University of Virginia Library

41. CHAPTER XLI.
PEDANTIC LOVE-MAKING.

How came it about that such a grotesque and dubious adventurer as Poloski
should win, to a certain extent at least, the confidence of such a sensible
mother in Israel as Mrs. Dinneford, and the liking of such a flirtish daughter
of Zion as Alice?

It was probably the title of Count which mainly did the business for these
two ladies, as well as for a number of other ladies then breathing the air of
freedom in this glorious republic, the land of democratic simplicity and equality.
After our best society had decided to concede and eventually to affirm
that Poloski was an entirely authentic noble, his success as a man of fashion
and as a beau was assured. Even to the minds of free men and free women

there is something powerfully and we will not say irrationally dazzling in the
fact of descent from “a hundred earls,” or even from a much shorter string of
titled forefathers. As we look upon a “scion of a noble stock,” we get an impression
of the virtues and potencies and great deeds of successive eminent
generations, all accumulated and concentrated in the perhaps personally unattractive
individual before us, and shining out of him like the vitality of bygone
forests out of a lump of anthracite. It seems natural and right to how
down to a Lama whose lamaic predecessors have mayhap looked upon the
crouchings of our predecessors. We are good republicans in our heads; we
can argue against caste in the abstract, and do not want its hands in our
pockets; but our imaginations are enchanted by it.

So Count Poloski was a favorite in stylish New York society; a dozen, or
perhaps twenty, or perhaps forty of our young ladies were more or less bewitched
about him; and Alice Dinneford had not been able to resist the widespread
infection. Satirical, clever, and in some respects sensible, she was in
many things the abject slave of public opinion, and she wanted to carry off
this prize which so many others strove for. And, what is much more wonderful,
her mother had come to grant the Pole a certain degree of regard. The
fact that “Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell” pleaded eloquently for
him to Mrs. Dinneford's excellent heart. Likewise it advantaged him much
with her that he was such a “scholarly man,” and knew so much, or so little,
of so many languages, and could talk fluently of so many diverse, abstruse
subjects. An intellectual charlatan, whose hasty cleverness had washed
through numerous channels and brought away some golden or at least shining
sands, was naturally impressive to a semi-educated spirit which had the
New England reverence for learning and looked upon every college tutor as a
precious well-spring of knowledge.

And when Mrs. Dinneford found that Poloski could discourse copiously
concerning the Scriptures, she became disposed to consider him an elect soul,
who might properly be received into any of the households of our American
Zion. His views of Jewish history, indeed, rather amazed her; he discussed
that revered subject with an absence of prejudice which at times seemed to
her to border on free-thinking; but the fact that a foreigner, and especially a
noble foreigner, should know anything at all about the Bible was delightful;
and on the whole she listened to the Count's doubts and queries with a patience
not devoid of respect and admiration. This very evening, while Edward
Wetherel and Lehming were coming to dislodge Poloski from her confidence,
she held with him earnest speech concerning the influence of the captivity in
purifying and elevating the Hebrew religion.

The family scene was a pleasant one to look at. The tall, blonde, handsome,
dandified Poloski talked from the sofa, or rose in moments of inspiration
to pace once or twice across the room, gesturing meanwhile with taking
vivacity. Mrs. Dinneford hearkened from her rocking-chair, her plain but
kindly and bright face beaming with interest, and her large, strongly-veined
hands busy upon some charitable needlework. Alice, curled up prettily on a
cushion, embroidered with a sort of tremulous vehemence quite characteristic
of her when debarred from talking.

“In short, Mrs. Dinneford, the captivity founded Hebraism,” summed up
the encyclopedical Count. “The captivity was the starting-point of the
Jewish national faith, as we know it. Up to the captivity the Hebrews had
no national faith. The school of the prophets, which was a patriotic sect, worshipped
the Baal or Lord of Israel, who, as German scholars have discovered

was a sun-god. The other Jews worshipped Moloch, who was the sun-god of
the Tyrians, and the bacchic Baal, who was a sun-god of the northern Canaanites,
and Ashtaroth, who was the moon-goddess of the Sidonians, and other
pantheonic deities. Their great king Solomon built temples to all the divinities
of the surrounding peoples. The nation was polytheistic through all its
early history. It knew nothing of the great truth of monotheism. Superficial
scholars, such as you have in England and America, have stigmatized the son
of Nebat as an idolater. He was not; he was a reformer; he was a foe of
polytheism. He set up the golden calf, or bull, as the symbol of the sun-god
of Israel. He did away with other deities. He was the founder of a national
faith, purer far than the faith of Solomon. But his struggle to establish monotheism
was unsuccessful. Not until the captivity, not until the advent of the
Persic idea of a divine unity, did the Jews become monotheists. We owe
Hebraic monotheism to the Persians, a race of the noble Aryan stock. That,
Mrs. Dinneford, is the true history of monotheism, at least so far as it concerns
the Hebrews.”

“These things are too hard for me, Mr. Poloski,” replied the good lady,
shaking her orthodox head resolutely, but with less acrimony than might have
been expected. “I know that in the times of Elijah there were only seven
thousand that had not bowed the knee to Baal and kissed him. But that was
because Ahab and Jezebel had led the nation into apostasy. We have it in the
Scriptures that the Jews were God's chosen people.”

“My dear Mrs. Dinneford, all peoples are God's chosen peoples,” urged
the Count. “He made them all; he chose to make them all; they are all his
chosen peoples.”

