RETROSPECTIVE
Rufus tramped the seven long miles to Tregannon like one in a dream. Up
hill and down dale he swung his way, heedless of the milestones and
untroubled by distance. The short winter's day faded into darkness
before he had covered half the journey. A little later the moon sailed
slowly up in the eastern sky and flung weird shadows across the road,
but he paid no heed. Through sleepy villages and hamlets he tramped, by
lonely cottages and splashing water-wheels, but his thoughts were back
in the quiet lane outside St. Gaved, and the warm hand of Madeline
Grover still trembled in his.
He had tried to forget her, tried to keep out of her way; but what was
the use? She had come into his life for good or ill, and she had come to
stay. Until he ceased to draw breath she would dominate his heart, and
it was only waste of strength and energy to fight against his fate.
He hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad. If he had to leave the
world, loving her would make it all the harder, he knew. If his
enterprise succeeded and his life stretched out to its natural span, the
burden of an unrequited love would always press heavy upon him. And yet
to love at all was worth living for. The thrill of her touch, the glance
of her sweet, honest eyes, made heaven for the moment. Let the future
go. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. Twelve months hence
he might be sleeping in the dust, and she might be the wife of Gervase
Tregony. It was foolish, therefore, to anticipate the future. To-day
alone was his, and he would make the most of it, and let his heart go
out in free, unfettered affection, giving all and asking for nothing in
return. It was in the inspiration and exaltation of this feeling that he
swung along the quiet country lanes. No one could hinder him from
loving, and love was its own reward. The joy was not so much in
receiving as in giving. When love became selfish it ceased to be love.
Madeline might never be his in the conventional sense. She might never
know how much she had been to him, might never guess how much he loved
her. That might not be all loss; it might, indeed, be gain. He felt
already that he was a better man for this great passion that had come
into his life--less selfish, less self-centred, less bitter and
infinitely more pitiful.
He found his grandfather, Rev. Reuben Sterne, still active and alert, in
spite of the eighty-four winters that had passed over his head. He was
no less sure of his election now than he was sixty years ago, when he
was first called to the ministry, and he was as anxious to remain a
little longer on the earth as he was in the flowery days of his youth.
He extended to his grandson a grave and unemotional welcome, and then
led the way into the little sitting-room, where his wife sat deep in an
easy chair, a little, shrunken thing, who looked as if all the sap had
dried out of her veins. Her welcome, however, was much warmer than her
husband's, and the tears came into her faded eyes when he bent down to
kiss her.
While supper was being got ready Rufus stretched himself in an easy
chair before the fire and listened while the old people talked.
"Ah me, Rufus," Mrs. Sterne said, in her thin, quavering voice. "It is
just sixteen years ago yesterday since news came that your father was
dead. How time flies, to be sure, and your poor mother survived the
shock just six months and a day."
Rufus had heard the story recalled nearly every Christmas Eve since.
Whoever might forget, the little grandmother remembered, Joshua
Sterne--Rufus's father--was her firstborn and only child, and the wound
caused by his death never seemed to heal.
Rufus listened with no poignant sense of grief. His father had crossed
the Atlantic to seek his fortune when he, Rufus, was little more than
out-of-arms, and he had never returned. Rufus fancied that he remembered
him. But he was never quite sure. The recollection--if such it was--was
so vague and indistinct that it seemed little more than the shadow of a
dream.
He remembered well enough the day when the news came of his father's
death. Remembered the grief and anguish of his mother, which, boy-like,
he did his best to soothe, but which he could not understand.
Six months later the broken-hearted mother slipped unexpectedly away
into the land of shadows, and Rufus, bewildered and rebellious, was
taken away from the silent house to live with his grandparents. That
seemed like the beginning of all his griefs. He had often wondered since
what his life would have been like if his mother had lived. How he would
have rejoiced to toil for her and fight her battles. But it was not to
be. In the cold and gloomy shadow of his grandfather's home it seemed to
him that the better side of his nature had never a chance of developing.
The sunshine was absent. The real joy of existence was unknown.
