THE RESULT.
OW, what I want," said Marion, "is to have you people who are posted answer a few questions. You know I am not a dancer; I have only stood aside and looked on; but I have as high a respect for common sense as any of you can have, and I want to use some of it in this matter; so just tell me, is it true or not that there is a style of dancing that is considered improper in the extreme?"
"Why, yes, of course there is," Eurie said, quickly.
"Is it the style that is indulged in at our ordinary balls, where all sorts of characters are admitted, where, in fact, anyone who can buy a ticket and dress well is welcome? You know you were particular to state that none of you went to balls; are these some of the reasons?"
"My principal reason is," Ruth said, with an upward curve of her haughty lip, "that I do not care to associate with all sorts of people, either in the ball-room or anywhere else."
"Besides which, you are reasonably particular, who of your acquaintances have the privilege of frequently clasping your hand and placing an arm caressingly around your waist, to say nothing of almost carrying you through the room, are you not?"
Ruth turned toward the questioner flashing eyes, while she said:
"That is very unusual language to address to us, Marion. Possibly we are quite as high-toned in our feelings as yourself."
"Oh, but now, I appeal to your reason and common sense; you say, yourself, that these should be our guide. Isn't it true that you, as a dancer, allow familiarity that you would consider positively insulting under other circumstances? Am I mistaken in your opinion as to the proper treatment that ladies should receive from gentlemen at all other times save when they are dancing?"
"It's a solemn fact," said Eurie, laughing at the folly of her position, "that the man with whom I dance has a privilege that if he should undertake to assume at any other time would endanger his being knocked down if my brother Nell was within sight."
"And it is true that there are lengths to which dancers go that you would not permit under any circumstances?"
"Undeniable," Eurie said again. "Yet I don't see what that proves. There are lengths to which you can carry almost any amusement. The point is, we don't carry them to any such lengths."
"That isn't the whole point, Eurie. There are many amusements which no one carries to improper lengths. We do not hear of their being so perverted; but we do not hear of them in the ball-room. The question is, has dancing such a tendency? Do impure people have dance-houses which it is a shame for a person to enter? Are young men and young women, our brothers and sisters led astray in them? We mustn't be too delicate to speak on these things, for they exist; and they are found among people for whom the Lord died, and many of them will be reclaimed and be in heaven with us. They are our brethren; can they be led away by the influences of the dance? If we are all really in earnest in this matter, will you each give your opinion on this one point?"
"I suppose it is unquestionable," Ruth said, "that dance-houses are in existence, and that they are patronized by the lowest and vilest of human beings; but the sort of dance indulged in has no more likeness to the dances of cultivated society than—"
"Than the drunkard lying in the gutter bears likeness to the elegant young man of fashion who takes his social sips from a silver goblet lined with gold at his mother's refreshment table," Marion said, interrupting her, and speaking with energy. "Yet you will admit that the one may be, and awfully often is, the stepping stone to the other."
"It is true," Eurie said; "both are true. I never thought of it before, but there is no denying it."
As for Flossy, she simply bowed her head, as one interested but not excited.
"Then may I bring in one of my verses, 'Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.' Does that apply? If the world can carry this amusement to such depths of degradation, and if the elegant parlor dance is or can be in the remotest degree the first step thereto, are we keeping ourselves unspotted if we have anything to do with it, countenance it in any way? Don't you see that the question, after all, is the same in many respects as the card-playing one? We have been over this ground before.
"Suppose we grant, for argument's sake, that not one of you is in danger of being led away to any sort of excess, and I should hardly dare to admit it in my own case, because of a verse in this same old book, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;' but if it should be so, let me give you another of my selections—rather, let me read the entire argument."
Whereupon she turned to the tenth chapter of First Corinthians and read St. Paul's argument about eating meat offered to idols, pausing with special emphasis over the words, "Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other." "Did I understand you to say, Eurie, that it is a very general belief among dancers that Christians are inconsistent who indulge in this amusement."
"It is a provoking truth that there is. Don't you know, Ruth, how we used to be merry over the Symonds girls and that young Winters who were church-members? Well, they made rather greater pretensions with their religion than some others did, and that made us specially amused over them."
