The Uncalled · Chapter 9 (2/2)

Elizabeth did not know what to make of his words, so she said nothing, and for a while they stood in strained silence. After a while he said, “Aunt Hester wants me to be a preacher.”

“I am so glad to hear that,” she returned. “I think you’ll make a good one.”

“You too!” he exclaimed, resentfully. “Why should I make a good one? Why need I be one at all?”

“Oh, because you’re smart, and then you’ve always been good.”

The young man was suddenly filled with disdain. His anger returned. He felt how utterly out of accord he was with everyone else. “Don’t you think there is anything else required besides being ‘smart’ and ‘good’?” He himself would have blushed at the tone in which he said this, could he have recognised it. “I’m smart because I happened to pass all my examinations. I got through the high school at eighteen: nearly everyone does the same. I’m good because I have never had a chance to be bad: I have never been out of Aunt Hester’s sight long enough. Anybody could be good that way.”

“But then older people know what is best for us, Fred.”

“Why should they? They don’t know what’s beating inside of us away down here.” The boy struck his breast fiercely. “I don’t believe they do know half the time what is best, and I don’t believe that God intends them to know.”

“I wouldn’t talk about it, if I were you. I must go in. Won’t you come in with me?”

“Not tonight,” he replied. “I must be off.”

“But papa might give you some advice.”

“I’ve had too much of it now. What I want is room to breathe in once.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I know you don’t; nobody does, or tries to. Go in, Lizzie,” he said more calmly. “I don’t want you to catch cold, even if I do. Good night.” And he turned away.

The girl stood for a moment looking after him; her eye was moist. Then she pouted, “Fred’s real cross tonight,” and went in.

It is one of the glaring sarcasms of life to see with what complacency a shallow woman skims the surface of tragedy and thinks that she has sounded the depths.

Fred continued his walk towards home. He was thinking. It ran in him that Elizabeth was a good deal of a fool; and then he felt horrified with himself for thinking it. It did not occur to him that the hard conditions through which he had come had made him mentally and spiritually older than the girl. He was thinking of his position, how perfectly alone he stood. Most of the people whom he knew would see only blind obstinacy in his refusal to be a minister. But were one’s inclinations nothing? Was there really nothing in the “call” to preach? So he pondered as he walked, and more and more the hopelessness of his predicament became revealed to him. All his life had been moulded by this one woman’s hands. Would not revolt now say to the world, “I am grown now; I do not need this woman who has toiled. I can disobey her with impunity; I will do so.”

He went home, and before going in leaned his head long upon the gate and thought. A listless calm had succeeded his storm of passion. He went in and to bed.

At breakfast he seemed almost cheerful, while Mr. Hodges was subdued. His wife had taken refuge in an attitude of injured silence.

“Aunt Hester,” said the young man, apparently without effort, “I was wrong yesterday; I am sorry. I will do whatever you say, even to being a preacher.” Something came up in his throat and choked him as he saw a brightness come into the face and eyes of his beloved “Uncle ’Liph,” but it grew hard and bitter there as Mrs. Hodges replied, “Well, I’m glad the Lord has showed you the errors of your way an’ brought you around to a sense o’ your dooty to Him an’ to me.”

Poor, blind, conceited humanity! Interpreters of God, indeed! We reduce the Deity to vulgar fractions. We place our own little ambitions and inclinations before a shrine, and label them “divine messages.” We set up our Delphian tripod, and we are the priest and oracles. We despise the plans of Nature’s Ruler and substitute our own. With our short sight we affect to take a comprehensive view of eternity. Our horizon is the universe. We spy on the Divine and try to surprise His secrets, or to sneak into His confidence by stealth. We make God the eternal a puppet. We measure infinity with a foot-rule.