The Altar Fire by Arthur Christopher Benson (golden son ebook txt) 📕

before, he said, I was like a boy learning a lesson with the help of another boy, but that now I was being taught by the Master Himself. That may be so; but the Master has a very scared and dull pupil, alas, who cannot even discern the letters. I care nothing whether God be pleased or displeased; I bear His will, without either pain or resistance. I simply feel as if there had been some vast and overwhelming mistake somewhere; a mistake so incredible and inconceivable that nothing else mattered; as if--I do not speak profanely--God Himself were appalled at what He had done, and dared not smite further one whom He had stunned into silence and apathy.

With Mr. ---- I talk; he talks of simple, quiet things, of old books and thoughts. He tells me, sometimes, when I am too weary to speak, long, beautiful, quiet stories of his younger days, and I listen like a child to his grave voice, only sorry when it comes to an end. So the days pass, and I will not say I have no pleasure in them, because I have won back a sort of odd childish pleasure in small incidents, sights, and sounds. The part of me that can feel seems to have been simply cut gently away, and I live in the hour, just glad when the sun is out, sorry when it is dull and cheerless.

I read the other day one of my old books, and I could not believe it was mine. It seemed like the voice of some one I had once known long ago, in a golden hour. I was amused and surprised at my own quickness and inventiveness, at the confidence with which I interpreted everything so glibly and easily. I cannot interpret any more, and I do not seem to desire to do so. I seem to wait, with a half-amused smile, to see if God can make anything out of the strange tangle of things, as a child peers in within a scaffolding, and sees nothing but a forest of poles, little rising walls of chambers, a crane swinging weights to and fro. What can ever come, he thinks, out of such strange confusion, such fruitless hurry?

Well, I will not write any more; a sense of weariness and futility comes over me. I will go back to my garden to see what I can see, only dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required of me to perform any dull and monotonous task, which would interrupt my idle dreams.


February 8, 1891.


I tried this morning to look through some of the old letters and papers in Maud's cabinet. There were my own letters, carefully tied up with a ribbon; letters from her mother and father; from the children when we were away from them. I began to read, and was seized with a sharp, unreasoning pain, surprised by sudden tears. I seemed dumbly to resent this, and I put them all away again. Why should I disturb myself to no purpose? "There shall be no more sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed away"--so runs the old verse, and I had almost grown to feel like that. Why distrust it? Yet I could not forbear. I got the papers out again, and read late into the night, like one reading an old and beautiful story. Suddenly the curtain lifted, and I saw myself alone, I saw what I had lost. The ineffectual agony I endured, crying out for very loneliness! "That was all mine," said the melting heart, so long frozen and dumb. Grief, in waves and billows, began to beat upon me like breakers on a rock-bound shore. A strange fever of the spirit came on me, scenes and figures out of the years floating fiercely and boldly past me. Was my strength and life sustained for this, that I should just sleep awhile, and wake to fall into the pit of suffering, far deeper than before?

If they could but come back to me for a moment; if I could feel Maud's cheek by mine, or Maggie's arms round my neck; if they could but stand by me smiling, in robes of light! Yet as in a vision I seem to see them leaning from a window, in a blank castle-wall rising from a misty abyss, scanning a little stairway that rises out of the clinging fog, built up through the rocks and ending in a postern gate in the castle-wall. Upon that stairway, one by one emerging from the mist, seem to stagger and climb the figures of men, entering in, one by one, and the three, with smiles and arms interlaced, are watching eagerly. Cannot I climb the stair? Perhaps even now I am close below them, where the mist hangs damp on rock and blade? Cannot I set myself free? No, I could not look them in the face, they would hide their eyes from me, if I came in hurried flight, in passionate cowardice. Not so must I come before them, if indeed they wait for me.

The morning was coming in about the dewy garden, the birds piping faint in thicket and bush, when I stumbled slowly, dizzied and helpless, to my bed. Then a troubled sleep; and ah, the bitter waking; for at last I knew what I had lost.


February 10, 1891.


"All things become plain to us," said the good vicar, pulling on his gloves, "when we once realise that God is love--Perfect Love!" He said good-bye; he trudged off to his tea, a trying visit manfully accomplished, leaving me alone.

