THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 7247, 25 June 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND.

[Bit Maxwell Gray.]

All Rights Reserved,

PART HI.—CHAPTER 111

When Everard reached the High street tois attention was caught by an announcement in a bookseller’s window “ Dean Maitland’s new work,” and, on going up to the shop, he saw the volumes, fresh from the publisher's, in their plain brown binding. It was the third volume of the dean’s 1 Commentary on the Pauline Epistles.’ There ■also he saw, in every variety of binding suited to luxurious devotion, hjs other works: his ‘ Secret Penitent,’ his 1 Knight’s Expiation, and other Poems,’ his ‘ Lyra Sacra,’ his ‘ Individual. Sanctity,’ his ‘ Verses for the Suffering,’ ‘ Parish Sermons,’ ‘ Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey,’ together with endless tracts and pamphlets. Everard purchased the ‘ Secret Penitent ’ and the ‘ Expiation,’ after turning over the leaves of the sermons, wondering at their commonplace character, and listening to a long eulogy on the author from the bookseller. Then he walked up the hill to the station, dipping into his new purchases as he went. Having claimed his modest possessions, he had them conveyed to the George Inn, where he dined in a first-floor room with a bow window looking out on the sunny, bustling High street; and while he dined ho turned over the leaves of the dean’s boob, recognising Cyril’s style and certain peculiar turns of thought and traits of character as he road, and feeling more and more that neither the poems nor the devotions were the work of a conscious hypocrite. From an artistic point of view, they were not calculated to take the world by storm ; but there was an unmiatakeable ring of reality throughout which entitled them to respect, and accounted for the influence Dean Maitland was said to exercise over men’s minds. The * Secret Penitent ’ had passed through many editions. It must have comforted the souls of thousands of human beings; it could only have been written by a man of deep religious convictions and high - toned morality. Everard sat in the bow window, listening to the httm of the streets and the cadences of the bells, and pondering with a bewildered mind over this enigma of human character; and again he wondered, as he had so often wondered during the earlier days of miserable brooding in his captivity, how it was possible that such a man could have sinned so heavily. He recalled his sensitive refinement, his excessive exaltation of the spiritual above the animal, his scorn for the facile follies of youth, his piety, the purity of his emotions, his almost womanly tenderness, and marvelled with a bewildered amazement. He had himself not been unacquainted with the fires of temptation, but his life had been unscathed, nevertheless, because he had been strong enough to resist. But that such fires should have power over Cyril seemed incredible, especially when he remembered his austere, almost ascetic life. Equally strange did it appear to Cyril himself, as he lay prostrate before the crucifix, face to face with his sin, and wondering if indeed he were the same man as he who went astray twenty years ago. Yet the first sin was simple enough, given the components of Cyril’s character and Alma’s, the strange and inexplicable entanglement of the animal and the spiritual in human nature, and the blind madness in ; which passion, once kindled, involves the whole being. | Alma was then innocent of heart; but : what is innocence before the fierce flame of | temptation, unless guarded by high principle and severe self-mastery ’ Cyril could not , live without adoration, and when Marion turned from him he caught at that uncon- , aeiously offered him elsewhere, telling himaelf that there could be no harm to such as he, above temptation as he was, in watching the impassioned light, of Alma’s beautiful eyes, and that pity required him to pour some kindness into so stricken and guileless a heart.

