ST RONAN’S WELL.
The next day the reading was resumed, and for several days was
regularly continued. Each day, as their interest grew, longer time was
devoted to it. They were all simple enough to accept what the author
gave them, nor, had a critic of the time been present to instruct them
that in this last he had fallen off, would they have heeded him much:
for Malcolm, it was the first story by the Great Unknown he had seen. A
question however occurring, not of art but of morals, he was at once on
the alert. It arose when they reached that portion of the tale in which
the true heir to an earldom and its wealth offers to leave all in the
possession of the usurper, on the one condition of his ceasing to annoy
a certain lady, whom, by villainy of the worst, he had gained the power
of rendering unspeakably miserable. Naturally enough, at this point
Malcolm’s personal interest was suddenly excited: here were elements
strangely correspondent with the circumstances of his present position.
Tyrrel’s offer of acquiescence in things as they were, and abandonment
of his rights, which, in the story, is so amazing to the man of the
world to whom it is first propounded, drew an exclamation of delight
from both ladies--from Clementina because of its unselfishness, from
Florimel because of its devotion: neither of them was at any time ready
to raise a moral question, and least of all where the heart approved.
But Malcolm was interested after a different fashion from theirs. Often
during the reading he had made remarks and given explanations--not so
much to the annoyance of Lady Clementina as she had feared, for since
his rescue of the swift, she had been more favourably disposed towards
him, and had judged him a little more justly--not that she understood
him, but that the gulf between them had contracted. He paused a moment,
then said:
“Do you think it was right, my ladies? Ought Mr Tyrrel to have made
such an offer?”
“It was most generous of him,” said Clementina, not without indignation
--and with the tone of one whose answer should decide the question.
“Splendidly generous,” replied Malcolm; “--but--I so well remember when
Mr Graham first made me see that the question of duty does not always
lie between a good thing and a bad thing: there would be no room for
casuistry then, he said. A man has very often to decide between one
good thing and another. But indeed I can hardly tell without more time
to think, whether that comes in here. If a man wants to be generous, it
must at least be at his own expense.”
“But surely,” said Florimel, not in the least aware that she was
changing sides, “a man ought to hold by the rights that birth and
inheritance give him.”
“That is by no means so clear, my lady,” returned Malcolm, “as you
seem to think. A man _may_ be bound to hold by things that are his
rights, but certainly not because they are rights. One of the grandest
things in having rights is that, being your rights, you may give them
up--except, of course, they involve duties with the performance of
which the abnegation would interfere.”
“I have been trying to think,” said Lady Clementina, “what can be the
two good things here to choose between.”
“That is the right question, and logically put, my lady,” rejoined
Malcolm, who, from his early training, could not help sometimes putting
on the schoolmaster. “The two good things are--let me see--yes--on
the one hand the protection of the lady to whom he owed all possible
devotion of man to woman, and on the other what he owed to his tenants,
and perhaps to society in general--yes --as the owner of wealth and
position. There is generosity on the one side and dry duty on the
other.”
“But this was no case of mere love to the lady, I think,” said
Clementina. “Did Mr Tyrrel not owe Miss Mowbray what reparation lay in
his power? Was it not his tempting of her to a secret marriage, while
yet she was nothing more than a girl, that brought the mischief upon
her?”
“That is the point,” said Malcolm, “that makes the one difficulty.
Still, I do not see how there can be much of a question. He could have
no right to do fresh wrong for the mitigation of the consequences of
preceding wrong--to sacrifice others to atone for injuries done by
himself.”
“Where would be the wrong to others?” said Florimel, now back to her
former position. “Why could it matter to tenants or society which of
the brothers happened to be an earl?”
“Only this, that, in the one case, the landlord of his tenants, the
earl in society, would be an honourable man, in the other, a villain--a
difference which might have consequences.”
“But,” said Lady Clementina, “is not generosity something more than
duty--something higher, something beyond it?”
“Yes,” answered Malcolm, “so long as it does not go against duty, but
keeps in the same direction, is in harmony with it. I doubt much,
though, whether, as we grow in what is good, we shall not come soon to
see that generosity is but our duty, and nothing very grand and beyond
it. But the man who chooses to be generous at the expense of justice,
even if he give up at the same time everything of his own, is but a
poor creature beside him who, for the sake of the right, will not only
consent to appear selfish in the eyes of men, but will go against his
own heart and the comfort of those dearest to him. The man who accepts
a crown _may be_ more noble than he who lays one down and retires to
the desert. Of the worthies who do things by faith, some are sawn
asunder, and some subdue kingdoms. The look of the thing is nothing.”
