PROGRESS AGAIN.
The estates in Yorkshire were indeed in need of the master's eye. One
of the clerks had absconded with a considerable sum of money; and this
touched Mr. Godfrey nearly: while Hester was more affected by the
discovery that the insidious doctrines of 'free love' were making
terrible inroads on the morality of the young people. She was the more
affected as she felt a natural repugnance to approach the subject. She
found the people legislating for themselves, and systematizing divorce
in what they deemed a manner consonant to nature. She was not prepared
for this development, and drew back in disgust. "Is there, then, no
remedy for this?" she asked of her father. "None but to legalize it, I
believe," he replied. "You know nothing of these things, child, and
had better not meddle with them. Legalizing divorce must take place
sooner or later, from causes you do not understand; nay, I do not
think the matter will stop there. As people become enlightened, and
live more according to the laws of nature, polygamy must be legalized
too; [Footnote 174] it is the only way to prevent disorder. In
fact, but for the prejudice created by religion, it would have been
done long since in theory as it has ever been done in practice!"
[Footnote 174: This plea is now used by intelligent men,
non-Mormonites, to justify the existence of legalized polygamy in an
American State. It is gravely asserted that only in Mormondom can
the moral laws be enforced; that the practice in other states is the
same without the sanction of the law, and that the absence of that
sanction creates the disorders and night brawls of our streets.
Order reigns in Utah!]
"Are you serious?"
"Perfectly so!"
"Then there must be something wrong, absolutely wrong. I can never be
brought to believe polygamy necessary; that must enslave a woman, and
I must protest against it."
"Protest as you will you will find nature too strong for your theory.
You have been so peculiarly brought up, Hester, by your poor mother,
that you know nothing, absolutely nothing, of the world's necessities,
and I begin to wish I had never let your eyes become unsealed. You are
a privileged one, and belonging to a privileged class; the majority of
the world are not so protected. But this is not a subject for you;
shut your eyes to these matters, and attended to the spread of
intelligence."
But it is not easy to shut one's eyes when once they have been opened.
Hester was stupefied. This came as a climax to the sorrow already
arising from her mother's illness, from her remorse in having partly
occasioned it. The woman's heart within her was beginning to make
itself felt. The occupations of the Yorkshire estate grew trite and
dull, until she had found a remedy for this grievance, a principal to
propose, a power with which to act. Mr. Godfrey was also gloomy from
his pecuniary loss through the embezzlement of the clerk, and matters
were assuming a very unpleasant appearance.
{611}
M. de Villeneuve called to pay them a parting visit, the illness of
his father called him to America.
"Shall you return to Europe?" said Mr. Godfrey.
"Yes; as soon as I can get away, I must return to take care of my
ward; and if I can possibly find a location for her order, take her to
America with me."
"Your ward? Her order?"
"Did you not know that Euphrasie de Meglior is my ward, that her
father increased her to my care the night before he died? That which
has kept me in Europe so long as been the hope of assisting her to
regain her estates and to establish yourself. Fortunately for my peace
of mind, I have been able partially to succeed in both. A part, though
but a small part, of the estate has been rescued; and Madame de
Meglior is already returned to France. Euphrasie thinks herself still
more fortunate. Four of the ladies of the continent where she was
educated have found shelter in England. They have met, and by the age
of friends have wherewith to establish themselves. They have taken a
house at------, about ten miles from this, and have already commenced
community life, two Euphrasie's great content."
"And Euphrasie did not return with her mother to France?"
"No. She resigned her right to the estate during madame's life."
"And what will she live on?"
"The poor Clares support themselves by their work."
Hester looked surprised, almost shocked. M. de Villeneuve continued:
"During my absence I have deputed warm friends to look after them,
and, as I said, my object is finally to transplant them to America.
But I must not forget to inquire after Mrs. Godfrey, of whose health I
hear such sad accounts. I do not wonder to perceive you are dejected,
every one must sympathize in your anxiety. But tell me, how was it
that Mrs. Godfrey, so lofty-minded, so motherly a woman, so full of
magnetism, if I may be allowed the expression, could bring herself to
patronize this materialistic scheme of education? Her loving heart
must have felt intuitively that systems, exterior expressions which
lack the vital principle, cannot regenerate the earth."
"I do not know that my mother ever did patronize my plans. She has
never been well enough to come to Yorkshire since they were started."
"No! Then you missed the benefit of her fine intuitive reasonings, and
of the results of her experience. Believe me, Miss Hester, applauding
as I do, perforce, the zeal which animates you, I am constrained to
tell you, you must necessarily fail. You appeal but to the selfish
passions; you will be startled one day at the demoralization that will
be manifested."
"I am beginning to feel this already," said Hester. "I want some power
that as yet I do not find."
Mr. Godfrey rose impatiently and went to the window, scarcely out of
earshot, but far enough away to decline any share in the conversation.
He was always displeased when his "best policy" principle was called
in question, though just now his pocket was suffering from that cause.
"You will find out soon the sanction you require," said M. de
Villeneuve. "Every real unperverted natural law is the material symbol
of a higher supernatural law, to which it is essentially related. It
is the disunion of these two laws in your mind that now perplexes you;
but you are too sincere in your search for truth not to perceive their
relative bearings at last."
"Truth! what is truth?" said Hester.
