Wherefore Paula was instructed to avoid conversation concerning themes celestial or infernal, and was thus deprived of a pleasure; for there had been much loving talk between her and Natalie concerning the child, now abiding in heavenly regions. Perhaps Natalie sorrowed a little, noting that Paula no longer lingered over the favorite topic; if so, she made no comment; her thoughts were her own.
"What is true marriage?" she asked one day.
"I—I don't know," replied Paula, taken unawares, and not sure whether this new topic were celestial or infernal. "Celibacy, as the ideal state——"
"A wife vows obedience," interrupted Natalie—she had heard Paula before on celibacy—"that's a small matter. Who wouldn't be obedient?"
"But, suppose a husband were to require something wrong," suggested Paula, disturbed by the fleeting vision of a wife of St. Perpetua deprived of fish on Fridays by a wicked spouse.
"He wouldn't be a true husband. My ideal of marriage is unity in all things—tastes, hopes, beliefs——"
"Belief, of course. And to the realization of that ideal a churchwoman would lead her husband."
"Or, if the husband were the better Christian, he would lead his wife."
After due consideration, Paula repeated the monosyllable "if?"
"And, if he showed no disposition to lead his wife, which might be the case for some good reason, she ought to try and attain his standpoint. Then she would evince that perfect sympathy which all the while the husband may be longing for."
"I—I suppose so," replied Paula, always dreading an approach toward forbidden ground.
"If a wife had wronged her husband, even without intention," Natalie went on, after a considerable pause, "that fact would stand in the way of complete sympathy."
"There could be no wrong without intention—that is, no fault."
"But still a wrong; one that the doer might find it harder to forgive than the sufferer. If you were my wife. Paula——"
"Say husband," said Paula, laughing, "and since you find obedience so easy, I order you to prepare to let me drive you to the White House in the pony-phaeton."
Mrs. Joe sought, and very easily obtained, Leonard's confidence in regard to the grievance to which Dr. Stanley had alluded. Hampton had been only too glad, so he averred, to accept his aid in overcoming Brigston; and if that was in the way of accomplishment (and who could deny it?) the fact was more attributable to him (Leonard) than to any other man. "I simply popularized Dr. Burley's learned, but certainly obscurely-written article, giving its author full credit; and now he says I misrepresented him, and his complaint is echoed by every toady in Hampton. The papers, even the secular papers, are actually making sport of me."
"But Dr. Burley can't deny what he wrote."
Even Leonard smiled at her simplicity. "He can deny what I wrote, although, in other words, it is exactly what he wrote. And that is morally just as bad."
The lady was full of sympathy; the more so as his "bumptiousness" was gone. He had been plainly deeply wounded, yet out of consideration for his wife, he had borne his grief in silence. In Mrs. Joe's eyes this abnegation deserved recognition. There was a way by which he could humiliate his enemies, and yet be of so much importance that they would not venture to show resentment. She had, as we know, already "worked the Seminary" in behoof of her "policy." She could work it a little more, and help both Leonard and herself. Her donations to the library had not heretofore been of large amounts, for she shrank from ostentation, but she had always intended to be magnificent on some convenient occasion. By being so through Leonard, she could avoid display and yet possess its advantages, for the Seminary authorities would, of course, know the source of a donation from a modestly anonymous lady, coming through the hands of Leonard.
So this matter was easily arranged. "And," suggested the lady, "after you have given notice of the donation and have heaped coals on Dr. Burley's head, go away for awhile. It will do you good, and they can think their conduct over."
The idea appealed to Leonard, who saw the situation dramatically; but when Mrs. Joe proposed that he accompany herself, Paula and Natalie on a visit to Mrs. Leon at Newport, he declined with some perturbation. "I'll go to New York," he said. And, on the whole, Mrs. Joe thought this was best, though she was surprised.
She was glad when he had departed, believing that his absence would have the effect of rousing Natalie from a condition incompatible with the life of every day, in that it would result in wholesome longing for her husband. And the politic lady soon saw her hope justified. Leonard had been gone but a day when Natalie announced a desire to return to her own house; not to remain, but to order some domestic arrangements, more especially with the view of making Leonard's study more attractive than it had been, even in those days of "coddling" which Mrs. Joe had once found objectionable, but whose returning symptoms she now hailed with approval.
At Natalie's request she was driven past the cemetery, where she alighted, and, bidding the coachman wait, she sought her child's grave. Some tears came to her eyes as she laid flowers on the still fresh earth and stood for many minutes leaning on the headstone. Her thoughts were far away. In a room in Paris she saw a woman humbled by a consciousness of wrong; and here, at the most sacred spot on earth, she renewed her vow of atonement.
She returned slowly to the carriage and was driven to the Morley mansion, where she was welcomed with effusion by the maids. From them she for the first time learned that her husband had often worked far into the night, and while listening to their comments, she reproached herself that she had left him alone. The house, with its closed shutters, was gloomy even on this bright day; what had it been in the long nights?
She instructed the servants to prepare a light luncheon for her at noon and leave it on the dining table, paying no further heed to her. She intended, she said, to arrange her husband's books.
But first she went upstairs. There beside her bed was the child's crib, cheerless without its sheets and embroidery. The empty room, from which daylight was nearly excluded chilled her. The rugs were removed and her heels clicked sharply on the bare floor, making hollow echoes as she walked. She overcame the oppressive sense of desolation and went about her tasks.
She put the child's trinkets away; the spoon which had been useless, the cup from which he had never drunk, the gold chain given by Mrs. Joe, and which, partaking of the nature of the Great Serpent, had been found too heavy for agreeable wear; these were laid among her treasures. His clothes, except the little gown he had worn when dying, were put aside to be sent to poor women, already mothers or about to become such. Leonard had once suggested kindly that they were too fine. "The mothers won't think so," she had replied.
This work finished, she closed the door of the room and walked down the broad, old-fashioned stairway, every foot-fall echoing through the ancient house of which she seemed to be the only occupant; and though she knew the maids were at their tasks and within reach, the impression affected her unpleasantly. She glanced more than once over her shoulder as she descended the staircase and walked through the echoing hall.
She entered the library—a large room, dedicated, at least nominally, even in the days of Jeremiah Morley, to its present purpose, and later, by Cousin Jared and her husband, lined from floor to ceiling with books, a cheerful room when lighted, but now, with bare floor and closed shutters, a gloomy vault in whose distant corners, where the shadows were dark, the spirits of former occupants might lurk and peer at this invader. The uncanny impressions that had been with her were deepened by the sombre fancies awakened by the aspect of the room, in which the confusion attendant on Leonard's labors was everywhere apparent. Books were everywhere—on chairs, on tables, on the floor, face downward in the shelves.
