CHAPTER VI.
THE BROKEN SWORDS.
Every one liked this, except Mrs. Cathcart, who opined, with her usual
smile, that it was rather silly.
"Well, I hope a father may be silly sometimes," said the curate, with a
glance at his wife, which she did not acknowledge. "At least I fear I
should be silly enough, if I were a father."
No more remarks were made, and as it was now quite time to begin the
story, Mr. Armstrong took his place, and the rest took their places. He
began at once.
"THE BROKEN SWORDS.
"The eyes of three, two sisters and a brother, gazed for the last time
on a great pale-golden star, that followed the sun down the steep west.
It went down to arise again; and the brother about to depart might
return, but more than the usual doubt hung upon his future. For between
the white dresses of the sisters, shone his scarlet coat and golden
sword-knot, which he had put on for the first time, more to gratify
their pride than his own vanity. The brightening moon, as if prophetic
of a future memory, had already begun to dim the scarlet and the gold,
and to give them a pale, ghostly hue. In her thoughtful light the whole
group seemed more like a meeting in the land of shadows, than a parting
in the substantial earth.--But which should be called the land of
realities?--the region where appearance, and space, and time drive
between, and stop the flowing currents of the soul's speech? or that
region where heart meets heart, and appearance has become the slave to
utterance, and space and time are forgotten?
"Through the quiet air came the far-off rush of water, and the near cry
of the land-rail. Now and then a chilly wind blew unheeded through the
startled and jostling leaves that shaded the ivy-seat. Else, there was
calm everywhere, rendered yet deeper and more intense by the dusky
sorrow that filled their hearts. For, far away, hundreds of miles beyond
the hearing of their ears, roared the great war-guns; next week their
brother must sail with his regiment to join the army; and to-morrow he
must leave his home.
"The sisters looked on him tenderly, with vague fears about his fate.
Yet little they divined it. That the face they loved might lie pale and
bloody, in a heap of slain, was the worst image of it that arose before
them; but this, had they seen the future, they would, in ignorance of
the further future, have infinitely preferred to that which awaited him.
And even while they looked on him, a dim feeling of the unsuitableness
of his lot filled their minds. For, indeed, to all judgments it must
have seemed unsuitable that the home-boy, the loved of his mother, the
pet of his sisters, who was happy womanlike (as Coleridge says), if he
possessed the signs of love, having never yet sought for its
proofs--that he should be sent amongst soldiers, to command and be
commanded; to kill, or perhaps to be himself crushed out of the fair
earth in the uproar that brings back for the moment the reign of Night
and Chaos. No wonder that to his sisters it seemed strange and sad. Yet
such was their own position in the battle of life, in which their father
had died with doubtful conquest, that when their old military uncle sent
the boy an ensign's commission, they did not dream of refusing the only
path open, as they thought, to an honourable profession, even though it
might lead to the trench-grave. They heard it as the voice of destiny,
wept, and yielded.
"If they had possessed a deeper insight into his character, they would
have discovered yet further reason to doubt the fitness of the
profession chosen for him; and if they had ever seen him at school,
it is possible the doubt of fitness might have strengthened into a
certainty of incongruity. His comparative inactivity amongst his
schoolfellows, though occasioned by no dulness of intellect, might have
suggested the necessity of a quiet life, if inclination and liking had
been the arbiters in the choice. Nor was this inactivity the result of
defective animal spirits either, for sometimes his mirth and boyish
frolic were unbounded; but it seemed to proceed from an over-activity
of the inward life, absorbing, and in some measure checking, the outward
manifestation. He had so much to do in his own hidden kingdom, that he
had not time to take his place in the polity and strife of the
commonwealth around him. Hence, while other boys were acting, he was
thinking. In this point of difference, he felt keenly the superiority
of many of his companions; for another boy would have the obstacle
overcome, or the adversary subdued, while he was meditating on the
propriety, or on the means, of effecting the desired end. He envied
their promptitude, while they never saw reason to envy his wisdom; for
his conscience, tender and not strong, frequently transformed slowness
of determination into irresolution: while a delicacy of the sympathetic
nerves tended to distract him from any predetermined course, by the
diversity of their vibrations, responsive to influences from all
quarters, and destructive to unity of purpose.
"Of such a one, the _a priori_ judgment would be, that he ought to
be left to meditate and grow for some time, before being called upon to
produce the fruits of action. But add to these mental conditions a vivid
imagination, and a high sense of honour, nourished in childhood by the
reading of the old knightly romances, and then put the youth in a
position in which action is imperative, and you have elements of strife
sufficient to reduce that fair kingdom of his to utter anarchy and
madness. Yet so little, do we know ourselves, and so different are the
symbols with which the imagination works its algebra, from the realities
which those symbols represent, that as yet the youth felt no uneasiness,
but contemplated his new calling with a glad enthusiasm and some vanity;
for all his prospect lay in the glow of the scarlet and the gold. Nor
did this excitement receive any check till the day before his departure,
on which day I have introduced him to my readers, when, accidently
taking up a newspaper of a week old, his eye fell on these
words--"_Already crying women are to be met in the streets_." With
this cloud afar on his horizon, which, though no bigger than a man's
hand, yet cast a perceptible shadow over his mind, he departed next
morning. The coach carried him beyond the consecrated circle of home
laws and impulses, out into the great tumult, above which rises ever and
anon the cry of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
"Every tragedy of higher order, constructed in Christian times, will
correspond more or less to the grand drama of the Bible; wherein the
first act opens with a brilliant sunset vision of Paradise, in which
childish sense and need are served with all the profusion of the
indulgent nurse. But the glory fades off into grey and black, and night
settles down upon the heart which, rightly uncontent with the childish,
and not having yet learned the childlike, seeks knowledge and manhood as
a thing denied by the Maker, and yet to be gained by the creature; so
sets forth alone to climb the heavens, and instead of climbing, falls
into the abyss. Then follows the long dismal night of feverish efforts
and delirious visions, or, it may be, helpless despair; till at length a
deeper stratum of the soul is heaved to the surface; and amid the first
dawn of morning, the youth says within him, "I have sinned against my
_Maker_--I will arise and go to my _Father_." More or less,
I say, will Christian tragedy correspond to this--a fall and a rising
again; not a rising only, but a victory; not a victory merely, but a
triumph. Such, in its way and degree, is my story. I have shown, in one
passing scene, the home paradise; now I have to show a scene of a far
differing nature.
