Andrew had occasion to call on the laird to pay his father's rent, and Alexa, who had not seen him for some time, thought him improved both in carriage and speech, and wondered. She did not take into account his intercourse with God, as with highest human minds, and his constant wakefulness to carry into action what things he learned. Thus trained in noblest fashions of freedom, it was small wonder that his bearing and manners, the natural outcome and expression of his habits of being, should grow in liberty. There was in them the change only of development. By the side of such education as this, dealing with reality and inborn dignity, what mattered any amount of ignorance as to social custom! Society may judge its own; this man was not of it, and as much surpassed its most accomplished pupils in all the essentials of breeding, as the apostle Paul was a better gentleman than Mr. Nash or Mr. Brummel. The training may be slow, but it is perfect. To him who has yielded self, all things are possible. Andrew was aware of no difference. He seemed to himself the same as when a boy.
Alexa had not again alluded to his brother's letter concerning George Crawford, fearing he might say what she would find unpleasant. But now she wanted to get a definite opinion from him in regard to certain modes of money-making, which had naturally of late occupied a good deal of her thought.
“What is your notion concerning money-lending—I mean at interest, Mr. Ingram?” she said. “I hear it is objected to nowadays by some that set up for teachers!”
“It is by no means the first time in the world's history,” answered Andrew.
“I want to know what you think of it, Mr. Ingram?”
“I know little,” replied Andrew, “of any matter with which I have not had to deal practically.”
“But ought not one to have his ideas ready for the time when we will have to deal practically?” said Alexa.
“Mine would be pretty sure to be wrong,” answered Andrew; “and there is no time to spend in gathering wrong ideas and then changing them!”
“On the contrary, they would be less warped by personal interest.”
“Could circumstances arise in which it would not be my first interest to be honest?” said Andrew. “Would not my judgment be quickened by the compulsion and the danger? In no danger myself, might I not judge too leniently of things from which I should myself recoil? Selfishly smoother with regard to others, because less anxious about their honesty than my own, might I not yield them what, were I in the case, I should see at once I dared not allow to myself? I can perceive no use in making up my mind how to act in circumstances in which I am not—probably will never be. I have enough to occupy me where I find myself, and should certainly be oftener in doubt how to act, if I had bothered my brains how to think in circumstances foreign to me. In such thinking, duty is of necessity a comparatively feeble factor, being only duty imagined, not live duty, and the result is the more questionable. The Lord instructed His apostles not to be anxious what they should say when they were brought before rulers and kings: I will leave the question of duty alone until action is demanded of me. In the meantime I will do the duty now required of me, which is the only preparation for the duty that is to come.”
Although Alexa had not begun to understand Andrew, she had sense enough and righteousness enough to feel that he was somehow ahead of her, and that it was not likely he and George Crawford would be of one mind in the matter that occupied her, so different were their ways of looking at things—so different indeed the things themselves they thought worth looking at.
She was silent for a moment, then said:
“You can at least tell me what you think of gambling!”
“I think it is the meanest mode of gaining or losing money a man could find.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because he desires only to gain, and can gain only by his neighbor's loss. One of the two must be the worse for his transaction with the other. Eachmustwish ill to his neighbor!”
“But the risk was agreed upon between them.”
“True—but in what hope? Was it not, on the part of each, that he would be the gainer and the other the loser? There is no common cause, nothing but pure opposition of interest.”
“Are there not many things in which one must gain and the other lose?”
“There are many things in which one gains and the other loses; but if it is essential to any transaction that only one side shall gain, the thing is not of God.”
“What do you think of trading in stocks?”
“I do not know enough about it to have a right to speak.”
“You can give your impression!”
“I will not give what I do not value.”
“Suppose, then, you heard of a man who had made his money so, how would you behave to him?”
“I would not seek his acquaintance.”
“If he sought yours?”
“It would be time to ask how he had made his money. Then it would be my business.”
“What would make it your business?”
“That he sought my acquaintance. It would then be necessary to know something about him, and the readiest question would be—how he had made his money!”
Alexa was silent for some time.
“Do you think God cares about everything?” she said at length.
“Everything,” answered Andrew, and she said no more.
Andrew avoided the discussion of moral questions. He regarded the thing asvermiculate, and ready to corrupt the obedience. “When you have a thing to do,” he would say, “you will do it right in proportion to your love of right. But do the right, and you will love the right; for by doing it you will see it in a measure as it is, and no one can see the truth as it is without loving it. The more youtalkabout what is right, or even about the doing of it, the more you are in danger of exemplifying how loosely theory may be allied to practice. Talk without action saps the very will. Something you have to do is waiting undone all the time, and getting more and more undone. The only refuge isto do.” To know the thing he ought to do was a matter of import, to do the thing he knew he ought to do was a matter of life and death to Andrew. He never allowed even a cognate question to force itself upon him until he had attended to the thing that demanded doing: it was merest common sense!
