Part 73 (1/2)
Mr. Lindsay came in and stood near her un.o.bserved. They had not met for several weeks, and she was not aware that he was in the city.
Charon, who lay on the rug at her feet, growled, and she looked round.
”Good-evening,” said her visitor, extending his hand.
She did not accept it; but merely inclined her head, saying:
”Ah, how do you do, sir?”
He laid a package on the table, drew a chair near the hearth without looking at her, and, calling to Charon, patted his huge head kindly.
”What have you there, Miss Beulah? Merely a newspaper; it seems to interest you intensely. May I see it?”
”I am certainly very much obliged to you, sir, for the chivalrous spirit in which you indited your criticism. I was just pondering it when you entered.”
She smiled as she spoke, and shook the paper at him.
”I thought I had feigned a style you would not recognize,” he answered quite unconcernedly.
”You succeeded admirably, with the exception of one pet phrase, which betrayed you. Next time, recollect that you are very partial to some particular expressions, with which I happen to be acquainted; and avoid their introduction.”
”I rather think I shall not repeat the experiment; especially as my arguments seem to have failed signally in their design. Are you quite sure that you understand my review perfectly?”
He looked a little curious--she fancied disappointed--and she replied laughingly:
”Oh, I think I do; it is not so very abstruse.”
He leaned forward, took the paper from her, before she was aware of his intention, and threw it into the fire.
She looked surprised, and he offered his hand once more.
”Are we still friends? Will you shake hands with your reviewer?”
She unhesitatingly put her hand in his, and answered:
”Friends.h.i.+p is not a gossamer thread, to be severed by a stroke of the pen.”
She endeavored to withdraw her fingers, but he held them firmly, while his blue eyes rested upon her with an expression she by no means liked. Her black brows met in a heavy frown, and her lips parted angrily. He saw it, and instantly released her hand.
”Miss Beulah, my uncle commissioned me to say to you that he received a letter to-day from Dr. Hartwell. It was written during his voyage down the Red Sea, and contained a long farewell, as inland travel would afford no facilities for writing.”
He noted the tight clasp in which her fingers locked each other, and the livid paleness of her lips and brow, as the long lashes drooped and she sat silently listening. Charon laid his head on her knee and looked up at her. There was a brief silence, and Mr. Lindsay added slowly:
”My uncle fears he will never return. Do you cherish the hope?”
”Yes; he will come back, if his life is spared. It may be many years; but he will come, he will come.”
Their eyes met; there was a long, searching look from Mr. Lindsay; she did not shrink from the scrutiny. An expression of keen sorrow swept over his face, but he conquered his emotion, took the parcel he had brought, and, unwrapping a book, said, in his usual quiet tone:
”When I saw you last you were regretting your inability to procure Sir William Hamilton's 'Philosophy of the Conditioned,' and I have taken the liberty of bringing you my own copy. Read it at your leisure; I shall not need it again soon. I do not offer it as a system which will satisfy your mind, by solving all your problems; but I do most earnestly commend his 'Philosophy of the Conditioned,'
as the surest antidote to the abstractions in which your speculation has involved you. The most erudite scholar of the age, and one of the finest metaphysical minds the world has ever known, he expressly sums up his vast philosophic researches with the humble confession: 'There are two sorts of ignorances; we philosophize to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance; we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is itself only a traveling from grave to grave. The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance.' Like you, Miss Beulah, I set out to discover some system where no mysteries existed; where I should only believe what I could clearly comprehend. 'Yes,' said I proudly, 'I will believe nothing that I cannot understand.' I wandered on until, like you, I stood in a wide waste, strewn with the wreck of beliefs. My pride a.s.serted that my reason was the only and sufficient guide, and whither did it lead me? Into vagaries more inexplicable than aught I fled from in Revelation. It was easier to believe that, 'in the beginning, G.o.d created the heaven and the earth,' than that the glorious universe looked to chance as its sole architect, or that it was a huge lumbering machine of matter, grinding out laws. I saw that I was the victim of a miserable delusion in supposing my finite faculties could successfully grapple with the mysteries of the universe. I found that to receive the attempted solutions of philosophy required more faith than Revelation, and my proud soul humbled itself and rested in the Bible. My philosophic experience had taught me that if mankind were to have any knowledge of their origin, their destiny, their G.o.d, it must be revealed by that G.o.d, for man could never discover aught for himself. There are mysteries in the Bible which I cannot explain; but it bears incontrovertible marks of divine origin, and as such I receive it. I can sooner believe the Mosaic revelation than the doctrine which tells you that you are part of G.o.d and capable of penetrating to absolute truth. To quote the expressive language of an acute critic (whose well-known lat.i.tudinarianism and disbelief in the verbal inspiration of Scripture give peculiar weight to his opinion on this subject), 'when the advocates of this natural, spontaneous inspiration will come forth from their recesses of thought and deliver prophecies as clear as those of the Hebrew seer; when they shall mold the elements of nature to their will; when they shall speak with the sublime authority of Jesus of Nazareth; and with the same infinite ease, rising beyond all the influence of time, place, and circ.u.mstances, explain the past and unfold the future; when they die for the truth they utter, and rise again as witnesses to its divinity; then we may begin to place them on the elevation which they so thoughtlessly claim. But until they either prove these facts to be delusions, or give their parallel in themselves, the world may well laugh at their ambition and trample their spurious inspiration beneath its feet.'
There is an infinite, eternal, and loving G.o.d; I am a finite creature, unable to comprehend him, and knowing him only through his own revelation. This very revelation is insufficient for our aspiring souls, I grant; but it declares emphatically that here 'we see through a gla.s.s darkly.' Better this than the starless night in which you grope, without a promise of the dawn of eternity, where all mystery shall be explained. Are you not weary of fruitless, mocking speculation?” He looked at her anxiously.