Part 38 (2/2)

”I should like to tell you everything about myself,” he went on, at length, ”my early troubles and battles, my boyish revolt against cruel and illogical creeds, my almost unaided pursuit of knowledge, my steady drift into blank negation; but I should bore you----”

”No, no!” she said, quickly. ”I should like to hear all the story. I should, indeed. Really and truly.”

They walked away northward, while the light went down in the West. The twilight deepened rapidly, and the frosty stars began to glimmer in the sky. But neither seemed to heed the gathering darkness nor the rapid flight of time.

Rufus talked without reserve; it is easy to talk when those who listen are sympathetic. He told the story of his father's death abroad, of his mother's grief, of his own bitter sense of loss. He sketched his grandfather--upright and severe--preaching a creed that was more fearsome than any nightmare. He spoke of their slender means and their fruitless efforts to get any of the property his father left. Of his granny's wish that he should be a draper, of his own ambition to be an engineer, and the compromise which landed him in Redbourne as a bank clerk. And through all the story there ran the deeper current of his mental struggles till at last he fancied he found the _ultima Thule_ in pure materialism.

Madeline listened quite absorbed. It was the most interesting human doc.u.ment that had ever been unfolded to her, and all the more interesting because it was told with such artlessness and sincerity. Yet it was not a very heroic story as he told it. Rufus was no hero in his own eyes, and he was too honest to pretend to be what he was not.

Perhaps, in his hatred of pretence he made himself out a less admirable character than he was in reality.

Madeline sighed faintly more than once. There were manifest weaknesses where there should have been strength. He had drifted here and there where he should have resisted, and taken for granted what he should have tried and tested.

”And you still remain on the barren rocks of your _ultima Thule_?” she questioned, at length.

He did not answer for several moments. Then he said quietly, ”You will think me sadly lacking in mental balance, no doubt; but at present, I fear, I must say I am at sea again.”

”Yes?”

”You compelled me to face the old problems once more, to re-examine the evidence.”

”I compelled you?”

”Unwittingly, no doubt. You remember our talks when I was _hors de combat_. The fragments of poetry you read to me, the books you lent?”

”Well?”

”I found myself fighting the old battles over again. Before I was aware, I was in the thick of the strife.”

”And you are fighting still?”

”Yes, I am fighting still.”

”With your face toward your _ultima Thule_?”

”I cannot say that.”

”What is your desire, then?”

”To find the truth. Perhaps I shall never succeed, but I shall try.”

”You should come to church, which is the repository of truth, our vicar says.”

He smiled a little wistfully, and shook his head. ”At present I am making a fresh study of what Jesus said--or what He is reported to have said.”

”Then that is all the greater reason why you should come to church.”

<script>