Frank looked a little astonished.
"Don't be alarmed. I am not going to confess my own sins—only other people's."
"Pray don't, then. I know far more of them already than I can cure. I am worn out with the daily discovery of fresh evil wherever I go."
"Then why not comfort yourself by trying to find a little fresh good wherever you go?"
Frank sighed.
"Perhaps, though, you don't care for any sort of good except your own sort of good. You are fastidious. Well, you have your excuses. But you can understand a poor fellow like me, who has been dragged through the slums and sewers of this wicked world for fifteen years and more, being very well content with any sort of good which I can light on, and not particular as to either quantity or quality."
"Perhaps yours is the healthier state of mind; if you can only find the said good. The vulturine nose, which smells nothing but corruption, is no credit to its possessor. And it would be pleasant, at least, to find good in every man."
"One can't do that in one's study. Mixing with them is the only plan. No doubt they're inconsistent enough. The more you see of them, the less you trust them; and yet the more you see of them, the more you like them. Can you solve that paradox from your books?"
"I will try," said Frank. "I generally have more than one to think over when you go. But, surely, there are men so fallen that they are utterly insensible to good."
"Very likely. There's no saying in this world what may not be. Only I never saw one. I'll tell you a story: you may apply it as you like. When I was on the Texan expedition, and raw to soldiering and camping, we had to sleep in low ground, and suffered terribly from a miasma. Deadly cold, it was, when it came; and the man who once got chilled through with it, just died. I was lying on the bare ground one night, and chilly enough I was—for I was short of clothes, and had lost my buffalo robe—but fell asleep: and on waking the next morning, I found myself covered up in my comrade's blankets, even to his coat, while he was sitting shivering in his shirt sleeves. The cold fog had come down in the night, and the man had stripped himself, and sat all night with death staring him in the face, to save my life. And all the reason he gave was, that if one of us must die, it was better the older should go first, and not a youngster like me. And," said Tom, lowering his voice, "that man was a murderer!"
"A murderer!"
"Yes; a drunken, gambling, cut-throat rowdy as ever grew ripe for the gallows. Now, will you tell me that there was nothing in that man but what the devil put there?"
Frank sat meditating awhile on this strange story, which is moreover a true one; and then looked up with something like tears in his eyes.
"And he did not die?"
"Not he! I saw him die afterwards—shot through the heart, without time even to cry out. But I have not forgotten what he did for me that night; and I'll tell you what, sir! I do not believe that God has forgotten it either."
Frank was silent for a few moments, and then Tom changed the subject.
"I want to know what you can tell me about this Mr. Vavasour."
"Hardly anything, I am sorry to say. I was at his house at tea, two or three times, when I first came; and I had very agreeable evenings, and talks on art and poetry: but I believe I offended him by hinting that he ought to come to church, which he never does, and since then our acquaintance has all but ceased. I suppose you will say, as usual, that I played my cards badly there also."
"Not at all," said Tom, who was disposed to take any one's part against Elsley. "If a clergyman has not a right to tell a man that, I don't see what right he has of any kind. Only," added he, with one of his quaint smiles, "the clergyman, if he compels a man to deal at his store, is bound to furnish him with the articles which he wants."
"Which he needs, or which he likes? For 'wanting' has both these meanings."
"With something that he finds by experience does him good; and so learns to like it, because he knows that he needs it, as my patients do my physic."
"I wish my patients would do so by mine: but, unfortunately, half of them seem to me not to know what their disease is, and the other half do not think they are diseased at all."
"Well," said Tom drily, "perhaps some of them are more right than you fancy. Every man knows his own business best."
"If it were so, they would go about it somewhat differently from what most of the poor creatures do."
"Do you think so? I fancy myself that not one of them does a wrong thing, but what he knows it to be wrong just as well as you do, and is much more ashamed and frightened about it already, than you can ever make him by preaching at him."
"Do you?"