Alexa had in a manner got over her uneasiness at the report of how George was making his money, and their correspondence was not interrupted. But something, perhaps a movement from the world of spirit coming like the wind, had given her one of those motions to betterment, which, however occasioned, are the throb of the divine pulse in our life, the call of the Father, the pull of home, and the guide thither to such as will obey them. She had in consequence again become doubtful about Crawford, and as to whether she was right in corresponding with him. This led to her talk with Andrew, which, while it made her think less of his intellect, influenced her in a way she neither understood nor even recognized. There are two ways in which one nature may influence another for betterment—the one by strengthening the will, the other by heightening the ideal. Andrew, without even her suspicion of the fact, wrought in the latter way upon Alexa. She grew more uneasy. George was coming home: how was she to receive him? Nowise bound, they were on terms of intimacy: was she to encourage the procession of that intimacy, or to ward attempt at nearer approach?
George returned, and made an early appearance at Potlurg. Dawtie met him in the court. She did not know him, but involuntarily shrunk from him. He frowned. There was a natural repugnance between them; the one was simple, the other double; the one was pure, the other selfish; the one loved her neighbor, the other preyed upon his.
George was a little louder, and his manners were more studied. Alexa felt him overblown. He was floridly at his ease. What little “atmosphere” there had been about him was gone, and its place taken by a colored fog. His dress was unobjectionable, and yet attracted notice; perhaps it was only too considered. Alexa was disappointed, and a little relieved. He looked older, yet not more manly—and rather fat. He had more of the confidence women dislike to see a man without, than was quite pleasant even to the confident Alexa. His speech was not a little infected with the nasality—as easy to catch as hard to get rid of—which I presume the Puritans carried from England to America. On the whole, George was less interesting than Alexa had expected.
He came to her as if he would embrace her, but an instinctive movement on her part sufficed to check him. She threw an additional heartiness into her welcome, and kept him at arm's-length. She felt as if she had lost an old friend, and not gained a new one. He made himself very agreeable, but that he made himself so, made him less so.
There was more than these changes at work in her; there was still the underlying doubt concerning him. Although not yet a live soul, she had strong if vague ideas about right and wrong; and although she sought many things a good deal more than righteousness, I do not see what temptation would at once have turned her from its known paths. At the same time I do not see what she had yet, more than hundreds of thousands of well-meaning women, to secure her from slow decay and final ruin.
They laughed and talked together verylikethe way they used, but “every like is not the same,” and they knew there was a difference. George was stung by the sense of it—too much to show that he was vexed. He laid himself out to be the more pleasing, as if determined to make her feel what he was worth—as the man, namely, whom he imagined himself, and valued himself on being.
It is an argument for God, to see what fools those make of themselves who, believing there is a God, do not believeinHim—children who do not know the Father. Such make up the mass of church and chapel goers. Let an earthquake or the small-pox break loose among them, and they will show what sort their religion is. George had got rid of the folly of believing in the existence of a God, either interested in human affairs or careless of them, and naturally found himself more comfortable in consequence; for he never had believedinGod, and it is awkward to believe and not believe at the same moment. What he had called hisbeliefswere as worthy of the name as those of most people, but whether he was better or worse without them hardly interests me, and my philanthropy will scarce serve to make me glad that he was more comfortable.
As they talked, old times came up, and they drew a little nearer, until at last a gentle spring of rose-colored interest began a feeble flow in Alexa's mind. When George took his leave, which he did soon, with the wisdom of one who feared to bore, she went with him to the court, where the gardener was holding his horse. Beside them stood Andrew, talking to the old man, and admiring the beautiful animal in his charge.
“The life of the Creator has run free through every channel up to this creature!” he was saying as they came near.
“What rot!” said George to himself, but to Alexa he said: “Here's my old friend, the farmer, I declare!” then to Andrew: “How do you do, Mr. Ingram?”
George never forgot a man's name, and went in consequence for a better fellow than he was. One may remember for reasons that have little to do with good-fellowship. He spoke as if they were old friends. “You seem to like the look of the beast!” he said: “you ought to know what's what in horses!”
“He is one of the finest horses I ever saw,” answered Andrew. “The man who owns him is fortunate.”
“He ought to be a good one!” said George. “I gave a hundred and fifty guineas for him yesterday.”
Andrew could not help vaguely reflecting what kind of money had bought him, if Sandy was right.
Alexa was pleased to see Andrew. He made her feel more comfortable. His presence seemed to protect her a little.
“May I ask you, Mr. Ingram,” she said, “to repeat what you were saying about the horse as we came up?”
“I was saying,” answered Andrew, “that, to any one who understands a horse it is clear that the power of God must have flowed unobstructed through many generations to fashion such a perfection.”
“Oh! you indorse the development theory—do you?” said George. “I should hardly have expected that of you.”
“I do not think it has anything to do with what I said; no one disputes that this horse comes of many generations of horses. The development theory, if I understand aright, concerns itself with how his first ancestor in his own kind came to be a horse.”
