Whether my death was succeeded by a season of slumber, in which certain divinely ordered dreams were caused to be dreamed by me, or whether God caused the hands on the dial of Time to be put back for a space in order that I might see the past as He sees it, I neither knew nor know; but I distinctly remember that the first thing of which I was conscious after my dissolution was that the events of my past life were rising before me. Yes, it was my past life, which I saw in that awful moment, my past life standing out in its own naked and intolerable horror, an abomination in the sight of God, and of my own conscience.
The hands on the dial of Time went back half a score, a score, and finally a score and a half of years, and once more I was a young man of twenty-one. The chambers in which I was then living were situated in one of the well-known Inns off Holborn, and the housekeeper of the wing where I was quartered was a widow, who, with her daughter Dorothy, a girl of seventeen, resided on the premises.
As it was Dorothy's part to wait upon the occupants of the chambers, she had occasion to come to my room several times in the day, and I could not help noticing her loveliness, which, indeed, reminded me not a little of my favourite Greuze picture. When I first knew her she seemed maidenly and modest, but was vain beyond a question, and her manner to the opposite sex was shy and self-conscious, with occasional dashes of an artless and even childish coquetry which was most bewitching. By this girl I was irresistibly and fatally fascinated. I was young, susceptible, and singularly impressionable to female beauty, whilst the loneliness and the monotony of the life I was leading were in themselves elements of considerable danger; and to make matters worse, it was only too evident that Dorothy was not indifferent to my admiration. As I knew that it was but the fascination of form and feature which attracted me, and that nothing but mischief was likely to come of such a passion, I strove my hardest to steel myself against her; but Fate seemed adverse, for one summer evening while I was sitting in my study, waiting for a friend, there burst over London the most fearful thunderstorm which I have ever witnessed. The lightning was so vivid and the thunder so terrific, that even I, who am by no means nervous about such things, felt strangely moved and unsettled; and I was not a little glad, therefore, to hear what I took to be my friend's knock. When I went to the door, however, I found that it was not he, but Dorothy, and that she was white with fear, and trembling from head to foot. "Oh, sir," she sobbed, "mother's out, and there's no one else in but you, and I'm so frightened that I can't stay by myself. If you'll only let me be here till she comes back, I'll be very quiet and not disturb you in any way."
Knowing my weakness and her great beauty, I had up to that moment studiously refrained from allowing so much as a wandering glance to rest on her; but I could not avoid looking at her now, and I remember that her eyes, bright and pitiful and beseeching, "her bosom's gentle neighbourhood," and the very consciousness of her presence as she stood before me, set my heart beating so wildly, that it was all I could do to refrain from taking her in my arms then and there, and telling her (forgive the profanation of a holy word) that I "loved" her.
The virtuous determination to be on our guard against some besetting sin or constitutional failing comes to us generally, not during the moment of temptation, when we are most in need of such a moral reminder, but after the event, and when the determination is too late; but on this occasion I heard the inward monitor speak out a timely warning, and that with no uncertain tongue. By a great effort I nerved myself to my accustomed control, and though I knew Dorothy would think me churlish and cruel, I told her coldly that she had better go downstairs and wait the return of her mother. The words had scarcely time to pass my lips (I doubt, indeed, if she could have heard them), before they were lost in a terrific thunder-peal, following almost instantaneously upon a blinding flash of lightning. It had been better for both of us, as I have often since thought, if that flash had struck us dead as we stood there; for, with one cry of passion and fear, and calling me by my name—my Christian name—in a tone that none could misinterpret, Dorothy flung her arms around me, and the next moment I found myself pressing her to my heart with a fierce and almost savage exultation, and telling her, amid a score of burning kisses, that I loved her.
Almost immediately afterwards we heard the opening of doors, which indicated her mother's home-coming, but not before Dorothy had time to tell me in return that she too loved me, and had always done so. And then she slipped from my arms, and tripped away with tumbled hair and flaming cheeks to join her mother, turning as she reached the door to look back with a shy smile and to say—innocently and unsuspectingly enough as I knew well—that the room directly over mine was her own, and that she often lay awake at night listening to my restless pacing to and fro, and wondering what could keep me up so late.
Of the hellish thought which rose in my heart as I listened—the thought that she would not refuse me admittance to her room should I seek her there that night—she could have had no suspicion, for it was a thought of which, at any other time, I should have deemed myself incapable. I remember that I did not fling the hateful suggestion from me, as I should have done an hour earlier, although, passion-maddened as I was, I recoiled from it, and vowed that I would never entertain it. But I brooded over the horrible idea, and sketched out how easily it might be acted upon, were I the foul thing to do it, which I still declared to myself I was not. Had I arisen in trembling horror, and thrust the vile conception from me, she and I might even then have been saved, but I let it enter and take up its abode in my heart, and from thenceforward I strove to drive it forth in vain.
Oh! in God's name, in the name of Love and Truth and Purity, when any such evil or impure thought so much as casts the shadow of its approaching presence on your soul, then, in all the strength of your manhood, arise and thrust it out, ere it be too late! Argue not, delay not, listen not, but hurl the loathsome whisper from you as though it were some poisonous reptile, and bid it be gone for ever!
From the moment that I gave audience to that messenger of Satan, hell and its furies laid hold on me. Sometimes I seemed to be gaining ground, sometimes I seemed to be recovering my balance of mind. "I will do the right!" I cried, "I will not be guilty of this accursed thing!" but even as I strove to fix my feeble purpose to the sticking point, some moral screw seemed to give way within me, and I felt that purpose ebbing away like life-blood from a fatal wound.
At last the struggle seemed to cease, and there was borne in upon me a sense of peace, deep, and sweet, and restful. I know now that it was but exhaustion consequent upon the strain I had endured, that it was nothing more than the inevitable reaction from the high soul-tension to which I had been subjected. To me, however, it seemed as the very peace of God and as a sign from heaven, and lulled into a false security, I let my thoughts wander back to dwell again upon the temptation. Need I tell the remainder of my story? Need I say that my passion had but simulated defeat, as passion often does, in order that it might turn in an unguarded moment, and rend me with redoubled fury? The next moment I saw my last gasping effort to will the right sink amid the tempestuous sea of sinful wishes, as a drowning man sinks after he has risen for the third time; and deliberately thrusting away, in the very doggedness of despair, the invisible hand which yet strove to stay me, I arose and sought the room that I had prayed I might never enter.