David Elginbrod

After this, nothing went amiss for some time. But it was very dreary work to teach such boys—for the younger came in for the odd sixpence. Slow, stupid, resistance appeared to be the only principle of their behaviour towards him. They scorned the man whom their mother despised and valued for the self-same reason, namely, that he was cheap. They would have defied him had they dared, but he managed to establish an authority over them—and to increase it. Still, he could not rouse them to any real interest in their studies. Indeed, they were as near being little beasts as it was possible for children to be. Their eyes grew dull at a story-book, but greedily bright at the sight of bull’s eyes or toffee. It was the same day after day, till he was sick of it. No doubt they made some progress, but it was scarcely perceptible to him. Through fog and fair, through frost and snow, through wind and rain, he trudged to that wretched house. No one minds the weather—no young Scotchman, at least—where any pleasure waits the close of the struggle: to fight his way to misery was more than he could well endure. But his deliverance was nearer than he expected. It was not to come just yet, however.

All went on with frightful sameness, till sundry doubtful symptoms of an alteration in the personal appearance of Hugh having accumulated at last into a mass of evidence, forced the conviction upon the mind of the grocer’s wife, that her tutor was actually growing a beard. Could she believe her eyes? She said she could not. But she acted on their testimony notwithstanding; and one day suddenly addressing Hugh, said, in her usual cold, thin, cutting fashion of speech:

“Mr. Sutherland, I am astonished and grieved that you, a teacher of babes, who should set an example to them, should disguise yourself in such an outlandish figure.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Appleditch?” asked Hugh, who, though he had made up his mind to follow the example of Falconer, yet felt uncomfortable enough, during the transition period, to know quite well what she meant.

“What do I mean, sir? It is a shame for a man to let his beard grow like a monkey.”

“But a monkey hasn’t a beard,” retorted Hugh, laughing. “Man is the only animal who has one.”

This assertion, if not quite correct, was approximately so, and went much nearer the truth than Mrs. Appleditch’s argument.

“It’s no joking matter, Mr. Sutherland, with my two darlings growing up to be ministers of the gospel.”

“What! both of them?” thought Hugh. “Good heavens!” But he said:

“Well, but you know, Mrs. Appleditch, the Apostles themselves wore beards.”

“Yes, when they were Jews. But who would have believed them if they had preached the gospel like old clothesmen? No, no, Mr. Sutherland, I see through all that. My own uncle was a preacher of the word.—As soon as the Apostles became Christians, they shaved. It was the sign of Christianity. The Apostle Paul himself says that cleanliness is next to godliness.”

Hugh restrained his laughter, and shifted his ground.

“But there is nothing dirty about them,” he said.

“Not dirty? Now really, Mr. Sutherland, you provoke me. Nothing dirty in long hair all round your mouth, and going into it every spoonful you take?”

“But it can be kept properly trimmed, you know.”

“But who’s to trust you to do that? No, no, Mr. Sutherland; you must not make a guy of yourself.”

Hugh laughed, and said nothing. Of course his beard would go on growing, for he could not help it.

So did Mrs. Appleditch’s wrath.

CHAPTER X. CONSULTATIONS

Wo keine Götter sind, walten Gespenster.

NOVALIS.– Christenheit.Where gods are not, spectres rule.Ein Charakter ist ein vollkommen gebildeter Wille.NOVALIS.—Moralische Ansichten.

A character is a perfectly formed will.

It was not long before Hugh repeated his visit to Falconer. He was not at home. He went again and again, but still failed in finding him. The day after the third failure, however, he received a note from Falconer, mentioning an hour at which he would be at home on the following evening. Hugh went. Falconer was waiting for him.

“I am very sorry. I am out so much,” said Falconer.

“I ought to have taken the opportunity when I had it,” replied Hugh. “I want to ask your help. May I begin at the beginning, and tell you all the story? or must I epitomize and curtail it?”

“Be as diffuse as you please. I shall understand the thing the better.”

So Hugh began, and told the whole of his history, in as far as it bore upon the story of the crystal. He ended with the words:

“I trust, Mr. Falconer, you will not think that it is from a love of talking that I have said so much about this affair.”

