Kitabı oku: «David Elginbrod», sayfa 25

CHAPTER II. LETTERS FOR THE POST

 
Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,
Which way soe’er I look, I see.
Some may dream merrily, but when they wake,
They dress themselves, and come to thee.
 

GEORGE HERBERT.—Home.

He got his writing materials, and wrote to the effect, that a graduate of a Scotch university was prepared to give private lessons in the classics and mathematics, or even in any of the inferior branches of education, &c., &c. This he would take to the Times next day.

As soon as he had done this, Duty lifted up her head, and called him. He obeyed, and wrote to his mother. Duty called again; and he wrote, though with much trepidation and humiliation, to David Elginbrod.

It was a good beginning. He had commenced his London life in doing what he knew he ought to do. His trepidation in writing to David, arose in part, it must be confessed, from the strange result of one of the experiments at Arnstead.

This was his letter. But he sat and meditated a long time before he began it.

“MY DEAR FRIEND,—If I did not think you would forgive me, I should feel, now that I have once allowed my mind to rest upon my conduct to you, as if I could never hold up my head again. After much occupation of thought and feeling with other things, a season of silence has come, and my sins look me in the face. First of them all is my neglect of you, to whom I owe more than to any man else, except, perhaps, my father. Forgive me, for forgiveness’ sake. You know it takes a long time for a child to know its mother. It takes everything as a matter of course, till suddenly one day it lifts up its eyes, and knows that a face is looking at it. I have been like the child towards you; but I am beginning to feel what you have been to me. I want to be good. I am very lonely now in great noisy London. Write to me, if you please, and comfort me. I wish I were as good as you. Then everything would go right with me. Do not suppose that I am in great trouble of any kind. As yet I am very comfortable, as far as external circumstances go. But I have a kind of aching inside me. Something is not right, and I want your help. You will know what I mean. What am I to do? Please to remember me in the kindest, most grateful manner to Mrs. Elginbrod and Margaret. It is more than I deserve, but I hope they have not forgotten me as I have seemed to forget them.

“I am, my dear Mr. Elginbrod,

“Your old friend,

“HUGH SUTHERLAND.”

I may as well insert here another letter, which arrived at Turriepuffit, likewise addressed to David, some six weeks after the foregoing. They were both taken to Janet, of course:

“SIR,—I have heard from one who knows you, that you believe—really believe in God. That is why I write to you. It may seem very strange in me to do so, but how can I help it? I am a very unhappy woman, for I am in the power of a bad man. I cannot explain it all to you, and I will not attempt it; for sometimes I almost think I am out of my mind, and that it is all a delusion. But, alas! delusion or not, it is a dreadful reality to me in all its consequences. It is of such a nature that no one can help me—but God, if there be a God; and if you can make me believe that there is a God, I shall not need to be persuaded that he will help me; for I will besiege him with prayers night and day to set me free. And even if I am out of my mind, who can help me but him? Ah! is it not when we are driven to despair, when there is no more help anywhere, that we look around for some power of good that can put right all that is wrong? Tell me, dear sir, what to do. Tell me that there certainly is a God; else I shall die raving. He said you knew about him better than anybody else.

“I am, honoured Sir,

“Your obedient servant,

“EUPHRASIA CAMERON

“Arnstead, Surrey, &c., &c.”

David’s answer to this letter, would have been something worth having. But I think it would have been all summed up in one word: Try and see: call and listen.

But what could Janet do with such letters? She did the only thing she could: she sent them to Margaret.

