * * * * * + +"This lesson," it began, "is to teach us to love God and the prophets or +else we will likely get into trouble. It says Elisha went up from Bethel +and some children came out of the city and said go up thou Baldhead. +They said it Twice one after the other and so Elisha got mad right away +and turned around and cursed them good in the name of the Lord and so 2 +She Bears come along and et up 42 of them for Elisha was a holy prophet of +God and had not ought to of been yelled at. So of course the mothers would +Take on very much When they found their 42 Children et up but I think that +we had ought to learn from this that these 42 Little ones was not the +Elected. It says in our catchism God having out of his mere good pleasure +elected some to everlasting life. Now God being a Presbiterian would know +these 42 little ones had not been elected so they might as well be et up +by bears as anything else to show forth his honour and glory Forever Amen. +It should teach a Boy to be mighty carful about kidding old men unless he +is a Presbiterian. I spelled every word in this right. + +"Mr. Allan Delcher Linford." + +The second paper, which the old man now held long before him, was partly +printed and partly written with a lead-pencil, whose mark was now faint +and now heavy, as having gone at intervals to the writer's lips. As the +old man read, his face lost not a little of its grimness. + +"BEARS + +"It teaches the lord thy God is baldheaded. I ask my deer father what it +teeches he said it teeches who ever wrot that storry was baldheaded. He +says a man with thik long hair like my deer father would of said o let the +kids have their fun with old Elisha so I ask my deer mother who wrot this +lesson she said God wrot the holy word so that is how we know God is +baldheaded. It was a lot of children for only two 2 bears. I liked to of +ben there if the bears wold of known that I was a good child. mabe I cold +of ben on a high fense or up a tree. I climd the sor aple tree in our back +yard esy. + +"By Bernal Linford, aged neerly 8 yrs." + +Carefully he put back both papers with the mother's letter, his dark face +showing all its intricate net-work of lines in a tension that was both +pained and humorous. + +Two fresh souls were given to his care to be made, please God, the means +of grace by which thousands of other souls might be washed clean of the +stain of original sin. Yet, if revolt was there--revolt like his +daughter's and like his own? Would he forgive as his own father had +forgiven, who had called him back after many years to live out a tranquil +old age on the fortune that father's father had founded? He mused long on +this. The age was lax--true, but God's law was never lax. If one would +revolt from the right, one must suffer. For the old man was one of the few +last of a race of giants who were to believe always in the Printed Word. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CULT OF THE CANDY CANE + + +When the littler boy looked fairly into the frosty gray of that Christmas +morning, the trailed banner of his faith was snatched once more aloft; +and in the breast of his complacent brother there swelled the conviction +that one does ill to flaunt one's skepticism, when the rewards of belief +are substantial and imminent. For before them was an array of gifts such +as neither had ever looked upon before, save as forbidden treasure of the +few persons whose immense wealth enables them to keep toy-shops. + +The tale of the princely Saint was now authenticated delightfully. That +which had made him seem unreal in moments of spiritual laxity--the +impenetrable secrecy of his private life--was now seen to enhance manyfold +his wondrous givings. Here was a charm which could never have sat the +display before them had it been dryly bought in their presence from one of +the millionaire toy-shop keepers. For a wondering moment they looked from +their beds, sputtering, gibbering, gasping, with cautious calls one to +the other. Then having proved speech to be no disenchantment they shouted +and laughed crazily. There followed a scramble from the beds and a swift +return from the cold, each bearing such of the priceless bits as had +lain nearest. And while these were fondled or shot or blown upon or +tasted or wound up, each according to its wonderful nature, they looked +farther afield seeing other and ever new packages bulk mysteriously into +the growing light; bundles quickening before their eyes with every delight +to be imagined of a Saint with epicurean tastes and prodigal +habits--bundles that looked as if a mere twitch at the cord would expose +their hidden charms. + +The littler boy now wore a unique fur cap that let down to cover the neck +and face, with openings wonderfully contrived for the eyes, nose and +mouth--an easy triumph, surely, over the deadliest cold known to man. In +one hand he flourished a brass-handled knife with both of its blades open; +with the other he clasped a striped trumpet, into the china mouthpiece of +which he had blown the shreds of a caramel, not meaning to; and here he +was made to forget these trifles by discovering at the farther side of the +room a veritable rocking-horse, a creature that looked not only +magnificently willing, but superbly untamable, with a white mane and tail +of celestial flow, with alert, pointed ears of maroon leather nailed +nicely to the right spot. At this marvel he stared in that silence which +is the highest power of joy: a presentiment had been his that such a +horse, curveting on blue rockers, would be found on this very morning. Two +days before had he in an absent moment beheld a vision of this horse +poised near the door of the attic; but when he ran to make report of it +below, thinking to astound people by his power of insight, Clytemnestra, +bidding him wait in the kitchen where she was baking, had hurried to the +spot and found only some rolls of blue cambric. She had rather shamed him +for giving her such a start. A few rolls of shiny blue cambric against a +white wall did not, she assured him, make a rocking-horse; and, what was +more, they never would. Now the vision came back with a significance that +set him all a-thrill. Next time Clytie would pay attention to him. He +laughed to think of her confusion now. + +But here again, at the very zenith of a shout, was he frozen to silence by +a vision--this time one too obviously of no ponderable fabric. There in +the corner, almost at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed +of possessing only after he entered Heaven--a candy cane: one of fearful +length, thick of girth, vast of crook, and wide in the spiral stripe that +seemed to run a living flame before his ravished eyes, beginning at the +bottom and winding around and around the whole dizzy height. Fearfully in +nerve-braced silence he leaned far out of his bed to bring against this +amazing apparition one cool, impartial forefinger of skeptic research. It +did not vanish; it resisted his touch. Then his heart fainted with +rapture, for he knew the unimagined had become history. + +Standing before the windows of the great, he had gazed long at these +creations. They were suspended on a wire across the window in various +lengths, from little ones to sizes too awesome to compute. On one +occasion so long had he stood motionless, so deep the trance of his +contemplation, that the winter cold had cruelly bitten his ears and toes. +He had not supposed that these things were for mere vulgar ownership. He +had known of boys who had guns and building-blocks and rocking-horses as +well as candy in the lesser degrees; but never had he known, never had he +been able to hear of one who had owned a thing like this. Indeed, among +the boys he knew, it was believed that they were not even to be seen save +on their wire at Christmas time in the windows of the rich. One boy had +hinted that the "set" would not be broken even if a person should appear +with money enough to buy a single one. And here before him was the finest +of them all, receding neither from his gaze or his touch, one as long as +the longest of which Heaven had hitherto vouchsafed him a chilling vision +through glass; here was the same fascinating union of transcendent merit +with a playful suggestion of downright utility. And he had blurted out to +Clytie that the news of there being no Santa Claus was all over town! He +was ashamed, and the moment became for him one of chastening in which he +humbled his unbelieving spirit before this symbol of a more than earthly +goodness--a symbol in whose presence, while as yet no accident had +rendered it less than perfect, he would never cease to feel the spiritual +uplift of one who has weighed the fruits of faith and found them not +wanting. + +He issued from some bottomless stupor of ecstacy to hear the door open to +Allan's shouts; then to see the opening nicely filled again by the figure +of Clytemnestra, who looked over at them with eager, shining eyes. He was +at first powerless to do more than say "Oh, Clytie!" with little impotent +pointings toward the candy cane. But the action now in order served to +restore him to a state of working sanity. There was washing and dressing +after Clytie had the fire crackling; the forgetting of some treasures to +remember others; and the conveyance of them all down stairs to the big +sitting-room where the sun came in over the geraniums in the bay-window, +and where the Franklin heater made the air tropic. The rocking-horse was +led and pushed by both boys; but to Clytie's responsible hand alone was +intrusted the more than earthly candy cane. + +Downstairs there was the grandfather to greet--erect, fresh-shaven, +flashing kind eyes from under stern brows. He seemed to be awkwardly +pleased with their pleasure, yet scarce able to be one with them; as if +that inner white spirit of his fluttered more than its wont to be free, +yet found only tiny exits for its furtive flashes of light. + +Breakfast was a chattering and explosive meal, a severe trial, indeed, to +the patience of the littler boy, who decided that he wished never to eat +breakfast again. During the ten days that he had been a member of the +household a certain formality observed at the beginning of each meal had +held him in abject fascination, so that he looked forward to it with +pleased terror. This was that, when they were all seated, there ensued a +pause of precisely two seconds--no more and no less--a pause that became +awful by reason of the fact that every one grew instantly solemn and +expectant--even apprehensive. His tingling nerves had defined his spine +for him before this pause ended, and then, when the roots of his hair +began to crinkle, his grandfather would suddenly bow low over his plate +and rumble in his head. It was very curious and weirdly pleasurable, and +it lasted one minute. When it ceased the tension relaxed instantly, and +every one was friendly and cordial and safe again. + +This morning the little boy was actually impatient during the rumble, so +eager was he to talk. And not until he had been assured by both his +grandfather and Clytie that Santa Claus meant everything he left to be +truly kept; that he came back for nothing--not even for a cane--_of any +kind_--that he might have left at a certain house by mistake--not until +then would he heave the sigh of immediate security and consent to eat his +egg and muffins, of which latter Clytie had to bring hot ones from the +kitchen because both boys had let the first plate go cold. For Clytie, +like Grandfather Delcher, was also one of the last of a race of American +giants--in her case a race preceding servants, that called itself "hired +girls"--who not only ate with the family, but joyed and sorrowed with it +and for long terms of years was a part of it in devotion, responsibility +and self-respect. She had, it is true, dreaded the coming of these +children, but from the moment that the two cold, subdued little figures +had looked in doubting amazement at the four kinds of preserves and three +kinds of cake set out for their first collation in the new home, she had +rejoiced unceasingly in a vicarious motherhood. + +Within an hour after breakfast the morning's find had been examined, +appraised, and accorded perpetual rank by merit. Grandfather Delcher made +but one timid effort to influence decisions. + +"Now, Bernal, which do you like best of all your presents?" he asked. With +a heart too full for words the littler boy had pointed promptly but shyly +at his candy cane. Not once, indeed, had he been able to say the words +"candy cane." It was a creation which mere words were inadequate to name. +It was a presence to be pointed at. He pointed again firmly when the old +man asked, "Are you quite certain, now, you like it best of +all?"--suggestively--"better than this fine book with this beautiful +picture of Joseph being sold away by his wicked brothers?" + +The questioner had turned then to the older boy, who tactfully divined +that a different answer would have pleased the old man better. + +"And what do you like best, Allan?" + +"Oh, I like this fine and splendid book best of all!"--and he read from +the title-page, in the clear, confident tones of the pupil who knows that +the teacher's favour rests upon him--"'From Eden to Calvary; or through +the Bible in a year with our boys and girls; a book of pleasure and profit +for young persons on Sabbath Afternoon. By Grandpa Silas Atterbury, the +well-known author and writer for young people." + +His glance toward his brother at the close was meant to betray the +consciousness of his own superiority to one who dallied sensuously with +created objects. + +But the unspiritual one was riding the new horse at a furious gallop, and +the glance of reproof was unnoted save by the old man--who wondered if it +might be by any absurd twist that the boy most like the godless father +were more godly than the one so like his mother that every note of his +little voice and every full glance of his big blue eyes made the old heart +flutter. + +In the afternoon came callers from the next house; Dr. Crealock, rubicund +and portly, leaning on his cane, to pass the word of seasonable cheer with +his old friend and pastor; and with him his tiny niece to greet the +grandchildren of his friend. The Doctor went with his host to the study on +the second floor, where, as a Christmas custom, they would drink some +Madeira, ancient of days, from a cask prescribed and furnished long since +by the doctor. + +The little boy was for the moment left alone with the tiny niece; to stare +curiously, now that she was close, at one of whom he had caught glimpses +in a window of the big house next door. She was clad in a black velvet +cloak and hood, with pink satin next her face inside the hood, and she +carried a large closely-wrapped doll which she affected to think might +have taken cold. With great self-possession she doffed her cloak and +overshoes; then slowly and tenderly unwound the wrappings of the doll, +talking meanwhile in low mothering tones, and going with it to the fire +when she had it uncloaked. Of the boy who stared at her she seemed +unconscious, and he could do no more than stand timidly at a little +distance. An eye-flash from the maid may have perceived his abjectness, +for she said haughtily at length, "I'm astonished no one in this house +knows where Clytie is!" + +He drew nearer by as far as he could slowly spread his feet twice. + +"_I_ know--now--she went to get two glasses from the dresser to take to my +grandfather and that gentleman." He felt voluble from the mere ease of +the answer. But she affected to have heard nothing, and he was obliged to +speak again. + +"Now--why, _I_ know a doll that shuts up her eyes every time she lies +down." + +The doll at hand was promptly extended on the little lap and with a click +went into sudden sleep while the mother rocked it. He could have ventured +nothing more after this pricking of his inflated little speech. A moment +he stood, suffering moderately, and then would have edged cautiously away +with the air of wishing to go, only at this point, without seeming to see +him, she chirped to him quite winningly in a soft, warm little voice, and +there was free talk at once. He manfully let her tell of all her silly +little presents before talking of his own. He even listened about the +doll, whose name Santa Claus had thoughtfully painted on the box in which +she came; it was a French name, "Fragile." + +Then, being come to names, they told their own. Hers, she said, was +Lillian May. + +"But your uncle, now--that gentleman--he called you _Nancy_ when you came +in." He waited for her solving of this. + +"Oh, Uncle Doctor doesn't know it yet, what my _real_ name is. They call +me Nancy, but that's a very disagreeable name, so I took Lillian May for +my real name. But I tell _very_ few persons," she added, importantly. Here +he was at home; he knew about choosing a good name. + +"Did you give up the gold-piece you found?" he asked. But this puzzled +her. + +"'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,'" he reminded her. +"Didn't you find a gold-piece like Ben Holt did?" + +But it seemed she had never found anything. Indeed, once she had lost a +dime, even on the way to spending it for five candy bananas and five +jaw-breakers. Plainly she had chosen her good name without knowing of the +case of Ben Holt. Then he promised to show her something the most +wonderful in all the world, which she would never believe without seeing +it, and led her to where the candy cane towered to their shoulders in its +corner. He saw at once that it meant less to her than it did to him. + +"Oh, it's a candy cane!" she said, _calling_ it a candy cane commonly, +with not even a hush of tone, as one would say "a brick house" or "a gold +watch," or anything. She, promptly detecting his disappointment at her +coldness, tried to simulate the fervour of an initiate, but this may never +be done so as to deceive any one who has truly sensed the occult and +incommunicable virtue of the candy cane. For one thing, she kept repeating +the words "candy cane" baldly, whenever she could find a place for them in +her soulless praise; whereas an initiate would not once have uttered the +term, but would have looked in silence. Another initiate, equally silent +by his side, would have known him to be of the brotherhood. Perhaps at the +end there would have been respectful wonder expressed as to how long it +would stay unbroken and so untasted. Still he was not unkind to her, +except in ways requisite to a mere decent showing forth of his now +ascertained superiority. He helped her to a canter on the new horse; and +even pretended a polite and superficial interest in the doll, Fragile, +which she took up often. Being a girl, she had to be humoured in that +manner. But any boy could see that the thing went to sleep by turning its +eyes inside out, _and its garters were painted on its fat legs_. These +things he was, of course, too much the gentleman to point out. + +When the Doctor and his host came down stairs late in the afternoon, the +little boy and girl were fairly friendly. Only there was talk of kissing +at the door, started by the little girl's uncle, and this the little boy +of course could not consider, even though he suddenly wished it of all +things--for he had never kissed any one but his father and mother. He had +told Clytie it made him sick to be kissed. Now, when the little girl +called to him as if it were the simplest thing in the world, he could not +go. And then she stabbed him by falsely kissing the complacent Allan +standing by, who thereupon smirked in sickening deprecation and promptly +rubbed his cheek. + +Not until the pair were out in the street did his man-strength come back +to him, and then he could only burn with indignation at her and at Allan. +He wondered that no one was shocked at him for feeling as he did. But, as +they seemed not to notice him, he rode his horse again. No mad gallop now, +but a slow, moody jog--a pace ripe for any pessimism. + +"Clytie!" he called imperiously, after a little. "Do you think there's a +real bone in this horse--like a _regular_ horse?" + +Clytie responded from the dining-room with a placid "I guess so." + +"If I sawed into its neck, would the saw go right into a real _bone_?" + +"My suz! what talk! Well?" + +"I know there _ain't_ any bone in there, like a regular horse. It's just a +_wooden_ bone." + +Nor was this his last negative thought of the day. It came to him then and +there with cruel, biting plainness, that no one else in the house felt as +he did toward his chief treasure. Allan didn't. He had spent hardly a +moment with it. Clytie didn't; he had seen her pick it up when she dusted +the sitting-room; there was sacrilege in her very grasp of it; and his +grandfather seemed hardly to know of its existence. The little girl who +had chosen the good name of Lillian May might have been excused; but not +these others. If his grandfather was without understanding in such a +matter, in what, then, could he be trusted? + +He descended to a still lower plane before he fell asleep that night. Even +if he had _one_ of them, he would probably never have a whole row, +graduated from a pigmy to a mammoth, to hang on a wire across the front +window, after the manner of the rich, and dazzle the outer world into +envy. The mood was but slightly chastened when he remembered, as he now +did, that on last Christmas he had received only one pretentious candy +rooster, falsely hollow, and a very uninteresting linen handkerchief +embroidered with some initials not his own. He fell asleep on a brutal +reflection that the cane could be broken accidentally and eaten. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE BIG HOUSE OF PORTENTS + + +In this big white house the little boys had been born again to a life that +was all strange. Novel was the outer house with its high portico and +fluted pillars, its vast areas of white wall set with shutters of +relentless green; its stout, red chimneys; its surprises of gabled window; +its big front door with the polished brass knocker and the fan-light +above. Quite as novel was the inner house, and quite as novel was this new +life to its very center. + +For one thing, while the joy of living had hitherto been all but flawless +for the little boys, the disadvantages of being dead were now brought +daily to their notice. In morning and evening prayer, in formal homily, +informal caution, spontaneous warning, in the sermon at church, and the +lesson of the Sabbath-school, was their excessive liability to divine +wrath impressed upon them "when the memory is wax to receive and marble +to retain." + +Within the home Clytie proved to be an able coadjutor of the old man, who +was, indeed, constrained and awkward in the presence of the younger child, +and perhaps a thought too severe with the elder. But Clytie, who had said +"I'll make my own of them," was tireless and not without ingenuity in +opening the way of life to their little feet. + +Allan, the elder, gifted with a distinct talent for memorising, she taught +many instructive bits chosen from the scrap-book in which her literary +treasures were preserved. His rendition of a passage from one of Mr. +Spurgeon's sermons became so impressive under her drilling that the aroma +of his lost youth stole back to the nostrils of the old man while he +listened. + +"There is a place," the boy would declaim loweringly, and with fitting +gesture, with hypnotic eye fastened on the cowering Bernal, "where the +only music is the symphony of damned souls. Where howling, groaning, +moaning, and gnashing of teeth make up the horrible concert. There is a +place where demons fly swift as air, with whips of knotted burning wire, +torturing poor souls; where tongues on fire with agony burn the roofs of +mouths that shriek in vain for drops of water--that water all denied. When +thou diest, O Sinner--" + +But at this point the smaller boy usually became restless and would have +to go to the kitchen for a drink of water. Always he became thirsty here. +And he would linger over his drink till Clytie called him back to admire +his brother in the closing periods. + +--"but at the resurrection thy soul will be united to thy body and then +thou wilt have twin hells; body and soul will be tormented together, each +brimful of agony, the soul sweating in its utmost pores drops of blood, +thy body from head to foot suffused with pain, thy bones cracking in the +fire, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, every nerve a +string on which the devil shall play his diabolical tune of hell's +unutterable torment." + +Here the little boy always listened at his wrist to know if his pulse +rattled yet, and felt glad indeed that he was a Presbyterian, instead of +being in that dreadful place with Jews and Papists and Milo Barrus, who +spelled God with a little g. + +As to his own performance, Clytie found that he memorised prose with great +difficulty. A week did she labour to teach him one brief passage from a +lecture of Francis Murphy, depicting the fate of the drunkard. She bribed +him to fresh effort with every carnal lure the pantry afforded, but +invariably he failed at a point where the soul of the toper was going +"down--_down_--DOWN--into the bottomless depths of HELL!" Here he became +pitiful in his ineffectiveness, and Clytie had at last to admit that he +would never be the elocutionist Allan was. "But, my Land!" she would say, +at each of his failures, "if you only _could_ do it the way Mr. Murphy +did--and then he'd talk so plain and natural, too,--just like he was +associating with a body in their own parlour--and so pathetic it made a +body simply bawl. My suz! how I did love to set and hear that man tell +what a sot he'd been!" + +However, Clytie happily discovered that the littler boy's memory was more +tenacious of rhyme, so she successfully taught him certain metrical +conceits that had been her own to learn in girlhood, beginning with pithy +couplets such as: + + "Xerxes the Great did die + And so must you and I." + + "As runs the glass + Man's life must pass." + + "Thy life to mend + God's book attend." + +From these it was a step entirely practicable to longer warnings, one of +her favourites being: + +UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE + + "I in the burying-place may see + Graves shorter there than I. + From Death's arrest no age is free, + Young children, too, may die. + + "My God, may such an awful sight + Awakening be to me; + Oh, that by early grace, I might + For death prepared be!" + +She was not a little proud of Bernal the day he recited this to +Grandfather Delcher without a break, though he began the second stanza +somewhat timidly, because it sounded so much like swearing. + +Nor did she neglect to teach both boys the lessons of Holy Writ. + +Of a Sabbath afternoon she would read how God ordered the congregation to +stone the son of Shelomith for blasphemy; or, perhaps, how David fetched +the Ark of the Covenant from Kirjath-jearim on a new cart; and of how the +Lord "made a breach" upon Uzza for wickedly putting his hand upon the Ark +to save it when the oxen stumbled. The little boys were much impressed by +this when they discovered, after questioning, exactly what it meant to +Uzza to have "a breach" made upon him. The unwisdom of touching an Ark of +the Covenant, under any circumstances, could not have been more clearly +brought home to them. They liked also to hear of the instruments played +upon before the Lord by those that went ahead of the Ark; harps, +psalteries, and timbrels; cornets, cymbals, and instruments made of +fir-wood. + +Then there was David, who danced at the head of the procession "girded +with a linen ephod," which, somehow, sounded insufficient; and indeed, +it appeared that Clytie was inclined to side wholly with Michal, David's +wife, who looked through a window and despised him when she saw him +"leaping and dancing before the Lord," uncovered save for the presumably +inadequate ephod of linen. She, Clytie, thought it not well that a man of +David's years and honour should "make himself ridiculous that way." + +So it was early in this new life that the little boys came to walk as it +behooves those to walk who shall taste death. And to the littler boy, +prone to establish relations and likenesses among his mental images, the +big house itself would at times be more than itself to him. There was the +Front Room. Only the use of capital letters can indicate the manner in +which he was accustomed to regard it. Each Friday, when it was opened for +a solemn dusting, he timidly pierced its stately gloom from the threshold +of its door. It seemed to be an abode of dead joys--a place where they had +gone to reign forever in fixed and solemn festival. And while he could not +see God there, actually, neither in the horse-hair sofa nor the bleak +melodeon surmounted by tall vases of dyed grass, nor in the center-table +with its cemeterial top, nor under the empty horsehair and green-rep +chairs, set at expectant angles, nor in the cold, tall stove, ornately +set with jewels of polished nickel, and surely not in the somewhat +frivolous air-castle of cardboard and scarlet zephyr that fluttered from +the ceiling--yet in and over and through the dark of it was a forbidding +spirit that breathed out the cold mustiness of the tomb--an all-pervading +thing of gloom and majesty which was nothing in itself, yet a quality and +part of everything, even of himself when he looked in. And this quality or +spirit he conceived to be God--the more as it came to him in a flash of +divination that the superb and immaculate coal-stove must be like the Ark +of the Covenant. + +Thus the Front Room became what "Heaven" meant to him when he heard the +word--a place difficult of access, to be prized not so much for what it +actually afforded as for what it enabled one to avoid; a place whose very +joys, indeed, would fill with dismay any but the absolutely pure in heart; +a place of restricted area, moreover, while all outside was a speciously +pleasant hell, teeming with every potent solicitation of evil, of games +and sweets and joyous idleness. + +The word "God," then, became at this time a word of evil import to the +littler boy, as sinister as the rustle of black silk on a Sabbath +morning, when he must walk sedately to church with his hand in Clytie's, +with scarce an envious glance at the proud, happy loafers, who, +clean-shaven and in their own Sabbath finery, sat on the big boxes in +front of the shut stores and whittled and laughed and gossiped rarely, +like very princes. + +To Clytie he once said, of something for which he was about to ask her +permission, "Oh, it must be awful, _awful_ wicked--because I want to do +it very, very much!--not like, going to church." + +Yet the ascetic life was not devoid of compensation--particularly when +Milo Barrus, the village atheist, was pointed out to him among the +care-free Sabbath loafers. + +Clytie predicted most direly interesting things of him if he did not come +to the Feet before he died. "But I believe he _will_ come to the Feet," +she added, "even if it's on his very death-bed, with the cold sweat +standing on his brow. It would make a lovely tract--him coming to the +Feet at the very last moment and his face lighting up and everything." + +The little boy, however, rather hoped Milo Barrus wouldn't come to the +Feet. It was more worth while going to Heaven if he didn't, and if you +could look down and see him after it was too late for him to come. During +church that morning he chiefly wondered about the Feet. Once, long ago, +it seemed, he had been with his dear father in a very big city, and out of +the maze of all its tangled marvels of sound and sight he had brought and +made his own forever one image: the image of a mighty foot carved in +marble, set on a pedestal at the bottom of a dark stairway. It had been +severed at the ankle, and around the top was modestly chiselled a border +of lace. It was a foot larger than his whole body, and he had passed +eager, questioning hands over its whole surface, pressing it from heel to +each perfect toe. Of course, this must be one of the Feet to which Milo +Barrus might come; he wondered if the other would be up that dark +stairway, and if Milo Barrus would go up to look for it--and what did you +have to do when you got to the Feet? The possibility of not getting to +them, or of finding only one of them, began to fill his inner life quite +as the sombre shadows filled and made a presence of themselves in the +Front Room--particularly of a Sabbath, when one must be uncommonly good +because God seemed to take more notice than on week-days. + +During the week, indeed, Clytie often relaxed her austerity. She would +even read to him verses of her own composition, of which he never tired +and of which he learned to repeat not a few. One of her pastoral poems +told of a visit she had once made to the home of a relative in a +neighbouring State. It began thus: + + "New Hampshire is a pretty place, + I did go there to see + The maple-sugar being boiled + By one that's dear to me." + +Bernal came to know it all as far as the stanza-- + + "I loved to hear the banjo hum, + It sounds so very calmly; + If a happy home you wish to find, + Visit the Thompson family." + +After this the verses became less direct, and, to his mind, rather wordy +and purposeless, though he never failed of joy in the mere verbal music of +them when Clytie read, with sometimes a kind of warm tremble in her +voice-- + + "At lovers' promises fates grow merrilee; + Some are made on land, + Some on the deep sea. + Love does sometimes leave + Streams of tears." + +He thought she looked very beautiful when she read this, in a voice that +sounded like crying, with her big, square face, her fat cheeks that looked +like russet apples, her very tiny black moustache, her smooth, oily black +hair with a semicircle of tight little curls over her brow, and her +beautiful, big, rounded, shining forehead. + +Yet he preferred her poems of action, like that of Salmon Faubel, whose +bride became so homesick in Edom that she was in a way to perish, so that +Salmon took her to her home and found work there for himself. He even +sang one catchy couplet of this to music of his own: + + "For her dear sake whom he did pity, + He took her back to Jersey City." + +But the Sabbath came inexorably to bring his sinful nature before him, +just as the door of the Front Room was opened each week to remind him of +the awful joys of Heaven. And then his mind was like the desert of +shifting sands. There were so many things to be done and not done if one +were to avert the wrath of this God that made the Front Room a cavern of +terror, that rumbled threateningly in the prayer of his grandfather and +shook the young minister to a white passion each Sabbath. + +There was being good--which was not to commit murder or be an atheist like +Milo Barrus and spell God with a little g; and there was Coming to the +Feet--not so simple as it sounded, he could very well tell them; and there +was the matter of Blood. There were hymns, for example, that left him +confused. The "fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins" +sounded interesting. Vividly he saw the "sinners plunged beneath that +flood" losing all their guilty stains. It was entirely reasonable, and +with an assumption of carelessness he glanced cautiously over his own body +each morning to see if his guilty stains showed yet. But who was Immanuel? +And where was this excellent fountain? + +Then there was being "washed in the blood of the lamb," which was +considerably simpler--except for the matter of its making one "whiter +than snow." He was doubtful of this result, unless it was only +poetry-writing which doesn't mean everything it says. He meant to try +this sometime, when he could get a lamb, both as a means of grace and as +a desirable experiment. + +But plunging into the fountain filled with blood sounded far more +important and effectual--if it were only practicable. As the sinners came +out of this flood he thought they must look as Clytie did in her scarlet +flannel petticoat the night he was taken with croup and she came running +with the Magnetic Ointment--even redder! + +The big white house of Grandfather Delcher and Clytie, in short, was a +house in which to be terrified and happy; anxious and well-fed. And if its +inner recesses took on too much gloomy portent one could always fly to the +big yard where grew monarch elms and maples and a row of formal spruces; +where the lawn on one side was bordered with beds of petunias and +fuschias, tiger-lilies and dahlias; where were a great clump of white +lilacs and many bushes of yellow roses; a lawn that stretched unbrokenly +to the windows of the next big house where lived the gentle stranger with +the soft, warm little voice who had chosen the good name of Lillian May. + +Life was severely earnest but by no means impracticable. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE LIFE OF CRIME IS APPRAISED AND CHOSEN + + +It came to seem expedient to Bernal, however, in the first spring of his +new life, to make a final choice between early death and a life, of sin. +Matters came to press upon him, and since virtue was useful only to get +one into Heaven, it was not worth the effort unless one meant to die at +once. This was an alternative not without its lures, despite the warnings +preached all about him. It would surely be interesting to die, if one had +come properly to the Feet. Even coming to but one of the Feet, as he had, +might make it still more interesting. Perhaps he would not, for this +reason, be always shut up in Heaven. In his secret heart was a lively +desire to see just what they did to Milo Barrus, if he _should_ continue +to spell God with a little g on his very death-bed--that is, if he could +see it without disadvantage to himself: But then, you could save that up, +because you _must_ die sometime, like Xerxes the Great; and meantime, +there was the life of evil now opening wide to the vision with all +enticing refreshments. + +First, it meant no school. He had ceased to picture relief in this matter +by the school-house burning some morning, preferably a Monday morning, +one second after school had taken in. For a month he had daily dramatised +to himself the building's swift destruction amid the kind and merry +flames. But Allan, to whom he had one day hinted the possibility of this +gracious occurrence, had reminded him brutally that they would probably +have school in the Methodist church until a new school-house could be +built. For Allan loved his school and his teacher. + +But a life of evil promised other joys besides this negative one of no +school. In his latest Sunday-school book, Ralph Overton, the good boy, not +only attended school slavishly, so that at thirteen he "could write a +good business hand"; but he practised those little tricks of picking up +every pin, always untying the string instead of cutting it, keeping his +shoes neatly polished and his hands clean, which were, in a simpler day, +held to lay the foundations of commercial success in our republic. Besides +this, Ralph had to be bright and cheery to every one, to work for his +widowed mother after school; and every Saturday afternoon he went, +sickeningly of his own accord, to split wood for an aged and poor lady. +This lady seemed to Bernal to do nothing much but burn a tremendous lot of +stove-wood, but presently she turned out to be the long-lost cousin of Mr. +Granville Parkinson, the Great Banker from the City, who thereupon took +cheery Ralph there and gave him a position in the bank where he could be +honest and industrious and respectful to his superiors. Such was the +barren tale of Virtue's gain. But contrasted with Ralph Overton in this +book was one Budd Jackson, who led a life of voluptuous sloth, except at +times when the evil one moved him to activity. At these bad moments he +might go bobbing for catfish on a Sabbath, or purloin fruit from the +orchard of Farmer Haskins (who would gladly have given some to him if he +had but asked for it civilly, so the book said); or he might bully smaller +boys whom he met on their way to school, taking their sailor hats away +from them, or jeering coarsely at their neatly brushed garments. When +Budd broke a window in the Methodist parsonage with his slung-shot and +tried to lie it on to Ralph Overton, he seemed to have given way utterly +to his vicious nature. He was known soon thereafter to have drunk liquor +and played a game called pin-pool with a "flashy stranger" at the tavern; +hence no one was surprised when he presently ran off with a circus, became +an infidel, and perished miserably in the toils of vice. + +This touch about the circus, well-intended, to be sure, was yet fatal to +all good the tale might have done the little boy. Clytie, who read most of +the story to him, declared Budd Jackson to be "a regular mean one." But in +his heart Bernal, thinking all at once of the circus, sickened unutterably +of Virtue. To drive eight spirited white horses, seated high on one of +those gay closed wagons--those that went through the street with that +delicious hollow rumble--hearing perchance the velvet tread, or the +clawing and snarling of some pent ferocity--a leopard, a lion, what not; +to hear each day that muffled, flattened beating of a bass drum and +cymbals far within the big tent, quick and still more quickly, denoting to +the experienced ear that pink and spangled Beauty danced on the big white +horse at a deathless gallop; to know that one might freely enter that +tented elysium--if it were possible he would run off with a circus though +it meant that he had the morals of a serpent! + +Now, eastward from the big house lay the village and its churches: thither +was tame virtue. But westward lay a broad field stretching off to an +orchard, and beyond swelled a gentle hill, mellow in the distance. Still +more remotely far, at the hill's rim, was a blur of woods beyond which +the sun went down each night. This, in the little boy's mind, was the +highway to the glad free Life of Evil. Many days he looked to that western +wood when the sky was a gush of colour behind its furred edge, perceiving +all manner of allurements to beckon him, hearing them plead, feeling them +tug. Daily his spirit quickened within him to their solicitations, leaping +out and beyond him in some magic way to bring back veritable meanings and +values of the future. + +Then a day came when the desire to be off was no longer resistible. There +was a month of school yet; an especially bitter thought, for had he not +lately been out of school a week with mumps; and during that very week had +not the teacher's father died, so that he was cheated out of the resulting +three-days' vacation, other children being free while he lay on a bed of +pain--if you tasted pickles or any sour thing? Not only was it useless to +try to learn to write "a good business hand," like Ralph Overton--he took +the phrase to mean one of those pictured hands that were always pointing +to things in the newspaper advertisements--but there was the circus and +other evil things--and he was getting on in years. + +It was a Saturday afternoon. To-morrow would be too late. He knew he would +not be allowed to start on the Sabbath, even in a career that was to be +all wickedness. In the grape-arbour he massed certain articles necessary +for the expedition: a very small strip of carpet on which he meant to +sleep; a copy of "_Golden Days_," with an article giving elaborate +instructions for camping in the wilderness. He was compelled to disregard +all of them, but there was comfort and sustenance in the article itself. +Then there was the gun that came at Christmas. It shot a cork as far as +the string would let it go, with a fairly satisfying report (he would have +that string off, once he was in the woods!). Also there were three glass +alleys, two agate taws and thirty-eight commies. And to hold his outfit +there was a rather sizable box which he with his own hands had papered +inside and out from a remnant of gorgeously flowered wall-paper. + +When all was ready he went in to break the news to Clytie. She, busy with +her baking, heard him declare: + +"Now--I'm going to leave this place!" with the look of one who will not be +coaxed nor in any manner dissuaded. He thought she took it rather coolly, +though Allan ran, as promptly as he could have wished, to tell his +grandfather. + +"I'm going to be a regular mean one--_worse'n_ Budd Jackson!" he continued +to Clytie. He was glad to see that this brought her to her senses. + +"Will you stay if I give you--an orange?" + +"No, _sir;_--you'll never set eyes on _me_ again!" + +"Oh, now!--two oranges?" + +"I can't--I _got_ to go!" in a voice tense with effort. + +"All right! Then I'll give them to Allan." + +She continued to take brown loaves from the oven and to put other loaves +in to bake, while he stood awkwardly by, loath to part from her. Allan +came back breathless. + +"Grandpa says you can go as far as you like and you needn't come back till +you get ready!" + +He shifted from one foot to the other and absently ate a warm cookie from +the jarful at his hand. He thought this seemed not quite the correct +attitude to take toward him, yet he did not waver. They would be sorry +enough in a few days, when it was too late. + +"I guess I better take a few of these along with me," he said, stowing +cookies in the pockets of his jacket. He would have liked one of the big +preserved peaches all punctuated with cloves, but he saw no way to carry +it, and felt really unable to eat it on the spot. + +"Well, good-bye!" he called to Clytie, turning back to her from the door. + +"Good-bye! Won't you shake hands with me?" + +Very solemnly he shook her big, floury hand. + +"Now--could I take Penny along?" (Penny was an inconsequential dog that +had been given to Clytie by one whom she called Cousin Bill J.) + +"Yes, you'll need a dog to keep the animals off. Now be sure you write to +us--at least twice a year--don't forget!" And, brutally before his very +eyes, she handed the sniffing and virtuous Allan two of the largest, most +goldenly beautiful oranges ever beheld by man. + +Bitterly the self-exiled turned from this harrowing scene and strode +toward his box. + +Here ensued a fresh complication. Nancy, who had chosen the good name of +Lillian May, wanted to go with him. She, too, it appeared, was fresh from +a Sunday-school book--one in which a girl of her own age was so proud of +her long raven curls that she was brought to an illness and all her hair +came out. There was a distressing picture of this little girl after a just +Providence had done its work as a depilatory. And after she recovered from +the fever, it seemed, she had cared to do nothing but read the Scriptures +to bed-ridden old ladies--even after a good deal of her hair came in +again--though it didn't curl this time. The only pleasure she ever +experienced thereafter was that, by virtue of her now singularly angelic +character, she was enabled to convert an elderly female Papist--an +achievement the joys of which were problematic, both to Nancy and the +little boy. Certainly, whatever converting a Papist might be, it was +nothing comparable to driving a red-and-green-and-gold wagon in which was +caged the Scourge of the Jungle. + +But Nancy could not go with him. He told her so plainly. It was no place +for a girl beyond that hill where they commonly drove caged beasts, and no +one ever so much as thought of Coming to the Feet or washing in the blood +of the Lamb, or writing a good business hand with the first finger of it +pointing out, or anything. + +The little girl pleaded, promising to take her new pink silk parasol, her +buff buttoned shoes, a Christmas card with real snow on it, shining like +diamonds, and Fragile, her best doll. The thing was impossible. Then she +wept. + +He whistled to Penny, who came barking joyously--a pretender of a dog, if +there ever was one--and they moved off. Weeping after them went Nancy--as +far as the first fence, between two boards of which she put her head and +sobbed with a heavenly bitterness; for to the little boy, pushing sternly +on, her tears afforded that certain thrill of gratified brutality under +conscious rectitude, the capacity for which is among those matters by +which Heaven has set the male of our species apart from the female. The +sensation would have been flawless but for Allan's lack of dignity: from +the top board of the fence he held aloft in either hand a golden orange, +and he chanted in endless inanity: + + Chink, Chink Chiraddam! + Don't you wisht you had 'em? + Chink, Chink Chiraddam! + Don't you wisht you had 'em? + +Still he was actually and triumphantly off. + +And here should be recalled the saying of a certain wise, simple man: "If +our failures are made tragic by courage they are not different from +successes." For it came about that the subsequent dignity of this revolt +was to be wholly in its courage. + +The way led over a stretch of grassy prairie to a fence. This surmounted, +there came a ploughed field, of considerable extent to one carrying an +inconvenient box. At the farther end of this was another fence, and beyond +this an ancient orchard with a grassy floor, where lingered a few old +apple-trees, under which the recumbent cows, chewing and placid, dozed +like stout old ladies over their knitting. + +Nearest the fence was an aged, gnarled and riven tree, foolishly decked +in blossoms, like some faded, wrinkled dame, fatuously reluctant to leave +off girlish finery. Under its frivolous branches on the grassy sward would +be the place for his first night's halt--for the magic wood just this side +of the sun was now seen to be farther off than he had once supposed. So he +spread his carpet, arranged the contents of his box neatly, and ate half +his food-supply, for one's strength must be kept up in these affairs. As +he ate he looked back toward the big house--now left forever--and toward +the village beyond. The spires of the three churches were all pointing +sternly upward, as if they would mutely direct him aright, but in their +shelter one must submit to the prosaic trammels of decency. It was not to +be thought of. + +He longed for morning to come, so that he might be up and on. He lay down +on his mat to be ready for sleep, and watched a big bird far above, +cutting lazy graceful figures in the air, like a fancy skater. Then, on a +bough above him, a little dusty-looking bird tried to sing, but it sounded +only like a very small door creaking on tiny rusted hinges. A fat, +gluttonous robin that had been hopping about to peer at him, chirped far +more cheerfully as it flew away. + +Just at this point he suffered a real adventure. Eight cows sauntered up +interestedly and chewed their cuds at him in unison, standing +contemplative, calculating, determined. It is a fact in natural history +not widely enough recognised that the domestic cow is the most ferocious +appearing of all known beasts--a thing to be proved by any who will +survey one amid strange surroundings, with a mind cleanly disabused of +preconceptions. A visitor from another planet, for example, knowing +nothing of our fauna, and confronted in the forest simultaneously by a +common red milch cow and the notoriously savage black leopard of the +Himalyas, would instinctively shun the cow as a dangerous beast and +confidingly seek to fondle the pretty leopard, thus terminating his +natural history researches before they were fairly begun. + +It can be understood, then, that a moment ensued when the little boy +wavered under the steady questioning scrutiny of eight large and powerful +cows, all chewing at him in unison. Yet, even so, and knowing, moreover, +that strange cows are ever untrustworthy, only for a moment did he waver. +Then his new straw hat was off to be shaken at them and he heaved a fierce +"_H-a-y--y-u-p!_" + +At this they started, rather indignantly, seeming to meditate his swift +destruction; but another shout turned and routed them, and he even chased +them a little way, helped now by the inconsiderable dog who came up from +pretending to hunt gophers. + +After this there seemed nothing to do but eat the other half of the +provisions and retire again for the night. Long after the sun went down +behind the magic wood he lay uneasily on his lumpy bed, trying again and +again to shut his eyes and open them to find it morning--which was the way +it always happened in the west bedroom of the big house he had left +forever. + +But it was different here. And presently, when it seemed nearly dark +except for the stars, a disgraceful thing happened. He had pictured the +dog as faithful always to him, refusing in the end even to be taken from +over his dead body. But the treacherous Penny grew first restive, then +plainly desirous of returning to his home. At last, after many efforts to +corrupt the adventurer, he started off briskly alone--cornerwise, as +little dogs seem always to run--fleeing shamelessly toward that east +where shone the tame lights of Virtue. + +Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember certain phrases +from a tract that Clytie had tried to teach him--"the moment that will +close thy life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail in +hell"--"impossible to go from the haunts of sin and vice to the presence +of the Lamb"--"the torments of an eternal hell are awaiting thee"-- + + "To-night may be thy latest breath, + Thy little moment here be done. + Eternal woe, the second death, + Awaits the Christ-rejecting one." + +This was more than he had ever before been able to recall of such matters. +He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly. Yet so was he turned +again to better things. Gradually he began to have an inkling of a +possibility that made his blood icy--a possibility that not even the +spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could +mitigate--namely, a vision of himself in the same plight with that person. + +Now it was that he began to hear Them all about him. They walked +stealthily near, passed him with sinister rustlings, and whispered over +him. If They had only talked out--but they whispered--even laughing, +crying and singing in whispers. This horror, of course, was not long to +be endured. Yet, even so, with increasing myriads of Them all about, +rustling and whispering their awful laughs and cries--it was no +ignominious rout. With considerable deliberation he folded the carpet, +placed it in the box with his other treasure, and started at a pace which +may, perhaps, have quickened a little, yet was never undignified--never +more than a moderately fast trudge. + +He wondered sadly if Clytie would get up to unlock the door for him so +late at night. As for Penny, things could never be the same between them +again. + +He was astounded to see lights burning and the house open--how weird for +them to have supper at such an hour! He concealed his box in the +grape-arbour and slunk through the kitchen into the dining-room. Probably +they had gotten up in the middle of the night, out of tardy alarm for him. +It served them right. Yet they seemed hardly to notice him when he slid +awkwardly into his chair. He looked calculatingly over the table and +asked, in tones that somehow seemed to tell of injury, of personal +affront: + +"What you having supper for at this time of night?" + +His grandfather regarded him now not unkindly, while Clytie seemed +confused. + +"It's more'n long past midnight!" he insisted. + +"Huh! it ain't only a quarter past seven," put in his superior brother. +He seemed about to say more, but a glance from the grandfather silenced +him. + +So _that_ was as late as he had stayed--a quarter after seven? He was +ready now to rage at any taunt, and began to eat in haughty silence. He +was still eating when his grandfather and Allan left the table, and then +he began to feel a little grateful that they had not noticed or asked +annoying questions, or tried to be funny or anything. Over a final dish of +plum preserves and an imposing segment of marble cake he relented so far +as to tell Clytie something of his adventures--especially since she had +said that the big hall-clock was very likely slow--that it must surely be +a lot later than a quarter past seven. The circumstances had combined to +produce a narrative not entirely perspicuous--the two clear points being +that They do everything in a whisper, and that Clytie ought to get rid of +Penny at once, since he could not be depended upon at great moments. + +As to ever sleeping under a tree, Clytie discouraged him. She knew of +some Boys that once sat under a tree which was struck by lightning, all +being Killed save one, who had the rare good luck to be the son of a +Presbyterian clergyman. The little boy resolved next time to go beyond +the trees to sleep; perhaps if he went far enough he would come to the +other one of the Feet, and so have a safeguard against lightning, foreign +cows, and Those that walk with rustlings and whisper in the lonely places +at night. + +The little boy fell asleep, half-persuaded again to virtue, because of its +superior comforts. The air about his head seemed full of ghostly "good +business hands," each with its accusing forefinger pointed at him for that +he had not learned to write one as Ralph Overton did. + +Down the hall in his study the old man was musing backward to the +delicate, quiet girl with the old-fashioned aureole of curls, who would +now and then toss them with a little gesture eloquent of possibilities +for unrestraint when she felt the close-drawn rein of his authority. Again +he felt her rebellious little tugs, and the wrench of her final defiance +when she did the awful thing. He had been told by a plain speaker that her +revolt was the fault of his severity. And here was the flesh of her +flesh--was it in the same spirit of revolt against authority, a +thousandfold magnified? Might he not by according the boy a wise liberty +save him in after years from some mad folly akin to his mother's? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE GARDEN OF TRUTH AND THE PERFECT FATHER + + +It was a different summer from those that had gone before it. + +A little passionate Protestant had sallied out to make bed with the gods; +and the souls of such the just gods do truly take into certain shining +realms whither poor involatile bodies of flesh may not follow. The +requirement is that one feel his own potential godship enough to rebel. +For, having rebelled, he will assuredly venture beyond mortal domains into +that garden where stands the tree of Truth--this garden being that one to +the west just beyond the second fence (or whichever fence); that point +where the mortal of invertebrate soul is beset with the feeling that he +has already dared too far--that he had better make for home mighty quick +if he doesn't want Something to get him. The essence of this decision is +quite the same whether the mortal be eight years old or eighty. Now the +Tree of Truth stands just over this line at which all but the gods' own +turn to scamper back before supper. It is the first tree to the left--an +apple-tree, twisted, blackened, scathed, eaten with age, yet full of +blossoms as fresh and fertile as those first born of any young tree +whatsoever. Those able rightly to read this tree of Truth become at once +as the gods, keeping the faith of children while absorbing the wisdom of +the ages--lacking either of which, be it known, one may not become an +imperishable ornament of Time. + +But to him who is bravely faithful to the passing of that last fence, who +reclines under that tree even for so long as one aspiration, comes a +substantial gain: ever after, when he goes into any solitude, he becomes +more than himself. Then he reads the first lesson of the tree of Truth, +which is that the spirit of Life ages yet is ageless; and suffers yet is +joyous. This is no inconsiderable reward for passing that frontier, even +if one must live longer to comprehend reasons. It is worth while even if +the mortal become a mere dilettante in paradoxes and never learn even +feebly to spell the third lesson, which is the ultimate wisdom of the +gods. + +These matters being precisely so, the little boy knew quite as well as the +gods could know it, that a credit had been set down to his soul for what +he had ventured--even though what he had not done was, so far, more +stupendous than what he had, in the world of things and mere people. He +now became enamoured of life rather than death; and he studied the Shorter +Catechism with such effect that he could say it clear over to "_Every sin +deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to +come._" Each night he tried earnestly to learn two new answers; and glad +was he when his grandfather would sit by him, for the old man had now +become his image of God, and it seemed fitting to recite to him. Often as +they sat together the little boy would absently slip his hand into the +big, warm, bony hand of the old man, turning and twisting it there until +he felt an answering pressure. This embarrassed the old man. Though he +would really have liked to take the little boy up to his breast and hold +him there, he knew not how; and he would even be careful not to restrain +the little hand in his own--to hold it, yet to leave it free to withdraw +at its first uneasy wriggle. + +Of this shackled spirit of kindness, always striving within the old man, +the little boy had come to be entirely conscious. So real was it to him, +so dependable, that he never suspected that a certain little blow with the +open hand one day was meant to punish him for conduct he had persisted in +after three emphatic admonitions. + +"Oh! that _hurts_!" he had cried, looking up at the confused old man with +unimpaired faith in his having meant not more than a piece of friendly +roughness. This look of flawless confidence in the uprightness of his +purpose, the fine determination to save him chagrin by smiling even though +the hurt place tingled, left in the old man's mind a biting conviction +that he had been actually on the point of behaving as one gentleman may +not behave to another. Quick was he to make the encounter accord with the +child's happy view, even picking him up and forcing from himself the +gaiety to rally him upon his babyish tenderness to rough play. Not less +did he hold it true that "The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child +left to himself bringeth his mother to shame--" and with the older boy +he was not unconscientious in this matter. For Allan took punishment as +any boy would, and, indeed, was so careful that he seldom deserved it. But +the old man never ceased to be grateful that the littler boy had laughed +under that one blow, unable to suspect that it could have been meant in +earnest. + +From the first day that the little boy felt the tender cool grass under +his bare toes that summer, life became like perfectly played music. This +was after the long vacation began, when there was no longer any need to +remember to let his voice fall after a period, or to dread his lessons so +that he must learn them more quickly than any other pupil in school. There +would be no more of that wretched fooling until fall, a point of time +inconceivably far away. Before it arrived any one of a number of strange +things might happen to avert the calamity of education. For instance, he +might be born again, a thing of which he had lately heard talk; a +contingency by no means flawless in prospect, since it probably meant +having the mumps again, and things like that. But if it came on the very +last day of vacation, or on the first morning of school, just as he was +called on to recite, snatching him from the very jaws of the Moloch, and +if it fixed him so he need not be afraid in the night of going where Milo +Barrus was going, then it might not be so bad. + +Nancy, who had now discarded the good name of Lillian May for simple +Alice, disapproved heartily of being born again; unless, indeed, one could +be born a boy the second time. She was only too eager for the day when +she need not submit to having her hair brushed and combed so long every +morning of her life. Not for the world would she go through it again and +have to begin French all over, even at "_J'ai, tu as, il a_." Yet, if it +were certain she could be a boy-- + +He was too considerate to tell her that this was as good as +impossible--that she quite lacked the qualities necessary for that. +Instead, he reassured her with the chivalrous fiction that he, at least, +would like her as well as if she _were_ a boy. And, indeed, as a girl, she +was not wholly unsatisfactory. True, she played "school" (of all things!) +in preference to "wild animals," practised scales on the piano an hour +every day, wore a sun-hat frequently--spite of which she was +freckled--wore shoes and stockings on the hottest days, when one's feet +are so hungry for the cool, springy turf, and performed other acts +repugnant to a soul that has brought itself erect. But she was fresh and +dainty to look at, like an opened morning glory, with pretty frocks that +the French lady whose name was Madmasel made her wear every day, and her +eyes were much like certain flowers in the bed under the bay-window, with +very long, black lashes that got all stuck together when she cried; and +she made superb capital letters, far better than the little boy's, though +she was a year younger. + +Also, which was perhaps her chief charm, she could be made to believe that +only he could protect her from the Gratcher, a monstrous thing, half +beast, half human, which was often seen back of the house; sometimes +flitting through the grape-arbour, sometimes coming out of the dark +cellar, sometimes peering around corners. It was a thing that went on +enormous crutches, yet could always catch you if it saw you by daylight +out of its right eye, its left being serviceable only at night, when, if +you were wise, you kept in the house. Once the Gratcher saw you with its +right eye the crutches swung toward you and you were caught: it picked you +up and began to look you all over, with the eyes in the ends of its +fingers. This tickled you so that you went crazy in a minute. + +Nancy feared the Gratcher, and she became supremely lovely to the little +boy when she permitted him to guard her from it, instead of running home +across the lawn when it was surely coming;--a loveliness he felt more +poignantly at certain reflective times when he was not also afraid. For, +the Gratcher being his own invention, these moments of superiority to its +terrors would inevitably seize him. + +[Illustration: "She could be made to believe that only he could protect +her from the Gratcher."] + +Better than protecting Nancy did he love to report the Gratcher's +immediate presence to Allan, daring him to stay on that spot until it put +its dreadful head around the corner and shook one of its crutches at them. +In low throbbing tones he would report its fearful approach, stride by +stride, on the crutches. This he could do by means of the Gratcher-eye, +with which he claimed to be endowed. One having a Gratcher-eye can see +around any corner when a Gratcher happens to be coming--yet only then, not +at any other time, as Allan had proved by experiment on the first +disclosure of this phenomenon. He of the Gratcher-eye could positively not +see around a corner, if, for example, Allan himself was there; the +Gratcher-eye could not tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by +no means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise its magic function +when a Gratcher actually approached, and Allan knew it. He would stand +staunchly, with a fine incredulity, while the little boy called off the +strides, perhaps, until he announced "_Now_ he's just passed the +well-curb--_now_ he's--" but here, scoffing over an anxious shoulder, +Allan would go in where Clytie was baking, feigning a sudden great hunger. + +Nancy would stay, because she believed the little boy's protestations that +he could save her, and the little boy himself often believed them. + +"I love Allan best, because he is so comfortable, but I think you are the +most admirable," she would say to him at such times; and he thought well +of her if she had seemed very, very frightened. + +So life had become a hardy sport with him. No longer was he moved to wish +for early dissolution when Clytie's song floated to him: + + "'I should like to die,' said Willie, + If my papa could die, too; + But he says he isn't ready, + 'Cause he has so much to do!" + +This Willie had once seemed sweet and noble to him, but the words now made +him avid of new life by reminding him that his own dear father would soon +come to be with him one week, as he had promised when last they parted, +and as a letter written with magnificent flourishes now announced. + +Late in August this perfect father came--a fine laughing, rollicking, big +gentleman, with a great, loud voice, and beautiful long curls that touched +his velvet coat-collar. His sweeping golden moustache, wide-brimmed white +hat, the choice rings on his fingers, his magnificently ponderous gold +watch-chain and a watch of the finest silver, all proclaimed him a being +of such flawless elegance both in person and attire that the little boy +never grew tired of showing him to the village people and to Clytie. He +did not stay at the big house, for some reason, but at the Eagle Hotel, +whence he came to see his boys each day, or met them hurrying to see him. +And for a further reason which the little boys did not understand, their +grandfather continued to be too busy to see this perfect father once +during the week he stayed in the village. + +Deeming it a pity that two such choice spirits should not be brought +together, the little boy urged his father to bring his fiddle to the big +house and play and sing some of his fine songs, so that his grandfather +could have a chance to hear some good music. He knew well enough that if +the old man once heard this music he would have to give in and enjoy it, +even if he was too busy to come down. And if only his father would tune up +the fiddle and sing that very, very good song about, + + "The more she said 'Whoa!' + They cried, 'Let her go!' + And the swing went a little bit higher," + +if only his grandfather could hear this, one of the funniest and noisiest +songs in the world, perhaps he would come right down stairs. But his +father laughed away the suggestion, saying that the old gentleman had no +ear for music; which, of course, was a joke, for he had two, like any +person. + +Clytemnestra, too, was at first strangely cool to the incomparable father, +though at last she proved not wholly insensible to his charm, providing +for his refection her very choicest cake and the last tumbler of +crab-apple jelly. She began to suspect that a man of manners so engaging +must have good in him, and she gave him at parting the tracts of "The +Dying Drummer Boy" and "Sinner, what if You Die To-day?" for which he +professed warm gratitude. + +The little boy afterward saw his perfect father hand these very tracts to +Milo Barrus, when they met him on the street, saying, "Here, Barrus, get +your soul saved while you wait!" Then they laughed together. + +The little boy wondered if this meant that Milo Barrus had come to the +Feet, or been born again, or something. Or if it meant that his father +also spelled God with a little g. He did not think of it, however, until +it was too late to ask. + +The flawless father went away at the end of the week, "over the County +Fair circuit, selling Chief White Cloud's Great Indian Remedy," the little +boy heard him tell Clytie. Also he heard his grandfather say to Clytie, +"Thank God, not for another year!" + +The little boy liked Nancy better than ever after that, because she had +liked his father so much, saying he was exactly like a prince, giving +pennies and nickels to everybody and being so handsome and big and grand. +She wished her own Uncle Doctor could be as beautiful and great; and the +little boy was generous enough to wish that his own plain grandfather +might be _almost_ as fine. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SUPERLATIVE COUSIN BILL J. + + +A splendid new interest had now come into the household in the person of +one whom Clytemnestra had so often named as Cousin Bill J. Grandfather +Delcher having been ordered south for the winter by Dr. Crealock, Cousin +Bill J., upon Clytie's recommendation, was imported from up Fredonia way +to look after the cow and be a man about the place. Clytie assured +Grandfather Delcher that Cousin Bill J. had "never uttered an oath, though +he's been around horses all his life!" This made him at once an object of +interest to the little boy, though doubtless he failed to appraise the +restraint at anything like its true value. It had sufficed Grandfather +Delcher, however, and Cousin Bill J., securing leave of absence from the +livery-stable in Fredonia, arrived the day the old man left, making a +double excitement for the household. + +He proved to be a fascinating person; handsome, affable, a ready talker +upon all matters of interest--though sarcastic, withal--and fond of boys. +True, he had not long hair like the little boy's father. Indeed, he had +not much hair at all, except a sort of curtain of black curls extending +from ear to ear at the back of his bare, pink head. But the little boy had +to admit that Cousin Bill J.'s moustache was even grander than his +father's. It fell in two graceful festoons far below his chin, with a +little eyelet curled into each tip, and, like the ringlets, it showed the +blue-black lustre of the crow's wing. In the full sunlight, at times, it +became almost a royal purple. + +Later observation taught the little boy that this splendid hue was applied +at intervals by Cousin Bill J. himself. He did it daintily with a small +brush, every time the moustache began to show a bit rusty at the roots; +Bernal never failed to be present at this ceremony; nor to resolve that +his own moustache, when it came, should be as scrupulously cared for--not +left, like Dr. Crealock's, for example, to become speckled and gray. + +Cousin Bill J.'s garments were as splendid as his character. He had an +overcoat and cap made from a buffalo hide; his high-heeled boots had +maroon tops set with purple crescents; his watch-charm was a large gold +horse in full gallop; his cravat was an extensive area of scarlet satin in +the midst of which was caught a precious stone as large as a robin's egg; +and in smoking, which his physician had prescribed, he used a superb +meerschaum cigar-holder, all tinted a golden brown, upon which lightly +perched a carven angel dressed like those that ride the big white horse in +the circus. + +But aside from these mere matters of form, Cousin Bill J. was a man with a +history. Some years before he had sprained his back, since which time he +had been unable to perform hard labour; but prior to that mishap he had +been a perfect specimen of physical manhood--one whose prowess had been +the marvel of an extensive territory. He had split and laid up his three +hundred and fifty rails many a day, when strong men beside him had +blushingly to stop with three hundred or thereabouts; he had also cradled +his four acres of grain in a day, and he could break the wildest horse +ever known. Even the great Budd Doble, whom he personally knew, had said +more than once, and in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses, that in +some ways he, Budd Doble, knew less about a horse than Cousin Bill J. did. +The little boy was wrought to enthusiasm by this tribute, resolving always +to remember to say "hoss" for horse; and, though he had not heard of Budd +Doble before, the name was magnetic for him. After you said it over +several times he thought it made you feel as if you had a cold in your +head. + +Still further, Cousin Bill J. could throw his thumbs out of joint, sing +tenor in the choir, charm away warts, recite "Roger and I" and "The Death +of Little Nell," and he knew all the things that would make boys grow +fast, like bringing in wood, splitting kindling, putting down hay for the +cow, and other out-of-door exercises that had made him the demon of +strength he once was. The little boy was not only glad to perform these +acts for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the labours of his +hero, who wrenched his back anew nearly every time he tried to do +anything, and was always having to take a medicine for it which he called +"peach-and-honey." The little boy thought the name attractive, though his +heart bled for the sufferer each time he was obliged to take it; for after +every swallow of the stuff he made a face that told eloquently how +nauseous it must be. + +As for the satire and wit of Cousin Bill J., they were of the dry sort. He +would say to one he met on the street when the mud was deep, "Fine weather +overhead"--then adding dryly, after a significant pause--"_but few going +that way!"_ Or he would exclaim with feigned admiration, when the little +boy shot at a bird with his bow and arrow, "My! you made the feathers fly +_that_ time!"--then, after his terrible pause--_"only, the bird flew with +them_." Also he could call it "Fourth of Ju-New-Years" without ever +cracking a smile, though it cramped the little boy in helpless laughter. + +Altogether, Cousin Bill J. was a winning and lovely character of merits +both spiritual and spectacular, and he brought to the big house an exotic +atmosphere that was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this +hero might be made again the man he once was; not because of any flaw that +he could see in him--but only because the sufferer appeared somewhat less +than perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing could have been +superior to the noble melancholy with which Cousin Bill J. looked back +upon his splendid past. There was a perfect dignity in it. Surely no mere +electric belt could bring to him an attraction surpassing this--though +Cousin Bill J. insisted that he never expected any real improvement until +he could save up enough money to buy one. He showed the little boy a +picture cut from a newspaper--the picture of a strong, proud-looking man +with plenteous black whiskers, girded about with a wide belt that was +projecting a great volume of electricity into the air in every direction. +It was interesting enough, but the little boy thought this person by no +means so beautiful as Cousin Bill J., and said so. He believed, too, +though this he did not say, from tactful motives, that it would detract +from the dignity of Cousin Bill J. to go about clad only in an electric +belt, like the proud-looking gentleman in the picture--even if the belt +did send out a lot of electric wiggles all the time. But, of course, +Cousin Bill J. knew best. He looked forward to having his father meet this +new hero--feeling that each was perfect in his own way. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES + + +Around the evening lamp that winter the little boys studied Holy Writ, +while Allan made summaries of it for the edification of the proud +grandfather in far-off Florida. + +Tersely was the creation and the fall of man set forth, under promptings +and suggestions from Clytie and Cousin Bill J., who was no mean Bible +authority: how God, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," found +his first pair ashamed of their nakedness, and with his own hands made +them coats of skins and clothed them. "What a treasure those garments +would be in this evil day," said Clytie--"what a silencing rebuke to all +heretics!" But the Lord drove out the wicked pair, lest they "take also of +the tree of life and live forever," saying, "Behold, the man is become as +one of _us!_" This provoked a lengthy discussion the very first evening as +to whether it meant that there was more than one God. And Clytie's +view--that God called himself "Us" in the same sense that kings and +editors of newspapers do--at length prevailed over the polytheistic +hypothesis of Cousin Bill J. + +On they read to the Deluge, when man became so very bad indeed that God +was sorry for ever having made him, and said: "I will destroy man whom I +have created from the face of the earth; both man and the beast and the +creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have +made them." + +Hereupon Bernal suggested that all the white rabbits at least should have +been saved--thinking of his own two in the warm nest in the barn. He was +unable to see how white rabbits with twitching pink noses and pink rims +around their eyes could be an offense, or, indeed, other than a pure joy +even to one so good as God. But he gave in, with new admiration for the +ready mind of Cousin Bill J., who pointed out that white rabbits could not +have been saved because they were not fish. He even relished the dry quip +that maybe he, the little boy, thought white rabbits _were_ fish; but +Cousin Bill J. didn't, for his part. + +Past the Tower of Babel they went, when the Lord "came down to see the +city and the tower," and made them suddenly talk strange tongues to one +another so they could not build their tower actually into Heaven. + +The little boy thought this a fine joke to play on them, to set them all +"jabbering" so. + +After that there was a great deal of fighting, and, in the language of +Allan's summary, "God loved all the good people so he gave them lots of +wives and cattle and sheep and he let them go out and kill all the other +people they wanted to which was their enemies." But the little boy found +the butcheries rather monotonous. + +Occasionally there was something graphic enough to excite, as where the +heads of Ahab's seventy children were put into a basket and exposed in two +heaps at the city's gate; but for the most part it made him sleepy. + +True, when it came to getting the Children of Israel out of Egypt, as +Cousin Bill J. observed, "Things brisked up considerable." + +The plan of first hardening Pharaoh's heart, then scaring him by a +pestilence, then again hardening his heart for another calamity, quite +won the little boy's admiration for its ingenuity, and even Cousin Bill J. +would at times betray that he was impressed. Feverishly they followed the +miracles done to Egypt; the plague of frogs, of lice, of flies, of boils +and blains on man and beast; the plague of hail and lightning, of locusts, +and the three days of darkness. Then came the Lord's final triumph, which +was to kill all the first-born in the land of Egypt, "from the first-born +of Pharaoh, that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the first-born of the +maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts." +Again the little boy's heart ached as he thought pityingly of the +first-born of all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement to +dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was the manner in which the +Israelites identified themselves, by marking their doors with a sprig of +hyssop dipped in the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did he +see the good God gliding cautiously from door to door, looking for the +mark of blood, and passing the lucky doors where it was seen to be truly +of a male lamb without blemish. He thought it must have taken a lot of +lambs to mark up all the doors! + +Then came that master-stroke of enterprise, when God directed Moses to +"speak now in the ears of the people and let every man borrow of his +neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels +of gold," so that they might "spoil" the Egyptians. Cousin Bill J. +chuckled when he read this, declaring it to be "a regular Jew trick"; but +Clytie rebuked him quickly, reminding him that they were God's own words, +spoken in His own holy voice. + +"Well, it was mighty thoughtful in God," insisted Cousin Bill J., but +Clytie said, however that was, it served Pharaoh right for getting his +heart hardened so often. + +The little boy, not perceiving the exact significance of "spoil" in this +connection, wondered if Cousin Bill J. would spoil if some one borrowed +his gold horse and ran off with it. + +Then came that exciting day when the Lord said, "I will get me honour upon +Pharaoh and all his host," which He did by drowning them thoroughly in the +Red Sea. The little boy thought he would have liked to be there in a +boat--a good safe boat that would not tip over; also that he would much +like to have a rod such as Aaron had, that would turn into a serpent. It +would be a fine thing to take to school some morning. But Cousin Bill J. +thought it doubtful if one could be procured; though he had seen Heller +pour five colours of wine out of a bottle which, when broken, proved to +have a live guinea-pig in it. This seemed to the little boy more wonderful +than Aaron's rod, though he felt it would not reflect honour upon God to +say so. + +Another evening they spent before Sinai, Cousin Bill J. reading the verses +in a severe and loud tone when the voice of the Lord was sounding. Duly +impressed was the little boy with the terrors of the divine presence, a +thing so awful that the people must not go up into the mount nor even +touch its border--lest "the Lord break forth upon them: There shall not a +hand touch it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether it be +beast or man it shall not live." Clytie said the goodness of God was +shown herein. An evil God would not have warned them, and many worthy but +ignorant people would have been blasted. + +Then He came down in thunder and smoke and lightning and +earthquakes--which Cousin Bill J. read in tones that enabled Bernal to +feel every possible joy of terror; came to tell them that He was a very +jealous God and that they must not worship any of the other gods. He +commanded that "thou shalt not revile the Gods," also that they should +"make no mention of the names of other Gods," which Cousin Bill J. said +was as fair as you could ask. + +When they reached the directions for sacrificing, the little boy was +doubly alert--in the event that he should ever determine to be washed in +the blood of the lamb and have to do his own killing. + +"Then," read Cousin Bill J., in a voice meant to convey the augustness of +Deity, "thou shalt kill the ram and take of his blood and put it upon the +tip of the right ear of Aaron and upon the tip of the right ear of his +sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of +their right foot." So you didn't have to wash all over in the blood. He +agreed with Clytie, who remarked that no one could ever have found out how +to do it right unless God had told. The God-given directions that ensued +for making the water of separation from "the ashes of a red heifer" he did +not find edifying; but some verses after that seemed more practicable. +"And thou shalt take of the ram," continued the reader in majestic +cadence, "the fat and the rump and the fat that covereth the inwards, and +the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat that is upon +them--" + +Here was detail with a satisfying minuteness; and all this was for +"a wave-offering" to be waved before the Lord--which was indeed an +interesting thought. + +"If God was so careful of His children in these small matters," said +Clytie; "no wonder they believed He would care for them in graver matters, +and no wonder they looked forward so eagerly to the coming of His Son, +whom He promised should be sent to save them from His wrath." + +Through God's succeeding minute directions for the building and upholstery +of His tabernacle, "with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and +purple and scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them," +the interest of the little boys rather languished; likewise through His +regulations about such dry matters as slavery, divorce, and polygamy. His +directions for killing witches and for stoning the ox that gores a man or +woman had more of colour in them. But there was no real interest until the +good God promised His children to bring them in unto the Amorites and the +Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the +Jebusites, to "cut them off." It was not uninteresting to know that God +put Moses in a cleft of the rock and covered it with His hand when He +passed by, thus permitting Moses a partial view of the divine person. But +the actual fighting of battles was thereafter the chief source of +interest. For God was a mighty God of battles, never weary of the glories +of slaughter. When it was plain that He could make a handful of two +thousand Israelites slay two hundred thousand Midianites, in a moment, as +one might say, the wisdom of coming to the Feet, being born again, and +washing in the blood ceased to be debatable. It would seem very silly, +indeed, to neglect any precaution that would insure the favour of this +God, who slew cities full of men and women and little children off-hand. +The little boy thought Milo Barrus would begin to spell a certain word +with the very biggest "G" he could make, if any one were to bring these +matters to his notice. + +As to Allan, who made abstracts of the winter's study, Clytemnestra and +her transcendent relative agreed that he would one day be a power in the +land. Off to Florida each week they sent his writing to Grandfather +Delcher, who was proud of it, in spite of his heart going out chiefly to +the littler boy. + +"So this is all I know now about God," ran the conclusion, "except that He +loved us so that He gave His only Son to be crucified so that He could +forgive our sins as soon as He saw His Son nailed up on the cross, and +those that believed it could be with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and +those that didn't believe it, like the Jews and heathens, would have to be +in hell for ever and ever Amen. This proves His great love for us and that +He is the true God. So this is all I have learned this winter about God, +who is a spirit infinite eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom and +power holiness justice goodness and truth, and the word of God is +contained in the scriptures of the old and new testament which is the only +rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. In my next I will take +up the meek and lowly Jesus and show you how much I have learned about +him." + +They had been unable to persuade the littler boy into this species of +composition, his mind dwelling too much on the first-born of white rabbits +and such, but to show that his winter was not wholly lost, he submitted a +secular composition, which ran: + +"BIRDS + +"The Animl kindom is devided into birds and reguler animls. Our teacher +says we had ougt to obsurv so I obsurv there is three kinds of birds +Jingle birds Squeek birds and Clatter birds. Jingle birds has fat rusty +stumacks. I have not the trouble to obsurv any more kinds." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +ON SURVIVING THE IDOLS WE BUILD + + +It is the way of life to be forever building new idols in place of the +old. Into the fabric of these the most of us put so much of ourselves that +a little of us dies each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is +shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with +doubt. This is why we fade and wither as the leaf. Could we but sweep +aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing +certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree +in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword. +But this may not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new +creation--deeming that _here_, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond +the end of time. To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are +meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken. + +And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, +learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some +last idol triumphantly surviving us. For--and this is the third lesson +from that tree of Truth--we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our +idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is +quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his +creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful +dust. Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself--but this is +mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last +fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange +and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper. + +To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be +apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol +blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish +caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers--as if +we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to +this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt +for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol +go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a +better one. + +Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that +might wrench even youth's divine credulity. + +Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and +its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that +Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins +of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place +something unseen and unheard of any save himself--an idol discernible only +by him, but none the less real for that. + +The Imp with the hammer being no respecter of dignities, the idol of the +Front Room fell next, increasing the heap of ruins that was gathering +about his feet. Tragically came a day one spring, a cold, cloudy, +rational day, it seemed, when the Front Room went down; for the little +boy saw all its sanctities violated, its mysteries laid bare. And the +Front Room became a mere front room. Its shutters were opened and its +windows raised to let in light and common fresh air; its carpet was on the +line outside to be scourged of dust; the black, formidable furniture was +out on the wide porch to be re-varnished, like any common furniture, +plainly needing it; the vases of dyed grass might be handled without risk; +and the dark spirit that had seemed to be in and over all was vanished. +Even the majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza once died for +so much as touching reverently, was now seen to be an ordinary stove for +the burning of anthracite coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for +an extra quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had finished +whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little boy, grown somewhat bigger +now, walked among the debris of this idol, stamping the floor, sounding +the walls, detecting cracks in the ceiling, spots on the wall-paper and +cobwebs in the corners. Yet serene amid the ruins towered his valiant +spirit, conscious under the catastrophe of its power to build other and +yet stauncher idols. + +Thus was it one day to stretch itself with new power amid the base ruins +of Cousin Bill J., though the time was mercifully deferred--that his soul +might gain strength in worship to put away even that which it worshipped +when the day of new truth dawned. + +When Cousin Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually +to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments +with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath +desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the +little boy suspected no motive. He saw these works only as the outward +signs of an inward grace that must be ever increasing. So it came that his +amazement was above that of all other persons when, at Spring's first +breath of honeyed fragrance, Cousin Bill J. went to be the husband of +Miss Alvira Abney. He had not failed to observe that Miss Alvira sang +alto, in the choir, out of the same book from which Cousin Bill J. +produced his exquisite tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this, +beyond, perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor figure beside +her magnificent companion, even if her bonnet was always the gayest bonnet +in church, trembling through every season with the blossoms of some +ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira's face and hair and eyes +seemed to be all one colour, very pale, and her hands were long and thin, +with far too many bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought. + +Yet when he learned that the woman was not without merit in the sight of +his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave her his favour. At the marriage he felt +in his heart a certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that in +the bride's own heart, for their faces seemed to speak much alike. + +Tensely the little boy listened to the words that united these two, +understanding perfectly from questions that his hero endowed the woman at +his side with all his worldly goods. Even a less practicable person than +Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in this light--being endowed +with the gold horse, to say nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the +precious jewel in the scarlet cravat. Probably now she would be able to +throw her thumbs out of joint, too! + +But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that Cousin Bill J. would +stay close at hand, to be a joy forever in his sight and lend importance +to the town of Edom. For his hero was to go and live in the neat rooms of +Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking shop, and never return to +the scenes of his early prowess. + +After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would +watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high glass case +in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets. +And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not +irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back +at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts +deserved. He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, +or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which +time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be +had for the asking. Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject +of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County +marvelling at his strength. + +At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. Later he came to +rejoice in the very circumstance that had brought him pain. If his hero +could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he +had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences--yes, and smart +under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm. + +It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not +infrequently the fate of an idol. + +Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have +said "that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet +there came a moment when all was changed--a time of question, doubt, +conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, +he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even +esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J. + +He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss +Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs +and actually split her own kindlings--with that healthy loafer setting +around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that +drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been seen with +that eldest--" + +Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener, +whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He +pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss +Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up +the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He +would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be +lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her +back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist, +she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried +to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If _that_ was the kind +she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or +Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing +Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero." + +As for Cousin Bill J., of _course_ he was a loafer! Who wouldn't be if he +had the chance? But it was false and cruel to say that he was a healthy +loafer. When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to fell an ox +with one blow of his fist. + +Nor was he disturbed seriously by rumours that his hero was a +"come-outer"; that instead of attending church with Miss Alvira he could +be heard at the barbershop of a Sabbath morning, agreeing with Milo Barrus +that God might have made the world in six days and rested on the seventh; +but he couldn't have made the whale swallow Jonah, because it was against +reason and nature; and, if you found one part of the Bible wasn't so, how +could you tell the rest of it wasn't a lot of grandmother's tales? + +Nor did he feel anything but sympathy for a helpless man imposed upon when +he heard Mrs. Squire Cumpston say to Clytie, "Do you know that lazy brute +has her worked to a mere shadow; she just sits in that shop all day long +and lets tears fall every minute or so on her work. She spoiled +five-eighths of a yard of three-inch lavender satin ribbon that way, that +was going on to Mrs. Beasley's second-mourning bonnet. And she's had to +cut him down to twenty-five cents a day for spending-money, and order the +stores not to trust him one cent on her account." + +He was sorry to have Miss Alvira crying so much. It must be a sloppy +business, making her hats and things. But what did the woman _expect_ of a +man like Cousin Bill J., anyway? + +Yet somehow it came after a few years the new light upon his old idol. One +day he found that he neither resented nor questioned a thing he heard +Clytie herself say about Cousin Bill J.: "Why, he don't know as much as a +goat." Here she reconsidered, with an air of wanting to be entirely +fair:--"Well, not as much as a goat really _ought_ to know!" And when he +overheard old Squire Cumpston saying on the street, a few days later, "Of +all God's mean creatures, the meanest is a male human that can keep his +health on the money a woman earns!" it was no shock, though he knew that +Cousin Bill J. was meant. + +Departed then was the glory of his hero, his splendid dimensions shrunk, +his effective lustre dulled, his perfect moustache rusted and scraggly, +his chin weakened, his pale blue eyes seen to be in force like those of a +china doll. + +He heard with interest that Squire Cumpston had urged Miss Alvira to +divorce her husband, that she had refused, declaring God had joined her to +Cousin Bill J. and that no man might put them asunder; that marriage had +been raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament and was now +indissoluble--an emblem, indeed, of Christ's union with His Church; and +that, as she had made her bed, so would she lie upon it. + +Nor was the boy alone in regarding as a direct manifestation of Providence +the sudden removal of Cousin Bill J. from this life by means of pneumonia. +For Miss Alvira had ever been esteemed and respected even by those who +considered that she sang alto half a note off, while her husband had +gradually acquired the disesteem of almost the entire village of Edom. +Many, indeed, went so far as to consider him a reproach to his sex. + +Yet there were a few who said that even a pretended observance of the +decencies would have been better. Miss Alvira disagreed with them, +however, and after all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the +post-office next day, "It was _her_ funeral." For Miss Alvira had made no +pretense to God; and, what is infinitely harder, she would make none to +the world. She rode to the last resting-place of her husband--Elias also +made a funny joke about his having merely changed _resting-places_--decked +in a bonnet on which were many blossoms. She had worn it through years +when her heart mourned and life was bitter, when it seemed that God from +His infinity had chosen her to suffer the cruellest hurts a woman may +know--and now that He had set her free she was not the one to pretend +grief with some lying pall of crepe. And on the new bonnet she wore to +church, the first Sabbath after, there still flowered above her somewhat +drawn face the blossoms of an endless girlhood, as if they were rooted in +her very heart. Beneath these blossoms she sang her alto--such as it +was--with just a hint of tossing defiance. Yet there was no need for that. +Edom thought well of her. + +No one was known to have mourned the departed save an inferior dog he had +made his own and been kind to; but this creature had little sympathy or +notice, though he was said to have waited three days and three nights on +the new earth that topped the grave of Cousin Bill J. For, quite aside +from his unfortunate connection, he had not been thought well of as a dog. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PASSING OF THE GRATCHER; AND ANOTHER + + +From year to year the perfect father came to Edom to be a week with his +children. And though from visit to visit there were external variations in +him, his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless. When his garments +were appreciably less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when +his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the +priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, +though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of +copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, +worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the +reverse. Yet he could not avoid being sensible of the fluctuations. + +One year the parent would come with the long hair of one who, having been +brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the +choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopaeia, and who would out of love +for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all for a nominal +consideration. + +Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping moustache and much of the +tawny hair, and the little boy would understand that he had travelled +extensively with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in large +cities, and being spoken of as "the phenomenal California baritone." His +admiring son envied the fortunate people of those cities. + +Again he would be touring the world of cities with some simple article of +household use which, from his luxurious barouche, he was merely +introducing for the manufacturers--perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a +silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen knives and cut +glass, this being, indeed, one of his prized staples. It appeared--so the +little boy heard him tell Milo Barrus--that few men could resist buying a +tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into strips before their +eyes; that one beholding the sea of hands waving frantically up to him +with quarters in them, after his demonstration, would have reason to +believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of glass every day +or so. Instead of this, as an observer of domestic and professional life, +he believed that out of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not +ten had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would. + +There was another who continued indifferent to the personal estate of this +father. This was Grandfather Delcher, who had never seen him since that +bleak day when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter. When the +perfect father came to Edom the grandfather went to his room and kept +there so closely that neither ever beheld the other. The little boy was +much puzzled by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other by two +men of such rare distinction, and during the early visits of his father he +was fruitful of suggestion for bringing them together. But when he came to +understand that they remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was +troubled. He ceased then all efforts to arrange a meeting to which he had +looked forward with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage to +the other. But he was grieved toward his grandfather, becoming sharp and +even disdainful to the queer, silent old man, at those times when the +father was in the village. He could have no love and but little +friendliness for one who slighted his dear father. And so a breach +widened between them from year to year, as the child grew stouter fibre +into his sentiments of loyalty and justice. + +Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly depriving him of +this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant +vitality that could fashion others to be still more warmly cherished. + +With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between +their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had +not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of +humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, +she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken +wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was +more plausible now that a prince, "all dressed up in shiny Prince +Clothes," would come riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the +saddle in front of him and gallop off, calling her "My beautiful darling!" +while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the cook, danced up and down on the +front piazza impotently shouting "Help!" She suspected then, when it was +too late, that certain people would bitterly wish they had acted in a +different manner. If this did not happen soon, she meant to go into a +convent where she would not be forever told things for her own good by +those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where she could devote a +quiet life to the bringing up of her children. + +The little boy sympathised with her. He knew what it was to be +disappointed in one's family. The family he would have chosen for his own +was that of which two excellent views were given on the circus bills. In +one picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in their pink +tights, ranging from the tall father and mother down through four children +to a small boy that always looked much like himself. In the other picture +these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through the air at the very +top of the great tent, from trapeze to trapeze, with the littlest boy +happily in the greatest danger, midway in the air between the two proud +parents, who were hurling him back and forth. + +It was absurd to think of anything like this in connection with a family +of which only one member had either courage or ambition. One had only to +study Clytie or Grandfather Delcher a few moments to see how hopeless it +all was. + +The next best life to be aspired to was that of a house-painter, who could +climb about unchided on the frailest of high scaffolds, swing from the +dizziest cupola, or sway jauntily at the top of the longest ladder--always +without the least concern whether he spilled paint on his clothes or not. + +Then, all in a half-hour, one afternoon, both he and Nancy seemed to cross +a chasm of growth so wide that one thrilled to look back to the farther +side where all objects showed little and all interests were juvenile. And +this phenomenon, signalised by the passing of the Gratcher, came in this +wise. As they rested from play--this being a time when the Gratcher was +most likely to be seen approaching by him of the Gratcher-eye, the usual +alarm was given, followed by the usual unbreathing silence. The little boy +fixedly bent his magic eye around the corner of the house, the little girl +scrambling to him over the grass to clutch one of his arms, to listen +fearfully for the setting of the monster's crutches at the end of each +stride, to feel if the earth trembled, as it often distinctly did, under +his awful tread. + +Wider grew the eyes of both at each "Now he's nearer still!" of the little +boy, until at last the girl must hide her head lest she see that awful +face leering past the corner. For, once the Gratcher's eye met yours +fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will. This was to pick +you up and look at you on all sides at once with the eyes in his +finger-ends, which tickled you so that you lost your mind. + +But now, at the shrillest and tensest report of progress from the gifted +watcher, all in a wondrous second of realisation, they turned to look into +each other's eyes--and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick +little self-conscious laughs they gave. It was all at once as if two +grown-ups had in a flash divined that they had been playing at a childish +game under some spell. The moment was not without embarrassment, because +of their having caught themselves in the very act and frenzy of showing +terror of this clumsy fiction. Foolishly they averted their glances, after +that first little laugh of sudden realisation; but again their eyes met, +and this time they laughed loud and long with a joy that took away not +only all fears of the Gratcher forever, but their first embarrassment of +themselves. Then, with no word of the matter whatsoever, each knowing that +the other understood, they began to talk of life again, feeling older and +wiser, which truly they were. + +For, though many in time wax brave to beard their Gratcher even in his +lair, only the very wise learn this--that the best way to be rid of him is +to laugh him away--that no Gratcher ever fashioned by the ingenuity of +terror-loving humans can keep his evil power over one to whom he has +become funny. + +The passing of the Gratcher had left no pedestal crying for another idol. +In its stead, for his own chastening and with all reverence, the little +boy erected the spirit of that God which the Bible tells of, who is +all-wise and loving, yet no sentimentalist, as witness his sudden +devastations among the first-born of all things, from white rabbits to +men. + +But an idol next went down that not only left a wretched vacancy in the +boy's pantheon, but fell against his heart and made an ugly wound. It was +as if he had become suddenly clear-seeing on that day when the Gratcher +shrivelled in the blast of his laugh. + +A little later came the father on his annual visit, and the dire thing was +done. The most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A +perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, +street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby +smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, +and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things +without which the little boy now saw no one could be a gentleman. + +He cried in his bed that night, after futile efforts to believe that some +fearful change had been wrought in his father. But his memory of former +visits was scrupulously photographic--phonographic even. He recalled from +the past certain effects once keenly joyed in that now made his cheeks +burn. The things rioted brutally before him, until it seemed that +something inside of him strove to suppress them--as if a shamed hand +reached out from his heart to brush the whole offense into decent hiding +with one quick sweep. + +This time he took care that Nancy should not meet his father. Yet he +walked the streets with him as before--walking defiantly and with shame +those streets through which he had once led the perfect father in festal +parade, to receive the applause of a respectful populace. Now he went +forth awkwardly, doggedly, keen for signs that others saw what he did, and +quick to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he detected that +they did so. Once his father rallied him upon his "grumpiness"; then he +grew sullen--though trying to smile--thinking with mortification of his +grandfather. He understood the old man now. + +He was glad when the week came to an end. Bruised, bewildered, shamed, but +loyal still and resentful toward others who might see as he did, he was +glad when his father went--this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a +twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading with the Gus Levy +All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, playing the "ten-twenty-thirties," whatever +they were! + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE STRONG PERSON'S NARRATIVE + + +Near the close of the following winter came news of the father's death. +In some town of which the boy had never heard, in another State, a +ramshackle wooden theatre had burned one night and the father had perished +in the fire through his own foolhardiness. The news came by two channels: +first, a brief and unilluminating paragraph in the newspaper, giving +little more than the fact itself. + +But three days later came a friend of the father, bringing his few poor +effects and a full relation of the matter. He was a person of kind heart, +evidently, to whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom--a +bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of +the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a +portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand +piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable and busy violinists. + +He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather Delcher having +wished to hear no more of the occurrence. + +"You understan', it was like this now," he began, after having with a +calculating eye rejected two proffered chairs of delicate structure and +selected a stout wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as one +whom experience had taught to distrust most of the chairs in common use. + +"The people in front had got out all right, the fire havin' started on the +stage from the strip-light, and also our people had got out through the +little stage-entrance, though havin' to leave many of our props--a good +coat I had to lose meself, fur-lined around the collar, by way of helpin' +the Sisters Devere get out their box of accordions that they done a Dutch +Daly act with for an enn-core. Well, as I was sayin', we'd all hustled +down these back stairs--they was already red hot and smokin' up good, you +understan', and there we was shiverin' outside in the snow, kind of +rattled, and no wonder, at that, and the ladies of the troupe +histurrical--it had come like a quick-change, you understan', when all of +a sudden up in the air goes the Original Kelly. Say, he lets out a yell +for your life--'Oh, my God!' he says, 'my kids--up there,' pointin' to +where the little flames was spittin' out through the side like a +fire-eatin' act. Then down he flops onto his knees in the snow, prayin' +like the--prayin' like _mad_, you understan', and callin' on the blessed +Virgin to save little Patsy, who was just gittin' good with his drum-major +act and whirlin' a fake musket--and also little Joseph, who was learnin' +to do some card-tricks that wasn't so bad. Well, so everybody begins to +scream louder and run this way and that, you understan', callin' the kids +and thinkin' Kelly was nutty, because they must 'a got out. But Kelly +keeps right on prayin' to the holy Virgin, the tears runnin' down his +make-up--say, he looked awful, on the dead! And then we hears another +yell, and here was Prof. at the window with one of the kids, sure enough. +He'd got up them two flights of stairs, though they was all red smoky, +like when you see fire through smoke. Well, he motions to catch the kid, +so we snatches a cloak off one of the girls and holds it out between us, +you understan', while he leans out and drops the kid into it, all safe and +sound. + +"Just then we seen the place all light up back of him, and we yelled to +him to jump, too--he could 'a saved himself, you understan', but he waves +his hand and shook his head--say, lookin' funny, too, with his _mus_-tache +half burned off, and we seen him go back out of sight for the other little +Kelly--Kelly still promisin' to give up all he had to the Virgin if she +saved his boys. + +"Well, for a minute the crowd kep' still, kind 'a holdin' its breath, you +understan', till the Prof.'d come back with the other kid--and holdin' it +and holdin' it till the fire gits brighter and brighter through the +window--and--nothin' happens, you understan'--just the fire keeps on +gittin' busy. Honest, I begun to feel shaky, but then up comes one of +these day-after-to-morrow fire-departments, like they have in them towns, +with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, and there was +great doings with these Silases screamin' to each other a foot away +through their fire-trumpets, only the stairs had been ablaze ever since +the Prof. got up 'em, and before any one does anything the whole inside +caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky. + +"Well, of course, that settles it, you understan'--about the little Kelly +and the Prof. We drags the original Kelly away to a drug-store on the +corner of the next block, where they was workin' over the kid Prof. +saved--it was Patsy--and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. was bringin' the +kid around all right, when one of the Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty +all to once--say, she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park, +laughin' till you'd think she'd bust, only it sounded like she was cryin' +at the same time, and screamin' out at the top of her voice, 'Oh, he +looked so damned funny with his _mus_-tache burned off! Oh, he looked so +damned funny with his _mus_-tache burned off!'--way up high like that, +over and over. Well, so she has to be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm +full of knockouts. Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by that time, +what with the lady bein' that way I'm 'a tellin' you, and Kelly, the crazy +Irishman--I could hear him off in one corner givin' his reg'ler stunt +about his friend, O'Houlihan, lately landed and lookin' for work, comes to +a sausage factory and goes up to the boss and says, 'Begobs!'