The Elect Lady Part 16

"I want to know what you think of it, Mr. Ingram?"

"I know little," replied Andrew, "of any matter with which I have not had to deal practically."

"But ought not one to have his ideas ready for the time when we will have to deal practically?" said Alexa.

"Mine would be pretty sure to be wrong," answered Andrew; "and there is no time to spend in gathering wrong ideas and then changing them!"

"On the contrary, they would be less warped by personal interest."

"Could circ.u.mstances arise in which it would not be my first interest to be honest?" said Andrew. "Would not my judgment be quickened by the compulsion and the danger? In no danger myself, might I not judge too leniently of things from which I should myself recoil? Selfishly smoother with regard to others, because less anxious about their honesty than my own, might I not yield them what, were I in the case, I should see at once I dared not allow to myself? I can perceive no use in making up my mind how to act in circ.u.mstances in which I am not--probably will never be. I have enough to occupy me where I find myself, and should certainly be oftener in doubt how to act, if I had bothered my brains how to think in circ.u.mstances foreign to me. In such thinking, duty is of necessity a comparatively feeble factor, being only duty imagined, not live duty, and the result is the more questionable. The Lord instructed His apostles not to be anxious what they should say when they were brought before rulers and kings: I will leave the question of duty alone until action is demanded of me. In the meantime I will do the duty now required of me, which is the only preparation for the duty that is to come."

Although Alexa had not begun to understand Andrew, she had sense enough and righteousness enough to feel that he was somehow ahead of her, and that it was not likely he and George Crawford would be of one mind in the matter that occupied her, so different were their ways of looking at things--so different indeed the things themselves they thought worth looking at.

She was silent for a moment, then said:

"You can at least tell me what you think of gambling!"

"I think it is the meanest mode of gaining or losing money a man could find."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because he desires only to gain, and can gain only by his neighbor's loss. One of the two must be the worse for his transaction with the other. Each _must_ wish ill to his neighbor!"

"But the risk was agreed upon between them."

"True--but in what hope? Was it not, on the part of each, that he would be the gainer and the other the loser? There is no common cause, nothing but pure opposition of interest."

"Are there not many things in which one must gain and the other lose?"

"There are many things in which one gains and the other loses; but if it is essential to any transaction that only one side shall gain, the thing is not of G.o.d."

"What do you think of trading in stocks?"

"I do not know enough about it to have a right to speak."

"You can give your impression!"

"I will not give what I do not value."

"Suppose, then, you heard of a man who had made his money so, how would you behave to him?"

"I would not seek his acquaintance."

"If he sought yours?"

"It would be time to ask how he had made his money. Then it would be my business."

"What would make it your business?"

"That he sought my acquaintance. It would then be necessary to know something about him, and the readiest question would be--how he had made his money!"

Alexa was silent for some time.

"Do you think G.o.d cares about everything?" she said at length.

"Everything," answered Andrew, and she said no more.

Andrew avoided the discussion of moral questions. He regarded the thing as _vermiculate_, and ready to corrupt the obedience. "When you have a thing to do," he would say, "you will do it right in proportion to your love of right. But do the right, and you will love the right; for by doing it you will see it in a measure as it is, and no one can see the truth as it is without loving it. The more you _talk_ about what is right, or even about the doing of it, the more you are in danger of exemplifying how loosely theory may be allied to practice. Talk without action saps the very will. Something you have to do is waiting undone all the time, and getting more and more undone. The only refuge is _to do_." To know the thing he ought to do was a matter of import, to do the thing he knew he ought to do was a matter of life and death to Andrew.

He never allowed even a cognate question to force itself upon him until he had attended to the thing that demanded doing: it was merest common sense!

Alexa had in a manner got over her uneasiness at the report of how George was making his money, and their correspondence was not interrupted. But something, perhaps a movement from the world of spirit coming like the wind, had given her one of those motions to betterment, which, however occasioned, are the throb of the divine pulse in our life, the call of the Father, the pull of home, and the guide thither to such as will obey them. She had in consequence again become doubtful about Crawford, and as to whether she was right in corresponding with him. This led to her talk with Andrew, which, while it made her think less of his intellect, influenced her in a way she neither understood nor even recognized. There are two ways in which one nature may influence another for betterment--the one by strengthening the will, the other by heightening the ideal. Andrew, without even her suspicion of the fact, wrought in the latter way upon Alexa. She grew more uneasy.

