Chapter XVI: Apprehension

Life has two ecstatic moments, one when the spirit catches sight of Truth, the other when it recognises a kindred spirit....... Perhaps it is only in the land of Truth that spirits can discern each other; as it is when they are helping each other on, that they may best hope to arrive there. _Guesses at Truth._

If rapture means the being carried away, snatched out of self to something higher--if ecstasy means the state in which corporeal consciousness is made to stand aside, to give place to a higher and perfectly satisfying consciousness--then Donovan knew for the first time both rapture and ecstasy. But real spiritual rapture is the quietest thing in the world. It is only when the senses are appealed to that superstition and fanaticism win devotees and evoke noisy and excited zeal. The man who, after long search and hard labour, is at length rewarded by some grand discovery, will be very calm because of his rapture, very still, because his feelings are true and deep.

It was characteristic of him that he stood upright. After a time the beauty of the scene without made itself felt. The sun had just risen--the window looked westward--all the land was bathed in the rosy glow of sunrise. The wind had gone down, the bare trees no longer waved dismally to and fro, the white graves in the burial-ground were softened and mellowed in the glorious flood of light. It was not unlike the change in his own life--the darkness past, the sun changing all the scene. For was not the mystery of life solved? had not even the grave "its sunny side"? It was when the prophet realised the everlastingness of God that the conviction came to him--"we shall not die."

And Dot's confident "you will know" came to pass, and she was, as it were, given back to him once more.

The sick man stirred. Donovan went to the bedside. There too he was conscious of change. The realisation of immortality brings relief, but it brings too a strange sense of awe.

The sleep had refreshed Ellis. He was a little better, and not quite so irritable, his assumed dislike too was put aside. Once more his only anxiety was to keep Donovan beside him. As the day advanced he grew weaker, however. He was not in great pain, but very restless and weary, and in an agony of fear. At last, to relieve himself, he began to talk to Donovan.

"Do you remember what you said when you left the Manor?" he began, hurriedly, "about hoping I'd remember to my dying day? This is my dying day, and you've got your wish."

"I have unwished it," said Donovan, quietly.

"I believe you have," said Ellis, looking at him steadily for a minute. "But how can I forget? The sin is the same whether you forgive or not. And I've not even enjoyed it--do you hear? I've not been able to enjoy it!"

"No? Then God has been very good to you," said Donovan.

"Good! What do you mean?" groaned Ellis.

"That the greatest curse you can have is enjoyment of wrong," replied Donovan. "I know only too bitterly what it means."

Ellis seemed to muse over the words, then he continued--"I've done what I could. I've got it signed and witnessed. See!" and he drew a folded paper from beneath the pillow. "But it's no good, it's not a bit of good. It's made me feel no better."

Donovan glanced at the confession and put it aside.

"Don't let it be lost, don't leave it about," cried Ellis, nervously. "Without it you won't get your rights, and if not, I couldn't rest in my grave."

Just at that moment Donovan felt supremely indifferent as to the property, but to please Ellis he put the paper in a safe place.

"It was all that wretched will that ruined me!" cried the miserable man. "If it hadn't been so small, if I hadn't been alone, there'd have been no temptation. I wasn't such a bad fellow before then. And now I'm ruined, lost! Do you hear what I say? I've lost my soul! How can you sit there so quietly, when in a few hours I shall be dead? Don't you believe in hell?"

"Yes," said Donovan, slowly. "And I think that you and I have already spent most of our lives there."

"That wasn't what they used to teach; I believe you're half a sceptic still," groaned Ellis. "I'm sure there was a way of getting it all set right at the last, if only I could remember."

"Would you like to see a clergyman?" asked Donovan.

"No, no, no," cried Ellis, vehemently; "I've been a hypocrite all my life before them, I can at least speak the truth to you--you who know just what I am."

"Then," said Donovan, very diffidently, urged to speak only by the extremity of the case, "if you want one who knows all, you can go straight to God who is nearer you than anyone else can be."

"That's nothing new!" exclaimed Ellis, petulantly. "I've known that all my life."

"How did you know it?" asked Donovan.

"I don't know how; they told me--my mother, and at church and school."

Conventional acceptance was a thing which Donovan could not understand.

"I think we must learn differently from that," he said, slowly, as if feeling his way on new ground. "Before you can really know, must you not be conscious of God's presence?"

"I've had that," groaned Ellis, "it's dogged me through everything--a dreadful text that was up in the old nursery, it used to make me shiver then--great black letters--'Thou God seest me;' I can see it now, and the horrid feeling after one had told a lie. Do you think there's no way out of it? They used to say something--I forget what, it never seemed to me very real. Do you think one must be punished?"

"Yes, I do," said Donovan.

"Oh! is there no way of getting off?" groaned Ellis.

"I don't think you'll wish to 'get off,'" replied Donovan.

"Not wish! How little you know! What would you do if you were lying as I am, with only a few hours more to live?--would you not wish to get off?"

"I think I should wish--I do wish to be saved from selfishness," said Donovan, slowly, "and to give myself unreservedly into God's keeping."

Death has a strange way of breaking down the strongest barriers of reserve; afterwards it seemed almost incredible to Donovan that he and Ellis, of all people in the world, should have spoken with such perfect openness to each other. It was a little hard on him perhaps to be called upon so soon to speak of the truths he had so lately grasped, but the very freshness of his conviction gave his words a peculiar power, the very slowness and diffidence of his humility touched Ellis when glib, conventional utterances would have passed by him unheeded. And yet the sick man did not gather from his words one grain of selfish comfort. Donovan evidently did not believe in any charm for converting the death-bed of a wrong-doer into that of a saint, he seemed perfectly convinced that punishment did await him, purifying punishment. And Ellis who had all his life hoped to set things right at the last, was much more terrified at the idea of certain punishment even with his ultimate good in view than of everlasting punishment, which, by some theological charm, he might hope altogether to escape. The inevitable loss of even some small possession is much more keenly felt than the possible loss of all, which we hope to avert, and the very idea of which we can hardly take into our minds.