He had sate with me, good, kindly man, for twenty minutes. There were tears in his eyes, and I valued that little sign of human fellowship more than all the commonplaces he courageously enunciated. He talked in a soft, low tone, as if I was ill. He made no allusions to mundane things; and I am grateful to him for coming. He had dreaded his call, I am sure, and he had done it from a mixture of affection and duty, both good things.

"Perfect Love, yes--if we could feel that!" I sate musing in my chair.

I saw, as in a picture, a child brought up in a beautiful and stately house by a grave strong man, who lavished at first love and tenderness, ease and beauty, on the child, laughing with him, and making much of him; all of which the child took unconsciously, unthinkingly, knowing nothing different; running to meet his guardian, glad to be with him, sorry to leave him.

Then I saw in my parable that one day, when the child played in the garden, as he had often played before, he noticed a little green alley, with a pleasant arch of foliage, that he had never seen before, leading to some secluded place. The child was dimly aware that there were parts of the garden where he was supposed not to go; he had been told he must not go too far from the house, but it was all vague and indistinct in his mind; he had never been shown anything precisely, or told the limits of his wanderings. So he went in joy, with a sense of a sweet mystery, down the alley, and presently found himself in a still brighter and more beautiful garden, full of fruits growing on the ground and on the trees, which he plucked and ate. There was a building, like a pavilion, at the end, of two storeys; and while he wandered thither with his hands full of fruits, he suddenly saw his guardian watching him, with a look he had never seen on his face before, from the upper windows of the garden-house. His first impulse was to run to him, share his joy with him, and ask him why he had not been shown the delicious place; but the fixed and inscrutable look on his guardian's face, neither smiling nor frowning, the stillness of his attitude, first chilled the child and then dismayed him; he flung the fruits on the ground and shivered, and then ran out of the garden. In the evening, when he was with his guardian, he found him as kind and tender as ever. But his guardian said nothing to him about the inner garden of fruits, and the child feared to ask him.

But the next day he felt as though the fruits had given him a new eagerness, a new strength; he hankered after them long, and at last went down the green path again; this time the summer-house seemed empty. So he ate his fill, and this he did for many days. Then one day, when he was bending down to pluck a golden fruit, that lay gem-like on the ground among green leaves, he heard a sudden step behind him, and turning, saw his guardian draw swiftly near, with a look of anger on his face; the next instant he was struck down, again and again; lifted from the ground at last, as in a passion of rage, and flung down bleeding on the earth; and then, without a word, his guardian left him; at first he lay and moaned, but then he crawled away, and back to the house. And there he found the old nurse that tended him, who greeted him with tears and words of comfort, and cared for his hurts. And he asked her the reason of his hard usage, but she could tell him nothing, only saying that it was the master's will, and that he sometimes did thus, though she thought he was merciful at heart.

The child lay sick many days, his guardian still coming to him and sitting with him, with gentle talk and tender offices, till the scene in the garden was like an evil dream; but as his guardian spoke no word of displeasure to the child, the child still feared to ask him, and only strove to forget. And then at last he was well enough to go out a little; but a few days after--he avoided the inner garden now out of a sort of horror--he was sitting in the sun, near the house, feebly trying to amuse himself with one of his old games--how poor they seemed after the fruits of the inner paradise, how he hankered desirously after the further place, with its hot, sweet, fragrant scents, its rich juices!--when again his guardian came upon him in a sudden wrath, and struck him many times, dashing him down to the ground; and again he crept home, and lay long ill, and again his guardian was unwearyingly kind; but now a sort of horror of the man grew up in the mind of the child, and he feared that his strange anger might break out at any moment in a storm of blows.

And at last he was well again; and had half forgotten, in the constant kindness, and even merriment, of his guardian, the horror of the two assaults. He was out and about again; he still shunned the paradise of fruits, but wearying of the accustomed pleasaunce, he went further and passed into the wood; how cool and mysterious it was among the great branching trees! the forest led him onwards; now the sun lay softly upon it, and a stream bickered through a glade, and now the path lay through thickets, which hid the further woodland from view; and now passing out into a more open space, he had a thrill of joy and excitement; there was a herd of strange living creatures grazing there, great deer with branching horns; they moved slowly forwards, cropping the grass, and the child was lost in wonder at the sight. Presently one of them stopped feeding, began to