Yeast: a Problem Part 24

'And you will take charge of a letter? Perhaps, too, you could see him yourself; and tell him--you see I trust you with everything-- that my fortune, his own fortune, depends on his being here to- morrow morning. He must start to-night, sir--to-night, tell him, if there were twenty Miss Lavingtons in Whitford--or he is a ruined man!'

The letter was written, and put into the vicar's hands, with a hundred entreaties from the terrified banker. A cab was called, and the clergyman rattled off to the railway terminus.

'Well,' said he to himself, 'G.o.d has indeed blessed my errand; giving, as always, "exceeding abundantly more than we are able to ask or think!" For some weeks, at least, this poor lamb is safe from the destroyer's clutches. I must improve to the utmost those few precious days in strengthening her in her holy purpose. But, after all, he will return, daring and cunning as ever; and then will not the fascination recommence?'

And, as he mused, a little fiend pa.s.sed by, and whispered, 'Unless he comes up to-night, he is a ruined man.'

It was Friday, and the vicar had thought it a fit preparation for so important an errand to taste no food that day. Weakness and hunger, joined to the roar and bustle of London, had made him excited, nervous, unable to control his thoughts, or fight against a stupifying headache; and his self-weakened will punished him, by yielding him up an easy prey to his own fancies.

'Ay,' he thought, 'if he were ruined, after all, it would be well for G.o.d's cause. The Lavingtons, at least, would find no temptation in his wealth: and Argemone--she is too proud, too luxurious, to marry a beggar. She might embrace a holy poverty for the sake of her own soul; but for the gratification of an earthly pa.s.sion, never! Base and carnal delights would never tempt her so far.'

Alas, poor pedant! Among all that thy books taught thee, they did not open to thee much of the depths of that human heart which thy dogmas taught thee to despise as diabolic.

Again the little fiend whispered,--

'Unless he comes up to-night, he is a ruined man.'

'And what if he is?' thought the vicar. 'Riches are a curse; and poverty a blessing. Is it not his wealth which is ruining his soul?

Idleness and fulness of bread have made him what he is--a luxurious and self-willed dreamer, battening on his own fancies. Were it not rather a boon to him to take from him the root of all evil?'

Most true, vicar. And yet the devil was at that moment transforming himself into an angel of light for thee.

But the vicar was yet honest. If he had thought that by cutting off his right hand he could have saved Lancelot's soul (by canonical methods, of course; for who would wish to save souls in any other?), he would have done it without hesitation.

Again the little fiend whispered,--

'Unless he comes up to-night he is a ruined man.'

A terrible sensation seized him.--Why should he give the letter to- night?

'You promised,' whispered the inner voice.

'No, I did not promise exactly, in so many words; that is, I only said I would be at home to-night, if G.o.d pleased. And what if G.o.d should not please?--I promised for his good. What if, on second thoughts, it should be better for him not to keep my promise?' A moment afterwards, he tossed the temptation from him indignantly: but back it came. At every gaudy shop, at every smoke-grimed manufactory, at the face of every anxious victim of Mammon, of every st.u.r.dy, cheerful artisan, the fiend winked and pointed, crying, 'And what if he be ruined? Look at the thousands who have, and are miserable--at the millions who have not, and are no sadder than their own tyrants.'

Again and again he thrust the thought from him, but more and more weakly. His whole frame shook; the perspiration stood on his forehead. As he took his railway ticket, his look was so haggard and painful that the clerk asked him whether he were ill. The train was just starting; he threw himself into a carriage--he would have locked himself in if he could; and felt an inexpressible relief when he found himself rushing past houses and market-gardens, whirled onward, whether he would or not, in the right path--homeward.

But was it the right path? for again the temptation flitted past him. He threw himself back, and tried to ask counsel of One above; but there was no answer, nor any that regarded. His heart was silent, and dark as midnight fog. Why should there have been an answer? He had not listened to the voice within. Did he wish for a miracle to show him his duty?

