CHAPTER XI

The Strong Person's Narrative

Near the close of the following winter came news of the father's death. In some town of which the boy had never heard, in another State, a ramshackle wooden theatre had burned one night and the father had perished in the fire through his own foolhardiness. The news came by two channels: first, a brief and unilluminating paragraph in the newspaper, giving little more than the fact itself.

But three days later came a friend of the father, bringing his few poor effects and a full relation of the matter. He was a person of kind heart, evidently, to whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom —a bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable and busy violinists.

He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather Delcher having wished to hear no more of the occurrence.

"You understan', it was like this now," he began, after having with a calculating eye rejected two proffered chairs of delicate structure and selected a stout wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as one whom experience had taught to distrust most of the chairs in common use.

"The people in front had got out all right, the fire havin' started on the stage from the strip-light, and also our people had got out through the little stage-entrance, though havin' to leave many of our props—a good coat I had to lose meself, fur-lined around the collar, by way of helpin' the Sisters Devere get out their box of accordions that they done a Dutch Daly act with for an enn-core. Well, as I was sayin', we'd all hustled down these back stairs—they was already red hot and smokin' up good, you understan', and there we was shiverin' outside in the snow, kind of rattled, and no wonder, at that, and the ladies of the troupe histurrical —it had come like a quick-change, you understan', when all of a sudden up in the air goes the Original Kelly. Say, he lets out a yell for your life—'Oh, my God!' he says, 'my kids—up there,' pointin' to where the little flames was spittin' out through the side like a fire-eatin' act. Then down he flops onto his knees in the snow, prayin' like the—prayin' like mad, you understan', and callin' on the blessed Virgin to save little Patsy, who was just gittin' good with his drum-major act and whirlin' a fake musket—and also little Joseph, who was learnin' to do some card-tricks that wasn't so bad. Well, so everybody begins to scream louder and run this way and that, you understan', callin' the kids and thinkin' Kelly was nutty, because they must 'a got out. But Kelly keeps right on prayin' to the holy Virgin, the tears runnin' down his make-up—say, he looked awful, on the dead! And then we hears another yell, and here was Prof. at the window with one of the kids, sure enough. He'd got up them two flights of stairs, though they was all red smoky, like when you see fire through smoke. Well, he motions to catch the kid, so we snatches a cloak off one of the girls and holds it out between us, you understan', while he leans out and drops the kid into it, all safe and sound.

"Just then we seen the place all light up back of him, and we yelled to him to jump, too—he could 'a saved himself, you understan', but he waves his hand and shook his head—say, lookin' funny, too, with his mus-tache half burned off, and we seen him go back out of sight for the other little Kelly—Kelly still promisin' to give up all he had to the Virgin if she saved his boys.

"Well, for a minute the crowd kep' still, kind 'a holdin' its breath, you understan', till the Prof.'d come back with the other kid—and holdin' it and holdin' it till the fire gits brighter and brighter through the window—and—nothin' happens, you understan'—just the fire keeps on gittin' busy. Honest, I begun to feel shaky, but then up comes one of these day-after-to-morrow fire-departments, like they have in them towns, with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, and there was great doings with these Silases screamin' to each other a foot away through their fire-trumpets, only the stairs had been ablaze ever since the Prof. got up 'em, and before any one does anything the whole inside caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky.

"Well, of course, that settles it, you understan'—about the little Kelly and the Prof. We drags the original Kelly away to a drug-store on the corner of the next block, where they was workin' over the kid Prof. saved —it was Patsy—and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. was bringin' the kid around all right, when one of the Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty all to once—say, she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park, laughin' till you'd think she'd bust, only it sounded like she was cryin' at the same time, and screamin' out at the top of her voice, 'Oh, he looked so damned funny with his mus-tache burned off! Oh, he looked so damned funny with his mus-tache burned off!'—way up high like that, over and over. Well, so she has to be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm full of knockouts. Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by that time, what with the lady bein' that way I'm 'a tellin' you, and Kelly, the crazy Irishman—I could hear him off in one corner givin' his reg'ler stunt about his friend, O'Houlihan, lately landed and lookin' for work, comes to a sausage factory and goes up to the boss and says, 'Begobs!'—you know the old gag—say, I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin' around in that dressin'-room for Kelly's other kid, when he might 'a jumped after he got the first one, and, say, this is no kid—first thing I knew I begin to bawl like a baby.

