CHAPTER 37

WHAT NATURE HATH JOINED TOGETHER

NED paused, but Paul remained silent, hoping that his mood for self-revelation would lead him to talk still more about his past. Nor was Paul disappointed, for Ned presently resumed:

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Did you ever think it strange, Paul, that I have reached the age of thirty-five years without marrying?"

"Yes," replied Paul with unconcealed interest; "I have often wondered at it, and more than ever since you have been talking to me to-day. I have wanted to ask you about it, but didn't quite dare take the liberty. And I think you will understand that it is not mere idle curiosity that prompts me. It seems to me that a man like yourself, so well fitted physically, mentally, and morally for everything that marriage involves and implies, ought to have been married years ago."

"You are right, Paul; so I ought," responded Ned, smiling a half-melancholy smile at his young friend's frank earnestness. "And so I should have been if

He stopped short, but after a moment continued:

"It is to me a sad and bitter recollection, though the lapse of years has in great measure healed the wound. I have meant to tell you about it when you were prepared to hear it, and in time for you to profit by the lesson of it. Happily for you, you no longer need the lesson. Still, the knowledge of such an experience as I shall relate will help you to readjust your mental focus, and perhaps enable you to do something to save others from such mistakes. In the natural order of things I should have been married ten years ago. I believed Julia Dale worthy of any man's love. Her father was a professor in the medical college where I took my course, and an old friend of my father. It was on Dr. Dale's invitation to his sunny home that I met his daughter Julia. I became a frequent caller, and a warm friendship. sprang up between the girl and myself. If her father observed our mutual attachment, as he doubtless did, he gave no token of disapproval, and I believed him not unwilling

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that our feelings should ripen into love and marriage. I completed my studies at twenty-three, and opened an office but a few blocks from Julia's home. A few months later we were betrothed, with her father and mother's ready consent. It was settled that we should be married the next year. Not a shadow dimmed the brightness of our future. "But by and by we found a cloud rising up between us, a first no bigger than a man's hand, but gradually widening and darkening till it began to alarm us. We strove for some time to avoid open recognition of it, in the hope that it would melt away as quietly as it came. did not."

Ned paused again.

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It

66 That cloud," he went on, was her religion-or my want of religion, according to the point of view. Her father had always appeared to me not to differ greatly from myself in his religious views. But I now learned, on looking into the matter closely, that, whatever his opinions, his wife was intensely pious, even to bigotry, and that she had steeped her daughter in the most orthodox Episcopal faith. To the girl's mind, the superstition and myths of the church were as true and real as though she had herself seen Jesus rise from the dead, ascend into heaven, and take his seat on the right hand of God. I was astonished beyond measure when, after our betrothal, the depth and fervor of her belief forced itself upon my unwilling mind. While I had known that she was a Christian, and while I had never purposely concealed my own views from her, we had never discussed religion to any extent; and from Dr. Dale's liberalism I had inferred that his daughter could not be very firmly grounded in superstition. I was possessed with a cheerful confidence that we would soon come to see things alike—that is, that she would come to see them as I saw them-when we could go over the ground freely and thoroughly. When I learned how I had misjudged her, I was at a loss to understand why Dr. Dale had allowed her to grow up in such blind faith. A little quiet observation and a little analysis of some things that Julia had told me, uncovered the secret of it. Complete and undivided control of the daughter's religious education by the mother was the price of peace and harmony in the family, and the father had deemed it more prudent to pay the price than to risk the alternative.

"I found, too, after our engagement, that Julia's heart was set on converting me to Christianity, and that she had no doubt whatever of her ultimate success. So clearly did she see the truths and beauties of her religion that she could not conceive of my rejecting it when she should once present it to me in sympathy and love. She thought it was merely that I hadn't been properly instructed. You see, each of us had fondly hoped, indeed, expected, to convert the other. We had not yet learned experimentally that with the conscientious man and woman truth and duty are stronger motives than even love, and immeasurably stronger than selfish, ignoble longing for peace and harmony. As gently and tenderly as love could suggest, and with a heavy sense of all that was at stake, I unfolded to her my views, my reasons for them, and what appeared to me to be the fallacies and falsehoods of her faith. Not a hair's breadth could I swerve her.

