Chapter XIII

OF EVOLUTION, AND A NINETEENTH CENTURY FOE.

"Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
* * * * * * * *
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward look, the land is light."
A. H. CLOUGH.

Late in the afternoon of a sunny August day two pedestrians might have been seen skirting the shore of one of the beautiful little lakes which lie cradled in the arms of the grand old monarch of Welsh mountains. The elder, grey-bearded and somewhat bent, had yet an air of alertness, a certain elasticity of step which bespoke a buoyant temperament; the younger, lacking entirely this touch of triumph, walked firmly and sharply, following in his companion's wake, and himself closely followed by a fox-terrier. Very still was the mountain side, for miles round not another living creature was in sight; above them to the right towered the most abrupt side of Snowdon, rugged and wild and grim-looking, its chaos of grey rocks relieved here and there by tufts of coarse mountain grass or clumps of fern; to the left, in striking contrast, lay the little lake, small and insignificant enough to be scarcely known by its name, and yet in the beauty of its situation and in its majesty of calmness attracting the eye almost as much as its stately bearer.

"There's a stiffish climb before us," said Charles Osmond, pausing as he looked up the mountain path. "What do you say to an hour's rest here? we couldn't have a lovelier place."

"Very well, and Waif shall have a swim," replied Donovan, "I'll just give him a stone or two. We have plenty of time if we're to see the sunset from the top."

Whistling to the dog, he ran down the slope to the lake, while Waif, in a tremor of delighted excitement, plunged into the cool water after the sticks and stones which his master threw. Charles Osmond, stretched out on the grass with one of the grey boulders by way of a pillow, watched the two thoughtfully, the spirited swimming of the fox-terrier, the fine strongly-made figure of the man hurling the stones into the lake with a vigour and directness and force which--albeit there was no mark--bespoke him a good marksman. After a time he made his way again up the slope, and threw himself down at full length beside his companion with a sigh of comfortable content.

"You old Italian!" said Charles Osmond, with a laugh, "what a way you have of throwing yourself in an instant into exactly the most comfortable position! now a true-born Britisher fidgets, and wriggles, and grumbles, and in the end does not look as if he'd found the right place."

"One of the bequests of my great-great-grandmother," said Donovan, "by nature I do go straight out on the hearthrug when other fellows would crouch up in an arm-chair."

"Oh! it is four generations back, is it! I staked my reputation as an observer that you had a bit of the Italian in you the very first time we met, though Brian scouted the idea."

"It comes out in that and in the way I owned to you before," said Donovan, "the endlessness of the feud when once begun. We've some bloodthirsty proverbs as to enemies in Italy."

"I shouldn't have thought you revengeful by nature."

"It smoulders, and does not often show itself in flame," said Donovan. "I'm afraid there have often been times when I could have done something desperate to Ellis Farrant if I'd had a chance. Even now, professing to go by very different rules, I believe if I saw him fall into that lake, the fiend of revenge in me would try hard to hold me still on the shore. Good folk may shudder, but that's the plain unvarnished truth. I have shocked even you, though, by the confession."

"No," said Charles Osmond, slowly, "you've only surprised me a little. Having come to such blanks in yourself and your system, I wonder rather that the fitness of Christianity to fill those blanks does not seem more striking. The lesson of forgiveness, for instance, could only have been taught by Christ--by the great Forgiver. I wonder that your need does not throw more light on Christianity."

"Proof," sighed Donovan. "It is that we want."

He thought of his talks with Dr. Tremain as the words passed his lips, but though the doctor's argument was still fresh in his mind, he had by no means come yet to think that logical proof could be willingly renounced.

"But the sense of need is an indirect proof," said Charles Osmond.

"I cannot see it in that way," said Donovan. "That a man in a desert is dying of thirst is no proof that there is water in the place."

"No; but it is a proof that the natural place for man is not the said desert, and that the water he longs for does exist, that it is his natural means of life, and that without it he will certainly die."

