A HUMAN DOCUMENT
Rufus returned from Tregannon in a condition of mental unrest, such as
he had not known before. It was Madeline Grover in the first instance
who set him thinking along certain lines, and once started it was
impossible to turn back. During all the time he remained a prisoner in
the house, his brain had been unusually active. Unconsciously his fierce
antagonisms subsided, his revolt against accepted creeds took new
shapes, his belief in German philosophy began to waver.
The process of mental evolution went on so quietly and silently, that he
was almost startled when he discovered that his philosophic watchwords
no longer represented his real beliefs. He felt as though while he slept
all his beliefs had been thrown into the melting-pot to be cast afresh,
and were now being poured out into new moulds. What the result would be
when the process was complete it was impossible to say, but already one
thing was certain, the blank negatives in which he once found refuge,
would never again satisfy him. He might never evolve into an orthodox
believer. The religiosity of the Churches appealed to him as little as
ever it did. He despised the smug hypocrisy that on all hands usurped
the place of Christianity, and defiled its name. He loathed the
pretensions of priests and clerics of all sects. But out of the fog and
darkness and uncertainty, certain great truths and principles loomed
faintly and fitfully.
The fog was no longer an empty void. The silence was now and then broken
by a sound of words, though the language was strange to his ears. There
appeared to be a moral order which answered to his own need, and a moral
order implied the existence of what he had so long denied.
His visit to his grandparents quickened his thoughts in the direction
they had been travelling. Everything tended to serious reflection. The
awful mystery and solemnity of life were forced upon him at all points.
The old people walked and talked "as seeing Him who is invisible."
He was quietly amused when he returned from his long walk on Christmas
day to find his grandfather and the young minister engaged in a heated
argument on the barren and thorny subject of verbal inspiration. He
would have stopped the discussion if he could, for he discovered that
his grandfather was getting much the worst of the argument, and was
losing his temper in consequence. But the old man refused to be
silenced. Getting his chance of reply he poured out a torrent of words
that swept everything before it, and to which there seemed to be no end.
Fortunately, tea was announced just as the young minister was about to
reply, and over the tea-table conversation drifted into an entirely
different channel. After tea the Rev. Reuben retired to his study
accompanied by his wife, and Rufus and Mr. Brook were left in possession
of the sitting-room.
As there was no evening service on Christmas Day the young minister felt
free to relax himself. Conversation tripped lightly from point to point,
from general to particular, from gay to grave, from serious to solemn.
They talked till supper time, and after supper Rufus walked with the
young minister to his lodgings, and remained with him till long after
midnight. The conversation was a revelation to Rufus in many ways.
Marshall Brook was a scholar as well as a thinker. He was as familiar
with the German writers as with the English. He was alive to all modern
questions, conversant with all the work of the higher critics, alive to
all that was fundamental in the creeds of the Churches, contemptuous of
the narrowness and bigotry that brought religion into contempt, tolerant
of all fresh light, patient and even sympathetic with every form of
human doubt, and large-hearted and clear-eyed enough to see that there
was good in everything.
Marshall Brook had often heard of his predecessor's sceptical grandson,
and was glad of the opportunity of meeting him, and was charmed with him
when they did meet. It was easy to discover where the shoe pinched, easy
to see how and when the revolt began, easy to trace the successive steps
from doubt to denial, from unbelief to blank negation.
Rufus talked freely and well. He knew that the young minister regarded
him as an infidel, and he thought he might as well live up to the
description. Marshall Brook led him on by easy and almost imperceptible
steps. His first business was to diagnose the case, and if possible to
find out the cause. For the first hour he allowed all Rufus's arguments
to go by default.
But when they got to close grips Rufus felt helpless. This young scholar
could state his case better than he could state it himself. He had
traversed all the barren and thorny waste, and much more carefully than
Rufus had ever done. He knew the whole case by heart; knew every
argument and every objection. He tore the flimsy fabric of Rufus's
philosophy to shreds and left him with scarcely a rag to cover himself
with.
Rufus remained three days at Tregannon and spent the major portion of
the time with Marshall Brook. Apart from the interest raised by the
questions discussed, it was a delight to be brought into contact with a
mind so fresh and well disciplined. They hammered out the _pros_ and
_cons_ of materialistic philosophy with infinite zest. They wrestled
with the joy of striplings at a village fair. They fought for supremacy
with all their might, but in every encounter Rufus went under.
When he returned to St. Gaved he was in a condition of mental chaos.
Nearly every prop on which he supported himself had been knocked away.
