Chapter XV: Via Lucis

O Beauty, old yet ever new!
Eternal Voice and Inward Word,
The Logos of the Greek and Jew,
The old sphere music which the Samian heard.
Truth which the sage and prophet saw,
Long sought without, but found within,
The Law of Love beyond all law,
The life o'erflooding mortal death and sin!

Shine on us with the light which glowed
Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way,
Who saw the Darkness overflowed,
And drowned by tides of everlasting Day.
Shine, light of God!--make broad thy scope
To all who sin and suffer; more
And better than we dare to hope
With Heaven's compassion make our longings poor!
WHITTIER.

It was evening by the time that Donovan's preparations were ended. About seven o'clock he was set down at the Marble Arch, and hastily made his way to Connaught Square. As he stood on the steps waiting till the door was opened, the newly-risen moon, looked full down on him through the trees in the garden; the quiet silvery light was not quite in keeping with his state of mind, for the whole afternoon he had, as it were, been rowing against tide, and quietly as he had made his resolution, and steadily as he had gone through with all which it involved, there was no denying that it was sorely against his inclination.

It was certainly a curious position. Here he was, after years of absence, ringing at the door of his own house, not with a view to taking possession, but merely to see and help the unlawful occupant. He could not even to himself explain or understand the line of conduct he was taking, he did not think it particularly just, or at all politic, and there was no doubt that it was exceedingly painful. He was no saint at present, only an honest man walking in the twilight.

He rang at least three times, and was beginning to feel impatient, when at length the door was opened about an inch and some one within asked what he wanted.

"I want to come in, Phœbe," he replied, recognising the voice.

The maid opened the door wider, astonishment and some perplexity in her look.

"Oh, Mr. Donovan, sir!" she exclaimed. "How little I thought to see you again! But don't come in, sir, please don't, for we've small-pox in the house."

"I know," said Donovan, "and I'm glad to see that you've not deserted your master, Phœbe; I might have known that you at least would be staunch. We must keep you out of the way of infection, though. Have you been with Mr. Farrant at all?"

"I helped to move him, sir, this morning," said Phœbe.

"Oh! he's up at the top, is he? That's well. Don't you come further than the second floor then, I will fetch everything from there."

"You mean to stay?" said Phœbe, surprised, but evidently relieved.

"I have come to nurse him," said Donovan. "You can make me up a bed in" (with an effort) "Miss Dot's room."

In a few minutes more he was striding upstairs two steps at a time, perhaps moving the quicker because even now a voice within him was urging him to turn back, calling him a fool for his pains.

Since their meeting in Wales he had often wondered whether he should again see Ellis Farrant, and if so how they would meet and where. He had rehearsed possible meetings in which he might combine perfect coldness with the forgiveness which Charles Osmond had spoken of. Cold Christliness--a curious idea, certainly!

But when it came to the point he somehow lost sight of himself and his wrongs altogether. A dim yellow light pervaded the room, the sick-nurse came to meet him as he opened the door, he gave her a low-toned explanation, then turned to the bed where Ellis Farrant lay.

After all he was a man--a man tossing to and fro in weary misery, racked with pain, scorched by fever, fearfully ill, and fearfully alone, left at least with only paid attendants. He was delirious, but he at once noticed Donovan's entrance, mistaking him, however, for his father. He started up with outstretched hands. "Ralph! dear old fellow, I knew you'd come," he cried. "Save me from that old hag, it's old Molly the matron; don't you remember her? Stay with me, Ralph; promise! She's a hag, I tell you, a cursed old hag! She's been trying to poison me. Don't leave me with her, don't leave me!"

"I have come to stay with you," said Donovan, touched by the reference to the past, to the school days when his father and Ellis had been the greatest of friends. "I shall stay and nurse you through this; no one shall hurt you."

After the promise had been repeated again and again Ellis grew more quiet.

"There's one other thing," he began, incoherently. "I owe a sovereign to one of the sixth; you'll pay it for me if I die--promise me--the honour of the family, you know--the Farrant honour; his name is--what is his name? I can't remember it! Plague on the fellow! _Donovan!_ That's it. Pay Donovan a sovereign, will you? And there was something else--a paper; what did I do with it? Tell me, for heaven's sake! There were six bits; I could join them. Give them to me, give them, I say; don't burn them, don't!" his voice rose to a scream. "Fire! fire! the bits are flying round me. Save me, Ralph! it's that dreadful Donovan, he's pelting me!"

"I'll settle him," said Donovan, quietly. "Don't be afraid."

"But you can't get the paper--it's the paper he wants, and it's burnt. Oh, God! what shall I do? There he is again! he won't speak--his dreadful eyes are looking at me!"

"No, no, you've made a mistake," said Donovan, re-assuringly; "he doesn't want the paper, he wants you to go to sleep. Come, now, you must try to settle off."

With that he laid his hand on Ellis's burning forehead, and before long had really quieted him; he fell into a sort of doze.

