Chapter 11

Let me tell in briefest words how the spell was broken,--partially broken. During those months of passionate exaltation, letters from friends once dear to me had been thrown aside half-read, and wholly valueless. On the eleventh of November I started,--as a black seal was to be broken. My uncle had suddenly died. The last instalment of his annuity had been paid, and my little sister, an orphan and penniless, was thrown upon me for education and support. Shame to me that I then hesitated! Yet it was some hours before I could persuade myself to put the letter into Vannelle's hand, and say that I must abandon him forever. Let me forget the bitter temptation. Of course my friend begged to provide for my sister from his own ample means, and even offered her an asylum at his house. I still retained sufficient sanity to perceive the wrong of bringing a young child to that dismal place to wither removed from all human companionship and sympathy. A spirit not in a condition to be sustained and elevated by the society of Herbert would be confused, and finally petrified. Had this refined probing and questioning deadened all sense of duty? Was this the end of my Absolute Philosophy, that the intellect should usurp the place of the conscience and the moral law? Shame to me that I could have paused to ask such questions! yet any claim but one tittle less urgent I should have bantered aside. I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream of Dante,--two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the victory have ached through my life.

There was but one calling wherein it seemed possible for me to earn my bread; for how could I descend to chaffer in the market, to trim and huckster through the world,--_I_, who had thought to condition the Spirit of the Universe? But there were metaphors faintly shadowing divine things, symbols adapted to the limitations of the popular mind, and with these I might do an honest work for the souls of men. _Honest?_ Yes,--unless Augustine was a hypocrite, when he declared that he spoke of the Unseen as unity in three persons, less to say something than not to remain altogether silent. To a certain order of minds among the clergy this is the daily cross,--the necessity of maintaining a fixed position, and ever looking down from it to teach, instead of ever yearning upward to be taught.

It is enough to say, that, supporting myself and my sister by school-teaching, I achieved such courses of reading as are supposed to qualify for enrolment among the liberal clergy of New England. Until the time when my sister left me by marriage I was settled at N----, on the Connecticut. Soon after this event, died old Dr. P---- of Foxden, and I received a call to his vacant parish. I knew that the sort of society to be found in that place would minister to my most urgent need. I craved some intellectual clanship which should never seek to rise to an equal spiritual companionship. For there was only one man to whom I might speak freely, and from him my path ever diverged. How far apart the years had led us! Sometimes there came a whisper that I had been snatched from the hand of Satan, killer of souls; sometimes my only opportunities of salvation seemed left in that sad, damp homestead. I could never return to him; I could never be wholly free from him. Ever was I controlled by a shadowy force which reached me from his abundant power. No occupation was so absorbing as to protect me from the invading presence of Herbert Vannelle.

* * * * *

The first Sunday of the present month brought the twentieth anniversary of the day that I parted from Vannelle. In the morning I had preached a written sermon on those solemn words of the Apostle, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." For the first time I shrank from the consciousness that the words uttered were true to me in a very different sense from that in which the congregation received them. I found it difficult to poise in tremulous balance between Truth and its available representation to common men. It is my custom to preach extemporaneously in the afternoon. Upon rising, after the introductory services, I could perceive that my pulse and breathing were accelerated. A certain numbness of the brain seemed pierced with convulsive, fugitive shocks. An inexplicable influence, a command for cerebral sympathy, seemed beating at my forehead. I turned the sacred pages before me, but could find nothing upon which to base my remarks. But to my lips would come incessantly a passage from Sir Thomas Browne. At last I gave it voice:--

"There are, as in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts and boisterous objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these no man hath known than myself; which I confess I conquered, not in martial attitude, but on my knees."

An extraordinary impetus seemed imparted to my mental powers. Men have said that I spoke with a fluency and eloquence unknown to them before. Indeed, I was conscious of a capacity to receive and convey such portions of divine wisdom as corresponded to their needs. To speak in figure, my heavenly race was as if the Lord of Evil pursued my soul.

Thoroughly exhausted by the effort, I returned to my study and threw myself upon a sofa. More fully than ever before, I entered that state where one far distant may make himself perceived and known. The occult power of foreknowing events, the delicate perception of forbidden things, worked their abnormal invigoration in the brain. I became conscious that a carriage miles off was rolling nearer and nearer; I knew that it would stop at my door. I waited, waited long into the night. One by one went out the scattered village-lights. Another consciousness of twenty years seemed compressed into those brilliant, bitter hours. My lamp flickered. I rose with effort and supplied oil; it would now burn till morning. The carriage came nearer. I knew that Vannelle was in it. At last the heavy rumble ceased at the door.

