Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 53

Eleanor--for so I must call her now--stood watching me for a few minutes, and then glided back to the bedside, and sat down again.

"You find the room quiet?"

"Wonderfully quiet. The roar of the city outside is almost soothing, and the noise of every carriage seems to cease suddenly just as it becomes painfully near."

"We have had straw laid down," she answered, "all along this part of the street."

This last drop of kindness filled the cup to overflowing: a veil fell from before my eyes--it was she who had been my friend, my guardian angel, from the beginning!

"You--you--idiot that I have been! I see it all now. It was you who laid that paper to catch my eye on that first evening at D * * *!--you paid my debt to my cousin!--you visited Mackaye in his last illness!"

She made a sign of a.s.sent.

"You saw from the beginning my danger, my weakness!--you tried to turn me from my frantic and fruitless pa.s.sion!--you tried to save me from the very gulf into which I forced myself!--and I--I have hated you in return--cherished suspicions too ridiculous to confess, only equalled by the absurdity of that other dream!"

"Would that other dream have ever given you peace, even if it had ever become reality?"

She spoke gently, slowly, seriously; waiting between each question for the answer which I dared not give.

"What was it that you adored? a soul or a face? The inward reality or the outward symbol, which is only valuable as a sacrament of the loveliness within?"

"Ay!" thought I, "and was that loveliness within? What was that beauty but a hollow mask?" How barren, borrowed, trivial, every thought and word of hers seemed now, as I looked back upon them, in comparison with the rich luxuriance, the startling originality, of thought, and deed, and sympathy, in her who now sat by me, wan and faded, beautiful no more as men call beauty, but with the spirit of an archangel gazing from those clear, fiery eyes! And as I looked at her, an emotion utterly new to me arose; utter trust, delight, submission, grat.i.tude, awe--if it was love, it was love as of a dog towards his master....

"Ay," I murmured, half unconscious that I spoke aloud, "her I loved, and love no longer; but you, you I worship, and for ever!"

"Worship G.o.d," she answered. "If it shall please you hereafter to call me friend, I shall refuse neither the name nor its duties. But remember always, that whatsoever interest I feel in you, and, indeed, have felt from the first time I saw your poems, I cannot give or accept friendship upon any ground so shallow and changeable as personal preference. The time was when I thought it a mark of superior intellect and refinement to be as exclusive in my friendships as in my theories. Now I have learnt that that is most spiritual and n.o.ble which is also most universal. If we are to call each other friends, it must be for a reason which equally includes the outcast and the profligate, the felon, and the slave."

"What do you mean?" I asked, half disappointed.

"Only for the sake of Him who died for all alike."

Why did she rise and call Crossthwaite from the next room where he was writing? Was it from the womanly tact and delicacy which feared lest my excited feelings might lead me on to some too daring expression, and give me the pain of a rebuff, however gentle; or was it that she wished him, as well as me, to hear the memorable words which followed, to which she seemed to have been all along alluring me, and calling up in my mind, one by one, the very questions to which she had prepared the answers?

"That name!" I answered. "Alas! has it not been in every age the watchword, not of an all-embracing charity, but of self-conceit and bigotry, excommunication and persecution?"

"That is what men have made it; not G.o.d, or He who bears it, the Son of G.o.d. Yes, men have separated from each other, slandered each other, murdered each other in that name, and blasphemed it by that very act. But when did they unite in any name but that? Look all history through--from the early churches, unconscious and infantile ideas of G.o.d's kingdom, as Eden was of the human race, when love alone was law, and none said that aught that he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common--Whose name was the, bond of unity for that brotherhood, such as the earth had never seen--when the Roman lady and the Negro slave partook together at the table of the same bread and wine, and sat together at the feet of the Syrian tent-maker?--'One is our Master, even Christ, who sits at the right hand of G.o.d, and in Him we are all brothers.' Not self-chosen preference for His precepts, but the overwhelming faith in His presence, His rule, His love, bound those rich hearts together. Look onward, too, at the first followers of St. Bennet and St. Francis, at the Cameronians among their Scottish hills, or the little persecuted flock who in a dark and G.o.dless time gathered around Wesley by pit mouths and on Cornish cliffs--Look, too, at the great societies of our own days, which, however imperfectly, still lovingly and earnestly do their measure of G.o.d's work at home and abroad; and say, when was there ever real union, co-operation, philanthropy, equality, brotherhood, among men, save in loyalty to Him--Jesus, who died upon the cross?"

