George MacDonald

“ I don’t care for myself any more.’
‘Then, Charley, what have you done?’
‘You are always so kind, Wilfrid!’ he returned, with a hopelessness which seemed almost coldness.
‘Charley,’ I said, ‘if you don’t tell me what has happened—’
‘Happened!’ he cried. ‘Hasn’t that man been lashing at you like a dog, and I didn’t rush at him, and if I couldn’t fight, being a milksop, then bite and kick and scratch, and take my share of it? O God!’ he cried, in agony, ‘if I had but a chance again! But nobody ever has more than one chance in this world. ”

“ For, if there were a God, how could he let purity be clasped in the arms of defilement? how could he marry my Athanasia—not to a corpse, but to a Plague? Here was the man who had done more to ruin her brother than any but her father, and God had given her to him! I had had—with the commonest of men—some notion of womanly purity—how was it that hers had not instinctively shuddered and shrunk? how was it that the life of it had not taken refuge with death to shun bare contact with the coarse impurity of such a nature as that of Geoffrey Brotherton? ”

“ Wilfrid, I am ashamed of you!’
‘So should I be, Charley, if I had meant it. I only wanted to make you speak. I agree with you entirely. But I do wish we could be quite sure of it; for I don’t believe any man can ever be sure of a thing that is not true.’
‘My father is sure that the love of nature is not only a delusion, but a snare. I should have no right to object, were he not equally sure of the existence of a God who created and rules it. By the way, if I believed in a God, I should say creates not created. ”

“ My uncle had, by no positive instruction, but by occasional observations, not one of which I can recall, generated in me a strong hope that the life of the lower animals was terminated at their death no more than our own. The man who believes that thought is the result of brain, and not the growth of an unknown seed whose soil is the brain, may well sneer at this, for he is to himself but a peck of dust that has to be eaten by the devouring jaws of Time; but I cannot see how the man who believes in soul at all, can say that the spirit of a man lives, and that the spirit of his horse dies. ”

“ I thought for a little before I answered.
‘No, Charley,’ I said at last—‘it would not satisfy me. For it would indicate that beauty might be, after all, but the projection of my own mind—the name I gave to a harmony between that around me and that within me. There would then be nothing absolute in beauty. There would be no such thing in itself. It would exist only as a phase of me when I was in a certain mood; and when I was earthly-minded, passionate, or troubled, it would be nowhere. ”

“ He may damn me now when he likes: I don’t care!’
‘Charley! Charley!’ I cried; ‘you’re as bad as Mr Forest. Are you to say such things about God, when you know nothing of him? He may be as good a God, after all, as even we should like him to be.’
‘But Mr Forest is a clergyman.’
‘And God was the God of Abraham before ever there was a clergyman to take his name in vain,’ I cried; for I was half mad with the man who had thus wounded my Charley. ‘I am content with you, Charley. ”

“ Earth and sky were alive with Spring. The wind was the breath of the coming Summer: there were flakes of sunshine and shadow in it. Before me lay a green bank with a few trees on its top. It was crowded with primroses growing through the grass. The dew was lying all about, shining and sparkling in the first rays of the level sun, which itself I could not see. The tide of life rose in my heart and rushed through my limbs. I would take my sword and go for a ramble through the park. I went to my bedside, and stretched across to find it by the wall. ”

“ I crept down the stair like a thief—not that I feared detention, but that I felt such a sense of the important, even the dread, about myself and my instrument, that I was not in harmony with souls reflecting only the common affairs of life. In a moment I was in the middle of a storm—for storm it very nearly was and soon became. I rushed to and fro in the midst of it, lay down and rolled in it, and laughed and shouted as I looked up to the window where the pendulum was swinging, and thought of the trees at work away in the dark. The wind grew stronger and stronger. ”

“ I can recall it now with a calmness equal to its own. Indeed in my memory it seems to belong to my mind as much as to the outer world; or rather the night filled both, forming the space in which my thoughts moved, as well as the space in which the brilliant thread of the sun-lighted crescent hung clasping the earth-lighted bulk of the moon. I wandered in the grass until midnight was long by, feeling as quietly and peacefully at home as if my head had been on the pillow and my soul out in a lovely dream of cool delight. We lose much even by the good habits we form. ”

