“The old work, I suppose, to root out lies and plant in truth.”
“That same slow task. Tunnelling too, to find my way out of the prison of doubt into the freedom of faith.”
“You are out, then, at last. Happy and at peace, I hope.”
“At peace, hardly happy. How can such a lonely fellow be happy?”
“We are peers in bereavement now. My family are all gone, except two little children of my sister.”
“Not quite peers. You remember your relatives tenderly. I have no such comfort.”
Odd talk this may seem, to hold with an old friend. Ten years apart! We ought to have met in merrier mood. We might, if we had parted with happy memories. But it was not so. Youth had been a harsh season to Brent. If Fate destines a man to teach, she compels him to learn,—bitter lessons, too, whether he will or no. Brent was a man of genius. All experience, therefore, piled itself upon him. He must learn the immortal consolations by probing all suffering himself.
Brent’s story is a short one or a long one. It can be told in a page, or in a score of volumes. We had met fourteen years before in the same pew of Berkeley College Chapel, grammars by our side and tutors before us, two well-crammed candidates for the Freshman Class. Brent was a delicate, beautiful, dreamy boy. My counterpart. I was plain prose, and needed the poetic element. We became friends. I was steady; he was erratic. I was calm; he was passionate. I was reasonably happy; he was totally miserable. For good cause.
The cause was this; and it has broken weaker hearts than Brent’s. His heart was made of stuff that does not know how to break.
Dr. Swerger was the cause of Brent’s misery. The Reverend Dr. Swerger was a brutal man. One who believes that God is vengeance naturally imitates his God, and does not better his model.