“Certainly not. It is a remarkable story. I will think what can be done. Meantime I will keep my eyes and ears open. I may find the fellow. Tell me what he is like.”

Hugh gave as minute a description of the count as he could.

“I think I see the man,” said Falconer. “I am pretty sure I shall recognise him.”

“Have you any idea what he could want with the ring?”

“It is one of the curious coincidences which are always happening,” answered Falconer, “that a newspaper of this very day would have enabled me, without any previous knowledge of similar facts, to give a probably correct suggestion as to his object. But you can judge for yourself.”

So saying, Falconer went to a side-table, heaped up with books and papers, maps, and instruments of various kinds, apparently in triumphant confusion. Without a moment’s hesitation, notwithstanding, he selected the paper he wanted, and handed it to Hugh, who read in it a letter to the editor, of which the following is a portion:—

“I have for over thirty years been in the habit of investigating the question by means of crystals. And since 18—, I have possessed the celebrated crystal, once belonging to Lady Blessington, in which very many persons, both children and adults, have seen visions of the spirits of the deceased, or of beings claiming to be such, and of numerous angels and other beings of the spiritual world. These have in all cases supported the purest and most liberal Christianity. The faculty of seeing in the crystal I have found to exist in about one person in ten among adults, and in nearly nine in every ten among children; many of whom appear to lose the faculty as they grow to adult age, unless they practise it continually.”

“Is it possible,” said Hugh, pausing, “that this can be a veritable paper of to-day? Are there people to believe such things?”

“There are more fools in the world, Mr. Sutherland, than there are crystals in its mountains.”

Hugh resumed his reading. He came at length to this passage:

“The spirits—which I feel certain they are—which appear, do not hesitate to inform us on all possible subjects which may tend to improve our morals, and confirm our faith in the Christian doctrines…The character they give of the class of spirits who are in the habit of communicating with mortals by rapping and such proceedings, is such that it behoves all Christian people to be on their guard against error and delusion through their means.”

Hugh had read this passage aloud.

“Is not that a comfort, now, Mr. Sutherland?” said Falconer. “For in all the reports which I have seen of the religious instruction communicated in that highly articulate manner, Calvinism, high and low, has predominated. I strongly suspect the crystal phantoms of Arminianism, though. Fancy the old disputes of infant Christendom perpetuated amongst the paltry ghosts of another realm!”

“But,” said Hugh, “I do not quite see how this is to help me, as to the count’s object in securing the ring; for certainly, however deficient he may be in such knowledge, he is not likely to have committed the theft for the sake of instruction in the doctrines of the sects.”

“No. But such a crystal might be put to other, not to say better, uses. Besides, Lady Blessington’s crystal might be a pious crystal; and the other which belonged to Lady—”

“Lady Euphrasia.”

“To Lady Euphrasia, might be a worldly crystal altogether. This might reveal demons and their counsels, while that was haunted by theological angels and evangelical ghosts.”

“Ah! I see. I should have thought, however, that the count had been too much of a man of the world to believe such things.”

“He might find his account in it, notwithstanding. But no amount of world-wisdom can set a man above the inroads of superstition. In fact, there is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most sceptical have ever been the most credulous. This is one of the best arguments for the existence of something to believe.”

“You remind me of a passage in my story which I omitted, as irrelevant to the matter in hand.”

“Do let me have it. It cannot fail to interest me.”

Hugh gave a complete account of the experiments they had made with the careering plate. Now the writing of the name of David Elginbrod was the most remarkable phenomenon of the whole, and Hugh was compelled, in responding to the natural interest of Falconer, to give a description of David. This led to a sketch of his own sojourn at Turriepuffit; in which the character of David came out far more plainly than it could have come out in any description. When he had finished, Falconer broke out, as if he had been hitherto restraining his wrath with difficulty:

“And that was the man the creatures dared to personate! I hate the whole thing, Sutherland. It is full of impudence and irreverence. Perhaps the wretched beings may want another thousand years’ damnation, because of the injury done to their character by the homage of men who ought to know better.”