“And about that there can be no doubt in the mind of any one who believes in the Bible!” said George.
“God makes beautiful horses,” returned Andrew; “whether He takes the one way or the other to make them, I am sure He takes the right way.”
“You imply it is of little consequence what you believe about it.”
“If I had to make them it would be of consequence. But what I think of consequence to us is—that He makes them, not out of nothing, but out of Himself. Why should my poor notion of God'showbe of importance, so long as, when I see a horse like yours, Mr. Crawford, I say, God be praised? It is of eternal importance to love the animal, and see in him the beauty of the Lord; it is of none to fancy I know which way God took to make him. Not having in me the power or the stuff to make a horse, I can not know how God made the horse; I can know him to be beautiful.”
“But,” said George, “the first horse was a very common-looking domestic animal, which they kept to eat—nothing like this one.”
“Then you think God made the first horse, and after that the horses made themselves,” said Andrew.
Alexa laughed; George said nothing; Andrew went on.
“But,” he said, “if we have come up from the lower animals, through a million of kinds, perhaps—against which theory I have nothing to urge—then I am more than prepared to believe that the man who does not do the part of a man will have to go down again, through all the stages of his being, to a position beyond the lowest forms of the powers he has misused, and there begin to rise once more, haunted perhaps with dim hints of the world of humanity left so far above him.”
“Bah! What's the use of bothering! Rubbish!” cried George, with rude jollity. “You know as well as I do, Mr. Ingram, it's all bosh! Things will go on as they're doing, and as they have been doing, till now from all eternity—so far as we know, and that's enough for us.”
“They will not go on so for long in our sight, Mr. Crawford. The worms will have a word to say with us.”
Alexa turned away.
“You've not given up preaching and taken to the practical yet, Mr. Ingram, I see,” said George.
Andrew laughed.
“I flatter myself I have not ceased to be practical, Mr. Crawford. You are busy with what you see, and I am busy as well with what I don't see; but all the time I believe my farm is in as good a state as your books.”
George gave a start, and stole a look at the young farmer, but was satisfied he “meant nothing.” The self-seeker will walk into the very abyss protesting himself a practical man, and counting him unpractical who will not with him “jump the life to come.” Himself, he neither measures the width nor questions his muscle.
Andrew, with all his hard work, harder since Sandy went, continued able to write, for he neither sought company nor drank strong drink, and was the sport of no passion. From threatened inroad he appealed to Him who created to lift His child above the torrent, and make impulse the slave of conscience and manhood. There were no demons riding the whirlwinds of his soul. It is not wonderful then that he should be able to write a book, or that the book should be of genuine and original worth. It had the fortune to be “favorably” reviewed, scarce one of those who reviewed it understanding it, while all of them seemed to themselves to understand it perfectly. I mention the thing because, had the book not been thus reviewed, Alexa would not have bought a copy, or been able to admire it.
The review she read was in a paper whose editor would not have admitted it had he suspected the drift which the reviewer had failed to see; and the passages quoted appealed to Alexa in virtue, partly, of her not seeing half they involved, or anything whatever of the said drift. But because he had got a book published, and because she approved of certain lines, phrases and passages in it; but chiefly because it had been praised by more than one influential paper, Andrew rose immensely in Alexa's opinion. Although he was the son of a tenant, was even a laborer on his farm, and had covered a birth no higher than that of Jesus Christ with the gown of no university, she began, against her own sense of what was fit, to look up to the plow-man. The plow-man was not aware of this, and would have been careless had he been. He respected his landlord's daughter, not ever questioned her superiority as a lady where he made no claim to being a gentleman, but he recognized in her no power either to help or to hurt.
When they next met, Alexa was no longer indifferent to his presence, and even made a movement in the direction of being agreeable to him. She dropped in a measure, without knowing she had ever used it, her patronizing carriage, but had the assurance to compliment him not merely on the poem he had written, but on the way it had been received; she could not have credited, had he told her, that he was as indifferent to the praise or blame of what is called the public, as if that public were indeed—what it is most like—a boy just learning to read. Yet it is the consent of such a public that makes the very essence of what is called fame. How should a man care for it who knows that he is on his way to join his peers, to be a child with the great ones of the earth, the lovers of the truth, the Doers of the Will. What to him will be the wind of the world he has left behind, a wind that can not arouse the dead, that can only blow about the grave-clothes of the dead as they bury their dead.
“Live, Dawtie,” said Andrew to the girl, “and ane day ye'll hae yer hert's desire; for 'Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.'”
Andrew was neither annoyed nor gratified with the compliments Alexa paid him, for she did not know the informing power of the book—what he cared for in it—the thing that made him write it. But her gentleness and kindness did please him; he was glad to feel a little at home with her, glad to draw a little nearer to one who had never been other than good to him. And then was she not more than kind, even loving to Dawtie?
“So, Andrew, you are a poet at last,” she said, holding out her hand to him, which Andrew received in a palm that wrote the better verse that it was horny. “Please to remember I was the first that found you out!” she added.
