Chapter IV.

Just Before Light.

The days were well arranged in the Granger mansion. Breakfast was a movable feast, and silent for the most part. The members of the family broke their fast when and as they liked, often with a book or paper for company.

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Most persons feel disinclined to talk in the morning, and are social only from necessity. This household recognized and respected the instinct. One could always hold one's tongue there. If they did not follow the old Persian rule never to speak till one had something to say worth hearing, they at least kept silence when they felt so inclined.

Luncheon was never honored by the presence of the gentlemen, except that on rare occasions Mr. Southard came out of his study to join the ladies, who by this time had found their tongues. They preferred his usual custom of taking a scholarly cup of tea in the midst of his books.

To the natural woman an occasional gossip is a necessity; and if ever these three ladies indulged in that pardonable weakness, it was over their luncheon. At six o'clock all met at dinner, and passed the evening together. This disposition of time left the greater part of the day free, for each one to spend as he chose, and brought them together again at the close of the day, more or lest tired, always glad to meet, often with something to say.

Margaret found herself fully and pleasantly occupied. Besides translating, she had again set up her easel, and spent an hour or two daily at her former pretty employment. The value of her services increased, she found, in proportion as she grew indifferent to rendering them; and she could now select her own work, and dictate terms. But her most delightful occupation was the teaching her three little pupils.

There are two ways of teaching children. One is to seek to impose on them our own individuality, to dogmatize, in utter unconsciousness that they are the most merciless of critics, frequently the keenest of observers, and that they do not so much lack ideas, as the power of expression. Such teachers climb on to a pedestal, and talk complacently downward at pupils who, perhaps, do not in the least consider them classical personages. We cannot impose on children unless we can dazzle them, sometimes not even then.

The other mode is to stand on their own platform, and talk up, not logically, according to Kant or Hamilton, but in that circuitous and inconsequent manner which is often the most effectual logic with children. We all know that the greatest precision of aim is attained through a spiral bore; and perhaps these young minds oftener reach the mark in that indirect manner, than they would by any more formal process.

This was Miss Hamilton's mode of teaching and influencing children, and it was as fascinating to her as to them. She treated them with respect, never laughed at their crude ideas, did not require of them a self-control difficult for an adult to practice, and never forgot that some ugly duck might turn out to be a swan. But where she did assert authority, she was absolute; and she was merciless to insolence and disobedience.

"I want cake. I don't like bread and butter," says Dora.

Mrs. James fired didactic platitudes at the child, Aurelia coaxed, and Mrs. Lewis preached hygiene. Miss Hamilton knew better than either. She sketched a bright word-picture of waving wheat-fields over-buzzed by bees, over-fluttered by birds, starred through and through with little intrusive flowers that had no business whatever there, but were let stay; of the shaking mill where the wheat was ground, and the gay stream that laughed, and set its shining shoulder to the great wheel, and pushed, and ran away, blind with foam; of the yeasty sponge, a pile of milky bubbles. {166} She told of sweet clover-heads, red and white, and the cow and the bees seeing who should get them first. 'I want them for my honey,' says the bee. 'And I want them for my cream,' says Mooly. And they both made a snatch, and Mooly got the clover, and perhaps a purple violet with it, and the cream got the sweetness of them, and then it was churned, and there was the butter! She described the clean, cool dairy, full of a ceaseless flicker of light and shade from the hop-vines that swung outside the window, and waved the humming-birds away, of pans and pans of yellow cream, smooth and delicious, of fresh butter just out of the churn, glowing like gold through its bath of water, of pink and white petals of apple-blossoms drifting in on the soft breeze, and settling--"who knows but a pink, crimped-up-at-the-edges petal may have settled on this very piece of butter? Try, now, if it doesn't taste apple-blossomy."

Nonsense, of course, when viewed from a dignified altitude; but when looked up at from a point about two feet from the ground, it was the most excellent sense imaginable. To these three little girls, Dora, Agnes, and Violet, Miss Hamilton was a goddess.

Margaret did not neglect her own mind in those happy days. Mr. Southard marked out for her a course of reading in which, it is true, poetry and fiction, with a few shining exceptions, were tabooed; but metaphysics was permitted; and history enjoined tome upon tome, striking octaves up the centuries, and dying away in tinkling mythologies. She read conscientiously, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with a half-acknowledged weariness.

Mr. Southard was a severe Mentor. As he did not spare himself, so he did not spare others, still less Margaret. She failed to perceive, what was plain to the others, that, by virtue of her descent, he considered her his especial charge, and was trying to form her after his notions. She acquiesced in all his requirements, half from indifference, half from a desire to please everybody, since she was herself so well pleased; and then forgot all about him. It was out of his power to trouble her save for a moment.

