The Altar Fire, Arthur Christopher Benson [book recommendations for young adults txt] 📗

and he knew exactly what his markers meant. In the middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored like a worm in a cheese, he died. His library was sold. The markers meant nothing to any one else; and the book-buyers merely took the markers out and threw them away, and that was the end of the history of political institutions.

I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to try and arrive at some solution, to draw some sort of conclusions--to reflect, to theorise; we may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only hope of doing so, the only hope that humanity will do so, is for some at least to try. And thus I think that I have perhaps been saved from a great delusion. I was spending my time in spinning romances, in elaborating plots, in manoeuvring life as I would; and it is not like that! Life is not run on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor social, nor even moral lines. It is not managed in the least as we should manage it; it is a resultant of innumerable forces, or perhaps the same force running in intricate currents. Of course the strange thing is that we men should find ourselves thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed; our happiness seems to depend upon our being, or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it baffles us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end; sometimes it crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and even if we do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure; and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by practising indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning ourselves to despair; only by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows gracious, can we hope to triumph. We go on, many of us, relying on useless defences, beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions, overlooking, as far as we can, stern realities; stopping our ears, turning away our gaze, shrinking and crying out like children at the prospect of experiences to which we are led by loving presences, that smile as they draw us to the wholesome and bracing incidents that we so weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we know in our souls that courage can only be won by enduring what we fear; and thus preoccupied by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the wholesome sweet and simple stuff of life, its quiet relationships, its tranquil occupations, its beautiful and tender surprises.

And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a deep and splendid flash of insight, when we can thank God that things have not been as we should have willed and ordered them. We should have lingered, perhaps, in the low rich meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our desire; we should never have set our feet to the hill. In terror and reluctance we have wandered upwards among the steep mountain tracks, by high green slopes, by grim crag-buttresses, through fields of desolate stones. Yet we are aware of a finer, purer air, of wide prospects of hill and plain; we feel that we have gained in strength and vigour, that our perceptions are keener, our very enjoyment nobler; and at last, it may be, we have sight, from some Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer lands yet to which we are surely bound. And then, too, though we have fared on in loneliness and isolation, we see moving forms of friends and comrades converging on our track. It is no dream; it is but a parable of what has happened to many a soul, what is daily happening. What does the sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern us at such a moment as this? It concerns us nothing, save that only through its pains and shadows was it possible for us to climb where we have climbed.

To-day it seems that I have been blessed with such a vision. The mist will close in again, doubtless, wild with wind, chill with rain, sad with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have seen! I shall be weary and regretful and despairing many times; but I shall never wholly doubt again.


August 8, 1889.


Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, feverish, yesterday evening, and I thought he must have caught cold; we put him to bed, and this morning we sent for the doctor. He says there is no need for anxiety, but he does not know as yet what is the matter; his temperature is high, and we must just keep him quietly in bed, and wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to be anxious, but I cannot keep a certain dread out of my mind; there is a weight upon my heart, which seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only that it seems unusual, for he has never had an illness of any kind. He is not to be disturbed, and Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud sate with him this morning, and he slept most of the time. I looked in once or twice, but people coming and going tend to make him restless. Maud herself is a marvel to me. She must be even more anxious than I am, but she is serene, smiling, strong, with a cheerfulness that has no effort about it. She laughed tenderly at my fears, and sent me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear I was a gloomy companion. In the evening I went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful, large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, in one hand, the other clasping his black kitten, which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him a long trivial story, full of unexciting incidents. He lay musing, his head on his hand; then he seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, watching and wondering at the nearness and the dearness of the child to me, almost amazed at the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me of the place which he fills in my heart and life. He tossed about for some time, and when I asked him if he wanted anything, he only put his hand in mine; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a boy who is averse to personal caresses or signs of emotion. So I drew my chair up to the bed, and sate there with the little hot hand in my own. Maud came up presently; but as he now seemed sound asleep, we left him in the care of the old nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only knew what was the matter! I argue with myself how much unnecessary misery I give myself by anticipating evil; but I cannot help it; and the weight on my mind grew heavier; half the night I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a beast leaping upon its prey.


August 11, 1889.


I cannot and dare not write of these days. The child is very ill; it is some obscure inflammation of the brain-tissue. I had an insupportable fear that it might have resulted in some way from being over-pressed in the matter of work, over-stimulated. I asked the doctor. If he lied to me, and I do not think he did, he lied like a man, or an angel. "Not in the least," he said, "it is a constitutional thing; in fact, I may say that the rational and healthy life the child has lived will help more than anything to pull him through."

But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half-conscious of my misery. I suppose I eat, walk, read. But waking is like the waking of a prisoner who awakes up to be put on the rack, who hears doors open and feet approach, and sickens with dread as he lies. God's hand is heavy upon me day and night. Surely nothing, in the world or out of it, can obliterate the memory of this suffering; perhaps, if Alec is given back to us, I shall smile at this time of suffering. But, if not--


August 12, 1889.


He is losing ground, he is hardly ever conscious now; he sleeps a good deal, but often he talks quietly to himself of all that we have done and said; he often supposes himself to be with me, and, thank God, he never says a word to show that he has ever feared or misunderstood me. I could not bear that. Yesterday when I was with him, he opened his eyes on me; I could see that he knew me, and that he was frightened. I could not speak, but Maud, who was with me, just took his hand and with her own tranquil smile, said, "It is all right, Alec; there is nothing to be frightened about; we are here, and you will soon be well again." The child closed his eyes and lay smiling to himself. I could not have done that.


August 13, 1889.


He died this morning, just at the dawn. I knew last night that all hope was over. I was with him half the night, and prayed, knowing my prayers were in vain. That I could save him no suffering, could not keep him, could not draw him back. Maud took my place at midnight; I slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her standing with a candle by my bed; I knew in a moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No word passed between us; I found Maggie by the bed; and we three together waited for the end. I had never seen any one die. He was quite unconscious, breathing slowly, looking just like himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle himself for the last sleep. I do not know when he died, but I became aware that life had passed, and that the little spirit that we loved had fled, God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in my dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love and death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in their thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their own--while I was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a place of darkness and in the deep.


August 19, 1889.


I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the stiffened waxen mask of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly greyness. And I who thought that I had sounded the depths of pain! I could not realise it, could not believe that all would not somehow be as before. Maud and Maggie speak of him to each other and to me . . . it is inconceivable. With a dull heartache I have collected and put away all the child's things--his books, his toys, his little possessions. I followed the little coffin to the grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion came over me at the words, "I am the resurrection