A figure stood before me. The old fascination in the eyes; a soul burning with lofty enthusiasm looked through and kindled them. But the face,--it was ghastly, livid as the face of a leper: it was spectral,--blanched and dried with the white flames of his exalted vigils. Ah, black eyes, well may you shine in terrible triumph! The old idolatry this man demanded of me would not be repelled. I gazed upon my visitor as upon a phantom from another sphere, and knew no reckoning of time. His magnetism was upon me; I could only crouch into myself--and wait. At length the silence was broken.

"Charles Clifton, teacher of the people, listen that you may be taught! For the last time I have come down into your world of passion and sense. The impulses with which you vainly strive and wrestle are behind me. Alone, alone, I have risen from the abysmal depths of personality. I have struggled fiercely. I have also conquered."

The livid face showed no change. It suddenly came to me, that, by some voluntary disfigurement of his exquisite beauty of feature, this man had cut away the lusts for pleasure, fame, and influence. What woman would kiss that ghastly cheek? What sycophant could fawn and smirk in that chilly presence? The injunctions concerning the offending eye and hand Vannelle had interpreted literally.

"I hold," he continued, "the noble prize of intellectual satisfaction seized by effort. Multiply the self-satisfactions of earth by infinity, and you may guess a little of the sublime contentment which wraps me round! Does the best stage-trick of your liberal clergy help them to anything but a plasticity of mind to be moulded into artistic forms of skepticism? How can you feel the delight of a definite, positive affirmation which accounts for and includes all creeds and lives of men? How can you come out from your partial dogmas to enter Truth and find it alone dogmatic and compulsive? Clifton, I pity you. I would rescue you from this haze of thought and feeling,--I, who have even now discarded Intelligence and enthroned Wisdom."

"I hope to be pardoned," I said,--"the current of this life sets so in favor of Utility and the Practical; men long to be fed with sentiment,--why try to give them ideas?"

"Fulfil, then, forever your little round of decencies and proprieties," exclaimed Vannelle; "I judge you not. Perchance your weakness is the pardonable weakness of one who has done his best. You may be guiltless in failing to attain the strength, the glory, of a true conviction."

"Is it too late?" I asked, faintly.

"It is the question I must put to you," replied Herbert. "I bring you in this manuscript the result of my life,--the result of two lives. Here is written, as clearly as can be written in gross symbols of human language, that which may suggest the Absolute, the Alpha and Omega, the System, not humanly built upon hypothesis, but divinely founded upon Law."

I knew that a package had been placed upon the table at my side.

"If you can so far command the fragmentary life you lead as to give this manuscript the sober, searching thought which it invites, the truth may be brought to you. But if these twenty years have only filled you with the pride of inventing arguments and detecting analogies, if they have only given you the petty skill of a petty scholar, why then dally on with a tinsel variety of superficial attainments, and give others the blessed privilege you are not strong enough to accept."

"Take it from me," I said. "It has haunted me too long. What you may have found, it is for your honor to promulgate."

"The finding is enough for one life," replied Vannelle. "The spiritual manhood is indeed complete, but the shell which enclosed it totters towards earth. My responsibility in this matter is at an end: yours will now begin."

A tremor ran through my frame as he spoke these words. A mystery rigid as Fate seemed to shackle me. Without seeing him go, I knew that Vannelle had left the room. Again was I conscious of the carriage-rumble growing fainter, fainter, fainter in the distance. A dream of passionate excitement, a phantasmagoria of old wishes, old hopes, of the life I might have led, flew before me. For a moment the energy of Vannelle seemed to have transfused itself through every fibre. An unquenchable thirst that I had never summoned struck into my brain. I seized the manuscript, and devoured page after page. Then I felt the approaches of a supreme despotism that might annihilate all I had been, all I hoped to be,--that might compel me to denounce all that I had taught, to hear all that was respectable and healthy in the world jeer at me as an impostor, an enthusiast, a madman. It was not that I was simply invited to come above the ordinary doctrines of the day, and stand supported and encouraged by a few advanced minds; but I was called to place myself where the most earnest souls--unless a second birth could be granted them--would scoff with the ignorance and intolerance of the mass.

At last the gray light of morning shone upon me.

One of my deacons, whistling sturdily, passed along the street. A physical emanation from his healthy vitality partially counteracted the influence of the night. Gathering up every muscle of my feeble will, I closed the manuscript forever. Hereditary imperfections of body and mind confine me to a sphere of reputable usefulness. If I have sinned in the past, I have also suffered. If, as I sometimes suspect, I have thrust from me the grandest opportunity ever offered to man, the loss through all eternity will be mine.

