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Wilfrid Cumbermede

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That she had never seen life as a whole; that her religious theories
had ever been eating away and absorbing her life, so preventing her
religion from interpenetrating and glorifying it; that in regard to
certain facts and consequences she had been left to an ignorance which
her innocence rendered profound; that, attracted by the worldly
splendour of the offer, her father and mother had urged her compliance,
and broken in spirit by the fate of Charley, and having always been
taught that self-denial was in itself a virtue, she had taken the
worldly desires of her parents for the will of God, and blindly
yielded; that Brotherton was capable, for his ends, of representing
himself as possessed of religion enough to satisfy the scruples of her
parents, and, such being satisfied, she had resisted her own as evil
things.

Whether his hatred of me had had any share in his desire to possess
her, I hardly thought of inquiring.

Of course I did not for a single moment believe that Mary had had the
slightest notion of the bitterness, the torture, the temptation of
Satan it would be to me. Doubtless the feeling of her father concerning
the death of Charley had seemed to hollow an impassable gulf between
us. Worn and weak, and not knowing what she did, my dearest friend had
yielded herself to the embrace of my deadliest foe. If he was such as I
had too good reason for believing him, she was far more to be pitied
than I. Lonely she must be--lonely as I--for who was there to
understand and love her? Bitterly too by this time she must have
suffered, for the dove can never be at peace in the bosom of the
vulture, or cease to hate the carrion of which he must ever carry about
with him at least the disgusting memorials. Alas! I too had been her
enemy, and had cried out against her; but now I would love her more and
better than ever! Oh! if I knew but something I could do for her, some
service which on the bended knees of my spirit I might offer her! I
clomb the heights of my grief, and looked around, but alas! I was such
a poor creature! A dabbler in the ways of the world, a writer of tales
which even those who cared to read them counted fantastic and Utopian,
who was I to weave a single silken thread into the web of her life? How
could I bear her one poorest service? Never in this world could I
approach her near enough to touch yet once again the hem of her
garment. All I could do was to love her. No--I could and did suffer for
her. Alas! that suffering was only for myself, and could do nothing,
for her! It was indeed some consolation to me that my misery came from
her hand; but if she knew it, it would but add to her pain. In my heart
I could only pray her pardon for my wicked and selfish thoughts
concerning her, and vow again and ever to regard her as my
Athanasia.--But yes! there was one thing I _could_ do for her: I would
be a true man for her sake; she should have some satisfaction in me; I
would once more arise and go to my Father.

The instant the thought arose in my mind, I fell down before the
possible God in an agony of weeping. All complaint of my own doom had
vanished, now that I began to do her the justice of love. Why should
_I_ be blessed--here and now at least--according to my notions of
blessedness? Let the great heart of the universe do with me as it
pleased! Let the Supreme take his own time to justify himself to the
heart that sought to love him! I gave up myself, was willing to suffer,
to be a living pain, so long as he pleased; and the moment I yielded
half the pain was gone; I gave my Athanasia yet again to God, and all
_might_ yet, in some nigh, far-off, better-world-way, be well. I could
wait and endure. If only God was, and was God, then it was, or would
be, well with Mary--well with me!

But, as I still sat, a flow of sweet sad repentant thought passing
gently through my bosom, all at once the self to which, unable to
confide it to the care of its own very life, the God conscious of
himself and in himself conscious of it, I had been for months offering
the sacrifices of despair and indignation, arose in spectral
hideousness before me. I saw that I, a child of the infinite, had been
worshipping the finite--and therein dragging down the infinite towards
the fate of the finite. I do not mean that in Mary Osborne I had been
worshipping the finite. It was the eternal, the lovely, the true that
in her I had been worshipping: in myself I had been worshipping the
mean, the selfish, the finite, the god of spiritual greed. Only in
himself _can_ a man find the finite to worship; only in turning back
upon himself does he create the finite for and by his worship. All the
works of God are everlasting; the only perishable are some of the works
of man. All love is a worship of the infinite: what is called a man's
love for himself, is not love; it is but a phantastic resemblance of
love; it is a creating of the finite, a creation of death. A man
_cannot_ love himself. If all love be not creation--as I think it
is--it is at least the only thing in harmony with creation, and the
love of oneself is its absolute opposite. I sickened at the sight of
myself: how should I ever get rid of the demon? The same instant I saw
the one escape: I must offer it back to its source--commit it to him
who had made it. I must live no more from it, but from the source of
it; seek to know nothing more of it than he gave me to know by his
presence therein. Thus might I become one with the Eternal in such an
absorption as Buddha had never dreamed; thus might I draw life ever
fresh from its fountain. And in that fountain alone would I contemplate
its reflex. What flashes of self-consciousness might cross me, should
be God's gift, not of my seeking, and offered again to him in ever new
self-sacrifice. Alas! alas! this I saw then, and this I yet see; but
oh, how far am I still from that divine annihilation! The only comfort
is, God is, and I am his, else I should not be at all.

