I think I do understand them. Mystery for mystery science beats religion
hollow. I can't open my mouth in my lecture-room without repeating ten
times as many unintelligible formulas as ever Hazard is forced to do in
his church. I can quiet her mind on that score."
"You had better leave it alone, George! Why should you meddle? Let Mr.
Hazard fight his own battles!"
George refused to take this wise advice. He was a tender-hearted fellow
and could not bear to see his friends suffer. If Esther loved Hazard and
wanted to marry him, she should do so though every dogma of the church
stood in her way, and every old woman in the parish shrieked sacrilege.
Strong had no respect for the church and no wish to save it trouble, but
he believed that Hazard was going blindly under Esther's influence which
would sooner or later end by drawing him away from his old forms of
belief; and as this was entirely Hazard's affair, if he chose to risk
the danger, Strong chose to help him.
"Why not?" said Strong to himself. "It is not a question of earning a
living. Both of them are well enough off. If he can turn her into a
light of his church, let him do it. If she ends in dragging him out of
the church, so much the better. She can't get a better husband, and he
can't find a better wife. I mean to see this thing through."
So George strolled round to Esther's house after this interview with his
aunt, thinking that he might be able to do good. Being at home there, he
went up-stairs unannounced, and finding no one in the library he climbed
to the studio, where, on opening the door, he saw Catherine sitting
before the fire, looking very much bored. Poor Catherine found it hard
to keep up with life in New York. Fresh from the prairie, she had been
first saturated with art, and was now plunged in a bottomless ocean of
theology. She was glad to see Strong who had in her eyes the advantage
of being more practical than the rest of her friends.
"Catherine, how are your sheep?"
"I am glad you have come to look after them," answered Catherine. "I
won't be watch-dog much longer. They are too troublesome."
"What mischief are they doing now?"
"Every thing they can think of to worry me. Esther won't eat and can't
sleep, and Mr. Hazard won't sleep and can't eat. She tries not to worry
him, so she comes down on me with questions and books enough to frighten
a professor. Do tell me what to say!"
"Where are your questions?" asked Strong.
"This morning she wanted to know what I thought of apostolic succession.
She said she was reading some book by a Dr. Newman. What is apostolic
succession?"
"A curious disease, quite common among the poorer classes of Sandwich
Islanders," replied Strong. "No one has ever found a cure for it."
"Don't laugh at us! We do nothing but cry now, except when Mr. Hazard is
here, and then we pretend to be happy. When Esther cries, I cry too.
That makes her laugh. It's our only joke, and we used to have so many."
"Don't you think it rather a moist joke?" asked Strong. "I take mine
dry."
"I can't tell what she will think a joke," replied Catherine. "She asked
me to-day what was my idea of heaven, and I said it was reading novels
in church. She seemed to think this a rich bonanza of a joke, and
laughed herself into hysterics, but I was as serious as Mr. Wharton's
apostles."
"You are never so funny as when you are serious. Never be so any more!
Why don't you get her to paint?"
"She won't. I'm rather glad of it, for if she did, I should have to sit
for melancholy, or an angel, or something I'm not fitted for by
education."
"What shall we do about it?" asked Strong. "Things can't go on in this
way."
"I think the engagement had better come out," said Catherine. "The
longer it is kept private, the more she will doubt whether she ought to
marry a clergyman. What do you think about marrying clergymen? Wouldn't
it almost be better to marry a painter, or even a professor?"
"That would be playing it too low down," replied Strong gravely. "I
would recommend you to look out for a swell. What has become of your
admirer, Mr. Van Dam?"
"Gone!" said Catherine sadly. "Mr. Wharton and he went off together.
There is something about me that scares them all off the ranche."
While they were thus improving each other's minds, the door opened and
Esther entered. She was pale and her face had no longer the bright look
which Wharton had thought so characteristic, but there was no other sign
of trouble about her, and she welcomed her cousin as pleasantly as ever,
so that he could hardly believe in the stories he had just heard of her
distress.
"Good day, Cousin George," she said. "Thank you for coming to cheer up
this poor girl. She needs it. Do take her out and amuse her."
"Come out yourself, Esther. You need it more than she does."
