Roland Graeme: Knight. A Novel of Our Time

by Agnes Maule Machar

Roland was this good man's only son, and on him his father had concentrated all the ideality of his nature. Living in a remote country place, where no good grammar school was easily accessible, he had himself prepared his boy for college. Roland had absorbed eagerly all that his father had to teach him, of classic lore, of poetry, of nature, as well as the rudimentary, informal theology, that was, so to speak, filtered through the spectroscope of a mind which unconsciously rejected all that was harsh and narrow, allowing free passage only to what was akin to his own loving spirit. Under such paternal influences, intensified by his mother's strong religious nature, Roland had grown up with his whole being inspired and colored by the great principles of Christianity. The teachings of Christ himself, household words from his earliest infancy, had taken a firm hold of his plastic young soul. Principles of action seemed to him matters of course, which, as he too often afterward found, were, to the average Christian people with whom he came in contact, as an unknown tongue. Till he left his home, the boy supposed all the nominal Christian world to be only an extension of the little circle in his childhood's abode, and his fervid nature looked forward to something like a repetition of his father's life under new circumstances, possibly, with wider scope and under more congenial and hopeful surroundings.

But, when he went to college, his sanguine nature was painfully disenchanted by his first dip into the cold, commonplace reality. Many of his comrades seemed to him little better than baptized heathen. He saw things done, heard things said every day, by people who would have been indignant had any one denied them the name of Christian, that seemed to him in direct opposition to the spirit and teachings of the Master they professed to own. Many, even of the religious students he met, repelled him. Their religion for the most part seemed so shallow and conventional, their creed so hard and narrow, their ideals so worldly, that their conversation jarred and revolted him. He sought some refuge from his perplexities in writing to his mother, who sensibly reminded him that as he had had special privileges, he must not expect the same degree of religious culture from lads brought up under very different influences; that his own duty was, to hold fast by the truth he knew, and, in so far as he could by his example and influence, help others to see it, too. So the boy staunchly adhered to his principles, and was thought "an odd sort of fellow," but "with no harm in him," who could always be depended upon for a good turn, though a sort of "crank" on certain points, especially as regarded poetry and religion. He found no difficulty, with his natural talent and thorough preparation, in taking a high place in his classes, though his love of literature and general knowledge, combined with a natural dreaminess, kept him from taking the highest honors of his course. This was, perhaps, a slight disappointment to the good father, who cherished for his bright, enthusiastic boy, ambitions he had never entertained for himself. But, just at the close of Roland's undergraduate course, when he was already looking forward to beginning his theological studies, his father suddenly died.

It was a terrible blow to the lad, in more ways than one. His father had been so much to him, a centre of such passionate love and reverence, that life did not seem the same to him now that his father was no longer there to guide and advise his still immature mind, and to sympathize with his enthusiasms and aspirations. Moreover, this sad event seriously affected his own prospects. He could no longer, for the present at least, continue his professional studies. He must "buckle to" the task of providing for his mother and two younger sisters, whom it was necessary for him, in great measure, to support and educate. Teaching was the work readiest to hand, and he soon secured a fairly remunerative position, entailing, however, work which absorbed the greater portion of his time and strength. He toiled on, steadily, faithfully; finding, as time passed, much satisfaction in knowing that he was so well fulfilling the responsibilities bequeathed to him by his father. He still read omnivorously, seizing eagerly every fresh vein of thought, or view of life and nature that came in his way. Of course, modern science threw over him the glamour of its fascination, and he rapidly assimilated its leading facts and theories, with an avidity characteristic of his active and unresting mind, while, after the manner of young men, he did not always stop to discriminate between fact and theory. Nor did he always discern just whither the theory was leading him.

As he had by no means given up the hope of eventually prosecuting his theological studies, he began, as he could spare the time from his daily duties and the more secular reading that so fascinated him, to take up some of the old text-books which had been in his father's library. One of these was the intricate and elaborate compendium of doctrine which formed the standard creed of the ministry of his Church—an able synopsis of a certain rigid, scholastic, one-sided theology, having, for most thoughtful minds nowadays, the great fault that it attempts to compress into a series of logical propositions, mysteries far transcending human thought, and never thrown into this dogmatic form by the original teachers of Christianity. He found there, not only statements that seemed to conflict with the teachings of science, but also declarations concerning the deepest mysteries of Divine purpose, against which his heart and his sense of justice alike rose in passionate revolt, and which he could never have dreamed it possible to conjure out of the love-lighted pages of his New Testament. Was this, he thought, what his father had believed? Looking back on all he had ever heard from that father, he could not think so. At all events, he knew that he could never believe it or profess to do so. His mother could give him little help in his perplexities. She had never troubled herself about abstruse theological questions. Her Bible was enough for her, and she did not think his father had felt himself bound to believe everything the theologians taught. Yet there was confronting him, this long series of definite propositions, subscription to which was the only entrance-gate to the ministry of the Church which was so dear to his imagination through a thousand traditions and tender associations. He felt that, for him, that gate was firmly barred.

But this was by no means all. The questioning and disintegrating process, once begun, did not stop here. The mystery of life and being seemed to have opened an abyss before him which he now seemed unable to bridge by the old simple faith that had hitherto been enough for him. Sceptical friends, by plausible arguments, increased this difficulty, and the attacks on the Divine origin of Christianity, which were constantly coming in his way, found a ready entrance into his perplexed mind, unarmed to repel them. A "horror of great darkness" seemed to have swallowed up the very foundations of his faith. Life and death—the present and the future—seemed shrouded in the cloud of unfathomable mystery which his baffled vision vainly strove to penetrate. Much thought about it became too heavy a burden to bear; and he practically gave up the struggle for light, making up his mind, for the present, to follow the one compass in his possession—the Christian ideal and conscience that had been developed and educated with his own growth, till it had become an inseparable part of his moral being. He was at least happy in having his life founded on this rock, even though his eyes might be for a time blinded as to the true source of his strength.

