Chapter 51. It Is Naught, Saith The Buyer

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_ CHAPTER LI. IT IS NAUGHT, SAITH THE BUYER

When Cosmo reached the gate of his lordship's policy, he found it closed, and although he rang the bell, and called lustily to the gate-keeper, no one appeared. He put a hand on the top of the gate, and lightly vaulted over it. But just as he lighted, who should come round a bend in the drive a few yards off, but Lord Lick-my-loof himself, out for his morning walk! His irritable cantankerous nature would have been annoyed at sight of anyone treating his gate with such disrespect, but when he saw who it was that thus made nothing of it--clearing it with as much contempt as a lawyer would a quibble not his own--his displeasure grew to indignation and anger.

"I beg your pardon, my lord," said Cosmo, taking the first word that apology might be immediate, "I could make no one hear me, and therefore took the liberty of describing a parabola over your gate."

"A verra ill fashiont parabola in my judgment, Mr. Warlock! I fear you have been learning of late to think too little of the rights of property."

"If I had put my foot on your new paint, my lord, I should have been to blame; but I vaulted clean over, and touched nothing more than if the gate had been opened to me."

"I'll have an iron gate!"

"Not on my account, my lord, I hope; for I have come to ask you to put it out of my power to offend any more, by enabling me to leave Glenwarlock."

"Well?" returned his lordship, and waited.

"I find myself compelled at last," said Cosmo, not without some tremor in his voice, which he did his best to quench, "to give you the refusal, according to your request, of the remainder of my father's property."

"House and all?"

"Everything except the furniture."

"Which I do not want."

A silence followed.

"May I ask if your lordship is prepared to make me an offer?--or will you call on my father when you have made up your mind?"

"I will give two hundred pounds for the lot."

"Two hundred pounds!" repeated Cosmo, who had not expected a large offer, but was unprepared for one so small; "why, my lord, the bare building material would be worth more than that!"

"Not to take it down. I might as well blast it fresh from the quarry. I know the sort of thing those walls of yours are! Vitrified with age, by George! But I don't want to build, and standing the place is of no use to me. I should but let it crumble away at its leisure!"

Cosmo's dream rose again before his mind's eye; but it was no more with pain; for if the dear old place was to pass from their hands, what other end could be desired for it!

"But the sum you mention, my lord, would not, after paying the little we owe, leave us enough to take us from the place!"

"That I should be sorry for; but as to paying, many a better man has never done that. You have my offer: take it or leave it. You'll not get half as much if it come to the hammer. To whom else would it be worth anything, bedded in my property? If I say I don't want it, see if anybody will!"

Cosmo's heart sank afresh. He dared not part with the place off hand on such terms, but must consult his father: his power of action was for the time exhausted; he could do no more alone--not even to spare his father.

"I must speak to the laird," he said. "I doubt if he will accept your offer."

"As he pleases. But I do not promise to let the offer stand. I make it now--not to-morrow, or an hour hence."

"I must run the risk," answered Cosmo. "Will you allow me to jump the gate?"

But his lordship had a key, and preferred opening it.

When Cosmo reached his father's room, he found him not yet thinking of getting up, and sat down and told him all--to what straits they were reduced; what Grizzie had felt herself compelled to do in his illness; how his mind and heart and conscience had been exercised concerning the castle; how all his life, for so it seemed now, the love of it had held him to the dust; where and on what errand he had been that morning, with the result of his interview with Lord Lick-my-loof. He had fought hard, he said, and through the grace of God had overcome his weakness--so far at least that it should no more influence his action; but now he could go no further without his father. He was equal to no more.

"I would not willingly be left out of your troubles, my son," said the old man, cheerfully. "Leave me alone a little. There is one, you know, who is nearer to each of us than we are to each other: I must talk to him--your father and my father, in whom you and I are brothers."

Cosmo bowed in reverence, and withdrew.

After the space of nearly half an hour, he heard the signal with which his father was in the habit of calling him, and hastened to him.

The laird held out his old hand to him.

"Come, my son," he said, "and let us talk together as two of the heirs of all things. It's unco easy for me to regaird wi' equanimity the loss o' a place I am on the point o' leavin' for the hame o' a' hames--the dwellin' o' a' the loves, withoot the dim memory or foresicht o' which--I'm thinkin' they maun be aboot the same thing--we could never hae lo'ed this auld place as we du, an' whaur, ance I'm in, a'thing doon here maun dwindle ootworthied by reason o' the glory that excelleth--I dinna mean the glory o' pearls an' gowd, or even o' licht, but the glory o' love an' trowth. But gien I've ever had onything to ca' an ambition, Cosmo, it has been that my son should be ane o' the wise, wi' faith to believe what his father had learned afore him, an' sae start farther on upo' the narrow way than his father had startit. My ambition has been that my endeavours and my experience should in such measure avail for my boy, as that he should begin to make his own endeavours and gather his own experience a little nearer that perfection o' life efer which oor divine nature groans an' cries, even while unable to know what it wants. Blessed be the voice that tells us we maun forsake all, and take up ovir cross, and follow him, losing our life that we may find it! For whaur wad he hae us follow him but til his ain hame, to the verra bosom o' his God an' oor God, there to be ane wi' the Love essential!"

