Chapter XXIV: “celui-La Fait Le Crime a Qui Le Crime Sert.” (4)

“Now, Robert, it is just to oppose me that you so persistently uphold Elizabeth in this. Is it to be supposed that girls of sixteen are going to take to isms in Protestant schools or irreligion either? Why, they don’t know enough for that, at their age!”

“I do not dispute you. I only think that Elizabeth has preferred for Elly this risk rather than have her of John’s state of mind. And that is why John is so easy in the matter. Being of no faith himself, he prides himself on being also of no prejudice. ‘The greater the faith, the greater the bigotry,’ he says.”

“And I think you are just about as bad as John,” says the lady. “I 791 don’t believe you listened to the sermon at all to-day.”

This last charge passes unanswered, because they have arrived at their own door, where we leave them.

II.

Two years after this, the cousins, Lizzie Lennox and Elinor Lloyd, have returned from their respective schools: Lizzie from her fashionable seminary, where she has received every advantage that money could purchase, and where she has associated with the daughters of the wealthiest, if not the most refined, families in the land. And if wealth will not purchase the means and open the way for refinement, pray what will? Does it not free the path from the thorns of toil, give time and means for culture and for travel, and to surround ourselves with the ennobling influences of art? And, above all, does it not grant us the free indulgence of generous impulses? Do not all the mortal ills of flesh which bear upon the rich bear also on the poor, with more added to stand in the way of their refinement? It would seem so.

Lizzie Lennox has all these advantages of wealth in her case, but her cousin Elinor Lloyd is the daughter of a poor man. Poorer now than he was two years ago, when he let his prudent wife have her way in the choice of a convent school for her daughter. Elinor has been very happy with the sisters, to whom she has become sincerely attached. Their good example has not been lost upon her, but she denies indignantly that any under-handed means have been used to warp her religious feelings. They have simply and honestly acted out the dictates of their own faith, exacting from her only such general compliance as would be required in the schools of any denomination among Protestants. If her affections have been won, and her young heart drawn toward the religion of these gentle teachers, that was the risk her mother took when she sent her willingly among the Sisters of Charity.

The cousins are nearly of an age. Lizzie is named after her father’s sister, Mrs. Lloyd, and Elinor after her aunt, Mrs. Lennox.

These cousins are strikingly alike, and yet singularly unlike in their appearance. Their faces seem to have been cast in almost the same mould, so exactly does every feature correspond, but the coloring is so different that they present opposite types of beauty. For they are very beautiful. Lizzie is exceedingly fair, with light auburn hair and hazel eyes; the same reddish tint seeming to lurk in the eyes and lashes as in the hair, which peculiarity any close observer of faces may often see in this type. But Elinor’s eyes are a dark brown, and her hair is very dark. She is too fair and pale for a brunette, and her eyes are not black enough. Despite this difference in color, they are very like her cousin Lizzie’s light orbs in expression. It is as if a painter should take two sketches of the same face, and simply change his colors for the touching of them. Indeed, a cast of each might pass for the same person, so like are they, even to the carriage of the head, the turn of the throat, the curve of the shoulders. I am thus exact in my description, because out of this wonderful likeness and difference of face and form came Elinor’s trial. But now, at eighteen, Elinor’s face is softer and sweeter than that of her blonde cousin. This difference is seen as they are listening or talking, more than while their faces are in repose. Shall we say that it is the 792 result of training and education that Elinor seems the more refined and modest? Or is it only a matter of inheritance, or a trick of manner betokening nothing? I present them thus to the reader, who may guess somewhat of their respective characters, as they sit chatting their cousinly talk in Lizzie’s room. Lizzie is dressing to go out with Elinor, and talking while she proceeds with her toilet.

“But, Elly, where is the harm of flirting a little, so long as you do nothing serious, and never commit yourself?”

“I think you do commit yourself, Lizzie, when you put pen to paper to answer a stranger’s letter, and when you cannot tell whether he is true or false. More likely he is the latter, from the very fact of his trying to draw you on. How do you know how he may use your letter?”

“But I haven’t signed my name, only my own initials. I use E. L., not L. L. And you know I am known rather as Lizzie Lennox than Elizabeth Lennox. No one ever thinks of me as Elizabeth--I don’t seem to be that to myself. Now, you are either Elinor or Elly, but I am just Lizzie. So you see I can hide under my own honest initials.”

“Ah Lizzie! why hide at all? Give it up. I don’t like this kind of thing. I don’t believe the men who write to girls in this way care one bit for them, except to make them contribute to their own amusement, and feed their conceit. What good does it do when you don’t even see each other?”

“But we may, after, if we want to, you know.”

“I shouldn’t want to see him, Lizzie; I hope you will never meet.”

“Now, Elly, it is just being with those sisters that makes you talk so. Why, all the girls do so. It is only for fun, and the young men know we don’t mean wrong. I could say ‘Evil he who evil thinks,’ only I know you are not evil, only sisterified in this matter.”

