Part 30 (2/2)
Rufus was carried back again to the days of his boyhood and youth. The present was forgotten. He had never been away from Tregannon. He was still a lad. He had a jack-knife in his pocket and a white alley and a piece of cobbler's wax and several yards of string. That was Billy Beswarick's suppressed cough coming from a neighbouring pew, and he was sure d.i.c.k Daddo was behind him waiting to pull his hair.
He raised his eyes at length, and the illusion partially vanished; but not altogether. There was the same organ--how often he had counted its gilt dummy pipes; new bra.s.s book-rests had been placed in the gallery front for the convenience of the choir--that was an innovation, and brought him down to more modern days. The iron pillars that supported the galleries were festooned with evergreens, and over the arch of the organ loft was a text of Scripture, conspicuous in white against a scarlet background:--”On earth peace and good will toward men.”
The text set Rufus thinking again. He rather wondered that anyone had the courage to put it up. Perhaps the young people had done it, unthinkingly, for no sentiment could be more incongruous or out of place. The air was full of the clash of arms, the newspapers contained little else than records of battle and slaughter. Ministers all over the country were preaching sermons on patriotism and Imperialism. Churches and Sunday-schools were organising boys' brigades, and children were being taught how to shoot. Here and there a solitary voice protested against all war as unchristian, but the voice in the main was unheeded.
How could war be unchristian? How could killing on a large scale be anything but an enn.o.bling occupation? How could defending homes that were not attacked and destroying homes that were not defended, be anything less than heroic? How could stealing your neighbour's birthright and possessing his inheritance be anything but righteous?
”There's evidently a screw loose somewhere,” he said to himself, with a smile. ”If that text sets forth the objective of Christ's mission, then a good deal that pa.s.ses muster as Christianity to-day is loathsome hypocrisy.”
Then his attention was arrested by the entrance of the minister into the pulpit. A young man with a frank, boyish face, large, square forehead, a wide mouth, strong chin and jaw--all this he took in at a glance. A moment later he noticed that his dress was unclerical, his hands small and brown, his eyes deep-set and dark.
Rufus felt interested in the man. Accustomed as he had been during all the years of his boyhood and youth to seeing the tall, stiff, clerical figure of his grandfather in the pulpit, there seemed something delightfully free and unconventional about this young man. The pulpit ”tone” was absent from his voice, the pulpit manner he had evidently not yet learnt, the pulpit expression had to be acquired.
Rufus got far back in his childhood days again during the singing and prayers. But directly the text was announced and the minister began to preach he felt wide awake and interested. To begin with, all his early notions about preaching were rudely upset. Taking his grandfather as a model this young man did not preach at all. He just talked and talked in a most delightfully easy and quickening way.
The farther he advanced the more interested Rufus became. There were no attempts at oratory, no flights of rhetoric, no simulated pa.s.sion, no declamation, but just earnest, lucid talk. He forgot that he was in a chapel and this man in a pulpit. They might be anywhere--in a workshop or by the fireside--and the man was talking to them on a subject of deep and perennial interest. He did not dogmatise; he did not ignore objections and difficulties. He faced every problem fairly and fearlessly, and gave his reason for the faith that was in him.
”The desire of all nations shall come,” was the text. What was the desire of all nations? What was the deep, pa.s.sionate longing of all thoughtful, serious people of all ages and of all countries? And how was that longing met in Jesus of Nazareth?
On the first point he touched Rufus to the quick. He described every mental emotion through which he had pa.s.sed, and showed how every merely human philosophy had failed to satisfy the need of the human heart.
Every word of this part of the discourse was absolutely true to Rufus's own experience.
But when the preacher came to deal with the second part of his subject, Rufus felt all his old scepticism returning with a rush; and yet so reasonably did the preacher talk that he was compelled to listen. He did not speak like an advocate with a bad case. There were no evasions, no special pleadings, no attempts to browbeat witnesses, or to sail off on side issues. He spoke as one who had fought his way through every phase of doubt, and had reached the serene heights of absolute conviction.
Christ had met his needs, and had answered his questions, had solved the riddle of life.
Rufus shook his head more than once unconsciously. The argument from experience might be satisfactory enough to those who had the experience, but he wanted proof. The experience of another man was of very little value to him.
If he could be sure that Christ spoke with absolute authority on these questions that vexed the human mind, then would he find rest also, but how was he to get that a.s.surance.
He walked home from chapel by his grandfather's side in silence. The old man was as little disposed to talk as Rufus, but for a different reason.
After dinner Rufus went for a long walk alone. He wanted to shake off the effects of the sermon. Some of the conclusions of the preacher had made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. The possibility of life being a sacred trust for the use, or abuse, of which he would be held responsible by a Supreme Being was distinctly disquieting, especially in view of the unpleasant possibility that was hanging over his head.
If life were not his own to do as he liked with--to spend or end how or when seemed good in his own eyes--then his attempt to gamble with it was more immoral than for a trustee or a lawyer to gamble with his client's property. Rufus had always prided himself on his honour. It was his sheet-anchor in all the mental storms through which he had pa.s.sed; but if in throwing his life into p.a.w.n he had p.a.w.ned his honour at the same time what was there left to him that was worth possessing? And if the worst should come to the worst, if, as he sometimes feared, his invention had been forestalled--not only a part of it, but the whole of it--if the demands of what he called honour should necessitate the giving up of his life, in what sort of moral dilemma would he find himself?
His compact with Muller began to appear in a more unpleasantly lurid light than it had ever done before. Could a man steal money to pay his debts with, and then boast of his honesty in paying? Could he discharge a debt of honour by an act that in itself was criminal?
It was dark when he got back to his grandfather's house, but the influence of the sermon was still upon him. He had pa.s.sed cottages by the dozen from which had come sounds of mirth and festivity. Tregannon appeared to be enjoying itself to the full. The young people, untroubled about the future, were making merry in the hope and gladness of to-day; while he, having lost the faith of his childhood, had drifted into regions not only of hopelessness, but of peril.
”It seems but a poor exchange,” he said, sadly, ”but I shall have to make the best of it.”
When he opened the door he was surprised to hear the voices of his grandfather and the Rev. Marshall Brook, in what seemed to him a very animated and even heated discussion.
CHAPTER XIX
AFTER THREE YEARS
<script>