Hugh found it no great hardship to go to bed in the same room in which he sat. The bed looked peculiarly inviting; for, strange to tell, it was actually hung with the same pattern of old-fashioned chintz, as the bed which had been his from his earliest recollection, till he left his father’s house. How could he mistake the trees, growing with tufts to the ground, or the great birds which he used to think were crows, notwithstanding their red and yellow plumage? It was all over red, brown, and yellow. He could remember, and reconstruct the very faces, distorted and awful, which, in the delirium of childish sicknesses, he used to discover in the foliage and stems of the trees. It made the whole place seem to him homely and kind. When he got tired, he knelt by his bedside, which he had not done for a long time, and then went to bed. Hardship! No. It was very pleasant to see the dying fire, and his books about and his papers; and to dream, half-asleep and half-awake, that the house-fairies were stealing out to gambol for a little in the fire-lighted silence of the room as he slept, and to vanish as the embers turned black. He had not been so happy for a long time as now. The writing of that letter had removed a load from his heart. True, we can never be at peace till we have performed the highest duty of all—till we have arisen, and gone to our Father; but the performance of smaller duties, yes, even of the smallest, will do more to give us temporary repose, will act more as healthful anodynes, than the greatest joys that can come to us from any other quarter. He soon fell asleep, and dreamed that he was a little child lost in a snow-storm; and that just as the snow had reached above his head, and he was beginning to be smothered, a great hand caught hold of him by the arm and lifted him out; and, lo! the storm had ceased, and the stars were sparkling overhead like diamonds that had been drinking the light of the sun all day; and he saw that it was David, as strong as ever, who had rescued him, the little child, and was leading him home to Janet. But he got sleepy and faint upon the way, which was long and cold; and then David lifted him up and carried him in his bosom, and he fell asleep. When he woke, and, opening his eyes, looked up to him who bore him, it was David no longer. The face was that which was marred more than any man’s, because the soul within had loved more; it was the face of the Son of Man, and he was carrying him like a lamb in his bosom. He gazed more and more as they travelled through the cold night; and the joy of lying in the embrace of that man, grew and grew, till it became too strong for the bonds of sleep; and he awoke in the fog of a London morning.

CHAPTER III. ENDEAVOURS

 
And, even should misfortunes come,
—I, here wha sit, hae met wi’ some,
An’s thankfu’ for them yet.
They gie the wit of age to youth;
They let us ken oursel’;
They mak’ us see the naked truth,
The real guid and ill.
Tho’ losses, and crosses,
Be lessons right severe,
There’s wit there, ye’ll get there,
Ye’ll find nae other where.
 

BURNS

Hugh took his advertisement to the Times office, and paid what seemed to him an awful amount for its insertion. Then he wandered about London till the middle of the day, when he went into a baker’s shop, and bought two penny loaves, which he put in his pocket. Having found his way to the British Museum, he devoured them at his leisure as he walked through the Grecian and Roman saloons. “What is the use of good health,” he said to himself, “if a man cannot live upon bread?” Porridge and oatmeal cakes would have pleased him as well; but that food for horses is not so easily procured in London, and costs more than the other. A cousin of his had lived in Edinburgh for six months upon eighteen-pence a week in that way, and had slept the greater part of the time upon the floor, training himself for the hardships of a soldier’s life. And he could not forget the college youth whom his comrades had considered mean, till they learned that, out of his poor bursary of fourteen pounds a session, and what he could make besides by private teaching at the rate previously mentioned or even less, he helped his parents to educate a younger brother; and, in order to do so, lived himself upon oatmeal and potatoes. But they did not find this out till after he was dead, poor fellow! He could not stand it.

I ought at the same time to mention, that Hugh rarely made use of a crossing on a muddy day, without finding a half-penny somewhere about him for the sweeper. He would rather walk through oceans of mud, than cross at the natural place when he had no coppers—especially if he had patent leather boots on.

After he had eaten his bread, he went home to get some water. Then, as he had nothing else to do, he sat down in his room, and began to manufacture a story, thinking it just possible it might be accepted by one or other of the pseudo-literary publications with which London is inundated in hebdomadal floods. He found spinning almost as easy as if he had been a spider, for he had a ready invention, and a natural gift of speech; so that, in a few days, he had finished a story, quite as good as most of those that appear in the better sort of weekly publications. This, in his modesty, he sent to one of the inferior sort, and heard nothing more of it than if he had flung it into the sea. Possibly he flew too low. He tried again, but with no better success. His ambition grew with his disappointments, or perhaps rather with the exercise of his faculties. Before many days had passed he made up his mind to try a novel. For three months he worked at this six hours a day regularly. When material failed him, from the exhaustion consequent upon uninterrupted production, he would recreate himself by lying fallow for an hour or two, or walking out in a mood for merely passive observation. But this anticipates.

