Wilfrid Cumbermede

CHAPTER XLI. A WAKING

I suppose I awoke tossing in my misery, for my hand fell upon something cold. I started up and tried to see. The light of a clear morning of late Autumn had stolen into the room while I slept, and glimmered on something that lay upon the bed. It was some time before I could believe that my troubled eyes were not the sport of one of those odd illusions that come of mingled sleep and waking. But by the golden hilt and rusted blade I was at length convinced, although the scabbard was gone, that I saw my own sword. It lay by my left side, with the hilt towards my hand. But the moment I turned a little to take it in my right hand, I forgot all about it in a far more bewildering discovery, which fixed me staring half in terror, half in amazement, so that again for a moment I disbelieved in my waking condition. On the other pillow lay the face of a lovely girl. I felt as if I had seen it before—whether only in the just vanished dream, I could not tell. But the maiden of my dream never comes back to me with any other features or with any other expression than those which I now beheld. There was an ineffable mingling of love and sorrow on the sweet countenance. The girl was dead asleep, but evidently dreaming, for tears were flowing from under her closed lids. For a time I was unable even to think; when thought returned, I was afraid to move. All at once the face of Mary Osborne dawned out of the vision before me—how different, how glorified from its waking condition! It was perfectly lovely—transfigured by the unchecked outflow of feeling. The recognition brought me to my senses at once. I did not waste a single thought in speculating how the mistake had occurred, for there was not a moment to be lost. I must be wise to shield her, and chiefly, as much as might be, from the miserable confusion which her own discovery of the untoward fact would occasion her. At first I thought it would be best to lie perfectly still, in order that she, at length awaking and discovering where she was, but finding me fast asleep, might escape with the conviction that the whole occurrence remained her own secret. I made the attempt, but I need hardly say that never before or since have I found myself in a situation half so perplexing; and in a few moments I was seized with such a trembling that I was compelled to turn my thoughts to the only other possible plan. As I reflected, the absolute necessity of attempting it became more and more apparent. In the first place, when she woke and saw me, she might scream and be heard; in the next, she might be seen as she left the room, or, unable to find her way, might be involved in great consequent embarrassment. But, if I could gather all my belongings, and, without awaking her, escape by the stair to the roof, she would be left to suppose that she had but mistaken her chamber, and would, I hoped, remain in ignorance that she had not passed the night in it alone. I dared one more peep into her face. The light and the loveliness of her dream had passed; I should not now have had to look twice to know that it was Mary Osborne; but never more could I see in hers a common face. She was still fast asleep, and, stealthy as a beast of prey, I began to make my escape. At the first movement, however, my perplexity was redoubled, for again my hand fell on the sword which I had forgotten, and question after question as to how they were together, and together there, darted through my bewildered brain. Could a third person have come and laid the sword between us? I had no time, however, to answer one of my own questions. Hardly knowing which was better, or if there was a better, I concluded to take the weapon with me, moved in part by the fact that I had found it where I had lost it, but influenced far more by its association with this night of marvel.

Having gathered my garments together, and twice glanced around me—once to see that I left nothing behind, and once to take farewell of the peaceful face, which had never moved, I opened the little door in the wall, and made my strange retreat up the stair. My heart was beating so violently from the fear of her waking, that, when the door was drawn to behind me, I had to stand for what seemed minutes before I was able to ascend the steep stair, and step from its darkness into the clear frosty shine of the Autumn sun, brilliant upon the leads wet with the torrents of the preceding night.

