Part 36 (1/2)
Haldane shook his head, and after a moment slowly and musingly said, as much to himself as to the giver of this good advice:
”I'm in the Slough of Despond, and I don't know how to get out. I can see the sunny uplands that I long to reach, but everything is quaking and giving way under my feet. After listening to Dr. Barstow's grand sermon this morning, my spirit flamed up hopefully. Now he has placed a duty directly in my path that I cannot perform by myself. Mrs. Arnot has made it clear to me that the manhood I need is Christian manhood. Dr.
Barstow proves out of the Bible that the first step toward this is conversion--which seems to be a mysterious change which I but vaguely understand. I must do my part myself, he says, yet I am wholly dependent on the will and co-operation of another. Just what am I to do? Just when and how will the help come in? How can I know that it will come? or how can I ever be sure that I have been converted?”
”O, stop splittin' hairs!” said Mr. Growther, testily. ”Hanged if I can tell you how it's all goin' to be brought about--go ask the parson to clear up these p'ints for you--but I can tell you this much: when you git convarted you'll know it. If you had a ragin' toothache, and it suddenly stopped and you felt comfortable all over, wouldn't you know it? But that don't express it. You'd feel more'n comfortable; you'd feel so good you couldn't hold in. You'd be fur shoutin'; you wouldn't know yourself. Why, doesn't the Bible say you'd be a new critter? There'll be just such a change in your heart as there is in this old kitchen when we come in on a cold, dark night and light the candles, and kindle a fire.
I tell you what 'tis, young man, if you once got convarted your troubles would be wellnigh over.”
Though the picture of this possible future was drawn in such homely lines, Haldane looked at it with wistful eyes. He had become accustomed to his benefactor's odd ways and words, and caught his sense beneath the grotesque imagery. As he was then situated, the future drawn by the old man and interpreted by himself was peculiarly attractive. He was very miserable, and it is most natural, especially for the young, to wish to be happy. He had been led to believe that conversion would lead to a happiness as great as it was mysterious--a sort of miraculous ecstasy, that would render him oblivious of the hard and prosaic conditions of his lot. Through misfortune and his own fault he possessed a very defective character. This character had been formed, it is true, by years of self-indulgence and wrong, and Mrs. Arnot had a.s.serted that reform would require long, patient, and heroic effort. Indeed, she had suggested that in fighting and subduing the evils of one's own nature a man attained the n.o.blest degree of knighthood. He had already learned how severe was the conflict in which he had been led to engage.
But might not this mysterious conversion make things infinitely easier?
If a great and radical change were suddenly wrought in his moral nature, would not evil appet.i.tes and propensities be uprooted like vile weeds?
If a ”new heart” were given him, would not the thoughts and desires flowing from it be like pure water from an unsullied spring? After the ”old things”--that is the evil--had pa.s.sed away, would not that which was n.o.ble and good spring up naturally, and almost spontaneously?
This was Mr. Growther's view; and he had long since learned that the old man's opinions were sound on most questions. This seemed, moreover, the teaching of the Bible also, and of such sermons as he could recall. And yet it caused him some misgivings that Mrs. Arnot had not indicated more clearly this short-cut out of his difficulties.
But Mr. Growther's theology carried the day. As he watched the young man's thoughtful face he thought the occasion ripe for the ”word in season.”
”Now is the time,” he said; ”now while yer moral j'ints is limber.
What's the use of climbin' the mountain on your hands and knees when you can go up in a chariot of fire, if you can only git in it?” and he talked and urged so earnestly that Haldane smiled and said:
”Mr. Growther, you have mistaken your vocation. You ought to have been a missionary to the heathen.”
”That would be sendin' a thief to ketch a thief. But you know I've a grudge agin the devil, if I do belong to him; and if I could help git you out of his clutches it would do me a sight o' good.”
”If I ever do get out I shall indeed have to thank you.”
”I don't want no thanks, and don't desarve any. You're only giving me a chance to hit the adversary 'twixt the eyes,” and the old man added his characteristic ”A-a-h!” in an emphatic and vengeful manner, as if he would like to hit very hard.
Human nature was on the side of Mr. Growther's view of conversion.
Nothing is more common than the delusive hope that health, shattered by years of wilful wrong, can be regained by the use of some highly extolled drug, or by a few deep draughts from some far-famed spring.
Haldane retired to rest fully bent upon securing this vague and mighty change as speedily as possible.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
HOPING FOR A MIRACLE
Mr. Ivison, Haldane's employer, was a wors.h.i.+pper at St. Paul's, and, like many others, had been deeply impressed by the sermon. Its influence had not wholly exhaled by Monday, and, as this gentleman was eminently practical, he felt that he ought to do something, as well as experience a little emotion. Thus he was led to address the following note to Haldane:
Last week I gave you a chance; this week I am induced to give you a good word. While I warn you that I will tolerate no weak dallying with your old temptations, I also tell you that I would like to see you make a man of yourself, or, more correctly, perhaps, as Dr. Barstow would express it, be made a man of. If one wants to do right, I believe there is help for him (go and ask the Rev. Dr. Barstow about this); and if you will go right straight ahead till I see you can be depended upon, I will continue to speak good words to you and for you, and perhaps do more.
GEORGE IVISON.
This note greatly encouraged Haldane, and made his precarious foothold among the world's industries seem more firm and certain. The danger of being swept back into the deep water where those struggle who have no foothold, no work, no place in society would not come from the caprice or forgetfulness of his employer, but from his own peculiar temptations and weaknesses. If he could patiently do his duty in his present humble position, he justly believed that it would be the stepping-stone to something better. But, having learned to know himself, he was afraid of himself; and he had seen with an infinite dread what cold, dark depths yawn about one whom society shakes off as a vile and venomous thing, and who must eventually take evil and its consequences as his only portion.
The hot, reeking apartment wherein he toiled was the first solid ground that he had felt beneath his feet for many days. If he could hold that footing, the water might shoal so that he could reach the land. It is true he could always look to his mother for food and clothing if he would comply with her conditions. But, greatly perverted as his nature had been, food and clothing, the maintenance of a merely animal life, could no longer satisfy him. He had thought too deeply, and had seen too much truth, to feed contentedly among the swine.
But the temptations which eventually lead to the swine--could he persistently resist these? Could he maintain a hard, monotonous routine of toil, with no excitements, no pleasures, with nothing that even approached happiness? He dared not give way; he doubted his strength to go forward alone with such a prospect. If conversion be a blessed miracle by which a debased nature is suddenly lifted up, and a harsh, lead-colored, prosaic world transfigured into the vestibule of heaven, he longed to witness it in his own experience.