Part 2, Chapter X.
Grit.
Godfrey paid but scant attention to poor old Cooper’s feelings when he reached the mill. He hardly took the trouble to glance round him, and never realised that he was, in part, owner of the great concern, and a person on whom its future depended. He gave Guy’s message, and asked indifferently if there was any in return. Cooper looked up the whole length of the young man’s tall figure, ending with the gloomy, indifferent face.
“Nay,” he said, “I’ve no message to send by you, Mr Godfrey.”
“All right, then,” said Godfrey, going, still thinking of nothing but his own purpose.
He found Guy on the sofa in the study, with some papers in his hands. Godfrey sat down opposite, and stared straight before him. Guy lay, looking down, very quiet but with a curious air of something held under and suppressed.
“I’m not up to long explanations,” he said; “but you ought to know at once that matters are in a bad way at the mill. It will take every penny we both possess, and all the energy and sense too, to pull through and turn the corner. Things have been going downhill for some time. Look here—”
Here he showed the statement which he had partly prepared to lay before his aunt, adding a few explanations and comments.
“Then—is the mill going to fail?” said Godfrey, confusedly.
“Not if I can help it,” answered Guy. “No! But we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“But we couldn’t take out—realise—any part of the capital.”
“Rather not,” said Guy, with a shrug. “But what I want to say is this. You can’t do anything till you have taken your degree—except give your consent to certain measures. I’ll explain by-and-by. But, then, if you come back, and give your mind to it and work, as the old folks did, we’ll get on our legs again. I—of course Aunt Margaret thought you would be able to live at Waynflete.”
“Nothing would induce me to live at Waynflete, apart from the horrible injustice of it—I hate it. I should never endure it!”
“Shouldn’t you?” said Guy, and paused for a minute. “Then, I think you should use some of the investments to put it properly to rights, and let it again. Don’t sell it.”
“I don’t regard it as mine to sell,” said Godfrey; “and no—that would be undoing all she lived for.”
“Just so. And remember this. We owe it to her strong purpose that we’re not driving some one else’s plough, or working at some one else’s looms; that we are as we are, such as it is. That work can’t be undone. I don’t mean to give up. But, I can’t depend on my own health, or powers; I mayn’t live long, or be able to work constantly. But if you co-operate, we’ll pull through. Aunt Margaret trusted you, and you’re bound not to disappoint her. Her memory shall not be dishonoured.”
Guy was moved to speak more warmly from the kind of stupefaction with which Godfrey heard him. He thought that he had been too abrupt.
“You’re surprised,” he said more gently. “I’ve known how it was for a long time. It’s not at all a hopeless case.”
“I can’t take it in,” said Godfrey. How could he propose to “cut the whole concern,” and go away in the face of this news. Even if he went without a penny, how could he leave his sick brother with such a weight on his shoulders? Did dropping Waynflete out of his hands merely mean shirking a hard struggle? At any rate, he could not tell Guy his intention at that minute.
“You know,” said Guy, “after all the legacies are paid, and Waynflete is put to rights, I’m afraid you’ll have very little ready money. The work of restoring the family isn’t complete. You’ve got it to finish.”
“If—if the will had been burned, you wouldn’t have sold Waynflete, and put the money into the business?”
“No!” said Guy. He stopped to rest a minute, and then said, “If the business really failed, neither of us could honourably keep Waynflete. It would have to be sold to pay the creditors. And it is possible that, to save the business— But no, Godfrey—no—it won’t come to that. It shall not. Aunt Margaret shan’t be defeated.”
“I’ll think it over,” said Godfrey, after a moment. “Ought I to take my degree?”
“Of course, what’s the use of leaving a thing half-finished? But you’ll have to understand a little what has to be done at once, and give your consent to it. I’ll tell you about it another time. Take these papers, and read them.”
“Yes,” said Godfrey, escaping; “anything. I consent to whatever you wish. That is the least I can do!”
So then, there was no such easy way of escape as he had hoped. It was a burden, not an honour, that he had unduly won. For the momentary act there was no momentary atonement; but years of uncongenial labour. He hated the mills. Surely, if he dropped all claim on the profits, and gave his brother an entirely free hand, it would be enough? He would willingly sell Waynflete, and throw the price into the business, if Guy had not objected so vehemently. He had thought that his mind was settled, and behold! it was more unsettled than ever before. To give Waynflete to Guy, he could have worked tooth and nail; without a settled purpose, he was all at sea.
Guy felt a little baffled and disappointed. He had expected to find, as he put it, more grit in Godfrey.
“I suppose you will have to go away soon,” he said to Cuthbert afterwards.
“Yes—on the 18th, I fear—but I want you to come with me. There’s no one here to look after you even as clumsily as I can. I suppose Mrs Palmer stays; but her notions are limited to good beef-tea.”
“It’s not a bad notion. Cuthbert, don’t you want to know what happened to me?”
“Yes—when you can tell me.”
“I’m going to tell you now. Come here—quite close—lock the door first.”