His advertisement did not produce a single inquiry, and he shrunk from spending more money in such an apparently unprofitable appliance. Day after day went by, and no voice reached him from the unknown world of labour. He went at last to several stationers’ shops in the neighbourhood, bought some necessary articles, and took these opportunities of asking if they knew of any one in want of such assistance as he could give. But unpleasant as he felt it to make such inquiries, he soon found that to most people it was equally unpleasant to reply to them. There seemed to be something disreputable in having to answer such questions, to judge from the constrained, indifferent, and sometimes, though not often, surly answers which he received. “Can it be,” thought Hugh, “as disgraceful to ask for work as to ask for bread?” If he had had a thousand a year, and had wanted a situation of another thousand, it would have been quite commendable; but to try to elude cold and hunger by inquiring after paltry shillings’ worths of hard labour, was despicable.

So he placed the more hope upon his novel, and worked at that diligently. But he did not find it quite so easy as he had at first expected. No one finds anything either so easy or so difficult as, in opposite moods, he had expected to find it. Everything is possible; but without labour and failure nothing is achievable. The labour, however, comes naturally, and experience grows without agonizing transitions; while the failure generally points, in its detected cause, to the way of future success. He worked on.

He did not, however, forget the ring. Frequent were his meditations, in the pauses of his story, and when walking in the streets, as to the best means of recovering it. I should rather say any means than best; for it was not yet a question of choice and degrees. The count could not but have known that the ring was of no money value; therefore it was not likely that he had stolen it in order to part with it again. Consequently it would be of no use to advertise it, or to search for it in the pawnbrokers’ or second-hand jewellers’ shops. To find the crystal, it was clear as itself that he must first find the count.

But how?—He could think of no plan. Any alarm would place the count on the defensive, and the jewel at once beyond reach. Besides, he wished to keep the whole matter quiet, and gain his object without his or any other name coming before the public. Therefore he would not venture to apply to the police, though doubtless they would be able to discover the man, if he were anywhere in London. He surmised that in all probability they knew him already. But he could not come to any conclusion as to the object he must have had in view in securing such a trifle.

Hugh had all but forgotten the count’s cheque for a hundred guineas; for, in the first place, he had never intended presenting it—the repugnance which some minds feel to using money which they have neither received by gift nor acquired by honest earning, being at least equal to the pleasure other minds feel in gaining it without the expense of either labour or obligation; and in the second place, since he knew more about the drawer, he had felt sure that it would be of no use to present it. To make this latter conviction a certainty, he did present it, and found that there were no effects.

CHAPTER IV. A LETTER FROM THE POST

 
Hipolito.  Is your wife then departed?
Orlando.  She’s an old dweller in those high countries, yet not
from me: here, she’s here; a good couple are seldom parted.—DEKKER.
 

What wonderful things letters are! In trembling and hope the fingers unclasp, and the folded sheet drops into—no, not the post-office letter-box—but into space.

I have read a story somewhere of a poor child that dropped a letter into the post-office, addressed to Jesus Christ in Heaven. And it reached him, and the child had her answer. For was it not Christ present in the good man or woman—I forget the particulars of the story—who sent the child the help she needed? There was no necessity for him to answer in person, as in the case of Abgarus, king of Edessa.

Out of space from somewhere comes the answer. Such letters as those given in a previous chapter, are each a spirit-cry sent out, like a Noah’s dove, into the abyss; and the spirit turns its ear, where its mouth had been turned before, and leans listening for the spirit-echo—the echo with a soul in it—the answering voice which out of the abyss will enter by the gate now turned to receive it. Whose will be the voice? What will be the sense? What chords on the harp of life have been struck afar off by the arrow-words of the letter? What tones will they send back to the longing, hungering ear? The mouth hath spoken, that the fainting ear may be filled by the return of its words through the alembic of another soul.

