III.
As the last words of his strange narration fell from Clifton's lips, he bowed his head and was greatly agitated. The [pg 336] vast theologic conception over which he had so long brooded, instead of lifting him on high, had crushed him to the earth. His moral consciousness had demanded a satisfaction which he lacked integrity of purpose to pursue and challenge. A fixed conviction of the dreariest pessimism would have been better for this man than the lofty uncertainty which had tortured his days; for in the belief that one may neither struggle nor aspire there is a certain practical drift. But how shall he do any good who bears about him a quick conscience, a skeptical understanding, sensitive religious affections, and a feeble will? Charles Clifton had neither the leisure, nor possibly the application, to follow the creeping advances of systematic knowledge. He had listened to a fatal persuasion, and at the same time had sought to satisfy contradictory principles of the human mind. The kindest thing I could do for him was soon perceived.
"Reverend Sir," I said, "you must permit me to advise you. It is now six o'clock. In an hour the early train leaves for Foxden. You must take it and return home. Any further vacuum in your daily employment will produce a crushing pressure from without that might endanger reason itself. I solemnly promise to deposit this manuscript in the Mather Safe,—nay, I will not leave town until the President and Treasurer have met me this afternoon according to your agreement. I pledge you my honor that the parchment shall be consigned to its resting-place with every necessary formality."
My companion gazed long upon vacancy before returning any answer. He strove to dispel the cloud-pageantry which had sailed above him in shapeless beauty. He walked up and down the chamber, paused, threw open the window, and looked upon the street below. I felt that every petty detail of man's daily craft struck outlines of painful vividness upon the morbid sensibility of his condition. Finally he spoke to this effect: —
"A grief has been lessened in giving it words. My deepest and most solitary moments have been revealed to human sympathy, and the relief is great. It may be that I have been created to some wholesome end,—that some truth may shine before the world through what seems the failure of my life. I will return at once to the sphere of the senses: it is, as you say, all that is left me. Let who will inquire into the significance and purpose of the Universe; it is for me to work in the bondage of the flesh, to be the humble tool of the age in which my lot is cast."
Yet it was not easy to induce the clergyman to commit to my care the conclusion of the enterprise which had brought him to town. His peculiar nervous temperament foretold a thousand accidents that might befall the precious legacy of his friend. It was only by addressing his reason in repeated arguments, and by solemnly asseverating my entire fidelity, that I induced him to yield.
It was a gracious gift to be once more alone.
I seemed awakened from a dream of pining exultation, of dark foreboding. Without acknowledging it to myself, I had been strangely wrought upon by what I had read and heard. As Clifton emerged from the magical influence of Vannelle, was it not concentrated upon me? The impulse to return to the perusal of the manuscript was almost irresistible. Yet it was evident, that, failing to receive as my very life what was there written, I should become hopelessly entangled in discrepancies and contradictions. A glance at the imminent peril sent me shuddering to my only safety.
It has been mentioned that I had interested myself in some inquiries tending to modify the received understanding of a certain natural law. During my morning in the College Library I had collected the records of many facts, which, laboriously compared, might confirm the hypothesis I had conceived. I now braced myself to the task of tracing an order in these random observations. I was soon stimulated by perceiving that my [pg 337] statistics seemed to confirm the justice of the reasoning which at first roused my suspicion. More and more plainly did man's experience respond to the results I had dared to predict. Trivial circumstances, noted in remote times and disconnected places, pointed in one direction, and there beat the regular pulse of Nature.
It is perhaps a little humiliating to mention, what I afterwards discovered, that the doctrine which I endeavored to reach had been already conceived and passed upon by a not very eminent scientist in one of the Western States. But at that time absorption in the search for attainable truth was necessary to my welfare; and, with very brief intervals for rest and refreshment, I continued my pursuit until the afternoon-hour for visiting the library.
The President and Treasurer entered the building at five o'clock.
For some minutes I had stood before the massive doors of the Mather Safe, wondering if any of its mysterious contents could be more singular than the consignment about to be made to its keeping.
"Is Mr. Clifton of Foxden in the library?" inquired the President.
"I am here to represent him," I replied. "He made a strange mistake in the day of appointment, and was compelled to leave town this morning. The package which he wished to deposit in the Mather Safe I hold in my hand."
"Lex Universalis Naturæ; THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE," exclaimed the Treasurer, reading the inscription upon the outer parchment. "Poh, poh! I thought that sort of philosophy had long ago been handed over to the limbo of fallacies."
