Chapter 7

Robin clapped her hands and laughed again. "I beg your pardon for laughing," she said, "but the idea of Spinoza, the 'God-intoxicated man,' presiding over an auto-da-fé is too absurd. If you only remembered anything about his gentle, retiring spirit and melancholy life; I think he was better known in our time than in his own, but his philosophy does not satisfy me. I am willing to grant the identity of life, and its divine possibilities, but I cannot worship it as life itself, a mere manifestation of nature. I know that there is such a thing as living rock, and that it may be killed by a bolt of lightning as readily as a tree; but this does not make it any more worthy of worship than I am, and that is terribly unworthy. The rock and I are types of life, stages in the development of life, but for my child there must be something better. For the child I must lay hold on the everlasting life; I must find the rock that is higher than I. I do not know of any manifestation of that life so great, so godlike, and so lovable as His who said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.'"

"But surely you do not believe in the Immaculate Conception?" asked Adam, incredulously.

"I don't care anything about it, one way or the other. It's the immaculate life that concerns me. As you said yourself a few minutes ago, words cannot frighten me. Am I going to stand carping, 'Can any good come out of Nazareth?' What do I care if it comes out of Sodom and Gomorrah, if it is good?"

"But you surely don't believe in the miracles?" he asked.

"Surely I do, in some of them at least. I have seen a miracle or so myself. Besides, if you remember the greatest proof He gave was that the gospel was preached to the poor. Buddha was a prince; he whom the Jews expected was to reign as a king. What a fall was there! the gospel of hope and joy was brought to the children of Gibeon, the hewers of wood and drawers of water. The love of Christ has wrought greater miracles than He did. Look at the arena in Rome. Look at the whole countless army of martyrs. When Mrs. Booth died, the eighty thousand women that nightly walked the streets of London rebelled, and for once the long aisles of brick and stone were swept clean of that awful arraignment of civilization. That was more of a miracle than satisfying three thousand souls with food. At least, it's enough of a miracle for me."

The tears came into her eyes, and she gathered up her pans and went into the house.

XVIII

Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life:

So careful of the type? but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, "A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go."

TENNYSON.

They were sitting in the doorway together. Robin rested her chin in her hands and looked down the valley, the lines of perplexity deepening in her forehead.

"If only we had an angel with a sword, or without one, to tell us what to do," she said. "If only we were deeply religious with the old-fashioned orthodox religion, that would enable us to believe we were predestined not to be drowned--"

"Or if we believed in a personal God, without whom not a sparrow falleth, though the waters cover the face of the earth and blot out millions of His creatures," answered Adam. "After all, can we do better than follow the dictates of Nature?"

"Do you mean to look through Nature up to Nature's God?" answered Robin. "How can we worship any God as pitiless as Nature? Nature is strong, but is it our place to help her in her care for the single type? Perhaps we are the trilobites of a new Silurian period; well, trilobites were painfully common, but we need not be. Nature's laws are immutable, so we have been told with wearying insistence, but suppose you and I have wills as strong as Nature herself? Suppose we ask what she has done for the humanity of which we are a part, that she should demand fresh victims from us? Oh, I know; you will tell me,--

"'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!'

"And I should answer,--

"'What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.'

"David or Hamlet, it comes to the same thing. Where are the crowns now, and how can we say Solomon was not right when he said the end of it all was vanity? What is Nature, and on what compulsion must we obey her? The imperative mandates of our own hearts? But what if our hearts are at war with our heads? Are we to follow no higher law than the blind instinct that moves the house-fly? Or will we aspire to the indomitable soul of the mocking-birds that feed their young in captivity until they see they are prisoners for life, and then bring them poisonous spiders that they may die rather than live under such conditions? Shall we give hostages to Nature when she has given nothing to us?"

She was standing now and speaking with more vehemence than was her wont. Adam caught her hands, as she flung them out with a gesture full of scorn.

"Do you really think we have nothing? How many million lovers have envied Adam and Eve their paradise? This Nature against which you bring so railing an accusation,--has she taken away more than she has given us? We had ambitions, you and I, but the way of ambition is full of weariness and disappointment and bitterness of spirit. We did not expect peace and comfort and joy, but work and turmoil. Our slates were set with a sum--"

"Yes, a sum in vulgar fractions," answered Robin.

"Perhaps; it was a sum in which the unknown and unknowable quantity determined the result. We had seen a good deal of what is called life,--it is a good name to distinguish it from the death it so much resembles,--and I am half inclined to think Nature has been merciful."

"But if she was merciful to them," said Robin, quickly, "why were we omitted?"