"Aunt Sarah is coming at two o'clock to take me to drive," said Esther.
"Catherine hates driving unless she drives herself."
"I thought you hated it too."
"Oh, I hate nothing now," replied Esther, with a little of her old
laugh. "I am learning to like every thing."
"Is that in the marriage service?" asked Strong. "Do you have to begin
so high up? Couldn't you start easy, and like a few things first,--me
for instance--and let the rest wait?"
"No," she said, "you are to come last. Honestly, I am more afraid of you
than of all the rest of the world. If you knew what a bug-bear you are
to me, you would be afraid of yourself. Don't make fun of me any more! I
know I am horribly funny, but you must take me in earnest. Poor papa's
last words to me were: 'Laugh and you're safe!'--but if I laugh now, I'm
lost."
"This is the first time I ever met any one honest enough to acknowledge
that marriage was so sad a thing. Catherine, if I ask you to marry me,
will you turn serious?"
"She will turn serious enough if she does it," said Esther. "You would
stay with her a week, and then tell her that you were obliged to see a
friend in Japan. She would never see you again, but the newspapers would
tell her that you had set out to look for bones in the Milky Way."
"What you say sounds to me as though it had a grain of truth," replied
Strong. "That reminds me that I got a letter telling me of a lot of new
bones only yesterday, but I must leave them underground till the summer;
if by that time I can do any thing for you in Oregon, let me know."
"I want you very much to do something for me now," said Esther. "Will
you try to be serious a moment for my sake?"
"I don't know," said Strong. "You ask too much all at once. Where are
you coming out?"
"Will you answer me a question? Say yes or no!"
"That depends on the question, Mistress Esther! Old birds are not to be
caught in old traps. State your question, as we say in the
lecture-room."
"Is religion true?"
"I thought so! Cousin Esther, I love you as much as I love any one in
this cold world, but I can't answer your question. I can tell you all
about the mound-builders or cave-men, so far as known, but I could not
tell you the difference between the bones of a saint and those of a
heathen. Ask me something easier! Ask me whether science is true!"
"Is science true?"
"No!"
"Then why do you believe in it?"
"I don't believe in it."
"Then why do you belong to it?"
"Because I want to help in making it truer. Now, Esther, just take this
matter coolly! You are bothered, I suppose, by the idea that you can't
possibly believe in miracles and mysteries, and therefore can't make a
good wife for Hazard. You might just as well make yourself unhappy by
doubting whether you would make a good wife to me because you can't
believe the first axiom in Euclid. There is no science which does not
begin by requiring you to believe the incredible."
"Are you telling me the truth?"
"I tell you the solemn truth that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so
difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms
of physics. The wife of my mathematical colleague, to my knowledge,
never even stopped to ask whether it was true that a point had neither
length, breadth nor thickness."
Esther pondered a few moments, looking into the fire with a grave face.
Then she went on:
"You are not talking honestly. Why should I dare tell you that your old
fossil bones are a humbug, when I would not for the world talk so to Mr.
Hazard? You don't care whether geology is true or not."
"Well, no, not much!" said Strong. "I should care more if you told me
that my best Japanese lacquer was modern."
"Besides," said Esther; "you have not answered my question. I want to
know what you think, and you won't tell me. Oh! don't let me lose faith
in you too! I know your opinions. You think the whole church a piece of
superstition. I've heard you say so, and I want you to tell me why.
You're my cousin and I've a right to your help, but you won't give it."
"You are a desperate little tyrant," said Strong laughing. "You always
were. Do you remember how we fought when we were children because you
would have your own way? I used to give in then, but I am old now, and
obstinate."
"I know that you always ended by making me go your way," replied Esther;
"but that was because I never cared much where I went. Now it is a
matter of life and death. I can't move a step, or even let our
engagement be announced until I feel sure that I shall not be a load on
his neck. Do you think I should hesitate to break it off, even if I
broke my heart with it, if I thought it was going to bring trouble on
him?"
Against this assault jesting was out of the question. Strong was forced
out of this line of defense and found himself in an awkward position.
Esther, not outwardly excited, but leaning her chin on her hand, and
gazing into the fire with a look of set will, had the calmness of
despair. Strong was staggered and hesitated.