"Well, as I was sayin', there I am and all I can see through the fog is one 'a these here big lighted signs down the street with 'George's Place' on it, and a pitcher of a big glass of beer. Me to George's, at once. When Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, I'm tryin' to tell a gang of Silases how it all happened and chokin' up every time so's I have to have another.

"Well, of course, we break up next day. Kelly tells me, after he gits right again, that little Patsy was saved by havin' one 'a these here scapulars on—he shows it to me hanging around the kid's neck, inside his clothes. He says little Joseph must 'a left his off, or he'd 'a' been saved, too. He showed me a piece in one 'a these little religious books that says there was nothing annoyed the devil like a scapular—that a man can't be burned or done dirt to in no way if he wears one. I says it's a pity the Prof. didn't have one on, but Kelly says they won't work for Protestants. But I don't know—I never purtended to be good on these propositions of religious matters. And there wasn't any chance of findin' the kid to prove if Kelly had it right or not.

"But the Prof. he was certainly a great boy for puttin' up three-sheets about his own two kids; anybody that would listen—friend or stranger—made no difference to him. He starred 'em to anybody, you understan'—what corkers they was, and all like that. It seemed like Kelly's havin' two kids also kind 'a touched on his feelin's. Honest, I ain't ever got so worked up over anything before in me whole life."

When this person had gone the old man called the two boys to his room and prayed with them; keeping the younger to sit with him a long time afterward, as if feeling that his was the heavier heart.

CHAPTER XII

A New Theory of a Certain Wicked Man

The time of the first sorrow was difficult for the boy. There was that first hard sleep after one we love has gone—in which we must always dream that it is not true—a sleep from which we awaken to suffer all the shock of it again. Then came black nights when the perfect love for the perfect father came back in all its early tenderness to cry the little boy to sleep. Yet it went rapidly enough at last, as times of sorrow go for the young. There even came a day when he found in a secret place of his heart a chastened, hopeful inquiry if all might not have been for the best. He had loved his father—there had been between them an unbreakable bond; yet this very love had made him suffer at every thought of him while he was living, whereas now he could love him with all tender memories and with no poisonous misgivings about future meetings with their humiliations. Now his father was made perfect in Heaven, and even Grandfather Delcher—whose aloofness here he had ceased to blame—would not refuse to meet and know him there.

Naturally, then, he turned to his grandfather in his great need for a new idol to fill the vacant niche. Aforetime the old man in his study upstairs had been little more than a gray shadow, a spirit of gloom, stubbornly imprisoning another spirit that would have been kind if it could have escaped. But the little boy drew near to him, and found him curiously companionable. Where once he had shunned him, he now went freely to the study with his lessons or his storybook, or for talk of any little matter. His grandfather, it seemed, could understand many things which so old a man could scarcely have been expected to understand. In token of this there would sometimes creep over his brown old face a soft light that made it seem as if there must still be within him somewhere the child he had once been; as if, perhaps, he looked into the little boy as into a mirror that threw the sunlight of his own boyhood into his time-worn face. Side by side, before the old man's fire, they would talk or muse, since they were friendly enough to be silent if they liked. Only one confidence the little boy could not bring himself to make: he could not tell the old man that he no longer felt hard toward him, as once he had done, for his coldness to his father; that he had divined —and felt a great shame for—the true reason of that coldness. But he thought the old man must understand without words. It was hardly a matter to be talked of.

About his other affairs, especially his early imaginings and difficulties, he was free to talk; about coming to the Feet, and the Front Room, and being washed in the blood, and born again—matters that made the old man wish their intimacy had not been so long delayed.

But now they made up for lost time. Patiently and ably he taught the little boy those truths he needed to know; to seek for eternal life through the atoning blood of the Saviour, whose part it had been to purchase our redemption from God's wrath by his death on Calvary. Of other matters more technical: of how the love that God of necessity has for His own infinitely perfect being is the reason and the measure of the hatred he has for sin. Above all did he teach the little boy how to pray for the grace of effectual calling, in order that, being persuaded of his sin and misery, he might thereafter partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and those several benefits which, in this life, do either accompany or flow from them. They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when he should become a great and good man, preaching the gospel of the crucified Son to spellbound throngs.

