Part 68 (1/2)
”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 lords.h.i.+p 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 lords.h.i.+p 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!