"Ay; he's greatly changed. He's no the man he was. It fairly beats me; I
canna mak' it out. Ye've heard that--" And here he lowered his voice and
I could not catch his words.
I turned away from the wall, and walking swiftly, set out for the Manse
with a busy mind. The afternoon was already late, and when I gained a
view of the Manse, a cold grey house standing a little apart in a grove
of weary-looking sycamores, one or two lights smiled on me from the
small windows that stared upon the narrow and muddy road. The minister's
study was on the right of the hall door; and, as I pulled the bell, I
observed the shadow of his head to dance upon the drawn white blind, a
thought fantastically, or with a palsied motion, I fancied. The
yellow-headed maidservant admitted me with a shrunken grin, that
suggested wild humour stifled by achieved respect, and I was soon in the
minister's study. Then I saw that Doctor Wedderburn was moving up and
down the room, and that his head was going this way and that, as he
communed in a loud voice with himself. My entrance checked him as soon
as he observed me, which was not instantly, as, at first, his back was
set towards me and the mood-swept maid. When he turned about, his
discomposure was evident. His gaze was troubled, and his manner, as he
shook hands with me, had in it something of the tremulous, and was
backward in geniality. We sat down on either side of the fire, the tea
service and the hot cakes, loved of the doctor, between us. At first we
talked warily of such things as my recovery, the weather, the condition
of affairs in the parish and so forth. I noticed that though the
doctor's eyes often rested with an almost glaring expression of scrutiny
or of surprise upon me, he made no remark on the change of my
appearance. Nor did I on the change of his, which was startling, and
suggested I know not what of sorrow and of the attempt to kill it with
evil weapons. The healthy brick-red of his complexion was now become
scarlet and full of heat; his mouth worked loosely while he talked; the
flesh of his cheeks was puffed and wrinkled; his eyes had the clouded
and yet fierce aspect of the drunkard. But, absurdly enough, what most
struck me in him was his abstinence from an accustomed act. He drank
his tea, but he ate no hot cakes. This was a departure from an
established, if trifling custom of many years' standing, and worked on
my imaginative conception of what the doctor now was more than would, at
the first blush, appear likely, or even possible. Instead of, as of old,
feeling myself on the worm level in his presence, I was filled with a
sense of pity, as I looked upon him and wondered what subtle process of
mental or physical development or retrogression had wrought this dreary
change. Presently, while I wondered, he put his cup down with an awkward
and errant hand that set it swaying and clattering in the tray, and said
abruptly:--
"And what have you come for, Alistair, eh? what have you come for? To go
on with what you've begun? Well, well, lad, I'm ready for you; I'm ready
now."
His voice was full of timorous irritation, his manner of pitiable
distress.
"I've thought it out, I've thought it all out," he continued; "and I can
combat you, I can combat you, Alistair, wherever you've got your
fever-mind from and your fever-tongue."
I knew what he meant, and suddenly I knew, too, why I had wanted so
eagerly to come to the Manse. My instinct of pity and of sympathy died
softly away. My new instinct of cruel rapture in the ruthless exercise
of my--shall I call them fever-powers then?--woke, dawned to sunrise.
And Doctor Wedderburn and I fell forthwith into an animated theological
discussion. He was desperately nervous, desperately ill at ease. His
argumentative struggles were those of a drowning man positively
convinced--note this,--that he would drown, that no human or divine aid
could save him. There was, too, a strong hint of personal anger in his
manner, which was strictly undignified. He fought a losing battle with
bludgeons, and had an obvious contempt for the bludgeons while in the
act of using them in defence or in attack. And at last, with a sort of
sharp cry, he threw up his hands, and exclaimed in a voice I hardly knew
as his:--
"God forgive you, Alistair, for what you're doing! God forgive
you--murderer, murderer!"
This dolorous exclamation ran through me like cold water and chilled all
the warmth of my intellectual excitement.
"Murderer!" I repeated inexpressively.
Doctor Wedderburn sat in his chair trembling, and looking upon me with
despairing and menacing eyes, the eyes of a man who curses but cannot
fight his enemy.
