“That’s in the Bible,” he murmured, as if he thought no better of the Sacred Word for giving a place to such frivolities.
“Fred,” I said, “tell me what you would be at? Would you have all women slain like the babes of Bethlehem, or must we have you made into a monk and locked in a cell with only a book and an inkhorn and a quill?”
“Neither,” he said; “but—oh, man, there is something awesome, coarse-grained and common in the way the like o’ you speak about women.”
“Aye, do ye tell me that?” I said to try him; “coarse, maybe, as our father Adam, when he tilled his garden, and common as the poor humanity that is yet of his flesh and blood.”
“There ye go!” he cried; “I knew well that my words were thrown away.”
“Speak up, Mr. Lily Fingers,” I answered; “let us hear what sort of a world you would have without love—and men and women to make it.”
“It would be like that in which dwell the angels of heaven—where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage!”
“Well,” said I, “speaking for myself and most lads like me, we will mend our ways before we get a chance of trying that far country! And in the meantime here we are—our feet in the mire, and our heads not so very near the sky. Talk of angels—where are we to get their society? And the likest to them that I have ever heard tell of are just women—good women, innocent lasses, beginning to feel the stir of their own power—and all the better and the stronger are they for that! Oh, Fred, I saw an angel within the last half-hour! There she stood, her eyes shooting witcheries, poised for flight like a butterfly, the dimples playing hide-and-seek on her face, and her whole soul and body saying to the sons of men, ‘Come, seek me on your knees—you know you can’t help loving me! It is very good for you to worship me!”
“And you are not ashamed, Duncan MacAlpine, to speak such words?”
“Oh, ye Lallan Scot!” I cried; “ye Westland stot! Is there no hot blood of the Celt in you? What brought you to Galloway, where the Celt sits on every hill-top, names every farm and lea-rig, and lights his Baal-fires about the standing stones on St. John’s Eve?”