as I am?" she asked.
"I am not afraid to lay bare my conscience to you," he replied becoming
cool again, and willing perhaps to stretch his own points of conscience
in the effort to control hers. "I suppose the clergyman hardly exists
who has not been tormented by doubts. As for myself, if I could have
removed my doubts by so simple a step as that of becoming an atheist, I
should have done it, no matter what scandal or punishment had followed.
I studied the subject thoroughly, and found that for one doubt removed,
another was raised, only to reach at last a result more inconceivable
than that reached by the church, and infinitely more hopeless besides.
What do you gain by getting rid of one incomprehensible only to put a
greater one in its place, and throw away your only hope besides? The
atheists offer no sort of bargain for one's soul. Their scheme is all
loss and no gain. At last both they and I come back to a confession of
ignorance; the only difference between us is that my ignorance is joined
with a faith and hope."
Esther was staggered by this view of the subject, and had to fall back
on her common-places: "But you make me say every Sunday that I believe
in things I don't believe at all."
"But I suppose you believe at last in something, do you not?" asked
Hazard. "Somewhere there must be common ground for us to stand on; and
our church makes very large--I think too large, allowances for
difference. For my own part, I accept tradition outright, because I
think it wiser to receive a mystery than to weaken faith; but no one
exacts such strictness from you. There are scores of clergymen to-day in
our pulpits who are in my eyes little better than open skeptics, yet I
am not allowed to refuse communion with them. Why should you refuse it
with me? You must at last trust in some mysterious and humanly
incomprehensible form of words. Even Strong has to do this. Why may you
not take mine?"
"I hardly know what to trust in," said Esther sadly.
"Then trust in me."
"I wish I could, but--"
"But what? Tell me frankly where your want of confidence lies."
"I want to tell you, but I'm afraid. This is what has stood between us
from the first. If I told you what was on my lips, you would think it an
insult. Don't drive me into offending you! If you knew how much I want
to keep your friendship, you would not force me to say such things."
"I will not be offended," answered Hazard gayly. "I can stand almost any
thing except being told that you no longer love me."
It wrung Esther's heart to throw away a love so pure and devoted. She
felt ashamed of her fears and of herself. As he spoke, her ears seemed
to hear a running echo: "Mistress, know yourself! Down on your knees,
and thank heaven fasting for a good man's love!" She sat some moments
silent while he gazed into her face, and her eyes wandered out to the
gloomy and cloud-covered cataract. She felt herself being swept over it.
Whichever way she moved, she had to look down into an abyss, and leap.
"Spare me!" she said at last. "Why should you drive and force me to take
this leap? Are all men so tyrannical with women? You do not quarrel with
a man because he cannot give you his whole life."
"I own it!" said Hazard warmly. "I am tyrannical! I want your whole
life, and even more. I will be put off with nothing else. Don't you see
that I can't retreat? Put yourself in my place! Think how you would act
if you loved me as I love you!"
"Ah, be generous!" begged Esther. "It is not my fault if you and your
profession are one; and of all things on earth, to be half-married must
be the worst torture."
"You are perfectly right," he replied. "My profession and I are one, and
this makes my case harder, for I have to fight two battles, one of love,
and one of duty. Think for a moment what a struggle it is! I love you
passionately. I would like to say to you: 'Take me on your own terms! I
will give you my life, as I will take yours.' But how can I? You are
trembling on the verge of what I think destruction. If I saw you tossing
on the rapids yonder, at the edge of the fall, I could not be more eager
to save you. Yet think what self-control I have had to exercise, for
though I have felt myself, for weeks, fighting a battle of life and
death for a soul much dearer to me than my own, I have gone forward as
though I felt no alarm. I have never even spoken to you on the subject.
I stood by, believing so entirely in you that I dared let your own
nature redeem itself. But now you throw out a challenge, and I have no
choice but to meet it. I have got to fight for myself and my profession
and you, at the same time."
At last, then, the battle was fairly joined, and desperately as both the
lovers had struggled against it, they looked their destiny in the face.
With all Esther's love and sympathy for Hazard, and with all the subtle
power which his presence had on her will, his last speech was unlucky.
Here was what she had feared! She seemed to feel now, what she had only
vaguely suspected before, the restraint which would be put upon her the
moment she should submit to his will. He had as good as avowed that
nothing but the fear of losing her had kept him silent. She fancied that
the thunders of the church were already rolling over her head, and that
her mind was already slowly shutting itself up under the checks of its
new surroundings. Hazard's speech, too, was unlucky in another way. If
he had tried not to shock her by taking charge of her soul before she
asked for his interference, she had herself made a superhuman effort not
to shock him, and never once had she let drop a word that could offend
his prejudices. Since the truth must now come out, she was the less
anxious to spare his pride because he claimed credit for respecting
hers.
"Must you know why I have broken down and run away?" she said at last.
"Well! I will tell you. It was because, after a violent struggle with
myself, I found I could not enter a church without a feeling of--of
hostility. I can only be friendly by staying away from it. I felt as
though it were part of a different world. You will be angry with me for
saying it, but I never saw you conduct a service without feeling as
though you were a priest in a Pagan temple, centuries apart from me. At
any moment I half expected to see you bring out a goat or a ram and
sacrifice it on the high altar. How could I, with such ideas, join you
at communion?"
No wonder that Esther should have hesitated! Her little speech was not
meant in ridicule of Hazard, but it stung him to the quick. He started
up and walked across the room to the window, where he stood a moment
trying to recover his composure.
