第149章 PART FIFTH(24)

He fell to brooding on it,and presently he heard his son saying,"I suppose,papa,that Mr.Lindau died in a bad cause?"March was startled.He had always been so sorry for Lindau,and admired his courage and generosity so much,that he had never fairly considered this question."Why,yes,"he answered;"he died in the cause of disorder;he was trying to obstruct the law.No doubt there was a wrong there,an inconsistency and an injustice that he felt keenly;but it could not be reached in his way without greater wrong.""Yes;that's what I thought,"said the boy."And what's the use of our ever fighting about anything in America?I always thought we could vote anything we wanted.""We can,if we're honest,and don't buy and sell one another's votes,"said his father."And men like Lindau,who renounce the American means as hopeless,and let their love of justice hurry them into sympathy with violence--yes,they are wrong;and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause,as you say,Tom.""I think Conrad had no business there,or you,either,Basil,"said his wife.

"Oh,I don't defend myself,"said March."I was there in the cause of literary curiosity and of conjugal disobedience.But Conrad--yes,he had some business there:it was his business to suffer there for the sins of others.Isabel,we can't throw aside that old doctrine of the Atonement yet.The life of Christ,it wasn't only in healing the sick and going about to do good;it was suffering for the sins of others.That's as great a mystery as the mystery of death.Why should there be such a principle in the world?But it's been felt,and more or less dumbly,blindly recognized ever since Calvary.If we love mankind,pity them,we even wish to suffer for them.That's what has created the religious orders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our day as much as to the mediaeval past.That's what is driving a girl like Margaret Vance,who has everything that the world can offer her young beauty,on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the dying.""Yes,yes!"cried Mrs.March."How--how did she look there,Basil?"She had her feminine misgivings;she was not sure but the girl was something of a poseuse,and enjoyed the picturesqueness,as well as the pain;and she wished to be convinced that it was not so.

"Well,"she said,when March had told again the little there was to tell,"I suppose it must be a great trial to a woman like Mrs.Horn to have her niece going that way.""The way of Christ?"asked March,with a smile.

"Oh,Christ came into the world to teach us how to live rightly in it,too.If we were all to spend our time in hospitals,it would be rather dismal for the homes.But perhaps you don't think the homes are worth minding?"she suggested,with a certain note in her voice that he knew.

He got up and kissed her."I think the gimcrackeries are."He took the hat he had set down on the parlor table on coming in,and started to put it in the hall,and that made her notice it.

"You've been getting a new hat!"

"Yes,"he hesitated;"the old one had got--was decidedly shabby.""Well,that's right.I don't like you to wear them too long.Did you leave the old one to be pressed?""Well,the hatter seemed to think it was hardly worth pressing,"said March.He decided that for the present his wife's nerves had quite all they could bear.

XII.

It was in a manner grotesque,but to March it was all the more natural for that reason,that Dryfoos should have Lindau's funeral from his house.He knew the old man to be darkly groping,through the payment of these vain honors to the dead,for some atonement to his son,and he imagined him finding in them such comfort as comes from doing all one can,even when all is useless.

No one knew what Lindau's religion was,and in default they had had the Anglican burial service read over him;it seems so often the refuge of the homeless dead.Mrs.Dryfoos came down for the ceremony.She understood that it was for Coonrod's sake that his father wished the funeral to be there;and she confided to Mrs.March that she believed Coonrod would have been pleased."Coonrod was a member of the 'Piscopal Church;and fawther's doin'the whole thing for Coonrod as much as for anybody.He thought the world of Coonrod,fawther did.Mela,she kind of thought it would look queer to have two funerals from the same house,hand-runnin',as you might call it,and one of 'em no relation,either;but when she saw how fawther was bent on it,she give in.Seems as if she was tryin'to make up to fawther for Coonrod as much as she could.

Mela always was a good child,but nobody can ever come up to Coonrod."March felt all the grotesqueness,the hopeless absurdity of Dryfoos's endeavor at atonement in these vain obsequies to the man for whom he believed his son to have died;but the effort had its magnanimity,its pathos,and there was a poetry that appealed to him in the reconciliation through death of men,of ideas,of conditions,that could only have gone warring on in life.He thought,as the priest went on with the solemn liturgy,how all the world must come together in that peace which,struggle and strive as we may,shall claim us at last.He looked at Dryfoos,and wondered whether he would consider these rites a sufficient tribute,or whether there was enough in him to make him realize their futility,except as a mere sign of his wish to retrieve the past.He thought how we never can atone for the wrong we do;the heart we have grieved and wounded cannot kindle with pity for us when once it is stilled;and yet we can put our evil from us with penitence,and somehow,somewhere,the order of loving kindness,which our passion or our wilfulness has disturbed,will be restored.