I saw too that thus God also lives--in his higher way. I saw, shadowed
out in the absolute devotion of Jesus to men, that the very life of God
by which we live is an everlasting eternal giving of himself away. He
asserts himself, only, solely, altogether, in an infinite sacrifice of
devotion. So must we live; the child must be as the father; live he
cannot on any other plan, struggle as he may. The father requires of
him nothing that he is not or does not himself, who is the one prime
unconditioned sacrificer and sacrifice. I threw myself on the ground,
and offered back my poor wretched self to its owner, to be taken and
kept, purified and made divine.

The same moment a sense of reviving health began to possess me. With
many fluctuations, it has possessed me, has grown, and is now, if not
a persistent cheerfulness, yet an unyielding hope. The world bloomed
again around me. The sunrise again grew gloriously dear; and the
sadness of the moon was lighted from a higher sun than that which
returns with the morning.

My relation to Mary resolved and re-formed itself in my mind into
something I can explain only by the following--call it dream: it was
not a dream; call it vision: it was not a vision; and yet I will tell
it as if it were either, being far truer than either.

I lay like a child on one of God's arms. I could not see his face, and
the arm that held me was a great cloudy arm. I knew that on his other
arm lay Mary. But between us were forests and plains, mountains and
great seas; and, unspeakably worse than all, a gulf with which words
had nothing to do, a gulf of pure separation, of impassable
nothingness, across which no device, I say not of human skill, but of
human imagination, could cast a single connecting cord. There lay Mary,
and here lay I--both in God's arms--utterly parted. As in a swoon I
lay, through which suddenly came the words: 'What God hath joined, man
cannot sunder.' I lay thinking what they could mean. All at once I
thought I knew. Straightway I rose on the cloudy arm, looked down on a
measureless darkness beneath me, and up on a great, dreary,
world-filled eternity above me, and crept along the arm towards the
bosom of God.

In telling my--neither vision nor dream nor ecstasy, I cannot help it
that the forms grow so much plainer and more definite in the words than
they were in the revelation. Words always give either too much or too
little shape: when you want to be definite, you find your words clumsy
and blunt; when you want them for a vague shadowy image, you
straightway find them give a sharp and impertinent outline, refusing to
lend themselves to your undefined though vivid thought. Forms
themselves are hard enough to manage, but words are unmanageable. I
must therefore trust to the heart of my reader.

I crept into the bosom of God, and along a great cloudy peace, which I
could not understand, for it did not yet enter into me. At length I
came to the heart of God, and through that my journey lay. The moment I
entered it, the great peace appeared to enter mine, and I began to
understand it. Something melted in my heart, and for a moment I thought
I was dying, but I found I was being born again. My heart was empty of
its old selfishness, and I loved Mary tenfold--no longer in the least
for my own sake, but all for her loveliness. The same moment I knew
that the heart of God was a bridge, along which I was crossing the
unspeakable eternal gulf that divided Mary and me. At length, somehow,
I know not how, somewhere, I know not where, I was where she was. She
knew nothing of my presence, turned neither face nor eye to meet me,
stretched out no hand to give me the welcome of even a friend, and yet
I not only knew, but felt that she was mine. I wanted nothing from her;
desired the presence of her loveliness only that I might know it; hung
about her life as a butterfly over the flower he loves; was satisfied
that she could _be_. I had left my self behind in the heart of God, and
now I was a pure essence, fit to rejoice in the essential. But alas! my
whole being was not yet subject to its best. I began to long to be able
to do something for her besides--I foolishly said _beyond_ loving her.
Back rushed my old self in the selfish thought: Some day--will she not
know--and at least--? That moment the vision vanished. I was
tossed--ah! let me hope, only to the other arm of God--but I lay in
torture yet again. For a man may see visions manifold, and believe them
all; and yet his faith shall not save him; something more is needed--he
must have that presence of God in his soul, of which the Son of Man
spoke, saying: 'If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father
will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.'
God in him, he will be able to love for very love's sake; God not in
him, his best love will die into selfishness.