Reuben Sterne was a disciplinarian of the severest type. A minister of
the Gospel who had no real Gospel to preach. A theologian who had no
true vision of God. A man severe and stern by nature, and made doubly so
by an austere and loveless creed. "God was a jealous God." That lay at
the foundation of all his beliefs and coloured all his actions. The
burden of the Divine decrees lay heavy upon his heart in the brightest
days, and touched every song to sadness. Of his own election he did not
doubt. Of his call to preach to the elect he was equally sure. But his
only son, Joshua, the child of many prayers, gave no evidence of saving
grace, and died uncalled to the favours of the heavenly fold, while his
grandson, Rufus, appeared, even from boyhood, to be as pagan as his
name. This was a great grief to the old man, though he would not have
made any sign of it for the world. It was his place to bow, not only in
submission, but in thankfulness to the heavenly will. To kiss the hand
that smote, and adore the unrelenting power that consigned to eternal
burning those who were dear to him as his own life.
At bottom his heart was better than his creed, but he was afraid of
showing tenderness or affection lest he should be running counter to the
Divine Will, or giving encouragement to the enemies of the cross to
blaspheme.
Twice every Sunday Rufus was led to the Baptist chapel to hear his
grandfather preach, and early indicated the fate to which he was
predestined by falling asleep under the old man's most terrible sermons.
Among the memories that stood out most clearly in his brain was that of
his grandfather in the pulpit. A tall, straight man, with clean-shaved,
severe face, and eyes that never smiled. He always wore a frock-coat,
tightly buttoned, a tall, stiff collar, and a large white bow, the ends
of which touched the lapels of his coat. His grey hair was brushed
smoothly from his forehead, his mouth was set in severe lines, his
shoulders squared as if for battle. And indeed, every sermon was a
battle. He was appointed of God to fight "spiritual wickedness in high
places." He asked no quarter and gave none. His voice rang with the
thunders of the law. Sinai was nearer to his heart than Calvary.
Rufus gave evidence of intellectual revolt before he had reached his
teens.
"What is the use of preaching, grandfather?" he asked the old man, one
Sunday morning, over the dinner table.
"The use of preaching?" the Rev. Reuben questioned, aghast at the
audacity of the young speaker; while Mrs. Sterne laid down her knife and
fork, and stared.
"Well, suppose you didn't preach, what would happen?" the boy went on,
unconscious of the storm he was raising.
"Happen? Happen? Be silent, boy; you know not of what you are speaking."
"But if you didn't preach, would the elect be lost?" the boy persisted.
"Of course not. How could they be lost? 'Whom He did foreknow, He also
did predestinate.'"
"And will you save any of those who are not elected by preaching to
them?" the boy went on.
"It is not in man's power to save at all," the old man said, severely.
"Salvation belongeth unto the Lord."
"Well, then, I don't see a bit of use in preaching or in going to
chapel."
The old man raised his eyes and stared. "You ungrateful, unregenerate
youth," he said. "How dare you speak in such a way, and at my table?"
"But, grandfather," said the boy, with astonishment in his eyes, "why am
I ungrateful because I ask questions?"
"Why? Because your questions savour of an unregenerate and unbelieving
heart; because they make light of the Word of truth; because the Spirit
of God is not in you."
"But how can I help that, grandfather? Do you think it is that I am not
called?"
"I fear you are not," he said, with a groan. "I fear you are not."
"But you are not sure, grandfather?"
"No, I am not sure; but there is no evidence of saving grace in you."
"But if I am elected I shall be all right in the end, sha'n't I?"
"Yes, yes; the gracious Spirit always finds those who have the mark of
the seal."
"Then, I don't think I shall go to chapel to-night."
"Not go to chapel!" and the old man's eyes flashed fire. "Not go to
chapel? Did my ears deceive me? Is it for this I have cared for you
since the death of your mother? Boy, boy, be careful how you disobey
me!"
"But, but----"
"Not another word," the old man said, raising his right hand in a
threatening attitude. "Not another word, or I will punish you as you
were never punished before. How dare you blaspheme, and at my very
board?"
That was the beginning of open strife and rebellion. The boy went to
chapel that night, and for many years after, but never in the same
spirit again. Scarcely a Sunday passed that both his heart and
intellect did not revolt against his grandfather's teachings, and there
was no one to show him the other side of the shield. Had some whisper
come to him in those days that truth was many-sided, that the Kingdom of
God was broader than Church or Creed, and that the heart of the Eternal
was not to be measured by an ecclesiastical tape-line, he might have
been saved many long years of darkness and doubt. But in the village of
Tregannon, teachers and seers were few, and books that would have helped
him were out of his reach.