So in those idle days of the Shotover curacy he trod the primrose path of dalliance with a careless and unguarded heart, and did not waken to a sense of danger until he found himself and another precipitated downwards into the very gulfs of hell. The shock of the fall sobered him, and suddenly quenched the delirium of the senses which had hitherto blinded him, and left a mingled loathing and contempt in its place ; and the abasement of his own fall and the terrible sense of having wrought the ruin of another stirred the yet unwakened depths of his nature, and kindled the first faint beginnings of deeper moral and spiritual life. Had he but possessed the courage and strength of will to accept the consequences, to confess where confession was due, and to atone as far as atonement was possible, both he and the more innocent partner of his guilt might have recovered moral health, and even happiness, and he might have led the noblest if not perhaps the happiest of lives, deriving strength from his very weakness. For his life had till then been untempted, and all bis impulses had been good and beautiful. But he was a coward, and loved the praise of men. And more than all things and persons be loved Cyril Maitland. He was also a self deceiver ; he drugged his conscience, and was dragged into the tortuous windings of his own inward deceit, and thus he fell from depth to depth, like Lucifer, falling all the deeper because of the height from which he fell, until he finished In the perversion of his moral being with the deed of a Judas. Of that last iniquity he never dared think.

Everard read and pondered, and pondered and read, and was filled with awe and pity. Then, laying the books aside with & sense of {‘oy in his newly-gained freedom, ho took ds hat and sauntered along the dusk, yet unlighted streets, letting his fancy dwell on brighter themes. He had not gone far before he met a man who looked curiously at him, turned after he had passed, and again studied him intently, and finally, retracing his steps, accosted him.

“ It is Dr Everard, surely ?” he said. “ That is my name,” replied Everard, a little started at the unfamiliar sound of the long unspoken name. “ But I have not the pleasure of knowing yours,” he. added, •canning the figure and face of the respectable tradesman.

“Think of Dartmoor and No. 56,” replied the tradesman, in a low tone. A light of recognition broke over Everard’s face, and be clasped the offered hand with a cordial greeting. “It is no wonder that you did not recognise me,” the man said. “ Thanks to you, I make rather a different figure to what I did on the moor. But yours is a face not to be forgotten.” “ Yon are doing well, apparently, Smith-

son.”

“I have a linen-draper’s shop, and I married a good girl, and we have two little ones, and wo pay our way,” he replied. “If you arc going my way—l was just strolling up the hill for a breath of air—l will tell you all about it. You know, doctor, I could never have had the courage to face the world again but for you. Your words were always in my cars, ‘ The only atonmont we can make is to accept the consequences manfully and conquer them.’ It was uphill work, and I was often ready to throw up the sponge ; but I stuck to it, and got through. Everybody knows ray story, ut they have mostly forgotten it. Many a time when I was ready to give up, and take to lying ways and hiding and going to the deuce again, I remembered how you, an honorable gentleman, who never did wrong, trusted ana respected me in spite of all, and I thought, 'lf he can respect me, others will,* and I held on. You remember the Putney Slogger “ Boor Slogger ! He had a good heart, Jim.”

“ He goes straight now, and says it was you that heartened him to it. Has a greengrocer’s cart, and deals fair.” Smithson had been a clerk in a mercantile office, and falling into dissipated ways and consequent debt, helped himself to petty sums, which gradually grew larger, until the usual end to such a course was reached—an appearance in the prisoners’ dock and a sentence of penal servitude. He was barely twenty when Everard made his acquaintance at Dartmoor, and a more hopeless human being than he did not exist. He had been brought up by an uncle, who now washed his hands of him for ever. Everard pitied the miserable lad, won his affections and

