The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863

I was relieved when the whole party came back, and when the blooming, happy face of Lulu showed that she, at least, had neither thought nor done anything very bad.

The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks. While we should be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together once more. The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour. I remember vividly the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed together.

XIII

While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a metaphysical discussion of some length. From time to time we heard, "Pascal's idea seems to be," and then, "The notion of Descartes and all that school of thinkers"; and feeling that they were plunging quite beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,—

"What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who said of metaphysics, 'Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should have the skin for his pains'?"

"But that is a most unfair comparison!" said the minister, eagerly, "and what I will by no means allow. By so much more as the mind is better than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy"—

"I give in! I am down!" said Remington.

"But what are you disputing about?" said I.

"Oh, only Infinity!" said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that may not be an effect."

"Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?" said the minister.

"No,—of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be extended."

"Very good. Perhaps you can't. I suppose we cannot comprehend infinity, because we are essentially finite ourselves. But it by no means follows that we cannot apprehend and believe in attributes which we are unable to comprehend. We can certainly do that."

"No. After you reach your limit of comprehension, you may say, all beyond that is infinite,—but you only push the object of your thought out of view. After you have reiterated the years till you are tired, you say, beyond that is infinite. You only mean that you are tired of computing and adding."

"Then you cannot believe in an Infinite Creator?" said the minister.

"I can believe in nothing that is not founded on reason. I should be very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not himself created."

"Yet you can believe in a world that is not created?" said the minister. "You can believe that a world full of adaptations, full of signs of intelligence and design, could be uncreated. How do you make that out?"

"There remains no greater difficulty to me," said Remington, "in believing in an uncreated world than you have in believing in an uncreated God. Why is it stranger that Chaos should produce harmony than that Nothing should produce God?"

He looked at us, smiling as he said this, which he evidently considered unanswerable.

"You are quite right," said my husband, gravely. "It is impossible that nothing should produce God, and therefore I say God is eternal. It is not impossible that something should produce the world, and therefore I believe the world is not eternal. That point is the one on which the whole argument hangs in my mind."

"It does not become me to dispute a clergyman," said Mr. Remington, smiling affectedly, as if only courtesy prevented his coming in with an entirely demolishing argument.

To my great surprise Lulu instantly answered, and with an intelligence that showed she had followed the argument entirely,—

"I am certain, George, that Mr. Prince has altogether the best of it. Yours is merely a technical difficulty,—merely words. You can conceive a thousand things which you can never fully comprehend. And this, too, is a proof of the Infinite Father in our very reasoning,—that, if we could comprehend Him, we should be ourselves infinite. As it is, we can believe and adore,—and, more than that, rejoice that we cannot in this finite life of ours do more."

"If we believed we could comprehend Him," said I, "we should soon begin to meddle with God's administration of affairs."

"Yes,—and in fatalism I have always thought there was a profound reverence," said Lulu.

"Oh, are you going into theological mysteries, too?" said Remington, with a laugh in which none of us joined; "what care you, Lulu, for the quiddities of Absolute Illimitation and Infinite Illimitation? After all, what matters it whether one believes in a God, who you allow to be the personation of all excellence, if only one endeavors to act up to the highest conceivable standard of perfection,—I mean of human perfection,—leaving, of course, a liberal margin for human frailties and defects? One wouldn't like to leave out mercy, you know."

Whatever might be the real sentiments of the man, there was an air of levity in his mode of treating the most important subjects of thought which displeased me, especially when he said, "You adore the Incomprehensible; I am contented to adore, with silent reverence, the lovely works of His hand." He pointed his remark without hesitation at LuLu, who sat looking into the fire, and did not notice him or it.

"You are quite right, Mr. Prince, and my cousin, is quite wrong," said she, looking up with a docile, childlike expression, at the minister. "One feels that all through, though one may not be able to reason or argue about it."

"And the best evidence of all truth, my dear," answered the delighted Dominie, "is that intuition which is before all reasoning, and by which we must try reasoning itself. The moral is before the intellectual; and that is why we preachers continually insist on faith as an illuminator of the reason."

"You mean that we should cultivate faith," I said.

"Yes: not the faith that is blind, but the faith that sees, that is positive; that which leads, not that which follows; the faith that weighs argument and decides on it; in short, the native intuitions which are a necessary part of the mind."

"I see, and I shall remember," said Lulu. "I shall never forget all you say, Mr. Prince."