"It is not much good to talk by metaphors," said Donovan, "and, since we have broken the ice, I should very much like to ask you one or two questions in plainest English. It is all very well to speak of need and thirst and the rest of it, but there are gigantic difficulties in the way. I should like very much to know, for instance, how you get over the evolution theory."

"You speak as if it were a wall," said Charles Osmond, laughing a little. "I never thought of 'getting over it.' To my mind, it is one of the most beautiful of the 'ladders set up to Heaven from earth,' and if folks hadn't been scared by the conglomeration of narrow-minded fearfulness and atheistical cock-crowings, the probabilities are that more would have seen the real beauty and grandeur of the idea."

"I noticed Hæckel's 'Creation' and 'Evolution of Man' in your book-shelves the very first night I came to you," said Donovan; "and I've always wondered how you did get over it."

"There you are again, making my ladder a wall," said Charles Osmond, with a little twinkle in his deep, bright eyes.

"Well, it is a wall to me," said Donovan. "Having all come into existence so exceedingly well without a God----"

"And," interrupted Charles Osmond, "finding it so hard to live without Him, being so conscious of a grave deficiency in our nature which yet nature does not give us the means to supply. In honesty, you must remember that you've previously admitted that."

"Yes, but surely you see the difficulty," said Donovan, with a touch of impatience in his tone.

"I do," said Charles Osmond, gravely, "that is, I think I see where your difficulty is. For myself, as I told you, the theory of evolution seems to me in absolute harmony with all that I know or can conceive of God. I accept it fully as His plan for the world, or rather, perhaps I should say, as an imperfect glimpse of the beauty of His plan, the best and clearest that present science can give us. In another hundred years we may know much more."

"But you cannot make Hæckel square with the Bible."

"I certainly do not accept all Hæckel's conclusions, for they are often drawn from premises which are utterly illogical; nor do I accept all his assumptions, for he often practically claims omniscience. At the same time, he has done us a great service, and the false deductions of a teacher cannot spoil or alter the truth of his system. If it were so, it would be a bad look out for Christianity, with its two hundred and odd sects. Do you consider that spontaneous generation is already proved?"

"Not absolutely," said Donovan, "but quite sufficiently for working purposes, and in time I can't doubt that it will be completely proved. What will then become of the Author of the Universe, to adopt the current phrase?"

"If it should be proved, as I fully expect it will be," replied Charles Osmond, "it will merely carry us one step further back in our appreciation of the original Will-power. We shall still recognise the one Mind impressing one final and all-embracing law upon what we call matter and force, and then leaving force and matter to elaborate the performance of that law."

"You assume a good deal there," said Donovan. "Why should we imagine that law--still less, a personal Will--existed before the existence of primordial cells?"

"You must either assume that there existed only one primordial cell, or else that there was a law of order impressed upon the infinite number of primordial cells," said Charles Osmond.

Donovan left off twisting the grasses which grew beside him, and knitted his brows in thought. This idea was a new one to him. He was silent for a minute or two, then, keeping his judgment entirely suspended, he said, slowly,

"And what then? I should like to hear that borne out a little."

"The question is, how has the absolute uniformity of action been attained? If matter be self-existent, there must have been at the very first outset an infinite number of cells, and also an infinite possibility of variation. Say, just for illustration, a million cells, each capable of varying in a million ways. Now just calculate the mathematical chances that ultimate order could result from this disorder, and, if so, what length of time, approximately, it would occupy, allowing each cell an hour of existence, and then to give birth to another cell, probably differing from itself!"

Donovan laughed a little, and mused, and presently Charles Osmond continued.

"No, it seems to me that orderly transmission of hereditary form or habit is only possible on the supposition either of the one self-existent cell, to which there are many objections, or on the supposition of a law of order, which must have been antecedent to the cells, or it could not have impressed them."

"I daresay many would willingly concede as much as that," said Donovan. "It is only when you go on to assert that the law came from a law-giver that we cry out."

"Well, where did it come from?" said Charles Osmond.

