This Book is the Property of 
 
 No Membership Fee 
 
 Time Limit on all Books 
 THIRTY DAYS 
 
 Books will be reserved on the payment 
 
 of Five Cents. This payment covers a 
 
 notice to you that the book is being 
 
 held for three days from sending 
 
 date of notice.
 
 OF CALIF. LWRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 CALMIRE 
 
 FOURTH EDITION REVISED 
 
 Neto Yorfe 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1893
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
 
 BY 
 MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 First Edition published May 1892 ; Second (with considerable 
 alterations'), August 1892; Third, in 2 vols. for England {with 
 slight modifications], October 1892 ; Fourth, 2 vols. in one (with 
 tome restatements and minor alterations), January 1893. 
 
 PRINTED BY ROBERT DRUMMOND, NEW YORK.
 
 NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 SHOULD this fall under the eye of any one who 
 has been interested in the discussions in a previous 
 edition, he may care to have his attention called to 
 some re-statements in Part II, on pp. 266 and 295. 
 The separate paging of the parts, which may at 
 first puzzle such a reader, is due to alterations for 
 the third edition, in two volumes, which went to 
 England. 
 
 There are some minor modifications hardly 
 worth specifying, but perhaps worth alluding to 
 for bibliographical reasons. 
 
 21 26274
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 I. A Real Ghost 3 
 
 II. A Youth of the Period, 14 
 
 III. A Girl not of the Period, 19 
 
 IV. A Man of Several Periods, 24 
 
 V. The First Bout 28 
 
 VI. An Afternoon Drive, 32 
 
 VII. A Town out of the Beaten Path 40 
 
 VIII. The Unjust and the Just, 53 
 
 IX. The Band begins to Play 68 
 
 X. Sympathy? 77 
 
 XI. The New Genesis 84 
 
 XII. Wilful Woman, 100 
 
 XIII. New Foreshadowings from Old Questions, . . no 
 
 XIV. The Granzines, 124 
 
 XV. Another Bout 139 
 
 XVI. A Tough Subject though not a New One, . . 144 
 XVII. Mr. Courtenay Experiences some Sentiments 
 
 and a Visit, 153 
 
 XVIII. Faith and Fact, 160 
 
 XIX. Courtenay and his Sister, 176 
 
 XX. The All-including, 183 
 
 v
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXI. At a Tennis Match, 201 
 
 XXII. Muriel takes a Short Innings, 216 
 
 XXIII. Aids to Matrimony, 230 
 
 XXIV. Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy, .... 244 
 XXV. A Bit of Knight-errantry 258 
 
 XXVI. In the Same Boat 267 
 
 XXVII. Dependence, 287 
 
 XXVIII. Absence Omits to Conquer, 302 
 
 XXIX. In Another Boat 305 
 
 XXX. Going Wooing, 316 
 
 XXXI. Banished, 329 
 
 XXXII. " Du sollst entbehren," 335 
 
 XXXIII. A Little Diplomacy, 340 
 
 XXXIV. The Encounter, 345 
 
 XXXV. Another Encounter 354 
 
 XXXVI. A Soulless Universe, 360 
 
 XXXVII. Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire, .... 365 
 
 PART II. 
 
 XXXVIII. Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire, . ... 3 
 
 XXXIX. Revelation 12 
 
 XL. The Natural and the Supernatural, . ... . . 25 
 
 XLI. An Outside Argument, 35 
 
 XLII. The Essential Religion, 42 
 
 XLIII. Mary's Story, 62 
 
 XLIV. Courtenay's Faith, "... 74 
 
 XLV. The Moral Order 84 
 
 XLVI. Misery makes Strange Bedfellows, . . . . 100 
 
 XLVII. The Unknown God, no
 
 Contents. vii 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XLVIII. God and Man 126 
 
 XLIX. More Correspondence, 134 
 
 L. Cain 143 
 
 LI. Tantalus, 152 
 
 LII. Our only Glimpse of Town 157 
 
 LIII. Where Man may Go, 168 
 
 LIV. Man's Range Enough for Man, 183 
 
 LV. Making the Best of a Bad Case, 194 
 
 LVI. Some Travel and Some Letters, 204 
 
 LVII. Extracts arranged from the Diary of a Penitent, 216 
 
 LVI II. De Profundis, 234 
 
 LIX. Facing It, 252 
 
 LX. Where All Roads Meet, 263 
 
 LXI. Noblesse Oblige, 2 g, 
 
 LXII. A Hunter's Find, 299 
 
 LXIII. The Finder's Hunt 308 
 
 LXIV. The Beginning, 317
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAOS
 
 CALMIRE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A REAL GHOST. 
 
 "THIS is outrageous ! She has rung four times 
 already !" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " The door is open," answered her mother beside 
 her in the carriage. " Send the coachman in." 
 
 " No ! He had better stay with his horses. I'll 
 go and see what it means myself. Let me out, 
 please." 
 
 " Let Marie go in." 
 
 " No; I'll go myself." 
 
 And she got out. It was one Summer evening 
 not far from 1880, when the two ladies and their 
 maid reached Fleuvemont. Till within a few 
 weeks, the house had been closed for two years 
 since Mr. Calmire had gone abroad immediately 
 after his wife's death. Now he was back in New 
 York, where he had found his cousin (by mar- 
 riage) and life-long friend, Mrs. Hugh Wahring, 
 in town later than her wont, and in a predicament. 
 She had not settled for Nina and herself that 
 most harassing of standard questions, where to 
 
 3
 
 4 A Real Ghost. 
 
 spend the Summer. She had supposed it settled, 
 and satisfactorily, a month before, when Mr. Wahr- 
 ing had seen them comfortably fixed in their 
 house at Newport. All of them were vastly pleased 
 with the new addition to it, and he had started off 
 to visit his firm's office in China, to determine the 
 question of yielding to the then recent revolution in 
 trade, and closing the office up. A week after the 
 arrival at Newport, a fog set in, which led Mrs. 
 Wahring to order fires. The flues in the new ad- 
 dition had been built as usual, though the usual 
 conflagration which they occasioned had not been 
 subdued with the usual success, but had burned 
 the house down, and sent the ladies back to their 
 town house without their natural guide the hus- 
 band and father to determine their course for 
 the season. 
 
 Mr. Calmire determined it, however, by saying : 
 " Now, Cousin Hilda, the judicious gods evidently 
 burned down that well-insured house to reward 
 my virtues. I need you and Nina this Summer. 
 For one reason and another, my children are all 
 away, though I had to make some of them go. 
 You know how lonely I am. I have ordered 
 Fleuvemont opened. Pierre has been up there, 
 and reports everything ready. But it will be a 
 dreary place with no woman in it, and I cannot 
 count on even Muriel to stick by me long at a time. 
 I must have you and Nina there. Go up with me 
 Wednesday evening, and lay me under a lasting 
 obligation." 
 
 After some demur, a few inquiries, and unmis- 
 takable indications that Calmire meant what he
 
 A Real Ghost. 5 
 
 said, as he always did when he spoke seriously, 
 Mrs. Wahring, without consulting Nina, said that 
 they would accept the invitation. 
 
 " You will grant the favor, you mean. Wednes- 
 day, then, we leave Forty-second Street at eight. 
 I'm sorry that I have a special appointment which 
 prevents my going earlier in the day." 
 
 Wednesday turned out an oppressively hot day. 
 At three o'clock, this note was put in Mrs. Wahr- 
 ing's hands : 
 
 " 35 WALL STREET, Wednesday, 2.10 P.M. 
 
 " DEAR COUSIN HILDA : The person whom I was 
 to see to-day has been delayed some hours by a rail- 
 way breakdown. The business is very important 
 and cannot be postponed. I must stay in town 
 overnight. It's too hot for you and Nina to stay, 
 and you are all packed for going. Your staying 
 would add to the discomfort I must suffer. Pray 
 go. Take the six train. As you are alone, it will 
 be pleasanter to get in early. I have telegraphed 
 the servants to expect you. I will join you to- 
 morrow. 
 
 " Ever yours, L. C." 
 
 So here they were, at Fleuvemont, in the dark, 
 and of the servants they knew to be inside, not 
 one paying any attention to the hackman's ring- 
 ing. Much less had any of them taken the pains 
 to meet the guests at the station. And Miss Nina 
 Wahring, among whose many undisciplined pow- 
 ers at eighteen was a temper, had that power in a 
 very pretty state of excitation. 
 
 She rushed into the house.
 
 6 A Real Ghost. 
 
 She had heard the place described as impressive, 
 and so it was. The hall was of noble proportions. 
 The doors on the sides were large and dark, and 
 framed in heavy carvings. The walls were pan- 
 eled with dark oak to within a yard of the ceiling, 
 which also was paneled. Between the ceiling and 
 the wall-panels, was a frieze of dark leather, cov- 
 ered with antlers, antique weapons, and bits of 
 armor. At the remote end of the hall, on high 
 pedestals, were the effigies of two knights in full 
 mail. The lamps were placed where they could 
 not distract attention from the whole effect, so the 
 light was subdued, and over all was silence. 
 
 Nina's impetuous steps grew slower almost 
 upon the threshold. Her irritation was forgot- 
 ten, and she felt as if she had come suddenly 
 into some land of dreams. She walked lightly, as 
 if afraid of breaking a spell. Soon, at the left 
 of the mailed figures and at the foot of the 
 broad niched staircase, appeared the light, softened 
 through great globes, which rose from a mass of 
 weapons stacked amid a base of shields. Passing 
 to the farther side of these, she rested her left hand 
 on one of them, and gazed up to where, beyond the 
 gloomy curves of the stairs, shining through the 
 roof-light, she saw two stars. 
 
 She made a lovely picture as she stood there 
 her slight figure, in its diaphanous Summer dra- 
 pery, thrown in bold relief against the dark panels 
 behind her her fair, upturned face and careless 
 red-gold hair against the great dark-lined hat, al- 
 most aureoled by the soft lights at whose pedestal 
 she half supported herself.
 
 A Real Ghost. 7 
 
 For some moments she had forgotten her pur- 
 pose, when it was brought back by the noise of a 
 door closing upstairs. She called: 
 
 " I say, there!" 
 
 No answer, the silence gaining in impressiveness 
 by the contrast with her echoed voice. A feeling 
 came over her that she did not half like, but she 
 imperiously smothered it and waited for some 
 repetition of the noise. Soon another door closed 
 and footsteps began descending the stairs. 
 
 " No need of calling now!" she thought wearily, 
 for she was very tired. 
 
 A flight or two above, there emerged from 
 the shadows, a tall figure in dark dress. As 
 it came down, she slowly realized, with a feel- 
 ing almost uncanny, that the brown costume 
 was not a livery, but a doublet with wide lace 
 collar, trunks, and jack-boots with great spurs, 
 and slung over one arm was a heavy sword. The 
 face, though she could not see it very clearly, was 
 plainly young, but serious, with a square brow, 
 deep eyes, and a straight nose. The hair was cut 
 close, and there was a dark mustache. The young 
 Roundhead advanced slowly, lost in thought, un- 
 observant of the graceful addition that had been 
 made to the massive objects below him. 
 
 She was rapt in contemplation of the noble 
 presence until it reached the last platform of the 
 staircase, stopped, gazed at her a few seconds, and 
 then said slowly, in a rich, sweet voice: 
 
 " If you're a vision, pray don't vanish before I 
 have a closer view,"
 
 8 A Real Ghost. 
 
 " If you're a ghost, you take a very mundane 
 tone for one." 
 
 " I am a ghost, but you needn't be afraid of me." 
 
 " Thank you, I won't. But why do you take the 
 trouble to be a ghost ? Is it your own sins or other 
 people's that disturb your rest?" 
 
 "A good deal of both, sometimes. I'm only one 
 of Carlyle's ghosts, though, just as you are, if you're 
 really not a dream. He says we're all ghosts." 
 
 " Ghosts get pretty tired and hungry, then, some- 
 times. Didn't you expect us ? I didn't come to 
 vanish." 
 
 " I'm very glad of that," he said, descending the 
 stairs. " But I didn't expect anybody. I came my- 
 self only half an hour ago, to go to a ball. I'm Mr. 
 Muriel Calmire, very much at your service, and I 
 have the pleasure of addressing ?" 
 
 " Miss Wahring;" and she added, holding out 
 her hand: " Perhaps we'd better test each other's 
 substantiality, especially as you're one of the 
 family, and I'm going to stay here ever so long." 
 
 They shook hands very substantially for a first 
 meeting, and he said: "Oh yes! I've heard the 
 name in the family. I think I met your father 
 once. General, isn't he ?" 
 
 " Yes, was, of volunteers. But it's odd your 
 father didn't let you know we were coming." 
 
 "Uncle Grand isn't my father," he said; "but 
 he's nearer a father than anybody else. He lets 
 me come and go as I please. He didn't know I 
 was coming now. When did you come ?" 
 
 "Why, we've just got here, and mamma is wait- 
 ing in the carriage while we're discussing family 
 history."
 
 A Real Ghost. 9 
 
 "Oh!" he exclaimed, and started for the car- 
 riage without a word of apology. 
 
 When he emerged from the door and ran down 
 in the dim light to the first landing, whence two 
 flights of steps wound down to the right and left, 
 Mrs. Wahring, whose annoyance had been in- 
 creased by the delay inside, hailed him with: 
 
 " Come, help the maid with these things. You 
 people seem very careless. Didn't you get your 
 master's telegram ?" 
 
 " You mean Mr. Calmire's ?" he said. 
 
 " Certainly. Who else employs you ?" 
 
 " Nobody else!" and he reached the carriage-door 
 and offered his hand. 
 
 Mrs. Wahring, not stopping to reflect that the 
 Calmire servants were not apt to wear mustaches, 
 ignored the proffered hand as she got out, and 
 said: 
 
 " There are two dressing-bags in there, two 
 parasols, and two umbrellas tied together. One 
 trunk, that you may help the man with, is behind. 
 The rest will be up in the morning." 
 
 Then she started up the steps. Muriel took some 
 of the things, leaving the rest for the maid, and 
 followed Mrs. Wahring. His quicker steps brought 
 him beside her on the landing, and after two or 
 three paces more he dropped a parasol, and it broke. 
 
 " Stupid !" she exclaimed, not quite intending 
 him to hear. But he did hear, and turning to her, 
 half angry and half amused, said: 
 
 " I've not been very long at this work ;" but he 
 explained no further, and was too angry to ex- 
 press any regret.
 
 IO A Real Ghost- 
 
 Nina was at the door, waiting for them. When 
 he stopped to pick up the pieces of the parasol, 
 Mrs. Wahring got ahead of him, and when he ap- 
 peared with the things in the half light, she ex- 
 claimed to her daughter: 
 
 " Well ! that's the strangest livery I ever saw !" 
 
 The two young people broke into a laugh. Mu- 
 riel's little irritation was soothed by it; and as soon 
 as Nina could, she said : 
 
 "Mamma, let me introduce Mr. Muriel Calmire." 
 
 Mrs. Wahring flushed at first, but soon joined in 
 the laugh, shook hands with him, and said : 
 
 " How could you let me speak to you in that 
 manner? It wasn't fair." 
 
 "You're probably entitled to choose your own 
 manner of speech," he answered, still a little un- 
 amiable. 
 
 " But you deceived me." 
 
 " You deceived yourself." 
 
 " Mr. Calmire told me," she continued, " that you 
 weren't expected for some time. Of course I was 
 out of patience with the servants. I couldn't see 
 in the dark that you were a gentleman, and " (after 
 a little pause) "perhaps you'll excuse my saying 
 that I don't think it was quite the act of one not 
 to let me know who you were." 
 
 He flushed, and said bluntly: " Your tone of 
 voice irritated me, and when I saw the joke, it 
 seemed too good to let go all at once." 
 
 "I was out of temper," said Mrs. Wahring, "and 
 I had no right to go as far as I did. I beg your 
 pardon." 
 
 "Pray don't mention it. Consider me always
 
 A Real Ghost. II 
 
 your servant, madam." He accompanied his words 
 with a bow and a smile, but apparently he did not 
 realize that he had anything to apologize for. 
 
 " But what in the world are you doing in that 
 costume ?" asked Mrs. Wahring. " There's nothing 
 going on here to-night, is there ?" 
 
 " No ; but I'm going off. as soon as I see you 
 taken care of. I wonder what ails those con- 
 founded servants. Didn't anybody know you were 
 coming ?" 
 
 "Yes; at least Mr. Calmire telegraphed, and we 
 rang and rang." 
 
 " The bell must be out of order," he said. 
 " Uncle Grand has been away so long that pretty 
 much everything is. I'll ring again. Pray be 
 seated," and he motioned them toward one of the 
 great carved benches. Then he opened the draw- 
 ing-room door next them, put his hand inside, and 
 pulled a heavy old-fashioned silk bell-cord. In a 
 moment a maid appeared, and he said: 
 
 " Where are the men ?" 
 
 " Down at the village, sir. Didn't know they'd 
 be needed before ten." 
 
 " Didn't you get a telegram about these ladies ?" 
 
 " No, sir. We only expected Mr. Calmire in the 
 eleven-o'clock train." 
 
 " Country telegraph offices!" exclaimed Muriel. 
 " Is the library lit?" he asked the maid, who said 
 yes, and then he explained to the ladies, as he led 
 them to the room: " Evidently the lost telegram 
 contained Uncle Grand's instructions about you, 
 and so the drawing-room is not lit. He always 
 has them light the library for him, though."
 
 12 A Real Ghost. 
 
 The great room they entered was two stories 
 high, with two galleries, and on the floor, alcoved 
 shelves out to the edge of the lower gallery. The 
 room had been built by Calmire's father, who was 
 a collector of vast quantities of books that he sel- 
 dom read. Calmire, on the other hand, was quite 
 a student. 
 
 The tired ladies were put between a huge study- 
 table and the great fireplace, in two big, com- 
 fortable Turkish chairs comfortable at least in 
 Muriel's eyes, though the backs were not straight 
 enough for a woman's ideal; and Mr. Muriel dis- 
 posed himself in an old Canterbury chair, before 
 the logs which, though unlit in the Summer night, 
 still looked comfortably suggestive: and he, with 
 the big fireplace, the old chair, and his Cromwellian 
 dress, made a picture that the ladies never forgot. 
 For a large room, the one they were in was amaz- 
 ingly cosy, partly because it had been much lived 
 in by a cheerful spirit fond of light and color. 
 
 "Now, Mary, have you anything to eat?" said 
 Mr. Muriel to the maid, in a characteristically 
 direct way, indifferent to the minor convention- 
 alities that would have led to domestic discussions 
 aside, or to an apology for entering upon them be- 
 fore his stranger guests. 
 
 " Oh yes, sir; I can order dinner at once," she 
 answered. 
 
 "No, no!" protested Mrs. Wahring. "We had 
 something substantial before we started." 
 
 " But Miss Wahring has already plead guilty to 
 an appetite," said Muriel. 
 
 " Yes," said the young lady. " It was too hot tC
 
 A Real Ghost. 13 
 
 eat in town, except as a precautionary measure. 
 I'm ready to do it seriously now, though." 
 
 " Good Lord !" thought Muriel to himself, 
 "there goes my vision!" He was very young and 
 very imaginative, and therefore, of course, a good 
 deal of a fool. This shade of " disillusion," as he 
 saw fit to consider it, made it easier for him, after 
 a few more explanations and the necessary orders 
 for the ladies' comfort, to say to them: 
 
 "And now I must bid you good-night I have 
 an appointment and a six-mile drive before me. 
 I trust you will find yourselves entirely at home, 
 and that to-morrow I can hear you say you have 
 been." 
 
 He bowed and was off. Somehow the almost 
 cordial beginning that the various contretemps had 
 given to their acquaintance, did not seem quite sus- 
 tained. So much spontaneity seldom is, in our self- 
 conscious and sophisticated age; though the rela- 
 tions with each other that we sometimes build 
 when there is time enough, are probably as endur- 
 ing as they are deliberate.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A YOUTH OF THE PERIOD. 
 
 THIS Mr. Muriel Calmire was rather a chaotic 
 young person, in both ancestry and education. 
 His family was of French extraction and pro- 
 nounced its name in the French way. His 
 great-grandfather, Honore Calmire, a Louisiana 
 planter, had, while studying abroad, married a 
 daughter of Nina's great-grandfather, General 
 Freiherr von Wahring; their son Legrand was edu- 
 cated in New England, and while in college met his 
 wife, who was an unmixed descendant of the Puri- 
 tans. Their sons, including Muriel's father, were 
 all educated North and settled there, marrying 
 again into the Puritan stock, which had now, in 
 spite of the family's French name, become the 
 dominant strain in the branch of it with which we 
 have to do. 
 
 Muriel's parents died early, from some local 
 zymotic disease, while they were visiting one of his 
 aunts at the South, and that threw the child in his 
 early years principally among his Southern rela- 
 tives. As he grew older, he drifted more toward 
 his mother's sister Amelia, who had married his 
 father's brother John, and later toward his uncle 
 Legrand. 
 
 But Legrand was much away from home during 
 Muriel's formative years, at least during such of 
 
 14
 
 A Youth of i 'he Period, 15 
 
 them as had passed before this narrative opens, 
 and the boy had felt only enough of his influence 
 to counteract much of that of his aunts' husbands 
 at the South. These gentlemen had led him to enter 
 a Southern "University," where Muriel, being very 
 precocious, had graduated at nineteen. He had 
 meanwhile picked up some ideas during his visits 
 to his aunt Amelia and uncle Legrand, which de- 
 termined him to enter the junior year at a leading 
 Northern university. There he had done brill- 
 iantly just what he liked, including many things 
 he would better not have done at all, had failed 
 deliberately in such enforced studies as he did not 
 like, and had finished his complex career a few 
 weeks before this story opens. 
 
 His Southern college had been almost virgin to 
 the revolution in thought of the preceding twenty 
 years. By nature, Muriel was made to accept 
 the new light, but he had caught only faint 
 glimpses of it from his uncle Legrand, and when he 
 came into full view of it at his Northern university, 
 it of course developed in him a very pretty radical 
 iconoclasm. As so many of the ideas in which he 
 had been brought up, were now proved absurd, of 
 course he jumped to the conclusion that most all 
 were, and he seldom had eyes or ears for that por- 
 tion of his new teachings which simply adds sup- 
 port to the most important features of his old ones. 
 Moreover, he was too fond of amusing himself, to 
 thoroughly study the new philosophy and incor- 
 porate it into the working fibre of his being. Yet 
 despite his spasmodic and superficial interest in 
 those strong thoughts, he was, by virtue of the
 
 1 6 A Youth of the Period. 
 
 German strain in him, something of a dreamer, 
 and even capable of pumping up tolerable verses. 
 
 In college, he had been greatly loved and greatly 
 hated. He was bright, accomplished, and genial, 
 save for occasional moods; full of initiative and 
 energy, and liberal enough with what it cost him 
 no inconvenience to spare. He had even been 
 known, a few times, not to stop at inconvenience. 
 But as he was rough and hearty and strong, he 
 demanded that everybody else should be rough 
 and hearty and strong. He was brutally candid: 
 give and take was his gamo, though he entirely 
 overestimated his own readiness to "take," as such 
 youngsters are apt to. 
 
 He was by nature moral and kindly. But he 
 was impetuous, and had not had that steady home 
 influence which curbs selfishness and passion. His 
 very strength made him weak before some tempta- 
 tions, and he had never known his mother. 
 
 His powerful constitution had, so far, carried his 
 body, at least, safely through the wildest follies of 
 youth, and the centuries of sturdy puritanism in 
 his veins had got him through without his deceiv- 
 ing anybody or taking anything that he did not 
 pay for. But his arm was long and his grasp was 
 strong. To his fervid impulses, woman was a toy 
 when she presented herself as such, yet in his 
 equally fervid imagination, when she was not a 
 toy, there was always room for her as a goddess. 
 
 After he had left Mrs. Wahring and her daughter, 
 he was bothered once or twice by a faint question 
 whether he ought to have left them at all, or at
 
 A Youth of the Period. 17 
 
 least whether he ought not to have waited until 
 they should have left him, for their rooms. He 
 felt that this question had already contributed to 
 the slight shadow over the evening's cordiality. 
 Even the idea of turning back presented itself to 
 his imagination. But the same momentum of 
 character which had impelled him, in spite of the 
 ladies, in the direction he had started, of course 
 carried him past the notion of turning back. He 
 had made an "appointment," whose nature maybe 
 inferred later, and that momentum of his was al- 
 ways strong in the direction of a promise, even if 
 it were one that might perhaps better be honored 
 in the breach than in the observance. But where 
 amusement was waiting, he was not apt to trouble 
 himself long over questions that involved anything 
 less than his good faith; so he soon drove the 
 present ones away with a " Vive la bagatelle!", and 
 gave his powerful stepper an extra touch that 
 jerked the groom behind him out of his nap, and 
 nearly out of the dog-cart. 
 
 This " ball " to which he betook himself was one 
 that it is very doubtful whether he had any busi- 
 ness to go to. It was given by a fire company in a 
 neighboring village where his uncles, and he him- 
 self by inheritance, were owners of large factories. 
 He did not by any means, however, go in the char- 
 acter of " lord of the manor," to give the enter- 
 tainment the lustre of his patronage, but he went 
 because he wanted to have a good time, and be- 
 cause, of late, one side of his nature was more apt 
 to find a good time in the excitements of such free 
 and easy assemblages, than amid the conventional
 
 1 8 A Youth of the Period. 
 
 proprieties to which he was born. Had the enter- 
 tainment been a symphony concert, he would have 
 been equally apt to go; but had it been a concert 
 of commonplace music, he would have cared as 
 little for it as for a ball characterized by the com- 
 monplace proprieties. He would have cared for 
 the latter, however, if he had been sure of meeting 
 any women who would, as he would have been apt 
 to phrase it, " stir him up." But, young as he was, 
 excitement of some kind was growing to be a crav- 
 ing with him, and he was nearing that dangerous 
 point where one disregards the cost of it. 
 
 To do him justice, however, amid the excitements 
 of this company, he did think more than once, with 
 little self-approbation, of the widely different com- 
 pany he had forsaken. 
 
 After tearing several skirts with his big spurs, 
 until, partly at the recommendation of a friend, he 
 took them off; after also disarranging two or three 
 quadrilles with his long sword, emptying a plate 
 of salad over the hired pink satin court-dress worn 
 by one of his partners, fascinating the reigning and 
 two vice-regnant belles of that circle, and loading 
 himself with the mysterious but effective punch to 
 be found at such assemblies, Mr. Muriel Calmire 
 had returned home with a clear head at five o'clock 
 in the morning, and when Miss Nina Wahring 
 bloomed upon the piazza at eight, was still in- 
 tensely engrossed in sleeping the sleep of the just.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A GIRL NOT OF THE PERIOD. 
 
 THAT circumstance, or rather the non-appearance 
 which, for some hours, it entailed, was on the whole 
 rather congenial with the young lady's taste. Mu- 
 riel was a creature new to her experience, and not 
 yet satisfactorily classified. He was handsome, 
 she did not recall anybody handsomer, and bright 
 enough, but he was not altogether agreeable. True, 
 he had been passably peaceable under her mother's 
 assault, and shown a certain dignified courtesy at 
 first; but he had not displayed much tact in man- 
 aging tne situation, and on the whole had lacked 
 deference. When it was plain that he was mainly 
 in the wrong, he had not squarely owned up, but 
 had tried to make courtesy take the place of con- 
 fession. No ! He was handsome, intelligent, vi- 
 vacious, thoughtful, perhaps truthful; but he was 
 subject to fits of awkwardness; he was not very 
 chivalrous, not given to owning himself in the 
 wrong, was possibly selfish, and probably con- 
 ceited. She experienced something like a sense 
 of relief at not finding him on the piazza. 
 
 After breakfast, the ladies busied themselves in 
 supervising the unpacking and getting their belong, 
 ings suitably bestowed. One of the several respects 
 in which Nina was like heaven, was that order 
 
 19
 
 20 A Girl Not of the Period. 
 
 was her first law. Neatness she inherited from 
 her mother; the good taste would have had to be 
 sought in some other ancestor. 
 
 I have looked for Nina's face in most of the 
 great galleries of the world, but in vain. The 
 nearest to it is an angel at the left in a round Bot- 
 ticelli in the Uffizi, in the last room north-east of 
 the Tribune. Nina's face had the same general 
 character and the same sympathetic earnestness, 
 but with more impression of thoughtfulness. Her 
 hair was more the color of red bronze, and covered 
 a broader brow. But, after all, what is there worth 
 describing about a woman, that can be described ? 
 Her beauty, if supreme, cannot be described ; 
 her sympathies can be felt, but they can be de- 
 scribed only by describing that which she sym- 
 pathizes with, and that is not what she feels, and 
 makes you feel, regarding it. If you go into her 
 ancestry, you cannot indicate those best things 
 there, any better than you can in herself. If 
 you go into her education, if she happens to have 
 a little, you cannot convey the quick and subtle 
 uses she makes of it, and you might as well be 
 talking about a boy. The bold facts that go 
 to make up a man can be told about; but try 
 to give the make-up of a woman in correspond- 
 ing details, and you produce but a weak image 
 of a man. Ask a woman for a definition and 
 ten to one she will give you an illustration; and if 
 she is a very great woman, and you don't stop to 
 force logic out of her, her illustration will help you 
 to make for yourself a definition better than any 
 man is apt to give you. So a woman herself, if she is
 
 A Girl Not of the Period. 21 
 
 very woman, had better be indicated by illustra- 
 tions. She cannot be narrowed within terminolo- 
 gies, any more than poetry can, and her subtleties 
 can be caught only through watching her and lis- 
 tening to her. I have tried to give some set notion 
 of Muriel, and shall try to give some of Calmire ; 
 but Nina? she was beyond it. It might be done 
 for a lesser woman ; but for her I had best only 
 attempt a little of what she said and did. Yet in 
 cold print, how like what all other women say and 
 do, must it appear! 
 
 The faint sense of relief to Nina occasioned by 
 Mr. Muriel's absence from breakfast, was clouded 
 a little at luncheon by a shadow of unsatisfied 
 curiosity and, it must be admitted, by a womanly 
 fear that the young gentleman might have a head- 
 ache. Reminiscences of the conversation of other 
 young gentlemen, even awakened in her a solici- 
 tude as to whether the resources of Fleuvemont, 
 so early in its occupancy, could be depended upon 
 to the extent of soda-water. 
 
 Dismissing these cares, however, she announced: 
 " Mamma, while you are taking your nap, I shall 
 take a book and lounge around the grounds." 
 It was a peculiarity in Nina's diction never to say, 
 "I am going to" do anything; it was always the 
 succinct " I shall," or " I will." 
 
 The day was delightful. Here and there some 
 belated roses filled the soft air with sweetness. 
 Away from the river, she saw to the East, a 
 gentle descent dotted with trees, among them an 
 orchard, and, perhaps a mile away, a second roll of
 
 22 A Girl Not of the Period. 
 
 hills, wild, with boulders and, she knew, mullens. 
 
 " This world ends there !" she said to herself. 
 
 Turning South, where the ground sloped gently 
 downward, she wandered along from one point of 
 view, or one attractive plant or wild flower, to 
 another, and at length deposited herself on the turf 
 beneath a great oak whose branches shaded her, but 
 were too high to obstruct the view which offered it- 
 self for miles in many directions. She gazed at the 
 beautiful scene for a few .ninutes, and then began 
 to read a story in the magazine she carried. 
 
 She was pleasantly interested, when she real- 
 ized that strains of distant music had for some 
 time been contending for her rttention. She dis- 
 tinguished the notes of a cornet, well played and 
 with intense, almost exaggerated, feeling. The 
 artist scattered scraps of jerky dance-music among 
 passionate cavatinas and even majestic sacred melo- 
 dies ; and despite his skill and feeling, he seemed 
 indifferent to accuracy, though occasionally he 
 would repeat an unsuccessful passage, and once, 
 though once only, struggled with a phrase of 
 enormous difficulty until he had conquered it. 
 
 Nina enjoyed many of the player's gentler 
 strains, and felt moved as she had seldom been by 
 some of his bursts of passion, but she was annoyed 
 by a carelessness that his evident power showed to 
 be almost contemptuous. 
 
 "A very unusual player to be practicing for one 
 of these country bands," thought Nina. After per- 
 haps fifteen minutes of the music, it ceased. She 
 vainly waited some time for it to be renewed, and 
 then betook herself again to her book,
 
 A Girl Not of the Period. 23 
 
 Lingering mental echoes of the intense music 
 made her story seem very flat, but she struggled 
 through to the final orthodox distribution of re- 
 wards and punishments, and then took up her 
 wrap and proceeded toward the house. 
 
 On the piazza toward her, she saw her mother, 
 Mr. Calmire, and, sitting a little apart with a meer- 
 schaum and, apparently, a French novel, a gentle- 
 man in a rather loud plaid knickerbocker suit in 
 the height of the fashion then prevalent, and a 
 red tie (which she felt that no man of taste would 
 have been apt to wear on a bright day), and in the 
 wearer she recognized to her astonishment her 
 grave Roundhead of the night before Certainly 
 the removal of the jack-boots had not affected his 
 appearance unfavorably, for the rough Scotch 
 stockings were extremely becoming to him, or he 
 to them, and he knew it. 
 
 The people did not see her until she passed a 
 clump of flowering shrubs near the piazza. Then 
 Calmire ran down the steps, laughing, and said: 
 "Lucky you came up without me, wasn't it? If 
 I'd come, you'd have missed your unique recep- 
 tion." 
 
 " Yet we missed you," she answered. 
 
 "I half regretted sending you out," said he, "for 
 you had hardly gone, when there sprang up one of 
 those sea-breezes which so often save us in New 
 York, and we had a delightfully cool evening, and 
 pleasant morning." 
 
 "You show it, and I'm very glad of it," said 
 Nina, both her hands still in his.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A MAN OF SEVERAL PERIODS. 
 
 HE did show it. His face was very strong and 
 buoyant, despite the traces of much thought, and 
 much suffering and the overcoming of it. He 
 was a little over fifty, and simply Muriel thirty 
 years older. There were a few gray streaks at the 
 chin in the short parted beard, and in the mustache, 
 hardly any noticeable in the hair. He was per- 
 haps a fourth heavier than Muriel, but was well 
 proportioned, and light and graceful in his move- 
 ments. What he wore, nobody ever noticed, though 
 in the evening, when he was dressed exactly like 
 other men, he seemed most distinguished from 
 them. 
 
 The Calmire face does not appear in any of the 
 world's great pictures, probably because it is too 
 modern. It is suggested, though, by that direct- 
 ness which Velasquez got into most of his portraits 
 through his unique power of feeling the qualities 
 in a man which, if anything, the man must express- 
 Even had I not described Calmire's ancestry with 
 Muriel's, it would be rather superfluous to do so, for 
 men of his character usually conquer their antece- 
 dents by the time they reach his age. For the same 
 reason I need not detail his education. M. Thomas 
 has said: " You can educate the average man, 
 
 2-1
 
 A Man of Several Periods. 25 
 
 but you cannot educate the genius. He will edu- 
 cate himself, and his first step will be to tear away 
 the education provided for him." Calmire had 
 enough genius to make this apply in no small 
 degree to him. 
 
 Other countries than America may perhaps 
 produce better men than he, but only America 
 can produce exactly such a man. He was an 
 "American business man," but with most of the 
 associations which in other countries are reserved 
 to men outside of business. He had succeeded 
 his father in large manufacturing interests, but 
 had also served his country in the Cabinet and at 
 foreign courts. His diverse experiences, acting on 
 a comprehensive character, had made him that 
 rare creature a man with wide sympathies and 
 no little knowledge from books and the arts, who at 
 the same time knew men and life was systematic 
 and practical, aifd abundantly able to take care of 
 himself and the many dependent upon him. He 
 had accepted his business as a matter of course, for 
 without it, he would have had to limit the habits 
 of living which were natural from his birth. But 
 while he was entirely adequate to his affairs, they 
 could not touch the greater part of his faculties, 
 much less absorb them, and he had been able to 
 allow himself leisure to yield to his spirit's insati- 
 ate demand that it should keep pace with all the 
 important advances of thought. 
 
 He had done well as a politician and diplomatist, 
 but he was neither politic nor diplomatic enough 
 to become more absorbed in either pursuit than he 
 had been in business. He was tempted, in fact, to
 
 26 A Man of Several Periods. 
 
 class all three with " details," and for details he had 
 no fancy. He sought principles and generaliza- 
 tions; the rest he declared to be some form or other 
 of "shop." Yet he had no contempt for shop: 
 only his individual preferences did not lead him 
 into it. Though he very seldom said disagreeable 
 things, some people professed themselves "afraid 
 of him." Only people at the two extremes of 
 culture and opportunity were apt to be attached 
 to him. His servants and the poor worshipped him. 
 
 An exception to the indifference to him of com- 
 monplace people, was his attractiveness to all good 
 women: though this exception is but provisional, 
 for he declared that no good woman is common- 
 place. 
 
 As this story is apt to be a long one, and must 
 deal with many of the faults of other people, there 
 will not be much room in it for his. He had out- 
 grown many of them, but he still 'had his human 
 share. I do not think he can be the hero of the 
 tale, because, despite his faults, he had grown too 
 deliberate, too consistent, too calm. 
 
 Miss Wahring, fortunately, was not kept waiting 
 for this description. He said to her: 
 
 " I fear Muriel was not so much impressed by the 
 fact that two ladies were on his hands, as that he 
 wanted to appear in costume, a few miles off. I 
 trust, however, that you were eventually made 
 comfortable ?" 
 
 "Perfectly! Luxurious, indeed. Hasn't mamma 
 told you how pleasantly we were cared for?" 
 
 "Yes; but I wanted to be told that you were 
 pleased, too."
 
 A Man of Several Periods. 27 
 
 "We were delighted! Such a place! Why, last 
 night" (and she had a little feeling as if she were 
 giving him a confidence, but she liked to) "last 
 night I felt as if I were transported out of our 
 commonplace century altogether." 
 
 "Our commonplace century is good enough for 
 me to work in," he added with a smile. " And as 
 to the place, perhaps in the way you speak of, it's 
 a little too good. A French chateau with a French 
 name would be well enough if we had stayed in 
 France, but I'm an American. Yet my father 
 
 built it and there are associations." And his 
 smile faded, but into something more beautiful.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FIRST BOUT. 
 
 ON turning toward the porch, Nina found Mu- 
 riel at her side. He reached for her shawl, para- 
 sol, and book, saying : 
 
 "Let me carry them up. I think I can do better 
 when not in disguise." 
 
 " Good morning" said the girl (it was three in 
 the afternoon), and yielded up the things. "Does 
 your head ache ?" 
 
 " I never get up while it does," said Muriel. 
 
 "You deserve that it should, for your double 
 masquerade last night." 
 
 "I can't see any connection between the part I 
 played with you and your mother" (he was too un- 
 conventional to say "Mrs. Wahring") "and head- 
 ache." 
 
 " Don't you think that the part deserved a head- 
 ache ?" 
 
 " Things deserve their natural consequences, I 
 suppose," said the young man. " If I deserve any 
 punishment, your displeasure and hers would be 
 the natural one. I hope I have not incurred that." 
 
 " Not very seriously, at least not for letting her 
 remain deceived." 
 
 "Well, for what then?" 
 
 "She begged your pardon; you did not beg 
 
 hers." 
 
 28
 
 The First Bout. 29 
 
 He disregarded the point, and said: 
 "Aren't your notions of punishment a little 
 primitive? You want to sentence me to a head- 
 ache for lese majesti." 
 
 "What does that outlandish expression mean ?" 
 "Why, don't you know?" and his habitual feel- 
 ing of superiority came up, comforting him. 
 
 "If I had, I wouldn't have asked you," she said 
 simply, and he had a dim notion that confessed 
 ignorance was, in some vague way that he did not 
 stop to examine, not so terribly inferior to vaunted 
 knowledge. He answered: 
 
 " Why, lese-majeste means, I suppose, lack of re- 
 spect for the powers that be." 
 
 " So I'm one of the powers that be, am I ?" 
 "Every young and pretty woman is." 
 "Thank you. How about my mother?" 
 "Well, she is too, I suppose, though since you 
 have claimed part of the injury, I didn't think of 
 that." 
 
 "Didn't you? Well, it's worth thinking of." 
 She made the boy feel uncomfortable and a bit 
 revengeful. The girl was very pretty, though, and 
 not stupid; and he was glad enough to keep on 
 fencing with her. He did not always realize when 
 he was hit, and when he did, if he could get in a 
 passable stroke in return, he lost all consciousness 
 of his weak spot. Hoping to win yet, he began: 
 
 "Why did you want to give me a headache for 
 what you seem to consider a failure in manners?" 
 "To punish you, of course." 
 
 "Upon my soul! Why, I believe you would 
 whip a child for stealing."
 
 30 The First Bout. 
 
 "Of course I would. Do'you think I'd spare 
 the rod and spoil the child ?" 
 
 " Solomon was an old fool !" 
 
 " I'd be obliged if you wouldn't speak disre- 
 spectfully of Bible characters in my presence. As 
 you are so much wiser than Solomon, what would 
 you do ?" 
 
 " I should be sorry if a few thousand years' 
 more experience hadn't made me wiser than Solo- 
 mon. Why, I'd make the child replace the stolen 
 article from his pocket-money, of course, and for a 
 time I'd treat the child as coldly as I would an 
 older criminal." 
 
 "Suppose the child didn't care for your punish- 
 ment ?" 
 
 " Suppose the moon to be made of green cheese! 
 But even if the child were such a lusus naturce as 
 you're making out, do you suppose a whipping 
 would make any difference to such a creature?" 
 
 " It might. But I wish you'd stop talking out- 
 landish tongues at me." 
 
 He stared at her a second, wondering what sort 
 of woman this could be, on whom his profound 
 learning produced no effect. Yet he did not find 
 the lack of appreciation altogether disagreeable, 
 especially as she seemed interested in his matter, 
 if not in his manner. Then he answered her, and 
 after a few similar passages, in which he got the 
 better of her, and she was surprised to find him 
 interested in children and not unintelligently, 
 Nina pondered a few moments and then asked 
 suddenly : 
 
 " Where did you get all these notions ?"
 
 The First Bout. 3 1 
 
 " Well, I have thought of these subjects a good 
 deal." 
 
 " Where did you get all these notions ?" 
 "Why? Do you think they're good ?" 
 " I think they're admirable. I never thought of 
 them before. Where did you get them ?" 
 
 " From Spencer and Helen Hunt, I suppose. 
 I'm rather fond of that sort of reading." 
 
 "So, after all, you've been drawing on your 
 reading rather than your wit, to overwhelm me ?" 
 "You don't seem to overwhelm worth a cent." 
 " No, I'm not apt to. Now let me tell you that 
 I've found what you have been pleased to say to 
 me, very sensible; and no matter where you got it, 
 you have it. Nobody ever talked to me in that 
 way before. Perhaps I shall think about it. Only 
 I don't believe I think much. I'm very much 
 obliged to you." 
 
 Muriel colored to the roots of his hair and bowed 
 low. He had never felt cheaper in his life. And 
 it would have puzzled him, philosopher as he held 
 himself, to exactly define the reason why.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AN AFTERNOON DRIVE. 
 
 CALMIRE turned from the chat he had been 
 having with Mrs. Wahring, and said: 
 
 "You two young people will have to suspend 
 quarreling for a few minutes. The band plays on 
 Calmire Green to-night, and we're going to start 
 over in half an hour. I haven't yet been there since 
 I came from abroad. We'll dine with my brother. 
 All this, of course, subject to your good pleasure 
 as far as you two are concerned. Mrs. Wahring 
 and I have agreed upon it for ourselves already." 
 
 " Yes, the elders always decide and ask our 
 wishes afterward," said Muriel. 
 
 " I, for one, shall be delighted," said Nina. 
 
 " You'll go, Muriel ?" asked Calmire. 
 
 " Certainly. You've telegraphed Aunt Amelia, or 
 shall I ?" 
 
 "It's done already." 
 
 And they separated to arrange their prelimi- 
 naries. 
 
 When Mrs. Wahring and Nina were secure be- 
 hind their doors, the former turned half confi- 
 dentially to her daughter and said : 
 
 "Oh, Nina dear, I've almost got a headache. 
 
 32
 
 An Afternoon Drive. 33 
 
 That dreadful young man spoiled my nap by 
 blowing on some sort of a horn." 
 
 " Why, it wasn't he who was playing the cornet 
 so beautifully, was it ?" 
 
 " Perhaps he was; but I didn't find it so beau- 
 tiful. I wanted to get to sleep. It's no proper 
 instrument to play in the house. I think he's 
 dreadful. Isn't he, dear ?" 
 
 " Well, yes, mamma, in some ways. He does 
 seem sometimes to think of nobody but himself. 
 Yet last night, despite his letting you remain de- 
 ceived, he seemed to care to make us comfortable." 
 
 And a moment after she pondered: " It's very 
 odd that he should have thought so much about 
 children." 
 
 Muriel reciprocated these unheard compliments 
 by observing to his uncle as they wandered off 
 together: 
 
 " That girl you've brought here is the sharpest- 
 tongued piece I ever saw !" 
 
 "Yes?" answered Calmire. "Is that the best 
 you can say for her ?" 
 
 "Well, she's about like the rest of them, she 
 doesn't seem to know anything." 
 
 " Probably she doesn't, and yet there appear to 
 me to be one or two particulars in which she's not 
 quite ' like the rest of them.' " 
 
 " She's certainly prettier than most of them." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " Well, I don't know her much yet. What are 
 you driving at ?" 
 
 " She's honest," said Calmire. 
 
 " Any fool can be that," answered his nephew.
 
 34 An Afternoon Drive. 
 
 " You'll find your definition of ' fool ' varying a 
 good deal as you pass through life," observed the 
 elder. 
 
 This was the first time that Calmire had known 
 his nephew to say so much that was uncompli- 
 mentary to an attractive woman. But it was the 
 first time that one had made Muriel feel so uncom- 
 fortable: yet he by no means wished that the con- 
 versation had not taken place. 
 
 At half-past four, the T-cart with a pair of sturdy 
 roans was at the door. 
 
 "Well, shall we risk our necks with you? 1 
 suppose you like to drive?" said Calmire to Muriel. 
 
 " I don't care much for it, thank you," answered 
 Muriel. 
 
 " I can," said Nina. 
 
 " I dare say you both can," said Mrs. Wahring, 
 ' but I think I would feel just as much at ease if 
 Mr. Calmire were to do it." 
 
 " Then, dear madam !" said he, helping her to 
 the front seat. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Calmire, I hoped you were going to 
 take me!" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " And leave your poor old mother," bowing to 
 that blooming and beautiful matron, "-to be talked 
 to death by that young chatterbox ? No, you're 
 young and strong. Help her in, Muriel !" 
 
 When they were seated and off, Nina said to 
 Muriel: 
 
 " How far are we going?" 
 
 " Six miles." 
 
 " Tell me about the place."
 
 An Afternoon Drive. 35 
 
 " Historically, geographically, economically, or 
 socially ?" 
 
 " All of them; begin at the beginning." 
 
 " Well, it's the village where our mills are 
 about three miles up a branch. There's a big 
 water-power there. What with the war and tariff- 
 tinkering, it has had all sorts of ups and downs. 
 In my grandfather's time it was all iron. Some 
 twenty years ago, my father and my uncles began 
 on wool. They've branched out, and added 
 several things since. My father died soon aftei 
 they began. My mother too. So I've been kick- 
 ing around ever since, always tying up to Uncle 
 Grand when I can get a chance, which isn't often, 
 for he's been abroad most of my vacations. But 
 I forgot that you didn't ask for my biography. 
 Well, when father died, Uncle Grand " 
 
 "Why do you call him Grand? Isn't his name 
 Legrand ?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Oh, I got into it when I was a baby, and no- 
 body knowing him as I do, would ever stop it." 
 
 "I can understand that; but go on about Cal- 
 mire." 
 
 " Well, when my father died, John Calmire told 
 Uncle Grand that he'd got to manage the people, 
 for John himself could manage only the business." 
 
 " But Mr. Legrand is away a great deal." 
 
 "Yes, John couldn't be and doesn't care to be; 
 Uncle Grand wasn't either, at first. But now, 
 whenever he's around here, he's with the people a 
 great deal. They worship him. He has made the 
 town what it is. It's got everything library, brass 
 band, singing clubs, gymnastic clubs you'll see."
 
 36 An Afternoon Drive. 
 
 " Yes, and John's treasurer of pretty much the 
 whole of them," said Calmire, turning round. " Be 
 a little cautious regarding what that young gen- 
 tleman tells you about my doings, Miss Nina. I've 
 overheard him taking my name in vain there." 
 
 " I flatter myself you've taught me to tell the 
 truth, sir," retorted Muriel. Then he resumed to 
 Nina in a low tone: 
 
 " He likes to be appreciated just as well as any- 
 body." 
 
 "What sort of a man is your uncle John?" 
 asked Nina. 
 
 "Well, he and I never pulled together much; 
 yet he's a good sort of fellow a great business 
 man, perfect gentleman too confoundedly per- 
 fect for my taste. Honors the ground that one 
 treads on" (in a low tone and pointing to Cal- 
 mire), " but never said so to a living being, unless 
 to his quiet little wife who never tells anything. 
 To his brother's face, he keeps making fun of his 
 moonshiny notions. Yet he runs the factories and 
 the town on them, at least on those he keeps. 
 He brushes half aside, and very properly, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 Muriel's little disquisitions had not proceeded 
 uninterruptedly, but were interspersed with many 
 an interjection of " Hello, Jimmy!" " Howdy, Old 
 Man ?" " Mornin', Granny," and other equally grace- 
 ful and conventional greetings, scattered among 
 all the younger and poorer people met by the 
 roadside. Calmire raised his hat to all the women 
 whom he knew, while to the poorer ones Muriel
 
 An Afternoon Drive. 37 
 
 was more apt to call out and wave his hand. The 
 children invariably grinned as he went by. 
 
 At the town where the tributary joined the great 
 river, they passed a beautiful new church, and Cal- 
 mire said : 
 
 "Why, I didn't expect to see this finished al- 
 ready ! There's some salvation in such architec- 
 ture." 
 
 "Fearful waste of money!" said Muriel. "Why 
 didn't they put it into an Art Museum or a Lec- 
 ture Hall?" 
 
 "Because the people would not use them as 
 much, as they have proved by putting their money 
 here," said Calmire. " You people who are im- 
 patient with the churches are some generations 
 before your time." 
 
 When, after a short hour, they got into Calmire, 
 they created quite a sensation. It was the first time 
 the town's sponsor had been there for two years, 
 and many a hat was waved with a flourish, and 
 even an occasional handkerchief was fluttered from 
 a window. 
 
 Twice Calmire pulled up, as some special friends 
 were on the sidewalk. But as a knot of people 
 gathered each time, he said, "We won't stop any 
 more," and contented himself with an occasional 
 extra wave of the hand. Once or twice, with 
 sportive gallantry, he kissed his hand to ladies 
 who were evidently old friends. 
 
 "Why, it's a regular triumph!" said Nina, as 
 they went bowling along amid these salutations. 
 
 "You bet the dear old boy enjoys it!" said Mu- 
 riel, in a tone for her alone, his eyes sparkling.
 
 3 8 An Afternoon Drive. 
 
 Yet despite these sparkling eyes, Nina had for 
 a moment one of those strange feelings which 
 women know, that there was some uneasiness or 
 anxiety in Muriel. The impression soon passed. 
 She was at the careless age, and so was he. 
 
 A few minutes later Nina exclaimed: 
 
 " Who was that lovely woman ?" 
 
 " Where ?" asked Muriel. " I didn't see any." 
 
 "At that brown house on my side just back 
 there. She came running to the door as we 
 passed. She's the loveliest woman I ever saw." 
 
 "That's John Baldwin's house," said Muriel. 
 "They don't keep any lovely women there." 
 
 " Perhaps she was a visitor," said Nina. " She 
 had her hat and things on." 
 
 " What did she look like ?" asked Muriel. 
 
 "A queen! Not an empress, because empresses 
 are cold and hard. This one " 
 
 But a burst of laughter from Muriel interrupted 
 her, and after a moment she joined in it. 
 
 " Well, 3'ou know," she said after they had quieted 
 down, " that's the way I always think of them. An 
 empress is a great selfish, masculine thing like 
 Catharine or Irene; but a queen now well, a 
 queen is tall too, but she is sweet and gracious 
 and lovely, just like that one back there." 
 
 " Guess it must have been Mary," said Muriel. 
 
 " Who's Mary ?" 
 
 " Oh, she's just Mary. Had she dark hair and a 
 low forehead over which it rippled a little, and 
 oh! such a nose and mouth ?" 
 
 " How could I see all that ?" answered Nina. 
 " Her hair was dark, and, yes, 1 think her forehead
 
 An Afternoon Drive. 39 
 
 must have been rather low, and she was so grace- 
 ful although she ran to the door." 
 
 "It must have been Mary," said Muriel; "she 
 must have been calling there." 
 
 "Well, tell me about her," exclaimed Nina. 
 " She doesn't live in this little town ?" 
 
 "Yes, she does," said Muriel; and after a mo- 
 ment he added, in a tone that was almost reveren- 
 tial: "She pervades it like music. But," and his 
 tones grew hard, " it's music in a minor key. She's 
 religion's perfect work here." 
 
 Nina turned her head and looked at him puz- 
 zled, and then said, with a genial little laugh: 
 " Well, the town contains at least two rather un- 
 usual people." 
 
 " Who, besides her ?" 
 
 " You. I can't make you out at all. Sometimes 
 you make me think you're a Well, I won't tell 
 you what. And then you make me think you're 
 a Well, I won't tell you that either." 
 
 "That describes me exactly," said Muriel. 
 " You're a marvel of penetration. But here we 
 are at John's." 
 
 And they drew up toward the sidewalk. 
 
 " Why, is that the way you always speak of your 
 uncle ?" asked Nina 
 
 "Yes, of this one."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A TOWN OUT OF THE BEATEN PATH. 
 
 JOHN CALMIRE'S house was the typical square 
 stone residence of the northern village magnate, 
 ample in its proportions and surroundings, a little 
 peculiar, perhaps, in the absence of bizarre orna- 
 mentation, without and within, though everything 
 was cheerful and in good taste. 
 
 When they drew up before it, Muriel jumped 
 into the middle of the sidewalk without thinking 
 of resting his foot on step or wheel. Half a 
 dozen children bobbed up, shouting, from the high 
 grass beside the lawn, and soon got themselves 
 tangled up among Muriel's arms and legs. The 
 master and mistress of the house came down the 
 steps, he a little sandy-colored man, gentleman all 
 over, leading out the little dark woman, despite 
 their cordial haste, as if she were an empress. 
 
 Mrs. John, meeting Muriel first, did not reflect 
 upon the ladies waiting, but put both arms around 
 his neck and kissed him twice. His mother had 
 been her elder sister, so he was her own nephew 
 as well as John's, and she loved him dearly. 
 Naturally she was alive to all his good qualities, 
 and attributed his bad ones to the fate which had 
 early deprived him of his mother, and her of her 
 
 40
 
 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 41 
 
 idolized sister. This sister she was constantly 
 seeing and worshiping in Muriel. Her adoration 
 had developed not a little his native blindness to 
 his own mistakes and shortcomings. The boy loved 
 her in a boy's ungrateful way, realizing more her 
 lack of intellectual pyrotechnics than her wealth 
 of sympathy and (except regarding him) good sense. 
 
 " Calmire, I'm glad to see you," said John, 
 wringing his brother's hand, even before he no- 
 ticed the ladies a trifling oversight that in John 
 Calmire indicated more feeling than shouts of wel- 
 come and lusty embraces would have done in most 
 men. 
 
 "Are you all right, old man?" queried Calmire, 
 taking his brother's hand in both his own. Then 
 he flung his arm around his sister-in-law's neck 
 and kissed her as if he liked it, which showed ex- 
 cellent taste and was cordially reciprocated. 
 
 "Ah, Mrs. Wahring," said John. "Pardon my 
 leaving you till the second : it's a good while since 
 I saw Calmire." He always called his older brother 
 by the family name, and people intimate with them 
 sometimes followed his fashion. 
 
 "Why, young lady," John continued, turning to 
 Nina, "it's hardly fair to take me so by surprise. 
 You surely ought to be a little girl yet." 
 
 " I hope you won't think so when we know each 
 other better," she answered, shaking hands cordially. 
 
 The ladies being helped out, satisfactorily kissed 
 by Mrs. Calmire, and ushered into the house, all 
 amid the usual pleasant little confusions, John 
 turned to Muriel, who was last but himself on the 
 piazza, pretended to raise his hat, though he had
 
 42 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 
 
 none on, motioned with the other hand toward the 
 door, and said with mock ceremony: 
 
 " Pray honor my poor house." 
 
 Muriel retorted: "Sir, to precede a gentleman 
 of your age and distinguished merits 
 
 "Go in, you cub!" commanded John with a 
 push. The two did not like each other and they 
 did like each other. So, for safety's sake, they 
 always began with their weapons covered with a 
 double thickness of burlesque conventionality. 
 
 "Where's the baby?" was Muriel's prompt ques- 
 tion, and the nurse, appearing in a few minutes, 
 delivered it over to him as a matter of course, 
 while Mrs. Wahring and her daughter laughed at 
 seeing the impetuous young man handle it as ten- 
 derly and skilfully as a woman. 
 
 "Why," said Mrs. John, "he actually said he 
 wanted to take the last one to college with him." 
 
 And the Wahrings found the young man more 
 perplexing than ever. 
 
 Mrs. Calmire took her old friend Mrs. Wahring, 
 to her own room, and her oldest girl, Genevieve, 
 captured Nina. After a little talk about the 
 children and some elder friends, Mrs. John asked: 
 
 "And how do you find Calmire?" 
 
 " Beautiful, so far as I've seen it. Everything 
 looks so trim." 
 
 " Oh no: I mean brother Legrand ?" 
 
 "He seems very well." 
 
 " Yet he has suffered terribly. He's a philosopher, 
 though, and John believes he'll marry again in 
 time, if he finds the right woman, and that will 
 be easy because he would probably prefer that she
 
 A Town out of the Beaten Path, 43 
 
 should be poor. John is always making fun of his 
 contempt for policy in such matters." 
 
 " I know a girl who's not poor," said Mrs. Wahr- 
 ing, " whom I'd like to see safe in his hands." 
 
 Mrs. Calmire looked at her hard, and then burst 
 out: "What, Hilda Wahring! You old Lady Kew! 
 Make her the second wife of a man old enough to 
 be her grandfather!" 
 
 " Such men are never old. When they get 
 ready, they die, but that's all. Calmire is the 
 strongest man in this house to-day. And I've 
 seen enough of young husbands." 
 
 "You ungrateful thing! Hadn't you a young 
 husband? Hadn't I ? And aren't we both happy 
 women and healthy ones too?" 
 
 " You have lived in the country, and the Lord 
 sent me but one child, and we are of an earlier 
 generation. In this day of nervous strain, the 
 younger women require more care than any boy 
 will give them." 
 
 " Nina is not one of that kind. She can take 
 care of herself. And she has had more air and 
 exercise than either of us ever had. Lawn-tennis 
 was not of our day; neither were the Adirondacks 
 and Mount Desert." 
 
 " Well, dear, with Calmire I know she would have 
 twenty years of happiness and probably ten years 
 more of peace. After him, she would have her 
 grown children and her grandchildren. With a 
 boy it's all chance whether she has more than a 
 year of anything." 
 
 " Well, I'd rather love and bully a man as I love 
 and bully my John, and run all the chances, than
 
 44 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 
 
 be safe as half wife, half daughter, with the next 
 best man in the world." 
 
 "John is an unusual man, my dear; he was al- 
 ways careful and patient." 
 
 "I'd have loved him the same if he'd been 
 careless and impetuous." 
 
 " That is to say, you could have loved somebody 
 else. Do you believe any woman could love him 
 more than she could love his brother, other things 
 even ?" 
 
 " I believe that a girl like Nina, to whom a man 
 like Calmire is an entire novelty, and whose mind 
 would be first awakened by him, could love him 
 madly; but it would be madness all the same, as a 
 few years would show." 
 
 " No, it wouldn't. He could hold her always." 
 
 " Yes, because she's a good and brave girl," said 
 deep little Mrs. John; "but that's no reason her 
 goodness and bravery should be abused. But tell 
 me, have you opened up your horrid scheme to 
 Calmire?" 
 
 " No, I have no scheme." 
 
 " Tell me! As soon as a woman like you has a 
 wish, she has a scheme. But as you've been foolish 
 enough to have such a wish, I'm surprised you 
 had sense enough to keep it to yourself." 
 
 " I'm too old a fox, my dear." 
 
 " Well, I must confess you don't look it. You 
 make me hate you," and she rose and kissed the 
 blooming cheek. 
 
 Of course Mrs. John had a double reason for dis- 
 approving Mrs. Wahring's idea; for she never saw 
 a girl whom she approved (and she saw very few
 
 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 45 
 
 such) without thinking: " She'd make a good wife 
 for Muriel, and the poor boy must have one as 
 soon as possible." 
 
 As the party were seated at table, Mrs. Wahring 
 opened the conversation with: 
 
 " Well! you're very civilized country-folks. How 
 long has dressing for dinner been the fashion in 
 American manufacturing towns? I should think 
 the people would stone you." 
 
 "Well," answered John, laughingly, "it really 
 did arise to the dignity of a serious question when 
 we concluded to swarm over here from Fleuve- 
 mont. I didn't think of doing it. But Calmire 
 said that if we were going to live here the whole 
 year and not relapse into barbarism and bring our 
 children up in it, we'd got to stick to all the con- 
 ventionalities we could." 
 
 " But it did stir up a little democratic ire at first, 
 didn't it?" asked Muriel. "Seems to me I heard 
 something said about it when I was a youngster." 
 
 " When you were a youngster !" observed John. 
 " No, even at that remote period, people at least 
 kept quiet about it." 
 
 " Don't some of them ape it ?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Well, it's odd," said Calmire. "The first time 
 Courtenay's singing club gave a concert, they all 
 appeared in white ties. There was a variety of 
 patterns in the coats, not an evening coat among 
 them, I think, but all were dark." 
 
 "And you can't imagine that a set of factory 
 hands would look so well," said Mrs. John. 
 
 "Do you have any trouble here with drunk- 
 enness?" inquired Nina, peering into her glasses.
 
 46 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 
 
 " I'm told that it's apt to be the great curse of such 
 places." 
 
 "Oh, we run opposition to the rum-shops," said 
 Mrs. John. " All sorts of refreshments can be had 
 in the library and gymnasium buildings. There's 
 only one rum-shop left now, besides ours." 
 
 "Do you supply the same things the rum-shops 
 do?" 
 
 "The people supply themselves," Calmire inter- 
 rupted. " It's just like any other club." 
 
 "But," persisted Mrs. Wahring, "do they have 
 what gentlemen's clubs do?" 
 
 " Certainly the less expensive things. But most 
 of our people use only the lighter drinks: they are 
 cheaper, and the women set public opinion that 
 way." 
 
 "Well, I'm in favor of laws to keep the dram- 
 shops out anyhow." 
 
 "I'm in favor of limiting them," said Calmire, 
 "but I doubt the justice of cutting off all my 
 chance to get a drink because my neighbor abuses 
 his. And anyhow Nature is killing off the drunk- 
 ards wherever she is not interfered with." 
 
 "Oh, that's too terrible!" cried Nina. "You 
 don't believe in letting such things be?" 
 
 "Do I believe in letting lightning-strokes and 
 war and pestilence be? Certainly not, if we can 
 find any remedy that is not worse than the trouble. 
 But paternal government destroys the people's 
 capacity to take care of themselves, and that's of 
 more value than all the drunkards in the com- 
 munity." 
 
 "And water's such poor stuff," interrupted
 
 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 47 
 
 Muriel. "Will nourish nothing but the lowest 
 forms of life." 
 
 " The lowest creatures only absorb it by external 
 contact," quietly observed Calmire. " Do you ob- 
 ject to that relation to it ?" 
 
 Muriel felt disposed to change the subject. The 
 accidental shoving aside of the screen before the 
 pantry-door gave him a chance: 
 
 " Uncle Grand, there's one argument for total 
 abstinence that you've not mentioned." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " The horrible faces people make when they 
 draw corks." 
 
 " Ah, Miss Nina," said Calmire, " there's some- 
 thing apt to happen among us, you see, which 
 you're more in danger of getting tired of than of 
 talk about nature's hard remedies." 
 
 Nina, who was ready for a change in the tone of 
 the conversation, laughed with both speakers and 
 said: 
 
 " I'm not afraid. Let's have a little frivolity." 
 
 " Many a good fellow has died from the want of 
 it," remarked Calmire. 
 
 "I hate flippancy," said Muriel with burlesque 
 gravity. 
 
 "Yes, youth hates competition," observed John. 
 
 " Please don't anybody say anything about Shak- 
 spere's and Hardy's clowns," interposed Muriel. 
 
 " I knew you would," said John. 
 
 " I'm always safe for a compliment from you. Did 
 you ever know a fellow who couldn't make a fool of 
 himself to amount to anything ?" continued Muriel. 
 
 "I never knew a fellow to amount to anything
 
 48 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 
 
 unless he knew when to make a fool of himself," 
 answered John. 
 
 The little ripple of nonsense had spent itself and 
 one of those silences of which all are conscious, 
 followed. Nina ended it with: 
 
 " A queer time for an angel to pass !" 
 
 This led Mrs. Wahring to say to John: 
 
 " I hope you are more religious here than you 
 used to be." 
 
 " More churchy, you mean ?" asked John. 
 
 "I mean more given to religious observances. 
 You were no better than heathen savages," ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Wahring, forgetting in her enthu- 
 siasm, her interest in Nina's favorable opinion of 
 Calmire. " Mr. Calmire never went to church, and 
 Mr. John didn't use to go half the time. Do you 
 still go, Amelia ?" 
 
 "Oh, don't let's talk a.bout that," said Calmire, 
 "we'll get to quarreling." 
 
 " I wish you would talk about it," said Nina. 
 "This seems the queerest place I ever heard of, 
 and you are certainly the queerest lot of people 
 I ever saw, and " here she became conscious that 
 her candor had led her a little farther than, girl as 
 she was, she liked. She blushed and hesitated a 
 moment, then smiled and continued: "And I'm 
 not sure I hate you as much as I ought, so I want 
 to know the worst about you." 
 
 " All the stupid folks in town go," broke in Muriel. 
 
 "I wonder," quietly observed John, "if some 
 people are not as intolerant about other people 
 going to church, as other people are about some 
 people staying at home."
 
 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 49 
 
 " I'm not quite so absurd as you're trying to 
 make out," said Muriel. " Intolerance never 
 forced anybody to stay away, and it has forced 
 many to go. As to the stupidity there's Gene- 
 vieve, for instance" (who still took her evening meal 
 apart with the children, when company dined at 
 the house): " I'll admit (not merely for the sake of 
 argument either) that she's the loveliest child that 
 ever lived; but she's always the last to see through 
 a thing, and can't take a joke to save her. She's 
 the churchiest of the lot." 
 
 " And you know perfectly well," Calmire broke 
 in, "that she's a born artist, musician, and actress 
 even of parts with jokes in them, and the most 
 affectionate child of them all. In sympathies, and 
 tastes too, she is head and shoulders above any of 
 them, though her analytical powers may not be 
 as quick. But you're simply mad over analytical 
 power. All the boys are nowadays. I may as well 
 own, though, that I was, myself, once." Then he 
 added in a lower tone: " It cost me something to 
 get over it, and it will cost you something, too, 
 before you get through." 
 
 Mrs. John felt moved to say: "Don't think our 
 men are out of sympathy with the church. They 
 do their share for it." 
 
 "But I don't know that we deserve any credit 
 for that," said Calmire. " You know that, as 
 Emerson said, if the good people were to fail in 
 running it, the capitalists would have to, to keep 
 thievery down." Then he added: " But don't let's 
 argue, Cousin Hilda. A great many of our people 
 go to church in the morning, and when they are
 
 50 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 
 
 out of church I think they spend the day more as 
 Jesus Christ and his disciples did, than any Ameri- 
 can people I know. I never heard that Christ was 
 very rigorous in his attendance at the temple. In 
 fact, I have the impression that, as a rule, he was 
 rather hard on the priests. I suspect he was re- 
 garded as a good deal of an infidel in his day." 
 
 " Do you keep the library open on Sundays ?" 
 asked Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " Most certainly! And the club too. That's the 
 only chance the people have at them by daylight. 
 There Courtenay had to yield." 
 
 "Who's Courtenay?" asked Nina. 
 
 "A saint!" burst in Muriel. "But I don't half 
 like saints." 
 
 This later ejaculation seemed to divert Muriel's 
 intention of enlightening her, if he had had any. 
 After a moment John said: 
 
 "I beg pardon, Muriel, but T didn't under- 
 stand Miss Wahring to ask our opinion of saints, 
 but to inquire who Mr. Courtenay is. He's the 
 rector." 
 
 "That means Episcopal, doesn't it?" asked 
 Nina. 
 
 " Yes, my little Presbyterian," interrupted Cai- 
 rn ire. 
 
 " Oh, I generally go to the Episcopal church." 
 
 " Music, and painting, and lights ?" asked Cai- 
 rn ire. 
 
 " Yes, and great deep shadows too," she said. 
 
 Muriel's face flashed and he turned and looked 
 at her. She did not notice him, but went on: 
 
 "Tell me about Mr. Courtenay."
 
 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 5 1 
 
 "He's a noble fellow," said Calmire. 
 
 "Then why in the world don't you go to hear 
 him preach ?" asked Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 "He'd a mighty sight better come and hear 
 Uncle Grand preach!" broke in Muriel again. 
 
 " Well, boy, you are irrepressible," exclaimed 
 Calmire. " It's not a great many years since your 
 Aunt Amelia would have sent you to bed for that." 
 
 " Well, if she'll let me sit up a little longer now, 
 I'll try to be good. Go ahead ; I won't interrupt 
 till the next time." * 
 
 "Why don't you go to hear Mr. Courtenay 
 preach?" Mrs. Wahring again asked Calmire. 
 
 "It wouldn't be honest," he answered. "I 
 should be held to indorse too much that I do not. 
 Besides, I don't get any too much time at books to 
 absorb the wisdom of even greater men than my 
 friend Courtenay." 
 
 " But how can you work together if you don't 
 agree?" asked Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " Well, in the first place," said Calmire, " you 
 know Courtenay is very tolerant." 
 
 " His sister made him that," again interjected 
 Muriel. 
 
 "And then," continued Calmire, "we don't at- 
 tempt working together in things where he has 
 been trained to believe that his office gives him 
 the right of control. We do very well in others 
 in the library, the club, the hospital, or 'home' 
 as we call it, and such of his private charities as 
 he allows us the honor of helping in." 
 
 "But," persisted Mrs. Wahring, "I don't see but 
 what you run the church ' opposition ' (as Amelia
 
 52 A Town out of the Beaten Path. 
 
 puts it) with the club and the library, as much as 
 you do the rum-shops." 
 
 "We have no distinct desire to," said Calmire. 
 " But if the church can't stand that sort of oppo- 
 sition, so much the worse for the church. 1 think 
 it can, as long as it needs to." 
 
 " Well, I hate to see anything interfering with it 
 at all," said Nina. 
 
 " But the best men are not paying any attention 
 to it," said Muriel. " Hardly any of those intellec- 
 tual swells I used to see over at Fleuvemont ever 
 went unless to keep the peace with their wives," 
 he added as he watched Nina's astonished face. 
 
 " But this is all new to me," said Nina, flushing 
 slightly; "I can hardly suppose it to be correct. 
 But if it is, what's the reason ?" 
 
 " One is," answered Calmire, " that the ministry 
 doesn't begin to absorb the talent it used to, 
 partly because so many other things are made 
 more attractive, but mainly because fewer able 
 young men subscribe to the views of Christianity 
 put forward by the churches." 
 
 "That they don't !" exclaimed Muriel. 
 
 "But some of them do. There's Mr. , who 
 
 laid down his college professorship to preach," 
 said Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " And there's Mr. , certainly as able a man, 
 
 who laid down his pastorate to teach, and 
 
 too, now a professor in the same university, did 
 the same thing," answered Muriel.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE UNJUST AND THE JUST. 
 
 " BUT all this doesn't prove anything against the 
 truth of Christianity," said Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " There's no danger that anything true in Chris- 
 tianity is going to be disproved," observed Calmire. 
 
 " But don't shirk the question, Uncle Grand," 
 said Muriel. "To these ladies, Christianity and 
 the church mean precisely the same thing." 
 
 " Well. They needn't have their dinner spoiled 
 by anybody trying to convince them otherwise." 
 
 " But I want to know about it," said Nina, turn- 
 ing a face of bright expectancy to Calmire and 
 then to Muriel. " This is all very strange to me, 
 and I'm interested." 
 
 " Oh well, then," said Calmire, smiling on her, 
 " to put it in an extreme way, are you willing to 
 accept as Christianity, the indulgences, masses for 
 the dead, Mariolatry, prayer to saints, worship of 
 relics, Bambino miracles and all the other observ- 
 ances that sadden one in Rome?" 
 
 " No, of course I don't accept it," answered 
 Nina. 
 
 " Yet," said Calmire, "all of that was held to be 
 Christianity by everybody five hundred years ago. 
 Now have you any reason to suppose that if you 
 were living five hundred years hence, you would 
 fully endorse the Christianity of the present?" 
 
 " But I never thought of it that way before."
 
 54 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 "You don't seem to realize." said Muriel, "that 
 the Church preaches a lot of stuff that's not true, 
 and stands in the way of others preaching what is." 
 
 "And you don't seem to realize," broke in his 
 uncle John, " that it preaches a lot more that is 
 true, and stands in the way of many others preach- 
 ing what is not." 
 
 "As how?" asked Muriel. 
 
 "Well, you believe in the morality of Chris- 
 tianity, don't you ?" 
 
 "Yes, in a general way, though it's rather milk 
 and water; and if anybody can make the parable of 
 the unjust steward anything but approval of con- 
 spiracy to defraud, he can do more than I can." 
 
 " This is getting a little too far," said Mrs. 
 Wahring, and made a move as if to rise from the 
 table. 
 
 Calmire laid a restraining hand on hers, and 
 said: 
 
 "It looks a little, Muriel, as if it were impracti- 
 cable to carry on this discussion without hurting 
 somebody's feelings." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Wahring," said Muriel, " I beg ten 
 thousand pardons. I really didn't think. I " and 
 the fellow evidently was confused and sorry. 
 
 "No, I don't suppose you intended to pain us," 
 said Mrs. Wahring; " but as the subject is such a 
 dangerous one, hadn't we better change it?" 
 
 "Not yet, please," said Nina; "I didn't enjoy 
 Mr. Muriel's last remarks either, but what the gen- 
 tlemen are saying is so strange that I'd like to 
 understand more about it." 
 
 " Well, if you ladies will forgive me," said Mu-
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 5 5 
 
 rie!. " I'll try to put my idea in a less disagree- 
 able way. Now, Mrs. Wahring, it seems to me 
 that I've heard something about a heroic young 
 lady in New Yoric who, some twenty years ago, 
 sent her young husband off to the civil war as a 
 private, and by virtue of the blood of his grand- 
 father, he rose to be General Wahring." 
 
 "Yes," she answered; ' but, Mr. Muriel, the 
 other side drew the sword first, and you certainly 
 would not make light of such a virtue as patriotism 
 or such a wrong as the slavery our side fought ?" 
 
 " And therefore, dear madam, I have all the 
 more hope of your pardon for speaking lightly of a 
 system whose founder didn't happen to mention the 
 one, or condemn the other." 
 
 "Why!" she exclaimed, turning toward Calmire. 
 
 " He's right," quietly remarked that gentleman. 
 
 "And yet," said Muriel, "among the good 
 things which I suppose Uncle Grand urges that 
 the churches do sometimes teach, is that same 
 virtue of patriotism, although Christ didn't give 
 any encouragement for their doing so." 
 
 There was a few moments' pause a thing Mu- 
 riel never could endure. He broke it with: 
 
 "And while we're about it, Uncle Grand, we 
 may just as well note the historic facts that the 
 growth of that non-resistent creed rotted out the 
 valor of Rome, and made the barbarians' destruc- 
 tion of that civilization possible. Next, Chris- 
 tianity's exaltation of shiftlessness into a virtue 
 filled Europe with beggary for a thousand years, 
 ai*ti shut up in the convents the men wno ought to 
 have redeemed their countries."
 
 56 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 "You got most of that," said Caltnire, "from 
 Heine a Jew who hated Christianity, a profligate 
 who hated restraint, and, as it happened, probably 
 the greatest satirist that ever lived, who naturally 
 made the most of every chance to satirize. But 
 you and Heine ignore the facts that most of the 
 barbarians who overran Rome claimed to be Chris- 
 tians, and that many Christians in Rome desired 
 the destruction of the empire, to bring on the 
 ' kingdom of Christ ' that they had been expecting 
 ever since his day." 
 
 " Well," rejoined Muriel, " either way, Christianity 
 destroyed Rome, and made Europe a beggar's hospi- 
 tal andapandemonium for nearly a thousand years." 
 
 "I don't deny that Christianity had a share in 
 all that, but you exaggerate. Rome would have 
 fallen without Christianity ; but for it, the dark 
 ages would have been vastly darker ; and (if I 
 can enlarge a little without boring anybody) the 
 Crusades, terrible waste as they were, brought 
 back with them Arabian mathematics, medicine, 
 and decoration; later, even at the time of the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew and the religious 
 wars on the Continent, England was giving man- 
 kind the Elizabethan age; and cotemporaneous 
 with the Spanish Inquisition and the worst cor- 
 ruptions of the Romish Church, blossomed the 
 Italian Renaissance." 
 
 "Yes," retorted Muriel, "and much Christianity 
 there was in Arabian civilization and, for that mat- 
 ter, .in Elizabeth's England and in the Italian Re- 
 naissance!" 
 
 "Well," said Calmire, "there seems to have
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 57 
 
 been a little of it hanging around Sir Philip 
 Sidney and Sir Thomas Browne, as well as Fra 
 Angelico and Savonarola, not to speak of Petrarch 
 and Dante. Do try to see both sides." 
 
 " You admit that there are two?" asked Muriel. 
 
 " Unquestionably," answered Calmire. " Two 
 dozen, if you please !" 
 
 " And I," exclaimed Nina, " never had wit enough 
 to reflect that there was more than one!" 
 
 Muriel turned to her with great interest, and said: 
 " I don't object to seeing all the sides there are." 
 
 "Then I suspect you'll admit," observed Cal- 
 mire, very deliberately, "as to Christ not having 
 preached the pugnacious virtues: that it doesn't 
 seem to have been much needed in his day. And 
 if his preaching of peacefulness was corrupted by 
 some into advocating cowardice, his followers gen- 
 erally haven't lacked pluck even the pluck to 
 keep peaceful ; and that if his preaching against 
 covetous competition was corrupted into advocat- 
 ing laziness, his followers have nevertheless done 
 more than their share of the world's work." 
 
 " But why claim that all the faults are corrup- 
 tions ?" asked Muriel. "Why pick out all that is 
 good and venerable from the records, and give the 
 credit of that to Christ; and why lay up all that is 
 absurd against the makers of the records ?" 
 
 "I attribute much that is good," answered Cal- 
 mire, " to some of the writers themselves. Paul said 
 on his own account many of the best things that have 
 ever been said. And as to the absurdities, it hardly 
 seems fair to attribute them to a person of Christ's 
 transcendent genius. But whatever he may have
 
 58 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 left out, you'll admit that now the churches preach 
 every virtue which the best judges approve." 
 
 "Yes, whether Christ ever preached it or not," 
 answered Muriel. " But the churches preach such 
 an awful lot of rot besides. Oh Lord! There I go 
 again! Do forgive me, ladies! I'll try not to do it 
 any more." 
 
 This set them laughing in spite of themselves, 
 and his forgiveness was, at least ostensibly, secure. 
 
 "Well," asked Calmire, after a moment, "are 
 you finding fault with the churches because they 
 preach virtues which Christ did not, or simply be- 
 cause in your opinion they are not perfect ?" 
 
 "No, they're not!" 
 
 " On that basis," responded Calmire, " you'd 
 have to destroy every human institution, for noth- 
 ing we know is perfect, except young ladies, and" 
 to Mrs. Wahring "all ladies are young." 
 
 "I don't believe," answered Muriel, "in de- 
 stroying any useful thing that has growth in it, 
 but (Be patient with me, ladies) the church has 
 culminated and is going downhill and is doing 
 more harm than good." 
 
 "Well," answered Calmire, "you will have to be 
 patient with me this time, for I think that view of 
 the churches an excessively superficial one." 
 
 Mrs. Wahring and Nina brightened up, as if the 
 fight were going for their side. 
 
 " Well, Uncle Grand," said Muriel, " there's not 
 a university in this land where a man abreast of the 
 age can teach all the truth that is in him, for fear 
 of hurting the religious prejudice; and in the most 
 intellectual city of the land, they can't use a history
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 59 
 
 in the public schools that has not lots of the truth 
 cut out of it by the Catholic Church. Matthew 
 Arnold said that the church is the only organiza- 
 tion of our time for the promotion of goodness. 
 But that fellow Sill, whose name is getting frequent 
 in the magazines, upset that by answering that it 
 is the only organization for the suppression of 
 truth. It has fought discovery in every age; it 
 imprisoned Galileo, burnt Giordano Bruno, and 
 persecuted Priestley, and to-day it is turning pro- 
 fessors out of colleges for preaching evolution." 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, " every syllable of that is 
 true, but so is every syllable of this true, and you 
 knew it all and ignore it: (Young people always 
 leave so much out!) The church saved the liter- 
 ature of Greece and Rome; in the dark ages, it 
 was the only conservator of knowledge: between 
 the fall of Rome and the accession of Charles 
 the Great, there was very little else to prevent 
 men degenerating into simianism. The church 
 has built most of the hospitals and schools in 
 Europe and, till very lately, most of those in 
 America certainly most of the best schools; and, 
 to get above the roots of civilization to its fruits, 
 the church was the mother of Gothic architecture, 
 of the great Italian painting and sculpture, and of 
 modern music. Whenever I go into a fine cathedral 
 during a full service, I seem to be more in the cur- 
 rent of the world's past achievement than anywhere 
 else if I can stop thinking and give myself up to 
 the art side." 
 
 "Yes," said Muriel, "if you 'can stop thinking' 
 or think only of ' the world's past achievement.' But
 
 60 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 that's just the point. The church is obstructing 
 present achievement; it has survived its usefulness, 
 and I think we'd be better off without it." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "Now." 
 
 " You're too fast," said Calmire. " I admit that its 
 contributions to schools and hospitals are not rela- 
 tively as great as they used to be, but take things 
 right here in America, where we know something 
 of what we are talking about the church's work 
 for education and charity is still enormous. Ad- 
 mit that Harvard is no longer a church institution, 
 and that Johns Hopkins and Cornell and the Uni- 
 versities of Michigan and Virginia never were: 
 nevertheless Yale and Princeton and Columbia 
 and Amherst and Williams and most of the others 
 of any consequence still are." 
 
 " Yes," said Muriel; " but some of them are eager 
 to deny it with one breath while they assert it 
 with the next, and your very phraseology admits 
 that the tendency of the colleges is to grow away 
 from the churches." 
 
 " Oh, the discussion is not about tendencies," 
 answered Calmire, " it is about the facts to-day. 
 Now the fact is, that if the church contributions 
 I mean the contributions of people inspired by the 
 church were taken from those institutions, they 
 would be in a bad way. That's the fact : to pull 
 them away from the church, would be to break 
 off their principal roots. What it would be in that 
 'five hundred years hence' that Miss Nina and I 
 were just talking about, is another question: but
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 61 
 
 you propose to pull them away from the church, or 
 the church away from them, now." 
 
 "But " interrupted Muriel. 
 
 " Wait a moment," said Calmire. " What I have 
 to say is commonplace enough, so is what I have 
 said, for that matter, and obvious enough when 
 you come to think about it; but when you talk as 
 you do, it shows that some people of a good deal of 
 sense don't think about it. If Christianity has done 
 something to develop shiftlessness, it has done more 
 to develop charity. Turn away from the schools 
 and look at the hospitals and asylums. What are 
 St. Luke's Hospital, and the Catholic Orphan Asy- 
 lum just below it, both right under your eye every- 
 day, and the great Presbyterian Hospital, and 
 the Mount Sinai and innumerable others? Even 
 the most of those which are technically secular, 
 outside of those provided by government, are 
 mainly run by societies in the churches. Consider 
 Hospital Sunday ! Go to any meeting for chari- 
 table administration: most of the men you meet 
 there will be church members. Agnostics may 
 have their uses, but the fact is that they're a pre- 
 cious small minority in that sort of work !" 
 
 " What does that queer word mean ?" asked 
 Nina. 
 
 " What ? Agnostics ?" asked Muriel. (The word 
 was not then as much in vogue as it has become 
 since.) 
 
 " Yes," assented Nina. 
 
 " Why, it means a fellow who has sense enough 
 to know what he doesn't know, and pluck enough 
 to say so."
 
 62 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 " Well, that's the most puzzling explanation I 
 ever heard," said Nina. "' A fellow who knows 
 what he doesn't know'! How can one do that?" 
 
 " Why," rejoined Muriel, " in your sense, it's just 
 what orthodox people are professing to do all the 
 time to know what they don't know and what 
 nobody can know." 
 
 " Then ' agnostic ' is another name for orthodox 
 Christian, I suppose," said Nina, and turned toward 
 Calmire. " You used the word, Mr. Calmire; please 
 tell me what you meant by it." 
 
 " You took Muriel's words in the wrong sense," 
 answered Calmire. " He meant a man who says 
 he does not know anything unless he has the same 
 evidence for it that is required in ordinary matters. 
 That involves the doctrine that knowledge comes 
 to us only through investigation and discovery: in 
 consequence of this doctrine, such people neces- 
 sarily hold, too, that there has never been any 
 ' revelation ' in the usual sense, and therefore they 
 are bound to hold that Christ's teachings were 
 not different in their essential nature from those 
 of other moralists." 
 
 " If you'd only write a dictionary, Uncle Grand!" 
 exclaimed Muriel. 
 
 " It might be a little stiff in the joints!" said Cal- 
 mire. 
 
 " Are you an agnostic, Mr. Calmire ?" asked 
 Nina. 
 
 " Oh, I'm accused of a great deal," laughed Cal- 
 mire, evasively. 
 
 "Why don't you tell me?" said the girl. "I'm 
 not ashamed to tell that I'm a Christian."
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 63 
 
 "When you tell that," said Calmire, "everybody 
 knows pretty well what you mean. But I've heard 
 many people say that an agnostic must be an 
 atheist and a disbeliever in all moral law, and as I 
 don't happen to be quite that, by calling myself an 
 agnostic I should appear to many people to take 
 ground that I think foolish and dangerous." 
 
 After a moment's pause, Muriel went back to the 
 main subject. " You said, Uncle Grand, that there 
 were mighty few agnostics doing any charitable 
 work; but there are mighty few of us anyhow. 
 Don't we do our share?" 
 
 " Well, I hardly expected you to be tripped up 
 by so slight a fallacy as that," said his uncle. " Of 
 course we're a small minority, and even if we do 
 many times our share, the church still does vastly 
 more than we, and that's precisely what I've been 
 trying to demonstrate." 
 
 "But the State," Uncle Grand, "isn't it doing 
 more of the hospital business now than the 
 church?" 
 
 " Very likely, and more of the education too, 
 perhaps; I'm not trying to demonstrate that the 
 usefulness of the church is not being absorbed by 
 other agencies. And I confess I don't want the con- 
 tract of proving that, in time, other agencies can't do 
 the whole thing. But what I'm driving at, is the 
 enormous amount that the church is doing now. 
 Not only through her did charity and education 
 come among us, whether you like the way of their 
 coming or not; but it's largely through her that 
 they stay. If you fight the church, you're fight- 
 ing them, except as you furnish other agencies to
 
 64 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 do the work: and that's slow business. And here's 
 another very important thing the enormous cir- 
 culation of the religious weekly papers, which are 
 pretty near the only education beyond commerce 
 and politics that a vast portion of the people get." 
 
 "So much the worse," said Muriel. "They're 
 poor stuff." 
 
 "That doesn't touch my argument, even if it's 
 correct, which it's not, entirely. The religious 
 weeklies are the best stuff that most of those who 
 take them can assimilate, and vastly better than 
 none. Then, too, look at the educational influ- 
 ence of these Summer schools that whole Chau- 
 tauqua business, for instance, is from the church." 
 
 "Great heavens! Uncle Grand, what are you 
 giving us ? Have I lived to hear you commend 
 such rot as that ?" 
 
 " Easy, Muriel, easy! It isn't as bad as it used to 
 be, and they are making it better. By the way," he- 
 said, laughing, "a number of their journal which 
 I happened to see the other day, would perhaps 
 commend itself to your approval, for it contained a 
 paper by one of the most uncompromising infidels 
 of my acquaintance, and papers by two or three 
 other men who I believe belong in the same cate- 
 gory. But they are trying now to get the best 
 things that their people can take, even if they have 
 to get them from the opposing camp. But why 
 should I say ' opposing' ? In many respects both 
 sides plainly want the same thing. And now 
 Bless you, ladies, am I tiring you to death ? I 
 don't care about Muriel, he's tough, and he's better 
 used to my garrulous moods than you are. Nina, 
 are bonnets to be high or low this Fall ?"
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 65 
 
 "Oh stop, Mr. Calmire!" 
 
 " That's precisely what I was proposing to do." 
 
 "You know perfectly well that I meant: 'Go 
 on! '" 
 
 " You mean that I apply to your words the 
 meanings that tradition ascribes to those of your 
 sex. I don't generally." 
 
 " Oh, stop teasing me! I was interested in what 
 you were saying." 
 
 " Then I've been shamefully ungrateful, haven't 
 I ? But how can I tell that you will be interested 
 in what I was going to say ?" 
 
 "Well, stop chaffing, and try me and see." 
 
 " At your own peril, then. I merely wanted to 
 say a little about the social side of the church." 
 
 "Why the new people take pews in Grace, I sup- 
 pose," said Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " No, that's plain enough. But I didn't mean that, 
 though something ridiculously near it. What I 
 meant is that the lower down you go socially, the 
 more and more the church becomes a sort of social 
 club. It's about the only society that vast numbers 
 of people have; it gives them company for their plea- 
 sures and in their sorrows, and follows them to their 
 graves: there's a world of meaning in the underta- 
 kers' signs on the churches. Then, too, there's an- 
 other article, sometimes of value and sometimes not, 
 which the church supplies namely, a talkative old 
 gentleman to harangue at the people's tables about 
 a good many things beyond daily toils and cares." 
 
 " Seldom one, however," observed Mrs. Wahring, 
 " troubled by as much modesty as some gentlemen 
 I've known to defend the church at table."
 
 66 The Unjust and the Just. 
 
 " Modest or not," said Calmire, very earnestly, 
 " the clergymen are generally extremely useful 
 outside of the church as well as in it. It's often re- 
 marked in England, that a clergyman is always a 
 gentleman and, in many out-of-the-way places, the 
 only civilizing influence his flock comes in contact 
 with. The same is true to a great extent here, 
 though we have the schoolmaster also; and to a de- 
 gree not dreamed of in England. But you people 
 in society, to whom the church, as a social institu- 
 tion, is but one in many, don't begin to realize what 
 a social help it is to the vast mass of people who 
 have no other. Courtenay could tell a thing or two 
 about that if he were not too modest." 
 
 " You haven't spoken of the church yet as a po- 
 lice institution for servant-girls," said Muriel. 
 
 " Yes, and you won't sneer at it so much, even in 
 that function, when you come to keep house," said 
 Mrs. Wahring. " I thank my Heavenly Father 
 that he has given me the light to despise the 
 Catholic Church " 
 
 "'Even as this publican,'" interjected Calmire, 
 sotto voce. 
 
 " but I send my servants to it," continued the 
 lady, and then joined in the laugh which she had 
 almost deliberately raised at her own exbense. 
 
 " So do I mine," said Calmire, " unless they hap- 
 pen to be Protestants." 
 
 " My Protestants don't go nearly as regularly as 
 my Catholics," said Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 "Nor mine," said Calmire. "Are yours any 
 worse servants ?" 
 
 " No," the lady admitted.
 
 The Unjust and the Just. 67 
 
 "The less church the less need of it, then," said 
 Muriel. 
 
 "Can't you say: the more need, the more 
 church?" asked Calmire. 
 
 "Well, perhaps," admitted Muriel, candidly. "I 
 hadn't thought over all you've been saying." 
 
 " But bless you, boy, I haven't been saying any- 
 thing new. Everybody here knew it all before, 
 just as well as I did." 
 
 "Yes; but I've been bored and pestered so about 
 the church forced at college to go to a lot of ser- 
 vices that I didn't care about, and all that, that 
 I've done most of my thinking on the opposition 
 side." 
 
 " Yes, that's one way the colleges are turning out 
 the infidels. But you haven't been bored by it as 
 much as I was. You had (Let me see) eight ser- 
 vices a week. In my time they had sixteen seven 
 of them before daylight in winter." 
 
 " What blasted fools !" muttered Muriel. 
 
 " Well," said his uncle, who was not the only one 
 who heard him, "I don't know that I've any par- 
 ticular objection to offer to that sentiment what- 
 ever I may think of your way of expressing it," 
 lie added in a good-natured way. 
 
 Mrs. Calmire here broke in with : " The conver- 
 sation of you wise people has spun my poor din- 
 ner out very late for village folks. The band must 
 be gathering. Let us have coffee on the front 
 piazza."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE BAND BEGINS TO PLAY. 
 
 IT was a pretty sight as they came upon the 
 piazza. The square was ample and well cared 
 for, with serpentine walks, beds of flowers here 
 and there, and two large but simple fountains scat- 
 tering diamonds under the great electric lights. 
 These latter were a much-admired novelty then. 
 In the centre of the square was the band-stand, 
 where the bright uniforms of the band had al- 
 ready begun to appear. The evening was perfect. 
 People were on the piazzas of the houses around, 
 others were scattered thickly on the walks, and 
 children were running freely over the turf. 
 
 "I never saw a scene of greater happiness," ex- 
 claimed Nina. 
 
 " Or for less money," said John. " It cost Cal- 
 mire about fifty dollars, with the help of our 
 machinists, in off-hours, to get those fountain-jets 
 there, and to connect the electric lights with the 
 dynamos at the mill. Thursday is as nearly an off- 
 night as we can make it, so we can spare the power. 
 We don't run these lights every night yet, but shall 
 soon. The members of the Village Improvement 
 Society, which includes most of our people, keep 
 the green in order in their off-hours, and as new 
 
 68
 
 The Band begins to Play. 69 
 
 flowers are needed, my gardener supplies them. 
 Calmire bluffed me into that by putting up the 
 fountains and lights himself. But what's the mat- 
 ter with the band ? They seem to be breaking up." 
 
 Truly enough, the band were getting up and 
 leaving the platform, and running toward them 
 was a youth lugging a ponderous bearskin cap 
 and a drum-major's staff. These portentous para- 
 phernalia were assumed by one of the men, who 
 placed himself in front of the others, marshaled 
 them into rank, raised his staff and set them 
 marching to the tap of the drums, and followed 
 by the crowd, over to where our friends were sit- 
 ting. After they had gone a few steps, the drum- 
 major raised his staff again, and the band struck 
 up, " Hail to the Chief." When they were in the 
 street before the house, the leader signaled a halt, 
 pulled off his big cap and cried, " Now, three cheers 
 for Mr. Calmire." 
 
 That meant Legrand. His brother was " Mr. 
 John." 
 
 The cheers were given with a will by the whole 
 crowd, hats and handkerchiefs waving all around 
 the square, for even the people on the piazzas 
 at a distance saw what was going on and partici- 
 pated. 
 
 Calmire moved, uncovered, to the head of the 
 front steps, his brother and Muriel behind him, 
 when the crowd, true to its American instincts, 
 began to clamor: " Speech ! Speech !" He waited, 
 smiling, for the noise to subside, and then said, so 
 that all within long ear-shot could hear: " I don't be- 
 lieve we want any speechifying to-night. We're alJ
 
 70 The Band begins to Play. 
 
 here to listen to the band. You know I'm glad to 
 get back among you, or else you wouldn't be glad 
 to see me, and your being glad to see me makes me 
 doubly glad to get back. I've seen a great many 
 beautiful and wonderful places since I've been 
 away from you, and a great many kinds of people, 
 but I've seen no place and no people that can 
 make life worth as much to me as it is just here. 
 How d'ye do, Billy?" With the last few words 
 he had walked down the steps and grasped the 
 hand of the drum -major, who with the rest of 
 the band had moved up to the steps to hear 
 him: "Are you all well? You seem to stand it 
 pretty well, Mr. Bissell," to a gray-haired, fierce- 
 mustached, kind-eyed little man behind the bass 
 drum, who had performed with acceptance on 
 that instrument in the Mexican War, and been 
 for the last twenty-eight years chief engineer in 
 the Calmire Mills. "Well, Clint, old boy, I sup- 
 pose the high notes come in tune by this time," 
 to a gigantic fellow, with the bass tuba, whose 
 hand he shook with special heartiness. 
 
 The big fellow's expression of joy was a tre- 
 mendous oath, to which he added, almost weeping, 
 " But ain't I glad to see you back, Mr. Calmire !" 
 
 "What's the news from Africa ?" Calmire asked. 
 
 "Ah, Jim's a damned big man out there, sir," 
 was the answer. 
 
 "Well, Johnny," continued Calmire, as he laid a 
 hand affectionately on the shoulder of a slight, 
 great-eyed boy of twenty, " I'm glad to see you've 
 got the horn. How goes it, my son ?" So, with 
 a word for nearly eve'ry man, he shook hands with
 
 The Band begins to Play. 7 1 
 
 each of the players. Then he turned to go back 
 to the porch, saying, "Now, the music, please. 
 You know one or two things that I've wanted to 
 hear you play, ever since I left you." 
 
 By the time the Calmires and their guests were 
 reassembled around the tables on the piazza and 
 the cigars lit, a single strain, clear and sweet, arose 
 from a French horn on the band-stand. It was 
 supported in the first few bars by little more than 
 a hint of accompaniment, but gradually the instru- 
 ments dropped in until there swelled up what 
 Calmire felt to be the greatest surge of harmony 
 that man has yet known the Pilgrim Chorus from 
 Tannhduser. It kept rising, rising, stirring sym- 
 pathetic listeners to feel: "Ah! there is a height 
 commanding all things. We are nearing it !" And 
 then it fell back, as all human experiences do, and, 
 more happy than most, lost itself in sweetness and 
 silence. 
 
 For some momentsour friends said nothing. Mrs. 
 Wahring was the first to speak: "Mr. Calmire" 
 (turning to John), " that band has been under an 
 artist; who was he?" 
 
 Legrand took it upon himself to answer. "That 
 boy with the French horn is a genius. I suppose 
 he's kept that band in shape since I heard it last. 
 His name is John Granzine. His father is employed 
 in our offices." 
 
 " He didn't find his way to the Tannhduser over- 
 ture alone," said Mrs. Wahring. (It was less known 
 then than now.) " It's still more certain that he 
 didn't find his own way to leaving out all of it that 
 is unsuited for a brass band. It's equally certain
 
 72 The Band begins to Play. 
 
 that no boy was able to drill all those clods to 
 keep their places under him as they did. Who 
 was the master?" 
 
 " What's the use of fooling, Uncle Grand ?" burst 
 in Muriel. " Mrs. Wahring can't help learning 
 sooner or later that you taught the band." 
 
 " No mortal man taught them to do that," said 
 Calmire. " They caught some of the inspiration 
 which the Universe itself throbbed through Wag- 
 ner. They never played it so under me. I do be- 
 lieve the kind souls were lifted to it by their feeling 
 at seeing me home again," and Calmire's lips gave 
 a hardly perceptible twitch. " That was why 
 Johnny had the French horn instead of his regu- 
 lar instrument. I must go over and thank them by 
 and by." 
 
 Soon they trooped down the steps, John and 
 Nina in front. Nina had trusted John at once, 
 and, without any thought of reticence, began to 
 pour out to him what was first in her mind. 
 " What queer talk we had at table!" 
 
 "Yes, Legrand will talk you deaf, dumb, and 
 blind." 
 
 "Now, Mr. Calmire, what makes you go on in 
 that way? You know you admire your brother 
 more than you do any human being but that quiet 
 little lady with him now. Haven't I seen you with 
 them for two whole hours ?" 
 
 " Well, I do admit that Legrand has a good point 
 or two. He's certainly a relief from Muriel's 
 jabber." 
 
 " Is Mr. Muriel really a trial to you ?" 
 
 " Well, he's a kind-hearted cub. He wants every-
 
 The Band begins to Play. 73 : 
 
 body to be happy, provided they'll be happy in his 1 
 way. He always takes that way himself, without S 
 troubling himself about other people. He doesn't 
 seem to care to do anything, though, but blow his 
 cornet, and flirt with the girls. But I mustn't be 
 prejudicing you against the boy. You put one in 
 a confidential mood, somehow, and I've talked be- 
 yond bounds." 
 
 "Isn't Mr. Muriel enormously influenced by the 
 people he is with ? He seems to care for Mr. Cal- 
 mire's society, and Mr. Calmire is not exactly a 
 girl. Does he avoid you ?" 
 
 " No, he hangs around and talks, and sometimes 
 gets me to talking, for I do rather like the fellow, 
 though I don't like his ways." 
 
 " I've had some specimens of them!" 
 
 The object of John's misgivings was now visible, in 
 conference with the leader of the band, who seemed 
 to have come down to speak with him, and they 
 heard Muriel say: "Yes, after a while." Then Cal- 
 mire said to the leader: " It was very kind in you, 
 George, to give me the Tannhduser to welcome me 
 home. No other music could have given me as 
 much happiness." 
 
 " I'm very glad, indeed, Mr. Legrand, but Johnny 
 Granzine deserves the credit." 
 
 "Yes, Johnny knows; but you're all very kind. 
 Does Johnny stick to his work, or does he want to 
 be at his music all the while ?" 
 
 " His father has taken him out of the mill alto- 
 gether, and Mr. Courtenay is getting him ready to 
 go to college this Fall." 
 
 "Well, I don't know but that is best. I had a
 
 74 The Band begins to Play. 
 
 talk with his father about it before I went away." 
 
 Nina strolled through and around the square on 
 the arm of John, who was greeted by most of the 
 people with kindly respect, he invariably touching 
 his hat to the men and taking it off to the women. 
 In the throng, were a good many ladies and gentle- 
 men, some of them owners of factories in the vi- 
 cinity, a few living at economical ease in Calmire 
 because it was a place of exceptional prettiness, 
 orderliness and peace, and a few " Summer board- 
 ers " who were there for the same reason. More- 
 over, the Thursday evenings on the Calmire Green, 
 with its fine band and electric lights, had come to 
 be talked about in the neighborhood so that people 
 came to them from even farther than our party had, 
 in all sorts of vehicles, from the farmer's rockaway 
 to the village blood's piano-box and the dog-cart 
 of the Summer sojourner, and now and then a four- 
 in-hand. 
 
 " Tell me some more about Mr. Courtenay," said 
 Nina to John Calmire. 
 
 " Oh, he's a splendid fellow." 
 
 "What is he like?" 
 
 " Look like ? Like the pictures of St. John. I 
 call him St. John. It won't do to call him Jack 
 any more, now that he's a parson." *. 
 
 " You used to call him Jack ? He's a young man, 
 then ?" 
 
 "Yes, about twenty-five. But I tell you he has 
 an old head on him when it comes to prudence and 
 patience and kindness. You don't catch him burst- 
 ing into things and people the way Muriel does." 
 
 Somehow Nina wished that John would not be
 
 The Band begins to Play. 75 
 
 quite so hard on Muriel all the time: although she 
 had been perfectly willing to be hard on him her- 
 self. 
 
 A little pause ensued, and while Nina was fairly 
 reveling in the happiness around her, her ear was 
 attacked by a most elaborate roulade on the cor- 
 net, which had been preceded by a few introduc- 
 tory chords by the band. Then came three or 
 four pairs of notes, the first a high one sustained, 
 increased, diminished with great delicacy and 
 power; the next a gymnastic drop to a tone at the 
 bottom of the instrument's compass which fairly 
 made the air throb ; after them a sustained trill, 
 and then a dash off into a chromatic waltz that was 
 a marvel of grace and execution. All motion 
 among the crowd converged toward the band- 
 stand, and there, the band lightly touching an ac- 
 companiment for him, stood Muriel, playing away 
 at a second, madder strain with the fire of all the 
 satyrs. 
 
 "Wasn't it delightful ?" demanded Nina of Mr. 
 John Calmire after the piece was over. It did not 
 silence her as the Tannhduser overture had done. 
 
 " I'd like it just as well if the beggar didn't show 
 himself off before this crowd," sympathetically re- 
 sponded John. 
 
 Then Nina heard a girl behind her say to an- 
 other: "Yes! He is a wonderful man. I know 
 that better than anybody else." 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked the girl's com- 
 panion. 
 
 "Oh, nothing. He's a great friend of Johnny's, 
 and I play the piano while Johnny practices his
 
 j6 The Band begins to Play. 
 
 parts in their music, and Johnny tells me all about 
 him. So I feel that I understand all about him, 
 you see." 
 
 None of these observations had been made in a 
 confidential tone, and Nina unconsciously turned 
 to look at the speaker. She was very pretty, a 
 year or two over twenty, of medium height, full 
 and not ungraceful figure, brown velvety eyes and 
 brown hair. She was rather showily dressed, but 
 not expensively, evidently not a menial and yet 
 possibly not quite a lady. 
 
 " Who is that girl talking about Mr. Muriel ?" 
 asked Nina of John. 
 
 " Minerva Granzine, the sister of the boy who 
 played the horn. She sings as well as he plays." 
 
 " I only half like her. She seems pretty, though." 
 
 " She professes to be, I believe." 
 
 "You odd man! Don't you ever begin by speak- 
 ing well of people?" 
 
 " Get somebody to ask me about you!" 
 
 John's habits of speech, and Nina's uncertain 
 feeling, were not far out about Minerva Granzine. 
 In saying that Muriel was a great friend of Johnny's, 
 she told a little lie. She would not have done it, 
 though, if her somewhat vainglorious speech had 
 not made it awkward for her to tell the truth ; for 
 lying was not her habit. Muriel had never been 
 intimate with Johnny, though he liked and admired 
 him, as everybody did; but Muriel could not act 
 a part, and there were facts inconsistent with pro- 
 fessions of friendship from him to Minerva's 
 brother: so he made none.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SYMPATHY ? 
 
 THE T-cart was at the door at ten. It was clear 
 starlight so clear that Calmire had ordered the 
 lamps put out " so that we can see the night," and 
 until they were in sight of the great river, save 
 for an occasional comment on something in the 
 scenery, they enjoyed the beautiful silence that 
 was only emphasized by the rhythmic trab-trab of 
 the horses' feet. 
 
 Nina afterward said more than once, that in 
 that meditation, she began to be a woman. Be- 
 fore then, life had not brought her any questions, 
 nor had anybody in her world. It was the cut-and- 
 dried world of a New York girl of easy circum- 
 stances, educated at home and seeing nobody but 
 the usual run of society people a society (at that 
 time, let us say,) probably more moral, more intel- 
 ligent, and less intellectual than that of any other 
 great metropolis in the civilized world. During 
 that day Nina had heard questioned, for the first 
 time, several things which she had taken as mat- 
 ters of course, just as she had taken light and 
 air. She had never heard the Calmires spoken 
 of in any other tones than those of respect, yet 
 here she had found them all professing opinions 
 which, so far as she had thought anything about 
 them, she had supposed to be held only by the de- 
 
 77
 
 78 Sympathy ? 
 
 praved. What was stranger still, she had not found 
 these opinions, as these people put them, too re- 
 pulsive to interest her. Thinking was natural to 
 her, but had not yet become habitual : she had 
 known too little of either sadness or loneliness to 
 be driven to it, and the books and friends that 
 had been furnished her, had not tempted her to it. 
 She had unquestioningly taken her peaceful life as 
 it had come. And now as she was pondering these 
 new and strange things, in spite of all her interest, 
 she felt a sense of disturbance and unrest: the 
 sense of insecurity was hardly developed; and she 
 also experienced a shadow of resentment against 
 the authors of the commotion, as if somebody were 
 rocking a boat in which she had been smoothly 
 gliding. 
 
 As her mind drifted back, it came to Muriel's in- 
 cidental mention of his own life, as they had passed 
 over the same road in the daylight. Somehow the 
 darkness that had come over the scene seemed to 
 have come over his allusions. She had not thought 
 anything about them in the afternoon, she was so. 
 much interested in what he was telling her of the 
 place they were going to, and the way it had come 
 to be what it was; but now, she was struck almost 
 suddenly by the consciousness that in his daylight 
 story of activity and sympathy and prosperity, 
 there had been a dark passage. She fell to musing 
 over it. This young man by her side had never 
 known a mother or father. She had heard one of 
 the visitors whom her father's business-connection 
 brought to the house, quote a Chinese saying, that 
 the three greatest losses are, in youth, the father;
 
 Sympathy f 79 
 
 in middle life, the wife; in old age, a son. The 
 young man by her side, had known the first ; Cal- 
 mire had known the second. To her, who had 
 known none, it seemed unimaginably terrible. She 
 recalled Muriel's words: "So I've been kicking 
 around ever since, always tying up to Uncle Grand 
 when I can." Why, he had been for months at a 
 time, without anybody to love him ! That was as 
 vaguely terrible as the rest. Involuntarily she 
 turned to him with: 
 
 "I'm so sorry for you, Mr. Muriel !" 
 
 The young man was never more astonished in 
 his life. Sorry for him ? For him, the envied of 
 the envied the handsomest, most talented, most 
 accomplished, most free-handed, most princely, 
 most courted young man at his college! Why, 
 what in the name of all that was ridiculous could 
 she be thinking about? He had never had more 
 than two or three hard knocks in his life. These 
 came out distinctly enough in the flash which her 
 sentence cast over his reminiscences: but when they 
 occurred, they had been speedily hidden by fresh 
 successes and fresh laudations. The memory of 
 them had an ugly habit, it was true, of obtruding 
 itself, sometimes on the most inconvenient occa- 
 sions. They did make a little drop of bitterness in 
 his overflowing cup. But it was so little ! It kept 
 pretty well by itself, and did not spoil the wine of 
 life; and who had had more of that than he ? And 
 whose merits entitled him to more? Conscious- 
 ness of all this flashed through him too quickly to 
 make any perceptible pause before he asked :
 
 8o Sympathy? 
 
 "Why, what do you mean, Miss Wahring?" 
 
 " I was thinking of what you told me about your- 
 self this afternoon." 
 
 He had had it in mind very definitely that he 
 would like her to spend some thought on him 
 on the way he had played the waltz, and on the 
 elegant appearance he nattered himself he had made 
 in the various costumes he had sported before her. 
 These moderate ambitions were not based on any 
 desire for her admiration more special than he felt 
 for that of every approved member of her sex: un- 
 less, perhaps, there was a certain stimulus to such 
 ambitions in the fact that she had made him feel a 
 little more uncomfortable than any woman ever 
 had before. And here, she had indeed been turn- 
 ing him over in her mind, and instead of being re- 
 sistlessly impelled to burst out with some compli- 
 ment to his unprecedented splendors, she was 
 simply occupied in pitying him. And that, too, 
 because of circumstances which, though he duti- 
 fully, and sometimes very sentimentally, recognized 
 them as afflictions, did not really enter into his 
 view of his life, as any very serious detraction from 
 its joys or its successes. Of course, most of this had 
 passed through his mind again and again before- 
 hand, and required only a glance of recognition to 
 color his response to Nina. 
 
 "Why, is that the most interesting thing about 
 me that you've found to think of?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well!!!" 
 
 He was but a boy, and in his way a very candid 
 boy. But, perhaps, if he had known how petty a
 
 Sympathy f 8 r 
 
 thing his chagrin was, he would have held in his ex- 
 pression, or at least the long breath which followed 
 it. He was conscious, however, of there being 
 something awkward for him in the silence which 
 ensued conscious enough to break it, and in a 
 conciliatory way: 
 
 " Well, it is kind in you to be sorry for my losses: 
 but you know that I never knew my parents they 
 died when I was so young ; so, though I wish I 
 had them, it really has not made so much difference 
 to me." 
 
 "Why, you have had no home." 
 
 "Oh, I've got along pretty well !" 
 
 Now in Nina's opinion, he had not got along well 
 at all, and, young as she was, she spontaneously 
 traced to this very absence of a home, some of the 
 particulars in which he had not got along well. 
 She had been unable to hold back the blunt "Yes !" 
 with which she had just given him his second fall 
 for that day, but she was really, as she said, sorry 
 for him, and perhaps was not as unconscious of 
 the things which he considered most interesting 
 about himself, as that blunt "Yes" had indicated. 
 So, despite this new development of his interest in 
 himself, her answer was: 
 
 " I'm glad you have not suffered as much as I 
 thought. You know, I have always had home and 
 father and mother, and it seemed to me very hor- 
 rible that anybody should be without them." 
 
 "Well, I try to console myself by seeing as much 
 on the bright side as I can," he said. " I haven't 
 had much care, but I've at least had free swing 
 for my wits" the gentle implication that she had
 
 82 Sympathy f 
 
 not had free swing for her wits, being inspired by 
 the fall she had given him. 
 
 "I believe you intimated, too, that you'd had 
 more or less the run of Mr. Calmire's wits!" his 
 courtesy prompted her to add. 
 
 "Well, not so very much, but I've learned more 
 from him than from everybody else put together." 
 Even Muriel's wounded vanity could be forgotten 
 in his loyalty to Calmire. The girl felt it, and felt 
 more amiable toward him for it. She said; 
 
 "But, Mr. Muriel, I'm not so sure that it's the 
 best thing for us young people to have what you 
 call free swing for our wits. Why, you don't seem 
 to have anything to hold on by." 
 
 " Don't want to hold on by anything. I like free 
 swing." 
 
 " But, even a swing must be fastened to some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Well! I've got my seven senses and this big 
 universe to swing 'em in, and Uncle Grand to talk 
 to when I can get at him, and plenty of young 
 ladies to give me good advice." He didn't know 
 whether he meant to be sarcastic or gallant, and 
 she knew that he meant both. 
 
 " I don't remember giving you any." 
 
 "That's so ! You haven't ! Yet, I feel as if you 
 had. I suppose I ought to be grateful, oughtn't I ?" 
 
 "Wait till you see if it does you any good." 
 
 " It tastes bad enough to !" 
 
 "Can't you young people manage to keep the 
 peace back there ?" called Calmire, who had caught 
 the general tone of the conversation. 
 
 "We've just come to a stopping-place," said 
 Muriel.
 
 Sympathy ? g ^ 
 
 " Well, I'm glad of it," said Calmire. " Mrs. Wahr- 
 ing and I have been gradually brought to silence 
 by all the beauty there," pointing to the river, 
 which was calm and mirrored the hills, and the 
 lights and stars in long quivering rays of fire and 
 silver. " I'm sorry I didn't take you here, Miss Nina. 
 That boy is a little too bumptious to talk to you, 
 and your mother would have kept him in order." 
 
 "It's Miss Wahring keeping me in order that 
 makes all the fuss, sir." Calmire was the only 
 man whom Muriel ever addressed as " sir." 
 
 After his remark, they relapsed into silence. 
 
 Muriel loved nature. He had long given up 
 imagining celestial visions, and such communion 
 as he had with the Power behind our lives, was 
 principally through its manifestation in broad ex- 
 panses of natural beauty. He was soon lost in con- 
 templation of the scene. Whatever he might feel 
 regarding himself before men and women, before 
 such surroundings as these, self was nothing. Yet 
 they brought him a certain invigoration, and he 
 seldom contemplated those high waving sky-lines 
 without recalling : " I will look up unto the hills, 
 from whence cometh my strength." In a few 
 minutes he was lifted out of his pettiness, and, 
 turning to Nina, said: " Look here, Miss Wahring. 
 Upon my soul, I believe you and I must have a 
 taste or two in common. Suppose we try not to 
 quarrel so over everything under God's heaven." 
 
 " It's over things in God's heaven," she answered, 
 "where I fear that our most serious differences 
 are apt to arise."
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE NEW GENESIS. 
 
 " WELL, I'd like to know what you know about 
 things in God's heaven ?" said Muriel. 
 
 " We are told a great deal," she answered. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "by Milton and other poets, but 
 less by the Bible than people generally suppose." 
 
 " Why!" she exclaimed, " I supposed that all we 
 knew came from the Bible." 
 
 " A good deal more than we know," he replied, 
 "comes from poets and Bible both." 
 
 " Mr. Calmire, I don't like to hear you talk in 
 that way. When you spoke against the church, at 
 dinner, it was one thing ; but to speak against 
 Christianity itself is another." 
 
 " The discrimination, at least, does you credit," 
 he said ; "but we're getting to quarreling again. 
 Let's talk about the heavens we can see." 
 
 " Well," she said, " who made those stars ?" 
 
 " I don't know. Do you ?" 
 
 " Don't joke with me, I really want to know what 
 you think about it," she said. 
 
 " Is that the reason," he asked, " you began with 
 the question with which Napoleon is said to have 
 posed certain of his unbelieving officers ?" 
 
 "I did not ask it with any desire to 'pose' you." 
 
 "Well, I answered you just as I would have 
 answered Napoleon," 
 
 84
 
 The New Genesis. 85 
 
 " Suppose, then, that Napoleon had replied 
 'God'?" 
 
 " I should have asked him what he meant." 
 
 "Why, God!" she said. "What can God mean 
 but God ?" 
 
 " It seems," he answered, " to mean very differ- 
 ently to different people to Moses and Christ, 
 for instance." 
 
 "Well," she said, "I can't understand that; 
 but even if it is so, suppose I say the God of 
 Moses, who made the world in six days and rested 
 on the seventh ?" 
 
 " I should have said that Moses evidently made 
 his creation, and therefore presumably his God, 
 out of whole cloth. We know that this earth was 
 not made in six days; we knoiv that the other 
 globes, the sun and stars visible to Moses, were 
 not, as he supposed, mere lights for the benefit of 
 this globe; and that even the most violent stretch- 
 ing of what we know, to make it fit Moses' state- 
 ments, does no more than convince any candid 
 mind that Moses didn't know what he was talking 
 about." 
 
 " I've heard that his narrative was the best in all 
 the religions," she said. 
 
 " It may be," he answered. " Some narrative had 
 to be the best, and it is quite natural that we 
 should now find that one in the possession of the 
 most advanced nations." 
 
 "But I think I've heard, too," she continued, 
 " that there is a correspondence between the order 
 in which science says things were created, and the 
 order in which Moses tells us they were."
 
 86 The New Genesis. 
 
 " It would be very strange if there were not some 
 correspondence," he rejoined, " and if the hosts of 
 able men who have been trying to find what corre- 
 spondence there is, had not succeeded. It would 
 be utterly impossible to give any two coherent 
 plans, even if one of them were the actual one, be- 
 tween which such vast ingenuity would not find 
 some resemblance. But yet most of the resem- 
 blances found, are based on assumptions that Moses 
 didn't quite say what he meant, or didn't quite 
 mean what he said." 
 
 "Well, it may be an odd confession for a girl 
 
 who is called educated; but I have only the loosest 
 
 ideas of what is said to have been discovered of the 
 
 way things got to be as they are. And I suspect 
 
 .that, after all, at bottom I hate your cold science." 
 
 " Now, Miss Wahring !" the boy exclaimed, 
 " you've too much sense to use a parrot phrase like 
 that." 
 
 "Why," said the girl, " it's bugs, and stones, and 
 weeds, and cutting people up," and she laughed. 
 
 " I thought," said the boy, " that you just spoke 
 of it as concerning the start and the origin of all 
 things." 
 
 " Forgive me!" she said seriously. " I'm afraid 
 I have a little stubborn fit to-night. When I've 
 been having a good time, I like to chaff." 
 
 "Yet," he answered, "you didn't like me to do 
 it a few minutes ago, though I didn't really contra- 
 dict anything true: I only exaggerated. But you 
 girls are all alike," graciously observed the young 
 gentleman. " Even when you know anything, you 
 never think of what you know. You know per-
 
 The New Genesis. 87 
 
 fectly well that there is a science of Light and a 
 science of Thought and a science of Morals." 
 
 " Yes," said she, " and the books look awfully 
 big and hard and stupid." 
 
 " But here you've been expressing an interest in 
 what's in some of them !" he remonstrated. 
 
 She did not respond promptly, and Calmire, who 
 in a lull in his talk with Mrs. Wahring had caught 
 their last few sentences, said: 
 
 "You don't hate knowledge, Nina?" 
 
 " Of course not, only when it's stupid." 
 
 " That's the way they generally administer it to 
 girls, I'm afraid," said Calmire; "but if you don't 
 hate knowledge, you don't hate Science, for it's 
 only knowledge classified acknowledge, of every- 
 thing of beautiful things as well as homely ones, 
 belongs in science as truly as the baldest equation 
 or the coldest iceberg." 
 
