第145章

He more and more seldom went out of the house, more and more seldom left his apartment. At times he would read a great deal, then for days would not open a book, but seem absorbed in meditation--a meditation which had nothing in it worthy of the name. In his communications with Donal, he did not seem in the least aware that he had made him the holder of a secret by which he could frustrate his plans for his family. These plans he clung to, partly from paternity, partly from contempt for society, and partly in the fancy of repairing the wrong he had done his children's mother. The morally diseased will atone for wrong by fresh wrong--in its turn to demand like reparation! He would do anything now to secure his sons in the position of which in law he had deprived them by the wrong he had done the woman whom all had believed his wife. Through the marriage of the eldest with the heiress, he would make him the head of the house in power as in dignity, and this was now almost the only tie that bound him to the reality of things. He cared little enough about Forgue, but his conscience was haunted with his cruelties to the youth's mother. These were often such as I dare not put on record: they came all of the pride of self-love and self-worship--as evil demons as ever raged in the fiercest fire of Moloch. In the madness with which they possessed him, he had inflicted upon her not only sorest humiliations, but bodily tortures: he would see, he said, what she would bear for his sake!

In the horrible presentments of his drug-procured dreams they returned upon him in terrible forms of righteous retaliation. And now, though to himself he was constantly denying a life beyond, the conviction had begun to visit and overwhelm him that he must one day meet her again: fain then would he be armed with something which for her sake he had done for her children! One of the horrible laws of the false existence he led was that, for the deadening of the mind to any evil, there was no necessity it should be done and done again; it had but to be presented in the form of a thing done, or a thing going to be done, to seem a thing reasonable and doable. In his being, a world of false appearances had taken the place of reality; a creation of his own had displaced the creation of the essential Life, by whose power alone he himself falsely created; and in this world he was the dupe of his own home-born phantoms. Out of this conspiracy of marsh and mirage, what vile things might not issue! Over such a chaos the devil has power all but creative. He cannot in truth create, but he can with the degenerate created work moral horrors too hideous to be analogized by any of the horrors of the unperfected animal world. Such are being constantly produced in human society; many of them die in the darkness in which they are generated; now and then one issues, blasting the public day with its hideous glare. Because they are seldom seen, many deny they exist, or need be spoken of if they do. But to terrify a man at the possibilities of his neglected nature, is to do something towards the redemption of that nature.

School-hours were over, but Davie was seated where he had left him, still working. At sight of him Donal, feeling as if he had just come from the presence of the damned, almost burst into tears. A moment more and Arctura entered: it was as if the roof of hell gave way, and the blue sky of the eternal came pouring in heavenly deluge through the ruined vault.

"I have been to call upon Sophia," she said.

"I am glad to hear it," answered Donal: any news from an outer world of yet salvable humanity was welcome as summer to a land of ice.

"Yes," she said; "I am able to go and see her now, because I am no longer afraid of her--partly, I think, because I no longer care what she thinks of me. Her power over me is gone."

"And will never return," said Donal, "while you keep close to the master. With him you need no human being to set you right, and will allow no human being to set you wrong; you will need neither friend nor minister nor church, though all will help you. I am very glad, for something seems to tell me I shall not be long here."

Arctura dropped on a chair--pale as rosy before.

"Has anything fresh happened?" she asked, in a low voice that did not sound like hers. "Surely you will not leave me while--.--I thought--I thought--.--What is it?"

"It is only a feeling I have," he answered. "I believe I am out of spirits."

"I never saw you so before!" said Arctura. "I hope you are not going to be ill."

"Oh, no; it is not that! I will tell you some day, but I cannot now.

All is in God's hands!"

She looked anxiously at him, but did not ask him any question more.

She proposed they should take a turn in the park, and his gloom wore gradually off.