{750}
A missive soon brought M. Bertolot to the trio. He came as secretly as possible, and departed in the same way; not so secretly, however, as to prevent his visit being shortly made known to Alfred Brookbank, who, with the view of making a final breach between Sir Philip and his wife, had set spies to watch the movements of the party. He discovered from the jealousy of the neighbors the intimacy at the Irish cottage, and surmised the attraction which produced these visits, but could make no use of this surmise until his agent recognized in M. Bertolot the French priest who had accompanied the countess to England. The secrecy of the visit told its purport. Alfred now informed Sir Philip, as if he had just made the discovery, that Annie had been in Eugene's company all the time she had been away; that Catholics were their only society, and that a priest visited them in secret, adding that there could be no rational doubt that Lady Conway and her mother were both Catholics.
Sir Philip's indignation was excessive. Without taking time to consider the matter at all, he ordered his carriage and drove post-haste to Estcourt Hall, to which place the family were now summoned in consequence of the increasing weakness of Mrs. Godfrey.
Mrs. Godfrey had been brought there by short stages, and had arrived the night before. Mr. Godfrey and Hester were there to meet her, and to Hester's great joy she was once more pressed lovingly to her mother's heart, who was more than happy to see her children united again in affection. Adelaide was hourly expected; and when Sir Philip made his appearance he was supposed to come in obedience to a similar summons. Mr. Godfrey received him; but Sir Philip's agitation was such that he made no answer to the customary greeting. He looked round the room, and seeing they were alone, he said in a choking voice:
"Is Lady Conway here?"
"She is; she arrived last night."
"And her brother Eugene?"
"Is here also."
"And have they been together all this time? O Mr. Godfrey, how you have deceived me!"
Mr. Godfrey was puzzled. He was constitutionally timid, and certainly was just now in no mood for quarrelling; so he said quietly: "Why, has any harm come of it?"
"Harm! What can be greater harm than that Annie and her mother should both of them be papists?"
"Is it that which frightens you? Be composed, my dear friend; put such thoughts from your mind; Annie has too much sense for that. And my poor wife, she has been a little weak in the head lately, it is true, but she is not given that way in the least degree; besides, I greatly fear she cannot live long; her strength is less than I could have imagined. Come, and see her."
But Sir Philip was absorbed in one idea. "I tell you," said he, "that the mischief is already done; that your wife and mine have both been on their knees to a priest, and that the secrets of both families are already on the way to Rome."
"Impossible!" said Mr. Godfrey.
{751}
"Try," said Sir Philip; "ask the question; if they dare deny it, I will produce the proofs."
Mr. Godfrey laid his hand on the bell-rope. A servant appeared. "Request Mr. Eugene to come to me immediately." The man bowed and disappeared. Eugene soon entered. The door was carefully closed. Sir Philip could scarcely keep himself from springing on him; but Mr. Godfrey stood between them, and said in a hollow voice: "Eugene, answer without circumlocution or disguise, say yes or no, are your mother and sister Annie Catholics?"
"They are."
Mr. Godfrey pointed to the door; he could not speak. Eugene left the room. The two strong men trembled with impotent rage.
"A curse has fallen upon the house," muttered Mr. Godfrey at length, as he paced the room. "Who could have dreamed of this?"
"Mr. Godfrey," said Sir Philip, in tones of thunder, "you will tell your daughter that she never again will enter my doors. Prepare what settlements you please, send them to my lawyer; anything in reason I will consent to, but see her again I will not."
He quitted the house, nor did he ever see his injured wife again.
Scarcely had Sir Philip's carriage driven away when another drove up, containing Adelaide, the young Dowager Duchess of Durimont. She entered the house in a scarcely less agitated state than Sir Philip had left it in; but her excitement proceeded altogether from a different cause. Among Adelaide's numerous faults, want of affection for her mother certainly did not form one. On the contrary, she was accustomed not only to love but to reverence her mother as a very superior woman. Through the sunshine of youth, while enjoying the warmth of a mother's fondness and protection, Adelaide's affections had strengthened without that sentimentality of expression which Mrs. Godfrey would have taught her to repress had she seen it manifested, but they were none the less deep or tender for having hitherto found no occasion, of great display. On the first intimation she had received of her mother's illness, Adelaide had hastened at once to Estcourt Hall, and was with difficulty persuaded by Mr. Godfrey to retire. He feared that Adelaide's presence would but increase the excitement under which Mrs. Godfrey labored, and as the doctor's opinion was to that effect also, Adelaide was compelled, however reluctantly, to yield. They gave her no clew whatever as to the cause of her mother's malady, and though she had a general idea of some unworthy transaction in which Eugene was wronged and Hester enriched, she did not enter into particulars, nor mentally connect the facts with her mother's illness. The only effect it had upon her was to estrange her from Hester, and in a slighter degree from her father also.
