"I feel as strong as onything. That sup o' brandy has put some grit in me. Give me some more. Thank tha … Does tha believe in God, Rector?"
His whimsical, half-teasing, yet, at bottom, anxious look touched Meynell strangely.
"With all my life—and with all my strength!"
Meynell's gaze was fixed intently on his questioner. The night-light in the basin on the farther side of the room threw the strong features into shadowy relief, illumining the yearning kindliness of the eyes.
"What made tha believe in Him?"
"My own life—my own struggles—and sins—and sufferings," said Meynell, stooping toward the sick man, and speaking each word with an intensity behind which lay much that could never be known to his questioner. "A good man, Bateson, put it once in this way, 'There is something in me that asks something of me.' That's easy to understand, isn't it? If a man wants to be filthy, or drunken, or cruel, there is always a voice within—it may be weak or it may be strong—that asks of him to be—instead—pure and sober and kind. And perhaps he denies the Voice, refuses it—talks it down—again and again. Then the joy in his life dies out bit by bit, and the world turns to dust and ashes. Every time that he says No to the Voice he is less happy—he has less power of being happy. And the voice itself dies away—and death comes. But now, suppose he turns to the Voice and says 'Lead me—I follow!' And suppose he obeys, like a child stumbling. Then every time he stretches and bends his poor weak will so as to give It what it asks, his heart is happy; and strength comes—the strength to do more and do better. It asks him to love—to love men and women, not with lust, but with pure love; and as he obeys, as he loves—he knows—he knows that it is God asking, and that God has come to him and abides with him. So when death overtakes him he trusts himself to God as he would to his best friend."
"Tha'rt talkin' riddles, Rector!"
"No. Ask yourself. When you fell into sin with that woman, did nothing speak to you, nothing try to stop you?"
The bright half-mocking eyes below Meynell's wandered a little—wavered in expression.
"It was the hot blood in me—aye, an' in her too. Yo cawn't help them things."