"You yield too much to that man," Mrs. Lewis said to her one day. "He is one of those positive persons who cannot help being tyrannical."

"He has a fine mind," said Margaret absently.

"Yes," the lady acknowledged in a pettish tone. "But if he would send a few pulses up to irrigate his brain, it would be an improvement."

Of course Mr. Southard spoke of religion to his pupil, and urged on her the duty of being united with the church.

"I cannot be religious, as the church requires," she said uneasily, dreading lest he might overcome her will without convincing her reason. "I think that it is something cabalistic."

"Your grandfather, and your father and mother did not find it so," the minister said reprovingly.

Margaret caught her breath with pain, and lifted her hand in a quick, silencing gesture. "I never bury my dead!" she said; and after a moment added, "It may be wrong, but this religion seems to me like a strait-jacket. I like to read of David dancing before the ark, of dervishes whirling, of Shakers clapping their hands, of Methodists singing at the tops of their voices 'Glory Hallelujah!' or falling into trances. Religion is not fervent enough for me. It does not express my feelings. I hardly know what I need. Perhaps I am all wrong."

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She stopped, her eyes filling with tears of vexation.

But even as the drops started, they brightened; for, just in season to save her from still more pressing exhortation, Mr. Granger sauntered across the room, and put some careless question to the minister.

Mr. Southard recollected that he had to lecture that evening, and left the room to prepare himself.

"I am so glad you came!" Margaret said, "I was on the point of being bound, and gagged, and blindfolded."

Mr. Granger took the chair that the minister had vacated, and drew up to him a little stand on which he leaned his arms, "I perceived that I was needed," he said. "There was no mistaking your besieged expression; and I saw, too, that look in Mr. Southard's face which tells that he is about to pile up an insurmountable argument. I do not think that you will be any better for having religious discussions with him. You will only be fretted and uneasy. Mr. Southard is an excellent man, and a sincere Christian; but he is in danger of mistaking his own temperament for a dogma."

"If I thought that, then I shouldn't mind so much," Margaret said. "But I have been taking for granted that he is right and I wrong, and trying to let him think for me. The result is, that instead of being convinced, I have only been irritated. I must think for myself, whether I wish to or not. Now he circumscribes my reading so. It is miscellaneous, I know; but I am curious about everything in the universe. I don't like closed doors. He thinks my curiosity trivial and dangerous, and reminds me that a rolling stone gathers no moss."

"And I would ask, with the canny Scotchman,'what good does the moss do the stone?'" Mr. Granger replied. "The fact is, you've got to do just as I did with him. He and I fought that battle out long ago, and now he lets me alone, and we are good friends. Be as curious as you like. I heard him speak with disapproval of your going to the Jewish synagogue last week, and I dare say you resolved not to go again. Go, if you wish; and don't ask his permission. He frowned on the Greek anthology, and you laid it aside. Take it up again if you like. Even pagan flowers catch the dews of heaven. Your own good taste and delicacy will be a sufficient censor in matters of reading."

"Now I breathe!" Margaret said joyfully. "Some people can bear to be so hemmed in; but I cannot. It does me harm. If I am denied a drop of water, which, given, would satisfy me, at once I thirst for the ocean. I cannot help it. It is my way."

"Don't try to help it," Mr. Granger replied decisively; "or, above all, don't allow any one else to try to help it for you. I have no patience with such impositions. It is an insult to humanity, and an insult to Him who created humanity, for any one person to attempt to think for another. Obedience and humility are good only when they are voluntary, and are practised at the mandate of reason. There are people who never go out of a certain round, never want to. They are born, they live, and they die, in the mental and moral domicil of their forefathers. They have no orbit, but only an axis. Stick a precedent through them, and give them a twirl, and they will hum on contentedly to the end of the chapter. I've nothing against them, as long as they let others alone, and don't insist that to stay in one place and buzz is the end of humanity. {168} Other people there are who grow, they are insatiably curious, they dive to the heart of things, they take nothing without a question. They are not quite satisfied with truth itself till they have compared it with all that claims to be truth. Let them look, I say. It's a poor truth that won't bear any test that man can put to it. The first are, as Coleridge says, 'very positive, but not quite certain' that they are right; to the last a conviction once won is perfect and indestructible. Rest with them is not vegetation, but rapture.

"Fly abroad, my wild bird! don't be afraid. Use your wings. That is what they were made for."

