The Elect Lady

CHAPTER XI. GEORGE AND ANDREW

George went home the next day; and the following week sent Andrew a note, explaining that when he saw him he did not know his obligation to him, and expressing the hope that, when next in town, he would call upon him. This was hardly well, being condescension to a superior. Perhaps the worst evil in the sense of social superiority is the vile fancy that it alters human relation. George did not feel bound to make the same acknowledgment of obligation to one in humble position as to one in the same golden rank with himself! It says ill for social distinction, if, for its preservation, such an immoral difference be essential. But Andrew was not one to dwell upon his rights. He thought it friendly of Mr. Crawford to ask him to call; therefore, although he had little desire to make his acquaintance, and grudged the loss of time, to no man so precious as to him who has a pursuit in addition to a calling, Andrew, far stronger in courtesy than the man who invited him, took the first Saturday afternoon to go and see him.

Mr. Crawford the elder lived in some style, and his door was opened by a servant whose blatant adornment filled Andrew with friendly pity: no man would submit to be dressed like that, he judged, except from necessity. The reflection sprung from no foolish and degrading contempt for household service. It is true Andrew thought no labor so manly as that in the earth, out of which grows everything that makes the loveliness or use of Nature; for by it he came in contact with the primaries of human life, and was God’s fellow laborer, a helper in the work of the universe, knowing the ways of it and living in them; but not the less would he have done any service, and that cheerfully, which his own need or that of others might have required of him. The colors of a parrot, however, were not fit for a son of man, and hence his look of sympathy. His regard was met only by a glance of plain contempt, as the lackey, moved by the same spirit as his master, left him standing in the hall—to return presently, and show him into the library—a room of mahogany, red morocco, and yellow calf, where George sat. He rose, and shook hands with him.

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Ingram,” he said. “When I wrote I had but just learned how much I was indebted to you.”

“I understand what you must mean,” returned Andrew, “but it was scarce worth alluding to. Miss Fordyce had the better claim to serve you!”

“You call it nothing to carry a man of my size over a mile of heather!”

“I had help,” answered Andrew; “and but for the broken leg,” he added, with a laugh, “I could have carried you well enough alone.”

There came a pause, for George did not know what next to do with the farmer fellow. So the latter spoke again, being unembarrassed.

“You have a grand library, Mr. Crawford! It must be fine to sit among so many books! It’s just like a wine-merchant’s cellars—only here you can open and drink, and leave the bottles as full as before!”

“A good simile, Mr. Ingram!” replied George. “You must come and dine with me, and we’ll open another sort of bottle!”

“You must excuse me there, sir! I have no time for that sort of bottle.”

“I understand you read a great deal?”

“Weather permitting,” returned Andrew.

“I should have thought if anything was independent of the weather, it must be reading!”

“Not a farmer’s reading, sir. To him the weather is the Word of God, telling him whether to work or read.”

George was silent. To him the Word of God was the Bible!

“But you must read a great deal yourself, sir!” resumed Andrew, casting a glance round the room.

“The books are my father’s!” said George.

He did not mention that his own reading came all in the library-cart, except when he wanted some special information; for George was “a practical man!” He read his Bible to prepare for his class in the Sunday-school, and his Shakespeare when he was going to see one of his plays acted. He would make the best of both worlds by paying due attention to both! He was religious, but liberal.

His father was a banker, an elder of the kirk, well reputed in and beyond his circle. He gave to many charities, and largely to educational schemes. His religion was to hold by the traditions of the elders, and keep himself respectable in the eyes of money-dealers. He went to church regularly, and always asked God’s blessing on his food, as if it were a kind of general sauce. He never prayed God to make him love his neighbor, or help him to be an honest man. He “had worship” every morning, no doubt; but only a Nonentity like his God could care for such prayers as his. George rejected his father’s theology as false in logic and cruel in character: George knew just enough of God to be guilty of neglecting Him.

“When I am out all day, I can do with less reading; for then I have the ‘book of knowledge fair,’” said Andrew, quoting Milton. “It does not take all one’s attention to drive a straight furrow or keep the harrow on the edge of the last bout!”