"I suppose it was a fortuitous concourse of atoms," said Donovan, doubtfully.

"That is a thoroughly unscientific hypothesis," returned Charles Osmond. "Mind, I don't assert that my theory is proved, but I claim this, that both physical and mathematical science demonstrate the probability of some law existing before primordial cells existed, and that this probability is at least as reasonable as a working hypothesis, as is that of evolution in explaining the method in which that primordial law has operated."

"But what will my old 'soul-preserving' friends say to you?" observed Donovan, smiling. "You agree to the disenthronement of that all-important being--man."

"Do I?" said Charles Osmond.

"Well, you accept as your oldest ancestor something more insignificant than an amœba."

"Yes, but I thought the longer the pedigree the better," said Charles Osmond, with laughter in his eyes.

"But, seriously, where do you make your spirit-world begin?"

"I think," said Charles Osmond, "there was once a wise man, but who he was I haven't an idea, and this was his wise utterance, 'The spirit sleeps in the stone, dreams in the animal, and wakes in man.' The revelation, or, if you will, the awakening, appeared to be sudden, it came as it were in a flash; but it was the result of long processes, it followed the universal rule--a gradual advance, then a sudden unfolding. And in this way, I take it, all revelation comes."

Donovan looked full into his companion's face for a moment, a question, and a very eager one, was trembling on his lips, his whole face was a question, the question which Charles Osmond would fain have answered if he could. But a reserved man does not easily talk of that which affects him most nearly, and in this case certainly out of the abundance of the heart the mouth did not speak. The firm yet sensitive lips were closed again, but perhaps the very silence revealed more to Charles Osmond than any spoken words could have done, and by a hundred other slight indications he knew perfectly well that Donovan's heart was full of the spirit hunger.

"Let me just for a minute fall back on the Mosaic account," he said, after a little time had passed. "You think that account incompatible with the evolution theory, to my mind it expresses in a simple, clear way, such as a wise teacher might use with young children, the very truths that recent researches have wonderfully enlarged upon. If you will notice it carefully the very order given to the creation in the first of Genesis is exactly borne out by modern science. Then we are told in the grand old simple words which only were fit for such a purpose--that God breathed into him, and man became a living soul. To man evolved probably from the simplest of organisms, to gradually perfected man the revelation is made: God breathes into him the breath of life, that is the knowledge of Himself, life according to Christ's definition being knowledge of God. Man was now fully alive, fully awake, the spirit had slept, had dreamed, but the revelation was made, and his dormant spirit sprang into life."

"But I am not conscious of this spirit," said Donovan, "I am aware of nothing that cannot be explained as a function of the brain, thought, mind, will."

"Yet you are conscious of being incomplete," said Charles Osmond. "It seems to me that for a time we get on very well as body and soul men, or body and mind, if you like it better; but sooner or later comes the craving for something higher, which something, I take it, is the spirit life. And one thing more, if you will let me say it, you tell me you are conscious of nothing but body and mind, but I can't help thinking that your love for that little sister whom you mentioned to me was the purest spiritual love, to which no scientific theory will apply."

For many minutes Donovan did not speak, not because he was actually thinking of his companion's words, but because a vision of the past was with him; little Dot in her purity, her child-like trust, her clinging devotion rose once more before him. How had she learnt the truths which to him were so unattainable? Brought up for years in a way which could not possibly bias her mind, how was it that she had, apparently without the least difficulty, taken hold of such an abstraction, such a mysterious, incomprehensible idea? She had not believed on "authority," for naturally the nurse-maid's authority would have weighed less with her than his own, yet in some way the Unseen, the Unknown, the to him Unknowable, had become to her the most intense reality. She had very rarely spoken to him on that subject because she knew it grieved him; he could only remember one instance in which she had definitely expressed the reality of her faith. He had been remonstrating with her a little, and she had answered in a half-timid way which somehow angered him because it was so unusual with her.

"You see, Dono, I can't help knowing that God is, because He is nearer to me even than you."