"Truth is the harmony of all things as they exist in God; as love is
their manifestation," said M. de Villeneuve. "The simplicity of ideas,
their order, beauty, harmony, find expression in the created world;
but the ideas themselves {612} are immaterial or spiritual, and have a
relative spiritual expression in the soul. You have taken one and left
the other, hence the failure. Missing the idea itself, you necessarily
fail in power, for spiritual power is needed to develop truly even the
material type. And, moreover, you cannot understand the type until you
possess the idea."
"Something is wanted, that is certain," said Hester; "but if all
virtue is typified in some material existence, tell me where is the
type of purity?"
"Where but in the virgin-mother," responded the comte. "In the mother
of him who died to obtain for man that power over sin which had
escaped him. The world lies the victim of its own self-will: it needs
a high ideal of purity and of sanctifying love, and this it finds in
Mary; it needs the power to work out this ideal, and this it finds in
Jesus. The progression of man is dearer to Mary than ever it can be to
you, for she is our mother, and the mother of our Redeemer; but
progression consists in sanctifying the individual, in destroying that
overweening empire of sense which overlies the spiritual faculty, and
which is fatal to woman in every sense, even in this world. Did you
never observe how the progression of ancient times ever riveted
woman's chains? From Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, as luxury
increased the degradation of the majority of women followed. The
temples of the gods were filled with thousands of women enacting
scenes of horror under the name of worship. This affords a key to the
disorders that always accompanied ancient civilization, for woman is
the mother of the race, the peculiar impersonation of the affections,
and in her maternity the representative of that self-sacrificing
principle which forgets self in care for the welfare of her children.
Where woman is not cognizant of her true office, where her spiritual
affinities remain undeveloped, the race can get no further than
materialism, and that sensuous gratification which contains already
within itself the germ of decay, No For it is of earth, earthy. But
the divine instinct of religion, when proclaiming the 'grace to rise'
one for us by the cross on which the God-man died, raised Mary on the
altars of his church, for the special protection of all that is holy
and aspirative to in womanhood. And since that blessed time Christian
women have been respected as virgins and as mothers; as beings formed
to foster virtue and watch over the spiritual education of the of the
members of Christ's body. Mary acts wonderfully through her daughters.
Christian queens converted their husbands, and with them their
subjects throughout Europe; Christian matrons have given that tone to
society which now, even in this age of heresy, respect security in
theory, though it throws it off in practice. All that is pure, all
that is lovely, all that is harmonious and holy invests the shrine of
Mary, and from her influence proceeds the charm that represses vice,
converts the heart to goodness as its chief happiness, and gives power
to the individual to do those works of penance, of violence to self,
which win the kingdom of heaven; a kingdom which commences here, in
our own hearts, when we once enter into the harmonies of the religious
teachings of nature and of revelation."
Hester started to her feet. "Is this the office of Mary?" she
exclaimed.
M. de Villeneuve assented by a gesture.
"True or not true," said Hester, "this explanation does not in the
least savor of ignorance and superstition it is beautiful poetry!"
"And is not poetry the highest truth?" said the comte.
"No," said Mr. Godfrey, coming forward with a frown on his
countenance. "No! I wonder you religious people can never keep within
your proper bounds. I, who have traveled in France, in Belgium, and in
Italy, and seen the painted dolls and gaudy dressed-up images, protest
against your giving a poetic or philosophic dress to this idolatry or
mariolatry. When I {613} take Hester abroad, she will see with me that
this worship is nothing but the rankest superstition."
"But I thought you said there was always a meaning under every myth.
Pop, may not this be the meeting of 'Mary'"?
"Mary is no myth," said the Comte de Villeneuve, "she is a real, holy,
pure, and loving woman, to be loved with a personal affection!"
"Beware!" said Mr. Godfrey, "our family has suffered enough already
from these fantastic dreams. Eugene's Catholicity has driven his
mother crazy. If my Hester were to succumb, it would be even worse
with me. Let us make a truce with religion, I see it will produce no
other fruits than to set people buy the ears."
"As you will. I am leaving for America, can I bear a greeting from you
to my father?"
"Tell him to inspire his son with a little of his common sense. In a
twenty years' intercourse he never mentioned the word religion in my
family."
"You must forgive me, Mr. Godfrey," said the comte rising. "I thought
to console your daughter; she is much changed since I saw her last."
Hester was much changed, but never so much as now. She longed to thank
the comte, to unsay her father's rude words, but she dared not. She
dared not anger Mr. Godfrey. Nor was it necessary: her eyes had
kindled, her countenance had glowed, and the comte felt that his words
had not been thrown away, that Hester had received a revelation, and
he departed consoled.
It was a new study that Hester now entered upon. Woman as she was in
the olden time: in Greece and Rome; in Egypt and Abyssinia; in Persia
and India. Woman as she is everywhere where Christianity is not known,
where the mothership of Mary is ignored. The facts presented to her
were appalling, and none the less so that Mr. Godfrey was so peevish
when addressed on this subject. He felt intuitively that the more
Hester knew of this, the more she would shrink from materialism; and
if she abandoned him, if she adopted Catholicity, he would have lost
his last hope. He began to tire of "perfectibility" and "progress,"
the more that they seemed to detach his only joy from his side.
Yet with an old man's obstinacy he would not yield. Hester continued
her system, but now it was to watch more closely its results, to
penetrate the secret workings of the heart. She wanted to speak of
higher motive than self, but she knew not how. She only knew, and
daily she knew it more, that some high controlling power was wanting
which could speak to the heart and regulate the inward spirit: "Was
that power God?" "And Mary, was she a real manifestation of the power
of God residing in a woman's frame?"
Hester now wished this might be true.