Warlock o' Glenwarlock Part 27

"Cosmo!" came the call again.

The sky was s.h.i.+ning with the stars, and that other light that might be its own; other than the stars and the sky he saw nothing. He looked all round his narrow horizon, the edge of the hollow between him and the sky, where the heaven and the earth met among the stars and the gra.s.s, and the stars s.h.i.+mmered like glow-worms among the thin stalks: nothing was there; its edge was unbroken by other shape than gra.s.s, daisies, ox-eyes, and stars. A soft dreamy wind came over the edge, and breathed once on his cheek. The voice came again--

"Cosmo!"

It seemed to come from far away, so soft and gentle was it, and yet it seemed near.

"It has called me three times!" said Cosmo, and rose to his feet.

There was the head of Simon Peter, as some called him, rising like a dark sun over the top of the hollow! In the faint light Cosmo knew him at once, gave a cry of pleasure, and ran to meet him.

"You called so softly," said Cosmo, "I did not know your voice."

"And you are disappointed! You thought it was a voice from some region beyond this world! I am sorry. I called softly, because I wanted to let you know I was coming, and was afraid of startling you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VAULTED INFINITUDE]

"I confess," replied Cosmo, "a little hope was beginning to flutter, that, perhaps I was called from somewhere in the unseen--like Samuel, you know; but I was too glad to see you to be much disappointed. I do sometimes wonder though, that, if there is such a world beyond as we sometime talk about, there should be so little communication between it and us. When I am out in the still time of this world, and there is nothing to interfere,--when I am not even thinking, so as to close my doors, why should never anything come? Never in my life have I had one whisper from that world."

"You are saying a great deal more than you can possibly know, Cosmo," answered Mr. Simon. "You have had no communication recognized by you as such, I grant. And I, who am so much older than you, must say the same. If there be any special fitness in the night, in its absorbing dimness, and isolating silence, for such communication--and who can well doubt it?--I have put myself in the heart of it a thousand times, when, longing after an open vision, I should have counted but the glimpse of a ghostly garment the mightiest boon, but never therefrom has the shadow of a feather fallen upon me. Yet here I am, hoping no less, and believing no less! The air around me may be full of ghosts--I do not know; I delight to think they may somehow be with us, for all they are so unseen; but so long as I am able to believe and hope in the one great ghost, the Holy Ghost that fills all, it would trouble me little to learn that betwixt me and the visible centre was nothing but what the senses of men may take account of. If there be a G.o.d, he is all in all, and filleth all things, and all is well. What matter where the region of the dead may be? Nowhere but here are they called the dead. When, of all paths, that to G.o.d is alone always open, and alone can lead the wayfarer to the end of his journey, why should I stop to peer through the fence either side of that path? If he does not care to reveal, is it well I should make haste to know? I shall know one day, why should I be eager to know now?"

"But why might not something show itself once--just for once, if only to give one a start in the right direction?" said Cosmo.

"I will tell you one reason," returned Mr. Simon, "--the same why everything is as it is, and neither this nor that other way--namely, that it is best for us it should be as it is. But I think I can see a little way into it. Suppose you saw something strange--a sign or a wonder--one of two things, it seems tome likely, would follow:--you would either doubt it the moment it had vanished, or it would grow to you as one of the common things of your daily life--which are indeed in themselves equally wonderful.

Evidently, if visions would make us sure, G.o.d does not care about the kind of sureness they can give, or for our being made sure in that way. A thing that gained in one way, might be of less than no value to us, gained in another, might, as a vital part of the process, be invaluable. G.o.d will have us sure of a thing by knowing the heart whence it comes; that is the only worthy a.s.surance. To know, he will have us go in at the great door of obedient faith; and if anybody thinks he has found a backstair, he will find it land him at a doorless wall. It is the a.s.surance that comes of inmost beholding of himself, of seeing what he is, that G.o.d cares to produce in us. Nor would he have us think we know him before we do, for thereby thousands walk in a vain show. At the same time I am free to imagine if I imagine holily--that is, as his child. And I imagine s.p.a.ce full of life invisible; imagine that the young man needed but the opening of his eyes to see the horses and chariots of fire around his master, an inner circle to the horses and chariots that encompa.s.sed the city to take him. As I came now through the fields, I lost myself for a time in the feeling that I was walking in the midst of lovely people I have known, some in person, some by their books. Perhaps they were with me--are with me--are speaking to me now. For if all our thoughts, from whatever source, whether immediately from G.o.d, or through ourselves, seem to enter the chamber of our consciousness by the same door, why may it not be so with some that come to us from other beings? Why may not the dead speak to me, and I be unable to distinguish their words from my thoughts? The moment a thought is given me, my own thought rushes to mingle with it, and I can no more part them. Some stray hints from the world beyond may mingle even with the folly and stupidity of my dreams."

