|It was a chill day in early autumn, and as Charles Santley passed
along the dark avenue of the Manor his path was strewn here and there
with freshly fallen leaves. Dark shadows lay on every side, and the
heaven above was full of a sullen, cheerless light. It was just
the day for a modern Faust, in the course of his noonday walk, to
encounter, in some fancied guise, canine or human, the evil one of old
superstition.
Be that as it may, Santley knew at last that the hour of his
temptation was over, and that the evil one was not far away. He
knew it, by the sullen acquiescence of evil of his own soul; by the
deliberate and despairing precision with which he had chosen the easy
and downward path; by the sense of darkness which already obliterated
the bright moral instincts in his essentially religious mind. He had
spoken the truth when he said he would follow Ellen Haldane anywhere,
even to the eternal pit itself. Her beauty possessed him and disturbed
him with the joy of impure thoughts; and now that he perceived his own
power to trouble her peace of mind, he rejoiced at the strength of his
passion with a truly diabolic perversity.
As he came out of the lodge gate he saw, far away over the fields, the
spire of his own church.
He laughed to himself.
But the man’s faith in spiritual things, so far from being shaken, was
as strong as ever. His own sense of moral deterioration, of spiritual
backsliding, only made him believe all the more fervently in the
heaven from which he had fallen, or might choose to fall. For it is
surely a mistake to picture, as so many poets have pictured, the evil
spirit as one ignorant of or insensible to good. Far wiser is the
theology which describes Satan as the highest of angelic spirits--the
spirit which, above all others, had beheld and contemplated the
Godhead, and had then, in sheer revolt and negation, deliberately and
advisedly decided its own knowledge and rejected its own truthright.
Santley was, in his basest moods, essentially a godly man--a man
strangely curious of the beauty of goodness, and capable of infinite
celestial dreams. If, like many another, he confused the flesh and the
spirit, he did no more than many sons of Eve have done.
As he walked slowly along he mused, somewhat to this effect--“I
love this woman. In her heart she loves me. Her superior spiritual
endowments are mystically alive to those I myself possess. Her
husband is a clod, an unbeliever, with no spiritual promptings. In
his sardonic presence, her aspirations are chilled, frozen at the very
fountain-head; whereas, in mine, all the sweetness and the power
of her nature are aroused, though with a certain irritation. If I
persist, she must yield to the slow moral mesmerism of my passion,
and eventually fall. Is this necessarily evil? Am I of set purpose
sinning? Is it not possible that even a breach of the moral law
might, under certain conditions, lead us both to a higher religious
place--yes, even to a deeper and intenser consciousness of God?”
And again--“What _is_ sin? Surely it is better than moral stagnation,
which is death. There are certain deflections from duty which, like
the side stroke of a bird’s wing, may waft us higher. In the arms of
this woman, I should surely be nearer God than crawling alone on the
bare path of duty, loving nothing, hoping nothing, becoming nothing.
What is it that Goethe says of the Eternal Feminine which lead us
ever upward and onward? Which was the highest, Faust before he loved
Marguerite, or Faust after he passed out of the shadow of his sin into
the sphere of imperial and daring passion? I believe in God, I love
this woman. Out of that belief, and that love, shall I not become a
living soul?”
Was this the man’s own musing, or rather the very devil whispering
in his ear? From such fragmentary glimpses of his mind as have
been given, we can at least guess the extent of his intellectual
degradation.
As he walked along the country road, his pale countenance became
seraphic; just so may the face of Lucifer have looked when he plumed
his wings for deliberate flight from heaven.
He stepped into a roadside farm and had a glass of milk, which the
good woman of the place handed to him with a sentiment of adoration;
he looked so gentle, so at peace with all living things. His white
hand rested for a moment on the head of her little girl, in gentle
benediction. He had never felt more tenderly disposed to all creation
than at that moment, when he was prepared to dip a pen into his
own hearts blood, and sign the little promissory note which
Mephistopheles carries, always ready, in his pocket. He had hated his
congregation before; now he loved them exceedingly--and all the world.