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For she was rehearsing a pleasant little drama as she hurried back across the street.
Her daughter’s sad face had deeply pained her. It was plain to see that if she loved not wisely, she loved, at least, too well; and she pitied her from the bottom of her heart. Perhaps some anger had been mingled with the softer feeling at first; but Alice had put a new face upon the matter; and she was hurrying home to say to her daughter that she for one (and her father for another) looked upon the alleged scepticism of young men as the most harmless of eccentricities; and her face wore a determined smile. She did not intend to commit herself. It would be time enough to express her views (that is to say, Mr. Rolfe’s) when this Enigma had given an account of himself. But if thatwas all that could be said against him, etc., etc., etc., etc.
And, would you believe it? the very incognito of our hero had begun to make the imagination of this staid matron cut fantastic capers. Who could tell? Strange things had happened before. Why not?
“Sceptic or something!” She almost laughed as she turned the knob of the door. “The poor child should laugh, too!”
The poor child did not laugh!
CHAPTER LXI.
The poor child did not laugh.
“You do not know him, you do not know him,” again and again she replied, wearily.
She might have added,—but she did not,—“You do not know me.” And after all, what mother, of them all, knows her daughter, enveloped as she is in a double veil? For between the old heart and the young lies the mist of the years; and what eye can pierce aright the diffracting medium of maternal love?
Even Doctor Alice, when called in consultation, next day, could not probe to the bottom of the mystery.
And are there not ever some little nooks and corners of our hearts unsuspected by our dearest friends, even?—aspirations that they would have laughed at, perhaps,—fears which we should have blushed to confess,—hopes, alas, withered and fallen now,—that we have never revealed to mortal ears?
Now, within our Mary’s breast there was, I shall not say a nook or a recess, but a dark and dismal chamber, the key of which had never left her keeping.
Let us call it the Cavern of Religious Terror, and cut the allegory short.
Suppose we try to put ourselves in her place, and see how things looked, not to an average girl of that period (still less to any one of this), but to one such as Mary was.
At the time in question, the dogma of what is known among theologians, I believe, as that of the plenary inspiration of the
Scriptures, was held from one end of Virginia to the other.
That is to say, my Ah Yung, that every chapter, every sentence, every word, and every syllable of the Bible had been literally inspired, and was absolutely true. This we were expected to believe and did believe; and by what ingenuity we were to escape the dogma of eternal damnation I, for one, cannot see. But we made no effort to escape it, regarding it, to a man, as the mainstay of society and the sheet-anchor of all the virtues. A belief in hell was ranked among the necessaries of life.
“’Twas the merest luxury,” quoth Charley.
Now, what is the imagination but a kind of inner eye, revealing to us, often with fearful distinctness, that which may be, but is not. And imagination was, as we know, an overshadowing trait of Mary’s mind.
And what a training that imagination had! Her mother thought it was her duty, so let that pass; but hardly had she shed her long clothes when her precocious little head began to teem with burning lakes, and writhing souls, and mocking demons, and worms that die not. And, ofttimes, her little heart almost ceased to beat, as she lay in her trundle-bed, and, with wide-staring eyes, saw her own baby-self engirdled with unquenchable flames. For had she not fretted over her Sunday-school lesson that very morning (longing to dress her new doll), and said it was too long, and oh! that she hated the catechism?
Now, among those who accept this dogma, there are various ways of dealing with it. The immense majority inscribe it among the articles of their creed, fold the paper, label it, and file it away in some dusty pigeon-hole, in an out-of-the way corner of their heads, and go about their business. They are satisfied to know that it is there, and that there is no heresy about them. A true Virginian looks upon his faith much as he does upon a Potomac herring, and would no more think of finding fault with the one because of a knotty point or so, than with the other for the bones it contains. He wouldn’t be
caught carrying a stomach about with him that was capable of making wry faces over such spiculæ, not he. Look at that noble roe, that firm flesh, as stimulating as cognac! No cod-fish, no heresy for him!
So with the vast majority.
Then, there is another class of minds, with which to believe is to realize. To such this article of their faith assumes abnormal proportions, dwarfing all others. Upon this alone their glassy eyes are fixed. Let us pass them by with bowed heads. Seeking heaven in the world to come, they have found a hell in this.
Our Mary stood between these two classes, belonging to neither; but by the nature of her mental constitution she leaned fearfully towards the latter. Seeing is believing; but with Mary to believe was to see. And from her infancy to her womanhood her fond mother had done all that in her lay, unwittingly, to overthrow her reason. That that fair mind did not become as sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh, was due to her father. It was he that saved, her,— unwittingly as well,—saved her through books.
Mr. Rolfe had no son, and Mary was his only daughter. He made her his companion in his walks and in his study; and she became, like him, an omnivorous reader; and the baleful phantasms of her distempered spirit grew paler in the presence of other and brighter thoughts. The process went further. As she read and read, drawing upon all the great literatures (when she could, in the original—else in translations), there gradually dawned upon her a sense of the immense diversity of human opinion.
And yet, with what undoubting tenacity each people clung to its faith! Hindu, Turk, Greek, Spaniard, Scotchman,—each was in exclusive possession of the Eternal Verities!
The materials of the generalization were all there; and one fine morning she said to herself: Religious truth is simply a question of geography.
Mary Rolfe was a sceptic!
And yet she had not read one sceptical book. Where was she to find such in Richmond?
But this demure little miss of sixteen summers did what she could to keep her doubts to herself. How shockingly ungenteel to be an infidel! And a female infidel! An agnostic would have been different. The very sound of the word is ladylike; but, unhappily for our heroine, their day had not yet come. And for a whole year there was not a more wretched little woman in all Richmond.
Two clocks shall stare at each other, from opposite walls, year in and year out, and agree to disagree without the least discomfort to either. And would that we men were even as these serenely-ticking philosophers! Alas for the shadow that falls on the friendship of Mrs. A. and Mrs. B., when they become adherents of rival sewingmachines! And why, because our whilom chum now goes about with the pellets of the Homœopath in his vest-pocket, forsaking the boluses of the Regulars, why should we turn and rend him?
Dreading to be rent, our sweet-sixteener kept her daring speculations locked within her bosom, and was wretched; for man’s opinions, like man himself, are gregarious,—and a thought is as restless in solitude as a bird cut off from its mate.
So this state of things could not last. And when Alice, after looking very serious for a week, announced her intention of being confirmed on the approaching visitation of the bishop, Mary had to speak. Alice was horrified at first; but, being a plucky little soul, more given to acting, under difficulties, than repining, she posted off to their pastor.
He made short work of Mary’s difficulties; and, being well up in evidential polemics, battered down her vague objections to the credibility of Christianity with such ease, that, at the close of a twohours’ interview, she begged, in deep humiliation, that he would not consider her an entirely brainless creature; so utterly frivolous had all her objections been made to appear. Two or three books, left in her hands, finished the business. And, a few weeks later, Mary and
Alice knelt side by side, and took upon themselves their baptismal vows.
Now, among the various phases of infidelity, there are two forms which are strongly antithetical,—the scepticism of the body and the scepticism of the mind. Who has not seen a vigorous young animal of our species, his head as void of brains as his body is full of riotous passions,—who has not seen such a one masquerading as a freethinker? Never fear, reverend and dear sir; thinking will have to be wondrous free before any of it passes his way. Sooner or later you shall number him among the meekest of your lambs. A hemorrhage—a twinge of gout in the stomach—any reminder that he is mortal—and you shall see him passing the plate along the aisles, and offering to take a class in your Sunday-school. In fact, a few such reclaimed sheep are a positive necessity in every flock. They point a moral. Remember what he was, and see what he is. And the blasphemer of yesterday becomes the beacon-light of today.
But when doubts have their origin in the higher rather than the lower nature,—when a mind, at once candid and searching, gradually finds itself forced to question dogmas learned from a mother’s lips,—for this phase of scepticism, the cure is far more difficult, and rarely radical. You may mow down the doubts with irresistible logic, they may be crushed into the very earth by the enormous weight of unanimous opposing opinion, but they are not dead. Remove the pressure, and the mind bristles, instantly, with interrogation-points.
“No,” said her kindly pastor, patting her brown hair, “I am far from thinking that this little head is brainless. The trouble lies in the opposite direction. Stop thinking about things that are above the reach of the human mind,—above it, for the very reason that they are of God. Honestly, now, if we could grasp the meaning of every word in that Bible of ours, as though it were a human production, would not that, of itself, prove that it was of man? To be of God is to be inscrutable. Is not that what a fair mind should expect?
Undoubtedly. But my advice to you is, not to bother your head about such subtleties. Stop thinking, and go to work. You will find that a panacea worth all the logic in the world.”
And such Mary found it to be. And her class in the Sunday-school was soon recognized as the best. And she taught the servants of her mother’s household, and read to them till they nodded again.
And so, when she went down to spend Christmas in Leicester, after a year spent in these works of charity, she had forgotten that she had ever been a doubter. Two months had passed, and she was all at sea again. She felt that her faith was slipping from beneath her feet. She repeated to herself, over and over again, the arguments of her pastor; she read and re-read his books. Their logic seemed irresistible; yet it did not give her rest. Her head was convinced, —’twas her heart that was in rebellion. And she was woman enough to know the danger of that.
Faith or love,—which should it be? One cannot serve two masters.
“Nonsense!” said the cheery Alice, one day. “I can imagine now how he will look, marching to church with your prayer-book in his hand!”
“No, it is not nonsense.”
“Pooh! we shall have him singing in the choir before you have been married six months.”
Mary laughed (for who could resist the Enchantress?); and Alice, seizing her advantage, drew picture after picture of the reclaimed Don, each more ludicrous than the other (throwing in parenthetical glimpses of her own Charley), till both girls were convulsed with merriment.
“No, Alice,” said Mary, at last, wiping the tears from her eyes, “it is a very serious matter. Do you know what would happen? Hewould not be saved, but Ishould be lost.”
That was what troubled Mary. That was why she could not laugh when her mother made merry over sceptical youths. He who had spoken so well and so strangely, down there by the Argo, was not a
sceptical youth, but a man of most vehement convictions. And she felt that she would be clay in his hands. His faith, was formed; hers would be formed upon it. Formed upon it? Crushed against it, rather! For, after all, though of a deeply religious nature, as was plain, had he any religion?
That was the way we Virginians[1] looked at it. If you were not orthodox, you didn’t count. If you were not for us, you were against us. “I look upon all Protestant ministers as wolves in sheep’s clothing,” said a Catholic to me. Per contra, I once asked a Presbyterian minister—a friend of mine—how he rated Catholicism. “What do you mean?” “Do you look upon it as a religion, for example?” He was a good fellow, and wished to be charitable. He hung his head. He felt half ashamed of what he was going to say. But he said it. Slowly raising his eyes to mine, he answered, in a voice full of sadness, “I do not. I regard it as worse than nothing.”
Ah, we were out-and-outers in those days! An error was worse than a crime. That could be atoned for, with the one, by confession and absolution; with the other by repentance, even at the eleventh hour. But getting into the wrong pew! “A blind horse tumbles headforemost into a well. He did not know it was there! Does that savehisneck?”
Ole Virginny nebber tire!
Such was the atmosphere which our Mary breathed. And—strange psychological paradox—just in proportion as her faith weakened did its terrors grow darker to her mind. That yawning gulf, upon the brink of which she used to tremble as a little child, seemed to have opened again. She believed less—she feared more. The peace she had gained was gone. The old dark days had come back. One cannot serve two masters; for either
But faith or love—which?
[1] Why Virginians? Can this so-called Mr. John Bouche Whacker be a carpet-bagger?—Ed.
CHAPTER LXII.
One day, Mary burst into Alice’s room. “Read that,” said she; and she threw herself upon the lounge, with her face to the wall.
Alice was a brave little soul; but Mary’s pale face and tear-stained cheeks upset her, and her hands shook a little as she unfolded the letter. She read the first page with eager haste and contracted brows; then turned nervously to the last (the sixteenth), and read the concluding sentence and signature.
“Why, what canthe matter be, Mary? It begins well, it ends well?”
“It is the same all through.”
“The same all through! And you crying! Upon my word, Mary, you—”
“Read it.”
Those satirists who claim that nothing can stop a woman’s tongue have never tried the experiment of handing her a love-letter. Over Alice there now came a sudden stillness, chequered only by exclamations of delight,—
“So nice!—beautiful!—too lovely!—A-a-a-a-h, M-a-r-y! Mary, let me read this aloud? A-a-a-h! No? You goose! A-a-a-h, too beautiful,—too sweet for anything!—I declare I shall be heels over head in love with him myself before— Gracious, what a torrent! What vehemence! Do you know, Mary, he almost frightens me? Well, I have read the letter; and now, miss, be so good as to explain what you mean by scaring people so with your white face and red eyes?”
“It is hard,” said Mary, after a pause, and trying to control her voice, —“it is hard to give—up—all—that—love. And such love!”
“Give it up! Are you crazy?”