confidence, showed him how ho could shorten his terra by good conduct, impressed upon him that on's fault need not blight a man’s life-, i’nc\ encouraged him to achieve a nefr reputation. When he got his ticket-of-leave, ho boldly offered his services in shops and offices at a low price, in consideration of his antecedents, and, after many lebuffs and much privation during a time when he himself alive by casual manual labor, by dint of persistence and watching the time when employers were short-handed, he got himself taken on as assistant in a draper’s shop, for which he had done errands and odd jobs. Here he suffered much misery from the taunts and practical jokes of his fellowshopmen, who managed to get hold of his history, the truth of which ho did not deny. Did any petty dishonesty occur, suspicion turned at once to the gaol-bird ; nay, was anything lost it was laid to his account. More than once he was on the point of being taken into custody, when his innocence was proved t and once the roasting and sending to Coventry he underwent at the hands of his comrades had become so intolerable that, in his desperation, he offered to fight each man separately, in order of seniority, on the condition that the Conquered were never again to allude to his unfortunate past. His challenge was refused on the ground that no man could sully his hands by fighting him, but one or two of the better disposed from that day dropped the cruel tyranny ; others followed their example, and Smithson gradually earned a character and received full salary. Then he saved money, and having gained the affections of a girl in the millinery department of his house, felt that he had won the battle of life. They put their savings together and started in a humble way on their own account, and now they had a large establishment, and paid their way. They did not, of course, parade Smithson’s antecedents; but they were determined to have no concealments, and intended that their children, when of fit age, should know the whole story. Smithson now related to Everard how, mindful of his own desperate struggles and misery on leaving prison, he tried to lend others a helping hand, by giving them employment. It was, however, found extremely difficult to mix them with people of good reputation. The end of it was, that his entire staff, both of hofise and shop, consisted of criminals, all of Whom were supposed to ignore the antecendents of the others, and many of whom believed the others to be spotless. Many, whom he was unable to employ himself, Smithson had set going by offering security for their integrity, and by _ this means had had the happiness of setting a number of fallen creatures upon their feet again. “But are you never deceived or robbed?” asked Everard, who was deeply interested in his friend’s narration.

Smithson smiled, and replied that his trust had more than once been abused, but more frequently justified. That very week he had paid a hundred pounds surety money. “You will not make a fortune at this rate, Jim.”

“No, doctor ; but we are content to pay our way, and wc like helping people better than getting money,” he replied. “My wife is greatly set on that, especially on helping the women. Come and see her; she has heard many a tale of you. It will be supper-time by the time we are back.” Everard gladly accepted this invitation, and found among Smithson’s staff another old prison friend, whose memory of him was as grateful as his employer’s. Smithson showed him the photograph of a refinedlooking woman,” with a pleasing face. “ Our forewoman,” he said. “ But surely there is nothing against her,” said Everard.

“ She had ten years for killing her husband,” replied Smithson. “Capital woman of business, and the sweetest temper. The dean got hold of her and sent her to me. He stands surety for those who have not a character. Ah! no one knows the good that man does !” “ Do you mean the Dean of Belminstcr ?” asked Everard, in a hard voice. “ Of course ; the dean—Dean Maitland.”

Everard again looked at the handsome milliner, whose face was as gentle as it was refined, and could not help asking what led this amiable person to resort to the extreme measure of murdering her husband. No doubt he deserved it, he thought; but t'icn, so many husbands do, that it would cause considerable social inconvenience to condone such acts.

“ .She did it in a passion, poor girl. The fellow was a drunken brute, years older than she, and he used to beat her and drag her about by the hair night after night. She put up with it, as so many poor things do, and went starved and barefoot, though they were well-to-do people. But one night he came home drunk as usual, and dashed the baby against the wall, and she took up a knife and stabbed him to death.”

“ And the baby ? ” “ She baby is now in Earlswood, a hopeless idiot. She hopes to have it home to tend some day. It was a clever little thing, just beginning to talk. Nobody but the dean and we two guess there is anything wrong in her past. She is only four and thirty now, and much admired. My wife is very fond of her.” “ Have yon any more murderers?” asked Everard.

“ Not at present. We arc mostly thieves and forgers just.now, and all first convictions. Ah, doctor, the Almighty can bring good out of evil, and it was a happy day for many besides me when first I saw your kind face in that awful place. Nobody but you ever told me that good is stronger than evil. You said it in the exercise-yard that cold, foggy vSundy, while all that vicious talk was going on round us, and the Mauler was making his filthy jokes.” “ That is all over now, Jim, thank God!” said Everard.

Then the former comrades parted, Everard deeply moved by what he had seen and heard, and half doubting if the pleasant, open face of the philanthropic linen-draper, with its look of grave thought and settled happiness, could indeed be the same as that white, haggard, abject face, with the despairing iys, which bad so moved bis pity years ago in the dreary prison, and thankful for his long agony if it had been the salvation of but one fellow-creature.