--_you_ know +the old gag--say, I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd +around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin' around in that dressin'-room +for Kelly's other kid, when he might 'a jumped after he got the first one, +and, say, this is no kid--first thing I knew I begin to bawl like a baby. + +"Well, as I was sayin', there I am and all I can see through the fog is +one 'a these here big lighted signs down the street with 'George's Place' +on it, and a pitcher of a big glass of beer. Me to George's, at once. When +Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, I'm tryin' to tell a gang of +Silases how it all happened and chokin' up every time so's I have to have +another. + +"Well, of course, we break up next day. Kelly tells me, after he gits +right again, that little Patsy was saved by havin' one 'a these here +scapulars on--he shows it to me hanging around the kid's neck, inside his +clothes. He says little Joseph must 'a left his off, or he'd 'a' been +saved, too. He showed me a piece in one 'a these little religious books +that says there was nothing annoyed the devil like a scapular--that a man +can't be burned or done dirt to in no way if he wears one. I says it's a +pity the Prof. didn't have one on, but Kelly says they won't work for +Protestants. But I don't know--I never _purtended_ to be good on these +propositions of religious matters. And there wasn't any chance of findin' +the kid to prove if Kelly had it right or not. + +"But the Prof. he was certainly a great boy for puttin' up three-sheets +about his own two kids; anybody that would listen--friend or +stranger--made no difference to _him_. He starred 'em to anybody, you +understan'--what corkers they was, and all like that. It seemed like +Kelly's havin' two kids also kind 'a touched on his feelin's. Honest, I +ain't ever got so worked up over anything before in me whole life." + +When this person had gone the old man called the two boys to his room and +prayed with them; keeping the younger to sit with him a long time +afterward, as if feeling that his was the heavier heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A NEW THEORY OF A CERTAIN WICKED MAN + + +The time of the first sorrow was difficult for the boy. There was that +first hard sleep after one we love has gone--in which we must always +dream that it is not true--a sleep from which we awaken to suffer all the +shock of it again. Then came black nights when the perfect love for the +perfect father came back in all its early tenderness to cry the little boy +to sleep. Yet it went rapidly enough at last, as times of sorrow go for +the young. There even came a day when he found in a secret place of his +heart a chastened, hopeful inquiry if all might not have been for the +best. He had loved his father--there had been between them an unbreakable +bond; yet this very love had made him suffer at every thought of him while +he was living, whereas now he could love him with all tender memories and +with no poisonous misgivings about future meetings with their +humiliations. Now his father was made perfect in Heaven, and even +Grandfather Delcher--whose aloofness here he had ceased to blame--would +not refuse to meet and know him there. + +Naturally, then, he turned to his grandfather in his great need for a new +idol to fill the vacant niche. Aforetime the old man in his study upstairs +had been little more than a gray shadow, a spirit of gloom, stubbornly +imprisoning another spirit that would have been kind if it could have +escaped. But the little boy drew near to him, and found him curiously +companionable. Where once he had shunned him, he now went freely to the +study with his lessons or his storybook, or for talk of any little matter. +His grandfather, it seemed, could understand many things which so old a +man could scarcely have been expected to understand. In token of this +there would sometimes creep over his brown old face a soft light that made +it seem as if there must still be within him somewhere the child he had +once been; as if, perhaps, he looked into the little boy as into a mirror +that threw the sunlight of his own boyhood into his time-worn face. Side +by side, before the old man's fire, they would talk or muse, since they +were friendly enough to be silent if they liked. Only one confidence the +little boy could not bring himself to make: he could not tell the old man +that he no longer felt hard toward him, as once he had done, for his +coldness to his father; that he had divined--and felt a great shame +for--the true reason of that coldness. But he thought the old man must +understand without words. It was hardly a matter to be talked of. + +About his other affairs, especially his early imaginings and difficulties, +he was free to talk; about coming to the Feet, and the Front Room, and +being washed in the blood, and born again--matters that made the old man +wish their intimacy had not been so long delayed. + +But now they made up for lost time. Patiently and ably he taught the +little boy those truths he needed to know; to seek for eternal life +through the atoning blood of the Saviour, whose part it had been to +purchase our redemption from God's wrath by his death on Calvary. Of other +matters more technical: of how the love that God of necessity has for His +own infinitely perfect being is the reason and the measure of the hatred +he has for sin. Above all did he teach the little boy how to pray for the +grace of effectual calling, in order that, being persuaded of his sin and +misery, he might thereafter partake of justification, adoption, +sanctification, and those several benefits which, in this life, do either +accompany or flow from them. They looked forward with equal eagerness to +the day when he should become a great and good man, preaching the gospel +of the crucified Son to spellbound throngs. + +[Illustration: "They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when +he should become a great and good man."] + +Together they began again the study of the Scriptures, the little boy now +entering seriously upon that work of writing commentaries which had once +engaged Allan. In one of these school-boyish papers the old man came upon +a passage that impressed him as notable. It seemed to him that there was +not only that vein of poetic imagination--without which one cannot be a +great preacher--but a certain individual boldness of approach, monstrous +in its naive sentimentality, to be sure, but indicating a talent that +promised to mature splendidly. + +"Now Jesus told his disciples," it ran, "that he must be crucified before +he could take his seat on the right hand of God and send to hell those who +had rejected him. He told them that one of them would have to betray him, +because it must be like the Father had said. It says at the last supper +Jesus said, 'The Son of Man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto +that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man +if he had not been born.' + +"Now it says that Satan entered into Judas, but it looks to me more like +the angel of the Lord might have entered into him, he being a good man to +start with, or our Lord would not have chosen him to be a disciple. Judas +knew for sure, after the Lord said this, that one of the disciples had got +to betray the Saviour and go to hell, where the worm dieth not and the +fire is not quenched. Well, Judas loved all the disciples very much, so he +thought he would be the one and save one of the others. So he went out and +agreed to betray him to the rulers for thirty pieces of silver. He knew if +he didn't do it, it might have to be Peter, James, or John, or some one +the Saviour loved very dearly, because it _had_ to be one of them. So +after it was done and he knew the others were saved from this foul deed, +he went back to the rulers and threw down their money, and went out and +hung himself. If he had been a bad man, it seems more like he would have +spent that money in wicked indulgences, food and drink and entertainments, +etc. Of course, Judas knew he would go to hell for it, so he was not as +lucky as Jesus, who knew he would go to heaven and sit at the right hand +of God when he died, which was a different matter from Judas's, who would +not have any reward at all but going to hell. It looks to me like poor +Judas had ought to be brought out of hell-fire, and I shall pray Jesus to +do it when he gets around to it." + +However it might be with our Lord's betrayer, there was one soul now seen +to be deservedly in hell. Through the patient study of the Scriptures as +expounded by Grandfather Delcher, the little boy presently found himself +accepting without demur the old gentleman's unspoken but sufficiently +indicated opinion. His father was in everlasting torment--having been not +only unbaptised, but godless and a scoffer. With a quickening sense of the +majesty of that Spirit infinitely good, a new apprehension of His plan's +symmetry, he read the words meant to explain, to comfort him, silently +indicated one day by the old man: + +"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one +vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? + +"What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, +endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to +destruction? + +"And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of +mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory." + +It hurt at first, but the young mind hardened to it dutifully--the big, +laughing, swaggering, scoffing father--a device of God made for torment, +that the power of the All-loving might show forth! If the father had only +repented, he might have gone straight to heaven as did Cousin Bill J. For +the latter had obtained grace in his last days, and now sang acceptably +before the thrones of the Father and the Son. But the unbaptised scoffer +must burn forever--and the little boy knew at last what was meant by +"the majesty of God." + + + + +BOOK TWO + +The Age of Reason + + + +[Illustration] + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE REGRETTABLE DEMENTIA OF A CONVALESCENT + + +"You know you _please_ me--_really_ you do!" + +Allan, perfect youth of the hazel eyes and tawny locks, bent upon +inquiring Nancy a look of wholly pleasant reassurance, as one wishful to +persuade her from doubt. + +"I'm not joking a bit. When I say you please me, I mean it." + +His look became rather more expansive with a smile that seemed meant to +sympathise guardedly with her in her necessary rejoicing. + +Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black curtains of her eyes, +murmuring from out the friendly gloom: + +"It's very good of you, Allan!" + +Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, which she divined he +was about to do, the curtains were up and the eyes wide open to him with a +question about Bernal. + +He turned to the house and pointed up to the two open windows of the +study, in and out of which the warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains. + +"He's there, poor chap! He was able to get that far for the first time +yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie." + +"And to think I never knew he was sick until we came from town last night. +I'd surely have left the old school and come before if I'd heard. I +wouldn't have cared _what_ Aunt Bell said." + +"Eight weeks down, and you know we found he'd been sick long before he +found it out himself--walking typhoid, they called it. He came home from +college with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed the moment he +clapped eyes on him. Said it was walking typhoid, and that he must have +been worrying greatly about something, because his nervous system was all +run down." + +"And he was very ill?" + +"Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go and get back at all." + +"How dreadful--poor Bernal! Oh, if he _had_ died!" + +"Out of his head for three weeks at a time--raving fearfully. And you +know, he's quite like an infant now--says the simplest things. He laughs +at it himself. He says he's not sure if he knows how to read and write." + +"Poor, dear Bernal!" + +With some sudden arousing he studied her face swiftly as she spoke, then +continued: + +"Yes, Bernal's really an awfully good chap at bottom." He turned again to +look up at the study windows. "You know, I intend to stand by that fellow +always--no matter _what_ he does! Of course, I shall not let his being my +brother blind me to his faults--doubtless we _all_ have faults; but I tell +you, Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a man's make-up." + +She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he broke off--"Now I must +hurry to mail these letters It's good to be home for another summer. You +really _do_ please me, Nance!" + +She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome--more than handsome, +indeed. He left an immediate conviction of his superb vitality of body and +mind, the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail. Featured in almost +faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, unaffectedly proclaiming +its superior gravity among human masses, he was a planet destined to have +many satellites and be satellite to none; an _ego_ of genuine lordliness; +a presence at once masterly and decorative. + +And yet she was conscious of a note--not positively of discord, but one +still exciting a counter-stream of reflection. She had observed that each +time Allan turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning his +shoulders with it: the perfect head and shoulders were swung with almost a +studied unison. And this little thing had pricked her admiration with a +certain needle-like suspicion--a suspicion that the young man might be not +wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle. + +Yet this was no matter to permit in one's mind. For Nancy of the +lengthened skirts and the massed braids was now a person of reserves. Even +in that innocent insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively +malicious, half-conscious flauntings, she was one of reticences toward the +world including herself, with petticoats of decorum draping the child's +anarchy of thought--her luxuriant young emotions "done up" sedately with +her hair. She was now one to be cautious indeed of imputations so blunt as +this concerning Allan. Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal. Then +she wondered _why_ it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a +creature to wonder where another would accept. She saw it had seemed noble +because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry. + +This phrase would not be Nancy's--only she knew it to be the way her +uncle, for example, would translate Allan's praise of his brother. She +hoped Bernal had not been very bad--and wondered _how_ bad. + +Then she went to him. Her first little knock brought no answer, nor could +she be sure that the second did. But she knew it was loud enough to be +heard if the room were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack and +peeped in. He lay on the big couch across the room under the open window, +a scarlet wool dressing-gown on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower +part of his body. He seemed to be looking out and up to the tree that +appeared above the window. She thought he could not have heard her, but he +called: + +"Clytie!" + +She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his eyes when he +weakly turned his head on the pillow. + +"Nancy!" + +He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of hers. The laugh did +not end until there were tears in his eyes. She laughed with him as a +strong-voiced singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly +force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had found. + +"Don't be flattered, Nance--it's only typhoid emotion," he said at last, +in a voice that sounded strangely unused. "You don't really overcome me, +you know--the sight of you doesn't unman me as much as these fond tears +might make you suspect. I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, +too." He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him. + +"How plump and warm your hand is--all full of little whispering pulses. My +hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and _so_ uninterested! Doesn't fever +bring forward a man's bones in the most shameless way?" + +"Oh, Bernal--but you'll soon have them decently hidden again--indeed, +you're looking--quite--quite plump." She smiled encouragingly. A sudden +new look in his eyes made her own face serious again. + +"Why, Nance, you're rather lovely when you smile!" + +She smiled. + +"Only then?" + +He studied her, while she pretended to be grave. + +He became as one apart, giving her a long look of unbiassed appraisal. + +"Well--you know--now you have some little odds and ends of features--not +bad--no, not even half bad, for that matter. I can see thousands of miles +into your eyes--there's a fire smouldering away back in there--it's all +smoky and mysterious after you go the first few thousand miles--but, I +don't know--I believe the smile is _needed_, Nance. Poor child, I tell you +this as a friend, for your own good--it seems to make a fine big +perfection out of a lot of little imperfections that are only fairly +satisfactory." + +She smiled again, brushing an escaped lock of hair to its home. + +"Really, Nance, no one could guess that mouth till it melts." + +"I see--now I shall be going about with an endless, sickening grin. It +will come to that--doubtless I shall be murdered for it--people that do +grin that way always make _me_ feel like murder." + +"And they could never guess your eyes until the little smile runs up to +light their chandeliers." + +"Dear me!--Like a janitor!" + +"--or the chin, until the little smile does curly things all around +it--" + +"There, now--calm yourself--the doctor will be here presently--and you +know, you're among friends--" + +"--or the face itself until those little pink ripples get to chasing each +other up to hide in your hair, as they are now. You know you're blushing, +Nance, so stop it. Remember, it's when you smile; remember, also, that +smiles are born, not made. It's a long time since I've seen you, Nance." + +"Two years--we didn't come here last summer, you know." + +"But you've aged--you're twice the woman you were--so, on the whole, I'm +not in the least disappointed in you." + +"Your sickness seems to have left you--well--in a remarkably unprejudiced +state of mind." + +He laughed. "That's the funny part of it. Did they tell you this siege had +me foolish for weeks? Honest, now, Nance, here's a case--how many are two +times two?" He waited expectantly. + +"Are you serious?" + +"It seems silly to you, doesn't it--but answer as if I were a child." + +"Well--twice two are four--unless my own mind is at fault." + +"There!--now I begin to believe it. I suppose, now, it _couldn't_ be +anything else, could it? Yesterday morning the doctor said something was +as plain as twice two are four. You know, the thing rankled in me all day. +It seemed to me that twice two ought to be twenty-two. Then I asked Clytie +and she said it was four, but that didn't satisfy me. Of course, +Clytemnestra is a dear soul, and I truly, love her, but her advantages in +an educational way have been meagre. She could hardly be considered an +authority in mathematics, even if she is the ideal cook and friend. But I +have more faith in your learning, Nance. The doctor's solution seems +plausible, since you've sided with him. I suppose you could have no motive +for deceiving me?" + +She was regarding him with just a little anxiety, and this he detected. + +"It's nothing to worry about, Nance--it's only funny. I haven't lost my +mind or anything, you know--spite of my tempered enthusiasm for your +face--but this is it: first there came a fearful shock--something +terrible, that shattered me--then it seemed as if that sickness found my +brain like a school-boy's slate with all his little problems worked out on +it, and wickedly gave it a swipe each side with a big wet sponge. And now +I seem to have forgotten all I ever learned. Clytie was in to feed me the +inside of a baked potato before you came. After I'd fought with her to eat +the skin of it--such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious little +white particles still sticking to the inside where it hadn't all been dug +out--and after she had used her strength as no lady should, and got it +away from me, it came to me all at once that she was my mother. Then she +assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite reasonable, too. I told +her I loved her enough for a mother, anyway--and the poor thing giggled." + +"Still, you have your lucid moments." + +"Ah, still thinking about the face? You mean I'm lucid when you smile, and +daffy when you don't. But that's a case of it--your face--" + +"My face a case of _what?_ You're getting commercial--even shoppy. Really, +if this continues, Mr. Linford, I shall be obliged--" + +"A case of it--of this blankness of mine. Instead of continuing my early +prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey +you coldly for the first time. You know I'm afraid to look at print for +fear I've forgotten how to read." + +"Nonsense!" + +"No--I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another +planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G. Wells's stories--a +gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you--bland, +agreeable, scholarly--with marked distinction of bearing, and a personal +beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting of one's secretest bones +is held to betoken the only beauty--you understand _that?_--Well, I come +here, and everything is different--ideals of beauty, people absurdly +holding for flesh on their bones, for example--numbers, language, +institutions, everything. Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the +value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean +of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe's." + +"Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not--" + +"Also, why I could see that you _are_--that's it, smile! Nance, you _are_ +a dear, when you smile--you make a man feel so strong and protecting. But +if you knew all the queer things I've thought in the last week about time +and people and the world. This morning I woke up mad because I'd been +cheated out of the past. Where _is_ all the past, Nance? There's just as +much past somewhere as there is future--if one's soul has no end, it had +no beginning. Why not worry about the past as we do about the future? +First thing I'm going to do--start a Worry-About-the-Past Club, with dues +and a president, and by-laws and things!" + +"Don't you think I'd better send Clytie, now?" + +"No; please wait a minute." He clutched her hand with a new strength, and +raised on his elbow to face her, then, speaking lower: + +"Nance, you know I've had a feeling it wasn't the right thing to ask the +old gentleman this--he might think I hadn't been studying at college--but +_you_ tell me--what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ? It +was a phrase he used the other day, and it stuck in my mind." + +"Bernal--you surely know!" + +"Truly I don't--it seems a bad dream I've had some time--that's all--some +awful dream about my father." + +"It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our redemption by his death on +Calvary." + +"Our redemption from what?" + +"From sin, to be sure." + +"What sin?" + +"Why, our sin, of course--the sin of Adam which comes down to us." + +"You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from that sin by dying?" + +"Yes." + +"From whom did he purchase it?" + +"Oh, dear--this is like a catechism--from God, of course." + +"The God that made Adam?" + +"Certainly." + +"Oh, yes--now I seem to remember him--he was supposed to make people, and +then curse them, wasn't he? And so he had to have his son killed before he +could forgive Adam for our sins?" + +"No; before he could forgive _us_ for Adam's sin, which descended to us." + +"Came down like an entail, eh? ... Adam couldn't disinherit us? Well, how +did this God have his son die?" + +"Why, Bernal--you _must_ remember, dear--you knew so well--don't you know +he was crucified?" + +"To be sure I do--how stupid! And was God _very_ cheerful after that? No +more trouble about Adam or anything?" + +"You must hush--I can't tell you about these things--wait till your +grandfather comes." + +"No, I want to have it from you, Nance--grandad would think I'd been +slighting the classics." + +"Well, God takes to heaven with him those who believe." + +"Believe what?" + +"Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son." + +"What does he do with those who don't believe it?" + +"They--they--Oh, I don't know--really, Bernal, I must go now." + +"Just a minute, Nance!" He clutched more tightly the hand he had been +holding. "I see now! I must be remembering something I knew--something +that brought me down sick. If a man doesn't believe God was capable of +becoming so enraged with Adam that only the bloody death of his own son +would appease his anger toward _us_, he sends that man where--where the +worm doeth something or other--what is it? Oh, well!--of course, it's of +no importance--only it came to me it was something I ought to remember if +grandad should ask me about it. What a quaint belief it must have been." + +"Oh, I must go!--let me, now." + +"Don't you find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old +religions of a dead past--though I admit that this one is less pleasant to +study than most of the others. This god seems to lack the majesty and +beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods. In fact, he was +too crude to be funny--by the way, what is it I seem to recall, about +eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son?--'unless ye eat the +flesh of the son--'" + +She drew her hand from his now and arose in some dismay. He lay back upon +his pillow, smiling. + +"Not very agreeable, is it, Nance? Well, come again, and I'll tell you +about some of the pleasanter old faiths next time--I remember now that +they interested me a lot before I was sick." + +"You're sure I shouldn't send Clytie or some one?" She looked down at him +anxiously, putting her hand on his forehead. He put one of his own lightly +over hers. + +"No, no, thank you! It's not near time yet for the next baked potato. If +Clytie doesn't give up the skin of this one I shall be tempted to forget +that she's a woman. There, I hear grandad coming, so you won't be leaving +me alone." + +Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left the room. + +"Resting, my boy? That's good. You look brighter already--Nancy must come +often." + +He took Nancy's chair by the couch and began the reading of his morning's +mail. Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several +letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings +and pats, he turned to him. + +"Well, my boy?" + +"I've been thinking of something funny. You know, my memory is still +freakish, and things come back in splotches. Just now I was recalling a +primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also +'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also +'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man--we--good; not we--bad! I +suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human +nature--a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude +lines of it. + +"And this tribe--the Bakairi, it is called--is equally crude in its +religion. It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the +savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites?" + +"Generally true. Human sacrifice was practised even by some who were well +advanced, like the Aztecs and Peruvians." + +"Well, sir, this Bakairi tribe believed that its god demanded a sacrifice +yearly, and their priests taught them that a certain one of their number +had been sent by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by +butchering this particular member of the tribe and--incredible as it +sounds--eating his body and drinking his blood, could they avert drouth +and pestilence and secure favours for the year to come. I remember the +historian intimated that it were well not to incur the displeasure of any +priest; that one doing this might find it followed by an unpleasant +circumstance when the time came for the priests to designate the next +yearly sacrifice." + +"Curious, indeed, and most revolting," assented the old man, laying down +his paper. "You _are_ feeling more cheerful, aren't you--and you look so +much brighter. Ah, what a mercy of God's you were spared to me!--you know +you became my walking-stick when you were a very little boy--I could +hardly go far without you now, my son." + +"Yes, sir--thank you--I've just been recalling some of the older +religions--Nancy and I had quite a talk about the old Christian faith." + +"I'm glad indeed. I had sometimes been led to suspect that Nancy was the +least bit--well, frivolous--but I am an old man, and doubtless the things +that seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour subdued +through the years." + +"Nancy wasn't a bit frivolous this morning--on the contrary, she seemed +for some reason to consider me the frivolous one. She looked shocked at me +more than once. Now, about the old Christian faith, you know--their god +was content with one sacrifice, instead of one each year, though he +insisted on having the body eaten and the blood drunk perpetually. Yet I +suppose, sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the human +sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a distinct advance over the +god of the Bakairi, though he seems to have been equally a tribal god, +whose chief function it was to make war upon neighbouring tribes." + +"Yes, my boy--quite so," replied the old man most soothingly. He stepped +gently to the door. Halfway down the hall Allan was about to turn into his +room. He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, in tones too low for +Bernal to hear: + +"Go quickly for Dr. Merritt. He's out of his head again." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +FURTHER DISTRESSING FANTASIES OF A CLOUDED MIND + + +When young Dr. Merritt came, flushed and important-looking, greatly +concerned by the reported relapse, he found his patient with normal pulse +and temperature--rational and joyous at his discovery that the secret of +reading Roman letters was still his. + +"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, smilingly, when +the little thermometer had been taken from between his lips, "but it's all +right--I didn't find a single strange letter--every last one of them meant +something--and I know figures, too--and now I'm as hungry for print as I +am for baked potatoes. You know, never in my life again, after I'm my own +master, shall I neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. When I think +of those I let go in my careless days of plenty, I grow heart-sick." + +"A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge as you'd like to +there would be no more use sending for me; you'd be a goner--that's what +you'd be! Head feel all right?" + +"Fine!--I've settled down to a pleasant reading of Holy Writ. This Old +Testament is mighty interesting to me, though doubtless I've read it all +before." + +"It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming on all right," the +doctor assured the alarmed old man outside the door. "He may be a little +flighty now and then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe him +over. He's getting back to himself--stronger every hour. We often have +these things to contend with." + +And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to puzzle over the case. + +Again the following morning, when Bernal had leaned his difficult way down +to the couch in the study, the old man was dismayed by his almost +unspeakable aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow and +placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of the mad. + +"You know, grandad," he began easily, looking up at the once more placid +old man who sat beside him, "I am just now recalling matters that were +puzzling me much before the sickness began to spin my head about so fast +on my shoulders. The harder I thought, the faster my head went around, +until it sent my mind all to little spatters in a circle about me. One +thing I happened to be puzzling over was how the impression first became +current that this god of the Jews was a being of goodness. Such an +impression seems to have been tacitly accepted for some centuries after +the iniquities so typical of him had been discountenanced by society--long +after human sacrifice was abhorred, and even after the sacrificing of +animals was held to be degrading. It's a point that escapes me, owing to +my addled brain; doubtless you can set me right. At present I can't +conceive how the notion could ever have occurred to any one. I now +remember this book well enough to know that not only is little good ever +recorded of him, but he is so continually barbarous, and so atrociously +cruel in his barbarities. And he was thought to be all-powerful when he is +so pitifully ineffectual, with all his crude power--the poor old fellow +was forever bungling--then bungling again in his efforts to patch up his +errors. Indeed, he would be rather a pathetic figure if he were not so +monstrous! Still, there is a kind of heathen grandeur about him at times. +He drowns his world full of people because his first two circumvented him; +then he saves another pair, but things go still worse, so he has to keep +smiting the world right and left, dumb beasts as well as men; and at last +he picks out one tribe, in whose behalf he works a series of miracles, +that devastated a wide area. How he did love to turn a city over to +destruction! And from the cloud's centre he was constantly boasting of his +awful power, and scaring people into butchering lambs and things in his +honour. Yet, doubtless, that heathen tribe found its god 'good,' and other +people formed the habit of calling him good, without thinking much about +it. They must have felt queer when they woke up to the fact that they were +calling infinitely good a god who was not good, even when judged by their +poor human standards." + +Remembering the physician's instructions to soothe the patient, the +distressed old man timidly began-- + +"'For God so loved the world'"--but he was interrupted by the vivacious +one on the couch. + +"That's it--I remember that tradition. He was even crude enough to beget a +son for human sacrifice, giving that son power to condemn thereafter those +who should not detect his godship through his human envelope! That was a +rather subtler bit of baseness than those he first perpetrated--to send +this saving son in such guise that the majority of his creatures would +inevitably reject him! Oh! he was bound to have his failures and his +tortures, wasn't he? You know, I dare say the ancient Christians called +him good because they were afraid to call him bad. Doubtless the one great +spiritual advance that we have made since the Christian faith prevailed +is, that we now worship without fearing what we worship." + +Once more the distressed old man had risen to stand with assumed +carelessness by the door, having writhed miserably in his chair until he +could no longer endure the profane flood. + +"But, truly, that god was, after all, a pathetic figure. Imagine him amid +the ruins of his plan, desolate, always foiled by his creatures--meeting +failure after failure from Eden to Calvary--for even the bloody expedient +of sending his son to be sacrificed did not avail to save his own chosen +people. They unanimously rejected the son, if I remember, and so he had to +be content with a handful of the despised Gentiles. A sorrowful old figure +of futility he is--a fine figure for a big epic, it seems to me. By the +way, what was the date that this religion was laughed away. I can remember +perfectly the downfall of the Homeric deities--how many years there were +when the common people believed in the divine origin of the Odyssey, while +the educated classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at last +the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. But strangely enough I do +not recall just the date when _we_ began to demand a god of dignity and +morality." + +The old man had been loath to leave the sufferer. He still stood by the +open door to call to the first passer-by. Now, shudderingly wishful to +stem the torrent of blasphemies, innocent though they were, he ventured +cautiously: + +"There was Sinai--you forget the tables--the moral law--the ten +commandments." + +"Sinai, to be sure. Christians used to regard that as an occasion of +considerable dignity, didn't they? The time when he gave directions about +slavery and divorce and polygamy--he was beautifully broad-minded in all +those matters, and to kill witches and to stone an ox that gored any one, +and how to disembowel the lambs used for sacrifice, and what colours to +use in the tabernacle." + +But the horrified old man had fled. Half an hour later he returned with +Dr. Merritt, relieving Clytie, who had watched outside the door and who +reported that there had been no signs of violence within. + +Again they found a normal pulse and temperature, and an appetite +clamouring for delicacies of strong meat. Young Dr. Merritt was greatly +puzzled. + +"I understand the case perfectly," he said to the old man; "he needs rest +and plenty of good nursing--and quiet. We often have these cases. Your +head feels all right, doesn't it?" he asked Bernal. + +"Fine, Doctor!" + +"I thought so." He looked shrewdly at the old man. "Your grandfather had +an idea you might be--perhaps a bit excited." + +"No--not a bit. We've had a fine morning chatting over some of the +primitive religions, haven't we, old man?" and he smiled affectionately up +to his grandfather. "Hello, Nance, come and sit by me." + +The girl had paused in the doorway while he spoke, and came now to take +his hand, after a look of inquiry at the two men. The latter withdrew, the +eyes of the old man sadly beseeching the eyes of the physician for some +definite sign of hope. + +Inside, the sufferer lay holding a hand of Nancy between his cheek and the +pillow--with intervals of silence and blithe speech. His disordered mind, +it appeared, was still pursuing its unfortunate tangent. + +"The first ideas are all funny, aren't they, Nance? Genesis in that +Christian mythology we were discussing isn't the only funny one. There was +the old northern couple who danced on the bones of the earth nine times +and made nine pairs of men and women; and there were the Greek and his +wife who threw stones out of their ark that changed to men; and the Hindu +that saved the life of a fish, and whom the fish then saved by fastening +his ship to his horn; and the South Sea fisherman who caught his hook in +the water-god's hair and made him so angry that he drowned all the world +except the offending fisherman. Aren't they nearly as funny as the god who +made one of his pair out of clay and one from a rib, and then became so +angry with them that he must beget a son for them to sacrifice before he +would forgive them? Let's think of the pleasanter ones. Do you know that +hymn of the Veda?--'If I go along trembling like a cloud, have mercy, +Almighty, have mercy!' + +"'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone +wrong. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!' + +"And Buddha was a pleasant soul, Nance--with stuff in him, too--born a +prince, yet leaving his palace to be poor and to study the ways of wisdom, +until enlightenment came to him sitting under his Bo tree. He said faith +was the best wealth here. And, 'Not to commit any sin, to do good and to +purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the awakened'; 'not hating +those who hate us,' 'free from greed among the greedy.' They must have +been glad of Buddhism in their day, teaching them to honour their parents, +to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, to forgive their enemies +and return good for evil. And there was funny old Confucius with his +'Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a +pillow--happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue, both +riches and honour seem to me like the passing cloud.' Another one of his +is 'In the book of Poetry are three hundred pieces--but the designs of +them all mean, "Have no depraved thoughts."' Rather good for a Chinaman, +wasn't it? + +"And there was old Zoroaster saying to his Ormuzd, 'I believe thee, O God! +to be the best thing of all!' and asking for guidance. Ormuzd tells him to +be pure in thought, word and deed; to be temperate, chaste and +truthful--and this Ormuzd would have no lambs sacrificed to him. Life, +being his gift, was dear to him. And don't forget Mohammed, Nance, that +fine old barbarian with the heart of a passionate child, counselling men +to live a good life and to strive after the mercy of God by fasting, +charity and prayer, calling this the 'Key of Paradise.' He went after a +poor blind man whom he had at first rebuffed, saying 'He is thrice welcome +on whose account my Lord hath reprimanded me.' He was a fine, stubborn old +believer, Nance. I wonder if it's not true that the Christians once +studied these old chaps to take the taste of their own cruder God out of +their minds. What a cruel people they must have been to make so cruel a +God! + +"But let's talk of you, Nance--that's it--light the chandeliers in your +eyes." + +He spoke drowsily now, and lay quiet, patting one of her hands. But +presently he was on one elbow to study her again. + +"Nance, the Egyptians worshipped Nature, the Greeks worshipped Beauty, the +Northern chaps worshipped Courage, and the Christians feared--well, the +hereafter, you know--but I'm a Catholic when you smile." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +REASON IS AGAIN ENTHRONED + + +Slowly the days brought new life to the convalescent, despite his +occasional attacks of theological astigmatism. And these attacks grew +less frequent and less marked as the poor bones once more involved +themselves in firm flesh--to the glad relief of a harried and scandalised +old gentleman whose black forebodings had daily moved him to visions of +the mad-house for his best-loved descendant. + +Yet there were still dreadful times when the young man on the couch +blasphemed placidly by the hour, with an insane air of assuming that those +about him held the same opinions; as if the Christian religion were a +pricked bubble the adherents of which had long since vanished. + +If left by himself he could often be heard chuckling and muttering +between chuckles: "I will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host. I +have hardened his heart and the heart of his host that I might show these +my signs before him." + +Entering the room, the old gentleman might be met with: + +"I certainly agree with you, sir, in every respect--Christianity was an +invertebrate materialism of separation--crude, mechanical separation--less +spiritual, less ethical, than almost any of the Oriental faiths. Affirming +the brotherhood of man, yet separating us into a heaven and a hell. +Christians cowering before a being of divided power, half-god and +half-devil. Indeed, I remember no religion so non-moral--none that is so +baldly a mere mechanical device for meeting the primitive mind's need to +set its own tribe apart from all others--or in the later growth to +separate the sheep from the goats, by reason of the opinion formed of +certain evidence. Even schoolboys nowadays know that no moral value +inheres in any opinion formed upon evidence. Yet, I dare say it was +doubtless for a long period an excellent religion for marauding nations." + +Or, again, after a long period of apparently rational talk, the +unfortunate young man would break out with, "And how childish its +wonder-tales were, of iron made to swim, of a rod turned to a serpent, of +a coin found in a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a +fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit out of season--how +childish that tale of a virgin mother, who conceived 'without sin,' as it +is somewhere naively put--an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity. Even +the great old painters were helpless before it. They were driven to make +mindless Madonnas, stupid bits of fleshy animality. It's not easy to +idealise mere physical motherhood. You see, that was the wrong, perverted +idea of motherhood--'conceiving without sin.' It's an unclean dogma in its +implications. I knew somewhere once a man named Milo Barrus--a sort of +cheap village atheist, I remember, but one thing I recall hearing him say +seems now to have a certain crude truth in it. He said: 'There's my old +mother, seventy-eight this spring, bent, gray, and wasted with the work of +raising us seven children; she's slaved so hard for fifty years that she's +worn her wedding-ring to a fine thread, and her hands look as if they had +a thousand knuckles and joints in them. But she smiles like a girl of +sixteen, she was never cross or bitter to one of us hounds, and I believe +she never even _wanted_ to complain in all her days. And there's a look of +noble capacity in her face, of soul dignity, that you never saw in any +Madonna's. I tell you no "virgin mother" could be as beautiful as my +mother, who bore seven children for love of my father and for love of the +thought of us.' Isn't it queer, sir, that I remember that--for it seemed +only grotesque at the time I heard it." + +It was after this extraordinary speech, uttered with every sign of +physical soundness, that young Dr. Merritt confided to the old man when +they had left the study: + +"He's coming on fine, Mr. Delcher. He'll eat himself into shape now in no +time; but--I don't know--seems to me you stand a lot better show of making +a preacher out of his brother. Of course, I may be mistaken--we doctors +often are." Then the young physician became loftily humble: "But it +doesn't strike me he'll ever get his ideas exactly into Presbyterian shape +again!" + +"But, man, he'll surely be rid of these devil's hallucinations?" + +"Well, well--perhaps, but I'm almost afraid they're what we doctors call +'fixed delusions.'" + +"But I set my heart so long ago on his preaching the Word. Oh, I've looked +forward to it so long--and so hard!" + +"Well, all you can do now is to feed him and not excite him. We often have +these cases." + +The very last of Bernal's utterances that could have been reprobated in a +well man was his telling Clytie in the old gentleman's presence that, +whereas in his boyhood he had pictured the hand of God as a big black hand +reaching down to "remove" people--"the way you weed an onion bed"--he now +conceived it to be like her own--"the most beautiful fat, red hand in the +world, always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you something +good or pointing to a jar of cookies." It was so dangerously close to +irreverence that it made Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she +arranged matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive, +considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher quite hopeful. + +Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent became +silent for the most part, yet cheerful and beautifully rational when he +did speak, so that fear came gradually to leave the old man's heart for +longer and longer intervals. Indeed, one day when Bernal had long lain +silent, he swept lingering doubts from the old man's mind by saying, with +a curious little air of embarrassment, yet with a return of that old-time +playful assumption of equality between them--"I'm afraid, old man, I may +have been a little queer in my talk--back there." + +The old man's heart leaped with hope at this, though the acknowledgment +struck him as being inadequate to the circumstance it referred to. + +"You _were_ flighty, boy, now and then," he replied, in quite the same +glossing strain of inadequacy. + +"I can't tell you how queerly things came back to me--some bits of +consciousness and memory came early and some came late--and they're still +struggling along in that disorderly procession. Even yet I've not been +able to take stock. Old man, I must have been an awful bore." + +"Oh, no--not _that_, boy!" Then, in glad relief, he fell upon his knees +beside the couch, praying, in discreetly veiled language, that the pure +heart of a babbler might not be held guilty for the utterances of an +irresponsible head. + +Yet, after many days of sane quiet and ever-renewing strength--days of +long walks in the summer woods or long readings in the hammock when the +shadows lay east of the big house, there came to be observed in the young +man a certain moody reticence. And when the time for his return to college +was near, he came again to his disquieted grandfather one day, saying: + +"I think there are some matters I should speak to you about, sir." Had he +used the term "old man," instead of "sir," there might still have been no +cause for alarm. As it was, the grandfather regarded him in a sudden, +heart-hurried fear. + +"Are the matters, boy, those--those about which you may have spoken during +your sickness?" + +"I believe so, sir." + +The old man winced again under the "sir," when his heart longed for the +other term of playful familiarity. But he quickly assumed a lightness of +manner to hide the eagerness of his heart's appeal: + +"_Don't_ talk now, boy--be advised by me. It's not well for you--you are +not strong. Please let me guide you now. Go back to your studies, put all +these matters from your mind--study your studies and play your play. Play +harder than you study--you need it more. Play out of doors--you must have +a horse to ride. You have thought too much before your time for thinking. +Put away the troublesome things, and live in the flesh as a healthy boy +should. Trust me. When you come to--to those matters again, they will not +trouble you." + +In his eagerness, first one hand had gone to the boy's shoulder, then the +other, and his tones grew warm with pleading, while the keen old eyes +played as a searchlight over the troubled young face. + +"I must tell you at least one thing, sir." + +The old man forced a smile around his trembling mouth, and again assumed +his little jaunty lightness. + +"Come, come, boy--not 'sir.' Call me 'old man' and you shall say +anything." + +But the boy was constrained, plainly in discomfort. "I--I can't call you +that--just now--sir." + +"Well, if you _must_, tell me one thing--but only one! only one, mind you, +boy!" In fear, but smiling, he waited. + +"Well, sir, it's a shock I suffered just before I was sick. It came to me +one night when I sat down to dinner--fearfully hungry. I had a thick +English chop on the plate before me; and a green salad, oily in its bowl, +and crisp, browned potatoes, and a mug of creamy ale. I'd gone to the +place for a treat. I'd been whetting my appetite with nibbles of bread and +sips of ale until the other things came; and then, even when I put my +knife to the chop--like a blade pushed very slowly into my heart came the +thought: 'My father is burning in hell--screaming in agony for a drop of +this water which I shall not touch because I have ale. He has been in this +agony for years; he will be there forever.' That was enough, sir. I had to +leave the little feast. I was hungry no longer, though a moment before it +had seemed that I couldn't wait for it. I walked out into the cold, raw +night--walked till near daylight, with the sweat running off me. And the +thing I knew all the time was this: that if I were in hell and my father +in heaven, he would blaspheme God to His face for a monster and come to +hell to burn with me forever--come with a joke and a song, telling me +never to mind, that we'd have a fine time there in hell in spite of +everything! That was what I knew of my poor, cheap, fiddle-playing +mountebank of a father. Just a moment more--this is what you must remember +of me, in whatever I have to say hereafter, that after that night I never +ceased to suffer all the hell my father could be suffering, and I suffered +it until my mind went out in that sickness. But, listen now: whatever has +happened--I'm not yet sure what it is--I no longer suffer. Two things only +I know: that our creed still has my godless, scoffing, unbaptised father +in hell, and that my love for him--my absolute _oneness_ with him--has not +lessened. + +"I'll stop there, if you wish, leaving you to divine what other change has +taken place." + +"There, there," soothed the old man, seizing the shoulders once more with +his strong grip--"no more now, boy. It was a hard thing, I know. The +consciousness of God's majesty comes often in that way, and often it +overwhelms the unprepared. It was hard, but it will leave you more a man; +your soul and your faith will both survive. Do what I have told you--as if +you were once more the puzzled little Bernal, who never could keep his +hair neatly brushed like Allan, and would always moon in corners. Go +finish your course. Another year, when your mind has new fortitude from +your recreated body, we will talk these matters as much as you like. Yet +I will tell you one thing to remember--just one, as you have told me one: +You are in a world of law, of unvarying cause and effect; and the +integrity of this law cannot be destroyed, nor even impaired, by any +conceivable rebellion of yours. Yet this material world of law is but the +shadow of the reality, and that reality is God--the moral law if you +please, as relentless, as inexorable, as immutable in its succession of +cause and effect as the physical laws more apparent to us; and as little +to be overthrown as physical law by any rebellion of disordered sentiment. +The word of this God and this Law is contained in the Scriptures of the +Old and New Testaments, wherein is the only rule to direct us how we may +glorify and enjoy Him. + +"Now," continued the old man, more lightly, "each of us has something to +remember--and let each of us pray for the other. Go, be a good boy--but +careless and happy--for a year." + +The old man had his way, and the two boys went presently back to their +studies. + +The girl, Nancy, remembered them well for the things each had said to her. + +Allan, who, though he constantly praised her, had always the effect of +leaving her small to herself. "Really, Nance," he said, "without any +joking, I believe you have a capacity for living life in its larger +aspects." + +And on the last day, Bernal had said, "Nance, you remember when we were +both sorry you couldn't be born again--a boy? Well, from what the old +gentleman says, one learns in time to bow to the ways of an inscrutable +Providence. I dare say he's right. I can see reasons now, my girl, why it +was well that you were not allowed to meddle with Heaven's allotment of +your sex. I'm glad you had to remain a girl." + +One compliment pleased her. The other made her tremble, though she laughed +at it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +A FEW LETTERS + + +(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.) + +_Dear Grandfather:_ The college year soon ends; also my course. I think +you hoped I wouldn't want again to talk of those matters. But it isn't so. +I am primed and waiting, and even you, old man, must listen to reason. The +world of thought has made many revolutions since you shut yourself into +that study with your weekly church paper. So be ready to hear me. + +Affectionately, +BERNAL LINFORD. + + +(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.) + +"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright, but they have +sought out many inventions." I am sending you a little book. + +GRANDFATHER. + + +(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.) + +_Dear Old Man:_ How am I going to thank you for the "little book"--for +Butler's Analogy? Or rather, how shall I forgive you for keeping it from +me all these years? I see that you acquired it in 1863--and I never knew! +I must tell you that I looked upon it with suspicion when I unwrapped +it--a suspicion that the title did not allay. For I recalled the last time +you gave me a book--the year before I came here. That book, my friend, was +"Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." I began it with deep respect for you. I +finished with a profound distrust of all Abyssinians and an overwhelming +grief for the untimely demise of Mrs. Johnson--for you had told me that +the good doctor wrote this book to get money to bury her. How the circle +of mourners for that estimable woman must have widened as Rasselas made +its way out into the world! Oh, Grandad, if only they had been able to +keep her going some way until he needn't have done it! If only she could +have been spared until her son got in a little money from the Dictionary +or something! + +All of which is why I viewed with unfriendly distrust your latest gift, +the Analogy of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham. But, honestly, +old man, did you know how funny it was when you sent it? It's funnier than +any of the books of Moses, without being bloody. What a dear, innocent old +soul the Bishop is! How sincerely he believes he is reasoning when he is +merely doing a roguish two-step down the grim corridor of the eternal +verities--with a little jig here and there, and a pause to flirt his frock +airily in the face of some graven image of Fact. Ah, he is so weirdly +innocent. Even when his logical toes go blithely into the air, his dear +old face is most resolutely solemn, and I believe he is never in the least +aware of his frivolous caperings over the floor of induction. Indeed, his +unconsciousness is what makes him an unfailing delight. He even makes his +good old short-worded Saxon go in lilting waltz-time. + +You will never know, Grandad, what this book has done for me. I am +stimulated in the beginning by this: "From the vast extent of God's +dominion there must be some things beyond our comprehension, and the +Christian scheme may be one of them." And at the last I am soothed with +this heart-rending _pas seul:_ "Concluding remarks by which it is clearly +shown that those men who can evade the force of arguments so probable for +the truth of Christianity undoubtedly possess dispositions to evil which +would cause them to reject it, were it based on the most absolute +demonstration." Is not that a pearl without price in this world of lawful +conclusions? + +By the way, Grandad--recalling the text you quote in your last--did you +know when you sent me to this university that the philosophy taught, in a +general way, is that of Kant; that most university scholars smile +pityingly at the Christian thesis? Did you know that belief in Genesis had +been laughed away in an institution like this? With no intention of +diverting you, but merely in order to acquaint you with the present state +of popular opinion on a certain matter, I will tell you of a picture +printed in a New York daily of yesterday. It's on the funny page. A +certain weird but funny-looking beast stands before an equally +funny-looking Adam, in a funny Eden, with a funny Eve and a funny Cain and +Abel in the background. The animal says, "Say, Ad., what did you say my +name was? I've forgotten it again." Our first male parent answers somewhat +testily, as one who has been vexed by like inquiries: "Icthyosaurus, you +darned fool! Can't you remember a little thing like that?" + +In your youth this would doubtless have been punished as a crime. In mine +it is laughed at by all classes. I tell you this to show you that the +Church to-day is in the position of upholding a belief which has become +meaningless because its foundation has been laughed away. Believing no +longer in the god of Moses who cursed them, Christians yet assume to +believe in their need of a Saviour to intercede between them and this +exploded idol of terror. Unhappily, I am so made that I cannot occupy that +position. To me it is not honest. + +Old man, do you remember a certain saying of Squire Cumpston? It was this: +"If you're going to cross the Rubicon, _cross_ it! Don't wade out to the +middle and stand there: you only get hell from both banks!" + +And so I have crossed; I find the Squire was right about standing in the +middle. Happily, or unhappily, I am compelled to believe my beliefs with +all my head and all my heart. But I am confident my reasons will satisfy +you when you hear them. You will see these matters _in a new light._ + +Believe me, Grandad, with all love and respect, + +Affectionately yours, +BERNAL LINFORD. + + +(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.) + +_My Boy:_ For one bitten with skepticism there is little +argument--especially if he be still in youth, which is a time of raw and +ready judgments and of great spiritual self-sufficiency. You wanted to go +to Harvard. I wanted you to go to Princeton, because of its +Presbyterianism and because, too, of Harvard's Unitarianism. We +compromised on Yale--my own alma mater, as it was my father's. To my +belief, this was still, especially as to its pulpit, the stronghold of +orthodox Congregationalism. Was I a weak old man, compromising with Satan? +Are you to break my heart in these my broken years? For love of me, as for +the love of your own soul, _pray_. Leave the God of Moses until your +soul's stomach can take the strong meat of him--for he _is_ strong +meat--and come simply to Jesus, the meek and gentle--the Redeemer, who +died that his blood might cleanse our sin-stained souls. Centre your +aspirations upon Him, for He is the rock of our salvation, if we believe, +_or the rock of our wrecking to endless torment if we disbelieve_. Do not +deny our God who is Jesus, nor disown Jesus who is our God, nor yet +question the inerrance of Holy Writ--yea, with its everlasting burnings. +"He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth +not shall be damned." + +I am sad. I have lived too long. + +GRANDFATHER. + + +(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.) + +_Grandad:_ It's all so plain, you must see it. I told you I had crossed to +the farther bank. Here is what one finds there: Taking him as God, Jesus +is ineffectual. Only as an obviously fallible human man does he become +beautiful; only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great--or even +plausible. + +The instinct of the Jews did not mislead them. Jesus was too fine, too +good, to have come from their tribal god; yet too humanly limited to have +come from God, save as we all come from Him. + +Since you insist that he be considered as God, I shall point out those +things which make him small--as a God. I would rather consider him as a +man and point out those things which make him great to me--things which I +cannot read without wet eyes--but you will not consider him as man, so let +him be a God, and let us see what we see. It is customary to speak of his +"sacrifice." What was it? Our catechism says, "Christ's humiliation +consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the +law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the cursed +death of the cross; in being buried and continuing under the power of +death for a time." + +As I write the words I wonder that the thing should ever have seemed to +any one to be more than a wretched piece of God-jugglery, devoid of +integrity. Are we to conceive God then as a being of carnal appetites, +humiliated by being born into the family of an honest carpenter, instead +of into the family of a King? This is the somewhat snobbish imputation. + +Let us be done with gods playing at being human, or at being half god and +half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church +must concede--nay, proclaim--the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from +that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a +primitive Hebrew mythology--and take him in the only way that he commands +attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. +Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern +mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one +day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the +universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will +save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin. +Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in +history--never one less meek than this carpenter's son who ranks himself +second only to God, with power to send into everlasting hell those who +disbelieve him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers and +the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, attacking what we +to-day call "the decent element." He called the people constantly "Fools," +"Blind Leaders of the Blind," "faithless and perverse," "a generation of +vipers," "sinful," "evil and adulterous," "wicked," "hypocrites," "whited +sepulchres." + +As the god he worshipped was a tribal god, so he at first believed himself +to be a tribal saviour. He directed his disciples thus: "Go not into the +way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But +go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"--(who emphatically +rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman of Canaan whose +daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: "It is not meet to take the +children's bread to cast it to dogs." Imagine a God calling a woman a dog +_because she was not of his own tribe!