CHAPTER II.
Men rail upon the Change!
* * * * *
But think they as they speak?
Thou softener of earth’s pain,
Oh Change! sweet gift of the Infinite to the weak,
We hail alike thy sunshine and thy rain;
Awe dwells supreme in yon eternal light,
Horror in misery’s doom;
But frail humanity dares breathe, when bright
Thy tremulous radiance mingles with the gloom.—Y.S.P.
NCLE JAMES has just gone, and the group of elders in the parlour are just drawing their chairs closer together to fill up the gap which his departure has made, when they hear a hasty knock at the door; a hasty, imperative summons, as if from urgent need that would not be denied access, and a dripping messenger stands on the threshold—for the cold rain of winter falls heavily without—begging that Mr. Melville would go with him to see a dying man, a stranger who has taken up his residence for the last few weeks at a small inn in the neighbourhood, and was now, apparently, on the very brink of death, and in a dreadful state of mind. The calls of the sick and dying were as God’s special commands to Halbert; and he rose at once to accompany the messenger, though the faces of his wife and sisters twain, darkened with care as he did so. It was very hard that he should be called away from them on this especial night; and when he firmly declared he would go, Mary whispered to Charles to go with him, and to bring him soon back. The two brothers went away through the storm, and the sisters drew closer to each other round the fire, as the gentlemen left them; then Mrs. Melville told the others how anxious she always was when her husband was called out in this way; how he might be exposed to infection in his visiting of the sick so assiduously as he did; and how, for his health’s sake, she could almost wish he were less faithful and steady in the discharge of these his duties: and Mary looked at her in alarm as she spoke, and turned pale, and half upbraided herself for having unnecessarily exposed Charles, though a more generous feeling speedily suppressed her momentary selfishness. But Christian was by, and when was selfishness of thought, or an unbelieving fear harboured in Christian’s gentle presence?
“Mary! Mary!” she exclaimed, as she turned from one to the other, “are you afraid to trust them in the hands of your Father? They are but doing what is their duty, and He will shield His own from all evil. Would you have your husband, Mary Melville, like these ministers whose whole work is their sermons—alas! there are many such—and who never try, whether visiting the sick and dying, or the vicious and criminal, would not advance their Master’s cause as well—would you that, rather than Halbert’s going forth as he has done to-night?”
“No, no; but it is terrible for me to think that he is exposed to all kinds of contagion; that he must go to fevers, and plagues, and diseases that I cannot name nor number, and run continually such fearful risks,” said Mary, energetically.
“Our Father who is in Heaven, will protect him,” said Christian, solemnly. “I have heard of a minister in London, who never for years ever thinks of seeing after his own people in their own homes; it is too much labour, forsooth, he is only their preacher, not their pastor; and though he sends—Reverend Doctor that he is—his deacons and such like to visit; it’s seldom that himself ever goes to a poor sick bed, and as to his trying to reclaim the vicious, there is not on his individual part the least attempt or effort. Now, Mary, would you have Halbert such a man as that?”
“I would rather see him lying under the direfullest contagion. I would rather that he was stricken by the Lord’s own hand, than that it should be said of Halbert Melville that he flinched in the least degree from the work which the Lord has laid upon him,” returned Mary, proudly elevating her matronly form to its full height, with a dignity that gladdened Christian’s heart.
“Yet that man in London will be well spoken of,” said Mary Hamilton, “and our Halbert unknown. No matter: the time will come when Halbert will be acknowledged openly; and now, Christian, I feel assured and pleased that Charles went out with Halbert.”
“And you may, when they went on such an errand,” said Christian; “but”—and she continued briskly, as if to dispel the little gloom which had fallen upon them, and resuming the conversation, which had been broken off on the departure of the gentlemen—“but Robert writes me, that he is very comfortably settled, and likes his new residence well.”
“I am sorry,” said Mrs. Melville, after a pause, during which her agitation had gradually subsided, “I am sorry that I saw so little of Robert. He and I are almost strangers to each other.”
“Not strangers, Mary, while so nearly connected,” said Christian, kindly. “Moreover, Robert gives me several very intelligible hints about a young lady in your uncle’s family to whom you introduced him.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Melville, “no doubt he means my cousin Helen. Oh, I am very glad of that. Your brothers are too good, Christian, to be thrown away on cold-hearted, calculating people, who only look at money and money’s worth——” and as the words fell from her lips, she stopped and blushed, and hesitated, for Mrs. James flashed upon her mind, and the comparison seemed invidious.