“I think it was my mother,” answered Andrew.
“And I would have helped you if you would have let me.”
“It is not well, ma'am, to push the bird off because he can't sit safe on the edge of the nest.”
“Perhaps you are right A failure then would have stood in the way of your coming fame.”
“Oh, for that, ma'am, believe me, I do not care a short straw.”
“What do you not care for?”
“For fame.”
“That is wrong, Andrew. We ought to care what our neighbors think of us.”
“My neighbors did not set me to do the work, and I did not seek their praise in doing it. Their friendship I prize dearly—more than tongue can tell.”
“You can not surely be so conceited, Andrew, as to think nobody capable of judging your work.”
“Far from it, ma'am. But you were speaking of fame, and that does not come from any wise judgment.”
“Then what do you write for, if you care nothing for fame? I thought that was what all poets wrote for.”
“So the world thinks; and those that do sometimes have their reward.”
“Tell me then what you write for?”
“I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong. I want to say it, and so try to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole. I was once at an oratorio, and that taught me the shape of a poem. In a pause of the music, I seemed all at once to see Handel's heavy countenance looking out of his great wig, as he sat putting together his notes, ordering about in his mind, and fixing in their places with his pen, his drums, and pipes, and fiddles, and roaring bass, and flageolets, and hautboys—all to open the door for the thing that was plaguing him with the confusion of its beauty. For I suppose even Handel did not hear it all clear and plain at first, but had to build his orchestra into a mental organ for his mind to let itself out by, through the many music holes, lest it should burst with its repressed harmonic delights. He must have felt an agonized need to set the haunting angels of sound in obedient order and range, responsive to the soul of the thing, its one ruling idea! I saw him with his white rapt face, looking like a prophet of the living God sent to speak out of the heart of the mystery of truth! I saw him as he sat staring at the paper before him, scratched all over as with the fury of a holy anger at his own impotence, and his soul communed with heavenliest harmonies! Ma'am, will any man persuade me that Handel at such a moment was athirst for fame? or that the desire to please a house full or world full of such as heard his oratorios, gave him the power to write his music? No, ma'am! he was filled, not with the longing for sympathy, and not even with the good desire to give delight, but with the music itself. It was crying in him to get out, and he heard it crying, and could not rest till he had let it out; and every note that dropped from his pen was a chip struck from the granite wall between the song-birds in their prison-nest, and the air of their liberty. Creation is God's self-wrought freedom. No, ma'am, I do not despise my fellows, but neither do I prize the judgment of more than a few of them. I prize and love themselves, but not their opinion.”
Alexa was silent, and Andrew took his leave. She sat still for awhile thinking. If she did not understand, at least she remembered Andrew's face as he talked: could presumption make his face shine so? could presumption make him so forget himself?
Things went swimmingly with George. He had weathered a crisis, and was now full of confidence, as well as the show of it. That he held himself a man who could do what he pleased, was plain to every one. His prosperity leaned upon that of certain princes of the power of money in America: gleaning after them he found his fortune.
But he did not find much increase of favor with Alexa. Her spiritual tastes were growing more refined. There was something about the man, and that not new, which she could no longer contemplate without dissatisfaction. It cost her tears at night to think that, although her lover had degenerated, he had remained true to her, for she saw plainly that it was only lack of encouragement that prevented him from asking her to be his wife. She mustappearchangeable, but this was not the man she had been ready to love! the plant had put forth a flower that was not in sequence with the leaf. The cause of his appearing different might lie in herself, but in any case he was not the gentleman she had thought! Had she loved him, she would have stood by him bravely, but now she could not help recalling the disgrace of the father, and shrunk from sharing it with the son. Would it be any wonder if the son himself proved less than honorable? She would have broken with him quite but for one thing: he had become intimate with her father, and the laird enjoyed his company.
George had a large straggling acquaintance with things, and could readily appear to know more than he did. He was, besides, that most agreeable person to a man with a hobby, a good listener—when he saw reason. He made himself so pleasant that the laird was not only always glad to see him, but would often ask him to stay to supper, when he would fish up from the wine-cellar he had inherited a bottle with a history and a character, and the two would pass the evening together, Alexa trying not to wish him away, for was not her poor old father happy with him! Though without much pleasure of his own in such things, George, moved by the reflection of the laird's interest, even began tocollecta little, mainly in the hope of picking up what might gratify the laird; nor, if he came upon a thing hemustcovet, would hesitate to spend on it a good sum. Naturally the old man grew to regard him as a son of the best sort, one who would do anything to please his father and indulge his tastes.