She took up a small volume. Its evident antiquity attracted her and she read the title-page: "Delay Not; or, A Call to the Careless," by the Reverend Eliphalet Claghorn. Numerous names on the fly-leaves disclosed that the book had been handed down through many Claghorns. The last name was her husband's; preceding that his father's, to whom it had been given, as testified by the inscription, by "E. Beverley Claghorn." E. Beverley Claghorn, she knew, had been her own father. Turning the pages, her attention was arrested.
She read for hours. Sunk in a heap on the floor, forgotten by the servants, her eyes gloated on the page written by her ancestor. No romance had ever enchained her attention as did all this "Call to the Careless." If the writer had so charmed the reader of his own generation, the dead hand that had composed the pages which held this reader spell-bound must have been guided by a brain cunning in the author's craft. Whatever was the story, the woman lived in its terrors; she cowered and moaned, her eyes stood out, and her face was a face distorted by the horror of a soul in fear. But she could not leave the story. Enthralled until the last page had been turned, she only then looked up, and her eyes, which that morning had been bright with the light of hope, born of the resolve to resume her duties as a wife, were now dull with the shadow of an awful dread.
She glanced fearfully around and tried to rise, but crouched again upon the floor, one hand still clutching book and dust-cloth, the other held as though to shield her from a blow. She uttered no word, but a strange, hoarse rattle came from her throat, as though she would have prayed, had her voice been at her command. At last she rose, half staggering, retreating backward toward the door, as though she feared some presence, and, not daring to turn, must face it. Thus she passed out of the room and from the house.
She walked, at first, with uncertain steps, then more firmly, and with ever swifter stride. The by-streets through which she passed were quiet, almost deserted; she was hardly noticed, though in one or two observers a faint curiosity was aroused by the figure of the well-dressed, hatless woman, be-aproned and clasping to her breast a dust-cloth and a book. As for her, she noticed nothing as she hastened on.
Without pause, with ever-increasing pace, which had now become a run, she entered the gates of the cemetery, threading its alleys, seeing nothing with her bodily eyes; for their horror and despair were no reflection of the mournful yet peaceful scene in which she passed. She came to the grave of her child. Again she crouched as she had done in the library of her home; her despairing eyes were turned upward and her hands raised in appeal to the serene and pitiless sky.
Words came to her in the language of her childhood. "My God," she cried, "Fiend that dwellest beyond the sky, have mercy. Pitiless Father, who didst condemn thy Son for sport, whose nostrils love the scent of burning men, whose ears find music in their agony, whose eyes gloat upon their writhings, take me to thy hell of torment and release my child."
And so, with frantic blasphemy, cursing God and beating her breast, she fell forward upon the baby's grave.
At the hour agreed upon, Mrs. Joe left Stormpoint to fetch Natalie. As the latter had done in the morning, and in order to inspect the newly-erected headstone, she alighted from her carriage at the cemetery and passed through various alleys, when, as she approached her destination, she suddenly halted.
A woman was stretched upon the grave, who, on hearing the ejaculation of Mrs. Joe, partly raised her head, disclosing an earth-bedaubed face, and emitting sounds not human, but rather the moans of a tortured animal.
Mrs. Joe ran and seized her shoulder, and at the touch Natalie half arose. Her gleaming eyes, her face distorted and soiled with earth—these presented an appalling spectacle.
The lady of Stormpoint could hardly have told how the task was accomplished, but she succeeded in inducing the frantic woman to enter the carriage, and, thus separated from the grave, she became quieter, though never ceasing to mutter phrases which caused the listener to shudder. Mrs. Joe was a woman of varied experience. She had heard the oaths of mining camps when pistols and knives were out and frenzied ruffians were athirst for blood; she would have thought no form of profanity strange to her ears; yet she had heard no blasphemy equal to that uttered by her companion, repeated as a weary child asleep may repeat some hard-learned sentence impressed upon a tired brain.
Arrived home, and Natalie in her bed, and withal lying quiet, and the carriage dispatched at full speed for Dr. Stanley, there was time to consider the next step.
"Send for Father Cameril," urged Paula.
"What is Leonard's address?" asked the lady, ignoring the suggestion.
"Dear," said Paula, caressingly, and taking Natalie's hand, "where is Leonard?"
"In hell," was the answer. "I am overjoyed in hearing the howlings of hell. My joy is increased as I gaze upon Leonard in the midst of that sea of suffering."
"Good Lord deliver us!" ejaculated Mrs. Joe. Paula fell upon her knees. "Father in heaven!" she commenced.
Natalie looked at her with languid interest "The sight of hell-torments exalts the happiness of the saints," she said.
At this delectable quotation from Jonathan Edwards Mrs. Joe wrung her hands; Paula uttered a half scream and burst into tears; in the same moment Dr. Stanley was ushered into the room.
"A frightful shock!" was his verdict. "Absolute quiet! No tears; no exorcisms," with a warning finger upheld for Paula. "I'll send a nurse at once and return soon."
By night he was again in the house, having received bulletins from the nurse in the meanwhile. The patient was asleep; had been so for nearly three hours. "Excellent!" he said to Mrs. Joe, finding that lady awaiting his report in the library. "It's a fine brain, Mrs. Claghorn. Let us hope it may prove a strong one. Can you explain further than you could this afternoon?"
"The keeper of the cemetery knows nothing. Her maids are here. I sent James for them, and have kept them to be questioned by you."
The maids only knew that Mrs. Leonard had visited the house, and had spent the day in the library; that one of them, noting that her mistress had neglected the luncheon that had been laid out for her, had ventured to look into the room. "She was crouched on the floor, reading; I could not well see her face. When I spoke she waved her hand, as though I was not to interrupt. That was about two o'clock. I went back to the kitchen, just putting the tea on the range so's to heat it. Then neither Martha nor I thought anything more about her, until about five Martha thought she heard the front door slam. We looked in the library; she was gone. She hadn't touched the lunch." Such, relieved of some circumlocution, was the report of the maid most glib of speech. They were dismissed by the doctor.
"She has done," was his comment, "that which creed-adherents usually omit. She has read, and as a consequence is crazed."
"Crazed as a consequence of reading!" exclaimed Mrs. Joe.