_ + +And the vital test of godhood he failed to meet: It is his own test, +whereby he disproves his godship out of his own mouth. Compare these +sayings of Jesus, each typical of him: + +"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn +to him the other also." Yet he said to his Twelve: + +"And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence +shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them." + +Is that the consistency of a God or a man? + +Again: "Blessed are the merciful," _but_ "Verily I say unto you it shall +be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for +that city." Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed? + +Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them +likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida ... +and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down +to hell." Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something +else, as a man might? + +Again: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that +hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. + +"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the +publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren, what do ye more than +others? Do not even the publicans so?" That, sir, is a sentiment that +proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here is one which, +placed beside it, proves him to have been a man. + +"_Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the son of man also +confess before the angels of God_; + +"_but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my +father, which is in heaven._" + +Is it God speaking--or man? "_Do not even the publicans so?_" + +Beside this very human contradiction, it is hardly worth while to hear him +say "Resist not evil," yet make a scourge of cords to drive the +money-changers from the temple in a fit of rage, human--but how ungodlike! + +Believe me, the man Jesus is better than the god Jesus; the man is worth +while, for all his inconsistencies, partly due to his creed and partly to +his emotional nature. Indeed, we have not yet risen to the splendour of +his ideal--even the preachers will not preach it. + +And the miracles? We need say nothing of those, I think. If a man disprove +his godship out of his own mouth, we shall not be convinced by a coin in a +fish's mouth or by his raising Lazarus, four days dead. So long as he +says, "I will confess him that confesseth me and deny him that denieth +me," we should know him for one of us, though he rose from the dead before +our eyes. + +Then at the last you will say, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Well, +sir, the fruits of Christianity are what one might expect. You will say it +stands for the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. That it has +always done the reverse is Christianity's fundamental defect, and its +chief absurdity in this day when the popular unchurchly conception of God +has come to be one of some dignity. + +"That ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the +Egyptians and Israel." There is the rock of separation upon which the +Church builded; the rock upon which it will presently split. The god of +the Jews set a difference between Israel and Egypt. So much for the +fatherhood of God. The Son sets the same difference, dividing the sheep +from the goats, according to the opinions they form of his claim to +godship. So much for the brotherhood of man. Christianity merely +caricatures both propositions. Nor do I see how we can attain any worthy +ideal of human brotherhood while this Christianity prevails: We must be +sheep and goats among ourselves, some in heaven, some in hell, still +seeking out reasons "Why the Saints in Glory Should Rejoice at the +Sufferings of the Damned." We shall be saints and sinners, sated and +starving. A God who separates them in some future life will have children +that separate themselves here upon His own very excellent authority. That +is why one brother of us must work himself to death while another idles +himself to death--because God has set a difference, and his Son after him, +and the Church after that. The defect in social Christendom to-day, sir, +is precisely this defect of the Christian faith--its separation, its +failure to teach what it chiefly boasts of teaching. We have, in +consequence, a society of thinly veneered predatoriness. And this, I +believe, is why our society is quite as unstable today as the Church +itself. They are both awakening to a new truth--which is _not_ separation. + +The man who is proud of our Christian civilisation has ideals susceptible +of immense elevation. Christianity has more souls in its hell and fewer in +its heaven than any other religion whatsoever. Naturally, Christian +society is one of extremes and of gross injustice--of oppression and +indifference to suffering. And so it will be until this materialism of +separation is repudiated: until we turn seriously to the belief that men +are truly brothers, not one of whom can be long happy while any other +suffers. + +Come, Grandad, let us give up this God of Moses. Doubtless he was good +enough for the early Jews, but man has always had to make God in his own +image, and you and I need a better one, for we both surpass this one in +all spiritual values--in love, in truth, in justice, in common decency--as +much as Jesus surpassed the unrepentant thief at his side. Remember that +an honest, fearless search for truth has led to all the progress we can +measure over the brutes. Why must it lose the soul? + +BERNAL. + + +(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.) + +My boy, I shall not believe you are sane until I have seen you face to +face. I cannot believe you have fallen a victim to Universalism, which is +like the vale of Siddim, full of slime-pits. I am an old man, and my mind +goes haltingly, yet that is what I seem to glean from your rambling + screed. Come when you are through, for I must see you once more. + +"For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that +the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not +condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath +not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God." + +Lastly--doubt in infinite things is often wise, but doubt of God must be +blasphemy, else he would not be God, the all-perfect. + +I pray it may be your mind is still sick--and recall to you these words of +one I will not now name to you: "Father, forgive them, for they know not +what they do." + +ALLAN DELCHER. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +"IS THE HAND OF THE LORD WAXED SHORT?" + + +A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, awaited the +home-coming of his grandsons at the beginning of that vacation. + +Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter a blasphemer--unless, +indeed, he were possessed of a devil--could walk in the eye of Jehovah, +and no breach be made upon him? Even was the world itself so lax in these +days that one speaking thus could go free? If so, then how could God +longer refrain from drowning the world again? The human baseness of the +blaspheming one and the divine toleration that permitted it were alike +incredible. + +A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh away his fears. It +could not be. The young mind was still disordered. + +On the night of the home-coming he greeted the youth quite as if all were +serene within him, determined to be in no haste and to approach the thing +lightly on the morrow--in the fond hope that a mere breath of authority +might blow it away. + +And when, the next morning, they both drifted to the study, the old man +called up the smile that made his wrinkles sunny, and said in light tones, +above the beating of an anxious heart: + +"So it's your theory, boy, that we must all be taken down with typhoid +before we can be really wise in matters of faith?" + +But the youth answered, quite earnestly: + +"Yes, sir; I really believe nothing less than that would clear most +minds--especially old ones. You see, the brain is a muscle and thought is +its physical exercise. It learns certain thoughts--to go through certain +exercises. These become a habit, and in time the muscle becomes stiff and +incapable of learning any new movements--also incapable of leaving off +the old. The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous +action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The individual's mind can +affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body new +suppleness." + +He spoke with a certain restrained nervousness that was not reassuring. +But the old man would not yet be rebuffed from his manner of lightness. + +"Then, wanting an epidemic of typhoid, we of the older generation must die +in error." + +"Yes, sir--I doubt even the efficacy of typhoid in most cases; it's as +difficult for an old person to change a habit of thought as to take the +wrinkles from his face. That is why what we very grandly call 'fighting +for the truth' or 'fighting for the Lord' is merely fighting for our own +little notions; they have become so vital to us and we call them 'truth.'" + +The youth stopped, with a palpable air of defiance, before which the old +man's assumption of ease and lightness was at last beaten down. He had +been standing erect by the table, still with the smile toning his +haggardness. Now the smile died; the whole man sickened, lost life +visibly, as if a dozen years of normal aging were condensed into the dozen +seconds. + +He let himself go into the big chair, almost as if falling, his head +bowed, his eyes dulled to a look of absence, his arms falling weakly over +the chair's sides. A sigh that was almost a groan seemed to tell of pain +both in body and mind. + +Bernal stood awkwardly regarding him, then his face lighted with a sudden +pity. + +"But I thought _you_ could understand, sir; I thought you were different; +you have been like a chum to me. When I spoke of old persons it never +occurred to me that you could fall into that class! I never knew you to be +unjust, or unkind, or--narrow--perhaps I should say, unsympathetic." + +The other gave no sign of hearing. + +"My body was breaking so fast--and you break my heart!" + +"There you are, sir," began the youth, a little excitedly. "Your heart is +breaking _not_ because I'm not good, but because I form a different +opinion from yours of a man rising from the dead, after he has been +crucified to appease the anger of his father." + +"God help me! I'm so human. I _can't_ feel toward you as I should. Boy, I +_won't_ believe you are sane." He looked up in a sudden passion of hope. +"I won't believe Christ died in vain for my girl's little boy. Bernal, +boy, you are still sick of that fever!" + +The other smiled, his youthful scorn for the moment overcoming his deeper +feeling for his listener. + +"Then I must talk more. Now, sir, for God's sake let us have the plain +truth of the crucifixion. Where was the sacrifice? Can you not picture the +mob that would fight for the honour of crucifixion to-morrow, if it were +known that the one chosen would sit at the right hand of God and judge all +the world? I say there was no sacrifice, even if Christian dogma be +literal truth. Why, sir, I could go into the street and find ten men in +ten minutes who would be crucified a hundred times to save the souls of us +from hell--_not_ if they were to be rewarded with a seat on the throne of +God where they could send into hell those who did not believe in them--but +for no reward whatever--out of a sheer love for humanity. Don't you see, +sir, that we have magnified that crucifixion out of all proportion to the +plainest truth of our lives? You know I would die on a cross to-day, not +to redeem the world, but to redeem one poor soul--your own. If you deny +that, at least you won't dare deny that you would go on the cross to +redeem _my_ soul from hell--the soul of one man--and do you think you +would demand a reward for doing it, beyond knowing that you had ransomed +me from torment? Would it be necessary to your happiness that you also +have the power to send into hell all those who were not able to believe +you had actually died for me? + +"One moment more, sir--" The thin, brown, old hand had been raised in +trembling appeal, while the lips moved without sound. + +"You see every day in the papers how men die for other men, for one man, +for two, a dozen! Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of +five little children--their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of +their immortal souls. I believe I'd die myself to save two thousand--I +_know_ I would to save three--if their faces were clean and they looked +funny enough and helpless. Here, in this morning's paper, a negro +labourer, going home from his work in New York yesterday, pushed into +safety one of those babies that are always crawling around on railroad +tracks. He had time to see that he could get the baby off but not himself, +and then he went ahead. Doubtless it was a very common baby, and certainly +he was a very common man. Why, I could go down to Sing Sing tomorrow, and +I'll stake my own soul that in the whole cageful of criminals there isn't +one who would not eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he +would thereby ransom the race from hell. And he wouldn't want the power to +damn the unbelievers, either. He would insist upon saving them with the +others." + +"Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!" + +"It was passion, sir--" he spoke with a sudden relenting--"but try to +remember that I've sought the truth honestly." + +"You degrade the Saviour." + +"No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian belief about him. If +common men all might live lives of greater sacrifice than Jesus did, +without any pretensions to the supernatural, it only means that we need a +new embodiment for our ideals. If we find it in man--in God's creature--so +much the better for man and so much the more glory to God, who has not +then bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches." + +"God forgive you this tirade--I know it is the sickness." + +"I shall try to speak calmly, sir--but how much longer can an educated +clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God? +Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the +Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh is gathering even now. +Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest--firm +wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will +go--from a laugh--not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called +higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of +this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to +its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the +sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurdities--its +vain bungling God of one tribe who crowns his career of impotencies--in +all but the art of slaughter--by instituting the sacrifice of a Son +begotten of a human mother, to appease his wrath toward his own creatures; +a God who even by this pitiful device can save but a few of us. Was ever +god so powerless? Do you think we who grow up now do not detect it? Is it +not time to demand a God of virtue, of integrity, of ethical dignity--a +religion whose test shall be moral, and not the opinion one forms of +certain alleged material phenomena?" + +When he had first spoken the old man cowered low and lower in his chair, +with little moans of protest at intervals, perhaps a quick, almost +gasping, "God forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the talk went +on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, +and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him +falter confusedly and stop. + +"I can say no more, sir; I should not have said so much. Oh, Grandad, I +wouldn't have hurt you for all the world, yet I had to let you know why I +could not do what you had planned--and I was fool enough to think I could +justify myself to you!" + +The old eyes still blazed upon him with a look of sorrow and of horror +that was yet, first of all, a look of power; the look of one who had +mastered himself to speak calmly while enduring uttermost pain. + +"I am glad you have spoken. You were honest to do so. It was my error not +to be convinced at first, and thus save myself a shock I could ill bear. +But you have been sick, and I felt that I should not believe without +seeing you. I had built so much--so many years--on your preaching the +gospel of--of my Saviour. This hope has been all my life these last +years--now it is gone. But I have no right to complain. You are free; I +have no claim upon you; and I shall be glad to provide for you--to educate +you further for any profession you may have chosen--to start you in any +business--away from here--from this house--" + +The young man flushed--wincing under this, but answered: + +"Thank you, sir. I could hardly take anything further. I don't know what I +want to do, what I can do--I'm at sea now. But I will go. I'm sure only +that I want to get out--away--I will take a small sum to go with--I know +you would be hurt more if I didn't; enough to get me away--far enough +away." + +He went out, his head bowed under the old man's stern gaze. But when the +latter had stepped to the door and locked it, his fortitude was gone. +Helplessly he fell upon his knees before the big chair--praying out his +grief in hard, dry sobs that choked and shook his worn body. + +When Clytie knocked at the door an hour later, he was dry-eyed and +apparently serene, but busy with papers at his table. + +"Is it something bad about Bernal, Mr. Delcher," she asked, "that he's +going away so queer and sudden?" + +"_You_ pray for him, too, Clytie--you love him--but it's nothing to talk +of." + +But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put down by this. + +"Oh, Mr. Delcher--" a look of horror grew big in her eyes--"You don't mean +to say he's gone and joined the Universalists?" + +The old man shook his head. + +"And he ain't a _Unitarian_?" + +"No, Clytie; but our boy has been to college and it has left him rather +un--unconforming in some little matters--some details--doubtless his +doctrine is sound at core." + +"But I supposed he'd learn everything off at that college, only I know he +never got fed half enough. What with all its studies and football and +clubs and things I thought it was as good as a liberal education." + +"Too liberal, sometimes! Pray for Bernal--and we won't talk about it +again, Clytie, if you please." + +Presently came Allan, who had heard the news. + +"Bernal tells me he will not enter the ministry, sir; that he is going +away." + +"We have decided that is best." + +"You know, sir, I have suspected for some time that Bernal was not as +sound doctrinally as you could wish. His mind, if I may say it, is a +peculiarly literal one. He seems to lack a certain spiritual +comprehensiveness--an enveloping intuition, so to say, of the spiritual +value in a material fact. During that unhappy agitation for the revision +of our creed, I have heard him, touching the future state of unbaptised +infants, utter sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate +in its sentimentality--sentiments which I shall not pain you by repeating. +He has often referred, moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality, +to the sad fate of our father--about whose present estate no churchman can +have any doubt. And then about our belief that even good works are an +abomination before God if performed by the unregenerate, the things I have +heard him--" + +"Yes--yes--let us not talk of it further. Did you wish to see me +especially, Allan?" + +"Well, yes, sir, I _had_ wished to, and perhaps now is the best moment. I +wanted to ask you, sir, how you would regard my becoming an Episcopalian. +I am really persuaded that its form of worship, translating as it does so +_much_ of the spiritual verity of life into visible symbols, is a form +better calculated than the Presbyterian to appeal to the great throbbing +heart of humanity. I hope I may even say, without offense, sir, that it +affords a wider scope, a broader sweep, a more stimulating field of +endeavour, to one who may have a capacity for the life of larger aspects. +In short, sir, I believe there is a great future for me in that church." + +"I shouldn't wonder if there was," answered the old man, who had studied +his face closely during the speech. Yet he spoke with an extreme dryness +of tone that made the other look quickly up. + +"It shall be as you wish," he continued, after a meditative pause--"I +believe you are better calculated for that church than for mine. Obey your +call." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE FOLLY OF HIS YOUTH + + +At early twilight Bernal, sore at heart for the pain he had been obliged +to cause the old man, went to the study-door for a last word with him. + +"I believe there is no one above whose forgiveness I need, sir--but I +shall always be grieved if I can't have yours. I _do_ need that." + +The old man had stood by the open door as if meaning to cut short the +interview. + +"You have it. I forgive you any hurt you have done me; it was due quite as +much to my limitations as to yours. For that other forgiveness, which you +will one day know is more than mine--I--I shall always pray for that." + +He stopped, and the other waited awkwardly, his heart rushing out in +ineffectual flood against the old man's barrier of stern restraint. For a +moment he made folds in his soft hat with a fastidious precision. Finally +he nerved himself to say calmly: + +"I thank you, sir, for all you have done--all you have ever done for me +and for Allan--and, good-bye!" + +"Good-bye!" + +Though there was no hint of unkindness in the old man's voice, something +formal in his manner had restrained the other from offering his hand. +Still loath to go without it, he said again more warmly: + +"Good-bye, sir!" + +"Good-bye!" + +This time he turned and went slowly down the dim hall, still making the +careful folds in his hat, as if he might presently recall something that +would take him back. At the foot of the stairs he stopped quickly to +listen, believing he had heard a call from above; but nothing came and he +went out. Still in the door upstairs was the old man--stern of face, save +that far back in his eyes a kind spirit seemed to strive ineffectually. + +Across the lawn from her hammock Nancy called to Bernal. He went slowly +toward her, still suffering from the old man's coldness--and for the hurts +he had unwittingly put upon him. + +The girl, as he went forward, stood to greet him, her gown, sleeveless, +neckless, taking the bluish tinge that early twilight gives to snow, a +tinge that deepened to dusk about her eyes and in her hair. She gave him +her hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured heart. After +all, men were born to hurt and be hurt. + +He sat in the rustic chair opposite the hammock, looking into Nancy's +black-lashed eyes of the Irish gray, noting that from nineteen to twenty +her neck had broadened at the base the least one might discern, that her +face was less full yet richer in suggestion--her face of the odds and ends +when she did not smile. At this moment she was not only unsmiling, but +excited. + +"Oh, Bernal, what is it? Tell me quick. Allan was so vague--though he said +he'd always stand by you, no matter what you did. What _have_ you done, +Bernal? Is it a college scrape?" + +"Oh, that's only Allan's big-hearted way of talking! He's so generous and +loyal I think he's often been disappointed that I didn't do something, so +he _could_ stand by me. No--no scrapes, Nance, honour bright!" + +"But you're leaving--" + +"Well, in a way I have done something. I've found I couldn't be a minister +as Grandad had set his heart on my being--" + +"But if you haven't done anything wicked, why not?" + +"Oh, I'm not a believer." + +"In what?" + +"In anything, I think--except, well, in you and Grandad and--and Allan and +Clytie--yes, and in myself, Nance. That's a big point. I believe in +myself." + +"And you're going because you don't believe in other things?" + +"Yes, or because I believe too much--just as you like to put it. I +demanded a better God of Grandad, Nance--one that didn't create hell and +men like me to fill it just for the sake of scaring a few timid mortals +into heaven." + +"You know Aunt Bell is an unbeliever. She says no one with an open +mind can live twenty years in Boston without being vastly +broadened--'broadening into the higher unbelief,' she calls it. She +says she has passed through nearly every stage of unbelief there is, +but that she feels the Lord is going to bring her back at last to rest +in the shadow of the Cross." + +As Aunt Bell could be heard creaking heavily in a willow rocker on the +piazza near-by, the young man suppressed a comment that arose within him. + +"Only, unbelievers are apt to be fatiguing" the girl continued, in a lower +tone. "You know Aunt Bell's husband, Uncle Chester--the meekest, dearest +little man in the world, he was--well, once he disappeared and wasn't +heard of again for over four years--except that they knew his bank account +was drawn on from time to time. Then, at last, his brother found him, +living quietly under an assumed name in a little town outside of +Boston--pretending that he hadn't a relative in the world. He told his +brother he was just beginning to feel rested. Aunt Bell said he was +demented. While he was away she'd been all through psychometry, the +planchette, clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology, and Unitarianism. What are +you, Bernal?" + +"Nothing, Nance--that's the trouble." + +"But where are you going, and what for?" + +"I don't know either answer--but I can't stay here, because I'm +blasphemous--it seems--and I don't want to stay, even if I weren't sent. +I want to be out--away. I feel as if I must be looking for something I +haven't found. I suspect it's a fourth dimension to religion. They have +three--even breadth--but they haven't found faith yet--a faith that +doesn't demand arbitrary signs, parlour-magic, and bloody, weird tales in +a book that becomes their idol." + +The girl looked at him long in silence, swaying a little in the hammock, a +bare elbow in one hand, her meditative chin in the other, the curtains of +her eyes half-drawn, as if to let him in a little at a time before her +wonder. Then, at last: + +"Why, you're another Adam--being sent out of the garden for your sin. Now +tell me--honest--was the sin worth it? I've often wondered." She gave an +eager little laugh. + +"Why, Nance, it's worth so much that you want to go of your own accord. Do +you suppose Adam could have stayed in that fat, lazy, silly garden after +he became alive--with no work, no knowledge, no adventure, no chance to do +wrong? As for earning his bread--the only plausible hell I've ever been +able to picture is one where there was nothing to do--no work, no +puzzling, no chances to take, no necessity of thinking. Now, isn't that an +ideal hell? And is it my fault if it happens to be a description of what +Christians look forward to as heaven? I tell you, Adam would have gone out +of that garden from sheer boredom after a few days. The setting of the +angel with the flaming sword to guard the gate shows that God still failed +to understand the wonderful creature he had made." + +She smiled, meditative, wondering. + +"I dare say, for my part, I'd have eaten that apple if the serpent had +been at all persuasive. Bernal, I wonder--and wonder--and wonder--I'm +never done. And Aunt Bell says I'll never be a sweet and wholesome and +stimulating companion to my husband, if I don't stop being so vague and +fantastic." + +"What does she call being vague and fantastic?" + +"Not wanting any husband." + +"Oh!" + +"Bernal, it's like the time that you ran off when you were a wee thing--to +be bad." + +"And you cried because I wouldn't take you with me." + +"I can feel the woe of it yet." + +"You're dry-eyed now, Nance." + +"Yes--and the pink parasol and the buff shoes I meant to take with me are +also things of the past. Mercy! The idea of going off with an unbeliever +to be bad and--everything! 'The happy couple are said to look forward to a +life of joyous wickedness, several interesting crimes having been planned +for the coming season. For their honeymoon infamy they will perpetrate a +series of bank-robberies along the Maine coast.' There--how would that +sound?" + +"You're right, Nance--I wouldn't take you this time either, even if you +cried. And your little speech is funny and all that--but Nance, I believe, +these last years, we've both thought of things now and then--things, you +know--things to think of and not talk of--and see here--The man was driven +out of the garden--but not the woman. She isn't mentioned. She could stay +there--" + +"Until she got tired of it herself?" + +"Until the man came back for her." + +He thought her face was glowing duskily in the twilight. + +"I wonder--wonder about so many things," she said softly. + +"I believe you're a sleeping rebel yourself, Nance. If ever you do eat +from that tree, there'll be no holding you. You won't wait to be driven +forth!" + +"And you are, a wicked young man--that kind never comes back in the +stories." + +"That may be no jest, Nance. I should surely be wicked, if I thought it +brings the happiness it's said to. Under this big sky I am free from any +moral law that doesn't come from right here inside me. Can you realize +that? Do I seem bad for saying it? What they call the laws of God are +nothing. I suspect them all, and I'll make every one of them find its +authority in me before I obey it." + +"It sounds--well--unpromising, Bernal." + +"I told you it was serious, Nance. I see but one law clearly--I am bound +to want happiness. Every man is bound always to want happiness, Nance. No +man can possibly want anything else. That's the only thing under heaven +I'm sure of at this moment--the one universal law under which we all make +our mistakes--good people and bad alike?" + +"But, Bernal, you wouldn't be bad--not really bad?" + +"Well, Nance, I've a vague, loose sort of notion that one isn't really +compelled to be bad in order to be happy right here on earth. I know the +Church rather intimates this, but I suspect that vice is not the delicious +thing the Church implies it to be." + +"You make me afraid, Bernal--" + +"But if I do come back, Nance, having toiled?" + +"--and you make me wonder." + +"I think that's all either of us can do, Nance, and I must go. I have to +say good-bye to Clytie yet. The poor soul is convinced that I have become +a Unitarian and that there's a conspiracy to keep the horrible truth from +her. She says grandad evaded her questions about it. She doesn't dream +there are depths below Unitarianism. I must try to convince her that I'm +not _that_ bad--that I may have a weak head and a defective heart, but not +that. Nance--girl!" + +He sat forward in the chair, reaching toward her. She turned her face +away, but their hands trembled toward each other, faltering fearfully, +tremulously, into a clasp that became at once firm and knowing when it +felt itself--as if it opened their blind eyes to a world of life and light +without end, a world in which they two were the first to live. + +Lingeringly, with slow, regretting fingers, the hands fell apart, to +tighten eagerly again into the clasp that made them one flesh. + +When at last they were put asunder both arose. The girl patted from her +skirts the hammock's little disarranging touches, while the youth again +made the careful folds in his hat. Then they shook hands very stiffly, and +went opposite ways out of a formal garden of farewell; the youth to sate +that beautiful, crude young lust for living--too fierce to be tamed save +by its own failures, hearing only the sagas of action, of form and colour +and sound made one by heat--the song Nature sings unendingly--but heard +only by young ears. + +The girl went back to the Crealock piazza to hear of one better set in the +grace of faith. + +"That elder young Linford," began Aunt Bell, ceasing to rock, "has a +future. You know I talked to him about the Episcopal Church, strongly +advising him to enter it. For all my broad views"--Aunt Bell sighed +here--"I really and truly believe, child, that no one not an Episcopalian +is ever thoroughly at ease in this world." + +Aunt Bell was beautifully, girlishly plump, with a sophisticated air of +smartness--of coquetry, indeed--as to her exquisitely small hands and +feet; and though a certain suggestion of melancholy in her tone +harmonised with the carefully dressed gray hair and with her apparent +years, she nevertheless breathed airs of perfect comfort. + +"Of course this young chap could see at once," she went on, "what +immensely better form it is than Calvinism. _Dear_ me! Imagine one being a +Presbyterian in this day!" It seemed here that the soul of Aunt Bell +poised a disdainful lorgnette before its eyes, through which to survey in +a fitting manner the unmodish spectacle of Calvinism. + +"And he tells me that he has his grandfather's consent. Really, my dear, +with his physique and voice and manner that fellow undoubtedly has a +future in the Episcopal Church. I dare say he'll be wearing the lawn +sleeves and rochet of a bishop before he's forty." + +"Did it ever occur to you, Aunt Bell, that he is--well, just the least +trifle--I was going to say, vain of his appearance--but I'll make it +'self-conscious'?" + +"Child, don't you know that a young man, really beautiful without being +effeminate, is bound to be conscious of it. But vain he is not. It +mortifies him dreadfully, though he pretends to make light of it." + +"But why speak of it so often? He was telling me to-day of an elderly +Englishman who addressed him on the train, telling him what a striking +resemblance he bore to the Prince of Wales when he was a youth." + +"Quite so; and he told me yesterday of hearing a lady in the drug-store +ask the clerk who 'that handsome stranger' was. But, my dear, he tells +them as jokes on himself, and he's so sheepish about it. And he's such a +splendid orator. I persuaded him to-day to read me one of his college +papers. I don't seem to recall much of the substance, but it was full of +the most beautiful expressions. One, I remember, begins, 'Oh, of all the +flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human +heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of--' you know I've +forgotten what it was--Civilisation or Truth or something. Anyway, +whatever it was, it had like a giant engine rolled the car of Civilisation +out from the maze of antiquity, where she now waits to be freighted with +the precious fruits of living genius, and so on." + +"That seems impressive and--mixed, perhaps?" + +"Of course I can't remember things in their order, but it was about the +essential nature of man being gregarious, and truth is a potent factor in +civilisation, and something would be a tear on the world's cold cheek to +make it burn forever--isn't that striking? And Greece had her Athens and +her Corinth, but where now is Greece with her proud cities? And Rome, +Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and splendour. Of course I can't recall +his words. There was a beautiful reference to America, I remember, from +the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen North to the +ever-tepid waters of the sunny South--and a perfectly splendid passage +about the world is and ever has been illiberal. Witness the lonely lamp of +Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, the scaffold of +Sidney--Sidney who, I wonder?" + +"Has it taken you that way, Aunt Bell?" + +"And France, the saddest example of a nation without a God, and succeeding +generations will only add a new lustre to our present resplendent glory, +bound together by the most sacred ties of goodwill; independent, yet +acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, and it was fraught with +vital interest to every thinking man--" + +"Spare me, Aunt Bell--it's like Coney Island, with all those carrousels +going around and five bands playing at once!" + +"But his peroration! I can't pretend to give you any idea of its +beauties--" + +"Don't!" + +"Get him to declaim it for you. It begins in the most impressive language +about his standing on top of the Rocky Mountains one day and placing his +feet upon a solid rock, he saw a tempest gathering in the valley far +below. So he watches the storm--in his own language, of course--while all +around him is sunshine. And such should be our aim in life, to plant our +feet on the solid rock of--how provoking! I can't remember what the rock +was--anyway, we are to bid those in the valley below to cease their +bickerings and come up to the rock--I think it was Intellectual +Greatness--No!--Unselfishness--that's it. And the title of the paper was a +sermon in itself--'The Temporal Advantage of the Individual No Norm of +Morality.' Isn't that a beautiful thought in itself? Nancy, that chap will +waste himself until he has a city parish." + +There was silence for a little time before Aunt Bell asked, as one having +returned to baser matters: + +"I wonder if the jacket of my gray suit came back from that clumsy tailor. +I forgot to ask Ellen if an express package came." + +And Nancy, whose look was bent far into the dusk, answered: + +"Oh, I wonder if he will come back!" + + + + +BOOK THREE + +The Age of Faith + + + +[Illustration] + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE PERVERSE BEHAVIOUR OF AN OLD MAN AND A YOUNG MAN + + +When old Allan Delcher slept with his fathers--being so found in the big +chair, with the worn, leather-bound Bible open in his lap--the revived +but still tender faith of Aunt Bell Hardwick was bitten as by frost. And +this though the Bible had lain open at that psalm in which David is said +to describe the corruption of a natural man--a psalm beginning, "The +fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" + +For it straightway appeared that the dead man had in life done a +perverse and inexplicable thing, to the bitter amazement of those who +had learned to trust him. On the day after he sent a blasphemous +grandson from his door he had called for Squire Cumpston, announcing to +the family his intention to make an entirely new will--a thing for which +there seemed to be a certain sad necessity. + +When he could no longer be reproached it transpired that he had left "to +Allan Delcher Linford, son of one Clayton Linford," a beggarly pittance +of five thousand dollars; and "to my beloved grandson, Bernal Linford, I +give, devise and bequeath the residue of my estate, both real and +personal." + +Though the husband of her niece wore publicly a look of faith +unimpaired, and was thereby an example to her, Aunt Bell declared +herself to be once more on the verge of believing that the proofs of an +overseeing Providence, all-wise and all-loving, were by no means +overwhelming; that they were, indeed, of so frail a validity that she +could not wonder at people falling away from the Church. It was a trying +time for Aunt Bell. She felt that her return to the shadow of the cross +was not being made enough of by the One above. After years of running +after strange gods, the Episcopal service as administered by Allan had +prevailed over her seasoned skepticism: through its fascinating leaven +of romance--with faint and, as it seemed to her, wholly reverent hints +of physical culture--the spirit may be said to have blandished her. And +now this turpitude in a man of God came to disturb the first tender +rootlings of her new faith. + +The husband of her niece had loyally endeavoured to dissuade her from +this too human reaction. + +"God has chosen to try me for a purpose, Aunt Bell," he said very +simply. "I ought to be proud of it--eager for any test--and I am. True, +in these last years I had looked upon grandfather's fortune as mine--not +only by implied promise, but by all standards of right--even of +integrity. For surely a man could not more nearly forfeit his own +rights, in every moral aspect, than poor Bernal has--though I meant +always to stand by him. So you see, I must conclude that God means to +distinguish me by a test. He may even subject me to others; but I shall +not wince. I shall welcome His trials. He turned upon her the face of +simple faith." + +"Did you speak to that lawyer about the possibility of a contest--of +proving unsound mind?" + +"I did, but he saw no chance whatever." + +Aunt Bell hereupon surveyed her beautifully dimpled knuckles minutely, +with an affectionate pride--a pride not uncritical, yet wholly +convinced. + +"Of course," added Allan after a moment's reflection, "there's no sense +in believing that every bit of one's hard luck is sent by God to test +one. One must in all reverence take every precaution to prove that the +disaster is not humanly remediable. And this, I may say, I have done +with thoroughness--with great thoroughness." + +"Bernal may be dead," suggested Aunt Bell, brightening now from an +impartial admiring of the toes of her small, plump slippers. + +"God forbid that he should be cut off in his unbelief--but then, God's +will be done. If that be true, of course, the matter is different. +Meantime we are advertising." + +"I wish I had your superb faith, Allan. I wish Nancy had it...." + +Her niece's husband turned his head and shoulders until she had the +three-quarters view of his face. + +"I have faith, Aunt Bell. God knows my unworthiness, even as you know it +and I know it--but I have faith!" + +The golden specks in his hazel eyes blazed with humility, and a flush of +the same virtue mantled his perfect brow. + +Such news of Bernal Linford as had come back to Edom, though meagre and +fragmentary, was of a character to confirm the worst fears of those who +loved him. The first report came within a year after his going, and +caused a shaking of many heads. + +An estimable farmer, one Caleb Webster, living on the outskirts of Edom, +had, in a blameless spirit of adventure, toured the Far West, at +excursion rates said to be astounding for cheapness. He had met the +unfortunate young man in one of the newer mining towns along his +exciting route. + +"He was kind of nursin' a feller that had the consumption," ran the +gossip of Mr. Webster, "some one he'd fell in with out in them parts, +that had gone there to git cured. But, High Mighty! the way them two +carried on at all hours wasn't goin' to cure no one of nothin'! +Specially gamblin', which was done right in public, you might say, +though the sharpers never skinned me none, I'll say that! But these two +was at it every night, and finally they done just like I told the young +fools they'd do--they lost all they had. They come into the Commercial +House one night where I was settin' lookin' over a time-table, both +seemin' down in the mouth. And all to once this sick young man--Mr. +Hoover, his name was--bust out cryin'--him bein' weak or mebbe in liquor +or somethin'. + +"'Every cent lost!' he says, the tears runnin' down those yellow, sunk +cheeks of his. But Bernal seems to git chipper again when he sees how +Mr. Hoover is takin' it, so he says, 'Haven't you got a cent left, +Hoover? Haven't you got anythin' at all left? Just think,' he says, +'what I stood to win on that last turn, if it'd come my way--at four to +one,' he says, or somethin' like that; them gamblin' terms is too much +for me. 'Hain't you got nothin' at all left?' he says. + +"Then this Hoover--still cryin', mind you--he says, 'Not a cent in the +world except forty dollars in my trunk upstairs that I saved out to bury +me with--and they won't send me another cent,' he says, 'because I tried +'em.' + +"It sounded awful to hear him talkin' like that about his own buryin', +but it didn't phase Bernal none. + +"'Forty dollars!' he says, kind of sniffy like. 'Why, man, what could +you do for forty dollars? Don't you know such things are very outrageous +in price here? Forty _dollars_--why,' he says, 'the very best you could +do would be one of these plain pine things with black cloth tacked on to +it, and pewter trimmin's if _any_,' he says. 'Think of _pewter_ +trimmin's!' + +"'Say,' he says, when Hoover begun to look up at him, 'you run and dig +up your old forty and I'll go back right now and win you out a full +satin-lined, silver-trimmed one, polished mahogany and gold name-plate, +and there'll be enough for a clock of immortelles with the hands stopped +at just the hour it happens,' he says. 'And you want to hurry,' he says, +'it ought to be done right away--with that cough of yours.' + +"Me? Gosh, I felt awful--I wanted to drop right through the floor, but +this Hoover, he says all at once, still snufflin', mind you: 'Say, +that's all right,' he says. 'If I'm goin' to do it at all, I ought to do +it right for the credit of my folks. I ought to give this town a flash +of the right thing,' he says. + +"Then he goes upstairs, leaning on the balusters, and gets his four +ten-dollar bills that had been folded away all neat at the bottom of his +trunk, and before I could think of anythin' wholesome to say--I was that +scandalised--they was goin' off across the street to the Horseshoe +Gamin' Parlour, this feller Hoover seemin' very sanguine and asking +Bernal whether he was sure they was a party in town could do it up right +after they'd went and won the money for it. + +"Well, sir, I jest set there thinkin' how this boy Bernal Linford was +brought up for a preacher, and 'Jest look at him now!' I says to +myself--and I guess it was mebbe an hour later I seen 'em comin' out of +the swingin' blinds in the door of this place, and a laffin' fit to kill +themselves. 'High Mighty! they done it!' I says, watchin' 'em laff and +slap each other on the back till Hoover had to stop in the middle of the +street to cough. Well, they come into the Commercial office where I am +and I says, 'Well, boys, how much did you fellers win?' and Hoover says, +'Not a cent! We lost our roll,' he says. 'It's the blamedest funniest +thing I ever heard of,' he says, just like that, laffin' again fit to +choke. + +"'_I_ don't see anythin' to laff at,' I says. 'How you goin' to live?' + +"'How's he goin' to die?' says Bernal, 'without a cent to do it on?' + +"'That's the funny part of it,' says Hoover. 'Linford thought of it +first. How _can_ I die now? It wouldn't be square,' he says--'me without +a cent!' + +"Then they both began to laugh--but me, I couldn't see nothin' funny +about it. + +"Wal, I left early next mornin', not wantin' to have to refuse 'em a +loan." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +HOW A BROTHER WAS DIFFERENT + + +In contrast with this regrettable performance of Bernal's, which, alas! +bore internal evidence of being a type of many, was the flawless career +of Allan, the dutiful and earnest. Not only did he complete his course +at the General Theological Seminary with great honour, but he was +ordained into the Episcopal ministry under circumstances entirely +auspicious. Aunt Bell confided to Nancy that his superior presence quite +dwarfed the bishop who ordained him. + +His ordination sermon, moreover, which his grandfather had been +persuaded into journeying to hear, was held by many to be a triumph of +pulpit oratory no less than an able yet not unpoetic handling of his +text, which was from John--"The Truth shall make you free." + +Truth, he declared, was the crowning glory in the diadem of man's +attributes, and a subject fraught with vital interest to every thinking +man. The essential nature of man being gregarious, how important that +the leader of men should hold Truth to be like a diamond, made only the +brighter by friction. The world is and ever has been illiberal. Witness +the lonely lamp of Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of +Pascal, the scaffold of Sidney--all fighters for truth against the +masses who cannot think for themselves. + +Truth was, indeed, a potent factor in civilisation. If only all +truth-lovers could feel bound together by the sacred ties of fraternal +good-will, independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, +succeeding ages could but add a new lustre to their present resplendent +glory. + +Truth, triumphant out of oppression, is a tear falling on the world's +cold cheek to make it burn forever. Why fear the revelation of truth? +Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but where is Greece to-day? Rome, +too, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and polish! They were, but they +are not--for want of Truth. But might not we hope for a land where Truth +would reign--from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the +frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South? + +Truth is the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled +the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity where it now +waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius. + +The young man's final flight was observed by Aunt Bell to impress +visibly even the bishop--a personage whom she had begun to suspect was +the least bit cynical, perhaps from having listened to many first +sermons. + +"Standing one day," it began, "near the summit of one of the grand old +Rocky Mountains that in primeval ages was elevated from ocean's depths +and now towers its snow-capped peak heavenward touching the azure blue, +I witnessed a scene which, for beauty of illustration of the thought in +hand, the world cannot surpass. Placing my feet upon a solid rock, I +saw, far down in the valley below, the tempest gathering. Soon the +low-muttered thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave token of +increasing turbulence with Nature's elements. Thus the storm raged far +below while all around me and above glittered the pure sunlight of +heaven, where I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought +came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified in Nature's own +impressive language the simple grandeurs of Truth. While we are in the +valley below, we have ebullitions of discontent and murmurings of +strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought becomes elevated. +Then placing our feet on the solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the +valley below to cease their bickerings and come up higher. + +"Truth! Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the +parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower +of Truth. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but +they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible. +But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out +through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the +mountain-side, _up_ and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all +along the cloudy corridors of the day, _up_ along the misty pathway to +the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the +breath of angels!" + +Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon--had, even +after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should +never have done. Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he +was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a +discreet housekeeper, as "the son of his father"--which was an invidious +circumlocution, amounting almost to an epithet. And he had most weakly +continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of his daughter--the +godless boy whom he had driven from his door. + +Not even the other bit of news that came a little later had sufficed to +make him repair his injustice; and this, though the report came by the +Reverend Arthur Pelham Gridley, incumbent of the Presbyterian pulpit at +Edom, who could preach sermons the old man liked. + +Mr. Gridley, returning from a certain gathering of the brethren at +Denver, had brought this news: That Bernal Linford had been last seen +walking south from Denver, like a common tramp, in the company of a poor +half-witted creature who had aroused some local excitement by declaring +himself to be the son of God, speaking familiarly of the Deity as +"Father." + +As this impious person had been of a very simple mind and behaved +inoffensively, rather shrinking from publicity than courting it, he had +at first attracted little attention. It appeared, however, that he had +presently begun an absurd pretence of healing the sick and the lame; +and, like all charlatans, he so cunningly worked upon the imaginations +of his dupes that a remarkable number of them believed that they +actually had been healed by him. In fact, the nuisance of his operations +had grown to an extent so alarming that thousands of people stood in +line from early morning until dusk awaiting their turn to be blessed and +"healed" by the impostor. Just as several of the clergy, said Mr. +Gridley, were on the point of denouncing this creature as anti-Christ +and thus exploding his pretensions; and when the city authorities, +indeed, appealed to by the local physicians, were on the point of +suppressing him for disorderly conduct, and a menace to the public +health, since he was encouraging the people to forsake their family +physicians; and just as the news came that a long train-load of the +variously suffering was on its way from Omaha, the wretched impostor had +himself solved the difficulty by quietly disappearing. As he had refused +to take money from the thousands of his dupes who had pressed it upon +him in their fancied relief from pain, it was known that he could not be +far off, and some curiosity was at first felt as to his +whereabouts--particularly by those superstitious ones who continued to +believe he had healed them of their infirmities, not a few of whom, it +appeared, were disposed to credit his blasphemous claim to have been +sent by God. + +According to the lookout thus kept for this person, it was reported that +he had been seen to pass on foot through towns lying south of Denver, +meanly dressed and accompanied by a young man named Linford. To all +inquiries he answered that he was on his way to fast in the desert as +his "Father" had commanded. His companion was even less communicative, +saying somewhat irritably that his goings and comings were nobody's +business but his own. + +Some six months later the remains of the unfortunate person were found +in a wild place far to the south, with his Bible and his blanket. It was +supposed that he had starved. Of Linford no further trace had been +discovered. + +The most absurd tales were now told, said Mr. Gridley, of the miracles +of healing wrought by this person--told, moreover, by persons of +intelligence whom in ordinary matters one would not hesitate to trust. +There had even been a story started, which was widely believed, that he +had raised the dead; moreover, many of those who had been deluded into +believing themselves healed, looked forward confidently to his own +resurrection. + +Mr. Gridley ventured the opinion that we should be thankful to the daily +press which now disseminates the news of such things promptly, instead +of allowing it to travel slowly by word of mouth, as it did in less +advanced times--a process in which a little truth becomes very shortly a +mighty untruth. Even between Denver and Omaha he had observed that the +wonder-tales of this person grew apace, thus proving the inaccuracy of +the human mind as a reporter of fact. Without the check of an +unemotional daily press Mr. Gridley suspected that the poor creature's +performances would have been magnified by credulous gossip until he +became the founder of a new religion--a thing especially to be dreaded +in a day when the people were crazed for any new thing--as Paul found +them in Athens. + +Mr. Gridley mentioned further that the person had suffered from what the +alienists called "morbid delusions of grandeur"--believing, indeed, that +but One other in the universe was greater than himself; that he would +sit at the right hand of Power to judge all the world. His most puerile +pretension, however, was that he meant to live, even if the work +required a thousand years, until such time as he could save all persons +into heaven, so that hell need have no occupants. + +But this distressing tale did not move old Allan Delcher to reconsider +his perverse decision, though there had been ample time for reparation. +Placidly he dropped off one day, a little while after he had cautioned +Clytie to keep the house ready for Bernal's coming; and to have always +on hand one of those fig layer-cakes of which he was so fond, since as +likely as not he would ask for this the first thing, just as he used to +do. It must seem homelike to him when he did come. + +Having betrayed the trust reposed in him by an unsuspecting grandson, it +seemed fitting that he should fall asleep over that very psalm wherein +David describeth the corruption of the natural man. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +HOW EDOM WAS FAVOURED OF GOD AND MAMMON + + +In the years gone, the village of Edom had matured, even as little boys +wax to manhood. Time was when all but two trains daily sped by it so +fast that from their windows its name over the station door was naught +but a blur. Now all was changed. Many trains stopped, and people of the +city mien descended from or entered smart traps, yellow depot-wagons or +immaculate victorias, drawn by short-tailed, sophisticated steeds +managed by liveried persons whose scraped faces were at once impassive +and alert. + +In its outlying parts, moreover, stately villas now stood in the midst +of grounds hedged, levelled, sprayed, shaven, trimmed and +garnished--grounds cherished sacredly with a reverence like unto that +once accorded the Front Room in this same village. Edom, indeed, had +outgrown its villagehood as a country boy in the city will often outgrow +his home ways. That is, it was still a village in its inmost heart; but +outwardly, at its edges, the distinctions and graces of urban +worldliness had come upon it. + +All this from the happy circumstance that Edom lay in a dale of beauty +not too far from the blessed centre of things requisite. First, one by +one, then by families, then by groups of families, then by cliques, the +invaders had come to promote Edom's importance; one being brought by the +gracious falling of its little hills; one by its narrow valleys where +the quick little waters come down; one by the clearness of its air; and +one by the cheapness with which simple old farms might be bought and +converted into the most city-like of country homes. + +The old stock of Edom had early learned not to part with any massive +claw-footed sideboard with glass knobs, or any mahogany four-poster, or +tall clock, or high-boy, except after feigning a distressed reluctance. +It had learned also to hide its consternation at the prices which this +behaviour would eventually induce the newcomers to pay for such junk. +Indeed, it learned very soon to be a shrewd valuer of old mahogany, +pewter, and china; even to suspect that the buyers might perceive +beauties in it that justified the prices they paid. + +Old Edom, too, has its own opinion of the relative joys of master and +servant, the latter being always debonair, their employers stiff, formal +and concerned. It conceives that the employers, indeed, have but one +pleasure: to stand beholding with anxious solemnity--quite as if it were +the performance of a religious rite--the serious-visaged men who daily +barber the lawns and hedges. It is suspected by old Edomites that the +menials, finding themselves watched at this delicate task, strive to +copy in face and demeanour the solemnity of the observing +employer--clipping the box hedge one more fraction of an inch with the +wariest caution--maintaining outwardly, in short, a most reverent +seriousness which in their secret hearts they do not feel. + +Let this be so or not. The point is that Edom had gone beyond its three +churches of Calvin, Wesley and Luther--to say nothing of one poor little +frame structure with a cross at the peak, where a handful of benighted +Romanists had long been known to perform their idolatrous rites. Now, +indeed, as became a smartened village, there was a perfect little +Episcopal church of redstone, stained glass and painted shingles, with a +macadam driveway leading under its dainty _porte-cochere_, and at the +base of whose stern little tower an eager ivy already aspired; a +toy-like, yet suggestively imposing edifice, quite in the manner of +smart suburban churches--a manner that for want of accurate knowledge +one might call confectioner's gothic. + +It was here, in his old home, that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford +found his first pastorate. Here from the very beginning he rendered +apparent those gifts that were to make him a power among men. It was +with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice began his first +service that June morning, before a congregation known to be +hypercritical, composed as it was of seasoned city communicants, +hardened listeners and watchers, who would appraise his vestments, +voice, manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light of a ripe +experience. + +Yet his success was instant. He knew it long before the service +ended--felt it infallibly all at once in the midst of his sermon on +Faith. From the reading of his text, "For God so loved the world that he +gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein might not +perish, but have everlasting life," the worldly people before him were +held as by invisible wires running from him to each of them. He felt +them sway in obedience to his tones; they warmed with him and cooled +with him; aspired with him, questioned, agreed, and glowed with him. +They were his--one with him. Their eyes saw a young man in the splendour +of his early prime, of a faultless, but truly masculine beauty, delicate +yet manfully rugged, square-chinned, straight-mouthed, with tawny hair +and hazel eyes full of glittering golden points when his eloquence +mounted; clear-skinned, brilliant, warm-voiced, yet always simple, +direct, earnest; a storehouse of power, yet ornate; a source of +refreshment both physical and spiritual to all within the field of his +magnetism. + +So agreed those who listened to that first sermon on Faith, in which +that virtue was said be like the diamond, made only the brighter by +friction. Motionless his listeners sat while he likened Faith to the +giant engine that has rolled the car of Religion out from the maze of +antiquity into the light of the present day, where it now waits to be +freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, then to speed on to +that hoped-for golden era when truth shall come forth as a new and +blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in +one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet acknowledging the +sovereignty of Omnipotence. + +Rapt were they when, with rare verbal felicity and unstudied eloquence, +the young man pictured himself standing upon a lofty sunlit mountain, +while a storm raged in the valley below, calling passionately to those +far down in the ebullition to come up to him and mingle in the blue +serene of Faith. Faith was, indeed, a tear dropped on the world's cold +cheek of Doubt to make it burn forever. + +Even those long since _blase_ to pulpit oratory thrilled at the simple +beauty of his peroration, which ran: "_Faith!_ Oh, of all the flowers +that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none +so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Faith. Other flowers there may +be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that +their fragrance become perceptible. But this flower--" + +In spite of this triumph, it had taken him still another year to prevail +over one of his hearers. True, she had met him after that first +triumphant ordination sermon with her black lashes but half-veiling the +admiration that shone warm in the gray of her eyes; and his low +assurance, "Nance, you _please_ me! Really you do!" as his yellow eyes +lingered down her rounded slenderness from summer bonnet to hem of +summer gown, rippled her face with a colour she had to laugh away. + +Yet she had been obstinate and wondering. There had to be a year in +which she knew that one she dreamed of would come back; another in which +she believed he might; another in which she hoped he would--and yet +another in which she realised that dreams and hopes alike were +vain--vain, though there were times in which she seemed to feel again +the tingling life of that last hand-clasp; times when he called to her; +times when she had the absurd consciousness that his mind pressed upon +hers. There had been so many years and so much wonder--and no one came. +It had been foolish indeed. And then came a year of wondering at the +other. The old wonder concerning this one, excited by a certain fashion +of rendering his head in unison with his shoulders--as might the statue +of Perfect Beauty turn upon its pedestal--with its baser residue of +suspicion, had been happily allayed by a closer acquaintance with Allan. +One must learn, it seemed, to distrust those lightning-strokes of +prejudice that flash but once at the first contact between human clouds. + +Yet in the last year there had come another wonder that excited a +suspicion whose troubling-power was absurdly out of all true proportion. + +It was in the matter of seeing things--that is, funny things. + +Doubtless she had told him a few things more or less funny that had +seemed to move him to doubt or perplexity, or to mere seriousness; but, +indeed, they had seemed less funny to her after that. For example, she +had told Aunt Bell the anecdote of the British lady of title who says to +her curate, concerning a worthy relative by marriage lately passed away, +toward whom she has felt kindly despite his inferior station: "Of course +I _couldn't_ know him here--but we shall meet in heaven." Aunt Bell had +been edified by this, remarking earnestly that such differences would +indeed be wiped out in heaven. Yet when Nancy went to Allan in a certain +bubbling condition over the anecdote itself and Aunt Bell's comment +thereon, he made her repeat it slowly, after the first hurried telling, +and had laughed but awkwardly with her, rather as if it were expected of +him--with an eye vacant of all but wonder--like a traveller not sure he +had done right to take the left-hand turn at the last cross-roads. + +Again, the bishop who ordained him had, in a relaxed and social moment +after the ceremony, related that little classic of Bishop Meade, who, +during the fight over a certain disestablishment measure, was asked by a +lobbyist how he would vote. The dignified prelate had replied that he +would vote for the bill, for he held that every man should have the +right to choose his own way to heaven. None the less, he would continue +to be certain that a gentleman would always take the Episcopal way. To +Nancy Allan retold this, adding, + +"You know, I'm going to use it in a sermon some time." + +"Yes--it's very funny," she answered, a little uncertainly. + +"Funny?" + +"Yes." + +"Do you think so?" + +"Of course--I've heard the bishop tell it myself--and I know _he_ thinks +it funny." + +"Well--then I'll use it as a funny story. Of course, it _is_ funny--I +only thought"--what it was he only thought Nancy never knew. + +Small bits of things to wonder at, these were, and the wonder brought no +illumination. She only knew there were times when they two seemed of +different worlds, bereft of power to communicate; and at these times his +superbly assured wooing left her slightly dazed. + +But there were other times, and different--and slowly she became used to +the idea of him--persuaded both by his own court and by the spirited +encomiums that he evoked from Aunt Bell. + +Aunt Bell was at that time only half persuaded by Allan to re-enter the +church of her blameless infancy. She was still minded to seek a little +longer outside the fold that _rapport_ with the Universal Mind which she +had never ceased to crave. In this process she had lately discarded +Esoteric Buddhism for Subliminal Monitions induced by Psychic Breathing +and correct breakfast-food. For all that, she felt competent to declare +that Allan was the only possible husband for her niece, and her niece +came to suspect that this might be so. + +When at last she had wondered herself into a state of inward +readiness--a state still governed by her outward habit of resistance, +this last was beaten down by a letter from Mrs. Tednick, who had been a +school friend as Clara Tremaine, and was now married, apparently with +results not too desirable. + +"Never, my dear," ran the letter to Nancy, "permit yourself to think of +marrying a man who has not a sense of humour. Do I seem flippant? Don't +think it. I am conveying to you the inestimable benefits of a trained +observation. Humour saves a man from being impossible in any number of +ways--from boring you to beating you. (You may live to realise that the +tragedy of _the first_ is not less poignant than that of the second.) +Whisper, dear!--All men are equally vain--at least in their ways with a +woman--but humour assuredly preserves many unto death from betraying it +egregiously. Beware of him if he lack it. He has power to crucify you +daily, and yet be in honest ignorance of your tortures. Don't think I am +cynical--and indeed, my own husband is one of the best and dearest of +souls in the world, _the biggest heart_--but be sure you marry no man +without humour. Don't think a man has it merely because he tells funny +stories; the humour I mean is a kind of sense of the fitness of things +that keeps a man from forgetting himself. And if he hasn't humour, don't +think he can make you happy, even if his vanity doesn't show. He +can't--after the expiration of that brief period in which the vanity of +each is a holy joy to the other. Remember now!" + +Curiously enough this well-intended homily had the effect of arousing in +Nancy an instant sense of loyalty to Allan. She suffered little flashes +of resentment at the thought that Clara Tremaine should seem to +depreciate one toward whom she felt herself turning with a sudden +defensive tenderness. And this, though it was clear to the level eye of +reason that Clara must have been generalising on observations made far +from Edom. But her loyal spirit was not less eager to resent an affront +because it might seem to have been aimless. + +And thereafter, though never ceasing to wonder, Nancy was won. Her +consent, at length, went to him in her own volume of Browning, a pink +rose shut in upon "A Woman's Last Word"--its petals bruised against the +verses: + + "What so false as truth is, + False to thee? + Where the serpent's tooth is, + Shun the tree. + + "Where the apple reddens, + Never pry-- + Lest we lose our Edens, + Eve and I. + + "Be a god and hold me + With a charm! + Be a man and fold me + With thine arm!" + +That was a moment of sweetness, of utter rest, of joyous peace--fighting +no longer. + +A little while and he was before her, proud as a conquerer may be--glad +as a lover should. + +"I always knew it, Nance--you _had_ to give in." + +Then as she drooped in his arms, a mere fragrant, pulsing, glad +submission-- + +"You have _always_ pleased me, Nancy. I know I shall never regret my +choice." + +And Nancy, scarce hearing, wondered happily on his breast. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE WINNING OF BROWETT + + +A thoughtful Pagan once reported dignity to consist not in possessing +honours, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. It is a theory +fit to console multitudes. Edom's young rector was not only consoled by +it, he was stimulated. To his ardent nature, the consciousness of +deserving honour was the first vital step toward gaining it. Those +things that he believed himself to deserve he forthwith subjected to the +magnetic rays of his desire: Knowing with the inborn certainty of the +successful, that they must finally yield to such silent, coercing +influence and soon or late gravitate toward him in obedience to the same +law that draws the apple to the earth's lap. In this manner had the +young man won his prizes for oratory; so had he won his wife; so had he +won his first pastorate; so now would he win that prize he was conscious +of meriting next--a city parish--a rectorate in the chief seat of his +church in America, where was all wealth and power as well as the great +among men, to be swayed by his eloquence and brought at last to the +Master's feet. And here, again, would his future enlarge to prospects +now but mistily surmised--prospects to be moved upon anon with +triumphant tread. Infinite aspiration opening ever beyond itself--this +was his. Meantime, step by step, with zealous care for the accuracy of +each, with eyes always ahead, leaving nothing undone--he was forever +fashioning the moulds into which the Spirit should materialise his +benefits. + +The first step was the winning of Browett--old Cyrus Browett, whose +villa, in the fashion of an English manor-house, was a feature of remark +even to the Edom summer dwellers--a villa whose wide grounds were so +swept, garnished, trimly flowered, hedge-bordered and shrub-upholstered +that, to old Edom, they were like stately parlours built foolishly out +of doors. + +Months had the rector of tiny St. Anne's waited for Browett to come to +him, knowing that Browett must come in the end. One less instinctively +wise would have made the mistake of going to Browett. Not this one, +whose good spirit warned him that his puissance lay rather with groups +of men than with individuals. From back of the chancel railing he could +sway the crowd and make it all his own; whereas, taking that same crowd +singly, and beyond his sacerdotal functions, he might be at the mercy of +each man composing it. He knew, in short, that Cyrus Browett as one of +his congregation on a Sabbath morning would be a mere atom in the +plastic cosmos below him; whereas Browett by himself, with the granite +hardness of his crag-like face, his cool little green eyes--unemotional +as two algebraic x's--would be a matter fearfully different. Even his +white moustache, close-clipped as his own hedges, and guarding a stiff, +chilled mouth, was a thing grimly repressed, telling that the man was +quite invulnerable to his own vanity. A human Browett would have +permitted that moustache to mitigate its surroundings with some flowing +grace. He was, indeed, no adversary to meet alone in the open field--for +one who could make him in a crowd a mere string of many to his harp. + +The morning so long awaited came on a second Sunday after Trinity. Cyrus +Browett, in whose keeping was the very ark of the money covenant, +alighted from his coupe under the _porte-cochere_ of candied Gothic and +humbly took seat in his pew like a mere worshipper of God. + +As such--a man among men--the young rector looked calmly down upon him, +letting him sink into the crowd-entity which always became subject to +him. + +His rare, vibrant tones--tones that somehow carried the subdued light +and warmth of stained glass--rolled out in moving volume: + +"The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before +him." + +Then, still as a mere worshipper of God, that Prince of the power of +Mammon down in front knelt humbly to say after the young rector above +him that he had erred and strayed like a lost sheep, followed too much +the devices of his own heart, leaving undone those things he ought to +have done, and doing those things which he ought not to have done; that +there was no health in him; yet praying that he might, thereafter, lead +a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of God's holy name. Even +to Allan there was something affecting in this--a sort of sardonic +absurdity in Browett's actually speaking thus. + +The kneeling financier was indeed a gracious and lovely spectacle to the +young clergyman, and in his next words, above the still-bended +congregation, his tones grew warmly moist with an unction that thrilled +his hearers as never before. Movingly, indeed, upon the authority that +God hath given to his ministers, did he declare and pronounce to his +people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. +Wonderful, in truth, had it been if his hearers did not thrill, for the +minister himself was thrilled as never before. He, Allan Delcher +Linford, was absolving and remitting the sins of a man whose millions +were counted by the hundred, a god of money and of power--who yet +cringed before him out there like one who feared and worshipped. + +Nor did he here make the mistake that many another would have made. +Instead of preaching to Cyrus Browett alone--preaching at him--he +preached as usual to his congregation. If his glance fell, now and then, +upon the face of Browett, he saw it only through the haze of his own +fervour--a patch of granite-gray holding two pricking points of light. +Not once was Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a crowd; +not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that +he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for +pew-rent. Yet, though the young rector regarded Browett as but one of +many, he knew infallibly the instant that invisible wire was strung +between them, and felt, thereafter, every tug of opposition or signal of +agreement that flashed from Browett's mind, knowing in the end, without +a look, that he had won Browett's approval and even excited his +interest. + +For the sermon had been strangely, wonderfully suited to Browett's +peculiar tastes. Hardly could a sermon have been better planned to win +him. The choice of the text itself: "And thou shalt take no gift: for +the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words of the righteous," +was perfect art. + +The plea was for intellectual honesty, for academic freedom, for +fearless independence, which were said to be the crowning glories in the +diadem of man's attributes. Fearlessly, then, did the speaker depreciate +both the dogmatism of religion and the dogmatism of science. "Much of +what we call religion," he said, "is only the superstition of the past; +much of what we call science is but the superstition of the present." He +pleaded that religion might be an ever-living growth in the human heart, +not a dead formulary of dogmatic origin. True, organisation was +necessary, but in the realm of spiritual essentials a creed drawn up in +the fourth century should not be treated as if it were the final +expression of the religious consciousness _in secula seculorum_. One +should, indeed, be prepared for the perpetual restatement of religious +truth, fearlessly submitting the most cherished convictions to the light +of each succeeding age. + +Yet, especially, should it not be forgotten in an age of +ultra-physicism, of social and economic heterodoxies, that there must +ever be in human society, according to the blessed ordinance of God, +princes and subjects, masters and proletariat, rich and poor, learned +and ignorant, nobles and plebeians--yet all united in the bonds of love +to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last +end in heaven;--all united in the bonds of fraternal good-will, +independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. + +He closed with these words of Voltaire: "We must love our country +whatever injustice we suffer in it, as we must love and serve the +Supreme Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so +often dishonour His worship." + +The sermon was no marked achievement in coherence, but neither was +Browett a coherent personality. It was, however, a swift, vivid +sermon--a short and a busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, +incoherent though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic doubter of his +own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire and a believer in the +Established Order of Things; despising a radical and a conservative +equally, but, hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He must be +preached to as one not yet brought into that flock purchased by God with +the blood of His Son; and at the same time, as one who had always been +of that flock and was now inalienable from it. In a word, Browett's +doubt and his belief had both to be fed from the same spoon, a fact that +all young preachers of God's word would not have fathomed. + +Thus our young rector proved his power. His future rolled visibly toward +him. During the rest of that service there sounded in his ears an +undertone from out the golden centre of that future: "_Reverend Father +in God, we present unto you this godly and well-learned man to be +ordained and consecrated Bishop--_" + +Rewarded, indeed, was he for the trouble he had taken long months before +to build that particular sermon to fit Browett, after specifications +confided to him by an obliging parishioner--keeping it ready to use at a +second's notice, on the first morning that Browett should appear. + +How diminished would be that envious railing at Success could we but +know the hidden pains by which alone its victories of seeming ease are +won! + +The young minister could now meet Browett as man to man, having +established a prestige. + +It had been said by those who would fain have branded him with the +stigma of disrepute that Browett's ethics were inferior to those of the +prairie wolf; meaning, perhaps, that he might kill more sheep than he +could possibly devour. + +Browett had views of his own in this matter. As a tentative evolutionist +he looked upon his survival as unimpeachable evidence of his +fitness,--as the eagle is fitter than the lamb it may fasten upon. +Again, as a believer in Revealed Religion, he accepted human society +according to the ordinance of God, deeming himself as Master to be but +the rightful, divinely-instituted complement of his humblest +servant--the two of them necessary poles in the world spiritual. + +One of the few fads of Browett being the memorial window, it was also +said by enviers that if he would begin to erect a window to every small +competitor his Trust had squeezed to death there would be an +unprecedented flurry in stained glass. But Browett knew, as an +evolutionist, that the eagle has a divine right to the lamb if it can +come safely off with it; as a Christian, that one carries out the will +of God as indubitably in preserving the established order of prince and +subject, of noble and plebeian, as in giving of his abundance to relieve +the necessitous--or in endowing universities which should teach the +perpetual sacredness of the established order of things in Church and +State. + +In short, he derived comfort from both poles of his belief--one the God +of Moses, a somewhat emotional god, not entirely uncarnal--the other the +god of Spencer, an unemotional and unimaginative god of Law. + +It followed that he was much taken with a preacher who could answer so +appositely to the needs of his soul as did this impressive young man in +a chance sermon of unstudied eloquence. + +There were social meetings in which Browett dispassionately confirmed +these early impressions gained under the spell of a matchless oratory, +and in due time there followed an invitation to the young rector of St. +Anne's of Edom to preach at the Church of St. Antipas, which was +Browett's city church. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +A BELATED MARTYRDOM + + +The rectory at Edom was hot with the fever of preparation. The +invitation to preach at St. Antipas meant an offer of that parish should +the preaching be approved. It was a most desirable parish--Browett's +city church being as smart as one of his steam yachts or his private +train (for nothing less than a train sufficed him now--though there were +those of the green eyes who pretended to remember, with heavy sarcasm, +the humbler day when he had but a beggarly private car, coupled to the +rear of a common Limited). It was, moreover, a high church, its last +rector having been put away for the narrowness of refusing to "enrich +the service." This was the church and this the patron above all others +that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford would have chosen, and earnestly +did he pray that God in His wisdom impart to him the grace to please +Browett and those whom Browett permitted to have a nominal voice in the +control of St. Antipas. + +Both Aunt Bell and Nancy came to feel the strain of it all. The former +promised to "go into the silence" each day and "hold the thought of +success," thereby drawing psychic power for him from the Reservoir of +the Eternal. + +Nancy could only encourage by wifely sympathy, being devoid of those +psychic powers that distinguished Aunt Bell. Tenderly she hovered about +Allan the morning he began to write the first of the three sermons he +was to preach. + +As for him, though heavy with the possibilities of the moment, he was +yet cool and centred; resigned to what might be, yet hopeful; his manner +was determined, yet gentle, almost sweet--the manner of one who has +committed all to God and will now put no cup from him, how bitter +soever. + +"I am so hopeful, dearest, for your sake," his wife said, softly, +wishing to reveal her sympathy yet fearful lest she might obtrude it. He +was arranging many sheets of notes before him. + +"What will the first one be?" she asked. He straightened in his chair. + +"I've made up my mind, Nance! It's a wealthy congregation--one of the +wealthiest in the city--but I shall preach first from the parable of +Dives and Lazarus." + +"Isn't that--a little--wouldn't something else do as well--something +that wouldn't seem quite so personal?" + +He smiled up with fond indulgence. "That's the woman of it--concession +for temporal advantage." Then more seriously he added, "I wouldn't be +true to myself, Nance, if I went down there in any spirit of truckling +to wealth. Public approval is a most desirable luxury, I grant +you--wealth and ease are desirable luxuries, and the favour of those in +power--but they're only luxuries. And I know in this matter but one real +necessity: my own self-approval. If consciously I preached a polite +sermon there, my own soul would accuse me and I should be as a leaf in +the wind for power. No, Nance--never urge me to be untrue to that divine +Christ-self within me! If I cannot be my best self before God, I am +nothing. I must preach Christ and Him crucified, whether it be to the +wealthy of St. Antipas or only to believing poverty." + +Stung with contrition, she was quick to say, "Oh, my dearest, I didn't +mean you to be untrue! Only it seemed unnecessary to affront them in +your very first sermon." + +"I have been divinely guided, Nance. No considerations of expediency can +deflect me now. This _had_ to be! I admit that I had my hour of +temptation--but that has gone, and thank God my integrity survives it." + +"Oh, how much bigger you are than I am, dearest!" She looked down at him +proudly as she stood close to his side, smoothing the tawny hair. Then +she laid one finger along his lips and made the least little kissing +noise with her own lips--a trick of affection learned in the early days +of their love. After a little she stole from his side, leaving him with +head bent in prayerful study--to be herself alone with her new +assurance. + +It was moments like this that she had come to long for and to feed her +love upon. Nor need it be concealed that there had not been one such for +many months. The situation had been graver than she was willing to +acknowledge to herself. Not only had she not ceased to wonder since the +first days of her marriage, but she had begun to smile in her wonder, +fancying from time to time that certain plain answers came to it--and +not at all realising that a certain kind of smile is love's unforgivable +blasphemy; conscious only that the smile left a strange hurt in her +heart. + +For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly turning the +light of her newly fed faith upon an idol whose clearness of line and +purity of tint had become blurred in a dusk of wondering--an idol that +had begun, she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely +through that deepening gloom of doubt. + +Now all was well again. In this new light the dear idol might even at +times show a dual personality--one kneeling beside her very earnestly to +worship the other with her. Why not, since the other showed itself truly +worthy of adoration? With faith made new in her husband--and, therefore, +in God--she went to Aunt Bell. + +She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, over her book, "The +Beautiful Within," her particular chapter being headed, "Psychology of +Rest: Rhythms and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism +with Subliminal Spontaneity." Over this frank revelation of hidden +truths Aunt Bell's handsome head was, for the moment, nodding in +sub-rhythms of psychic placidity--a state from which Nancy's animated +entrance sufficed to arouse her. As the proud wife spoke, she divested +herself of the psychic restraint with something very like a carnal yawn +behind her book. + +"Oh, Aunt Bell! Isn't Allan _fine_! Of course, in a way, it's too +bad--doubtless he'll spoil his chances for the thing I know he's set his +heart upon--and he knows it, too--but he's going calmly ahead as if the +day for martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, dear, +martyrs are _so_ dowdy and out-of-date--but there he is, a great, noble, +beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity and independence that is +stunning!" + +"What has Allan been saying now?" asked Aunt Bell, curiously unmoved. + +"_Said?_ It's what he's _doing!_ The dear, big, stupid thing is going +down there to preach the very first Sunday about Dives and Lazarus--the +poor beggar in Abraham's bosom and the rich man down below, you +remember?" she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to hover about the +centre of psychic repose. + +"Well?" + +"Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to _any one_ in this +age--then think of a young minister talking it to a church of rich men +and expecting to receive a call from them!" + +Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness of her small hands +with more than her usual studious complacence. "My dear," she said at +last, "no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have--but I've +observed that he usually knows what he's about." + +"Indeed, he knows what he's about now, Aunt Bell!" There was a swift +little warmth in her tones--"but he says he can't do otherwise. He's +going deliberately to spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a +piece of mere early-Christian quixotism. And you must see how _great_ he +is, Aunt Bell. Do you know--there have been times when I've misjudged +Allan. I didn't know his simple genuineness. He wants that church, yet +he will not, as so many in his place would do, make the least concession +to its people." + +Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to bear upon one small +foot which she thrust absently out until its profile could be seen. + +"Perhaps he will have his reward," she said. "Although it is many years +since I broadened into what I may call the higher unbelief, I have never +once suspected, my dear, that merit fails of its reward. And above all, +I have faith in Allan, in his--well, his psychic nature is so perfectly +attuned with the Universal that Allan simply _cannot_ harm himself. Even +when he seems deliberately to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead. +So cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence and holding +the thought of success for him. I think Allan will attend very +acceptably to the mere details." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE WALLS OF ST. ANTIPAS FALL AT THE THIRD BLAST + + +On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when the young minister faced +a thronged St. Antipas at eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at +him from Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward--the pew of Cyrus +Browett--looked up at him in trembling, loving wonder. Then a little +tender half-smile of perfect faith went dreaming along her just-parted +lips. Let the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas--she could see the +relentless profile of their chief at her right--be offended by his +rugged speech: he should find atoning comfort in her new love. Like +Luther, he must stand there to say out the soul of him, and she was +prostrate before his brave greatness. + +When, at last, he came to read the biting verses of the parable, her +heart beat as if it would be out to him, her face paled and hardened +with the strain of his ordeal. + + "And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by + the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died and + was buried. + + "And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and + seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. + + "And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and + send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water + and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.' + + "But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime + receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; + but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'" + +The sermon began. Unflinchingly the preacher pointed out that Dives, +apparently, lay in hell for no other reason than that he had been a rich +man; no sin was imputed to him; not even unbelief; he had not only +transgressed no law, but was doubtless a respectable, God-fearing man of +irreproachable morals--sent to hell for his wealth. + +And Lazarus appeared to have won heaven merely by reason of his poverty. +No virtue, no active good conduct, was accredited to him. + +Reading with the eye of common understanding, Jesus taught that the +rich merited eternal torment by reason of their riches, and the poor +merited eternal life by reason of their poverty, a belief that one +might hear declared even to-day. Nor was this view attested solely by +this parable. Jesus railed constantly at those in high places, at the +rich and at lawyers, and the chief priests and elders and those in +authority--declaring that he had been sent, not to them, but to the +poor who needed a physician. + +But was there not a seeming inconsistency here in the teachings of the +Master? If the poor achieved heaven automatically by their mere poverty, +_why were they still needing a physician?_ Under that view, why were not +the rich those who needed a physician--according to the literal words of +Jesus? + +Up to the close of this passage the orator's manner had been one of +glacial severity--of a sternness apparently checked by rare self-control +from breaking into a denunciation of the modern Dives. Then all was +changed. His face softened and lighted; the broad shoulders seemed to +relax from their uncompromising squareness; he stood more easily upon +his feet; he glowed with a certain encouraging companionableness. + +Was that, indeed, the teaching of Jesus--as if in New York to-day he +might say, "I have come to Third Avenue rather than to Fifth?" Can this +crudely literal reading of his words prevail? Does it not carry its own +refutation--the extreme absurdity of supposing that Jesus would come to +the squalid Jews of the East Side and denounce the better elements that +maintain a church like St. Antipas? + +The fallacy were easily probed. A modern intelligence can scarcely +prefigure heaven or hell as a reward or punishment for mere carnal +comfort or discomfort--as many literal-minded persons believe that +Jesus taught. The Son of Man was too subtle a philosopher to teach that +a rich man is lost by his wealth and a poor man saved by his poverty, +though primitive minds took this to be his meaning. Some primitive minds +still believe this--witness the frequent attempts to read a literal +meaning into certain other words of Jesus: the command, for example, +that a man should give up his cloak also, if he be sued for his coat. +Little acumen is required to see that no society could protect itself +against the depredations of the lawless under such a system of +non-resistance; and we may be sure that Jesus had no intention of +tearing down the social structure or destroying vested rights. Those who +demand a literal construction of the parable of Dives and Lazarus must +look for it in the Bowery melodrama, wherein the wealthy only are +vicious and poverty alone is virtuous. + +We have only to consider the rawness of this conception to perceive that +Jesus is not to be taken literally. + +Who, then, is the rich man and who the poor--who is the Dives and who +the Lazarus of this intensely dramatic parable? + +Dives is but the type of the spiritually rich man who has not charity +for his spiritually poor brother; of the man rich in faith who will not +trouble to counsel the doubting; of the one rich in humility who will +yet not seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him rich in +charity who indifferently views his uncharitable brethren; of the man +rich in hope who will not strive to make hopeful the despairing; of the +one rich in graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim the +unsanctified beggar at his gate. + +And who is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring--the soul-hungry, whether +he be a millionaire or a poor clerk--the determined seeker whose eye is +single and whose whole body is full of light? In this view, surely more +creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material wealth ceases +to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality may be the actual beggar rich +in faith yet indifferent to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor +Lazarus may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, day +after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the beggar, out of the +abundance of his faith, would never miss. + +Christianity has suffered much from our failure to give the Saviour due +credit for subtlety. So far as money--mere wealth--is a soul-factor at +all, it must be held to increase rather than to diminish its possessor's +chances of salvation, but not in merely providing the refinements of +culture and the elegances of modern luxury and good taste, important +though these are to the spirit's growth. The true value of wealth to the +soul--a value difficult to over-estimate--is that it provides +opportunity for, and encourages the cultivation of, that virtue which is +"the greatest of all these"; that virtue which "suffereth long and is +kind; which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up"--Charity, in +short. While not denying the simple joys of penury, nor forgetting the +Saviour's promises to the poor and meek and lowly, it is still easy to +understand that charity is less likely to be a vigorous soul-growth in a +poor man than in a rich. The poor man may possess it as a germ, a seed; +but the rich man is, through superior prowess in the struggle for +existence, in a position to cultivate this virtue; and who will say that +he has not cultivated it? Certainly no one acquainted with the efforts +of our wealthy men to uplift the worthy poor. A certain modern +sentimentality demands that poverty be abolished--ignoring those +pregnant words of Jesus--"the poor ye have _always_ with +you"--forgetting, indeed, that human society is composed of unequal +parts, even as the human body; that equality exists among the social +members only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, +have sinned in Adam, and have been, by the sacrificial blood of God's +only begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary, equally redeemed into +eternal life, if they will but accept Christ as their only true +Saviour;--forgetting indeed that to abolish poverty would at once +prevent all manifestations of human nature's most beauteous trait and +virtue--Charity. + +Present echoes from the business world indicate that the poor man +to-day, with his vicious discontent, his preposterous hopes of +trades-unionism, and his impracticable and very _un-Christian_ dreams of +an industrial millennium, is the true and veritable Dives, rich in +arrogance and poor in that charity of judgment which the millionaire has +so abundantly shown himself to possess. + +The remedy was for the world to come up higher. Standing upon one of the +grand old peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the speaker had once witnessed a +scene in the valley below which, for beauty of illustration of the +thought in hand, the world could not surpass. He told his hearers what +the scene was. And he besought them to come up to the rock of Charity +and mingle in the blue serene. Charity--a tear dropped on the world's +cold cheek of intolerance to make it burn forever! Or it was the grand +motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of +civilisation out from the maze of antiquity into the light of the +present day where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits +of living genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for golden era when +truth shall rise as a new and blazing star to light the splendid +pageantry of earth, bound together in one law of universal brotherhood, +independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. Charity +indeed was what Voltaire meant to inculcate when he declared: "Atheism +and fanaticism are the two poles of a universe of confusion and horror. +The narrow zone of virtue is between these two. March with a firm step +in that path; believe in a good God and do good." + +The peroration was beautifully simple, thrilling the vast throng with a +sudden deeper conviction of the speaker's earnestness: "_Charity!_ Oh, +of all the flowers that have swung their golden censers in the parterre +of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of charity. +Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be +crushed before their fragrance becomes perceptible; but _this_ flower at +early morn, at burning noon and when the dew of eve is on the flowers, +has coursed its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark +dell, over the burning plain, and up the mountain side--_up_, ever UP it +rises into the beautiful blue--up along the cloudy corridors of the day, +up along the misty pathway to the skies till it touches the beautiful +shore and mingles with the breath of angels." + +Hardly was there a dissenting voice in all St. Antipas that Sabbath upon +the proposal that this powerful young preacher be called to its pulpit. +The few who warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not +sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted the following +Sabbath by a very different sermon on certain flaws in the fashionable +drama. + +The one and only possible immorality in this world, contended the +speaker, was untruth. A sermon was as immoral as any stage play if the +soul of it was not Truth; and a stage play became as moral as a sermon +if its soul was truth. The special form of untruth he attacked was what +he styled "the drama of the glorified wanton." Warmly and ably did he +denounce the pernicious effect of those plays, that take the wanton for +a heroine and sentimentalise her into a morbid attractiveness. The stage +should show life, and the wanton, being of life, might be portrayed; but +let it be with ruthless fidelity. She must not be falsified into a +creature of fine sensibilities and lofty emotions--a thing of dangerous +plausibility to the innocent. + +The last doubter succumbed on the third Sabbath, when he preached from +the warning of Jesus that many would come after him, performing in his +name wonders that might deceive, were it possible, even the very elect. +The sermon likened this generation to the people Paul found in Athens, +running curiously after any new god; after Christian Science--which he +took the liberty of remarking was neither Christian nor scientific--or +mental science, spiritism, theosophy, clairvoyance, all black arts, +straying from the fold of truth into outer darkness--forgetting that +"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that +whosoever believed therein might not perish, but have everlasting life." +As this was the sole means of salvation that God had provided, the time +was, obviously, one fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. + +As a sagacious member of the Board of Trustees remarked, it would hardly +have been possible to preach three sermons better calculated, each in +its way, to win the approval of St. Antipas. + +The call came and was accepted after the signs of due and prayerful +consideration. But as for Nancy, she had left off certain of her +wonderings forever. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THERE ENTERETH THE SERPENT OF INAPPRECIATION + + +For the young rector of St. Antipas there followed swift, rich, +high-coloured days--days in which he might have framed more than one +triumphant reply to that poet who questioned why the spirit of mortal +should be proud, intimating that it should not be. + +Also was the handsome young rector's parish proud of him; proud of his +executive ability as shown in the management of its many organised +activities, religious and secular; its Brotherhood of St. Bartholomew, +its Men's Club, Women's Missionary Association, Guild and Visiting +Society, King's Daughters, Sewing School, Poor Fund, and still others; +proud of his decorative personality, his impressive oratory and the +modern note in his preaching; proud that its ushers must each Sabbath +morning turn away many late-comers. Indeed, the whole parish had been +born to a new spiritual life since that day when the worship at St. +Antipas had been kept simple to bareness by a stubborn and perverse +reactionary. In this happier day St. Antipas was known for its advanced +ritual, for a service so beautifully enriched that a new spiritual +warmth pervaded the entire parish. The doctrine of the Real Presence was +not timidly minced, but preached unequivocally, with dignified boldness. +Also there was a confessional, and the gracious burning of incense. In +short, St. Antipas throve, and the grace of the Holy Ghost palpably took +possession of its worshippers. The church was become the smartest church +in the diocese, and its communicants were held to have a tone. + +And to these communicants their rector of the flawless pulchritude was a +gracious spectacle, not only in the performance of his sacerdotal +offices, but on the thoroughfares of the city, where his distinction was +not less apparent than back of the chancel rail. + +A certain popular avenue runs between rows of once splendid mansions now +struggling a little awkwardly into trade on their lowest floors, like +impoverished but courageous gentlefolk. To these little tragedies, +however, the pedestrian throng is obtuse--blind to the pathos of those +still haughty upper floors, silent and reserved, behind drawn curtains, +while the lower two floors are degraded into shops. In so far as the +throng is not busied with itself, its attention is upon the roadway, +where is ever passing a festival procession of Success, its floats of +Worth Rewarded being the costliest and shiniest of the carriage-maker's +craft--eloquent of true dignity and fineness even in the swift silence +of their rubber tires. This is a spectacle to be viewed seriously; to be +mocked at only by the flippant, though the moving pedestrian mass on the +sidewalk is gayer of colour, more sentient--more companionable, more +understandably human. + +It was in this weaving mass on the walk that the communicants of St. +Antipas were often refreshed by the vision of their rector on pleasant +afternoons. Here the Reverend Doctor Linford loved to walk in God's +sunlight out of sheer simple joy in living--happily undismayed by any +possible consciousness that his progress turned all faces to regard him, +as inevitably as one would turn the spokes of an endless succession of +turnstyles. + +Habited with an obviously loving attention to detail, yet with tasteful +restraint, a precise and frankly confessed, yet never obtrusive, +elegance, bowing with a manner to those of his flock favoured by heaven +to meet him, superbly, masculinely handsome, he was far more than a mere +justification of the pride St. Antipas felt in him. He was a splendid +inspiration to belief in God and man. + +Nor was he of the type Pharasaic--the type to profess love for its kind, +yet stay scrupulously aloof from the vanquished and court only the +victors. Indeed, this was not so. + +In the full tide of his progress--it was indeed a progress and never a +mere walk--he would stop to address a few words of simple cheer to the +aged female mendicant--perhaps to make a joke with her--some pleasantry +not unbefitting his station, his mien denoting a tender chivalry which +has been agreeably subdued though not impaired by the experience +inevitable to a man of the world. When he dropped the coin into the +withered palm, he did it with a certain lingering hurriedness, as one +frankly unable to repress a human weakness, though nervously striving to +have it over quickly and by stealth. + +Young Rigby Reeves, generalising, as it later appeared, from inadequate +data, swore once that the rector of St. Antipas kept always an eye ahead +for the female mendicant in the tattered shawl and the bonnet of +inferior modishness; that, if the Avenue was crowded enough to make it +seem worth while, he would even cross from one side to the other for the +sake of speaking to her publicly. + +While the fact so declared may have been a fact, the young man's +corollary that the rector of St. Antipas sought this experience for the +sake of its mere publicity came from a prejudice which closer +acquaintance with Dr. Linford happily dissolved from his mind. As +reasonably might he have averred, as did another cynic, that the rector +of St. Antipas was actuated by the instincts of a mountebank when he +selected his evening papers each day--deliberately and with kind +words--from the stock of a newswoman at a certain conspicuous and +ever-crowded crossing. As reasonable was the imputation of this other +cynic, that in greeting friends upon the thronged avenue, the rector +never failed to use some word or phrase that would identify him to those +passing, giving the person addressed an unpleasant sense of being placed +in a lime-light, yet reducing him to an insignificance just this side +the line of obliteration. + +"You say, 'Ah, Doctor!' and shake hands, you know," said this +hypercritical observer, "and, ten to one, he says something about St. +Antipas directly, you know, or--'Tell him to call on Dr. Linford at the +rectory adjoining St. Antipas--I'm always there at eleven,' or 'Yes, +quite true, the bishop said to me, "My dear Linford, we depend on you in +this matter,"' or telling how Mrs. General Somebody-Something, you +know--I never could remember names--took him down dreadfully by calling +him the most dangerously fascinating man in New York. And there you are, +you know! It never fails, on my word! And all the time people are +passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, so that it's quite +rowdy--saying 'Yes--that's Linford--there he is,' quite as if they were +on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give +you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the +fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some kind gentleman +from the audience.'" + +It may be told that this other person was of a cynicism hopelessly +indurated. Not so with Rigby Reeves, even after Reeves alleged the other +discoveries that the rector of St. Antipas had "a walk that would be a +strut, by gad! if he was as short as I am"; also that he "walked like a +parade," which, as expounded by Mr. Reeves, meant that his air in +walking was that of one conscious always of leading a triumphal +procession in his own honour; and again, that one might read in his eyes +a keenly sensuous enjoyment in the tones of his own voice; that he +coloured these with a certain unction corresponding to the flourishes +with which people of a certain obliquity of mind love to ornament their +chirography; still again that he, Reeves, was "ready to lay a bet that +the fellow would continue to pose even at the foot of the Great White +Throne." + +Happily this young man was won out of his carping attitude by closer +acquaintance with the rector of St. Antipas, and learned to regard those +things as no more than the inseparable antennae of a nature unusually +endowed with human warmth and richness--mere meaningless projections +from a personality simple, rugged, genuine, never subtle, and entirely +likable. He came to feel that, while the rector himself was unaffectedly +impressed by that profusion of gifts with which it had pleased heaven to +distinguish him, he was yet constantly annoyed and embarrassed by the +fact that he was thus made so salient a man. Young Reeves found him an +appreciative person, moreover, one who betrayed a sensible interest in a +fellow's own achievements, finding many reasons to be impressed by a few +little things in the way of athletics, travel, and sport that had never +seemed at all to impress the many--not even the members of one's own +family. Rigby Reeves, indeed, became an ardent partisan of Dr. Linford, +attending services religiously with his mother and sisters--and nearly +making a row in the club cafe one afternoon when the other and more +obdurate cynic declared, with a fine assumption of the judicial, that +Linford was "the best actor in New York--on the stage or off!" + +It was concerning this habit of the daily stroll that Aunt Bell and her +niece also disagreed one afternoon. They were in the little dark-wooded, +red-walled library of the rectory, Aunt Bell with her book of devotion, +Nancy at her desk, writing. + +From her low chair near the window, Aunt Bell had just beheld the +Doctor's erect head, its hat of flawless gloss, and his beautifully +squared shoulders, progress at a moderate speed across her narrow field +of vision. In so stiffly a level line had they passed that a profane +thought seized her unawares: the fancy that the rector of St. Antipas +had been pulled by the window on rollers. But this was at once atoned +for. She observed that Allan was one of the few men who walk always like +those born to rule. Then she spoke: + +"Nancy, why do you never walk with Allan in the afternoon? Nothing would +please him better--the boy is positively proud to have you." + +"Oh, I had to finish this letter to Clara," Nancy answered abstractedly, +as if still intent upon her writing, debating a word with narrowed eyes +and pen-tip at her teeth. + +But Aunt Bell was neither to be misunderstood nor insufficiently +answered. + +"Not this afternoon, especially--_any_ afternoon. I can't remember when +you've walked with him. So many times I've heard you refuse--and I dare +say it doesn't please him, you know." + +"Oh, he has often told me so." + +"Well?" + +"Aunt Bell--I--Oh, _you've_ walked on the street with Allan!" + +"To be sure I have!" + +"Well!" + +"Well--of course--that _is_ true in a way--Allan _does_ attract +attention the moment he reaches the pavement--and of course every one +stares at one--but it isn't the poor fellow's fault. At least, if the +boy were at all conscious of it he might in very little ways here and +there prevent the very tiniest bit of it--but, my dear, your husband is +a man of most striking appearance--especially in the clerical garb--even +on that avenue over there where striking persons abound--and it's not to +be helped. And I can't wonder he's not pleased with you when it gives +him such pleasure to have a modish and handsome young woman at his side. +I met him the other day walking down from Forty-second Street with that +stunning-looking Mrs. Wyeth, and he looked as happy and bubbling as a +schoolboy." + +"Oh--Aunt Bell--but of course, if you don't see, I couldn't possibly +tell you." She turned suddenly to her letter, as if to dismiss the +hopeless task. + +Now Aunt Bell, being entirely human, would not keep silence under an +intimation that her powers of discernment were less than phenomenal. The +tone of her reply, therefore, hinted of much. + +"My child--I may see and gather and understand much more than I give any +sign of." + +It was a wretchedly empty boast. Doubtless it had never been true of +Aunt Bell at any time in her life, but she was nettled now: one must +present frowning fortifications at a point where one is attacked, even +if they be only of pasteboard. Then, too, a random claim to possess +hidden fruits of observation is often productive. Much reticence goes +down before it. + +Nancy turned to her again with a kind of relief in her face. + +"Oh, Aunt Bell, I was sure of it--I couldn't tell you, but I was sure +you must see!" Her pen was thrown aside and she drooped in her chair, +her hands listless in her lap. + +Aunt Bell looked sympathetically voluble but wisely refrained from +speech. + +"I wonder," continued the girl, "if you knew at the time, the time when +my eyes seemed to open--when I was deceived by his pretension into +thinking--you remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell--how independent and +noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, Aunt Bell--what a slump in my +faith that day! I think its foundations all went, and then naturally the +rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you realise it all the time?" + +So it was religious doubt--a loss of faith--heterodoxy? Having listened +until she gathered this much, Aunt Bell broke in--"My dear, you must let +me guide you in this. You know what I've been through. Study the higher +criticism, reverently, if you will--even broaden into the higher +unbelief. Times have changed since my youth; one may broaden into almost +anything now and still be orthodox, especially in our church. But beware +of the literal mind, the material view of things. Remember that the +essentials of Christianity are spiritually historic even if they aren't +materially historic--facts in the human consciousness if not in the +world of matter. You need not pretend to understand how God can be one +in essence and three in person--I grant you that is only a reversion to +polytheism and is so regarded by the best Biblical scholars--but never +surrender your belief in the atoning blood of the Son whom He sent a +ransom for many--at least as a spiritual fact. I myself have dismissed +the Trinity as one of those mysteries to be adoringly believed on earth +and comprehended only in heaven--but that God so loved the world that he +gave his only begotten Son--Child, do you think I could look forward +without fear to facing God, if I did not believe that the blood of his +only begotten Son had washed from my soul that guilt of the sin I +committed in Adam? Cling to these simple essentials, and otherwise +broaden even into the higher unbelief, if you like--" + +"But, Aunt Bell, it _isn't_ that! I never trouble about those +things--though you have divined truly that I have doubted them +lately--but the doubts don't distress me. Actually, Aunt Bell, for a +woman to lose faith in her God seems a small matter beside losing faith +in her husband. You can doubt and reason and speculate and argue about +the first--it's fashionable--people rather respect unbelievers +nowadays--but Oh, Aunt Bell, how the other hurts!" + +"But, my child--my preposterous child! How can you have lost faith in +that husband of yours? What nonsense! Do you mean you have taken +seriously those harmless jesting little sallies of his about the snares +and pitfalls of a clergyman's life, or his tales of how this or that +silly woman has allowed him to detect in her that pure reverence which +most women do feel for a clergyman, whether he's handsome or not? Take +Mrs. Wyeth, for example--" + +"Oh, Aunt Bell--no, no--how can you think--" + +"I admit Allan is the least bit--er--redundant of those +anecdotes--perhaps just the least bit insistent about the snares and +pitfalls that beset an attractive man in his position. But really, my +dear--I know men--and you need never feel a twinge of jealousy. For one +thing, Allan would be held in bounds by fear of the world, even if his +love for you were inadequate to hold him." + +"It's no use trying to make you understand, Aunt Bell--you _can't!