Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/164

158 from his bag and read a good while: then went to bed and fell fast asleep.

In the morning he woke early, as was his habit, sprung at once on the floor, dressed, and went quietly down. The household was yet motionless. He had begun to descend the last stair when all at once he turned deadly sick, and had to sit down, grasping the balusters. In a few minutes he recovered, and made the best speed he could to the stable, where Kelpie was now beginning to demand her breakfast.

But Malcolm had never in his life before felt sick, and it seemed awful to him. Something that had appeared his own, a portion — hardly a portion, rather an essential element of himself — had suddenly deserted him, left him a prey to the inroad of something that was not of himself, bringing with it faintness of heart, fear and dismay. He found himself for the first time in his life trembling; and it was to him a thing as appalling as strange. While he sat on the stair he could not think, but as he walked to the mews, he said to himself, "Am I then the slave of something that is not myself — something to which my fancied freedom and strength are a mockery? Was my courage, my peace, all the time dependent on something not me, which could be separated from me, and but a moment ago was separated from me and left me as helplessly dismayed as the veriest coward in creation? I wonder what Alexander would have thought if, as he swung himself on Bucephalus, he had been taken as I was on the stair?"

Afterward, talking the thing over with Mr. Graham, he said, "I saw that I had no hand in my own courage. If I had any courage, it was simply that I was born with it. If it left me, I could not help it: I could neither prevent nor recall it — I could only wait until it returned. Why, then, I asked myself, should I feel ashamed that for five minutes, as I sat on the stair, Kelpie was a terror to me, and I felt as if I dared not go near her? I had almost reached the stable before I saw into it a little. Then I did see that if I had had nothing to do with my own courage, it was quite time I had something to do with it. If a man had no hand in his own nature, character, being, what could he be better than a divine puppet — a happy creature, possibly — a heavenly animal, like the grand horses and lions of the book of the Revelation — but not one of the gods that, the sons of God, the partakers of the divine nature, are? For this end came the breach in my natural courage, that I might repair it from the will and power God had given me, that I might have a hand in the making of my own courage, in the creating of myself. Therefore I must see to it."

Nor had he to wait for his next lesson — namely, the opportunity of doing what he had been taught in the first. For just as he reached the stable, where he heard Kelpie clamoring with hoofs and teeth after her usual manner when she judged herself neglected, the sickness returned, and with it such a fear of the animal he heard thundering and clashing on the other side of the door as amounted to nothing less than horror. She was a man-eating horse! — a creature with bloody teeth, brain-spattered hoofs and eyes of hate! A flesh-loving devil had possessed her, and was now crying out for her groom that he might devour him. He gathered, with agonized effort, every power within him to an awful council, and thus he said to himself: "Better a thousand times my brains plastered the stable-wall than I should hold them in the head of a dastard. How can God look at me with any content if I quail in the face of his four-footed creature? Does he not demand of me action according to what I know, not what I may chance at any moment to feel? God is my strength, and I will lay hold of that strength and use it, or I have none, and Kelpie may take me and welcome."

Therewith the sickness abated so far that he was able to open the stable-door; and, having brought them once into the presence of their terror, his will arose and lorded it over his shrinking, quivering nerves, and like slaves they obeyed him. Surely the Father of his spirit was most in that will when most that will was Malcolm's own! It is when a man is most a man, that the cause of the man, the God of his life, the very life himself, the original life-creating life, is closest to him, is most within him. The individual, that his individuality may blossom, and not soon be "massed into the common clay," must have the vital indwelling of the primary individuality which is its origin. The fire that is the hidden life of the bush will not consume it.

Malcolm tottered to the corn-bin, staggered up to Kelpie, fell up against her hind-quarters as they dropped from a great kick, but got into the stall beside her. She turned eagerly, darted at her food, swallowed it greedily, and was quiet as a lamb while he dressed her.