The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner


The tall man advanced to meet her, and led her into the midst of the
group.

For a few moments there was prayer, inaudible at a distance. Then the
tall man, taking the girl by the hand, advanced down the slope to the
stream. His hat was laid aside, his venerable locks streamed in the
breeze, his eyes were turned to heaven; the girl walked as in a vision,
without a tremor, her wide-opened eyes fixed upon invisible things. As
they moved on, the group behind set up a joyful hymn in a kind of
mournful chant, in which the tall man joined with a strident voice.
Fitfully the words came on the wind, in an almost heart-breaking wail:

"Beyond the smiling and the weeping I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon."

They were near the water now, and the tall man's voice sounded out loud
and clear:

"Lord, tarry not, but come!"

They were entering the stream where there was an opening clear of ice;
the footing was not very secure, and the tall man ceased singing, but the
little band sang on:

"Beyond the blooming and the fading I shall be soon."

The girl grew paler and shuddered. The tall man sustained her with an
attitude of infinite sympathy, and seemed to speak words of
encouragement. They were in the mid-stream; the cold flood surged about
their waists. The group sang on:

"Beyond the shining and the shading,
Beyond the hoping and the dreading, I shall be soon."

The strong, tender arms of the tall man gently lowered the white form
under the cruel water; he staggered a moment in the swift stream,
recovered himself, raised her, white as death, and the voices of the
wailing tune came:

"Love, rest, and home
Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come!"

And the tall man, as he struggled to the shore with his almost insensible
burden, could be heard above the other voices and the wind and the rush
of the waters:

"Lord, tarry not, but come!"

The girl was hurried into the carriage, and the group quickly dispersed.
"Well, I'll be--" The tender-hearted little wife of the rough man in the
crowd who began that sentence did not permit him to finish it. "That'll
be a case for a doctor right away," remarked a well-known practitioner
who had been looking on.

Margaret and Mr. Lyon walked home in silence. "I can't talk about it,"
she said. "It's such a pitiful world."




IV

In the evening, at our house, Margaret described the scene in the park.

"It's dreadful," was the comment of Miss Forsythe. "The authorities ought
not to permit such a thing."

"It seemed to me as heroic as pitiful, aunt. I fear I should be incapable
of making such a testimony."

"But it was so unnecessary."

"How do we know what is necessary to any poor soul? What impressed me
most strongly was that there is in the world still this longing to suffer
physically and endure public scorn for a belief."

"It may have been a disappointment to the little band," said Mr. Morgan,
"that there was no demonstration from the spectators, that there was no
loud jeering, that no snowballs were thrown by the boys."

"They could hardly expect that," said I; "the world has become so
tolerant that it doesn't care."

"I rather think," Margaret replied, "that the spectators for a moment
came under the spell of the hour, and were awed by something supernatural
in the endurance of that frail girl."

"No doubt," said my wife, after a little pause. "I believe that there is
as much sense of mystery in the world as ever, and as much of what we
call faith, only it shows itself eccentrically. Breaking away from
traditions and not going to church have not destroyed the need in the
minds of the mass of people for something outside themselves."

