Yet none save those who have pa.s.sed through it can conceive the utter desolation and darkness of soul, during what may be called the interregnum. The old has been destroyed, the new has not yet taken shape. The ark has been sunk and the mountain peaks have not yet begun to appear above the flood. The frightened soul flits. .h.i.ther and thither across the waste of waters, seeking some place on which to rest its feet, and finding none; and unlike Noah"s dove there is no ark to which it can return. It must remain poised on wing till the floods have a.s.suaged and the foundations of things have been discovered.
In the last resort every man writes his own creed. No man, even mentally, can remain in a state of suspended animation for very long. A philosophy of negations is as abhorrent to the sensitive soul as a vacuum is to Nature. After destruction there is bound to be construction. Like beavers we are ever building, and when one dam has been swept away by the flood, we straightway set to work to build another.
Rufus was trying to evolve some kind of cosmos out of chaos when he met Madeline on the downs. She came upon him suddenly and unexpectedly and his heart leaped like a startled hare. How beautiful she was. How lissom and graceful and strong.
"This is an unexpected pleasure," she said, in her bright, frank, ingenuous way. "I am glad we have met."
"Yes?" he replied, not knowing what else to say.
"I have heard something about you recently and I would like to know if it is true."
"What have you heard?" he questioned, with a puzzled look on his face.
"That you are an infidel."
"Who told you that?"
"That is a matter of no consequence since it is common gossip."
For a moment he was silent, and turned his eyes seaward as if to watch the sun go down. "Are you pressed for time?" he asked without turning his eyes.
"No, I am quite free for the next hour," she answered, with a smile, though she wondered what the Tregonys would think if they knew.
"I owe a good deal to you," he began, slowly and thoughtfully.
"No, not to me, surely. I am the debtor," she interrupted.
"Yes, to you," he went on in the same slow, even way. "And if you care to know--that is, if you are interested--why then it will be a pleasure to talk to you--as it always has been----"
Then he paused and again turned his eyes toward the sea. She glanced at him shyly but did not reply.
"It is easy to call people names," he said, at length, without looking at her. "I do not complain, however. I have believed the things I could not help believing. Can we any of us do more than that?"
"I do not quite understand?" she answered, looking at him with a puzzled expression.
"I mean that the things we believe, or do not believe, are matters over which we have no absolute control. You believe what you believe because you cannot help it. You have not been coerced into believing it. The evidence is all-sufficient for you though it might not be for me. On the same ground I believe what I believe--because--because I cannot help myself. Do you follow me? Faith after all is belief upon evidence, and if the evidence is insufficient----"
"But what if people reject the evidence without weighing it, stubbornly turn their backs upon the light?" she interrupted.
"Then they are not honest," he said, quickly; "but I hope you do not accuse me of dishonesty?"
"I accuse you of nothing," she answered. "I have only told you what people are saying."
"And you are sorry?" and he turned, and looked her frankly in the face.
"I am very sorry," she replied, with a faint suspicion of colour on her cheeks.
"It is generous of you to be interested in me at all," he said, after a pause. "And if I were to tell you how much I value that interest you might not believe me."
She darted a startled glance at him, but she did not catch his eyes for he was looking seaward again, and for a moment or two there was silence.
"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."