A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time

by Sir Hall Caine

What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is death.

Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church, and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel within him had once again been conquered.

The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more. "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a garment.... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed their normal expression.

The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but the symbol of the close-locked heart.

He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man? These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished? Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening to know that it was not true.

The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into the sacristy.

Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint, with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her, her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look. "Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass," she said.

Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."

"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said Greta, fervently.