They were sitting in the doorway together. Robin rested her chin in
her hands and looked down the valley, the lines of perplexity
deepening in her forehead.
"If only we had an angel with a sword, or without one, to tell us what
to do," she said. "If only we were deeply religious with the
old-fashioned orthodox religion, that would enable us to believe we
were predestined not to be drowned--"
"Or if we believed in a personal God, without whom not a sparrow
falleth, though the waters cover the face of the earth and blot out
millions of His creatures," answered Adam. "After all, can we do
better than follow the dictates of Nature?"
"Do you mean to look through Nature up to Nature's God?" answered
Robin. "How can we worship any God as pitiless as Nature? Nature is
strong, but is it our place to help her in her care for the single
type? Perhaps we are the trilobites of a new Silurian period; well,
trilobites were painfully common, but we need not be. Nature's laws
are immutable, so we have been told with wearying insistence, but
suppose you and I have wills as strong as Nature herself? Suppose we
ask what she has done for the humanity of which we are a part, that
she should demand fresh victims from us? Oh, I know; you will tell
me,--
"'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite
in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action
how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!'
"And I should answer,--
"'What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of
man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and
honor.'
"David or Hamlet, it comes to the same thing. Where are the crowns
now, and how can we say Solomon was not right when he said the end of
it all was vanity? What is Nature, and on what compulsion must we obey
her? The imperative mandates of our own hearts? But what if our hearts
are at war with our heads? Are we to follow no higher law than the
blind instinct that moves the house-fly? Or will we aspire to the
indomitable soul of the mocking-birds that feed their young in
captivity until they see they are prisoners for life, and then bring
them poisonous spiders that they may die rather than live under such
conditions? Shall we give hostages to Nature when she has given
nothing to us?"
She was standing now and speaking with more vehemence than was her
wont. Adam caught her hands, as she flung them out with a gesture full
of scorn.
"Do you really think we have nothing? How many million lovers have
envied Adam and Eve their paradise? This Nature against which you
bring so railing an accusation,--has she taken away more than she has
given us? We had ambitions, you and I, but the way of ambition is full
of weariness and disappointment and bitterness of spirit. We did not
expect peace and comfort and joy, but work and turmoil. Our slates
were set with a sum--"
"Yes, a sum in vulgar fractions," answered Robin.
"Perhaps; it was a sum in which the unknown and unknowable quantity
determined the result. We had seen a good deal of what is called
life,--it is a good name to distinguish it from the death it so much
resembles,--and I am half inclined to think Nature has been merciful."
"But if she was merciful to them," said Robin, quickly, "why were we
omitted?"
"She gave them oblivion, the hereafter, whatever comes hereafter. She
gave us each other. We were going to miss one another in the careers
we had mapped out. We might have lost each other forever, or for æons
of years. Nothing but a general breaking up of everything would ever
have flung us into each other's arms. We were too much interested in
my career, my vast influence on the political situation, to consider
any existence apart from the setting we had chosen for the play. And,
after all, what was it, that career from which we hoped so much? I
stood waiting my cue, ready to act my part in the farce or tragedy,
whichever it turned out to be."
"I think it was more like a circus," said Robin.
"Very like a circus," he admitted with grim appreciation. "A circus in
which no one knew whether he was to be a ringmaster or a clown. There
were the financial tight-rope walkers, and the social lion-tamers, and
snake-charmers, and the political acrobats whose falls were unsoftened
by any kind of network. There were heat and dust and discomfort, and
weary, wretched animals looking out of cages at other weary, tortured
animals, that were sometimes scarcely less pachydermatous than
themselves. I know the program we had mapped out, the triumphal entry,
the daring leaps, the cheers,--but was it worth while? After all, does
one care to be the champion bareback rider in life's hippodrome?
Nature swept away my sawdust ring, but she gave me heaven for a
canopy, earth for an arena, you for a queen. At times I am disposed to
take a fatalist view of the case, and think that God, or Nature, knew
there was no more to be done with the earth, not so much because of
its wickedness, as on account of its stupidity and cruelty. All my
plans had centered in a political career, and yet how could a man
touch politics and remain undefiled? Yes, I know there were honorable
men in politics, but they were lonely, and they hated with an
unspeakable hatred all the means that were used to keep them there.