_" + +Whereupon Aunt Bell neglected her former device of pretending that she +did, indeed, understand, and bluntly asked: + +"Well, what is it, child?" + +"Nothing, nothing, nothing, Aunt Bell--it's only what he _is_." + +"What he _is_? A handsome, agreeable, healthy, good-tempered, loyal, +upright, irreproachable--" + +"Aunt Bell, he's _killing_ me. I seem to want to laugh when I tell you, +because it's so funny that he should have the power to--but I tell you +he's killing out all the good in me--a little bit every day. I can't +even _want_ to be good. Oh, how stupid to think you could see--that any +one could see! Sometimes I do forget and laugh all at once. It's as +grotesque and unreal as an imaginary monster I used to be afraid +of--then I'm sick, for I remember we are bound together by the laws of +God and man. Of course, you can't see, Aunt Bell--the fire hasn't eaten +through yet--but I tell you it's burning inside day and night." + +She laughed a little, as if to reassure her puzzled listener. + +"A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell--burning out my goodness--if the +firemen would only come with engines and axes and hooks and things, and +water--I'd submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old house--it +hurts so!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE APPLE OF DOUBT IS NIBBLED + + +The rector of St. Antipas came from preaching his Easter sermon. He was +elated. Of the sermons delivered in New York that morning, he suspected +that his would be found not the least ingenious. Telling excerpts would +doubtless appear in the next day's papers, and at least one paper would +reprint his favourite likeness over the caption, "Dr. Allan Delcher +Linford, the Handsome and Up-to-Date Rector of St. Antipas." Under this +would be head-lines: "The Resurrection Proved; a Literal Fact in History +not less than a Spiritual Fact in the Human Consciousness. An Unbroken +Chain of Living Witnesses." + +He even worded scraps of the article on his way from the church to his +study: + +"An unusually rich Easter service was held at fashionable St. Antipas +yesterday morning. The sermon by its able and handsome young rector, the +Reverend Dr. Linford, was fraught with vital interest to every thinking +man. The Resurrection he declares to be a fact as well attested as the +Brooklyn Bridge is to thousands who have never seen it--yet who are +convinced of its existence upon the testimony of those who have. Thus +one who has never seen this bridge may be as certain of its existence as +a man who crosses it twice a day. In the same way, a witness to the +risen Christ tells the glorious truth to his son, a lad of fifteen, who +at eighty tells it to his grandson. 'Do you realise,' said the magnetic +young preacher, 'that the assurance of the Resurrection comes to you +this morning by word of mouth through a scant three thousand +witnesses--a living chain of less than three thousand links by which we +may trace our steps back to the presence of the first witness--so that, +in effect, we have the Resurrection on the word of a man who beheld the +living Saviour this very morning? Nay; further, in effect we ourselves +stand trembling before that stone rolled away from the empty but forever +hallowed tomb. As certainly as thousands know that a structure called +the Brooklyn Bridge exists, so upon testimony of the same validity do we +know that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, +that whosoever believed on him might not perish but have everlasting +life." God has not expected us to trust blindly: he has presented +tangible and compelling evidence of his glorious scheme of salvation.' +The speaker, who is always imbued with the magnetism of a striking +personality, was more than usually effective on this occasion, and +visibly moved the throng of fashionable worshippers that--" + +"Allan, you outdid yourself!" Aunt Bell had come in and, in the mirror +over the dining-room mantel, was bestowing glances of unaffected but +strictly impartial admiration upon the bonnet of lilac blossoms that +rested above the lustrous puffs of her plenteous gray hair. + +The young man looked up from his meditative pacing of the room. + +"Aunt Bell, I think I may say that I pleased myself this morning--and +you know that's not easy for me." + +"It's too bad Nance wasn't there!" + +"Nancy is not pleasing me," began her husband, in gentle tones. + +"I didn't feel equal to it, Allan," his wife called from the library. + +"Oh, you're there! My dear, you give up too easily to little +indispositions that another woman would make nothing of. I've repeated +that to you so often that, really, your further ignoring it appears +dangerously like perverseness--" + +"Is she crying?" he asked Aunt Bell, as they both listened. + +"Laughing!" replied that lady. + +"My dear, may I ask if you are laughing at me?" + +"Dear, no!--only at something I happened to think of." She came into the +dining-room, a morning paper in her hand. "Besides, in to-morrow's paper +I shall read all about what the handsome rector of St. Antipas said, in +his handsome voice, to his handsome hearers--" + +He had frowned at first, but now smiled indulgently, as they sat down to +luncheon. "You _will_ have your joke about my appearance, Nance! That +reminds me--that poor romantic little Mrs. Eversley--sister of Mrs. +Wyeth, you know--said to me after service this morning, 'Oh, Dr. +Linford, if I could only believe in Christian dogma as I believe in +_you_ as a man!' You know, she's such a painfully emotional, impulsive +creature, and then Colonel Godwin who stood by had to have _his_ joke: +'The symbol will serve you for worship, Madam!' he says; 'I'm sure no +woman's soul would ever be lost if all clergymen were as good to look +upon as our friend here!' Those things always make me feel so +awkward--they are said so bluntly--but what could I do?" + +"Mr. Browett's sister and her son were out with him this morning," began +Aunt Bell, charitably entering another channel of conversation from the +intuition that her niece was wincing. But, as not infrequently happened, +the seeming outlet merely gave again into the main channel. + +"And there's Browett," continued the Doctor. "Now I am said to have +great influence over women--women trust me, believe me--I may even say +look up to me--but I pledge you my word I am conscious of wielding an +immensely greater influence over men. There seems to be in my _ego_ the +power to prevail. Take Browett--most men are afraid of him--not physical +fear, but their inner selves, their _egos_, go down before him. Yet from +the moment I first saw that man I dominated him. It's all in having an +_ego_ that means mastery, Aunt Bell. Browett has it himself, but I have +a greater one. Every time Browett's eyes meet mine he knows in his soul +that I'm his master--his _ego_ prostrates itself before mine--and yet +that man"--he concluded in a tone of distinguishable awe--"is worth all +the way from two to three hundred millions!" + +"Mrs. Eversley is an unlucky little woman, from what I hear," began Aunt +Bell, once more with altruistic aims. + +"That reminds me," said the Doctor, recalling himself from a downward +look at the grovelling Browett, "she made me promise to be in at four +o'clock. Really I couldn't evade her--it was either four o'clock to-day +or the first possible day. What could I do? Aunt Bell, I won't pretend +that this being looked up to and sought out is always disagreeable. +Contrary to the Pharisee, I say 'Thank God I _am_ as other men are!' I +have my human moments, but mostly it bores me, and especially these +half-religious, half-sentimental confidences of emotional women who +imagine their lives are tragedies. Now this woman believes her marriage +is unhappy--" + +"Indeed, it is!" Aunt Bell broke in--this time effectually, for she +proceeded to relate of one Morris Upton Eversley a catalogue of +inelegancies that, if authoritative, left him, considered as a husband, +undesirable, not to say impracticable. His demerits, indeed, served to +bring the meal to a blithe and chatty close. + +Aunt Bell's practice each day after luncheon was, in her own +terminology, to "go into the silence and concentrate upon the thought of +the All-Good." She was recalled from the psychic state on this +afternoon, though happily not before a good half-hour, by Nancy's knock +at her door. + +She came in, cheerful, a small sheaf of papers in her hand. Aunt Bell, +finding herself restored and amiable, sat up to listen. + +Nancy threw herself on the couch, with the air of a woman about to chat +confidentially from the softness of many gay pillows, dropping into the +attitude of tranquil relaxation that may yet bristle with eager mental +quills. + +"The drollest thing, Aunt Bell! This morning instead of hearing Allan, I +went up to that trunk-room and rummaged through the chest that has all +those old papers and things of Grandfather Delcher's. And would you +believe it? For an hour or more there, I was reading bits of his old +sermons." + +"But he was a Presbyterian!" In her tone and inflection Aunt Bell ably +conveyed an exposition of the old gentleman's impossibility--lucidly +allotting him to spiritual fellowship with the head-hunters of Borneo. + +"I know it, but, Aunt Bell, those old sermons really did me good; all +full of fire they were, too, but you felt a _man_ back of them--a good +man, a real man. You liked him, and it didn't matter that his +terminology was at times a little eccentric. Grandfather's theology +fitted the last days of his life about as crinoline and hoop-skirts +would fit over there on the avenue to-day--but he always made me feel +religious. It seemed sweet and good to be a Christian when he talked. +With all his antiquated beliefs he never made me doubt as--as I doubt +to-day. But it was another thing I wanted to show you--something I +found--some old compositions of Bernal's that his grandfather must have +kept. Here's one about birds--'jingle-birds, squeak-birds and +clatter-birds.' No?--you wouldn't care for that?--well--listen to this." + +She read the youthful Bernal's effort to rehabilitate the much-blemished +reputation of Judas--a paper that had been curiously preserved by the +old man. + +"Poor Judas, indeed!" The novelty was not lost upon Aunt Bell, expert +that she was in all obliquities from accepted tradition. + +"The funny boy! Very ingenious, I'm sure. I dare say no one ever before +said a good word for Judas since the day of his death, and this lad +would canonise him out of hand. Think of it--St. Judas!" + +Nancy lay back among the cushions, talking idly, inconsequently. + +"You see, there was at least one man created, Aunt Bell, who could by no +chance be saved--one man who had to betray the Son of Man--one man to be +forever left out of the Christian scheme of salvation, even if every +other in the world were saved. There had to be one man to disbelieve, to +betray and to lie in hell for it, or the whole plan would have been +frustrated. There was a theme for Dante, Aunt Bell--not the one soul in +hell, but the other souls in heaven slowly awakening to the suffering of +that one soul--to the knowledge that he was suffering in order that they +might be saved. Do you think they would find heaven to be real heaven if +they knew he was burning? And don't you think a poet could make some +interesting talk between this solitary soul predestined to hell, and the +God who planned the scheme?" + +Aunt Bell looked bored and uttered a swift, low phrase that might have +been "Fiddlesticks!" + +"My dear, no one believes in hell nowadays." + +"Does any one believe in anything?" + +"Belief in the essentials of Christianity was never more apparent." + +It was a treasured phrase from the morning's sermon. + +"What are the essentials?" + +"Belief that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten +Son--you know as well as I, child--belief in the atoning blood of the +Christ." + +"Wouldn't it be awful, Aunt Bell, if you didn't believe in it, and had +to be in hell because the serpent persuaded Eve and Eve persuaded Adam +to eat the apple--that's the essential foundation of Christianity, isn't +it?" + +"Why, certainly--you must believe in original sin--" + +"I see--here's a note in Bernal's hand, on one of these old +papers--evidently written much later than the other: 'The old gentleman +says Christmas is losing its deeper significance. What is it? That the +Babe of Bethlehem was begotten by his Father to be a sacrifice to its +Father--that its blood might atone for the sin of his first pair--and so +save from eternal torment the offspring of that pair. God will no longer +be appeased by the blood of lambs; nothing but the blood of his son will +now atone for the sin of his own creatures. It seems to me the sooner +Christmas loses this deeper significance the better. Poor old loving +human nature gives it a much more beautiful significance.'" + +"My dear," began Aunt Bell, "before I broadened into what I have called +the higher unbelief, I should have considered that that young man had a +positive genius for blasphemy; now that I have again come into the +shadow of the cross, it seems to me that he merely lacks imagination." + +"Poor Bernal! Yet he made me believe, though he seemed to believe in +nothing himself. He makes me believe _now_. He _calls_ to me, Aunt +Bell--or is it myself calling to him that I hear? + +"And blasphemy--even the word is ridiculous, Aunt Bell. I was at the +day-nursery yesterday when all those babies were brought in to their +dinner. They are strictly forbidden to coo or to make any noise, and +they really behaved finely for two-and three-year-olds--though I did see +one outlaw reach over before the signal was given and lovingly pat the +big fat cookie beside its plate--thinking its insubordination would be +overlooked--but, Aunt Bell, do you suppose one of those fifty-two babies +could blaspheme you?" + +"Don't be silly!" + +"But can you imagine one of them capable of any disrespect to you that +would merit--say, burning or something severe like that?" + +"Of course not!" + +"Well, don't you really believe that God is farther beyond you or me or +the foolish boy that wrote this, than we are beyond those babies--with a +greater, bigger point of view, a fuller love? Imagine the God that made +everything--the worlds and birds and flowers and butterflies and babies +and mountains--imagine him feeling insulted because one of his wretched +little John Smiths or Bernal Linfords babbles little human words about +him, or even worries his poor little human heart with doubts of His +existence!" + +"My child, yours is but a finite mind, unable to limit or define the +Infinite. What is it, anyway--is it Christian Science taking hold of +you, or that chap who preaches that they have the Messiah re-incarnated +and now living in Syria--Babbists, aren't they--or is it theosophy--or +are you simply dissatisfied with Allan?" A sudden shrewd glance from +Aunt Bell's baby-blue eyes went with this last. + +Nancy laughed, then grew serious. "I think the last is it, Aunt Bell. A +woman seems to doubt God and everything else after she begins to doubt +the husband she has loved. Really, I find myself questioning +everything--every moral standard." + +"Nance, you are an ungrateful woman to speak like that of Allan!" + +"I never should have done it, dear, if you hadn't made me believe you +knew. I should have thought it out all by myself, and then acted, if I +found I could with any conscience." + +"Eh? Mercy! You couldn't. The _idea!_ And there's Allan, now. Come!" + +The Doctor was on the threshold. "So here you are! Well, I've just sent +Mrs. Eversley away in tears." + +He dropped into an arm-chair with a little half-humorous moan of +fatigue. + +"It's a relief, sometimes, to know you can relax and let your whole +weight absolutely down on to the broad earth!" he declared. + +"Mrs. Eversley?" suggested Aunt Bell. + +"Well, the short of it is, she told me her woes and begged me to give my +sanction to her securing a divorce!" + +Nancy sat up from her pillows. "Oh--and you _did?_" + +"_Nancy!_" It was low, but clear, quick-spoken, stern, and hurt. "You +forget yourself. At least you forget my view and the view of my Church. +Even were I out of the Church, I should still regard marriage as a +sacrament--indissoluble except by death. The very words--'Whom God hath +joined'"--he became almost oratorical in his warmth--"Surely you would +not expect me to use my influence in this parish to undermine the +sanctity of the home--to attack our emblem of Christ's union with His +Church!" + +With reproach in his eyes--a reproach that in some way seemed to be +bland and mellow, yet with a hurt droop to his handsome head, he went +from the room. Nancy looked after him, longingly, wonderingly. + +"The maddening thing is, Aunt Bell, that sometimes he actually has the +power to make me believe in him. But, oh, doesn't Christ's union with +his Church have some ghastly symbols!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SINFUL PERVERSENESS OF THE NATURAL WOMAN + + +Two months later a certain tension in the rectory of St. Antipas was +temporarily relieved. Like the spring of a watch wound too tightly, it +snapped one day at Nancy's declaration that she would go to Edom for a +time--would go, moreover, without a reason--without so much as a woman's +easy "because." This circumstance, while it froze in the bud every +available objection to her course, quelled none of the displeasure that +was felt at her woman's perversity. + +Her decision was announced one morning after a sleepless night, and +after she had behaved unaccountably for three days. + +"You are not pleasing Allan," was Aunt Bell's masterly way of putting +the situation. Nancy laughed from out of the puzzling reserve into which +she had lately settled. + +"So he tells me, Aunt Bell. He utters it with the air of telling me +something necessarily to my discredit--yet I wonder whose fault it +really is." + +"Well, of all things!" Aunt Bell made no effort to conceal her +amazement. + +"It isn't necessarily mine, you know." Before the mirror she brought the +veil nicely about the edge of her hat, with the strained and solemn +absorption of a woman in this shriving of her reflection so that it may +go out in peace. + +"My failure to please Allan, you know, may as easily be due to his +defects as to mine. I said so, but he only answered, 'Really, you're not +pleasing me.' And, as he often says of his own predicaments--'What could +I do?' But I'm glad he persists in it." + +"Why, if you resent it so?" + +"Because, Aunt Bell, I must be quite--_quite_ certain that Allan is +funny. It would be dreadful to make a mistake. If only I could be +certain--positive--convinced--sure--that Allan is the funniest thing in +all the world--" + +"It never occurred to me that Allan is funny." Aunt Bell paused for an +instant's retrospect. "Now, he doesn't joke much." + +"One doesn't have to joke to be a joke, Aunt Bell." + +"But what if he were funny? Why is that so important?" + +"Oh, it's important because of the other thing that you know you know +when you know that." + +"Mercy! Child, you should have a cup of cocoa or something before you +start off--really--" + +The last long hatpin seemingly pierced the head of Nancy and she turned +from the glass to fumble on her gloves. + +"Aunt Bell, if Allan tells me once more in that hurt, gentle tone that I +don't please him, I believe I shall be the freest of free women--ready +to live." + +She paused to look vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, you know, I seem +to wake up with a clear mind--but the day clouds it. We shouldn't +believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains +into it at a tender age. I should know Allan through and through at a +glance to-day, if I met him for the first time; but he kneaded my poor +girl's brain this way and that, till I'd have been done for, Aunt Bell, +if some one else hadn't kneaded and patted it into other ways, so that +little memories come back and stay with me--little bits of sweetness and +genuineness--of _realness_, Aunt Bell." + +"Nance, you are morbid--and I think you're wrong to go up there to be +alone with your sick fancies--why are you going, Nance?" + +"Aunt Bell, can I really trust you not to betray me? Will you promise to +keep the secret if I actually tell you?" + +Aunt Bell looked at once important and trustworthy, yet of an +incorruptible propriety. + +"I'm sure, my dear, you would not ask me to keep secret anything that +your husband would be--" + +"Dear, no! You can keep mum with a spotless conscience." + +"Of course; I was sure of that!" + +"What a fraud you are, Aunt Bell--you weren't sure at all--but I shall +disappoint you. Now my reason--" She came close and spoke low--"My +reason for going to Edom, whatever it is, is so utterly silly that I +haven't even dared to tell myself--so, you see--my _real_ reason for +going is simply to find out what my reason really is. I'm dying to know. +There! Now never say I didn't trust you." + +In the first shock of this fall from her anticipations Aunt Bell +neglected to remember that All is Good. Yet she was presently far enough +mollified to accompany her niece to the station. + +Returning from thence after she had watched Nancy through the gate to +the 3:05 Edom local, Aunt Bell lingered at the open study door of the +rector of St. Antipas. He looked up cordially. + +"You know, Allan, it may do the child good, after all, to be alone a +little while." + +"Nancy--has--not--pleased--me!" The words were clean-cut, with an +illuminating pause after each, so that Aunt Bell might by no chance +mistake their import, yet the tone was low and not without a quality of +winning sweetness--the tone of the injured good. + +"I've seen that, Allan. Nance undoubtedly has a vein of selfishness. +Instead of striving to please her husband, she--well, she has +practically intimated to me that a wife has the right to please herself. +Of course, she didn't say it brutally in just those words, but--" + +"It's the modern spirit, Aunt Bell--the spirit of unbelief. It has made +what we call the 'new woman'--that noxious flower on the stalk of +scientific materialism." + +He turned and wrote this phrase rapidly on a pad at his elbow, while +Aunt Bell waited expectantly for more. + +"There's a sermon that writes itself, Aunt Bell. 'Woman's deterioration +under Modern Infidelity to God.' As truly as you live, this thing called +the 'new woman' has grown up side by side with the thing called the +higher criticism. And it's natural. Take away God's word as revealed in +the Scriptures and you make woman a law unto herself. Man's state is +then wretched enough, but contemplate woman's! Having put aside Christ's +authority, she naturally puts aside _man's_, hence we have the creature +who mannishly desires the suffrage and attends club meetings and argues, +and has views--_views_, Aunt Bell, on the questions of the day--the +woman who, as you have just succinctly said of your niece, 'believes she +has a right to please herself!' There is the keynote of the modern +divorce evil, Aunt Bell--she has a right to please herself. Believing no +longer in God, she no longer feels bound by His commandment: 'Wives be +subject to your husbands!' Why, Aunt Bell, if you can imagine +Christianity shorn of all its other glories, it would still be the +greatest religion the world has ever known, because it holds woman +sternly in her sphere and maintains the sanctity of the home. Now, I +know nothing of the real state of Nancy's faith, but the fact that she +believes she has a right to please herself is enough to convince me. I +would stake my right arm this moment, upon just this evidence, that +Nancy has become an unbeliever. When I let her know as plainly as +English words can express it that she is not pleasing me, she looks +either sullen or flippant--thus showing distinctly a loss of religious +faith." + +"You ought to make a stunning sermon of that, Allan. I think society +needs it." + +"It does, Aunt Bell, it does! And we are going from bad to worse. I +foresee the time in this very age of ours when no woman will continue to +be wife to a man except by the dictates of her own lawless and corrupt +nature--when a wife will make so-called love her only rule--when she +will brazenly disregard the law of God and the word of his only begotten +crucified Son, unless she can continue to feel what she calls 'love and +respect' for the husband who chose her. We prize liberty, Aunt Bell, but +liberty with woman has become license since she lost faith in the word +of God that holds her subject to man. We should be thankful that the +mother Church still stands firm on that rock--the rock of woman's +subjection to man. Our own Church has quibbled, Aunt Bell, but look at +the fine consistency of the Church of Rome. As truly as you live, the +Catholic Church will one day hold the only women who subject themselves +to their husbands in all things because of God's command--regardless of +their anarchistic desire to 'please themselves.' There is the only +Christian Church left that knows woman is a creature to be ruled with an +iron hand--and has the courage to send them to hell for 'pleasing +themselves.'" + +He glowed in meditation a moment, then, in a burst of confidence, +continued: + +"This is not to be repeated, Aunt Bell, but I have more than once +questioned if I should always allow the Anglo-Catholic Church to modify +my true Catholicism. I have talked freely with Father Riley of St. +Clements at our weekly ministers' meetings--there's a bright chap for +you--and really, Aunt Bell, as to mere universality, the Church of Rome +has about the only claim worth considering. Mind you, this is not to be +repeated, but I am often so much troubled that I have to fall back on my +simple childish faith in the love of the Father earned of him for me by +the Son's death on the cross. But what if I err in making my faith too +simple? Even now I am almost persuaded that a priest ordained into the +Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a +sacrificial sense. Doubts like these are tragedies to an honest man, +Aunt Bell--they try his soul--they bring him each day to the foot of +that cross whereon the Son of God suffers his agony in order to ransom +our souls from God's wrath with us--and there are times, Aunt Bell, when +I find myself gazing longingly, like a little tired child, at the open +arms of the mother Church--on whose loving bosom of authority a man may +lay all his doubts and be never again troubled in his mind." + +Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully. + +"After all," she said briskly, "isn't Christianity the most fascinating +of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief? Isn't it +fine, Allan--doesn't the very thought excite you--that not only the +souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be +affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with +which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual +values--and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions. How +truly God has made us responsible for the souls of one another!" + +The rector of St. Antipas shrugged modestly at this bald wording of his +responsibility; then he sighed and bent his head as one honestly +conscious of the situation's gravity. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE REASON OF A WOMAN WHO HAD NO REASON + + +It was not a jest--Nancy's telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going +to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself. At least such reticence +to self is often sincerely and plausibly asserted by the very inner +woman. Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a +secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, then low like a voice +overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise +of the train did no more than confuse the words so that only she could +hear them. + +When the exciting time of this listening had gone and she stepped from +the train into the lazy spring silence of the village, her own heart +spelled the thing in quick, loud, hammering beats--a thing which, now +that she faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks burned at +the first second of actual realisation of its enormity; and her knees +weakened in a deathly tremble, quite as if they might bend +embarrassingly in either direction. + +Then in the outer spaces of her mind there grew, to save her, a sense of +her crass fatuity. She was quickly in a carriage, eager to avoid any +acquaintance, glad the driver was no village familiar who might amiably +seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up the western road +through its greening elms to where Clytie kept the big house--her own +home while she lived, and the home of the family when they chose to go +there. + +At last, the silent, cool house with its secretive green shutters rose +above her; the wheels made their little crisping over the fine metal of +the driveway. She hastily paid the man and was at the side door that +opened into the sitting-room. As she put her hand to the knob she was +conscious of Clytie passing the window to open the door. + +Then they were face to face over the threshold--Clytemnestra, of a +matronly circumference, yet with a certain prim consciousness of +herself, which despite the gray hair and the excellent maturity of her +face, was unmistakably maidenish--Clytie of the eyes always wise to +another's needs and beaming with that fine wisdom. + +She started back from the doorway by way of being playfully +dramatic--her hands on her hips, her head to one side at an astounded +angle. Yet little more than a second did she let herself simulate this +welcoming incredulity--this stupefaction of cordiality. There must be +quick speech--especially as to Nancy's face--which seemed strangely +unfamiliar, set, suppressed, breathless, unaccountably young--and there +had to be the splendid announcement of another matter. + +"Why, child, is it you or your ghost?" + +Nancy could only nod her head. + +"My suz! what ails the child?" + +Here the other managed a shake of the head and a made smile. + +"And of all things!--you'll never, never, never guess!--" + +"There--there!--yes, yes--yes! I know--know all about it--knew it--knew +it last night--" + +She had put out a hand toward Clytie and now reached the other from her +side, easing herself to the doorpost against which she leaned and +laughed, weakly, vacantly. + +"Some one told you--on the way up?" + +"Yes--I knew it, I tell you--that's what makes it so funny and +foolish--why I came, you know--" She had now gained a little in +coherence, and with it came a final doubt. She steadied herself in the +doorway to ask--"When did Bernal come?" + +And Clytie, somewhat relieved, became voluble. + +"Night before last on the six-fifteen, and me getting home late from the +Epworth meeting--fire out--not a stick of kindling-wood in--only two +cakes in the buttery, neither of them a layer--not a frying-size chicken +on the place--thank goodness he didn't have the appetite he used +to--though in another way it's just downright heartbreaking to see a +person you care for not be a ready eater--but I had some of the plum +jell he used to like, and the good half of an apple-John which I at once +het up--and I sent Mehitty Lykins down for some chops--" + +"Where is he?" + +There had seemed to be a choking in the question. Clytie regarded her +curiously. + +"He was lying down up in the study a while ago--kicking one foot up in +the air against the wall, with his head nearly off the sofy onto the +floor, just like he used to--there--that's his step--" + +"I can't see him now! Here--let me go into your room till I freshen and +rest a bit--quick--" + +Once more the indecisive knees seemed about to bend either way under +their burden. With an effort of will she drew the amazed Clytie toward +the open door of the latter's bedroom, then closed it quickly, and stood +facing her in the dusk of the curtained room. + +"Clytie--I'm weak--it's so strange--actually weak--I shake so--Oh, +Clytie--I've got to cry!" + +There was a mutual opening of arms and a head on Clytie's shoulder, wet +eyes close in a corner that had once been the good woman's neck--and +stifling sobs that seemed one moment to contract her body rigidly from +head to foot--the next to leave it limp and falling. From the nursing +shoulder she was helped to the bed, though she could not yet relax her +arms from that desperate grip of Clytie's neck. Long she held her so, +even after the fit of weeping passed, clasping her with arms in which +there was almost a savage intensity--arms that locked themselves more +fiercely at any little stirring of the prisoned one. + +At last, when she had lain quiet a long time, the grasp was suddenly +loosened and Clytie was privileged to ease her aching neck and cramped +shoulders. Then, even as she looked down, she heard from Nancy the +measured soft breathing of sleep. She drew a curtain to shut out one +last ray of light, and went softly from the room. + +Two hours later, as Clytemnestra attained ultimate perfection in the +arrangement of four glass dishes of preserves and three varieties of +cake upon her table--for she still kept to the sinfully complex fare of +the good old simple days--Nancy came out. Clytie stood erect to peer +anxiously over the lamp at her. + +"I'm all right--you were a dear to let me sleep. See how fresh I am." + +"You do look pearter, child--but you look different from when you came. +My suz! you looked so excited and kind of young when I opened that door, +it give me a start for a minute--I thought I'd woke out of a dream and +you was a Miss in short skirts again. But now--let me see you closer." +She came around the table, then continued: "Well, you look fresh and +sweet and some rested, and you look old and reasonable again--I mean as +old as you had ought to look. I never did know you to act that way +before, child. My neck ain't got the crick out of it yet." + +"Poor old Clytie--but you see yesterday all day I felt queer--very +queer, and wrought up, and last night I couldn't rest, and I lay awake +and excited all night--and something seemed to give way when I saw you +in the door. Of course it was nervousness, and I shall be all right +now--" + +She looked up and saw Bernal staring at her--standing in the doorway of +the big room, his face shading into the dusk back of him. She went to +him with both hands out and he kissed her. + +"Is it Nance?" + +"I don't know--but it's really Bernal." + +"Clytie says you knew I had come." + +"Clytie must have misunderstood. No one even intimated such a thing. I +came up to-day--I had to come--because--if I had known you were here, +wouldn't I have brought Allan?" + +"Of course I was going to let you know, and come down in a few +days--there was some business to do here. Dear old Allan! I'm aching to +get a stranglehold on him!" + +"Yes--he'll be so glad--there's so much to say!" + +"I didn't know whom I should find here." + +"We've had Clytie look after both houses--sometimes we've rented +mine--and almost every summer we've come here." + +"You know I didn't dream I was rich until I got here. The lawyer says +they've advertised, but I've been away from everything most of the +time--not looking out for advertisements. I can't understand the old +gentleman, when I was such a reprobate and Allan was always such a +thoroughly decent chap." + +"Oh, hardly a reprobate!" + +"Worse, Nance--an ass--think of my talking to that dear old soul as I +did--taking twenty minutes off to win him from his lifelong faith. I +shudder when I remember it. And yet I honestly thought he might be made +to see things my way." + +Their speech had been quick, and her eyes were fastened upon his with a +look from the old days striving in her to bring back that big moment of +their last parting--that singular moment when they blindly groped for +each other but had perforce to be content with one poor, trembling +handclasp! Had that trembling been a weakness or a strength? For all +time since--and increasingly during the later years--secret memories of +it had wonderfully quickened a life that would otherwise have tended to +fall dull, torpid, stubborn. It was not that their hands had met, but +that they had trembled--those two strange hands that had both repelled +and coerced each other--faltering at last into that long moment of +triumphant certainty. + +Under the first light words with Bernal this memory had welled up anew +in her with a mighty power before which she was as a leaf in the wind. +Then, all at once, she saw that they had become dazed and speechless +above this present clasp--the yielding, yet opposing, of those +all-knowing, never-forgetting hands. There followed one swift mutual +look of bewilderment. Then their hands fell apart and with little +awkward laughs they turned to Clytie. + +They were presently at table, Clytie in a trance of ecstatic +watchfulness for emptied plates, broken only by reachings and urgings of +this or that esteemed fleshpot. + +Under the ready talk that flowed, Nancy had opportunity to observe the +returned one. And now his strangeness vaguely hurt her. The voice and +the face were not those that had come to secret life in her heart during +the years of his absence. Here was not the laughing boy she had known, +with his volatile, Lucifer-like charm of light-hearted recklessness in +the face of destiny. Instead, a thinned, shy face rose before her, a +face full of awkwardness and dreaming, troubled and absent; a face that +one moment appealed by its defenseless forgetfulness, and the next, +coerced by a look eloquent of tested strength. + +As she watched him, there were two of her: one, the girl dreaming +forward out of the past, receptive of one knew not what secrets from +inner places; the other, the vivid, alert woman--listening, waiting, +judging. She it was whose laugh came often to make of her face the +perfect whole out of many little imperfections. + +Later, when they sat in the early summer night, under a moon blurred to +a phantom by the mist, when the changed lines of his face were no longer +relentless and they two became little more than voices and remembered +presences to each other, she began to find him indeed unchanged. Even +his voice had in an hour curiously lost that hurting strangeness. As she +listened she became absent, almost drowsy with memories of that far +night when his voice was quite the same and their hands had trembled +together--with such prescience that through all the years her hand was +to feel the groping of his. + +Yet awkward enough was that first half-hour of their sitting side by +side in the night, on the wide piazza of his old home. Before them the +lawn stretched unbroken to the other big house, where Nancy had wondered +her way to womanhood. Empty now it was, darkened as those years of her +dreaming girlhood must be to the present. Should she enter it, she knew +the house would murmur with echoes of other days; there would be the +wraith of the girl she once was flitting as of old through its peopled +rooms. + +And out there actually before her was the stretch of lawn where she had +played games of tragic pretense with the imperious, dreaming boy. +Vividly there came back that late afternoon when the monster of Bernal's +devising had frightened them for the last time--when in a sudden flash +of insight they had laughed the thing away forever and faced each other +with a certain half-joyous, half-foolish maturity of understanding. One +day long after this she had humorously bewailed to Bernal the loss of +their child's faith in the Gratcher. He had replied that, as an +institution, the Gratcher was imperishable--that it was brute humanity's +instinctive negation to the incredible perfections of life; that while +the child's Gratcher was not the man's, the latter was yet of the same +breed, however it might be refined by the subtleties of maturity: that +the man, like the child, must fashion some monster of horror to deter +him when he hears God's call to live. + +She had not been able to understand, nor did she now. She was looking +out to the two trees where once her hammock had swung--to the rustic +chair, now falling apart from age, from which Bernal had faced her that +last evening. Then with a start she was back in the present. Nancy of +the old days must be shut fat in the old house. There she might wander +and wonder endlessly among the echoes and the half-seen faces, but never +could she come forth; over the threshold there could pass only the wife +of Allan Linford. + +Quick upon this realisation came a sharp fear of the man beside her--a +fear born of his hand's hold upon hers when they had met. She shrank +under the memory of it, with a sudden instinct of the hunted. Then from +her new covert of reserve she dared to peer cautiously at him, seeking +to know how great was her peril--to learn what measure of defense would +best insure her safety--recognising fearfully the traitor in her own +heart. + +Their first idle talk had died, and she noted with new alarm that they +had been silent for many minutes. This could not safely be--this +insidious, barrier-destroying silence. She seemed to hear his heart +beating high from his own sense of peril. But would he help her? Would +he not rather side with that wretched traitor within her, crying out for +the old days--would he not still be the proud fool who would suffer no +man's law but his own? She shivered at the thought of his nearness--of +his momentous silence--of his treacherous ally. + +She stirred in her chair to look in where Clytie bustled between kitchen +and dining-room. Her movement aroused him from his own abstraction. For +a breathless stretch of time she was frozen to inertness by sheer +terror. Would that old lawless spirit utter new blasphemies, giving +fearful point to them now? Would the old eager hand come again upon hers +with a boy's pleading and a man's power? And what of her own secret +guilt? She had cherished the memory of him and across space had +responded to him through that imperious need of her heart. Swiftly in +this significant moment she for the first time saw herself with critical +eyes--saw that in her fancied security she had unwittingly enthroned the +hidden traitor. More and more poignant grew her apprehension as she felt +his eyes upon her and divined that he was about to speak. With a little +steadying of the lips, with eyes that widened at him in the dim light, +she waited for the sound of his voice--waited as one waits for something +"terrible and dear"--the whirlwind that might destroy utterly, or +pass--to leave her forever exulting in a new sense of power against +elemental forces. + +"Would you mind if I smoked, Nance?" + +She stared stupidly. So tense had been her strain that the words were +mere meaningless blows that left her quivering. He thought she had not +heard. + +"Would you mind my pipe--and this very mild mixture?" + +She blessed him for the respite. + +"Smoke, of course!" she managed to say. + +She watched him closely, still alert, as he stuffed the tobacco into his +pipe-bowl from a rubber pouch. Then he struck the match and in that +moment she suffered another shock. The little flame danced out of the +darkness, and wavering, upward shadows played over a face of utter +quietness. The relaxed shoulders drooped sideways in the chair, the body +placidly sprawled, one crossed leg gently waving. The shaded eye +surveyed some large and tranquil thought--and in that eye the soul sat +remote, aloof from her as any star. + +She sank back in her chair with a long, stealthy breath of relief--a +relief as cold as stone. She had not felt before that there was a chill +in the wide sweetness of the night. Now it wrapped her round and slowly, +with a soft brutality, penetrated to her heart. + +The silence grew too long. With a shrugging effort she surmounted +herself and looked again toward the alien figure looming unconcerned in +the gloom. A warm, super-personal sense of friendliness came upon her. +Her intellect awoke to inquiries. She began to question him of his days +away, and soon he was talking freely enough, between pulls of his pipe. + +"You know, Nance, I was a prodigal--only when I awoke I had no father to +go to. Poor grandad! What a brutal cub I was! That has always stuck in +my mind. I was telling you about that cold wet night in Denver. I had +found a lodging in the police station. There were others as forlorn--and +Nance--did you ever realise the buoyancy of the human mind? It's +sublime. We rejected ones sat there, warming ourselves, chatting, and +pretty soon one man found there were thirteen of us. You would have +thought that none of them could fear bad luck--worse luck--none of them +could have been more dismally situated. But, do you know? most of those +fellows became nervous--as apprehensive of bad luck as if they had been +pampered princes in a time of revolution. I was one of the two that +volunteered to restore confidence by bringing in another man. + +"We found an undersized, insignificant-looking chap toddling aimlessly +along the street a few blocks away from the station. We grappled with +him and hustled him back to the crowd. He slept with us on the floor, +and no one paid any further attention to him, except to remark that he +talked to himself a good bit. He and I awoke earliest next morning. I +asked him if he was hungry and he said he was. So I bought two fair +breakfasts with the money I'd saved for one good one, and we started out +of town. This chap said he was going that way, and I had made up my mind +to find a certain friend of mine--a chap named Hoover. The second day +out I discovered that this queer man was the one who'd been turning +Denver upside down for ten days, healing the halt and the blind. He was +running away because he liked a quieter life." + +He stopped, laughing softly, as if in remembrance--until she prompted +him. + +"Yes, he said, 'Father' had commanded him to go into the wilderness to +fast. He was always talking familiarly with 'Father,' as we walked. So I +stayed by him longer than I meant to--he seemed so helpless--and I +happened at that time to be looking for the true God." + +"Did you find him, Bernal?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +"In this strange man?" + +"In myself. It's the same old secret, Nance, that people have been +discovering for ages--but it is a secret only until after you learn it +for yourself. The only true revelation from God is here in man--in the +human heart. I had to be years alone to find it out, Nance--I'd had so +much of that Bible mythology stuffed into me--but I mustn't bore you +with it." + +"Oh, but I must know, Bernal--you don't dream how greatly I need at this +moment to believe _something_--more than you ever did!" + +"It's simple, Nance. It's the only revelation in which the God of +yesterday gives willing place to the better God of to-day--only here +does the God of to-day say, 'Thou shalt have no other God before me but +the God of to-morrow who will be more Godlike than I. Only in this way +can we keep our God growing always a little beyond us--so that to-morrow +we shall not find ourselves surpassing him as the first man you would +meet out there on the street surpasses the Christian God even in the +common virtues. That was the fourth dimension of religion that I wanted, +Nance--faith in a God that a fearless man could worship." + +He lighted his pipe again, and as the match blazed up she saw the absent +look still in his eyes. By it she realised how far away from her he +was--realised it with a little sharp sense of desolation. He smoked a +while before speaking. + +"Out there in the mountains, Nance, I thought about these things a long +time--the years went before I knew it. At first I stayed with this +healing chap, only after a while he started back to teach again and they +found him dead. He believed he had a mission to save the world, and that +he would live until he accomplished it. But there he was, dead for want +of a little food. Then I stayed a long time alone--until I began to feel +that I, too, had something for the world. It began to burn in my bones. +I thought of him, dead and the world not caring that he hadn't saved +it--not even knowing it was lost. But I kept thinking--a man can be so +much more than himself when he is alone--and it seemed to me that I saw +at least two things the world needed to know--two things that would +teach men to stop being cowards and leaners." + +Her sympathy was quick and ardent. + +"Oh, Bernal," she said warmly, "you made me believe when you believed +nothing--and now, when I need it above all other times, you make me +believe again! And you've come back with a message! How glorious!" + +He smiled musingly. + +"I started with one, Nance--one that had grown in me all those years +till it filled my life and made me put away everything. I didn't accept +it at first. It found me rebellious--wanting to live on the earth. Then +there came a need to justify myself--to show that I was not the mere +vicious unbeliever poor grandad thought me. And so I fought to give +myself up--and I won. I found the peace of the lone places." + +His voice grew dreamy--ceased, as if that peace were indeed too utter +for words. Then with an effort he resumed: + +"But after a while the world began to rumble in my ears. A man can't cut +himself off from it forever. God has well seen to that! As the message +cleared in my mind, there grew a need to give it out. This seemed easy +off there. The little puzzles that the world makes so much of solved +themselves for me. I saw them to be puzzles of the world's own +creating--all artificial--all built up--fashioned clumsily enough from +man's brute fear of the half-God, half-devil he has always made in his +own image. + +"But now that I'm here, Nance, I find myself already a little +bewildered. The solution of the puzzles is as simple as ever, but the +puzzles themselves are more complex as I come closer to them--so complex +that my simple answer will seem only a vague absurdity." + +He paused and she felt his eyes upon her--felt that he had turned from +his abstractions to look at her more personally. + +"Even since meeting you, Nance," he went on with an odd, inward note in +his voice, "I've been wondering if Hoover could by some chance have been +right. When I left, Hoover said I was a fool--a certain common variety +of fool." + +"Oh, I'm sure you're not--at least, not the common kind. I dare say that +a man must be a certain kind of fool to think he can put the world +forward by leaps and bounds. I think he must be a fool to assume that +the world wants truth when it wants only to be assured that it has +already found the truth for itself. The man who tells it what it already +believes is never called a fool--and perhaps he isn't. Indeed, I've come +to think he is less than a fool--that he's a mere polite echo. But oh, +Bernal, hold to your truth! Be the simple fool and worry the wise in the +cages they have built around themselves." + +She was leaning eagerly forward, forgetful of all save that her starved +need was feasting royally. + +"Don't give up; don't parrot the commoner fool's conceits back to him +for the sake of his solemn approval. Let those of his kind give him what +he wants, while you meet those who must have more. I'm one of them, +Bernal. At this moment I honestly don't know whether I'm a bad woman or +a good one. And I'm frightened--I'm so defenseless! Some little soulless +circumstance may make me decisively good or bad--and I don't want to be +bad! But give me what I want--I must have that, regardless of what it +makes me." + +He was silent for a time, then at last spoke: + +"I used to think you were a rebel, Nance. Your eyes betrayed it, and the +corners of your mouth went up the least little bit, as if they'd go +further up before they went down--as if you'd laugh away many solemn +respectabilities. But that's not bad. There are more things to laugh at +than are dreamed of. That's Hoover's entire creed, by the way." + +She remembered the name from that old tale of Caleb Webster's. + +"Is--is this friend of yours--Mr. Hoover--in good health?" + +"Fine--weighs a hundred and eighty. He and I have a ranch on the +Wimmenuche--only Hoover's been doing most of the work while I thought +about things. I see that. Hoover says one can't do much for the world +but laugh at it. He has a theory of his own. He maintains that God set +this planet whirling, then turned away for a moment to start another +universe or something. He says that when the Creator glances back at us +again, to find this poor, scrubby little earth-family divided over its +clod, the strong robbing the weak in the midst of plenty for +all--enslaving them to starve and toil and fight, spending more for war +than would keep the entire family in luxury; that when God looks closer, +in his amazement, and finds that, next to greed, the matter of +worshipping Him has made most of the war and other deviltry--the hatred +and persecution and killing among all the little brothers--he will laugh +aloud before he reflects, and this little ballful of funny, passionate +insects will be blown to bits. He says if the world comes to an end in +his lifetime, he will know God has happened to look this way, and +perhaps overheard a bishop say something vastly important about +Apostolic succession or the validity of the Anglican Orders or +Transubstantiation or 'communion in two kinds' or something. He insists +that a sense of humour is our only salvation--that only those will be +saved who happen to be laughing for the same reason that God laughs when +He looks at us--that the little Mohammedans and Christians and things +will be burned for their blasphemy of believing God not wise and good +enough to save them all, Mohammedan and Christian alike, though not +thinking excessively well of either; that only those laughing at the +whole gory nonsense will go into everlasting life by reason of their +superior faith in God." + +"Of course that's plausible, and yet it's radical. Hoover's father was a +bishop, and I think Hoover is just a bit narrow from early training. He +can't see that lots of people who haven't a vestige of humour are +nevertheless worth saving. I admit that saving them will be a thankless +task. God won't be able to take very much pleasure in it, but in strict +justice he will do it--even if Hoover does regard it as a piece of +extravagant sentimentality." + +A little later she went in. She left him gazing far off into the night, +filled with his message, dull to memory on the very scene that evoked in +her own heart so much from the old days. And as she went she laughed +inwardly at a certain consternation the woman of her could not wholly +put down; for she had blindly hurled herself against a wall--the wall of +his message. But it was funny, and the message chained her interest. She +could, she thought, strengthen his resolution to give it out--help him +in a thousand ways. + +As she fell asleep the thought of him hovered and drifted on her heart +softly, as darkness rests on tired eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE REMORSE OF WONDERING NANCY + + +She awoke to the sun, glad-hearted and made newly buoyant by one of +those soundless black sleeping-nights that come only to the town-tired +when they have first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the +restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation the +black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, +and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a +deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming +smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened +to a laugh as she looked--a little womanish chuckle of confident joy, as +one alone speaking aloud in an overflowing moment. + +An hour later she was greeting Bernal where the sun washed through the +big room. + +"Young life sings in me!" she said, and felt his lightening eyes upon +her lips as she smiled. + +There were three days of it--days in which, however, she grew to fear +those eyes, lest they fall upon her in judgment. She now saw that his +eyes had changed most. They gave the face its look of absence, of +dreaming awkwardness. They had the depth of a hazy sky at times, then +cleared to a coldly lucid glance that would see nothing ever to fear, +within or without; that would hide no falseness nor yet be deceived by +any--a deadly half-shut, appraising coolness that would know false from +true, even though they mated amicably and distractingly in one mind. + +The effect of this glance which she found upon herself from time to time +was to make Nancy suspect herself--to question her motives and try her +defenses. To her amazement she found these latter weak under Bernal's +gaze, and there grew in her a tender remorse for the injustice she had +done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she +came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had +opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged +a good man--good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely +lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's +eyes: she was less than she had thought--he was more. Bernal had proved +these things to her all unconsciously. Now her heart was flooded with +gratitude for his simple, ready, heartfelt praise of his brother--of his +unfailing good-temper, his loyalty, his gifts, his modesty so often +distressed by outspoken admiration of his personal graces. She listened +and applauded with a heart that renewed itself in all good resolves of +devotion. Even when Bernal talked of himself, he made her feel that she +had been unjust to Allan. + +Little by little she drew many things from him--the story of his +journeyings and of his still more intricate mental wanderings. And it +thrilled her to think he had come back with a message--even though he +already doubted himself. Sometimes he would be jocular about it and +again hot with a passion to express himself. + +"Nance," he said on another night, "when you have a real faith in God a +dead man is a miracle not less than a living--and a live man dying is +quite as wondrous as a dead man living. Do you know, I was staggered one +day by discovering that the earth didn't give way when I stepped on it? +The primitive man knowing little of physics doesn't know that a child's +hand could move the earth through space--but for a certain mysterious +resistance. That's God. I felt him all that day, at every step, pushing +the little globe back under me--counteracting me--resisting me--ever so +gently. Those are times when you feel you must tell it, Nance--when the +God-consciousness comes." + +"Oh, Bernal, if you could--if you could come back to do what your +grandfather really wanted you to do--to preach something worth while!" + +"I doubt the need for my message, Nance. I need for myself a God that +could no more spare a Hottentot than a Pope--but I doubt if the world +does. No one would listen to me--I'm only a dreamer. Once, when I was +small they gave me a candy cane for Christmas. It was a thing I had long +worshipped in shop-windows--actually worshipped as the primitive man +worshipped his idol. I can remember how sad I was when no one else +worshipped with me, or paid the least attention to my treasure. I +suspect I shall meet the same indifference now. And I hope I'll have the +same philosophy. I remember I brought myself to eat the cane, which I +suppose is the primary intention regarding them--and perhaps the fruits +of one's faith should be eaten quite as practically." + +They had sent no word to Allan, agreeing it were better fun to surprise +him. When they took the train together on the third day, the wife not +less than the brother looked forward to a joyous reunion with him. And +now that Nancy had proved in her heart the perverse unwifeliness of her +old attitude and was eager to begin the symbolic rites of her atonement, +it came to her to wonder how Bernal would have judged her had she +persisted in that first wild impulse of rebellion. She wanted to see +from what degree of his reprobation she had saved herself. She would be +circuitous in her approach. + +"You remember, Bernal, that night you went away--how you said there was +no moral law under the sky for you but your own?" + +He smiled, and above the noise of the train his voice came to her as his +voice of old came above the noise of the years. + +"Yes--Nance--that was right. No moral law but mine. I carried out my +threat to make them all find their authority in me." + +"Then you still believe yours is the only authority?" + +"Yes; it sounds licentious and horrible, doesn't it; but there are two +queer things about it--the first is that man quite naturally _wishes_ to +be decent, and the second is that, when he does come to rely wholly upon +the authority within himself, he finds it a stricter disciplinarian than +ever the decalogue was. One needs only ordinary good taste to keep the +ten commandments--the moral ones. A man may observe them all and still +be morally rotten! But it's no joke to live by one's own law, and yet +that's all anybody has to keep him right, if we only knew it, +Nance--barring a few human statutes against things like murder and +keeping one's barber-shop open on the Sabbath--the ruder offenses which +no gentleman ever wishes to commit. + +"And must poor woman be ruled by her own God, too?" + +"Why not?" + +"Well, it's not so long ago that the fathers of the Church were debating +in council whether she had a soul or not, charging her with bringing +sin, sickness and death into the world." + +"Exactly. St. John Damascene called her 'a daughter of falsehood and a +sentinel of hell'; St. Jerome came in with 'Woman is the gate of the +devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion'; St. Gregory, I +believe, considered her to have no comprehension of goodness; pious old +Tertullian complimented her with corrupting those whom Satan dare not +attack; and then there was St. Chrysostom--really he was much more +charitable than his fellow Saints--it always seemed to me he was not +only more humane but more human--more interested, you might say. You +know he said, 'Woman is a necessary evil, a domestic peril, a deadly +fascination, a painted ill.' It always seemed to me St. Chrysostom had a +past. But really, I think they all went too far. I don't know woman very +well, but I suspect she has to find her moral authority where man finds +his--within herself." + +"You know what made me ask--a little woman in town came to see Allan not +long ago to know if she mightn't leave her husband--she had what seemed +to her sufficient reason." + +"I imagine Allan said 'no.'" + +"He did. Would you have advised her differently?" + +"Bless you, no. I'd advise her to obey her priest. The fact that she +consulted him shows that she has no law of her own. St. Paul said this +wise and deep thing: 'I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that +there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything +unclean, to him it is unclean!'" + +"Then it lay in her own view of it. If she had felt free to go, she +would have done right to go." + +"Naturally." + +"Yet Allan talked to her about the sanctity of the home." + +"I doubt if the sanctity of the home is maintained by keeping unwilling +mates together, Nance. I can imagine nothing less sanctified than a home +of that sort--peopled by a couple held together against the desire of +either or both. The willing mates need no compulsion, and they're the +ones, it seems to me, that have given the home its reputation for +sanctity. I never thought much about divorce, but I can see that much at +once. Of course, Allan takes the Church's attitude, which survives from +a time when a woman was bought and owned; when the God of Moses classed +her with the ox and the ass as a thing one must not covet." + +"You really think if a woman has made a failure of her marriage she has +a right to break it." + +"That seems sound as a general law, Nance--better for her to make a +hundred failures, for that matter, than stay meekly in the first because +of any superstition. But, mind you, if she suspects that the Church may, +after all, have succeeded in tying up the infinite with red-tape and +sealing-wax--believes that God is a large, dark notary-public who has +recorded her marriage in a book--she will do better to stay. Doubtless +the conceit of it will console her--that the God who looks after the +planets has an eye on her, to see that she makes but one guess about so +uncertain a thing as a man." + +"Then you would advise--" + +"No, I wouldn't. The woman who has to be advised should never take +advice. I dare say divorce is quite as hazardous as marriage, though +possibly most people divorce with a somewhat riper discretion than they +marry with. But the point is that neither marriage nor divorce can be +considered a royal road to happiness, and a woman ought to get her +impetus in either case from her own inner consciousness. I should call +divorcing by advice quite as silly as marrying by it." + +"But it comes at last to her own law in her own heart?" + +"When she has awakened to it--when she honestly feels it. God's law for +woman is the same as for man--and he has but two laws for both that are +universal and unchanging: The first is, they are bound at all times to +desire happiness; the second is, that they can be happy only by being +wise--which is what we sometimes mean when we say 'good,' but of course +no one knows what wisdom is for all, nor what goodness is for all, +because we are not mechanical dolls of the same pattern. That's why I +reverence God--the scheme is so ingenious--so productive of variety in +goodness and wisdom. Probably an evil marriage is as hard to be quit of +as any vice. People persist long after the sanctity has gone--because +they lack moral courage. Hoover was quite that way with cigarettes. If +some one could only have made Jim believe that God had joined him to +cigarettes, and that he mustn't quit them or he'd shatter the +foundations of our domestic integrity--he'd have died in cheerful +smoke--very soon after a time when he says I saved his life. All he +wanted was some excuse to go on smoking. Most people are +so--slothful-souled. But remember, don't advise your friend in town. Her +asking advice is a sign that she shouldn't have it. She is not of the +coterie that Paul describes--if you don't mind Paul once more--'Happy is +he that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth.'" + +There had come to the woman a vast influx of dignity--a joyous increase +in the volume of that new feeling that called to her husband. She would +have gone back, but one of the reasons would have been because she +thought it "right"--because it was what the better world did! But +now--ah! now--she was going unhampered by that compulsion which galls +even the best. She was free to stay away, but of her own glad, loyal +will she was going back to the husband she had treated unjustly, judged +by too narrow a standard. + +"Allan will be so astonished and delighted," she said, when the coupe +rolled out of the train-shed. + +She remembered now with a sort of pride the fine, unflinching sternness +with which he had condemned divorce. In a man of principles so staunch +one might overlook many surface eccentricities. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE FLEXIBLE MIND OF A PLEASED HUSBAND + + +As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of +the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs. +Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable +feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she +was. + +The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, were quick for Allan's +face, resting fondly there during the seconds in which he was changing +from the dead astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal. +During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each +other's arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had +paused before her. + +"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys +go back there to have it out!" + +Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to +tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened +duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to +Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a +slow-moving elder. + +Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed +her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk. + +"--and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite +confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm sure he would wish you +to know. Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as +he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply +them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of +view. But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful +case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless +chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his +mind at all well before thirty-five. Of course, divorce is an evil that, +broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life--no one +understands that better than your husband--and re-marriage after divorce +is usually an outrageous scandal--one, indeed, altogether too +common--sometimes I wonder what we're coming to, it seems to be done so +thoughtlessly--but individual instances are different--'exceptions prove +the rule,' you know, as the old saying goes. Now Harold is ready to +settle down, and the girl is of excellent family and all that--quite the +social and moral brace he needs, in fact." + +Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled. + +"But--you speak of your son, Harold--is he not already married?" + +"That's it, my dear. You know what a funny, bright, mischievous boy +Harold is--even a little deliciously wild at times--doubtless you read +of his marriage when it occurred--how these newspapers do relish +anything of the sort--she was a theatrical young woman--what they call a +'show girl,' I believe. Humph!--with reason, I _must_ say! Of all the +egregious and inveterate showiness! My dear, she is positively a +creature! Oh, if they'd only invent a monocle that would let a young man +pierce the glamour of the footlights. I pledge you my word, she's--but +never mind that! Harold was a thoughtless, restless boy--not bad, you +know, but heedless. Why, he was quite the same about business. He began +to speculate, and of course, being brother Cyrus's nephew, his advantage +was considerable. But he suddenly declared he wouldn't be a broker any +more--and you'd never guess his absurd reason: simply because some stock +he held or didn't hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the +street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill! He said that this +brought him to his senses. He says to me, 'Mater, I've not met Mr. Sage, +you know, but from what I hear of him it would be irrational to place +myself in a position where I should have to experience emotion of any +sort at news of the old gentleman's taking-off. An event so agreeable to +the natural order of God's providence, so plausible, so seemly, should +not be endowed with any arbitrary and artificial significance, +especially of a monetary character--one must be able to view it +absolutely without emotion of any sort, either of regret or +rejoicing--one must remain conscientiously indifferent as to when this +excellent old gentleman passes on to the Golden Shore'--but you know +the breezy way in which Harold will sometimes talk. Only now he seems +really sobered by this new attachment--" + +"But if he is already married--" + +"Yes, yes--if you can call it married--a ceremony performed by one of +those common magistrates--quite without the sanction of the Church--but +all that is past, and he is now ready to marry one who can be a wife to +him--only my conscience did hurt me a little, and brother Cyrus said to +me, 'You see Linford and tell him I sent you. Linford is a man of +remarkable breadth, of rare flexibility.'" + +"Yes, and of course Allan was emphatically discouraging." Again she was +recalling the fervour with which he had declared himself on this point +on that last day when he actually made her believe in him. + +"Oh, the Doctor is broad! He is what I should call adaptable. He said by +all means to extricate Harold from this wretched predicament, not only +on account of the property interests involved, but on account of his +moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he holds deathlessly +to the indissolubility of the marriage tie, still it is unreasonable to +suppose that God ever joined Harold to a person so much his inferior, +and that we may look forward to the real marriage--that on which the +sanctity of the home is truly based--when the law has freed him from +this boyish entanglement. Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that +my boy can have a wife from his own class--and still have it right up +there--with Him, you know!" she concluded with an upward glance, as +Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost +steely--watched her as one might watch an ant. She had the look of one +whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great inner +tumult. + +When her caller had gone she dropped back into the chair, absently +pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand--her bag and parasol on +the floor at her feet. One might have thought her on the point of +leaving instead of having just come. The shadows were deepening in the +corners of the room and about her half-shut eyes. + +A long time she listened to the animated voices of the brothers. At last +the doors were pushed apart and they came out, Allan with his hand on +Bernal's shoulder. + +"There's your bag--now hurry upstairs--the maid will show you where." + +As Bernal went out, Nancy looked up at her husband with a manner +curiously quiet. + +"Well, Nance--" He stepped to the door to see if Bernal was out of +hearing--"Bernal pleases me in the way he talks about the old +gentleman's estate. Either he is most reasonable, or I have never known +my true power over men." + +Her face was inscrutable. Indeed, she only half heard. + +"Mrs. Covil has been telling me some of your broader views on divorce." + +The words shot from her lips with the crispness of an arrow, going +straight to the bull's-eye. + +He glanced quickly at her, the hint of a frown drawing about his eyes. + +"Mrs. Covil should have been more discreet. The authority of a priest in +these matters is a thing of delicate adjustment--the law for one may not +be the law for all. These are not matters to gossip of." + +"So it seems. I was thinking of your opposite counsel to Mrs. Eversley." + +"There--really, you know I read minds, at times--somehow I knew that +would be the next thing you'd speak of." + +"Yes?" + +"The circumstances are entirely different--I may add that--that any +intimation of inconsistency will be very unpleasing to me--very!" + +"I can see that the circumstances are different--the Eversleys are not +what you would call 'important factors' in the Church--and besides--that +is a case of a wife leaving her husband." + +"Nance--I'm afraid you're _not_ pleasing me--if I catch your drift. Must +I point out the difference--the spiritual difference? That misguided +woman wanted to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her +pride--her vanity--by certain alleged attentions to other women, +concerning the measure of which I had no knowledge. That was a case +where the cross must be borne for the true refining of that dross of +vanity from her soul. Her husband is of her class, and her life with him +will chasten her. While here--what have we here?" + +He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when he prepared a +sermon. + +"Here we have a flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual +miscegenation--that's it!--why didn't I think of that phrase +before--spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the +connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance +with a person inferior to him in every point of view--birth, breeding, +station, culture, wealth--a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad +to relinquish her so-called rights for a sum of money. Can that, I ask +you, be called a _marriage?_ Can we suppose an all-wise God to have +joined two natures so ill-adapted, so mutually exclusive, so repellent +to each other after that first glamour is past. Really, such a +supposition is not only puerile but irreverent. It is the conventional +supposition, I grant, and theoretically, the unvarying supposition of +the Church; but God has given us reasoning powers to use fearlessly--not +to be kept superstitiously in the shackles of any tradition whatsoever. +Why, the very Church itself from its founding is an example of the +wisdom of violating tradition when it shall seem meet--it has always had +to do this." + +"I see, Allan--every case must be judged by itself; every marriage +requires a special ruling--" + +"Well--er--exactly--only don't get to fancying that you could solve +these problems. It's difficult enough for a priest." + +"Oh, I'm positive a mere woman couldn't grapple with them--she hasn't +the mind to! All she is capable of is to choose who shall think for +her." + +"And of course it would hardly do to announce that I had counselled a +certain procedure of divorce and re-marriage--no matter how flagrant the +abuse, nor how obvious the spiritual equity of the step. People at large +are so little analytical." + +"'Flexible,' Mr. Browett told his sister you were. He was right--you +_are_ flexible, Allan--more so than I ever suspected." + +"Nance--you _please_ me--you are a good girl. Now I'm going up to +Bernal. Bernal certainly pleases me. Of course I shall do the handsome +thing by him if he acts along the lines our talk has indicated." + +She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had taken two hours +before, when Aunt Bell came in, dressed for dinner. + +"Mercy, child! Do you know how late it is?" + +"What did you say, Aunt Bell?" + +"I say do you know how late it is?" + +"Oh--not too late!" + +"Not too late--for what?" + +There was a pause, then she said: "Aunt Bell, when a woman comes to make +her very last effort at self-deception, why does she fling herself into +it with such abandon--such pretentious flourishes of remorse--and +things? Is it because some under layer of her soul knows it will be the +last and will have it a thorough test? I wonder how much of an arrant +fraud a woman may really be to herself, even in her surest, happiest +moments." + +"There you are again, wondering, wondering--instead of accepting things +and dressing for dinner. Have you seen Allan?" + +"Oh, yes--I've been seeing him for three days--through a glass, darkly." + +Aunt Bell flounced on into the library, trailing something perilously +near a sniff. + +Bernal came down the stairs and stood in the door. + +"Well, Nance!" He went to stand before her and she looked up to him. +There was still light enough to see his eyes--enough to see, also, that +he was embarrassed. + +"Well--I've had quite a talk with Allan." He laughed a little +constrained, uneasy laugh, looking quickly at her to see if she might be +observing him. "He's the same fine old chap, isn't he?" Quickly his eyes +again sought her face. "Yes, indeed, he's the same old boy--a great old +Allan--only he makes me feel that I have changed, Nance." + +She arose from her chair, feeling cramped and restless from sitting so +long. + +"I'm sure you haven't changed, Bernal." + +"Oh, I must have!" + +He was looking at her very closely through the dusk. + +"Yes, we had an interesting talk," he said again. + +He reached out to take one of her hands, which he held an instant in +both his own. "He's a rare old Allan, Nance!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS OF THE GREAT MACHINE + + +For three days the brothers were inseparable. There were so many ancient +matters to bring forward of which each could remember but a half; so +many new ones, of which each must tell his own story. And there was a +matter of finance between them that had been brought forward by Allan +without any foolish delay. Each of them spoke to Nancy about it. + +"Bernal has pleased me greatly," said her husband. "He agrees that +Grandfather Delcher could not have been himself when he made that +will--being made as it was directly after he sent Bernal off. He finds +it absurd that the old man, so firm a Christian, should have +disinherited a Christian, one devoted to the ministry of Jesus, for an +unbeliever like Bernal. It is true, I talked to him in this strain +myself, and I cannot deny that I wield even a greater influence over men +than over women. I dare say I could have brought Bernal around even had +he been selfish and stubborn. By putting a proposition forward as a +matter of course, one may often induce another to accept it as such, +whereas he might dispute it if it were put forward as at all debatable. +But as a matter of fact he required no talking to; he accepted my views +readily. The boy doesn't seem to know the value of money. I really +believe he may decide to make over the whole of the property to me. That +is what I call a beautiful unselfishness. But I shall do handsomely by +him--probably he can use some money in that cattle business. I had +thought first of ten thousand dollars, but doubtless half that will be +wiser. I shall insist upon his taking at least half that. He will find +that unselfishness is a game two can play at." + +Nancy had listened to this absently, without comment. Nor had Bernal +moved her to speech when he said, "You know, Allan is such a sensitive +old chap--you wouldn't guess how sensitive. His feelings were actually +hurt because I'd kept him out of grandad's money all these years. He'd +forgotten that I didn't know I was doing it. Of course the old boy was +thinking what he'd have done in my place--but I think I can make it +right with him--I'm sure now he knows I didn't mean to wrong him." + +Yet during this speech he had shot furtive little questioning looks at +her face, as if to read those thoughts he knew she would not put into +words. + +But she only smiled at Bernal. Her husband, however, found her more +difficult than ever after communicating his news to her. He tried once +to imagine her being dissatisfied with him for some reason. But this +attempt he abandoned. Thereafter he attributed her coldness, aloofness, +silence, and moodiness to some nervous malady peculiar to the modern +woman. Bernal's presence kept him from noting how really pronounced and +unwavering her aversion had become. + +Nor did Bernal note her attitude. Whatever he may have read in Allan at +those times when the look of cold appraisement was turned full upon him, +he had come to know of his brother's wife only that she was Nancy of the +old days, strangely surviving to greet him and be silent with him, or to +wonder with him when he came in out of that preposterous machine of many +wheels that they called the town. No one but Nancy saw anything about it +to wonder at. + +To Bernal, after his years in the big empty places, it was a part of all +the world and of all times compacted in a small space. One might see in +it ancient Jerusalem, Syria, Persia, Rome and modern Babylon--with +something still peculiar and unclassifiable that one would at length +have to call New York. And to make it more absorbing, the figures were +always moving. Where so many were pressed together each was weighted by +a thousand others--the rich not less than the poor; each was stirred to +quick life and each was being visibly worn down by the ceaseless +friction. + +When he had walked the streets for a week, he saw the city as a huge +machine, a machine to which one might not even deliver a message without +becoming a part of it--a wheel of it. It was a machine always +readjusting, always perfecting, always repairing itself--casting out +worn or weak parts and taking in others--ever replacing old wheels with +new ones, and never disdaining any new wheel that found its place--that +could give its cogs to the general efficiency, consenting to be worn +down by the unceasing friction. + +Looking down Broadway early one evening--a shining avenue of joy--he +thought of the times when he had gazed across a certain valley of his +West and dreamed of bringing a message to this spot. + +Against the sky many electric signs flamed garishly. Beneath them were +the little grinding wheels of the machine--satisfied, joyous, wisely +sufficient unto themselves, needing no message--least of all the simple +old truth he had to give. He tried to picture his message blazing +against the sky among the other legends: from where he stood the three +most salient were the names of a popular pugilist, a malt beverage and a +theatre. The need of another message was not apparent. + +So he laughed at himself and went down into the crowd foregathered in +ways of pleasure, and there he drank of the beer whose name was flaunted +to the simple stars. Truly a message to this people must be put into a +sign of electric bulbs; into a phonograph to be listened to for a coin, +with an automatic banjo accompaniment; or it must be put upon the stage +to be acted or sung or danced! Otherwise he would be a wheel rejected--a +wheel ground up in striving to become a part of the machine at a place +where no wheel was needed. + +For another experience cooling to his once warm hopes, the second day of +his visit Allan had taken him to his weekly Ministers' Meeting--an +affair less formidable than its title might imply. + +A dozen or so good fellows of the cloth had luncheon together each +Tuesday at the house of one or another, or at a restaurant; and here +they talked shop or not as they chose, the thing insisted upon being +congeniality--that for once in the week they should be secure from +bores. + +Here Presbyterian and Unitarian met on common ground; Baptist, Catholic, +Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist--all became brothers over the +soup. Weekly they found what was common and helpful to all in discussing +details of church administration, matters of faith, methods of handling +their charitable funds; or the latest heresy trial. They talked of these +things amiably, often lightly. They were choice spirits relaxed, who +might be grave or gay, as they listed. + +Their vein was not too serious the day Bernal was his brother's guest, +sitting between the very delightful Father Riley and the exciting +Unitarian, one Whittaker. With tensest interest he listened to their +talk. + +At first there was a little of Delitzsch and his Babel-Bible addresses, +brought up by Selmour, an amiable Presbyterian of shining bare pate and +cheerful red beard, a man whom scandal had filliped ever so coyly with a +repute of leanings toward Universalism. + +This led to a brief discussion of the old and new theology--Princeton +standing for the old with its definition of Christianity as "a piece of +information given supernaturally and miraculously"; Andover standing for +the new--so alleged Whittaker--with many polite and ingenious evasions +of this proposition without actually repudiating it. + +The Unitarian, however, was held to be the least bit too literal in his +treatment of propositions not his own. + +Then came Pleydell, another high-church Episcopalian who, over his chop +and a modest glass of claret, declared earnest war upon the whole +Hegel-Darwinian-Wellhausen school. His method of attack was to state +baldly the destructive conclusions of that school--that most of the +books of the Old Testament are literary frauds, intentionally +misrepresenting the development of religion in Israel; that the whole +Mosaic code is a later fabrication and its claim to have been given in +the wilderness an historical falsehood. From this he deduced that a mere +glance at the Bible, as the higher critics explain it, must convince the +earnest Christian that he can have no share in their views. "Deprive +Christianity of its supernatural basis," he said, "and you would have a +mere speculative philosophy. Deny the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, +and the Atonement becomes meaningless. If we have not incurred God's +wrath through Adam's disobedience, we need no Saviour. That is the way +to meet the higher criticism," he concluded earnestly. + +As the only rule of the association was that no man should talk long +upon any matter, Floud, the fiery and aggressive little Baptist, +hereupon savagely reviewed a late treatise on the ethnic Trinities, put +out by a professor of ecclesiastical history in a New England +theological seminary. Floud marvelled that this author could retain his +orthodox standing, for he viewed the Bible as a purely human collection +of imperfect writings, the wonder-stories concerning the birth and death +of Jesus as deserving no credence, and denied to Christianity any +supernatural foundation. Polytheism was shown to be the soil from which +all trinitarian conceptions naturally spring--the Brahmanic, +Zoroastrian, Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity--the +latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish stalk. The author's +conclusion, by which he reached "an undogmatic gospel of the spirit, +independent of all creeds and forms--a gospel of love to God and man, +with another Trinity of Love, Truth and Freedom," was particularly +irritating to the disturbed Baptist, who spoke bitterly of the day +having dawned when the Church's most dangerous enemies were those +critical vipers whom she had warmed in her own bosom. + +Suffield, the gaunt, dark, but twinkling-eyed Methodist, also sniffed +at the conclusion of the ethnic-trinities person. "We have an age of +substitutes," he remarked. "We have had substitutes for silk and +sealskin--very creditable substitutes, so I have been assured by +a lady in whom I have every confidence--substitutes for coffee, +for diamonds--substitutes for breakfast which are widely +advertised--substitutes for medicine--and now we are coming to have +substitutes for religion--even a substitute for hell!" + +Hereupon he told of a book he had read, also written by an orthodox +professor of theology, in which the argument, advanced upon scriptural +evidence, was that the wicked do not go into endless torment, but +ultimately shrivel and sink into a state of practical unconsciousness. +Yet the author had been unable to find any foundation for universalism. +This writer, Suffield explained, holds that the curtain falls after the +judgment on a lost world. Nor is there probation for the soul after the +body dies. The Scriptures teach the ruin of the final rejecters of +Christ; Christ teaches plainly that they who reject the Gospel will +perish in the endless darkness of night. But eternal punishment does not +necessarily mean eternal suffering; hence the hypothesis of the soul +gradually shrivelling for the sin of its unbelief. + +The amiable Presbyterian sniffed at this as a sentimental quibble. +Punishment ceases to be punishment when it is not felt--one cannot +punish a tree or an unconscious soul. But this was the spirit of the +age. With the fires out in hell, no wonder we have an age of sugar-candy +morality and cheap sentimentalism. + +But here the Unitarian wickedly interrupted, to remind his Presbyterian +brother that his own church had quenched those very certain fires that +once burned under the pit in which lay the souls of infants unbaptised. + +The amiable Presbyterian, not relishing this, still amiably threw the +gauntlet down to Father Riley, demanding the Catholic view of the future +of unbaptised children. + +The speech of the latter was a mellow joy--a south breeze of liquid +consonants and lilting vowels finely articulated. Perhaps it was not a +little owing to the good man's love for what he called "oiling the rusty +hinges of the King's English with a wee drop of the brogue"; but, if so, +the oil was so deftly spread that no one word betrayed its presence. +Rather was his whole speech pervaded by this soft delight, especially +when his cherubic face, his pink cheeks glistening in certain lights +with a faint silvery stubble of beard, mellowed with his gentle smile. +It was so now, even when he spoke of God's penalties for the souls of +reprobate infants. + +"All theologians of the Mother Church are agreed," replied the gracious +father, "first, that infants dying unbaptised are excluded from the +Kingdom of Heaven. Second, that they will not enjoy the beatific vision +outside of heaven. Third, that they will arise with adults and be +assembled for judgment on the last day. And, fourth, that after the last +day there will be but two states, namely: a state of supernatural and +supreme felicity and a state of what, in a wide sense, we may call +damnation." + +Purlingly the good man went on to explain that damnation is a state +admitting of many degrees; and that the unbaptised infant would not +suffer in that state the same punishment as the adult reprobate. While +the latter would suffer positive pains of mind and body for his sins, +the unfortunate infant would doubtless suffer no pain of sense whatever. +As to their being exempt from the pain of loss, grieving over their +exclusion from the sight of God and the glories of His Kingdom, it is +more commonly held that they do not suffer even this; that even if they +know others are happier than themselves, they are perfectly resigned to +God's will and suffer no pain of loss in regard to happiness not suited +to their condition. + +The Presbyterian called upon them to witness that his church was thus +not unique in attaining this sentimentality regarding reprobate infants. + +Then little Floud cited the case of still another heretic within the +church, a professor in a western Methodist university, who declared that +biblical infallibility is a superstitious and hurtful tradition; that +all the miracles are mere poetic fancies, incredible and untrue--even +irreverent; and that all spiritual truth comes to man through his brain +and conscience. Modern preaching, according to the book of this heretic, +lacks power because so many churches cling to the tradition that the +Bible is infallible. It is the golden calf of their worship; the +palpable lie that gives the ring of insincerity to all their moral +exhortations. + +So the talk flowed on until the good men agreed that a peculiarity of +the time lay in this: that large numbers of ministers within the church +were publishing the most revolutionary heresies while still clinging to +some shred of their tattered orthodoxy. + +Also they decided that it would not be without interest to know what +belief is held by the man of common education and intelligence--the man +who behaves correctly but will not go to church. + +Here Father Riley sweetly reminded them--"No questions are asked in the +Mother Church, gentlemen, that may not be answered with authority. In +your churches, without an authority superior to mere reason, destructive +questions will be asked more and more frequently." + +Gravely they agreed that the church was losing its hold on the people. +That but for its social and charitable activities, its state would be +alarming. + +"Your churches!" Father Riley corrected with suave persistence. "No +church can endure without an infallible head." + +Again and again during the meal Bernal had been tempted to speak. But +each time he had been restrained by a sense of his aloofness. These men, +too, were wheels within the machine, each revolving as he must. They +would simply pity him, or be amused. + +More and more acutely was he coming to feel the futility, the crass, +absurd presumption of what he had come back to undertake. From the lucid +quiet of his mountain haunts he had descended into a vale where +antiquated cymbals clashed in wild discordance above the confusing +clatter of an intricate machinery--machinery too complicated to be +readjusted by a passing dreamer. In his years of solitude he had grown +to believe that the teachers of the world were no longer dominated by +that ancient superstition of a superhumanly malignant God. He had been +prepared to find that the world-ideal had grown more lofty in his +absence, been purified by many eliminations into a God who, as he had +once said to Nance, could no more spare the soul of a Hottentot than the +soul of a pope. Yet here was a high type of the priest of the Mother +Church, gentle, Godly, learned, who gravely and as one having authority +told how God would blight forever the soul of a child unbaptised, thus +imputing to Deity a regard for mechanical rites that would constitute +even a poor human father an incredible monster. + +Yet the marvel of it seemed to him to lie in this: that the priest +himself lived actually a life of loving devotion and sacrifice in marked +opposition to this doctrine of formal cruelty; that his church, more +successfully than any other in Christendom, had met the needs of +humanity, coming closer to men in their sin and sickness, ministering to +them with a deeper knowledge, a more affectionate intimacy, than any +other. That all these men of God should hold formally to dogmas belying +the humaneness of their actual practise--here was the puzzling anomaly +that might well give pause to any casual message-bringer. Struggle as he +might, it was like a tangling mesh cast over him--this growing sense of +his own futility. + +Along with this conviction of his powerlessness there came to him a new +sense of reliance upon Nancy. Unconsciously at first he turned to her +for sunlight, big views and quiet power, for the very stimulus he had +been wont to draw from the wide, high reaches of his far-off valley. +Later, came a conscious turning, an open-eyed bringing of all his needs, +to lay them in her waiting lap. Then it was he saw that on that first +night at Edom her confidence and enthusiasm had been things he leaned +upon quite naturally, though unwittingly. The knowledge brought him a +vague unrest. Furtive, elusive impulses, borne to him on the wings of +certain old memories--memories once resolutely put away in the face of +his one, big world-desire--now came to trouble him. + +It seemed that one must forever go in circles. With fine courage he had +made straight off to toil up the high difficult paths of the ideal. +Never had he consciously turned, nor even swerved. Yet here he was at +length upon his old tracks, come again to the wondering girl. + +Did it mean, then, that his soul was baffled--or did it mean that his +soul would not suffer him to baffle it, try as he might? Was that girl +of the old days to greet him with her wondering eyes at the end of every +high path? These and many other questions he asked himself. + +At the close of this day he sought her, eager for the light of her +understanding eyes--for a certain waiting sympathy she never withheld. +As she looked up now with a kind of composed gladness, it seemed to him +that they two alone, out of all the world, were sanely quiet. Silently +he sank into a chair near her and they sat long thus, feeling no need of +words. At last she spoke. + +"Are you coming nearer to it, Bernal?" + +He laughed. + +"I'm farther away than ever, Nance. Probably there's but one creature in +this city to-day as out of place as I am. He's a big, awkward, +country-looking dog, and he was lost on Broadway. Did you ever see a +lost dog in a city street? This fellow was actually in a panic, wholly +demoralised, and yet he seemed to know that he must conceal it for his +own safety. So he affected a fine air of confidence, of being very busy +about an engagement for which he feared he might be late. He would trot +swiftly along for half a block, then pause as if trying to recall the +street number; then trot a little farther, and stop to look back as if +the other party to his engagement might happen along from that +direction. It was a splendid bit of acting, and it deceived them all, in +that street of mutterers and hard faces. He was like one of them, busy +and hurried, but apparently cool, capable, and ominously alert. Only, in +his moments of indecision, his eyes shifted the least bit nervously, as +if to note whether the real fear he felt were detected, and then I could +read all his secret consternation. + +"I'm the same lost dog, Nance. I feel as he felt every time I go into +that street where the poor creatures hurry and talk to themselves from +sheer nervous fatigue." + +He ceased speaking, but she remained silent, fearing lest she say too +little or too much. + +"Nance," he said presently with a slow, whimsical glance, "I'm beginning +to suspect that I'm even more of a fool than Hoover thought me--and he +was rather enthusiastic about it, I assure you!" + +To which she at length answered musingly: + +"If God makes us fools, doubtless he likes to have us thorough. Be a +great fool, Bernal. Don't be a small one." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE INEFFECTIVE MESSAGE + + +The week had gone while he walked in the crowds, feeling his remoteness; +but he knew at last that he was not of the brotherhood of the zealots; +that the very sense of humour by which he saw the fallacies of one +zealot prevented him from becoming another. He lacked the zealot's +conviction of his unique importance, yet one must be such a zealot to +give a message effectively. He began to see that the world could not be +lost; that whatever might be vital in his own message would, soon or +late, be delivered by another. The time mattered not. Could he not be as +reposeful, as patient, as God? + +In spite of which, the impulse to speak his little word would recur; and +it came upon him stoutly one day on his way up town. As the elevated +train slowly rounded a curve he looked into the open window of a room +where a gloomy huddle of yellow-faced, sunken-cheeked, brown-bearded men +bent their heads over busy sewing-machines. Nearest the window, full +before it, was one that touched him--a young man with some hardy spirit +of hope still enduring in his starved face, some stubborn refusal to +recognise the odds against him. And fixed to his machine, where his eyes +might now and then raise to it from his work, was a spray of lilac--his +little spirit flaunting itself gaily even from the cross. The pathos of +it was somehow intensified by the grinding of the wheels that carried +him by it. + +The train creaked its way around the curve--but the face dreaming +happily over the lilac spray in that hopeless room stayed in his mind, +coercing him. + +As he entered the house, Nancy met him. + +"Do go and be host to those men. It's our day for the Ministers' +Meeting," she continued, as he looked puzzled, "and just as they sat +down Allan was called out to one of his people who is sick. Now run like +a good boy and 'tend to them." + +So it came that, while the impulse was still strong upon him, he went in +among the dozen amiable, feeding gentlemen who were not indisposed to +listen to whomsoever might talk--if he did not bore--which is how it +befell that they had presently cause to remark him. + +Not at first, for he mumbled hesitatingly, without authority of manner +or point to his words, but the phrase, "the fundamental defect of the +Christian religion" caused even the Unitarian to gasp over his glass of +mineral water. His green eyes glittered pleasantly upon Bernal from his +dark face with its scraggly beard. + +"That's it, Mr. Linford--tell us that--we need to know that--do we not, +gentlemen?" + +"Speak for yourself, Whittaker," snapped the aggressive little Baptist, +"but doubtless Mr. Linford has something to say." + +Bernal remained unperturbed by this. Very earnestly he continued: +"Christianity is defective, judged even by poor human standards; untrue +by the plain facts of human consciousness." + +"Ah! Now we shall learn!" Father Riley turned his most gracious smile +upon the speaker. + +"Your churches are losing their hold upon men because your religion is +one of separation, here and hereafter--while the one great tendency of +the age is toward brotherhood--oneness. Primitive man had individual +pride--family pride, city pride, state pride, national pride +followed--but we are coming now to the only permissible pride, a world +pride--in which the race feels its oneness. We are nearly there; even +now the spirit that denies this actual brotherhood is confined to the +churches. The people outside more generally than you dream know that God +does not discriminate among religions--that he has a scheme of a dignity +so true that it can no more permit the loss of one black +devil-worshipper than that of the most magnificent of archbishops." + +He stopped, looking inquiringly--almost wistfully, at them. + +Various polite exclamations assured him of their interest. + +"Continue, by all means," urged Whittaker. "I feel that you will have +even Father Riley edified in a moment." + +"The most cynical chap--even for a Unitarian," purled that good man. + +Bernal resumed. + +"Your God is a tribal God who performed his wonders to show that he had +set a difference between Israel and Egypt. Your Saviour continues to set +the same difference: Israel being those who believed his claim to +Godship; Egypt those who find his evidence insufficient. But we humans +daily practise better than this preaching of retaliation. The Church is +losing power because your creeds are fixed while man, never ceasing to +grow, has inevitably gone beyond them--even beyond the teachings of your +Saviour who threatened to separate father from son and mother from +daughter--who would distinguish sheep from goats by the mere +intellectual test of the opinion they formed of his miracles. The world +to-day insists on moral tests--which Christianity has never done." + +"Ah--now we are getting at it," remarked the Methodist, whose twinkling +eyes curiously belied his grimly solemn face. "Who was it that wished to +know the belief of the average unbeliever?" + +"The average unbeliever," answered Bernal promptly, "no longer feels the +need of a Saviour--he knows that he must save himself. He no longer +believes in the God who failed always, from Eden to Calvary, failed even +to save his chosen tribe by that last device of begetting a son of a +human mother who should be sacrificed to him. He no longer believes that +he must have a mediator between himself and that God." + +"Really, most refreshing," chortled Father Riley. "More, more!" and he +rapped for silence. + +"The man of to-day must have a God who never fails. Disguise it as you +will, your Christian God was never loved. No God can be loved who +threatens destruction for not loving him. We cannot love one whom we are +not free _not_ to love." + +"Where shall we find this God--outside of Holy Writ," demanded Floud, +who had once or twice restrained himself with difficulty, in spite of +his amusement. + +"The true God comes to life in your own consciousness, if you will clear +it of the blasphemous preconceptions imposed by Christianity," answered +Bernal so seriously that no one had the heart to interrupt him. "Of +course we can never personify God save as a higher power of self. Moses +did no more; Jesus did no more. And if we could stop with this--be +content with saying 'God is better than the best man'--we should have a +formula permitting endless growth, even as He permits it to us. God has +been more generous to us than the Church has been to Him. While it has +limited Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew, +He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him +morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable +malignity. + +"You see the world has demonstrated facts that disprove the Godship of +your God and your Saviour. We have come, indeed, into a sense of such +certain brotherhood that we know your hell is a falsity. We know--a +knowledge of even the rudiments of psychology proves--_that there will +be a hell for all as long as one of us is there_. Our human nature is +such that one soul in hell would put every other soul there. Daily this +becomes more apparent. We grow constantly more sensitive to the pain of +others. This is the distinctive feature of modern growth--our increasing +tendency to find the sufferings of others intolerable to ourselves. A +disaster now is felt around the world--we burn or starve or freeze or +drown with our remote brothers--and we do what we can to relieve them +because we suffer with them. It seems to me the existence of the +S.P.C.A. proves that hell is either for all of us or for none of +us--because of our oneness. If the suffering of a stray cat becomes our +suffering, do you imagine that the minority of the race which +Christianity saves could be happy knowing that the great majority lay in +torment? + +"Suppose but two were left in hell--Judas Iscariot and Herbert +Spencer--the first great sinner after Jesus and the last of any +consequence. One betrayed his master and the other did likewise, only +with far greater subtlety and wickedness--teaching thousands to +disbelieve his claims to godhood--to regard Christianity as a crude +compound of Greek mythology and Jewish tradition--a thing built of myth +and fable. Even if these two were damned and all the rest were +saved--can you not see that a knowledge of their suffering would +embitter heaven itself to another hell? Father Riley was good enough to +tell us last week of the state of unbaptised infants after death. Will +you please consider coldly the infinite, good God setting a difference +for all eternity between two babies, because over the hairless pate of +one a priest had sprinkled water and spoken words? Can you not see that +this is untrue because it is absurd to our God-given senses of humour +and justice? Do you not see that such a God, in the act of separating +those children, taking into heaven the one that had had its little head +wetted by a good man, and sending the reprobate into what Father Riley +terms, 'in a wide sense, a state of damnation'--" + +Father Riley smiled upon him with winning sweetness. + +"--do you not see that such a God would be shamed off his throne and +out of heaven by the pitying laugh that would go up--even from sinners? + +"You insist that the truth touching faith and morals is in your Bible, +despite its historical inaccuracies. But do you not see that you are +losing influence with the world because this is not so--because a higher +standard of ethics than yours prevails out in the world--a demand for a +veritable fatherhood of God and a veritable brotherhood of man--to +replace the caricatures of those doctrines that Christianity submits." + +"Our young friend seems to think exceeding well of human nature," +chirped Father Riley. + +"Yes," rejoined Bernal. "Isn't it droll that this poor, fallen human +nature, despised and reviled, 'conceived in sin and born in iniquity,' +should at last call the Christian God and Saviour to account, weigh them +by its own standard, find them wanting, and replace them with a greater +God born of itself? Is not that an eloquent proof of the living God that +abides in us?" + +"Has it ever occurred to you, young man, that human nature has its +selfish moments?" asked the high-church rector--between sips of claret +and water. + +"Has it ever occurred to you that human nature has _any_ but selfish +moments?" replied Bernal. "If so, your impression was incorrect." + +"Really, Mr. Linford, have you not just been telling us how glorious is +this nature of man--" + +"I know--I will explain to you," he went on, moving Father Riley to +another indulgent smile by his willingness to instruct the gray-bearded +Congregationalist who had interrupted. + +"When I saw that there must be a hell for all so long as there is a hell +for one--even for Spencer--I suddenly saw there was nothing in any man +to merit the place--unless it were the ignorance of immaturity. For I +saw that man by the very first law of his being can never have any but a +selfish motive. Here again practical psychology sustains me. You cannot +so much as raise your hand without an intention to promote your +happiness--nor are you less selfish if you give your all to the +needy--you are still equally doing that which promotes your happiness. +That it is more blessed to give than to receive is a terse statement of +a law scientifically demonstrable. You all know how far more exquisite +is the pleasure that comes from giving than that which comes from +receiving. Is not one who prefers to give then simply selfish with a +greater wisdom, a finer skill for the result desired--his own pleasure? +The man we call good is not less selfish than the man we call bad--only +wiser in the ways that bring his happiness--riper in that divine +sensitiveness to the feelings of his brother. Selfish happiness is +equally a law with all, though it send one of us to thieving and another +to the cross. + +"Ignorance of this primary truth has kept the world in spiritual +darkness--it has nurtured belief in sin--in a devil, in a God that +permits evil. For when you tell me that my assertion is a mere +quibble--that it matters not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely +selfish--you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there is +no longer any sin. 'Sin' is then seen to be but a mistaken notion of +what brings happiness. Last night's burglar and your bishop differ not +morally but intellectually--one knowing surer ways of achieving his own +happiness, being more sensitive to that oneness of the race which +thrills us all in varying degrees. When you know this--that the +difference is not moral but intellectual, self-righteousness disappears +and with it a belief in moral difference--the last obstacle to the +realisation of our oneness. It is in the church that this fiction of +moral difference has taken its final stand. + +"And not only shall we have no full realisation of the brotherhood of +man until this inevitable, equal selfishness is understood, but we shall +have no rational conception of virtue. There will be no sound morality +until it is taught for its present advantage to the individual, and not +for what it may bring him in a future world. Not until then will it be +taught effectively that the well-being of one is inextricably bound up +with the well-being of all; that while man is always selfish, his +selfish happiness is still contingent on the happiness of his brother." + +The moment of coffee had come. The Unitarian lighted a black cigar and +avidly demanded more reasons why the Christian religion was immoral. + +"Still for the reason that it separates," continued Bernal, "separates +not only hereafter but here. We have kings and serfs, saints and +sinners, soldiers to kill one another--God is still a God of Battle. +There is no Christian army that may not consistently invoke your God's +aid to destroy any other Christian army--none whose spiritual guides do +not pray to God for help in the work of killing other Christians. So +long as you have separation hereafter, you will have these absurd +divisions here. So long as you preach a Saviour who condemns to +everlasting punishment for disbelief, so long you will have men pointing +to high authority for all their schemes of revenge and oppression here. + +"Not until you preach a God big enough to save all can you arouse men to +the truth that all must be saved. Not until you have a God big enough to +love all can you have a church big enough to hold all. + +"An Indian in a western town must have mastered this truth. He had +watched a fight between drunken men in which one shot the other. He said +to me, 'When I see how bad some of my brothers are, I know how good the +Great Spirit must be to love them all!'" + +"Was--was he a member of any church?" inquired the amiable Presbyterian, +with a facetious gleam in his eyes. + +"I didn't ask him--of course we know he wasn't a Presbyterian." + +Hereupon Father Riley and the wicked Unitarian both laughed joyously. +Then the Congregationalist, gazing dreamily through the smoke of his +cigarette, remarked, "You have omitted any reference to the great fact +of Christianity--the sacrifice of the Son of Man." + +"Very well, I will tell you about it," answered the young man quite +earnestly, whereat the Unitarian fairly glowed with wicked +anticipations. + +"Let us face that so-called sacrifice honestly. Jesus died to save those +who could accept his claim to god-ship--believing that he would go to +sit at the right hand of God to judge the world. But look--an engineer +out here the other day died a horrible death to save the lives of a +scant fifty people--their mere physical lives--died out of that simple +sense of oneness which makes us selfishly fear for the suffering of +others--died without any hope of superior exaltation hereafter. Death of +this sort is common. I would not belittle him you call the Saviour--as a +man he is most beautiful and moving to me--but that shall not blind me +to the fact that the sacrificial element in his death is surpassed daily +by common, dull humans." + +A veiled uneasiness was evident on the part of his listeners, but the +speaker gave no heed. + +"This spectacle of sacrifice, of devotion to others, is needed as an +uplift," he went on earnestly, "but why dwell upon one remote--obscured +by claims of a God-jugglery which belittle it if they be true--when all +about you are countless plain, unpretentious men and women dying deaths +and--what is still greater,--living lives of cool, relentless devotion +out of sheer human love. + +"Preach this divineness of human nature and you will once more have a +living church. Preach that our oneness is so real that the best man is +forever shackled to the worst. Preach that sin is but ignorant +selfishness, less admirable than virtue only as ignorance is less +admirable than knowledge. + +"In these two plain laws--the individual's entire and unvarying +selfishness and his ever-increasing sensitiveness to the sufferings of +others--there is the promise not of a heaven and a hell, but of a heaven +for all--which is what the world is more and more emphatically +demanding--which it will eventually produce even here--for we have as +little sensed the possibilities of man's life here as we have divined +the attributes of God himself. + +"Once you drove away from your church the big men, the thinkers, the +fearless--the souls God must love most truly were it possible to +conceive him setting a difference among his creatures. Now you drive +away even the merely intelligent rabble. The average man knows your +defect--knows that one who believes Christ rose from the dead is not by +that fact the moral superior of one who believes he did not; knows, +indeed, of God, that he cannot be a fussy, vain, blustering creature who +is forever failing and forever visiting the punishment for his failures +upon his puppets. + +"This is why you are no longer considered a factor in civilisation, save +as a sort of police-guard upon the very ignorant. And you are losing +this prestige. Even the credulous day-labourer has come to weigh you and +find you wanting--is thrilling with his own God-assurance and stepping +forth to save himself as best he can. + +"But, if you would again draw man, heat him, weld him, hold him--preach +Man to him, show him his own goodness instead of loading him with that +vicious untruth of his conception in iniquity. Preach to him the +limitless devotion of his common dull brothers to one another through +their sense of oneness. Show him the common beautiful, wonderful, +selfish self-giving of humanity, not for an hour or for a day, but for +long hard life-times. Preach the exquisite adjustment of that human +nature which must always seek its own happiness, yet is slowly finding +that that happiness depends on the happiness of all. The lives of daily +crucifixion without hope of reward are abundant all about you--you all +know them. And if once you exploit these actual sublimities of human +nature--of the man in the street--no tale of devotion in Holy Writ will +ever again move you as these do. And when you have preached this long +enough, then will take place in human society, naturally, spontaneously, +that great thing which big men have dreamed of doing with their +artificial devices of socialism and anarchism. For when you have +demonstrated the race's eternal oneness man will be as little tempted to +oppress, starve, enslave, murder or separate his brothers as he is now +tempted to mutilate his own body. Then only will he love his neighbor as +himself--still with a selfish love. + +"Preach Man to man as a discovery in Godhood. You will not revive the +ancient glories of your Church, but you will build a new church to a God +for whom you will not need to quibble or evade or apologise. Then you +will make religion the one force, and you will rally to it those great +minds whose alienation has been both your reproach and your +embarrassment. You will enlist not only the scientist but the poet--and +all between. You will have a God to whom all confess instinctively." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE WOMAN AT THE END OF THE PATH + + +He stopped, noticing that the chairs were pushed back. There was an +unmistakeable air of boredom, though one or two of the men still smoked +thoughtfully. One of these, indeed--the high church rector--even came +back with a question, to the undisguised apprehension of several +brothers. + +"You have formulated a certain fashion of belief, Mr. Linford, one I +dare say appealing to minds that have not yet learned that even reason +must submit to authority; but you must admit that this revelation of God +in the human heart carries no authoritative assurance of immortality." + +Bernal had been sitting in some embarrassment, dismayed at his own +vehemence, but this challenge stirred him. + +"True," he answered, "but let us thank God for uncertainty, if it take +the place of Christian belief in a sparsely peopled heaven and a crowded +hell." + +"Really, you know--" + +"I know nothing of a future life; but I prefer ignorance to a belief +that the most heinous baby that ever died in sin is to languish in a +state of damnation--even 'in a wide sense' as our good friend puts it." + +"But, surely, that is the first great question of all people in all +ages--'If a man die shall he live again?' + +"Because there has never been any dignified conception of a Supreme +Being. I have tried to tell you what my own faith is--faith in a God +wiser and more loving than I am, who, being so, has devised no mean +little scheme of revenge such as you preach. A God more loving than my +own human father, a God whose plan is perfect whether it involve my +living or dying. Whether I shall die to life or to death is not within +my knowledge; but since I know of a truth that the God I believe in must +have a scheme of worth and dignity, I am unconcerned. Whether his plan +demand extinction or immortality, I worship him for it, not holding him +to any trivial fancy of mine. God himself can be no surer of his plan's +perfection than I am. I call this faith--faith the more perfect that it +is without condition, asking neither sign nor miracle." + +"And life is so good that I've no time to whine. If this _ego_ of mine +is presently to become unnecessary in the great Plan, my faith is still +triumphant. It would be interesting to know the end, but it's not so +important as to know that I am no better--only a little wiser in certain +ways--than yesterday's murderer. Living under the perfect plan of a +perfect Creator, I need not trouble about hidden details when so many +not hidden are more vital. When, in some far-off future, we learn to +live here as fully and beautifully as we have power to, I doubt not that +in the natural ways of growth we shall learn more of this detail of life +we call 'death'--but I can imagine nothing of less consequence to one +who has faith. + +"I saw a stanza the other day that tells it well: + + "'We know not whence is life, nor whither death, + Know not the Power that circumscribes our breath. + But yet we do not fear; what made us men, + What gave us love, shall we not trust again?'" + +While quoting the lines his eyes had been straight ahead, absently +dwelling upon the space between the slightly parted doors that gave into +the next room. But even as he spoke, the last line faltered and halted. +His glance slowly stiffened out of widening eyes to the face it had +caught there--a face new, strange, mesmeric, that all at once enchained +him soul and body. With a splendid, reckless might it assailed him--left +him dazed, deaf, speechless. + +It was the face of Nancy, for the first time all its guards down. Full +upon him flamed the illumined eyes that made the face a yielding +radiance; lifted a little was the chin of gentle curves, the under lip +caught as if in that quivering eagerness she no longer breathed--the +face of Nancy, no longer wondering, Nancy at last compelled and +compelling. A moment the warm light flashed from each to each. + +He stopped in a sudden bewilderment, looking blankly, questioningly at +the faces about him. Then out of the first chaos came the sense of +having awakened from some long, quiet sleep--of having suddenly opened +his eyes upon a world from which the morning mists had lifted, to see +himself--and the woman who stood always at the end of that upward +path--face to face for the first time. One by one his outer sensations +returned. At first he heard a blurred murmuring, then he became aware +that some of the men were looking at him curiously, that one of them had +addressed him. He smiled apologetically. + +"I beg your pardon. I--I couldn't have been listening." + +"I merely asked," repeated Floud, "how you expect to satisfy humanity +with the vague hope that you would substitute for the Christian promise +of eternal life." + +He stared stupidly at the questioner. + +"I--I don't know." He passed a hand slowly upward over his forehead. +"Really I can hardly trouble about those matters--there's so much life +to live. I think I knew a moment ago, but I seem to have forgotten, +though it's doubtless no great loss. I dare say it's more important to +be unafraid of life than to be unafraid of death." + +"You were full of reasons a moment ago," reminded Whittaker--"some of +them not uninteresting." + +"Was I? Oh, well, it's a small matter--I've somehow lost hold of it." He +laughed awkwardly. "It seems to have come to me just now that those who +study an apple until it falls from its stem and rots are even more +foolish than those who pluck and eat." + +Again he was silent, with a great hidden impatience for them to be gone. +But Whittaker, the wicked Unitarian, detained them still a moment +longer. + +"How hardly we should believe in a God who saved every one!" he breathed +softly to the remains of his cigar. + +"Humph! Such a God would be a mere mush of concession!" retorted Floud, +the Baptist. + +"And how true," pursued the unruffled Unitarian, "that we cannot worship +a 'mere mush of concession'--how true that our God must hate what we +hate, and punish what we would punish. We might stomach a God who would +save orthodox burglars along with orthodox bishops, but not one who +saved unbaptised infants and adults of unsound doctrine. Dear, dear, +yes! We must have a God with a little human spite in Him or He seems to +be spineless." + +"A hopeless cynic," declared the soft voice of the Catholic--"it's the +Unitarianism working out of him, mind you!" + +"So glad to have met you!" continued the same good man to Bernal. "Your +words are conducive to thought--you're an earnest, decent lad at all +events." + +But Bernal scarcely heard them or identified the speakers. They were to +him but so many noisy wheels of the vast machine, each revolving as it +must. His whole body seemed to send electric sparks of repulsion out to +them to drive them away as quickly as might be. All his energies were +centred to one mighty impulse. + +At last the door closed and he stood alone with the disordered table and +the pushed back chairs, doggedly gathering himself. Then he went to the +doors and with a hand to each, pushed them swiftly apart. + +She stood at the farther side of the room. She seemed to have fled +there, and yet she leaned toward him breathless, again with the under +lip caught fast in its quivering--helpless, piteously helpless. It was +this that stayed him. Had she utterly shrunk away, even had he found her +denying, defiant--the aroused man had prevailed. But seeing her so, he +caught at the back of a chair as if to hold himself. Then he gazed long +and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his. For a moment it +filled him to see and know, to be certain that she knew and did not +deny. But the man in him was not yet a reasoning man--too lately had he +come to life. + +He stepped eagerly toward her, to halt only when one weak white hand +faltered up with absurd pretension of a power to ward him off. Nor was +it her hand that made him stop then. That barrier confessed its +frailness in every drooping line. Again it was the involuntary +submission of her whole poise--she had actually leaned a little further +toward him when he started, even as her hand went up. But the helpless +misery in her eyes was still a defense, passive but sufficient. + +Then she spoke and his tension relaxed a little, the note of helpless +suffering in her voice making him wince and fall back a step. + +"Bernal, Bernal, Bernal! It hurts me so, hurts me so! It's the +Gratcher--isn't it hurting you, too? Oh, it must be!" + +He retreated a little, again grasping the back of the chair with one +hand, but there was no restraint in his voice. + +"Laugh, Nance, laugh! You know what laughing does to them!" + +"Not to this one, Bernal--oh, not to this one!" + +"But it's only a Gratcher, Nance! I've been asleep all these years. Now +I'm awake. I'm in the world again--here, do you understand, before you. +And it's a glad, good world. I'm full of its life--and I've money--think +of that! Yesterday I didn't know what money was. I was going to throw it +away--throw it away as lightly as I threw away all those good, precious +years. How much it seems now, and what fine, powerful stuff it is! And +I, like a sleeping fool, was about to let it go at a mere suggestion +from Allan." + +He stopped, as if under the thrust of a cold, keen blade. + +[Illustration: "He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so +abjectly to his."] + +"Allan--Allan!" he repeated dazedly while the look of pain deepened in +the woman's eyes. He stared back at her dumbly. Then another awakening +became visible in him and he laughed awkwardly. + +"It's funny, Nance--funny--and awful! Do you know that not until I spoke +his name then had a thought of Allan come to me? Can you comprehend it? +I can't now. But it's the truth. I woke up too suddenly. +Allan--Allan--." It sounded as if he were trying to recall some +forgotten personality. "Oh, Allan!" + +The last was more like a cry. He fell into the chair by which he had +stood. And now the woman erected herself, coming forward to stand before +him, her head bowed, her hands convulsively interlocked. + +"Do you see it all, Bernal? Is it plain now? Oh, how it tortured +me--that last Gratcher--the one we make in our own image and yet make to +be perfect. It never hurt me before, but now I know why. It couldn't +hurt me so long as I looked it straight in the eye--but just now my eyes +had to fall before it, and all in a second it was tearing me to pieces. +That's the only defense against this last Gratcher, Bernal, to look it +in the eyes unafraid. And oh, it hurts so--and it's all my own miserable +fault!" + +"No, it's your goodness, Nance." He spoke very quietly now. "Only the +good have a Gratcher that can't be laughed away. My own was late in +coming. Your Gratcher has saved us." + +He stood up and took her unresisting hands in both his own. They rested +there in peace, yielding themselves like tired children to caring arms. + +"Now I shall be healed," she said. + +"It will take me longer, Nance. My hurt is more stubborn, more +complicated. I can't help it. Something in me resists. I see now that I +know too much--too much of you, too much of--" + +She saw that he must have suffered some illumination upon Allan. There +was a look of bitter comprehension in his face as he broke off. She +turned away from it. + +When, an hour later, Allan came in, he found them chatting easily of the +few people of St. Antipas that Bernal had met. At the moment, they were +discussing Mrs. Wyeth, whose face, Bernal declared, was of a rare +perfection. Nance turned to her husband. + +"You must thank Bernal," she said, "for entertaining your guests this +afternoon." + +"He wouldn't if he knew what I said--or how it must have bored them. One +thing, Nance, they won't meet here again until you swear I've gone!" + +"Bernal's heart is right, even if his theology doesn't always please +me," said his brother graciously, examining some cards that lay on the +table. "I see Mrs. Wyeth has called," he continued to Nancy, looking up +from these. + +"Yes. She wanted me to see her sister, poor Mrs. Eversley, who is ill at +her house. I promised to look in to-morrow." + +"I've just been telling Nance how beautiful I think Mrs. Wyeth is," said +Bernal. "She's rare, with that face of the low-browed Greek. It's one of +the memories I shall take back to my Eve-less Eden." + +"She _is_ beautiful," said Nancy. "Of course her nose is the least bit +thin and long, but it rather adds zest to her face. Now I must dress for +dinner." + +When Nancy had gone, Bernal, who had been speaking with a marked +lightness of tone, turned to Allan with an equally marked seriousness. + +"Old chap, you know about that money of mine--of Grandfather's?" + +Allan instantly became attentive. + +"Of course, there's no hurry about that--you must take time to think it +over," he answered. + +"But there _is_ hurry! I shouldn't have waited so long to make up my +mind. + +"Then you _have_ made up your mind?" questioned his brother, with +guarded eagerness. + +"Definitely. It's all yours, Allan. It will help you in what you want to +do. And not having it will help me to do what I want to do--make it +simpler, easier. Take it--and for God's sake be good to Nancy." + +"I can't tell you how you please me, Bernal. Not that I'm avid for +money, but it truly seems more in accord with what must have been +grandfather's real wish. And Nancy--of course I shall be good to +her--though at times she seems unable to please me." + +There was a sanctified displeasure in his tone, as he spoke of Nancy. It +caused Bernal to turn upon him a keen, speculative eye, but only for a +moment. And his next words had to do with matters tangible. "To-morrow +I'll do some of the business that can be done here. Then I'll go up to +Edom and finish the transfers that have to be made there." After a brief +hesitation, he added: "Try to please _her_ a bit, Allan. That's all." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +IN WHICH THE MIRROR IS HELD UP TO HUMAN NATURE + + +When, the next day, Nancy went to pay her promised visit to Mrs. +Eversley, the rectory was steeped in the deep household peace of +mid-afternoon. Both Allan and Bernal had gone out soon after luncheon, +while Aunt Bell had withdrawn into the silence, there to meditate the +first letters of the alphabet of the inexpressible, to hover about the +pleasant line that divides the normal from the subliminal. + +Though bruised and torn, Nancy was still grimly upright in the eye of +duty, still a worthy follower of orthodox ways. Buried in her own +eventful thoughts in that mind-world where love is born and dies, where +beliefs rise and perish but no sound ever disturbs the stillness, she +made her way along the shaded side of the street toward the Wyeth +residence. Not until she had passed several doors beyond the house did +she recall her errand, remember that her walk led to a goal, that she +herself had matters in hand other than thinking, thinking, thinking. + +Retracing her steps, she rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Eversley. +Before the servant could reply, Mrs. Wyeth rustled prettily down the +hall from the library at the back. She wore a gown of primrose yellow. +An unwonted animation lighted the cold perfection of her face, like fire +seen through ice. + +"_So_ glad to see you!" she said with graceful effusion--"And the +Doctor? And that queer, fascinating, puzzling brother of yours, how are +they? So glad! Yes, poor sister keeps to her room and you really mustn't +linger with me an instant. I'm not even going to ask you to sit down. Go +right up. Her door's at the end of the hall, you know. You'll comfort +the poor thing beautifully, you dear!" + +She paused for breath, a vivid smile taking the place of words. Mrs. +Linford, rendered oddly, almost obstinately reserved by this excessive +cordiality, was conscious of something unnatural in that smile--a too +great intensity, like the greenness of artificial palms. + +"Thank you so much for coming, you angel," she went on playfully, "for +doubtless I shall not be visible when you go. You see Donald's off in +the back of the house re-arranging whole shelves of wretched, dusty +books and he fancies that he must have my suggestions." + +"The door at the end of the hall!" she trilled in sweet but unmistakable +dismissal, one arm pointing gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of +draperies, that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that even +Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had admitted to be all but +faultless. And the latter, wondering not a little at the stiff +disposition to have her quickly away, which she had somehow divined +through all the gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, went on +upstairs. As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley's door, the bell of the street +door sounded in her ears. + +Somewhat less than an hour after, she came softly out again, opening and +closing the door noiselessly. So effectually had she soothed the +invalid, that the latter had fallen into a much-needed sleep, and Nancy, +eager to escape to that mind-world where the happenings are so momentous +and the silence is so tense, had crept like a mouse from the room. + +At the top of the stairs she paused to gather up her skirts. Then her +ears seemed to catch the sound of voices on the floor below and she +remained motionless for a second, listening. She had no desire to +encounter for the second time the torrent of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, no +wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably gifted in the art of +arousing in her an aversion of which she was half ashamed. + +No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, deciding that the way +was clear, she descended the thickly carpeted stairs. Near the bottom, +opposite the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused to look +into the big mirror on the opposite wall. As she turned her head for a +final touch to the back of her veil, her eyes became alive to something +in that corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror--something +that held her frozen with embarrassment. + +Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, the gown of Mrs. +Wyeth showed unmistakably--Mrs. Wyeth abandoned to the close, still +embrace of an unrecognized man. + +Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy hesitated, not +knowing whether to retreat or go forward. She had decided to go on, +observing nothing--and of course she _had_ observed nothing save an +agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and Mrs. +Wyeth--when a further revelation arrested her. + +Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of Mrs. Wyeth was +lifted and Mrs. Wyeth's big eyes fastened upon hers through the +impartial mirror. But their expression was not that of the placid matron +observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness. Rather, it was one of +acute dismay--almost fear. Poor Mrs. Weyth, who had just said, +"Doubtless I shall not be visible when you go!" + +Even as she caught this look, Nancy started down the remaining steps, +her cheeks hot from her own wretched awkwardness. She wanted to +hurry--to run; she might still escape without having reason to suspect +that the obscured person was other than he should be in the opinion of +an exacting world. Then, as her hand was at the door, while the silken +rustling of that hurried disentanglement was in her ears, the voice of +Wyeth sounded remotely from the rear of the house. It seemed to come +from far back in the library, removed from them by the length of the +double drawing-rooms--a comfortable, smooth, high-pitched voice--lazy, +drawling-- + +"Oh, _Linford!_" + +_Linford!_ The name seemed to sink into the stillness of the great +house, leaving no ripple behind. Before an answer to the call could +come, she had opened the great door and pulled it sharply to behind her. + +Outside, she lingered a moment as if in serenely absent contemplation of +the street, with the air of one who sought to recall her next +engagement. Then, gathering up her skirts, she went leisurely down the +steps and passed unhurriedly from the view of those dismayed eyes that +she felt upon her from the Wyeth window. + +On the avenue she turned north and was presently alone in a shaded aisle +of the park--that park whose very trees and shrubs seem to have taken on +a hard, knowing look from having been so long made the recipients of +cynical confidences. They seemed to understand perfectly what had +happened, to echo Wyeth's high-pitched, friendly drawl, with an added +touch of mockery that was all their own--"Oh--Linford!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +FOR THE SAKE OF NANCY + + +It was toward six o'clock when she ascended the steps of the rectory. +Bernal, coming from the opposite direction, met her at the door. Back of +his glance, as they came together, was an intimation of hidden things, +and at sight of him she was smitten by an electric flash of wonder. The +voice of Wyeth, that friendly, untroubled voice, she now remembered had +called to no specific Linford. In the paralysis of embarrassment that +had seized her in that darkened hallway, she had failed to recall that +there were at least two Linfords in existence. In an instant her inner +world, wrought into something like order in the past two hours, was +again chaos. + +"Why, Nance--you look like night, when there are no stars--what is it?" +He scanned her with an assumption of jesting earnestness, palpably meant +to conceal some deeper emotion. She put a detaining hand on his arm as +he was about to turn the key in the lock. + +"Bernal, I haven't time to be indirect, or beat about, or anything--so +forgive the abruptness--were you at Mrs. Wyeth's this afternoon?" + +His ear caught the unusual note in her voice, and he was at once +concerned with this rather than with her question. + +"Why, what is it, Nance--what if I was? Are you seeing another +Gratcher?" + +"Bernal, quick, now--please! Don't worry me needlessly! Were you at Mrs. +Wyeth's to-day?" + +Her eyes searched his face. She saw that he was still either puzzled or +confused, but this time he answered plainly, + +"No--I haven't seen that most sightly cold lady to-day--more's the +pity!" + +She breathed one quick little sigh--it seemed to him strangely like a +sigh of relief. + +"I knew you couldn't have been." She laughed a little laugh of secrets. +"I was only wondering foolish wonders--you know how Gratchers must be +humoured right up to the very moment you puff them away with the deadly +laugh." + +Together they went in. Bernal stopped to talk with Aunt Bell, who was +passing through the hall as they entered; while Nancy, with the manner +of one not to be deflected from some set purpose, made straight for +Allan's study. + +In answer to her ominously crisp little knock, she heard his "Come!" and +opened the door. + +He sat facing her at his desk, swinging idly from side to side in the +revolving chair, through the small space the desk permitted. Upon the +blotter before him she saw that he had been drawing interminable +squares, oblongs, triangles and circles, joining them to one another in +aimless, wandering sequence--his sign of a perturbed mind. + +He glanced up with a look of waiting defiance which she knew but masked +all his familiar artillery. + +Instantly she determined to give him no opportunity to use this. She +would end matters with a rush. He was awaiting her attack. She would +make none. + +"I think there is nothing to say," she began quickly. "I could utter +certain words, but they would mean one thing to me and other things to +you--there is no real communication possible between us. Only remember +that this--to-day--matters little--I had already resolved that sooner or +later I must go. This only makes it necessary to go at once." + +She turned to the door which she had held ajar. At her words he sat +forward in his chair, the yellow stars blazing in his eyes. But the +opening was not the one he had counted upon, and before he could alter +his speech to fit it, or could do more than raise a hand to detain her, +she had gone. + +He sat back in his chair, calculating how to meet this mood. Then the +door resounded under a double knock and Bernal came in. + +"Well, old boy, I'll be off to-night. The lawyer is done with me here +and now I'll go to Edom and finish what's to be done there. Then in a +few days I'll be out of this machine and back to the ranche. You know +I've decided that my message to the world would best take the +substantial form of beef--a message which no one will esteem +unpractical." + +He paused, noting the other's general droop of gloom. + +"But what's the trouble, old chap? You look done up!" + +"Bernal--it's all because I am too good-hearted, too unsuspecting. Being +slow to think evil of others, I foolishly assume that others will be +equally charitable. And you don't know what women are--you don't know +how the sentimental ones impose upon a man in my office. I give you my +word of honour as a man--my word of _honour_, mind you!--there never has +been a thing between us but the purest, the most elevated--the loftiest, +most ideal--" + +"Hold on, old chap--I shall have to take the car ahead, you know, if you +won't let me on this one...." + +"--as pure a woman as God ever made, while as for myself, I think my +integrity of purpose and honesty of character, my sense of loyalty +should be sufficiently known--" + +"Say, old boy--" Bernal's face had lighted with a sudden flash of +insight--"is it--I don't wish to be indiscreet--but is it anything about +Mrs. Wyeth?" + +"Then you _do_ know?" + +"Nothing, except that Nance met me at the door just now and puzzled me a +bit by her very curious manner of asking if I had been at the Wyeth's +this afternoon." + +"_What_?" The other turned upon him, his eyes again blazing with the +yellow points, his whole figure alert. "She asked you _that--Really_?" + +"To be sure!" + +"And you said--" + +"'No'--of course--and she mumbled something about having been foolish to +think I could have been. You know, old man, Nance was troubled. I could +see that." + +His brother was now pacing the floor, his head bent from the beautifully +squared shoulders, his face the face of a mind working busily. + +"An idiot I was--she didn't know me--I had only to--" + +Bernal interrupted. + +"Are you talking to yourself, or to me?" + +The rector of St. Antipas turned at one end of his walk. + +"To both of us, brother. I tell you there has been nothing between +us--never anything except the most flawless idealism. I admit that at +the moment Nancy observed us the circumstances were unluckily such that +an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might have misconstrued them. I +will even admit that a woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments +might not unreasonably have been puzzled, but I would tear my heart open +to the world this minute--'Oh, be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as +snow, thou shalt not escape calumny!'" + +"If I follow you, old chap, Nancy observed some scene this afternoon in +which it occurred to her that I might have been an actor." There was +quick pain, a sinking in his heart. + +"She had reason to know it was one of us--and if I had denied it was +I--" + +"I _see_--why didn't you?" + +"I thought she must surely have seen me--and besides"--his voice +softened with affection--"do you think, old chap, I would have shifted a +misunderstanding like that on to _your_ shoulders. Thank God, I am not +yet reduced to shirking the penalties of my own blameless acts, even +when they will be cruelly misconstrued." + +"But you should have done so--It would mean nothing to me, and +everything to you--to that poor girl--poor Nance--always so helpless and +wondering and so pathetically ready to _believe_! She didn't deserve +that you take it upon yourself, Allan!" + +"No--no, don't urge! I may have made mistakes, though I will say that +few men of my--well, my attractions! Why not say it bluntly?--few men of +my attractions, placed as I have been, would have made so few--but I +shall never be found shirking their consequences--it is not in my +nature, thank God, to let another bear the burden--I can always be a +man!--" + +"But, old boy--you must think of poor Nancy--not of me!" Again he felt +the hurt of her suspicion. + +"True--compassion requires that I think of her rather than of my own +pride--and I have--but, you see, it's too late. I committed myself +before I knew she didn't _know_!" + +"Let her believe it is still a mistake--" + +"No, no--it would be trickery--and it's impracticable--I as good as +confessed to her, you see--unless"--he brightened here and stopped in +his walk--"unless she could be made to believe that I meant to shield +you!" + +"That's it! Really, you are an executor, Allan! Now we'll put the poor +girl easy in her mind again. I'll tell her you did it to shield me. You +know it's important--what Nancy thinks of you, old chap--she's your +wife--and--it doesn't matter a bit how meanly--she thinks of me--of +course not. I dare say it will be better for me if she _does_ think +meanly of me--I'll tell her at once--what was it I did?" + +"No--no--she wouldn't believe you now. I dislike to say this, Bernal, +but Nancy is not always so trusting as a good woman should be--she has a +habit of wondering--but--mind you, I could only consent to this for the +sake of her peace of mind--" + +"I understand perfectly, old chap--it will help the peace of mind of all +of us, I begin to see--hers and mine--and yours." + +"Well, then, if she can be made to suspect this other aspect of the +affair without being told directly--ah!--here's a way. Turn that +messenger-call. Now listen--I will have a note sent here addressed to +you by a certain woman. It will be handed to Nancy to give to you. She +will observe the writing--and she will recognise it,--she knows it. You +will have been anxious about this note--expecting it--inquiring for it, +you know. Get your dinner now, then stay in your room so the maid won't +see you when the note comes--she will have to ask Nance where you +are--" + +At dinner, which Bernal had presently with Aunt Bell and two empty +seats, his companion regaled him with comments upon the development of +the religious instinct in mankind, reminding him that should he ever +aspire to a cult of his own he would find Boston a more fertile field +than New York. + +"They're so much broader there, you know," she began. "Really, they'll +believe anything if you manage your effects artistically. And that is +the trouble with you, Bernal. You appeal too little to the imagination. +You must not only have a novelty to preach nowadays, but you must preach +it in a spectacular manner. Now, that assertion of yours that we are all +equally selfish is novel and rather interesting--I've tried to think of +some one's doing some act to make himself unhappy and I find I can't. +And your suggestion of Judas Iscariot and Mr. Spencer as the sole +inmates of hell is not without a certain piquancy. But, my dear boy, you +need a stage-manager. Let your hair grow, wear a red robe, do +healing--" + +He laughed protestingly. "Oh, I'm not a prophet, Aunt Bell--I've learned +that." + +"But you could be, with proper managing. There's that perfectly stunning +beginning with that wild healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you +make nothing of it--it might have happened to anybody and it never came +to anything, except that you went off into the wilderness and stayed +alone. You should tell how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he +told you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. Then get the +reporters about you and talk queerly so that they can make a good story +of it. Also live on rice and speak with an accent--_any_ kind of accent +would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach your message, and +I'd guarantee you a following of thousands in New York in a month. Of +course they'd leave you for the next fellow that came along with a key +to the book of Revelations, or a new diet or something, but you'd keep +them a while." + +Aunt Bell paused, enthusiastic, but somewhat out of breath. + +"I'll quit, Aunt Bell--that's enough--" + +"Mr. Spencer is an example for you. Contrast his hold on the masses with +Mrs. Eddy's, who appeals to the imagination. I'm told by those who have +read his works that he had quite the knack of logic, and yet the +President of Princeton Theological Seminary preaches a sermon in which +he calls him 'the greatest failure of the age.' I read it in this +morning's paper. His text was, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me.' +You see, there was an appeal to the imagination--the most audacious +appeal that the world has ever known--and the crowd will be with this +clergyman who uses it to refute the arguments of a man who worked hard +through forty years of ill-health to get at the mere dry common-sense of +things. If Jesus had descended to logic, he'd never have made a convert. +But he appealed magnificently to the imagination, and see the result!" + +His mind had been dwelling on Allan's trouble, but now he came back to +his gracious adviser. + +"You do me good, Aunt Bell--you've taken all that message nonsense out +of me. I suppose I _could_ be one of them, you know--one of those +fellows that get into trouble--if I saw it was needed; but it isn't. Let +the men who can't help it do it--they have no choice. Hereafter I shall +worry as little about the world's salvation as I do about my own." + +When they had finished dinner he let it be known that he was not a +little anxious concerning a message that was late in arriving, and he +made it a point, indeed, that the maid should advise Mrs. Linford to +this effect, with an inquiry whether she might not have seen the delayed +missive. + +Then, after a word with Allan, he went to his room and from his south +window smoked into the night--smoked into something approaching quietude +a mind that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed girl in +dusky white--the wondering, waiting girl whose hand had trembled into +his so long ago--so many years during which he had been a dreaming fool, +forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of +idealism--forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible +custom to eat one's candy cane instead of preserving it superstitiously +through barren years! + +He knew that he had awakened too late for more than a fleeting vision of +what would have made his life full. Now he must be off, up the path +again, this time knowing certainly that the woman would never more stand +waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations. The +woman was definitely gone. That was something, even though she went with +that absurd, unreasoning, womanish suspicion. And he had one free, dear +look from her to keep through the empty days. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE FELL FINGER OF CALUMNY SEEMS TO BE AGREEABLY DIVERTED + + +Shut in his study, the rector of St. Antipas paced the floor with nicely +measured steps, or sat at his desk to make endless squares, circles, and +triangles. He was engrossed in the latter diversion when he heard the +bell sound below. He sat back to hear the steps of the maid, the opening +of the door; then, after an interval, her steps ascending the stairs and +stopping at his own door; then her knock. + +"A letter for Mr. Bernal, sir!" + +He glanced at the envelope she held, noting its tint. + +"He's not here Nora. Take it to Mrs. Linford. She will know where he +is." + +He heard her go down the hall and knock at another door. She was +compelled to knock twice, and then there was delay before the door +opened. + +He drew some pages of manuscript before him and affected to be busy at a +work of revision, crossing out a word here, interlining one there, +scanning the result with undivided attention. + +When he heard a knock he did not look up, but said, "Come!" Though still +intent at his work, he knew that Nancy stood there, looking from the +letter to him. + +"Nora said you sent this letter to me--it's for Bernal--" + +He answered, still without looking up, + +"I thought he might be with you, or that you might know where he was." + +"I don't." + +He knew that she studied the superscription of the envelope. + +"Well, leave it here on my desk till he comes. I sent it to you only +because I heard him inquiring if a letter had not come for him--he +seemed rather anxious about some letter--troubled, in fact--doubtless +some business affair. I hoped this might be what he was expecting." + +His eyes were still on the page before him, and he crossed out a word +and wrote another above it, after a meditative pause. Still the woman at +the door hesitated. + +"Did you chance to notice the address on the envelope?" + +He glanced at her now for the first time, apparently in some surprise: +"No--it is not my custom to study addresses of letters not my own. Nora +said it was for Bernal and he had seemed really distressed about some +letter or message that didn't come--if you will leave it here--" + +"I wish to hand it to him myself." + +"As you like." He returned to his work, crossing out a whole line and a +half with broad, emphatic marks. Then he bent lower, and the interest in +his page seemed to redouble, for he heard the door of Bernal's room +open. Nancy called: + +"Bernal!" + +He came to the door where she stood and she stepped a little inside so +that he might enter. + +"I am anxious about a letter. Ah, you have it!" + +She was scanning him with a look that was acid to eat out any untruth in +his face. + +"Yes--it just came." She held it out to him. He looked at the front of +the envelope, then up to her half-shut eager eyes--eyes curiously +hardened now--then he blushed flagrantly--a thorough, riotous blush--and +reached for the letter with a pitiful confusion of manner, not again +raising his uneasy eyes to hers. + +"I was expecting--looking--for a message, you know--yes, yes--this is +it--thank you very much, you know!" + +He stammered, his confusion deepened. With the letter clutched eagerly +in his hand he went out. + +She looked after him, intently. When he had shut his own door she +glanced over at the inattentive Allan, once more busy at his manuscript +and apparently unconscious of her presence. + +A long time she stood in silence, trying to moderate the beating of her +heart. Once she turned as if to go, but caught herself and turned again +to look at the bent head of Allan. + +At last it seemed to her that she could trust herself to speak. Closing +the door softly, she went to the big chair at the end of the desk. As +she let herself go into this with a sudden joy in the strength of its +supporting arms, her husband looked up at her inquiringly. + +She did not speak, but returned his gaze; returned it, with such +steadiness that presently he let his own eyes go down before hers with +palpable confusion, as if fearing some secret might lie there plain to +her view. His manner stimulated the suspicion under which she now seemed +to labour. + +"Allan, I must know something at once very clearly. It will make a +mighty difference in your life and in mine." + +"What is it you wish to know?" His glance was oblique and his manner one +of discomfort, the embarrassed discomfort of a man who fears that the +real truth--the truth he has generously striven to withhold--is at last +to come out. + +"That letter which Bernal was so troubled about came from--from that +woman--how could I avoid seeing that when it was handed to me? Did you +know it, too?" + +"Why, Nancy--I knew--of course--I knew he expected--I mean the poor boy +told me--" Here he broke off in the same pitiful confusion that had +marked Bernal's manner at the door--the confusion of apprehended deceit. +Then he began again, as if with gathered wits--"What was I saying? I +know nothing whatever of Bernal's affairs or his letters. Really, how +should I? You see, I have work on my mind." As if to cover his +awkwardness, he seized his pen and hastily began to cross out a phrase +on the page before him. + +"Allan!" Though low, it was so near a cry that he looked up in what +seemed to be alarm. She was leaning forward in the chair, one hand +reaching toward him over the desk, and she spoke rapidly. + +"Allan, I find myself suspecting now that you tried to deceive me this +afternoon--that Bernal did, also, incredible as it sounds--that you +tried to take the blame of that wretched thing off his shoulders. That +letter to him indicates it, his own pitiful embarrassment just now--oh, +an honest man wouldn't have looked as he did!--your own manner at this +instant. You are both trying--Oh, tell me the truth now!--you'll never +dream how badly I need it, what it means to my whole life--tell me, +Allan--for God's sake be honest this instant--my poor head is whirling +with all the lies! Let me feel there is truth somewhere. Listen. I swear +I'll stay by it, wherever it takes me--here or away from here--but I +must have it. Oh, Allan, if it should be in you, after all--Allan! dear, +_dear_--Oh! I do see it now--you _can't_ deceive--you _can't_ deceive!" + +Slowly at first his head bent under her words, bent in cowardly evasion +of her sharp glance, the sidelong shiftings of his eyes portraying him, +the generous liar, brought at last to bay by his own honest clumsiness. +Then, as her appeal grew warmer, tenderer, more insistent, the fine head +was suddenly erected and proud confession was written plainly over the +glowing face--that beautiful contrition of one who has willed to bear a +brother's shame and failed from lack of genius in the devious ways of +deceit. + +Now he stood nobly from his chair and she was up with a little loving +rush to his arms. Then, as he would have held her protectingly, she +gently pushed away. + +"Don't--don't take me yet, dear--I should be crying in another +moment--I'm so--so _beaten_--and I want not to cry till I've told you, +oh, so many things! Sit again and let us talk calmly first. Now +why--_why_ did you pretend this wretched thing?" + +He faced her proudly, with the big, honest, clumsy dignity of a rugged +man--and there was a loving quiet in his tones that touched her +ineffably. + +"Poor Bernal had told me his--his _contretemps_. The rest is simple. He +is my brother. The last I remember of our mother is her straining me to +her poor breast and saying, 'Oh, take care of little Bernal!'" Tears +were glistening in his eyes. + +"From the very freedom of the poor boy's talk about religious matters, +it is the more urgent that his conduct be irreproachable. I could not +bear that even you should think a shameful thing of him." + +She looked at him with swimming eyes, yet held her tears in check +through the very excitement of this splendid new admiration for him. + +"But that was foolish--quixotic--" + +"You will never know, little woman, what a brother's love is. Don't you +remember years ago I told you that I would stand by Bernal, come what +might. Did you think that was idle boasting?" + +"But you were willing to have me suspect _that_ of you!" + +He spoke with a sad, sweet gentleness now, as one might speak who had +long suffered hurts in secret. + +"Dearest--dear little woman--I already knew that I had been unable to +retain your love--God knows I tried--but in some way I had proved +unworthy of it. I had come to believe--painful and humiliating though +that belief was--that you could not think less of me--your words +to-night proved that I was right--you would have gone away, even without +this. But at least my poor brother might still seem good to you." + +"Oh, you poor, foolish, foolish, man--And yet, Allan, nothing less than +this would have shown you truly to me. I can speak plainly now--indeed I +must, for once. Allan, you have ways--mannerisms--that are unfortunate. +They raised in me a conviction that you were not genuine--that you were +somehow false. Don't let it hurt now, dear, for see--this one little +unstudied, impetuous act of devotion, simple and instinctive with your +generous heart, has revealed your true self to me as nothing else could +have done. Oh, don't you see how you have given me at last what I had to +have, if we were to live on together--something in you to _hold_ to--a +foundation to rest upon--something I can know in my heart of hearts is +stable--despite any outward, traitorous _seeming_! Now forever I can be +loving, and loyal, in spite of all those signs which I see at last are +misleading." + +Again and again she sought to envelope him with acceptable praises, +while he gazed fondly at her from that justified pride in his own +stanchness--murmuring, "Nance, you please me--you _please_ me!" + +"Don't you see, dear? I couldn't reach you before. You gave me nothing +to believe in--not even God. That seeming lack of genuineness in you +stifled my soul. I could no longer even want to be good--and all that +for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness in you." + +"No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, +Nance--" + +"Say unfortunate, Allan--not faulty. I shall never again believe a fault +of you. How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments--and +what stupids they are who say she is intuitive! Do you know, I believed +in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me +believe in everything else--in God and goodness and virtue and truth--in +all the good things we like to believe in--yet see what he did!" + +"My dear, I know little of the circumstances, but--" + +"It isn't _that_--I can't judge him in that--but this I must +judge--Bernal, when he saw I did not know who had been there, was +willing I should think it was you. To retain my respect he was willing +to betray you." She laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in +pain. "You will never know just what the thought of that boy has been to +me all these years, and especially this last week. But now--poor weak +Bernal! Poor _Judas_, indeed!" There was a kind of anguished bitterness +in the last words. + +"My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy," remonstrated Allan +gently. "Remember that whatever his mistakes, he has a good heart--and +he is my brother." + +"Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you--Can't you see that is +precisely what he _lacks_--a good heart? Oh, dearest, I needed this--to +show Bernal to me not less than to show you to me. There were grave +reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you this moment." + +There were steps along the hall and a knock at the door. + +"It must be Bernal," he said--"he was to leave about this time." + +"I can't see him again." + +"Just this once, dear--for _my_ sake! Come!" + +Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at his feet. With his +hat he held a letter. Allan went forward to meet him. Nancy stood up to +study the lines of an etching on the wall. + +"I've come to say good-bye, you know." She heard the miserable +embarrassment of his tones, and knew, though she did not glance at him, +that there was a shameful droop to his whole figure. + +Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter he held. + +"Good-bye--old chap--God bless you!" + +He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of guilt, something about +being sorry to go. + +"And I don't want to preach, old chap," continued Allan, giving the hand +a farewell grip, "but remember there are always two pairs of arms that +will never be shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died to +save us,--and my own poor arms, hardly less loving." + +"Thank you, old boy--I'll go back to Hoover"--he looked hesitatingly at +the profile of Nancy--"Hoover thinks it's all rather droll, you +know--Good-bye, old boy! Good-bye, Nancy." + +"My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye." + +She turned and said "good-bye." He stepped toward her--seeming to her to +slink as he walked--but he held out his hand and she gave him her own, +cold, and unyielding. He went out, with a last awkward "Good-bye, old +chap!" to Allan. + +Nancy turned to face her husband, putting out her hands to him. He had +removed from its envelope the letter Bernal had left him, and seemed +about to put it rather hastily into his pocket, but she seized it +playfully, not noting that his hand gave it up with a certain +reluctance, her eyes upon his face. + +"No more business to-night--we have to talk. Oh, I must tell you so much +that has troubled me and made me doubt, my dear--and my poor mind has +been up and down like a see-saw. I wonder it's not a wreck. Come, put +away your business--there." She placed the letter and its envelope on +the desk. + +"Now sit here while I tell you things." + +An hour they were there, lingering in talk--talking in a circle; for at +regular intervals Nancy must return to this: "I believe no wife ever +goes away until there is absolutely no shred of possibility left--no +last bit of realness to hold her. But now I know your stanchness." + +"Really, Nance--I can't tell you how much you please me." + +There was a knock at the door. They looked at each other bewildered. + +"The telephone, sir," said the maid in response to Allan's tardy "Come +in." + +When he had gone, whistling cheerily, she walked nervously about the +room, studying familiar objects from out of her animated meditation. + +Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into his chair and gazed +fondly over its litter of papers. With a little instinctive move to +bring somewhat of order to the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow +brushed to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge of +the desk. + +As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left +lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly +legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it +was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of +it had flashed irrevocably to her mind's centre. + +When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, she was standing +by the desk. She held the letter in both hands and over it her eyes +flamed--blasted. + +Divining what she had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to +face this new emergency. But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her +hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched for +the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, hesitatingly, expecting +some word from her to guide him along the proper line of defense. + +"I am sure, my dear--if you had only--only trusted me--implicitly--your +opinion of this affair--" + +At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening into a wild, +grim intensity. + +"Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and it can't hurt me." + +"In the eyes?" he questioned, blankly. + +"I can _go_ now." + +"You will make me the laughing-stock of this town!" + +For the first time in their life together there was the heat of real +anger in his voice. Yet she did not seem to hear. + +"Yes--that last terrible Gratcher can't hurt me now." + +He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity which he felt was +demanded of him. + +"I don't understand you!" + +Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she heard at last. + +"But _he_ will--_he_ will!" she cried exultingly, and her eyes were wet +with an unexplained gladness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +A MERE BIT OF GOSSIP + + +The Ministers' Meeting of the following Tuesday was pleasantly enlivened +with gossip--retained, of course, within seemly bounds. There was absent +the Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, said lately to +have emerged from a state of spiritual chrysalis into a world made new +with truths that were yet old. It was concerning this circumstance that +discreet expressions were oftenest heard during the function. + +One brother declared that the Linfords were both extremists: one with +his absurdly radical disbelief in revealed religion; the other flying at +last to the Mother Church for that authority which he professed not to +find in his own. + +Another asserted that in talking with Dr. Linford now, one brought away +the notion that in renouncing his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he +had gone to the extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the Mother +Church might become his only bride. True, Linford said nothing at all +like this;--the idea was fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words +of his. Yet it left a track across the mind. It seemed to be the very +spirit of his speech upon the subject. Certainly no other reason had +been suggested for the regrettable, severance of this domestic tie. +Conjecture was futile and Mrs. Linford, secluded in her country home at +Edom, had steadfastly refused, so said the public prints, to give any +reason whatsoever. + +His soup finished, the Reverend Mr. Whittaker unfolded the early edition +of an evening paper to a page which bore an excellent likeness of Dr. +Linford. + +"I'll read you some things from his letter," he said, "though I'll +confess I don't wholly approve his taste in giving it to the press. +However--here's one bit: + +"'When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church I dreamed of +wielding an influence that would tend to harmonise the conflicting +schools of churchmanship. It seemed to me that my little life might be +of value, as I comprehended the essentials of church citizenship. I will +not dwell upon my difficulties. The present is no time to murmur. +Suffice it to say, I have long held, I have taught, nearly every +Catholic doctrine not actually denied by the Anglican formularies; and I +have accepted and revived in St. Antipas every Catholic practice not +positively forbidden. + +"But I have lately become convinced that the Anglican orders of the +ministry are invalid. I am persuaded that a priest ordained into the +Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a +sacrificial sense. Could I be less than true to my inner faith in a +matter touching the sacred verity of the Real Presence--the actual body +and blood of our Saviour? + +"After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly whither God has been +pleased to lead me. In my humble sight the only spiritual body that +actually claims to teach truth upon authority, the only body divinely +protected from teaching error, is the Holy, Catholic and Roman Church. + +"For the last time I have exercised my private judgment, as every man +must exercise it once, at least, and I now seek communion with this +largest and oldest body of Christians in the world. I have faced an +emergency fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. I have met +it; the rest is with my God. Praying that I might be adorned with the +splendours of holiness, and knowing that the prayer of him that humbleth +himself shall pierce the clouds, I took for my motto this sentence from +Huxley: 'Sit down before fact as a little child; be prepared to give up +every preconceived notion; follow humbly wherever and to whatever +abysses Nature leads.' Presently, God willing, I shall be in communion +with the See of Rome, where I feel that there is a future for me!" + +The reader had been absently stabbing at his fish with an aimless fork. +He now laid down his paper to give the food his entire attention. + +"You see," began Floud, "I say one brother is quite as extreme as the +other." + +Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker to finish the letter. + +"Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be stale before we +reach it--so hasten now--I've a presentiment that our friend goes still +farther afield." + +Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful look, and resumed +the reading. + +"May I conclude by reminding you that the issue between Christianity and +science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity +rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the +whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God +for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation +and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the +status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy--a peasant moralist +with certain delusions of grandeur--an agitator and heretic whom the +authorities of his time executed for stirring up the people. In short, +the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the divinity of the God of +Moses, and this in turn rests upon the historical truth of Genesis. If +the Fall of man be successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a +figment of the Jewish imagination--Jesus becomes man. And this is what +Science asserts, while we of the outer churches, through cowardice or +indolence--too often, alas! through our own skepticism--have allowed +Science thus to obscure the issue. We have fatuously thought to +surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour--not perceiving +that we must keep both or neither. + +"There is the issue. The Church says that man is born under the curse of +God and so remains until redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church, +by the blood of God's only begotten Son. + +"Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily from remote +brute ancestors. If science be right--and by _mere evidence_ its +contention is plausible--then original sin is a figment and natural man +is a glorious triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no +saviour--since he is under no curse of God--but having every reason to +believe that the divine favour has ever attended him in his upward +trend. + +"But if one finds _mere evidence_ insufficient to outweigh that most +glorious death on Calvary, if one regards that crucifixion as a tear of +faith on the world's cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then +one must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock of Original +Sin upon which the Christ is builded. For the ramparts of Protestantism +are honeycombed with infidelity--and what is most saddening, they are +giving way to blows from within. Protestantism need no longer fear the +onslaughts of atheistic outlaws: what concerns it is the fact that the +stronghold of destructive criticism is now within its own ranks--a +stronghold manned by teachers professedly orthodox. + +"It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found safety in the +Mother Church. Only there is one compelled by adequate authority to +believe. There alone does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot +relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating those that rest +upon it. + +"For another vital matter, only in the Catholic Church do I find +combated with uncompromising boldness that peculiarly modern and vicious +sentimentality which is preached as 'universal brotherhood.' It is a +doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses outside the true +Church, a chimera of visionaries who must be admitted to be dishonest, +since again and again has it been pointed out to them that their +doctrine is unchristian--impiously and preposterously unchristian. +Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, as to +God's divine ordinance of prince and subject, noble and plebeian, master +and proletariat, learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in +_material_ equality--only in the bonds of love to help one another +attain their _moral_ welfare on earth and their last end in heaven. Most +pointedly does his Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal +brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the social members +only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have +sinned in Adam, and have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the +sacrifice of our Lord. + +"Upon these two rocks--of original sin and of prince and subject, riches +and poverty--by divine right, the Catholic Church has taken its stand; +and within this church will the final battle be fought on these issues. +Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to fight upon His side +against the hordes of infidelity and the preachers of an unchristian +social equality!" + +There were little exclamations about the table as Whittaker finished and +returned at last to his fish. To Father Riley it occurred that these +would have been more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence. +In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent silence in lieu of remarks +that might too easily have been indiscreet. + +"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen--I'll listen blandly whilst I +disarticulate this beautiful bird." + +"I say one is quite as extreme as the other," again declared the +discoverer of this fact, feeling that his perspicacity had not been +sufficiently remarked. + +"I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism," suggested Father +Riley. + +"Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young man," remarked the +amiable Presbyterian--"I trust God's Providence to care for children and +fools--" + +"And yet I found his remarks suggestive," said the twinkling-eyed +Methodist. "That is, we asked for the belief of the average +non-church-goer--and I dare say he gave it to us. It occurs to me +further that he has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words +what so many of us declare with academic flourishes. We can all name a +dozen treatises written by theologians ostensibly orthodox which +actually justify his utterances. It seems to me, then, that we may +profit by his blasphemies." + +"How?" demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness. + +"Ah--that is what the Church must determine. We already know how to +reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking--but how reach the +educated--the science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest, +biggest minds are outside the Church--indifferentists or downright +opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men like +these to perish--I don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley, +or Spencer, or even Darwin--Question: has the Church power to save the +educated?" + +"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled Father Riley. + +"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," added Whittaker. + +"Gentlemen, you jest with me--but I shall continue to feel grateful to +our slightly dogmatic young friend for his artless brutalities. Now I +know what the business man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has +lost interest in the church." + +"There's a large class we can't take from you," said Father Riley--"that +class with whom religion is a mode of respectability." + +"And you can't take our higher critics, either--more's the pity!" + +"On my word, now, gentlemen," returned the Catholic, again, "that was a +dear, blasphemous young whelp! You know, I rather liked him. Bless the +soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I could punish +the guiltless indecence of a babe--he was that shockingly naif!" + +"He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration," repeated the +high-church rector. + +"And he stands for our knottiest problem," said the Presbyterian. + +"A problem all the knottier, I suspect," began Whittaker-- + +"Didn't I _tell_ you?" interrupted Father Riley. "Oh, the outrageous +cynic! Be braced for him, now!" + +"I was only going to suggest," resumed the wicked Unitarian, calmly, +"that those people, Linford and his brother--and even that singularly +effective Mrs. Linford, with her inferable views about divorce--you know +I dare say that they--really you know--that they possess the courage +of--" + +"Their _convictions_!" concluded little Floud, impatient alike of the +speaker's hesitation and the expected platitude. + +"No--I was about to say--the courage--of ours." + +A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy. Father Riley +smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, "So cynical, even for a +Unitarian!" as if to himself in playful confidence. + +But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn beard and the +salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully to safe ground in a discussion +of the ethnic Trinities. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEEKER*** + + +******* This file should be named 15797.txt or 15797.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/7/9/15797 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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