Florimel made a neat little yawn over her work. Clementina’s hands
rested a moment in her lap, and she looked thoughtful. But she resumed
her work, and said no more. Malcolm began to read again. Presently
Clementina interrupted him. She had not been listening.
“Why should a man want to be better than his neighbours, any more than
to be richer?” she said, as if uttering her thoughts aloud.
“Why, indeed,” responded Malcolm, “except he wants to become a
hypocrite?”
“Then, why do you talk for duty against generosity?”
“Oh!” said Malcolm, for a moment perplexed. He did not at once catch
the relation of her ideas. “Does a man ever do his duty,” he rejoined
at length, “in order to be better than his neighbours.” If he does, he
won’t do it long. A man does his duty because he must. He has no choice
but do it.”
“If a man has no choice, how is it that so many men choose to do
wrong?” asked Clementina.
“In virtue of being slaves and stealing the choice,” replied Malcolm.
“You are playing with words,” said Clementina.
“If I am, at least I am not playing with things,” returned Malcolm. “If
you like it better, my lady, I will say that, in declaring he has no
choice, the man with all his soul chooses the good, recognizing it as
the very necessity of his nature.”
“If I know in myself that I have a choice, all you say goes for
nothing,” persisted Clementina. “I am not at all sure I would not do
wrong for the sake of another. The more one preferred what was right,
the greater would be the sacrifice.”
“If it was for the grandeur of it, my lady, that would be for the man’s
own sake, not his friend’s.”
“Leave that out then,” said Clementina.
“The more a man loved another--say a woman, as here in the story--then
it seems to me, the more willing would he be that she should continue
to suffer rather than cease by wrong. Think, my lady: the essence of
wrong is injustice: to help another by wrong is to do injustice to
somebody you do not know well enough to love for the sake of one you do
know well enough to love. What honest man could think of that twice?
The woman capable of accepting such a sacrifice would be contemptible.”
“She need not know of it.”
“He would know that she needed but to know of it to despise him.”
“Then might it not be noble in him to consent for her sake to be
contemptible in her eyes?”
“If no others were concerned. And then there would be no injustice,
therefore nothing wrong, and nothing contemptible.”
“Might not what he did be wrong in the abstract, without having
reference to any person?”
“There is no wrong man can do but is a thwarting of the living Right.
Surely you believe, my lady, that there is a living Power of right,
whose justice is the soul of our justice, who _will_ have right done,
and causes even our own souls to take up arms against us when we do
wrong.”
“In plain language, I suppose you mean--Do I believe in a God?”
“That is what I mean, if by a God you mean a being who cares about us,
and loves justice--that is, fair play--one whom therefore we wrong to
the very heart when we do a thing that is not just.”
“I would gladly believe in such a being, if things were so that I
could. As they are, I confess it seems to me the best thing to doubt
it. I do doubt it very much. How can I help doubting it, when I see so
much suffering, oppression, and cruelty in the world? If there were
such a being as you say, would he permit the horrible things we hear of
on every hand?”
“I used to find that a difficulty. Indeed it troubled me sorely until
I came to understand things better. I remember Mr Graham saying once
something like this--I did not understand it for months after: ‘Every
kind-hearted person who thinks a great deal of being comfortable, and
takes prosperity to consist in being well-off, must be tempted to doubt
the existence of a God.--And perhaps it is well they should be so
tempted,’ he added.”
“Why did he add that?”
“I think because such are in danger of believing in an evil God. And
if men believed in an evil God, and had not the courage to defy him,
they must sink to the very depths of savagery. At least that is what I
ventured to suppose he meant.”
Clementina opened her eyes wide, but said nothing. Religious people,
she found, could think as boldly as she.
“I remember all about it so well!” Malcolm added, thoughtfully. “We had
been talking about the Prometheus of Æschylus--how he would not give in
to Jupiter.”
“I am trying to understand,” said Clementina, and ceased--and a silence
fell which for a few moments Malcolm could not break. For suddenly he
felt as if he had fallen under the power of a spell. Something seemed
to radiate from her silence which invaded his consciousness. It was as
if the wind which dwells in the tree of life had waked in the twilight
of heaven, and blew upon his spirit. It was not that now first he saw
that she was beautiful; the moment his eyes fell upon her that morning
in the park, he saw her beautiful as he had never seen woman before.