"Mrs. Leonard has sustained a shock; there must be a cause. No external injury is discoverable. The cause is to be found in her moral, or, if you please, her spiritual constitution—I don't care what you call it—among other things in strong maternal yearnings—subjective causes these, and not sufficient to explain the seizure; there must have been an agent. The maid found her deeply absorbed; people that read crouched on the floor are so; therefore a book——"
"I took this from her," exclaimed the lady, producing the Reverend Eliphalet's "Call to the Careless."
"Aha!" exclaimed the doctor, pouncing upon the volume and glancing at the title-page, "here we have it; here's enough to convert a lying-in hospital into Bedlam."
Mrs. Joe gazed upon the fat little volume in the hand of the speaker, with the same expression with which a novice might contemplate an overgrown spider impaled upon the card of a collector.
"This unctuous treatise," proceeded the doctor, who, finding his hobby saddled, was impatient to mount, "was written by a shining light of that family to which you and I have been graciously permitted to ally ourselves. In this volume are recorded the ecstatic transports of one of the most blessed of the blessed Claghorns. Our patient may have derived her tendency to exaltation from this very rhapsodist. Here, with the Reverend Eliphalet, we may revel in angelic joys; with him, we may, god-like, gloat over sinners damned, and, enraptured, contemplate Flames, Torment and Despair; here our ears may be charmed with the Roars of Age, the Howls of Youth, the Screams of Childhood and the Wails of Infancy; all in linked sweetness long drawn out; all in capital letters, and all extorted by the Flames that Lick the Suffering Damned!"
"Doctor!" exclaimed the lady, scandalized at that which she supposed was a burst of profanity.
"Shocked? Well, shocking it is—in me, who refuse to believe it, but edifying in Eliphalet. Ah! madam, the evil that men do lives after them. Was truth ever better exemplified? Listen to this: The writer pictures himself in heaven and looking down into hell. 'What joy to behold Truth vindicated from all the horrid aspersions of hellish monsters!' (that's me) 'I am overjoyed at hearing the everlasting Howlings of the Haters of the Almighty! Oh! Sweet, sweet. My heart is satisfied!'"
The lady attempted to interrupt, but the doctor continued to read: "The saints in glory will see and better understand (than we do) how terrible the sufferings of the damned are! When they have this sight it will excite them to joyful praises,' that's a choice bit from Jonathan Edwards. What do you think of the diversions of 'the saints in glory?'"
"It's blasphemy!"
"Blasphemy! Tell it not in Hampton! But listen to Jonathan again. Here is his picture of a sinner just condemned. His parents are witnesses of his terror and agony, and thus they righteously gloat: 'When they shall see what manifestations of amazement will be in you at the hearing of this dreadful sentence; when they shall behold you with a frightened and amazed countenance, trembling and astonished, and shall hear you groan and gnash your teeth, these things will not move them at all to pity you, but you will see them with a holy joy in their countenances and with songs in their mouths. When they shall see you turned away and beginning to enter into the great furnace, and shall see how you shrink at it, and hear how you shriek and cry out, yet they will not be at all grieved for you; but at the same time you will hear from them renewed praises and hallelujahs for this true and righteous judgment of God in so dealing with you!'"
"If," interjected the listener, "that is written there, the devil wrote it."
"The devil may have had a hand in the matter, but it was written by no less a person than Jonathan Edwards, regarded, and justly, by the Reverend Eliphalet and others, as a great man. He is also quoted here as saying to his hearers, 'If you perish hereafter, it will be an occasion of joy to all the godly'; one is hardly surprised that he didn't get on with his congregation. Imagine Father Cameril making that announcement with you and Miss Paula in the front pew."
"Doctor, if you are not inventing——"
"I could not. My imagination is not warmed by the flames of hell or by celestial visions. This book is filled with similar elegant extracts."
"I have heard enough, Doctor. Really——"
"Permit me one or two more. We have hardly heard the author himself as yet."
"But to what end?"
"You were incredulous when I asserted that a day's reading in Leonard's library would account for the present condition of his wife. It's only fair to allow me to justify my assertion."
"You have read enough to drivemecrazy, if for one moment I believed it."
"Hardly.Youare not a recently bereaved mother;youare not just emerging from a condition consequent upon disturbance of the physical economy which has reacted upon the mental;youare not inclined to mysticism, to see visions, to find pictures in goblets of water or in grate fires; in short, while you have your own idiosyncrasies, they are not of a character to render you liable to this sort of transport. But there are organizations which, though seduced by mystic lore, can hardly contemplate such matters without injury. The compiler of this book, the men he quotes, the ecstatics in general—revivalists, hermits, nuns and monks in all ages—do you believe that as a class they were well balanced? Peering into heaven is a dangerous business."
"The men you have quoted seem to have peered into hell."
"That is the Puritan mode of ecstatic enjoyment. Our Catholic—I beg your pardon, our Roman Catholic—enthusiasts, being more artistic, and lovers of the beautiful, prefer contemplation of heaven. Unlike the smug Puritan, they do not spare their bodies. They fast and flog, wear hair shirts, roll in ashes and wash seldom, but their eyes are turned upward; they urge the spirit to rejoice. Your fat and well-fed Calvinist prefers a gloom irradiated by the flames of hell, in which he can behold the writhing victims of God's vanity——"
"Doctor, you are as bitter as all your brethren; you unbeliever——"
"I don't know that I'm more of an unbeliever than you are. I'm sure if the Reverend Eliphalet has not by this time modified his opinions, he has no expectation of meeting you in heaven. Hear him as he warns humanity against the devices of Satan: 'Of which,' he says, 'the traces are visible even in the church. In these days there hath arisen a delusive hope as to infants. Some hold, and a few dare to assert, though with bated breath, that all infants die in the grace of God. Who saith this? Not God, who, by His Eternal Decree, hath declared that none but His Elect are saved. Not our Confession of Faith, formulated at Westminster in earnest prayer and reverence for the Word. Not the framers of that Confession, of whom I may mention Twisse, as having specially wrote against this new-born folly, extorted by the cunning of the Enemy of Souls by means of the bleatings of foolish mothers—search the Scripture, reader! Nowhere shalt thou find any saved but His Elect.'"
"Abominable!" ejaculated the lady.
