Two Years Ago Volume I Part 33

"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 quant.i.ty 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.suming 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?"