There are moments when these two indefinite words contain the whole of our philosophy of existence. "I am going to seek the great Perhaps!"

said Rabelais, as he breathed his last.

David looked at him sympathetically and said, "Well, it is not strange that you cannot feel as I do. It is not by what befalls others, but by what befalls ourselves, that we learn to hope and trust."

The silence that came between them was broken by Mantel, who looked up at him with a trace of the old ironical smile on his face.

"Your plans are all right as far as they go, but it seems to me the hardest part of the tangle still remains to be unraveled."

"What do you mean?" asked David.

"What are you going to do about this beautiful Pepeeta?"

"Oh, I have settled that, too! You do not know how clearly I see it all.

It is as if a fog had lifted from the ocean, and the sailor had found himself inside the harbor. I shall write and tell her all."

"Do you mean that you will tell her that her husband is alive?"

"I do."

"And perhaps you will advise her to return to him!"

"You are right, I shall."

Mantel shook his head.

"You do not think it best?" said David.

"I do not know."

"But there is nothing else to do."

"It is natural that I should see only the difficulties."

"What difficulties can there be?"

"Will you do anything more than destroy her by binding her once more to the man she loathes?"

"You do not know Pepeeta."

"It is true, I only know human nature."

"But she is more than human!"

"And are you?"

"Not I!"

"Then how will you endure to see her once more the wife of your enemy and rival?"

"Mantel," said David, pausing in his restless walk across the room, "I do not wonder that you ask this. It was the first question that I asked myself. It struck my heart like the blow of a hammer. But I have settled it. I have weighed the pains which I have suffered in a just and even balance. I know I cannot escape suffering, whichever way I turn. I have felt the pains of doing wrong, and I now deliberately choose the pains of doing right, let them be what they will!"

"It is easy to scorn the bitterness of an untasted cup."

"No matter! I have settled it. It must be done."

Mantel shrugged his shoulders and said, "I am afraid that the great Joker of whom we were talking yesterday is about to perpetrate another of his jests."

"You think it absurd, then?"

"I regard it as impossible."

"But why?"

"Because you are making a plan to act as if you were a disembodied conscience. You have forgotten that you still have the pa.s.sions of a man. I fear there will be another tragedy as dark as the first. But if you are determined, I must obey you. I never know how to act for myself; but if some one wishes me to act for him I can do so without fear, even if I am compelled to do so without hope."

David resumed his walk for a moment, and then pausing again before his friend, said, "Mantel, a few years ago my soul was so sensitive to truth and duty that I was accustomed to regard its intuitions as the will of G.o.d revealed to me in some sort of supernatural way. I acted on the impulses of my heart without the slightest question or hesitation, and during that entire period of my life I cannot remember that I was ever for a single time seriously mistaken or misled. While I obeyed those intuitions and followed that mysterious light, I was happy. When I turned my back on that light it ceased to shine. It has been more than two years since I have thought I heard the voice of G.o.d or felt any a.s.surance that I was in the path of duty. But now the departed vision has returned! I have had as clear a perception of my duty as was ever vouchsafed me in the old sweet days, and I shall obey it if it costs me my life."

So deep was his earnestness that Mantel seemed to catch his enthusiasm and be convinced. But in another instant the old mocking smile had returned.

"Would you be so tractable and obedient if the old beggar were in better health?" he said, opening and shutting the leaves of a book which was lying on the table, and looking out from under half-lifted eyelids.

At this insinuation David winced, and for a moment seemed about to resent it. But he restrained himself and replied gently, "The same distrust of my motives has arisen in my own mind. I more than half suspect that if, as you say, the old beggar were young and strong, my heart would fail me. But the knowledge that I could not do my duty if the doctor were going to live cannot be any reason for my not doing it when I believe that he is likely to die! I am not called upon to do wrong simply because I see that I am not wholly unselfish in doing right. I am not asked to face a supposition, but a fact. I shall not pride myself on any righteousness that I do not possess; but I must not be kept from doing my duty because I am not a perfect man."

"You are right," said Mantel, but his a.s.sent seemed more like a concession than a conviction. He had grown to regard the pa.s.sing panorama of life as a great spectacular exhibition. The actors seemed swayed by powers external to themselves, their movements exhibiting such gross inconsistencies as to make it impossible to predict, and almost impossible to guess them. He looked on with more curiosity than interest, as at the different combinations in a kaleidoscope. He could not conceive that David, or any one, could so come under the dominant influence of a conviction as to act coherently and consistently upon it through any or all emergencies. But he was kind and sympathetic, and his heart responded to the pa.s.sionate earnestness of his friend with a new interest and pleasure.

CHAPTER XXIX.

AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD

"First our pleasures die--and then Our hopes and then our fears--and when These are dead, the debt is due Dust claims dust, and we die too."

--Sh.e.l.ley.

The next few weeks were pa.s.sed by these two subdued and altered friends in devoted efforts to make the blind man comfortable and happy. True to his determination, David sought and found a place to work, and after reserving enough of his wages to supply the few necessities of his daily life, dedicated the rest to the purchase of comforts for the poor invalid.

Mantel acted as his almoner, and by his delicate tact and gentle manners persuaded the proud and revengeful old man to accept the mysterious charity. The moment the strain of perpetual beggary was taken from him, the physical ruin which the terrible blow of the stone, the subsequent illness, and the ensuing poverty and wretchedness had wrought, became manifest. He experienced a sudden relapse, and began to sink into an ominous decline.

Even had he not known the secret of his sorrow, it would have soon become plain to his acute and watchful nurse that some hidden trouble was gnawing at his heart, for he was taciturn, abstracted and sometimes morose. He manifested no curiosity as to the benefactor upon whose charity he was living, but received the alms bestowed by that unknown hand as children receive the gifts of G.o.d--unsolicited, uncomprehended and un.o.bserved.

His mind, aroused by the conversation of his untiring nurse to the realities of the present existence, would sink back by a sort of irresistible gravity into the realm of memory. There, in the impenetrable privacy of his soul, he brooded over his wrongs and counted his prospects of righting them, as a miser reckons his coins.

The spasmodic workings of his countenance, the convulsive gripping of his hands, the grinding of his great white teeth, the scalding tears which sometimes fell from his sightless eyes, revealed to the mind of his patient and watchful observer the pa.s.sions secretly and ceaselessly working in his soul.

Mantel became fascinated by the study of this subjective drama. He used to sit and watch the expressive curtain behind which these dark scenes were being enacted, and fancy that he could follow the soul as, in the spirit world, it tracked its foe, fell upon him and exacted its terrible revenge. At times he imagined that he could actually see the enraged thoughts issue from the body as if it were a den or cave, and they, living beasts of prey ranging abroad by day and night, and returning with their booty to devour it; or, if they had failed to take it, to brood over the failure of their hunt.