_A QUESTION_.
The identically same doubt busied some minds in another quarter, where
Mr. and Mrs. Dallas sat expecting their son home. They were not so much
concerned with it through the winter; the Gainsboroughs had been
happily got rid of, and were no longer in dangerous proximity; that was
enough for the time. But as the spring came on and the summer drew
nigh, the thought would recur to Pitt's father and mother, whether
after all they were safe.
'He mentions them in every letter he writes,' Mrs. Dallas said. She and
her husband were sitting as usual in their respective easy chairs on
either side of the fire. Not for that they were infirm, for there was
nothing of that; they were only comfortable. Mrs. Dallas was knitting
some bright wools, just now mechanically, and with a knitted brow; her
husband's brow showed no disturbance. It never did.
'That's habit,' he answered to his wife's remark.
'But habit with Pitt is a tenacious thing. What will he do when he
comes home and finds they are gone?'
'Make himself happy without them, I expect.'
'It wouldn't be like Pitt.'
'You knew Pitt two and a half years ago. He was a boy then; he will be
a man now.'
'Do you expect the man will be different from the boy?'
'Generally are. And Pitt has been going through a process.'
'I can see something of that in his letters,' said the mother
thoughtfully. 'Not much.'
'You will see more of it when he comes. What do you say in answer to
his inquiries?'
'About the Gainsboroughs? Nothing. I never allude to them.'
Silence. Mr. Dallas read his paper comfortably. Mrs. Dallas's brow was
still careful.
'It would be like him as he used to be, if he were to make the journey
to New York to find them. And if we should seem to oppose him, it might
set his fancy seriously in that direction. There's danger, husband.
Pitt is very persistent.'
'Don't see much to tempt him in that direction.'
'Beauty! And Pitt knows he will have money enough; he would not care
for that.'
'I do,' said Mr. Dallas, without ceasing to read his paper.
'I would not mind the girl being poor,' Mrs. Dallas went on, 'for Pitt
_will_ have money enough--enough for both; but, Hildebrand, they are
incorrigible dissenters, and I do _not_ want Pitt's wife to be of that
persuasion.'
'I won't have it, either.'
'Then we shall do well to think how we can prevent it. If we could have
somebody here to take up his attention at least'--
'Preoccupy the ground,' said Mr. Dallas. 'The colonel would say that is
good strategy.'
'I do not mean strategy,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'I want Pitt to fancy a
woman proper for him, in every respect.'
'Exactly. Have you one in your eye? Here in America it is difficult.'
'I was thinking of Betty Frere.'
'Humph! If she could catch him,--she might do.'
'She has no money; but she has family, and beauty.'
'You understand these things better than I do,' said Mr. Dallas, half
amused, half sharing his wife's anxiety. 'Would she make a comfortable
daughter-in-law for you?'
'That is secondary,' said Mrs. Dallas, still with a raised brow,
knitting her scarlet and blue with out knowing what colour went through
her fingers. Perhaps her husband's tone had implied doubt.
'If she can catch him,' Mr. Dallas repeated. 'There is no calculating
on these things. Cupid's arrows fly wild--for the most part.'
'I will ask her to come and spend the summer here,' Mrs. Dallas went
on. 'There is nothing like propinquity.'
In those days the crossing of the Atlantic was a long business, done
solely by the help or with the hindrance of the winds. And there was no
telegraphing, to give the quick notice of a loved one's arrival as soon
as he touched the shore. So Mr. and Mrs. Dallas had an anxious time of
watching and uncertainty, for they could not tell when Pitt might be
with them. It lasted, this time of anxiety, till Seaforth had been in
its full summer dress for some weeks; and it was near the end of a fair
warm day in July that he at last came. The table was set for tea, and
the master and mistress of the house were seated in their places on
either side the fireplace, where now instead of a fire there was a huge
jar full of hemlock branches. The slant sunbeams were stretching across
the village street, making that peaceful alternation of broad light and
still shadows which is so reposeful to the eye that looks upon it. Then
Mrs. Dallas's eye, which was not equally reposeful, saw a buggy drive
up and stop before the gate, and her worsteds fell from her hands and
her lap as she rose.
'Husband, he is come' she said, with the quietness of intensity; and
the next moment Pitt was there.
Yes, he had grown to be a man; he was changed; there was the conscious
gravity of a man in his look and bearing; the cool collectedness that
belongs to maturer years; the traces of thought and the lines of
purpose. It had been all more or less to be seen in her boy before, but
now the mother confessed to herself the growth and increase of every
manly and promising trait in the face and figure she loved. That is, as
soon as the first rush of delight had had its due expression, and the
first broken and scattering words were spoken, and the three sat down
to look at each other. The mother watched the broad brow, which was
whiter than it used to be; the fine shoulders, which were even
straighter and broader than of old; and the father noticed that his son
overtopped him. And Mrs. Dallas's eyes shone with an incipient moisture
which betrayed a soft mood she had to combat with; for she was not a
woman who liked sentimental scenes; while in her husband's grey orbs
there flashed out every now and then a fire of satisfied pride, which
was touching in one whose face rarely betrayed feeling of any kind.