"The trouble with you is that you start wrong," said he at length. "You
need what is called faith, and are trying to get it by reason. It can't
be done. Faith is a state of mind, like love or jealousy. You can never
reason yourself into it."
"So Mr. Hazard says," rejoined Esther. "He tells me to wait and it will
come, but he wants me to go on just as though I were certain of its
coming. I can't wait. If it does not come quickly, I must do something
desperate. Now tell me what you would do to get faith if the happiness
of your whole life hung on it."
Strong rose uneasily from his seat and stood up before the fire. He
began to think himself rash for venturing into this arena. He had always
believed his cousin to be stronger than Hazard, because Hazard was a
clergyman, but he had not hitherto thought her stronger than himself,
and he now looked at her carefully, wondering whether he could have
managed her. Never in his life had he felt so nearly in love with her as
now, under the temptation to try whether she could be made to give up
her will to his. This feeling was the stronger because even in his own
eyes his conduct so far seemed a little cowardly and ridiculous. He
pulled himself up sharply, and, seeing nothing else to be done, he took
up the weapons of the church and asserted the tone of authority.
"Every one who marries," he said, "goes it blind, more or less. If you
have faith enough in Hazard to believe in him, you have faith enough to
accept his church. Faith means submission. Submit!"
"I want to submit," cried Esther piteously, rising in her turn and
speaking in accents of real distress and passion. "Why can't some of you
make me? For a few minutes at a time I think it done, and then I
suddenly find myself more defiant than ever. I want nothing of the
church! Why should it trouble me? Why should I submit to it? Why can't
it leave me alone?"
"What you want is the Roman church," continued Strong mercilessly. "They
know how to deal with pride of will. Millions of men and women have gone
through the same struggle, and the church tells them to fix their eyes
on a symbol of faith, and if their eyes wander, scourges them for it."
As he talked, he took up the little carved ivory crucifix which stood on
the mantel-piece among other bits of studio furniture, and holding it up
before her, said: "There! How many people do you think, have come to
this Christ of yours that has no meaning to you, and in their struggle
with doubt, have pressed it against their hearts till it drew blood? Ask
it!"
"Is that all?" said Esther, taking the crucifix from his hand and
looking curiously at it. Then she silently put it against her heart and
pressed it with more and more force, until Strong caught her hand in
alarm and pulled it away.
"Come!" said he coolly, as he forced her to give up the crucifix; "my
little bluff has failed. I throw up the hand. You must play it out with
Hazard."
_Chapter VIII_
Mr. Hazard was not happy. Like Esther he felt himself getting into a
state of mind that threatened to break his spirit. He had been used to
ordering matters much as he pleased. His parish at Cincinnati, being his
creation, had been managed by him as though he owned it, but at St.
John's he found himself less free, and was conscious of incessant
criticism. He had been now some months in his new pulpit; his popular
success had been marked; St. John's was overflowing with a transient
audience, like a theater, to the disgust of regular pew-owners; his
personal influence was great; but he felt that it was not yet, and
perhaps never could be, strong enough to stand the scandal of his
marriage to a woman whose opinions were believed to be radical. On this
point he was not left in doubt, for the mere suspicion of his engagement
raised a little tempest in the pool. The stricter sect, not without
reason, were scandalized. They held to their creed, and the bare mention
of Esther Dudley's name called warm protests from their ranks. They
flatly said that it would be impossible for Mr. Hazard to make them
believe his own doctrine to be sound, if he could wish to enter into
such a connection. None but a free-thinker could associate with the set
of free-thinkers, artists and other unusual people whose society Mr.
Hazard was known to affect, and his marriage to one of them would give
the unorthodox a hold on the parish which would end by splitting it.
One of his strongest friends, who had done most to bring him to New York
and make his path pleasant, came to him with an account of what was said
and thought, softening the expression so as to bear telling.
