Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories, Arthur Christopher Benson [paper ebook reader TXT] 📗

so that the light about them was pure and even; but one day the good dame Ann, who tended me, in stooping to give me drink, thrust a dish off the table, which broke, and spilled its contents, and a dark flush came into the light that was round her for a moment.

"Then too as I got better, and was able to see and speak with my people, there came to me several in trouble of different kinds, and the light was sullen and wavering; one, whose name I will not tell you, came to me with a sin upon his mind, and the vapour was all dark and stained; and so it has been till now; and these last weeks it has been even stranger; because by a kind of practice I have been led to infer what the thoughts in the mind of each person are, at first seeing them. It is true that they have not always told me in words what the light would seem to suggest; but I have good reason to believe that the thoughts are there behind.

"Now," he went on, "this is a sad and dreadful gift, and I do not desire it. It is horrible that the thoughts of men should be made manifest to a man, the thoughts that should be read only by God; and I go to and fro in the world with this cruel horror upon me, and so I am in evil case."

He ceased, as if tired of speaking, and the old Doctor mused, looking on the floor--then he shook his head and said, "My dear friend, I am powerless at present; such a thing has never come to me before--you are as it were in a chamber of life that I have never visited, and I can but stand on the threshold and listen at a closed door." Then he was silent for a little, but presently he said, "This light that you speak of--does it envelop every one?--do you see it about me as I speak with you?" "Yes," said Herbert, turning his eyes upon the Doctor, "it is round you, very pure and clean; you are giving all your heart to my story; and it is a good and tender heart. You have not many sorrows except the sorrows of others," and then suddenly Herbert broke off with a vague gesture of the hand and looked at the Doctor with a bewildered look. "Finish what you were saying," said the Doctor with a grave look. "Nay, nay," said Herbert with a sad air, "you have sorrows indeed--the light changes and darkens--but they are not all for yourself."

"This is a strange thing," said the Doctor very seriously--"tell me what you mean."

"Then you must keep from thoughts on your trouble, whatever it is," said Herbert. "I would read no man's secrets; but let this prove to you that I am not speaking of a mere sick fancy--turn not your thoughts on me." Then there was a pause and then Herbert said slowly, "As far as I can read the light, you did a wrong once, long ago, in your youth, and bear the burden of it yet; and you have striven to amend it; and now it is not a selfish fear;"--the priest mused a moment--"How, if the deed has borne fruit in another, for whom you sorrow, for you think that your wrongdoing was the seed of his?"

The Doctor grew pale to the lips, and said in a low voice, "This is a very fearful gift, dear friend. You have indeed laid your finger on the sore spot--it is a thing I have never spoken of to any but God."

Then there was a silence again; and then Herbert said, "But there is another thing of which I have not told you; it is this; you know what I was before my illness--simple, I think, and humble, and with a heart that for all its faults was tender and faithful. Well, with this gift, that has all departed from me; I seem to care neither for man nor God; I see the trouble in another heart, and it moves me not. I feel as if I would not put out a finger to heal another's grief, except that habit has made it hard for me to do otherwise." And then with a sudden burst of passion, "Oh, my heart of stone!" he said.

The Doctor looked at him very sadly and lovingly, and then he rose. "I must be gone," he said, "but by your leave I will consult, without any mention of name, an old friend of mine, the wise physician of whom I spoke; and meanwhile, dear friend, rest and be still. God has sent you a very strange and terrible gift, but He sends not His gifts in vain; and you must see how you may use it for His service."

"Yes, yes, I doubt not," said Herbert wearily--"but the will to serve is gone from me--I would I were sleeping quietly out yonder--the world is poisoned for me, and yet I loved it once."

Then the old physician went away, lost in thought, and Herbert made attempt to address himself to his book, but he could not; he looked back over his life, and saw himself a simple child, very innocent and loving; he saw his eager and clean boyhood, and how the thought had come into his mind to be a priest--it was not for a noble reason, Herbert thought; he had loved the beauty of the dark rich church, the slow and delicate music of the organ, the singing of the choir, the faint sweetness of the incense smoke, the solemn figures of the priests as they moved about the altar--it had been but a love of beauty and solemnity; no desire to save others, and very little love to the Father, though a strange uplifted desire of heart toward the Lord Christ; but as he thought of it now, sitting in the afternoon sunshine, it seemed to him as though he had loved the Saviour more for the beauty of worship which surrounded Him, throned as it were so piteously upon the awful Cross, lifted up, the desire of the world, in all His stainless strength and adorable suffering, to draw souls to Him.