"Of a soul, of a soul," he said. "The poisoned dagger?--doubt, the
poisoned dagger--you've plunged it into me, boy."
Then raising his voice harshly, he exclaimed:
"Curse you, curse you!"
I was thunderstruck. I declare it here, for it is true. I had
defamed--and deliberately--the doctor's dearest idols. I had driven my
lance into his convictions. I had blasphemed what he worshipped, and had
denied all he affirmed. But that I had made so terrific an impression
upon his mind, his soul--this astounded me. Yet what else could his
passionate denunciation mean? Had I, a boy, unused to controversy,
unskilled in dialectics, overthrown with my hasty words the faith of
this strong and fervent man? The thought thrilled one side of my dual
nature with triumph, pierced the other with grim horror. My emotions
were divided and complex. As I sat silent, my face dogged yet ashamed,
the doctor got up from his chair trembling like one with the palsy.
"Away from me--away," he cried in a hoarse voice, and pointing at the
door. "I'll have no more talk with the Devil, no more--no more!"
I had not a word. I got up and went, bending a steady, fascinated look
upon this old mentor of mine, who now proclaimed himself my victim.
Arrived in the garden I found a thin moon riding above the sycamores,
and soft airs of Spring playing round the doctor's habitation.
Strangely, I had no mind to begone from it immediately. I crossed the
garden bit and paced up and down the country lane that skirted it,
keeping an eye upon the lighted window of the study. So I went back and
forth for full an hour, I suppose. Then I heard a sound in the Spring
night. The doctor's hall door banged, and, peering through the privet
hedge that protected his meagre domain, I perceived him come out into
the air bareheaded. He took his way to the small path that ran by the
hedge parallel to the lane, coming close to the place by which I
crouched, spying upon his privacy. And there he paced, bemoaning aloud
the ill fate that had come upon him. I heard all the awful complaining
of this soul in distress, besieged by doubts, deserted by the faith and
hope of a lifetime. It was villainous to be his audience. Yet, I could
not go. Sometimes the poor man prayed with a desolate voice, calling
upon God for a sign, imploring against temptation. Sometimes--and this
was terrible--he blasphemed, he imprecated. And then again he prayed--to
the Devil, as do the Satanists. I heard him weeping in his garden in the
night, alone under the sycamores. It was a new agony of the garden and
it wrung my heart. Yet I watched it till the spectral moon waned, and
the trees were black as sins against the faded sky.
About this time, as I have said, his parishioners began to mark the
outward change of Dr Wedderburn that signified the inward change in him.
The talking ploughmen had their fellows. All who sat under the doctor
were conscious of a difference, at first vague, in his eloquent
discourses, of a diminuendo in the full fervour of his delivery and
manner. Gossip flowed about him, and presently there were whisperings
of change in his bodily habits. He had been seen by night wandering
about his garden in very unholy condition, he who had so often rebuked
excess. Children, passing his gate in the dark of evening, had endured
with terror his tipsy shoutings. A maidservant left him, and spread
doleful reports of his conduct through the village. By degrees, rumours
of our minister's shortcomings stole, like snakes, into the local
papers, carefully shrouded by the wrappings that protect scandal-mongers
against libel actions. The congregation beneath the doctor's pulpit
dwindled. Women looked at him askance. Men were surly to him, or--and
that was less kind--jocular. I, alone, followed with fascination the
paling to dusk of a bright and useful career. I, alone, partially
understood the hell this poor creature carried within him. For I often
heard his dreary night-thoughts, and assisted, unperceived of him, at
the vigils that he kept. The lamp within his study burned till dawn
while he wrestled, but in vain, with the disease of his soul, the malady
of his tortured heart.