"She gave them oblivion, the hereafter, whatever comes hereafter. She gave us each other. We were going to miss one another in the careers we had mapped out. We might have lost each other forever, or for æons of years. Nothing but a general breaking up of everything would ever have flung us into each other's arms. We were too much interested in my career, my vast influence on the political situation, to consider any existence apart from the setting we had chosen for the play. And, after all, what was it, that career from which we hoped so much? I stood waiting my cue, ready to act my part in the farce or tragedy, whichever it turned out to be."

"I think it was more like a circus," said Robin.

"Very like a circus," he admitted with grim appreciation. "A circus in which no one knew whether he was to be a ringmaster or a clown. There were the financial tight-rope walkers, and the social lion-tamers, and snake-charmers, and the political acrobats whose falls were unsoftened by any kind of network. There were heat and dust and discomfort, and weary, wretched animals looking out of cages at other weary, tortured animals, that were sometimes scarcely less pachydermatous than themselves. I know the program we had mapped out, the triumphal entry, the daring leaps, the cheers,--but was it worth while? After all, does one care to be the champion bareback rider in life's hippodrome? Nature swept away my sawdust ring, but she gave me heaven for a canopy, earth for an arena, you for a queen. At times I am disposed to take a fatalist view of the case, and think that God, or Nature, knew there was no more to be done with the earth, not so much because of its wickedness, as on account of its stupidity and cruelty. All my plans had centered in a political career, and yet how could a man touch politics and remain undefiled? Yes, I know there were honorable men in politics, but they were lonely, and they hated with an unspeakable hatred all the means that were used to keep them there. And there were any number of men who had been honorable once. When a man becomes possessed by the desire of place, his backbone becomes elastic, and he stoops to things of which he had believed himself incapable. I don't know what it is, but it weakens a man's moral fibre, and breaks down the tissues of his will, and gives him mental astigmatism. How dare I say I should have been any better than the rest?"

"Do you remember your address, a year ago Flag Day, and the old man with the little bronze button of the Civil War veteran, who stood in front, and shook hands with you afterwards, with tears running down his face? And the applause? Can you honestly say that you find 'to utter love more sweet than praise'? You have told me of your dream of a home, but Emerson said, 'not even a home in the heart of one we love can satisfy the awful soul that dwells in clay.' Can it satisfy you, who hoped and expected so much?"

He hesitated and did not reply at once.

"Are you sure you are not making a virtue of necessity?" she asked a little bitterly.

"I think as much as anything," he said slowly, "I was excusing myself for not having known all along that the real life, and the most useful one, is the one we could have made together. Principalities and powers and empires and republics have fallen. When God wants to regenerate the world, He begins with the family. Now _I_," with unspeakable scorn,--"_I_ intended to begin with a different primary law. I could have made a good home, but I was intent on making an indifferent, honest congressman, or senator, or perhaps president. In a way your home always meant a good deal of what I am trying to say. You always had some one on hand you were trying to make capable of great things by believing in them. You made us welcome, and were ready to listen to our troubles, our literary curiosities, our musical gems and our aspirations. Suppose I had had sense enough to refuse the husks and choose--"

"Don't say it," she answered. "Don't say it, even if you mean it, for I should have sent you away, and have felt like reviling you for putting your hand to the plow and turning back. Your ambitions were the most attractive thing about you then. I hadn't pinned my faith on a primary law; I think it was government ownership that I regarded as the great regenerator. I am glad if my home seemed homelike to any one; it never reached my ideal; and when a woman's home isn't the hub of her universe,--well, she takes to china painting, or gossip, or philanthropy; a man takes to poker or politics. I took to politics, second-hand. Personally and concretely I abhorred the whole miserable farce, but abstractly, and as a means to an end which I greatly desired, I found it interesting. I admired you infinitely more than I liked you in those days, but I wouldn't have married you under any circumstances."

"Why?"

"First, because I didn't want to marry any one; I didn't want to care that much. And, secondly, because I wanted you to devote yourself to your country, and had you possessed a family your devotion would have been divided. I don't see," she went on reflectively, "how you, who know so well how empty it all was, and how hopeless the endeavor to lift it an inch,--I don't see how you can think anything would justify us in making it go on."

"But, on the other hand," he said, "are we justified in snuffing it all out? There was so much that was beautiful, and the possibilities were so glorious! Sweetheart, I shall not believe you love me if you think the world all cold and dark. I believe now the one law it needs, or has ever needed, is love, the fulfilling of the law."

