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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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expressed in the words already quoted from Thomas Jefferson; and,
with the "sectarians," we deny that the system now in use is
sufficiently "general" to accomplish the purpose intended, or that it
can be called a general system while it excludes any class whose
positive religious convictions must necessarily be daily interfered
with by what is called an "unsectarian" method of instruction. We
believe, as did the Puritan fathers, that a knowledge of and an
obedience to the divine government are essential in fitting each child
"to be a citizen of a free and tolerant republic." We believe in our
right to say how and by whom such knowledge shall be given and
such obedience shall be taught, and we also believe that we are
quite as competent to determine our methods and to select our
teachers as is any political party now in being or ever likely to be.
We are quite as strongly opposed to the establishment of any "state
religion" as this self-elected body of political reformers are or affect
to be; and, to quote and apply to this body the words of "Document
No. 4," "we cannot yield one jot or tittle of their demand, for it
involves a principle to us sacred and vital. It means the union of
church and state." And we refer to history for the proof that the
Catholic has never been a state church, but has been more
frequently found in antagonism to the civil power than in alliance
with it; always on the side of liberty and the rights of the people;
shielding them from oppression, even to the deposing of unjust
rulers; enforcing their rights, even to the extent of aiding to make
war upon tyrants; and yet, despite this teaching of history, we are
told (on page 8 of the Document first referred to), under the
pretence of saying why we "make war upon the public schools," as
follows: "But a single sect is taught by its head, a foreign and
despotic ecclesiastical prince, that the civil authorities in a republic
have not the right to direct and control the course of study, and the
choice and appointment of teachers in the public schools, open alike
to the youth of all classes, but that this right belongs to the church."
Now, this is merely a specious falsehood. For, let us ask what is here
meant by "the civil authorities"? Does the phrase mean "the state,"
which, we are also told, is a better educator than the church; or
does it mean that aggregation of individuals, each being represented
and having an equal voice, composing "the state"? If the latter is the
meaning, what Catholic American denies the right or asserts it for
"the church" exclusively? We are yet to meet him.
Catholics, and others not Catholics, do deny that "the state" is the
best educator, to the exclusion of the church; and they do their best
to maintain the rights of minorities as against the tyranny of
majorities.
There are certain words and phrases used in this "Document No. 4"
which we do not altogether like; as, for instance: "The state a better
educator than the church"; for, in the light of certain events not long
since occurring here and in Washington, "the state" has come to be
used, and perhaps understood, in a sense of which we are
somewhat suspicious. The doctrine of "centralization" is slowly
becoming something more than theory with a certain class of
politicians and office-holders; and the words, "the state," the "civil
authorities," and the "government," are beginning to have an
ominous ring in our ears.
To be sure, when we are told, in a somewhat dogmatic way, that
"the state is a better educator than the church," we may infer from
the text illustrating the dogma (page 8, Document No. 4) that in this
connection the state is manifest in the persons of the public-school
authorities, and that they are a power in opposition to "a sect" or to
"sects." And when our public schools are "open alike to youth of all
classes," of all creeds, and Catholics are fairly represented among
"school authorities," and are allowed an equal voice in direction and
control, and in the choice of teachers—in short, when they have
their rights as component parts and members of "the state," we
shall probably hear no more about this "war upon the public
schools," but until then probably this clamor for their rights will still
be heard.
All this talk, however, about secularizing education means nothing
more nor less than the divorcement of religion from all public
education; and it remains to be seen how far the descendants and
the heirs of that people who asserted that liberty of conscience and
freedom to worship God (even in the school-room) meant
something, and are paramount, will tolerate this "new departure."
The Catholic barons of England wrung from King John at
Runnymede the famous Magna Charta, and the Catholic settlers of
Maryland gave the first constitution recognizing equal rights for all
men; and the "Church of Rome," as a British Presbyterian writer has
said, "has always been an 'independent, distinct, and often opposing
power'; and that civil liberty is closely connected with religious
liberty—with the church being independent of the state." Every
school-boy might and ought to be taught these and other like facts,
for history mentions them; and the assailants of the Catholic Church
ought to be ashamed to ignore or deny them. And yet such
ignorance and such denials are the capital in trade of the bigots and
the fanatics who fear and affect to see in the spread of Catholicism a
menace to our liberties.