“I do not quite understand you.”

“I mean, that you ought to believe as easily that such a man as you describe is laughing with the devil and his angels, as that he wrote a copy at the order of a charlatan, or worse.”

“But it could hardly be deception.”

“Not deception? A man like him could not get through them without being recognised.”

“I don’t understand you. By whom?”

“By swarms of low miserable creatures that so lament the loss of their beggarly bodies that they would brood upon them in the shape of flesh-flies, rather than forsake the putrifying remnants. After that, chair or table or anything that they can come into contact with, possesses quite sufficient organization for such. Don’t you remember that once, rather than have no body to go into, they crept into the very swine? There was a fine passion for self-embodiment and sympathy! But the swine themselves could not stand it, and preferred drowning.”

“Then you do think there was something supernatural in it?”

“Nothing in the least. It required no supernatural powers to be aware that a great man was dead, and that you had known him well. It annoys me, Sutherland, that able men, ay, and good men too, should consult with ghosts whose only possible superiority consists in their being out of the body. Why should they be the wiser for that? I should as soon expect to gain wisdom by taking off my clothes, and to lose it by getting into bed; or to rise into the seventh heaven of spirituality by having my hair cut. An impudent forgery of that good man’s name! If I were you, Sutherland, I would have nothing to do with such a low set. They are the canaille of the other world. It’s of no use to lay hold on their skirts, for they can’t fly. They’re just like the vultures—easy to catch, because they’re full of garbage. I doubt if they have more intellect left than just enough to lie with.—I have been compelled to think a good deal about these things of late.”

Falconer put a good many questions to Hugh, about Euphra and her relation to the count; and such was the confidence with which he had inspired him, that Hugh felt at perfect liberty to answer them all fully, not avoiding even the exposure of his own feelings, where that was involved by the story.

“Now,” said Falconer, “I have material out of which to construct a theory. The count is at present like a law of nature concerning which a prudent question is the first half of the answer, as Lord Bacon says; and you can put no question without having first formed a theory, however slight or temporary; for otherwise no question will suggest itself. But, in the meantime, as I said before, I will make inquiry upon the theory that he is somewhere in London, although I doubt it.”

“Then I will not occupy your time any longer at present,” said Hugh. “Could you say, without fettering yourself in the least, when I might be able to see you again?”

“Let me see. I will make an appointment with you.—Next Sunday; here; at ten o’clock in the morning. Make a note of it.”

“There is no fear of my forgetting it. My consolations are not so numerous that I can afford to forget my sole pleasure. You, I should think, have more need to make a note of it than I, though I am quite willing to be forgotten, if necessary.”

“I never forget my engagements,” said Falconer.

They parted, and Hugh went home to his novel.

CHAPTER XI. QUESTIONS AND DREAMS

On a certain time the Lady St. Mary had commanded the Lord Jesus to fetch her some water out of the well. And when he had gone to fetch the water, the pitcher, when it was brought up full, brake. But Jesus, spreading his mantle, gathered up the water again, and brought it in that to his mother.—The First (apocryphal) Gospel of the INFANCY of JESUS CHRIST.

Mrs. Elton read prayers morning and evening;—very elaborate compositions, which would have instructed the apostles themselves in many things they had never anticipated. But, unfortunately, Mrs. Elton must likewise read certain remarks, in the form of a homily, intended to impress the scripture which preceded it upon the minds of the listeners. Between the mortar of the homilist’s faith, and the dull blows of the pestle of his arrogance, the fair form of truth was ground into the powder of pious small talk. This result was not pleasant either to Harry or to Euphra. Euphra, with her life threatening to go to ruin about her, was crying out for him who made the soul of man, “who loved us into being,” {2} and who alone can renew the life of his children; and in such words as those a scoffing demon seemed to mock at her needs. Harry had the natural dislike of all childlike natures to everything formal, exclusive, and unjust. But, having received nothing of what is commonly called a religious training, this advantage resulted from his new experiences in Mrs. Elton’s family, that a good direction was given to his thoughts by the dislike which he felt to such utterances. More than this: a horror fell upon him lest these things should be true; lest the mighty All of nature should be only a mechanism, without expression and without beauty; lest the God who made us should be like us only in this, that he too was selfish and mean and proud; lest his ideas should resemble those that inhabit the brain of a retired money-maker, or of an arbitrary monarch claiming a divine right—instead of towering as the heavens over the earth, above the loftiest moods of highest poet, most generous child, or most devoted mother. I do not mean that these thoughts took these shapes in Harry’s mind; but that his feelings were such as might have been condensed into such thoughts, had his intellect been more mature.