“You don’t mean you can read your Bible as you hold the plow!” said George.

“No, sir,” answered Andrew, amused. “A body could not well manage a book between the stilts of the plow. The Bible will keep till you get home; a little of it goes a long way. But Paul counted the book of creation enough to make the heathen to blame for not minding it. Never a wind wakes of a sudden, but it talks to me about God. And is not the sunlight the same that came out of the body of Jesus at His transfiguration?”

“You seem to have some rather peculiar ideas of your own, Mr. Ingram!”

“Perhaps, sir! For a man to have no ideas of his own, is much the same as to have no ideas at all. A man can not have the ideas of another man, any more than he can have another man’s soul, or another man’s body!”

“That is dangerous doctrine.”

“Perhaps we are not talking about the same thing! I mean by ideas, what a man orders his life by.”

“Your ideas may be wrong!”

“The All-wise is my judge.”

“So much the worse, if you are in the wrong!”

“It is the only good, whether I be in the right or the wrong. Would I have my mistakes overlooked? What judge would I desire but the Judge of all the earth! Shall He not do right? And will He not set me right?”

“That is a most dangerous confidence!”

“It would be if there were any other judge. But it will be neither the Church nor the world that will sit on the great white throne. He who sits there will not ask: ‘Did you go to church?’ or ‘Did you believe in this or that?’ but’ Did you do what I told you?’”

“And what will you say to that, Mr. Ingram?”

“I will say: ‘Lord, Thou knowest!”

The answer checked George a little.

“Suppose He should say you did not, what would you answer?”

“I would say: ‘Lord, send me where I may learn.’”

“And if He should say: ‘That is what I sent you into the world for, and you have not done it!’ what would you say then?”

“I should hold my peace.”

“You do what He tells you then?”

“I try.”

“Does He not say: ‘Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together?’”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“Somebody says something like it in the Epistle to the Hebrews.”

“And isn’t that the same?”

“The Man who wrote it would be indignant at your saying so! Tell me, Mr. Crawford, what makes a gathering a Church?”

“It would take me some time to arrange my ideas before I could answer you.”

“Is it not the presence of Christ that makes an assembly a Church?”

“Well?”

“Does He not say that where two or three are met in His name, there is He in the midst of them?”

“Yes.”

“Then thus far I will justify myself to you, that, if I do not go to what you call church, I yet often make one of a company met in His name.”

“He does not limit the company to two or three.”

“Assuredly not. But if I find I get more help and strength with a certain few, why should I go with a multitude to get less? Will you draw another line than the Master’s? Why should it be more sacred to worship with five hundred or five thousand than with three? If He is in the midst of them, they can not be wrong gathered!”

“It looks as if you thought yourselves better than everybody else!”

“If it were so, then certainly He would not be one of the gathering!”

“How are you to know that He is in the midst of you?”

“If we are not keeping His commandments, He is not. But His presence can not be proved; it can only be known. If He meets us, it is not necessary to the joy of His presence that we should be able to prove that He does meet us! If a man has the company of the Lord, he will care little whether another does or does not believe that he has.”

“Your way is against the peace of the Church! It fosters division.”

“Did the Lord come to send peace on the earth? My way, as you call it, would make division, but division between those who call themselves His and those who are His. It would bring together those that love Him. Company would merge with company that they might look on the Lord together. I don’t believe Jesus cares much for what is called the visible Church; but He cares with His very Godhead for those that do as He tells them; they are His Father’s friends; they are His elect by whom He will save the world. It is by those who obey, and by their obedience, that He will save those who do not obey, that is, will bring them to obey. It is one by one the world will pass to His side. There is no saving in the lump. If a thousand be converted at once, it is every single lonely man that is converted.”

“You would make a slow process of it!”

“If slow, yet faster than any other. All God’s processes are slow. How many years has the world existed, do you imagine, sir?”

“I don’t know. Geologists say hundreds and hundreds of thousands.”