Cuthbert did as he was told, and sat down quietly.
“Well,” he said, “how was it?”
“Well, that night when I was walking from Kirk Hinton, I got on very slowly, and it was a long—long time.”
“Yes—you got very tired.”
“Yes, but I thought hard. I almost made up my mind that the whole thing was a craze inherited from the other Guy, or at least shared with him. I thought nothing existed outside my own brain; that the old Guy had probably got drunk at the old public in the valley, and that I should too. That the cause of the whole horror was in me, because my brain was made wrong or crooked.”
He paused, and Cuthbert said no more than, “Well?”
“You’ve always wanted me to think that. You don’t know what it’s like to think so, when there is a great horror that your brain has made for you.”
Guy spoke very quietly. Cuthbert hardly ventured to answer him. “You would never understand what I meant by ‘feeling.’ But then I felt—nothing. I don’t think even Christ felt like that—quite, when He said God had forsaken Him. For I felt that there was no one even to forsake me.”
“But, my dear boy,” exclaimed Cuthbert, distressed, “I do not think so. I never meant to teach you to think so. That one hallucination—”
“If you knew what a spiritual presence in your soul is, good or evil—you would know what is involved in finding it a delusion. I was glad when I felt him come.”
“Did you see—it?”
“I saw the figure on the bridge, standing in my way. Well, it was a question of drowning myself or letting him drown me. I was almost mad—I—I think he laughed at me—I’m not sure. His eyes—”
Guy dropped his voice, and into his own eyes there came a wild, uncertain look, as of a sorely shaken brain. But he sat up and spoke emphatically.
“Suddenly I knew that I could try to get across. That’s the point, you see, Cuthbert—that’s the point! One can try, one can fight—devil or delusion—I don’t know which—one can resist, and he will flee. I think he will always flee—for there’s help. All spiritual presences are not evil; something helped me. I fainted, I suppose; but I got across the river—I set myself to get on, but the hill was so steep—and long—I was so deadly faint. It took an awful time, I had to stop so often; oh, I don’t wonder the other Guy was too late! But I got there in time. Aunt Margaret knew it, she quite understood.”
“It is all over now,” said Cuthbert, soothingly; “you won’t see the figure again.”
Guy slowly turned his eyes away from Cuthbert’s face, and looked straight in front of him.
“I see it now,” he said. “Listen—don’t stop me. I saw it ahead all the way. I’ve seen it ever since. But—but—it’s not him—now. Oh, you won’t understand. I know he’s not here now. This is a spectre—a delusion—but it’s very bad to bear. Stop; let me rest a bit.”
He put his hand over his eyes and lay still—whispering, “I’ve some more to say.”
“Yes, tell me everything—tell me just what it is,” said Cuthbert, gently.
“I can’t,” said Guy. “Shakespeare was right—and it’s very hard to be quite sure. The more one thinks, the harder it is. But whatever that is—which comes to me, I can fight it; I can resist. And I will. I mustn’t give in an inch. I’ve got to hold on with the business, and against the drink, and against the terror. That’s all I know; but I know that, though I’ve almost died of learning it.”
Guy turned faint after this eager speech, and was forced to lie back and be silent. Presently he spoke again in a faltering whisper—
“Doesn’t all this—”
“What, my boy? Yes, tell me.”
“It is so queer—you’ll dislike me for it,” said poor Guy, simply, and with tears in his eyes. “Anybody would.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Cuthbert, in his dry, gentle voice. “You know, I promised to see you through.”
“It eases me so to have you know it. But no one else—promise me—no one else.”
“Well—but your best help in the fight would be the doctor.”
“Oh yes—you may tell him anything you like, anything you can. The real thing is past man’s understanding. Only,” and he collected his strength, and looked up again steadfastly, “remember—devil or delusion—it is not irresistible, and I can resist.”
When Guy, soothed by his friend’s sympathy, had dropped into a much-needed sleep, Cuthbert still sat beside him puzzled, and, spite of himself, awed by the terrible story. He could not forget the records of that earlier struggle, which had come into his hands, and which Guy must see, as soon as he was fit to do so. He did not understand the experience enough to see why, as he put it, in the half-jesting thought with which deep feeling veils itself, Guy preferred the devil to a delusion. But he saw that mind and soul and body were all in danger, and he recognised that the belief in a resisting power must be fostered and guarded to the utmost.
“Only his faith can save him,” thought Cuthbert, with a mental start at the familiar ring of words, of which he had never made any personal application.
“It’s beyond me,” he thought, “and I’ll take off my hat and wait. He may be crazed, but he’s pretty much of a hero. And as for disliking him—well—not much fear of it. I’ll do all I know for him.”
Then Cuthbert thought the whole matter through, from beginning to end, and finally, with wise and uncommon mental patience, made up his mind not to rush in like a fool, where a man of any ordinary experience might well fear to tread. He would take every care of Guy; but, in that unknown region of his trial, he would let him judge for himself.