The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863

We acknowledged that she was become an agreeable companion. In a few weeks of home-education her soul had expanded to a tropical and rich growth. This we were talking over one night, when Lulu had been with us, and when George had come for her and extinguished us with his great hearty laugh and abundant health and activity, as the sun's effulgence does a house-candle.

"I don't like that Remington, either," said the minister, after we were left in this state of darkness.

"But, surely, he has given Lulu's mind a most desirable impulse and direction. How glad Mr. Lewis will be to see her so happy, so animated, and so sensible, when he comes home!"

"If that makes him happy, he could have had it before, I suppose. But do you notice anything unhealthy in this mental cultivation,—anything forced in this luxuriant flowering? Now the light of heaven expands the whole nature, I hold, into healthy and proportioned beauty. If anything is lacking or exuberant, the influence is not heavenly, be sure. What do you think of this statement?"

"Very sensible, but very Hebrew to me."

"I never thought Lulu's were 'household eyes,'—but now she never speaks of husband or children, of house or home. Now that is not a suitable mental condition. Let us hope that this intellectual effervescence will subside, and leave her some thoughtfulness and care for others, and the meditation which will make her accomplishments something to enrich and strengthen, rather than excite and overrun her mind."

"Ah! well, it is only a few weeks, not more than six, since she found out she had a soul. No wonder she feels she has been such a laggard in the race, she must keep on the gallop now to make up for lost time."

"But,—about the husband and children?"

"Oh, they will come in in due time and take their true place. She is a young artist, and hasn't got her perspectives arranged. Be sure they will be in the foreground presently," said I, cheerfully.

"Let us hope so. For a wife, mother, and house-mistress to be racing after so many ologies, and ignoring her daily duties, is a spectacle of doubtful utility to me."

To tell the truth, this want of domestic interest had often struck me also. One day, as we were talking about my children, Lulu had said that she believed herself destitute of the maternal instinct; for although she liked to see the children, of course, yet she did not miss them when away from her. And after the death of young Lewis, which happened while they were at Cuba, and which distressed my Johnnie so much that he could not for a long time bear either books or play, for want of his beloved playmate, his mother, apparently, did not lament him at all.

"I never liked to have him with me," she said to me,—"partly, I suppose, because he reminded me of Montalli, and of a period of great suffering in my life. I should be glad never to think of him again. But William seemed to love and pity him always. Gave him his name, and always treated him like an only and elder son. And William is fond of the little girls, too. I don't mean that I am not fond of them, but not as he is. He will go and spend a week at a time playing and driving with them."

Indeed, she very often reminded me of Undine in her soulless days.

As she scarcely went into society, during the absence of Mr. Lewis, Lulu had time for all this multifarious culture that I have been describing, and she was gradually coming also to reason and reflect on what she read and heard, though her appetite for knowledge continued with the same keenness. Her artistic eye, which naturally grouped and arranged with taste whatever was about her, stood her in good stead of experience; and with a very little instruction, she was able to do wonders in both a plastic and pictorial way.

One day she showed me a fine drawing of the Faun of Praxiteles, with some verses written beneath. The lines seemed to me full of vigor and harmony. They implied and breathed, too, such an intimacy with classical thought, that I was astonished when, in answer to my inquiry, she told me she wrote them herself.

"How delighted Mr. Lewis will be with this!" I exclaimed, looking at the beautifully finished drawing; "to think how you have improved, Lulu!"

"You think so?" she answered, with glistening eyes. "I, too, feel that I have, and am so happy!"

"I am sure Mr. Lewis will be so, too," I continued, persistently.

She answered in a sharp tone, dropping her eyes, and, as it were, all the joy out of them,—

"Surely, I have told you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-idéale; failing that, a housekeeper and drudge."

I cannot describe the scorn with which she said this. She changed the subject, however, at once, instead of pursuing it as she would formerly have done, and soon after left me for a drive over Milton Hills with George, with a hammer and sketch-book in the chaise.

Mr. Lewis's business in Cuba was prolonged into May. He had estates there, and desired to dispose of them, Lulu said, so that they might for the future live entirely at the North, which they both liked better.

I could not help seeing that her affections drifted farther and farther every week from their lawful haven, and I wished Mr. Lewis safe back again and overlooking his Northern estates. I guessed how, through her pride of awakened intellect, Lulu's gratitude had wrought a deep interest in her cousin. He had rescued her from the idleness and inanity of her daily life, pointed out to her the broad fields of literary enjoyment and excellence, and inevitably associated his own image with all the new and varied occupations with which her now busy days were filled. The poetry she read he brought to her; the songs she sang were of his selection. His mind and taste, his observations and reflections, were all written over every page she read, over every hour of her life. She had been on a desert island in her intellectual loneliness. She could hardly help loving the hand that had guided her to the palm-tree and the fountain, especially when she glanced back at the long sandy reach of her life.

