‘And after all, you know, old chap, there are great compensations for all losses; but for the loss of a good conscience towards God, what can make up?’
But, all the same, I hoped for some better result from his visit to Britain. It seemed to me that something must turn up to change such an unbearable situation.
The year passed, however, and when I looked into Craig’s face again I knew that nothing had been changed, and that he had come back to take up again his life alone, more resolutely hopeful than ever.
But the year had left its mark upon him too. He was a broader and deeper man. He had been living and thinking with men of larger ideas and richer culture, and he was far too quick in sympathy with life to remain untouched by his surroundings. He was more tolerant of opinions other than his own, but more unrelenting in his fidelity to conscience and more impatient of half-heartedness and self-indulgence. He was full of reverence for the great scholars and the great leaders of men he had come to know.
‘Great, noble fellows they are, and extraordinarily modest,’ he said—‘that is, the really great are modest. There are plenty of the other sort, neither great nor modest. And the books to be read! I am quite hopeless about my reading. It gave me a queer sensation to shake hands with a man who had written a great book. To hear him make commonplace remarks, to witness a faltering in knowledge—one expects these men to know everything—and to experience respectful kindness at his hands!’
‘What of the younger men?’ I asked.
‘Bright, keen, generous fellows. In things theoretical, omniscient; but in things practical, quite helpless. They toss about great ideas as the miners lumps of coal. They can call them by their book names easily enough, but I often wondered whether they could put them into English. Some of them I coveted for the mountains. Men with clear heads and big hearts, and built after Sandy M’Naughton’s model. It does seem a sinful waste of God’s good human stuff to see these fellows potter away their lives among theories living and dead, and end up by producing a book! They are all either making or going to make a book. A good thing we haven’t to read them. But here and there among them is some quiet chap who will make a book that men will tumble over each other to read.’
Then we paused and looked at each other.
‘Well?’ I said. He understood me.
‘Yes!’ he answered slowly, ‘doing great work. Every one worships her just as we do, and she is making them all do something worth while, as she used to make us.’