In eight days I heard of the death of Herbert Vannelle.

III.

As the last words of his strange narration fell from Clifton's lips, he bowed his head and was greatly agitated. The vast theologic conception over which he had so long brooded, instead of lifting him on high, had crushed him to the earth. His moral consciousness had demanded a satisfaction which he lacked integrity of purpose to pursue and challenge. A fixed conviction of the dreariest pessimism would have been better for this man than the lofty uncertainty which had tortured his days; for in the belief that one may neither struggle nor aspire there is a certain practical drift. But how shall he do any good who bears about him a quick conscience, a skeptical understanding, sensitive religious affections, and a feeble will? Charles Clifton had neither the leisure, nor possibly the application, to follow the creeping advances of systematic knowledge. He had listened to a fatal persuasion, and at the same time had sought to satisfy contradictory principles of the human mind. The kindest thing I could do for him was soon perceived.

"Reverend Sir," I said, "you must permit me to advise you. It is now six o'clock. In an hour the early train leaves for Foxden. You must take it and return home. Any further vacuum in your daily employment will produce a crushing pressure from without that might endanger reason itself. I solemnly promise to deposit this manuscript in the Mather Safe,--nay, I will not leave town until the President and Treasurer have met me this afternoon according to your agreement. I pledge you my honor that the parchment shall be consigned to its resting-place with every necessary formality."

My companion gazed long upon vacancy before returning any answer. He strove to dispel the cloud-pageantry which had sailed above him in shapeless beauty. He walked up and down the chamber, paused, threw open the window, and looked upon the street below. I felt that every petty detail of man's daily craft struck outlines of painful vividness upon the morbid sensibility of his condition. Finally he spoke to this effect: --

"A grief has been lessened in giving it words. My deepest and most solitary moments have been revealed to human sympathy, and the relief is great. It may be that I have been created to some wholesome end,--that some truth may shine before the world through what seems the failure of my life. I will return at once to the sphere of the senses: it is, as you say, all that is left me. Let who will inquire into the significance and purpose of the Universe; it is for me to work in the bondage of the flesh, to be the humble tool of the age in which my lot is cast."

Yet it was not easy to induce the clergyman to commit to my care the conclusion of the enterprise which had brought him to town. His peculiar nervous temperament foretold a thousand accidents that might befall the precious legacy of his friend. It was only by addressing his reason in repeated arguments, and by solemnly asseverating my entire fidelity, that I induced him to yield.

It was a gracious gift to be once more alone.

I seemed awakened from a dream of pining exultation, of dark foreboding. Without acknowledging it to myself, I had been strangely wrought upon by what I had read and heard. As Clifton emerged from the magical influence of Vannelle, was it not concentrated upon me? The impulse to return to the perusal of the manuscript was almost irresistible. Yet it was evident, that, failing to receive as my very life what was there written, I should become hopelessly entangled in discrepancies and contradictions. A glance at the imminent peril sent me shuddering to my only safety.

It has been mentioned that I had interested myself in some inquiries tending to modify the received understanding of a certain natural law. During my morning in the College Library I had collected the records of many facts, which, laboriously compared, might confirm the hypothesis I had conceived. I now braced myself to the task of tracing an order in these random observations. I was soon stimulated by perceiving that my statistics seemed to confirm the justice of the reasoning which at first roused my suspicion. More and more plainly did man's experience respond to the results I had dared to predict. Trivial circumstances, noted in remote times and disconnected places, pointed in one direction, and there beat the regular pulse of Nature.

It is perhaps a little humiliating to mention, what I afterwards discovered, that the doctrine which I endeavored to reach had been already conceived and passed upon by a not very eminent scientist in one of the Western States. But at that time absorption in the search for attainable truth was necessary to my welfare; and, with very brief intervals for rest and refreshment, I continued my pursuit until the afternoon-hour for visiting the library.

The President and Treasurer entered the building at five o'clock.

For some minutes I had stood before the massive doors of the Mather Safe, wondering if any of its mysterious contents could be more singular than the consignment about to be made to its keeping.

"Is Mr. Clifton of Foxden in the library?" inquired the President.

"I am here to represent him," I replied. "He made a strange mistake in the day of appointment, and was compelled to leave town this morning. The package which he wished to deposit in the Mather Safe I hold in my hand."

