The Actress in High Life Part 20

"And to estimate the prisoner's woes," L'Isle suggested, "you must try the virtues of a dungeon--musty straw, and bread and water."

"That would be buying the knowledge dearly," said she; "but I would like to try how the life of a nun would suit me."

"It would suit you the least of all women," said Mrs. Shortridge.

"You might die in the cloister, but could not live there."

"Oh, I am sure I could stand a short novitiate, say three or six months," exclaimed Lady Mabel.

"Your novitiate, soon to end in freedom," said L'Isle, "would not help you to the experience of the true internal life of the nun. It is pleasant to walk, leading your horse by the rein, and at liberty to mount when you like; but the essence of monastic life lies in the conviction that you have turned your back forever on the world without, with all its trials, its hopes and fears, its pa.s.sions and pursuits, and have given yourself religiously to tread through this life, the narrow path you have chosen, to the next."

"You have convinced me," said Lady Mabel. "In my longing after a varied experience of the conditions of life, I might sacrifice half a year to the trial of one, but I prefer ignorance on this point to the burden of a life-enduring vow."

"If our knowledge were limited by our own experience, we would know little indeed," said L'Isle. "Our capacity to bring home to ourselves other conditions than our own, depends more on the transferring and transforming faculties of the imagination, than on the observing powers of the eye. If, indeed, we had never felt bodily pain, we could not feel for a man on the rack. Had we never known anguish of mind, we might not estimate the mental agonies of others. But we have feelings, for the exercise of which sympathy and imagination can create conditions. We can feel with the captive in the dungeon, without going down there to take a place by his side."

"Still, there is nothing like experience in one's own person," said Mrs. Shortridge. "I can now sympathize fully with the toilworn traveler, across a parched and thirsty desert, under a broiling sun. I own that the pleasures of this journey far exceed its pains, thanks to your care and company; but, as Lady Mabel says, the chief pleasure comes afterward, and this journey will be still more pleasant next week than now."

"In spite of its hardships," said Lady Mabel, "it has been so agreeable to me, that I would have it last a week longer. As an escort, interpreter, and cicerone, Colonel L'Isle has no rival. He has, too, filled the commissary's place so well, that we have suffered nothing from your good man's desertion."

The pleasure Lady Mabel expressed, and her frank admission that she wished the journey longer, delighted L'Isle. He longed to tell her that he was ever at her command as companion, guardian, and guide on any journey, however long. But no--he must not say that. He had no thoughts of matrimony--at least, just now. A remote prospect did indeed float before his eyes, in which he saw himself having outlived this war, and attained the rank of Major-General, returning home to find Lady Mabel still lovely and still free to listen to a lover's suit. This was but a bright vista of the future, hemmed in and overhung by many a dark contingency, a glowing picture in an ebony frame.

The character of the country underwent a change as they rode on.

Sloping downward toward the Guadiana, over a succession of hills which concealed the descent, the soil became more fertile, but was scarcely more cultivated than in the region which they had just left behind them. The heaths and broom plants now gave place to a variety of evergreen shrubs. Though the forest trees had vanished centuries ago, the prospect was often shut out by the thickets that overspread the country. An occasional spot of open ground indicated some attempts at cultivation, but they saw few peasants, and but one village seated on a hill, until pa.s.sing a wretched hamlet, they reach the bank of a brook. The shade of some trees, already in full leaf, in this sheltered spot, tempted them to make here their noonday halt.

Seating herself on the fern and moss at the foot of an old mulberry-tree that overhung the little stream, Lady Mabel pointed out to her companions, that the trees around them were all of the same kind.

"They were doubtless planted here," said L'Isle, "when the silk culture throve in this country, a branch of industry, which, with too many others, has almost died out. Civil disorder and foreign war have been fatal to it. The Spaniards have made Alemtejo their highroad in every invasion of Portugal; and the disasters of late years have completed the ruins of this frontier, so long a debatable land. The country around, is, for the most part, a heath-covered waste, or a wilderness of brushwood; here the silkworm has perished, the peasant's hand is idle, and the amoreira stands with unplucked leaves."