Then he had gone to Oxford, and he thought of his time there, his small bare rooms, the punctual vivid life, so repressed, yet so full of human movement. Herbert had won friends very easily there, and the good fathers had loved him; but all this love, looking back, seemed to him to have been called out not by the lovingness of his own heart, but by a certain unconscious charm, a sweet humility of manner, a readiness to please and be pleased, a desire to do what should win his companion, whoever it might chance to be.

Then he went for a time as a young priest to the cathedral, as a vicar, and there again life had been easy for him; he had gained fame for a sort of easy and pathetic eloquence, that allowed him to make what he spoke of seem beautiful to those who heard it, but now Herbert thought sadly that he had not done this for love of the thoughts of which he spoke, but for the pleasure of arraying them so that they moved and pleased others; and yet he had won some power over souls too, he had himself been so courteous, so gentle, so seeming tender, that others spoke easily to him of their troubles and seemed to find help in his words; then had come the day when the Bishop had sent him to St. Mary's, and there too everything had been as easy to him as before. Yes, that had been the fault all through! he had won by a certain grace what ought to have been won by deep purity and eager desire and great striving.

And this too had at last begun to come home to him; and then he had half despaired of changing himself. He had been like a shallow rippling brook, yet seemed to others like a swift and patient river; and he had prayed very earnestly to God to change his heart; to deepen and widen it, to make it strong and sincere and faithful. And was this, thought Herbert, the terrible answer? was he who had loved ease and beauty on all sides, had loved the surface and the seeming of things, to be thrust violently into the deep places of the human heart, to be shown by a dreadful clearness of vision the stain, the horror, the shadow of the world?

But what was to him the most despairing thought of all was this--and thinking quietly over it, it seemed to him that if this clearness of vision had quickened his zeal to serve, if it had shown him how true and fierce was the battle to be waged in life, and how few men walked in the peace that was so near them that they could have taken it by stretching out their hand--if it had taught him this, had nerved his heart, had sent him speeding into the throng to heal the secret sorrows that his quickened sight could see, then the reason of the gift would have been plain to him; but with the clearer vision had come this deadly apathy, this strange and bitter loathing for a world where all seemed so sweet outwardly and was so heavy-hearted within. And Herbert thought of how once as a child he had seen a beautiful rose-bush just bursting into bloom; and he had gone near to draw the sweet scent into his nostrils, and had recognised a dreadful heavy odour below and behind the delicate scent of the roses, and there, when he put the bush aside, was the swollen body of a dog that had crept into the very heart of the bush to die, and tainted all the air with the horror of death. He had hated roses long after, and now it seemed to him that all the world was like that.

He came suddenly out of his sad reverie with a start; the bell of the church began to toll for vespers, and he rose up wearily enough to go. His work, he hardly dared confess to himself, was a heavy burden to him; of old he had found great peace, day by day, in the quiet evensong in the dark cool church, the few worshippers, the gracious pleading of the ancient psalms, so sweet in themselves, and so fragrant with the incense of immemorial prayer; and he thought that, besides the actual worshippers, there were round him a great company of faithful souls, unseen yet none the less present--all this had been to him a deep refreshment, a draught of the waters of comfort; but now there was never a gathering when the dark trouble of thought in other souls was not visibly revealed to him.

He went slowly across the little garden in front of the house; there by the road grew a few flowers--for Herbert loved to have all things trim and bright about him. A boy was leaning over the rail looking at the flowers; and Herbert saw, in the secret light that hung round the child, the darkening flush that told of the presence of some conscience-stricken wish. The child got hurriedly down from the rail at the sight of Herbert, who stopped and called him. "Little one," he said, "come hither." The child stood a moment absorbed, finger on lip, and presently came up to Herbert, who gathered a few of the flowers and put them into the child's hands. "Here is a posy for you," he said, "but, dear