CHAPTER II.
One afternoon in early spring, I happened to pass the cathedral just as service was over. I had spent the previous evening with Miss Foster—an event of not unusual occurrence now, although I never called unless when accompanied by Armitage. The current of my thoughts flowed pleasantly as the crowd of devout worshippers issued forth from their devotions. A lady passed out of the gate, and I immediately recognized the figure as that of Miss Foster. "Eccentric, certainly," I thought; "just like what I would imagine she might do. Strange that some of our most intelligent and highly educated women can fancy this attending Catholic churches."
I quickened my steps, and in a moment was at her side.
"Have you been at vespers, Mr. Moray?" she asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world that I should have been there.
"Not I," I replied laughingly; "but you have, I presume?"
"Yes," she rejoined, "grandmamma will be scolding me, I am afraid. I went up-stairs to lie down after dinner, having a slight headache. But once in my room, I felt as though a walk would benefit me more, so I stole out."
"A crowded church is not the best place in the world in which to get rid of the headache," I responded.
"Mine has vanished, however," was the reply. "It had quite disappeared before I reached the church."
"Do you affect Catholic ceremonies generally, Miss Foster?" I asked; "or rather do you admire Catholicism in the abstract? Or is it the incense and music and wax tapers that possess charms for you?"
"All these collectively have attractions for me," she answered; "but not in the way you imagine. You are inclined to believe, no doubt, that it is some romantic and impressionable vein in my nature that sends me within the influence of Catholic ceremonies and their accessories. But we are all liable to error; and you will not be deeply wounded, I hope, if I venture to advise you of your mistake in this instance. I am a Catholic, and hold all these things as a part of my faith."
"A Catholic!" I exclaimed in undisguised astonishment. "A Catholic! Not a Roman Catholic, Miss Foster? You mean that you are one in the true sense of the term?"
"I hope I do—I think that is what I mean. I am, by the grace of God, a Roman Catholic." And it seemed to me she spoke almost maliciously, as though deliberately to wound my dearest prejudices.
"You will the more readily excuse me for my inability to realize this information," I replied, "when I tell you that until now my acquaintance with members of your church has been very limited, and that those whom I have met have always belonged to the lowest classes of society. I find it difficult to convince myself that you can profess a belief whose tenets have always appeared to me to be a web of superstition. My associates have been altogether Protestant, and my prejudices, as you would call them, very decided wherever Rome was concerned. You may think me blunt, even impertinent; but allow me at the same time to acknowledge that I feel confident there must be something good and beautiful in a religion that one of your intelligence and refinement admires and professes."
"There is something good and beautiful in all religions," she answered, "or they would not be worthy of the name—mere attempts and half promises as most of them are. But in ours all is goodness and beauty. I can pardon, even understand your prejudices; for I shared them once. I was born and educated in the Presbyterian faith; a faith hard, cold, and unconsoling. I can remember the time when I regarded Catholicity as but another form of heathenism. For your estimate of my intelligence and refinement I can only thank you—all the more as you have never had opportunity to judge correctly of either; consequently I must take the verdict for what it is worth. But here I am at home, and the lamps are lighted. How late it must be. Thank you again, and good evening."
With a little rippling laugh she left my side, and almost before I had time to answer her parting salutation, she had tripped up the steps and entered the house.
A crowd of conflicting thoughts pursued each other in my mind as I continued my walk. A consciousness that I endeavored vainly to ignore grew stronger as I reflected on what had passed, and weighed more minutely all the circumstances of our meeting and acquaintance. And with it was mingled a feeling of disappointment, almost of vexation and pain, as though I had been touched and assailed by some detested enemy.
I grew restless; nothing satisfied me. People said I looked ill. No wonder, when I sat up half the night trying to divert my mind from the study of its own problems, to those of incomprehensible German philosophy. I reasoned with what I was pleased to term my weakness. But what could I do? I had kept out of the way of temptation; I had avoided assemblies where I knew she was likely to be; twenty times I had stood upon the threshold of her home, and as often turned and retraced my steps. One night I sat alone in my room, and almost vowed to put the thought of her from my mind at once and for ever. As I mused, Armitage entered unannounced.
"Desolate and melancholy as ever," he said cheerfully, and the sound of his happy voice made me desperate. Suddenly, involuntarily, I might say, I found myself answering him,
"I am tired of being desolate and melancholy though;" then carelessly, "What if we saunter down to Miss Foster's?"
Fred was all willingness, while surprised at my change of mood. We walked leisurely along. When we reached the house, Fred remarked that the shutters were closed, and that there was some probability of the young lady being out. I said nothing, but made a solemn compact with myself while we waited. "If she is not at home," I thought, "that vow shall be registered and kept; if she is, che sera sera."