"By those who have neither feeling nor imagination enough to care for anything not transmutable into dollars, perhaps it has," I rejoined, somewhat tartly.
"Come, come!" said the President, in his good-natured, rolling tones; "since the days of the great Jonathan, our New-England metaphysicians have generally been broken-down poets, and should be treated with the greatest tenderness. Some flighty minds will prefer dangerous trips to dream-land to the rigid demonstrations of figures; but the mass of our graduates accept the teaching of their Alma Mater, that only the mathematician has the right to investigate, and that of all philosophers only natural philosophers are competent instructors."
"Yet, Sir," I said, "you will remember that the time was when your natural philosophers were persecuted as wizards by Church and State. Even the mathematician is defined by an old lexicographer to be 'Magus dæmonum invocator'; and I cannot forget that all that is of honor and respect to-day is but the actual of a once despised ideal."
I really marvelled at my own audacity in presuming to question the words of this distinguished and excellent gentleman. Indeed, it was particularly surprising, because (if I knew myself) I precisely agreed with him. But there is a certain waywardness in my composition, which loves to puncture an inflated conventionality, even when I myself am most conventional.
In the mean time the Treasurer, taking the President's key with his own, had opened the Safe. I looked in and beheld coffers of lead and oak, nooks and pigeon-holes covered and sealed with the College seal, little cells of glass which appeared to hold documents of the utmost importance, and, in short, whatever might best defy the injuries of time. The weighty book which registered the contents of the Safe was opened before me. I was told to write the number assigned to the manuscript, to describe its present condition, and to indicate its destination. This I carefully did, and was about to confide my charge to its long oblivion.
"Stay!" said the President. "You have forgotten the mottoes! Here is only one; and it is our rule that every deposit in the Mather Safe be distinguished by three, in as many languages.
'Alteri Sæculo.'
[pg 338]
The selection is good, though it has already been adopted by a Massachusetts statesman. It is now for you to supply two others."
Singular as it may appear, this sudden call to perform a trifling office which I had not anticipated, filled me with a conflict of emotions. In choosing another's words, I seemed to indorse or repudiate the strange matter with which they were to be associated. I thought of Vannelle's wondrous language, of Clifton's exhilaration, and of the vivid buoyancy with which my spirit had striven to rise. I even groped for some phrase which might hint what delicate aërial impressions had tended to condense the soul on the supreme point of spiritual ecstasy. But memory was a blank when I demanded words for this seeming-glorious fact in the experience of humanity. Success was made impossible by the very intensity of the effort to summon an appropriate message to be dropped over the abyss of Time. I was confident that there were many apt things which might be said, if I could come at them, as it were, sideways. In order that I might take them at this advantage, I snatched a letter from my pocket, and began to read. My eye was soon caught by the impression of a seal that I had once given my wife. It was a good [woman's] motto, I jestingly told her; and now it was returned to me at my sorest need. Six little words of the good Pascal,—
"Le plus súr est de croire."
Something compelled me to write them, and a new freedom was with me when I had done so.
"Make haste, make haste, for the prayer-bell is ringing!" cried the President "See, here is a copy of Plato's 'Phædrus,'—a work which our vapory brethren are fond of quoting, generally at second-hand; perhaps you may pick out a sentence that will prophesy with sufficient ambiguity."
But it was not Plato or his "Phædrus" that then claimed my thoughts. There loomed a Rock graven with more august instruction than the sage of the Academy was privileged to communicate,—a Rock against which the heaving surface of human opinion had chafed and broken in vain. Tossed to and fro upon the tide of life, who has not sometimes listened to the wrangling voices which shouted, "Mystical Interpretation," "Absolute Fiction," "Huge Conglomerate of Myths"? Whose eye has never been caught by the sparkling tinsel of modern philosophies, with their Seers, Heroes, Missions, Developments, Insights, Principles of Nature, Clairvoyance, and Magnetic Currents? Happy those who are able to return to that one channel through which magnetic currents have indeed descended from an unseen sphere, and touched the noblest hearts! For there is a certain mediation between the necessities and aspirations of man,—an assured deliverance from the gross and sordid surroundings of his earthly life. There came before me one simple period from a familiar Book. Most direct and confident is the solemn statement. I wrote it as the final motto.
"NOW THE SERPENT WAS MORE SUBTILE THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD WHICH THE LORD GOD HAD MADE."
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