He went up one of the narrow tracks that led toward the dead man"s Orphanage, intending to look at it and perhaps hear again the evening hymn; but before he got to those broken fences he turned and began to wander aimlessly through the trees. All his mind was now full of the awful thought of G.o.d, and of the eternal punishment to which he believed G.o.d had condemned him.
Christ had tried to save him; but the other two persons of the Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity had interposed, had prevented Christ from holding any further communication with him, and together had issued the fearful decree. That was it. Christ had not deserted him; he had lost the right ever to approach Christ again. That accounted for everything--the unutterable desolation, the dark despair, the overwhelming necessity of death without one ray of hope.
All that lovely and comforting faith in the endless loving mercy of G.o.d the Son, the Redeemer of mankind, the Friend and sometime Comrade of man, was to prove useless to him; the gentle creed of the Baptists could not be applied to so vile a case as his; he was at handygrips with the dread Jehovah, the mighty Judge, the offended King of creation.
Three Persons and one G.o.d--yes, but such different Persons; and thinking of the triple mystery, he imagined that two of its component parts had probably seen through him from the very beginning of his religious fervor. Only the other part, the part that he wished was the whole, had believed in him and gone on believing in him until it was forbidden to do so any more.
The awe and reverence that he felt while he thought in this manner made him bow his head and keep his eyes humbly downcast, as one not daring to look upward to the heavenly throne; yet, profound and sincere as was his reverential awe, he unhesitatingly translated all the sublime mystery of the skies into the simple terms that alone possess plain meaning to man"s limited intelligence. Nothing in the naturally courageous bent of his mind prevented him; everything in his experiences of the Baptists, with their constant habit of homely ill.u.s.tration, encouraged him to do so.
He imagined the First and the Third Persons of the Trinity seated royally but vaguely amid the clouds, all about them a splendor of light like that of sunset or dawn, melodious music faintly perceptible, exquisitely beautiful forms of angels rising on white wings, hovering obediently, fading obediently--but they themselves, the Lords of Life and of Death, the Masters of Time and s.p.a.ce, were two tangible concrete old men--two venerable wise old men--the ultimate strained extended conception of two powerful, honored, high-placed old men. And they talked as men would talk--not in the human vocabulary, but conveying to each other, _somehow_, human ideas--about the man William Dale.
It was at the period of his conversion or repentance or baptism, and they were speaking to each other of Their Beloved Son and His newest recruit. And G.o.d the Father seemed to say that He would hope for the best--although, as they Both knew, Christ was too easily imposed on.
And G.o.d the Holy Ghost pursed His lips, and shook His head, and said, "Take it from Me, this fellow Dale will turn out badly"--seeming to add or explain that it was a mere pretense and no true repentance. "He has _never_ repented of his crime. But of course he is anxious about his future, and would try any trick to escape the punishment he has richly deserved."
All this was terribly real to him, and he imagined the dread scene more strongly every moment. Those Two went on debating his case--becoming now so solidly presented to his imagination that he could see Them, the purple color of Their robes, the halo of light as in a painted window, Their forms, Their faces. G.o.d the Father was not unlike old Mr. Bates, except that He had a long beard and that there mingled with the candid dignity of His expression a consciousness of sovereign power. The Holy Ghost was clean-shaven, very thin, with sharp clearly-cut features as of somebody who does not enjoy robust health, and with a slight but painful suggestion of a Roman Catholic priest who habitually goes deep into private secrets and is never really satisfied until he has extracted the fullest possible confessions. He was the One that Dale had never so much cared about--the _difficult_ member of the firm, the sleeping partner who never really slept, who professed to keep himself in the background, but who quietly a.s.serted himself in important moments and proved infinitely the hardest of the Three.
And so it had been in this case. Since time is nothing, and then and now are all one, Dale imagined that while his Judges talked of him in Heaven his whole earthly career had flashed onward to its end; so that he and all that concerned him was disposed of at one continuous sitting. Thus, without a pause, the Holy Ghost was already saying, "You see I was right in my first view of the affair. Dale is disgracing himself again. Now You and I must not allow any further communication between Our dear Son and such an impostor."
Then Christ pleaded for him, prayed for mercy. Christ, although invisible, was certainly there, imploring mercy for the man he had trusted and loved; and, in spite of the fact that He remained unseen, His mere presence glorified and magnified the heavenly scene. The light grew softer and yet more supremely radiant; hosts of angels soared and hovered in vast s.p.a.ces between the rolling clouds; a vibrating echo of the divine pity swept like music far and near.
But the Holy Ghost brought forward a large strongly-bound volume, opened it, and said very quietly, "Let Me show You what We have against him in the book." And at sight of the book Dale shivered and grew cold to the core of his spine. He knew perfectly well what was entered in the book, and he thought, "It stands to reason They could never get over _that_. I might have known all along _that_ would do for me, an" there was no getting round it."
