"Well, good-night. I will not say good-bye; perhaps something may turn up yet." And he pulled open the door and passed out into the hall.
"Good-night," Rufus answered, and he turned back to his easy-chair and sat down.
CHAPTER XXVI
QUESTIONS TO BE FACED
Rufus sat staring into the fire for the best part of an hour, with eyes full of pain and questioning. Unwittingly Felix Muller had startled him out of the condition of semi-insensibility into which he had fallen. The dull apathy, mental and moral, passed from him like a cloud. He was keenly alive once more, keenly sensitive to every question that touched his personal honour. He was amazed that he should have failed to see the moral issue raised by Muller. Amazed that he had never considered the rights of the company in which he had insured his life.
Was it true, he wondered, that departure from the Christian faith, the relinquishing of the idea of accountability to a Supreme Being, lowered a man's moral standard? Would he have lost sight of the moral view if he had not drifted into the cold and barren regions of materialistic philosophy? He had prided himself on his personal honour, and yet had he not been sliding downwards, steadily and unconsciously, ever since he cast religion definitely aside? The Churches might concern themselves mainly with questions that were of little account. But, after all, they did keep alive the sense of God, the idea of accountability, the importance of right living.
If he had held on, for instance, to the faith of his childhood, would he have lost sight for a moment of the fact that to cheat a public company was just as dishonest as to cheat a private individual? Could he under any circumstances have entered into the compact he had? Would he not have sighted the moral issue in a moment?
He felt humiliated and ashamed. How could he patch the garment of his personal honour with stolen material. The conduct of Micawber in paying Traddles with his I.O.U. was nobility itself in comparison with his proposal to pay Muller by cheating an insurance company. The only question that had worried him until now was whether a man had any right to take his own life. And his materialistic philosophy had led him to the conclusion that in such a matter he was responsible to himself alone, that his life was his own to do what he liked with, to end it or use it, just as seemed good in his own eyes.