“But, Lizzie, sisterified or not, you know I like fun as much as other girls, only I don’t think this _is_ fun: I think it isn’t just right. It is making yourself too cheap. I don’t like men well enough to do so much for their amusement. I may be peculiar, but I certainly hate a covert thing, and personals in the newspapers are very covert and very cowardly. Mamma says a respectable paper will not publish them. Besides, you dare not let your father and mother know this, dare you?”

“Oh! of course they would get a great scare, and think I was going to do something much worse than I mean. But that doesn’t prove I would do wrong.”

“No; but, Lizzie, don’t you hate to deceive them when they trust you so freely? Is this stranger to be trusted and they not?”

“Well, I don’t want to give pain to either papa or mamma; and so if they don’t know it, they will be spared all pain and fuss in the matter, and nobody hurt. Now I’m ready. Let’s go.” And the two leaving the house, the subject is dropped for the time.

* * * * *

Only one month has passed since the cousins have had this morning’s talk together, but it has brought a great change in their feelings and relations to each other.

First, Elinor has quietly but courageously avowed herself a Catholic. Alone and unsupported she has made the great step--alone she goes to Mass and Vespers--and without sympathy from her family she practises faithfully all the observances of her church. In all this, she has 793 shown her aunt Lennox a wise prophet, but that lady is no less indignant on that account. She enlarges upon her favorite text, and congratulates herself that she has taken no such risk for her own daughter’s falling into Popish pitfalls, and traps set for the young and innocent. Lizzie chooses to consider herself called upon to give up the intimacy and nearly all intercourse with her cousin. In this she is secretly governed by a sense of annoyance at Elinor’s persistent discountenancing of her clandestine correspondences, but she makes a show of setting herself against “Popish influences.”

The parents of Elinor have taken the matter with seeming indifference. She loses none of their love in consequence of the change in her faith, and they are sure she is quite as good a daughter as ever. But a greater trouble, if this is a trouble, now absorbs their minds. John Lloyd has failed in business and failed in health. He is a broken-down man. In this emergency, Elinor has determined to accept a situation as musical governess in a wealthy family. She has felt the tug at her heartstrings, no less from her wounded pride in the matter of her changed social position, than in the hard necessity to leave her home and parents. She is no saint, only a good, pure-minded girl, who is scrupulously conscientious in all things. She battles against a bitter feeling of almost envy toward the better luck and easier life of her cousin. She does not really wish Lizzie to be as poor as herself, and she is sure she would rather be herself than Lizzie, but she does wish her father and mother were in the same comfortable ease that her uncle and aunt enjoy. Her uncle is disposed to be very kind to her, but he is hampered by his wife and daughter in their bitter opposition to her. He has sent her a check to defray all necessary expenses in her wardrobe. So she goes to her new home so nicely clad that at least no air of shabbiness clings to her. Brave as she may be, this feminine sensitiveness to her appearance is very acute in her. Foolish vanity concerning dress she may not have, but, being young, she is only natural in liking to look well, to pass criticism which she cannot ignore at least creditably. If a young woman has not this much of feeling concerning her toilet, she is probably slovenly, or else she affects an eccentricity which is more disagreeable than a love for finery. Elinor is refined in her nature, and she is not strong-minded, so she likes the good opinion of others.

Elinor soon settles into the new and changed relations of her life, the more easily because her employer proves exceedingly kind. As her forte is music, she is of course, in the exercise of that accomplishment, brought into more constant contact and intercourse with the guests at the house than the mere instruction and supervision of her pupils would demand. Her seat at the piano calls to her the attention and brings upon her the criticism of many who otherwise might never notice her. And so it has happened that young Mr. Schuyler, the brother of her hostess, has more frequently than any other turned the leaves of her music, sang to her accompaniment, and gazed admiringly upon the pretty hands moving over the keys and upon the charming face turned to the pages before it. Mr. Schuyler is an agreeable young gentleman, good-looking enough, graceful enough, and flattering enough in his address to ladies to win their pleased recognition of his attentions. But buzzing in his admiration around 794 each sweet flower like the veriest male coquette of a bee, he is just unstable enough also to tantalize the fair recipients of his attentions. Elinor likes him, but with a little reserve. She is not of a distrustful nature, but she does not quite like Mr. Schuyler’s manner to her. He has been very unreserved in his admiration. He has attempted some sentimental love-making, but there has always been a sort of holding back--a non-committal manner, which has not seemed to her straightforward and manly. It has appeared to her that he has been attempting to gain her regard without making any actual avowal himself, and that he is trying to amuse himself or feed his own vanity at her expense. Yet she is so afraid of being unjust to him, knowing that her position in the family may make her unduly sensitive, that she strives against this feeling. He really is very kind in a great many little ways which she would be ashamed not to acknowledge, and she thinks, if she were not a governess for his sister, she might receive his attentions in a less cavilling spirit.

In the meantime, Mr. Schuyler studies Elinor from quite a different point of view from any she imagines. He has found by repeated experiment that he cannot make her understand or respond to various little devices which he has been in the habit of using to flirt with certain school-girls whom he has met often in his daily walks and rides. All these signals pass unnoticed upon the convent girl. But in fluttering thus around this innocent, cold light, the gay moth has got his wings singed. He does really love Elinor as much as such a nature is capable of loving. Just because she has _not_ responded to any of his advances, he has become more seriously interested in her. But just when an honorable feeling of choosing her from all others is dawning as a possibility on his mind, a wonderful discovery bursts upon him.