Miss Helen was at home, the servant said. She reproached me for not having called in such a length of time, and wondered if the revelation made at our last meeting had not helped to keep me away. Then turning, to her cousin she said laughingly, "Mr. Moray was horrified the other day, to hear of my being a Catholic."
"The other day?" I answered. "It is fully three months ago, and I have not yet been able to reconcile my mind to the fact."
"It is a fact though, Ed," said Armitage; "and greatly as I deplored the calamity when it happened four years ago, I must confess that Helen has changed for the better in the interval. You see, she was most irrepressible, some time since—before her conversion, as she calls it—doing every thing by fits and starts, and holding every one under the severest of despotisms; but I actually believe this little devotion she has, this habit of confessing, has toned her down and made her the rational creature we see her. That's how you account for the change, isn't it, coz?"
"Fred, you are unconscionable. Mr. Moray knows you as well as I do, no doubt, and weighs your veracity proportionately. You don't admire Shelley, Mr. Moray?" interrogatively, as I turned over the pages of a richly bound edition of that author which lay upon a little table near me.
"No; and yet I do not look at him from the same point of view as you probably would. I think he was crazy. You, I suppose, would pass a more merciless judgment."
"Let us be charitable," she said, "and hope that he was insane. But unhappily his was a species of insanity of which there are but too many instances."
After that, the talk fell upon books generally. The hours slipped by, and eleven o'clock had struck before we took leave. Before I left her that night, I had thrown down the barriers crumbling so long; I had seen and recognized a true, womanly woman, and, all unknown to her, had accepted what I knew to be the inevitable.
After this I went often to the enchanted castle. My fairy princess was nearly always accessible, but so she was to the rest of the world as well. How could I hope to be the favored knight, when her smiles were bestowed on all so generously? She was invariably kind and cordial; sometimes slightly sarcastic and critical, but never moody or sad. I often wondered from what source she drew her abundant cheerfulness, and how she managed to preserve it.
Never by word or look had I intimated my own feelings toward her; something told me to linger at the gate of paradise, content to see the roses blooming without daring to venture in. I felt that a suspicion once aroused in her mind would change our relations completely; and I had not begun to hope.
As things stood, we grew to be excellent friends. Our views differed widely on many points, but religion was the only really sensitive topic. More than once I had noticed a look of pain in her face when I startled her with some of my materialistic views, and at last we tacitly avoided the subject altogether. While I admired her beautiful simplicity and faith, I could not understand then, as I do now, how any aspersion cast upon that faith could wound her as deeply as though it sought herself, and I had never wished to take it from her. In hopeful moments, few and far between, when I had dared to think of her as my wife, the thought of her religion and the absence of it in me had, strangely enough, never intruded itself upon me. Consequently, it was from no desire to weaken or alter her convictions in any particular that I became almost involuntarily instrumental in bringing matters to a crisis.
We had been reading French together, or, to speak more correctly, I had been reading it to her, one evening of every week, with the ostensible purpose of improving my pronunciation under her tutelage; for she spoke the language beautifully.
One day an old Parisian who lodged in the house with me, and who occasionally made my sitting-room the theatre of a homily on Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and their confrères, laid upon my table a copy of Renan's "grand succès."
"Read it," he said; "read it in the original; it loses by translation."
I promised to do so. That evening I took it with me to Miss Foster's. As I walked leisurely along, the thought struck me that my "teacher" might probably not admire the "grand succès;" but it only lingered a moment, and troubled me but little. "No harm in bringing it, any how—the style is good," I soliloquized, and rang the bell in a happier frame of mind than I had known for weeks. Fred usually joined us on French evenings, but to-night another engagement claimed him. Helen was sitting alone when I entered the parlor.
"Grandmamma has a headache this evening, and will not be down," she said apologetically.
I sat down, made a few trifling remarks, to which she responded, and then arose to bring the book we had been reading.
"Wait, I have something else to-night," I said, taking the volume from the table where I had placed it.
"What is it?" she asked, resuming her seat.
"Renan's book," I replied confidently. "I thought I would bring it with me. He has an excellent style—unique and polished. He is the last sensation, you know."
"I will not read it," she said in a low tone.
"I'll read and you will listen," I answered. "That is the usual arrangement, is it not?"
"I will not listen;" she replied, and I saw by the angry flush mantling her forehead that I had committed a grave error; that she misunderstood my motives and was vexed.
"Pardon me," I said. "We will not read it, if you so desire; but at the same time there can be no harm in informing one's self on opposite views from our own. This is the spirit in which I should read the book, not fearing that it would bias my mind either one way or the other. Can you not be as liberal?"
