IN EMBRYO
A child on the floor, flat on her stomach in the red light of the
stove, drawing pictures; her mother by the shaded lamp mending
stockings; her father reading; a faint odour of kerosene from the
glass lamp in the room, and the rattle of sleet on roof and window;
this was one of her childhood memories which never faded through all
the years of Ruhannah's life.
Of her waking hours she preferred that hour after supper when, lying
prone on the worn carpet, with pencil and paper, just outside the
lamp's yellow circle of light, her youthful imagination kindled and
caught fire.
For at that hour the magic of the stove's glowing eyes transformed the
sitting-room chairs to furtive watchers of herself, made of her
mother's work-table a sly and spidery thing on legs, crouching in
ambush; bewitched the ancient cottage piano so that its ivory keys
menaced her like a row of monstrous teeth.
She adored it all. The tall secretary stared at her with owlish
significance. Through that neutral veil where lamplight and shadow
meet upon the wall, the engraved portrait of a famous and godly
missionary peered down at her out of altered and malicious eyes; the
claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to entrap
her with wide, inviting arms; three folded umbrellas leaned over the
edge of their shadowy stand, looking down at her like scrawny and
baleful birds, ready to peck at her with crooked handles. And as for
Adoniram, her lank black cat, the child's restless creative fancy was
ever transforming him from goblin into warlock, from hydra to
hippogriff, until the earnestness of pretence sent agreeable shivers
down her back, and she edged a trifle nearer to her mother.
But when pretence became a bit too real and too grotesque she had
always a perfect antidote. It was merely necessary to make a quick
picture of an angel or two, a fairy prince, a swan, and she felt
herself in their company, and delightfully protected.
* * * * *
There was a night when the flowing roar of the gale outside filled the
lamplit silence; when the snow was drifting level with the window
sills; when Adoniram, unable to prowl abroad, lay curled up tight and
sound asleep beside her where she sat on the carpet in the stove
radiance. Wearied of drawing castles and swans, she had been listening
to her father reading passages aloud from the book on his knees to her
mother who was sewing by the lamp.
Presently he continued his reading:
"I asked Alaro the angel: 'Which place is this, and which people are
these?'
"And he answered: 'This place is the star-track; and these are they
who in the world offered no prayers and chanted no liturgies. Through
other works they have attained felicity.'"
Her mother nodded, continuing to sew. Ruhannah considered what her
father had read, then:
"Father?"
"Yes----" He looked down at her absently.
"What were you reading?"
"A quotation from the Sacred Anthology."
"Isn't prayer really necessary?"
Her mother said:
"Yes, dear."
"Then how did those people who offered no prayers go to Heaven?"
Her father said:
"Eternal life is not attained by praise or prayer alone, Ruhannah.
Those things which alone justify prayer are also necessary."
"What are they?"
"What we really _think_ and what we _do_--both only in Christ's name.
Without these nothing else counts very much--neither form nor
convention nor those individual garments called creed and
denomination, which belief usually wears throughout the world."
Her mother, sewing, glanced gravely down at her daughter:
"Your father is very tolerant of what other people believe--as long as
they really do believe. Your father thinks that Christ would have
found friends in Buddha and Mahomet."
"Do such people go to Heaven?" asked Ruhannah, astonished.
"Listen," said her father, reading again:
"'I came to a place and I saw the souls of the liberal, adorned above
all other souls in splendour. And it seemed to me sublime.
"'I saw the souls of the truthful who walked in lofty splendour. And
it seemed to me sublime.
"'I saw the souls of teachers and inquirers; I saw the friendly souls
of interceders and peacemakers; and these walked brilliantly in the
light. And it seemed to me sublime----'"
He turned to his wife:
"To see and know _is_ sublime. We know, Mary; and Ruhannah is
intelligent. But in spite of her faith in what she has learned from
us, like us she must one day travel the common way, seeking for
herself the reasons and the evidences of immortality."
"Perhaps her faith, Wilbour----"
"Perhaps. But with the intelligent, faith, which is emotional, usually
follows belief; and belief comes only from reasoning. I think that
Ruhannah is destined to travel the way of all intelligence when she is
ready to think for herself."
"I am ready now," said the girl. "I have faith in our Lord Jesus, and
in my father and mother."
Her father looked at her:
"It is good building material. Some day, God willing, you shall build
a very lofty temple with it. But the foundation of the temple must
first be certain. Intelligence ultimately requires reasons for belief.
You will have to seek them for yourself, Ruhannah. Then, on them build
your shrine of faith; and nothing shall shake it down."
"I don't understand."
