"This whole subject of infancy's perceptions, and opinions is curious," he observed presently. "What a world it would be, if it were exactly as these little people see it! Yes, and what a world it would be, if it were as we grown people see it in our different moods of depression, exhilaration, vanity, spite, and folly! I suppose that only Deity sees it truly."
In this kind of life the spring grew into summer, the summer sobered into autumn, and the autumn began to grow hoary with winter. Eight months of paternal affection received, and maternal cares bestowed had decided that Lillie should neither die of her troubles nor suffer a life-long blighting of the soul. In bloom she was what she used to be; in expression alone had she suffered a change. Sometimes sudden flashes of profoundly felt pain troubled her eyes, as she thought of her venture of love and its great shipwreck. She had not the slightest feeling of anger toward her husband; she could not be angry with the buried father of her child. But she felt, and sometimes reproached herself for it, that his crime had made her grieve less over his death, just as his death had led her to pardon his crime. She often prayed for him, not that she believed in Purgatory and its deliverance, but rather because the act soothed painful yearnings which she could not dispel by reason alone. Her devotional tendencies had been much increased by her troubles. In fact, she was far more religious than some of the straiter New Bostonians were able to believe when they knew that she played whist, and noted how tastefully she was dressed, and how charmingly graceful she was in social intercourse. She never went to sleep without reading a chapter in the Bible, and praying for her child, her father, and herself. It is possible that she may have forgotten the heathen, the Jews, and the negroes. Well, she had not been educated to think much of far away people, but rather to interest herself in such as were near to her, and could be made daily happy or unhappy by her conduct. She almost offended Mrs. Whitewood by admitting that she loved Ravvie a thousand times more than the ten tribes, or, as Mrs. W. called them, the wandering sheep of the house of Israel. Nor could this excellent lady enlist her interest in favor of the doctrine of election, owing perhaps to the adverse remarks of Doctor Ravenel.
"My dear madame," he said, "let us try to be good, repent of our short-comings, trust in the atonement, and leave such niceties to those whose business it is to discuss them. Doctrines are no more religion than geological bird-tracks are animated nature. Doctrines are the footprints of piety. You can learn by them where devout-minded men have trod in their searchings after the truth. But they are not in themselves religion, and will not save souls."
"But think of the great and good men who have made these doctrines the study and guide of their lives," said Mrs. Whitewood. "Think of our Puritan forefathers."
"I do," answered the Doctor. "I think highly of them. They have my profoundest respect. We are still moving under the impetus which they gave to humanity. Dead as they are, they govern this continent. At the same time they must have been disagreeable to live with. Their doctrines made them hard in thought and manner. When I think of their grimness, uncharity, inclemency, I am tempted to say that the sinners of those days were the salt of the earth. Of course, Mrs. Whitewood, it is only a temptation. I don't succumb to it. But now, as to these doctrines, as to merely dogmatic religion, it reminds me of a story. This story goes (I don't believe it), that an ingenious man, having found that a bandage drawn tight around the waist will abate the pangs of hunger, set up a boarding-house on the idea. At breakfast the waiters strapped up each boarder with a stout surcingle. At dinner the waistbelts were drawn up another hole—or two, if you were hungry. At tea there was another pull on the buckle. The story proceeds that one dyspeptic old bachelor found himself much better by the evening of the second day, but that the other guests rebelled and left the house in a body, denouncing the gentlemanly proprietor as a humbug. Now some of our ethical purveyors remind me of this inventor. They put nothing into you; they give you no sustaining food. They simply bind your soul, and now and then take up a hole in your moral waistbelt."
It is pretty certain that Lillie even felt more interest in Captain Colburne than in the vanished Hebrews. It will be remembered that she has never ceased to like him since she met him, more than three years ago, in this same New Boston House, which is now in some faint degree fragrant to her with his memory. Here commenced that loyal affection which has followed her through her love for another, her marriage, and her maternity, and which has risked life to save her from captivity. She would be ungrateful if she did not prefer him in her heart to every other human being except her father and Ravvie. Next to her intercourse with this same parent and child, Colburne's letters were her chief social pleasures. They were invariably directed to the Doctor; but if she got at them first, she had no hesitation about opening them. It was her business and pleasure also to file them for preservation.
"If he never returns," she said, "I will write his life. But how horrible to hear of him killed!"
"In five months more his three years will be up," observed the Doctor. "I hope that he will be protected through the perils that remain."
"I hope so," echoed Lillie. "I wonder if the war will last long enough to need Ravvie. He shall never go to West Point."
"He is pretty certain not to go for the next fourteen years," said Ravenel, smiling at this long look ahead.