"Then, Eurie, wasn't their influence unfortunate on you?"
"I am not on your side, Mistress Wilbur. You should have more conscience than to keep me all the time condemning myself!"
"That is answer enough," Marion said, smiling. "I am only asking for information, you know. I never danced. But in the light of that confession, hear this: 'But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died. Let not, then, your good be evil spoken of.' Isn't that precisely what you were doing of the good in those church-members, Eurie? Now a sophist would possibly say that the argument of Paul had reference to food offered to idols, and not to dancing; but I think here is a chance for us to exercise that judgment and common sense which we are so fond of talking about.
"The main point seems to be not to destroy those for whom Christ died. Does it make any difference whether we do it with our digestive organs or with our feet? But what is the sophist going to do with this: 'It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.' You see he may, or may not, be a fool for allowing himself to be led astray. St. Paul says nothing about that. He simply directs as to the Christian's duty in the matter."
Ruth made a movement of impatience.
"You are arguing, Marion, on the supposition that a great many people are led astray by dancing; whereas I don't believe that to be the case."
"Do you believe one soul ever was?"
"Why, yes, I suppose so."
"We even know one," Eurie said, speaking low, and looking very grave.
"Do you believe it is possible that another soul may in the next million years?"
"Of course it is possible."
"Then the question is, how much is one soul worth? I don't feel prepared to estimate it, do you?" To which question Ruth made no reply "There is another point," Marion said. "You young ladies talk about being careful with whom you dance. Don't you accept the attentions of strange young gentlemen, who have been introduced to you by your fashionable friends? Take Mr. Townsend, the young man who came here a stranger, and was introduced in society by the Wagners, because they met him when abroad. Didn't you dance with him, Eurie Mitchell?"
"Dozens of times," said Eurie, promptly.
"And Flossy, didn't you?"
Flossy nodded her golden head.
"Well, now you know, I suppose, that he has proved to be a perfect libertine. Honestly, wouldn't you both feel better if he had never had his arm around you?"
"Marion, your way of saying that thing is simply disgusting!" Ruth said, in great heat.
"Is it my way of saying it, or is it the thing itself?" Marion asked, coolly. "I tell you, girls, it is impossible to know whether the man who dresses well, and calls on you at stated intervals, looking and talking like a gentleman, is not a very Satan, who will lead away the pretty guileless, unsuspecting young girl who is worth his trouble; and the leading often and often commences with a dance; and the young girl may never have been allowed to dance with him at all had not stately and entirely unexceptionable leaders of society, like our Ruth here, allowed it first.
"It is the same question after all, and it narrows down to a fine point. A thing that can possibly lead one to eternal death, a Christian has no business to meddle with, even if he knows of but one soul in a million years who has been so wrecked. In all this we have not even glanced at the endless directions to 'redeem the time,' to be 'instant in season and out of season, to 'work while the day lasts,' 'to watch and be sober.' What do all these verses mean? Are we obeying them when we spend half the night in a whirl of wild pleasure?
"The fact remains that a majority of people are not temperate in their dancing; they do it night after night; they long after it, and are miserable if the weather, or the cough, keeps them away. I know dozens of such young ladies; I have them as my pupils; my heart trembles for them; they are just intoxicated with dancing; and they quote you, Ruth Erskine, as an example when I try to talk with them; I have heard them. Whether it is wrong for other people or not, as true as I sit here I can tell you this: I have two girls in my class who are killing themselves with this amusement, carried to its least damaging extreme, for they still think they are very careful with whom they dance; and you are in a measure, at least, responsible for their folly. You needn't say they are simpletons; I think they are, but what of it? 'Shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?'"
"Nell made a remark that startled me a little, it was so queer." Eurie said this after the startled hush that fell over them at the close of Marion's eager sentence had in part subsided. "We were speaking of a party where we had been one evening and some of the girls had danced every set, till they were completely worn out. Some of them had been dancing with rather questionable young men, too; for I shall have to own that all the gentlemen who get admitted into fashionable parlors are not angels by any means. I know there are several, who are supposed to be of the first society, that father has forbidden me ever to dance with.