Naturally enough, I watched and distrusted Mr. Remington, who was a man of the world, and knew very well what he was about. Of all things, he dearly loved to be excited, occupied, and amused. Of course, I was not disturbed about his heart, nor seriously supposed he would get into any entanglement of the affections and the duties of life, but I thought he might do a great deal of harm for all that.

At last, in the middle of May, Mr. Lewis returned, having failed in his desired arrangement for a permanent residence in New England. The first evening I saw them together without company, I perceived that he was struck with the new life in Lulu's manner and conversation. He watched and listened to her with an astonishment which he could not conceal.

I never saw anything like jealousy in Mr. Lewis's manner, either at this time, or before. He was always tender and dignified, when speaking to or of her. If he felt any uneasiness now, he did not betray it. In looking back, I am sure of this. Afterwards, in company, where he might be supposed to be proud of his wife, he often looked at her with the same astonishment, and sometimes with unaffected admiration. He could not help seeing the great change in her,—that the days were taken up with rational and elegant pursuits, and that the hours were vocal with poetry and taste. The illuminating mind had brought her tulip beauty into a brighter and more gorgeous glow, and her movements were full of graceful meaning. Everything was touched and inspired but the heart. I don't know that he felt this, or that he missed anything. She had the same easy self-possession in his presence which she had always had,—the same pet names of endearment. It was always "Willie, dear," or "Yes, my love," which makes the usual matrimonial vocabulary, and which does not reward study. But he always looked at her with a calm delight, perfectly satisfied with all she said and did, and with a Southern indolence of mind and body, that precluded effort. I think he never once lost entire confidence in her, or was jealous of the hand that had unlocked such mental treasures for her.

Meanwhile her eager lip quaffed the bright cup so cautiously presented, and drained it with ever new delight. If it was mingled with delicate flattery, it only sparkled more merrily; and if there were poison there, I am sure she never guessed it, even when it burnt in her cheek or thrilled in her dancing veins.

XII

The Lewises, with Mr. Remington and a large party of pleasure-seekers, went about this time on a tour to Quebec and the Falls of Montmorency. They decided to shut their house in Boston, and Lulu asked me if I would employ and look after a protégée of hers, in whom she took some interest. The woman was a tolerable seamstress, she said, and would come to me the next day. She knew nothing about her except that she was poor and could sew.

When the woman came in, I was puzzled to think where I could have seen her, which I was sure I had done somewhere, though I could not recall the where or when. In answer to my particular inquiries, as she could give me no references, she told me her husband was living, but was sick and could do nothing for his family,—in fact, that she and three children were kept alive by her efforts of various sorts. These were, sewing when she could get it, washing and scrubbing when she could not. She was very poorly dressed, but had a Yankee, go-ahead expression, as if she would get a living on the top of a bare rock.

Still puzzling over the likeness in her face to somebody I had known, I continued to ask questions and to observe face, manner, and voice, in hope to catch the clue of which I was in search. When she admitted that her husband's intemperance had lost him his place and forbade his getting another, and said his name was Jim Ruggles, "a light broke in upon my brain." I remembered my vision of the fresh young girl who had sprung out on our path like a morning-glory, on our way to New York seven years before. The poor morning-glory was sadly trodden in the dust. It hadn't done "no good," as the driver had remarked, to forewarn her of the consequences of marrying a sponge. She had accepted her lot, and, strangely enough, was quite happy in it. There could be no mistake in the cheerful expression of her worn face. Whatever Jim might be to other people, she said, he was always good to her and the children; and she pitied him, loved him, and took care of him. It wasn't at all in the fashion the Temperance Society would have liked; for when I first went to the house, I found her pouring out a glass of strong waters for him, and handing it to his pale and trembling lips herself. As soon as I was seated, she locked bottle and glass carefully. Before I left her, she had given him stimulants of various sorts from the same source, which he received with grateful smiles, and then went on coughing as before.

"It's no time now for him to be forming new habits," said she, in answer to my open-eyed surprise; "and it's best he should have all the comfort and ease he can get. As long as I can get it for him, he shall have it."

She spoke very quietly, but very much as if the same will of her own which had led her to marry Jim Ruggles, when a gay, dissipated fellow, kept her determined to give him what he wanted, even to the doubtful extreme I saw. So she struggled bravely on during the next four weeks of Jim's existence, keeping herself and her three children on hasty pudding, and buying for Jim's consumptively craving appetite rich mince-pies and platefuls of good rich food from an eating-house hard by. At the end of the four weeks he died most peacefully and suddenly, having not five minutes before swallowed a glass of gin sling, prepared by the loving hand of his wife, and saying to her, with a firm, clear voice, and a grateful smile, "Good Amy! always good!" So the weak man's soul passed away. And as Amy told me about it, with sorrowful sobs, I was not ready to say or think she had done wrong, although both her conduct and my opinion were entirely uncanonical.

