The Seeker Part 12

"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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumed 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 appet.i.te 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 h.e.l.l--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 h.e.l.l and my father in heaven, he would blaspheme G.o.d to His face for a monster and come to h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.dless, scoffing, unbaptised father in h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d'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 fort.i.tude 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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d 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 s.e.x. 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 G.o.d 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 a.n.a.logy? 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 t.i.tle 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 "Ra.s.selas, 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 Ra.s.selas 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 a.n.a.logy 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 b.l.o.o.d.y. 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 G.o.d'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 inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses. 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 G.o.d of Moses who cursed them, Christians yet a.s.sume 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 c.u.mpston? 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d who is Jesus, nor disown Jesus who is our G.o.d, 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 d.a.m.ned."