THE MOMENT AFTER.*
BY the motto which Mr. Buchanan takes for this story, "0 healer Death !" we may conclude that he intends his story to be a vision of something like the realities of the unseen world, and not a mere dream such as a half-hanged man might have had of the unseen world in which he had been taught to believe as a child, though as a man he had rejected it as an idle and superstitious tale. "Betwixt the saddle and the ground, he mercy sought and mercy found," says Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Buchanan has made it the subject of a remarkable little study. But in this view of the story, which is no doubt the true one, chap. ix., which contains a rambling and ill-considered attack on the manner in which the Home Secretary,—perhaps we should say, a particular Home Secretary,—uses the Crown's prerogative of mercy, is an excrescence, and a rather ugly one. It breaks the thread of the story, and gives the impression that Mr. Buchanan thinks himself in a position to pass judgment on institutions of which he appears to know ex- tremely little. It is certainly not true, as Mr. Buchanan assumes it to be true, that it is the drift and intention of the English criminal law that the jury is, as he calls it, "the only tribunal fitted to decide" whether the criminal ought to be executed or not. The intention of the English law is that the jury should be the judge of the facts of the case, not the judge, of the guilt, not the judge even of the gravity of the facts, still less of the wisdom or expediency of lightening the sentence, a matter in which various considerations not affecting the guilt or criminality of the particular criminal come into play. That tile jury are allowed, if they wish it, to express their own opinion as to the expediency of lightening the punishment, not only does not show that they have any authority in the matter, but distinctly suggests the truth,—namely, that this right is accorded to them only as a grace, not as a part of their true function. But in this particular story there happens to be no recommendation to mercy on the part of the jury; so that Mr. Buchanan's angry digression against institutions which do not give effect at once to a jury's recommendation to mercy, is as irrelevant as it is foolish and ill-considered. We
cannot understand a poet like Mr. Buchanan wedging in this heterogeneous chapter to interrupt and lower the tone of an imaginative conception. As to the story itself, it is certainly an impressive one, more especially, we should say, the story of the crime. Whether the conception of "Death the healer,"—in other words, of the remorse, the penitence, the retribution, the upward struggle, which are supposed to follow the moment of quasi-death, and to constitute the spiritual element in the story,—is equally effective, we are more than doubtful. Mr. Buchanan's conception of the matter seems to be, that if you
• The Moment After, a Tate of the I7neeen. By Robert Bitehearm. London: William Heinemann. 1880.
isolate the soul with its crime, and revivify all that made the crime terrible and revolting, the result must be,—first, bitter self-reproach, and next, pity for those against whom the crime was directed. This seems to us more than questionable, both
as a matter of experience, and as a matter of moral probability ; and even if the pity were actually engendered, it does
not at all follow that the self-reproach would be. We do not find that either sinners or criminals are always revolted with themselves when they concentrate their minds on the nature of the act they have committed, and we do not see why any such isolation with their sin need have that result. A man cannot really repent without learning to abhor the inward frame of mind which led to the crime. And he cannot abhor that frame of mind without comparing it with the higher frame of mind from which one whom he would recognise as nobler than himself, standing in the same circumstances, would have acted. Now, Mr. Buchanan makes no effort to introduce us to any influences which tend to make the criminal of his tale loathe his past self by comparing it with any higher attitude of feeling which he would wish to have substituted for the vindictive jealousy which impelled him to the dQuble murder. The Italian murderer of this story, when he ceases to be possessed by the old passions, is stirred no doubt by a certain pity for his victims ; but let pity for his victims be as
deep as it might, it would not make him really loathe the fierce thirst for revenge to which he had given himself up. There is no necessary inconsistency between the revenge of one moment and the pity of the next. And the stirring of pity at the consequences of his ruthless murders, does not prove any true moral shame for the overwhelming revengefulness by which his whole being had been swept away. It does not seem to us that there is anything in this tale to show that if Maurizio Modena had passed a second time through the same tempta- tion, he would have found any new spiritual power to oppose to the ferry of wounded pride and burning jealousy by which
he had been actuated. He is described as being startled by the discovery that those whom he had killed had, after all, survived the death of their bodies ; as being absolutely over- whelmed by the loneliness into which his sin and crime had plunged him ; and as having been touched by the pity
of his wife's and her paramour's sudden and fearful deaths • but all these feelings are really perfectly consistent with
