CHAPTER XXVIII.
"Then lock thee fast
Alone within thy chamber, there fall down
On both thy knees, and grovel on the ground:
Cry to thy heart: wash every word thou utter'st
In tears (and if't be possible) of blood:
Beg Heaven to cleanse the leprosy."
FORD'S PLAYS.
Armstrong, upon the departure of Holden, sat moodily pondering what had been told him. Were his emotions those of pleasure or of pain? At first, the former. The natural goodness of his disposition made him instinctively rejoice in the happiness of his friend. For a few moments, he forgot himself, and, as long as the forgetfulness lasted, was happy in the participation of the other's hopes. But this frame of mind was only momentary. We have seen how an answer of Holden was sufficient to restore his gloom. Thoughts chased each other in wild confusion, over which he had no control, which he reproached himself for admitting—which he would have excluded, if he could. The connection between him and the Solitary was one of mutual misfortune. Sorrow was the ligament that united them. For years had he known Holden, but it was only within a short time, namely, since an awakened conscience (so he judged, himself) had revealed to him his own hideousness, that he had been attracted to the Solitary. Should Holden recover his son, should his heart expand once more to admit worldly joys, would it not be closed to him? As he once felt indifference towards Holden, so would not Holden, by a change of circumstances, by the awakening of new desires and new hopes, by the occupancy of emotions the more delightful because fresh and for so long unexperienced, stand to him in other and colder relations? These reflections were not clear, distinct, sharply defined. They drove through his mind, ragged and torn, like storm-clouds chased by the tempest.
There were two beings struggling with one another in him—the one striving to encourage the noble feelings of his nature, and drive away whatever was inconsistent with truth and reason—the other whispering doubt, and selfishness, and despair. He rose and paced, with rapid steps, the room.
"Has it come to this?" he said to himself, as if wondering at his condition. "Am I become incapable of participating in the happiness of others? Am I a festering mass of selfishness? O! once it was not so. I will resist these thoughts which come from the bottomless pit. They shall not master me. They are the temptations of the Evil One. But can I resist them? Have I not grieved away the spirit? Is there place for repentance? Am I not like Esau, who sought it in vain with many tears? If he was refused the grace of God, why not I? Why not I, that I may go to my own place? Already I feel and know my destiny. I feel it in the terrible looking for of judgment. I feel it in that I do not love my neighbor. If I did, would I not sympathize in his happiness? Would this wretched self for ever interpose? I never knew myself before. I now know the unutterable vileness of my heart. I would hide it from Thee, my God. I would hide it from Thy holy angels—from myself."
That day, Mr. Armstrong stirred not from the house, as long as the sun remained above the horizon. The golden sunshine deepened his mental gloom. Nor to his eyes was it golden. It was a coppery, unnatural light. It looked poisonous. It seemed as if the young leaves of spring ought to wither in its glare.
He heard the laugh of a man in the street, and started as if he had been stung. It sounded like the mockery of a fiend. Was the laugh directed at him? He started, and ran to the window, with a feeling of anger, to see who it was that was triumphing over his misery. He looked up and down the street, but could see no one. The disappointment still further irritated him. Was he to be refused the poor satisfaction of knowing who had wounded him? Was the assassin to be permitted to stab him in the back? Was he not to be allowed to defend himself? He returned and resumed his seat, trembling all over. Faith's canary bird was singing, at the top of its voice. Armstrong turned and looked at it. The little thing, with fluttering wings and elevated head, and moving a foot, as if beating time, poured out a torrent of melody. The sounds, its actions, grated on his feelings. He rose and removed it into another room.
He folded his arms, his head fell upon his chest, and he shut his eyes to exclude the light. "I am out of harmony with all creation," he said. "I am fit for a place where no bird ever sings. This is the evidence of my doom. Only the blessed can be in harmony with God's works. Heaven is harmony—the music of his laws. Evil is discord—myself am discord."
Faith had still some influence over him, though even at her entrance he started "like a guilty thing surprised." Her presence was a charm to abate the violence of the hurricane. He could not resist the gentle tones of her voice, and at the spell his calmed spirit trembled into comparative repose. Armstrong acknowledged it to himself as an augury of good.
