THE GREAT REFUSAL
"But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful."
Too busy with their own thoughts to talk on the way home, on entering their rooms Mantel threw himself into a chair, while David nervously began to gather his clothes together and crowd them hastily into a satchel.
"What's up?" asked Mantel.
"I'm off in the morning."
"Which way are you going?"
"There is only one way. I am going to find Pepeeta."
"Do you really expect to succeed?"
"Expect to! I am determined!"
"It's a sudden move."
"Sudden! everything is sudden. Events have simply crashed upon me lately! When I think of the fluctuations of hope and despair, of certainty and uncertainty through which I have gone in the past few hours, I am stupefied."
"And I never go through any! My life is like a dead and stagnant sea—nothing agitates it. If I could once be upheaved from the bottom or churned into a foam from the top, I think I might amount to something."
"You ought to quit this business, Mantel, and come with me. I am going to find Pepeeta, take her back to that quiet valley where I lived, and get myself readjusted to life. I need time for reflection, and so do you. What do you say? Will you join me? I cannot bear to leave you? You have been a friend, and I love you!"
"Thanks, Corson, thanks. You have come nearer to stirring this dead heart of mine than any one since—well, no matter. I reciprocate your feeling. I shall have a hard time of it after you have gone."
"Then join me."
"It is impossible."
"But why? This life will destroy you sooner or later."
"Oh—that's been done already."
"No, it hasn't. There are more noble things in you than you realize. What you need is to give them scope and let them out."
"You don't know me. What you see is all on the surface. If I ever had any power of decision or action it has gone. I am the victim, and not the master of my destiny. I am drifting along like a derelict, with no compass to guide, rudder to steer or anchor to grip the bottom."
"Make another effort, old man, do! Look at me. I was in as bad a fix as you are only a little while ago."
"Yes; but see what has happened to you! Circumstances have tumbled you out of the nest, and of course you had to fly. I wish something would happen to me! I would almost be glad to have lightning strike me."
"What you say is true in a way, of course. I know I don't deserve any credit for breaking out of this life. But don't you think a man can do it alone, without any such frightful catastrophes to help him? It seems to me, now, that I could. I feel as if I could burst through stone walls."
"Of course you do, my dear fellow, and you can. But something has put strength into you! That's what I need."
"Well, let me put it into you! Lean on me. I can't bear to leave you here and see you go down! Come, brace up. Make an effort. Decide. Tear yourself away!"
"You actually make my heart flutter, Davy; I feel as if I would really like to do it. But I can't. It's no use. I shouldn't get across the ferry before I'd begin to hang back."
"But you don't belong to this life. You are above it, naturally. You ought to be a force for good in the world. Society needs such men as you are, and needs them badly. Come! If I can break these meshes you can."
"No, my dear fellow, that's a non-sequitur. There is different blood flowing in our veins, and we have had a different environment and education. As far back as I know anything about them, my people have all lived on the surface of life, and I have floated along with them. But, by heavens—I have at least seen down into the depths!"
"Well, I have my inheritance of bad blood also. I had a father who was not only weak but wicked."
"Yes, but think of your mother."
"Mantel, you are carrying this too far. A man is something more than the mere chemical product of his ancestor's blood and brains! Every one has a new and original endowment of his own. He must live and act for himself."
"Maybe so, but everything seems, at least, to be a fixed and inevitable consequence of what has gone before. I don't want to disparage this last act of yours, but see how far back its roots reach into the past. See what a chain of events led up to it, and what frightful causes have been operating to bring you up to the sticking point! How long ago was it that you were just as ready to throw up the game?"
"Horrible! Don't speak of it! It makes me tremble. I am not worthy to defend or even advocate a life of endeavor and victory, Mantel, and I will not try; but I know that I am right."
"Yes, Dave, you are right; I know it as well as you. I am only talking to ease my conscience. I know I ought to snap these cords, and I know I can. But I also know that I am grinding here in this devil's mill while every bad man makes sport and every good man weeps! And I know that I shall keep on grinding while you and thousands of other noble fellows with less brains, perhaps, and fewer chances than mine, make wild dashes for liberty and do men's work in the world. But here I am, cold and dead, and here I remain."
"Can nothing persuade you—not love? I love you, Mantel! Come, let us go together. Who knows what we can do if we try? I must persuade you!"