He has been amusing himself by conducting a correspondence with some unknown lady who has signed herself “E. L.” This incognita has at last yielded to an oft-urged request to send her picture, and a fine photograph of a beautiful girl has come to him. Whose face does he see? “By all that is astounding,” he says, “Miss Lloyd!” He cannot be mistaken. The very same. It is a Rembrandt shadow picture, by which he studies every line of the profile, while it shows also the contour of the full face. There is the dark hair waving from the same fair forehead. The eyes are the same dark orbs with the long lashes, only he has never seen just this bright, coquettish, laughing look in them before. It is wonderfully charming in the picture, but he really does not like it as well as the other thoughtful, intent gaze he has lately come to love so well.

“The demure little cheat!” he says. “Well, she is very versatile, it must be confessed. Who would have thought it? But stop. This may be a cheat. The whole thing is so unlike her. I do believe the writer has sent Miss Lloyd’s picture instead of her own. ‘E. L.’ L for Lloyd certainly, and I saw Elinor Lloyd written on her music, and, by Jove! I think it was the very writing. I’ll look again”--which he does, and finds it to be just the very same E and L; and no wonder, for Lizzie Lennox wrote it in other days, when she gave that music to her cousin.

Then he observes, what careless Lizzie has never once thought of, the name of the photographer, to whom he goes at once, and by no very adroit means discovers the name of the fair original. And here he is 795 again astonished. He finds he has the photograph of Miss Lizzie Lennox. “L. L.,” he says to himself, “and not E. L., after all,” and in his bewilderment it is actually some days before it occurs to him that Lizzie is the pet name for Elizabeth.

Now, having arrived thus far in his pursuit of information under difficulties, he is unable to decide whether she is Miss Lennox or Miss Lloyd. In this dilemma he questions his sister, Mrs. Wood, and determines that she can scarcely be any other than the Miss Lloyd she professes herself. So the false name has been given the photographer, he thinks; and he makes up his mind that Miss Lloyd, though unquestionably very charming, is about as profound a coquette as he is ever likely to meet.

And so believing, his manner toward Elinor takes on a new phase, which pleases her so little that it has the effect of making her more reserved than heretofore. She now avoids him as much as possible, and yet she is conscious of a sharp pain in thus being driven to an attitude of defence. She is young and frank, and would be light-hearted if in her true position. She has really liked Frederick Schuyler because she found him companionable in a house where all are either older or younger than herself except him. Their tastes are similar in many things, and of late he had seemed to her more honest. But now he treats her with a certain familiarity of look and tone which offends her nice sense of propriety. She cannot guess at the false position in which she is placed. She has been very reticent concerning herself and her relatives. True pride and dignity have made her forbear to allude to her wealthy relations, the Lennoxes, now that she is supporting herself. She does not wish to seem to make any claim for consideration outside of her own individual merits. This is not vanity, but proper self-respect; and this feeling is increased by the utter silence which Lizzie has preserved toward her. But as she withdraws from even the slight friendship which she had allowed to spring up between herself and Mr. Schuyler, she feels more lonely. Her religion separates her also from a closer confidence with Mrs. Wood, who goes to a fashionable Unitarian church.

But Frederick Schuyler does not give up his interest in this baffling coquette, for so he firmly believes Elinor to be. Does he not hold the proof? He has sent his own picture to E. L. at the usual address, and he firmly believes that Elinor Lloyd has that picture in her possession. He waits until he receives an acknowledgment from E. L.; and then he watches Elinor. He is prepared to see her betray her overwhelming confusion at discovering who her unknown correspondent is. What, then, is his amazement, his disappointment, at seeing no ripple of disturbance in her composed demeanor! He is exasperated at this assurance. He determines to shake her composure by direct means. The opportunity offers only too soon.

As the last music lesson for the day is finished and the pupil bounds from the room, Mr. Frederick Schuyler presents himself with a peculiar and, to Elinor, an offensive smile on his face.

“Miss Lloyd,” he says blandly, “do you not think it is time to drop this masking?”

Elinor looks at him with wondering and offended eyes. They are not the eyes of either the picture, or the soft brown ones he has known hitherto as hers. They flash up to him in angry brilliancy as she 796 replies:

“I do not understand you, sir!” So sure is he, and so amazed at this stubbornness, that he almost as indignantly replies:

“And I am sure I cannot understand you!”

“I do not desire that you should,” she retorts: “but I think it due to myself to demand why you presume to thus address me, Mr. Schuyler.”

The offended tone remains, but blended with it is a little faint touch of grieved feeling, which his nice ear detects.

“Can you pretend to still treat me as if you did not recognize me? Is my picture so unlike me that you do not know the original?”

“Your picture!” and such a world of wonderment is expressed in her voice that he thinks she ought to be on the stage for consummate acting.

“Perhaps you do not recognize this,” and he holds before her a picture so like herself that she is confounded. For the moment, she really does not see her cousin Lizzie as plainly as herself. The photograph, like one of those libellous stories which are true in detail, but false in implication, has given the reddish tint in Lizzie’s hair, brows, and lashes dark as her own, and there is the blonde cousin presented, the very counterpart of the brunette, one. The light hazel eyes are in the photograph, dark as Elinor’s own.

