As for Bulstrode, Conyers’s sad heart had glowed when he first heard of the advent of this great scholar in the county. Perhaps here was light at hand. But the very first sight of Bulstrode was enough for him. Bulstrode’s guzzling of liquor, his unbridled license of tongue, were repelling to a natural born ascetic and enthusiast. But Bulstrode was instantly attracted by the parson with the distressed eyes, which always seemed to be looking for something which they never could find. He pursued the acquaintance, and actually tracked Conyers to his lair in the tumble-down rectory. Here Bulstrode would sit for hours, clawing his unkempt hair, and drinking innumerable cups of tea out of a cracked teapot from sheer force of habit. He talked on every imaginable subject, and poured out the stores of his learning lavishly. But he never touched, in the remotest degree, upon religion. Conyers found out, though, that Bulstrode was deeply skilled in that science called theology, and at last the impulse came to unburden his mind and heart, which Bulstrode had long foreseen. They were sitting, one night soon after their acquaintance began, in the shabby rectory study, when Conyers made his confession—telling it all recklessly, his sallow face glowing, his deep eyes burning. Bulstrode heard patiently, even that greatest grievance of all to Conyers—the unwillingness of people to think upon the great affair of religion, and their perfect willingness to accept anything rather than to bestow consideration or thought upon it.
“And do you imagine,� asked Bulstrode gravely, stopping in the midst of his tea-drinking, “that religion is an intellectual exercise?�
Poor Conyers admitted that he thought it had an intellectual side.
“So it has, so it has; but it has a great emotional side too,� answered Bulstrode; “that’s where the women are nearer right than men think. The Christian religion undertakes to make a human being better, but it doesn’t pretend to make him wiser or happier—or only incidentally; so you see, it must work in the heart of man as in the brain. And I tell you, my clerical friend, that the great defect in all the other systems I’ve studied—and I know ’em all—is that they are meant for thinkers, and that leaves out nine tenths of the human race. The intellectual side of man’s relation to the Great First Cause was worked out long ago by those clever old Greeks. All these modern fellows have been threshing over old straw.�
Conyers was surprised at this, and said so. It seemed to him that men who dared to meddle with so vast a subject must be of gigantic strength and heroic mould. Through the mists of his own ignorance and inexperience their figures loomed large, but when he expressed this in halting language, Bulstrode shouted with laughter.
“You think a man must be a second Plato to start a new philosophic system—a new religion, in fact! Why, look you, parson, most undergraduates have doubts about a Great First Cause even; and there are monstrous few university men who don’t expect to make a new religion some time or other. They have the disease, like measles or whooping-cough, and get over it and are better afterwards.�
Conyers had an idea that among men of true learning the Christian religion was treated as a lot of old women’s fables, while all systems of philosophy were regarded with the utmost respect. This, too, he expressed to Bulstrode.
“Don’t know, I’m sure, how it is in this queer country,� answered Bulstrode, pouring himself out a ninth cup of tea, “but, comparing things according to their size, the biggest system is small compared with that enormous fact of Christianity. Mind, I ain’t a Christian myself, though I lean that way, and when I’m drunk and my mind works rapidly, and I see the relations of things better, I lean that way still more; for, know you, Wat Bulstrode drunk is a better man than Wat Bulstrode sober.�
If this was meant as a hint for Conyers to produce something stronger than tea, it failed of its object, for not even to make Bulstrode talk like a Christian, would Conyers so far outrage his conscience as to give liquor to a man already too fond of it. Bulstrode really threw out the remark more as a test of the man than a hint, but when Conyers refused the bait a strange glitter came into Bulstrode’s dull eyes. Here was that honest man, whose untarnished integrity was like the sun at noonday. Bulstrode, in admiration for this, conceived the idea of establishing in Conyers a sincere belief of Christianity; for, half-educated, starved spiritually, and the prey of scruples that were really doubts, Conyers scarcely knew where he stood. So, then, the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a man little better than a heathen preaching the gospel to a man after God’s own heart. Bulstrode was fully sensible of the grotesqueness of the thing, but all disposition to laugh was checked by the sublime earnestness with which Conyers followed him. Bulstrode marshalled with singular power and precision all the arguments in favour of the immortality of the soul, beginning with Plato. He then argued profoundly and subtly in favour of a revealed religion. He pointed out all the weak spots in the various substitutes for religion that had been offered in various ages, and laid bare their defects mercilessly. He sat until late in the night talking, Conyers’s eyes all the time growing less and less sombre.
“Now,� said Bulstrode, getting up toward midnight, “I’ve given you all the weapons I have, and taught you how to thrust and parry the best I know how; and, hang me, parson, I’ve almost argued myself into being a Christian too while I’ve been trying to convert you!