"Did I tell you," interposed Morgan--"it is almost in the line of your
thought--of a girl I met the other day on the train? I happened to be her
seat-mate in the car-thin face, slight little figure--a commonplace girl,
whom I took at first to be not more than twenty, but from the lines about
her large eyes she was probably nearer forty. She had in her lap a book,
which she conned from time to time, and seemed to be committing verses to
memory as she looked out the window. At last I ventured to ask what
literature it was that interested her so much, when she turned and
frankly entered into conversation. It was a little Advent song-book. She
liked to read it on the train, and hum over the tunes. Yes, she was a
good deal on the cars; early every morning she rode thirty miles to her
work, and thirty miles back every evening. Her work was that of clerk and
copyist in a freight office, and she earned nine dollars a week, on which
she supported herself and her mother. It was hard work, but she did not
mind it much. Her mother was quite feeble. She was an Adventist. 'And
you?' I asked. 'Oh, yes; I am. I've been an Adventist twenty years, and
I've been perfectly happy ever since I joined--perfectly,' she added,
turning her plain face, now radiant, towards me. 'Are you one?' she
asked, presently. 'Not an immediate Adventist,' I was obliged to confess.
'I thought you might be, there are so many now, more and more.' I learned
that in our little city there were two Advent societies; there had been a
split on account of some difference in the meaning of original sin. 'And
you are not discouraged by the repeated failure of the predictions of the
end of the world?' I asked. 'No. Why should we be? We don't fix any
certain day now, but all the signs show that it is very near. We are all
free to think as we like. Most of our members now think it will be next
year.'--'I hope not!' I exclaimed. 'Why?' she asked, turning to me with a
look of surprise. 'Are you afraid?' I evaded by saying that I supposed
the good had nothing to fear. 'Then you must be an Adventist, you have so
much sympathy.'--'I shouldn't like to have the world come to an end next
year, because there are so many interesting problems, and I want to see
how they will be worked out.'--'How can you want to put it off'--and
there was for the first time a little note of fanaticism in her
voice--'when there is so much poverty and hard work? It is such a hard
world, and so much suffering and sin. And it could all be ended in a
moment. How can you want it to go on?' The train approached the station,
and she rose to say good-by. 'You will see the truth some day,' she said,
and went away as cheerful as if the world was actually destroyed. She was
the happiest woman I have seen in a long time."

"Yes," I said, "it is an age of both faith and credulity."

"And nothing marks it more," Morgan added, "than the popular expectation
among the scientific and the ignorant of something to come out of the
dimly understood relation of body and mind. It is like the expectation of
the possibilities of electricity."

"I was going on to say," I continued, "that wherever I walk in the city
of a Sunday afternoon, I am struck with the number of little meetings
going on, of the faithful and the unfaithful, Adventists, socialists,
spiritualists, culturists, Sons and Daughters of Edom; from all the open
windows of the tall buildings come notes of praying, of exhortation, the
melancholy wail of the inspiring Sankey tunes, total abstinence melodies,
over-the-river melodies, songs of entreaty, and songs of praise. There is
so much going on outside of the regular churches!"

"But the churches are well attended," suggested my wife.

"Yes, fairly, at least once a day, and if there is sensational preaching,
twice. But there is nothing that will so pack the biggest hall in the
city as the announcement of inspirational preaching by some young woman
who speaks at random on a text given her when she steps upon the
platform. There is something in her rhapsody, even when it is incoherent,
that appeals to a prevailing spirit."'

"How much of it is curiosity?" Morgan asked. "Isn't the hall just as
jammed when the clever attorney of Nothingism, Ham Saversoul, jokes about
the mysteries of this life and the next?"

"Very likely. People like the emotional and the amusing. All the same,
they are credulous, and entertain doubt and belief on the slightest
evidence."

"Isn't it natural," spoke up Mr. Lyon, who had hitherto been silent,
"that you should drift into this condition without an established
church?"

"Perhaps it's natural," Morgan retorted, "that people dissatisfied with
an established religion should drift over here. Great Britain, you know,
is a famous recruiting-ground for our socialistic experiments."

"Ah, well," said my wife, "men will have something. If what is
established repels to the extent of getting itself disestablished, and
all churches should be broken up, society would somehow precipitate
itself again spiritually. I heard the other day that Boston, getting a
little weary of the Vedas, was beginning to take up the New Testament."

"Yes," said Morgan, "since Tolstoi mentioned it."

After a little the talk drifted into psychic research, and got lost in
stories of "appearances" and "long-distance" communications. It appeared
to me that intelligent people accepted this sort of story as true on
evidence on which they wouldn't risk five dollars if it were a question
of money. Even scientists swallow tales of prehistoric bones on testimony
they would reject if it involved the title to a piece of real estate.

Mr. Lyon still lingered in the lap of a New England winter as if it had
been Capua. He was anxious to visit Washington and study the politics of
the country, and see the sort of society produced in the freedom of a
republic, where there was no court to give the tone and there were no
class lines to determine position. He was restless under this sense of
duty. The future legislator for the British Empire must understand the
Constitution of its great rival, and thus be able to appreciate the
social currents that have so much to do with political action.

