Playing With Fire Part 7

"Listen to me, Ian. You say that now you have perfect Faith. When you have gone through those books, your Faith will be in rags and tatters."

"I do not fear. There is no danger but in our own cowardice. We are ourselves the rocks of our own doubt. The danger lies in fearing danger.

I made a promise to the dead. I cannot break it, Jessy. Such a promise is a finality."

"You made that promise by the special instigation of the devil, Ian."

"Jessy, you never read these books. The men who wrote them were morally good men, seekers after truth and righteousness. I believe so much of them."

"You are partly right. I have never read the books, but I have read long, elaborate, wearisome reviews of them. That was enough, and more than enough, for me."

"Why did you read such reviews?"

"Because I wanted to know whether Donald and Marion should be warned against them. I think they ought to be warned."

"You can leave that duty to me. If I think it necessary, they will receive the proper instruction."

"I wonder the government allows such books to be published. They will ruin the coming generations. The Romans had not much of a religion, but when they began to doubt it they went madly into vice and atheism and national ruin. If men have such wicked thoughts as are in the books you are going to read, they ought to keep them in their own hearts. If they could not do that, I would put them in prison, and take pen and ink from them."

"Do be more charitable, Jessy. The Bible teaches----"

"It teaches us to let such destructive books alone. G.o.d himself specially warned the Israelites not even 'to make inquiry' about the religion of the Canaanites; they did it, of course, and you know the result as well as I do. And men these days are so set up with their long dominion and the varieties of strange knowledge they have accepted that they do not require any Eve to pull this apple of disobedience and doubt of G.o.d. They manage it themselves."

"Jessy Caird, you have no right to impute evil to either men or books that are only known to you through some critic's opinion." Then he rose and, standing with uplifted eyes, said with singular emotion:

"'O G.o.d, that men would see a little clearer!

Or judge less harshly where they cannot see.

O G.o.d, that men would draw a little nearer To one another! They'd be nearer Thee!'"

With these words he left Jessy and went to the room where the fateful books were waiting for him.

And Jessy could say no more. But she threw her knitting out of her hands and let them drop hopelessly into her lap.

"When men stop reasoning, they quote poetry," she mused angrily. "I never heard Ian quote a whole verse before, unless he was in the pulpit; well, I have warned him, and now I can only hope he will feel that sense of utter desolation in his soul that I always felt after a few sentences of Schopenhauer or Darwin. There! I hear him opening the box. Now begin the to-and-fro paths of Doubt and Persuasion, days full of anxious brooding, nights full of shadowy chasms, that nothing but Faith can bridge. But Ian has Faith--at least in his creed--and there are spiritual influences that no one can predict or resist, for the way of the Spirit is the way of the wind." Motionless she sat for a few minutes, and then rose hastily, saying softly as she did so, "Wherever is Marion? I wonder she was not seeking me ere this."

She found Marion in her own room. She was kneeling at the open window with her elbows on the broad stone sill, and her cheeks were almost touching the sweet little mignonettes. A tender smile brooded over her face, a tender light was in her eyes, she was lost in a new, ineffable sense of something full of delight--some pleasure strangely personal that was hers and hers alone.

"I am lonely without you, Marion. Why did you run away from me?"

"I thought Father was with you and, perhaps, saying something I would not like--about our visitors."

"What could he say that was not pleasant? I am sure they were everything that any reasonable person could expect."

"You know what Father told you about Lord Cramer. I have now seen him. I would not believe any wrong of him. I shall not listen to any wrong of him without protesting it; so I thought it best not to go into temptation."

"You did right."

"He is a beautiful young man--and how exquisite are his manners! How did he learn them?"

"He has always lived among people of the highest distinction, and they practice them naturally--or ought to do so."

"To you, to his stepmother, to Father, and to me he was equally polite.