Elinor gazes speechless for a moment. Then she recognizes the dress of her cousin, and the expression _not_ her own which she knows so well. It all rushes upon her perception at once--the cruel mistake--Lizzie’s clandestine correspondence, of which she disapproved so much--the well-known resemblance between them--the picture more like herself than Lizzie--she sees it all, and she sees Mr. Schuyler’s triumph in her discomfiture. Guilty Lizzie would not look so guilty as innocent Elinor looks now.

“Checkmate!” says Mr. Schuyler. His tone stings her.

“Mr. Schuyler, this is not my picture. I never sat for it.”

“Miss Lloyd!”

“I repeat, sir! This is not my picture, and I wear no mask.”

“But you are ‘E. L.,’” he says, showing her his last missive with that signature, “and you acknowledge receiving one like this,” and he confronts her with a duplicate of his own picture.

“My name is Elinor Lloyd, and I have never written to you, and this is the first time I have seen either of these pictures,” she replies, glancing disdainfully at each of them.

“Do you know whose this is?” he asks.

At this point-blank question, Elinor bursts into tears. The cruelty of the position in which she finds herself is too much for her. She will not betray her cousin, and she knows that on her own denial alone, against overwhelming evidence, rests her defence of herself. And in tears, distressed beyond measure, she rushes from the room. Mr. Schuyler gives a long, low whistle. He is inclined to believe she has told him the truth, in spite of all he knows and has seen. For why does she wish to deny it? What girl who could do this thing would so spurn the accusation? Her proud assertion, “My name is Elinor Lloyd, and I have never written to you,” rings in his ears. He believes it, as we will all of us sometimes believe, apparently against reason. He knows that he wishes to believe in her truth, despite his vanity.

A little book lies near a roll of music on the piano, with her gloves and hat. He takes up this book and examines it, for no reason except 797 that it appears to belong to her. A copy of Dickens’ _Barnaby Rudge_, with a mark at the description of the Lord George Gordon Riots, and pencil marks on the margin. He turns idly to the fly-leaf, and sees written, “Elizabeth Lennox, from her brother Robert.” O cruel evidence! “Circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator,” again shows Elinor as a liar. What can he do now but doubt her word? Elinor meanwhile is pacing her room in a tumult of agitation. Her first impulse is to abandon her engagement with Mrs. Wood at once, and go to her parents. But poverty among other hard impositions forbids us acting on the dictates of pride, be it ever so honorable. Elinor shrinks from staying, but also shrinks from giving her reasons for leaving to her parents or to Mrs. Wood. To give false ones, covering her real one, never for one moment occurs to her. She feels keenly the cruelty, the injustice of the false position in which Lizzie’s folly has placed her. Yet she is too generous at heart to betray Lizzie even to her mother. She knows that when Lizzie told her of this “bit of fun” it was in confidence, and troublesome as the trust has proved, she will keep it until she is released. But she feels how hard it is to know how to act rightly, unaided, uncounselled. One refuge, however, she has--one counsellor who never betrays his trust, and who does not require her cousin’s name or identity. O blessed privilege of a Catholic! The safe, sure refuge of the confessional is Elinor’s. What better human guide and comforter than her pastor can she seek? No fears of a betrayed trust is here. So to him she goes, and from him she receives the needed strength to bear her heavy trial--for heavy trial it is on such a young heart, all the more so because she cannot suppose her silence has put a stop to this disgraceful affair. She has written to Lizzie explaining what has happened, and begging her to lift this weight from her, and at least free her from this blame. And Lizzie has indignantly replied that she will not interfere, and that she believes Elinor to be the betrayer of her name to Fred Schuyler, and moreover hints that it has been done to win him to herself.

This rouses Elinor to such a degree that she nearly forgets her counsel to “return good for evil.” Prayer and meditation, however, those best of medicines for disturbed souls, work their good effect for her, and she is able still to bear in silence, trusting that time will lift the stigma off her. So she shuns as best she can all intercourse with Mr. Schuyler.

And thus about three unhappy weeks pass. Mr. Schuyler gives up trying to enlist Elinor’s attention, and he leaves the last communication of E. L. unanswered. He receives no more of those interesting missives. Lizzie, thoroughly frightened, stops this amusement for herself.

But at last the Nemesis, circumstance, overtakes her--the circumstance of meeting Mr. Frederick Schuyler at a party. A very small circumstance apparently, but pregnant with much for three individuals. He sees her standing not far off from him, in all the blaze of gas-light and full dress. He has never seen Elinor at this advantage, but the perfect profile and the proud carriage of the head impress him at once. Yet those blonde locks and the light laughing eyes--these are neither like Elinor’s nor the picture. Lovely this face certainly is, but he remembers the darker one as pleasing him more. The remarkable 798 resemblance, however, has so startled him, that he actually trembles as he asks a friend who has been talking with her to tell him her name.

“Miss Lennox.”

“Do you know her first name?” he says, with forced composure.