Such a son as Cosmo could not listen to such a father saying such things, and not drop the world as if it were no better than the burnt out cinder of the moon.

"When men desire great things, then is God ready to hear them," he said; "and so it is, I think, father, that he has granted your desires for me: I desire nothing but to fulfil my calling."

"Then ye can pairt wi' the auld hoose ohn grutten?"

"As easy, father, as wi' a piece whan I wasna hungry. I do not say that another mood may not come, for you know the flesh lusteth against the spirit as well as the spirit against the flesh; but in my present mood of light and peace, I rejoice to part with the house as a victory of the spirit. Shall I go to his lordship at once and accept his offer? I am ready."

"Do, my son. I think I have not long to live, and the money, though little, is large in this, that it will enable me to pay the last of my debts, and die in the knowledge that I leave you a free man. You will easily provide for yourself when I am gone, and I know you will not forget Grizzie. For Jeames Gracie, he maun hae his share o' the siller because o' the croft: we maun calculate it fairly. He'll no want muckle mair i' this warl'. Aggie 'ill be as safe's an angel ony gait. An', Cosmo, whatever God may mean to du wi' you i' this warl', ye'll hae an abundant entrance ministered to ye intil the kingdom' o' oor Lord an' Saviour. Wha daur luik for a better fate nor that o' the Lord himsel'! But there was them 'at by faith obtained kingdoms, as weel as them wha by faith were sawn asunder: they war baith martyrdoms; an' whatever God sen's, we s' tak."

"Then you accept the two hundred for croft and all, father?"

"Dinna ettle at a penny more; he micht gang back upo' 't. Regaird it as his final offer."

Cosmo rose and went, strong-hearted, and without a single thought that pulled back from the sacrifice. There was even a certain pleasure in doing the thing just because in another and lower mood it would have torn his heart: the spirit was rejoicing against the flesh. To be rid of the castle would be to feel, far off, as the young man would have felt had he given all to the poor and followed the master. With the strength of a young giant he strode along.

When he reached the gate, there was my lord leaning over it.

"I thought you would be back soon! I knew the old cock would have more sense than the young one; and I didn't want my gate scrambled over again," he said, but without moving to open it.

"My father will take your lordship's offer," said Cosmo.

"I was on the point of making a fool of myself, and adding another fifty to be certain of getting rid of you; but I came to the conclusion it was a piece of cowardice, and that, as I had so long stood the dirty hovel at my gate because I couldn't help it, I might just as well let you find your own way out of the parish."

"I am sure from your lordship's point of view you were right," said Cosmo. "We shall content ourselves, anyhow, with the two hundred."

"Indeed you will not! Did I not tell you I would not be bound by the offer? I have changed my mind, and mean to wait for the sale."

"I beg your pardon. I did not quite understand your lordship."

"You do now, I trust!"

"Perfectly, my lord," replied Cosmo, and turning away left his lordship grinning over the gate. But he had a curious look, almost as if he were a little ashamed of himself--as if he had only been teasing the young fellow, and thought perhaps he had gone too far. For Cosmo, in such peace was his heart, that he was not even angry with the man.

On his way home, the hope awoke, and began once more to whisper itself, that they might not be able to sell the place at all; that some other way would be provided for their leaving it; and that, when he was an old man, he would be allowed to return to die in it. But up started his conscience, jealously watchful lest hope should undermine submission, or weaken resolve. God MIGHT indeed intend they should not be driven from the old house! but he kept Abraham going from place to place, and never let him own a foot of land, except so much as was needful to bury his dead. And there was our Lord: he had not a place to lay his head, and had to go out of doors to pray to his father in secret! The only things to be anxious about were, that God's will should be done, and that it should not be modified by any want of faith or obedience or submission on his part. Then it would be God's, very own will that was done, and not something composite, in part rendered necessary by his opposition. If God's pure will was done, he must equally rejoice whether that will took or gave the castle!

And so he returned to his father.

When he told him the result of his visit, the laird expressed no surprise.

"He maketh the wrath o' man to praise him," he said. "This will be for our good."