I found a sheltered spot by the chimney-stack, where no one could see me from below, and proceeded to dress myself—assisted in my very imperfect toilet by the welcome discovery of a pool of rain in a depression of the lead-covered roof. But alas, before I had finished, I found that I had brought only one of my shoes away with me! This settled the question I was at the moment debating—whether, namely, it would be better to go home, or to find some way of reaching the library. I put my remaining shoe in my pocket, and set out to discover a descent. It would have been easy to get down into the little gallery, but it communicated on both sides immediately with bed-rooms, which for anything I knew might be occupied; and besides I was unwilling to enter the house for fear of encountering some of the domestics. But I knew more of the place now, and had often speculated concerning the odd position and construction of an outside stair in the first court, close to the chapel, with its landing at the door of a room en suite with those of Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton. It was for a man an easy drop to this landing. Quiet as a cat, I crept over the roof, let myself down, crossed the court swiftly, drew back the bolt which alone secured the wicket, and, with no greater mishap than the unavoidable wetting of shoeless feet, was soon safe in my own room, exchanging my evening for a morning dress. When I looked at my watch, I found it nearly seven o’clock.

I was so excited and bewildered by the adventures I had gone through, that, from very commonness, all the things about me looked alien and strange. I had no feeling of relation to the world of ordinary life. The first thing I did was to hang my sword in its own old place, and the next to take down the bit of tapestry from the opposite wall, which I proceeded to examine in the light of my recollection of that round the denuded door. Room was left for not even a single doubt as to the relation between this and that: they had been wrought in one and the same piece by fair fingers of some long vanished time.

CHAPTER XLII. A TALK ABOUT SUICIDE

In the same excited mood, but repressing it with all the energy I could gather, I returned to the Hall and made my way to the library. There Charley soon joined me.

‘Why didn’t you come to breakfast?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been home, and changed my clothes,’ I answered. ‘I couldn’t well appear in a tail-coat. It’s bad enough to have to wear such an ugly thing by candle-light.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked again, after an interval of silence, which I judge from the question must have been rather a long one.

‘What is the matter with me, Charley?’

‘I can’t tell. You don’t seem yourself somehow.’

I do not know what answer I gave him, but I knew myself what was the matter with me well enough. The form and face of the maiden of my dream, the Athanasia lost that she might be found, blending with the face and form of Mary Osborne, filled my imagination so that I could think of nothing else. Gladly would I have been rid of even Charley’s company, that, while my hands were busy with the books, my heart might brood at will now upon the lovely dream, now upon the lovely vision to which I awoke from it, and which, had it not glided into the forms of the foregone dream, and possessed it with itself, would have banished it altogether. At length I was aware of light steps and sweet voices in the next room, and Mary and Clara presently entered.

How came it that the face of the one had lost the half of its radiance, and the face of the other had gathered all that the former had lost. Mary’s countenance was as still as ever; there was not in it a single ray of light beyond its usual expression; but I had become more capable of reading it, for the coalescence of the face of my dream with her dreaming face had given me its key; and I was now so far from indifferent, that I was afraid to look for fear of betraying the attraction I now found it exercise over me. Seldom surely has a man been so long familiar with and careless of any countenance to find it all at once an object of absorbing interest! The very fact of its want of revelation added immensely to its power over me now—for was I not in its secret? Did I not know what a lovely soul hid behind that unexpressive countenance? Did I not know that it was as the veil of the holy of holies, at times reflecting only the light of the seven golden lamps in the holy place; at others almost melted away in the rush of the radiance unspeakable from the hidden and holier side—the region whence come the revelations. To draw through it, if but once, the feeblest glimmer of the light I had but once beheld, seemed an ambition worthy of a life. Knowing her power of reticence, however, and of withdrawing from the outer courts into the penetralia of her sanctuary, guessing also at something of the aspect in which she regarded me, I dared not now make any such attempt. But I resolved to seize what opportunity might offer of convincing her that I was not so far out of sympathy with her as to be unworthy of holding closer converse; and I now began to feel distressed at what had given me little trouble before, namely, that she should suppose me the misleader of her brother, while I knew that, however far I might be from an absolute belief in things which she seemed never to have doubted, I was yet in some measure the means of keeping him from flinging aside the last cords which held him to the faith of his fathers. But I would not lead in any such direction, partly from the fear of hypocrisy, partly from horror at the idea of making capital of what little faith I had. But Charley himself afforded me an opportunity which I could not, whatever my scrupulosity, well avoid.