One night in Summer time, towards midnight, I bent my steps furtively to
the Manse. It was very dark and the weather was dumb and agitating. No
leaf danced, no grass quivered. Breathless, dead, seemed the woods and
fields, the ocean of moorland, the assemblage of the mountains. I heard
no step upon the lonely road but my own, and life seemed to have left
the world until I came upon the Manse. Then I saw the light in the
doctor's window, and, drawing near, observed that the blind was up and
the lattice thrust open among the climbing dog-roses. Craftily I stole
up the narrow garden path, and, keeping to the side of the window,
looked into the room.
Doctor Wedderburn lounged within at the table facing me. A pen was in
his shaking hand. A shuffle of manuscript paper was before him, and a
Bible, in which he thrust his fingers as if to keep texts already looked
out. Beyond the Bible was a bottle, three-quarters full of whiskey, and
a glass. His muttering lips and dull yet shining eyes betokened his
condition. I saw before me a drunkard writing a sermon. The vision was
sufficiently bizarre. A tragedy of infinite pathos mingled with a comedy
of hideous yet undeniable humour in the live picture. I neither wept nor
did I laugh. I only watched, shrouded by the inarticulate night. The
doctor took a pull at the bottle, then swept the leaves of the Bible....
"Let me die the death of the righteous," he murmured thickly. "That's
it--that's--that's--" He wrote on the paper before him with a wandering
pen, then pushed the sheet from him. It fell on the floor by the window.
"And let my last end be like his--Ah--ah!"
He drank again, and again wrote with fury. How old and how wicked he
looked, yet how sad! He crouched down over the table and the pen broke
in his hand. A dull exclamation burst from him. Taking up the bottle, he
poured by accident some of the whiskey over the open Bible.
"A baptism! A baptism!" he ejaculated, bursting into laughter.
"Now--now--let's see--let's see."
Again he violently turned the sodden leaves and shook his head. He could
not read the words, and that angered him. He drank again and again till
the bottle was empty, then staggered out of the room. I heard his
frantic footsteps echoing in the uncarpeted passage. Quickly I leaned in
at the window and caught up the sheet of paper that had fallen to the
floor. I held it up to the light. Only one sentence writhed up and down
over it, repeated a dozen times; "There is no God!" While I read I heard
the doctor returning, and I shrank back into the night. He came
stumbling in, another whiskey bottle full in his hand. Falling down in
the chair he applied his lips to it and drank--on and on. He was killing
himself there and then. I knew it. I wanted to leap into the room, to
stop him, yet I only watched him. Why?--I want to know why--
At last he fell forward across the Bible with a choking noise. His limbs
struggled. His arms shot out wildly, the table broke under him--there
was a crash of glass. The lamp was extinguished. Darkness crowded the
little room--and silence.
* * * * *
The papers recorded the shocking death of a minister. They did not
record this.
As I stole home that night, alone in my knowledge of the doctor's
appalling end, I heard going before me light and tripping footsteps,
those, apparently, of some youth, not above three yards or so from me.
What wanderer thus preceded me, I asked myself, with a certain tingling
of the nerves, shaken, perhaps, by what I had just seen? I paused. The
steps also paused. The person was stopping too. I resumed my way. Again
I heard the tripping footfalls. Their sound greatly disquieted me, yet I
hurried, intending to catch up the wayfarer. Still the steps hastened
along the highway, and always just before me. I ran, yet did not come up
with any person. I called "Stop! Stop!" There was no reply. Again I
waited. This man--or boy--(the steps seemed young) waited also. I
started forward once more. So did he. Then a fury of fear ran over me,
urging me at all hazards to see in whose train I travelled. We were now
close to Carlounie. We entered the policies. Yes, this person turned
from the public road through my gates into the drive, and the footfalls
reached the very house. I stopped. I dared not approach quite close to
the door. With trembling fingers I fumbled in my pocket, drew out my
match-box, and, in the airless night, struck a match. The tiny flame
burned steadily. I stretched my hand out, approaching it, as I supposed,
to the face of the stranger.
But I saw nothing. Only, on a sudden, I heard some one hasten from me
across the sweep of gravel in the direction of the burn. And then, after
an interval, I heard the rush of startled sheep through the night.
Just so had they scattered on the day I spoke with the grey traveller by
the waterside.