CHAPTER LX.


MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER.

The morning then which had thus dawned upon me, was often over-clouded
heavily. Yet it was the morning and not the night; and one of the
strongest proofs that it was the morning lay in this, that again I
could think in verse.

One day, after an hour or two of bitterness, I wrote the following. A
man's trouble must have receded from him a little for the moment, if he
descries any shape in it, so as to be able to give it form in words. I
set it down with no hope of better than the vaguest sympathy. There
came no music with this one.

If it be that a man and a woman
Are made for no mutual grief;
That each gives the pain to some other,
And neither can give the relief;

If thus the chain of the world
Is tied round the holy feet,
I scorn to shrink from facing
What my brothers and sisters meet.

But I cry when the wolf is tearing
At the core of my heart as now:
When I was the man to be tortured,
Why should the woman be _thou?_

I am not so ready to sink from the lofty in to the abject now. If at
times I yet feel that the whole creation is groaning and travailing, I
know what it is for--its redemption from the dominion of its own death
into that sole liberty which comes only of being filled and eternally
possessed by God himself, its source and its life.

And now I found also that my heart began to be moved with a compassion
towards my fellows such as I had never before experienced. I shall best
convey what I mean by transcribing another little poem I wrote about
the same time.

Once I sat on a crimson throne,
And I held the world in fee;
Below me I heard my brothers moan,
And I bent me down to see;--

Lovingly bent and looked on them,
But _I_ had no inward pain;
I sat in the heart of my ruby gem,
Like a rainbow without the rain.

My throne is vanished; helpless I lie
At the foot of its broken stair;
And the sorrows of all humanity
Through my heart make a thoroughfare.

Let such things rest for a while: I have now to relate another
incident--strange enough, but by no means solitary in the records of
human experience. My reader will probably think that of dreams and
visions there has already been more than enough: but perhaps she will
kindly remember that at this time I had no outer life at all. Whatever
bore to me the look of existence was within me. All my days the
tendency had been to an undue predominance of thought over action, and
now that the springs of action were for a time dried up, what wonder
was it if thought, lording it alone, should assume a reality beyond its
right? Hence the life of the day was prolonged into the night; nor was
there other than a small difference in their conditions, beyond the
fact that the contrast of outer things was removed in sleep; whence the
shapes which the waking thought had assumed had space and opportunity,
as it were, to thicken before the mental eye until they became dreams
and visions.

But concerning what I am about to relate I shall offer no theory. Such
mere operation of my own thoughts may be sufficient to account for it:
I would only ask--does any one know what the _mere_ operation of his
own thoughts signifies? I cannot isolate myself, especially in those
moments when the individual will is less awake, from the ocean of life
and thought which not only surrounds me, but on which I am in a sense
one of the floating bubbles.

I was asleep, but I thought I lay awake in bed--in the room where I
still slept--that which had been my grannie's.--It was dark midnight,
and the wind was howling about the gable and in the chimneys. The door
opened, and some one entered. By the lamp she carried I knew my
great-grandmother,--just as she looked in life, only that now she
walked upright and with ease. That I was dreaming is plain from the
fact that I felt no surprise at seeing her.

'Wilfrid, come with me,' she said, approaching the bedside. 'Rise.'

I obeyed like a child.

'Put your cloak on,' she continued. 'It is a stormy midnight, but we
have not so far to go as you may think.'

'I think nothing, grannie,' I said. 'I do not know where you want to
take me.'

