What Necessity Knows by Lily Dougall (web ebook reader TXT) 📕

he had seen many from his own little cure of souls who were shaken by the madman's fervour as _he_ had never been able to move them by precept or example. There he, too, had seen, with sight borrowed from the eyes of the enthusiast, the enthusiast's Lord, seen Him the more readily because there had been times in his life when he had not needed another to show him the loveliness that exceeds all other loveliness. He was versed in the chronicle of the days when the power of God wrought wonders by devoted men, and he asked himself with whom this power had been working here of late--with him, the priest, or with this wandering fool, out of whose lips it would seem that praise was ordained. He looked back to divers hours when he had given himself wholly to the love of God, and to the long reaches of time between them, in which he had not cast away the muck-rake, but had trailed it after him with one hand as he walked forward, looking to the angel and the crown. He seemed to see St. Peter pointing to the life all which he had professed to devote while he had kept back part; and St. Peter said, "Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God."

There was for him the choice that is given to every man in this sort of pain, the choice between dulling his mind to the pain, letting it pass from him as he holds on his way (and God knows it passes easily), or clasping it as the higher good. Perhaps this man would not have been wiser than many other men in his choice had he not looked at the gathering of his muck-rake and in that found no comfort. Since a woman had called this prosperity paltry, it seemed less substantial in his own eyes; but, paltry or worthy, he believed that it was in the power of his younger brother to reverse that prosperity, and he felt neither brave enough to face this misfortune nor bad enough to tamper with that brother's crude ideals for the sake of his own gain. From the length of his own experience, from the present weariness of his soul, he looked upon Alec more than ever as a boy to be shielded from the shock of further disillusion with regard to himself. He had not had Alec's weal a thorn in his conscience for ten months without coming to feel that, if merely for the sake of his own comfort, he would not shoulder that burden again. Now this conception he had of Alec as a weaker man, and of his ideals as crude and yet needing tender dealing, was possibly a mistaken one, yet, so curious is our life that, true or false, it was the thing that at this juncture made him spurn all thought of setting aside the reproach of his roused sense of loss as morbid or unreal. He looked to his early realisation of the all-attractiveness of the love of God, not with the rational view that such phase of religion is ordained to fade in the heat of life, but with passionate regret that by his own fault he had turned away from the glory of life. He thought of the foolish dreamer who had been struck dead in the full impulse of adoration and longing love, and he would have given reason and life itself to have such gate of death open now for him.

His spirit did not rest, but tossed constantly, as a fever patient upon his bed, for rest requires more than the softest of beds; and as even those whose bodies are stretched on pillows of down may be too weak to find bodily rest, so the soul that lies, as do all self-sick souls, in the everlasting arms, too often lacks health to feel the up-bearing.

A clever sailor, whose ship is sinking because of too much freight does not think long before he throws the treasure overboard; a wise man in pain makes quick vows of abstinence from the cause of pain. In Trenholme there was little vestige of that low type of will which we see in lobsters and in many wilful men, who go on clutching whatever they have clutched, whether it be useful or useless, till the claw is cut off. He had not realised that he had fallen from the height of his endeavours before he began to look about eagerly for something that he might sacrifice. But here he was met by the difficulty that proves that in the higher stages of human development honest effort after righteousness is not one whit easier than are man's first simple efforts to put down the brute in him. Trenholme could find in himself no offending member that was not so full of good works toward others that he could hardly destroy it without defrauding them. He had sought nothing for himself that was not a legitimate object of desire. The world, the flesh, and the devil had polished themselves to match all that was best in him, and blended impartially with it, so that in very truth he did not know where to condemn. A brave man, when examined, will confess all that he honourably may, but not more; so Trenholme confessed himself to be worldly, but against that he was forced to confess that a true son of the world would have been insensible to the torture he was groaning under. He upbraided himself for not knowing right from wrong, and yet he knew that it was only a very superficial mind that imagined that without direct inspiration from Heaven it could detect its sin and error truly. Crying for such inspiration, his cry seemed unanswered.