“Oh! yes. Lizzie Lennox and I are old friends; let me introduce you.” And in the brief interval before he is presented, he only remembers that it is L. L. and not E. L., the lady of the photograph but not of the correspondence.

Lizzie passes this ordeal with a frightened, throbbing heart, but a polite, calm exterior, thankful to be very soon claimed for the next dance, and to leave Mr. Schuyler for the present at least. She is a foolish coquette, but not an evil-minded girl. Weak, vain, selfish, but not bad-hearted--she has really felt troubled by the mean way in which she has refused to clear her cousin of the suspicion which she has brought upon her, but her selfishness has prevailed in the matter. To protect herself has seemed to her of more consequence than to clear Elinor. And the possible consequence of her parents knowing all about this little escapade has not seemed to her at all pleasant to contemplate. And so she has been vacillating between the desire to do right and the fear of exposure ever since she has received Elinor’s letter. She is equally ignorant of how much she may be known to Mr. Schuyler, or how far she may be protected by her cousin’s magnanimity. She moreover finds Mr. Schuyler better than his photograph on inspection, as a handsome face generally is better than a photograph of it. Meanwhile, that gentleman has recollected that Elizabeth and Lizzie are the same name. He has been watching this airy, graceful dancer, and he has seen that she has been observing him. Elinor is absolved from all blame in his mind. The only shred of mystery left is the name in that book of hers. Lizzie, resting after her last round dance, sees him approach with both dread and pleasure. He wastes no time in prefatory remarks, but says, “Miss Lennox, are you related to a Miss Elinor Lloyd?”

Lizzie has the command of this situation better than Mr. Schuyler. She knows the full purport of the question, but being asked by Elinor in a letter to speak the truth while she can yet hide it, and by handsome Fred Schuyler looking into her eyes, and knowing her for the girl he has been flirting with, are two very different matters. Here she may make a virtue of necessity, and perhaps a conquest at the same time. Ah! if our good deeds are viewed by the light of our motives, how very much the virtue in them seems to pale.

Lizzie says with charming candor, “Oh! yes, she is my cousin; do you know her?”

“Yes, Miss Lennox, and I saw your name in a book she had--_Barnaby Rudge_--and it appeared to have been quite attentively read, from the marginal notes I saw.”

Lizzie shows a momentary astonishment. “Why, Mr. Schuyler, the only copy of Dickens’ _Barnaby Rudge_ I have is at home in the New Riverside set papa gave me only lately--since”--she pauses a little confused--“since I have seen Elly last. Besides, I don’t make notes on the margins of my books, and I am quite sure Elly would not in mine. I think it could not have been my name you saw.”

“Indeed, I saw it, ‘Elizabeth Lennox,’ and from your ‘brother Robert.’”

Lizzie laughs merrily, and she looks the very image of innocent fun as 799 she responds to this triumphant assertion.

“Oh! that’s a good joke! My _brother_ Robert! Why, that’s papa! And the name is his sister’s. She is Elinor’s mother. Why didn’t she tell you! I hate such mysteries.” And she shoots such a glance as would once have been a challenge irresistible. He keeps up the badinage, but he is answering that question, “Why did she not tell you?” in a manner not flattering to Miss Lennox, but very much so to Miss Lloyd. The former young lady is not quite pleased with his abstracted manner. True, he dances with her, chats with her, compliments her, but she is not satisfied. She is wishing that this was the first intercourse she has had with Mr. Schuyler, and that he had nothing to remember of Lizzie Lennox, and no previous knowledge of her--she has an intuitive sense that she does not stand as well as her cousin in his estimation, and that her chance would have been better if she had never written to him. He, however, generously makes no allusion to that correspondence. He is ashamed of it for her, and heartily wishes it had never been. He is thinking how he can make his peace with her cousin, of whom he feels glad to think so well, when he is startled by the words.

“Elinor and I are not friends now as we were once--before she became a Catholic.”

“Miss Lloyd a Catholic!”

“Yes, Mr. Schuyler, did you not know that? All of the family are Protestants except her. Her mother was so very liberal as to allow her to be educated at a convent of those Sisters of Charity, and this is the result. I have never been intimate with her since.”

