The wind was blowing through the heather, singing softly from the distant sea. The tiny tinkling sound of the purple bells was like faint music of faery.
They lay on an ancient barrow—three men on a summer holiday by the southern sea.
One was a thin, nervous-looking man, who knew much of the purlieus of the “primrose path,” wherein he strayed to gather up its wreckage and mend it if he might, by the power of a God in whom he said he did not believe.
The second was an ascetic, devout, and hard-working priest of the Anglican Church.
The third was a man still young, but looking even younger than his years. Dennis Barra was his name; a man with a smooth, boyish face, strange yellow-grey eyes, and thick hair streaked a little with grey; it gave the effect of dark hair lightly powdered, and added to the lack of modernity about the face. It was not a modern face; it had delicate irregular features, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth; the face looked curiously luminous in the strong sunlight.
The first man—Ralph Ingram—was speaking.
“No, Cardew,” he said to the priest, “I tell you if I did not hold to that belief I should go mad. If it be not thus, the world is based on injustice. If we climb a ladder rung by rung, if we work out the result of our deeds—that’s just. But no other theory is. What! a man murders and wipes out all his past by ‘grace at the last,’ ‘forgiveness of sins’ and ‘faith’ which his victim never had.
“You speak of these things as though they were outer contracts or a mental attitude,” said the priest, “whereas they are real spiritual forces, definite powers of the unseen. I do not see that you can parcel out guilt thus, according to your system. If life be as you say it is, the fine threads of cause and effect, of will, speech, thought, impulse, action, are endless. It appears to me that by pushing ‘causes’ so far back, you have complicated everything so hopelessly that you need some universal solvent to melt the bonds. If you accept Adam as collective man rather than as an individual ancestor, then Man—collective, heavenly man—has chosen his own lot; he has chosen his fall. His true life is elsewhere; in some mysterious Eden of the spirit he views all our inequalities with a wider view. Our misfortunes may be his opportunity; and our happiness his slough of despond. The view of man spiritual and man carnal may be diametrically opposed. His justice may be your injustice.”
“Well! I should as soon believe in the sea-serpent as in the doctrine of regeneration, grace, and faith.”
At this point Dennis Barra laughed.