It may seem surprising that such a man as George should have remained so true; but he had a bull-dog tenacity of purpose, as indeed his money-making indicated. Then there was good in him to the measure of admiring a woman like Alexa, though not of admiring a far better. He saw himself in danger of losing her; concluded influences at work to the frustration of his own; surmised that she doubted the character of his business; feared the clownish farmer-poet might have dazzled with his new reputation her womanly judgment; and felt himself called upon to make good his position against any and every prejudice she might have conceived against him! He would yield nothing! If he was foiled he was foiled, but it should not be his fault! His own phrase was, that he would not throw up the sponge so long as he could come up grinning. He had occasional twinges of discomfort, for his conscience, although seared indeed, was not seared as with the hottest iron, seeing he had never looked straight at any truth: it would ease those twinges, he vaguely imagined, so to satisfy a good woman like Alexa, that she made common cause with him, accepting not merely himself, but the money of which he had at such times a slight loathing. Then Alexa was handsome—he thought herveryhandsome, and, true to Mammon, he would gladly be true also to something better. Theremight beanother camp, and it would be well to have friends in that too!
So unlike Andrew, how could he but dislike him! and his dislike jealousy fostered into hatred. Cowed before him, like Macbeth before Banquo, because he was an honest man, how could he but hate him! He called him, and thought him a canting, sneaking fellow—which he was, if canting consist in giving God His own, and sneaking consist in fearing no man—in fearing nothing, indeed, but doing wrong. How could George consent even to the far-off existence of such a man!
The laird also had taken a dislike to him.
From the night when Dawtie made her appeal, he had not known an hour's peace. It was not that it had waked his conscience, though it had made it sleep a little less soundly; it was only that he feared she might take further action in regard to the cup. She seemed to him to be taking part with the owner of the cup against him; he could not see that she was taking part with himself against the devil; that it was not the cup she was anxious about, but the life of her master. What if she should acquaint the earl's lawyer with all she knew! He would be dragged into public daylight! He could not pretend ignorance concerning the identity of the chalice! that would be to be no antiquarian, while Dawtie would bear witness that he had in his possession a book telling all about it! But the girl would never of herself have turned against him! It was all that fellow Ingram, with his overstrained and absurd notions as to what God required of His poor sinful creatures! He did not believe in the atonement! He did not believe that Christ had given satisfaction to the Father for our sins! He demanded in the name of religion more than any properly educated and authorized minister would! and in his meddlesomeness had worried Dawtie into doing as she did! The girl was a good and modest girl, and would never of herself have so acted! Andrew was righteous overmuch, therefore eaten up with self-conceit, and the notion of pleasing God more than other men! He cherished old grudges against him, and would be delighted to bring his old school-master to shame! He was not a bad boy at school; he had always liked him; the change in him witnessed to the peril of extremes! Here they had led to spiritual pride, which was the worst of all the sins! The favorite of heaven could have no respect for the opinion of his betters! The man was bent on returning evil for all the good he had done the boy! It was a happy thing young Crawford understood him! He would be his friend, and defeat the machinations of his enemy! If only the fellow's lease were out, that he might get rid of him!
Moved by George's sympathy with his tastes, he drew nearer and nearer to disclosing the possession which was the pride of his life. The enjoyment, of connoisseur or collector rests much on the glory of possession—of having what another has not, or, better still, what no other can possibly have.
From what he had long ago seen on the night of the storm, and now from the way the old man hinted, and talked, and broke off; also from the uneasiness he sometimes manifested, George had guessed that there was something over whose possession he gloated, but for whose presence among his treasures he could not comfortably account He therefore set himself, without asking a single question, to make the laird unbosom. A hold on the father would be a hold on the daughter!
One day, in a pawnbroker's shop, he lighted upon a rarity indeed, which might or might not have a history attributed to it, but was in itself more than interesting for the beauty of both material and workmanship. The sum asked for it was large, but with the chance of pleasing the laird, it seemed to George but a trifle. It was also, he judged, of intrinsic value to a great part of the price. Had he been then aware of the passion of the old man for jewels in especial, he would have been yet more eager to secure it for him. It was a watch, not very small, and by no means thin—a repeater, whose bell was dulled by the stones of the mine in which it lay buried. The case was one mass of gems of considerable size, and of every color. Ruby, sapphire, and emerald were judiciously parted by diamonds of utmost purity, while yellow diamonds took the golden place for which the topaz had not been counted of sufficient value. They were all crusted together as close as they could lie, the setting of them hardly showing. The face was of fine opals, across which moved the two larger hands radiant with rubies, while the second-hand flitted flashing around, covered with tiny diamonds. The numerals were in sapphires, within a bordering ring of emeralds and black pearls. The jewel was a splendor of color and light.
George, without preface, took it from his pocket, held it a moment in the sunlight, and handed it to the laird. He glowered at it. He saw an angel from heaven in a thing compact of earth-chips! As near as anythingcan be loved of a live soul, the laird loved a fine stone; what in it he loved most, the color, the light, the shape, the value, the mystery, he could not have told!—and here was a jewel of many fine stones! With both hands he pressed it to his bosom. Then he looked at it in the sun, then went into the shadow of the house, for they were in the open air, and looked at it again. Suddenly he thrust it into his pocket, and hurried, followed by George, to his study. There he closed the shutters, lighted a lamp, and gazed at the marvel, turning it in all directions. At length he laid it on the table, and sunk with a sigh into a chair. George understood the sigh, and dug its source deeper by telling him, as he had heard it, the story of the jewel.
