It did not settle Tabitha, whose question touched the weak spot in Hodge's assertion. "Where'd he see the record?" she asked.
"Tabitha," remonstrated Miss Achsah with evident sincerity, "sometimes I doubt your election. The audacity of setting up your opinion——"
Tabitha was human and venerated print. She was a little frightened at her own temerity, and Miss Claghorn's seriousness did not tend to reassure her. "There's Brigston," she said weakly.
"Yes; and there's 'Greenland's Icy Mountains,' and 'India's Coral Strand,'" answered the lady pertinently, and closing the book and the discussion.
But, if closed at the White House, it raged furiously in the theological world. Until recently the permanent abode of Socrates had been as well known as that of Satan. No decree, whether of Roman or Protestant Pope, had been needed to establish a fact settled to the satisfaction of all (except, perhaps, to that of the Athenian sage) by the Eternal Decree of Omnipotence. It was reserved for a deluded doctor of the rival Seminary of Brigston to promulgate doubts of a self-evident truth. Such an affront to Westminster and the immutable justice of God was not to be borne in silence by Hampton.
A storm of unexampled fury burst from theological clouds, and Leonard, sniffing the odor of battle, joyously saw that his day had dawned. Into the fray he plunged, a gallant knight armed with the sword of orthodoxy, battling in the name of God and by the lurid light of hell, in order that the music of the chorus of the anguish of the damned might still arise, a dulcet melody, to heaven.
And while the din of the holy war filled the air, Natalie welcomed a little babe, the light of whose clear blue eyes melted her soul in tenderness. To look into their celestial purity was to see heaven's glory reflected in the azure depths. The deeper springs of tenderness, closed to the rude touch of Leonard's passion, were opened, and love undefiled gushed forth in a stream of unspeakable gladness. Her health remained delicate, and she was long confined to the house, but, aside from a pleasant languor, being physically at ease, she found in the care of the infant sufficient occupation. She was glad that she could be much alone with the boy, and held many and sweet communings with that soul she had discovered in his eyes. She never wearied of reading the mystery of those clear depths and, always connecting the child with heaven, in her simple belief, imagining the newcomer as lately from that blissful region, she built upon her fancies a system of theology which would have startled and confounded the Hampton Matrons. And, as before, in sight of the grandeur of God upon the waters, Leonard's lower self had been humbled, so now, the beauty of a pure soul, all its glory set forth in motherhood, chastened his earthly nature, and he bowed with the reverence of simple souls to saints.
Leonard's creed was, as is the case with creeds, a matter apart from his life; wherefore there was nothing strange in the fact that he could leave the presence of the two pure creatures, and retiring to his study, damn countless souls to hell in essays of exceeding force and brilliancy. Young as he was, all Hampton gloried in these labors whereby Brigston was smitten and abashed. There were champions more learned, being older; but, being older, their pens were encumbered with caution and hampered by the knowledge that pitfalls and traps lurk in the dark thickets of theological controversy. But Leonard had the daring of youth. Logic was logic, and truth not for a day, but eternal. Truth led to the Westminster Confession, which damns the great majority, Socrates included. To quibble with the plain meaning of plain words would be to follow the heretical Brigstonian, to deny the inspiration of Scripture, to be a traitor to his party and his creed. If the same decree which damned Socrates consigned the great majority of his own friends and acquaintances to the same everlasting misery, it couldn't be helped. And, in fact, there was no reason why Leonard should shrink from that which thousands of men and women profess to believe, yet marry and bring forth children doomed, the while eating dinner in content.
Echoes of the merry war reached Natalie, but her curiosity was but faintly stirred. She saw that Leonard avoided the topic when alone with her, and was now content to learn nothing from her husband; seeing in her child her best teacher in heavenly lore. Her exhibition of maternal love extorted some disapproving comment; Mrs. Joe called it "uncanny," Tabitha said she was a queer mother, Miss Claghorn disapprovingly likened her adoration to Romanism—"Idolatry," she said to Tabitha.
"Yet," replied Tabitha, "she hardly ever hugs or kisses him. She just looks at him, and if you catch her at it she passes it off."