The Threatening Eye Part 18

"Some of your aunt's views are rather startling," he said. He was thinking of one of her speeches he had heard, in which she had upheld the unsavoury teachings of Mr. Bradlaugh, and had declared her favourite opinions as to the abominable nature of religion and morality.

"Startling! yes, I suppose they are startling--truth often is so," she replied.

"Is it truth?"

"Is what truth?" and she turned and looked him full in the face.

Finding himself driven into a corner, he spoke out boldly. "Miss King, I hope you will forgive me when I tell you that I feel a deep interest in you. I hope you will look on me as your friend, and that we shall know each other better some day. Do not think I am impertinent if I explain what I meant."

"I do not think so, Dr. Duncan."

"Well, I know what your aunt's opinions on certain matters--religion for instance--are, and I should be very sorry to think that you entertained the same."

"Oh! are they false opinions?"

"I think so; but that is hardly the question. Some false opinions are at any rate harmless, but these I speak of are certainly bad in their effects, whether they be true or false."

"Do you then believe that to know the truth can be bad?" she asked in a sarcastic tone.

"I don't say that; but don't you think that when a theory is put before you, you should be much more careful than usual in your examination of it, should require much more--indeed, absolute proof--before you accept it, if it is a theory, the belief in which cannot fail to have bad consequences?"

"A theory should stand on its own merits. It is no argument against an opinion to say that it is an unhappy one."

"Certainly not; but, surely, unless we are quite convinced that such a theory is correct--a difficult matter, as a rule--we should be very rash in not only accepting it, but in acting up to it. Take a parallel case, Miss King. In a court of law a far stronger and more indisputable chain of evidence is required to bring about an adverse verdict in the case of a prisoner charged with a capital crime, than in the case of one who is accused of an injury to a fellow that only makes him liable to a civil action. It is in that spirit, I think, we should try opinions on which the whole happiness of mankind depends. Before we condemn religion, and put away the system of morality which follows it, we should surely ask for more convincing evidence against them, than if it were merely a question of the truth or falsehood of some opinion which cannot influence mankind much either way for good or evil."

"Don't you call that an '_argumentum ad hominem_?'" Mary said.

"I see I have a logician to deal with in you, Miss King. Mind, I do not wish to discuss religious truths with you. I am not a clergyman. I am merely throwing out suggestions as to the state of mind with which, I believe, one ought to approach speculations of this nature."

"Are you a religious man, Dr. Duncan?--but it is very rude of me to ask such a question."

"I am sorry to say I am not. My work is my religion at present, and fills all my thought."

"Why should not my work be my religion?"

"If it was it would be very well. To alleviate human misery is to act religion. Though I am far from being a religious man, and rarely go inside a church; though I may be a bad man, I do not question the fundamental laws of morality, on which I believe the whole happiness and loveliness of the human race depend. Now, your aunt does this; and though one may--mind, _may_--get on, and be virtuous, and good, and lovable, without being what people call religious, I doubt whether one can be so if one is constantly trying to prove to oneself that _a priori_ religious and moral systems are untrue--if one comes to think that no action is _per se_ bad and to be avoided. We must have a dogmatic morality, Miss King. I don't say that we can altogether _act up_ to it, but we must _believe_ in it. The evil-living man, who still admires and respects virtue, is in a happier way, I think, than a man, good in action, who yet has no belief in good. I know Mrs. King is one who has carried Utilitarian ethics to their extreme conclusions. This is a dangerous thing for us poor mortals to attempt. Misery is the result.

Utilitarianism may do for angels--it won't do for us."

There were tears in Mary's eyes as he concluded. She had been too long fed on unwholesome doctrine to be in any way influenced by his arguments. He had merely told her what she already knew too well, that such a belief as she professed--that truth--was an apple of Sodom, full of bitterness and sorrow; but, somehow, his kind words brought vividly before her the utterness of her desolation, and she said in mournful tones, "Oh, how wicked you would think me if you knew all my thoughts; how you would loathe me!"

"Pray, don't say such a thing, Miss King," he exclaimed. "Whatever your opinions and doubts may be, you are not wicked. Do you know, I have often watched you in the hospital. I have taken great interest in you. I saw how sad and thoughtful you were, and I saw how kind you were to the sick--how patient, how sympathetic. I observed how you felt with their suffering, not in mere physical revolt at witnessing pain, but with a true woman's pity. No! I know you are not wicked."

He spoke earnestly, with a deep feeling, the meaning of which could hardly be mistaken.

Mary answered not a word. She was overawed by this man. She felt as if she could have sunk into the ground with her sense of shame and degradation. "What, this good man believes that _I_ am good," she thought. "He has faith in me--affection for me! He loves me for my kindness to the sick--me, that am training to be a murderess--me, a baby-killer! Oh, the horror of the thing--the despair of my position!"

She realized bitterly how deep, how irreconcilable must be her estrangement from her race. "She must never know love--she must steel her heart--crush her sympathies, and, oh! she must never again trust herself to talk in confidence with her fellows, especially with this doctor."

She could not speak with that choking sensation in her throat, so she walked on in silence.

Her companion looked at her and perceived the tears glistening in her downcast eyes. The doctor had, of late, found himself constantly thinking tenderly of this lonely, sad-looking girl, whose only companion was the frivolous Susan. He had, to a certain extent, guessed the cause of her sorrow, living as she did with the half-insane atheist and revolutionist he knew Mrs. King to be. He felt a great pity for the beautiful unprotected creature, in whom he saw such sweet possibilities of love and all the graces and good qualities of woman. The love that was coming to him was deep and strong and fierce as was his nature, and the girl was beginning to divine this.

