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Wilfrid Cumbermede, a novel by George MacDonald |
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Chapter 21. The Frozen Stream |
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_ CHAPTER XXI. THE FROZEN STREAM Before the Winter arrived, I was well, and Charley had recovered from the fatigue of watching me. One holiday, he and I set out alone to accomplish a scheme we had cherished from the first appearance of the frost. How it arose I hardly remember; I think it came of some remark Mr Forest had made concerning the difference between the streams of Switzerland and England--those in the former country being emptiest, those in the latter fullest in the Winter. It was--when the frost should have bound up the sources of the beck which ran almost by our door, and it was no longer a stream, but a rope of ice--to take that rope for our guide, and follow it as far as we could towards the secret recesses of its Summer birth. Along the banks of the stream, we followed it up and up, meeting a varied loveliness which it would take the soul of a Wordsworth or a Ruskin to comprehend or express. To my poor faculty the splendour of the ice-crystals remains the one memorial thing. In those lonely water-courses the sun was gloriously busy, with none to praise him except Charley and me. Where the banks were difficult we went down into the frozen bed, and there had story above story of piled-up loveliness, with opal and diamond cellars below. Spikes and stars crystalline radiated and refracted and reflected marvellously. But we did not reach the primary source of the stream by miles; we were stopped by a precipitous rock, down the face of which one half of the stream fell, while the other crept out of its foot, from a little cavernous opening about four feet high. Charley was a few yards ahead of me, and ran stooping into the cavern. I followed. But when I had gone as far as I dared for the darkness and the down-sloping roof, and saw nothing of him, I grew dismayed, and called him. There was no answer. With a thrill of horror my dream returned upon me. I got on my hands and knees and crept forward. A short way further the floor sank--only a little, I believe, but from the darkness I took the descent for an abyss into which Charley had fallen. I gave a shriek of despair, and scrambled out of the cave howling. In a moment he was by my side. He had only crept behind a projection for a trick. His remorse was extreme. He begged my pardon in the most agonized manner. 'Never mind, Charley,' I said; 'you didn't mean it.' 'Yes, I did mean it,' he returned. 'The temptation came, and I yielded; only I did not know how dreadful it would be to you.' 'Of course not. You wouldn't have done it if you had.' 'How am I to know that, Wilfrid? I might have done it. Isn't it frightful that a body may go on and on till a thing is done, and then wish he hadn't done it? I am a despicable creature. Do you know, Wilfrid, I once shot a little bird--for no good, but just to shoot at something. It wasn't that I didn't think of it--don't say that. I did think of it. I knew it was wrong. When I had levelled my gun, I thought of it quite plainly, and yet drew the trigger. It dropped, a heap of ruffled feathers. I shall never get that little bird out of my head. And the worst of it is that to all eternity I can never make any atonement' 'But God will forgive you, Charley.' 'What do I care for that,' he rejoined, almost fiercely, 'when the little bird cannot forgive me?--I would go on my knees to the little bird, if I could, to beg its pardon and tell it-what a brute I was, and it might shoot me if it would, and I should say "Thank you."' He laughed almost hysterically, and the tears ran down his face. I have said little about my uncle's teaching, lest I should bore my readers. But there it came in, and therefore here it must come in. My uncle had, by no positive instruction, but by occasional observations, not one of which I can recall, generated in me a strong hope that the life of the lower animals was terminated at their death no more than our own. The man who believes that thought is the result of brain, and not the growth of an unknown seed whose soil is the brain, may well sneer at this, for he is to himself but a peck of dust that has to be eaten by the devouring jaws of Time; but I cannot see how the man who believes in soul at all, can say that the spirit of a man lives, and that the spirit of his horse dies. I do not profess to believe anything for _certain sure_ myself, but I do think that he who, if from merely philosophical considerations, believes the one, ought to believe the other as well. Much more must the theosophist believe it. But I had never felt the need of the doctrine until I beheld the misery of Charley over the memory of the dead sparrow. Surely that sparrow fell not to the ground without the Father's knowledge. 'Charley! how do you know,' I said, 'that you can never beg the bird's pardon? If God made the bird, do you fancy with your gun you could destroy the making of his hand? If he said, "Let there be," do you suppose you could say, "There shall not be"?' (Mr Forest had read that chapter of first things at morning prayers.) 'I fancy myself that for God to put a bird all in the power of a silly thoughtless boy--' 'Not thoughtless! not thoughtless! There is the misery!' said Charley. But I went on-- '--would be worse than for you to shoot it.' A great glow of something I dare not attempt to define grew upon Charley's face. It was like what I saw on it when Clara laid her hand on his. But presently it died out again, and he sighed-- 'If there _were_ a God--that is, if I were sure there was a God, Wilfrid!' I could not answer. How could I? _I_ had never seen God, as the old story says Moses did on the clouded mountain. All I could return was, 'Suppose there should be a God, Charley!--Mightn't there be a God!' 'I don't know,' he returned. 'How should _I_ know whether there _might_ be a God?' 'But _may_ there not be a _might be?_' I rejoined. 'There may be. How should I say the other thing?' said Charley. I do not mean this was exactly what he or I said. Unable to recall the words themselves, I put the sense of the thing in as clear a shape as I can. We were seated upon a stone in the bed of the stream, off which the sun had melted the ice. The bank rose above us, but not far. I thought I heard a footstep. I jumped up, but saw no one. I ran a good way up the stream to a place where I could climb the bank; but then saw no one. The footstep, real or imagined, broke our conversation at that point, and we did not resume it. All that followed was-- 'If I were the sparrow, Charley, I would not only forgive you, but haunt you for ever out of gratitude that you were sorry you had killed me.' 'Then you _do_ forgive me for frightening you?' he said eagerly. Very likely Charley and I resembled each other too much to be the best possible companions for each other. There was, however, this difference between us--that he had been bored with religion and I had not. In other words, food had been forced upon him, which had only been laid before me. We rose and went home. A few minutes after our entrance, Mr Forest came in--looking strange, I thought. The conviction crossed my mind that it was his footstep we had heard over our heads as we sat in the channel of the frozen stream. I have reason to think that he followed us for a chance of listening. Something had set him on the watch--most likely the fact that we were so much together, and did not care for the society of the rest of our schoolfellows. From that time, certainly, he regarded Charley and myself with a suspicious gloom. We felt it, but beyond talking to each other about it, and conjecturing its cause, we could do nothing. It made Charley very unhappy at times, deepening the shadow which brooded over his mind; for his moral skin was as sensitive to changes in the moral atmosphere as the most sensitive of plants to those in the physical. But unhealthy conditions in the smallest communities cannot last long without generating vapours which result in some kind of outburst. The other boys, naturally enough, were displeased with us for holding so much together. They attributed it to some fancy of superiority, whereas there was nothing in it beyond the simplest preference for each other's society. We were alike enough to understand each other, and unlike enough to interest and aid each other. Besides, we did not care much for the sports in which boys usually explode their superfluous energy. I preferred a walk and a talk with Charley to anything else. I may here mention that these talks had nearly cured me of castle-building. To spin yarns for Charley's delectation would have been absurd. He cared for nothing but the truth. And yet he could never assure himself that anything was true. The more likely a thing looked to be true, the more anxious was he that it should be unassailable; and his fertile mind would in as many moments throw a score of objections at it, looking after each with eager eyes as if pleading for a refutation. It was the very love of what was good that generated in him doubt and anxiety. When our schoolfellows perceived that Mr Forest also was dissatisfied with us, their displeasure grew to indignation; and we did not endure its manifestations without a feeling of reflex defiance. _ |
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