But Lancelot spoke no word all the way home, and wandered till dawn in the woods around his cottage, kissing the hand which Argemone"s palm had pressed.
CHAPTER VIII: WHITHER?
Some three months slipped away--right dreary months for Lancelot, for the Lavingtons went to Baden-Baden for the summer. "The waters were necessary for their health." . . . How wonderful it is, by the bye, that those German Brunnen are never necessary for poor people"s health! . . . and they did not return till the end of August. So Lancelot buried himself up to the eyes in the Condition-of-the-Poor question--that is, in blue books, red books, sanitary reports, mine reports, factory reports; and came to the conclusion, which is now pretty generally entertained, that something was the matter--but what, no man knew, or, if they knew, thought proper to declare.
Hopeless and bewildered, he left the books, and wandered day after day from farm to hamlet, and from field to tramper"s tent, in hopes of finding out the secret for himself. What he saw, of course I must not say; for if I did the reviewers would declare, as usual, one and all, that I copied out of the Morning Chronicle; and the fact that these pages, ninety-nine hundredths of them at least, were written two years before the Morning Chronicle began its invaluable investigations, would be contemptuously put aside as at once impossible and arrogant. I shall therefore only say, that he saw what every one else has seen, at least heard of, and got tired of hearing--though alas! they have not got tired of seeing it; and so proceed with my story, only mentioning therein certain particulars which folks seem, to me, somewhat strangely, to have generally overlooked.
But whatever Lancelot saw, or thought he saw, I cannot say that it brought him any nearer to a solution of the question; and he at last ended by a sulky acquiescence in Sam Weller"s memorable dictum: "Who it is I can"t say; but all I can say is that SOMEBODY ought to be wopped for this!"
But one day, turning over, as hopelessly as he was beginning to turn over everything else, a new work of Mr. Carlyle"s, he fell on some such words as these:--
"The beginning and the end of what is the matter with us in these days is--that WE HAVE FORGOTTEN G.o.d."
Forgotten G.o.d? That was at least a defect of which blue books had taken no note. And it was one which, on the whole--granting, for the sake of argument, any real, living, or practical existence to That Being, might be a radical one--it brought him many hours of thought, that saying; and when they were over, he rose up and went to find--Tregarva.
"Yes, he is the man. He is the only man with whom I have ever met, of whom I could be sure, that independent of his own interest, without the allurements of respectability and decency, of habit and custom, he believes in G.o.d. And he too is a poor man; he has known the struggles, temptations, sorrows of the poor. I will go to him."
But as Lancelot rose to find him, there was put into his hand a letter, which kept him at home a while longer--none other, in fact, than the long-expected answer from Luke.
"WELL, MY DEAR COUSIN--You may possibly have some logical ground from which to deny Popery, if you deny all other religions with it; but how those who hold any received form of Christianity whatsoever can fairly side with you against Rome, I cannot see. I am sure I have been sent to Rome by them, not drawn thither by Jesuits. Not merely by their defects and inconsistencies; not merely because they go on taunting us, and shrieking at us with the cry that we ought to go to Rome, till we at last, wearied out, take them at their word, and do at their bidding the thing we used to shrink from with terror--not this merely but the very doctrines we hold in common with them, have sent me to Rome. For would these men have known of them if Rome had not been? The Trinity--the Atonement--the Inspiration of Scripture.--A future state--that point on which the present generation, without a smattering of psychological science, without even the old belief in apparitions, dogmatises so narrowly and arrogantly--what would they have known of them but for Rome?
And she says there are three realms in the future state . . .
heaven, h.e.l.l, and purgatory . . . What right have they to throw away the latter, and arbitrarily retain the two former? I am told that Scripture gives no warrant for a third state. She says that it does--that it teaches that implicitly, as it teaches other, the very highest doctrines; some hold, the Trinity itself. . . . It may be proved from Scripture; for it may be proved from the love and justice of G.o.d revealed in Scripture. The Protestants divide--in theory, that is--mankind into two cla.s.ses, the righteous, who are destined to infinite bliss; the wicked, who are doomed to infinite torment; in which latter cla.s.s, to make their arbitrary division exhaustive, they put of course nine hundred and ninety-nine out of the thousand, and doom to everlasting companionship with Borgias and Cagliostros, the gentle, frivolous girl, or the peevish boy, who would have shrunk, in life, with horror from the contact. . . .