‘Have you ever looked into that little book, Charley?’ I said, finding in my hands an early edition of the Christian Morals of Sir Thomas Browne.—I wanted to say something, that I might not appear distraught.

‘No,’ he answered, with indifference, as he glanced at the title-page. ‘Is it anything particular?’

‘Everything he writes, however whimsical in parts, is well worth more than mere reading,’ I answered. ‘It is a strangely latinized style, but has its charm notwithstanding.’

He was turning over the leaves as I spoke. Receiving no response, I looked up. He seemed to have come upon something which had attracted him.

‘What have you found?’ I asked.

‘Here’s a chapter on the easiest way of putting a stop to it all,’ he answered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was a medical man—wasn’t he? I’m ashamed to say I know nothing about him.’

‘Yes, certainly he was.’

‘Then he knew what he was about.’

‘As well probably as any man of his profession at the time.’

‘He recommends drowning,’ said Charley, without raising his eyes from the book.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean for suicide.’

‘Nonsense, He was the last man to favour that. You must make a mistake. He was a thoroughly Christian man.’

‘I know nothing about that. Hear this.’

He read the following passages from the beginning of the thirteenth section of the second part.

‘With what shifts and pains we come into the world, we remember not; but ‘tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it. Many have studied to exasperate the ways of death, but fewer hours have been spent to soften that necessity.’—‘Ovid, the old heroes, and the Stoicks, who were so afraid of drowning, as dreading thereby the extinction of their soul, which they conceived to be a fire, stood probably in fear of an easier way of death; wherein the water, entering the possessions of air, makes a temporary suffocation, and kills as it were without a fever. Surely many, who have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not been ingenious in the contrivance thereof.’—‘Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his delivery, not in the point but the pummel of his sword.’

‘Poison. I suppose,’ he said, as he ended the extract.

‘Yes, that’s the story, if you remember,’ I answered; ‘but I don’t see that Sir Thomas is favouring suicide. Not at all. What he writes there is merely a speculation on the comparative ease of different modes of dying. Let me see it.’

I took the book from his hands, and, glancing over the essay, read the closing passage.

‘But to learn to die, is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find some ways to untie or cut the most gordian knots of life, and make men’s miseries as mortal as themselves: whereas evil spirits, as undying substances, are unseparable from their calamities; and, therefore, they everlastingly struggle under their angustias, and, bound up with immortality, can never get out of themselves.’

‘There! I told you so!’ cried Charley. Don’t you see? He is the most cunning arguer—beats Despair in the Fairy Queen hollow!’

By this time, either attracted by the stately flow of Sir Thomas’s speech, or by the tone of our disputation, the two girls had drawn nearer, and were listening.

‘What do you mean, Charley?’ I said, perceiving, however, the hold I had by my further quotation given him.

‘First of all, he tells you the easiest way of dying, and then informs you that it ends all your troubles. He is too cunning to say in so many words that there is no hereafter, but what else can he wish you to understand when he says that in dying we have the advantage over the evil spirits, who cannot by death get rid of their sufferings? I will read this book,’ he added, closing it and putting it in his pocket.

‘I wish you would,’ I said: ‘for although I confess you are logically right in your conclusions, I know Sir Thomas did not mean anything of the sort. He was only misled by his love of antithesis into a hasty and illogical remark. The whole tone of his book is against such a conclusion. Besides, I do not doubt he was thinking only of good people, for whom he believed all suffering over at their death.’

‘But I don’t see, supposing he does believe in immortality, why you should be so anxious about his orthodoxy on the other point. Didn’t Dr Donne, as good a man as any, I presume, argue on the part of the suicide?’

‘I have not read Dr Donne’s essay, but I suspect the obliquity of it has been much exaggerated.’