When she heard that Eugene and Annie were summoned to her mother's side, again she endeavored to share their cares; but Mr. Godfrey was fearful of suffering too great intercourse between Adelaide and Eugene, and used his utmost endeavors to dissuade her. He insisted that the physicians absolutely ordered that none should approach her save those she asked for. The father dreaded the judgment of the daughter when she should know the cause of her mother's trouble. He was accustomed to be looked up to by his children, and shrank from incurring the disapproval of this one in particular; for Adelaide had ever been considered the most talented and the most intellectual of the family. He had a sort of consciousness that to the mother's influence in veiling his foibles from his children's eyes, he owed much of that reverence with which they habitually approached him; and he could but feel that he had made but a poor return for a life of devotedness, when he refused to yield to the first{752}important demand she had ever made him, and that in favor of his own son.
But now Eugene had written to Adelaide to say her mother was calm, and would welcome her. Adelaide entered her father's house pale and trembling, an attendant supporting her.
"Is she still alive?" she whispered, as she saw her father; then, as if fearful he would still oppose her seeing Mrs. Godfrey's, she refused by a gesture to enter the sitting-room, but made her way at once up the broad staircase to the room her mother had ever been wont to occupy. She opened the door, and flinging herself on her knees by the side of the bed, took the pale hand, and, as she kissed it, said, with streaming eyes: "Ah! dear mother, why was I not permitted to come to you before?"
"And who forbade you, my love?"
"My father said the doctors—"
Mrs. Godfrey looked at her husband, who had followed Adelaide into the room; there was surprise and sorrow, but no anger on her countenance. She pressed Adelaide's hand and whispered, "Perhaps he was right, I was unconscious and delirious a long while, my poor child; but now you will stay with me the little time that I remain on earth."
"You feel better to-day, my dear mother," said Annie, hopefully.
"I do, but it cannot last; we must not deceive ourselves. I am glad to see my dear Adelaide, but I cannot talk to her yet."
The effort of saying even so much exhausted her; she lay back, and they watched long hours in silence by her pillow.
Day after day passed away, the loving children surrounding her, and Mr. Godfrey sharing their watch. All traces of excitement had gone, in the solemnity of that watch. Mrs. Godfrey seemed so thoroughly in peace, that that peace seemed to pass into the circle of hearts surrounding her. She became, however, perceptibly weaker everyday. Ten days after Adelaide's arrival she whispered to her one morning: "Tell your father I wish to speak to him."
Adelaide summoned her father. Whatever were the words spoken, they appeared to distress him very much. He gazed at his wife as though in a stupor. She held his hand and faintly whispered, "My last wishes, can you refuse them?" "No," said he, half choked, "he shall be sent for;" and he left her to seek Eugene. That evening a stranger was ushered by Eugene, as it were by stealth, into his mother's room. Annie alone was present. The last sacraments of the church were administered, and the stranger priest passed down the back staircase so secretly that none knew of or suspected his visit save those present and Mr. Godfrey, who had insisted on such secrecy being observed.
Adelaide had at length gathered all the facts concerning her brother being disinherited, and the effect the transaction had produced on Mrs. Godfrey's mind. A great feeling of repulsion for Hester was the consequence, and her manner soon betrayed symptoms of the feelings that swayed her.
"I can never again call her sister," she whispered, half-aloud, one day, in her meditation, by her mother's side; Mrs. Godfrey's eyes opened. "My children, love one another," she said. "Love, for he loved even sinners; forgive, for he forgave those who crucified him." She sank to sleep after pronouncing these words, and when the watchers bent over her to see what prolonged that sleep to so unusual a time, they found that the sweet purified spirit had already winged its way to the mansions of the blessed.
Of all the mourners there, perhaps the grief of Adelaide was the most violent. The feelings of Annie and Eugene were tempered by the hope that their mother was now happier than she had ever been before. Hester's were modified by the deep meditation in which she was plunged by the fact that her mother had received full insight into that faith of which she had caught but a glimpse, and of which{753}she so earnestly desired to know more. But she dared not question Eugene or Annie, for fear of angering her father and her mother! "O mother, pray for me!" was in her heart, and checked the outward demonstration of' her grief.
They were standing round the coffin, those four children, whom she had brought so faithfully through the cares and dangers of childhood! No pride of station had withdrawn her from fulfilling her nursery duties; no sloth, no command of riches had caused her to delegate to hireling hands the cultivation of their infant minds; riches to them had been as an accessory, not, as too often happens, causing a withdrawal of maternal offices. How had they requited her? Oh! happy they who can stand by the bier of those to whom they are bound by duty or by love, and feel no remorse for duty oft neglected.
Adelaide was standing on one side at the head of the coffin, rapt in grief, Eugene and Annie were on the other side. Hester at the foot absorbed in intense thought, but tearless and as it seemed to Adelaide not paying homage in her thoughts to that dear mother. "Was she even then dwelling on her own wild schemes?" The thought maddened Adelaide, and forgetting the self-control for which she was usually so remarkable, she in the overmastering impulse of the moment seized Hester's arm, led her to the head of the coffin, and, pointing to the sweet pale face before them, said in a frenzied tone, regardless of the presence of Mr. Godfrey, who just then entered the room: "And did you dare to wring the heart of that most noble woman? Was it for you, whom she loved so dearly, to crush her loving spirit, and then stand by so calmly contemplating her remains? How my heart loathes you!"