Well, at least, their h.e.l.l is h.e.l.lish enough . . . if it were but just. . . . But I, Lancelot, I cannot believe it! I will not believe it! I had a brother once--affectionate, simple, generous, full of n.o.ble aspirations--but without, alas! a thought of G.o.d; yielding in a hundred little points, and some great ones, to the infernal temptations of a public school. . . . He died at seventeen. Where is he now? Lancelot! where is he now? Never for a day has that thought left my mind for years. Not in heaven--for he has no right there; Protestants would say that as well as I. . .
. Where, then?--Lancelot! not in that other place. I cannot, I will not believe it. For the sake of G.o.d"s honour, as well as of my own sanity, I will not believe it! There must be some third place--some intermediate chance, some door of hope--some purifying and redeeming process beyond the grave. . . . Why not a purifying fire? Ages of that are surely punishment enough--and if there be a fire of h.e.l.l, why not a fire of purgatory? . . . After all, the idea of purgatory as a fire is only an opinion, not a dogma of the Church. . . . But if the gross flesh which has sinned is to be punished by the matter which it has abused, why may it not be purified by it?"
"You may laugh, if you will, at both, and say again, as I have heard you say ere now, that the popular Christian paradise and h.e.l.l are but a Pagan Olympus and Tartarus, as grossly material as Mahomet"s, without the honest thorough-going s.e.xuality, which you thought made his notion logical and consistent. . . . Well, you may say that, but Protestants cannot; for their idea of heaven and ours is the same--with this exception, that theirs will contain but a thin band of saved ones, while ours will fill and grow to all eternity. . . .
I tell you, Lancelot, it is just the very doctrines for which England most curses Rome, and this very purgatory at the head of them, which const.i.tute her strength and her allurement; which appeal to the reason, the conscience, the heart of men, like me, who have revolted from the novel superst.i.tion which looks pitilessly on at the fond memories of the brother, the prayers of the orphan, the doubled desolation of the widow, with its cold terrible a.s.surance, "There is no hope for thy loved and lost ones--no hope, but h.e.l.l for evermore!"
"I do not expect to convert you. You have your metempsychosis, and your theories of progressive incarnation, and your monads, and your spirits of the stars and flowers. I have not forgotten a certain talk of ours over Falk Von Muller"s Recollections of Goethe, and how you materialists are often the most fantastic of theorists. . . . I do not expect, I say, to convert you. I only want to show you there is no use trying to show the self-satisfied Pharisees of the popular sect--why, in spite of all their curses, men still go back to Rome."
Lancelot read this, and re-read it; and smiled, but sadly--and the more he read, the stronger its arguments seemed to him, and he rejoiced thereat. For there is a bad pleasure--happy he who has not felt it--in a pitiless reductio ad absurdum, which asks tauntingly, "Why do you not follow out your own conclusions?"--instead of thanking G.o.d that people do not follow them out, and that their hearts are sounder than their heads. Was it with this feeling that the fancy took possession of him, to show the letter to Tregarva? I hope not--perhaps he did not altogether wish to lead him into temptation, any more than I wish to lead my readers, but only to make him, just as I wish to make them, face manfully a real awful question now racking the hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able to answer the sophist fiend--for honestly, such he is--when their time comes, as come it will. At least he wanted to test at once Tregarva"s knowledge and his logic. As for his "faith," alas!
he had not so much reverence for it as to care what effect Luke"s arguments might have there. "The whole man," quoth Lancelot to himself, "is a novel phenomenon; and all phenomena, however magnificent, are surely fair subjects for experiment. Magendie may have gone too far, certainly, in dissecting a live dog--but what harm in my pulling the mane of a dead lion?"
So he showed the letter to Tregarva as they were fishing together one day--for Lancelot had been installed duly in the Whitford trout preserves"--Tregarva read it slowly; asked, shrewdly enough, the meaning of a word or two as he went on; at last folded it up deliberately, and returned it to its owner with a deep sigh.
Lancelot said nothing for a few minutes; but the giant seemed so little inclined to open the conversation, that he was forced at last to ask him what he thought of it.