"The better for us," said Mrs. Shortridge; "we need its thickest shade."

A solitary stork, by the rivulet, was engaged in that gentle sport which Isaac Walton a.s.sures us, is so favorable to tranquil meditation. Deep in reverie, the philosopher seemed not to heed their presence. For a time, he stood gravely on one leg, then with a few stately strides, drew nearer to them. They were commenting on his sedate air, and disregard for man's presence, when Moodie came and sat down within ear-shot of them. The bird now raised his head and gave them a searching look. Then bending back his long neck, he uttered a dissatisfied chatter with his snapping beak, and taking wing, sought a sequestered part of the stream, remote from the intruders.

"The stork would not thus have shunned natives. He must have found out that we are foreigners and heretics" said Mrs. Shortridge.

"It is this arch-heretic, Moodie, that he shuns," said Lady Mabel. "His presence would drive away a whole congregation of storks, who are almost as good churchmen as the monks themselves."

"Perhaps quite as good," said Moodie. "My arch-heresy consists in protesting now and always against idolatrous Rome. Some here are not quite as good Protestants as I am."

"I never called myself a Protestant," said L'Isle.

"Do you not, sir?" exclaimed Moodie. "Pray what are you then?"

"I never called myself a Protestant in defining my faith."

"And why not, sir," asked Moodie, adding in an under tone. "Now he will show the cloven foot."

"Because mine is a positive creed, not to be expressed by negation. In defining it, I can admit no term not expressing some essential point. I would not mistake the accident for the essence. That G.o.d has given his revealed word to man, is an essential point in my belief. That Rome has misconstrued that word, may be true, but comes not within the scope of my creed. I believe that Christ by his Apostles founded a church to ramify through the world, like the fruitful vine running over the wall. Some branches may have rotted off, some may bear degenerate fruit, some in unpruned luxuriance may bring forth nothing but leaves. Be it so. My belief is that the branch I cleave to retains its vital vigor and produces life-sustaining fruit."

"But how does this prevent your protesting against Rome?" objected Moodie.

"It prevents my making that protest any part of the definition of my faith. Names are things, and he who is perpetually dubbing himself a Protestant, ends by making it the first article of his creed, that Rome errs, and his active religion becomes opposition to Rome. Now I find Voltaire quite as good a Protestant as you are."

"I can say nothing to that," answered Moodie, "never having met with that gentleman."

L'Isle smiled for a moment, but went on earnestly to say: "We believe that Christ not only gave us a father, but founded a church, and we will not let go our hold upon it, as some sects and nations have done, out of mere opposition to Rome. Our forefathers by G.o.d's providence, set earnestly to work reforming it where corrupted, repairing it when dilapidated, but did not pull it down, in the presumptuous hope of building up another. They purified the temple, but did not destroy it. They removed the idols, but did plough up and sow with salt the consecrated spot, because it had been defiled."

"I see" said Moodie warmly, "that you aim your anathema at the Kirks among other Christian bodies."

"Without anathematizing any one," L'Isle answered, "we take comfort to ourselves, in the conviction that our church is a continuous branch of that which the Apostles founded in Christ, and that it might have been in essentials what it now is, were its history as closely connected with the Greek church, as it is with that of Rome, or had it ever stood unconnected with either of them. Never having been rebuilt from its foundation, it has lost its apostolic character."

"You have given many branches to the vine planted by Christ," observed Moodie. "Perhaps you admit the Church of Rome, to be one that still bears fruit."

"To drop the figure of the vine, I will answer you by saying, that it is possible for a Romanist to be a Christian."

"Are Christianity and idolatry one and the same?" said Moodie, indignantly.

