"Not the first thing! Why, the Bible says, "All that a man hath will he give for his life"!"
"That is in the Bible; but whether the Bible says it, is another thing."
"I do not understand silly distinctions."
"Why, my lord, who said that?"
"What does it matter who said it?"
"Much always; everything sometimes."
"Who said it then?"
"The devil."
"The devil he did! And who ought to know better, I should like to ask!"
"Every man ought to know better. And besides, it is not what a man will or will not do, but what a man ought or ought not to do!"
"Ah, there you have me, I suppose! But there are some things so d.a.m.ned difficult, that a man must be very sure of his danger before he can bring himself to do them!"
"That may be, my lord: in the present case, however, you must be aware that the danger is not to the bodily health alone; these drugs undermine the moral nature as well!"
"I know it: I cannot be counted guilty of many things; they were done under the influence of h.e.l.lish concoctions. It was not I, but these things working in me--on my brain, making me see things in a false light! This will be taken into account when I come to be judged--if there be such a thing as a day of judgment."
"One thing I am sure of," said Donal, "that your lordship will have fair play. At first, not quite knowing what you were about, you may not have been much to blame; but afterwards, when you knew that you were putting yourself in danger of doing you did not know what, you were as much to blame as if you made a Frankenstein-demon, and turned him loose on the earth, knowing yourself utterly unable to control him."
"And is not that what the G.o.d you believe in does every day?"
"My lord, the G.o.d I believe in has not lost his control over either of us."
"Then let him set the thing right! Why should we draw his plough?"
"He will set it right, my lord,--but probably in a way your lordship will not like. He is compelled to do terrible things sometimes."
"Compelled!--what should compel him?"
"The love that is in him, the love that he is. He cannot let us have our own way to the ruin of everything in us he cares for!"
Then the spirit awoke in Donal--or came upon him--and he spoke.
"My lord," he said, "if you would ever again be able to thank G.o.d; if there be one in the other world to whom you would go; if you would make up for any wrong you have ever done; if you would ever feel in your soul once more the innocence of a child; if you care to call G.o.d your father; if you would fall asleep in peace and wake to a new life; I conjure you to resist the devil, to give up the evil habit that is dragging you lower and lower every hour. It will be very hard, I know!
Anything I can do, watching with you night and day, giving myself to help you, I am ready for. I will do all that lies in me to deliver you from the weariness and sickness of the endeavour. I will give my life to strengthen yours, and count it well spent and myself honoured: I shall then have lived a life worth living! Resolve, my lord--in G.o.d"s name resolve at once to be free. Then you shall know you have a free will, for your will will have made itself free by doing the will of G.o.d against all disinclination of your own. It will be a glorious victory, and will set you high on the hill whose peak is the throne of G.o.d."
"I will begin to-morrow," said the earl feebly, and with a strange look in his eyes. "--But now you must leave me. I need solitude to strengthen my resolve. Come to me again to-morrow. I am weary, and must rest awhile. Send Simmons."
Donal was nowise misled by the easy, postponed consent, but he could not prolong the interview. He rose and went. In the act of shutting the door behind him, something, he did not know what, made him turn his head: the earl was leaning over the little table by his bedside, and pouring something from a bottle into a gla.s.s. Donal stood transfixed.
The earl turned and saw him, cast on him a look of almost demoniacal hate, put the gla.s.s to his lips and drank off its contents, then threw himself back on his pillows. Donal shut the door--not so softly as he intended, for he was agitated; a loud curse at the noise came after him. He went down the stair not only with a sense of failure, but with an exhaustion such as he had never before felt.
There are men of natures so inactive that they cannot even enjoy the sight of activity around them: men with schemes and desires are in their presence intrusive. Their existence is a sleepy lake, which would not be troubled even with the wind of far-off labour. Such lord Morven was not by nature; up to manhood he had led even a stormy life. But when his pa.s.sions began to yield, his self-indulgence began to take the form of laziness; and it was not many years before he lay with never a struggle in the chains of the evil power which had now reduced him to moral poltroonery. The tyranny of this last wickedness grew worse after the death of his wife. The one object of his life, if life it could be called, was only and ever to make it a life of his own, not the life which G.o.d had meant it to be, and had made possible to him. On first acquaintance with the moral phenomenon, it had seemed to Donal an inhuman and strangely exceptional one; but reflecting, he came presently to see that it was only a more p.r.o.nounced form of the universal human disease--a disease so deep-seated that he who has it worst, least knows or can believe that he has any disease, attributing all his discomfort to the condition of things outside him; whereas his refusal to accept them as they are, is one most prominent symptom of the disease. Whether by stimulants or narcotics, whether by company or ambition, whether by grasping or study, whether by self-indulgence, by art, by books, by religion, by love, by benevolence, we endeavour after another life than that which G.o.d means for us--a life of truth, namely, of obedience, humility, and self-forgetfulness, we walk equally in a vain show. For G.o.d alone is, and without him we are not. This is not the mere clang of a tinkling metaphysical cymbal; he that endeavours to live apart from G.o.d must at length find--not merely that he has been walking in a vain show, but that he has been himself but the phantom of a dream. But for the life of the living G.o.d, making him be, and keeping him being, he must fade even out of the limbo of vanities!
