CHAPTER XLVII

Kimberly no longer concealed from his family the trend of his thinking nor that which was to them its serious import. Dolly came to him in consternation. "My dear brother!" she wept, sitting down beside him.

His arm encircled her. "Dolly, there is absolutely nothing to cry about."

"Oh, there is; there is everything. How can you do it, Robert? You are turning your back on all modern thought."

"But 'modern thought,' Dolly, has nothing sacred about it. It is merely present-day thought and, as such, no better than any other day thought. Every preposterous thought ever expressed was modern when it first reached expression. The difficulty is that all such 'modern' thought delights in reversing itself. It was one thing yesterday and is wholly another to-day; all that can with certainty be predicated of it is, that to-morrow it will be something quite else. Present day modern thought holds that what a man believes is of no moment--what he does is everything. Four hundred years ago 'modern' thought announced that what a man did was of no moment, what he believed was everything. Which was right?"

"Well, which was right?" demanded Dolly, petulantly. "You seem to be doing the sermonizing."

"If you ask me, I should say neither. I should say that what a man believes is vital and what he does is vital as well. I know--if my experience has taught me anything--that what men do will be to a material degree modified by what they believe. It is not I who am sermonizing, Dolly. Francis often expressed these thoughts. I have only weighed them--now they weigh me."

"I don't care what you call it. Arthur says it is pure mediaevalism."

"Tell Arthur, 'mediaevalism' is precisely what I am leaving. I am casting off the tatters of mediaeval 'modern' thought. I am discarding the rags of paganism to which the modern thought of the sixteenth century has reduced my generation and am returning to the most primitive of all religious precepts--authority. I am leaving the stony deserts of agnosticism which 'modern' thought four hundred years ago pointed out as the promised land and I am returning to the path trodden by St. Augustine. Surely, Dolly, in this there is nothing appalling for any one unless it is for the man that has it to do."

Yet Kimberly deferred a step against which every inclination in his nature fought. It was only a persistent impulse, one that refused to be wholly smothered, that held him to it. He knew that the step must be taken or he must do worse, and the alternative, long pondered, was a repellent one.

Indeed, the alternative of ignoring a deepening conviction meant, he realized, that he must part with his self-respect. He went so far as seriously to ask himself whether he could not face putting this away; whether it was not, after all, a fanciful thing that he might do better without. He considered that many men manage to get on very well in this world without the scruple of self-respect.

But honesty with himself had been too long the code of his life to allow him to evade an unanswered question and he forced himself gradually to the point of returning to the archbishop. One night he stood again, by appointment, in his presence.

"I am at fault in not having written you," Kimberly said simply. "It was kind of you to remember me in my sorrow last summer. Through some indecision I failed to write."

"I understand perfectly. Indeed, you had no need to write," returned the archbishop. "Somehow I have felt I should see you again."

"The knot was cruelly cut."

The archbishop paused. "I have thought of it all very often since that day on the hill," he said. "'Suppose,' I have asked myself, 'he had been taken instead. It would have been easier for him. But could he really wish it? Could he, knowing what she once had suffered, wish that she be left without him to the mercies of this world?'" The archbishop shook his head. "I think not. I think if one were to be taken, you could not wish it had been you. That would have been not better, but worse."

"But she would not have been responsible for my death. I am for hers."

"Of that you cannot be certain. What went before your coming into her life may have been much more responsible."

"I am responsible for another death--my own nephew, you know, committed suicide. And I would, before this, have ended my mistakes and failures," his voice rose in spite of his suppression "--put myself beyond the possibility of more--but that she believed what you believe, that Christ is the Son of God."

The words seemed wrung from him. "It is this that has driven me to you. I am sickened of strife and success--the life of the senses. It is Dead Sea fruit and I have tasted its bitterness. If I can do nothing to repair what I have already done, then I am better done with life."

"And do not you, too, believe that Christ is the Son of God?"

"I do not know what I believe--I believe nothing. Convince me that He was the Son of God and I will kneel to him in the dust."

"My dear son! It is not I, nor is it another, that can convince you. God, alone, extends the grace of faith. Have you ever asked for it?"

Kimberly started from his apathy. "I?" He relapsed again into moodiness. "No." The thought moved him to a protest. "How can I reach a far-off thing like faith?" he demanded with angry energy---"a shadowy, impalpable, evasive, ghostly thing? How can I reach, how can I grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot understand?"

"You can reach it and you can grasp it. Such questions spring from the anger of despair; despair has no part in faith. Faith is the death of despair. From faith springs hope. It is despair that pictures faith to you as a far-off thing."

"Whatever it may be, it is not for me. I have no hope."

"What brought you to-night? Can you not see His grace in forcing you to come against your own inclination? His hope has sustained you when you least suspected it. It has stayed your hand from the promptings of despair. Faith a far-off thing? It is at your side, trembling and invisible. It is within your reach at every moment. You have but to put forth your hand to touch it."

Kimberly shook his bowed head.

"Will you stretch forth your hand--will you touch the hem of His garment?"

Kimberly sat immovable. "I cannot even stretch forth a hand."

"Will you let me stretch forth mine?" His silence left the archbishop to continue. "You have come to me like another Nicodemus, and with his question, unasked, upon your lips. You have done wrong--it is you who accuse yourself, not I. Your own words tell me this and they can spring only from an instinct that has accused you in your own heart.

"Christianity will teach you your atonement--nothing else can or will. You seem to picture this Christianity as something distant, something of an unreal, shadowy time and place. It is not. It is concrete, clear, distinct, alive, all about you every day, answering the very questions you have asked in your loneliness. It is hidden in the heart of the servant that waits at your call, locked in the breast of the man that passes you in the street. It is everywhere, unseen, unapprehended about you. I am going to put it before you. Stay with me to-night. In that room, my own little chapel," the archbishop rose as he indicated the door, "spend the time until you are ready to sleep. You have given many years to the gratification of yourself. Give one hour to-night to the contemplation of God. May I tell you my simple faith? The night before He suffered, He took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to His disciples. And He said, in substance, 'Take and eat of this, for this is my body, broken for your sins. And as often as ye shall do this, do it in commemoration of me.' And on these words I ground my faith in this mystery of His presence; this is why I believe He is here to-night, and why I leave you with Him in this tabernacle before you. If you feel that you have done wrong, that you want to atone for it, ask Him to teach you how."

The archbishop opened the chapel door. In the darkness of the cool room, the red sanctuary lamp gleamed above the altar. The archbishop knelt for a moment beside his questioner; then he withdrew, closing the door behind him, and the silence of the night remained unbroken.

An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head. In the adjoining room the archbishop himself had slept, within call, in his chair. He entered the chapel and an assistant robed him to say his mass before his single auditor. The service over, he made his thanksgiving, walked to where the man knelt and, touching him on the shoulder, the two left the room together.