The Jessica Letters Part 6

Now the question of the Trinity or of the atonement may not seem essential to me. My faith has pa.s.sed out of them--beyond them, I trust; and at least I do not call myself a Christian. But remember that Dr. Abbott is a teacher of Christianity and was on this occasion addressing students of theology. Certainly to him and to his audience these are, they must be, the first of all matters in the realm of ideas, whether accepted or rejected, and to speak slightingly of them is to show contempt for everything that transcends the material world. I know that Dr. Abbott, like some others, makes this service of our fellow-men to be a form of the service of G.o.d; but the slightest knowledge of the spirit of the day, indeed any intelligent reading of the words I have quoted, makes plain how entirely this "service of G.o.d" is a tag, a meaningless concession to an older form of speech. What seriously concerns our humanitarians is the service of mankind. Now am I not justified in saying that true religion would at least change the order of ideas and declare that to serve mankind is, first of all, to give one's self to the service of G.o.d? This is not a quibbling of words, but a radical distinction. It is because I find in all so-called humanitarians this tendency to place humanity before G.o.d, material needs before ideals, that I call them, when all is said, the most insidious foes of true religion. Their very virtues make them more dangerous than outspoken materialists and scoffers. It is largely due to them and their creed that we have no art and no literature; for art and literature depend, at the last a.n.a.lysis, on a reaching out after ideas, on an attempt to trans.m.u.te material things into spiritual values,--on faith, in a word. The humanitarians cry out against the materialism and the commercial spirit of the age. They do not perceive that the only remedy against this degeneracy is the renewal of faith in something greater and higher than our material needs. Let them preach for a while the blessings of poverty and other-worldliness. The attempt to instil benevolence or so-called human justice into society as the chief message of religion is merely to play into the hands of the enemy. Do you see why I call them the real followers of Simon Magus, who sought to buy the gift of G.o.d with a price? "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right in the sight of G.o.d."

Consider how impossible it would have been in any age of genuine or real creativeness for a leading preacher of Christianity to have p.r.o.nounced Dr.

Abbott's words, and you will see how far humanitarianism has fallen from faith in the spirit. I know that pa.s.sages maybe quoted from the Bible which might seem to make Christ himself responsible for this new Simony; but Satan, too, may quote Scripture. Surely the whole tenor of Christ's teaching is the strongest rebuke to this lowering of the spirit's demands.

He spent his life to bring men into communion with G.o.d, not to modify their worldly surroundings. Indeed, the world was to him a place of misery and iniquity, doomed to speedy destruction. He sought to save a remnant from the wrath of judgment as a brand is plucked from the fire, and he separated his disciples utterly from acquiescence in the comforts of this earth; they were to be in the world but not of it: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's." He taught poverty and not material progress. Those he praised were the poor and the meek and the unresisting and the persecuted--those who were cut off from the hopes of the world.

And now, dear girl, do you ask me to apply my preaching to my own case? Of a truth I have faith. I think it my true service to men that I should learn to love you greatly; and out of that love shall flow charity and justice and righteousness toward the world. Let it be my meed of service that men shall see the beauty of my homage.

XXV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR JESSICA:

The end has come even sooner than I looked for it. This afternoon, little Jack, our goblin boy, came to my office and I followed him back to the dismal court where his father lay expecting me. I had arranged that the poor wretch should be carried into a room where at least there was a bed and where a ray of clean suns.h.i.+ne might greet his soul when departing on the long journey; and there I found him lying perfectly quiet save for the twitching of his hands outstretched on the counterpane. I thought a glimmer of content lightened his dull eyes as I sat down beside him. I talked with him a little, but he seemed scarcely to heed my words. Then turning his head towards me he plucked from under his pillow an old thumb-worn copy of _Virgil_ (so bedraggled and spotted that no second-hand book-seller would have looked at it) and thrust it out to me, intimating by a gesture that he would have me read to him. I asked him where I should begin, and he held up two fingers as if to indicate the second book of the _aeneid_; and there I began with the fall of Troy-town.

He listened with apparent apathy, though I know not what echoes the sonorous lines awakened in his mind, until I came to the words:

Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus.

