The Damnation of Theron Ware Part 7

"That's putting it too strong," remarked the Doctor. "I only follow at a distance--a year or two behind. But I daresay I can help you. You are quite welcome to anything I have: my books cover the ground pretty well up to last year. Delitzsch is very interesting; but Baudissin's 'Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte' would come closer to what you need.

There are several other important Germans--Schrader, Bunsen, Duncker, Hommel, and so on."

"Unluckily I--I don't read German readily," Theron explained with diffidence.

"That's a pity," said the doctor, "because they do the best work--not only in this field, but in most others. And they do so much that the ma.s.s defies translation. Well, the best thing outside of German of course is Sayce. I daresay you know him, though."

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head mournfully. "I don't seem to know any one," he murmured.

The others exchanged glances.

"But if I may ask, Mr. Ware," pursued the doctor, regarding their guest with interest through his spectacles, "why do you specially hit upon Abraham? He is full of difficulties--enough, just now, at any rate, to warn off the bravest scholar. Why not take something easier?"

Theron had recovered something of his confidence. "Oh, no," he said, "that is just what attracts me to Abraham. I like the complexities and contradictions in his character. Take for instance all that strange and picturesque episode of Hagar: see the splendid contrast between the craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightforward G.o.dliness of his later years. No, all those difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to know--of course you would know--do those German books, or the others, give anywhere any additional details of the man himself and his sayings and doings--little things which help, you know, to round out one's conception of the individual?"

Again the priest and the doctor stole a furtive glance across the young minister's head. It was Father Forbes who replied.

"I fear that you are taking our friend Abraham too literally, Mr. Ware,"

he said, in that gentle semblance of paternal tones which seemed to go so well with his gown. "Modern research, you know, quite wipes him out of existence as an individual. The word 'Abram' is merely an eponym--it means 'exalted father.' Practically all the names in the Genesis chronologies are what we call eponymous. Abram is not a person at all: he is a tribe, a sept, a clan. In the same way, Shem is not intended for a man; it is the name of a great division of the human race. Heber is simply the throwing back into allegorical substance, so to speak, of the Hebrews; Heth of the Hitt.i.tes; a.s.shur of a.s.syria."

"But this is something very new, this theory, isn't it?" queried Theron.

The priest smiled and shook his head. "Bless you, no! My dear sir, there is nothing new. Epicurus and Lucretius outlined the whole Darwinian theory more than two thousand years ago. As for this eponym thing, why Saint Augustine called attention to it fifteen hundred years ago. In his 'De Civitate Dei,' he expressly says of these genealogical names, 'GENTES NON HOMINES;' that is, 'peoples, not persons.' It was as obvious to him--as much a commonplace of knowledge--as it was to Ezekiel eight hundred years before him."

"It seems pa.s.sing strange that we should not know it now, then,"

commented Theron; "I mean, that everybody shouldn't know it."

Father Forbes gave a little purring chuckle. "Ah, there we get upon contentious ground," he remarked. "Why should 'everybody' be supposed to know anything at all? What business is it of 'everybody's' to know things? The earth was just as round in the days when people supposed it to be flat, as it is now. So the truth remains always the truth, even though you give a charter to ten hundred thousand separate numskulls to examine it by the light of their private judgment, and report that it is as many different varieties of something else. But of course that whole question of private judgment versus authority is No-Man's-Land for us.

We were speaking of eponyms."

"Yes," said Theron; "it is very interesting."

"There is a curious phase of the subject which hasn't been worked out much," continued the priest. "Probably the Germans will get at that too, sometime. They are doing the best Irish work in other fields, as it is.

I spoke of Heber and Heth, in Genesis, as meaning the Hebrews and the Hitt.i.tes. Now my own people, the Irish, have far more ancient legends and traditions than any other nation west of Athens; and you find in their myth of the Milesian invasion and conquest two princ.i.p.al leaders called Heber and Ith, or Heth. That is supposed to be comparatively modern--about the time of Solomon's Temple. But these independent Irish myths go back to the fall of the Tower of Babel, and they have there an ancestor, grandson of j.a.phet, named Fenius Farsa, and they ascribe to him the invention of the alphabet. They took their ancient name of Feine, the modern Fenian, from him. Oddly enough, that is the name which the Romans knew the Phoenicians by, and to them also is ascribed the invention of the alphabet. The Irish have a holy salmon of knowledge, just like the Chaldean man-fish. The Druids' tree-worship is identical with that of the Chaldeans--those pagan groves, you know, which the Jews were always being punished for building. You see, there is nothing new.