One cause of great uneasiness to Hugh was, that, for some time after a reply might have been expected, he received no answer from David Elginbrod. At length, however, a letter arrived, upon the hand-writing of which he speculated in vain, perplexed with a resemblance in it to some writing that he knew; and when he opened it, he found the following answer to his own:

“DEAR MR. SUTHERLAND,—Your letter to my father has been sent to me by my mother, for what you will feel to be the sad reason, that he is no more in this world. But I cannot say it is so very sad to me to think that he is gone home, where my mother and I will soon join him. True love can wait well. Nor indeed, dear Mr. Sutherland, must you be too much troubled that your letter never reached him. My father was like God in this, that he always forgave anything the moment there was anything to forgive; for when else could there be such a good time?—although, of course, the person forgiven could not know it till he asked for forgiveness. But, dear Mr. Sutherland, if you could see me smiling as I write, and could yet see how earnest my heart is in writing it, I would venture to say that, in virtue of my knowing my father as I do—for I am sure I know his very soul, as near as human love could know it—I forgive you, in his name, for anything and everything with which you reproach yourself in regard to him. Ah! how much I owe you! And how much he used to say he owed you! We shall thank you one day, when we all meet.

“I am, dear Mr. Sutherland,

“Your grateful scholar,

“MARGARET ELGINBROD.”

Hugh burst into tears on reading this letter,—with no overpowering sense of his own sin, for he felt that he was forgiven; but with a sudden insight into the beauty and grandeur of the man whom he had neglected, and the wondrous loveliness which he had transmitted from the feminine part of his nature to the wholly feminine and therefore delicately powerful nature of Margaret. The vision he had beheld in the library at Arnstead, about which, as well as about many other things that had happened to him there, he could form no theory capable of embracing all the facts—this vision returned to his mind’s eye, and he felt that the glorified face he had beheld must surely have been Margaret’s, whether he had seen it in the body or out of the body: such a face alone seemed to him worthy of the writer of this letter. Purposely or not, there was no address given in it; and to his surprise, when he examined the envelope with the utmost care, he could discover no postmark but the London one. The date-stamp likewise showed that it must have been posted in London.

“So,” said he to himself, “in my quest of a devil, I may cross the track of an angel, who knows? But how can she be here?”

To this of course he had no answer at hand.

CHAPTER V. BEGINNINGS

Since a man is bound no farther to himself than to do wisely, chance is only to trouble them that stand upon chance.—SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.—The Arcadia.

Meantime a feeble star, but sparkling some rays of comfort, began to shine upon Hugh’s wintry prospects. The star arose in a grocer’s shop. For one day his landlady, whose grim attentions had been increasing rather than diminishing, addressed him suddenly as she was removing his breakfast apparatus. This was a very extraordinary event, for she seldom addressed him it all; and replied, when he addressed her, only in the briefest manner possible.

“Have you got any pupils yet, Mr. Sutherland?”

“No—I am sorry to say. But how did you come to know I wanted any, Miss Talbot?”

“You shouldn’t have secrets at home, Mr. Sutherland. I like to know what concerns my own family, and I generally find out.”

“You saw my advertisement, perhaps?”

To this suggestion Miss Talbot made no other answer than the usual compression of her lips.

“You wouldn’t be above teaching a tradesman’s son to begin with?”

“Certainly not. I should be very happy. Do you know of such a pupil?”

“Well, I can’t exactly say I do know or I don’t know; but I happened to mention to my grocer round the corner that you wanted pupils. Don’t suppose, Mr. Sutherland, that I’m in the way of talking about any young men of mine; but it—”

“Not for a moment,” interrupted Hugh; and Miss Talbot resumed, evidently gratified.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind stepping round the corner, I shouldn’t wonder if you might make an arrangement with Mr. Appleditch. He said you might call upon him if you liked.”

Hugh jumped up, and got his hat at once; received the few necessary directions from Miss Talbot, and soon found the shop. There were a good many poor people in it, buying sugar, and soap, &c.; and one lady apparently giving a large order. A young man came to Hugh, and bent over the counter in a recipient position, like a live point of interrogation. Hugh answered—

“Mr. Appleditch.”

“Mr. Appleditch will be disengaged in a few minutes. Will you take a seat?”

The grocer was occupied with the lady and her order; but as soon as she departed, he approached Hugh behind the rampart, and stood towards him in the usual retail attitude.

“My name is Sutherland.”

“Sutherland?” said Mr. Appleditch; “I think I’ve ‘eard the name somewheres, but I don’t know the face.”

“Miss Talbot mentioned me to you, I understand, Mr. Appleditch.”

“Oh! ah! I remember. I beg your pardon. Will you step this way, Mr. Sutherland?”