On page 5 of this "Document No. 4" we are told that "the moment
the state takes under its protection any church, by appropriating
public money or property to the uses or support of that church, or
the teaching of its peculiar tenets or practices, it in that act, and to
that extent, unites church and state. The union of church and state,
in all ages and in all countries, has led to oppression and
bloodshed." Now, if this is not arrant nonsense, what is?
The practice of "appropriating public money or property" to
churches, so called, is coeval with our national birth. And in this
country church and state have, according to the logic of this
statement, been very much united—very much married, like Brigham
Young and his multitudinous wives—and yet the "oppression and
bloodshed" sure to follow have not yet come upon us—in fact,
"churches" and state have always in this country been united, and
we did not know it! Through what unknown dangers have we
passed!
This "Document No. 4" is not honest in this kind of talk—the union of
church and state means a form of religion established by law, and
pains and penalties inflicted upon dissenters.
Not a great many years ago, in Prussia, of which we hear so much
upon the "educational question," by command of the king, the
"Prussian Calvinist and Lutheran, who had quarrelled for three
hundred years about the real presence and predestination,
abandoned their disputes, denied their faith, and became members
of the 'Evangelical Church of Prussia'"—a church whose simple creed
is thus stated: "Do ye believe in God? then must ye believe in Christ.
Do ye believe in Christ? then must ye believe in the king. He is our
head on earth, and rules by the order of God. The king has
appeared in the flesh in our native land!" This was a state religion—a
union of church and state, and is about as likely to be established
here as that the "Document No. 4" is to be adopted as a text-book in
our public schools. This union of church and state is about as
sensible a cry, and quite as malignant, as the old "No Jews, no
wooden shoes!" addressed to the mob in England, and is framed
and uttered in the spirit of the same "sectarian" and bigoted hate.
Now, one word as to "secular education"—there is no such thing, if
God's work is our work. If his glory requires the dedication of all the
powers he has given us, it is preposterous to talk about an education
from which he and his existence, and the knowledge of him and his
purposes and laws, are excluded. We may endow, and send our
children to colleges where no priest or clergyman shall ever come,
and no creed shall be taught or even mentioned, and call the
education there received secular and unsectarian, as was intended
to be done at the "Girard College" at Philadelphia, and yet we shall
find the education unsatisfactory, and no "state" has yet adopted the
plan.
In conclusion, we demand, in the language of the resolutions
"unanimously adopted" and appended to the report in "Document
No. 4," "... free of cost, to every child in the state, a generous and
tolerant education—such an education as qualifies him for the duties
of citizenship"; and, moreover, such an education as shall recognize
and protect the first and most important of all the rights of
citizenship—the right of conscience, which is grossly violated by the
system of atheistical education.
 CHURCH POSTURES.

Ye would not sit at ease while meek men kneel

Did ye but see His face shine through the veil,
And the unearthly forms that round you steal
Hidden in beauteous light, splendent or pale
As the rich Service leads. And prostrate faith
Shroudeth her timorous eye, while through the air
Hovers and hangs the Spirit's cleansing Breath
In Whitsun shapes o'er each true worshipper.
Deep wreaths of angels, burning from the east,
Around the consecrated Shrine are traced,
The awful Stone where by fit hands are placed
The Flesh and Blood of the tremendous Feast,
But kneel—the priest upon the altar-stair
Will bring a blessing out of Sion there.

—Faber.
 GRAPES AND THORNS
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER V.
SHADOWS AND LILIES.

Mr. Schöninger came early to the rehearsal that evening, and, in his
stately fashion, made himself unusually agreeable. There was,
perhaps, a very slight widening of the eyes, expressive of surprise, if
not of displeasure, when he saw Miss Ferrier's critics, but his
salutation did not lack any necessary courtesy. He did not lose his
equanimity even when, later, while they were singing a fugue
passage, a sonorous but stupid bass came in enthusiastically just
one bar too soon.
"I am glad you chose to do that to-night instead of to-morrow night,
sir," the director said quietly. "Now we will try it again."
