Chapter VIII: Temptation

Thy face across his fancy comes
And gives the battle to his hands.
TENNYSON.

The encounter with Pat served to turn Donovan's thoughts for a short time from his trouble, it made him realise that there were other beings in the world besides Tremains, men, women, and children more or less poor, more or less suffering, more or less in need of help.

By-and-by, however, being but human, his own sorrow overpowered him again, shutting out for the time all thought of others. He was no novice in sorrow; one by one everything that was of most worth to him had been either taken away or voluntarily renounced, but this last call, this greatest sacrifice, seemed to have exhausted his strength utterly. He went about his work more like a machine than like a man, he lost all interest in what, but a short time before, had completely absorbed him. Had he been ordered never to go to the hospital again, he would have acquiesced without a word; had he been warned of the most imminent danger, his heart would not have beat more quickly. To rouse his energy, to awaken his love, hate, interest of any sort seemed impossible.

Dr. Tremain's letter did indeed sharpen his pain; and in a few days' time Mrs. Tremain wrote too--a long letter, cruelly kind, cruelly trustful, urging in almost irresistible words that Donovan would write to her and tell her all he could, that he would be open with her, would remember what old friends they were, and would not allow any formality, or even any mistake, to raise a barrier between them.

"Be sure to write to me when you can," the letter ended, "for till I hear I shall not be happy about you, and you know your place in my heart is very near Dick's. You see I put my request on selfish grounds entirely! My husband seems to have seen so little of you the other day, and I can't help fancying that you misunderstood each other.

"Even if it was not so, please let me hear from you; remember that you adopted Porthkerran as your home, and that even if things have gone wrong we should like to have a little home confidence."

Perhaps Donovan had never before realised how much Mrs. Tremain was to him; in actually leaving Trenant the year before, he had been too much absorbed with the pain of leaving Gladys to have a thought for anyone else, but now, as he read the motherly letter and recalled all Mrs. Tremain's goodness to him, he did realise the truth very bitterly. How wonderful her sympathy had been at the time of his illness, how comforting it had been to tell her about Dot! "Remember that this is your home," how cruelly tempting were the words! If he could but have written in answer to that letter, if he could but have given that "home confidence" for which she asked!

Well! it was no use going over the old arguments again. He had to be silent,--merely to hold his tongue, merely to let all letters remain unanswered, an easy enough _rôle_ surely--merely silence. Nothing to be learnt before that part can be played, no need for beauty of voice or grace of speech, for the silent player nothing is required but self-restraint.

The end of it was that Mrs. Tremain's letter was quietly dropped into the hottest part of the fire; when the sudden blaze died out, Donovan turned away, and with something added to the dead weight of depression which he had borne before, set out for his day's work.

For some weeks things went on in this way, the only change was that those black depths of dejection lost their horrible novelty; it seemed as if for long ages he had fagged through weary uninteresting days, had borne this load at his heart. In time, however, he came to realise the truth that dejection is selfishness, and no more excusable on the ground of naturalness than selfishness is. It was natural certainly to be dejected after a great loss, it was also natural to put self first, but it was not for that reason right. He had been simply wrapped up in himself for weeks, in himself and in those bitter-sweet recollections of the past. When he was fully awake to the fact his strength came back again, dejection was not an easy foe to combat, but he went at it tooth and nail, and the strange incentive to the work was none other than the old captain.

Poor Rouge was a curious person perhaps to save a fellow-being from spiritual death, but nevertheless his presence did save Donovan. It was the sight of that feeble old man dragging through his useless, aimless days, with his pipe and his brandy and water, his weak fits of laughter and his maudlin tears, which first roused him.

How he had neglected the poor old fellow! what a gloomy taciturn companion he had been! what single thing had he done for Rouge beyond offering him the use of his sitting-room? He must alter his conduct, or the old man might as well not have come to him at all, and would really have some excuse for slowly drinking himself to death. It was on a Saturday that Donovan first became alive to these facts. It was raining heavily, a walk was out of the question, the old captain was asleep on the sofa, Waif slept on the hearthrug, the fire smouldered in the grate, the only waking creature in the room besides himself was Sweepstakes. By way of a first step out of his self-absorption, Donovan walked across to the window, and tried to get up a quarrel with the parrot; it was desperately hard work.