And there were any number of men who had been honorable once. When a
man becomes possessed by the desire of place, his backbone becomes
elastic, and he stoops to things of which he had believed himself
incapable. I don't know what it is, but it weakens a man's moral
fibre, and breaks down the tissues of his will, and gives him mental
astigmatism. How dare I say I should have been any better than the
rest?"
"Do you remember your address, a year ago Flag Day, and the old man
with the little bronze button of the Civil War veteran, who stood in
front, and shook hands with you afterwards, with tears running down
his face? And the applause? Can you honestly say that you find 'to
utter love more sweet than praise'? You have told me of your dream of
a home, but Emerson said, 'not even a home in the heart of one we love
can satisfy the awful soul that dwells in clay.' Can it satisfy you,
who hoped and expected so much?"
He hesitated and did not reply at once.
"Are you sure you are not making a virtue of necessity?" she asked a
little bitterly.
"I think as much as anything," he said slowly, "I was excusing myself
for not having known all along that the real life, and the most useful
one, is the one we could have made together. Principalities and powers
and empires and republics have fallen. When God wants to regenerate
the world, He begins with the family. Now _I_," with unspeakable
scorn,--"_I_ intended to begin with a different primary law. I could
have made a good home, but I was intent on making an indifferent,
honest congressman, or senator, or perhaps president. In a way your
home always meant a good deal of what I am trying to say. You always
had some one on hand you were trying to make capable of great things
by believing in them. You made us welcome, and were ready to listen to
our troubles, our literary curiosities, our musical gems and our
aspirations. Suppose I had had sense enough to refuse the husks and
choose--"
"Don't say it," she answered. "Don't say it, even if you mean it, for
I should have sent you away, and have felt like reviling you for
putting your hand to the plow and turning back. Your ambitions were
the most attractive thing about you then. I hadn't pinned my faith on
a primary law; I think it was government ownership that I regarded as
the great regenerator. I am glad if my home seemed homelike to any
one; it never reached my ideal; and when a woman's home isn't the hub
of her universe,--well, she takes to china painting, or gossip, or
philanthropy; a man takes to poker or politics. I took to politics,
second-hand. Personally and concretely I abhorred the whole miserable
farce, but abstractly, and as a means to an end which I greatly
desired, I found it interesting. I admired you infinitely more than I
liked you in those days, but I wouldn't have married you under any
circumstances."
"Why?"
"First, because I didn't want to marry any one; I didn't want to care
that much. And, secondly, because I wanted you to devote yourself to
your country, and had you possessed a family your devotion would have
been divided. I don't see," she went on reflectively, "how you, who
know so well how empty it all was, and how hopeless the endeavor to
lift it an inch,--I don't see how you can think anything would justify
us in making it go on."
"But, on the other hand," he said, "are we justified in snuffing it
all out? There was so much that was beautiful, and the possibilities
were so glorious! Sweetheart, I shall not believe you love me if you
think the world all cold and dark. I believe now the one law it needs,
or has ever needed, is love, the fulfilling of the law."
Robin shook her head, and there was a pathetic quiver about her
sensitive mouth. "Is it so? We have sung, ''Tis love, it makes the
world turn round,' but is it so? Would you give your world that one
great principle as the whole of its code of laws?"
"Yes, I would," he answered sturdily. "I should not revive a single
law, not even the Ten Commandments, nor any of their variations. You
have to read the statutes provided for unnamable crimes to understand
just how bad mankind could be. I should not bother my world with
Draco, or Solon, or Justinian, or Coke, or Blackstone. I should give
it the code of Christ, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, do ye even so unto them.' To love one's neighbor as
oneself,--isn't that code enough for any world? And I should make the
neighbor include every dumb creature."
She turned to him, her face radiant with love and trust.
"There is no difference between us in reality," she said: "you would
found your political economy on the teachings of Christ, and I my
religion. If we realize the unity of life, we must make our religion
our law, and our law our religion. Sometimes I think the hand of the
Lord is in it, for surely, surely, there never was a nobler man on
earth than you."