Читать книгу A Man's World - Edwards Albert - Страница 8

Nothing of moment happened in the weeks I spent in camp meeting that summer. Luckily Mary was not there and Oliver, having finished the Seminary, was passing some months in Europe. I bore in mind the Doctor's advice, avoided all arguments and mechanically observed the forms of that religious community. No one suspected my godlessness, but I suspected everyone of hypocrisy. It was a barren time of deceit.

Even my correspondence with Margot gave me no pleasure. I could not write to her about my doubts, but I wanted very much to talk them over with her. While I could not put down on paper what was uppermost in my heart, I found it very hard to fill letters with less important things. Whenever I have been less than frank, I have always found it dolefully unsatisfactory.

I imagine that most thoughtful boys of my generation were horribly alone. It is getting more the custom nowadays for adults to be friends with children. The Doctor at school was the only man in whom I had ever confided. And in my loneliness I looked forward eagerly to long talks with Margot. I supposed that love meant understanding.

The serious sickness of the Mother took us home before the summer was ended. I had not been especially unhappy there during my childhood, but now that I had seen other pleasanter homes, my own seemed cruelly cheerless. Its gloom was intensified because the Mother was dying. I had had no special love for her but the thing was made harder for me by my lack of sympathy with their religious conventions. It was imperative that they should not question God's will. The Mother did not want to die. The Father was, I am sure, broken-hearted at the thought of losing her. They kept up a brave attitude – to me it seemed a hollow pretense – that God was being very good to them, that he was releasing her from the bondage of life, calling her to joy unspeakable. However much she was attached to things known – the Father, her absent son, the graves of her other children, the homely things of the parsonage, the few pieces of inherited silver, the familiar chairs – it was incumbent on her to appear glad to go out into the unknown.

It was my first encounter with death. How strange it is that the greatest of all commonplaces should always surprise us! What twist in our brains is it, that makes us try so desperately to ignore death? The doctors of philosophy juggle words over their Erkenntnis Theorie– trying to discover the confines of human knowledge, trying to decide for us what things are knowable and what we may not know – but above all their prattle, the fact of death stands out as one thing we all do know. Whether our temperaments incline us to reverence pure reason or to accept empirical knowledge, we know, beyond cavil, that we must surely die. Yet what an amazing amount of mental energy we expend in trying to forget it. The result? We are all surprised and unnerved when this commonplace occurs.

Christianity claims to have conquered death. For the elect, the Father taught, it is a joyous awakening. The people of the church scrupulously went through the forms which their creed imposed. Who can tell the reality of their thoughts? There is some validity in the theory of psychology which says that if you strike a man, you become angry; that if you laugh, it makes you glad. I would not now deny that they got some comfort from their attitude. But at the time, tossing about in my stormy sea of doubts, it seemed to me that they were all afraid. Just as well disciplined troops will wheel and mark time and ground arms, go through all the familiar manoeuvres of the parade ground, while the shells of the enemy sweep their ranks with cold fear, so it seemed to me that these soldiers of Christ were performing rites for which they had lost all heart in an effort to convince themselves that they were not afraid.

A great tenderness and pity came to me for the Mother. As I have said there had been little affection between us. All her love had gone out to Oliver. Yet in those last days, when she was so helpless, it seemed to comfort her if I sat by her bed-side and stroked her hand. Some mystic sympathy sprang up between us and she felt no need of pretense before me. I sat there and watched sorrow on her face, hopeless grief, yes, and sometimes rebellion and fear. But with brave loyalty she hid it all when the Father came into the room, dried her tears and talked of the joy that was set before her.

There was also a sorrow of my own. Disillusionment had come to me from Margot. Why I had expected that she would sympathize with and understand my doubts, I do not know. It was a wild enough dream.

The first night at home I went to see her. The family crowded about with many questions. Al was attending a southern military academy and there were endless comparisons to be made between his school and mine. But at last Margot and I got free of them and off by ourselves in an arbor. She seemed older than I, the maturity which had come to her in these two years startled me. But I blurted out my troubles without preface.

"Margot," I said, "Do you believe everything in the Bible?"

I suppose she was expecting some word of love. Two years before, when I had left her, I had kissed her. And now —

"Of course," she said, in surprise.

If she had doubted one jot or tittle of it, I might have been content. Her unthinking acceptation of it all angered me.

"I don't," I growled.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say. I don't believe in the Bible."

