"Why do you say that? Of course I've been bad--of course I'm changed."
"Changed! Look at yourself--and praise God, Alistair."
He had caught up a hand-mirror that lay on the dressing-table and now
put it into my hand. For the first time since the fever I saw my face.
It was as it had been and yet it was utterly different, for now it was
beautiful. The pinched features seemed to have been smoothed out. The
mouth had become firm and masterful. The haggard eyes were alight as if
torches burned behind them. My expression, too, was powerful, collected,
alert. I scarcely recognised myself. But I pretended to see no change.
"Well--what is it?" I asked, dropping the glass.
The doctor was confused by my calm.
"Your look of health startled me," he answered, sitting down by the bed
and examining me keenly.
All at once I was seized by a strange desire to get up an argument with
this man, by whom I had so often been crushed in conversation. I leaned
on my elbow in the bed, and fixing my eyes on him, I said:--
"And why should I praise God?"
The doctor seemed in amazement at my tone.
"Because you are a Christian and have been brought back from death," he
replied, but with none of his usual half-sarcastic self-confidence.
"You think God did that?"
"Alistair, do you dare to blaspheme the Almighty?"
I felt at that moment like a cat playing with a mouse. My lips, I know,
curved in a smile of mockery, and yet I will swear--yes, even to my own
heart--that all I said that day I said in pure mischief, with no evil
intent. It seemed that I, Alistair Ralston, the dolt, the ignoramus,
longed to try mental conclusions with this brilliant and opinionated
divine. He bade me praise God. In reply I praised--the Devil, and I
forced him to hear me. Absolutely I broke into a flood of words, and he
sat silent. I compared the good and evil in the scheme of the world,
balancing them in the scales, the one against the other. I took up the
stock weapon of atheism, the deadly nature, the deadly outcome of free
will. I used it with skill. The names of Strauss, Comte, Schopenhauer,
Renan, a dozen others, sprang from my lips. The dreary doctrine of the
illimitable triumph of sin, of the appalling mistake of the permission
granted it to step into the scheme of creation, in order that its
presence might create a _raison d'etre_ for the power of personal action
one way or the other in mankind--such matters as these I treated with a
vehement eloquence and command of words that laid a spell upon the
doctor. Going very far, I dared to exclaim that since God had allowed
his own scheme to get out of gear, the only hope of man lay in the
direction of the opposing force, in frank and ardent Satanism.
When at length I ceased from speaking, I expected Dr Wedderburn to rise
up in his wrath and to annihilate me, but he sat still in his chair with
a queer, and, as I thought, puzzled expression upon his face. At last he
said, as if to himself:
"The miracle of Balaam; verily, the miracle of Balaam."
The ass had indeed spoken as never ass spoke before. I waited a moment,
then I said:--
"Well, why don't you rebuke me, or why don't you try to controvert me?"
Again he looked upon me, very uneasily I thought, and with something
that was almost fear in his keen eyes.
"Ah!" he said, "I have praised the Lord many a morning and evening for
his gift of words to me. It seems others bestow that gift too.
Alistair"--and here his voice became deeply solemn--"where have you been
visiting when you lay there, mad to all seeming? In what dark place have
you been to gather destruction for men? With whom have you been
talking?"
Suddenly, I know not why, I thought of the grey stranger, and, with a
laugh, I cried:--
"The grey traveller taught me all I have said to you."
"The grey traveller! Who may he be?"
But I lay back upon the pillows and refused to answer, and very soon the
doctor went, still bending uneasy, nervous eyes upon me.
In those eyes I read the change that had stolen over my intellect, as in
the hand-mirror I had read the change that had stolen over my face. This
strange fever had caused both soul and body to blossom. I trembled with
an exquisite joy. Had Fate relented to me at last? Was it possible that
I was to know the joys of the heroes? I longed for, yet feared my full
recovery. In it alone should I discover how sincere was my
transformation. Doctor Wedderburn did not come to me again. The days
passed, my convalescence strengthened, watched over by the pretty nurse,
Kate Walters, a fresh, pure, pious, innocent, beautiful soul, tender,
temperate, and pitiful for all sorrow and evil. At length I was well. At
length I knew, to some extent, my new, my marvellous self. For I had,
indeed, been folded up in my fever like a vesture, and, like a vesture,
changed. I had grown taller, expanded, put forth mighty muscles as a
tree puts forth leaves. My cheeks and my eyes glowed with the radiance
of strong health. I went out with my cousin Gavin, whose estate marched
with mine, and I shot so well that he was filled with admiration, and
forthwith conceived a sort of foolish worship for me--having a
sportsman's soul but no real mind. For the first time in my life I felt
absolutely at home on a horse, an unwonted skill came to my hands, and I
actually schooled Gavin's horses over some fences he had had set up in a
grass park at the Mains of Cossens. The keepers who had once secretly
jeered at me were now at my very feet. Their children looked upon me as
a young god. I rejoiced in my strength as a giant. But I asked myself
then, as I ask myself now--what does it mean? The days of miracles are
over. Yet, is this not a miracle? And in a miracle is there not a gleam
of terror, as there is a gleam of stormy yellow in the fated opal? But
here I leave my condition of body alone, and pass on to the episode of
Doctor Wedderburn, partially related in the newspapers of the day and
marvelled at, I believe, by all who ever knew, or even set eyes upon
him.
The doctor, as I have said, did not come again to see me, but I felt an
over-mastering desire to set forth and visit him. This was surprising,
as hitherto I had rather avoided and hated him. Now something drew me to
the Manse. At first I resisted my inclination, but a chance word led me
to yield to it impulsively. Since my illness I had not once attended
church. Moved by a violent distaste for the religious service, that was
novel in me, I had frankly avowed my intention of keeping away. But, as
I did not go to the kirk, I missed seeing Dr Wedderburn; and I wanted to
see him. One day, leaning by chance against a stone dyke in the Glen of
Ogilvy, smoking a pipe and enjoying the soft air of Spring as it blew
over the rolling moorland, I heard two ploughmen exchange a fragment of
gossip that made excitement start up quick within me.