And then, in broken words, she told him how she had gone up to the fever patient at Ashy, on the fatal night on which Lancelot had last seen her. Shuddering, she hinted at the horrible filth and misery she had seen, at the foul scents which had sickened her. A madness of remorse, she said, had seized her. She had gone, in spite of her disgust, to several houses which she found open. There were worse cottages there than even her father"s; some tradesmen in a neighbouring town had been allowed to run up a set of rack rent hovels.--Another shudder seized her when she spoke of them; and from that point in her story all was fitful, broken, like the images of a hideous dream. "Every instant those foul memories were defiling her nostrils. A horrible loathing had taken possession of her, recurring from time to time, till it ended in delirium and fever. A scent-fiend was haunting her night and day," she said. "And now the curse of the Lavingtons had truly come upon her. To perish by the people whom they made. Their neglect, cupidity, oppression, are avenged on me! Why not? Have I not wantoned in down and perfumes, while they, by whose labour my luxuries were bought, were pining among scents and sounds,--one day of which would have driven me mad!
And then they wonder why men turn Chartists! There are those horrible scents again! Save me from them! Lancelot--darling! Take me to the fresh air! I choke! I am festering away! The Nun-pool!
Take all the water, every drop, and wash Ashy clean again! Make a great fountain in it--beautiful marble--to bubble and gurgle, and trickle and foam, for ever and ever, and wash away the sins of the Lavingtons, that the little rosy children may play round it, and the poor toil-bent woman may wash--and wash--and drink--Water! water! I am dying of thirst!"
He gave her water, and then she lay back and babbled about the Nun- pool sweeping "all the houses of Ashy into one beautiful palace, among great flower-gardens, where the school children will sit and sing such merry hymns, and never struggle with great pails of water up the hill of Ashy any more."
"You will do it! darling! Strong, wise, n.o.ble-hearted that you are!
Why do you look at me? You will be rich some day. You will own land, for you are worthy to own it. Oh that I could give you Whitford! No! It was mine too long--therefore I die! because I-- Lord Jesus! have I not repented of my sin?"
Then she grew calm once more. A soft smile crept over her face, as it grew sharper and paler every moment. Faintly she sank back on the pillows, and faintly whispered to him to kneel and pray. He obeyed her mechanically. . . . "No--not for me, for them--for them, and for yourself--that you may save them whom I never dreamt that I was bound to save!"
And he knelt and prayed . . . what, he alone and those who heard his prayer, can tell. . . .
When he lifted up his head at last, he saw that Argemone lay motionless. For a moment he thought she was dead, and frantically sprang to the bell. The family rushed in with the physician. She gave some faint token of life, but none of consciousness. The doctor sighed, and said that her end was near. Lancelot had known that all along.
"I think, sir, you had better leave the room," said Mrs. Lavington; and followed him into the pa.s.sage.
What she was about to say remained unspoken; for Lancelot seized her hand in spite of her, with frantic thanks for having allowed him this one interview, and entreaties that he might see her again, if but for one moment.
Mrs. Lavington, somewhat more softly than usual, said,--"That the result of this visit had not been such as to make a second desirable--that she had no wish to disturb her daughter"s mind at such a moment with earthly regrets."
"Earthly regrets!" How little she knew what had pa.s.sed there! But if she had known, would she have been one whit softened? For, indeed, Argemone"s spirituality was not in her mother"s language.
And yet the good woman had prayed, and prayed, and wept bitter tears, by her daughter"s bedside, day after day; but she had never heard her p.r.o.nounce the talismanic formula of words, necessary in her eyes to ensure salvation; and so she was almost without hope for her. Oh, Bigotry! Devil, who turnest G.o.d"s love into man"s curse!
are not human hearts hard and blind enough of themselves, without thy cursed help?
For one moment a storm of unutterable pride and rage convulsed Lancelot--the next instant love conquered; and the strong proud man threw himself on his knees at the feet of the woman he despised, and with wild sobs entreated for one moment more--one only!
At that instant a shriek from Honoria resounded from the sick chamber. Lancelot knew what it meant, and sprang up, as men do when shot through the heart.--In a moment he was himself again. A new life had begun for him--alone.
"You will not need to grant my prayer, madam," he said, calmly: "Argemone is dead."
