“Ask the world, Pierre”—said Mrs. Glendinning warmly—“and ask your own heart.”
“My own heart? I will, Madam”—said Pierre, now looking up steadfastly; “but what do you think, Mr. Falsgrave?” letting his glance drop again—“should the one shun the other; should the one refuse his highest sympathy and perfect love for the other, especially if that other be deserted by all the rest of the world? What think you would have been our blessed Savior’s thoughts on such a matter? And what was that he so mildly said to the adulteress?”
A swift color passed over the clergyman’s countenance, suffusing even his expanded brow; he slightly moved in his chair, and looked uncertainly from Pierre to his mother. He seemed as a shrewd, benevolent-minded man, placed between opposite opinions—merely opinions—who, with a full, and doubly-differing persuasion in himself, still refrains from uttering it, because of an irresistible dislike to manifesting an absolute dissent from the honest convictions of any person, whom he both socially and morally esteems.
“Well, what do you reply to my son?”—said Mrs. Glendinning at last.
“Madam and sir”—said the clergyman, now regaining his entire self-possession. “It is one of the social disadvantages which we of the pulpit labor under, that we are supposed to know more of the moral obligations of humanity than other people. And it is a still more serious disadvantage to the world, that our unconsidered, conversational opinions on the most complex problems of ethics, are too apt to be considered authoritative, as indirectly proceeding from the church itself. Now, nothing can be more erroneous than such notions; and nothing so embarrasses me, and deprives me of that entire serenity, which is indispensable to the delivery of a careful opinion on moral subjects, than when sudden questions of this sort are put to me in company. Pardon this long preamble, for I have little more to say. It is not every question, however direct, Mr. Glendinning, which can be conscientiously answered with a yes or no. Millions of circumstances modify all moral questions; so that though conscience may possibly dictate freely in any known special case; yet, by one universal maxim, to embrace all moral contingencies,—this is not only impossible, but the attempt, to me, seems foolish.”
At this instant, the surplice-like napkin dropped from the clergyman’s bosom, showing a minute but exquisitely cut cameo brooch, representing the allegorical union of the serpent and dove. It had been the gift of an appreciative friend, and was sometimes worn on secular occasions like the present.
“I agree with you, sir”—said Pierre, bowing. “I fully agree with you. And now, madam, let us talk of something else.”
“You madam me very punctiliously this morning, Mr. Glendinning”—said his mother, half-bitterly smiling, and half-openly offended, but still more surprised at Pierre’s frigid demeanor.
“‘Honor thy father and mother;’” said Pierre—“both father and mother,” he unconsciously added. “And now that it strikes me, Mr. Falsgrave, and now that we have become so strangely polemical this morning, let me say, that as that command is justly said to be the only one with a promise, so it seems to be without any contingency in the application. It would seem—would it not, sir?—that the most deceitful and hypocritical of fathers should be equally honored by the son, as the purest.”
“So it would certainly seem, according to the strict letter of the Decalogue—certainly.”