"It is. It is the business of sane men to expose for what they are the fools' paradises of the world."
"Surely not. Let the fools find it out themselves; and if they never do, the better for them."
"Look here, my young friend, your best plan is to take a holiday at once and go down home for two or three weeks, to get over this mood of contrariness. I'm surprised that you've been slogging away in London all through the stifling summer. It was mere madness. You're suffering from mental clog. Shake free of Fleet Street for a week or two, and the book will finish, never fear. Whatever you do, don't have one of those maudlin, barley-sugar ends. Be true to life, and let all else go. Perhaps a visit home would supply the contrast necessary to re-start the mind."
"I've been thinking of that this very day."
"Then my advice is: Go. You're not looking well. London is a hard task-master, and the slave who runs to the eternal crack of his whip is by way of being untimely worn out."
The idea of spending an autumn holiday at home had been with Henry for some time, even to the exclusion of plans for a visit to the Continent, and it was evidence of the influence this strange friend had over him, that so soon as he suggested it the project was distinctly forwarded.
In another week he was to be homeward-bound: heart-free, but disappointed. Successful in a sense, and a failure in the light of his inner desires. London had not brought him peace of mind, and Hampton, he feared, would only bore him into accepting the life of the City as the lesser of two evils.
If Henry could have looked inward then he would have seen that all his uneasiness came from the dragging of the old anchor of faith which began long ago at Laysford on his first meeting with Mr. Puddephatt. That, and naught else. Edward John believed in the Bible verbatim et litteratim; worshipped it with the superstitious awe wherewith a sentimental woman bobs to tuppenceworth of stucco and a penn'orth of paint fashioned into a Bambino; would have believed it implicitly had the story ran that Jonah swallowed the whale; and often, indeed, expressed his readiness for that supreme test of faith.
To Henry, as to every young man who thinks, came the inevitable collision between inherited belief and acquired knowledge. Also the inevitable wreckage. Many thousands had gone his road before him, and more will follow. To the father the roads of Knowledge and of Faith ran neatly parallel, the one narrow and the other broad; but as the son laboured at the widening of the former, the road of Faith, trodden less and less, was dwindling into a crooked and uncertain footway. It's an old, old story—why say more than that the miraculous basis of belief is a mere quicksand when Knowledge attempts to stand upon it?
But Edward John was as much a man as his son would ever be, and Henry could see that his father was as important a unit in the Kingdom of Heaven as he could hope to become. Was Ignorance, then, the kindest friend? No, there must be a way for the cultured as for the unlettered; but was it a different way?