“It may be true,” he said as he ended. “I remember seeing some time ago a description of the toy. I think I could lay my hand on it!”
“Would you mind leaving it with me till you come again?” faltered the laird.
He knew he could not buy it: he had not the money; but he would gladly dally with the notion of being its possessor. To part with it, the moment after having held it in his hand and gloated over it for the first time, would be too keen a pain! It was unreasonable to have to part with it at all! Heoughtto be its owner! Who could be such an owner to a thing like that as he! It was a wrong to him that it was not his! Next to his cup, it was the most precious thing he had ever wished to possess!—a thing for a man to take to the grave with him! Was there no way of carryinganytreasure to the other world? He would have sold of his land to secure the miracle, but, alas, it was all entailed! For a moment the Cellini chalice seemed of less account, and he felt ready to throw open the window of his treasure-room and pitch everything out. The demon ofhavingis as imperious and as capricious as that of drink, and there is no refuge from it but with the Father. “This kind goeth not out by prayer.”
The poor slave uttered, not a sigh now, but a groan. “You'll tell the man,” he said, thinking George had borrowed the thing to show him, “that I did not even ask the price: I know I can not buy it!”
“Perhaps he would give you credit!” suggested George, with a smile.
“No! I will have nothing to do with credit! I should not be able to call it my own!”—Money-honesty was strong in the laird. “But,” he continued, “do try and persuade him to let me have it for a day or two—that I may get its beauty by heart, and think of it all the days, and dream of it all the nights of my life after!”
“There will be no difficulty about that,” answered George. “The owner will be delighted to let you keep it as long as you wish!”
“I would it were so!”
“It is so!”
“You don't mean to say, George, that that queen of jewels is yours, and you will lend it me?”
“The thing is mine, but I will not lend it—not even to you, sir!”
“I don't wonder!—I don't wonder! But it is a great disappointment! I was beginning to hope I—I—might have the loan of it for a week or two even!”
“You should indeed if the thing were mine!” said George, playing him; “but—”
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I thought you said it was yours!”
“So it was when I brought it, but it is mine no longer. It is yours. I purchased it for you this morning.”
The old man was speechless. He rose, and seizing George by both hands, stood staring at him. Something very like tears gathered within the reddened rims of his eyes. He had grown paler and feebler of late, ever in vain devising to secure possession of the cup—possession moral as well as legal. But this entrancing gift brought with it strength and hope in regard to the chalice! “To him that hath shall be given!” quoted the Mammon within him.
“George!” he said, with a moan of ecstasy, “you are my good angel!” and sat down exhausted. The watch was the key to his “closet,” as he persisted in calling his treasury.
In old times not a few houses in Scotland held a certain tiny room, built for the head of the family, to be his closet for prayer: it was, I believe, with the notion of such a room in his head, that the laird had called his museum his closet; and he was more right than he meant to be; for in that chamber he did his truest worship—truest as to the love in it, falsest as to its object; for there he worshiped the god vilest bred of all the gods, bred namely of man's distrust in the Life of the universe.
And now here also were two met together to worship; for from this time the laird, disclosing his secret, made George free of his sanctuary.
George was by this time able to take a genuine interest in the collection. But he was much amused, sometimes annoyed, with the behavior of the laird in his closet: he was more nervous and touchy over his things than a she-bear over her cubs.
Of all dangers to his darlings he thought a woman the worst, and had therefore seized with avidity the chance of making that room a hidden one, the possibility of which he had spied almost the moment he first entered it.
He became, if possible, fonder of his things than ever, and flattered himself he had found in George a fellow-worshiper: George's exaggerated or pretended appreciation enhanced his sense of their value.
Alexa had a strong shaggy pony, which she rode the oftener that George came so often; taking care to be well gone before he arrived on his beautiful horse.
One lovely summer evening she had been across the moor a long way, and was returning as the sun went down. A glory of red molten gold was shining in her face, so that she could see nothing in front of her, and was a little startled by a voice greeting her with a respectful good-evening. The same moment she was alongside of the speaker in the blinding veil of the sun. It was Andrew walking home from a village on the other side of the moor. She drew rein, and they went together.
“What has come to you, Mr. Ingram?” she said; “I hear you were at church last Sunday evening!”
“Why should I not be, ma'am?” asked Andrew.
“For the reason that you are not in the way of going.”
“There might be good reason for going once, or for going many times, and yet not for going always!”
“We won't begin with quarreling! There are things we shall not agree about!”
“Yes; one or two—for a time, I believe!” returned Andrew.
“What did you think of Mr. Rackstraw's sermon? I suppose you went to hearhim.'”
“Yes, ma'am—at least partly.”
“Well?”
“Will you tell me first whether you were satisfied with Mr. Rackstraw's teaching? I know you were there.”
