Part 37 (1/2)
Late one wondrously beautiful August night, as Bart was returning from a solitary stroll, he was suddenly joined by Sartliff, bare-headed and bare-footed, who placed his hand within his arm, and turning him about, walked him back towards the wood. Bart had not seen him for weeks, and he thought his face was thinner and more haggard, and his eyes more cavernous than he had ever seen them.
”What progress are you making?” asked Bart, quietly.
”I am getting increase of power. I don't know that I need light; I think I want strength. I hear the voices oftener, and they are wonderfully sweeter; I find that they consist of marvelous musical sounds, and I can distinguish some notes; meanings are conveyed by them. If I could only comprehend and interpret them. I shall in time if I can hold out. I find as the flesh becomes more spirit-like, that this power increases. If I only had some fine-fibred soul who could take this up where I must leave it! Barton, you believe G.o.d communicates with men through other than his ordinary works?”
”I don't know; I see and hear G.o.d in the wondrous symbols of nature; when they say that he speaks directly, I don't feel so certain. I am so made up, that the very nature, the character and quality of the evidence, is unequal to the facts to be proven, and so to produce conviction. If a score of you were to say to me, that in the forest to-day, you saw a fallen and decayed tree arise and strike down new roots, and shoot out new branches, and unfold new foliage and flowers, I would not believe it: Nor, though five hundred men should swear that they saw a grave heave up, and its tenant come forth to life and beauty, would I believe. The quality of the evidence is not equal to sustain the burthen of the fact to be established, and it does not help the matter, that alleged proofs come to me through uncertain historical media. Yet I can't say that I disbelieve. Who can say that there is not within us a religious spiritual faculty, or a set of faculties, that take impressions, and receive communications, not through the ordinary perceptions and convictions of the mere mind--that sees and hears, retains and transmits, loves, hopes and wors.h.i.+ps, in a spiritual or religious atmosphere of its own; whose memories are superst.i.tions, whose realizations are extatic visions, and whose hopes are the future of blessedness; and that it is through these faculties that religious sentiments are received, transmitted and propagated, and to which G.o.d speaks and acts, spirit to spirit, as matter to matter? Who can tell how many sets of faculties are possible to us? We may have developed only a few of the lowest. I sometimes fancy that I feel the rudiments of a higher and finer set within me.
Who shall say that I have them not?”
”Go on, Barton; I like to hear you unfold yourself,” said Sartliff.
”I can't,” said Bart, ”I can only vaguely talk about what I so vaguely feel.”
”Barton,” said Sartliff, ”go with me; let me impart to you what I know; perhaps you have a finer and subtler sense than I had. At any rate I can help you. You can be warned by my failures and blunders, and possess yourself of my small gains. I know I have taken some steps. I shall last long enough to place you well on the road. You are silent. Do you think me crazy--mad?”
”No, not that, nor do I think that we have occupied all the fields of human knowledge. We are constantly acquiring a faculty to see new things and to take new meanings from the common and old. Nature has not yet delivered her full speech to man. She can communicate only as he acquires the power to receive. This idea of finding new pathways, and new regions and realms, with new powers, of finding an opening from our day into the more effulgent, with new strange and glorious creatures, with new voices and forms, with whom we may communicate, is alluring, and may all lay within the realm of possibility. I don't say that to dream of it, is to be mad.”
”It is possible,” said Sartliff with fervor. ”I have seen the forms and heard the voices.”
”And to what purpose do you pursue these mystical studies and researches.”
”Partly for the extacy and glory of the present, mainly for the ultimate good to the races of men, when the new and powerful agencies that come of the wisdom and strength which will be thus acquired, the powers within and about us, are developed and employed for the common good; and man is emanc.i.p.ated from his sordid slavery to the gross and physical of his worst and lowest nature, and when woman through this emanc.i.p.ation takes her real position, glorified, by the side of her glorified companion; when she seeks to be wife and mother, with free choice to be other--what a race will spring from them! Strong, brave, beautiful men, great, radiant, beautiful women, like the first mothers of the race, bringing forth their young, with the same joy and gladness, as that with which they receive their young bridegrooms.”
”Go and help me find the way for our common race.”
He had turned, and stood with intent eyes burning into the soul of the young man. ”I have faith in you. Of all the young men I have met, you have exhibited more capacity to comprehend me than any other, and I am beginning to feel the need of help,” said Sartliff, plaintively.
”G.o.d alone can help you,” said Bart, ”I cannot. You believe in this; to me it is a dream, with which my fancy, when idle, willingly toys. I like to talk with you. I sympathise with you; I cannot go with you. I will not enter upon your speculations. Don't think me unkind.”
”I don't,” said Sartliff, ”nor do I blame you. You are young and gifted, and opportunities will come to you; and distinction and fame, and some beautiful woman's love await you, and G.o.d bless you.” And he walked away.
There was always something about Sartliff that stimulated, but at the same time excited an apprehension in Bart, who regarded him as past recall to healthy life, and he felt a sense of relief when he was alone; but the old, melancholy chords continued to vibrate, and Bart returned to the village under a depression that lingered about him for days.
CHAPTER XLII.
ADMITTED.
At the September term of the Supreme Court, Mr. Ranney presented the certificates and applications for the admission of Case, Ransom, and Bart on the first day, and they were, as usual, referred to a Committee of the whole bar, for examination and report.
The Committee met that evening in the Court room, the Supreme Judges, Wood and Lane, being present.
Old Webb, of Warren, whom Case ought to have sketched in his rough outlines as the senior of the bar, turned suddenly to Bart, the youngest of the applicants, and asked him if a certain ”estate could exist in Ohio?”
After a moment's reflection, Bart answered that it could not.
”Why?”
Bart explained the nature and conditions of the estate, and said that one of them was rendered impossible by a statute; and explained how.