“And what’s ‘fore-ornained,’ Mother?” The hazel grey eyes searched the
face, pale and luminous as if with an inner light, leaning toward him.
“What’s ‘fore-ornained?’”
“‘Fore-ordained,’ darling? Why, it means—well, let me see—why, well—it’s
a little hard to explain, darling.”
“I’m glad it is, Mother, because I don’t want to be stupid. I’m glad you
don’t know either.”
“Oh, well, I don’t quite say that, Paul, but it is a little difficult.
You see it is difficult to explain about God.”
“Oh, no! Not difficult about God. Why! I know God just as well
as—anything.”
“Do you, dear?”
“Yes, and I often see Him——”
“See Him, darling?” The mother’s voice was a little shocked. “What _do_
you mean? When do you see Him?”
“Oh, lots of times. But mostly when I lie down on my back under the big
pine trees away up on the hill here, Mother, and look away up between
the big tops into the clouds—no, I mean behind the clouds—way up through
the little blue holes—I see Him looking down at me, quiet, quiet, oh,
awful quiet—just like He was watching and thinking—you know, just like
you sometimes when you look far, far away over the river and away far
behind the mountains, at something you don’t see. That’s the way He
looks down through the clouds and between the trees, and He sees me too
but He never says anything out loud—just looks and looks, and
whispers—just like little winds.”
“And what does He look like, darling? I mean what—who does He make you
think of?” asked the mother.
“Oh, I don’t know azackly. Oh, yes, a’course—why, I never thought
before, Mother—it’s you, a’course. Only He’s a man an’ bigger—oh, much
bigger, and stronger.” The little boy paused a moment or two, then said
shyly, “An’ I like Him, Mother, awful well.”
“Do you, darling? And why?”
“Oh, I dunno. He’s always nice and pleased looking. An’ I think He likes
me. But, Mother, you didn’t answer me about that word ‘fore-ornained.’”
“‘Fore-ordained?’ Well, let me see—what does it say? ‘The decrees of God
are His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will, whereby
for His own glory He hath fore-ordained whatsoever comes to pass.’ Well,
that just means, Paul, that God has arranged beforehand everything that
happens in the world.”
“Everything? To everybody? Every single thing?”
“Yes. Yes, dear. Now, we’ll go on.”
“But everything, Mother? To Blazes too?” insisted the boy, his eye upon
the nondescript mongrel stretched at ease on the grass in the shade of
the verandah.
“To Blazes? Why—I suppose so—yes.”
“Are you sure, Mother, about Blazes?” said the boy, with a child’s
passion for absolutism.
“Yes, of course—but now let us get on.” The mother, from long
experience, feared a pitfall.
“God didn’t arrange about Blazes’ ear. It was the big wildcat did that
when Blazes sailed into ’im. Daddy said so,” said the boy triumphantly
marshalling his secondary causes in the great line of causation. “I
guess God doesn’t arrange for dogs, does He, Mother?”
“Why—yes, dear.”
“But are you sure, Mother, certain sure? Sure as death?” insisted the
boy.
“‘Sure as death?’ Where did you get that, Paul?”
“Oh, that’s what Jinny says, only she says, ‘sheer as deeth,’” said the
little lad, proud of the superiority of his diction over that of his old
Scottish nurse. “Are you sure, Mother, about Blazes?” he persisted.
“Yes, dear, I am sure. You see, Blazes had to learn that it’s dangerous
to ‘sail into’ wolves—or a wildcat, was it?—and so——”
“And so God arranged the wildcat for to teach him. My, that was awful
clever of God. And God arranged for the wildcat to be shot, Mother,
didn’t He? I guess He doesn’t like wildcats, does He? But—” the vivid
face clouded over—“but, Mother, did God arrange—” the deepening note of
anxiety was painfully present—“God didn’t arrange for the Bunn boys to
drown in the river.” The delicate face had gone white, the lips were
drawn, the grey hazel eyes staring, the voice fallen to a tremulous,
passionate undertone. His little soul was passing into an eclipse of
faith. “Whatsoever comes to pass.” Against the age-long creed of a God
Whose Will runs as the supreme law throughout the universe of men and
things, across the wreckage of empires, through seas of blood and tears,
working out with serene, unswerving purpose the glory of God, this
tender, loving, sensitive heart hurled itself in passionate protest.
“He did not, Mother!” cried the boy, his fists clenched, his eyes
ablaze, his voice vibrating in vehement and indignant rage. “He did not
arrange them to go. They just went themselves, and their father told
them not to. They went themselves. He did not arrange! He did not
arrange!” The voice broke in its passionate championing of his God Whom
he had seen up next the blue, looking down between the tree tops, with
kindly face, the God Whom “he liked awful well” and Who “liked him.”
Startled, acutely distressed, the mother sat gazing at the defiantly
passionate face: startled to find how intense was her sympathy with that
passionate protest of her little lad, distressed that she found no word
wherewith to make answer.
“Hello! old chap, what’s the row? What’s up here?”
A tall man came round the corner of the house, a photographer’s tripod
and camera over his shoulder. The boy hesitated a perceptible moment. He
stood somewhat in awe of his father, but his passion swept away his
fear.