"I do. I judge of others by myself."
"Then would you have a clergyman never warn his people of their sins?"
"If I were he, I'd much sooner take the sins for granted, and say to them, 'Now, my friends, I know you are all, ninety-nine out of the hundred of you, not such bad fellows at bottom, and would all like to be good, if you only knew how; so I'll tell you as far as I know, though I don't know much about the matter. For the truth is, you must have a hundred troubles every day which I never felt in my life; and it must be a very hard thing to keep body and soul together, and to get a little pleasure on this side the grave without making blackguards of yourselves. Therefore I don't pretend to set myself up as a better or a wiser man than you at all: but I do know a thing or two which I fancy may be useful to you. You can but try it. So come up, if you like, any of you, and talk matters over with me as between gentleman and gentleman. I shall keep your secret, of course; and if you find I can't cure your complaint, why, you can but go away and try elsewhere.'"
"And so the doctor's model sermon ends in proposing private confession!"
"Of course. The thing itself which will do them good, without the red rag of an official name, which sends them cackling off like frightened turkeys.—Such private confession as is going on between you and me now. Here am I confessing to you all my unorthodoxy."
"And I my ignorance," said Frank; "for I really believe you know more about the matter than I do."
"Not at all. I may be all wrong. But the fault of your cloth seems to me to be that they apply their medicines without deigning, most of them, to take the least diagnosis of the case. How could I cure a man without first examining what was the matter with him?"
"So say the old casuists, of whom I have read enough—some would say too much; but they do not satisfy me. They deal with actions, and motives, and so forth; but they do not go down to the one root of wrong which is the same in every man."
"You are getting beyond me: but why do you not apply a little of the worldly wisdom which these same casuists taught you?"
"To tell you the truth, I have tried in past years, and found that the medicine would not act."
"Humph! Well, that would depend, again, on the previous diagnosis of human nature being correct; and those old monks, I should say, would know about as much of human nature as so many daws in a steeple. Still, you wouldn't say that what was the matter with old Heale was the matter also with Vavasour?"
"I believe from my heart that it is."
"Humph! Then you know the symptoms of his complaint?"
"I know that he never comes to church."
"Nothing more? I am really speaking in confidence. You surely have heard of disagreements between him and Mrs. Vavasour?"
"Never, I assure you; you shock me."
"I am exceedingly sorry, then, that I said a word about it: but the whole parish talks of it," answered Tom, who was surprised at this fresh proof of the little confidence which Aberalva put in their parson.
"Ah!" said Frank sadly, "I am the last person in the parish to hear any news: but this is very distressing."
"Very, to me. My honour, to tell you the truth, as a medical man, is concerned in the matter; for she is growing quite ill from unhappiness, and I cannot cure her; so I come to you, as soul-doctor, to do what I, the body-doctor, cannot."
Frank sat pondering for a minute, and then—
"You set me on a task for which I am as little fit as any man, by your own showing. What do I know of disagreements between man and wife? And one has a delicacy about offering her comfort. She must bestow her confidence on me before I can use it: while he—"
"While he, as the cause of the disease, is what you ought to treat; and not her unhappiness, which is only a symptom of it."
"Spoken like a wise doctor; but to tell you the truth, Thurnall, I have no influence over Mr. Vavasour, and see no means of getting any. If he recognised my authority, as his parish priest, then I should see my way. Let him be as bad as he might, I should have a fixed point from which to work; but with his free-thinking notions, I know well—one can judge it too easily from his poems—he would look on me as a pedant assuming a spiritual tyranny to which I have no claim."
Tom sat awhile nursing his knee, and then—
"If you saw a man fallen into the water, what do you think would be the shortest way to prove to him that you had authority from heaven to pull him out? Do you give it up? Pulling him out would it not be, without more ado?"
"I should be happy enough to pull poor Vavasour out, if he would let me. But till he believes that I can do it, how can I even begin!"