"The young ensign was lying in his tent, weary, but wakeful. All day
long the cannon had been bellowing against the walls of the city, which
now lay with wide, gaping breach, ready for the morrow's storm, but
covered yet with the friendly darkness. His regiment was ordered to be
ready with the earliest dawn to march up to the breach. That day, for
the first time, there had been blood on his sword--there the sword lay,
a spot on the chased hilt still. He had cut down one of the enemy in a
skirmish with a sally party of the besieged and the look of the man as
he fell, haunted him. He felt, for the time, that he dared not pray to
the Father, for the blood of a brother had rushed forth at the stroke of
his arm, and there was one fewer of living souls on the earth because he
lived thereon. And to-morrow he must lead a troop of men up to that poor
disabled town, and turn them loose upon it, not knowing what might
follow in the triumph of enraged and victorious foes, who for weeks had
been subjected, by the constancy of the place, to the greatest
privations. It was true the general had issued his commands against all
disorder and pillage; but if the soldiers once yielded to temptation,
what might not be done before the officers could reclaim them! All the
wretched tales he had read of the sack of cities rushed back on his
memory. He shuddered as he lay. Then his conscience began to speak, and
to ask what right he had to be there.--Was the war a just one?--He could
not tell; for this was a bad time for settling nice questions. But there
he was, right or wrong, fighting and shedding blood on God's earth,
beneath God's heaven.
"Over and over he turned the question in his mind; again and again the
spouting blood of his foe, and the death-look in his eye, rose before
him; and the youth who at school could never fight with a companion
because he was not sure that he was in the right, was alone in the midst
of undoubting men of war, amongst whom he was driven helplessly along,
upon the waves of a terrible necessity. What wonder that in the midst
of these perplexities his courage should fail him! What wonder that the
consciousness of fainting should increase the faintness! or that the
dread of fear and its consequences should hasten and invigorate its
attacks! To crown all, when he dropped into a troubled slumber at
length, he found himself hurried, as on a storm of fire, through the
streets of the captured town, from all the windows of which looked
forth familiar faces, old and young, but distorted from the memory of
his boyhood by fear and wild despair. On one spot lay the body of his
father, with his face to the earth; and he woke at the cry of horror
and rage that burst from his own lips, as he saw the rough, bloody
hand of a soldier twisted in the loose hair of his elder sister, and
the younger fainting in the arms of a scoundrel belonging to his own
regiment.
"He slept no more. As the grey morning broke, the troops appointed for
the attack assembled without sound of trumpet or drum, and were silently
formed in fitting order. The young ensign was in his place, weary and
wretched after his miserable night. Before him he saw a great,
broad-shouldered lieutenant, whose brawny hand seemed almost too large
for his sword-hilt, and in any one of whose limbs played more animal
life than in the whole body of the pale youth. The firm-set lips of this
officer, and the fire of his eye, showed a concentrated resolution,
which, by the contrast, increased the misery of the ensign, and seemed,
as if the stronger absorbed the weaker, to draw out from him the last
fibres of self-possession: the sight of unattainable determination,
while it increased the feeling of the arduousness of that which required
such determination, threw him into the great gulf which lay between him
and it. In this disorder of his nervous and mental condition, with a
doubting conscience and a shrinking heart, is it any wonder that the
terrors which lay before him at the gap in those bristling walls,
should draw near, and, making sudden inroad upon his soul, overwhelm the
government of a will worn out by the tortures of an unassured spirit?
What share fear contributed to unman him, it was impossible for him,
in the dark, confused conflict of differing emotions, to determine;
but doubtless a natural shrinking from danger, there being no excitement
to deaden its influence, and no hope of victory to encourage to the
struggle, seeing victory was dreadful to him as defeat, had its part in
the sad result. Many men who have courage, are dependent on ignorance
and a low state of the moral feeling for that courage; and a further
progress towards the development of the higher nature would, for a time
at least, entirely overthrow it. Nor could such loss of courage be
rightly designated by the name of cowardice.
"But, alas! the colonel happened to fix his eyes upon him as he passed
along the file; and this completed his confusion. He betrayed such
evident symptoms of perturbation, that that officer ordered him under
arrest; and the result was, that, chiefly for the sake of example to the
army, he was, upon trial by court-martial, expelled from the service,
and had his sword broken over his head. Alas for the delicate minded
youth! Alas for the home-darling!
"Long after, he found at the bottom of his chest the pieces of the
broken sword, and remembered that, at the time, he had lifted them from
the ground and carried them away. But he could not recall under what
impulse he had done so. Perhaps the agony he suffered, passing the
bounds of mortal endurance, had opened for him a vista into the eternal,
and had shown him, if not the injustice of the sentence passed upon him,
yet his freedom from blame, or, endowing him with dim prophetic vision,
had given him the assurance that some day the stain would be wiped from
his soul, and leave him standing clear before the tribunal of his own
honour. Some feeling like this, I say, may have caused him, with a
passing gleam of indignant protest, to lift the fragments from the
earth, and carry them away; even as the friends of a so-called traitor
may bear away his mutilated body from the wheel. But if such was the
case, the vision was soon overwhelmed and forgotten in the succeeding
anguish. He could not see that, in mercy to his doubting spirit, the
question which had agitated his mind almost to madness, and which no
results of the impending conflict could have settled for him, was thus
quietly set aside for the time; nor that, painful as was the dark,
dreadful existence that he was now to pass in self-torment and moaning,
it would go by, and leave his spirit clearer far, than if, in his
apprehension, it had been stained with further blood-guiltiness, instead
of the loss of honour. Years after, when he accidentally learned that on
that very morning the whole of his company, with parts of several more,
had, or ever they began to mount the breach, been blown to pieces by the
explosion of a mine, he cried aloud in bitterness, "Would God that my
fear had not been discovered before I reached that spot!" But surely it
is better to pass into the next region of life having reaped some
assurance, some firmness of character, determination of effort, and
consciousness of the worth of life, in the present world; so approaching
the future steadily and faithfully, and if in much darkness and
ignorance, yet not in the oscillations of moral uncertainty.
"Close upon the catastrophe followed a torpor, which lasted he did not
know how long, and which wrapped in a thick fog all the succeeding
events. For some time he can hardly be said to have had any conscious
history. He awoke to life and torture when half-way across the sea
towards his native country, where was no home any longer for him. To
this point, and no farther, could his thoughts return in after years.