"It isn"t a matter for thinking, sir, to my mind--There"s a nice fish on the feed there, just over-right that alder."
"Hang the fish! Why not a matter for thinking?"
"To my mind, sir, a man may think a deal too much about many matters that come in his way."
"What should he do with them, then?"
"Mind his own business."
"Pleasant for those whom they concern!--That"s rather a cold-blooded speech for you, Tregarva!"
The Cornishman looked up at him earnestly. His eyes were glittering--was it with tears?
"Don"t fancy I don"t feel for the poor young gentleman--G.o.d help him!--I"ve been through it all--or not through it, that"s to say. I had a brother once, as fine a young fellow as ever handled pick, as kind-hearted as a woman, and as honest as the sun in Heaven.--But he would drink, sir;--that one temptation, he never could stand it.
And one day at the shaft"s mouth, reaching after the kibble-chain-- maybe he was in liquor, maybe not--the Lord knows; but--"
"I didn"t know him again, sir, when we picked him up, any more than- -" and the strong man shuddered from head to foot, and beat impatiently on the ground with his heavy heel, as if to crush down the rising horror.
"Where is he, sir?"
A long pause.
"Do you think I didn"t ask that, sir, for years and years after, of G.o.d, and my own soul, and heaven and earth, and the things under the earth, too? For many a night did I go down that mine out of my turn, and sat for hours in that level, watching and watching, if perhaps the spirit of him might haunt about, and tell his poor brother one word of news--one way or the other--anything would have been a comfort--but the doubt I couldn"t bear. And yet at last I learnt to bear it--and what"s more, I learnt not to care for it.
It"s a bold word--there"s one who knows whether or not it is a true one."
"Good Heavens!--and what then did you say to yourself?"
"I said this, sir--or rather, one came as I was on my knees, and said it to me--What"s done you can"t mend. What"s left, you can.
Whatever has happened is G.o.d"s concern now, and none but His. Do you see that as far as you can no such thing ever happen again, on the face of His earth. And from that day, sir, I gave myself up to that one thing, and will until I die, to save the poor young fellows like myself, who are left now-a-days to the Devil, body and soul, just when they are in the prime of their power to work for G.o.d."
"Ah!" said Lancelot--"if poor Luke"s spirit were but as strong as yours!"
"I strong?" answered he, with a sad smile; "and so you think, sir.
But it"s written, and it"s true--"The heart knoweth its own bitterness.""
"Then you absolutely refuse to try to fancy your--his present state?"
"Yes, sir, because if I did fancy it, that would be a certain sign I didn"t know it. If we can"t conceive what G.o.d has prepared for those that we know loved Him, how much less can we for them of whom we don"t know whether they loved Him or not?"
"Well," thought Lancelot to himself, "I did not do so very wrong in trusting your intellect to cut through a sophism."
"But what do you believe, Tregarva?"
"I believe this, sir--and your cousin will believe the same, if he will only give up, as I am sore afraid he will need to some day, sticking to arguments and doctrines about the Lord, and love and trust the Lord himself. I believe, sir, that the judge of all the earth will do right--and what"s right can"t be wrong, nor cruel either, else it would not be like Him who loved us to the death, that"s all I know; and that"s enough for me. To whom little is given, of him is little required. He that didn"t know his Master"s will, will be beaten with few stripes, and he that did know it, as I do, will be beaten with many, if he neglects it--and that latter, not the former, is my concern."
"Well," thought Lancelot to himself, "this great heart has gone down to the root of the matter--the right and wrong of it. He, at least, has not forgotten G.o.d. Well, I would give up all the Teleologies and cosmogonies that I ever dreamt or read, just to believe what he believes--Heigho and well-a-day!--Paul! hist? I"ll swear that was an otter!"
"I hope not, sir, I"m sure. I haven"t seen the spraint of one here this two years."
"There again--don"t you see something move under that marl bank?"
Tregarva watched a moment, and then ran up to the spot, and throwing himself on his face on the edge, leant over, grappled something--and was instantly, to Lancelot"s astonishment, grappled in his turn by a rough, lank, white dog, whose teeth, however, could not get through the velveteen sleeve.
"I"ll give in, keeper! I"ll give in. Doan"t ye harm the dog! he"s deaf as a post, you knows."
"I won"t harm him if you take him off, and come up quietly."