He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private,and were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer.The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to setup a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old one?The profits made out of lost souls—where can the line be drawn at whichthey begin in human transactions? Was it not even God's way of savingHis chosen? "Thou knowest,"—the young Bulstrode had said then, as theolder Bulstrode was saying now—"Thou knowest how loose my soul sitsfrom these things—how I view them all as implements for tilling Thygarden rescued here and there from the wilderness."
Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritualexperiences were not wanting which at last made the retention of hisposition seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune hadalready opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking remained private. Mr.Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: hehad never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme ofsalvation. And it was true that Bulstrode found himself carrying on twodistinct lives; his religious activity could not be incompatible with hisbusiness as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling itincompatible.
Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the samepleas—indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them intointricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding the moralsensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, hissoul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everythingfor God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own. And yet—if he couldbe back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty—why, then hewould choose to be a missionary.
But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on.There was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury. Years before, the onlydaughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; andnow the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out ofthe magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, hadcome to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women oftenadore their priest or "man-made" minister. It was natural that after atime marriage should have been thought of between them. But Mrs.Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had longbeen regarded as lost both to God and her parents. It was known thatthe daughter had married, but she was utterly gone out of sight. Themother, having lost her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in adouble sense to reclaim her daughter. If she were found, there would bea channel for property—perhaps a wide one—in the provision for severalgrandchildren. Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirkwould marry again. Bulstrode concurred; but after advertisement as wellas other modes of inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that herdaughter was not to be found, and consented to marry withoutreservation of property.
The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrodeknew it, and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.
That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in therigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers. But forhimself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the factwas broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by reasoningswhich seemed to prove it righteous. Bulstrode's course up to that timehad, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences, appearingto point the way for him to be the agent in making the best use of a largeproperty and withdrawing it from perversion. Death and other strikingdispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come; and Bulstrodewould have adopted Cromwell's words—"Do you call these bare events?The Lord pity you!" The events were comparatively small, but theessential condition was there—namely, that they were in favor of hisown ends. It was easy for him to settle what was due from him to othersby inquiring what were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could itbe for God's service that this fortune should in any considerableproportion go to a young woman and her husband who were given up tothe lightest pursuits, and might scatter it abroad in triviality—peoplewho seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences? Bulstrodehad never said to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not befound"—nevertheless when the moment came he kept her existencehidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed the mother withconsolation in the probability that the unhappy young woman might beno more.
There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action wasunrighteous; but how could he go back? He had mental exercises, calledhimself nought laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course ofinstrumentality. And after five years Death again came to widen hispath, by taking away his wife. He did gradually withdraw his capital, buthe did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the business,which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it finallycollapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred thousanddiscreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important—a banker, aChurchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in tradingconcerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the rawmaterial, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. Andnow, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirtyyears—when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in theconsciousness—that past had risen and immersed his thought as if withthe terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.
Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learnedsomething momentous, something which entered actively into thestruggle of his longings and terrors. There, he thought, lay an openingtowards spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.
The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There maybe coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for thesake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He wassimply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs,and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires intosatisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is aprocess which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confessionwe belong, and whether we believe in the future perfection of our race orin the nearest date fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard theearth as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves, orhave a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.
The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through lifethe ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been themotive which he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use moneyand position better than he meant to use them? Who could surpass himin self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause? And to Mr. BulstrodeGod's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct: itenforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used merelyas instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep out ofmoney and consequent influence. Also, profitable investments in tradeswhere the power of the prince of this world showed its most activedevices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits in thehands of God's servant.
This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelicalbelief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar toEnglishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eatingout our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.
But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, hasnecessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adaptshimself. Bulstrode's standard had been his serviceableness to God'scause: "I am sinful and nought—a vessel to be consecrated by use—butuse me!"—had been the mould into which he had constrained hisimmense need of being something important and predominating. Andnow had come a moment in which that mould seemed in danger of beingbroken and utterly cast away.
What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made hima stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext ofthe scoffer, and a darkening of that glory? If this were to be the ruling ofProvidence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had broughtunclean offerings.
He had long poured out utterances of repentance. But today arepentance had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threateningProvidence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply adoctrinal transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him;self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution inhis hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode was about toattempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread had seized hissusceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame wrought in hima new spiritual need. Night and day, while the resurgent threatening pastwas making a conscience within him, he was thinking by what means hecould recover peace and trust—by what sacrifice he could stay the rod.His belief in these moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously didsomething right, God would save him from the consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only change when the emotions which fill it arechanged; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level ofthe savage.
He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, andthis was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediatedread, but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need towin protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letterto Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for aprivate interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise atthe request, and connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;"but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he was struckwith the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say,"Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he onlyinquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the picturebought for her.
"Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with herdaughters this evening. I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because Ihave a communication of a very private—indeed, I will say, of a sacredlyconfidential nature, which I desire to make to you. Nothing, I dare say,has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been importantties in the past which could connect your history with mine."
Will felt something like an electric shock. He was already in a stateof keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of tiesin the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed like thefluctuations of a dream—as if the action begun by that loud bloatedstranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking piece ofrespectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of speech were atthis moment almost as repulsive to him as their remembered contrast.He answered, with a marked change of color—
"No, indeed, nothing."
"You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken.But for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am before thebar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsionto make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to comehere to-night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on mewhatever."
Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrodehad paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor. Buthe now fixed his examining glance on Will and said—
"I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that sheran away from her friends to go on the stage. Also, that your father wasat one time much emaciated by illness. May I ask if you can confirmthese statements?"
"Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which aninquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary tothe banker's previous hints. But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed theorder of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity forrestitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards thepenitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.
"Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" hecontinued.
"No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous,honorable woman," said Will, almost angrily.
"I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mentionher mother to you at all?"
"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know thereason of her running away. She said 'poor mother' in a pitying tone."
"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused amoment before he added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as Isaid before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes. Iwas enriched by that marriage—a result which would probably not havetaken place—certainly not to the same extent—if your grandmother couldhave discovered her daughter. That daughter, I gather, is no longerliving!"
"No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so stronglywithin him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hatfrom the floor and stood up. The impulse within him was to reject thedisclosed connection.
"Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously. "Doubtlessyou are startled by the suddenness of this discovery. But I entreat yourpatience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial."
Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt forthis voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.
"It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivationwhich befell your mother. I know that you are without fortune, and Iwish to supply you adequately from a store which would have probablyalready been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother'sexistence and been able to find her."
Mr. Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking pieceof scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act inthe eyes of God. He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw's mind,smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its naturalquickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of discoverieswhich he would have been glad to conjure back into darkness. Will madeno answer for several moments, till Mr. Bulstrode, who at the end of hisspeech had cast his eyes on the floor, now raised them with anexamining glance, which Will met fully, saying—