I saw his hands clench together feebly here, and then there was no more motion. Presently I looked into his face, and I knew that no sound of my voice, nor any sound of the world, could ever reach him again; for the story of his unspeakable sorrow, like the ruin of Troy, had been told to the end. He had spoken not a single word; he had carried the silence of his soul into the infinite silences of death. The secret of his life had pa.s.sed with him. I shall probably never know what early dreams and ambitions had faded into this squalid despair. And his pitiful wan-faced boy--who was the child's mother? I am glad I do not know; I am only glad I can tell him of your love. I shall see that the father is buried decently with a wooden slab to distinguish his grave from the innumerable dead who rest in the earth. Might we not print above his body the last words of the poem he seems to have loved so much: _Fugit indignata sub umbras_! For I think it was the indignity of shame in the end that killed him. Is he not now all that Caesar and Virgil are? Shall he not sleep as peacefully in his pauper's bed as the great General Grant in that mausoleum raised by the river's side?--Commonplace thoughts that came to me as I sat for a while musing in the presence of death; but is not death the inevitable commonplace that shall put to rout all our originality in the end?

And all the while our Jack was sitting perfectly motionless by the window, looking out into the court--into the blue sky, I think. I picked up one of his thin hands and said to him: "Little Jack, your father has gone away from us and is at rest. There is a beautiful lady in the South who loves you as she loves me; will not her love make you happy?" He did not appear to understand me, but shrank into himself as if afraid. Indeed, sweet benefactress, I shall send him into the country somewhere as you bid me, and I shall see that your love brings him greater happiness than it has brought me, for with him you shall not withdraw with one hand what you have held out in the other.

I went away, leaving an old woman to care for the dead man and his child.

It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the street sounded as I pa.s.sed out of that chamber of silence. Is it not a strange thing that death should have this power of benediction? Of a sudden a breath comes out of the heavens, our little cares are touched by an eternal presence, a rift is blown in the thick mists that hem us about, and behold, we look out into infinite visionless s.p.a.ce. And now I am back in my office. I open O'Meara's worn and much-stained _Virgil_, and inside the cover I find these words scribbled in pencil: "_I have cried unto G.o.d and He hath not heard my cry; but thou, O beloved poet, art ever near with consolation_!" I do not know whether the sentence is original with O'Meara or a quotation; it is certainly new to me. One other book I brought with me, and the two were the whole worldly possession of the dead man. This is a small but pretty thick blank-book, written over almost to the last page.

I have not examined the contents carefully, but I can see that they are made up of miscellaneous pa.s.sages copied from books and of reflections on a great variety of topics, with few or no records of events. One of the last entries is from Clarence Mangan's heart-breaking poem, _The Nameless One_:

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow, And want, and sickness, and houseless nights, He bides in calmness the silent morrow That no ray lights.

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying n.o.ble, Deep in your bosoms: there let him dwell!

He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble Here, and in h.e.l.l.

And is it not a touch of Fate's irony that I should be sending this threnody of death to one who might expect to receive from me only messages and pleadings of love? Death and love are the very antipodes of our existence, one would say. And yet I do not know; I feel nothing incongruous in linking the twain together. Love, too, breaks open the barriers of our poor personality that the breath of the infinite may blow in upon us. I cannot say how it is with others, but so it is with me: love lays a hand upon me, and instantly the discords of the world are hushed in my ears, the little desires and fears that trouble me are shamed into silence, and I am rapt away into the infinitely great heart that throbs at the centre of all. It is strange, but life itself seems to pa.s.s away in the presence of this power that is the creator of life. I speak darkly, but my words have a meaning. And, dear sweetheart, be not afraid that you shall be left without a lover; that I shall bereave you! Do you think for an instant that I can cease to love? I cannot understand this war between your heart and your will; am I very stupid? Surely when I come to you, I shall bring this contention to an end, and you--it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what you shall give me. Out of the conclusions of death into the prophecies of love! I am filled with wondering.

You shall hear more hereafter of poor Jack, our adopted child.

XXVI

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR PHILIP:

See how you shame me! For this long while I have wished to begin my letters thus, but I waited, hoping you would entreat me to do so. I expected you to provide an excuse. I thought my own pleasure would wear the genial air of a concession to your wishes. Indeed, the way you wait for me to be obliged to do such things of my own accord, fills me with superst.i.tious anxieties. It is as if you had some unfair foreknowledge of the natural order of events. You would take things for granted, and thus produce an hypnotic effect by your convictions so strong as to compel my conformity. But I console myself with the reflection that all this is mental. You terrify only my intelligence with your strange sorcery. And for this reason I shall always escape your bondage, for I am too wise to concede my familiar territory to such an overbearing foreign power.

However, I must not forget the prime object I have in writing this letter.

It is to tell you that the little box of childish things, which you must have received already and wondered at, are _not_ for the literary editor of _The Gazette_, but for Jack, sent with the hope that they may in some measure comfort his sad heart. I went so far as to purchase material for the promised set of jackets, when suddenly I remembered that I was ignorant of both his age and size. You have never told me that, though you have given me such a real picture of him that I could almost trust my imagination to cut those garments to fit him!