“You are quite right, Mary,” said the other Mary, smiling; “and if Robert be as fortunate as Halbert has been, we shall be a happy family indeed.”
Did Christian’s brow grow dark with selfish sorrow, as she listened to these mutual congratulations? Nay, that had been a strange mood of Christian’s mind in which self was uppermost, or indeed near the surface at all; and her whole soul rejoiced within her in sympathetic gladness. Nor, though they were happy in the full realisation of their early expectations, did she hold herself less blessed; for Christian bore about with her, in her heart of hearts, the holy memory of the dead, and in her hours of stillest solitude felt not herself alone. An angel voice breathed about her in whispering tenderness when she turned over the hallowed leaves of yon old Bible; and when the glorious light of sunset fell on her treasured picture, it seemed, in her glistening eyes, to light it up with smiles and gladness; and the time is gliding on gently and silently, day upon day falling like leaves in autumn, till the gates of yon far celestial city, gleaming through the mists of imperfect mortal vision, shall open to her humble footsteps, and the beloved of old welcome her to that everlasting reunion; and therefore can Christian rejoice, as well on her own account, as in ready sympathy with the joyful spirits round about her.
But the present evening wore gradually away, and the children became heavy, weary, and sleepy, and the youngest of all fairly fell asleep; and Mrs. Melville looked at her watch anxiously, and Mary said she could not wait for Charles, but must go home; but here again Christian interposed. The little Melvilles and Hamiltons had slept under the same roof before now, and being too far gone in weariness to have joined in their domestic worship, even had the elders been ready to engage in it, were taken off by twos and threes indiscriminately to their respective chambers; and the three sisters are left alone once more, maintaining, by fits and starts, a conversation that showed how their thoughts wandered; and, in this dreary interval of waiting for the home-coming of Halbert and Charles, listening to the doleful dropping of the slow rain without, until the long-continued suspense became intolerably painful. At length footsteps paused at the door; there was a knock, and some one entered, and each drew a long breath as if suddenly relieved, though Mrs. Melville started again, and became deadly pale, when Charles Hamilton entered the room alone. He seemed much agitated and distressed.
“Where is Halbert?” Mrs. Melville exclaimed; and her cry was echoed by the others at the fireside. “Has anything happened to Halbert?”
“Nothing—nothing: Halbert is quite well,” said Charles, sitting down and wiping the perspiration from his forehead, while Halbert’s wife clasped her hands in thankfulness. “He will be here soon; but I come from a most distressing scene—a deathbed—and that the deathbed of one who has spent his life as an infidel.”
“A stranger, Charles?” asked Mary.
“A stranger, and yet no stranger to us,” was Charles’s answer; and he pressed his hands on his eyes, as though to shut out the remembrance of what he had so lately witnessed. As he spoke, the servants entered the room for the usual evening worship, under the impression that the master had returned; and Charles Hamilton took Halbert’s place; and wife, and Christian, and the other Mary, marvelled when Charles’s voice arose in prayer, at the earnest fervent tone of supplication with which he pleaded for that dying stranger, that the sins of his bygone life might not be remembered against him; and that the blood of atonement, shed for the vilest, might cleanse and purify that polluted soul, even in the departing hour; and to these listeners there seemed a something in Charles’s prayer, as if the dying man and the sins of his fast fading life were thoroughly familiar to him and them.
A dreary journey it was for Halbert and Charles Hamilton as they left the warm social hearth and threaded the narrow streets in silence, following the sick man’s messenger. It was a boisterous night, whose windy gusts whirled the heavy clouds along in quick succession, scattering them across the dark bosom of the sky, and anon embattling them in ponderous masses that lowered in apparent wrath over the gloomy world below. A strange contrast to the blithe house they had left was the clamour and rudeness of the obscure inn they entered now, and an unwonted visitor was a clergyman there; but up the narrow staircase were they led, and pausing for an instant on the landing-place, they listened for a moment to the deep groans and wild exclamations of impatient agony, as the sufferer tossed about on his uneasy bed.
