III
There was one thing that he must be prepared to face. His wife and their three children would look just as they had looked when he last saw them, and as a matter of fact they would be just what they were; but to him, with all his new and accurate knowledge and his inconceivably clear vision, they would seem to have changed greatly.
He had always considered his wife an intelligent, well-educated, even an advanced woman, and he had considered his children, especially the youngest, who was a girl, altogether brighter and more precocious than his neighbour’s children. Well, along those lines he must be prepared for shocks and disillusionment.
It would not be possible, for instance, to sit down with his wife to a rational discussion of anything. She would seem like a moron to him: superstitious, backward, ignorant, and stubborn as a mule. He would find her erroneous beliefs and convictions hard to change. It would be the same with the children, but in less degree. The oldest was twelve, and his brain was still capable of a little development. He would have some inclination to listen to his father and to believe what his father told him. With Sammy aged ten, and Ethel, aged eight, much might be done.
He would begin by asking these young hopefuls to forget everything that had been taught them, with the exception of that one startling fact, that the world is round. He would then proceed to feed their eager young earth minds on as many simple and helpful truths as would be good for them, and he would show them, what was now so clear to him, how to find happiness on earth with a minimum of labour and worry.
A question carelessly thought and instantly answered caused him to return to earth sooner than he had intended. The answer to his question had been in the nature of a hard jolt. It had to do with sin.
Sin, he learned, is not doing something which other people regard as sinful, but something which you yourself know to be sinful. Lying, theft, arson, murder, bigamy may on occasion be acts of light, charity, and commiseration, no matter how the man-mob may execrate, judge, and punish them. But the same things may be also the worst of crimes. And only the individual who commits them can possibly know. That individual doesn’t even have to know. It is what he thinks that counts; not what he pretends to think, not what he swears in open court that he did think, but what, without self-deception, he actually did and does think.
And Derrick learned that if during his brief absence from them any of those earth persons whom he loved so dearly had sinned, committed some act or other which they knew for themselves to be sinful, there would be an opaque veil which neither his eyes nor theirs could pierce, nor the words of their mouths.
But he was not greatly worried.
As men count time he had been absent from the earth and from his loved ones only for a very short time. They would still be in the depths of mourning for him. And even if they were evilly disposed persons, which they were not, they would hardly have had time to think of anything but their grief and their loss.