There is an old legend which tells how two monks, finding the tedious routine of their life intolerably dull, resolved that they would try to quarrel by way of enlivenment. They agreed that one should make an assertion and the other should contradict it, this would make an opening for impassioned argument.

"Black is white," asserted the younger monk.

"It is not," replied the elder.

"Black is white," repeated the first speaker.

"Oh, very well, brother," rejoined the other, meekly, "if you say so."

The habit of meek deference had grown so strong, that they found it impossible to quarrel.

Neither Donovan nor Sweepstakes was meek, but nevertheless their quarrel was but a tame one. It required such an exertion to get up the requisite energy. However, after a time the bird did call forth the good-natured teazing which he liked best, and was stimulated into flapping his wings, screaming, chattering, swearing; finally he made it up again, and accepted a Brazil nut as a peace-offering.

When he subsided into quiet, Donovan turned his attention to the outside world, which for days he had seen without seeing. York Road looked very dreary it must be owned. Exactly opposite his window was the establishment of Swimming and Vapour Baths, then came grim, uninteresting houses; far down to the left was the entrance to a timber-yard, where he could see the tops of wooden planks swaying to and fro in the wind. And all the time the rain came down steadily, ceaselessly, with a dull, monotonous drip on the flags, the wheels on the road passed by with a dull, hollow roll, the foot-passengers on the pavement with dull, thudding footsteps, the wind in its gloomy strait of houses with dull, faint meanings. A grey world, but one which must be gone through with, and made the best of.

He felt that his absorption in his trouble had weakened him not a little. All this time his brain had seemed half dead, he had read to no purpose, had lived to no purpose. Worst of all the sense of his complete and final separation from Gladys had come to him for the first time in full force, proving only too clearly that, though he had willed more than a year before not to see her again, he had all the time nursed a faint hope of a possible re-union. He had really renounced her before, but the most honestly-intentioned being in the world cannot altogether shut out every ray of hope; he had hoped without knowing that he hoped, he only knew that it had been so by feeling aware that he had sunk now into a blacker depth. Clearly the only thing for the present was to will not to think of her, the hardest thing in the world. But the idea of putting every thought of her away from him was more tolerable than the idea of letting her memory chain him down in a selfishness which she would abhor.

Now for more days than he cared to remember Donovan had allowed himself the pleasing pain of continually looking at the photograph which the doctor had taken in the orchard, on that summer afternoon which had ended so painfully. To study that family group, to note Gladys' sweet face turned up to his, to see little Nesta on his own shoulder, to recall that beautiful summer dream, was gratifying but very weakening torture. Looking out on the grey world this afternoon, the world which contrasted so strangely with the bright picture of the past, he made up his mind that he must waste no more--well, yes--sentiment, he was honest enough to use the true word, over the photograph. Without any more delay he fetched it from his room and burnt it. Also a certain sixpence which he had worn with Dot's miniature since Gladys had put it into his hand one summer day at the door of Trevethan's forge, was deliberately removed, and found its way into his pocket with the ordinary unhallowed coins. Then, having done his best to clear out his heart, he set to work to fill up the vacuum with that strange substitute--the old captain.

Rouge at once perceived that, as he expressed it, the wind had changed, when he awoke that Saturday afternoon; his companion for the first time seemed approachable, he no longer felt uncomfortable in his presence, he felt as if he could venture to talk freely. After dinner they had a pipe together, and then Rouge launched out into one of his long "yarns," about which there was generally a sort of dry humour. To-night the old man, who was shrewd and curious, made his story turn on his first love, and Donovan listened with an imperturbable countenance, till the idea of old Rouge Frewin in love with a beautiful Venetian lady of high rank tickled his fancy and made him laugh. The name of the fair one, too, Ceccarella Bonaventura, when reduced by Rouge's pronunciation to "Kickerella Bunnyventury," was sufficiently ludicrous, and when it came to the description of the gorgeous palace on the grand canal, with eight masts at the door, when Rouge graphically sketched the beauties of Venice from the Bridge of Sighs to "the beautiful cafés in the Piazza," when he related how he had "got into hot water" over his serenade, that is had had a pailful poured on his head from a window by way of recompense, it was impossible to resist the keen sense of the ridiculous which was almost his only Irish characteristic.