And yet Mr. Schöninger was, in his profession, an object of terror to
some of his pupils, and of scrupulous, if not anxious, attention to all;
for not only did he possess notably that exalted musical
sensitiveness which no true artist lacks, but he concealed under an
habitual self-control, and great exactness in the discharge of his
duty, a fiery impatience of temper, and a hearty dislike for the
drudgery of his profession.
"If your doctrines regarding future punishments are true," he once
said to F. Chevreuse, "then the physical part of a musician's
purgatory will be to listen to discords striving after, but never
attaining to, harmony, and his hell to hear sublime harmonies rent
and distorted by discords. I never come so near believing in an
embodied spirit of evil as when I hear a masterpiece of one of the
great composers mangled by a tyro. I haven't a doubt that Chopin or
Schumann might be played so as to throw me into convulsions."
And F. Chevreuse had answered after his kind: "And your spiritual
purgatory, sir, will be the recollection of those long years during
which you have persisted in playing with one thumb, as a bleak
monody, that divine trio of which all the harmonies of the universe
are but faint echoes."
Nothing of this artistic irritability appeared to-night, as we have said.
In its stead was a gentleness quite new in the musician's demeanor,
and so slight as to be like that first film of coming verdure on the
oak, when, some spring morning, one looks out and doubts whether
it is a dimness of the eyes or the atmosphere, or a budding foliage
which has set swimming those sharp outlines of branch and twig.
"He is really human," Annette whispered to Miss Pembroke; and
Honora smiled acquiescence, though she would scarcely have
employed such an expression for her thought. She had already
discovered in Mr. Schöninger a very gentle humanity.
Low as the whisper was, his ears caught it, and two sharp eyes,
watching him, saw an almost imperceptible tremor of the eyelids,
which was the only sign he gave. The owner of these eyes did not
by any means approve of the manner in which their leader had given
Miss Pembroke her music that evening, leaving the other ladies to be
served as they might; still less did she approve of the coldness with
which her own coquettish demands on his attention had been met.
It was scarcely worth while to submit to the drudgery of rehearsing,
in a chorus too, if that was to be all the return. Rising carelessly,
therefore, and allowing the sheet of music on her lap to fall
unheeded to the floor, Miss Carthusen sauntered off toward where
Miss Ferrier's two critics sat apart, talking busily, having, apparently,
as she had anticipated, written their reports of the rehearsal before
coming to it.
These critics were a formidable pair, for they criticised everybody
and everything. One of them added to a man's sarcasm a woman's
finer malice, which pricks with the needlepoint. Dr. Porson was a tall,
aquiline-faced, choleric man, with sharp eyes that, looking through a
pair of clear and remarkably lustrous glasses, saw the chink in
everybody's armor. Those who knew him would rather see lightning
than meet the flash of his glasses turned on them, and feel the
probing glances that shot through, and thunder would have been
music to their ears compared to the short laugh that greeted a
sinister discovery.
The other was Mr. Sales, the new editor of The Aurora, a little wasp
of a man. He had twinkling black eyes that needed no lens to assist
their vision, and a thin-lipped mouth with a slim black moustache
hanging at either corner, like a strong pen-dash made with black ink.
Dr. Porson called them quotation-marks, and had a way of
smoothing imaginary moustaches on his own clean-shaven face
whenever the younger man said any very good thing without giving
credit for it.
"A clever little eclectic," the doctor said of him. "He pilfers with the
best taste in the world, and, with the innocence of a babe, believes
everybody else to be original. He never writes anything worth
reading but I want to congratulate him on his 'able scissors.' 'Able
scissors' is not mine," the doctor added, "but it is good. I found it in
Blackwood's."
These two gentlemen had arrived early, and, seated apart, in a side-
window of the long drawing-room, crunched the people between
their teeth as they entered. Between the morsels, the doctor
enlightened his companion, a new-comer in the city, regarding
Crichton and the Crichtonians.
