his whip is
by way of being untimely worn out."

The idea of spending an autumn holiday at home had been with Henry for
some time, even to the exclusion of plans for a visit to the Continent,
and it was evidence of the influence this strange friend had over him,
that so soon as he suggested it the project was distinctly forwarded.

In another week he was to be homeward-bound: heart-free, but
disappointed. Successful in a sense, and a failure in the light of his
inner desires. London had not brought him peace of mind, and Hampton, he
feared, would only bore him into accepting the life of the City as the
lesser of two evils.

If Henry could have looked inward then he would have seen that all his
uneasiness came from the dragging of the old anchor of faith which began
long ago at Laysford on his first meeting with Mr. Puddephatt. That, and
naught else. Edward John believed in the Bible _verbatim et litteratim_;
worshipped it with the superstitious awe wherewith a sentimental woman
bobs to tuppenceworth of stucco and a penn'orth of paint fashioned into
a Bambino; would have believed it implicitly had the story ran that
Jonah swallowed the whale; and often, indeed, expressed his readiness
for that supreme test of faith.

To Henry, as to every young man who thinks, came the inevitable
collision between inherited belief and acquired knowledge. Also the
inevitable wreckage. Many thousands had gone his road before him, and
more will follow. To the father the roads of Knowledge and of Faith ran
neatly parallel, the one narrow and the other broad; but as the son
laboured at the widening of the former, the road of Faith, trodden less
and less, was dwindling into a crooked and uncertain footway. It's an
old, old story--why say more than that the miraculous basis of belief is
a mere quicksand when Knowledge attempts to stand upon it?

But Edward John was as much a man as his son would ever be, and Henry
could see that his father was as important a unit in the Kingdom of
Heaven as he could hope to become. Was Ignorance, then, the kindest
friend? No, there must be a way for the cultured as for the unlettered;
but was it a different way?

Thus and so forth went the unrestful soul of the young man, who was
even then writing his undecided mind into a novel, and by that token
giving evidence of an ignorance as essential as his father's, different
in kind but not in degree.

CHAPTER XXII