 " Yes, I've sometimes really had a notion of that," 
 she said, " but I didn't realize it just now because 
 I've been quarreling with Mr. Muriel about Moses, 
 and because I've always been hearing science 
 spoken ill of, as an enemy to religion. What makes 
 religious people hate science so, anyhow ?" 
 
 " It's not the religious people, but the dogmatic 
 people. Pretty much every religion has had to 
 profess some account of the origin and destiny of 
 things, to get its moral principles from. In early 
 days it was all guesswork, and so the dogmatic 
 notions are always coming into conflict with the 
 new truths which are based on actual knowledge, 
 as fast as Science brings them out: Therefore those 
 who love dogma, hate Science."
 
 88 The New Genesis. 
 
 " But," she expostulated, " Moses didn't write the 
 whole Bible. It can 'tall be dogma, even if his part is." 
 
 " Yes," answered Calmire, " but haven't the pope 
 and the councils been making dogma, even in your 
 time ?" 
 
 " Yes, but only Catholics accept that." 
 
 "But don't you suppose," asked Calmire, "that 
 before our brarich of the church split off, they must 
 have made a tremendous amount of that same sort 
 of doctrine, which we necessarily inherit from the 
 common stock? And haven't we different dogmas 
 through all the Protestant sects ?" 
 
 " Why, certainly. I never thought of that before." 
 
 " It's worth thinking of," said Muriel, sotto voce, 
 remembering her comment of the morning. She 
 recalled it too, and turning with a deprecating wave 
 of the hand, which barely touched him, burst into 
 candid laughter. 
 
 "Why! what are you laughing at?" asked Calmire. 
 
 " Oh, at myself !" explained Nina. " Mr. Muriel 
 has got the joke on me." 
 
 After another silence, in which Calmire resumed 
 conversation with Mrs. Wahring, Nina said to 
 Muriel: 
 
 " I would like to know about what Science says 
 of the origin of the stars up there and our earth 
 down here." 
 
 "Why! didn't you learn all that at school?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " No," she exclaimed, " I've had a suspicion to- 
 day that there may be several things that girls 
 don't learn at school." 
 
 He turned toward her with an expression of ap-
 
 The Neiv Genesis. 89 
 
 proval, tinged with surprise and perplexity, and 
 went on: 
 
 "Well, probably you've heard that this earth 
 and all the stars, and everything even we our- 
 selves, were once very fine dust, finer than we can 
 imagine, diffused through space." 
 
 "But," she asked, "how did this dust get to 
 be all these things, if not as the Bible says? God 
 even made man out of it, didn't he?" 
 
 "Man was certainly made out of it, but not in 
 the way the Bible says." 
 
 "Well, never mind that now. Tell me about the 
 stars." 
 
 "Suppose," he resumed, "any quantity of the 
 dust you please. That quantity must have a cen- 
 tre of gravity. You know what that is?" 
 "Yes, in a sort of a way." 
 
 "And you know that everything attracts every- 
 thing else. You do me, for instance." 
 "But I didn't know that you did me." 
 " I do, little as you may be aware of it. Now, as 
 each particle of this dust attracts each other par- 
 ticle, it must all be moving about, and no matter 
 how various those motions are, they must all tend 
 at length toward the centre of gravity, and as the 
 dust rushes together, it must get to whirling 
 around the centre, just as you've seen a lot of dust 
 whirled together in a circle by puffs of wind meet- 
 ing, haven't you?" 
 
 "I remember noticing it in drifting snow," she 
 answered. " Oh, it was so beautiful !" 
 
 "Well," he resumed, "that always reminds me 
 of the way the heavenly bodies were made: Those
 
 go The New Genesis. 
 
 * 
 
 little eddies of snow or dust are circles, or rather 
 cylinders, partly because they are made by only 
 two opposing currents. But suppose there were 
 no earth under the dust in one of those little whirl- 
 winds, and currents were coming from all sides. 
 Don't you see that they would make the dust a 
 ball instead of a cylinder, and that it would whirl 
 in the direction of the strongest current? That 
 gives a notion how this star-dust rushing from all 
 directions took round shapes and began turning." 
 
 "But how did it get solid?" 
 
 "Slap your hands together hard, or bettor, 
 rub them. Don't you feel heat? Well, all bodies 
 striking or rubbing each other, turn the force that 
 brings them together, into heat. These masses of 
 star-dust, jamming together with such force, and 
 their particles rubbing so among themselves, got 
 hotter than anything we know, and became great 
 glowing masses. The biggest ones are not all 
 cooled off yet. You see the sky full of them burn- 
 ing now. When the sun rises to-morrow you'll feel 
 the heat of the only big one near enough to affect 
 us. Our earth is so vastly smaller, that it has got 
 pretty well cooled down in comparison, though not 
 as cool as the moon has, which is much smaller still." 
 
 " How strange! But go on and give me the rest 
 of your genesis." 
 
 " Am I as interesting as Moses ?" asked the boy. 
 
 " Such questions mustn't be encouraged," she 
 said. " Please go on. Why is the moon so much 
 smaller than the earth ?" 
 
 " The earth and the planets," he answered, "are 
 only drops flung off from the sun in revolving, as
 
 The New Genesis. 91 
 
 
 
 drops fly off from a wet base-ball, and the moons 
 are similar drops flung off from the planets. Very 
 tantalizing things, those moons!" 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 " Why, for instance, that's a pretty good sort of 
 a moon up there, so far as I know, but they've got 
 half a dozen or so out in Jupiter; and even poor 
 little Mars, they've found out lately, has two or 
 three. Now what jolly nights they must have 
 there lovers especially! A girl for each moon, I 
 suppose." 
 
 "You're a very improper young man." 
 
 "Very! And those canals in Mars! Why don't 
 the magazines publish illustrated articles of trips 
 on them ?" 
 
 "Ah, "she laughed, "it's rather an out-of-the- 
 way place to get particulars." 
 
 " I don't know about that ; they send to New 
 Jersey! And," he continued, "there's Saturn! I 
 wonder if they use those rings for race-tracks ! 
 Just imagine the whole planet for a grand stand, 
 and the rings for courses." 
 
 "How far is it from the planet to the rings?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " Blest if I know," he answered. 
 
 " Perhaps, then," she suggested, " the people 
 couldn't see across, and they couldn't see all the 
 way around anyhow." 
 
 " That's so. The real dodge would be to have 
 the track on one ring and an observation train on 
 the other, as they do at New London." 
 
 " How wide are the rings?" she asked. 
 
 "I don't know that either."
 
 92 The New Genesis. 
 
 " Have you any guess ?" 
 "Some thousands of miles." 
 
 "Then your race-course idea would appear a 
 little extravagant." 
 
 "Yes, my ideas often are. Wouldn't give much 
 for 'em if they were not." 
 
 " But as they are, I suppose they justify very 
 large investment." 
 
 He was not used to this sort of thing, especially 
 when he was condescending to try to make himself 
 agreeable, and he did not like it. But he was too 
 taken by surprise to assume the offensive without a 
 moment's deliberation ; and that deliberation ended 
 with an indolent, good-natured, self-satisfied as- 
 sumption that perhaps she did not mean it after 
 all. She, too, was not ill-naturedly disposed, and 
 had no wish whatever to be pert. So after a little 
 she resumed amiably: 
 
 " I suppose, Mr. Muriel, that among so many 
 ideas you are occasionally visited by a serious 
 one ?" 
 
 " Yes, I have been known to have spasms of that 
 kind." 
 
 "Do they hurt you much?" 
 
 " Well, yes, sometimes they rather do." 
 
 " In my limited reading, I have encountered a 
 few geniuses who seemed to like to consider their 
 great thoughts a burden and a pain. Are you 
 troubled in that way?" 
 
 As she had classed him with the geniuses, whether 
 she meant it or not, he did not get angry, but took 
 up a little of her own tone. 
 
 " Yes, my thoughts weigh on me almost as much
 
 The New Genesis, 93 
 
 as your anxieties about them seem to weigh on 
 you. But why do you want to chaff? Don't let's 
 be restless. Let's enjoy the night." 
 
 " My homoeopathic medicine seems to have done 
 its work very well," observed Nina. 
 
 " Oh, that was it, was it ?" 
 
 " Yes. I wanted to see if you really could keep 
 serious." 
 
 " Well, I can. Wasn't I serious long enough at 
 dinner?" 
 
 " Somehow, the sort of thing you said then al- 
 ways impresses me as the reverse of serious. The 
 subject is serious; but you don't really seem to 
 take it in a serious way." 
 
 "You don't understand me yet," said the boy. 
 
 " Are you sure you do?" she answered. 
 
 "Why, of course! I never thought about that." 
 
 " It's worth thinking of," she said in her turn, 
 and despite their laughter he had a feeling that 
 Miss Wahring was not as thoughtless, relatively to 
 himself, as he had several times assumed. 
 
 "Well," he said, after a few moments, "whether 
 I understand myself or not, I don't object to being 
 serious awhile, if you want me to be; but if we 
 talk seriously about the stars, I'm afraid we'll get 
 to quarreling again." 
 
 " Why?" 
 
 "Because I can't say much about them without 
 pitching into Moses, and you appear to be a friend 
 of his." 
 
 " Oh, I don't feel about the Old Testament quite 
 as I do about the New," she said. " Please go on 
 and give me the rest of yourGenesis."
 
 94 The New Genesis. 
 
 " Am I as interesting as Moses ?" the boy repeated. 
 
 "You give more reasons for things," she an- 
 swered; "but you must not think so much about 
 the effect you produce, but go on with your work. 
 You've only got the universe filled with soft hot 
 balls so *ar, and it's not comfortable." 
 
 " It does not seem very much as if they had been 
 put there 'for a light by day' and for ' lights by 
 night,' does it ?" he asked. 
 
 " They seem to answer those purposes very 
 well," she said quietly; " but aren't you ever going 
 to tell me how the earth got as it is now?" 
 
 "Well," he resumed, "different parts of the 
 matter were exposed to different conditions. All 
 was bubbling and seething, but that at the 
 poles being less exposed to the sun's influence 
 than that at the equator, was cooler ; and cur- 
 rents were therefore setting to and fro. As it all 
 went on cooling at a variety of temperatures, it 
 took on a variety of characters and shapes. Some 
 became lava, some hard rock, some softer rock, 
 some even water. Great cracks and ridges came 
 canyons and mountain ranges. In short, a crust 
 came over the earth like the crust on a custard 
 cooling in a dish, even to the puddles of water 
 that you sometimes see on the surface of the cus- 
 tard, which will do for our oceans, and the ridges 
 that it has cracked into, which will do for our 
 mountains and water-sheds. 
 
 " Now," he continued, " if you were to leave that 
 custard standing a few days, you'd find some mould 
 coming over its surface. That mould is organic 
 matter matter with life."
 
 The New Genesis. 95 
 
 "How strange!" she exclaimed. "But how did 
 life come on the earth ?" 
 
 " In some such fashion as mould comes over cus- 
 tard, I suppose, only much simpler than cus- 
 tard mould, which is quite a complex substance 
 probably in some such state as the substance 
 we call protoplasm, out of which all plants and 
 animals are made. From some such substance, 
 we've reason to believe, all living beings have been 
 evolved by slow changes from generation to gener- 
 ation. To put it very roughly, suppose that sub- 
 stance to become worms; the worms, tadpoles; the 
 tadpoles, frogs; the frogs, as they're such good 
 jumpers, we'll suppose to live more and more on 
 land, until their descendants become little chaps 
 like kangaroos; then suppose the little kangaroos 
 to split into two families, one becoming, in time, 
 the kangaroos we know, and the others, we'll say 
 well, for alliteration's sake, Calmires." 
 
 " Your uncle doesn't seem much like it," ob- 
 served Nina, " whatever you may assert regarding 
 other members of the family. I don't think I 
 like it." 
 
 " I don't see that you need object unless he 
 does," said Muriel. " He's rather proud of the way 
 the family has got ahead." 
 
 "That's one way to look at it," said Nina. 
 
 ' Yes," he assented, " but the theologians haven't 
 taken that way, but have fought every step of dis- 
 covery all the way up. They didn't wait for pro- 
 toplasm though, but shut up Galileo, you know, 
 for asserting that the earth itself moved." 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire, those were bigoted Catholics
 
 96 The New Genesis. 
 
 hundreds of years ago. There's nothing like that, 
 now." 
 
 " Nothing so extreme, perhaps, but enough that's 
 exactly like it. The clergy raised the mischief in 
 the first half of this century over the discoveries of 
 geology which proved the absurdity of the Mosaic 
 record of this earth. But they've given up that 
 fight now, as well as the astronomical one. They 
 are fighting still, however, over the discovery that 
 all living beings, but the lowest, were evolved from 
 inferior ancestors. That is the fundamental prop- 
 osition of the Darwinism that they dread and hate 
 so much. But the evidence is too strong for them, 
 and they are slowly and meanly, not manfully, 
 giving up that fight. They make their stand now, 
 on the question of whether living matter was 
 evolved trom dead matter. They make this fight 
 despite the fact that their prophet, Moses, asserts 
 that it was, asserts it specifically regarding man 
 and by implication regarding all other creatures 
 except woman, whom even he recognized as some- 
 thing superior. He doesn't assert an evolution, 
 though, but a creation." 
 
 " What's the difference ?" 
 
 "Why, one asserts the arbitrary making of 
 something out of nothing, or at least the sudden 
 change of something into something entirely dif- 
 ferent, like the sudden making of a man out of 
 earth, as the ancients thought Prometheus made 
 him, or as most Christian people think their God 
 made him. Evolution asserts that, with the excep- 
 tion of occasional catastrophes, like volcanic erup- 
 tions and earthquakes and hurricanes, there are no
 
 The Neiv Genesis. 97 
 
 sudden changes in nature; and that there are no 
 arbitrary ones whatever that everything occurs 
 under the uniform and majestic control of law, 
 even the earthquakes and hurricanes and death 
 itself; and that life in all its forms, nay, even 
 the colossal things which have no life that 
 river and those hills and the whole earth and 
 the stars and all we see and even all we know 
 and think and feel, grew up by changes gradual, 
 imperceptible, as those which turn the seed into 
 the tree, or the dust into this beautiful and glow- 
 ing universe." 
 
 As the boy spoke, the girl had gradually turned 
 toward him, and when he moved upon her the eyes 
 which had been dreamily peering over earth and 
 sky, he half started at the gaze of surprised inter- 
 est with which she was regarding him. 
 
 " Why, it's grand !" she exclaimed. 
 
 " If you believe it, you'll be damned," graciously 
 observed the young gentleman. 
 
 " Oh, why will you talk so!" she exclaimed, dis- 
 appointed and grieved. " Nobody believes that way 
 now.' 
 
 " You never lived South, did you ?" asked Muriel. 
 
 " Or anywhere else twenty years ago," added 
 Calmire, whose attention their raised voices had 
 attracted. 
 
 " Not that I can remember," Nina replied. 
 
 " Well," Muriel resumed, " there's no telling what 
 people believe nowadays; they've got a lot of creeds 
 and confessions of faith that were made Lord 
 knows how many years ago. And you, most of 
 you, hang on to churches that profess to believe 
 them all, and yet you yourselves profess not to.
 
 98 The New Genesis. 
 
 I don't know what you call such inconsistent posi- 
 tions, but I don't call them honest !" 
 
 " Now you're getting polite again!" Nina remon- 
 strated. 
 
 "Well, I declare such positions are not entitled 
 to polite treatment!" he exclaimed. 
 
 " Suppose I'm honest, but stupid ?" asked the girl. 
 
 " Miss Wahring !" and he turned toward her. 
 "Well, I'll be hanged if I know what you are! 
 But if begging your pardon is to admit that you're 
 stupid, I won't do it." 
 
 " But aren't there two ways of saying disagree- 
 able things?" she asked. 
 
 "You've just illustrated it very prettily," he an- 
 swered. " But I never thought of it before." 
 
 " It's worth thinking of," she said. 
 
 "Now you've got the joke back," he exclaimed. 
 "That's the third time you've said that to-day." 
 
 " Was I right each time ?" she asked. " Are you 
 going to think of all those things?" 
 
 " Maybe. But I can't practice the mealy way of 
 saying things to-night, for we're almost home." 
 
 Before eleven, their good horses had brought 
 them to Fleuvemont. The ladies said good-night 
 as soon as they were in the house. To Calmire's 
 exhortation not to hurry off, Nina replied : 
 
 " I never was so tired in my life. I never in one 
 day heard so many new things." 
 
 " Why, there's no particular novelty in anything 
 that's been going on to-day," said Calmire. 
 
 " New to me. Very new. Aren't you people 
 going to let me rest in any of my own ways ? I'll 
 have to run away from you."
 
 The New Genesis. 99 
 
 " 1 should be sorry if our ways brought upon us 
 any such result as that. You'll get used to them. 
 They're not so bad." 
 
 "They're not unkind," said she as she gave him 
 her hand in parting. " That is, not so very," as 
 she turned toward Muriel. 
 
 Mrs. Wahring. although no more in sympathy 
 than Nina, and by nature not as much, with most 
 that had been said during the day, was old enough 
 to have become somewhat used to hearing views 
 not her own. Though not seriously fatigued, she 
 followed her daughter, saying as she departed, " If 
 you don't tire my child to death, I'm afraid you'll 
 make a pagan of her." 
 
 " Do you so dislike pagans, dear madam ?" asked 
 Calmire. 
 
 "Not all of them. Good-night." 
 
 Nina spoke truly when she said that she was tired 
 with new impressions. She was too tired to sleep, 
 and as she lay awake pondering things of which 
 some were very serious, one question in varying 
 shapes, dominated all the rest " Are that boy who 
 used bad langage and was impolite; the man who 
 told me so many deep things as we drove home; 
 the vainglorious fellow who tooted his cornet so 
 deftly before the villagers; the elegant young gen- 
 tleman at dinner who said so many frivolous things 
 and so many profound ones, if they were bad; the 
 young jack-a-dandy on the piazza this morning; 
 the grand creature who stalked down the staircase 
 last night, are they all, can they all, be the same 
 person ? Which is he really ? Well, I'm sorry 
 for the one in the T-cart who grew up without a 
 mother or a home! '
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WILFUL WOMAN. 
 
 FOR the next morning, a sail on the river was* 
 arranged. The wagonette was at the door an houi 
 after breakfast. After the ladies and certain lunch- 
 baskets were handed in, Muriel said he would 
 drive, and placed himself beside the coachman 
 instead of in the seat next herself, which Miss Nina 
 had always been used to consider a point of ambi- 
 tion to any young gentleman who might be in her 
 society. 
 
 Muriel did not really care about driving, though 
 he was very fond of riding; but somehow this 
 morning he felt tired of enduring this young 
 woman's habit of shying at observations of his 
 that he thought were harmless and, he flattered 
 himself, profound. Reaching the dock, he went 
 around and helped the ladies out, and did his share 
 of duty with the parasols and wraps. 
 
 " Now, Nina, my dear," said Mrs. Wahring, as 
 soon as they had got aboard, " do take care of your 
 complexion." 
 
 Nina turned toward Muriel and said sotto voce: 
 "Mr. Muriel, do you think I might venture to ob- 
 serve, in the manner I've learned from you ' Bother 
 my complexion ! ' ?" 
 
 " Miss Wahring, I think such an observation 
 would do you infinite credit. But don't quote my
 
 Wilful Woman. 101 
 
 opinion to your mother." And he wondered what 
 made her manner a little more intimate than it 
 had been most of the day before. 
 
 They were under way almost immediately, sail- 
 ing with a fair wind directly up the river. 
 
 Not long after they had started, while Calmire 
 was forward in conference with the cook, Nina 
 turned from Muriel, who was teasing her by per- 
 sistent refusals to take seriously anything she 
 might say, and said: "Captain, I want to steer. 
 I've been watching you, and I can do it." 
 
 " Well, if we were at sea, Miss, I wouldn't mind 
 letting you try. That's where you ought to learn. 
 There's too many craft along here." 
 
 " Why, it's perfectly easy. You just turn the 
 wheel in the direction you want the boat to go. 
 I'm not such a baby as to be unable to do that. 
 Tell the Captain I'm not, Mr. Muriel." 
 
 " Captain, Miss Wahring is not such a baby as 
 to be unable to turn a wheel in the direction she 
 wishes the boat to go." 
 
 " Oh, stop laughing at me, and make the Captain 
 let me do it." 
 
 "It's not generally found expedient to make 
 Captain Conroy do anything, unless his judgment 
 approves, on a vessel where he commands," said 
 Muriel, with a smile toward the Captain which 
 awakened an answering smile, as Muriel's smiles 
 almost always did. " I think you'd find it easier to 
 coax him." 
 
 " Well, I don't like to be treated like a child. 
 Captain, don't you think I can do that simple 
 thing?"
 
 IO2 Wilful Woman. 
 
 "I don't know about the simple things, Miss. 
 Whenever I hear of simple things I'm apt to think 
 of our cruise down Florida-way three years ago. 
 There was one of Mr. Calmire's friends on board, 
 an artist a very great man I knew he must be 
 before anybody told me, though he never seemed 
 to have very much to say, except once in a while 
 at table. Well, the first few times I stood over him 
 while he was at work, I felt as if I could do it too." 
 
 " Well, painting a picture and steering a boat are 
 two very different things." 
 
 " Yes, Miss, it takes a great man to do one well, 
 and a very common man can do the other well; but 
 it doesn't follow that a young lady can do either 
 without practice." 
 
 Muriel held up his right hand and said, " Please, 
 ma'am, may I laugh out in school ?" 
 
 " No ! you " But his eyes met hers with 
 an expression that had already more than once 
 stopped the utterance of such a sentence as she 
 had begun. She turned again to the Captain. 
 "Captain, I flatter myself I've as much sense as a 
 very common man." 
 
 "There's different kinds of sense, Miss. You 
 have as much will as some uncommon men, if 
 you'll let me say so. But it would be a good deal 
 easier to oblige you than not to. I'll leave it to 
 Mr. Calmire. Here he comes." 
 
 "Mr. Calmire," said Nina, "Captain Conroy 
 doubts if I can turn that wheel to the left when 
 I want the boat to go to the left, and to the right 
 when I want it to go to the right. I hope you 
 don't agree with him."
 
 Wilful Woman. 103 
 
 " Miss Nina, I've seen some of the strongest and 
 bravest men that live, fail in doing jhat very simple 
 thing under very simple circumstances. It's not a 
 question of intelligence, but of habit: one who has 
 to stop to think about it before doing it, may fail." 
 
 "Oh, well, there's no danger here, Mr. Calmire. 
 The Captain says I may try it if you'll let me;" and 
 she looked up at him in the confident though can- 
 did way that he had once or twice before failed to 
 resist, and which, with one or two other considera- 
 tions, made it such hard work for Muriel to hate her. 
 
 When Calmire was lazy, he was very lazy; and he 
 began this day, determined to do his capable best 
 in that direction. The resources of his nature 
 which made him resolute and even imperious, on 
 occasion, were off duty. He said: 
 
 " Oh, well, if the Captain says so," and seated 
 himself on the low cabin deck in the shadow of the 
 sail, on the other side of Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 "Confound that girl!" muttered Muriel, as he 
 walked forward to speak to the sailors; "she'll be 
 getting us into trouble yet." 
 
 Some time later, as he happened to be looking 
 astern, he found himself almost spell-bound gazing 
 at her graceful figure relieved against the beauti- 
 ful blending of blue water and green hills, the 
 harmony of color being filled by her red-gold 
 hair, as some of its ends had been pulled down 
 and blown outward by the breeze. 
 
 "What's the reason," he thought to himself, 
 "that I love all beautiful things but beautiful 
 women ? I never met one yet who wasn't a discord 
 when you came to strike all her tones."
 
 IO4 Wilful Woman. 
 
 " Hard aport !" yelled a sailor in the bow. But 
 it was too late, or Nina made it so. They were 
 nearing the end of a pier, where the man at the 
 bow had seen, through the piles, a light wherry 
 pulled by two men shooting like an arrow out into 
 the river. Muriel saw it and rushed back for the 
 wheel. Nina did not understand the cry, but invol- 
 untarily pulled the wheel toward her; but this 
 threw the rudder just where the sailor did not 
 mean it should go, and in six seconds the wherry 
 was cut in two. Unluckily, the Captain had gone 
 below for a moment, and Muriel reached the 
 wheel. 
 
 " Go 'way'" he shouted almost angrily, seized the 
 spokes, and brought the boat around into the wind. 
 
 The craft was now motionless, with canvas quiv- 
 ering. They could see a dark mass on the water 
 about a hundred yards South of them. 
 
 Soon they could see one man with his right arm 
 over what appeared to be nearly the whole of the 
 wherry, and with his left supporting the other 
 man, who was nearly submerged. 
 
 "Ah, he's gone," said Calmire, as they approached 
 the spot. 
 
 Calmire 's lazy spell was over for that day. "We 
 can't get there without a couple of short tacks. 
 Give the Captain the wheel, Muriel, and bring the 
 log-line here." 
 
 Calmire then threw off his outer clothing and 
 boots and said: 
 
 "Muriel, now tie that line under my arms; let 
 the men take care of it, and pull me up if I give 
 three tugs. You stand by with your watch, and
 
 Wilful Woman. 105 
 
 think of nothing but letting me stay under for half 
 a minute, and no more, if go I must. There are two 
 of them floating there not. No, boy!" he added 
 peremptorily as he noticed something in Muriel's 
 face. " You mustn't try it. It's my work. Lie to, 
 Captain." 
 
 The boat's speed slackened, and the Captain 
 brought them so close to the man still above water 
 that the sailors hauled him on board too exhausted 
 to speak. At the same moment, Calmire dived. 
 The boat was virtually still, and the Captain had 
 already ordered the sails lowered. Fortunately, 
 it was slack tide and they were well in shore out 
 of the current. Calmire appeared at the surface, 
 swimming easily. He said: 
 
 " Help me aboard. I'll get down better if I dive 
 again." 
 
 As they pulled him up he said: 
 
 " Be careful not to let any tangle get in that 
 rope; and if you find any slack, haul it up gently." 
 
 He was over again in less time than it takes to 
 tell it, and they all watched the rope in breathless 
 suspense. Several times the bystanders said to 
 Muriel, "Isn't it time yet ?" He held his watch 
 and said, " No, he is still moving." 
 
 Twenty-two seconds elapsed, when all swaying of 
 the rope ceased. Three regular tugs were given to it. 
 
 " Bring him up!" said Muriel. " Haul ! Steady! 
 Don't jerk." 
 
 Half a dozen regular hauls brought Calmire to 
 the surface, and in his arms, insensible, a young 
 man with light hair and beard, the latter partly 
 concealing an ugly bruise on the right side of his 
 face. As soon as Muriel saw his face, he said :
 
 :o6 Wilful Woman. 
 
 "Great God! It's Courtenay!" 
 
 As soon as both were on board, the spell that 
 had held all tongues was relaxed. 
 
 " Silence!" said Calmire, panting, his voice faint, 
 but so clear that they all heard it. " We can't have 
 anything misunderstood here. Give me a glass of 
 brandy." 
 
 Nina, uttering her first word since the accident, 
 impulsively said to Calmire in awe-struck tones, " I 
 did it. It's my fault. Why wouldn't I listen to you ?" 
 
 Calmire merely responded, " I hope he's all right 
 yet." And then, turning to Mrs. Wahring, added, 
 " Take your daughter below." 
 
 " No! I did it, and I must stay here and see the 
 end of it," expostulated Nina. 
 
 " Cousin Hilda," said Calmire, " take your daugh- 
 ter below. She'd find it embarrassing here. Please 
 send Muriel to me with your smelling-salts." 
 
 And he set his men to stripping the upper part 
 of the body. 
 
 "Sha'n't we roll him over a barrel, sir, and get 
 the water out of him ?" inquired the Captain. 
 
 " Not unless you want to finish him," said Cal- 
 mire. "Here, boys," he continued, "dry him and 
 lay him on the cabin deck, face downward. Keep 
 away from his feet until you can put blankets on 
 them. Put his right arm under his forehead. Give 
 me a handkerchief." 
 
 He took it and turning the young man's head, 
 gently wiped out his mouth. The brandy came 
 a small tumbler of it and Calmire swallowed it 
 at a gulp. It had not come any too soon, for he 
 was very weak and had begun to shiver.
 
 Wilful Woman. 107 
 
 "Here, Sandy Campbell," he called, "give me 
 your snuff box." 
 
 He applied a pinch to the patient's nostrils: but 
 there was no inspiration to carry it to the sensitive 
 spots. Muriel appeared with the smelling-salts. 
 Calmire seized the vial, saying, "This is better." 
 But they, too, produced no effect. "This is seri- 
 ous," he murmured; and set to work with them on 
 the operations usual in such emergencies rolling 
 the body gently from side to side with intervening 
 pressure between the shoulder-blades, and alter- 
 nate dippers of hot and cold water on the chest. 
 
 After a few minutes, Muriel said: " Uncle Grand, 
 there'll be two dead men here if you don't get 
 those wet things off." 
 
 " Well, I hope he won't be one of them, and 
 the exercise has set me fairly steaming. Still, I 
 am tired. It's time to change our tactics, though. 
 I guess we've rolled all the water out of him that 
 we can." 
 
 Then he told them to dry the patient where the 
 dippers of water had been dashed over him, and 
 himself took hold of both arms a little above the 
 elbow and began artificial respiration by slowly 
 extending them above the head and alternately 
 restoring them to the sides, while he set a couple 
 of men chafing the body, under the blanket, but 
 would not let them touch the chest, for fear of 
 impeding breathing. 
 
 In a few minutes he let Muriel take his place 
 and said: " Captain, we must make sail and get 
 out of this, or we'll be overrun by these people 
 from the shore. Don't let any of them come
 
 io8 Wilful Woman. 
 
 aboard. The mainsail will fill to the port, so we 
 can go on without swinging the boom over our 
 man. Keep on, Muriel. We may have a couple 
 of hours of this before we can be sure." 
 
 Then he sent below for some clothes and changed 
 himself on deck, refusing to quit his patient. 
 
 The Captain soon took Muriel's place at the ar- 
 tificial respiration, and said to Calmire: 
 
 " Guess this feller's time's about come." 
 
 "Why work on him, then, Captain?" asked Mu- 
 riel. " If he has a time set, nothing you can do 
 will change it." 
 
 "Well, mebbe he hasn't," said the Captain; and 
 increased his vigor. 
 
 Toward the end of the half-hour, Calmire noticed 
 something in the patient which, after a little close 
 scrutiny, led him to say, "Stop, Captain ; I think 
 he's breathing ! He is !" 
 
 Muriel had been in the cabin at intervals, to re- 
 assure the ladies. When he saw the patient, he 
 exclaimed, "Why, he's alive! I must go right 
 back and tell that poor girl. She's in torture !" 
 
 " It's too uncertain yet," said Calmire. " Keep 
 on working over him !" 
 
 The breathing continued, and the face gradually 
 assumed a natural color. At the end of a quarter 
 of an hour, Calmire said to Muriel: 
 
 " He's saved. You may tell Miss Wahring." 
 
 Calmire poured a few drops of warm water into 
 Courtenay's mouth. There seemed to be an effort 
 to swallow. 
 
 "That's good!" said Calmire. "Bring some 
 brandy."
 
 Wilful Woman. 109 
 
 Soon Nina, followed by her mother, rushed on 
 deck and up to the spot. 
 
 "Ah, he is go t ng to live!" she cried to Calmire, 
 as she ran up with her hands clenched before her, 
 while the men made way. She bent over the 
 patient's face as if all her fate were in it. 
 
 After a minute or two, in which Calmire con- 
 tinued his ministrations, Courtenay moved a hand 
 to the bruise on his face, and Nina, still bending 
 over him, impulsively seized the hand. In another 
 minute he half-opened his eyes, but after a moment 
 more, closed them, as if dazzled and bewildered. 
 But soon he opened them full upon the radiant 
 face above him with its intense and anxious happi- 
 ness and its halo of glowing hair, all standing out 
 from the wondrous blue of the Summer sky. The 
 sufferer's features gradually took expression, at 
 first of surprise, and soon of sudden rapture, and 
 he faintly murmured : 
 
 "At last, Heaven!"
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 NEW FORESHADOWINGS FROM OLD QUESTIONS. 
 
 NINA'S religious faith had been mainly an aesthetic 
 matter. The words of the chanted services in the 
 church she had forsaken her mother's to attend, 
 she had not paid much attention to ; and what 
 reading she had given her Bible, had been recep- 
 tive rather than critical. The admirable things 
 she had enjoyed, and those that some people have 
 questioned, she let go among " the mysteries" 
 which, she was informed, were essential to a re- 
 ligion, mysteries that, with the dim light of the 
 churches and the deep, strange harmonies of some 
 of the old chants, took their place in the poetic 
 side. She had never felt any need for a strong 
 faith, even of the every-day kind, for she had, so 
 far, been spared those assaults of temptation, per- 
 plexity, or sorrow against which the support of 
 such a faith is a defence. 
 
 But since the drive to Calmire, there had grown 
 up in Nina a disturbing curiosity. She had been 
 led to notice the distinction between Christ's 
 religion and the Church, but her curiosity was, 
 at first, only regarding the historical vicissi- 
 tudes of the latter. She had been made to realize 
 not only that it was less powerful and influ- 
 ential than it had once been, but also less char- 
 acterized by absurdities and cruelties. Stranger 
 than all, the longer it had been away from the 
 direct presence of its founder, the less these ab-
 
 New Foreshadowing* from Old Questions. \ \ i 
 
 surdities and cruelties had become. Thought once 
 having been directed to the subject, there was cer- 
 tainly, in a mind like hers, enough to think about. 
 
 It seemed astonishing, even to herself, that these 
 facts, nearly all of which she had known before, 
 had not before set her mind at work. But that 
 might not have seemed so strange if she had real- 
 ized how peculiarly sheltered a young girl's life 
 often is from that leaven of thought which, at a 
 parallel age, often sets a young man's in a ferment. 
 
 The ferment in Nina's, however, had at last, in a 
 very mild way, begun. It was not diminished by 
 the nervous shock of running down Courtenay's 
 boat, and the terrible strain of anxiety that fol- 
 lowed. While she had been in the cabin, she had 
 prayed, for his resuscitation, the first really earnest, 
 agonized prayers she had ever had cause to make. 
 To pray with that new intensity was to consider 
 with a new intensity, whether her prayer would be 
 answered. Sometimes, when a paroxysm of agon- 
 ized entreaty had exhausted itself, her mind would 
 not only dwell on this question, but would mingle 
 with it some of the strong impressions which had 
 haunted her since the preceding night; and they pre- 
 vented her stopping merely at the question: " Will 
 my prayers be answered ?" and led her to some 
 vague hint of a deeper question that she had never 
 asked herself before: "Is prayer ever answered ?" 
 This doubt was so contrary to all her habits of 
 mind she had been so sheltered from even the 
 second-hand presentations of it as one of the great 
 problems agitating the world, that she hardly re- 
 alized that it had crossed her mind at all. But it
 
 1 1 2 New Foreshadowing* from Old Questions. 
 
 had, and a long and arduous mental revolution 
 had begun. 
 
 The revolution was promoted, too, by a second 
 influence. As they had looked back at the boat 
 from the hill on their way home, she had said to 
 Calmire, but loud enough for all to hear, " A very 
 stubborn, wilful, foolish girl steered that boat to- 
 day. I hope she learned something on it." The 
 breach in her confidence in herself included a 
 breach, though as yet unrecognized, in her confi- 
 dence in her habitual convictions ; and il also did 
 a good deal to soothe the antipathy that her wil- 
 fulness had aroused in Mr. Muriel Calmire. 
 
 As soon as they reached home, she went to her 
 room. She lay there all the next day pondering 
 many things, but her vigorous young constitution 
 asserted itself, and she appeared at dinner the 
 second night hardly the worse for wear. 
 
 As they sat on the piazza after dinner, the faint 
 questions that Muriel had set workrng under her 
 mind, were brought to the surface by one of those 
 remarks which he was apt to touch off like *the 
 fuse ending in a blast. 
 
 "Uncle Grand, what was the sense in Captain 
 Conroy saying, when we were standing around 
 Courtenay there: 'Guess his time's come'?" 
 
 Nina shivered, and Calmire noticed it and said : 
 
 "I wonder if we hadn't better talk about some- 
 thing else ? That was a pretty hard pull on some 
 of us." 
 
 " Isn't that ' something else,' Mr. Calmire ?" asked 
 Nina, feeling that she, if anybody, had a right to
 
 New Foreshadowing* from Old Questions. 1 1 3 
 
 deprecate Calmire's kind intentions. " Mr. Cour- 
 tenay is safe" (Calmire had brought over word to 
 that effect), " and I too would like to know what 
 you think about everybody having a set ' time ' to 
 die." 
 
 " Ah, my dear young lady, that's one form of the 
 old question of ' fate, free will, foreknowledge abso- 
 lute,' and I think the same of it that I do of a great 
 many other interesting questions that I can't 
 solve it, and that nobody can not even Muriel." 
 And he laid his hand on the boy's arm in a way 
 that made the little irony affectionate. 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire," said Nina, " aren't we taught 
 that not a sparrow falls without the Divine knowl- 
 edge?" 
 
 "We're taught a good many things," said Cal- 
 mire. 
 
 " But that," said Muriel, " isn't teaching that the 
 sparrow's time is fixed beforehand. I suspect 
 the sparrow has something to do with it himself; 
 and for my part, I'd like it better if he didn't fall at 
 all. I don't see why an infinitely wise God wouldn't 
 stop it, if he were infinitely good." 
 
 " He didn't stop my boat," said Nina. 
 
 " And you and Courtenay are of more conse- 
 quence than many sparrows?" queried Calmire, 
 smiling and finishing her argument. 
 
 " Of course," said Muriel. " So why didn't God 
 stop her?" 
 
 Nina turned inquiringly toward Calmire. 
 
 " I suppose you're aware, my boy," said his 
 uncle, "that you're talking nonsense?" 
 
 "No. Why?"
 
 114 New For eshadowings from Old Questions. 
 
 "Why, your terms don't mean anything. You 
 speak about ' infinitely good ' and ' infinitely wise,' 
 when your word 'infinitely' is itself but a confes- 
 sion of ignorance. It simply means, as you know, 
 without limit. Now the only way we can think at 
 all, is within limits. We can't think of 'infinite 
 goodness ' and ' infinite power.' " 
 
 " But the words must have been made for some- 
 thing, Uncle Grand." 
 
 " Yes, to express that a thing is too big for our 
 minds to compass: we often need to use them, 
 reverently, for that. But what nonsense it is to 
 say that if one thing we don't understand exists 
 in conjunction with another thing we don't under- 
 stand, something we do understand will be the result!" 
 
 " Give it up !" said Muriel, "and yet it seems to 
 me that there must be something in what I said." 
 
 " There is something in what you intended to 
 say, but your words were too big. Try it again." 
 
 " Well," answered Muriel after a moment's reflec- 
 tion, " apparently there's no God good enough to 
 hate all pain, who has power enough to stop it." 
 
 "There may be," said Calmire. 
 
 "How?" 
 
 'There may be one who thinks it better in the 
 long-run to permit it." 
 
 " Why, for instance ?" 
 
 " Why, that's one of the commonplaces of theo- 
 logical teaching. He may think pain is good for 
 us. Sometimes it unquestionably is." 
 
 "But," insisted Muriel, "he could do us the 
 good without the pain, if his power were infinite." 
 
 " There you're talking nonsense again," said
 
 New Fore shadow ings from Old Questions. \ 1 5 
 
 Calmire. "What do we know about 'infinite'? 
 All we know is that pain is here that it sometimes 
 does us good to endure it, and that it always does 
 us good to study Nature's laws and follow them, 
 so as to avoid it. I presume that's enough for 
 practical purposes." 
 
 "Well, I suspect there's not much sense in think- 
 ing anything farther about it," admitted Muriel. 
 
 " That's the wisest thing you've said to-day. 
 There's enough else to think about. But I don't see 
 what you children ever went to Sunday-school for, 
 if I have to tell you these old things over again." 
 
 " But somehow," said Nina, " they come up in 
 different ways." 
 
 " Yes, in many," said Calmire, with a far-away 
 look. 
 
 After a little pause, Muriel turned and said to 
 Nina : 
 
 " I suppose you didn't like my pitching into 
 Christianity the other night?" 
 
 " Of course I didn't; though, to be honest, I was 
 interested in the talk." 
 
 "Of course," he continued, "you consider the 
 church a divine institution whatever that may 
 mean ?" 
 
 " I never happened to reflect before," she an- 
 swered, " upon how intensely human it has been. 
 But its shortcomings do not affect the divine au- 
 thority of Christ himself. And, by the way, you 
 were not just, the other night, when you said that 
 he preached the gospel of shiftlessness. Didn't 
 he tell the parable of the talents, and say: 'To 
 him who hath shall be given, and from him who
 
 Il6 New Foreshadoivings from Old Questions. 
 
 hath not, shall be taken away that which he hath ' ?" 
 
 " And that," said Calmire, " is as profound a sen 
 tence as was ever uttered." 
 
 " Well," said Muriel to Nina, " you've simply illus- 
 trated his inconsistency. You can't deny that, he did 
 say, in a thousand ways, 'Take no thought for the 
 morrow,' as well as the sentence you quoted. The 
 factis,hekeptcontradictinghimself in lotsof things." 
 
 "Haven't you yet realized," said Calmire, "that 
 proverbs are too terse to express more than one 
 side of the truth ? It's hardly fair to contrast them. 
 Moreover, those natures burning with enthusiasm 
 (and Christ could not have set the world on fire if he 
 had not been) don't trouble themselves to be consist- 
 ent. Their powerisnotin makingsystems. Christ's 
 system, so far as there is a system, was made by his 
 followers. The great moral geniuses simply supply 
 the inspiration. Look at the greatest one that our 
 country has had Emerson. He contradicts him- 
 self all the time. Yet he probably has done more 
 to set people thinking, and inspire them with a de- 
 sire to think rightly, than any other American." 
 
 "Well," resumed Muriel to Nina, "admitting all 
 Uncle Grand says, if there was any supernatural 
 power about Christ, it ought to have kept him con- 
 sistent,and kept hischurch straight. Isn'tthatso?" 
 
 "Ah, that's beyond me," said Nina. "Why didn't 
 God keep Mr. Courtenay's boat out of my way?" 
 
 "Or yours out of his," said considerate Muriel. 
 
 " Yes," she said submissively a new thing in her. 
 
 " Look here !" exclaimed the boy. " It wasn't 
 decent in me to say that, and I beg your pardon." 
 
 This was a new thing in him, and her look and
 
 New Foreshadowing* from Old Questions. \ \ 7 
 
 smile made him think that it was a thing worth- 
 while. After a little deliberation she said: 
 
 " But now, my impetuous friend, what do you 
 make out this great fact of Christianity to be ?" 
 
 " Simply," he answered, " the best, and one of the 
 latest, of dozens of great moral inspirations which 
 have affected large portions of mankind." 
 
 " It might be just as well to add," said Calmire, 
 " that those lessons in morality, wherever they 
 started, have pretty generally reached us through 
 Christianity, and been enormously developed and 
 emphasized in the process." 
 
 "But were they all in some shape in the false 
 religions?" asked Nina. 
 
 " There are no false religions, my child," an- 
 swered Calmire. 
 
 " Just as there's no bad whiskey," Muriel broke 
 in. 
 
 " What does that mean ?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Well!" exclaimed Calmire, " it's certainly one 
 of the great consolations of growing old, to find 
 constant crops of you fresh young things to whom 
 the old stories are new. It's yours, Muriel." 
 
 So Muriel told it, and went on to say: 
 
 "And it's about as true of religions as it is of 
 whiskey. There is bad whiskey, and how about 
 Baal and Juggernaut and the thugs?" 
 
 " Yes, and you might add indulgences and the 
 inquisition and witch-burnings," said Calmire. 
 " Yet they are only excrescences on the religions." 
 
 "Well, sometimes," said Muriel, "the excres- 
 cences are bigger than the thing itself, and have 
 done more harm than the religions themselves ever 
 did good."
 
 Ii8 New Forcshadowings from Old Questions. 
 
 "Possibly in a few cases," said Calmire, "but I 
 doubt it." 
 
 "And, "said Muriel, " when I think of Christi- 
 anity having Alexander Borgia for chief priest, 
 imprisoning Galileo, burning Bruno, and meddling 
 with all the schools to-day, I'll be hanged if I'm 
 not tempted to include Christianity in the number." 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, " when you think of only 
 that side. Galileo and Bruno seem to have taken 
 very strong possession of your mind lately." 
 
 "Yes, they have," said Muriel, "and that side's 
 big enough to make it high time the church were 
 done away with." 
 
 " Of course you don't mean that you want its 
 moral teachings to disappear?" said Calmire. 
 
 " Well, the shiftless side of them has pretty well 
 disappeared already, I suppose," answered Muriel, 
 'and if they'd only keep their fingers off of knowl- 
 edge, the rest may be good enough. But they're 
 always interfering outside of morals, to keep up 
 their confounded dogmas." 
 
 Nina looked inquiringly at Calmire. 
 
 " There are many dogmas that must go, my 
 child," he said, "just as so many have gone 
 already. But Christianity holds much that can- 
 not go some of it much older than Christ or Moses. 
 The disappearance of the churches would not be 
 the disappearance of that. Already its existence 
 is far from dependent on the churches." 
 
 "Well, I should rather think it is 'far from de- 
 pendent on the churches ' !" exclaimed Muriel. " I 
 don't believe the world was ever as good as it is to- 
 day. Look at those people in the back towns of New
 
 New Foreshadowings from Old Questions. \ \ 9 
 
 England: there's not a more honest set of people 
 on earth ; and yet the religious papers are full 
 of complaints that they won't go to church, and of 
 schemes to make them go sociables, club-houses, 
 cornets and chromos. The chromo has always 
 been a favorite means of getting the children to 
 Sunday-school : now they have to try it to get 
 the parents to church. Fact is, the institution is 
 playing out." 
 
 "You're simply the most dreadful young man I 
 ever saw," said Nina. " You don't talk like this, 
 Mr. Calmire; where did he learn it?" 
 
 Mrs. Wahring now appeared, and after some 
 general chat, the ladies said good-night. Calmire 
 then said to Muriel: 
 
 " You're doing that girl a doubtful service in 
 disturbing her mind on these questions." 
 
 " Why, I don't know," answered Muriel; " I find 
 them great fun. And I'm getting sicker and sicker 
 of orthodoxy: the more I hear, the more absurdities 
 I hear." 
 
 " Well," said Calmire, " there's no way to stop 
 fools from preaching, but isn't it rather hard on 
 a system to judge it from what any fool sees fit to 
 say about it?" 
 
 " I never heard a man preach it who didn't talk 
 nonsense," said Muriel. 
 
 " You mean some nonsense," replied his uncle. 
 " I've heard Christian preachers talk a great deal 
 of sense." 
 
 " Yes, so have I sometimes. But the nonsense 
 predominates so that at last I've broken with the 
 whole thing."
 
 i2o New Foreshadowings from Old Questions. 
 
 " Well, that's more than I've done with even 
 Buddhism or Mohammedanism," answered Cal- 
 mire. "It's one thing to reason away a faith, 
 and another thing to do without it when you 
 need it. It's all very well, when things are going 
 so smoothly with you that the question of some- 
 thing to fall back upon, beyond yourself and your 
 friends, is merely an abstract proposition. But a 
 time comes to every young fellow of your com- 
 plexity, especially if he happens to have a con- 
 science, when some spark of circumstance blows 
 his character from unstable equilibrium into chaos. 
 He suffers the agonies of annihilation, and must 
 perform the labors of creation to make himself 
 anew. He generally ends in constructing creeds 
 in some fashion, but he has to do it in the sweat of 
 blood." 
 
 " Oh, I know all about that," exclaimed Muriel. 
 " Do you think it has cost me nothing to give up 
 the faiths of my childhood ?" 
 
 " Has anything gone wrong with you while I 
 have been away ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then, you've not yet experienced what I speak 
 of. You'll know it when it comes." 
 
 " But tell me more about it, to help me prepare 
 for it." 
 
 " It would be useless : some diseases must be 
 gone through with." 
 
 "But you don't want me to believe nonsense?" 
 
 "No; nor to be too eager to believe that any- 
 thing is nonsense. The trouble nowadays is, that 
 so much which the world has clung to has been
 
 New Foreshadowing* from Old Questions. 1 2 1 
 
 proved nonsense, that people incline to think that 
 all that it has clung to, is. Yet there's nothing 
 more thoroughly ingrained in the system of things 
 than these religions: you can't imagine the race 
 being evolved to the present point without them, 
 and no community has ever got very far without 
 one." 
 
 "Yes," assented Muriel, "and there's nothing 
 more thoroughly ingrained in the religions than 
 their absurdities." 
 
 " Now Muriel, that isn't so! It's very superficial. 
 You know perfectly well that the absurdities have 
 been wearing off from Christianity for hundreds of 
 years. Evolution gets rid of them, as it does of 
 other primitive noxious things." 
 
 "Yes," said Muriel, "and it gets rid of the re- 
 ligion at the same time ! Haven't they all got to 
 go?" 
 
 " The underlying principles never go, but all forms 
 change, and for the better. Already has come the 
 difference between temples for human sacrifice and 
 religious organizations for saving human life; be- 
 tween the barbaric relic-worship and idolatries of 
 Rome and the comparatively rational observances 
 of Protestantism: and the observances are certainly 
 more religious than they have ever been. But of 
 course all human things have their imperfections, 
 religion with the rest: yet it has been just as much 
 an agent in the world's progress as anything else in 
 Nature, and it is as much of Nature as anything is." 
 
 " So are the snakes as much as the stars !" ex- 
 claimed the incorrigible youth. 
 
 " Another of your impetuous fallacies!" quietly
 
 122 New Foreshadowings fro m Old Questions, 
 
 rejoined the elder man. " One could almost infer 
 from it that lately you have seen more of snakes 
 than of stars. Have you ?" 
 
 " Not by any manner of means!" exclaimed the 
 boy with a candid smile. " Not by any manner of 
 means! No! the good things predominate even in 
 the religions, I suppose. No! I cave!" 
 
 "Well," said Calmire, "I don't hold to any an- 
 thropomorphic religion, as you know, but it has its 
 uses. You'll find soon or later that every man who 
 is a man, must have that or something to take its 
 place." 
 
 "Yes, but he needn't have rot," said Muriel. 
 
 "If he has an inferior mind," answered Calmire, 
 "it can hold only inferior ideas. Unless he has a 
 soul capable of saturating itself with the conception 
 of Law (and very few men have that yet, though 
 many would claim to have), he'll have to land in 
 some sort of anthropomorphism. But the religions 
 hold all the best conceptions not only of Law but 
 of morality that their adherents have been able to 
 grasp; and to call them 'rot' because they don't 
 hold better ones, is to despise the moon because it's 
 not the sun. The religions shine with reflected light, 
 it's true; but it's light all the same, reflected from 
 Nature Herself, and though there are many aber- 
 rations in it, it's the best that most people can get." 
 
 "Well," asked Muriel, "you don't expect to get 
 all that into this girl's head, do you ?" 
 
 "You act as if you did," said Calmire, "and a 
 great deal that's much harder, for you're always 
 attacking what's there already, and there's no 
 knowing what she can take in place of it f You
 
 New Fores hadowings from Old Questions. 123 
 
 keep me busy soothing what you ruffle up, and 
 trying to show her how the essentials of her old 
 faiths can be looked at in the new way. I think 
 it's the greatest mistake to disturb such people as 
 you do." 
 
 " Well, what in thunder can be done about it ?" 
 asked Muriel. " Are people to be left to grovel in 
 their blindness forever?" 
 
 "You're a pretty impatient soul," said Calmire, 
 quietly, " for one who professes to believe in the 
 slow processes of evolution. This world has got 
 along a good while without your help, although 
 that's the sort of fact which it's very difficult for 
 youngsters of your make-up to realize. You're 
 actually more of a revolutionist than an evolu- 
 tionist. Have some of the patience of the faith 
 you profess. Leave people's needs to develop as 
 the people themselves develop, then do what you 
 can to satisfy their needs. But don't try to stuff 
 all the babies in the land with beef and burgundy. 
 This is a serious matter, Muriel : how serious, 
 you'll find out some day. Now take my advice 
 and leave that girl in peace, if there's any peace 
 left for her without a complete change, which I 
 doubt. But on the chances, leave her all the peace 
 you can, rather than give her more of this stimula- 
 tion of unrest. Good-night." 
 
 "Good-night, Uncle Grand; I'd really prefer to 
 be decent, if I could conveniently,"
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE GRANZINES. 
 
 WHEN Calmire talked with the band-master 
 about Johnny Granzine going to college, he did 
 not mention that he had told Mr. Granzine that 
 Johnny was to be educated, if Calmire had to bear 
 the expenses himself, which he was perfectly 
 ready to do, but which Mr. Granzine had said he 
 thought he could manage himself, if he was sure 
 that "a hankering after books would do anything 
 more than spoil the boy for anything good he may 
 be fit for." Mr. Granzine's experience of profound 
 culture, or what he considered such, in the mind of 
 Mrs. Granzine, did not appear to have prejudiced 
 him greatly in its favor. 
 
 That Granzine family had always had a sort 
 of mysterious interest for Calmire. The name, 
 though apparently corrupted, pointed to French 
 Canadian extraction, yet the father was as blue- 
 eyed and hay-haired and nasal-voiced a Saxon as 
 ever drove a plow between New England stones. 
 His wife, who had been a school-teacher of the 
 name of Doolittle, was herself as unlike her name 
 as her husband was unlike his a slight poetic 
 creature without any hips, with cold gray eyes, and 
 unmanageable dark hair, ambitious, refined above 
 her station, and intensely vulgar in her all-absorb- 
 ing consciousness of that fact. Johnny got his 
 
 1124
 
 The Granzines. 125 
 
 genius from her, and Calmire, who loved the boy, 
 forgave her a great deal because of that; but he 
 hated her nevertheless, among other reasons be- 
 cause he was sorry for poor old Granzine, for whom 
 the woman evidently cared nothing; and because, 
 like the lower creatures, she cared less for her 
 mate than for her offspring. 
 
 Calmire might well love Johnny, who was one 
 of those rare instances where sometimes Nature 
 selects only virtues from either parent and inten- 
 sifies them in the offspring. Whatever worthy as- 
 pirations made his mother restless, were in this boy 
 easy powers, and from his father he had inherited 
 gentleness, truthfulness, and industry. 
 
 Minerva, who was really Granzine's step-daugh- 
 ter, though she bore his name, Calmire half ad- 
 mired, but did not trust. Her impulses he felt 
 to be kindly, and he thought her, as far as he 
 thought about it, possessed of some sort of a con- 
 science. But he had once said to himself: "She's 
 a dangerously rich creature." Yet her faults were 
 those of a careless and luxurious temperament: not, 
 like her mother's, of a scheming and envious one. 
 Calmire saw a good deal of her because she was the 
 leading soprano in the choir, for which organization 
 he had performed substantially the same services 
 that he had for the band. His brother John had 
 said to him once: " Oh, if the girl hadn't such a fool 
 for a mother! Or if her mother would only rest 
 satisfied with being a fool, and stop there!" 
 
 But John Calmire, at bottom as gentle a soul as 
 lived, did pass a good many hard judgments. Most
 
 126 The Granzines. 
 
 people, including herself, regarded Mrs. Granzine 
 as very far from a fool. 
 
 The lady in question had greeted her daughter 
 when she got home after listening to the band, 
 with:" Well, my darling, did you derive pleasure 
 from the performance ?" 
 
 " Yes, mother dear." 
 
 " I hear Mr. Calmire has arrived. Did Mr. Mu- 
 riel come over with him ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Of course you derived great pleasure from each 
 other's society ?" 
 
 Then Minerva told another little fib like the one 
 she told when we had the honor of introducing her: 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 She and Muriel had not seen each other at all, 
 except to exchange salutations. She wondered 
 why, and Muriel, despite the fact that he had 
 been busy with his friends and his music, rather 
 wondered why, too. 
 
 Yet it should be understood that Minerva some- 
 times had serious difficulty in lying. She had 
 "derived great pleasure" from Muriel's playing, 
 at least, and the fib slipped out. It was flatter- 
 ing to her own vanity, and was apt to keep 
 alive the appreciative tenderness of the maternal 
 heart. This was a desideratum to a young woman 
 who, after an evening spent, since an early tea, in 
 walking around the green, desired perfect liberty 
 among the pies, cakes, and other sources of gusta- 
 tory satisfaction with which the pantries of that 
 latitude abound. Minerva's roundness a great 
 contrast to her ' mother's proportions was not
 
 The Granzines. 127 
 
 sustained on thin air, and her " unlady-like ap- 
 petite," as her mother called it, was one of the 
 minor burdens of the elder woman's unsatisfied 
 life. Sadly enough, the appetite had never seemed 
 less affected than at present by the maternal 
 aspersions. It was not 'even affected by any dis- 
 appointment the young lady herself may have felt 
 at not having been more fully honored during the 
 evening by the attention of Mr. Muriel Calmire. 
 In due time, it was satisfied, however, and, after 
 the good-night kiss dutifully exchanged, mother 
 and daughter sought their respective rooms. The 
 father was always away at the factory until one 
 o'clock, and Johnny had remained out on some 
 devices of his own. 
 
 Free as Mrs. Granzine was to seek sleep, it did 
 not readily come to her, and not before her hus- 
 band's return, had she so withdrawn her mind from 
 certain speculations to which it had lately become 
 addicted, that she was able to calm it to rest. 
 
 Whatever may have been the state of that lady's 
 account on the recording angel's ledger in heaven, 
 nobody on earth (with the exception of Mr. John 
 Calmire), had ever expressed a doubt that she was 
 a superior woman. Taking that term in its vague, 
 general sense, even he had been known to concede 
 it to her, but he hated her nevertheless. The one 
 thing most likely to lead to qualifications in such 
 exalted praise, was the amount of time which, in- 
 stead of devoting to pursuits more natural to such 
 a superior person, she spent in obtaining data for 
 her philosophy of Man and Nature, from her little
 
 128 The Granzines. 
 
 parlor window. Each morning, except Sunday, 
 since the events just recorded, after she had, with 
 Minerva's rather languid assistance, most energeti- 
 cally and systematically discharged her domestic 
 duties, she was more prompt than usual in seating 
 herself about eleven o'clock, with a book, in her 
 accustomed perch. 
 
 The book did not seem to engross her during 
 these three days even as much as usual. On the 
 last of them she had, as usual, exchanged saluta- 
 tions with several passers-by, and had given more 
 than one the benefit of a few courteous, not to say 
 stilted, phrases, when who should come riding by 
 on a light sorrel thoroughbred, but Mr. Muriel 
 Calmire! It must be confessed that he did not sit 
 a horse as well as he did some other things, but he 
 did it well enough to make what appeared to Mi- 
 nerva, gazing through her chamber blinds, far 
 from an Unpleasing picture. 
 
 He was lost in meditation, and might have 
 passed the house without knowing it (although 
 his intention had been distinctly otherwise), had 
 not Mrs. Granzine, whose expression on seeing 
 him was wonderfully as if she had been waiting 
 for him, called out : " Good morning, Mr. Muriel ! 
 Glad to see you back !" Apparently the woman 
 could avoid polysyllables when there was not time 
 for them. 
 
 The abstraction passed from his face like the 
 shadow of a swift cloud from a lake, and he was 
 all smiles when he stopped his horse before the 
 window, saying, " I'm always glad to get back, too. 
 How are you all ?"
 
 The Granzines. 129 
 
 "Very well, I thank you. Minerva will be down 
 in a minute." 
 
 Was this superior woman, in her prompt and in- 
 consequent allusion to Minerva, just a Jttle off her 
 balance, with trepidation or anxiety or something 
 of that sort ? If she was, Muriel, though he might 
 have felt it, was hardly worldly-wise enough to 
 recognize it. 
 
 " Yes ? I should be very glad to see her, but I can't 
 stop now, I have a message to Mr. John Calmire." 
 
 " Well, you must stop to luncheon going back." 
 
 Muriel hesitated. He did not exactly want to, 
 and consciousness of that fact, coupled with the 
 necessity of concealing it, so upset his ingenuous 
 nature as to incapacitate him from saying anything 
 more than: "Thank you!" 
 
 " At what hour shall you return ?" inquired the 
 lady, not unconsciously naming an hour, as some 
 different ladies would have done. 
 
 " Oh well, don't you dine at twelve ?" inquired 
 the gentleman, not ignoring that plebeian fact as 
 some different gentlemen would have done. 
 
 " Oh no, we often lunch at one," lied the supe- 
 rior woman, intensely convinced that that was the 
 proper thing to do. 
 
 " At one then, thanks," said Muriel, and the 
 thoroughbred, feeling a slight pressure from the 
 gorgeous boots, started briskly off. 
 
 The meditations in the rider's mind, if the privi- 
 lege of quoting them exactly may be again ac- 
 corded, were substantially: "Why the devil must 
 that woman always be putting on airs? Often 
 lunch at one, indeed! As if I didn't know, and as
 
 13 The Granzines. 
 
 if she didn't know I know, that the maison Gran- 
 zine wrestles its hash at twelve sharp." Then, 
 after a brief interval: " Poor Minerva!" 
 
 And soon his thoughts wandered far from Mi- 
 nerva, his face fell into the same lines that Mrs. 
 Granzine had pulled it out of, and his thoughts 
 ran on Nina in strains something, like: "Yes, she 
 is an unusual girl. I certainly never did meet one 
 like her. But why the devil must she be making 
 herself disagreeable all the while ? Ain't I as bright 
 as she is? Don't I know more than she does? She 
 hasn't a bad heart, though. And she's certainly 
 nobody's fool. What? Why, of course she's a 
 fool! If she isn't, it may cross my mind some of 
 these days, to imagine that I may be one myself." 
 
 Such very inconsequent cogitations occupied 
 him for the few minutes it took to trot to his uncle's 
 office. The business there was soon dispatched, 
 and he had time to run over to the house and get 
 a little petting from his aunt, and caress and tease 
 the children a little, before starting back to keep 
 his appointment (which he took precious good 
 care not to mention) at the Granzines'. 
 
 He met Mr. Granzine on the way to the mill, 
 after the meal (he divined) which served that late 
 worker as breakfast. But on nearing the house, 
 he saw through the side window of the little din- 
 ing-room, no indication of symposia past or to come. 
 
 At the gate (this was before the blessed destruc- 
 tion of so many fences in front of houses in small 
 towns) he met Johnny coming out. The boy bowed 
 with perfect respectfulness and yet with the ease 
 of a prince. But in place of the usual calm of his
 
 The Granzines. 13 [ 
 
 great gray eyes, as they looked into Muriel's, there 
 was something not quite easy. 
 
 After bowing Muriel into the parlor, Mrs. Gran- 
 zine excused herself for a few minutes, and, for the 
 first time in his life, he was alone in the room. 
 
 On glancing around, he remarked to himself: 
 " So they've got it here too, have they ?" and 
 picked up the illustration of the keramical craze 
 then rampant, which stood nearest to him. He 
 had been struck by the unexpected number and 
 magnificence of similar objects displayed around 
 the modest apartment. On examining the one in 
 his hand, he found it cracked. Proceeding leis- 
 urely and unsuspiciously to the survey of another, 
 his curiosity at finding it also cracked, drove him 
 to a third. It, too, was cracked, and so was a 
 fourth. He had barely ascertained this fact when 
 he was struck by a consciousness of what he was 
 doing, and with his usual intensity, elegance, and 
 candor addressed himself: "Don't be a sneak! 
 What business have you prying into Mrs. Gran- 
 zine's splendor in this way ?" 
 
 Close upon his remark, entered Minerva, fol- 
 lowed by her mother. The girl looked extremely 
 pretty. Her round cheeks were flushed, and her 
 eyes were lowered as she advanced toward him 
 with her hand outstretched. As soon as he took 
 it, she looked up at him with a confident smile, 
 and the confusion or whatever it had been, left 
 her face and manner altogether. 
 
 " I thought you were never coming!" was her 
 coquettish greeting. 
 
 "A queer thing for you to think!" said the 
 young man, with less than half of his usual aplomb.
 
 132 The Granzine $. 
 
 Then all seated themselves, before he, with his 
 native incapacity to endure a pause, broke it with* 
 
 " I hoped to see you the other night." Perhaps he 
 did, but his hope had not inspired him with much 
 effort to realize it: in recognition of which fact, 
 Miss Minerva responded: 
 
 " I was on the green. I heard you play." 
 
 " Yes ? There were so many people to shake 
 hands with, and my uncle had some company, so I 
 was pulled here and there without being able to do 
 anything merely because I wanted to." 
 
 " Is the beautiful young lady visiting at your 
 house ? >; inquired Mrs. Granzine, who had noticed 
 the inconsistency between his statements and 
 Minerva's previous one. 
 
 "Miss Wahringis staying with us if you mean her." 
 
 " Why, do you not consider her beautiful ?" asked 
 Mrs. Granzine. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose she is. People generally think 
 girls are." 
 
 Mrs. Granzine's scrutinizing glance took on a 
 shade of perplexity. Was Muriel trying to make 
 a fool of her? His insensibility to Miss Wahring's 
 unquestionable charms was beyond her compre- 
 hension. Her only way of accounting for so 
 strange a phenomenon was that Muriel was more 
 attracted by the young lady than he cared to own. 
 She determined to investigate this, and being en- 
 tirely unable to understand his character, got her- 
 self, before he left, into a very pretty fog of self- 
 deception. 
 
 Her first step, however, was to change the sub- 
 ject, which she did very naturally by saying:
 
 The Grammes. 133 
 
 " We will take luncheon in the garden, Mr. Muriel 
 Shall we proceed thither now ?" 
 
 " Oh, that will be much pleasanter than here," 
 said the candid youth, intending to compliment 
 her selection, and blissfully unaware of any im- 
 plication but a pleasant one. Mrs. Granzine's 
 vanity was equal to the occasion, however, and 
 saying, " I am glad you acquiesce in my prefer- 
 ence," she took his arm and led him off as she had 
 an impression that a hostess in a higher sphere 
 would always lead a man when she was going to 
 give him something to eat. 
 
 The garden, which was reached by a flight of 
 a dozen steps from the back piazza, sloped to the 
 river and had a view of the hills beyond. It was a 
 pretty place, and, its owner's means not admitting 
 of much care and elaboration, it was one of the 
 most natural things about the establishment. Of 
 course a path ran straight from the foot of the 
 piazza steps to the water, and of course a white- 
 washed grape-arbor spread over this path half- 
 way down, and, of course too, the path was liber- 
 ally bordered by dahlias, hollyhocks, and poppies. 
 All Mrs. Granzine's superiority was inadequate to 
 a departure from the type of the region, in any of 
 these fundamental particulars. It had been ade- 
 quate, however, to the suppression of sunflowers 
 around the veranda, as she considered them a 
 coarse and vulgar plant, and had not yet reached 
 that elevation of aestheticism which had already 
 (though Mrs. Granzine did not know it) intro- 
 duced a superb fringe of them along some of the 
 walls at John Calmire's.
 
 1 34 The Granzines. 
 
 On the right of the straight path, was a fine pear- 
 tree, and under this stood a table which had been 
 taken from the house. Mrs. Granzine's researches 
 into some of the lighter forms of European litera- 
 ture had convinced her that an informal meal al 
 fresco was quite an elegant thing. She dimly con- 
 fused the term with some horrible paintings on the 
 walls of the edifice where she worshipped, which 
 represented pillars and arches to give the illusion 
 of porches, and open sky beyond. But even such 
 reading had not so far corrupted her allegiance to 
 the sad customs of her New England ancestry, as 
 to lead to the establishment of a permanent table 
 for occasional meals out of doors. 
 
 To her dining-room table, so wisely misplaced, 
 she led Muriel, holding his arm all the way with 
 heroic, even if mistaken, fidelity to high ideals. 
 Depositing him on one of the chairs, she observed: 
 
 " You are aware, Mr. Muriel, of the distresses 
 endured by American housewives with their do- 
 mestic service. Mine have all left me" (only one 
 topic did Mrs. Granzine ever permit to overcome 
 her grammar, and that one was social elegance), 
 " and I am reduced to preparing our meal myself.' 
 
 Muriel was sometimes a cynical dog (if the reader 
 will pardon the tautology), but, having been so little 
 under the influence of his family and so much under 
 inferior influences, he had become enough of a 
 snob himself to feel some sympathy with poor Mrs. 
 Granzine's sufferings; so, while through his mind 
 flashed the sentence, " As if she hadn't cooked 
 Granzine's dinners ever since she was married, and 
 cooked them well too, I'll bet," his tongue, never-
 
 The Granzines. !^c 
 
 theless, uttered the more courtly phrase, " I feel 
 myself doubly honored, dear madam." For at least 
 once that day, it was his high privilege to make a 
 fellow-creature happy. It may or may not have 
 been gratitude that led her to say: 
 
 " While I am making my arrangements, I will 
 leave my daughter to entertain you." 
 
 Minerva certainly was lazy, but somehow, to-day, 
 she was not herself, even in laziness, and Muriel 
 actually did not know whether he was glad or 
 sorry when she bounced from the chair she had 
 naturally dropped into, and said: 
 
 " No, Mother, I'm going to help you!" 
 
 " No; you remain here, my child. I am cer- 
 tainly adequate to the exertion myself." 
 
 But Minerva had already started. 
 
 " Mr. Muriel is never tired of looking at the 
 river and the mountains," she called back. " He 
 won't miss us." 
 
 She was generally ready to stay, and full of talk, 
 spiced with a little good-natured chaff; but to-day, 
 off she went and help she did, with a will with 
 such energy and recklessness, indeed, that Mr. 
 Muriel was more than once impressed by the fact 
 that travelling up and down those piazza stairs, 
 was a pair of little slippers surmounted by a pair of 
 blue stockings with some little white figures worked 
 on them, that were filled out with a degree of luxuri- 
 ance which, to his young and omnivorous taste, was 
 probably more impressive than would have been 
 any symmetry that Pygmalion ever chiseled. 
 
 But something was out of gear in the boy. The 
 <juick coursing of the young blood was there, but,
 
 136 The Gr amines. 
 
 somehow, over it dominated a sense which had be- 
 fore been a stranger to him when such objects were 
 visible. Though somewhat given to analysis, he 
 was not at all given to self-analysis, and he hardly 
 realized that the unaccustomed qualification to his 
 feelings was distaste. Still less did he realize, in 
 his mind contemplating the blue stockings, the 
 presence of a suspicion of danger; and least of all 
 did he realize a comparison of the feeling which 
 the blue stockings inspired, with other emotions 
 that he sometimes imagined and longed to feel. 
 Yet back in his nature were all these complex ele- 
 ments, but the nearest approach to any definite 
 thought that came into his mind, was a query: 
 "Am I going to rush after those blue stockings 
 wherever they see fit to run ?" 
 
 So attractive, however, were the objects of his 
 meditations, that he did not inquire very deeply 
 into the unaccustomed turn the meditations had 
 taken. The idea of his stopping in any such 
 pursuit as he was picturing to himself, had never 
 occurred to him before; and not till some time 
 afterward, when it was brought up by even more 
 unaccustomed thoughts, did he stop to ponder on 
 the strangeness of such an idea occurring now. 
 
 The lunch was served, and a good lunch it was, 
 though the young man could not escape his faculty 
 of criticism far enough to enjoy it in free uncon- 
 sciousness of its variations from certain con- 
 ventions with which he was familiar. His biog- 
 rapher must even record, in faithfulness though 
 in sorrow, that he did not entirely succeed in re- 
 fraining from incidental allusions to fine houses 
 where he had tasted viands inferior, as he declared,
 
 The Gran sines. J 37 
 
 to certain ones set before him. These allusions, 
 while impressing his companions with his social 
 superiority, made them conscious, not without 
 some twinges, of the shortcomings of the hospi- 
 tality they were offering. He said nothing, how- 
 ever, with any intention of giving pain, and said so 
 many things with the distinct intention of giving 
 pleasure, and said them so effectively, that his 
 hostesses were on the whole charmed with the suc- 
 cess of theii. little /^te, and he was quite charmed, 
 as usual, with himself. 
 
 The mayonnaise, it must be admitted, was not a 
 mayonnaise at all, but the lamb-chops were breaded 
 to perfection, and the Spring-chicken was fried and 
 bathed in white sauce in a way that did credit to 
 the teaching of Mrs. Granzine's Virginia cousin. 
 In the rolls which Mrs. Granzine had set before 
 she took her station at the window that morning, 
 there was no trace of the saleratus that then per- 
 vaded the cuisine of those latitudes; and there was 
 a bottle of thin pinkish wine made of currants, or 
 elderberries, or God knows what, possibly grapes, 
 but so well made and so well kept, and even so 
 well iced (by some subtle divination of that su- 
 perior woman; for if she had followed her literary 
 lights or those of her experience, she might have 
 either served the stuff tepid and exhaling all its 
 raw bouquet, or have iced Burgundy itself, if she 
 had had it), that Muriel drank most of it (as per- 
 haps he would have done if it had not been so 
 good), with an effect on his eloquence and geni- 
 ality that could not have been surpassed by his 
 uncle's Clos de Vougeot-
 
 138 The Granzines. 
 
 Yet, under it all, somehow rumbled a negation, 
 and after he had expressed with most graceful 
 volubility his appreciation of the kindness of 'his 
 entertainers, and turned his horse's head home- 
 ward, his strong face gradually fell into its medi- 
 tative lines, and there floated through his mind in 
 disjointed and inconsequent ways such sentences 
 as: "So Miss Wahring pities me, does she? I 
 wonder how she'd feel if she could see me wor- 
 shipped and see what sort of a god I am!. ...Boun- 
 teous Nature! What a creature that Minerva is! 
 How she did roll her gorgeousness up and down 
 those steps!. ...Muriel, what ails you? Oh well! 
 there must be an end to tomfoolery some time, and 
 perhaps the sooner the better! Oh, if I could get 
 but one clear and strong emotion to come and 
 burn it away like the sun! But where? Where? 
 I stretch out empty arms to the universe, and empty 
 they fall!. ...Is my strong stomach turning against 
 cakes and ale ? Perhaps it isn't as strong a stomach 
 as it was once. It certainly has had a good deal to 
 do!. ..Well, it is a new sensation. I certainly never 
 saw a woman before Miss Wahring whom I couldn't 
 master. But then I don't care to master her. I 
 wonder if she's been glad to have me out of the 
 way to-day? God knows I'm glad enough to 
 escape her, with her ignorance and impudence!.... 
 Does it occur to you, Mr. Muriel Calmire, that 
 ignorance never was a bar to your seeking the 
 society of Miss Minerva Granzine ?" And after a 
 little more meditation, the queer boy ejaculated 
 aloud: " But God forgive me !" and actually took 
 off his hat.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ANOTHER BOUT. 
 
 PROBABLY the last thing to be expected from- a 
 boy, unless he is a stupid boy, is consistency. So 
 perhaps the reason Muriel raised his hat, was be- 
 cause he had uttered the name of God. Be that 
 as it may, when he found Miss Wahring on the 
 pizza at Fleuvemont, his manner could not have 
 been more deferential if he had felt impelled to 
 make her reparation for some wrong. Up to that 
 time, he had treated her with the offhand ease of a 
 young sultan, whose handkerchief had always been 
 raised wherever it had happened to fall: not that he 
 had consciously felt in that way toward her, but 
 the boy had been spoiled : though he had sat too 
 often at Mrs. John Calmire's feet, and, earlier, at 
 Mrs. Legrand's, not to know what a true woman 
 is, and, despite his aberrations, to long with more 
 fervor than he bestowed on all other dreams, for 
 the love of a true woman that is, one made on an 
 entirely new pattern which it would have been 
 cruel to suddenly call upon him to describe, but 
 with a good deal more than either of his aunts 
 had of rough commonplace intellect, though not 
 with more of their transcendent genius of sym- 
 pathy which he failed to appreciate. 
 
 His shade of compunction, or whatever it was, 
 
 139
 
 140 Another Bout. 
 
 toward Miss Nina Wahring, tempered the little 
 conversation which they had in a stroll on the 
 lawn before they went to dress for dinner. After 
 they had chatted on indifferent things for a few 
 minutes, Muriel said: 
 
 " See my uncle over by the grove. Did you ever 
 notice his walk ? He moves like the river." 
 "Yes. He is so calm and strong. He rests me." 
 And then she added half to herself: "But it's a 
 new thing for me to think of rest!" 
 
 " It's a very old thing to me." 
 
 " Yes, you are lazy," said the lady. 
 
 " No, I'm not. Give me any work I care for, 
 and I work like a horse." 
 
 " Yes, you'll work at enjoying yourself." 
 
 " Well, how am I different from that beast whose 
 cupola you see over the hill there ? He works 
 because he enjoys it. I heard him tell a man so, 
 one day in the cars. Now what does his work 
 amount to? He's a bank-president in New York. 
 He goes down every morning in the six-twenty- 
 four train, busies himself over purely material 
 interests, and gets back in the evening about 
 six. Then he dines, if that's what you'd call 
 the sort of performance they have over there, 
 and then he goes to sleep. As the days get a 
 little shorter he comes out too late for a drive. 
 Then, after he swallows his dinner, he goes to 
 sleep too soon to open a book. In short, he leads 
 the life of the beasts, and that's why I called 
 him one. Now that man enjoys his laborious 
 day as much as I enjoyed training my crew at 
 college, and he lives such days because he enjoys
 
 Another Bout. 141 
 
 them: just the same reason that I trained my crew 
 or learned the cornet two things that he couldn't 
 do to save his life. Yet he's admired as a model 
 of energy, while I am twitted for laziness by peo- 
 ple whom whose respect I believe, upon my soul, 
 I'm really beginning to care for." 
 
 Her smile answered his, and her eyes met his as 
 frankly as they had always done, but for the first 
 time in their acquaintance, she lowered them be- 
 fore she began her reply. 
 
 " In regard to many people, what you have said, 
 is just. In fact, our country is full of such. But 
 do you know Mr. Plumfield ?" 
 
 " No, I don't know him, and I don't want to. 
 What I've heard about him is enough." 
 
 " Yet I must beg you to hear some more, for I 
 do know him. In town, they live next door to us. 
 Out here, he leaves, as you say, on the six-twenty- 
 four train. He reaches New York not far from 
 nine. He's not due at the bank until ten. How 
 do you suppose he spends the interval?" 
 
 " Getting shaved and eating his breakfast, I sup- 
 pose. He certainly can't, do either before he starts." 
 
 " He does do both, and decently and in order 
 too. No, he generally spends that time in person- 
 ally visiting needy people who are recommended 
 to him by the man he pays to investigate them." 
 
 "The Devil he does! Miss Nina, I beg your 
 pardon!" he added as she turned her clear gaze 
 upon him reprovingly. 
 
 " Isn't it rather childish to be making such a slip 
 to beg pardon for? Understand, I'm not making 
 the same sort of objection to the profanity, that I
 
 H 2 Another Bout. 
 
 might have done even a week ago. It is more, per- 
 haps, to what your uncle would call the disregard of 
 convention. Though if you put your knife in your 
 mouth before me, I should have no right to lecture 
 you; but for saying such things before me, I have 
 a right, and I intend to use it again if you do so 
 again." 
 
 "Yes, do!" exclaimed the boy. "Goon. Make me 
 feel like a baby some more. I'm getting to like it." 
 
 "Charmed to gratify you! Well, do you know 
 what Mr. Plumfield does with his two hours after 
 the bank closes in the afternoon ?" 
 
 "Visits more poor folks, I suppose, as his genius 
 runs in that line." 
 
 " No, he doesn't. His genius is capable of larger 
 things. He goes to meetings of charitable com- 
 mittees. Yes, come to think of it, committees of 
 literary and artistic things too. He's the prop 
 and mainstay of three or four such concerns." 
 
 "I didn't suppose he could care for them at all. 
 Well, I've done the man a wrong, and," as they 
 turned and faced his house again, " I'd like to go 
 and tell him so." (But he would not have gone.) 
 "Yet you said I was right in the general drift of what 
 I said if he'd been like most of his style of men.'' 
 
 " No, I didn't say exactly that. But I feel as if 
 you were to blame somehow. In short, I wanted 
 to say to you what you have so often said to me: 
 * Try to be more catholic-minded.' " 
 
 "Me! More catholic-minded! Why, I'm not a 
 narrow sort of a fellow. I haven't any of the stock 
 prejudices." 
 
 " No, you have your own original prejudices.
 
 Another Bout. H3 
 
 You see how useful Mr. Plumfield is; but you still 
 entertain a doubt whether, as a business man, he's 
 of as much use in the world as an average fiddler." 
 
 " The world pays the fiddler three dollars a 
 night," said Mr. Calmire, who had stopped to 
 speak to a gardener, and was just passing to speak 
 to a second, "and Mr. Plumfield, about three hun- 
 dred dollars a day." 
 
 " The world's a fool, and you know it," Muriel 
 called after him. " How much did it pay Archer, 
 the jockey ?" " Got the last word, for once," he 
 added, turning to Nina. " So perhaps I can own 
 up a little easier. Do you know I've lately had a 
 faint suspicion of what you've just intimated to 
 me. I will try to be more catholic-minded." 
 
 " And not to advise others to be so, so often ?" 
 
 " Yes! Here's my hand on it." 
 
 She did not give him the opportunity he want- 
 ed to take hers, but, moving away, said: " I must 
 get ready for dinner. You seem about to become 
 quite interesting." 
 
 Her tone was merely playful, not sarcastic; and 
 as they separated for their rooms, he went off, 
 very conceited over his new virtue of humility.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A TOUGH SUBJECT, THOUGH NOT A NEW ONE. 
 
 AFTER dinner the ladies started for their rooms 
 rather early, and a few minutes later, Calmire made 
 as if he were going too. 
 
 " Oh no," said Muriel, " let's have another cigar. 
 Besides, I'm thirsty," and he rang the bell. 
 
 " Oh, I'm an old man, Muriel, I mustn't be keep- 
 ing such hours. Do you know that there's a par- 
 ticular in which I'm like Sir Isaac Newton ? I'm 
 good for nothing without eight hours' sleep." 
 
 " Take it in the morning, sir. You're not going 
 to the mills to-morrow, and there's nothing else to 
 do, so you can afford to be good for nothing. Why, 
 Uncle Grand, do you know I haven't had a square 
 talk with you for over two years ? And the Lord 
 only knows when I'm going to have, with all these 
 women chattering around here. Tell Pierre to 
 give us something in the dining-room, and come 
 ahead." 
 
 " You'll be the death of me yet. I tell you, I'm 
 getting old." 
 
 " You're always charming when you talk non- 
 sense, sir." 
 
 And they went off arm in arm. 
 
 Calmire put a match under the great logs in the 
 
 144
 
 A Tough Subject, though not a New One. 145 
 
 dining-room fireplace, for the night had grown 
 cool, and they drew up two of the great arm-chairs 
 from the table. Their clay was duly moistened, 
 biscuits nibbled and cigars lit, when Calmire asked: 
 
 " Well! What have you got to say for your- 
 self ?" 
 
 " I don't know. Of course, I want to talk about 
 everything. Seems to me that nearly every time 
 I've tried to get my mouth open lately, that girl 
 has shut it. But somehow I can't talk common- 
 places to her." 
 
 " She's rather too young to have learned or 
 thought much," said Calmire. " But I've known 
 you to talk commonplaces very volubly to ladies 
 who knew nothing and thought nothing, and had 
 not her sharpness either." 
 
 " Yes, that's just the trouble. One is not content 
 to talk only nonsense with her, and yet if I try any- 
 thing else, it only leads to disagreement." 
 
 " Invariably ?" 
 
 "Well, no, not invariably; once she actually 
 thanked me for some notions I gave her, but I'd 
 rather she hadn't." 
 
 Why ?" 
 
 " Well, somehow, she made me feel cheap." 
 
 "Oh! I shouldn't think a stupid girl could do 
 that. Not meaning to imply, of course, that you 
 are the least stupid boy I ever saw." 
 
 " Thank you. Yet I don't more than half like 
 her. Some things about her are awfully nice, but 
 I'll bet she's stubborn as the devil." 
 
 " All of which sounds to me as if she had sat
 
 146 A Tough Subject, though not a New One. 
 
 down on you pretty hard. Has she been savage 
 all the time?" 
 
 " Not exactly. Once she even was amiable 
 enough to pity me." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " My orphaned state." 
 
 " I always gave her credit for a deal of penetra- 
 tion," said Calmire, " but that sounds as if she had 
 more than I supposed." 
 
 " Why, Uncle Grand, you've never let me fee! 
 that I had no father." 
 
 "Ah, my poor boy, I've loved you and scolded 
 you when I got a chance. But the best I've done 
 for you has been to bring you up at boarding- 
 school and college. You've never had a home." 
 
 " What do you call this ?" 
 
 " A place where you've been welcome to an 
 occasional sojourn when I've not been away, but 
 where it has not been possible for me to keep you 
 so steadily that your character would grow into 
 any shape the place might impose. You've grown 
 up wild. You've not been obliged to care for 
 women, and I suspect that Miss Wahring realizes 
 it." 
 
 " Why, I care for women more than for anytning 
 else!" 
 
 "As an amusement," responded Calmire. "I 
 meant that you had neve- been obliged to take care 
 of them, to think of them before thinking of your- 
 self. But as you care so much for the-n, and as 
 you've got out of college now, I suppose you'll be 
 wanting one all to yourself soon."
 
 A Tough Subject, though not a New One. 147 
 
 " Yes, if it were but possible to find the right 
 one. There's nothing I so yearn for as a good 
 woman whom I will think of before anything else 
 whom I can pour out my whole soul upon." 
 
 "You can't do that, my poor boy. Your habit 
 is to think of yourself, and to pour out most of 
 your soul upon yourself, and nothing but suffering 
 can break that habit, and // can't break it in a day." 
 
 " Love can do anything." 
 
 " What do you know about love ? You even 
 make it a sort of boast that you've never been in 
 love an evidence, I suppose you like to regard it, 
 of your superiority to every woman you ever met." 
 
 "Well," answered Muriel, " when I was a boy, I 
 fancied myself in love two or three times, but I 
 see plainly that it was mere fancy. The girls were 
 in every way my inferiors, and there's no conceit 
 in my saying it, although you seem to think I'm 
 made of nothing but conceit." 
 
 " No, there's a good deal else in you, and you'll 
 have the conceit ground out of you in time. But 
 that love of yours was the kind of love that most of 
 the poets rave about the love that throws a glory 
 over its object, as a sunset does over the most com- 
 monplace things the love that does not study its 
 object. You will study yours now, in spite of your- 
 self." 
 
 "You don't mean that I can't love?" 
 
 " You can love in your way, but it won't be as 
 the poets and old-fashioned novelists depict the 
 passion. That's what I suppose you want to do ?" 
 
 " Of course, to have every faculty of my being 
 merged in it."
 
 148 A Tough Subject, though not a New One. 
 
 " You can't do it. Your being is grown too com- 
 plex. And you need hardly regret it, for that kind 
 of love is based on illusions, and does not outlive 
 them, as you say your boyish love did not." 
 
 " I'm not afraid," said Muriel. "I have it in me to 
 love unqualifiedly. I shall yet meet some woman 
 before whom I shall lay down everything." 
 
 " That's all very well, my boy, but there are 
 several reasons why you won't, besides those I've 
 already given. One is that you're not in the habit 
 of 'laying down everything' or much of any- 
 thing: you haven't had to often enough. Another 
 is that a perfect woman doesn't exist, and you'll 
 detect some of the particulars in which any one 
 woman falls short. Another is that you're a wor- 
 shipper of both beauty and brains, and you'll find 
 it hard to get the two combined : the beauties 
 don't generally think it worthwhile to train their 
 minds: you may possibly grow old waiting for a 
 delicate woman with a man's tough intellect." 
 
 "Well, why shouldn't one have it?" 
 
 "The reasons are far back in evolution. The 
 differences in general structure and function in- 
 volve differences in brain. Besides, woman hasn't 
 yet had a tair chance: the world has been too much 
 under the control of muscle; and her disadvantages 
 have had their hereditary influences, along with the 
 fact of sex. So, of course hardly any woman ever 
 did any of the big things at least the recorded 
 ones. But one of these days you're going to 
 find out that the best things are not the recorded 
 ones. Way beyond literature, art, philosophy, 
 politics, triumph if you will, the deepest and
 
 A Tough Subject, though not a New One. 149 
 
 sweetest thing I've known or have seen any reason 
 for supposing man can know, is human sympathy; 
 and at that, women beat us all hollow." 
 
 "Maybe!" said Muriel with a skeptical drawl. 
 " But I'm not such a worshipper of beauty as you 
 suppose. I've fought shy of more than one pretty 
 woman in our own sphere, I mean ; of course with 
 other women I'm no puritan." 
 
 " But at bottom you are a puritan, nevertheless," 
 said Calmire; "and if your little strain of French 
 blood ever gets the better of your puritan blood, 
 there's going to be some queer trouble, and I don't 
 like to anticipate trouble for you, Muriel." 
 
 "Why, I but follow Nature." 
 
 " So do you if you take what you like wherever 
 you find it. Brute nature and human nature are 
 two different things, though." 
 
 " The cases are not the same," Muriel objected. 
 "I know that stealing is not right. But if I think 
 anything else right, it's right for me." 
 
 " No! Thatblunderis frequent among the young. 
 Nooneman'sopinion isatestof right: theaggregate 
 opinion is the only one. That's not always right, 
 but it's apt to be right when it contradicts any one 
 man's. But utterly independent of abstract ethics, 
 I wish you could realize that any relation you may 
 have with any woman but your wife, which the 
 experience of mankind says should be reserved for 
 the wife alone, you'll be sorry for. You may think 
 that you can incur low reminiscences now, and still 
 keep your soul's holy-of-holies uninvaded by them 
 until you find a being that you care to place in it. 
 But they will obtrude themselves at the loftiest
 
 1 50 A Tougli Subject, though not a New One. 
 
 moments, and you would have to lead your pure 
 being to your holy-of-holies through memories of 
 your own that you would wince to see her garments 
 touch things which, if you lay your whole nature 
 open to her (and no woman is worth having as a 
 wife unless she will welcome your laying it open), 
 she will have to learn of with bitter pain." 
 
 "Oh well, what do other men do?" said Muriel, 
 carelessly. 
 
 " Are you ' other men ' ? Would you be content 
 with the half-arm's-length relation with your wife 
 that satisfies ' other men ' ?" 
 
 " No. I'd rather have her know me and love me 
 exactly as I am. I'd want her big enough to. But 
 I'm not as bad as some fellows. I never deliber- 
 ately wronged a woman, and I never will ; and 
 there are plenty of women as bad as I am." 
 
 "You've no right to help any of them continue 
 bad, and you can't participate in the badness with- 
 out harm to yourself; and I'm impertinent enough 
 to have some feeling regarding harm to you. But 
 I'm afraid preaching won't help : you'll have to 
 undergo experience. Only let me tell you that 
 as you're not apt to be drawn into love by illusions, 
 there's double danger in your jading your suscepti- 
 bility to the legitimate charms of sex, by ' not being 
 a puritan.' " 
 
 " Oh pshaw! I can keep my soul virgin, no 
 matter what my body does." 
 
 Calmire shook his head but did not speak. 
 
 After a moment's musing, Muriel asked: "Doesn't 
 the man without illusions love more deeply and 
 permanently than the man with them ?"
 
 A TougJi Subject, though not a New One. \ 5 i 
 
 " Yes, but not in the mad, poetical way. But he 
 sticks to his love better than the poetical lovers do. 
 You know the lovers Byron and Poe and their like 
 depict. They're the kind all boys want to be. You 
 know the kind of lovers such poets actually were : 
 I suppose they too sometimes fancied that they 
 ' kept their souls virgin.' " 
 
 " But I want to do the loving they depict, not 
 that which they did." 
 
 " You've had your little turns at it. You're too 
 old now. It's a babyish thing at best as evanes- 
 cent as all the emotions of childhood, as you found 
 it yourself several times. But here it is past mid- 
 night. I'm going to bed. We'll have enough 
 chance to talk during the Summer." 
 
 " Are you going to keep these women here ?" 
 
 " I hope they'll stay. Why ? Do they bore you ?" 
 
 " No. Not exactly." 
 
 " But you usually like ladies' society. I can't un- 
 derstand your apparent indifference to these. Cer- 
 tainly they are as charming women as I know, and 
 if the younger one ever has the chance, she's ca- 
 pable of something colossal." 
 
 " That's a big word," said Muriel. 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, "but mind just that word: 
 you may see it justified." After a moment's pause, 
 he added musingly: "And she would be as faith- 
 ful as Death!" Then he slowly shook his head, look- 
 ing at Muriel, and added : " But you don't enjoy 
 fighting her ! Yet I've seen you enjoy it with 
 other girls. Why not with her ?" 
 
 " Oh well, she's not like any other girls." 
 
 " Well, perhaps a little of her castigation may do 
 you good. Good-night, my boy. Oh ! Muriel, by
 
 152 A Tough Subject, though not a New One. 
 
 the way, wouldn't it be just as well while the ladies 
 are here to hold up a little on playing the cornet 
 in the house ? Ladies, and perhaps some old 
 men, may be addicted to a little sleep between 
 lunch and dinner !" 
 
 " Oh, bother sleep ! Who cares for sleep ?" 
 
 "Most people who are obliged to care for any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Of whom, thank God, I'm not one," exclaimed 
 Muriel. " Good-night." 
 
 " Yes, you are one," said Calmire, "but you don't 
 know it yet. We all are." 
 
 " Oh well, Uncle Grand, I'm getting sick of this 
 business whatever a fellow wants to do, is always 
 bumping up against some confounded Law of 
 Nature. Nature is nothing but a dumb brute. 
 I'm a man and I have a will of my own. She may 
 blast me if she wants to, but she can't frighten me. 
 Oh, I glory in old Ajax defying the lightning !" 
 
 " Of course ! of course! Something big and sen- 
 sational !" said Calmire. "Do you suppose that 
 if you see fit to defy Nature, she's going to bother 
 over you with her lightnings ? She's more apt to 
 send some petty filthy messenger so contemptible 
 that even a microscope can't find it, and quietly 
 and contemptuously rot you down as she does the 
 oak : she does not often grant even the oak the 
 honor of a lightning-stroke. Muriel, there are 
 some things before which it does a man good to 
 feel small !" 
 
 The boy first looked puzzled and then ashamed. 
 He got up, held out his hand and went off to bed 
 without a word.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MR. COURTENAY EXPERIENCES SOME SENTIMENTS AND 
 A VISIT. 
 
 COURTENAY had been put ashore at the scene of 
 the accident, by the mouth of the tributary stream 
 which, three miles up, passed the town of Calmire. 
 He stood the drive home very well, but he was not 
 fairly himself for more: than a week. 
 
 During the long reflective hours of that week, 
 even his impatient dreams over his beloved and 
 noble work could not generally hold their place 
 in his mind against a widely different image, 
 equally noble in its way and probable, though 
 strange equally beloved. Amid the faces weak, 
 yearning, cringing, grateful with which the 
 reminiscences of his ministry were crowded, now 
 always obtruded itself that strong and beauti- 
 ful one, his recent glimpse of. which had seemed 
 heaven. It was the last face he had seen on 
 quitting life, the first on returning to it. She had 
 taken his life, she had given it back. She con- 
 trolled it. It was hers. That sort of reasoning, 
 under any inspiration of the good and beautiful, 
 was easy to him. His whole system of things was 
 made up of it; his life was passed in preaching it. 
 On grounds about equally coherent, but with the 
 loftiest motives, he had from the beginning given
 
 1 54 Mr. Conrtenay Experiences some Sentiments 
 
 up his life to God; and now the second great inspira- 
 tion, Love, had similarly taken possession of him. 
 In common-sense matters, he was by no means 
 devoid of common sense. But fond as he was of 
 preaching common-sense sermons, religion was 
 something higher than common sense, and so, 
 he now felt, as he had often dreamed, was love. 
 Was not religion, love; and love, therefore, religion ? 
 And was not faith in love therefore faith in re- 
 ligion ? Any less view was a low view, a subjec- 
 tion to mere reason, of his highest impulses and 
 his highest faiths. Reason he admitted to be a 
 great thing in law-courts, in laboratories, and on 
 exchanges; but religion and love must be guided 
 by something higher than reason: they were mat- 
 ters of inspiration of faith. And so, as he was in- 
 spired by the faith that his life was Nina's, he was, 
 of course, inspired with the, to him, logically cor- 
 relative conviction that her life was his. A sense of 
 his unworthiness suggested itself, as it often did: 
 but he would have faith; and as soon as he should 
 be well enough, he would go to her in his great 
 faith, and it should be justified. 
 
 During his convalescence, this state of mind ma- 
 tured. It had been stimulated by his being told 
 of Nina's bitter self-reproaches, not only for hav- 
 ing so imperiled a human life, but a life so val- 
 uable as she knew his to be. All this had been 
 recounted in various ways by the Calmires, who 
 had all been to see him Calmire himself twice, 
 John on alternate days, and Mrs. John every day, 
 once bringing a bunch of her children. 
 
 Even Muriel, after leaving his card the day he
 
 and a Visit. i$5 
 
 lunched at the Granzines', concluded that he 
 could manage to talk with the parson by Wednes- 
 day, and on that day presented himself in person. 
 
 As Courtenay walked forward to greet him, 
 Muriel grasped his hand heartily. Unless he dis- 
 liked a man, he could not take his hand in any 
 other way, and he more than once had caught him- 
 self taking in that way, the hand of some one he 
 did dislike. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Courtenay," he said, " I'm mighty 
 glad to see you so well out of that scrape." 
 
 " Yes, it has indeed been a merciful deliverance," 
 said Courtenay, " and I thank you for your sym- 
 pathy." 
 
 Perfunctory as the words may read, there was 
 nothing perfunctory in them. They came out in 
 a perfectly hearty and manly way. So did Mu- 
 riel's answer: 
 
 " Well, as regards the deliverance, it strikes me 
 that a better time for that would have been before 
 the boats struck." 
 
 " It's not for us to criticise the ways of the Lord, 
 Mr. Calmire," Courtenay said, though not austerely. 
 
 " Perhaps not: though I believe in the liberty of 
 determining which are the Lord's ways and which 
 are the Devil's ways." 
 
 " Then," said Courtenay, laughing, " I suppose I 
 should blame the Devil for getting me into the 
 trouble, as I thank the Lord for getting me out." 
 
 " I thought Uncle Legrand got you out," said 
 Muriel. 
 
 " He certainly was the Lord's instrument, and a 
 very efficient one."
 
 I 56 Mr. Courtenay Experiences some Sentiments 
 
 " Then Miss Wahring, who got you in, was the 
 Devil's instrument, and equally efficient." 
 
 "Ah! I cannot be guilty of such double blas- 
 phemy as that," said Courtenay fervently. 
 
 Muriel turned his eyes from the flower-pots on the 
 window-sill, where he had let them drift, and cast his 
 strong glance full upon the speaker: though it was 
 not to measure him for battle, but merely to de- 
 termine, though not premeditately, whether Cour- 
 tenay's fervor were gallantry or something less 
 mundane. With all Muriel's vaunted slowness to 
 love, he was entirely capable of being jealous of 
 any man's regard for almost any woman. And 
 as that universal jealousy existed for many genera- 
 tions in the remote ancestry of every man, prob- 
 ably the strongest traces of it exist still in the men 
 who can love strongest. Such a feeling Muriel 
 always crushed, or thought he did: but it came, 
 and needed to be crushed. Without professing to 
 love Nina Wahring, he felt that innate jealousy, or 
 some other, when he turned toward Courtenay; 
 and when he saw Courtenay's face, he realized that 
 he felt it. 
 
 "What! This damned parson!" he said to him- 
 self. But he was much more in love with theo- 
 logical argument than with Nina Wahring, and so 
 he returned to the charge. 
 
 "Where's the sense in thanking God forgetting 
 you out of a scrape, when he might as well have 
 kept you out of it in the beginning ?" 
 
 "Why, Mr. Calmire, our moral education comes 
 from the scrapes we get into." 
 
 "Well, I prefer to get my moral education 
 easier."
 
 and a Visit. 157 
 
 "But," said the clergyman, "we can't always 
 have what we'd prefer. No man can understand 
 the ways of God." 
 
 "I've found mighty few men," responded Mu- 
 riel, " who are strong enough to profess not to, 
 and stick to their profession through thick and 
 thin. Men profess in one breath not to under- 
 stand him; and in the breath before, they have 
 thanked him in some fashion implying a better 
 understanding than I, at least, can see my way to." 
 
 The rage of argument was upon the boy, and he 
 would have gone on had his man been in the death- 
 agony. 
 
 Courtenay changed the subject. 
 
 " Well, I'm not up to argument now, and I'm 
 even afraid my people will have to put up with an 
 old sermon Sunday." 
 
 " Fortunately, they can't answer back," said 
 Muriel with good humor, but not realizing the 
 possible double meaning of his "fortunately." 
 
 Courtenay, however, took the remark as it was 
 meant and went on: 
 
 " I've been able to read a little, but not to write." 
 
 " Why, I should think writing a sermon the 
 easiest thing in the world," said Muriel. 
 
 " Not easy enough for me now. But why do 
 you think it easy ?" 
 
 " Well, as I've just said, the congregation gener- 
 ally endows sermons with a sanctity that puts them 
 above criticism." 
 
 "That conception of a sermon would have been 
 correct a hundred years ago," said Courtenay, "and 
 perhaps later, but it is hardly correct now. Now, a
 
 158 Mr. Court enay Experiences some Sentiments 
 
 minister is rather expected to discuss the questions 
 of the day, and some have had to give up congre- 
 gations for preaching on the side of the minority." 
 
 "That's true!" exclaimed Muriel. "There has 
 been some pluck there. But don't you think any- 
 thing but religion a descent from religion ?" 
 
 "There's theoretical religion and there's ap- 
 plied religion. I'm a practical man, Mr. Calmire, 
 and I try to preach my religion applied." 
 
 " And I suspect there would have been a good 
 deal less nonsense in this world if more people had 
 taken your course," said Muriel, rising and holding 
 out his hand to take leave. 
 
 " I'm afraid you're correct," said Courtenay with 
 equal cordiality. And as they grasped hands he 
 added: "I wish we could see more of each other, 
 Mr. Calmire!" 
 
 From babyhood up, Muriel had been pestered 
 by so many advances of this kind from people of 
 religious professions desirous of making him what 
 they saw fit to call "good," that he could not 
 dissociate Courtenay's advances from the rest, ana 
 the situation embarrassed him. He did manage, 
 however, to say, " We get along better than most," 
 meaning most people who disagree, and vanished. 
 
 The minister had received Muriel in a little 
 study upstairs in an humble boarding-house. 
 More luxurious quarters were not within his 
 means, as he saw fit to use his means. Too much 
 of his salary, respectable as it was, went home to 
 the large family of which he was the eldest son, 
 and to poorer people. 
 
 After Muriel had groped his way down the dark
 
 and a Visit. 159 
 
 and narrow stairway, the first clear thought he had 
 was: " So the parson's in love with Nina Wahring!" 
 And then, but with no realization of rivalry, he 
 fell to contrasting the parson with himself, and not 
 altogether to the parson's advantage. The par- 
 
 son was a good fellow! What lots of good he did! 
 But all sorts of namby-pamby people could do 
 that. Muriel could, easily enough, if he cared to 
 try. But, after all, the parson was not so namby- 
 pamby: he could even, Muriel suspected, beat Mu- 
 riel at tennis. But what was tennis? A mere game! 
 fit for girls and parsons. Now for any real thing, 
 say a pistol Muriel had never seen a man vrho 
 could handle one as well as he could, and that 
 was a man's weapon. And as to pulling an oar or 
 sailing a boat! Hadn't Muriel been a college stroke, 
 and taken boats through all sorts of night and blow, 
 while that near-sighted parson had let a girl run him 
 down ? And then his idiocy in thinking himself in 
 heaven! "But, confound it!" Muriel thought, "I 
 wish the girl hadn't run him down." The wish was 
 not born of any tenderness for the parson, or for 
 the girl either. And no one could have convinced 
 him that it was born of any tenderness for himself.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 FAITH AND FACT. 
 
 ON Monday evening, Mrs. John had Courtenay 
 to dinner. The good fellow's constitution, strong 
 from temperate living and abundant exercise, ap- 
 peared to have entirely recovered from its fearful 
 shock, and to have, if anything, taken on a little extra 
 vigor from the unusual rest of the past ten days. 
 
 All the Fleuvemont people were over, though 
 Nina had conquered some reluctance before con- 
 senting to go. She knew that they would meet 
 Courtenay, and the idea of encountering her 
 " victim," as Muriel had dubbed him, abashed her. 
 Yet she realized that, before long, they must meet 
 somewhere, and she preferred to have it over with. 
 
 On the afternoon drive over to the dinner, when 
 they passed the Granzines', they saw Mrs. Granzine 
 and Minerva on the little piazza the mother 
 standing, and Minerva seated, with a mass of flowers 
 in her lap. Calmire saluted them with his whip, 
 and Muriel raised his hat. These proceedings led 
 Nina to remark the pair, but even before she 
 recognized them, she had that vague feeling of 
 something wrong that she had felt when they 
 drove over before. The passing glance at Mrs. 
 Granzine gave her a sense of shrinking that she 
 sometimes had experienced regarding people whom
 
 Faith and Fact. 161 
 
 she had afterward found dangerous, and when she 
 recognized Minerva, she felt a certain relief, albeit 
 confusion, at remembering the remarks she had 
 overheard when Muriel was exhibiting himself 
 with his cornet. Half unconsciously, she ex- 
 claimed: " She is certainly very pretty!" 
 
 Did Muriel blush ? And what was it that made 
 him so slow in saying: " You mean that girl that 
 we just passed ?" 
 
 " Whom else should I mean ?" said Nina, with 
 some odd feeling of opposition. 
 
 " Oh yes, she'll do very well. See that hawk 
 and the two little birds over there ! Upon my 
 soul, I believe he's getting the worst of it!" 
 
 They watched the birds manoeuvring against 
 the blue background and flying along in front of 
 them. In a few minutes, the three were out of 
 sight, after what seemed a drawn battle. 
 
 Muriel then turned toward Nina and said: 
 " How do you reconcile the work that was at- 
 tempted then, with the goodness and omnipotence 
 of your God ? Either the poor little bird had to 
 be eaten, or the poor hawk had to go home with- 
 out any supper." 
 
 " How do you reconcile it ?" answered Nina. 
 
 " I don't pretend to," Muriel answered. 
 
 After they were all in the drawing-room, Mrs. 
 John said to Mrs. Wahring and Nina: "I'm dis- 
 appointed in one guest whom I wanted Nina to 
 meet. I think you know her already, Hilda." 
 
 " Whom do you mean ?" 
 
 " Mary. She had to go to New York on some 
 hospital business this morning."
 
 1 62 Faith and Fact, 
 
 "Oh, I want to see her so much!" cried Nina. 
 " I caught a glimpse of her when we first came 
 here. She was so lovely. I'd intended to ask 
 about her before. Who is she ?" 
 
 " My dearest friend," said Mrs. John. " She is 
 
 " Mr. Courtenay!" cried the butler, and that gen- 
 tleman advanced toward hjs hostess. 
 
 The name gave Nina a little start, and she in- 
 voluntarily slipped behind her mother, which 
 brought her near Muriel. 
 
 After Courtenay had been introduced to Mrs. 
 Wahring and shaken hands with the older men 
 who came up, Mrs. John led him up to Nina. Be- 
 fore Mrs. John spoke, Muriel said: "I think you 
 two have met before." 
 
 Nina promptly held out her hand, saying : 
 "And oh! Mr. Courtenay, can you ever forgive the 
 manner of our meeting?" 
 
 "Don't think of it in that way, Miss Wahring." 
 
 Men have their own ways of being "ready." 
 The great generals, ready beyond other men, 
 have not, as a rule, been very ready in mere speech; 
 and men who have been very ready in speech are 
 not, as a rule, very ready in real feeling. Courte- 
 nay was prompt in feeling, so prompt that the 
 very directness of his emotion shoved aside that 
 indirect approach to things which contributes to 
 wit. Like the rest of us, he sometimes after the 
 event, thought of the better things he might have 
 said; but not often, for he was not vain enough 
 to. Regarding this occasion, however, he did af- 
 terwards think of various antithetical observa- 
 tions with which he could have opened his ac-
 
 Faith and Fact. 163 
 
 quaintance with Miss Wahring. He wished that 
 he had said in answer to her plea for forgiveness: 
 "Forgive it? I shall always bless it!" That was 
 what, in his "Faith," he felt; and something like 
 that, was what he thought Muriel Calmire would 
 have said under the circumstances. The good man 
 did not realize that that was just the sort of thing 
 which, in its slight exaggeration and (as he would 
 have been in earnest) its unblushing pouring of 
 emotion into the ears of third parties, Miss Wahr- 
 ing would not have liked half as well as she did 
 like the bashful parson's straightforward words. 
 They showed, too, that he did not think of himself 
 but only of her. 
 
 Her eyes thanked him, and her answer was: 
 " You are very good. And you have been doubly 
 good to get well so fast, instead of giving me more 
 of your illness to regret." 
 
 Muriel had managed to muster up enough un- 
 selfishness to move away, and Mrs. John did not 
 find her presence necessary. Mr. Courtenay asked 
 Nina if she would be seated, and got her a chair, 
 instead of ordering her to sit on one before asking 
 if she wanted to, as Muriel would have done. 
 
 When he was seated opposite her, the ardently- 
 awaited situation was there, but it seemed strange. 
 This eminently well-turned-out young lady in a 
 very pretty dinner-dress, seated conventionally in 
 a quite correct drawing-room, was certainly a most 
 graceful picture, but she was not exactly an altar- 
 piece; yet that was just what Courtenay's devo- 
 tional habit had made of that glimpse of her bright 
 face against the radiant heavens; and he had been
 
 164 Faith and Fact. 
 
 worshipping before it in a very devoted but yet 
 very professional fashion. He still felt the devo- 
 tion, and it even showed itself in his eyes, but he 
 felt a little as if he had gone into church to open 
 service, and found his prayer-books missing; and 
 so it came about that his first remark was: 
 
 " It has been a very hot day!" 
 
 "Yes, at noon it was," said Nina. "But we 
 found it not unpleasant in driving over. I some- 
 times feel that our city sea-breeze must reach even 
 up to here." 
 
 How easy she was! How she had given the little 
 commonplace subject a suggestive turn, and how 
 pitifully commonplace he had been! Was this life 
 of his a very full life after all? Although he some- 
 times did go into society, he was at the opposite ex- 
 treme from the regular society parson, and did not 
 often talk with any strange woman except the wife 
 of some new laborer who needed bringing into the 
 fold or some less doctrinal aid. He never was 
 stupid in talking with them. And before he settled 
 down to his work, he had not been stupid in talking 
 with other sorts of people. All this went through 
 his mind in a flash, but not to the relief of his self- 
 consciousness. He jumped to the opposite extreme. 
 
 " Yes, it's an ill wind that blows us no good from 
 the city." 
 
 Nina's balance had become the least trifle dis- 
 turbed through her quick sympathy with his little 
 perturbation, and she said, laughing, but a trifle 
 nervously: 
 
 " Like that wind that blew my boat down upon 
 you!"
 
 Faith and Fact. 165 
 
 This braced him. He was on the water, nothing 
 before his eyes but her face with its loosened hair 
 and the blue sky behind it. He exclaimed: 
 
 "Ah, I shall ever bless that wind!" 
 
 His fervor startled her. She heard the rings of 
 the portieres behind them click together, and Mrs. 
 John approached, saying: " Mr. Courtenay, will 
 you take Miss Wahring in ?" 
 
 But after they got in, Mrs. John placed " her 
 boy " Muriel on Nina's other side, although she 
 had got Sallie Stebbins up from the judge's to 
 make the company even, and had Muriel take her 
 in. 
 
 Calmire was on Sallie's other side, and she liked 
 to talk to him; and Mrs. Wahring was on the cler- 
 gyman's left, and she preferred to have him, rather 
 than Muriel, talk to Nina, so she occupied herself 
 mainly with John Calmire, who of course had taken 
 her in. This arrangement made Nina much of the 
 time an object of competition between Courtenay 
 and Muriel. To Muriel's ponderous self-assertive 
 nature, this would have been an annoyance if he 
 had not been in high feather and feeling rather a 
 zest for the rivalry. Courtenay's placid and un- 
 selfish soul was not at first Conscious of anything 
 in this conjunction unfavorable to his eager hopes. 
 The possibilities of boredom and the possibilities 
 of delight inherent in different arrangements of 
 the same people at table, had not been realized 
 among his limited sorrows and limited joys. 
 
 They were hardly seated when Muriel began, in 
 his amiable way, to put his big foot right into the 
 midst of things.
 
 1 66 Faith and Fact. 
 
 " Miss Nina, you owe it to Mr. Courtenay to 
 make this dinner compensate him for a good many 
 that he's lost." 
 
 " Oh don't let's think of them," said Courtenay. 
 " Fortunately lost dinners are not like some other 
 lost opportunities. I have had an extra appetite 
 for a few days, that I think has already made up 
 for mine." 
 
 " Your amiability seems equal to anything," said 
 Nina. She did not mean to intimate that Muriel 
 had imposed upon Courtenay's amiability, yet 
 Muriel felt a little as if she did. Between them 
 both, he felt a sort of compunction, and so set to 
 work like a dancing elephant to improve matters. 
 
 " Well! All's well that ends well. We've ended 
 in a good dinner. And if your running a man 
 down, Miss Nina, has anything to do with the in- 
 troduction of this Sauterne to these clams, I wish 
 you'd do it every day." 
 
 " And I would echo the wish if it were needed 
 to enable me to discuss these good things in your 
 company," said Courtenay, looking toward her. 
 
 " Ah, then you find my company peculiarly ap- 
 propriate to Sauterne and clams," said Nina. 
 
 " To anything good," was the best that Courte- 
 nay was able to say. 
 
 " To all things fragrant and inspiring like this," 
 said Muriel, tasting his wine, "and to all things 
 tender and sustaining like this," he added, drink- 
 ing a clam from its shell, regardless of his fork. 
 Then he looked at her, laughing, and said to him- 
 self, half surprised, " Blest if it's all chaff! She's 
 lovely!" He had already attacked his second glass
 
 Faith and Fact. 167 
 
 of Sauterne, and the emulation with another young 
 man, felt now for the first time in her presence, 
 was upon him. 
 
 " Don't you think there are flowers enough 
 about the table alreacty, Mr. Muriel, without draw- 
 ing on your rhetoric for more ?" asked Nina. 
 
 He looked at her significantly a moment, and 
 then said: "Yes; emphatically Yes! Any that I 
 or mortal man can make, would be superfluous 
 here." 
 
 It was half mischief and half earnest. He would 
 have said the same sort of cheap stuff to any at- 
 tractive woman under the circumstances, and had 
 often talked it for the sake of hearing himself talk. 
 Nina did not know whether to be merely amused, 
 or whether, if she should be anything more, to be 
 pleased or displeased. She had never seen him in 
 this mood before. She had got some sense of the 
 deep current under the ripples of his nature, and 
 she did not know whether to regard these trifling 
 flashes as coming from the surface of the stream 
 itself, or as mere will-o'-the-wisps of temporary im- 
 pulse. But in reality, seldom if ever had Muriel 
 talked the same sort of nonsense with quite the 
 same feeling. 
 
 Once while Muriel was getting poor Sallie Steb- 
 bins out of breath with some disquisition more 
 profound than Calmire's kind taste would permit 
 him to inflict on that lady, Nina said to Mr. 
 Courtenay: 
 
 "Won't you tell me a little about this work of 
 yours that I interrupted so rudely ?" 
 
 " Dear Miss Wahring," he answered, " will you
 
 1 68 Faith and Fact. 
 
 not try to banish your regrets over that harmless 
 accident ? For the sake of helping you to, I'm al- 
 most tempted to ask you not to speak of it again." 
 
 Nina flushed a little at even this kind opposi- 
 tion; but instantly answered: 
 
 " I will try, Mr. Courtenay, not to annoy you 
 with it. Now tell me about your work, please." 
 
 " Most of it is Mr. Calmire's work, not mine." 
 
 Calmire, who had a faculty for following the 
 conversation around him without losing the thread 
 of his own, said to Mrs. Wahring, "Excuse me 
 a second," and turning, smiling, to Courtenay, 
 said: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Courtenay, but I 
 could not help overhearing you. It ought not to 
 be necessary for me to take the liberty of saying 
 to you that honesty is even a greater virtue than 
 modesty. Miss Wahring is able to realize that." 
 
 Then he turned and resumed where he had left 
 off with Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 Nina returned to her attack. 
 
 " Well, as you were about to say regarding Mr. 
 Calmire's work, which he allows you the privilege 
 of doing for him ?" 
 
 " As to the work which both the Messrs. Cal- 
 mire make it possible for me to do, it's a good 
 deal in the nature of leading the horse to water. 
 They provide the water." 
 
 "And you pump it," interrupted Calmire again. 
 
 "Well, who's the horse, and what's the water, 
 and how do you pump it?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Perhaps it would be necessary for Mr. Calmire 
 himself to explain his part of the metaphor. I'll 
 gladly explain mine. I suppose the ordinary
 
 Faith and Fact. 169 
 
 functions of a minister to a laboring population 
 must include much more attention to mere phys- 
 ical needs than mine do. Fortunately there is 
 very little pauperism here, and very litle sickness. 
 There is in the very air, a cleanliness and a spirit 
 of industry and self-respect, and the sanitary ar- 
 rangements of the town are perfect. So really 
 I'm able to work more exclusively for the spiritual 
 welfare of the people. Now I realize that making 
 them religious is greatly helped by making them 
 intelligent." 
 
 Muriel shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Now these people," continued Courtenay, 
 " come here desiring neither religion nor intelli- 
 gence. Of course there are exceptions, but I am 
 speaking of the mass and, naturally, most of the 
 new-comers. But one thing they all do desire, 
 and that is amusement. Now our programme is 
 simply to give them what they don't want by 
 giving them what they do to amuse them in ways 
 that develop their intelligence, and to proceed from 
 that to their religion." 
 
 "'Speak for yourself John!'" quoted Calmire 
 with a smile. 
 
 Courtenay blushed and said: "Perhaps I ought 
 not to have said ' our programme ' in reference to 
 the religion, for I must admit that regarding that, 
 Mr. Calmire's position has been simply that of a 
 neutral a friendly one, though." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Calmire, " if you'll pardon my 
 interrupting you again, you may find yourself able 
 kindly to say to Miss Wahring that you have not
 
 1 70 Faith and Fact. 
 
 found my brother and me exactly neutral regard- 
 ing the moral condition of these people." 
 
 " I can say so, most sincerely. The influence of 
 these gentlemen^ I need not say their example 
 except in staying away from church," he inter- 
 jected in a good-humored way "has of course 
 always been on the side of good morals. But, also 
 of course, I'm bound to believe that their influ- 
 ence would be even better, if it went farther in the 
 direction of religion." 
 
 " I can't see how anybody is bound 'to believe any- 
 thing," again interrupted Muriel. 
 
 " Ah, I feared so," said Courtenay, amiably. 
 
 " I'm afraid you'd find it a little difficult to sup- 
 port the proposition you hint at, Muriel," said Mr. 
 Calmire. 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " Why, if we don't believe what we know to be 
 true, all basis of action falls to pieces, and certainly 
 we're bound to prevent that." 
 
 "Yes! 'What we know to be true.' But Lord! 
 that's not what gentlemen of Mr. Courtenay's 
 cloth mean when they say, ' bound to believe.' " 
 
 " His expression is not under discussion, but 
 yours. You said you could not see how anybody 
 is bound to believe anything. Now I think a man 
 is morally bound to believe, for instance, that two 
 and two make four." 
 
 " Yes," answered Muriel, " and that three times 
 one are three ?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 " But," said Muriel, " Mr. Courtenay says there
 
 Faith and Fact. \ j \ 
 
 are circumstances under which three times one are 
 one." 
 
 The explosion of this careless bombshell was fol- 
 lowed by silence. Courtenay was flushed, and all, 
 even Muriel himself, were annoyed. After a mo- 
 ment, Nina's clear voice uttered : 
 
 " Mr. Courtenay, will you kindly tell me a little 
 more of who is the horse, what is the water, and 
 how you pump it?" 
 
 The table broke into a laugh, and good feeling 
 was saved. Calmire looked at Muriel with a smile 
 that bordered upon a frown, which Muriel answered 
 by raising his eyebrows, while some heavy lines 
 took shape about his mouth. Then Calmire at 
 once began talking to Mrs. Wahring, throwing 
 Miss Sallie upon Muriel's attention, and leaving 
 Courtenay free to continue with Miss Wahring. 
 
 "With pleasure," Courtenay answered. "The 
 horse is, of course, the people here; the water is 
 the material provided in the library building, more 
 especially in the lecture-room; and when Mr. Cal- 
 mire is good enough to say I pump it, he refers to 
 my attempts to provide lectures, concerts, and 
 magic-lantern shows." 
 
