Christian Melville

by Mrs. Oliphant

CHAPTER I.

That there is not a God, the fool
Doth in his heart conclude:
They are corrupt, their works are vile;
Not one of them doth good.
* * * * *
There feared they much; for God is with
The whole race of the just.—Psalm xiv.

NOTHER December has begun to lower in the dim skies with wintry wildness, to bind the earth with iron fetters, and to cover its surface with its snowy mantle, as we enter for the first time another town, far from that English borough in which we lingered a year ago. An ancient city is this, within whose time-honoured walls the flower and pride of whatever was greatest and noblest in Scotland, has ever been found through long descending ages. Elevated rank, mighty mental ability, eminent piety, the soundest of all theology, the most thorough of all philosophy, and the truest patriotism, have ever been concentrated within its gates. Here men are common, who elsewhere would be great, and the few who do stand out from amid that mass of intellect stand out as towers, and above that vast aggregate of genius and goodness are seen from every mountain in Christendom, from every Pisgah of intellectual vision, whereon thoughtful men do take their stations, as suns amid the stars. And alas that we should have to say it, where vice also erects its head and stalks abroad with an unblushing front, and a fierce hardihood, lamentable to behold. We cannot, to-night, tread its far-famed halls of learning, we may not thread our way through the busy, seething multitudes of its old traditionary streets; but there is one chamber, from whose high windows a solitary light streams out into the murky air, into which we must pass.

It is a plain room, not large, and rich in nothing but books; books which tell the prevalent pursuits, tastes, and studies of its owner, filling the shelves of the little bookcase, covering the table, and piled in heaps on floor and chairs: massive old folios, ponderous quartos, and thick, dumpy little volumes, of the seventeenth century, in faded vellum, seem most to prevail, but there are others with the fresh glitter of modern times without, and perhaps with the false polish of modern philosophies within. With each of its two occupants we have yet to make acquaintance; one is a tall, handsome man, already beyond the freshness of his youth, well-dressed and gentleman-like, but having a disagreeable expression on his finely formed features, and a glittering look in his eye—a look at once exulting and malicious, such as you could fancy of a demon assured of his prey. The other, with whom he is engaged in earnest conversation, is at least ten years his junior; young, sensitive, enthusiastic, he appears to be, with an ample forehead and a brilliant eye, as different as possible in its expression from the shining orb of the other. There is no malice to be seen here, no sneer on those lips, no deceit in that face, open, manly, eloquent and sincere. Famed in his bygone career, he is covered with academic honours, is full of vigour, of promise, of hopefulness, with eloquence on his lips, and logic in his brain, and his mind cultured thoroughly, the favoured of his teachers, the beloved of his companions, the brother of our gentle Christian, our acquaintance of last year in his letter to Christian—Halbert Melville.

But what is this we see to-night! How changed does he seem, then so beautiful, so gallant; there is a fire in his eyes, a wild fire that used not to be there, and the veins are swollen on his forehead, and stand out like whipcord. His face is like the sea, beneath the sudden squall that heralds the coming hurricane, now wild and tossed in its stormy agitation, now lulled into a desperate and deceitful calmness. His lips are severed one moment with a laugh of reckless mirth, and the next, are firmly compressed as if in mortal agony, and he casts a look around as if inquiring who dared to laugh. His arm rests on the table, and his finger is inserted between the pages of a book—one of the glittering ones we can see, resplendent in green and gold—to which he often refers, as the conversation becomes more and more animated; again and again he searches its pages, and after each reference he reiterates that terrible laugh, so wild, so desperate, so mad, while his companion’s glittering serpent eye, and sneering lip, send it back again in triumph. What, and why is this?

Look at the book, which Halbert’s trembling hand holds open. Look at this little pile laid by themselves in one corner of the room, the gift every one of them of the friend who sits sneering beside him, the Apostle of so-called spiritualism, but in reality, rank materialism, and infidelity, and you will see good cause for the internal struggle, which chases the boiling blood through his youthful veins, and moistens his lofty brow with drops of anguish. The tempter has wrought long and warily; Halbert’s mind has been besieged in regular form; mines have been sprung, batteries silenced, bastions destroyed—at least, to Halbert’s apprehension, rendered no longer tenable; point by point has he surrendered, stone by stone the walls of the citadel have been undermined, and the overthrowal is complete. Halbert Melville is an unbeliever, an infidel, for the time. Alas! that fair and beauteous structure, one short twelvemonth since so grand, so imposing, so seeming strong and impregnable, lies now a heap of ruins. No worse sight did ever captured fortress offer, after shot and shell, mine and counter-mine, storm and rapine had done their worst, than this, that that noble enthusiastic mind should become so shattered and confused and ruinous.

There is a pause in the conversation. Halbert has shut his book, and is bending over it in silence. Oh, that some ray of light may penetrate his soul, transfix these subtle sophisms, and win him back to truth and right again; for what has he instead of truth and right? only dead negations and privations; a series of Noes—no God, no Saviour, no Devil even, though they are his children; no immortality, no hereafter—a perfect wilderness of Noes. But his tempter sees the danger.

“Come, Melville,” he says rising, “you have been studying too long to-day; come man, you are not a boy to become melancholy, because you have found out at last, what I could have told you long ago, that these nonsensical dreams and figments, that puzzled you a month or two since, are but bubbles and absurdities after all—marvellously coherent we must confess in some things, and very poetical and pretty in others—but so very irrational that they most surely are far beneath the consideration of men in these days of progress and enlightenment. Come, you must go with me to-night, I have some friends to sup with me, to whom I would like to introduce you. See, here is your hat; put away Gregg, and Newman, just now, the Nemesis can stand till another time—by-the-by, what a struggle that fellow must have had, before he got to light. Come away.”