"And did you really love this signorina?" asked Donovan.

"Love her!" exclaimed Rouge. "I adored her, kissed the ground she trod on--there's not much ground though in Venice--ruined myself in gondolas that I might pass fifty times a day under her windows, wrote verses about her, raved about her, dreamed of her--and then--"

He paused, a merry twinkle lurking in his little grey eyes.

"Well?" asked Donovan.

"The good ship sailed down the Adriatic, and knowing of course that it must be so, I became resigned, and--forgot her again."

The utterly prosaic tone in which he said the last words had a very comical effect. Donovan smiled.

"We all do," said Rouge, in the tone of one adding the moral to the story. "It's the way with first loves, you know."

"Indeed!" ejaculated Donovan, mentally. But guessing that the observant old captain had discovered the real cause of his depression, and had produced his moral tale on purpose, he gave an apparently careless turn to the conversation, for he would not for the world have had him come a degree nearer his secret trouble, that aching loss, of which it would have seemed sacrilege to speak to one like Rouge.

Not many days after this, however, the dull, tedious monotony of life was suddenly broken. Donovan had felt as if he could never again really care for anything in the world, but now a sudden and violent re-action set in.

"Do you ever go to Israel's now?" questioned Rouge one evening.

"Not since I went last with you," returned Donovan.

But therewith arose a fearful craving for his old pastime. He had, during these years of self-denial, been occasionally seized with a great desire for play, and when Stephen had shared his rooms he had often had to bear the great irritation of seeing cards in the hands of other people. But never before had the desire been so irresistible, the temptation so terribly strong. He had resolved not to play; had willed that he would utterly renounce gaming, but he found himself now rebelling against the restraint, albeit it was a self-restraint. He had a horror of pledges as pledges. The consciousness of this self-made curb began to gall him unbearably. He questioned its wisdom. It might have been necessary once, but now might he not safely indulge in his favourite amusement--of course in moderation? Having schooled himself all this time, might he not relax a little, and satisfy this miserable craving? It was hard that by his own doing he should cut himself off from the one amusement that seemed left to him in the dull, grey world.

His strong nature would not quickly yield, however, to such arguments. The struggle went on with fearful intensity for days. Perhaps he would have stifled it sooner had he not been worn out with the trouble of the last few weeks; however it might be, the temptation proved the most severe of his whole life. It was as if the lower self were making one final and desperate effort to gain the mastery.

One day, in the thick of this inward struggle, he happened to be at work in the dissecting-room, and though, as a rule, he took very little note of the talk that went on there, it chanced that day that, being anxious to escape from his own thoughts, he made himself listen. There were plenty of Freethinkers among the students, and many were at the dogmatic stage of atheism which Donovan had just passed out of. Discussion on the points of discord between religion and science was very frequent, but Donovan rarely joined in it, partly because he was taciturn, partly because he was too much in the borderland of doubt to care to make any assertion, partly because of that strange and utterly unaccountable sense of reverence which was pained by hearing the Unknown--the possibly non-Existent--spoken of slightingly. The discussion to-day on the existence of the soul was neither edifying nor interesting. Donovan, who was in the worst of tempers, was chafed and irritated by the worthlessness of the arguments on each side. "Pack of idiots!" he exclaimed to himself, "if they must babble about what they don't understand, why can't they put a little life into their talk?" He wandered back to his own all too haunting thoughts, but was recalled by the peculiarly confident tone of his neighbour, a young fellow of about two and twenty, who was eagerly attempting to prove the truth of the theory admirably summed up once by old Mrs. Doery, that "Death ends us all up."

"Well," remarked the student, as if he had got hold of a clinching argument, "I've been at work here for some time, but I never yet found a soul in the dissecting-room."

