"Alice, Alice, Alice!"

And Tray uttered a soft, cooing, nasal croon in his head register, though he was a barytone dog by nature, with portentous, warlike chest-notes of the jingo order.

"Tray, your mistress is a parson's daughter, and therefore twice as much of a mystery as any other woman in this puzzling world!

"Tray, if my heart weren't stopped with wax, like the ears of the companions of Ulysses when they rowed past the sirens--you've heard of Ulysses, Tray? he loved a dog--if my heart weren't stopped with wax, I should be deeply in love with your mistress; perhaps she would marry me if I asked her--there's no accounting for tastes!--and I know enough of myself to know that I should make her a good husband--that I should make her happy--and I should make two other women happy besides.

"As for myself personally, Tray, it doesn't very much matter. One good woman would do as well as another, if she's equally good-looking. You doubt it? Wait till you get a pimple inside your b.u.mp of--your b.u.mp of--wherever you keep your fondnesses, Tray.

"For that's what's the matter with me--a pimple--just a little clot of blood at the root of a nerve, and no bigger than a pin's point!

"That's a small thing to cause such a lot of wretchedness, and wreck a fellow's life, isn't it? Oh, curse it, curse it, curse it--every day and all day long!

"And just as small a thing will take it away, I'm told!

"Ah! grains of sand are small things--and so are diamonds! But diamond or grain of sand, only Alice has got that small thing! Alice alone, in all the world, has got the healing touch for me now; the hands, the lips, the eyes! I know it--I feel it! I dreamed it last night! She looked me well in the face, and took my hand--both hands--and kissed me, eyes and mouth, and told me how she loved me. Ah! what a dream it was!

And my little clot melted away like a snow-flake on the lips, and I was my old self again, after many years--and all through that kiss of a pure woman.

"I've never been kissed by a pure woman in my life--never! except by my dear mother and sister; and mothers and sisters don't count, when it comes to kissing.

"Ah! sweet physician that she is, and better than all! It will all come back again with a rush, just as I dreamed, and we will have a good time together, we three!...

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MAY HEAVEN GO WITH HER!"]

"But your mistress is a parson's daughter, and believes everything she's been taught from a child, just as you do--at least, I hope so. And I like her for it--and you too.

"She has believed her father--will she ever believe me, who think so differently? And if she does, will it be good for her?--and then, where will her father come in?

"Oh! it's a bad thing to live, and no longer believe and trust in your father, Tray! to doubt either his honesty or his intelligence. For he (with your mother to help) has taught you all the best he knows, if he has been a good father--till some one else comes and teaches you better--or worse!

"And, then, what are you to believe of what good still remains of all that early teaching--and how are you to sift the wheat from the chaff?...

"Kneel undisturbed, fair saint! I, for one, will never seek to undermine thy faith in any father, on earth or above it!

"Yes, there she kneels in her father's church, her pretty head bowed over her clasped hands, her cloak and skirts falling in happy folds about her: I see it all!

"And underneath, that poor, sweet, soft, pathetic thing of flesh and blood, the eternal woman--great heart and slender brain--forever enslaved or enslaving, never self-sufficing, never free ... that dear, weak, delicate shape, so cherishable, so perishable, that I've had to paint so often, and know so well by heart! and love ... ah, how I love it! Only painter-fellows and sculptor-fellows can ever quite know the fulness of that pure love.

"There she kneels and pours forth her praise or plaint, meekly and duly.

Perhaps it's for me she's praying!

"'Leave thou thy sister when she prays.'

"She believes her poor little prayer will be heard and answered somewhere up aloft. The impossible will be done. She wants what she wants so badly, and prays for it so hard.

"She believes--she believes--what _doesn't_ she believe, Tray?

"The world was made in six days. It is just six thousand years old. Once it all lay smothered under rain-water for many weeks, miles deep, because there were so many wicked people about somewhere down in Jude_e_, where they didn't know everything! A costly kind of clearance!

And then there was Noah, who _wasn't_ wicked, and his most respectable family, and his ark--and Jonah and his whale--and Joshua and the sun, and what not. I remember it all, you see, and, oh! such wonderful things that have happened since! And there's everlasting agony for those who don't believe as she does; and yet she is happy, and good, and very kind; for the mere thought of any live creature in pain makes her wretched!

"After all, if she believes in me, she'll believe in anything; let her!

