Part 46 (2/2)
Most people find the first of a bereavement more tolerable than what follows. They find in its fever a support. When the wound in the earth is closed, and the wave of life has again rushed over it, when things have returned to their wonted, now desiccated show, then the very Sahara of desolation opens around them, and for a time existence seems almost insupportable. With Dorothy it was different. Alive in herself, she was hungering and thirsting after life, therefore death could not have dominion over her.
To her surprise she found also--she could not tell how the illumination had come--she wondered even how it should ever have been absent--that, since her father's death, many of her difficulties had vanished. Some of them, remembering there had been such, she could hardly recall sufficiently to recognize them. She had been lifted into a region above that wherein moved the questions which had then disturbed her peace.
From a point of clear vision, she saw the things themselves so different, that those questions were no longer relevant. The things themselves misconceived, naturally no satisfaction can be got from meditation upon them, or from answers sought to the questions they suggest. If it be objected that she had no better ground for believing than before, I answer that, if a man should be drawing life from the heart of G.o.d, it could matter little though he were unable to give a satisfactory account of the mode of its derivation. That the man lives is enough. That another denies the existence of any such life save in the man's self-fooled imagination, is nothing to the man who lives it.
His business is not to raise the dead, but to live--not to convince the blind that there is such a faculty as sight, but to make good use of his eyes. He may not have an answer to any one objection raised by the adopted children of Science--their adopted mother raises none--to that which he believes; but there is no more need that should trouble him, than that a child should doubt his bliss at his mother's breast, because he can not give the chemical composition of the milk he draws: that in the thing which is the root of the bliss, is rather beyond chemistry. Is a man not blessed in his honesty, being unable to reason of the first grounds of property? If there be truth, that truth must be itself--must exercise its own blessing nature upon the soul which receives it in loyal understanding--that is, in obedience. A man may accept no end of things as facts which are not facts, and his mistakes will not hurt him. He may be unable to receive many facts as facts, and neither they nor his refusal of them will hurt him. He may not a whit the less be living in and by the truth. He may be quite unable to answer the doubts of another, but if, in the progress of his life, those doubts should present themselves to his own soul, then will he be able to meet them: he is in the region where all true answers are gathered. He may be unable to receive this or that embodiment or form of truth, not having yet grown to its level; but it is no matter so long as when he sees a truth he does it: to see and not do would at once place him in eternal danger. Hence a man of ordinary intellect and little imagination, may yet be so radiant in n.o.bility as, to the true poet-heart, to be right wors.h.i.+pful. There is in the man who does the truth the radiance of life essential, eternal--a glory infinitely beyond any that can belong to the intellect, beyond any that can ever come within its scope to be judged, proven, or denied by it. Through experiences doubtful even to the soul in which they pa.s.s, the life may yet be flowing in. To know G.o.d is to be in the secret place of all knowledge; and to trust Him changes the atmosphere surrounding mystery and seeming contradiction, from one of pain and fear to one of hope: the unknown may be some lovely truth in store for us, which yet we are not good enough to apprehend. A man may dream all night that he is awake, and when he does wake, be none the less sure that he is awake in that he thought so all the night when he was not; but he will find himself no more able to prove it than he would have been then, only able to talk better about it. The differing consciousnesses of the two conditions can not be _produced_ in evidence, or embodied in forms of the understanding. But my main point is this, that not to be intellectually certain of a truth, does not prevent the heart that loves and obeys that truth from getting its truth-good, from drawing life from its holy _factness_, present in the love of it.
As yet Dorothy had no plans, except to carry out those of her father, and, mainly for Juliet's sake, to remove to the old house as soon as ever the work there was completed. But the repairs and alterations were of some extent, and took months. Nor was she desirous of shortening Juliet's sojourn with the Polwarths: the longer that lasted with safety, the better for Juliet, and herself too, she thought.
On Christmas eve, the curate gave his wife a little poem. Helen showed it to Dorothy, and Dorothy to Juliet. By this time she had had some genuine teaching--far more than she recognized as such, and the spiritual song was not altogether without influence upon her. Here it is:
THAT HOLY THING.
They all were looking for a king To slay their foes, and lift them high: Thou cam'st a little baby thing That made a woman cry.
O Son of Man, to right my lot Naught but Thy presence can avail; Yet on the road Thy wheels are not, Nor on the sea Thy sail.
My how or when Thou wilt not heed, But come down Thine own secret stair, That Thou mayst answer all my need, Yea, every by-gone prayer.
CHAPTER L.
FALLOW FIELDS.
The spring was bursting in bud and leaf before the workmen were out of the Old House. The very next day, Dorothy commenced her removal. Every stick of the old furniture she carried with her; every book of her father's she placed on the shelves of the library he had designed. But she took care not to seem neglectful of Juliet, never failing to carry her the report of her husband as often as she saw him. It was to Juliet like an odor from Paradise making her weep, when Dorothy said that he looked sad--”so different from his old self!”
One day Dorothy ventured, hardly to hint, but to approach a hint of mediation. Juliet rose indignant: no one, were he an angel from Heaven, should interfere between her husband and her! If they could not come together without that, there should be a mediator, but not such as Dorothy meant!
”No, Dorothy!” she resumed, after a rather prolonged silence; ”the very word _mediation_ would imply a gulf between us that could not be pa.s.sed.
But I have one pet.i.tion to make to you, Dorothy. You _will_ be with me in my trouble--won't you?”
”Certainly, Juliet--please G.o.d, I will.”
”Then promise me, if I can't get through--if I am going to die, that you will bring him to me. I _must_ see my Paul once again before the darkness.”
”Wouldn't that be rather unkind--rather selfish?” returned Dorothy.
She had been growing more and more pitiful of Paul.
Juliet burst into tears, called Dorothy cruel, said she meant to kill her. How was she to face it but in the hope of death? and how was she to face death but in the hope of seeing Paul once again for the last time?
She was certain she was going to die; she knew it! and if Dorothy would not promise, she was not going to wait for such a death!
”But there will be a doctor,” said Dorothy, ”and how am I----”
Juliet interrupted her--not with tears but words of indignation: Did Dorothy dare imagine she would allow any man but her Paul to come near her? Did she? Could she? What did she think of her? But of course she was prejudiced against her! It was too cruel!
The moment she could get in a word, Dorothy begged her to say what she wished.
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