But the misery which he then endured is hardly to be understood, save by
those of like delicate temperament with himself. All day long he sat
silent in his cabin; nor could any effort of the captain, or others on
board, induce him to go on deck till night came on, when, under the
starlight, he ventured into the open air. The sky soothed him then, he
knew not how. For the face of nature is the face of God, and must bear
expressions that can influence, though unconsciously to them, the most
ignorant and hopeless of His children. Often did he watch the clouds in
hope of a storm, his spirit rising and falling as the sky darkened or
cleared; he longed, in the necessary selfishness of such suffering, for
a tumult of waters to swallow the vessel; and only the recollection of
how many lives were involved in its safety besides his own, prevented
him from praying to God for lightning and tempest, borne on which he
might dash into the haven of the other world. One night, following a
sultry calm day, he thought that Mercy had heard his unuttered prayer.
The air and sea were intense darkness, till a light as intense for one
moment annihilated it, and the succeeding darkness seemed shattered with
the sharp reports of the thunder that cracked without reverberation. He
who had shrunk from battle with his fellowmen, rushed to the mainmast,
threw himself on his knees, and stretched forth his arms in speechless
energy of supplication; but the storm passed away overhead, and left him
kneeling still by the uninjured mast. At length the vessel reached her
port. He hurried on shore to bury himself in the most secret place he
could find. _Out of sight_ was his first, his only thought. Return
to his mother he would not, he could not; and, indeed, his friends never
learned his fate, until it had carried him far beyond their reach.
"For several weeks he lurked about like a malefactor, in low
lodging-houses in narrow streets of the seaport to which the vessel had
borne him, heeding no one, and but little shocked at the strange society
and conversation with which, though only in bodily presence, he had to
mingle. These formed the subjects of reflection in after times; and he
came to the conclusion that, though much evil and much misery exist,
sufficient to move prayers and tears in those who love their kind, yet
there is less of both than those looking down from a more elevated
social position upon the weltering heap of humanity, are ready to
imagine; especially if they regard it likewise from the pedestal of
self-congratulation on which a meagre type of religion has elevated
them. But at length his little stock of money was nearly expended, and
there was nothing that he could do, or learn to do, in this seaport. He
felt impelled to seek manual labour, partly because he thought it more
likely he could obtain that sort of employment, without a request for
reference as to his character, which would lead to inquiry about his
previous history; and partly, perhaps, from an instinctive feeling that
hard bodily labour would tend to lessen his inward suffering.
"He left the town, therefore, at nightfall of a July day, carrying a
little bundle of linen, and the remains of his money, somewhat augmented
by the sale of various articles of clothing and convenience, which his
change of life rendered superfluous and unsuitable. He directed his
course northwards, travelling principally by night--so painfully did he
shrink from the gaze even of foot-farers like himself; and sleeping
during the day in some hidden nook of wood or thicket, or under the
shadow of a great tree in a solitary field. So fine was the season,
that for three successive weeks he was able to travel thus without
inconvenience, lying down when the sun grew hot in the forenoon, and
generally waking when the first faint stars were hesitating in the great
darkening heavens that covered and shielded him. For above every cloud,
above every storm, rise up, calm, clear, divine, the deep infinite
skies; they embrace the tempest even as the sunshine; by their
permission it exists within their boundless peace: therefore it cannot
hurt, and must pass away, while there they stand as ever, domed up
eternally, lasting, strong, and pure.
"Several times he attempted to get agricultural employment; but the
whiteness of his hands and the tone of his voice not merely suggested
unfitness for labour, but generated suspicion as to the character of one
who had evidently dropped from a rank so much higher, and was seeking
admittance within the natural masonic boundaries and secrets and
privileges of another. Disheartened somewhat, but hopeful, he journeyed
on. I say hopeful; for the blessed power of life in the universe in
fresh air and sunshine absorbed by active exercise, in winds, yea in
rain, though it fell but seldom, had begun to work its natural healing,
soothing effect, upon his perturbed spirit. And there was room for hope
in his new endeavour. As his bodily strength increased, and his health,
considerably impaired by inward suffering, improved, the trouble of his
soul became more endurable--and in some measure to endure is to conquer
and destroy. In proportion as the mind grows in the strength of
patience, the disturber of its peace sickens and fades away. At length,
one day, a widow lady in a village through which his road led him, gave
him a day's work in her garden. He laboured hard and well,
notwithstanding his soon-blistered hands, received his wages thankfully,
and found a resting-place for the night on the low part of a hay-stack
from which the upper portion had been cut away. Here he ate his supper
of bread and cheese, pleased to have found such comfortable quarters,
and soon fell fast asleep.
"When he awoke, the whole heavens and earth seemed to give a full denial
to sin and sorrow. The sun was just mounting over the horizon, looking
up the clear cloud-mottled sky. From millions of water-drops hanging on
the bending stalks of grass, sparkled his rays in varied refraction,
transformed here to a gorgeous burning ruby, there to an emerald, green
as the grass, and yonder to a flashing, sunny topaz. The chanting
priest-lark had gone up from the low earth, as soon as the heavenly
light had begun to enwrap and illumine the folds of its tabernacle; and
had entered the high heavens with his offering, whence, unseen, he now
dropped on the earth the sprinkled sounds of his overflowing
blessedness. The poor youth rose but to kneel, and cry, from a bursting
heart, "Hast Thou not, O Father, some care for me? Canst Thou not
restore my lost honour? Can anything befall Thy children for which Thou
hast no help? Surely, if the face of Thy world lie not, joy and not
grief is at the heart of the universe. Is there none for me?"
"The highest poetic feeling of which we are now conscious, springs
not from the beholding of perfected beauty, but from the mute sympathy
which the creation with all its children manifests with us in the
groaning and travailing which look for the sonship. Because of our
need and aspiration, the snowdrop gives birth in our hearts to a loftier
spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose most complete in form,
colour, and odour. The rose is of Paradise--the snowdrop is of the
striving, hoping, longing Earth. Perhaps our highest poetry is the
expression of our aspirations in the sympathetic forms of visible
nature. Nor is this merely a longing for a restored Paradise; for even
in the ordinary history of men, no man or woman that has fallen, can be
restored to the position formerly held. Such must rise to a yet higher
place, whence they can behold their former standing far beneath their
feet. They must be restored by the attainment of something better than
they ever possessed before, or not at all. If the law be a weariness,
we must escape it by taking refuge with the spirit, for not otherwise
can we fulfil the law than by being above the law. To escape the
overhanging rocks of Sinai, we must climb to its secret top.