Robin shook her head, and there was a pathetic quiver about her sensitive mouth. "Is it so? We have sung, ''Tis love, it makes the world turn round,' but is it so? Would you give your world that one great principle as the whole of its code of laws?"

"Yes, I would," he answered sturdily. "I should not revive a single law, not even the Ten Commandments, nor any of their variations. You have to read the statutes provided for unnamable crimes to understand just how bad mankind could be. I should not bother my world with Draco, or Solon, or Justinian, or Coke, or Blackstone. I should give it the code of Christ, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.' To love one's neighbor as oneself,--isn't that code enough for any world? And I should make the neighbor include every dumb creature."

She turned to him, her face radiant with love and trust.

"There is no difference between us in reality," she said: "you would found your political economy on the teachings of Christ, and I my religion. If we realize the unity of life, we must make our religion our law, and our law our religion. Sometimes I think the hand of the Lord is in it, for surely, surely, there never was a nobler man on earth than you."

XIX

For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two.

KIPLING.

"Do you remember the name of that man we knew," said Adam one day, "who wrote a book to prove the immortality of the body? He did prove that various people had lived well on to two hundred years. If we were sure of that, we might get the earth very fairly started."

Robin laughed. "We are not apparently growing any older," she said; "but we can hardly count on more than a hundred years each."

"There is one thing you haven't taken into consideration," said Adam. "Our children would be several thousand years ahead of the original children of the Garden; they would be further along than you and I in a good many ways."

"No," she said, "I haven't forgotten, but I do not know how much of a load they would bring with them into the world. We called it heredity, the Hindoos called it karma, and, though that is different, educators called it the recapitulation theory."

Adam shook his head. "I understand heredity," he said, "but karma and recapitulation are too much for me."

"Karma is our heritage from former existences," she answered, "that may have been lived here or elsewhere. It is the sum of our past, good and bad. It is based on a belief in reincarnation, and it is the law that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. It is justice untempered by mercy, and it is at variance with the doctrine of vicarious atonement, though one may believe it and worship Christ as the highest type of love the world has ever known. Naturally, it does not appeal to the people who are willing to let some one bear the cross for them, and yet I have wondered whether, if we were sure we should not gather figs from thistles, we should sow the thistles so freely. The recapitulation theory makes the child pass through the evolutionary stages of the nation or nations he represents. It has a kind of seven ages of man of its own, and brings him down through all phases,--the savage, the hunter, the explorer, the conqueror, the builder. I don't pretend fully to understand it. I heard one of its ablest exponents say once, 'The soul of the German nation is in the German boy.' Heredity curses or blesses, sometimes both. Before any of these theories prospective parents might well hesitate."

"Which do you believe?" asked Adam, curiously.

She reflected a moment. "A little of all three; not all of any of them; one would have to be a profound student to understand fully what their adherents claim for them. Heredity plays strange freaks now and then. It is easier to account for Abraham Lincoln by the second theory than by either of the others. His shiftless, untidy mother and commonplace father do not explain such a soul as his; nor was there any reversion in his childhood to the original savage instincts that make children dismember grasshoppers--rather the reverse. I like better to think that, like that other Deliverer, who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, he came to do the will of his and our Father which art in heaven,--came gladly, freely, knowing the end from the beginning."

Adam sat up suddenly and looked at her with startled eyes. "Then you think--you mean--you don't believe--surely you don't believe we have anything to do with our coming here?"

She smiled. "Surely I do. Our coming is sad enough when we do it voluntarily. It would be quite intolerable to have existence thrust upon us. Besides, it seems blasphemous to me to believe that God has given to every human being the power to bestow an eternal existence. The responsibility is great enough when it is simply a matter of so living that noble souls may seek to be born of us, and undertaking to give them sound minds and bodies."

Adam looked unconvinced and troubled. "Where on earth did you get all that?" he asked.

"Well, it is to my mind only an elaboration of Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am.' I am, presupposes that I have been, and will be. If you can't destroy one drop of water, you can't destroy me. If you drop the water on red-hot iron, it instantly becomes an imperceptible mist, the mere ghost of itself, but it will ultimately become fluid again. It seems to me that the scientific fact gives a sound basis for the psychologic probability."

"But think of all the miserable human beings born daily. Do you think any one would choose such surroundings?"

"You and I never wanted to go anywhere badly enough to crowd ourselves under the cow-catcher, or upon the trucks, but there were those who did. We didn't want to see the parade badly enough to stand on the street corner for hours; but you worked your way through college, and we have both sat in the top gallery to hear 'Tannhäuser.' We were willing to put up with the whips and scorns, which is another way of saying the garlic and tobacco, for the sake of the music. In any event the experiment was of brief duration. No one gets more than a fragment in an ordinary lifetime."

