"Then lock thee fast
Alone within thy chamber, there fall down
On both thy knees, and grovel on the ground:
Cry to thy heart: wash every word thou utter'st
In tears (and if't be possible) of blood:
Beg Heaven to cleanse the leprosy."
FORD'S PLAYS.
Armstrong, upon the departure of Holden, sat moodily pondering what
had been told him. Were his emotions those of pleasure or of pain? At
first, the former. The natural goodness of his disposition made
him instinctively rejoice in the happiness of his friend. For a few
moments, he forgot himself, and, as long as the forgetfulness lasted,
was happy in the participation of the other's hopes. But this frame
of mind was only momentary. We have seen how an answer of Holden was
sufficient to restore his gloom. Thoughts chased each other in wild
confusion, over which he had no control, which he reproached himself
for admitting--which he would have excluded, if he could. The
connection between him and the Solitary was one of mutual misfortune.
Sorrow was the ligament that united them. For years had he known
Holden, but it was only within a short time, namely, since an awakened
conscience (so he judged, himself) had revealed to him his own
hideousness, that he had been attracted to the Solitary. Should Holden
recover his son, should his heart expand once more to admit worldly
joys, would it not be closed to him? As he once felt indifference
towards Holden, so would not Holden, by a change of circumstances,
by the awakening of new desires and new hopes, by the occupancy
of emotions the more delightful because fresh and for so long
unexperienced, stand to him in other and colder relations? These
reflections were not clear, distinct, sharply defined. They drove
through his mind, ragged and torn, like storm-clouds chased by the
tempest.
There were two beings struggling with one another in him--the one
striving to encourage the noble feelings of his nature, and drive away
whatever was inconsistent with truth and reason--the other whispering
doubt, and selfishness, and despair. He rose and paced, with rapid
steps, the room.
"Has it come to this?" he said to himself, as if wondering at his
condition. "Am I become incapable of participating in the happiness of
others? Am I a festering mass of selfishness? O! once it was not so.
I will resist these thoughts which come from the bottomless pit. They
shall not master me. They are the temptations of the Evil One. But can
I resist them? Have I not grieved away the spirit? Is there place for
repentance? Am I not like Esau, who sought it in vain with many tears?
If he was refused the grace of God, why not I? Why not I, that I may
go to my own place? Already I feel and know my destiny. I feel it in
the terrible looking for of judgment. I feel it in that I do not love
my neighbor. If I did, would I not sympathize in his happiness? Would
this wretched self for ever interpose? I never knew myself before. I
now know the unutterable vileness of my heart. I would hide it from
Thee, my God. I would hide it from Thy holy angels--from myself."
That day, Mr. Armstrong stirred not from the house, as long as the sun
remained above the horizon. The golden sunshine deepened his mental
gloom. Nor to his eyes was it golden. It was a coppery, unnatural
light. It looked poisonous. It seemed as if the young leaves of spring
ought to wither in its glare.
He heard the laugh of a man in the street, and started as if he had
been stung. It sounded like the mockery of a fiend. Was the laugh
directed at him? He started, and ran to the window, with a feeling
of anger, to see who it was that was triumphing over his misery.
He looked up and down the street, but could see no one. The
disappointment still further irritated him. Was he to be refused the
poor satisfaction of knowing who had wounded him? Was the assassin
to be permitted to stab him in the back? Was he not to be allowed to
defend himself? He returned and resumed his seat, trembling all over.
Faith's canary bird was singing, at the top of its voice. Armstrong
turned and looked at it. The little thing, with fluttering wings and
elevated head, and moving a foot, as if beating time, poured out a
torrent of melody. The sounds, its actions, grated on his feelings. He
rose and removed it into another room.
He folded his arms, his head fell upon his chest, and he shut his
eyes to exclude the light. "I am out of harmony with all creation,"
he said. "I am fit for a place where no bird ever sings. This is the
evidence of my doom. Only the blessed can be in harmony with
God's works. Heaven is harmony--the music of his laws. Evil is
discord--myself am discord."
Faith had still some influence over him, though even at her entrance
he started "like a guilty thing surprised." Her presence was a charm
to abate the violence of the hurricane. He could not resist the gentle
tones of her voice, and at the spell his calmed spirit trembled into
comparative repose. Armstrong acknowledged it to himself as an augury
of good.