"How can you expect him to believe, if he has no proof?"
"There are proofs enough in the Bible and elsewhere, if he will but accept them. If he refuses to examine into the credentials, the fault is his, not mine. I really do not wish to be hard; but would not you do the same, if any one refused to employ you, because he chose to deny that you were a legally qualified practitioner?"
"Not so badly put; but what should I do in that case? Go on quietly curing his neighbours, till he began to alter his mind as to my qualifications, and came in to be cured himself. But here's this difference between you and me. I am not bound to attend to any one who don't send for me; while you think that you are, and carry the notion a little too far, for I expect you to kill yourself by it some day."
"Well?" said Frank, with something of that lazy Oxford tone, which is intended to save the speaker the trouble of giving his arguments, when he has already made up his mind, or thinks that he has so done.
"Well, if I thought myself bound to doctor the man, willy-nilly, as you do, I would certainly go to him, and show him, at least, that I understood his complaint. That would be the first step towards his letting me cure him. How else on earth do you fancy that Paul cured those Corinthians about whom I have been reading lately?"
"Are you, too, going to quote Scripture against me? I am glad to find that your studies extend to St. Paul."
"To tell you the truth, your sermon last Sunday puzzled me. I could not comprehend (on your showing) how Paul got that wonderful influence over those pagans which he evidently had; and as how to get influence is a very favourite study of mine, I borrowed the book when I went home, and read for myself; and the matter at last seemed clear enough, on Paul's own showing."
"I don't doubt that: but I suspect your interpretation of the fact and mine would not agree."
"Mine is simple enough. He says that what proved him to be an apostle was his power. He is continually appealing to his power; and what can he mean by that, but that he could do, and had done, what he professed to do? He promised to make those poor heathen rascals of Greeks better, and wiser, and happier men; and, I suppose, he made them so; and then there was no doubt of his commission, or his authority, or anything else. He says himself he did not require any credentials, for they were his credentials, read and known of every one; he had made good men of them out of bad ones, and that was proof enough whose apostle he was."
"Well," said Frank half sadly, "I might say a great deal, of course, on the other side of the question, but I prefer hearing what you laymen think about it all."
"Will you be angry if I tell you honestly?"
"Did you ever find me angry at anything you said?"
"No. I will do you the justice to say that. Well, what we laymen say is this. If the parsons have the authority of which they boast, why don't they use it? If they have commission to make bad people good, they must have power too; for He whose commission they claim, is not likely, I should suppose, to set a man to do what he cannot do."
"And we can do it, if people would but submit to us. It all comes round again to the same point."
"So it does. How to get them to listen. I tried to find out how Paul achieved that first step; and when I looked he told me plainly enough. By becoming all things to all men; by showing these people that he understood them, and knew what was the matter with them. Now do you go and do likewise by Vavasour, and then exercise your authority like a practical man. If you have power to bind and loose, as you told us last Sunday, bind that fellow's ungovernable temper, and loose him from the real slavery which he is in to his miserable conceit and self-indulgence! and then if he does not believe in your 'sacerdotal power,' he is even a greater fool than I take him for."
"Honestly, I will try: God help me!" added Frank in a lower voice; "but as for quarrels between man and wife, as I told you, no one understands them less than I."
"Then marry a wife yourself and quarrel a little with her for experiment, and then you'll know all about it."
Frank laughed in spite of himself.
"Thank you. No man is less likely to try that experiment than I."
"Hum!"
"I have quite enough as a bachelor to distract me from my work, without adding to them those of a wife and family, and those little home lessons in the frailty of human nature, in which you advise me to copy Mr. Vavasour."
"And so," said Tom, "having to doctor human beings, nineteen-twentieths of whom are married; and being aware that three parts of the miseries of human life come either from wanting to be married, or from married cares and troubles—you think that you will improve your chance of doctoring your flock rightly by avoiding carefully the least practical acquaintance with the chief cause of their disease. Philosophical and logical, truly!"
