CHAPTER XXI.

PROGRESS AGAIN.

The estates in Yorkshire were indeed in need of the master's eye. One of the clerks had absconded with a considerable sum of money; and this touched Mr. Godfrey nearly: while Hester was more affected by the discovery that the insidious doctrines of 'free love' were making terrible inroads on the morality of the young people. She was the more affected as she felt a natural repugnance to approach the subject. She found the people legislating for themselves, and systematizing divorce in what they deemed a manner consonant to nature. She was not prepared for this development, and drew back in disgust. "Is there, then, no remedy for this?" she asked of her father. "None but to legalize it, I believe," he replied. "You know nothing of these things, child, and had better not meddle with them. Legalizing divorce must take place sooner or later, from causes you do not understand; nay, I do not think the matter will stop there. As people become enlightened, and live more according to the laws of nature, polygamy must be legalized too; [Footnote 174] it is the only way to prevent disorder. In fact, but for the prejudice created by religion, it would have been done long since in theory as it has ever been done in practice!"

[Footnote 174: This plea is now used by intelligent men, non-Mormonites, to justify the existence of legalized polygamy in an American State. It is gravely asserted that only in Mormondom can the moral laws be enforced; that the practice in other states is the same without the sanction of the law, and that the absence of that sanction creates the disorders and night brawls of our streets. Order reigns in Utah!]

"Are you serious?"

"Perfectly so!"

"Then there must be something wrong, absolutely wrong. I can never be brought to believe polygamy necessary; that must enslave a woman, and I must protest against it."

"Protest as you will you will find nature too strong for your theory. You have been so peculiarly brought up, Hester, by your poor mother, that you know nothing, absolutely nothing, of the world's necessities, and I begin to wish I had never let your eyes become unsealed. You are a privileged one, and belonging to a privileged class; the majority of the world are not so protected. But this is not a subject for you; shut your eyes to these matters, and attended to the spread of intelligence."

But it is not easy to shut one's eyes when once they have been opened. Hester was stupefied. This came as a climax to the sorrow already arising from her mother's illness, from her remorse in having partly occasioned it. The woman's heart within her was beginning to make itself felt. The occupations of the Yorkshire estate grew trite and dull, until she had found a remedy for this grievance, a principal to propose, a power with which to act. Mr. Godfrey was also gloomy from his pecuniary loss through the embezzlement of the clerk, and matters were assuming a very unpleasant appearance.

{611}

M. de Villeneuve called to pay them a parting visit, the illness of his father called him to America.

"Shall you return to Europe?" said Mr. Godfrey.

"Yes; as soon as I can get away, I must return to take care of my ward; and if I can possibly find a location for her order, take her to America with me."

"Your ward? Her order?"

"Did you not know that Euphrasie de Meglior is my ward, that her father increased her to my care the night before he died? That which has kept me in Europe so long as been the hope of assisting her to regain her estates and to establish yourself. Fortunately for my peace of mind, I have been able partially to succeed in both. A part, though but a small part, of the estate has been rescued; and Madame de Meglior is already returned to France. Euphrasie thinks herself still more fortunate. Four of the ladies of the continent where she was educated have found shelter in England. They have met, and by the age of friends have wherewith to establish themselves. They have taken a house at------, about ten miles from this, and have already commenced community life, two Euphrasie's great content."

"And Euphrasie did not return with her mother to France?"

"No. She resigned her right to the estate during madame's life."

"And what will she live on?"

"The poor Clares support themselves by their work."

Hester looked surprised, almost shocked. M. de Villeneuve continued:

"During my absence I have deputed warm friends to look after them, and, as I said, my object is finally to transplant them to America. But I must not forget to inquire after Mrs. Godfrey, of whose health I hear such sad accounts. I do not wonder to perceive you are dejected, every one must sympathize in your anxiety. But tell me, how was it that Mrs. Godfrey, so lofty-minded, so motherly a woman, so full of magnetism, if I may be allowed the expression, could bring herself to patronize this materialistic scheme of education? Her loving heart must have felt intuitively that systems, exterior expressions which lack the vital principle, cannot regenerate the earth."

"I do not know that my mother ever did patronize my plans. She has never been well enough to come to Yorkshire since they were started."

"No! Then you missed the benefit of her fine intuitive reasonings, and of the results of her experience. Believe me, Miss Hester, applauding as I do, perforce, the zeal which animates you, I am constrained to tell you, you must necessarily fail. You appeal but to the selfish passions; you will be startled one day at the demoralization that will be manifested."

"I am beginning to feel this already," said Hester. "I want some power that as yet I do not find."

Mr. Godfrey rose impatiently and went to the window, scarcely out of earshot, but far enough away to decline any share in the conversation. He was always displeased when his "best policy" principle was called in question, though just now his pocket was suffering from that cause.

"You will find out soon the sanction you require," said M. de Villeneuve. "Every real unperverted natural law is the material symbol of a higher supernatural law, to which it is essentially related. It is the disunion of these two laws in your mind that now perplexes you; but you are too sincere in your search for truth not to perceive their relative bearings at last."

"Truth! what is truth?" said Hester.

