Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 40
CHAPTER XL.
THE END OF A DELUSION.
Captain Saltren remained motionless, with his gun raised, as it had been struck up by Patience Kite, for several minutes; then he slowly lowered it, and turned his face to her. The troubled expression which of late had passed over it at intervals returned. The jaw was no longer set, and the red spots of anger had faded from his cheeks. The momentary character of decision his face had assumed was gone, and now the lips trembled feebly.
"What was that you said?" he asked.
Patience laughed, and pointed to the crag.
"See," she exclaimed, "the gun has frightened the men; and there comes the policeman with your son over the down!" She laughed again. "How the fellows run! After all, men are cowards."
"What was that you said when I was about to fire?" asked the captain again.
"Said?—why, what is true. You wanted to rattle down his lordship's house, and killed him because he refused to allow it to be done; and now you object to having your own shaken down. But there, that is the way of men."
Saltren remained brooding in thought, with his eyes on the ground, and the end of the gun resting where his eyes fell.
Mrs. Kite taunted him.
"You kill the man who won't let you pull down his house, and you would kill the man who throws down yours. What are you going to do now? Prosecute them for the mischief, and make them patch up again what they have broken? or will you give up the point, and let them have their own way, and the railway to run here, with a station to Chillacot?"
He did not answer. He was considering Mrs. Kite's reproach, not her question. Presently he threw the gun away, and turned from his wrecked house.
"It is true," he said. "Our ways are unequal; it is very true." He put his hand over his face, and passed it before his eyes; his hand was shaking. "I will go back to the Owl's Nest," he said in a low tone.
"What! Leave your house? Do you not want to secure what has not been broken?"
"I do not care about my house. I do not care about anything in it."
"But will you not go and see Marianne—your wife? You do not know where she is, into what place your son took her, and whether she is ill?"
He looked at her with a mazed expression, almost as if he were out of his senses, and said slowly—
"I do not care about her any more." Then, dimly seeing that this calmness needed justification, he added, "I have condemned in others what I allow in myself. I have measured to one in this way, and to myself in that."
He turned away, and went slowly along the brook to the point at which he had crossed it with Patience Kite after the death of Lord Lamerton, when she led him into the covert of the woods. Mrs. Kite accompanied him now.
They ascended the further hillside together, passing through the coppice, and he remained silent, mechanically thrusting the oak-boughs apart. He seemed to see, to feel nothing, so occupied was he with his own thoughts.
Presently he came out on the open patch where he had stood twice before, once to watch the removal of his victim, next to see the destruction of his house. There now he halted, and brushed his arms down, first the left, then the right with his hands, then passed them over his shoulders as though he were sweeping off him something that clung to and encumbered him.
"They are all gone," said Mrs. Kite, pointing to the headland, "and Jingles is bringing the policeman down to see the mischief that has been done."
Captain Saltren stood and looked across the valley, but not at his house; he seemed to have forgotten about it, or lost all concern in it; he looked away from it, higher up, to the spot whence Lord Lamerton had fallen. Mrs. Kite was puzzled at the expression in his face, and at his peculiar manner. She had never thought highly of him, now she supposed he was losing his head. Every now and then he put up his hand over his mouth to conceal the contraction and quivering of the lips; and once she heard him utter a sound which might have been a laugh, but was more like a sob, not in his throat, but in his breast.
That dread of having been a prey to delusions, which had passed over him before, had gained consistency, and burdened him insupportably. Opposite him was the headland whence he had precipitated Lord Lamerton, and now he asked himself why he had done it. Because he believed his lordship had hurt him in his family relations? In that he was mistaken. Because his lordship stopped the mine and threw him out of work rather than have his house imperilled? He himself was as resolute in resisting an attack on his own property, an interference with his own house. Because his lordship had occasioned the death of Arkie Tubb? Now, as the veils of prejudice fell, one after another, he saw that no guilt attached to his lordship on that account. The boy had gone in to save Mrs. Kite. It was her fault that he was crushed. She had allowed her daughter, Arkie, all who looked on to believe she was endangered, when she had placed herself in a position of security. The only way in which he could allay the unrest in his mind was to repeat again and again to himself, "It was ordained. The Lord revealed it. There were reasons which I did not know."
There is a moment, we are told by those who have ascended in a balloon, when the cord is cut, and the solid earth is seen to begin to drift below, the trees to dance, and the towers to slide away, that an all-but over-powering sense of fear and inclination comes on one to leap from the car at the risk of being dashed to pieces. It is said that the panic produced by an earthquake exceeds every other terror. When a ship is storm-tossed, escape is possible in a boat, when a house is on fire there are feather-beds into which we can leap; but when the earth is insecure, then we have nowhere to which we can flee, nothing to which we can look.
With Captain Saltren, his religious convictions were what was most stable. Everything else glided before him as a dream, but he kept his feet on those things that belonged to the spiritual world, as if they were adamantine foundations. And now he was being, like an aeronaut, caught away, and these shifted under his eyes; like one in an earthquake, he felt the strong bases rock beneath him. The sense of terror that passed over him was akin to despair; but the last cord was not snapped, and that was the firmest of all—his visions and revelations.
