Paul Rundel: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

“Oh, Paul, don't!” Ethel protested. “You must not think of me that way; but go on—go on!”

“Day after day, week after week,” Paul continued, “I fought the inclination to write that apology. I'd start it, only to throw it aside as something above and beyond my nature. I began to loath myself. I had sufficient cause. I was a murderer living under a false name, continually lying about my past, haunted by remorse, and gradually losing my reason. Then came the crisis. I call it my 'black day.' You will despise me when I confess it, but I decided to—kill myself.”

“Oh, Paul, Paul!” Ethel covered her face with her hands. “How could you—how could you?”

“I was a blind man, goaded to despair. I was swimming with my last feeble stroke in a torrent of sin. It was Christmas Eve. The joy of the rest of the world only added to my loneliness. All my acquaintances had gone to relatives and friends, and I was alone in my desolate room. I had never faced myself so plainly as I did that night. I did not believe there was any future life, and I told myself that I was tired of the struggle, and wanted to go to sleep never to wake again. I thought that would solve it, you see, I wrote a note to old Silas Tye, feeling somehow that I wanted him to know what had happened to me. I got ready. Forgive me, but I want you to hear it all. The door' and windows were tightly closed, and I turned on the gas and lay down on the bed. I folded my hands on my breast. I was sorry for myself. Then, just as I was beginning to notice the odor of the gas, I seemed to see old Uncle Si on his knees praying for me, and I asked myself what was he praying for, to whom or what was he praying? My next thought was of you and your sweet, girlish faith, and then I recalled the poet and his beautiful ideas of life. All at once, as if in a flash of light, came the thought that you three might be right and I wrong; that while I could kill my body I might never be able to kill my soul. 'God help me!' I cried, and why I did not know, for I had never prayed before. I sprang up and turned out the gas and opened the windows and breathed the fresh air deep into my lungs. Just then the church-bells of the city rang out in the announcement of the day on which Christ was born. I was tingling all over with a strange, new hope. What if I should, after all, actually be immortal?

“I sat down before the fire and asked myself, for the first time in my life, 'Am I flesh, blood, and bones, or am I wholly spirit?' Was it a physical possibility for my brain-cells—tiny fragments of matter—to evoke the spiritual tempest through which I was passing? Was there a God and was He good? If not, why was the universe?

“I had brought home a new book—the Life of Tolstoi—to review, and I began to read it with the first touch of sympathy I had ever given such a work. It clutched me and held me like a vise. At one time Tolstoi—like myself—had been tempted to kill himself because he had no faith, and life was nothing without it. Like myself, he had been influenced by materialistic thinkers and worldly-minded associates. He had wealth, a noble's title, and great fame, and yet he had thrown them all over that he might become as a little child. Among the great men of the earth—his mental peers—he could not find the peace of soul that he found reflected in the faces of the poorest peasants on his estate. He wanted to be like them, because he felt they were more like God than he. For him the riddle was solved. It struck me that his life was a wonderful revelation of spiritual truth, if it was anything aside from senility. To satisfy myself on this point I spent the next day reading his books, becoming more and more convinced of his rational sincerity and the unity of his life from beginning to end. Tolstoi's admiration for Rousseau led me to Rousseau's life and Confessions. From him I went to Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and all the great poets. I neglected my duties on the paper, and fairly buried myself in books such as I'd never read before. My desire to satisfy myself that my soul was immortal became a veritable passion. I read everything that could possibly throw a light on the subject. The first thing that I became convinced of was my stupendous ignorance. For instance, I had never dreamt that one could have any faith which was not founded on the religious creeds of which I had heard all my life; but I soon saw that it was possible to acquire a belief like that of Emerson, Whitman, Wordsworth, and Goethe, which soared above all so-called revelation and reached out into the transcendental. I read the works of many philosophers, spurning almost angrily those who leaned to the material side of life and reverently devouring those who, like Kant and Hegel, were idealistic. Among the modern ones William James seemed inspired. Then Bergson held me with his idea that the simple intuition of the trusting masses was a better guide to hidden truth than the intellectuality of all the scholars.”

“I didn't know you had read so much,” Ethel said, when Paul paused and sat tenderly regarding her grief-stricken face.

“I was forced to,” he smiled. “I was in a corner fighting for life against awful odds. I was sick and disgusted with existence. In my new atmosphere I began to breathe for the first time. I was sensing the eternal meaning of things. I began to see why I had been made to suffer, and I was glad. The habits of my associates, their cramped and aimless lives, now seemed horribly sordid. It sounded strange to hear them speak so seriously and gravely of trivial affairs when a vast new world was fairly throbbing around me. I ventured to speak with a tentative sort of respect of some of the books I had read, and they laughed at me. I was forced into cowardly craftiness. I hid my wonderful secret and continued to go among them. But that couldn't go on. One cannot serve both the spirit and the flesh and be true to either, so I gave up my associates. I apologized to the poet, wrote a strong review of a new book of his, and we became good friends.”

“Then, then”—Ethel laid an eager hand on his arm—“then you decided to—to come home?”

Paul smiled reminiscently, his glance on the gray wisps of clouds slowly lifting themselves from the mountain-side up into the full blaze of the sun.