"You ought to hear about it," said he, "so I tell you; but it is between
you and me. I don't ask whether you are engaged to Miss Dudley. For my
own pleasure, I wish you may be. If I were thirty years younger I would
try for her myself; but we all know that she has very little more
religious experience than a white rosebud. I'm not strict myself, I
don't mind a little looseness on the creed, but the trouble is that
every old woman in the parish knows all about the family. Her father,
William Dudley, a great friend of mine as you know, was a man who liked
to defy opinion and never hid his contempt for ours. He paid for a pew
at St. John's because, he said, society needs still that sort of police.
But he has told me a dozen times that he could get more police for his
money by giving it to the Roman Catholics. He never entered his pew. His
brother-in-law Murray is just as bad, never goes near the church, and is
always poking fun at us who do. The professor is a full-fledged German
Darwinist, and believes in nothing that I know of, unless it is himself.
Esther took to society, and I'm told by my young people that she was one
of the best waltzers in town until she gave it up for painting and
dinners. Her set never bothered their heads about the church. Of the
whole family, Mrs. Murray is the only one who has any weight in the
parish, and she has a good deal, but if I know her, she won't approve
the match any more than the rest, and you must expect to get the
reputation of being unorthodox. Only yesterday old Tarbox told me he
thought you were rather weak on the Pentateuch, and the best I could say
was that now-a-days we must choose between weak doctrines and weak
brains, and of the two, I preferred to let up on the Pentateuch."
All this was the more annoying to Mr. Hazard because his orthodoxy was
his strong point. Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was
no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept
dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith.
He would rather have jumped at once to Strong's pure denial, than yield
an inch to the argument that a mystery was to be paltered with because
it could not be explained. The idea that these gossiping parishioners of
his should undertake to question his orthodoxy, tried his temper. He
knew that they disliked his intimacy with artists and scientific people,
but he was not afraid of his parish, and meant that his parish should be
a little afraid of him. He preferred to give them some cause of
fault-finding in order to keep them awake. His greatest annoyance came
from another side. If such gossip should reach Esther's ears, it would
go far towards driving her beyond his control, and he knew that even
without this additional alarm, it was with the greatest difficulty he
could quiet and restrain her. The threatened disaster was terrible
enough when looked at as a mere question of love, but it went much
deeper. He was ready to override criticism and trample on remonstrance
if he could but succeed in drawing her into the fold, because his
lifelong faith, that all human energies belonged to the church, was on
trial, and, if it broke down in a test so supreme as that of marriage,
the blow would go far to prostrate him forever. What was his religious
energy worth if it did not carry him successfully through such stress,
when the strongest passion in life was working on its side?
At the hour when Strong was making his disastrous attempt to relieve
Esther of her scruples, Mr. Hazard was listening to these exasperating
criticisms from his parish. It was his habit to come every day at noon
to pass an hour with Esther, and as he entered the house to-day he met
Strong leaving it, and asked him to spare the time for a talk the same
evening. He wanted Strong's advice and help.
A brace of lovers in lower spirits than Hazard and Esther could not have
been easily found in the city of New York or its vicinity this day, and
the worst part of their depression was that each was determined to hide
it from the other. Esther could not tell him much more than he already
knew, and would not throw away her charm over him by adding to his
anxieties, while he knew that any thing he could tell her would add to
her doubts and perhaps drive her to some sudden and violent step.
Luckily they were too much attached to each other to feel the full
awkwardness of their attitude.
"It is outrageously pleasant to be with you," he said. "One's conscience
revolts against such enjoyment. I wonder whether I should ever get
enough."
"I shall never give you a chance," said she. "I shall be strict with you
and send you off to your work before you can get tired of me."
"You make me shockingly weary of my work," he answered. "At times I wish
I could stop making a labor of religion, and enjoy it a little. How
pleasant it would be to go off to Japan together and fill our
sketch-books with drawings."
This suggestion came on Esther so suddenly that she forgot herself and
gave a little cry of delight. "Oh, are you in earnest?" she said. "It
seems to me that I could crawl and swim there if you would go with me."
Then she saw her mistake. Her outburst of pleasure gave him pain. He was
displeased with himself for speaking so thoughtlessly, for this idea of
escape made both of them conscious of the chasm on whose edge they
stood.
"No, I wish I could be in earnest," he answered, "but I have just begun
work, and there is no vacation for me. You must keep up my courage.
