Idolatry: Chapter 9

Chapter 9

THE VOICE OF DARKNESS.

The fog-whistle screeched dismally. Helwyse took his feet off the
camp-stool in front of him, and sat upright.

"Do you know this secret of sin?" he asked.

"It must, of course, be an object of speculation to a thoughtful man,"
answered the voice, modestly parrying the question. "But I assure you
that only a man of intellect--of genius--has in him the intelligence,
the sublime reach of soul, which could attain the full solution of the
problem; they who merely blunder into it would fail to grasp the grand
significance of the idea."

"But you affirm that whoever fairly masters the problem of absolute
sin would have God and His kingdom at his mercy?"

"I am loath to appear boastful; but I apprehend the fact to be not
unlike what you suggest," the voice replied, with a subdued gusto. "It
would depend upon our hypothetical person's discretion, and his views
as to the claims of the august Being who has so long controlled the
destinies of the human race, how much the existing order of things
might have to fear from him. I should imagine that the august Being,
if He be as wise as they say He is, would be careful how He treated
this hypothetical person!"

"You are a liar," said Helwyse, unceremoniously. "Why is not Satan,
who must possess this all-powerful knowledge, supreme over the
universe?"

Instead of taking offence (as Helwyse, to do him justice, hoped it
would; for his Berserker blood, which boiled only at heaven-and-hell
temperature, was beginning to stir in him),--so far from being
offended, the voice only uttered its peculiar quiet chuckle.

"Your frankness charms me! it proves you worthy to learn.
Satan--supposing there be such a personage--divides, with the other
august Being, the sovereignty of the spiritual world. Were I a cynic,
I should say he owned at least half of the physical world into the
bargain! But Satan is only a spirit, and his power over men is but as
the power of a dream. Were a Satan to arise in the flesh, so that men
could see and touch him, and hear his voice with their fleshy
ears,--there were a Satan! Already has the Incarnation of goodness
appeared to mankind, and, though the world be moved to virtue only
slowly and with reluctance, mark how mighty has been his influence!
What think you, then, would be the power of a Christ of evil, showing
to men the path they already grope for? I tell you, the human race
would be his only; Hell, full to bursting with their hurrying souls,
would outweigh Heaven in the balance; the teller of the secret would
be king above all,--forever!"

The sinuous voice twined round the listener's mind, swaddling the
vigorous limbs into imbecile inertia. But when before now did a sane
human brain let itself be duped by sophistry? This case were worth
marking, if only because it is unparalleled.

"And the only punishable sin is ignorance!" muttered Helwyse.

"Well, I have thought so, too. And I have questioned whether a man
might have power over himself, to put his hand to evil or to good
alike, and to remain impartial and impassive; and so make evil and
good alike minister to his culture and raise him upwards!"

"The question does credit to your wit," chimed in the voice of
darkness. "Whoever has in him the making of a deity must learn the
nature of opposites. The soldier will not join battle without studying
the tactics of the enemy. Without experimental knowledge of both evil
and good, none but a fool would believe that man can become
all-powerful."

"From the care with which you avoid speaking the name of God, if from
no other cause, I should suppose you to be the Devil himself!"
observed Helwyse, bluntly.

"Well, profanity is vulgar! As to my being the Devil, it is too dark
here for either denial or acknowledgment to be of practical use. But
(to be serious)--about this secret--"

The voice paused interrogatively. Lucifer, speaking through Helwyse's
lips, demanded sullenly,--

"Well, what is the secret?"

What, indeed! Why, there is no such secret;--it is a bugbear! But the
moral perversion of the person who could soberly ask the question that
Helwyse asked is not so easily disposed of. It met, indeed, with full
recognition. As for the subtile voice, having accomplished its main
purpose, it began now to evade the point and to run into digressions;
until the collision came, and ended the conversation forever.

"Unfortunately," said the voice, "the secret is not such as may be
told in a word. Like all profound knowledge, it can only be
communicated by leading the learner, step by step, over the ground
traversed by the original discoverer. Let me, as a sort of
preliminary, suppose a case."

Hereupon ensued a considerable silence, and Helwyse seemed once more a
detached atom, flying through infinite darkness without guide or
control. Where was he?--what was he? Did the world exist,--the broad
earth, the sunny sky, the beauty, the sound, the order and sweet
succession of nature? Was he a shadow that had dreamed for a moment a
strange dream, and would anon be quenched, and know what had seemed
Self no more? Strangely, through the doubt and uncertainty, Helwyse
felt the pressure of his shoulders against the cabin wall, and the
touch of the dead cigar between his fingers.