Neither was it that now first he saw her good; even in that first
interview her heart had revealed itself to him as very lovely. But
the foolishness which flowed from her lips, noble and unselfish as it
was, had barred the way betwixt his feelings and her individuality as
effectually as if she had been the loveliest of Venuses lying uncarved
in the lunar marble of Carrara. There _are_ men to whom silliness is
an absolute freezing mixture; to whose hearts a plain, sensible woman
at once appeals as a woman, while no amount of beauty can serve as
sweet oblivious antidote to counteract the nausea produced by folly.
Malcolm had found Clementina irritating, and the more irritating
that she was so beautiful. But at the first sound from her lips that
indicated genuine and truthful thought, the atmosphere had begun to
change; and at the first troubled gleam in her eyes, revealing that she
pursued some dim-seen thing of the world of reality, a nameless potency
throbbed into the spiritual space betwixt her and him, and embraced
them in an aether of entrancing relation. All that had been needed to
awake love to her was, that her soul, her self, should look out of its
windows--and now he had caught a glimpse of it. Not all her beauty,
not all her heart, not all her courage, could draw him while she would
ride only a hobby-horse, however tight its skin might be stuffed with
emotions. But now who could tell how soon she might be charging in the
front line of the Amazons of the Lord--on as real a horse as any in the
heavenly army? For was she not thinking--the rarest human operation in
the world?
“I will try to speak a little more clearly, my lady,” said Malcolm. “If
ease and comfort, and the pleasures of animal and intellectual being,
were the best things to be had, as they are the only things most people
desire, then that maker who did not care that his creatures should
possess or were deprived of such, could not be a good God. But if the
need with the lack of such things should be the means, the only means,
of their gaining something in its very nature so much better that----”
“But,” interrupted Clementina, “if they don’t care about anything
better--if they are content as they are?”
“Should he then who called them into existence be limited in his
further intents for the perfecting of their creation, by their notions
concerning themselves who cannot add to their life one cubit?--such
notions being often consciously dishonest? If he knows them worthless
without something that he can give, shall he withhold his hand because
they do not care that he should stretch it forth? Should a child not be
taught to ride because he is content to run on foot?”
“But the means, according to your own theory, are so frightful!” said
Clementina.
“But suppose he knows that the barest beginnings of the good he intends
them would not merely reconcile them to those means, but cause them
to choose his will at any expense of suffering! I tell you, Lady
Clementina,” continued Malcolm, rising, and approaching her a step or
two, “if I had not the hope of one day being good like God himself,
if I thought there was no escape out of the wrong and badness I feel
within me and know I am not able to rid myself of without supreme help,
not all the wealth and honours of the world could reconcile me to life.”
“You do not know what you are talking of,” said Clementina, coldly and
softly, without lifting her head.
“I do,” said Malcolm.
“You mean you would kill yourself but for your belief in God?”
“By life, I meant _being_, my lady. If there were no God, I dared
not kill myself, lest worse should be waiting me in the awful voids
beyond. If there be a God, living or dying is all one--so it be what he
pleases.”
“I have read of saints,” said Clementina, with cool dissatisfaction in
her tone, “uttering such sentiments,”----“_Sentiments!_” said Malcolm
to himself----“--and I do not doubt such were felt or at least imagined
by them; but I fail to understand how, even supposing these things
true, a young man like yourself should, in the midst of a busy world,
and with an occupation which, to say the least,----”
Here she paused. After a moment Malcolm ventured to help her.
“Is so far from an ideal one--would you say, my lady?”
“Something like that,” answered Clementina, and concluded,--“I wonder
how _you_ can have arrived at such ideas.”
“There is nothing wonderful in it, my lady,” returned Malcolm. “Why
should not a youth, a boy, a child--for as a child I thought about what
the kingdom of heaven could mean--desire with all his might that his
heart and mind should be clean, his will strong, his thoughts just, his
head clear, his soul dwelling in the place of life? Why should I not
desire that my life should be a complete thing, and an outgoing of life
to my neighbour? Some people are content not to do mean actions: I want
to become incapable of a mean thought or feeling; and so I shall be
before all is done.”
“Still, how did you come to begin so much earlier than others?”
“All I know as to that, my lady, is that I had the best man in the
world to teach me.”
“And why did not I have such a man to teach me? I could have learned of
such a man too.”
“If you are able now, my lady, it does not follow that it would have
been the best thing for you sooner. Some children learn far better for
not being begun early, and will get before others who have been at it
for years. As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find
what is needful for you--in a book, or a friend, or, best of all in
your own thoughts--the eternal thought speaking in your thought.”
It flashed through her mind, “Can it be that I have found it now --on
the lips of a groom?”