‘Why should you? I never saw any argument worth the name on the other side. We have plenty of expressions of horror—but those are not argument. Indeed, the mass of the vulgar are so afraid of dying that, apparently in terror lest suicide should prove infectious, they treat in a brutal manner the remains of the man who has only had the courage to free himself from a burden too hard for him to bear. It is all selfishness—nothing else. They love their paltry selves so much that they count it a greater sin to kill oneself than to kill another man—which seems to me absolutely devilish. Therefore, the vox populi, whether it be the vox Dei or not, is not nonsense merely, but absolute wickedness. Why shouldn’t a man kill himself?’

Clara was looking on rather than listening, and her interest seemed that of amusement only. Mary’s eyes were wide-fixed on the face of Charley, evidently tortured to find that to the other enormities of his unbelief was to be added the justification of suicide. His habit of arguing was doubtless well enough known to her to leave room for the mitigating possibility that he might be arguing only for argument’s sake, but what he said could not but be shocking to her upon any supposition.

I was not ready with an answer. Clara was the first to speak.

‘It’s a cowardly thing, anyhow,’ she said.

‘How do you make that out, Miss Clara?’ asked Charley. ‘I’m aware it’s the general opinion, but I don’t see it myself.’

‘It’s surely cowardly to run away in that fashion.’

‘For my part,’ returned Charley, ‘I feel that it requires more courage than I’ve got, and hence it comes, I suppose, that I admire any one who has the pluck.’

‘What vulgar words you use, Mr Charles!’ said Clara.

‘Besides,’ he went on, heedless of her remark, ‘a man may want to escape—not from his duties—he mayn’t know what they are—but from his own weakness and shame.’

‘But, Charley dear,’ said Mary, with a great light in her eyes, and the rest of her face as still as a sunless pond, ‘you don’t think of the sin of it. I know you are only talking, but some things oughtn’t to be talked of lightly.’

‘What makes it a sin? It’s not mentioned in the ten commandments,’ said Charley.

‘Surely it’s against the will of God, Charley dear.’

‘He hasn’t said anything about it, anyhow. And why should I have a thing forced upon me whether I will or not, and then be pulled up for throwing it away when I found it troublesome?’

‘Surely I don’t quite understand you, Charley.’

‘Well, if I must be more explicit—I was never asked whether I chose to be made or not. I never had the conditions laid before me. Here I am, and I can’t help myself—so far, I mean, as that here I am.’

‘But life is a good thing,’ said Mary, evidently struggling with an almost overpowering horror.

‘I don’t know that. My impression is that if I had been asked—’

‘But that couldn’t be, you know.’

‘Then it wasn’t fair. But why couldn’t I be made for a moment or two, long enough to have the thing laid before me, and be asked whether I would accept it or not? My impression is that I would have said—No, thank you; that is, if it was fairly put.’

I hastened to offer a remark, in the hope of softening the pain such flippancy must cause her.

‘And my impression is, Charley,’ I said, ‘that if such had been possible—’

‘Of course,’ he interrupted, ‘the God you believe in could have made me for a minute or two. He can, I suppose, unmake me now when he likes.’

‘Yes; but could he have made you all at once capable of understanding his plans, and your own future? Perhaps that is what he is doing now—making you, by all you are going through, capable of understanding them. Certainly the question could not have been put to you before you were able to comprehend it, and this may be the only way to make you able. Surely a being who could make you had a right to risk the chance, if I may be allowed such an expression, of your being satisfied in the end with what he saw to be good—so good indeed that, if we accept the New Testament story, he would have been willing to go through the same troubles himself for the same end.’

‘No, no; not the same troubles,’ he objected. ‘According to the story to which you refer, Jesus Christ was free from all that alone makes life unendurable—the bad inside you, that will come outside whether you will or not.’

‘I admit your objection. As to the evil coming out, I suspect it is better it should come out, so long as it is there. But the end is not yet; and still I insist the probability is that, if you could know it all now, you would say with submission, if not with hearty concurrence—“Thy will be done.”’

‘I have known people who could say that without knowing it all now, Mr Cumbermede,’ said Mary.

I had often called her by her Christian name, but she had never accepted the familiarity.

‘No doubt,’ said Charley, ‘but I’m not one of those.’