One morning, the passage of scripture which Mrs. Elton read was the story of the young man who came to Jesus, and went away sorrowful, because the Lord thought so well of him, and loved him so heartily, that he wanted to set him free from his riches. A great portion of the homily was occupied with proving that the evangelist could not possibly mean that Jesus loved the young man in any pregnant sense of the word; but merely meant that Jesus “felt kindly disposed towards him”—felt a poor little human interest in him, in fact, and did not love him divinely at all.

Harry’s face was in a flame all the time she was reading. When the service was over—and a bond service it was for Euphra and him—they left the room together. As soon as the door was shut, he burst out:

“I say, Euphra! Wasn’t that a shame? They would have Jesus as bad as themselves. We shall have somebody writing a book next to prove that after all Jesus was a Pharisee.”

“Never mind,” said the heart-sore, sceptical Euphra; “never mind, Harry; it’s all nonsense.”

“No, it’s not all nonsense. Jesus did love the young man. I believe the story itself before all the Doctors of Divinity in the world. He loves all of us, he does—with all his heart, too.”

“I hope so,” was all she could reply; but she was comforted by Harry’s vehement confession of faith.

Euphra was so far softened, or perhaps weakened, by suffering, that she yielded many things which would have seemed impossible before. One of these was that she went to church with Mrs. Elton, where that lady hoped she would get good to her soul. Harry of course was not left behind. The church she frequented was a fashionable one, with a vicar more fashionable still; for had he left that church, more than half his congregation, which consisted mostly of ladies, would have left it also, and followed him to the ends of London. He was a middle-aged man, with a rubicund countenance, and a gentle familiarity of manner, that was exceedingly pleasing to the fashionable sheep who, conscious that they had wandered from the fold, were waiting with exemplary patience for the barouches and mail-phaetons of the skies to carry them back without the trouble of walking. Alas for them! they have to learn that the chariots of heaven are chariots of fire.

The Sunday morning following the conversation I have just recorded, the clergyman’s sermon was devoted to the illustration of the greatness and condescension of the Saviour. After a certain amount of tame excitement expended upon the consideration of his power and kingdom, one passage was wound up in this fashion:

“Yes, my friends, even her most gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, the ruler over millions diverse in speech and in hue, to whom we all look up with humble submission, and whom we acknowledge as our sovereign lady—even she, great as she is, adds by her homage a jewel to his crown; and, hailing him as her Lord, bows and renders him worship! Yet this is he who comes down to visit, yea, dwells with his own elect, his chosen ones, whom he has led back to the fold of his grace.”

For some reason, known to himself, Falconer had taken Hugh, who had gone to him according to appointment that morning, to this same church. As they came out, Hugh said:

“Mr.–is quite proud of the honour done his master by the queen.”

“I do not think,” answered Falconer, “that his master will think so much of it; for he once had his feet washed by a woman that was a sinner.”

The homily which Mrs. Elton read at prayers that evening, bore upon the same subject nominally as the chapter that preceded it—that of election; a doctrine which in the Bible asserts the fact of God’s choosing certain persons for the specific purpose of receiving first, and so communicating the gifts of his grace to the whole world; but which, in the homily referred to, was taken to mean the choice of certain persons for ultimate salvation, to the exclusion of the rest. They were sitting in silence after the close, when Harry started up suddenly, saying: “I don’t want God to love me, if he does not love everybody;” and, bursting into tears, hurried out of the room. Mrs. Elton was awfully shocked at his wickedness. Euphra, hastened after him; but he would not return, and went supperless to bed. Euphra, however, carried him some supper. He sat up in bed and ate it with the tears in his eyes. She kissed him, and bade him good night; when, just as she was leaving the room, he broke out with:

“But only think, Euphra, if it should be true! I would rather not have been made.”

