第64章 THE BALKING OF CHRISTOPHER(2)

"Guess you are glad to see a man coming, instead of a woman who has doubts about some doctrine,"was the first thing Christopher said to the minister when he had been admitted to his study. The study was a small room, lined with books, and only one picture hung over the fireplace, the portrait of the minister's mother -- Stephen was so like her that a question concerning it was futile.

Stephen colored a little angrily at Christopher's remark -- he was a hot-tempered man, although a clergyman; then he asked him to be seated.

Christopher sat down opposite the minister. "Ioughtn't to have spoken so," he apologized, "but what I am doing ain't like me.""That's all right," said Stephen. He was a short, athletic man, with an extraordinary width of shoul-ders and a strong-featured and ugly face, still indica-tive of goodness and a strange power of sympathy.

Three little mongrel dogs were sprawled about the study. One, small and alert, came and rested his head on Christopher's knee. Animals all liked him.

Christopher mechanically patted him. Patting an appealing animal was as unconscious with the man as drawing his breath. But he did not even look at the little dog while he stroked it after the fashion which pleased it best. He kept his large, keen, melancholy eyes fixed upon the minister; at length he spoke. He did not speak with as much eagerness as he did with force, bringing the whole power of his soul into his words, which were the words of a man in rebellion against the greatest odds on earth and in all creation -- the odds of fate itself.

"I have come to say a good deal, Mr. Wheaton,"he began.

"Then say it, Mr. Dodd," replied Stephen, without a smile.

Christopher spoke. "I am going back to the very beginning of things," said he, "and maybe you will think it blasphemy, but I don't mean it for that.

I mean it for the truth, and the truth which is too much for my comprehension.""I have heard men swear when it did not seem blasphemy to me," said Stephen.

"Thank the Lord, you ain't so deep in your rut you can't see the stars!" said Christopher. "But I guess you see them in a pretty black sky sometimes.

In the beginning, why did I have to come into the world without any choice?""You must not ask a question of me which can only be answered by the Lord," said Stephen.

"I am asking the Lord," said Christopher, with his sad, forceful voice. "I am asking the Lord, and I ask why?""You have no right to expect your question to be answered in your time," said Stephen.

"But here am I," said Christopher, "and I was a question to the Lord from the first, and fifty years and more I have been on the earth.""Fifty years and more are nothing for the answer to such a question," said Stephen.

Christopher looked at him with mournful dissent;there was no anger about him. "There was time before time," said he, "before the fifty years and more began. I don't mean to blaspheme, Mr.

Wheaton, but it is the truth. I came into the world whether I would or not; I was forced, and then I was told I was a free agent. I am no free agent. For fifty years and more I have thought about it, and I have found out that, at least. I am a slave -- a slave of life.""For that matter," said Stephen, looking curi-ously at him, "so am I. So are we all."

"That makes it worse," agreed Christopher -- "a whole world of slaves. I know I ain't talking in exactly what you might call an orthodox strain. Ihave got to a point when it seems to me I shall go mad if I don't talk to somebody. I know there is that awful why, and you can't answer it; and no man living can. I'm willing to admit that sometime, in another world, that why will get an answer, but meantime it's an awful thing to live in this world without it if a man has had the kind of life I have.

My life has been harder for me than a harder life might be for another man who was different. That much I know. There is one thing I've got to be thankful for. I haven't been the means of sending any more slaves into this world. I am glad my wife and I haven't any children to ask 'why?'

"Now, I've begun at the beginning; I'm going on.

I have never had what men call luck. My folks were poor; father and mother were good, hard-working people, but they had nothing but trouble, sickness, and death, and losses by fire and flood.

We lived near the river, and one spring our house went, and every stick we owned, and much as ever we all got out alive. Then lightning struck father's new house, and the insurance company had failed, and we never got a dollar of insurance. Then my oldest brother died, just when he was getting started in business, and his widow and two little children came on father to support. Then father got rheu-matism, and was all twisted, and wasn't good for much afterward; and my sister Sarah, who had been expecting to get married, had to give it up and take in sewing and stay at home and take care of the rest. There was father and George's widow -- she was never good for much at work -- and mother and Abby. She was my youngest sister. As for me, Ihad a liking for books and wanted to get an educa-tion; might just as well have wanted to get a seat on a throne. I went to work in the grist-mill of the place where we used to live when I was only a boy.

Then, before I was twenty, I saw that Sarah wasn't going to hold out. She had grieved a good deal, poor thing, and worked too hard, so we sold out and came here and bought my farm, with the mort-gage hitching it, and I went to work for dear life.

Then Sarah died, and then father. Along about then there was a girl I wanted to marry, but, Lord, how could I even ask her? My farm started in as a failure, and it has kept it up ever since. When there wasn't a drought there was so much rain everything mildewed; there was a hail-storm that cut every-thing to pieces, and there was the caterpillar year.

I just managed to pay the interest on the mortgage;as for paying the principal, I might as well have tried to pay the national debt.