His Sombre Rivals | Page 2

IN TIME
CHAPTER XXXII
A WOUNDED SPIRIT
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE WHITE-HAIRED NURSE
CHAPTER XXXIV
RITA'S BROTHER
CHAPTER XXXV
HIS SOMBRE RIVALS
CHAPTEB XXXVI ALL MATERIALISTS
CHAPTEE XXXVII THE EFFORT TO LIVE
CHAPTEE XXXVIII GRAHAM'S LAST SACRIFICE
CHAPTEE XXXIX MARRIED UNCONSCIOUSLY
CHAPTEE XL RITA ANDERSON
CHAPTEE XLI A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM

CHAPTER I
AN EMBODIMENT OF MAY
"Beyond that revolving light lies my home. And yet why should I use
such a term when the best I can say is that a continent is my home?
Home suggests a loved familiar nook in the great world. There is no

such niche for me, nor can I recall any place around which my memory
lingers with especial pleasure."
In a gloomy and somewhat bitter mood, Alford Graham thus
soliloquized as he paced the deck of an in-coming steamer. In
explanation it may be briefly said that he had been orphaned early in
life, and that the residences of his guardians had never been made
homelike to him. While scarcely more than a child he had been placed
at boarding-schools where the system and routine made the youth's life
little better than that of a soldier in his barrack. Many boys would have
grown hardy, aggressive, callous, and very possibly vicious from being
thrown out on the world so early. Young Graham became reticent and
to superficial observers shy. Those who cared to observe him closely,
however, discovered that it was not diffidence, but indifference toward
others that characterized his manner. In the most impressible period of
his life he had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance,
but love and sympathy had been denied. Unconsciously his heart had
become chilled, benumbed and overshadowed by his intellect. The
actual world gave him little and seemed to promise less, and, as a result
not at all unnatural, he became something of a recluse and bookworm
even before he had left behind him the years of boyhood.
Both comrades and teachers eventually learned that the retiring and
solitary youth was not to be trifled with. He looked his instructor
steadily in the eye when he recited, and while his manner was
respectful, it was never deferential, nor could he be induced to yield a
point, when believing himself in the right, to mere arbitrary assertion;
and sometimes he brought confusion to his teacher by quoting in
support of his own view some unimpeachable authority.
At the beginning of each school term there were usually rough fellows
who thought the quiet boy could be made the subject of practical jokes
and petty annoyances without much danger of retaliation. Graham
would usually remain patient up to a certain point, and then, in dismay
and astonishment, the offender would suddenly find himself receiving a
punishment which he seemed powerless to resist. Blows would fall like
hail, or if the combatants closed in the struggle, the aggressor appeared

to find in Graham's slight form sinew and fury only. It seemed as if the
lad's spirit broke forth in such a flame of indignation that no one could
withstand him. It was also remembered that while he was not noted for
prowess on the playground, few could surpass him in the gymnasium,
and that he took long solitary rambles. Such of his classmates, therefore,
as were inclined to quarrel with him because of his unpopular ways
soon learned that he kept up his muscle with the best of them, and that,
when at last roused, his anger struck like lightning from a cloud.
During the latter part of his college course he gradually formed a strong
friendship for a young man of a different type, an ardent sunny-natured
youth, who proved an antidote to his morbid tendencies. They went
abroad together and studied for two years at a German university, and
then Warren Hilland, Graham's friend, having inherited large wealth,
returned to his home. Graham, left to himself, delved more and more
deeply in certain phases of sceptical philosophy. It appeared to him that
in the past men had believed almost everything, and that the heavier the
drafts made on credulity the more largely had they been honored. The
two friends had long since resolved that the actual and the proved
should be the base from which they would advance into the unknown,
and they discarded with equal indifference unsubstantiated theories of
science and what they were pleased to term the illusions of faith. "From
the verge of the known explore the unknown," was their motto, and it
had been their hope to spend their lives in extending the outposts of
accurate knowledge, in some one or two directions, a little beyond the
points already reached. Since the scalpel and microscope revealed no
soul in the human mechanism they regarded all theories and beliefs
concerning a separate spiritual existence