"There's little Jones, the most irritating person I know," the doctor
said. "By what chance he should have that robust voice I cannot
imagine. Sometimes I think it doesn't come out of his own throat,
but that he has a large ventriloquist whom he carries about with
him. I shouldn't wonder if the fellow were now just outside that
open sash. Did you see the way he marched past us, all dickey and
boot-heels? A man who is but five feet high has no right to assume
six-foot manners; he has scarcely the right to exist at all among
well-grown people. Besides, they always wear large hats. Not but I
respect a small stature in a clever person," he admitted, with a side
glance at Mr. Sales' slight figure. "We don't wish to have our
diamonds by the hundredweight. But common, pudding-stone men
must be in imposing masses, or we want them cleared away as
débris."
"Is Mr. Schöninger a pudding-stone man?" the young editor asked,
when that gentleman had passed them by.
Dr. Porson's face unconsciously dropped its mocking. "If you should
strike Mr. Schöninger in any way," he said, "you would find him flint.
The only faults I see in the man are his excessive caution and
secretiveness. He is here, evidently, only to get all the money he
can, and, when he has enough, will wash his hands of us; therefore,
wishes for no intimacies. That is my interpretation. He is a
gentleman, however. A man must have the most perfect politeness
of soul to salute Mme. Ferrier as he did. While they were speaking
together, she actually had the air of a lady. See her look after him. It
is an art which we critics cannot learn, sir, that of setting people in
their best light. Of course it would spoil our trade if we did learn it;
but, for all that, we miss something. Schöninger is a Jew, to be sure,
but that signifies nothing. Each one to his taste. We no longer
trouble ourselves about people's faith. When you say that a man
believes this or that, it's as though you said, he eats this or that. The
world moves. Why, sir, a few years ago, we wouldn't have spoken to
a man who ate frogs any more than to a cannibal; and now we are
so fond of the little reptiles that there isn't a frog left to sing in the
swamps."
"But," Mr. Sales objected, "society has established certain rules—"
then stopped, finding himself in deep water.
"Undoubtedly," the doctor replied, as gravely as though something
had been said. "The Flat-head Indians now, who seem to have
understood the science of phrenology, think it the proper thing to
have a plateau on the top of the head. Their reason is, probably, a
moral rather than an æsthetic one. They know that the peaceful and
placable qualities, those which impel a man to let go, are kept in
little chambers in the front top of the brain. They have other use for
their attics. So they just clap a board on the baby's soft head, and
press the space meant for such useless stuff as benevolence and
reverence back, so as to increase the storage for the noble qualities
of firmness and self-esteem. That is one of the rules of their society;
and I have always considered it a most striking and beautiful
instance of the proper employment of means to an end. There is a
certain sublime and simple directness in it. No circuitous, century-
long labor of trying to square the fluid contents of a round vessel,
but just a board on the head. That, sir, should be the first step in
evangelizing the heathen—shape their heads. When you want a man
to think in a certain way, put a strong pressure on his contradictory
bumps, and preach to him afterwards. That's what I tell our minister,
Mr. Atherton. There he is now, that bald man with the fair hair. He is
a glorious base. His great-grandfather was a conceited Anglo-Saxon,
and he's the fourth power of him. The reason why he does not
believe in the divinity of Christ is because he was not of Anglo-Saxon
birth."
Here, across the pianissimo chorus which made the vocal
accompaniment of an Alp-song, Miss Ferrier's brilliant voice flashed
like lightning in clear, sharp zigzags, startling the two into silence.
"That wasn't bad," the doctor said when she ended.
The younger gentleman applauded with such enthusiasm that
Annette blushed with pleasure. "She needs but one thing to make
her voice perfect," he said, "and that is a great sorrow."
"Yes, as I was telling you some time ago," the doctor resumed, "we
are a liberal and hospitable people in Crichton. We have no
prejudices. Everybody is welcome, even the devil. We are æsthetic,
too. We admire the picturesque. We wouldn't object to seeing an
interesting family of children shot with arrows, provided they would
fall with a grace, and their mother would assume the true Niobe
attitude. In literature, too, how we shine! We have reached the
sublime of the superficial. There's your Miss Carthusen, now, with
her original poetry. How nicely she dished up that conceit of
Montaigne's, that somebody is peculiar because he has no
peculiarities. I've forgotten, it is so long since I read him. I haven't
looked over the new edition that this poetess of ours has peeped
into and fished a fancy out of. But yesterday I was charmed to see it
scintillating, in rhymed lines, in the Olympian corner of The Aurora,
over the well-known signature of Fleur-de-lis."