"But if you cannot distinguish, where is the good?" Cosmo ventured to ask.

"Nowhere for deductive certainty. Nor, if the things themselves are not worth remembering, or worthy of influencing us, is there any good in enquiring concerning them? Shall I mind a thing that is not worth minding, because it came to me in a dream, or was told me by a ghost? It is the quality of a thing, not how it arrived, that is the point. But true things are often mingled with things grotesque.

For aught I know, at one and the same time, a spirit may be taking advantage of the door set ajar by sleep, to whisper a message of love or repentance, and the troubled brain or heart or stomach may be sending forth fumes that cloud the vision, and cause evil echoes to mingle with the hearing. When you look at any bright thing for a time, and then close your eyes, you still see the shape of it, but in different colours. This figure has come to you from the outside world, but the brain has altered it. Even the shape itself is reproduced with but partial accuracy: some imperfection in the recipient sense, or in the receptacle, sends imperfection into the presentation. In a way something similar may our contact with the dwellers beyond fare in our dreams. My unknown mother may be talking to me in my sleep, and up rises some responsive but stupid dream-cloud of my own, and mingles with and ruins the descended grace. But it is well to remind you again that the things around us are just as full of marvel as those into which you are so anxious to look. Our people in the other world, although they have proved these earthly things before, probably now feel them strange, and full of a marvel the things about them have lost."

"All is well. The only thing worth a man's care is the will of G.o.d, and that will is the same whether in this world or in the next.

That will has made this world ours, not the next; for nothing can be ours until G.o.d has given it to us. Curiosity is but the contemptible human shadow of the holy thing wonder. No, my son, let us make the best we can of this life, that we may become able to make the best of the next also."

"And how make the best of this?" asked Cosmo.

"Simply by falling in with G.o.d's design in the making of you. That design must be worked out--cannot be worked out without you. You must walk in the front of things with the will of G.o.d--not be dragged in the sweep of his garment that makes the storm behind him! To walk with G.o.d is to go hand in hand with him, like a boy with his father. Then, as to the other world, or any world, as to the past sorrow, the vanished joy, the coming fear, all is well; for the design of the making, the loving, the pitiful, the beautiful G.o.d, is marching on towards divine completion, that is, a never ending one. Yea, if it please my sire that his infinite be awful to me, yet will I face it, for it is his. Let your prayer, my son, be like this:'O Maker of me, go on making me, and let me help thee. Come, O Father! here I am; let us go on. I know that my words are those of a child, but it is thy child who prays to thee. It is thy dark I walk in; it is thy hand I hold.'"

The words of his teacher sank into the heart of Cosmo, for his spirit was already in the lofty condition of capacity for receiving wisdom direct from another.

It is a lofty condition, and they who scorn it but show they have not reached it--nor are likely to reach it soon. Such as will not be taught through eye or ear, must be taught through the skin, and that is generally a long as well as a painful process. All Cosmo's superiority came of his having faith in those who were higher than he. True, he had not yet been tried; but the trials of a pure, honest, teachable youth, must, however severe, be very different from those of one unteachable. The former are for growth, the latter for change.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AT COLLEGE.

The summer and autumn had yet to pa.s.s before he left home for the university of the north. He spent them in steady work with Mr.

Simon. But the steadier his work, and the greater his enjoyment of it, the dearer was his liberty, and the keener his delight in the world around him. He worked so well that he could afford to dream too; and his excursions and his imaginings alike took wide and wider sweeps; while for both, ever in the near or far distance, lay the harbour, the nest of his home. It drew him even when it lay behind him, and he returned to it as the goal he had set out to seek. It was as if, in every excursion or flight, he had but sought to find his home afresh, to approach it by a new path. But--the wind-fall?--nay, the G.o.d-send of the golden horse, gave him such a feeling of wealth and freedom, that he now began to dream in a fresh direction, namely, of things he would do if he were rich; and as he was of a constructive disposition, his fancies in this direction turned chiefly on the enlarging and beautifying of the castle--but always with the impossibility understood of destroying a feature of its ancient dignity and historic worth.

