A Reconstructed Marriage Part 19

"Well, brother, I do not believe Dr. Robertson would have approved the sermon. It is not like his preaching."

"It was an excellent sermon," reiterated Mrs. Campbell. "I hope all the uncovenanted present felt its weighty solemnity." She muttered, twice over, its awful text: "The wicked shall be turned into h.e.l.l, and all the nations that forget G.o.d."

"There is a better word for them than that," said Theodora, her face alight with spiritual promise. "'The Lord is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that _all_ should come to repentance.' That is what Saint Peter says, and Timothy, 'G.o.d our Saviour will have all men to be saved,' a great _all_ that, and the Testament is full of such glad hope."

"Those pa.s.sages do not apply to the lost, Dora."

"But as your great Scotch preacher, Thomas Erskine, said, we are lost _here_ as much as there, and Christ came to seek and to save the lost."

Mrs. Campbell looked with sorrowful anger at her son, and Robert said: "My dear Dora, you argue like a woman. Women should listen, and never argue."

"Women are told to search the Scriptures, Robert. I search and understand them, but I do not often understand the men who profess to explain them."

"Your father----"

"Oh, my father! _He_ has come unto Bethlehem. Those who can believe G.o.d has any pleasure in punishing sinners, are still at Sinai."

"G.o.d must punish sinners," said Isabel.

"G.o.d can reform and forgive them, just as easily; and it would be far more in accord with His nature, for 'G.o.d is Love.'"

"If we are to have a theological discussion by young women, I shall retire," said Robert, and with these words he rose from the table.

"Sit down, Robert. You have had no pudding."

"The collops were very fine to-day, mother, and I am satisfied."

As he left the room Theodora rose and went with him, but he did not appear to notice her. When they were in their parlor he said: "You ought to have sat still and finished your argument with my sister."

"Have I done something wrong, Robert?"

"I think if you cannot a.s.sent to mother's statements, it would be more becoming not to contradict them."

"If it had been a matter of no importance, I would have kept silence, but I must always testify in any company, the absolute perfection of Jesus Christ's sacrifice."

"n.o.body challenged it."

"But if it does not save _all_ it is imperfect. And surely John the Beloved knew his Master's heart, and he says 'Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.' How can any one dare to narrow that zone of mercy?"

"You argue like a woman, Dora."

"I am not arguing. I am only quoting what the greatest of men have said."

Then Robert lifted the _Sunday Magazine_ and answered all her further efforts at conversation in polite monosyllables, and finding the position she had been relegated to both embarra.s.sing and humiliating, she finally went to her room upstairs, and shut herself in with G.o.d. Her eyes were full of unshed tears, as she turned the key, for she felt that something in her life had lost its foothold. Was it her faith? Oh, no!

She trusted G.o.d implicitly. She could not think any ill of Him, she had loved Him from her cradle. Was it her love? Oh, how reluctant she was, to even ask this question. But there was a great change in Robert, or was it that she now saw the real Robert Campbell, while the man who had wooed and won her had been but a man playing a lover's role?

For even during the few days they had been at home, it was evident that both he and his family were resolved on her surrendering her faith, and her individuality. She was to be made over by the Campbells in their own image and likeness. Robert had loved and married Theodora Newton; was she to change her character with her name? She had made no such promise, and, without the slightest egotism, she could see that such a denial of herself would compel from her mental and spiritual nature a downward, backward movement, so deep and wide she dared not contemplate it.

Her duty to her husband was plain as the Bible, and she promised herself to fulfil it to the last t.i.ttle, but while doing this, she must find the courage to be true to herself, as well as to others. And as nothing can be done in the heart by halves, it would be no fitful or uncertain struggle. The whole soul, the whole heart, the whole mind, the whole life, would be demanded. She was troubled at the prospect before her.

Would she find strength and wisdom for it? Or would it prove to be another of the lost fights of Virtue?

"No, no!" she cried. "I shall not fight alone. G.o.d and Theodora are a mult.i.tude."

She had certainly that doleful afternoon gone back in piteous memory to her teaching and writing, and her own peaceful, loving home, and thought that if trouble was necessary for her higher development it could have been better borne in either environment. But she acknowledged also that

"_Where our Captain bids us go, 'Tis not ours to murmur 'No.'

He that gives us sword and shield, Chooses too the battlefield._"

So if G.o.d had chosen this gloomy house, full of jealousy, envy, hatred, and apparently dying love, for her battlefield, it was not her place to murmur "No," nor even her desire, since He that

"_chose the battlefield, Would give her also sword and shield._"

CHAPTER V

BAD AT BEST

If there had been a little diversity in the Campbell family it would have been a more bearable household. But they had the same prejudices and the same likes and dislikes, differing only in the intensity with which they held them. Mrs. Campbell and her son Robert were the most positive, Isabel was but little behind them, and Christina was easily bent as the others desired. Under present circ.u.mstances she could only be true to her family; under any other circ.u.mstances, it was doubtful if she could be false. This monotony of feeling pressed like a weight on Theodora, who felt that she could have borne opposition and unkindness better if there had been more variety in their exhibition; for then Life might have had some interesting fluctuations.

But Mrs. Campbell did precisely the same things every day, and to go to the works at the same moment every morning was the sum-total of Robert's life. The girls had certain dresses for the morning, and certain other dresses for the afternoon, and their employments were quite as uniform.

There were even certain menus for every day's dinner in the week, and these were repeated with little or no change year in and year out. For Mrs. Campbell hated the unexpected; she tried to order her life so that there should be no surprises in it. On the contrary Theodora delighted in the unforeseen. She would have wished that even in heaven she might have happy surprises--the sudden meeting with an old friend, or good news from the dear earth still loved and remembered.

However, she had that hopefulness and virginity of spirit that makes the best of what cannot be changed, and as the weeks went on she learned to ignore the ill-will she could not conquer and to bear in silence the wrongs not to be put right by any explanations. And she soon made many acquaintances, and a few sincere friends. Among the latter were Dr.

Robertson and his wife, and Mrs. Oliphant, the American. The former had called on Theodora about ten days after her home-coming and had been heartily attracted by her intelligence and beauty. The doctor was pa.s.sionately fond of good music, and when he noticed the open piano and the name Mendelssohn on the music above it, he asked in an eager voice: "You will play for me?"

"Yes," Theodora answered, "very gladly! My piano is my great friend and companion. It feels with me in every mood. What shall I play?"

"The song before you. Mendelssohn can get very near to a musical soul."

She rose at once, and after a short prelude played in a manner so masterful as to cause the minister to look at his wife in wonder as her magnificent voice lifted that pathetic prayer, which has spoken for the sorrowful and suffering in all ages:

"O that I had wings like a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest."

Every note and every word was full of pa.s.sionate spiritual desire and tender aspiration, and the music was as if her guardian angel joined her in it. The doctor was entranced, and Mrs. Robertson rose and was standing by the singer's side when she ceased.

"O, my dear, my dear!" she said, "you have gone straight to my heart."

A long and delightful conversation followed; then Ducie set an exquisite little service, and gave the company tea and cake and sweetmeats, and the visit did not terminate for nearly another hour.

Mrs. Campbell was in a transport of anger. "I was never even asked after," she complained to her son, "and Dora kept them all of two hours--such ignorance of social customs--and I could hear them talking and singing like a crowd of daffing young people."

"You ought to have joined them, mother."

"I ought to have been asked to do so, but I was quite neglected."