Chapter 13 DINNER-TABLE TALK.

Late wisdom is apt to taste of the flower of folly whence it is distilled. So, at least, thought Mrs. Bergan, when, months afterward, she looked back upon her dinner-party, and seemed to see in it the beginning of trouble. But it is probable that nothing which she could have done, or left undone, would have availed to alter the natural, irresistible course of events. At the most, she may have hastened its current a little. Her dinner-party only furnished a convenient point of meeting for lives inevitably tending toward each other, for influences long converging, and certain to meet at last, in clash or harmony. Without it, there must needs have been a swift birth of friendship between Carice and Astra, at their next meeting; which meeting could not have been much longer deferred. Without it, Doctor Remy would assiduously have spun his web for self-advantage, fastening his threads indifferently to whatever or whomsoever seemed to promise the best support, and quickly unfastening them whenever a prop failed him. Without it, the hearts of Bergan and Carice would sooner or later have inclined toward each other, by reason of an instinct truer and surer than maternal foresight or forestalling.

The dinner was, per se, a success. The table was elegant with glass, silver, and flowers; the viands were the creation of one of those round, greasy Africanesses, who are born to the gridiron not less indubitably than a poet to the lyre; and white-haired old Sancho waited with a blending of obsequiousness and pomposity, wonderful to behold. There were neither culinary failures to harrow the soul of the hostess, nor glass-fractures or sauce-spillings to disconcert her guests.

The conversation was bright, easy, and desultory, as well as interlocutory and general by turns, as dinner-table talk should be. Only once, and that quite at the last, did it take a graver turn than was well suited to the occasion, or seem to stir any ill-feeling. In a pause of the more general conversation, Doctor Remy was heard saying to Carice, who sat next him;—

"You are fortunate in being able to believe so implicitly, without ampler proof."

"Do you think the proof insufficient, then?" asked Carice, with a little look of wonder in her blue eyes.

"To some minds," answered Doctor Remy, evasively.

"Perhaps," interposed Mr. Islay, whose ears had been open for some moments toward this conversation,—"perhaps such minds find the proof insufficient only because they have not yet been able to look at it in the right light."

"What light do you mean?" asked Doctor Remy, a little doubtfully.

"The light of a renewed heart and an obedient life. No man apprehends the truths of Christianity clearly, nor believes them with a belief that is worth anything, until he feels his own personal need of them. When that time comes, he catches hold of them, without proof, as it were,—or, at least, without other proof than their felt adaptation to that intense need,—-just as a man who is hungry and thirsty accepts convenient food without troubling himself about its chemical analysis. Then, holding them fast, and feeling how perfectly they meet his wants, what strength and satisfaction they give to his mind, and what symmetry and dignity they impart to his life, he begins to look back over the long line of prophecy and testimony for proof, and finds it ample. Men are prone to forget, Dr. Remy, that the natural order—as we see in children—is through the heart to the intellect, not through the intellect to the heart."

"But," objected Doctor Remy, "if a man is not sensible of any such personal need, how is he to be made to feel it?"

"Who can tell?" responded Mr. Islay, solemnly. "If the eye sees no comeliness in Christ, to desire Him, if the heart feels no void which craves His fulness, no pang which needs His healing, who can tell when the one will be opened, the other emptied or smitten? 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' But I can tell you, Doctor Remy, how a man can postpone the time of conviction to the last moment, perhaps to the very end."

"Indeed," answered Doctor Remy, lifting his eyebrows. "May I ask for the formula?"

"Simply by leading a life of deliberate, habitual sin and selfishness. There is nothing like sin for blinding the eyes, and misleading the judgment, in regard to spiritual things. Indeed, if I desired to shake my own faith in Christ to the very centre, I know no way in which I could do it so surely as by committing some dreadful crime—murder, for instance. All my views of life and death, earth and heaven, would at once become distorted and confused, just as all my thoughts and aims would immediately take a new direction."

Mr. Islay being on the same side of the table as his interlocutor, could not observe the latter's sudden change of countenance; but Bergan, sitting opposite, was surprised to see the doctor's face darken with some powerful emotion, while he shot a furtive, suspicious glance at the speaker. Yet his voice, when he spoke, was studiously low and even, so much so that its latent venom was unnoticed by the majority of the party.

"Inasmuch," said he, "as Mr. Islay is able to speak so intelligently of religious faith, because of his thorough acquaintance therewith, so, doubtless, his remarks upon crime and its effects are the outcome of his own personal experience."