“And how many is it since Christ came?”

“Toward two thousand.”

“Then we are but in the morning of Christianity! There is plenty of time. The day is before us.”

“Dangerous doctrine for the sinner!”

“Why? Time is plentiful for his misery, if he will not repent; plentiful for the mercy of God that would lead him to repentance. There is plenty of time for labor and hope; none for indifference and delay. God will have his creatures good. They can not escape Him.”

“Then a man may put off repentance as long as he pleases!”

“Certainly he may—at least as long as he can—but it is a fearful thing to try issues with God.”

“I can hardly say I understand you.”

“Mr. Crawford, you have questioned me in the way of kindly anxiety and reproof; that has given me the right to question you. Tell me, do you admit we are bound to do what our Lord requires?”

“Of course. How could any Christian man do otherwise?”

“Yet a man may say: ‘Lord, Lord,’ and be cast out! It is one thing to say we are bound to do what the Lord tells us, and another to do what He tells us! He says: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness:’ Mr. Crawford, are you seeking the kingdom of God first, or are you seeking money first?”

“We are sent into the world to make our living.”

“Sent into the world, we have to seek our living; we are not sent into the world to seek our living, but to seek the kingdom and righteousness of God. And to seek a living is very different from seeking a fortune!”

“If you, Mr. Ingram, had a little wholesome ambition, you would be less given to judging your neighbors.”

Andrew held his peace, and George concluded he had had the best of the argument—which was all he wanted; of the truth concerned he did not see enough to care about it Andrew, perceiving no good was to be done, was willing to appear defeated; he did not value any victory but the victory of the truth, and George was not yet capable of being conquered by the truth.

“No!” resumed he, “we must avoid personalities. There are certain things all respectable people have agreed to regard as right: he is a presumptuous man who refuses to regard them. Reflect on it, Mr. Ingram.”

The curious smile hovered about the lip of the plow-man; when things to say did not come to him, he went nowhere to fetch them. Almost in childhood he had learned that, when one is required to meet the lie, words are given him; when they are not, silence is better. A man who does not love the truth, but disputes for victory, is the swine before whom pearls must not be cast. Andrew’s smile meant that it had been a waste of his time to call upon Mr. Crawford. But he did not blame himself, for he had come out of pure friendliness. He would have risen at once, but feared to seem offended. Crawford, therefore, with the rudeness of a superior, himself rose, saying:

“Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Ingram?”

“The only thing one man can do for another is to be at one with him,” answered Andrew, rising.

“Ah, you are a socialist! That accounts for much!” said George.

“Tell me this,” returned Andrew, looking him in the eyes: “Did Jesus ever ask of His Father anything His Father would not give Him?”

“Not that I remember,” answered George, fearing a theological trap.

“He said once: ‘I pray for them which shall believe in Me, that they all may be one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also many be one in us!’ No man can be one with another, who is not one with Christ.”

As he left the house, a carriage drove up, in which was Mr. Crawford the elder, home from a meeting of directors, at which a dividend had been agreed upon—to be paid from the capital, in preparation for another issue of shares.

Andrew walked home a little bewildered. “How is it,” he said to himself, “that so many who would be terrified at the idea of not being Christians, and are horrified at any man who does not believe there is a God, are yet absolutely indifferent to what their Lord tells them to do if they would be His disciples? But may not I be in like case without knowing it? Do I meet God in my geometry? When I so much enjoy my Euclid, is it always God geometrizing to me? Do I feel talking with God every time I dwell upon any fact of his world of lines and circles and angles? Is it God with me, every time that the joy of life, of a wind or a sky or a lovely phrase, flashes through me? Oh, my God,” he broke out in speechless prayer as he walked—and those that passed said to themselves he was mad; how, in such a world, could any but a madman wear a face of joy! “Oh, my God, Thou art all in all, and I have everything! The world is mine because it is Thine! I thank Thee, my God, that Thou hast lifted me up to see whence I came, to know to whom I belong, to know who is my Father, and makes me His heir! I am Thine, infinitely more than mine own; and Thou art mine as Thou art Christ’s!”