The young man looked mortified. He had never read Montaigne, and
had announced this production as original and remarkable, firmly
believing the writer to be a genius. But he did not choose to tell Dr.
Porson that.
"What would you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and his voice in a
philosophical manner. "I must fill the paper; and it is better to put in
good thought at second-hand than flat originals. How many know
the difference?"
Here Annette's voice stopped them again.
"Strange that girl sings so well to-night," said the doctor, adjusting
his glasses for a clearer glance. "She looks well, too. Must be the
inspiration of her lover's presence. That's the kind of fellow, sir, that
a woman takes a fancy to—a pale, beautiful young man with a
slouched hat and a secret sorrow, the sorrow usually having
reference to the pocket."
Lawrence Gerald sat near his lady, and seemed to be absorbed in his
occupation of cutting a rosebud across in thin slices with his pocket-
knife, a proceeding his mother viewed with gentle distress. But when
the song was ended, he looked up at Annette and smiled, seeming
to be rather proud of her. And, looking so, his eyes lingered a little,
expressing interest and a slight surprise, as if he beheld there
something worth looking at which he had not noticed before. Had he
cared to observe, he might have known already that Miss Ferrier had
moments of being beautiful. This was one of them.
There is a pain that looks like delight, when the heart bleeds into the
cheeks, the lips part with a smile that does not touch the eyes, and
the eyes shine with a dazzling brilliancy that may well be mistaken
for joyousness. With such feverish beauty Annette was radiant this
evening, and the excitement of singing and of applause had added
the last touch of brightness.
The programme for the concert was chiefly of popular music, or a
kind of old-fashioned music they were making popular, part-songs
and glees. They had attained great finish and delicacy in executing
these, and the effect was charming, and far preferable to operas and
operatic airs as we usually hear them. It would have been a bold
woman who would have asked Mr. Schöninger's permission to sing a
difficult aria. Annette had once made such a request, but with
indifferent success.
"Mademoiselle," the teacher replied, "you have a better voice than
either of the Pattis; but a voice is only a beginning. You must learn
the alphabet of music before you can read its poems. When you are
ready to be a Norma, I will resign you to some teacher who knows
more than I do."
The singing was at an end, and the singers left their seats and
wandered about the house and garden. Only Mr. Schöninger lingered
by the piano, and, seeing him still there, no one went far away,
those outside leaning in at the window.
He seated himself presently, and played a Polonaise. He sat far back,
almost at arm's length from the keys, and, as he touched it, the
instrument seemed to possess an immortal soul. One knew not
which most to admire, the power that made a single piano sound
like an orchestra, or the delicacy that produced strains fine and clear
like horns of fairyland.
When he had finished, he went to ask Mrs. Gerald how the singing
had gone.
"I observed that you listened," he remarked, being within Dr.
Porson's hearing.
Mrs. Gerald had been sitting for the last half-hour beside Mrs. Ferrier,
and the time had been penitential, as all her intercourse with
Annette's mother was. It was hard for a fond mother and a sensitive
lady to listen to such indelicate complaints and insinuations as Mrs.
Ferrier was constantly addressing to her when they were together
without uttering any sharp word in return. To be reminded that
Lawrence was making a very advantageous marriage without
retorting that she would be far more happy to see him the husband
of Honora Pembroke, required an effort; and to restrain the quick
flash, or the angry tears in her fiery Celtic heart when she heard him
undervalued, was almost more than she could do. But she had
conquered herself for God's sake and for her son's sake, perhaps a
little for pride's sake, had given the soft answer when she could, and
remained silent when speech seemed too great an effort.
That coarse insolence of mere money to refined poverty, and the
mistaking equality before the law for personal equality, are at any
time sufficiently offensive; how much more so when the victim is in
some measure in the tormentor's power.