"Indeed, I'm not sure that it's not rather ungainly for a pretty woman _not_ to believe in all these good old cosmic taradiddles, as it is for a pretty child not to believe in Little Red Riding-hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk, and Morgiana and the Forty Thieves; we learn them at our mother's knee, and how nice they are! Let us go on believing them as long as we can, till the child grows up and the woman dies and it's all found out.

"Yes, Tray, I will be dishonest for her dear sake. I will kneel by her side, if ever I have the happy chance, and ever after, night and morning, and all day long on Sundays if she wants me to! What will I _not_ do for that one pretty woman who believes in _me_? I will respect even _that_ belief, and do my little best to keep it alive forever. It is much too precious an earthly boon for _me_ to play ducks and drakes with....

"So much for Alice, Tray--your sweet mistress and mine.

"But, then, there's Alice's papa--and that's another pair of sleeves, as we say in France.

"Ought one ever to play at make-believe with a full-grown man for any consideration whatever--even though he be a parson, and a possible father-in-law? _There's_ a case of conscience for you!

"When I ask him for his daughter, as I must, and he asks me for my profession of faith, as he will, what can I tell him? The truth?

"But, then, what will _he_ say? What allowances will _he_ make for a poor little weak-kneed, well-meaning waif of a painter-fellow like me, whose only choice lay between Mr. Darwin and the Pope of Rome, and who has chosen once and forever--and that long ago--before he'd ever even heard of Mr. Darwin's name.

"Besides, why should he make allowances for me? I don't for him. I think no more of a parson than he does of a painter-fellow--and that's precious little, I'm afraid.

"What will he think of a man who says:

"'Look here! the G.o.d of your belief isn't mine and never will be--but I love your daughter, and she loves me, and I'm the only man to make her happy!'

"He's no Jephthah; he's made of flesh and blood, although he's a parson--and loves his daughter as much as Shylock loved his.

"Tell me, Tray--thou that livest among parsons--what man, not being a parson himself, can guess how a parson would think, an average parson, confronted by such a poser as that?

"Does he, dare he, _can_ he ever think straight or simply on any subject as any other man thinks, hedged in as he is by so many limitations?

"He is as shrewd, vain, worldly, self-seeking, ambitious, jealous, censorious, and all the rest, as you or I, Tray--for all his Christian profession--and just as fond of his kith and kin!

"He is considered a gentleman--which perhaps you and I are not--unless we happen to behave as such; it is a condition of his n.o.ble calling.

Perhaps it's in order to become a gentleman that he's become a parson!

It's about as short a royal road as any to that enviable distinction--as short almost as her Majesty's commission, and much safer, and much less expensive--within reach of the sons of most fairly successful butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers.

"While still a boy he has bound himself irrevocably to certain beliefs, which he will be paid to preserve and preach and enforce through life, and act up to through thick and thin--at all events, in the eyes of others--even his nearest and dearest--even the wife of his bosom.

"They are his bread and b.u.t.ter, these beliefs--and a man mustn't quarrel with his bread and b.u.t.ter. But a parson must quarrel with those who don't believe as he tells them!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'SO MUCH FOR ALICE, TRAY'"]

"Yet a few years' thinking and reading and experience of life, one would suppose, might possibly just shake his faith a little (just as though, instead of being parson, he had been tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief), and teach him that many of these beliefs are simply childish--and some of them very wicked indeed--and most immoral.

"It is very wicked and most immoral to believe, or affect to believe, and tell others to believe, that the unseen, unspeakable, unthinkable Immensity we're all part and parcel of, source of eternal, infinite, indestructible life and light and might, is a kind of wrathful, glorified, and self-glorifying ogre in human shape, with human pa.s.sions, and most inhuman hates--who suddenly made us out of nothing, one fine day--just for a freak--and made us so badly that we fell the next--and turned us adrift the day after--d.a.m.ned us from the very beginning--_ab ovo--ab ovo usque ad malum_--ha, ha!--and ever since! never gave us a chance!

"All-merciful Father, indeed! Why, the Prince of Darkness was an angel in comparison (and a gentleman into the bargain).

"Just think of it, Tray--a finger in every little paltry pie--an eye and an ear at every key-hole, even that of the larder, to catch us tripping, and find out if we're praising loud enough, or grovelling low enough, or fasting hard enough--poor G.o.d-forsaken worms!