THOMAS'S MOTHER.
Meantime Mrs. Worboise had taken to her bed, and not even Mr. Simon
could comfort her. The mother's heart now spoke louder than her
theology.
She and her priest belonged to a class more numerous than many of my
readers would easily believe, a great part of whose religion consists
in arrogating to themselves exclusive privileges, and another great
part in defending their supposed rights from the intrusion of others.
The thing does not look such to them, of course, but the repulsiveness
of their behavior to those who cannot use the same religious phrases,
indicating the non-adoption of their particular creed, compels others
so to conclude concerning their religion. Doubtless they would say
for themselves, "We do but as God has taught us; we believe but as
he has told us; we exclude whom he has excluded, and admit whom he
has admitted." But, alas for that people! the god of whose worship is
altogether such a one as themselves, or worse; whose god is paltry,
shallow-minded and full of party spirit; who sticks to a thing
_because_ he has said it, accepts a man because of his assent, and
condemns him because of his opinions; who looks no deeper than a man's
words to find his thoughts, and no deeper than his thoughts to find his
will! True, they are in the hands of another God than that of their
making, and such offenses must come; yet, alas for them! for they are
of the hardest to redeem into the childhood of the kingdom.
I do not say that Mrs. Worboise began to see her sin as such, when the
desolation of Thomas's disappearance fell upon her, but the atmosphere
of her mind began to change, and a spring-season of mother's feelings
to set in. How it came about I cannot explain. I as well as any of
my readers might have felt as if Mrs. Worboise were almost beyond
redemption; but it was not so. _Her_ redemption came in the revival
of a long suppressed motherhood. Her husband's hardness and want of
sympathy with her sufferings had driven her into the arms of a party
of exclusive _Christians_, whose brotherhood consisted chiefly, as
I have already described it, in denying the great brotherhood, and
refusing the hand of those who followed not with them. They were led
by one or two persons of some social position, whose condescending
assumption of superiority over those that were without was as offensive
as absurd, and whose weak brains were their only excuse. The worst
thing of this company was that it was a company. In many holding
precisely the same opinions with them, those opinions are comparatively
harmless, because they are more directly counteracted by the sacred
influences of God's world and the necessities of things, which are very
needful to prevent, if possible, self-righteous Christians from sending
themselves to a deeper hell than any they denounce against their
neighbors. But when such combine themselves into an esoteric school,
they foster, as in an oven or a forcing-pit, all the worst distinctions
for the sake of which they separate themselves from others. All that
was worst in poor Mrs. Worboise was cherished by the companionship of
those whose chief anxiety was to save their souls, and who thus ran the
great risk set forth by the Saviour of losing them. They treated the
words of the Bible like talismans or spells, the virtue of which lay in
the words, and in the assent given to them, or at most, the feelings
that could be conjured up by them, not in the doing of the things they
presupposed or commanded. But there was one thing that did something
to keep her fresh and prevent her from withering into a dry tree of
supposed orthodoxy, the worst dryness of all, because it is the least
likely to yield to any fresh burst of living sap from the forgotten
root--that was her anxiety to get her son within the "garden walled
around," and the continual disappointment of her efforts to that end.
