Wilfrid Cumbermede Part 84

About five years after I left home, I happened in my wanderings to be in one of my favourite Swiss valleys--high and yet sheltered. I rejoiced to be far up in the mountains, yet behold the inaccessible peaks above me--mine, though not to be trodden by foot of mine--my heart's own, though never to yield me a moment's outlook from their lofty brows; for I was never strong enough to reach one mighty summit.

It was enough for me that they sent me down the glad streams from the cold bosoms of their glaciers--the offspring of the sun and the snow; that I too beheld the stars to which they were nearer than I.

One lovely morning I had wandered a good way from the village--a place little frequented by visitors, where I had a lodging in the house of the syndic--when I was overtaken by one of the sudden fogs which so frequently render those upper regions dangerous. There was no path to guide me back to my temporary home, but, a hundred yards or so beneath where I had been sitting, lay that which led down to one of the best known villages of the canton, where I could easily find shelter. I made haste to descend.

After a couple of hours' walking, during which the fog kept following me, as if hunting me from its lair, I at length arrived at the level of the valley, and was soon in one of those large hotels which in Summer are crowded as bee-hives, and in Winter forsaken as a ruin. The season for travellers was drawing to a close, and the house was full of homeward-bound guests.

For the mountains will endure but a season of intrusion. If travellers linger too long within their hospitable gates, their humour changes, and, with fierce winds and snow and bitter sleet, they will drive them forth, preserving their Winter privacy for the bosom friends of their mistress, Nature. Many is the Winter since those of my boyhood which I have spent amongst the Alps; and in such solitude I have ever found the negation of all solitude, the one absolute Presence. David communed with his own heart on his bed and was still--there finding G.o.d: communing with my own heart in the Winter-valleys of Switzerland I found at least what made me cry out: 'Surely this is the house of G.o.d; this is the gate of heaven!' I would not be supposed to fancy that G.o.d is in mountains, and not in plains--that G.o.d is in the solitude, and not in the city: in any region harmonious with its condition and necessities, it is easier, for the heart to be still, and in its stillness to hear the still small voice.

Dinner was going on at the _table-d'hote_. It was full, but a place was found for me in a bay-window. Turning to the one side, I belonged to the great world, represented by the Germans, Americans, and English, with a Frenchman and Italian here and there, filling the long table; turning to the other, I knew myself in a temple of the Most High, so huge that it seemed empty of men. The great altar of a mighty mountain rose, ma.s.sy as a world, and ethereal as a thought, into the upturned gulf of the twilight air--its snowy peak, ever as I turned to look, mounting up and up to its repose. I had been playing with my own soul, spinning it between the sun and the moon, as it were, and watching now the golden and now the silvery side, as I glanced from the mountain to the table, and again from the table to the mountain, when all at once I discovered that I was searching the mountain for something--I did not know what. Whether any tones had reached me, I cannot tell;--a man's mind may, even through his senses, be marvellously moved without knowing whence the influence comes;--but there I was searching the face of the mountain for something, with a want which had not begun to explain itself. From base to peak my eyes went flitting and resting and wandering again upwards. At last they reached the snowy crown, from which they fell into the infinite blue beyond. Then, suddenly, the unknown something I wanted was clear. The same moment I turned to the table. Almost opposite was a face--pallid, with parted lips and fixed eyes--gazing at me. Then I knew those eyes had been gazing at me all the time I had been searching the face of the mountain. For one moment they met mine and rested; for one moment, I felt as if I must throw myself at her feet, and clasp them to my heart; but she turned her eyes away, and I rose and left the house.

The mist was gone, and the moon was rising. I walked up the mountain path towards my village. But long ere I reached it the sun was rising.

With his first arrow of slenderest light, the tossing waves of my spirit began to lose their white tops, and sink again towards a distant calm; and ere I saw the village from the first point of vision, I had made the following verses. They are the last I will set down.

I know that I cannot move thee To an echo of my pain, Or a thrill of the storming trouble That racks my soul and brain;

That our hearts through all the ages Shall never sound in tune; That they meet no more in their cycles Than the parted sun and moon.

But if ever a spirit flashes Itself on another soul, One day, in thy stillness, a vapour Shall round about thee roll;

And the lifting of the vapour Shall reveal a world of pain, Of frosted suns, and moons that wander Through misty mountains of rain.

Thou shalt know me for one live instant-- Thou halt know me--and yet not love: I would not have thee troubled, My cold, white-feathered dove!

I would only once come near thee--Myself, and not my form; Then away in the distance wander, A slow-dissolving storm.

The vision should pa.s.s in vapour, That melts in aether again; Only a something linger-Not pain, but the shadow of pain.

And I should know that thy spirit On mine one look had sent; And glide away from thy knowledge, And try to be half-content.

CHAPTER LXV.

CONCLUSION.

The ebbing tide that leaves bare the sh.o.r.e swells the heaps of the central sea. The tide of life ebbs from this body of mine, soon to lie on the sh.o.r.e of life like a stranded wreck; but the murmur of the waters that break upon no strand is in my ears; to join the waters of the infinite life, mine is ebbing away.