"You seem to have acquired a little knowledge of men and women, my good friend, without encumbering yourself with a wife and children."
"Would you like to go to the same school to which I went?" asked Thurnall, with a look of such grave meaning that Frank's pure spirit shuddered within him. "And I'll tell you this; whenever I see a woman nursing her baby, or a father with his child upon his knees, I say to myself—they know more, at this minute, of human nature, as of the great law of 'C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour, which makes the world go round,' than I am likely to do for many a day. I'll tell you what, sir! These simple natural ties, which are common to us and the dumb animals,—as I live, sir, they are the divinest things I see in the world! I have but one, and that is love to my poor old father; that's all the religion I have as yet: but I tell you, it alone has kept me from being a ruffian and a blackguard. And I'll tell you more," said Tom, warming, "of all diabolical dodges for preventing the parsons from seeing who they are, or what human beings are, or what their work in the world is, or anything else, the neatest is that celibacy of the clergy. I should like to have you with me in Spanish America, or in France either, and see what you thought of it then. How it ever came into mortal brains is to me the puzzle. I've often fancied, when I've watched those priests—and very good fellows, too, some of them are—that there must be a devil after all abroad in the world, as you say; for no human insanity could ever have hit upon so complete and 'cute a device for making parsons do the more harm, the more good they try to do. There, I've preached you a sermon, and made you angry."
"Not in the least: but I must go now and see some sick."
"Well, go, and prosper; only recollect that the said sick are men and women."
And away Tom went, thinking to himself: "Well, that is a noble, straightforward, honest fellow, and will do yet, if he'll only get a wife. He's not one of those asses who have made up their minds by book that the world is square, and won't believe it to be round for any ocular demonstration. He'll find out what shape the world is before long, and behave as such, and act accordingly."
Little did Tom think, as he went home that day in full-blown satisfaction with his sermon to Frank, of the misery he had caused, and was going to cause for many a day, to poor Grace Harvey. It was a rude shock to her to find herself thus suspected; though perhaps it was one which she needed. She had never, since one first trouble ten years ago, known any real grief; and had therefore had all the more time to make a luxury of unreal ones. She was treated by the simple folk around her as all but inspired; and being possessed of real powers as miraculous in her own eyes as those which were imputed to her were in theirs (for what are real spiritual experiences but daily miracles?) she was just in that temper of mind in which she required, as ballast, all her real goodness, lest the moral balance should topple headlong after the intellectual, and the downward course of vanity, excitement, deception, blasphemous assumptions be entered on. Happy for her that she was in Protestant and common-sense England, and in a country parish, where mesmerism and spirit-rapping were unknown. Had she been an American, she might have become one of the most lucrative "mediums;" had she been born in a Romish country, she would have probably become an even more famous personage. There is no reason why she should not have equalled or surpassed, the ecstasies of St. Theresa, or of St. Hildegardis, or any other sweet dreamer of sweet dreams; have founded a new order of charity, have enriched the clergy of a whole province, and have died in seven years, maddened by alternate paroxysms of self-conceit and revulsions of self-abasement. Her own preachers and class-leaders, indeed (so do extremes meet), would not have been sorry to make use of her in somewhat the same manner, however feebly and coarsely: but her innate self-respect and modesty had preserved her from the snares of such clumsy poachers; and more than one good-looking young preacher had fled desperately from a station where, instead of making a tool of Grace Harvey, he could only madden his own foolish heart with love for her.