Your account of O'Meara's death affected me deeply. With what sublime abandon does such a man let go his soul into the mystery of that silence which we call eternity!

Is it not strange how the same impressions come to many, but by different ways! "It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the street sounded as I pa.s.sed out of that chamber of silence," you said, and the sentence recalled a somewhat similar experience of my own on c.u.mberland Island, where father and I went last summer for a short vacation. One day, leaving the group of happy bathers to their surf, I climbed up inland among the sand-hills, that lie along the sh.o.r.e like the white pillows of fabulous sea-G.o.ds. Presently I came upon one of those great sand-pits that stretch along the Island, deep and wide like mighty graves. Far below me a whole forest stood in ghostly silence, with every whitening limb lifted in supplication, as if all had died in a terrified struggle with the engulfing sands. Unawares, I had happened upon one of Nature's griefs--and I do not know how to tell you, but the sight of it aged me. Of a sudden this death of the trees seemed a far-off part of my own experience. I was swept out of this contesting, energetic world into a still region where great events come to pa.s.s in silence, and inevitably.

And so real was the illusion that, as I turned to hurry back, it seemed to me that centuries had pa.s.sed since I saw the same little tuft of flowers like a group of purple fairies nodding to me from the top of a tall cliff.

And so I stood there confused by the significance of this silence, so incredible that even the winds could not shake it. I felt so near and kin to death that I became "alien" to all the living world about me. For the first time in my life, I lost the _sense_ of G.o.d, which is always a kind of mental protection against the terrors of infinity. There was nothing to pray to, only the sea on one side and this grave on the other, with a little trembling life between.

Thus you will understand that not only have I had a similar experience to your own upon the occasion of O'Meara's death, but that for once I came into your region of shades and terrors. I was like one on the point of dissolution, and almost my soul escaped into your dim habitation. From your letters I had already learned how near together love and death stood in your consciousness. Each is an exit through which your spirit is ever ready to pa.s.s. And for the moment, crowded in with skeleton shadows there, you seemed sensibly near me. I was divided between fear and love. But the blood of life in me always triumphs,--and then it was that I made my first flight in consciousness from you. I kissed my hand to the twilight and ran! I am sure you were there, Philip, a cold-lipped spirit-lover seeking my mortal life. And, oh my Heart! is it wrong that I would love and be loved in the flesh? I do not object to spirituality, only it must have a visible presence and a warm cheek.

P. S.--But, dear Philip, how am I to reconcile this tender charity to Jack with your anti-humanitarian views? Is a man's heart so divided from his philosophy? Or do you intend to make a mystic of that poor child, so that he may escape the woes of his condition? I am curious to see what you will do with him. Also, I shall certainly defend him against your Nirvana doctrines if I suspect you of juggling with his soul.

XXVII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR, TEASING, RARE JESSICA:

I have so many things to say to you. First of all, why do you blame me for my "foreknowledge"? You scold me for my hostility to the sentimentalism of the day, you scold me then for any act of common human sympathy, and now you take me to task because I foresee how you will address me in a letter.

Dear me, what a horrid little scold it is! I wonder you didn't quote _The Raven_,--

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!"

But really no great powers of prophecy were required. Have you forgotten that in the very letter before this one you called me "Dear Philip"? And wasn't that a good index of your tempestuous, contradictory sweet self, that you should have begun your letter "My dear Mr. Philip Towers" and then thrown in your "Dear Philip" by the way, as if it would not be observed! Why, my naughty Jessica, when I came to that phrase, I just took my longest, biggest blue pencil and put a ring about it so that I might find it at a moment's notice and feast my eyes a thousand thousand times on its sweet familiarity. Do not suppose that anything ever escapes me in your letters. I con every little lapse in your spelling until I know it by heart. And you do make so many slips, you know, in your reviews as well as in your letters! I never correct them,--that would be a desecration, I think,--but send up your copy just as it comes to me. Indeed, I find myself imitating unawares some of your most unaccountable originalities.

Only the other day I was in the reading-room and our head proofreader, a sour, wizened old man, cried out to me: "I say, Mr. Towers, what is the matter with your spelling? You write _propotion_[2] for proportion and _propersition_ for proposition, and get your _r_'s all mixed up generally!" There was a t.i.tter from all the girls in the room. Then said I: "Thou fool! knowest thou not that Jessica lives in the South, and treats her _r_'s with royal contempt as she was taught to treat the black man? And shall I not imitate her in this as in all her high-born originalities?" Of course I didn't say that aloud, but just thought it to myself. And really I do wonder sometimes that your excellent father, when he taught you Latin, should have permitted you to take such liberties with our good mother tongue. But after all it is only another sign of your right Southern wilfulness. Do you not take even greater liberties with poor human souls?