CHAPTER XVII: THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Let us pa.s.s over the period of dull, stupefied misery that followed, when Lancelot had returned to his lonely lodging, and the excitement of his feelings had died away. It is impossible to describe that which could not be separated into parts, in which there was no foreground, no distance, but only one dead, black, colourless present. After a time, however, he began to find that fancies, almost ridiculously trivial, arrested and absorbed his attention; even as when our eyes have become accustomed to darkness, every light-coloured mote shows luminous against the void blackness of night. So we are tempted to unseemly frivolity in churches, and at funerals, and all most solemn moments; and so Lancelot found his imagination fluttering back, half amused, to every smallest circ.u.mstance of the last few weeks, as objects of mere curiosity, and found with astonishment that they had lost their power of paining him. Just as victims on the rack have fallen, it is said, by length of torture, into insensibility, and even calm repose, his brain had been wrought until all feeling was benumbed. He began to think what an interesting autobiography his life might make; and the events of the last few years began to arrange themselves in a most attractive dramatic form. He began even to work out a scene or two, and where "motives" seemed wanting, to invent them here and there.
He sat thus for hours silent over his fire, playing with his old self, as though it were a thing which did not belong to him--a suit of clothes which he had put off, and which,
"For that it was too rich to hang by the wall, It must be ripped,"
and then pieced and dizened out afresh as a toy. And then again he started away from his own thoughts, at finding himself on the edge of that very gulf, which, as Mellot had lately told him, Barnakill denounced as the true h.e.l.l of genius, where Art is regarded as an end and not a means, and objects are interesting, not in as far as they form our spirits, but in proportion as they can be shaped into effective parts of some beautiful whole. But whether it was a temptation or none, the desire recurred to him again and again. He even attempted to write, but sickened at the sight of the first words. He turned to his pencil, and tried to represent with it one scene at least; and with the horrible calmness of some self- torturing ascetic, he sat down to sketch a drawing of himself and Argemone on her dying day, with her head upon his bosom for the last time--and then tossed it angrily into the fire, partly because he felt just as he had in his attempts to write, that there was something more in all these events than he could utter by pen or pencil, than he could even understand; princ.i.p.ally because he could not arrange the att.i.tudes gracefully enough. And now, in front of the stern realities of sorrow and death, he began to see a meaning in another mysterious saying of Barnakill"s, which Mellot was continually quoting, that "Art was never Art till it was more than Art; that the Finite only existed as a body of the Infinite; and that the man of genius must first know the Infinite, unless he wished to become not a poet, but a maker of idols." Still he felt in himself a capability, nay, an infinite longing to speak; though what he should utter, or how--whether as poet, social theorist, preacher, he could not yet decide. Barnakill had forbidden him painting, and though he hardly knew why, he dared not disobey him.
But Argemone"s dying words lay on him as a divine command to labour.
All his doubts, his social observations, his dreams of the beautiful and the blissful, his intense perception of social evils, his new- born hope--faith it could not yet be called--in a ruler and deliverer of the world, all urged him on to labour: but at what?
He felt as if he were the demon in the legend, condemned to twine endless ropes of sand. The world, outside which he now stood for good and evil, seemed to him like some frantic whirling waltz; some serried struggling crowd, which rushed past him in aimless confusion, without allowing him time or opening to take his place among their ranks: and as for wings to rise above, and to look down upon the uproar, where were they? His melancholy paralysed him more and more. He was too listless even to cater for his daily bread by writing his articles for the magazines. Why should he? He had nothing to say. Why should he pour out words and empty sound, and add one more futility to the herd of "prophets that had become wind, and had no truth in them"? Those who could write without a conscience, without an object except that of seeing their own fine words, and filling their own pockets--let them do it: for his part he would have none of it. But his purse was empty, and so was his stomach; and as for asking a.s.sistance of his uncle, it was returning like the dog to his vomit. So one day he settled all bills with his last shilling, tied up his remaining clothes in a bundle, and stoutly stepped forth into the street to find a job--to hold a horse, if nothing better offered; when, behold! on the threshold he met Barnakill himself.
"Whither away?" said that strange personage. "I was just going to call on you."
"To earn my bread by the labour of my hands. So our fathers all began."
"And so their sons must all end. Do you want work?"
"Yes, if you have any."
"Follow me, and carry a trunk home from a shop to my lodgings."
He strode off, with Lancelot after him; entered a mathematical instrument maker"s shop in the neighbouring street, and pointed out a heavy corded case to Lancelot, who, with the a.s.sistance of the shopman, got it on his shoulders; and trudging forth through the streets after his employer, who walked before him silent and unregarding, felt himself for the first time in his life in the same situation as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of Adam"s descendants, and discovered somewhat to his satisfaction that when he could once rid his mind of its old superst.i.tion that every one was looking at him, it mattered very little whether the burden carried were a deal trunk or a Downing Street despatch-box.
