Chapter 22: Saul Tresithny

HIS eyes opened slowly upon the unfamiliar room. The shaft of sunlight slanting in from the west shone upon a comfortable apartment, far larger and loftier than anything to which he had been accustomed. The window was larger, the fireplace was wider, and there was a clear fire of coal burning in the grate, very different from the peat and driftwood fires to which he had been long accustomed. The only familiar object in the room was the figure of his grandfather, bending over the big Bible on the table, as he had been so used to see it from childhood, when he awakened from sleep in the early hours of the night, and looked about him to know where he was.

For a moment a dreamy wonderment came over him. He asked himself whether he had not been dreaming a long, long troubled dream of manhood and strife, and whether, after all, he were not a little child again, living in his grandfather’s cottage, happy in his games upon the shore, and looking eagerly forward to the time when he should be a man and could follow the fortunes of fishermen and smugglers, or have a big garden to care for like Abner.

But this dreamy condition did not last long. There was a bowed look about Abner, and his hair was altogether too white for him to be identified with the Abner of twenty years back. Saul raised his own hand and looked at it curiously. It was shrunken to skin and bone, but a great hand still, with indications of vanished power and strength. The dark sombre eyes roved round and round the room. Memory was awakening, the mists of fever and delirium were passing away. Suddenly Saul seemed to see as in a panorama the whole map of his past life rolled out before him. It was written in characters of fire upon the bare walls of the room. Everywhere he looked he saw his wild and evil deeds depicted. Why was it that they looked black and hideous to him now, when hitherto he had gloried in them—gloated over them? He saw, last of all, the doomed vessel bearing straight down upon the cruel rocks. And now he seemed to see a face on board that vessel—the face of one he loved—the face of the man who had held out his hand in friendship, when (as he believed) all the world beside had turned its back upon him. He saw the face of this friend looking at him with a deep reproach in the eyes, and a sudden groan of anguish broke from Saul’s lips as he stretched out his hands to stay the course of the doomed vessel.

At the sound of that groan Abner rose quickly and came forward to the bedside. The ray of dying daylight was fading already, and the shadow of the winter’s evening closing in; and yet in the dimness about the bed, Abner thought he saw something new in Saul’s face.

“Saul, my lad,” he said gently, “do you know me?”

“Tu be sure I du,” answered Saul, and wondered why his voice sounded so distant and hollow. “What’s the matter, grandfather?”

“You have been in a fever for many days, my lad, and didn’t know anybody about yu. What is it, boy? Don’t excite yourself. Yu must be kept quite quiet.”

Saul’s face was changing every moment, turning from red to pale and pale to red. He was struggling with emotion and a rush of recollection. For a moment Abner’s voice and presence had arrested the course of his memories; but now they came surging back.

“Grandfather, tell me,” he cried, struggling to sit up and then sinking back in his weakness, “what happened?—how did I get out of the water? Where is Mr. Marchmont?”

“Here in the castle. You were brought in together. They could not loose your clasp upon him for a long time.”

“And where is he? Is he alive?”

“Yes—alive, and like to live.”

Saul suddenly pressed his hands together and broke into wild weeping.

“Thank God! thank God!” he cried, his whole frame shaken with sobs. “Grandfather, pray for me—you know I never learned to pray for myself—at least I have well-nigh forgotten now. But down on your knees and thank God for that for me! May be He will hear yu. It must have been He that saved him; for the devil was at my ear all the while prompting me to let him die.”

Abner was already on his knees, with a thanksgiving of his own to offer. He had prayed too much and too earnestly, both in secret and before his fellow-men, to lack words now in this hour of intense gratitude and thanksgiving. In rugged yet not ill-chosen words he lifted up his voice and gave thanks to God for His great and unspeakable mercies in giving back this one life from the destruction that had come upon all besides; and in permitting the very man whose sin had brought about this fearful thing to be His instrument for the salvation of the life of his friend. He pleaded for mercy for the sinner with an impassioned eloquence which bespoke a spirit deeply moved. He brought before the Lord the sins and shortcomings of this erring man, now stretched on a bed of sickness, and besought that the cleansing blood of Christ might wash them all away. He pleaded for Saul as he never could have pleaded for himself. He brought together all those eternal promises of mercy which are to the sinner as the anchor and stay of the soul in the deep and bitter waters of remorse. He pleaded with his Redeemer for the soul of his grandson with a fervour only inspired by a love and a faith too deep to be daunted by any considerations as to the weight of iniquity to be pardoned, or the lack of faith in the one thus prayed for. And Saul, lying helpless and tempest-tossed, listened to this pleading, and found his tears bursting forth again. He had seen before all the black and crushing iniquity of his own past record, but now was brought before his eyes a picture of the infinite and ineffable love of a dying Saviour—the Lord of Glory crucified for him—bearing his sins upon the Cross of shame—stretching out His wounded hands and bidding him come to that Cross and lay down his burden there. It was too much for Saul, softened as he was by the sense that God had already answered his prayer even in the midst of his sin and wickedness, and had given him the one petition, the only one he ever remembered to have offered. The whole conception of such divine mercy was too much—it broke down all his pride and reserve and sullen defiance—it broke his heart and made it as the heart of a little child. His tears gushed forth. He clasped his hands, and lifted them in supplication to his Saviour. He could not have found words for his own guilt, but he could follow the earnest words of the grandfather, whose simple piety he had hitherto held in a species of lofty contempt. And in that still evening hour, with the dying day about them, and the shadow of death hovering as it were in the very air above them (for Saul was dying, although he knew it not yet; and Abner knew that his hours were numbered, though he might linger for a day or two yet), the erring soul turned in penitence and love to the Saviour in Whose death lay the only hope of pardon, and in Whose resurrection-life the only hope of that life immortal beyond the grave, beyond the power of the second death, and found at last peace and rest, in spite of all the blackness of past sin.