"'Is thy strait horizon dreary?
Is thy foolish fancy chill?
Change the feet that have grown weary
For the wings that never will.'
"Thus, like one of the wandering knights searching the wide earth for
the Sangreal, did he wander on, searching for his lost honour, or rather
(for that he counted gone for ever) seeking unconsciously for the peace
of mind which had departed from him, and taken with it, not the joy
merely, but almost the possibility, of existence.
"At last, when his little store was all but exhausted, he was employed
by a market gardener, in the neighbourhood of a large country town, to
work in his garden, and sometimes take his vegetables to market. With
him he continued for a few weeks, and wished for no change; until, one
day driving his cart through the town, he saw approaching him an elderly
gentleman, whom he knew at once, by his gait and carriage, to be a
military man. Now he had never seen his uncle the retired officer, but
it struck him that this might be he; and under the tyranny of his
passion for concealment, he fancied that, if it were he, he might
recognise him by some family likeness--not considering the improbability
of his looking at him. This fancy, with the painful effect which the
sight of an officer, even in plain clothes, had upon him, recalling the
torture of that frightful day, so overcame him, that he found himself at
the other end of an alley before he recollected that he had the horse
and cart in charge. This increased his difficulty; for now he dared not
return, lest his inquiries after the vehicle, if the horse had strayed
from the direct line, should attract attention, and cause interrogations
which he would be unable to answer. The fatal want of self-possession
seemed again to ruin him. He forsook the town by the nearest way, struck
across the country to another line of road, and before he was missed,
was miles away, still in a northerly direction.
"But although he thus shunned the face of man, especially of any one
who reminded him of the past, the loss of his reputation in their eyes
was not the cause of his inward grief. That would have been comparatively
powerless to disturb him, had he not lost his own respect. He quailed
before his own thoughts; he was dishonoured in his own eyes. His
perplexity had not yet sufficiently cleared away to allow him to see the
extenuating circumstances of the case; not to say the fact that the
peculiar mental condition in which he was at the time, removed the case
quite out of the class of ordinary instances of cowardice. He condemned
himself more severely than any of his judges would have dared;
remembering that portion of his mental sensations which had savoured of
fear, and forgetting the causes which had produced it. He judged himself
a man stained with the foulest blot that could cleave to a soldier's
name, a blot which nothing but death, not even death, could efface.
But, inwardly condemned and outwardly degraded, his dread of recognition
was intense; and feeling that he was in more danger of being discovered
where the population was sparser, he resolved to hide himself once more
in the midst of poverty; and, with this view, found his way to one of
the largest of the manufacturing towns.
"He reached it during the strike of a great part of the workmen; so
that, though he found some difficulty in procuring employment, as might
be expected from his ignorance of machine-labour, he yet was sooner
successful than he would otherwise have been. Possessed of a natural
aptitude for mechanical operations, he soon became a tolerable workman;
and he found that his previous education assisted to the fitting
execution of those operations even which were most purely mechanical.
"He found also, at first, that the unrelaxing attention requisite for
the mastering of the many niceties of his work, of necessity drew his
mind somewhat from its brooding over his misfortune, hitherto almost
ceaseless. Every now and then, however, a pang would shoot suddenly to
his heart, and turn his face pale, even before his consciousness had
time to inquire what was the matter. So by degrees, as attention became
less necessary, and the nervo-mechanical action of his system increased
with use, his thoughts again returned to their old misery. He would wake
at night in his poor room, with the feeling that a ghostly nightmare sat
on his soul; that a want--a loss--miserable, fearful--was present; that
something of his heart was gone from him; and through the darkness he
would hear the snap of the breaking sword, and lie for a moment
overwhelmed beneath the assurance of the incredible fact. Could it be
true that he was a coward? that _his_ honour was gone, and in its
place a stain? that _he_ was a thing for men--and worse, for
women--to point the finger at, laughing bitter laughter? Never lover or
husband could have mourned with the same desolation over the departure
of the loved; the girl alone, weeping scorching tears over _her_
degradation, could resemble him in his agony, as he lay on his bed, and
wept and moaned.
"His sufferings had returned with the greater weight, that he was no
longer upheld by the "divine air" and the open heavens, whose sunlight
now only reached him late in an afternoon, as he stood at his loom,
through windows so coated with dust that they looked like frosted glass;
showing, as it passed through the air to fall on the dirty floor, how
the breath of life was thick with dust of iron and wood, and films of
cotton; amidst which his senses were now too much dulled by custom to
detect the exhalations from greasy wheels and overtasked human-kind.
Nor could he find comfort in the society of his fellow-labourers.
True, it was a kind of comfort to have those near him who could not
know of his grief; but there was so little in common between them,
that any interchange of thought was impossible. At least, so it seemed
to him. Yet sometimes his longing for human companionship would drive
him out of his dreary room at night, and send him wandering through the
lower part of the town, where he would gaze wistfully on the miserable
faces that passed him, as if looking for some one--some angel, even
there--to speak goodwill to his hungry heart.
"Once he entered one of those gin-palaces, which, like the golden gates
of hell, entice the miserable to worse misery, and seated himself close
to a half-tipsy, good-natured wretch, who made room for him on a bench
by the wall. He was comforted even by this proximity to one who would
not repel him. But soon the paintings of warlike action--of knights, and
horses, and mighty deeds done with battle-axe, and broad-sword, which
adorned the--panels all round, drove him forth even from this heaven of
the damned; yet not before the impious thought had arisen in his heart,
that the brilliantly painted and sculptural roof, with the gilded
vine-leaves and bunches of grapes trained up the windows, all lighted
with the great shining chandeliers, was only a microcosmic repetition of
the bright heavens and the glowing earth, that overhung and surrounded
the misery of man. But the memory of how kindly they had comforted and
elevated him, at one period of his painful history, not only banished
the wicked thought, but brought him more quiet, in the resurrection of
a past blessing, than he had known for some time. The period, however,
was now at hand when a new grief, followed by a new and more elevated
activity, was to do its part towards the closing up of the fountain of
bitterness.
