The Seeker Part 26

"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. G.o.d 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-G.o.d, 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 a.s.sume that the world wants truth when it wants only to be a.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstance 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, pa.s.sionate insects will be blown to bits. He says if the world comes to an end in his lifetime, he will know G.o.d 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 G.o.d laughs when He looks at us--that the little Mohammedans and Christians and things will be burned for their blasphemy of believing G.o.d 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 G.o.d."

"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. G.o.d 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 gla.s.s to know if the restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbia.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.king 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion to express himself.

"Nance," he said on another night, "when you have a real faith in G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce--but for a certain mysterious resistance. That's G.o.d. 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.l'; 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 sanct.i.ty of the home."

"I doubt if the sanct.i.ty 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 sanct.i.ty. I never thought much about divorce, but I can see that much at once. Of course, Allan takes the Church's att.i.tude, which survives from a time when a woman was bought and owned; when the G.o.d of Moses cla.s.sed her with the ox and the a.s.s 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."