Mrs. Gerald's face showed how severe the trial had been. Her blue
eyes had the unsteady lustre of a dew that dared not gather into
tears, a painful smile trembled on her lips, and her cheeks were
scarlet. Had she been at liberty, this lady could perfectly well have
known how to ignore or reprove impertinence without ruffling her
smooth brow or losing her tranquil manner; but she was not free,
and the restraint was agitating. This rude woman's rudest
insinuation was but truth, and she must bear it. Yet, mother-like, she
never thought of reproaching her son for what she suffered.
"I never heard music I liked so well," she said to Mr. Schöninger's
question. "We are under obligation to you for giving us what we can
understand. The composition you have just played delighted me,
too, though it is probable that I do not at all appreciate its beauties.
It made me think of fairies dancing in a ring."
"It was a dance-tune," Mr. Schöninger said, pleased that she had
perceived the thought; for it required a fine and sympathetic ear to
discern the step in that capricious movement of Chopin's.
The fact that he was a Jew had prevented her looking on this man
with any interest, or feeling it possible that any friendship could exist
between them; but the thought passed her mind, as he spoke, that
Mr. Schöninger might be a very amiable person if he chose. There
was a delicate and reserved sweetness in that faint smile of his
which reminded her of some expression she had seen on Honora's
face, when she was conversing with a gentleman who had the good
fortune to please her.
Meantime, Lawrence had been having a little dispute with Annette.
"What's this about the wine?" he whispered to her. "John says there
isn't any to be had."
He looked astonished, and with reason, for the fault of the Ferrier
entertainments had always been their profusion.
"I meant to have told you that I had concluded not to have wine,"
she said. "Two gentlemen present are intemperate men, who make
their families very unhappy, and when they begin to drink they do
not know where to stop. The last time Mr. Lane was here he became
really quite unsteady before he went away."
"But the others!" Lawrence exclaimed. "What will they think?"
"They may understand just why it is," she replied; "and they may
not think anything about it. I should not imagine that they need
occupy their minds very long with the subject."
"Why, you must know, Annette, that some of them come here for
nothing but the supper, and chiefly the wine," the young man urged
unguardedly.
She drew up slightly. "So I have heard, Lawrence; and I wish to
discourage such visitors' coming. People who are in the devouring
mood should not go visiting; they are disagreeable. I have never
seen in company that liveliness which comes after supper without a
feeling of disgust. It may not go beyond proper bounds, but still it is
a greater or less degree of intoxication. I have provided everything I
could think of for their refreshment and cheering, but nothing to
make them tipsy. I gave you a good reason at first, Lawrence, and I
have a better. My father died of liquor, and my brother is becoming a
slave to it. I will help to make no drunkards."
"Well," the young man sighed resignedly, "you mean well; but I can't
help thinking you a little quixotic."
"The Ferriers are giving us eau sucrée instead of wine to-night,"
sneered one of the company to Mr. Schöninger, a while after.
"They show good taste in doing so," he replied coldly. "There are
always bar-rooms and drinking-saloons enough for those who are
addicted to drink. I never wish to take wine from the hand of a lady,
nor to drink it in her presence."
The night was brilliantly full-moonlighted, and so warm that they
had lit as little gas as possible. A soft glow from the upper floor, and
the bright doors of the drawing-room, made the hall chandelier
useless. Miss Ferrier's new organ there was flooded with a silvery
radiance that poured through a window. Mr. Schöninger came out
and seated himself before it.
"Shall I play a fugue of Bach's?" he asked of Miss Pembroke, who
was standing in the open door leading to the garden.
She took a step toward him, into the shadow between moonlight of
window and door, and the light seemed to follow her, lingering in her
fair face and her white dress. Even the waxen jasmine blossoms in
her hair appeared to be luminous.
"Yes," she said, "if you are to play only once more; but, if more than
once, let that be last. I never lose the sound and motion of one of
Bach's fugues till I have slept; and I like to keep the murmur it
leaves, as if my ears were sea-shells."
She went back to stand in the door, but, after a few minutes,
stepped softly and slowly further away, and passed by the drawing-
room doors, through which she saw Annette talking with animation
and many gestures, while her two critics listened and nodded
occasional acquiescence, and Lawrence withdrawn to a window-seat
with Miss Carthusen, and Mrs. Ferrier the centre of a group of young
people, who listened to her with ill-concealed smiles of amusement.