But now that the shock of his flight had aggravated all the symptoms
of her complaint, which was a serious one though slow in the movement
of its progressive cycles, now that she was confined to her bed and
deprived of the small affairs that constituted the dull excitements
of her joyless life, her imagination, roused by a reaction from the
first grief, continually presented to her the form of her darling in
the guise of the prodigal, his handsome face worn with hunger and
wretchedness, or still worse, with dissipation and disease; and she
began to accuse herself bitterly for having alienated his affections
from herself by too assiduously forcing upon his attention that which
was distasteful to him. She said to herself that it was easy for an old
woman like her, who had been disappointed in everything, and whose
life and health were a wreck, to turn from the vanities of the world;
but how could her young Thomas, in the glory of youth, be expected to
see things as she saw them? How could he flee from the wrath to come
when he had as yet felt no breath of that wrath on his cheek? She ought
to have loved him, and borne with him, and smiled upon him, and never
let him fancy that his presence was a pain to her because he could not
take her ways for his. Add to this certain suspicions that arose in
her mind from what she considered unfriendly neglect on the part of
the chief man of their chosen brotherhood, and from the fact that her
daughter Amy had already wrought a questionable change on Mr. Simon,
having persuaded him to accompany her--not to the theatre at all--only
to the Gallery of Illustration, and it will be seen that everything
tended to turn the waters of her heart back into the old channel with
the flow of a spring-tide toward her son. She wept and prayed--better
tears and better prayers because her love was stronger. She humbled her
heart, proud of its acceptance with God, before a higher idea of that
God. She began to doubt whether she was more acceptable in his sight
than other people. There must be some who were, but she could not be
one of them. Instead of striving after assurance, as they called it,
she began to shrink from every feeling that lessened her humility;
for she found that when she was most humble then she could best pray
for her son. Not that had her assurance rested in the love of God it
would ever have quenched her prayer; but her assurance had been taught
to rest upon her consciousness of faith, which, unrealized, tended to
madness--realized, to spiritual pride. She lay thus praying for him,
and dreaming about him, and hoping that he would return before she
died, when she would receive him as son had never before been welcomed
to his mother's bosom.
But Mr. Worboise's dry, sand-locked bay was open to the irruption of no
such waters from the great deep of the eternal love. Narrow and poor
as it was, Mrs. Worboise's religion had yet been as a little wedge to
keep her door open to better things, when they should arrive and claim
an entrance, as they had now done. But her husband's heart was full
of money and the love of it. How to get money, how not to spend it,
how to make it grow--these were the chief cares that filled his heart.
His was not the natural anxiety the objects of which, though not the
anxiety, were justified by the Lord when he said, "Your Father knoweth
that ye have need of these things." It was not what he needed that
filled his mind with care, but what he did not need, and never would
need; nay, what other people needed, and what was not his to take--not
his in God's sight, whatever the law might say. And to God's decision
everything must come at last, for that is the only human verdict of
things, the only verdict which at last will satisfy the whole jury of
humanity. But I am wrong; this was not all that filled his heart. One
demon generally opens the door to another--they are not jealous of
exclusive possession of the human thrall. The heart occupied by the
love of money will be only too ready to fall a prey to other evils; for
selfishness soon branches out in hatred and injustice. The continued
absence of his son, which he attributed still to the Boxalls, irritated
more than alarmed him; but if sometimes a natural feeling of dismay
broke in upon him, it only roused yet more the worst feelings of his
heart against Lucy and her grandmother. Every day to which Thomas's
absence extended itself, his indignation sank deeper rather than rose
higher. Every day he vowed that, if favored by fortune, he would make
them feel in bitterness how deeply they had injured him. To the same
account he entered all the annoyance given him by the well-meaning
Mr. Sargent, who had only as yet succeeded in irritating him without
gaining the least advantage over him. His every effort in resistance
of probate failed. The decision of the court was that Mr. Boxall,
a strong, healthy, well-seasoned, middle-aged man, was far more
likely to have outlived all his daughters, than any one of them have
outlived him; therefore Mr. Worboise obtained probate and entered into
possession.
Although Mr. Sargent could not but have at least more than doubted the
result, he felt greatly discomfited at it. He went straight to Mr.
Morgenstern's office to communicate his failure and the foiling of the
liberality which had made the attempt possible. Mr. Morgenstern only
smiled, and wrote him a check for the costs. Of course, being a Jew, he
did not enjoy parting with his money for nothing--no Christian would
have minded it in the least. Seriously, Mr. Morgenstern did throw half
his cigar into the fire from annoyance. But his first words were:
"What's to be done for those good people, then, Sargent?"
"We must wait till we see. I think I told you that the old lady has a
claim upon the estate, which, most unfortunately, she cannot establish.
Now, however, that this cormorant has had his own way, he will perhaps
be inclined to be _generous_; for justice must be allowed in this case
to put on the garb of generosity, else she will not appear in public,
I can tell you. I mean to make this one attempt more. I confess to
considerable misgiving, however. To-morrow, before his satisfaction has
evaporated, I will make it, and let you know the result."
By this time Mr. Morgenstern had lighted another cigar.