Margaret forgot to answer in listening and looking at the speaker's animated face. When Mr. Granger was in earnest, he had an impetuous way that carried all before it. At the end, his shining eyes dropped on her and seemed to cover her with light; the impatient ring in his voice softened to an indulgent tenderness. Margaret felt as a flower may feel that has its fill of sun and dew, and has nothing to do but bloom, and then fade away. She had no fear of this man, no sense of humiliation with regard to the past. Her gratitude toward him was boundless. To him she owed life and all that made life tolerable, and any devotion which he could require of her she was ready to render. Her friendship was perfect, deep, frank, and full of a silent delight. She did not deify him, but was satisfied to find him human. He could speak a cross word if his beef was over-done, his coffee too weak, or his paper out of the way when he wanted it. He could criticise people occasionally, and laugh at their weakness, even when his kind heart reproached him for doing it. He liked to lounge on a sofa and read, when he had better be about his business. He needed rousing, she thought; was too much of a Sybarite to live in a world full of over-worked people. Perhaps he was rusting. But how kind and thoughtful he was; how full of sympathy when sympathy was needed; how generously he blamed himself when he was wrong, and how readily forgot the faults of others. How impossible it was for him to be mean or selfish! His rich, sweet, slow nature reminded her of a rose; but she felt intuitively that under that silence was hidden a heroic strength.

Mr. Southard's lecture was on the Jesuits; and all the family were to go and hear him.

"Terribly hot weather for such a subject," Mr. Lewis grumbled. "But it wouldn't be respectful not to go. Don't forget to take your smelling-salts, girls. There will be a strong odor of brimstone in the entertainment.

Margaret went to the lecture with a feeling that was almost fear. To her the name of Jesuit was a terror. The day of those powerful, guileful men was passed, surely; and yet, what if, in the strange vicissitudes of life, they should revive again? She was glad that the minister was going to raise his warning voice; yet still, she dreaded to hear him. The subject was too exciting.

The lecture was what might be expected. Beginning with Ignatius of Loyola, the speaker traced the progress of that unique and powerful society through its wonderful increase, and its downfall, to the present time, when as he said, the bruised serpent was again raising its head.

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Mr. Southard did full justice to their learning, their sagacity, and their zeal. He told with a sort of shrinking admiration how men possessed of tastes and accomplishments which fitted them to shine in the most cultivated society, buried themselves in distant and heathen lands, far removed from all human sympathy, hardened their scholarly hands with toil, encountered danger, suffered death--for what? That their society might prosper! The subject seemed to have for the speaker a painful fascination. He lingered while describing the unparalleled devotion, the pernicious enthusiasm of these men. He acknowledged that they proclaimed the name of Christ where it had never been heard before; he lamented that ministers of the gospel had not emulated their heroism; but there the picture was over-clouded, was vailed in blackness. It needed so much brightness in order that the darkness which followed might have its full effect.

We all know what pigments are used in that Plutonian shading--mental reservation, probableism, and the doctrine that the end justifies the means; the latter a fiction, the two former scrupulously misrepresented.

Here Mr. Southard was at home. Here he could denounce with fiery indignation, point with lofty scorn. The close of the lecture left the characters of the Jesuits as black as their robes. They had been lifter only to be cast down.

Miss Hamilton walked home with Mr. Granger, scarcely uttering a word the whole way.

"You do not speak of the lecture," he said when they were at the house steps. "Has it terrified you so much that you dare not? Shall you start up from sleep to-night fancying that a great black Jesuit has come to carry you off?"

"Do you know, Mr. Granger," she said slowly, "those men seem to me very much like the apostles; in their devotion, I mean? I would like to read about them. They are interesting."

"Oh! they have, doubtless, books which will tell you all you want to know," he replied.

"_They!_" repeated Margaret. "But I want to know the truth." Mr. Granger laughed. "Then I advise you to read nothing, and hear nothing."

"How then shall I learn?" demanded Miss Hamilton with a touch of impatience.

"Descend into the depth of your consciousness, as the German did when he wanted to make a correct drawing of an elephant."

"No," she replied remembering the story, "I will imitate the Frenchman; I will go to the elephant's country, and draw from life."

"That is not difficult," Mr. Granger said, amused at the idea of Miss Hamilton studying the Jesuits. "These elephants have jungles the world over. In this city you may find one on Endicott street, another on Suffolk street, and a third on Harrison avenue."

They were just entering the house. Margaret hesitated, and paused in the entry.

"You do not think this a foolish curiosity?" she asked wistfully. "You see no harm in my wishing to know something more about them?"

Mr. Granger was leaving his hat and gloves on the table. He turned immediately, surprised at the serious manner in which the question was put.

"Surely not!" he said promptly. "I should be very inconsistent if I did."

She stood an instant longer, her face perfectly grave and pale.

"You are afraid?" he asked smiling.

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"No," she replied hesitatingly, "I don't think that is it. But I have all my life had such a horror of Catholics, and especially of Jesuits, that to resolve even to look at them deliberately, seems almost as momentous a step as Caesar crossing the Rubicon."