"Amongst his fellow-labourers, he had for a short time taken some
interest in observing a young woman, who had lately joined them. There
was nothing remarkable about her, except what at first sight seemed a
remarkable plainness. A slight scar over one of her rather prominent
eyebrows, increased this impression of plainness. But the first day had
not passed, before he began to see that there was something not
altogether common in those deep eyes; and the plain look vanished before
a closer observation, which also discovered, in the forehead and the
lines of the mouth, traces of sorrow or other suffering. There was an
expression, too, in the whole face, of fixedness of purpose, without any
hardness of determination. Her countenance altogether seemed the index
to an interesting mental history. Signs of mental trouble were always an
attraction to him; in this case so great, that he overcame his shyness,
and spoke to her one evening as they left the works. He often walked
home with her after that; as, indeed, was natural, seeing that she
occupied an attic in the same poor lodging-house in which he lived
himself. The street did not bear the best character; nor, indeed, would
the occupations of all the inmates of the house have stood
investigation; but so retiring and quiet was this girl, and so seldom
did she go abroad after work hours, that he had not discovered till then
that she lived in the same street, not to say the same house with
himself.
"He soon learned her history--a very common one as outward events,
but not surely insignificant because common. Her father and mother
were both dead, and hence she had to find her livelihood alone,
and amidst associations which were always disagreeable, and sometimes
painful. Her quick womanly instinct must have discovered that he too
had a history; for though, his mental prostration favouring the
operation of outward influences, he had greatly approximated in
appearance to those amongst whom he laboured, there were yet signs,
besides the educated accent of his speech, which would have
distinguished him to an observer; but she put no questions to him,
nor made any approach towards seeking a return of the confidence she
reposed in him. It was a sensible alleviation to his sufferings to
hear her kind voice, and look in her gentle face, as they walked home
together; and at length the expectation of this pleasure began to
present itself, in the midst of the busy, dreary work-hours, as the
shadow of a heaven to close up the dismal, uninteresting day.
"But one morning he missed her from her place, and a keener pain passed
through him than he had felt of late; for he knew that the Plague was
abroad, feeding in the low stagnant places of human abode; and he had
but too much reason to dread that she might be now struggling in its
grasp. He seized the first opportunity of slipping out and hurrying
home. He sprang upstairs to her room. He found the door locked, but
heard a faint moaning within. To avoid disturbing her, while determined
to gain an entrance, he went down for the key of his own door, with
which he succeeded in unlocking hers, and so crossed her threshold for
the first time. There she lay on her bed, tossing in pain, and beginning
to be delirious. Careless of his own life, and feeling that he could not
die better than in helping the only friend he had; certain, likewise,
of the difficulty of finding a nurse for one in this disease and of her
station in life; and sure, likewise, that there could be no question of
propriety, either in the circumstances with which they were surrounded,
nor in this case of terrible fever almost as hopeless for her as
dangerous to him, he instantly began the duties of a nurse, and returned
no more to his employment. He had a little money in his possession, for
he could not, in the way in which he lived, spend all his wages; so he
proceeded to make her as comfortable as he could, with all the pent-up
tenderness of a loving heart finding an outlet at length. When a boy at
home, he had often taken the place of nurse, and he felt quite capable
of performing its duties. Nor was his boyhood far behind yet, although
the trials he had come through made it appear an age since he had lost
his light heart. So he never left her bedside, except to procure what
was necessary for her. She was too ill to oppose any of his measures,
or to seek to prohibit his presence. Indeed, by the time he had returned
with the first medicine, she was insensible; and she continued so
through the whole of the following week, during which time he was
constantly with her.
"That action produces feeling is as often true as its converse; and it
is not surprising that, while he smoothed the pillow for her head, he
should have made a nest in his heart for the helpless girl. Slowly and
unconsciously he learned to love her. The chasm between his early
associations and the circumstances in which he found her, vanished as
he drew near to the simple, essential womanhood. His heart saw hers and
loved it; and he knew that, the centre once gained, he could, as from
the fountain of life, as from the innermost secret of the holy place,
the hidden germ of power and possibility, transform the outer intellect
and outermost manners as he pleased. With what a thrill of joy, a
feeling for a long time unknown to him, and till now never known in this
form or with this intensity, the thought arose in his heart that here
lay one who some day would love him; that he should have a place of
refuge and rest; one to lie in his bosom and not despise him! "For,"
said he to himself, "I will call forth her soul from where it sleeps,
like an unawakened echo, in an unknown cave; and like a child, of whom
I once dreamed, that was mine, and to my delight turned in fear from all
besides, and clung to me, this soul of hers will run with bewildered,
half-sleeping eyes, and tottering steps, but with a cry of joy on its
lips, to me as the life-giver. She will cling to me and worship me. Then
will I tell her, for she must know all, that I am low and contemptible;
that I am an outcast from the world, and that if she receive me, she
will be to me as God. And I will fall down at her feet and pray her for
comfort, for life, for restoration to myself; and she will throw herself
beside me, and weep and love me, I know. And we will go through life
together, working hard, but for each other; and when we die, she shall
lead me into paradise as the prize her angel-hand found cast on a desert
shore, from the storm of winds and waves which I was too weak to
resist--and raised, and tended, and saved." Often did such thoughts
as these pass through his mind while watching by her bed; alternated,
checked, and sometimes destroyed, by the fears which attended her
precarious condition, but returning with every apparent betterment
or hopeful symptom.
"I will not stop to decide the nice question, how far the intention was
right, of causing her to love him before she knew his story. If in the
whole matter there was too much thought of self, my only apology is
the sequel. One day, the ninth from the commencement of her illness,
a letter arrived, addressed to her; which he, thinking he might prevent
some inconvenience thereby, opened and read, in the confidence of that
love which already made her and all belonging to her appear his own.
It was from a soldier--_her lover_. It was plain that they had been
betrothed before he left for the continent a year ago; but this was the
first letter which he had written to her. It breathed changeless love,
and hope, and confidence in her. He was so fascinated that he read it
through without pause.
"Laying it down, he sat pale, motionless, almost inanimate. From the
hard-won sunny heights, he was once more cast down into the shadow of
death. The second storm of his life began, howling and raging, with yet
more awful lulls between. "Is she not _mine_?" he said, in agony.