He was certain of nothing, not even of his own existence.
It was not an uncommon experience; most thinking men have passed through
it at one time or another. Destruction has often to precede
construction. The old has to be demolished even to the foundations
before the new building can arise.
Yet none save those who have passed through it can conceive the utter
desolation and darkness of soul, during what may be called the
interregnum. The old has been destroyed, the new has not yet taken
shape. The ark has been sunk and the mountain peaks have not yet begun
to appear above the flood. The frightened soul flits hither and thither
across the waste of waters, seeking some place on which to rest its
feet, and finding none; and unlike Noah's dove there is no ark to which
it can return. It must remain poised on wing till the floods have
assuaged and the foundations of things have been discovered.
In the last resort every man writes his own creed. No man, even
mentally, can remain in a state of suspended animation for very long. A
philosophy of negations is as abhorrent to the sensitive soul as a
vacuum is to Nature. After destruction there is bound to be
construction. Like beavers we are ever building, and when one dam has
been swept away by the flood, we straightway set to work to build
another.
Rufus was trying to evolve some kind of cosmos out of chaos when he met
Madeline on the downs. She came upon him suddenly and unexpectedly and
his heart leaped like a startled hare. How beautiful she was. How lissom
and graceful and strong.
"This is an unexpected pleasure," she said, in her bright, frank,
ingenuous way. "I am glad we have met."
"Yes?" he replied, not knowing what else to say.
"I have heard something about you recently and I would like to know if
it is true."
"What have you heard?" he questioned, with a puzzled look on his face.
"That you are an infidel."
"Who told you that?"
"That is a matter of no consequence since it is common gossip."
For a moment he was silent, and turned his eyes seaward as if to watch
the sun go down. "Are you pressed for time?" he asked without turning
his eyes.
"No, I am quite free for the next hour," she answered, with a smile,
though she wondered what the Tregonys would think if they knew.
"I owe a good deal to you," he began, slowly and thoughtfully.
"No, not to me, surely. I am the debtor," she interrupted.
"Yes, to you," he went on in the same slow, even way. "And if you care
to know--that is, if you are interested--why then it will be a pleasure
to talk to you--as it always has been----"
Then he paused and again turned his eyes toward the sea. She glanced at
him shyly but did not reply.
"It is easy to call people names," he said, at length, without looking
at her. "I do not complain, however. I have believed the things I could
not help believing. Can we any of us do more than that?"
"I do not quite understand?" she answered, looking at him with a puzzled
expression.
"I mean that the things we believe, or do not believe, are matters over
which we have no absolute control. You believe what you believe because
you cannot help it. You have not been coerced into believing it. The
evidence is all-sufficient for you though it might not be for me. On the
same ground I believe what I believe--because--because I cannot help
myself. Do you follow me? Faith after all is belief upon evidence, and
if the evidence is insufficient----"
"But what if people reject the evidence without weighing it, stubbornly
turn their backs upon the light?" she interrupted.
"Then they are not honest," he said, quickly; "but I hope you do not
accuse me of dishonesty?"
"I accuse you of nothing," she answered. "I have only told you what
people are saying."
"And you are sorry?" and he turned, and looked her frankly in the face.
"I am very sorry," she replied, with a faint suspicion of colour on her
cheeks.
"It is generous of you to be interested in me at all," he said, after a
pause. "And if I were to tell you how much I value that interest you
might not believe me."
She darted a startled glance at him, but she did not catch his eyes for
he was looking seaward again, and for a moment or two there was silence.
"I should like to tell you everything about myself," he went on, at
length, "my early troubles and battles, my boyish revolt against cruel
and illogical creeds, my almost unaided pursuit of knowledge, my steady
drift into blank negation; but I should bore you----"
"No, no!" she said, quickly. "I should like to hear all the story. I
should, indeed. Really and truly."
They walked away northward, while the light went down in the West. The
twilight deepened rapidly, and the frosty stars began to glimmer in the
sky. But neither seemed to heed the gathering darkness nor the rapid
flight of time.
Rufus talked without reserve; it is easy to talk when those who listen
are sympathetic. He told the story of his father's death abroad, of his
mother's grief, of his own bitter sense of loss. He sketched his
grandfather--upright and severe--preaching a creed that was more
fearsome than any nightmare. He spoke of their slender means and their
fruitless efforts to get any of the property his father left. Of his
granny's wish that he should be a draper, of his own ambition to be an
engineer, and the compromise which landed him in Redbourne as a bank
clerk. And through all the story there ran the deeper current of his
mental struggles till at last he fancied he found the _ultima Thule_ in
pure materialism.
