DOT'S DECISION
Now, in thus appealing to Dot, her father had appealed to just the one
out of all his children who was least likely to disappoint him. To Dot
and Henry had unmistakably been transmitted the largest share of their
father's spirituality. Esther was not actively religious, any more than
she was actively poetic. Hers was one of those composite, admirably
balanced natures which include most qualities and faculties, but no one
in excess of another. Such make those engaging good women of the world,
who are able to understand and sympathise with the most diverse
interests and temperaments; as it is the characteristic of a good critic
to understand all those various products of art, which it would be
impossible for him to create. Thus Esther could have delighted a saint
with her sympathetic comprehension, as she could have healed the wounds
of a sinner by her comprehensive sympathy; but it was certain she would
never be, in sufficient excess, spiritually wrought or sensually
rebellious to be one or the other. She was beautifully, buoyantly
normal, with a happy, expansive, enjoying nature, glad in the sunlight,
brave in the shadow, optimistically looking forward to blithe years of
life and love with Mike and her friends, and not feeling the necessity
of being anxious about her soul, or any other world but this. She was
not shallow; but she merely realised life more through her intelligence
than through her feelings. To have become a Baptist would have offended
her intelligence, without bringing any satisfaction to spiritual
instincts not, in any event, clamorous.
As for Henry, it was not only activity of intelligence, but activity of
spirituality, that made it impossible for him to embrace any such narrow
creed as that proposed to him; and, for the present, that spiritual
activity found ample scope for itself in poetry.
Dot's, however, was an intermediate case. With an intelligence active
too, she united a spirituality torturingly intense, but for which she
had no such natural creative outlet as Henry. With her loss of the old
creed,--in discarding which these three sisters had followed the lead of
their brother with a curious instinctiveness, almost, it would seem,
independent of reasoning,--her spirituality had been left somewhat
bleakly houseless, and she had often longed for some compromise by which
she could reconcile her intelligence to the acceptance of some
established home of faith, whose kindly enclosing walls should be more
genially habitable to the soul than the cold, star-lit spaces which
Henry declared to be sufficient temple.
Perhaps Esther's commiseration of her sisters' narrow opportunities was,
so far as it related to Dot, a little unnecessary, for indeed Dot's
ambitions were not social. By nature shy and meditative, and with her
religious bias, had she been born into a Catholic family, she might not
improbably have found the world well lost in a sisterhood. The Puritan
conscience had an uncomfortable preponderance in the deep places of her
nature, and, far down in her soul, like her father, she would ask
herself if pleasure could be the end of life--was there not something
serious each of us could and ought to do, to justify his place in the
world? Were we not all under some mysterious solemn obligation to do
something, however little, in return for life?
Mat, on the other hand, had no such scruples. She was more like Esther
in nature, with a touch of cynicism curling her dainty lip, arising,
perhaps, from an early divination that she was to lack Esther's
opportunities. Perhaps it was because she was the pessimist--the quite
cheerful pessimist--of the family, that she was by far the cleverest and
most industrious at the housework. If it was her fate to be Cinderella,
she might as well make the best of it, with a cynical endurance and
good-humour, and be Cinderella with a good grace. Probably the only
glass slipper in the family had already fallen to Esther. Never mind,
though her good looks might fade with being a good girl at home, year by
year, what did it matter, after all? Nothing mattered in the end. And
thus, out of a great indifference, Mat developed a great unselfishness;
and if you could name one special angel in the house of the Mesuriers,
she was unmistakably Mat.
In addition to her religious promptings, Dot had lately developed a
great sympathy for her father. Standing a little aside from the conflict
between him and Henry, she was able to divine something of the feelings
of both; and she had now and again caught a look of loneliness on her
father's face that made her ready to do almost anything to please him.
Of course the question was one for general consultation. She knew what
Henry would say. It didn't much matter anyhow, he would say, but it was
a pity. How was intellectual freedom to be won, if those who had seen
the light should thus deliberately forego it, time after time, from such
merely sentimental reasons? And when she saw Henry, that was just what
he did say.
"But," she said, "it would make father so happy."
"Yes, I know," he answered; "and it would be very beautiful of you.
Besides, of course, in one way it's only a matter of symbolism; but
then, on the other hand, it's symbolism hardened into dogmatism that has
done all the mischief. Do it, dear, if you like; I hardly know what to
say. As you say, it will make father happy, and I shall quite
understand."
Dot was one of those natures that like to seek, and are liable to take,
advice; so, after seeing Henry, she thought she would see what Mr.
Trotter had to say; for, in spite of his unfortunate name, Mr. Trotter
was a gentle, cultivated mind, and was indeed somewhat incongruously,
perhaps in a mild way Jesuitically, circumstanced as a Baptist minister.
Henry and he were great friends on literary matters; and Dot and he had
had many talks, greatly helpful to her, on spiritual things. In fact,
Chrysostom Trotter was one of those numerous half-way men between the
old beliefs and their new modifications, which the continuous advance of
scientific discovery and philosophical speculation on the one hand, and
the obstinate survival of Christianity on the other, necessitate--if men
of spiritual intuitions who are not poets and artists are to earn their
living. There was nothing you could say to Chrysostom Trotter, provided
you said it reverently, that would startle him. He knew all that long
ago and far more. For, though obliged to trade in this backwater of
belief, he was in many respects a very modern mind. You were hardly
likely to know your Herbert Spencer as intimately as he, and all the
most exquisite literature of doubt was upon his shelves. Though you
might declare him superficially disingenuous, you could not, unless you
were some commonplace atheist or materialist, gainsay the honest logic
of his position.
"You believe that the world, that life, is a spiritual mystery?" he
would say.
"Yes."
"You do not for a moment think that any materialistic science has
remotely approached an adequate explanation of its meaning?"