the hurricane of vindictive rage in which he had rioted, and there is nothing to show that he had faced in full the meaning and character of his own revenge, had condemned it, and had looked at himself with the pure indignation and horror which he deserved. Mr. Buchanan's picture of his sufferings does not seem to us to contain a single element of what we should call true penitence. No doubt he acts as if he had forgiven those who had sinned against him, as soon as he realised how terribly they too had suffered ; but it is one thing to forgive those on whom fall vengeance has first been wreaked, and quite another thing to abhor and repent of that vengeance itself.. The picture in the following impressive passage, is a. picture of remorse, bewilderment, regret, wistful hope; but it does not seem to us to contain one element of that poignant self-loathing and passionate renunciation of a bitter jealousy in favour of him who has the highest claim to the loyalty of the human heart, which are essential to true peni- tence; it contains only the delineation of emotions which might prove a very good starting-point for a true conversion, but which certainly do not constitute penitence itself. Catherine and her companion, we should tell our readers, are the victims of the murderer, whose state of mind is described :—
" Methought a strange pity possessed me, such as I had felt when first I saw her lying slain, because she looked so still and white and beautiful on her bed of death ; and when I touched her softly and tried to waken her, she did not stir, and the other had run on and stood looking back and beckoning as I had beckoned. I turned to follow, but my feet were as lead, my old life rose within me heavy and dreadful, and I came back, kneeling down again by Catherine, and, bending over her, kissed her on the cold brow. And with that kiss a strange yearning came upon me to uplift her and bear her with me I knew not whither; for - I thought, I cannot leave her on these waste sands alone, since presently she will awaken and see the empty heavens and be afraid.' So I stooped and raised her in my arms, trembling beneath her weight, and holdinc, her gently ; and as I stepped forward the load grew lighter, and my feet seemed light as air, and I ran along swiftly and passed the other, and left him a long way behind. And flying thus, I felt full of a new peace and lightness, and felt as if I could wander on for ever and never weary ; till suddenly I felt her move in mine arms' and breathe feebly, and I knew that she lived. Then I set her down gently, and stood looking at her, and she smiled and put out her hand and touched me softly on the hair ; and at the touch my peace fell from me, and I fell on my knees weeping and moaning and naming her name. Then Catherine said : 411e tarries a long way behind. Go back to him, Maurizio!—I looked back and saw no sign or trace of him whom we had left ; so I turned to Catherine and said : 'Let us wander on together.'—Bat when I moved to depart my feet were as lead, and my whole life felt like death within me, and I could not stir ; and Catherine said again : 'He tarries a long way behind. Go back to him, Maurizio.'—And ere I knew it I was running back across the sands, and how long I ran I knew not, but it seemed for years and years, and I knew that I could not pause until I had found him ; but at last I saw him lying under the palm-tree where I had found him first, and bent over him, and saw that he was dead. I touched him, but he was cold and did not stir, and far away I saw Catherine standing and looking back and beckoning; so I bent above him and raised him in mine arms as I had raised Catherine, and carried him gently, and at every step I took the load felt lighter, till I ran with him swiftly as the wind rune over waving wheat, and ever I grew more light and strong, till I brought him to the place where Catherine waited, and he wakened smiling as I set him down. So we three stood together looking on one another, and the heavens sparkled like frost above us, and far away there grew a light like the dim first flush of day. And Catherine said : 'We are dead, but there is no death. Let us go on together, Maurizio.' "
That is impressive of its kind, but the kind is not that which seems to us wanted in a picture of the healing moral influences which are put forth by the immediate approach of death, or by the passage through death, whichever of the two the story is supposed to portray. Mr. Buchanan has to show that his dying criminal realises to the full what he has actually been, what he ought to have been, and the infinite gulf which separates the one from the other, and that his whole heart craves the divine grace which would enable him under like temptation in future, to renounce his former self in favour of the purer self. But Mr. Buchanan only does show that when the vindictive rage has spent itself in a great act of revenge, his criminal can forgive those who have suffered at his hands, the anguish they inflicted on him, and can try to help them to
become better. But that is not penitence; it is only evidence that the criminal is not hardened in his im- penitence. It is one thing to be moved to pity by the spec- tacle of the misery which revenge has wrought, and quite another, bitterly to renounce that revenge, and abhor the very attitude of heart in which it was determined on and -wrought out. On the whole, we think that Mr. Buchanan has succeeded better in depicting "the Moment Before," than "the Moment After."
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