"This is his record," the voice of the implacable Judge continued; "not what I have attributed to him as secret thought, but words taken down as spoken by his own mouth. Having committed his crime, he had the calm audacity--_to lay the blame on US_.... Yes, here is the entry. This is the statement verbatim: "It is the finger of G.o.d"."
And Christ seemed to plead in an agony of grief still strove to lighten the punishment of the pitiful worm that he had deigned to call His brother man. "Oh, he didn"t mean it."
"He _said_ it," replied the Holy Ghost, dryly.
"But he didn"t think what he was saying--he has been sorry for it ever since."
"Yet, frankly," said the Holy Ghost, "I can not see that he has made a single effort to put things straight, by removing the blame to the proper quarter--that is, to himself."
Nevertheless, Christ still pleaded, could not be silenced, must go on struggling to save this one man--because He was the Savior of all men, because He was Christ. He was there, certainly, infallibly, although quite invisible--He was there, kneeling at the feet of the other Two, praying, weeping:--He was there, filling Heaven with inconsolable woe because, although His myriad suns shone bright as when He lighted them and His universe swung steady and true in His measureless void, one microscopic speck of dirt only just big enough to hold immortal life was in danger of eternal death.
All these imaginations were absolutely real to Dale, an approximate conception of the truth which he could not doubt; and he thought: "Need I wonder if I have not had the slightest glimpse of His face? It is my doom. Christ is cut off from me. So far as human time counts, the communication was broken that afternoon when I was seeming to see him as he rode into Jerusalem and my hankerings after Norah seemed to snap the thread.
"I was judged at that moment. It was my doom--never more, here or there, to look upon His face."
x.x.xV
It was the evening of another day; and Dale stood motionless in the ride, close to Kibworth Rocks.
The twilight was fading rapidly; clouds that had crept up from the east filled the sky, and presaged a dark and probably a stormy night.
Every now and then a gust of angry wind shook the tops of the fir trees; then the air was still and heavy again, and then the wind came back a little fiercer than before. Dale felt sure that there would be rain presently, and he thought: "If his ghost is really lying in there, it"ll get as wet as that first night when the showers washed away all the blood."
He stared and listened, but to-night he could not fancy that he heard the dead man calling to him. He could not invent any appropriate conversation. It seemed to him that the ugly phantom was refusing to talk, that it had become sulky, or that it was pretending not to be there at all in order to effect a most insidious purpose. Yes, that must be the explanation. It wanted to entice and lure him off the ride--to make him venture right in there among the rocks, so that he might be shown the thing that had haunted him in dreams.
"Very well," said Dale, "so be it. That"s the idea. All right. I agree."
He did not, however, move for another minute or so. He was thinking hard, and listening eagerly. But he could hear no sound, could imagine no sound, other than that made by the wind.
Then he moved, and, examining the ground, made his way slowly from the ride to the rocks, thinking the while, "It"s impossible to follow my exact footsteps, because things have changed--but this was about the line I took with him."
Forcing himself through a tangle of holly and hawthorn, he came out into the open s.p.a.ce and his feet struck against stone. In front of him the rocks rose darkly against the waning light, and he began to clamber about among them, over smooth round surfaces, along narrow gullies, and by cruel jagged ridges, seeking to find the exact spot where he had left the dead body. "It was about here," he said, after a time. "It was close by here. Prob"bly down there, where the foxgloves and the blackberries have taken root. Anyhow, that"s near enough. I"ve come as near as I can;" and he sat down upon the ledge just above this hollow, and looked about him, attentively, in all directions.
The wind had ceased to blow; not a leaf stirred; silence reigned over the strewn boulders. Downward, where the ground fell away to a deep chasm, everything was indistinct; to the west, beneath banked ma.s.ses of cloud, the last glow of the sunset showed in blood-red bands, and on this side all the intervening trees were black as ink; all about him the shadows filled every hollow, and the rocks were like shoals or reefs above the surface of a stagnant sea.
The place was a wilderness, a solitude, the dead and barren landscape of dreams--quite empty, unoccupied, a place that even ghosts would shun. He sat thinking, and listening; and soon it occurred to him that, though all seemed so dead and so silent, this place was really full of life. He heard the faint buzz of belated bees questing in tufts of heather or foxglove bells, a bat flitted over his head, some small furred thing scuttled past his feet; and in the air there were thousands of winged insects, whose tiny voices one could hear by straining one"s ears. Listening intently for such murmurs, he thought: "Perhaps really and truly one has not any right to kill the smallest of these gnats. All that stuff about self-protection, an" struggle for existence, is just fiddle-de-dee in so far"s G.o.d"s concerned. He never meant it, an" never will approve of it. It"s just nature"s hatefulness and cruelty--not permitted or intended, an" to be put right some day."