 " Delightful ! But do you mean me to under- 
 stand that it's hard to lead your horse to such 
 water?" 
 
 " It ought not to be, and has not always been. 
 But just now I am encountering an unexpected 
 difficulty." 
 
 " What's that ?" asked Calmire, who this time 
 was in a temporary pause of conversation. 
 
 " Ah, I haven't had an opportunity to tell you
 
 1 72 Faith and Fact. 
 
 before. I have felt it, but only learned what it is, 
 yesterday after church. I understand that the 
 Catholic priests are getting jealous of our influ- 
 ence over their people, and are prohibiting their 
 coming to our entertainments." 
 
 " Why, there's been no attempt at proselyting 
 their people, has there?" asked Calmire in a sud- 
 den way that for years had been growing less fre- 
 quent with him. 
 
 " Unfortunately I have been able to make very 
 little," answered Courtenay. 
 
 Calmire's face grew cloudy, and he said: " I fear 
 the attempt to make any, may have impeded our 
 efforts to do these people good." 
 
 Courtenay answered: "I have not thought it 
 right to neglect their highest good." 
 
 " Ah, my friend," said Calmire, " the only way to 
 the highest good is through the attainable good, 
 and the highest is very seldom immediately at- 
 tainable." 
 
 " The Catholic Church does not hesitate to prose- 
 lyte, and we must fight her with her own weapons," 
 answered the clergyman. 
 
 "I'm not convinced that we must fight her at 
 all, at least directly," said Calmire. 
 
 "And let her have her own way?" asked the 
 clergyman. 
 
 " Sometimes that is the most dangerous thing 
 people can have," answered Calmire. 
 
 " Well, what am I to do ?" asked Courtenay. 
 " Here are these people opposing our efforts for 
 the good of the poor and ignorant in this town!" 
 
 " Make allies of them,"
 
 Faith and Fact. 173 
 
 "Impossible!" answered Courtenay. 
 
 " Perhaps. Have you tried ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " It may be worth trying." 
 
 Nina had become much interested, and was 
 turning her bright face to one speaker and the 
 other, awaiting their replies. Calmire, who was 
 opposite, noticed it; so did Muriel, who was at the 
 angle of the table. "Watch out, parson!" he said 
 to himself. 
 
 " I had never thought of making allies of them," 
 said Courtenay, aloud. 
 
 " Neither had I," said Calmire. " I'm not sure 
 that they would co-operate if you were to try. But 
 there can be no harm in trying." 
 
 " I'm not sure of that, I'm sorry to say." 
 
 " Why, the worst you could do would be to fail." 
 
 " No! It might be worse to succeed," said Cour- 
 tenay. " I believe it would inevitably spoil the 
 work for the Catholics to take part in it." 
 
 "It might limit its range," Calmire admitted. 
 " But it begins to look now like a question of lim- 
 iting its range, or limiting the number of people 
 whom it is to reach. I think there would be range 
 enough, though, in fields that the Catholics would 
 not object to." 
 
 " You'd have to keep away from History," said 
 Muriel. 
 
 " Not necessarily," said Calmire. " The history 
 most necessary for these people to know, Catholics 
 and Protestants are agreed about. They can vote 
 on all questions likely to be before them, without
 
 1/4 Faith and Fact. 
 
 knowing anything of Savonarola or Bloody Mary, 
 or even of Christopher Columbus." 
 
 "Yes," said Courtenay ; "but I should hate to 
 have our work kept away from such history as 
 bears upon religious points. I hope I don't want 
 to be narrow in any direction." 
 
 Nina looked up at him with a smile which some- 
 how he felt he only half deserved; and Calmire 
 responded: 
 
 " So should I hate to have our work limited 
 at all. But I have found few things that are 
 not limited, in spite of all we can do; and we 
 generally have but a choice, not exactly between 
 two evils, but between two limited goods. The 
 choice here seems to be between influencing only a 
 few of these people, or being a little discriminating 
 in selecting methods which may influence them all." 
 
 " You mean between letting some of them go, or 
 working with the Catholics ?" 
 
 " It looks as if it might come to that." 
 
 "Well, then, for my part, I'd let them go. I 
 couldn't work with the Catholics." 
 
 " Well, I hate the Catholics pretty well," blurted 
 in Muriel. " But I'll be hanged if I'd be above 
 using them!" 
 
 "They might use you!" quietly observed his 
 uncle. 
 
 "And then again they mightn't," said Muriel. 
 " You're not afraid they'd use you, are you, Mr. 
 Courtenay ?" 
 
 "I had not thought of that," said Courtenay. 
 "I simply could not work with them." 
 
 " Some of them are admirable people, as the
 
 Faith and Fact. 175 
 
 world goes," Calmire quietly rejoined. " Of course 
 I don't mean that their views are congenial with 
 my own; but," turning his eyes full on Courtenay, 
 "congenial views throughout, are not necessary to 
 enable one to honor a man and work with him." 
 
 " You don't insist upon people believing with you, 
 Mr. Calmire. The Catholic priests do insist upon it." 
 
 " I thought," exclaimed Muriel, " that you'd 
 been trying to make some of their people believe 
 with you." 
 
 Courtenay's face reddened. Nina Wahring's in- 
 terested expression changed into a look of disap- 
 proval, of which, however, she gave Muriel a por- 
 tion, and Calmire said, promptly: 
 
 "Well, fortunately, our course need not be de- 
 termined to-day, and we can determine it when our 
 discussion need not trouble anybody but ourselves." 
 
 Mrs. Calmire arose, and as the ladies followed 
 her into the drawing-room, it was with a feeling 
 of strangeness that Courtenay saw Nina disappear. 
 Surely it was unnatural that they should have so 
 long been side by side without the tie which God 
 himself had placed between them being recognized 
 and even mutually acknowledged. Yet there she 
 was, wandering off from him as unresponsively as 
 any other young woman whom he had ever taken 
 in to dinner. 
 
 He knew, though. The hope and faith were in 
 his soul, and in the good time of Him who placed 
 them there, they should be vindicated.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 COURTENAY AND HIS SISTER. 
 
 THOUGH the day had been hot, the evening was 
 cool, so the men smoked in the dining-room instead 
 of on the piazza, and Courtenay, though he did 
 not smoke, stayed with the men. When they joined 
 the ladies, it was only to say good-night, as the 
 Fleuvemont party had their drive before them. 
 Courtenay, however, lingered to see the last of 
 Nina, and placed himself beside her to walk out 
 to the carriage. This aroused a little resentful 
 feeling in Muriel, though whether it arose solely 
 from Courtenay's appropriating what for the nonce 
 Muriel considered his property, he did not stop to 
 consider. His feeling of even a proprietary in- 
 terest, would have surprised him a little, if he had 
 been in the habit of examining his feelings. 
 
 On the drive home, he sat behind with Nina, as 
 before. His first remark naturally was: 
 
 " Well, how do you like the parson ?" 
 
 " He has simply the most beautiful face I ever 
 saw," she answered. 
 
 " Nice thing, that, for a man to have!" was his 
 comment. 
 
 " I don't think it lacks firmness," she said. 
 
 " No," said Muriel, " I shouldn't be surprised if it 
 
 176
 
 Courtenay and his Sister. 1 77 
 
 could even get as far as stubbornness. But how 
 do you like the man himself?" 
 
 " He appears to me very noble !" she answered. 
 " Perhaps he's not as catholic-minded as some 
 people, but we can't expect everybody to be very 
 much so." 
 
 Muriel came as near wincing as he was capable 
 of, and changed the subject. 
 
 " Do you think he's as beautiful as his sister?" 
 
 " As his sister? Why, I never saw his sister." 
 
 " Why, didn't I tell you," ejaculated Muriel, " that 
 Mary is his sister that woman you admired so the 
 first day you came here?" 
 
 " Impossible !" exclaimed Nina. " Why, they're 
 no more alike than the two poles !" 
 
 "The two poles are very much alike, I suspect," 
 answered Muriel, "at least in a certain family re- 
 semblance probably a great deal more alike than 
 Courtenay and Mary." 
 
 " Well, do tell me all about them," said Nina. 
 " They're the most interesting people I ever saw." 
 
 " Thank you !" said Muriel. 
 
 " Oh you egoist !" exclaimed Nina. " You un- 
 paralleled egoist ! Are you always thinking of 
 yourself?" 
 
 " Well, I'll be blessed if I know. I know that 
 lately I've sometimes wished I didn't. But I've gen- 
 erally been so awfully to myself, you see friends 
 enough, but not many to be with and think about 
 all the time like parents and brothers and sisters." 
 
 " You poor boy ! And yet the first time we drove 
 over here, you wouldn't let me pity you. Perhaps 
 you don't like me to now."
 
 1 78 Courtenay and his Sister. 
 
 " Yes, I do. Do it some more!" 
 
 " Stop your nonsense and tell me all about Miss 
 Courtenay." 
 
 " I wish I could. There's history written all over 
 her. But I can't get at it. There's religious trouble 
 in it somewhere, I judge from 'several things. I 
 suspect Uncle Grand knows all about it, and per- 
 haps Aunt Amelia: but nobody ever pumped either 
 of them in this world, or ever will in the world to 
 come, if there's any such institution." 
 
 "What a horrid, horrid infidel you are! But 
 anyhow, tell me what you know about her." 
 
 " Well ! She lives all alone and keeps a little 
 school for the better children. And she also runs 
 a sort of hospital for all sorts of broken-down 
 people, especially for city brats and their mothers 
 in Summer." 
 
 " But where does she get the money to do that?" 
 
 " Oh, I suspect Aunt Amelia knows. But she 
 never tells such things, neither does John nor 
 Uncle Grand." 
 
 "But why does she live all alone?" asked Nina. 
 "I should think she'd keep house for her bro- 
 ther." 
 
 "Well, that's one of the mysteries about her," 
 Muriel answered. 
 
 "Don't she and her brother get along?" asked 
 Nina. 
 
 "They seem to perfectly. But she never goes 
 to his church, though." 
 
 " How very strange ! But I'm surprised that 
 people trust their children to her, then." 
 
 "Oh, that's because it's the fashion, I suppose..
 
 Courtenay and his Sister. 
 
 Aunt Amelia started with her brood, and all her 
 friends followed suit. Besides, everybody loves 
 Mary, though I understand that she has fits of the 
 dumps, when she'll have nothing to do with anybody 
 but the children and poor folks,for days at a time." 
 
 "Not even with Mrs. John ?" asked Nina. "I 
 should think it would relieve any burdened soul to 
 be near her." 
 
 " No, not even Aunt Amelia. But I forgot that 
 even at such times, Mary likes to see Uncle Grand." 
 
 "Won't she even see her brother?" 
 
 " I have an idea not. But this is all largely con- 
 jecture on my part made from putting this and 
 that together." 
 
 "Why, you seem interested in her," said Nina. 
 " But I don't wonder. I never was so drawn to 
 anybody by a mere glimpse." 
 
 " Yes," said Muriel, " if she weren't nearly old 
 enough to be my mother, I think I'd be in love 
 with her." 
 
 "Why, do you know her very well?" 
 
 " About as well as I know the Virgin Mary. She 
 always seems to me just about that far off, but just 
 about as benign and lovely." 
 
 " You don't mean that you never spoke to her?" 
 
 " No, but I do mean that she always seems above 
 our world at least above my world," the boy 
 added, in a tone that was very new in him. 
 
 "Mr. Muriel Calmire," exclaimed Nina, "you're 
 the strangest man I ever saw ! Is this humility, 
 that you're treating me to a glimpse of now?" 
 
 " I don't know. It's something or other inspired 
 by a lovely woman. They always make me good.
 
 180 Court enay and his Sister. 
 
 I've suspected you of doing it once or twice. Why 
 don't you keep it up?" 
 
 " Because I've been lovely only once or twice, 
 I'm afraid," said Nina, simply. 
 
 " Is this a glimpse of humility you're treating me 
 to?" said Muriel, with a little laugh. 
 
 " I don't know," she said, in the same quiet and 
 utterly simple way. 
 
 " Well, it's something rather nice, whatever it 
 is !" exclaimed the boy. 
 
 " Thank you !" she answered, and they both 
 laughed a moment and were still. After a little 
 she asked: 
 
 " Haven't you any guesses, even, regarding Miss 
 Courtenay's history ?" 
 
 " Oh ! of course she lost a lover once! That 
 goes without saying." 
 
 " But it's so queer," said Nina, " that she doesn't 
 live with her brother." 
 
 "And doesn't go to church," added Muriel, 
 " especially as she's a parson's daughter, as well as 
 a parson's sister. A queerer thing is that she never 
 goes to see her parents, and her father never corrres 
 here. Her mother has been here." 
 
 "Well," said Nina, " Mr. Calmire has got to tell 
 me that story sometime if it's right that I should 
 know it." 
 
 " Perhaps Mary will tell you herself," said Mu- 
 riel. " You seem on the way to be great friends 
 with her." 
 
 " She is l friends ' with people, then ?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Muriel; "everybody in trouble 
 goes to her especially lovers and sich, and she and
 
 Courtenay and his Sister. 1 8 1 
 
 Aunt Amelia and Courtenay take care of every sick 
 cat in town." 
 
 " A proceeding which you don't seem to approve 
 very heartily," said Nina. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know! I don't bother my head 
 much about it." 
 
 " And yet you do bother your head over some 
 serious things," she persisted. 
 
 " Oh yes, the big things," he answered; " but I'm 
 not much on sick cats and that sort of thing !" 
 
 " Have you ever been sick any yourself ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Do I look like it?" 
 
 " No, nor talk like it either." 
 
 "Yet," said Muriel, almost as if musing aloud, 
 " the best fellow in our class didn't seem ever to be 
 quite well." 
 
 " He wasn't the same sort of a good fellow that 
 you are, was he ?" 
 
 " Not by a long shot. Guess he's a better fellow 
 than I am." 
 
 " And there you go again !" exclaimed Nina, ap- 
 provingly. After a little while she asked: "How 
 good a fellow is Mr. Courtenay?" 
 
 " Oh, he'll do, in his way. But he's rather hide- 
 bound." 
 
 This irritated Nina a little, and she answered: 
 
 " Are you sure that he's more ' hidebound, 'as you 
 call it, than some young men who differ with him ?" 
 
 " Mean me ?" asked Muriel. 
 
 "Does the cap fit?" 
 
 " Of course not ! I've outgrown all that stuff, 
 long ago."
 
 ig2 Courtenay and his Sister. 
 
 " But haven't you grown into any other stuff ?" 
 
 " Not the kind that ties a fellow up." 
 
 " Well, I'm not so sure about that," she said. 
 
 " Why, what do you mean ?" he asked. 
 
 " Simply that you sometimes appear as blind to 
 the good on his side, as you would say he is to the 
 truth or what you call the truth on yours." 
 
 " I don't know; I hope not," said Muriel in a 
 quiet, candid way that surprised Nina. " I hadn't 
 thought of that." 
 
 " It's worth thinking of !" She smiled as she re- 
 iterated the old formula for the dozenth time, and 
 they both laughed.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE ALL-INCLUDING. 
 
 AFTER some alternations of silence and indif- 
 ferent chat, they got into the open country and 
 under the dome of the stars. It was a thoughtful 
 night not one with moonlight's constant chal- 
 lenge to admire and enjoy, or with deep darkness's 
 gloom and appeal to inherited fears; but a night 
 when the stars have an individuality not only of 
 size, but of distance, so that one seems to realize 
 them not merely as spots of light, but as tangible 
 bodies near and far. 
 
 After the two young people had pondered quietly 
 for a while, Nina said: 
 
 " Who made the star-dust ?" 
 
 " The same man that made the stars, I suppose," 
 Muriel answered. 
 
 " I thought you fought against the idea that 
 anybody like a man made either !" remarked the 
 lady rather impatiently. 
 
 " How exceedingly literal even the brightest 
 women are!" ejaculated the youth, and after a little 
 pause, continued: "It was out of deference to 
 your opinions that I used the word man. Far be 
 it from me to limit the cause of this universe to 
 anything our intelligence can grasp. Spencer 
 
 183
 
 1 84 The A ll-including. 
 
 suggests, you know, that the universe may be due 
 to something as far transcending intelligence as 
 intelligence transcends mechanical action." 
 
 " I didn't know," said Nina, " though perhaps I 
 ought to have known. The idea appears to me 
 immense and vague." 
 
 Calmire turned from the front seat and said: 
 
 " Doesn't it look as if ideas must grow vague as 
 they grow immense? I wonder if that's not one 
 reason why the farther we get in comprehension 
 of the Infinite, the farther we are from believing 
 that we comprehend it. The wisest men that I 
 have known, have been the most modest." 
 
 Muriel went on to Nina: " That particular idea 
 about the Power behind the universe won't ap- 
 pear so vague after you get used to it, but if 
 people are honest, they've got to be content 
 with many vague ideas on subjects that are beyond 
 their grasp. People who are not, manufacture the 
 religions." 
 
 " Dogmas, you mean !" Calmire interjected again. 
 
 "Confound your omniscience, Uncle Grand!" 
 exclaimed Muriel. " Can't you help hearing every- 
 thing that everybody says? I can't talk for Miss 
 Wahring and you too." 
 
 "Don't try," said Calmire, laughing. "Talk to 
 her. Anything worth her hearing, is worth any- 
 body's." 
 
 But during the rest of the talk, Muriel did have 
 a little self-consciousness that his uncle would hear 
 without listening; but, though that may have kept 
 him a little more careful than he otherwise would 
 have been, the sympathy between him and his
 
 The All-including. 185 
 
 uncle was too great, despite Muriel's boyish tan- 
 gents, to permit any serious embarrassment. 
 
 "Well, Miss Nina," he resumed, "do you really 
 want to know about the star-dust?" 
 
 " Certainly, unless it's one of the subjects which 
 you alluded to a moment ago, that my mind can't 
 grasp." 
 
 " Look here !" he exclaimed, " I didn't mean 
 your mind any more than anybody's else. There 
 are lots of things which we've all got to be content 
 not to know." 
 
 " To be agnostic ?" she queried. 
 
 " Yes, just exactly so. But there are things 
 about which it's legitimate to guess, and others 
 about which it's foolish to guess." 
 
 "Is it legitimate to guess about the star-dust?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Yes, because we see things actually going on 
 that suggest what it is." 
 
 "What is it, then ?" 
 
 "It's smithereens!" 
 
 " Now, Muriel Calmire! can't you ever be serious 
 two minutes together? What in the world do you 
 mean by that word, if you mean anything?" It 
 was the first time she had addressed him without 
 the " Mister." 
 
 " I'm perfectly serious," he replied. " Smith- 
 ereens is the very entirest, most completest smash 
 that anything can be knocked into. Didn't you 
 ever hear of a gentleman proposing to knock 
 another gentleman into smithereens? that's what 
 star-dust is. It wasn't made by Jack Heenan, 
 though, or even by any of the more pious people.
 
 1 86 The All-including. 
 
 such as Torquemada or the Duke of Alva, who 
 liked to hash up their neighbors for conscience' 
 sake." 
 
 Ninacould not help laughing with him a little, and 
 then said: 
 
 "Well now do be serious and tell me how it was 
 made. Of course you know, as you know every- 
 thing." 
 
 " Madam, I am an agnostic. The foundation 
 of my creed is, that I don't know everything, and, 
 what's more, that I can't. The foundation of my 
 moral character is modesty. The trouble with 
 you is, that you don't know when I am serious." 
 
 " Well, I confess that it takes more penetration 
 than I'm mistress of," she admitted. " Now if 
 that satisfies you, go on and tell me how the star- 
 dust got knocked into smith that ridiculous 
 word." 
 
 " It wasn't the star-dust, but the stars," he said. 
 A lot of them bumped into each other and had a 
 general pulverization." 
 
 " Well, I'd like to know who was there to see it, 
 or how he survived to tell the tale," laughed Nina. 
 
 " Of course we don't know it," said Muriel, " even 
 as well as we know that the Sun flung off the 
 planets, or the planets the moons." 
 
 " That depends upon what you mean by 'know,' >; 
 broke in Calmire. " Some wise men think we do.' ; 
 
 "So we do!" exclaimed Muriel. "Thank you. 
 Uncle Grand." 
 
 "But watch out now, Muriel," said Calmire; 
 "you're getting on disputed ground." 
 
 "Well," continued Muriel, "what I was going to 
 gay looks mighty consistent anyhow, and the men
 
 The All-including. 187 
 
 with the biggest grip take it in, whatever the dry- 
 asdusts do. It's denied only by a lot of duffers 
 who haven't any imagination." 
 
 " Don't be too sure of that," Calmire cautioned 
 him again. " If you began to realize what harm 
 imagination has done, you wouldn't blame anybody 
 for using it cautiously. You're now among a lot 
 of hypotheses that few working astronomers are 
 yet quite ready to call proven." 
 
 " Don't you believe it, Uncle Grand ?" 
 
 "The rhythms of evolution and dissolution?" 
 asked Calmire. " It looks very tempting pro- 
 vided," he added with a laugh, "one's sympathies 
 are not pained by the thought of so much disso- 
 lution. But that's a thought that we've got to 
 harden ourselves against anyhow, for it seems plain, 
 at best, that every orb in the universe is going to 
 become cold and dead some day, like the moon." 
 
 "Well, the 'hypotheses' suit me," exclaimed 
 Muriel after a moment's musing. 
 
 "So do my faithssuit me," said Nina, "and haven't 
 I as much right to them as you to your guesses ?" 
 
 "Heavens, no! Why, I've something to guess 
 on, but you believe lots of things that are made 
 out of the whole cloth." 
 
 Well," said Nina, partly as if resigning herself, 
 "tell me your guesses." 
 
 "Lord, they're not mine!" ejaculated the boy. 
 
 " Modest again!" exclaimed Nina very pleasantly. 
 " But go on with them, please." 
 
 " Well, you see," Muriel went on, " we've reason to 
 believe from the laws of physics, though we haven't 
 had time for actual measurement, that the moon is 
 slowly approaching the earth; and the earth, the
 
 1 8 8 The A It-including, 
 
 Sun. So presumably all the other orbs in the 
 system, and in all systems, are approaching each 
 other. The little ones will inevitably fall into the 
 big ones some day, and when they do, they'll become 
 star-dust again. If the moon were to fall into the 
 earth now, it would be dissipated into nebulous 
 matter that would reach beyond its orbit." 
 
 " Gracious Heavens, Cousin Calmire!" exclaimed 
 Mrs. Wahring, who had been listening since Calmire 
 last spoke, " do drive under cover somewhere !" 
 
 " I don't think we need to hurry," said Calmire. 
 " We've some millions of years yet. Besides, if the 
 moon hits us, or if we tumble into the Sun, the 
 attraction of the larger body will hold the sub- 
 stance of the smaller one in some form or other 
 perhaps atmospheric. To get a bump big enough 
 for a fresh start all around, the two bodies would 
 have to be of near the same size. So you see our 
 individuality, at least as part of our system, is not 
 in such immediate danger." 
 
 " Oh I'm so consoled !" said Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " But I'm afraid you've got to come to it sooner 
 or later," insisted Muriel. " It looks very much 
 as if, after you're part of the Sun, you'll go 
 bumping up against some other sun some day and 
 then, I really am afraid, your physical identity, 
 even as part of the Sun, will be disturbed beyond 
 recovery." 
 
 "Well, I'm glad my poor husband isn't here to 
 be harrowed by this tale," exclaimed the lady. 
 
 " I'm here, mamma," observed Nina, " but I'll 
 stick by you even then." 
 
 After their little laugh, when Calmire had re-
 
 The All-including. 189 
 
 sumed talking to Mrs. Wahring, Muriel went on : 
 
 " You see, after enough of these things fall 
 together " 
 
 " But why should they fall together ?" Nina in- 
 terrupted. 
 
 "Why, if they keep on attracting each other, 
 they've got to, haven't they ?" 
 
 " But they attract each other so little 'as you do 
 me, for instance,' to quote your illustration of the 
 other night." Her manner made the speech agree- 
 able despite its touch of sarcasm, and it was a pity 
 that he could not catch the expression of her face. 
 
 " Then they've got to be just so much longer 
 about it," said Muriel, too intent on his topic to 
 invent a prompt reply to her badinage. " But it's 
 got to come all the same" "Just as some other 
 things have," he was surprised to find added in 
 his mind. But his imagination was constantly 
 rounding out things in that way, and young as he 
 was, he had made some progress in suppressing 
 its suggestions, though he got into a good many 
 scrapes from not suppressing more. He put this 
 one under, not very summarily however, and went 
 on: " We're going for some sun in Hercules now, 
 you know, just as Uncle Grand said. Probably 
 we're too far off to have picked out the exact one, 
 but when we get there, there'll be a dust raised, I 
 can tell you !" 
 
 " Oh Muriel," exclaimed Calmire, " we don't 
 know that. We haven't had time to see whether 
 things are really working in that direction." 
 
 "Well, isn't it a healthy guess ?" 
 
 " Herschel felt pretty sure of it," Calmire an-
 
 19 The All-including. 
 
 swered, " and some of the rest are nearly ready to 
 accept it. Yet most hold out against it as ' not 
 proven.' " 
 
 " There's a mighty sight more reason for you to 
 believe it, Miss Nina," Muriel continued, " than to 
 believe lots of other things that you do. Well, 
 just as T explained to you the other night, the star- 
 dust rushes into suns, planets, moons, and then 
 again, in time, those moons, planets, suns, will 
 rush together and make new nebulae, and " here 
 Muriel's voice began to sound like his uncle's, and 
 he spoke meditatively " so have come, and so 
 will come, evolution and dissolution evolution, 
 dissolution through times and spaces before 
 which our intellects are absolutely powerless 
 this ineffably beautiful infinity above us and in- 
 cluding us, throbbing with rhythms beside which 
 our lives are vastly less than the smallest star is 
 beside that milky-way; and yet those vast rhythms 
 are but the pulses of the Universe. I don't know 
 which moves me the more the immensity or the 
 order of it all. I suppose that's about the vastest 
 conception the human mind has yet attained." 
 
 " Yes, stupendous !" exclaimed Nina. But after 
 a little awed silence, she added: "And yet, Mr. 
 Muriel, it seems to me a hopeless sort of concep- 
 tion, tremendous as it is: nothing fixed nothing 
 permanent nothing really attained !" 
 
 " Well," answered Muriel, " we've attained the 
 Iliad and Miss Nina Wahring ! And I won't ad- 
 mit them to be nothing." 
 
 " But the Iliad has got to go too !" Nina mod- 
 estly objected.
 
 The A ll-induding, 1 9 i 
 
 " There's a great deal to be said on that ques- 
 tion," interrupted Calmire, turning again. " But 
 the fact that the conception Muriel has been re- 
 counting raises the question, interferes with its 
 being really the vastest conception yet attained : 
 There are conceptions just as wide, which are more 
 certain and not so mechanical, and, perhaps you 
 would say, not so hopeless." 
 
 " Oh give me one !" cried Nina. "This tremen- 
 dous dream of constantly recurring death smothers 
 me." 
 
 " There's not time to-night. Let Muriel give you 
 something else to catch your breath with." 
 
 " Well, what shall I tell you about?" asked Muriel. 
 
 " Oh I don't know ! Anything. Yes," she ex- 
 claimed after a moment, " there is one thing you 
 told me the other night about the way the stars 
 were made, which puzzles me a great deal. Why 
 did the dust get hot when it rushed together? 
 Why do my hands get hot when I rub them ?" 
 
 " Don't you know anything about the law of the 
 Persistence of Force ?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, in the way that, I'm beginning to find, 
 girls always know things! At school I studied a 
 little about what my book called the Conservation 
 of Energy. The teacher asked us questions and we 
 told her what was in the book, all in half an hour, 
 and that was the last I thought about it. I won- 
 der if it's what you mean ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Muriel, with an inflection of despair- 
 ing pity. But an idea struck him: " Weren't you 
 telling me the other day that you once went to see 
 a place where they made electricity ?"
 
 t9 2 The All-including. 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " Well, where did your people get their electric- 
 ity?" 
 
 "From the steam-engine," she answered. 
 
 "Well, that steam-engine gave out nothing but 
 force, did it ?" 
 
 " No, it supplied the force that whirled the 
 things that made the electricity something like 
 dynamics, they call them." 
 
 " Dynamos, you mean," he said, laughing. " Now 
 don't you see that (to put it roughly) the force was 
 turned into electricity, just as, later, the electricity 
 was turned into light ? And if you turn the elec- 
 tricity into heat instead of light, and put the heat 
 under the boiler, you'll get back again to mechani- 
 cal force, and can start the engines over again." 
 
 " Why, how interesting !" she exclaimed. " It's 
 'swingin' round the circle.'" 
 
 " Yes," he answered. " Now you see how force 
 and heat are but different forms of the same thing, 
 and it's not so hard to understand how the force 
 of the star-dust rushing together was turned into 
 heat. But what I've given you, is not the most in- 
 teresting circle that Force swings around." 
 
 " No ? What is ?" 
 
 " Before the engine developed the electricity, 
 where did it get its own force ?" he asked. 
 
 "From the steam." 
 
 "And that?" 
 
 "Well, it must have had something to do with 
 the fire." 
 
 " And that ?" 
 
 " From the coal."
 
 The All-including. 193 
 
 "And that?" 
 
 " Now you're too hard for me." 
 
 "Well, you know that the coal is ancient vegeta- 
 tion. The matter composing it was brought to- 
 gether in plants by the heat of the sun. In separat- 
 ing, in the fire, it gives off that heat again. To put 
 it a little more precisely, the union of the plant's ele- 
 ments was effected by the sun's heat turning into 
 chemical energy. The separation of the same ele- 
 ments is effected by turning the chemical energy 
 that holds them together, back into heat." 
 
 " Electric light is sunlight, then!" she exclaimed. 
 
 " Certainly, a form of it. So is all other light 
 on earth." 
 
 At the time of the publication of this narrative, 
 the learned do not interchange the terms "force" 
 and " energy," as freely as was often done when 
 Mr. Muriel attempted his demonstration; and the 
 new views of electricity also tend to make that 
 demonstration appear rather primitive. But those 
 views, after all, only confirm and widen the general 
 principle he expounded, which is the main point. 
 
 He went on with his topic. "But even making 
 electricity is not the most interesting way that a 
 plant has of disposing of the sun's energy. When 
 the plant is eaten by an animal, its energy becomes 
 part of that of the animal and helps do his moving, 
 seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, and thinking." 
 
 " Why," said the girl, in wonder, " I knew that 
 eating plants, or eating animals that have eaten 
 them, made us grow and enabled us to take exer- 
 cise; but I didn't know that our thinking and feel- 
 ing had anything to do with our eating."
 
 '94 The All-including. 
 
 "Well, it has," said Muriel. "But Lord! how 
 ignorant they let you girls grow up !" 
 
 " Did you know these things when you were my 
 age ?" she asked. 
 
 "Why no!" he exclaimed after a moment's re- 
 flection. " We didn't have them till Junior year." 
 
 "Well, this is my Freshman year," she said, 
 laughing. " Now tell me some more about food 
 and mind." 
 
 "Don't you know," he resumed, "that you can't 
 think or feel without matter in your nervous sys- 
 tem changing place, and that that change is made 
 by the force you get through your food and air?" 
 
 " No, they didn't teach us that at school," she 
 responded. "It's very wonderful." 
 
 " I suppose they didn't teach that, because it's 
 what they call materialism," said Muriel. " It's 
 true, though: thought's nothing but another mode 
 of force." 
 
 " Check, there, Muriel !" Calmire interrupted. 
 Then he excused himself to Mrs. Wahring, and 
 continued to Muriel and Nina, a piece of noiseless 
 road making it easy for him to be heard : 
 
 "Thought is not a mere mode of force. Why, 
 with sufficient instruments one could see all those 
 changes in nerve, but one could not see thought. 
 The thought accompanies the nerve-change, but it 
 is about as reasonable to make them identical be- 
 cause they are simultaneous, as it would be to make 
 thought identical with change in countenance or 
 voice, because they also are simultaneous. The 
 realm of force and matter is one thing, visible, tan- 
 gible, or at least measurable, and nerve and nerve-
 
 The All-including. 195 
 
 changes belong in it. But the realm of thought 
 is invisible, intangible, unmeasurable. We can 
 keep track of the matter and force as they go into 
 your brain and as they come out, and some day 
 we'll really measure them and the changes which 
 take place in them while one thinks and feels 
 in fact we can measure the pulse-beats stimu- 
 lated by our feelings now : but we can't meas- 
 ure the feelings themselves, except by infer- 
 ence. You can't even think of feeling as measur- 
 able like nerve-function, and there is no bridge 
 between the two. All assertions to the contrary 
 are but forms of words, and the idea of applying an 
 instrument to thoughts and feelings, or of treating 
 them in any way as we treat the nerve-changes col- 
 lateral with them, is simply inconceivable." 
 
 "Well!" exclaimed Muriel, "if thought is not a 
 mode of force, what is it then ?" 
 
 " That's exactly what we don't know," answered 
 Calmire. " But we know very well what it is not, 
 and it is not anything we know of but itself. It is 
 as nearly an ultimate fact as force or matter more 
 nearly, for it is behind all our notions of them. 
 Py the way, though, perhaps I ought to say that 
 consciousness, rather than thought, is behind those 
 notions, but for the purposes of our talk, it's hardly 
 necessary to go into such distinctions." 
 
 "Guess I'll wait," said Muriel, "and not up- 
 set what you've had to say, this evening. Yet I 
 know lots of fellows who think as I've been think- 
 ing." 
 
 " Oh well," said Calmire, " there's a stage at 
 which fellows jump at anything new, if it's only
 
 1 9 6 The All-including. 
 
 startling and subversive enough. But it's odd that 
 that stupid blunder should deceive anybody. Sav- 
 ing your presence, I don't know that it ever has 
 deceived any really eminent person, though emi- 
 nent blatherskites have done a deal of chattering 
 over it." 
 
 " Farther instruction in materialism from me," 
 said Muriel to Nina, " is indefinitely postponed, 
 until I've had a little time to examine my opinions. 
 But," he continued, " I suppose you'll admit, Uncle 
 Grand, that we know nothing of thought except 
 in connection with nerve-change ?" 
 
 - " Certainly," said Calmire. " And we know noth- 
 ing of the sensation of light except in connection, 
 direct or indirect, with incandescent matter, but that 
 does not make the sensation of light the same 
 thing with incandescent matter." Then he con- 
 tinued his chat with Mrs Wahring. 
 
 Muriel resumed to Nina: " Well, force is still a 
 fact that accompanies everything, and in a sense at 
 least, causes everything. Even if it is not thought, 
 it starts up thought, through vibrations that strike 
 our eyes and ears and other organs, and if one 
 is going to think at all with reference to one's rela- 
 tions to the universe, the first fact to realize thor- 
 oughly, it seems to me, is that through all, without 
 us and within us, everything the motions of the 
 stars and their heat and light; the processes of our 
 earth, its clouds and storms, and the growth of 
 the plants they feed; the growth of its living crea- 
 tures and all they do; the life of man, his senses 
 knowing the universe, his intellect understanding 
 it, his feelings toward it and toward his fellows,
 
 The All-including. 197 
 
 his loves and hates and aspirations all depend, 
 so far as we know, on processes in various forms 
 of the same boundless force. It pervades all, sus- 
 tains all, inspires all." 
 
 " It, then, is God !" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 y es God, Pan, Brahma, Orm uzd, Osiris: wher- 
 ever men have vaguely guessed regarding it, they 
 have given it a name. It has had thousands." 
 
 " But, Mr. Muriel, Brahma and Osiris are idols." 
 
 "Oh fudge!" he exclaimed. "You've been in 
 Rome, I believe? Wish I had." 
 
 "Yes," answered Nina. "But you mustn't say 
 'Fudge' to my simple ideas. It's not polite or 
 kind." 
 
 "All right! I beg your pardon, and I'll try not 
 to do it again. Well, did you see any images 
 
 of 'God' in Rome?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then where's the difference ? Call them, and 
 images of Brahma and Osiris, idols or not, all are 
 efforts to express to sense, the all-pervading power." 
 
 " Perhaps so," Nina admitted, " but nobody in 
 Rome worshipped the pictures and statues of God 
 the Father." 
 
 " Did they worship images of any other divini- 
 ties? Even of men ?" 
 
 "Yes, they did," said Nina. "But somehow 
 that didn't seem idolatry." 
 
 " But it was, all the same," Muriel asserted, and 
 added: "And now, I tell you, Miss Wahring, any 
 sort of anthropomorphism is idolatry." 
 
 "What does that awful long word mean?" 
 
 " Why, it's simply made up of two Greek words"
 
 198 The All-including. 
 
 (which the young gentleman was pleased to show 
 his scholarship by pronouncing and translating). 
 " It means the effort to narrow down the illimitable 
 power behind the universe, to the form of a man. 
 To my mind that's a step toward idolatry whether the 
 idolatry turns up in Italy or India: at best it's only 
 the result of early man's incapacity to imagine a 
 force not proceeding from a man or an animal. The 
 early man wasn't quite ready to understand gravi- 
 tation changing into heat, or into the later forces 
 winds and lightning and tides and vegetable 
 growth and the grace of womanhood and the mind 
 of man; and so at first he referred each manifesta- 
 tion of the All-including Power to a separate god; 
 and to get a better grip of his ideas, made images 
 of them gods of fire, of light, of lightning, of wind, 
 of sound, even of strength and beauty and intellect. 
 But as men's minds grew more capable of general 
 conceptions, their gods became more general. The 
 Greeks, who had more gods than pretty much any- 
 body else, got, in Pan, a conception almost as gen- 
 eral, though of course not as exalted as the Hebrew 
 Jehovah, or the Indian Brahma, or the Egyptian 
 Osiris that I was just speaking of." 
 
 " But," asked Nina, " wasn't Pan merely a god of 
 inanimate nature ? You spoke of the All-including 
 Force as moving our minds and souls. Jehovah 
 was much nearer that than Pan." 
 
 "The best of the Greeks too got higher than 
 Pan," Calmire interrupted, " as high as anybody 
 in those days; and so did many of the Romans." 
 
 "Yes," said Muriel, "but I was speaking only 
 of the general conception. And as to the power
 
 The All-including. T 99 
 
 that moves the visible universe, moving also the 
 soul of man, the East Indians, and the Egyptians 
 too, had at least a very distinct notion of the man's 
 soul being absorbed in the universal soul after death, 
 but they didn't comprehend that the force that 
 impels the soul in life, is the universal force. Yet 
 there were frequent guesses in that direction, all 
 around, as there have been toward most of the 
 recent generalizations." 
 
 "Well, I find it terribly bewildering," said the 
 girl, " but inexpressibly grand." 
 
 " Yes," said Muriel, " it is grand perhaps it is 
 what Uncle Grand would admit to be the grandest 
 thought possible to us to feel that the throbs of 
 those farthest stars and the throbs of one's own 
 heart are impulses from one all-including, ineffable 
 Power!" 
 
 "That is grand, but not yet the grandest," said 
 Calmire. 
 
 When the ladies said good-night, at home, Mu- 
 riel grasped Nina's hand with something more 
 than the feeling of gallantry which had moved him 
 early in the evening. 
 
 More than once that night, she was conscious 
 that this proud, strong Muriel Calmire was yield- 
 ing something to her, but she felt nothing more 
 responsive than a little feminine triumph. Of 
 Courtenay, she hardly thought before she was 
 quietly in bed. Then she felt a disappointment at 
 not having heard more of the details of his work. 
 Next she realized that her disappointment was due,
 
 200 The All-including. 
 
 in a large degree, to Muriel's interruptions, and she 
 felt a little indignant at Muriel. Her indignation 
 increased with some such reflection as: "What 
 right has that great lazy creature who does nothing 
 but blow his cornet and amuse himself, to interfere 
 with this noble gentleman whose whole life is full 
 of self-sacrifice and devotion to the highest things?" 
 Then came a lazy consciousness that Muriel had 
 talked with great interest of some things which 
 seemed to her very high. Then came a realiza- 
 tion that when Muriel had interfered with Cour- 
 tenay, he had sometimes been almost brutal, 
 and then a recognition that he had generally 
 been correct, and that Courtenay's spirit had not 
 been any too liberal. Then she grew sleepy, with 
 a dreamy feeling of sympathy with Courtenay 
 in the hands of Muriel, who was so big and un- 
 sparing, but who was withal so true. Her last 
 consciousness before her sweet slumbers, was of 
 these two preparing for some game of strength 
 and skill, and behind them she saw Calmire, who, 
 she was impressed, had more strength and skill than 
 either, and who would be umpire and see the match 
 rightly played. But just as her half-dream faded 
 into complete repose, that figure itself stooped 
 to take up some of the implements of the game.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 AT A TENNIS MATCH. 
 
 COURTENAY was not the only person who had 
 been disappointed in the results of the meeting be- 
 tween him and Nina: Nina was disappointed too. 
 
 Of course but a small share of the talk she par- 
 ticipated in or listened to, is reported here: the 
 atmosphere in which she lived was permeated with 
 germs of thought new to her. Her mother, having 
 the indifference of a woman of the world to all 
 such subjects, hardly realized what was going on, 
 and if she had, would probably have thought the 
 considerations in favor of staying at Fleuvemont 
 more important than the dangers to the orthodoxy 
 of her daughter. The poor child had, however, 
 begun on the task which drove Hugh Miller mad, 
 and she was beginning to feel the strain. 
 
 Calmire had avoided protracted conversations 
 on the subject, knowing that they would tend 
 farther to "unsettle" her, and feeling, though 
 somewhat vaguely, that it would be against the 
 duties of hospitality to exercise such influences 
 under his own roof. 
 
 For a variety of reasons, she did not for some time 
 seek farther conferences with Muriel. She had a 
 doubt whether he would be quite fair. This doubt, 
 so far as she cared to analyze it, was not that, ab- 
 
 201
 
 2O2 At a Tennis MatcJi. 
 
 stractly, he wanted to be fair, but she had a vague 
 feeling that he was too enthusiastic, perhaps too 
 prejudiced, to be able to be so. Under the doubt 
 was, too, that sweet maidenly shrinking that she 
 did not feel regarding the older man. 
 
 She had not yet formed any habit of serious read- 
 ing, and, of course, still less had she any idea of 
 how to " hunt up" things in books. Calmire had 
 reintroduced her into the library a few days after 
 her arrival, saying: " There's one little alcove, that 
 I call mine, which "contains more worth knowing 
 than any one man is ever going to know. But if 
 you merely want 'elegant letters,' you can play 
 over half the place with them, and it's a very good 
 sort of amusement, until you find you're in earnest 
 about something." 
 
 Despite the somewhat Delphic and, possibly, 
 somewhat narrow-minded character of these utter- 
 ances, Nina had come to find herself " in earnest 
 about something." 
 
 In the mornings, after Calmire had started on his 
 gallop across country to the factories, she often 
 fumbled about, principally in Calmire's alcove, but 
 found little to suit her case: the scientific books 
 confined themselves to their facts, often in language 
 that she could not understand, and the non-scien- 
 tific books were vague and frequently contradictorv 
 to a degree that but added to her perplexities 
 Her mind was full of pretty distinct questions, but 
 the direct answers she wanted, were seldom in 
 books; and those that were, generally could be 
 got at only by wading through much extraneous 
 matter.
 
 At a Tennis Match. 203 
 
 As she was unable, then, for various reasons, to 
 quiet her mind through Calmire, Muriel, or books, 
 it was natural that her thoughts should begin to 
 turn toward Courtenay. He was the most acces- 
 sible fountain of that wisdom which she had long 
 thought inexhaustible, and so it was a pleasant 
 surprise to find him, a couple of days later, at one 
 of the neighbors', where the local tennis club hap- 
 pened to be meeting. 
 
 When the Fleuvemont party entered the grounds 
 after a word with the hostess in the house, a goodly 
 company was already in position on rows of camp- 
 stools on both sides of the courts. 
 
 " Why, there's Julia Winterton," said Mrs. 
 Wahring, indicating a tall, striking-looking woman 
 who was the centre of quite a group. "You 
 know her daughter is just engaged to the Earl of 
 Bournemouth. We must go and congratulate 
 her," and in two minutes, it was: 
 
 " Oh Julia, I was so glad to hear it! Blanche is 
 just the girl for it, and it must be just what you 
 want." 
 
 " Yes, Hilda, it makes me a very happy woman, 
 and I think Blanche's happiness is certain." 
 
 " She's a sweet enough girl to deserve any amount 
 of it," said Calmire. " Let me join my congratula- 
 tions too. But it's time for these foreigners to 
 stop robbing us of our prettiest girls. And you 
 mustn't think me a bear when I say that I'm very 
 sorry that now Blanche can't ever be the wife of a 
 president of the United States." 
 
 " Unless," broke in Muriel, as his form of con- 
 gratulation, "some one should be envious enough
 
 204 At a Tennis Match. 
 
 to kill off Bournemouth. No jury with eyes in 
 their heads would convict for it." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Muriel. But, Mr. Calmire, isn't 
 one earl in the hand worth two presidents in the 
 bush ?" 
 
 " Depends on the earl," said Calmire. 
 
 "Well, ours is a good one, and it's well to draw 
 the two branches of the English race closer, you 
 know; and it seems to me that for a man with a 
 daughter married to a prince, your talk is very 
 democratic this afternoon. I hope you don't 
 regret the match ?" It is barely possible that 
 the lady was a little nettled at Calmire's qualified 
 felicitations. 
 
 " Oh, Edelstein's a good fellow, and he loves 
 Molly. I understand that your young man is a 
 good fellow too, and if he is, he can't help loving 
 Blanche. But perhaps I'm justified in saying in 
 ihis connection that, fond as I am of Edelstein, the 
 plain truth is that he's not a fifth the man that 
 either of my Yankee sons-in-law is." 
 
 " Well, for argument's sake, I'll admit," said Mrs. 
 Winterton, "that he's not a fifth the man that 
 either of your sons is. Where are they now?" 
 
 "In India the last I heard. That's nearly half 
 around. But speaking of men, here comes one." 
 
 There was no doubt of that, for it was Courtenay 
 who joined the group. Blanche, who was like a 
 younger sister to him, had met him in another 
 part of the grounds and already told him of her 
 engagement, and said that he was to perform the 
 marriage-service. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Winterton," he said. " I suppose it's
 
 At a Tennis Match. 205 
 
 going to be too grand a ceremony for a poor little 
 country parson like me !" 
 
 " Not if it were in Westminster Abbey, Mr. 
 Courtenay. You would do it honor anywhere." 
 
 The good man blushed, and when he raised his 
 eyes, they met Nina's smiling upon him. They 
 braced him, as they always did. He answered 
 promptly: 
 
 " Honor anything where Blanche is ? ' Paint 
 the lily and gild refined gold ' ? Lord Bourne- 
 mouth is said to be a man of sense. How proud 
 he must be !" 
 
 The little ripples of laughter that had been run- 
 ning over the group were loudest at this, and 
 Courtenay was glad to retire with the honors, 
 beside Nina, who had already given place to 
 others seeking to felicitate the " successful " ma- 
 tron. 
 
 Courtenay was not in knickerbockers (as the 
 fashion then was), and Nina, having heard of 
 his renown as a player, asked him why. He told 
 her that Doctor Rossman had advised him to 
 keep quiet for a week longer. In a few minutes, 
 when play was about to begin, Nina said: "Of 
 course you want to look on;" but after noticing 
 that she was not dressed for playing, he said: "I 
 think not. I have agreed to umpire the finals, and 
 I think that will be enough. But don't you want 
 to watch the play ?" 
 
 " No," she answered, " I'll save my interest for 
 the finals too. Those people seem to find it very 
 pleasant on the settees by the edge of the grove. 
 It's cool and shady there. Suppose we go too."
 
 206 At a Tennis Match. 
 
 The seats were scattered at judicious intervals, 
 at the shady edge of the wide sunlit lawn, and her 
 opportunity for ghostly counsel was secured. 
 
 His first words after they were seated were: 
 
 " It seems very natural to be here with you!" 
 
 " So it does to me," she answered, too full of her 
 own purposes to dwell on the significance of his 
 remark, " for I've been wanting to see you." 
 
 He was ready to assume all the reasons for the 
 fact that his fervid convictions furnished; but he 
 was a gentleman as well as an enthusiast, so the 
 exultant throb at his heart found no bolder expres- 
 sion than a grateful: 
 
 " That does me very high honor." 
 
 "I wanted to ask you," she resumed, "some 
 questions. But I hardly know where to begin.' 
 
 " The beginning is usually a good place to begin 
 at," he said, smiling, " though it's sometimes hard 
 to find." 
 
 "Well, you've helped me to it," she said, "and I 
 will begin just there. Do you believe the world was 
 made in six days?" 
 
 The turn in the conversation was so ludicrously 
 different from what his thoughts had dwelt upon, 
 that he burst out laughing. 
 
 "Why, it isn't a laughing matter, is it, Mr. 
 Courtenay ?" she said, half hurt and half amused. 
 
 "Of course not," he answered. "I beg your 
 pardon. But one so seldom expects such a ques- 
 tion so suddenly. Now my answer will have to be 
 that it depends upon what you mean by six days." 
 
 " Then," said she, " please let me ask you another
 
 At a Tennis Match. 207 
 
 question. Do you believe in the divine authority 
 of the Scriptures?" 
 
 "Why certainly. Why do you ask ?" 
 
 " Because, as I've been thinking over these mat- 
 ters lately, it has seemed to me, that if God meant 
 to say six days, he would have said six days, and 
 if he had wanted to say six something else, he 
 would have said six something else." 
 
 "Perhaps he wanted to leave us uncertain," 
 Courtenay answered. " You know that the world 
 and life are full of mysteries, yet they are God's work. 
 Why shouldn't God's other work, the Bible, be 
 also full of mysteries?" 
 
 "Yes, I've thought of that too," said the girl; 
 "but as far as I can read Nature, she makes no 
 distinct statements that are not distinctly true." 
 
 " Oh yes, she does," said the priest. " She says 
 that the Sun rises and sets, while it only appears 
 to, and it is the earth that moves." 
 
 The girl's face fell and she looked puzzled. 
 After a few moments, she said: 
 
 " No. Nature does not say that the Sun rises 
 and sets: we say so." 
 
 " And isn't it we," he answered, " who say that 
 the Bible says that the world was made in six 
 days ?" 
 
 " Do you mean," she asked, " that the Bible only 
 appears to us to say so ?" 
 
 " Why, what more can it do ?" said he. 
 
 She was puzzled again, but after a little asked: 
 
 " Do you mean to say that we cannot be more 
 certain what words are in the Bible, than what 
 motions are made by the heavenly bodies ? Why,
 
 208 At a Tennis Match. 
 
 any child can read the Bible, just the same as the 
 wisest man reads it, but no child can read the 
 motions of the heavenly bodies." 
 
 " But any child can see the Sun rise," he an- 
 swered. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " but all wise people agree that 
 the Bible reads as it appears to, and that the Sun 
 does not rise as it appears to." 
 
 " Yes," said he, " I suppose there are differing 
 degrees of certainty." 
 
 " You admit then that we have much more rea- 
 son to believe that the words in Scripture are what 
 they appear to be, than that the motions of the 
 heavenly bodies are what they appear to be ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then why didn't you say so at first ?" she asked 
 in a manner far less abrupt than the words. 
 
 " Because," he answered very promptly and 
 quietly, " I suppose that in trying to defend the 
 Scriptures, I took a mistaken argument. It was a 
 bad effort in a good cause," he added with a smile. 
 
 " But it seems to me, Mr. Courtenay, that God 
 would at least have been able to make his meaning 
 so plain that one need not be in danger of making 
 mistakes with reference to it." 
 
 "Well," he answered, "as I said, perhaps he 
 didn't want to." 
 
 "Then why did he profess to?" 
 
 " I don't know that we're warranted in assuming 
 that he professed to. Why might \ve not as justly 
 say that he professes that the Sun rises and sets?" 
 
 She was puzzled again, but after a while said: 
 
 " But the Scriptures are everywhere accepted as
 
 At a Tennis Match. 209 
 
 having been expressly sent for our guidance. It 
 seems to me much more reasonable that they 
 should be exactly what they appear to be, than 
 that anything else we know of should." 
 
 " Yes, that may be, but we must not be too self- 
 sufficient in judging them. It won't do, you know, 
 to judge divine things by human methods. All 
 Christianity is a miracle, and so we must expect to 
 find in it things out of the reach of our reason." 
 
 "Then how can we judge that it's a miracle?" 
 asked Nina. 
 
 "Oh that's very plain. Why, just consider that 
 the whole civilized world had been prepared for 
 it by the spread of the Roman empire : there 
 was at last a universal language provided to con- 
 vey it; then Rome's conquests had provided 
 nations of oppressed and suffering people ready 
 to welcome the new light. At the same time, the 
 hold of the rich and powerful on their old faith had 
 been weakened; they had begun to see the absurd- 
 ity of the polytheism of Greece and Rome, and 
 their minds were becoming clean pages ready to 
 receive the new impressions. And then, when all 
 these wonderful provisions had been made for His 
 coming, appeared our Lord with his wonderful 
 new teachings of the brotherhood of man, and of 
 God as a single loving father over all; contrast his 
 doctrine of the brotherhood of man with the pre- 
 vailing notions of conquering captor and conquered 
 slave; and his God with the selfish, cruel, and 
 wicked gods of Greece and Rome. Have you 
 never thought how miraculous all that was ?" 
 "Only in disjointed ways; I never thought of
 
 2IO At a Tennis Match. 
 
 it all together before. It certainly is very wonder- 
 ful. But, Mr. Courtenay, admitting the Bible to 
 have been miraculously sent, if we can't depend on 
 the impressions we get from it, what are they good 
 for ?" 
 
 "Ask the civilization of the last two thousand 
 years." 
 
 "Are you sure we owe all that civilization to 
 Christianity? I've heard a good deal of it attrib- 
 uted to steam and electricity and the compass and 
 even gunpowder." 
 
 "But don't you see," he answered, "that all 
 these blessings have come up under the Christian 
 civilization, and certainly you would not deny the 
 Christian civilization to the Christian religion ? 
 That would be a contradiction in terms. It is to 
 just such confusions as that that one always comes 
 in trying to question it. The only way is not to 
 question it to accept it as the great including 
 tact of the world, and if the minor facts seem to 
 our limited intelligence at variance with it, to 
 assume that they only seem so, until farther knowl- 
 edge reconciles them." 
 
 She did not reflect perhaps did not know that 
 Christian Europe had had no monopoly in the 
 discovery of some of the agents of civilization 
 which she had named, and she did not realize that 
 he had made his own "contradiction in terms" by 
 applying his own terms: neither did he. Yet the 
 reasoning seemed, somehow, hazy to her, though 
 she seized on another point in his remarks: 
 
 "You believe, then, in sacrificing your intellect 
 wherever it raises any questions in your religion ?"
 
 At a Tennis Match. 211 
 
 " I should not have put it quite in that way," he 
 answered. " But since you do, what is my intellect 
 that I should not sacrifice it for my faith for my 
 people? My Master sacrificed his life." 
 
 " But what are our intellects for, Mr. Courtenay, 
 if not to seek the truth?" 
 
 "When we have found the highest truth," he 
 answered, " the intellect has done its best. It can 
 afford to resist all temptations to fly beyond. Such 
 temptations must be delusion." 
 
 She saw no answer to this, and returned to 
 another aspect of what he had been saying. 
 Though she objected to his position, she felt the 
 nobleness in his spirit, and yet she felt remonstrant. 
 " You spoke of readiness for sacrifice. May 
 I ask it is not going too far, I hope," she said, 
 blushing " if you have never really felt the aban- 
 donment of some of these questions to be a sacri- 
 fice ?" 
 
 "Well, at times I have had to resist a spirit of 
 inquiry, though I doubt if it is as strong in me as 
 in some men, and I'm grateful that it is not. But 
 I try to make my religion one of work. There's 
 enough to do without inquiring, and the struggle 
 against inquiry has always been easy when I have 
 realized that I must keep my own faith clear and 
 strong for my poor." 
 
 Probably the greatest reward he had ever re- 
 ceived for his pure efforts, was the admiring smile 
 with which she looked up at him. She said : 
 "You are very noble, Mr. Courtenay." 
 "Oh no!" he remonstrated, "there can be noth- 
 ing noble in mistrusting the intellect in such mat-
 
 212 At a Tennis Match. 
 
 ters. What has it ever done? Only built system 
 after system to see them disappear. The intelli- 
 gence of the world has followed and forsaken a 
 dozen systems in the time that our Religion has 
 steadily and majestically pursued its way." 
 
 They were interrupted here by friends coming 
 up, and the conversation could not be resumed 
 before Courtenay had to go and umpire the games. 
 Then Nina, instead of going to look on, slipped off 
 by herself into the grove, and thought it all over. 
 
 Her first strong feeling was: " Here is a noble, 
 useful life I never knew one more admirable 
 entirely free from the speculations which fill the 
 brain of that useless Muriel Calmire....And, too, 
 it is a peaceful life, for it is not troubled by 
 the questions that have been disturbing this use- 
 less Nina Wahring....What is this presumptuous 
 mind of mine that I should let its little curiosities 
 disturb me? Why not quiet it as he does his, in 
 the greater truth ?....' If his Master sacrificed his 
 life, why should not he sacrifice his intellect?' 
 True, generous soul !....! wonder if it ever oc- 
 curred to that Muriel Calmireto sacrifice anything 
 for anything for anybody !....Well, the wise 
 course is open to me, and what a noble course it 
 is ! I will simply stop troubling myself any more 
 about the whole thing.. ..Why, there's the moon, 
 and up beyond, a star visible in daylight. I 
 never saw but one before. How it throbs !.... 
 ' To feel that the throbs of that far-off star and the 
 throbs of one's own heart come from the same in- 
 effable Power.' " The words had often gone 
 through her mind. Now she added with a feeling
 
 At a Tennis Match. 213 
 
 of impatient triumph: "And yes, Mr. Muriel Cal- 
 mire, that power is God!" Then the triumph 
 melted into sympathy as she mused: "'God, 
 Brahma, Osiris' what was it he said? Well, I 
 won't bother over it any more. Even he admits 
 that it is surely God." She felt contented and at 
 rest, and turned back toward the tennis-courts. 
 
 As they drove home after dinner, she sat next 
 Calmire. Both were in a mood for silence, and 
 she soon lost herself in the beauty and mystery of 
 the night. But the feeling of its beauty was 
 habitual, and now there grew up for the first time, 
 the deeper feeling of its order. With that, came a 
 sense of reverence such as she had never before 
 experienced. After some minutes of deep absorp- 
 tion, she realized that all her previous emotions 
 toward Nature had had in them something akin 
 to the enthusiasm we feel for human superiority. 
 When they had been very intense, there was some- 
 thing in them not entirely unlike the passion of 
 human love, as her pure nature had imagined it; 
 with this, her mind came to the conception of the 
 Creator the bearded man she had seen in pic- 
 tures; and the contrast of this image with the im- 
 mensity that had just filled her soul, gave her a 
 start of something strangely like disgust. 
 
 This set her to thinking of her talk with Courte- 
 nay, and after a while she turned and said to Cal- 
 mire: 
 
 " Mr. Calmire, Mr. Courtenay says that perhaps 
 the Bible doesn't mean what it says, and yet that
 
 214 At a Tennis Match. 
 
 all Christian civilization is built upon it. Now I 
 can't quite make that out, can you ?" 
 
 " No. I suppose he would call it one of the 
 mysteries of religion. I believe that's their name 
 for all contradictions in what they say they believe." 
 
 " Say they believe !" exclaimed Nina; " why, 
 don't you think Mr. Courtenay does believe what 
 he says ?" 
 
 " I've no doubt he thinks he does, but ' believing ' 
 means different things to him and to me." 
 
 " I don't understand," she said. 
 
 " Well," answered Calmire, " to him it means 
 something superior to reason, to me it means 
 something subordinate to reason." 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire, where's the virtue in Faith 
 if we're going to let it be upset all the time?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You don't think it a virtue ?" she asked. 
 
 " Not for all persons, in the sense you mean it." 
 
 " Not for me ?" 
 
 Nina was not given to self-reference. Her fall- 
 ing into it now, showed that something very unusual 
 was going on in her mind. Calmire answered: 
 
 " I don't know yet." 
 
 " Not for Mr. Courtenay ?" she asked. 
 
 " Yes, I think it is good for him." 
 
 " Then w r hat kind of people is it good for, and 
 what kind of people is it not ?" 
 
 " Ah, young lady," he answered with a little 
 laugh, "I shall not tell you that unless I find out 
 that it is not good for you. But if I ever find that 
 out, you will know the answer for yourself, so I 
 shall never need to tell you at all."
 
 At a Tennis Match. ~ 1 5 
 
 And thenceforward at odd moments for many 
 days, the cup of her perplexity was full. Mr. Cal- 
 mire, whom, in a timid half-unconscious way, she 
 trusted profoundly, said that it was well for Cour- 
 tenay to believe as he did, yet Calmire did not 
 himself believe as Courtenay did, and doubted 
 whether it was best for her that she should. She 
 wished that she had asked him whether he thought 
 it best for Muriel. 
 
 And as she thought more about it, she became 
 perplexed as to how Courtenay did believe. De- 
 spite her admiration for the self-denial in his con- 
 clusions, she could not make his views consistent 
 with each other, and she was astounded once to 
 find herself saying to herself: " Is it right to be 
 content with inconsistent views is it honest ?" 
 
 But some time later, she was brought to realize 
 that,in some regions, the only way to avoid incon- 
 sistent views, is to have no views at all. 
 
 When they got home, after the ladies had retired, 
 and the men had settled down for an extra cigar, 
 Muriel said to Calmire: 
 
 " What were you and Miss Wahring talking 
 about as we neared home ?" 
 
 " About Dogma's last ditch." 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" 
 
 " About Dogma exalting credulity into a virtue. 
 Science declares it a vice." 
 
 "What did Miss Wahring say to that?" 
 
 "What did she say to that? Do you suppose I 
 told it to her ? You young people never will realize 
 that it's absurd to tell people things they can't 
 understand."
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 MURIEL TAKES A SHORT INNINGS. 
 
 NINA awoke late the next morning, but feel- 
 ing very bright, partly because, despite her ques- 
 tions to Calmire, she had been set relatively at 
 peace by Courtenay, through the regular pro- 
 fessional demonstration of the miraculous foun- 
 dation of Christianity. While taking a light break- 
 fast in her room, she pondered this, and then ran 
 downstairs and out on to the lawn, like a child with 
 some new-found wonder in its apron, to show it to 
 Muriel and convince him. 
 
 This tempestuous Muriel Calmire was a factor in 
 Mrs. Wahring's Summer experiences that she had 
 not counted on. But he caused her no anxiety re- 
 garding her great scheme, for she expected his 
 loud irreverence to make him distasteful to Nina; 
 and, so far, in some respects, she had no occasion 
 to be disappointed. Yet Nina, while she had 
 found his aggressive infidelity repulsive, had not 
 found it altogether uninteresting, especially as she 
 had realized that its aggressiveness was earnest- 
 ness of conviction, and that its justification was 
 not altogether denied by Calmire, who was him- 
 self so temperate and so patient. But unques- 
 tionably she would have been much more moved 
 by Calmire's admissions, if the crassness of Mu- 
 riel's assertions had not prejudiced her against 
 
 316
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 2 1 / 
 
 his side. How much of a young man's enthusiasm 
 against restraining doctrine, may be due to im- 
 patience of restraint, it had not occurred to her to 
 inquire. 
 
 Muriel, of course, was a propagandist when it 
 was no trouble to be one. Such boys, no less than 
 the best men in the church, always want people to 
 think as they do. Probably Muriel would not 
 have sought jungles, deserts, and lonely death 
 for the sake of spreading his faith, or lack of it; 
 but preaching to Nina Wahring at Fleuvemont 
 was a different matter. So despite his uncle's cau- 
 tions against disturbing Nina's faith, he was at 
 least always ready to take up the cudgels at her 
 invitation. 
 
 When she found him, she gave him briefly the 
 points she had learned the day before, and ended 
 triumphantly with " So Christianity is miraculous 
 after all !" 
 
 "Yes?" asked Muriel, with a provoking drawl, 
 and then flashed out: "Confound their impu- 
 dence ! To make out Christianity the only re- 
 ligion, they're always making out Rome's the only 
 civilization, when off there were India and China 
 and Japan with art and culture that in many re- 
 spects could knock Rome endways. But even that 
 ' universal language' argument doesn't amount to 
 anything. The gospels were not even written in 
 it; and assume the empire of Rome to have been 
 prepared miraculously, then I suppose the empires 
 of Charles the Great and Napoleon were too?" 
 
 " I never heard anybody say so," answered Nina. 
 
 " Nor I either," said Muriel.
 
 218 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 
 
 " Then what makes you talk that way?" she asked. 
 
 "Because the world was certainly in as favorable 
 a state for each of those men, as for Christ. Don't 
 you see that?" 
 
 "Oh, what does a girl have a chance to see?" 
 Then she added in a contrasting tone that made 
 Muriel think of the middle register of a clarionet: 
 "Tell me what_jw/ see." 
 
 He briefly explained the situations, when she 
 said: 
 
 " But God may have shaped the world for Chris- 
 tianity through natural causes, as he did for Charles 
 and Napoleon; and then there were Christ's miracu- 
 lous new and divine doctrines." 
 
 "'Natural causes' are not miracles: so over goes 
 that claim. Now what doctrines do you call miracu- 
 lous and new ?" 
 
 " Why one God a father, and all men brothers." 
 
 "Now just look at that!" cried the boy; "will 
 you just look at that? I declare it ought to be a 
 criminal offence for a parson to get hold of an in- 
 nocent girl and stuff her with that sort of humbug. 
 Asia had those doctrines long before Christ was 
 born; and even the claim that Christianity intro- 
 duced them to the Western world, is all nonsense. 
 Certainly the best of the Greeks and Romans had 
 them before Christ, and about his time their old 
 mythology was already played out, as Courtenay 
 says: Cicero and Seneca, for instance, were as much 
 infidels regarding it, as anybody now is regarding 
 Christianity. But is there anything remarkable 
 about that? Don't all religions play out?" 
 
 Disregarding his question, she persisted:
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 219 
 
 " But, Mr. Muriel, I always supposed that Chris- 
 tianity was the first religion to teach charity and 
 the sacrifice of self to others." 
 
 Muriel gave something like a low whistle, then 
 begged her pardon (a proceeding rather new in 
 him), and said, " Come on to the piazza, please, and 
 excuse me a minute." Then he went off into the 
 library, came back with some books, and said: 
 
 " Now, listen to this," and he read, in tones that, 
 despite the feeling of opposition that he had 
 aroused, seemed to her like deep music : 
 
 " ' Charity is found where man, seeking to diffuse hap- 
 piness among all men those he loves and those he loves 
 not digs canals and pools, makes roads, bridges and 
 seats, and plants trees for shade. It is found where, 
 from compassion for the miserable and poor, who have 
 none to help them, a man erects resting-places for wan- 
 derers, and drinking-fountains, or provides food, raiment, 
 medicine for the needy, not selecting one more than an- 
 other. This is true charity, and bears much fruit.' 
 
 " That," said Muriel, " is from the Katha Chari, 
 a Buddhist collection of the third century before 
 Christ." He went on, selecting passages: 
 
 "I find here that Manu, about twelve centuries 
 before Christ, among his ten duties named ' return- 
 ing good for evil,' and said: ' Shun even lawful 
 acts which may cause future pain or be offensive to 
 mankind.' He also said: ' He who seeks the good 
 of all sentient beings, enjoys bliss without end.' 
 
 "The Khuddaka Patha, of the third century be- 
 fore Christ, says: 
 
 " ' Let the love that fills the mother's heart as she 
 watches over an only child, even such love, animate all. 
 
 " ' Let the good will that is boundless, immeasurable, 
 impartial, unmixed with enmity, prevail throughout the 
 world.'
 
 22O Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 
 
 " Confucius, in the sixth century before Christ, 
 said : 
 
 " 'The abject man sows that himself or his friends may 
 reap: the love of the perfect man is universal.' 
 
 "I won't read," he continued, "a lot of things 
 from the Hitopadesa, because this editor says that 
 although most of its material is known to have ex- 
 isted in the third century before Christ, it was not 
 put in shape until about the sixth century of our 
 era, and therefore possibly may have felt the benefit 
 of Christianity. I haven't any idea that it did, 
 though. I also refrain from quoting the Talmud 
 and the Old Testament, because they are claimed 
 as part of the Christian system, though they con- 
 tradict it in perhaps as many things as they antici- 
 pate it in. But I want to give you a little of what 
 Greece and Rome have to say on the subject. It 
 would have been a greater miracle than any yet 
 recorded, if they had reached their civilizations 
 without some of those ideas." He hunted in 
 another book, and said: 
 
 " Take this from Isokrates, four or five centuries 
 before Christ: 
 
 " ' That which it angers you to suffer from others, that 
 do not to others yourselves.' 
 
 "That's merely negative," Muriel continued; 
 " but how about this ? That same Isokrates, I find 
 here, advised Nikokles, King of Crete, to behave 
 to states weaker than his own, as he would have 
 states stronger than his own, behave to his." 
 
 "Why, that's the golden rule !" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " Seems so!" said Muriel, and went on:
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 221 
 
 " Seneca says the same thing: 
 
 " ' So live with your inferior as you would have your 
 superior live with you.' 
 
 "Elsewhere he said: 
 
 " ' It is required of a man to be of benefit to men to 
 many if he can; failing that, to a few; failing that, to 
 those nearest him ; failing that, to himself.' 
 
 " It strikes 1 me that that's even a little in advance 
 of the golden rule, for it puts others before oneself. 
 But here's some more from Seneca: 
 
 " 'The brave and just man when he places before him- 
 self as the rewards of death, the liberty of his country, 
 the safety of all, for which he sacrifices his life, is in the 
 highest state of happiness.' 
 
 u And there," continued Muriel, " you get not 
 only more steps beyond the golden rule, but you 
 get patriotism too something which Christianity 
 doesn't go into." 
 
 " But it seems to me," Nina "remonstrated, 
 " that I've heard Seneca spoken of as a Christian 
 moralist." 
 
 " Oh Lord, yes ! The Christians tried to steal 
 him, and even forged a lot of letters between him and 
 Saint Paul, just as they later forged the dotation 
 of Constantine. But that's all rot ! His morals 
 were Christian, or Christian morals were his. All 
 Aryan and Jewish civilization had pretty much the 
 same morals improving of course as time went 
 on: Christianity is but one name for the world's 
 stock of morality, as Buddhism is another." 
 
 " But, Mr. Muriel ! Mr. Muriel ! How can you 
 talk so! It wasn't Roman morality. Didn't Chris-
 
 222 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 
 
 tianity have to come in to put an end to the Romans' 
 cruel shows in the Arena?" 
 
 " So they say ! But nevertheless, many ' pagan ' 
 moralists resisted them, some 'pagan' emperors 
 prohibited them, and many Christians were very 
 fond of them. Hold on ! I'll hunt up the evi- 
 dence here if you want it." 
 
 " No ! If you've seen it, I'll take your word. 
 What you have given me is enough, "and she gave 
 a little sigh that was half relief from her strained 
 attention, and half regret at its results. "But," 
 she added, " why, in the face of such things, have 
 my teachers always told me that Christ was the 
 first to bring the message of ' Peace on earth, good 
 will toward men' ?" 
 
 "Because they've been crazy with enthusiasm. 
 They see nothing and seek nothing but what makes 
 for their case. They won't tell you what makes 
 against it. They justify the means by the end, 
 too, whether they mean to or not. The Jesuits are 
 not alone in that. Within a few weeks, a learned 
 man told me that Christianity is the only religion 
 which states the golden rule positively; that no 
 other religion did more than Confucius in saying, 
 ' Refrain from doing to others that which you 
 would not that they should do to you.' I don't 
 see, though, that the difference between a positive 
 and a negative statement of it, even if that differ- 
 ence existed, would be of much consequence." 
 
 "Why," said Nina, "it seems to me that the 
 golden rule is clear and positive in several of the 
 passages you have read. But," she continued after 
 a moment, "despite all you've said, there are the 
 miracles that Christ himself performed."
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 223 
 
 " Great Scott! Why, I sometimes think that if 
 there were no miracles in that religion, a fellow 
 might believe in it." 
 
 " A great many fellows do manage to believe in 
 it with its miracles," she rejoined. " Why do the 
 miracles convince you against it, instead of for it ?" 
 
 " Why, simply," he said, " because they reduce 
 it to the grade of all other religions. Its morality, 
 much as I had to say against it the other night, is 
 ahead of the rest of them, unless perhaps Buddhism, 
 but the religion has the same ear-marks that the 
 others have. If it had only left the miracles out, 
 I'd have thought it something distinct." 
 
 " But aren't its miracles different ?" she asked. 
 
 " Why, bless you," said the boy, " pretty much 
 all the religions have incarnations, miraculous 
 births, and all that, not to speak of miraculous 
 cures and feeds and all sorts of prestidigitation. 
 And as to observances, lots of them use the sign 
 of the cross and even most of the sacraments. 
 Rome and the East had infant baptism, and at the 
 Samothracian mysteries, a priest heard criminals 
 confess and granted them absolution. And as 
 to originality of dogma, Lactantius, a Christian, 
 demonstrated immortality itself from Plato's argu- 
 ments, without referring to Christ in his demon- 
 stration; and Arnobius, another Christian, speaks 
 of it as a widespread belief, in the Church and out, 
 which he himself opposed because it would logic- 
 ally make men reckless in this life." 
 
 " But," persisted Nina, " wasn't practical charity 
 introduced by Christianity? I've been told over 
 and over again that the ancient philosophers talked
 
 224 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 
 
 very prettily, but that they didn't lead anybody 
 to do anything." 
 
 " Now just look at that again !" exclaimed Muriel. 
 " It's flat lying." 
 
 " No," remonstrated Nina. " It certainly has 
 been told me by people who don't lie. " 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so," Muriel conceded. "They 
 merely repeated the lies that dogmatic literature 
 is full of. Why, the truth is that in the best days 
 of Athens, nobody was permitted to want; and that 
 in Rome, provisions, and even clothes, were distrib- 
 uted by the state, free schools founded for poor chil- 
 dren, medical officers provided for the needy sick, 
 and people giving feasts were required by law to 
 do something for the poor. And not only that, 
 but so far from its being true, as I long supposed, 
 that gifts from outside to cities and countries in 
 distress, were known only under our present Chris- 
 tianity, the fact is that classic civilization had 
 many such instances. Hold on, my author says 
 something about that business," and he hunted 
 in his last book again and read: 
 
 " ' There is indeed no fact m'ore patent in history than 
 that with the triumph of Christianity under Constantine, 
 the older and finer spirit of charity died out of the world, 
 and gave place to an intolerance and bigotry which were 
 its extreme antithesis, and which still unhappily rule in 
 its stead.' " 
 
 " But," said Nina, "'the finer spirit of charity' 
 has certainly been revived. And there is the idea 
 of one God: Greece and Rome didn't have that." 
 
 " Well, suppose they didn't. Nobody claims any 
 more than that Christianity brought it from the 
 East. But the fact is that the best minds of Greece 
 and Rome did have it before. They regarded the
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 225 
 
 various divinities, with their various names, as 
 merely symbols for the various aspects of the one 
 Power. Valeus Loranus, who flourished in the 
 century before Christ, wrote of Jupiter, ' Deum 
 Deus, unus et omnes' God of gods, one and all.' 1 
 And Muriel dived into his book again. " Here's 
 Seneca says : 
 
 " ' Call Him Nature, Fate, Chance all are names for the 
 same God in the various manifestations of his power.' 
 
 " All the early critics of Christianity, and many 
 of the fathers themselves, claimed that there was 
 nothing new in its distinctive doctrines." 
 
 " What made them spread so, then ?" objected 
 Nina. 
 
 "The same influence, I suppose," answered 
 Muriel, " which made the same doctrines spread 
 over the civilized world before Christianity was 
 thought of. Christ was a great man, though, and 
 gave them a great impulse, but so did Buddha 
 and Socrates and Cicero and Seneca and Marcus 
 Aurelius, and hosts of others who were not Chris- 
 tians at all. The fact is that all over Mediter- 
 ranean Europe and the Southwestern half of Asia 
 (leaving out some of the vagaries of our friends 
 the Mussulmans) there was a general consensus of 
 moral doctrine among the wise and good, which 
 India had as Brahminism and Buddhism, Persia 
 as Zoroastrianism, Syria as Jehovahism, Egypt 
 in its esoteric doctrines, and Greece and Rome in 
 their philosophies; and this morality reaches us 
 under the name of Christianity. It seems, too, as 
 if modern Christian apologists had kept the share 
 of other religions in that body of doctrine pretty 
 well out of sight, though I see here that Clement,
 
 236 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 
 
 for instance, though he was a father of the 
 Church, said that Greek philosophy was inspired 
 of God, as truly as Christianity was; and Justin 
 Martyr, another father, counted many of the 
 philosophers as among the elect of God. That 
 degree of tolerance hasn't been the fashion in 
 Christianity, though. No ! Christian writers have 
 made too light of the religious thought of non- 
 Christian civilizations. That is not a matter of 
 opinion, for here are abundant citations which you 
 can verify for yourself, to prove that the educated 
 classes in Greece and Rome were monotheists; 
 held essentially the same beliefs in Providence and 
 design in Nature that Christians do; professed the 
 same reliance in God's goodness, and resignation to 
 His will; had the same hope of immortality, with 
 the same inducements to well-doing for its sake 
 (but without the same slavish fears of Hell); prac- 
 ticed the same charity and forgiveness, and vastly 
 more toleration; and, with a few exceptions in the 
 Bible itself, expressed their doctrines in a litera- 
 ture infinitely loftier than that of the fathers of the 
 Church." 
 
 "Well, I didn't know all this," said Nina, with a 
 second sigh, over both her old ignorance and her 
 new knowledge. " Girls seem to be shown only 
 one side. But after all, what you detract from the 
 originality of Christianity, makes its great influence 
 appear all the more wonderful. Surely there must 
 have been something divine in Christ." 
 
 "There is in every great genius," said Muriel, 
 with a reverent tone that sometimes came from 
 that paradoxical youth. " Half the gods have
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 227 
 
 been made of people's reverence for great men. 
 Imagine the beautiful doctrines we've been talk- 
 ing about, brought to an oppressed people sorely 
 needing charity and consolation, and especially to 
 the lower classes among whom such doctrines were 
 comparatively strange; imagine them preached 
 by a man of Christ's presence and genius and 
 consciousness of power. Even if he were not, in 
 any peculiar sense, the Son of God, would not the 
 people, a few generations later, (especially the 
 wonder-loving Greeks, in whose language the gos- 
 pels were written, a good while after his death,) 
 have been ready to make him a god, as they 
 did their mythical heroes ? Even if he had not 
 claimed such divinity himself, as I'm not at all 
 sure he did, would not his followers have claimed 
 it for him, as I'm mighty sure they did, and have 
 elaborated the claim by all sorts of ' supernatural ' 
 detail ? Such claims were not received then as 
 they would be to-day, despite the fact that people 
 to-day admit the claims made then : but if the 
 same tales were told as having happened a year 
 ago, nobody would believe them. People have 
 always swallowed things regarding the past, even 
 a few generations past, that they would not admit 
 regarding the present; and all that made it much 
 easier for Christianity to spread." 
 
 "Yes, there's something in that," said Nina. 
 " I've heard that almost every people looks back 
 for its golden age." 
 
 "Certainly," assented Muriel, " when the fact is 
 that in the assumed golden ages, our ancestors 
 were brutes, and for the real golden age, we must
 
 228 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 
 
 look forward. But here's another reason why 
 Christianity took hold so readily. You know that 
 the religions which Christ found existing when 
 he appeared what was left of them, made few 
 promises and very vague ones: but Christ, or his 
 reporters at least, offered some sort of reward in 
 nearly every sentence. They led every beggar to 
 expect to be on horseback in a very short time. 
 Every religion starts among the beggars, because 
 they've everything to gain and nothing to lose : 
 and yet you always hear the fact that Christianity 
 did, harped upon as if it were something wonder- 
 ful. Christ's parables generally made the good 
 people poor, and the bad ones rich; the poor 
 thought he was going to give them everything 
 that is, everything consistent with morality, and a 
 good deal more laziness and irresponsibility than 
 are consistent with it; the people took much of 
 what he said about his ' Kingdom,' whether he 
 meant it so or not, as offering them a new earthly 
 dynasty, just as people offered a new religion gen- 
 erally do, and they were so full of it that they 
 wanted the Roman empire destroyed to make 
 way for it, and some think that the Roman Chris- 
 tians stimulated the barbarian Christians in that 
 job. When it became plain that Christ's Kingdom 
 was not to be looked for here, it was looked for 
 hereafter, mainly at first, of course, by the people 
 who had nothing to look for here anyhow. Partly 
 to gain those things, and partly, no doubt, from 
 better motives, the people practiced, more or less, 
 the altruistic morality that Christ had impressed 
 upon them, and that was good enough and, to the 
 majority, new enough to soon commend the sect to
 
 Muriel Takes a Short Innings. 229 
 
 the attention of the better classes. And so, you 
 see, here you are a Christian, and nothing super- 
 natural about it." 
 
 " Well !" exclaimed Nina, with a long breath. 
 " It won't do to be sure of anything, will it ?" Then 
 she added, rebounding from the strain she had 
 been under into a little playfulness: " You're very 
 learned with your big books there, aren't you ?" 
 
 " Yes, and you with the stuff Courtenay gave 
 you. So we're quits. Quits ! Quits !" he cried, 
 laughing and jumping up and dancing around the 
 piazza. Then, to make her come, he seized her 
 hand, but got playfully slapped on his own. 
 
 " Let's take a ride!" he exclaimed. 
 
 "I don't know if mamma will let me. Can we 
 have a groom ?" 
 
 " Yes, but what's the use ? Mrs. Grundy doesn't 
 call for one here." 
 
 Soon, after a little demur from Mrs. Wahring, 
 they were having some royal good gallops over 
 bits of turf and soft road, or meditatively walking 
 their horses through woods, or pausing on bare 
 far-reaching heights; and they found too much in 
 the sunlight and brisk air,and buoyancy of youth, 
 to bother their heads any more about Napoleon or 
 Charles, or the Man of Peace whose victories sur- 
 pass theirs; or even about Nina's question: "It 
 won't do to be sure of anything, will it?" They 
 had not yet begun to hear the thunders which 
 mutter under that thought.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 AIDS TO MATRIMONY. 
 
 MRS. WAHRING had not cared to startle her 
 game, but she had now been at Fleuvemont long 
 enough to sound Calmire's heart on her matri- 
 monial projects. One evening as they were 
 strolling in the grounds, she began speaking of 
 the pleasant time the four were having together, 
 'except, of course, the constant sparring of those 
 young people, who were never made to agree," 
 and then she said that her very enjoyment made 
 her reflect that it could not last that the time must 
 come when she (somehow she omitted Nina) must 
 leave Fleuvemont. " Of course, I have compensa- 
 tion in my own home and my husband's society," 
 she said, " but you She paused, and then she 
 plunged: 
 
 " Cousin Calmire, why don't you marry again ?" 
 
 " Haven't had the chance." 
 
 " Ridiculous! Don't you want to ?" 
 
 " Most assuredly." 
 
 " Then, why haven't you ?" 
 
 " I've told you." 
 
 " Now, don't play with me. You know you 
 could marry any woman you please." 
 
 " I haven't had the chance to please." 
 
 "You are too fastidious. You need to shape 
 
 230
 
 Aids to Matritrony. 231 
 
 some one to suit you. Take some one who is 
 young enough and you can make her anything 
 you please." 
 
 "But what can I make of myself to suit her? I 
 am too old for a girl to marry. What right have 
 I to tie a woman of forty to a man over seventy? 
 That would be the case in twenty years if I were 
 to marry a girl of twenty." 
 
 " You might not keep her tied so long, then," 
 laughed Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " Oh, my family lives to ninety. But," he mused 
 aloud, " in that case, I should not." 
 
 " If you should not, then what wrong do you 
 do?" 
 
 " The wrong of depriving a girl of the natu- 
 ral love of a person of near her own age." 
 
 " Is there any certainty of her getting it ? And 
 if she does, she gets the thoughtless impetuous 
 treatment of a boy. In exchange, you give her 
 your experienced and tempered care, and you keep 
 her in contact with a mind to know which ' is a 
 liberal education.' " 
 
 "Don't you be sarcastic! And above all things, 
 don't you put too much confidence in any such 
 nonsensical expression that may occur to you in 
 regard to me. I am reaching the age when men 
 begin to ossify their opinions. A woman who 
 wants an education had better take a younge 
 man." 
 
 " But don't you see that it is your habit to let 
 your opinions change with discoveries, and that it 
 was not the habit of the men just before you, 
 whose opinions you have watched ossify ? You are
 
 232 Aids to Matrimony. 
 
 not like us who have a Faith. Why, you experience 
 a certain wild delight in finding yourself wrong." 
 
 " Hilda Wahring! Why don't you do your brains 
 justice, oftener? Oh the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil!" 
 
 " Thank you, especially regarding the last two. 
 I'd rather be devoted to the first, though, with a 
 little reservation for the next world, than to the 
 wicked notions you're so stubborn in." 
 
 " Well, I'll apologize so far as concerns the flesh 
 and the devil, except as they always follow the 
 world as sharks follow a ship. But as to my notions, 
 I hope, to use your phraseology, that the Lord will 
 give me strength to stand to some notions that 
 you've attacked this evening. I've no business with 
 a girl for a wife." 
 
 " Any girl whom you will make your wife, is to 
 be congratulated." 
 
 And this sentence survived in his memory, while 
 most of the arguments with which the lady had 
 supported it, faded away. But, of course, Calmire 
 was the first thoughtful and candid man who could 
 be more affected by a generalization fastening it- 
 self upon his vanity, than by an argument attack- 
 ing his reason! 
 
 Calmire was too old a fish not to recognize bait 
 when he could see the angler extending it. Mrs. 
 Wahring's conversation could not have been plainer 
 to him if it had been condensed into the simple 
 statement: " My dear old friend, I wish you would 
 marry my daughter. I know you would make her 
 happy, and I know no other fate for her that I so 
 much desire."
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 233 
 
 And here Mrs. Wahring, though ordinarily a 
 good tactician, made a bad move. There were two 
 excuses for her: Calmire was an old friend with 
 whom candor had been her rule, and with whom, 
 in fact, candcr was almost everybody's rule ; then, 
 moreover, she felt, and not wrongly, that her con- 
 victions about his marrying would have weight 
 with him. Her mistake was in not confining her- 
 self to expressing them incidentally. He was 
 enough interested in the subject to note them 
 without requiring special emphasis. As it was, 
 feeling his positions attacked, he aroused himself 
 to their defence. He should have been tempted 
 to abandon them by finding others more attrac- 
 tive. Moreover, aside from his convictions regard- 
 ing women in general, he was put specially on his 
 guard respecting Nina. 
 
 He knew that the girl found him interesting, 
 and was glad that she did. But he determined 
 that in one respect she should not find him too in- 
 teresting. Therefore, not seldom when he caught 
 her hanging on his words or found himself pur- 
 sued by her intelligent curiosity, he abruptly drew 
 the topic into some less fruitful field or overturned 
 it with a jest. This was because he had little sym- 
 pathy, as he had intimated to Muriel, with the 
 latter's attempt to set up a kindergarten in in- 
 fidelity for Miss Wahring's instruction, and was 
 certainly not prepared to teach in it while she and 
 her mother were his guests. 
 
 This produced upon her interest in him, an effect 
 like those of most artificial policies, as undesirable 
 as the one it was intended to avoid. He became
 
 234 Aids to Matrimony. 
 
 an object of tantalizing curiosity to the girl, and 
 aroused in her a suspicion that he did not deem 
 her worthy of his free confidence; and this, as she 
 knew him to be devoid of conceit, made him ap- 
 pear to her all the more exalted. 
 
 The next day, Muriel being off on some devices 
 of his own, Mrs. Wahring being. disabled by a con- 
 venient headache, and there happening to be no 
 other visitors in the house, Nina found herself 
 starting out about five o'clock with Calmire alone 
 in the dog-cart. 
 
 Of the dog-cart as an aid to matrimony, not all 
 has been said that the subject deserves, though it 
 is true that much is made of it in the novels of the 
 fair Mrs. Higliff, /<? Deasent; and those who have 
 had the opportunity for a season or two, to fre- 
 quently see her in the park exalted in the trap of 
 her present happy lord above the victoriaed and 
 landaued herd, have fully recognized the potency 
 of that method of locomotion in effecting the mar- 
 riage which raised her from the circles of Pres- 
 byterian respectability to those of horse-racing 
 aristocracy. 
 
 As promoter of the love which leads to marriage, 
 the dog-cart cannot be too highly honored by all 
 economists who oppose Malthus. But as a sus- 
 tainer of love after marriage, its frequent inefficacy 
 might delight the soul of Malthus himself. To the 
 philosophic observer, there is something in the 
 relation of the dog-cart to this whole subject, 
 which may be interesting enough tc justify far- 
 ther elucidation,
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 235 
 
 It will be realized that the inexperienced driver 
 of the new dog-cart is generally in mourning of 
 course, for the worthy relative whose money paid for 
 the trap. When the novice first appears, it is apt 
 to be about eleven o'clock in the morning, after most 
 of the early equestrians are out of the park, and 
 hours before the more experienced artists on the 
 vehicle come out. The groom, or whatever func- 
 tionary may wear the livery (also deep mourning, 
 even crape around the boot-tops, in some instances), 
 is perched by the master's side, instead of sitting 
 backward on the back seat a position known to be 
 impracticable for some new grooms on account of 
 its tendency to create sea-sickness. Especially is the 
 groom apt to be by the master's side if a tandem be 
 under consideration, it being then doubly important 
 that experience should be at hand. A few days 
 later, the trap is observable, at the same hour, with 
 the groom in the position, not (as we were going to 
 say) for which nature intended him, but to which 
 fashion has dedicated him. A few days later still, 
 the trap with the same arrangements, appears in all 
 its glory at the time the world drives as early as 
 three if the owner be a systematic and fussy man, 
 or as late as six if he be accustomed to let things 
 take care of themselves. Whatever a man's charac- 
 teristics prompt or dilatory, they will be exaggera- 
 ted when he first faces the world in a new dog-cart. 
 
 Within a fortnight, the matrimonial functions of 
 the engine are first indicated. A young lady ap- 
 pears, generally in a bright costume finely set off 
 by the sombreness previously monopolizing the 
 vehicle; for she is not usually a friend with whom
 
 236 Aids to Matrimony. 
 
 the young fellow is familiar in sorrow and in joy, 
 but some one whom he met in society (and con- 
 sequently not in mourning), shortly before the 
 melancholy event which led to his own sables and 
 dog-cart. The next day, a second young lady ap- 
 pears, the next day a third, and so on, until all the 
 intimate friends have had a drive in the new trap. 
 Then the first young lady appears again, then for a 
 week some of the others, and so on, the first ap- 
 pearing with decreasing intervals until she is there 
 every pleasant day. At about this stage, a bunch 
 of light purple flowers, indicative of either ebbing 
 woe or rising joy, is sometimes seen in the horse's 
 headstall, and even in the button-hole of the 
 groom. After a short season of this sort of loco- 
 motion, a mighty change is noticed the groom has 
 disappeared! He has long been felt a burden to 
 the confidences suppressed on the front seat, but 
 Mrs. Grundy has kept him in his place. Now, Mrs. 
 Grundy releases all three from their irksome situa- 
 tion, for the young people are engaged. It came 
 
 near being all four in the case of young , for 
 
 he, not having been reared in the midst of good 
 precedents, began his matrimonial pursuit with 
 two tigers, but was most ingeniously corrected by 
 Miss , to whom, however, he did not feel suffi- 
 ciently grateful to make her his ultimate every-day 
 driving companion. Or perhaps she declined to be. 
 If smiles were water and could be scattered from 
 the rear of the vehicle as bounteously as from the 
 front, the dog-cart with an engaged couple meet- 
 ing friends, would render the present style of 
 road-sprinkler superfluous,
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 237 
 
 The smiles are scattered till late Spring or late 
 Fall as the case may be, when the vehicle is laid 
 up during the wedding-journey. After the return, 
 it appeals again for a few months, when it is 
 again laid up, and after a brief period it is, for 
 some recondite reason, replaced by a low vic- 
 toria. A little later, the couple is lost to sight for 
 a month or two, and when they reappear, the dog- 
 cart alternates with the victoria, the husband's 
 place in the latter generally being occupied by a 
 woman in a French cap with a bundle in her arms. 
 Soon, on the days when the victoria appears, 
 the husband is apt to be seen alone in a road- 
 wagon with a trotter, and the general tendency is 
 for the old place of the dog-cart to be entirely 
 usurped by the road-wagon and the victoria, or 
 the landau for which, before many years, increasing 
 family makes occasion. 
 
 The mission of the vehicle which founded the 
 family, is generally here ended. In some rare 
 cases, however, (with occasional intervals when so 
 high a vehicle is not practicable,) the dog-cart 
 holds its own through the lives of the couples whom 
 it first brought together. In those traps, if in any- 
 thing that conveys humanity, look for happiness! 
 
 Some day, however, all other vehicles give way 
 to the hearse, and the impatient new generation 
 begins the pretty experience over again, in sables 
 and a new dog-cart of its own. 
 
 Whether Mr. Legrand Calmire was beginning the 
 standard dog-cart experience on the day when, on 
 the strength of his patriarchal years, he dispensed 
 with the groom, and drove tandem alone with
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 
 
 Miss Nina Wahring, was a question which could not 
 escape his calm but speculative mind. Earlier in 
 life, among his sources of amusement had fre- 
 quently been his own superstitions inherited ten- 
 dencies to draw auguries and to believe things that 
 his more modern individual judgment pronounced 
 absurd. The habit of rigidly following his reason, 
 regardless of the diversions of impulse, had now 
 so long been his, however, that he dismissed these 
 inherited tendencies almost unconsciously ; but 
 sometimes, even yet, one would produce a distinct 
 impression upon him. Such an one came just before 
 he started on this drive. The afternoon was cool 
 for the season, and he told Pierre to bring him a top- 
 coat. Thereupon flashed through his mind a vague 
 notion that if Pierre should bring a light-colored 
 coat, the outcome of his chat with Nina would be 
 favorable to the notions Mrs. Wahring had been 
 putting in his head; but that if the coat were 
 dark, it would be unfavorable. Pierre brought a 
 mackintosh that was neither light nor dark, and 
 Calmire had a quiet laugh at his own expense. 
 The question faintly before him was a little compli- 
 cated by a thought that had once or twice passed 
 through his mind. That there was any question 
 at all, annoyed him; and partly for the sake of 
 getting rid of it, he attacked it, in the course of the 
 ride, at the point where his own complication lay: 
 
 "What do you and Muriel quarrel most about? 
 Going home the other night, I didn't hear half 
 your talk, though Muriel seemed to think I did." 
 
 "We quarreled over everything, I suppose. We 
 generally do."
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 239 
 
 " I congratulate you! I hardly expected so much 
 scope in people so young." 
 
 " I wish I didn't give you the chance to laugh at 
 me so often. I meant everything that we talked 
 about." 
 
 "Ah! that's not quite so startling. What did 
 you talk about?" 
 
 "Well, the most interesting thing was himself." 
 
 "To him undoubtedly; but to you ?" 
 
 " Yes, to me: though he didn't think I thought so." 
 
 "What do you find so interesting about him?" 
 
 " His deformities." 
 
 "Ah ! you hit me hard there, my child. I might 
 have prevented the growth of many of them. Yet," 
 he mused aloud, " I was not his parents, much less all 
 his ancestors. It is unquestionably true that ' the 
 sins of the fathers ' are ' visited upon the children.' 
 So probably," he said, laughing, " Muriel's ancestors 
 are responsible for anything you don't like in him; 
 while I'm responsible only for anything you do 
 like." 
 
 " What a horrid set of infidels his ancestors must 
 have been, then! Pity that half of them were your 
 own !" 
 
 " Oh, that was the good half!" laughed Calmire. 
 " Only it wasn't perhaps not as good as the other. 
 On both sides there were some who would have 
 been called infidels." 
 
 "Well," said Nina, "as to the present infidel " 
 
 " Do you mean me ?" asked Calmire; " because if 
 you do, I think I'll have to trouble you to define 
 the term."
 
 240 Aids to Matrimony. 
 
 " No, I mean Mr. Muriel. Now if all that he 
 says about Christianity is true -all that you don't 
 contradict, I mean, one might even doubt its 
 divine origin. But if it is not divine, how did it 
 ever- do so much ?" 
 
 " For my part," he answered, " I can't doubt the 
 divine origin of anything: though it's not often 
 that two people mean quite the same thing by the 
 word 'divine.' " 
 
 " What do you mean by it, Mr. Calmire ?" 
 
 " I believe," he answered, " that Christianity was 
 sent by the same Power that sends everything 
 the Power you call divine." 
 
 " Then, Mr. Calmire, you must be a Christian." 
 
 " So I am, on the same ground that all men are 
 who accept as divine all that seems to them rea- 
 sonable in the faith, and attribute all else to 
 metaphor and accident. Christians vary, you 
 know, especially as time goes on. Don't you re- 
 member your saying once that you would not 
 accept the Christianity of five hundred years ago?" 
 
 " Yes. But, it seems to me that on your ground 
 pretty much everybody is a Christian." 
 
 " I don't know anybody who is on any other 
 ground," said Calmire, " if he uses his reason at 
 all." 
 
 "And that's just what Mr. Courtenay doesn't 
 do !" exclaimed Nina. " He professes to give up 
 even his reason for his faith." 
 
 " Well !" commented Calmire. " As good a man 
 as Mr. Courtenay can afford to, perhaps. But 
 those of us who haven't his goodness, have to find 
 our way by such lights as we have. But we are
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 241 
 
 wandering very far from our starting-point. All 
 this talk has grown out of what you are pleased to 
 term Muriel's deformities. I don't know how far 
 they are to be divided up between his ancestors 
 and his circumstances. Do you find his deformities 
 very monstrous?" 
 
 " Oh no ! They would not be worth noticing in 
 an ordinary young man." 
 
 " What ? Do you think him extraordinary?" 
 
 " I certainly do." 
 
 " So does he," said his uncle. 
 
 " I know that," she responded. 
 
 "There's one point at least," said Calmire, "on 
 which you agree." 
 
 "Hardly," said Nina; "his opinion of himself is 
 very different from mine." 
 
 " Well, what is your opinion of him ?" 
 
 "That he's a very brilliant and profound young 
 man, who turns out of his way very little for any- 
 body or anything but himself." 
 
 His uncle's opinion of his brilliancy and pro- 
 fundity might not have been as favorable as Nina's. 
 Calmire did not discuss that, though, but said: 
 
 "You do him injustice. He's the most affec- 
 tionate fellow in the world." 
 
 " Perhaps," answered Nina, " when it doesn't 
 interfere with his convenience.", 
 
 " There you're correct, and there's where I blame 
 myself. I have not made the effort I ought, to keep 
 him where he would grow up consulting the con- 
 venience of those he loved. You think he's 
 honest ?" 
 
 "Yes."
 
 2 4 2 Aids to Matrimony. 
 
 " He intends to be," said Calmire, "but it takes 
 a strong man to be honest always." 
 
 " He's strong!" said Nina. 
 
 "He's young," answered Calmire "Well," he 
 resumed, "you think him brilliant, honest, and 
 strong. That's a good deal. Can't you humor a 
 doting old man with a little more?" 
 
 " He's handsome as as well, as himself : none 
 of the pictures or statues are like him, though 
 they're no finer." 
 
 "And yet you find the most interesting thing 
 about him his deformities!" 
 
 They both laughed. 
 
 "Well," protested Nina, "he's conceited, selfish, 
 lazy, and I suspect not very thorough." 
 
 "You seem to have studied him pretty well on 
 so short an acquaintance," said Calmire. 
 
 " Oh, I see through people pretty well." 
 
 So far, Calmire had not got much light on his 
 little complication. He attacked it directly: 
 
 "Do you like him ?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Do you admire him ?" 
 
 "Of course, in some things." 
 
 " Would you trust him ?" 
 
 " In everything where he could be deliberate." 
 
 Calmire turned square around and looked at her. 
 
 " What business has a girl like you making such 
 a piece of character-analysis as that ?" 
 
 " A girl like me," she said, turning toward him, 
 and looking directly in his eyes, "does not always 
 judge character well, though. I want you now to
 
 Aids to Matrimony. 243 
 
 forgive me for mistrusting yours because I've mis- 
 trusted your opinions." 
 
 He returned her gaze smiling, and taking the 
 reins in his right hand, put his left on hers, say- 
 ing: 
 
 " Well ! ' a girl like you ' is a queer thing !" 
 She looked up, blushing and smiling, and the 
 tandem trotted homeward bearing two friends for 
 life. The outcome of the talk had been as neutral 
 as the color of Calmire's coat. He had been mainly 
 occupied in teaching the girl a few of the simple 
 things she wanted to know, and, so far as he 
 thought about it, he thought that the function 
 most appropriate for him. And yet ? 
 
 The quiet troop of long shadows had left the 
 hillsides and followed the music of the birds west- 
 ward with the Sun. Soon tree-toads and other plain- 
 colored folk on the dark sides of the trees, began to 
 tell that the nights were growing longer. Down in 
 the pond, a big frog, thinking of his Winter-sleep, 
 growled out : " Don't care. Let it come! Let 
 it come!" He startled the other singers so that 
 they all stopped, and it was so quiet that two or 
 three little stars peeped out. Over where it was 
 too bright for others to come, the sky was yellow, 
 and under it the hills were deep, deep blue. The 
 air began to be cool, and Calmire reached back for 
 more wraps, and they both thought pleasantly of 
 the deep dining-room hearth: not eagerly, though, 
 for no feeling of haste could disturb that peace. 
 All feeling was toward rest: to the children who 
 loved her, the great Mother was opening her 
 arms.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 GENTLE MAGIC AND HARD PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A WEEK or two later, the two Calmire house- 
 holds and Courtenay, with a different young lady 
 in the place of Sallie Stebbins, dined again at 
 John's. After dinner Muriel went to the ladies on 
 the piazza, and, without any polite subterfuge, 
 proclaimed to two of them that he liked their com- 
 pany less than that of the third, by asking Miss 
 Wahring to take a little stroll. 
 
 Mrs. Wahring protested that it was late, et 
 cetera, et cetera, but Muriel's heavy will crashed 
 through all her little diplomacies and he and Nina 
 started off. 
 
 "Where are you going?" asked Nina. 
 
 " I don't care," Muriel answered, but did not take 
 the pains to learn if she did. 
 
 "I've never seen the poor parts of the town," she 
 said. "Are they dangerous at night?" 
 
 " Oh no ! There's no very poor part here, but 
 we can walk through such as there are, even before 
 it gets very dark." 
 
 "Then let's go slumming." 
 
 Ten minutes later, as they were passing a row of 
 very small cottages, they encountered a woman 
 standing by a gate half open outwards, looking 
 anxiously up the street. As they stepped aside, 
 she said: 
 
 244
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 245 
 
 " Good-evening, Mr. Muriel. Have you seen any- 
 thing of Dr. Rossman or Mr. Courtenay?" 
 
 " Oh! it's you, is it, Mrs. Walters ? I didn't know 
 you lived here, and it was a little dark to recognize 
 you. I've just left Mr. Courtenay at Mr. John's." 
 
 "To-night my William was taken awful bad," 
 said the woman, "and I sent off for one of them. 
 I've been looking into the face of everybody that 
 passed: that's why I knew you/ 1 
 
 "What's the matter?" briskly inquired Nina. 
 
 "It's my poor boy, Miss; he got hurted in the 
 mills near a year ago, and he gets light in his head 
 and frightened like, and nobody can't keep him 
 quiet but the doctor and Mr. Courtenay. There 
 he is, takin' on now." 
 
 They recognized sounds of moaning and depre- 
 cation from the house, which had not struck their 
 attention before. 
 
 " Let me go to him," said Nina, and, in her en- 
 thusiastic way, went right past the woman without 
 waiting for the amenities. 
 
 The woman caught hold of her and said: " Mebbe 
 he's not fit for you to see, Miss. Wait a bit till I 
 go in." And she went into the house, leaving Mu- 
 riel at the gate, and Nina a pace or two inside 
 of it. 
 
 This was not what Mr. Muriel had bargained for. 
 He had come out to enjoy himself walking alone 
 with Miss Wahring, not to be troubled over an idiotic 
 pauper, or to wait alone while she was. He said: 
 
 " Oh, come along. You can't do anything for the 
 boy, so what's the use of bothering? The doctor
 
 246 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 
 
 or Courtenay will be along soon. The messenger 
 must have found one of them by this time." 
 
 Nina looked hard at him with a shade of disap- 
 pointment. After a moment, she said: "I don't 
 know whether I can do anything for him prob- 
 ably I can't: but it may be something to his poor 
 mother to have somebody with her till the others 
 come. I'm going to try, anyhow. I've done some 
 queer things in the way of quieting pain." 
 
 " It's not so much pain with this chap," said Mu- 
 riel, "but he has fits of horrors, as I understand it 
 something like jim-jams." 
 "What are jim-jams?" 
 
 "Why, don't you know? From drinking hard." 
 "Oh! Does he take too much ?" 
 "Oh no! Nothing of that kind. It's from a 
 blow he got on the head." 
 "Does he get no better?" 
 
 " I don't know: I don't know much about it, any- 
 way." 
 
 "And don't care?" said Nina, impatiently. 
 " Not very much, I guess: no affair of mine. If 
 Nature will do such things, I suppose she's got to 
 have her own way." 
 
 "Then I don't see what we've got hearts for." 
 "Oh, there are nuisances enough for them, with- 
 out any such nuisances as this." 
 
 " It's not nice in you to look at it in that way," 
 she remonstrated. 
 
 "It's not nice in Nature. Don't blame me." 
 Here the woman came half-timidly back, and 
 Nina followed her in, while Muriel remained by 
 the gate. While the mother had been in the house,
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 247 
 
 the moaning had been more interrupted and had 
 changed to occasional protestation. When Nina 
 appeared in the door, it stopped. 
 
 Muriel shifted his position, and through the open 
 window could see the boy a fellow of some sixteen 
 years, who would have looked very commonplace but 
 for the paleness and emaciation of his face, empha- 
 sized by a great shock of sandy hair. He was gaz- 
 ing at Nina with pleased surprise. Muriel stepped 
 near enough to hear him say, after a moment: 
 
 "Why, you'm not a bit like the others!" 
 
 " I'm glad I'm not, if the others frightened you," 
 said Nina. 
 
 "Oh, but they did ! They's awful ! Where be 
 they gone to ?" 
 
 " I've tried to send them away," Nina answered, 
 "and I don't think they'll come back." 
 
 "Oh, you know 'em, then," half wailed the boy. 
 " Mother swears she don't." 
 
 "I saw some of them once," responded Nina. 
 
 "What in the devil's name does the woman 
 mean ?" muttered Muriel, half aloud. 
 
 "You did!" exclaimed the lad. "Did the big 
 red one hit you on the head too ?" 
 
 "No," said Nina, who by this time had gone up 
 and shaken hands with the boy and seated herself 
 beside him. " It wasn't that way. I had a book 
 full of green and red and yellow pictures, and 
 when I looked at it till my eyes got tired, and 
 then looked up, I saw the queer things dancing 
 all over the wall and the ceiling." 
 
 "That wasn't like mine," said the boy. 
 
 "Not exactly," Nina assented; "but I think
 
 248 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 
 
 they're a good deal alike. Mine came because 
 I hurt my nerves a little, and yours came because 
 you hurt your nerves a great deal." 
 
 " What's nerves ? Is it only people whose nerves 
 get hurted what can see 'em ? Mother can't see 
 'em. Could she see 'em if her nerves was to be 
 hurted ? You know lots more than she does or 
 doctor. Oh, here they be again!" half cried the 
 boy, cowering back with an expression that was 
 terrible to see. 
 
 " They sha'n't get to you," said Nina, taking his 
 hand. " I'll get in front of you." And she moved 
 her chair from beside the boy directly in front of 
 him. This brought her back toward Muriel, and 
 he got disgusted again. 
 
 The light from the mantel now shone through 
 the increasing darkness full on her face, which was 
 directly opposite the poor boy. This diverted his 
 disordered imaginings again, as her entrance had 
 done. She still held his hand and talked with 
 him soothingly for several minutes. He gazed at 
 her steadily, only uttering monosyllables, until at 
 last he said: 
 
 " You'm not like anybody ever I seen, and yet 
 you'm not like them neither. What be you any- 
 how ?" 
 
 " Only a young woman who is very sorry you 
 have so much trouble." 
 
 " No, you'm more than that. I guess likely 
 you'm an angel." 
 
 Muriel said to himself, "Well, if here isn't an- 
 other at it!" 
 
 Nina laughed low and musically, not with her
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 249 
 
 usual hearty peais that would hcve jarred the 
 boy's distressed nerves. 
 
 " Oh, but it's pretty to see you laugh !" he ex- 
 claimed, with something more like vivacity than 
 anything, except the fear of a moment before, that 
 his tired face had shown. This started Nina's 
 laughter afresh. A little after she subsided, the 
 boy said to her cheerfully but beseechingly: 
 
 " Laugh again !" 
 
 This time there was a little intention mingled 
 with the laugh, and he said : 
 
 " It was prettier before. I'm getting sleepy." 
 
 Nina said: " It's very easy for you to find things 
 pretty. Do you like flowers ?" 
 
 " No, I don't care much for 'em." 
 
 "What do you like?" 
 
 " Oh, I like girls, and angels, and dogs, and such 
 things." 
 
 This started Nina's laugh again. 
 
 " That's it ! That's it !" cried the boy. 
 
 "Don't you like some other things?" said Nina. 
 
 "Oh yes; before I got sick," he said wearily, "I 
 had a jew's-harp." 
 
 "What tunes could you play?" 
 
 " Oh, I can't think now. I'm tired, and I can go 
 to sleep. I'll tell you all about it, though, if you'll 
 come again," he said, stretching himself and gap- 
 ing, " if you'll come and laugh. Will you ?" 
 
 " Indeed I will," said Nina. 
 
 Then the mother approached and said, " Oh, 
 Miss, you make him feel so good." 
 
 Nina exchanged a few words with her, and then 
 said to her son: " When I come again, what shall I
 
 250 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 
 
 bring you? Have you still the jew's-harp? I 
 
 might bring " She had been moving to go, 
 
 but her eyes now fell again on the boy. He was 
 asleep. 
 
 " God bless you, Miss !" said the woman, follow- 
 ing her to the door. "Nobody never quieted him 
 like this." 
 
 " Why, it seems easy enough," said Nina, " if 
 you'll only let him have his own way and lead him 
 gently to think of other things." 
 
 " Yes, but that's not so easy. You was some- 
 thing for him to think of, yourself, you see. J try 
 that way, but he's used to me and all I can do. 
 The doctor and Mr Courtenay tries it, but they're 
 nothing but men." 
 
 " Well, I'll come some more until he gets used to 
 me and tired of me," said Nina, and shook hands 
 and passed out. 
 
 Muriel, who was standing beside the door, 
 stepped on to the sill, held out his hand to the 
 woman, and said, " Good-night, Mrs. Walters." 
 Then Nina heard a few words of a rather protracted 
 discussion, Muriel insisting and the woman object- 
 ing, and finally yielding, after which Muriel, with 
 two or three long strides, half jumps, placed himself 
 by the gate after Nina had opened it for herself. 
 
 They went along in silence for a minute or two 
 until they were met by a man walking almost at a 
 run. They could see it was Courtenay. 
 
 " Come back !" said Muriel, seizing his arm as he 
 was rushing past without recognizing them, "your 
 work is done." 
 
 " He isn't dead ?" exclaimed Courtenay, half real-
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 25 1 
 
 izing his misunderstanding before it was all ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 " Oh no ! Miss Wahring has charmed him to 
 sleep." 
 
 " Sweet wonder-worker !" said Courtenay, with a 
 reverence that excluded all suggestion of presump- 
 tion. Yet the expression nettled Muriel a little. 
 For once, however, he kept still. 
 
 "Come back with us," said Nina, to break a 
 silence that she was very quick to feel embarrass- 
 ing. 
 
 " Thank you, I will, so far as my corner;" and 
 the three walked on side by side. 
 
 Courtenay said in a few moments: "That's a 
 strange dispensation down there." 
 
 " I can't see anything strange about it," snapped 
 Muriel. " The fellow's head got hit and it's addled. 
 Nothing queer about that !" 
 
 " No. But that the only son of a widow should 
 be selected !" 
 
 " You must keep pretty intelligent blocks of wood 
 in this town," said Muriel, " if they select what 
 heads they're going to hit." 
 
 " And certainly a very cruel one in this case," 
 quickly added Nina, for the sake of diverting the 
 conversation. She was conscious only of the sym- 
 pathy she was expressing, and her tact was too im- 
 mature to prevent her for the moment from uncon- 
 sciously "taking sides." 
 
 " There's a Power behind the blocks of wood," 
 said Courtenay. 
 
 " Must be a mighty stupid one !" commented 
 Muriel, half sotto voct.
 
 252 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 
 
 "It's not for us to judge it, Mr. Calmire." 
 
 "All right; I won't if you won't." 
 
 Victory, even when a little brutal, inspires a con- 
 ciliatory disposition; so a few moments later, Mu- 
 riel resumed: 
 
 "That poor chap seems to yield to your good 
 handling, Mr. Courtenay. Isn't he going to get 
 well ?" 
 
 " His sufferings can be palliated, but the doctor 
 says he can never get well." 
 
 " Then the sooner it's over, the better." 
 
 "His mother wouldn't think so," said Nina. 
 
 "And I'm notsure thatlshould/'addedCourtenay. 
 
 " You've a tender heart, Mr. Courtenay." 
 
 " And your tough opinions have not yet con- 
 vinced me that you have not, Mr. Calmire." 
 
 "Well, that's very kind in you, but I think it's a 
 man's business to govern his heart by his opinions, 
 and not his opinions by his heart. Now if it's the 
 height of wisdom to follow Nature, and she permits 
 only the fittest to survive, why should anybody want 
 an incapable like that to survive ? I hate sick peo- 
 ple anyhow." 
 
 " That doctrine of the survival of the fittest," 
 answered Courtenay calmly, " I've often thought, 
 tends to make people cruel, and raises a good many 
 hard questions. But it's a very easy doctrine for a 
 man of your proportions to get enthusiastic over." 
 
 " By that same token, sir, it ought not to be an 
 unwelcome doctrine to a man of yours. But where 
 is the answer ?" 
 
 " I think there are a good many. But here's my 
 corner, and if I walk on to preach to you to-night.
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 253 
 
 my people will be in danger of short-commons Sun- 
 day. I'd like to talk it over with you some time, 
 though. Good-night. Good-night, Miss Wahring. 
 Perhaps you can set him straight. Women see 
 these things better than men do sometimes." 
 
 As Courtenay walked swiftly away, Muriel said 
 to Nina: " I sometimes suspect there's a good deal 
 of man in that fellow, despite his cloth." 
 
 " Why, we really are getting catholic-minded/" 
 she answered. 
 
 "Thank you! By the way, if he'd stayed with 
 that sick fellow, he'd have had to take as much 
 time away from his sermon as to talk with me." 
 
 " Perhaps he considered the sick fellow a worthier 
 subject than he did you or, perhaps, a more needy 
 one. Forgive me; I didn't mean to be pert." 
 
 " Sure ?" 
 
 " Well, perhaps I did; but I was sorry for it after- 
 wards." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 After they had walked a little farther she said: 
 "I'm beginning to understand you a little. I find 
 you're a hypocrite." 
 
 "Why, what, in the name of all that's preposter- 
 ous, do you mean ? If I don't profess anything, 
 how can any of my professions be hypocritical ?" 
 
 " Oh, you profess a great deal." 
 
 " For instance ?" 
 
 " Well, you profess to be very savage." 
 
 " Well, ain't I ?" 
 
 "What do you mean by coming out here, and 
 talking big and black and fierce about wanting 
 that poor boy to die, five minutes after you've been
 
 254 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 
 
 giving his mother money to keep him alive ?" 
 
 " What makes you think I gave her money ?" 
 
 "I heard you force it on her. You're always 
 forcing something on somebody money, or an 
 opinion, or or something." 
 
 " Hm!" was all Muriel had to say. 
 
 "Well," she resumed after a moment, " haven't 
 you anything to say for your conduct?" 
 
 "I don't see why the beggar shouldn't die. I 
 don't see why the doctor shouldn't put him out of 
 his misery." 
 
 " Then what did you give his mother the money 
 for ?" 
 
 "Well, you wouldn't like them to starve, would 
 you ?" 
 
 " No; but you're trying to make out that you 
 would." 
 
 " Oh no. I'm not as bad as that." 
 
 "Just how bad are you, then ?" 
 
 "Well, I think Nature had better finish him up 
 her own way, since she's begun, and be quick 
 about it. She's pretty sure to make a botch any- 
 how; but I'm not going to stand by and let her 
 make as disgusting a botch as starvation would be. 
 I can stop that. I can't stop his jim-jams, though, 
 or I'd tackle them too." 
 
 " Hm !" it was Nina's turn to say now. 
 
 She broke the silence later, as if in the midst of 
 a train of thought, with: 
 
 " And yet you are merciless !" 
 
 " So is Nature, if you look at it in that way. 
 She's always killing off the weak, and she does it 
 painfully and cruelly. I'm a mighty sight more
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 255 
 
 merciful than she is. I'd chloroform the beggar 
 decently and in order, if I had my way." 
 
 " And yet his mother, who loves him more than 
 you do, would not let you." 
 
 " That's because she's a fool all women are, 
 over things they love." 
 
 " Perhaps that's not a misfortune for the things," 
 she commented. 
 
 " It is in this case. It would be better for the 
 boy and better for his mother if it were all o^er 
 with. She can't do all the work she might, because 
 she has to stay home with him. She gets only half 
 her share out of life, and he gets nothing and a 
 good deal less." 
 
 " But she has him, and caring for him is a happi- 
 ness to her." 
 
 " Well, I beg leave to doubt it. It's not natural 
 that it should be." 
 
 "Yes, it is to a mother." 
 
 "Well, a mother is a queer institution. If I'd 
 had one, I suppose she'd have spoiled me too, 
 taking care of me." 
 
 " I suppose nobody was ever known to be spoiled 
 for the lack of a mother ?" It was a pity that the 
 darkness hid the expression of her face. 
 
 " Do you think I'm spoiled ?" 
 
 " Awfully near it." 
 
 "Would you mind telling me how?" These 
 falls, from her, did not daze or irritate him any 
 more. 
 
 " Well, one thing, in your having so little sym- 
 pathy with feelings not your own in feeling so 
 few things."
 
 2 56 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 
 
 "Hm! I don't care to feel things that will 
 knock my judgment endways." 
 
 " But I suppose that, when you form a judgment, 
 you want it to cover everything in the case ?" 
 
 " Hulloa ! That sounds like Uncle Grand." 
 
 " Well, dorit you ?" 
 
 " I suppose I ought to." 
 
 " Surely so consistent and catholic-minded a 
 person must."" 
 
 " Don't be rough on a fellow ! Do you know 
 you kind of make me see that perhaps in this thing 
 I didn't give weight enough to the mother busi- 
 ness ?" 
 
 " Now that's being very good," she said in a way 
 that was like a caress. " Now be good some more, 
 and see if there are not some other kinds of ' busi- 
 ness ' that you're not apt to give enough weight to." 
 
 " All sorts of feelings and sich, I suppose you 
 mean ?" 
 
 " Yes, other people's." 
 
 " I dunno." He had unconsciously tried to cover 
 a retreat with a little buffoonery of expression. 
 
 " Well," ejaculated Nina, amiably, " it's some im- 
 provement to say that you don't know." 
 
 " Thank you. I'm glad your ferocity is going." 
 
 " Oh, it wouldn't do you any harm," she said 
 simply and seriously. 
 
 After a little silence she exclaimed: 
 
 " See here, I've got it !" 
 
 " What ?" 
 
 " Mr. Courtenay's reason. My mind has been fum 
 bling for it, ever since I began to think about you." 
 " So you do sometimes think about me?"
 
 Gentle Magic and Hard Philosophy. 257 
 
 "Yes; but don't feel flattered." 
 
 " Well, what have you got ?" 
 
 " Why, this. You say our hearts were made 
 only for happy feelings. Now pity, sympathy, 
 self-sacrifice are not happy feelings, but they are 
 all great things. Where would they be if there 
 were no misery in the world ?" 
 
 " I've often heard Uncle Grand talk about that," 
 Muriel interrupted. 
 
 "Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "I wouldn't have to 
 find out near so many things for myself if I could 
 always talk with him instead of wasting my time 
 with you. But that woman's misery has done good 
 even in your case, whether my troubles with you do 
 or not. The best thing 1 ever saw you do, was to 
 give her the money to-night. And it's worth all 
 the more," she said in the softest tones he ever 
 heard, as she lightly touched his arm and turned a 
 glowing face to him in the lamplight, " for all the 
 big black talk you uttered after it. Now, how 
 could you have done it, in face of your horrid 
 opinions too, if it hadn't been for the misery there ?" 
 
