“But has it taught thee, William, whereby to win the good and eschew the evil; whereby to hold fast to the virtuous, and say unto the evil, ‘get behind me?’ Has it taught thee, I say not to be wiser, but to be happier or better?”
“What is, is! What shall be, shall be! What is written, shall be done! We may flap, or flutter, or even fight, like fish or birds, or, if you will, like lions in the toil; but we are netted, and may not escape, from the beginning! The man may learn the workings of the God, but how shall he control them?”
“And this is thy philosophy—this all that thine art teaches?”
“It is. No more.”
“A sad philosophy—a vain art,” replied the other. “I’ll none of them.”
“I tell thee, Miles St. Aubyn, that years ago, years ere I had heard of Widecomb or its water, I saw yon deep, red-whirling pool; I saw that drowning youth; I saw the ready rescue, and the gentle nursing; and now,” he cried, stretching his hands out widely, and gazing into vacancy, “I see a wilder and a sadder sight—a deeper pool, a stronger cataract, a fierce storm thundering on the hills, and torrents thundering down every gorge and gully to swell the flooded rivers. A young man and a maiden—yet no! no! not a maiden! mounted on gallant horses, are struggling in the whelming eddies. Great God! avert—hold! hold! He lifts his arm, he smites her with his loaded whip—smites her between the eyes that smile upon him; she falls, she is down, down in the whirling waters—rider and horse swept over the mad cataract; but who—who?—ha!” and with a wild shriek he started to his feet, and fell back into the arms of the young man, who from the beginning of the paroxysm evidently had expected its catastrophe, and who, with the assistance of the girl, supported him, now quite inanimate and powerless, from the room, merely saying to Sir Miles, “Be not alarmed, I will return forthwith.”
“My father!” exclaimed Jasper, in a faint voice, as the door closed upon them.
The old man turned hastily to the well-known accents, and hurried to the bed-side. “My boy, my own boy, Jasper. Now, may God’s name be praised forever!”
And falling into a chair by his pillow, the same chair on which that sweet girl had sat a few hours before, he bent over him, and asked him a thousand questions, waiting for no reply, but bathing his face with his tears, and covering his brow with kisses.
When he had at length satisfied the old man that he was well and free from pain, except a few slight bruises, he asked his father eagerly where he was, and who was that strange old man.