And she bowed her head reverently before that unseen Majesty; and then looked up at us again--Those eyes, now br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of earnest tears, would have melted stonier hearts than ours that day.

"Do you not believe me? Then I must quote against you one of your own prophets--a ruined angel--even as you might have been.

"When Camille Desmoulins, the revolutionary, about to die, as is the fate of such, by the hands of revolutionaries, was asked his age, he answered, they say, that it was the same as that of the 'bon sans-culotte Jesus.'

I do not blame those who shrink from that speech as blasphemous. I, too, have spoken hasty words and hard, and prided myself on breaking the bruised reed, and quenching the smoking flax. Time was when I should have been the loudest in denouncing poor Camille; but I have long since seemed to see in those words the distortion of an almighty truth--a truth that shall shake thrones, and princ.i.p.alities, and powers, and fill the earth with its sound, as with the trump of G.o.d; a prophecy like Balaam's of old--'I shall see Him, but not nigh; I shall behold Him, but not near.'... Take all the heroes, prophets, poets, philosophers--where will you find the true demagogue--the speaker to man simply as man--the friend of publicans and sinners, the stern foe of the scribe and the Pharisee--with whom was no respect of persons--where is he? Socrates and Plato were n.o.ble; Zerdusht and Confutzee, for aught we know, were n.o.bler still; but what were they but the exclusive mystagogues of an enlightened few, like our own Emersons and Strausses, to compare great with small? What gospel have they, or Strauss, or Emerson, for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed? The People's Friend? Where will you find him, but in Jesus of Nazareth?"

"We feel that; I a.s.sure you, we feel that," said Crossthwaite. "There are thousands of us who delight in His moral teaching, as the perfection of human excellence."

"And what gospel is there in a moral teaching? What good news is it to the savage of St. Giles, to the artizan, crushed by the compet.i.tion of others and his own evil habits, to tell him that he can be free--if he can make himself free?--That all men are his equals--if he can rise to their level, or pull them down to his?--All men his brothers--if he can only stop them from devouring him, or making it necessary for him to devour them? Liberty, equality, and brotherhood? Let the history of every nation, of every revolution--let your own sad experience speak--have they been aught as yet but delusive phantoms--angels that turned to fiends the moment you seemed about to clasp them? Remember the tenth of April, and the plots thereof, and answer your own hearts!"

Crossthwaite buried his face in his hands.

"What!" I answered, pa.s.sionately, "will you rob us poor creatures of our only faith, our only hope on earth? Let us be deceived, and deceived again, yet we will believe! We will hope on in spite of hope. We may die, but the idea lives for ever. Liberty, equality, and fraternity must come. We know, we know, that they must come; and woe to those who seek to rob us of our faith!"

"Keep, keep your faith," she cried; "for it is not yours, but G.o.d's, who gave it! But do not seek to realize that idea for yourselves."

"Why, then, in the name of reason and mercy?"

"Because it is realized already for you. You are free; G.o.d has made you free. You are equals--you are brothers; for He is your king who is no respecter of persons. He is your king, who has bought for you the rights of sons of G.o.d. He is your king, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; who reigns, and will reign, till He has put all enemies under His feet. That was Luther's charter,--with that alone he freed half Europe.

That is your charter, and mine; the everlasting ground of our rights, our mights, our duties, of ever-gathering storm for the oppressor, of ever-brightening sunshine for the oppressed. Own no other. Claim your invest.i.ture as free men from none but G.o.d. His will, His love, is a stronger ground, surely, than abstract rights and ethnological opinions. Abstract rights? What ground, what root have they, but the ever-changing opinions of men, born anew and dying anew with each fresh generation?--while the word of G.o.d stands sure--'You are mine, and I am yours, bound to you in an everlasting covenant.'