Pitt was just the fellow he had hoped to see him; and Oxford had been
just the right place to send him to. He said little; it was the other
two who did most of the talking. The talking itself for some time was
of that disjointed, insignificant character which is all that can get
out when minds are so full, and enough when hearts are so happy.
Indeed, for all that evening they could not advance much further. Eyes
supplemented tongues sufficiently. It was not till a night's sleep and
the light of a new day had brought them in a manner to themselves that
anything less fragmentary could be entered upon. At breakfast all
parties seemed to have settled down into a sober consciousness of
satisfied desire. Then Mr. Dallas asked his son how he liked Oxford?
Pitt exhausted himself in giving both the how and the why. Yet no
longer like a boy.
'Think you'll end by settling in England, eh?' said his father, with
seeming carelessness.
'I have not thought of it, sir.'
'What's made old Strahan take such a fancy to you? Seems to be a
regular love affair.'
'He is a good friend to me,' Pitt answered seriously. 'He has shown it
in many ways.'
'He'll put you in his will, I expect.'
'I think he will do nothing of the kind. He knows I will have enough.'
'Nobody knows it,' said the older Dallas drily. 'I might lose all _my_
money, for anything you can tell.'
The younger man's eyes flashed with a noble sparkle in them. 'What I
say is still true, sir. What is the use of Oxford?'
'Humph!' said his father. 'The use of Oxford is to teach young men of
fortune to spend their money elegantly.'
'Or to enable young men who have no fortune to do elegantly without it.'
'There is no doing elegantly without money, and plenty of it,' said the
elder man, looking from under lowered eyelids, in a peculiar way he
had, at his son. 'Plenty of it, I tell you. You cannot have too much.'
'Money is a good dog.'
'A good _what?_'
'A good servant, sir, I should say. You may see a case occasionally
where it has got to be the master.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'A man unable to be anything and spoiled for doing anything worth
while, because he has so much of it; a man whose property is so large
that he has come to look upon money as the first thing.'
'It is the first thing and the last thing, I can tell you. Without it,
a man has to play second fiddle to somebody else all his life.'
'Do you think there is no independence but that of the purse, sir?'
'Beggarly little use in any other kind. In fact, there is not any other
kind, Pitt. What passes for it is just fancy, and struggling to make
believe. The really independent man is the man who need not ask anybody
else's leave to do anything.'
Pitt let the question drop, and went on with his breakfast, for which
he seemed to have a good appetite.
'Your muffins are as good as ever, mother,' he remarked.
Mrs. Dallas, to judge by her face, found nothing in this world so
pleasant as to see Pitt eat his breakfast, and nothing in the world so
important to do as to furnish him with satisfactory material. Yet she
was not a foolish woman, and preserved all the time her somewhat
stately presence and manner; it was in little actions and words now and
then that this care for her son's indulgence and delight in it made
itself manifest. It was manifest enough to the two who sat at breakfast
with her; Mr. Dallas observing it with a secret smile, his son with a
grateful swelling of the heart, which a glance and a word sometimes
conveyed to his mother. Mrs. Dallas's contentment this morning was
absolute and unqualified. There could be no doubt what Betty Frere
would think, she said to herself. Every quality that ought to grace a
young man, she thought she saw embodied before her. The broad brow, and
the straight eyebrow, and the firm lips, expressed what was congenial
to Mrs. Dallas's soul; a mingling of intelligence and will, well
defined, clear and strong; but also sweet. There was thoughtfulness but
no shadow in the fine hazel eyes; no cloud on the brow; and the smile
when it came was frank and affectionate. His manner pleased Mrs. Dallas
infinitely; it had all the finish of the best breeding, and she was
able to recognise this.
'What are you going to be, Pitt?' his father broke in upon some
laughing talk that was going on between mother and son.
'To be, sir? I beg your pardon!'
'After you have done with Oxford, or with your college course. You know
I intend you to study for a profession. Which profession would you
choose?'
Pitt was silent.
'Have you ever thought about it?'
'Yes, sir. I have thought about it.'
'What conclusion did you come to?'
'To none, yet,' the young man answered slowly. 'It must depend.'
'On what?
'Partly,--on what conclusion I come to respecting something else,' Pitt
went on in the same manner, which immediately fastened his mother's
attention.
'Perhaps you will go on and explain yourself,' said his father. 'It is
good that we should understand one another.'
