And now a great fear that had long lain dormant in Mrs. Thorpe's heart sprang into life. What reason had she to believe that her husband would be spared this fatality, this mysterious thing that had transmitted itself from one generation to another, and was free to lay its hand on its victims as it chose; sparing where its fickle fancy dictated, or clutching its death fingers into the heart, and refusing to relax its hold until the lifeless body lay before it, if so its ghoulish will desired? And no man could say it nay! Brooking no restraint, gaunt, mocking, stalking abroad at noonday, in the land which the Lord God had created!
The hot restlessness of heart which never wholly left her now flamed up and burned, and caused her to writhe as one in mortal pain. Questions of the gravest importance fraught with meanings she could not measure nor weigh confronted her wherever she turned. And the depth of her ignorance--humanity's ignorance--concerning the most vital things of life, seemed to her deplorable and reprehensible.
From sheer necessity she dropped the greater burden of her work. And always fond of reading, she now read incessantly and without discrimination whatever work she could find bearing on that one great problem, Life, and that other all-absorbing question, Religion. And over and over, and again and again, she pondered the meaning of it all. What does it mean--this life of man, with all of its pleasures and pain, its stress and strife, its joy and sorrow, its good and evil--for what is it given? She had been taught to believe that it is a preparatory state, a test or trial to ascertain how many are deserving of eternal bliss hereafter. And although she struggled against it and refused to look upon it, a picture persisted in painting itself upon her mental vision. This was the picture of a father who placed his children, the weak and the strong together, in an open field, and compelled them to till the soil and to dig and delve in the ground. And at times he sent punishment upon them, torment and torture and physical pain; while they, the children, toiled on in blind and stupid ignorance, never knowing what it was that had caused the father's wrath to descend upon them. And the father sat calmly at a safe distance and stoically observed their conduct. At the end of a certain period he intended to reward those who had been very good and patient, and very submissive to his will, with a beautiful home, while the others, those who had rebelled or complained, or fallen by the wayside, he would drive into another field and inflict punishment yet more dire upon them.
She never fully consented to look upon this picture, and she tried always to blot it from her vision, to erase and destroy it, and yet as often as she tried to do this she was horrified to find that by some strange machination of her mind she was condemning, repudiating the whole of creation, the scheme of the universe.
Her purpose in life was too honest, too sincere, her desires too pure to admit of her taking any halfway ground on these questions that confused and perplexed her. Her reading and research led her into many strange and unfrequented byways--hazardous, she thought them sometimes, black with peril--destruction, perhaps. And yet she had come to the place where she must know--she for herself must know the truth. And while with a trembling hand she shattered her old beliefs--graven images of doctrine--she found nothing to take their place. The sincerity of her life was crowding her off her old footing--but where? Over a precipice? She felt it to be so, and then--what then? There were days when her mind refused to act, when her mental faculties were in a state of paralysis. Sometimes she fell into the old trick of her childhood, day dreaming.
At the close of one painful, troubled day she sat before her open fire, her head against a pillow at the back of her chair. Her eyes were upon the fire at her feet. The flames leaped fitfully from time to time, and again fluttered among the embers. Slowly the gulf of the centuries was bridged and she witnessed the creation of the first man--no great task it appeared, for the dust of the earth furnished sufficient material. In our human wisdom, finite though it is, we do not permit our children to use edged tools--her eyes were on the red embers at her feet, and she saw, glowing there, the thing which infinite wisdom gave to man; that which was at once his glory and his undoing, a two-edged sword, deadly keen--good and evil. It developed that this keen edged sword was hardly the thing with which to prune and keep in order the luxurious garden set apart for man on one corner of the footstool.
The unselfishness of Woman dates back to the Garden. No sooner had Eve broken open the luscious apple and tasted its flavor than she offered to divide it. And it was not within the nature of man to refuse so dainty a morsel from a fair hand.
Then man began to wander over the face of the earth, footsore and sinstained, and in due course of time came the great Sacrifice--the spilling of blood--the Golgotha.
The smouldering fire shot into tiny tongues of flame and licked the stones on the hearth--and yet what has the great Sacrifice accomplished? Wherein is the efficacy? Hoping, fearing, faithless--ignorant, suffering, despairing--this is Life. Men and women parade before us and flaunt to the world that they are saved--saved from what? Or for what? The shame and moral degradation, the pain and the anguish date back to the Garden. Christ came to check it, but wherein are we better? The poison is in our blood and the canker in our hearts; the flesh rots from the bones and the soul reeks in iniquity; the senses long for the fleshpots of Egypt, and with one accord we gather about the board, at the feast of Belshazzer!
The flames died down, and the embers burned with a dull glow. Now a hush fell over the room and the stillness of the place folded itself about the woman motionless in her chair. The minutes slipped by and time flowed on without a break or ripple to mark its passing. The great calm stillness! Not only did it fill the room and lay like a garment about the dreamer, it filled her heart and entered her soul, and as a mother broods over her child and stills its restless wailing, it brooded over her and stilled all her tumultuous, unholy pain, and the spell of her turbulent, unwarrantable dream held her no longer.