Was it her own spirit or another that laughed strangely within her?
“Well, as you seem to know so much better than other people,” she said,
“I want you to explain to me how the God in whom you profess to believe
can make use of such cruelties. It seems to me more like the revelling
of a demon.”
“My lady!” remonstrated Malcolm, “I never pretended to explain. All
I say is, that, if I had reason for hoping there was a God, and if
I found, from my own experience and the testimony of others, that
suffering led to valued good, I should think, hope, expect to find that
he caused suffering for reasons of the highest, purest and kindest
import, such as when understood must be absolutely satisfactory to the
sufferers themselves. If a man cannot believe that, and if he thinks
the pain the worst evil of all, then of course he cannot believe there
is a good God. Still, even then, if he would lay claim to being a lover
of truth, he ought to give the idea--the mere _idea_ of God fair play,
lest there should be a good God after all, and he all his life doing
him the injustice of refusing him his trust and obedience.”
“And how are we to give the mere idea of him fair play?” asked
Clementina, rather contemptuously. But I think she was fighting
emotion, confused and troublesome.
“By looking to the heart of whatever claims to be a revelation of him.”
“It would take a lifetime to read the half of such.”
“I will correct myself, and say--whatever of the sort has best claims
on _your_ regard--whatever any person you look upon as good, believes
and would have you believe--at the same time doing diligently what you
_know_ to be right; for, if there be a God, that must be his will, and,
if there be not, it remains our duty.”
All this time, Florimel was working away at her embroidery, a little
smile of satisfaction flickering on her face. She was pleased to hear
her clever friend talking so with her strange vassal. As to what they
were saying, she had no doubt it was all right, but to her it was not
interesting. She was mildly debating with herself whether she should
tell her friend about Lenorme.
Clementina’s work now lay on her lap and her hands on her work, while
her eyes at one time gazed on the grass at her feet, at another
searched Malcolm’s face with a troubled look. The light of Malcolm’s
candle was beginning to penetrate into her dusky room, the power of
his faith to tell upon the weakness of her unbelief. There is no
strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source
of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength
to disbelieve. But into the house where the refusal of the bad is
followed by no embracing of the good-- the house empty and swept and
garnished--the bad will return, bringing with it seven evils that are
worse.
If something of that sacred mystery, holy in the heart of the Father,
which draws together the souls of man and woman, was at work between
them, let those scoff at the mingling of love and religion who know
nothing of either; but man or woman who, loving woman or man, has
never in that love lifted the heart to the Father, and everyone
whose divine love has not yet cast at least an arm round the human
love, must take heed what they think of themselves, for they are yet
but paddlers in the tide of the eternal ocean. Love is a lifting no
less than a swelling of the heart. What changes, what metamorphoses,
transformations, purifications, glorifications, this or that love must
undergo ere it take its eternal place in the kingdom of heaven, through
all its changes yet remaining, in its one essential root, the same, let
the coming redemption reveal. The hope of all honest lovers will lead
them to the vision. Only let them remember that love must dwell in the
will as well as in the heart.
But whatever the nature of Malcolm’s influence upon Lady Clementina,
she resented it, thinking towards and speaking to him repellently.
Something in her did not like him. She knew he did not approve of her,
and she did not like being disapproved of. Neither did she approve of
him. He was pedantic--and far too good for an honest and brave youth:
not that she could say she had seen dishonesty or cowardice in him,
or that she could have told which vice she would prefer to season his
goodness withal, and bring him to the level of her ideal. And then,
for all her theories of equality, he was a groom--therefore to a lady
ought to be repulsive--at least when she found him intruding into the
chambers of her thoughts --personally intruding--yes, and met there
by some traitorous feelings whose behaviour she could not understand.
She resented it all, and felt towards Malcolm as if he were guilty of
forcing himself into the sacred presence of her bosom’s queen--whereas
it was his angel that did so, his Idea, over which he had no control.
Clementina would have turned that Idea out, and when she found she
could not, her soul started up wrathful, in maidenly disgust with her
heart, and cast resentment upon everything in him whereon it would
hang. She had not yet, however, come to ask herself any questions; she
had only begun to fear that a woman to whom a person from the stables
could be interesting, even in the form of an unexplained riddle,
must be herself a person of low tastes; and that, for all her pride
in coming of honest people, there must be a drop of bad blood in her
somewhere.
For a time her eyes had been fixed on her work, and there had been
silence in the little group.
“My lady!” said Malcolm, and drew a step nearer to Clementina.