"Poetical. 'Bleatings of foolish mothers' is quite so. And now our good man actually drops into the poetry of the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth, whose 'Day of Doom' he quotes at length. I will not inflict the whole fifteen stanzas upon you; but listen to a morsel or two. This is the Argument: The Still-born appear at the Seat of Mercy, and put in a plea for grace that might have weight in Senegambia, but which has none in the heaven of Eliphalet and of Hampton:
'Then to the bar they all drew near who died in Infancy,And never had, or good or bad, effected personally,But from the womb unto the tomb were straightway carried(Or at the least, ere they transgressed), who thus began to plead.'
'Then to the bar they all drew near who died in Infancy,And never had, or good or bad, effected personally,But from the womb unto the tomb were straightway carried(Or at the least, ere they transgressed), who thus began to plead.'
"Their plea is that since Adam, the actual delinquent, has been 'set free, and saved from his trespass,' they are on better grounds entitled to consideration. To the finite intelligence there would seem to be some force in the infantile argument. What says Omnipotence?
'I may deny you once to try, or grace to you to tender,Though he finds Grace before my face who was the chief offender.You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect,Such you shall have, for I do save none but mine own elect;Yet to compare your sin with their who sinned a longer time,I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime;A crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell,But unto you I shall allow THE EASIEST ROOM IN HELL.'"
'I may deny you once to try, or grace to you to tender,Though he finds Grace before my face who was the chief offender.You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect,Such you shall have, for I do save none but mine own elect;Yet to compare your sin with their who sinned a longer time,I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime;A crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell,But unto you I shall allow THE EASIEST ROOM IN HELL.'"
The doctor closed the book. "I submit that I have proved my contention," he said. "Do you doubt now that Mrs. Leonard was affected by her browsings among Leonard's books? The men who wrote the matter of which this volume is made up were largely the founders of Hampton, men whose names she has heard venerated as almost inspired of God."
"Even so, how could she believe such absurdities?"
"I do not assert that she believed. Belief in the impossible is impossible. But have you never been deeply impressed by fiction; never been scared by a ghost story? Have you shed tears over the sorrows of Colonel Newcome? The few quotations you have heard cause you to shrink, though you are well aware they are but foolish words. But if you couldseethe scenes herein depicted, I do not think you could bear the prospect. I am sureIshould howl as lustily as any hellish monster here referred to. Well, Mrs. Leonard being so constituted, has actuallyseenthese horrors, and, in the central figure, has contemplated the writhings of her child."
"Oh, Doctor!" she spoke in a subdued tone, her eyes expressing more than her words.
"Even you, here in this well-lighted and cheerful room, with me, a very material and matter-of-fact person, beside you, even you can feel a faint reflection of the terrors in which this woman spent the day. Alone, without food, a deserted room, a gloomy house, but lately cheerful with the prattle of a childish voice, forever silent, but of which the echoes still linger in the mother's ears—here's enough and more than enough to disturb an exalted temperament, a morbid imagination. Add this"—the doctor shook the book in his hand—"and what need of belief, if by belief you mean the result of a reasoning process? The ideas suggestedhere took possession of her! Belief! Pshaw! nobody believes in this stuff; but Hampton says it believes."
"But that's monstrous!"
"Nothing more common than loud assertions of belief where is no belief. That's politics, partisanship."
"But this is religion——"
"So-called."
"But——"
"The Westminster Confession is a written document. The men who composed it knew what they wished to say, and said it so clearly that nobody can misapprehend their meaning. Your own creed of compromises—pardon me, compromise is always the resort of politicians who understand their business—was wiser, or luckier; its Articles are all loopholes in regard to this doctrine of Election——"
"Doctor, your ignorance of my church is so palpable that I decline to take your word concerning Hampton and the Confession of Faith. I've never read it——"
"Even its adherents are not so rash. It becomes a serious matter as to one's self-respect to maintain a monstrous absurdity, after one knows it. Nevertheless, the Westminster Confession teaches as truth all that the Reverend Eliphalet says, or that Michael Wigglesworth grotesquely sings. Moreover, it is annually published under the title of 'The Constitution and Standards of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America'—a solemn declaration that God, before the creation of man, damned the great majority to everlasting agony so excruciating as to be beyond conception, and all for His own glory and pleasure."
"Yet I know, and you ought to know, that Christianity offers salvation to every soul through the medium of its Founder."
"Deniedin totoby Westminster. According to the Confession, not even Jesus Christ could diminish the number of the damned, fixed before the creation of a single soul. If Mrs. Leonard's baby was born to be damned, damned he is."
"Now I know you are asserting what is not so. I have heard infant damnation denied by Hampton professors."
"And may again. I do not claim that a single human being believes the Westminster Confession; but I do maintain that he who acknowledges that Confession as his standard, and retains membership in that church, which annually promulgates the same as truth, either believes an outrageous absurdity, or says he believes it. If he is not willing to do this, he has no right in the organization; why, only the other day Dr. Willis was requested to get out because he declined to say he believed that which he does not believe."
"Doctor, I am sorry to say it, but your statements are not credible——"
"Don't apologize. Of course they are not; but they are true. I certainly don't blame you for doubting my word. But you shall ask Hodge; I'll lend you his commentary. Hodge hopes as to infants, but is honest enough to admit that in the Confession there is no ground for hope. He damns all heathen incontinently, which includes all the babies I ever knew, though he may have known babies that were not heathen. And, after all, why this solicitude for babies? Why is it less monstrous to condemn to eternal torture a being six feet long than one of three? Why, on the last occasion I was in a church I heard these words: 'The sentiment which sorrows over what God reveals as His will is simply maudlin. When the Christian finds out who are in the regions of despair he will neither be affected by their number nor by the duration of their punishment.' That's not much better than 'bleating mothers.' And in the meanwhile"—he concluded a tirade so rapidly uttered that his auditor had had no opportunity to interrupt—"they are quarreling about Socrates and tobacco, crusading against my bottle of claret, and sending missionaries to Japan." Who "they" were he had no opportunity to designate, for at this moment a messenger from the nurse announced that the patient was awake.
When the doctor and the lady entered the room, Natalie looked at them, but betrayed no surprise. Mrs. Joe was startled by the expression of her face, which was peaceful, even happy. "Heaven is beautiful," she said, without other preface. "Birds and flowers and little children. Oh! the happy little children and Lenny among them; all so happy, so rosy! Ah, I am glad!" And even as she sighed her gladness she sank into slumber. The doctor watched her anxiously for many minutes; then he signed to Mrs. Joe to follow, and they softly left the room.
"Is it death?" asked the lady, who had been frightened by his anxious face.
"Such visions often mean death; there's nothing certain yet, but every hope. Go to bed, Mrs. Claghorn; I shall remain here."