There was a general laugh, but it was checked by a quick retort, uttered in a voice which was made powerful by a ring of indignation and a slight touch of scorn.

"No one but a fool would look for one there."

"Bravo!" cried Donovan, delighted with the ready reply, though by no means convinced of the existence of the soul.

He glanced with some interest and a good deal of curiosity at the speaker. He was a certain Brian Osmond, a clever, hard-working, silent fellow, with the reputation of being stiff and very "churchy," the latter accusation having probably for its sole foundation the fact that his father was a clergyman. Looking at him to-day, Donovan for the first time felt drawn towards him; he admired him and respected him, as much perhaps for his subsequent silence as for his sharp retort. Few know when they have said enough. Apparently Brian Osmond did know, for he spoke no more, but went on with his work with a slightly heightened colour, as if the speaking had been something of an effort.

That night it so happened that Donovan and three other students were told off for duty in the accident ward. There was a patient who needed constant attendance; these four were to take it in turns to be with him, two at a time. Not a little to his satisfaction, Donovan found that Brian Osmond was to be his companion--he really wanted to know him; they were now of course on speaking terms, but, being both reserved men, they would never have got nearer had not an opportunity such as this been thrown in their way.

Now all the evening Donovan's fierce craving for play had been growing more and more irresistible; when the other two students relieved guard, and he and Brian Osmond went to rest in an adjoining room, the first thing he saw on the table was a pack of cards. He did not say anything, but Brian at once caught sight of them.

"Hullo! these fellows have been playing," he remarked. "They've done their game--let's have a turn at écarté to keep us awake."

Donovan did not speak an assent, but he took up the pack; if his hands had been steel, and the cards so many magnets, the power which drew him towards them could not have been more irresistible; the struggle within him was ceasing, a delicious calm set in. The mere sight of the cards was to him what the sight of bread is to a hungry man--to feel them once more in his hands was bliss. Was the world, after all, so grey? With scarcely a word he shuffled and dealt. His hand was one to make the heart of a card-player leap within him, the old passion had him well in its grip, the old fierce, delicious excitement sent the blood coursing at double time through his veins; after years of plodding work, after weeks of blank depression, this was rapture.

"Stop a minute," said Brian; "we didn't settle points. I draw the line at sixpence--is that too mild for you?"

Donovan produced a handful of coins from his pocket; among them was the sixpence with the hole in it--Gladys' sixpence--he saw it at once, and that instant her face rose before him in its purity and guilelessness. Then the delicious calm gave place to deadly struggle, his better self pleading eagerly--"This play calls out all the bad in you, makes you the direct opposite of all that is pure and noble, all that is like Gladys."

But the lower self was ready with bitter taunts--"What, a strong man letting himself be bound by a mere ideal of a girl--a girl whom he has renounced--who is nothing to him! Have your game, and don't be a fool."

"You willed not to play, and it was the right you willed," urged one voice.

"Nothing is so weak as to stick to a mistake," urged the other; "there's no such thing as actual right or wrong--you can't prove it."

"There is right and wrong, there is purity of heart," urged the higher counsellor--"think of Gladys."

He did think, and it saved him.

Brian thought him slightly crazed, for he threw down the cards, got up from the table, and began to pace the room like a caged lion. Before very long, however, he quieted down, threw himself back in a chair, and in a matter-of-fact tone which belied his look of exhaustion, said,

"I beg your pardon, Osmond, but I can't play; the fact is, it makes a sort of demon of me."

Brian was surprised, for Donovan looked much too stern and self-controlled for his idea of a gambler, but the struggle he had just witnessed proved the truth of the words.

"I suppose there is a tremendous fascination in cards, if you're anything of a player," he said. "I'm sorry I suggested a game."

"You couldn't know whom you had to deal with," returned Donovan, gathering up the cards--he was strong enough to touch them now. "Who would have thought that in this trumpery pack there was such tremendous power? It's horribly humiliating when one comes to think of it."