"Hush! hush! dear sister," said Eugene tenderly, as he disengaged her clasp from Hester, who fell nearly fainting into her father's arms. "Hush! Adelaide, hush! she bade us love each other; you have misconceived this matter. Come with me, I will explain it"—and he took her to another apartment, and tried to make her understand Hester's intentions of ultimately settling all according to equity, while Mr. Godfrey and Annie did their best, to restore Hester to her usual equanimity.
Mr. Godfrey was so much moved by this affront put upon his darling that he forgot his intention of keeping Mrs. Godfrey's change of religion secret, and in the evening he called Adelaide to his private study, and there explained that the delusions under which her dear mother had labored had no particular reference to Hester, but were caused by religion. "In fact,'" said; Mr. Godfrey, "what she wanted the day you came to summon me to her, was a Catholic priest. Of course I refused her nothing; the priest came that night, but secretly, out of respect to the reputation of the family."
"Was my mother a Catholic?"
"She became one latterly."
"And was it for her religion that you persecuted her?"
"Persecuted her! Why, Adelaide, how dare you apply such words to your father? Your mother was never persecuted; even when out of her mind she had everything she asked for, and as I tell you, a Catholic priest attended her the other evening. Persecuted, indeed!"
Adelaide cared not to pursue a theme which brought her out as her father's accuser, though the impression still remained on her mind that injustice had occasioned the illness and subsequent death of her mother, and this prevented her from recalling the offending words.
The father and daughter parted somewhat coldly that evening, nor were matters much mended by the family consultation held shortly afterward as to what was to become of Annie. Sir Philip's message was now first delivered to her, as Alfred Brookbank had arrived as his agent, with offers of settlement for Mr. Godfrey's approbation.
{754}
"And is Annie not to see her own children again?" asked the duchess, as she gazed on the speechless, the agonized face of her sister.
"So says Sir Philip."
"But have you reasoned with him on the subject? Have you protested against such a monstrous piece of tyranny?"
"It were useless, may it please your grace," interposed the soft low tones of Alfred Brookbank, who was secretly gloating in the agony of his victim. "It were perfectly useless. Sir Philip's hatred of papistry—"
"Please to speak with more respect of the Holy Catholic Church, Mr. Brookbank," interrupted the duchess.
"I beg pardon; I knew not that your grace—"
"It matters not what you knew," haughtily rejoined the duchess. "It behoves every man of common sense, or of common education, to speak respectfully of a faith which for so many centuries has formed the religion not only of the commonalty but of the heroes of the race. The names of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne, of Copernicus and Michael Angelo, with countless others, may weigh a little perhaps against the opinion of so enlightened an individual as Sir Philip Conway."
The withering sarcasm of tone with which this was uttered made Mr. Godfrey bite his lips. He felt at once that he had not lowered her mother in Adelaide's estimation by informing her of that mother's becoming a Catholic; and he began to wonder which would be the next seceder from rationalistic principle. "A curse is fallen upon our house," he again muttered between his teeth.
The conference was necessarily a painful one; but it was with indescribable surprise and emotion that the assembled family heard Mr. Godfrey propose that Annie should take refuge in the convent in which dwelt her friend Euphrasie.
"Why, papa;" whispered Hester, "have you changed your opinion of convents? You used to call them sinks of iniquity. Why do you wish to imprison Annie in one?"
"Hush, my dear," answered her father, in the lowest possible whisper, "all convents are not alike. I happen to know the antecedents of the superioress and of several of the nuns in this one; they are all ladies of high birth, and are altogether above suspicion. They are austere fanatics, that is all. Annie will take no vows, and there she will see the extent of the folly to which religious enthusiasm lays us open. If a twelvemonth's residence among the poor Clares does not set her brain in order, then she is irrecoverably lost to us—we may set her down as incurably insane."
While this little dialogue was going on, Eugene and Adelaide, jointly and severally, were urging Annie to make a home with one or other of themselves, each promising to do the utmost to regain for her the custody of her children; but Annie, while she mournfully thanked them for their kindness, decided that, at least till she had taken time for reflection, she would abide by her father's advice, that is, provided the sisterhood would consent to receive her.
After vainly endeavoring to shake her resolution, the duchess resolved on accompanying her to the north to see whether suitable arrangements could be made for her comfort.
It was well for Annie that the care of a sister watched over her during that sad journey, for sometimes her mind seemed almost to have lost its balance, and she would weep frantically over the loss of her little ones, as one who would not be comforted; then with a sudden revolution of feeling she would stop, and say, "Thy will be done, O Lord," and would begin to say her beads, as Eugene had taught her, with most edifying resignation. After awhile the thought of her little ones would make her weep anew, and again the thought of God would check her tears.
{755}
These alternations were for Annie alone, however. Adelaide felt unmitigated disgust at the barbarity which could sever a loving mother from her infants.