So Grace had reigned upon her pretty little throne of not unbearable sorrows, till a real and bitter woe came; one which could not be hugged and cherished, like the rest; one which she tried to fling from her, angrily, scornfully, and found to her horror, that, instead of her possessing it, it possessed her, and coiled itself round her heart, and would not be flung away. She—she, of all beings, to be suspected as a thief, and by the very man whose life she had saved! She was willing enough to confess herself—and confessed herself night and morning—a miserable sinner, and her heart a cage of unclean birds, deceitful, and desperately wicked—except in that. The conscious innocence flashed up in pride and scorn, in thoughts, even when she was alone, in words, of which she would not have believed herself capable. With hot brow and dry eyes she paced her little chamber, sat down on the bed, staring into vacancy, sprang up and paced again: but she went into no trance—she dare not. The grief was too great; she felt that, if she once gave way enough to lose her self-possession, she should go mad. And the first, and perhaps not the least good effect of that fiery trial was, that it compelled her to a stern self-restraint, to which her will, weakened by mental luxuriousness, had been long a stranger.
But a fiery trial it was. The first wild (and yet not unnatural) fancy, that heaven had given Thurnall to her, had deepened day by day, by the mere indulgence of it. But she never dreamt of him as her husband: only as a friendless stranger to be helped and comforted. And that he was worthy of help; that some great future was in store for him; that he was a chosen vessel marked out for glory, she had persuaded herself utterly; and the persuasion grew in her day by day, as she heard more and more of his cleverness, honesty, and kindliness, mysterious and, to her, miraculous learning. Therefore she did not make haste; she did not even try to see him, or to speak to him; a civil bow in passing was all that she took or gave; and she was content with that, and waited till the time came, when she was destined to do for him—what she knew not; but it would be done if she were strong enough. So she set herself to learn, and read, and trained her mind and temper more earnestly than ever, and waited in patience for God's good time. And now, behold, a black, unfathomable gulf of doubt and shame had opened between them, perhaps for ever. And a tumult arose in her soul, which cannot be, perhaps ought not to be, analysed in words; but which made her know too well, by her own crimson cheeks, that it was none other than human love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave.
At last long and agonising prayer brought gentler thoughts, and mere physical exhaustion a calmer mood. How wicked she had been; how rebellious! Why not forgive him, as One greater than she had forgiven? It was ungrateful of him; but was he not human? Why should she expect his heart to be better than hers? Besides, he might have excuses for his suspicion. He might be the best judge, being a man, and such a clever one too. Yes; it was God's cross, and she would bear it; she would try and forget him. No; that was impossible; she must hear of him, if not see him, day by day: besides, was not her fate linked up with his? And yet shut out from him by that dark wall of suspicion! It was very bitter. But she could pray for him; she would pray for him now. Yes; it was God's cross, and she would bear it. He would right her if He thought fit; and if not, what matter? Was she not born to sorrow? Should she complain if another drop, and that the bitterest of all, was added to the cup?
And bear her cross she did, about with her, coming in, and going out, for many a weary day. There was no change in her habits or demeanour; she was never listless for a moment in her school; she was more gay and amusing than ever, when she gathered her little ones around her for a story: but still there was the unseen burden, grinding her heart slowly, till she felt as if every footstep was stained with a drop of her heart's blood…. Why not? It would be the sooner over.
Then, at times came that strange woman's pleasure in martyrdom, the secret pride of suffering unjustly: but even that, after a while, she cast away from her, as a snare, and tried to believe that she deserved all her sorrow—deserved it, that is, in the real honest sense of the word; that she had worked it out, and earned it, and brought it on herself—how, she knew not, but longed and strove to know. No; it was no martyrdom. She would not allow herself so silly a cloak of pride; and she went daily to her favourite "Book of Martyrs," to contemplate there the stories of those who really innocent, really suffered for welldoing. And out of that book she began to draw a new and a strange enjoyment, for she soon found that her intense imagination enabled her to re-enact those sad and glorious stories in her own person; to tremble, agonise, and conquer with those heroines who had been for years her highest ideals—and what higher ones could she have? And many a night, after extinguishing the light, and closing her eyes, she would lie motionless for hours on her little bed, not to sleep, but to feel with Perpetua the wild bull's horns, to hang with St. Maura on the cross, or lie with Julitta on the rack, or see with triumphant smile, by Anne Askew's side, the fire flare up around her at the Smithfield stake, or to promise, with dying Dorothea, celestial roses to the mocking youth, whose face too often took the form of Thurnall's; till every nerve quivered responsive to her fancy in agonies of actual pain, which died away at last into heavy slumber, as body and mind alike gave way before the strain. Sweet fool! she knew not—how could she know?—that she might be rearing in herself the seeds of idiotcy and death: but who that applauds a Rachel or a Ristori, for being able to make awhile their souls and their countenances the homes of the darkest passions, can blame her for enacting in herself, and for herself alone, incidents in which the highest and holiest virtue takes shape in perfect tragedy?