"Abstract rights? They are sure to end, in practice, only in the tyranny of their father--opinion. In favoured England here, the notions of abstract right among the many are not so incorrect, thanks to three centuries of Protestant civilization; but only because the right notions suit the many at this moment. But in America, even now, the same ideas of abstract right do not interfere with the tyranny of the white man over the black. Why should they? The white man is handsomer, stronger, cunninger, worthier than the black. The black is more like an ape than the white man--he is--the fact is there; and no notions of an abstract right will put that down: nothing but another fact--a mightier, more universal fact--Jesus of Nazareth died for the negro as well as for the white. Looked at apart from Him, each race, each individual of mankind, stands separate and alone, owing no more brotherhood to each other than wolf to wolf, or pike to pike--himself a mightier beast of prey--even as he has proved himself in every age. Looked at as he is, as joined into one family in Christ, his archetype and head, even the most frantic declamations of the French democrat, about the majesty of the people, the divinity of mankind, become rational, reverent, and literal. G.o.d's grace outrivals all man's boasting--'I have said, ye are G.o.ds, and ye are all the children of the Most Highest:'--'children of G.o.d, members of Christ, of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones,'--'kings and priests to G.o.d,'--free inheritors of the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of prudence and courage, of reverence and love, the spirit of Him who has said, 'Behold, the days come, when I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and no one shall teach his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Him, from the least even unto the greatest. Ay, even on the slaves and on the handmaidens in those days will I pour out my spirit, saith the Lord!'"

"And that is really in the Bible?" asked Crossthwaite.

"Ay"--she went on, her figure dilating, and her eyes flashing, like an inspired prophetess--"that is in the Bible! What would you more than that?

That is your charter; the only ground of all charters. You, like all mankind, have had dim inspirations, confused yearnings after your future destiny, and, like all the world from the beginning, you have tried to realize, by self-willed methods of your own, what you can only do by G.o.d's inspiration, by G.o.d's method. Like the builders of Babel in old time, you have said, 'Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top shall reach to heaven'--And G.o.d has confounded you as he did them. By mistrust, division, pa.s.sion, and folly, you are scattered abroad. Even in these last few days, the last dregs of your late plot have exploded miserably and ludicrously--your late companions are in prison, and the name of Chartist is a laughing-stock as well as an abomination."

"Good Heavens! Is this true?" asked I, looking at Crossthwaite for confirmation.

"Too true, dear boy, too true: and if it had not been for these two angels here, I should have been in Newgate now!"

"Yes," she went on. "The Charter seems dead, and liberty further off than ever."

"That seems true enough, indeed," said I, bitterly.

"Yes. But it is because Liberty is G.o.d's beloved child, that He will not have her purity sullied by the touch of the profane. Because He loves the people, He will allow none but Himself to lead the people. Because He loves the people, He will teach the people by afflictions. And even now, while all this madness has been destroying itself, He has been hiding you in His secret place from the strife of tongues, that you may have to look for a state founded on better things than acts of parliament, social contracts, and abstract rights--a city whose foundations are in the eternal promises, whose builder and maker is G.o.d."

She paused.--"Go on, go on," cried Crossthwaite and I in the same breath.

"That state, that city, Jesus said, was come--was now within us, had we eyes to see. And it is come. Call it the church, the gospel, civilization, freedom, democracy, a.s.sociation, what you will--I shall call it by the name by which my Master spoke of it--the name which includes all these, and more than these--the kingdom of G.o.d. 'Without observation,' as he promised, secretly, but mightily, it has been growing, spreading, since that first Whitsuntide; civilizing, humanizing, uniting this distracted earth. Men have fancied they found it in this system or in that, and in them only.