“God did not arrange for the Bunn boys to be drowned in the river, did
He, Daddy? They just went themselves, and their father told them not to.
God did not arrange it. They did it themselves.”
With a swift glance the father took in the salient features of the
scene, the pale face of the boy with its trembling lips and burning
eyes, the startled, perplexed and distressed face of his mother.
“Certainly, they went themselves,” said the father heartily. “They were
told not to go, they knew that the high water was dangerous and that the
old dugout wasn’t safe, but they _would_ go. Poor chaps, it was awfully
hard lines, but they wouldn’t take advice.”
“I knew it, I knew it, Daddy!” cried the boy, breaking into a storm of
tears. “I knew He wouldn’t do anything bad. I just knew He wouldn’t hurt
anybody——”
The mother caught him in her arms and held him fast.
“Of course He wouldn’t, darling. You didn’t understand—we none of us
understand, but we know He won’t do anything unkind, or to hurt us. We
are sure of that, we are sure of that.” Her own tears were flowing as
she rocked the boy in her arms. “But,” she added, more to herself than
to the boy in her arms, “it is hard to understand”—her eyes wandered up
the hillside at the back of the bungalow to a little mound enclosed in a
white paling—“no, we can’t understand. We will just have to wait, and
wait, and be sure He doesn’t do anything unkind.”
“O’ course, I knew He couldn’t,” said little Paul, snuggling down into
her arms.
“I would suggest a more elementary course of theology for a boy of
eight—or nine, is he?—dear,” said her husband, grinning at her.
“Perhaps we had better stop it,” sighed the mother, “at least, for a
while. But I did want to go through with it.”
“But, my dear, what earthly use is that stuff? I don’t say,” he hastened
to add, reading her face, “it isn’t the very finest system of
iron-bound, steel-clad theology ever given to mortal mind to chew upon.
But, after all, can you reasonably expect the infant there to take in
propositions upon which the world’s thinkers have been arranged in
opposing camps from the great Socrates down to your great little self?”
“And yet, after all, a child is no more puzzled about these
mysteries—free will, determinism and all that—than are the best and
wisest of men today. So why not give him the formulæ? I think we will go
on.”
“Well, you know I don’t agree. And you know you belong to the ancient
pedagogic school in this,” chaffed her husband.
“Yes, I know we don’t agree,” she smiled, “but I would like to go
through the Catechism. After all, it is a wonderful little book, you
know.”
“Wonderful! I should say! Nothing like it has ever been put forth by the
human mind. But——”
“Oh, I know all you would say, but I would like to go on——”
“So would I, Mother. And I’m going to go right through, just like you
did when you were a little girl. I’m over to ‘the sinfulness o’ that
mistake wherein a man fell’ and I’ll be at ‘the misery o’ that mistake’
next week.”
His father shouted.
“Never mind, dear,” said the mother, with difficulty controlling her
face. “Your father forgets he was a little boy himself once. Indeed, I
don’t believe he could say the question himself.”
“What’ll you bet?” said the father. “I learned the thing from cover to
cover when I was a kid—got ten bob for saying it before the whole school
in a contest.”
“Make him say it, Mother,” cried the boy, springing to his feet. “Make
him say ‘the sinfulness o’ that mistake’ and ‘the misery o’ that
mistake’ too.”
Violently protesting, but all in vain, the father was made to repeat not
only “the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell” but “the misery
of that estate” as well, which he did only after some considerable
prompting by the delighted boy and his mother.
“So you’re going through with it, are you, laddie?” said his father,
when he had emerged, somewhat chastened in spirit, from his ordeal.
“Right through to the very end, Daddy, same as Mother did.”
“And me too. Don’t forget your father’s early triumphs. And a lot of
good it has done me, eh, Mother?”
“You never know, dear, what good it has done you.”
“Or what harm. Luckily I never tried to understand it, like this young
philosopher.”
“What’s a philofisser, Mother?”
“A person who is very fond of knowing things, dear.”
“All right, I’m one, Mother. And I’m going to know everything in the
Cakism——”
“Catechism, dear.”
“Yes, the Catism—all about God and what He does and what He doesn’t do
too, Mother. ’Specially the things He doesn’t do. I don’t like those
things. Who does arrange the bad things, Mother?”
“Here, youngster, you’ll have us all frogging in deep water in another
jiffy and shouting for help,” said the father. “That’ll do. Take your
mother up the hill for a walk. It is getting cool enough for a walk, eh,
what?”
“I believe I am a little too tired,” said the mother, wistfully looking
up the hill.
“Oh, go on, Mother. Take it easy. A little walk will do you good.”
“Come on, Mother. I’ll take care of you,” said the boy stoutly.
“Come along then, laddie.”
The man stood looking after them as they toiled uphill among the pines,
the mother pausing now and again, ostensibly to pick a red lily or to
admire some newly opening vista through the aisled forest.
“My God!” he said, through his teeth. “She is getting weaker. She is!
She is! We must get her out of this to some one who knows. Must raise
the money somehow.”
He swore a deep oath, and, passing into the bungalow, sat down to drink
his heartache numb in Scotch whiskey.