The Zeit-Geist - Lily Dougall (black female authors .txt) 📗

it to cause the long, slow growth of root and stem, and therefore it soon puts forth its little blossom. These things all happen, of course, according to eternal law of inward development; they are not altered by any force from without, because nothing is without: the sun that makes the daisy to blossom is just that amount of sun that it absorbs into itself, and so with the acorn or the pine-cone. These latter, however, do not produce any bright immediate blossom, though they ultimately change the face of all that spot of earth by the spread of their roots and branches.

After praying a long time Bart Toyner relapsed into meditation, endeavouring to contemplate those attributes of his God which might bring him the strength which he had not yet attained, and just here came to him the subtlest and strongest reinforcement to all those arguments which were chiming together upon what appeared to him the side of evil. The God in whom he had learned to trust was a God who, moved by pity, had come out of His natural path to give a chance of salvation to wicked men by the sacrifice of Himself. To what did he owe his own rescue but to this special adjustment of law made by God? and how then was it right for him to adhere to the course the regular law imposed on him and to hunt down Markham? If he saved Markham, he would answer to the law for his own breach of duty--this would be at least some sacrifice. Was not this course a more God-like one?

There was one part of Toyner that spoke out clearly and said that his duty was exactly what he had esteemed it to be before Ann Markham appealed to him. He believed this part of him to be his conscience.

All the rest of him slowly veered round to thoughts of mercy rather than legal duty; he thought of Ann and Christa with hard, godless hearts, surrounded by every form of folly and sin, and he believed that Ann would keep her promise to him, and that different surroundings would give them different souls. Yet he felt convinced that God and conscience forbade this act of mercy.

One thing he was as certain of now as he had been at the beginning--that if he disobeyed God, God would leave him to the power of all his evil appetites; he felt already that his heart gave out thoughts of affection to his old evil life.

As the hours passed he began to realise that he would need to disobey God. He found himself less and less able to face the thought of giving up this rare opportunity of winning Ann's favour and an influence over her--_moral_ influence at least; his mind was clear enough to see that what was gained by disobeying God's law was from a religious point of view nil. In his mind was the beginning of a contempt for God's way of saving him. If he was to win his own soul by consigning Ann and her father to probable perdition, he did not want to win it.

The August morning came radiant and fresh; the air, sharp with a touch of frost from neighbouring hills, bore strength and lightness for every creature. The sunlight was gay on the little wooden town, on its breezy gardens and wastes of flowering weeds, on the descent of the foaming fall, on the clear brown river. Even the sober wood of ash and maple glistened in the morning light, and the birds sang songs that in countries where a longer summer reigns are only heard in spring-time.

Bart Toyner went out of the house exhausted and almost hopeless. The source of his strength had failed within him. He looked forward to defeat.

As it happened Toyner's official responsibility for Markham's arrest was to be lightened. The Crown Attorney for the county had already communicated with the local government, and a detective had been sent, who arrived that morning by the little steamboat. Before Toyner realised the situation he found himself in consultation with the new-comer as to the best means of seeking Markham. Did the perfect righteousness require that he should betray Ann's confidence and state that Markham was in hiding somewhere within reach? Bart looked the question for a moment in the face, and trembled before it. Then he set it aside unanswered, resolved on reticence, whether it was right or wrong.

The detective, finding that Toyner had no clue to report, soon went to drink Ann's beer, on business intent. Bart kept sedulously apart from this interview. When it was over the stranger took Toyner by the arm and told him privately that he was convinced that the young woman knew nothing whatever about the prisoner, and as Markham had been gone now forty-eight hours it was his opinion that it was not near Fentown that he would be found.

This communication was made to Toyner in the public-house, where they had both gone the better to discuss their affairs. Toyner had gone in labouring under horrible emotion. He believed that he was going to get drunk, and the result of his fear was that he broke his pledge, giving as an excuse to the by-standers that he felt ill. Yet he did not get drunk.

Toyner saw the detective depart by the afternoon boat, and as he walked back upon the bit of hot dusty road in the sun he reeled, not with the spirits he had taken, but with the sickening sense that his battle was lost.

