Hubert Lyle understood all this at once; he saw how it stood with him, and how it was to be, on to the very door of the grave; so he folded his hands upon his breast and bowed down his head; he accepted his destiny, for he felt that this was not the all of existence. He knew how strangely sweet beyond the tomb shall seem all the bitterness of this life; he saw that the earth was to be to his soul what it is to the outward eyes on a starry winter's night. We know what a contrast there is in that hour between the world above and the world below: the one lies so dark and cold, full only of black shadows and the howling of mournful winds, while the lucid sky that overhangs it, replete with brightness and glory, teems with radiant stars, which are the type of those eternal and glorious hopes that cluster for us on the outskirts of the heaven of revelation. And so it was to be for him: his spirit was to walk in this world as in a bleak and sunless desert; but it was to be for ever canopied over with one bright and boundless thought, wherein were set immutable and numberless, the starlike hopes of one eternity.
Thus was he to live, wholly independent of earth, and indifferent to it. But no man can walk free while there are chains upon his hands and feet, and he felt that he was bound to his fellow-creatures by two ropes, as it were, of iron: the longing to love, and to be beloved. Of these he must free himself, tearing them off his shrinking flesh as a prisoner would his manacles. And he did so. He taught himself to look upon all human beings as not of his kind. Even when every nerve and fibre in his frame cried out that they were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, he learned to consider them inaccessible for him as the angels in heaven. Yes, even far more; for he trusted that yet a little while, and these holy ones should be his dear companions; and so he held communion with them now. But with men he dared not hazard so much as to give them a place in his thoughts, for he knew that the dream of their friendship would become the longing for it, and the longing in his case must turn to agony; so it came to pass that his strong will, his stern resignation, compassed that which one might have believed well nigh unattainable to flesh and blood. He divested himself of all earthly inclinations and desires, all natural wishes and sympathies, and lived in this world as though he were utterly alone in it, and sole representative of a race, differing from those angelic friends whom only he consented to know as the living population of the universe—a solitary being placed on this earth as in a desert place, where he was commanded, for his own needful discipline, to abide, till the world of spirits should be revealed to him, and he entering there should find a home and loving friends.
It was for this cause that Hubert shunned all intercourse with the Randolph family, as he did with all others—a resolution strengthened in their case by the generous motives Gabriel had assigned to him; for whatever might have been the reasons of this latter for pronouncing his eulogium, he had said no more than the truth in his account of his character.
When Hubert Lyle had gone through the mental process we have detailed, very deep was the calm that entered into his soul. It became like the pure waters of a deep still well, walled in and protected from all sights and sounds of the world without, and with the light and the glory of heaven alone mirrored within it.
And why, then, was the quiet now gone from his heart, and the repose from his eyes? Why did he look up with that earnest gaze to the evening sky, as though some shadow had come over its brightness? It was because the terror had come upon him, that the greatest enemy he ever could know in this life was about to rise up from its deathlike torpor and assail him—even his own human nature; he felt that all those natural feelings and passions which he had crushed down deep into his heart as unto a grave, were now stirring themselves like men that had been buried alive, and were waking in torture; they would live, they were bursting the cerements of that strong heart. How were they to be beaten to death again? There—rampant and fierce was the craving for sympathy, for love. There, sickening in its intensity, was the yearning to give and to receive that greatest of earthly gifts, the blessing of a mutual pure affection; the heart moulded from dust reasserted its birthright, and cried out for its kindred dust. It was not that these feelings were as yet at work with any definite object within Hubert Lyle, it was but the shadow and the prophecy of them that lay upon him, like a thick cloud charged with lightning.
And all this had been done by the murmur of one voice, one sweet voice, speaking in the accents of that tender sympathy which never before had sounded in the cold, joyless region of his life, whispering hope to him. He was not so mad as to love Lilias Randolph, whom he had seen but for one half-hour, but her tenderness, her generous, loving kindness, had aroused the slumbering nature within him, and he felt that were he much in contact with one so pure, so gentle, so noble, as she seemed to him, he might come to love. Oh! how madly, how miserably to love! he, the deformed cripple! Was not this a frenzy against which he had armed all the powers of his being? what tyrant, what enemy could be more fearful to him than an earthly love? what would it do for him but crush and torture him, and hold up far off the cup of this world's joy, where his parched lips could not reach, and he dying of thirst? Was it a presentiment that made him feel as if the spirit he had so chained down were rebelling against him, and required but the master-touch of some kindly and winning child of earth to abandon itself to unutterable madness? But, at all events, whatever were the source of this terror which had come upon him, whether it were a foreshadowing of future evil, or the warning of his good angel, it cannot pass unheeded. He must, with a strong will, compel his spirit to realize in all the bitterness of detail the truth of his exile from mankind, his needful isolation, as decreed by the seal of that deformity which made him an unsightly object in their eyes.
He would force himself to remember that the music of human voices, however softly they might greet him, must be for him like those melodies of nature when wind and stream make the air musical, to which we listen with pleasure, but in which we have no part; and the aspect of goodness and gentleness, so lovely in the fallen child of Adam, must be to him like the light of a star shining far off in regions unattainable. Yet, while he felt within himself the courage thus to act, were he brought in contact again with her, whose sweet face had come beaming in so strangely on the darkness of his perpetual solitude, his very soul shrank from the struggle, and the longing so often before experienced to quit this house, where he was so unwelcome, returned upon him with redoubled force.
Whilst he was still sitting thinking on these things, his head resting on his clasped hands, there was a sound of rustling silks in the passage—the door opened, a measured, stately step went through the room, and Lady Randolph stood by the side of her deformed son. He looked up.
"Dear mother, I am so glad you have come, I was wishing at this very moment to speak to you."
There was an expression of displeasure and annoyance on her beautiful face as she looked at him.