So he grew first into the belief that he belonged to the non-elect, and
later into the belief that the whole fabric of the Christian religion
was a delusion and a snare.
Yet no cloud of unbelief dimmed for a moment the purity of his soul. He
loved goodness none the less because he hated human creeds. Right was
right, whatever preachers preached or failed to preach; and wrong was
wrong though stamped with the Church's approval.
It was a great grief to the Rev. Reuben and to his wife when Rufus
demonstrated by open and unabashed revolt that he belonged to the
non-elect. They had suspected it early in his career; they had prepared
themselves for the blow when it should fall. The tender-hearted little
grandmother had hoped and prayed till the last, and even continued to
pray when she believed that praying was vain and feared that it might be
an offence to the Lord.
The Rev. Reuben was made of sterner stuff. "Ephraim," he said, "is
joined to his idols, let him alone."
So the quiet, uneventful years passed away, and the boy grew into a man.
A man of fine presence, of considerable intellectual attainments--for
Reuben Sterne gave the lad the best education he could afford--and of
unblemished character.
Rufus wanted to be an engineer, but that was beyond his grandfather's
means. His grandmother wanted to apprentice him to a draper, but the boy
protested so vehemently that that laudable desire was never carried out.
In the end, he found his way into a Redbourne Bank, where he became
acquainted with Felix Muller, who was a solicitor's clerk in the town,
and who later on succeeded to his master's business. From Redbourne,
Rufus removed to St. Gaved as Secretary to the Wheal Gregory Tin Mining
Company, Limited, and it was while there that he conceived a scheme for
the bettering of his own fortunes and those of the county as a whole.
Rufus could not help recalling the past as he stretched his legs before
the fire and listened in dreamy fashion to the talk of the old people.
All the years that had fled and gone seemed to live again. All the
people that he knew in his boyhood's days gathered round him once more.
Voices long since hushed in the great silence spoke to him as they used
to do; and eyes that long since had fallen into dust smiled with all
their old sweetness.
He always felt a boy again when he came home to Tregannon. The old
people were unchanged. They did not look a day older than ten years
previously. The house and its ways had been stereotyped for a
generation. The same coarse rug was before the fire, on which he had
sprawled as a lad. The same kettle sang on the hob, the same poker and
tongs shone in the firelight.
The old people still talked on, recalling the events of other years, the
one supplying what the other had forgotten. Rufus interposed a
monosyllable now and then, but his thoughts in the main were far away
from theirs. Suddenly his interest was aroused by an allusion his
grandfather made to some wasteful and abortive lawsuit that followed his
father's death.
"The ways of the law may be crooked in this country," he said, with
energy; "and English lawyers may be blood-suckers in the main, but in
America things are fifty times worse."
"Why do you think that?" he questioned, raising his eyes with interest.
"Why, because I've proved it. Your father's title was clear enough,
there's no doubt about that. He made his money honestly too. If he'd
lived a month or two longer he'd have returned home a rich man."
"Well?"
"Well, just because some swindler disputed his right, and a blackmailer
presented a bogus account, and somebody else claimed on the estate, on
the ground of a letter which was clearly a forgery, the lawyers went to
work with glee, and the State judge or attorney, or whoever he may be,
aided and abetted the plunder. A grosser piece of corruption there never
was in this world."
"And they ate it all up between them?"
"Every dollar. At least, I presume so. It was postponed--I mean the
settlement--and postponed month after month, and year after year; and
taken to this court and that, the lawyers licking their lips all the
time--What cared they for the widow and the fatherless? And when there
was nothing left of the estate, why the litigation ceased."
"That's usually the case, isn't it?"
"But in our English courts there is a chance of an honest man coming by
his rights."
"Not much if he should happen to be a poor man."
"Then you believe we are as bad as the Americans?"
"Every whit. Lawyers and law courts, all the world over mean the same
thing."
"But isn't one of your best friends a lawyer?"
"You refer to Felix Muller? Well, yes. Muller has been a very good
friend to me. But when it comes to business, like the rest of them, he
will have his pound of flesh."
"Ah, well!" the old man answered, with a sigh. "It's a sad world. Though
many may be called, few are chosen, and Satan must work his will till
the appointed time."
"He seems to have had a pretty long innings," Rufus said, with a laugh.
"And yet, beyond his chain he cannot go," the old man answered. And then
supper was brought on to the table.