"As if those babes were safer with that bigoted, soft-pated Mrs. Bedford than with my intellectual, high-minded sister!" she thought. Certainly the duchess's horror of Catholicity had wonderfully abated of late. There was little said at first between the sisters on that three days' journey. But once or twice the exclamation on Adelaide's lips, "My mother a Catholic!" showed which direction her thoughts were taking. Once, when Annie was a little calmer than usual, she suddenly asked her: "What made my mother desire to be a Catholic, Annie?"
"The grace of God, as I humbly hope," answered her sister.
"The grace of God! What do you mean by that, Annie?"
"I mean the special provision with which God deigns to bless every human soul that desires it with knowledge and love of himself. Adam had this grace conferred on him at his creation. He lost it, not only for himself, but for us also. But Christ has repurchased it for all who come to him. My mother heard this voice pleading within her for a higher life. She listened and obeyed. This is what theologians call co-operation with grace. The grace of God needs man's co-operation to be efficacious, because God will not compel the human will. He desires free service."
"Ah, yes," said the duchess, "all other were a mockery. Nature is bound by stern, inevitable law; that is easily seen: but intelligent love must have freedom for its sphere of action, or it ceases to be the love of intelligence; that, too, I comprehend. I thought your words intended to convey some mysterious action of God on the soul not given to all men."
"All do not correspond with it, by a large majority, I fear," said Annie.
"And think you God speaks to all alike?" asked Adelaide.
"Theologians say that a grace corresponded to merits another," answered Annie, "and that one rejected or unused often loses that grace, so slighted. This, at least, we know: God loves us all, and places at our option higher degrees of spiritual attainment than we oftentimes profit by."
"God! What is God?" murmured Adelaide. "Truly aDeus absconditusfor man."
"'He who followeth me walketh not in darkness,' said the Man-God," replied Annie. "God was a hidden God for the nations of olden time, perhaps; but for us, Adelaide, he is God manifested in the flesh! and to as many as receive him gives he power to become 'sons of God.'"
Where was Adelaide's sharpness at repartee as of old? She meditated now instead of replying; and Annie solaced her own sorrows by praying for her sister's conversion. It was in something like tranquillity of spirit that, she reached the district in which the convent was situated.
The next day the duchess accompanied her sister to the dwelling of the sisterhood. They found it even poorer than they had anticipated. When it had been first contemplated, Eugene had handed over a well-filled purse to M. Bertolot with strict injunction to, procure everything needful; but Eugene's idea of what was needed differed from that of the superioress. "We did not take vows of poverty," she said, "to live with every elegance like ladies. The spirit of our holy father, St. Francis, as also that of our beloved mother and foundress, St. Clare, requires the utmost plainness and poverty compatible with existence." Eugene's large offering was refused, and when he on his part refused to replace it in his pocket, it was distributed among the sick poor.
{756}
Euphrasie received her friends with open arms, and conducted them to the superioress with love and respect. Many of the sisterhood had now gathered together, and even postulants were not wanting. The superioress greeted the ladies with calm dignity, and entered with much feeling into the account given to Euphrasie in her presence of Mrs. Godfrey's conversion and happy death.
"And am I to understand, dear ladies," said the superioress, "that you also share these blessed dispositions?"
"Annie is a Catholic," answered the duchess, "and a persecuted one. Sir Philip has shut the doors on the mother of his children because she has embraced Catholicity."
Euphrasie, by a sudden impulse, rose and knelt by Annie's side; kissing her hands and bathing them with her tears. "Now, God be praised for all his mercies!" she said: "How shall we welcome you, dear martyr, for his sake?"
Annie could only reply by returning Euphrasie's caresses and affection. She placed her arm round her friend, and compelled her to sit by her side.
"Will you ask the reverend mother to let me stay with you awhile, dear Euphrasie?" she said.
"What! Here? here in the convent? in this poor place?" replied Euphrasie. "You who have been, cradled in luxury and reared in abundance? You know not what you ask, dear friend; it is impossible."
Annie looked at the superioress; she read more promise there. "Dear reverend mother," she said, "Almighty God has seen how unfit I am as yet to train my beloved children in the narrow path of mortification and of humiliation, trodden by our Divine Master. He has sent me to learn it of you. Will you accept me as your disciple in Jesus Christ? At least, I can promise you reverence and submission."
"You are welcome, most welcome, my daughter," said the superioress, "and may Almighty God, in his own good time, restore your children to you, to be brought up in the faith and love of Christ."
"Thank you, dear mother; and if you and the dear sisters will assist me by your prayers, doubtless he will. He has but sent me here to school awhile, that I may be able to teach them rightly. I stand as yet but on the threshold of the church; I have looked in and seen her glories, but selfish and worldly as I have been from childhood, I scarce know how to share in her unworldly triumphs."
"Dear cousin," said Euphrasie, "you must not defame yourself. You were ever kind and generous, and now your humility will surely bring you a blessing. We will try to make you happy here."
"Indeed, yes," said the superioress, "it is a great consolation to us to receive you. Your heart, so long accustomed to the incredulity of the age, needs rest—such rest as is produced by dwelling on the love of Christ for us. After a while it will become for you a necessity to reciprocate that love, by pouring yourself out as it were in deeds of charity and kindness for the pure love of him who died for you. Once accustomed to converse familiarly with him, you will no longer regard him as divided from yourself, but as one same self with you, so that with St. Paul you may be able to exclaim, 'Ilive now, notI, but Christ liveth in me.' Yes, my dear daughter, from him you may hope all things for your children as well as for yourself. Detach yourself from this world, seek Christ crucified, that you may repose surely in his love."
Adelaide listened and wondered. She looked around at the bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, the plain deal tables, and the common rush-chairs. "Is the rest of the house like this?" she asked of herself: "and am I to leave Annie here?"
Begging the superioress to excuse her for an instant, she drew Annie apart, and urged upon her that it was useless for her to subject herself to such privations as these.
{757}
"Come home with me, dear Annie, I beg of you."
"Nay, sister, think not so meanly of me, as to deem that I cannot endure for a few weeks or months, privations which these dear ladies suffer always."
"Oh! they are nuns, you know."
"But that does not alter, their nature, and once, they were in the world, rich, titled, honored. I would learn of them what has given them power thus to trample the world beneath their feet. Leave me for a while, my sister; if I find the life too hard for me, I will come to you."
"You promise?"
"I do, believe me, Adelaide."
And with this promise Adelaide was obliged to be content. She prepared to wend her way homewards. As she rose for that purpose, the superioress said: "Your grace will have a solitary journey. May I venture to offer you a book to beguile the tedium of the way?" Adelaide smilingly assented, and on getting in her carriage, Euphrasie placed into her hands Avrillon's meditations for every day in Lent. Absorbed at first in her own thoughts, Adelaide, heeded the book but little: but after a while, to relieve ennui, she began its perusal, and was soon astonished at the interest it excited within her breast.
On the morning of Annie and Adelaide's departure for the convent, Mr. Godfrey had ordered breakfast for himself in his library, and had summoned Hester to attend him, on the pretext of not feeling well, but in reality to avoid a parting scene with his children. Hester, on the other hand, dreaded nothing more than they should depart without farewell; she had keenly felt Adelaide's words beside her mother's coffin, but in despite of her efforts could not effect an interview which should dispel the ill-feeling that oppressed her. Her father's jealousy of her holding any private intercourse with the rest of the family on the one hand, and the coldness of Adelaide on the other, seemed to present insurmountable obstacles. At length she heard the carriage draw up, and the voices departing; hastily she quitted the breakfast table, and rushed into the hall. The travellers were already there; she approached Annie with tears in her eyes. Annie was too sad herself to be angry just then, she imprinted on her sister's forehead the silent kiss her gesture pleaded for; but Adelaide went forward and seated herself in the carriage, waving her hand for a general adieu, and Hester fell back weeping on her brother's shoulder as the vehicle drove away from the door.
"O Eugene! I had no hand in this; tell me at least that you believe me," sobbed the poor girl.
"I do believe you, and so will Adelaide after a time; take comfort, Hester."
"I cannot, with them all against me. Oh! who could ever dream our love for each other could melt away to this?"
"It is not, melted a way, dear sister, only obscured; it will one day return warmer and brighter than ever."
"Then you, you will write to me, you will not cast me off?"
"Never, never will I cast you off! never cease to love you!"
"Then, Eugene, you will help me also; I want to read, to know the cause of these unhappy divisions."
"And my father?"
"O Eugene! that is the misery my father must not know. Eugene, I love my father; there can be nothing wrong in that, he has only me now. We cannot help that; but I must be true to him, I cannot break his heart. He must not know we correspond or that I read your books, or that I am thinking on the subjects he hates so much. He need not know it; I am a woman now, I have a right to my{758}freedom. If I conceal my thought, it is out of love to him; you know well how it would pain him were he to suspect I read a work that treats on religion."
"Our correspondence must be secret; then?"
"I fear it must; at least till my father gets over this miserable prejudice. You can write and send to me under cover to Norah, my little maid. I will send her to you presently for some books, and now good-by, my father will be wanting me. Pray for us both, Eugene."
Mr. Godfrey was considerably unhinged by the change that had taken place in his family, and he watched Hester closely. She had truly said she was now his last hope. That she was dejected at her mother's death could not surprise him or any one, but that her sprightliness had altogether departed, that her energy was depressed, her color faded, and her appetite gone, were sources of great anxiety. Again he took her to Yorkshire, to endeavor to reinspire her with interest in the promotion of the "March of Intellect."
Hester did not feel justified in withdrawing her interest or exertions from the institutions which she had raised and fostered; but it must be confessed that these institutions were gradually assuming the character of mere money-making factories. Mr. Godfrey, dissatisfied with certain losses, had engaged a man of business to overlook the whole concern, and in addition to a stipulated sum, this person was to receive a certain percentage of the profits. This rendered him particularly sharp-sighted as to doing matters economically; that is, with the fewest number of hands, at the lowest rate of wages, and oftentimes employing children in lieu of adults.
"This is altogether, foreign to our first idea," said Hester, "and I do not approve of it at all."
"It cannot be helped, my dear; no enterprise that will not pay can be proceeded with in the long run."
"But these children shut up in the close rooms at eight or ten years of age, for such long hours! it will numb every faculty they possess."
"If their parents are willing to permit it, I do not see what we have to do with it."
"O father! ignorant people often sell their children, without knowing the harm they do; but this cannot be the way in which the world is to improve."
"You were not satisfied with the results of your new plan, which did not make money. I have put the matter into Mr. Fisher's hands for a while, because, I know that in his hands, if money is to be made, it will be made: his talent for business is unrivalled."
"Money is not the principle of progression."
"Nothing can be done without it, at any rate."
These discussions annoyed Mr. Godfrey the more because he felt the inconsistency between the past idea and the present practice. On the other hand, Hester was not in possession of the principle she was seeking; that was acknowledged with regret on her part, though she by no means gave up the search, and still less rested contented with the inferior motive of placing all development, all future improvement on the mere basis of money-making.
Among Mr. Godfrey's friends, one of the most intimate, because the most scientific after the fashion of this world's science, was a Mr. Spencer—a gentleman whose works had already acquired for him a great share of reputation, and who was gradually acquiring great influence over Mr. Godfrey. He was a man of about five-and-thirty years of age, being some twelve years older than our Hester, whom he greatly admired, notwithstanding that he found her mind a little difficult to understand. Perhaps he liked her the better that she puzzled him, that she took different views from him. Certain it is that he haunted her society whenever he could find an excuse, and Mr. Godfrey seemed particularly well pleased to find them together, as he{759}hoped that interviews with such a learned man would dissipate any tendency to religion, especially the Catholic religion, that Hester might be fostering in consequence of the proclivities of her mother and of the rest of the family in that direction.
. . . . .
'Twas autumn, a walk through the woods had brought the trio together, and together they returned to the house; the gusty and fitful wind scattering in their path the tinted leaves that fell like showers from the trees beneath which they were passing. Wild clouds were hurrying through space, as if summoned suddenly to assist at some tempestuous commotion, and though many miles distant was the sea, the roar of waves was heard beating on the far-off shore; every sign betokened that a storm was at hand. The pedestrians hurried to the house, and scarcely had they reached it, than impulsively they went to the window to gaze in mute amazement at the scene. A sudden wind was uprooting trees, unroofing houses, and carrying off all things before it. An old barn long doomed to be pulled down, which was but awaiting hands to perform the work, suddenly reeled like a drunken man, and in a few moments more fell to the ground with a great crash. The servant girls screamed in the hall, "the men went in for shelter, they must be crushed to death!" The door was opened that the serving-men might rush to the rescue, but the wind swept like a tornado through the hall, tiles were rattling from the house-top, bricks tumbling from the chimneys. To leave the house was impossible, none could stand against such a blast. A large boarded roof that was being prepared by the carpenters was carried off the scaffold, and after being for some time balanced in the air as if it were a paper kite, fell at length with a loud splash into the lake some quarter of a mile distant from the spot whence it was first uplifted. The scene was at once terrific and sublime, and but for the screams and sobs of the girls, who feared to have some father, brother, or friend buried beneath the fallen building, Hester could have enjoyed the spectacle; but she was occupied in endeavoring to soothe the panic-stricken tremblers, and for consolation what could she say? She could but stand by and sympathize, and utter words of hope, meaningless because unfelt. It was a relief when the storm abated to find that all the men had been able to quit the building at the first creaking of the rafters, and by crawling on all fours had reached a place where they lay safely till the storm had passed—all save one, and he was protected by the manner in which the beams fell over him, they being prevented from falling perpendicularly by some obstacles, and formed a sloping defensive shelter for the young man who happened to find himself in that particular corner, from which, when the storm abated, he was extricated by his companions, with no other injury suffered than the alarm endured for several hours; and in this alarm he had many sharers, for few of the neighbours could rest in peace until he was drawn forth unhurt.
A feeling of relief pervaded the party as with closed shutters, drawn curtains, and every appurtenance of comfort, they drew round the bright coal fire, which shed a glowing, cheering warmth throughout the apartment—while the rain which had succeeded to this storm of wind was pattering against the windows, enhancing the comfort within by a sense of dreariness without.
"How remorseless is nature!" said Mr. Spence, as at length the silence which had pervaded the three friends became almost painful; "decay, change, transition, pain, with transient gleams of beauty, as if to render the surrounding gloom more painful still, and no escape: how remorseless is nature!"
"All things have their bright side, I believe," she said, "even so terrible a storm as to-day's. It is good to feel a grand sensation sometimes, it stirs up the very depths of one's being."
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"How would it have been if those men had been crushed to death, or worse, hopelessly maimed for life?"
"That did not happen. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."
"But similar events often do happen. The battle-field, the pestilence, man's evil passions, or the remorseless sea tossing man's feeble bark in sport against the rocks, cause many a grand sensation that is not good. See in that newly settled swamp the settler's wife surprised amid her household drudgeries with a startling shriek, and, hurrying to the water's edge, to find a rattlesnake coiled round her prattler's leg, inflicting the painful sting that causes the innocent child to expire in torture: do you call that good?"
"It does not follow that there is no good because we see it not! The design of the creation may involve a hidden good to be evolved out of what seems evil."
"And meantime the longer we pursue our researches, the more we become convinced that an all-pervading inexorable law governs events by necessary connection; that there is no resisting the force of this law, no disarming it. All that we can do is to study it, and take what comfort we can individually by an intelligent application of it to ourselves."
"And our neighbor's happiness is to tell for nothing?"
"You will do no good by forcing any system on men for which they are not prepared," said Mr. Spence. "Ideas remain inoperative when the civilization or intelligence to which it is addressed is unequal to its realization; practice does not depend on theories, but on development, on individual assimilation of the principles, if I may be permitted to use this word. For instance, moral theories are ever the same. The Hindoo, the Chinaman, the follower of Zoroaster and the transcribers of the precepts of Menu, declare with the Jew and the Christian, that the law is to be honest, virtuous, heedful of others' pleasure or good, to seek justice, love mercy, reverence age, and submit to all lawful authority, etc.—each precept requiring a willing obedience; yet where are the fruits to be found?"
"But do men believe these precepts to be the rule of right?"
"Theoretically they are not disputed, but practically man is made by the external objects that surround him. Give society a system below its advancement, it rises superior to it; give it one above it, it does not come up to it. This is observable in nations. Among the lower order of French Catholics there is less of bigotry and civilization, with more of the real charity enjoined by religion, than among the lower order of Scotch Protestants, despite the theory of their theology. [Footnote 206] Again, the Swedes and the inhabitants of some of the Swiss Cantons are less civilized than the French, and therefore it avails them little that they three centuries ago adopted a creed to which the force of habit and the influence of tradition now oblige them to cling. Whoever has travelled in these countries will see how little the inhabitants have benefited by their religion, while in France you will see an illiberal religion accompanied by liberal views, and a creed full of superstitions professed by a people among whom superstition is comparatively rare." [Footnote 206]
[Footnote 206: See Buckle's Civilization in England. Vol i. pages 191-193, from which above is extracted. (There are two references and only one footnote on this page.—Transcriber)]
"That would rather go to prove Catholicity to be better than Protestanism," said Hester; "at least, if liberal views and tolerant actions be a proof of the advancement of society."
Mr. Godfrey bit his lips, and Mr. Spence, suddenly mindful of certain proceedings in his friend's family not exactly of the tolerative description, hastily essayed to cover his mistake:
"Practically," he said, "men's religious demonstrations are a thing apart from their theory, and are governed by the character of individual mental development, rather than (what they are assumed to be) a power governing development."
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"I think that proposition illogical. If religion acts at all, it must act according to its character as a power. Granting that with many it is a dead letter, without any action, yet with those it does influence, its action must be the legitimate result of its doctrine; and if the civilization resulting from Catholicity is superior, is not that the superior agency?"
"You forget how the guardians of the Catholic faith have ever persecuted science; that proves them intolerant."
"Not necessarily. The guardians of a faith, amid a crude, undeveloped people, may well be jealous of novel notions, dispersed out of their connexion amid an unthinking, unreflecting populace. If the object is to raise people from the phase of their present existence to a higher phase, our late experiments have shown that it needs caution in disturbing present moral influences. The mass are not philosophers; they will not travel the whole round of a series to trace the whole chain of what you call the necessary connection. Were I to begin my experiment again I should take the highest motive then active on the mind, and try to build higher on that. The first results of science are usually destructive, and therefore not fit for the masses; something must be built up again ere we present it to them. As it is, these masses seem only to amuse themselves by hurling the stones of the ruined theory at the world and at each other, destroying much, but advancing nothing good."
"But philosophy must not be controlled. Science must not be impeded in its onward march; the hopes of ultimate civilization lie in free investigation. The evil is transient—the good permanent."
"Yet you admit that a system may be in advance of a people?"
"Yes, and forerunners are martyrs, sacrificed to the ignorance, to the inaptitude of the age in which they live; yet there is a sort of necessity for their existence, the law for which is not as yet discovered. Future ages will probably be more enlightened on this head. All that we know is, that there is a law for all evolutions, a practical principle—if we could only trace it—to which every action, every development may be referred. Statistical tables show us that even crime follows method. In a given number of people in a given state of civilization there will be a certain percentage of murders, a certain percentage of thefts, robberies, and the like; nay, a certain average number of suicides. You may verify these facts by comparing the statistical tables of large cities such as London and Paris, [Footnote 207] for a definite series of years.
[Footnote 207: See Buckle's Civilization in England. Vol. i. page 17et seq.]
"And through what agency is this effected?" asked Hester, in amazement.
"Nay, that I can scarcely answer save in general terms. The cause of law, the cause of evolution, the cause of everything is utterly unknown. The most we can do is to observe phenomena, to class them, and then note the sequences which form necessary connection together; in this way we discover the law, but beyond that science can affirm nothing. The cause we can know nothing, and affirm nothing of, save its bare existence as the incomprehensible cause of all phenomena. The sole possible predication is merely that he, or more properly it, is."
"Why, surely the cause is God," said Hester, who, new as she was to a personal recognition of God's rights to her own devotion, had never dreamed of doubting, that "absolute intelligence" ruled "as cause."
"God," said Mr. Spence, "is too indefined a term for science, or rather there are ideas connected with the term which we cannot scientifically apply to the unknowable. We cannot affirm of this unknowable that he is either matter or mind; because this would be to degrade him, by representing him in terms of our finite and human conceptions. Matter and mind are in fact but phenomena of which the unknowable is the unknown cause.{762}He is of a far higher nature than matter or mind, for he is the common cause of both. Of this nature we can form no idea whatever. We cannot attribute to the unknowablereason; since that would represent him as finite, for all reasoning is limitation. We cannot affirm of him either justice or mercy; because these are words borrowed from the human, and to express the unknown in such terms is anthropomorphism and blasphemy. Such a religion is but one grade higher than the ancient theologies that represent God with hands and feet and other human members."
"Stay," said Hester, "I cannot admit all your assumptions. That the cause is the great I Am, of whose essential being we know nothing, is doubtless true, as also that finitude cannot comprehend infinitude: but that it is wrong or blasphemous to speak of him in the language of earth, I cannot see. We know the expression is inadequate, that it is metaphorical, an application of the less to signify the greater, but it is the only voice we have, and the degree of worship depends on the spirit of reverence which prompts the utterance, as the freedom from idolatry must depend on the spirit of appreciative love and submission with which that worship is offered.
"But," said Mr. Spence, "all theologies set out with the great truth, that the deity is incomprehensible. But they immediately contradict and stultify themselves by proceeding to assign him attributes. In this way all religions become suicidal as well as irreligious. The only true religion is to worship God as the unknown and forever unknowable. True religion and science agree in this, that the cause of all phenomena is the unknown. Science, in affirming the cause to be material or mental, becomes unscientific, just as religion, by pretending to reveal his nature or attributes, becomes irreligious."
"Pardon me," said Hester, "I think you are begging the question. Because we know nothing of the interior being of God, it does not follow that we may not discover the relationships which he wishes to establish between himself and ourselves, and to the manifestations of these relationships we may in all reverence and with consistency assign attributes. Within himself God is the great I Am, unknown and unknowable to us. Reason, justice, mercy, probably find there, no exercise. Their exercise is outside in creation; for all creation is outside God, an expression of his power, as of every other attribute justly assigned him. Creation itself is limited: man's expression more so yet: but we do not therefore believe in the limitation of the deity. We cannot conceive infinity, still less express it; still the idea exists, and our minds invest the deity with it in reverential awe, not in blasphemy."
"You have given the modern theology assuming God to be a spirit and a creative spirit; and assuming also that the creation is a work of his design. You do not perceive that you make God the author of evil as well as good, and that you assume matter was created. Now, the eternity of matter would be no greater enigma than the eternity of mind; and we do not know whether the cause be 'matter or mind.' It is unknown, as it is also unknowable."
"Why this is sheer Atheism," said the startled Hester.
"Not so! This doctrine is neither Atheism nor Theism. It is merely the highest and last formula, at once, of science and religion, ceasing to represent the unknowable in any conceptions of human thought, and thus leaving free scope for worship, which (worship) is not assertion, but humility and transcendent wonder."
"Nay," said Hester; "religion, as far as I can make it out, consists in acknowledging the relationships which God has established: first, between himself and man, and secondly, between man and man. Religion, if true, is a manifestation or revelation if not of God's essential nature, yet of his will{763}in man's regard. The discrepancies between our conceptions of what is evil and evil itself may explain your difficulty about God being the author of evil. It may be that mere change, mere transition, is not evil, even when accompanied by some pain. I read yesterday that the only real evil was, a voluntary act on the part of a rational creature, performed contrary to the known will of God."
"That is so evidently a theological subtlety," said Mr. Spence, "science deigns it no reply."
"And yet," said Hester, "your last and highest formula, which refuses to represent the unknowable in any conception of human thought, bows down in worship and transcendent wonder to the 'cause' which makes murder, suicide, and every species of human wickedness result from 'A Law'!
"Because we believe that ultimately that law will evolve good. It appears a fact now thoroughly established, that all the organisms we are acquainted with, have been evolved by a gradual process rather than produced by a series of special creations, as has been so long the theory. And the evolution tends upward; that is, to produce new and more complicated organisms as time speeds on. This must in the end evolve higher good."
"Do you mean that the lesser is ever producing the greater; and that in the aggregation of insentient matter life is evolved?"
"Does not the infant grow into the man by the aggregation of insentient matter assimilated into his being in the shape of food?"
"Yes, but life was there already; character and power, expansion and development it receives, but no new function."
"That is not so certain; or rather it is certain that evolution constantly manifests changes, which can only be accounted for on the ground of a great universal law, a law ever producing diversity of phenomena in unity of operation."
"But I do not see that it explains anything of the ultimate cause."
"Have I not already said that the cause is unknown and unknowable?"