A portion of the early summer he spent in enlarging the garden on the south side or back of the house. One portion of the ground there seemed to him to have been neglected--the part which lay between the block in which was the kitchen, and that in which was the drawing-room. These stood at right angles to each other, their gables making two sides of a square. But he found the rock so near the surface, that he could not utilize much of it. This set him planning how the s.p.a.ce might be used for building. In the angle, the rock came above ground entirely, and had been made the foundation of a wall connecting the two corners, to defend the court--a thick strong wall of huge stones, that seemed as solid as the rock. He grew fond of the spot, almost forsaking for it his formerly favoured stone, and in the pauses of his gardening would sit with his back against this wall, dreaming of the days to come.

Here also he would bring his book, and read or write for hours, sometimes drawing plans of the changes and additions he would make, of the pa.s.sages and galleries that might be contrived to connect the various portions of the house, and of the restoration of old defences. The whole thing was about as visionary as his dream of Tree-top-city, but it exercised his constructive faculty, and exercise is growth, and growth in any direction, if the heart be true, is growth in all directions.

The days glided by. The fervid Summer slid away round the shoulder of the world, and made room for her dignified matron sister; my lady Autumn swept her frayed and discoloured train out of the great hall-door of the world, and old brother Winter, who so a.s.siduously waits upon the house, and cleans its innermost recesses, was creeping around it, biding his time, but eager to get to his work.

The day drew near when Cosmo must leave the house of his fathers, the walls that framed almost all his fancies, the home where it was his unchanging dream to spend his life, until he went to his mother in heaven.

I will not follow his intellectual development. The REAL education of the youth is enough for my narrative.

His mind was too much filled with high hopes and lofty judgments, to be tempted like a common nature in the new circ.u.mstances in which he found himself. There are not a few who, believing of others as they are themselves, and teaching as they practise, represent the youth of the nation as necessarily vile; but let not the pure thence imagine there is no one pure but himself. There is life in our nation yet, and a future for her yet, none the less that the weak and cowardly and self-indulgent neither enter into the kingdom of G.o.d, nor work any salvation in the earth. Cosmo left the university at least as clean as he went to it.

He had few companions. Those whom he liked best could not give him much. They looked up to him far more than he knew, for they had avague suspicion that he was a genius; but they ministered almost only to his heart. The unworthy amongst his fellow-students scorned him with looks askance, and called him Baby Warlock--for on more than one of them he had literally turned his back when his conversation displeased him. None of them however cared to pick a quarrel with him. The devil finds it easier to persuade fools that there is dignity in the knowledge of evil, and that ignorance of it is contemptible, than to give them courage. Truly, if ignorance is the foundation of any man's goodness, it is not worth the wind that upsets it, but in its mere self, ignorance of evil is a negative good. It is those who do not love good that require to be handed over to evil. The grinders did not care about Cosmo, for neither was he of their sort. Now and then, however, one of them would be mildly startled by a request from him for a.s.sistance in some pa.s.sage, which, because he did not GO IN for what they counted scholars.h.i.+p, they could hardly believe him interested. Cosmo regarded everything from amidst a.s.sociations of which they had none. In his instinctive reach after life, he a.s.similated all food that came in his way. His growing life was his sole impulsive after knowledge. And already he saw a glimmer here and there in regions of mathematics from which had never fallen a ray into the corner of an eye of those grinding men. That was because he read books of poetry and philosophy of which they had never heard. For the rest, he pa.s.sed his examinations creditably, and indeed, in more than one case, with unexpected as unsought distinction. I must mention, however, that he did all his set work first, and thoroughly, before giving himself what he hungered after.

Of society in the city he had no knowledge. Amongst the tradespeople he made one or two acquaintances.