'Not that I care for detection,' he said to himself. 'What is shame to me? Is it not a glory to be evil-spoken of in the cause of G.o.d?

How can the world appreciate the motives of those who are not of the world?--the divine wisdom of the serpent--at once the saint's peculiar weapon, and a part of his peculiar cross, when men call him a deceiver, because they confound, forsooth, his spiritual subtlety with their earthly cunning. Have I not been called "liar,"

"hypocrite," "Jesuit," often enough already, to harden me towards bearing that name once again?'

That led him into sad thoughts of his last few years' career,--of the friends and pupils whose secession to Rome had been attributed to his hypocrisy, his 'disguised Romanism;' and then the remembrance of poor Luke Smith flashed across him for the first time since he left the bank.

'I must see him,' he said to himself; 'I must argue with him face to face. Who knows but that it may be given even to my unworthiness to s.n.a.t.c.h him from this accursed slough?'

And then he remembered that his way home lay through the city in which the new convert's parish was--that the coach stopped there to change horses; and again the temptation leapt up again, stronger than ever, under the garb of an imperative call of duty.

He made no determination for or against it. He was too weak in body and mind to resist; and in a half sleep, broken with an aching, terrified sense of something wanting which he could not find, he was swept down the line, got on the coach, and mechanically, almost without knowing it, found himself set down at the city of A--, and the coach rattling away down the street.

He sprang from his stupor, and called madly after it--ran a few steps--

'You might as well try to catch the clouds, sir,' said the ostler.

'Gemmen should make up their minds afore they gets down.'

Alas! so thought the vicar. But it was too late; and, with a heavy heart, he asked the way to the late curate's house.

Thither he went. Mr. Luke Smith was just at dinner, but the vicar was, nevertheless, shown into the bachelor's little dining-room.

But what was his disgust and disappointment at finding his late pupil tete-a-tete over a comfortable fish-dinner, opposite a burly, vulgar, cunning-eyed man, with a narrow rim of muslin turned down over his stiff cravat, of whose profession there could be no doubt.

'My dearest sir,' said the new convert, springing up with an air of extreme empress.e.m.e.nt, 'what an unexpected pleasure! Allow me to introduce you to my excellent friend, Padre Bugiardo!'

The padre rose, bowed obsequiously, 'was overwhelmed with delight at being at last introduced to one of whom he had heard so much,' sat down again, and poured himself out a b.u.mper of sherry; while the vicar commenced making the best of a bad matter by joining in the now necessary business of eating.

He had not a word to say for himself. Poor Luke was particularly jovial and flippant, and startlingly unlike his former self. The padre went on staring out of the window, and talking in a loud forced tone about the astonishing miracles of the 'Ecstatica' and 'Addolorata;' and the poor vicar, finding the purpose for which he had sacrificed his own word of honour utterly frustrated by the priest's presence, sat silent and crestfallen the whole evening.

The priest had no intention of stirring. The late father-confessor tried to outstay his new rival, but in vain; the padre deliberately announced his intention of taking a bed, and the vicar, with a heavy heart, rose to go to his inn.

As he went out at the door, he caught an opportunity of saying one word to the convert.

'My poor Luke! and are you happy? Tell me honestly, in G.o.d's sight tell me!'

'Happier than ever I was in my life! No more self-torture, physical or mental, now. These good priests thoroughly understand poor human nature, I can a.s.sure you.'

The vicar sighed, for the speech was evidently meant as a gentle rebuke to himself. But the young man ran on, half laughing,--

'You know how you and the rest used to tell us what a sad thing it was that we were all cursed with consciences,--what a fearful miserable burden moral responsibility was; but that we must submit to it as an inevitable evil. Now that burden is gone, thank G.o.d.

We of the True Church have some one to keep our consciences for us.

The padre settles all about what is right or wrong, and we slip on as easily as--'

'A hog or a b.u.t.terfly!' said the vicar, bitterly.