George was coming home: how was she to receive him? Nowise bound, they were on terms of intimacy: was she to encourage the procession of that intimacy, or to ward attempt at nearer approach?

CHAPTER XX.

GEORGE AND ANDREW.

George returned, and made an early appearance at Potlurg. Dawtie met him in the court. She did not know him, but involuntarily shrunk from him.

He frowned. There was a natural repugnance between them; the one was simple, the other double; the one was pure, the other selfish; the one loved her neighbor, the other preyed upon his.

George was a little louder, and his manners were more studied. Alexa felt him overblown. He was floridly at his ease. What little "atmosphere" there had been about him was gone, and its place taken by a colored fog. His dress was un.o.bjectionable, and yet attracted notice; perhaps it was only too considered. Alexa was disappointed, and a little relieved. He looked older, yet not more manly--and rather fat. He had more of the confidence women dislike to see a man without, than was quite pleasant even to the confident Alexa. His speech was not a little infected with the nasality--as easy to catch as hard to get rid of--which I presume the Puritans carried from England to America. On the whole, George was less interesting than Alexa had expected.

He came to her as if he would embrace her, but an instinctive movement on her part sufficed to check him. She threw an additional heartiness into her welcome, and kept him at arm's-length. She felt as if she had lost an old friend, and not gained a new one. He made himself very agreeable, but that he made himself so, made him less so.

There was more than these changes at work in her; there was still the underlying doubt concerning him. Although not yet a live soul, she had strong if vague ideas about right and wrong; and although she sought many things a good deal more than righteousness, I do not see what temptation would at once have turned her from its known paths. At the same time I do not see what she had yet, more than hundreds of thousands of well-meaning women, to secure her from slow decay and final ruin.

They laughed and talked together very _like_ the way they used, but "every like is not the same," and they knew there was a difference.

George was stung by the sense of it--too much to show that he was vexed.

He laid himself out to be the more pleasing, as if determined to make her feel what he was worth--as the man, namely, whom he imagined himself, and valued himself on being.

It is an argument for G.o.d, to see what fools those make of themselves who, believing there is a G.o.d, do not believe _in_ Him--children who do not know the Father. Such make up the ma.s.s of church and chapel goers.

Let an earthquake or the small-pox break loose among them, and they will show what sort their religion is. George had got rid of the folly of believing in the existence of a G.o.d, either interested in human affairs or careless of them, and naturally found himself more comfortable in consequence; for he never had believed _in_ G.o.d, and it is awkward to believe and not believe at the same moment. What he had called his _beliefs_ were as worthy of the name as those of most people, but whether he was better or worse without them hardly interests me, and my philanthropy will scarce serve to make me glad that he was more comfortable.

As they talked, old times came up, and they drew a little nearer, until at last a gentle spring of rose-colored interest began a feeble flow in Alexa's mind. When George took his leave, which he did soon, with the wisdom of one who feared to bore, she went with him to the court, where the gardener was holding his horse. Beside them stood Andrew, talking to the old man, and admiring the beautiful animal in his charge.

"The life of the Creator has run free through every channel up to this creature!" he was saying as they came near.

"What rot!" said George to himself, but to Alexa he said: "Here's my old friend, the farmer, I declare!" then to Andrew: "How do you do, Mr.

Ingram?"

George never forgot a man's name, and went in consequence for a better fellow than he was. One may remember for reasons that have little to do with good-fellowship. He spoke as if they were old friends. "You seem to like the look of the beast!" he said: "you ought to know what's what in horses!"

"He is one of the finest horses I ever saw," answered Andrew. "The man who owns him is fortunate."

"He ought to be a good one!" said George. "I gave a hundred and fifty guineas for him yesterday."