Whatever has been his will is well--grandly well--well even for that in me which feared, and in those very respects in which it feared that it might not be well. The whole being of me past and present shall say: It is infinitely well, and I would not have it otherwise. Rather than it should not be as it is, I would go back to the world and this body of which I grew weary, and encounter yet again all that met me on my journey. Yes--final submission of my will to the All-will--I would meet it _knowing what was coming_. Lord of me, Father of Jesus Christ, will this suffice? Is my faith enough yet? I say it, not having beheld what thou hast in store--not knowing what I shall be--not even absolutely certain that thou art--confident only that, if thou be, such thou must be.

The last struggle is before me. But I have pa.s.sed already through so many valleys of death itself, where the darkness was not only palpable, but choking and stinging, that I cannot greatly fear that which holds but the shadow of death. For what men call death, is but its shadow.

Death never comes near us; it lies behind the back of G.o.d; he is between it and us. If he were to turn his back upon us, the death which no imagination can shadow forth, would lap itself around us, and we should be--we should not know what.

At night I lie wondering how it will feel; and, but that G.o.d will be with me, I would rather be slain suddenly, than lie still and await the change. The growing weakness, ushered in, it may be, by long agony; the alienation from things about me, while I am yet amidst them; the slow rending of the bonds which make this body a home, so that it turns half alien, while yet some bonds unsevered hold the live thing fluttering in its worm-eaten cage--but G.o.d knows me and my house, and I need not speculate or forebode. When it comes, death will prove as natural as birth. Bethink thee, Lord--nay, thou never forgettest. It is because thou thinkest and feelest that I think and feel; it is on thy deeper consciousness that mine ever floats; thou knowest my frame, and rememberest that I am dust: do with me as thou wilt. Let me take centuries to die if so thou willest, for thou wilt be with me. Only if an hour should come when thou must seem to forsake me, watch me all the time, lest self-pity should awake, and I should cry that thou wast dealing hardly with me. For when thou hidest thy face, the world is a corpse, and I am a live soul fainting within it.

Thus far had I written, and was about to close with certain words of Job, which are to me like the trumpet of the resurrection, when the news reached me that Sir Geoffrey Brotherton was dead. He leaves no children, and the property is expected to pa.s.s to a distant branch of the family. Mary will have to leave Moldwarp Hall.

I have been up to London to my friend Marston--for it is years since Mr Coningham died. I have laid everything before him, and left the affair in his hands. He is so confident in my cause, that he offers, in case my means should fail me, to find what is necessary himself; but he is almost as confident of a speedy settlement.

And now, for the first time in my life, I am about--shall I say, to court society? At least I am going to London, about to give and receive invitations, and cultivate the acquaintance of those whose appearance and conversation attract me.

I have not a single relative, to my knowledge, in the world, and I am free, beyond question, to leave whatever property I have, or may have, to whomsoever I please.

My design is this: if I succeed in my suit, I will offer Moldwarp to Mary for her lifetime. She is greatly beloved in the county, and has done much for the labourers, nor upon her own lands only. If she had the full power she would do yet better. But of course it is very doubtful whether she will accept it. Should she decline it, I shall try to manage it myself--leaving it to her, with reversion to the man, whoever he may be, whom I shall choose to succeed her.

What sort of man I shall endeavour to find, I think my reader will understand. I will not describe him, beyond saying that he must above all things be just, generous, and free from the petty prejudices of the country gentleman. He must understand that property involves service to every human soul that lives or labours upon it--the service of the elder brother to his less burdened yet more enduring and more helpless brothers and sisters; that for the lives of all such he has in his degree to render account. For surely G.o.d never meant to uplift any man _at the expense_ of his fellows; but to uplift him that he might be strong to minister, as a wise friend and ruler, to their highest and best needs--first of all by giving them the justice which will be recognized as such by him before whom a man _is_ his brother's keeper, and becomes a Cain in denying it.

Lest Lady Brotherton, however, should like to have something to give away, I leave my former will as it was. It is in Marston's hands.

Would I marry her now, if I might? I cannot tell. The thought rouses no pa.s.sionate flood within me. Mighty s.p.a.ces of endless possibility and endless result open before me. Death is knocking at my door.--

No--no; I will be honest, and lay it to no half reasons, however wise.--I would rather meet her then first, when she is clothed in that new garment called by St Paul the spiritual body. That, Geoffrey has never touched; over that he has no claim.

But if the loveliness of her character should have purified his, and drawn and bound his soul to hers?

Father, fold me in thyself. The storm, so long still, awakes; once more it flutters its fierce pinions. Let it not swing itself aloft in the air of my spirit. I dare not think, not merely lest thought should kindle into agony, but lest I should fail to rejoice over the lost and found. But my heart is in thy hand. Need I school myself to bow to an imagined decree of thine? Is it not enough that, when I shall know a thing for thy will, I shall then be able to say: Thy will be done? It is not enough; I need more. School thou my heart so to love thy will that in all calmness I leave to think what may or may not be its choice, and rest in its holy self.

She has sent for me. I go to her. I will not think beforehand what I shall say.

Something within tells me that a word from her would explain all that sometimes even now seems so inexplicable as hers. Will she speak that word? Shall I pray her for that word? I know nothing. The pure Will be done!

THE END.