A LIFE FOR A LIFE By Dinah Maria Craik The Author Of “John Halifax, Gentleman,” “A Woman's Thoughts About Women,” &c., &c. In Three Volumes. Vol. II. London: Hurst And Blackett, Publishers, 1859 “_When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive_.” “_I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance_.” A LIFE FOR A LIFE. CHAPTER I. HIS STORY. |I ended the last page with “I shall write no more here.” It used to be my pride never to have broken a promise nor changed a resolution. Pride! What have I to do with pride? And resolutions, forsooth! What,--are we omnipotent and omniscient, that against all changes of circumstances, feelings, or events, we should set up our paltry resolutions, urge them and hold to them, in spite of reason and conviction, with a tenacity that we suppose heroic, god-like, yet which may be merely the blind obstinacy of a brute? I will never make a resolution again. I will never again say to myself, “You, Max Urquhart, in order to keep up that character for virtue, honour, and steadfastness, which heaven only knows whether or no you deserve, ought to do so and so; and, come what will, you must do it.” Out upon me and my doings! Was I singled out to be the scapegoat of the world? It is my intention here, regularly to set down, for certain reasons, which I may, or may not, afterwards allude to, certain events, which have happened without any act of mine, almost without my volition, if a man can be so led on by force of circumstances, that there seems only one course of conduct open to him to pursue. Whither these circumstances may lead, I am at this moment as utterly ignorant as on the day I was born, and almost as powerless. I make no determinations, attempt no previsions, follow no set line of conduct; doing only from day to day, what is expected of me, and leaving all the rest to--is it? it must be--to God. The sole thing in which I may be said to exercise any absolute volition, is in writing down what I mean to write here, the only record that will exist of the veritable me--Max Urquhart,--as he might have been known, not to people in general, but to--any one who looked into his deepest heart, and was his friend, his beloved, his very own. The form of Imaginary Correspondent I henceforward throw aside. I am perfectly aware to whom and for whom I write: yet who, in all human probability, will never read a single line.