"_Lex Universalis Naturæ_; THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE," exclaimed the Treasurer, reading the inscription upon the outer parchment. "Poh, poh! I thought that sort of philosophy had long ago been handed over to the limbo of fallacies."

"By those who have neither feeling nor imagination enough to care for anything not transmutable into dollars, perhaps it has," I rejoined, somewhat tartly.

"Come, come!" said the President, in his good-natured, rolling tones; "since the days of the great Jonathan, our New-England metaphysicians have generally been broken-down poets, and should be treated with the greatest tenderness. Some flighty minds will prefer dangerous trips to dream-land to the rigid demonstrations of figures; but the mass of our graduates accept the teaching of their Alma Mater, that only the mathematician has the right to investigate, and that of all philosophers only natural philosophers are competent instructors."

"Yet, Sir," I said, "you will remember that the time was when your natural philosophers were persecuted as wizards by Church and State. Even the mathematician is defined by an old lexicographer to be '_Magus dæmonum invocator_'; and I cannot forget that all that is of honor and respect to-day is but the actual of a once despised ideal."

I really marvelled at my own audacity in presuming to question the words of this distinguished and excellent gentleman. Indeed, it was particularly surprising, because (if I knew myself) I precisely agreed with him. But there is a certain waywardness in my composition, which loves to puncture an inflated conventionality, even when I myself am most conventional.

In the mean time the Treasurer, taking the President's key with his own, had opened the Safe. I looked in and beheld coffers of lead and oak, nooks and pigeon-holes covered and sealed with the College seal, little cells of glass which appeared to hold documents of the utmost importance, and, in short, whatever might best defy the injuries of time. The weighty book which registered the contents of the Safe was opened before me. I was told to write the number assigned to the manuscript, to describe its present condition, and to indicate its destination. This I carefully did, and was about to confide my charge to its long oblivion.

"Stay!" said the President. "You have forgotten the mottoes! Here is only one; and it is our rule that every deposit in the Mather Safe be distinguished by three, in as many languages.

'_Alteri Sæculo_.'

The selection is good, though it has already been adopted by a Massachusetts statesman. It is now for you to supply two others."

Singular as it may appear, this sudden call to perform a trifling office which I had not anticipated, filled me with a conflict of emotions. In choosing another's words, I seemed to indorse or repudiate the strange matter with which they were to be associated. I thought of Vannelle's wondrous language, of Clifton's exhilaration, and of the vivid buoyancy with which my spirit had striven to rise. I even groped for some phrase which might hint what delicate aërial impressions had tended to condense the soul on the supreme point of spiritual ecstasy. But memory was a blank when I demanded words for this seeming-glorious fact in the experience of humanity. Success was made impossible by the very intensity of the effort to summon an appropriate message to be dropped over the abyss of Time. I was confident that there were many apt things which might be said, if I could come at them, as it were, sideways. In order that I might take them at this advantage, I snatched a letter from my pocket, and began to read. My eye was soon caught by the impression of a seal that I had once given my wife. It was a good [woman's] motto, I jestingly told her; and now it was returned to me at my sorest need. Six little words of the good Pascal,--

"_Le plus sûr est de croire_."

Something compelled me to write them, and a new freedom was with me when I had done so.

"Make haste, make haste, for the prayer-bell is ringing!" cried the President "See, here is a copy of Plato's 'Phædrus,'--a work which our vapory brethren are fond of quoting, generally at second-hand; perhaps you may pick out a sentence that will prophesy with sufficient ambiguity."

But it was not Plato or his "Phædrus" that then claimed my thoughts. There loomed a Rock graven with more august instruction than the sage of the Academy was privileged to communicate,--a Rock against which the heaving surface of human opinion had chafed and broken in vain. Tossed to and fro upon the tide of life, who has not sometimes listened to the wrangling voices which shouted, "Mystical Interpretation," "Absolute Fiction," "Huge Conglomerate of Myths"? Whose eye has never been caught by the sparkling tinsel of modern philosophies, with their Seers, Heroes, Missions, Developments, Insights, Principles of Nature, Clairvoyance, and Magnetic Currents? Happy those who are able to return to that one channel through which magnetic currents have indeed descended from an unseen sphere, and touched the noblest hearts! For there _is_ a certain mediation between the necessities and aspirations of man,--an assured deliverance from the gross and sordid surroundings of his earthly life. There came before me one simple period from a familiar Book. Most direct and confident is the solemn statement. I wrote it as the final motto.

"NOW THE SERPENT WAS MORE SUBTILE THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD WHICH THE LORD GOD HAD MADE."

THE TERTIARY AGE, AND ITS CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS.