"Now, Charles," interposed Mrs. Lewis, touching her husband's arm, "why will you say what you do not mean, just for the sake of being disagreeable? You know, Mr. Southard, that he cares no more for Rome than he does for Pekin, and knows no more about it, indeed. The fact is, he has the greatest respect for our church—may I saymilitant?"
"Sweet peacemaker!" exclaimed Mr. Lewis, delighted with the neat little sting at the end of his wife's speech.
Aurelia lifted her cup, and interposed with a laughing quotation:
"'Here's a health to all those that we love. Here's a health to all them that love us. Here's a health to all those that love them that love those that love them that love those that love us.'"
This was drunk with acclamations, and peace restored.
After a while Mr. Lewis managed, or happened, to find Margaret apart.
"I protest I never had a worse opinion of myself than I have tonight," he said. "There I had promised Louis and my wife to let religion alone, and not get up a skirmish with the minister for at least a week after you came; and I meant to keep my promise. But you see what my resolutions are worth. I am sincerely sorry if I have vexed you."
He looked so sorry, and spoke so frankly, that Margaret could not help giving him a pleasant answer, though she had been displeased.
"The fact is," he went on, lowering his voice, "I have seen so much cant, and hypocrisy, and inconsistency in religion that it has disgusted me with the whole business. I may go too far. I don't doubt that there are honest men and women in the churches; but to my mind they are few and far between. I've nothing to say against Mr. Southard, and I don't want any one else to speak against him. I say uglier things to his face than I would say behind his back. He's a good man, according to his light; but you must permit me to say that it is a Bengal-light to my eyes. I can't stand it. It turns me blue all through."
"Perhaps you do not understand him," Margaret suggested. "May be you haven't given him a chance to explain."
"I tried to be fair," was the reply. "Now Southard," said I, "tell me what you want me to believe, and I'll believe if I can." Well, the first thing he told me was, that I must give up my reason. 'By George, I won't!' said I, and there was an end to the catechism. Of course, if I set my reason aside, I might be made to believe that chalk is cheese. Perhaps I am stubborn and material, as he says; but I am what God made me; and I won't pretend to be anything else. I believe that there is somewhere a way for us all—a way that we shall know is right, when once we get into it. These fishers of men ought to remember that whales are not caught with trout-hooks, and that it isn't the whale's fault if there's a good deal of blubber to get through before you reach the inside of him. St. Paul let fly some pretty sharp harpoons. I can't get 'em out of me for my life. And, for another kind of man, I like Beecher. His bait isn't painted flies, but fish, a piece of yourself. But the trouble with him is, there's no barb on his catch. You slip off as easily as you get on."
Margaret was glad when the others interposed and put an end to this talk. To her surprise, she had nothing to reply to Mr. Lewis's objections. And not only that, but, while he spoke, she perceived in her own mind a faint echo to his dissatisfaction. Of course it must be wrong, and she was glad to have the conversation put an end to.
They had music, Aurelia playing with a good deal of taste some perfectly harmless pieces. While she listened, Miss Hamilton's glance wandered about the rooms, finding them quite to her taste. The first impertinent gloss of everything had worn off, and each article had mellowed into its place, like the colors of an old picture. There was none of that look we sometimes see, of everything having been dipped into the same paint-pot. The furniture was rich in material and beautiful in shape; the upholstery a heavy silk and wool, the colors deep and harmonious, nothing too fine for use. The dull amber of the walls was nearly covered with pictures, book-cases, cabinets, and brackets; there was every sort of table, from the two large central ones with black marble tops, piled with late books and periodicals, to the tiny teapoys that could be lifted on a finger, marvels of gold, and japanning, and ingenious Chinese perspective. On the black marble mantel-piece near her were a pair of silver candelebra, heirlooms in the family, and china vases of glowing colors, purple, and rose, and gold. There was more bronze than parian; there were curtains wherever curtains could be; and withal, there was plentiful space to get about, and for the ladies to display their trains.
All this her first glance took in with a sense of pleasure. Then she looked deeper, and perceived friendship, ease, security, all that make the soul of home. Deeper yet, then, to the vague longing for a love, a security, a rest exceeding the earthly. One who has suffered much can never again feel quite secure, but shrinks from delight almost as much as from pain.
She turned to Mr. Southard, who sat beside her. "I am thinking how miserably we are the creatures of circumstance," she said, in her earnestness forgetting how abrupt she might seem. "When we are troubled, everything is dark; when we are happy, everything that approaches casts its shadow behind, and shows a sunny front."
He regarded her kindly, pleased with her almost confidential manner. "There is but one escape from such slavery," he said. "When we set the sun of righteousness in the zenith of our lives, then shadows are annihilated, not hidden, but annihilated."
When Margaret went up-stairs that night, she knelt before her open window, and leaned out, feeling, rather than seeing, the brooding, starless sky, soft and shadowy, like wings over a nest. Her soul uplifted itself blindly, almost painfully, beating against its ignorance. There was something out of sight and reach, which she wanted to see and to touch. There was one hidden whom she longed to thank and adore.
"O brooding wings!" she whispered, stretching out her hands. "O father and mother-bird over the nest where the little ones lie in the sweet, sweet dark!"
Words failed. She knew not what to say. "I wish that I could pray!" she thought, tears overflowing her eyes.
Margaret did not know that she had prayed.
The days were well arranged in the Granger mansion. Breakfast was a movable feast, and silent for the most part. The members of the family broke their fast when and as they liked, often with a book or paper for company.
Most persons feel disinclined to talk in the morning, and are social only from necessity. This household recognized and respected the instinct. One could always hold one's tongue there. If they did not follow the old Persian rule never to speak till one had something to say worth hearing, they at least kept silence when they felt so inclined.
Luncheon was never honored by the presence of the gentlemen, except that on rare occasions Mr. Southard came out of his study to join the ladies, who by this time had found their tongues. They preferred his usual custom of taking a scholarly cup of tea in the midst of his books.
To the natural woman an occasional gossip is a necessity; and if ever these three ladies indulged in that pardonable weakness, it was over their luncheon. At six o'clock all met at dinner, and passed the evening together. This disposition of time left the greater part of the day free, for each one to spend as he chose, and brought them together again at the close of the day, more or lest tired, always glad to meet, often with something to say.
Margaret found herself fully and pleasantly occupied. Besides translating, she had again set up her easel, and spent an hour or two daily at her former pretty employment. The value of her services increased, she found, in proportion as she grew indifferent to rendering them; and she could now select her own work, and dictate terms. But her most delightful occupation was the teaching her three little pupils.
There are two ways of teaching children. One is to seek to impose on them our own individuality, to dogmatize, in utter unconsciousness that they are the most merciless of critics, frequently the keenest of observers, and that they do not so much lack ideas, as the power of expression. Such teachers climb on to a pedestal, and talk complacently downward at pupils who, perhaps, do not in the least consider them classical personages. We cannot impose on children unless we can dazzle them, sometimes not even then.
The other mode is to stand on their own platform, and talk up, not logically, according to Kant or Hamilton, but in that circuitous and inconsequent manner which is often the most effectual logic with children. We all know that the greatest precision of aim is attained through a spiral bore; and perhaps these young minds oftener reach the mark in that indirect manner, than they would by any more formal process.
This was Miss Hamilton's mode of teaching and influencing children, and it was as fascinating to her as to them. She treated them with respect, never laughed at their crude ideas, did not require of them a self-control difficult for an adult to practice, and never forgot that some ugly duck might turn out to be a swan. But where she did assert authority, she was absolute; and she was merciless to insolence and disobedience.
"I want cake. I don't like bread and butter," says Dora.
Mrs. James fired didactic platitudes at the child, Aurelia coaxed, and Mrs. Lewis preached hygiene. Miss Hamilton knew better than either. She sketched a bright word-picture of waving wheat-fields over-buzzed by bees, over-fluttered by birds, starred through and through with little intrusive flowers that had no business whatever there, but were let stay; of the shaking mill where the wheat was ground, and the gay stream that laughed, and set its shining shoulder to the great wheel, and pushed, and ran away, blind with foam; of the yeasty sponge, a pile of milky bubbles.She told of sweet clover-heads, red and white, and the cow and the bees seeing who should get them first. 'I want them for my honey,' says the bee. 'And I want them for my cream,' says Mooly. And they both made a snatch, and Mooly got the clover, and perhaps a purple violet with it, and the cream got the sweetness of them, and then it was churned, and there was the butter! She described the clean, cool dairy, full of a ceaseless flicker of light and shade from the hop-vines that swung outside the window, and waved the humming-birds away, of pans and pans of yellow cream, smooth and delicious, of fresh butter just out of the churn, glowing like gold through its bath of water, of pink and white petals of apple-blossoms drifting in on the soft breeze, and settling—"who knows but a pink, crimped-up-at-the-edges petal may have settled on this very piece of butter? Try, now, if it doesn't taste apple-blossomy."
Nonsense, of course, when viewed from a dignified altitude; but when looked up at from a point about two feet from the ground, it was the most excellent sense imaginable. To these three little girls, Dora, Agnes, and Violet, Miss Hamilton was a goddess.
Margaret did not neglect her own mind in those happy days. Mr. Southard marked out for her a course of reading in which, it is true, poetry and fiction, with a few shining exceptions, were tabooed; but metaphysics was permitted; and history enjoined tome upon tome, striking octaves up the centuries, and dying away in tinkling mythologies. She read conscientiously, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with a half-acknowledged weariness.
Mr. Southard was a severe Mentor. As he did not spare himself, so he did not spare others, still less Margaret. She failed to perceive, what was plain to the others, that, by virtue of her descent, he considered her his especial charge, and was trying to form her after his notions. She acquiesced in all his requirements, half from indifference, half from a desire to please everybody, since she was herself so well pleased; and then forgot all about him. It was out of his power to trouble her save for a moment.
"You yield too much to that man," Mrs. Lewis said to her one day. "He is one of those positive persons who cannot help being tyrannical."
"He has a fine mind," said Margaret absently.
"Yes," the lady acknowledged in a pettish tone. "But if he would send a few pulses up to irrigate his brain, it would be an improvement."
Of course Mr. Southard spoke of religion to his pupil, and urged on her the duty of being united with the church.
"I cannot be religious, as the church requires," she said uneasily, dreading lest he might overcome her will without convincing her reason. "I think that it is something cabalistic."
"Your grandfather, and your father and mother did not find it so," the minister said reprovingly.
Margaret caught her breath with pain, and lifted her hand in a quick, silencing gesture. "I never bury my dead!" she said; and after a moment added, "It may be wrong, but this religion seems to me like a strait-jacket. I like to read of David dancing before the ark, of dervishes whirling, of Shakers clapping their hands, of Methodists singing at the tops of their voices 'Glory Hallelujah!' or falling into trances. Religion is not fervent enough for me. It does not express my feelings. I hardly know what I need. Perhaps I am all wrong."
She stopped, her eyes filling with tears of vexation.
But even as the drops started, they brightened; for, just in season to save her from still more pressing exhortation, Mr. Granger sauntered across the room, and put some careless question to the minister.
Mr. Southard recollected that he had to lecture that evening, and left the room to prepare himself.
"I am so glad you came!" Margaret said, "I was on the point of being bound, and gagged, and blindfolded."
Mr. Granger took the chair that the minister had vacated, and drew up to him a little stand on which he leaned his arms, "I perceived that I was needed," he said. "There was no mistaking your besieged expression; and I saw, too, that look in Mr. Southard's face which tells that he is about to pile up an insurmountable argument. I do not think that you will be any better for having religious discussions with him. You will only be fretted and uneasy. Mr. Southard is an excellent man, and a sincere Christian; but he is in danger of mistaking his own temperament for a dogma."
"If I thought that, then I shouldn't mind so much," Margaret said. "But I have been taking for granted that he is right and I wrong, and trying to let him think for me. The result is, that instead of being convinced, I have only been irritated. I must think for myself, whether I wish to or not. Now he circumscribes my reading so. It is miscellaneous, I know; but I am curious about everything in the universe. I don't like closed doors. He thinks my curiosity trivial and dangerous, and reminds me that a rolling stone gathers no moss."
"And I would ask, with the canny Scotchman,'what good does the moss do the stone?'" Mr. Granger replied. "The fact is, you've got to do just as I did with him. He and I fought that battle out long ago, and now he lets me alone, and we are good friends. Be as curious as you like. I heard him speak with disapproval of your going to the Jewish synagogue last week, and I dare say you resolved not to go again. Go, if you wish; and don't ask his permission. He frowned on the Greek anthology, and you laid it aside. Take it up again if you like. Even pagan flowers catch the dews of heaven. Your own good taste and delicacy will be a sufficient censor in matters of reading."
"Now I breathe!" Margaret said joyfully. "Some people can bear to be so hemmed in; but I cannot. It does me harm. If I am denied a drop of water, which, given, would satisfy me, at once I thirst for the ocean. I cannot help it. It is my way."
"Don't try to help it," Mr. Granger replied decisively; "or, above all, don't allow any one else to try to help it for you. I have no patience with such impositions. It is an insult to humanity, and an insult to Him who created humanity, for any one person to attempt to think for another. Obedience and humility are good only when they are voluntary, and are practised at the mandate of reason. There are people who never go out of a certain round, never want to. They are born, they live, and they die, in the mental and moral domicil of their forefathers. They have no orbit, but only an axis. Stick a precedent through them, and give them a twirl, and they will hum on contentedly to the end of the chapter. I've nothing against them, as long as they let others alone, and don't insist that to stay in one place and buzz is the end of humanity.Other people there are who grow, they are insatiably curious, they dive to the heart of things, they take nothing without a question. They are not quite satisfied with truth itself till they have compared it with all that claims to be truth. Let them look, I say. It's a poor truth that won't bear any test that man can put to it. The first are, as Coleridge says, 'very positive, but not quite certain' that they are right; to the last a conviction once won is perfect and indestructible. Rest with them is not vegetation, but rapture.
"Fly abroad, my wild bird! don't be afraid. Use your wings. That is what they were made for."
Margaret forgot to answer in listening and looking at the speaker's animated face. When Mr. Granger was in earnest, he had an impetuous way that carried all before it. At the end, his shining eyes dropped on her and seemed to cover her with light; the impatient ring in his voice softened to an indulgent tenderness. Margaret felt as a flower may feel that has its fill of sun and dew, and has nothing to do but bloom, and then fade away. She had no fear of this man, no sense of humiliation with regard to the past. Her gratitude toward him was boundless. To him she owed life and all that made life tolerable, and any devotion which he could require of her she was ready to render. Her friendship was perfect, deep, frank, and full of a silent delight. She did not deify him, but was satisfied to find him human. He could speak a cross word if his beef was over-done, his coffee too weak, or his paper out of the way when he wanted it. He could criticise people occasionally, and laugh at their weakness, even when his kind heart reproached him for doing it. He liked to lounge on a sofa and read, when he had better be about his business. He needed rousing, she thought; was too much of a Sybarite to live in a world full of over-worked people. Perhaps he was rusting. But how kind and thoughtful he was; how full of sympathy when sympathy was needed; how generously he blamed himself when he was wrong, and how readily forgot the faults of others. How impossible it was for him to be mean or selfish! His rich, sweet, slow nature reminded her of a rose; but she felt intuitively that under that silence was hidden a heroic strength.
Mr. Southard's lecture was on the Jesuits; and all the family were to go and hear him.
"Terribly hot weather for such a subject," Mr. Lewis grumbled. "But it wouldn't be respectful not to go. Don't forget to take your smelling-salts, girls. There will be a strong odor of brimstone in the entertainment.
Margaret went to the lecture with a feeling that was almost fear. To her the name of Jesuit was a terror. The day of those powerful, guileful men was passed, surely; and yet, what if, in the strange vicissitudes of life, they should revive again? She was glad that the minister was going to raise his warning voice; yet still, she dreaded to hear him. The subject was too exciting.
The lecture was what might be expected. Beginning with Ignatius of Loyola, the speaker traced the progress of that unique and powerful society through its wonderful increase, and its downfall, to the present time, when as he said, the bruised serpent was again raising its head.
Mr. Southard did full justice to their learning, their sagacity, and their zeal. He told with a sort of shrinking admiration how men possessed of tastes and accomplishments which fitted them to shine in the most cultivated society, buried themselves in distant and heathen lands, far removed from all human sympathy, hardened their scholarly hands with toil, encountered danger, suffered death—for what? That their society might prosper! The subject seemed to have for the speaker a painful fascination. He lingered while describing the unparalleled devotion, the pernicious enthusiasm of these men. He acknowledged that they proclaimed the name of Christ where it had never been heard before; he lamented that ministers of the gospel had not emulated their heroism; but there the picture was over-clouded, was vailed in blackness. It needed so much brightness in order that the darkness which followed might have its full effect.
We all know what pigments are used in that Plutonian shading—mental reservation, probableism, and the doctrine that the end justifies the means; the latter a fiction, the two former scrupulously misrepresented.
Here Mr. Southard was at home. Here he could denounce with fiery indignation, point with lofty scorn. The close of the lecture left the characters of the Jesuits as black as their robes. They had been lifter only to be cast down.
Miss Hamilton walked home with Mr. Granger, scarcely uttering a word the whole way.
"You do not speak of the lecture," he said when they were at the house steps. "Has it terrified you so much that you dare not? Shall you start up from sleep to-night fancying that a great black Jesuit has come to carry you off?"
"Do you know, Mr. Granger," she said slowly, "those men seem to me very much like the apostles; in their devotion, I mean? I would like to read about them. They are interesting."
"Oh! they have, doubtless, books which will tell you all you want to know," he replied.
"They!" repeated Margaret. "But I want to know the truth." Mr. Granger laughed. "Then I advise you to read nothing, and hear nothing."
"How then shall I learn?" demanded Miss Hamilton with a touch of impatience.
"Descend into the depth of your consciousness, as the German did when he wanted to make a correct drawing of an elephant."
"No," she replied remembering the story, "I will imitate the Frenchman; I will go to the elephant's country, and draw from life."
"That is not difficult," Mr. Granger said, amused at the idea of Miss Hamilton studying the Jesuits. "These elephants have jungles the world over. In this city you may find one on Endicott street, another on Suffolk street, and a third on Harrison avenue."
They were just entering the house. Margaret hesitated, and paused in the entry.
"You do not think this a foolish curiosity?" she asked wistfully. "You see no harm in my wishing to know something more about them?"
Mr. Granger was leaving his hat and gloves on the table. He turned immediately, surprised at the serious manner in which the question was put.
"Surely not!" he said promptly. "I should be very inconsistent if I did."
She stood an instant longer, her face perfectly grave and pale.
"You are afraid?" he asked smiling.
"No," she replied hesitatingly, "I don't think that is it. But I have all my life had such a horror of Catholics, and especially of Jesuits, that to resolve even to look at them deliberately, seems almost as momentous a step as Caesar crossing the Rubicon."
Boston, at the beginning of the war, was not a place to go to sleep in. Massachusetts politics, so long eminent in the senate, had at last taken the field; and that city, which is the brain of the State, effervesced with enthusiasm. Men the least heroic, apparently, showed themselves capable of heroism; and dreamers over the great deeds of others looked up to find that they might themselves be "the hymn the Brahmin sings."
Eager crowds surrounded the bulletin, put out by newspaper offices, or ran to gaze at mustering or departing regiments. Windows filled at the sound of a fife and drum; and it seemed that the air was fit to be breathed only when it was full of the flutter of flags.
Ceremony was set aside. Strangers and foes spoke to each other; and the most disdainful lady would smile upon the roughest uniform. From the Protestant pulpit came no more the exhortation to brotherly love, but the trumpet-call to arms; and under the wing of the Old South meeting-house rose a recruiting office, and a rostrum, with the motto, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."
The Lord of that time was he at the touch of whose rod the flesh and the loaves were consumed with fire; who sent for a sign a drench of dew on the fleece; at the command of whose servant all Ephraim shouted and took the waters before the flying Midianites, with the heads of Oreb and of Zeb on their spears.
Of course there was a good deal of froth; but underneath glowed the pure wine. It is true that many went because the savage instinct hidden in human nature rose from its unseen lair, and fiercely shook itself awake at the scent of blood. But others came from an honest sense of duty, and offered their lives knowing what they did; and women who loved them said amen. It was a stirring time.
It is not to be supposed that our friends were indifferent to these events. It was a doubtful point with them, indeed, whether they could be content to leave the city that summer. Mr. Southard was decidedly for remaining in town; and Mr. Granger, though less excited, was inclined to second him. But Mr. Lewis had, early in the spring, engaged a cottage at the seaside, with the understanding that the whole family were to accompany him there, and he utterly refused to release them from their promise. As if to help his arguments, the weather became intensely hot in June. Finally they consented to go.
"We owe you thanks for your persistence," Mr. Granger said, as they sat together the last evening of their stay in town. "I couldn't stand two months of this."
Mr. Lewis was past answering. Dressed in a complete suit of linen, seated in a wide Fayal chair, with a palm-leaf fan in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, he presented what his wife called an ill-tempered dissolving view. At that moment, the only desire of his heart was that one of Sydney Smith's, that he could take off his flesh and sit in his bones.
Aurelia and Margaret sat near by, flushed, smiling, and languid, trying to look cool in their crisp, white dresses.
Miss Hamilton would scarcely be recognized by one who had seen her only three months before. Happiness had done its work, and she was beautiful. Her face had recovered its smooth curves and bloomy whiteness, and her lips were constantly brightening with the smile that was ever ready to come.
Mr. Granger contemplated the two young ladies with a patriarchal admiration. He liked to have beautiful objects in his sight; and surely, he thought, no other man in the city could boast of having in his family two such girls as those who now sat opposite him. Besides, what was best, they were friends of his, and regarded him with confidence and affection.
Mrs. Lewis glanced from them to him, and back to them, and pouted her lip a little. "He is enough to try the patience of a saint!" she was thinking. "Why doesn't he marry one of those girls like a sensible man? To be sure, it is their fault. They are too friendly and frank with him, the simpletons! There they sit and beam on him with affectionate tranquillity, as if he were their grandfather. I'd like to give 'em a shaking."
Mr. Southard was walking slowly to and fro from the back-parlor to the front, and he, too, glanced frequently at the sofa where sat the two unconscious beauties. But no smile softened his pale face. It seemed, indeed, sterner than usual. The war was stirring the minister to the depths.
Mr. Lewis opened a blind near him. A beam of dusty gold came in from the west; he snapped the blind in its face.
"Seems to me it takes the sun a long time to get down," he said crossly. "I hope that none of your mighty Joshuas has commanded it to stand still."
No one answered. They sat in the sultry gloaming, and listened dreamily to the mingled city noises that came from near and far; the softened roll of a private carriage, like the touch of a gloved hand, after the knuckled grasp of drays and carts; the irritating wheeze of an inexorable hand-organ; and, through all, the shrill cry of the news-boy, the cicada of the city.
The good-breeding of the company was shown by the perfect composure of their silence, and the perfect quiescence of their minds, by the fact that their thoughts all drifted in the same direction, each one after its own mode.
Mrs. Lewis was thinking: "Those poor horses! I wish they knew enough to organize a strike, and all run away into the green, shady country."
The husband was saying relentingly to himself, "I declare I do pity the poor fellows who have to work during this infernal weather."
The others were still more in harmony with Mr. Granger when he spoke lowly, half to himself:
"If that beautiful idyl of Ruskin's could be realized; that country and government where the king should be the father of his people; where all alike should go to him for help and comfort; where he should find his glory, not in enlarging his dominion, but in making it more happy and peaceful! Will such a kingdom ever be, I wonder? Will such a golden age ever come?"
Margaret glanced with a swift smile toward Mr. Southard, and saw the twin of her thought in his face. He came and stood with his hand on the arm of her sofa.
"Both you and Mr. Ruskin are unconsciously thinking of the same thing," he said, with some new sweetness in his voice, and brightness in his face. "What you mean can only be the kingdom of God; and it will come! it will come!"
Looking up smilingly at him, Margaret caught a smile in return; and then, for the first time, she thought that Mr. Southard was beautiful. The cold purity of his face was lighted momentarily by that glow which it needed in order to be attractive.
Aurelia rose, and crossing the room, flung the blinds open. The sun had set, and a slight coolness was creeping up.
"This butchery going on at the South looks as if the kingdom of God were coming with a vengeance," said Mr. Lewis, fanning himself.
"It is coming with a vengeance!" exclaimed Mr. Southard. "God does not work in sunshine alone. Job saw him in the whirlwind. Massachusetts soldiers have gone out with the Bible as well as the bayonet."
Mr. Lewis contemplated the speaker with an expression of wondering admiration that was a little overdone.
"WhatdidGod do before Massachusetts was discovered?" he exclaimed.
"I was surprised to hear, Mr. Granger, that your cousin Sinclair had joined a New York regiment," Mrs. Lewis said hastily. "Only the day before the steamer sailed in which he had engaged passage, some quixotic whim seized him, and he volunteered. I cannot conceive what induced him."
"I think the uniform was becoming," Mr. Granger said dryly.
"I pity his wife," pursued the lady, sighing. "Poor Caroline!"
"She has acted like a fool!" Mr. Lewis broke in angrily. "It was her fault that Sinclair went off. She thorned him perpetually with her exactions. She forgot that lovers are only common folks in a state of evaporation, and that it is in the nature of things that they should get condensed after a time. She wanted him to be for ever picking up her pocket-handkerchief, and writing acrostics on her name. A man can't stand that kind of folderol when he's got to be fifty years old. We begin to develop a taste for common sense when we reach that age."
"He showed no confidence in her," Mrs. Lewis said, with downcast eyes, "He often deceived her, and therefore she always suspected him."
"I think that a man should have no concealments from his wife," said Mr. Southard emphatically.
"That's just what Samson's wife thought when her husband proposed his little conundrum to the Philistines," commented Mr. Lewis.
Margaret got up and followed Aurelia to the window.
"I am very sorry for Cousin Caroline," said Mr. Granger, in his stateliest manner, rising, also, and putting an end to the discussion.
"He is always sorry for any one who can contrive to appear abused," Mr. Lewis said to Margaret. "If you want to interest him, you must be as unfortunate as you can."
Margaret looked at her friend with eyes to which the quick tears started, and blessed him in her heart.
He was passing at the moment, and, catching the remark, feared lest she might be hurt or embarrassed.
"Don't you want to come out on to the veranda?" he asked, glancing back as he stepped from the long window.
The words were nothing; but they were so steeped in the kindness of the look and tone accompanying them that they seemed to be words of tenderness.
She followed him out into the twilight; the others came too, and they sat looking into the street, saying little, but enjoying the refreshing coolness. Other people were at their windows, or on their steps; and occasionally an acquaintance passing stopped for a word. After a while G——, the liberator, came along, and leaned on the fence a moment—a man with a ridge over the top of his bald head, that looked as if his backbone didn't mean to stop till it had reached his forehead, as probably it didn't; a soft-voiced, gently-speaking lion; but Margaret had heard him roar.
"Mr. G——," said Mr. Granger, "here is a lady with two dactyls for a name, Miss Margaret Hamilton. She will add another, and be Miriam, when your people come out through the Red Sea we are making."
"Have your cymbals ready, young prophetess," said the liberator. "The waters are lifting on the right hand and on the left."
The next day they went to the seaside, the ladies going in the morning to set things in order; the gentlemen not permitted to make their appearance till evening.
After a pleasant ride of an hour in the cars, they stepped out at a little way-station, where a carriage was awaiting them. About half a mile from this station, on a point of land hidden from it by a strip of thick woods, was their cottage.
The place was quite solitary; not a house in sight landward, though summer cottages nestled all about among the hills, hidden in wild green nooks. But across the water, towns were visible in all directions.
They drove with soundless wheels over a moist, brown road that wound and coiled through the woods. There had been a shower in the night that left everything washed, and the sky cloudless. It was yet scarcely ten o'clock; and the air, though warm, was fresh and still. The morning sunshine lay across the road, motionless between the motionless dense tree-shadows; both light and shade so still, so intense, they looked like a pavement of solid gold and amber. If, at intervals, a slight motion woke the woods, less like a breeze than a deep and gentle respiration of nature, and that leaf-and-flower-wrought pavement stirred through each glowing abaciscus, it was as though the solid earth were stirred.
A faint sultry odor began to rise from the pine-tops, and from clumps of sweet-fern that stood in sunny spots; but the rank, long-stemmed flowers and trailing vines that grew under the trees were yet glistening with the undried shower; the shaded grass at the roadside was beaded, every blade, with minute sparkles of water; and here and there a pine-bough was thickly hung with drops that trembled with fulness at the points of its clustered emerald needles, and at a touch came clashing down in a shower that was distinctly heard through the silence.
The birds were taking their forenoon rest; but, as the carriage rolled lightly past, a fanatical bobolink, who did not seem to have much common sense, but to be brimming over with the most glorious nonsense, swung himself down from some hidden perch, alighted in an utterly impossible manner on a spire of grass, and poured forth such a long-drawn, liquid, impetuous song, that it was a wonder there was anything of him left when it was over.
Three pairs of hands were stretched to arrest the driver's arm; three smiling, breathless faces listened till the last note, and watched the ecstatic little warbler swim away with an undulating motion, as if he floated on the bubbling waves of his own song.
In a few minutes a turn of the road brought them in sight of the blue, salt water spread out boundlessly, sparkling, and sail-flecked; and presently they drove up at the cottage door.
This was a long, low building, all wings, like a moth; colored, like fungi, of mottled browns and yellows; overtrailed by woodbines and honeysuckles, through which you sometimes only guessed at the windows by the white curtains blowing out.
"Why, it is something that has grown out of the earth!" exclaimed Margaret. "See! the ground is all uneven about the walls as it is about the boles of trees."
This rural domicil faced the east and the sea; and an unfenced lawn sloped down to the beach where the tide was now creeping up with bright ripples chasing each other.
The house was pleasant enough, large and airy; and, after a few hours' work, they had everything in order. Then, tired, happy, and hungry, they sat down to luncheon.
"Isn't it delightful to get rid of men a little while, when you know that they are soon to come again?" drawled Aurelia, sitting with both elbows on the table, and her rich hair a little tumbled.
Margaret glanced at her with a smile of approval. "That sweet creature!" she thought. And said aloud, "You know perfectly well, Aura, that all the time they are gone we are thinking of them and doing something for them. Whom have we been working for to-day but the gentlemen, pray?"
To her surprise, Aurelia's brown eyes dropped, and her beautiful face turned a sudden pink.
"I never could carve a fowl," said Mrs. Lewis plaintively. "But there must be a beginning in learning anything. I wish I knew where the beginning of this duck is. Aura, will you go look in that Audubon, and see how this creature is put together? We are likely to be worse off than Mr. Secretary Pepys, when the venison pasty turned out to be 'palpable mutton.' We shall have nothing."
Margaret started up. "Infirm of purpose, give me the carver!" she cried; and seizing the knife, in a moment of inspiration, triumphantly carved the mysterious duck, and betrayed its hidden articulations.
Mrs. Lewis contemplated her with great respect. "My dear," she said, "I have done you injustice. I have believed that though you could succeed admirably in the ornamental and the extraordinary, you had no faculty for common things. I acknowledge my error.'Nemesis favors genius,' as Disraeli says of Burke."
After luncheon and a siesta, they dressed and went out onto the lawn to watch for the gentlemen, who presently appeared.
Mr. Granger presented Margaret with a spike of beautiful pink arethusa set in a ring of feathery ferns. "It came from a swamp miles away," he said. "I wanted to bring you something bright the first day."
"You always bring me something bright," she said.
To Be Continued.
The article fromThe Independentof August 20th, which we quote in full below, has been sent to us by the writer of it, with an accompanying note, requesting us to take notice of its observations. Our remarks will, therefore, be chiefly confined to this particular criticism on theProblems of the Age, although we shall embrace the opportunity to notice also some other criticisms which have been made in various periodicals.
"The pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, many years ago, taking a hint from Archbishop Whately,'traced the errors of Romanism to their origin,'not'in human nature,' but in Old School theology. The ultra-Calvinist doctrine of original sin, he argued, necessitated the dogma of baptismal regeneration; and the doctrine of physical inability brought in the notion of sacramental grace. Mr. Hewit is a living example, and his book is documentary proof, of the justice of this theory. His early training was under the severest of schoolmasters, in the oldest of schools. The problems on which his mind has been exercised from his birth are such as this: How men can be 'born depraved, with an irresistible propensity to sin, and under the doom of eternal misery.' With admirable infelicity, a treatise on questions like this—the freshest of which are as old as Christian theology, and the others as old, if not older, than the fall of man—has been entitledProblems of the Age, on the ground (as we are informed in the preface) that they are 'subjects of much interest and inquiry in our own time.' From his hereditary embarrassments on these subjects, the writer makes his way out to a new theodicy, which on the subject of the existence of sin is Taylorism, word for word; on the subject of natural depravity is something like Pelagianism; and on the subject of original sin is a curious notion, which he strives mightily to represent as the sentiment of Augustine. The whole series of ideas is labelled 'Catholic Theology,' and represented as the antagonist of Protestant opinion.
"The volume deserves no small praise as a specimen of lucid, consecutive argument on difficult questions, conducted in pure English. The only serious blemish upon the author's style is his habit, when he has said a thing once in good English, of saying it over again immediately in bad Latin. But this, we suppose, is less the fault of his taste than of his position. The logic of the book, also, has not more faults than are commonly incident to such discussions; it is strong for pulling down, feeble in building up. It reduces to absurdity the statements of some of his antagonists, with wonderfully complacent unconsciousness that a smart antagonist could get exactly the same hitch about the neck ofitsstatement, and drag it to the same destruction.
"The plan of the work is curious. It begins with the primary cognitions of the mind, and goes forward with anà prioriargument for the existence of God: that if God exists, he must necessarily exist in Trinity; must create just such a universe; must be incarnate in the Second Person; must redeem a fallen race; must institute the Roman Catholic Church, its sacraments and ritual. The second part is devoted to finding in Augustine the ideas of the former part—ideas some of which, unless that lucid author has been hitherto read with a veil upon the heart,
'Would makeAugustinestare and gasp.'
"Besides the limits of space, which are imperative, two reasons suffice to excuse us from examining in detail the course of this ingenious and protracted argument:
"First. It is a matter of comparatively little interest to scrutinize severely theprocessesof a reasoner to whom one half of hisconclusionsare prescribed beforehand, under peril of excommunication and eternal damnation, while he holds the other half under a vow to repudiate them at a moment's notice from the proper authority.
"Second. It is profoundly unsatisfactory to argue against any such book, whatever its origin or pretensions, as representative of the Roman Catholic theology. From page to page the author challenges our respect and deference for his views as being the teachings of the church.'This is Catholic truth; this is Catholic theology.'But, once let us give chase to one of his propositions, and hunt it down into the corner of an absurdity, and we are sure to hear some of the author's confederates trying to call off the dogs with the assurance,'Oh! that is only a notion of Hewit's;' or, 'only a private opinion of theologians;' or, 'only the declaration of an individual pope;' or, 'only a decree of council which never was generally received: the church is not responsible for such things as these.' So slippery a thing is 'Catholic doctrine'! So unrestful is the 'repose' offered to inquiring minds by that church, which divides all subjects of religious thought into two classes: one, on which it is forbidden to make impartial inquiry; the other, on which it is forbidden to come to settled conclusions."
We confess that it appears to us a very puzzling "problem" to find out how to answer the foregoing criticism, or the others from non-catholic periodicals which it has been our hap to fall in with. Not one of them has seriously controverted the main thesis of the book they profess to criticise, or to make any well-motived adjudication of the several portions of the argument by which the thesis is sustained. Some, like the one before us, attempt to set aside the whole question; others content themselves with a round assertion that the arguments are inconclusive; and the residue confine themselves to generalities; or, at most, to the criticism of some minor details. We should not think it worth while to trouble ourselves or our readers with a formal replication to such superficial critics, were it not for the opportunity which is afforded us of bringing into clearer light the total lack of all deep philosophy or theology in the non-catholic world, and the value of the Catholic philosophy which we are striving to bring before the minds of intelligent and sincere inquirers after truth.
The criticisms begin with the title of the work. The critic ofThe Independentobjects to our calling old questionsproblems of the age.The Southern Reviewcoincides with him, and suggests that they should rather have been called "problemsof all ages;" while another critic, inThe Evening Post, gives his verdict that they are all to be classed as "problems of a bygone age." This last criticism is the only one founded upon a reason; and is, at the same time, a full justification of the appropriateness of the title before all those who still profess to believe in the revelation of God. The different classes of protesters against the teaching of the church have wearied themselves in vain in searching for a satisfactory solution of the problems of man's condition and destiny; either in some new rendering of divine revelation, or in some system of purely rational philosophy. The despair produced by their utter failure vents itself in the denial that these problems are real ones, capable of any solution at all, and in the attempt to relegate them finally into the region of the unknowable. This is a vain effort. They have forced themselves upon the attention of the human mind ever since the creation, and they will continue to do so, in spite of all efforts to exorcise them. The relations of man to his Creator, the reason of moral and physical evil, the bearing of the present life on the future, the significance of Christianity, and such like topics, can be regarded as obsolete questions only by a most unpardonable levity. The so-called Liberal Christian and the rationalist may in deed proffer the opinion that the solutions we have given are already antiquated. But, with all the hardihood which persons of this class possess in so remarkable a degree in claiming for themselves all the light, all the intelligence, all the spiritual vitality existing in the world, we must persist in thinking that their triumphant tone is some what prematurely assumed.We insist that the problems of bygone ages are the problems of the present ages, and that the solutions of bygone ages are the only real ones, as true and as necessary at the present moment as they have ever been. The restless mind of the non-Catholic world, having broken away from its intellectual centre to wander aimlessly in the infinite void, has plunged itself anew into all the puzzle and bewilderment from which Christianity with its divine philosophy had once delivered it, and, wearied with its wanderings, longs and yet delays to return to its proper orbit. Hence the great problems of past ages have become emphatically the problems of the present, and must be answered anew, by the same principles and the same truths which past ages found sufficient, yet presented in part in modified language, in a new dress, and with special application to new phases of error. The titleProblems of the Ageis therefore fully justified as the most felicitous and appropriate which could have been chosen for a treatise intended to meet the wants of those who are seeking for help in their doubts and difficulties respecting both natural and revealed religion. Any believer in the Christian revelation who cannot recognize this, and heartily sympathize in any well-meant effort to present the Christian mysteries in an aspect which may attract honest and candid doubters or unbelievers, shows that he has mistaken his side, and has more intellectual sympathy with unbelief than he would willingly acknowledge, even to himself.
Another anonymous critic sets aside with one sentence the entire argument of the book; because, forsooth, it begins with the assumption that the Catholic doctrine is the only true one, and demands a preliminary submission of the reader's mind to the authority of the Catholic Church. Nothing could be more superficial and incorrect than this statement of the thesis proposed by the author. The whole course of the argument supposes that an unbeliever or inquirer after the true religion begins with the first, self-evident principles of reason; proceeds, by way of demonstration, to the truths of natural theology, and by the way of evidence and the motives of credibility advances to the belief of Christianity and the divine authority of the Catholic Church. The thesis proposed or the special topic to be discussed by the author is, Supposing the authority of the Catholic Church sufficiently established by extrinsic evidence, is there any insurmountable obstacle, on the side of reason, to accept her dogmas as intrinsically credible? The implicit or even explicit affirmation that Catholic philosophy is the true and only philosophy, that it alone can satisfy the demands of reason, is no begging of the question; for it is not stated as thedatumor logical premiss from which the logical conclusions are drawn. It is stated as being, so far as the mind of the sceptical reader is concerned, only an hypothesis to be proved, an enunciation of the judgment which is made by the mind of a Catholic, the motives of which the non-catholic reader is invited to examine and consider by the light of the principles of reason, or of those revealed truths of which he is already convinced.
