"But," she said, "it would make father so happy."

"Yes, I know," he answered; "and it would be very beautiful of you.

Besides, of course, in one way it's only a matter of symbolism; but then, on the other hand, it's symbolism hardened into dogmatism that has done all the mischief. Do it, dear, if you like; I hardly know what to say. As you say, it will make father happy, and I shall quite understand."

Dot was one of those natures that like to seek, and are liable to take, advice; so, after seeing Henry, she thought she would see what Mr.

Trotter had to say; for, in spite of his unfortunate name, Mr. Trotter was a gentle, cultivated mind, and was indeed somewhat incongruously, perhaps in a mild way Jesuitically, circ.u.mstanced as a Baptist minister.

Henry and he were great friends on literary matters; and Dot and he had had many talks, greatly helpful to her, on spiritual things. In fact, Chrysostom Trotter was one of those numerous half-way men between the old beliefs and their new modifications, which the continuous advance of scientific discovery and philosophical speculation on the one hand, and the obstinate survival of Christianity on the other, necessitate--if men of spiritual intuitions who are not poets and artists are to earn their living. There was nothing you could say to Chrysostom Trotter, provided you said it reverently, that would startle him. He knew all that long ago and far more. For, though obliged to trade in this backwater of belief, he was in many respects a very modern mind. You were hardly likely to know your Herbert Spencer as intimately as he, and all the most exquisite literature of doubt was upon his shelves. Though you might declare him superficially disingenuous, you could not, unless you were some commonplace atheist or materialist, gainsay the honest logic of his position.

"You believe that the world, that life, is a spiritual mystery?" he would say.

"Yes."

"You do not for a moment think that any materialistic science has remotely approached an adequate explanation of its meaning?"

"Certainly not."

"You believe too that, however it comes about, and whatever it means, there is an eternal struggle in man between what, for sake of argument, we will call the higher and lower natures?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, this spiritual mystery, this struggle, are hinted at in various media of human expression, in an ever-changing variety of human symbols. Art chiefly concerns itself with the s.e.xual mystery, with the wonderful love of man and woman, in its explanation of which alone science is so pitifully inadequate. Literature more fully concerns itself with the mystery of man's indestructibly instinctive relation to what we call the unseen,--that is, the Whole, the Cosmos, G.o.d, or whatever you please to call it. But more than literature, religion has for centuries concerned itself with these considerations, has consciously and industriously sought to make itself the science of what we call the soul. It has thrown its observations, just as poetry and art have thrown their observations, into symbolic forms, of which Christianity is incomparably the most important. You don't reject the revelation of human love because Hero and Leander are probably creations of the poet's fancy. Will you reject the revelation of divine love, because it chances, for its greater efficiency in winning human hearts, to have found expression in a similar human symbolism? Personally, I hold that Christ actually lived, and was literally the Son of G.o.d; but, were the human literalness of his divine story discredited, the eternal verities of human degeneration, and a mysterious regeneration, would be no whit disproved. Externally, Christianity may be a symbol; essentially, it is a science of spiritual fact, as really as geology is a science of material fact.

"And as for its miraculous, supernatural, side,--are the laws of nature so easy to understand that we should find such a difficulty in accepting a few divergencies from them? He who can make laws for so vast a universe may surely be capable of inventing a few comparatively trivial exceptions."

Not perhaps in so many words, but in some such spirit, would Chrysostom Trotter argue; and it was in some such fashion that he talked in his charmingly sympathetic way with Dorcas Mesurier, one afternoon, as she had tea with him in a study breathing on every hand the man of letters, rather than the minister of a somewhat antiquated sect.

"My dear Dorcas," he said, "you know me well enough--you know me perhaps better than your father knows me--know me well enough to believe that I wouldn't urge you to do this thing if I didn't think it was right _for you_--as well as for your father and me. But I know it is right, and for this reason. You are a deeply religious nature, but you need some outward symbol to hold on to,--you need, so to say, the magnetising a.s.sociation of a religious organisation. Henry can get along very well, as many poets have, with his birds and his sunsets and so forth; but you need something more authoritative. It happens that the church I represent, the church of your father, is nearest to you. You might, with all the goodwill in the world, so far as I am concerned, embrace some other modification of the Christian faith; but here is a church, so to say, ready for you, familiar by long a.s.sociation, endeared to your father. You believe in G.o.d, you believe in the spiritual meaning of life, you believe that we poor human beings need something to keep our eyes fixed upon that spiritual meaning--well, dear Dorcas," he ended, abruptly, "what do you think?"

"I'll do it," said Dot.

"Good girl," said the minister; "sometimes it is a form of righteousness to waive our doubts for those who are at once so dear and good as your father. And don't for a moment think that it will leave you just where you are. These outward acts are great energisers of the soul. Dear Dorcas, I welcome you into one of G.o.d's many churches."

So it was that Dot came to be baptised; and, to witness the ceremony, all the Mesuriers a.s.sembled at the chapel that Sunday evening,--even Henry, who could hardly remember when he used to sit in this still-familiar pew, and scribble love-verses in the back of his hymn-book during the sermon.