She left her seat and began fingering in a nervous way the ornaments that lay upon the mantel.
"I have no wish to hear my God and my religion railed and blasphemed at either at first or second hand," she said. "It would be none the less painful coming from the lips of one whom I had almost learned to call friend; but who has to-night in a very few words shown me my mistake. For my religion I have long been aware that you cherish an undisguised contempt; for myself I had hoped you entertained no contemptuous feeling. Surely, I have never given you reason for your action of this evening."
While she was speaking I had shaped my course. Precipitate as it might be, there was nothing left me now but a declaration of my real sentiments, unless I would forfeit her esteem for ever. Fully conscious of the disadvantages of time and circumstance as I was, and without any presumption of success, I then and there resolved to tell her the whole truth. It was but a hastening to the end.
"Stop one moment," I replied; "a word with you. You have wronged me by intimating that I purposed aught of disrespect to you or your religion by what I have unthinkingly done this evening. I could do neither; for I love you. How deeply, I, who have struggled with that love for months, alone can know; how entirely and unselfishly, you perhaps might learn, could you find it in your heart to let me show you; how vainly, my own heart tells me while I watch your face. Surprised you may be—I have no doubt you are; displeased too, but I take no blame to myself for that. An honest man dares lift his eyes to a noble woman; and whatever be my faults, and they are many; wherever lie my errors, and they are thickly sown, I still can call myself an honest man."
She moved further away from where I stood, and once or twice, while I was speaking, made a movement as though to interrupt me. As I uttered the last words, I saw her eyes flash, and a half sarcastic smile wreathe itself about her lips.
"You call yourself an honest man," she said; "an honest man! What is your code, and who the lawgiver? Is it honest to leave untilled and brier-strewn the soil that has been given you in trust for an endless harvest-time; to waste the talents that have been bestowed on you with lavish hand; to spend days and months and years in pleasant idleness, as you have done, and as you do? Is it honest to wrap yourself in a mantle of false and hollow cynicism, lest your better nature might have opportunity to assert its capacities and prove its possibilities; to scoff at all creeds and professions of religion as so many shams and superstitions, because from the nature of the life you lead your own ideal must be both hypocrisy and sham? I am only a woman, and such men as you place but little confidence in a woman's judgment and far-sightedness. But I have read you deeper than you suppose. Evening after evening, while you sat here reading, talking to me, I have been studying you. I have recognized emotions that your pride would call weaknesses; thoughts that your worldly wisdom seeks to cover with a jest or smile; great capabilities of sacrifice that your every-day exterior conceals under dilettante tastes and careless ways. I have seen that in your eye, heard that in your voice, which has made me marvel how a soul like yours could be content with husks and bitterness. For you, yourself, I could have sympathy; but I scorn the evil spirit that is in you."
I had loved her before; but as she stood there taxing me with that to the consciousness of which I was but just awakening, my love gave one great bound and seemed to sit enthroned high above sight or sound of human passion, even while, with every word she uttered, the knowledge of its vain endeavor fastened itself more firmly upon me. I was about to speak, but she interrupted me, and the words came more slowly now, and more kindly.
"I may have spoken harshly," she said. "Indeed, I am sure I have. But it was of yourself with regard to yourself, and in what I said there was no thought of my own connection with the subject. As to that part of it, I can have none; but I think, however much or little a woman esteems a man, there must be something especially tender in her dealings with one who has made her the offering of his love. You will believe me, then, when I say that I am pained, deeply pained, that you should have given yours to me, or deemed its acknowledgment necessary. Words are idle and superfluous here. I can and do appreciate it; I can be, I am your friend. Forgive me if I have been harsh; in calmer moments you will come to think of me as one whose words were quick and too impulsive, but who had your interest at heart. Now let me go. Do not speak further, I beg of you; it would only pain us both."
"But a few words," I said; "a very few. You have aimed surely, and struck deep. I do not blame you for my mistake, nor for that which you term harshness. I cannot, since I recognize its truth. The difference between you and most women is, that you are brave enough to speak that truth; for you are too free from vanity or falsity of any kind, I know, ever to speak other than your earnest thoughts. I may have scoffed at creeds; I have never scoffed at God; give me at least this merit. I have dreamed a dream—we all do at some time, I believe; may yours be happy realizations always. Good-by."
With a sudden glare the firelight flashed upon the wall, and the red glow shone full upon her face, paler than usual, but calm. There were tears in her eyes as they met mine; but what woman with a woman's heart could be unmoved at such a moment?
"Good-by," she answered, almost inaudibly. I paused to hear no more; the next moment the door closed behind me, and I was in the street.