"Do I not feel that she is mine? Who will watch over her as I? Who will
kiss her soul to life as I? Shall she be torn away from me, when my soul
seems to have dwelt with hers for ever in an eternal house? But have
I not a right to her? Have I not given my life for hers? Is he not a
soldier, and are there not many chances that he may never return? And it
may be that, although they were engaged in word, soul has never touched
soul with them; their love has never reached that point where it passes
from the mortal to the immortal, the indissoluble: and so, in a sense,
she may be yet free. Will he do for her what I will do? Shall this
precious heart of hers, in which I see the buds of so many beauties,
be left to wither and die?"
"But here the voice within him cried out, "Art thou the disposer of
destinies? Wilt thou, in a universe where the visible God hath died
for the Truth's sake, do evil that a good, which He might neglect or
overlook, may be gained? Leave thou her to Him, and do thou right."
And he said within himself, "Now is the real trial for my life! Shall
I conquer or no?" And his heart awoke and cried, "I will. God forgive
me for wronging the poor soldier! A brave man, brave at least, is better
for her than I."
"A great strength arose within him, and lifted him up to depart. "Surely
I may kiss her once," he said. For the crisis was over, and she slept.
He stooped towards her face, but before he had reached her lips he saw
her eyelids tremble; and he who had longed for the opening of those
eyes, as of the gates of heaven, that she might love him, stricken now
with fear lest she should love him, fled from her, before the eyelids
that hid such strife and such victory from the unconscious maiden had
time to unclose. But it was agony--quietly to pack up his bundle of
linen in the room below, when he knew she was lying awake above, with
her dear, pale face, and living eyes! What remained of his money, except
a few shillings, he put up in a scrap of paper, and went out with his
bundle in his hand, first to seek a nurse for his friend, and then to go
he knew not whither. He met the factory people with whom he had worked,
going to dinner, and amongst them a girl who had herself but lately
recovered from the fever, and was yet hardly able for work. She was the
only friend the sick girl had seemed to have amongst the women at the
factory, and she was easily persuaded to go and take charge of her.
He put the money in her hand, begging her to use it for the invalid,
and promising to send the equivalent of her wages for the time he thought
she would have to wait on her. This he easily did by the sale of a ring,
which, besides his mother's watch, was the only article of value he had
retained. He begged her likewise not to mention his name in the matter;
and was foolish enough to expect that she would entirely keep the
promise she had made him.
"Wandering along the street, purposeless now and bereft, he spied a
recruiting party at the door of a public-house; and on coming nearer,
found, by one of those strange coincidences which do occur in life,
and which have possibly their root in a hidden and wondrous law, that
it was a party, perhaps a remnant, of the very regiment in which he
had himself served, and in which his misfortune had befallen him. Almost
simultaneously with the shock which the sight of the well-known number
on the soldiers' knapsacks gave him, arose in his mind the romantic,
ideal thought, of enlisting in the ranks of this same regiment, and
recovering, as a private soldier and unknown, that honour which as
officer he had lost. To this determination, the new necessity in which
he now stood for action and change of life, doubtless contributed,
though unconsciously. He offered himself to the sergeant; and,
notwithstanding that his dress indicated a mode of life unsuitable as
the antecedent to a soldier's, his appearance, and the necessity for
recruits combined, led to his easy acceptance.
"The English armies were employed in expelling the enemy from an invaded
and helpless country. Whatever might be the political motives which had
induced the Government to this measure, the young man was now able to
feel that he could go and fight, individually and for his part, in the
cause of liberty. He was free to possess his own motives for joining
in the execution of the schemes of those who commanded his commanders.
"With a heavy heart, but with more of inward hope and strength than he
had ever known before, he marched with his comrades to the seaport and
embarked. It seemed to him that because he had done right in his last
trial, here was a new glorious chance held out to his hand. True, it
was a terrible change to pass from a woman in whom he had hoped to
find healing, into the society of rough men, to march with them, "_mit
gleichem Tritt und Schritt_," up to the bristling bayonets or the
horrid vacancy of the cannon mouth. But it was the only cure for the
evil that consumed his life.
"He reached the army in safety, and gave himself, with religious
assiduity, to the smallest duties of his new position. No one had a
brighter polish on his arms, or whiter belts than he. In the necessary
movements, he soon became precise to a degree that attracted the
attention of his officers; while his character was remarkable for
all the virtues belonging to a perfect soldier.
"One day, as he stood sentry, he saw the eyes of his colonel intently
fixed on him. He felt his lip quiver, but he compressed and stilled it,
and tried to look as unconscious as he could; which effort was assisted
by the formal bearing required by his position. Now the colonel,
such had been the losses of the regiment, had been promoted from a
lieutenancy in the same, and had belonged to it at the time of the
ensign's degradation. Indeed, had not the changes in the regiment
been so great, he could hardly have escaped so long without discovery.
But the poor fellow would have felt that his name was already free of
reproach, if he had seen what followed on the close inspection which
had awakened his apprehensions, and which, in fact, had convinced the
colonel of his identity with the disgraced ensign. With a hasty and less
soldierly step than usual the colonel entered his tent, threw himself
on his bed and wept like a child. When he rose he was overheard to say
these words--and these only escaped his lips: 'He is nobler than I.'
"But this officer showed himself worthy of commanding such men as this
private; for right nobly did he understand and meet his feelings. He
uttered no word of the discovery he had made, till years afterwards;
but it soon began to be remarked that whenever anything arduous, or in
any manner distinguished, had to be done, this man was sure to be of
the party appointed. In short, as often as he could, the colonel "set
him in the forefront of the battle." Passing through all with wonderful
escape, he was soon as much noticed for his reckless bravery, as hitherto
for his precision in the discharge of duties bringing only commendation
and not honour. But his final lustration was at hand.
"A great part of the army was hastening, by forced marches, to raise
the siege of a town which was already on the point of falling into the
hands of the enemy. Forming one of a reconnoitring party, which preceded
the main body at some considerable distance, he and his companions came
suddenly upon one of the enemy's outposts, occupying a high, and on one
side precipitous rock, a short way from the town, which it commanded.