I remember so well how she looked – there in the arbor, where she had led me – her eyes wide with surprise and fear. I thought she looked stupid.

"I don't believe in God," I went on.

I expected her to take this announcement quietly. But two years before I had never heard of men who doubted the existence of God, except, of course, the benighted heathen. Margot's hair is almost white now, but I suppose that in all her life, I am the only person she has heard question the teachings of the church.

Now I realize the extent of my folly in expecting that she would understand. The two years I had been away had changed everything for me, even the meaning of the words I used. I had been out in a wider world than hers, had begun to meet the minds of men who thought. In that little mountain village, a second rate, rather mushy-brained rector had been her intellectual guide. It was insane for me to think she would sympathize with me. And yet, because I loved her, I did. I was only eighteen.

How the fright grew in her eyes as I went on declaiming my unbeliefs!

"It's wicked – what you are saying."

"It's true. Is truth wicked?"

"I won't listen to you any more."

She got up. Suddenly I realized that I was losing her.

"Margot," I pleaded, "you mustn't go. We're going to get married. I've got to tell you what I think."

"I'll never marry a man who doesn't believe in God."

We were both very heroic. There was no older, wiser person there to laugh at us. So we stood and glared at each other. She waited some minutes for me to recant. I could not. Then two tears started down her cheeks. I wanted desperately to say something, but there were tears in my eyes also and no words would come. She turned and walked away. I could not believe it. I do not know how long I waited for her to come back. At last I went home.

Sullen, bitter days followed. I suppose she hoped, as I did, that some way would be found to restore peace. But neither of us knew how.

If I might have my way, I would first of all arrange life so that boys should escape such crises. Sooner or later, I suppose, every human being comes to a point where to compromise means utter damnation. But if I could remould this "sorry scheme of things," I would see that this portentous moment did not come till maturity. A Frenchman has said that after thirty we all become cynics. It is a vicious saying, but holds a tiny grain of truth. As we get older we become indifferent, cynical, in regard to phrases. The tragedy of youth is that it rarely sees beyond words. And of all futilities, it seems to me that quarrels over the terms with which we strive to express our mysticism – our religion, if you will – are the most futile. At eighteen I let a tangle of words crash into, smash, my love. Youth is cruel – above all to itself.

The mother's funeral seemed to me strangely unreal. It was hard to find the expected tears, and the black mourning clothes were abhorrent. I felt that I was imprisoned in some foul dungeon and was stifling for lack of air.

Release came with time for me to start to College. There was a lump in my throat as I climbed into the buckboard, beside the negro boy who was to drive me down to the county seat for the midnight train. The Father reached up and shook my hand and hoped that the Lord would have me in His keeping and then we turned out through the gate into the main street. I saw the Father standing alone in the doorway and I knew he was praying for me. I felt that I would never come back. I was sorry for the Father in the big empty house, but I had no personal regret, except Margot. The memory of the former leave-taking, how with her I had found the first realization of love, the first vague sensing of the mystic forces of life, came back to me sharply. All through the two years she had been a constant point in my thinking. I had not mooned about her sentimentally, more often than not, in the rush of work or play, I had not thought of her at all. But the vision of her had always been there, back in the holy of holies of my brain, a thing which was not to change nor fade.

The Episcopal Church was lit up, as we drove by I could hear some laughter. I knew they were decorating it for a wedding. Margot would be there, for she was one of the bride's maids. As soon as we were out of the village I told the negro boy I had forgotten something and jumping out, I walked back into the woods and circled round to the side of the church. I put a board up under a window and looked in. There were other people there, but I saw only Margot. She was sitting apart from the laughter, weaving a wreath of ground-pine for the lectern. Her face was very sad. Of course she knew I was going away, everyone knows such things in a little village. But she held her head high. If I had called her out onto the steps, she would have asked me once more to recant. I knew it was irrevocable. The fates had made us too proud.

I slipped down from my perch and made my way back to the buckboard. There was a wild west wind blowing, it howled and shrieked through the pines and I caught some of its fierce exultation. The summer had been bitter beyond words. The full life before me called, the life without need of hypocrisy.

When at last I was on the train, and felt the jar as it started, I walked forward into the smoking car. As a symbol of my new liberty, as reverently as if it had been a sacrament to the Goddess of Reason, I lit a cigarette. The tears were very close to my eyes as I sat there and smoked. But the pride of martyrdom held them back. Was I not giving up even Margot for the Cause of Truth?