"If you think that," said Adam, "I can't see that there is any responsibility about it. We should not thrust life on any one."

"True," she assented. "Your position is unassailable, but still it seems to me the responsibility remains. In the first place, granting that my hypothesis is true, how can we tell whether to live is gain? How do we know that the next generation would be better and stronger than we are? Moreover, I only give this to you as my idea. I do not say it is true; I believe it to be so, but I do not know anything whatsoever about it. I can't prove it, and it may be transcendental rubbish. I rather imagine you think it is."

"Not exactly that," he said, coloring and laughing, "but certainly it is rather amazing when one hears it for the first time. I daresay I shall come to believe it too. So far as I can see, you are about as unorthodox as I am."

"I have times of relapse," she said. "Then I think we are being tempted like the first Adam and Eve. They were commanded to multiply and reign. You and I wouldn't ask anything better, but as a rule one's duty is not attractive. It seems to me just as likely that we are to prove that the lesson is learned, and a man and woman may love each other unselfishly and nobly, foregoing their own desires to save others. Under the old dispensation it was said, 'Greater love hath no man than this;' is it not possible now that the greatest love is that which lays down its life untransmitted? If Christ could pray that the cup of suffering and death might pass from Him, dare we press the bitter draught of being to other lips?"

"Dare we dash the full goblet of joy and opportunity from them?" asked Adam, gravely.

"I wish I knew," she said. "I wish I knew!"

"Have you ever thought what it will mean," he said, "if we adopt the other alternative? Have you thought of the desolation and loneliness of growing old and helpless and finally--" He stopped, and she threw out her hands as if to ward off the thoughts he called before her.

"Oh, yes, yes, I have thought, and it is terrible. I keep remembering a picture I saw in the French Exhibit. It was of a man and a woman; the woman was dead, and he had dug her grave, his broken sword lay at his side, and he had wrapped her in his coat, and begun to cover her over. He could not go on, and knelt, looking at her with a despair on his face that has haunted me ever since. The name, Manon Lescaut, meant nothing to me then, but the story of the picture was enough by itself. All last year I kept seeing that terrible picture. Sometimes it was you, sometimes it was I, that dug the grave and went mad looking into it."

"I should not bury you," said Adam, grimly. "I should carry you to the cliff and take you in my arms and jump. The sea is deep and cruel there."

"Sometimes," she hesitated a moment, then went on,--"sometimes I think that would be the best way for us now, I mean if we decide we have no right to be happy in the old way; for I should be afraid we could not always be strong."

"Very well," he answered; "when we decide, it shall be literally life or death."

XX

The ant and the moth have cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps in homes that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless,--"I was a stranger and ye took me not in."

RUSKIN.

For a time they busied themselves with different things about their little home, worked in the garden, and held a round-up of their stock that they might know the extent of their wealth; and because, in a life quite apart from human beings, animals come to take their place to a greater extent than might seem possible.

It was a very pleasant time. Everything seemed so gentle, so willing to be friends, and so certain of their good-will.

"You used to be a Kipling fiend," said Adam, one morning, when they had been salting the cattle, and were resting before going home. "Didn't he write a Jungle tale about 'How Fear Came'? He ought to be here now to write another to show how Fear might go."

"It seems to me he did," Robin answered, running her fingers through the short, curly forelock of a colt that stood placidly licking her hand. "I wonder that they don't remember longer, or perhaps they know that we think they are folks. Really, I think we ought to hold a reception, a kind of salon, once a week, so as to keep acquainted with our neighbors."

"You are an absurd child," he said, laughing; "but does that mean that you have really decided to go on living?"

"I don't know," she said. "What did we determine? By the way, which side of this question are you on?"

"Both," he said decidedly.

"Oh! then we can't do like those men Cooper told about, in 'The Pioneers,' wasn't it? who argued and argued every night until at last they convinced each other, and then started in to argue it out again."

"No," he answered, "I rather think that we are answering ourselves rather than each other, anyhow. Robin, where was 'the land of Nod'?"

"That is one of the questions that I was sent to bed for asking a preacher who was visiting at our house, when I was about seven years old. They hurried me hence before he had a chance to answer, so I never found out. But I know what you are thinking of, and I have thought of it too. Perhaps there isn't any land of Nod, or any land at all. And I have thought, also, how it would be if one of us died and left the other with little children. You might take my body and jump off the rock, but you couldn't take them too, and still less could you leave them."

"I have thought of the risk to you," he said, "and felt that not even for the sake of a child would I let you come so near death."