CHAPTER LXVI.

PROGRESS AND CHANGE.

Things went on very quietly for a time. Arctura grew better, resumed

her studies, and made excellent progress. She would have worked harder,

but Donal would not let her. He hated forcing--even with the good will

of the plant itself. He believed in a holy, unhasting growth. God’s

ways want God’s time.

Long after, people would sometimes say to him--

“That is very well in the abstract; but in these days of hurry a young

fellow would that way be left ages behind!”

“With God,” would Donal say.

“Tut, tut! the thing would never work!”

“For your ends,” Donal would answer, “it certainly would never work;

but your ends are not those of the universe!”

“I do not pretend they are; but they are the success of the boy.”

“That is one of the ends of the universe; and your reward will be to

thwart it for a season. I decline to make one in a conspiracy against

the design of our creator: I would fain die loyal!”

He was of course laughed at, and not a little despised, as an

extravagant enthusiast. But those who laughed found it hard to say for

what he was enthusiastic. It seemed hardly for education, when he would

even do what he could sometimes to keep a pupil back! He did not care

to make the best of any one! The truth was, Donal’s best was so many

miles ahead of theirs, that it was below their horizon altogether. If

there be any relation between time and the human mind, every forcing of

human process, whether in spirit or intellect, is hurtful, a retarding

of God’s plan.

Lady Arctura’s old troubles were gradually fading into the limbo of

vanities. At times, however, mostly when unwell, they would come in

upon her like a flood: what if, after all, God were the self-loving

being theology presented--a being from whom no loving human heart could

but recoil with a holy dislike! what if it was because of a nature

specially evil that she could not accept the God in whom the priests

and elders of her people believed! But again and again, in the midst of

profoundest wretchedness from such doubt, had a sudden flush of the

world’s beauty--that beauty which Jesus has told us to consider and the

modern pharisee to avoid, broken like gentlest mightiest sunrise

through the hellish fog, and she had felt a power upon her as from the

heart of a very God--a God such as she would give her life to believe

in--one before whom she would cast herself in speechless adoration--not

of his greatness--of that she felt little, but of his lovingkindness,

the gentleness that was making her great. Then would she care utterly

for God and his Christ, nothing for what men said about them: the Lord

never meant his lambs to be under the tyranny of any, least of all the

tyranny of his own most imperfect church! its work is to teach; where

it cannot teach, it must not rule! Then would God appear to her not

only true, but real--the heart of the human, to which she could cling,

and so rest. The corruption of all religion comes of leaving the human,

and God as the causing Human, for something imagined holier. Men who do

not see the loveliness of the Truth, search till they find a lie they

can call lovely. What but a human reality could the heart of man ever

love! what else are we offered in Jesus but the absolutely human? That

Jesus has two natures is of the most mischievous fictions of theology.

The divine and the human are not two.

Suddenly, after an absence of months, reappeared lord Forgue--cheerful,

manly, on the best terms with his father, and plainly willing to be on

still better terms with his cousin! He had left the place a mooning

youth; he came back a man of the world--easy in carriage, courteous in

manners, serene in temper, abounding in what seemed the results of

observation, attentive but not too attentive, jolly with Davie, distant

with Donal, polite to all. Donal could hardly receive the evidence of

his senses: he would have wondered more had he known every factor in

the change. All about him seemed to say it should not be his fault if

the follies of his youth remained unforgotten; and his airy carriage

sat well upon him. None the less Donal felt there was no restoration of

the charm which had at first attracted him; that was utterly vanished.

He felt certain he had been going down hill, and was now, instead of

negatively, consciously and positively untrue.

With gradations undefined, but not unmarked of Donal, as if the man

found himself under influences of which the youth had been unaware, he

began to show himself not indifferent to the attractions of his cousin.

He expressed concern that her health was not what it had been; sought

her in her room when she did not appear; professed an interest in

knowing what books she was reading, and what were her studies with

Donal; behaved like a good brother-cousin, who would not be sorry to be

something more.

And now the earl, to the astonishment of the household, began to appear

at table; and, apparently as a consequence of this, Donal was requested

rather than invited to take his meals with the family--not altogether

to his satisfaction, seeing he could not only read while he ate alone,

but could get through more quickly, and have the time thus saved, for

things of greater consequence. His presence made it easier for lord

Forgue to act his part, and the manners he brought to the front left

little to be desired. He bowed to the judgment of Arctura, and seemed

to welcome that of his father, to whom he was now as respectful as

moralist could desire. Yet he sometimes faced a card he did not mean to

show: who that is not absolutely true can escape the mishap!--there was

condescension in his politeness to Donal! and this, had there been

nothing else, would have been enough to revolt Arctura. But in truth he

impressed her altogether as a man of outsides; she felt that she did

not see the man he was, but the nearest approach he could make to the

man he would be taken for. He was gracious, dignified, responsive,

kind, amusing, accurate, ready--everything but true. He would make of

his outer man all but what it was meant for--a revelation of the inner.

It was that notwithstanding. He was a man dressed in a man, and his

dress was a revelation of much that he was, while he intended it only

to show much that he was not. No man can help unveiling himself,

however long he may escape even his own detection. There is nothing

covered that shall not be revealed. Things were meant to come out, and

be read, and understood, in the face of the universe. The soul of every

man is as a secret book, whose content is yet written on its cover for

the reading of the wise. How differently is it read by the fool, whose

very understanding is a misunderstanding! He takes a man for a God when

on the point of being eaten up of worms! he buys for thirty pieces of

silver him whom the sepulchre cannot hold! Well for those in the world

of revelation, who give their sins no quarter in this!

Forgue had been in Edinburgh a part of the time, in England another

part. He had many things to tell of the people he had seen, and the

sports he had shared in. He had developed and enlarged a vein of

gentlemanly satire, which he kept supplied by the observation and

analysis of the peculiarities, generally weaknesses, of others. These,

as a matter of course, he judged merely by the poor standard of

society: questioned concerning any upon the larger human scale, he

could give no account of them. To Donal’s eyes, the man was a shallow

pool whose surface brightness concealed the muddy bottom.