In fact he had another reason for uneasiness. His mother had written him,
asking why he stayed so long in an unimportant city, he who had been so
active a traveler hitherto. Knowledge of the capitals was what he needed.
Agreeable people he could find at home, if his only object was to pass
the time. What could he reply? Could he say that he had become very much
interested in studying a schoolteacher--a very charming school-teacher?
He could see the vision raised in the minds of his mother and of the earl
and of his elder sister as they should read this precious confession--a
vision of a schoolma'am, of an American girl, and an American girl
without any money at that, moving in the little orbit of Chisholm House.
The thing was absurd. And yet why was it absurd? What was English
politics, what was Chisholm House, what was everybody in England compared
to this noble girl? Nay, what would the world be without her? He grew hot
in thinking of it, indignant at his relations and the whole artificial
framework of things.

The situation was almost humiliating. He began, to doubt the stability of
his own position. Hitherto he had met no obstacle: whatever he had
desired he had obtained. He was a sensible fellow, and knew the world was
not made for him; but it certainly had yielded to him in everything. Why
did he doubt now? That he did doubt showed him the intensity of his
interest in Margaret. For love is humble, and undervalues self in
contrast with that which it desires. At this touchstone rank, fortune,
all that go with them, seemed poor. What were all these to a woman's
soul? But there were women enough, women enough in England, women more
beautiful than Margaret, doubtless as amiable and intellectual. Yet now
there was for him only one woman in the world. And Margaret showed no
sign. Was he about to make a fool of himself? If she should reject him he
would seem a fool to himself. If she accepted him he would seem a fool to
the whole circle that made his world at home. The situation was
intolerable. He would end it by going.

But he did not go. If he went today he could not see her tomorrow. To a
lover anything can be borne if he knows that he shall see her tomorrow.
In short, he could not go so long as there was any doubt about her
disposition towards him.

And a man is still reduced to this in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, notwithstanding all our science, all our analysis of the
passion, all our wise jabber about the failure of marriage, all our
commonsense about the relation of the sexes. Love is still a personal
question, not to be reasoned about or in any way disposed of except in
the old way. Maidens dream about it; diplomats yield to it; stolid men
are upset by it; the aged become young, the young grave, under its
influence; the student loses his appetite--God bless him! I like to hear
the young fellows at the club rattle on bravely, indifferent to the whole
thing--skeptical, in fact, about it. And then to see them, one after
another, stricken down, and looking a little sheepish and not saying
much, and by-and-by radiant. You would think they owned the world.
Heaven, I think, shows us no finer sarcasm than one of these young
skeptics as a meek family man.

Margaret and Mr. Lyon were much together.

And their talk, as always happens when two persons find themselves much
together, became more and more personal. It is only in books that
dialogues are abstract and impersonal. The Englishman told her about his
family, about the set in which he moved--and he had the English frankness
in setting it out unreservedly--about the life he led at Oxford, about
his travels, and so on to what he meant to do in the world. Margaret in
return had little to tell, her own life had been so simple--not much
except the maidenly reserves, the discontents with herself, which
interested him more than anything else; and of the future she would not
speak at all. How can a woman, without being misunderstood? All this talk
had a certain danger in it, for sympathy is unavoidable between two
persons who look ever so little into each other's hearts and compare
tastes and desires.

"I cannot quite understand your social life over here," Mr. Lyon was
saying one day. "You seem to make distinctions, but I cannot see exactly
for what."

"Perhaps they make themselves. Your social orders seem able to resist
Darwin's theory, but in a republic natural selection has a better
chance."

"I was told by a Bohemian on the steamer coming over that money in
America takes the place of rank in England."

"That isn't quite true."

"And I was told in Boston by an acquaintance of very old family and
little fortune that 'blood' is considered here as much as anywhere."

"You see, Mr. Lyon, how difficult it is to get correct information about
us. I think we worship wealth a good deal, and we worship family a good
deal, but if any one presumes too much upon either, he is likely to come
to grief. I don't understand it very well myself."

"Then it is not money that determines social position in America?"