The whole day after, there was not between them another allusion to the matter. Cosmo read to his father a ballad he had just written. The old man was pleased with it; for what most would have counted a great defect in Cosmo's imagination was none to him--this namely, that he never could get room for it in this world; to his way of feeling, the end of things never came here; what end, or seeming end came, was not worth setting before his art as a goal for which to make; in its very nature it was no finis at all, only the merest close of a chapter.

This was the ballad, in great part the result of a certain talk with Mr. Simon.

The miser he lay on his lonely bed,
Life's candle was burning dim,
His heart in his iron chest was hid,
Under heaps of gold and a well locked lid,
And whether it were alive or dead,
It never troubled him.

Slowly out of his body he crept,
Said he, "I am all the same!
Only I want my heart in my breast;
I will go and fetch it out of the chest."
Swift to the place of his gold he stept--
He was dead but had no shame!

He opened the lid--oh, hell and night!
For a ghost can see no gold;
Empty and swept--not a coin was there!
His heart lay alone in the chest so bare!
He felt with his hands, but they had no might
To finger or clasp or hold!

At his heart in the bottom he made a clutch--
A heart or a puff-ball of sin?
Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust,
He grasped but a handful of dry-rotted dust:
It was a horrible thing to touch,
But he hid it his breast within.

And now there are some that see him sit
In the charnel house alone,
Counting what seems to him shining gold,
Heap upon heap, a sum ne'er told:
Alas, the dead, how they lack of wit!
They are not even bits of bone!

Another miser has got his chest,
And his painfully hoarded store;
Like ferrets his hands go in and out,
Burrowing, tossing the gold about;
And his heart too is out of his breast,
Hid in the yellow ore.

Which is the better--the ghost that sits
Counting shadowy coin all day,
Or the man that puts his hope and trust
In a thing whose value is only his lust?
Nothing he has when out he flits
But a heart all eaten away.

That night, as he lay thinking, Cosmo resolved to set out on the morrow for the city, on foot, and begging his way if necessary. There he would acquaint Mr. Burns with the straits they were in, and require of him his best advice how to make a living for himself and his father and Grizzie. As for James and Agnes, they might stay at the castle, where he would do his best to help them. As soon as his father had had his breakfast, he would let him know his resolve, and with his assent, would depart at once. His spirits rose as he brooded. What a happy thing it was that Lord Lick-my-loof had not accepted their offer! all the time they saw themselves in a poor lodging in a noisy street, they would know they had their own strong silent castle waiting to receive them, as soon as they should be able to return to it! Then the words came to him: "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come."

The special discipline for some people would seem to be that they shall never settle down, or feel as if they were at home, until they are at home in very fact.

"Anyhow," said Cosmo to himself, "such a castle we have!"

To be lord of space, a man must be free of all bonds to place. To be heir of all things, his heart must have no THINGS in it. He must be like him who makes things, not like one who would put everything in his pocket. He must stand on the upper, not the lower side of them. He must be as the man who makes poems, not the man who gathers books of verse. God, having made a sunset, lets it pass, and makes such a sunset no more. He has no picture-gallery, no library. What if in heaven men shall be so busy growing, that they have not time to write or to read!

How blessed Cosmo would live, with his father and Grizzle and his books, in the great city--in some such place as he had occupied when at the university! The one sad thing was that he could not be with his father all day; but so much the happier would be the home-coming at night! Thus imagining, he fell fast asleep.

He dreamed that he had a barrow of oranges, with which he had been going about the streets all day, trying in vain to sell them. He was now returning home, the barrow piled, as when he set out in the morning, with the golden fruit. He consoled himself however with the thought, that his father was fond of oranges, and now might have as many as he pleased. But as he wheeled the barrow along, it seemed to grow heavier and heavier, and he feared his strength was failing him, and he would never get back to his father. Heavier and heavier it grew, until at last, although he had it on the pavement--for it was now the dead of the night--he could but just push it along. At last he reached the door, and having laboriously wheeled it into a shed, proceeded to pick from it a few of the best oranges to take up to his father. But when he came to lift one from the heap, lo, it was a lump of gold! He tried another and another: every one of them was a lump of solid gold. It was a dream-version of the golden horse. Then all at once he said to himself, nor knew why, "My father is dead!" and woke in misery. It was many moments before he quite persuaded himself that he had but dreamed. He rose, went to his father's bed-side, found him sleeping peacefully, and lay down comforted, nor that night dreamed any more.

"What," he said to himself, "would money be to me without my father!"

Some of us shrink from making plans because experience has shown us how seldom they are realized. Not the less are the plans we do make just as subject to overthrow as the plans of the most prolific and minute of projectors. It was long since Cosmo had made any, and the resolve with which he now fell asleep was as modest as wise man could well cherish; the morning nevertheless went differently from his intent and expectation. _

Read next: Chapter 52. An Old Story

Read previous: Chapter 50. Discovery And Confession

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