Everything is built on the ruins of something else. Just as the material earth is made up of countless billions of dead men's bones, so the mental world is all alive with the ghosts of dead men's thoughts and beliefs, the wraiths of dead races' faiths and imaginings."

Father Forbes paused, then added with a twinkle in his eye: "That peroration is from an old sermon of mine, in the days when I used to preach. I remember rather liking it, at the time."

"But you still preach?" asked the Rev. Mr. Ware, with lifted brows.

"No! no more! I only talk now and again," answered the priest, with what seemed a suggestion of curtness. He made haste to take the conversation back again. "The names of these dead-and-gone things are singularly pertinacious, though. They survive indefinitely. Take the modern name Marmaduke, for example. It strikes one as peculiarly modern, up-to-date, doesn't it? Well, it is the oldest name on earth--thousands of years older than Adam. It is the ancient Chaldean Meridug, or Merodach. He was the young G.o.d who interceded continually between the angry, omnipotent Ea, his father, and the humble and unhappy Damkina, or Earth, who was his mother. This is interesting from another point of view, because this Merodach or Marmaduke is, so far as we can see now, the original prototype of our 'divine intermediary' idea. I daresay, though, that if we could go back still other scores of centuries, we should find whole receding series of types of this Christ-myth of ours."

Theron Ware sat upright at the fall of these words, and flung a swift, startled look about the room--the instinctive glance of a man unexpectedly confronted with peril, and casting desperately about for means of defence and escape. For the instant his mind was aflame with this vivid impression--that he was among sinister enemies, at the mercy of criminals. He half rose under the impelling stress of this feeling, with the sweat standing on his brow, and his jaw dropped in a scared and bewildered stare.

Then, quite as suddenly, the sense of shock was gone; and it was as if nothing at all had happened. He drew a long breath, took another sip of his coffee, and found himself all at once reflecting almost pleasurably upon the charm of contact with really educated people. He leaned back in the big chair again, and smiled to show these men of the world how much at his ease he was. It required an effort, he discovered, but he made it bravely, and hoped he was succeeding.

"It hasn't been in my power to at all lay hold of what the world keeps on learning nowadays about its babyhood," he said. "All I have done is to try to preserve an open mind, and to maintain my faith that the more we know, the nearer we shall approach the Throne."

Dr. Ledsmar abruptly scuffled his feet on the floor, and took out his watch. "I'm afraid--" he began.

"No, no! There's plenty of time," remarked the priest, with his soft half-smile and purring tones. "You finish your cigar here with Mr. Ware, and excuse me while I run down and get rid of the people in the hall."

Father Forbes tossed his cigar-end into the fender. Then he took from the mantel a strange three-cornered black-velvet cap, with a dangling silk ta.s.sel at the side, put it on his head, and went out.

Theron, being left alone with the doctor, hardly knew what to do or say.

He took up a paper from the floor beside him, but realized that it would be impolite to go farther, and laid it on his knee. Some trace of that earlier momentary feeling that he was in hostile hands came back, and worried him. He lifted himself upright in the chair, and then became conscious that what really disturbed him was the fact that Dr. Ledsmar had turned in his seat, crossed his legs, and was contemplating him with a gravely concentrated scrutiny through his spectacles.

This uncomfortable gaze kept itself up a long way beyond the point of good manners; but the doctor seemed not to mind that at all.

CHAPTER VIII

When Dr. Ledsmar finally spoke, it was in a kindlier tone than the young minister had looked for. "I had half a notion of going to hear you preach the other evening," he said; "but at the last minute I backed out. I daresay I shall pluck up the courage, sooner or later, and really go. It must be fully twenty years since I last heard a sermon, and I had supposed that that would suffice for the rest of my life. But they tell me that you are worth while; and, for some reason or other, I find myself curious on the subject."

Involved and dubious though the compliment might be, Theron felt himself flushing with satisfaction. He nodded his acknowledgment, and changed the topic.

"I was surprised to hear Father Forbes say that he did not preach," he remarked.

"Why should he?" asked the doctor, indifferently. "I suppose he hasn't more than fifteen parishioners in a thousand who would understand him if he did, and of these probably twelve would join in a complaint to his Bishop about the heterodox tone of his sermon. There is no point in his going to all that pains, merely to incur that risk. n.o.body wants him to preach, and he has reached an age where personal vanity no longer tempts him to do so. What IS wanted of him is that he should be the paternal, ceremonial, authoritative head and centre of his flock, adviser, monitor, overseer, elder brother, friend, patron, seigneur--whatever you like--everything except a bore. They draw the line at that. You see how diametrically opposed this Catholic point of view is to the Protestant."