I cannot be wholly evil, he thought, if the approach of a pure angel
gives me pleasure. The touch of Ithuriel's spear reveals deformity
where it exists; in me it discloses beauty.
With her he could talk over the ordinary affairs of the day with
calmness, though it is singular, considering the perfect confidence
between them, that he never adverted to the communication of Holden,
notwithstanding he knew it would possess the highest interest for her.
It betrays, perhaps, the weakened and diseased condition of a mind,
wincing like an inflamed limb at the apprehension of a touch.
As the father listened and looked at his child, he felt transported
into a region whither the demons could not come. They could not endure
her purity; they could not abide her brightness. Her influence was a
barrier mightier than the wall that encircled Paradise, and over which
no evil thing could leap. He therefore kept her by him as much as
possible. He manifested uneasiness when she was away. His consolation
and hope was Faith. As the Roman prisoner drank life from the pure
fountains to which he had given life, so Armstrong drew strength from
the angelic spirit his own had kindled.
Yet was his daughter unconscious of the whole influence she exerted,
nor had she even a distant apprehension of the chaos of his mind.
How would she have been startled could she have beheld the seething
cauldron! But into that, only the Eye that surveys all things could
look.
Thus several days passed by. An ordinary observer would have noticed
no change in Armstrong, except that his appetite diminished, and he
seemed restless. Doctor Elmer and Faith both remarked these symptoms,
but they did not alarm the former, though they grieved the latter.
Accustomed to repose unlimited confidence in the medical skill of
the physician, and too modest to have an opinion adverse to that
of another older than herself, and in a department wherewith he was
familiar, and she had no knowledge except what was colored by filial
fears and affection, and, perhaps, distorted by them out of its
reasonable proportions, Faith went on from day to day, hoping that
a favorable change would take place, and that she should have
the happiness of seeing her dear father restored to his former
cheerfulness.
It is painful to follow the sad moods of a noble mind, conscious of
its aberrations, and yet unable to control them. We have not the
power of analysis capable of tracing it through all its windings, and
exhibiting it naked to the view, and if we had, might shrink from the
task, as from one inflicting unnecessary pain, both on the writer
and the reader. It is our object only so far to sketch the state of
Armstrong's mind, as to make his conduct intelligible.
His restlessness has been alluded to. He found himself unable to sleep
as formerly. Long after retiring to rest he would lie wide awake,
vainly courting the gentle influence that seemed to shun him the more
it was wooed. The rays of the morning sun would sometimes stream into
the window before sleep had visited his eyelids, and he would rise
haggard, and weary, and desponding. And if he did sink into slumber,
it was not always into forgetfulness, but into a confused mist of
dreams, more harassing than even his waking thoughts. The difficulty
of obtaining sleep had lately induced a habit of reading late into the
night, and not unfrequently even into the morning hours. Long after
his daughter had sought her chamber, and when she supposed he was
in bed, he was seated in his solitary room, trying to fasten his
attention on a book, and to produce the condition favorable to repose.
The darkness of his mind sought congenial gloom. If he opened
the sacred volume, he turned not to the gracious promises of
reconciliation and pardon, and the softened theology of the New
Testament, or to those visions of a future state of beatitude, which
occasionally light up the sombre pages of the Old, as if the gates of
Paradise were for a moment opened, to let out a radiance on a darkness
that would else be too disheartening and distracting; but to the
wailings of the prophets and denunciations of punishment. These he
fastened on with a fatal tenacity, and by a perverted ingenuity, in
some way or other connected with himself, and made applicable to
his own circumstances. Naught could pass through his imagination or
memory, but, by some diabolical alchemy, was stripped of its sanative
and healthful properties, and converted into harm.
"Young's Night Thoughts" was a book that possessed peculiar
attractions. For hours would he hang over its distressful pages, and
many were the leaves blotted by his tears. Yet those tears relieved
him not. Still, from time to time, would he recur to the book, as if
tempted by a fascination he could not resist, striving to find, if
possible, in the wretchedness of another, a lower deep than his own.
Especially in the solemn hours of the night, when the silence was so
profound, he could fancy he heard the flickering of the candles, he
read the book. Then hanging upon image after image of those deploring
strains, and appropriating all their melancholy, intensified through
the lens of his own dark imagination, he would sink from one depth
of wretchedness to another, till he seemed lost away, where no ray of
light could ever penetrate, or plummet sound.