“ I gazed in comfortless content for a time on the repose of my weary friend, and then went on, inly moved to see what further the ice of the godless region might hold. Nor had I wandered far when I saw the form of Mary, lying like the rest, only that her hands were crossed on her bosom. I stood, wondering to find myself so little moved. But when the ice drew nigh me, and would have closed around me, my heart leaped for joy; and when the heat of my lingering life repelled it, my heart sunk within me, and I said to myself: ‘Death will not have me. ”

“ I dared one more peep into her face. The light and the loveliness of her dream had passed; I should not now have had to look twice to know that it was Mary Osborne; but never more could I see in hers a common face. She was still fast asleep, and, stealthy as a beast of prey, I began to make my escape. At the first movement, however, my perplexity was redoubled, for again my hand fell on the sword which I had forgotten, and question after question as to how they were together, and together there, darted through my bewildered brain. Could a third person have come and laid the sword between us? ”

“ I strove to master my dismay, and forced myself to get up and run about; and in a few minutes the fear had withdrawn into the background, and I felt no longer an unseen force dragging me towards a frightful gulf. But it was replaced by a more spiritual horror. The sense of loneliness seized upon me, and the first sense of absolute loneliness is awful. Independent as a man may fancy himself in the heart of a world of men, he is only to be convinced that there is neither voice nor hearing, to know that the face from which he most recoils is of a kind essential to his very soul. Space is not room ”

“ I do not mean that in Mary Osborne I had been worshipping the finite. It was the eternal, the lovely, the true that in her I had been worshipping: in myself I had been worshipping the mean, the selfish, the finite, the god of spiritual greed. Only in himself can a man find the finite to worship; only in turning back upon himself does he create the finite for and by his worship. All the works of God are everlasting; the only perishable are some of the works of man. All love is a worship of the infinite: what is called a man’s love for himself, is not love ”

“ You will find all about it in Dante.’
‘It doesn’t look like that—the light I see,’ said Mary, quietly.
‘How very ill-bred you are—to say such wicked things, Charley!’ said Clara.
‘Am I? They are better unmentioned. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die! Only don’t allude to the unpleasant subject.’
He burst out singing: the verses were poor, but I will give them.
‘Let the sun shimmer! Let the wind blow! All is a notion—What do we know? Let the moon glimmer! Let the stream flow! All is but motion To and fro! ‘Let the rose wither! Let the stars glow! ”

“ There are people who consider themselves very grand because they can’t bear to be interfered with. They think themselves lovers of justice, when it is only justice to themselves they care about. The true lover of justice is one who would rather die a slave than interfere with the rights of others. To wrong any one is the most terrible thing in the world. Injustice to you is not an awful thing like injustice in you. I should like to see you a great man, Willie. Do you know what I mean by a great man?’
‘Something else than I know, I’m afraid, uncle,’ I answered. ”

“ Night after night I would dream of danger drawing nigh—crowds of men of evil purpose—enemies to me or to my country; and ever in the beginning of my dream, I stood ready, foreknowing and waiting; for I had climbed and had taken the ancient power from the wall, and had girded it about my waist—always with a straw rope, the sole band within my reach; but as it went on, the power departed from the dream: I stood waiting for foes who would not come; or they drew near in fury, and when I would have drawn my weapon, old blood and rust held it fast in its sheath, and I tugged at it in helpless agony ”

“ Mr Coningham was at my door by ten o’clock, and we set out together for Umberden Church. It was a cold clear morning. The dying Autumn was turning a bright thin defiant face upon the conquering Winter. I was in great spirits, my mind being full of Mary Osborne. At one moment I saw but her own ordinary face, only what I had used to regard as dulness I now interpreted as the possession of her soul in patience; at another I saw the glorified countenance of my Athanasia, knowing that, beneath the veil of the other, this, the real, the true face ever lay. ”

“ He had only crept behind a projection for a trick. His remorse was extreme. He begged my pardon in the most agonized manner.
‘Never mind, Charley,’ I said; ‘you didn’t mean it.’
‘Yes, I did mean it,’ he returned. ‘The temptation came, and I yielded; only I did not know how dreadful it would be to you.’
‘Of course not. You wouldn’t have done it if you had.’
‘How am I to know that, Wilfrid? I might have done it. Isn’t it frightful that a body may go on and on till a thing is done, and then wish he hadn’t done it? I am a despicable creature. ”