They have cursed it in its own name, when they found it too wide for their own narrow notions. They have cried, 'Lo here!' and 'Lo there!' 'To this communion!' or 'To that set of opinions.' But it has gone its way--the way of Him who made all things, and redeemed all things to Himself. In every age it has been a gospel to the poor, In every age it has, sooner or later, claimed the steps of civilization, the discoveries of science, as G.o.d's inspirations, not man's inventions. In every age, it has taught men to do that by G.o.d which they had failed in doing without Him. It is now ready, if we may judge by the signs of the times, once again to penetrate, to convert, to reorganize, the political and social life of England, perhaps of the world; to vindicate democracy as the will and gift of G.o.d. Take it for the ground of your rights. If, henceforth, you claim political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, claim it not as mere men, who may be villains, savages, animals, slaves of their own prejudices and pa.s.sions; but as members of Christ, children of G.o.d, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore bound to realize it on earth. All other rights are mere mights--mere selfish demands to become tyrants in your turn. If you wish to justify your Charter, do it on that ground. Claim your share in national life, only because the nation is a spiritual body, whose king is the Son of G.o.d; whose work, whose national character and powers, are allotted to it by the Spirit of Christ. Claim universal suffrage, only on the ground of the universal redemption of mankind--the universal priesthood of Christians. That argument will conquer, when all have failed; for G.o.d will make it conquer.

Claim the disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of every man, rich or poor, who breaks the laws of G.o.d and man, not merely because he is an obstacle to you, but because he is a traitor to your common King in heaven, and to the spiritual kingdom of which he is a citizen. Denounce the effete idol of property-qualification, not because it happens to strengthen cla.s.s interests against you, but because, as your mystic dream reminded you, and, therefore, as you knew long ago, there is no real rank, no real power, but worth; and worth consists not in property, but in the grace of G.o.d. Claim, if you will, annual parliaments, as a means of enforcing the responsibility of rulers to the Christian community, of which they are to be, not the lords, but the ministers--the servants of all. But claim these, and all else for which you long, not from man, but from G.o.d, the King of men. And therefore, before you attempt to obtain them, make yourselves worthy of them--perhaps by that process you will find some of them have become less needful. At all events, do not ask, do not hope, that He will give them to you before you are able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them from you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not blessings.

Oh! look back, look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the last half century, and judge by your own deeds, your own words; were you fit for those privileges which you so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that those who had them were equally unfit; but thank G.o.d, if the case be indeed so, that your incapacity was not added to theirs, to make confusion worse confounded! Learn a new lesson. Believe at last that you are in Christ, and become new creatures. With those miserable, awful farce tragedies of April and June, let old things pa.s.s away, and all things become new. Believe that your kingdom is not of this world, but of One whose servants must not fight. He that believeth, as the prophet says, will not make haste. Beloved suffering brothers! are not your times in the hand of One who loved you to the death, who conquered, as you must do, not by wrath, but by martyrdom?

Try no more to meet Mammon with his own weapons, but commit your cause to Him who judges righteously, who is even now coming out of His place to judge the earth, and to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that the man of the world may be no more exalted against them--the poor man of Nazareth, crucified for you!"

She ceased, and there was silence for a few moments, as if angels were waiting, hushed, to carry our repentance to the throne of Him we had forgotten.

Crossthwaite had kept his face fast buried in his hands; now he looked up with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes--

"I see it--I see it all now. Oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d! what infidels we have been!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

MIRACLES AND SCIENCE.

Sunrise, they say, often at first draws up and deepens the very mists which it is about to scatter: and even so, as the excitement of my first conviction cooled, dark doubts arose to dim the new-born light of hope and trust within me. The question of miracles had been ever since I had read Strauss my greatest stumbling-block--perhaps not unwillingly, for my doubts pampered my sense of intellectual acuteness and scientific knowledge; and "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." But now that they interfered with n.o.bler, more important, more immediately practical ideas, I longed to have them removed--I longed even to swallow them down on trust--to take the miracles "into the bargain" as it were, for the sake of that mighty gospel of deliverance for the people which accompanied them. Mean subterfuge! which would not, could not, satisfy me. The thing was too precious, too all-important, to take one t.i.ttle of it on trust. I could not bear the consciousness of one hollow spot--the nether fires of doubt glaring through, even at one little crevice. I took my doubts to Lady Ellerton--Eleanor, as I must now call her, for she never allowed herself to be addressed by her t.i.tle--and she referred me to her uncle--