 "I don't see that there was anything in it to 
 make a fuss about," he said. 
 
 He never had been quite so pleased in his life, 
 but he showed his vanity by not answering her 
 question, even though he nervously deprecated her 
 compliment. 
 
 " Well, why don't you answer my question ?" she 
 persisted. 
 
 " I give it up," he said about the first time he 
 had ever been wise enough to "give up" anything.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 A BIT OF KNIGHT-ERRANTRY. 
 
 WOMAN'S dependence on man's strength has been 
 hereditary through too many rude generations, to 
 be absent from any of the present "daughters of 
 Eve." Some women love men learned, many love 
 them wise, most love them good, but all love 
 them strong. Yet there are already evolved many 
 modes of strength besides the one that all appre- 
 ciate. 
 
 Nina was now thrown frequently with three men 
 each of whom she found more interesting in his 
 own peculiar way than she had ever found any man 
 outside of the three. On their parts: Courtenayfelt 
 that he loved her; Calmire, though he had lived be- 
 yond the stage of love's happy illusions, felt himself, 
 regarding her, capable of all love's realities; and as 
 to Muriel, more than once it had crossed his mind, 
 that here was the first young woman he had met 
 who, if she were not "hide-bound" and stubborn, 
 might be capable of rising to a comprehension of 
 the deep speculations and lofty aspirations of even 
 his mighty soul. But then his wife was to com- 
 bine the grandeur of Juno with the ethereality of 
 Psyche, the passion of Venus with the purity of 
 
 258
 
 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 259 
 
 Diana, the simplicity of Cordelia with the worldly 
 tact of Beatrice; she was to be learned beyond all 
 the philosophies, and yet was to learn everything 
 from him; her mere glance was to compel his 
 allegiance, and yet her chief delight was to be in 
 submitting to his supernal self: in short, she was 
 to be everything and its opposite at once. Such a 
 creature, and such an one only, could be worthy 
 the fealty of Muriel Catmire as he conceived 
 Muriel Calmire. But lately, when he had dreamed 
 of loving some grand creature like Semiramis, he 
 had regretted that Miss Wahring was but five feet 
 four; when he had dreamed that his love would be 
 a little appealing Psyche-like darling that he could 
 carry around as he would any other toy, he had been 
 sorry that this woman consisted of a hundred and 
 forty very pretty pounds; when his reveries ran on 
 dark-eyed Eastern houris, he had begun to wish 
 that his new friend's eyes were dark; and when, 
 through some book, he had felt an echo of the 
 passion that sacrificed so many men to Mary of 
 Scotland, he had said to himself: "Oh, if Nina's 
 eyes, too, were but gray!" Perhaps he was not in 
 love with her. But it is a portentous circumstance 
 for one of the few youths of his make, to draw so 
 many and so serious comparisons between a special 
 woman and his all-embracing desires. 
 
 Nina, for her part, though not the sort of a girl 
 who is always speculating on the feeling toward 
 herself of each man she meets, was woman enough 
 to have in her sub-consciousness a set of feelings 
 which, so far as they went, told her a little of the 
 attitudes of the three men. But her intense maiden-
 
 260 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 
 
 hood prevented her examining those feelings very 
 closely. They told her enough, however, to give 
 her a faint vague perplexity regarding Muriel 
 which corresponded with his own self-contradic- 
 tory condition. Toward Calmire, her feeling was 
 even more complex. All women are match-makers, 
 and she had heard from her acquaintances many a 
 speculation, often humorous, as to who would be 
 the next Mrs. Calmire. She had heard his name 
 coupled with those of girls as young as herself, 
 and once had even been jestingly advised to "set 
 her cap" for him. This was very repugnant to 
 her. Though she had plenty of common-sense, she 
 was not without imagination, and she was young. 
 Love between one man and one woman, she had 
 rightly placed as the best of human experiences; 
 and if anything human was, in her eyes, worthy 
 of immortality, of course that love was. It had 
 not yet dawned upon her that even her ideas of 
 immortality were, on the whole, incompatible with 
 the conditions of hitman love. She had heard the 
 facile disposition of the case: " There is no marry- 
 ing or giving in marriage there;" but she had not 
 coupled with it any real conception of a love re- 
 leased from all human limitations and glorying in 
 all conscious being. Of course, then, like all young 
 women who dream the dreams she dreamed, and 
 are strangers to the thoughts she was stranger to, 
 she found the idea of anybody making a second 
 marriage, repugnant. A part of this repugnance 
 inevitably drifted in between her and Calmire. 
 She had never respected or admired a man so
 
 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 261 
 
 much, and the more she thus regarded him, the 
 more she felt the charm of his gentleness and 
 strength and wisdom, the more there grew in her 
 a feeling, of which she was but half conscious 
 however, that all her high ideals of love de- 
 manded that her interest in him should not in- 
 crease. The attraction and repulsion grew together. 
 
 But toward Courtenay, her feeling was the most 
 complex of all. His pathetic beauty as he lay, 
 cruelly marred and dead perhaps, by her hand, 
 had made her pity for him an actual passion, much 
 of which was self-reproach and sense of reparation 
 due. So far as it included a certain responsibility 
 to him, it was the germ, but only the germ, of a 
 feeling responsive to his own wild inspiration. As 
 yet, he had said no direct word to her, but she felt 
 that he loved her. This gave her a perplexing dis- 
 quietude. She had almost a notion that she 
 ought to love him, and she did not. She realized 
 the nobleness of his life and aims, she felt the love- 
 liness of his character. Sometimes she contrasted 
 his self-denying, careful, gentle life with Muriel's 
 self-indulgence, carelessness, and brusqueness; but 
 she could not love Courtenay at least yet; and 
 she could not hate Muriel yet, at least. What 
 was stranger still, she never felt toward Courtenay 
 that emotion that women so love as if she could 
 lean upon him. When she thought of Muriel, that 
 feeling was sometimes there. But when she thought 
 of Calmire, the feeling was always there as much 
 a matter of course as the solid earth beneath her 
 feet. 
 
 This is not saying that she realized all this herself
 
 262 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 
 
 or gave it nearly as much thought as is needed 
 to convey it. In complex cases, when action is de- 
 manded, how many of the dormant feelings that 
 spring up and impel us, have we ever clearly com- 
 prehended before? How much better our friends 
 often know their existence in us than we do our- 
 selves ! 
 
 It was some time before the sharp summons of 
 circumstances brought Nina's real feelings to her 
 knowledge, but of course events kept adding defi- 
 niteness in one way or another. One such event 
 came a few days after the visit to the sick boy, as 
 she and Muriel were walking, at sunset, some dis- 
 tance from the house at Fleuvemont. They were 
 talking about Courtenay's work and Muriel's 
 well, his not-work. 
 
 "You've pitched into me for laziness before," 
 said he. " Now as I said then, I don't believe I'm 
 altogether lazy. I work like the Prince of Dark- 
 ness (since you won't let me name my old friend 
 the Devil), at anything I care for." 
 
 "Then you don't care for other people, I sus- 
 pect," said Nina. 
 
 " No, not for many of them. And now that I 
 come to think of it, it seems to me that the fellows 
 I've known who've gone in for charity and all that, 
 have most of them been rather slow." 
 
 " Haven't driven four-in-hand, you mean." 
 
 " No, not altogether that, but haven't gone in 
 for the things a fellow ought to go in for." 
 
 " Such as ?" 
 
 "Well, say boating and tennis and riding, and. 
 music and society if you will,"
 
 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 263 
 
 "Unluckily for me," said Nina, " Mr. Courtenay 
 goes in for boating; and he certainly goes in for 
 charities. And I think I've heard that he is a good 
 tennis-player. Isn't he a musician too?" 
 
 " Yes, something of one." 
 
 " Why don't you like him ?" she asked quickly. 
 
 " I do like him, or at least I try to." 
 
 "Why do you have to try ?" 
 
 "Because I don't trust him," said Muriel, and 
 Nina had a queer feeling as of recognition. Yet 
 she exclaimed : 
 
 "Don't trust him? Why, what can you mean?" 
 
 " I mean that I don't trust him to look at things 
 squarely. I mean that I feel, when I'm talking 
 with him, that he'll not take a fact for what it's 
 worth compared with other facts, but that he's 
 always weighing it in the medium of his dogmas 
 instead of in the true air." 
 
 " Yes, but some things will float on water that 
 won't float on air. His dogmas sustain a good 
 deal that would fall to the ground without them." 
 
 ' I doubt that. The real work is done by some- 
 thing older and broader than his dogmas some- 
 thing that they're simply tacked on to." 
 
 "Well! It's all awfully puzzling to me!" ex- 
 claimed the girl. " Sometimes I think reason is on 
 your side, and then when I look at your life and 
 his, it seems to me, you must excuse my saying, 
 that facts are on his side." 
 
 " You mean his doing so much good and my 
 doing so little!" 
 
 "Yes, if it must be put in that way." 
 
 "Well, I guess he'd do good anyhow, no matter
 
 264 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 
 
 what he believed; and very likely I wouldn't, no 
 matter what I believed. But a good many fellows 
 who believe as I do, do do lots of good; and a good 
 many fellows who believe as he does, don't. If 
 you'll just look " 
 
 He was interrupted by a woman's scream from 
 beyond a clump of bushes near by. He rushed 
 through them. There he saw one of the maids 
 from the house, holding on with one arm to a sap- 
 ling, and shrinking from a man who stood before 
 her with his arms folded. He was not a specially 
 brutal-looking fellow, but had a mean, cruel face. 
 
 "What's this about?" said Muriel. 
 
 " It's my husband, sir," said the woman. 
 
 " Oh yes, you're Annie. I've heard about it." 
 
 " Yes, sir. He's trying to make me go back with 
 him, sir." 
 
 " What made you scream ?" 
 
 The woman did not answer. 
 
 Nina, who had followed through the bushes, saw 
 a slight shiver go through Muriel and his hands 
 contract like claws, as he jerked his head toward 
 the man. 
 
 "Did you strike her?" 
 
 " None of your business." 
 
 " Yes, it is my business. She's a woman, and I 
 heard her scream." 
 
 As Nina watched Muriel, he seemed fairly to ex- 
 pand before her eyes, into something portentous 
 and baleful. 
 
 The man answered: "She's my wife and I'll do 
 what I please with her," and he reached out his 
 hand and took a step toward her. She gave a 
 little cry and started back.
 
 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 265 
 
 " Stop!" roared Muriel. There is no other word 
 to describe it. But his aspect was more terrifying 
 than his voice: that, indeed, at once fell to its 
 ordinary volume. " Now listen to me," he said in 
 tones that seemed made of steel, and he seemed 
 made of steel himself as he stood rigid and immense. 
 Nothing stirred about him but his deep chest, and 
 his tense fingers strained apart and grasping slowly 
 and separately to and fro. His face was pale with 
 a tinge of livid green, his deep eyes took that hor- 
 rible merciless look of a creature watching its prey, 
 only that their beauty and intelligence made them 
 just that much more fearful. 
 
 At Muriel's order, the man had dropped his hands 
 like a soldier at the word of command, and stood 
 facing him. He spoke again in tones whose delib- 
 erate calm was grim beside the awful aspect of his 
 rage: 
 
 " Now listen to me. Whatever your rights over 
 that woman may be, you have no right to abuse 
 her. If you touch her, I'll kill you. I mean ex- 
 actly what I say." 
 
 He had no weapon, but as Nina saw and heard 
 him, she no more doubted that he would kill the 
 man than she doubted his presence before her. 
 She felt herself strained up with part of his 
 strength. Even her sex's fear was banished from 
 her. She simply waited to see what was to be the 
 next irresistible movement of this awful power. 
 
 A man may be coward enough to frighten a 
 woman, and yet have a half-stupid stubbornness 
 that keeps him up until the actual contact with 
 danger. Such a man faced Muriel. He even had
 
 266 A Bit of Knight-errantry. 
 
 some blundering notion that his rights were being 
 invaded. There was no more thought of fight in 
 him than if he had stood before a tornado, and yet 
 he put on a cheap bold front, and repeated after a 
 few moments' pause: "She's my wife, and I'll do 
 what I please with her. Who are you ?" 
 
 " It's no matter who I am. Touch her, and I'll 
 kill you." 
 
 The man knew that he would, and turned away. 
 
 " Go to the house, Annie," said Muriel, " and I 
 will follow you." 
 
 Then he turned to Nina, but could not smile: his 
 rage so possessed him through and through. He 
 said: 
 
 " Let us go back." 
 
 He was breathing deeply and rapidly, almost 
 with great sighs. This too he could not control, or 
 did not seem to care to try. 
 
 Before they had gone many steps he stumbled. 
 The strain had used up his strength. Then he 
 was able to laugh, and he said to Nina : 
 
 "It's too bad to have to put you through such a 
 scene." 
 
 " You are something terrible," said the girl. 
 
 And so one step more had been made toward 
 definiteness in her relations with the three men. 
 She was afraid of Muriel Calmire, and he was the 
 first thing that she ever had been afraid of. But 
 she feared him as one fears Nature's forces: under 
 such fear, is reliance absolute.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 IN THE SAME BOAT. 
 
 LIFE at Fleuvemont continued during September 
 in about the simple courses already indicated. 
 
 The ladies ran off for two little visits, once to a 
 certain nook in the Adirondacks, and once to Lenox. 
 The first time, Muriel was so lonely and ill-natured 
 that Calmire, following an instinct of earlier years, 
 went off to Saratoga for a couple of days and took 
 Muriel with him: the next time the ladies went off, 
 Muriel, forewarned, made arrangements to travel 
 on some devices of his own, and after he got 
 started, felt almost as much at a loss without his 
 Fleuvemont life, as he had felt with it when the 
 ladies were away before. 
 
 Moreover during September, as some people 
 were driven toward town from their more remote 
 summer fastnesses, a few visitors had been drawn 
 to Fleuvemont for a day or two at a time. They were 
 principally lone men whom Calmire compassionated 
 for a Sunday; and more than one of them, as well as 
 some others at neighborhood gatherings, aroused 
 in Muriel, as Courtenay had, regarding Nina, that 
 congenital jealousyuniversal in strong young males, 
 or possibly some jealousy a little more special. 
 
 October had come, and one warm night, as the 
 
 267
 
 268 In the Same Boat. 
 
 four at Fleuvemont were seated on the piazza 
 silently watching the twilight and the clear moon, 
 Muriel suddenly exclaimed: 
 
 "What a night for October ! Come, Miss Nina, 
 let's go on the river." 
 
 " Delightful!" exclaimed Nina, rising. 
 
 " I think best not," said Mrs. Wahring. 
 
 " It's perfectly safe in a rowboat," said Calmire, 
 rising too. 
 
 " I I'm afraid of the night air for Nina," rejoined 
 the lady. 
 
 " Well," said Calmire, "let's at least walk around 
 the piazza and see if the sky is not as beautiful on 
 the other side," and he offered her his arm. 
 
 The young people did not follow. As soon as 
 they were left out of earshot, Calmire said: 
 
 " Why don't you let her go ?" 
 
 " What ! alone with that young pirate ?" 
 
 "Certainly. Under any ordinary circumstances 
 I'd trust any real good girl with him as I'd trust 
 her with her mother. Let them go. We were 
 young once!" 
 
 "Yes, that's just the trouble." 
 
 "That we were ?" 
 
 " That they are." 
 
 ' It's no question of convention here," he remon- 
 strated. " Why, they're almost cousins, as we 
 were when we went rowing, let me see, twenty- 
 eight years ago this month. It didn't hurt either 
 of us much." 
 
 " Didn't it?" said she, affecting a sigh and plac- 
 ing one hand over the left side of her matronly 
 bosom,
 
 Tn the Same Boat. 269 
 
 "You Sapphira! you were engaged to Wahring 
 at the time!" 
 
 " But you didn't know it !" 
 
 " Didtit I ? But didn't you enjoy yourself, even 
 if Wahring was in China?" 
 
 " Well, to be candid, perhaps I did." 
 
 "'To be candid, perhaps'! So did I. Well, 
 give your daughter a good time too." 
 
 "Ah, but your nephew is not you." 
 
 "No, he's certainly better fitted to give the girl 
 a pleasant hour to remember than I am now." 
 
 "Your modesty, like other diseases coming late 
 in life, is positively incurable. I know she enjoys 
 your society more than his." 
 
 " So did you Wahring's more than mine. Yet 
 you had a good time." 
 
 He did not know whether he had deliberated the 
 shot or not, but he felt that in comparing his own 
 relation with the girl, to Wahring's with his fiancee, 
 the shot was a good one. It told, and as they 
 neared the young people, Mrs. Wahring said so 
 they could hear: 
 
 "Certainly there are few nights like this." 
 
 "Too few to miss," responded Muriel. "Miss 
 Nina's not afraid to go if you'll consent. I'll take 
 good care of her." 
 
 " The night is milder than I thought. She may 
 
 go-" 
 
 The two were soon in the boat. After the usual 
 chat on surrounding objects and the incidents at- 
 tending their start, they settled into a not uncon- 
 genial silence, both gradually yielding to the medi-
 
 270 In the Same Boat. 
 
 tative influences of the scene. At last Nina broke 
 it by humming a little song to the rhythm of 
 his oars, he improvising a florid and sometimes 
 burlesque accompaniment. At last he got so 
 boisterous with harmonious growls and explosions 
 that they both stopped for laughing, and soon 
 grew silent and meditative again. After a while, 
 she said: 
 
 "The night is no longer restful to me. You 
 have been too busy all Summer filling it with 
 questions." 
 
 "And you're disposed to feel unkindly toward 
 me for it?" he asked. 
 
 " Perhaps I ought not to. I've heard you and 
 your uncle say a thousand times that one should 
 trust truth, no matter where it leads. But what 
 you've given me, so far, seems to lead nowhere," 
 and her tone was sad. 
 
 "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Now you're talking in 
 the commercial wav. One should not weigh con- 
 sequences. Truth for its own sake is the thing, I 
 suppose: only that's a sort of truism. What it 
 really means must be that we can trust truth to 
 lead rightly whether we see the way or not." 
 
 " I don't know about that!" she responded, again 
 sadly. "I don't find the leadings very pleasant." 
 " But, Miss Nina, you don't mean ' 
 
 "Yes, I do," she interrupted, and went on pas- 
 sionately : " I mean that all this Summer, the whole 
 world I used to stand on has been crumbling under 
 my feet; I mean that the beliefs, hopes, fears, if you 
 will, that shaped my former life, are nearly all gone, 
 and those of them that I still hold, I find I used to
 
 Tn the Same Boat. 27 r 
 
 hold for wrong reasons. I find that most of what 
 has been taught me, was taught by ignorance and 
 often by virtual dishonesty. Those who taught 
 me, thought it better to give a wrong argument for 
 a right opinion, than to give none at all. You 
 can't tell what realizing all this means to me, be- 
 cause to you it came more gradually, and half of it 
 came without trampling to death anything you 
 held dear before. But my old beliefs were old 
 friends, almost old parents; I had taken them so 
 much as a matter of course, that I did not know 
 what they had been to me, until they began to dis- 
 appear, and here I see them destroyed, and so little 
 left me in their place ! I feel deserted, unsup- 
 ported, alone ! I'm very wretched, Mr. Calmire, if 
 you can understand that, when every doubt of your 
 own seems only a pillar for your pride. My pillars 
 are all fallen, and I sometimes feel as if the life 
 were being crushed out of me." 
 
 Had a meteor fallen into the boat, the boy could 
 not have been more astonished. 
 
 "Why, you astound me, Miss Nina. I knew that 
 you were getting more patient with us, but I did 
 not know that you were becoming one of us." 
 
 " I'm not one of you! You're contented and even 
 conceited, if you'll pardon my saying so, in your 
 position, and I'm simply wretched and very humble 
 how humble, my talking to you in this way, 
 ought to help you imagine." 
 
 Now, among the virtues which Mr. Muriel Cal- 
 mire intended to practice some day when he 
 should become old and superior to temptation, 
 that is to say when he should have had all the
 
 272 In the Same Boat. 
 
 pleasure that the exercise of such virtues might 
 interfere with, he had lately begun to include hu- 
 mility and candor in acknowledging defeat. There 
 were very few pretty things that appealed to his 
 aesthetic sense in vain, and these pretty virtues, with 
 several others entirely too beautiful for daily use, 
 had already several times (especially in novels) 
 been honored by his passing admiration. But they 
 had never appealed to him with anything like 
 the same vigor that they did when manifested in 
 the proud and, as it happened, beautiful creature 
 now before him a person whose whole association 
 with him seemed to be a constant demand for just 
 such concessions from him as she was now astound- 
 ing him by making herself. The boy's first emotion 
 was triumph, and it had almost taken possession 
 of his tongue, when there came rushing over him a 
 flood of sympathy and contrition such as he had 
 never known. The conflict of feelings started him 
 into a hysterical laugh, through which he jerked 
 out the consolatory observation: " Why, Miss Nina, 
 I I didn't suppose it could make such a dif- 
 ference." 
 
 But the girl understood his feeling, and was 
 better satisfied to go on: 
 
 " I've thought and thought and thought, and 
 for my soul's sake, I can't escape seeing that if half 
 you and Mr. Calmire say, is true; and if one de- 
 pends on reason alone without Faith, Christ's 
 divinity, a personal God, and immortality itself are 
 all dogma. There's no good proof for any of them. 
 The moral law is, I suppose, after all the main 
 thing: but with Christ and God and Immortality
 
 In the Same Boat. 273 
 
 gone, I don't see why people believe in that. Do 
 you ?" 
 
 "Why, of course I do. But before I tell you, I 
 want to stick a pin or two. I don't see that 
 Christ's 'gone,' as you call it. I suspect he's a his- 
 toric fact that you can't get around; and as to God: 
 there's certainly something running the machine 
 and keeping it in some sort of order; and as to im- 
 mortality: well, we don't know so much about that. 
 But this is pretty considerable of a universe, and 
 we have a pretty significant share in it, whether 
 we're immortal or not; and either way, we ought 
 to behave ourselves just as we should if we were, I 
 suppose: only it's such a bore to do so. But upon 
 my soul, as you sit there, you look as if you ought 
 to be immortal, whether you are or not." 
 
 " Thanks, very much!" answered the lady. " But 
 suppose you take the trouble to keep serious a 
 little longer. There's something better than com- 
 pliments to be had out of you occasionally. Now, 
 about behaving ourselves, I no longer know 
 if right is right, or wrong is wrong, or if each is not 
 the other. I sometimes feel as if I could be wicked. 
 But I won't." 
 
 "Well, why won't you?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Why won't Mr. Calmire ? 
 He believes none of the things I used to. Why 
 won't you, if you can help it? For I wouldn't be 
 talking to you as I'm talking now,if I had not seen 
 that in your way you do sometimes try to do what 
 is right." 
 
 " I do try, Miss Nina, in some things. But I like 
 to have a good time too."
 
 2 74 I n the Same Boat. 
 
 " Yes, I know all that, but at bottom you're true. 
 What makes you so? You're not so from love of 
 God, or from love of anything else I can see, but 
 your precious self, except, of course, your uncle." 
 
 "Do you think I'm true, Miss Nina?" 
 
 "Haven't I said it? Would I have said any of 
 these things to you if I didn't believe that ?" 
 
 " Well then, why have you always been so down 
 on me?" 
 
 " Because you're so seldom just to yourself. You 
 have a great, deep soul, and yet you lead a shallow, 
 empty life. You are really that earnest, thought- 
 ful man you appeared to be the first moment I saw 
 you ; and yet you have no aims, and you never work 
 at anything: all the deep things you've told me, 
 you either studied because you had to, or ' picked 
 up,' as you say, largely because you happen to 
 have an uncle who drops them; but your life, as 
 you've candidly described it to me, has been mainly 
 one of idleness and dissipation." 
 
 " But I never expected to keep up those things: 
 a fellow must sow his wild oats, but sometimes I 
 do ' keep up a devil of a thinking.' " 
 
 "Mr. " she began remonstrantly. 
 
 "Quotation-marks! quotation-marks!" he cried, 
 dropping his oars and holding up both hands. 
 
 " Oh, well, I can't understand you men," she ex- 
 claimed. "You're weak creatures at best." 
 
 " Is my Uncle Legrand a weak creature ?" 
 
 " He's had much practice in being strong," she an- 
 swered; yet she pondered a little over some things 
 she had seen in him. After a pause, she continued: 
 
 " But I never can keep you to anything. I want
 
 In the Same Boat, 275 
 
 you to talk to me. I want you to tell me how, 
 without any God, you and Mr. Calmire have any 
 notion of right and wrong." 
 
 "Mr. Calmire won't admit that he has no God," 
 said Muriel, "and I don't know that I will, but I 
 haven't much of an opinion of mine." 
 
 " I did Mr. Calmire injustice," she said. " But I 
 can hardly think of any God unlike my own. But 
 go on and tell me how it is that you have a right 
 and wrong." 
 
 He had resumed rowing, but he stopped againj 
 as he did afterwards whenever he got specially 
 interested. 
 
 " Well," he answered, " we have all the experience 
 of mankind at our backs pronouncing certain things 
 right and certain others wrong. The religions 
 don't really do anything more than pick up this 
 experience and enforce it. Of course you're not 
 so blind as to attribute all morality to Christianity. 
 Men can't work together, at least in fine work, 
 without being able to rely on each other. Slavery 
 alone could build the pyramids, perhaps, but it 
 couldn't build the Parthenon and the Taj. There 
 were morals behind those two, and behind the 
 pyramids also, I've no doubt: certainly there were 
 religions. Now religions all agree pretty well on 
 fundamentals, allowing for different degrees of 
 civilization of course." 
 
 " But you don't admit any religion to be super- 
 natural, and what you say only proves all that 
 splendid morality to be human; and, after all, the 
 heart cries out for something more than the narrow 
 facts of our little lives."
 
 276 In the Same Boat. 
 
 " Unquestionably. And it's a very good heart for 
 doing so. Else we should not have any 'splendid 
 morality,' but should be still among the 'narrow 
 facts' in the 'little lives' of anthropoid apes. All 
 progress lies in that cry. The morality is here 
 though, and we are not leading the lives of the 
 anthropoid apes." 
 
 " But the enforcing of the morals ?" she ex- 
 claimed, "the making men live up to them?" 
 
 "Well, I haven't seen that religion has much to 
 do with that," he replied. " I'd trust the agnostics 
 of my acquaintance to observe them just as far as 
 I would trust the Christians, and so would you." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps I would," she admitted. " But 
 why does anybody live up to them ? Why, I've heard 
 one of the best women I know, say that if she 
 didn't believe in a hereafter, she wouldn't hesitate 
 at any crime. She even said that that she might 
 run away from her husband." 
 
 Muriel laughed and said: " I heard Uncle Grand 
 talking about something like that the other day. 
 He said that he'd often heard such remarks from 
 such people, and that they simply hadn't thought 
 about what they were saying. Either your friend 
 was mistaken in her own view of how she would act, 
 or you are mistaken in calling her a good woman. 
 Do you believe she really would do anything dis- 
 graceful ?" 
 
 Now it was Nina's turn to laugh, and she said: 
 "No! She couldn't if she tried, and wild horses 
 couldn't drag her away from her husband." 
 
 "Probably she spoke of that, just because it was 
 the most extreme idea that could enter her head," 
 said Muriel.
 
 In the Same Boat. 277 
 
 "But," insisted Nina, "why does any person 
 keep good without a religious faith if any person 
 does?" 
 
 "Without a dogmatic faith, you mean ! Mainly 
 from force of habit a habit of sympathy with 
 mankind and enthusiasm for justice, that has beer- 
 accumulating through all the generations. Any- 
 body inherits his share of it, and the whole gath- 
 ered drift of it surrounds him and bears him on 
 with it." 
 
 " But what started it ?" she asked. 
 
 "First love, then family affection, then friendship, 
 then the realization, more or less distinct, that the 
 greatest good of each man is in the greatest good 
 of the greatest number of men. This has been 
 lived up to with more or less directness, but always 
 with increasing directness, until now it is distinctly 
 realized as a rule of conduct. What did I read to 
 you long ago on the piazza ?" 
 
 " But what is good ?" she demanded. " There 
 comes in just my trouble." 
 
 "Ah, yes," he said, " the dogmatic meanings are 
 confused with the practical ones. You've been 
 told that only that is ' good ' which is pleasing in 
 the sight of God, and even that if you act from 
 any less motive than ' love of God,' you are not 
 'good,' though the same teachers tell you that you 
 are good if you act from love of your neighbor, 
 and the best-known teacher of them all makes the 
 test of love for your neighbor, that you shall love 
 him as yourself he seems even to have tacitly ad- 
 mitted that there can be 'good' in loving one's 
 self, up at least to the degree where one can love 
 one's neighbor too,"
 
 278 In the Same Boat. 
 
 " A Christian policy which most of us are entitled 
 to the credit of following !" she quietly observed. 
 
 " Yes," he agreed, " because it's common sense, 
 not because it's Christianity. But don't go to iron- 
 ing me now.. You interrupt the lecture. Where 
 was I ?" 
 
 "You're very good and amiable to-night," she 
 said. 
 
 " You've made me so," he replied, " and yet I'm 
 not 'good ' for love of God or even love of myself. 
 Yet, you call me ' good ' all the same. Now, don't 
 you see distinctly that you applied that word to 
 my actions because you are amiable enough to de- 
 rive satisfaction from my humble exposition in 
 other words, you call me 'good' because I'm giv- 
 ing you pleasure ?" 
 
 " Yes, that's true. I say you're good because 
 you act in a way agreeable to me." 
 
 " Well, now, Miss Nina, here is the centre of the 
 whole subject, and you must ponder it carefully, 
 because it won't be clear to you at once, or before 
 you've gone over it many times. I defy you to find 
 a definition of ' good ' implied in any religion or sys- 
 tem of morals, that doesn't depend upon the idea of 
 increasing happiness for somebody. No man ever 
 had any idea of good, but happiness. ' Good for 
 goodness' sake,' like ' truth for truth's sake,' ' beauty 
 for beauty's sake,' and all that run of cheap phrases 
 really means nothing the repetition of a word is 
 no explanation of it. Actually, the most abstract 
 motive to good conduct ever urged, is to please 
 God to add to his happiness a motive in the 
 right direction by the way, because it is away
 
 In the Same Boat. 279 
 
 from selfishness. The same is true, in being good 
 to your neighbor. But even the ascetic, whether 
 St. Simeon on his pillar, or the Hindoo under the 
 car of Juggernaut, is simply being good to himself 
 increasing the sum total of his own happiness, 
 (at least he supposes so,) by throwing away a lot of 
 happiness here to get a great deal more hereafter." 
 
 " Why, this is all very strange to me, Mr. Mu- 
 riel. I always supposed that the grand thing was 
 to despise happiness." 
 
 " That's all cant. Take till we next meet," 
 (What did he know of when they would next meet ?) 
 " to see if you can think up a good act that doesn't 
 tend to increase the amount of happiness in the 
 universe somewhere, some time; or a bad act that 
 doesn't tend to diminish it. And conversely, try to 
 think of any act that would add to the happiness 
 in the universe (including that of God and angels 
 if you want to bring them in), and see if it's not a 
 good act; and think of any act that would tend to 
 diminish the aggregate happiness, and see if it's 
 not a bad act." 
 
 " There does seem a great deal in what you say," 
 Nina admitted. " But why, then, should not a man 
 devote himself entirely to his own happiness?" 
 
 "Because," answered Muriel, with the superi- 
 ority of philosophy to practice so frequent in 
 youth and after, "for one reason, the veriest ig- 
 noramus knows that that's not the way to get 
 it. Happiness is a faint star that one sees quicker 
 by glancing at the brighter one of duty which 
 lies near it. Guess somebody must have said that 
 before!"
 
 2 So In the Same Boat. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Muriel, is this you? A month ago 
 you would have quietly appropriated it to your- 
 self !" 
 
 " Perhaps ! I don't know. I like to be strictly 
 true with you. Well, here's another new develop- 
 ment. Somehow it no longer seems to me a mere 
 abstraction of the text-books that selfishness does 
 not bring happiness, even to the selfish individual. 
 Yes! I have been changing! I think I see for my- 
 self now why working for the greatest good of the 
 greatest number is, in the long-run, the surest means 
 of each individual securing his own good. Such is 
 the law under which we live, and all moralists have 
 caught glimpses of it, more or less distinct." 
 
 "Yes, perhaps," she meditated. "But how are 
 we to judge when duties are in conflict?" 
 
 "Just as we judge which oar to use in pulling 
 the boat around by experience, which of course 
 includes teaching from previous experience." 
 
 " But it's so much harder in moral questions," 
 she objected. 
 
 " I can't help that," he said. " The difficulty of 
 navigation is no argument against the use of such 
 methods as we have. You don't pretend that re- 
 ligion is an infallible help ? Look at the Inqui- 
 sition, witch-burning, and stewed Quaker. In 
 fact, I'm inclined to think that religion is a fearful 
 misleader." 
 
 " But in pulling the boat around," objected Nina, 
 " there's no selfish element to fight against. There 
 is in moral questions." 
 
 " There's a selfish element in most questions," 
 answered Muriel, " even in pulling the boat around. 
 You see that splendid constellation right by those
 
 In the Same Boat. 28 r 
 
 clouds over the western hills ? Now, I can pull this 
 boat around so as to bring you face to face with it, 
 or so as to bring myself face to face with it. I'm 
 going to resist the bias of self, and bring you face 
 to face with it, for I'm going to turn now. I haven't 
 rowed very far while this trivial conversation has 
 been going on: for a fellow can't talk fit for any- 
 thing with all his blood in his muscles. But it's time 
 to go back, nevertheless. I'll farther unfold the 
 mysteries of our moral nature, on the way home." 
 
 " First let me tell you," said Nina, as he pro- 
 ceeded to back water with his port oar and to put 
 a little extra strength into his starboard, " that I 
 do think there seems some ground to stand on in 
 what you've been telling me. I feel better for it. 
 But I don't half like your speaking in a sportive 
 way of such things, as you just did." 
 
 " Well, my dear young lady," he proceeded, as 
 he settled down to his measured stroke, and she 
 shifted herself into an easier and more recumbent 
 position, and stuck her little right thumb over the 
 side into the water, where the hand and wrist seemed 
 to Muriel more dazzling than the moonlit swirl that 
 the thumb threw up " Well, my dear young lady, 
 there are two reasons for that, two at least, as there 
 are for most things. One is that I'm rather a sport- 
 ive sort of chap, as you have frequently been compli- 
 mentary enough to observe (in yourown language, 
 however); and the other is" (and here he stopped 
 rowing and lifted upon her that ponderous look 
 which somehow she had grown to enjoy bracing 
 herself to receive), "that when I'm talking over 
 these subjects, their depth presents such a contrast
 
 282 In the Same Boat. 
 
 to the shallowness of the best opinions I or any 
 man can form upon them, that it stirs my sense of 
 humor. But, don't think again, when I speak light- 
 ly in such connections,that I'm feeling lightly. I'm 
 only indulging in a little unwonted modesty re- 
 garding my own opinions." 
 
 " You caught that from your uncle, too !" she 
 said. 
 
 "Thank you, I didn't know it merited such 
 praise." 
 
 "I've heard you, too," she continued, "indulge 
 your sense of humor pretty freely regarding other 
 people's opinions on similar subjects." 
 
 " Then do vouchsafe me a little grace for treat- 
 ing my own in the same way." 
 
 "Yes, yes; you're not as bad as you were two 
 months ago. Then you had unbounded respect 
 for your own opinions. But your uncle has given 
 you a good deal of judicious snubbing in that time, 
 I fancy. Hasn't he ?" 
 
 " So has somebody else, Miss. But my uncle 
 always does it kindly, and somebody else has not 
 always been as gentle as she is to-night. Perhaps 
 she has learned something, too!" 
 
 " Merciful heavens ! Haven't I told you that I 
 have ? But do go on. You've been wandering in 
 your mind ever since you turned the boat around." 
 
 " That is," he answered, " ever since the moon- 
 light has been shining on your face." 
 
 " Evidently," she retorted, " it has been shining 
 on your brain." 
 
 If Nina's face could be taken as a test, the moon- 
 light was rosy for a moment. Muriel went on:
 
 In the Same Boat. 283 
 
 " No, with my back to the moon, my brain is 
 better protected than before." 
 
 " Well, then," she said, " perhaps you can go on 
 rationally. You were admitting what I said, that 
 there is a selfish element to fight in making nearly 
 all moral decisions." 
 
 " So there is. But it doesn't follow from that, 
 that we have any other weapons to fight it with 
 than just those we have; and they have come 
 through experience always, of course, including 
 that of our ancestors." 
 
 " But," she retorted, " you talk as if there were 
 no such thing as conscience." 
 
 " Certainly there is such a thing," he replied. 
 " But we got our moral sense from the experience 
 of our ancestors, developed by our own, just as we 
 got our color sense or any other sense. The sense 
 of moral beauty was developed in just the same 
 way as the sense of physical beauty, by sympathy 
 with fit objects and antipathy from repulsive 
 ones. Evil is a repulsive object. I don't deny 
 that religious enthusiasm has often been a good 
 defence against it. I do assert, though, that 
 it's often been a bad one. I assert, too, that most 
 of the best men I know are getting along without 
 it." 
 
 " Without enthusiasm ?" 
 
 " I said religious enthusiasm. I meant the kind 
 that hinges on a professed knowledge of the super- 
 natural. I don't mean that they get along without 
 moral enthusiasm: that's a natural thing, for morals 
 are a set of natural facts right before our compre- 
 hension. There's nothing supernatural about them,
 
 284 In the Same Boat. 
 
 though folks used to think so. Still less do I mean 
 that we are without enthusiasm for our common hu- 
 manity. Both these enthusiasms are possible with- 
 out the slightest tinge of supernatural sanction." 
 
 Evidently Mr. Muriel's association with his uncle 
 for the past two months had been expanding his 
 information on the subjects he was discoursing 
 upon so glibly, and possibly his association with 
 Miss Wahring had been quickening his interest in 
 them. 
 
 "But why," asked Nina after a moment, "do 
 you object so to supernatural sanction ? Surely, 
 it would be a good thing if we could have it." 
 
 "Assuming that it would, which is clear assump- 
 tion, we haven't got it, and as soon as men claim to 
 have it, they prove they have not got it by show- 
 ing that the samples of what all claim to be the 
 same thing, are not at all like each other. One 
 man's religion contradicts another's. Then they 
 begin to quarrel. The worst bloodsheds in history 
 have come from those quarrels. Dynastic and ter- 
 ritorial wars and persecutions have been nothing 
 to religious ones. So, too, the worst domestic and 
 social quarrels are the religious ones." 
 
 " Well, perhaps it all may be as you say, but I 
 never thought over it much." 
 
 " Girls don't. We're made to help them." 
 
 " Perhaps some of these days you'll see some 
 things that girls were made to help men in, too." 
 
 "What things? I don't know anything but 
 looking pretty that men can't beat women at. 
 What else is there ?" 
 
 "Sympathizing."
 
 In the Same Boat. 285 
 
 "Oh, I always thought any fool could do that." 
 
 " That depends on what you mean by a fool. 
 You're not able to do much of it, I'm afraid. But 
 now I'll give you a touch of your uncle," she added, 
 resuming an upright position and wiping the water 
 from her hand. "What's knowledge good for?" 
 
 "To increase happiness." 
 
 " Good ! What are the arts good for?" 
 
 " To increase happiness." 
 
 " Good again ! You see what a convert you've 
 been making. Now, on your own reasoning, sym- 
 pathy is the highest of the arts. It does more for 
 happiness than any other art." 
 
 " I never thought of that." 
 
 " Because you never felt the need of it. Because 
 you never suffered, even as I have been suffering 
 for the past few weeks." 
 
 " Haven't I? Now, if you are such a believer in 
 sympathy, why don't you exercise more of it on a 
 poor devil like me?" 
 
 " ' Poor devil ' is good. You're the last man to 
 admit yourself an object of compassion. Why, I 
 began our acquaintance by pitying you, and much 
 thanks I got !" 
 
 "But then I do have my tastes and feelings and 
 even aspirations, and some of them are not un- 
 worthy of even your interest, and yet you don't 
 seem to have cared much for them at least not 
 until to-night, and then it seems to have been 
 principally because you wanted to pump me." 
 
 " Oh, you stupid boy ! don't you see that I 
 wouldn't have 'pumped' you, as you call it, if I 
 hadn't grown interested in what you have in you
 
 286 In the Same Boat. 
 
 to pump? Haven't I told you so before to-night? 
 But my not having made it apparent to you before, 
 supports what I've begun to suspect that I'm not 
 blessed with a first-class genius for sympathy my- 
 self, and that such as I have, is not very well de- 
 veloped." 
 
 " Practise it on me, won't you ?" 
 
 "I'm not sure you deserve it." 
 
 " I don't mind trying to deserve it. But you 
 have seemed so awfully far off." 
 
 "And yet, Mr. Muriel," and her beautiful candid 
 eyes looked straight into his, in the bright moon- 
 light, while she said, "our opinions don't seem so 
 far apart as they used to. Except that I believe 
 more fully than you do that God is behind it all, 
 most of the differences left between us, seem to me 
 mere words." 
 
 " Upon my soul, I hope so. Do you ?" 
 
 "Yes!"
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 DEPENDENCE. 
 
 FROM the cleft in the hills away under the ma- 
 jestic clouds that Muriel had pointed out, came a 
 puff of wind. The sky had been growing darker, 
 not with that pervading mist which hides all the 
 stars, but with more clouds and heavier, which 
 made the stars between their rifts seem all the 
 brighter. Over in the West, throbbed, almost 
 gently, a glow that was the last of many reflections 
 of far-off lightnings. The next time, the wind 
 came, not with a puff, but with a burst, and the 
 gentle glows in the western sky became swift- 
 climbing flames that set the edges of the clouds 
 on fire; and there was thunder, but muttered so 
 low that they would not have heard if they had 
 not been intent. 
 
 " It's coming," said Muriel. 
 
 "Oh, how glorious!" cried the girl, and then 
 again the western sky burned for an instant as if 
 the sun had just set. 
 
 Then: " I come," boomed the thunder. 
 
 " It's glorious, glorious, glorious !" echoed Mu- 
 riel. " But I'll be getting you wet." 
 
 " I'd like to know how you'll be responsible for 
 it," said the girl. 
 
 " I always feel responsible for any woman I
 
 288 Dependent, 
 
 have with me," answered the boy, as he bent hard 
 to his oars. "And for you I feel wry responsible." 
 
 She smiled at him and hummed some contented 
 little tune. 
 
 " How you do make the boat go !" she said. " I 
 actually see foam come back from the bows." 
 And then she said to herself: " How strong he is ! 
 And he is pulling so because he wants to save me 
 from the storm." Muriel exerting himself, was a 
 new Muriel, and exerting himself for somebody 
 else, almost a strange one: but she liked the novel- 
 ties, and felt as woman always feels when the man 
 before her shows himself strong. 
 
 The storm came fast, and the black waves were 
 high. The lightning was soon no play of reflec- 
 tions, but split great jagged rifts through the sky 
 over the heights, and the flashes showed boats 
 already cowering under reefed sails. The peaks 
 flung the thunder to each other, and it rolled 
 down the precipices. 
 
 "When the thunder rolls down, it will fall into 
 the river, and can't catch us," laughed Nina. 
 
 "Almost anything can catch us at the rate we're 
 making," said Muriel. " Why don't you get 
 scared ?" 
 
 " Scared?" with a long dwell on the a. 
 
 "Why, yes. Other women would." 
 
 "You don't know me," she answered very 
 quietly from the darkness. For now they could 
 not even see each other except as the lightning 
 flashed. 
 
 " By Jove, I didn't !"
 
 Dependence. 289 
 
 " But Jove himself has shown you to me," he 
 added a second later, when the next flash came and 
 showed her not leaning back languidly, but erect 
 against the glory, in her close white gown, her 
 proud bosom swelling forward as her arms strained 
 on the tiller-ropes, her beautiful lips set firm, her 
 nostrils dilated, her calm eyes peering far to catch 
 her bearings, and her hair made, by the lightning, 
 a halo around her pure face. 
 
 Did you ever pull a boat hard? If you did, 
 against wind or tide, or other men, you can under- 
 stand how Muriel, seeing this image, recognized it 
 but did not feel it, until quiet moments later. But 
 in such moments, how often it came, and how 
 vividly ! 
 
 A big drop splashed on his left hand. 
 
 " Here it is," said he. " You must put on my 
 coat." 
 
 " Oh no !" 
 
 "What?" said he, like the crack of a whip. 
 " This is no time for nonsense. You'll be wet to 
 the skin." 
 
 " So will you." 
 
 " It makes no difference if I am. Besides, the 
 exercise will keep me warm. You can do nothing 
 but sit there till your teeth chatter. Here!" 
 
 He took his Norfolk jacket from under his 
 thwart and crawled toward her. The boat was 
 pitching about so that if he had stood up, he would 
 have toppled over. 
 
 "Put this on." 
 
 And for the first time in her life, she vielded to 
 compulsion, and she liked it.
 
 290 Dependence. 
 
 " I don't want any cigars," she uttered between 
 two little laughs. She had put her hand in a 
 pocket while fumbling for a sleeve. 
 
 " Oh, there's a watch and a lot of things there," 
 he said. " Let me have it a moment." 
 
 As he groped for it in the dark, he touched her 
 hand and felt an impulse to kiss it, but the boat 
 was rolling in the trough, a little flurry of rain 
 came, and his impulse hardly had a chance to be- 
 come distinct enough for him to know whether he 
 wanted to kiss the hand because it was hers, or 
 simply because it was a woman's. He knew later, 
 though; especially when he reflected that he had 
 never in his life before wanted to kiss a woman on 
 the hand. 
 
 " Now," said he, " I have the coat by the collar, 
 and am holding the inside toward you. Feel 
 until you know your right arm is in the right arm- 
 hole, then I'll release it to you." 
 
 In a second he almost felt her in his arms; and 
 afterwards he had occasion to realize how abso- 
 lutely he respected her. 
 
 " Now you've made a man of me," she said, 
 laughing, as she settled into the coat and into her 
 seat. 
 
 "You didn't need it !" he answered, and turned 
 to crawl back to his thwart. 
 
 He felt for his oars and they were gone. In 
 his impetuosity, he had neglected to stow them, 
 and they had no stops. He was entitled, however, 
 to the excuse, such as it was, that he was used to 
 stops. 
 
 " Why don't you row ?" Nina called.
 
 Dependence. 29 1 
 
 " The oars Wait a moment." 
 
 He wanted to spare her, somehow. A flash of 
 lightning came and showed the situation. She 
 said nothing. 
 
 "There's really no occasion to be alarmed," said 
 he. " Nothing serious can happen to us. We'll 
 be blown ashore somewhere pretty soon, at this 
 rate, and even if I had the oars, I'm not sure it 
 wouldn't be the wisest thing to get ashore at the 
 very nearest point we can, instead of rowing down 
 the river in the rain at a snail's pace, as I was do- 
 ing before." 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me at first that they were 
 gone ?" said she. 
 
 " I didn't want to frighten you, and wanted to 
 think." 
 
 " It wouldn't have done any good to get fright- 
 ened," she said very simply. 
 
 "Well, you're just a trump!" he exclaimed, "and 
 the queen at that." 
 
 " Not good for many tricks just now, I'm afraid," 
 she responded with a little laugh. 
 
 "That depends on the hands!" he answered. 
 "There's not very much at risk, I think, if you don't 
 catch cold. Let me see! I have it! I'm going to 
 paddle with the bottom-board from the bow. You 
 can steer against me. If that jacket gets soaked 
 through, I'll give you another bottom-board to 
 paddle with and keep yourself warm." 
 
 " Aren't you going to look for the oars ?" 
 
 " We can poke along to shore sooner than we 
 could find them. The wind's with us." 
 
 He groped around and got the bottom-board out.
 
 29 2 Dependence. 
 
 " This is a poor paddle," he said, " so you'll have 
 to steer hard against me to keep her even. I'll 
 change sides occasionally, to relieve your arms. 
 Why didn't I know before what a regular-built, 
 spang-up Here goes!" and he set to work. 
 
 Another flash came with a deafening crash of 
 thunder close at hand. 
 
 " Pray excuse my back. I forgot my manners 
 in the dark," he called over his shoulder. He 
 had turned on his thwart to use his paddle. 
 
 " Since we're transformed into a canoe," she re- 
 sponded, " I ought to be doing the paddling here, 
 in the stern, and you, there, facing me at ease." 
 
 " Even at Mount Desert, they don't let the 
 women do the work that way," he answered, "and 
 women have their rights there, if anywhere. But 
 the right to do the work, is one they've never 
 clamored for, I believe." 
 
 The rain came down in sheets. It seemed as if 
 the blackness itself were wet and falling on them. 
 They went along, occasionally exchanging a few 
 cheerful words, until he said: 
 
 " Of course you're soaked. Let me get you an- 
 other bottom-board, to keep yourself warm with." 
 
 " No! We're almost inshore. But may I wriggle 
 the rudder from side to side ? That will exercise 
 me." 
 
 " It would hold us back a little," he objected. 
 " Why not pull both tiller-ropes at once and swing 
 yourself to and fro, as on the vertical parallels in 
 the gymnasium? You don't really need to pull 
 alternately." 
 
 " You're a man of resources !" she exclaimed.
 
 Dependence. 293 
 
 In a few minutes, a flash of lightning just pre- 
 vented their being bumped into a wharf, and they 
 ran past it on to a sloping shore, where, in the 
 darkness, they did graze a boat hauled up on their 
 right. 
 
 " Sit still," said Muriel. And he took the painter, 
 jumped out through the little breakers that some- 
 how managed to show white, hauled up the boat, 
 straddled the bow to steady her, and said: 
 
 " Now creep to me, and be careful not to hurt 
 yourself against the thwarts." 
 
 "Shall I unship the rudder?" 
 
 " It would be as well. Lay it under the seat, 
 please." 
 
 She did as she was bid, and groped her way to 
 him. 
 
 " Let me carry you through this mud," said he. 
 
 " No, I can't be more bedraggled, and it will be 
 all mud going home, anyway." 
 
 " Take my hand then, and jump toward me!" 
 
 " Wait for another flash. I can't see where I'll 
 land." 
 
 The flash came. She reached out her hand to 
 Muriel and jumped. He held the hand and put it 
 over his arm, she not resisting, and they walked 
 up the bank toward the lights. One was from a 
 waterside tavern. With their eyes opened to the 
 absolute blackness before, they could now see quite 
 plainly. 
 
 " Come under this shed," said Muriel, "and I'll 
 go in and get you a hot whiskey that will expand 
 your views of the universe." 
 
 "Must I take it?"
 
 2 94 Dependence. 
 
 " You unquestionably must." 
 
 She waited and Muriel went in. Behind the bar 
 was a jolly old river-dog, who said: 
 
 " Don't take it hot if you've got to go out again. 
 You're too wet. No use in opening up your pores. 
 Hadn't you better put on some of my togs, 
 though?" 
 
 Muriel pondered a moment about "togs" for his 
 companion, and then said: 
 
 " No. It's only a little way home. The walk 
 will keep me warm enough. I've a friend out here 
 to whom I'll take this, and swallow mine when I 
 come back." 
 
 "Why in blazes don't he come in ?" 
 
 But Muriel had taken some whiskey and cold 
 water and was gone. 
 
 " Now," he said, " if a man's coat has made a man 
 of you, take this like a man." " Miss Nina," some- 
 how, had dropped out of its dominance in his 
 phraseology. 
 
 " I can't promise to enjoy it like a man. But 
 ' Here goes,' that's what you say, I believe." 
 
 " Yes, you're the queen of trumps isn't good 
 enough for you." 
 
 Flyingabout like the recent lightning, he ran back, 
 gulped his own drink, flung down half a dollar, 
 and was out of the door, having paid no attention 
 to the old fellow's yell of " Here's your change!" 
 or his after-reflection, " Blowed if that isn't the 
 maddest cove around these parts ! I've seed him 
 afore somewhere!" 
 
 Then Muriel strode off with Nina's hand again 
 on his arm, and said to her:
 
 Dependence. 2 95 
 
 '* You can dress like a man and drink like a man. 
 now walk like a man." 
 
 "You'll forget that I'm a woman if I don't dj 
 something inconvenient." 
 
 " No, by Heavens, I'll never forget that! But 
 weren't you afraid at all in the boat ?" 
 
 " You would have saved me !" It had slipped out, 
 but she did not even reflect that it had. 
 
 " I'm not a very good swimmer." 
 
 " You would have been." 
 
 " Miss Nina, I don't deserve this," and he felt, for 
 almost the first time in his life, sincerely modest. 
 
 Now it seems pretty plain that out there in the 
 dark, with her depending upon him, that man was 
 in love with that woman. Why then didn't he tell 
 her so ? Simply because he didn't know it himself. 
 
 He felt the emotion, but he doubted whether 
 this simply this, could be the occasion for which 
 he had waited through all his thinking years. 
 From boyhood, he had cultivated a beatific dream 
 of loving some woman superior to any whom he had 
 ever met or ever could meet a creature full of 
 all possible charms, half of which, of course, could 
 not exist in conjunction with the other half. Nina 
 Wahring, equally of course, was not such a creature: 
 so how was he to learn all at once that he was in 
 love with Nina Wahring ? His Love, forsooth, was 
 to be hail-fellow-well-met with him more of a 
 boon companion than any of his college mates, yet 
 he was always to treat her with the deference of a 
 subject to a queen: here he had been calling Nina 
 a trump, and had made her put on his coat sim- 
 ply made her. Of course she was not his pedestaled 
 ideal !
 
 296 Dependence. 
 
 Worse for him, while in the deepest sanctuary 
 of his soul, that changing ideal had stood sacred 
 behind its altars ; in the outer courts of the tem- 
 ple, the priest had chucked the dancing maidens 
 under the chin. He was not the first whose 
 service within the hallowed walls had been pas- 
 sionately true, while his life outside had been, 
 just as passionately, something else. In short, 
 many of the sweet impulses that had drawn him, 
 as man, toward Nina as woman, had become, for 
 him, familiarized to baser uses. They were no 
 proof to him that here was his Love. He had per- 
 mitted them to lead him often where he had no 
 thought of love. They had not been reserved for 
 their true function to guide him, unthinking, to 
 that pure goal. 
 
 Not only, too, were his imagination and his 
 passions all out of gear, but that deliberative, skep- 
 tical intellect of his in great matters cautious, 
 despite his impetuosity in little ones must make 
 its leisurely survey of the situation. More than 
 once before, he had unthinkingly striven toward 
 some big temptation, and when he had got squarely 
 within reach of it, so that he could realize what a 
 large part of his life it must absorb, he had quietly 
 turned his back, and afterward called himself a 
 weakling and a fool for not grasping what he had 
 sought, and disregarding consequences. The pale 
 cast of thought was inevitably so much a habit of 
 his constitution, that it not seldom sicklied o'er the 
 native hue of resolution, especially where resolu- 
 tion was portentous with possibilities. He was as 
 incapable of being carried entirely away by floods
 
 Dependence. 297 
 
 of pure emotion, as he was of constantly dwelling 
 on the safe heights of philosophic calm. 
 
 He was too young to realize that great junctures 
 do not necessarily require great preparations, and 
 that many of the culminating determinations of 
 life have to be made at unanticipated moments. 
 Vastly less was he able to realize that most tre- 
 mendous fact in practical morals, that the only 
 safety at such sudden moments, is in a character 
 so drilled, in every-day life, to do the brave thing 
 and the right thing, that, when there is no time to 
 think, it does them automatically. But this is be- 
 side the immediate issue, which is simply that it 
 was so much the habit of Muriel's mind to imagine 
 what great circumstances must be, that he had 
 virtually put them outside the possibilities of actual 
 life, and might be in the thick of the greatest things 
 that life can bring, without realizing how great 
 they really were. Well! for all these reasons, 
 
 and probably a great many more, (For what search 
 will discover all the springs of motive, or what 
 patience describe or even comprehend them all ?) 
 Muriel did not yet know that he loved Nina. 
 But as he strode along with her, following the 
 storm which had passed them as contemptuously 
 as it had caught and tossed them, he did get so 
 far as to have one or two distinct questions whether 
 in that majestic future where his imagination pro- 
 jected all great things, and almost all great con- 
 duct, he might not love her. 
 
 The sky was clear behind them, and even the 
 moon threw in front their shadows arm-in-arm in 
 most friendly fashion. Nina was a little worried
 
 298 Dependence. 
 
 over the anxiety she knew her mother must be feel- 
 ing on her account, but that could not long repress 
 the gale of high spirits into which such an experi- 
 ence always throws the young and healthy and 
 brave. But Muriel, while alive to the fun of it, 
 had two or three periods of deep meditation. 
 He was also getting more and more under the 
 undefinable power of Nina's presence a power 
 that, as he had begun faintly to realize, always 
 brought out the best of any man that was with 
 her. As they chatted, somehow he talked less 
 slang, and his voice grew deeper, and he let up on 
 their tearing pace for they were in a glow and 
 the influences of the calm deep night began to fill 
 his soul. 
 
 " Oh the ineffable order and majesty of it all!" 
 he exclaimed. " How can people worship a God 
 of freaks ?" 
 
 " How could they make him other than a God of 
 freaks," said Nina, " with such an experience 
 thrust in upon the order, as we had half an hour 
 ago ?" 
 
 "Yes, very likely he killed somebody then, and 
 out of pure wantonness. I don't wonder the sav- 
 ages sometimes beat their idols. What can we 
 make out of it all ?" 
 
 " Well," said Nina, " I've been told not to probe 
 the mysteries; but I don't find that very satisfying. 
 I found your talk in the boat much more so." 
 
 " See here!" broke in Muriel, " I've got a queer 
 idea. Suppose these mysteries are simply of our own 
 making ! Nature is plain enough, or at least our 
 ignorance of her is not superstitious and torturing:
 
 Dependence. 299 
 
 we can study her. Now suppose nobody had in- 
 vented any God to put behind Nature, then there 
 are none of his mysterious ways to account for." 
 
 "Then I'd be lost!" exclaimed Nina. "Take 
 God away, and there's nothing left." 
 
 The remarks were inconsistent enough with some 
 things she had been saying, but such inconsistency 
 was natural enough in her chaotic state of mind. 
 
 Muriel's comment was: "Nothing left? I've 
 rather a better opinion of the majesty of those 
 hills, that river, these deep, deep heavens and 
 and," he added, turning towards her, " of your fair 
 though somewhat bedraggled self, gentle lady." 
 
 "Yes, Nature inspires one !" said Nina, after she 
 had got through laughing at his complex compli- 
 ment, " but I meant that without God, there would 
 be nothing to depend upon." 
 
 " I don't know about that either. Don't you 
 put any faith in ' the indomitable soul of Armand 
 de Richelieu'? You're certainly no stranger to it 
 in your own person ; and as to Nature : there's un- 
 varying Law behind it all. You can depend upon 
 gravitation at least ?" 
 
 " Yes," she said, " and I can meditate upon the 
 procession of the equinoxes, I believe I heard 
 somebody call it, though I haven't the slightest 
 idea what it means : but I've no doubt they're 
 something very responsive for a burdened soul to 
 cast itself upon." 
 
 "Well, now there's Uncle Grand. He doesn't 
 seem to have any other sort of thing to cast his 
 soul upon. But perhaps yours needs something 
 like the human, only more than the human, as all
 
 3oo Dependence. 
 
 women's seem to because they haven't the bino- 
 mial theorem and the Pons Asinorum as we men 
 have, I suppose. But nonsense aside, there's Uncle 
 Grand, who I don't believe has said his prayers for 
 twenty years, and yet he is good and calm and 
 noble. Now why can't other people get along on 
 what he gets along on ?" 
 
 " Other people are not he," Nina answered. "Do 
 you know that for a long time I wouldn't believe 
 in him ? And I couldn't make out how my mother 
 did. I can't make it out yet, for that matter, as 
 long as she professes to believe in some other 
 things." 
 
 " Such professions of belief, in people of her age, 
 are matters of habit," said Muriel. " People don't 
 really think about them." 
 
 "Well, how about professions of disbelief?" 
 asked Nina. 
 
 " If a person doesn't believe what's generally 
 taught, it proves that he has thought for himself," 
 Muriel answered. " People are not generally taught 
 what you call the disbelief, as everybody is taught 
 the belief. But what, after all, have we got to de- 
 pend upon save what we know? We do know that 
 this is a Universe governed by Law not only this 
 immensity of ponderable facts shining above us, but 
 the intellectual and moral immensity within; and 
 that Law that no subterfuge can avoid and no 
 prayer can change, is what we've got to rely upon." 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Muriel," exclaimed Nina, "no prayer 
 can change? Hard inexorable? No! don't let us 
 say we know that! Most of what we say we know, 
 \ve have taken on faith from other people, We
 
 Dependence. 301 
 
 can take the truths of Christianity in that way too, 
 if we take other truths so." 
 
 " We don't take other statements so, when they 
 contradict common-sense," said Muriel. "But I 
 don't object to taking the truths of Christianity; 
 I object to taking its untruths. You know per- 
 fectly well, as Uncle Grand said the first time we 
 dined over at John Calmire's, that what were 
 assumed to be the truths of Christianity eighteen 
 hundred years ago, were not the same as fifteen 
 hundred years ago, or the same then as at any 
 later time. And a greater change in what are 
 called the truths of Christianity, has taken place 
 in the last thirty years than during all their 
 previous history." 
 
 " Then how are we going to know what is the 
 truth ?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Oh," he answered, " I guess we'll manage to 
 get along: we generally have." 
 
 " Perhaps ! We'll hope so !" she said with a 
 despondent sort of cheerfulness, " but," and she un- 
 consciously increased her slight pressure on his arm, 
 "my heart shrinks from all these uncertainties." 
 
 "Poor little heart! We have been burdening it 
 pretty sorely." He spoke tenderly to her for the 
 first time. 
 
 "It is getting stronger, and finding good help," 
 she said, looking up at him with a smile. 
 
 They were at the steps, and after hurried expla- 
 nations and reassurances to Mrs. Wahring and Cal- 
 mire, they went in their wet clothes to their rooms.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ABSENCE OMITS TO CONQUER, 
 
 NINA awoke late the next morning, feeling per- 
 fectly bright and fresh. When she got downstairs, 
 she learned that Muriel had already gone to Cal- 
 mire to attend to some sudden exigencies for his 
 uncle, and that those matters would involve his 
 taking the boat that night at its landing where the 
 tributary joined the great river. There was no land- 
 ing nearer Fleuvemont. She missed him, and felt 
 keenly disappointed on learning that this sudden 
 excursion would probably connect itself with a 
 visit on Long Island promised for a few days later, 
 and that he would not be back for ten days or a 
 fortnight. " And he went without even a word for 
 me," she was thinking, when Pierre laid a note be- 
 side her plate, saying: 
 
 " M'sieu Muriel has commanded me to give zees 
 to Mademoiselle." 
 
 It ran simply: 
 
 " What a lot of time we've been wasting while 
 we might have known each other better! I hate 
 to waste more by going away. I hope you're quite 
 well after last night. Mighty few girls would have 
 behaved as you did. Auf wiedersehen ! M. C." 
 
 302
 
 Absence Omits to Conquer. 33 
 
 Her first feeling on opening the note, was dis- 
 satisfaction at his omitting all form of address. 
 This was not lessened by his including her with 
 himself as having lost time. Then it was lessened 
 by his saying that he hated to lose more. Then 
 the fact that His Superbness really had thought 
 about her health or anybody's, almost amused her. 
 Then his just and straightforward compliment 
 pleased her, and then his invocation for a reunion 
 surprised a feeling that made her blush. Then she 
 turned back to the beginning and, after reading the 
 first sentence, said to herself: "Well! It may be 
 conceited and it may be impudent, but it's true !" 
 Her mother noticed her blush and said: 
 " Is that boy up to more of his impudence?" 
 " A little," said Nina, laughing half nervously. 
 All that day, the spots she had previously fre- 
 quented, somehow began to be individualized by 
 " Here he said " or " Here he did " or "Here he 
 looked " so and so. And the scraps of music that 
 floated through her mind were more and more in 
 the timbre of Muriel's cornet; and the songs that 
 came through her lips were more and more those 
 that she had caught from Muriel. She was not 
 as conscious of all this as a more sophisticated 
 girl would have been, but so far as she did realize 
 it, it gave her a timid pleasure. 
 
 On the next Sunday, she and her mother drove 
 over to hear Courtenay preach. Her mind was 
 not very much on the sermon until this passage 
 attracted her: 
 
 "And, my friends, this curse does not come to
 
 304 Absence Omits to Conquer. 
 
 the learned alone. Knowledge, it is true, has been 
 a stumbling-block to the faith of many; but there 
 is a form of ignorance aping knowledge, that has 
 been a stumbling-block to many more. To such, 
 to doubt seems worthier than to believe, and many 
 an ignorant disbeliever looks down upon the wisest 
 believers." 
 
 Here Nina commented to herself: " But not half 
 as much as ignorant believers look down on learned 
 disbelievers." 
 
 He went on: " Christianity need not be afraid of 
 Science; but oh, my friends, do not cultivate the 
 disbelieving habit of mind. Shut your minds to 
 doubts as you would shut your ears to the songs 
 of the fabled sirens who used to lure the mariners 
 to destruction. When you read, why read books 
 that encourage that habit of mind ? The English 
 literature that has stood the test of time, is a Chris- 
 tian literature: why read the infidel books that 
 bloom to-day to die to-morrow ?" 
 
 " Poor George Eliot!" said Nina to herself. " Is 
 your place so insecure ?" 
 
 " Do not seek doubt," continued the preacher. 
 " Avoid it. Fear it." 
 
 " Muriel Calmire is too brave to talk like that," 
 said Nina to herself.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 IN ANOTHER BOAT. 
 
 THE n'ight after he left, Muriel took the boat 
 about ten o'clock. After he had got his stateroom- 
 key and disposed of his traps, he walked aft to in- 
 dulge in a luxury in which he specially delighted 
 a cigar by the stern-rail of a vessel leaving a wake 
 of Starlit water. Cigarettes, Muriel despised, ex- 
 cept with the sorbet at a stag dinner and, it can- 
 not be denied, at some dinners which were not 
 stag. 
 
 Soon after the cigar was in successful operation, 
 there came up in his mind, associated with the sky 
 and river, the sky and river of the night before. 
 Nina's pure strong face was opposite him in the 
 little boat, and her expression of perplexity was 
 melting into one of confidence, with occasional 
 flashes of interest and sympathy. 
 
 These sweet visions were interrupted by a touch 
 on his shoulder, and the question in a sweet con- 
 tralto voice: 
 
 " I believe I have the honor of addressing Mr. 
 Muriel Calmire ?" 
 
 He turned and faced Minerva Granzine. The 
 velvet-brown eyes were laughing, so were the soft 
 pink cheeks with their dimples, and the red lips, 
 which were parted; and the perfect teeth were 
 brighter, perhaps, for the night, though the light 
 from the cabin striking on one side of her face 
 gave it almost its daylight radiance. 
 
 305
 
 306 In Another Boat, 
 
 Poor Muriel, although he deemed himself very 
 deep in the sex, had been " kicking around " too 
 much, to have ever had the long and constant 
 association with a noble woman which makes the 
 presence of an ignoble one, even if she is pretty, 
 disagreeable. Besides, Minerva was by no means 
 altogether ignoble. She had made her little sacri- 
 fices in her time, was capable of her enthusiasms, 
 and unquestionably had her charms. Few women, 
 perhaps no young and good women, could realize 
 the fascination she had for men. And probably 
 few men could themselves quite explain it. Their 
 general reason was: " She's so awfully pretty." 
 But that was the smallest part of it. She was so 
 awfully feminine not in the miniature negative 
 way not in merely lacking things that men have, 
 but in possessing so much that men have not. 
 She was round and soft and tender and gentle 
 and affectionate and, under it all, glowing with 
 passion. Her smile was a banter, her glance an 
 appeal, her touch a thrill. She was educated, after 
 a fashion; and the democratic conditions of her 
 village had thrown her with several men of pur- 
 suits superior to her father's some of them men 
 not without reading and aspirations a young 
 schoolmaster or two, and occasional students and 
 professors off for vacation. She had been engaged 
 to two or three of these, as well as to one or two of 
 the best young men in the village, and all her suit- 
 ors thought her, for a time at least, the very pearl 
 of womanhood. But as she could very dearly love 
 a good many people at once, and was too kind not 
 to accept every offer made her by men whom she
 
 In Another Boat. 307 
 
 really liked, and as many offers were made, there 
 had not yet been time for any engagement to re- 
 sult in marriage. But a very strange thing about 
 her was, that not one of the men who had been en- 
 gaged to her, seemed to bear her any ill will. She 
 always got amicably off with the old love before 
 getting professedly on with the new. She was too 
 amiable to jilt anybody. Probably she let it be 
 plain to each one, in some way, before she installed 
 his successor, that, however fascinating she might 
 be as a woman, she was not very desirable as a 
 wife. Perhaps this was the easier to do because, 
 generally, she had installed men of high require- 
 ments men who would not marry where they did 
 not entirely respect. Yet although she was, to 
 put it mildly, so "inconsequent," she was so amia- 
 ble withal, so charming, so kind and gentle, that 
 on ceasing to respect her, and being unable to love 
 without respect, one could not help still feeling 
 friendly toward her. It was a very remarkable fact 
 that, so far, all the men who had been very inti- 
 mate with her, were among the best of those within 
 reach. She could feel the heroic merits of Clint 
 Russell, despite his profanity and his superiority 
 to grammar, and had stirred his big heart; and 
 before, even Courtenay had felt her charm, and for 
 a while was devoted to her. Even since, he had 
 seemed to take a pitying interest in her. 
 
 Among the men whom she had attracted, 
 had been, a few months before, Muriel. She 
 had found him a very odd fish among the 
 others: he had not resisted her no man of flesh 
 and blood, with a free heart, could ; he had
 
 In Another Boat. 
 
 become extremely intimate with her, but he had 
 never professed to love her. With all his strong 
 passions and all his ideals, he was very little of a 
 sentimentalist. He took pleasure wherever he 
 found it, and this soft round bright unthinking 
 creature that threw herself in his way, was pleas- 
 ure; but the oft-imagined lady who was to redeem 
 and inspire his life, was quite another thing, though 
 as yet a very varying and indefinite one. He never 
 mixed the two for an instant, though, and he was 
 too straightforward to give Minerva any notion 
 that he did. But she loved him in her way, for 
 the time being, perhaps more than she had loved 
 anybody else: for, not to speak of advantages of 
 person and position, he was so immensely above 
 her above any young man she had known, for that 
 matter in rude strength of character and intellect. 
 He was mysterious to her and, despite his playful- 
 ness, at times almost awful. And probably she 
 thought that this was the real love, as she had 
 thought many times before. How long she would 
 continue to love him, or anybody else, when she 
 had begun, was more apt to be determined by the 
 man than by her: she was always ready to go on 
 loving. But what the "love" of such a creature 
 is, is hard to make out. For anything that appeals 
 to the affections, she was full of her soft warm 
 passions. A year before, they had taken the direc- 
 tion of religion and she had joined the church, and 
 for a week or two after it, was as devote as anybody; 
 and here again on the boat, they were making her 
 radiant before the eyes of Muriel Calmire. Although 
 of lateshehad met him occasionally, for agood while
 
 In Another Boat. 309 
 
 she had not seen him alone, and she had begun to 
 realize the fact and ponder over it and worry just 
 a little. It may be remembered that on meeting 
 him a couple of months before, when he had taken 
 lunch with them, she had found something to blush 
 about. But among her rather unusual character- 
 istics, was a capacity to deliberately say or do a 
 thing, and then to blush over it, and then to say or 
 do it again, and then to blush over it again, and 
 so on interminably. In fact, she generally did 
 blush she was blushing now, as she looked up at 
 Muriel with her bantering smile. 
 
 Promptly it drove away the pure vision which 
 had been softening and inspiring him. Away deep 
 ponderings and self - questionings and self - re- 
 proaches! Up surges youth's hot blood! Socrates 
 could make Alcibiades thoughtful, but he could not 
 prevent his being young. 
 
 Muriel rose and answered Minerva's mock-cere- 
 monious question in the same vein: 
 
 " You have a slave of that name. What under 
 heaven brought you here? I didn't notice you 
 coming aboard, or on the train." 
 
 " I've been near the landing all day with Susie Jan- 
 ney, and I'm going down to New York with them." 
 
 " Where are they ?" 
 
 " Susie and her mother went to their stateroom 
 as soon as they came on board. The purser gave 
 me one all to myself (He's a friend of mine), and it 
 has a parlor, too ! Won't you come and call on me? 
 I've nothing to do but sit up and talk with you." 
 
 " ' Wot larks ! '" he ejaculated. But somehow, 
 instead of attending to her bantering invitation, he 
 Continued: "Won't you sit down?"
 
 3 JO In Another Boat. 
 
 She took a chair a step off, in shadow, and 
 Muriel placed his beside her. No one was near 
 them. She laid her hand on his, and said: 
 
 " Why haven't you been to see me ?" 
 
 Muriel answered truthfully: "I don't know." 
 
 " You didn't want to come." 
 
 " That's not so." 
 
 He was perfectly sincere again. He had wanted 
 to go several times, but, somehow, his desire had 
 not been strong enough or steady enough to send 
 him. The obstacles had perhaps been greater than 
 usual, or even than he quite appreciated. 
 
 " Then why didn't you come ?" 
 
 "Well, we've had company at our house, and 
 Uncle Grand has had lots of things for me to 
 do. He's been away a good while, you know. 
 And I've been away some myself, too." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 One of Minerva's charms was, that she never 
 made herself disagreeable. When other women 
 would get jealous, she only got sad and went on 
 loving somebody else. But she was not yet even 
 at the point where other women get jealous. The 
 excuses were good enough good enough, at all 
 events, for an indolent and forgiving nature to ac- 
 cept in preference to disagreeable conclusions. 
 
 Nobody was near them. The side toward Muriel 
 was in shadow. She laid her arm on his knee. The 
 night was warm for October, and the sleeve was 
 loose. What a wondrous great white arm it was! 
 The wrist was a little large, but the hand was 
 small, and the taper up from the round wrist was 
 perfect. Why did not Muriel seize it?
 
 In Another Boat. 3 1 1 
 
 " Oh, I do so love starlight nights," said the girl. 
 " The moon is such a tell-tale." 
 
 " Yes, she's an old maid, you know," said Muriel. 
 
 " That's what I'm going to be." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " At least you know," and her ready blushes 
 came again. " I'm never going to marry any- 
 body." 
 
 " Bet you ten to one !" said Muriel. 
 
 "Well, it won't be you." 
 
 " I never said it would." 
 
 Then, seized perhaps by a bit of compunction for 
 his bluntness, he did lay his hand kindly on the 
 lovely arm. How cool it was ! If the night had 
 been cold, the arm would have been warm: such 
 perfect balance had Nature given the rare creature- 
 
 "What makes you bother your head about such 
 things, anyhow, Minerva? You'd never be happy 
 married. Your heart's too big." Then he felt a 
 little more compunction, and did not help matters 
 much by adding: "You know you'd soon tire of 
 any man." 
 
 " Not of any man." 
 
 " How many have you tired of already ?" 
 
 " Never of the right one." 
 
 If she had ever tired of any man, and probably 
 she had, the man had never been sure of it. 
 
 " Yes ! Your tiring of any one proves that he is 
 not the right one. But the right one doesn't exist; 
 you don't want to tie yourself up. What's the use 
 of bothering about it ?" 
 
 " None, perhaps. At least I'm not sure there is. 
 You're none of you worth it." And she laughed,
 
 3!2 In Another Boat. 
 
 but in a way that he thought of afterwards. She 
 had put him a little on his mettle, though. 
 
 " No, we're a poor lot. What should we do with- 
 out the women to keep us straight?" 
 
 "Yes, if you'd only condescend to deserve all we 
 do for you. We don't spare ourselves." 
 
 " Or us either, when you're inclined to tease us 
 a little, do you ?" and he gave the arm a little pinch. 
 
 "Don't. You hurt. You make it all red." 
 
 And she raised it opposite his face, while the 
 sleeve fell back to the dimpled elbow. White 
 things showed distinct enough in the mixed lights 
 of the boat and the stars. 
 
 " Pretty thing !" said Muriel. " Don't tire it." 
 
 And he took it by the wrist. A month before, he 
 would have kissed it. Now he gently bent it down 
 again on to his own knee, where, after a second, he 
 relinquished it, saying: 
 
 "Wouldn't you like to walk the upper deck a 
 little and see the stars overhead ?" 
 
 " Yes, that would be splendid ! Let's go this 
 way." 
 
 And she sprang up the ladder before him, put- 
 ting her little boots almost into his face. 
 
 " Hm !" said he to himself as he rushed up after 
 her. 
 
 Then she took his arm. What a difference there 
 is in the way women do it ! One makes herself an 
 inconvenience, another an inspiration, most pro- 
 duce no effect at all. Minerva's hand never rested 
 on a man's arm without his realizing that she was 
 a woman, and his realizing only the charming 
 features of the fact.
 
 In A not her Boat. 3 1 3 
 
 But she put more than her hand on Muriel's arm, 
 and her electric form brushed against him at every 
 step. More than once he felt a glowing conscious- 
 ness of it, but some half-realized reminiscence that 
 was not of the spirit of this night, came and calmed 
 him. Despite his slowness in great issues, or rather 
 issues that he realized as great, under most circum- 
 stances he was careless of consequences, and eager 
 to seize the joy of the moment. He had no clear 
 realization of the counter-influences working within 
 him now, and he felt half disgusted with the quies- 
 cence produced in him by the play of opposing 
 forces. 
 
 The main thing which distracted him from the 
 glowing ecstasy beside him, was a want that had 
 never obtruded itself before: he had always taken 
 her for what she was, been glad enough to find her, 
 and thought in a healthy, though perhaps a danger- 
 ous, way, only of what the moment offered. But 
 lately a new habit a new requirement, had grown 
 up within him faint, little more than rudimentary, 
 but distinct and delicious beyond anything he had 
 known before. Sometimes when his soul was filled 
 with the awful beauty of the night, and when he 
 had marveled and triumphed in the sense that this 
 speck upon a speck this brain of man upon the 
 earth, had learned a word or two of the infinite 
 histories of the stars, sometimes when he had 
 caught an occasional glimpse of the philosophy to 
 which those stupendous facts are the first step- 
 ping-stones, and all that was highest in his being 
 had been filled with a sense of the Infinite Energy 
 and the Infinite Law, he had lately learned the
 
 314 / Another Boat. 
 
 joy of supporting a woman's tender steps to those 
 .heights where most souls must stand alone, and he 
 had had some foretaste of the sympathy which, at 
 a word, brings the companion-soul into the com- 
 munion of that lofty worship. 
 
 And now ! Here he was under the holy night 
 with this marvel of exquisite flesh ! 
 
 He had much reason to feel a certain chivalrous 
 responsibility for her entertainment, and, how- 
 ever much, at any time, he might be embarrassed 
 and perplexed, it was never difficult for him to 
 talk, provided the embarrassment and perplex- 
 ity were not thrust upon him suddenly. Now 
 he made it pleasant for Minerva and even for 
 himself, in the face of distractions new to his 
 experience. When, at moments, he forgot both 
 attractions and distractions, his mind might 
 glow up into some comment, perhaps on the 
 infinity around them, that brought him a 
 sense of chilling emptiness in her; but that 
 for her, opened up vistas of thought by which 
 she was puzzled and awed awed, that is, 
 as far as she was capable of awe, which was 
 farther than are some women who have studied 
 enough to dry up such rich juices as ran in 
 her. She was capable of enough of it to often find 
 herself lifted, when with Muriel, to planes that 
 she was not conscious of with anybody else, and to 
 have her passion burn all the stronger in their 
 purer air. 
 
 For an hour he walked glowing and languishing 
 amid her intoxications. Then she stopped, saying: 
 "I'm tired. Take me to my stateroom."
 
 In A not her Boat. 3 * 5 
 
 At the ladder, she pushed him playfully and 
 said: "Go first and catch me." 
 
 He obeyed mechanically. Before she touched 
 the deserted lower deck, she threw herself back- 
 ward into his arms. As they closed around her, 
 his soul was full of hot battle. But in a moment, 
 there came into his quick imagination a beautiful 
 and noble face, whose eyes looked trustingly into 
 his, as they had looked the night before. 
 
 His arms fell, he bade Minerva an abrupt good- 
 night, and to the bow of the boat stalked the 
 puritan Nina had seen on the great staircase at 
 Fleuvemont. 
 
 There he stood silent while the air, resisting the 
 boat's swift motion, fanned his hot face. His 
 pulses, quelled for a moment, were beating with 
 redoubled fury. But soon the cool air and a 
 revery into which he gradually subsided, calmed 
 them. 
 
 The moon was just rising. A broad light trem- 
 bled over the ripples before him. The hills were 
 transfigured into mountains, towering, immutable, 
 calm ; some late cottager's light on the bank made 
 human the stupendous scene. It interfused itself 
 with his own being. Though he stood long, he 
 never afterward could recall anything that passed 
 in his soul except a consciousness of the omnipo- 
 tent loveliness, a strange feeling that it and he and 
 Nina all were one, and his saying to himself, as he 
 turned to seek his rest: 
 
 " I love her! Thank God! I love her! I love 
 her.'"
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 GOING WOOING. 
 
 OF course a readiness, despite his unorthodoxy, 
 f .o say " Thank God," or to use that venerable 
 name in less reverent ways, was not the only 
 inconsistency in Mr. Muriel Calmire. Consistency 
 was apt to interfere with his ease, and, it may 
 be suspected, he dearly loved his ease. Not 
 only did he love it for his big and handsome 
 earthly tabernacle, but also for the copious and 
 not altogether ungraceful imagination therein en- 
 shrined. Although on calm nights he could dis- 
 course to Miss Nina Wahring on the infinite 
 Law that no subterfuge can escape, and although 
 he did not number Ser Tito Melema or Mr. 
 Fred Vincy among his progenitors, if his blood 
 had come through them, his imagination could 
 not have been more incapable than it was of pic- 
 turing the same evils resulting from his own acts 
 that he knew often resulted from the same acts 
 performed by other people. Calmire had more 
 than once been anxious over this,and remonstrated 
 with him in some such phrase as: 
 
 "You believe in the unerringness of natural law, 
 I suppose?" 
 
 " Certainly I do," Muriel would very properly 
 reply. 
 
 316
 
 Going Wooing. 3*7 
 
 And then Calmire would utter, with a sadness 
 which the boy thought a good deal of a bore, some 
 such phrases as: 
 
 " Yes, evidently, in all lives but your own. It's 
 sad that there, you can't learn it from books. It's 
 a big truth, but there's no royal road to it. When 
 there's temptation before him, every young fellow 
 believes in at least one miracle that the laws ot 
 Nature are going to be suspended in his case." 
 
 It was now all that Muriel could do to keep 
 himself away from Fleuvemont. A month earlier, 
 with the same eagerness in his heart, he would 
 have rushed back as a matter of course, postpon- 
 ing his business and, if need be, cutting his social 
 engagements; but now, somehow, there was a 
 new conscience in him. By a display of energy 
 which, if it was not unnatural with him, was cer- 
 tainly unusual, he finished his business in half the 
 time he expected. He also found that his visit 
 could as well be made earlier and shorter than at 
 first intended, and within a week he was on his way 
 back to Fleuvemont on the same train that had taken 
 Nina there nearly three months before. A block on 
 the road detained it several hours. Muriel had not 
 expected to leave New York so soon, and he was so 
 preoccupied with what the night on the boat going 
 down had revealed to him, that he forgot to tele- 
 graph for a trap to meet him at the station. No pub- 
 lic conveyance was there, but he hardly noticed the 
 fact. He gave his hand-bag to the station-keeper, 
 told him that he would send for it and his trunk 
 in the morning, and started off up the hill through 
 the moonlight with the gait of a young panther.
 
 S 1 ^ Going Wooing. 
 
 His heart was full of singing birds, as some good 
 old poet hath it, although the voice which gave 
 the songs utterance, as he swung himself along 
 could have issued only from the throat of a strong 
 and happy man. 
 
 At the house, he saw lights in the ladies' win- 
 dows, and in the library, which was habitually re- 
 served to the master's use. A servant was closing 
 the front door. 
 
 " Has Miss Wahring gone to her room ?" was 
 Muriel's first greeting. 
 
 " She went an hour ago, sir." 
 
 " My uncle is up, I suppose ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; I just left him in the library, writing." 
 
 Muriel started for the library, whence Calmire, 
 having heard his voice, was coming out to meet him. 
 
 " Oh, Muriel," he said; " I did not expect you so 
 soon. I was just trying to write to you." 
 
 "' Trying to write,' and to me. That's good! 
 Why, what's the matter ?" 
 
 " Come in and sit down." 
 
 Calmire waited to say to the servant: " Tell 
 Pierre not to go to bed until I tell him to. Leave 
 word at the stables that I shall want to catch the 
 down train at 2.17." Then he followed Muriel 
 into the library, closed the door, took a seat op- 
 posite the young man on the other side of the 
 smouldering fire, and began: 
 
 "Well, Mr. Stubbs, we're in a scrape." 
 
 Because Muriel never was a little fat fellow, but 
 a lank and rather puny child, Calmire long ago, 
 on the principle of lucus a non, had nicknamed him 
 Mr. Stubbs. The name had gradually fallen into
 
 Going Wooing. 3 X 9 
 
 disuse, but on occasions of hilarity or distress 
 of any considerable feeling, in fact, it was apt to 
 come to the surface. 
 
 " What is it, Uncle Grand ?" 
 " Do you want to marry Minerva Granzine ?" 
 Muriel shivered, and then his blood was like 
 flame. At the same moment he felt that sinking 
 weakness that sometimes comes before battle. 
 He would have given his right hand to be 
 away, but would have given his head rather than 
 go. He did have cause for fear, for although he 
 had controlled himself a week earlier, there had 
 been times, before he knew Nina Wahring, when 
 he had not. He managed to say: 
 " Certainly not. Why do you ask ?" 
 " Because her mother came here to-day to tell 
 me that it is time high time, that she were mar- 
 ried to somebody, and that you are the man." 
 
 A cold perspiration burst out over the youth, and 
 he remembered the prophecy regarding the wretch 
 who should pray that the mountains might fall on 
 him and hide him. Then between his ancestors 
 began the conflict in his soul that Calmire had 
 once warned him of. Should he ignore these 
 responsibilities, or should he meet them ? But 
 though he did often shrink before possible con- 
 sequences, it was not his habit to deliberate over 
 moral questions, except in the abstract, and it 
 was his habit to trust his uncle. He had hardly 
 grasped the situation before he exclaimed: 
 
 " Great God, Uncle Grand ! What can I do ?" 
 " If you want me to answer that," said Calmire,
 
 320 Going Wooing. 
 
 "of course I must know your side of the story too. 
 I've only heard Mrs. Granzine's." 
 
 Muriel sat silent, leaning forward, his head down, 
 his forearms on his knees, his han^s clasped in 
 hopeless perplexity and dread. Shame was cov- 
 ered out of sight by the heavier emotions, but 
 through his brain rushed a dozen mean schemes of 
 escape, which he had not strength enough left either 
 to harbor or to scorn. 
 
 "Do you want my hand in this business?" con- 
 tinued Calmire. 
 
 " Do I what ? Why, Uncle Grand, I" and he 
 could go no farther. 
 
 " Because," calmly resumed Calmire, "while the 
 interests of the family are, to some extent, my in- 
 terests, and while your interests are certainly mine 
 as far as you are willing they should be, I should 
 be very sorry to seem intrusive." 
 
 " Oh! bother all that! You know perfectly well 
 that if I'd known the trouble first, I'd have come to 
 you with it." 
 
 Calmire's face beamed. He drew up his chair, 
 and put his hand on Muriel's knee, saying: 
 
 " I hoped so, my son, I hoped so. I'm very glad. 
 I've known more than one young fellow come to 
 grief by taking a different course." 
 
 " That's because most old fellows are such 
 fools," was Muriel's reply. 
 
 " Yes," assented Calmire, " the old fools beget 
 
 the young ones, and then have no mercy for their 
 
 folly. Now tell me who's to blame for this, if 
 
 that question is not too much for human nature ?" 
 
 Muriel had recovered himself a little under Cal-
 
 Going Wooing. 32 r 
 
 mire's handling. He was almost nonplussed by it, 
 however, and let two or three thoughts shape and 
 oppose themselves in his bewildered brain, before 
 he burst out : 
 
 "Why don't you blame me, and raise an infernal 
 row?" 
 
 " There seems to be row enough already. Na- 
 ture attends to that side of the case without our 
 help. I prefer to take care of the other side if I 
 can, and keep the misery down. There's sure to 
 be enough without any from me. Now, if you 
 want me to do anything, you've got to confide in 
 me. Do you care to ?" 
 
 " You're good, as always. But this is not a 
 matter of my confidence alone." 
 
 " I trust I can appreciate the reticence of a 
 gentleman," said Calmire. " But I don't see that 
 it's called for here. Of course you'll acquit me 
 of any idle curiosity: but I've heard Mrs. Gran- 
 zine's statement of the case, and if I'm to have any 
 such opinions as the subject demands, I must hear 
 yours." 
 
 "But, Uncle Grand, I've been told, by yourself 
 for aught I know, that it's a man's duty to lie, 
 even, rather than betray the confidence of a woman." 
 
 " I'm not sure that I ever took it upon myself to 
 pronounce on that question. But don't you see 
 that it doesn't apply to this case ? The revelation, 
 if it be one, has already been made by the other 
 side." 
 
 " By her consent, do you mean ?" 
 
 " Her distinct assertion." 
 
 Muriel paused. Without the little stimulus of
 
 322 Going Wooing. 
 
 discussion, he could not fix his thoughts. At the 
 first mention of Minerva's name, Nina's image had 
 seemed to come up in his mind even before Miner- 
 va's; and now it kept thrusting itself into all the 
 things he tried to shape, and confused them. He 
 realized with perfect distinctness, or thought he 
 did, that all the possible joy of life had been 
 snatched from his grasp, and his future loomed 
 up black and terrible. Yet he was hardly con- 
 scious of any pain. He tried to grapple the facts 
 and group them into intelligible shape. But he 
 was unequal to it. He got up, walked to and fro 
 two or three times, stopped, and leaned on the 
 mantel. 
 
 Calmire, to help him on, spoke again: 
 
 " To come to the point, do you care to tell me, 
 without details, whether she led you on ? It's a 
 tough question, but you're honest." 
 
 Muriel hesitated, and at length said: 
 
 " I must say I think she did." 
 
 "Was the first thing that would not have taken 
 place if a third person had been present, her doing 
 or yours ?" 
 
 " Hers!" 
 
 " You've been to her house, of course ? Was her 
 mother surprised to see you ?" 
 
 " She didn't seem to be." 
 
 " Always pleased to have you there ?" 
 
 " Well, it did strike me that she was." 
 
 "And she left you alone?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And kept doing it ?" 
 
 " Yes."
 
 Going Wooing. 3 2 3 
 
 "I thought so," said Calmire, settling back in his 
 chair in the comfortable way that naturally follows 
 the demonstration of one's own prescience. 
 
 A pause. All sorts of reminiscences and specula- 
 tions began running through Muriel's brain. Pic- 
 tures, now loathsome, whatever they had been be- 
 fore, in which the pretty girl had borne a part, 
 mingling themselves with others more loathsome 
 still, of scenes yet to come in which she might bear 
 a part too. Yet of all these, he seemed to be a 
 mere unmoved spectator. Calmire called him 
 back to himself. 
 
 " Now one or two other things. Did you ever 
 profess to love her? Pardon me, I don't believe 
 you ever did. Of course you praised her beauty, 
 and fed her vanity. You never talked of mar- 
 riage ?" 
 
 "Of course I didn't," said Muriel, looking into 
 Calmire's eyes almost indignantly and then settling 
 himself into another chair. 
 
 "Hm! It didn't seem possible that you had; 
 but ' Calmire paused and pondered. 
 
 " Had you ever suspected her character before 
 she led you on? What was your opinion of her 
 when you began philandering about her?" 
 
 "That she was awfully pretty." 
 
 " Yes, that started you. But did you believe her 
 an innocent girl ?" 
 
 " Probably I'd have kept away from her if I'd 
 felt sure she was." 
 
 " What? If she had seriously attracted you ?" 
 
 " But she only attracted one side of me. There's 
 not much of her but her beauty."
 
 324 Going Wooing. 
 
 Another pause, in which Muriel realized that he 
 was in pain horrible pain. A woman of whom 
 there was much besides her beauty, filled his soul; 
 and she was lost to him! And then the phantasma- 
 goria in his brain began again. But in another 
 moment he felt the torture renewed, and then he 
 burst out: 
 
 " Oh, my God ! Haven't I fled temptation- 
 fled this very woman's temptations, and all for 
 chis !" 
 
 " Muriel, Nature doesn't play laps and slams. 
 Each game counts by itself." The statement was 
 couched in terms singularly inconsistent with the 
 serious tones in which it was uttered, but it fitted 
 the occasion. 
 
 "Uncle Grand," cried the boy, "I love Nina!" 
 and he went over and put his arm on Calmire's 
 shoulder and leaned his head upon it. 
 
 Calmire gently passed his hand over Muriel's 
 hair as if it had been that of a woman or a child. 
 He said: " Yes, it is hard, very hard. But how you 
 young people do jump to conclusions ! This mat- 
 ter is just opened, and yet you regard it as finished. 
 Of course I can't tell how it's going to turn out, 
 but you assume at once that you can. We won't 
 give up yet." 
 
 Muriel straightened himself, and went back to 
 his chair, saying: 
 "What's my duty?" 
 
 " It's too soon to tell about that. One thing is 
 plain: you've got to clear out." 
 " What ? Run away ?" 
 
 " Keep out of the way out of my way, if you pre- 
 fer."
 
 Going Wooing. 325 
 
 "But here's a responsibility that maybe mine. 
 flfy child! And," he said in a lower tone that was 
 inexpressibly sad and bitter, " I've longed for chil- 
 dren as women do! Well," he added after a mo- 
 ment, "at least I don't propose to shirk." 
 
 "Poor fellow! Of course you don't. But the first 
 thing, is to-find out what's the best way to handle 
 the situation. If you want me to do that, clear 
 out and leave it to me for the present. I don't want 
 you within the reach of these people. You're too 
 complex: there's no knowing what you'll do. You 
 may marry the woman or murder her. When I 
 want you, I can send for you." 
 
 " I must go anyhow." His frightened conscience 
 said: " I can't face Nina's awful eyes." 
 
 In a moment he went on: " But at least give me 
 some idea of what you think best to do." 
 
 " I don't know m3 r self. The case is so com- 
 plicated, I want time to study it." 
 
 " Ought I to marry her ?" 
 
 " Ought you to desert it?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Of course I could provide 
 for it." 
 
 " Provide what ? The care its father owes it ?" 
 
 " Oh, what can I do ? What can I do ?" cried the 
 boy in his agony. 
 
 " You can't do anything very satisfactory. But 
 you must do the best you can. I'm not sure 
 that marrying the mother or deserting the child 
 are the only alternatives. And I'm not even sure 
 which of the two is the worse, even for the child. 
 It is better that a child should be at peace among 
 strangers than in a discordant home. The plain 
 truth is, Muriel, that you have taken the respon-
 
 326 Going Wooing. 
 
 sibility of the life of a human being for whom it is 
 impossible for you to provide what every human 
 being needs and what your having been without, 
 has had much to do with bringing you just where 
 you are." 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Grand, I took no responsibility. I 
 didn't think, I didn't realize, and here I'm hemmed 
 in by hell-fire on every side !" 
 
 " There's no need of my preaching to you, my 
 son; but I must tell you that you are learning 
 what I knew you would have to learn sooner or 
 later that most of our great disasters come from 
 crimes that the codes don't deal with." 
 
 " You think me a criminal, then ?" 
 
 "Certainly not by the world's present standards. 
 And after what you have told me, I'm not disposed 
 to heap unmeasured blame upon you myself. I 
 know what temptation is, and I know what youth 
 is. But I think the world ought to judge more 
 by consequences. Certainly, by that standard, 
 such an act, instead of being omitted from most 
 codes, would be placed among the gravest crimes. 
 But I don't want to add my preaching to the other 
 bad results; I only want to help you deal with 
 them." 
 
 "Well, anything but this vague misery. For 
 pity's sake let me give it some shape. I feel as if 
 I could fight definite prospects better. Tell me 
 what you think now about my marrying her." 
 
 "If I were her father, I'm not sure that I 
 should want you to." 
 
 " But they want me to. You can't put yourself 
 in their place, and they surely have some rights in 
 the matter."
 
 Going Wooing. 327 
 
 "Why, Muriel, self-sacrifice is a new role for 
 you !" exclaimed Calmire. 
 
 " If I'm to lose what I most care for, what does 
 the rest matter?" 
 
 " You're a boy! otherwise you would never think 
 that 'the rest' is of no importance." 
 
 After a little silence, Calmire said, half musingly, 
 " No. If the girl were my daughter, I don't think 
 I would let her marry you, at least now." 
 
 "What? I could be good to her." 
 
 " You could resolve to be. But you're the last 
 man in the world to keep such a resolve, at least 
 among the men who could make it." 
 
 " Why, Uncle Grand, I'm not such a bad fellow." 
 
 " No. You're rather a good fellow, or you would 
 not entertain these ideas. But you're a candid 
 fellow, and an irritable one. You'd sting her to 
 death without intending it: provided her counter- 
 stings did not kill you first. Your home would be 
 Hell on earth. She'd probably leave it." 
 
 " Well, what difference would that make to me?" 
 
 " To you ? Why, you're proud !" 
 
 " Perhaps I have been." 
 
 " There you go again ! You're proud, I tell you. 
 Do you suppose that anything that doesn't kill or 
 maim, can change a man's character in an hour?" 
 
 Muriel was silent a moment, and then said : 
 
 " This thing makes of me a maimed man. I 
 shall never get over it." 
 
 "Yes, you will. I meant physical maiming: I've 
 seldom known anybody not to get over any trouble 
 unless he died of it." And there was a reminiscent 
 sadness in his tone that went far to contradict his 
 assertion. " I don't mean to say," he went on,
 
 328 Going Wooing. 
 
 "that people are always the same after great 
 catastrophes as before them. Of course, they're 
 changed, but not half as much as you suppose, and 
 it takes time for even that. But festering wounds 
 kill : if they don't, they stop festering. This one 
 is not going to kill you : you don't come of stock 
 that suffering kills." And there was again a touch 
 of melancholy in the tone that uttered the boast. 
 
 "And there's Johnny!" said Muriel after a mo- 
 ment. " Do you suppose he'll want to fight? He's 
 a gentleman, whatever his parents are, and I'll fight 
 him if he wants to, and let him kill me. That 
 would settle the whole miserable business." 
 
 " No it wouldn't," said Calmire, " not by a great 
 deal. But Johnny's above all that. His early edu- 
 cation was not in a fighting community, as yours 
 was." 
 
 " No, and his character isn't what mine is either," 
 ejaculated Muriel in a tone of regret. It was the 
 first confession of inferiority that Calmire had ever 
 heard the boy make. 
 
 " Now lie down on my lounge and go to sleep," 
 he said. " You're gaping now. It's lucky that we 
 Calmires can sleep when we need to. That's one 
 reason we don't die before we're ready; sometimes 
 even when we are ready. I'll tell you in an hour 
 what you've got to do next." 
 
 He flung an afghan over the boy's feet, left the 
 room, and afterward was surprised to find that he 
 had locked the door behind him, as if he had had 
 some sub-conscious idea of keeping the secret 
 safe.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI, 
 
 BANISHED. 
 
 CALMIRE went into the dining-room, rang for 
 Pierre, and ordered him: 
 
 " Have a bottle of Burgundy, some cold meat, and 
 something to make it taste good, here in an hour. 
 Mr. Muriel is going back in the 2.17 train. By the 
 way, roll up a couple of sandwiches for him, in 
 case he should not care to eat before starting. 
 And don't go into the library. He's asleep there." 
 
 "Pardon, M'sieul Will not M'sieti take some 
 supper? John said M'sieu would take the train." 
 
 " No, I shall not go. Mr. Muriel has come, and 
 he will go. He is younger than you and I, Pierre." 
 
 And Calmire laughed, not entirely at the little 
 pleasantry which he allowed himself with the old 
 retainer, who had followed him from Switzerland 
 nearly thirty years before ; but partly from the 
 cheerful consciousness that he had quite involun- 
 tarily started among the servants the impression 
 that Muriel was hurrying away to attend to impor- 
 tant business for his uncle. 
 
 While Pierre thought his master was laughing 
 with him, the master was thinking to himself : "If 
 the beggar would only get his impression to Nina's 
 ears! I shall not hurry myself to breakfast in the 
 
 morning for the sake of preventing him." Then he 
 
 329
 
 33 Banished. 
 
 said aloud: "By the way, Pierre, as I'm to be up 
 so very late, if I succeed in sleeping over in the 
 morning, make my apologies to the ladies, and 
 explain matters." 
 
 " Parfaitement, M'steu." 
 
 Months before,in a talk with Nina, Calmire had 
 declared himself a superstitious man; and he often 
 half-humorously admitted himself superstitious re- 
 garding the truth. Some people would think that 
 that attitude was illustrated now, as he said to 
 himself : " How am I going to explain Muriel's 
 absence to Nina? She's such a penetrative minx! 
 Yet suppose that I could lie to her, and she should 
 believe ic: how do I know that it would be for the 
 best? In these complexities, how can I arrogate 
 to myself power to see beyond the end of my nose ? 
 How can I tell whether a lie will do more good 
 than harm?" and he went on musing: "How, for 
 that matter, can anybody at any time? Truth is 
 natural : a liar goes against Nature, and sets up 
 for a prophet in the bargain; he needs not only a 
 ' long memory,' but an infinite foresight. But 
 
 how am I to stave her off?" 
 
 The good gentleman need not have troubled 
 himself even to lie. The question was settled 
 without his help, and if he had lied, as some people 
 thinking themselves wiser would have done, he 
 would have been found out, and the existing chaos 
 would have been worse confounded. 
 
 Calmire told Pierre to put another log on the 
 dining-room fire, and then seated himself, musing, 
 before it. In five minutes he, like Muriel, was 
 asleep. In fifteen more he was awake. Among his 
 first reflections was ;
 
 Banished. 33 J 
 
 " If I were as terribly wise as some people, I sup- 
 pose I should not have given that boy a word of 
 sympathy. While pitying him as much as blaming 
 him, I should have let him see only the blame, and 
 while intending to do what I can for him, I should 
 have professed to throw him upon his own weak- 
 ness and inexperience. That was the 'good old- 
 fashioned way,' I suppose. Ah, these are degener- 
 ate days!" 
 
 Then he fell into a long meditation, making a 
 few notes on an envelope from his pocket. 
 
 At half-past one, Muriel had a dream. He and 
 Nina were in the row-boat, down upon them came 
 the yacht that Nina had steered that bright day 
 somewhere away back in another life. Mrs. Gran- 
 zine was at the helm. Nina had just said, "Most 
 of the differences between us seem to me mere 
 words." She had smiled and was looking into his 
 eyes with that glance of recognition and trust. 
 Crash went the yacht into their little boat, just 
 where Nina sat. He saw her face marked like 
 Courtenay's, and she sank. He tried to pull the 
 boat around with his port oar, to where she was 
 sinking, but some nightmare force held his arm 
 and interrupted him. Nina was there drowning. 
 He tried madly again and again to pull to her, 
 and could not. In horrible agony he awoke. Cal- 
 mire had been gently moving his arm to arouse 
 him. 
 
 " Oh!" he cried; " is it all a dream ?" 
 
 "What have you been dreaming?" 
 
 " Nina!" he exclaimed. "Yes, I remember now. 
 Never mind. I'm ready. What am I to do?"
 
 33 2 Banished. 
 
 " Come and have some supper." 
 " I can't eat." 
 
 " Go out into the lavatory and dash some cold 
 water over your face. Then come into the dining- 
 room." 
 
 In a few minutes they were opposite each other 
 at the table. Muriel was ready for a glass of wine, 
 but he poured out half a goblet of the carefully 
 tempered Burgundy, filled it up with ice-water, and 
 swallowed it at a gulp. Then he filled his wine- 
 glass. Pierre had withdrawn at a sign from his 
 master. 
 
 " If you don't eat something with that," said Cal- 
 mire, "your head will be reeling." 
 
 "All right," said the boy, and helped himself to 
 some cold chicken and bread, and before he knew 
 it, was relishing them. 
 
 "Now," said Calmire, "have you plenty of 
 money ?" 
 
 " Did I ever have?" asked Muriel. 
 
 " Never long. What have you about you ?" 
 
 " Twenty or thirty dollars." 
 
 "That will start you," said Calmire. "Go to 
 some place within six or eight hours of here, where 
 you are not known, and which is not small enough 
 to make you an object of remark. But you can't 
 cash checks at such places, so take this." He 
 tossed across the table a wad of bills that he had 
 taken from his fob. " In three days write me 
 where you are. For three days to come, I don't 
 want to know. Then I'll tell you what to do 
 next." 
 
 "All right," said Muriel, and af teramoment added :
 
 Banished. 333 
 
 " Oh ! I hate to leave you with this uncertainty 
 hanging upon me. For that matter, I hate to leave 
 at all. It seems cowardly." 
 
 "It is best." 
 
 "You promise me on your honor that you will 
 do nothing to prevent my ultimately facing this 
 thing like a man ?" 
 
 " Need I ?" 
 
 " Forgive me, Uncle Grand, my brain whirls." 
 
 "Now, Muriel, one thing you are to understand. 
 There's no room for heroics in my philosophy. 
 Self-sacrifice is a great thing in its place. But I 
 don't believe that a man who has spoken slander, 
 can remedy it by wearing a hair shirt, or that a 
 man who has robbed, can better things by shaving 
 his head or going on a crusade. The world has so 
 long been educated in such notions, however, that 
 when a high-spirited youngster repents a wrong, 
 his first impulse is to do himself some harm. If 
 there's a chance to do it under the guise of doing 
 somebody else some good, or what appears to be 
 some good, so much stronger the impulse. Most 
 of the time, there is, at bottom, some notion that in 
 that way scores can be cleared off and matters made 
 as they were before, at least from the side of justice." 
 
 "But, Uncle" 
 
 "Don't interrupt me, please. I don't say that 
 this is deliberately your individual way. I simply 
 say that, in the present stage of evolution, it's 
 largely human nature. Now all that way is mainly 
 humbug. Harm done, is harm done. There's no 
 undoing or offsetting it. The only reasonable 
 thing is to attend to the consequences, and try
 
 334 Banished. 
 
 to shape them to the least pain for all, and to con- 
 fine that pain as nearly as possible where the blame 
 lies. This trouble is too complicated to judge 
 hastily. I can't tell you yet what to strive for. 
 Perhaps I said too much in the library. Leave it 
 to me, and I will try literally \.Q judge it. When I 
 ought to send for you, I will send." 
 
 After a few moments of meditation, Calmire 
 asked abruptly: "Whom did you supplant?" 
 
 Reflecting a little, Muriel answered: "I can't be 
 very sure, but as probably Clint Russell as anybody." 
 
 After another brief silence, Calmire asked : " Have 
 you a diary?" 
 
 " Only a very fitful one." 
 
 " Take it with you to consult if I want to ask you 
 any more questions." 
 
 " It's in my trunk at the station now." 
 
 " Well, it's time for you to go there too. Tele- 
 graph me in three days. Now, Muriel, remember 
 this. It won't mean much now, but it will later. 
 Make the most of this time of misery. It is in such 
 times that character grows. Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 Calmire walked with him silently to the steps, 
 and pressed his hand. At the turn of the road, 
 Muriel looked back to Nina's dark windows, then 
 buried his face in his hands, and down the hiil 
 which, a few hours before, he had scaled in trium- 
 phant hope, he was driven beneath the waning Oc- 
 tober moon, inert and despairing, burdened for the 
 first time with the ennobling curse of care.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIi. 
 
 "DU SOLLST ENTBEHREN." 
 
 AFTER Muriel left, Calmire went in and sat be- 
 fore the fire. His thoughts ran somewhat : " I sup- 
 pose some wise men would have sent that poor 
 boy off without a single gleam of hope. Ah, me ! 
 Perhaps a youth without follies is apt to mean a 
 manhood without inspirations." 
 
 Then instead of continuing to ponder, as weaker 
 men would, he said to himself, as his habit was: 
 "While I sleep, it will shape itself," and went off to 
 bed. 
 
 He awoke late next morning, but with a pretty 
 clear idea of what point in the situation he would 
 touch next, and while dressing with the happy im- 
 pulse of physical vigor that, whatever his state of 
 mind may be, a strong man often feels in the morn- 
 ing, especially in early Autumn, he told Pierre that 
 he should need his saddle-horse at ten. 
 
 As he went to the front door, he found it open 
 and saw Nina sitting on a bench in the sunlit lawn. 
 She was braiding some bright Fall leaves around her 
 hat. In pulling it off, she had loosened her hair, 
 and the red-gold stream rippled down over a deep 
 green dress of some soft substance that fitted close 
 to her graceful curves. On a tree near her, waited 
 a few birds who had postponed going South to 
 look at her, and they were chippering sweet praises 
 
 335
 
 336 " Du soltst entbehren* 
 
 of her to each other. Her profile was toward Cal- 
 mire, and its firm delicacy stood out against some 
 dark evergreens. Her face was absorbed in her 
 work, but was relieved by an expression of deep 
 content, and she was humming to herself a little 
 song which he could not clearly catch. 
 
 While life and temptation last, who shall say 
 with final assurance: "I have conquered"? Cal- 
 mire had renounced the sweet dream that had been 
 floating across his mind for many weeks, and had 
 determined that though the rest of his days might 
 abound in sympathy and peace, he should know the 
 fires of joy, only as reflected heat. In his life, pas- 
 sion, possession, exultation, all had blazed glorious 
 and triumphant. He had felt all that man may 
 feel and keep strong, and he had said content- 
 edly: " I have had my share: let me make way 
 for others now." But he was a man still: he 
 stood regarding her as men who are both strong 
 and good are apt to regard women with some 
 such expression of mingled discrimination and 
 reverence as a sincere Egyptian priest, if there was 
 one, would have regarded a creature which to 
 him was both flesh and God. At first the trained 
 habit of Calmire's soul to lose itself in any ob- 
 ject of beauty, made him unconscious of all but 
 the aesthetic side of the picture before him: but 
 as he watched Nina's unconscious loveliness, 
 there grew in him the man's yearning to possess 
 and cherish. Back in his consciousness, but un- 
 defined, rumbled that deep note which under- 
 lies every human symphony, and which means
 
 " Du sotlst entbehren." 337 
 
 incompleteness and abnegation ; but so far as he was 
 conscious of it, it only aroused that savage im- 
 pulse to crush all opposition, right or wrong, 
 which seems to have come down with all great 
 strength, from barbaric fathers. In Calmire, as 
 in all other men of steady power, the barbaric 
 tenseness was under perfect and involuntary con- 
 trol. It never attained even the definiteness of 
 motive, but it often filled his soul with a grasping 
 eagerness. 
 
 While he stood thus with all his nature uncon- 
 sciously reaching for her, she overcame some little 
 difficulty with her wreath, and held it up on a level 
 with her eyes, humming her little tune with a cer- 
 tain triumphant energy. Some maidenly instinct 
 kept her from uttering the words, but Calmire re- 
 membered them. 
 
 "Erkommt! Er kommt ! Mein Lieber kommt, 
 Mein Lieber kommt zuriick!" 
 
 Was this a flash of triumph that passed through 
 Calmire, as he said half aloud: " No, he won't"? 
 Whatever it was, the next instant the honorable 
 gentleman bent his head, and his cheeks were red 
 with shame. 
 
 Then he turned and went into his library and 
 closed the door, and walked up and down heavily 
 a few times, and then seated himself in anxious 
 thought by the window which commanded the bar- 
 ren hills with their stones and mullens. And circle 
 as his thoughts would, they always came back to 
 the point: " It may be too late now to be generous 
 for hirr. and her need of me may be final. There's no
 
 338 D U so ii st entbehren." 
 
 one for her but him or me. And now he, poor 
 boy ! " 
 
 Soon Nina came running in to learn if he was up, 
 and found him at breakfast. Her large instincts 
 told her that there was something wrong, though 
 Calmire's attempts to conceal that fact were among 
 the great efforts of his life. 
 
 Mrs. Wahring came in too, and said : " Why not 
 only are you late, but Mr. Muriel is losing some of 
 his new punctuality. I suppose he returned last 
 night ?" 
 
 Evidently Pierre had not been subjected to any 
 inquisitions. 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, who had learned that the 
 best way to conceal essentials, is to leave as little 
 room as possible for inconsistency between non- 
 essentials. " He came, but new matters had arisen 
 which forced me to send him right back." 
 
 " Oh !" exclaimed Nina, and Calmire thought 
 how comfortable it would be to be dead. 
 
 But just at present, he had no time for comfort 
 in that way or any other. He had got to go to 
 Calmire and survey the situation. He told the 
 ladies that he was going to ride over. One rea- 
 son why he had ordered his horse saddled, was 
 that he did not wish any company. 
 
 " Let me ride with you," said Nina ; " I must go 
 to-day." 
 
 " Unfortunately I'm in great haste and must go 
 across country," answered Calmire. "Won't you 
 take the victoria ?" 
 
 " Oh, I can go across country." 
 
 "There are high fences," said Calmire, almost 
 impatiently.
 
 " Dn sollst entbehren." 339 
 
 "You mustn't take them, my darling," expostu- 
 lated Mrs. Wahring. " It's bad enough for Cousin 
 Calmire to risk his own neck. You'renotfitforalong 
 ride, anyhow; you've been a little sleepless of late." 
 
 " But I'm very fit now!" urged Nina. 
 
 Calmire was half tempted to make some compro- 
 mise with her, but restrained himself by reflecting: 
 "I've got to gag that she-devil of a Granzine, and 
 that's a job that will give me enough to think out, 
 without having to parry this child all the way." 
 
 Mrs. Wahring had a headache, and so it came 
 about that Nina drove over and back alone. She 
 had a good time with her own thoughts so good 
 that she drove over alone more than once later, and 
 thus the little circumstance of her going alone this 
 day had some results; or perhaps it would be bet- 
 ter to say that the place of this little circumstance 
 in the infinite web of causes and results, eventu- 
 ally became more noticeable than at the time would 
 have appeared probable. 
 
 As Calmire started to ride across country, the 
 old-time suggestion of augury came up in his 
 mind, and as he dismissed it, his smile was very 
 sad. He thought of a similar suggestion that 
 had come when he started to drive tandem with 
 Nina far back on the other side of this great 
 gulf of trouble. It is strange, before one stops to 
 reason over it, how remote even yesterday appears, 
 when there is a great event between it and to-day. 
 Calmire's augury to-day was : "If I jump an even 
 number of ditches, this affair will come out right : 
 if odd !" But he forgot to count the ditches.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 A LITTLE DIPLOMACY. 
 
 THE first thing Calmire did on reaching the 
 office, was to send for Clint Russell, the gentleman 
 whose difficulties with the bass tuba, and interest 
 in African colonization, were alluded to very early 
 in this narrative, and who was one of the most 
 important foremen in the mills. 
 
 This Clint Russell was a character. When a great 
 lank boy of twenty, he had come to Calmire from the 
 army. Muriel's grandfather asked what he could do. 
 He answered: "Anything that don't need book- 
 larnin '," and Mr. Calmire found out that he had sub- 
 stantially told the truth, as he always did. But he 
 had since shown his ability to do some things that 
 did require more or less " book-larnin'," and had 
 provided himself with not a little of that enervating 
 commodity. Yet, as is not seldom the case with such 
 men, his speech, especially at exciting moments, re- 
 tained much of the twangand many of the solecisms 
 of his youth, as well as a very undue proportion of 
 the oaths he had, boy-like, cultivated in the army. 
 But at bottom he was a gentle and reverent soul, 
 rugged, but strong and reliable as his native New 
 England hills. 
 
 When he came in, Calmire, with 'a diplomacy 
 foreign to his character, but, like many other ardu- 
 ous things, within his powers under great necessity, 
 
 340
 
 A Little Diplomacy. 34 1 
 
 got Clint into a communicative mood, then led 
 gradually from a business talk, through some in- 
 quiry about Granzine's functions at the mills, to 
 comments on the family, and at last managed to 
 bring in, in the most natural manner in the world: 
 
 " I had a notion once that you wanted to marry 
 Minerva, old man." 
 
 He had affectionately called Clint "old man," 
 when none of the other men were by, for many 
 years. 
 
 " And have that damned woman for a mother- 
 in-law? Not if I know myself, sir !" was Clint's 
 prompt reply. 
 
 In the rest of the conversation, he had abundant 
 occasion for his pet adjective, and its various forms 
 as verb and substantive, but the reader need not 
 be bothered with them. 
 
 Calmire laughed in spite of his heavy heart. 
 
 " Why, Clint, what difference does the mother- 
 in-law make if a man wants a girl ?" 
 
 " Not so much with your sort o' folks ; but it's 
 different with us. We mostly have to live together, 
 and crowd close. Old Granzine's peterin' out, and 
 never amounted to narthin' in his own house no- 
 how; Johnny's gone to college and won't be doin* 
 much for quite a spell. I'd soon have the old wo- 
 man on my shoulders, and I hate her." 
 
 "Why, Clint, you didn't always feel this way. 
 But pardon my meddlesomeness." 
 
 " Oh, as for me ever hav'n' anything to par- 
 don in you, it's too ridiculous. Yes, I did kind 
 o' shine up to Minervy once, and that woman 
 she kind o' led me on until, I may as well out with
 
 342 A Little Diplomacy. 
 
 it, when Mr. Muriel come home one holiday, and 
 the woman got her blasted neck twisted over him." 
 
 " Which woman ?" 
 
 "The old 'un. The young 'un might ha' kep' 
 along straight enough if the old one had had sense 
 enough to let her alone. But she ain't much of a 
 critter to go alone nohow. It might ha' been right 
 enough though, if the old woman hadn't inter- 
 fered. But mebbe it's all for the best." 
 
 " Whether it's better or not, Clint," said Cal- 
 mire, " I'm sorry you think Muriel was the cause 
 of any trouble. But I've never known of his 
 being with her a great deal. He certainly has not 
 been since I've been home." 
 
 " Guess that's so," said Clint. " Well, if it hadn't 
 been him, it might ha' been somebody else, and 
 that too, perhaps, when my job got far enough to 
 make it hurt." 
 
 "Then you've no grudge against Muriel ?" 
 
 " I ain't had no call ter ! He hadn't been here, 
 so he didn't know what I was arter, and he didn't 
 do narthin' I wouldn't ha' done." 
 
 " Well, if you wanted to marry her, you're pretty 
 liberal to him. But that's just like you." 
 
 " Oh, we wasn't reg'lerly keepin' company. I 
 was only sort o' shinin' up to her." 
 
 " Well, it's strange you hate the mother so much, 
 if you didn't love the daughter just as much." 
 
 " It's God a'mighty's own work to hate that 
 woman anyhow. None of us people ain't good 
 enough for her: yet at bottom she's not as good as 
 the worst of us. She's always makin' trouble. She 
 nearly bust up the library while you was away.
 
 A Little Diplomacy. 343 
 
 Oh, I know her! But I didn't think so awful much 
 about it till she tried her stuck-up airs on me." 
 
 "You didn't think much aboutwhat,if I mayask ?" 
 
 " Sorry I can't tell you, sir." But he told 
 
 enough for Calmire before the interview was over. 
 
 Calmire could not have talked with any other 
 subordinate in the works as he talked with Clint. 
 But the characters of both men made such intimacy 
 possible without any intrenchment on their respec- 
 tive positions, and Calmire not only liked, perhaps 
 it would not be too much to say loved, the man, 
 but found him an unfailing source of sympathetic 
 amusement, and often indulged in chats with him. 
 Calmire found it very congenial with his feeling to- 
 ward his trusted henchman to learn that, after all, 
 Minerva Granzine did not appear to have more 
 deeply stirred the giant's great and simple heart. 
 
 But Calmire was no sentimentalist, and perhaps he 
 did not allow quite enough for Clint's involuntary 
 New England reticence. He knew, though, that 
 there are too many close intimacies where hearts 
 are not involved, and he had more to search for, 
 with hope and fear for Muriel's sake. His cautious 
 inquiries, however, elicited nothing to relieve his 
 perplexities. Yet there was much more of the con- 
 versation, some of which eventually served him. 
 
 He led the talk over a wide range of topics con- 
 cerning the work-people, and the various organi- 
 zations for their benefit, bringing in a variety oi 
 personal gossip, and getting side lights on his main 
 points as best he could without arousing suspicion. 
 To close the interview, he looked at his watch and 
 said:
 
 344 A Little Diplomacy. 
 
 "Well, we've used up a lot of time, but I've been 
 so busy since I got home, over back work and 
 with guests in my house, that I haven't really had 
 a good gossip about our people before. You've 
 given me some points about the way things have 
 been running, especially at the library building, 
 that I think may be of some use. And," he added 
 laughing, " if your friend Mrs. Granzine wants to 
 stir up any more seditions there, or make any 
 trouble of any kind, am I to understand that I'm 
 at liberty to refer her to you ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir/" said Clint. " Just you do anything 
 you please. We all know you don't take no wrong 
 twists on nobody. Good-morn'n'." 
 