But though the lady declined to go to bed, the discussion was not resumed.
About four in the morning he went alone to the room, and soon returned with a smiling face. "She is sleeping naturally," he said. "A few hours since I feared for her reason; now I have great hope. I shall return at eight o'clock. Let nobody go near her. Burn that thing; she must never see it again." He pointed to the "Call to the Careless," and left the house.
Leonard remained in New York, ignorant of the events which had transpired at Stormpoint, concerning which, however, he was soon informed by a letter written by Mrs. Joe, a letter which conveyed the intelligence that his wife had fainted in the cemetery "as a consequence of over-exertion," that Dr. Stanley wished the intended visit to Newport to be made as soon as possible, that there was no need of his presence in Easthampton, and that if he were to come there he would probably find his wife already departed. All of which, though dictated by the physician, had been written with misgiving, as conveying an insufficient statement of the facts. But the doctor had been peremptory. "Keep them apart," he had said. "The only subject on which Leonard can expatiate just now is damnation, and of that the wife has had more than enough."
Leonard evinced no desire to follow the Newport party. Misled by the communication from the lady of Stormpoint, and yet more influenced by reluctance to enter the household of Mrs. Leon, of which household he assumed Berthe Lenoir to be still an inmate, he was willing to enjoy a holiday which he thought he had fairly earned. Mrs. Joe, though surprised by his acquiescence, was relieved. She was still more surprised when her keen vision detected that Natalie was equally relieved. "It seemed," she observed to the doctor, "to lighten her heart."
"Instinct," he replied, and made no further comment; but though ordinarily very discreet as to professional matters, he mentioned the circumstance to his wife, at the same time advancing a theory which startled that lady.
Freed from anxiety concerning Natalie, whose letters, though very short, reported continuing improvement in the matter of health, Leonard resolved, for the present at least, to forget the ingratitude of Hampton, and to enjoy to the fullest his bachelor outing. He recalled his strolls on Parisian Boulevards, and in fancy lived in past delights, promenading Broadway with the old Parisian strut, though modified, and not oblivious of the fact that here, as in Paris, were handsome eyes, not unwilling to return the glance of one who had been likened to a Greek god.
Sometimes, indeed often, he lamented that his lot had not been cast in the great world. His instincts truthfully told him that, as a man of action, he would have presented no mean figure; there were even moments when he wished, though he knew the futility of such a wish, that he might never see Hampton or hear of theology again. This he knew well enough was but the natural reaction from the strain of his recent labors, but he toyed with the thought, half playfully, half regretfully, as indicating one of the things that might have been. If there were any conscience-pricks they were too feeble to be felt; he had ceased to be a boy (so he said to himself); the boy, for instance, he had been when, on the Heidelberg terrace, he had yearned over the erring soul of his cousin. The religious sentiment which once had glowed so ardently in his bosom was burned out, consumed in the heat of partisan theology; but though he knew this, he did not know the meaning of the fact. To him it meant that his salvation was assured, and with that conviction the great concern of life had passed into the peace which passeth understanding.
Just now, however, he was not giving much attention to his personal religious attitude, as he moved among the city's throngs well-clad, rosy and with the form and grace of an athlete and the eager eyes of innocence and unconscious desire. In the delight of the holiday, a delight which sometimes rose to a surprising fervor, he thought of certain Parisian peccadillos, and more than once half resolved to renew his acquaintance with the ballet andbelles jambes, like unto those of Mademoiselle Coralie, which gamboled ravishingly in the haze of memory; but he rejected the imprudent suggestion; he might be recognized, and Brigston would rejoice in unholy glee, if its most potent adversary—he wondered if this fact were known to the passers-by—were discovered in a temple of dubious recreation. Such recollections brought Paris very vividly before his eyes, and for some reason also the memory of Berthe and of that rapturous kiss; and perhaps at such times the handsome face assumed the look of which Mrs. Joe had disapproved.
The remembrance of Berthe recalled Natalie, who, as he believed, was in the house with her former maid, and Natalie's beauty, and he was filled with tenderness, and his soul yearned with a great longing, and had it not been that Berthe was there he would have fled to Newport. He recognized now a fact of which he had, in a vague way, been long conscious, the fact that ever since the birth of the boy he and his wife had grown somewhat apart. She had been engrossed with the child, and he with his theological war. He regretted it, and resolved that it must not be so in the future. Loving one another as they did, it would be easy to grow together again. He would tell her how grievously he had been treated by Hampton, in its envy; and on the beautiful bosom that he loved and that was his own, would pour out his griefs and find sweetest solace. If she would only curtail her visit!
One day there came a letter from his wife which he opened in the eager hope that it would announce the termination of her stay in Newport. He was disappointed in this, and was further rendered uneasy by the tone of constraint in which it was written, or which he imagined; for if there were constraint, it was hard to point out just where it lay; yet he felt, if he could not see, that the pen of the writer had been heavy in her hand. But he was more than uneasy; he felt resentment rising within him as he read the postscript, which was as follows: "Do you believe that there is an eternal hell and that many are condemned? Will you answer this as briefly as possible?"
He studied the written words with growing annoyance. The curtness of the question seemed to indicate that to the questioner the matter was of minor import—trivial, in fact; if she really thought thus, then all his recent labors had been labor in vain. Nothing had so angered him as suggestions of this character, frequently made by a godless secular press. One journal had, with pretended gravity, argued that since all heathen and their progeny must be damned, extermination was more merciful than the hopeless attempt at conversion, and at least as practicable; another had flippantly suggested that Professor Claghorn be required to demonstrate the utility of theological seminaries, since no product of those institutions could, by any possibility, be instrumental in saving a single soul—and so on. All of which he had borne with a fair show of equanimity, but he had smarted; and now Natalie's question seemed, at first sight, an echo of the unworthy journalistic jibes. There might be various opinions concerning hell; it was conceivable that the great majority preferred an attitude of incredulity as to its inevitable destination; but, at least, it was a serious subject.
But later readings of the letter seemed to indicate that it had been written with a heavy heart. There was affection in it, but a tone of gloom as well, which, though Natalie admitted that her health was completely restored, was too apparent to permit the supposition of a trifling postcript. The inference, then, must be that she had arrived at a not uncommon stage of religious agitation, often preliminary to conversion, a stage which he knew to be frequently of intense suffering to the neophyte, though satisfactory to pious observers, who were inclined to see in the lowest depths of misery the sure precursor of the highest joy. He had, himself, at an unusually early age, passed through a similar experience, and though that period of anguish was so far behind him that he could not recall its terrors, he knew that they had been very dreadful, and that his parents, to whom he had been as the apple of their eye, had been correspondingly complacent. There was, in these days, less of the agonized form of religious experience, but he could easily understand that it might happen to Natalie, who, in religion, was still but a babe.