The voice, resuming, restored him to a reality that seemed less
trustworthy than the doubt. The tone was not quite the same as
heretofore. The smooth mocking had given place to a hurried
excitement, alien to the philosophic temperament.

"A man kidnaps the child of his enemy, through the child to revenge
himself. Kill it?--no! he is no short-sighted bungler; he has
refinement, foresight, understanding. She is but an infant,--open and
impressible, warm and sanguine! He isolates her from sight and reach.
He pries into her nature with keenest delicacy,--no leaf is unread.
Being learnt, he works upon it; touches each budding trait with
gentlest impulse. No violence! he seems to leave her to her own
development; yet nothing goes against his will. More than half is left
to nature, but his scarce perceptible touches bias nature. Ah! the
idealization of education!"

"This sounds more real than hypothetical!" thought Helwyse.

"So cunning was he, he reversed in her mind the universal law. Evil
was good; good, evil. She grew fast and strong, for evil is the
sweeter food; it is rich earth to the plant. She never knew that evil
existed, yet evil was all she knew! For whatever is forced reacts; he
never taught her positive sin, lest she perversely turn to good."

"Did he mean insensibly to initiate her into the knowledge of absolute
sin?"

"Such would be his purpose,--such would be his purpose. To make her a
devil, without the chance of knowing it possible to be anything else!"

"He was a fool," growled Helwyse. "The plan is folly,--impracticable
in twenty ways. A soul cannot be so influenced. Devils are not made by
education. The only devil would be the educator!"

But the voice had forgotten his presence. It ceased not to mutter to
itself while he was speaking, and now it broke forth again.

"Years have passed,--she is a woman now. She knows not that the world
exists. All is yet latent within her. But the time is at hand when the
hidden forces shall flower! Plunged into life, with nothing to hold
by, no truth, no divine help; her marvellous powers and passions in
full strength,--all trained to drag her down,--not one aspiring,
maddened by new thoughts, limitless opportunities opening before
her,--she will plunge into such an abyss of sin as has been undreamt
of since the Deluge!"

"Well,--what of it? what is the upshot?" questioned Helwyse with
sullen impatience. The emotion now apparent in the voice, uncanny
though it was, counteracted the spell wrought by its purely
intellectual depravity. Helwyse was perhaps beginning to understand
that he had ventured his stock of virgin gold for a handful of unclean
waste-paper!

"He will come back,--her father,--my enemy! I have waited for him from
youth to age. I have seen him in my dreams, and in visions. I am with
him continually,--we talk together. At first, cringingly and softly, I
lead him to recall the past, to speak of the dead wife,--the lost
child,--her baby ways and words. I lure him on till imagination has
fired his love and given life and vividness to his memory. Then I
whisper,--She lives! she is near! in a moment he shall behold her! And
while his heart beats and he trembles, I bring her forth in her
beauty. Take her! your daughter! the one devil on earth; but devils
shall spring like grass in the track of her footsteps!"

The voice had worked itself into a frenzy, and, forgetting caution,
had crazily exposed itself. Its owner was probably some poor lunatic,
subject to fits of madness. But Helwyse was full of scorn and anger,
born of that bitterest disappointment which admits not even the poor
consolation of having worthily aspired. He had been duped,--and by the
cobwebs of a madman's brain! He broke into a short laugh, harsh to the
ear, and answering to no mirthful impulse.

"So! you are the hero of your story? You have brooded all your life
over a crazy scheme of stabbing a father through his child, until you
have become as blind as you are vicious! As for the girl, you may have
made her ignorant and stupid, or even idiotic; but that she should
become queen of Hell or anything of that kind--"

He stopped, for his unseen companion was evidently beyond hearing him.
The man seemed to be actually struggling in a fit,--gasping and
choking. It was a piteous business,--not less piteous than revolting.
But Helwyse felt no pity,--only ugly, hateful, unrelenting anger,
needing not much stirring to blaze forth in fearful passion. Where now
were his wise saws,--his philosophic indifference? Self-respect is the
pith of such supports; which being gone, the supports fail.

"My music,--my music!" gasped the voice; "my music, or I shall die!"

"Die? Yes, it were well you should die. You cumber the earth! Shall I
do it?" Helwyse muttered to his heart,--"merely as a means of
culture!"

Perhaps it was said only in a mood of sardonic jesting. The next
moment, no doubt, Balder Helwyse would have retired to his cabin,
leaving the voice of darkness forever. But at that moment the hurried
flash of a lantern on the captain's bridge fell full on the young
man's face and shoulders, gleaming in his eyes, and lighting up the
masses of yellow hair and mighty beard. He was standing with one hand
resting on the taffrail. The dim halo of the fog, folding him about,
made him look like a spirit.

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