Now for a while, Donal seldom saw lady Arctura, and when he did, received from her no encouragement to address her. The troubled look had reappeared on her face. In her smile, as they passed in hall or corridor, glimmered an expression almost pathetic--something like an appeal, as if she stood in sore need of his help, but dared not ask for it. She was again much in the company of Miss Carmichael, and Donal had good cause to fear that the pharisaism of her would-be directress was coming down upon her spirit, not like rain on the mown grass, but like frost on the spring flowers. The impossibility of piercing the Christian pharisee holding the traditions of the elders, in any vital part--so pachydermatous is he to any spiritual argument--is a sore trial to the old Adam still unslain in lovers of the truth. At the same time nothing gives patience better opportunity for her perfect work. And it is well they cannot be reached by argument and so persuaded; they would but enter the circles of the faithful to work fresh schisms and breed fresh imposthumes.
But Donal had begun to think that he had been too forbearing towards the hideous doctrines advocated by Miss Carmichael. It is one thing where evil doctrines are quietly held, and the truth associated with them assimilated by good people doing their best with what has been taught them, and quite another thing where they are forced upon some shrinking nature, weak to resist through the very reverence which is its excellence. The finer nature, from inability to think another of less pure intent than itself, is often at a great disadvantage in the hands of the coarser. He made up his mind that, risk as it was to enter into disputations with a worshipper of the letter, inasmuch as for argument the letter is immeasurably more available than the spirit--for while the spirit lies in the letter unperceived, it has no force, and the letter-worshipper is incapable of seeing that God could not possibly mean what he makes of it--notwithstanding the risk, he resolved to hold himself ready, and if anything was given him, to cry it out and not spare. Nor had he long resolved ere the opportunity came.
It had come to be known that Donal frequented the old avenue, and it was with intent, in the pride of her acquaintance with scripture, and her power to use it, that Miss Carmichael one afternoon led her unwilling, rather recusant, and very unhappy disciple thither: she sought an encounter with him: his insolence towards the old-established faith must be confounded, his obnoxious influence on Arctura frustrated! It was a bright autumnal day. The trees were sorely bereaved, but some foliage yet hung in thin yellow clouds upon their patient boughs. There was plenty of what Davie called scushlin, that is the noise of walking with scarce lifted feet amongst the thick-lying withered leaves. But less foliage means more sunlight.
Donal was sauntering along, his book in his hand, now and then reading a little, now and then looking up to the half-bared branches, now and then, like Davie, sweeping a cloud of the fallen multitude before him. He was in this childish act when, looking up, he saw the two ladies approaching; he did not see the peculiar glance Miss Carmichael threw her companion: "Behold your prophet!" it said. He would have passed with lifted bonnet, but Miss Carmichael stopped, smiling: her smile was bright because it showed her good teeth, but was not pleasant because it showed nothing else.
"Glorying over the fallen, Mr. Grant?" she said.
Donal in his turn smiled.
"That is not Mr. Grant's way," said Arctura, "--so far at least as I have known him!"
"How careless the trees are of their poor children!" said Miss Carmichael, affecting sympathy for the leaves.
"Pardon me," said Donal, "if I grudge them your pity: there is nothing more of children in those leaves than there is in the hair that falls on the barber's floor."
"It is not very gracious to pull a lady up so sharply!" returned Miss Carmichael, still smiling: "I spoke poetically."
"There is no poetry in what is not true," rejoined Donal. "Those are not the children of the tree."
"Of course," said Miss Carmichael, a little surprised to find their foils crossed already, "a tree has no children! but--"
"A tree no children!" exclaimed Donal. "What then are all those beech-nuts under the leaves? Are they not the children of the tree?"
"Yes; and lost like the leaves!" sighed Miss Carmichael.
"Why do you say they are lost? They must fulfil the end for which they were made, and if so, they cannot be lost."
"For what end were they made?"
"I do not know. If they all grew up, they would be a good deal in the way."
"Then you say there are more seeds than are required?"
"How could I, when I do not know what they are required for? How can I tell that it is not necessary for the life of the tree that it should produce them all, and necessary too for the ground to receive so much life-rent from the tree!"
"But you must admit that some things are lost!"
"Yes, surely!" answered Donal. "Why else should he come and look till he find?"
No such answer had the theologian expected; she was not immediate with her rejoinder.
"But some of them are lost after all!" she said.
"Doubtless; there are sheep that will keep running away. But he goes after them again."
"He will not do that for ever!"
"He will."
"I do not believe it."
"Then you do not believe that God is infinite!"
"I do."
"How can you? Is he not the Lord God merciful and gracious?"
"I am glad you know that."
"But if his mercy and his graciousness are not infinite, then he is not infinite!"
"There are other attributes in which he is infinite."
"But he is not infinite in all his attributes? He is partly infinite, and partly finite!--infinite in knowledge and power, but in love, in forgiveness, in all those things which are the most beautiful, the most divine, the most Christ-like, he is finite, measurable, bounded, small!"
"I care nothing for such finite reasoning. I take the word of inspiration, and go by that!"
