Beulah Part 71

"You know little of what oppresses me. It is the knowledge of my--of Antoinette's indifference which makes the future so joyless, so desolate. Beulah, this has caused my ruin. When I stood by Cornelia's coffin, and recalled her last frantic appeal; when I looked down at her cold face, and remembered her devoted love for her unworthy brother, I vowed never to touch wine again; to absent myself from the a.s.sociates who had led me to dissipation. Beulah, I was honest, and intended to reform from that hour. But Antoinette's avowed coldness, or, to call it by its proper name, heartless selfishness and fondness for admiration, first disgusted and then maddened me. I would have gladly spent my evenings quietly, in our elegant home; but she contrived to have it crowded with visitors as soulless and frivolous as herself. I remonstrated; she was sneering, defiant, and unyielding, and a.s.sured me she would 'amuse' herself as she thought proper; I followed her example, and went back to the reckless companions who continually beset my path. I was miserably deceived in Antoinette's character. She was very beautiful, and I was blind to her mental, nay, I may as well say it at once, her moral, defects. I believed she was warmly attached to me, and I loved her most devotedly. But no sooner were we married than I discovered my blind rashness. Cornelia warned me; but what man, fascinated by a beautiful girl, ever listened to counsels that opposed his heart? Antoinette is too intensely selfish to love anything or anybody but herself; she does not even love her child.

Strange as it may seem, she is too entirely engrossed by her weak fondness for display and admiration even to caress her babe. Except at breakfast and dinner we rarely meet, and then, unless company is present (which is generally the case), our intercourse is studiedly cold. Do you wonder that I am hopeless in view of a life pa.s.sed with such a companion? Oh, that I could blot out the last two years of my existence!"

He groaned, and shaded his face with his hands.

"But, Eugene, probably your reformation and altered course will win you your wife's love and reverence," suggested Beulah, anxious to offer some incentive to exertion.

"I know her nature too well to hope that. A woman who prefers to dance and ride with gentlemen rather than remain in her luxurious home with her babe and her duties, cannot be won from her moth-like life. No, no! I despair of happiness from her society and affection, and, if at all, must derive it from other sources. My child is the one living blossom amidst all my withered hopes. She is the only treasure I have, except your friendship. She shall never blush for her father's degradation. Henceforth, though an unhappy man, I shall prove myself a temperate one. I cannot trust my child's education to Antoinette; she is unworthy the sacred charge; I must fit myself to form her character. Oh, Beulah, if I could make her such a woman as you are, then I could indeed bear my lot patiently! I named her Cornelia, but henceforth she shall be called Beulah also, in token of her father's grat.i.tude to his truest friend."

"No, Eugene; call her not after me, lest some of my sorrows come upon her young head. Oh, no! name her not Beulah; let her be called Cornelia. I would not have her soul shrouded as mine has been."

Beulah spoke vehemently, and, laying her hand on his arm, she added:

"Eugene, to-day you will leave me and go back to your own house, to your family; but before you go, I ask you, if not for your sake, for that of your child, to promise me solemnly that you will never again touch intoxicating drinks of any kind. Oh, will you promise? Will you reform entirely?"

There was a brief pause, and he answered slowly:

"I promise, Beulah. Nay, my friend, I swear I will abstain in future. Ah, I will never disgrace my angel child! Never, so help me Heaven!"

The sound of approaching steps interrupted the conversation, and, expecting to see Antoinette and her infant, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Graham, Beulah looked up quickly, and perceived Mr. Lindsay.

"Does my advent startle you, that you look so pale and breathless?"

said he, smiling as he took her hand.

"I am certainly very much surprised to see you here, sir."

"And I am heartily glad you have come, Reginald," cried Eugene, returning his friend's tight clasp.

"I intended coming to nurse you, Graham, as soon as I heard of the accident, but my mother's illness prevented my leaving home. I need not ask about your arm; I see it still requires cautious handling; but how are you otherwise? Regaining your strength, I hope?"