The only way to deal with the matter was the way in which it had been treated in his own case. There must be no slurring of the truth. He would disdain that course in private as much as he had disdained it in public. Hampton might shrink from disclosure of eternal verity; he would not.
Wherefore, he sent to Natalie his pamphlet, entitled, "Dr. Burley's True Meaning," not sorry that she should see how clearly and uncompromisingly he could state matters which others had been willing to obscure. The true meaning of the Confession, and, therefore, of the Bible, and, therefore, of the learned biblical scholar whose text Leonard illuminated, was that the majority of mankind was on the way to a hell, eternal, and of torture inconceivable.
The pamphlet was relentless, as was proper; but in his accompanying letter to his wife Leonard was very tender. He showed her that there was but one course to pursue in the face of indisputable truth, and that was resignation to the will of heaven. Weak humanity might grieve over God's will; such sorrow was certainly pardonable by man, but was nevertheless rebellion; and, before complete reconciliation to God could be assumed, must be dismissed from the heart. Leaving religion, he proceeded to tell his wife that his longing for her was growing absolutely insupportable, and he was much more fervid in his petition that she hasten her return home than he had been in his doctrinal expositions. He dispatched his letter, and returned to his former avocations, but with little spirit; he longed for Natalie, and had no room for other than the thoughts that accompanied his longing. In a few days he was able to start for home, Natalie having, in a very short letter, in which she made no comment on the one he had last written, announced her arrival in Hampton by a train due there a few minutes later than the one from New York by which he traveled, and when he finally alighted at the station, he was tremulous with anticipation, and his disappointment was proportionate when the Newport train arrived with none of the expected travelers.
There was nothing to do but to bear a revulsion of feeling, which was actually painful. He walked across the Square to his home, and found the maids with everything prepared for his arrival, and with a letter from Natalie which informed him that she would be in Hampton on the following morning.
He went early to bed, discontented and fretful. He slept badly, and in the night got up and wandered restlessly about, and in his wanderings made a discovery which might have remained unnoticed had the fancies which vexed his repose been of a different character.
After the birth of her child, Natalie had occupied a room separate from her husband's, in order that the latter, whose literary labors were exacting, should not be disturbed. In his prowling Leonard discovered evidences that this arrangement was to be continued, and as he stood in the gaslight considering the tokens whereby he inferred that one room was reserved for masculine, the other for feminine occupancy, he mentally pronounced the arrangement unsatisfactory, and experienced a feeling of vexation amounting to resentment.
But resentment gave way when, next morning, having seen Mrs. Joe and Paula drive away to Stormpoint, and having followed Natalie to the room which he had inspected the night before with dissatisfaction, he once more held her in his arms. The light that gleamed from her eyes, the roseate hue upon her feverish cheeks, the rich red lips upon which he pressed his own hungrily—the beautiful reality, fairer than the fairest vision of his hours of longing, banished every thought but one.
He held her long in a close embrace. He was very happy, and when she had withdrawn from his arms he sat upon the edge of the bed telling her of his disappointment of the day before, and of his nocturnal prowlings, and laughingly advancing his objections to the sleeping arrangements she had ordered. Meanwhile, she said but little, being engaged in searching for something in her trunk. At length she found whatever she had been seeking. "Leonard," she said, "go down to the library. I must speak to you, but not here."
The manner and the tone puzzled him—then he remembered. He sighed involuntarily. It was an inopportune moment to discuss conversion—but since she was in its throes——He went downstairs; his face betrayed vexation.
Soon she entered the room where he awaited her, seated in a big chair. She knelt before him, taking his hand in hers. "Leonard," she said, "I am sorry you don't like the arrangement of the bedrooms."
Her solemnity had led him to expect something of greater importance than this, which was, however, decidedly a more welcome topic. "You know, dearest," he said, with a quizzical look, "as husband and wife——"
"Leonard! Leonard! We dare not be husband and wife."
He stared at her in amazement. "What do you mean?" he said.
"I mean this," she answered, producing "Dr. Burley's True Meaning." "Oh, Leonard! How could the same man write that book and be a father?"
Mrs. Joe had not obeyed Dr. Stanley's injunction, to burn the "Call to the Careless," but had studied that delectable composition sufficiently to compel her to exonerate the doctor from her suspicion, that he had invented much of the matter, which he had, in fact, read from the text before him.
Her researches had not been without an object. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to point out that this lady's conscience was sufficiently elastic for ordinary purposes, even for ordinary political purposes, and it might have with stood the assaults made upon it by her investigation, had she been of the usual sex of politicians. She could go far in the interests of her son, but long ago she had borne another child, whose smile as it faded in death had ever been, at odd moments, before her, and constantly before her during her wanderings in fields theological, and she had but recently seen a woman crazed by contemplation of her baby in hell. When she had learned, by means of her studies, that a great ecclesiastical body still dooms the vast majority of those born of woman to everlasting woe, it came upon her like a blow in the face that, in order to see her son in the legislature, she had aided in promulgating the diabolical creed which, in the face of nineteen centuries of Christianity, is still waved aloft as the Standard of a Christian Church.
Upon the first shock of this knowledge she followed the inevitable course of the conscience-stricken, and proceeded to argue with the inward monitor. "Nobody believes that now," she insisted; "the actual belief has been modified to accord with common sense. No Christian can admit that God is a demon, and no Christian can teach impossible falsehood." In answer to which, Conscience pointed to the title-page, which proclaimed the Confession to be the "Standard of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.'" She resolved to seek enlightenment at the acknowledged head of human wisdom in Hampton, and called for the purpose on the great Dr. Burley himself. Him she encountered as he was emerging from his front door. "Does Hampton actually uphold the Westminster Confession?" she asked.
"Certainly, my dear madam, so does Brigston."
"I'm not interested in Brigston. I am in Hampton."
"And we are all glad that it is so. But, I see—I've always been afraid of it; you are going to try and get us all over to St. Perpetua, ha! ha!"
"And does Hampton really believe——?"
"Only what is true. I must be off to my lecture now; we must have it out some other time. How's the Bishop? Fine fellow; wish we had him. Good-bye; Mrs. Burley will bedelighted tosee you," and the doctor waved the lady into the house and made his escape.