"Not altogether; but more now than formerly. I suppose the distinction is
this: family will take a person everywhere, money will take him almost
everywhere; but money is always at this disadvantage--it takes more and
more of it to gain position. And then you will find that it is a good
deal a matter of locality. For instance, in Virginia and Kentucky family
is still very powerful, stronger than any distinction in letters or
politics or success in business; and there is a certain diminishing
number of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, who cultivate a good
deal of exclusiveness on account of descent."

"But I am told that this sort of aristocracy is succumbing to the new
plutocracy."

"Well, it is more and more difficult to maintain a position without
money. Mr. Morgan says that it is a disheartening thing to be an
aristocrat without luxury; he declares that he cannot tell whether the
Knickerbockers of New York or the plutocrats are more uneasy just now.
The one is hungry for social position, and is morose if he cannot buy it;
and when the other is seduced by luxury and yields, he finds that his
distinction is gone. For in his heart the newly rich only respects the
rich. A story went about of one of the Bonanza princes who had built his
palace in the city, and was sending out invitations to his first
entertainment. Somebody suggested doubts to him about the response. 'Oh,'
he said, 'the beggars will be glad enough to come!'"

"I suppose, Mr. Lyon," said Margaret, demurely, "that this sort of thing
is unknown in England?"

"Oh, I couldn't say that money is not run after there to some extent."

"I saw a picture in Punch of an auction, intended as an awful satire on
American women. It struck me that it might have two interpretations."

"Yes, Punch is as friendly to America as it is to the English
aristocracy."

"Well, I was only thinking that it is just an exchange of commodities.
People will always give what they have for what they want. The Western
man changes his pork in New York for pictures. I suppose that--what do
you call it?--the balance of trade is against us, and we have to send
over cash and beauty."

"I didn't know that Miss Debree was so much of a political economist."

"We got that out of books in school. Another thing we learned is that
England wants raw material; I thought I might as well say it, for it
wouldn't be polite for you."

"Oh, I'm capable of saying anything, if provoked. But we have got away
from the point. As far as I can see, all sorts of people intermarry, and
I don't see how you can discriminate socially--where the lines are."

Mr. Lyon saw the moment that he had made it that this was a suggestion
little likely to help him. And Margaret's reply showed that he had lost
ground.

"Oh, we do not try to discriminate--except as to foreigners. There is a
popular notion that Americans had better marry at home."

"Then the best way for a foreigner to break your exclusiveness is to be
naturalized." Mr. Lyon tried to adopt her tone, and added, "Would you
like to see me an American citizen?"

"I don't believe you could be, except for a little while; you are too
British."

"But the two nations are practically the same; that is, individuals of
the nations are. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, if one of them gives up all the habits and prejudices of a lifetime
and of a whole social condition to the other."

"And which would have to yield?"

"Oh, the man, of course. It has always been so. My
great-great-grandfather was a Frenchman, but he became, I have always
heard, the most docile American republican."

"Do you think he would have been the one to give in if they had gone to
France?"

"Perhaps not. And then the marriage would have been unhappy. Did you
never take notice that a woman's happiness, and consequently the
happiness of marriage, depends upon a woman's having her own way in all
social matters? Before our war all the men who married down South took
the Southern view, and all the Southern women who married up North held
their own, and sensibly controlled the sympathies of their husbands."

"And how was it with the Northern women who married South, as you say?"

"Well, it must be confessed that a good many of them adapted themselves,
in appearance at least. Women can do that, and never let anyone see they
are not happy and not doing it from choice."

"And don't you think American women adapt themselves happily to English
life?"

"Doubtless some; I doubt if many do; but women do not confess mistakes of
that kind. Woman's happiness depends so much upon the continuation of the
surroundings and sympathies in which she is bred. There are always
exceptions. Do you know, Mr. Lyon, it seems to me that some people do not
belong in the country where they were born. We have men who ought to have
been born in England, and who only find themselves really they go there.
There are who are ambitious, and court a career different from any that a
republic can give them. They are not satisfied here. Whether they are
happy there I do not know; so few trees, when at all grown, will bear
transplanting."

"Then you think international marriages are a mistake?"

"Oh, I don't theorize on subjects I am ignorant of."

"You give me very cold comfort."