But soon another, and a yet darker cause of sorrow arose in her. It was clear, from what Willis had told her, that she had held the lost belt in her hand. The question was, how had she lost it?
Did her mother know anything about it? That question could not but arise in her mind, though, for very reverence she dared not put it to her mother; and with it arose the recollection of her mother's strange silence about the matter. Why had she put away the subject, carelessly, and yet peevishly, when it was mentioned? Yes. Why? Did her mother know anything? Was she—? Grace dared not pronounce the adjective, even in thought; dashed it away as a temptation of the devil; dashed away, too, the thought which had forced itself on her too often already, that her mother was not altogether one who possessed the single eye; that in spite of her deep religious feeling, her assurance of salvation, her fits of bitter self-humiliation and despondency, there was an inclination to scheming and intrigue, ambition, covetousness; that the secrets which she gained as class-leader too, were too often (Grace could but fear) used to her own advantage; that in her dealings her morality was not above the average of little country shopkeepers; that she was apt to have two prices; to keep her books with unnecessary carelessness when the person against whom the account stood was no scholar. Grace had more than once remonstrated in her gentle way; and had been silenced, rather than satisfied, by her mother's commonplaces as to the right of "making those who could pay, pay for those who could not;" that "it was very hard to get a living, and the Lord knew her temptations," and "that God saw no sin in His elect," and "Christ's merits were infinite," and "Christians always had been a backsliding generation;" and all the other commonplaces by which such people drug their consciences to a degree which is utterly incredible, except to those who have seen it with their own eyes, and heard it with their own ears, from childhood.
Once, too, in those very days, some little meanness on her mother's part brought the tears into Grace's eyes, and a gentle rebuke to her lips: but her mother bore the interference less patiently than usual; and answered, not by cant, but by counter-reproach. "Was she the person to accuse a poor widowed mother, struggling to leave her child something to keep her out of the workhouse? A mother that lived for her, would die for her, sell her soul for her, perhaps—"
And there Mrs. Harvey stopped short, turned pale, and burst into such an agony of tears, that Grace, terrified, threw her arms round her neck, and entreated forgiveness, all the more intensely on account of those thoughts within which she dared not reveal. So the storm passed over. But not Grace's sadness. For she could not but see, with her clear pure spiritual eye, that her mother was just in that state in which some fearful and shameful fall is possible, perhaps wholesome. "She would sell her soul for me? What if she have sold it, and stopped short just now, because she had not the heart to tell me that love for me had been the cause? Oh! if she have sinned for my sake! Wretch that I am! Miserable myself, and bringing misery with me! Why was I ever born? Why cannot I die—and the world be rid of me?"
No, she would not believe it. It was a wicked, horrible, temptation of the devil. She would rather believe that she herself had been the thief, tempted during her unconsciousness; that she had hidden it somewhere; that she should recollect, confess, restore all some day. She would carry it to him herself, grovel at his feet, and entreat forgiveness. "He will surely forgive, when he finds that I was not myself when—that it was not altogether my fault—not as if I had been waking—yes, he will forgive!" And then on that thought followed a dream of what might follow, so wild that a moment after she had hid her blushes in her hands, and fled to books to escape from thoughts.