CHAPTER VI

IN THE FOLLY OF HIS YOUTH

At early twilight Bernal, sore at heart for the pain he had been obliged to cause the old man, went to the study-door for a last word with him.

"I believe there is no one above whose forgiveness I need, sir--but I shall always be grieved if I can't have yours. I _do_ need that."

The old man had stood by the open door as if meaning to cut short the interview.

"You have it. I forgive you any hurt you have done me; it was due quite as much to my limitations as to yours. For that other forgiveness, which you will one day know is more than mine--I--I shall always pray for that."

He stopped, and the other waited awkwardly, his heart rushing out in ineffectual flood against the old man's barrier of stern restraint. For a moment he made folds in his soft hat with a fastidious precision. Finally he nerved himself to say calmly:

"I thank you, sir, for all you have done--all you have ever done for me and for Allan--and, good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

Though there was no hint of unkindness in the old man's voice, something formal in his manner had restrained the other from offering his hand.

Still loath to go without it, he said again more warmly:

"Good-bye, sir!"

"Good-bye!"

This time he turned and went slowly down the dim hall, still making the careful folds in his hat, as if he might presently recall something that would take him back. At the foot of the stairs he stopped quickly to listen, believing he had heard a call from above; but nothing came and he went out. Still in the door upstairs was the old man--stern of face, save that far back in his eyes a kind spirit seemed to strive ineffectually.

Across the lawn from her hammock Nancy called to Bernal. He went slowly toward her, still suffering from the old man's coldness--and for the hurts he had unwittingly put upon him.

The girl, as he went forward, stood to greet him, her gown, sleeveless, neckless, taking the bluish tinge that early twilight gives to snow, a tinge that deepened to dusk about her eyes and in her hair. She gave him her hand and at once he felt a balm poured into his tortured heart. After all, men were born to hurt and be hurt.

He sat in the rustic chair opposite the hammock, looking into Nancy's black-lashed eyes of the Irish gray, noting that from nineteen to twenty her neck had broadened at the base the least one might discern, that her face was less full yet richer in suggestion--her face of the odds and ends when she did not smile. At this moment she was not only unsmiling, but excited.

"Oh, Bernal, what is it? Tell me quick. Allan was so vague--though he said he'd always stand by you, no matter what you did. What _have_ you done, Bernal? Is it a college sc.r.a.pe?"

"Oh, that's only Allan's big-hearted way of talking! He's so generous and loyal I think he's often been disappointed that I didn't do something, so he _could_ stand by me. No--no sc.r.a.pes, Nance, honour bright!"

"But you're leaving--"

"Well, in a way I have done something. I've found I couldn't be a minister as Grandad had set his heart on my being--"

"But if you haven't done anything wicked, why not?"

"Oh, I'm not a believer."

"In what?"

"In anything, I think--except, well, in you and Grandad and--and Allan and Clytie--yes, and in myself, Nance. That's a big point. I believe in myself."

"And you're going because you don't believe in other things?"

"Yes, or because I believe too much--just as you like to put it. I demanded a better G.o.d of Grandad, Nance--one that didn't create h.e.l.l and men like me to fill it just for the sake of scaring a few timid mortals into heaven."

"You know Aunt Bell is an unbeliever. She says no one with an open mind can live twenty years in Boston without being vastly broadened--'broadening into the higher unbelief,' she calls it. She says she has pa.s.sed through nearly every stage of unbelief there is, but that she feels the Lord is going to bring her back at last to rest in the shadow of the Cross."

As Aunt Bell could be heard creaking heavily in a willow rocker on the piazza near-by, the young man suppressed a comment that arose within him.

"Only, unbelievers are apt to be fatiguing" the girl continued, in a lower tone. "You know Aunt Bell's husband, Uncle Chester--the meekest, dearest little man in the world, he was--well, once he disappeared and wasn't heard of again for over four years--except that they knew his bank account was drawn on from time to time. Then, at last, his brother found him, living quietly under an a.s.sumed name in a little town outside of Boston--pretending that he hadn't a relative in the world. He told his brother he was just beginning to feel rested. Aunt Bell said he was demented. While he was away she'd been all through psychometry, the planchette, clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology, and Unitarianism. What are you, Bernal?"

"Nothing, Nance--that's the trouble."

"But where are you going, and what for?"

"I don't know either answer--but I can't stay here, because I'm blasphemous--it seems--and I don't want to stay, even if I weren't sent.

I want to be out--away. I feel as if I must be looking for something I haven't found. I suspect it's a fourth dimension to religion. They have three--even breadth--but they haven't found faith yet--a faith that doesn't demand arbitrary signs, parlour-magic, and b.l.o.o.d.y, weird tales in a book that becomes their idol."

The girl looked at him long in silence, swaying a little in the hammock, a bare elbow in one hand, her meditative chin in the other, the curtains of her eyes half-drawn, as if to let him in a little at a time before her wonder. Then, at last:

"Why, you're another Adam--being sent out of the garden for your sin. Now tell me--honest--was the sin worth it? I've often wondered." She gave an eager little laugh.

"Why, Nance, it's worth so much that you want to go of your own accord. Do you suppose Adam could have stayed in that fat, lazy, silly garden after he became alive--with no work, no knowledge, no adventure, no chance to do wrong? As for earning his bread--the only plausible h.e.l.l I've ever been able to picture is one where there was nothing to do--no work, no puzzling, no chances to take, no necessity of thinking. Now, isn't that an ideal h.e.l.l? And is it my fault if it happens to be a description of what Christians look forward to as heaven? I tell you, Adam would have gone out of that garden from sheer boredom after a few days. The setting of the angel with the flaming sword to guard the gate shows that G.o.d still failed to understand the wonderful creature he had made."

She smiled, meditative, wondering.

"I dare say, for my part, I'd have eaten that apple if the serpent had been at all persuasive. Bernal, I wonder--and wonder--and wonder--I'm never done. And Aunt Bell says I'll never be a sweet and wholesome and stimulating companion to my husband, if I don't stop being so vague and fantastic."

"What does she call being vague and fantastic?"

"Not wanting any husband."

"Oh!"

"Bernal, it's like the time that you ran off when you were a wee thing--to be bad."

"And you cried because I wouldn't take you with me."

"I can feel the woe of it yet."

"You're dry-eyed now, Nance."

"Yes--and the pink parasol and the buff shoes I meant to take with me are also things of the past. Mercy! The idea of going off with an unbeliever to be bad and--everything! 'The happy couple are said to look forward to a life of joyous wickedness, several interesting crimes having been planned for the coming season. For their honeymoon infamy they will perpetrate a series of bank-robberies along the Maine coast.' There--how would that sound?"

"You're right, Nance--I wouldn't take you this time either, even if you cried. And your little speech is funny and all that--but Nance, I believe, these last years, we've both thought of things now and then--things, you know--things to think of and not talk of--and see here--The man was driven out of the garden--but not the woman. She isn't mentioned. She could stay there--"

"Until she got tired of it herself?"