And you make my prophetic powers a bulwark for your licentious rebellion and declare that you will always escape my bondage. Shall you, indeed? You once intimated that I wore a.s.s's ears. I begin to believe it. What a blind, solemn animal I was when I came to Morningtown to beg for your love! I was so afraid of you. And as we sat in the circle of your watching, motionless trees, something of their stiff ways entered into my heart. I told you of my love so solemnly, and you answered so solemnly.

Fool! Fool! I should have spoken not a single word, but just taken you in my arms and kissed you once and twice. Don't frown now, it is too late.

There would have been one wild, tempestuous outbreak of indignation, and then my dryad maiden would have known my "foreknowledge" indeed. Is it too late to rehea.r.s.e that curtain-raiser? Dear girl, I would be merry, but I am not so sure that all is well with my heart. I need you so much now, for I have entered on a new path and the way is obscure before me. I need you.

Your hand in mine would give me the courage I require.

Do you remember how you warned me of dangers when I reviewed Miss Addams's book? You, too, were a prophet. Let me tell you how it all came about. The other day I wrote up Mme. Adam's _Romance of My Childhood and Youth_ (Addams and Adam--the name has a fatality for me), and took occasion to make it the text of a tremendous preachment against our latter-day Simony,--as well it might be, for Mme. Adam grew up in the thirties and forties when France was a huge seething caldron in which all these modern notions were brewing together. And unfortunately we are just beginning now where France left off a score of years ago. You have already seen the review, no doubt, and it is superfluous to repeat its argument. But for my own justification to you I want to quote a few sentences from the book.

You disdained to make any reply to my letter on Lyman Abbott, and I fear you have grown weary of the whole subject; but certainly you will be interested in what I am copying out for you now. In one of her chapters, then, Mme. Adam writes:

Nature, Science, Humanity, are the three terms of initiation. First comes nature, which rules everything; then the revelations of nature, revelations which mean science--that is to say, phenomena made clear in themselves and observed by man; and lastly, the appropriation of phenomena for useful social purposes.... There is no error in nature, no perversity in man; evil comes only from society.... He [Mme.

Adam's father] delighted in proving to me that it was useless for man to seek beyond nature for unattainable chimeras, for the infinite which our finite conception was unable to understand, and for the immaterial, which our materiality can never satisfactorily explain.... They [these humanitarian socialists] resembled my father.

Their doubts--and they had many!--were of too recent a date to have dried up their souls; _they no longer believed in a divine Christ; they still believed in a human one_. They wors.h.i.+pped that mysterious Science, which replaced for them the supernatural, and which had not then brought all its brutality to light in crus.h.i.+ng man under machinery.

Could anything be more illuminating than that? Does it not set forth the close cousins.h.i.+p of humanitarianism with socialism and the fungous growth of the two out of the mouldering ruins of faith and the foul reek of a sensuous philosophy? And do you not see why any surrender to this modern cult of human comfort means the indefinite postponement of that fresh-dawning ideal which shall bring life to literature and art and evoke once more the golden destiny of man?

Well, this morning the particular Simon Magus who rules _The Gazette_ walked into my office and, after some preliminary sparring, came out with a complaint which I knew had been preparing in his brain for some time. It seems that he had already been deluged with letters about my heretical attack on Miss Addams, and now a new storm had begun over my further delinquencies. He kindly told me that my views were a hundred years behind the age and that they were doing injury to the paper. Against the latter charge I had no defence, and immediately capitulated. To cut a disagreeable tale short, I antic.i.p.ated his purpose and offered to make way for some man who would better harmonise with the benevolent policy of the paper. The first of the month comes in four days, and then I shall be thrown once again on my own resources. The shock, though expected, is a little disconcerting; for at times a man grows weary and discouraged in fighting against the perpetual buffeting of the current. But most of all I am wondering how my independence will affect the hopes that were beginning to colour my dreams. Dear Jessica, you will not forsake me now; you will put away your perversity and love me simply and unreservedly? There are difficulties before me, I know; but I am not afraid if only my heart is at peace. I am free, and if there is any power in my brain, any skill in my right hand, I will make such a pother that the world shall hear me. I will not die till I am heard. And so I ask you to help-me. With your love I shall be made bold, and no opposition and no repeated reverses shall trouble me. And in the end your happiness is in my making.