Together they began again the study of the Scriptures, the little boy now entering seriously upon that work of writing commentaries which had once engaged Allan. In one of these school-boyish papers the old man came upon a passage that impressed him as notable. It seemed to him that there was not only that vein of poetic imagination—without which one cannot be a great preacher—but a certain individual boldness of approach, monstrous in its naïve sentimentality, to be sure, but indicating a talent that promised to mature splendidly.

"Now Jesus told his disciples," it ran, "that he must be crucified before he could take his seat on the right hand of God and send to hell those who had rejected him. He told them that one of them would have to betray him, because it must be like the Father had said. It says at the last supper Jesus said, 'The Son of Man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if he had not been born.'

"Now it says that Satan entered into Judas, but it looks to me more like the angel of the Lord might have entered into him, he being a good man to start with, or our Lord would not have chosen him to be a disciple. Judas knew for sure, after the Lord said this, that one of the disciples had got to betray the Saviour and go to hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Well, Judas loved all the disciples very much, so he thought he would be the one and save one of the others. So he went out and agreed to betray him to the rulers for thirty pieces of silver. He knew if he didn't do it, it might have to be Peter, James, or John, or some one the Saviour loved very dearly, because it had to be one of them. So after it was done and he knew the others were saved from this foul deed, he went back to the rulers and threw down their money, and went out and hung himself. If he had been a bad man, it seems more like he would have spent that money in wicked indulgences, food and drink and entertainments, etc. Of course, Judas knew he would go to hell for it, so he was not as lucky as Jesus, who knew he would go to heaven and sit at the right hand of God when he died, which was a different matter from Judas's, who would not have any reward at all but going to hell. It looks to me like poor Judas had ought to be brought out of hell-fire, and I shall pray Jesus to do it when he gets around to it."

However it might be with our Lord's betrayer, there was one soul now seen to be deservedly in hell. Through the patient study of the Scriptures as expounded by Grandfather Delcher, the little boy presently found himself accepting without demur the old gentleman's unspoken but sufficiently indicated opinion. His father was in everlasting torment—having been not only unbaptised, but godless and a scoffer. With a quickening sense of the majesty of that Spirit infinitely good, a new apprehension of His plan's symmetry, he read the words meant to explain, to comfort him, silently indicated one day by the old man:

"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

"What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?

"And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory."

It hurt at first, but the young mind hardened to it dutifully—the big, laughing, swaggering, scoffing father —a device of God made for torment, that the power of the All-loving might show forth! If the father had only repented, he might have gone straight to heaven as did Cousin Bill J. For the latter had obtained grace in his last days, and now sang acceptably before the thrones of the Father and the Son. But the unbaptised scoffer must burn forever—and the little boy knew at last what was meant by "the majesty of God."

BOOK TWO—THE AGE OF REASON

CHAPTER I

The Regrettable Dementia of a Convalescent

"You know you please me—really you do!"

Allan, perfect youth of the hazel eyes and tawny locks, bent upon inquiring Nancy a look of wholly pleasant reassurance, as one wishful to persuade her from doubt.

"I'm not joking a bit. When I say you please me, I mean it."

His look became rather more expansive with a smile that seemed meant to sympathise guardedly with her in her necessary rejoicing.

Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black curtains of her eyes, murmuring from out the friendly gloom:

"It's very good of you, Allan!"

Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, which she divined he was about to do, the curtains were up and the eyes wide open to him with a question about Bernal.

He turned to the house and pointed up to the two open windows of the study, in and out of which the warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains.

"He's there, poor chap! He was able to get that far for the first time yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie."

"And to think I never knew he was sick until we came from town last night. I'd surely have left the old school and come before if I'd heard. I wouldn't have cared what Aunt Bell said."

"Eight weeks down, and you know we found he'd been sick long before he found it out himself—walking typhoid, they called it. He came home from college with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed the moment he clapped eyes on him. Said it was walking typhoid, and that he must have been worrying greatly about something, because his nervous system was all run down."

"And he was very ill?"

"Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go and get back at all."

"How dreadful—poor Bernal! Oh, if he had died!"

"Out of his head for three weeks at a time—raving fearfully. And you know, he's quite like an infant now —says the simplest things. He laughs at it himself. He says he's not sure if he knows how to read and write."

"Poor, dear Bernal!"

With some sudden arousing he studied her face swiftly as she spoke, then continued:

"Yes, Bernal's really an awfully good chap at bottom. " He turned again to look up at the study windows. "You know, I intend to stand by that fellow always—no matter what he does! Of course, I shall not let his being my brother blind me to his faults— doubtless we all have faults; but I tell you, Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a man's make-up."