"What you call Pagan is to me proof of an eternal truth handed down by
tradition and divine revelation," he said at length. "But the mere
ceremonies need not stand in your way. Surely you can disregard them and
feel the truths behind."
"Oh, yes!" answered Esther, plunging still deeper into the morass. "The
ceremonies are picturesque and I could get used to them, but the
doctrines are more Pagan than the ceremonies. Now I have hurt your
feelings enough, and will say no more. What I have said proves that I am
not fit to be your wife. Let me go in peace!"
Again Hazard thought a moment with a grave face. Then he said: "Every
church is open to the same kind of attack you make on ours. Do you mean
to separate yourself from all communion?"
"If you will create a new one that shall be really spiritual, and not
cry: 'flesh--flesh--flesh,' at every corner, I will gladly join it, and
give my whole life to you and it."
Hazard shook his head: "I can suggest nothing more spiritual than what
came from the spirit itself, and has from all time satisfied the purest
and most spiritual souls."
"If I could make myself contented with what satisfied them, I would do
it for your sake," answered Esther. "It must be that we are in a new
world now, for I can see nothing spiritual about the church. It is all
personal and selfish. What difference does it make to me whether I
worship one person, or three persons, or three hundred, or three
thousand. I can't understand how you worship any person at all."
Hazard literally groaned, and his involuntary expression so irritated
Esther that she ran on still more recklessly.
"Do you really believe in the resurrection of the body?" she asked.
"Of course I do!" replied Hazard stiffly.
"To me it seems a shocking idea. I despise and loathe myself, and yet
you thrust self at me from every corner of the church as though I loved
and admired it. All religion does nothing but pursue me with self even
into the next world."
Esther had become very animated in the course of her remarks, and not
the less so because she saw Hazard frown and make gestures of impatience
as she passed from one sacrilege to another. At last he turned at bay,
and broke out:
"Do you think all this is new to me? I know by heart all these
criticisms of the church. I have heard them in one form and another ever
since I was a boy at school. They are all equally poor and ignorant.
They touch no vital point, for they are made by men, like your cousin
George Strong, from whom I suppose you got them, who know nothing of the
church or its doctrines or its history. I'll not argue over them. Let
them go for whatever you may think they are worth. I will only put to
you one question and no more. If you answer it against me, I will go
away, and never annoy you again. You say the idea of the resurrection is
shocking to you. Can you, without feeling still more shocked, think of a
future existence where you will not meet once more father or mother,
husband or children? surely the natural instincts of your sex must save
you from such a creed!"
"Ah!" cried Esther, almost fiercely, and blushing crimson, as though
Hazard this time had pierced the last restraint on her self-control:
"Why must the church always appeal to my weakness and never to my
strength! I ask for spiritual life and you send me back to my flesh and
blood as though I were a tigress you were sending back to her cubs. What
is the use of appealing to my sex? the atheists at least show me respect
enough not to do that!"
At this moment the door opened and Strong entered. It was high time. The
scene threatened to become almost violent. As Strong came in, Esther
was standing by the fire-place, all her restless features flashing with
the excitement of her last speech. Hazard, with his back to the window,
was looking at her across the room, his face dark with displeasure. As
Strong stepped between them, a momentary silence followed, when not a
sound was heard except the low thunder of the falling waters. One would
have said that storm was in the air. Suddenly Hazard turned on the
unlucky professor and hurled at him the lightning.
"You are the cause of all this! what is your motive?"
Strong looked at him with surprise, but understood in a moment what had
happened. Seeing himself destined in any case to be the victim of the
coming wrath, he quietly made up his mind to bear the lot of all
mediators and inter-meddlers.
"I am afraid you are half right," he answered. "My stupidity may have
made matters a little worse."
"What was your motive?" repeated Hazard sternly.
"My motive was to fight your battle for you," replied Strong unruffled;
"and I did it clumsily, that's all! I might have known it beforehand."
"Have you been trying to supplant me in order to get yourself in my
place?" demanded Hazard, still in the tone of a master.
"No!" replied Strong, half inclined to laugh.
"You will never find happiness there!" continued Hazard, turning to
Esther, and pointing with a sweep of his hand to Strong.
"Esther agrees with you on that point," said Strong, beginning to think
it time that this scene should end. "I don't mind telling you, too, that
since I have seen her stand out against your persecution, I would give
any chance I have of salvation if she would marry me; but you needn't be
alarmed about it,--she won't!"
"She will!" broke in Hazard abruptly. "You have betrayed me, and your
conduct is all of a piece with your theories." Then turning to Esther,
who still stood motionless and silent before the fire, he went on: "I am
beaten. You have driven me away, and I will never trouble you again,
till, in your days of suffering and anguish you send to me for hope and
consolation. Till then--God bless you!"
The silence was awful when his retreating footsteps could no longer be
heard. It was peace, but the peace of despair. As the sound of the
jangling sleigh-bells slowly receded from the door, and Esther realized
that the romance of her life was ended, she clasped her hands together
in a struggle to control her tears. Strong walked once or twice up and
down the room, buried in thought, then suddenly stopping before her, he
said in his straight-forward, practical way:
"Esther, I meant it! you have fought your battle like a heroine. If you
will marry me, I will admire and love you more than ever a woman was
loved since the world began."
Esther looked at him with an expression that would have been a smile if
it had not been infinitely dreary and absent; then she said, simply and
finally:
"But George, I don't love you, I love him."
THE END.