"They're quite right," he returned, at length. "Such ideas can lead to nothing but mischief."
"Surely that is the orthodox theologian's usual objection to scientific fact."
The Master lifted his head and looked at his rebel disciple. For although he was an officiating clergyman, he and the orthodox theologians were at daggers drawn.
"Views, statements of this kind are not knowledge," he said, after a while, and continued moving uneasily about without looking at Stewart.
Stewart did not reply; it seemed useless to go on talking. He recognized that the Master's attitude was what his own had been before the iron of fact had entered into his flesh and spirit. Yet somehow he had hoped that his Master's large and keen perception of human things, his judicial mind, would have lifted him above the prejudices of Reason. He sat there cheerless, his college cap between his knees; and was seeking the moment to say good-bye when the Master suddenly sat down beside him. To any one looking in at the window, the two seated side by side on the hard sofa would have seemed an oddly assorted pair. Stewart's length of frame, the raven black of his hair and beard, the marble pallor of his delicate features, made the little Master look smaller, pinker, plumper than usual; but his face, radiating wisdom and affection, was more than beautiful in the eyes of his old disciple.
"I took a great interest in your marriage, Stewart," he said. "I always think of you and your wife as two very dear young friends. You must let me speak to you now as a father might—and probably wouldn't."
Stewart assented with affectionate reverence.
"You are young, but your wife is much younger. A man marries a girl many years younger than himself and has not the same feeling of responsibility towards her as he would have towards a young man of the same age. He seldom considers her youth. Yet his responsibility is much greater towards her than towards a pupil of the same age; she needs more help, she will accept more in forming her mind and character. Now you have married a young lady who is very intelligent, very pleasing; but she has a delicate nervous system, and it has been overstrained. She lets this peculiar weakness of her memory get on her nerves. You have nerves yourself, you have imagination, and you let your mind give way to hers. That's not wise; it's not right. Let her feel that these moods do not affect you; be sure that they do not. What matters mainly is that your mutual love should remain unchanged. When your wife finds that her happiness, her real happiness, is quite untouched by these changes of mood, she will leave off attributing an exaggerated importance to them. So will you, Stewart. You will see them in their right proportion; you will see the great evil and danger of giving way to imagination, of accepting perverse psychological hypotheses as guides in life. Reason and Religion are the only true guides."
The Master did not utter these sayings continuously. There were pauses which Stewart might have filled, but he did not offer to do so. The spell of his old teacher's mind and aspect was upon him. His spirit was, as it were, bowed before his Master in a kind of humility.
He walked home with a lightened heart, feeling somewhat as a devout sinner might feel to whom his confessor had given absolution. For about twenty-four hours this mood lasted. Then he confronted the fact that the beloved Master's advice had been largely, though not altogether, futile, because it had not dealt with actuality. And Ian Stewart saw himself to be moving in the plain, ordinary world of men as solitary as a ghost which vainly endeavors to make its presence and its needs recognized.