Mr. Schuyler is very uncomfortably astonished by this information. He has had pleasant thoughts of the possible consequence of his reconciliation with Elinor. She has so much risen in his estimation by this solution of the picture mystery and her generous, honorable forbearance toward Lizzie, that he is thinking how very pleasant it would be to pass his life with such a companion. She certainly has proved herself very trustworthy. But a Catholic! That changes the aspect of affairs. Does he want a wife of that faith? Would not the coquettish blonde beauty be more desirable? And yet he cannot say that the ways of Miss Lennox altogether please him. He has been willing to amuse himself by a clandestine correspondence with the unknown beauty, but the known writer of those entertaining epistles does not seem to him just the one to trust with his life’s chance of domestic bliss. The trust is not for just such as she. He really believes no harm of Lizzie, but he knows a worse man might think worse of her than she deserves. He wishes she were the Catholic and Elinor the Protestant. Why now, for the upholding of all his cherished beliefs and prejudices, could not the result of the two different systems of education have been reversed? Surely, he thinks, “Popery would, as a rule, have made such a girl as Lizzie rather than one like Elinor. After all,” he concludes, “the difference is in their own natures, and would have shown itself had they both had the same training,” and in this we cannot dispute him. But possibly, although Elinor might never have condescended to such a course, Lizzie might with better teaching have been saved from it also. The girl is not evil, only young, weak, vain, and she has needed just that which Elinor has had to sustain and strengthen her. Lizzie relies on herself, on her own crude knowledge 800 of the world, and on just as much advice as she chooses to accept. She never bares her conscience and her soul, as Elinor does, to any one. Therefore, she not only robs herself of the counsel of wiser heads, but she never brings upon herself that searching self-examination necessary to the seeing of herself rightly. Had she done that, had she been forced to look with this introverted gaze upon herself, she would have shrunk from placing herself in this doubtful position. She will remember this in after years with a sense of annoyance, if not of any deeper sentiment. And yet her present feeling toward Elinor is one of irritation. She knows that Elinor was right in her advice to her, and that she can look down upon her from a more exalted height. The fact that she has not taken airs of superiority on herself has not lessened Lizzie’s resentment. The feeling that she is on a lower moral plane than that of her Catholic, convent-educated cousin, is a sufficient grievance of itself, and admits to her unregulated mind of no extenuation in Elinor’s behalf.

It is not very easy for Mr. Schuyler to find an opportunity to explain to Elinor his enlightenment and change of views. She shuns him so sedulously that he begins to think he will have to tell her at the table, in the presence of the family, that he has met her cousin. True, he could do this without any indelicacy, but he has planned a little programme of a _tête-à-tête_, which he thinks more pleasant, to himself at least, than leaving her to draw her own conclusions from such meagre information as he can give her in the presence of others. Moreover, he does not wish to startle her before others by mentioning Lizzie’s name--a sore subject to her, he suspects. So he bides his time, although impatiently. If Elinor were like her cousin, he thinks he would not wait so long for opportunity to speak. His man’s nature is aroused by the necessity of pursuing.

But Mr. Schuyler has not made up his mind that he is willing to take a Catholic wife. He is at present only desirous of establishing the old pleasant, friendly footing between Elinor and himself--possibly a more tender one; but he will not yet commit himself. Not until he has seen how deeply rooted is her Catholicism--only an ism, it seems to him. He is getting impatient, however, at her continued indifference toward him. He sees that he must make his opportunity; and, being a young gentleman fertile in expedients, he resorts to waylaying her at the hour when her last music lesson is ended for the day.

Elinor’s face flushes and her brow contracts--a little indignant flash is in her brown eyes as he confronts her. She remembers the last scene between them at that hour by the piano, and it does not tend to soften her manner. Evidently he has got all the work to do, unhelped by her. So he starts off, as is his usual manner, with an abrupt introduction of the subject.

“Miss Lloyd, I owe you an apology for declaring that I had your picture in my possession. I know now whose picture it is.”

“You should have known it was not mine, sir, when I told you so,” and she blushes again at the thought of Lizzie’s being known. Even when the blame is lifted from herself, she does not rejoice in her cousin’s exposure.

“I did know it, Miss Lloyd; I did believe you, on my soul, against all the wonderful evidence of the remarkable likeness to you. I did believe that picture was not yours, or that at least you did not send me it, 801 or know of my having it. But how could I know that it was your mother’s name in your book?”

He stops confused. Elinor has never yet known of that added testimony against her. Had she known it, she would at once have told him it was her mother’s name. There was no reason for any mystery concerning that, it being no part of Lizzie’s confidences to her. If he had had that clue, perhaps he might have come to some imperfect glimpse of the truth. In answer to her wondering inquiry, “What book?” he says now humbly:

“You left a book you appeared to own on the piano. I took the liberty of looking at it, and read a name in it which I knew belonged to her whose picture I mistook for yours. Your cousin, Miss Lloyd, is very like and very unlike yourself. I met her a short time since at a party; and even seeing her before me, the original of that picture, I could scarcely believe it was those fair locks which the sun made so dark in her picture. I may certainly be excused for not remembering this trick of photography, especially when you two are in features so very similar.” He says this last pleadingly, because the displeased look is not gone from her face.

“Mr. Schuyler,” she says, “your mistake concerning that picture was more natural and more excusable than your supposing me the writer of that letter, or the giver of that picture. I think, whatever the evidence you may have supposed yourself to possess, my uniform bearing and manner toward you should have freed me from any such supposition on your part. I could not tell you whose picture you had, but I was free to tell you whose name was in my book.”

“But, Miss Lloyd, even if you had given me the chance to ask you, I could scarcely take upon myself the liberty of seeming to make you accountable to myself for any name written in your book. The very asking of that would have seemed an accusation.”

Elinor’s quick sense of justice sees this readily, and her brow clears. Hard as it has been against herself, she admits that it was an entanglement for him. So she says more graciously: “We will let it pass, Mr. Schuyler. I wish the whole matter for all parties could be disposed of as easily as I can pass out of it.” And she endeavors to leave him, with a provoking air of taking no further interest in him or his changed footing toward herself. He gently makes a motion of barring her way. She stands waiting to hear what he has further to say to her, but there is no evidence of any desire to remain.