Before Mrs. Lewis returned, Amy was one day at my room and asked me when I expected her back.

"Is Mr. Lewis with her, Ma'am?" said she, hesitatingly.

"Of course; at least, I suppose so. Why, what makes you ask?" said I, with surprise at her downcast eyes and flushed face.

"I heard he had gone away. And that—that Mr. Remington was there with her. But you know about it, most likely."

"No, I know nothing about it, Amy."

"It was their old cook told me, Mrs. Butler. And she said,—oh! all sorts of things, that I am sure couldn't be true, for Mrs. Lewis is such a kind, beautiful woman! I couldn't believe a word she said!"

In my quality of minister's wife, and with a general distrust of cooks' opinions, I told Amy that there was always scandal enough, and it was a waste of time to listen to it. But after she left me, I confess to a whole hour wasted in speculations and anxious reflections on Amy's communication, and also to having taken the Dominie away from his sermon for a like space of time to consider the matter fully.

I was relieved when the whole party came back, and when the blooming, happy face of Lulu showed that she, at least, had neither thought nor done anything very bad.

The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks. While we should be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together once more. The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour. I remember vividly the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed together.

XIII

While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a metaphysical discussion of some length. From time to time we heard, "Pascal's idea seems to be," and then, "The notion of Descartes and all that school of thinkers"; and feeling that they were plunging quite beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,—

"What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who said of metaphysics, 'Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should have the skin for his pains'?"

"But that is a most unfair comparison!" said the minister, eagerly, "and what I will by no means allow. By so much more as the mind is better than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy"—

"I give in! I am down!" said Remington.

"But what are you disputing about?" said I.

"Oh, only Infinity!" said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that may not be an effect."

"Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?" said the minister.

"No,—of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be extended."

"Very good. Perhaps you can't. I suppose we cannot comprehend infinity, because we are essentially finite ourselves. But it by no means follows that we cannot apprehend and believe in attributes which we are unable to comprehend. We can certainly do that."

"No. After you reach your limit of comprehension, you may say, all beyond that is infinite,—but you only push the object of your thought out of view. After you have reiterated the years till you are tired, you say, beyond that is infinite. You only mean that you are tired of computing and adding."

"Then you cannot believe in an Infinite Creator?" said the minister.

"I can believe in nothing that is not founded on reason. I should be very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not himself created."

"Yet you can believe in a world that is not created?" said the minister. "You can believe that a world full of adaptations, full of signs of intelligence and design, could be uncreated. How do you make that out?"

"There remains no greater difficulty to me," said Remington, "in believing in an uncreated world than you have in believing in an uncreated God. Why is it stranger that Chaos should produce harmony than that Nothing should produce God?"

He looked at us, smiling as he said this, which he evidently considered unanswerable.

"You are quite right," said my husband, gravely. "It is impossible that nothing should produce God, and therefore I say God is eternal. It is not impossible that something should produce the world, and therefore I believe the world is not eternal. That point is the one on which the whole argument hangs in my mind."

"It does not become me to dispute a clergyman," said Mr. Remington, smiling affectedly, as if only courtesy prevented his coming in with an entirely demolishing argument.

To my great surprise Lulu instantly answered, and with an intelligence that showed she had followed the argument entirely,—

"I am certain, George, that Mr. Prince has altogether the best of it. Yours is merely a technical difficulty,—merely words. You can conceive a thousand things which you can never fully comprehend. And this, too, is a proof of the Infinite Father in our very reasoning,—that, if we could comprehend Him, we should be ourselves infinite. As it is, we can believe and adore,—and, more than that, rejoice that we cannot in this finite life of ours do more."

"If we believed we could comprehend Him," said I, "we should soon begin to meddle with God's administration of affairs."

"Yes,—and in fatalism I have always thought there was a profound reverence," said Lulu.

"Oh, are you going into theological mysteries, too?" said Remington, with a laugh in which none of us joined; "what care you, Lulu, for the quiddities of Absolute Illimitation and Infinite Illimitation? After all, what matters it whether one believes in a God, who you allow to be the personation of all excellence, if only one endeavors to act up to the highest conceivable standard of perfection,—I mean of human perfection,—leaving, of course, a liberal margin for human frailties and defects? One wouldn't like to leave out mercy, you know."