Some busy years had passed, lighted at least by the consciousness of practical duty honestly followed and of being the trusted prop and consolation of his mother's life; while for his sisters he did his best to secure as careful an education as had been bestowed on him. The interest that he had felt compelled to withdraw from speculative thought, he had thrown, all the more strongly, into some of the great practical questions of the day, unconscious that much of his early faith still survived in the enthusiasm with which he caught at every new plan or measure for lightening the load of the more burdened portion of humanity. Altruistic by inherited temperament, the "enthusiasm of humanity" gradually possessed him like a passion. It seemed as if the wrongs and woe of oppressed multitudes lay like an actual weight on his heart. He devoured the works of Henry George, as they came out, till these "Problems" absorbed his own mind, and the remedies proposed by George and others seemed to bring up the vision of a fair Utopia which might become the noble aim of a modern crusade. To devote himself and his life in some way to such an object, seemed to him the aim most worthy to set before himself. But, of course, his first duty was to provide for his mother and sisters.

An unexpected event, however, set him free from this obligation in a very agreeable way. The elder of his two sisters had been gradually and imperceptibly developing into a very charming and attractive young woman; and, much to Roland's surprise, he one day discovered in a wealthy young friend of his own a prospective brother-in-law, who was generously ready to provide a home for the mother of the bride he was eager to claim. And as his younger sister was almost ready for her own chosen vocation of teaching, Roland could now begin to think of a career for himself.

One of his most promising and congenial classmates at college, with whom he had always kept up a steady correspondence, had, some years before, gone to the United States, to engage in journalistic work, and had become the editor of the Minton Minerva. He had frequently urged Roland to join him there, setting before him the inducements of a wider sphere and a more active and busy life. Roland had always had strong republican sentiments and sympathies, and humanitarian instincts were still stronger in him than were local or traditional attachments and associations. There was the attraction, too, of possibly helping on a great "movement" in which he thoroughly believed, and then there was the fascination of new scenes and surroundings to one whose life for years had been so monotonous. He stuck to his post, however, till he had saved enough to supply his own simple needs for a year or two, and then set off on a rapid trip to those portions of the Old World which, from his childhood, he had most longed to see.

There, besides the old quaint cities and ruins, around which a thousand literary and historical associations clustered like the ivy which clothed them, and the glorious mountain scenery of which as a boy he had so often dreamed, he had found in his wanderings another subject of deep interest. This was the condition of those "forgotten millions," of which he had read so much of late. Here, as in other cases, he found all his conceptions fall far short of what he actually beheld—men, women and children, pent up in rank and wretched slums, fighting with gaunt famine for a miserable existence. He saw them, at early morning, searching heaps of rubbish for a few crusts, only too eagerly devoured. He saw young girls, forced to still more revolting means of procuring daily bread—means that dragged them rapidly down to worse than physical death. He saw young children, with haggard unchildlike faces, and most unchildlike sharpness and callous greed, born of the premature "struggle for existence" that was written on their pinched young features. He saw human beings who had not, literally, "where to lay their heads," glad to throw themselves down on the damp grass of city parks, yet driven from thence, and from every other resting-place, by the relentless order to "move on!" He knew that, of these multitudes, fighting hand to hand with starvation, many could not, by any effort, secure remunerative work. For these, there seemed nothing but despair and death, on an earth which could no longer make good for them the promise—"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." For them there was neither work nor bread. The sights he then saw burned themselves into his heart and brain forever. And, side by side with all this misery, he saw gorgeous displays of wealth and luxury, such as he had scarcely thought possible, outside of the "Arabian Nights;" evidences of idle abandon to voluptuous pleasure—of unblushing and reckless extravagance—until he wondered how it could be that a just and over-ruling Providence should not interfere; how it was that the earth did not open to swallow up these selfish cumberers of the ground. It was the old problem which perplexed the righteous soul of Job in the dawn of history—which has perplexed many a moralist and driven to despair many a bewildered enthusiast in all the ages. But if anything had been needed to intensify in him the "enthusiasm of humanity," the passion for reform; to grave on his heart the resolve to "open his mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such as are left desolate," it was what he then saw of that hopeless, inarticulate hardship and misery, which rarely finds expression in speeches or pamphlets, but sometimes does find it, at last, in strikes and catastrophes! A little, too, he saw, of that underlying social dynamite, and felt to his heart's core the gravity of the situation.

It was, therefore, with no room in his mind for trifling, and little for selfish aims, that Roland Graeme returned from abroad to take up the work of his life. He first, of course, paid a brief visit to his mother and sisters, to satisfy himself as to their happiness and comfort; and then, with his few belongings—chiefly books—he betook himself to his friend at Minton. Dick Burnett received him cordially, and at once gave him some light work, in the way of reporting and editorial writing, which would at least keep his purse moderately supplied, while he was also studying law in a lawyer's office, with the view of eventually entering that profession. To him, among other things, fell the work of reporting sermons for the Minerva, a task for which, of course, he was well fitted by his early training; and this was the reason why, for some months past, Mr. Chillingworth had wondered at the skill and accuracy with which his sermons had been synopsized for the benefit of the readers of the Minerva. In fact, he sometimes could not help admitting to himself, that, in clearness of thought and felicitous condensation, the abstract was almost an improvement on the sermon. Had he been aware that Roland Graeme was his unknown reporter, he would doubtless have been more affable in his greeting on the occasion of the young man's visit.