"Truth is the harmony of all things as they exist in God; as love is their manifestation," said M. de Villeneuve. "The simplicity of ideas, their order, beauty, harmony, find expression in the created world; but the ideas themselves {612} are immaterial or spiritual, and have a relative spiritual expression in the soul. You have taken one and left the other, hence the failure. Missing the idea itself, you necessarily fail in power, for spiritual power is needed to develop truly even the material type. And, moreover, you cannot understand the type until you possess the idea."

"Something is wanted, that is certain," said Hester; "but if all virtue is typified in some material existence, tell me where is the type of purity?"

"Where but in the virgin-mother," responded the comte. "In the mother of him who died to obtain for man that power over sin which had escaped him. The world lies the victim of its own self-will: it needs a high ideal of purity and of sanctifying love, and this it finds in Mary; it needs the power to work out this ideal, and this it finds in Jesus. The progression of man is dearer to Mary than ever it can be to you, for she is our mother, and the mother of our Redeemer; but progression consists in sanctifying the individual, in destroying that overweening empire of sense which overlies the spiritual faculty, and which is fatal to woman in every sense, even in this world. Did you never observe how the progression of ancient times ever riveted woman's chains? From Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, as luxury increased the degradation of the majority of women followed. The temples of the gods were filled with thousands of women enacting scenes of horror under the name of worship. This affords a key to the disorders that always accompanied ancient civilization, for woman is the mother of the race, the peculiar impersonation of the affections, and in her maternity the representative of that self-sacrificing principle which forgets self in care for the welfare of her children. Where woman is not cognizant of her true office, where her spiritual affinities remain undeveloped, the race can get no further than materialism, and that sensuous gratification which contains already within itself the germ of decay, No For it is of earth, earthy. But the divine instinct of religion, when proclaiming the 'grace to rise' one for us by the cross on which the God-man died, raised Mary on the altars of his church, for the special protection of all that is holy and aspirative to in womanhood. And since that blessed time Christian women have been respected as virgins and as mothers; as beings formed to foster virtue and watch over the spiritual education of the of the members of Christ's body. Mary acts wonderfully through her daughters. Christian queens converted their husbands, and with them their subjects throughout Europe; Christian matrons have given that tone to society which now, even in this age of heresy, respect security in theory, though it throws it off in practice. All that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is harmonious and holy invests the shrine of Mary, and from her influence proceeds the charm that represses vice, converts the heart to goodness as its chief happiness, and gives power to the individual to do those works of penance, of violence to self, which win the kingdom of heaven; a kingdom which commences here, in our own hearts, when we once enter into the harmonies of the religious teachings of nature and of revelation."

Hester started to her feet. "Is this the office of Mary?" she exclaimed.

M. de Villeneuve assented by a gesture.

"True or not true," said Hester, "this explanation does not in the least savor of ignorance and superstition it is beautiful poetry!"

"And is not poetry the highest truth?" said the comte.

"No," said Mr. Godfrey, coming forward with a frown on his countenance. "No! I wonder you religious people can never keep within your proper bounds. I, who have traveled in France, in Belgium, and in Italy, and seen the painted dolls and gaudy dressed-up images, protest against your giving a poetic or philosophic dress to this idolatry or mariolatry. When I {613} take Hester abroad, she will see with me that this worship is nothing but the rankest superstition."

"But I thought you said there was always a meaning under every myth. Pop, may not this be the meeting of 'Mary'"?

"Mary is no myth," said the Comte de Villeneuve, "she is a real, holy, pure, and loving woman, to be loved with a personal affection!"

"Beware!" said Mr. Godfrey, "our family has suffered enough already from these fantastic dreams. Eugene's Catholicity has driven his mother crazy. If my Hester were to succumb, it would be even worse with me. Let us make a truce with religion, I see it will produce no other fruits than to set people buy the ears."

"As you will. I am leaving for America, can I bear a greeting from you to my father?"

"Tell him to inspire his son with a little of his common sense. In a twenty years' intercourse he never mentioned the word religion in my family."

"You must forgive me, Mr. Godfrey," said the comte rising. "I thought to console your daughter; she is much changed since I saw her last."

Hester was much changed, but never so much as now. She longed to thank the comte, to unsay her father's rude words, but she dared not. She dared not anger Mr. Godfrey. Nor was it necessary: her eyes had kindled, her countenance had glowed, and the comte felt that his words had not been thrown away, that Hester had received a revelation, and he departed consoled.

It was a new study that Hester now entered upon. Woman as she was in the olden time: in Greece and Rome; in Egypt and Abyssinia; in Persia and India. Woman as she is everywhere where Christianity is not known, where the mothership of Mary is ignored. The facts presented to her were appalling, and none the less so that Mr. Godfrey was so peevish when addressed on this subject. He felt intuitively that the more Hester knew of this, the more she would shrink from materialism; and if she abandoned him, if she adopted Catholicity, he would have lost his last hope. He began to tire of "perfectibility" and "progress," the more that they seemed to detach his only joy from his side.

Yet with an old man's obstinacy he would not yield. Hester continued her system, but now it was to watch more closely its results, to penetrate the secret workings of the heart. She wanted to speak of higher motive than self, but she knew not how. She only knew, and daily she knew it more, that some high controlling power was wanting which could speak to the heart and regulate the inward spirit: "Was that power God?" "And Mary, was she a real manifestation of the power of God residing in a woman's frame?"

Hester now wished this might be true.