"Certainly not."
"You believe too that, however it comes about, and whatever it means,
there is an eternal struggle in man between what, for sake of argument,
we will call the higher and lower natures?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, this spiritual mystery, this struggle, are hinted at in
various media of human expression, in an ever-changing variety of human
symbols. Art chiefly concerns itself with the sexual mystery, with the
wonderful love of man and woman, in its explanation of which alone
science is so pitifully inadequate. Literature more fully concerns
itself with the mystery of man's indestructibly instinctive relation to
what we call the unseen,--that is, the Whole, the Cosmos, God, or
whatever you please to call it. But more than literature, religion has
for centuries concerned itself with these considerations, has
consciously and industriously sought to make itself the science of what
we call the soul. It has thrown its observations, just as poetry and art
have thrown their observations, into symbolic forms, of which
Christianity is incomparably the most important. You don't reject the
revelation of human love because Hero and Leander are probably creations
of the poet's fancy. Will you reject the revelation of divine love,
because it chances, for its greater efficiency in winning human hearts,
to have found expression in a similar human symbolism? Personally, I
hold that Christ actually lived, and was literally the Son of God; but,
were the human literalness of his divine story discredited, the eternal
verities of human degeneration, and a mysterious regeneration, would be
no whit disproved. Externally, Christianity may be a symbol;
essentially, it is a science of spiritual fact, as really as geology is
a science of material fact.
"And as for its miraculous, supernatural, side,--are the laws of nature
so easy to understand that we should find such a difficulty in accepting
a few divergencies from them? He who can make laws for so vast a
universe may surely be capable of inventing a few comparatively trivial
exceptions."
Not perhaps in so many words, but in some such spirit, would Chrysostom
Trotter argue; and it was in some such fashion that he talked in his
charmingly sympathetic way with Dorcas Mesurier, one afternoon, as she
had tea with him in a study breathing on every hand the man of letters,
rather than the minister of a somewhat antiquated sect.
"My dear Dorcas," he said, "you know me well enough--you know me perhaps
better than your father knows me--know me well enough to believe that I
wouldn't urge you to do this thing if I didn't think it was right _for
you_--as well as for your father and me. But I know it is right, and for
this reason. You are a deeply religious nature, but you need some
outward symbol to hold on to,--you need, so to say, the magnetising
association of a religious organisation. Henry can get along very well,
as many poets have, with his birds and his sunsets and so forth; but you
need something more authoritative. It happens that the church I
represent, the church of your father, is nearest to you. You might, with
all the goodwill in the world, so far as I am concerned, embrace some
other modification of the Christian faith; but here is a church, so to
say, ready for you, familiar by long association, endeared to your
father. You believe in God, you believe in the spiritual meaning of
life, you believe that we poor human beings need something to keep our
eyes fixed upon that spiritual meaning--well, dear Dorcas," he ended,
abruptly, "what do you think?"
"I'll do it," said Dot.
"Good girl," said the minister; "sometimes it is a form of righteousness
to waive our doubts for those who are at once so dear and good as your
father. And don't for a moment think that it will leave you just where
you are. These outward acts are great energisers of the soul. Dear
Dorcas, I welcome you into one of God's many churches."
So it was that Dot came to be baptised; and, to witness the ceremony,
all the Mesuriers assembled at the chapel that Sunday evening,--even
Henry, who could hardly remember when he used to sit in this
still-familiar pew, and scribble love-verses in the back of his
hymn-book during the sermon.
To the mere mocker, the rite of baptism by immersion might well seem a
somewhat grotesque antic of sectarianism; but to any one who must needs
find sympathy for any observance into which, in whatsoever forgotten and
superseded time, has passed the prayerful enthusiasm of man, the rite
could hardly fail of a moving solemnity. As Chrysostom Trotter ordered
it, it was certainly made to yield its fullest measure of
impressiveness. To begin with, the chapel was quite a comely edifice
inside and out; and its ministerial end, with its singers' gallery
backed by great organ pipes, and fronted by a handsome pulpit, which Mr.
Trotter had dared to garnish with chrysanthemums on each side of his
Bible, had a modest, sacerdotal effect. Beneath the pulpit on ordinary
occasions stood the Communion-table; but on evenings when the rite of
baptism was prepared, this table, and a boarding on which it stood,
were removed, revealing a tiled baptistry,--that is, a tiled tank, about
eight feet long, and six wide, with steps on each side descending into
about four feet of water.
Towards the close of the service, the minister would leave his pulpit,
and, during the singing of a hymn, would presently emerge from his
vestry in a long waterproof garment. As the hymn ended, some "sister" or
"brother" that night to be admitted into the church, would timidly join
him at the baptistry side, and together they would go down into
the water.
Holding the hands of the new communicant, the minister, in a solemn
voice, would say, "Sister," or "Brother, on confession of your faith in
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I baptise thee in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
Then the organ would strike up a triumphant peal, and, to the
accompaniment of its music and the mellow plashing of the water, the
sister or brother would be plunged beneath the symbolic wave.
Great was the excitement, needless to say, in the Mesurier pew, as
little Dot at last came forth from the vestry, and, stealing down into
the water, took the minister's out-stretched hands.
"There she is! There's Dot!" passed round the pew, and the hardest young
heart, whoever it belonged to, stopped beating, to hear the minister's
words. They seemed to come with a special personal tenderness,--
"Sister, on confession of your faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ, I baptise thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost."
Once more the organ triumphant, and the mellow splashing of the water.
Dear little Dot, she had done it!
"Did you see father's face?" Esther whispered to Henry.
Yes; perhaps none of them would ever do such a beautiful thing as Dot
had done that night. At least there was one of James Mesurier's children
who had not disappointed him.