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THE FINAL CONFLICT.
As there was no more weekly pay for teaching, and no extra hands
were longer wanted for farm-labour, Cosmo, hearing there was a
press of work and a scarcity of workmen in the building-line,
offered his services, at what wages he should upon trial judge them
worth, to Sandy Shand, the mason, then erecting a house in the
village for a certain Mr. Pennycuik--a native of the same, who,
having left it long ago, and returned from India laden with riches,
now desired, if not to end, yet to spend his days amid the
associations of his youth. Upon this house, his offer accepted,
Cosmo laboured, now doing the work of a mason, now of a carpenter,
and receiving fair wages, until such time when the weather put a
stop to all but in-door work of the kind. But the strange thing
was, that, instead of reaping golden opinions for his readiness to
turn his hand to anything honest by which he could earn a shilling,
Cosmo became in consequence the object of endless blame--that a
young man of his abilities, with a college-education, should spend
his time--WASTE it, people said--at home, pottering about at work
that was a disgrace to a gentleman, instead of going away and
devoting himself to some HONOURABLE CALLING. "Look at Mr.
Pennycuik!" they said. "See how he has raised himself in the social
scale, and that without one of the young laird's advantages! There
he stands, a rich man and employer of labour, while the
poor-spirited gentleman is one of his hired labourers!" Such is the
mean idea most men have of the self-raising that is the duty of a
man! They speak after their kind, putting ambition in the place of
aspiration. Not knowing the spirit they were of, these would have
had Cosmo say to his father, KORBAN. They knew nothing of, and were
incapable of taking into the account certain moral refinements and
delicate difficulties entailed upon him by that father, such as
might indeed bring him to beggary, but could never allow him to
gather riches like those of Mr. Pennycuik. Like his father he had a
holy weakness for the purity that gives arms of the things within
us. If there is one thing a Christian soul recoils from, it is
meanness--of action, of thought, of judgment. What a heaven some
must think to be saved into! At the same time Cosmo would not have
left his father to make a fortune the most honourable.
Through stress of weather, Cosmo was therefore thrown back once
more upon his writing. But still, whether it was that there was too
little of Grizzie or too much of himself in these later stories,
his work seemed to have lost either the power or the peculiarity
that had recommended it. Things therefore did not look promising.
But they had a fair stock of oatmeal laid in, and that was the
staff of life, also a tolerable supply of fuel, which neighbours
had lent them horses to bring from the peat-moss.
With the cold weather the laird began again to fail, and Cosmo to
fear that this would be the last of the good man's winters. As the
best protection from the cold he betook himself to bed, and Cosmo
spent his life almost in the room, reading aloud when the old man
was able to listen, and reading to himself or writing when he was
not. The other three of the household were mostly in the kitchen,
saving fuel, and keeping each other company. And thus the little
garrison awaited the closer siege of the slow-beleaguering winter,
most of them in their hearts making themselves strong to resist the
more terrible enemies which all winter-armies bring flying on their
flanks--the haggard fiends of doubt and dismay--which creep through
the strongest walls. To trust in spite of the look of being
forgotten; to keep crying out into the vast whence comes no voice,
and where seems no hearing; to struggle after light, where is no
glimmer to guide; at every turn to find a door-less wall, yet ever
seek a door; to see the machinery of the world pauseless grinding
on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifting a
hair's-breadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake
and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us
from his hand; to wait patiently, willing to die of hunger, fearing
only lest faith should fail--such is the victory that overcometh
the world, such is faith indeed. After such victory Cosmo had to
strive and pray hard, sometimes deep sunk in the wave while his
father floated calm on its crest: the old man's discipline had been
longer; a continuous communion had for many years been growing
closer between him and the heart whence he came.
"As I lie here, warm and free of pain," he said once to his son,
"expecting the redemption of my body, I cannot tell you how happy I
am. I cannot think how ever in my life I feared anything. God knows
it was my obligation to others that oppressed me, but now, in my
utter incapacity, I am able to trust him with my honour, and my
duty, as well as my sin."
"Look here, Cosmo," he said another time; "I had temptations such
as you would hardly think, to better my worldly condition, and
redeem the land of my ancestors, and the world would have
commended, not blamed me, had I yielded. But my God was with me all
the time, and I am dying a poorer man than my father left me,
leaving you a poorer man still, but, praised be God, an honest one.
Be very sure, my son, God is the only adviser to be trusted, and
you must do what he tells you, even if it lead you to a stake, to
be burned by the slow fire of poverty.--O my Father!" cried the old
man, breaking out suddenly in prayer, "my soul is a flickering
flame of which thou art the eternal, inextinguishable fire. I am
blessed because thou art. Because thou art life, I live. Nothing
can hurt me, because nothing can hurt thee. To thy care I leave my
son, for thou lovest him as thou hast loved me. Deal with him as
thou hast dealt with me. I ask for nothing, care for nothing but
thy will. Strength is gone from me, but my life is hid in thee. I
am a feeble old man, but I am dying into the eternal day of thy
strength."
Cosmo stood and listened with holy awe and growing faith. For what
can help our faith like the faith of the one we most love, when,
sorely tried, it is yet sound and strong!
But there was still one earthy clod clinging to the heart of Cosmo.