"I am like a ship in a sea of glue. You touch me, but you don't persuade me! It's no use. I cannot budge. The aspirations you awaken in my soul leap up above the surface like little fishes from a pond, and as quickly fall back again! No, I cannot go. Don't press me—it makes me feel like the young man in the gospel, who made what Dante calls 'the great refusal;' he saw that young man's 'shade' in hell."
They were sitting on the sill of a deep window in what had once been one of the most fashionable mansions of the city. The sash was raised, and the light of the moon fell full upon their young faces. They ceased speaking after Mantel had uttered those solemn words, and looked out over the housetops to the water of the great river. It was long after midnight, and not a sound broke the stillness. Fleecy clouds were drifting across the sky, and a vessel under full sail was going silently down the river toward the open sea. They had involuntarily clasped each other's hands, and as their hearts opened and disclosed their secrets they were drawn closer and closer together until their arms stole about each other's necks. For a few brief moments they were boys again. The vices that had hardened their hearts and shut their souls up in lonely isolation relaxed their hold. That sympathy which knit the hearts of David and Johnathan together made their's beat as one.
David broke the silence. "I cannot bear to leave you, Mantel. Join me. Such feelings as these which stir us so deeply to-night do not come too often. It must be dangerous to resist them. I suppose there are slight protests and aspirations in the soul all the time, but these to-night are like the flood of the tide."
"Yes," said Mantel; "the Nile flows through Egypt every day, but flows over it only once a year."
"And this is the time to sow the seed, isn't it?"
"So they say. But you must remember that you feel this more deeply than I do, Davy. I am moved. I have a desire to do better, but it isn't large enough. It is like a six-inch stream trying to turn a seven-foot wheel.
"Don't make light of it, Mantel!"
"I don't mean to, but you must not overestimate the impressions made on me. I am not so good as you think."
"I wish you had the courage to be as good as you are."
"But there is no use trying to be what I am not. If I should start off with you, I should never be able to follow you. My old self would get the victory. In the long run, a man will be himself. 'Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome—seldom extinguished.'"
"What a mood you are in, Mantel! It makes me shiver to hear you talk so. Here I am, full of hope and purpose; my heart on fire; believing in life; confident of the outcome; and you, a better man by nature than I am, sitting here, cold as a block of ice, and the victim of despair! I ought to be able to do something! Sweet as life is to me to-night, I feel that I could lay it down to save you."
"Dear fellow!" said Mantel, grasping his hands and choking with emotion; "you don't know how that moves me! It can't seem half so strange to you as it does to me; but I must be true to myself. If I told you I would take this step I should not be honest. No! Not to-night! Sometime, perhaps. I haven't much faith in life, but I swear I don't believe, bad man as I am, that anybody can ever go clear to the bottom, without being rescued by a love like that! I'll never forget it, Davy; never! It will save me sometime; but you must not talk any more, you are tired out. Go to bed, friend, brother, the only one I ever really had and loved. You will need your sleep. Leave me alone, and I will sit the night out and chew the bitter cud."
It was not until daybreak that David ceased his supplications and lay down to snatch a moment's rest. When he awoke, he sprang up suddenly and saw Mantel still sitting before the open window where he left him, smoking his cigar and pondering the great problem.
"I have had a wonderful dream," he said.
"What was it?" asked Mantel.
"I dreamt that I was swimming alone in a vast ocean,—weary, exhausted, desperate and sinking,—but just as I was going down a hand was thrust out of the sky, and although I could not reach it, so long as I kept my eyes on it I swam with perfect ease; while, just the moment I took them off, my old fatigue came back and I began to sink. When I saw this, I never looked away for even a second, and the sea seemed to bear me up with giant arms. I swam and swam as easily as men float, day after day and year after year, until I reached the harbor."
"Whose hand was it?"
"I couldn't tell."
"Well, swim on and look up, Davy, and God bless you."
They parted at dawn, one to break through the meshes and escape, and the other—!
In Australia, when drought drives the rabbits southward, the ranchmen, terrified at their approach, have only to erect a woven wire fence on the north side of their farms to be perfectly safe, for the poor things lie down against it and die in droves—too stupid to go round, climb over, or dig under! It is a comfort to see one of them now and then who has determined to find the green fields on the southward side—no matter what it costs!
Weak and bad as he had been, David at least took the first path which he saw leading up to the light.