At length she found the place she wanted, an arm-chair under the
front portico, and, seated there, gathered up that strong, wilful rush
of harmony as a whole. It did not seem to have ceased when Mr.
Schöninger joined her. She was so full of the echoes of his music
that for a moment she looked at him standing beside her as if it had
been his wraith.
He pointed silently and smiling to the corner of the veranda visible
from where they sat. It was on the shady side of the house, and still
further screened by vines, and the half-drawn curtains of the
window looking into it allowed but a single beam of gaslight to
escape. In that nook were gathered half a dozen children, peeping
into the drawing-room. They were as silent as the shadows in which
they lurked, and their bare feet had given no notice of their coming.
Their bodies were almost invisible, but their eager little faces shone
in the red light, and now and then a small hand was lifted into sight.
"It reminds me," he said, "of a passage in the Koran, where
Mahomet declares that it had been revealed to him that a company
of genii had listened while he was reading a chapter, and that one of
them had remarked: 'Verily, we have heard a most admirable
discourse.' That amused me; and I fancied that an effective picture
might be made of it: the prophet reading at night by the light of an
antique lamp that shone purely on his solemn face and beard, and
his green robe, with, perhaps, the pet cat curled round on the
sleeve. The casement should be open wide, and crowded with a
multitude of yearning, exquisite faces, the lips parted with the
intensity of their listening. As I came along the hall just now, I saw
one of those children through the window, and in that light it looked
like a cameo cut in pink coral."
"I fancy they are some of my children," Miss Pembroke said, and
rose. "Let us see. They ought not to be out so late, nor to intrude."
"Oh! spare the poor little wretches," Mr. Schöninger said laughingly,
as she took his arm. "We find this commonplace enough, but to
them it is wonderful. I think we might be tempted to trespass a little
if we could get a peep into veritable fairyland. This is to them
fairyland."
"That anything is a strong temptation is no excuse for yielding," the
lady said in a playful tone that took away any appearance of reproof
from her words. "We do not go into battle in order to surrender
without a struggle, nor to surrender at all, but to become heroes. I
must teach my little ones to have heroic thoughts."
The children, engrossed in the bright scene within, did not perceive
any approach from without till all retreat was cut off for them, and
they turned, with startled faces, to find themselves confronted by a
tall gentleman, on whose arm leaned a lady whom they looked up to
with a tender but reverent love.
These children were of a class accustomed to a word and a blow,
and their instinctive motion was to shrink back into a corner, and
hide their faces.
"I am sorry to see you here, my dears," she said. "Please go home
now, like good children."
That was her way of reproving.
She stood aside, and the little vagabonds shied out past her, each
one trying to hide his face, and scampering off on soundless feet as
soon as he had reached the ground.
"So you have a school?" Mr. Schöninger asked, as they went round
through the garden.
They came out into the moonlight, and approached the rear of the
house, where a number of the company were gathered, standing
among the flowers.
"Yes, I have fifty, or more, of these little ones, and I find it
interesting. They were in danger of growing up in the street, and I
had nothing else to do—that is, nothing that seemed so plain a duty.
So I took the largest room in an old house of mine just verging on
the region where these children live, and have them come there
every day."
"You must find teaching laborious," the gentleman said.
"Oh! no. I am strong and healthy, and I do not fatigue myself nor
them. The whole is free to them, of course, and I am responsible to
no one, therefore can instruct or amuse them in my own way. As far
as possible, I wish to supply the incompetency of their mothers. If I
give the little ones a happy hour, during which they behave properly,
and teach them one thing, I am satisfied. One of the branches I try
to instruct them in is neatness. No soiled face is allowed to speak to
me, nor soiled hands to touch me. Then they sing and read, and
learn prayers and a little doctrine, and I tell them stories. When the
Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Notre Dame come, my
occupation will of course be gone."
"I wish I might some time be allowed to visit this school of yours,"
Mr. Schöninger said hesitatingly. "I could give them a singing-lesson,
and tell them a story. Little Rose Tracy likes my stories."