'Come and see then, my son. You must at last learn what has been kept
from you far too long.'

As she spoke she led the way down the stair, through the kitchen, and
out into the dark night. I remember the wind blowing my cloak about,
but I remember nothing more until I found myself in the winding
hazel-walled lane, leading to Umberden Church. My grannie was leading
me by one withered hand; in the other she held the lamp, over the flame
of which the wind had no power. She led me into the churchyard, took
the key from under the tombstone, unlocked the door of the church, put
the lamp into my hand, pushed me gently in, and shut the door behind
me. I walked to the vestry, and set the lamp on the desk, with a vague
feeling that I had been there before, and that I had now to do
something at this desk. Above it I caught sight of the row of
vellum-bound books, and remembered that one of them contained something
of importance to me. I took it down. The moment I opened it I
remembered with distinctness the fatal discrepancy in the entry of my
grannie's marriage. I found the place: to my astonishment the date of
the year was now the same as that on the preceding page--1747. That
instant I awoke in the first gush of the sunrise.

I could not help feeling even a little excited by my dream, and the
impression of it grew upon me: I wanted to see the book again. I could
not rest. Something seemed constantly urging me to go and look at it.
Half to get the thing out of my head, I sent Styles to fetch Lilith,
and for the first time since the final assurance of my loss, mounted
her. I rode for Umberden Church.

It was long after noon before I had made up my mind, and when, having
tied Lilith to the gate, I entered the church, one red ray from the
setting sun was nestling in the very roof. Knowing what I should find,
yet wishing to see it again, I walked across to the vestry, feeling
rather uncomfortable at the thought of prying thus alone into the
parish register.

I could almost have persuaded myself that I was dreaming still; and in
looking back, I can hardly in my mind separate the dreaming from the
waking visit.

Of course I found just what I had expected--1748, not 1747--at the top
of the page, and was about to replace the register, when the thought
occurred to me that, if the dream had been potent enough to bring me
hither, it might yet mean something. I lifted the cover again. There
the entry stood undeniably plain. This time, however, I noted two other
little facts concerning it.

I will just remind my reader that the entry was crushed in between the
date of the year and the next entry--plainly enough to the eye; and
that there was no attestation to the entries of 1747. The first
additional fact--and clearly an important one--was that, in the summing
up of 1748, before the signature, which stood near the bottom of the
cover, a figure had been altered. Originally it stood: 'In all six
couple,' but the six had been altered to a seven--corresponding with
the actual number. This appeared proof positive that the first entry on
the cover was a forged insertion. And how clumsily it had been managed!

'What could my grannie be about?' I said to myself. It never occurred
to me then that it might have been intended to _look like_ a forgery.

Still I kept staring at it, as if by very force of staring I could find
out something. There was not the slightest sign of erasure or
alteration beyond the instance I have mentioned. Yet--and here was my
second note--when I compared the whole of the writing on the cover with
the writing on the preceding page, though it seemed the same hand, it
seemed to have got stiffer and shakier, as if the writer had grown old
between. Finding nothing very suggestive in this, however, I fell into
a dreamy mood, watching the red light, as it faded, up in the old,
dark, distorted roof of the desolate church--with my hand lying on the
book.

I have always had a bad habit of pulling and scratching at any knot or
roughness in the paper of the book I happen to be reading; and now,
almost unconsciously, with my forefinger I was pulling at an edge of
parchment which projected from the joint of the cover. When I came to
myself and proceeded to close the book, I found it would not shut
properly because of a piece which I had curled up. Seeking to restore
it to its former position, I fancied I saw a line or edge running all
down the joint, and looking closer, saw that these last entries, in
place of being upon a leaf of the book pasted to the cover in order to
strengthen the binding, as I had supposed, were indeed upon a leaf
which was pasted to the cover, but one which was not otherwise
connected with the volume.