Then Donovan turned to make his peace with the much-maligned nurse, a good-natured old creature in a gorgeous dressing-gown rather painfully suggestive of defunct patients. She was not at all unwilling to share the burden of nursing with the young doctor, and it ended not unnaturally in his taking by far the greatest part. For Ellis remained for several days under the same delusion, and would accept no services from anyone but the supposed cousin and school-fellow.

His ravings were painful enough to listen to, and Donovan saw plainly that his guilt weighed heavily on him. The fatal "paper," with its six fluttering bits, sometimes red-hot, sometimes black and charred, sometimes only freshly torn, recurred constantly in his delirium. The last meeting on Snowdon haunted him too, and Donovan would have given much to be able to blot out the strong impression which his silent wrath had made.

By the time the fever subsided, and the second stage of the illness set in, he had grown so perfectly absorbed in the progress of his patient that all sense of the strangeness of his own position had died away. He had scarcely time to realise that he was in his own house; when in his brief intervals of rest he was set free from the sick-room, and could emerge from the carbolic-steeped barrier which separated the upper part of the house from the lower, he had no leisure to think of possessions or rights; there were orders to be given, telegrams to be sent; every now and then in the early morning, or after dusk when few passengers were stirring, there was the chance of a breath of air in the park.

But to the sick man the discovery was a great surprise and a very sudden shock. The fever left him, the delirium faded away, and he found that the attendant from whom he hoped everything, the only person he could bear to touch him, and the one in whom he had put the blindest faith, was not his old friend and school-fellow at all, but his enemy--Donovan. He tried in vain to think that this too was a delusion. A hundred horrible fears rushed through his mind; had he come to take his revenge? He dared not say a word, but accepted everything sullenly and silently. At length, after many days, Donovan's persevering care and tenderness began to touch his heart. When the secondary fever set in, his ravings were less of the burning paper, and more of "coals of fire,"--coals which, nevertheless, he could ill have dispensed with.

It was the strangest, saddest, most pitiful sick-bed, and in many ways it was more of a strain to Donovan than the stiffest campaign could have been.

Charles Osmond, coming one evening to inquire after the patient, met Donovan on the doorstep.

"You are not afraid of me?" he inquired. "I've just changed."

"Not a bit," said the clergyman, taking his arm. "Let us have a turn together. Do you think I've been a parson all these years without coming nearer small-pox than this? How is your cousin getting on?"

"Exceedingly well up till this morning," replied Donovan; "the disease has about run its course, but I'm afraid a serious complication has just arisen. There's to be a consultation to-morrow."

"You look rather done up; are you taking care of yourself?"

"Oh! I shall do very well; but between ourselves it has been"--he hesitated for words--"about the saddest business I ever saw, from the very first."

"Do you mean his remorse?"

"Yes, the sort of abject misery of it, and his agony of fear. I wish he had some one else with him, some one who was at least sure in his own mind one way or the other. If the poor fellow asks me anything, I can tell him absolutely nothing, but that I do not know--that all is unknown and unknowable."

"I will gladly come to see him," said Charles Osmond, "if you think he would not object; but"--looking attentively at the singularly pure and noble face of his companion--"I fancy, Donovan, you are helping him better than anyone else could; service from you must be to him what no other service could be."

"'Coals of fire,' according to his own account," said Donovan, with a little humorous smile playing about his grave lips. "But he does seem to like it nevertheless."

Their conversation was cut short by a warning clock which reminded Donovan that he must return. Charles Osmond watched him as he walked rapidly up the square, and disappeared into the darkened house, the house in which such a strange bit of life was being lived. How those two cog-wheels would work together the clergyman did not feel sure, but he was sure they would in some way work the good. Ay! and that without his interference! He was human enough to long to have his share in helping this soul, honest enough to recognise that another had been called to the work--that other being an agnostic. As he walked down into the main road a verse from one of his favourite poems rang in his head.

"And nerve his arm, and cheer his heart;
Then _stand aside_, and say 'God speed!'"

"Standing aside!" the hardest of tasks to a warm-hearted man, very conscious of his own power! To a surface observer it would surely have seemed right that Charles Osmond and Donovan should change places.

The sick man not being a surface observer, however, but an actor in this life drama, would strongly have objected to such a change. Very slowly and gradually his sullenness had disappeared, and in his heart a strange, helpless, dependent love was growing up--almost the first love he had ever known. He was quite himself now, and could think clearly; he had already formed his plan, his poor, wretched bit of restitution, and how to carry it out.

When Donovan returned that evening from his walk with Charles Osmond, and took his usual place in the peculiarly oppressive sick-room, he found Ellis much exhausted, his hoarse voice sounded hoarser than usual, his inflamed eyelids were suggestive of voluntary tears, he seemed rather to shrink from Donovan's gaze.

For in his thin, wasted hand he held tightly the paper which contained his brief confession. With infinite difficulty he kept it out of Donovan's sight, with almost childish impatience he waited for the morning, when, before the two doctors, he intended to make his declaration. He was too eager to gain the relief to care very much what they thought of him. Perhaps he half hoped, too, that he could make a sort of compact with Heaven, and by the act of restitution secure a few more years in the world; or perhaps, having lived guilty, he desired to die innocent, or as nearly innocent as might be. Undoubtedly there was a certain amount of selfishness in the action, but there was, too, a very genuine sorrow, and that strange glimmer of love for the man whom he had injured, the enemy who had come to him in his need.

