The lost hunter: A tale of early times

by John Turvill Adams

"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.