“Ay, sir,” said a servant, who came out of the room with a scared and terrified expression upon her face, in answer to Halbert’s inquiry; “ay, sir, he’s very bad; but the worst of it is not in his body, neither!” and she shook her head mysteriously; “for sure he’s been a bad man, and he’s a deal on his mind.”
She held open the door as she said so, and the visitors entered. The scanty hangings of his bed hid them from the miserable man who lay writhing and struggling there, and the brothers started in utter amazement as they looked upon the wasted and dying occupant of that poor room; the brilliant, the fashionable, the rich, the talented Forsyth—where were all these vain distinctions now?—lay before them, labouring in the last great conflict; poor, deserted, forlorn, and helpless, without a friend, without a hope, with scarce sufficient wealth to buy the cold civility of the terrified nurse who tended him with mercenary carelessness; pressing fast into the wide gloom of eternity, without one feeble ray of life or hope to guide him on that fearful passage, or assuage the burning misery of his soul ere it set out. Halbert Melville, deceived by that poor sufferer of old, bent down his face on his clasped hands, speechless, as the well-known name trembled on his companion’s tongue,—
“Who calls me?” said the dying man, raising himself fearfully on his skeleton arm, and gazing with his fiery sunken eyes through the small apartment. “Who spoke to me? Hence!” he exclaimed, wildly sitting up erect and strong in delirious fury. “Hence, ye vile spirits! Do I not come to your place of misery? Why will ye torment me before my time?”
His trembling attendant tried to calm him: “A minister,” she said, “had come to see him.” He said: “He allow a minister to come and speak with him?”
A wild laugh was the response. “To speak with me, me that am already in torment! Well, let him come,” he said, sinking back with a half-idiotic smile, “let him come”—— and he muttered the conclusion of the sentence to himself.
“Will you come forward, sir?” said the nurse, respectfully addressing Halbert. “He is composed now.”
Trembling with agitation, Halbert drew nearer the bedside, but when those burning eyes, wandering hither and thither about the room, rested on him, a maniac scream rang through the narrow walls, and the gaunt form sat erect again for a moment, with its long arms lifted above its head, and then fell back in a faint, and Halbert Melville hung over his ancient deceiver as anxiously as though he had been, or deserved in all respects to be, his best beloved; and when the miserable man awoke to consciousness again, the first object his eye fell upon, was Halbert kneeling by his bedside, chafing in his own the cold damp hand of Forsyth, with kindest pity pictured on his face. Had Halbert disdained him, had he shunned or reproached him, poor Forsyth, in the delirious strength of his disease, would have given him back scorn for scorn, reproach for reproach. But, lo! the face of this man, whom he had wounded so bitterly, was beaming on him now in compassion’s gentlest guise; and the fierce despairing spirit melted like a child’s, and the dying sinner wept.
“Keep back, Charles!” whispered Halbert, as he rose from the bedside; “the sight of you might awaken darker feelings, and he seems subdued and softened now. There may yet be hope.”
Hope!—the echo of that blessed word has surely reached the quick ear of the sufferer; and it draws from him a painful moan and bitter repetition as he turns his weary form on his couch again: “Hope! who speaks of hope to me?”
“I do,” said Halbert Melville, mildly looking upon the ghastly face whose eyes of supernatural brightness were again fixed upon him. “I do, Forsyth; I, who have sinned as deeply, and in some degree after the same fashion as you. I am commissioned to speak of hope to all—of hope, even on the brink of the grave—of hope to the chief of sinners. Yes, I am sent to speak of hope,” he continued, growing more and more fervent, while the sick man’s fascinated attention and glowing eyes followed each word he uttered and each motion of his lifted hand. “Yes, of hope a thousand times higher in its faintest aspirations than the loftiest ambition of the world.”
“Ay, Melville,” he murmured, feebly overcome by his weakness and emotion. “Ay, but not for me, not for one like me. Why do you come here to mock me?” he added fiercely, after a momentary pause; “why do you come here to insult me with your offers of hope? I am beyond its reach. Let me alone; there is no hope, no help for me!” and again his voice sunk into feebleness, as he murmured over and over these despairing words, like, Charles Hamilton said afterwards, the prolonged wail of a lost soul.
“Listen to me, Forsyth,” said Halbert, seating himself by the bedside, and bending over the sufferer. “Listen to me! You remember how I denied my God and glorified in the denial when last I saw you. You remember how I renounced my faith and hope,” and Halbert, pale with sudden recollection, wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead. “You know, likewise, how I left my home in despair—such despair as you experience now. Listen to me, Forsyth, while I tell you how I regained hope.”
