the idea — the mere idea — of God fair play, lest there should be a good God after all, and he all his life doing him the injustice of refusing him his trust and obedience."
"And how are we to give the mere idea of him fair play?" asked Clementina, rather contemptuously. But I think she was fighting emotion, confused and troublesome.
"By looking to the heart of whatever claims to be a revelation of him."
"It would take a lifetime to read the half of such."
"I will correct myself, and say 'Whatever of the sort has best claims on your regard, whatever any person you look upon as good believes and would have you believe;' at the same time doing diligently what you know to be right; for, if there be a God, that must be his will, and if there be not, it remains our duty."
All this time Florimel was working away at her embroidery, a little smile of satisfaction flickering on her face. She was pleased to hear her clever friend talking so with her strange vassal. As to what they were saying, she had no doubt it was all right, but to her it was not interesting. She was mildly debating with herself whether she should tell her friend about Lenorme.
Clementina's work now lay on her lap and her hands on her work, while her eyes at one time gazed on the grass at her feet, at another searching Malcolm's face with a troubled look. The light of Malcolm's candle was beginning to penetrate into her dusky room, the power of his faith to tell upon the weakness of her unbelief. There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve. But into the house where the refusal of the bad is followed by no embracing of the good — the house empty and swept and garnished — the bad will return, bringing with it seven evils that are worse.
If something of that sacred mystery, holy in the heart of the Father, which draws together the souls of man and woman, was at work between them, let those scoff at the mingling of love and religion who know nothing of either; but man or woman, who, loving woman or man, has never in that love lifted the heart to the divine Father, and every one whose love has not yet cast at least an arm around the human love, must take heed what they think of themselves, for they are yet but paddlers in the tide of the eternal ocean. Love is a lifting no less than a swelling of the heart. What changes, what metamorphoses, transformations, purifications, glorifications, must this or that love undergo ere it take its eternal place in the kingdom of heaven, through all its changes yet remaining, in its one essential root, the same, let the coming redemption reveal. The hope of all honest lovers will lead them to the vision. Only let them remember that love must dwell in the will as well as in the heart.
But whatever the nature of Malcolm's influence upon Lady Clementina, she resented it, thinking toward and speaking to him repellently. Something in her did not like him. She knew he did not approve of her, and she did not like being disapproved of. Neither did she approve of him. He was pedantic, and far too good for an honest and brave youth: not that she could say she had seen dishonesty or cowardice in him, or that she could have told which vice she would prefer to season his goodness withal and bring him to the level of her ideal. And then, for all her theories of equality, he was a groom — therefore to a lady ought to be repulsive, at least when she found him intruding into the chambers of her thoughts — personally intruding, yes — and met there by some traitorous feelings whose behavior she could not understand. She resented it all, and felt toward Malcolm as if he were guilty of forcing himself into the sacred presence of her bosom's queen; whereas it was his angel that did so, his idea, over which he had no control. Clementina would have turned that idea out; and when she found she could not, her soul started up wrathful, in maidenly disgust with her heart, and cast resentment upon everything in him whereon it would hang. She had not yet, however, come to ask herself any questions: she had only begun to fear that a woman to whom a person from the stables could be interesting, even in the form of an unexplained riddle, must be herself a person of low tastes, and that, for all her pride in coming of honest people, there must be a drop of bad blood in her somewhere.
For a time her eyes had been fixed on her work, and there had been silence in the little group.
"My lady!" said Malcolm, and drew a step nearer to Clementina.
She looked up. How lovely she was with the trouble in her eyes! Thought Malcolm, "If only she were what she might be! If the form were but filled with the spirit! the body with life!"