She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he broke off—"Now I must hurry to mail these letters It's good to be home for another summer. You really do please me, Nance!"

She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome —more than handsome, indeed. He left an immediate conviction of his superb vitality of body and mind, the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail. Featured in almost faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, unaffectedly proclaiming its superior gravity among human masses, he was a planet destined to have many satellites and be satellite to none; an ego of genuine lordliness; a presence at once masterly and decorative.

And yet she was conscious of a note—not positively of discord, but one still exciting a counter-stream of reflection. She had observed that each time Allan turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning his shoulders with it: the perfect head and shoulders were swung with almost a studied unison. And this little thing had pricked her admiration with a certain needle-like suspicion—a suspicion that the young man might be not wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle.

Yet this was no matter to permit in one's mind. For Nancy of the lengthened skirts and the massed braids was now a person of reserves. Even in that innocent insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively malicious, half-conscious flauntings, she was one of reticences toward the world including herself, with petticoats of decorum draping the child's anarchy of thought —her luxuriant young emotions "done up" sedately with her hair. She was now one to be cautious indeed of imputations so blunt as this concerning Allan. Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal. Then she wondered why it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a creature to wonder where another would accept. She saw it had seemed noble because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry.

This phrase would not be Nancy's—only she knew it to be the way her uncle, for example, would translate Allan's praise of his brother. She hoped Bernal had not been very bad—and wondered how bad.

Then she went to him. Her first little knock brought no answer, nor could she be sure that the second did. But she knew it was loud enough to be heard if the room were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack and peeped in. He lay on the big couch across the room under the open window, a scarlet wool dressing-gown on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower part of his body. He seemed to be looking out and up to the tree that appeared above the window. She thought he could not have heard her, but he called:

"Clytie!"

She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his eyes when he weakly turned his head on the pillow.

"Nancy!"

He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of hers. The laugh did not end until there were tears in his eyes. She laughed with him as a strong-voiced singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had found.

"Don't be flattered, Nance—it's only typhoid emotion, " he said at last, in a voice that sounded strangely unused. "You don't really overcome me, you know —the sight of you doesn't unman me as much as these fond tears might make you suspect. I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, too." He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him.

"How plump and warm your hand is—all full of little whispering pulses. My hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and so uninterested! Doesn't fever bring forward a man's bones in the most shameless way?"

"Oh, Bernal—but you'll soon have them decently hidden again—indeed, you're looking—quite—quite plump." She smiled encouragingly. A sudden new look in his eyes made her own face serious again.

"Why, Nance, you're rather lovely when you smile!"

She smiled.

"Only then?"

He studied her, while she pretended to be grave.

He became as one apart, giving her a long look of unbiassed appraisal.

"Well—you know—now you have some little odds and ends of features—not bad—no, not even half bad, for that matter. I can see thousands of miles into your eyes—there's a fire smouldering away back in there —it's all smoky and mysterious after you go the first few thousand miles—but, I don't know—I believe the smile is needed, Nance. Poor child, I tell you this as a friend, for your own good—it seems to make a fine big perfection out of a lot of little imperfections that are only fairly satisfactory."

She smiled again, brushing an escaped lock of hair to its home.

"Really, Nance, no one could guess that mouth till it melts."

"I see—now I shall be going about with an endless, sickening grin. It will come to that—doubtless I shall be murdered for it—people that do grin that way always make me feel like murder."

"And they could never guess your eyes until the little smile runs up to light their chandeliers."

"Dear me!—Like a janitor!"

"—or the chin, until the little smile does curly things all around it——"

"There, now—calm yourself—the doctor will be here presently—and you know, you're among friends——"

"—or the face itself until those little pink ripples get to chasing each other up to hide in your hair, as they are now. You know you're blushing, Nance, so stop it. Remember, it's when you smile; remember, also, that smiles are born, not made. It's a long time since I've seen you, Nance."

"Two years—we didn't come here last summer, you know."

"But you've aged—you're twice the woman you were —so, on the whole, I'm not in the least disappointed in you."

"Your sickness seems to have left you—well—in a remarkably unprejudiced state of mind."