Hugh followed him through a sort of draw-bridge which he lifted in the counter, into a little appendix at the back of the shop. Mr. Appleditch was a meek-looking man, with large eyes, plump pasty cheeks, and a thin little person.

“‘Ow de do, Mr. Sutherland?” said he, holding out his hand, as soon as they had reached this retreat.

“Thank you—quite well;” answered Sutherland, shaking hands with him as well as he could, the contact not being altogether pleasant.

“So you want pupils, do you, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! well you see, sir, pupils is scarce at this season. They ain’t to be bought in every shop—ha! ha!” (The laugh was very mild.) “But I think Mrs. Appleditch could find you one, if you could agree with her about the charge, you know, and all that.”

“How old is he? A boy, I suppose?”

“Well, you’re right, sir. It is a boy. Not very old, though. My Samuel is just ten, but a wonderful forward boy for his years—bless him!”

“And what would you wish him to learn?”

“Oh! Latin and Greek, and all that. We intend bringing him up for the ministry.—I hope your opinions are decided, sir?”

“On some points, they are. But I do not know to what you refer, exactly.”

“I mean theological opinions, sir.”

“But I shall not have to teach your little boy theology.”

“Certainly not, sir. That department belongs to his mother and I. Unworthy vessels, sir; mere earthen vessels; but filled with the grace of God, I hope, sir.”

The grocer parted his hands, which he had been rubbing together during this conversation, and lifted them upwards from the wrists, like the fins of a seal; then, dropping them, fell to rubbing them again.

“I hope so. Well—you know the best way will be for me—not knowing your opinions—to avoid everything of a religious kind.”

“Ah! but it should be line upon line, you know; here a little, and there a little, sir. As the bow is bent, you know—the—hoop is made, you know, sir.”

Here Mr. Appleditch stepped to the door suddenly, and peeped out, as if he feared he was wanted; but presently returning, he continued:

“But time’s a precious gift, sir, and we must not waste it. So, if you’ll do us the honour, sir, to dine with us next Lord’s day—we may call it a work of necessity, you know—you will see the little Samuel, and—and—Mrs. Appleditch.”

“I shall be very happy. What is your address, Mr. Appleditch?”

“You had better come to Salem Chapel, Dervish town, and we can go home together. Service commences at eleven. Mrs. Appleditch will be glad to see you. Ask for Mr. Appleditch’s pew. Goo-ood morning, sir.”

Hugh took his leave, half inclined to send an excuse before the day arrived, and decline the connection. But his principle was, to take whatever offered, and thus make way for the next thing. Besides, he thus avoided the responsibility of choice, from which he always shrunk.

He returned to his novel; but, alas! the inventive faculty point-blank refused to work under the weight of such a Sunday in prospect. He wandered out, quite dispirited; but, before long, to take his revenge upon circumstances, resolved at least to have a dinner out of them. So he went to a chop house, had a chop and a glass of ale, and was astonished to find how much he enjoyed them. In fact, abstinence gave his very plain dinner more than all the charms of a feast—a fact of which Hugh has not been the only discoverer. He studied Punch all the time he ate, and rose with his spirits perfectly restored.

“Now I am in for it,” said he, “I will be extravagant for once.” So he went and bought a cigar, which he spun out into three miles of smoke, as he wandered through Shoreditch, and Houndsditch, and Petticoat-lane, gazing at the faces of his brothers and sisters; which faces having been so many years wrapt in a fog both moral and physical, now looked out of it as if they were only the condensed nuclei of the same fog and filth.

As he was returning through Whitechapel, he passed a man on the pavement, whose appearance was so remarkable that he could not help looking back after him. When he reflected about it, he thought that it must have been a certain indescribable resemblance to David Elginbrod that had so attracted him. The man was very tall. Six-foot. Hugh felt dwarfed beside him; for he had to look right up, as he passed, to see his face. He was dressed in loose, shabby black. He had high and otherwise very marked features, and a dark complexion. A general carelessness of demeanour was strangely combined with an expression of reposeful strength and quiet concentration of will. At how much of this conclusion Hugh arrived after knowing more of him, I cannot tell; but such was the description he gave of him as he saw him first: and it was thoroughly correct. His countenance always seemed to me (for I knew him well) to represent a nature ever bent in one direction, but never in haste, because never in doubt.