"Yes; gradually. I am better than I deserve to be, Reginald."

"That remains to be proved in future, Graham. Come, get well as rapidly as possible; I have a plan to submit to you, the earliest day you are strong enough to discuss business topics. Miss Beulah, let me sharpen your pencil."

He took it from her, trimmed it carefully, and handed it back; then drew her portfolio near him, and glanced over the numerous unfinished sketches.

"I have several books filled with European sketches which, I think, might afford you some pleasure. They were taken by different persons; and some of the views on the Rhine, and particularly some along the southern sh.o.r.e of Spain, are unsurpa.s.sed by any I have seen. You may receive them some day, after I return."

"Thank you; I shall copy them with great pleasure."

"I see you are not as much of a pyrrhonist in art as in philosophy,"

said Mr. Lindsay, watching her countenance as she bent over her drawing.

"Who told you, sir, that I was one in any department?" She looked up suddenly, with flashing eyes.

"There is no need to be told. I can readily perceive it."

"Your penetration is at fault, then. Of all others, the charge of pyrrhonism is the last I merit."

He smiled, and said quietly:

"What, then, is your aesthetic creed, if I may inquire?"

"It is nearly allied to Cousin's."

"I thought you had abjured eclecticism; yet Cousin is its apostle.

Once admit his theory of the beautiful, and you cannot reject his psychology and ethics; nay, his theodicea."

"I do not desire to separate his system; as such I receive it."

Beulah compressed her lips firmly and looked at her interrogator half defiantly.

"You deliberately shut your eyes, then, to the goal his philosophy sets before you?"

"No; I am nearing the goal, looking steadily toward it." She spoke hastily, and with an involuntary wrinkling of her brow.

"And that goal is pantheism; draped gorgeously, but pantheism still," answered Mr. Lindsay, with solemn emphasis.

"No; his whole psychology is opposed to pantheism!" cried Beulah, pushing aside her drawing materials and meeting his eyes fixedly.

"You probably attach undue weight to his a.s.sertion that, although G.o.d pa.s.ses into the universe, or therein manifests all the elements of his being, he is not 'exhausted in the act.' Now, granting, for the sake of argument, that G.o.d is not entirely absorbed in the universe, Cousin's pet doctrine of the 'Spontaneous Apperception of Absolute Truths' clearly renders man a modification of G.o.d.

Difference in degree, you know, implies sameness of kind; from this there is no escape. He says, 'The G.o.d of consciousness is not a solitary sovereign, banished beyond creation, upon the throne of a silent eternity, and an absolute existence, which resembles existence in no respect whatever. He is a G.o.d, at once true and real, substance and cause, one and many, eternity and time, essence and life, end and middle; at the summit of existence and at its base, infinite and finite together; in a word, a Trinity; being at the same time G.o.d, Nature, and Humanity.' His separation of reason and reasoning, and the results of his boasted 'spontaneous apperception,' are very nearly allied to those of Sch.e.l.ling's 'Intellectual Intuition'; yet I suppose you would shrink from the 'absolute ident.i.ty' of the latter?"

"You have not stated the question fairly, sir. He reiterates that the absolute belongs to none of us. We perceive truth, but do not create it!" retorted Beulah.

"You will perhaps remember his saying explicitly that we can comprehend the Absolute?"

"Yes; I recollect; and, moreover, he declares that 'we are conducted to G.o.d by a ray of his own being.'"

"Can limited faculties comprehend the infinite and eternal creator?"

"We do not attain a knowledge of him through finite channels. Cousin contends that it is by means of relation to the absolute that we know G.o.d."

"Then, to know the absolute, or G.o.d, you must be the absolute; or, in other words, G.o.d only can find G.o.d. This is the simple doctrine, when you unwind the veil he has cleverly hung over it. True, he denounces pantheism; but here is pantheism of the eclectic patent, differing from that of other systems only in subtlety of expression, wherein Cousin certainly excels. One of the most profound philosophical writers of the age, [Footnote: J. D. Moreil.