He could almost feel the little face nestling closer to him as the shy words were ended, and clearly could he recall the terrible pang which that faltering childish sentence had caused him. He had then believed that she was under a great delusion, now he inclined to think that her pure soul had grasped a great truth which still remained to him utterly unknowable. This was almost all that he had actually heard her say, except the last half unconscious prayer, the speech of a little child to its father containing no pompous title, no ascriptions of praise, but only the most absolute trust. She had never fallen into conventional religious phraseology; but perhaps nothing could have so exactly met Donovan's wants that summer afternoon as her last perfectly peaceful words, "He is so very good, you know--you will know." No argument, however subtle, no sermon, however eloquent, had the hope-giving power which lay in the little child's words--words which had lain dormant in his heart for years, apparently with no effect whatever.

Charles Osmond saw that his reference had awakened a long train of thought; he would not look at the changes on the face of his companion, for just now in its naturalness it was exceedingly like a book, and a book which he felt it hardly fair to read. Instead he gazed across the quiet little lake to the sunny landscape beyond, battled with a conceited thought which had arisen within him, and was ready with his beautiful, honest mind and hearty sympathy to come back to Donovan's standpoint as soon as he seemed to wish it.

Waif, having studied the group from a distance for some minutes, and having given himself a series of severe shakings to wring the water from his coat, seemed to consider himself dry enough for society. He came back to his master, sniffed at his clothes, and finding that his remonstrating whines received no notice, began to lick his face. Then Donovan came back to the world of realities, and perhaps because of the softening influence of the past vision, perhaps merely out of gratitude to the dumb friend who understood his moods so well and filled so great a blank for him, he threw his arms round the dog, wet as he was, hugged him, patted him, praised and petted him in a way which put the fox-terrier into his seventh heaven of happiness.

Charles Osmond was touched and amused by the manner in which the silence was ended. Presently Donovan turned towards him again with a much brightened face.

"There is one thing which you Christians will have to face before long," he began, "or rather I should think must face now, with the theory of evolution so nearly established."

"Well?" said Charles Osmond.

"I mean this," continued Donovan: "Our original ancestors and their living representatives can hardly be left out of your scheme of immortality. It seems to me a very half-and-half scheme if it only includes mankind. You know," he added, laughing a little, "even the idea of heaven you gave us in your sermon the other night--about the least material and the most beautiful I ever heard--would scarcely be perfect to me without Waif."

"I quite agree with you," said Charles Osmond. "Nor can I understand why people object so much to the idea. Luther, you know, fully admitted his belief that animals might share in the hereafter, and to appeal to a still higher authority it seems to me that, unless we deliberately narrow the meaning of the words, St. Paul clearly asserts the deliverance of the whole creation from the bondage of corruption into the deliverance of the glory of the children of God. I believe in One who fills all things, by whom all things consist, therefore I certainly do believe in the immortality of animals."

"Well, seeing how infinitely more loving my dog is than most men, I own that it seems to me unfair to shut him out of your scheme. The old Norsemen walked with their dogs in the 'Happy Hunting Fields,' and, however material that old legend, there is a touch of beauty in it which is somehow wanting--at any rate, to dog-lovers--in the ordinary, and I must say equally material, descriptions of the gorgeous halls of Zion."

"You two are very fond of each other," said Charles Osmond, looking at the dog and his master.

"We have been through a good deal together, and I believe, to begin with, the mere fact of his wanting me when no one else did, of his following me so persistently in the Strand just at the time when everyone had hard words to throw at me, drew me towards him. I've watched him nearly dying with distemper, and somehow dragged him through. He has watched me nearly dying in a bog, and, by his sense and persistency, got me rescued. Besides that, at least three times he has saved me from a worse death, just by being what he is, the most loving little brute in England."

"Brave little Waif! I shall never forget my first sight of him," said Charles Osmond, smiling. "It was a wonder you two didn't put me out that night, the fit was distracting enough; but when I saw you and the fox-terrier walking up the aisle, head No. 1 nearly went into space, though I could have told the people every one of your characteristic features, and should have known Waif among a thousand dogs!"