Having no desire to call upon Mrs. Burley, the lady of Stormpoint remained in the vestibule only long enough for the gentleman to get away; she then descended the steps and was about to enter her carriage, when she was accosted by Dr. Stanley, who, after the usual salutations, asked her if she had seen Leonard recently.
"I am about to call on him now—on unpleasant business."
"That's a pity. You'll wish you had stayed at home. I have just left him; he's as cross as three sticks, which I suppose are crosser than the proverbial two."
"I suppose because the newspapers are still nagging him."
"Perhaps; yet if you could manage a confidential talk with Mrs. Leonard, it might be a good thing."
"Ah! You've noticed that there's domestic trouble? I have suspected it. Why was he willing to stay away from Newport? Why was his wife reluctant to come home?"
"Perhaps you can find out. Doctors can't ask indiscreet questions more than other people."
"And you think I can, or will?" In answer to which the physician merely shrugged his shoulders.
The lady drove away, her distaste for the task before her not diminished by the encounter. She was quite sure that the physician would not have made the allusions, which had fallen from him, unless he believed that the domestic status in the Morley mansion was of grave significance. Which, in fact, it was; a dark shadow loomed, ever larger, in the old house.
Leonard was very unhappy. Natalie's ignorance, in respect to his longings, her utter absence of sympathy; these formed the side of the shadow visible to him. He was irritable, at times harsh; but more deadly in its possible results was a sullen resentment, so deep that its ferocity and strength were unsuspected by himself. He was gazing moodily out of the library window when Mrs. Joe's equipage stopped at the door, and in another moment the lady was ushered in.
"What is it?" he asked shortly. His manner was divested of its usual graces. He looked moodily at the floor.
"Only a matter of business. Leonard, have you informed the Hampton people of the gift of which I spoke to you?"
"It has been mentioned."
"Leonard, I ought not to give it."
"You don't mean you have met with serious losses?" he exclaimed, impressed by her manner.
"No, no! But my views have changed; that is, I have made discoveries. Will it annoy you, personally, if the gift is not made?"
"I shall regret it; but nobody will blame me, if that's what you mean."
She was relieved. Still, it was painful to withhold a promised gift, especially painful to deprive him just now of the credit of being her almoner. "I wish you to take this," she said, handing him a cheque. "Let it go to the poor of the town, the hospital, the blind asylum——"
He took the slip of paper she held out to him. He was startled by the amount. "Mrs. Joe——" he commenced.
"We can arrange as to details," she interrupted. "Oblige me by taking it now."
He saw that she was somewhat agitated, and knew that she feared that the withdrawal of the gift to the Seminary might have wounded him. This was her way of curing such wounds. It would be ungracious to refuse the cheque, yet even as he looked at it, a strange foreboding was upon him.
He sat down saying he would prefer to give her a receipt as trustee. "As you say, we must arrange as to details. Meanwhile, I suggest a portion of the sum for the Missionary Fund——"
"Not one penny of it," she answered with energy.
"Do you object to the conversion of the heathen?" he asked surprised.
"I do," was her emphatic answer. "Leave them alone. I suppose there are among them some that look with hope beyond the grave. I will not be an instrument to destroy that hope."
He jumped at once to the conclusion that she had been reading some of the frothy and ill-considered articles of the secular press in regard to the Hampton-Brigston controversy, and again the suspicion arose in his mind that Natalie was influenced by the wretched diatribes of the newspapers.
"I should fail in my duty as a Christian, Mrs. Joe," he said coldly, "if I made no effort to disabuse your mind of prejudice. Your capacity to aid a noble cause is so great——"
"God knows," she interrupted earnestly, "I desire to use that capacity for good. I have done grievous harm hitherto."
"I do not understand."
"Leonard, look at this. It is a fair statement. I know it because I have tested every line of it in the Seminary Library. Can I give money to bring tidings of their eternal damnation to the heathen? They are happier without such knowledge."
He took from her hand a cutting from a newspaper. It was an attack on his theology: "As a mitigation of the misery which flows from the Westminster Confession," wrote the journalist, "probation after death has been suggested by weaklings. We know how that suggestion has been received. In June, 1893, the General Assembly of the Church convicted Dr. Briggs, its author, of heresy, and stigmatized sanctification after death as 'in direct conflict with the plain teachings of the Divine Word, and the utterances of the Standards of our Church'; a deliverance which consigns to hell myriads of Jews, Mohammedans and honest doubters of Christendom—all to be added to the number of heathen in hell. Concerning these last, various computations have been made by theologians of a mathematical turn; the American Board estimates that five hundred millions go to hell every thirty years, or as Dr. Skinner has it, thirty-seven thousand millions since the Christian era. Dr. Hodge states that none escape. The last-named learned commentator on the Confession of Faith is even hopeless as to Christian infants, concerning whom he says, 'It is certainly revealed that none, either adult or infant, are saved, except by special election,' and that it is not 'positively revealed that all infants are elect.'"
The article proceeded to argue that, if all this were true (which the writer denied), to impart the knowledge to the heathen would be cruel, and that if it were not true, so much the less should lives and money be spent in the dissemination of false views of God's mercy and justice.
"Beyond the fact that the writer is thoroughly illogical, slipshod and evidently malicious, there is no fault to be found with his statements," observed Leonard, as he returned the cutting to the lady.
"Leonard, my conscience will not permit me to disseminate a faith which knows no mercy."
He respected Mrs. Joe; he could even sympathize with her views, though, regarding her as a child in doctrine, he did not think it worth while to attempt to explain to her the enlightening and consolatory effect of the "high mysteries," which are to be handled "with especial care." "Let the matter rest awhile," he said. "I will arrange as to the hospital and for a donation to the blind asylum. We can agree as to the distribution of the rest of the fund later. You will not always be so hard on Hampton. Theology is not learned in a day, Mrs. Joe, and, you will excuse me for saying it, you have not given as much thought to the matter as some others."
"I am not foolish enough to pretend to a knowledge of theology. That would be as absurd as the exhibition presented by men who pass years in striving to reconcile eternal damnation and common justice." Having fired this shot, the lady took her departure.
The door had scarce closed upon her when Leonard called Natalie. An impression, revived by his visitor and her newspaper cutting, that his wife's attitude had its inspiration in the empty criticisms of the press, had aroused his anger. He resolved that the present mode of living should terminate. He had rights, God-given, as well as by the laws of men; he would enforce them if he must.