His father had been so much pleased with the jeweller to whom he parted with the golden horse, that he requested Cosmo to call upon him as soon as he was settled. Cosmo found him a dignified old gentleman--none the less of a gentleman, and all the more of a man, that he had in his youth worked with his own hands. He took a liking to Cosmo, and, much pleased with his ready interest in whatever he told him, for Cosmo was never tired of listening to anyone who talked of what he knew, made him acquainted with many things belonging to his trade, and communicated many of his experiences. Indifferent to the opinion of any to whom he had not first learned to look up, n.o.body ever listened better than Cosmo to any story of human life, however humble. Everybody seemed to him of his own family. The greater was the revulsion of his feeling when he came upon anything false in character or low in behaviour. He was then severe, even to utter breach. Incapable of excusing himself, he was incapable also of excusing others. But though gentleness towards the faults of others is an indispensable fruit of life, it is perhaps well it should be a comparatively late one: there is danger of foreign excuse reacting on home conduct. Excuse ought to be rooted in profoundest obedience, and outgoing love. To say ANYTHING is too small to matter, is of the devil; to say anything is too great to forgive, is not of G.o.d. He who would soonest die to divide evil and his fellows, will be the readiest to make for them all HONEST excuse.

Cosmo liked best to hear Mr. Burns talk about precious stones.

There he was great, for he had a pa.s.sion for them, and Cosmo was more than ready to be infected with it. By the hour together would he discourse of them; now on the different and comparative merits of individual stones which had at one time and another pa.s.sed through his hands, and on the way they were cut, or ought to have been cut; now on the conditions of size, shape, and water, as indicating the special best way of cutting them; now on the various settings, as bringing out the qualities of different kinds and differing stones.

One day he came upon the subject of the weather in relation to stones: on such a sort of day you ought to buy this or that kind of stone; on such another you must avoid buying this or that kind, and seek rather to sell.

Up to this moment, and the mention of this last point, Cosmo had believed Mr. Burns an immaculate tradesman, but here the human gem was turned at that angle to the light which revealed the flaw in it. There are tradesmen not a few, irreproachable in regard to money, who are not so in regard to the quality of their wares in relation to the price: they take and do not give the advantage of their superior knowledge; and well can I imagine how such a one will laugh at the idea that he ought not: to him every customer is more or less of a pigeon.

"If I could but buy plenty of such sapphires," said Mr. Burns, "on a foggy afternoon like this, when the air is as yellow as a cairngorm, and sell them the first summer-like day of spring, I should make a fortune in a very few years."

"But you wouldn't do it, Mr. Burns?" Cosmo ventured to suggest, in some foreboding anxiety, caused by the tone in which the man had spoken: he would fain have an express repudiation of the advantage thus to be obtained.

"Why not?" rejoined Mr. Burns, lifting his keen gray eyes, with some wonder in them, and looking Cosmo straight in the face. His mind also was crossed by a painful doubt: was the young man a mere innocent? was he "NO A' THERE?"

"Because it is not honest," replied Cosmo.

"Not honest!" exclaimed the jeweller, in a tone loud with anger, and deep with a sense of injury--whether at the idea that he should be capable of a dishonest thing, or at the possibility of having, for honesty's sake, to yield a money-making principle, I do not know; "I present the thing as it is, and leave my customer to judge according to his knowledge. Is mine to be worth nothing to me?

There is no deception in the affair. A jeweller's business is not like a horse-dealer's. The stone is as G.o.d made it, and the day is as G.o.d made it, only my knowledge enables me to use both to better purpose than my neighbour can."

"Then a man's knowledge is for himself alone--for his own behoof exclusively--not for the common advantage of himself and his neighbour?" said Cosmo.

"Mine is so far for my neighbour, that I never offer him a stone that is not all I say it is. He gets the advantage of his knowledge, let us say, in selling me wine, which he understands to fit my taste with; and I get the advantage of my knowledge in selling him the ring that pleases him. Both are satisfied. Neither asks the other what he paid for this or that. But why make any bones about it; the first acknowledged principle in business is, to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest."

"Where does the love of your neighbour come in then?"

"That has nothing to do with business; it belongs to the relations of social life. No command must be interpreted so as to make it impossible to obey it. Business would come to a stand-still--no man could make a fortune that way."

"You think then that what we are sent here for is to make a fortune?"

"Most people do. I don't know about SENT FOR. That's what, I fancy, I find myself behind this counter for. Anyhow the world would hardly go on upon any other supposition."