Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/344

 a half-wit would want to go there; personally, to myself, hell was more appealing, Cullen. But they," he turned and swept his hand to a space on his shelves where he had the books which he had used in the preparation of his case, "they show you a place you want to go to—a good human heaven where you'll know people, and they'll know you a good deal as you were and as they were. That what you want to know?"

"Yes," said Lucas and abruptly changed the subject and soon departed; for he had sought Jaccard, the old skeptic and sinner, to argue him out of that human idea of heaven which had been fastening itself upon him during these long days; and instead, he found Jaccard was accepting that idea for himself.

For Lucas's whole philosophy of life, now that he had to think it over, had been based upon belief of no accountability at the end—or at any other time—to any other heaven than that populated by half-witted, washed-out angels in silly, psalm-singing choirs which could mean little or nothing, one way or another, to a new arrival in the Beyond. So he had thought of everything which was real and actual—either of reward or punishment—as being here. He had never, like Macbeth before the murder, boldly upon this bank and shoal of time "jumped" the life to come; he had thought of that life to come—whether in the old one-hundredth-believed-in hell or in the old, orthodox milk-and-honey-blest heaven—as to be lived, not by Lucas Cullen, but perhaps by some characterless emanation of his spirit impossible to keep identified with himself. And this characterless soul would encounter, in the monotonous heavenly choir, only other spirits as lacking in human, personal attributes; so such meetings held for Lucas no terror. But the books which he re-