Part 12 (1/2)

”It may be that you know not what you desire. Still, name any question you wish; and I will tell you freely whether in my judgment G.o.d's Word contains an answer.”

Carlos stated the difficulty suggested by the inquiry of Dolores. Who can tell the exact moment when his bark leaves the gently-flowing river for the great deep ocean? That of Carlos, on the instant when he put this question, was met by the first wave of the mighty sea upon which he was to be tossed by many a storm. But he did not know it.

”I agree with you as to the silence of G.o.d's Word about purgatory,”

returned his friend; and for some time both gazed into the fire without speaking.

”This and similar discoveries have sometimes given me, I own, a feeling of blank disappointment, and even of terror,” said Carlos at length.

For with him it was one of those rare hours in which a man can bear to translate into words the ”dark misgivings” of the soul, usually unacknowledged even to himself.

”I cannot say,” was the answer, ”that the thought of pa.s.sing through the gate of death into the immediate presence of my glorified Lord affects me with 'blank disappointment' or 'terror.'”

”How?--What do you say?” cried Carlos, starting visibly.

”'Absent from the body, present with the Lord.' 'To depart and to be with Christ is far better.'”

”But it was San Pablo, the great apostle and martyr, who said that. For us,--we have the Church's teaching,” Carlos rejoined in quick, anxious tones.

”Nevertheless, I venture to think that, in the face of all you have learned from G.o.d's Word, you will find it a task somewhat of the hardest to prove purgatory.”

”Not at all,” said Carlos; and immediately he bounded into the arena of controversy, laid his lance in rest, and began an animated tilting-match with his new friend, who was willing (of course, thought Carlos, for argument's sake alone, and as an intellectual exercise) to personate a Lutheran antagonist.

But not a few doughty champions have met the stern reality of a b.l.o.o.d.y death in the mimic warfare of the tilting-field. At every turn Carlos found himself answered, baffled, confounded. Yet, how could he, how dared he, acknowledge defeat, even to himself, when with the imperilled doctrine so much else must fall? What would become of private ma.s.ses, indulgences, prayers for the dead? Nay, what would become of the infallibility of Mother Church herself?

So he fought desperately. Fear, ever increasing, quickened his preceptions, baptized his lips with eloquence, made his sense acute and his memory retentive. Driven at last from the ground of Scripture and reason, he took his stand upon that of scholastic divinity. Using the weapons with which he had been taught to play so deftly for once in terrible earnest, he spun clever syllogisms, in which he hoped to entangle his adversary. But De Seso caught the flimsy webs in the naked hand of his strong sense, and crushed them to atoms.

Then Carlos knew that the battle was lost. ”I can say no more,” he acknowledged, sorrowfully bowing his head.

”And what I have said--is it not in accordance with the Word of G.o.d?”

With a cry of dismay on his lips, Carlos turned and looked at him--”G.o.d help us! Are we then Lutherans?”

”It may be Christ is asking another question--Are we amongst those who follow him _whithersoever_ he goeth?”

”Oh, not _there_--not to _that_!” cried Carlos, rising in his agitation and beginning to pace the room. ”I abhor heresy--I eschew the thought.

From my cradle I have done so. Anywhere but that!”

Pausing at last in his walk before the place where De Seso sat, he asked, ”And you, senor, have you considered whither this would lead?”

”I have. I do not ask thee to follow. But this I say: if Christ bids any man leave the s.h.i.+p and come to him upon these dark and stormy waters, he will stretch out his own right hand to uphold and sustain him.”

”To leave the s.h.i.+p--his Church? That would be leaving him. And leaving him, I am lost, soul and body--lost--lost!”

”Fear not. At his feet, clinging to him, soul of man was never lost yet.”

”I will cleave to him, and to the Church too.”