"I didn't know," said Margaret, with a laugh that was too genuine to be
consoling, "that you were traveling for comfort; I thought it was for
information."

"And I am getting a great deal," said Mr. Lyon, rather ruefully. "I'm
trying to find out where. I ought to have been born."

"I'm not sure," Margaret said, half seriously, "but you would have been a
very good American."

This was not much of an admission, after all, but it was the most that
Margaret had ever made, and Mr. Lyon tried to get some encouragement out
of it. But he felt, as any man would feel, that this beating about the
bush, this talk of nationality and all that, was nonsense; that if a
woman loved a man she wouldn't care where he was born; that all the world
would be as nothing to him; that all conditions and obstacles society and
family could raise would melt away in the glow of a real passion. And he
wondered for a moment if American girls were not "calculating"--a word to
which he had learned over here to attach a new and comical meaning.




V

The afternoon after this conversation Miss Forsythe was sitting reading
in her favorite window-seat when Mr. Lyon was announced. Margaret was at
her school. There was nothing un usual in this afternoon call; Mr. Lyon's
visits had become frequent and informal; but Miss Forsythe had a nervous
presentiment that something important was to happen, that showed itself
in her greeting, and which was perhaps caught from a certain new
diffidence in his manner.

Perhaps the maiden lady preserves more than any other this sensitiveness,
inborn in women, to the approach of the critical moment in the affairs of
the heart. The day may some time be past when she--is sensitive for
herself--philosophers say otherwise--but she is easily put in a flutter
by the affair of another. Perhaps this is because the negative (as we say
in these days) which takes impressions retains all its delicacy from the
fact that none of them have ever been developed, and perhaps it is a wise
provision of nature that age in a heart unsatisfied should awaken lively
apprehensive curiosity and sympathy about the manifestation of the tender
passion in others. It certainly is a note of the kindliness and charity
of the maiden mind that its sympathies are so apt to be most strongly
excited in the success of the wooer. This interest may be quite separable
from the common feminine desire to make a match whenever there is the
least chance of it. Miss Forsythe was not a match-maker, but Margaret
herself would not have been more embarrassed than she was at the
beginning of this interview.

When Mr. Lyon was seated she made the book she had in her hand the excuse
for beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem to have in
their ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitious
representation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join in
it. He rose and stood leaning his arm upon the mantel-piece, and looking
into the fire, and said, abruptly, at last:

"I called to see you, Miss Forsythe, to--to consult you about your
niece."

"About her career?" asked Miss Forsythe, with a nervous consciousness of
falsehood.

"Yes, about her career; that is, in a way," turning towards her with a
little smile.

"Yes?"

"You must have seen my interest in her. You must have known why I stayed
on and on. But it was, it is, all so uncertain. I wanted to ask your
permission to speak my mind to her."

"Are you quite sure you know your own mind?" asked Miss Forsythe,
defensively.

"Sure--sure; I have never had the feeling for any other woman I have for
her."

"Margaret is a noble girl; she is very independent," suggested Miss
Forsythe, still avoiding the point.

"I know. I don't ask you her feeling." Mr. Lyon was standing quietly
looking down into the coals. "She is the only woman in the world to me. I
love her. Are you against me?" he asked, suddenly looking up, with a
flush in his face.

"Oh, no! no!" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, with another access of timidity.
"I shouldn't take the responsibility of being against you, or--or
otherwise. It is very manly in you to come to me, and I am sure I--we all
wish nothing but your own happiness. And so far as I am concerned--"

"Then I have your permission?" he asked, eagerly.

"My permission, Mr. Lyon? why, it is so new to me, I scarcely realized
that I had any permission," she said, with a little attempt at
pleasantry. "But as her aunt--and guardian, as one may say--personally I
should have the greatest satisfaction to know that Margaret's destiny was
in the hands of one we all esteem and know as we do you."

"Thank you, thank you," said Mr. Lyon, coming forward and seizing her
hand.

"But you must let me say, let me suggest, that there are a great many
things to be thought of. There is such a difference in education, in all
the habits of your lives, in all your relations. Margaret would never be
happy in a position where less was accorded to her than she had all her
life. Nor would her pride let her take such a position."