“It is so long since we have spoken together in this friendly fashion, that I think you need not be in such haste to shorten our conversation.”

He says this in such a flattering way, implying that to talk with her is the one great delight for him, that her girl’s sense of pleasing and being pleased is quickened, but she only toys with the tassel of the curtain near which she is standing, and says nothing.

Again Mr. Frederick finds he has all the advances to make toward conversation, unaided by her.

“Miss Lennox tells me you were educated at a convent. Is that the reason you are so shy of me, or is it because I am a Protestant, Miss Lloyd?”

“My parents are Protestants, and all my relatives. It would be strange for me to be afraid of a Protestant.”

“And yet you can be of so very different a faith. May I ask, is it a 802 matter of conscience with you, or only one of taste?”

“I do not understand religion being a matter of only taste, Mr. Schuyler,” she says simply.

“Why, don’t you think it is taste, preference only for the gorgeous and ceremonial, which makes the Ritualists of St. Alban’s and St. Mary’s do as they do?”

“I cannot decide upon their motives, Mr. Schuyler. I only know that if my conscience were not in this, I should not separate myself in my faith from that of my family.” She says this with a firm bearing and a lofty look at him which abashes him. He begins to suspect that this young convert _will not_ swerve from her path from any regard for him. He has a full share of conceit, fed by his success with the girls of his acquaintance. He has won their smiles so readily heretofore, and he has pleased and flattered them so easily, that he is piqued at making no better impression now when he really tries.

Again Elinor moves to the door. He lets her pass with the words, “We are friends now, are we not?”

“Friends, oh! certainly,” she says, but her tone does not seem so delighted at this change in their relations as he thinks it should be.

The truth is, Elinor has thought much over Mr. Schuyler’s little flirtation with her cousin, and he has not come out from that inspection of his conduct with any great credit, in her way of looking at it. She thinks that although he may pass unscathed by such indulgence, it is not honorable in him to tempt one younger and weaker than himself into such practices. She thinks if Lizzie could find no one like him to entice her into this folly, she must perforce amuse herself in some other way. It seems to her that his motives were bad. And she suspects that if she would have lent herself to this sort of thing, he would have been just as ready to conduct an affair of the kind with herself. Her native good sense shows her this, and she is thankful for the different example and teaching which has hedged her in from ever giving a chance for such a thing. The amount of all this is, that the little inclination to like Mr. Fred Schuyler which she had once is now gone, she has no trust in him, and without, trust there can be no abiding love.

Therefore, when, some days after that gentleman overcomes his dislike of her religion so far as to absolutely offer his heart, hand, and fortune to her, this disdainful Catholic astonishes him with these words:

“I think, Mr. Schuyler, that these protestations are more due to my cousin Lizzie than to me. If you speak truth to me, you have spoken false to her. If it is truth to her, what am I to believe? Mr. Schuyler, ‘I must trust all in all,’ or not at all.”

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OWEN ON SPIRITISM.[159] 803

Mr. Owen, though he has since been a member of Congress, and an American minister at Naples, was formerly well known in this city as associated with Frances Wright in editing the _Free Enquirer_, as the author of an infamous work on moral physiology, and as an avowed atheist. He now claims to be a believer in the existence of God, and in the truth of the Christian religion; but his God has no freedom of action, being hedged in and bound hand and foot by the laws of nature, and his Christianity is a Christianity without Christ, and indistinguishable from unmitigated heathenism. How much he has gained by his conversion, through the intervention of the spirits, from atheism to demonism and gross superstition, it is not easy to say, though it is better to believe in the devil, if one does not mistake him for God, than it is to believe in nothing.

Mr. Owen makes, as do hundreds of others, a mistake in using the word _spiritualism_ for _spiritism_, and spiritual for spirital or spiritalistic. Spiritualism is appropriated to designate a system of philosophy opposed to sensism or materialism, and spiritual stands opposed to sensual or carnal, and is too holy a term to be applied to spirit-rapping, table-tipping, and other antics of the spirits. Mr. Owen is unhappy in naming his books. He holds that the universe is governed by inflexible, immutable, and imperishable physical laws; that all events or manifestations take place by the agency of these laws; that the future is only the continuation and development of the present; and that death is only the throwing off of one’s overcoat, and the life after death is the identical life, without any interruption, that we now live. We see not well how he can assert another world, or a debatable land between this world and the next. If all things and all events are produced by the agency of natural laws, and those laws are universal and unchangeable, we are unable to conceive any world above or beyond nature, or any world in any sense distinguishable from the present natural world. His books are therefore decidedly misnamed, and so named as to imply the existence of another world and a world after this, which cannot on his principles be true.

Mr. Owen’s first book was mainly intended to establish the fact and to show the character of the spirit-manifestations; in his last work, his design is to show that these manifestations take place by virtue of the physical law of the universe, that they are of the same nature and origin with the Christian miracles, inspiration, and revelation, and are simply supplementary to them, or designed to continue, augment, and develop them; and to show, especially to Protestants, that, if they mean to make theology a progressive science, and win the victory over their enemy the Catholic Church, they must call in the spirits to 804 their aid, and accept and profit by their inspirations and revelations.

