Part 30 (2/2)
”Very well. In what respects was Mr. Harding typical?”
”In the sublime self-confidence with which he proclaimed as facts, things that have never been proved to be facts.”
”Do men want facts?” said Chichester, almost as one speaking alone to himself.
”I do. I want nothing else. Possibly Mr.
Harding had none to give me. I don't blame him.”
”Perhaps it is a greater thing to give men faith than to give them facts.”
”Give them the first by giving them the second, if you can! And that, by the way, is the last thing the average clergyman is able to do.”
Chichester sat silent for nearly a minute looking at the professor with a strange expression, almost fiery, yet meditative, as if he were trying to appraise him, were weighing him in a balance.
”Professor,” he said at last, ”I suppose your pa.s.sion for facts has led men to put a great deal of faith in you. Hasn't it?”
”I dare say my word carries some weight. I really don't know,” responded Stepton, with an odd hint of something like modesty.
”I had thought of Malling first,” almost murmured Chichester.
”What's that about Malling?”
”I think he would have accepted what I have to give more readily than you would. There seems to me something in him which stretches out arms toward those things in which mystics believe. In you there seems to me something which would almost rather repel such things.”
”I beg your pardon. I am quiescent. I neither seek to summon nor to repel.”
”I couldn't tell Malling,” said Chichester. ”His readiness stopped me. It struck me like a blow.”
”Malling prides himself on being severely neutral in mind.”
”And you on being skeptical?”
”I await facts.”
”Shall I give you some strange facts, the strangest perhaps you have ever met with?”
Stepton smiled dryly.
”You'll forgive me, but some such remark has been the prelude to so many figments.”
”Figments?”
”Of the imagination.”
An expression of anger--almost like a n.o.ble anger it seemed--transformed Chichester's face. It was as a fine wrath which looked down from a height, and in an instant it melted into pity.
”How much you must have missed because of your skepticism!” he said. ”But I shall not let it affect me. You are a man of note-book and pencil. Will you promise me one thing? Will you give me your word not to share what I shall tell you with any one, unless, later on, I am willing that you should?”
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