He laughed. "That's the funny part of it. Did they tell you this siege had me foolish for weeks? Honest, now, Nance, here's a case—how many are two times two?" He waited expectantly.

"Are you serious?"

"It seems silly to you, doesn't it—but answer as if I were a child."

"Well—twice two are four—unless my own mind is at fault."

"There!—now I begin to believe it. I suppose, now, it couldn't be anything else, could it? Yesterday morning the doctor said something was as plain as twice two are four. You know, the thing rankled in me all day. It seemed to me that twice two ought to be twenty-two. Then I asked Clytie and she said it was four, but that didn't satisfy me. Of course, Clytemnestra is a dear soul, and I truly, love her, but her advantages in an educational way have been meagre. She could hardly be considered an authority in mathematics, even if she is the ideal cook and friend. But I have more faith in your learning, Nance. The doctor's solution seems plausible, since you've sided with him. I suppose you could have no motive for deceiving me?"

She was regarding him with just a little anxiety, and this he detected.

"It's nothing to worry about, Nance—it's only funny. I haven't lost my mind or anything, you know—spite of my tempered enthusiasm for your face—but this is it: first there came a fearful shock—something terrible, that shattered me—then it seemed as if that sickness found my brain like a school-boy's slate with all his little problems worked out on it, and wickedly gave it a swipe each side with a big wet sponge. And now I seem to have forgotten all I ever learned. Clytie was in to feed me the inside of a baked potato before you came. After I'd fought with her to eat the skin of it— such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious little white particles still sticking to the inside where it hadn't all been dug out—and after she had used her strength as no lady should, and got it away from me, it came to me all at once that she was my mother. Then she assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite reasonable, too. I told her I loved her enough for a mother, anyway—and the poor thing giggled."

"Still, you have your lucid moments."

"Ah, still thinking about the face? You mean I'm lucid when you smile, and daffy when you don't. But that's a case of it—your face——"

"My face a case of what? You're getting commercial —even shoppy. Really, if this continues, Mr. Linford, I shall be obliged——"

"A case of it—of this blankness of mine. Instead of continuing my early prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey you coldly for the first time. You know I'm afraid to look at print for fear I've forgotten how to read."

"Nonsense!"

"No—I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G. Wells's stories—a gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you—bland, agreeable, scholarly—with marked distinction of bearing, and a personal beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting of one's secretest bones is held to betoken the only beauty—you understand that?——Well, I come here, and everything is different—ideals of beauty, people absurdly holding for flesh on their bones, for example —numbers, language, institutions, everything. Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe's."

"Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not——"

"Also, why I could see that you are—that's it, smile! Nance, you are a dear, when you smile—you make a man feel so strong and protecting. But if you knew all the queer things I've thought in the last week about time and people and the world. This morning I woke up mad because I'd been cheated out of the past. Where is all the past, Nance? There's just as much past somewhere as there is future—if one's soul has no end, it had no beginning. Why not worry about the past as we do about the future? First thing I'm going to do—start a Worry-About-the-Past Club, with dues and a president, and by-laws and things!"

"Don't you think I'd better send Clytie, now?"

"No; please wait a minute." He clutched her hand with a new strength, and raised on his elbow to face her, then, speaking lower:

"Nance, you know I've had a feeling it wasn't the right thing to ask the old gentleman this—he might think I hadn't been studying at college—but you tell me—what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ? It was a phrase he used the other day, and it stuck in my mind."

"Bernal—you surely know!"

"Truly I don't—it seems a bad dream I've had some time—that's all—some awful dream about my father."

"It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our redemption by his death on Calvary."

"Our redemption from what?"

"From sin, to be sure."

"What sin?"

"Why, our sin, of course—the sin of Adam which comes down to us."

"You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from that sin by dying?"

"Yes."

"From whom did he purchase it?"

"Oh, dear—this is like a catechism—from God, of course."

"The God that made Adam?"

"Certainly."

"Oh, yes—now I seem to remember him—he was supposed to make people, and then curse them, wasn't he? And so he had to have his son killed before he could forgive Adam for our sins?"

"No; before he could forgive us for Adam's sin, which descended to us."

"Came down like an entail, eh?... Adam couldn't disinherit us? Well, how did this God have his son die?"

"Why, Bernal—you must remember, dear—you knew so well—don't you know he was crucified?"

"To be sure I do—how stupid! And was God very cheerful after that? No more trouble about Adam or anything?"