He did not treat me indifferently because I have only the shy, half-formed manners of a school-girl. He paid you as much respect as he paid Lady Cramer, though you are old and beneath her in social rank, nor was he in the least subservient to Father because he is a famous minister. He was equally attentive and courteous to all."

"I will take leave to differ with you, Marion Macrae. I am not old. I am in the midway of my life, young in soul, mind and body, and I am nothing beneath Lady Cramer in rank. Keep that in your mind. And you are not a shy, untrained school-girl; you are a young, lovely woman, with the naturally fine manners that come from a good heart and proper education.

As for subservience to your father, I saw nothing of it from Lord Cramer, but Lady Cramer deferred to him in everything, and I wonder she has not turned his head round, and his heart inside out with her humility, and homage, and her downcast eyes."

"She is very pretty, Aunt."

"She is fairly beautiful. She has the witching ways of those golden-haired women, and all their flattering submissions. She can drop her blue eyes, and then lift them with a flash that would trouble any man's heart that had love or life left in it. And see how wisely and warily she dresses herself--the long, black, satin gown, with its white c.r.a.pe collar and cuffs, and the black and white satin ribbons so fresh and uncreased!"

"And the wave and curl of her lovely hair, under the small white lace bonnet! I thought, Aunt, she----"

"She ought not to have worn a white bonnet. It is too soon after her husband's death to wear a bit of white lace and a few white flowers on her head. She should have worn her widow's bonnet for two years, and it is wanting half a year at least of that term. But, this or that, she is a b.u.t.terfly of beauty and vanity, and I would not be astonished if she fell in love with your father. To most women he would be an extraordinarily attractive man."

"O Aunt Jessy, what an idea! That would be the most unlikely of things."

"For that very reason it is likely."

"Father never notices women except in a religious way--when they are in trouble, or want his advice about their souls."

"You can no more judge your father by his outside than you can judge a cocoanut. He has a volcanic soul--ordinarily the fire is low and quiet, but if it should become active it would be a dangerous thing to meddle with."

"Father may have an austere face, but he has a tender mouth; and, O Aunt, I have seen love leap into his shadowy eyes when I have met him at the door, or drawn my chair close to his side in the evening."

"Your father is a good man. He has a genius for divine things--but women are not reckoned in that cla.s.s."

"And I think Lord Cramer is a good man, though his genius may be for military things. He had the light of battle on his face this afternoon when he told us of that fight with the Afghans; and how sad was his expression when he described the burying of his company's colonel after it--the open grave in a cleft of hills dark with pines, the solemn dead march, the n.o.ble words spoken as they left their leader forever, and turned back to camp to the tender, homely strains of _Annie Laurie_. Oh, I could see and hear all. I have felt ever since as if I had been present."

"He appears to be a fine young fellow, though we must remember that men judge men better than women can; and it may be possible your father's opinion of Lord Richard Cramer has at least some truth in it."

"I do not believe it has. I think, also, that Lord Cramer is the handsomest man I ever saw. Just compare him with Allan Reid."

"Why are you speaking of Allan Reid?"

"Because Father thinks I will marry the creature."

"Will you do as your father wishes?"

"Once, I might have done so--perhaps. Not now. My eyes have been opened.

I have seen a man like Lord Richard Cramer, and I will marry no man of a meaner kind. How tall and straight and slender is his figure! How bold and manly his face! His gray eyes are full of quick, undaunted spirit, he is all nerve and fire, and I believe he could love as well as I am sure he can fight."

"You need not take love into the question. Richard Cramer will be compelled to marry a rich woman. Your father says he is bound both by honor and necessity to do so."

Marion buried her face in the mignonette, and did not answer; and Mrs.

Caird, after a few moments' silence, said:

"Be glad that your heart is your own, and do not give it away until it is asked for."

"As if I would be so foolish, Aunt! I stand by Lord Cramer because people tell lies about him. I always stand by anyone wronged. I would even stand by Allan Reid, if I knew he was slandered without just cause."