Chapter 6

Miss Marsden, and can better express my thoughts than hide them. You know you are very beautiful. Why should I not say so as well as involuntarily express the fact in my face as I did a moment ago, and as every one does, I suppose, who meets you. There is nothing brought to your attention more often, and more pressed upon you. It must be so. Does not your beauty cause you much anxiety?"

"What a funny question!" laughed Lottie. "Your frankness is certainly as transparent as those snow-crystals there. I cannot say that it does. Why should it, even granting that it exists independently of your disordered imagination?"

"It exposes you to a temptation very hard to resist. Such beauty as yours should be but the reflex of character. I once saw, in an art gallery of New York, a marble face so white, pure, and sweet, that it has ever remained in my memory as an emblem of spiritual beauty. Suppose every one that came in should touch that face, and some with coarse and grimy fingers, what a smutched and tawdry look it would soon have. You cannot help the admiring glances, flattering words, and the homage that ever waits on beauty, any more than the marble face the soiling touch of any Vandal hand; but you can prevent your soul from being stained and smirched with vanity and pride."

"I never had any one to talk to me in this way," said Lottie, looking demurely down. "Perhaps I should have been better if I had. I fear you think me very vain and conceited."

"I should think it very strange if you were not somewhat vain. And yet you do not act as if you were."

"Supposing I am vain. What difference does it make, if no one knows it?" she asked abruptly.

"There are two who always will know it."

"Who?"

"God and yourself. And by and by all masks must be dropped, and all the world see us as we are."

"Do you believe that?" she asked, a little startled at the thought.

"I know it," he replied, in a tone of quiet confidence that carries more conviction than loud assertion. "Moreover, your beauty involves a heavy burden of responsibility."

"Really, Mr. Hemstead, if you keep on you will prove beauty a great misfortune, whether I possess it or not."

"Far from it."

"Granting for sake of argument your premise, how am I burdened with responsibility?"

"Would it not almost break your heart, if your honorable father were misappropriating money intrusted to his care?"

"Don't suggest such a thing."

"Only for the sake of illustration. Suppose he had the qualities and position which led a great many to place their means in his hands; would that not increase his responsibility?"

"Yes, if he accepted such trusts."

"Are there not more valuable possessions than dollars, stocks, and bonds? Every one is more or less fascinated, drawn, and won by beauty, and to the beautiful the most sacred thoughts and feelings of the heart are continually intrusted. History and biography show that beautiful women, if true, gentle, and unselfish, have great power with their own sex, and almost unbounded influence over men. Your power, therefore, is subtle, penetrating, and reaches the inner life, the very warp and woof of character. If a beautiful statue can ennoble and refine, a beautiful woman can accomplish infinitely more. She can be a constant inspiration, a suggestion of the perfect life beyond and an earnest of it. All power brings responsibility, even that which a man achieves or buys; but surely, if one receives Heaven's most exquisite gifts, bestowed as directly as this marvellous beauty without, and so is made pre-eminent in power and influence, she is under a double responsibility to use that power for good. That a woman can take the royal gift of her own beauty, a divine heritage, one of the most suggestive relics of Eden still left among us, and daily sacrifice it on the poorest and meanest of altars--her own vanity--is to me hard to understand. It is scarcely respectable heathenism. But to use her beauty as a lure is far worse. Do we condemn wreckers, who place false, misleading lights upon a dangerous coast? What is every grace of a coquette, but a false light, leading often to more sad and hopeless wreck?"

No man had ever told Lottie more plainly that she was beautiful, than Hemstead, and yet she disliked his compliments wofully. Her face fairly grew pale under his words. Had he learned of her plot? Had he read her thoughts, and been informed of her past life? Did quiet satire and denunciation lurk under this seeming frankness? She was for the moment perplexed and troubled. Worse still, he compelled her to see these things in a new light, and her conscience echoed his words.

But her first impulse was to learn whether he was speaking generally, or pointedly at her; so she asked, in some little trepidation, "Has any naughty girl tried to treat you badly, that you speak so strongly?"