"Finally, after careful consideration, I said to her that, while she could never hope to convert me to her religion, I was willing to let the whole question drop, trusting to the future of close and loving contact to bring us, if not to common ground, at least to a less pronounced and painful disagreement. But there was one condition, one stipulation, I added, that I wished to have understood and agreed on in advance; it was that if children should be born to us, I should have her consent, as they grew up, to present to them my views in regard to religion as freely as she presented hers; that she should be at full liberty to take them to church and Sunday-school, and to instruct them as she chose, but that I would claim the same right and privilege. I believed that in this way I could insure that even if our children embraced Christianity, it would be of a mild, comparatively harmless type, like varioloid to smallpox. The very experience I was passing through with Julia determined me that no child of mine should ever be reared as she had been.

At last, feeling herself unable to cope with me in argument, and without giving a decided answer to my proposition, she begged permission to have her rector, the Rev. Dr. Deemer, talk with me. I told her that it was useless and would be a mere waste of time and effort on his part. But she was so eager that I had not the heart to deny her; and I hoped that if I yielded to her in this matter she

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would be more easily brought to yield to me in the other. I even suggested to her that she state my position to Dr. Deemer in advance, so that he might know what he was to meet. I was aware of Dr. Deemer's reputation for theological learning and power of argument; so I prepared to meet him.

"The next afternoon he called at my office, and for two hours we were closeted together in terrific intellectual combat. We went over the whole ground, forward and backward, from God and Adam to the last man and the day of judgment. Both of us waxed warmer as the discussion progressed. He had perfect command of the whole hoary stock of theological lore; but when it came to the facts of history and science I had him at great disadvantage. He felt it, and showed that he felt it; and it wound up in his losing his temper and using language that I thought passed the bounds of courteous, gentlemanly controversy. Though stung by his manner and words, I kept my temper and mental balance, so that the more excited and angry he grew, the worse I worsted him, till he brought the scene to an end by the plea of another engagement. When he left, his sleek fat face was fairly livid with ill-suppressed rage. "I could not see wherein I had overdone the matter, or how I could in justice to myself have said less. Nor could I foresee how the reverend divine could do me serious injury. I was as yet personally but little acquainted with the modes of Christian warfare.

"That evening I spent with Julia as usual. Tenderly I informed her that the efforts of the rector had been without avail; and I tried by every means that anxious love could devise to soothe her, as she wept on my breast. Fearing that we had already had too much theological skirmishing, I besought her to lay the theme aside for a couple of weeks, and see whether we could not then approach it in a calmer frame of mind and find in our great love some pathway to peace. This she agreed to. For the next ten days we met as we had before the cloud came between us; and what joyous days they were. We could not see the dismal abyss that was to swallow them up."

Again Ned stopped, and remained silent for several moments, the gathering twilight hiding its face from Paul's sight.

"It was on the second Sunday after my interview with

Dr. Deemer," resumed Ned. "I attended church with Julia, as I had become accustomed to do. That day neither Dr. Dale nor his wife accompanied us. It was understood by our friends and acquaintances that Julia and I were betrothed, and we went everywhere together with perfect freedom. With devout and humble mien the white-robed priest intoned the service, and opened the manuscript of his sermon. Then he looked directly at me. Our eyes

met. There was an expression on his face that I did not understand. Later I understood it but too well. Slowly, solemnly, in tones of authority, his penetrating voice pronounced the text-that Pauline injunction of which we have already spoken:

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.' "My heart almost stopped beating. I glanced at Julia. Her eyes were riveted on the rector, her face white as marble, her hands tightly clasped. Speaking throughout as one with authority, he plunged into a philippic against the marriage of Christians with unbelievers. There was no mistaking his object. I was the game that he was hunting, and the woman at my side was to be the innocent victim of his malignity. He had taken ample time and had brought all his resources to the task of preparing that twenty-minute discourse for the sole purpose of breaking the bond that joined two loving hearts. As he went on I realized with anguish how invulnerable, once his premises were granted, was his position, and with what telling, killing force he could marshal arguments and phrases to serve his cruel end. He spoke of the incessant grief of a wife in the knowledge that her husband was bound for perdition; of her inability to lead such a Christian life herself as she ought, when chained to a servant of the Devil. And then how mercilessly he probed that tender spot in our love, the question of the religious instruction to be given the children of such a marriage. How vividly he pictured the terrible wrong that a skeptical father might do his guileless children, a wrong that the mother, however pious and devoted, would in most cases be powerless to prevent or rectify.

"Not once during the delivery of his discourse did he look toward our pew, until near his closing period. Then, slowly, deliberately, turning his eyes full upon Julia, sitting there so still and white, as though he would leave no doubt in her mind that we two and our love were within the sweep