Forsyth groaned and hid his face in his hands, for Halbert had touched a chord in his heart, and a flood of memories rushed back to daunt and confound him, if that were possible, still more and more; and then, for there seemed something in Halbert’s face that fascinated his burning eyes, he turned round again to listen, while Halbert began the fearful story of his own despair—terrible to hear of—terrible to tell; but, oh! how much more terrible to remember, as what oneself has passed through. With increasing earnestness as he went on, the poor sufferer gazed and listened, and at every pause a low moan, wrung from his very soul, attested the fearful faithfulness of the portraiture, true in its minutest points. It was a sore task for Halbert Melville to live over again, even in remembrance, those awful years, and exhibit the bygone fever of his life for the healing of that wounded soul; but bravely did he do it, sparing not the pain of his own shrinking recollection, but unfolding bit by bit the agonies of his then hopelessness, so fearfully reproduced before him now in this trembling spirit, till Charles, sitting unseen in a corner of the small apartment, felt a thrill of awe creep over him, as he listened and trembled in very sympathy; but when Halbert’s voice, full of saddest solemnity, began to soften as he spoke of hope, of that hope that came upon his seared heart like the sweet drops of April rain, reviving what was desolate, of hope whose every smile was full of truthfulness, and certainty, firmer than the foundations of the earth, more enduring than the blue sky or the starry worlds above, built upon the divine righteousness of Him who died for sinners;—the heart of the despairing man grew sick within him, as though the momentary gleam which irradiated his hollow eye was too precious, too joyful, to abide with him in his misery—and, lo! the hardened, obdurate, and unbelieving spirit was struck with the rod of One mightier than Moses, and hiding his pale face on his tear-wet pillow, the penitent man was ready to sob with the Prophet, “Oh! that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!”
A solemn stillness fell upon that sick-room when Halbert’s eloquent tale was told; a stillness that thrilled them as though it betokened the presence of a visitor more powerful than they. The solitary light by the bedside fell upon the recumbent figure, with its thin arms stretched upon the pillow, and its white and ghastly face hidden thereon—full upon the clasped hands of God’s generous servant, wrestling in silent supplication for that poor helpless one. It was a solemn moment, and who may prophesy the issue, the end of all this? A little period passed away, and the fever of the sick man’s despair was assuaged, and weariness stole over his weak frame, with which his fiery rage of mind had hitherto done battle; and gentle sleep, such as had never refreshed his feeble body since he lay down on this bed, closed those poor eyelids now. Pleasant to look upon was that wasted face, in comparison with what it was when Halbert Melville saw its haggard features first of all this night. God grant a blessed awakening.
Softly Halbert stole across the room, and bade Charles go; as soon as he could leave Forsyth he promised that he would return home, but it might be long ere he could do that, and he called the nurse, who was waiting without the door, to see how her patient slept. She looked at him in amazement. Nor was the wonder less of the doctor, who came almost immediately after—he could not have deemed such a thing possible, and if it continued long, it yet might save his life, spent and wasted as he was; but he must still be kept in perfect quietness. Halbert took his station at the bedside as the doctor and nurse left the room, and shading Forsyth’s face with the thin curtain, he leant back, and gave himself up for a time to the strange whirl of excited feeling which followed. The memories so long buried, so suddenly and powerfully awakened; the image of this man, as he once was, and what he was now. Compassion, interest, hope, all circled about that slumbering figure, till Halbert’s anxiety found vent in its accustomed channel, prayer. The night wore slowly on, hour after hour pealed from neighbouring clocks till the chill grey dawn of morn crept into the sick-room, making the solitary watcher shiver with its breath of piercing cold; and not until the morning was advanced, till smoke floated over every roof, and the bustle of daily life had begun once more, did the poor slumberer awake. Wonderingly, as he opened his eyes, did he gaze on Halbert: wonderingly and wistfully, as the events of the past night came up before him in confused recollections, and he perceived that Halbert, who bent over him with enquiries, had watched by his side all night. Forsyth shaded his eyes with his thin hand, and murmured a half weeping acknowledgment of thankfulness, “This from you, Melville, this from you!”