"Speculative Philosophy of Europe."] and one whose opinion on this point certainly merits careful consideration, has remarked, in an a.n.a.lysis of Cousin's system, 'with regard to his notion of Deity, we have already shown how closely this verges upon the principle of Pantheism. Even if we admit that it is not a doctrine, like that of Spinoza, which identifies G.o.d with the abstract idea of substance; or even like that of Hegel, which regards Deity as synonymous with the absolute law and process of the universe; if we admit, in fact, that the Deity of Cousin possesses a conscious personality, yet still it is one which contains in itself the infinite personality and consciousness of every subordinate mind. G.o.d is the ocean--we are but the waves; the ocean may be one individuality, and each wave another; but still they are essentially one and the same. We see not how Cousin's Theism can possibly be consistent with any idea of moral evil; neither do we see how, starting from such a dogma, he can ever vindicate and uphold his own theory of human liberty. On such theistic principles all sin must be simply defect, and all defect must be absolutely fatuitous.' Eclecticism was a beautiful but frail levee, opposed to the swollen tide of skepticism, and, as in every other creva.s.se when swept away, it only caused the stream to rush on more madly."

He watched her closely as he spoke, and observed the quiver of her long, curling lashes; he saw, too, that she was resolved not to surrender, and waited for an explicit defense; but here Eugene interrupted.

"All this tweedledum and tweedledee reminds me of Heidelberg days, when a few of us roamed about the Odenwald, chopping off flowers with our canes and discussing philosophy. Rare jargon we made of it; talking of cosmothetie idealism or hypothetical dualism, of noetic and dianoetic principles, of hylozoism and hypostasis, and demonstrating the most undemonstrable propositions by appeals to the law of contradiction or of excluded middle. I fancied then that I was growing very learned--wondered whether Beulah here would be able to keep up with me, and really thought I understood what I discoursed about so logically."

"You can at least console yourself, Graham, by determining that

"'You know what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly.'"

I imagine there are very few of us who would agree with some of our philosophers, that 'the pursuit of truth is far more important than the attainment thereof'--that philosophizing is more valuable than philosophy. To be conversant with the abstractions which, in the hands of some metaphysical giants, have rendered both mind and matter like abstractions, is a course of proceeding I should scarcely indorse; and the best antidote I remember just now to any such web-spinning proclivities is a persual of the three first lectures of Sidney Smith on 'Moral Philosophy.' In recapitulating the tenets of the schools, he says: 'The speculations of many of the ancients on the human understanding are so confused, and so purely hypothetical, that their greatest admirers are not agreed upon their meaning; and whenever we can procure a plain statement of their doctrines, all other modes of refuting them appear to be wholly superfluous.' Miss Beulah, I especially commend you to these humorous lectures." He bowed to her with easy grace.

"I have them, sir--have read them with great pleasure," said Beulah, smiling at his droll manner of mingled reserve and freedom.

"What an exalted estimate that same incorrigible Sidney must have placed upon the public taste of this republican land of ours? In one of his lectures on 'the beauty of form,' I remember he says: 'A chin ending in a very sharp angle would be a perfect deformity. A man whose chin terminated in a point would be under the immediate necessity of retiring to America--he would be such a perfect horror!' Decidedly flattering to our national type of beauty." As Eugene spoke, his lips wore a smile more akin to those of his boyhood than any Beulah had seen since his return from Europe.

"Yes; that was to show the influence of custom, be it remembered; and, in the same connection, he remarks, honestly enough, that he 'hardly knows what a Grecian face is; but thinks it very probable that if the elegant arts had been transmitted to us from the Chinese, instead of the Greeks, that singular piece of deformity--a Chinese nose--would have been held in high estimation.' It was merely a.s.sociation."