Miss Pembroke was thoughtful a moment, then consented. She had
witnessed with approval Mr. Schöninger's treatment of Miss
Carthusen that evening, and respected him for it. "The day after to-
morrow, in the afternoon, would be a good time," she said. "It is to
be a sort of holiday, on account of the firemen's procession. The
procession passes the school-room, and I have promised the
children that they shall watch it."
They went in to take leave, for the company was breaking up.
"Oh! by the way, Mr. Schöninger," Annette said, recollecting, "did you
get the shawl you left here at the last rehearsal? It was thrown on a
garden-seat, and forgotten."
"Yes; I stepped in early the next morning, and took it," he said. His
countenance changed slightly as he spoke. The eyelids drooped, and
his whole air expressed reserve.
"The next morning!" she repeated to herself, but said nothing.
Lawrence went off with Miss Carthusen; and as Mrs. Gerald and
Honora went out at the same time with Mr. Schöninger, he asked
permission to accompany them.
"How lovely the night is!" Mrs. Gerald murmured, as they walked
quietly along under the trees of the avenue, and saw all the
beautiful city bathed in moonlight, and ringed about with mountains
like a wall. "Heaven can scarcely have a greater physical beauty than
earth has sometimes."
"I do not think," the gentleman said, "that heaven will be so much
more beautiful than earth, but our eyes will be opened to see the
beauties that exist."
He spoke very quietly, with an air of weariness or depression; and,
when they reached home, bowed his good-night without speaking.
The two ladies stood a moment in the door, looking out over the
town. "If that man were not a Jew, I should find him agreeable,"
Mrs. Gerald said. "As it is, it seems odd that we should see so much
of him."
"I am inclined to believe," Honora said slowly, "that it is not right for
us to refuse a friendly intercourse with suitable associates on
account of any difference of religion, unless they intrude on us a
belief or disbelief which we hold to be sacrilegious."
"Could you love a Jew?" Mrs. Gerald asked, rather abruptly.
Honora considered the matter a little while. "Our Lord loved them,
even those who crucified him. I could love them. Besides, I do not
believe that the Jews of to-day would practise violence any more
than Christians would. We are friendly with Unitarians, yet they are
not very different from some Jews. I think we should love everybody
but the eternally lost. I could more easily become attached to an
upright and conscientious Jew, than to a Catholic who did not
practise his religion."
Mr. Schöninger, as soon as he had left the ladies, mended his pace,
and strode off rapidly down the hill. In a few minutes he had
reached a lighted railroad station, where people were going to and
fro.
"Just in time!" he muttered, and ran to catch a train that was
beginning to slip over the track. Grasping the hand-rail, he drew
himself on to the step of the last car, then walked through the other
cars, and, finally, took his seat in that next the engine. Once a week
he gave lessons in a town fifteen miles from Crichton, and he usually
found it more agreeable to take the night train down than to go in
the morning.
In selecting this car he had hoped to be alone; but he had hardly
taken his seat when he heard a step following him, and another man
appeared and went into the seat in front of him—an insignificant-
looking person, with a mean face. He turned about, put his feet on
the seat, stretched his arm along the back, and, assuming an
insinuating smile, bade Mr. Schöninger good evening. He had,
apparently, settled himself for a long conversation.
Mr. Schöninger's habits were those of a scrupulous gentleman, and
he had, even among gentlemen, the charming distinction of always
keeping his feet on the floor. This man's manners were, therefore, in
more than one way offensive, and his salutation received no more
encouraging reply than a stare, and a scarcely perceptible inclination
of the head.
Mr. Schöninger seemed, indeed, to regret even this slight
concession, for he rose immediately with an air of decision, and
walked forward to the first seat. The door of the car was open there
as they rushed on through the darkness, and, looking forward, it
was like beholding the half-veiled entrance of a cavern of fire. A
cloud of illuminated smoke and steam swept about and enveloped
the engine with a bright atmosphere impenetrable to the sight, and
through this loomed the gigantic shadow of a man. This shadow
sometimes disappeared for a moment only to appear again, and
seemed to make threatening gestures, and to catch and press down
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