"We were talking about some of these, and about the extreme manner in which the dancing was carried on, when Nell said: 'I'll tell you what, Eurie, I hope my wife wasn't there to-night.' 'Dear me!' I said, 'I didn't know she was in existence. Where do you keep her?' He was as sober as a judge. 'She is on the earth somewhere, of course, if I am to have her,' he said; 'and what I say is, I hope she wasn't there. If I thought she was among those dancers, I would go and knock the fellow down who insulted her by swinging her around in that fashion. I want my wife's hand to be kept for me to hold; I don't thank anybody else for doing that part for me.'"
"Precisely!" Marion said. "It is considered unladylike, I believe, for people to talk about love and marriage. I never could see why; I'm sure neither of them is wicked. But I suppose each of us occasionally thinks of the possibility of having a friend as dear even as a husband. How would you like it, girls, to have him spend his evenings dancing with first one young lady and then another, offering them attentions that, under any other circumstances, would stamp him as a libertine?
"Whichever way you look at this question it is a disagreeable one to me. I may never be married; it is not at all likely that I ever shall; I ought to have been thinking about it long ago, if I was ever going to indulge in that sort of life; but if I should, I'm heartily glad of one thing—and, mind, I mean it—that no man but my husband shall ever put his arm around me, nor hold my hand, unless it is to keep me from actual danger; falling over a precipice, you know, or some such unusual matter as that."
"Flossy hasn't opened her lips this evening. Why don't you talk, child? Does Marion overwhelm you? I don't wonder. Such a tornado as she has poured out upon us! I never heard the like in my life. It isn't all in the Bible; that is one comfort. Though, dear me! I don't know but the spirit of it is. What do you think about it all?"
"Sure enough," Marion said, turning to Flossy, as Eurie paused. "Little Flossy, where are your verses? You were going to give us whatever you found in the Bible. You were the best witness of all, because you brought such an unprejudiced determination to the search. What did you find?"
"My search didn't take the form I meant it should," Flossy said. "I didn't look far nor long, and I did not decide the question for anybody else, only for myself. I found only two verses, two pieces of verses; I mean, I stopped at those, and thought about them all the rest of the week. These are the ones," and Flossy's soft sweet voice repeated them without turning to the Bible:
"'Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus;' 'Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.' Those verses just held me; I thought about dancing, about all the times in which I had danced, and the people with whom I had danced, and the words we had said to each other, and I could not see that in any possible way it could be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, or that it could be done heartily, as unto the Lord. I settled my own heart with those words; that for me to dance after I knew that whatever in word or deed I did, I was pledged to do heartily for the Lord, would be an impossibility."
An absolute hush fell upon them all. Marion looked from one to the other of the flushed and eager faces, and then at the sweet drooping face of their little Flossy.
"We have spent our strength vainly," she said, at last. "It is our privilege to get up higher; to look at all these things from the mount whereon God will let us stand if we want to climb. I think little Flossy has got there."
"After all," Eurie said, "that verse would cut off a great many things that are considered harmless."
"What does that prove, my beloved Eureka?" Marion said, quickly. "'If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee,' is another Bible verse. These verses of Flossy's mean something, surely. What do they mean, is the question left for us to decide? After all, Ruth, I agree with you; it is a question that must be left to our judgment and common sense; only we are bound to strengthen our common sense and confirm our judgments in the light of the lamp that is promised as a guide to our feet."
Almost nothing was said among them after that, except the commonplaces of good-nights. The next afternoon, as Marion was working out a refractory example in algebra for Gracie Dennis, she bent lower over her slate, and said:
"Miss Wilbur, did you know that your friends, Miss Erskine, Miss Shipley and Miss Mitchell, had all declined Mrs. Garland's invitation, and sent her an informal little note signed by them all, to the effect that they had decided not to dance any more?"
"No," said Marion, the rich blood mounting to her temples, and her face breaking into a smile. "How did you hear?"
"Mrs. Garland told my father; she said she honored them for their consistency, and thought more highly of their new departure than she ever had before. It is rather remarkable so early in their Christian life, don't you think?"
"Rather," Marion said, with a smile, and she followed it by a soft little sigh. She had not been invited to Mrs. Garland's. There was no opportunity for her to show whether she was consistent or not.