The next evening found him in the nave of the cathedral some time before the appointed hour of the lecture, for the verger had warned him that the attendance would be very large. The sun was still shining warmly on the lime-tree avenue outside, making the fresh foliage glow like a jewel of unearthly radiance in its blended gold and green translucence, throwing long powdery shafts of gold through the windows up into the dim recesses of the groined roof, and disclosing carven nooks only thus touched by the midsummer glory, and dark all the year long besides. But the body of the cathedral was solemnly dusk, and great masses of shadows brooded in the choirs, transepts, and chantries, and eacii brotherhood of massed pillars in the nave was bound with a girdle of tiny fire-points, which were to grow larger with the gathering gloom. Everard watched the great stream of worshippers poursteadily and quietly in ana fill the long lines of chairs, which made the pillars look more lofty and the soaring roof farther off than ever. They were chiefly men, the lectures being specially given for working men, but women were not excluded, and in some cases accompanied a husband, a father, or a brother. Men with hard and stained hands, with clothes still redolent of the putty, paint, or oil of the day’s labors; men with rugged, eager faces and athletic frames, for the most part; also the pallid, weak-kneed tailors, shoemakers, and other indoor laborers. Clerks and shopmen were also there, with men of a higher standing still, but it was the hard-handed fellows in whom Everard found himself most interested —those extremely human creatures in whom the elementary instincts and passions are still so active and unchecked, and whose intellects are so starved and yet so unspoiled. How would the refined and cultivated dean touch these ? he wondered. He had lived among them so long himself that he had acquired a strong affection for the raw material of human nature; but what link was there between the delicate-handed Cyril and these untutored sons of impulse. A link there surely must be, or they would not thus come pouring in to hear him. Far down among the hard visages of the artisans, Everard saw some black-coated,

clerical-looking men, whose peculiar halffinished appearance proclaimed them to be dissenting ministers, and he _ remembered how the verger had told him that the popular Spurgeon himself did not disdain to try and catch the secret of the dean’s goldenmouthed eloquence. Such an agitation pervaded his being, that even the quiet majesty of the great dim cathedral could scarcely calm him. He could now count the hours before his meeting with Lilian, and another second might bring him face to face with Cyril, whom he had last seen in the terrible moment of bis sentence. It seemed as if the service would never begin. The worshippers still poured in, the nave was full, but where were the clergy? The organ had been sounding for some time—soft, mellow music, as soothing as the wave-lullaby of the summer sea, with no hint of slumbering tempests, and a sick fancy took Evorard’s shaken mind that something was wrong, and Cyril would never Comb, He seemed to have been looking at that dark sea Of earnest faces, and hearing that solemn, wave-like music, for ever in the beam-broken dusk of the vast building. But at last a melody rose slowly, like an ocean spirit, out of the softly-breaking waves of music, and floated away over its surface. It was Mendelssohn’s “ If with all your hearts ye truly seek me,” the same which Cyril had listened to in the hour of his desperate conflict eighteen years ago, and the small choir entered with two clergymen, one of whom wore the scarlet hood of a doctor over his snowy surplice, and whom he heard it whispered was no other than the great dean. He had so stationed himself, partly with a view to being unseen by the preacher, that he only caught a brief glimpse of the procession, and lost sight of the dean entirely when the latter took the place he occupied during the prayers, so that he could not recognise him. Cyril had risen that morning refreshed by sleep, and had looked upon the disturbing events of the previous evening from quite another point of view. In the evening, alone in the silelico of his study, he had been a sinful man, face to face with the awful consequences of his guilt, prostrate before the God whose laws he had broken, and whose priesthood he had dishonored. In the sunny morning, at the breakfast table, surrounded by an adoring family, with servants attentive to his wish, with a pile of correspondence before him—correspondence in which the Dean of Belminster was asked to do this and that, and implored to give advice or attendance on the other ; correspondence relating to the Bishopric of Warham, which was now virtually his own —he was another man :he was the Dean of Belminster, the Bishop Designate of Warham, the friend of princes and ministers, the popular author, the chosen guide of troubled consciences. This man naturally thought in other ways than the conscience-stricken sinner alone with his guilt. While breakfasting and chatting pleasantly with his children, and with Miss Mackenzie and the German tutor, both of whom were under the spell of his fascination, an undercurrent of thought passed through his mind on the subject of last night's unsuspected agony, While rapidly running through his correspondence, and answering letter after letter with the swift skill of a practised pen ; while entering the cathedral behind the white-robed choir; while listening to the chanted prayers and psalms; while sending his beautiful voice pealing down the dim aisles on the wings of the ancient Hebrew poems;—the same undercurrent of thought flowed silently on.