Retreat was impossible, for they were already discovered, and the
bullets were falling amongst them like the first of a hail-storm. The
only possibility of escape remaining for them was a nearly hopeless
improbability. It lay in forcing the post on this steep rock; which if
they could do before assistance came to the enemy, they might, perhaps,
be able to hold out, by means of its defences, till the arrival of the
army. Their position was at once understood by all; and, by a sudden,
simultaneous impulse, they found themselves half-way up the steep
ascent, and in the struggle of a close conflict, without being aware
of any order to that effect from their officer. But their courage was
of no avail; the advantages of the place were too great; and in a few
minutes the whole party was cut to pieces, or stretched helpless on
the rock. Our youth had fallen amongst the foremost; for a musket ball
had grazed his skull, and laid him insensible.
"But consciousness slowly returned, and he succeeded at last in raising
himself and looking around him. The place was deserted. A few of his
friends, alive, but grievously wounded, lay near him. The rest were
dead. It appeared that, learning the proximity of the English forces
from this rencontre with part of their advanced guard, and dreading
lest the town, which was on the point of surrendering, should after
all be snatched from their grasp, the commander of the enemy's forces
had ordered an immediate and general assault; and had for this purpose
recalled from their outposts the whole of his troops thus stationed,
that he might make the attempt with the utmost strength he could
accumulate.
"As the youth's power of vision returned, he perceived, from the height
where he he lay, that the town was already in the hands of the enemy.
But looking down into the level space immediately below him, he started
to his feet at once; for a girl, bare-headed, was fleeing towards the
rock, pursued by several soldiers. "Aha!" said he, divining her
purpose--the soldiers behind and the rock before her--"I will help you
to die!" And he stooped and wrenched from the dead fingers of a sergeant
the sword which they clenched by the bloody hilt. A new throb of life
pulsed through him to his very finger-tips; and on the brink of the
unseen world he stood, with the blood rushing through his veins in a
wild dance of excitement. One who lay near him wounded, but recovered
afterwards, said that he looked like one inspired. With a keen eye he
watched the chase. The girl drew nigh; and rushed up the path near which
he was standing. Close on her footsteps came the soldiers, the distance
gradually lessening between them.
"Not many paces higher up, was a narrower part of the ascent, where
the path was confined by great stones, or pieces of rock. Here had been
the chief defence in the preceding assault, and in it lay many bodies
of his friends. Thither he went and took his stand.
"On the girl came, over the dead, with rigid hands and flying feet,
the bloodless skin drawn tight on her features, and her eyes awfully
large and wild. She did not see him though she bounded past so near
that her hair flew in his eyes. "Never mind!" said he, "we shall meet
soon." And he stepped into the narrow path just in time to face her
pursuers--between her and them. Like the red lightning the bloody
sword fell, and a man beneath it. Cling! clang! went the echoes in
the rocks--and another man was down; for, in his excitement, he was
a destroying angel to the breathless pursuers. His stature rose, his
chest dilated; and as the third foe fell dead, the girl was safe;
for her body lay a broken, empty, but undesecrated temple, at the foot
of the rock. That moment his sword flew in shivers from his grasp.
The next instant he fell, pierced to the heart; and his spirit rose
triumphant, free, strong, and calm, above the stormy world, which at
length lay vanquished beneath him."
* * * * *
"A capital story!" cried our host, the moment the curate had ceased
reading. "But you should not have killed him. You should have made a
general of him. By heaven! he deserved it."
Mr. Armstrong was evidently much pleased that the colonel so heartily
sympathized with his tale. And every one else added some words of
commendation. I could not help thinking with myself that he had only
embodied the story of his own life in other more striking forms. But I
knew that, if I said so, he would laugh at me, and answer that all he
had done was quite easy to do--he had found no difficulty in it; whereas
this man was a hero and did the thing that he found very difficult
indeed. Still I was sure that the story was at least the outgrowth of
his own mind.
"May we ask," I said, "how much of the tale is fact?"
"I am sorry it is not all fact," he answered.
"Tell us how much, then," I said.
"Well, I will tell you what made me write it. I heard an old lady at a
dinner-table mention that she had once known a young officer who had his
sword broken over his head, and was dismissed from the army, for
cowardice. I began trying first to understand his feelings; then to see
how the thing could have happened; and then to discover what could be
done for him. And hence the story. That was all, I am sorry to say."
"I thought as much," I rejoined.
"Will you excuse me if I venture to make a remark?" said Mrs.
Bloomfield.
"With all my heart," answered the curate.
"It seemed to me that there was nothing Christian in the story. And I
cannot help feeling that a clergyman might, therefore, have done
better."
"I allow that in words there is nothing Christian," answered Mr.
Armstrong; "and I am quite ready to allow also that it might have been
better if something of the kind you mean had been expressed in it. The
whole thing, however, is only a sketch. But I cannot allow that, in
spirit and scope, it is anything other than Christian, or indeed
anything but Christian. It seems to me that the whole might be used as a
Christian parable."
While the curate spoke, I had seen Adela's face flush; but the cause was
not _visible_ to me. As he uttered the last words, a hand was laid
on his shoulder, and Harry's voice said:
"At your parables again, Ralph?"
He had come in so gently that the only sign of his entrance had been the
rose-light on Adela's cheeks.--Was he the sun? And was she a cloud of
the east?
"Glad to see you safe amongst us again," said the colonel, backed by
almost every one of the company.
"What's your quarrel with my parables, Harry?" said the curate.
"Quarrel? None at all. They are the delight of my heart. I only wish
you would give our friends one of your best--_The Castle_, for
instance."
"Not yet a while, Harry. It is not my turn for some time, I hope.
Perhaps Miss Cathcart will be tired of the whole affair, before it
comes round to me again."
"Then I shall deserve to be starved of stories all the rest of my life,"
answered Adela, laughing.
"If you will allow me, then," said Harry, "I will give you a parable,
called _The Lost Church_, from the German poet, Uhland."
"Softly, Harry," said his brother; "you are ready enough with what is
not yours to give; but where is your own story that you promised, and
which indeed we should have a right to demand, whether you had promised
it or not?"
"I am working at it, Ralph, in my spare moments, which are not very
many; and I want to choose the right sort of night to tell it in, too.
This one wouldn't do at all. There's no moon."
"If it is a horrid story, it is a pity you did not read it last time,
before you set out to cross the moor."
"Oh, that night would not have done at all. A night like that drives all
fear out of one's head. But indeed it is not finished yet.--May I repeat
the parable now, Miss Cathcart?"