It grew darker and darker, and the shadows rose all round him till he was like a man who had climbed out of the gray sea upon the only rock that was not yet submerged. When he got up presently and looked down at the hollow where he believed the corpse had lain, he could no longer see it. It was gone, lost in shadow.
Then he knelt upon his rock, and prayed--offered up the last agonized prayer of a despairing human soul. "O G.o.d--have mercy on me just so far"s this. Don"t let me die hopeless. I"ve submitted myself into Your hands. I don"t complain. I don"t question. I"m going to do it. But don"t send me out in total darkness. Give me a blink of light--just one blink o" light before I go."
Was it this that had been wanted, this that had been waited for--the true acknowledgment, the true submission, the cry for mercy of the repentant creature who has already tasted more than the bitterness of death?
He rose from his knees, and without once looking back left the rocks and came through the thicket to the ride. It grew darker, the clouds dropped still lower, and the wind again blew fierce and strong. He left the broad ride and sauntered along one of the narrow tracks. He could hear the wind as it tore through slender branches high above his head, but down here it did not touch him; and he strolled on slowly, feeling extraordinarily calm, full of a great reverence and wonder, not noticing external things because he wished to maintain this strange inward peace.
Then soon the voluminous but indefinite sensations of mental tranquillity concentrated their soothing messages to make the comfort of one definite thought, and Dale said to himself: "Christ has returned to me."
And then he saw Him--not for an instant believing that he really saw Him, that he had pa.s.sed from the order of common facts into the realm of miracles, that the usual laws of heaven had been broken by a special material manifestation, or anything of that sort; but that he saw Him with the beautifully clear visualization for which he had longed and prayed. And it seemed to him that the power of his thoughts took a splendid leap, and that he could now understand everything that hitherto had been unintelligible and inexplicable. Very G.o.d, and very man. Yes, this was the man--a man after his own heart--the comrade with whom one could work shoulder to shoulder and never know fatigue--the unfailing friend whom one dared not flatter or s...o...b..r over, but the grip of whose hand gave self-respect and the glance of whose eyes swept the evil out of one"s breast. And this was G.o.d too--the only G.o.d that men can worship without fear; Whose power is so great that it makes one"s head split to think of, and Whose love is greater than His power.
And the voice of Christ seemed to speak to him, not by the channel of crudely imagined words, but in a transcendent joy that was sent thrilling through and through him.
"Then I need not despair," he said to himself. "That was the voice of Christ telling me to hope."
He strolled on with bowed head, and remembered the night when he sat in Mr. Osborn"s little room, staring at the carpenter"s bench, and struggling between belief and doubt. He had said: "I want to be saved.
I want the day when you can tell me I have gained everlasting salvation." And Mr. Osborn had answered him: "The day will come; but it will not be my voice that tells you."
It was dark, but he did not mind the darkness. He walked on, not knowing where he was going, and time pa.s.sed without his thinking Of the lateness of the hour. He had forgotten his wife and his home; he had forgotten Norah; he had forgotten all his pain.
Then the odd and unexpected character of an external object made an impression sufficiently strong to rouse him from his reverie, and he thought dreamily: "What is that? Why, yes, it is what I was asking for--a blink of light."
Suddenly, straight in front of him, he saw the gleam again. What could it be? Then something right ahead, in the darkness of the trees, a bright flicker--as might be made by a man waving a lantern. There it was again, but brighter than before, quite a long way off. And he walked on faster.
Then, looking up, he saw a red glow in the sky, and he thought: "The heath is on fire." He walked faster, saw a column of crimson smoke and a great tongue of flame above the pine trees, and thought: "It is much nearer than the heath. It must be right on the edge of the wood."
He ran now, and soon the track was brightly lighted and confused sounds grew plain--shouting of voices, the galloping of a horse, the clamorous ringing of a bell. The trees opened out and he was running along the high ground above those broken fences, looking down at the Orphanage gardens, at men cl.u.s.tered like black ants, at solid buildings that seemed to send forth sheets, lakes, and seas of flame.
He rushed down the slope, burst through wooden barriers and leafy screens, shouting as he came. In the glare on the upper terraces there were many people--men, women, children; some of the men vainly endeavoring to fix and work unused hose-pipes; others dragging away furniture, curtains, carpets that lay in heaps near the central hall; the greatest number of them struggling with ladders, advancing and recoiling in front of the low block at the further end of the building.
"Are they all out?" shouted Dale. "Have they all been got out?"
Terror-stricken voices answered as he pa.s.sed. "There"s seven they can"t get at.... Seven have been left.... They"re the little ones."
And running in the fiery glare, he thought: "Yes, mercy has been vouchsafed me. This is my chance."