"You must hush—I can't tell you about these things —wait till your grandfather comes."

"No, I want to have it from you, Nance—grandad would think I'd been slighting the classics."

"Well, God takes to heaven with him those who believe."

"Believe what?"

"Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son."

"What does he do with those who don't believe it?"

"They—they——Oh, I don't know—really, Bernal, I must go now."

"Just a minute, Nance!" He clutched more tightly the hand he had been holding. "I see now! I must be remembering something I knew—something that brought me down sick. If a man doesn't believe God was capable of becoming so enraged with Adam that only the bloody death of his own son would appease his anger toward us, he sends that man where —where the worm doeth something or other—what is it? Oh, well!—of course, it's of no importance—only it came to me it was something I ought to remember if grandad should ask me about it. What a quaint belief it must have been."

"Oh, I must go!—let me, now."

"Don't you find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old religions of a dead past— though I admit that this one is less pleasant to study than most of the others. This god seems to lack the majesty and beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods. In fact, he was too crude to be funny —by the way, what is it I seem to recall, about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son?—'unless ye eat the flesh of the son—'"

She drew her hand from his now and arose in some dismay. He lay back upon his pillow, smiling.

"Not very agreeable, is it, Nance? Well, come again, and I'll tell you about some of the pleasanter old faiths next time—I remember now that they interested me a lot before I was sick."

"You're sure I shouldn't send Clytie or some one?" She looked down at him anxiously, putting her hand on his forehead. He put one of his own lightly over hers.

"No, no, thank you! It's not near time yet for the next baked potato. If Clytie doesn't give up the skin of this one I shall be tempted to forget that she's a woman. There, I hear grandad coming, so you won't be leaving me alone."

Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left the room.

"Resting, my boy? That's good. You look brighter already—Nancy must come often."

He took Nancy's chair by the couch and began the reading of his morning's mail. Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings and pats, he turned to him.

"Well, my boy?"

"I've been thinking of something funny. You know, my memory is still freakish, and things come back in splotches. Just now I was recalling a primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also 'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also 'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man—we—good; not we—bad! I suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human nature—a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude lines of it.

"And this tribe—the Bakaïri, it is called—is equally crude in its religion. It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites?"

"Generally true. Human sacrifice was practised even by some who were well advanced, like the Aztecs and Peruvians."

"Well, sir, this Bakaïri tribe believed that its god demanded a sacrifice yearly, and their priests taught them that a certain one of their number had been sent by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by butchering this particular member of the tribe and— incredible as it sounds—eating his body and drinking his blood, could they avert drouth and pestilence and secure favours for the year to come. I remember the historian intimated that it were well not to incur the displeasure of any priest; that one doing this might find it followed by an unpleasant circumstance when the time came for the priests to designate the next yearly sacrifice."

"Curious, indeed, and most revolting," assented the old man, laying down his paper. "You are feeling more cheerful, aren't you—and you look so much brighter. Ah, what a mercy of God's you were spared to me!—you know you became my walking-stick when you were a very little boy—I could hardly go far without you now, my son."

"Yes, sir—thank you—I've just been recalling some of the older religions—Nancy and I had quite a talk about the old Christian faith."

"I'm glad indeed. I had sometimes been led to suspect that Nancy was the least bit—well, frivolous— but I am an old man, and doubtless the things that seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour subdued through the years."

"Nancy wasn't a bit frivolous this morning—on the contrary, she seemed for some reason to consider me the frivolous one. She looked shocked at me more than once. Now, about the old Christian faith, you know—their god was content with one sacrifice, instead of one each year, though he insisted on having the body eaten and the blood drunk perpetually. Yet I suppose, sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the human sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a distinct advance over the god of the Bakaïri, though he seems to have been equally a tribal god, whose chief function it was to make war upon neighbouring tribes."

"Yes, my boy—quite so," replied the old man most soothingly. He stepped gently to the door. Halfway down the hall Allan was about to turn into his room. He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, in tones too low for Bernal to hear:

"Go quickly for Dr. Merritt. He's out of his head again."

CHAPTER II

Further Distressing Fantasies of a Clouded Mind

When young Dr. Merritt came, flushed and important-looking, greatly concerned by the reported relapse, he found his patient with normal pulse and temperature —rational and joyous at his discovery that the secret of reading Roman letters was still his.