‘If you would but give in,’ said his sister, ‘you would—in the end, I mean—say, “It is well.” I am sure of that.’

‘Yes—perhaps I might—after all the suffering had been forced upon me, and was over at last—when I had been thoroughly exhausted and cowed, that is.’

‘Which wouldn’t satisfy any thinking soul, Charley—much less God,’ I said. ‘But if there be a God at all—’

Mary gave a slight inarticulate cry.

‘Dear Miss Osborne,’ I said, ‘I beg you will not misunderstand me. I cannot be sure about it, as you are—I wish I could—but I am not disputing it in the least; I am only trying to make my argument as strong as I can.—I was going to say to Charley—not to you—that, if there be a God, he would not have compelled us to be, except with the absolute fore-knowledge that, when we knew all about it, we would certainly declare ourselves ready to go through it all again if need should be, in order to attain the known end of his high calling.’

‘But isn’t it very presumptuous to assert anything about God which he has not revealed in his Word?’ said Mary, in a gentle, subdued voice, and looking at me with a sweet doubtfulness in her eyes.

‘I am only insisting on the perfection of God—as far as I can understand perfection,’ I answered.

‘But may not the perfection of God be something very different from anything we can understand?’

‘I will go further,’ I returned. ‘It must be something that we cannot understand—but different from what we can understand by being greater, not by being less.’

‘Mayn’t it be such that we can’t understand it at all?’ she insisted.

‘Then how should we ever worship him? How should we ever rejoice in him? Surely it is because you see God to be good—’

‘Or fancy you do,’ interposed Charley.

‘Or fancy you do,’ I assented, ‘that you love him—not merely because you are told he is good. The Fejee islander might assert his God to be good, but would that make you love him? If you heard that a great power, away somewhere, who had nothing to do with you at all, was very good, would that make you able to love him?’

‘Yes, it would,’ said Mary, decidedly. ‘It is only a good man who would see that God was good.’

‘There you argue entirely on my side. It must be because you supposed his goodness what you call goodness—not something else—that you could love him on testimony. But even then your love could not be of that mighty absorbing kind which alone you would think fit between you and your God. It would not be loving him with all your heart and soul and strength and mind—would it? It would be loving him second-hand—not because of himself, seen and known by yourself.’

‘But Charley does not even love God second-hand,’ she said, with a despairing mournfulness.

‘Perhaps because he is very anxious to love him first-hand, and what you tell him about God does not seem to him to be good. Surely neither man nor woman can love because of what seems not good! I confess one may love in spite of what is bad, but it must be because of other things that are good.’

She was silent.

‘However goodness may change its forms,’ I went on, ‘it must still be goodness; only if we are to adore it, we must see something of what it is—of itself. And the goodness we cannot see, the eternal goodness, high above us as the heavens are above the earth, must still be a goodness that includes, absorbs, elevates, purifies all our goodness, not tramples upon it and calls it wickedness. For if not such, then we have nothing in common with God, and what we call goodness is not of God. He has not even ordered it; or, if he has, he has ordered it only to order the contrary afterwards; and there is, in reality, no real goodness—at least in him; and, if not in him, of whom we spring—where then?—and what becomes of ours, poor as it is?’

My reader will see that I had already thought much about these things; although, I suspect, I have now not only expressed them far better than I could have expressed them in conversation, but with a degree of clearness which must be owing to the further continuance of the habit of reflecting on these and cognate subjects. Deep in my mind, however, something like this lay; and in some manner like this I tried to express it.

Finding that she continued silent, and that Charley did not appear inclined to renew the contest, anxious also to leave no embarrassing silence to choke the channel now open between us—I mean Mary and myself—I returned to the original question.

‘It seems to me, Charley—and it follows from all we have been saying—that the sin of suicide lies just in this, that it is an utter want of faith in God. I confess I do not see any Other ground on which to condemn it—provided, always, that the man has no other dependent upon him, none for whom he ought to live and work.’

‘But does a man owe nothing to himself?’ said Clara.