"What do you mean by a _parable_, Mr. Henry?" interrupted Mrs.
Cathcart. "It sounds rather profane to me."
"I mean a picture in words, where more is meant than meets the ear."
"But why call it a parable?"
"Because it is one."
"Why not speak in plain words then?"
"Because a good parable is plainer than the plainest words. You remember
what Tennyson says--that
'truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors'?"
"Goethe," said the curate, "has a little parable about poems, which is
equally true about parables--
'Poems are painted window-panes.
If one looks from the square into the church,
Dusk and dimness are his gains--
Sir Philistine is left in the lurch.
The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,
Nor any words henceforth assuage him.
But come just inside what conceals;
Cross the holy threshold quite--
All at once,'tis rainbow-bright;
Device and story flash to light;
A gracious splendour truth reveals.
This, to God's children, is full measure;
It edifies and gives them pleasure.'"
"I can't follow that," said Adela.
"I will write it out for you," said Harry; "and then you will be able
to follow it perfectly."
"Thank you very much. Now for your parable."
"It is called _The Lost Church_; and I assure you it is full of
meaning."
"I hope I shall be able to find it out."
"You will find the more the longer you think about it.
'Oft in the far wood, overhead,
Tones of a bell are heard obscurely;
How old the sounds no sage has said,
Or yet explained the story surely.
From the lost church, the legend saith,
Out on the winds, the ringing goeth;
Once full of pilgrims was the path--
Now where to find it, no one knoweth.
Deep in the wood I lately went,
Where no foot-trodden path is lying;
From the time's woe and discontent,
My heart went forth to God in sighing.
When in the forest's wild repose,
I heard the ringing somewhat clearer;
The higher that my longing rose,
Downward it rang the fuller, nearer.
So on its thoughts my heart did brood,
My sense was with the sound so busy,
That I have never understood
How I clomb up the height so dizzy.
To me it seemed a hundred years
Had passed away in dreaming, sighing--
When lo! high o'er the clouds, appears
An open space in sunlight lying.
The heaven, dark-blue, above it bowed;
The sun shone o'er it, large and glowing;
Beneath, a ministers structure proud
Stood in the gold light, golden showing.
It seemed on those great clouds, sun-clear,
Aloft to hover, as on pinions;
Its spire-point seemed to disappear,
Melting away in high dominions.
The bell's clear tones, entrancing, full--
The quivering tower, they, booming, swung it;
No human hand the rope did pull--
The holy storm-winds sweeping rung it.
The storm, the stream, came down, came near,
And seized my heart with longing holy;
Into the church I went, with fear,
With trembling step, and gladness lowly.
The threshold crossed--I cannot show
What in me moved; words cannot paint it.
Both dark and clear, the windows glow
With noble forms of martyrs sainted.
I gazed and saw--transfigured glory!
The pictures swell and break their barriers;
I saw the world and all its story
Of holy women, holy warriors.
Down at the altar I sank slowly;
My heart was like the face of Stephen.
Aloft, upon the arches holy,
Shone out in gold the glow of heaven.
I prayed; I looked again; and lo!
The dome's high sweep had flown asunder;
The heavenly gates wide open go;
And every veil unveils a wonder.
What gloriousness I then beheld,
Kneeling in prayer, silent and wondrous,
What sounds triumphant on me swelled,
Like organs and like trumpets thunderous--
My mortal words can never tell;
But who for such is sighing sorest,
Let him give heed unto the bell
That dimly soundeth in the forest.'"
"Splendid!" cried the schoolmaster, with enthusiasm.
"What is the lost church?" asked Mrs. Cathcart.
"No one can tell, but him who finds it, like the poet," answered the
curate.
"But I suppose _you_ at least consider it the Church of England,"
returned the lady with one of her sweetest attempts at a smile.
"God forbid!" exclaimed the clergyman, with a kind of sacred horror.
"Not the Church of England!" cried Mrs. Cathcart, in a tone of horror
likewise, dashed with amazement.
"No, madam--the Church of God; the great cathedral-church of the
universe; of which Church I trust the Church of England is a little
Jesus-chapel."
"God bless you, Mr. Armstrong!" cried the schoolmaster.
The colonel likewise showed some sign of emotion. Mrs. Cathcart looked
set-down and indignant. Percy stared. Adela and Harry looked at each
other.
"Whoever finds God in his own heart," said the clergyman, solemnly,
"has found the lost Church--the Church of God."
And he looked at Adela as he spoke. She cast down her eyes, and thanked
him with her heart.
A silence followed.
"Harry, you must come up with your story next time--positively," said
Mr. Armstrong at length.
"I don't think I can. I cannot undertake to do so, at all events."
"Then what is to be done?--I have it. Lizzie, my dear, you have got
that story you wrote once for a Christmas paper, have you not?"
"Yes, I have, Ralph; but that is far too slight a thing to be worth
reading here."
"It will do at least to give Harry a chance for his. I mustn't praise
it 'afore fowk,' you know."
"But it was never quite finished--at least so people said."
"Well, you can finish it to-morrow well enough."
"I haven't time."
"You needn't be working at that--all day long and every day. There is
no such hurry."
The blank indicates a certain cessation of intelligible sound occasioned
by the close application of Lizzie's palm to Ralph's lips. She did not,
dare, however, to make any further opposition to his request.
"I think we have some claim on you, Mrs. Armstrong," said the host. "It
will be my sister's turn next time, and after that Percy's."
Percy gave a great laugh; and his mother said, with a slight toss of her
head:
"I am not so fond of being criticised myself!"
"Has criticism been _your_ occupation, Mrs. Cathcart," I said,
"during our readings? If so, then indeed we have a claim on you greater
than I had supposed."
She could not hide some degree of confusion and annoyance. But I had had
my revenge, and I had no wish for her story; so I said nothing more.
We parted with the understanding that Mrs. Armstrong would read her
story on the following Monday.
Again, before he took his leave, Mr. Harry had a little therapeutic
_tete-a-tete_ with Miss Adela, which lasted about two minutes, Mrs.
Cathcart watching them every second of the time, with her eyes as round
and wide as she could make them, for they were by nature very long, and
by art very narrow, for she rarely opened them to any width at all. They
were not pleasant eyes, those eyes of Mrs. Cathcart's. Percy's were like
them, only better, for though they had a reddish tinge, he did open them
wider.
