The Reign Of Law Part 25

After a pause, he continued in a changed tone:--

"And now while everything is pleasant at home, it is the time for me to go away. My father was right: this is no place for me. I must be where people think as I do--must live where I shall not be alone. There will soon be plenty of companions everywhere. The whole world will believe in Evolution before I am an old man."

"I think you are right," she said quietly. "It is best for you to go and to go at once."

When he spoke again, plainly he was inspired with fresh confidence by her support of his plans.

"And now, Gabriella, I must tell you what I have determined to do in life: I want your approval of that, and then I am perfectly happy."

"Ah," she said quickly, "that is what I have been wanting to know. It is very important. Your whole future depends on a wise choice."

"I am going to some college--to some northern university, as soon as possible. I shall have to work my way through, sometimes by teaching, in whatever way I can. I want to study physical science. I want to teach some branch of it. It draws me, draws all that is in me. That is to be my life-work. And now?"

He waited for her answer: it did not come at once.

"You have chosen wisely. I am so glad!"

"Oh, Gabriella!" he cried, "if you had failed me in that, I do not know what I should have done! Science! Science! There is the fresh path for the faith of the race! For the race henceforth must get its idea of G.o.d, and build its religion to Him, from its knowledge of the laws of His universe. A million years from now! Where will our dark theological dogmas be in that radiant time? The Creator of all life, in all life He must be studied! And in the study of science there is least wrangling, least tyranny, least bigotry, no persecution. It teaches charity, it teaches a well-ordered life, it teaches the world to be more kind. It is the great new path of knowledge into the future. All things must follow whither it leads. Our religion will more and more be what our science is, and some day they will be the same."

She had no controversy to raise with him about this. She was too intently thinking of troublous problems nearer heart and home.

And these rose before him also: he fell into silence.

"But, oh, Gabriella! how long, how long the years will be that separate me from you!"

"No!" she exclaimed, her whole nature starting up, terrified. "What do you mean? No!"

"I mean while I am going through college; while I am preparing a place for you."

"Preparing a place FOR ME! You have prepared a place for me and I have taken it. My place is with you."

"Gabriella, do you know I have not a dollar in the world?"

"_I_ have!"

"But--"

"Ah, don't! don't! That would be the first time you had ever wounded me!"

"How can I--"

"How can you go away and leave me here--here--anywhere--alone--struggling in the world alone? And you somewhere else alone? Lose those years of being together? Can you even bear the thought of it? Ah, I did not think this!"

"It was only because--"

"But it shall never be! I will not be separated from you!"

David remembered a middle-aged man at the University, working his way through college with his wife beside him. His heart melted in joy and tenderness--before the possibility of life with her so near. He could not speak.

"I will never be separated from you!"

And then, feeling her victory won, she added joyously: "And what I have shall never be separated from me! We three--I, thou, it--go together.

My two years' salary--do you think I love it so little as to leave it behind when I go away with you?"

"Oh, Gabriella!"--

The domes of the trees were white with blossoms now and with moonlight.

How warm and sweet the air! How sacred the words and the silences! Two children of vast and distant revolutions guided together into one life--a young pair facing toward a future of wider, better things for mankind.

"Gabriella, when a man has heard the great things calling to him, how they call and call, day and night, day and night!"

"When a woman hears them once, it is enough."

Even in this hour Gabriella was receiving the wound which is so often the pathos and the happiness of a woman's love. For even in these moments he could not forget Truth for her. And so, she said to herself with a hidden tear, it would be always. She would give him her all, she could never be all to him. Her life would be enfolded completely in his; but he would hold out his arms also toward a cold Spirit who would forever elude him--Wisdom.

The golden crescent dropped behind the dark green hills of the silent land. Where were they? Gone? or still under the trees?

"Ah, Gabriella, it is love that makes a man believe in a G.o.d of Love!"

"David! David!"--

The south wind, warm with the first thrill of summer, blew from across the valley, from across the mighty rus.h.i.+ng sea of the young hemp.

O Mystery Immortal! which is in the hemp and in our souls, in its bloom and in our pa.s.sions; by which our poor brief lives are led upward out of the earth for a season, then cut down, rotted and broken--for Thy long service!