Yet Pitt was silent.
'Is it anything private and secret?' his father asked, half laughing,
although with a touch of sharp curiosity in his look.
'Private--not secret,' Pitt answered thoughtfully, too busy with his
own thoughts to regard his father's manner. 'At least the conclusion
cannot be secret.'
'It might do no harm to discuss the subject,' said his father, still
lightly.
'I cannot see how it would do any good. It is my own affair. And I
thought it might be better to wait till the conclusion was reached.
However, that may not be for some time; and if you wish'--
'We wish to share in whatever is interesting you, Pitt,' his mother
said gently.
'Yes, mother, but at present things are not in any order to please you.
You had better wait till I see daylight.'
'Is it a question of marriage?' asked his father suddenly.
'No, sir.'
'A question of Uncle Strahan's wishes?' suggested Mrs. Dallas.
'No, mother.' And then with a little hesitation he went on: 'I have
been thinking merely what master I would serve. Upon that would depend,
in part, what service I would do;--of course.'
'What master? Mars or Minerva, to wit? or possibly Apollo? Or what was
the god who was supposed to preside over the administration of justice?
I forget.'
'No, sir. My question was broader.'
'Broader!'
'It was, briefly, the question whether I would serve God or Mammon.'
'I profess I do not understand you now!' said his father.
'You are aware, sir, the world is divided on that question; making two
parties. Before going any farther, I had a mind to determine to which
of them I would belong. How can a navigator lay his course, unless he
knows his goal?'
'But, my boy,' said his mother, now anxiously and perplexedly, 'what do
you mean?'
'It amounts to the question, whether I would be a Christian, mother.'
Mr. Dallas slued his chair round, so as to bring his face somewhat out
of sight; Mrs. Dallas, obeying the same instinctive impulse, kept hers
hidden behind the screen of her coffee-urn, for she would not her son
should see in it the effect of his words. Her answer, however, was
instantaneous:
'But, my dear, you _are_ a Christian.'
'Am I? Since when, mother?'
'Pitt, you were baptized in infancy,--you were baptized by that good
and excellent Bishop Downing, as good a man, and as holy, as ever was
consecrated, here or anywhere. He baptized you before you were two
months old. That made you a Christian, my boy.'
'What sort of a one, mother?'
'Why, my dear, you were taught your catechism. Have you forgotten it?
In baptism you were made "a member of Christ, a child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." You have learned those words,
often enough, and said them over.'
'That will do to talk about, mother,' said Pitt slowly; 'but in what
sense is it true?'
'My dear!--in every sense. How can you ask? It is part of the
Prayer-Book.'
'It is not part of my experience. Up to this time, my life and
conscience know nothing about it. Mother, the Bible gives certain marks
of the people whom it calls "disciples" and "Christians." I do not find
them in myself.'
Pitt lifted his head and looked at his mother as he spoke; a grave,
frank, most manly expression filling his face. Mrs. Dallas met the look
with one of intense worry and perplexity. 'What do you mean?' she said
helplessly; while a sudden shove of her husband's chair spoke for _his_
mood of mind, in its irritated restlessness. 'Marks?' she repeated.
'Christians are not _marked_ from other people.'
'As I read the Bible, it seems to me they must be.'
'I do not understand you,' she said shortly. 'I hope you will explain
yourself.'
'I owe it to you to answer,' the young man said thoughtfully; 'it is
better, perhaps, you should know where I am, that you may at least be
patient with me if I do not respond quite as you would wish to your
expectations. Mother, I have been studying this matter a great while;
but as to the preliminary question, whether I am already what the Bible
describes Christians to be, I have been under no delusion at all. The
marks are plain enough, and they are not in me.'
'What marks?'
'It is a personal matter,' Pitt went on a little unwillingly; 'it must
be fought through somehow in my own mind; but some things are plain
enough. Mother, the servants of Christ "follow" Him; it is the test of
their service; I never did, nor ever thought or cared what the words
meant. The children of God are known by the fact that they love Him and
keep his commandments. So the Bible says. I have not loved Him, and
have not asked about His commandments. I have always sought my own
pleasure. The heirs of the kingdom of heaven have chosen that world
instead of this; and between the two is just the choice I have yet to
make. That is precisely where I am.'
'But, my dear Pitt,' said Mrs. Dallas, while her husband kept an
ominous silence, 'you have always led a most blameless life. I think
you judge yourself too hardly. You have been a good son, always!' and
her eyes filled, partly with affection and partly with chagrin. To what
was all this tending? 'You have _always_ been a good son,' she repeated.
'To you, mother. Yes, I hope so.'
'And, my dear, you were confirmed. What did that mean?'
