"Well," observed David, with a great forward stride, "aren't you?"
Gabriella, being a woman, did not particularly prize this remark: it
suggested his being kind because she had been kind; and a woman likes
nothing as reward, everything as tribute.
"And now if the apple trees are only not killed!" she exclaimed
joyously, changing the subject.
"Why the apple trees?"
"If you had been here last spring, you would have understood. When they
bloom, they are mine, I take possession." After a moment she added:
"They bring back the recollection of such happy times--springs long
ago. Some time I'll tell you."
"When you were a little girl?"
"Yes."
"I wish I had known you when you were a little girl," said David, in an
undertone, looking into the fire.
Gabriella reflected how impossible this would have been: the thought
caused her sharp pain.
Some time later, David, who had appeared more and more involved in some
inward struggle, suddenly asked a relieving question:--
"Do you know the first time I ever saw you?"
She did not answer at once.
"In the smoke-house," she said with a ripple of laughter. Gabriella,
when she was merry, made one, think of some lovely green April hill,
snow-capped.
David shook his head slowly. His eyes grew soft and mysterious.
"It was the first time _I_ ever saw YOU," she protested.
He continued to shake his head, and she looked puzzled.
"You saw me once before that, and smiled at me."
Gabriella seemed incredulous and not well pleased.
After a little while David began in the manner of one who sets out to
tell a story he is secretly fond of.
"Do you remember standing on the steps of a church the Friday evening
before Christmas--a little after dark?"
Gabriella's eyes began to express remembrance. "A wagon-load of cedar
had just been thrown out on the sidewalk, the sexton was carrying it
into the church, some children were helping, you were making a wreath:
do you remember?"
She knew every word of this.
"A young man--a Bible student--passed, or tried to pass. You smiled at
his difficulty. Not unkindly," he added, smiling not unkindly himself.
"And that was you? This explains why I have always believed I had seen
you before. But it was only for a moment, your face was in the dark;
how should I remember?"
After she said this, she looked grave: his face that night had been far
from a happy one.
"That day," continued David, quickly grave also, "that day I saw my
professors and pastor for the last time; it ended me as a Bible
student. I had left the University and the scene of my trial only a
little while before."
He rose as he concluded and took a turn across the room. Then he faced
her, smiling a little sadly.
"Once I might have thought all that Providential. I mean, seeing the
faces of my professors--my judges--last, as the end of my old life;
then seeing your face next--the beginning of the new."
He had long used frankness like this, making no secret of himself, of
her influence over him. It was embarrassing; it declared so much,
assumed so much, that had never been declared or assumed in any other
way. But her stripped and beaten young Samaritan was no labyrinthine
courtier, bescented and bedraped and bedyed with worldliness and
conventions: he came ever in her presence naked of soul. It was this
that empowered her to take the measure of his feeling for her: it had
its effect.
David returned to his chair and looked across with a mixture of
hesitancy and determination.
"I have never spoken to you about my expulsion--my unbelief."
After a painful pause she answered.
"You must be aware that I have noticed your silence. Perhaps you do not
realize how much I have regretted it."
"You know why I have not?"
She did not answer.
"I have been afraid. It's the only thing in the world I've ever been
afraid of."
"Why should you have been?"
"I dreaded to know how you might feel. It has caused a difficulty with
every one so far. It separated me from my friends among the Bible
students. It separated me from my professors, my pastor. It has
alienated my father and mother. I did not know how you would regard it."
"Have I not known it all the time? Has it made any difference?"
"Ah! but that might be only your toleration! Meantime it has become a
question with me how far your toleration will go--what is back of your
toleration! We tolerate so much in people who are merely
acquaintances--people that we do not care particularly for and that we
are never to have anything to do with in life. But if the tie begins to
be closer, then the things we tolerated at a distance--what becomes of
them then?"
He was looking at her steadily, and she dropped her eyes. This was
another one of the Prodigal's assumptions--but never before put so
pointedly.
"So I have feared that when I myself told you what I believe and what I
do not believe, it might be the end of me. And when you learned my
feelings toward what YOU believe--that might be more troublesome still.
But the time has come when I must know."
He turned his face away from her, and rising, walked several times
across the room.
At last also the moment had arrived for which she had been waiting.
Freely as they had spoken to each other of their pasts--she giving him
glimpses of the world in which she had been reared, he taking her into
his world which was equally unfamiliar--on this subject silence between
them had never been broken. She had often sought to pass the guard he
placed around this tragical episode but had always been turned away.
The only original ground of her interest in him, therefore, still
remained a background, obscure and unexplored. She regretted this for
many reasons. Her belief was that he was merely passing through a phase
of religious life not uncommon with those who were born to go far in
mental travels before they settled in their Holy Land. She believed it
would be over the sooner if he had the chance to live it out in
discussion; and she herself offered the only possibility of this.
Gabriella was in a position to know by experience what it means in
hours of trouble to need the relief of companionship. Ideas, she had
learned, long shut up in the mind tend to germinate and take root.
There had been discords which had ceased sounding in her own ear as
soon as they were poured into another.
"I have always hoped," she repeated, as he seated himself, "that you
would talk with me about these things." And then to divert the
conversation into less difficult channels, she added:--
"As to what you may think of my beliefs, I have no fear; they need not
be discussed and they cannot be attacked."
"You are an Episcopalian," he suggested hesitatingly. "I do not wish to
be rude, but--your church has its dogmas."
"There is not a dogma of my church that I have ever thought of for a
moment: or of any other church," she replied instantly and clearly.
In those simple words she had uttered unaware a long historic truth:
that religion, not theology, forms the spiritual life of women. In the
whole history of the world's opinions, no dogma of any weight has ever
originated with a woman; wherein, as in many other ways, she shows
points of superiority in her intellect. It is a man who tries to
apprehend God through his logic and psychology; a woman understands Him
better through emotions and deeds. It is the men who are concerned
about the cubits, the cedar wood, the Urim and Thummim of the
Tabernacle; woman walks straight into the Holy of Holies. Men
constructed the Cross; women wept for the Crucified. It was a man--a
Jew defending his faith in his own supernatural revelation--who tried
to ram a sponge of vinegar into the mouth of Christ, dying; it was
women who gathered at the sepulchre of Resurrection. If Christ could
have had a few women among his Apostles, there might have been more of
His religion in the world and fewer creeds barnacled on the World's
Ship of Souls.
"How can you remain in your church without either believing or
disbelieving its dogmas?" asked David, squarely.
"My church is the altar of Christ and the house of God," replied
Gabriella, simply. "And so is any other church." That was all the logic
she had and all the faith she needed; beyond that limit she did not
even think.
"And you believe in THEM ALL?" he asked with wondering admiration.
"I believe in them all."
"Once I did also," observed David, reverently and with new reverence
for her.
"What I regret is that you should have thrown away your religion on
account of your difficulties with theology. Nothing more awful could
have befallen you than that."
"It was the churches that made the difficulties," said David, "I did
not. But there is more than theology in it. You do not know what I
think about religions--revelations--inspirations--man's place in
nature."
"What DO you think?" she asked eagerly. "I suppose now I shall hear
something about those great books."
She put herself at ease in her chair like one who prepares to listen
quietly.
"Shall I tell you how the whole argument runs as I have arranged it? I
shall have to begin far away and come down to the subject by degrees."
He looked apologetic.
"Tell me everything; I have been waiting a long time."