The one only comfort of that terrible day was in the realisation of Donovan's forgiveness. By degrees this began to work in the poor man's mind, almost imperceptibly to alter his grim notions of the stern, inexorable Judge in whom he believed, and before whom he trembled.

It was night again, the room was dim and quiet, but beside the bed the dying man could see the face of his late enemy, the strong, pure, strangely powerful face which, in his helplessness, he had learnt to love.

"Do you think God's as forgiving as you are?" he faltered. "Do you think He's better than they say?"

Donovan was dismayed. Did the poor fellow know what he was saying? could he have such a terribly low ideal? He would not allow his surprise to show itself, however. He drew nearer.

"See," he said, at the same time raising his cousin's head so that it rested on his shoulder in the way which gave the sick man most relief. "I know very little of what they say, and am at the beginning of everything, but I am sure that whatever love I have for you is but the tiniest ray of His love; and if you persist in shutting out all but one ray when the whole sun is ready to light you, you will find it, as I have found it, very dark."

And then in the silence that followed Donovan fell into a reverie. Why was it that this man found it so hard to believe? He had evidently no such difficulties as he himself had had--no intellectual perplexities. Had he believed in some terrific phantom? or had the long selfishness of years brought him to a state in which he could not reach the idea of love? Yet he could reach the idea of human love and pity; he clung now almost like a child to Donovan.

"Who would have thought that you would be the only one with me at the last?" he murmured. "But I shall have to leave even you; I must go alone to face God, to stand before the Judge. I wish I'd never been born, I tell you!"

Donovan felt almost choked; he would have given worlds to have had Charles Osmond there at that moment. But there was no chance of getting a better man to speak to Ellis then, nor, had the greatest saints upon earth been present, would they have had as much influence with him as the man whom he had wronged.

The clock struck three. There was a long silence. Donovan seemed to have gained what he wanted in the waiting, for his face was strangely bright when he turned once more to Ellis.

"I am going to tell you something about my father," he began. And then, much in the way in which he used to soothe Dot's restless nights with stories, Donovan told faithfully and graphically the whole story of his school disgrace. How he had cared not a rush for all the blame, how he had braved opinion, how the gauntletting had hardened and embittered him; then of his return to the house, of the way in which his father had received him, of the forgiveness which had first made him repentant, of the fatherly grief which had made him just for his father's sake care for the punishment.

His voice got a little husky towards the end. Ellis, too, was evidently much moved.

"Do you think God is at all like your father?" he faltered.

It hurt Donovan a little, this bald anthropomorphism, but recognising that Ellis was really feeling after the underlying truth, he answered,

"I think my father was, as it were, a shadow of God--a shadow of the great Fatherhood--and the shadow can't be without the reality."

Ellis seemed satisfied. After that he slept at intervals, murmuring indistinctly every now and then fragments of the story he had just heard, or wandering back to recollections of his childhood.

Just as the dawn was breaking, he came to himself once more, speaking quite clearly.

"I should like you to say the Lord's Prayer," he said.

So together Donovan and the dying man said the "Our Father," and sealed their reconciliation.

Then, tremblingly and fearfully, Ellis entered the valley of the shadow of death. Truly there are last which shall be first, and first last! The conventionally religious man, the man whose orthodoxy had always been considered beyond dispute, would have died in black darkness had not one ray of love been kindled in his cold heart by the forgiveness he so little deserved, had not a gleam of truth been given to him by one who but yesterday had been an agnostic.

At sunrise he passed away into the Unseen.

For thirty-six hours Donovan had been in constant attendance on his cousin. When all was over he could no longer resist the craving for air which had for some time made the sick-room almost intolerable to him. In the stillness of that early winter morning he left the house and made his way into the park. The ground was white with frost, the sky intensely blue, the air sharp and exhilarating. The outer world suited his state of mind exactly. He was awed and quieted by the death-bed he had just quitted, but above the stillness and above the awe there was that marvellous sense of the Eternal which had so lately dawned for him, a consciousness which widened the whole universe, which gave new beauty to all around. He walked on rapidly into the bleakest, most open part of the park, a peculiar elasticity in his step, a light in his eyes.

It took him back to a day in his childhood, when his tutor had first given him some idea of the most recent solar discoveries. He could clearly remember the sort of exultant glow of wonder and awe which had taken possession of him; how the whole world had seemed full of grand possibilities; how he had rushed out alone on to the downs near the Manor, and in every blade of grass, in every tiny flower, in every wayside stone had seen new wonders, strange invisible workings which no one could fathom or grasp. The very wind blowing on his heated brow had been laden with the marvellous; nothing could be common, or small, or ordinary to him again.

That had been his feeling when he first realised the physical unseen; his first realisation of the spiritual unseen was a little like it, only deeper and more lasting, and that while the child's delight had had an element of wildness in it, the man's rapture was all calmness.

The park seemed deserted. The sole creature he met was an organ-grinder setting out on his daily rounds. Involuntarily they exchanged a _buon giorno_. His very dreams of "liberty, equality, fraternity" took a wider and deeper meaning in the breadth and light of that morning.

There are more resurrection days than the world dreams of--Easters which are not less real because the church bells do not ring--which, though chanted of by no earthly choir, cause joy in the presence of the angels of God.