To carry his extravagance and dissipation still further, Hugh now betook himself to the pit of the Olympic Theatre; and no one could have laughed more heartily, or cried more helplessly, that night, than he; for he gave himself wholly up to the influences of the ruler of the hour, the admirable Robson. But what was his surprise when, standing up at the close of the first act, and looking around and above him, he saw, unmistakeably, the same remarkable countenance looking down upon him from the front row of the gallery. He continued his circuit of observation, trying to discover the face of Funkelstein in the boxes or circles; but involuntarily he turned his gaze back to the strange countenance, which still seemed bent towards his. The curtain rose, and during the second act he forgot all about everything else. At its close he glanced up to the gallery again, and there was the face still, and still looking at him. At the close of the third act it had vanished, and he saw nothing more of it that evening. When the after-piece was over, for he sat it out, he walked quietly home, much refreshed. He had needed some relaxation, after many days of close and continuous labour.

But awfully solemn was the face of good Miss Talbot, as she opened the door for him at midnight. Hugh took especial pains with his boots and the door-mat, but it was of no use: the austerity of her countenance would not relax in the least. So he took his candle and walked up-stairs to his room, saying only as he went—being unable to think of anything else:

“Good night, Miss Talbot.”

But no response proceeded from the offended divinity of the place.

He went to bed, somewhat distressed at the behaviour of Miss Talbot, for he had a weakness for being on good terms with everybody. But he resolved to have it out with her next morning; and so fell asleep and dreamed of the strange man who had watched him at the theatre.

He rose next morning at the usual time. But his breakfast was delayed half an hour; and when it came, the maid waited upon him, and not her mistress, as usual. When he had finished, and she returned to take away the ruins, he asked her to say to her mistress that he wanted to speak to her. She brought back a message, which she delivered with some difficulty, and evidently under compulsion—that if Mr. Sutherland wanted to speak to her, he would find her in the back parlour. Hugh went down instantly, and found Miss Talbot in a doubly frozen condition, her face absolutely blue with physical and mental cold combined. She waited for him to speak. Hugh began:

“Miss Talbot, it seems something is wrong between you and me.”

“Yes, Mr. Sutherland.”

“Is it because I was rather late last night.”

“Rather late, Mr. Sutherland?”

Miss Talbot showed no excitement. With her, the thermometer, in place of rising under the influence of irritation, steadily sank.

“I cannot make myself a prisoner on parole, you know, Miss Talbot. You must leave me my liberty.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Sutherland. Take your liberty. You’ll go the way of all the rest. It’s no use trying to save any of you.”

“But I’m not aware that I am in any particular want of saving, Miss Talbot.”

“There it is!—Well, till a sinner is called and awakened, of course it’s no use. So I’ll just do the best I can for you. Who can tell when the Spirit may be poured from on high? But it’s very sad to me, Mr. Sutherland, to see an amiable young man like you going the way of transgressors, which is hard. I am sorry for you, Mr. Sutherland.”

Though the ice was not gone yet, it had begun to melt under the influences of Hugh’s good-temper, and Miss Talbot’s sympathy with his threatening fate. Conscience, too, had something to do with the change; for, much as one of her temperament must have disliked making such a confession, she ended by adding, after a pause:

“And very sorry, Mr. Sutherland, that I showed you any bad temper last night.”

Poor Miss Talbot! Hugh saw that she was genuinely troubled about him, and resolved to offend but seldom, while he was under her roof.

“Perhaps, when you know me longer, you will find I am steadier than you think.”

“Well, it may be. But steadiness won’t make a Christian of you.”

“It may make a tolerable lodger of me, though,” answered Hugh; “and you wouldn’t turn me into the street because I am steady and nothing more, would you?”

“I said I was sorry, Mr. Sutherland. Do you wish me to say more?”

“Bless your kind heart!” said Hugh. “I was only joking.”

He held out his hand to Miss Talbot, and her eyes glistened as she took it. She pressed it kindly, and abandoned it instantly.

So all was right between them once more.

“Who knows,” murmured Miss Talbot, “but the Lord may save him? He’s surely not far from the kingdom of heaven. I’ll do all I can to make him comfortable.”