In their intercourse recently, Leonard had refrained from harshness, but he had been unable to conceal a resentment, hourly growing in strength; his manner had been hard and sullen. Without exhibiting actual discourtesy he had shown plainly enough that he preferred to be alone, and, except when it was inevitable, husband and wife had hardly met or spoken together for days.
Hence, when Natalie heard him call, a flush, born partly of apprehension, partly of hope, suffused her cheek. She came toward him, smiling and rosy, a vision of radiant loveliness. The pleading tenderness of her eyes was answered by the wolfish gleam of a gaze that arrested her steps. He seized her in his arms, clasping the lithe body in a clutch of fury, kissing her red lips and clinging to their sweetness with a ferocity that terrified her. In this shameful embrace they wrestled a moment until the man's violence enfeebled himself. She broke from him, standing before him an image of outraged modesty, panting, indignant and bewildered.
"Leonard!"
He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. His own self-respect was shocked. He was humiliated, and his shame increased his resentment.
"What is it?" she asked, placing a trembling hand on his shoulder, and noting that he shuddered at the touch.
"What is it?" he repeated. For a moment a fury to strike her possessed him. By an effort he calmed himself.
"Natalie," he said, in a slow, measured tone, "do you regard me as your husband?"
"You know I do, Leonard."
He sighed despairingly. How was he to bring a knowledge of facts to this woman incapable of comprehending them, or what they signified for him?
"Natalie," he said, and now he took her hand in his, noting its cool freshness again his own hot palm. "We cannot live thus; we are married. We must be husband and wife."
"You dare not create victims of hell," she whispered.
"Natalie, you would impiously abrogate God's holy ordinance. Marriage is enjoined by Scripture. Sin of the most heinous character is born of neglect of this ordinance of God."
"Leonard, Leonard," she cried, "you can have no assurance that your children will be saved. Only the elect."
"All, dying in infancy are elect," he answered impatiently. "That is the universal belief of to-day."
She grew very white as she looked at him; her eyes were big with horror. "Do you mean," she asked hoarsely, "that we should murder our babies?"
"Murder!" he exclaimed, amazed.
"Since only infants are certainly saved——"
He burst into a discordant laugh. "Natalie," he said, "as a reasoner you would do credit to Brigston."
"I can see no other way," she said after a pause. "My reasoning may be defective, but you do not show me its defects. Surely you believe the Confession and the catechisms?"
"Every line of either," he answered defiantly and in anger. Had he not labored night and day for a year past to demonstrate the truth of the "Standards"?
"Then," she answered sadly, "you have no right to become a father. Fathers and mothers are instruments of the devil. According to your belief, no sin can compare with the sin of bringing forth a creature so offensive to God that it must suffer eternal punishment. You may believe that you and I are both to dwell together in hell. If that be our fate we must submit. But our children, Leonard! Shall we earn their hatred in life, and watch their torments in unquenchable fires?"
"Do you compare yourself and me, and children born of us, to the depraved mass of humanity? Have you no assurance of God's gracious mercy?"
"God's gracious mercy!" she repeated. "God's gracious mercy!"
"Natalie," he said, making a great effort to speak calmly. "You who but a short time since had no religion, surely you will concede that I know something of that which has been the study of my life. I tell you that your reasoning is frantic nonsense; it would be blasphemous if it were not for your ignorance."
"You believe the Confession true—every line. I have studied it; I have studied your book. Prior to that I had spent a whole day, in this very room, reading——"
He laughed, but as before there was no mirth in the laugh. "A whole day," he said, "and this profound research enables you to contend with me in a science that I have studied all my life."
"On that day," she answered, shuddering, "the fires of hell blazed before my eyes and I heard the wails of damned souls. In a day much may be learned. If what I then saw be true—I do not know—you say it is; you say hell is——"
"And say it again," he interrupted. "If I had never known it before, I would know it now."
"Then, Leonard, you must justify me. Since God cannot save the innocent——"
"He punishes the guilty only."
"Having himself decreed their guilt! In the face of that decree there is no human guilt. Even marriage, that most hideous of all crimes, does not merit endless suffering——"
"You insist that all are damned; you rave. Nobody asserts that all are damned."
"'He hath chosen some to eternal life and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath.' Yet if there were but a single soul to suffer; if but one solitary creature of all the millions of men were doomed to dwell in hell forever—the knowledge that your child, Leonard, might be that lonely one—surely such knowledge——"
He ground his teeth. She drew texts from the source he had declared to be the living truth. He had no answer; there was no answer.
"Leave me," he whispered, in a tone that evidenced his fury better than a roar of rage. Again he hid his face in his hands. She often turned to look at him as she slowly withdrew, but he did not raise his head.
He wrestled fiercely with his emotions and with the problem that fate had raised. At times rage consumed his soul, and his thoughts rioted in brutal instigation, which even then he feared, and of which he was ashamed. At moments he hated, at moments he loved, but hating or loving, the seductive charms of the woman swayed before his eyes, mocking him as the mirage mocks the fainting pilgrim. Hours passed and he remained in the same attitude, striving to estimate the situation correctly, so that he could evolve a remedy. He could not deny her reasoning; he would not give up his faith. His mind, rigid from the training to which it had been subjected, was incapable of readily admitting new theories; and his best nourished and most vigorous attribute was involved. Whether his integrity could be bent or not, it was certain that his vanity would not submit. No! He would not deny his faith. He would enforce his rights.
But not without further effort at persuasion. He made a heroic and worthy resolve. He would be patient still, meanwhile using every gentle measure. He would enlist Mrs. Joe in his cause. She was a matron, shrewd and too well balanced to allow religious notions to carry her to fanatical extremes; and she did not hold his own views, apparently not even as to eternal punishment. Perhaps she would convince Natalie that there was no hell. It would be a lie, but better that his wife believe a lie than that hell reign in his house and in his bosom.
At the dinner hour the maid handed her mistress a note. It ran thus:
"Dear Natalie—I have decided to leave home for a little time. I think we are better apart. If you will open your heart to Mrs. Joe she will explain that which you and I cannot discuss. I learn that you are in your own room, and think it better not to disturb you. Good-bye, for a little time. It may be that I shall not write."Leonard."
"Dear Natalie—I have decided to leave home for a little time. I think we are better apart. If you will open your heart to Mrs. Joe she will explain that which you and I cannot discuss. I learn that you are in your own room, and think it better not to disturb you. Good-bye, for a little time. It may be that I shall not write.
"Leonard."