'Exactly,' answered Luke. 'And, on your own showing, are clean gainers of a happy life here, not to mention heaven hereafter. G.o.d bless you! We shall soon see you one of us.'

'Never, so help me G.o.d!' said the vicar; all the more fiercely because he was almost at that moment of the young man's opinion.

The vicar stepped out into the night. The rain, which had given place during the afternoon to a bright sun and clear chilly evening, had returned with double fury. The wind was sweeping and howling down the lonely streets, and lashed the rain into his face, while gray clouds were rushing past the moon like terrified ghosts across the awful void of the black heaven. Above him gaunt poplars groaned and bent, like giants cowering from the wrath of Heaven, yet rooted by grim necessity to their place of torture. The roar and tumult without him harmonised strangely with the discord within. He staggered and strode along the plashy pavement, muttering to himself at intervals,--

'Rest for the soul? peace of mind? I have been promising them all my life to others--have I found them myself? And here is this poor boy saying that he has gained them--in the very barbarian superst.i.tion which I have been anathematising to him! What is true, at this rate? What is false? Is anything right or wrong? except in as far as men feel it to be right or wrong. Else whence does this poor fellow's peace come, or the peace of many a convert more? They have all, one by one, told me the same story. And is not a religion to be known by its fruits? Are they not right in going where they can get peace of mind?'

Certainly, vicar. If peace of mind be the summum bonum, and religion is merely the science of self-satisfaction, they are right; and your wisest plan will be to follow them at once, or failing that, to apply to the next best subst.i.tute that can be discovered-- alcohol and opium.

As he went on, talking wildly to himself, he pa.s.sed the Union Workhouse. Opposite the gate, under the lee of a wall, some twenty men, women, and children, were huddled together on the bare ground.

They had been refused lodging in the workhouse, and were going to pa.s.s the night in that situation. As he came up to them, coa.r.s.e jests, and s.n.a.t.c.hes of low drinking-songs, ghastly as the laughter of lost spirits in the pit, mingled with the feeble wailings of some child of shame. The vicar recollected how he had seen the same sight at the door of Kensington Workhouse, walking home one night in company with Luke Smith; and how, too, he had commented to him on that fearful sign of the times, and had somewhat unfairly drawn a contrast between the n.i.g.g.ard cruelty of 'popular Protestantism,' and the fancied 'liberality of the middle age.' What wonder if his pupil had taken him at his word?

Delighted to escape from his own thoughts by anything like action, he pulled out his purse to give an alms. There was no silver in it, but only some fifteen or twenty sovereigns, which he that day received as payment for some bitter reviews in a leading religious periodical. Everything that night seemed to shame and confound him more. As he touched the money, there sprang up in his mind in an instant the thought of the articles which had procured it; by one of those terrible, searching inspirations, in which the light which lighteth every man awakes as a lightning-flash of judgment, he saw them, and his own heart, for one moment, as they were;--their blind prejudice; their reckless imputations of motives; their wilful concealment of any palliating clauses; their party nicknames, given without a shudder at the terrible accusations which they conveyed.

And then the indignation, the shame, the reciprocal bitterness which those articles would excite, tearing still wider the bleeding wounds of that Church which they professed to defend! And then, in this case, too, the thought rushed across him, 'What if I should have been wrong and my adversary right? What if I have made the heart of the righteous sad whom G.o.d has not made sad? I! to have been dealing out Heaven's thunders, as if I were infallible! I! who am certain at this moment of no fact in heaven or earth, except my own untruth! G.o.d! who am I that I should judge another?' And the coins seemed to him like the price of blood--he fancied that he felt them red-hot to his hand, and, in his eagerness to get rid of the accursed thing, he dealt it away fiercely to the astonished group, amid whining and flattery, wrangling and ribaldry; and then, not daring to wait and see the use to which his money would be put, hurried off to the inn, and tried in uneasy slumbers to forget the time, until the mail pa.s.sed through at daybreak on its way to Whitford.