He more and more seldom went out of the house, more and more seldom left his apartment. At times he would read a great deal, then for days would not open a book, but seem absorbed in meditation--a meditation which had nothing in it worthy of the name. In his communications with Donal, he did not seem in the least aware that he had made him the holder of a secret by which he could frustrate his plans for his family. These plans he clung to, partly from paternity, partly from contempt for society, and partly in the fancy of repairing the wrong he had done his children"s mother. The morally diseased will atone for wrong by fresh wrong--in its turn to demand like reparation! He would do anything now to secure his sons in the position of which in law he had deprived them by the wrong he had done the woman whom all had believed his wife. Through the marriage of the eldest with the heiress, he would make him the head of the house in power as in dignity, and this was now almost the only tie that bound him to the reality of things. He cared little enough about Forgue, but his conscience was haunted with his cruelties to the youth"s mother. These were often such as I dare not put on record: they came all of the pride of self-love and self-worship--as evil demons as ever raged in the fiercest fire of Moloch. In the madness with which they possessed him, he had inflicted upon her not only sorest humiliations, but bodily tortures: he would see, he said, what she would bear for his sake! In the horrible presentments of his drug-procured dreams they returned upon him in terrible forms of righteous retaliation. And now, though to himself he was constantly denying a life beyond, the conviction had begun to visit and overwhelm him that he must one day meet her again: fain then would he be armed with something which for her sake he had done for her children! One of the horrible laws of the false existence he led was that, for the deadening of the mind to any evil, there was no necessity it should be done and done again; it had but to be presented in the form of a thing done, or a thing going to be done, to seem a thing reasonable and doable. In his being, a world of false appearances had taken the place of reality; a creation of his own had displaced the creation of the essential Life, by whose power alone he himself falsely created; and in this world he was the dupe of his own home-born phantoms. Out of this conspiracy of marsh and mirage, what vile things might not issue! Over such a chaos the devil has power all but creative. He cannot in truth create, but he can with the degenerate created work moral horrors too hideous to be a.n.a.logized by any of the horrors of the unperfected animal world. Such are being constantly produced in human society; many of them die in the darkness in which they are generated; now and then one issues, blasting the public day with its hideous glare. Because they are seldom seen, many deny they exist, or need be spoken of if they do. But to terrify a man at the possibilities of his neglected nature, is to do something towards the redemption of that nature.
School-hours were over, but Davie was seated where he had left him, still working. At sight of him Donal, feeling as if he had just come from the presence of the d.a.m.ned, almost burst into tears. A moment more and Arctura entered: it was as if the roof of h.e.l.l gave way, and the blue sky of the eternal came pouring in heavenly deluge through the ruined vault.
"I have been to call upon Sophia," she said.
"I am glad to hear it," answered Donal: any news from an outer world of yet salvable humanity was welcome as summer to a land of ice.
"Yes," she said; "I am able to go and see her now, because I am no longer afraid of her--partly, I think, because I no longer care what she thinks of me. Her power over me is gone."
"And will never return," said Donal, "while you keep close to the master. With him you need no human being to set you right, and will allow no human being to set you wrong; you will need neither friend nor minister nor church, though all will help you. I am very glad, for something seems to tell me I shall not be long here."
Arctura dropped on a chair--pale as rosy before.
"Has anything fresh happened?" she asked, in a low voice that did not sound like hers. "Surely you will not leave me while--.--I thought--I thought--.--What is it?"
"It is only a feeling I have," he answered. "I believe I am out of spirits."
"I never saw you so before!" said Arctura. "I hope you are not going to be ill."
"Oh, no; it is not that! I will tell you some day, but I cannot now.
All is in G.o.d"s hands!"
She looked anxiously at him, but did not ask him any question more. She proposed they should take a turn in the park, and his gloom wore gradually off.
CHAPTER LIX.
DUST TO DUST.
The next night, as if by a common understanding, for it was without word spoken, the three met again in the housekeeper"s room, where she had supper waiting. Of business nothing was said until that was over.
Mistress Brookes told them two or three of the stories of which she had so many, and Donal recounted one or two of those that floated about his country-side.
"I"ve been thinkin"," said mistress Brookes at length, "seein" it"s a bonny starry nicht, we couldna do better than lift an" lay doon this varra nicht. The hoose is asleep."
"What do you say to that place in the park where was once a mausoleum?"
said Donal.
"It"s the varra place!--an" the sooner the better--dinna ye think, my lady?"
Arctura with a look referred the question to Donal.
"Surely," he answered. "But will there not be some preparations to make?"
"There"s no need o" mony!" returned the housekeeper. "I"ll get a fine auld sheet, an" intil "t we"ll put the remains, an" row them up, an"
carry them to their hame. I"ll go an" get it, my lady.--But wouldna "t be better for you and me, sir, to get a" that dune by oorsel"s? My leddy could j"in us whan we cam up."