A most sapient critic in the LondonAthenaeum, venturing entirely out of his depth, makes an observation on the statement that absolute beauty is identical with the divine essence, which we notice merely for the amusement of our theological readers. The statement of the author is, that beauty is to be identified with the divine essence, by virtue of its definition as the splendor of truth, and because truth, being identical with the divine essence, its splendor must be also.This consummate philosopher argues that beauty must be identified, not with the divine essence, but with its splendor, because it is the splendor of truth. The splendor of God is, then, something distinct from God; and he is not most pure act and most simple being! We cannot wish for a more apposite illustration of the total loss of the first and most fundamental conceptions of philosophy and natural theology out of the English mind—a natural result of that movement which began with Luther, when he publicly burned theSummaof St. Thomas.
The Mercersburg Reviewdenies the demonstrative force of the evidences of natural religion and positive revelation; referring us to conscience, or the moral sense, as the ground of belief in God and in Jesus Christ. This is another proof of the truth of our judgment, that the radical intellectual disease which Protestantism has produced requires treatment by a thorough dosing with sound philosophy. The corruption of theology has brought on a corruption of philosophy, and heresy has produced scepticism, so that we can hardly find a sound spot to begin with as apoint d'appuifor the reconstruction of rational and orthodox belief. We do not despise the argument from conscience and the moral sense, or deny its validity. We did not specially draw it out, because we were not writing a complete treatise on natural theology; but it is contained in the metaphysical argument establishing the first and final cause. Apart from that, it has no conclusive force. What is conscience? Nothing but a practical judgment respecting that which ought to be done or left undone. What is the moral sense, but an intimate apprehension of the relation of the voluntary acts of an intelligent and free agent to a final cause? It is only intellect which can take cognizance of a rule or principle directing a certain act to be done or omitted, or of the intrinsic necessity of directing all acts toward a final cause or ultimate end. The intellect cannot do this, or deduce an argument from conscience and the moral sense for the existence of God, unless it has certain infallible principles given it in its creation; and with these principles, the existence of God and all natural theology can be proved by a metaphysical demonstration, proceeding from which, as a basis, we prove Christianity and the Catholic Church by a moral demonstration which is reducible to principles of metaphysical certitude. Deny this, and conscience, or the moral sense, is a mere feeling, a sensible emotion, a habit induced by education, a subjective state, which is just as available in support of Buddhism or Mohammedanism as of Christianity.The Mercersburg Reviewis trying to sustain itself midway down the declivity of a slippery hill, afraid to descend where the mangled remains of Feuerbach lie bleaching in the sun, and unwilling to catch the rope which the Catholic Church throws to it, and ascend to the height from whence Luther, in his pride and folly, slid. Kant's miserable expedient of practical reason may suit those who are content with such an insecure position; but it will never satisfy those who look for true science, and certain, infallible faith.
The Round Table, in a notice which is, on the whole, very favorable and appreciative, complains that we have accused Calvinism of being a dualistic or Manichaean doctrine. We have not only affirmed, but proved that it is so. By Calvinism, however, we mean the strict, logical Calvinism of the rigid adherents of the system.The moderated, modified system, which approaches more nearly to the doctrine of the most rigorous Catholic school, we do not wish to censure too severely. Neither do we charge formal dualism, or a formal denial of the pure, unmixed goodness of God even upon the strictest Calvinists. What we affirm is, that, together with their doctrine respecting God, which is orthodox, they hold another doctrine respecting the acts of God toward his creatures, which is logically incompatible with the former, and logically demands the affirmation of an evil and malignant principle equally self-existent, necessary, and eternal with the principle of good, and thus leads to the doctrine of dualism in being. Many orthodox Protestants have spoken against Calvinism much more severely than we have done; and, in fact, while we cannot too strongly reprobate its logical consequences, we always intend to distinguish between them and the true, interior belief which exists in the minds of many Calvinists, excellent persons, and really nearer to the church, in their doctrine, as practically apprehended, than they are aware of.
OurIndependentcritic is displeased with the Latin quotations from scholastic theology which we have somewhat freely employed, and compliments us, as he apparently supposes, by suggesting that this violation of good taste is to be ascribed, not to any lack of judgment on our part, but to the fault of our position. It is somewhat amusing to notice the patronizing air which this well-meaning gentleman assumes, and the evident complacency with which, from the height of his little, recently constructed eminence, he looks down with a smile of pitying forbearance upon our unfortunate "position." We will consent to waive, once for all, all claims of a personal nature to any consideration which is not derived from our position as a Catholic and a humble disciple of the scholastic theology. That theology is the glory and the boast of Christendom and of the human intellect. We are firmly convinced that there is no true wisdom, science, illumination, or progress to be found, except in following the broad path which scholastic theology has explored and beaten. Although our nice critic—who seems to have more admiration for the effeminate classicism of Bembo and the age of Leo X. than the masculineverveof St. Thomas—may call the scientific terminology of the schoolmen "bad Latin," we shall venture to retain a totally different opinion. It is unequalled and unapproachable for precision, clearness, and vigor. We have employed it because our own judgment and taste have dictated to us the propriety of doing so. We have not been led by servile adhesion to custom, or the affectation of making a display, but by the desire of making our meaning more clear and evident to theological readers, especially those whose native language is not English, and of introducing into our English theological literature those definite and precise modes of reasoning which belong to these great schoolmen. We can easily understand the aversion of our opponents to the schoolmen, in which they are only following after their predecessor, Martin Bucer, who said, albeit in Latin,Tolle Thomam et delebo Ecclesiam Romanam, "Take away Thomas, and I will destroy the Roman Church." To the personal remarks of the critic in regard to the author and the history of his religious opinions we give a simpletranseat, and pass to what semblance of argument there is in rejoinder to the thesis defended in theProblems of the Age.