He had been reading one night late, until as if unable to endure the
images of woe it conjured up, he pushed the book away from him. The
night was dark and stormy, and the rain pouring in torrents. He walked
to the window and looked out. He could see nothing, except as the
landscape was revealed for an instant by a flash of lightning. He
could hear nothing, except the peals of thunder rolling through
the valleys. He took a candle, and walked cautiously to the door of
Faith's chamber, to see if she were asleep. The door was ajar, for
the purpose of ventilation, and, shading the light with his hand,
Armstrong could see the face of his sleeping daughter without waking
her. She lay in the profound slumber of health and youth, undisturbed
by the noise of the thunder, as one conscious of a protecting
Providence. Her left hand was under her cheek, the black hair combed
back, and collected under the snowy cap. Her breathing was scarcely
perceptible, but soft and quiet as an infant's. An expression of
happiness rested on her features, and the color was a little kindled
in her cheek, looking brighter in contrast with the linen sheet.
"She sleeps," he thought, "as if there were no sin and misery in the
world. And why should she not? What has she to do with them? Were my
spiritual eyes opened, I should see the protecting angels in shining
garments around her bed, unless my approach has driven them away.
Heaven takes care of its own. So I could sleep once. Will the time
come when she, too, shall be so guilty she cannot sleep? Almighty
God forbid! Better she were in her grave. They are fortunate who die
young. They are taken from the evil to come. The heart ceases to beat
before it becomes so hard it cannot repent. Were she to die to-night
her salvation would be assured. What infinite gain! The murderer could
inflict no injury, but would confer a benefit."
Why did he start? Why did he shudder all over? Why did he hastily turn
round, and shut the door, and hasten to his own room, locking it after
him? Why was it he took something from his pocket, and, opening the
window, threw it violently into the dark? But a moment Armstrong
remained in his room. Blowing out the candles, and noiselessly
descending the stairs, he as quietly opened and shut the front door,
and stood in the open air.
The storm was at its height. The rain poured with such violence that
in the flashes of lightning he could see the large drops leap from
the ground. But he felt not that he was wet to the skin. He minded
not that he had left the house without a hat, and that the water was
running in streams from his head to the earth. With a rapid pace,
approaching running, he fled through the streets, until he reached the
grave-yard. Without a ray to guide him, through a darkness that might
be felt, he found his way to a grave, it was his wife's. He threw
himself prostrate on his face, and lay motionless.
When Armstrong raised himself from the ground the storm had ceased,
the clouds had left the sky, and the stars were shining brilliantly.
He gazed around, then looked up into the blue vault. What were those
innumerable shining points? Were they worlds, as the learned have
said? Were they inhabited by beings like himself, doomed to sin and
suffer? Did they suffer, more or less? Could the errors of a few years
be expiated by sufferings of ages, as countless as the grains of
sand on the seashore? He struck the palm of his hand violently on his
forehead; he threw out his arm, as if in defiance, toward heaven, and
groaned aloud. It seemed as though from every heaped-up grave that
groan was echoed, and called to him like an invitation to join the
hosts of darkness. He started, and looked again at the gruel sky. But
no voice of comfort was breathed thence. The silver stars were now
sparks of an universal conflagration. With a gesture of despair, he
left the city of the dead.
Silence and darkness still shrouded the house of Mr. Armstrong on his
return. He closed the door quietly after him, and, cautiously as
he had descended, ascended the stairs, which, in spite of all his
precaution, creaked under his feet. The sounds sent a thrill of
alarm through him as though he feared discovery. It was as if he were
returning from some guilty enterprise. Without striking a light, he
threw off his soaked garments, and got into bed. Strange, perhaps, to
say, he soon fell into a sleep, deeper and more refreshing than any
he had for a long time enjoyed. It may be that the excitement of his
system was worked off by rapid motion, and exposure to the night air
and rain, or that nature, unable longer to endure it, sunk beneath
the tension. It was not until a late hour he arose, when he found
breakfast awaiting him. After the usual greetings, Faith said:
"Here is your penknife, father, which Felix found lying on the path
this morning. You must have lost it from your pocket."
Mr. Armstrong took the knife, without reply, and, when unobserved,
dropped it into the fire.