Bergan colored with indignation, and was about to say something in sharp rebuke of the covert insult; but Mr. Islay stopped him by a look, and a slight, yet decided gesture.

"You are thinking, doubtless," said he, mildly, turning to Dr. Remy, "of the deep truth that he who would teach successfully, must know something of his subject by experience as well as theory. A clergyman certainly does find in his own heart both the suggestion and the proof of the truths which he seeks to enforce upon others. Herein lies his fitness for his office. Out of seeming weakness comes real strength. Feeling, or having felt, in his own person, the power both of sin and of redeeming love, he can the better set forth the hatefulness of the one, and the efficacy of the other."

There was a slight pause; then, Mrs. Bergan made haste to break the silence, and to do it in such a manner as to induce a speedy change of subject. And Dr. Remy, after a brief moodiness, which seemed to indicate some lingering effect of the preceding discussion, suddenly unbent his brow, and threw himself into the new theme with animation, to the immediate enlivenment of the party, and the gradual extinction of his hostess's resentment. She acknowledged to herself that he could be exceedingly agreeable, when it pleased him. If he would but spice his conversation a little less freely with sarcasm!

And then she gave the signal for the ladies to leave the table.

As has been already hinted, the more immediate and visible result of the dinner-party at Oakstead, was a swift budding and blossoming of friendship between Carice and Astra. Despite the playful disclaimer of the latter, when the probability of such a consummation had been mentioned by her mother, no sooner did the two girls meet face to face, the gray eyes and the blue ones looking straight into each other's depths, than there was an instant, unlooked-for revival of their childish affection and confidence; quickly informed by a deeper sympathy and fuller comprehension. It was much like sisters—unavoidably separated for years, but in whom the instinct of kinship cannot be lost—that they sat talking together, in a twilight corner of the parlor, until the gentlemen came from the dining-room. Not only were there pleasant childhood memories to recall, but the life-story of each was to be brought fairly up to the present time, for the enlightenment of the other. Astra's was the more eventful; it embraced all her art-education and life, with its toils, pleasures, difficulties, ambitions, and disappointments. Carice's was more like that of a flower; she had lived and grown in the home-precinct, she had fed on sunshine and dew, sweet and right thoughts had been as natural to her as perfume to a rose, she had made a little space very delightsome with her beauty and her sweetness; and that was all. Each felt a very genuine admiration for the other;—Carice bent loyally before Astra's crown of genius; Astra held her breath, half in awe, half in tenderness, before the aureola that she saw encircling the fair head of Carice. As for the "chill" of which she had spoken to Bergan, she had ceased to think of it. Carice's affections were warm enough, she saw, when they were reached. Yet there was something about her too, which she would still have been forced to call chill, for want of a better word,—-that indefinable quality which is inseparable from anything at once white and pure,—a pearl, a star, or the white wing of a dove.

As a natural consequence of this friendship, Carice came often to Astra's studio. Not infrequently she met Bergan there. Remembering Miss Ferrar's statement, and giving it more credit than she was really aware of, she wondered, sometimes, that she could detect no sign of a secret, or tacit, understanding between him and Astra. Their manner to each other was most frank and kind, but it seemed totally devoid of any lover-like quality. She finally settled it in her mind that no engagement existed as yet; but she also decided that, inasmuch as they were admirably fitted for each other, it was sure to come, in good time. Nothing better, she thought, in her innocent heart, could well be devised for either.

Astra, meanwhile was watching Bergan and Carice with as warm an interest, and a far more penetrating glance; and often she smiled to herself over the discoveries that she made. To her, they appeared to be drifting as surely, if unconsciously, down the smooth, gliding current of love, as could be desired. She was glad to have it so. She believed them to be true counterparts, needing each to be completed by the other. Bergan had strength, nobleness, enthusiasm; Carice had sweetness, purity, repose; how beautiful and fit the union, how symmetrical the result! There was a genuine artistic joy in the thought.

And then, all at once, she forgot to watch them. Suddenly, or gradually, she knew not which, a magical change had been wrought in her surroundings; old things had vanished, all things had become new. A new sky, a new earth,—stars and cloud-shapes of bewitching vagueness and softness,—scenery of wondrous coloring and surpassing loveliness,—lights that were tenderer than any shadows, and shadows that were only subdued lights;—of what were these things the signs? Had she also been drifting, and whither?