His employer"s lodgings were in St. Paul"s Churchyard. Lancelot set the trunk down inside the door.
"What do you charge?"
"Sixpence."
Barnakill looked him steadily in the face, gave him the sixpence, went in, and shut the door.
Lancelot wandered down the street, half amused at the simple test which had just been applied to him, and yet sickened with disappointment; for he had cherished a mysterious fancy that with this strange being all his hopes of future activity were bound up.
Tregarva"s month was nearly over, and yet no tidings of him had come. Mellot had left London on some mysterious errand of the prophet"s, and for the first time in his life he seemed to stand utterly alone. He was at one pole, and the whole universe at the other. It was in vain to tell himself that his own act had placed him there; that he had friends to whom he might appeal. He would not, he dare not, accept outward help, even outward friendship, however hearty and sincere, at that crisis of his existence. It seemed a desecration of its awfulness to find comfort in anything but the highest and the deepest. And the glimpse of that which he had attained seemed to have pa.s.sed away from him again,--seemed to be something which, as it had arisen with Argemone, was lost with her also,--one speck of the far blue sky which the rolling clouds had covered in again. As he pa.s.sed under the shadow of the huge soot-blackened cathedral, and looked at its grim spiked railings and closed doors, it seemed to him a symbol of the spiritual world, clouded and barred from him. He stopped and looked up, and tried to think. The rays of the setting sun lighted up in clear radiance the huge cross on the summit. Was it an omen? Lancelot thought so; but at that instant he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked round.
It was that strange man again.
"So far well," said he. "You are making a better day"s work than you fancy, and earning more wages. For instance, here is a packet for you."
Lancelot seized it, trembling, and tore it open. It was directed in Honoria"s handwriting.
"Whence had you this?" said he.
"Through Mellot, through whom I can return your answer, if one be needed."
The letter was significant of Honoria"s character. It busied itself entirely about facts, and showed the depth of her sorrow by making no allusion to it. "Argemone, as Lancelot was probably aware, had bequeathed to him the whole of her own fortune at Mrs. Lavington"s death, and had directed that various precious things of hers should be delivered over to him immediately. Her mother, however, kept her chamber under lock and key, and refused to allow an article to be removed from its accustomed place. It was natural in the first burst of her sorrow, and Lancelot would pardon." All his drawings and letters had been, by Argemone"s desire, placed with her in her coffin. Honoria had been only able to obey her in sending a favourite ring of hers, and with it the last stanzas which she had composed before her death:--
"Twin stars, aloft in ether clear, Around each other roll away, Within one common atmosphere Of their own mutual light and day.
"And myriad happy eyes are bent Upon their changeless love alway; As, strengthened by their one intent, They pour the flood of life and day,
"So we, through this world"s waning night, Shall, hand in hand, pursue our way; Shed round us order, love, and light, And shine unto the perfect day."
The precious relic, with all its shattered hopes, came at the right moment to soften his hard-worn heart. The sight, the touch of it, shot like an electric spark through the black stifling thunder-cloud of his soul, and dissolved it in refreshing showers of tears.
Barnakill led him gently within the area of the railings, where he might conceal his emotion, and it was but a few seconds before Lancelot had recovered his self-possession and followed him up the steps through the wicket door.
They entered. The afternoon service was proceeding. The organ droned sadly in its iron cage to a few musical amateurs. Some nursery maids and foreign sailors stared about within the spiked felon"s dock which shut off the body of the cathedral, and tried in vain to hear what was going on inside the choir. As a wise author-- a Protestant, too--has lately said, "the scanty service rattled in the vast building, like a dried kernel too small for its sh.e.l.l."
The place breathed imbecility, and unreality, and sleepy life-in- death, while the whole nineteenth century went roaring on its way outside. And as Lancelot thought, though only as a dilettante, of old St. Paul"s, the morning star and focal beacon of England through centuries and dynasties, from old Augustine and Mellitus, up to those Paul"s Cross sermons whose thunders shook thrones, and to n.o.ble Wren"s masterpiece of art, he asked, "Whither all this?
Coleridge"s dictum, that a cathedral is a petrified religion, may be taken to bear more meanings than one. When will life return to this cathedral system?"