He laughed outright at this question. "No one has had a chance," he said; "and I do not think there are many who would take it. Moreover, I imagine that one of your proud belles would not even condescend to flirt with a poor awkward fellow like me. But I am not a croaking philosopher, and look on the bright side of the world. It has always treated me quite as well as I deserved. I often think the world is not so bad as described, and that it would be better, if it had a chance."

"Have you seen much of it, Mr. Hemstead?"

"I cannot say that I have. I have read and thought about it far more than I have seen. On account of my limited means and student life, my excursions have been few and far between. I have already proved to you what an awkward stranger I am to society. But in thought and fancy I have been a great rambler, and like to picture to myself all kinds of scenes, past and present, and to analyze all kinds of character."

"I hope you won't analyze mine," she said, looking at him rather distrustfully. "I should not like to be dissected before I was dead."

"I wish all were as able to endure analysis as yourself, Miss Marsden. In any case, you have no reason to fear a severe critic in me."

"Why not?"

"Because you have been so lenient towards me. I have received more kindness from you, a stranger, than from my own kindred."

"You are very grateful."

"Shakespeare declares ingratitude a 'marble-hearted fiend.'"

"You evidently are not 'marble-hearted.'"

"Though possibly a fiend. Thank you."

"I wish there were no worse to fear."

"You need not have occasion to fear any."

"Well, I can't say that I do very much. Perhaps it would be better for me if I did."

"Why so?"

"Then I should be more afraid to do wrong. Miss Parton cannot do wrong with any comfort at all."

"Well, that would be a queer religion which consisted only in being afraid of the devil and his imps."

"What is religion? I am foolish in asking such a question however, for I suppose it would take you a year to answer it, and they will all be down to breakfast in a few moments."

"O, no, I can answer it in a sentence. True religion is worshipping God in love and faith, and obeying Him."

"Is that all?" exclaimed Lottie, in unfeigned astonishment.

"That is a great deal."

"Perhaps it is. You theologians have a way of preaching awfully long and difficult sermons from simple texts. But I never got as simple an idea of religion as that from our minister."

"I fear you think I have been preaching for the last half-hour. Perhaps I can best apologize for my long homilies this morning by explaining. When an artist is in his best mood, he wishes to be at his easel. The same is true of every one who does something con amore. When I saw the transfigured world this morning, it was like a glimpse into heaven, and--"

"And a naughty little sinner came in just at that moment, and got the benefit of your mood," interrupted Lottie. "Well, I have listened to your sermon and understand it, and that is more than I can say of many I have heard. It certainly was pointed, and seemed pointed at me, and I have heard it said that it is proof of a good sermon for each one to go away feeling that he has been distinctly preached at. But permit me as a friend, Mr. Hemstead, to suggest that this will not answer in our day. I fear, from my little foretaste, that people will not be able to sit comfortably under your homilies, and unless you intend to preach out in the back-woods, you must modify your style."

"That is where I do intend to preach. At least upon the frontiers of our great West."

"O, how dismal!" she exclaimed. "And can you, a young, and I suppose an ambitious man, look forward to being buried alive, as it were, in those remote regions?"

"I assure you I do not propose to be buried alive at the West, or spiritually smothered, as you hinted, in a fashionable church at the East. I think the extreme West, where states and society are forming with such marvellous rapidity, is just the place for a young, and certainly for an ambitious man. Is it nothing to have a part in founding and shaping an empire?"

"You admit that you are ambitious, then."

"Yes."

"Is that right?"

"I think so."

"Our minister inveighs against ambition, as if it were one of the deadly sins."

"He means the ambition that is all for self. That is as wrong and contemptible as the beauty that is miserable without a looking-glass. An ardent desire to obtain my Divine Master's approval, and to be worthy of it--to be successful in serving a noble cause--cannot be wrong."

She looked at his earnest face and eyes, that seemed to glow with hidden fire, almost wistfully; and said with a tinge of sadness, "You will feel very differently I fear, twenty years hence. Enthusiasm is a rare thing in the city, and I imagine it is soon quenched everywhere."

"So it is; it needs constant rekindling."

Just then Mrs. Marchmont and Mr. Dimmerly appeared, and soon after they all sat down to a late breakfast.