I now began to feel a more lively interest in the behaviour of my
dream-grannie. Here might lie something to explain the hitherto
inexplicable. I proceeded to pull the leaf gently away. It was of
parchment, much thinner than the others, which were of vellum. I had
withdrawn only a small portion when I saw there was writing under it.
My heart began to beat faster. But I would not be rash. My old
experience with parchment in the mending of my uncle's books came to my
aid. If I pulled at the dry skin as I had been doing, I might not only
damage it, but destroy the writing under it. I could do nothing without
water, and I did not know where to find any. It would be better to ride
to the village of Gastford, somewhere about two miles off, put up
there, and arrange for future proceedings.

I did not know the way, and for a long time could see no one to ask.
The consequence was that I made a wide round, and it was nearly dark
before I reached the village. I thought it better for the present to
feed Lilith, and then make the best of my way home.

The next evening--I felt so like a thief that I sought the thievish
security of the night--having provided myself with what was necessary,
and borrowed a horse for Styles, I set out again.




CHAPTER LXI.


THE PARISH REGISTER.

The sky clouded as we went; it grew very dark, and the wind began to
blow. It threatened a storm. I told Styles a little of what I was
about--just enough to impress on him the necessity for prudence. The
wind increased, and by the time we gained the copse, it was roaring,
and the slender hazels bending like a field of corn.

'You will have enough to do with two horses,' I said.

'I don't mind it, sir,' Styles answered. 'A word from me will quiet
Miss Lilith; and for the other, I've known him pretty well for two
years past.'

I left them tolerably sheltered in the winding lane, and betook myself
alone to the church. Cautiously I opened the door, and felt my way from
pew to pew, for it was quite dark. I could just distinguish the windows
from the walls, and nothing more. As soon as I reached the vestry, I
struck a light, got down the volume, and proceeded to moisten the
parchment with a wet sponge. For some time the water made little
impression on the old parchment, of which but one side could be exposed
to its influence, and I began to fear I should be much longer in
gaining my end than I had expected. The wind roared and howled about
the trembling church, which seemed too weak with age to resist such an
onslaught; but when at length the skin began to grow soft and yield to
my gentle efforts at removal, I became far too much absorbed in the
simple operation, which had to be performed with all the gentleness and
nicety of a surgical one, to heed the uproar about me. Slowly the
glutinous adhesion gave way, and slowly the writing revealed itself. In
mingled hope and doubt I restrained my curiosity; and as one teases
oneself sometimes by dallying with a letter of the greatest interest,
not until I had folded down the parchment clear of what was manifestly
an entry, did I bring my candle close to it, and set myself to read it.
Then, indeed, I found I had reason to regard with respect the dream
which had brought me thither.

Right under the 1748 of the parchment, stood on the vellum cover 1747.
Then followed the usual blank, and then came an entry corresponding
word for word with the other entry of my great-grandfather and mother's
marriage. In all probability Moldwarp Hall was mine! Little as it could
do for me now, I confess to a keen pang of pleasure at the thought.

Meantime, I followed out my investigation, and gradually stripped the
parchment off the vellum to within a couple of inches of the bottom of
the cover. The result of knowledge was as follows:--

Next to the entry of the now hardly hypothetical marriage of my
ancestors, stood the summing up of the marriages of 1747, with the
signature of the rector. I paused, and, turning back, counted them.
Including that in which alone I was interested, I found the number
given correct. Next came by itself the figures 1748, and then a few
more entries, followed by the usual summing up and signature of the
rector. From this I turned to the leaf of parchment; there was a
difference: upon the latter the sum was six, altered to seven; on the
former it was five. This of course suggested further search: I soon
found where the difference indicated lay.

As the entry of _the_ marriage was, on the forged leaf, shifted up
close to the forged 1748, and as the summing and signature had to be
omitted, because they belonged to the end of 1747, a blank would have
been left, and the writing below would have shone through and attracted
attention, revealing the forgery of the whole, instead of that of the
part only which was intended to look a forgery. To prevent this, an
altogether fictitious entry had been made--over the summing and
signature. This, with the genuine entries faithfully copied, made of
the five, six, which the forger had written and then blotted into a
seven, intending to expose the entry of my ancestors' marriage as a
forgery, while the rest of the year's register should look genuine. It
took me some little trouble to clear it all up to my own mind, but by
degrees everything settled into its place, assuming an intelligible
shape in virtue of its position.

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