No wonder that she was filled with dread when she knew that she had inspired such a feeling in such a man; for there lay that terrible secret between them, a secret whose nature he had so little suspected, when she warned him that he would loathe her, did he know it. She found that she was on the edge of a precipice, and felt a sick dizziness to see it, but also a painful fascination.

They walked on together through the dreamy November haze--both feeling as in a dream--without speaking, but each in some strange manner vaguely conscious of the spirit of the other's thought, of a close sympathy that was fast drawing them together. It was as if their hearts beat, their souls sung, in unison, to some awful music from another sphere. The streets and the people were no longer with them.

So it was, that when at last he spoke, the words were expected by her.

She seemed to have felt their meaning before they came. They had been led up to by the unspoken emotions of either.

"Oh, Miss King, if you could only confide in me, and make me your friend! I would die, to be able to drive away that cloud from your mind, if I could only see you happy and smiling.... All that beautiful youth of yours, with its sweet possibilities, being destroyed by these dark phantoms! Oh, Mary, for G.o.d's sake, trust in me! Have you guessed how I love you? You must have done so. You fill all my thoughts. You know that you are everything in the world to me.... Oh, my sweet! my sweet! that I could make you throw yourself on my love. I believe I would make you happy. I would understand you, Mary, and we would make all your sadness go. We would go right away from the streets for a time, and walk through the green fields hand in hand like children again. In the bright, pure country we should drive all these phantoms right away; our human love would drive them right away. Mary! Mary!--" and he stopped and seized her two hands in his, carried away by his emotion.

They were standing by the railings of the garden of a deserted square, and the rays of a lamp fell full on her pale face.

He had raised an image of wonderful joys to her mind--but, oh! so impossible--so impossible!

She trembled in his grasp. She dared not raise her eyes to meet his.

"Mary! O Mary! can it be true? Do you care for me; do you love me a little?"

She could not preserve that outward calm any longer, with all that storm raging within her. She was stifling with it, and for an answer burst into hysterical sobs.

"Oh! my dear! my dear!" He folded her in his arms, and his pa.s.sionate kisses were on her eyes and on her mouth.

Then, with a strength that surprised him, she suddenly thrust him off, and retreating a few yards back, stared at him with eyes dilated with horror and anguish.

"Oh! Dr. Duncan!" she cried, with a voice full of such tragedy that the strong man felt his veins tingle with terror. "Oh! go away! go away, and leave me.... You do not know what you are saying.... You are mad. Never speak to me again. Forget me, if you do not wish to be more miserable than ever man was before. You don't know what I am--what I must be. If you married me, you would go mad with what you discovered. You would blow your brains out, and mine too.... I am not exaggerating. I am talking sober truth. I mean this.... Yes, more.... Think of all the greatest criminals you have ever heard of. Think of the most hideous, unspeakable crimes ever invented by man, and then look on me as guilty of them all--yes, all of them, and worse. I warn you--remember, I have warned you."

The intense earnestness of her look--of her speech--terrified him. "What could she mean? Was she mad?" And he felt sick and dizzy with the pain of this thought.

"Now, Dr. Duncan, not another word. I won't bring you any further out of your way. Good-night." And she walked rapidly away.

He stood where he was, supporting himself by the railing--for a moment half-dazed at the shock he had received. Then there came a curious reaction to him after the first effects of her wild words. He was seized by a sort of frenzy--by the strongest of all the pa.s.sions in its very greatest strength: love--love that is insane, and thinks of nothing--reckless of crime and consequence--the strong man's love that can make of him a fiend or an angel.

His blood tingled through his veins like fire. "Mary," he thought to himself, "Mary, you must be mine. Even if you _are_ mad, I will still have you. I do not care what you are. I would be mad too, rather than lose you. Were you a thousand times worse than you say--if you _have_ committed every crime--it can make no difference now to me. If you were a devil, I should have to become devil too, to please you. It must be love between us--love for good or bad. If it cannot be of heaven, it must be of h.e.l.l; but love it must--shall be...." And the usually self-possessed man hurried through the streets with his brain on fire, his hands clenched, and his eyes glaring, so that people he pa.s.sed got to one side or other of him in fear to let him go by, for his face was as that of a madman.

The devil had got hold of him for the time; and after the fit was over, he shuddered when he remembered how wild and wicked his fancies had been--how, in a moment, it had seemed as if all the good of years of careful training had run out of him, and left him a fiend without conscience or fear, capable of any deed, if by it he could but compa.s.s his desires.

And so it is with all of us at times. The pa.s.sionate temptations of a man reveal to him, in flashes, what horrible depths of possible sin lurk in his nature--hidden unsuspected, awaiting their opportunity.

But he had clasped that slight, girlish form in his arms--he had kissed that unkissed mouth, and drawn madness from it--he was the slave of his pa.s.sion for better or for worse.

Even when he thought more calmly over the whole matter on the following day, he still knew that his love for the girl was altogether his master.

He still determined to press his suit.

Even were she really bad, he must risk all, and make her his. But he knew that she was not really bad in heart, though she might have been in action. He would gain her confidence, share with her her repentance for her sin, take on himself her burden. Even had she been the most abandoned of creatures, he would take her to his arms now. Go back he could not--would not.

And yet, of all men this was the one whom none would have suspected capable of making a rash marriage. Ah! how little we know how we ourselves would behave when the moment comes! We are all of us mad and weak then--yes, every one of us.