“I must think of these matters,” said Mrs. Dinneford, still shaking her
head. “Another time, when I have meditated more fully on these weighty
questions, I shall be glad to discuss them with you. I don't suppose that we
shall settle them,” she laughed good-humoredly. “As Tupper says, Shall
time teach the lesson which eternity cannot master? I know that there are
difficulties in Hebrew history. But my faith stands firm. With Tupper, again,
I can declare. It is written, and so we believe, waiting not for outward proof.
To be sure, he speaks there of the Trinity; but the same good rule applies to
other mysteries; whatever is written I accept.”

The Count bowed, lifted his shoulders slightly, and fell silent. Perhaps he
saw that it was useless to argue with this believing lady; perhaps he feared
that he had already argued too boldly for his own good. Conceited as he was,
and fond beyond measure of the sound of his own voice, he had nevertheless
some worldly wisdom of self-control, and he did not want to win the ill opinion
of Alice's mother.

By the way, how is it possible, in view of the theories which Poloski had
advanced, that Mrs. Dinneford had not set him down as an outright infidel,
and resolved to eschew his company? Well, in the first place, he was a
Count; and that was a fact which still confounded her greatly; she did not
quite know what a Count ought to believe. In the second place, she was
largely broad-church in her sentiments; orthodox as she was for herself, she
was very charitable to the views of others; and if a man admitted the existence
of a Creator, she strove to be content with him. In the third place—and
this was the most bewildering fact of all—Poloski admired Alice. In a person
who beheld good in her child, this affectionate mother could find little evil.

“I doubt not you will convict me when we talk again, Mrs. Dinneford,”
bowed and smiled the Count, “In fact, we differ little in our opinions at

bottom. All my ancestors have been Christians, and have derived their faith
from the Hebrews. I could not turn my back upon the belief of my ancestors.”

“It is a great blessing to come of a devout family,” observed Mrs. Dinneford,
who trusted that she had derived some good from her Wetherel descent.

“Virtue and credence are hereditary,” pursued the Count. “That is one
argument in favor of the belief in a special chosen people.”

“You are a philosopher, Mr. Poloski,” said the lady, quite cheered and
gratified by this suggestion. “I do so reverence a philosophical mind, even
when led away by too much trusting to its own strength, as is the case, I fear,
with our great Emerson. You remind me of my cousin, John Bowlder, who
is an Emersonian, or tries his best to be.”

“Bowlder!” grimaced Poloski, not much pleased with the comparison.
“You must pardon me for saying what I think of Bowlder. He is an idealogue
without a system. I have no confidence in idealogues who have no system,
but say everything they can think of, burly hurly.”

Mrs. Dinneford burst into a hearty laugh; her sense of humor was easily
tickled.

“Cousin John is tangled,” she admitted. “His talk is much like throwing
things out of a window in a fire, grappling first whatever comes handiest, and
tumbling everything in one pile. To listen to him is just about the same as
reading a dictionary: Deuteronomy, and deviltry, and duty, and dishwater
come in the same column. But Cousin John, notwithstanding his queer mixtures,
and his poor, futile free-thinking, has such goodness of heart— ”

“Oh, I love goodness of heart,” hastily interjected Poloski, fearing lest he
had been too hard upon Cousin Bowlder. “Goodness of heart makes amends
for everything,” he added, kissing his fingers and waving them heavenward.

Alice cringed under this absurdly flat speech, and said to herself that now
and then the Count was too silly, and for a moment marvelled over the fact
that she had ceased to laugh at him. Then she reflected that he had improved
of late; that, for one thing, he had dropped his ridiculous investigations into
“slangs”; and finally that other girls as well as herself had learned to admire
him. Nevertheless, she was anxious to give such a turn to the conversation
as might prevent him from throwing any more kisses to goodness of heart.
So she asked him (and a most insidious question it was) whether he intended
to pass his life in America.

“I must go to Poland this very winter,” returned Poloski, with the start
of a man who suddenly remembers urgent affairs.

“Why so?” asked Alice, conscious of a sharp pang of interest. “You are
not going to fire the Polish heart and make a revolution, I hope?” she added,
trying to varnish over her anxiety with a joke.

“I would if I could,” declared the Count tragically. “But no; impossible.
The Russian and German colossuses are too big and strong. The emancipation
of the serfs in Russia has thrown all into confusion in all Slavic countries.
My steward knows not how to manage free tenants, and my revenues have
diminished twenty thousand dollars, which,” he added after a moment of computation—“which
is almost half. I must go there and restore order. I must
be my own Suwarrow. A steward cannot do it.”

Mrs. Dinneford was delighted to see him take his loss of income so calmly,
thinking that he had indeed inherited a heroic and worthy spirit from his noble
ancestors.

“I trust you will be gentle with your poor tenants, who of course don't
know how to use their freedom aright the moment they get it, and must learn

by degrees how to perform their duties toward their employer, as well as toward
themselves,” she said with a simple good faith which might have drawn
tears from an honestly tender philanthropist, but which only tempted Poloski
to smile.

“I shall be considerate to them, I assure you, my excellent Mrs. Dinneford,”
he promised with the gracious grandeur of an Ahasuerus extending his
sceptre. “Here in America I have made advances in the sublime science of
humanity.”

This speech was a hit, for Mrs. Dinneford had been an abolitionist from
her youth up, and had rejoiced exceedingly in emancipation and negro suffrage,
and sympathized with Mr. Sumner's desire to give every colored brother
a farm and mule.

Poloski saw that he had produced a good impression, and it occurred to
him that he ought to improve it at once. There was Miss Dinneford, a prize
worth having. She was genteel, and she was handsome, and, what was more,
she was rich, or would be. He must marry her; but to bring that about he
must propose to her; and how should he propose? Would it be best to declare
his love to the daughter after the American fashion, or preliminarily to the
mother, after the fashion of Europe? Should he ask a private interview with
Mrs. Dinneford or with Alice? For a few seconds he was silent, gravely debating
these breathless questions.