"Of all queer folks," said Mrs. Kite, "I reckon you are the queerest, captain. I thought so from the time I first saw you come and pray on your raft in the pond, and when I heard what a tale you had made out of Miss Arminell throwing a book at you, then I did begin to believe you were not right in your mind; now I'm sure of it."
Captain Saltren looked dreamily at her; but in that dreamy look was pain.
"That was, to be sure, a wonderful tale," pursued Mrs. Kite, losing patience with him. "An angel from Heaven cast the Everlasting Gospel down to you, was that it?"
He nodded, but said nothing.
"And I seed Miss Arminell do it."
His eyes opened wide with alarm.
"What the name of the book was, I do not mind; indeed, I do not know, because I cannot read; but I have got the book, and can show it you, and you who are a scholar can read it through from the first word to the last."
"You have the book?"
"I have; when it fell it went under your raft, but it did not sink, it came up after on the other side, and when you were gone I fished it out, and I have it now."
"It was red as blood."
"Aye, and the paint came off on my fingers, but I dried it in the sun; and I have the book now, not in the Owl's Nest, but in a cupboard of the back kitchen o' my old house."
"His likeness was on it."
"That I can't say. There is a head of a man."
"The head of Lord Lamerton."
"It don't look like it; the man has black hair and a beard, and his lordship had no beard, and his hair was light brown."
A shudder came over the captain. Was his last, his firmest anchor to break?
Again, as he had done several times already, he passed his hands over his arms and shoulders and sides, as if peeling off what adhered to him.
"Let me see the book," he said faintly. "Lead on."
"I ought to have returned it to Miss Arminell," said Mrs. Kite; "but I didn't, because my Tamsine saw it, and said she'd like to read it. She's mighty fond of what they call a sensational novel."
"It was the book of the Everlasting Gospel," said Saltren with a burst of desperation. "Nothing will ever make me believe otherwise."
"Or that Miss Arminell, who stood in the mouth of the Owl's Nest, was an angel flying?"
He made no reply, but lowered his head, and pushed forwards.
When they reached the ruined hovel, Mrs. Kite went into that part which had not been dismantled, and brought forth the crimson-covered book from the oven, where it had been hidden, and gave it to her companion.
"It is 'The Gilded Clique,'" was all he said, and fixed his eyes on it with terror in them.
He dared not look Mrs. Kite in the face; he stood with lowered head before her, and his hands shook as he held the book, so that he could not study it.
"Tell me all that you heard and saw," he said; then with sudden eagerness, "It was not on the Sabbath?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Kite, "it was on a Sunday that I saw you." Then she told him all the circumstances as they had really happened.
Wondrous are the phantasmagoric pictures conjured up by the sun in the desert; the traveller looks on and sees blue water, flying sails, palm groves, palaces, and all is so real that he believes he even hears the muezzin's call to prayer from the minarets, and the lap of the water on the sands, and the chant of the mariners in the vessels. Then up springs a cold air, and in a moment the picture is dissolved and exposes arid waste strewn with bones and utterly herbless. And the words of the woman produced some such an effect on the mind of Saltren. In a minute all the imaginations that had spun themselves out of the little bare fact, and overspread and disguised it, were riven and swept aside.
Captain Saltren stood turning the book about, and looking at the likeness of M. Emile Gaboriau on the cover; it bore not the faintest resemblance to the late Lord Lamerton. The book was headed "Gaboriau's Sensational Novels, the Favourite Reading of Prince Bismarck, one shilling." And beneath the medallion was "The Gilded Clique." Sick at heart, with giddy head, Captain Saltren opened the book stained with water, and read, hardly knowing what he did, an advertisement that occupied the fly leaf—an advertisement of "Asiatic Berordnung," for the production of "whiskers, moustaches, and hair, and for the cure of baldness, and the renovation of ladies' scanty partings."
Was this the revelation which had been communicated to him? Was it this which had drawn him on into an ecstasy of fanatical faith, and led him to the commission of an unprovoked crime?
Still half-stunned by his fear he read on. "Eminent authorities have expressed their entire approval of the valuable yet perfectly harmless nature of our discovery. In an age like this, when a youthful appearance is so against a young man, those without beard or moustache being designated boys, and scanty hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, so unproductive of admiration in the fair sex, the Asiatic Berordnung should be universally adopted. Price 1s. 6d.; full-sized bottles 3s. 6d. each."
Captain Saltren's face was in colour like that of a corpse; he raised his eyes for a moment to Mrs. Kite, and saw the mocking laugh on her lips. He dropped them again, and said in a low voice; "Leave me alone, I cannot think upon what you have said till you are gone."
"I will return to Chillacot and see the ruin," she said.
"The ruin?" he repeated, "the ruin?" He had forgotten about his house, he was looking on a greater ruin than that, the desolation of a broken-down faith, and of prostrate self-confidence.