There was no essential evil in it. yet not the less it held him
back from the freedom of the man who, having parted with
everything, possesses all things. The place, the things, the
immediate world in which he was born and had grown up, crowded with
the memories and associations of childhood and youth, amongst them
the shadowy loveliness of Lady Joan, had a hold of his heart that
savoured of idolatry. The love was born in him, had come down into
him through generation after generation of ancestors, had a power
over him for whose existence he was not accountable, but for whose
continuance, as soon as he became aware of its existence, he would
know himself accountable. For Cosmo was not one of those weaklings
who, finding in themselves certain tendencies with whose existence
they had nothing to do, and therefore in whose presence they have
no blame, say to themselves, "I cannot help it," and at once create
evil, and make it their own, by obeying the inborn impulse.
Inheritors of a lovely estate, with a dragon in a den, which they
have to kill that the brood may perish, they make friends with the
dragon, and so think to save themselves trouble.
But I would not be misunderstood: I do not think Cosmo loved his
home too much; I only think he did not love it enough in God. To
love a thing divinely, is to be ready to yield it without a pang
when God wills it; but to Cosmo, the thought of parting with the
house of his fathers and the rag of land that yet remained to it,
was torture. This hero of mine, instead of sleeping the perfect
sleep of faith, would lie open-eyed through half the night,
hatching scheme after scheme--not for the redemption of the
property--even to him that seemed hopeless, but for the retention
of the house. Might it not at least go to ruin under eyes that
loved it, and with the ministration of tender hands that yet could
not fast enough close the slow-yawning chasms of decay? His dream
haunted him, and he felt that, if it came true, he would rather
live in the dungeon wine-cellar of the mouldering mammoth-tooth,
than forsake the old stones to live elsewhere in a palace. The love
of his soul for Castle Warlock was like the love of the Psalmist
for Jerusalem: when he looked on a stone of its walls, it was dear
to him. But the love of Jerusalem became an idolatry, for the Jews
no longer loved it because the living God dwelt therein, but
because it was theirs, and then it was doomed, for it was an idol.
The thing was somewhat different with Cosmo: the house was almost a
part of himself--an extension of his own body, as much his as the
shell of a snail is his. But because into this shell were not
continued those nerves of life which give the consciousness of the
body, and there was therefore no reaction from it of those feelings
of weakness and need which, to such a man as Cosmo, soon reveal the
fact that he is not lord of his body, that he cannot add to it one
cubit, or make one hair white or black, and must therefore leave
the care of it to him who made it, he had to learn in other ways
that his castle of stone was God's also. His truth and humility and
love had not yet reached to the quickening of the idea of the old
house with the feeling that God was in it with him, giving it to
him. Not yet possessing therefore the soul of the house, its
greatest bliss, which nothing could take from him, he naturally
could not be content to part with it. It seemed an impossibility
that it should be taken from him--a wrong to things, to men, to
nature, that a man like Lick-my-loof should obtain the lordship
over it. As he lay in the night, in the heart of the old pile, and
heard the wind roaring about its stone-mailed roofs, the thought of
losing it would sting him almost to madness,--hurling him from his
bed to the floor, to pace up and down the room, burning, in the
coldest midnight of winter, like one of the children in the fiery
furnace, only the furnace was of worse fire, being the wrath which
worketh not the righteousness of God.
Suddenly one such night he became aware that he could not
pray--that in this mood he never prayed. In every other trouble he
prayed--felt it the one natural thing to pray! Why not in this?
Something must be wrong--terribly wrong!
It was a stormy night; the snow-burdened wind was raving; and Cosmo
would have been striding about the room but that now he was in his
father's, and dreaded disturbing him. He lay still, with a stone on
his heart, for he was now awake to the fact that he could not say,
"Thy will be done." He tried sore to lift up his heart, but could
not. Something rose ever between him and his God, and beat back his
prayer. A thick fog was about him--no air wherewith to make a cry!
In his heart not one prayer would come to life; it was like an old
nest without bird or egg in it.
It was too terrible! Here was a schism at the very root of his
being. The love of things was closer to him than the love of God.
Between him and God rose the rude bulk of a castle of stone! He
crept out of bed, laid himself on his face on the floor, and prayed
in an agony. The wind roared and howled, but the desolation in his
heart made of the storm a mere play of the elements. How few of my
readers will understand even the possibility of such a state! How
many of them will scorn the idea of it, as that of a man on the
high road to insanity!
"God," he cried, "I thought I knew thee, and sought thy will; and I
have sought thy will in greater things than this wherein I now lie
ashamed before thee. I cannot even pray to thee. But hear thou the
deepest will in me, which, thou knowest, must bow before thine,
when once thou hast uttered it. Hear the prayer I cannot offer. Be
my perfect Father to fulfil the imperfection of thy child. Be God
after thy own nature, beyond my feeling, beyond my
prayer--according to that will in me which now, for all my trying,
refuses to awake and arise from the dead. O Christ, who knowest me
better a thousand times than I know myself, whose I am, divinely
beyond my notions of thee and me, hear and save me eternally, out
of thy eternal might whereby thou didst make me and give thyself to
me. Make me strong to yield all to thee. I have no way of
confessing thee before men, but in the depth of my thought I would
confess thee, yielding everything but the truth, which is thyself;
and therefore, even while my heart hangs back, I force my mouth to
say the words--TAKE FROM ME WHAT THOU WILT, ONLY MAKE ME CLEAN,
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