Whatever might be the real sentiments of the man, there was an air of levity in his mode of treating the most important subjects of thought which displeased me, especially when he said, "You adore the Incomprehensible; I am contented to adore, with silent reverence, the lovely works of His hand." He pointed his remark without hesitation at LuLu, who sat looking into the fire, and did not notice him or it.

"You are quite right, Mr. Prince, and my cousin, is quite wrong," said she, looking up with a docile, childlike expression, at the minister. "One feels that all through, though one may not be able to reason or argue about it."

"And the best evidence of all truth, my dear," answered the delighted Dominie, "is that intuition which is before all reasoning, and by which we must try reasoning itself. The moral is before the intellectual; and that is why we preachers continually insist on faith as an illuminator of the reason."

"You mean that we should cultivate faith," I said.

"Yes: not the faith that is blind, but the faith that sees, that is positive; that which leads, not that which follows; the faith that weighs argument and decides on it; in short, the native intuitions which are a necessary part of the mind."

"I see, and I shall remember," said Lulu. "I shall never forget all you say, Mr. Prince."

It was this sweet frankness, and the clearness with which her lately developed intellect acted, that made us begin to respect Lulu as well as to love her. She seemed to be getting right-minded at last.

When Mr. Lewis came, the conversation turned on other subjects; but it was quite late at night before we were willing to part with our friends. The shadow of misgiving which hangs over even short separations was deeper than usual with me from the thought of the voyage. Lulu had been so many times across the sea that she had no fear of it; and she went up-stairs with me to say last words and give last commissions with her usual cheerfulness. Notwithstanding the relief which I had felt during the evening from her expressions of a moral and religious kind, I yet had a brooding fear of the effect of association with a mind so lively and so full of error as Remington's. What help or what sustaining power for her there might be in her husband I could not tell; but be it more or less, I feared she would not avail herself of it. Indeed, I feared that she was daily becoming more alienated from him, as she pursued onward and upward the bright mental track on which she had entered. And it was seeing that she had not yet begun to con the alphabet of true knowledge, that disturbed me most. If I could have seen her thoughtful for others, humble in her endeavor after duty, I should have hailed, rejoicingly, her intellectual illumination. As it was, I could not help saying to her, anxiously, before we went downstairs,—

"I don't like Mr. Remington's notions at all, my dear!—I don't mean merely his theological notions, but his ideas of life and duty seem to me wrong and poor. You will forgive me, if I say, you cannot be too careful how you allow his views to act on your own sense of right and wrong."

"What!—George? Oh, dear friend, it is only his nonsense! He will take any side for the time, only to hear himself talk. But he is the best fellow that ever breathed. Oh, if you only knew his excellence as well as I do!"

"My dear Lulu!" I expostulated, greatly pained to see her glowing face and the almost tearful sparkle of her eyes, as she defended her cousin, "your husband is a great deal the best guide for you,—in action, and I presume in opinion. At all events, you are safest under the shadow of his wing. There is the truest peace for a wife."

Whether she guessed what was in my mind I don't know; I did not try much to conceal it. But she shook her curls away from her face as if irritated, and answered in a tone from which all the animation had been quenched,—

"No. I have been a child. I am one no longer. Don't ask me to go back. I am a living, feeling, understanding woman! George himself allows it is perfectly shocking to be treated as I am,—a mere toy! a plaything!"

George again! I could scarcely restrain my impatience. Yet how to make her understand?

"Don't you see, Lulu, that George ought never to have dared to name the subject of your and your husband's differences? and do you not see that you can never discuss the subject with anybody with propriety? If, unhappily, all is not as you, as we, wish it, let us hope for the effect of time and right feeling in both; but don't, don't allow any gentleman to talk to you of your husband's treatment of you!"

Lulu listened in quiet wonderment, while, with agitated voice and trembling mouth, I addressed her as I had never before done. I had constantly avoided speaking to her on the subject. She looked at me now with clear, innocent eyes, (I am so glad to remember them!) and placed her two hands affectionately on my shoulders.

"I know what you mean,—and what you fear. That I shall say something, or do something undignified, or possibly wrong. But that, with God's help, I shall never do. Such happiness as I can procure, aside from my husband, and which I had a right to expect through him,—such enjoyment as comes from intellectual improvement and the exercise of my faculties, this is surely innocent pleasure, this I shall have. And George,—you must not blame him for being indignant, when he sees me treated so unworthily,—or for calling Lewis a Pacha, as he always does. You must think, my dear, that it isn't pleasant to be treated only like a Circassian slave, and that one may have something better to do in life than to twirl jewelled armlets, or to light my lord's chibouk!"

She looked all radiant with scorn, as she said this,—her eyes flashing, and her very forehead crimson. I could see she was remembering long months and years in that moment of indignant anger. Seeing them with her eyes, I could not say she was unjust, or that her estrangement was unnatural.