"I can't do it, Eldrige--I've no words to make you understand," he said, "you who have lived a clean life, you who have always worked--" He drew his chair up near to the doctor and sat down again. "I really think," he said, in a quieter tone, "that during that period of my life I was not so much bad as blind and dead--the man in me had never been born; I was a clod, a lump of clay, with the instincts of the beast. Our civilization! Our Christianity!--Damn!--I'll try not to be profane, doctor. But this is why I say I am not a religious man; I tell you I had as soon trust the chances of the brownest skinned, dumb beast of a man that I knew on those far islands of the sea as the chances of the son of the average wealthy Christian parents in this Christian land.
"I am not going to be profane, not if I can help it, and I am not going to allow myself to become unduly excited, but the rashest language that our vocabulary contains could not portray the fires of hell that burned within me when I left my native land, beaten and broken. I was furious--furious because I had missed the heart and center of life--why should I have missed it? I desired the beautiful, satisfying things of life; I had the base and unclean; and I was furious with myself, my family, society--the whole world."
There was silence for a few moments. The doctor said nothing; then Max spoke again: "I know, Eldrige, and you know, that the truth and purity in your wife's heart was the whip and scourge that drove me to my manhood."
The doctor extended his hand, and met Max's hand in a firm, keen clasp.
"When I found that truth and purity, uprightness and a clean soul are the real gems of life, the beautiful things, the lasting and abiding and satisfying things, I wanted them for myself," Max continued, "and no fires of hell can ever burn and sear as did the belief that I had lost them irrevocably; that through the conduct that my family had ignored and society had condoned I had with my own hand shut myself off from them forever. I think my indignation was directed not so much at myself as at the civilized world, the society, church, and family that had offered no resistance and put no check on my journey to perdition. But when I came back to my native land I had had some experiences that made another man of me. When a man goes down into the valley and stands on the border he sees things with a clearer vision. I had no desire then to shift the responsibility of my misspent life upon either people or institutions. I think I saw more clearly, perhaps, than I had before the faults and weaknesses in our institutions, and the lack of moral stamina in those who take upon themselves the training of the young; but these were not the things that counted with me then, not the things I cared about. No, I tell you I was face to face with my own soul then, and nothing else counted! The inexorability of it! There was no way to escape, no way to shift or turn, no excuses, no deceits, no subterfuges. Absolute, immovable Justice is the most grim-faced thing that a man can meet. It was not until after I had met this grim fellow, and laid my black life bare before him, asking nothing, deserving nothing, that any peace came to me. But after this I knew--I cannot tell you how I knew--but the knowledge came to me that over this sinning and suffering life there lies the great Life, tender, compassionate Love.
"When I came back to this Flat and found Margaret, and looked into her face, and saw the transformation there, then I knew that there is a God, and to know this, that there is a God, is to know that the whole duty, pleasure and profit of man is to serve Him by serving his fellow men, and this, without any meeting-house religion whatever, is what I have been trying to do.
"My mother and sister go every Sunday and worship in the beautiful church yonder on the hill. They have never recognized my wife, although my mother knows, as God knows, that the guilt was mine more than it was Margaret's. My mother is a Christian woman, according to accepted standards, and far be it from me to reproach or judge her, but the son that she reared had a long way to go and a hard battle to fight before he could see and know the purity of an honest love, the dignity of a human soul, whether it be in a high place or a lowly one. I have come to the conclusion that what we call the Christian world has in its social code and accepted standards of respectability a law of its own, the spirit of which never sprang from inspiration; a law that binds and holds absolutely, as the letter of the old Jewish law held the priests and scribes who cried 'Crucify, crucify the Truth unless it comes in the style and manner that we have marked out for its coming.' The simple, undressed truth is ignored, put aside and kept in the background; the so-called church of Christ keeps it there.
"You know, Eldrige, and I know, and every man in the world to-day knows, that there is something wrong, radically wrong, deep-seated and to the heart's core, with our church, society and home training when a man and woman, reared you might say, in the very shadow of the church, and having its precepts hurled at them from their infancy, yet can mistake passion, immorality and shame for the joy and pleasure of life; when to their young lives the hell-brewed poison of destruction appears like the rich, red wine of satisfaction.
"For what does the church over there on the hill stand? What is its mission? its object? its meaning? If there is anything in the power of the Son of Man there is everything--everything or nothing; and this attitude of people who call themselves Christians, standing between suffering, sin-sick mortals and the sinner's God is enough to make the angels weep--and mortals howl!"
"Well, well, Max, I believe you are aroused a bit; but I am afraid, my man, that you are probing to the heart and center of conditions that will never be righted in this world. Eternity alone, I think, will reveal the why and wherefore of some of the things that are troubling you."