“ I told my uncle, with some circumstance, the whole story: explaining how, although unable to combat the doubts which occasioned Charley’s unhappiness, I had yet always hung to the side of believing.
‘You did right to do no more, my boy,’ said my uncle; ‘and it is clear you have been misunderstood—and ill-used besides. But every wrong will be set right some day.’
My aunt showed me now far more consideration—I do not say—than she had felt before. A curious kind of respect mingled with her kindness, which seemed a slighter form of the observance with which she constantly regarded my uncle. ”

“ Surely that sparrow fell not to the ground without the Father’s knowledge.
‘Charley! how do you know,’ I said, ‘that you can never beg the bird’s pardon? If God made the bird, do you fancy with your gun you could destroy the making of his hand? If he said, “Let there be,” do you suppose you could say, “There shall not be”?’ (Mr Forest had read that chapter of first things at morning prayers.) ‘I fancy myself that for God to put a bird all in the power of a silly thoughtless boy—’
‘Not thoughtless! not thoughtless! There is the misery!’ said Charley. ”

“ And it is all such a muddle! I don’t care much about what they call immortality. I doubt if it is worth the having. I would a thousand times rather have one day of conscious purity of heart and mind and soul and body, than an eternity of such life as I have now.—What am I saying?’ he added, with a despairing laugh. ‘It is a fool’s comparison; for an eternity of the former would be bliss—one moment of the latter is misery.’
I could but admire and pity my poor friend both at once.
Miss Pease had entered unheard.
‘Mr Cumbermede,’ she said, ‘I have been looking for you to show you your room. ”

“ I confess I do not see any Other ground on which to condemn it—provided, always, that the man has no other dependent upon him, none for whom he ought to live and work.’
‘But does a man owe nothing to himself?’ said Clara.
‘Nothing that I know of,’ I replied. ‘I am under no obligation to myself. How can I divide myself, and say that the one-half of me is indebted to the other? To my mind, it is a mere fiction of speech.’
‘But whence, then, should such a fiction arise?’ objected Charley, willing, perhaps, to defend Clara. ”

“ Her hair doesn’t curl—that’s the only objection. Some one has remarked that all the good children who die have curly hair.’
Poor Charley! Was his mind more healthy, then? Was he less likely to come to an early death? Was his want of faith more life-giving than what he considered her false faith?
‘I see no reason to fear it,’ I said, with a tremor at my heart as I thought of my dream.
That night I was sleepless—but about Charley—not about Mary. What could I do?—what ought I to do? Might there be some mistake in my judgment of Clara? ”

“ To this book I owe so much that to me it would alone justify the conviction that Wordsworth will never be forgotten. That he is no longer the fashion, militates nothing against his reputation. We, the old ones, hold fast by him for no sentimental reminiscence of the fashion of our youth, but simply because his humanity has come into contact with ours. The men of the new generation have their new loves and worships: it remains to be seen to whom the worthy amongst them will turn long ere the frosts of age begin to gather and the winds of the human autumn to blow. ”

“ Clara turned her head like a startled forest creature that wants to listen, but does not know in what direction, and moved her feet as if she were about to fly.
‘Come back after dinner,’ she said: ‘you had better!’ and darting to the other side of the room, lifted a piece of hanging tapestry, and vanished just in time, for Mrs Wilson’s first words crossed her last.
‘My dear boy—Master Cumbermede, I should say, I am sorry I have not been able to get to you sooner. One thing after another has kept me on my legs till I’m ready to drop. The cook is as tiresome as cooks only can be. ”

“ In a moment it broke out in radiance.
‘I confess,’ he said. ‘I thought you were too hard on Wilfrid; and he hadn’t anything at hand to say for himself.’
‘And you were too hard upon me, weren’t you? Two to one is not fair play—is it now?’
‘No; certainly not.’
‘And that justified a little false play on my part?’
‘No, it did not,’ said Charley, almost fiercely. ‘Nothing justifies false play.’
‘Not even yours, Mr Osborne?’ replied Clara, with a stately coldness quite marvellous in one so young; and leaving him, she came again to my side. ”