"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, smilingly, when the little thermometer had been taken from between his lips, "but it's all right—I didn't find a single strange letter—every last one of them meant something—and I know figures, too—and now I'm as hungry for print as I am for baked potatoes. You know, never in my life again, after I'm my own master, shall I neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. When I think of those I let go in my careless days of plenty, I grow heart-sick."

"A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge as you'd like to there would be no more use sending for me; you'd be a goner—that's what you'd be! Head feel all right?"

"Fine!—I've settled down to a pleasant reading of Holy Writ. This Old Testament is mighty interesting to me, though doubtless I've read it all before."

"It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming on all right," the doctor assured the alarmed old man outside the door. "He may be a little flighty now and then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe him over. He's getting back to himself—stronger every hour. We often have these things to contend with."

And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to puzzle over the case.

Again the following morning, when Bernal had leaned his difficult way down to the couch in the study, the old man was dismayed by his almost unspeakable aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow and placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of the mad.

"You know, grandad," he began easily, looking up at the once more placid old man who sat beside him, "I am just now recalling matters that were puzzling me much before the sickness began to spin my head about so fast on my shoulders. The harder I thought, the faster my head went around, until it sent my mind all to little spatters in a circle about me. One thing I happened to be puzzling over was how the impression first became current that this god of the Jews was a being of goodness. Such an impression seems to have been tacitly accepted for some centuries after the iniquities so typical of him had been discountenanced by society—long after human sacrifice was abhorred, and even after the sacrificing of animals was held to be degrading. It's a point that escapes me, owing to my addled brain; doubtless you can set me right. At present I can't conceive how the notion could ever have occurred to any one. I now remember this book well enough to know that not only is little good ever recorded of him, but he is so continually barbarous, and so atrociously cruel in his barbarities. And he was thought to be all-powerful when he is so pitifully ineffectual, with all his crude power—the poor old fellow was forever bungling—then bungling again in his efforts to patch up his errors. Indeed, he would be rather a pathetic figure if he were not so monstrous! Still, there is a kind of heathen grandeur about him at times. He drowns his world full of people because his first two circumvented him; then he saves another pair, but things go still worse, so he has to keep smiting the world right and left, dumb beasts as well as men; and at last he picks out one tribe, in whose behalf he works a series of miracles, that devastated a wide area. How he did love to turn a city over to destruction! And from the cloud's centre he was constantly boasting of his awful power, and scaring people into butchering lambs and things in his honour. Yet, doubtless, that heathen tribe found its god 'good,' and other people formed the habit of calling him good, without thinking much about it. They must have felt queer when they woke up to the fact that they were calling infinitely good a god who was not good, even when judged by their poor human standards."

Remembering the physician's instructions to soothe the patient, the distressed old man timidly began—

"'For God so loved the world'"—but he was interrupted by the vivacious one on the couch.

"That's it—I remember that tradition. He was even crude enough to beget a son for human sacrifice, giving that son power to condemn thereafter those who should not detect his godship through his human envelope! That was a rather subtler bit of baseness than those he first perpetrated—to send this saving son in such guise that the majority of his creatures would inevitably reject him! Oh! he was bound to have his failures and his tortures, wasn't he? You know, I dare say the ancient Christians called him good because they were afraid to call him bad. Doubtless the one great spiritual advance that we have made since the Christian faith prevailed is, that we now worship without fearing what we worship."

Once more the distressed old man had risen to stand with assumed carelessness by the door, having writhed miserably in his chair until he could no longer endure the profane flood.

"But, truly, that god was, after all, a pathetic figure. Imagine him amid the ruins of his plan, desolate, always foiled by his creatures—meeting failure after failure from Eden to Calvary—for even the bloody expedient of sending his son to be sacrificed did not avail to save his own chosen people. They unanimously rejected the son, if I remember, and so he had to be content with a handful of the despised Gentiles. A sorrowful old figure of futility he is—a fine figure for a big epic, it seems to me. By the way, what was the date that this religion was laughed away. I can remember perfectly the downfall of the Homeric deities—how many years there were when the common people believed in the divine origin of the Odyssey, while the educated classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at last the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. But strangely enough I do not recall just the date when we began to demand a god of dignity and morality."

The old man had been loath to leave the sufferer. He still stood by the open door to call to the first passer-by. Now, shudderingly wishful to stem the torrent of blasphemies, innocent though they were, he ventured cautiously:

"There was Sinai—you forget the tables—the moral law—the ten commandments."