Nothing seemed fair to him, nothing attractive, but to drink one more glass of spirits, and to go and make promises to Ann that would be sweet to her ear. He knew that for him it was the gate of death.

At this point the minister met him, and jumped at once to the conclusion that he was drunk. The minister was one of those good men who found their faith in God upon absolute want of faith in man. His heart was better than his head, as is the case with all small-minded souls that have come into conscious contact with God, but his opinions ruled his official conduct. "I am afraid you have been drinking, Toyner," he said reproachfully.

The first three words, "I am afraid," were enough for Bart; he was filled himself with an all-pervading fear--a fear of himself, a fear of God, a fear of the devil who would possess him again. He was not drunk; the fact that drunkenness in him appeared so likely to this man, who was the best friend he had, completed in his heart the work of revolt against the minister and the minister's God. What right had God to take him up and clothe him and keep him in his right mind for a little while, just to let him fall at the first opportunity? It was quite true that he had deserved it, no doubt; he had done wrong, and he was going to do wrong; but God, who had gone out of His way to mercifully convert him and keep him straight for a while, could certainly have gone on keeping him if He had chosen. His mind was a logical one. He had been taught to praise God for some extraordinary favour towards him; he had been taught that the grace which had changed his life for good was in no degree his own; and why then was he to bear all the disgrace of his return to evil?

In the next hours he walked the streets of the town, and talked to other men when need was, and did a little business on his own account in the agency in which he was engaged, and went home and took supper, watching the vagaries of his father's senile mania with more than common pity for the old man. His own wretchedness gave him an aching heart of sympathy for all the sorrow of others which came across his mind that day.

The whole day was a new revelation to him of what tenderness for others could be and ought to be.

He did not hope to attain to any working out of this higher sympathy and pity himself. The wonderful confidence which his new faith had so long given him, that he was able in God's strength to perform the higher rather than the lower law of his nature, had ebbed away. God's strength was no longer with him; he was going to the devil; he could do nothing for himself, little for others; but he sympathised as never before with all poor lost souls. He was a little surprised, as the day wore to a close, that he had been able to control his craving, that he had not taken more rum. Still, he knew that he would soon be helpless. It was his doom, for he could awake in himself no further feeling of repentance or desire to return to God.

In the long day's struggle, half conscious and half unconscious, his love for Ann--and it was not a bad sort of love either--had triumphed over what principle he had; it had survived the sudden shock that had wrecked his faith. The hell which he was experiencing was intolerable now, because of the heaven which he had seen, and he could not forgive the God who had ordained it. The unreal notion that an omnipotent God can permit what He does not ordain could have no weight with him, for he was grappling with reality. As he brooded bitterly upon his own fate, his heart became enlarged with tenderness for all other poor helpless creatures like himself who were under the same misrule.

His resolution was taken--he would use his sobriety to help Ann. It would not profit himself, but still he would win from her the promise concerning her future life and Christa's which she had offered him, and he would go that night and do all that a man could do to help the poor wretch to whom his heart went out with ever-increasing pity. It would not be much, but he would do what he could, and after that he would tell the authorities what he had done and give up his office. He had a very vague notion of the penalties he would incur; if they put him in prison, so much the better--it might save him a little longer from drinking himself to death.

Like an honest man he had given up attempting to pull God round to his own position. He did not now think for a moment that the act of love and mercy which possessed his soul was a pious one; his motive he believed to be solely his pity for Markham and his love for Ann, which, being natural, he supposed to be selfish, and, being selfish, he knew to be unholy.

It had all come to this, then--his piety, his reformation, his prayers, his thanksgiving, his faith. His heart within him gave a sneering laugh. He was terribly to blame, of course--he was a reprobate; but surely God was to blame too!


CHAPTER VII.

Ann Markham's thoughts of Bart that day were chiefly wondering thoughts. She tried to think scornfully of his refusal to help her; theoretically she derided the religion that produced the refusal, but in the bottom of her heart she looked at it with a wonder that was akin to admiration. Then there was a question whether he would remain fixed in his resolution. If this man did not love her then Ann's confidence failed her in respect to her judgment of what was or was not; for though she had regarded him always as a person