It was this sweet frankness, and the clearness with which her lately developed intellect acted, that made us begin to respect Lulu as well as to love her. She seemed to be getting right-minded at last.

When Mr. Lewis came, the conversation turned on other subjects; but it was quite late at night before we were willing to part with our friends. The shadow of misgiving which hangs over even short separations was deeper than usual with me from the thought of the voyage. Lulu had been so many times across the sea that she had no fear of it; and she went up-stairs with me to say last words and give last commissions with her usual cheerfulness. Notwithstanding the relief which I had felt during the evening from her expressions of a moral and religious kind, I yet had a brooding fear of the effect of association with a mind so lively and so full of error as Remington's. What help or what sustaining power for her there might be in her husband I could not tell; but be it more or less, I feared she would not avail herself of it. Indeed, I feared that she was daily becoming more alienated from him, as she pursued onward and upward the bright mental track on which she had entered. And it was seeing that she had not yet begun to con the alphabet of true knowledge, that disturbed me most. If I could have seen her thoughtful for others, humble in her endeavor after duty, I should have hailed, rejoicingly, her intellectual illumination. As it was, I could not help saying to her, anxiously, before we went downstairs,—

"I don't like Mr. Remington's notions at all, my dear!—I don't mean merely his theological notions, but his ideas of life and duty seem to me wrong and poor. You will forgive me, if I say, you cannot be too careful how you allow his views to act on your own sense of right and wrong."

"What!—George? Oh, dear friend, it is only his nonsense! He will take any side for the time, only to hear himself talk. But he is the best fellow that ever breathed. Oh, if you only knew his excellence as well as I do!"

"My dear Lulu!" I expostulated, greatly pained to see her glowing face and the almost tearful sparkle of her eyes, as she defended her cousin, "your husband is a great deal the best guide for you,—in action, and I presume in opinion. At all events, you are safest under the shadow of his wing. There is the truest peace for a wife."

Whether she guessed what was in my mind I don't know; I did not try much to conceal it. But she shook her curls away from her face as if irritated, and answered in a tone from which all the animation had been quenched,—

"No. I have been a child. I am one no longer. Don't ask me to go back. I am a living, feeling, understanding woman! George himself allows it is perfectly shocking to be treated as I am,—a mere toy! a plaything!"

George again! I could scarcely restrain my impatience. Yet how to make her understand?

"Don't you see, Lulu, that George ought never to have dared to name the subject of your and your husband's differences? and do you not see that you can never discuss the subject with anybody with propriety? If, unhappily, all is not as you, as we, wish it, let us hope for the effect of time and right feeling in both; but don't, don't allow any gentleman to talk to you of your husband's treatment of you!"

Lulu listened in quiet wonderment, while, with agitated voice and trembling mouth, I addressed her as I had never before done. I had constantly avoided speaking to her on the subject. She looked at me now with clear, innocent eyes, (I am so glad to remember them!) and placed her two hands affectionately on my shoulders.

"I know what you mean,—and what you fear. That I shall say something, or do something undignified, or possibly wrong. But that, with God's help, I shall never do. Such happiness as I can procure, aside from my husband, and which I had a right to expect through him,—such enjoyment as comes from intellectual improvement and the exercise of my faculties, this is surely innocent pleasure, this I shall have. And George,—you must not blame him for being indignant, when he sees me treated so unworthily,—or for calling Lewis a Pacha, as he always does. You must think, my dear, that it isn't pleasant to be treated only like a Circassian slave, and that one may have something better to do in life than to twirl jewelled armlets, or to light my lord's chibouk!"

She looked all radiant with scorn, as she said this,—her eyes flashing, and her very forehead crimson. I could see she was remembering long months and years in that moment of indignant anger. Seeing them with her eyes, I could not say she was unjust, or that her estrangement was unnatural.

"Now, then, good friend, good bye! Don't look anxious. Don't fear for me. I am not happy, but I shall know how to keep myself from misery. You and your excellent husband have done more for me than you know or think; and I shall try to keep right."

She left me with this, and we parted from both with a lingering sweet friendliness that dwells still in our memories.

"It would be horrible to be on these terms, if she loved him," said the minister, that night, after I had told him of our parting interview.

"Well, she don't, you see. Did she ever?"

"With such mind and heart as she had, I suppose. On the other hand, what did he marry?"

"Grace and beauty—and promise. Of course, like every man in love, he took everything good for granted."

"The sweetest flower in my garden," said the minister, "should perfume no stranger's vase, however, nor dangle at a knave's button-hole."