This shows that the author leans to Protestantism, and seeks its triumph over Catholicity; or that he regards Protestantism as offering a more congenial soil for the seed he would sow than the old church with her hierarchy and infallibility. Certainly, he holds that, as it is, Protestantism is losing ground. In 1580 it held the vast majority of the people of Europe, but is now only a feeble minority. Even in this country, he says, if Catholics continue to increase for a third of a century to come in the same ratio that they have for the last three-fourths of a century, they will have a decided majority. As things now go, the whole world will become Catholic, and the only way to prevent it, he thinks, is to accept the aid of the spirits. We are not so sure that this aid would suffice, for Satan, their chief, has been the fast friend of Protestants ever since he persuaded Luther to give up private Masses, and has done his best for them, and it is difficult to see what more he can do for them than he has hitherto done.

Mr. Owen, since he holds the spirit-manifestations take place by a natural law, always operative, and always producing the same effects in the same or like favorable circumstances, of course cannot recognize in them anything miraculous or supernatural; and, as he holds the alleged Christian miracles, the wonderful things recorded in the Old and New Testaments, are of the same order, and produced by the same agency, he, while freely admitting them as facts, denies their miraculous or supernatural character. He thinks that the circumstances when these extraordinary events occurred were favorable to spirit-manifestations; the age was exceedingly ignorant, superstitious, and semi-barbarous, and needed new accessions of light and truth, and the spirits, through our Lord and his apostles as medium--God forgive us for repeating the blasphemy--made such revelations as that age most needed or could bear or assimilate. This age also needs further revelations of truth, especially to enable it to throw off the incubus of a fixed, permanent, non-progressive, infallible church, and secure an open field, and a final victory for the rational religion and progressive theology implied in the Protestant Reformation. So the spirits once more kindly come to our assistance, and reveal to us such further portions of truth as man is prepared for and especially needs. Very generous in them.

This is the doctrine, briefly and faithfully stated, of Mr. Owen’s _Debatable Land_, which he sets forth with a charming _naïveté_, and a self-complacency little short of the sublime. There is this to be said in his favor--the devil speaks better English through him than through the majority of the mediums he seems compelled to use; yet not much better sense. But what new light have the spirits shed over the great problems of life and death, time and eternity, good and evil, or what new revelations of truth have they made? Here is the author’s summary of their teaching:

“1. This is a world governed by a God of love and mercy, in which
all things work together for good to those who reverently conform
to his eternal laws.

“2. In strictness there is no death. Life continues from the life
which now is into that which is to come, even as it continues
from one day to another; the sleep which goes by the name of
death being but a brief transition-slumber, from which, for the
good, the awakening is immeasurably more glorious than is the
dawn of earthly morning, the brightest that ever shone. In all 805
cases in which life is well-spent, the change which men are wont
to call death is God’s last and best gift to his creatures here.

“3. The earth-phase of life is an essential preparation for the
life which is to come. Its appropriate duties and callings cannot
be neglected without injury to human welfare and development,
both in this world and in the next. Even its enjoyments,
temperately accepted, are fit preludes to the happiness of a
higher state.

“4. The phase of life which follows the death-change is, in
strictest sense, the supplement of that which precedes it. It has
the same variety of avocations, duties, enjoyments,
corresponding, in a measure, to those of earth, but far more
elevated; and its denizens have the same variety of character and
of intelligence; existing, too, as men do here, in a state of
progress. Released from bodily earth-clog, their periscope is
wider, their perceptions more acute, their spiritual knowledge
much greater, their judgment clearer, their progress more rapid,
than ours. Vastly wiser and more dispassionate than we, they are
still, however, fallible; and they are governed by the same
general laws of being, modified only by corporal _disenthralment_,
to which they were _subjected_ here.

“5. Our state here determines our initial state there. The
habitual promptings, the pervading impulses, the lifelong
yearnings, in a word the moving spirit, or what Swedenborg calls
the ‘ruling loves’ of man--these decide his condition on entering
the next world: not the written articles of his creed, nor yet
the incidental errors of his life.

“6. We do not, either by faith or works, _earn_ heaven, nor are
we sentenced, on any day of wrath, to hell. In the next world we
simply gravitate to the position for which, by life on earth, we
have fitted ourselves; and we occupy that position _because_ we
are fitted for it.

“7. There is no instantaneous change of character when we pass
from the present phase of life. Our virtues, our vices; our
intelligence, our ignorance; our aspirations, our grovellings;
our habits, propensities, prejudices even--all pass over with us:
modified, doubtless (_but to what extent we know not_), when the
spiritual body emerges, divested of its fleshly encumbrance; yet
essentially the same as when the death slumber came over us.

“8. The sufferings there, natural sequents of evil-doing and
evil-thinking here, are as various in character and in degree as
the enjoyments; but they are mental, not bodily. There is no
escape from them, except only, as on earth, by the door of
repentance. There as here, sorrow for sin committed and desire
for an amended life are the in dispensable conditions-precedent
of advancement to a better state of being.