"And I cannot explain. Only this; as you grow older, all around you in
the world you will become aware of people, countless millions and
millions of people, asking themselves--ready with the slightest
encouragement, or without it, to ask you the question which is the
most vital of all questions to them. And whatever way it is answered
always they ask for evidence. You, too, will one day ask for evidence.
All the world asks for it. But few recognise it as evidence when it is
offered."
He closed his book and dropped a heavy hand upon it.
"Amid the myriad pursuits and interests and trades and professions of
the human race, amid their multitudinous aspirations, perplexities,
doubts, passions, endeavours, deep within every intelligent man
remains one dominant desire, one persistent question to be answered if
possible."
"What desire, father?"
"The universal desire for another chance--for immortality. Man's
never-ending demand for evidence of an immortality which shall
terminate for him the most tremendous of all uncertainties, which
shall solve for him the most vital of all questions: What is to become
of him after physical death? Is he to live again? Is he to see once
more those whom he loved the best?"
Ruhannah sat thinking in the red stove light, cross-legged, her slim
ankles clasped in either hand.
"But our souls are immortal," she said at last.
"Yes."
"Our Lord Jesus has said it."
"Yes."
"Then why should anybody not believe it?"
"Try to believe it always. Particularly after your mother and I are no
longer here, try to believe it.... You are unusually intelligent; and
if some day your intelligence discovers that it requires evidence for
belief seek for that evidence. It is obtainable. Try to recognise it
when you encounter it.... Only, in any event, remember this: never
alter your early faith, never destroy your childhood's belief until
evidence to prove the contrary convinces you."
"No.... There is no such evidence, is there, father?"
"I know of none."
"Then," said the girl calmly, "I shall take Christ's evidence that I
shall live again if I do no evil.... Father?"
"Yes."
"Is there any evidence that Adoniram has no soul?"
"I know of none."
"Is there any that he has a soul?"
"Yes, I think there is."
"Are you sure?"
"Not entirely."
"I wonder," mused the girl, looking gravely at the sleeping cat.
It was the first serious doubt that Ruhannah had ever entertained in
her brief career.
That night she dreamed of the Yellow Devil in Herr Wilner's box, and,
awaking, remembered her dream. It seemed odd, too, because she had not
even thought of the Yellow Devil for over a year.
But the menacing Mongol figure seemed bound to intrude into her life
once more and demand her attention as though resentful of long
oblivion and neglect; for, a week later, an old missionary from
Indo-China--a native Chinese--who had lectured at the Baptist Church
in Gayfield the evening previous, came to pay his respects to the
Reverend Wilbour Carew. And Rue had taken the Yellow Devil from the
olive-wood box that day and was busily making a pencil drawing of it.
At sight of the figure the native missionary's narrow almond eyes
opened extremely wide, and he leaned on the table and regarded the
bronze demon very intently.
Then he took from his pocket and adjusted to his button nose a pair of
large, horn spectacles; and he carefully examined the Chinese
characters engraved on the base of the ancient bronze, following them
slowly with a yellow and clawlike forefinger.
"Can you read what is written there?" inquired the Reverend Mr.
Carew.
"Yes, brother. This is what is written: 'I am Erlik, Ruler of Chaos
and of All that Was. The old order passes when I arrive. I bring
confusion among the peoples; I hurl down emperors; kingdoms crumble
where I pass; the world begins to rock and tip, spilling nations into
outer darkness. When there are no more kingdoms and no more kings; no
more empires and no emperors; and when only the humble till, the
blameless sow, the pure reap; and when only the teachers teach in the
shadow of the Tree, and when the Thinker sits unstirring under the
high stars, then, from the dark edges of the world I let go my grasp
and drop into those immeasurable deeps from which I came--I, Erlik,
Ruler of All that Was.'"
After a silence the Reverend Mr. Carew asked whether the figure was a
very old one.
"It is before the period called 'Han'--a dynasty during which the
Mongols were a mighty people. This inscription is Mongol. Erlik was
the Yellow Devil of the Mongols."
"Not a heathen god, then?"
"No, a heathen devil. Their Prince of Darkness."
Ruhannah, pencil in hand, looked curiously at this heathen Prince of
Darkness, arrived out of the dark ages to sit to her for his scowling
portrait.
"I wonder what he thinks of America," she said, partly to herself.
The native missionary smiled, picked up the Yellow Devil, shook the
figure, listening.
"There is something inside," he said; "perhaps jewels. If you drilled
a hole in him you could find out."
The Reverend Mr. Carew nodded absently:
"Yes; it might be worth while," he said.
"If there is a jewel," repeated the missionary, "you had better take
it, then cast away the figure. Erlik brings disaster to the land where
his image is set up."
The Reverend Mr. Carew smiled at his Chinese and Christian confrère's
ineradicable vein of superstition.