Feeling that he owed Brian a sort of apology for spoiling his game, he overcame his reserve, and continued,

"You wouldn't wonder that I daren't play, if you knew how low these magical things have dragged me. The last time I played, which is getting on for three years ago, I won a small fortune, which my adversary had in his turn won at Monte Carlo. On losing it he absconded, hinting to his wife that he should commit suicide. The horror of that was enough to make one renounce gambling, you would think. Lately, though, the craving after it has come back; but I see it won't do for me even in moderation. I suppose, having once thoroughly abused a thing, you're never fit to use it again."

"That holds, I think, in some other cases," said Brian.

"You're thinking of the drunkard and total abstinence," said Donovan, laughing. "Never mind, I don't object to being taken as a parallel case, for it's perfectly true--the two vices are very nearly akin. I daresay it's as hard to you to understand or sympathise with my temptation as it is to me to sympathise with the poor old fellow who shares my rooms, who is slowly drinking himself to death. No one can understand or make allowance for utterly unknown temptations."

"I don't know that," said Brian, slowly. "One man at least I know who can sympathise with anyone; but then he is that rare being--a Christ-like man."

"Rare indeed," said Donovan, drily; "not too much of that sort of thing in this nineteenth century. I see you think I speak bitterly; perhaps you are right. I speak as an unbeliever, and I can count on my fingers the Christians who have had so much as a kind word to give me."

Brian began to feel very much drawn to his companion; in their next interval of rest he took up the thread of the conversation again.

"That is almost too horrible to be believed," he said. "I know people are intolerant, but that so few should have--" he paused for a word, and Donovan broke in.

"Mind I don't say I laid myself out for their kindness. I didn't cringe and fawn or disguise the views I then held; but to be conscious that people would receive you if you were judiciously hypocritical, does not raise your opinion either of them or of their religion."

"No, indeed!" said Brian.

"Besides," resumed Donovan, "if they are in earnest, as people who have made such a profession ought to be, surely they must see that isolating atheists as if they were lepers is the worst thing both for themselves and the atheists. I don't think it's in a man to feel kindly to those who treat him unjustly, and the good folks of our neighbourhood drove me as fast as they could into misanthropy. One man put a spoke in the wheel, but he was an atheist--the prophet of atheism."

"What, Raeburn?"

Donovan nodded an assent.

"I don't know that I agree with his views now any more than I agree with Christianity, but I do believe that man gets hold of selfish fellows and makes them downright ashamed of their selfishness."

"You have heard him lecture?"

"Only once, but I shall never forget it. The magnetism of the man is extraordinary; he means what he says, and has had to suffer for it--that, I expect, gives him his tremendous force. If you Christians only knew the harm you do your cause by injustice, you'd be more careful. St. Paul is not the only one who, for the sake of what he believed the truth, has borne imprisonment, stonings, watchings, fastings, perils of robbers, and perils of his own countrymen. I don't wonder at St. Paul making converts, and I don't wonder at Raeburn making converts, and as long as you persecute him, as long as you are uncharitable to him, you may be sure atheism will spread."

"If you admired him so much, why did you not go to hear him again?"

"Because, when I could have heard him again, I had sunk too low. I had suffered a great injustice, and it had made me hate the whole race--for a time. Once I half thought of going to see him, for I was in great need of work; but, do you know, I was ashamed to. Christians may scoff at the idea of being ashamed to go to see Raeburn, but anyone who is living in the vindictive misanthropy which I was living in may well be ashamed to go to one who leads a self-denying, hard-working life for others, whatever his creed."

"But you do not go to hear him now, though you still admire him?"

"No, for I've found the great blank in atheism; it can never satisfy a man's needs."

"Have you ever given the other side a hearing?" asked Brian.

"A reading, not a hearing; it is difficult to do that without either being a hypocrite or disturbing a congregation."

Brian seemed about to speak, but he checked himself, and very soon they were called to go into the ward. They did not have much more conversation that night, but their friendship was begun; when Donovan gave confidence and liking at all, he gave them without stint, and Brian, in spite of his reputation for stiffness and punctilious observance, became more and more fond of him. In some points they were a little like each other, in some they were curiously different, but both had found--Brian as a high churchman, Donovan as an agnostic--that the secret of life is loving self-sacrifice.

They were exactly fitted to rub off each other's angles.