“I was quite satisfied.”
“Then I don't see reason for saying anything about it.”
“If I am wrong, you ought to try to set me right!”
“The prophet Elisha would have done no good by throwing his salt into the running stream. He cast it, you will remember, into the spring!”
“I do not understand you.”
“There is no use in persuading a person to change an opinion.”
“Why not?”
“Because the man is neither the better nor the worse for it. If you had told me you were distressed to hear a man in authority speak as Mr. Rackstraw spoke concerning a being you loved, I would have tried to comfort you by pointing out how false it was. But if you are content to hear God so represented, why should I seek to convince you of what is valueless to you? Why offer you to drink what your heart is not thirsting after? Would you love God more because you found He was not what you were quite satisfied He should be?”
“Do tell me more plainly what you mean?”
“You must excuse me. I have said all I will. I can not reason in defense of God. It seems blasphemy to argue that His nature is not such as no honorable man could love in another man.”
“But if the Bible says so?”
“If the Bible said so, the Bible would be false. But the Bible does not say so.”
“How is it then that it seems to say so?”
“Because you were taught falsely about Him before you desired to know Him.”
“But I am capable of judging now!”
Andrew was silent.
“Am I not?” insisted Alexa.
“Do you desire to know God?” said Andrew.
“I think I do know Him.”
“And you think those things true?”
“Yes.”
“Then we are where we were, and I say no more.”
“You are not polite.”
“I can not help it. I must let you alone to believe about God what you can. You will not be blamed for not believing what you can not.”
“Do you mean that God never punishes any one for what He can not help?”
“Assuredly.”
“How do you prove that?”
“I will not attempt to prove it. If you are content to think He does, if it do not trouble you that your God should be unjust, go on thinking so until you are made miserable by it, then I will pour out my heart to deliver you.”
She was struck, not with any truth in what he said, but with the evident truthfulness of the man himself. Right or wrong, there was that about him—a certain radiance of conviction—which certainly was not about Mr. Rackstraw.
“The things that can be shaken,” said Andrew, as if thinking with himself, “may last for a time, but they will at length be shaken to pieces, that the things which can not be shaken may show what they are. Whatever we call religion will vanish when we see God face to face.”
For awhile they went brushing through the heather in silence.
“May I ask you one question, Mr. Ingram?” said Alexa.
“Surely, ma'am! Ask me anything you like.”
“And you will answer me?”
“If I am at liberty to answer you I will.”
“What do you mean by being at liberty? Are you under any vow?”
“I am under the law of love. I am bound to do nothing to hurt. An answer that would do you no good I will not give.”
“How do you know what will or will not do me good?”
“I must use what judgment I have.”
“Is it true, then, that you believe God gives you whatever you ask?”
“I have never asked anything of Him that He did not give me.”
“Would you mind telling me anything you have asked of Him?”
“I have never yet required to ask anything not included in the prayer, 'Thy will be done.'”
“That will be done without your praying for it.”
“Pardon me; I do not believe it will be done, to all eternity, without my praying for it. Where first am I accountable that His will should be done? Is it not in myself? How is His will to be done in me without my willing it? Does He not want me to love what He loves?—to be like Himself?—to do His will with the glad effort of my will?—in a word, to will what He wills? And when I find I can not, what am I to do but pray for help? I pray, and He helps me.”
“There is nothing strange in that!”
“Surely not It seems to me the simplest common sense. It is my business, the business of every man, that God's will be done by his obedience to that will, the moment he knows it.”
“I fancy you are not so different from other people as you think yourself. But they say you want to die.”
“I want nothing but what God wants. I desire righteousness.”
“Then you accept the righteousness of Christ?”
“Accept it! I long for it.”
“You know that it is not what I mean!”
“I seek first the kingdom of God and God's righteousness.”
“You avoid my question. Do you accept the righteousness of Christ instead of your own?”
“I have no righteousness of my own to put it instead of. The only righteousness there is is God's, and He will make me righteous like Himself. He is not content that His one Son only should be righteous; He wants all His children to be righteous as He is righteous. The thing is plain; I will not argue about it.”
“You do not believe in the atonement.”
“I believe in Jesus Christ. He is the atonement. What strength God has given me I will spend in knowing Him and doing what He tells me. To interpret His plans before we know Himself is to mistake both Him and His plans. I know this, that he has given His life for what multitudes who call themselves by His name would not rise from their seats to share in.”
“You think me incapable of understanding the gospel?”
“I think if you did understand the gospel of Christ you would be incapable of believing the things about His Father that you say you do believe. But I will not say a word more. When you are able to see the truth, you will see it; and when you desire the truth you will be able.”
Alexa touched her pony with her whip. But by and by she pulled him up, and made him walk till Andrew overtook her.
The sun was by this time far out of sight, the glow of the west was over, and twilight lay upon the world. Its ethereal dimness had sunk into her soul.
“Does the gloaming make you sad, Mr. Ingram?” she asked.