 As soon as Clint had gone out, Calmire wrote to 
 Mrs. Granzine, asking for an appointment a week 
 later, and expressing regret that many engage- 
 ments prevented his giving the subject the con- 
 sideration it deserved, in less time.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER. 
 
 ON Friday, the twenty-first, promptly at seven, 
 Mr. Calmire presented himself by appointment at 
 Mrs. Granzine's. That lady opened the door herself, 
 and asked him to walk into the "drawing-room." 
 
 When they were seated, he began: 
 
 "I hope I needn't tell you again, Mrs. Granzine, 
 how much I deplore this affair, and how ready I 
 am to do anything and advise anything that will 
 make the burden lightest for all concerned." 
 
 "There need not be any burden about it, sir. 
 All that is necessary, is for Mr. Muriel to marry 
 Minerva. All will be happy. Providence orders 
 everything for the best, sir." 
 
 "So you attribute this state of affairs to the de- 
 signs of Providence, do you ?" Calmire could not 
 help saying in a tone of sarcasm that Mrs. Gran- 
 zine was too intent on her own ideas to notice. 
 
 "How can we doubt it, sir?" she answered. 
 "Does not God do everything?" 
 
 "I don't know: we seem to do some things our- 
 selves. But I believe the people who claim to know, 
 find it convenient to have a devil to do a part." 
 
 " The devil has no chance where we do our duty, 
 sir. Everybody's duty is plain here, and through 
 this mysterious dispensation, good will come." 
 
 " Well, I regret to say that I don't see anything 
 at all mysterious in the 'dispensation,' and I do 
 
 345
 
 346 The Encounter. 
 
 find a great deal that's mysterious in the question 
 of what we ought to do about it." 
 
 " You do not mean to say, sir, that you have any 
 doubt as to Mr. Muriel's duty to marry Minerva ! 
 There can be only one end to such doubts, sir, and 
 I do not see how you can doubt at all." 
 
 "Simply by trying to consider your side of the 
 case as fairly as my own." 
 
 This nonplussed her. She had never known any- 
 body to be troubled in that way before. After a 
 moment, she said: 
 
 "It is perfectly plain to me, sir. May I inquire 
 into the considerations which prevent its being 
 equally plain to you?" 
 
 "Well, to begin with the point you are most 
 likely to be interested in: I doubt if it would be the 
 happiest thing for Minerva." 
 
 She was dumbfounded, and her eyes took an 
 ugly look. 
 
 " Did you come here to play with me, sir?" 
 
 " Not at all. Shall I give you my reasons ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then you must pardon plain speaking. It is 
 but natural for you to suppose that what money 
 and surroundings Muriel could give a woman, 
 ought to make her happy." 
 
 " And why not ?" 
 
 " Any newspaper will prove to you that money 
 cannot secure happy marriages that wretched 
 ones are as frequent proportionally among the 
 rich as among the poor. Marriage must depend 
 on the persons themselves, and in unhappy mar-
 
 The Encounter. 347 
 
 riages, the woman inevitably suffers more than the 
 man. Now what sort of a preparation for a happy 
 marriage is the present state of affairs?" 
 
 " If a man has the least spark of decency about 
 him," she exclaimed rather irrelevantly, " he would 
 do his duty by a woman under such circum- 
 stances !" 
 
 " Softly, madam. We are simply inquiring what 
 his duty is." 
 
 " I say it's to marry her and be good to her." 
 
 " ' Be good to her ' is an easy thing to say, and 
 perhaps an easy thing for an inexperienced man to 
 think he can do. There might be some confident 
 eagerness to begin it, in some generous young men. 
 But when the humdrum of life begins, and new 
 experiences come to the front, the first chivalric 
 feeling is driven into the background, and soon the 
 question becomes the same as it is in all other mar- 
 riages: Are the two people fitted for each other?" 
 
 " But " she interrupted. 
 
 " Bear with me a few moments more, please. 
 Now here, that question has some powerful con- 
 siderations against it. First and plainest, the dif- 
 ferent experiences of the young people. These are 
 of vast importance, not only as regards their rela- 
 tions to each other, but their relations to the world: 
 and the two relations affect each other. But it 
 is not an agreeable point to enlarge upon now. 
 Next, and stronger, comes the different cast of 
 their minds. Muriel's is very peculiar. I never 
 saw half a dozen women who could live with 
 him happily. Then comes the all-important
 
 348 The Encounter. 
 
 fact which we cannot afford to blink, that to make 
 a woman happy as the head of his house, a man 
 must look upon her with eyes which it is impossible 
 for the man to have for the woman in this case." 
 
 "What way do you mean, sir?" 
 
 " I mean that the present state of affairs would 
 have to be forgotten, and some men could never 
 forget, and Muriel happens to be such a man." 
 
 Mrs. Granzine drew a long breath, and got up 
 and walked the floor. At last she burst out: 
 
 "Yes, you ruin us, and then despise us." Then 
 she threw herself upon the sofa and burst into a 
 flood of angry tears. 
 
 Calmire felt as much sympathy as men usually 
 do before women's tears, but he always felt his con- 
 victions more persistently than most men can. His 
 lips twitched a moment, and then he unconsciously 
 uttered a little nervous laugh. He rose and ap- 
 proached the sofa where the woman's face was 
 buried in her arms, resisted an impulse to lay his 
 hand on her head, did lay it on the arm of the sofa 
 beside her, and said, very quietly: 
 
 " Compose yourself, Mrs. Granzine. We must 
 consider this matter with calmness, or we can do 
 nothing." 
 
 She sat up, clinched her knees with her hands, 
 and glared at him through her tangled hair. 
 
 " Consider it calmly! Do nothing with it! Your 
 nephew and adopted son comes here and ruins my 
 daughter! You refuse justice, and ask me to con- 
 sider it calmly, and you speak of doing nothing 
 with it! What do you call yourself?" 
 
 At first the question concluding her tirade did
 
 The Encounter. 349 
 
 not move Calmire to any response, but during the 
 silence that ensued, it somehow found lodgment 
 in his mind, and in a few moments he answered 
 her in a sad slow voice: 
 
 "An imperfect man who hopes he loves justice 
 and wishes to do it. But," he added with a sudden 
 quick firmness, " no amount of excitement on your 
 part is going to help me one hair's breadth." 
 
 She had but one idea, and had had but one for 
 six months to marry her daughter to Muriel Cal- 
 mire. That idea seldom slept, unless she slept; it 
 had been first in her dreams, and had greeted her 
 first of all things when she awoke. Monomania 
 was a mild name for it. That she had not forced 
 it into every sentence of the interview, was an illus- 
 tration of the strength of her nature. Now the 
 floodgates were down. She rose to her feet and 
 half screamed at him: 
 
 "Will you make your nephew marry my daugh- 
 ter?" 
 
 " Probably not." 
 
 Mrs. Granzine flew to the first alternative: 
 
 " Then I will." 
 
 " You'll have to find him first. It may not be 
 easy, even then." 
 
 "Oh! He's run away, has he? The coward! 
 Then I'll disgrace the name of Calmire from one 
 end of the land to the other." 
 
 "At the cost of the name of Granzine?" 
 
 " Oh, what's the name of Granzine ?" 
 
 " You seemed to consider it a good deal just 
 now, when you spoke of the danger threatening it." 
 
 " Well, the name's going to the dogs anyhow!"
 
 350 The Encounter. 
 
 " Not if I can help it!" 
 
 She dropped into a chair and looked up at him. 
 
 " Not if you can help it ? What can you do ?" 
 
 "Send you and your daughter away from here in 
 comfort until the future is past question. Mean- 
 time determine what is best to do then." 
 
 This was not what she had been burning for, for 
 six months. She felt, though, that force would not 
 give her that, and Calmire's " Not if I can help it," 
 had surprised one of the little loop-holes of even her 
 dark soul. She sat a few moments perplexed and, 
 for her, softened. Then she began: "Where's the 
 justice? Where's the justice for the woman, any- 
 how? The two commit the same wrong. The man 
 goes free, the world pardons and receives him. The 
 woman bears her burden and her disgrace, and the 
 world turns her off. Oh, it's unjust!" 
 
 "It's no such thing!" exclaimed Calmire. His 
 mind had lately been full of the subject and it over- 
 flowed. " I've heard that sort of rant on the stage 
 and off, until I'm sick of it. It will pass among 
 old maids, but you're too experienced for it. You 
 know what a man is and what a woman is. You 
 know that a young man's passions are to a young 
 woman's as lightning to moonshine, unless the wo- 
 man is perverted: and you know that if she is, she 
 can heat and mould the man like wax. You know 
 that no man has the same control over any woman 
 that almost any woman has over almost any man. 
 You know that it's as natural for a young woman 
 to fly, as it is for a young man to pursue, that the 
 only defence for either of them, is in her re> 
 serve, and that if she does not use that defence,
 
 The Encounter. 35 l 
 
 the fault is hers. You know that it's her business 
 to protect them both, and that a good woman al- 
 ways does. You know, and I'm going to indulge 
 myself in saying that I don't believe anybody 
 knows better, that most of these miserable scrapes 
 are made by women perverted from their nature, 
 and men who only follow their nature. Don't talk 
 to me about the man being as much to blame as 
 the woman ! There may be one case in ten where 
 he is. But that's not this case, and you know it." 
 
 "I don't know it, and he's got to marry my 
 daughter," persisted the woman. Long nursing 
 of the idea seemed to have rendered her incapable 
 of relinquishing it, yet it was far enough displaced 
 to make room for the idea of revenge. " If he 
 doesn't," she added, " I'll disgrace you all." 
 
 It was a little strange, but not unnatural, that her 
 resentment had not directed itself more specifically 
 against Muriel; but she had a sub-consciousness 
 regarding his share of the responsibility: and of 
 the obstacles to her ambitions, the principal one 
 seemed to be Mr. Calmire. 
 
 He reflected: "Confound the woman! In her 
 madness she's just as apt as not to do something 
 which will publish the whole affair. I must stop 
 her mouth." Then he said: 
 
 " Mrs. Granzine, suppose we suspend our argu- 
 ment long enough for me to tell you a little cir- 
 cumstance that may influence your views. A 
 friend of mine, who was a sergeant in the First 
 Maine Cavalry some twenty years ago, told me 
 that the surgeon of his regiment got hit once 
 while attending to the wounded under fire. The
 
 352 The Encounter. 
 
 surgeon was a brave man, though not exactly 
 what my friend calls a ' straight ' one. Well, my 
 friend carried him to the rear and set him down 
 against a tree, and the surgeon said: ' It's a ptetty 
 bad case, and if I don't get over it, I want you to 
 take these things ' and some of them were pretty 
 valuable things ' to a patient of mine up in Sands- 
 ville.' " 
 
 Mrs. Granzine's muscles grew a little more tense. 
 
 " My friend said that he took the things, was 
 nimself left on the field for dead that night, found 
 himself robbed when he recovered consciousness, 
 and never saw the surgeon again " 
 
 " Well, Mr. Calmire, what in the world has this 
 to do with what we're talking of?" 
 
 " Never saw the surgeon again," resumed Cal- 
 mire, " until the surgeon came to this town last 
 week. Now, Mrs. Granzine, you needn't care to 
 know the rest of the story, and it will never be told 
 unless I should be forced to illustrate the laws of 
 heredity a little by citing their application to the 
 case of Minerva Granzine." 
 
 The woman leaned back in her chair, with a face 
 so pale that only her hair and her great gray eyes 
 seemed to stand out from the white " tidy." In a 
 few seconds she bent quickly forward with her 
 hands clinching her knees, looked piercingly at 
 Calmire, and ground out between her teeth: 
 
 " I'll kill that Clint Russell ! How did he learn 
 it was I, and what made him tell you ?" 
 
 " He learned it naturally enough, and I learned 
 it naturally enough, without his intending that I 
 should. But if you had acted more wisely toward
 
 TJie Encounter. 353 
 
 him, I never should have happened on it. But if 
 you really mean to continue your unwise course so 
 far as to kill him, you've made a mistake in making 
 me a witness to your intention. Such testimony 
 hangs: so to be safe, you'd have to kill me too. 
 I've no particular objection to .your doing that, but 
 I don't believe it would be good policy." 
 
 Then he arose and continued: " Mrs. Granzine, 
 you're a sorely-tried woman, and I'm sorry for 
 you from the bottom of my heart. Of course you 
 will believe that, or not, as you please. But permit 
 me to advise you to believe it, and to let me know 
 that you do, and then to command me in anything 
 that I can approve which will lessen your troubles. 
 Good-night." 
 
 His tones were kind and earnest. If there had 
 been any sarcasm or hardness in them, she would 
 not have felt so sure that her game was up. 
 
 Calmire had not got half way to John's before 
 he met Clint Russell. He stopped fora word, and 
 at parting said: " Clint, perhaps I ought to tell you 
 that your having put me on the track of more of 
 Doctor Leitoff's history than you intended, need 
 give your sense of honor no further misgivings. 
 It has done good service." 
 
 "Then," broke out Clint, with a very just feel- 
 ing, but, as has been the case with more than one 
 other good man, with a very mistaken idea of what 
 he was talking about, " Hurrah for our side, and 
 Mrs. Granzine may go to the devil !"
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 ANOTHER ENCOUNTER. 
 
 THE next morning, Mrs. Granzine, in a neat gray 
 morning-gown, was by her window trying to com- 
 pose her distracted mind by reading one of Ouida's 
 novels, when the noise of a carriage caused her to 
 look up, and she saw Miss Wahring pass toward the 
 green. Her face assumed an expression of hate as 
 tragic as anything in the intense volume before her. 
 
 " You took him away! I know you did! I know 
 you did!" she exclaimed, so loudly that Minerva 
 called from the next room: 
 
 " What is it, mother ?" 
 
 " Never mind, my child." 
 
 Mrs. Granzine let her book lie, her finger be- 
 tween the leaves, and fell into a brown study. 
 Suddenly she said: "I'll do it," rose, put on her 
 bonnet and shawl, which were noticeably tasteful 
 though inexpensive, and started down the street. 
 Arrived at the green, she saw that Calmire's vic- 
 toria was not before his brother's house. She 
 walked past the house, around the green, and past 
 the house again. Then she walked about for half 
 an hour, frequently going where she could see 
 John Calmire's house, and peering into all the 
 shops as she went by them. At last, she entered a 
 drug-store where one of her few special friends 
 was clerk, and said to him: 
 
 354
 
 Another Encounter. 355 
 
 " William, I desire to write a letter. May I have 
 the privilege of doing so here?" 
 
 " Certainly," he said. " Mr. Einstein will not be 
 in for an hour. Come right back to his desk." 
 
 She went and spent three quarters of an hour in 
 producing, after various abortive attempts, a docu- 
 ment covering but two sides of a sheet of note- 
 paper. She addressed it, and started to go out, 
 when she saw Nina Wahring talking with the drug 
 clerk, whose sentence she caught up at: " . . per- 
 fume it very mildly: I should say about ten min- 
 utes. Will you wait ?" 
 
 Nina said yes, and seated herself. The clerk 
 went back to the prescription counter. Mrs. Gran- 
 zine said: " Thank you, William. Good-bye," and 
 passed outward into the store. The room was 
 long, and before she reached the front, she began 
 to shorten her steps and to peer at various objects 
 in the showcases. Opposite where Nina was sit- 
 ting, she seemed to find something of deep and 
 peculiar interest. After appearing to contemplate 
 it for perhaps five minutes, her hand all the time 
 in her pocket fumbling with the note, her features 
 set, she crushed the paper, turned, and abruptly 
 walked over to Nina, and said in a low tone: 
 
 " Excuse me, Miss. I have observed you fre- 
 quently interested in conversation with a gentle- 
 man who has no right to have any young lady but 
 one interested in him, and I feel under a moral 
 responsibility to make you acquainted with the 
 fact." 
 
 " I don't know that I've any need of any such 
 facts," said Nina, very calmly.
 
 Another Encounter. 
 
 She did not like the woman. Before Mrs. Gran- 
 zine spoke, there was something chilling about her 
 neat cold cut; and her grandiloquent language and 
 especially the expression of countenance which ac- 
 companied it, were repulsive. Nina's antipathy was 
 a pretty good substitute for apathy, but probably 
 if Muriel's name had been mentioned at the outset, 
 the substitute would not have been as efficacious. 
 
 " The person is not a proper person," reiterated 
 Mrs. Granzine. 
 
 " Oh!" said Nina, but very imperturbably. 
 
 " I mean Mr. Muriel Calmire," said the woman, 
 impatiently. 
 
 "Yes?" said Nina, with rising inflection, but the 
 same exasperating calm. 
 
 " He has ruined my daughter," ran on the 
 woman, stung beyond any power of restraint. 
 
 " Yes ?" said Nina, half mechanically repeating the 
 expression with the exasperating rising inflection 
 which had already served her so well, but she had a 
 faint grateful sense of the support of the counter. 
 
 " And he has run away; but he shall be forced to 
 come back and marry her and support her child," 
 almost screamed the woman. 
 
 " Yes?" again said Nina. 
 
 This was more than Mrs. Granzine had bargained 
 for. She had expected to overwhelm the girl not 
 only to destroy all fear of her being in the way of 
 Muriel's marriage to Minerva, but to make her 
 suffer for the innocent part she had presumably 
 taken in warping Muriel's inclinations away from 
 that unhappy girl. Here, for her life, she could 
 not make out whether Nina was agitated by such
 
 A not her Encounter. 357 
 
 communications, whether the revelations appeared 
 to her of consequence enough to in any way affect 
 her relations with Muriel, or whether (worst thought 
 of all) Muriel had not, with that almost shameless 
 candor of which he was spasmodically capable, 
 already confessed and been absolved. With her 
 communications received as of no consequence, and 
 herself treated contemptuously as a meddler and, 
 she felt, an inferior, Mrs. Granzine had gratuitously 
 poured the family scandal into another pair of ears. 
 Somehow she had, from the outset, no fear that it 
 would go farther; but nevertheless, she felt the deep- 
 est humiliation that she had endured in connection 
 with the whole humiliating affair. The instinct of 
 self-preservation asserted itself, and she said: 
 
 " I trust you believe, Miss, that nothing but a 
 conviction of moral responsibility would have in- 
 duced me to make this disclosure." 
 
 " Yes ?" again. 
 
 Mrs. Granzine disappeared. Nina took her pur- 
 chase, paid for it without counting her change a 
 very unusual thing with her and left the store. 
 
 Then what had been said to her began to take 
 on more detailed meaning. While listening, she 
 had felt and known little but that she must hold 
 herself in hand. Now she began to realize what it 
 was that she had been bracing herself against. In 
 horrified amazement, she recoiled from it with a 
 start that shook her whole soul and changed the 
 relations of all things in it. To her eyes, were 
 opened vistas that had been shaping themselves 
 deep down under her consciousness, and now fell 
 into coherent aspects under the new law which
 
 358 A not her Encounter. 
 
 had assumed control of her being. She voiced it 
 all in a questioning cry that welled up from depths 
 of her nature far below will or purpose, and that, 
 in the frequented street as she was, almost escaped 
 her lips: 
 
 "Muriel? Muriel? My Muriel ?" 
 
 She would not believe it. What she would not 
 believe, she hardly knew. She only knew that 
 far out in some inconceivable region, beyond even 
 the bounds of modesty, there was some vague form 
 of evil which cursed the human race, and espe- 
 cially her half of it, more heavily than any other 
 blight. She knew, too, that associated with this 
 evil were often, on the man's part, deceit and 
 cruelty. But deceit and cruelty were not Muriel, 
 so how could he have done the wrong ? The prob- 
 lem was too much for her. She puzzled and puz- 
 zled, until at last one fact, or set of facts, began to 
 assume horrible distinctness. Another woman 
 had a claim on him. Then she clearly felt what, 
 before, she had half unconsciously uttered to her- 
 self, that she had a claim the claim that a strong 
 and lonely soul has on a kindred soul when, by rare 
 chance, it meets one on its pilgrimage a claim in- 
 tensified a thousandfold when the ardor of youth 
 and the infinite sweet allurements of sex enforce 
 it. Muriel was hers, and she was his. Now she 
 knew it. And here was her one immeasurable, in- 
 effable possession, claimed, and claimed with some 
 dread vague right whose mystery made it doubly 
 terrible, by a person who could no more appreciate 
 the thing she claimed than the gorilla could appre- 
 ciate the human captive it was alleged to make. The
 
 Another Encounter, 
 
 359 
 
 comparison came from a picture in a book which 
 she had glanced into that very morning. It took 
 possession of her overwrought brain, and started 
 a horrible and bizarre sequence of fantasies. Mu- 
 riel was in hiding to escape the gorilla, and yet 
 (and Nina almost fainted as the thought came to 
 her) perhaps he was under an obligation that he 
 could not disregard and still be Muriel, to come 
 back and yield himself up. Then the picture 
 changed. Muriel could not be the captive. He 
 was too strong. He would subdue the horrid 
 thing, and for the rest of his life would be its 
 keeper. And outside the cage where they would 
 .dwell, would pass thought and art and high ambi- 
 tions and sweet love Nina herself was its image, 
 though pale, white-robed, with flowing hair and 
 wan eyes and as they should pass, Muriel would 
 see them all and yearn for them, but yearn less and 
 less every day, perhaps, until he should cease to 
 care for them, or even to know them; or perhaps 
 he would yearn more and more, until he would try 
 to break his chain of duty, and Nina could not let 
 him break it, and then they would both go mad. 
 And she wondered if she were not mad already 
 to have such strange phantasmagoria running 
 through her brain. 
 
 Dragging along, sometimes under such night- 
 mares, sometimes with a seeming absence of feel- 
 ing or interest in the matter, she reached John 
 Calmire's. 
 
 At lunch, she was gayer than usual, but little 
 Mrs. John saw or felt something in the gayety that 
 made her uneasy.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 A SOULLESS UNIVERSE. 
 
 THE next morning, Nina awoke too early after 
 a restless night. But she saw definitely before 
 her many distinct facts which she had hardly 
 recognized in the confusion of the evening be- 
 fore. 
 
 The strangest one was that she still loved a man 
 who had been guilty of the one, to her, unnamable 
 crime. 
 
 Next in strangeness, was that while, at the first 
 knowledge of the crime, she had instinctively dis- 
 sociated from him all thought of deceit and cru- 
 elty, she had never in her life before thought of 
 the crime as other than absolutely and unquali- 
 fiedly black. With this, she remembered some 
 men's talk to which she had at the time paid very 
 little attention, about " degrees" of burglary and 
 murder. 
 
 Perhaps, then, there were degrees of this unnam- 
 able crime ! And now her simple, easy world of 
 applied dogma of snap judgment from a ready- 
 made supply kept in stock, was gone, and gone 
 forever. 
 
 Nina had no special intellectual genius she was 
 a woman at best: but that best is the very best, 
 though it may not do the things often relatively 
 
 360
 
 . / Sou I less Universe. 361 
 
 cheap things that are heard of. Yet she could 
 do much that the commonplace would call impos- 
 sible. One such deed, was forming her present 
 feeling regarding Muriel considering, on the ex 
 parte case before her, and in face of the vague and 
 bitter sentiments of a young girl regarding the 
 aberrations of which he had been guilty, whether 
 his wrong, great as she felt it must be, had neces- 
 sarily involved any violation of his honor; and 
 judicially deciding that that could not be. That 
 she was helped to this feat by love, does not de- 
 tract from its greatness. 
 
 On one point, her judicial conclusion (it would be 
 better to say her judicial inspiration, for there was 
 not very much reasoning about it) nearly broke 
 down. At first her mind had been filled solely with 
 thoughts of Muriel's separation from herself: when 
 the idea came that he had been unfaithful to her, it 
 was a sudden revelation, and for a moment was ac- 
 cepted with the faith usually inspired by such. 
 Soon, however, her characteristic justice asserted 
 itself, and she said aloud: "What claim have I 
 on him?" Then she added to herself: "He never 
 gave me a word or sign or look of love." This 
 led her to ponder over the details of the evening 
 before he went away. " He praised me," she said 
 to herself; "he showed deep sympathy with me; 
 he regretted that we had not known each other 
 better earlier. But / did not exist, to be known, 
 much earlier! I am not the same woman that came 
 here. That night in the storm, I think Well, 
 whatever he felt toward me, he carried away with 
 him: he saw no other woman before he went."
 
 3^2 A Soulless Universe. 
 
 In a moment more, she sprang from her chair, 
 clasped her hands, and said with a radiant face : 
 " He left me that letter ! He left me that letter !" 
 Then she flung herself on her bed in a flood of tears. 
 
 But what was this other cloud of whose presence 
 she had been but very dimly conscious, but that 
 now, as the day came on, rolled up until it shut out 
 whatever gleams were in her uncertain sky, and left 
 even her present universe of strained ideals, dark 
 and hopeless ? Muriel, her teacher in morality, 
 
 had been immoral. Slowly it became perceptible 
 and grew plainer and plainer with horrible and 
 overwhelming distinctness, that the new basis of 
 conduct and life and faith which he had lifted her 
 to after her old one had disappeared, had, in its 
 turn, broken down, and broken down under Muriel 
 himself! Nothing was left, then no purity 01 
 goodness on earth, no God in Heaven. There 
 was nothing for her to rest upon, the universe was 
 but an infinite shifting sea, no land under foot, no 
 star overhead; and here in her first great misery, 
 when she most needed all the dear consolations 
 that she had had in her girlish sorrows, the conso- 
 lations were gone and she was alone alone no 
 God no Muriel. 
 
 She flung herself on her knees and strained her 
 eyes out to the steel-blue Autumn sky, and as she 
 peered into its vacant depths, moaned in her agony: 
 "Empty! empty! empty! Some miles of air; 
 then black cold space ; then off, off, off, another 
 world perhaps, with more air; then more space; 
 and so on, and on, and on, till my brain whirls 
 here and there more worlds more suns all grow-
 
 A Soulless Universe. 363 
 
 ing cold and dark but no Heaven and no God ! 
 Only cold, cold, cold and dark, dark, dark !" 
 
 Shuddering, she repeated the words over and 
 over again in a half-dazed fashion, braiding her 
 hands in her long hair and straining against it 
 as if it might be some such spiritual support as 
 she had been yearning for, and rocking herself to 
 and fro, until one knee which rested on the hard 
 floor beyond the rug, began to pain so as to recall 
 her to herself. Then she exclaimed: 
 
 " What ? I ?" 
 
 Putting one hand on the dressing-table, she 
 raised herself, and said: 
 
 " I can at least dress myself, instead of maunder- 
 ing here like a lunatic." 
 
 But the torturing thoughts would crowd. She 
 felt a cold little gleam of comfort when her girlish 
 timidity was invaded by a nebulous impression that 
 some preachers of the old faith had sinned too. But 
 all grew doubly black with the thought: " That sim- 
 ply proves their faith baseless. And the new faith is 
 baseless, and there is- nothing, nothing, nothing! 
 Why, I wonder that even the floor supports me." 
 
 When she looked in her mirror, she exclaimed in 
 a hoarse whisper: " God! What a face!" But she 
 went on with her toilet, without ringing for her 
 maid, and the rush of her thoughts kept on 
 too. 
 
 Suddenly she flung her brush on the table with 
 a start. She had thought : 
 
 " Muriel will be coming back soon. I must go 
 away. I must escape ! Where shall I go ? What 
 shall I do ?"
 
 364 -A Soulless Universe. 
 
 She began rocking herself to and fro again on 
 the stiff chair where she sat, and repeating the 
 words until, after a while, the sentences began to 
 lose their meaning, and grow into a faster and 
 rhythmic sing-song of "Where shall I go ? What 
 shall I do ? Where shall I go ? What shall I do ?" 
 
 When the feeling had spent itself, and she began 
 to reason again, there came the question of how to 
 induce her mother to go, and how to explain their 
 hurried departure to Mr. Calmire. It had been 
 understood, with Nina's glad concurrence, that 
 they were to remain at Fleuvemont until her 
 father should return in November. Now the ques- 
 tion of how to get away, was a torture; she had 
 become so nervous that everything was a torture. 
 But this question made her think of explanations 
 to Calmire, and the thought of him was always 
 restful to her. She grew calmer with a vague 
 realization that he too must know all the terrible 
 facts of this godless universe which completed her 
 despair, and that he was cheerful in spite of them. 
 Perhaps he could help her! So she decided to 
 ignore the question of departure, at least for a few 
 hours until she could tell him that she had no 
 more faiths for his talk to disturb, and so lead 
 him to cast any light he could on that blank dark 
 ness in her soul where her old faiths had been.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 MURIEL CALMIRE TO LEGRAND CALMIRE. 
 
 WHILE Nina was suffering alone, Calmire was 
 reading and answering the following letter: 
 
 " Oct. isth, 18 . 
 
 " Is there no way of easing up this torture, Uncle 
 Grand ? Was my crime as great as my punish- 
 ment? Are men's punishments in any way pro- 
 portioned to the evil they intend ? It's not remorse 
 I'm suffering most from, at least as I've always 
 imagined remorse, nor even realization of the con- 
 sequences of my crime or fault or misfortune : for 
 I'm not always quite ready to admit it a crime. Yet 
 sometimes, when I judge it from its consequences, 
 it seems as if it must be the blackest crime that 
 man ever committed. 
 
 " But over and above all remorse and dread 
 and personal misery I'm simply in Hell because 
 I realize at last what a mass of lies and snares this 
 universe is. Beauty and pleasure lied to me 
 everything lies. The blue water out there on the 
 lake, with its white-toppsd waves dancing in the 
 sun, is only a treacherous lie : beneath it are the 
 bones of men it has drowned. It woos me to 
 come to it : and it would drown me too, if I did 
 not fight it with my superior human skill and will. 
 
 365
 
 366 Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire. 
 
 God knows I'd like it to, often enough! It's a 
 lie! All things are lies! The glib philosophies 
 that used to make things seem good and beau- 
 tiful are as much lies as the religions. This 
 misery has made me realize that much wisdom at 
 least. 
 
 " Look at the hills. What are they but piles of 
 dirt ? To the unthinking man, they may seem grand 
 or fair. But to us who know, and have sense enough 
 to keep our knowledge before us (And it's only 
 fools who ignore such knowledge, and that is why 
 only fools are happy) to us who know, and who are 
 manly enough to face facts, these hills are but relics 
 of horrible convulsions, when earth seethed and 
 shook and burst and yawned, and heaved up 
 horrid ridges where even yet men lose their lives. 
 Why, in Switzerland the other day, a whole village 
 of simple folk, who had done no wrong and medi- 
 tated none, while they were in the very act of 
 saying their prayers to the merciless being who 
 launched all these terrors, were crushed, smothered, 
 mangled, by an avalanche of these same mountains 
 that I have been fool enough to find joy in. Some 
 few escaped maimed, and a babe unhurt its 
 mother dead, and no living breast left from which 
 to draw its food. Probably the poor little thing 
 sickened and died too. And this is what is done 
 by the hills, to which that simple old fool Solomon 
 looked up saying that from them came his strength! 
 
 " Oh, my God, (His name is now Satan, Ahriman, 
 Siva anything that is honestly bad, which Jehovah 
 and his troop were not,) how I do hate cant ! How 
 I do hate that milk-and-water spirit that prates of
 
 Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire. 367 
 
 good good good, in a world whose very lying 
 crust of sham beauty rests over lava-fires! 
 
 "And if this murderous Nature tires of her big 
 brutal weapons, what mean and disgusting poisons 
 she plays with ! And whom does she kill with them ? 
 Not those who have had their full share of the de- 
 ceitful farce called life, but the children, and the 
 weak and wretched those whose innocence or 
 whose misery would evoke some pity from the 
 meanest soul of even mean humanity. But Nature ? 
 Pity from her ? 
 
 "And beyond this seething ball whose cheating 
 crust swarms with Nature's victims, what have 
 you? More lies! Those clouds and sunset glories 
 what are they but painted lies ? Get into one 
 of them, and where are you ? In a fog chilled 
 to the bone, damp, seeing nothing, sure of death 
 if the thing be long continued. And yet, there 
 off on the horizon lies one (lies one, I say) that 
 some damned fool of a priest would call the 
 gate of Heaven; or some damned fool of a poet 
 would yearn for as a bridal couch for him and 
 the mass of flesh and bones and blood that he calls 
 his Love. Why, take a very woman the form of all 
 these lies that has cheated me most, and what is she 
 but a mass of the things I've named, hidden and got- 
 ten up to lure men to their doom, by a pretty skin 
 which you can't go into even as far as you can 
 into a man's, without drawing out the disgusting 
 blood it hides, and making the infernal mechanism 
 squeal ? What is that pearly rosy coloring, but the 
 same sort of a lie as the painting on a cloud, or as 
 this ocean-covered, hill-ribbed earth over the hell
 
 368 Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire. 
 
 seething underneath ? Take the lovely-seeming 
 skin itself what is it? Old Swift knew. There 
 was an honest man ! You remember how the 
 princess (Glumdalclitch, wasn't it?) of the big peo- 
 ple, to Gulliver's finer sense was covered with pits 
 and offended his nostrils. Our women are beauti- 
 ful and sweet to us, simply because we're fools- 
 weaklings; our perceptions are not fine enough to 
 see what they are. Yes, and I suppose I could be 
 just idiot enough again to kiss one of them one of 
 them! As if I dared kiss her footprint! 
 
 "And yet sometimes I don't care, now, for even 
 her. My very love was but one more lie! 
 
 "And of all the hideous cruelties of this reeking 
 earth, I'm among the worst. I'm not merely rec- 
 reant to love, but I meditate murder every hour, 
 and it is only because I couldn't hide it and for- 
 get it that I don't commit it. 
 
 " Oh, God! Uncle Grand, I shall go mad ! 
 
 "Oct. i4th. 
 
 " I couldn't go on yesterday. I was tired. I never 
 knew what it was to be tired in my mind until of 
 late. Besides, the feeling had written itself out. 
 I had a momentary notion that I was wrong some- 
 where : one is not always strong enough to be 
 loyal to painful convictions. But I've read the 
 whole through calmly to-day, and I see that it's 
 true deeply, damnably, hopelessly true. 
 
 "But as I read, I couldn't help thinking: But 
 what does the whole cursed farce amount to any- 
 how. 1 ' In a little while it's all over; and that fact
 
 Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire. 369 
 
 would take all the meaning out of it, even if it were 
 good for anything while it lasts. 
 
 " Uncle Grand, I did think you were an honest 
 man, and a brave one. How then, have you let me 
 grow up in such a veil of lies ? What if the veil 
 did shut out Hell? If we're in the midst of Hell, 
 isn't it best to know it ? I'm not afraid of Hell, 
 even ; no, nor of the fiend who made it, whether you 
 worship him as God, or, like the more honest Per- 
 sians, as devil. They're not honest either : for a 
 man who knows enough to worship a devil, as they 
 do, must know too much to worship a god too, and 
 they do worship one: in case of mistake, I suppose. 
 
 " Oh, how it sickens me when I think of our lying, 
 canting professors there at college, trying to cover 
 the whole thing over, as the skin covers over the 
 fat and blood and skeleton of the woman ! It's so 
 queer that they should think it their duty to lie so ! 
 Some of the old fools do seem to be kind and even 
 honest in their way. They ' think it's all for the 
 best,' I suppose, as their predecessors did in in- 
 quisitions and excommunications. The honest old 
 church-people would burn and torture for their 
 faith. The church-people of to-day are too weak : 
 they merely lie. 
 
 " Oh, for the robust old times, when a man could 
 kill if he wanted to ! There must be a delight in 
 it ! And perhaps somebody would kill me ! 
 
 " Write to me, Uncle Grand. Probably you will 
 have something to tell that will come as near kill- 
 ing me as any thing can. But nothing can ! There's 
 not mercy enough in the universe for even that. 
 
 " M."
 
 PART II 
 
 KOSMOS
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 LEGRAND CALMIRE TO MURIEL CALMIRE. 
 
 "Oct. I6th, 18 . 
 
 " I KNOW all about it, my poor boy. I told you 
 it would come. But I still say that you'll get 
 over it. You're simply enduring one of the curses 
 of I won't say genius, but of the type of mind 
 which, with certain exceptional accompaniments, 
 is genius. A man who takes little from tradition, 
 but investigates the universe for himself, seldom 
 settles into the mature convictions he lives by, 
 without going through just such a crisis as you're 
 in now. Weaklings, it kills, sometimes driving 
 them to kill themselves. Strong men live through 
 it; and only after living through it, do they enter 
 upon their full strength, and therefore upon their 
 full capacity for happiness. 
 
 " I have \cnown, and now you know, what it is to 
 envy those whose necessities are simple enough to 
 be met by the simple creeds. But this envy did 
 not last in me, nor will it in you. You will again 
 rejoice in dwelling on your lonely heights, even 
 amid the storms that sometimes enclose them. I 
 know as well as you do, how lonely you feel there 
 now; how there is no light in the sky, how the sun, 
 if it appear at all, shows itself only as a smoulder- 
 ing horror; how the far-off homes and peaceful 
 
 3
 
 4 Le grand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 ways of men, not lit up by the natural glow, seem 
 distorted and contemptible. I know it all, my 
 boy. The loneliness is one of the most terrible 
 things about it. But realize that others have been 
 there, and have come to regard this racking time as 
 but an episode, from which they have come back to 
 life as joyful as before, and strengthened against a 
 return of the same despair. 
 
 " If you can get hold of a copy of Sartor Resartus, 
 read the chapters, ' The Everlasting No,' ' The 
 Centre of Indifference,' and 'The Everlasting Yea.' 
 The 'No 'but seemed everlasting. So far as hu- 
 man needs go, the ' Yea,' when reached, is everlast- 
 ing. Possibly you have read the chapters before, 
 but probably they produced little effect upon you. 
 To get anything from the profoundest experiences 
 of others, one must bring profound experiences 
 of one's own. 
 
 " To Carlyle, all seemed seething flux, no point 
 in the universe whereon to stand. The first fixed 
 thing that came to him, was a realization that 
 he could fight. Whatever the forces controlling 
 things might be, he knew that they were simply 
 torturing him, and he felt that he could at least 
 return torture with struggle. There was work, 
 at least, and work with a big inspiration the 
 right to fight one's way, the right to one's self. 
 For ordinary work he was too ill one always is 
 in such crises. I dare say that, with the titanic 
 nerves of our family, you have never before felt 
 that anything attacking them could break your 
 health. But I shall be surprised if I do not soon 
 receive word that you are ailing all over. Carlyle
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 5 
 
 came out of his crisis with a dyspepsia that lasted 
 him for life. I don't think you will, for you 
 are not Carlyle. Neither was I, but most of the 
 few ills that my flesh is heir to, I trace back to 
 those evil days. Perhaps if I'd had the soul 
 to suffer as he did, my body would have been 
 as badly racked as his. Well, as I was say- 
 ing, he found something to do, though it was only 
 gnawing his file, and probably then began the 
 realization which he expressed in that wonderful 
 sentence: 'In idleness alone, is there perpetual 
 despair.' 
 
 " Of course your turning-point probably will not 
 be his. It may be nearer mine, which I will tell 
 you. With much the feelings you have described, 
 I was on a hill-top, looking over the face of 
 Nature, no longer fair to me, but just as you de- 
 scribed it the hills, dirt-heaps; the waters, chill- 
 ing and deceitful death; the clouds, fog-banks; the 
 sun itself, a mere hell, hotter than the science of 
 my boyhood enabled its theology to express. 
 ' God ' was the cheat who had made all these lies. 
 Suddenly there came into my mind the thought: 
 ' God or Devil, whatever made this universe, 
 made out of those fog-banks clouds of glorious 
 beauty; made those dirt-heaps the mountains which 
 are among my noblest joys, and have been the 
 inspirations of poets from Solomon down ; made 
 that water not only beautiful, but a means of the 
 greatest recreation and strength; and made that 
 sun, hell it may be, a hell that I, at least, can't 
 fall into, and has tempered it SL that, at this very 
 moment, it is life and, in spite of myself, vigor to
 
 6 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 me and to all the happy throngs around.' 'Why, 
 they are happy ! ' I remember saying to myself 
 with surprise, ' and I am probably the only 
 wretched one of the many in sight.' 
 
 " From that moment, Muriel, this has been a 
 different world to me. My crisis was not all over: 
 no moment (the novelists to the contrary, not- 
 withstanding) changes all one's habits of thought 
 and feeling. Before I could again count myself a 
 happy man, I had to go through many a period of 
 darkness, when the facts I had acknowledged to 
 myself on the hill-top, were as juiceless as the 
 binomial theorem. But I have never been any 
 more able to doubt their truth, than to doubt the 
 truth of the binomial theorem. Since that crisis, I 
 have endured anxieties and miseries greater than 
 those which plunged me into it as great as can 
 be thrown upon man, and he be left alive and sane 
 my eyes have been blind to sweet sights and my 
 ears deaf to sweet sounds, most of my reason has 
 been paralyzed, (In our race it never all goes); in 
 short, there has been little, for the time, but a 
 realization of that fact which is as indestructible 
 as any fact in human consciousness can be, that 
 out of the materials called base, Nature is con- 
 stantly producing beauty. But with that in mind, 
 a man can't find things wholly bad. 
 
 " And along with that fact, comes a troop of other 
 facts equally indestructible and equally sustaining. 
 For one: Nature makes haste to hide her ugly work: 
 wander for hours, and the chances are that your 
 senses will not be offended by what she has killed. 
 For one bird slain, you see and hear a myriad beauti- 
 ful and happy. Their lives are hours, weeks, months,
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 7 
 
 years of joy; their deaths, but moments of pain. 
 So through all animate nature, even to man with 
 his Atlas-burden of thought. You know that at a 
 given hour, most men are happy. This I have had to 
 acknowledge to myself at moments when my soul 
 was full with all the misery it could hold. I have 
 doubted, as every reasoning man undergoing the 
 ordinary fate of mortals must sometimes doubt, 
 whether life holds joys enough to compensate its 
 inevitable woes; but these doubts, candid men, with 
 very few exceptions, will tell you are the experiences 
 of but moments in days, or but days in years, or 
 perhaps of years in lifetimes. 
 
 " But Nature who has made the beauty you can't 
 escape, has made the organism which feels it, and 
 has made that organism so that under the vast 
 majority of conditions, if in health, it will feel the 
 beauty. You who have hitherto been well and 
 happy, have never before had occasion to realize 
 the importance of that provision. But the truth is 
 that the machine that takes in the beauty or enjoys 
 the sensation of whatever kind, can only do it when 
 in order: and nothing throws it out of order more 
 effectually than sorrow and anxiety. What you 
 call your disloyalty in love, is simply shock and 
 fatigue of your nervous system; and because it is 
 sometimes incapable of feeling even the emotion 
 of love, you are morbidly suspicious of your loyalty. 
 The fact is that even the healthiest man, is not keen 
 for anything at all times. If his attention is ab- 
 sorbed in one thing, he cannot often turn instantly 
 to another with all the enthusiasm of his being. 
 
 " In this connection, take that part of your
 
 8 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 letter whose perverse ingenuity hardly justifies 
 its unsavoriness, though it makes me feel the 
 agony which caused it, and pity you with my 
 whole soul. To the Brobdingnagians, Glumdal- 
 clitch was beautiful. You admit that to your 
 tastes, though trouble has disordered them for a 
 time, at least one woman is sometimes beautiful 
 still. Now what you were finding out-of-joint, 
 was simply a disturbance in nervous relations. 
 All happiness, whether derived from woman's 
 beauty or any other source, is simply a question of 
 the relation between the recipient and the exter- 
 nal cause, and when the nerves are in order, they 
 keep those relations correct. The swine's correct re- 
 lations make them glory in what disgusts you: give 
 them your senses, and what disgusts you would 
 disgust them too. There are other creatures who 
 glory in what the swine discard: give them the 
 senses of the swine, and the things would disgust 
 them too. Glumdalclitch pleased the Brobding- 
 nagians: she disgusted Gulliver. 
 
 "But be very careful not to let what I have just 
 said, blind you to the all-important fact that there 
 are a positive and a negative. The man is supe- 
 rior to the swine; the swine, to the creatures who 
 live on what swine refuse. 
 
 " Yet while we know a positive and a negative, 
 we are not made to know an absolute. All we 
 can attain, is relative: for us, at least, there is no 
 ultimate. The astronomer talks of enormous dis- 
 tances, but so does the microscopist. What makes 
 either distance great, is simply its relation to a less 
 one. Now as we cannot really conceive an abso-
 
 Lfgrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 9 
 
 lutely great or small, so we cannot conceive abso- 
 lutely agreeable or disagreeable. Happiness de- 
 pends almost as much upon capacity to ignore 
 some things, as upon the capacity to enjoy 
 others; and every normal person under normal 
 circumstances possesses that capacity to ignore: 
 its absence is one of the first marks of an abnormal 
 condition: the droning bee of the Summer noon, 
 which helps the loiterer's revery, grates on the ear 
 of the man whose nerves are all on edge. That ill 
 health and sorrow so upset our nerves, is one of the 
 worst of the maladjustments that we have to face. 
 Sometimes the very things which we most need 
 to resist, are the ones most fatal to our powers of 
 resistance. But so it is, and we have to make the 
 best we can of it. 
 
 " You see I don't attempt to blink facts. Find all 
 the fault you please with your theological friends 
 for doing it. To the healthy man, under average 
 circumstances, there is no need to blink anything; 
 with keen senses and clean conscience, he finds 
 enough to occupy him in real things and does 
 not bother himself much with the questions 
 that tempt to blinking. Most of them are insol- 
 uble, and the wise man acknowledges the fact. 
 When he is ordinarily well and happy, he can be 
 consistent enough to leave those questions alone. 
 When he is too young or too blind to realize their 
 insolubility, of course he fools with them, and 
 when he is ill or wretched, it takes more than the 
 strongest man's strength or the wisest man's expe- 
 rience to keep his hands entirely off them. The 
 churches knew that the speculations on sin and
 
 IO Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 death must come from the ascetic's sick body. 
 
 " You've even got the theological prejudice 
 against the law of the survival of the fittest or the 
 destruction of the least fit. The law was not known 
 in my early time of trouble: if it had been, prob- 
 ably I should have misread it as you do. But 
 surely, as death is here, it is most merciful that 
 it comes quickest to those who have no dread of 
 it, and to those who have least to lose by it. Mu- 
 riel miserable invokes it: Muriel happy shunned 
 it. 
 
 "Astoyourbloodstainedconscience,don'tletthat 
 bother you any more. A repenting man is always 
 morbidly conscientious. It is inevitable to a man of 
 your imagination that nearly all the possible ways 
 out of a complication should present themselves, 
 but it does not follow that he is any more willing 
 to adopt the bad ones, than if he were too stupid to 
 imagine them. You couldn't kill anybody, unless 
 it were deserved. 
 
 "What a long letter I've written! I've been in- 
 terrupted since the last paragraph, and will leave 
 some more of your points calling for notice, until 
 my next. 
 
 " Affairs here are in statu quo. On one thing I 
 am clear, however clearer, if possible, every day. 
 You are under no obligation to pretend to right 
 your wrong by sacrifices which, even to the people 
 you are bound to stand by, would result in more 
 misery than happiness. The best that can be done, 
 when we determine what it is, will be bad enough; 
 but your making a mutually destructive marriage 
 is not yet demonstrated the best,
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. r I 
 
 " Our friends are with me still; and it will do you 
 as much good as harm, to tell you that the younger 
 is sad. I know that you would not have her lied 
 to, and that that very fact is at the root of at least 
 half your hopelessness. Could she once get hold of 
 that fact of what I know to be true of you, my 
 boy, that, whether you are God or Devil, you 
 would not be, to a woman you love, other than 
 yourself, there is no knowing what her great 
 nature is capable of. 
 
 " You'd better leave that place where you are, 
 and 'take to the woods.' I don't want anybody to 
 know where you are just now, and in a big town 
 somebody may happen along and recognize you. 
 Keep in the open air all you can. But when you 
 are housed, take up something that will divert 
 your mind. Your tendency will be to read your 
 one subject into everything. Try not to. I wish 
 you had a taste for mathematics. Couldn't you 
 work at logic ? You need actual work : if you can 
 grasp hold of it now, which I'm not sure you can. 
 
 "Oh! You'd better write so that your letters 
 would convey to a third person nothing that you 
 would not wish them to. There's no knowing 
 where a scrap of paper may go. 
 
 " You know I love you." 
 
 This letter had no signature or form of address, 
 but only a date; the place of writing, even, was not 
 named.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 NINA'S restlessness had brought her downstairs 
 before her mother or Calmire,who was busy with 
 the foregoing letters; and a little walk in the sun 
 amid the bright leaves and the few lingering flow- 
 ers, made her vigorous youth assert itself, and sent 
 her to the breakfast-room in better case than half 
 an hour before would have seemed possible. 
 
 She saw now what a woman of but ordinary wo- 
 manliness might not have seen, and she realized 
 that it had been true for a week that Calmire was 
 in trouble; and he saw, as he had suspected the 
 night before, that she was; and each saw that the 
 other saw it. Calmire felt his large gentleness 
 and pity stirred even before he asked himself 
 whether his own trials, of which he supposed 
 her ignorant, might not also be trials in store for 
 her. She felt a shrinking from talking with him as 
 she had determined, but with her tendency, when 
 anything was to be done, to do it, she brushed the 
 reluctance aside in her large way, and having sent 
 her mother off on some pretext while Calmire was 
 on the piazza with his cigar, she came up pale and 
 languid, in terrible contrast to her usual sprightly 
 way, seated herself squarely in front of him, and 
 said : 
 
 " You must talk to me !" 
 
 His pulse stopped. He was so full of one sub-
 
 Revelation. 1 3 
 
 ject that, before he reflected, he thought she must 
 be alluding to it. But he fixed his eyes on his 
 cigar, knocked the ash from it, realized that he had 
 no grounds for his suppositions, and in a second 
 turned to her smiling, and said: 
 
 " Commands from such a superior should be 
 cheerfully obeyed. What am I to talk about ?" 
 
 "About everything, it seems to me." 
 
 " Where am I to begin ?" 
 
 " Mr. Calmire, I want you to tell me what keeps 
 you calm and good when you don't believe any- 
 thing. There's nothing to keep me so. I don't be- 
 lieve anything any more. You needn't any longer 
 be afraid of disturbing me. Talk to me now." 
 
 "Well," said Calmire to himself. " So Muriel's 
 kindergarten has turned out a graduate ! Ah me ! 
 I've got to take hold at last !" He little realized 
 for how much more than mere intellectual disturb- 
 ance, Muriel was responsible. He had, however, 
 a quick return of the suspicion he had intimated to 
 Muriel that Nina's trouble was deeper than creeds 
 go, and he was anxious as to the cause; but with- 
 out wasting time in conjectures, he determined that 
 it was best to follow her lead right on. So he an- 
 swered: 
 
 " Though you say I don't believe anything, I 
 probably believe many times as much as you ever 
 did as you have yet had time to. Nevertheless 
 you know most of the truths that help anybody 
 to be 'good and calm,' as well as anybody knows 
 them. But you don't appreciate that they are 
 the truths which really do the work, and you are 
 letting yourself be disturbed over some other
 
 14 Revelation, 
 
 notions which people have associated with those 
 essential truths. Possibly those notions are of 
 some value to some people, but not to the woman 
 you are growing to be." 
 
 " But who is to decide what is really true?" she 
 asked. " People differ so." 
 
 "That's a big question the test of truth," he 
 said. "In the first place, we have to determine 
 what we mean by truth." 
 
 "Are you going to be very tiresome, Mr. Cal- 
 mire?" 
 
 Her bantering way of saying it was so charming 
 that Timon himself could not have been offended. 
 Calmire laughed heartily and said: 
 
 " I hope not, dear, but I'm afraid I may, and I 
 see plainly that you are not feeling well. Hadn't 
 we better put it off?" 
 
 Eager as she had been for something to tie her 
 poor little boat to, she was not eager, with her 
 aching head, to have it dragged after a long-drawn 
 analysis. She had the yearning natural to one who 
 has been depending on alleged short-cuts to truth, 
 for some new short-cut across the waste of her per- 
 plexities. She wanted a "saving word." She did 
 not realize that no brief word can contain what 
 she needed; and the slow, laborious construction of 
 a system, however impregnable, was scarcely in her 
 mind, and not to her taste at all. Yet, so far, the 
 talk had diverted her a little from the tortures she 
 had been enduring, and the prospect of relinquish- 
 ing it, even to escape some tedious logic, brought 
 her face to face with the tortures again. She 
 eagerly begged Calmire to go on.
 
 Revelation. \ 5 
 
 "Well, dear," he said, "some people say there 
 are two kinds of truth, human and divine. That 
 seems to me plainly impossible. I can conceive of 
 only one kind of truth, and the portion of it which 
 we have, we have had to learn from experience. It 
 is, of course, largely incorporated in the religions. 
 But it is contradicted right and left by some state- 
 ments in the religions, and so their followers try 
 to make them out to be a superior kind of truth." 
 
 "But, Mr. Calmire, mere human truth is so 
 limited. One can see so little for oneself." 
 
 " The trouble about your beliefs, is that you 
 have supposed it necessary to believe a great 
 many things that you cant 'see for yourself.' 
 What you can see for yourself, is limited, I ad- 
 mit, but human experience is the only source of 
 truth we've got, and when we imagine that we 
 have any more, we get into trouble. All the sub- 
 stantial operations of our lives are conducted on 
 experience; and all our blunders come because we 
 have not enough of it. We've enough for practical 
 purposes, however, or at least enough to secure all 
 the happiness at present within our reach; for ex- 
 perience and experience alone does just that." 
 
 " What ? The faiths don't help ?" she asked. 
 
 " Only," he answered, " that portion of the faiths 
 which are pointed to by experience: though it is 
 claimed, with doubtful justice, that some people 
 couldn't get that portion without the fanciful 
 portion. For instance, experience really says 
 that, within reasonable limits, 'it is more blessed 
 to give than to receive : ' but religion says it too, 
 and as it's not a very obvious truth, a great many
 
 1 6 Revelation, 
 
 people believe it (or think they do), not as matter 
 of experience, but as matter of religion. Now 
 that's all very well, so long as they don't profess tc 
 believe against experience, for then harm comes 
 the wastes of asceticisms, religious wars and per- 
 secutions, human hearts torn out on the altars of 
 imaginary gods, both physically and emotionally 
 like poor He hesitated, but some impulse 
 prompted him to add, " poor Mary Courtenay's." 
 
 " Mary's ! Oh, I've so wanted to know her life. 
 Can't you tell me of it ?" 
 
 " Perhaps, some time. Let me go on now with 
 what I was trying to make clear to you. Do you 
 suppose the so-called mysteries of religion its 
 preposterous assertions and self-contradictions, 
 made the saints and martyrs, and make so many 
 good men in the church to-day ? Do you suppose 
 it was that part of religion that men have died 
 for, or, even if a few have, that it was that part 
 which sustained them in dying ?" 
 
 " Well, in pity's name, what was it then ? For it 
 seems to me that I am dying too for want of it." 
 
 " It was not often dogma, if ever, but what lay 
 under the dogma the morality that men have 
 been learning through all their experience, and the 
 simple faith in the Infinite Power and Infinite Law 
 which, in the religions and out, under the name of 
 every beneficent God ever worshipped, has inspired 
 the best men through all history." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Calmire, and it is just that faith which 
 I have lost. In some respects my mind since I have 
 been here has been widened. I have grown to a 
 cold intellectual recognition that love for mankind
 
 Revelation. 17 
 
 is the noblest basis of right-doing, if any basis is 
 good for anything; and that there are no freaks in 
 the merciless Power that governs us. But I have not 
 the kind of faith in any of it that can sustain and 
 comfort anybody. I've gained Altruism, and I've 
 gained Law, and they're two very big-sounding 
 words for a girl to be able to use, but I have lost 
 God." 
 
 "That 'cold intellectual recognition,'" he an- 
 swered, " will grow into something warmer, and 
 those ' big-sounding words' will come to mean more 
 to you, perhaps, than any other words have yet 
 meant. And as to losing God: you mean, that you 
 have lost a lot of primitive and gratuitous notions 
 regarding God." 
 
 " I have lost all I had, and where God was, there 
 is now nothing but unfeeling machinery. My 
 deepest soul finds nothing to respond to." 
 Calmire pondered a moment and then said: 
 "I suspect that it has pretty much all to respond 
 to that it ever had, but that communication has 
 been interrupted. We must see if we can't open 
 up some new lines: but that's not the work of a 
 day. Suppose, though, I give you something to 
 think about. In many days, it may come to have 
 a meaning to you." 
 
 " Give me anything a straw, for I am drowning." 
 Calmire pondered again, and then turned toward 
 her with a curiously complex smile, and said: 
 " Shut your eyes and stop your ears." 
 "What? Oh don't play with me now." 
 " My poor child," he said, taking and caressing 
 her hand, " I never was more serious in my life.
 
 t 8 Revelation. 
 
 Besides," he added, looking up and smiling again, 
 " I'm only asking you to do what the orthodox 
 teachers ask. They want you to give up the use of 
 your senses: now try to do the same for me a little 
 while. I really do want you to shut out all sight 
 and sound, and to remain in that condition as long 
 as you can. Can you imagine yourself deaf and 
 blind?" 
 
 " Imagine it? I've known it." 
 
 "Why, what in the world do you mean?" 
 
 " Once in the Poz/i at Venice, I wanted to see 
 how it must have felt to be imprisoned there, and I 
 lingered behind my friends and put out my taper." 
 
 "There's not another girl in creation who'd have 
 done that ! Weren't you frightened ?" 
 
 "No, I didn't think of that ; I knew my friends 
 would come back for me." 
 
 " Well, how did you feel ?" 
 
 " There was no world left, and it seemed as if I 
 had extinguished my soul." 
 
 " So your soul seems to be largely a matter of 
 sight and sound, doesn't it? But in those dun- 
 geons you couldn't experience exactly what I have 
 in mind. I want you to try it again here to get 
 your mind and senses as nearly vacant as possible 
 to obliterate yourself as far as you can, and 
 when thought and memory insist on reasserting 
 themselves, yield and open your eyes. It's too 
 light out here, come into the hall." 
 
 They went in out of the glare. Calmire gave her 
 a seat, and she closed her eyes, and put her little 
 hands over her little ears. She succeeded so well 
 in losing herself in the silent darkness that in
 
 Revelation. 19 
 
 about four minutes, which she supposed fifteen, 
 she had almost lost consciousness, but then she 
 found herself thinking, with a sort of horror, how 
 black and empty such life would be, and opened 
 her eyes. 
 
 Before her, under the arch of the doorway, was 
 the infinitely deep blue sky; far off, near the hori- 
 zon, it grew softer and touched the hills mellowed 
 by the Autumn haze. They were still green, with 
 faint patches of brown and yellow and dark forests 
 of pine, and here and there the subdued flame of 
 an Autumn maple or the gold of an elm. Under 
 t he hills, the river was a little misty too, but nearer, 
 it reflected the blue of the upper sky, save for one dot 
 of white sail; and in the foreground was the soft 
 curve of the hill of green lawn, with bold masses 
 of nearer flame and gold and red-bronzed oak 
 and dark green pines. On the outer edge of the 
 hill, over the rich brown line of the road, came 
 patiently two great shining white and yellow oxen 
 with their cart. Contrasted with the darkness and 
 vacancy Nina had just emerged from, Nature's 
 beauty appealed to her as it had never appealed 
 before. After some moments of rapt silence, she 
 said quietly: 
 
 " How inexpressibly lovely ! It is a revelation !" 
 " Precisely!" answered Calmire. " And it was be- 
 cause I wanted you to realize it as a revelation, 
 that I got you to shut yourself out from it. It 
 even surprised you, though you were familiar with 
 it. Now try to realize (as you could not have done 
 ten minutes ago, though you have thought of it 
 often) what a revelation sight must bring when a.
 
 2O Revelation. 
 
 surgeon gives it to a blind person. Just think it 
 over a minute. I have a purpose in all this," he 
 added with a smile. 
 
 After a little time she said: "Well, I think I 
 have some such realization as you wished me to get. 
 It must surpass anything anybody ever dreamed. 
 It must be so with hearing too, and to some ex- 
 tent with the other senses. But why have you 
 made me do all this ?" 
 
 " Partly (but not mainly) to try to get you to 
 recognize that the revelations we get from Nature, 
 direct through our own senses, are not. so much to 
 be despised after all. You said a few minutes ago, 
 that without certain dogmas of your old religion, 
 there was nothing left. Yet you also said that 
 shutting out light and sound extinguished your 
 soul: so, after all, your soul seems to get a large 
 part of its significance from light and sound, as well 
 as from your old dogmas. Now the fact is that 
 even when the dogmas are gone, everything real is 
 left. Think it over a moment, and then I'll try to 
 give you some farther points more significant still." 
 
 After a little meditation Nina said : " Yes, I have 
 been wrong stupidly, foolishly wrong, in under- 
 estimating what we have outside of the religions. 
 I had been taught to believe that without Christi- 
 anity the world must mean nothing." 
 
 "That Egypt and Greece and Rome and India, 
 and China and Japan meant nothing !" commented 
 Calmire. 
 
 " Yes !" said Nina, " and now what can you tell 
 me more significant than showing me my foolish 
 blunder?"
 
 Revelation. 2 1 
 
 "Well!" responded Calmire. "We have used 
 the word ' revelation ' several times, in conqection 
 with your appreciation of what Nature shows us of 
 itself. Now I want to help you realize that the word 
 was no metaphor, but that all we know is actually a 
 revelation from an infinite Something under it and 
 pervading it all a revelation that it has taken mil- 
 lions of years to bring to what it is, that is still in 
 creasing, and that we can increase for ourselves,' 
 
 " Why," exclaimed the girl, " that's all very 
 grand but very bewildering: and y*et somehow it 
 doesn't seem altogether unthinkable." 
 
 " Of course it's not," Calmire answered; " people 
 have had glimpses of it as long as they have 
 guessed, but we've got much new light on it of 
 late years, and if you ever get a clear realization 
 of it, you won't talk as you were just talking about 
 having lest God, and having nothing left: you'll 
 find new reasons to believe that you can't lose 
 God, and that everything means God. Now, 
 
 to begin with, do you believe in evolution ?" 
 
 " I don't like to think that we're descended from 
 monkeys." 
 
 " Now do try to get rid of that cheap prejudice ! 
 I'm afraid that some of the ancestors we're forced 
 to acknowledge, were worse in some respects than 
 even the monkeys: I never heard of an assembly 
 of monkeys enjoying seeing a lot of their own kind 
 killed by stronger beasts ; or worse still, enjoying 
 seeing a lot of their own kind kill each other. But 
 so long as we are what we are, what difference does 
 it make what our ancest o rs were? I did not ask
 
 22 Revelation. 
 
 you, however, whether you like the doctrine of evo- 
 lution, I asked whether you believe it." 
 
 " I suppose I've got to." 
 
 " Well then, don't make faces over it as if you 
 were biting a lemon, but glory in the progress 
 your family has made. Somehow women don't 
 seem to welcome truth to believe that it must be 
 better than any mistaken conviction, no matter 
 how deeply cherished." 
 
 " Do all men ?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Oh certainly, certainly !" said Calmire, laugh- 
 ing. "But let's assume that you believe in evolu- 
 tion, as, of course, all men do. Now try to follow 
 me closely, please. Millions of years ago, your ances 
 tors, you know, were far humbler than the monkeys 
 bits of protoplasm or tloating jelly, with virtually 
 no senses, no thoughts, no feelings. Try and im- 
 agine what the universe must have been to them 
 blank darkness and silence, somewhat as you felt 
 it in Venice, and tried to feel it, or rather to be in- 
 sensible to it, a few minutes ago virtually no uni- 
 verse at all nothing revealed, no ' revelations/ " 
 
 "Yes," she responded, " I experienced a little of 
 what they must have found it." 
 
 " No," said Calmire, " I doubt if we can begin to 
 realize the vacancy they lived in: we cannot get rid 
 of our memories of sights and sounds, and our 
 highly evolved sense of touch. But a creature who 
 never had any senses could not have even memories. 
 To the first creature that had a sense, though, say 
 only the faintest sense of touch, the universe had 
 some little meaning a little something of it was 
 'revealed,' To the one who first felt a difference
 
 Revelation. 23 
 
 between heat and cold, more was revealed; more 
 still in the difference between sound and silence; 
 still more when one could feel a difference between 
 light and darkness; and then by slow additions 
 were revealed the differences in sound and color. 
 So by insensible degrees, from generation to gen- 
 eration, new revelations have been added, with new 
 capacities for receiving them, until at last you've 
 reached your share, and to you are revealed such 
 things as this beautiful scene before us, and all I 
 tried to get you to realize a few minutes ago." 
 
 "But what does all that prove?" Nina inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 " Simply that, as every experience is a revelation 
 from the source of experiences, where there are 
 revelations, there is a something to be revealed. 
 All we know, is a mere film over Something be- 
 neath, which we cannot measure something to 
 which we can assign no bounds an Infinite; and 
 through our senses It has been to some degree 
 revealed to us, and revealed naturally and truth- 
 fully." 
 
 "But that's all merely material," objected Nina. 
 "What has it to do with making people good ?" 
 
 " After a while, you won't so despise the ' merely 
 material,' and it happens to be by comparing the 
 ' merely material 'truths revealed by the senses, that 
 we have learned the higher body of truths which 
 ' make people good ' : so moral truths are primarily 
 revelations from the same Infinite Source with the 
 material ones. All truth grew up by the slow de- 
 grees I have indicated. All truth is revela- 
 tion. Your immediate trouble is that men have
 
 2 4 Revelation. 
 
 asserted so many imaginary and unnatural revela- 
 tions, that when the fancied revelations are proved 
 mistaken, one is driven, as you have been, to over- 
 look the true ones. But the true ones are there, they 
 are the only body of truths on which all men, so 
 far as they know them, agree : and the source of 
 those truths does exist, and is the only actual real- 
 ity corresponding with what you have been in the 
 habit of calling ' God.' There have been a myriad 
 conceptions regarding it, for all sorts of divinities 
 and anthropomorphic fancies have been put be- 
 hind the actual revelations of Nature: and now 
 simply because much that was mistaken in your 
 conceptions, has disappeared, you feel that the 
 fundamental Verity behind the conceptions has 
 disappeared too. But it is there all the same, 
 and much clearer to us than it was to Moses or 
 Buddha or Paul. But you have got to learn to 
 recognize it with our eyes, and not with theirs. 
 Now I am forced to leave you, and I have but 
 barely opened the subject, but we will talk this 
 over some more this evening." 
 
 She gave a start, and put her hand on her heart. 
 
 " What's the matter ?" asked Calmire. 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! Some little stitch in my side." 
 But she kept him until she learned (quite diplomati- 
 cally, she flattered herself) that Muriel would not 
 be back that evening.
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 AFTER dinner, Nina furnished her mother some 
 pretext for going away, and that lady was of course 
 always ready to leave the girl with Calmire. When 
 they were alone before the logs in the drawing- 
 room, she began by saying : 
 
 " I don't know that I said ' revelations ' this morn- 
 ing, with any real feeling that they were revela- 
 tions. It was simply a fashion of speaking. I see 
 what I see, and hear what I hear, but, despite your 
 reasoning, the idea that there is anything more 
 than I hear or see, does not yet really take posses- 
 sion of me." 
 
 "Of course not," answered Calmire. "It's too 
 new. It needs looking at often, and from many 
 sides. Now, if it won't bore you, let's begin again 
 with our ' protoplasmic ancestor." " 
 
 " I shall be charmed to renew his acquaintance," 
 said Nina. 
 
 " Well," continued Calmire, " I have the honor to 
 introduce to you, not one, but those, generally, who 
 first had any consciousness of differences in things 
 outside of themselves. Let's go into their ex- 
 periences a little more in detail than we did this 
 morning. Of course I won't attempt to give the 
 exact chronological order, but merely to give the
 
 26 The Natural and the Supernatural. 
 
 Subject in a general way. They must have found 
 some things pleasanter than others soft contacts 
 pleasanter than harsh ones, even surfaces than 
 cutting ones, light than darkness, and warmth than 
 cold. Those, for instance, who had a distinct sense 
 of temperature, must have found it preferable to 
 float in the warmer places. Well, when their 
 descendants came to have added, say, a sense of 
 taste, they could have a good time, lying where 
 the sun falls on the water, and feeling the mo- 
 tion of the waves, and enjoying their food the 
 universe was revealed to them to a degree of con- 
 siderable significance. But how infinitely fuller 
 became the life of the creature who had added the 
 sense of sight ! Think of his greater happiness, 
 even before any enjoyment of beauty came, in 
 avoiding danger and finding food. Of course at 
 the beginning it wasn't sight as we know it, but 
 mere recognition of light. Then it probably took 
 thousands of generations to develop any notion of 
 color, and thousands more to develop discrimina- 
 tion of many colors." 
 
 "But," she interrupted, "how do you know all 
 these things about the creatures that came before 
 man ?" 
 
 " Why, we not only find fossil remains in succes- 
 sive layers of the earth, that indicate the progress; 
 but we see much of it going on now. We still 
 have almost all grades of animals with us. And just 
 as the astronomer calculates from the eclipses we 
 know, that certain reported ancient obscurations of 
 the sun and moon were also eclipses, so the biolo- 
 gists know ancient processes from contemporary
 
 The Natural and the Supernatural. 27 
 
 ones. This is a very different thing, mind you, 
 from accepting gratuitous statements like those 
 credited to Moses, for instance which contradict 
 known facts." 
 
 " Yes, I can see that," she said, " and now let's 
 go back to grandpa." 
 
 " So you acknowledge your poor relations to-day, 
 do you ? Well, after some of your very-very- 
 great-grandpas had got pretty susceptible to light, 
 some of your grandpas not quite so great, must 
 have got susceptible to, say, the difference between 
 red light and white light, and to the difference 
 between red light and blue light, and gradually to 
 other differences of color. Else, where didjw/ get 
 your capacity to recognize such differences ? These 
 susceptibilities must have been developed pretty 
 late, because we find many human beings, and in- 
 telligent ones too, in whom they are not developed 
 yet-: you know some color-blind people. Now to 
 some rays, we are all color-blind, for the prism 
 gives us some that nobody's eyes are yet far 
 enough evolved to be susceptible to: we know them 
 only because they have certain chemical powers, 
 some of them of use in photography, I believe. So, 
 many rays that we see, could not have been seen 
 by our humble ancestors; and therefore (Here 
 comes the great point) it is fair to presume that 
 the rays not seen by us, must be visible to our 
 posterity. Now think what the grand sights open 
 to them will be ! Only we can't think much more 
 definitely about those sights, than we can about 
 the rest of the Infinity yet unrevealed. As with 
 sights, so with tones. Our ancestors who first heard
 
 28 The Natural and the Supernatural. 
 
 noises, of course developed, generation after gen* 
 eration, a capacity to recognize differences between 
 noises as well as sights. One of the proofs that 
 this capacity has been so evolved, is that we find 
 it now, like susceptibility to shades of light, in very 
 various degrees of development. There are plenty 
 of people who hear well, and yet cannot distinguish 
 between two tones differing by fifty vibrations a 
 second; while on the other hand, there are some 
 musicians who will recognize a difference of half 
 a dozen vibrations, and I think less. Moreover, 
 just as the color-scale contains shades beyond 
 any existing eyes, so the sound-scale contains 
 tones beyond any existing ears. Average people 
 recognize notes four or five octaves above the 
 treble clef; musicians recognize them an octave 
 or so higher still; but soon there comes a point 
 where vibrations are too rapid for any human 
 ear yet evolved to hear. Some naturalists have 
 suspected that some insects communicate by notes 
 too high for the human ear, and whales by notes 
 too low. I suspect that's all rather mythical, 
 though, especially the whales, for when vibrations 
 get too slow to be recognized as tones, they are 
 perfectly audible as separate beats. But aside 
 from single tones, take the 'overtones,' whose 
 abundance in some instruments makes those in- 
 struments so much more beautiful than others: 
 some people are conscious of many more than 
 other people are actually hear things in the pres- 
 ent music, that other people can't. How will it be 
 then with the real 'music of the future'? Try 
 again now from this point of view, what you tried
 
 The Natural and the Supernatural. 29 
 
 from another this morning to imagine the possi- 
 ble revelations of sound." 
 
 "Oh, it's too much it's too much !" exclaimed 
 Nina. " Inexpressibly grand, but inexpressibly 
 bewildering. It makes my head whirl." 
 
 Had Mr. Calmire attempted his argument a 
 dozen years later, he could have given it new depth 
 and beauty from the discoveries that the waves of 
 which we recognize a few as light, really include 
 not only those of the spectrum Calmire knew, but 
 are already shown to extend into a spectrum ascer- 
 tainable only by other means than direct sight, and 
 infinitely larger than he had any idea of some of its 
 waves presumably long enough to reach beyond our 
 universe and all our conceptions, while others are so 
 minute as to be equally beyond our faculties. And 
 it is but a little fragment of this graduated infinity, 
 that our senses can grasp, as light. The capacities 
 of our early predecessors could respond only to frag- 
 ments vastly less, and we can assign no limits to what 
 may be appreciated by our successors. It is sus- 
 
 pectedthatlightand heatare otherwaves in the same 
 boundless series, and also that what is now found re- 
 garding that series of waves, seems true of another 
 series, among which we apprehend a few as sound. 
 
 But Calmire, not anticipating these discoveries, 
 and so makingNina's head whirl more, answered her: 
 
 " Let's stop: if you're tired, you can'ttake in more." 
 
 "Yes, I can. And besides, you've given your 
 poor creatures about all the usual senses already." 
 
 "And your word 'usual' anticipates my object 
 in doing it. Why shouldn't there be more than 
 the ' usual ' senses?"
 
 30 The Natural and the Supernatural. 
 
 " Why, I never heard of any." 
 
 " Neither did the creature with but one. Yet even 
 now," he said with a smile, " the societies for Psychi- 
 cal Research may be on the track of one new to us." 
 
 " Are you joking ?" 
 
 " Not altogether. Some people really seem 
 to get knowledge from other people's minds in 
 ways different from those already well known by 
 a sense of intellectual touch, as it were, just as the 
 first creatures with a sense of physical touch, got 
 knowledge in ways not known to their predecessors. 
 But our own contemporaries who are advanced in 
 this respect, hardly seem to get any new knowl- 
 edge, however, any that they do not appear to 
 read from the mind of somebody else. Yet that 
 much would show a new sense." 
 
 " Tell me more about it !" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " Well, there isn't very much to tell yet. You 
 know how a suggestion will make a sleeper dream?" 
 
 "Yes, I've heard how the clash of shovel and 
 tongs makes one dream great battles; and turning 
 on the gas, makes dreams of great conflagrations." 
 
 " Well," continued Calrnire, " there's an artificial 
 sleep, or rather state of waking dreaminess, called 
 hypnotism, into which some people can readily be 
 thrown, and in which they will dream and feel 
 and do anything suggested by the person who puts 
 them into that state." 
 
 " Why, isn't that something like mesmerism ?" 
 asked Nina. 
 
 " Certainly. It's the modern name for, apparently, 
 the same thing. Well, the influence of the hypno- 
 tizer or the mesmerizer if you will, appears to be
 
 The Natural and the Supernatural. 3 1 
 
 communicated sometimes by mere will, without 
 words, and even at a distance. People vary very 
 much in their susceptibility to such hypnotic com- 
 munications: some seem so sensitive that they ap- 
 parently get impressions from other minds with- 
 out any conscious effort on either side. I've had 
 persons get from my mind, very strange things that 
 they could not have known in any other way that I 
 can think of, and they have been able to get still 
 farther impressions by both sides concentrating 
 attention on the subject." 
 
 "Such as what?" interrupted Nina. 
 " Oh, impressions of facts in my history, names 
 of those d-ar to me, and many things that I may 
 tell you sometime. But now you see that */ this 
 susceptibility to such impressions is normal, it is 
 going to become more general and more intense, 
 as delicacy of physical touch has, and develop into 
 a distinct new sense. And," he continued, laugh- 
 ing, " as aptitudes tend to concentrate themselves 
 in the nerves best adapted for them to locate 
 some of the senses in special organs, we may yet 
 have an organ to read each other's minds with, 
 as we now have organs to read each other's faces 
 and voices." 
 
 " But how ugly we'd be with a new organ!" ex- 
 claimed Nina. 
 
 " You're expressing the jelly-fish's opinion of a 
 creature with eyes, aren't you?" said Calmire. 
 
 "Great Heavens!" Nina ejaculated. " How nar- 
 row all our every-day notions are! But if we 
 can read each other's minds, we can't keep our 
 secrets," she exclaimed, after a moment, becoming
 
 3 2 The Natural and the Supernatural. 
 
 again conscious of one that was burdening her 
 very heavily. 
 
 "I cLn't know about that," Calmire answered. 
 " It looks as if nothing can be read against its think- 
 er's will. But it's all very uncertain yet." 
 
 "Well, it's wonderful anyhow, even as far as it's 
 got !" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " I don't know," said Calmire, " that it's half 
 as wonderful as any one of the senses that we 
 already have, would appear to a man lacking it, if 
 he were suddenly put in possession of it. Try and 
 think a moment of such 'revelations' as you 
 had this morning, coming to a person to whom they 
 would be new." 
 
 "That's true, all true!" exclaimed Nina. "It 
 brings up again the stories of people blind from 
 birth being suddenly cured." 
 
 "Now go back," said Calmire, "and tell me if 
 you, with your five or seven senses (for you 
 realize that some of our senses are still in such a 
 vague state of development that people don't even 
 agree how many we have), wouldn't be almost as 
 foolish to deny the possibility of more, as would 
 the creature with only one ?" 
 
 " Why, yes ! I never thought of that before !" 
 
 " Really?" said Calmire, with a quizzical laugh, 
 and then continued: "Now here, my child, to 
 sum it all up, is what I want you to think about 
 some more and often: the first beings were ab- 
 solutely vacant of knowledge. To them and to 
 their descendants, the Infinite has been reveal- 
 ing itself little by little, through countless genera- 
 tions, until it has made possible such revelations
 
 The Natural and the Supernatural. 33 
 
 as you had this morning. The sum of these revela- 
 tions, is what we call the natural world this vast 
 assemblage of woods and hills and seas and stars 
 and deep vault of heaven, and the busy, thinking 
 and enjoying creatures, and, through all, despite 
 some drawbacks, Order and beneficent Law. All 
 this has slowly been revealed through the senses 
 we have. But, and here is the point of it all, 
 we have every reason to believe that the In- 
 finite which we touch on all our sides with our im- 
 perfect senses, could go on revealing, to finer senses, 
 unlimited new truth, beauty, orderliness, happiness. 
 What we know, must be as nothing to the great 
 beyond that we do not know. We are getting hints 
 of it all the while which we cannot clearly compre- 
 hend. To one it suggests itself in a strain of 
 music; to another, in some dear face to one, in 
 the majesty of mountains; to another, in the mys- 
 tery of wooded vales the hunter feels it beyond the 
 misty morning; the poet, beyond the sunset in 
 some way, at some time, most highly organized 
 beings have felt that ineffable thrill." 
 
 " Yes," cried Nina, " I have felt it! I know it! I 
 know it!" 
 
 "Now," said Calmire, "that Infinite Beyond 
 surrounding on every side the Nature that we 
 know, is the real .SV//Vr-natural. But it is unknown, 
 and, except as we gain little by little from it 
 through experience and study, it must, so far as 
 we can judge, remain unknown. Myriads of men 
 have professed to tell of it, but everybody believes 
 that all but his own chosen few, drew wholly on 
 fancy. This of course goes to indicate that all
 
 drew on fancy. But though we know nothing 
 of that all-pervading supernatural, faith in it is 
 one of the fundamental conditions of right think- 
 ing. All this may mean but little to you now. 
 But it will come to mean more." 
 
 " It seems to mean already, Mr. Calmire, that you 
 have proved to me what I have before supposed 
 we had to take wholly on faith the existence of 
 the spiritual world." 
 
 "Of course! Oh, it's a delight to teach you!" 
 exclaimed Calmire. " Yes, some anthropomorphic 
 'spirit' has always been supposed to be behind 
 every manifestation of that unknown Infinity 
 which people couldn't understand. You know 
 that even now, the hypnotism I was telling you 
 about a minute ago, is called 'spiritualism,' and 
 the spiritualists call their hypnotic visions ' reve- 
 lations.' And quite lately, electricity was attrib- 
 uted to spirits, just as savages have always attrib- 
 uted wind and rain to them. But as soon as such 
 specimens of 'spiritualism' get sifted from the 
 false notions they necessarily start with, and from 
 the humbug that the designing always promote 
 with them, all notion of 'spirits' in connection 
 with them is abandoned, and what is left takes 
 its natural place in the body of knowledge. Yet 
 such knowledge has always come to us from that 
 mysterious Infinity on whose surface we live, and 
 which has had almost universal recognition in 
 some such phrase as 'the spirit-world.' Now 
 don't think of this any more before you go to 
 sleep, but think it over hard when you wake. 
 Good-night," and he kissed her forehead.
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 AN OUTSIDE ARGUMENT. 
 
 THE efficacy of teaching often depends as much 
 upon personal relations as upon doctrine; and at 
 this stage of Calmire's expositions, a circumstance 
 occurred that greatly increased Nina's suscepti- 
 bility to his influence. 
 
 The next afternoon, he proposed to take her 
 riding, but she was languid because of the heavy 
 feelings and unaccustomed thoughts of the preced- 
 ing few days, and so a compromise was effected. 
 Calmire put the ladies in a victoria, and started 
 out beside them on Malzour. 
 
 I don't know much about a horse, but that one 
 was like some other rare beings no education was 
 required to appreciate him. 
 
 His sire was an Arab who had been given to 
 Calmire by some oriental diplomatic friend, and 
 the name had been "kept in the family." His 
 dam was a great three-quarter-bred Kentucky 
 mare. He was big and black, and seemed to have 
 a sunshine of his own. He was as proud and fiery 
 and gentle and reliable as his master. He liked 
 to have children pat him : yet he was as am- 
 bitious as Bucephalus, or as Alexander's self; but 
 while he was always ready to do all a horse can, 
 he was always content to do only what his master 
 wanted. The front of his head was straight and gen- 
 erally upright; his nostrils were open and red; his 
 
 35
 
 36 An Outside Argument. 
 
 little ears most always pointed forward; his long 
 neck, though generally arched, was not like a swan's, 
 for a swan's is sometimes ugly; his breast was so 
 broad, his chest so deep, his forearm and quarter 
 so powerful, and his back so straight and short and 
 firm that it would have seemed a waste for him to 
 bear a weight less kingly than Calmire's; where 
 the bones were indicated through his shining skin, 
 his legs seemed slight, but that was only in contrast 
 with the great muscles above; his pasterns were 
 rather long, that is why he and Calmire seemed to 
 move on as if the horse were a thing of springs or 
 waves, rather than one of unyielding bones with 
 joints ; his feet were round and firm and pointed 
 straight forward, but they were not small; his tail, 
 on top, was a continuation of the nearly straight 
 line of his back, until it gradually drooped into 
 the rich flowing curves of the hair, and when he 
 was going fast, it was almost the only horse-tail I 
 ever saw that it did not disgust me to have com- 
 pared to the train of a meteor. 
 
 Among the various high questions which, at quiet 
 hours, had claimed the discourse of Calmire and 
 Muriel, the cutting of that horse's tail had held a 
 prominent place. Muriel had seen so few revolu- 
 tions of fashion, and had got such a one-sided grip 
 of the truth that, to us, the beautiful is largely the 
 conventional, that he urged the conforming of 
 Malzour's tail to the prevailing mode. But Cal- 
 mire had got hold of the truth that as we leave 
 the artificially-enfolded human figure and go 
 through the brutes out toward inanimate nature, 
 our respect for convention decreases. This he
 
 An Outside Argument. 37 
 
 illustrated with such facts as that only in the most 
 degraded times, such as those of the Ancien Regime, 
 have many trees been trimmed into noticeably arti- 
 ficial shape, and that it took as colossal a fool as 
 Xerxes tothinkof carvingamountain intoaform not 
 its own. Calmire's principle being established by 
 this induction, he proceeded to apply it by saying 
 that much as he enjoyed contributing to the content 
 of so artificial a creature as Mr. Muriel Calmire, most 
 of whose person must necessarily be covered by 
 art, willing as he was, therefore, to enjoy that gen- 
 tleman's countenance despoiled, as it was, by the 
 razor, he would not inflict on Malzour, whose privi- 
 lege it was to go as Nature made him, the artificial 
 incongruity of banging his tail. 
 
 Well, the grand horse certainly justified his mas- 
 ter's principles, as he was led up in front of Mrs. 
 Wahring and Nina. And as Calmire mounted him 
 as lightly as Muriel would have done, and rode off 
 with them, Nina exclaimed to her mother, much 
 to the latter lady's delight: 
 
 " There go two noble creatures !" 
 
 Malzour knew that Calmire would not let him 
 out for the first half mile, and danced along con- 
 tentedly enough until, when they got upon the 
 main road at the bottom of the hill, by sundry un- 
 easinesses he called to himself the attention of 
 his master. 
 
 Calmire said to the ladies, " Excuse my running 
 away a few minutes to calm Malzour down," and 
 then said to the horse : 
 
 "All right, old boy," and with an unconscious 
 pressure of the leg, he brought the horse's croup
 
 38 An Outside Argument. 
 
 toward the middle of the road and let him go 
 over to the turf by the side. There he pressed 
 him with the other leg, for if he had not, the 
 horse would probably have gone to the fence and 
 over it, supposing that was what Calmire wanted. 
 He always did, as nearly as he understood it, what 
 Calmire wanted; but he also occasionally had a de- 
 sire of his own, as he had respectfully intimated 
 before Calmire took him off the road. When he 
 felt the second pressure, he brought himself around 
 again parallel with the road, and Calmire pressed 
 him with both legs and lightly touched the curb, 
 when the graceful mass started off in a canter 
 lighter than Vergil's verses. 
 
 It soon got to be a tearing pace, and after they 
 had had a mile or two of it, including two or three 
 very pretty jumps over ditches beside the culverts 
 and an occasional detour where the roadside was 
 impracticable, Calmire said : " We're not in a hurry 
 this afternoon," and gently drew him in and saun- 
 tered back to meet the ladies. 
 
 After walking quarter of a mile or so (for Mai 
 zour was one of those rare horses who, though 
 they pick up their feet with the spring of a good 
 pianist's wrists, nevertheless will walk), Calmire 
 saw the victoria with the two ladies approaching, 
 and set forward at a slow trot to meet it. 
 
 He turned and was at Mrs. Wahring's side of the 
 carriage, and, by a touch of the curb, moderated 
 Malzour's desire to trot with the other horses, into 
 a gentle canter which grouped the most beautiful 
 of all Malzour's beautiful possibilities, and would 
 have made the veriest tvro in the saddle look a
 
 An Outside Argument. 39 
 
 thing of grace. What Calmire looked, Nina never 
 forgot. Yet strange to say, always in recalling 
 horse and man and that afternoon, she was more 
 apt to imagine Muriel in the saddle than Calmire. 
 
 Suddenly the off horse in the victoria, on Cal- 
 mire's side, made a plunge. 
 
 "What is it?" said Calmire to the driver. 
 
 " The young horse is a little fresh, Mr. Calmire, 
 sir. If you'd just please go on the other side !" 
 
 In a minute, one rein (which, it was discovered 
 later, the coachman's monkey of a boy had been 
 stropping his father's razor on) snapped, and the 
 bits of both horses were held on but one side. The 
 colt, who would have been safe enough if the har- 
 ness was, proceeded to do what he could towards 
 running away, and there were not fit means to pre- 
 vent his steadier companion from going with him. 
 
 " Don't be uneasy!" said Calmire to the ladies, 
 " I'll take care of it." 
 
 But Mrs. Wahring, though she could endure 
 anything for which she was prepared, was not a 
 woman for quiet counsels in emergencies. She 
 began to scream and to show decided symptoms 
 of intending to jump out of the carriage. Her 
 screams frightened the horses more. 
 
 " Sit still, I tell you !" thundered Calmire, with a 
 voice and look that Nina. thought were the finest 
 things she had seen in him that day. 
 
 The poor lady, astonished and cowed, shrunk 
 back to her seat and quietly awaited death. Nina 
 felt rigid, but her anticipations stopped in depend- 
 ence on the big black horse and his rider. 
 
 In two seconds Calmire was around the car-
 
 4 An Outside Argument. 
 
 riage again, with his left hand on the wild young 
 creature's rein at the bit, and his right restrain- 
 ing Malzour, so that at times the faithful fel- 
 low's hoofs were plowing ridges in the road as 
 the two carriage-horses, for both were now run- 
 ning away, fairly dragged him with them. Malzour 
 was literally being dragged by Calmire's arm. No 
 human frame could stand it long. The speed was 
 checked a little, but Calmire felt that a few more 
 seconds would finish him. They were at the foot 
 of a gentle hill, and Calmire saw with joy that near 
 the summit the rpad had been cut into the side of 
 the hill, leaving a bank on the left. But the left 
 rein was broken. It could not turn them in. He 
 pondered a second, then his face suddenly fell into 
 hard lines and turned deadly pale. He called to the 
 man: 
 
 "Drop the rein, leave it to me." 
 
 Then a glow that seemed almost to contain a 
 smile, spread over his face, as he released the fright- 
 ened horse's bit, put spurs to Malzour and went up 
 the hill at a speed compared with which the run- 
 aways were slow. At the summit, he stopped a 
 little toward the right side of the road and turned 
 Malzour square across, facing the bank. The horse 
 arched his graceful neck. Calmire, with such a 
 face as great inspirations bring, leaned over, pat- 
 ting him, and said: " Steady, old fellow, and good- 
 bye, if we must." And then he waited. His most 
 definite thought was: " I hope it won't be maiming! 
 Death has got to come sometime, and I suspect it's 
 pretty much of a humbug anyhow." 
 
 It was not long as his watch would have counted
 
 An Outside Argument. 41 
 
 it, but long enough as his crowding memories did, 
 while the mad destruction rushed towards him. 
 When it was within a few paces, he waved his hat. 
 The horses veered to the left. He plunged right 
 against them. In three bounds, all three horses 
 were down against the bank. 
 
 " Jump, and take their heads," called Calmire to 
 the coachman, and by the time the man had the 
 near horse by the bit, Malzour, from whom Calmire 
 had sprung as they touched the bank, was stand- 
 ing safe by the roadside, and his master was at the 
 head of the off horse. 
 
 Calmire's leg was a little bruised by the tug-irons, 
 where he had struck the horse when he rushed 
 against them. No other living thing was scratched. 
 
 He had probably saved the ladies' lives, and at 
 the imminent peril of his own, and Mrs. Wahring's 
 quick mind did not, on the whole, regret the risk.
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THE ESSENTIAL RELIGION. 
 
 NATURALLY the ladies went to bed early that 
 evening, but the next morning after breakfast, 
 Nina came to Calmire on the piazza with a weary 
 smile, and said : 
 
 " Night before last, and even yesterday, it seemed 
 to me that I really felt toward that Infinity which 
 you have shown me to be behind all things, some- 
 thing that might take the place of my old feeling 
 toward God ; but when I awoke this morning, I 
 had no more feeling regarding it than if I were 
 dead. It's a very ungrateful recognition," she 
 added with a charming mixture of banter and 
 earnestness> "for your risks in preventing my 
 being really dead, as well as for your trouble in 
 teaching me." 
 
 Calmire gave a cheerful little laugh, and said : 
 
 " Of course you don't find your feelings on 
 philosophical truths very brisk this morning. Such 
 a little stir-up as we had yesterday afternoon 
 is apt to divert currents of emotion, and your 
 current of that class of emotions hadn't been run- 
 ning long enough to wear a very deep channel, 
 anyhow. But even in the old times, if you 
 had questioned your ' love of God,' or your love 
 of your mother, or of any one else, you would 
 
 42
 
 The Essential Religion. 43 
 
 have found many a morning when you did not 
 absolutely thrill with it, especially if you had been 
 very tired the night before. Don't let such a per- 
 fectly natural circumstance disturb your new faith, 
 and don't keep pulling the faith up by the roots to 
 see if it's well started." 
 
 "Well," said Nina, "certainly a new horizon has 
 opened to me, but faint and vague. My view is 
 full of uncertainties and perplexities." 
 
 "That's entirely natural," Calmire responded. 
 " To have its full effect, the subject must color every 
 fibre of your intellectual being, but it has hardly 
 had time yet to get below the surface ; and it is 
 too tremendous to be assimilated all at once, any- 
 how. The significance of these commonplaces of 
 modern philosophy that I'm trying to teach you 
 the bearing of the scientific facts on the moral 
 principles, never is found as obvious at first as 
 later ; and perhaps the added light will not come 
 as often when you seek it from deliberate thought, 
 as in odd moments by side-flashes from every-day 
 experience. It's going to take a good while, too, 
 for you to truly realize one point which is easy 
 enough to understand without realizing that 
 one's religion is simply what one thinks and feels 
 regarding the motive Power of the universe ; yet 
 one must realize that fact before getting the rela- 
 tion to the Infinite which transcends all relation 
 to an unseen personality." 
 
 " It has seemed to me very strange," she said, 
 " that the facts relating to the very beginnings of 
 life which you have been telling me, should have a 
 bearing upon our relations to that Infinity. But I
 
 44 The Essential Religion. 
 
 see that they do, even from what you have already 
 told me." 
 
 "Unquestionably they do," he said; "and the 
 fact seems to have been realized almost univer- 
 sally. Every religious system but some very prim- 
 itive ones, deals with 'the very beginnings of life,' 
 in some cosmogony, more or less absurd. A re- 
 ligion is but a theory of life, and the questions of 
 life are but questions of our relation to the uni- 
 verse (including man, of course), and the forces 
 behind it." 
 
 "But, Mr. Calmire, all that you have told me 
 about was, after all, mere sensations, not the high 
 thoughts and feelings where religion dwells. I've 
 always been taught that God sent us those direct- 
 ly: or that the devil did," she added with an ex- 
 pression which proved that he did not send them 
 to her often. Then she continued : " You did hint 
 something yesterday about intellectual and moral 
 truths coming from physical ones, but of course 
 you didn't expect me to understand that." 
 
 "Why, that isn't hard to understand. Most 
 truths which you call intellectual and moral are 
 merely statements about physical matters, and 
 perhaps, in the last analysis, all are. Take a few 
 at random for instance, the first of our great 
 4 glittering generalities' 'all men are born free 
 and equal.' It simply means that no physical force 
 should be used to seize another man's material 
 goods, confine or injure his material body, or hin- 
 der his freedom of speech which is simply to hin- 
 der his using material type or vibrations of material 
 air to affect another man's material eyes or ears so 
 as to influence certain material motions in the
 
 The Essential Religion. 45> 
 
 nerve-matter of that other man, with which 
 (and here we blend into the immaterial again) 
 his opinions are associated. ' Do as you would 
 be done by,' has a similar set of implications. 
 There's no hard and fast line between the intellec- 
 tual and the moral and the physical, Nina, any 
 more than there is anywhere else in Nature. Why, 
 even what you call ' matter ' is simply a name for a 
 lot of mental impressions of size, color possible 
 odor and taste, and of that resistance to press- 
 ure, which you call solidity. But an electric 
 shock or a hypnotic command would oppose about 
 the same resistance to muscular pressure, and yet 
 there's nothing which you call 'matter' there." 
 
 " But then a thing is a thing, Mr. Calmire. When 
 I see a thing, it's because there's something there." 
 
 "Yes," Calmire answered, "there />' something 
 there ' something everywhere, Something Infinite 
 and Inexpressible, causing all our sensations: and 
 when you express a certain set of them, you call 
 that set matter. You call another set lightning, 
 but the lightning is not what you mean by ' matter,' 
 and yet. it is as much a manifestation of that same 
 Something, as resistance to muscular pressure is." 
 
 "Well, there seems reason in what you say, and 
 yet it's so queer. I can't get hold of it." 
 
 "It takes time and frequent turning over," Cal- 
 mire responded. " But it will make the task easier, 
 perhaps, to give you a notion of how thoughts 
 and feelings arose. Or are you getting bored ?" 
 
 " Not a bit, not a bit! Do go on, please." 
 
 " Well, I can only do it very roughly. Our knowl- 
 edge of the subject is yet very new, and we've only 
 had time to make ourselves a mighty poor stock of
 
 46 The Essential Religion. 
 
 words to talk about it with, and I don't want to 
 bother you with the big ones. And at best it's very 
 hard to put the case with absolute consistency : for 
 when we talk of thought and feeling, we have to talk 
 in words that all come more or less directly from 
 sensation, because thought and feeling themselves 
 came from sensation. The words themselves prove 
 it our very difficulties prove our case the very 
 word ' feeling ' even yet remains connected with the 
 sensation of touch, and we say that a man hasn't 
 any ' sense,' when we mean that he hasn't anymind. 
 Moreover the truth that thought and feeling arose 
 in sensation, differs so from our ordinary impres- 
 sions, that it takes many illustrations and much 
 pondering to make it clear. But, though all 
 
 thoughts and feelings start from sensations, we 
 regard thought and feeling as advanced, in propor- 
 tion as they have advanced away from sensations." 
 
 " Well, I can't half understand it," persisted 
 Nina. "Do you mean that our loftiest emotions 
 love, for instance are built up from mere sense ?" 
 
 Calmire burst out laughing. " Why, my dear 
 child, that is the very feeling of all the great ones, 
 whose connection with sense is easiest to trace. In 
 the vast majority of mankind, it has hardly got 
 beyond sense yet and a single sense at that : 
 with most people it's mainly an affair of the eye. 
 With a few rare souls, it is a sympathy in great 
 thoughts and great feelings; but all the same, those 
 thoughts and feelings had their seeds, ages ago 
 generally, in sensations. Take something vastly 
 more abstract than love reverence. What started 
 it but the sense of grand things and grand pro-
 
 The Essential Religion. 47 
 
 cesses suns and skies and mountains and oceans 
 and storms and the strength and beauty of living 
 things ?" 
 
 "Well," said Nina, with a little sigh, "it does 
 seem as if it might be so, after all." 
 
 "Then let me try to show you a little of how 
 it's so. Let us go to our humble ancestors 
 again to the first of them who ever felt sensa- 
 tion, and look for a notion of how thought starts. 
 His consciousness of his thoughts and feelings, we 
 can't account for: it's beyond us with God, if 
 you want to put it so. But we're up to some of 
 the relations of his thoughts and feelings with the 
 outside world and with each other. Now until 
 that fellow felt sensation, there was, so far as we 
 are concerned, absolutely no thought, no knowl- 
 edge. The first sensation, whatever it was, was 
 knowledge was a revelation from the source of 
 all our knowledge reaction between something in 
 us and the Universe outside. It may have been 
 simply knowledge that the creature's progress in a 
 certain direction was obstructed, or that one cur- 
 rent of water was warmer than another, or that 
 one place was darker than another." 
 
 "You speak of a creature floating in water. 
 Were all the earliest creatures marine?" 
 
 " Probably. Most of the primitive forms we 
 now have, are. That's the reason the biologists 
 like to study by the sea. Now suppose one of 
 
 those creatures barely capable of feeling heat, when 
 he floats into the sunlight. It has then mere sensa- 
 tion no thought about it. But if it recognizes that 
 sensation as the same it felt yesterday, that put-
 
 48 The Essential Religion. 
 
 ting the two together, is a thought. There's some 
 reason, though by no means conclusive, to believe 
 that our word 'thought' started from a root that 
 meant to put things together, and we have a way 
 now of saying of a man who thinks well: ' He can 
 put this and that together.' ' 
 
 "Taking one consideration with another," sang 
 Nina lightly from "The Pirates of Penzance," and 
 then flushed at having been so unconscious of the 
 sombre undercurrent of her thoughts. 
 
 "That's it exactly!" said Calmire. "Now sup- 
 pose our very-great-grandfather going a step far- 
 ther on. Suppose his food most abounds, as it 
 generally does, in light places. After getting ac- 
 customed to find it in such places, the creature has 
 fitted together frequent sensations into a general 
 thought of light. (Of course the beast can't think 
 the man's thoughts, but he must have some pro- 
 cesses like those of a man's mind when it is hazy 
 and nearly asleep: I suppose you won't object to 
 its being a thought of light, because he doesn't give 
 that word to it?) But to continue: Now he has fitted 
 together certain other sensations into a general 
 thought of food. Then he gradually gets a farther 
 step and fits the thought of light to the thought of 
 food, and so gets a thought higher than either of 
 the first ones. Suppose one of his descendants far 
 enough evolved to be capable of seeking his food 
 instead of merely absorbing it as it comes. He 
 must get into the way of going about after it in 
 bright spots. But fallen leaves and branches float 
 about in the water, and so do other creatures which 
 prey on our friend, so he or his descendants must
 
 The Essential Religion. 4Q 
 
 in time get to distinguish between these small mov- 
 ing shadows, and the great fixed ones of banks and 
 rocks and trees." 
 
 " But why must he get to make these distinc- 
 tions ?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Simply because he'll get eaten up if he doesn't." 
 
 " But," objected Nina, " the one whose senses 
 are evolved first, must be smart enough to eat up 
 the others." 
 
 "It's not the smartest that eats, but the biggest; 
 and the little fellow develops smartness in getting 
 away from him. Man is not descended from the 
 biggest creatures. My child, do you know that 
 there you have touched the fundamental mystery 
 of our moral evolution? Even way back there 
 and way down there, prevails the rule that danger 
 and suffering and cruel necessity develop soul." 
 
 Nina's face became a beautiful study. 
 
 "Well," continued Calmire, "look at it again. 
 Frequent experiences give a thought of light, 
 frequent experiences give a thought of food, 
 later experiences give the thoughts that where 
 light is, food is, where moving shadow is, danger 
 is ; light is salutary, darkness is to be dreaded. 
 A jelly-fish reaches these generalizations after 
 thousands of centuries of inherited habit, and 
 children display them early, which means that 
 the generalizations were evolved in our early an- 
 cestry. Expand them a little farther with experi- 
 ences a little higher, and you get the early man's 
 notion of a good god of light and an evil god 
 of darkness all built up by obvious sequences 
 from the most primitive sensations. The proba-
 
 5O The Essential Religion. 
 
 bilities are tremendous that all our thoughts and 
 feelings were thus built up from sensation that 
 no man ever knew anything that he or his ances- 
 tors had not built up in that slow way." 
 
 "But oh, Mr. Calmire!" exclaimed Nina, "this is 
 bringing religion itself down to mere sense!" 
 
 " Bringing it down, my dear child ? If I tell 
 you that a flower grows from earth, and is limited 
 by the kind of earth it grows from, do I bring the 
 flower down to earth ?" 
 
 " No, I suppose not, after all. Go on, please." 
 
 " I don't want to go on until I get you to 
 realize a little better, how your sympathy with 
 what I am trying to explain, is obstructed by 
 prejudices and cant phrases of prejudice, which 
 the world has evolved with the old order of 
 beliefs. You objected lately to the law of evo- 
 lution, on grounds of family pride; and now you 
 don't want matters of religion made matters of 
 sense; and so on. But your objections are all be- 
 side the issue. It ought not to be a question of 
 what a doctrine interferes with, but simply a ques- 
 tion: ' Is it true ?' Unwelcome truth always turns 
 out a blessing in disguise. But you have had too 
 few opportunities to realize that. When you have 
 realized it oftener, you will not have any prefer- 
 ences whatever as to what dress truth comes in, but 
 simply an eagerness for truth in any dress just as 
 selfish an eagerness as for any other thing that will 
 add to your happiness." 
 
 " I do hope so, but it seems very strange. I feel 
 very weak and desolate, and what you have been 
 saying to me still seems a kind of narrowing down
 
 The Essential Religion. "> r 
 
 even of the little standing ground that was left me 
 I've been brought up to despise the things of sense, 
 and here you want to convince me that my whole 
 mind and soul are made up of them." 
 
 He reached over and gently stroked her hand as 
 he went on: 
 
 " Not a bit of it! They're made up of things of 
 consciousness, which originally were awakened by 
 things of sense. As we've said more than once 
 before, thought emotion, are the highest thing we 
 know at the summit of our evolution. Here they 
 are: what matters it how they got here ? Patience ! 
 Patience ! and all will become clearer. I've been 
 ' narrowing down ' a good many of your old concep- 
 tions, it's true. That was sure to be done by some- 
 body by yourself if by nobody else. But I hope 
 I've given you some better ones in the place of 
 them. I want to get you out of that sadly mis- 
 taken way of despising anything in Nature. Exalt- 
 ing thought at the expense of sense is all a mistake, 
 and is primarily responsible for the horrors of as- 
 ceticism. It was the sort of fool who does that, that 
 Luther sang of in ' Wein, Weib, und Gesang.' How 
 splendidly the knowledge of to-day confirms his in- 
 spirations! Is notsense the medium whereby the 
 external Infinity communicates with the internal 
 one, or as you would put it, whereby God in- 
 forms Soul? Is not sense, then, just as near to 
 God at one end as it is to you at the other? 
 Is it not simply our senses that have led us on 
 a little way into that mass of order and beauty 
 to which we cannot assign any limits ?" 
 
 " And yet," said Nina after a little reflection
 
 t;2 The Essential Religion. 
 
 " every-day religion, which satisfies most people's 
 needs, is not made up from study of Nature, but 
 from the inspirations and meditations of holy 
 men." 
 
 " So it is, my child. But their 'inspirations and 
 meditations,' so far as good for anything, result 
 from experience of Nature (which of course in- 
 cludes human life) by themselves and their ances- 
 tors. True, they tell us other things, but of doubt- 
 ful value. You know that even the church itself 
 has had to decide what to accept and what to re- 
 ject." 
 
 "Well, what is the right test?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Simply the correspondence of what men say 
 with what Nature says. Nature is the only source 
 of truth : of course I mean Nature in the large 
 sense including human nature." 
 
 " Yes, that's just it, Mr. Calmire. Aren't the 
 minds of holy men springs of truth ?' : 
 
 "Certainly; but just as all springs furnish 
 water which has fallen from elsewhere. Nature 
 pours truth upon us in our daily experiences, 
 and as we study her in woods and under skies, 
 in laboratories and observatories, before organs 
 and orchestras, in minds and hearts and in social 
 organizations. But the monk in his cell, the hermit 
 in the desert, the old-fashioned German dreamer 
 in his closet, have seldom studied things as they 
 are, but have generally imagined absurdities and 
 chimeras; and their vagaries, fastened on to more 
 or less of the truth, have done much to shape the 
 religions. 
 
 "We should never forget," he continued, "that
 
 The Essential Religion. "5 3 
 
 the mind of man is irregular and fallible, while 
 Nature is unvarying and reliable that though she 
 initiates and sustains man's soul-force, she still 
 leaves him enough independence to run counter 
 to the laws of both the external world and of mind, 
 and so to make his opinions proportionally unsafe. 
 So as soon as men get to fancying beyond Nature's 
 plain revelations, there are all degrees in which they 
 speak truly and falsely, and all ways in which even 
 the best men contradict each other. Socrates be- 
 lieved that the immortality of the soul will be the 
 solution of all human ills : Buddha believed the 
 same of its virtual annihilation. The fact is that 
 neither of them either knew or could know anything 
 about it, Nature being absolutely silent on the point. 
 Now in the hosts of such cases, as there was no 
 possible way of proving either side right or wrong, 
 the original method of avoiding tedious discussion 
 was for one disputant to roast the other. That 
 way is out of fashion now, however, so they get 
 together and have a little amusement that they call 
 a ' heresy trial,' where both sides assert a lot of 
 things that neither can prove, and then the ma- 
 jority decides that one is right, or sometimes that 
 both are: the world is growing so amiable, indeed, 
 that the latter way is becoming quite frequent." 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire, you don't mean that all 'the 
 work, the beauty, the poetry, the exaltation' of 
 the church has been the fruit of error ?" 
 
 " By no means ! At bottom they have rested on 
 Nature's own truths; but I'm afraid a good deal of 
 error has been the fruit of the poetry and exaltation. 
 Like all great forces, they're dangerous things:
 
 54 The Essential Religion. 
 
 they often substitute false emotion for true; they 
 often draw their nourishment from men's fancies 
 rather than from Nature and active life. All 
 healthy mental stimulus, not only as it comes 
 to us, but as it came to the first creature that re- 
 acted with the outside Universe, originally pro- 
 ceeds from without from Nature, as I just said 
 (or God if you prefer to put it in that way), or from 
 other human beings. But it won't do to mistake 
 the reactions of one's own mind for the utterances 
 of God. The mind's stimulation of itself is as 
 dangerous as the body's." 
 
 " But all the body's stimulants come from out- 
 side," Nina objected. 
 
 " Not all," he answered; " but that subject is not 
 pleasant, we can't go into it, and you couldn't un- 
 derstand it. Just bear this in mind, though : there 
 are but two sources of truth open to us the out- 
 side Universe, and minds evolved by healthy re- 
 action with it: not minds 'inspired' by their own 
 fancies." 
 
 " But," said Nina, " somehow this doesn't seem 
 to come from above it all seems so awfully me- 
 chanical and unspiritual." 
 
 "That depends upon what you mean by spir- 
 itual. It comes, as everything does, from the 
 Mystery under all our knowledge, which the other 
 day you called the 'spiritual world.' And in 
 that sense, it must be absolutely spiritual; but if 
 you mean that it does not profess to deal with 
 that awful Mystery, it is ^spiritual. If, though, 
 you mean by spirituality, the really highest range 
 of thought and feeling which that Mystery has yet
 
 The Essential Religion. 55 
 
 yielded from itself, if you mean the great emotions 
 which the contemplation of mystery generates, if 
 you mean the ' sacred thirst ' for more of such 
 experiences, you will find in what I have been in- 
 dicating, room for all that though it will involve 
 some change in your tastes. But you still have 
 everything man ever really knew,and every reason- 
 able longing he ever felt from that coming sun- 
 set, back through all the beautiful truths painted 
 or carved or in any other way recorded." 
 
 " But," she insisted, " there are those truths that 
 we can't paint or record." 
 
 " Yes, dear, an infinity of them ! But until we can 
 paint or record them, it won't do to claim that we 
 have them. If those we haven't got, are what you 
 mean by spiritual truths, why, so far as our minds 
 are concerned, there are none. Yet don't let us for 
 a moment forget that in another sense all truth is 
 spiritual: in a unified Universe, truth is necessarily 
 one the revealed as much as the unrevealed." 
 
 " But what does it all mean when we speak about 
 so many of the best men having devoted them- 
 selves to finding and teaching spiritual truth ? 
 I don't mean men engaged with bugs and stones 
 and such things that we talked about once," and 
 she suddenly turned pale, " but the men we speak 
 of as ' spiritually-minded.' What does that mean ?" 
 
 "It means a great many things everything be- 
 tween the wonderful moral insight of Christ. a-nd 
 the arrant nonsense talked in Alexandria in Hy- 
 patia's time." 
 
 " But there you go again, Mr. Calmire: 'insight,' 
 into what?"
 
 5 6 The Essential Religion. 
 
 "Into this marvelous mass of experiences and 
 reactions between them, which we call the human 
 soul." 
 
 " Well, isn't soul, spirit ? Isn't that spiritual ?" 
 
 " Not in the sense I think you're struggling over 
 now : you want something beyond the human 
 'spirit' something of those outside spirits that 
 the savages think of. We can only know the hu- 
 man spirit, and it may be made a very ennobling 
 study. But even with that study, as with a good 
 many other pursuits, the dangers have been pro- 
 portionate to the advantages." 
 
 She uttered a wondering " How ?" 
 
 " Because it has been the direct road to most of 
 the idiocies. As long as people are studying visi- 
 ble, audible, and tangible things, they are using 
 their longest-evolved and therefore most practiced 
 and reliable senses, and so are least apt to wander 
 into error. The thing is ' right before them,' as 
 we say, and keeps their minds pinned down to it. 
 But when we come to examine our thoughts and 
 feelings, not only are the faculties we use compara- 
 tively new and unexercised and weak, but the ob- 
 jects of our study are as elusive as our powers are 
 feeble. So the results are largely vagaries and 
 confusions, and although people have been writing 
 about them ever since they began writing of any- 
 thing, it is only very lately that we've begun to get 
 them into any sort of shape. At last, though, we've 
 fastened them on to nerve-function, where we could 
 bring our reliable old senses up to help us, and 
 now we're getting ahead." 
 
 " Are you coming to my question pretty soon,
 
 The Essential Religion. 57 
 
 Mr. Calmire?" she asked with a fascinating little 
 moue. 
 
 "You mustn't ask such deep ones, dear, if you 
 want me to get to the bottom of them quickly. I'm 
 nearly as far as I can go, though. I've been tell- 
 ing you all this to show you how our knowledge 
 of our own little 'spirits' is necessarily so vague. 
 But in spite of that, men have gratuitously and 
 irreverently assumed so much resemblance between 
 them and the Infinity behind phenomena, that 
 they have professed to be able through them to 
 study It. So they have got mind and morals 
 hopelessly jumbled up with speculations on the 
 other Invisible and Intangible behind all we know, 
 and have got in the way of calling the whole cha- 
 otic mass 'spiritual truth.' Why, when I was a 
 boy, the border between what our minds can do 
 and what they can't, was so ill-defined, that we 
 were actually told that there was such a thing as 
 a science of ontology, or pure being, as distinct 
 from any manifestations finite creatures know: 
 and yet their very term 'science' meant some- 
 thing known. I believe they're actually talking 
 such nonsense in some schools to-day." 
 
 After a little pondering, Nina asked, " Never- 
 theless, isn't the 'spirit' of God made manifest 
 through His works and through our own souls?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly," assented Calmire, "only there's 
 no more made manifest than is made manifest; and 
 all that is made manifest, is just our good old relia- 
 ble experience, which we've had to gain as much 
 in the sweat of our brows, as we've had to gain our 
 bread. But there's a type of mind that always
 
 -g The Essential Religion. 
 
 acts as if it could get ahead of the primeval curse: 
 it despises the slow ways of investigation and 
 discovery, and claims some sort of insight into 
 something that no two of its votaries agree upon, 
 except in calling it 'spiritual truth.' And it is just 
 this ' truth ' that makes up the vast mass of human 
 error, of wasted power, of fruitless contention, of 
 wars and inquisitions in earlier ages, and of grown 
 men spending their time on ' heresy trials' in ours." 
 
 " I begin to understand now," said Nina, after 
 a moment, " something you said yesterday morn- 
 ing about the woman I am growing to be, 
 and also something else you said once when 
 we were driving home from a tennis-match it 
 seems as if it must have been many years ago, before 
 I was born. You said you didn't know whether 
 Faith, according to my old ideas of it, was good 
 for me, and that it was good for Mr. Courtenay. 
 Of course I always knew why it was necessary for 
 many people. I may not be very bright, but I 
 know that most people could not understand what 
 you and Mu what I have learned here," she sub- 
 stituted, changingcoloragain. Then she continued: 
 " But it seems a pity that people should be hug- 
 ging false ideals, and worshipping idols and pic- 
 tures and Bambinos." 
 
 "Well," said Calmire, "rag babies have often 
 soothed bereaved and demented mothers. The 
 point for you to realize, though, is that just as fast 
 as humanity was able, it has got rid of anthropomor- 
 phic conceptions of the Infinite. The Greeks, you 
 know, did not merely have an anthropomorphic 
 god as the source of the Infinite Power, but had a
 
 The Essential Religion. 59 
 
 special anthropomorphic divinity to account for 
 each revelation of Nature a universe full of gods 
 fighting, loving, lying, and stealing, just as the 
 Greeks did themselves. The Hebrews, while they 
 professed to have but one Supreme being, had, like 
 the Greeks, no end of supernatural ones angels 
 and devils and translated prophets. Then the 
 early Christians added the Virgin and the saints, 
 with altars and churches built to a great variety of 
 them: Rome is certainly among the idolatrous 
 cities of the world." 
 
 "But now, Mr. Calmire," she said, " you're talk- 
 ing of the Romish Church." 
 
 " Oh! The later churches," he answered, " much 
 to their credit, have been practically reducing the 
 number of those anthropomorphic conceptions and 
 idolatries those images material and ideal; and 
 that simply goes to prove what I said : that as fast 
 as humanity can get some conception that the 
 Power behind our lives is absolutely ineffable, it 
 diminishes its attempts to express it." 
 
 " Haven't I seen somewhere," asked Nina, " the 
 word Unknowable, with a big U?" 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire. "And in one sense, I think 
 it a very unfortunate word. Of course only what 
 is revealed to us, is knowable by us; and so the 
 Revealing Power, except so far as revealed, is cor- 
 rectly called Unknowable. But as we know more 
 every day, the Power is, in that sense, eminently 
 knowable, and so far as the other word implies 
 that it is not, the word is incorrect." 
 
 " It's splendid, inspiring," cried Nina, " to re- 
 alize that It is knowable, and that each little step in
 
 6o The Essential Religion. 
 
 knowledge is a step in knowledge of the Infinite." 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, " I don't wonder at the 
 enthusiasm of the great investigators, when it has 
 such inspirations behind it. That enthusiasm was 
 never as great as in our day, as the inspiration has 
 never been so clear. I think you have now some 
 idea of the ' Religion of Science.' It's so much 
 decried, because it's so little understood." 
 
 ;< But/' Nina expostulated, "I don't yet see how 
 it can make people good. You said that you would 
 come to that." 
 
 "So I will. But we haven't time now. You were 
 getting toward it yourself a little faster than you 
 suspected, when you exclaimed a moment ago that 
 it was ' inspiring.' If you've recovered God and 
 the spiritual world, suppose you try to take the 
 rest for granted for the present." 
 
 " Yes, I've recovered something, or at least I have 
 something new. But something is gone, something 
 is gone!" 
 
 " Yes, my child, something that you supposed was 
 there, but was not. As we grow older, something 
 seems to go every day. But if we keep our souls 
 open, something greater comes: we are on the sur- 
 face of an Infinity, from which each step of evo- 
 lution or discovery, brings a new revelation. Call 
 it God or Nature or what you will no sane man 
 can escape the might and order and beauty of 
 that Infinity, no skepticism can. It is here to- 
 day, as it was before you felt uncertain about it. 
 Doubts and disappointments and the contradic- 
 tions of mistaken creeds, but affect the power to 
 realize it : it endures despite them all. All our
 
 The Essential Religion. 6 1 
 
 knowledge, all our joys, all our inspirations come 
 from It; the laws under which we receive them are 
 absolutely unvarying, absolutely consistent, and 
 we can study them and benefit by them. Though 
 we cannot know them all, we can have faith in 
 the Infinite Power, Order, and Beauty from which 
 they emanate, and of which in limited measure 
 they partake; and so we can have faith that to use 
 our little fragments of will in accordance with 
 them, is growth and happiness, and that oppo- 
 sition to them is destruction. That faith is founded 
 on the evidence of our senses; it is unavoidable, 
 and it is the foundation of all right reason and of 
 all true religion." 
 
 Both sat silent some moments, when he said 
 musingly: "Perhaps such broad outlooks make 
 life more impersonal, but they make it more calm 
 but," he added in a moment, " the young do not 
 care for calm: they want joy." 
 
 "I have done with joy," she said. "I came to 
 you to ask the secret of your calm." 
 
 Calmire smiled with a skeptical feeling regard- 
 ing her ignorant young despair, but thought best 
 not to contradict her, and merely said : 
 
 "Well, really, dear, I believe the great secret of 
 calm is the realization of the pettiness of all that 
 can disturb our lives, in contrast with the immens- 
 ity that includes them." 
 
 "Is that another name for Faith in God?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Faith in God is one of the names for it."
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 MARY'S STORY. 
 
 As Calmire mused over his talk with Nina, there 
 kept coming up in his mind one sentence of hers: 
 " I have done with joy." 
 
 " This is no mere religious upset," he had already 
 said to himself more than once. " She never was 
 devote she never was so attached to her old con- 
 ceptions that the mere breakdown of them has 
 afflicted her so. There's other trouble somewhere." 
 Then he thought of his own great trouble over 
 Muriel, and suddenly reflected that Nina had started 
 to pronounce Muriel's name, changed color, and al- 
 tered her phrase. "It must be there! For some 
 reason, it must be there!" he said half aloud. But 
 he could not imagine any way to account for her 
 knowing of Muriel's difficulty, and so dismissed the 
 subject. But of course it would keep coming up. 
 
 One afternoon, they were out with the tandem 
 again, and passed Courtenay driving in a low 
 phaeton with his sister. As salutations were ex- 
 changed, the two women, though their goings and 
 comings had happened to prevent their meeting 
 yet, looked directly into each other's eyes with 
 sympathetic recognition, and really bowed to each 
 other, rather than to their actual acquaintances in 
 the respective vehicles. After they had passed, 
 
 62
 
 Mary's Story. 63 
 
 Nina said to Calmire: "She's so lovely! Why 
 don't you tell me her story?" 
 
 He had already deliberated whether he should 
 tell it to Nina, and, of course, he realized that it 
 is always a relief to sorrow, to sympathize with 
 the sorrows of others. He now felt, too, that 
 Nina had reached the point intellectually where 
 his objections to telling the story would not apply. 
 He turned toward her and asked: "Do you want 
 the gist of it, or the details?" 
 
 " All that you'll tell me." 
 
 " In that case," said he, " let's wait till we're 
 quietly at home where there won't be so much to 
 distract us. I don't want to have my mind too 
 much off my leader this afternoon anyhow, for 
 he's new to the position; or too much off my story 
 either, for that matter, when I tell it." 
 
 They had started right after lunch in the brisk 
 October afternoon, and got home long before sun- 
 set. It was warm enough to sit in the sunshine on 
 the piazza in their wraps, and he began the story 
 there. 
 
 "Well! When Mary was about eighteen, she fell 
 in love with Arthur Woodleigh a bosom-friend 
 of mine, and the finest man I ever knew. They 
 worshipped each other, and you know enough 
 about Mary to realize that it was for good reason, 
 if he was her equal, and he was. 
 
 " On leaving college, Arthur expected to preach, 
 though he was like anything but the typical 
 divinity student 01 that time. He was as splendid 
 physically as Courtenay is now; but, unlike our 
 St. John, he had had a pretty good crop of
 
 64 Mary's Story. 
 
 wild oats to sow, and had sowed them with a gen- 
 erous hand, as he did everything. He was full of 
 love for all things that live, so when he outgrew 
 his nonsense, the first serious question he put to him- 
 self was: how he could be of most use. Strange as 
 it may appear to you, politics was seldom thought 
 of then as a career of beneficence. There was not 
 as much taught in the colleges about American his- 
 tory and politics as about those of Greece and Rome: 
 virtually all the colleges had been founded to make 
 clergymen, and the ministry was the one career gen- 
 erally turned to by those whose first wish was to serve 
 their fellow-men. So Arthur thought of preaching, 
 and this, you can realize, made his suit for Mary par- 
 ticularly congenial to old Mr. and Mrs. Courtenay." 
 
 " Was the father a preacher too ?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Yes, and the grandfather and the great-grand- 
 father, and, for all I know, so on back through a 
 line of savage medicine-men. But Mary's not that 
 way, though. She takes after her mother, who 
 was descended from the grandfather of Thomas 
 Jefferson. But we're getting away from the story 
 again. The old people favored the match, as I said. 
 The facts that Arthur was rich and well-born, were 
 not considered obstacles, though I believe the old 
 gentleman did think his clothes fitted rather too 
 well and were of rather too worldly a cut. Well, 
 
 when Arthur got out of college (They were en- 
 gaged during his Senior year) he began to study 
 theology.' 
 
 "Why didn't they marry?" asked Nina. "You 
 say he was rich." 
 
 " Her parents persuaded them to wait until he
 
 Mary's Story. 65 
 
 should be at least on the road toward his profes- 
 sion. But the road toward it proved the road 
 away from it. Quantities of things that he had 
 taken for granted until he stopped to think about 
 them, he found he couldn't take at all." 
 
 " Such as ?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Well, he's told me that the very first thing that 
 aroused his skepticism, was the attempt of the cate- 
 chism to make him responsible to keep a promise 
 which had been made for him by somebody else 
 without his knowledge or consent I mean the 
 promises of his sponsors in baptism. Then, I re- 
 member, he and I had our doubts about eternal 
 punishment, even at that time." 
 
 " Even at that time ! Why, it was not so very 
 long ago." 
 
 " About four hundred years, I think," said Cal- 
 mire; " that is to say, that counted by revolutions 
 in thought, it is about as long since the time when 
 people began really to get hold of the idea of the 
 Conservation of Force, and when Darwin's Origin 
 of Species and Spencer's First Principles appeared, 
 as it was before that time to the days of Luther." 
 
 " Well!" said Nina, with a long breath. " Perhaps 
 I've begun to understand a little of that since I've 
 been here." 
 
 "You see," said Calmire, "that the books which 
 everybody reads now, or rather the echoes of which 
 everybody reads, were then read only by very few. 
 I had read them before Arthur had. He was a 
 youngster in college when I was a man of thirty. He 
 got to his skeptical attitude from the inconsisten- 
 cies of what he was studying, and almost independ-
 
 66 Mary's Story. 
 
 ently of modern science. Geology and Astronomy 
 were in those days ' explained ' away with more 
 or less success. It was not really until Darwin 
 began to take hold, that the new revolution began. 
 But aren't you tired of having me talk all around 
 Robin Hood's barn, when you simply want me to 
 tell you about Mary and Arthur?" 
 
 " Oh no! We'll get to it in time, and I'm inter- 
 ested in all you're saying. Why, most of your 
 outside talk has been simply in answer to my in- 
 terruptions." 
 
 " We won't get through the tale to-day," said 
 Calmire, " if I try to give you a detailed history of 
 Arthur's mental development. To make a long 
 story short, he soon came to look upon Christianity 
 simply as upon other religions, admitting it to be 
 the best, of course. But in those days, it hardly 
 entered Arthur's head, or anybody's else, that 
 there could be Religion pure and simple, as distin- 
 guished from the Christian religion or the Bud- 
 dhist religion or the Mahometan religion." 
 
 " But," asked Nina, " by ' Religion pure and 
 simple,' don't you mean the religion you have been 
 showing me in Nature, and isn't that what I have 
 often seen alluded to with respect by orthodox 
 writers as ' natural religion ' ?" 
 
 " How our flowers do grow!" exclaimed Calmire, 
 smiling. " No, the two things look a good deal 
 alike, but they have important points of difference. 
 Orthodox Christians have respected only so much 
 of natural religion as supported their dogmas, and 
 the discovery of the law of Evolution has so ex- 
 panded it as to make it virtually a new thing that
 
 Marys Story. 67 
 
 destroys many of the dogmas. Very few orthodox 
 writers have yet really tried to use it, though most 
 of them have heartily abused it. Well," he con- 
 
 tinued, " of course Arthur's views of religion did 
 not suit old Mr. Courtenay, and he regarded Ar- 
 thur as on the way to eternal perdition." 
 
 "And that's Mary's story!" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " Oil no: that's only the beginning of it ! Of 
 course the match was broken off, not by any means 
 as a matter of conviction by Mary, but as what she 
 considered a matter of duty. The worst of it was, 
 that the more she tried to reason with her father, 
 the more she convinced him that Arthur's notions 
 were leading her to perdition as well as Arthur." 
 
 " What did Arthurdo ? Why didn't he take her ?" 
 
 " Largely because she wouldn't go. She would 
 make no promises to either side. At times, she 
 would hope that her father would look on it dif- 
 ferently, and she would cheer Arthur by counsel- 
 ing patience. At other times, she would simply 
 preach submission, and poor Arthur's soul was be- 
 ing worn out of him by alternately climbing the 
 heights of hope and being dashed into the depths 
 of despair." 
 
 " But she must have suffered more still," said Nina. 
 
 " I'm not so sure of that," Calmire responded. 
 " Men and women in love are spurred by widely dif- 
 ferent necessities far. more so than you can realize. 
 To some men probably to the manliest men, such 
 a state of affairs is worse than it can be to women 
 of corresponding womanliness. After two or three 
 years of it, Arthur went off to the war. He had 
 always felt it something of a duty to go, but he
 
 68 Marys Story. 
 
 did not want to go away from his terrible problem.'' 
 
 " How did she feel about his going?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Oh, of course she thought him rather too 
 fine for ' food for powder,' though she always said: 
 'If it comes to the point where such men ate 
 needed, I must submit.'" 
 
 " Why," said Nina, " weren't the best men needed? 
 I thought brains had something to do with making 
 wars short and merciful." 
 
 "And in so thinking," said Calmire, "you show 
 yourself possessed of more of that article than 
 most of your sex more, probably, than poor 
 Mary had at that time, though your heart is 
 not juggling with your brains, as hers did. Her 
 father was a parson, too; yours was a soldier in 
 his day, and so was your great-grandfather, who 
 was my great-grandfather too." 
 
 " Didn't you go to the war too, Mr. Calmire ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " One reason was having so many relatives and 
 associations on both sides, and having also a weak 
 habit of looking on both sides of any question: 
 and there were other reasons. But if one could 
 see the merits of a matter from in front as well as 
 from behind, I think I should have gone in spite of 
 all the reasons. Arthur went, however." 
 
 "Yes, from despair," said Nina. "How many 
 went from pure patriotism ?" 
 
 "That," said Calmire, "is not for a man who 
 stayed at home, to judge. But you don't quite do 
 Arthur justice. Despair certainly was in his heart, 
 but there were other things too. And, in a short
 
 Marys Story. 69 
 
 time, the}' included a bullet-hole." 
 
 "Of course!" said Nina, grasping the arms of 
 her chair. 
 
 " But not one of the ' of course ' kind," said Cal- 
 mire, " or perhaps I would not have spoken of it 
 quite in that way. The hole was not all the way 
 through, but a graze on one side. It was an almost 
 miraculous sort of wound, for a trifling difference 
 in position, even if it had not perforated the organ, 
 would have made the heart-beats so painful as to 
 soon wear a man out. But this was a wound for a 
 man with any decent show, to get well of." 
 
 " Oh he must have got well !" exclaimed Nina, 
 leaning forward with a glowing face, her hands 
 still grasping both arms of her chair. 
 
 "Ah, my child ! my child !" exclaimed Calmire, 
 " Nature doesn't work on your basis. The doctors 
 said he would get well, and soon began to wonder 
 why he didn't, and after some days, one of them 
 told me (for I went down to Arthur) that they were 
 satisfied something was preying on his spirits, and 
 that he never could get well as long as it did. I 
 wrote to old Courtenay. His answer was, sub- 
 stantially, that he was as sorry as I was (and I 
 believe he was sincere), but that he could not see 
 the gain in sacrificing Mary's eternal life for a few 
 years of Arthur's earthly one. That finished what 
 little orthodoxy there was left in me!" said Cal- 
 mire, "though I've recovered some of it since. 
 But I was simply in a blind rage. I went to 
 Arthur and told him I was going after Mary, and 
 that he must hold on till I should get back." 
 
 "Where were you ?" asked Nina.
 
 7O Marys Story. 
 
 " Down in Virginia at a little farm-house near 
 Spottsylvania. Arthur asked me if the old man 
 had given in, and I told him, saving your presence, 
 that the old man might go to the devil, that I was 
 going to bring Mary. I can see his pale face now, 
 as he smiled to thank me, but there was no hope 
 in his smile. 
 
 " Well," continued Calmire after a little pause, 
 during which Nina did put out her hand and take 
 hold of his, " it was not a very quick journey all 
 sorts of obstacles in war-time, you know. But after 
 three days, I was up at Mary's home. I had 
 telegraphed her that Arthur would die if she did 
 not go to him, and that I would be after her on 
 Thursday morning I think it was. The old man 
 met me at the door, and she stood behind him with 
 her bonnet on. I pitied the poor fellow almost as 
 much as I did her. He was a saintly man, but a 
 narrow one. He shook hands and said nothing 
 until I was in the house. Then he said : ' Mr. Cal- 
 mire, this is terrible ! ' ' Yes, I rather think it 
 is!' said I. 'What are you going to do about it?' 
 Perhaps I would not express myself in quite the 
 same way now. I think I must remember every 
 word of that interview. He answered: ' It seems to 
 me the greater sin to let my daughter go.' ' What 
 Sire you going to do, Mary ?' I asked her. ' I'm go- 
 ing!' said she. 'My daughter! O my daugh- 
 ter!' cried poor Courtenay, the tears streaming 
 down his face, and I heard Mrs. Courtenay sob- 
 bing in the parlor. The old man turned and 
 put his back against the door, and stood there 
 crying, but as firm as a rock. I call him old man
 
 Marys Story. 7 1 
 
 from the habit of that time, though he was really 
 not over forty-five. I thought of our ages very 
 distinctly, because I had to say to him: 'Well, Mr. 
 Courtenay, we've barely time to catch the down 
 train. Are you going to let us out?' 'I must 
 not! Oh, I must not! ' he cried. I shall never forget 
 the feeling that came over me then: I was in a 
 hurry, and I was not born a patient man, so I said 
 to him (I wish now I'd put it milder): ' Mr. Cour- 
 tenay, the rights of conscience and the rights of 
 parental control can be carried to extremes. The 
 line has got to be drawn somewhere, and I draw it 
 at murder. You must let us go!' 'No, I must 
 not! I must not! ' he said, but stopped crying and 
 began to look ugly. I was fool enough in those 
 days to let another man's ugliness make me ugly 
 too, so I said : ' Stand aside,' and went towards him. 
 He said: ' If you take her, it must be by force, and 
 force against the minister of God defending His 
 law.' 'There's no time for cant,' said I (I'm sorry 
 I did), and I put my hand on him. Mary grasped 
 my arm. I told her that I shouldn't hurt him, but 
 that he must let us go. Something in her eyes 
 quieted me, and I said to him: 'Mr. Courtenay, I 
 do respect your earnestness of conviction, and hate 
 to have to oppose it, but I'm going to take Mary 
 through that door; and unless you doubt it, to try 
 to prevent me is simply cruelty to all concerned." 
 His eyes looked like blue steel, for perhaps ten 
 seconds. Then he said: ' I cannot doubt it, and I 
 may as well yield now as later; but all the same, I 
 yield to force,' and he stepped aside. Mary kissed 
 her mother, who now stood in the parlor door, and
 
 72 Marys Story. 
 
 turned to her father, who seemed prepared to kiss 
 her. She stood still, however, and said: 'Father, 
 what can I say to Arthur?' He answered: 'My 
 child, if my poor life could settle this question 
 could save his I would give it, over and over 
 again, but I cannot tell you anything else to say 
 to him.' She said: 'Good-bye, Father,' and went 
 out of the door without touching him. She has 
 never seen him since." 
 
 " Can she be so unforgiving?" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " It's not that," Calmire answered. " Or at 
 least it's not entirely that. He has not since taken 
 squarely any attitude that entitles him to forgive- 
 ness. Mary is no sentimentalist. The usual ' kiss 
 and make up,' unless there's more behind it than 
 there can be here, is the way of children. It's 
 doubtful whether her seeing him would justify the 
 pain it would bring upon her. Well!" Calmire 
 
 continued after a moment, "he came to me with 
 the strangest face I ever saw, and held out his 
 hand. I had to take it: I don't remember that 
 I ever rejected a proffered hand. He came to the 
 door and said to us, so that Mary, who was al- 
 ready down the steps, could hear: ' May God bless 
 you both and and ' I think he said 'spare him,' 
 but his voice sank and I'm uncertain. When I 
 got Mary into the carriage, I noticed that a terri- 
 ble change had come over her face. It was set and 
 cold. She said, after I got in, * Thank you, Legrand ! ' 
 and grasped my hand so that it pained me, and 
 held it until we had driven seven miles to the sta- 
 tion, only answering me in monosyllables until I 
 Saw that it was better not to talk to her.
 
 Marys Story. 73 
 
 " Well, we got down into Virginia. When we were 
 within a few miles of the house where Arthur was 
 lying (we were riding in an ambulance, and that, by 
 the way, was the first time I saw Clint Russell : he 
 was driving it) Mary pointed to a man in an army 
 hat but a black coat, and asked if he was a chaplain. 
 I told her I supposed so. Then she asked if there 
 was one near Arthur, and when I said it was doubt- 
 ful, she told me to ask if this one would *jo with us." 
 
 " She wasn't pestered about his soul?" exclaimed 
 Nina. " Oh! she meant to marry him !" 
 
 " Yes. When we got to Arthur, the doctor told 
 me he was just alive. I went into his room. He 
 did not give any sign of recognition. I sent Mary 
 in atone. She told me some time afterwards that 
 his hand had closed on hers that was all." 
 
 After a minute or two, Nina wiped her eyes 
 and said: 
 
 " It sounds like two hundred years ago. Fortu- 
 nately such things have grown rarer." 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, " as dogma has lost its 
 hold. It was not religion that made this trouble, 
 but dogma going outside of all real questions of 
 moral life into a lot of factitious ones, and assum- 
 ing as facts a lot of statements and theories on 
 subjects that we know nothing about." 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire, where does dogma begin and 
 religion end ?" 
 
 "Just where common sense and experience end. 
 There's enough in the Bible that conforms to both, 
 and it's easy enough to see how the rest got there."
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 COURTENAY'S FAITH. 
 
 BUT why had Courtenay been standing all this 
 time with his feet pointing toward Nina and the 
 grass growing under them ? By September, he 
 always needed a vacation, and always deserved 
 it. This time, the nervous shock of his accident 
 made him doubly need it. After he met Nina at 
 the tennis-match early in that month, he met her 
 but two or three times more, and where private 
 chat was impossible; and then he was off, by pre- 
 vious arrangement, to spend some time with his 
 parents. He had intended to get a chance to see 
 Nina before going, by running over to say good-bye 
 to Mr. Calmire. But an hour before he expected to 
 start, he met that gentleman on the street, and in 
 response to his interested inquiries, had to tell him 
 of his intended vacation, and to receive his good- 
 bye on the spot. This made him think of post- 
 poning his departure, but his faithfulness to ap- 
 pointments where others were concerned, made it 
 natural for him to go, even had not his love for his 
 parents made it unnatural to disappoint them. 
 And toward them, he felt something more than 
 ordinary love and duty. His father's relation to 
 Mary inspired the son with an almost yearning 
 pity. Years before, Mary had said to him: " Father 
 probably admits no question of forgiveness; but 
 
 74
 
 toUrtenay's Faith. ?$ 
 
 iell him that I think I have conquered all bitter 
 feeling, and that I will see him when I feel able to." 
 But she had not felt physically able to, and Cour- 
 tenay knew enough of the condition of her* nervous 
 system, to realize whenever she said this, that it 
 was true. The father's condition, though he would 
 not admit it to himself, was one of remorse. If he 
 had been able to admit it and seek forgiveness, 
 the occasion for Courtenay's pity for him would 
 have passed. 
 
 As Courtenay thought of leaving the neighbor- 
 hood of Nina, he said to himself : " The Lord will 
 bless my following my duty," and he unconsciously 
 made the fact that he had had this opportunity to 
 follow duty in the face of his desire to see her, a 
 half-realized argument that he and she were des- 
 tined for each other. 
 
 Courtenay had but just returned from his vaca- 
 tion two days before Nina saw him driving with 
 his sister, and it was not unnatural that two days 
 later still, he should appear at Fleuvemont to " re- 
 port himself" to his patron, though neither of them 
 would have used that word. 
 
 This time, Fortune favored him. Calmire was 
 away, and Nina was on the piazza in the warm 
 October sun, when Courtenay approached the 
 house. He had gone over by rail and walked up 
 from the station. 
 
 When Nina recognized him, she felt a little 
 shrinking, but it was too late to run away without 
 hurting his feelings, and she did not wish to do 
 that, nor is it certain that, all in all, she really 
 wished to run awav. She even had felt a desire
 
 j6 Courtenay' s Faith. 
 
 to talk over some of her skeptical troubles with 
 him. So she was perfectly truthful when, ad- 
 vancing to the top of the steps and holding out 
 her hand, she said: 
 
 " I'm glad to see you, Mr. Courtenay, and es- 
 pecially to see you walking with such a vigorous 
 step. Of course you're quite well ?" 
 
 Perhaps her speech was a little more elaborate 
 than it would have been if her self-consciousness 
 had arisen only from the recollection of her " at- 
 tempt to murder him," as Muriel had come to call 
 it. But the sight of him had at once brought up 
 not only what she felt of his sentiments toward 
 her, but the thought of Muriel or rather that 
 thought intensified: the thought itself, with all 
 its terrible complications, had seldom left her during 
 many days. It made her life a double one. 
 
 " Oh yes, I'm perfectly well, thanks," Courtenay 
 answered simply. 
 
 " Your vacation has done you good ! Then you 
 have enjoyed it." 
 
 " Yes, in a way I did. But I was impatient to 
 get back." 
 
 "Why? Was not your work going on right?" 
 
 " Oh, it was not that." He had reached the 
 Rubicon, but his plunge was an awkward though 
 an honest one. " I wanted to get back to you." 
 
 " I should think you had had more reason to 
 want to avoid me," she laughed, half nervously. 
 
 " No, no ! God himself sent us to each other !" 
 
 From where he had seated himself, against the 
 post at the edge of the piazza, his face was turned 
 up to her with the fervor of conviction and adora-
 
 Courtenay s Faith. 77 
 
 tion. It was very beautiful, but it struck her 
 with misgiving. Expressions of adoration, she 
 had known before: but the confidence in this 
 man's face and speech was strange and startling. 
 She had long felt that Courtenay loved her: 
 but, young as she was, she was not a stranger 
 to feelings of that kind. She was a stranger, 
 though, to such confidence in an admirer: she 
 had met him oftener than has been detailed 
 here, but not often enough to account for 
 this. Her blush was as much that of confu- 
 sion as of modesty, when she answered, half at 
 random: 
 
 "I don't understand you." 
 
 " You have been made the instrument of death 
 and life to me. I was away from earth. When I 
 came back, I came to you. When I stayed, I stayed 
 for you. That I love you, is but the half. I live 
 in you. You are my condition of being." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Courtenay, you hardly know me!" 
 
 "What is knowledge ?" , he asked, and, too ab- 
 sorbed to notice her startled shrinking, went on: 
 "The pride of it is leading the world to destruc- 
 tion! One does not need any such mole's-wisdom 
 to comprehend you. You do not need to be 
 known : you are like the angels, for faith and 
 worship !" 
 
 No woman was ever indifferent to such address, 
 and no devoted face ever glowed from canvas with 
 more loveliness than was in Courtenay's as it 
 yearned up toward her. For an instant, she was 
 lost in his fervor and his beauty. Then there 
 seemed to come to her a voice, calm and quiet,
 
 78 Cwrttnay's Faith. 
 
 and with some reminiscent associations of the in- 
 finite Order. It simply said: 
 
 " Is this thing true ?" 
 
 And the answer she made was: 
 
 " /, a thing to be worshipped, when worship 
 means what it does to him !" 
 
 All this went through her mind so fast that 
 Courtenay hardly noticed her pause before, flush- 
 ing, she said: 
 
 " Mr. Courtenay, you have done me the greatest 
 honor that " 
 
 " No; it's not that," he said, interrupting her, 
 " it's not in that way I don't do it : God appointed 
 it. I don't deserve it, perhaps of myself I would 
 not feel worthy to ask for it. But as God has 
 sent us to each other, I humbly, but oh so grate- 
 fully, turn toward you," 
 
 Perhaps, as a woman, she would have been bet- 
 ter pleased had the man thought more of his own 
 feeling, and less of God's will ; and certainly, as the 
 woman she had recently become, she would have 
 been better pleased had he had less confidence in 
 his own ability to interpret the Infinite, less readi- 
 ness to attribute to it any swerving aside to any 
 special man from the courses laid out for all men; 
 and less readiness to assume that if it were so to 
 swerve, it would specially devise such kind and 
 dignified means of introducing a country parson 
 to a city belle, as having her run him down in a 
 boat. But though she might have been better 
 pleased, she was not quite displeased. She had too 
 much healthy vanity to suppose his devotion quite 
 limited to religious enthusiasm, and she could not 
 be insensible to his merits or his charm.
 
 dourienay's Faith. ffi 
 
 Her natural candor, or uficonscious tact brought 
 a diversion by letting him see this. 
 
 "Yet I respect you enough, Mr. Courtenay, td 
 feel that the interpretation you have given to God's 
 will, does me honor, even if I if if it's not on a 
 strictly professional subject." 
 
 " Oh, my profession covers everything, or ought 
 to. I'm a weak and fallible man, but surely if 
 my office is to be useful in anything, it should be 
 most useful in what most concerns the deepest 
 feelings. But you know that I'm not speaking to 
 you as a priest, but as a man, and as one who loves 
 you." 
 
 " But when I said that in doing so, you honored 
 me, you disclaimed doing so." 
 
 " Yes, there is more than that." 
 
 " Now, Mr. Courtenay, listen to me." She did 
 not at first speak with the tenderness that such 
 women are apt to use when they have similar 
 things to say. There was a certain assurance in 
 his manner which seemed superior to the need for 
 tenderness. But with her next sentence, her natu- 
 ral self had occasion to come forward. " I know 
 what pain is, well enough to make being the cause 
 of it hurt me. But I know that we are apt to 
 make it greater by trying to shut our eyes to 
 painful things. I know you love the truth, or at 
 least you love a great many things because you hold 
 them to be the truth: but I believe that the way to 
 truth is not by believing things because we find 
 them pleasant, and still less by giving the beliefs 
 we make for ourselves, a superhuman authority. 
 For my part, much as I honor you, I'm not ready
 
 8o Courtenays Faith. 
 
 to flatter myself that Nature, or God if you prefer, 
 has adapted us for each other at all. Probably to 
 adapt us to each other," she added, smiling, " Na- 
 ture would have to make me a much better woman." 
 
 " I know that you are as good as it is given to 
 humanity to be," he protested. " And I know that 
 Heaven sent you to me. Why, everything has 
 been different to me since my eyes opened upon 
 your face my work, my faith have all been in- 
 spired by the very thought of you!" 
 
 She reflected what this meant in a life like his, and 
 she contrasted with it, protestations which, young 
 as she was, she had heard more than once, that her 
 companionship would inspire lives that she knew had 
 been empty, and were made to remain so. Here, 
 without her even willing it, she actually had been 
 made by this good man a helper in his beneficent 
 work ! What had her influence done for that other 
 man who had broken her own life ? In her girlish 
 ignorance, she had not realized that Muriel's fault 
 could have been committed before her influence 
 touched him. Her life was broken, and yet here 
 she was of use in Courtenay's. There still lingered 
 in her, enough of her old enthusiasm for his faiths, 
 to glow up under sympathetic stimulus. Those 
 faiths were at the basis of his noble life, and she 
 actually she had been a helper in that ! She 
 had not willed it. She had not deserved it. Her 
 voice faltered as she said: 
 
 *' Mr. Courtenay, I am unworthy of this. Even 
 your goodness has not made me worthy of it." 
 
 " As if anything I could do, could be worthy of
 
 Courte nay's Faith. $ l 
 
 you !" he answered. " But perhaps you will make 
 me able to deserve you !" 
 
 That tone of confidence again ! It was not arro- 
 gant. It certainly was not insincere. But was it 
 true? She sat still for some time, pondering, lean- 
 ing forward a little, her right hand turned up- 
 ward lying in the palm of her left, her eyes stead- 
 ily gaz:ng over the river and the hills, as if the 
 little hieroglyphs that the changing foliage was 
 dotting over them, held hidden some answers to 
 the riddles of her life. The past was pain and 
 chaos, and seemed to have reached a definite and 
 hopeless end. Here seemed offered her, order, 
 usefulness, peace. The two visions opened before 
 her, but only as two domains belonging to stran- 
 gers for contemplation: not, at the moment, with 
 any sense of ownership actual or to come. But 
 after she had regarded them a few seconds, ab- 
 stractedly, almost listlessly, Courtenay being too 
 gentle, and perhaps too confident, to interrupt her, 
 she awoke, as it were, with a start, to the realiza- 
 tion that the two realms were clamoring for a de- 
 cision from her, and she deliberated a little more 
 regarding them. To enter one, would be to con- 
 done a horrid wrong and to do a grievous injustice. 
 That one was closed. But oh, how fair it seemed ! 
 How much of the pain there, was birth-throes of 
 mind and character ! All the heights were there, 
 and over them, all the stars. The other was a flat 
 noonday land, with farms and factories and schools 
 and hospitals and work and stupid peace. 
 
 Then over it all, a quick cloud came and a thun- 
 derbolt fell : one was Muriel's land, and the other
 
 Somebody's else! Sh did riot cafe if it was (Jdd'sj 
 she would not enter it. She could not enter Mil* 
 riel's, but she could remain a denizen of nowhere, 
 if she must, and beat the universal air with tired 
 wings all her days. 
 
 She turned to Courtenay. His face had become 
 anxious now, pleading, and almost pathetic. 
 
 " No, my kind friend," she said, taking his hand 
 " It is not always given to read God's will aright. 
 Even were I to go into your life, I should spoil it." 
 
 " Why ? How ?" he exclaimed in astonishment. 
 
 " My friend, your thoughts are not my thoughts, 
 and I fear that even your enthusiasms, noble as 
 they are, are not my enthusiasms. I am interested 
 in much that interests you, but I am more inter- 
 ested in things which do not interest you. More- 
 over, the things which interest you most, are not 
 those which interest me too. To spend part of our 
 lives together, but the best part of them separate, 
 would be to wrong the best part of them." 
 
 "Why, I cannot even conceive what you mean," 
 he answered. 
 
 " That but proves me right," she said with an al- 
 most regretful gentleness; " and to make you know 
 what I mean, would bring no agreement, and might 
 needlessly pain us both." 
 
 He was not very well-used to having people 
 reticent with him, and he was somewhat used to 
 overcoming what he called "difficulties" in the 
 opinions of others. He was a little tempted to 
 essay the same thing here. 
 
 "But, Miss Wahring," he said, "I am sure that 
 if you will consider these difficulties with me, they
 
 Court enatfs Faith. 83 
 
 will disappear. There can be but one truth, and 
 surely if we seek it together we should find it." 
 
 " At the very outset, Mr. Courtenay, I do not be- 
 lieve that we could agree on the ways of seeking it." 
 
 This answer went a little deeper than he was 
 used to, and he fell back on the remedy universal 
 among doctors of the soul, as well as among doctors 
 of the body, when the danger is not pressing time: 
 
 " In time you will consent to discuss the subject. 
 You live with people who, much as I honor some 
 of them, are apt to confuse your leadings. Other- 
 wise it would all be as plain to you as to me. I 
 will say good-bye now, but I hope you will not find 
 it disagreeable to see me in future." 
 
 " Not unless you make it so," she said with a 
 faint smile, giving him her hand. " I am sorry 
 to have had to " she was going to say "pain you," 
 but something in his confident air prevented, and 
 she substituted "disagree with you." 
 
 " Oh, my faith is strong !" 
 
 He said it kindly and modestly, not aggressively. 
 
 And as he went, she pondered: " His faith is 
 strong. Ah me, I fear I'm only a woman ! How 
 stupid men are ! It would have made no differ- 
 ence though. He's so good and gentle ! I hate to 
 hurt him ! But but but it ought to hurt him a 
 little more !" And she laughed. Then she pon- 
 dered and grew very serious, and said aloud : " I 
 could not depend upon him." 
 
 A moment later, she asked herself, thinking of 
 Muriel, " Could I could one, depend upon him f"
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 THE MORAL ORDER. 
 
 MARY COURTENAY'S story was followed before 
 many days by Nina's meeting Mary herself. The 
 two women became friends at once, all the more 
 readily because Mary had been through much of 
 the spiritual experience that Nina was now under- 
 going. But their sympathy in this regard was 
 felt, rather than expressed, and when expressed 
 was confined to incidental remark, because Nina 
 feared to arouse painful reminiscences in Mary, and 
 Mary no longer morbidly sought them. 
 
 Nina's mind was very full, however, of Mary's 
 cruel history, and also reverted not seldom to the 
 disappointment she had had to inflict on Mary's 
 brother. These thoughts, added to those for which 
 her own life was giving her abundant occasion, 
 soon made her very conscious of a need not yet 
 met in Calmire's efforts to prop up her faith. 
 
 One rainy evening Mrs. Wahring had left them 
 alone by the library fire, when Nina broke a little 
 congenial silence with : , 
 
 " I've often thought lately about your quoting, 
 once when we were all out in a shower, that 
 the rain falls alike on the just and the unjust, 
 and you added that lightning is no more apt to 
 strike a bad man than a good one, and made fun 
 about your being as safe as anybody, I know 
 
 84
 
 The Moral Order. 85 
 
 myself that wrong-doing often hurts the victim 
 more than it hurts the wrong-doer, and often 
 hurts the innocent outsider as much as it hurts 
 the people directly concerned. Now in all this 
 jumble, I can't yet keep up any steady faith in 
 right and wrong and in a moral order, without a 
 God to say what is right and wrong, and to punish 
 wrong if not here, hereafter." 
 
 Calmire answered : " There is a God, if you pre- 
 fer that name, to 'say what is right and wrong,' 
 and to reward right and punish wrong. But those 
 things are not perfectly done, any more than any- 
 thing else in this world is. Your trouble is an old, 
 old fallacy, lots of anthropomorphism is built on it 
 because the natural course of things is not perfect 
 as concerns morality, you're disposed to shut your 
 eyes to the fact that it nevertheless does conserve 
 morality, as far as morality is conserved at all. 
 Of course the world is not evolved up to ideal mo- 
 rality, but it has got as far as passably good work- 
 ing-morality, and is constantly improving." 
 
 " But," Nina objected, " ' the rain falls alike on 
 the just and the unjust' still." 
 
 " Yes; but there are not so many unjust for it to 
 fall upon." 
 
 " But Nature is blind the power behind it is 
 blind!" said Nina, mournfully. 
 
 " We're getting into terribly deep water," said 
 Calmire, "but it won't do to forget two things 
 the first is, that rain and lightning don't include 
 the whole question." 
 
 " Yes, I've thought about that," said Nina.
 
 86 The Moral Order. 
 
 "After all that rain and lightning do, doesn't the 
 moral man get along better than the immoral one ?" 
 
 "Yes, take it all in all, though to the superficial 
 glance, he doesn't always seem to. But it's really 
 a truism to say that he does, because when you 
 come to boil it down, morality is but a term 
 for the conduct which experience has found, in 
 the long-run, in closest conformity with Nature's 
 laws, and therefore that which we get along 
 best on. Those laws, imperfectly as they have yet 
 got our planet evolved, generally catch the vio- 
 lator of them pretty promptly, whether observers 
 realize that he is in their grip or not. I often think 
 of what an eminent artist told me after painting 
 the portrait of one of the richest men of our time, 
 who had made his money dishonestly, but had all 
 the externals of happiness. The artist said that in 
 studying the man's face, he had found more misery 
 in it than in any other that he ever saw." 
 
 " That's very interesting," said Nina. " I won- 
 der if he finds as much happiness in the moral 
 faces !" 
 
 " I don't remember certainly," said Calmire, 
 :< but I have an impression that he said he did; but 
 such an impression would be very natural from the 
 experience of all of us." 
 
 "Yes, that's true," Nina assented. "A man 
 can't escape his sin, after all, or his virtue." 
 
 " There you go again !" said Calmire, smiling. 
 ; ' You persist in asserting half the time, though 
 you deny it the other half, that the adjustments 
 are perfect. The fact is, that many a graceless dog 
 and many a saint both escape their deserts,"
 
 The Moral Order. 87 
 
 "Yes, so they do!" she exclaimed. "But most 
 people get them, after all. But what is the other 
 point you want me to bear in mind ?" 
 
 "That beyond the graceless dog and the saint, 
 though including them taking the Universe at 
 large, morality can't be escaped, unless by acci- 
 dent. It is a fundamental condition of all things 
 and of all law as much as gravitation is." 
 
 "Why, that's awfully strange and interesting!" 
 exclaimed Nina. " I supposed that morality only 
 had to do with man, and pretty civilized man at 
 that. Tell me more of it, please." 
 
 "Well," Calmire went on, "you're ready to say 
 ' good man ' and ' bad man,' aren't you ?" 
 
 "Certainly! Why?" 
 
 "Never mind why, just yet. And you'll say 
 ' good dog ' and ' bad dog,' won't you ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And ' good fish ' and ' bad fish' ? " 
 
 "Well, I don't know about the goodness or bad- 
 ness of a fish. I can't conceive a fish having much 
 moral character." 
 
 " The ' much 'ness of it is not what I'm after," 
 said Calmire. " Have you ever heard of a whale 
 (though he isn't a fish, by the way, but he'll do) 
 of a whale in a rage stubborn and unreason- 
 able, when all that gentlemen required of him 
 was to be killed in an amiable and accommo- 
 dating spirit ?" 
 
 "Yes," Nina admitted. "And I suppose the 
 carp at Versailles who used to feed from the king's 
 hand, had their willing days and their sulky days, 
 and were called 'good' or 'bad.'"
 
 88 The Moral Order. 
 
 " Unquestionably," assented Calmire. " And 
 now don't be very critical just yet, but answer my 
 questions simply. As to fish: you would say 
 i good hook ' or ' bad hook,' wouldn't you ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And ' good steel ' or ' bad steel ' ?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " And, as to the components of the steel, ' good 
 iron ' and ' bad iron ' or ' good carbon ' and ' bad 
 carbon ' ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And you could go on to say ' good ' or ' bad ' 
 carbonic acid gas, or hydrogen or oxygen, or any- 
 thing else?" 
 
 " Certainly, but " 
 
 "Never mind the ' buts ' just now, we'll take 
 care of them later. Now I want you to see what 
 quality all these things, from gases up to man, 
 have in common, that makes you willing to apply 
 the terms good and bad to them all." 
 
 " I shouldn't say ' from gases up,' " responded 
 Nina, " but from man down. I suspect we apply 
 the terms good and bad to the lower things only 
 metaphorically, and that their true application is 
 only to a moral being." 
 
 "Oh what a Nina you're getting to be!" ex- 
 claimed Calmire, approvingly. " But, my bright 
 girl, you're wrong all the same, unless you're 
 ready to contend that the first grunt of approval 
 from which our word good is descended, was 
 aroused by some companion of the creature who 
 gave it, rather than by its food, or a soothing ray
 
 The Moral Order. 89 
 
 of sunshine, or some other contribution to its 
 creature-comfort." 
 
 " Wait !" cried Nina. " That's too much all at 
 once, make it easier, please." 
 
 "Well, that grunt meant 'good,' didn't it? 
 Now do you suppose it was first applied to an- 
 other animal, or to something to eat ? If the latter, 
 its later use toward man was metaphorical from its 
 first use toward the food : and even if the former, its 
 application to man grew upward from the beast." 
 
 "It wasn't a grunt at all," said Nina, "but a 
 bird's song!" 
 
 " Ah, my sweet little poet, the facts are too 
 plain! The bird was evolved long after that 
 sound. True, we can hardly corral the very 
 first grunt. There were probably a good many 
 simultaneous ones for very different reasons and 
 of very different kinds, some of them not. audible 
 to such ears as ours. But what did all those that 
 meant approval have in common ?" 
 
 "A feeling of satisfaction, I suppose you mean," 
 Nina answered. 
 
 "And what did the objects which called them 
 forth, have in common ?" asked Calmire. 
 
 "Why, the capacity to arouse feelings of satis- 
 faction, of course," responded Nina. " But you're 
 not going to claim that that's a moral quality : 
 why! the objects of men's vices the very act of 
 murder, have that." 
 
 "Good for you, my child!" exclaimed Calmire. 
 " But don't go too fast: remember that a thing may 
 be good or bad for a thousand reasons. Brutus 
 thought Caesar's murder good: Caesar, so far as he
 
 go The Moral Order. 
 
 had a chance, undoubtedly thought it bad. But 
 take a simpler case: one glass of brandy is taken 
 to produce inebriety, another is taken to save life; 
 the toper says: 'The brandy is "good" to make 
 me drunk,' and the invalid says: ' The brandy is 
 " good " to make me well.' Now, as you said 
 before, they are both 'good* to produce feelings 
 of satisfaction, but what is the difference in the 
 feelings of satisfaction here, that makes one im- 
 moral and the other moral ?" 
 
 "Why, one's bad and the other's good!" 
 
 " But why is one bad and the other good ?" Cal- 
 mire asked. 
 
 " Why, in the long-run one does harm and the 
 other does good," Nina answered. 
 
 "Don't use, in an explanation, the term that 
 needs explaining. Think and try again." 
 
 " Oh, I'm too stupid!" exclaimed Nina. " Won't 
 you help me out?" 
 
 " No, you're not stupid, but you poor girls don't 
 get any training. Now is one bad because it 
 tends in the long-run to lessen the man's happi- 
 ness and that of others; and the other, good because 
 it tends to increase the man's happiness and that 
 of his friends ?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Well now is happiness ? But I won't ask hard 
 questions any more just now. We've got back 
 to the standard test of morality effect upon the 
 aggregate happiness. But weren't there good iron 
 and good oxygen on the planet before there was 
 any happiness to be affected by them ?" 
 
 " Certainly."
 
 The Moral Order, 91 
 
 " Why do we call them good ? But I'm question- 
 ing you again." 
 
 " Never mind !" said Nina. " That's plain 
 enough. It's because they had in them the possi- 
 bility of contributing to happiness." 
 
 "Well now, hasn't everything?" asked Calmire. 
 
 " Why, where would evil come from, then ?" asked 
 Nina in return. 
 
 " Simply from misuse of the good things. Let's 
 take a string of 'horrible examples' suppose, 
 for instance, that a rat eats a wounded hum- 
 ming-bird ; a rattlesnake kills a man ; a disap- 
 pointed office-seeker shoots a patriot : don't you 
 think of anything not unmitigatedly bad in those 
 cases ?" 
 
 " I see," Nina replied, " that although the hum- 
 ming-bird was a finer thing than the rat, the rat's 
 appetite was a good thing for himself." 
 
 "And wouldn't it have been a good thing for 
 everybody," asked Calmire, "if he had only eaten 
 as he usually does, matter that might otherwise be- 
 come offensive? So after all, wasn't his eating the 
 humming-bird, merely a misuse of the good ? Now 
 how about the politician shooting the patriot?" 
 
 "I can't find any good at all there," Nina an- 
 swered. 
 
 " It probably took some courage, and skill with 
 his weapon, didn't it?" asked Calmire. 
 
 " Yes, but the motives directing them were 
 wholly bad." 
 
 "I'm not so sure of that. I suspect that, at the 
 bottom, they were motives of self-preservation 
 and a desire to support his fam.ly, and a rage at
 
 9 2 The Moral Order. 
 
 anybody trying to keep him out of a place, like 
 that of a tigress at seeing her cubs' meat interfered 
 with." 
 
 " It does look like it," said Nina. " What's the 
 key ?" 
 
 " Simply deficiency of other good motives to re- 
 strict the rat and the rattlesnake to victims inferior 
 to themselves, and the politician to less objection- 
 able methods; and, too, deficiency of ingenuity to 
 devise such methods. It's our deficiencies that 
 cause our evils all the powers that we really have 
 are intrinsically good, only we have not enough to 
 keep action always in a good direction. Death it- 
 self is only a lack of powers : it is not a positive 
 thing. Yet, the world over, they've regarded it as 
 a positive thing, and got up angels or devils, to 
 produce it, when after all it's only life that can be 
 produced. Death is merely the absence of it." 
 
 " But evil is here all the same, Mr. Calmire, and 
 inasmuch as it is here, what difference does it make 
 how it got here as you said about our worthy 
 selves, some time ago, when you were talking of 
 Darwinism ?" 
 
 " All the difference in the world : because how it 
 got here determines how it's going to get away 
 from here. If evil is only a bad adjustment of 
 good things such as the bad adjustment of your 
 good needle to your good fingers when you prick 
 them we know how to improve your adjustments 
 and decrease the evil. We don't attempt it any 
 longer with incantations, relics, and holy water; 
 nor do we need to pester ourselves over the old 
 questions of how God can have all the power there
 
 The Moral Order. 93 
 
 is, and yet the devil have nearly as much, and why 
 God doesn't kill the devil." 
 
 " But," expostulated Nina, after a moment, 
 " however we try to decrease the evil, we can't 
 restrict all animals to vegetable food. Some crea- 
 tures have always got to be killed to feed others." 
 
 " Quite probably, until the others stop being 
 fed until, in short, dissolution is well under way: 
 but that doesn't concern us very closely. I didn't 
 say, however, that evil would ever disappear from 
 the planet entirely at least until good does : as 
 long as there's anything going, I suppose it will 
 sometimes get out of order : I only said that we 
 can make evil constantly decrease: creatures that 
 live by the destruction of others, are being hunted 
 off the earth themselves." 
 
 "But," said Nina, "a partiality for game-pie is 
 not yet set down among the capital offences." 
 
 " No, and I don't say that it's going to be. I do 
 say, though, that your ancestors, before they be- 
 came tillers of the soil, lived on other animals to a 
 vastly greater extent than you do; and I do say that 
 the modern states pay bounties for the destruction 
 of dangerous creatures." 
 
 "Then," said Nina, " the evil days of the snakes 
 and tigers have come." 
 
 " Yes," answered Calmire, " but they are more 
 than proportionally better days for better crea- 
 tures. Don't think, though, from anything I've 
 said, that I set this up for a perfect world now or 
 prospectively. It's an imperfect world a very 
 imperfect one I suppose, though I don't know 
 where anybody venturing on that statement, has
 
 94 The Moral Order. 
 
 found his standard of a better one: but imperfect 
 as it is, it's not a positively evil world; but only 
 negatively evil good can be permanently ad- 
 vanced in it, and evil can't. Everything, prop- 
 erly used, can do more good than harm. In other 
 words, the proper use of anything is moral : and 
 here we are back to the subject we started with: 
 for as every act uses something, so every act is 
 moral or immoral." 
 
 "But Mr. Calmire!" objected Nina. " There are 
 a great many acts, we never think of calling moral 
 or immoral." 
 
 " Yes, my child. In most cases the moral quality 
 is so nearly balanced or so slight that we don't 
 notice it sometimes we even mistake it, but 
 it's there all the same, and we can't escape it. 
 Every possible act of man or process of nature, 
 is legitimately open to the question whether 
 it tends in the long-run to increase or diminish 
 the happiness in the Universe. On that fact, 
 man's moral nature rests : his conduct inevitably 
 must be shaped with reference to it, and always 
 has been. So has the conduct of every other 
 creature capable of conduct, of course at first very 
 blindly and in very few particulars, but gradually 
 increasing in complexity. Our old friend the jelly- 
 fish was moral, as far as he went, in seeking the 
 light places and would have been immoral to 
 stay in the dark ones where food was scarce, and 
 where colds were to be caught, assuming him sub- 
 ject to that disorder. The beaver is moral in 
 making his dam, and a beaver who won't work at 
 it, is an immoral and reprehensible little beast. A
 
 The Moral Order. 95 
 
 squirrel who lays up a store of nuts for himself 
 and his family, is as moral, in that particular, as 
 a man who does a similar thing, and a squirrel 
 who does not, deserves to go to the poor-house. 
 Bees and ants are cited as moral examples by the 
 greatest teachers. In short, the Universe, or our 
 share of it, is so ordered that creatures must be 
 moral to a certain extent or die. 
 
 " But the higher moralities flow just as inevitably 
 from the operations of the Universal Law. Food, 
 shelter, defence, are necessary. They can be had 
 better by cooperation than by solitary effort or by 
 mutual pillage. The law that makes it to the 
 advantage of the beavers and ants and bees and 
 even wolves and jackals and elephants to help 
 each other, is the same law that, in a higher evo- 
 lution, makes it to the advantage of men to help 
 each other. Human society is but these lower 
 societies evolved patriotism, philanthropy, altru- 
 ism are but the evolution of the social virtues that 
 we see starting in the lower creatures. To make the 
 higher society possible, children must be educated 
 in the family, and the family, conjugal fidelity, the 
 lofty ideals of love, all have their sources in the de- 
 mands of the higher social evolution. Patriotism 
 and the civic virtues follow in here, as a matter of 
 course. In short, looking over the whole field of 
 conduct, it grades insensibly from the lowest act of 
 self-preservation up to the highest act for the ame- 
 lioration of the race. You can't draw the line any- 
 where between the jelly-fish seeking the light places, 
 and Washington devoting himself to liberty. Thus 
 moralitv. in its various forms, has grown up inevi-
 
 g6 The Moral Order. 
 
 tably in the universal system of things, as stars 
 and planets, and all the forms of life, have grown." 
 
 " Then do you think," asked Nina, " that morality 
 is on the other planets just as it is on ours?" 
 
 " Not exactly as it is on ours, that can't be, but 
 morality must be, in some degree, everywhere. 
 Let's look into it a moment, for your view can't 
 be too broad. We know that the other bodies 
 floating in space, are under the conditions of 
 time, space, matter, and force, just as we are. We 
 know that they contain many of the same chem- 
 ical elements that our planet does. We know it 
 absolutely, only of some of the suns: but the 
 planets are pieces of the suns. We know, de- 
 ductively, that all those spheres have been evolved 
 from some comparatively homogeneous form of 
 matter, as ours has in short, we know that they 
 are subject to the law of evolution. To assume 
 that they all are not inhabited by sentient beings, 
 is harder than to assume that some of them are; 
 and, under the law of evolution and dissolution, 
 those beings have got to die and others be pro- 
 duced to take their places. Now we are not apt 
 to think of morality as coming in before the human 
 family, but there are very decided and very beau- 
 tiful moralities in the conjugal and parental rela- 
 tions of many of the lower creatures. There, you 
 have the elements of moral evolution; and the 
 evolution is recognizable as soon as there comes a 
 subordination of the present to the future, a devo- 
 tion of parents to children, and some sort of public 
 opinion and regulation. These may not be higher 
 than they are in a band of coyotes, but they are
 
 The Moral Order, 97 
 
 morality, all the same. And, you know that, going 
 way below family relations, the lowest animals and 
 even the vegetables must have some capacity of 
 adaptation to their futures and to each other's 
 existences. In fact, the laws which make a 
 stone on the hillside roll when the stone propping 
 it is removed, and continue to roll until other stones 
 are interposed, and to stop when they are inter- 
 posed, are not only mere physical laws, but are also 
 laws adapting the stone to the other stones around 
 it. But bless me!" he broke off, "this is getting 
 awfully long-winded. But I'm coming outat some- 
 thing. Do you think you can live through it ?" 
 
 " Try me," she answered. 
 
 " Well," he went on, " as there is that side to 
 the laws which regulate the stone, I don't know- 
 that we can deny the germs of morality to the 
 stone, although, of course, we do not ordinarily 
 dissociate them from consciousness'. Now to carry 
 it even a step farther back, I don't see but what 
 the germs of morality must have been in the simple 
 star-dust that first began to whirl into suns. Cer- 
 tainly, to deny to the star-dust the germs of moral- 
 ity, would be to deny the law of evolution to say 
 that, later, the germs of morality had been created, 
 and that is something that, despite Genesis, we 
 simply can't conceive. Morality must have been 
 evolved, with everything else. The whole universe, 
 then, must always have been moral, though in a 
 rather small way here and there, especially between 
 evolutions of systems. Of course, now, we don't 
 call any of the functions of inanimate matter, 
 morality, any more than we call a hundred and 
 fifty pounds of inanimate matter, a man. But
 
 98 The Moral Order. 
 
 the man is evolved out of the inanimate mat- 
 ter all the same, and so must the morality be 
 evolved from its corresponding primitive con- 
 ditions. The conditions for both the man and 
 the morality are in the inanimate matter and 
 the primitive law. Well, then, it seems pretty 
 plain that morality is, potentially at least, through- 
 out the universe, just as matter is, and must appear 
 in corresponding degree wherever evolution sets 
 in. The claim, then, that any man or set of men 
 have brought it on earth, or that it depends upon 
 the system of any lawgiver, is absurdly belittling. 
 Its sources are wide and remote in the very foun- 
 dations of the universe. The claim that the fading 
 away of any categorical system of it, is going to 
 remove it from among men, is of course equally 
 belittling. Hundreds of its codes have risen and 
 fallen, but it has remained and increased; and for 
 all I can see, despite the impression of many that our 
 immediate traditional religion is losing its hold, 
 morality was never as high among us as it is to-day. 
 And moreover, I don't know any good reason for 
 supposing that the morality of spheres whose evo- 
 lution is older or faster than ours, may not be as 
 far in advance of ours, as ours is of the coyote's." 
 
 " Do you know what you've been doing for me?" 
 asked Nina, "better even than saving my life?" 
 
 " I know what I've been trying to do. I've been 
 trying again my old, old task, of showing you that 
 anthropomorphism belittles the Source of all things 
 of morality with the rest; and that all the ideas 
 we most value -now the idea of morality, as before, 
 the idea of a God and of a spiritual world rest on 
 foundations broader and deeper than any that hu-
 
 The Moral Order. 99 
 
 man attributes can express. Now you can judge 
 for yourself whether you would rather have your 
 morality on this basis that all our talks have been 
 leading up to, or on the command of an anthro- 
 pomorphic God. You see that it does make a dif- 
 ference, even in every-day morality, whether one 
 believes in a Universe of infinite Order under the 
 control of Law a Kosmos, or in a Chaos with 
 order depending on the whims of some arbitrary, 
 vacillating, even revengeful creature like a man." 
 
 " I see it now and feel it," said Nina, "just as you 
 want me to, and just as I want to myself. But I 
 know that my realization of it is going to grow 
 weak again." 
 
 " Why bless me!" exclaimed Calmire. " Haven't 
 all the saints in the calendar always prayed for the 
 strengthening of their faith ? And though they 
 did not have a chance at modern views of things, 
 some of them were tremendously strong men. 
 Don't expect more from yourself than they were 
 able to reach." 
 
 " Yes ! But our faiths are on broader and surer 
 foundations than theirs, and ought to be firm." 
 
 " But yours are assailed by foes that theirs were 
 not," said Calmire. "Comparatively few of them 
 had to make such a transition as you are mak- 
 ing. But you'll be helped if you try always to 
 realize this : Morality is not narrowed to any 
 one doctrine or system. All law is moral: so 
 much of it as we succeed in learning, it is moral to 
 follow." 
 
 " And all this," said Nina to herself, " is not so 
 different from what Muriel told me."
 
 CHAPTER XLVL 
 
 MISERY MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. 
 
 OF the various unhappy people with whom this 
 narrative is concerned, certainly not the least un- 
 happy at this stage of their experiences, was Minerva 
 Granzine. The strain was beginning to tell upon 
 even her health. Dark hollows were appearing 
 around her gazelle-like eyes, and her springing 
 step was becoming heavy. Strange as it may 
 appear, part of that strain was an honest sense of 
 shame. Such a sense is not inconsistent with many 
 an impulse which leads to occasions for it: both can 
 be fervid in a fervid temperament : the only ques- 
 tion is : which is the more fervid. Minerva's 
 mother, while in some ways kind and forbearing, was 
 possessed by a burning ambition, more destructive, 
 if possible, to the peace of all the household, than any 
 passive lugubriousness, or even any bursts of temper, 
 could have been. The idea of marrying her daughter 
 to Muriel Calmire had become a monomania that 
 would have lasted even if the shame had been 
 entirely out of the way. Despite her impotent 
 threats to Calmire, she still hoped to cover the 
 matter up, feeling that she had risked no farther 
 exposure in forcing her secret on Nina Wahring. 
 Such was her state of mind, however, that in any 
 way to remind her of the subject, even by the mute 
 
 100
 
 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. ioi 
 
 appeals for sympathy so natural to her unhappy 
 daughter, was to start her on a tirade of conject- 
 ures, fears, hopes, and abuse of Muriel and all his 
 race, which even Minerva's rudimentary conscience 
 was sometimes stirred into feeling excessive. 
 
 The state of affairs in the Granzine house was so 
 far known only to the mother and daughter. The 
 elder woman's strange, strong character was supe- 
 rior, or perhaps inferior, to any irrepressible crav- 
 ing for sympathy or counsel even from her hus- 
 band. His relation to his wife and ostensible 
 daughter, which Calmire and Clint Russell knew, 
 illustrated the weakness of his fibre. The wife 
 did not care even to lay her own burden upon it, 
 much less to admit it to a share in the responsi- 
 bility of supporting her ambitions against the house 
 of Calmire. The time might come when she would 
 have to; but should the secret once be opened to 
 the public, there would then be, even to Granzine's 
 timid nature, less temptation for retreat. 
 
 Minerva, then, was worse than alone in her 
 misery. At least she would have been, but for one 
 strange string of circumstances. Living in a little 
 cottage behind a wood passed by a by-road, some 
 four miles Northwest of the Granzines', was a 
 girl named Huldah Cronin, who, a year and a 
 half before, on taking her wages one Saturday 
 evening at one of the mills, had said to the 
 cashier: "I shall not be back Monday, Mr. Blake- 
 man. You may as well take my name off the 
 roll." On her way to her boarding-house, she had 
 surprised a flashy friend of hers at Botts's livery- 
 stable, by requesting him to send a carriage for her
 
 IO2 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. 
 
 at nine o'clock. When the carriage came, she 
 asked the driver to go to her room and take her 
 trunk and bag, and while he was performing that 
 operation, she called the landlady into the hall and 
 said: "Mrs. Orange, I want to bid you good-bye. 
 You are entitled to a week's notice before I leave 
 my room; I prefer to pay you a week's rent instead. 
 You have always been kind to me, and I thank 
 you." Then she passed into Mrs. Orange's hand, 
 bills which represented all of the wages she was 
 known to have drawn but two dollars, which she sub- 
 sequently gave the hackman; and without waiting 
 for a word from the astonished woman, she followed 
 the hackman to his vehicle and was driven off to 
 the cottage where she had lived since. From that 
 time, she had never been in the town of Calmire by 
 daylight, and had refused, through a middle-aged 
 negress, to see two or three of her old cronies who 
 had traced her to her retreat. In Minerva's coun- 
 try walks, in some of which she had not been alone, 
 she had occasionally passed Huldah driving in a 
 pony-carriage, but had not, apparently, been no- 
 ticed by her. 
 
 One moonlit Saturday evening, soon after Muriel 
 had gone away, Minerva was walking home 
 from the early choir rehearsal alone and rapt in 
 revery, when, not far from her own home, she was 
 aroused by hearing her name spoken. Beside her 
 at the curb, was standing Huldah's pony-carriage. 
 
 " Get in here," said its occupant. 
 
 Minerva, as was her custom when commanded, 
 obeyed. 
 
 " It's a beautiful night," said Huldah ; " we'll have 
 a drive."
 
 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. 103 
 
 "But, Huldah, what makes you take me?" 
 
 "I'll take you home in ten minutes, if you want 
 me to." 
 
 " But you're so queer!" exclaimed Minerva. 
 
 " You can't tell me anything about myself that I 
 don't know," said Huldah, " and I sha'n't tell you 
 anything that you don't know: so neither of us 
 will make much out of that subject, and we'd better 
 talk of some other one. I'm sorry for you, Minerva 
 Granzine: and that's all I'm going to say on thai 
 subject: so we'll have to take up another one still. 
 Have any new books come to the library this 
 week ? I sent for some Saturday, and they were 
 behindhand." 
 
 " But," exclaimed Minerva, startled, and with her 
 usual flush, " why do you say you're sorry for me ?" 
 
 " Because I am." 
 
 " But what makes you so ?" 
 
 " I've watched your face. That's all I know, and 
 all I care to know. Can you tell me about the 
 books ?" 
 
 " I don't know. Yes that is, I believe mother 
 said this morning that a new bundle had come." 
 
 " Do you read much now ?" asked Huldah. 
 
 " I never did very much, you know," answered 
 Minerva. " I haven't much lately, either." 
 
 " Your mother does," said Huldah. " I should 
 think she'd make you." 
 
 " Well, I don't know. She doesn't seem to care 
 much to have us read her sort of books. Johnny 
 hates "em." 
 
 " Queer fellow, that Johnny !" Huldah exclaimed. 
 "There's more man in him than in any boy in 
 Calmire."
 
 io4 Misery Makes Strange Bedfelloivs. 
 
 " Yes! He's like mother in some ways, but he's 
 soft and gentle like father too. Johnny used to 
 think a great deal of you." 
 
 " The first foolish thing I ever heard about him!" 
 commented Huldah. "Do you sing as much as 
 ever ?" 
 
 And so the talk went on, gradually getting into 
 a natural flow, and several times ten minutes had 
 elapsed before Minerva's strange entertainer, who 
 had made the poor girl nearer happy than she had 
 been for many days, and who had kept out of 
 town during most of the drive, drew up on a side 
 street between the church and Minerva's home, 
 while saying: 
 
 " Come to the powder-house field beyond Jim 
 Miles's Tuesday, at two, and I'll give you another 
 ride." 
 
 " Oh! I'll be so glad! You're very good to me." 
 
 Then said the other: 
 
 " Good-bye. I've let no woman kiss me for two 
 years, but you may as well." 
 
 And Minerva did it, and, wondering, went home 
 where her mother, used to her delays with her 
 young companions, received her without remark. 
 
 On the Tuesday, which was a beautiful day, 
 Minerva, not, strange to say, more than three 
 minutes behind her appointment, met Huldah, 
 had a delightful drive, in which the latter neither 
 asked nor told anything personal, and was set 
 down near four o'clock about a mile from home, 
 at an intersection with the main road. This was 
 repeated the next Tuesday, Huldah always fixing 
 the same time. On that occasion Minerva, feeling
 
 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellozvs. 105 
 
 nelped by the drive and the sympathy, walked 
 along homeward with steps more light and care- 
 less than she had taken for many a day, until, 
 after about quarter of a mile, stepping on a dis- 
 placed board over a culvert, her foot slipped, she 
 felt a twinge of terrible pain, fell, and fainted. 
 
 When she came to, she felt dazed, but soon tried 
 to rise, and was prevented by the pain in her 
 ankle. Then she began to look around and wonder 
 who might come to help her, when what should 
 appear coming from town but two prancing horses 
 in a victoria with two men on the box, whom she 
 soon recognized as in the liveries of Calmire. 
 
 " Not that ! not that !" she exclaimed aloud. 
 " I must not be seen lying here by them !" 
 
 She made an effort to rise, that would have done 
 even her mother credit, fell and fainted again. 
 
 Her eyes opened on the face of Nina Wahring, 
 who was bathing Minerva's forehead with a hand- 
 kerchief which had been moistened by the footman, 
 in the rill under the culvert. 
 
 Minerva uttered a faint scream, and ejaculated: 
 "My God! You?" 
 
 Then she closed her eyes again, not altogether 
 in weakness, for she tried to cover them with her 
 hands. 
 
 Nina, infinitely distressed, was for a moment 
 dumb. Then she said: 
 
 " You must be much hurt, poor child. I want to 
 help you." 
 
 " Oh, no ! No ! No !" cried Minerva, with as 
 much force as could well be left in a woman who 
 had just fainted twice.
 
 io6 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. 
 
 By this time, Nina was herself. 
 
 " Blossom," she said to the footman, in her calm 
 sweet tones, " perhaps you and Williams had better 
 go back to town for a doctor." But as soon as the 
 man was at a safe distance on the box, she called 
 out to him: " Stay where you are for the present. 
 I may want you more than the doctor." 
 
 Then she bent over Minerva and said, while she 
 gently stroked her forehead: "You must compose 
 yourself and tell me quietly what it is. Did you 
 fall ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The pain made the answer spontaneous, but she 
 would have yielded, as usual, without it ; and she 
 was already soothed by the calm spirit beside her. 
 
 "Are you in great pain ?" asked Nina. 
 
 " Oh, yes. It throbs fearfully." 
 
 " Where ?" 
 
 " My limb." (Mrs. Granzine's elegances had not 
 been entirely wasted on Minerva.) 
 
 "Your leg? Which one ?" 
 
 " The left. Oh, it hurts so ! down by the foot." 
 
 " Blossom, bring a cushion, and put it under her 
 head," called Nina. " Do you feel too faint for it ?" 
 she asked, turning to Minerva. 
 
 " No, I think not. How good you are !" 
 
 The transfer was tenderly made. Nina got Miner- 
 va's handkerchief, told the footman to wet it and 
 any he and the coachman might have, and pro- 
 ceeded to take a look at the injured member. The 
 ankle had already begun to swell, and a touch to 
 it was agony. 
 
 " I wish I knew whether to cut the boot !" mused 
 Nina aloud.
 
 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. 107 
 
 "Oh yes, do open it!" said Minerva. 
 
 "I think we'd better not," concluded Nina. "I 
 think we ought to bandage it tightly. The cold 
 water will prevent its hurting you so much." 
 
 " Oh, it will hurt so to tie it !" cried Minerva. 
 
 " I hope not," said Nina. " I will squeeze the 
 water over it gently first, and make it numb." 
 
 " Oh ! Oh ! Oh !" cried the sufferer, a few mo- 
 ments later, as the first drops fell. But soon the 
 cooling influence so gently administered began to 
 tell, and in a little while the fair surgeon had the 
 soothing bandages in place. 
 
 " Now do you feel stronger?" she asked. 
 
 "Oh, so much better!" said Minerva, looking, 
 for the first time, into the face of her benefactor, 
 and bursting into a fresh torrent of tears, with 
 which physical pain had very little to do. 
 
 " We must let you rest a little, and then put you 
 mto the carriage and take you home," said Nina. 
 
 " Oh, no, no !" protested Minerva. " Not in the 
 Calmire carriage! Let the men send somebody for 
 me, please do!" 
 
 " No. It would take too long. Such things al- 
 ways take longer than one expects. You might 
 catch cold lying out here, and I don't think that 
 ankle is a good thing to catch cold with. It's 
 getting late too, and it's no longer Summer." 
 
 "And you think of all this for me !" blubbered 
 poor Minerva, again weeping copiously. 
 
 " You're not safe from cold there now," was 
 Nina's answer. We must lay a cushion under 
 you, but that will make your head lower still, 
 and it's too low already, so we must have two,
 
 io8 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. 
 
 and I will sit on one, and hold your head in my lap." 
 
 "Oh, don't touch me! Don't touch me! I'm 
 not fit!" moaned the girl. 
 
 " Blossom! Come and help me !" called Nina, who 
 had managed to keep the man out of easy earshot 
 when not needed. 
 
 " Oh, I'm so much better ! I can help myself!" 
 sobbed Minerva. But a little help was not super- 
 fluous in establishing her on Nina's lap, where she 
 lay quietly weeping and wiping with some sort of 
 a coquettish little apron, the few tears that did not 
 eventually trickle over upon Nina's devoted cos- 
 tume. At times she moaned : " I don't deserve 
 it L.I'd rather you'd killed me." And Nina sim- 
 ply soothed her with some such phrase, gently 
 uttered, as " Hush, child!" (The ' child ' was several 
 years older than Nina.) " If you don't keep calm, 
 you will not be strong enough for us to get you 
 into the carriage." 
 
 What Nina felt during the strange time while 
 this was going on, she never clearly knew. She 
 was inclined to think that she did not feel any- 
 thing at all, except sympathy with a creature in 
 pain, and the necessity of getting the girl home. 
 Whatever she felt, she sat and stroked the girl's 
 hair and cooed little soothing nothings to her, 
 until after about ten minutes, Minerva looked 
 calmly up at her and said: 
 
 " You dreadful angel ! I think I am strong 
 enough to be moved now." 
 
 Then she reached up, seized Nina's hands, and 
 covered them with kisses and a fresh burst of tears.
 
 Misery Makes Strange Bedfellows. 109 
 
 And Nina, for the first time, felt something too. 
 It was as if a hand grasped her throat, and there 
 was a drop on Minerva's forehead that did not 
 come from her own eyes. 
 
 Soon she was lifted in Blossom's burly arms, 
 and transferred to the carriage, Nina all the while 
 holding the leg above the hurt ankle. 
 
 Then Nina, the labors and dangers over, felt the 
 second emotion that she afterward could recall. 
 It seemed impossible for her to get into the car- 
 riage. But without violating truth, she could say 
 gently, as she stood beside Minerva: 
 
 " You seem very safe there, but your leg is bent. 
 I think you will be easier if you sit more corner- 
 wise, and we move your feet more to the left. I 
 can walk beside you just as well as not." 
 
 Then occurred the strangest thing of the whole 
 experience. Minerva leaned over, at the cost of 
 some pain, and murmured so that the man holding 
 the door open might not hear: 
 
 " It makes me miserable to have you touch me. 
 And yet if you will sit beside me and hold my 
 hand, I shall be stronger and better the rest of my 
 life, and God will bless you !" 
 
 Nina got into the carriage, with a feeling as if 
 she were entering a church. 
 
 Somehow, she never remembered quite how, she 
 got Minerva home, and got back to Fleuvemont. 
 
 There she escaped all the household but Calmire, 
 who felt that something had gone wrong with her. 
 She took his hand with a smile that made his 
 heart ache, then walked mechanically to her room, 
 threw herself face downward across the bed, and 
 moaned: " My God ! My God ! My lost God !"
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 THE UNKNOWN GOD. 
 
 WHEN Nina went to her toilet-table to prepare 
 for dinner, (she was not addicted to convenient 
 headaches, or to yielding to inconvenient ones,) 
 she started to see there a note directed in Muriel's 
 hand. It ran simply: 
 
 " It may be some time before I see you, and 1 
 want you to know something now. You have done 
 for me, from the first, much that I did not realize 
 till very lately. You have made me a better man. 
 Since I first saw you, I have been Galahad. 
 
 "M. C." 
 
 She had picked up the note, trembling and 
 deadly pale. She read it once impatiently without 
 taking in its significance; then she read it again 
 more deliberately, and at the last word, the color 
 rushed to her face. Her hands dropped, both 
 holding the note. After a moment, she said aloud : 
 "He can't have supposed that I knew?", and in 
 another moment, she said to herself: " Perhaps he 
 thought I might come to know !" Then she read 
 the note again, kissed it passionately and put it 
 in her bosom. 
 
 That night, it may well be supposed, was a rest- 
 less one for Nina. From Muriel's note, she had 
 gained a strange sad exultation, and notwithstand-
 
 "The Unknown God. 1 1 1 
 
 ing her outburst on reaching her room in the after- 
 noon, she had found a certain peace in the recol- 
 lection of her Samaritan-like ministrations to the 
 girl who, responsibly or not, was the one baleful 
 shadow on her life; she even got something like 
 comfort from that poor creature's " God will bless 
 you." But who was God what was God to 
 bless? This diverted her thoughts to the aching 
 questions she had taken to Calmire, and they alter- 
 nated with questions of her future and Muriel's. 
 
 Should she answer his note ? No, not now ! It 
 called for no answer, and there was nothing to 
 say He could not know, and she could not tell 
 him, that it meant to her already what, he plainly 
 feared, he might some day have occasion to wish it 
 to mean. But was fear of future possibilities his 
 only motive? Plainly not: he might, perhaps 
 would, have written the same thing, had such pos- 
 sibilities not existed. He was grateful to her and 
 there was more than that. For her pure mind, his 
 almost shameless candor held no repugnance, and 
 despite her misery, she felt very proud proud of 
 what she had done for him proud of him and 
 almost grateful, in her turn, to him, and she felt 
 the impulse to write and tell him so. But no, it 
 was impracticable now. Oh, what was practicable 
 what could become practicable ? 
 
 The idea that he had ever loved Minerva had 
 not once entered Nina's mind, and with this letter 
 proving his regeneration, she could "forgive" that 
 mysterious crime of his, if it really was a crime call- 
 ing for forgiveness: in fact, as she all at once recog- 
 nized with triumphant joy, it had not been a crime
 
 1 1 2 The Unknown God. 
 
 against her at all. But there would be that 
 
 other woman and her child ! Could they be shut 
 out of Muriel's home, and she feel a right to share 
 it? Besides, he had not asked her to share his 
 home. But she knew ! Alas ! She knew, too, 
 
 where his duty was. What it was, was too vague 
 for her to think out : but where it was, she had 
 a woman's intense conviction. All she could 
 do for h.im now, was to keep him there. She 
 had done something for him, he had told her so ; 
 she might have done everything, but it was now 
 too late ! Too late ! But she could hold him to 
 his duty, and that she would. 
 
 And of course she would do it with a woman's 
 passion for self-immolation. 
 
 Then, as she peered into the mysterious future, 
 questions of Providence and God, came up again 
 and filled her mind. 
 
 After she had lain many hours wearily pondering 
 all these things, she yielded to the temptation that 
 the gleams of dawn had been sending through 
 the blinds, and arose and opened one. 
 
 She uttered an exclamation at the scene. 
 
 Just below Fleuvemont, the river widened and 
 made a great backward curve by some obstructing 
 hills, so that Nina's window in a South-East turret 
 commanded a view of the heights where the 
 sun was coming. It had just begun to color 
 the long stretch of sky and stream : above the 
 line of hills, the heavens were a dark dull scar- 
 let, like faintly glowing iron, and they shaded 
 up, growing less translucent, into the deep, deep 
 blue of sapphires almost as dark as night,
 
 The Unknown God. \ \ 3 
 
 where the light seems contained rather than given 
 forth. The hills themselves were defined in the 
 same deep blue, but thick, opaque, intense and 
 unspeakably rich, and edged like metal against 
 the dull red sky. Under them, was the wonder 
 of it all the water, intensely blue like the hills, 
 though glassy against the deep texture of the land- 
 color : but quarter of the way across the stream, 
 some current cut the dark blue with a much lighter 
 shade, nearly gray, like that of polished steel : 
 then, after another line of the deep blue, was 
 another grayish current, and so the whole sur- 
 face was broken into irregular bands of contrast- 
 ing shades, like some of the refined miracles of 
 Japanese art. The effect was emphasized by 
 
 great oaks in the foreground. There was not yet 
 sunlight enough to show their bright Fall colors, 
 and their rugged branches here and there thrust 
 broad dark dashes into the transcendent picture. 
 Between some of the dark branches, Nina saw, 
 lying across two of the blue and gray streaks 
 of the river, the graceful black mass of a great 
 steam yacht, silent, her lights still burning, her 
 spars black against the deep red sky ; and far 
 down the river, where sky and water met in a 
 misty harmony of tints, was faintly defined against 
 them both, the colossal shadowy mass of a coming 
 steamer and its smoke. 
 
 All this wondrous picture met Nina's gaze when 
 she first looked out, but after she was lost in it a 
 few moments, she let her eyes range away from its 
 intense colors, to her right, where, half around her 
 horizon, all sky and river faded into faint trans-
 
 1 14 The Unknown God. 
 
 lucent blue and pearl, clean cut below and ruggedly 
 gashed above by the dark hills: and there, high 
 above them, glowed and throbbed immense, the 
 white purity of the morning star. But while she 
 was contemplating it, she became conscious of a 
 fainter brightness pervading the sky far, far up, 
 and raising her eyes, she saw toward the zenith, 
 clear, calm, cold, the waning moon. Near it was 
 one little star. 
 
 But these gentle lights only emphasized the 
 grandeur of the scenes below, and after Nina had 
 wonderingly surveyed the whole, her gaze returned 
 and rested there. 
 
 She wrapped herself up warmly and, opening 
 the window, seated herself by it. As she raised her 
 hand to support her cheek, the loose sleeve of the 
 green plush robe fell back from her round arm. The 
 robe went admirably with the red-gold hair that 
 tumbled over it, and her strong sweet face added 
 poetry to what, had the face been soulless, would 
 still have been beautiful. It would have been hard 
 to choose, even for lofty inspiration's sake, between 
 the picture she made in the window and the pic- 
 ture she saw from it. 
 
 Nina soon ceased to note the details of the 
 scene, and began to lose herself in the harmony 
 of the whole, just as one feeling great chords of 
 music has no thought of the separate tones: the 
 harmony is something which they are not. So in 
 the greatest aspects of Nature, is given something 
 which material things are not which an artist 
 may paint each thing forever without expressing; 
 which only the greatest artists express at all, and
 
 The Unknown God. 1 1 5 
 
 to express which, whatever else he may fail in, 
 makes any artist great. People have tried to 
 indicate it by the word "atmosphere," but at- 
 mosphere is only one of its mediums. Others 
 call it light, but it does not appear often where 
 there is much light, but oftenest when the Sun 
 is gone, or before it comes. It is that which 
 is more than light or air, more than skies or 
 mountains or seas which includes them all and 
 all that is upon them, in an integral whole. And 
 it is from this vast unity that comes the vastest 
 feeling known to man a feeling which not only 
 fills the soul, but includes it makes it one with 
 Nature, or, as has been said, one with God. 
 
 Nina's troubled thoughts had all passed away 
 like vapors, and her whole being was interfused 
 with the mighty beauty before her. When her 
 power of feeling flagged enough for her to think, 
 her first definite idea was: " How mysterious 
 it all is !" Then, after another period of the in- 
 effable feeling, she thought again: "But what 
 is the mystery what is behind it all ? All this 
 glory is only an aspect of something beyond, which 
 I feel, as one feels a soul behind a face. Yes! It is 
 that Reality for which Mr. Calmire said one name 
 is God." 
 
 Then her thoughts became vague, and were soon 
 absorbed again in the emotions through which Na- 
 ture blended its soul with hers. 
 
 In the next recurrence of definite ideas, she said 
 to herself: "I have received my message I I have 
 received my message ! No words of any creed 
 could ever carry this !"
 
 1 i 6 The Unknown God. 
 
 After another interval, she felt : 
 
 " It seems impossible to believe that there is not 
 a conscious intelligence behind it all ! Yes, and 
 a beneficent one ! But never again will I try to 
 narrow my feeling of that Intelligence into any 
 other limits that human attributes can express 1" 
 
 Nina did not go downstairs until she had had 
 a long and refreshing sleep. When she left the 
 breakfast-table, and her mother had gone to write 
 some letters, she caught a glimpse of Calmire on 
 the piazza and ran up to him with : 
 
 "Oh Mr. Calmire! If you had only seen the 
 sunrise this morning!" 
 
 "Why, I did : they're so beautiful at this time of 
 year that I manage to see them pretty often." 
 
 " I wonder if you felt it as I did ?" she asked. 
 
 He looked at her with a grave kindness and 
 replied : 
 
 "What did you feel?" 
 
 " That it was Holy, Holy, Holy !" 
 
 "Yes, dear, but wasn't there something besides 
 that, and more definite something that I think 
 must be generations in advance of our language 
 something that a man can't express unless he can 
 write great music or paint a Sistine Madonna?" 
 
 "Why, Mr. Calmi're, how strange ! I did have 
 just that feeling before the Madonna. And you did 
 too ?" 
 
 " Yes, one sometimes has it before the greatest 
 art of any kind where what they call 'the divine 
 in man ' expresses itself. Just as the Divine out- 
 side of him expresses itself through Nature."
 
 The Unknown God. 1 1 7 
 
 He paused a moment, apparently reflecting, and 
 then asked : "Did you hear any music?' 
 
 " A bird or two." 
 
 " Nothing more, though?" 
 . " Why no ! Did you ?" 
 
 " Not this time." 
 
 "Why, what do you mean, Mr. Calmire ?" 
 
 He hesitated a moment and then said : 
 
 " I don't often talk about it, but I thought you 
 might know. There's more than we see in two 
 senses. But I think we see better than we hear : 
 sight is probably the older and better-practiced 
 sense. There's music there, though. I didn't 
 
 hear it this time, but I've heard it before." He 
 spoke very solemnly. 
 
 "Mr. Calmire! Really?- What was it like?" 
 
 " More like the deep choruses of men's voices 
 than anything else I can recall. Yet the bird-songs 
 blended with it, but vastly better even than the 
 violins do with the pilgrim motive in Tannhduser." 
 He paused again, but evidently overcame some 
 reluctance, and went on : " You know I'm not 
 what you call superstitious, Nina, but there were 
 some strange things about this. I've heard it two 
 or three times. It was when I awoke in the very 
 early morning, and I think that each time there 
 was death in my house, or impending over it." 
 
 Nina felt a sense of awe that kept her silent. 
 
 "That fact," Calmire continued after a little 
 while, with a marked change of expression, " may 
 have been mere coincidence. I was anxious, my 
 nerves overstrained, and I awoke early. But, coin- 
 cidence or not, the fact is as I have stated it,"
 
 1 1 8 The Unknown God 
 
 " Did you never hear it at any other times ?' ; 
 asked Nina. 
 
 " Not that I can recall. I suspect, though, that the 
 great musicians must hear it often, and that if my 
 experience was not fortuitous, it was because the 
 circumstances had developed in me some special 
 nervous sensibility that the great musicians often 
 experience. They do not make the music, but 
 Nature sends it through them. It is always there 
 in Nature, whether we hear it or not, just as the 
 greatest pictures are, whether our eyes are open or 
 not; and, for that matter (as I've tried to show you 
 in all our talks), just as all great things are great 
 beyond our perceptions or our dreams." 
 
 "And God behind them all!" exclaimed Nina. 
 
 " Let us rather say, ' God in them all,' " re- 
 sponded Calmire. After a moment, he said : " No 
 people who could feel what we felt this morning, 
 could have more than one God. It may seem 
 eccentric, but sometimes, especially after such an 
 experience, the use of that word 'God ' arouses in 
 me feelings very like those which orthodox people 
 have regarding its use profanely. The word has 
 so long done duty for such limited and base con- 
 ceptions of the Ineffable Power, that to me it often 
 calls up repugnant associations." 
 
 "Well, what word shall I use?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Oh, any! that one, if you please: no newer 
 one comes natural so often." 
 
 After a little silence, she spoke up : " Mr. Calmire, 
 why should not the Ineffable Power (that term 
 comes more natural than the old one this time, 
 thank you), why shouldn't the Power which mani-
 
 The Unknown God. ! 1 9 
 
 fests itself in everything, manifest itself as a human 
 being?" 
 
 " I don't know," he answered. " I'm credibly 
 informed that it does, in some fifteen hundred 
 million instances, to-day." 
 
 " Oh, is there anything that you won't tease 
 about?" she exclaimed, smiling in spite of her im- 
 patience. "You know what I mean! Why, after 
 all, shouldn't there be behind all we see, a Cause 
 like a human being ?" 
 
 " I can't imagine," answered Calmire, " anything 
 like a human being pervading all Nature, or even 
 the portion that we saw this morning, and I don't 
 think you can. But assume that there is such a 
 self-contradictory Being, why should he be more 
 like an inhabitant of earth than like an inhabitant 
 of Neptune or Mars or any other of the countless 
 heavenly bodits ? None of their inhabitants can be 
 like human beings: their air is denser or thinner 
 than ours, their days and years longer or shorter; 
 their heat great enough to burn us, or their cold to 
 freeze us; their light to blind us, or their darkness 
 to incapacitate us; and their gravitation so great 
 that our muscles could not move us against it, or so 
 little that perhaps one of our jumps would carry 
 us over their moons. So they can't be like us, and 
 it's just as reasonable that God should be like 
 any of them as like us." 
 
 "But," she persisted, "you showed me the other 
 day that there must be intelligence and morality 
 everywhere." 
 
 " I don't see why not," he answered, " and there's 
 certainly not the same absurdity in making a moral
 
 I2O The Unknown God. 
 
 and intelligent God, if you're going to make one at 
 all, that there is in making an entirely anthro- 
 pomorphic one. The notion of a God narrowed 
 to a specific form, which could be distinguished 
 from other forms, and therefore must be less than 
 the whole, seems to me belittling. But if you want 
 to indulge your fancies wider, there's not much 
 difficulty in forming an impression that, as man 
 includes all inferior earthly types, from the cell 
 of protoplasm up, so there may be some form of 
 existence higher than any other, which includes 
 all other forms, man's among them." 
 
 "I don't quite understand that," said Nina. 
 
 " Why, you know, (But of course you don't,) that 
 in the egg, the higher animal develops, in a rough 
 way, through the forms of those below him the 
 highest being, in the egg, at one time, we'll say, 
 like a fish, later a reptile, then a bird, and then a 
 quadrupedal mammal. And a man's thoughts and 
 feelings also, include, to a considerable extent, 
 those below him : there's not much that the lower 
 creatures do and feel, that he doesn't. Now 
 
 the universe (I don't mean merely the little uni- 
 verse revealed to us,) in fact does include all forms 
 of being, in a wider way than the man includes the 
 forms below him, and so the whole universe may 
 be, in some sense too wide for us, a higher form 
 than all the rest. So, I confess, I'm pantheist 
 enough to have a frequent feeling in regard to 
 the entire universe (so far as I can hold the con- 
 ception) not entirely unlike the feelings of those 
 who worship an anthropomorphic God." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Calmire, though you do not revere a
 
 The Unknown God. l21 
 
 1 person,' you are an intensely reverent man. But 
 I hardly know myself when I say it. And this 
 morning I felt some of the reverence which I find 
 you full of. But did you have the same kind when 
 you were as young as I ?" 
 
 " Perhaps. But it has grown as I have grown. 
 I remember riding one Fall morning, when I was 
 little more than a boy, with Nature spread out 
 before me there was a gray sky with a band 
 of yellow light under it, far off : I saw it under 
 some great trees that I was passing, and I was 
 pondering on the contradictions and absurdities 
 of the creeds, when a realization came over me that 
 not in the written creeds, but right there before 
 me, in the universe itself, was the place to seek 
 God. From that place, all the faiths had been 
 built : they were simply composed of the im- 
 pressions, combined and recombined, that the 
 universe had made on different men. Then I 
 thought: 'My creed shall be the impressions the 
 universe makes on me!' I often think of that 
 
 ride as being to me what a certain ride of Saul of 
 Tarsus was to him. So, pondering upon the 
 
 immeasurable universe, of which only some little 
 manifestations reach us through our senses, I have 
 got into the way of feeling toward it, much of 
 what you have felt toward 'God, 'and, as I told 
 you the other day, of feeling toward each advance 
 in knowledge, as so much more knowledge of God. 
 I don't believe that any person evolved to knowing 
 the feeling we had this morning, really needs an 
 anthropomorphic God,"
 
 122 The Unknown God. 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire, that's all so abstract and un- 
 human. I want sympathy." 
 
 " Did you experience anything like sympathy 
 this morning?" 
 
 Nina meditated and answered: "Yes, I did." 
 
 ".Do you suppose that if you were more highly 
 evolved, you would have experienced more ? Re- 
 flect that some thousands of generations back, your 
 ancestors didn't experience any." 
 
 " It does seem as if one might." 
 
 "And wasn't there a sense of something that in- 
 cludes the human as well as transcends it ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And yet you want to bring it down to the 
 human! That may do for those who never felt 
 the soul behind Nature." 
 
 " Ah well," sighed the girl, " this is all so new 
 and strange \ I've been so used to hearing of the 
 absurdity of ' Nature-worship.' And in those days 
 I didn't feel what is behind, any more than the 
 scoffers did. I supposed that what we see, was 
 all of Nature; and that God was a man sitting off 
 somewhere away. I waver a great deal yet, but 
 I've really grown beyond that." 
 
 " So big!" said Calmire, holding apart his hands 
 in the way that always accompanies that expression 
 with children, and smiling sympathetically. " But 
 you mustn't think of God only as behind external 
 nature. What power made our ancestral speck 
 of floating jelly contract when it touched some- 
 thing? What made that responsive tendency 
 pass down from generation to generation, and in- 
 crease until it reacted to heat and light and color
 
 The Unknown God. I2 3 
 
 and sound and music and words and every influ- 
 ence we know until the descendant became man 
 himself? And even then, what power sustains 
 man ? He is not self-existent or self-dependent : 
 his every pulse beats without his will; his very 
 brain, wherein resides his most essential self, works 
 by forces which he cannot half control. What 
 are those forces : you saw God behind the Sistine 
 Madonna an image of the human : have you never 
 had the same feeling in relation to the human 
 itself?" 
 
 Nina pondered, and there came up before her 
 Calmire's face as he sat on his horse before the 
 runaways; and then, with a contrast that almost 
 terrified her, though it did not displease her, 
 came Muriel's, in his just but awful wrath when 
 he defended the woman in the shrubbery. The 
 images passed, and she looked up with a complex 
 expression that puzzled Calmire, and said: "Yes." 
 
 "The truth is," he went on after a moment, 
 " that there ought never to be a question of God 
 behind Man or Nature, but only of what sort of a 
 God ; and if the anthropomorphists would but 
 stop manufacturing one that Man and Nature both 
 contradict, and be humble and patient enough 
 to learn of the real one from the manifestations 
 through all real things, (among which, of course, 
 I include all mind consistent with external Nature, 
 and not warped by this mysterious free-will of 
 ours,) there wouldn't be any more quarreling the 
 ' reconciliation of Science and Religion ' would 
 come. But even so far, despite all the quarrels 
 regarding details, few people really doubt that
 
 124 The Unknown God. 
 
 under all things, is the Unknown God that same 
 Unknown God to whom Paul found an altar in- 
 scribed in Athens." 
 
 " But," queried Nina, " wasn't that altar supposed 
 to be raised by polytheists who feared they would 
 leave some god out?" 
 
 " Yes, but it seems to me more likely to have 
 marked one of those splendid Greek, or Egyptian, 
 guesses which modern knowledge is all the time 
 confirming and developing. So man has made his 
 guesses and built his altars all over the world, 
 but after all, it is largely in his laboratories that 
 God has become less ' unknown.' Many of Paul's 
 lofty inspirations are splendidly confirmed, .though, 
 by our knowledge. He preached, apropos of that 
 altar, you know, that God is not like images of 
 metal or stone, and ' dwelleth not in temples made 
 with hands,' that he is 'not far from every one of 
 us,' that 'neither is he worshipped with hands 
 as though he needed anything,' that ' he giveth 
 life and breath to all things,' and that ' in him 
 we live and move and have our being.' Now 
 all this applies perfectly to our conceptions of 
 the Ineffable Power. I recall a mediaeval Latin 
 hymn which expresses the same feeling The old 
 monk called his God 
 
 " ' Super cuncta, subter cuncta, 
 Extra cuncta, intra cuncta. ' 
 
 " Do you remember Latin enough to get the 
 points ?" 
 
 " Not to be sure of them. You'd better give them 
 to me."
 
 The Unknown God, 125 
 
 " Well, it means simply * over all things, under all 
 things, beyond all things, within all things,' and 
 yet I haven't the slightest doubt that the man who 
 wrote it, had, running parallel with it, an entirely 
 anthropomorphic notion of God that he fully be- 
 lieved the statement that Moses had seen 'God's 
 back.' I haven't any doubt that he 'believed' (in 
 his way) two utterly contradictory propositions, 
 that his God was a man whom he could see and 
 shake hands with, and that he was at the same 
 time 'extra cuncta, intra cunctaj and the rest of it: 
 the mediaeval mind was doing such things all the 
 while. There are plenty of such minds cotem- 
 porary with us, just as there are still savages in 
 the stone age. Even Paul was so: he began that 
 splendid discourse on the Unknown God, by calling 
 the worshippers of the Unknown God, idolaters, 
 while they are really the only people who are not 
 who make no idol, in imagination or in matter. 
 But despite his hard words, Paul loved to feel 
 the Universal Presence as we did this morning, 
 in the 'temples not made with hands.' "
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 GOD AND MAN. 
 
 AFTER a little pause, Nina said: "All that you 
 have been telling me is very interesting and seems 
 very true. Perhaps I shall grow up to it sometime. 
 But yet I yearn like a child for God as a loving 
 father, and feel lonely in a world that seems to 
 have no one to take care of it and no one to take 
 care of me where there seems so little to keep 
 men good, and very much to tempt them to be 
 bad." 
 
 Under his deep brows, Calmire shot a look at her 
 which seemed to come from Muriel's eyes. "What 
 does she mean by that ? Can she possibly know ?" 
 he said to himself. Then he reflected: "Even if 
 she should, there's nothing I can do now, but go 
 on and build up her supports, and divert her as I 
 can." But then, despite poor banished Muriel, 
 
 there raised itself, like a serpent's head, the idea 
 that, lovely as she was, it would be a joy to in- 
 struct and uphold her always. He put his heel on 
 the thought, and went on with his earlier themes. 
 
 "You say the world is not taken care of. As- 
 sume that it takes care of itself, and not very good 
 care at that: all the same, there has been enough 
 care of some kind to make it grow from a planet 
 inhabited only by 'the fearful dragons of the 
 
 126
 
 God and Man. 127 
 
 prime,' into one graced by a few such creatures as 
 yourself; I don't think that you're ever going to 
 get back the idea that there's anything outside of 
 human relations, corresponding to the care of a 
 parent for a young child : and you've got to face 
 the facts and get along without it. Nature does 
 provide us with parents during our childhood, but 
 when we are old enough, she leaves us to our- 
 selves. It's the only way we can conceive of, to 
 ensure our intellectual and moral development, 
 and such freedom of the will as is possible un- 
 der our circumstances. For that last, we have to 
 pay the standard price of freedom, in vigilance, 
 self-denial, and effort. It's the true wisdom to say: 
 ' Here are Nature's laws. They are all I have, 
 and, except as I learn more, all I can have. I know 
 I can depend upon them absolutely. Here am I, 
 with a given power to know them and use them. 
 It is power enough, rightly used, to make life on 
 the whole worthwhile, and to enable me to make 
 it worthwhile, perhaps, for some to whom it would 
 not otherwise be so. Let me take my life, then, 
 happily if I can, but bravely, whether happily or 
 not.' " 
 
 "Ah!" said Nina, "but so few of us are that 
 strong especially so few women. We need the 
 good God over all." 
 
 " Some women are that strong, and you are going 
 to be. I have not said that there is no ' good God 
 over all.' I simply say that if there is one, he 
 gives us his care in a certain way, so much of it 
 and no more. For my part, I can't enter into the 
 mind of any well-informed person who thinks of
 
 1 28 God and Man. 
 
 God as interfering and tinkering with the universe 
 at all. Why, even a great human administrator 
 proves his ability by organizing a set of agents and 
 principles to do something, and then leaving them, 
 with occasional oversight, to do it." 
 
 " You allow room for occasional oversight, then ?" 
 
 " Not on the part of an organizer great enough 
 to do without it." 
 
 " I prefer," said Nina, " to think of God as con- 
 stantly watching over me, as a father would who 
 could always be with his child." 
 
 "Yes, dear. But what we ' prefer' is one thing, 
 and what we have, may be another. The only 
 thing that it is reasonable and honest to ' prefer to 
 think ' is whatever happens to be the true thing. 
 Now thinking of God as constantly watching over 
 us as a father watches over his children, is against 
 the evidence: for the axes have fallen and the fag- 
 gots have burned in spite of all the martyrs' trust; 
 and men have been lost and children have died 
 in spite of all the women's faith. It all may be 
 essential to the development of the race; it may 
 all fit in with some scheme wider and grander than 
 any human father could conceive: but to assume 
 that it does, is purely gratuitous. Look at it 
 squarely, and there's nothing in it like the human 
 father. Whatever the All-father may be, he has 
 put us off to boarding-school, possibly for our 
 own good, and never comes to see us. He may 
 sometimes hint his existence, though, as perhaps 
 we may assume he did this morning, and send us 
 great inspirations with the hint." 
 
 Nina pondered a few moments and then said :
 
 God and Man. 1 29 
 
 "But can't the administrator be great enough to 
 make the law go down to the minutest particulars 
 of our lives ?" 
 
 "What a girl you are! Do you know that you 
 have asked the question that puzzles me more 
 than all others ? Certain illegitimate ones might 
 puzzle me more, if I would dwell on them, but 
 that seems a legitimate one. Surely every one 
 who has suffered much has found, if he has tried 
 to do his best, that the suffering the loss, the 
 apparent neglect and cruelty of God, if you want 
 to put it in that way, has had some beneficial effect 
 on his character, and he even may have sometimes 
 found a more or less compensating side in the 
 circumstances themselves: so he has at least been 
 tempted by the doctrine that ' all is for the best ! ' 
 There's no sort of doubt that what appear to be 
 the blind general forces of the universe do go 
 much deeper into the details of our individual 
 lives both outer and inner, than thoughtless peo- 
 ple realize." 
 
 He paused, meditating a moment, and Nina, 
 with a little sense of possible victory, said: 
 
 "Well, Mr. Calmire?" 
 
 " I've watched it as closely as I could, my child, 
 in my own life and others, and I've thought upon 
 it as deeply as I can. My conclusion is, that, what- 
 ever evolution may be tending toward, so far, the 
 universal forces are not enough specialized to go 
 much deeper than the general features of our 
 lives. All evolution is specialization, you know, 
 and there's no knowing how far, even down into the 
 special needs of character, the external influences
 
 130 God and Man. 
 
 may yet go. But for the present, I have to 
 content myself with the boarding-school view. 
 It may be the very best thing for us. If there's 
 a Father who sends us off here, he may be a 
 better Father than if he coddled us more. The 
 school has its merits : there are no freaks in the 
 management, and no excuses are received. My 
 only objection is, that there's no way of learn- 
 ing all the rules, and we're constantly getting into 
 trouble for violating rules that we have had no 
 chance to learn. That, if you are going to hold a 
 ' person' responsible for it, is not fair play. At this 
 stage of evolution, though, perhaps we get into 
 more trouble for violating rules which we do know 
 than for violating those we don't." 
 
 " Yes, I've often heard Earth called a school for 
 Heaven," Nina interrupted. 
 
 " It may be, for all we know," Calmire assented. 
 " But intellectual health requires us to realize that 
 while we are off at this school, no Father who sent 
 us here has anything more to do with us directly 
 than if he didn't exist ; and therefore, if I were to 
 reason anthropomorphically, I should assume it to 
 be His wish that we are not to spend our time and 
 strength over questions regarding Him, but to 
 busy ourselves in doing what He has given us to 
 do, and enjoying what He has given us to enjoy. 
 We have more than enough to occupy us, and I've 
 seen enough of the results of illegitimate specula- 
 tion. Whatever may be the nature of the Cause, 
 the only revelations of it that we have are through 
 Nature and human nature, and come best inci- 
 dentally to our work there. So, it seems to me,
 
 God and Man. 1 3 r 
 
 have the greatest teachers taught. Christ himself 
 was full of the duties of human life : I can't 
 imagine anything more alien to his own example 
 than the protracted seclusion and exaggerated 
 self-communion and asceticism of so many of his 
 professed followers. The world owes a great deal 
 to its saints, but I suspect it owes more to its 
 investigators. The church admits something in 
 that direction," he added, with a laugh, " when it 
 proposes to make a saint of Christopher Columbus, 
 and something of the same kind when it made one 
 of Charles the Great. 
 
 "Now," he continued, "to sum it all up, what 
 have we to go on ? We know that there is a Power 
 which we cannot conceive as limited. We know 
 that it works in accordance with laws that we have 
 never known to vary. (Of course I leave miracles 
 out of the question, as absurdities common to all 
 the religions.) We know that we can study its laws } 
 gaining by the study, and most important and 
 very strange ! we know that as fast as we learn 
 its laws, we can ourselves use that awful Power 
 that it then submits itself to our commands that, 
 so far from being, as it appears to the savage, a 
 remote God to be assailed by prayer, it is then, as 
 it appears to the scientist, a familiar friend, and 
 even servant, of unswerving faithfulness, to be con- 
 trolled by knowledge." 
 
 " What ?" cried Nina. " God our servant !" 
 
 "The idea only illustrates the absurdities of the 
 
 anthropomorphic conception," Calmire answered. 
 
 " I did not say anything about God, except to 
 
 state the savage's idea. I only spoke of the mo-
 
 I3 2 God and Man. 
 
 live Power of the universe as we know it. Nearly 
 all savages place a God behind it. An increasing 
 number of civilized men refuse to try to go behind 
 it at all. The strongest intellects of the time 
 declare themselves too weak to. But, to go back : 
 I didn't mean by the Universal Power, mere brute 
 force : for certainly in the operations of the 
 Power, we must include all the normal functions 
 of man himself thought, emotion, conscience, 
 aspiration. Nature is the source of all those 
 things, even if she has added a certain paradoxical 
 freedom of will to use them, or even if she has been 
 educating us from the very beginning to control 
 herself. You don't find any human parents as 
 generous as that ! All the same, however, that 
 pretty fancy, like every other one raised by our 
 finite capacities, regarding that infinite subject, is 
 nonsense : for there is no generosity in giving 
 when infinity is left : and that very sentence, too, 
 you see, is nonsense ; for how can infinity be left, 
 when it is less than infinity by so much as has 
 been taken from it ? So let us mark again the 
 constant lesson that it is foolish for us to specu- 
 late on the nature of an unlimited Power: our 
 limited faculties are only for its limited manifesta- 
 tions. No matter in what direction we attempt to 
 get beyond them, we always find ourselves swamped 
 in paradox. If you try to get out of the scrape by 
 putting an out-and-out human God behind it all, 
 you have the father educating his children to unite 
 with him in the control of things, and giving them 
 control as fast as they learn how to use it. But 
 then you see you must limit his power or his
 
 God and Man. 133 
 
 kindness, for if a human parent could effectually 
 educate us without pain, he would : so we're in 
 paradox again, 
 
 "The only reasonable course is to find content 
 in knowing that the manifestations of the Power 
 work for the constantly increasing wisdom, good- 
 ness, and happiness of the human race; that while 
 around us misery and ugliness are frequent, they 
 do not prevail, but that happiness and beauty are, 
 on the whole, characteristic of our world ; and 
 that, in all conceivable probability, behind all the 
 happiness and beauty of which we are conscious, 
 is infinitely more infinite material for higher 
 thought and loftier emotion, some of which, our 
 descendants, with finer capacities than ours, will 
 enter into. Moreover, while there is, without, the 
 Divinity we see and feel; there is within, the same 
 Divinity which, without seeing, we feel more really 
 still that Divinity including us but distinct from 
 us, and we distinct from It even controlling, in 
 our little measure, the very forces which are Its 
 manifestations. True, that little measure shades 
 into the including Immensity so that we cannot 
 tell where It resigns and we become ourselves 
 the old, old mystery of fate and free-will; but de- 
 spite the mystery, we have the certainty that, in 
 some undefined degree, we are free moral agents 
 each with his own share of the Universal Power. 
 Now are we to be glad of what we have, and do 
 our best to increase it, for ourselves and for all : 
 or are we to count it as nothing because we have 
 not more ?"
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 MORE CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire. 
 
 " Oct. i8th, 18 . 
 
 " THE misery has begun again. I started to address 
 you as usual, but I remembered your injunction 
 to write nothing that an outsider could identify. 
 I suppose, though, that I may as well be honest in 
 such a lying world, and tell you that I did not 
 think of your caution until I hesitated over writing 
 the word 'Dear' because it seemed as if even you 
 had joined the conspiracy of the Universe against 
 me. The first time I read your letter, I got a lot of 
 comfort from it. But as I think it over, how do I 
 know that it's true ? How do I know that anything 
 is true ? I've found out long ago that the faiths of 
 my childhood were lies. What warrant is there that 
 my later faiths so far as I have any, are not ? They 
 all broke down before I got your letter. Why 
 shouldn't they break down again ? The very ut- 
 most that we can be sure of, is what has happened. 
 How can we be sure of what is going to happen ? 
 We mites of men can't know all the influences at 
 work around us. How do I know that my legs won't 
 break if I try to walk, that the house won't fall on me, 
 that you won't lie to me, that even No ! I can't 
 think that ! But surely no man can be certain of his 
 next step. We're all stumbling along no guide
 
 Muriel Calmire to Legrand Calmire. 1 3 5 
 
 but blind unfeeling Chance. No man goes safely 
 by his own wisdom. I've as much sense as most 
 fellows: yes, more, if I do say it; and where am I ? 
 while most of the fools of my acquaintance are 
 happy ! 
 
 " Now because you didn't admit all this squarely, 
 I seem to lack confidence in you. Lots of things in 
 your letter did seem true enough. But it soon got 
 mighty plain that they only had been true, and might 
 change at any moment. The queer thing is that 
 you hadn't sense enough to see that, or honesty 
 enough to acknowledge it. 
 
 "Oct. igth. 
 
 " There seemed something wrong about it all 
 again yesterday, so I stopped. But I'll be hanged 
 if I can see to-day what's wrong, except that there 
 doesn't seem much sense in questioning your 
 gumption or your honesty. 
 
 " What is wrong ? 
 
 " And why don't I blow my damned brains out ?" 
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 "Oct. 2oth, 18 . 
 
 "To begin at the end : the reason you don't blow 
 your damned brains out, is that it's not a family 
 habit. Some men in your fix, with your sort of 
 brains (though they're not an altogether 'damned' 
 sort by any means), would have done it before this, 
 but there are some conserving elements in your 
 make-up. 
 
 "' What is wrong?' is a question that has 
 puzzled your sort of brains for several thousand 
 years, but the way out seems simple enough now.
 
 1 36 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 It was obscured by people claiming too much 
 claiming a warrant for truth especially mathe- 
 matical and logical truth, superior to experience. 
 That blunder has been corrected by the discovery 
 that even our recognition of those truths depends 
 on ancestral experience that the Hottentot can't 
 be taught to count ten, while the Englishman writes 
 the Principia. So when we own up squarely that 
 all our knowledge is, like our capacities, limited 
 that our certainty is only approximate ; we're in 
 condition to realize that the approximation is close 
 enough for a working basis. You haven't cer- 
 tainty, but you don't need it. Despite the tricks 
 your present frame of mind plays you, you're not 
 really afraid to get up and walk, or enter a house 
 or to trust me, as far as my capacities go. But 
 
 I'm awfully sorry for you. I know all about it. 
 
 " Of your last letter, I only answered what moved 
 me most. Now I'll take what is left, seriatim. 
 
 " f Are men's punishments in any way propor- 
 tioned to the evil they intend to do ?' No, not very 
 closely. We've touched on that before. Even the 
 churches, you know, don't teach an equitable dis- 
 tribution of rewards and punishments in this life; 
 and one of their arguments for a future life is, that 
 it will afford an opportunity to compensate the 
 injustices of this. 
 
 " As far as the consequences of man's acts are 
 regulated by Nature, outside of man's will, 
 there is no room for justice. It is a purely anthro- 
 pomorphic conception; we read it from ourselves 
 into Nature. Thousands of men do just as you
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 137 
 
 did and go scot-free. If Nature is just to them, she 
 is unjust to you; if she is just to you, she is unjust 
 to them. The fact is: she is neither just nor un- 
 just. Justice regards motives, but Nature outside 
 of man knows nothing of them: she is as merciless 
 to ignorance as to crime. Our only safe guide, 
 then, is the absolute hard experience that the race 
 has had of Nature's ways, and that is embraced in 
 the standard morality in the religions or out. 
 Yet never forget that Nature, in the social sanctions, 
 in conscience, and in the hopes and fears of the re- 
 ligions, has evolved agencies which do reward and 
 punish motive. But outside of man, Nature has 
 simply her laws and forces. Anything we do sets 
 them all in motion, and our littlest acts sometimes 
 release the greatest of them, as a child touching 
 an electric button blew up Hell Gate. Yet unless 
 we absolutely know that they are in position to 
 crush us, we start them on some slight tempta- 
 tion, hoping they will miss us just that once : and 
 all the time we know (or would know, if it were 
 not for our pestilent anthropomorphism) that Na- 
 ture has no intelligence, no pity, no justice, to turn 
 her forces to the right or left. Those qualities are 
 man's, and make him ineffably Nature's superior, 
 except as you think of Nature including him. 
 Pascal puts it well: ' It is not necessary for the 
 whole universe to arm itself to crush a man: a 
 mist, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But 
 though the universe crushes him, the man is still 
 more noble than that which kills him, because 
 man knows that he dies: and of the advantage
 
 138 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 which the universe has over him, the universe 
 knows nothing.' 
 
 " Well ! your difficulty about the water deceiving 
 and drowning you, or the hills falling upon and 
 crushing you, is answered. In fact, you answered 
 it yourself when you said that if it were not for 
 your superior intelligence and will, the water 
 would deceive and drown you. Think of this in 
 connection with the cause of all your suffering you 
 are overwhelmed in a sea of woe, simply because 
 you did not use the superior intelligence and will. 
 You were not 'deceived' at all: you knew your 
 risk and ignored it. Nature can seldom be said to 
 deceive, though she often refuses to communicate. 
 
 "But even suppose she were 'just,' how, after 
 all, could the motives or punishments of any two 
 men be the same ? No two men are the same. In 
 face of a given temptation, your realizations of 
 consequence, and your resulting obligations, are 
 very different from those of most men most men, 
 in your situation, would not be suffering much : 
 they'd simply content themselves in repudiating 
 the whole affair. So I have sometimes been led to 
 wonder if there is not, after all, in Nature's way of 
 distributing the apparently disproportionate pun- 
 ishments, a closer correspondence with our ideas 
 of justice than we realize. 
 
 "I hope it's proved clearly enough by this time, 
 that it's not 'all a damned farce." And now let's 
 see whether the fact that 'in a little while it's all 
 over,' really does 'take all the meaning out of it.' 
 Is a star not beautiful, because sometime its light 
 is going to fade away? Is our Sun not warm
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 1 39 
 
 because sometime it is going to burn out? Are 
 there no lovely things on earth because aeons 
 hence there will be none ? Are there no duties plain 
 to-day because aeons hence there will be no duties on 
 earth ? To make to-day's fruits sweet, to-day's love 
 blissful, to-day's duties inspiring or even binding, is 
 it necessary that we should be sure that the same 
 soul which responds to them to-day will respond, 
 say, the ten-millionth day from this ? If so, to 
 make them good that day, is it necessary that the 
 soul should then be sure that it will respond the 
 ten-millionth day from 'then ? And so on to an- 
 other ten-millionth day, and another and another 
 ad infinitum ? : All of which, you simply can't con- 
 ceive. 
 
 " The argument from time, applies just as well to 
 sensation. If nothing is good for a moment, be- 
 cause it is not good for an aeon, so nothing is 
 good to any eye or any palate, because it might 
 not be good to a better eye or a better palate. 
 So you can imagine no good that will not be de- 
 clared bad by a sense finer than the one which 
 declares it good. This is the trouble in your 
 Glumdalclitch argument. What is the alternative? 
 Simply that, as I answered before, where senses 
 are balanced to objects, as they are when any or- 
 ganism is in health, there is good, and that good w 
 good. We made the word for that kind of good, 
 for we know no other kind. To deny this, and try 
 to imagine an immortality to make room for a good 
 nearer perfect than we know here, is simply to re- 
 move the difficulty a step farther off, and to land 
 us amid the follies of the ascetics who avoid the
 
 {40 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Catmtre. 
 
 plain good before them, because they can imagine 
 something better. Thus they ignore most of the 
 very appetites which make good, so far as we know 
 good, possible. In health, Nature gives us a cer- 
 tain amount of power to feel the good and be un- 
 conscious of the bad. It is a fact that we cannot 
 escape, and we're fools (and ungrateful fools, if 
 you want to be anthropomorphic) if we don't take 
 the benefit of it. 
 
 " Good is found in the reactions between man 
 and Nature. I don't deny that a man sometimes 
 gets pinched in the machinery; and I don't deny 
 that, so far as I can see, all men are ultimately 
 destroyed in that same machinery. But don't let 
 us take the fact that we cant see what becomes of 
 the man's mind and consciousness, as final proof 
 that they too are destroyed; and, as I indicated in 
 my last letter, don't let's forget that not many 
 men at once are pinched to death, or even to pain. 
 Look at a Coney Island Sunday its vast aggre- 
 gate of happiness more happy people in that one 
 spot than there are sufferers in the whole nation. 
 
 " But the beginning of wisdom is to learn that 
 there are things we've got to stand, and not to 
 have our judgment upset by them. As to what is 
 vulgarly considered the worst thing of all death, 
 a healthy man seldom thinks of it. That life is to 
 end, detracts nothing from its value to him. Is 
 each day in a month less valuable than each 
 day in a year? each day in a year less valuable 
 than each day in a lifetime? each day in a life- 
 time less valuable than each day in an eternity? 
 Can't a man work just as hard if he knows his
 
 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Catmire. 14' 
 
 time is short as if he knows that he has no end of 
 it to waste ? If it requires an eternity to make 
 life significant, aren't you in the midst of one 
 now ? Would its significance be gone if your single 
 life were taken out of it ? Can't the suns swing 
 without your help? and don't you know that they 
 swing? It's eternity now! Haven't you all you can 
 do in it? 
 
 " It may be urged that some men are better for 
 believing in immortality. Probably some persecut- 
 ing bigots would have been better if they had not 
 believed in it, and many men are good without be- 
 lieving in it. But I'm not quarreling with the belief, 
 but only with the claim that life has no meaning 
 without it. You can't know that you're immortal, 
 but this you can know that if you sit with folded 
 hands, whining for more life, while more than you 
 can handle is already within reach on every side, 
 you don't deserve to be immortal." 
 
 " Instead of finding fault with modern religion- 
 ists for not torturing for their faith, rejoice in their 
 progress over their ancestors. Spencer's demon- 
 stration of evolution in mind, morals, and social 
 institutions, is a proof of what all the ages have 
 been longing to know that man does progress, 
 and that the grounds of hope are facts. Civiliza- 
 tions do fall as well as rise, but each inherits from 
 its predecessors; and if evolution stops in one solar 
 system, it must, ipso facto, if the latest hypotheses 
 are correct, begin in another. So while you're 
 wretched because the Universe is out of joint, be 
 consistent and take the other side equally in the 
 large : don't fret because occasionally a man dies 
 or a civilization crumbles or a sun burns out; but
 
 H 2 Legrand Calmire to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 reflect that the Universe as a whole, moves on. 
 Rejoice, too, that if, so far as we can see, we are 
 not to participate in much of the progress our- 
 selves, many of us are at least evolved into enough 
 altruism to be glad that others are. 
 
 "I hope I haven't bored you, and have helped 
 you some. Probably in your state of mind, you 
 may as well have been reading this as doing any- 
 thing else. 
 
 "I have no more news. Our friends return to 
 town in three days. I go the day after. 
 
 "I sometimes suspect that the younger knows, 
 though neither of us has said anything. 
 
 " I have reached two distinct conclusions as to 
 what you had better do: I. That until what you 
 dread, is an accomplished fact, and the future 
 beyond any reasonable peradventure, you are to 
 do nothing. II. That the best place to do it in, is 
 where you are, or at all events away from here. 
 You can do no earthly good here, and you might 
 get yourself committed to something awkward and 
 superfluous. Whatever can be done, especially in 
 the way of making the burden easy for those who 
 bear it, T shall do. Questions of what you shall 
 do, can be met when they legitimately come. I 
 need no better evidence that you would be the 
 worst man to handle them before you have to, 
 than myself realizing now, that the emotional side 
 of the case so obscured my own vision that the fact 
 that there's nothing for you to do for months to 
 come, was not perfectly obvious at the outset. It 
 is as simple as Columbus's egg. 
 
 " You know my love for you : try to trust my 
 discretion."
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 CALMIRE'S letters brought Muriel great relief. 
 While he read them, and went over each a second 
 time and a third, he felt (as he had felt more than 
 once since he fell into his morbid state) that his 
 doubts were banished and could trouble him no 
 more. He was still far from realizing that recovery 
 from those emotional phases, like recovery from 
 any abnormal condition, is not accomplished sud- 
 denly or with uniform progress, but settles down 
 by oscillations in both directions, like a pendulum, 
 in conformity with the universal law which Spencer 
 has formulated as the Rhythm of Motion. 
 
 He felt better, however, for a time, and the night 
 after he got the last letter, which had been delayed 
 some days in the country post-offices, he started 
 out for a walk beyond the village in the moonlight. 
 He strode along more like himself than he had done 
 since he left Fleuvemont. He felt strong in a cer- 
 tain sense of growth. All his earlier conceptions of 
 man and law and duty seemed to him like child's toys 
 beside those that he had been getting glimpses of 
 during the past few weeks. Before, he had been 
 a boy, merely sentimentalizing over the necessities 
 in life, as he did over its romance: now he was a 
 man, strong for anything for renunciation, self-
 
 H4 Cain. 
 
 sacrifice, those great virtues of which he had read 
 so often, and professed, at a safe distance, to re- 
 spect so much. But he had really thought them 
 rather slow of the same class of merits with 
 those for which good marks were given in his 
 school-days, in which the stupid boys generally 
 excelled. Never before having essayed the prac- 
 tice of any virtues of that class, he had not realized 
 how hard they were, nor had he realized how 
 essential they were to the equilibrium of life. But 
 now he saw that they were great things, not 
 merely easy for boys born too poor and stupid to 
 have anything to renounce, but tests of strength 
 worthy of such splendid creatures as himself; 
 and he was rather thankful to things-in-gen- 
 eral for giving him the opportunity to make the 
 creditable exhibition of himself for which he now 
 felt prepared. Two or three times he had almost 
 congratulated himself on his miseries, perhaps be- 
 cause they were so big and majestic, or, lately, 
 perhaps because they held out to him such great 
 opportunities for the exercise, and even the dis- 
 play, of very impressive and melodramatic virtues. 
 He was indeed rather disposed to congratulate the 
 universe upon the opportunity to look at him. 
 Faint realizations of all this had begun to dawn 
 upon him ; but his instinct was to banish such reali- 
 zations, because they were uncomfortable. Yet late- 
 ly, this old instinct had, a few times, been opposed 
 by a new feeling which had peeped into being; he 
 had already once or twice wished that there were 
 no temptation to right-doing, as well as to wrong- 
 doing,and he had even doubted whether there could
 
 Cain. 145 
 
 be any merit in his readiness to immolate himself, 
 so long as he was conscious of there being any; 
 and all the worse, so long as he thought of any 
 admiration which it might compel. Then the 
 virus of skepticism which was running its course 
 in his blood, found its way to this virgin spot, and 
 he began to be skeptical of his own sincerity and 
 singleness of purpose; and, next, even of his tenac- 
 ity of purpose; and then, of course, of the real 
 existence of such qualities anywhere. 
 
 He had no God to dread or consult, and, as yet, 
 no realization that the only thing to depend upon 
 in such crises is one's self self made worthy of 
 reliance and accustomed to exact it. Therefore, 
 the big man with the white robe and white beard 
 having long since disappeared, and Self not yet 
 having taken the awful form of the Undeceivablo 
 and Unavoidable Judge; and the most august 
 object within sight during this evening walk being 
 the full moon, of course the thing natural to our 
 distracted young gentleman, who had so often 
 professed his freedom from superstition, was to 
 fall into a habit of his ancestors, and turn in a 
 spiritof reverence to said moon and swear by it that, 
 whatever might come, he would follow his duty, 
 and find his way out of his maze of troubles in any 
 direction where it might lead. 
 
 This after-thought of finding his way out, coming 
 in so quietly that he hardly recognized its advent, 
 suddenly loomed up before him like some unex- 
 pected object when brooding eyes are raised from 
 one's path. The conception that duty, blindly 
 followed, sometimes leads the way out of trouble,
 
 146 Cain. 
 
 he had before had a sort of unrealizing notion of; 
 but he had not thought much about it one way or 
 the other: he had not had any particular use for 
 it, he had never been in any perplexity which he had 
 not seen his way out of at a glance, and which his 
 ingenuity and confidence in himself had not ac- 
 tually got him out of in twenty-four hours. True, 
 he had had two or three hard and unexpected 
 knocks; but they simply had to be endured, they 
 had not, like this last one, brought with them any 
 future to be dreaded or determined, and his con- 
 science had not busied itself very much with any 
 question of his own responsibility for them. But 
 now he knew a misery beside which he felt, not 
 without a sort of grim pride, that everything he had 
 before endured was boyish. Here were the lives 
 of, probably, three beings, his own among them, 
 made miserable by his act and now to be shaped 
 by his will. He could not spare himself the sweet 
 agony of adding Nina's life, as a fourth, to those 
 already involved. Yet, in his exaltation, he felt 
 that it would be easy to take the course of self- 
 sacrifice to crush his own love and starve Nina's 
 (which, of course, he calmly assumed to exist, as its 
 complement had arisen in his lordly self), and to 
 give the rest of his life to the two beings with 
 whom a part of it was already incorporated. But 
 would this obvious course be the best even for 
 them ? Calmire had doubted it, and Calmire was 
 just, mercilessly just. But Muriel could not take 
 Calmire's advice and let the question rest until the 
 demands upon him should be matured and estab- 
 lished beyond reasonable peradventure: he was too
 
 Cain. 147 
 
 young, though he did not know that, and he did 
 not even know that to postpone the question, was 
 the part of wisdom the part, even, of strength. 
 He could not help some sort of realization that 
 any present determination must be premature, and 
 that any determination he could think of would be 
 but the settling of one question by the raising of a 
 host of others, some of them life-long. Yet he felt 
 that it must be determined. And how ? How ? 
 
 And here, amid all this maze of perplexity, he 
 had jumped at a true conception just as the earlier 
 Greek thinkers so often did, without having any 
 clear reasons for it. He hardly realized that be- 
 cause he was in an orderly universe with all its 
 parts connected and ceaselessly moving, if he 
 should find and conform himself to the true course 
 of the motion, not attempting by mistaken will or 
 desire to resist or divert it, it would bear him, if no 
 exceptional disturbance should come, to where he 
 had best go. But this process, so easy to describe, 
 and so hard to execute, Muriel had begun, in a 
 groping way, to associate with the old notion of 
 Duty. Here it was, that old notion, which he had 
 really regarded only as a good thing to versify and 
 speechify about; here it was no far-off star, but a 
 real thing, to hold on by and yet to exert one's 
 whole being by like an oar when one rows. That 
 it should help his boat over these dark and troubled 
 waters, he was resolved; and he felt from it a sense 
 of support akin, he realized, to that which many 
 creeds had given to sufferers and martyrs. 
 
 He walked on, strengthened and reliant. In 
 with the rhythm of his steps, began to fall an old
 
 148 Cain. 
 
 tune which faintly ran in his mind, perhaps be- 
 cause he had thought of the waters. Soon he 
 began to hum it, and after a few paces more, he 
 was singing, at the height of his great voice, 
 " Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep." By the 
 time he reached the bridge, his burst of energy 
 had taxed a little the frame already feeling the 
 burdens of the past few weeks, and he paused and 
 leaned on the parapet and contemplated the grand 
 play of moonlight with waters, and clouds with 
 shadows. 
 
 As he mused and sang of the troubled waves, 
 again arose the question, " What will the port be ? 
 Shall I get over ? Can there be any peace in re- 
 serve for me ?" 
 
 Then he began to think again. What, after all, 
 was this Duty which had made him sing, "Secure 
 I rest upon the wave" ? Was it not the very per- 
 plexing thing that he had been trying to deter- 
 mine? It would guide him to the end; but what 
 would guide him to it? "The greatest good of the 
 greatest number !" Well ! Here on one side were 
 Minerva and that other (possible) being, for whose 
 life, it was true, the responsibility would be his, but 
 whose life was unformed, whose requirements were 
 uncertain, and whose possibilities would be the 
 average of his and Minerva's: not, he bitterly told 
 himself, the higher average of his and Nina's. Yet 
 that was sophistical ! Who could prophesy what it 
 might be? Who would have foretold Shakspere 
 from his parents ? 
 
 The test of duty was the greatest good of the 
 greatest number. There on one side were Mi- 
 nerva and her expected child their expected
 
 Cain. T 49 
 
 child ; and he, who loved children so dearly, 
 could not even wish for it, though it was his 
 own ! And on the other side were himself and 
 Nina. Whose good, whose happiness, he 
 
 should like to know, were to be consulted here: 
 Who were the greater, or, at least, the more impor- 
 tant number? But this sophistry could nothold him 
 long. Whatever his feelings were, he had grown 
 up primarily a creature of intellect, such as it was; 
 and his intellect had been drilled beyond the pos- 
 sibility of any self-deception here. He saw the 
 case plainly enough. It was not the apparent hap- 
 piness of the people immediately interested that 
 must determine the moral quality of an act. It was 
 the effect that the general practice of such acts 
 would have upon the general happiness; for obvi- 
 ously no one man had a right to do what not all 
 would have a right to do. Human experience had 
 fixed some things, and had fixed nothing more 
 clearly than that the very existence of society, 
 which includes the possibility of civilization, 
 which makes man the creature he is, instead of a 
 solitary beast all this depends on parents taking 
 care of their own children. That is the one safe- 
 guard of education and morality. " Ah, but this 
 is only one case !" pleaded poor Muriel with him- 
 self; and promptly his just nature added: " Yes; 
 and it is but one case if I kill that man riding up 
 there on the hill against the sky, and take his 
 horse, and ride away from the whole horrible busi- 
 ness." No ! Temptation could master him, at 
 least it once could; but sophistry could not, at 
 least not now. If Minerva Granzine should have 
 a child, and that child should live, it was his busi-
 
 1 50 Cain. 
 
 ness to take care of it not merely to feed it and 
 clothe it, but to make of it a creature that should 
 do at least its share for the common welfare. That 
 duty demanded this much, was clear; that it might 
 demand more, was not impossible, especially when it 
 was backed up by other sanctions, some of them 
 tender, the thought of which pained him, some of 
 them beautiful, the thought of which sickened him 
 
 But broken though he was, painful and sickening 
 things could not long possess his imagination, un- 
 less they taxed his intellect more than the almost 
 routine rehearsal of the elements of morality 
 which he had just gone through. The clouds 
 were floating, a little portentously, over the moon; 
 but when one passed, how doubly bright every- 
 thing was, in the sky and over the river! Of 
 course the well-worn image of a clouded life took 
 possession of him, and soon our young gentleman, 
 who, as has been remarked, had so freely pro- 
 claimed his superiority to superstition, relapsed 
 into augury. There was that great black cloud 
 marching up; its edge might obscure the moon, 
 or it might not. The moon was the light of his 
 life; the cloud was hurrying fate. If the cloud 
 should long obscure the moon, fate would darken his 
 life; if the cloud should pass by, leaving the moon 
 uncovered, somehow these terrible threatenings 
 would pass by him. The cloud passed leaving the 
 moon clear. He turned away exultantly, then 
 called himself a fool, then laughed, and walked 
 briskly toward home. 
 
 During his absence, the late mail had been laid 
 on his table. He picked up the morning paper, 
 and after a time read, in the telegraphic columns:
 
 Cain. 1 5 l 
 
 Melancholy Suicide of a Student at College. 
 
 -, Oct. 25, 18 . Soon after midnight, the 
 
 students in - Hall were startled by a pistol-shot 
 in the building. It was found to have proceeded 
 from a room on the fourth floor on the south entry. 
 The occupant was discovered lying on the floor in 
 a pool of blood coming from wounds in the breast 
 and back. The ball from a derringer which lay 
 beside him had gone through the whole body, per- 
 forating the heart in its passage. Death must have 
 been instantaneous. No reason is assigned for the 
 rash act. The young man was a hard student, 
 though he had not studied hard enough to break 
 down his mind. On his table were charred por- 
 tions of a letter which appeared to have been held 
 over the chimney of his lamp, but there are not 
 enough fragments left to throw any light on the 
 melancholy affair. The name of the unfortunate 
 youth was John Granzeen. He was from Calmeer." 
 
 No "light on the melancholy affair"! Muriel 
 needed no light upon it. "/ did it," he said, hold- 
 ing the paper before him with a convulsive grasp 
 and staring eyes. " / did it. So I'm a murderer, 
 too !" 
 
 He fell into a chair and gazed out of the window. 
 The night had become black. The poor boy had 
 not even enough experience of distress, to light a 
 cigar. After he had sat for ten minutes, he said 
 aloud: "I must go to Uncle Grand." 
 
 A train left soon after midnight, and by ten 
 o'clock next morning he was in his uncle's house 
 in Washington Square.
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 TANTALUS. 
 
 THE servant at the door told Muriel that Mr. Cal- 
 mire had started down town half an hour before, 
 and that Mrs. John was in the house and had just 
 gone up to dress to go out. 
 
 Muriel gave the servant his overcoat and other 
 traps, and went into the parlor and sat down before 
 the fire. He felt deadened by the weight upon him. 
 He was aroused from a profound revery by the 
 rustle of a silk dress near him. He turned to greet 
 Mrs. John, and found himself face to face with Nina 
 Wahring. She had come to walk with Mrs. John. 
 
 " You here !" she exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes." In a voice with no more vibration than 
 cork. 
 
 " This is not your place !" she said as if in re- 
 monstrance. 
 
 The untoward had become so much a matter of 
 course to him that he did not even notice this con- 
 firmation of Calmire's suspicion that Nina knew. 
 
 She had a strong though vague conviction that 
 Muriel had no right with her while that other was 
 alone in the world. Meeting him brought up the 
 feeling with double force, and made her, with 
 the good woman's instinct to hold a man to his 
 
 152
 
 Tantalus. 1 5 3 
 
 duty, especially if she loves him, propose to turn 
 him out of a house where he had a better right 
 than she had. And of course a young man like 
 Muriel imaginative, intense, dramatic, accepted 
 such an extreme proposition unquestioningly, as a 
 perfectly natural element of an extreme case. 
 
 "There is no place for me!" he answered in the 
 same mechanical tone. 
 
 "There is one," she expostulated, "and you 
 must go to it." 
 
 " So I sometimes think, but the time is not yet 
 come. But I need not stay here to offend your 
 sight." His dead voice might have come from a 
 machine. He started to go. To reach the door he 
 had to walk toward her. His resolution braced his 
 whole frame and set his face. He was as she first 
 saw him at Fleuvemont. The recollection kept her 
 eyes unconsciously fixed upon him. His own were 
 directed toward the door. Her head began to turn 
 as he passed; the slight motion brought her to her- 
 self. She made a gesture, and said: 
 
 " This is your home. I have no right to turn 
 you out." 
 
 " I have no right to stay here or anywhere. I 
 could not stay where I was yesterday. The curse 
 of Cain is upon me. I must wander." 
 
 He still spoke mechanically, without looking at 
 her. Then he turned and did look from his deep 
 black-rimmed eyes in his pale face, and in the 
 same monotonous tone uttered: 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 " You shall not go!" she cried. ' " You are no 
 Cain !"
 
 1 54 Tantalus. 
 
 "Yes! It makes no difference," continued the 
 soulless tones. " I may as well go. Good-bye." 
 
 Oh, the misery of it ! This dead creature this 
 thing that could not even seize kindness this 
 humble thing this, Muriel Calmire ! It was too 
 horrible. Had he been Cain himself, it would have 
 moved her. 
 
 " Stay ! What harm can you do ?" 
 
 "Me? Harm? None!" 
 
 Worse and worse ! Was Samson shorn and blind ? 
 
 " Then do stay and let me talk to you," she ex- 
 claimed, her face glowing with a yearning pity. 
 
 " No. Perhaps it would hurt you. Maybe I 
 too can feel yet, though that doesn't matter." 
 
 "Then, in God's name, feel! Anything but 
 this !" 
 
 "Well! What can you say to me? Don't stand." 
 
 She sank into a chair. He put his hands on the 
 back of one opposite. 
 
 " Do sit down," she said. 
 
 " No! What can you tell me?" 
 
 "lean tell you to resist the misery you have; 
 not to court more." 
 
 "Can there be any that I have not?" 
 
 " Yes ! That which I have." She could not 
 withstand the impulse, and hardly cared to. 
 
 "That which you have !" His voice at last was 
 human. " You have done no wrong." 
 
 "Do only wrong-doers suffer?" she asked with a 
 sad smile. 
 
 "Oh, if 'twere only they who did ! if 'twere only 
 they who did !" he cried. " Then he would not 
 have killed himself." His heart was so full of his
 
 Tantalus. 155 
 
 latest pain, that even its hunger for her failed to 
 feel what her words had shown it. 
 
 "Who killed himself?" she asked. 
 
 "Johnny Granzine. I killed him." 
 
 " You did not kill him. His mother killed him," 
 she cried, rising to her feet ; and her energy flashed 
 another thought through her mind. " And I doubt 
 if he ever knew anything connected with you, to 
 give him trouble." 
 
 " His mother killed him ? How?", 
 
 "Oh, why must I talk to you of these terrible 
 things?" 
 
 " Never mind ! I will go," he said, with the 
 little thrill all fallen out of his voice. 
 
 " No," she added in her old imperious way, " I 
 told you to stay ! Didn't you know that his 
 mother had gone away?" 
 
 " No ! So I made her go away !" 
 
 " Oh, don't talk in that dead way, and don't hold 
 yourself responsible for every wicked thing that 
 everybody else ever did ! She went away because 
 she's a bad woman. If she had been a good one, 
 she would have felt it doubly her duty to stay at 
 home." 
 
 " Why should Johnny kill himself because she 
 went away?" 
 
 " She went away with a bad man." 
 
 "And Johnny knew nothing of me? But then 
 perhaps his mother would not have gone away if 
 it had not been for me. I was at the bottom of it." 
 
 " But you had nothing to do with her being 
 bad. You cannot blame yourself for that." 
 
 " I set the ball rolling," he remonstrated. " True,
 
 1 56 Tantalus. 
 
 I could not see where it was going," he added as 
 if meditating. " I could not know where all the 
 precipices were." He paused and looked long in 
 her face, and then said slowly in low tones, as if 
 thinking aloud: "Oh, angel of purity and good- 
 ness, why should I defile your white soul with 
 thought of my sins ?" 
 
 At last he had spoken in Muriel Calmire's voice, 
 and its vibration stirred the answering chords in 
 her soul. They drove the tears to her eyes, and 
 through them she looked up at him, sadly smiling, 
 and said: 
 
 "Those thoughts cannot harm me. And oh ! I 
 pity you so ! I pity you so !" 
 
 He fell on his knees before her and murmured: 
 
 "I have lost the right to love you, but I have 
 still the right to worship you, and let me ! Oh, let 
 me!" 
 
 And without thought, yielding to the weariness 
 of his overburdened soul, he buried his face, sob- 
 bing, in her lap. 
 
 How long they remained thus, neither of them 
 cared to know. But at last he seized her two 
 hands, kissed them, and arose. 
 
 " Now," said he, " I am ready for my duty, what- 
 ever it may be. When I falter, I will think of you!" 
 
 " Oh, Muriel, can that be right ? What is right ?" 
 
 " Anything I can think of you, is right and blessed. 
 Oh ! may you feel something of what you have 
 done for me !" 
 
 He took her hands in both of his, kissed them 
 long, and again, and was gone.
 
 CHAPTER LIT. 
 
 OUR ONLY GLIMPSE OF TOWN. 
 
 PERHAPS if life were not full of anticlimaxes, we 
 should not be able to stand its strain. Neverthe- 
 less, after a period of great exaltation, nobody is 
 quite satisfied to be in the commonplace position 
 of not knowing what to do with himself. Few 
 things make great moments seem, in retrospect, 
 more unreal. 
 
 Mr. Muriel, being a youth of big impulses, of 
 course put himself in this ridiculous position when 
 he left his beloved, by rushing out of the house 
 without the slightest idea where he was going. 
 After his long legs had carried him ahead for 
 some minutes, the absence of this idea occurred 
 to him. The special motive to see his uncle 
 had passed; and had it not, he would hardly 
 have sought an interview at the office of the Cal- 
 mire factories, in Wall Street. In fact, he had not 
 turned in that direction, but, with no other im- 
 pulse than habit, had turned up Fifth Avenue, not 
 even finding room in his distracted mind for the 
 notion that his face and apparel, after the experi- 
 ences of the last twelve hours, were hardly such 
 as he would wish to carry up that proper and 
 populous thoroughfare. 
 
 When he concluded that he was not going to 
 
 157
 
 1 5 8 On r only Glimpse of Town. 
 
 Wall Street, it naturally occurred to him to look 
 up and see where he was going. He was ap- 
 proaching Madison Square, and on all the great 
 buildings before him, save the club-house (as it 
 then was) beyond the monument, were flags flying at 
 half-mast. Despite these profuse emblems of some 
 heavy public sorrow, the scene was a pretty one, 
 the great white masses of building at his left run- 
 ning up into the clear blue sky (which, had it been 
 known to literature earlier, would have become pro- 
 verbial as readily as that of Italy); the contrast- 
 ing large red building between Fifth Avenue and 
 Broadway, the long avenue in front with its many 
 spires piercing that ineffable blue; the great open 
 mass of the same wondrous sky etched into by the 
 naked branches of the trees in the square; and, 
 most noticeable of all against the lovely high 
 background, the contrasting colors of the waving 
 flags. The prospect was beautiful and impressive 
 the nearest to a fine bit of purely urban scenery 
 that any American city presents, though of course 
 vastly inferior to much in Europe, and to some 
 in America where more of Nature has been left to 
 help. 
 
 As Muriel looked up at the half-masted flags, he 
 mused : " Of course! Of course ! Trouble every- 
 where ! But in the misfortunes of a nation, what 
 does any man feel that can at all compare with per- 
 sonal misery? If all the flags in the world meant 
 mourning, no one outside of some bereaved family 
 would be suffering as I suffer : and probably no 
 one in that family would. What can Death bring, 
 to equal what I have brought on myself?"
 
 Our only Glimpse of Town. ' 59 
 
 A policeman was on the corner Muriel was ap- 
 proaching, and he, being anxious, despite his own 
 misery, to know what woe had fallen on the state, 
 asked why the flags were at half-mast. The man 
 answered: 
 
 "An old hotel-keeper down near Chatham 
 Square, died this morning." 
 
 Muriel swore really for the first time in two 
 days and a half, then thanked the man and turned 
 down the avenue. 
 
 In a few moments, he wondered why, after leav- 
 ing Nina, he had not, instead of aimlessly rush- 
 ing out into the street, quietly gone up-stairs 
 to the room always known as his, and gone to 
 sleep. Although the Calmires were good sleepers, 
 no one of them, at least since their early " chivalric" 
 Louisiana days, was sufficiently used to the im- 
 pression that he had just killed a man, to be able 
 to pass a restful night with it. But any one of 
 them, after passing a restless night, was pretty 
 sure soon to be persuaded by Nature to recruit the 
 lost strength all of which may be a rather long- 
 winded way of saying that Mr. Muriel was sleepy. 
 So, realizing that Miss Wahring was probably 
 gone, he emulated the most famous of all the 
 deeds of all the kings of France with all their 
 armies, and took himself "back again." 
 
 He had a good nap on his lounge, and in the 
 afternoon, invigorated by his sleep and a bath, he 
 drove with his uncle, who had returned early from 
 his office, and talked over the future. This he did 
 with a certain grim calm, suggesting possibilities 
 that made life worse than useless to him, as if they
 
 1 60 Our only Glimpse of Town. 
 
 were simply the elements of a mathematical prob- 
 lem. This the men of the Calmire race were gen- 
 erally able to do when they grew to be men. 
 
 Muriel tried hard to get from his uncle an opinion 
 as to what he ought to do if everything should 
 turn out as, in due course of Nature, was to be ex- 
 pected; but the utmost he could get was: "There 
 are two things certain first, that you would be a 
 terribly sold man if you were to determine your 
 whole life now with reference to an expected con- 
 juncture, and then find the conjuncture failing to 
 arise; and second, as you have time to await the 
 conjuncture in, you have time (and you ought to 
 be glad of it) to let a determination shape itself. 
 Leaving your own will entirely out of account, 
 there are a myriad ways in which a conclusion 
 may be shaped for you. It's pitiful that youngsters 
 never can rest in such a fact, but must torture 
 themselves with curiosity and impatience." 
 
 "But waiting is the one thing I can't do," ex- 
 claimed Muriel. 
 
 " The ability to wait," said Calmire, " is one of 
 the highest of all human powers. Don't throw 
 away such a splendid chance to cultivate it." 
 
 "Yes! A splendid chance indeed!" gruesomely 
 assented poor Muriel. " But in this case, so many 
 people have got to wait! And I'd at least like 
 to show that I have some sort of human sym- 
 pathy for poor Minerva. I sometimes feel," he 
 added after a moment, "as if it would be only 
 decent in me to go and see her, or at least to write 
 to her."
 
 Our only Glimpse of Town. 161 
 
 "What sensible things could you say to her?" 
 
 " I hadn't got as far as that," said Muriel, with a 
 half-sheepish look in his smile. 
 
 " I've said everything to her," rejoined Calmire, 
 "that you ought to say, and a great deal more 
 than it would be wise for you to say or, possibly, 
 than it was wise for me to," he added, with his 
 candid habit (after the event) not exactly of self- 
 mistrust, but of general mistrust of human wisdom. 
 
 " If" murmured Muriel, thinking aloud, " I ought 
 to come up to the scratch and marry her, it would 
 save her an awful lot to do it now. And if I've got 
 to, I'd rather plunge and have it over with." 
 
 ' 'If ' is a good pair of tongs to handle red-hot 
 questions with, isn't it?" asked Calmire, and then 
 exclaimed: "Marry one woman while loving an- 
 other! The bravest man that ever did that, was a 
 coward somewhere back in his soul or a senti- 
 mentalist. Besides, it wouldn't be ' over with,' but 
 just begun. I suppose," he continued, " that here- 
 tofore, you've thought of things that make a noise 
 and kill, as the stuff to test heroes with. Probably 
 tame little uncertainty never appeared to you 
 dreadful enough for that. It doesn't make any 
 more noise than bacteria do, but I've known men 
 to do more cowardly things before it, than before 
 cannons. Now keep up your pluck to wait. Be- 
 sides, what did I tell you about the chance of your 
 being sold ?" 
 
 " But if my hara-kiri were done now," said 
 Muriel, with that perverseness which always sends 
 the tongue to an aching tooth, "all possibility of 
 awkward conjecture could be nipped in the bud."
 
 1 62 Our only Glimpse of Town. 
 
 Well," said Calmire, "you must give me, and 
 yourself too, credit for very little ingenuity if you 
 think that can't be taken care of. For instance: 
 when a man, after some years in Europe or far Ca- 
 thay, returns with a wife and a child or two, does 
 anybody bother over the exact ages of the chil- 
 dren ?" 
 
 "That's so!" exclaimed Muriel. " There doesn't 
 seem much sense in worrying about that." But 
 his exultant tone dropped as he added, "Yes, the 
 sepulchre may be whited over; but within ! 
 within !" 
 
 Calmire's ingenuity was powerless before that 
 problem, and for some moments both were silent. 
 At length he said : 
 
 " Yes, Muriel, all our debts to Nature have got 
 to be paid. But a wise man manages liabilities 
 which bankrupt a fool. The main thing is not to 
 be staggered by the debt, but to use hard experi- 
 ence to add to our resources in the rest of life." 
 
 " But I am bankrupt," declared Muriel. 
 
 " Bankrupts sometimes recover," said Calmire, 
 " and you are young. True, the fact of having been 
 bankrupt can't be obliterated, but it can be offset." 
 
 After another silence Muriel asked: "Do you see 
 marriage looming up as a possible duty ?" 
 
 " To my mind," answered Calmire, " when duty 
 is the only motive, marriage and duty are contra- 
 dictions in terms. I'm not wise enough, however, 
 to consider all possible circumstances, and certainly 
 not, at present, those of this case. Be glad of your 
 spare time."
 
 Our only Glimpse of Town. ' 63 
 
 " Well, what's the next step at this end of it ?" 
 asked Muriel. 
 
 " None at all," answered Calmire, " or as near as 
 you can get to it. Can't you go to work at some- 
 thing ?" 
 
 " Perhaps I could if I knew my doom. But I 
 wouldn't give much for any work I'll accomplish 
 before I do." 
 
 " Well, you're young !" said Calmire, pityingly, 
 " and haven't yet learned the worth of work as an 
 anodyne. Perhaps some other would be best for 
 your case." 
 
 " Oh, I don't deserve any anodyne," exclaimed 
 Muriel. " I keep thinking about this thing all the 
 time. If there's a right about it, I'll find it. I don't 
 slip up in my duty there at least ! The thing is 
 never absent from my mind, except when I sleep." 
 
 " My poor boy !" exclaimed Calmire, turning to- 
 wards him. " My poor boy ! How in the world 
 did I manage to forget that before ? Why, do you 
 know what you're doing ?" 
 
 Muriel was astonished at his uncle's warmth, 
 but simply said: "Why, that's the least I can do. 
 I owe that to everybod)^ concerned." 
 
 " You poor boy ! Don't you know that you're 
 simply doing all you can to drive yourself crazy ? 
 That's monomania having one thing in mind 
 all the time that's the first step in insanity. 
 And I'm such an old fool that I didn't think to 
 warn you against it before! Yet I know per- 
 fectly well that in all distress, that's the first thing 
 inexperienced people do. I've even heard a be- 
 reaved mother say that she owed it to her child's
 
 164 Our only Glimpse of Town. 
 
 memory to blend it with every thought of her life. 
 What earthly naturalness and sanity of thought 
 can exist under such conditions every natural 
 sequence interrupted and clogged by a foreign ele- 
 ment ? People always begin that way when they 
 go crazy. Now instead of keeping this thing 
 
 in your mind, try every reasonable diversion to 
 keep it out, as long as nothing can be settled about 
 it. Why, haven't you found before now that many 
 a day you've vainly puzzled yourself tired over 
 something, when next morning the solution would 
 come into your mind like a flash ? Other things 
 even, the mere fact that a question will stick in 
 your mind to the exclusion of free attention to the 
 other topics that naturally arise, is a reason why 
 you should drive it out." 
 
 " Uncle Grand, how old must a man get before 
 he stops being a fool ?" 
 
 " Ask some older man than I." 
 
 " But I mean," persisted Muriel, " that since I 
 got into this trouble, there have been lots of things 
 coming up like what you've just told me, that seem 
 plain enough, but that I hadn't sense enough to 
 think of. Now, how old must a fellow get before 
 he thinks. of all the obvious things?" 
 
 "Ah! You can't count it by years!" said Cal- 
 mire. " Count it by troubles, and then it depends 
 on how big they are. You know that there's 
 pretty good authority for saying that if a man 
 happens to be a downright fool, even braying in a 
 mortar can't cure him." 
 
 " Well, take a fool of about my grade ?" Muriel 
 inquired.
 
 Our only Glimpse of Town. 165 
 
 " Is this really you ?" Calmire exclaimed, turning 
 toward him. " Your experience with the mortar has 
 not been entirely without result. Well, to answer 
 your question, your first long letter looked as if 
 you'd had about enough for the first round, any- 
 how. But a man never gets so much that he can't 
 get more. Yet when he gets knocked absolutely 
 wrong-end-first, and has sense enough to begin to 
 work around to natural bearings again, he'll have 
 to take pretty much all the points in his individual 
 horizon he'll have to revise pretty much every 
 belief he ever had from that in his own existence 
 out to that of the existence of a Law in Nature. 
 And the queer thing is that nearly every time he 
 thinks he's made a new point, it will simply be a 
 new side of some one of his old commonplace 
 ideas." 
 
 " Sometimes," said Muriel, " I feel so steady that 
 I think I must have got around all right that I 
 needn't bother my head anymore, but need simply 
 wait until some new fact arises, and then do, and 
 keep cool about it. And then a little later, I find 
 myself in a perfect hell-caldron of questions and 
 anxieties." 
 
 "That's all natural," said Calmire. "Your 
 nerves will help themselves to a rest occasionally: 
 '.f they didn't, you'd go crazy, and that's not our 
 way; but just as soon as they have had a respite, 
 they will want to get up and wrestle with the un- 
 certainties again as long as there are uncertain- 
 ties before you. You can save yourself lots of 
 trouble by diverting your nerves to other things,
 
 1 66 Our only Glimpse of Town. 
 
 instead of encouraging them into this useless 
 struggle, as I've been fool enough to let you do." 
 
 "Oh don't keep on scolding yourself so, Uncle 
 Grand. Are you responsible for all my folly and 
 inexperience ?" 
 
 " I have a good deal of charity for a young fool, 
 Muriel, but if there's anything I hate, it's an old 
 one, and I sometimes fear that that's just what I'm 
 getting to be." 
 
 And Muriel had the first hearty laugh, though a 
 very short one, that he had had for many a day, as 
 he looked at the splendid man, erect, alert, per- 
 fectly turned out, tooling his fiery horses along 
 with the unconscious grace of young Phoebus 
 Apollo. 
 
 Next they fell to talking about what Muriel 
 had better do with himself for the immediate 
 present. Solitude through the Winter in the 
 monotonous country place where he had lately 
 been immured, would not, his uncle was satisfied, 
 be good for him. As for Muriel himself, he was in- 
 different on all points except that he did not want 
 to remain in New York, subject, although he said 
 nothing about that, to experiencing and inflicting 
 such meetings as that of the morning. As it was, 
 Muriel had led his uncle to drive outside of the 
 park, in order to lessen the chance of imposing a 
 sight of himself on Nina. He would himself have 
 been glad enough of the sweet torture of seeing 
 her again, but at last he had grown able to think 
 of more sides than his own. 
 
 As, then, he wanted to avoid both New York and 
 the country, and in fact everything that he had
 
 Our only Glimpse of Town. 1 67 
 
 ever known, except his uncle, the obvious thing for 
 him was to go to Europe with a friend who was 
 soon to start for a saunter from Pau to Naples. 
 This was not at first obvious to him, though, and he 
 said some grim things about a man in his situation 
 going on " a pleasure- trip." Calmire told him not 
 to sentimentalize, though if it would relieve his 
 inflamed conscience, he might regard the trip as a 
 needed educational one. At last he decided to go, 
 and to come back in time for his impending re- 
 sponsibilities. The existing ones, his uncle insisted 
 on managing himself. 
 
 One thing surprised Calmire a little and pleased 
 him immensely. Muriel had not once evinced the 
 slightest inclination to shirk. His only desire had 
 been to determine what his responsibilities might 
 be; and while Calmire knew that this could not 
 endure with absolute consistency, it made him 
 realize more than anything else could have done, 
 what the recent weeks had effected in Muriel. 
 
 Notwithstanding his usual unreserve, Muriel 
 had not let his uncle know that he had even seen 
 Nina that morning. Everything about that inter- 
 view was too sacred for any soul that had not felt 
 it. Down in the bottom of Muriel's, too deep even 
 for his own thorough realization, the memory of it 
 had already assumed some of the awful sacredness 
 of death.
 
 CHAPTER LIIL 
 
 WHERE MAN MAY GO. 
 
 IT may well be supposed that the tender shoots 
 of Nina's new convictions shoots that, to most of 
 the contemporary world, are hopelessly juiceless, 
 had not yielded her during the few days since Cal- 
 mire last tended them, all the tonics needed 
 against her own harassing thoughts, not to speak 
 of such a strain upon her as the interview with 
 Muriel. Naturally the first fervor of what she 
 might perhaps have been ready to call her con- 
 version, had somewhat cooled, as such fervors 
 always do, and her former habits of mind were as- 
 sailing it, as such habits always do, and bringing 
 her, if not intellectually, at least emotionally, back 
 to the dark borders of her skepticism. The com- 
 munion with the Infinite in which her soul had 
 been immersed on that wondrous morning, had 
 not since been so complete, for Nature had not 
 since revealed itself to her with such inspiring un- 
 reserve. At moments, she had known something 
 of the feeling which had so exalted and sustained 
 her; but whatever be one's best affections be he 
 lover of a cult, or of man, or woman either, or of 
 Nature, or of All, those moments of supreme exal- 
 tation are vouchsafed but seldom. Nina was not 
 yet the matured creature who has outgrown the 
 
 168
 
 Where Man may Go. 169 
 
 yearning for parental care. Though no girl of a 
 loving disposition ever was naturally more inde- 
 pendent, her independence was not yet fully de- 
 veloped; and moreover, she was of a loving dis- 
 position to the extent that made a man's robuster 
 intellect the natural complement of hers; and she 
 had got into the habit of turning toward Calmire 
 as most girls turn toward the ordinary modes of re- 
 ligious consolation. She now looked with positive 
 dread for a communication from him postponing 
 on some pretext but the real one Muriel's presence 
 in town, a chat she was hoping for the next 
 evening. It had been arranged that she and 
 her mother were to run around and dine with Cal- 
 mire and Mrs. John, who, of course, was his guest. 
 
 No postponement was decreed, however, but Nina 
 felt sure that Muriel would not be there, and she 
 was glad to go. After dinner, Mrs. Wahring, who 
 somehow, particularly hated smoke when the en- 
 durance of it would force any woman but Nina to 
 keep Calmire company over his cigar, declined his 
 invitation to that function of familiar friendship, 
 dragged Mrs. John into the drawing-room with her, 
 and left Calmire and Nina together before the 
 dining-room fire. 
 
 Calmire knew well enough that Nina would 
 need her new lessons again and again before they 
 could become part of her working fibre, and was 
 only waiting to help her on. So he began: 
 
 " Well, how do our new philosophies progress ?" 
 
 If he had studied for a good opening for her, 
 as perhaps he had, he could not have done better. 
 The question was almost impersonal.
 
 1 70 Where Man may Go. 
 
 " Well," she answered, " I get myself terribly 
 mixed up. I think I must be very incapable of 
 confining my mind to those hard certain truths you 
 seem to content yours with, and keeping it away 
 from the things you call imaginary, and hate so." 
 
 " It's awful for a poor old man to feel himself 
 such an ogre in the eyes of a nice girl," he said, 
 laughing. " But seriously now : do you think my 
 soul is only filled with 'hard* things?" 
 
 " It's the tenderest, gentlest soul a man ever 
 had !" she exclaimed. " But your mind is so fear- 
 fully rigid beyond a certain point." 
 
 "You know," said he, "or perhaps you don't, 
 that I think intellectual integrity, and even com- 
 mon every-day honesty, depend almost as much on 
 the mind as upon the conscience, possibly more. I 
 don't mean upon the range of mind, but upon its 
 firmness in whatever principles its range includes. 
 I suspect that most moral breakdowns are preceded 
 by intellectual juggling by the person convincing 
 himself that the wrong course is right. No! in 
 men cursed by 'the malady of thought,' strength 
 depends largely upon judgment. Don't blame one 
 for trying to keep his judgment firm." 
 
 " I didn't mean to blame you. But there's some- 
 thing awful in you: my mind seeks to roam up 
 the pleasant valleys of my old beliefs, and you 
 loom up before me like a great precipice." 
 
 Calmire laughed again, though with a certain 
 serious satisfaction. After a little silence, he said: 
 
 " Do you want me to lecture some more ?" 
 
 "I always like to hear you talk. What do you 
 want to talk about now ?"
 
 Where Man may Go. \ 7 I 
 
 "You're very kind," he answered. "I know 
 that I must sometimes be an awful bore, because 
 I'm so much interested in some things that are 
 not generally found interesting. This isn't one 
 of those cases, though," he said with smiling 
 gallantry, "for I want to talk now because I'm 
 interested in you. Well, if you care to hear 
 
 me, I'd like to tell you something about the 
 limits of real thought where the precipices ought 
 to stand, or rather where they do stand all 
 around the little circle of our capacities; and where 
 we ought to realize that they stand, so that we may 
 not blindly dash ourselves against them, but sur- 
 mount them, or rather remove them so far as we 
 can, by the slow processes that Nature provides." 
 
 " Go on," she said, turning her chair a little 
 more directly toward him. " You're very good to 
 me!" 
 
 "Ah, you're the sort of pupil it's a pleasure to 
 be good to!" he exclaimed, as he leaned forward 
 and knocked the ashes of his cigar on the hearth. 
 
 Often afterward, she thought of how noble he 
 looked as he made that little commonplace mo- 
 tion the fire throwing a certain radiance over his 
 strong features, and glowing in the kind eyes, and 
 his grand form seeming so powerful, outlined by 
 the close-fitting evening suit, and emphasized by 
 the white expanse over the chest. 
 
 " Now the nearest of those precipices," he went on, 
 " is one that you will find it very hopeful to contem- 
 plate. It is the inscrutability of consciousness. To 
 understand a thing, you know, is simply to find in it 
 particulars identical with particulars in things we al-
 
 1 72 Where Man may Go. 
 
 ready are familiar with. Now we can't understand 
 consciousness, for as long as our minds are what 
 they are, we cannot get at it. It is behind all our 
 thoughts and feelings, both as it originates them or 
 receives them from without, as a mirror is behind 
 the pictures it sends forth; but we can't analyze con- 
 sciousness as we can a mirror. If we think of it, it is 
 behind that thought. If we think a second thought, 
 to the effect that consciousness is behind the first 
 one, consciousness is still behind that second one, 
 and so it would inevitably be behind a never-ending 
 series we could think forever, and as each thought 
 should take a step toward consciousness, con- 
 sciousness would take a step backward: we could 
 never get at it to compare it with anything else, so 
 wecan never understand it. Our minds are made up 
 of its phenomena, just as the external world is made 
 up of the phenomena of the other Inscrutable Verity; 
 but we cannot get at the Verity behind thoughts any 
 more than we can get at the Verity behind things." 
 
 " But what is there hopeful in all that ?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Simply this: that as we can't know anything 
 about consciousness, we can't have the slightest evi- 
 dence that it ever dies. We know that the body 
 with its nervous system the apparatus that acts 
 upon consciousness, and through which conscious- 
 ness acts, does die that the combination of ever- 
 changing particles which makes up that apparatus 
 is eventually resolved; but as we know nothing 
 about consciousness, we have no evidence whatever 
 that it may not survive independently of the appa- 
 ratus, or connected with new apparatus which our 
 present senses are unable to recognize."
 
 Where Man may Go. 173 
 
 "Why then," exclaimed Nina with a beaming 
 face, " we are immortal." 
 
 " Perhaps: but don't be too fast. I've only told 
 you there's not the slightest evidence against it. 
 But I'm bound to tell you that there's not the 
 slightest evidence for it. Yet there is a little evi- 
 dence that in time may make for it, for there is 
 something faintly visible that may mean that con- 
 sciousness is independent of the body that it can 
 leave and return to the same body. I don't mean 
 merely in fainting and sleep, when you might call 
 consciousness latent, but in other circumstances, 
 where two, or even three consciousnesses have 
 alternated in the same body. There are several 
 cases of people who have lost all recollection of 
 their past, and all intellectual and moral resem- 
 blance to their former selves ; and who have had 
 to begin life over again with new minds, new 
 characters, and new educations. The new con- 
 sciousness sometimes has been an improvement, 
 and sometimes the reverse sometimes with more 
 intelligence, and better dispositions, and sometimes 
 with worse. It has been precisely as if there were 
 a different soul in the same body. In many such 
 cases, probably most, the first soul has returned 
 after a while, at the same point in memory and 
 faculty where it left ; in some cases, the second 
 has come a second time, and in some cases there 
 has been even a third, each existing and coming 
 and going independently of the others. Hyp- 
 
 notic suggestion has been able quite frequently 
 to substitute the second soul, and sometimes the 
 third."
 
 1 74 Where Man may Go. 
 
 " I don't understand," Nina interrupted. " How 
 can that be ?" 
 
 " Why," Calmire explained, " you know that a 
 hypnotizer can make his subject fancy almost any- 
 thing : why shouldn't he make him fancy himself 
 somebody else ? And by renewing such fancies 
 with a good deal of completeness and uniformity, 
 the subject can be made at will to take on virtually 
 a new character, or even (as far as experiment 
 has got) either of two new characters. In either 
 of these ways either by natural processes which 
 we don't yet fully understand (though injuries 
 and shocks help account for some of them), or 
 by hypnotic suggestion, slow, stingy, timid people 
 have been changed into quick, liberal, dashing 
 ones, each either with no recollection of the 
 other, or, if with a recollection, only as of an- 
 other person. As, however, physical changes can 
 produce these changes of soul, its identity with 
 the body would seem to be indicated; but that is 
 offset by the fact that hypnotic suggestion from 
 another soul can produce them too, and perhaps 
 by the other fact that a very slight change in body 
 effects the total change in consciousness. But 
 the subject is unending: you can find more about 
 it in the books. The point I want to give you now 
 is that there is something that may look a little 
 like evidence for the soul existing independently 
 of the body. Don't ignore it entirely, but don't at- 
 tach much weight to it. There is also a faint possi- 
 bility that that possible new hypnotic sense may 
 yet get hold of more evidence. If it does, possibly 
 there may then be some indication of the persistence
 
 Where Man may Go, '75 
 
 of consciousness later than the apparatus, as well 
 as for its independence of the apparatus. But this 
 is getting too much like moonshine. Yet we may 
 be on the way toward something substantial, for 
 already the evidence regarding the persistence of 
 consciousness, seems at least even, while before the 
 discovery of the persistence of force, I think the evi- 
 dence was distinctly against that of consciousness." 
 
 " How ?" asked Nina. 
 
 "Why, I don't see what there was to do then, 
 when the force that moved a man's body and brain 
 stopped moving them, but to believe that the force 
 was annihilated." 
 
 " Why, isn't it ?" queried Nina. " What becomes 
 of it ?" 
 
 "Weren't you lectured enough last Summer to 
 know that something must become of it ? Why, it 
 simply takes up other work. The share of force 
 that the organism was constantly drawing from 
 the air and food-supply is left free for other or- 
 ganisms; and that already contained in the body 
 itself, goes to resolving the body into its elements 
 setting them free for new combinations; and in 
 doing that, the force is turned into heat and ab- 
 sorbed into the universal heat ready, probably, to 
 be converted into some new mode of force: though 
 that's farther than we've yet been able to follow it. 
 But thirty years ago, people didn't know that, and 
 they had to believe, so far as I can see, that when a 
 man died, what were called his ' vital forces ' ceased 
 to exist. And as they had to believe that, they had 
 to believe, so far as I can see, that his consciousness 
 ceased to exist too, unless they were simply going
 
 1 76 Where Man may Go. 
 
 to believe against their senses under the inspiration 
 of a few great geniuses; and you find a myriad of 
 great fools laying claim to the same inspirations. 
 But, for that matter, it won't do to trust only to 
 the geniuses: the hypnotic sense, if there's any 
 such inspiration to be had through if, is by no 
 means restricted to geniuses." 
 
 " Well, there's room to hope, anyhow," said Nina. 
 
 " Most certainly, if you'll keep your hopes within 
 reason. But see how strongly Nature enjoins us 
 to limit them to regard them as conjectures hy- 
 potheses; not to found faiths and practices upon 
 them! Reflect how doing that, has led, probably, 
 to more evils than any other blunder of the race. 
 We're here to mind our business here. And now 
 let's go on and find out a little more definitely what 
 our business is, or at least what its limits are. 
 Let's accept the inscrutability, with our present 
 faculties and present evidence, of the question of 
 consciousness continuing or ceasing, as we accept 
 the inscrutability of its very existing. So, as 
 we can't understand it in itself, let's go to its phe- 
 nomena, as we have to go to the phenomena of 
 that other Inscrutability behind the external world. 
 1 said a moment ago, that to understand a thing is to 
 find a resemblance in it to something that we were 
 previously familiar with. The degree of our under- 
 standing, of course, depends upon the number of 
 such resemblances that we find. I showed you, 
 too, that that's why we can't understand conscious- 
 ness, and yet there's just one particular in which 
 we can see that it resembles something else." 
 
 "I've caught it!" cried Nina, her bright face
 
 Where Man may Go. 
 
 lighting up. "I've caught it! You just showed 
 it! The verity behind the inner world is inscru- 
 table, the verity behind the outer world is in- 
 scrutable: the soul is like God!" 
 
 " But that's merely in a negative particular," 
 said Calmire. " There's a positive one." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " I've told you. See if you can't think it up." 
 
 "When did you tell me?" 
 
 " A moment ago as far as the soul's part goes." 
 
 Nina meditated and shook her head. 
 
 "I told you," said Calmire, " that consciousness, 
 in a degree, originates the phenomena of the world 
 within.'' 
 
 " Oh yes!" cried Nina. " So does God originate 
 those of the world without. So in our own little 
 worlds, each of us is a God! We create! But I'm 
 not so glad of the mere fact that we create, as I am 
 that doing so makes us like the great God." 
 
 " Yet," said Calmire, smiling at her pretty en- 
 thusiasms, but more at her quick recoil from self- 
 aggrandizement, "consciousness is nothing without 
 the external world : the German didn't evolve 
 much of a camel." 
 
 " No!" said Nina. " The external world of God 
 must supply the sources of all right thoughts. 
 We're absolutely dependent on God. I like that 
 too. ' Our wills are ours to make them thine.' " 
 
 "I don't know about 'absolutely dependent,' 
 Nina. You know it seemed to us once talking at 
 Fleuvemont, that some power, and an increasing 
 power, of controlling the universe, is possessed by 
 man. But here we are in paradox again : paradox is
 
 1 78 Where Man may Go. 
 
 the alarm-bell that always sounds when our reason- 
 ing is getting beyond our bounds. You see that 
 as soon as we assert free-will, we assert an effect 
 without a cause which is something, you'll find 
 if you try, that you can't think. One of the pret- 
 tiest demonstrations of evolution is that our ex- 
 perience of it is so absolutely without exception, 
 that our minds are actually incapable of think- 
 ing of anything as not an effect from a cause." 
 
 Nina reflected a moment and then said, "Yet 
 you believe in free-will, Mr. Calmire ?" 
 
 " Yes as I believe in consciousness and in the 
 external Ineffable Power not attempting to un- 
 derstand it. In one sense, by the way, believing 
 in free-will is not believing in an effect without a 
 cause, for we can refer it to consciousness as a 
 cause; but that puts our paradox only a step farther 
 back, for you can't refer consciousness back. 
 Even if you think of it as started by the Source of 
 everything else, you can't help thinking of it as 
 something now distinct and independent of its 
 source. But we're getting a long way off from 
 my attempt to indicate how our understanding is 
 bounded. At Fleuvemont, we discussed what 
 thought is what the structure of our minds; and 
 you just said, very properly, that the external world 
 of God gives the sources of all right thoughts. 
 Now all our talk has made it obvious that 
 legitimate thinking is only thinking that can be, 
 by sound logic, traced back to sensation to ex- 
 perience, direct or ancestral. And so, beliefs which 
 contradict experience, very seldom have any foun- 
 dation: though, as experience is imperfect, a few
 
 Where Man may Go. 1 79 
 
 may have had. Experience is, however, our only 
 test: though, like all our possessions, it's imper- 
 fect. It follows, then, that those precipices we 
 were talking about, which surround human capaci- 
 ty, stand at the borders of experience;- and the only 
 way to move them farther away, is to enlarge the 
 borders of experience. Or, to change the meta- 
 phor, the boundary of our little sphere of life is 
 translucent but not transparent: it is penetrated 
 by some of the light from the surrounding Infinity, 
 but we cannot see what is outside, and all our 
 speculations on it are vain until experience con- 
 firms them. Still we can enlarge the sphere, but 
 only by learning the laws of its constitution, and 
 following them." 
 
 " But what," asked Nina, " is meant by that 
 phrase: ' the scientific uses of the imagination' ?" 
 
 " Why of course the imagination can conjecture 
 from the data of experience, as to the directions in 
 which experience can be wisely enlarged. But our 
 conjectures should be in the directions experience 
 points out. The attempted short-cuts in other 
 directions make up the great mass of the race's 
 wasted effort, and have led to probably its greatest 
 misfortunes." 
 
 "Yes," persisted Nina, "that may all be true in 
 science and philosophy. But how can we be con- 
 tent to wait with such terrible mysteries before 
 us in life itself?" 
 
 " Nothing can be true in philosophy unless it's 
 true ' in life itself,' and one great function of 
 philosophy is to make us content before all mys- 
 teries that is, content to wait and study them.
 
 Where Man may Go. 
 
 But just what kind of mysteries do you mean ?" 
 
 " Well, take that case of poor Charley Staller. 
 He was a splendid fellow good, capable, support- 
 ing his old mother finely, engaged to one of the 
 nicest girls hi town, respected by everybody, hon- 
 orable, useful. Now why should he be cut off so sud- 
 denly and terribly, and lots of young men not worth 
 their salt be left to grow old at somebody-else's 
 expense and discomfort ? Indeed, indeed, Mr. Cal- 
 mire, much as I respect all your philosophy much, 
 perhaps I may say, as it has helped me, I'm afraid it 
 can't help a great deal before a mystery like that." 
 
 "Why!" exclaimed Calmire, "I didn't know 
 there was any mystery about it. The poor boy 
 broke his neck, didn't he ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Chasing an anise-seed bag over a fence that 
 was too high for his horse ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Doctor didn't find anything irregular about it, 
 did he?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Then where's the mystery? Boys will jump 
 fences, and even an old fool like me is known to 
 sometimes. I can't see anything mysterious when 
 we get our necks broken." 
 
 " Oh, you're teasing me again, Mr. Calmire ! 
 You know perfectly well what I mean." 
 
 " Well, I'd rather you'd put it to me in your own 
 words." 
 
 "Why!" answered Nina, " it's so mysterious that 
 God should permit such an awful thing to happen. 
 Such a mystery is too terrible not to cry out against."
 
 Where Man may Go. 181 
 
 " I thought," said Calmire quietly, " that ' God ' 
 was liberal enough to let us have a good deal 
 of our own way, and that it was the boy and his 
 horse that made it happen. But of course if you 
 want to put the responsibility back on the same 
 God that sent your boat down on Courtenay, you 
 can make it as mysterious as you please. But then 
 it's you who are reading the mystery into Nature; 
 it isn't really there. You make that sort of a God 
 out of your imagination, and then think it strange 
 that you haven't made him to fit the facts of the 
 Universe. Of course you can put a God behind 
 anything if you want to; but you'll find yourself 
 no better off when you come to account for his 
 ways. Your mind can't make a God consistent with 
 the facts, nobody's mind ever did. You know lots 
 of people from the Greeks down to Stuart Mill have 
 tried to account for the way things get mixed here, 
 by the assumption that this planet, or this system, 
 is governed by a viceroy of limited powers, with 
 Almighty God behind him." 
 
 " Well !" said Nina, " if the god behind him is 
 almighty, why doesn't he enable his viceroy to 
 govern perfectly ?" 
 
 " Good girl !" exclaimed Calmire. " There goes 
 the alarm-bell again, you see ! You're beginning 
 to realize, aren't you?, that through all our talks 
 (and always, for that matter,) whenever anything 
 counter to experience is assumed, reasoning on it 
 leads to paradox. Everybody who does that sort 
 of thing gets into trouble, and it's well to watch 
 out for the alarm. If only people would realize 
 what it means, and stop !"
 
 1 82 Where Man may Go. 
 
 " But," said Nina, " those who have perfect faith 
 don't get into trouble." 
 
 " ' Perfect faith/ '' answered Calmire, " is perfect 
 confession that one knows nothing about it, and is 
 willing to leave it alone. That's my position ex- 
 actly." 
 
 "Yet," expostulated Nina, "you show me that 
 there is a God, and a spiritual world. And when 
 we began talking to-night, you showed me grounds 
 for faith in immortality." 
 
 "Well, I haven't professed to know anything 
 about them, have I, except so far as they are re- 
 vealed in Nature and humanity? And as to im- 
 mortality, don't call that faith, Nina. It's not as 
 clear as the other two. Call it hope if you want 
 to-, but better still, leave it alone if you can, and 
 confine yourself to your life here. You'll find 
 enough to do, and doing it is the best preparation 
 we can conceive for more life Beyond the pre- 
 
 cipices which surround us, no man has ever been, 
 no instrument or formula has ever reached, and 
 reasonable belief is impossible. The beliefs men 
 have manufactured without evidence like that in 
 an anthropomorphic God, perfectly powerful, per- 
 fectly good and perfectly just, who is all the time 
 conniving at evil and injustice contradict them- 
 selves and, sooner or later, make trouble. Nature 
 tells us, if she tells us anything, that we have no 
 business with them."
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 MAN'S RANGE ENOUGH FOR MAN. 
 
 NINA sat silent a good while and then said: 
 " I've got to get used to these thoughts. At 
 times lately, I have realized more than I ever 
 dreamed before, of the significance of the universe; 
 but what you have been saying to-night makes me 
 realize more than I ever dreamed before, of the 
 littleness of our share in it. Instead of lifting me 
 up, you have cast me down." 
 
 " Ah, that's the old, old trouble of looking at it in 
 the wrong way," he answered. " You're oppressed 
 by old ideas of significance and insignificance of 
 big and little. Now while such ideas are an es- 
 sential part of our buying and selling and build- 
 ing, and even of our studying and investigating 
 in short, of all the details included in our lives, 
 when we try to apply them to that Infinity in 
 which our lives are included, they begin to lose 
 their meaning. Our limited minds can only go a 
 limited way in those questions. You say that 
 you are cast down because our share in the uni- 
 verse is so limited. Yet you can't even think 
 of our having an unlimited share in it; you 
 can put in words some such idea, but all the 
 same, it will be a false idea what it's getting 
 the fashion to call a pseud-idea. Place your 
 self, in imagination, beyond the farthest star 
 
 183
 
 1 84 Mans Range Enough for Man. 
 
 you can see : there, you have every reason to be- 
 lieve, you would see others equally far : we have 
 no reason to suppose that there is a limit." 
 
 " But, Mr. Calmire, I read the other day an argu- 
 ment showing that the space where there are stars 
 is limited." 
 
 "Very likely: there have been many such argu- 
 ments. What was that one ?" 
 
 "Well, I can't give it exactly, but its conclusion 
 was that unless the stars were limited, our nights 
 would be bright." 
 
 Calmire laughed, and exclaimed: "Oh yes! 
 The argument was that as there are many more 
 stars of the second magnitude than of the first, 
 more of the third than of the second, and so on, so 
 we get more light from the many stars of second 
 magnitude than we do from the few of first, more 
 from those of third than from those of second, and 
 so on down, until we get more light from the many 
 very remote stars we see, than from the relatively 
 few very near: therefore, the farther the stars ex- 
 tend, the more light we get, both relatively and 
 absolutely, and if they extended indefinitely, we 
 should be getting indefinitely increasing light. 
 Was that it?" 
 
 "Yes, and it seems perfectly conclusive." 
 
 Calmire laughed again, and said: "We are get- 
 ting indefinitely increasing light and not in the 
 physical sense alone; but, as I've often told you, 
 there's a great deal more of both kinds, that we 
 haven't got yet; and your friend's argument, my 
 child, is nonsense, as every human argument deal- 
 ing with infinities must be. You won't find a
 
 Mans Range Enough for Man. 185 
 
 prettier demonstration than this just here, of the 
 inevitable limits to our faculties and to our per- 
 ceived environment." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Calmire! The argument seems per- 
 fectly simple." 
 
 "Yes, dear, so simple that it leaves something 
 out. You know, don't you, that the light of even 
 many of the stars we see, has taken more time than 
 we can conceive, to reach us?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, how then are we going to be conscious of 
 the light of the stars far beyond even them?" 
 
 " I didn't think of that !" said Nina. 
 
 " Neither did your author. You see that we are 
 simply where our minds must stop. In the first 
 place, we have no evidence that the medium which 
 brings us light, can carry it an indefinite dis- 
 tance, any more than the medium which brings us 
 sound can*; and even if it could, the light of 
 stars infinitely far off would require infinite time 
 to reach us: so we could never see it. Yet that 
 expression really conveys nothing to the mind. It 
 has the negative meaning of upsetting your author's 
 equally meaningless hypothesis, though in, other 
 words, of bringing the whole question into paradox 
 just where such questions always end. But sup- 
 pose the ' fields of the stars' limited, we can't con- 
 ceive space beyond them limited, and yet we can't 
 conceive it limitless, though some comets come to 
 our Sun in curves which seem to prove that after 
 they leave it, they keep moving away forever." 
 
 "What a grand conception!" she exclaimed. 
 " So would I have my soul go !" 
 
 * The aspects of this question have changed since Mr. 
 held forth, but not so as to affect the argument.
 
 1 86 Mans Range Enough for Man. 
 
 " Paradox again, my child ! It's simply no con- 
 ception at all. Our minds can't really conceive it: 
 we can't imagine the comets stopping, but we can't 
 imagine their going forever, either. It would take 
 infinite time to imagine infinite motion which 
 expression sounds as if it meant something; but 
 really it doesn't, for reasons that you know by this 
 time, Miss." 
 
 "Well, I want to know more than I can now, 
 anyhow." 
 
 " An admirable desire, but, like every other 
 one, needing proper regulation ! If you had 
 the answer to every question that tortures your 
 soul now, each answer would raise a dozen new 
 questions you would find more questions, as you 
 would find more stars, and so on to infinity; 
 and knowledge itself, unless curiosity is tem- 
 pered by reason, would tend to misery rather 
 than to happiness. Those questions, rightly used, 
 are new sources of interest and activity; but if we 
 persist at looking at the subject in your mistaken 
 way, the wider share in the Universe that we get, 
 the more limited our share in it must appear. 
 Looked at in the right way, the fields we have, 
 and the privilege of widening them, give us more 
 room for intellectual activity than we can hope 
 to cover; and thought in those fields is useful and 
 happy. If we keep within the bounds that Na- 
 ture sets for us, we have plenty to do, and what's 
 even more important, no need to occupy ourselves 
 with chimerical speculations, or to cut each other's 
 throats over them and burn each other at stakes." 
 
 "That's true! Perhaps if my faith about God
 
 Mans Range Enough for Man. 187 
 
 and the spiritual world, were knowledge, I could 
 rest content." 
 
 "Do even the orthodox claim much knowledge? 
 Probably you know all of such subjects now that 
 your intellect is capable of comprehending, except 
 as you expand it by more study and more life. 
 Plainly, if you could put your questions to a super- 
 human intelligence, the answers would require su- 
 perhuman intelligence to comprehend; and the 
 words we have yet made, could not frame them. 
 You know that all through the talk of that great 
 man Paul, runs the question: 'How shall the finite 
 comprehend the infinite?' But yet we are not 
 wholly restricted to our ignorance. There is an 
 education of the human race s whatever may be the 
 nature of the Power which instituted it: all evolu- 
 tion has been working toward intelligence and 
 toward morality. But nothing js plainer than that 
 we can only know the educating Power through 
 the slow and salutary processes of the education. 
 Remember that it is but by the patient use of those 
 senses which you have been trained to despise, that 
 we have learned that that Power is one that the 
 actual energy which swings the stars, blazes in 
 their fires, warms the air and the plants, and vivi- 
 fies the conscious creature, is the same force by 
 which the human being thinks and feels, the same 
 that glows from canvas, throbs through sym- 
 phonies, and conquers Time and Death in poems." 
 
 His exaltation carried her with it for a moment. 
 But soon her face fell listless again, and she said: 
 " But Time and Death conquer in the end." 
 
 " And what if they do ? Oh dear !" he added
 
 1 88 Man's Range Enough for Man. 
 
 half wearily, but cheerfully. " How that always 
 comes up to young people ! How one has to go 
 over it with them again and again ! Well, perhaps 
 it can't be gone over too often. In the first place, 
 as we were saying a few minutes ago, we don't 
 know that thoughts, or even memories, die. In 
 old age the memories of youth are said to be more 
 vivid than in middle life; and certainly in dreams, 
 things apparently long forgotten come up with all 
 the vividness of reality; and the planchette boards 
 and all sorts of automatic writing and talking are 
 constantly showing a stock of memories and im- 
 pulses beneath our consciousness." 
 
 " But," Nina objected, " the things themselves 
 die, and the people, and everything that's lovely." 
 
 "Your faith of a few minutes ago was only in 
 the gristle, wasn't it ?" said Calmire, Then he went 
 on, apparently regardless of the subject, to ask: 
 " Can you make out that picture between the 
 windows ?" 
 
 "I seem to see the dome of St. Peter's in it." 
 
 "That's a thing, I suppose?" queried Calmire. 
 
 "Certainly !" 
 
 " Which ?" pursued Calmire. " The picture there, 
 or the stone dome in Rome ?" 
 
 "Why both, I suppose." 
 
 " Which is St. Peter's this, or the one in Rome ?" 
 
 " Why, the one in Rome, of course." 
 
 "Well now," said Calmire, "suppose that an 
 earthquake were to throw down the dome in Rome, 
 and later, somebody taking the existing pictures 
 and drawings were to reproduce it exactly. That 
 would be essentially just as much Michelangelo's
 
 Mans Range Enough for Man. 189 
 
 dome as the present one is, wouldn't it?" 
 
 "Certainly," Nina admitted. 
 
 " Yet," continued Calmire, " the thing you now 
 call Michelangelo's dome would have yielded to 
 ' time and death.' But there is something that en- 
 dures nevertheless." 
 
 " Not the pictures and drawings and all that?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "It's not inconceivable, is it," queried Calmire 
 in-return, "that without even them, a great archi- 
 tect could study the dome closely enough to repro- 
 duce it from memory ?" 
 
 " No: I suppose one could." 
 
 " Well, then, there is a something that started 
 with Michelangelo, and that outlasts granite. 
 Now that something the thought, is the essen- 
 tial thing. It accumulated paper and colors to 
 itself and expressed itself in Michelangelo's 
 plans, or it accumulated stone to itself and ex- 
 pressed itself in the dome by the Tiber; but what 
 we call St. Peter's and go all the way to Rome to 
 see, is not the real thing, but only one expression 
 of it, like the other ten thousand expressions 
 pictures, models, all are mere temporary acci- 
 dents of it : the thing itself, the real St. Peter's, 
 endures independently of them ; it arose in the 
 consciousness of Michelangelo and the other archi- 
 tects, it exists more or less completely in the con- 
 sciousness of millions to-day, a dream can bring it 
 up vividly in any one of them, and, as I have tried 
 to make plain to you before, we have no conclusive 
 evidence that it ever dies." 
 
 " Yes ! How wonderful !" ejaculated Nina. Then
 
 190 Man's Range Enough for Man. 
 
 after pondering a minute, she said sadly: "But 
 that flower there, is not an expression of any man's 
 enduring thought, and human beings are not, 
 either." 
 
 "Some people," Calmire answered, "are fond oi 
 considering them expressions of God's thoughts; 
 and some like to think of the human soul seizing 
 carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and iron and lime 
 and making a body to express itself withal, just as 
 Michelangelo's soul seized charcoal and colors 
 and stone to partially express itself in his plans 
 and pictures and statues and buildings. Of course 
 so far as we know, this is all a mere metaphor re- 
 garding man and the flower, but there may be the 
 deepest truth behind it. Certainly as long as the 
 flower and the man can be reproduced, to a degree, 
 on canvas or in memory including the vivid mem- 
 ory of dreams, it's no more true of them than of 
 the dome, that time and death conquer them; 
 though to be fair, it is in one sense more nearly 
 true of them than of the simpler things of man's 
 voluntary production: for man's can all be ex- 
 pressed over and over again in the most perfect 
 way, while Nature's cannot be reproduced by 
 human art in any but most inadequate represen- 
 tation. Yet involuntarily, outside of art, in dreams, 
 they are reproduced with strange completeness: 
 immortality in the minds of those who love us, or 
 hate us, or even are indifferent to us, means more 
 than we ordinarily ascribe to mere waking mem- 
 ory. 'Time and Death' may 'conquer in the 
 end ': our minds simply can't conceive of the eternal 
 existence of anything; but they don't conquer as
 
 Mans Range Enough for Man. 19 * 
 
 promptly as at first glance they seem to ! Do 
 they?" 
 
 "No," admitted Nina. "They certainly do not. 
 But this is all so new and strange! Give me some 
 more sides of it, please." 
 
 "Well," said Calmire, with a little laugh, "you 
 see, don't you, that when you say that Time and 
 Death conquer, you are simply falling once more 
 into the paradoxes that fringe our limited reason ? 
 We know just as well that they do not conquer, as 
 that they do. That flower blooming near the win- 
 dow, is beautiful in spite of all that Time and Death 
 can do; so is Hamlet; so is the Pastoral Symphony. 
 Here our paradox relates to time, just as, when 
 we were traveling off among the stars a moment 
 ago, it related to space. You can't imagine the 
 flower and the poetry and the music lasting forever, 
 any more than you can imagine the stars and space 
 extending without limit. Neither can you imagine 
 the fact that the flower is beautiful, annihilated, 
 any more than you can imagine space annihilated. 
 Are you going to despise the flower because it 
 does not last forever? Suppose that even your 
 flower of a soul does not last forever, any more 
 than your flower of a life does, are they not to 
 be loved ? We are not apt to think that being 
 each of us limited in space, takes the significance 
 out of life; why then should being limited in time ? 
 I confess that when I hear people say that life is 
 worthless unless it is immortal, I am reminded of 
 a creature of boundless greed, whose brief name 
 is often a term of reproach, and seldom mentioned 
 to ears polite."
 
 ig2 Maris Range Enough for Man. 
 
 Both were silent a little. Then he continued: 
 " Now what is the moral of all this ? It is not a specu- 
 lative one, for it is proved every day in the lives that 
 are happiest and most useful; it is the one that all 
 rational thought leads to from every side: our talks 
 always bring up at it; it is simply to use the facul- 
 ties we have and the opportunities we have. No 
 man ever found so little to do here that he really 
 needed a bigger universe. Alexander's cheap yearn- 
 ing for more worlds to conquer, would have been 
 superfluous if he'd had heart and brain enough to 
 try a single world to improve. No man ever found 
 in himself so much capacity to work or to enjoy, that 
 average opportunities, discretion, and health, would 
 not exercise it to the full, without giving him time 
 to sigh for more opportunities. Of course there 
 are many whose chances are below average : the 
 world is not yet perfectly evolved, and may never 
 be. But it's evolved far enough to give us our 
 hands full without our needing any more." 
 
 "Yes, but knowledge and work are not all," she 
 sighed, thinking farther away than the subject of 
 their talk. 
 
 " No," he answered, but still following his own 
 thought, little divining hers. "There must be a 
 faith beyond knowledge, as we felt it the other 
 morning. But with you, the faith can't any longer 
 be contrary to knowledge. Yet remember what I 
 have said before about the difficulty of changing 
 old beliefs for new. You can't expect your new 
 conceptions of the Infinite to fill your needs all 
 at once: for that matter, what human needs ever 
 are completely filled ? All I claim is that they're
 
 Mans Range Enough for Man. 193 
 
 generally filled far enough to get along on, if we 
 take things rightly." 
 
 " But," Nina objected, " so many who have noth- 
 ing here are sustained by hope of the hereafter." 
 
 " Well, certainly I don't object to their being, if 
 they can, and can't find anything to fill their 
 minds with more substantial than that hope. 
 But there are people whose minds seek demon- 
 strable things. You're one : but you've got to 
 get a new strength to pursue and hold the new 
 conceptions. Even those who are satisfied with the 
 old beliefs, have to do that before becoming really 
 strong in them: you know the churches talk about 
 getting a new heart, being born again, and the like. 
 You have got to get a new heart, with which to rely 
 on yourself and on the universe as you find it: not 
 as, in your limited judgment, you would like it. 
 Some maturer judgments prefer it as it is, rather 
 than as you would have it. You remember Les- 
 sing's saying?" 
 
 " I'm afraid I never knew it. What was it ?" 
 
 "What a delight to have a new generation to tell 
 the old stories to!" Calmire exclaimed, laughing. 
 
 "Has this one anything to do with whiskey?" 
 asked Nina, remembering one that did, and sud- 
 denly losing her bright expression. 
 
 " Not exactly. It's a beautiful allegory, and 
 beautifully told. ' If God held truth in his right 
 hand and search-for-truth in his left, and were to 
 say to me: "Choose!" I would bow reverently to 
 the left hand and say: " Father, give! Pure truth 
 is for thee alone!" ' "
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD CASE. 
 
 WHILE Nina and Muriel had been learning easy 
 lessons in philosophy from Calmire, and Muriel, 
 at least, hard lessons in morality from experience, 
 poor Minerva, who, of course, was not capable of 
 learning a very great deal of either, still was having 
 her full share of that mysterious education which 
 misery generally brings with it. 
 
 Whether, under all circumstances, " the prayer 
 of the righteous availeth much," will probably long 
 be an open question; and there may be a difference 
 of opinion as to which side of the question is sup- 
 ported by the fact that Mrs. Granzine had given 
 avail to Clint Russell's pious ejaculation when we 
 last saw him with Calmire, by starting off in the 
 direction it indicated with "Doctor" Leitoff. 
 
 It took a combination of many things to lead to 
 a step so inconsistent with her years and her de- 
 votion to her children. But her maternal feeling 
 has already been likened to that of the lower 
 creatures, and among the points of resemblance, 
 was its relatively evanescent character. A fort- 
 night earlier, "Doctor" Leitoff, the same surgeon 
 that Clint Russell had known in the army, had put 
 out of joint the nose of the leading quack of the 
 village, by appearing with a fine pair of horses, 
 
 194
 
 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 195 
 
 constant black broadcloth, excessive blue-white 
 linen with a most impressive diamond in the midst 
 thereof, and a great and suspiciously-black beard. 
 All this glory had been preceded by flaring ad- 
 vertisements of his benevolent intention to cure all 
 the ills of humanity, by various elements of a 
 pharmacopoeia whose uses were known only to 
 himself, and which, in his one little life, he had 
 raised into an efficacy superior to that of every- 
 thing else provided by all the experience of all the 
 ages. His remedies did not include "faith," for 
 that function of that much-misused power had 
 not then been revived from the desuetude into 
 which it had fallen since the mighty claims made 
 for it nearly twenty centuries earlier. 
 
 Mrs. Granzine was a strong woman where there 
 was anything to seek or anything to do. But where 
 there was only something to endure some loss to 
 bear she was of the weakest. And of all losses that 
 she might be called upon to endure the loss of 
 love, or of health, or of fortune (as she knew it), 
 or of the deference of her neighbors, the last loss 
 was to such a nature as hers, the greatest. Mi- 
 nerva's misfortunes constantly demanded from her 
 mother a sympathy which it was not in the mother's 
 nature to give, nor yet to suffer from her incapa- 
 city to give. But one thing the woman did suf- 
 fer from, and that was an imagination. Despite 
 Calmire's word that nothing should be spared 
 to save untoward exposure, even to settling the 
 family comfortably out of reach, she would picture 
 herself the object, no longer of the deferential ad- 
 miration of her ignorant circle, but of its gossip:
 
 196 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 
 
 and that, she felt, would be doubly eager because 
 of her " superiority." With the inconsistency of all 
 dishonest natures, she found immeasurably ter- 
 rible, the idea of the very exposure which she had 
 herself threatened. 
 
 This picture pushed her, and Dr. Leitoff attracted 
 her. The fires she had transmitted to Minerva 
 were still far from burned out in her own veins. 
 She still had power to inspire anew Leitoff's tran- 
 scendental German dreaminess, and it produced on 
 her the effect that a poetical nature, however cheap, 
 can exercise on the sort of woman that she bur- 
 lesqued. Small as her soul and his were, the 
 ratio between them was the same that it would 
 have been if he had been really a poet, and she 
 really a woman. She had felt his magnetic 
 charm in youth, and the long association with 
 poor prosy Granzine into which prudence had led 
 her, made her in her maturer years no less sen- 
 sitive to Leitoff's fancies or to his pinchbeck imi- 
 tations of what seemed to her refinement. She 
 never had much moral nature, and as is so fre- 
 quently the case, it was at the expense of it, that 
 she had cultivated her aesthetic nature. Here, too, 
 within her reach, were what appeared to her, ele- 
 gance and wealth: and she had never had an op- 
 portunity to test the emptiness of either. The result 
 of it all was that she shuffled off the whole miser- 
 able responsibilities and dreads of home, leaped 
 into the paradise of paint and tinsel constructed 
 for her by Leitoff's imagination and one evening 
 started off with him behind his white horses, never, 
 as she supposed, to return, Minerva was left alone
 
 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 1 97 
 
 with old Granzine, who might have been really 
 her father, for so had some ancestral weak nature 
 diluted in Minerva most of the forces but the 
 dangerous ones, transmitted by her mother. 
 
 Now that Mrs. Granzine had gone where Clint 
 wanted her to, though by no road of his selection, 
 she was at least out of his way; and the gentle giant 
 experienced toward Minerva a violent accession of 
 that chivalrous tenderness and pity for everything 
 weak and wronged, which made him as great a 
 comfort to them, as he was a terror to oppressors. 
 
 Although he had no suspicion of how much 
 Minerva needed her mother, he could not have 
 been more profane (Or at least any other man 
 could not) over Mrs. Granzine's desertion, if he 
 had known all that she had deserted. As soon 
 as he learned of that wretched woman's flight, 
 he came to Minerva to swear, in his way of course, 
 that he was going to do everything for her that 
 he could, beginning by thrashing the whole town 
 if it should by word or look make heavier the bur- 
 den her mother's conduct had thrown upon her. 
 
 He was the first to bring her any consolation, and 
 his rough kindness was peculiarly congenial to her. 
 All that she was suffering made it easy for a stronger 
 feeling than she had ever known before a feeling 
 of more character, to grow up toward Clint. Hers 
 was not the nature to scotch such a feeling at the 
 beginning for the reasons that would have made 
 it horrible to some women in her situation, or to 
 lead her to prevent Clint coming again with more 
 sympathy, and again and again with more and 
 more.
 
 1 98 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 
 
 In their earlier acquaintance, she had loved Clint, 
 in his turn of course, as she had loved every man 
 she knew who was worth it. One of the strange 
 things about Minerva, as already intimated, was 
 that, whatever her own shortcomings, her require- 
 ments in men and her attainments, were generally 
 high. If Clint had been persistent, if nobody else 
 had too soon tempted her with variety, and if 
 her mother had not corrupted her toward Muriel, 
 she would have married Clint long before. That 
 she could not do so now, was a fact painfully borne 
 in upon her by the feeling that his assiduous kind- 
 ness inspired. 
 
 Whether there was in Clint's own mind, any mo- 
 tive' for that kindness, beyond his natural gentle- 
 ness and chivalry, he had not time (for in such a 
 matter he required more time than most men) to 
 ask himself, before Minerva disappeared from the 
 scene, and with her whatever germs there may have 
 been in both of them for the development of an 
 aborted idyl in misery and despair. 
 
 Minerva's disappearance came about naturally 
 through Calmire. When she was deserted by her 
 mother, he felt the necessity of some other woman 
 in the case, and after carefully considering the 
 situation, came to the conclusion that the argu- 
 ments in favor of taking his sister-in-law Amelia 
 into his confidence, were greater than the very ob- 
 vious ones against it. That gentle lady's wisdom 
 and loving care for all that concerned, Muriel, 
 would, Calmire knew, not only be of value now, 
 but of inestimable worth in the probable future. 
 She, as recognized helper of every woman within
 
 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 199 
 
 miles who needed help, could at once do for Mi- 
 nerva, without exciting comment, what nobody 
 else could; and her unerring judgment, Calmire 
 felt, would see the best courses for the future. 
 
 She was infinitely distressed, as Calmire knew 
 she would be; but wasted no time in vainly wring- 
 ing her hands or moralizing. She concluded to 
 keep Minerva, for the present at least, within reach 
 of herself. In driving, she had seen her with Hul- 
 dah Cronin, touching whom she, and Mary Courte- 
 nay of course, knew more than anybody else in Cal- 
 mire. The image of the pair together, came up in 
 Amelia's imagination as it roamed over the neigh- 
 boring country seeking an asylum for Minerva. 
 Huldah's house was singularly secluded. Many old 
 residents did not know its existence. Winter was at 
 hand, when it would be doubly secluded. A little 
 discretion would enable Minerva to live there un- 
 observed, at least until Spring. Should any com- 
 plication arise, she could easily go away, and 
 meanwhile the question of where to, could be con- 
 sidered. 
 
 After much deliberation, some talks with Mi- 
 nerva, and a final talk with Calmire, and the over- 
 coming of a great repugnance, Amelia dispatched 
 the following note to Huldah Cronin: 
 
 " Monday. 
 
 " You have been kind to Minerva Granzine. You 
 know that her mother is gone. Your kindness has, 
 I trust, been a happiness to yourself. I hope you 
 will feel able to increase it by taking her to your 
 house. If you do, you can depend upon me to
 
 2OO Making the Best of a Bad Case. 
 
 supply money for everything that she needs. I 
 shall be glad to do this, and to supply any counsel 
 that I can which you may see fit to send for. 
 
 " I have not forgotten you in earlier and more 
 hopeful days, and I know that in whatever you do, 
 you deliberately wrong no one but yourself. If 
 my good wishes for you and for poor Minerva 
 could spare you both suffering, you would be 
 spared much; if they could give you happiness, 
 much would be added to you. 
 
 "AMELIA CALMIRE. 
 " To Huldah Cronin." 
 
 When Huldah read this note, she shed the first 
 tears that she had shed in a year. But she did 
 nothing in the matter for two days, but write a 
 letter (not to Mrs. John) and receive an answer. 
 In the morning of the third day, when she was 
 half dressed, she sat down and wrote to Mrs. John, 
 and after a note or two more, regarding details, 
 had been interchanged, she wrote as follows to 
 Minerva: 
 
 " Thursday. 
 
 " DEAR MINERVA: You are to come and live with 
 me. Tell your father what you please, and manage 
 him. Mrs. John will help you. Probably he had 
 better give up your house and go to live with his 
 brother in Massachusetts. He is not to come to see 
 you while you are with me. You can meet him 
 where you please. I will meet you at the old place 
 with my horse this day week at four. I am to 
 see no one but yourself. Have your trunk and 
 anything else you wish to bring, in your hall, with
 
 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 201 
 
 your name on a tag tied to each article. I wiii 
 send a man who will get them at six. 
 
 " Yours, HULDAH." 
 
 The change was effected as desired, but the 
 weather was bad, and Minerva, weak and excited, 
 caught a cold which sent her to bed with a raging 
 fever and delirium. The doctor for whom, at Mi- 
 nerva's request, Huldah sent a practitioner of 
 some alleged " pathy" or other which had appealed 
 to Mrs. Granzine's enlightened mind, told Dinah, 
 Huldah's black factotum, that he was sorry that 
 his engagements would prevent his attending a 
 case so far from his office. He lied. Huldah wrote 
 to Mrs. John, asking what she should do, but told 
 Dinah to employ a boy to carry the note. Mrs. 
 John went at once to Dr. Rossman, the leading 
 physician in Calmire one of the men not infre- 
 quent in country practice, who possess every ele- 
 ment of greatness except ambition and experience 
 of misery of their own; and when he bowed Mrs. 
 John out, though she had told him nothing of her 
 personal reasons for befriending the patient, their 
 hands grasped close as they 'had often done, and 
 tears were in the eyes of both; or, to be exact, 
 there was one tear in the Doctor's right eye, which 
 he had weakened over his microscope. 
 
 This good man kept Mrs. John informed regard- 
 ing his patient, and was the medium to Minerva of 
 many physical and moral comforts. Under his 
 kindly ministrations, and some elements of a new 
 moral atmosphere which began to surround her, 
 Minerva soon was gaining strength in many ways.
 
 202 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 
 
 Calmire showed his sympathy for her in a 
 thousand things that affected her deeply. While 
 his good taste, not to speak of his wisdom, would 
 not lavish luxuries upon her, he managed, without 
 attracting outside notice, to surround her with 
 an atmosphere of care and kindly little attentions 
 that might have surprised any forlorn banished prin- 
 cess in the land of the courtliest of sovereign hosts. 
 
 When in America, he always kept Fleuvemont in 
 condition to receive him during the whole year, 
 and now sometimes when he passed the night 
 there, on his way home from the village in the 
 dark evenings until Spring, he would ride over 
 on Malzour to see Minerva. With infinite deli- 
 cacy and tact, he had led her by degrees to open 
 her poor heart to him almost as she would to 
 a woman or, say, to a sympathetic old family 
 doctor. At the same time, without her half recog- 
 nizing his agency, he had led her to realize 
 that she was suffering the consequences of con- 
 duct that she herself was as responsible for as 
 anybody, and so he had given her that most 
 comfortable support in trouble: "It's my own 
 fault." Yet he never shaded off his conviction 
 of Muriel's responsibility, but rather proved his 
 realization of it, by the responsibilities for Miner- 
 va's well-being that he took upon himself. 
 
 Mrs. John, too, sometimes managed to get to Mi- 
 nerva, and in some ways did more for her than 
 Calmire. Between them, the two good people 
 made her life much more than tolerable, and with- 
 out encouraging any illusions, suggested enough 
 cheerful possibilities in the future to prevent its
 
 Making the Best of a Bad Case. 203 
 
 appearing what, without them and the faith that 
 Muriel would eventually carry on their work, it 
 would have been, black and desperate. 
 
 Under these influences, and especially under her 
 personal causes for reflection, Minerva was becom- 
 ing something like a serious, candid, and strong 
 woman. Huldah, with whom she lived, was natu- 
 rally al! that, though her independence of judgment 
 had led her to justify herself in things which prob- 
 ably, under a wider education, she would have disap- 
 proved. She was wiser than she once was, however, 
 and her influence on Minerva was not only sustain- 
 ing and cheering but, on the whole, expanding. 
 
 Moreover, Minerva's case had become one more to 
 prove John Calmire's frequent assertion that there 
 never was within five miles of the town, an in- 
 stance of anything like blighted affections, that 
 Mary Courtenay did not manage to find out and 
 do something to help. She came near doing more 
 harm than good in this one, but Minerva herself 
 brought her to her bearings, and made her a valu- 
 able and helpful friend. 
 
 In short, Minerva's lines, despite of all, had fallen 
 in such places that she said more than once, that 
 she had not known, in her happier days, how much 
 goodness and justice there was in the world. 
 
 So matters went on for some months.
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 SOME TRAVEL AND SOME LETTERS. 
 
 MEANWHILE, Muriel had gone abroad. He and 
 his companion proved such poor sailors that on 
 the voyage their relation was one of mutual 
 though ineffective sympathy. But they had not 
 been on shore long before they found each other 
 irksome. Muriel was too moody to be good com- 
 pany, and so unwilling to have his cogitations 
 broken in upon, that he could not find his friend 
 good company either. So, without any unpleasant 
 explanations, they took a chance of separating 
 which was offered in Paris by the happening along 
 of a party that was going to Marseilles instead of 
 to Pau, where Muriel's companion had to meet 
 friends. The region between Pau and Marseilles 
 being reported comparatively uninteresting, Mu- 
 riel was glad enough to make that a reason for 
 joining the party for the latter place, but with the 
 unexpressed intention of leaving them before get- 
 ting there. 
 
 When they neared Avignon, Muriel announced 
 his desire of giving a few days to the old papal 
 capital and the old Roman towns between it and 
 the Mediterranean. His companions were not 
 burdened with historical curiosity, but were more 
 directly bent upon the delights of Monte Carlo 
 
 204
 
 Some Travel and Some Letters. 205 
 
 and Mentone; and so Muriel found himself in the 
 old city, for the first time alone in a strange land. 
 He was not conscious of this fact during the bustle 
 of getting fixed in his quarters at the quaint old 
 hotel, and hardly conscious of it (though he did 
 wish for somebody to enjoy with him) as he was 
 looking at the time-worn bridge broken down 
 perhaps by its great weight of tradition, the pretty 
 little park, the inadequate little cathedral, and the 
 old palace which seems a combination of fortress, 
 church, and buttressed railway embankment. But 
 when he sat down to dinner without anybody to 
 talk all these things over with, for he was still 
 timid in his French, he felt very solitary indeed 
 alone in a crowd and, what was infinitely worse, 
 alone with a sorrow. 
 
 We seldom realize to what an extent our con- 
 victions are matters of environment how much 
 support they get from the soil in which they have 
 grown, especially from that portion of their nutri- 
 ment which comes from the corresponding opinions 
 of friends. Mr. Muriel did not endure separation 
 from all this his loneliness and the inevitable in- 
 trospection which, despite the novelties of foreign 
 travel, it involved, without finding himself on the 
 brink of the old agonizing skepticism which had 
 vented itself in the letters to Calmire already given. 
 This time, though, it did not take him long to 
 recognize the noisome pool and to avoid it by the 
 paths he had already learned. And as every nature 
 sore and inflamed as his was, is open to every dis- 
 ease, of course the very opposite temptation as- 
 sailed him too, through the appeal made to his
 
 206 Some Travel and Some Letters. 
 
 imagination by the Church. At Avignon, with the 
 aid of a book or two, he peopled the old scenes 
 with their former dramas and pageantry, and while 
 he was conscious of the weak and mean things that 
 had been done there, the immensity of the power 
 that did them, even when half bullied and half pro- 
 tected by other powers, impressed him as nothing 
 human had impressed him before. He carried some 
 of this state of mind to Rome, and posted off first 
 thing, not to the relatively modern gauds of St. 
 Peter's, but to the storied buildings by the Lateran, 
 the famous triclinium, and the font where poor 
 Rienzi took his mystic bath. For the first few 
 days, Muriel was so absorbed in his historic enthu- 
 siasms that he felt the impulse, which of course 
 he sardonically dismissed, to identify himself with 
 the tremendous institution which is far the most 
 picturesque and venerable of all that survive. 
 Even to his keen vision, dimmed by repentant 
 tears, warped by self-distrust, fagged by the need 
 of rest, and enveloped in the haze of a fervid 
 young imagination, the church's art and splendor 
 could easily veil, for a time, its tawdriness and ab- 
 surdity. But after the first few days of his enthu- 
 siasms, as he loafed about more leisurely on foot, 
 he became aware of the fact that in no city where 
 he had ever been, even in Italy, was the expression 
 of the people's faces so low, and that he was among 
 a race of beggars. While one priest in ten, perhaps, 
 had a refined face, the rest were brutish to a degree 
 that disgusted him; and when one of the latter as- 
 sailed him at his hotel, clinking a money-box, he 
 realized whence had come the example which had
 
 Some Travel and Some Letters. 207 
 
 developed the race of beggars. Then the humbug 
 pervading it all became obvious, and Muriel's dis- 
 illusion began. Nevertheless, with all the moral 
 enthusiasm of a penitent, and the susceptibility of 
 a sufferer, his sympathies expanded to the tender 
 imagery of the old religion and filled him with the 
 emotional exaltation that has responded to the 
 same sentiments and many of the same symbols, 
 through all human history. 
 
 He had bravely stuck to his resolution to leave 
 Nina in peace, but these feelings and his terrible 
 loneliness overpowered him, as of course some- 
 thing was sure to, and he wrote to her. Perhaps 
 no other youngster would have done it, at least 
 in his way: but our young man, as may have been 
 already suspected, was very much of a law unto 
 himself, and not always a very admirable law, at 
 that; and he was half mad. 
 
 Muriel Calmire to Nina Wahring. 
 
 " ROME, December 10, 18 . 
 
 " May I not speak to you not as Muriel to Nina, 
 not even as man to woman, not even as human 
 being to human being, but as penitent sinners 
 speak to God to the Holy Mother of God ? So 
 I see the poor and lowly doing here on every side: 
 they may be foolish, but I am humble now, and 
 their thought of their Madonna in the far-off 
 Heaven is no holier than my thought of you. 
 
 "The thought may drive me mad, but if it is the 
 only joy left me, let me at least be mad. In mad- 
 ness, I suppose, there is some oblivion. 
 
 " I am told that men are better and stronger for
 
 2o8 Some Travel and Some Letters. 
 
 their duty, if they think they work to honor some 
 perfect being, remote, inaccessible, divine such as 
 now I picture you. If this is true of other men, 
 why not of me ? At last I find that I am not as 
 different from other men as I had so arrogantly 
 supposed. My ancestors are in me, and when I 
 am weak with loneliness and despair, I turn, after 
 all, toward what they turned to. I cannot fancy 
 the laws of this vast Kosmos, which deal out our 
 lives with less sympathy, less mercy, than even the 
 laws of man which sweep on with us and sweep 
 on by us in a flood irresistible and inexorable I 
 cannot regard them as controlled by anything 
 enough like our human selves to care for any cry 
 sent forth from a human breast. And yet the old 
 cry for sympathy the old, old yearning to love 
 and worship, spring out from my breast just the 
 same. If you cannot be nearer, be far off like 
 God, like the Madonna Mary, but hear me! Pity 
 me, as these people say she pities even those viler 
 than I, and redeem me, though I see you not, as 
 they say she redeems them; and if I must not love 
 you, let me worship, worship, worship you. 
 
 " In the old days, a man who sinned and ruined 
 his life, as I have done, forsook his duties and 
 turned monk, that he might do nothing but so 
 worship. The old days still last here, and prob- 
 ably I see such men under their cowls almost every 
 hour. But I am at least a child of our times. I 
 can worship you always, and yet live in the world 
 and face my duty as best I can see it. But Oh ! 
 Is there not in all this vast complexity of life, 
 some train of duty that leads to you ? I am the
 
 Some Travel and Some Letters. 209 
 
 only man the only man near your years, at least, 
 that I ever knew, who can fathom your soul and 
 fill it. You are the only woman who can fill mine. 
 Are our souls worthless, that they should be de- 
 prived of each other? Is not their union our one 
 final duty above all other duties, comprehending 
 all others ? Should we not do that duty in any 
 event, and then let the scope of other duties be 
 determined by it? 
 
 " Of course I spin all sorts of webs of logic, and 
 I build arguments that seem unbreakable and 
 prove that you and I ought to be happy together, 
 that we could be, and that haunting alien duty 
 of mine still be done. But I mistrust all dem- 
 onstration that points to happiness; and even if 
 I did not, I would not wish, unless you bid me I 
 would not dare, to show all my reasonings to you. 
 
 " See my faith in you, Madonna ! I trust one 
 throb of instinct in that pure soul of yours farther 
 than I trust all my logic. 
 
 " Oh I love to humble myself before you ! Upon 
 the world, I have looked down, or thought myself 
 looking down; to Uncle Grand, I have looked 
 across, as from one peak to another (/ fancying 
 wyself as on a peak ! I don't believe that Uncle 
 Grand fancies Siimselt on one), but when I regard 
 the thought of you, it is joy, or nearer joy than 
 anything else I now know, to look up. 
 
 "What shall I do ? Guide me, Pure One ! You 
 told me when I saw you in my uncle's house 
 my home, that it was not my place. What 
 would you call my place? I know it must be 
 where I can do my duty. But must it not
 
 2io Some Travel and Some Letters. 
 
 be rather a demon's hand than an angel's, which 
 bears the sword that would drive me from 
 you, and perhaps would force me to vow to 
 love where I cannot love, honor where I cannot 
 honor, cherish where I can only tolerate perhaps 
 where I cannot be strong enough to do that per- 
 haps where thoughts even of murder, are more apt 
 to crowd than thoughts of protection ? Must I, 
 who have been so weak, undertake a task in which 
 I must assume myself so strong that omnipotent 
 Nature herself can have no control of me ? Was duty 
 ever the impossible ? Is the impossible my duty ? 
 If not, what is my duty ? Must I live a thing for 
 which language has no word a man with all the 
 powers and passions of a man, forbidden to exer- 
 cise the best of them a man with a love an ado- 
 ration in his soul that would purify Gehenna, for- 
 bidden to let the good thing in him come forth to 
 be blessed and (may I dare think ?) to bless ? 
 
 " Must you But I will not dare. 
 
 " But what shall we do with our lives ? They are 
 of each other, even if we never meet again inevi- 
 table parts of each other, unworthy as mine has 
 been. But since yours has touched it, mine has 
 been pure as Saint Anthony's. How fan it be right, 
 then, to sunder them ? 
 
 " Perhaps it were a more manly part not to put 
 questions before you, but to decide all myself, and 
 then to try to lead you to my decision. But I have 
 lost the right to do that even a man's right to 
 test my strength. You have purified me, but I 
 have erred: whenever I try to conclude, up comes 
 that thought, worse than the memento mori
 
 Some Travel and Some Letters. 2 1 1 
 
 ' You have erred ! Be not wise in your own con- 
 ceit.' May I say it to you, pure soul ? I 
 thought I had Nature's right to do wrong. How 
 then can I decide in favor of any inclination now, 
 lest I be the victim of some sophism again ? 
 
 "But what inclination toward you can be aught 
 but good ? You have redeemed me, Madonna: 
 take me into Heaven!" 
 
 Nina blushed two or three times at the boldness 
 which the boy's agony had forced him into, and 
 finally smiled through her tears, at seeing the mun- 
 dane capture the transcendental with which he 
 had begun his letter; and she was not sorry for it. 
 At length she answered him. 
 
 Nina Wahring to Muriel Calmire. 
 
 " EAST 36TH ST., 
 
 NEW YORK, Dec. 29, 18 . 
 
 "Muriel, I have written you a dozen letters, and 
 torn them up because they said too much or too 
 little. This one I am going to send, and going to 
 let it say all it will probably both too much and 
 too little. I have no hope of ever writing to you 
 again, and for this once, I am going to write with 
 my heart as open to you as I wish it could be 
 always. 
 
 " I must not write again, because writing tends to 
 draw us both from our duty. I write now mainly 
 to tell you that. You ask if our first duty is not 
 to marry, and let all other duties be determined 
 by that. Exactly what your duty is, or may be, I 
 do not pretend to judge. But whatever it may be, 
 where it belongs was determined before you saw 
 me, and therefore your relation to me cannot be
 
 212 Some Travel and Some Letters. 
 
 first. Plainly my duty to you is not to interfere 
 with that which claims you first, and I cannot 
 marry you and leave you as free as you would 
 otherwise be for whatever demands that first duty 
 may impose. 
 
 " Those are the reasons why I cannot continue 
 writing to you. It is not as if we could be mere 
 friends. Therefore as we have no right to be more 
 than friends, we must be less, except in our mem- 
 ories. Perhaps we can be to each other such mem- 
 ories as help. You tell me, and I love you more for 
 it, if that were possible, or would if it were right 
 that you are content, or at least determined, if duty 
 demands, to hold me as such a memory as one 
 remote and inaccessible who yet sympathizes and 
 approves. If, despite all prudence, you w/7/make 
 me that being, I will at least try to be worthy. 
 The thought that you so regard me will help and, 
 I may say it now, console me. 
 
 " It is so pitiful to see you turn even to my igno- 
 rance for guidance in your perplexities! I wish I 
 could give you some, but I am not wise, I can- 
 not even be good, for I will turn toward you when 
 perhaps I ought not; and some strange sense has 
 come to me,that to be wise is to be good." [" Poor 
 white dove !" thought Muriel as he kissed the 
 paper, and tears came into his eyes. " But what 
 she says is true for me. If I'd been better, I'd have 
 been wiser. After all, it's best to begin at good- 
 ness, as the women do."] " I only know," con- 
 tinued the letter, "as I knew when I turned you 
 out of your uncle's house, that I must not stand 
 between you and some dark and undefined duty.
 
 Some Travel and Some Letters. 2 1 3 
 
 " But I did not turn you out, though, did I, 
 Muriel ? You may know, if you care to, that I am 
 crying now. Yes, I want you to know it. I may 
 indulge myself that far. Oh ! If we but had the 
 right But it would be weak and not even kind, 
 :o say it : you are enduring enough already ! 
 
 " Come, I will be cheerful. You should see what 
 fun I have with the children at Mary's home, and 
 sometimes at the school when Mary lets me teach 
 them a little. I love them and they love me, or 
 the things I bring them. Mary won't let me bring 
 them much candy. For their sake, I have had to 
 learn about digestion and lots of other horrid 
 things that are perfectly delightful. Muriel, one 
 can't be miserable all the while, and yet I believe 
 that you are so nearly an impulsive poet, that you 
 think it your duty to be. Don't you ? Well, don't 
 do it! Be just as cheerful as you can. I am. But 
 oh God! There, I'm mean and weak again! But 
 this is the last letter I shall write you, and I'm 
 going to be natural, or at least, after anything 
 gets written, I won't cross it out. Oh I do so want 
 to write something that will help you and do you 
 good ! All this seems so dry and cold. My heart 
 won't go into it, because my conscience frightens 
 my heart off. 
 
 " I think you are too hard on yourself in some 
 ways. You say that you cannot now know what 
 is right, because you have done wrong. I do not 
 feel sure that a person who had never known wrong, 
 would have a clearer sense of right than a person 
 who knew both sides. Surely one is more apt to 
 be afraid of errors after suffering for them. But
 
 2 14 Some Travel and Some Letters. 
 
 your repentance, if that is the word for me to use, 
 and surely you are filled with all the good feelings 
 that go with that word your repentance seems to 
 me to go to extremes and to lead you to do your- 
 self wrong. You are still strong and true, as I 
 have always known you despising deceit and 
 loving the right, only now you are no longer care- 
 less about your duty to follow the right. Keep on 
 as you have been going lately, and you must make 
 vour walk useful and noble, wherever it leads. 
 I catch some glimpse now of what is meant by 
 happiness being within, and not without. How 
 many happy lives, or at least peaceful and useful 
 ones, have none of the outer sources of happiness 
 or what is infinitely worse, have lost them ! I 
 learn much from being with Mary. She is gen- 
 erally perfect sunshine. I think the times of de- 
 pression she often has, come from illness; and 
 something I heard the doctor say makes me think 
 that the fits of illness come from an early nervous 
 shock that I know she had, and think she has 
 never got over. But you are such a rock that 
 no strain on you is going to make you ill for 
 long. You need not long suffer from depression. 
 Think, if you will, of those same poor monks 
 you wrote me about. How many of them, after 
 having to give up everything that most men 
 care for, have led lives full of peace and useful- 
 
 ness 
 
 " You say you will live in the world. Why not ? 
 All ways to usefulness are open there. You can be 
 busy, and /know that to be busy is to be at peace, 
 I don't know whether it is best for you to travel any
 
 Some Travel and Some Letters. 2 1 5 
 
 more. Seeing things does not help one like doing 
 things. 
 
 " Here I am, making myself a counselor to you ! 
 But as I cannot be everything to you, perhaps it 
 would be wisest not to attempt to be anything. 
 Yet if you were fainting, could not I give you a cup 
 of water? And your letter makes me feel that 
 writing to you, at least this once, is like that. 
 
 " Many people help me." [Here Muriel thought 
 of Calmire and Courtenay and cursed himself for 
 it. He was very young.] " You ought not to be 
 off there alone. Perhaps it is because I sent you 
 away ! But I did not want you to go so far away, 
 and alone, where there is nobody to love you. 
 You poor great big Muriel, you need to be loved 
 just as much as any child !" [Here poor Muriel's 
 smile was like light reflected from a sword.] " It 
 can't be wrong for me to love you," went on 
 the letter, "if I only love you in the right way 
 as we ought to love truth and beauty and 
 justice ; and not as one loves a true and beau- 
 tiful and just man. But I can't! Oh I can't! And 
 so I must not love you at all ! I don't love you for 
 anything you are ; but just because you are you. 
 I'm afraid I would love you if you were bad. No 
 I wouldn't, because then you wouldn't be you. So 
 keep good, Muriel, keep good, though it takes you 
 away from me. Perhaps it may be right to love you 
 when you are away from me, and good ; but I know 
 it would be wrong to love you if you were near 
 me ; and I couldn't, either, because then you would 
 not be good. 
 
 " Oh, my Love, my Love, my Love, Good-bye !"
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 EXTRACTS ARRANGED FROM THE DIARY OF A PENI- 
 TENT. 
 
 OF course the standard hero, on getting such a 
 letter as Nina wrote Muriel, would start off by 
 the next train, or as soon as he could get his 
 armor on and have his war-horse caparisoned and 
 put on a box car, to take the lady by assault. 
 But Muriel was not the standard hero. He had 
 so far outgrown the " marriage-by-capture" no- 
 tions of his ancestors, that he considered ladies 
 who could be taken by assault, as not worth hav- 
 ing. He did consider this lady worth having ; 
 and therefore it did not even enter his head that 
 she could be taken by assault. When she trusted 
 him so far as to drift into freely showing him her 
 love, she honored him by knowing how implicitly he 
 would honor her. Had anybody now suggested to 
 Muriel, in one of his practical moods, anything lower 
 than that, he would have answered to the effect 
 that if all the vicissitudes of life held any chance 
 of his marrying Nina, to assume her capable of 
 marrying him at present, would be to destroy 
 that chance ; and deeper down in his soul, he 
 would have found that his now entertaining 
 such an assumption, or her tolerating it, would 
 deprive such a chance of its value. This of 
 
 course was all very inconsistent with his having 
 
 216
 
 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 2 1 ; 
 
 lately tried to persuade Nina to marry him. But 
 was he not young, and imaginative, and torn as 
 not only the young are, between impulse and con- 
 science? 
 
 So instead of getting out his lance, he got out 
 his pen, and wrote to Nina: 
 
 " My Lady, Sovereign and Divine, I obey and 
 bless you." 
 
 Then he girded up his loins and continued on 
 his lonely way. 
 
 Here are some of his communings, earlier and 
 later, with himself. 
 
 " This fitful old diary again ! Diaries seem to 
 have been kept by two sorts of men those that 
 have nobody to talk to, and those that are always 
 talking those who are generally alone, and those 
 who are seldom alone. Perhaps that means those 
 who are generally miserable, and those who haven't 
 time to be. 
 
 " Diary-keeping is another illustration of the way 
 extremes meet. Perhaps all habits are shared by 
 men who, in circumstances and nature, are diamet- 
 rically opposite. And perhaps they're not! And 
 perhaps everything is just what it isn't, and every- 
 thing isn't just what it is. And perhaps Hegel 
 wasn't a fool after all ! But as he probably be- 
 lieved he wasn't, his own system would oblige 
 him to admit that he was. 
 
 " Well ! This may be at least a diversion from
 
 2 1 8 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 loneliness, and even a nepenthe from despair. 
 Communion of some sort I must have I can't 
 write letters all the time and this, at least, is 
 worth trying. The pen was always some sort of 
 company to me, and it helps me straighten things 
 out." 
 
 " I go out into the night, bearing my heavy 
 question with me. I ask it of the earth and the 
 sky and the stars. The only answer that comes is: 
 ' We the conditions of your life, are around you. 
 We change not. We do not declare ourselves to 
 him who merely asks, but does no labor to learn. 
 What the best labor can know, is but little. That 
 little you must work for, and by it you must guide 
 your life as best you may.' 
 
 " It is very merciless! Never, indeed, outside of 
 the heart of man, have I known any such thing as 
 mercy. 
 
 " And yet I have not to learn it all for myself. Am 
 I not ' the heir of all the ages' ? Still I must labor 
 even to learn the things they have bequeathed. 
 Those things come not of themselves." 
 
 "What a humbug I've been! That seems the 
 burden of my thought, first, last, and all the time. 
 I've been such a humbug to myself !" 
 
 " From one little momentary act, months of 
 agonized uncertainty, and probably two ruined 
 lives and one stunted one! But putting a knife 
 or a bullet into a man, is a little momentary act 
 tool
 
 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 219 
 
 " No, it isn't! Each act is the result of long de- 
 velopment of character, even ancestral develop- 
 ment. Then where's 'God's justice' that they 
 prate so about? I never saw any sign of such a 
 thing outside of thinking man. 
 
 ' Yet the biologists do say that the individual 
 is but a link in a chain, and that all the genera- 
 tions are to be regarded as but one creature. 
 There's some sort of justice, then, in visiting the 
 sins of the fathers upon the children. 
 
 " But how about a God who says he does it be- 
 cause he's ' jealous ' ?" , 
 
 " That notion Justice .' There is that act of 
 mine, done, fixed, its nature unalterable by a hair's 
 breadth, and yet I can't tell if it is going to wreck 
 my life, or if, after more of this suspense, there 
 will appear some way out. But here's the rub: 
 any possible way out now, is utterly independent 
 of the moral nature of my act is probably in some 
 circumstance with which that had nothing whatever 
 to do; and yet theconsequencesmust be mine all the 
 same! Where is 'justice' then? I don't think I've 
 altogether deserved what has come upon me. Worse 
 fellows than I have gone scot-free. Ah, I've often 
 heard Uncle Grand say that there's no 'justice' in 
 the operations of natural law. But I didn't know 
 what it meant. I don't seem to have known what 
 anything meant." 
 
 . " Uncle Grand said that my act, if measured by its 
 consequences, must be classed among the worst. Yet 
 he did not definitely assert that it must be mea-
 
 22O Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 sured that way. (How few things he definitely as- 
 serts ! And how definitely he asserts those few !) I 
 don't think it fair to measure it that way. If a man 
 amuses himself with a bonfire which, much to his 
 regret, burns downs a house, he's not guilty of 
 arson." 
 
 " Uncle Grand once said to me, ' Most young 
 people's morality is a matter of sentiment. It 
 takes the fires of suffering to harden it into prac- 
 tice.' I know what he meant now. It's one thing 
 to imagine an ideal, but another to live up to it." 
 
 " I see it all now! I used to justify myself on 
 the ground of Nature first: convention and even law 
 might go hang. I see it! I see itl Why wouldn't I 
 learn it from Uncle Grand that night he talked to me 
 about love ? What is natural to the lower creature, 
 is not natural to the higher. Here the very Nature I 
 thought I followed, has been working all the ages to 
 evolve the possibility of this lofty love of one man for 
 onewoman. For a brief season it filled mysoulwith 
 light, and I had yearned for it beyond all other yearn- 
 ings, even when I let my passions follow 'Nature.' 
 The ' Nature ' I followed was simply ' Nature' in the 
 beasts. Even the swan is said to be above it. The 
 love of one creature for but one other creature was 
 a great step. What a power has monogamy been 
 in the evolution of man, society, poetry soul!" 
 
 " Upon my soul, it strikes me that in being ' radi- 
 cal,' as I have liked to vaunt myself in being, I 
 have indeed been grubbing around the roots, and
 
 Extracts from tlte Diary of a Penitent. 221 
 
 kept my face turned away from the leaves and 
 flowers!" 
 
 "Sometimes I lose my grip when I think of 
 things Nature might do for me, but doesn't. Well, 
 at least she does what she gives me reason to ex- 
 pect. Perhaps the rest is none of my business." 
 
 " Perhaps she does the best for us that she 
 can, after all ! But what a poor fist she makes 
 of it!" 
 
 " Nature is such a fool ! She makes birds with 
 beaks to catch worms, and gives worms colors to 
 prevent birds from seeing them. She gives tigers 
 claws and fangs to kill antelopes, and antelopes 
 swiftness to escape tigers. And for each one of 
 these four gifts, I've heard the 'goodness of God' 
 descanted upon. No! There's only one way out 
 to take things as we find them." 
 
 " Nature deals us our cards. I've played my 
 hand, and played it like a fool. What a hand it 
 was! And here's the game lost ! 
 
 "Yet I didn't know! I didn't know! 
 
 " I knew enough. If I'd known all, there would 
 have been no merit in winning." 
 
 " There are more perplexities than we can mas- 
 ter in the phenomena our present senses can re- 
 spond to. It's lucky we've no more senses at least 
 before we get proportionally more brain But if 
 we could know all, there would be no such vir-
 
 222 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 tues as judgment and courage. The game of life 
 would be a mean thing if played with loaded dice. 
 
 "Yet wouldn't more senses give us more solu- 
 tions to present perplexities, and so more time and 
 strength for the new ones ? 
 
 "How I do keep finding shallowness in my 
 brilliant-seeming generalizations now ! Is it be- 
 cause I've grown more willing to find it ? There 
 can't be more there, after a fellow has been through 
 what I have." 
 
 " ' If one could know all, there would be no such 
 virtues as judgment and courage ' ! An omniscient 
 god can't have them, then. What utter asses they 
 are to try to define a god, anyhow ! Can't they 
 see their contradictions at every step ? Why don't 
 they take what they can learn, and stop?" 
 
 " I'd be very sorry for a god who had to witness 
 all this misery." 
 
 "It's been getting plain to me that if 'God' is 
 an arbitrary power uncertain, to be propitiated 
 and influenced, man is but a slave. But if the 
 universe is moved by unerring Law, man is a free 
 citizen. The first notion will do for those who 
 made even slavery itself a ' divine institution.' 
 
 "In our views of the Universe, as in Jurispru- 
 dence, progress has meant the substitution of Law 
 for individual whim." 
 
 "As to gods in general, I never heard of one 
 that left a fellow much room for self-respect."
 
 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 223 
 
 "How I have always lived as if Nemesis were 
 going to make exceptions in my favor ! And how 
 strange that / should be this broken wretch ! Well, 
 it widens my sympathies." 
 
 " One night, I remember, I preached to Her that 
 man should be merciless with the weak and af- 
 flicted, because Nature is. How it expands a man's 
 views to be one of the weak and afflicted himself! 
 
 " Once I thought Nature ought to kill that poor 
 boy, because he was hopelessly maimed. Well, per- 
 haps it's time for Nature to kill me. All right 1 
 I'm agreeable." 
 
 " How much power must have been wasted in 
 despair and remorse over things that despair and 
 remorse can't change! As the world grows wise 
 enough to steer clear of that waste, how much 
 more power will be left for work and sympathy!" 
 
 " What an ass I've been always to assume that 
 'the best will come' ! The only sensible way is to 
 expect the best, but to act so that you'll have 
 nothing to reproach yourself with in case of the 
 worst." 
 
 " If ' it's all right,' wouldn't a good God let us 
 know it ? And if it's not ( all right,' there's not a 
 good God, or not much of a God. 
 
 " It's not all right. That's plain enough. It's 
 just as right as we see it, and no more. What 
 would be the use of its being any nearer right if 
 we don't see that it is? Our very not-seeing it,
 
 224 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 prevents its being any righter than we see. 'It 
 may come right'? But that doesn't make it right 
 now. Well then, let's grin and bear it ! There's 
 where wisdom begins." 
 
 " All for the best ' ? All for the best that is pos- 
 sible under our limitations, perhaps. But that's 
 simply a truism." 
 
 " To be ' rational ' and do without a human sort 
 of God, is well enough for happy people. I don't 
 find it good for much in misery. Perhaps I'm not 
 rational enough!" 
 
 "A religion must be a handy thing in trouble. 
 Its widest use, I suspect, is to make the afflicted 
 believe against all the evidence, that life is less 
 hard than it is Nature less merciless. Yet I want 
 none of it: let Truth hug me to her breast, though 
 she be the iron virgin with the knives." 
 
 " A very easy thing to write that up there! I've 
 said it often, I suppose, and so have lots of others: 
 it sounds too well not to have been said a great 
 deal. But I do believe I have some realization 
 of what I'm saying, this time." 
 
 " How far down into the little details of our 
 lives our characters, Law goes! I've felt it while 
 this misery has been working in mine. Of course 
 that close work is not so hard to realize regarding 
 character, if every change in character can take place
 
 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 225 
 
 only with a change in matter: we're used to the 
 idea of Law in nerve-cells, but that makes it 
 very little easier to realize regarding events. 
 The care of an all-seeing God over each footstep, 
 if there were any signs of it, could be understood; 
 but it's not easy to understand Law regulating cir- 
 cumstances down to such details. Yet, in a sense, 
 Law must; but certainly not in a sense that averts 
 evil. Law does not avert floods and earthquakes. 
 No; the conclusion is unavoidable that it takes 
 care of us to a certain point, and that from there 
 we must take care of ourselves. ' De Lord made 
 me so high, and I growed de rest myself.' Well, if 
 we were taken care of all the way through, where 
 would liberty and character be ?" 
 
 " And I thought that I could fill my mind with 
 all sorts of images, and at will prevent their recur- 
 rence ! I think I understand the myth of Saint 
 Anthony." 
 
 " If one could only live in. the higher air, where 
 the steady currents blow!" 
 
 " How I've fooled myself with inconsequences! 
 Our account with Nature is not like a merchant's, 
 where any sort of asset will balance any sort of 
 liability. Truthfulness won't balance profligacy; 
 or kindness, laziness; or continence, the small-pox. 
 Neither can profligacy entirely cancel truthfulness; 
 or laziness, kindness. It's too late, though, for a 
 robber to buy off by giving half his plunder to 
 charity, or to save his soul by building a church.
 
 226 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 An old Scotch Presbyterian woman Uncle Grand 
 used to talk about, attributed the deaths of an 
 acquaintance's large family of children, to the fact 
 that the family amused itself by playing cards in 
 the evening. That old woman simply believed in 
 alchemy and astrology. Her own sons, by the 
 way, grew up hale and strong, and two out of 
 three became notorious swindlers. In the case of 
 both families, of course those who respected the 
 parents stood by and wondered 'that the good 
 should be so afflicted.' The parents being 'good' 
 had nothing to do with it. Heart-disease was 
 hereditary in one family, and scoundrelism in the 
 other from the father's side, I suppose, as the 
 mother was such a pattern of pharisaical virtue. 
 
 "We've pretty much outgrown that order of be- 
 liefs, but we haven't outgrown the involuntary in- 
 tellectual habits they engendered, by a long shot: 
 it has really been something of a surprise to me 
 that being measurably truthful and honest, or 
 trying to be, didn't protect me from my troubles. 
 Ah ! Why did I inherit so much superstition?" 
 
 " Shall I repeat, then, that all superstitions are 
 debasing? That depends upon the mind you put 
 them in." 
 
 " I'm beginning to try to amuse myself a little. 
 As I look at life now, I suspect that anybody who 
 wants it all sunbeams, must get most of them out 
 of cucumbers." 
 
 "I got out my cornet to-day and played for the 
 diversion of the boors, hoping that diverting them
 
 Extracts from tlie Diary of a Penitent. 227 
 
 might divert me. It didn't. It was like food to a 
 man with no sense of taste. So with everything." 
 
 " A good, simple, sympathetic soul the clergy- 
 man of the village met me as I was walking to- 
 day. A flock of quail that I had started up had 
 flown within sight of him, and so we got to talk- 
 ing. He's one of the new sort, and knows a dog 
 and gun. One thing led to another, until all led 
 right up to the fact that I am miserable, as all 
 roads lead to Rome. I can't keep it entirely 
 to myself. I told him I didn't care for shooting 
 or anything else now though I have shot ? 
 little. Truth is, though I didn't tell him, that 
 I've grown too chicken-hearted, or possibly too 
 sympathetic, to cause pain : know what it is 
 myself, now! Well, he said: 'Poor boy!' and 
 I didn't get mad. Then he began very deli- 
 cately, but at the same time with the old disgust- 
 ing professional assurance, to inquire into the 
 state of my soul. I told him flatly that I didn't 
 believe much of what he thought most worth be- 
 lieving. Then he began to try and convert me, 
 but in a very decent way. He said: 'Christianity 
 offers you a loving God and immortality,' and the 
 rest of it. I told him that I hadn't seen any evi- 
 dence that it could deliver what it offers, and that 
 its 'offers' reminded me of the architects who, I've 
 heard Uncle Grand tell, have a fashion, in specify- 
 ing even absurd extravagances which one is to pay 
 for, of saying, ' I give you,' for instance, a mosaic 
 hall or a lapis-lazuli chimney-piece. I hope I 
 
 said it in such a way as not to hurt the good man's
 
 228 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 feelings. He seemed to take it in good part. It's 
 a new sensation for me to care whether he did or 
 not, but I'm glad to have the sensation. 
 
 "'Offers!' It might as well offer 'three acres 
 and a cow.' " 
 
 " After all, humanity all along seerrjs to have got 
 its consolations and inspirations from pretty much 
 the same ideas. The early fellows guess them 
 vaguely, the later ones make the image clearer 
 and more detailed. 
 
 " It's the same with me, too. Here I ponder, 
 ponder, ponder, and at last think I've found some 
 great truth, and behold ! it phrases itself in some 
 platitude that I've been impatient at having 
 dinned into me from the nursery up. Experience 
 is like the right light on a picture. 
 
 "Yet how could those old saws mean anything 
 to me before I had experienced facts enough to 
 understand the generalizations ? There's a good 
 reason for what I've heard Uncle Grand often say 
 that no experience but one's own, can be of 
 much use." 
 
 " Here I am on the ocean the 'vast' ocean that 
 they talk about. It's simply the most oppressively 
 circumscribed place I ever saw. The limits of our 
 vision are distinctly presented on every side. Turn 
 which way one will, he sees nothing else so marked 
 as that limit where water and sky meet. On land, 
 there are so many things in between, that one is 
 hardly conscious of the boundary, even if it be 
 much closer than here. Oh! I'm deadly sick of 
 that constant ring of sea and sky! But I'm always
 
 Extracts Jroni the Diary of a Penitent. 229 
 
 reminded by it now, of that other limit against 
 which we are always beating our wings, and beyond 
 which we cannot fly. Why not settle down, though, 
 and take our limitations peaceably, as the sailors 
 take the sea ?" 
 
 " At last I'm added to the millions who have 
 felt that human lives are like these waves merely 
 shifting forms of a substance that precedes them 
 and outlasts them." 
 
 " But when such a wave happens to" bear on its 
 crest, the Iliad, or Hamlet, or the Sistine Madonna, 
 or the Pilgerchor!" 
 
 "I wonder if any of those poor old Infallibles 
 that had such a tough time of it here at Avignon, 
 ever was as miserable as I am! They at least al- 
 ways had enough to do quarreling with the other 
 Infallibles down in Rome, or wherever else men 
 who were not infallible, infallibly elected one of 
 themselves to be infallible. 
 
 " They didn't have as much chance as I to feel 
 lonely, anyhow ! 
 
 " I wonder if among the dozen or so that were 
 here, there happened to be a decent man a quiet 
 man who ' walked with God ' ! Then he never 
 could have been lonely, as I am! That's an idea! 
 But haven't I God with me just as much as he had 
 with him ? What is this power that, independently 
 of any effort of mine, keeps my heart beating ? 
 What is the Power that steadfastly conditions this 
 Universe, so that the needle pointed my ship over
 
 230 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 here through the unmarked waters and through 
 the dark? Ah, but those old chaps put a sympa- 
 thetic soul behind it all, and when they were 
 lonely and in trouble, consoled themselves by 
 what they were pleased to term 'Communion with 
 Him.' 
 
 "Well! Haven't I felt some such communion? 
 Hasn't something which seems, after all, the best 
 in me, responded, at times, to something beautiful 
 and all-including outside of me ? Yes, but that's 
 not the human. Well! suppose it isn't: a good 
 many fellows have managed to get along in deserts 
 alone with it.. ..And a nice, lazy, filthy lot they 
 were! Much they've done to put food and clothing 
 and clean water and healthy work and play within 
 people's reach! 
 
 " I rather suspect that if a fellow is alone, and 
 craves sympathy, the healthy thing for him to do, 
 is to get it or go without it, and not interpret the 
 reactions of his own mind as a response from the 
 Power behind the Universe. That's a good deal 
 too near to taking the images in his own brain for 
 material ones outside flat hallucination, the spe- 
 cial test of insanity." 
 
 "How rare, after all, is an unmixed feeling, of 
 either joy or sorrow to suffer without distraction, 
 or, for that matter, to enjoy without it; to hate 
 without mercy; to love without criticism! Eter- 
 nities ago, when I read novels, I took it for granted 
 that life was full of such unmixed feelings, and 
 used to think myself exceptional for not having 
 more. Now when life is real, I begin to see how 
 complex emotion is,"
 
 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 231 
 
 " How the poetry is gone out of the world! 
 Here's another fact that wipes out a lot of it: 
 there can't be any perfect love, because there can't 
 be any perfect woman. There's no getting around 
 heredity. Why didn't I realize its damnable im- 
 plications when I was talking over the same thing 
 with Uncle Grand last Summer? I don't seem to 
 have realized the force of anything before I got 
 into trouble." 
 
 "Yet there's more to say on that topic first: 
 that while writing yesterday, I ' realized ' only the 
 gloomy side of the case that I really did not see 
 the subject with new light, but with part of the old 
 light obscured, as I find I've done more than once 
 lately; and second that there can't be any perfect 
 man either, and it needs a perfect being to feel 
 perfect love, as well as to inspire it. 
 
 " And, too, come to think of it, I've read of- other 
 ideals of love than love for a perfect creature. 
 A good many millions among the most advanced 
 peoples have, it just occurs to me, been consider- 
 ably influenced by an ideal of love for //^perfect 
 creatures, which they have exalted into something 
 superhuman. 
 
 "I remember Uncle Grand told me the night 
 after I first drove with Her, that I must suffer be- 
 fore I could love in the great way. His words 
 were meaningless to me then. They certainly are 
 not now. I wonder if I can love in the great way 
 yet!" 
 
 "The instinct of worship is an old one and well 
 ground in. When my soul expands at the sunset
 
 232 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 
 
 and the dawn and under the deep stars, and grows 
 profound and beautiful with them, up comes that 
 instinct of all the generations. But I do not crave 
 an anthropomorphic god: yet I crave understand- 
 ing, sympathy, response. Sometimes I feel them in 
 the Immensity: yet even at those times, I most crave 
 them from Her. Would it drive me mad if I were 
 to indulge myself in grouping all those yearnings 
 around her ? She is now as far removed from me as 
 any god in far Olympus or 'In Heaven. Yet wher- 
 ever she is, she inspires me and holds me to my duty. 
 Her soul reaches out to the measure of this Uni- 
 verse as no imagined god's has ever done. She is 
 full of sweetest sympathies and completest re- 
 sponses, and, as when she saw me last, of unfathom- 
 able motherliness. Her grand and most lovely face 
 tells things that Raphael's dreams could reach but 
 once. With reverence greater than my forebears 
 ever felt, I worship her! My Madonna! Oh my 
 Madonna!" 
 
 " Why, from all her abounding loveliness, should 
 my memory so often turn to that little blue vein 
 just below the palm of her hand, in the soft depres- 
 sion of her white round wrist ?" 
 
 " How often I recall that night when I asked her 
 if she thought I'd been spoiled by the lack of a 
 mother, and she said, ' Awfully near it! ' I had not 
 the slightest idea what she meant. Well, here I 
 am!" 
 
 " She didn't mean that, though. No, but she 
 meant a million possibilities which included that 
 among them, though her pure soul never definitely 
 reflected it."
 
 Extracts from the Diary of a Penitent. 233 
 
 " I wonder if Uncle Grand, either, had in mind 
 anything definite, when he prophesied that she 
 would do something colossal ! He couldn't have 
 had ! There was something colossal, though, in 
 what she did for me when I saw her last. When- 
 ever I think of it, it makes me big." 
 
 " I have always admired greatness of soul, and so 
 inferred that I had it. I've always admired the 
 power to lift a ton, but never inferred that I had 
 that ! I'm stronger than I was, though." 
 
 "To live away from her, chained to my hard 
 duty, and to feel that I am doing it to make me 
 worthy of that minute when I saw her last ! 
 There's inspiration ! But Heavens! Can I ? Was 
 ever man, man enough ? I can and I will !" 
 
 " There's a great fascination in rhetoric ! What's 
 the use of my trying to make myself out heroic 
 in staying away from her, when I know perfectly 
 well that she would not take me to her if I left a 
 single duty outside ? Well ! That's no reason I 
 shouldn't do the duty. I do hope, though, that 
 some day I'm going to get through cackling over 
 doing a duty, like a hen over laying an egg. 
 
 " I prate of duty ! What duty am I doing ? 
 Well, I'm at least resisting my old ways; and if a 
 time comes for me to do more, I'm going to do 
 it : that's all,"
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 DE PROFUNDIS. 
 
 UNDER the conditions and influences already in- 
 dicated, Minerva had passed a Winter not wholly 
 devoid of peace or profit. A little discreet man- 
 agement had prevented her whereabouts being 
 known to any person whom she was not willing 
 should know it. She had come to rely upon Mrs. 
 John as a beneficent Providence, and to feel that 
 her unending kindness and wisdom would in some 
 way provide that the future should be tolerable 
 at least. 
 
 But now into the midst of this good handling of 
 a bad situation, came a cataclysm. Mrs. John's 
 heart had not been beating all these years for all 
 the sorrows in the village, without being affected 
 by its labors. She had known it long, and lately 
 John had known it, and that tender gentleman's 
 quiet solicitude for her was a poem, in spite of all 
 his professed hatred of poetry. 
 