Was it his fault that a series of blunders had condemned Everard to an excessive sentence for a crime that was never committed ? Was he responsible for the severity of the Judge, the stupidity of the jury, the’unlucky blnnderings of the witnesses—above all, for the perjury of Alma Lee ? A man may love a woman who has sinned, but few men love women who sin for their sake, even though that sin be of their own compassing. Cyril had turned from Alma after her first fall; but when she stood and swore to the undoing of Everard, he loathed her with an unspeakable loathing. He said to himself that she was thoroughly bad, the cause of every trouble he had ever known ; as the sons of Adam always do when they sin, he threw all the blame on the woman.

He argued within himself that it was now too late for reparation. By this time Everard must have nearly completed his term of imprisonment. His life had been hopelessly ruined ; to stir the muddy waters of that bitter past would be merely to bring irretrievable ruin on others. Alma could not, he thought, clear Everard without betraying him. And then he considered his position in the Church, his elevation in men’s minds, the influence he had upon his generation—an influence depending entirely upon moral spotlessness—and asked what sin could equal that of ruining his own career of exceptional usefulness ? To comfort the morbid terrors of a dying reprobate was he to bring disgrace upon the national Church, of which he was a chief ornament; nay, upon the very Christianity of which he had been so famous a teacher ? Was he to blast the prospects of his innocent children ; to bring ruin upon them, and disgrace upon his aged father and upon the honored name that even his base-born son revered ? The thing was monstrous ; the more he looked at it the more monstrous it appeared.

Then he remembered how cruel Fate had been to him, how good his intentions ever were, how far he had been from dreaming one of the consequences which wrapped him round now in a net of such complicated meshing. As to Alma, it turned him sick to think of a sin which his inmost soul loathed ; he must have been mad, possessed, suffering from some supernatural assault of the powers of darkness—and he had repented, Heaven alone knew how bitterly. lie thought of the fatal hour when ho disguised himself in his friend’s dress, witli no thought but the desire to escape recognition and dread of bringing scandal on his cloth, never dreaming that he would be mistaken for Everard, who was singularly unlike him in face and manner. He thought of the heavy stick he had taken, simply because a man likes to have something in his hand, and which he had thrown away before the struggle; of Ben Lee’s unexpected appearance ; of his own wish to appease the anger of the man he had so cruelly wronged ; of Lee’s unbridled fury ; of the violence of his assault upon him ; and of the fatal blow which had been dealt with no ill intention, but was merely the rebound of that which Lee was dealing him. In all this he felt that he had been the sport of a cruel destiny, the fool of Fortune. And had he not suffered enough to atone for more than men could ever impute to him. He thought of the wife of his youth, first estranged, and then fading before him ; of the sweet faces of his children, and the graves which closed over them in their loveliest bloom, just as each had twined itself round his heart. He thought of his son and his hopeless allliction, and his heart bled.

Yet In; intended to go to the dying woman. But not immediately ; ho had pressing duties to perform first, mul who knew what might turn up in the meantime ? Besides, ho needed time for thought before meeting her. In the afternoon there came a second message from the siek woman, bidding him come that day, as she might sot live to see another, He could not come at the moment, having just then an engagement that could not be postponed ; he promised, with a sick heart, to come in an hour’s time.