"The difference does seem extremely curious to me," said Theron. "Now, those people in the hall--"

"Go on," put in the doctor, as the other faltered hesitatingly. "I know what you were going to say. It struck you as odd that he should let them wait on the bench there, while he came up here to smoke."

Theron smiled faintly. "I WAS thinking that my--my parishioners wouldn't have taken it so quietly. But of course--it is all so different!"

"As chalk from cheese!" said Dr. Ledsmar, lighting a fresh cigar. "I daresay every one you saw there had come either to take the pledge, or see to it that one of the others took it. That is the chief industry in the hall, so far as I have observed. Now discipline is an important element in the machinery here. Coming to take the pledge implies that you have been drunk and are now ashamed. Both states have their values, but they are opposed. Sitting on that bench tends to develop penitence to the prejudice of alcoholism. But at no stage would it ever occur to the occupant of the bench that he was the best judge of how long he was to sit there, or that his priest should interrupt his dinner or general personal routine, in order to administer that pledge. Now, I daresay you have no people at all coming to 'swear off.'"

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head. "No; if a man with us got as bad as all that, he wouldn't come near the church at all. He'd simply drop out, and there would be an end to it."

"Quite so," interjected the doctor. "That is the voluntary system. But these fellows can't drop out. There's no bottom to the Catholic Church.

Everything that's in, stays in. If you don't mind my saying so--of course I view you all impartially from the outside--but it seems logical to me that a church should exist for those who need its help, and not for those who by their own profession are so good already that it is they who help the church. Now, you turn a man out of your church who behaves badly: that must be on the theory that his remaining in would injure the church, and that in turn involves the idea that it is the excellent character of the parishioners which imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics' conception, you see, is quite the converse. Such virtue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak, here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it. Some come every day, some only once a year, some perhaps never between their baptism and their funeral. But they all have a right here, the professional burglar every whit as much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation is that they oughtn't to come under false pretences: the burglar is in honor bound not to pa.s.s himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is merely a moral obligation, established in the burglar's own interest. It does him no good to come unless he feels that he is playing the rules of the game, and one of these is confession. If he cheats there, he knows that he is cheating n.o.body but himself, and might much better have stopped away altogether."

Theron nodded his head comprehendingly. He had a great many views about the Romanish rite of confession which did not at all square with this statement of the case, but this did not seem a specially fit time for bringing them forth. There was indeed a sense of languid repletion in his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for awhile.

He contented himself with nodding again, and murmuring reflectively, "Yes, it is all strangely different."

His tone was an invitation to silence; and the doctor turned his attention to the cigar, studying its ash for a minute with an air of deep meditation, and then solemnly blowing out a slow series of smoke-rings. Theron watched him with an indolent, placid eye, wondering lazily if it was, after all, so very pleasant to smoke.

There fell upon this silence--with a softness so delicate that it came almost like a progression in the hush--the sound of sweet music. For a little, strain and source were alike indefinite--an impalpable setting to harmony of the mellowed light, the perfumed opalescence of the air, the luxury and charm of the room. Then it rose as by a sweeping curve of beauty, into a firm, calm, severe melody, delicious to the ear, but as cold in the mind's vision as moonlit sculpture. It went on upward with stately collectedness of power, till the atmosphere seemed all alive with the trembling consciousness of the presence of lofty souls, sternly pure and pitilessly great.

Theron found himself moved as he had never been before. He almost resented the discovery, when it was presented to him by the prosaic, mechanical side of his brain, that he was listening to organ-music, and that it came through the open window from the church close by. He would fain have reclined in his chair and closed his eyes, and saturated himself with the uttermost fulness of the sensation. Yet, in absurd despite of himself, he rose and moved over to the window.

Only a narrow alley separated the pastorate from the church; Mr. Ware could have touched with a walking-stick the opposite wall. Indirectly facing him was the arched and mullioned top of a great window. A dim light from within shone through the more translucent portions of the gla.s.s below, throwing out faint little bars of party-colored radiance upon the blackness of the deep pa.s.sage-way. He could vaguely trace by these the outlines of some sort of picture on the window. There were human figures in it, and--yes--up here in the centre, nearest him, was a woman's head. There was a halo about it, engirdling rich, flowing waves of reddish hair, the lights in which glowed like flame. The face itself was barely distinguishable, but its half-suggested form raised a curious sense of resemblance to some other face. He looked at it closely, blankly, the n.o.ble music throbbing through his brain meanwhile.

"It's that Madden girl!" he suddenly heard a voice say by his side. Dr.

Ledsmar had followed him to the window, and was close at his shoulder.

Theron's thoughts were upon the puzzling shadowed lineaments on the stained gla.s.s. He saw now in a flash the resemblance which had baffled him. "It IS like her, of course," he said.