Part 29 (1/2)

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 G.o.d 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 att.i.tude. ”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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+eld. Had some whisper come to him in those days that truth was many-sided, that the Kingdom of G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 coa.r.s.e 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.