"Strange!" thought Donal with himself; "an old withered grief looks almost as pitiful as an old withered joy!--But who is to say either is withered? Those who look upon death as an evil, yet regard it as the healer of sorrows! Is it such? No one can tell how long a grief may last unwithered! Surely till the life heals it! He is a coward who would be cured of his sorrow by mere lapse of time, by the mere forgetting of a brain that grows musty with age. It is God alone who can heal--the God of the dead and of the living! and the dead must find him, or be miserable for evermore!"
He had not a doubt that the letter he had read was in the writing of the mother of the present earl's children.
What was he to do? He had thought he was looking into matters much older--things over which the permission of lady Arctura extended; and in truth what he had discovered, or seen corroborated, was a thing she had a right to know! but whether he ought to tell her at once he did not yet see. He took up his candle, and with a feeling of helpless dismay, withdrew to his chamber. But when he reached the door of it, yielding to a sudden impulse, he turned away, and went farther up the stair, and out upon the bartizan.
It was a frosty night, and the stars were brilliant. He looked up and said, "Oh Saviour of men, thy house is vaulted with light; thy secret places are secret from excess of light; in thee is no darkness at all; thou hast no terrible crypts and built-up places; thy light is the terror of those who love the darkness! Fill my heart with thy light; let me never hunger or thirst after anything but thy will--that I may walk in the light, and light not darkness may go forth from me."
As he turned to go in, came a faint chord from the aeolian harp.
"It sings, brooding over the very nest of evil deeds!" he thought.
"The light eternal, with keen arrows of radiant victory, will yet at last rout from the souls of his creatures the demons that haunt them!
"But if there be creatures of God that have turned to demons, may not human souls themselves turn to demons? Would they then be victorious over God, too strong for him to overcome--beyond the reach of repentance?
"How would they live? By their own power? Then were they Gods!--But they did not make themselves, and could not live of themselves. If not, then they must live by God's power. How then should they be beyond his reach?
"If the demons can never be brought back, then the life of God, the all-pure, goes out to keep alive, in and for evil, that which is essentially bad; for that which is irredeemable is essentially bad."
Thus reasoned Donal with himself, and his reasoning, instead of troubling his faith, caused him to cling the more to the only One, the sole hope and saviour of the hearts of his men and women, without whom the whole universe were but a charnel house in which the ghosts of the dead went about crying, not over the life that was gone from them, but its sorrows.
He stood and gazed out over the cold sea. And as he gazed, a shivering surge of doubt, a chill wave of negation, came rolling over him. He knew that in a moment he would strike out with the energy of a strong swimmer, and rise to the top of it; but now it was tumbling him about at its evil will. He stood and gazed--with a dull sense that he was waiting for his will. Suddenly came the consciousness that he and his will were one; that he had not to wait for his will, but had to wake--to will, that is, and do, and so be.
And therewith he said to himself:--
"It is neither time, nor eternity, nor human consolation, nor everlasting sleep, nor the satisfied judgment, nor attained ambition, even in love itself, that is the cure for things; it is the heart, the will, the being of the Father. While that remains, the irremediable, the irredeemable cannot be. If there arose a grief in the heart of one of his creatures not otherwise to be destroyed, he would take it into himself, there consume it in his own creative fire--himself bearing the grief, carrying the sorrow. Christ died--and would die again rather than leave one heart-ache in the realms of his love--that is, of his creation. 'Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed!'"
Over his head the sky was full of shining worlds--mansions in the Father's house, built or building.
"We are not at the end of things," he thought, "but in the beginnings and on the threshold of creation! The Father is as young as when first the stars of the morning sang--the Ancient of Days who can never grow old! He who has ever filled the dull unbelieving nations with food and gladness, has a splendour of delight for the souls that believe, ever as by their obedience they become capable of receiving it."