"But to go back once more to our old subject," said Donovan; "does not your theory bring you to something very like Pantheism?"

"I think it is the Higher Pantheism," said Charles Osmond. "While we've been lying here, Tennyson's lines have been haunting me. You know them, I suppose?"

Donovan only knew one poem in the world, however, and he asked to hear this one. Charles Osmond repeated it, and, because he loved it, rendered it very well.

"You see," he said, after a pause, "it is this Higher Pantheism which leads us up to the greatest heights.

'Speak to Him thou, for He hears and Spirit with Spirit
can meet,
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.'

It leads us to no vague impersonal Force, but to the Spirit by whom and in whom we live and move and have our being."

Donovan did not speak, and before long they began to climb their mountain; but, though he said no word to his companion, he moved to a sort of soundless tune which set itself to a verse of the poem,

"Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel 'I am I'?"

The climb was rather a stiff one, and by the time they reached the summit they were glad enough of the fresh breeze which was there to greet them as they made their way up to the little cairn. The sun was within a quarter of an hour of setting, its red beams were bathing the landscape in a flood of glory; around the mountains stood in solemn grandeur, as if doing homage to the parting king, the red beams lighted up one or two, but more were in solemn shade, varying from pearly grey to the softest purple. There was something perfectly indescribable in the sense of breadth and height and beauty combined; in their different ways the two pedestrians revelled in it. The creases seemed to smooth themselves out of Charles Osmond's brow, he lost the weight of care which the long year's work brought, not always to be shaken off in the summer holiday. But here it was impossible to be earth-bound; his whole being was echoing the words,

"Are not these, oh! soul, the vision of Him who reigns?"

And Donovan, exulting in that sense of space which was so dear to him, realised as he had never realised before that it is the Infinite only which can satisfy the Infinite.

The lofty is often closely followed by the prosaic, and in the neighbourhood of great heights there lurk the dangers of the precipice. Donovan had reached high ground, but in a minute came the most violent re-action, the most humiliating fall.

They were not the only tourists who had made the ascent that afternoon. A very different party sat drinking and smoking on the other side of one of the huts; their laughter was borne across every now and then to the westward side of the cairn, but both Charles Osmond and Donovan were too much absorbed in their own thoughts to be at all disturbed by it. The rudeness of the shock was therefore quite unbroken. From high but unfortunately fruitless aspirations, Donovan was recalled to the hardest of facts by a sudden shadow arising between him and the sun. A dark and rather good-looking man stood on the very edge of the rock looking at the sky, very possibly not seeing it much, but looking at it just for want of something better to do. Charles Osmond glanced at him, then, as if struck by some curious resemblance, he turned towards his companion, and at once knew that the stranger could be none other than Ellis Farrant, for Donovan's face bore a look of such fearful struggle as in his life of half a century the clergyman had never before seen.

Before long Ellis turned, and finding himself face to face with the man he had so shamefully wronged, had the grace to flush deeply. But in a minute he recovered himself, and assumed the _rôle_ of the easy-mannered gentleman, which he knew so well how to play.

"Why, Donovan!" he exclaimed. "Who would have thought of meeting you up here? Pity your mother's not with me, but I'm only here for a week's fishing with Mackinnon."

The struggle had apparently ceased, Donovan had set his face like a flint, but his eyes flashed fire, and as he drew himself up and folded his arms, at the same time making a backward movement in order to be as far from Ellis as the narrow platform would admit, he was certainly a formidable-looking foe. There was no doubt whatever as to his sentiments; he might have stood for a model of one of the old Romans righteously hating his enemy. Ellis shrank beneath his glance, but it somehow made him malicious.

"You must remember Mackinnon," he continued, in his bland voice. "He was with us, if you recollect, on the night of that unfortunate dance, when poor little----"

He broke off, for Donovan, with the look of a man goaded beyond bearing, bent forward, and with the extraordinary vehemence which contrasted so strangely with his usually repressed manner, thundered rather than spoke the words,

"Be silent."