“It makes me very quiet,” he answered—“as if all my people were asleep, and waiting for me.”
“Do you mean as if they were all dead? How can you talk of it so quietly?”
“Because I do not believe in death.”
“Whatdoyou mean?”
“I am a Christian!”
“I hope you are, Mr. Ingram, though, to be honest with you, some things make me doubt it Perhaps you would say I am not a Christian.”
“It is enough that God knows whether you are a Christian or not. Why should I say you are or you are not?”
“But I want to know what you meant when you said you were a Christian. How should that make you indifferent to the death of your friends? Death is a dreadful thing, look at it how you like.”
“The Lord says, 'He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.' If my friends are not dead, but living and waiting for me, why should I wait for them in a fierce, stormy night, or a black frost, instead of the calm of such a sleeping day as this—a day with the son hid, Shakespeare calls it.”
“How you do mix up things! Shakespeare and Jesus Christ!”
“God mixed them first, and will mix them a good deal more yet,” said Andrew.
But for the smile which would hover like a heavenly Psyche about his mouth, his way of answering would sometimes have seemed curt to those who did not understand him. Instead of holding aloof in his superiority, however, as some thought he did when he would not answer, or answered abruptly, Andrew's soul would be hovering, watching and hoping for a chance of lighting, and giving of the best he had. He was like a great bird changing parts with a child—the child afraid of the bird, and the bird enticing the child to be friends. He had learned that if he poured out his treasure recklessly it might be received with dishonor, and but choke the way of the chariot of approaching truth.
“Perhaps you will say next there is no such thing as suffering,” resumed Alexa.
“No; the Lord said that in the world His friends should have tribulation.”
“What tribulation have you, who are so specially His friend?”
“Not much yet It is a little, however, sometimes, to know such strong, and beautiful, and happy-making things, and all the time my people, my beloved humans, born of my Father in heaven, with the same heart for joy and sorrow, will not listen and be comforted, I think that was what made our Lord sorriest of all.”
“Mr. Ingram, I have no patience with you. How dare you liken your trouble to that of our Lord—making yourself equal with Him!”
“Is it making myself equal with Him to say that I understand a little how He felt toward His fellow-men? I am always trying to understand Him; would it be a wonder if I did sometimes a little? How is a man to do as He did, without understanding Him?”
“Are you going to work miracles next?”
“Jesus was always doing what God wanted Him to do. That was what He came for, not to work miracles. He could have worked a great many more if He had pleased, but He did no more than God wanted of Him. Am I not to try to do the will of God, because He who died that I might, always succeeded however hard it was, and I am always failing and having to try again?”
“And you think you will come to it in this life?”
“I never think about that; I only think about doing His will now—not about doing it then—that is, to-morrow or next day or next world. I know only one life—the life that is hid with Christ in God; and that is the life by which I live here and now. I do not make schemes of life; I live. Life will teach me God's plans; I will take no trouble about them; I will only obey, and receive the bliss He sends me. And of all things I will not make theories of God's plans for other people to accept. I will only do my best to destroy such theories as I find coming between some poor glooming heart, and the sun shining in his strength. Those who love the shade of lies, let them walk in it until the shiver of the eternal cold drive them to seek the face of Jesus Christ. To appeal to their intellect would be but to drive them the deeper into the shade to justify their being in it. And if by argument you did persuade them out of it, they would but run into a deeper and worse darkness.”
“How could that be?”
“They would at once think that, by an intellectual stride they had advanced in the spiritual life, whereas they would be neither the better nor the worse. I know a man, once among the foremost in denouncing the old theology, who is now no better than a swindler.”
“You mean—”
“No one you know, ma'am. His intellectual freedom seems only to have served his spiritual subjugation. Right opinion, except it spring from obedience to the truth, is but so much rubbish on the golden floor of the temple.”
The peace of the night and its luminous earnestness were gleaming on Andrew's face, and Alexa, glancing up as he ceased, felt again the inroad of a sense of something in the man that was not in the other men she knew—the spiritual shadow of a dweller in regions beyond her ken. The man was before her, yet out of her sight!
The whole thing was too simple for her, only a child could understand it Instead of listening to the elders and priests to learn how to save his soul, he cast away all care of himself, left that to God, and gave himself to do the will of Him from whose heart he came, even as the eternal Life, the Son of God, required of him; in the mighty hope of becoming one mind, heart, soul, one eternal being, with Him, with the Father, with every good man, with the universe which was his inheritance—walking in the world as Enoch walked with God, held by his hand. This is what man was and is meant to be, what man must become; thither the wheels of time are roaring; thither work all the silent potencies of the eternal world; and they that will not awake and arise from the dead must be flung from their graves by the throes of a shivering world.
When he had done speaking Andrew stood and looked up. A few stars were looking down through the limpid air. Alexa rode on. Andrew let her go, and walked after her alone, sure that her mind must one day open to the eternal fact that God is all in all, the perfect friend of His children; yea, that He would cease to be God sooner than fail His child in his battle with death.