He knew his Father in the same way that Jesus Christ knows His Father. He was at home in the universe, neither lonely, nor out-of-doors, nor afraid.

CHAPTER XII. THE CRAWFORDS

Through strong striving to secure his life, Mr. Crawford lost it—both in God’s sense of loss and his own. He narrowly escaped being put in prison, died instead, and was put into God’s prison to pay the uttermost farthing. But he had been such a good Christian that his fellow-Christians mourned over his failure and his death, not over his dishonesty! For did they not know that if, by more dishonesty, he could have managed to recover his footing, he would have paid everything? One injunction only he obeyed—he provided for his own; of all the widows concerned in his bank, his widow alone was secured from want; and she, like a dutiful wife, took care that his righteous intention should be righteously carried out; not a penny would she give up to the paupers her husband had made.

The downfall of the house of cards took place a few months after George’s return to its business. Not initiated to the mysteries of his father’s transactions, ignorant of what had long been threatening, it was a terrible blow to him. But he was a man of action, and at once looked to America; at home he could not hold up his head.

He had often been to Potlurg, and had been advancing in intimacy with Alexa; but he would not show himself there until he could appear as a man of decision—until he was on the point of departure. She would be the more willing to believe his innocence of complicity in the deceptions that had led to his ruin! He would thus also manifest self-denial and avoid the charge of interested motives! he could not face the suspicion of being a suitor with nothing to offer! George had always taken the grand rôle—that of superior, benefactor, bestower. He was powerful in condescension!

Not, therefore, until the night before he sailed did he go to Potlurg.

Alexa received him with a shade of displeasure.

“I am going away,” he said, abruptly, the moment they were seated.

Her heart gave a painful throb in her throat, but she did not lose her self-possession.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To New York,” he replied. “I have got a situation there—in a not unimportant house. There at least I am taken for an honest man. From your heaven I have fallen.”

“No one falls from any heaven but has himself to blame,” rejoined Alexa.

“Where have I been to blame? I was not in my father’s confidence. I knew nothing, positively nothing, of what was going on.”

“Why then did you not come to see me?”

“A man who is neither beggar nor thief is not willing to look either.”

“You would have come if you had trusted me,” she said.

“You must pardon pride in a ruined man,” he answered. “Now that I am starting to-morrow, I do not feel the same dread of being misunderstood!”

“It was not kind of you, George. Knowing yourself fit to be trusted, why did you not think me capable of trusting?”

“But, Alexa!—a man’s own father!”

For a moment he showed signs of an emotion he had seldom had to repress.

“I beg your pardon, George!” cried Alexa. “I am both stupid and selfish! Are you really going so far?”

Her voice trembled.

“I am—but to return, I hope, in a very different position!”

“You would have me understand—”

“That I shall then be able to hold up my head.”

“Why should an innocent man ever do otherwise?”

“He can not help seeing himself in other people’s thoughts!”

“If we are in the right ought we to mind what people think of us?” said Alexa.

“Perhaps not. But I will make them think of me as I choose.”

“How?”

“By compelling their respect.”

“You mean to make a fortune?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will be the fortune they respect! You will not be more worthy!”

“I shall not.”

“Is such respect worth having?”

“Not in itself.”

“In what then? Why lay yourself out for it?”

“Believe me, Alexa, even the real respect of such people would be worthless to me. I only want to bring them to their marrow-bones!”

The truth was, Alexa prized social position so dearly that she did not relish his regarding it as a thing at the command of money. Let George be as rich as a Jew or an American, Alexa would never regard him as her equal! George worshiped money; Alexa worshiped birth and land.

Our own way of being wrong is all right in our own eyes; our neighbor’s way of being wrong is offensive to all that is good in us. We are anxious therefore, kindly anxious, to pull the mote out of his eye, never thinking of the big beam in the way of the operation. Jesus labored to show us that our immediate business is to be right ourselves. Until we are, even our righteous indignation is waste.