The hour passed. He took his hat and yet lingered, going back to give some message to Marion, then again to look into Everard’s study and see how he was getting on ; then at last he issued from beneath the light colonnade before his door, and set his face towards the hospital. He had not left the close when a messenger from the hospital met him, and gave the dean a note, which he opened with trembling fingers. It was to inform him that Alma was dead. He turned swiftly back, and did not stop till he reached home, entered his study, and locked the door; then he threw himself into a chair, laid his arms on the table, and, letting his face fall upon them, burst into tears and sobbed heavily for some time. Something had turned up, after all, and he was spared the horror of that dreaded interview, and could only hope that Alma’s secret had died with her.

He did not leave his study until it was time to go to the cathedral, which he did with a sense of unspeakable relief. The

reaction after last night’s agony and to-day’s conflict made him see everything in the brightest colors, and a delicious languor fell upon his wearied brain, a languor Iso deep that he felt incapable of rousihg himself to the effort of preaching. He wis, however, one of those finely strung, nervous natures which respond to the will as a thoroughbred horse docs to the whip, and do what is required of them in spite of exhaustion up to the last gasp ; and when the brief prayers were ended, and the great volume of men’s voices rolled out the hymn before the sermon, he pulled himself together and ascended the pulpit with his accustomed air of reverent dignity; and, having turned up the gas-beads at the desk and placed his manuscript conveniently, sent a piercing, comprehensive glance all round the vast building and over the wide sea of rough and earnest faces which flooded it, as if taking the measure of the human material spread out, plastic aud receptive, before him. The sight inspired him, and sent a thrill through every fibre of his being; for his was one of those magnetic natures whose strong attractive power over masses is in direct proportion to the stimulating power of masses upon themselves. He could not preach to empty benches, but when he found himself face to face with a multitude he threw his own personality into it in such a manner that he became, as it were, a part of his audience, and made it a part of himself, so that his own emotions thrilled his hearers, and theirs reacted upon him. This was one reason why the sermons Everard thought so commonplace when printed had such a living force when spoken. Everard, who was so placed by a cluster of pillars as to be half shielded by them, advanced his head and gazed over his hymnbook ; so that he could see the preacher without much of his own face being seen, and his first glance at the face, islanded from the dusk in the ruddy glow of gaslight, told him that he must have recognised Cyril anywhere, and set his heart beating vehemently with a mixture of love and hate. At forty-three Dean Maitland was in his fullest prime; the years had ripened instead of wasting and crushing him, as they had Everard. The dark-brown hair waved as gracefully as in his youth over his broad, clear brow, while the few silver threads in it were unseen; the finely-cut, closely-shaven features were but little sharpened in outline; the light-blue eyes were more sunken, and they glowed with an intenser radiance. The old face was there, but the expression was altered ; there was a hard austerity about the mouth when in repose that verged upon cruelty, though no one who had ever seen those tine lips curve into their winning smile when speaking could accuse them of anything harsher than a severe purity quite in character with the man’s writings and his calling, and during the most impassioned glances of the wonderfully expressive eyes they had a certain gleam which suggested the quaint and quiet humor which made the dean so delightful in society. Yet over all the face and in the whole bearing Everard saw an expression he had never seen before, and which he could not analyse, but which struck him with keen pain, and called to his mind Milton’s description of the fallen seraph on whose faded cheek sate Care.

All that evening Everard’s mind was haunted by the image of the fallen angel, once the brightest of the sons of morning, weighted with his unutterable woe, and yearning for the lost glory that could never more be his.

In the meantime, the closing notes of the hymn died away in the long and lingering cadences of the organ, the great congregation seated itself with a subdued rustle and murmur, and the dean, in his magnificent voice and pure enunciation, gave out his text.

(To be eonttnw.il,)