Part 73 (1/2)
”Surely, uncle, the legend is older than that!”
”It may be; you cannot be sure. Once a going, it would immediately cry back to a remote age. Prove that any one ever spoke of it before the building of that foolish wall.”
”Surely some remember hearing it long before that!”
”Nothing is more treacherous than a memory confronted with a general belief,” said the earl, and took his leave.
The next morning Arctura went to see the alteration. She opened the door of the little room: it was twice its former size, and two bureaus were standing against the wall! She peeped into the cupboard at the end of it, but saw nothing there.
That same morning she made up her mind that she would go no farther at present in regard to the chapel: it would be to break with her uncle!
In the evening, she acquainted Donal with her resolve, and he could not say she was wrong. There was no necessity for opposing her uncle--there might soon come one! He told her how he had entered the closet from behind, and of the noise he had made the night before, which had perhaps led to the opening of the place; but he did not tell her of what he had found on the bureau. The time might come when he must do so, but now he dared not render her relations with her uncle yet more uncomfortable; neither was it likely such a woman would consent to marry such a man as her cousin had shown himself; when that danger appeared, it would be time to interpose; for the mere succession to an empty t.i.tle, he was not sure that he was bound to speak. The branch which could produce such scions, might well be itself a false graft on the true stem of the family!--if not, what was the family worth? He must at all events be sure it was his business before he moved in the matter!
CHAPTER LXVI.
PROGRESS AND CHANGE.
Things went on very quietly for a time. Arctura grew better, resumed her studies, and made excellent progress. She would have worked harder, but Donal would not let her. He hated forcing--even with the good will of the plant itself. He believed in a holy, unhasting growth. G.o.d's ways want G.o.d's time.
Long after, people would sometimes say to him--
”That is very well in the abstract; but in these days of hurry a young fellow would that way be left ages behind!”
”With G.o.d,” would Donal say.
”Tut, tut! the thing would never work!”
”For your ends,” Donal would answer, ”it certainly would never work; but your ends are not those of the universe!”
”I do not pretend they are; but they are the success of the boy.”
”That is one of the ends of the universe; and your reward will be to thwart it for a season. I decline to make one in a conspiracy against the design of our creator: I would fain die loyal!”
He was of course laughed at, and not a little despised, as an extravagant enthusiast. But those who laughed found it hard to say for what he was enthusiastic. It seemed hardly for education, when he would even do what he could sometimes to keep a pupil back! He did not care to make the best of any one! The truth was, Donal's best was so many miles a-head of theirs, that it was below their horizon altogether. If there be any relation between time and the human mind, every forcing of human process, whether in spirit or intellect, is hurtful, a r.e.t.a.r.ding of G.o.d's plan.
Lady Arctura's old troubles were gradually fading into the limbo of vanities. At times, however, mostly when unwell, they would come in upon her like a flood: what if, after all, G.o.d were the self-loving being theology presented--a being from whom no loving human heart could but recoil with a holy dislike! what if it was because of a nature specially evil that she could not accept the G.o.d in whom the priests and elders of her people believed! But again and again, in the midst of profoundest wretchedness from such doubt, had a sudden flush of the world's beauty--that beauty which Jesus has told us to consider and the modern pharisee to avoid, broken like gentlest mightiest sunrise through the h.e.l.lish fog, and she had felt a power upon her as from the heart of a very G.o.d--a G.o.d such as she would give her life to believe in--one before whom she would cast herself in speechless adoration--not of his greatness--of that she felt little, but of his lovingkindness, the gentleness that was making her great. Then would she care utterly for G.o.d and his Christ, nothing for what men said about them: the Lord never meant his lambs to be under the tyranny of any, least of all the tyranny of his own most imperfect church! its work is to teach; where it cannot teach, it must not rule! Then would G.o.d appear to her not only true, but real--the heart of the human, to which she could cling, and so rest. The corruption of all religion comes of leaving the human, and G.o.d as the causing Human, for something imagined holier. Men who do not see the loveliness of the Truth, search till they find a lie they can call lovely. What but a human reality could the heart of man ever love! what else are we offered in Jesus but the absolutely human? That Jesus has two natures is of the most mischievous fictions of theology.
The divine and the human are not two.
Suddenly, after an absence of months, reappeared lord Forgue--cheerful, manly, on the best terms with his father, and plainly willing to be on still better terms with his cousin! He had left the place a mooning youth; he came back a man of the world--easy in carriage, courteous in manners, serene in temper, abounding in what seemed the results of observation, attentive but not too attentive, jolly with Davie, distant with Donal, polite to all. Donal could hardly receive the evidence of his senses: he would have wondered more had he known every factor in the change. All about him seemed to say it should not be his fault if the follies of his youth remained unforgotten; and his airy carriage sat well upon him. None the less Donal felt there was no restoration of the charm which had at first attracted him; that was utterly vanished.
He felt certain he had been going down hill, and was now, instead of negatively, consciously and positively untrue.
With gradations undefined, but not unmarked of Donal, as if the man found himself under influences of which the youth had been unaware, he began to show himself not indifferent to the attractions of his cousin.
He expressed concern that her health was not what it had been; sought her in her room when she did not appear; professed an interest in knowing what books she was reading, and what were her studies with Donal; behaved like a good brother-cousin, who would not be sorry to be something more.
And now the earl, to the astonishment of the household, began to appear at table; and, apparently as a consequence of this, Donal was requested rather than invited to take his meals with the family--not altogether to his satisfaction, seeing he could not only read while he ate alone, but could get through more quickly, and have the time thus saved, for things of greater consequence. His presence made it easier for lord Forgue to act his part, and the manners he brought to the front left little to be desired. He bowed to the judgment of Arctura, and seemed to welcome that of his father, to whom he was now as respectful as moralist could desire. Yet he sometimes faced a card he did not mean to show: who that is not absolutely true can escape the mishap!--there was condescension in his politeness to Donal! and this, had there been nothing else, would have been enough to revolt Arctura. But in truth he impressed her altogether as a man of outsides; she felt that she did not see the man he was, but the nearest approach he could make to the man he would be taken for. He was gracious, dignified, responsive, kind, amusing, accurate, ready--everything but true. He would make of his outer man all but what it was meant for--a revelation of the inner.
It was that notwithstanding. He was a man dressed in a man, and his dress was a revelation of much that he was, while he intended it only to show much that he was not. No man can help unveiling himself, however long he may escape even his own detection. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. Things were meant to come out, and be read, and understood, in the face of the universe. The soul of every man is as a secret book, whose content is yet written on its cover for the reading of the wise. How differently is it read by the fool, whose very understanding is a misunderstanding! He takes a man for a G.o.d when on the point of being eaten up of worms! he buys for thirty pieces of silver him whom the sepulchre cannot hold! Well for those in the world of revelation, who give their sins no quarter in this!