She looked up. How lovely she was with the trouble in her eyes! Thought
Malcolm, “If only she were what she might be! If the form were but
filled with the spirit! the body with life!”
“My lady!” he repeated, just a little embarrassed, “I should like
to tell you one thing that came to me only lately--came to me when
thinking over the hard words you spoke to me that day in the park. But
it is something so awful that I dare not speak of it except you will
make your heart solemn to hear it.”
He stopped, with his eyes questioning hers. Clementina’s first thought
once more was madness, but as she steadily returned his look, her face
grew pale, and she gently bowed her head in consent.
“I will try then,” said Malcolm. “--Everybody knows what few think
about, that once there lived a man who, in the broad face of prejudiced
respectability, truth-hating hypocrisy, common-place religion, and
dull book-learning, affirmed that he knew the secret of life, and
understood the heart and history of men--who wept over their sorrows,
yet worshipped the God of the whole earth, saying that he had known him
from eternal days. The same said that he came to do what the Father
did, and that he did nothing but what he had learned of the Father.
They killed him, you know, my lady, in a terrible way that one is
afraid even to think of. But he insisted that he laid down his life;
that he allowed them to take it. Now I ask whether that grandest thing,
crowning his life, the yielding of it to the hand of violence, he had
not learned also from his Father. Was his death the only thing he had
not so learned? If I am right, and I do not say _if_ in doubt, then the
suffering of those three terrible hours was a type of the suffering of
the Father himself in bringing sons and daughters through the cleansing
and glorifying fires, without which the created cannot be made the very
children of God, partakers of the divine nature and peace. Then from
the lowest, weakest tone of suffering, up to the loftiest pitch, the
divinest acme of pain, there is not one pang to which the sensorium of
the universe does not respond; never an untuneful vibration of nerve
or spirit but thrills beyond the brain or the heart of the sufferer to
the brain, the heart of the universe; and God, in the simplest, most
literal, fullest sense, and not by sympathy alone, suffers _with_ his
creatures.”
“Well, but he is able to bear it; they are not: I cannot bring myself
to see the right of it.”
“Nor will you, my lady, so long as you cannot bring yourself to see
the good they get by it.--My lady, when I was trying my best with poor
Kelpie, you would not listen to me.”
“You are ungenerous,” said Clementina, flushing.
“My lady,” persisted Malcolm, “you would not understand me. You
denied me a heart because of what seemed in your eyes cruelty. I
knew that I was saving her from death at the least, probably from a
life of torture: God may be good, though to you his government may
seem to deny it. There is but one way God cares to govern--the way
of the Father-king--and that way is at hand.--But I have yet given
you only the one half of my theory: If God feels pain, then he puts
forth his will to bear and subject that pain; if the pain comes to
him from his creature, living in him, will the endurance of God be
confined to himself, and not, in its turn, pass beyond the bounds of
his individuality, and react upon the sufferer to his sustaining? I
do not mean that sustaining which a man feels from knowing his will
one with God’s and God _with_ him, but such sustaining as those his
creatures also may have who do not or cannot know whence the sustaining
comes. I believe that the endurance of God goes forth to uphold, that
his patience is strength to his creatures, and that, while the whole
creation may well groan, its suffering is more bearable therefore than
it seems to the repugnance of our regard.”
“That is a dangerous doctrine,” said Clementina.
“Will it then make the cruel man more cruel to be told that God is
caring for the tortured creature from the citadel of whose life he
would force an answer to save his own from the sphinx that must at last
devour him, let him answer ever so wisely? Or will it make the tender
less pitiful to be consoled a little in the agony of beholding what
they cannot alleviate? Many hearts are from sympathy as sorely in need
of comfort as those with whom they suffer. And to such I have one word
more--to your heart, my lady, if it will consent to be consoled: The
animals, I believe, suffer less than we, because they scarcely think of
the past, and not at all of the future. It is the same with children,
Mr Graham says; they suffer less than grown people, and for the same
reason. To get back something of this privilege of theirs, we have to
be obedient and take no thought for the morrow.”
Clementina took up her work. Malcolm walked away.
“Malcolm,” cried his mistress, “are you not going on with the book?”
“I hope your ladyship will excuse me,” said Malcolm. “I would rather
not read more just at present.”
It may seem incredible that one so young as Malcolm should have been
able to talk thus, and indeed my report may have given words more
formal and systematic than his really were. For the _matter_ of them,
it must be remembered that he was not young in the effort to do and
understand; and that the advantage to such a pupil of such a teacher as
Mr Graham is illimitable.