Madeline listened quite absorbed. It was the most interesting human
document that had ever been unfolded to her, and all the more
interesting because it was told with such artlessness and sincerity. Yet
it was not a very heroic story as he told it. Rufus was no hero in his
own eyes, and he was too honest to pretend to be what he was not.
Perhaps, in his hatred of pretence he made himself out a less admirable
character than he was in reality.
Madeline sighed faintly more than once. There were manifest weaknesses
where there should have been strength. He had drifted here and there
where he should have resisted, and taken for granted what he should
have tried and tested.
"And you still remain on the barren rocks of your _ultima Thule_?" she
questioned, at length.
He did not answer for several moments. Then he said quietly, "You will
think me sadly lacking in mental balance, no doubt; but at present, I
fear, I must say I am at sea again."
"Yes?"
"You compelled me to face the old problems once more, to re-examine the
evidence."
"I compelled you?"
"Unwittingly, no doubt. You remember our talks when I was _hors de
combat_. The fragments of poetry you read to me, the books you lent?"
"Well?"
"I found myself fighting the old battles over again. Before I was aware,
I was in the thick of the strife."
"And you are fighting still?"
"Yes, I am fighting still."
"With your face toward your _ultima Thule_?"
"I cannot say that."
"What is your desire, then?"
"To find the truth. Perhaps I shall never succeed, but I shall try."
"You should come to church, which is the repository of truth, our vicar
says."
He smiled a little wistfully, and shook his head. "At present I am
making a fresh study of what Jesus said--or what He is reported to have
said."
"Then that is all the greater reason why you should come to church."
He smiled again, and shook his head once more. "I do not think so," he
answered.
"You do not?"
"No, the contrast is too sharp and startling."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I hardly like to discuss the matter at present," he said, diffidently;
"I do not know sufficiently well where I am. Only I am conscious of
this, that while Jesus wins my assent, the Church does the opposite."
"That is because of your upbringing."
"I do not think so. I have stood apart from all creeds and from all
sects. At present I am a humble searcher after truth. I want some great
principle to guide me. Some philosophy of life that shall appeal to the
best that is in me."
"Well?"
"I turn to the Church, and I find a great bishop addressing such
questions as these to his clergy: 'What ecclesiastical dress do you wear
when celebrating the Holy Communion? Do you ever use any ceremony such
as the Lavabo, or swinging of the incense immediately before or after
the service? Do you have cards on the holy table? If so what do they
contain? Do you ever read the first of the three longer exhortations? Do
you ever have celebrations without communicants?' with a dozen other
questions--to me--equally trivial and unimportant."
"To the bishop such questions would not be trivial at all, but vastly
important."
He smiled a little sadly. "Isn't that the pity of it," he said, "that
trifles are treated as though they were matters of life and death? I
notice that a neighbouring vicar has even closed the church because
women go into it with their heads uncovered."
"I admit that that seems straining at a gnat."
"But he does not think so. He is evidently righteously indignant,
complains of the house of God being desecrated, because people go into
it without some piece of millinery on their heads. One wonders
whether it is a woman's hair or her head that is the offence."
[Illustration: "THEN SUDDENLY FROM OUT THE SHADOW GERVASE APPEARED AND
STOOD BEFORE THEM."]
"I think it is rather insulting to women, of course," she answered, with
a laugh. "But he is only one, and nobody need mind very much."
"But how do these things help me? Think of the men who are wrestling
with the great problems of life, who are fighting temptation and bad
habits, who are groping in the darkness, and crying for the light, and
the Church meets them with petty discussions about Lavabos and stoles
and chasubles and incense, and hats off or on in church?"
"But are they not parts of religion?"
"I do not know. If they are, it is not to be surprised at that religion
gets water-logged."
"But such things may be helpful to some people."
"In which way?"
"Oh, I don't know! But some day you will see things differently,
perhaps."
"Perhaps so. I see some things differently already."
"Then you are not an infidel?"
"You can call me by any name you like. I do not mind so long as you
understand me, and I have your sympathy."
"My sympathy, I fear, can be of no help to you."
"It will help me more than you can understand."
"I am so glad we have had this long talk together," she said, brightly.
"I shall know what to think now when I hear people calling you names.
But here we are close to the lodge gates."
She held out her hand to him, and the light from the lodge window fell
full upon them. He took her hand in his, and held it for a moment.
Then suddenly from out the shadow of the lodge Gervase appeared, and
stood stock still before them.