To the mere mocker, the rite of baptism by immersion might well seem a somewhat grotesque antic of sectarianism; but to any one who must needs find sympathy for any observance into which, in whatsoever forgotten and superseded time, has pa.s.sed the prayerful enthusiasm of man, the rite could hardly fail of a moving solemnity. As Chrysostom Trotter ordered it, it was certainly made to yield its fullest measure of impressiveness. To begin with, the chapel was quite a comely edifice inside and out; and its ministerial end, with its singers' gallery backed by great organ pipes, and fronted by a handsome pulpit, which Mr.

Trotter had dared to garnish with chrysanthemums on each side of his Bible, had a modest, sacerdotal effect. Beneath the pulpit on ordinary occasions stood the Communion-table; but on evenings when the rite of baptism was prepared, this table, and a boarding on which it stood, were removed, revealing a tiled baptistry,--that is, a tiled tank, about eight feet long, and six wide, with steps on each side descending into about four feet of water.

Towards the close of the service, the minister would leave his pulpit, and, during the singing of a hymn, would presently emerge from his vestry in a long waterproof garment. As the hymn ended, some "sister" or "brother" that night to be admitted into the church, would timidly join him at the baptistry side, and together they would go down into the water.

Holding the hands of the new communicant, the minister, in a solemn voice, would say, "Sister," or "Brother, on confession of your faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I baptise thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Then the organ would strike up a triumphant peal, and, to the accompaniment of its music and the mellow plashing of the water, the sister or brother would be plunged beneath the symbolic wave.

Great was the excitement, needless to say, in the Mesurier pew, as little Dot at last came forth from the vestry, and, stealing down into the water, took the minister's out-stretched hands.

"There she is! There's Dot!" pa.s.sed round the pew, and the hardest young heart, whoever it belonged to, stopped beating, to hear the minister's words. They seemed to come with a special personal tenderness,--

"Sister, on confession of your faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I baptise thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Once more the organ triumphant, and the mellow splashing of the water.

Dear little Dot, she had done it!

"Did you see father's face?" Esther whispered to Henry.

Yes; perhaps none of them would ever do such a beautiful thing as Dot had done that night. At least there was one of James Mesurier's children who had not disappointed him.

CHAPTER XVIII

MIKE AND HIS MILLION POUNDS

The most exquisite compliment a man has ever paid to him is worded something like this: "Well, dear, you certainly know how to make love;"

and this compliment is always the reward, not of pa.s.sion however sustained, or sentiment however refined, but of humour whimsically fantasticating and balancing both. It is the gentle laugh, not violating, but just humanising, that very solemn kiss; the quip that just saves pa.s.sion from toppling over the brink into bathos, that mark the skilful lover. No lover will long be successful unless he is a humourist too, and is able to keep the heart of love amused. A lover should always be something of an actor as well; not, of course, for the purpose of feigning what he does not feel, but so that he may the better dramatise his sincerity!

Mike had therefore many advantages over those merely pretty fellows whose rivalry he had once been modest enough to fear. He was a master of all the child's play of love; and to attempt to describe the fancies which he found to vary the game of love, would be to run the risk of exposing the limitations of the literary medium. No words can pull those whimsical faces, or put on those heart-breaking pathetic expressions, with which he loved to meet Esther after some short absence. Sometimes he would come into the room, a little forlorn sparrow of a creature, signifying, by a dejection in which his very clothes took part, that he was out in the east wind of circ.u.mstance and no one in the world cared a shabby feather for him. He would stand shivering in a corner, and look timorously from side to side, till at last he would pretend she had warmed him with her kisses, and generally made him welcome to the world.

Sometimes he would come in with his collar dismally turned up, and an old battered hat upon his head, and pretend that he hadn't had a meal--of kisses--for a whole week; and occasionally he would come blowing out his cheeks like a king's trumpeter, to announce that Mike Laflin might be at any moment expected. But for the most part these impersonations were in a minor key, as Mike had soon discovered that the more pathetic he was, the more he was hugged and called a "weenty,"

which was one of his own sad little names for himself.

One of his "long-run" fairy-tales, as he would call them, was that each morning as he went to business, he really started out in search of a million pounds, which was somewhere awaiting him, and which he might break his shins over at any moment. It might be here, it might be there, it might come at any hour of the day. The next post might bring it. It might be in yonder Parcel Delivery van,--nothing more probable. Or at any moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at that second pa.s.sing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands of Sugar and Spice. You never could tell.

"Well, Mike," said Esther, one evening, as he came in, hopping in a pitifully wounded way, and explaining that he had been one of the three ravens sitting on a bough which the cruel huntsman had shot through the wing, etc., "have you found your million pounds to-day?"

"No, not my million pounds," said Mike. "I'm told I shall find them to-morrow."

"Who told you?"

"The Weenty."

"You silly old thing! Give me a kiss. Are you a dear? Tell me, aren't you a dear?"

"No-p! I'm only a poor little houseless, roofless, windowless, chimney-less, Esther-less, brainless, out-in-the-wind-and-the-snow-and-the-rain, Mike!"

"You're the biggest dear in the world!"

"No, I'm not. I'm the littlest!"

"Suppose you found your million pounds, Mike?"

"Suppose! Didn't I tell you I'm sure of it to-morrow?"

"Well, when you find it to-morrow, what will you do with it?"

"I'll buy the moon."