I cannot be wholly evil, he thought, if the approach of a pure angel gives me pleasure. The touch of Ithuriel's spear reveals deformity where it exists; in me it discloses beauty.
With her he could talk over the ordinary affairs of the day with calmness, though it is singular, considering the perfect confidence between them, that he never adverted to the communication of Holden, notwithstanding he knew it would possess the highest interest for her. It betrays, perhaps, the weakened and diseased condition of a mind, wincing like an inflamed limb at the apprehension of a touch.
As the father listened and looked at his child, he felt transported into a region whither the demons could not come. They could not endure her purity; they could not abide her brightness. Her influence was a barrier mightier than the wall that encircled Paradise, and over which no evil thing could leap. He therefore kept her by him as much as possible. He manifested uneasiness when she was away. His consolation and hope was Faith. As the Roman prisoner drank life from the pure fountains to which he had given life, so Armstrong drew strength from the angelic spirit his own had kindled.
Yet was his daughter unconscious of the whole influence she exerted, nor had she even a distant apprehension of the chaos of his mind. How would she have been startled could she have beheld the seething cauldron! But into that, only the Eye that surveys all things could look.
Thus several days passed by. An ordinary observer would have noticed no change in Armstrong, except that his appetite diminished, and he seemed restless. Doctor Elmer and Faith both remarked these symptoms, but they did not alarm the former, though they grieved the latter. Accustomed to repose unlimited confidence in the medical skill of the physician, and too modest to have an opinion adverse to that of another older than herself, and in a department wherewith he was familiar, and she had no knowledge except what was colored by filial fears and affection, and, perhaps, distorted by them out of its reasonable proportions, Faith went on from day to day, hoping that a favorable change would take place, and that she should have the happiness of seeing her dear father restored to his former cheerfulness.
It is painful to follow the sad moods of a noble mind, conscious of its aberrations, and yet unable to control them. We have not the power of analysis capable of tracing it through all its windings, and exhibiting it naked to the view, and if we had, might shrink from the task, as from one inflicting unnecessary pain, both on the writer and the reader. It is our object only so far to sketch the state of Armstrong's mind, as to make his conduct intelligible.
His restlessness has been alluded to. He found himself unable to sleep as formerly. Long after retiring to rest he would lie wide awake, vainly courting the gentle influence that seemed to shun him the more it was wooed. The rays of the morning sun would sometimes stream into the window before sleep had visited his eyelids, and he would rise haggard, and weary, and desponding. And if he did sink into slumber, it was not always into forgetfulness, but into a confused mist of dreams, more harassing than even his waking thoughts. The difficulty of obtaining sleep had lately induced a habit of reading late into the night, and not unfrequently even into the morning hours. Long after his daughter had sought her chamber, and when she supposed he was in bed, he was seated in his solitary room, trying to fasten his attention on a book, and to produce the condition favorable to repose. The darkness of his mind sought congenial gloom. If he opened the sacred volume, he turned not to the gracious promises of reconciliation and pardon, and the softened theology of the New Testament, or to those visions of a future state of beatitude, which occasionally light up the sombre pages of the Old, as if the gates of Paradise were for a moment opened, to let out a radiance on a darkness that would else be too disheartening and distracting; but to the wailings of the prophets and denunciations of punishment. These he fastened on with a fatal tenacity, and by a perverted ingenuity, in some way or other connected with himself, and made applicable to his own circumstances. Naught could pass through his imagination or memory, but, by some diabolical alchemy, was stripped of its sanative and healthful properties, and converted into harm.
"Young's Night Thoughts" was a book that possessed peculiar attractions. For hours would he hang over its distressful pages, and many were the leaves blotted by his tears. Yet those tears relieved him not. Still, from time to time, would he recur to the book, as if tempted by a fascination he could not resist, striving to find, if possible, in the wretchedness of another, a lower deep than his own. Especially in the solemn hours of the night, when the silence was so profound, he could fancy he heard the flickering of the candles, he read the book. Then hanging upon image after image of those deploring strains, and appropriating all their melancholy, intensified through the lens of his own dark imagination, he would sink from one depth of wretchedness to another, till he seemed lost away, where no ray of light could ever penetrate, or plummet sound.