"Do you know how many dogmas the Kirk and Rome hold in common?"

answered L'Isle. "If you set down each article of Christian doctrine in the order of its importance and certainty, you may travel the same road with the Romanist a long way; nor is it easy to prove that Rome does not hold to all Christian truths."

Moodie rose from where he sat and stretched forth a protesting hand. But he saw that protest was useless here, so he withdrew to the shade of another tree, and sat down to think what he should do for Lady Mabel's safety. To refresh himself and sharpen his wits, he took more than one draught from the bottle. The wine being old, mild and delicate in flavor, he cla.s.sed it in the same category with small beer, far underrating its beguiling potency. This _vinho maduro_, the _vino generoso_ of the Spaniard, was that which maketh glad the heart of man, being of a choice vintage from a famous vineyard. It was rich, oily and deceiving.

"Had Moodie not been too impatient to stay with us longer," said L'Isle, "he might have heard me admit, that though the Church of Rome has kept the truth, it has not been content with it, but has mingled with it so large a ma.s.s of falsehood, that the truth it teaches is no longer pure. It has not thrown away the G.o.d-given treasure, but it has piled over it such an ever acc.u.mulating heap of rubbish that it is not easily found. It may have guarded the fountain of life-giving waters, but has so hedged it in with a labyrinth of superst.i.tions and ceremonial rites, that it is almost inaccessible to the flock."

"Call Moodie back, and redeem yourself in his opinion," said Mrs.

Shortridge. "He is now mourning over your approaching conversion to Rome."

"It is useless," said Lady Mabel. "Moodie sets no value on half-truths."

"Moodie denies there being any Christianity left in Popery," said L'Isle. "I a.s.sert that there is many a thorough, though unconscious Papist among Protestants. Popery is not so much an accidental bundle of errors, as a spontaneous and necessary growth from corrupt human nature. Thus many a charity, with us, originates in the hope of atoning for sins; many seek salvation through vicarious but human means; many a sectarian, especially among women is not so much the member of a church, as the follower of an idolized man. There are Protestant popes, whose words are bulls in their little popedoms, and Protestant saints who, unlike those of Rome, are canonized in life by their handful of followers."

"I think I could find a patron saint for Moodie," said Lady Mabel. "At least I do not think he would have been startled as I was, on hearing a minister of the Kirk, after exhausting his powers of eulogy on the great Apostle of the Gentiles, crown his praise by likening the prisoner Paul preaching boldly in bonds before the Roman governor, in whose hand was his life, to John Knox, the mouth-piece of the dominant faction, bullying a lady and his queen, a capture in their hands. This was a strange canonization of John Knox, or a singular degradation of St. Paul. But I see that our dinner waits us; and though this is a charming spot, we must not linger here too long. I am sure," she added, "that the shy and meditative stork, who left us so abruptly, must be a deep theologian, for it was he who suggested this learned discertation on the church."

The travelers dined here under the shade of the trees, and soon after took horse again. Moodie threw himself into the saddle with a spirit and activity which led Lady Mabel to say: "Your good wine, Colonel L'Isle, has done wonders for Moodie. It carries him well through the labors of the day."

"It seems to have cured his ailing body," said L'Isle, "but has not mellowed his temper. He grows more crusty than ever."

"In him," said Lady Mabel, "crustiness is the natural condition, and betokens health."

They had ridden but a little way, when she heard Moodie call to her, and reining in her horse, she let him come up alongside of her. He evidently wished to speak to her in private, for he kept silence until L'Isle and Mrs. Shortridge were out of hearing, and looked cautiously round to see that the servants were not too near.

"My lady," said he, in a solemn manner, "I have been looking at you, wondering if you are the same girl I have seen for years growing up under my eye."

"Another, yet the same," said she. "I have not yet quite lost my personal ident.i.ty."

"And how many months is it since we left Scotland?"

"Weeks you mean, Moodie, it is scarcely yet time to count by months."

"Weeks, then, have made a wondrous change in you."