Without your help I shall break down."
If he had thought out in advance some device for distressing her, he
could not have succeeded better. She had just time to realize the full
strength of her love for him, when he thrust the church between them,
and bade her love him for its sake. The delight of wandering through the
world by his side flashed on her mind only to show a whole Fifth Avenue
congregation as her rival. The conviction that the church was hateful to
her and that she could never trust herself to obey or love it, forced
itself on her at the very moment when she felt that life was nothing
without her lover, and that to give up all the world besides in order to
go with him, would be the only happiness she cared to ask of her
destiny. The feeling was torture. So long as he remained she controlled
it, but when he went away she wrung her hands in despair and asked
herself again and again what she could do; whether she was not going mad
with the strain of these emotions.
Before she had fairly succeeded in calming herself, her aunt came to
take her out for their daily drive. Since her father's death, this drive
with her aunt, or a walk with Catherine, had been her only escape from
the confinement of the house, and she depended on it more than on food
and drink. They went first to some shops where Mrs. Murray had purchases
to make, and Esther sat alone in the carriage while her aunt was engaged
within in buying whatever household articles were on her list for the
day. As Esther, sitting quietly in the corner of the carriage,
mechanically watched the passers-by, she saw the familiar figure of Mr.
Wharton among them, and, with a sudden movement of her old vivacity, she
bent forward, caught his eye, and held out her hand. He stopped before
the carriage window, and spoke with more than common cordiality.
"I wanted to come and see you, but I heard you received no one."
"I will always see you," she replied.
Looking more than ever shy and embarrassed he said that he should
certainly come as soon as his work would let him, and meanwhile he
wanted her to know how glad he was to be able at last to offer his
congratulations.
"Congratulations? On what?" said she, beginning to flush scarlet.
Wharton stammered out: "I was this moment told by a lady of your
acquaintance that your engagement to Mr. Hazard was formally announced
to-day."
Esther grew as pale as she had been red, and answered quietly: "When my
engagement to any one is announced, I promise to let you know of it, Mr.
Wharton, before the world knows it."
He apologized and passed on. Esther, shrinking back into her corner,
struggled in vain to recover from this new blow. Mrs. Murray, on
returning, found her in a state of feverish excitement.
"I am being dragged in against my will," said she. "I am beyond my
depth. What am I to do?"
"Most women feel so at first," replied her aunt calmly. "Many want to
escape. Some are afterwards sorry they didn't."
"Have you heard of this too, and not told me?" asked Esther.
Mrs. Murray had thought too long over the coming trouble to hesitate now
that the moment had come. She had watched for the crisis; her mind was
made up to take her share of the responsibility; so she now settled
herself down to the task. As the thing had to be done, she thought that
the shortest agony was the most merciful.
"Yes!" she answered. "Several persons have mentioned it to me, and I
have had to profess not to know what they meant."
"What did they say?" asked Esther breathlessly.
"The only one who has talked openly to me about it is your friend Mrs.
Dyer. The story came from her, and I believe she invented it. Of course
she disapproves. I never knew her to approve."
"What reason does she give?"
"She says that you are an amiable girl, but one given up to worldly
pursuits and without a trace of religious principle; the last woman to
make a clergyman's wife, though you might do very well for an artist or
somebody wicked enough for you, as I gathered her idea. I am told that
she amuses herself by adding that she never took Mr. Hazard for a
clergyman, and the sooner he quits the pulpit, the better. She is never
satisfied without hitting every one she can reach."
"What does she want?" asked Esther.
"I suppose she wants to break off the intimacy. She thinks there is no
actual engagement yet, and the surest way to prevent one is to invent
one in time."
Esther reflected a few minutes before beginning again.
"Aunt, do you think I am fit to be his wife?"
"It all depends on you," replied Mrs. Murray. "If you feel yourself fit,
you are the best person in the world for it. You would be a brand saved
from the burning, and it will be a great feather in Mr. Hazard's cap to
convert you into a strong church-woman. He could then afford to laugh at
Mrs. Dyer, and all the parish would laugh with him."
"Aunt!" said Esther in an awe-struck tone; "I am jealous of the church.
I never shall like it."