Donovan could not understand why he was so anxious to get rid of him the next day; he humoured him, however, and was not present when the two doctors arrived. After the consultation was over he was too much troubled to think of anything but their verdict. He had known that Ellis's recovery was doubtful, but he was startled and shocked to hear that he could not possibly live more than two or three days. To him, too, was left the task of breaking the news to the patient. Never had he felt more unfitted for his work, never had he so keenly felt his own incompleteness. To make matters worse, Ellis seemed quite suddenly to have taken the greatest dislike to him.

"I know quite well what you have to say," he interrupted, when Donovan tried to lead up to the doctors' opinion. "I know that I'm dying, and that you'll soon be well rid of me. I tell you I won't have you in the room, get out and leave me to the nurse. Isn't it enough that I had you all last night?"

Till now it had been difficult to be absent even for a few hours from the room, for Ellis had always begged not to be left to the nurse, whom he greatly disliked. This sudden change was perplexing and disappointing. Donovan went away discouraged and wretched, and tried in vain to sleep. Late in the evening he again went to relieve guard. Ellis did not actually object this time to his presence, but he was alternately sullen and irritable, in great pain, and, in spite of his confession signed and witnessed, in terrible mental distress.

Donovan never forgot that night. It seemed endless! There was not very much to be done; to quiet Ellis was impossible, to reason with him was useless; he could only listen to his irritable remarks, and make answer as guardedly as he could.

"What are you here for?" grumbled Ellis "What made you come? Why do you stay? You know you hate me!"

"Nonsense," replied Donovan. "Should I stay here if I did?"

"You have some evil purpose," cried Ellis. "You have come for your revenge. Why did you come?"

"Because it was right," said Donovan, shortly.

"Right! Do you think I shall believe that? All very fine when you knew quite well I'd ruined you. Didn't you know, I say? Didn't you know well enough?"

"Of course," said Donovan. "But you were ill and alone."

"Oh! yes, it's all very fine; but you won't get me to believe it. It's a very likely story, isn't it? I tell you," he added, in a querulous voice, "you're a fool to try to gull me like that--it's against all reason--you can't prove to me that you don't hate me--you can't prove to me that you didn't mean to poison me!"

"No, I can't prove it in words," said Donovan; "I can only flatly deny. But we have been so long together, surely you can believe in me now?"

He still murmured that it was impossible--against reason; but, perhaps exhausted by his own vehemence, fell at length into a sort of restless sleep.

Donovan too dozed for a few minutes in his chair, only however to carry on the argument. He woke with the words--"Quite against reason" in his mind, and his own answer--"Surely you can believe in me now!"

He got up, went to the bed, and looked at Ellis; he was still sleeping, an expression of great distress on his worn face. Donovan sighed, and crossed the room to the window. The night was wearing on; he drew up the blind and saw that the first faint grey of dawn was stealing over the horizon. Everything looked inexpressibly dreary; the room was at the back of the house; he could see the bare trees waving in the wind, and the grim, white tombstones in the Unitarian burial-ground stood out forlornly in the dim light. Death was certain, all too certain, but the beyond was dark and unknown. Yet here in the very room with him was one who must soon pass through those gloomy portals--to what? Was there a hereafter to complete this fearfully barren existence? Would that wretched life have a chance of growth and change? Or was it just ended here? Had this man, with all his gifts and talents, just wasted his life? Was there no future for him? He had done no good works to live after him, he had left no memory to be revered, he had done no good to his generation, had left nothing for posterity. Was all ended? When Dot had died, Donovan had dreamed of no possible hereafter, but now all seemed different. His creed was no longer a positive one, and besides, the idea of the wasted life dying out for ever was less tolerable than the idea of the little child passing from terrible pain to the "peace of nothingness."

What was the Truth? Did this awfully mysterious life end with what was called Death?

And still a voice repeated his own words--"Surely you can believe in me now!"

Then again he looked at the sleeping man, and again a miserable sense of failure weighed down his heart. He had tried hard to show no trace of remembrance of the past, never in look or word to remind Ellis of the wrong he had done him, yet his forgiveness had been rejected, insolently, contemptuously rejected. He might just as well have gone out to the war and left Ellis to his fate, for he evidently would not even believe that his motive had not been one of self-interest. "Against all reason," a "likely story!" Evidently he could not bring himself to believe, and how was it possible to give him. proof! The most wounding sense of rejection and disappointment filled his heart.

And still the voice repeated, "Surely you can believe in me now!"

Then for the first time in his life Donovan became conscious of a Presence mightier than anything he had ever conceived possible. He realised that his pain about Ellis was but the shadow of the pain which he himself had given to "One better than the best conceivable." He saw that for want of logical proof he too had rejected Him whose ways are above and beyond proof. The veil was lifted, and in the place of the dim Unknown stood One who had loved him with everlasting love, who had drawn him with loving-kindness.