'It meant nothing, mother, so far as I was concerned. It amounted to
nothing. I did not know what I was doing. I did not think of the
meaning the words might bear. It was to me a mere form, done because
you wished it, and because it was said to be proper; the right thing to
do; I attached no weight to it, and lived just the same after as
before. Except that for a few days I went under a little feeling of
constraint, I remember, and also carried my head higher with a sense of
added dignity.'
'And what is your idea of a Christian now, then?' Mrs. Dallas asked,
between trouble and indignation.
'I am merely taking what the Bible says about it, mother.'
'Which every man interprets for himself,' added Mr. Dallas drily.
'Where words are so plain, there can hardly be any question of
interpretation. For instance'--
'Let that be,' said Mr. Dallas; 'and tell us, if you can, what is your
idea of the "choice" you say you have to make. A choice between what?'
'The one thing runs into the other,' said Pitt; 'but it does not
signify at which end we begin. The question is, I suppose, in short,
which world I will live for.'
'Live for both! That is the sensible way.'
'But, if you will pardon me, sir, impracticable.'
'How impracticable?'
'It has been declared so by the highest authority, and it has been
found so in practice. I see it to be impracticable.'
'_I_ do not. Where's the impracticability?' Mr. Dallas had wheeled
round now and was regarding his son attentively, with a face of
superior, cold, rather scornful calm. Mr. Dallas's face was rarely
anything else but calm, whatever might be going on beneath the calm.
Pitt's face was not exactly so quiet; thought was working in it, and
lights and shades sometimes passed over it, which his father carefully
studied. 'Where's the impossibility?' he repeated, as Pitt's answer
tarried.
'The impossibility of walking two ways at once.'
'Will you explain yourself? I do not see the application.'
He spoke with clear coldness, perhaps expecting that his son would be
checked or embarrassed by coming against that barrier to enthusiasm, a
cold, hard intellect. Pitt, however, was quite as devoid of enthusiasm
at the moment as his father, and far more sure of his ground, while his
intellect was full as much astir. His steadiness was not shaken, rather
gained force, as he went on to speak, though he did not now lift his
eyes, but sat looking down at the white damask which covered the
breakfast table, having pushed his plate and cup away from him.
'Father and mother,' he said, 'I have been looking at two opposite
goals. On one side there is--what people usually strive for--honour,
pleasure, a high place in the world's regard. If I seek that, I know
what I have to do. I suppose it is what you want me to do. I should
distinguish myself, if I can; climb the heights of greatness; make
myself a name, and a place, and then live there, as much above the rest
of the world as I can, and enjoying all the advantages of my position.
That is about what I thought I would do when I went to Oxford. It is a
career bounded by this world, and ended when one quits it. You ask why
it is impossible to do this and the other thing too? Just look at it.
If I become a servant of Christ, I give up seeking earthly honour; I do
not live for my own pleasure; I apply all I have, of talents or means
or influence, to doing the will of a Master whose kingdom is not of
this world, and whose ways are not liked by the world. I see very
plainly what His commands are, and they bid one be unlike the world and
separate from it. Do you see the impossibility I spoke of?'
'But, my dear,' said Mrs. Dallas eagerly, 'you exaggerate things.'
'Which things, mother?'
'It is not necessary for you to be unlike the world; that is
extravagance.'
Pitt rose, went to the table, where a large family Bible and Book of
Common Prayer lay, and fetched the Bible to the breakfast-table. During
which procedure Mr. Dallas shoved his chair round again, to gain his
former position, and Mrs. Dallas passed her hand over her eyes once or
twice, with her a gesture of extreme disturbance. Pitt brought his
book, opened it on the table before him, and after a little turning of
the leaves stopped and read the following:
'"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you."'
'Yes, _at that time_,' said Mrs. Dallas eagerly,--'at that time. Then
the heathen made great opposition. All that is past now.'
'Was it only the heathen, mother?'
'Well, the Jews, of course. They were as bad.'
'Why were they? Just for this reason, that they loved the praise of men
more than the praise of God. They chose this world. But the apostle
James,--here it is,--he wrote:
'"Whosoever will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God."'
'Wouldn't you then be a friend of the world, Pitt?' his mother asked
reprovingly.
'I should say,' Mr. Dallas remarked with an amused, indifferent
tone,--'I should say that Pitt had been attending a conventicle; only
at Oxford that is hardly possible.'
The young man made no answer to either speaker; he remained with his
head bent down over the Bible, and a face almost stern in its gravity.
Mrs. Dallas presently repeated her question.
'Pitt, would you not be a friend to the world?'
'That is the question, mother,' he said, lifting his face to look at
her. 'I thought it right to tell you all this, that you may know just
where I stand. Of course I have thought of the question of a
profession; but this other comes first, and I feel it ought first to be
decided.'
With which utterance the young man rose, put the big Bible in its
place, and left the room.