He had been reading one night late, until as if unable to endure the images of woe it conjured up, he pushed the book away from him. The night was dark and stormy, and the rain pouring in torrents. He walked to the window and looked out. He could see nothing, except as the landscape was revealed for an instant by a flash of lightning. He could hear nothing, except the peals of thunder rolling through the valleys. He took a candle, and walked cautiously to the door of Faith's chamber, to see if she were asleep. The door was ajar, for the purpose of ventilation, and, shading the light with his hand, Armstrong could see the face of his sleeping daughter without waking her. She lay in the profound slumber of health and youth, undisturbed by the noise of the thunder, as one conscious of a protecting Providence. Her left hand was under her cheek, the black hair combed back, and collected under the snowy cap. Her breathing was scarcely perceptible, but soft and quiet as an infant's. An expression of happiness rested on her features, and the color was a little kindled in her cheek, looking brighter in contrast with the linen sheet.
"She sleeps," he thought, "as if there were no sin and misery in the world. And why should she not? What has she to do with them? Were my spiritual eyes opened, I should see the protecting angels in shining garments around her bed, unless my approach has driven them away. Heaven takes care of its own. So I could sleep once. Will the time come when she, too, shall be so guilty she cannot sleep? Almighty God forbid! Better she were in her grave. They are fortunate who die young. They are taken from the evil to come. The heart ceases to beat before it becomes so hard it cannot repent. Were she to die to-night her salvation would be assured. What infinite gain! The murderer could inflict no injury, but would confer a benefit."
Why did he start? Why did he shudder all over? Why did he hastily turn round, and shut the door, and hasten to his own room, locking it after him? Why was it he took something from his pocket, and, opening the window, threw it violently into the dark? But a moment Armstrong remained in his room. Blowing out the candles, and noiselessly descending the stairs, he as quietly opened and shut the front door, and stood in the open air.
The storm was at its height. The rain poured with such violence that in the flashes of lightning he could see the large drops leap from the ground. But he felt not that he was wet to the skin. He minded not that he had left the house without a hat, and that the water was running in streams from his head to the earth. With a rapid pace, approaching running, he fled through the streets, until he reached the grave-yard. Without a ray to guide him, through a darkness that might be felt, he found his way to a grave, it was his wife's. He threw himself prostrate on his face, and lay motionless.
When Armstrong raised himself from the ground the storm had ceased, the clouds had left the sky, and the stars were shining brilliantly. He gazed around, then looked up into the blue vault. What were those innumerable shining points? Were they worlds, as the learned have said? Were they inhabited by beings like himself, doomed to sin and suffer? Did they suffer, more or less? Could the errors of a few years be expiated by sufferings of ages, as countless as the grains of sand on the seashore? He struck the palm of his hand violently on his forehead; he threw out his arm, as if in defiance, toward heaven, and groaned aloud. It seemed as though from every heaped-up grave that groan was echoed, and called to him like an invitation to join the hosts of darkness. He started, and looked again at the gruel sky. But no voice of comfort was breathed thence. The silver stars were now sparks of an universal conflagration. With a gesture of despair, he left the city of the dead.
Silence and darkness still shrouded the house of Mr. Armstrong on his return. He closed the door quietly after him, and, cautiously as he had descended, ascended the stairs, which, in spite of all his precaution, creaked under his feet. The sounds sent a thrill of alarm through him as though he feared discovery. It was as if he were returning from some guilty enterprise. Without striking a light, he threw off his soaked garments, and got into bed. Strange, perhaps, to say, he soon fell into a sleep, deeper and more refreshing than any he had for a long time enjoyed. It may be that the excitement of his system was worked off by rapid motion, and exposure to the night air and rain, or that nature, unable longer to endure it, sunk beneath the tension. It was not until a late hour he arose, when he found breakfast awaiting him. After the usual greetings, Faith said:
"Here is your penknife, father, which Felix found lying on the path this morning. You must have lost it from your pocket."
Mr. Armstrong took the knife, without reply, and, when unobserved, dropped it into the fire.