 While in her simple mind there was unbounded 
 room for pity and forgiveness, there were none 
 of the subtle allowances for temptation which 
 make it cancel "sin," and Muriel's sin had been 
 the heaviest of all the burdens which, up to that 
 time, her patient heart had borne. But now the 
 child was come, and the gentle lady was called 
 
 234
 
 De Profundis. 235 
 
 upon to bear greater anxieties for the future than, 
 with her other cares, she was equal to. Happily 
 for Muriel, he did not know anything of this con- 
 sequence of his act, or suspect anything of it until 
 later, when he was better able to bear it, though 
 also better capable of realizing it as an illustration of 
 the unending ramifications of the risks assumed by 
 one who disturbs the moral equilibrium of things. 
 
 So Mrs. John was dying. It was not from a 
 gradual and unremitting failure of her powers, 
 but from attacks increasing in frequency and in- 
 tensity, which she now knew would soon be 
 stronger than she was. 
 
 Not long after this conviction became established 
 in her mind, she determined upon one thing 
 that she could do for Muriel. It was a bold 
 thing, such as gentle creatures, in extreme issues, 
 dare to do. Early in May, she sent for Nina 
 Wahring, and talked with her for three hours, 
 bringing on herself, as she knew she would, utter 
 prostration and the most alarming attack of her 
 malady that she had yet experienced. The details 
 of that interview, Nina never alluded to, except with 
 one person, but its results were in time obvious to 
 several. 
 
 The third morning after it took place, a boy sent 
 by Dinah brought a letter for Mrs. John. Nina 
 Wahring, who had not left John's house since the 
 interview mentioned, took the letter, saying that 
 Mrs. John, who was very ill, had instructed her to. 
 
 Five hours later, Calmire, v/ho had ridden over 
 in response to a telegram from John, was met at 
 the door by his brother, who had awaited and
 
 236 De Profundis. 
 
 recognized, far off, Malzour's trot free from the roll 
 of wheels. With a set face, John opened the door 
 and said, as they grasped hands: "She's dead! 
 I'm glad you've come." 
 
 Calmire only pressed his brother's hand, and 
 then took him by the arm and led him into the 
 dining-room. There he said : " Light a cigar and 
 let us go onto the back piazza." 
 
 John mechanically did as he was bid. He was a 
 man of wonderful self-control and, despite his re- 
 mote French ancestor, had enough Anglo-Saxon in 
 him always to show less than he felt. 
 
 As the brothers silently seated themselves in the 
 arm-chairs, Calmire left his right hand resting on 
 his brother's arm for some minutes, neither of them 
 speaking. Thesemenhad k ;c^be7ondtheneedto"say 
 something" when together, **. length John spoke: 
 
 " Well ! I suppose yon're prepared to prove that 
 the whole thing's not a humbug !" 
 
 " Oh, Amelia proved that, John !" 
 
 " Yes, so she did." 
 
 Another silence of a minute or two, and then 
 John spoke agairi with a rough suddenness : 
 
 "Calmire, did any man ever succeed in not fool- 
 ing with this immortality question?" 
 
 " I suspect not, John, when he was brought face 
 to face with it." 
 
 "Well, did any man ever succeed in holding 
 himself good and tight to a neutral position on it ?" 
 
 " Not without tfs, I fancy : at least, when the 
 man had any blood in him." 
 
 After another little silence, John said: "You
 
 De Profundis. 237 
 
 cant know how good she was, Calmire. Nobody 
 can but me." And his voice faltered. 
 
 "Yes, John, I've been blessed by knowing how 
 good a woman can be : so I do know how good 
 Amelia was. And her life in this place gave such 
 opportunities to develop the best that was in her!" 
 
 " Yes, she took care of everybody." 
 
 " Yes," echoed Calmire. Then after a moment 
 he added: " Well, there are some things that I must 
 take care of now. Have you any special wishes ?" 
 
 " Only to be left alone by pretty much everybody 
 but you. I suppose there must be some sort of a 
 ceremony to satisfy her people. But I don't want 
 to be tortured with it." 
 
 " Hadn't you better go back to Fleuvemont 
 with me ?" 
 
 " I guess so, but yet I do at times feel like 
 lingering near near what is left, even though 
 Nature declares that I must leave it." 
 
 Poor John, during the dreads of recent months, 
 had unconsciously got his opinions pretty well 
 formulated. For the first time in their talk, his 
 mouth was trembling. 
 
 And Calmire thought of the sympathy between 
 this hard-headed brother of his who generally pro- 
 fessed so much contempt for sentiment, and the 
 creatures really no more faithful, but only less 
 reasoning, who linger by clay they love even to 
 their own death; and then there flashed through 
 his mind the mortuary customs of many peoples. 
 All that occurred to him to say, however, was: 
 "You're wiser than the Egyptians, John." 
 
 " Yes. I don't intend to have my reason upset
 
 238 & e Profundis. 
 
 by whatever vices of that kind may be in my blood. 
 Whatever I feel, I know it's best that my associa- 
 tion with her should, as nearly as possible, end 
 where Nature ended it. It would be a relief if 
 memory alone could be left. After all, anything 
 more that can intervene, is simply horrible." 
 
 "You feel precisely as I should, precisely as I 
 have felt; and I will do what I can to meet your 
 feelings." 
 
 After a moment, Calmire added: " Will you take 
 the children too ? Will they be willing to go ?" 
 
 " Entirely. I can trust the older ones to feel as 
 I do. Of course the younger don't think much 
 about it." 
 
 " Is anybody here besides the servants ?" 
 
 "Yes. Nina, and Amelia's sister Agnes and her 
 husband. Those two are disposed to all the neces- 
 sary absurd conventions. Leave things to them. 
 I suppose," he added bitterly, "that it's not es- 
 sential to the dignity of the occasion, that our 
 spirits should commune with tailors and semp- 
 stresses before we are permitted to face the light 
 of Heaven." 
 
 "I'd leave that whole nuisance until it comes up 
 of itself," said Calmire. " If you feel like it, 
 there'll be time enough. We may as well go at 
 once. I shall come back to-morrow. Any instruc- 
 tions about the traps ?" 
 
 " You come in the T-cart," answered John. " I'll 
 drive; and I want to take Genevieve on the seat 
 with me. The other children and a maid or two 
 can be piled into the wagonette. I'll go, and ar- 
 range it all right away. You stay here. Or, order
 
 De Profundis. 239 
 
 the carriages, if you'll be so good. We shall be 
 ready as soon as they are." 
 
 And they separated for their respective prepara- 
 tions. 
 
 When John told Genevieve of their plans, she 
 said, after a moment's hesitation: "Papa, dear, 
 Effie had better ride in the carriage with us. It 
 makes no difference about the younger children, 
 but when she's not with you, she wants to be all 
 the time with me. I would like to sit by you; but 
 if you sit with Uncle Grand, I shall do -very well 
 taking care of Effie." 
 
 " You're your mother's child, darling," said John, 
 kissing her. And until they joined Calmire, he 
 kept by the child's side as if he were some depend- 
 ent creature. 
 
 When they started, Calmire saw John's face 
 seek some upper windows with an expression that 
 was pitiful to see, and his muscles convulsively 
 contract until he almost stopped the horses. But 
 in less time than it takes to tell it, he jerked his 
 head square to the front, said : " Come," to the 
 horses, as his way was; and, as his way was not at 
 starting, picked up the whip and put them into a 
 brisk trot. Then, instead of driving nearly half 
 around the square and through the main street, as 
 he usually did, he went up the side street near his 
 house and kept through by-ways until they had 
 gone quarter around the town and struck the main 
 road outside of it. The moment John pulled the 
 horses' heads in the unaccustomed direction, Cal- 
 mire understood, and unconsciously threw his arm 
 over the back of the seat so that it touched John.
 
 240 De Profundis. 
 
 Nobody had ever before seen him in that position 
 in a vehicle. 
 
 They had not been in the country long, before 
 John moderated the quick pace he had been driv- 
 ing, He seemed soothed by the great soft influ- 
 ences of the sky and earth 
 
 For a mile or two, nobody spoke but the chil- 
 dren. Genevieve, on the back seat with Effie, 
 had got her much interested in the objects they 
 were passing. While their attention was obviously 
 absorbed,. John broke silence, half-meditating, 
 with : 
 
 " Mow about this immortality business ?" 
 
 " Ah," answered Calmire. " The question won't 
 down when it comes home to one's very self, will it ?" 
 
 " No. It won't." 
 
 "I understand," said Calmire. 
 
 "Yet I can grin and bear it," said John, but he 
 nearly bit his cigar in two. Then he went on: 
 " Once while this was coming, Courtenay said to 
 me, ' Let us pray that it may be averted ! ' and I 
 had a queer feeling that seemed disloyal to Her, 
 but I understand it now." 
 
 " What was it ?" 
 
 For a moment John searched for expressions. 
 Then he said : " I didn't want to feel that there are 
 any uncertainties in life and death but those of our 
 own ignorance and weakness. What has come to 
 her cannot be worse, nor can even what has come 
 to me, than it would be to live in a world ruled by 
 fluctuating laws." 
 
 "John, you've struck bottom!" exclaimed Cal- 
 mire.
 
 De Profundis, 24 r 
 
 "Yes," answered John, with a long breath, " I've 
 struck bottom! God, how deep it is!" 
 
 After a moment Calmire said: "You're not the 
 man to blink anything about it. Yet there's a 
 good deal to be said without blinking anything. 
 Do you care to talk, though ?" 
 
 "Yes, it will do me good. I feel better out here. 
 What a thing a river is!" 
 
 " Yes it's even ^more soothing than a cigar. 
 Well, now if you really care to talk, John: you re- 
 member Ted Bargwin from whom you couldn't 
 live apart until you were seventeen or so? When 
 did you see him last?" 
 
 " Some twenty years ago." 
 
 "You'd been separated twelve years?" 
 
 "Yes, and I found him simply a nuisance. I see 
 what you're coming to. It's tough." 
 
 "It's not as tough as it looks at first sight. For 
 if we imagine meeting those who, as some say, 
 have 'gone before,' we may as well, while we're 
 about it, imagine them freed from all the influ- 
 ences which made Ted disagreeable to you free 
 from the things that belittle us, so we may as well 
 imagine them simply improved in every way." 
 
 " But," asked John, " how about our precious 
 selves? Perhaps they might not regard us any 
 more favorably than I regarded Ted." 
 
 "And there's a reason for doing our best!" re- 
 sponded Calmire, "and that is what I've been 
 'coming to.' There's a big inspiration in it!" 
 
 "But a fellow has so little chance to lead a big 
 life!" John complained. "And those who've got 
 out of this mess, may have so much chance."
 
 242 De Profundis. 
 
 "Suppose they do!" was Calmire's comment. 
 " They may have a chance, withal, to learn how to 
 be charitable and patient with us." 
 
 "True!" John exclaimed. "But here's another 
 trouble. What satisfaction can they take all by 
 themselves out there in the cold ?" and he shud- 
 dered his terrible strain had weakened him. Then 
 he went on. ".In spite of everything, they must 
 either be wretched or get absorbed in something 
 something that we know nothing about and can't 
 be interested in. Just the same way, we in time 
 must get absorbed in what they're not interested 
 in. No ! It's all nonsense to talk about our sym- 
 pathies being kept up when there's no communi- 
 cation." 
 
 " John, haven't you pondered sometimes on what 
 it is for a man to keep the course of his own life at 
 one with the course of the universe?" 
 
 " Some vague notions in this direction have 
 crossed my mind once or twice." 
 
 "Now," resumed Calmire, "the course of the 
 universe is definite and consistent. Two people 
 who cannot communicate with each other, can 
 walk as close to it as they may be able. If they do 
 that, though they may not be very near each other, 
 they will at least be on paths that do not diverge. 
 Such notions become very clear and strong, when 
 one feels that leading such a life is the only con- 
 ceivable means of saving the dearest sympathy he 
 has ever known. When a man gets his slavish 
 allegiance to a fickle God, expanded into intelligent 
 cooperation with steadfast Law, and then feels 
 that in such cooperation he may be still living in
 
 De Profundis. 243 
 
 sympathy with one whom he has loved with all his 
 soul, and lost, he has the strongest incentive to 
 right living that has yet been found out, so far as 
 I know." 
 
 "It's a good deal of a notion," said John medi- 
 tatively. " I wonder if they had any grip on it when 
 they began to preach that one who lives according 
 to God's law, will meet the loved ones gone before 
 in Heaven ?" 
 
 " Not a very clear grip, I suspect," answered 
 Calmire. " But I'm more struck every day with 
 the fact that pretty much all our ideas have been 
 guessed at in some fashion before." 
 
 John pulled hard on his cigar for a few seconds 
 and then said: 
 
 " Calmire, I'm half afraid of playing with this 
 immortality question, even as far as you've been 
 speaking of it: it unsettles a man. I'd get to 
 going farther, and imagining and doing all sorts 
 of things praying to her, for all I know. Even 
 now, I generally think of myself before her, as on 
 my knees. It would drive me crazy to think much 
 about her, except as in the past." 
 
 " That depends upon whether you let what you 
 think run counter to what you know. To follow 
 Nature, as we were talking of a moment ago, 
 is to make no assumptions beyond the bounds 
 Nature has set for our knowledge. Live as a 
 wise man would live anyhow; you will have a 
 new incentive now. My counsel really is to avoid 
 the very extravagances you dread. You're in -the 
 situation of Orpheus over again you must keep 
 your eyes to the front."
 
 2 44 De Profundis. 
 
 "All right," said poor John, with a sickly at- 
 tempt at a smile, "I'll keep my eyes on you." 
 
 "And yet," continued Calmire after a moment's 
 pause, "there's another important thing that 
 doesn't seem to have been dwelt upon as much 
 as the immortality question: probably because 
 there's no selfish side to it. That is, the influence 
 of the memory of our dead, utterly independent 
 of the question of joining them again. I don't 
 know but what it's rooted in some notion of their 
 survival and supervision of our acts. But in the 
 best form I know of, it seems a very single desire 
 to be worthy of what they have been to us. There's 
 lots of imagination in the feeling, lots of exal- 
 tation, very likely lots of superstition: but what- 
 ever it is, I don't believe any man knows what 
 lofty incentive is, until he has had to mourn." 
 " Pretty superstitious for you, Calmire!" 
 "Superstitious for me! I'm one of the most 
 superstitious men alive under some definitions. 
 If anybody thinks oftener than I do of the myriad 
 unknown forces at work around us, it's about time 
 for his friends to shut him up, that's all!" 
 
 " You wouldn't have applied that definition to 
 anybody but yourself," said John, beginning a 
 sardonic little laugh which his sadness smothered 
 at its first breath. " You think that being super- 
 stitious would add force, by contrast, to your unor- 
 thodoxy: but all the same you're not superstitious. 
 Thinking about what's beyond us isn't superstition: 
 it's believing about it, as you've often said your- 
 self ; and I'm going to think all I want to. But it
 
 De Profundis. 2 45 
 
 tires me even to think. Couldn't a fellow just go 
 off quietly and die?" 
 
 " How about those children chattering on the 
 back seat," asked Calmire, "and those in the 
 wagonette behind?" 
 
 "Oh, there's no decent way out of it all," ex- 
 claimed John mournfully; " no way out! I've just 
 got to stick it through:" In a moment, he added: 
 ; ' That's just what I hate most of all about it 
 the cold fact which I can't help realizing from the 
 experiences of other men, that I shall in a sense 
 'get over it.' Why, this misery is only her due as 
 long as I draw breath!" 
 
 " An " ejaculated Calmire, " that's the damnable 
 way of looking at it that we've inherited from 
 Puritanism and the older diseases like it. But you 
 know all the same, John, that there's no sense in 
 nursing misery: enough of it is inevitable. The 
 only thing to nurse is happiness." 
 
 " And yet you wouldn't say that we should for- 
 get a human being like a dog!" 
 
 " You can't forget a dog a good one. There's 
 no danger that you'll forget Amelia in any way 
 you ought not, even after the sharpness of this 
 misery is past." 
 
 After a little musing, John said: "It's good to 
 talk to you, Calmire. But the worst of it all is 
 that I can't talk to her. If I could only go to her 
 and tell her all about it!" 
 
 " Yes, that's the worst, old man, the very worst!" 
 
 After they got to Fleuvemont, Calmire, while 
 apparently leaving John to himself, took pains to
 
 246 De Profundis. 
 
 keep within a moment's reach of him. The chil- 
 dren distributed themselves over the grounds, ex- 
 cept Genevieve, who kept by her father, or rather, 
 as Calmire realized, her father pitifully kept near 
 her. 
 
 After dinner, as the brothers smoked on the 
 piazza, John's talk was mostly monosyllabic, and 
 before his cigar was finished, he said he was tired 
 and would go to bed. Calmire took him to a room 
 communicating with his own, and as he was about 
 to bid him good-night, remembered himself and 
 said : 
 
 " Shall I stay with you, John ?" 
 
 " I wish you would." 
 
 So he sat, making a tremendous effort to divert 
 John's mind until he was ready for bed. Then the 
 elder brother said: 
 
 " I know you will sleep. There's at least that 
 advantage in being a Calmire. After you go to 
 sleep, I shall read in my room there, as I often do, 
 for an hour or two; and if you wake before I do, 
 call me." 
 
 For a moment John grasped his hand as if it 
 were a floating spar, and in a very few moments 
 more was sleeping the deep recuperative slumber 
 of exhaustion. 
 
 The next morning, Calmire, as he intended, 
 awoke first, and as soon as he knew John's sleep 
 was over, was beside him. When John saw him, 
 he murmured: 
 
 " Oh God, Calmire, what a life to wake into! I 
 knew nothing about it yesterday. And to think
 
 De Profundis. 2 47 
 
 that I have got to wake into it every day! I dread 
 Bleep!" 
 
 Calmire sat down beside the bed and stroked 
 his brother's hand. 
 
 " You can't wake into exactly it, another day, 
 John, even if you try. To-day's facts will inter- 
 vene, even if no more than as panes of glass, 
 between you and yesterday; next day, to-mor- 
 row's facts will be as a few panes more; and so 
 through the next day and the next, until by mere 
 accumulation, they will render the view of yester- 
 day dim. You can't help it, John. You may even 
 think that loyalty requires you to keep all the 
 misery clear and distinct before you, but you can't 
 do it. Omnipotent and beneficent Nature is work- 
 ing against it. Living is changing: if you don't 
 change, you die." 
 
 " That would suit me exactly," said John. 
 
 "But you can't have it," said Calmire, "and as 
 you can't, every experience, every thought, every 
 breath takes from you something old and substi- 
 tutes something new. The one fact that includes 
 all of life, is change. Change you must, and the 
 bearings of this misery must change with you." 
 
 "Yes, if a man lives." 
 
 " Well, you've got to. The happiness of so many 
 others depends upon you." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so." 
 
 Calmire could say nothing, yet he found some- 
 thing infinitely pitiable in his matter-of-fact 
 brother, who had always been mildly cynical re- 
 garding all expression of emotion, now wishing 
 again and again for love and sorrow's sake, to lay
 
 248 De Profundis. 
 
 down the life that had been so undemonstrative 
 and strong. 
 
 After a minute or two of silence, John resumed: 
 "I'm glad of what you said about all life being 
 change. But here's a queer change in mine: I want 
 to go back where she is." 
 
 " We don't know where she is, John." 
 
 "Oh well, you know what I mean," said John, 
 half irritably, and then added with a sad smile: 
 " I suspect that after all, I've enough of the instincts 
 of a dog, to follow till the last." 
 
 When they met downstairs, John said: 
 
 " I've thought it over and put my own mind in 
 command again. I'm not going." 
 
 "Do exactly as you feel when the moment 
 comes," said Calmire. "So far as possible, do 
 nothing and refrain from nothing that you'll regret 
 hereafter." 
 
 "All right, I sha'n't go." 
 
 As the brothers had provided, the grief of John 
 and his children was not made a show of to the 
 whole population of the town. For the people's sake, 
 and because he thought she would have wished 
 it so, Calmire had decided on a memorial meet- 
 ing, and had told Courtenay that, though he would 
 not profane their benefactress's memory by placing 
 the clay from which her loveliness had gone, for 
 them to look upon, he would still like Courtenay 
 to read before them as much of the venerable ser- 
 vice of his church as would be fitting, and to speak 
 whatever he might wish. He also told the choir
 
 De Profundis. 249 
 
 and the men's singing society to do their own will 
 about music. 
 
 The people gathered to pay their last tribute 
 of gratitude in and about the library hall where 
 Amelia had done so much for them, and it was 
 all very beautiful with the afternoon sunlight 
 slanting through the windows. When Courtenay 
 tried to talk to them of their sweet benefactress, 
 he found it hard to begin, and when he said: 
 " The mothers here know best what she was," 
 he could not go on for the sobs among the people. 
 He saw some of the men crying, and then he 
 simply broke down and buried his head in his 
 hands over the reading-desk. When after a minute 
 he raised his eyes, and tried to falter on, he met 
 the eyes of Nina Wahring, who sat with Calmire 
 in one of the front seats. Tears were rolling down 
 her cheeks, but her face was firm as marble, and in 
 it was a strange gentle sternness and resolution, 
 which came to him through her eyes. It was the 
 manhood women give great sons. And she gave 
 it to him, and afterward his voice was firm, and 
 his words calm and wise, and he talked to the 
 people with such strength and fitness and feeling 
 that the dullest of them always remembered that 
 hour, and referred back to it many a repression of 
 brutal impulse, and many a leading to gentleness 
 and charity. 
 
 Calmire, feeling that funeral pageants are but 
 survivals of barbarism, took upon himself to per- 
 form simply the sad offices which he had spared 
 his brother. Amelia's sister was ill, and Calmire 
 welcomed an intimation from her that an emer-
 
 250 De Profundis. 
 
 gency at home was clamoring for her husband, 
 and sent him away. Nina he sent to Fleuvemont 
 to the children, and it was not with reluctance 
 that, at twilight, he found himself alone, save for 
 the laboring men, by a grave on the hillside at 
 the edge of a wood, where one sees far. Before 
 him was a long covered basket of the sweet white 
 withes of the weeping willow. Flowers with their 
 stems woven into its meshes covered the sides, and 
 the top was heaped with them. 
 
 As Calmire stood looking beyond what was at his 
 feet, into the yellow afterglow over the far blue 
 hills, and upon the yellow gleams of the river here 
 and there between them, he felt, among many wide 
 and deep thoughts, that sure dependence on Na- 
 ture's courses which, under many names, has been 
 sung through all the ages. His lips almost uttered 
 some words that came to him: "This order and 
 this beauty endure will endure somewhere, if 
 not here, longer than any hope or dream of mine 
 can measure. What am I, that I should think 
 lightly of it if I respond to it but for a little while 
 more? I feel it now, and could not feel it better 
 if I knew that the emotion would last beyond all 
 the aeons I can conceive. I feel the higher moral 
 order which, to me, it always symbolizes. Joy that 
 I do so, is the emotion to fill my soul with: not 
 questioning discontent lest I may not do so long." 
 
 The first earth fell softly on the thick mass of 
 flowers, and he felt: 
 
 " She knew it too, and probably more sweetly 
 than I, for she knew wider love. Pelion and Ossa 
 piled over her coffin, would do nothing to shut out
 
 De Profundis. 251 
 
 that fact." And a smile of half-amused scorn 
 turned his proud kind lips, as there came up in 
 his mind the old question: "Grave, where is thy 
 victory ?" 
 
 Then came the antecedent question: " O Death, 
 where is thy sting?" His lips became set and he 
 frowned, and said to himself : " How long will they 
 amuse themselves with fictions? If one is a man. 
 it does sting ! Death is death ! It does sting ! 
 Oh, my sweet sister !" 
 
 And he sat down on a rock beside him and 
 rested his face in his hands, and looked through 
 wet eyes long and wistfully into the beckoning 
 mystery of the twilight. 
 
 He did not notice footsteps over the cracking 
 branches in the woods behind. Somebody came 
 down and over the noiseless turf, and sat unheard 
 beside him. In time his emotion spread its waves 
 to the borders of his strong will, and was checked. 
 As he lowered his hand, another hand was laid 
 upon it. He turned and put his arm around 
 Muriel's neck. 
 
 The two sat thus without a word, looking be- 
 yond into the deepening sky, until the grave was 
 filled with earth, and the sky with night 
 
 "It is over," said Calmire. 
 
 "And it begins," said Muriel. 
 
 " So always!" responded Calmirei
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 FACING IT. 
 
 " LET us walk," said Muriel. " You are going to 
 Fleuvemont? Tell the carriage to keep within 
 call." 
 
 "HmP'said Calmire to himself. "So you run 
 the situation your way, do you, even with me? 
 My poor boy, what you must have had to handle, 
 to make this grip spontaneous !" But he assented, 
 and they walked on together to Benstock, the sta- 
 tion next below Calmire, where the track was 
 crossed by the road which went past Huldah's. 
 
 "How does Uncle John take it?" said Muriel 
 after a while the first time he had alluded to 
 John as " Uncle," since he was a boy. 
 
 "Like a man," answered Calmire, "and what's 
 rarer, like a reasoning man." 
 
 " He's another person to whom I never did jus- 
 tice," said Muriel. 
 
 " Very likely. He's not your style." 
 
 " No, but I've learned that there are other styles 
 than mine. I'm so sorry for Uncle John ! Is it 
 worthwhile to love any mortal thing? Hadn't a 
 man better bury himself in the verities that are 
 sure to outlast him ?" 
 
 " No; the best in us lives on things that perish 
 quickly. We may in time be evolved beyond 
 
 252
 
 Facing It. 253 
 
 that; but when we are, down goes the charm of sex, 
 down goes procreation, down goes the race, and 
 dissolution takes the place of evolution. No, let's 
 take all the life we can get, pain and all. That's 
 living." 
 
 " Yes. Pain fertilizes, at least," responded Muriel. 
 " I see now that life probably never is what a 
 young man has imagined it to be. But I begin to 
 get a dim glimmer of an idea that the ordinary 
 materials of happiness may not be its essentials, or 
 at least may not be essential to peace." After a 
 pause he went on apparently finding it a relief to 
 unburden his mind after so much solitude: " And 
 I've got another new notion that by a man with 
 any claims to decency, even peace can't be had, 
 with duty shirked. I've often imagined myself 
 building happiness that did not rest on duty, and 
 every time, after a day or two, I've found my 
 structure full of cracks that let in the glare of 
 Hell." 
 
 " There's some of the old Muriel left in you yet!" 
 said Calmire, half thinking aloud. 
 
 " It's queer, isn't it," continued Muriel, " how 
 things won't hold together, and how they will?" 
 
 " Yes," said Calmire, " it takes a long while to 
 realize that moral forces act under the same laws 
 as physical ones. An engineer will look at a plan 
 and say: 'That looks well, but it won't stand,' 
 while at the same time he's just as apt as the rest 
 of us, to build into his own life little weaknesses 
 that will make his happiness shaky all his days." 
 
 " A man can't often avoid the consequences,' 
 Muriel assented.
 
 254 Facing It. 
 
 " He has some choice among them, though," 
 Calmire rejoined. 
 
 "Yes, I've worked that out too," responded Mu- 
 riel, and continued unbosoming himself: " The 
 choice between carrying a perfidy like a snake 
 in his bosorn, chilling his conscience, and deaden- 
 ing his comradeship with all honest things a 
 choice between that and candidly owning his fault, 
 that he may work with that comradeship restored 
 with sunlight and heat and frost and air and 
 gravity he and they all friends working hon- 
 estly together in the same evolution and," he 
 added after a moment, " it's better still to get the 
 feeling that even if he cannot grasp what he loves, 
 any more than he can grasp the sunset, he has an 
 honest man's right to love it apart, and is better 
 for it." 
 
 " You've thought out a good deal, for the amount 
 of living you've done !" said Calmire. 
 
 " I've done an enormous amount of living for my 
 years, and I've had to think it out. It was the boy 
 and the woodchuck !" and Muriel laughed almost 
 like his old self. 
 
 " Well," commented Calmire, " we'd both have 
 been dead if there hadn't been some humor in us. 
 But, my boy, mind this thing well. Don't culti- 
 vate the power of seeing the ludicrous side of seri- 
 ous things. Perhaps it's worth more to see the 
 serious side of ludicrous things, if it doesn't make 
 a prig of one." 
 
 "Why are people without humor generally such 
 small potatoes, anyhow?" asked Muriel. 
 
 "Why, didn't you know that, as far as we've
 
 Facing It. 255 
 
 got, a sense of humor is among the very latest 
 things evolved ? It's later than even many of the 
 moral sentiments." 
 
 "You don't say so ! Shakspere knew a thing or 
 two! Would you believe that during all the hor- 
 rible torture of the past half-year, I've sometimes 
 had spasms of fun or bursts of music come to me 
 in the most painful moments? At first I thought 
 that I must be very depraved to make them pos- 
 sible; but by and by I came to regard them as 
 narcotics." 
 
 " They're more healthful than that," said Cal- 
 mire. " You wouldn't have mistrusted them if you 
 hadn't had the vices of puritanism in your blood. 
 The first need in trouble is to take what comes, nat- 
 urally: trouble always tempts to self-mortification." 
 
 " I wish that I'd realized all that when I was 
 young," said Muriel. 
 
 " ' When you were young ' ? How long ago was 
 that?" 
 
 " Not a year," said Muriel, " but you don't meas- 
 ure experience by time, do you? For my part, I 
 think a fellow ceases to be young when he has it 
 well burned into him that pleasure may destroy 
 happiness, and that duty's the real thing, after all ! 
 It has a queer power to brace a fellow, and even 
 gives him now and then a gleam of something 
 like triumph." 
 
 "Ah, yes!" exclaimed Calmire, sadly. "But 
 while I hate to croak, there's no unkindness in tell- 
 ing you that you'll find humdrum daily life some- 
 thing very different from a triumphal procession of 
 good resolutions. So far, you've resolved nobly,
 
 2 56 Facing It. 
 
 though at least in generalities : but what are you 
 going to do?" 
 
 " Proclaim it and stand the consequences ! What 
 else is there for a man to do ? I don't want the 
 credit of being any better than I am." 
 
 " So you propose to proclaim your son a bastard, 
 and to destroy that much of what chance there 
 may be for him and his mother during the rest of 
 their lives !" 
 
 " What chance is any one of us three entitled 
 to ?" cried Muriel, bitterly. 
 
 "He is entitled to the chance of the innocent; 
 and you, and Minerva too, I trust, to the chance of 
 the repentant." 
 
 " Hm !" muttered Muriel. " I suspect I'm an ass !" 
 
 " Well, the ass's head faced the brave way, at 
 least," laughed Calmire. " But plainly the relief 
 of open confession is denied you." 
 
 "Well," said Muriel, " confession or no confes- 
 sion, I've got to take care of the child and its 
 mother." 
 
 "Certainly !" assented Calmire. " Do you mean 
 marriage ?" 
 
 " No. Do you think I ought to ?" 
 
 " You know I never did at least immediately. 
 But with the suicidal enthusiasm you showed a mo- 
 ment ago, I didn't know what you had come to." 
 
 " I had simply determined to take care of them 
 and take the consequences. But to make marriage 
 one, would, it seems to me, be to desecrate it. Its 
 only legitimate place is as an antecedent." 
 
 " You're right. But you're undertaking a hard 
 task."
 
 Facing It. 257 
 
 " Yes, harder than it seemed before you showed 
 me the need of concealment. And if it were only 
 all working ! But it's enduring, that I can't stand. 
 Oh ! can't there be any way out of it all ?" cried 
 the boy who a moment before had been exulting in 
 his resolution to stay in. 
 
 " Not for a good while, if ever," said Calmire. 
 " The tangle is too complex for me to see any un- 
 ravelment yet. There's nothing visible but pa- 
 tience." 
 
 " If I could only end it all by dying for them !" 
 murmured Muriel. 
 
 "Dying! Any fool can do that! To live and 
 suppress one's self, is the thing that tests a man !" 
 
 "If there were only something to do T cried 
 Muriel. " But merely waiting, when one doesn't 
 know what one is waiting for, is about as dead as 
 death." 
 
 " Nevertheless, it is sometimes the strongest and 
 wisest thing a man can do," said Calmire, " though 
 sometimes it's the weakest and stupidest. But wait- 
 ing should not mean idleness. That's full of dry-rot. 
 I thought of you the other day when I had to get 
 a carpenter to make some repairs. We build a 
 house to rest in, and after a little while, Nature 
 has attacked it with storm, and rust, and decay, 
 and shrinkage, and gravity, so that we've got to 
 get up and repair it. It is with our bodies and 
 minds just as it is with our houses: the environ- 
 ment is constantly acting upon them, and unless 
 they healthily react, they're rotted out. Queer 
 how everything is a corollary of the Persistence of 
 Force, isn't it ? even the fact that you've got to go
 
 258 Facing It. 
 
 to work to keep yourself together! Now what 
 
 is to be your first step? You'll attract attention if 
 you're all at any one place long. Her history will 
 be pried into, and then you'll have to move on. 
 That will at least keep you active, though!" 
 
 "Again, the curse of Cain! A wanderer on the 
 face of the earth!" exclaimed Muriel. 
 
 " Oh, don't indulge in that ort of thing. You've 
 done nothing as bad as that. Stick to the subject!" 
 
 Calmire put his arm in Muriel's while chiding him. 
 
 "Well," said Muriel, "possibly I can fix myself 
 somewhere at the centre of a circle, so to speak, 
 and nave the others make their moves on the cir- 
 cumference, within reach of me. All of which 
 opens the interesting question of how much lying 
 I've got to do. Why, when a fellow gets down, 
 does everything conspire to push him farther?" 
 
 " Say rather," commented Calmire, " ' Why, when 
 a man runs counter to one law, does he find himself 
 at war with the whole system ? ' ' 
 
 " Yes, the system seems to hang together pretty 
 well," said Muriel. "You pull a thread in any 
 direction, and the first you know, the strain has got 
 around to your own heart-strings. But Heavens and 
 Earth! I can't go on lying and wandering all my 
 life. What can I do ? Anything I can do is absurd." 
 
 "Yes," responded Calmire, "that's the worst of 
 the worst situations. The only way is to plan as 
 little as possible. First try what seems least ab- 
 surd, and then follow the indications." 
 
 " Uncle Grand, the thought has crossed my mind 
 a thousand times that it's mere mawkishness not 
 i j reduce this to a simple question of money, pay
 
 Facing It. 259 
 
 up, and clear it off." 
 
 "Well," asked Calmire, "what do you think of 
 that thought?" 
 
 "That it's the thought of a brute," Muriel re- 
 sponded promptly. 
 
 "Anything else?" queried Calmire. 
 
 "Yes. That it's the thought of a fool. The 
 thing wouldn't stay cleared off." 
 
 "It would if you were brute enough." 
 
 " But I'm not." 
 
 "That's just where the trouble comes in," ob- 
 served Calmire. " What did I write you last 
 Fall about men's punishments not being alike? 
 Make the best of yours, and leave the rest to the 
 infinite possibilities of Nature. Try to ignore it," 
 and his voice fell to a tone that had something 
 awful in it, " and no matter what your external life 
 may be, it will crush the soul out of you as sure as 
 gravitation!" 
 
 Muriel pondered a moment, and then said : 
 " Whatever externals may be, there will always 
 always always be something abnormal in my 
 life. Oh, the misery of it the unending misery 
 of it!" 
 
 Calmire's face was a strange study. His wider 
 experience made him realize ramifications to the 
 wretchedness, that the boy's imagination had not 
 yet reached; but yet he felt that skepticism re- 
 garding any definite expectations for the future, 
 which becomes habitual to men who have seen 
 and thought much. This and a certain amused pity 
 for the wholesale way in which the young expect 
 either sorrow or joy, united to interfuse a faint 
 gleam of a smile among the deep shadows of his
 
 260 Facing It. 
 
 grand features. After a minute, he said, very slowly: 
 " Muriel, there are very few lives very few, if 
 any that reach their climax without something 
 abnormal and irreparable in them. Don't get 
 demoralized because you can never be perfectly 
 happy. Do you know anybody who is?" 
 Muriel reflected a little, and then answered: 
 " Uncle Grand, under ordinary circumstances 
 you're the happiest man I know." 
 
 "The nearest to happy, you mean. Well, do 
 you want to know the secret ?" 
 
 "Always behaving yourself, I suppose." 
 " No; that would be but half of it, even if it were 
 true at least as your phrase is ordinarily under- 
 stood. Always occupying myself does much of it 
 always, on being attacked by painful thoughts, 
 finding something to do, and so leaving no room 
 in the mind for irremediable trouble." 
 
 "And yet," remonstrated Muriel, "you've told 
 me that we ought to get growth from our troubles." 
 "Certainly, and perhaps the most important 
 growth we can get, is just that power of ignor- 
 ing them. Only the remediable ones should be 
 thought about. Enough means of growth will 
 be found in them : in fact, they give us the very 
 'something to do' that we need." 
 
 "You don't want me to think of Aunt Amelia?" 
 " Yes that we had her : not that we've lost her." 
 " But my one fixed trouble ?" urged Muriel. " It 
 seems irremediable : shall I give it no thought?" 
 
 " None to its irremediable features. You'll find 
 enough remediable ones ; and they'll pound your 
 conscience hard enough, too, to keep it tender." 
 "Well, that seems rational," Muriel admitted.
 
 Facing It. 261 
 
 " But you told me that work is only part of your 
 secret of happiness. What's the rest?" 
 
 " Constantly realizing one little truth that it's 
 absurd to expect perfect happiness without perfect 
 evolution that for us, the conditions of perfect 
 happiness don't exist. Plainly, then, the moral 
 is, to make the best of what happiness the con- 
 ditions permit. No matter what Fate sends, I 
 take all the happiness I can get (Of course selfishly 
 trying not to forget that the most is to be got 
 from giving it), and in spite of Fate's hard blows 
 to us both, I do mightily enjoy my life." 
 
 He stretched out his great arms and expanded 
 his deep chest and looked over to Muriel with a 
 smile that made him think of Browning's Hercules 
 so full was it of the joy and pity of the gods. 
 
 '''Fate's hard blows' is a kind way of putting 
 it at least my part of it," said Muriel. " No! I've 
 spoiled my life myself; and after all, there's some 
 grim comfort in not being anybody-else's victim." 
 
 "That's honest!" exclaimed Calmire. "But this 
 thing need not spoil your life. You've told me 
 that you're even now able to lose yourself in what 
 interests you. Lose yourself, then." 
 
 "What shall I do?" 
 
 " Anything that adds to the aggregate happi- 
 ness." 
 
 " I may as well amuse myself, then. Thank you : 
 I've lost all taste for that." 
 
 "Then amuse others, if you will. I should be 
 sorry to see you become an intelligent being 
 wholly devoted to selfish pleasure ; for such a 
 creature has always seemed to me the saddest
 
 262 Facing It. 
 
 incongruity in nature, and one of the most dis- 
 gusting : I hardly know which is the worse 
 the pettiness of the object, or the stupidity of 
 the way of seeking it. But it's all right if you 
 add to the pleasure of others at the same time. 
 Why, even yachtsmen and turfmen who advance 
 their arts are useful; and so," he said with a smile, 
 " is a cornet-player who delights many people." 
 
 " But why do you talk about playthings, Uncle 
 Grand ? I'm past them." 
 
 " Now stop right there, Muriel ! I never knew a 
 really big man who had no playthings, even if they 
 were live soldiers." 
 
 " Probably I've got to put up with the cheap in- 
 spirations of ambition anyhow," Muriel muttered: 
 " But lacking love, I lack even ambition." 
 
 " But don't despise ambition, Muriel," urged Cal- 
 mire. "Surely there are noble ones. And whether 
 you succeed or not, the work is the main thing for 
 you. Can't you lay out something definite?" 
 
 "The country's greatest need is in politics," an- 
 swered Muriel. "But I can't make myself an 
 object of public investigation just now : so I've 
 simply closed that career for myself !" Muriel said 
 it bitterly, but added with a sneer: " I never had 
 much taste for it, though. I don't like to shake 
 hands that are seldom washed, and that's politics." 
 
 "That depends," said Calmire, " upon whether 
 you take the cheap notion of 'a career.' It might 
 be hard for you to get office, but lots of men have 
 done the greatest good in politics in the art as 
 well as in the science, without holding office."
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 
 WHERE ALL ROADS MEET. 
 
 THEY stepped upon the platform at Benstock. 
 Calmire looked at his watch and said : " We've 
 over half an hour: let's drive to the next station." 
 He told his men to throw back the top of the 
 landau. Despite Calmire's attitude regarding 
 mourning conventions, he had sent to New York 
 for a big close carriage that he had never before 
 used in the country, in which, alone, to follow his 
 sister's body to the grave. 
 
 After they were seated, Muriel resumed: " Do 
 you know, I've sometimes really thought I'd like to 
 preach ? for the sake of teaching some other poor 
 devils what has cost me so much to learn." 
 
 " Certainly !" responded Calmire. " Every young- 
 ster with any seriousness in him gets taken that 
 way sometime." 
 
 "Well!" exclaimed Muriel, "at least I've made 
 up my mind that I'm not going to pitch into the 
 churches any more." 
 
 "You've found at last that they have their uses, 
 have you ? even outside of charity and police ?" 
 
 " Yes. Why, will you believe that I've wandered 
 into them for help more than once of late ?" 
 
 "Of course! Of course! So did I in my early 
 time of trouble. A young man has all sorts of 
 impulses then grasps at every straw. But did 
 you get any comfort?" 
 
 263
 
 264 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 " Hardly, except in occasionally having the 
 cockles of my heart warmed by a little sense of 
 human sympathy. But I did get another thing," 
 he added after a moment, "a realization that a 
 good deal of what I've struggled to through all 
 this sweat and fire, the churches have been quietly 
 preaching all the while." 
 
 " Yes, a good deal of it," said Calmire. " I tried to 
 get that into your head long ago, but of course you 
 wouldn't take it. The sort of man who needs it has 
 to learn it for himself as he has most things. But 
 after a while, you'll begin to criticise the churches 
 again. When that time comes, don't forget what 
 seems very simple, but what, like many other sim- 
 ple things, it will take you a good while to really 
 feel I mean that, speaking broadly, to do any 
 good, the churches have got to take pretty much 
 the lines they do. The idea of giving most people 
 the direct truth is simply comical. Suppose that 
 instead of giving them the cosmogony of Moses, 
 you were to try to make them- understand evolu- 
 tion ; suppose that instead of the power and wis- 
 dom of God, you were to try to make them 
 understand the persistence of force and the uni- 
 versality of law ; suppose that for the jealous 
 God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the 
 children, you try to expound to them the law of 
 heredity; suppose that instead of the hope of 
 Heaven and the dread of Hell, you tried to sub- 
 stitute the Utilitarian basis of morals ; suppose 
 that for the mysteries of religion (and there's 
 great stimulus to all our higher faculties in the 
 contemplation of mystery) you try to give them a
 
 Where All Roads Meet. 265 
 
 grip on the relativity of our knowledge on the 
 fact that both the external universe and the uni- 
 verse of consciousness too, float on an Infinite 
 Mystery." 
 
 "Yes," said Muriel. " I've thought that all out. 
 I'm not going to quarrel about the symbols any 
 more: the moralities are about the same." 
 
 " Yes," assented Calmire, " fruits from the same 
 experience. It's in the sanctions, that the difference 
 comes : the Hell you've been through, couldn't 
 be understood by a fire-and-brimstone congrega- 
 tion." 
 
 " No, nor my Heaven either, if it were attain- 
 able. And yet," he mused after a moment, "I 
 don't know that I know much more about my 
 Heaven than they do. When a fellow's in such a 
 fix as I am, a purely philosophical Heaven won't 
 fill the bill : when he's alone as I've been, all his 
 ancestors cry out in his heart for God, and when 
 his life is broken as mine is, they all cry out for 
 another life." 
 
 "Well," said Calmire, "there's no necessity of 
 your altogether drowning the ancestral voices : 
 you can't escape a great deal that they assert re- 
 garding God ; and as to immortality, you've no 
 more right to deny it than they to assert it." 
 
 " I know that's the accepted lingo," responded 
 Muriel, "but I will speculate, speculate, speculate: 
 and if a fellow keeps speculating after he's broken 
 with Christianity and all that, what's he going to 
 do when he's all alone in the dark ?" 
 
 "He'd better stop speculating and mind his 
 business and keep out of the dark. Thinking is
 
 266 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 all very well as far as it goes : when a man first 
 gets into deep trouble he's got to think (unless he 
 lets somebody else do it for him), until he has a 
 lasting sense direct, or symbolic like Paul's, of at 
 least four things the enduring Verity behind all 
 the shifting phenomena we call life, the inscruta- 
 bility of consciousness, the sanctions of morality in 
 the very structure of the universe, and the hopeful- 
 ness of evolution. He'll be more comfortable, too, 
 if he will realize the relatively limited pain in disso- 
 lution cosmic as well as personal, I mean : that's 
 a big subject that hasn't been gone into much. But 
 all the same, when those foundations are once in good 
 and firm, it's best to cover them up and leave them 
 alone, and busy one's self in the daylight. Dig- 
 ging among the fundamental verities, is like mining 
 work for short hours. It's not as healthy as any 
 sort of 'active work,' as they call it, politics, hy- 
 giene, charity, education, or even business routine, 
 if a man is condemned to it. Why the churches 
 themselves, as they improve, pay less attention to 
 that sort of questions less to dogma and more to 
 morals, less to 'doctrine* and more to practice. 
 Under our eyes they are differentiating from insti- 
 tutions given wholly to ' services ' and preaching, 
 into clubs where people have good times and dis- 
 seminategood times amongtheless fortunate. Why, 
 sects which when I was a youngster thought that 
 cards, dancing, billiard-playing, and the theatre all 
 came from the devil, now have annexes to their 
 churches where all those things are used, and used ad 
 majorem dei gloriam, too. On the other hand, social 
 clubs are changing in the direction of the churches
 
 Where All Roads Meet. 267 
 
 they enforce many moralities they'd expel a man 
 now for publicly making such bets as they once 
 registered in their books ; they are getting libraries, 
 and even annexing lecture-halls where they discuss 
 many themes that the pulpit now does. Apparently 
 both religious and social organizations are approach- 
 ing some plane where they will hardly be distin- 
 guishable from each other where religion will be 
 what its most intelligent supporters have all along 
 wanted it to be a part of common life, and where 
 common life will be imbued with religion." 
 
 "And then," exclaimed Muriel, "the churches 
 will be out of the way!" 
 
 " That's hard to prognosticate," Calmire answered. 
 " Yet they don't even now stand out as the mediaeval 
 cathedrals do: the modern churches are already 
 more on the general level, partly because the level 
 has risen. The universities are looming up with 
 wonderful rapidity. But try to realize what the 
 religions have done to raise the whole. And, as I 
 intimated before, the faster they raise it, the less 
 they occupy themselves with speculation on what 
 is beyond our knowledge. That always was an ele- 
 ment of weakness in them, and is in anybody. It 
 won't do to get so engrossed in the questions un- 
 derlying life, as to lessen one's usefulness in life 
 itself : yow know that nine tenths of the half- 
 philosophical half-religious speculation is the work 
 of weaklings and cranks." 
 
 "Why, Uncle Grand, I took it for gfanted that 
 you held philosophy to be the highest possible 
 pursuit: then it ought to be the healthiest." 
 
 "So it is, if it heeds the very principle I've men-
 
 268 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 tioned, and busies itself with real things with 
 the relations between the laws actually discovered 
 in matter and motion and life and mind and morals 
 and society. A man working on actual phenomena 
 is constantly getting his Antaean strength: but if 
 he keeps too long away from mother Earth, in the 
 mists of old-fashioned speculation, his power is 
 going to ooze out fast." 
 
 " But," objected Muriel, " there have been some 
 very strong men given to that sort of speculation." 
 
 " Yes, men strong enough to be strong in spite of 
 it, and few of them for all their days: the best phi- 
 losophers, from Aristotle through Descartes down, 
 have devoted a large part of their time to verifica- 
 tion too to science. And what steadied the best 
 of those not given to science, was their big human 
 interest: if Socrates (who, by the way, although 
 one of the world's most precious moral inspira- 
 tions, is hardly to be called a philosopher, though 
 he may have been something better) if he hadn't 
 been going around boring all sorts of people with 
 his questions, and if Christ hadn't been going 
 around blessing them with his sympathy, I doubt 
 it we'd have heard much of either Socrates or 
 Christ." 
 
 " But, Uncle Grand, why won't you call Socrates 
 a philosopher? Surely he was a lover of wisdom." 
 
 " Bless you, boy, haven't you outgrown etymolo- 
 gies yet ? Don't you see words getting past them 
 every day, as knowledge changes; and only the 
 ignorant holding on to the old meanings? No- 
 body who reflects what philosophy means to-day, 
 would think of calling Socrates or Emerson a phi-
 
 Where All Roads Meet. 269 
 
 losopher, though they were two of the greatest, and 
 most useful men that ever lived." 
 
 "Well, how did the meanings get so mixed?" 
 asked Muriel. 
 
 " Because they were so vague. Before Evolution 
 was discovered, Philosophy was largely a jumble of 
 guesswork: the old 'systems ' did not confine them- 
 selves to laws actually found in Nature, as Evolu- 
 tion is, but were to a great extent mere structures 
 of words for pseud-ideas. They were the parents, 
 too, of half the dogmas of the churches." 
 
 "Yes," responded Muriel, "I've often wondered 
 why most of the teachers of philosophy are par- 
 sons." 
 
 " That's plain enough. Philosophy is, at bottom, 
 the attempt to explain man's relations to the uni- 
 verse, and to deduce the correct principles of con- 
 ducting them of conduct, in short, Phi Beta 
 Kappa and that sort of thing, you know. Theology 
 professes to do the same thing: and so philosophy 
 has got all mixed up with theology, as you find 
 them in the old-fashioned schools even to-day. But 
 after all, the guesswork philosophy has been only a 
 male parent of dogmas: unregulated emotions were 
 the female ones." 
 
 "And that's why the women run the churches," 
 Muriel commented. 
 
 "Of course so far as they do! And for the 
 same reason, the studious women are more apt to 
 take to the alleged philosophies than to the real 
 one : they give more play for fancy and the cheaper 
 sort of feeling, and call for less real thinking- 
 power. But don't let all that shut your eyes to the
 
 2/0 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 good side of the women, or the churches either. 
 The churches seek what philosophy seeks, and 
 they're better adapted than philosophy to the 
 average needs." 
 
 "Well, there's something in all that," Muriel ad- 
 mitted. Then after a little silence he added: 
 "But after all you've said about wasting time in 
 speculation, you know that you let your own mind 
 run a great deal on the same subjects that the early 
 philosophers did." 
 
 "Yes: but, I hope, only in the modern way; and 
 not to an abnormal degree unless under abnormal 
 circumstances. Under normal circumstances, one 
 ought to take those subjects only subconsciously, 
 as one does light and gravitation. I don't mean 
 to say, though, that it's not well at times for one's 
 consciousness to be as full as it can of the Infinite 
 Mystery on whose surface we live. But we don't 
 get the most and best of such moments by drop- 
 ping our work for the sake of them." 
 
 " That's so: we don't ! But in such moments, 
 we do want more, more, both in space and time." 
 
 "You haven't yet known the best moments," re- 
 sponded Calmire, " if you say that in them we most 
 long for more : for they are the nearest to complete 
 and satisfying. In them, we feel that we are part 
 of the All. It is in moments a degree lower, that 
 the longing is strongest; and the same rule holds 
 with that lofty longing as with our very lowest- 
 temperate indulgence is wisest." 
 
 " But you do sometimes long for immortality, 
 then!" exclaimed Muriel, partly with the eagerness 
 of one who has gained a point in argument,
 
 Where A II Roads Meet. 2 7 1 
 
 " I certainly do long for wider life," Calmire an- 
 swered. "Did you ever turn over in your mind 
 the inevitable narrowness of anyone man's? Why, 
 many a savage has experiences that you or I would 
 be glad of. Probably neither of us will ever know 
 how it feels to kill a lion as he is springing on a 
 child. What does a man feel that a woman does? 
 I doubt if he ever touches an ecstasy at all like that 
 of a mother nursing her babe, though he may have 
 some others as strong. No two people ever saw 
 the same rainbow, no matter how close their heads 
 were together, or the same thing, for that matter: 
 for the identical vibrations never entered more than 
 one eye each sees his own little aspect especially 
 of general truths: each philosophy or religion has 
 its own view of the same truths the others look at, 
 and all philosophies and religions are vastly nearer 
 alike than is generally realized. But as to our 
 
 narrowness: think of the future in the light of the 
 past thirty years: I would give a year of my life now, 
 for a day five hundred years hence! Or take what 
 the inhabitant of that planet nearest the sun must 
 experience what the inhabitant of the planet most 
 remote (though probably we shouldn't want much 
 of that) what the myriad creatures in the myriad 
 systems experience, have experienced, are to ex- 
 perience ! Yes, I do want an hour under the 
 arched glory in Saturn's sky, and I would like to 
 know by what name the inhabitants of Uranus call 
 the planet we live on. I want to know it all to 
 feel it all !" 
 
 " A very modern sort of a Heaven, you want !" 
 commented Muriel, "but I don't see why it can'f 
 hold its own with the earlier varieties/'
 
 272 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 " Hold its own with the earlier varieties ! Why, 
 as far as mere imagery is concerned, the earlier 
 people had not the knowledge to make much of 
 a heaven. We know that there are a myriad 
 heavens where 'there is no night' in each of 
 which a myriad suns revolve so clustered that to 
 our paltry vision they seem but a single star. On 
 the other hand, were our vision fine enough, it 
 would see the molecules in a partial vacuum no 
 bigger than your thumb, performing a dance more 
 wondrous than that of all those suns. One wants 
 to know it all : but the very idea of 'all ' becomes 
 more absurd with each step outward, and the circle 
 of what was known before shrinks to nothing. 
 The telescope comes : the heaven of our ancestors 
 dwindles like a dying flame; the spectroscope 
 comes, and of its heaven, the telescope's is but a 
 little fraction. The microscope comes, and man 
 
 marvels at a second universe: along come the 
 electric spark and the exhausted tube, and the uni- 
 verse of the microscope becomes a trifle." 
 
 They were silent for a while, contemplating the 
 sky, which was exceptionally beautiful that night, 
 when Muriel said : 
 
 "But don't you th/nk that, independently of the 
 question of a future life, we may sometime estab- 
 lish communication up there?" 
 
 " It's not inconceivable, even now," answered 
 Calmire, "// hypnotic susceptibility is telepathic. 
 Mind, I say if- if you can read a mind a hemi- 
 sphere off, why not read one an orbit off?" 
 
 " But we haven't the same language." 
 
 "That makes little difference. Hypnotic read-
 
 Where All Roads Meet. 273 
 
 ing is as much by visions sights and sounds in 
 general, as by words. The sensitive often simply 
 experiences fragments of what the person being 
 read has experienced. Why, then, shouldn't we 
 see or hear what the inhabitants of Mars, or even 
 of the dark companion of Algol, see and hear?" 
 
 " Provided they see and hear at all," commented 
 Muriel. 
 
 "Well!" Calmire answered, "if there are any 
 such folk, they are probably subjected to some 
 such vibrations as have evolved our sense of hear- 
 ing, and unquestionably to influences akin to those 
 which have evolved our senses of sight and feel- 
 ing. Of course their phenomena must differ 
 widely from ours, but probably many of them 
 would be within the range of our appreciation, 
 
 " It is hard," he added in a moment, " to feel 
 that our faculties only touch such a little film of 
 the Infinite; and it makes it harder, to realize that 
 in all probability other sets of faculties no better, 
 are touching other films which our minds might 
 be able to touch too. Our apparatus couldn't 
 stand the other fellows' conditions, though. That 
 needn't interfere with mutual mind-reading, how- 
 ever," he added, laughing. 
 
 " Yes," that's very consoling," said Muriel, laugh- 
 ing too. "And it seems rather simpler than the 
 immortality method." 
 
 " Not so protracted, however," Calmire re- 
 sponded. "We'd have to stop reading minds when 
 we stopped other things, and at best, reading finite 
 minds is not quite what we're after."
 
 274 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 "Yes," said Muriel. " If we're going to dream, 
 we may as well dream something bigger," 
 
 " But that mind-reading isn't exactly a dream," 
 Calmire objected. " There's something to start 
 on, and it hardly seems to contradict anything 
 now. But for that matter, the dream of immor- 
 tality itself doesn't necessarily contradict anything. 
 There's no ^/^-contradiction about it like paral- 
 lel lines meeting, or things equaling the same thing 
 and not equaling each other. Neither is there any 
 evidence against it: for there's no evidence in. But 
 it's different from the other great conceptions- 
 evolution, the Universe beyond revealed Nature, 
 the inscrutability of consciousness, and the uni- 
 versality of the moral Law. They're facts : the 
 evidence for them is in, while immortality is but a 
 speculation. Yet while I should be glad of some- 
 thing better than our present evolution, and can't 
 think much of any soul that wouldn't, nevertheless 
 as our share in the present evolution is the best 
 we're sure of, I think still less of any sou! not 
 ready to take its share cheerfully and make the 
 best of it. A man hasn't learned anything until 
 he has learned that. But Lord, how long-winded 
 I'm getting \ But we've got back to business now, 
 and I really think you need a word or two more 
 about these speculations if you can put up with 
 me?" 
 
 "If I can put up with you!" His tone was suf- 
 ficient, and Calmire went on: 
 
 " Well ! So far as any speculation tends to inter- 
 fere with a man's hearty interest in his life here, he'd 
 better, as a rule, leave it alone, except as implica-
 
 Where A II Roads Meet. 2 7 5 
 
 tions from positive knowledge Torce it upon him. I 
 see evidence written all over life and history that 
 if Nature means anything, It means (and mark 
 this well, there's nothing in practical philosophy 
 more important) that this life is best treated 
 as sufficient unto itself. There never was an 
 honest, invigorating duty predicated on the hy- 
 pothesis of another life, that does not stand out 
 boldly as a duty if this life is all; while upon the 
 assumption of another life, there have been more 
 swindles and enervations imposed on men and 
 especially on women than upon any other as- 
 sumption ever devised. For my part" he paused 
 a moment, and then continued in a lower voice 
 with a strange vibration in it : i( if I, for one, were to 
 play with the emotional aspects of the immortality 
 question as some people do, my intellect would 
 simply go where I have found a large proportion 
 of the intellects I happen to have come across, that 
 do play with those aspects. But," he added in 
 his usual cheery way, " I don't want to make a 
 dogma of the non-committal attitude. Some day, 
 something perhaps a trifling increase in some 
 little vein or artery perhaps death, may turn the 
 shield, and we be amazed at the simplicity of all 
 our puzzles. But probably you're in no hurry 
 
 for the latter solution: few folks are as eager for 
 Heaven as they profess to be." 
 
 "I don't care!" answered Muriel, gloomily. 
 But then, influenced a little by the contagion of 
 his uncle, hebrightened up and said: "But don't you 
 really play with the questionof a longer life, as you've 
 just been doing with the question of a broader one ?"
 
 276 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 " Sometimes, perhaps." 
 
 "Well, give us some of your notions, Uncle 
 Grand : I'll promise not to be foolish over them." 
 
 " My potions? Few men have any notions to 
 speak of that are not made out of the common 
 stock. We simply string them together our 
 own way. Well, here's one of my strings if you 
 want it. Plenty of others have had strings like it. 
 But mind! I don't say that there's any probability 
 about them. We can only get up hypotheses at best, 
 but there may be no harm in hanging on to them 
 provisionally, if you're sure to hang on only pro- 
 visionally, and don't insist upon sending to Coven- 
 try anybody who won't hang on with you. Well: 
 it seems pretty reasonable to think that the condi- 
 tions of imperfect evolution are reducible, in the 
 last analysis, to the limitations we group as time 
 and space. You really intimated that yourself a 
 minute ago. Now, take away those limitations (as 
 we get hints when the body seems to go toward 
 death in dreams and some somnambulistic and 
 hypnotic conditions); and evolution as we know 
 it, must go with the limitations; and with it, go 
 its painful conditions. Then let consciousness 
 survive unlimited by time and space; and let it 
 retain (as it does not in the dreamy states) its 
 coherent relations to the environment, and its 
 correlating powers within itself. Then time and 
 space surmounted the whole past, the whole fu- 
 ture, the whole scale of being of knowledge, 
 thought, and feeling, would be open to us all that 
 had been all that may be Shakspere, Socrates, 
 Job Rome, Greece, Egypt Saturn, Sirius, Aldeb-
 
 Where All Roads Meet. ^77 
 
 aran and all not in the evanescent jumble of 
 dreams, but systematically as in our thinking life, 
 and real and i ntense as, you know, are some dreams 
 which are more powerful, even over our physical 
 functions, than are the more complex and disturbed 
 emotions of our waking hours. Such a state of 
 consciousness would seem to satisfy all the noble 
 curiosities, and the nobler and deeper and more 
 terrible questions of the affections." 
 
 Muriel paused a little to take it in, and then ex- 
 claimed gayly : " Quite a comfortable little scheme 
 for immortality! Any patent on it?" His com- 
 paratively untouched young life left him respon- 
 sive only to the cheerful side : not to the pathetic 
 suggestions behind Calmire's last words and his 
 earlier kindred ones. Even the recent death of 
 her who had filled to Muriel his mother's place 
 was not to him the sort of loss which made Calmire's 
 strong soul shrink before those terrible problems. 
 
 "In some shape or other, the notion is as old as 
 history," responded the elder man to the younger's 
 light question. " Therefore it's not patentable. 
 But let's look into its corollaries a little seriously." 
 
 " Uncle Grand," Muriel interrupted, " I may have 
 seemed flippant; but I'll apologize if you say so." 
 
 " Never mind, Muriel ! I'm ready, at last, to as- 
 sume seriousness underneath, whenever you appear 
 flippant. Now here's what it all leads up to 
 assuming such a future, what sort of an interpre- 
 tation does it give to our present life? The uni- 
 verse is full of possibilities of growth and happiness. 
 There's a ' call,' so to speak, for souls to enjoy them. 
 The souls appear (probably in a myriad more
 
 ?7 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 ways than we know), and get started in some 
 school, or hot-bed, or whatever you see fit to call a 
 planet; but they appear, so far as we can conceive, 
 under limited conditions. It seems a pity that the 
 conditions are limited, but the wherefore seems 
 none of our business, and we can't even conceive 
 unlimited ones : limited they are, and it's only our 
 business to make the best of them. Now any limited 
 conditions must pall in time, and death be wel- 
 come : that's not saying that, so far, death doesn't 
 much too often come prematurely. But it's simply 
 mathematics that, to a being continuing to live 
 under limited conditions, a time must eventually 
 come when death would be welcome : therefore 
 the only way to keep up what enjoyment the 
 limited conditions hold, is to keep presenting 
 them to new lives. Well! the new soul gets 
 started under them, and the tired old one is re- 
 leased but released to free swing of the Uni- 
 verse free," and his tone changed, "for unlimited 
 association with all those who have preceded us" 
 here he laid his hand on Muriel's, adding "and 
 with all those who are to follow us." 
 
 Muriel placed his other hand on his uncle's, and 
 they were silent for a little time. At last Muriel 
 said, but not in his former careless voice: "Uncle 
 Grand, does that scheme hold water?" 
 
 " I never said it did ! In fact, I'm not prepared to 
 say that it's anything more than a form of words." 
 
 "How about the deterioriation of the faculties 
 in disease and old age ?" asked Muriel. 
 
 " Perhaps the deterioration is only of the appa- 
 ratus they work through: there are many things
 
 Where All Roads Meet. 2/9 
 
 vivid dreams and memories of youth, for instance, 
 that look as if the faculties themselves might be 
 latent, and only the machine out of order. But," 
 he added after a moment, "there's one more thing 
 which, much as I avoid the questions ordinarily, 
 each death that comes close to me makes clearer. 
 Very likely it has been clearer to other men than it 
 is yet to me; but I've thought much over it since 
 I've talked with John. It's a little foreign to his 
 habits of mind, though, and our language is so mis- 
 erably inadequate that I've neVer tried to express 
 it to him." 
 
 "Try to get it into me, Uncle Grand: I feel to- 
 night as if I could catch on to anything." 
 
 "Very likely it has crossed your mind in some 
 shape before. You know the old, old notion that 
 our souls are but rills from the infinite soul: 
 well, there seems growing reason to believe it 
 you know about different individualities existing 
 at different times in the same body, sometimes 
 under hypnotic suggestion, and all that. Now 
 if after separation from the body, the rills flow 
 to their source, it is conceivable that they can 
 blena there in closer union than love's fondest 
 dreams ever imagined here. An obvious objec- 
 tion to such a merging in the All, is the destruc- 
 tion of identity: but perhaps we'd better agree on 
 what identity is, before we begin to fear for its 
 destruction. No one of us knows anything more 
 about his identity than that there is an element of 
 memory in each moment's group of thoughts and 
 feelings, connecting it with those that have gone 
 before; and it's a good deal to assume that either
 
 2 80 Where A II Roads Meet. 
 
 consciousness of a wider group, or participation of 
 other consciousness in that wider group, is going 
 to destroy anything in * identity' that we need care 
 for. In fact, isn't the one thing that wise people 
 prize most sympathy itself, a sort of blending of 
 individualities the participation of other souls, in 
 one's psychical experiences; and one's own partici- 
 pation in those of other souls? But aside from that 
 doubtful 'identity' difficulty, there's the other ob- 
 jection that in the interval between thedeathsof two 
 people who love each'other, their souls may change 
 beyond sympathy, or even beyond what we know as 
 recognition. Now against both of those objections, 
 we have the virtually demonstrable fact that the hu- 
 man forms we love, and to a great extent perhaps 
 entirely, the human characters we love, are but tem- 
 porary and varying manifestations of the Infinite 
 Source of all experiences. It is not inconceivable, 
 then, that such manifestations may be accessible at 
 will in the infinite experience independent of time 
 and space, into which we all may become blended 
 that we may take up any broken thread that we 
 may know each other as we knew each other at 
 any moment here, and infinitely better, and that, 
 in knowing each other, we may know All." 
 
 "I think I get a glimmer of the conception," 
 said Muriel, " and it's the greatest conception I 
 ever did get a glimmer of." 
 
 "Well," responded Calmire, " don't put too much 
 faith in glimmers. But don't ignore them either: 
 for everything we know, was a glimmer once." 
 
 " And you believe we're going to know more 
 about this ?" asked Muriel. 
 
 " Perhaps \ But all the same, you'll notice that
 
 / / 'lie re A II Roads Meet. 28 1 
 
 this scheme seems to oppose some contradictions 
 to the one I sketched before: for the very essence 
 of that was individuality, while this one seems to 
 attack individuality. And so we can go on sketch- 
 ing schemes forever, and find each not quite con- 
 sistent with the rest. It's of doubtful .profit; and 
 yet I confess that while, at your age and for a good 
 many years later, I used to flout all idea of im- 
 mortality, and think myself very bright and bold 
 for doing it, the older I grow, the more irrational 
 flouting it seems, and the apparent Contradictions 
 involved in it, become less significant." 
 
 " Is any of that because life seems of more 
 value ?" asked Muriel. 
 
 "No! I don't think the clinging to life in- 
 creases: perhaps the contrary. It's simply because 
 immortality seems less unreasonable. It's probably 
 best, though, that we're not sure of it now: for of 
 the relatively few really absorbed in the subject, so 
 many who have felt sure of a future life, have let 
 it take the significance out of the present one." 
 
 " So as to get a better start in the new one !" 
 commented Muriel. 
 
 " Certainly," responded Calmire, "and in face of 
 the strong presumption that the best way to get a 
 start there, is to exercise the soul in the best activi- 
 ties here. But," he added cheerfully, after a 
 moment, " if there's anything to know, we'll know 
 it when the time comes; and it's wisest all around 
 to leave it to take care of itself till then, and, as 
 you've probably heard me say before, go about our 
 business." 
 
 " Especially mine," exclaimed Muriel, "as it's so 
 attractive."
 
 282 Where All Roads Meet. 
 
 "Fortunately," said his uncle, "the attractive- 
 ness of our business is none of our business. 1 
 hear the whistle. Write me as often as you can, 
 and keep a brave heart. You've reached the point, 
 I think, where a life can't be altogether spoiled. 
 Few happy men are happy in their own way: you 
 may yet be as happy as most: in fact, you have 
 conquered the things that make the unhappiness 
 of most. Take care of your health, so that your 
 appetites spiritual and physical, will respond to 
 every natural stimulus; keep yourself occupied; 
 don't wait for something to turn up, but turn 
 something up; find something worth doing, and 
 do it hard, and you'll not often stop to think 
 whether you're happy or not. When you get set- 
 tled somewhere, I can come to see you; and what's 
 more to the point, as I'm getting old, by that 
 time there will be nothing here to prevent your 
 coming back to see me. Good-bye!" 
 
 And Muriel jumped on to the car and was 
 whirled back into his loneliness, while Calmire 
 drove through the eloquent night, to take sym- 
 pathy and comfort to others that he loved, think- 
 ing much and suffering much, but with the stead- 
 fast stars mirrored in his deep soul. 
 
 But one thing disturbed his calm. After he 
 had said that there would be nothing to prevent 
 Muriel's coming back, he thought, with a start, 
 of Nina at Fleuvemont. How much would she be 
 there? And, generous, honorable gentleman though 
 he was, he could not help at least wondering whence 
 might come the strong guidance that her strong 
 young nature with its new independence of tra- 
 ditions, now so sorely needed.
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 
 
 THAT young lady, however, did not seem in any 
 immediate need of guidance, for she had enough 
 of it not in the shape of religion or philosophy, 
 but in a shape even more effective that of plenty 
 to do. She had made up her mind that for the 
 present at least, until some suitable relative should 
 be freed from the tangles that tended to hold them 
 all away, she was going to do what she could for 
 Amelia's children. 
 
 She decided, too, that, before coming home, John 
 had got to go to some place where he would not 
 be reminded of his loss at every turn, and to take 
 Genevieve with him; but Nina had got so much 
 tamed down from her habit of deciding for herself 
 and everybody about her, that she opened her idea 
 to Calmire, and begged him, if he approved, to 
 manage John. He did approve, and John required 
 no managing. He was used to controlling himself 
 and to scorning attempts at compromise with the 
 irrevocable. He simply said: 
 
 "I'd better be within reach of you, Calmire. 
 Things are in such shape that they won't smash 
 up if we're both away for a few weeks. You come 
 too." 
 
 So Calmire made some arrangements at the 
 
 283
 
 284 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 factories, and, with Nina's help, at John's; and in 
 four days the brothers and Genevieve started for 
 the mountains, and Nina took the children home 
 to John's. 
 
 Since the early Fall, she had wondered at the 
 relief brought to her own sorrows by interesting 
 herself in those of others, and during frequent 
 long visits, she had become Amelia's effective 
 helper in her work among the sick and needy. 
 She had also grown very intimate with Mary 
 Courtenay, and not only helped her in the admin- 
 istration of " The Home," but had herself become 
 quite a nurse, and was very fond of exercising the 
 art. She had got such control over the sick boy that 
 she had seen with Muriel, that he generally recog- 
 nized his illusions as illusions, and when, as was 
 becoming more frequently the case, they were not 
 attended with pain, he was amused by them. He 
 had gained in spirits and strength, and Doctor 
 Rossman was hoping for a cure. 
 
 Probably Nina would have gone to that house 
 nearly as often as she did, even if Mrs. Walters 
 had not talked so much about Muriel; for though 
 she liked most of what Mrs. Walters told her, the 
 thought of him was generally pain. Yet she would 
 encourage the woman to run on, and then go home 
 and be miserable over it. 
 
 The relief that Nina got from the benevolent 
 work into which she had thrown herself, might 
 perhaps have been greater if it had not brought 
 her into such frequent contact with Courtenay. 
 They had had to work together in more than one 
 charitable scheme, and sometimes had had their
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 285 
 
 sympathies drawn to some common object in ways 
 sure to draw them toward each other. His atti- 
 tude toward her was never aggressive, and he 
 never distressed her by any exhibition of his own 
 distress at their relations. She had even begun 
 to wonder whether his calmness was based on the 
 confidence in their future that he had already 
 professed; and this was so uncomplimentary to 
 both her judgment and her consistency, that the 
 thought of it was a little irritating. And, too, 
 in presence of the bravery he often showed before 
 contagion or self-sacrifice, she had begun to 
 wonder how, in intellectual matters, he could 
 avoid strenuous problems, and accept for true, 
 simply that which seemed most good and beauti- 
 ful how, where the paths that lead to the broadest 
 views reach up rugged heights and must be fol- 
 lowed blindly into many clouds, such a man as he 
 should note only the level ways among the lilies 
 how, in short, he would find the universe as benefi- 
 cent as he was himself. Her own enthusiasm had 
 begun to crystallize around the realization that 
 no mistaken belief, however beautiful it might ap- 
 pear, could be so precious as the homeliest truth. 
 She had come to know the enormous difficulty and 
 rarity of intellectual integrity intellectual hon- 
 esty, she had come to call it, and this was not 
 complimentary to Courtenay. 
 
 In his presence, the play of so many opposing 
 feelings was apt to keep her nature tremulous. 
 Combinations so unstable, of course contained the 
 elements of an explosion, and as soon as the con- 
 ditions were supplied, one very naturally came.
 
 286 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 Nina, like the rest of the people we are telling 
 about, was not one of those creatures of romance 
 who never break down. One morning after a 
 night that had been restless, partly because of one 
 of John's children being a little unwell, and before 
 Nina got the morning nap she had intended to take 
 after breakfasting with the children, she had been 
 sent for to soothe young Walters. It was one of 
 those prematurely warm days of early Spring when 
 all the electrical tone is lowered, which are par- 
 ticularly hard on sensitive or diseased nerves. At 
 such times, despite the boy's improvement, he was 
 sure to have relapses, and as the day was specially 
 bad, all will to reason against his illusions seemed 
 to be relaxed by the dead air, and when Nina got 
 to him, he was almost raving. His mother's morale 
 was pretty well gone before she was willing to 
 disturb Nina, and the latter found the poor woman 
 helplessly wringing her hands, and praying to the 
 Virgin and all the saints in a fashion which proved 
 that her American accent was not more than a 
 generation old, if as much. The boy, too, was 
 moaning, and sometimes shrieking. Into this little 
 pandemonium, Nina went with a resolute gentle- 
 ness that calmed the woman as soon as she saw 
 Nina's face, and that soon had the boy diverted 
 and amused, and in half an hour sleeping the deep 
 sleep of exhaustion. To interest him, she had for 
 the first time in many months herself introduced 
 the subject of Muriel. Six years before, when 
 Muriel was a strapping boy and young Walters but 
 a little chap, Muriel had flung him a pair of out- 
 grown skates, and these had been kept when not ir
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 use, Winter and Summer, hanging, brightly pol- 
 ished, by the fireplace near the boy's accustomed 
 seat. Nina, although she knew their history, seized 
 them as one of the best things to rivet the boy's 
 attention, and ven made him put them on her 
 feet, whose tiny proportions those of both the 
 owners of the skates had years before grown past. 
 She got the boy busy and diverted, but it cost her 
 dear. 
 
 Going home at a pace doubly brisk because of 
 her nervous excitement, she was overtaken by still 
 quicker footsteps, whose haste jarred on her over- 
 strained nerves. It was Courtenay. 
 
 He, too, was out of sorts, not only from the con- 
 ditions which that day affected all living things, but 
 because he had very lately undergone one of those 
 annoyances from the over-appreciation of a female 
 member of his congregation, to which all clergy- 
 men are subject. Through some inherent circum- 
 stances, the matter had come to the knowledge of 
 one of his deacons a bluff kindly old gentleman, 
 living at his ease in Calmire, and he had half an 
 hour before said, "I tell you what, Courtenay, 
 you've got to get married. It'll be a great pro- 
 tection to you and to the congregation. A man 
 like you will find it easy. Go ahead !" Courte- 
 nay had gone out, the half-hour before, "to walk 
 the thing off," as his custom was, and had got his 
 spirit again at peace with all mankind and wo- 
 mankind, and was in rather a hopeful state, when 
 he caught sight of Nina in front of him. Without 
 asking himself why, he very naturally started to 
 catch up with her. He found it a little harder
 
 288 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 than he had counted on, so when he was beside 
 her, he abruptly exclaimed: 
 
 "Why, you're running away from me, Miss 
 Wahring !" 
 
 She was just in the mood to make his speech 
 go wrong not only overstrained to the verge of 
 hysteria, but, as it unfortunately happened, think- 
 ing, with justifiable satisfaction, of her success 
 with the half-mad boy, and of a thing bolder still 
 which had lately crossed her mind more than once. 
 Her answer was: 
 
 " I run away from nothing." 
 
 The general drift of his recent half-formed 
 thoughts made it natural for him tc answer: 
 
 "And yet you avoid me, who bring you nothing 
 but devotion. Oh, why," turning his beautiful 
 pleading eyes directly to hers, " why must you ?" 
 
 "Because you're not an honest man." 
 
 Children and fools tell the truth. Nina had 
 undergone a strain that for the moment was too 
 much for her wisdom, and she told the truth as it 
 was in her. 
 
 There was no indignation in his gentle face, but 
 surprise and sorrow unutterable. Its quick change 
 brought her to herself, but the realization of what 
 she had said, added to what she had lately under- 
 gone, was too much for her self-control. She 
 shrieked out hysterically: 
 
 "What have I done? What have I done ? Oh. 
 my friend, forgive me, forgive me ! You can ! 
 You're so noble! You're so noble!" 
 
 His heart gave a great bound, and he tried to 
 calm her. Fortunately they were in a sequestered 
 part of the town, where the few houses stood well
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 289 
 
 back in the lots, and where the people were of a 
 kind to be busy with their domestic affairs in the 
 rear of the houses: so nobody but Courtenay 
 heard her rave on : 
 
 " You don't understand ! You can't understand ! 
 But let me atone ! Let me atone ! I know you 
 are good and noble, and that what you think I 
 meant, is vile and untrue ! Let me atone!" 
 
 He had taken her hands, which she let him do, 
 and was looking down kindly and soothingly into 
 her face. He managed to make her listen to him 
 say : 
 
 " Do calm yourself, dear friend. I know you 
 never meant any wrong." 
 
 " Oh, but it was wrong cruelly, vilely wrong !" 
 
 The shock had spent itself, she was calmer, and 
 she started to walk, without taking trom Courte- 
 nay the hand that was next him. He put it on his 
 arm with the unconscious feeling that she was not 
 herself, and needed support. 
 
 After a moment, her face brightened with an 
 impulse, and she said : 
 
 " See here ! I'll prove to you that I believe in 
 you. Ask me anything : I shall assent I am at 
 your disposal." 
 
 " You don't love me ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 u And yet I am to presume," he asked, " that 
 despite what you said at first (which I'll not at- 
 tempt to understand now or ever, if you prefer), 
 you believe the kind things you said later, so fully 
 as to be willing to trust your life to me?" 
 
 " I shall if you ask it."
 
 290 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 He pondered a moment, and then made one of 
 the master-strokes of his life : 
 
 "You put the greatest prize you could before 
 me, to prove your faith that I would not take it 
 selfishly ?" 
 
 "Yes, that was my feeling the prize you had 
 thought great." 
 
 He was silent a moment, and then exclaimed : 
 " How you have honored me ! No man could ever 
 deserve it. But I can at least act as if I did." 
 And he gently lowered the arm on which her hand 
 was still resting, so as to release it. Then he 
 said : " But may I not hope yet to obtain the 
 blessing for reasons that would make it right to 
 have it ?" 
 
 Nina was now very much herself : 
 
 " You have just proved how you can be trusted. 
 Now I am going to trust you to believe, whether 
 you understand it or not for you have a genius 
 for believing things you don't understand " she 
 said it with a smile which seemed to crown him 
 " to believe that it is a deep, deep grief to 
 me, to have to tell you that only such reasons 
 as influenced me just now, could ever influence 
 me in that way. As you are too noble to avail 
 yourself of them, I can now say that, in declining, 
 you have acted wisely, as well as nobly. I could 
 never make you happy; and perhaps I owe you 
 the confidence of saying that I could not have 
 made that strange offer, if there were anything to 
 make me happy. But oh !" she added a moment 
 later, taking his hand, " I do respect you so, though 
 we are so different ! Let me be the best friend
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 291 
 
 to you that woman ever was to man; I half believe 
 I can be, and I should consider the right to be, an 
 honor through all my life." 
 
 For many moments he gave no answer. Then 
 he turned to her with the expression on his face 
 that deplored the death of what was dear the 
 expression he wore at the memorial meeting when 
 he faltered in speaking of Amelia, and when Nina 
 gave him strength to go on. This time, as his 
 eyes met hers, she strengthened him again, and he 
 said: 
 
 " I had a beautiful dream. I understand it nofr. 
 There is something strange in the reality you offer 
 me something that seems to me (though the dream 
 did too) to come from God it is so strong and 
 true. I feel it now for the second time. It is better 
 than what most men call love. I am grateful, and 
 I will try to be worthy." 
 
 " You will not have to try, my dear friend." 
 
 They walked in silence a few minutes, when she 
 said: 
 
 " We are so different that I don't believe I can 
 ever make you understand what it was that led 
 me to say that vile thing to you. Yet I feel a little 
 as if I wanted to try." 
 
 " You think an honest man believes only what 
 he knows ?" 
 
 " No: but he shouldn't try to believe in spite of 
 what he knows. But I had no right to use that 
 word in speaking to you, because to you it means 
 something I did not mean. To you it means only 
 moral honesty, to me it means both." 
 
 " You don't think I'm intellectually honest !"
 
 292 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 " I think you intend to be. But I don't think 
 we could ever understand each other. You know 
 Mr. Calmire: now I'm not sure that you're not a 
 better man than he is, but you're not as honest, in 
 the sense I mean." 
 
 " Now I'm getting some idea of what you mean," 
 he answered. "That man is so honest that every 
 time I come near him, I feel weak and ashamed." 
 
 " My friend John Courtenay has no right to feel 
 weak and ashamed before any man that ever lived, 
 and I won't have it !" said the Nina of other days, 
 playfully seizing his arm and stamping her foot. 
 
 A breeze soon came, and they walked on more 
 rapidly, but in congenial silence, until they reached 
 his corner, when he said: " May I go on with you ? 
 I want to tell you something to prove that I 
 welcome your friendship, by taxing it for a little 
 sympathy, and perhaps advice." 
 
 " You make me very happy. What is it ?" 
 "I am going to set up as an honest man!" 
 " Mr. Courtenay! What do you mean ?" looking 
 up at him. 
 
 " I mean that you've pulled the last scale from 
 my eyes. There's been something going on in me 
 since I knew you that I haven't told you or any- 
 body. It began when you first told me that you 
 could not be my wife. (It seems to me that every 
 great growth has its root in some great suffering.) 
 This was the way of it : I had felt, you know, that 
 God had destined us for each other. I wanted to 
 feel it, and it seemed good to feel it : so I did feel 
 it. Well: your kindness and truthfulness that time
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 293 
 
 your divine sweetness and goodness (since you've 
 given me a friend's right to say as enthusiastic 
 things to you as I please) got through my dense 
 head some sense that there was a divine in you 
 which contradicted what I had assumed to be the 
 divine in me, and in time I came to see that it 
 wasn't very modest to set mine up against yours." 
 
 "But, Mr. Courtenay " 
 
 "Let me go on, please: I owe you something 
 very much, and it will do me good to tell you of 
 it, and," he looked down smiling, " you're going to 
 be the means of all the good to me you can now, 
 aren't you ?" 
 
 She reached out and took his hand and held it 
 for an instant. 
 
 "Well," he continued, "all that set me thinking: 
 and I realized that I believed many other things 
 merely because I wanted to even things at first 
 unreasonable and repugnant to me, simply because 
 I wanted to believe the whole system of my church. 
 I had been taught that the harder to believe, I 
 found anything, the more I must try to believe it. 
 Many a night of strife and agony have I passed to 
 crowd somewhere into my faith, things which, in the 
 last few months, other nights of strife and agony 
 have taken out. But I don't want to trouble you 
 with my struggles. Perhaps you know a little 
 of how I was brought up. My poor old father was 
 a splendid man a man of New England granite 
 (we were from there originally, you know), but he 
 had its faults as well as its virtues. Yet I honored 
 him so! And of late years since I have been old 
 enough to appreciate a great sorrow brought on by
 
 294 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 his stony virtues, I have loved him so! But though 
 I left his church for one of a more merciful faith, 
 when I was very young, that wasn't much of a strain, 
 and I couldn't really reason much against him while 
 he lived. But soon after you set me thinking, he 
 died, and among the last things he said to me was: 
 " John, I haven't felt the love of God enough. Our 
 fathers handed us down a terrible faith, I'm old 
 now, and I see so many good men disbelieving those 
 terrible things. Learn of Love, John.' I was 
 learning of it ! as the poor old man little sus- 
 pected," said Courtenay with the nearest approach 
 to bitterness in his tone, that Nina had ever heard. 
 
 "Oh John!" exclaimed Nina, simply. "I'm so 
 sorry!" She had echoed his Christian name not 
 quite unconsciously, but with a little feeling of 
 sympathetic spontaneity. 
 
 " Don't you be sorry a bit, dear. You've been 
 everything to me without meaning to be." 
 
 "Not without wanting to be in such ways," 
 said Nina. 
 
 "Well!" exclaimed Courtenay, "I believe God 
 did send you to me after all! though I don't pro- 
 fess to know as much about His ways as I did once. 
 Well, as I was going to say, my poor old father's 
 last words set me thinking a great deal more, so 
 that the next Sunday in church, I did not like the 
 people all calling themselves ' miserable sinners ' 
 among them my dear old mother who, I verily 
 believe, never committed a sin in her life. Then 
 there was the cry through the litany, of ' Spare us, 
 spare us, good Lord!' as if God were a vengeful 
 tyrant to be propitiated by complimentary address.
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 295 
 
 So all these things led me to ponder on the views 
 of the men who got up our liturgy, and at last I've 
 come to see that my views are not their views at 
 all, or those of anybody who got up a church in 
 the gray cold morning before our present knowl- 
 edge rose. They were narrow and slavish, and 
 they even cramped the grand image of our Master 
 down to fit their feudal notions. I love God 
 more, since I've got rid of so much of the foolish- 
 ness that men have talked about Him. No! I can't 
 believe as they did. And I've been reading 
 
 earlier too not in the books that leftout everything 
 that did not support the current notions, and I find 
 that almost all the things in Christianity which 
 anybody can call unreasonable, were simply the ex- 
 travagances with which the world was filled while 
 Christianity was taking shape, and are not peculiarly 
 Christian at all. Those who tried to record the tra- 
 ditions of Christ, simply colored them with the 
 phases of thought prevalent throughout their 
 world, and represented Christ as saying and doing 
 many things that he could never have said or 
 done. And I've come to see, too, that men at 
 
 different grades of knowledge must put different 
 constructions on whatever Christ did say: and so 
 each age hands down doctrines which laterages find 
 absurd. Well, through all this, I've come to 
 
 sympathize with the men whom, God forgive me, 
 I've helped to persecute the men who are making 
 our church a church for to-day, and not for two 
 hundred, or two thousand, years ago." 
 
 " How are you going to manage about the 
 liturgy of two hundred years ago?" Nina thought
 
 296 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 to herself, but wisely said nothing, and Courtenay 
 went on: 
 
 " And now, the long and short of it is, that, going 
 back to that time when you made me when I 
 made myself, suffer so because of you, I owe you 
 my intellectual emancipation, and that word means 
 a great deal a very great deal," he added in a 
 tone of pathetic earnestness, "and I'm proud and 
 happy to owe it to you." 
 
 "You're not as proud and happy as you're mak- 
 ing me, my friend if I could only believe myself to 
 deserve it all, but there are too many other things 
 working in the same direction in these days." 
 
 " Yes, and until you came, didn't they glance 
 from me as if I'd inherited all my father's granite ? 
 No, lady fair! your magic softened the stone." 
 
 She touched his hand again. 
 
 After a minute's silence, he said : "And now to 
 keep up my new character of an honest man, I've got 
 to tell you something more : that pestilent old 
 way of believing things because I wanted to, has 
 blinded me about you and me." 
 
 "Ah ! you didn't want me so much, after all !" 
 exclaimed Nina, still nervous enough to push a lit- 
 tle banter between herself and the painful subject, 
 
 " Yes, I think I did, but it has all grown clear 
 since we began talking. It's as you made me 
 suspect long ago I never could have made you 
 happy, even though I'm now getting to look at 
 things more as you do; and the consciousness of 
 not making you happy would have made me 
 miserable all my life if anybody could be miser- 
 able near you. You have more thoughts than I
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 297 
 
 have, and our thoughts come from different sides 
 of things. Between us lies the old gulf that will 
 separate Aristotelians from Platonists to the end 
 of time Although," he added with a laugh, " they 
 did try to bridge it at the same time they were in- 
 fusing the absurdities into the traditions of Christ: 
 but I've done with thaumaturgies now. There are 
 those two different ways of looking at things, and 
 people born with the opposite ways can't live to- 
 gether as one person. I've known at least one 
 couple to do that, and I never saw such happiness: 
 and you must have no h-appiness but the best." 
 
 His single-minded devotion brought the tears to 
 Nina's eyes, but in a moment she turned to him 
 smiling through them, and said : " So must you 
 have the best, John. Now that you see you have 
 made a mistake regarding me (though some of 
 your reasons are more complimentary than I de- 
 serve), your life is not going to be maimed, and I 
 feel sure that it will yet be full in every respect." 
 
 " I should have to change a great deal first," he 
 said. 
 
 "It seems to me you're learning how, and that 
 it's far from doing you harm." 
 
 " Perhaps!" he said rather sadly, and then con- 
 tinued in a cheerful tone : " But I'll tell you some- 
 thing you can do for me. You can continue keeping 
 me from running to extremes, as you've lately been 
 doing: for, you know, people of those opposite 
 kinds of mind we were talking about, make the 
 best possible friends, if they're only broad-minded, 
 and I'm going to be very broad-minded now!" 
 
 And Courtenay straightened himself up and
 
 29 8 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 squared out his broad shoulders all in a humorous 
 way that was almost the first healthy attempt in 
 that direction which Nina had known him to 
 make. 
 
 In a moment, she said, almost as if meditating: 
 "And yet I said you were not an honest man, and 
 you admitted it! Heaven forgive us both!" Then 
 she looked up at his beautiful face, strengthened 
 by his recent struggles and his new resolution, and 
 her mind was crossed by a thought that enraged 
 her: " How would it have been, if he had been like 
 this a few months earlier?" 
 
 And any calm student of human nature might 
 wonder how it might be a few years later.
 
 CHAPTER LXIL 
 A HUNTER'S FIND. 
 
 SINCE Minerva had been well enough to read, 
 she had had three letters from Muriel. In the first 
 two he had poured out all the enthusiasm of self- 
 sacrifice whose excesses Calmire had gently re- 
 buked, but he had had an unconscious deference to 
 Minerva's weak condition that prevented his bur- 
 dening her with details; and the general effect on 
 her was reassuring and sustaining. 
 
 It was a fortnight after Calmire and Muriel had 
 separated, when Minerva received the third letter: 
 
 " I'm coming on Thursday afternoon to see you 
 and talk with you about going away. It seems 
 best that you should be where neither of us is 
 known. 
 
 "What will be best next, we must wait to see; 
 but if such happiness as is possible to yourself, 
 and all the good that is possible for the child, do 
 not come, it shall not be because I do not devote 
 myself to securing them. 
 
 "Trust me. 
 
 "M. C." 
 
 "May 29, 1 8 ." 
 
 Muriel had directed it to Huldah, writing in the 
 
 corner: " For M. G." 
 
 299
 
 3OO A Hunter's Find. 
 
 On Wednesday afternoon, which was bright and 
 balmy, Minerva ventured, as she had done once or 
 twice before, to take her baby, which was now 
 over a month old, a little way back of the house 
 to a pretty secluded spot beside a brook. She 
 found the infant a very amusing toy, but she 
 was her mother's daughter, and her mother had 
 deserted her. 
 
 She was sitting on a log, singing low to the child, 
 whom she had nursed and put to sleep, when she 
 saw a man with a rifle over his shoulder coming 
 through the woods on the other side of the brook. 
 She rose to conceal herself, but it was too late: the 
 man had the far sight of one who had spent many 
 youthful days in the fields, and four years in war. 
 He recognized her and called out: 
 
 "Why, Minervy!" 
 
 She flushed and trembled, but sat still until he 
 had crossed the brook on the stones, and stopped 
 on the bank a little way from her, and stood 
 there leaning on his gun, and smiling at her. He 
 was a tender-souled gentleman, though rugged 
 in speech and garb; and after his first ejacu- 
 lation of surprise, and the reception by his rather 
 slow but wonderfully sure wits of the fact that 
 perhaps he was not wanted, he felt shy about in- 
 truding upon her. 
 
 With a tremendous effort, she spoke first: 
 
 "Well, Clint, where in the world did you come 
 from ?" 
 
 "Been up the maountain. There's been some 
 sort of a beast up there comin' down among 
 the sheep, and none of the folks could git him,
 
 A Hunter s Find. 301 
 
 and Jim Bellows wrote down to me, and so I went 
 for him." 
 
 " Did you get him ?" 
 
 " Git him? God a'mighty! He got me! My 
 gun hung fire, so I only hurt him a little, and he 
 got madder'n blazes and dropped down on top o' 
 me. So I had to choke him to death." 
 
 " You choked him to death ?" cried Minerva, with 
 big staring eyes. 
 
 "Sure! He got me so that it was my throat or 
 hisn, and I nat'r'lly preferred it to be hisn." 
 
 "Great God! Didn't he hurt you?" The idea 
 of Clint with the beast at his throat made her al- 
 most sick. 
 
 " Scratch or two! And tore my coat considerbul," 
 and Clint held up a sleeve that hung in strips. 
 So did the flannel shirt under it, and there was 
 blood on both. " Does look kind o' mussed, don't 
 it?" he added, with a grim smile. 
 
 " Poor dear old Clint !" murmured Minerva, and 
 he drew nearer. 
 
 Minerva hung her head and felt as if she wanted 
 to sink into the earth. 
 
 " Why, what you got there ?" said Clint, softly. 
 " Blest if 'tain't a baby !" 
 
 Despite Clint's cautious tones, the baby had 
 woke up, and was looking very quietly at Clint with 
 its great serious eyes. 
 
 " Purty little thing!" said Clint, holding out a 
 great finger to it. "May I take it? Always liked 
 'em." 
 
 Minerva let Clint take it, which he did with sur- 
 prising skill and a tenderness that, in him, was not 
 surprising at all.
 
 302 A Hunter s Find. 
 
 He looked at it with great interest. "Purty 
 little thing!" he repeated. "Where 'd you git it? 
 Hain't been married all this time and not let any- 
 body know about it ?" and he laughed pleasantly 
 at his bovine joke. 
 
 " I'm not married;" and she hid her scarlet face 
 in her hands. Then an idea struck her. "You 
 shouldn't make such jokes, Clint, and make me 
 hide my face. Of course the baby belongs where 
 I'm staying." 
 
 Clint laughed again, and said, " Didn't mean no 
 offence, Minervy." Then, still holding the baby, 
 he sat down on the log beside her. 
 
 " What made you go 'way without sayin' anything 
 or even biddin' a feller good-bye ?" 
 
 " Oh, I was so miserable, Clint. Hardly any- 
 body but you, at least among our people, was kind 
 to me, and I got a sudden chance to come away 
 and stay with some people near here, and just felt 
 like slinking out of sight and hiding myself. I 
 couldn't bear to say good-bye to you," she said, 
 turning her great swimming brown eyes toward 
 him, " for you'd been so good to me." 
 
 " Sho! 'Twarn't nothin ' !" said Clint, putting his 
 big right forefinger into the corner of his right eye, 
 while the baby reposed comfortably on his left arm. 
 " But now I've caught you," he continued, " mayn't 
 I come to see you again ?" 
 
 " You're always so good, Clint, but it's very far." 
 
 " Sakes alive! Ain't I just been further'n this 
 to see a catamaount ? And I'd a sight rather see 
 you." And he laughed heartily again, and she 
 managed to laugh a little with him.
 
 A Hunter's Find. 303 
 
 She reflected that she was going away in a day 
 or two, and that he would not be at all likely to 
 take a second consecutive day from the mill; so 
 there was no need of opposing him farther. 
 
 "Guess I'll have to come and glimpse at you," 
 he persisted. "Where you stayin'?" 
 
 Her old instinct of coquetry stood her in good 
 stead now. Turning toward him in her old saucy 
 way, she said: 
 
 "I thought you said you'd caught me, and yet 
 you don't know where I live. Now you've got to 
 find that out too." Her natural impulses were 
 strong enough to carry it out lightly, but her heart 
 felt terribly heavy over the prospect that she was 
 never to see this faithful friend again, and not a 
 little over the deception she was practising upon 
 him. 
 
 "Well," laughed Clint, feeling all the fascina- 
 tion of her way, " I guess you won't be harder 
 to find than the catamaount. But here I am, 
 losin' the train! I've got to git back to start the 
 night-gang, and I feel a bit tuckered and don't want 
 to have to walk the hull way. This arm with the 
 baby hurts a little too. Good-bye! I'll find you." 
 
 He rose and kissed the baby and handed it to 
 her. Then as he looked down on her, he almost 
 unconsciously exclaimed, "I'd like to kiss you 
 too!" but added in a bashful exculpatory way, 
 " It's so long since I've seen you!" 
 
 It was a strange fact that Clint never had kissed 
 her, or tried to: and probably he would not have 
 thought of doing it now, if something in her atti- 
 tude and expression as she took the child had not
 
 304 A Hunter 's Find. 
 
 made him feel toward her exactly as he had felt 
 when he kissed the child. 
 
 She rose, the child in her arms, and looked at him 
 with a face that he never forgot it was awful, 
 and she said, "You may if you want to, Clint," and 
 he bent over and kissed her forehead and was gone. 
 
 He thought of that face late into the night, until 
 he was driven to sleep by the fatigue of his morn- 
 ing's struggle. 
 
 When he awoke the next day, refreshed and 
 buoyant, that face came up again and sobered him. 
 Then with the activity of wit that a healthy man 
 always feels while dressing in the morning, he 
 thought over the details of his interview with 
 Minerva most prominent, of course, the baby; 
 and then again came up her strengthened and 
 saddened face. That was strange ! Then, by 
 
 the law of contrast, he saw her face brightened 
 as she bantered him about finding her out. That 
 was natural enough ! But she had told him ab- 
 solutely nothing. In just the same way, she had 
 told absolutely nothing when she left the town. 
 At the time, that too seemed strange. True, the 
 people whom she could talk with about it, had 
 not treated her in a way to lead her to say any- 
 thing to them; but why in the world shouldn't 
 she have said something to him ? He had seen 
 her the very night before she went; and two or 
 three days later, he learned that the house was 
 locked up, and a little later still, Bevans the fur- 
 niture man had packed up everything and sent 
 it to old Granzine in Massachusetts, where he
 
 A Hunter's Find. 305 
 
 had gone to live with his brother. Why had not 
 Minerva gone there too ? Clint had supposed that 
 she had, but now that she was near, her not 
 having spoken appeared doubly unaccountable. 
 Then came again that face of hers when she let 
 him kiss her the day before. 
 
 "Damned if I like it!" he said aloud a strange 
 thing for him. Then, after a little more fitful 
 cogitation, he mumbled a still stranger thing in 
 him: " Must have had to go to livin' out and doin' 
 nussin'. Maybe she's stuck up about lettin' me come 
 to see her don't want nobody to know about it 
 can't see her company in the parlor, maybe. That's 
 the reason, too, that she looked so kinder ashamed 
 and serious. But she hadn't oughter feel that way, 
 leastways with me: ain't I her friend ?" 
 
 And Clint performed the operation which more 
 introspective people call dismissing a subject from 
 their minds. At least he flattered himself he had, 
 but he hadn't. 
 
 It seems almost incredible that Calmire had 
 managed his interview with Clint the day after 
 Muriel went away, some half year before, with such 
 consummate tact that not even yet had Clint im- 
 agined the real situation. But Calmire's experiences 
 in diplomacy had not weakened his natural powers; 
 and he had performed just that marvelous feat. 
 
 Probably Clint could not have very readily de- 
 scribed the feelings which, a little later, made him 
 say again half aloud : " Poor thing ! she hain't 
 got no brother now, and her father never was 
 worth a continental, and he ain't worth half a con- 
 tinental now."
 
 306 - A Hunter s Find. 
 
 By the time he had walked meditatively to the 
 mill, he had come around to a repetition of sub- 
 stantially the same phrase with the addition : 
 "And she ain't married ! Guess I've got to look 
 arter her myself !" 
 
 But this: "She ain't married," now insisted on 
 coming up again, and the vision of the baby was 
 presenting itself at intervals all along. But Clint's 
 was not a soul to which suspicion of evil was natu- 
 ral; rather it was one to which it was natural when 
 suspicion approached, to ward it off. The word 
 " gentleman" is open to several definitions. 
 
 He had got away from the mill the day before, 
 because of some repairs needed in the machinery. 
 They were found to be more serious than at first 
 supposed. The night-gang he had come home to 
 start, had not gone on, and he found no chance that 
 the day-gang could work. So, after fussing around 
 a little, looking for odd jobs to make himself useful, 
 he felt justified in turning homeward, and he 
 walked slowly and meditatively. Before he got 
 to his boarding-house, he had said to himself: 
 " Here's a good chance to go out and look into 
 this thing, and see if there's anything to be done 
 about it." 
 
 When he got into his little sitting-room, he felt 
 like dressing up a little more than he had done to 
 go to the mill: Clint was a spruce fellow when off 
 duty. When he went to a closet for his clothes, 
 his eye fell upon his gun. He seldom went to 
 walk in the country without it. Even at this 
 season, he could get a shot at a rabbit, and rabbits 
 were getting to be a nuisance. Yet this time, he
 
 A Hunter's Find. 37 
 
 said to himself, without half realizing what he was 
 saying: "Like's not another catamaount's got an- 
 other lamb!" Then he turned scarlet, half with 
 rage at the idea, and half with shame at entertain- 
 ing it, and burst out: " If one has, he's too damned 
 dirty to choke, and I guess I'd better take that 
 thing along." 
 
 He went back from the closet and sat down, and 
 leaned both his elbows on the table, his chin in 
 his hands, and for some minutes looked across 
 out of the window. His was one of those natures 
 which move gradually, like the elemental forces, 
 but irresistibly too, toward tremendous climaxes 
 of love or hate. At last he arose and, with move- 
 ments unnaturally slow for him, went to the closet. 
 He paid no attention to the clothes he had first 
 gone there for, but took the gun and started out in 
 his work-a-day garb to find Minerva Granzine, with 
 a grim purpose, though half defined, to succor or 
 avenge her.
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 THE FINDER'S HUNT. 
 
 CLINT tried in vain to find Minerva at two houses 
 within an easy walk of their meeting-place of the 
 day before. As he turned away from the second 
 place, he groaned, for Huldah Cronin's was the 
 only house left, and Clint did not know any satis- 
 factory method of accounting for a baby there. 
 He had heard, too, that Huldah never would see 
 anybody. It was not his way to turn back, though. 
 
 The negress came to the door. 
 
 " Is the lady of the house to home ?" asked Clint. 
 
 " No, sah, she ain't. She done gone away." 
 
 Clint thought this was a ruse, though the wo- 
 man's good-natured expression did not look like 
 it. 
 
 " Now see here, Queen o' Night," said he, " I 
 want to see that lady, to find out if she can put 
 me on the track o' Miss Minervy Granzine. I've 
 somethin' very partickler to say to Miss Gran- 
 zine, and somethin' I hope she'll be very glad to 
 hear," and by way of emphasis he unconsciously 
 raised his gun from the floor and banged it down 
 again. 
 
 " Isn't gwine to say it wid yo gun, is yo ?" said 
 the woman, laughing. 
 
 " No, not without she wants me to go shootin' for 
 her," and there was a look in his blue eyes that 
 
 made the woman feel timid, 
 
 308
 
 The Finder's Hunt. 309 
 
 " Well, 'deed, sir," she said, " Miss Huldy ain't 
 here. She don't live here no moh." 
 
 " When did she go 'way ?" asked Clint. 
 
 " A week ago, sah." 
 
 One more hopeful hypothesis about the baby 
 excluded! 
 
 "Don't you know nothin' yerself about Miss 
 Granzine ?" said Clint, with eyes like blue steel 
 probes. " I've got somethin' to do for her!" 
 
 "Well, sah " began the woman in a tremor. 
 
 "Come in, Clint," rang Minerva's clear voice 
 from upstairs. She had heard the whole colloquy 
 through the little spaces of the cottage, had realized 
 that Huldah's absence did not necessarily exclude 
 the hypothesis regarding the baby which Clint 
 had just excluded, knew that Clint would learn her 
 own presence in some way, looked at the clock and 
 saw that it would be five hours before Muriel 
 was due, and decided that it was not worth- 
 while to make the negress fight a losing battle for 
 concealment. She came downstairs and gave 
 Clint her hand, and went into the parlor with him. 
 He closed the door as he went in, which added to 
 her nervousness. 
 
 " I didn't think you'd try to catch me so soon, 
 and to shut me up too," were her first words. 
 
 " No more did I, but we've had to stop work to- 
 day too, so I thought I'd come and see if I could 
 do anything for you." 
 
 "Thank you, Clint, but you see I'm very well 
 taken care of." 
 
 "Yes, you an' the baby." 
 
 Then he relapsed into a deliberative silence.
 
 310 The Finders Hunt. 
 
 His sympathies generally carried him so well to 
 the right point, that it was not his way to antici- 
 pate situations by preparation. After a brief mo- 
 ment, he said, with face and voice full of kindness: 
 
 " Minervy, somethin's not right. I never seen 
 a miserabler face 'n yourn when you bid me 
 good-bye yesterday evenin'. I know it wasn't my 
 goin' that made you so miserable (though I 
 wouldn't have minded if it had been), so it must 
 be somethin' else. Now I want to know if I can't 
 make it lighter for you somehow." 
 
 "Why, Clint," she responded, "we all have our 
 troubles. Many women have more of them than I 
 have. I have kindness and plenty. There's no use 
 in my wanting anything more." 
 
 He did not like the way in which she said: 
 "There's no use." He answered: 
 
 "You've kindness and plenty and misery, Mi- 
 nervy! A good many women have all three of 
 them things, and sometimes because they haven't 
 any brothers or fathers to help 'em from the misery. 
 Now ain't there nothin' I could do for you if I was 
 your brother, Minervy ?" 
 
 "Why no, Clint." 
 
 " I don't want you to tell me nothin' without you 
 want to, and without I can do you some good. 
 But I'd give my life for you, Minervy. Maybe I 
 would for any woman in great trouble, or I'd take 
 any other man's if he deserved it." 
 
 Minerva, though an adept in many dangerous 
 things, was not an adept in deceit, or even in con- 
 cealment. Her nature habitually flowed outward 
 flowed outward too much. She answered;
 
 The Finder s Hunt. 3 1 1 
 
 " Upon my soul I believe you would, Clint, but I 
 don't need anybody to champion me." 
 
 " Be you in love, Minervy ?" 
 
 She lo >ked up at him with some of her old ban- 
 ter. 
 
 " Oh, I'm old enough to have seen the folly of all 
 that, Cli-it." 
 
 " Mighty sorry you've had to see the folly of it !" 
 said Clint simply. 
 
 " Oh, we all do as we grow older," Minerva forced 
 herself to say. 
 
 " I never did," said Clint, " 'n 1 I'm a good deal 
 older'n you be. Sometimes a feller does the right 
 thing the wrong way 'n' calls it foolishness, and so, 
 I suppose, does a gal: but it's the right thing all the 
 same." After a pause he continued slowly and 
 more slowly until he closed his sentence with a 
 pathetic intonation of appeal : " There's a power 
 o' things I ought to be doin' to-day, and if I 
 can't do anythin' for you, I'll jog along 'n' come 
 'n' see you again sometime, 'n' perhaps you'll 
 let me do somethin' for you then," and, with dis- 
 appointment in every motion, he reluctantly rose 
 to go. 
 
 It was not strange that often during Minerva's 
 wakeful nights since this kind champion had pre- 
 sented himself after her mother left her, the prospect 
 of going off to live at arm's length from Muriel, had 
 been interspersed with visions of living less re- 
 motely from Clint. She had suppressed these right 
 loyally with loyalty to Clint; but the exercise of 
 that loyalty had made her none the less ready now 
 to be affected by the tender generosity he had
 
 3 1 2 The Finder's Hunt. 
 
 shown. She did not see how it could really help 
 her situation ; but nevertheless she felt a rest 
 and tremulous joy in it, and was greatly moved 
 by the idea that she was never to feel it again. 
 This feeling was strong enough to overflow into 
 an impulse an impulse ridiculous perhaps, but 
 one characteristic of such women, and one that 
 could never have carried away a woman who was 
 very mean. 
 
 "Clint," said she, "you're as good as God him- 
 self, and a great deal better for all I can see; and it 
 makes me feel mean to part with you trying to de- 
 ceive you. I know that if you suspect any secret 
 of mine, you'll keep it, and you are so true and 
 generous that if it could do any good, I'd trust you 
 with the whole of it." 
 
 "I don't want it, Minervy, if it can't do you no 
 good." But he had got it now, all the same. 
 
 " I know that, Clint." 
 
 Clint sat down again, and after some hesitation 
 queried, " You said you wasn't married, Minervy. 
 Wouldn't you like to be ?" 
 
 " That depends," she answered. 
 
 " If any man ought to marry you, by God I'll 
 make him !" 
 
 " Clint: marrying is for life. It wouldn't be well 
 to force it in a moment and have to stand it 
 always. There are things better than that." 
 
 " That's so, Minervy. You talk as if you'd been 
 doin* a devil of a thinkin'." 
 
 " I have, Clint ; and besides " 
 
 " Besides what ?" 
 
 " Never mind!"
 
 The Finder s Hunt. 3 1 3 
 
 There had been a good deal of sub-conscious 
 speculation going on in Clint's mind during the 
 talk. Minerva seemed to admit the fact which 
 he had tried not to suspect, and her speaking of 
 " kindness and plenty" turned his thoughts to the 
 source of most of the kindness and plenty in those 
 parts. He thought of Muriel with the rest of his 
 family, and suddenly reflected that he had lost sight 
 of him about the time he had lost sight of Minerva. 
 Then he remembered his own mysterious talk with 
 Calmire, a little before Mrs. Granzine's disappear- 
 ance, and his thought was scarcely framed before he 
 turned deadly pale and almost wailed: 
 
 " But my God ! I can't kill him f" Then his ex- 
 pression changed, and he turned to her and said : 
 " God help you, Minervy !" and he passed his 
 hand over his forehead as if trying to rub some- 
 thing away. 
 
 Minerva understood and buried her face in the 
 sofa-cushion. This was too much for Clint. He 
 sprang to his feet and ground out between his teeth: 
 
 "But I will kill him!" 
 
 Minerva too sprang up, and stood before him 
 erect and resolute as her mother: 
 
 " No you won't! He's not to blame!" 
 
 Clint had loved Minerva before, in his big pro- 
 tecting way, but now, for the first time, he respected 
 her. For the first time, too, without realizing it, 
 he felt jealous regarding her. 
 
 " You love him!" 
 
 " No I don't, and I never did, not as I love " 
 And she rushed back and buried her face in the 
 sofa-cushions again.
 
 3 14 The Finder's Hunt. 
 
 Clint's simple mind did not change direction 
 quickly. He was under-way in the direction of 
 serving her, and he had momentum enough, despite 
 her disclaimer, to reach the next natural stage in 
 his own course : 
 
 " I'll make him marry you!" 
 
 " And make me more miserable still! We're not 
 fit to live together. He would be terrible, terrible, 
 terrible !" She sat up again. " He wouldn't 
 mean to be, but he would be. Besides " and still 
 again, her face went into the cushion. 
 
 And as Clint looked over at her, despite what he 
 was suffering he became conscious, as she lay, 
 of the rich and beautiful lines she made, of her 
 little feet peeping out below her loose gown, and 
 of that very atmosphere which seemed to surround 
 her, that it would take Courtenay's purity or Cal- 
 mire's philosophy to resist. 
 
 " You could make any man love you!" said 
 Clint. 
 
 "Not him! I haven't seen him for more than 
 six months, though he has everything done for 
 me, and means to be good to me always. But I 
 know now he could never love me. Oh, there are 
 great deep places in him that I can't even see into, 
 much less go into, and he would hate me because 
 they would be empty. No, I wouldn't, if he 
 
 would. I'm afraid of him. Besides " 
 
 "Then by God I'll marry you myself!" 
 
 Clint's deliberate emotions had at last not only 
 felt her power as she lay there, and reinforced his 
 chivalry ; but he had come to interpret her reiter- 
 ated "besides."
 
 The Finder s Hunt. 3 ! 5 
 
 " No you won't, Clint. You're too good for me, 
 and and I love you too much to let you." 
 
 Clint went and picked her up like a child, and 
 sat and held her in his arms. 
 
 "Yes I will," he said. "I ain't a bit better 'n 
 you be. Women get into trouble when men don't; 
 that's all the difference; and your trouble has made 
 you better 'n ever I was, but not better 'n I'm goin' 
 to be. And I'm goin' to take you away from all 
 this. My brother's got rich out there 'n Afriky, 
 and I'll go out there 'n' get rich too get as rich 
 for you as anybody is. Guess I can handle nig- 
 gers! Saw enough of 'em when I was in the army. 
 Hello! what's that comin'?" 
 
 " It's only the pony-carriage," said Minerva, 
 looking out over his shoulder. " The boy brings 
 it for me to drive. But he can wait," and she 
 turned to put her head on Clint's shoulder again, 
 when all the reasons against putting it there rushed 
 anew upon her, and she cried, "No, I'm not fit! 
 You'll despise me yet," and struggled to get away. 
 But if the heavy oak chair had suddenly grown 
 up and held her, she could have produced just as 
 much impression upon it. 
 
 " Keep still, Minervy," said Clint, " you hurt 
 my sore arm. Besides, you needn't make such a 
 fuss, for me to believe that you're brave and 
 honest. I wouldn't have picked you up and set 
 you here if you hadn't proved that you've come to 
 be a bang-up square woman And my God, what 
 a purty one you be!" he exclaimed, as he held her 
 off and looked into her glowing face. "That's all 
 there is of it, 'n' I'm goin' to marry you: so put your
 
 3 1 6 The Finder's Hunt. 
 
 head down an' keep still. May as well kiss me 
 first, though," and she did kiss him, and said : 
 " Oh Clint, I'll love you as good women love 
 God," and probably her misery had strengthened 
 her to do it. She kissed him again and put her 
 head down as he had told her, and quietly wept 
 happy tears. 
 
 Soon he said: "Now, Minervy, I'll tell you what 
 I'm goin' to do. You're not to stay here another 
 day. I'm goin' to drive into town with that boy. 
 In two hours I'll be back here with Mr. Courte- 
 nay. In four hours, Mr. and Mrs. Clint Russell 
 and the kid will start for New York. So you be 
 ready. I can come back here and straighten 
 up things next week." 
 
 And in less than four hours, they had left the 
 house with all she cared to take with her, and drove 
 in a big carriage that Clint had brought, to the 
 station beyond Benstock. Courtenay went back to 
 town in the pony-carriage, and blushed at recalling 
 that when, country-fashion, he kissed Minerva, he 
 felt that he had wanted to before.
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 THE BEGINNING. 
 
 AN hour after Courtenay had left the cottage, 
 Muriel reached it on foot from Benstock. The day 
 was glorious. It marked one of the first timid 
 steps of Summer, wnich in those climes are doubly 
 beautiful from the contrast with the cold that 
 they banish. The air was warm and balmy, the trees 
 were green, the birds were singing, and here and 
 there a daisy had already peeped out. 
 
 The door stood open, and Muriel had to take a 
 step into the hall to ring the bell placed, as the 
 way is in those parts, in the centre of the door 
 between the panels. The negress came. 
 
 "Where's Miss Huldah ?" 
 
 " Done gone down Souf wid her husband a week 
 ago, sah." 
 
 " Her husband ! She isn't married." 
 
 " Yessah ! Married just befoh she went." 
 
 " To Mr. Redfield ?" 
 
 " Yessah, to Mars' Redfield !" 
 
 " Well, I'm glad to hear it !" 
 
 " Yessah !" 
 
 " Well, let me see Miss Mrs. Granzine." 
 
 " She done gone wid her husband too, sah !" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Yessah. Wid a gemman as swears." 
 
 " Impossible!" 
 
 "Yessah. If yo's young Mars' Calmire, dis
 
 318 The Beginning. 
 
 yar letter's for yo, sah. Walk right in de parlor, 
 sah, and hab a seat." 
 Muriel took the letter into the little room and read, 
 
 " Before you get this, I shall be gone where you 
 will never hear of me again, with the only man I ever 
 loved. I am married to Clint Russell. He offered 
 to take the child, and I don't doubt that he would 
 be good and kind to it always, but I love Clint too 
 much to burden him, and you can do better for the 
 child than we can, and he has a right to that. 
 
 " Good-bye. I hope your life will be happy. I 
 know mine will be, and I hope you are glad of it. 
 You never wished any harm to me, I know. And 
 I didn't to you. Good-bye. M. 
 
 " P.S. Clint says good-bye too." 
 
 The letter simply numbed Muriel. It took him a 
 minute to realize it. But there was no mistake 
 about it. Here he was a free man, with his child 
 upon his hands. He sat some minutes more pon- 
 dering and speculating; then, to do it better, he 
 took a few minutes more to walk up and down the 
 room. By that time, having slept poorly the night 
 before and having already, to avoid attention, 
 walked from Benstock, he felt exhausted and sat 
 down again. Since reading the letter, he had run 
 through the whole gamut of feeling from a sug- 
 gested desire to murder the child, (which sugges- 
 tion, he had learned enough to laugh at,) to a 
 pretty good imitation of parental interest in it. 
 Yet what was to be done with it ? His duties to 
 it were the same that he had always acknowledged,
 
 The Beginning. 3 1 9 
 
 and with them before him, all that he cared for 
 most, was as far off as ever. At last, he gave up 
 meditating from sheer incapacity to keep his tired 
 brain working, said: "I may as well face my 
 music," and went into the hall and rang the door- 
 bell again. The negress appeared. 
 
 " Where's the baby ?" he asked. 
 
 " Gone out wid de lady, sah!" 
 
 " What lady ?" 
 
 " De lubly lady I'se sometimes seed down by de 
 ' Home.' " 
 
 "Dear old Mary!" thought Muriel. "She's al- 
 ways on hand when there's trouble. Well, I'd 
 rather have her know about it than anybody else. 
 No Aunt Amelia now! And some woman's got to 
 help me." Then he asked the negress: 
 
 "How in the world did she get here?" 
 
 " She rid up wid de nuss and tole de carriage to 
 come back for her at six o'clock." 
 
 " But what made her come ?" 
 
 " She 'lowed dat Miss Minervy tole her de baby 
 was here, and she must send a nuss from de ' Home.' 
 So she com'd herself wid de nuss to look 'round 
 arter tings." 
 
 " Where is she ?" 
 
 "Gone out wid de baby, sah, to gib it a little 
 walk, jus' as I done tole ye. She be back soon." 
 
 "Thank you! I'll wait." And he sat down exhaust- 
 ed, on the platform at the foot of the stairs. The 
 woman went to the back of the house. He leaned 
 his overburdened head against the newel-post, 
 thought how beautiful the coming Summer ap- 
 peared through the open door, and in a minute was 
 asleep.
 
 320 The Beginning. 
 
 After a little time of oblivion, he awoke con- 
 fused and as if dreaming. Before him, backed 
 by the sunlight of the doorway, stood a figure 
 in white, with radiant hair ; on its arm, a child. 
 It all seemed very natural, as Muriel's eyes opened 
 upon it, and with a feeling of reverent admiration, 
 he raised them, partly dazzled by his sleep and the 
 glory of the Summer air, and dwelt upon the face. 
 
 When he could think for a moment, and realize 
 who it was, and what she had done, he gave a low 
 cry that was half a groan, and unconsciously sank 
 forward from the steps to his knees, looking up to 
 her as men look from thirsting death to the nearing 
 palms. Then he put his arms around her robes 
 and buried his face. 
 
 " Not there, Muriel !" she said, passing her free 
 hand tenderly over his head, while, for a little, to 
 them Time stopped. 
 
 At last he moved and took the caressing hand in 
 both of his, and pressed it to his lips, and mur- 
 mured : 
 
 " If I were but worthy! If I were but worthy!" 
 
 She answered : "You have expiated, my Love, 
 you have expiated. Come !" 
 
 And when she raised him, while one arm held his 
 child, she put the other around his neck and kissed 
 him. For a moment, he held both woman and 
 child in his embrace. Then Nina called the nurse 
 and gave her the boy, and went out into the sun- 
 light with Muriel. 
 
 THE EN IX
 
 133 2 
 
 
 , -- 8H9 
 
 
 ' 
 
 . ; m 
 
 i 
 
 ^^-