"Mind you do not risk going to the Owl's Nest," said Mrs. Kite; "you are not in condition for that, your knees scarce support you. Abide here and read your book, and see what comfort you can get out of it; a firm head and a steady foot is needed for that path."
He made a sign to the woman to go; he shook as with the palsy; he put his hand to his head. A band as of iron was tightening about his temples. He could not endure to have Mrs. Kite there any longer. He would go mad unless left alone.
She hesitated for a moment, repeated her injunctions to him to stay where he was till her return, and then left.
He looked after her till she had disappeared, and for some little while after she was gone he looked at the bushes that had closed behind her, fearing lest she should return: then he sank down on a heap of stones, put the book from him with a shudder, and buried his head in his hands.
The mirage was past, the dry and hideous reality remained, but Saltren had not as yet quite recovered from the impression of reality that mirage had produced on his mind. We cannot on waking from certain dreams drive them entirely from us, so that they in no way affect our conduct and influence our opinions. I know that sometimes I wake after having dreamed of some amiable and innocent person in an odious light, and though I fight against the impression all day, I cannot view that person without repugnance. Captain Saltren was aware that he had dreamed, that he had believed in the reality of the mirage conjured up by his fancy, had regarded that crimson-covered book as the revelation of the Everlasting Gospel, and though his mind assented to the fact that he had been deceived, he was unable to drive away the glamour of the delusion that clung to him.
I, who write this, know full well that I shall find readers, and encounter critics who will pronounce the case of Captain Saltren impossible; because in the London clubs and in country houses no such delusions are found. What! are we not all engaged in blowing soap-bubbles, in painting mirages, in spinning cobwebs? But then our soap-bubbles, our mirages, our cobwebs, in which we, unlike spiders, entangle ourselves, are not theological, but social and political. Do we not weave out of our own bowels vast webs, and hang them up in the sight of all as substantial realities? And are we not surprised with paralysing amazement when we discover that the bubbles we have blown are not new created worlds, and our cobwebs are dissolved by a touch? I have seen in Innsbruck pictures painted on cobwebs of close texture, with infinite dexterity and patient toil. We not only spin our cobwebs, but paint on them, though I allow we do not picture on them sacred images. Why, my own path is strewn with these gossamer webs of my own weaving that never caught any other midge than my own insignificant self; me they entangled, they choked my windpipe, they filled my eyes, they clogged my ears. Look back, critical reader, at your own course, and see if it be not encumbered with such torn and trampled cobwebs. There is a great German book of nine volumes, each of over a thousand pages, and it is entitled "The History of Human Folly." Alas, it is not complete! It gives but the record of the inconceivable follies of a few most salient characters. But in our own towns, in our villages, in our immediate families, what histories of human folly there are unwritten, but well known, I go closer home—in our own lives there is a volume for every year recording our delusions and our inconsequences.
In our Latin grammars we learned "Nemo omnibus horis sapit," but that may be better rendered, "Quis non omnibus horis delirat?"
The anthropologist and antiquary delight in exploring the kitchen middens of a lost race, heaps of bones, and shells, and broken potsherds rejected by a population that lived in pre-historic times. But, oh, what kitchen middens are about our own selves, at our own doors, of empty shells and dismarrowed bones of old convictions, old superstitions, old conceits, old ambitions, old hopes! Where is the meat? Where the nutriment? Nowhere; gone past recall; only the dead husks, and shells, and bones, and potsherds remain. Open your desk, pull out the secret drawer, and what are revealed? A dry flower—the refuse scrap of an old passion; a worthless voucher of a bad investment; a MS. poem which was refused by every magazine; a mother's Bible, monument of a dead belief. Go, turn over your own kitchen middens, and then come and argue with me that such a delusion as that of Captain Saltren is impossible. I tell you it is paralleled every year.
And now, sitting on the heap of stones, full of doubt, and yet not altogether a prey to despair, Captain Saltren took the red book again, and began to read it, first at the beginning, then turning to the middle, then looking to the end. Then he put it from him once more, and, with the cold sweat streaming over his face, he walked to the edge of the quarry, and there knelt down to pray. Had he been deceived? Was he not now subjected to a fiery trial of his faith—a last assault of the Evil One? This was indeed a possibility, and it was a possibility to which he clung desperately.
A little while ago we saw Giles Saltren humiliated and crushed, passing through the flame of disappointment and disenchantment, the purgatorial flame that in this life tries every man. In that fire the young man's self-esteem and self-reliance had shrivelled up and been reduced to ash. And now his reputed father entered the same furnace.
He prayed and wrestled in spirit, wringing his hands, and with sweat and tears commingled streaming down his cheeks. He prayed that he might be given a token. He could not, he would not, accept the humiliation. He fought against it with all the powers of his soul and mind.
Then he stood up. He was resolved what to do. He would walk along the ledge of rock to the Owl's Nest, holding the red book in his hand instead of clinging to the ivy bands. If that book stayed him up and sustained him in equilibrium till he reached the Cave, then he would still believe in his mission, and the revelations that attended it. But if he had erred, why then——
Holding the book he began the perilous walk. He took three steps forward, and then the judgment was pronounced.