Being a cowardly man, Ellis did not feel disposed to stay in the neighbourhood of his foe; he not only obeyed the injunction but disappeared from the scene as quickly as possible.

Donovan once more leant back against the cairn with folded arms, and for many minutes did not stir. Charles Osmond did not venture to speak to him; in perfect silence the two stood watching the setting sun, which was now like a golden-red globe on the horizon line. Many hundreds of times had the sun gone down on Donovan's wrath, and this evening proved no exception to the rule. By the time the last red rim had disappeared, however, all traces of agitation had passed from him, and he turned to his companion a quiet, cold face, observing, in the most matter-of-fact tone,

"We must be making our way home, I suppose."

"Certainly, if we're to eat the captain's trout for supper," said Charles Osmond.

And without further remark they began the descent, Donovan showing traces of latent irritation in the headlong way in which he plunged down the steep path. Charles Osmond, following much more slowly, found him beside the little lake where they had rested in the afternoon; perhaps the place or some recollection of their talk had softened him, at any rate, he was quite himself again. Charles Osmond put his arm within his, and they walked on steadily down the less abrupt part of the mountain to Pen-y-pass, and along the Capel Currig road to Bettws-y-Coed.

Presently Donovan broke the silence.

"Well, you have seen Ellis Farrant at last. Odd that he should have turned up just after we had been talking of him. I hope you were satisfied with my Christian forbearance."

Charles Osmond was silent, not quite liking his tone.

"I have offended you," said Donovan. "I will take away the adjective."

"I daresay your forbearance was very great," said Charles Osmond, "and your provocation far greater than I can understand, but you must forgive me for saying that I saw nothing Christian in it."

"What did you see?" asked Donovan, a little amused.

"I saw a perfect example of the way in which a nineteenth century gentleman hates his enemy, the hatred of the ancients kept in check by the power of modern civilization."

"And how would you have had me meet him?" cried Donovan. "Did you expect a stage reconciliation, while he is still defrauding me? Did you wish me to embrace him and wish him good speed?"

"I wished you to act as I think Christ would have acted," said Charles Osmond, quietly.

"Oh! once more I tell you this idealism is impossible!" exclaimed Donovan, impatiently. "I am but a mortal man, and cannot help hating this fellow."

"You see in copying Him whom I consider to be more than mortal man, we do realise our own short-comings," said Charles Osmond.

"Well, what do you imagine Christ would have done in such a case?"

"I think you can answer that question for yourself," said Charles Osmond. "But to put it on what to me is a lower footing, consider how the best man you ever knew would have acted, and then carry his conduct still further. Your father, for instance--how would he have treated an enemy?"

Unconsciously Charles Osmond had touched on Donovan's tenderest part. He fell into a reverie, and they walked a mile before he spoke again.

"I believe you are right," he said at last; and there was something of pathos in the words coming from one so strong and so exceedingly slow to own himself conquered. "I'm afraid up there on the mountain I've fallen when I might have risen."

"I daresay you will have another opportunity given you," said Charles Osmond, by way of consolation.

"Don't be in too great a hurry," said Donovan, smiling. "I'm afraid I can't honestly wish for it yet."

Then they fell to talking of every-day matters, and late in the evening they reached the cottage where they were spending a few weeks--a somewhat curious quartette--the Osmonds, father and son, old Rouge Frewin, and Donovan. The captain was supremely happy; went out fishing every day, and partly from his love to Donovan and his desire to do him credit, partly from his awe of a "parson out of the pulpit," really managed to keep sober through the whole of their stay in Wales. But perhaps no one got quite so much from the Welsh holiday as Donovan himself. He went back to work with both body and mind invigorated, having learnt more in that month's intercourse with Charles Osmond than he would have learnt in years of solitary life.

There now remained only a few months of his medical course. Then "the world was all before him." He had not as yet formed any plans, but as the autumn advanced public events pointed the way for him, and he found his vocation.