“ Clara led me to the library. There we found Charley waiting our return.
‘Will you take that little boy to his mother, Clara?’ I said. ‘I don’t want him here to-day. We’ll have a look over those papers in the evening, Charley.’
‘That’s right,’ said Clara. ‘I hope Charley will help you to a little rational interest in your own affairs. I am quite bewildered to think that an author, not to say a young man, the sole remnant of an ancient family, however humble, shouldn’t even know whether he had any papers in the house or not.’
‘We’ve come upon a glorious nest of such addled eggs, Clara. ”

“ But it had gone to the grave with grannie. If my uncle or aunt knew it, I had no hope of getting it from either of them; for I was certain they had no sympathy with any such fancies as mine. My favourite invention, one for which my audience was sure to call when I professed incompetence, and which I enlarged and varied every time I returned to it, was of a youth in humble life who found at length he was of far other origin then he had supposed. I did not know then, that the fancy, not uncommon with boys, has its roots in the deepest instincts of our human nature. ”

“ We descended the steep bank; we crossed the wooden bridge over the little river; we crunched under our feet the hail-like crystals lying rough on the surface of the glacier; we reached the cave, and entered its blue abyss. I went first into the delicious, yet dangerous-looking blue. The cave had several sharp angles in it. When I reached the furthest corner I turned to look behind me. I was alone. I walked back and peeped round the last corner. Between that and the one beyond it stood Clara and Charley—staring at each other with faces of ghastly horror. ”

“ I mean what I say.
‘Nonsense, Charley! It’s only that you haven’t active work enough, and get morbid with brooding over the germs of things.’
‘Oh, Wilfrid, how beautiful a life might be! Just look at that one in the New Testament! Why shouldn’t I be like that? I don’t know why. I feel as if I could. But I’m not, you see—and never shall be. I’m selfish, and ill-tempered, and—’
‘Charley! Charley! There never was a less selfish or better-tempered fellow in the world.’
‘Don’t make me believe that, Wilfrid, or I shall hate the world as well as myself. ”

“ At all events, an inroad of careless courage was the consequence. I stepped at once upon the buttress, and stood for a moment looking at her—no doubt with reproach. She sprang towards me.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said.
The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood. She bent over the battlement, stooped her face towards me, and kissed me on the mouth. My only answer was to turn and walk down the buttress, erect; a walk which, as the arch of the buttress became steeper, ended in a run and a leap on to the gutter of the hall. ”

“ Clara’s look certainly could not have been the result of any excess of imagination. But many women respond easily to influences they could not have originated. My conjecture is that the same horror had again seized upon Charley when he saw Clara; that it made his face, already deathlike, tenfold more fearful; that Clara took fright at his fear, her imagination opening like a crystal to the polarized light of reflected feeling; and thus they stood in the paralysis of a dismay which ever multiplied itself in the opposed mirrors of their countenances. ”

“ Until now, I had always accepted what seemed the natural and universal repugnance to absolute dissolution as the strongest argument on the side of immortality;—for why should a man shrink from that which belonged to his nature? But now annihilation seemed the one lovely thing, the one sole only lonely thought in which lay no blackness of burning darkness. Oh, for one eternal unconscious sleep!—the nearest likeness we can cherish of that inconceivable nothingness—ever denied by the very thinking of it—by the vain attempt to realize that whose very existence is the knowing nothing of itself! ”

“ You’re dead, you know.’
‘It is a good thing, Wilfrid,’ he rejoined, in a tone of some reproach, ‘that I am not frightened at you for the same reason; for what would happen then?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose you would go away and leave me alone in this ghostly light.’
‘If I were frightened at you as you are at me, we should not be able to see each other at all. If you take courage the light will grow.’
‘Don’t leave me, Charley,’ I cried, and flung myself from my tree towards his. I found myself floating, half reclined on the air. We met midway each in the other’s arms. ”

“ Such being my mood, it will cause no surprise if I say that I too was tempted to suicide; the wonder would have been if it had been otherwise. The soft keen curves of that fatal dagger, which had not only slain Charley but all my hopes—for had he lived this horror could not have been—grew almost lovely in my eyes. Until now it had looked cruel, fiendish, hateful; but now I would lay it before me and contemplate it. In some griefs there is a wonderful power of self-contemplation, which indeed forms their only solace ”