Ah, well, each man must parley as best he may with the Angel who withstands him in the narrow place where there is no way to turn to the right hand or the left. We desire at such times to be shown some such clear portraiture of the ideal to which we must conform in our place and circumstance as shall cause us no more to mistake good for evil. Possibly, if such image of all we ourselves ought to be were given to our gaze, we could not look in its eyes and live. Possibly, if Heaven granted us the knowledge of all thoughts and deeds that would make up the ideal self, we should go on our way producing vile imitations of it and neglecting Heaven, as they do who seek only to imitate the Divine Example. At any rate, such perfection of self-ideal is not given us, except with the years that make up the sum of life.


CHAPTER VI.

Robert Trenholme had a lively wit, and it stood him many times in lieu of chapel walls for within it he could retire at all times and be hidden. Of all that he experienced within his heart at this time not any part was visible to the brother who was his idle visitor; or perhaps only the least part, and that not until the moot point between them was touched upon.

There came a day, two days after the old preacher had been buried, when the elder brother called out:

"Come, my lad, I want to speak to you."

Robert was lying on a long couch improvised for him in the corner of his study. The time was that warm hour of the afternoon when the birds are quiet and even the flies buzz drowsily. Bees in the piebald petunias that grew straggling and sweet above the sill of the open window, dozed long in each sticky chalice. Alec was taking off his boots in the lobby, and in reply to the condescending invitation he muttered some graceless words concerning his grandmother, but he came into the room and sat with his elbows on the table. He had an idea of what might be said, and felt the awkwardness of it.

"That fellow Bates," he observed, "is devouring your book-case indiscriminately. He seems to be in the sort of fever that needs distraction every moment. I asked him what he'd have to read, and he said the next five on the shelf--he's read the first ten."

"It's not of Bates I wish to speak; I want to know what you've decided to do. Are you going to stick to your father's trade, or take to some other?"

Robert held one arm above his head, with his fingers through the leaves of the book he had been reading. He tried to speak in a casual way, but they both had a disagreeable consciousness that the occasion was momentous. Alec's mind assumed the cautious attitude of a schoolboy whispering "_Cave_". He supposed that the other hoped now to achieve by gentleness what he had been unable to achieve by storm.

"Of course," he answered, "I won't set up here if you'd rather be quit of me. I'll go as far as British Columbia, if that's necessary to make you comfortable."

"By that I understand that in these ten months your mind has not altered."

"No; but as I say, I won't bother you."

"Have you reconsidered the question, or have you stuck to it because you said you would?"

"I have reconsidered it."

"You feel quite satisfied that, as far as you are concerned, this is the right thing to do?"

"Yes."

"Well then, as far as I am concerned, I don't want to drive you to the other side of the continent. You can take advantage of the opening here if you want to."

Alec looked down at the things on the table. He felt the embarrassment of detecting his brother in some private religious exercise; nothing, he thought, but an excess of self-denial could have brought this about; yet he was gratified.

"Look here! You'd better not say that--I might take you at your word."

"Consider that settled. You set up shop, and I will take a fraternal interest in the number of animals you kill, and always tell you with conscientious care when the beef you supply to me is tough. And in the meantime, tell me, like a good fellow, why you stick to this thing. When you flung from me last time you gave me no explanation of what you thought."

"At least," cried Alec, wrath rising at the memory of that quarrel, "I gave you a fair hearing, and knew what you thought."

When anger began he looked his brother full in the face, thus noticing how thin that face was, too thin for a man in the prime of life, and the eye was too bright. As the brief feeling of annoyance subsided, the habitual charm of the elder man's smile made him continue to look at him.

"And yet," continued Robert, "two wrongs do not make a right. That I am a snob does not excuse you for taking up any line of life short of the noblest within your reach."

The other again warned himself against hidden danger. "You're such a confoundedly fascinating fellow, with your smiles and your suppressed religion, I don't wonder the girls run after you. But you are a Jesuit--I never called you a snob--you're giving yourself names to fetch me round to see things your way."

It was an outburst, half of admiring affection, half of angry obstinacy, and the elder brother received it without resentment, albeit a little absently. He was thinking that if Alec held out, "the girls" would not run after him much more. But then he thought that there was one among them who would not think less, who perhaps might think