"Sinai, to be sure. Christians used to regard that as an occasion of considerable dignity, didn't they? The time when he gave directions about slavery and divorce and polygamy—he was beautifully broad-minded in all those matters, and to kill witches and to stone an ox that gored any one, and how to disembowel the lambs used for sacrifice, and what colours to use in the tabernacle."

But the horrified old man had fled. Half an hour later he returned with Dr. Merritt, relieving Clytie, who had watched outside the door and who reported that there had been no signs of violence within.

Again they found a normal pulse and temperature, and an appetite clamouring for delicacies of strong meat. Young Dr. Merritt was greatly puzzled.

"I understand the case perfectly," he said to the old man; "he needs rest and plenty of good nursing—and quiet. We often have these cases. Your head feels all right, doesn't it?" he asked Bernal.

"Fine, Doctor!"

"I thought so." He looked shrewdly at the old man. " Your grandfather had an idea you might be—perhaps a bit excited."

"No—not a bit. We've had a fine morning chatting over some of the primitive religions, haven't we, old man?" and he smiled affectionately up to his grandfather. "Hello, Nance, come and sit by me."

The girl had paused in the doorway while he spoke, and came now to take his hand, after a look of inquiry at the two men. The latter withdrew, the eyes of the old man sadly beseeching the eyes of the physician for some definite sign of hope.

Inside, the sufferer lay holding a hand of Nancy between his cheek and the pillow—with intervals of silence and blithe speech. His disordered mind, it appeared, was still pursuing its unfortunate tangent.

"The first ideas are all funny, aren't they, Nance? Genesis in that Christian mythology we were discussing isn't the only funny one. There was the old northern couple who danced on the bones of the earth nine times and made nine pairs of men and women; and there were the Greek and his wife who threw stones out of their ark that changed to men; and the Hindu that saved the life of a fish, and whom the fish then saved by fastening his ship to his horn; and the South Sea fisherman who caught his hook in the water-god's hair and made him so angry that he drowned all the world except the offending fisherman. Aren't they nearly as funny as the god who made one of his pair out of clay and one from a rib, and then became so angry with them that he must beget a son for them to sacrifice before he would forgive them? Let's think of the pleasanter ones. Do you know that hymn of the Veda?—'If I go along trembling like a cloud, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!'

"'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone wrong. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!'

"And Buddha was a pleasant soul, Nance—with stuff in him, too—born a prince, yet leaving his palace to be poor and to study the ways of wisdom, until enlightenment came to him sitting under his Bo tree. He said faith was the best wealth here. And, 'Not to commit any sin, to do good and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the awakened'; 'not hating those who hate us,' 'free from greed among the greedy.' They must have been glad of Buddhism in their day, teaching them to honour their parents, to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, to forgive their enemies and return good for evil. And there was funny old Confucius with his 'Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a pillow—happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue, both riches and honour seem to me like the passing cloud.' Another one of his is 'In the book of Poetry are three hundred pieces—but the designs of them all mean, "Have no depraved thoughts."' Rather good for a Chinaman, wasn't it?

"And there was old Zoroaster saying to his Ormuzd, 'I believe thee, O God! to be the best thing of all!' and asking for guidance. Ormuzd tells him to be pure in thought, word and deed; to be temperate, chaste and truthful—and this Ormuzd would have no lambs sacrificed to him. Life, being his gift, was dear to him. And don't forget Mohammed, Nance, that fine old barbarian with the heart of a passionate child, counselling men to live a good life and to strive after the mercy of God by fasting, charity and prayer, calling this the 'Key of Paradise.' He went after a poor blind man whom he had at first rebuffed, saying 'He is thrice welcome on whose account my Lord hath reprimanded me.' He was a fine, stubborn old believer, Nance. I wonder if it's not true that the Christians once studied these old chaps to take the taste of their own cruder God out of their minds. What a cruel people they must have been to make so cruel a God!

"But let's talk of you, Nance—that's it—light the chandeliers in your eyes."

He spoke drowsily now, and lay quiet, patting one of her hands. But presently he was on one elbow to study her again.

"Nance, the Egyptians worshipped Nature, the Greeks worshipped Beauty, the Northern chaps worshipped Courage, and the Christians feared—well, the hereafter, you know—but I'm a Catholic when you smile."