“It is not true,” said Euphra, in whom a faint glimmer of faith in God awoke for the sake of the boy whom she loved—awoke to comfort him, when it would not open its eyes for herself. “No, Harry dear, if there is a God at all, he is not like that.”

“No, he can’t be,” said Harry, vehemently, and with the brightness of a sudden thought; “for if he were like that, he wouldn’t be a God worth being; and that couldn’t be, you know.”

Euphra knelt by her bedside, and prayed more hopefully than for many days before. She prayed that God would let her know that he was not an idol of man’s invention.

Till friendly sleep came, and untied the knot of care, both Euphra and Harry lay troubled with things too great for them. Even in their sleep, the care would gather again, and body itself into dreams. The first thought that visited Harry when he awoke, was the memory of his dream: that he died and went to heaven; that heaven was a great church just like the one Mrs. Elton went to, only larger; that the pews were filled with angels, so crowded together that they had to tuck up their wings very close indeed—and Harry could not help wondering what they wanted them for; that they were all singing psalms; that the pulpit by a little change had been converted into a throne, on which sat God the Father, looking very solemn and severe; that Jesus was seated in the reading-desk, looking very sad; and that the Holy Ghost sat on the clerk’s desk, in the shape of a white dove; that a cherub, whose face reminded him very much of a policeman he knew, took him by the shoulder for trying to pluck a splendid green feather out of an archangel’s wing, and led him up to the throne, where God shook his head at him in such a dreadful way, that he was terrified, and then stretched out his hand to lay hold on him; that he shrieked with fear; and that Jesus put out his hand and lifted him into the reading-desk, and hid him down below. And there Harry lay, feeling so safe, stroking and kissing the feet that had been weary and wounded for him, till, in the growing delight of the thought that he actually held those feet, he came awake and remembered it all. Truly it was a childish dream, but not without its own significance. For surely the only refuge from heathenish representations of God under Christian forms, the only refuge from man’s blinding and paralysing theories, from the dead wooden shapes substituted for the living forms of human love and hope and aspiration, from the interpretations which render scripture as dry as a speech in Chancery—surely the one refuge from all these awful evils is the Son of man; for no misrepresentation and no misconception can destroy the beauty of that face which the marring of sorrow has elevated into the region of reality, beyond the marring of irreverent speculation and scholastic definition. From the God of man’s painting, we turn to the man of God’s being, and he leads us to the true God, the radiation of whose glory we first see in him. Happy is that man who has a glimpse of this, even in a dream such as Harry’s!—a dream in other respects childish and incongruous, but not more absurd than the instruction whence it sprung.

But the troubles returned with the day. Prayers revived them. He sought Euphra in her room.

“They say I must repent and be sorry for my sins,” said he. “I have been trying very hard; but I can’t think of any, except once that I gave Gog” (his Welsh pony) “such a beating because he would go where I didn’t want him. But he’s forgotten it long ago; and I gave him two feeds of corn after it, and so somehow I can’t feel very sorry now. What shall I do?—But that’s not what I mind most. It always seems to me it would be so much grander of God to say: ‘Come along, never mind. I’ll make you good. I can’t wait till you are good; I love you so much.’”

His own words were too much for Harry, and he burst into tears at the thought of God being so kind. Euphra, instead of trying to comfort him, cried too. Thus they continued for some time, Harry with his head on her knees, and she kindly fondling it with her distressed hands. Harry was the first to recover; for his was the April time, when rain clears the heavens. All at once he sprung to his feet, and exclaimed:

“Only think, Euphra! What if, after all, I should find out that God is as kind as you are!”

How Euphra’s heart smote her!

“Dear Harry,” answered she, “God must be a great deal kinder than I am. I have not been kind to you at all.”

“Don’t say that, Euphra. I shall be quite content if God is as kind as you.”

“Oh, Harry! I hope God is like what I dreamed about my mother last night.”