University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
A PATRIARCH OF THE ARMY.

During the morning of Josie's second day
in Washington she received a call from that
uncle of hers whom we have heard mentioned
as the colonel.

Julian Murray, the only surviving brother
of the Reverend John Murray, was a full
colonel in the regular army, and chief of an
office in the War Department. He was a
fine-looking veteran, quite tall and remarkably
straight, with a long, firm, and striding
gait, as of one who had marched much, with
an air of unconsciousness and self-possession
which was nothing less than patrician,
and yet with little ways of putting himself
at ease which were as unceremonious as old
slippers.

His abundant hair was nearly white; his
face was long, thin, high-featured, and distinguished,
if not handsome; his expression
was calm, sweet, benevolent, and yet singu
larly resolute. There was a little absent-mindedness
in his demeanor, and there was
a frequent smile, which seemed to apologize
for it. On the whole, he made one think of
a venerable and entirely sane Don Quixote.
Sixty-five years of age—that is to say, three
years older than the rector—he appeared to
be the younger of the two, and was clearly
the haler and stronger. No one who had
to deal with him ever doubted that he was
in the full possession of all his intellectual
faculties.

“Uncle Julian!” exclaimed Josie, kissing
him immediately, although she had met him
but once before in her life. “I remember
you distinctly at my wedding. You said to
me, `Go through life by easy marches, my
dear!' I have never forgotten the advice,
though I haven't been able to follow it.”

“Well, I am sorry for that, my dear,” answered
the colonel, obviously pleased at being
recollected so well and embraced so cordially.
“I wish you better fortune in future
than you have had. Let me see, I don't
want to be calling you Mrs. Murray, and my
memory is a tattered old knapsack, and I am
always losing names out of it—”

“Josephine I was christened. It will be
Josie here.”

“Josie! It is a pretty name; it suits you
well,” declared the old gentleman, surveying
her handsome face with unmistakable approbation.
“Well, Josie, you must pardon my
not calling to see you yesterday. I was kept
frightfully busy at my office till late in the
evening by a demand for special returns.
Those Congressional fellows can't understand
figures unless we write them out for
them as plain as baker. And so this is my
first chance to get at you.”

“But you are going to make a long call
now?” said Josie.

“I shall want to,” replied the colonel,
seating himself with unceremonious ease in
a great arm-chair, and stretching out his
long, thin figure in a disjointed fashion. “I
am very glad that you have come to join us,
Josie. We will do what we can to make
things pleasant to you. We will march you
into society at once. John”—and here he
turned to his brother—“why couldn't you
and Huldah go to the Presidential reception
to-night? Mrs. Warden has dropped me a
sort of order to go myself and take Josie.
She is quite right; Josie ought to see it.
But how can an old bachelor like myself escort
a young lady suitably? I don't see but
what you two will have to get on your uniforms
and turn out.”

“Why, certainly,” broke out Mrs. Murray,
her small, wrinkled gray eyes twinkling at
the prospect of something entertaining. “Of
course Josephine ought to see it. Don't you
think so, Mr. Murray? And somebody must
go with her—somebody who can introduce
her to people—some lady.”

“We will risk it,” agreed the rector, who
perceived that his wife meant to go, and that
he might as well like it. “We must be careful
not to trample on people,” he added, with
a smile. “We will get into some corner and
see the crowd go by.”

“Have you all the things you want, Josephine?”
asked the old lady, a lover of good
style in dressing, notwithstanding her frugality.

“Every thing,” laughed the young woman,
remembering how she had spent her last
spare dollar at Stewart's. “But do call me
Josie.”

“I would,” said the prim dame of other
days; “but I am old-fashioned, and don't
fancy the new nicknames. You must let it
be Josephine.”

“Any thing you like best,” smiled Josie,
and Mrs. Murray patted her on the shoulder
—or, rather, on the trimming of her dress, so
fastidious and delicate was that wrinkled,
tremulous old hand, even in its endearments.

But the Reverend John Murray was still
a little troubled and anxious in spirit. Drawing
his brother aside, he whispered,

“I don't know about taking Huldah into
such a crowd and excitement. Won't it be
fearfully crammed?”

The colonel looked vacant, and whistled
softly: he knew that there was no sense in
their discussing the matter. The old lady
(as he often called his sister-in-law) would
settle it all by herself.

“Well, I think we had better risk it,”
continued the rector, after some further useless
pondering. “It will be very entertaining.”

Entertaining to his old wife he meant.
He was always seeking to amuse her, often
at the cost of much trouble, and sometimes
at a little risk. Apparently he feared lest
her mind should drop into dotage, unless it
were kept constantly awake by gentle fillips
and shocks. He, as it were, compelled her
to incessant intellectual movement, as men
who have taken poison are made to walk continuously,
lest they should sink into mortal
lethargy. It seemed also as if Mrs. Murray
had the same fear concerning herself, so
averse was she to tranquillity, and so eager
after new impressions. She caught at every
hold on life; she let nothing pass her
without putting forth her frail hands to
grip it; trifling diversions, tattle — every
thing was made use of as a stimulant.

“Well, you will be here to go with us,
Julian?” anxiously concluded the rector.

“Certainly,” promised the colonel. And
so this discussion between the two brothers
came to an end, if discussion it might be
called, where only one spoke, and he knew
that the matter had been decided before-hand.

“You came just at the right time, and I
am glad of it,” said the colonel, turning to
Josie. He liked her exceedingly already,
and was pleased at finding amusement for
her. As we already know, she was very
agreeable on a first acquaintance, and, moreover,
she had been making her lovely eyes
do their best to cajole him. There was nobody,
excepting people who were blind and
stone-deaf, whom she was not capable of
softening with her oglings and her cooings.

“It was so lucky!” answered Josie, who,
by-the-way, had planned to be here just at
this time. “And it is all so good of you!
I have only seen you for a minute, and here
I am under obligations to you!”

The colonel laughed in an easy, softly
deprecating fashion, as if to say that she
was making too much of it. Josie studied
him a moment, and guessed that she must
not flatter him too broadly; he had an air
of being very shrewd, as well as very modest,
and he might not like compliments.

“You must be my beau this evening, at
least some of the time,” she ventured to
add.

“You will have so many young ones that
you won't want me,” he laughed again.

She thought of saying something about
dear Augustus's relatives, and how much she
preferred their company to all the world besides;
but her second impression was that
this could not be made to sound otherwise
than spoony, and so she omitted it.

“Do you never walk with young ladies, if
they want to have you?” she persisted, for
she had really taken a fancy to the old soldier,
and she was eager to interest him.

“I shall be very glad to walk with my
young niece, if she cares for it,” he declared
with a simplicity which puzzled Josie, one
of those young women who can understand
almost any thing more easily than frankness.
Actually she could not decide whether
he were paying her some sort of courtship,
or petting her as he would a child.

“Certainly I shall care for it, and very
much,” she said, trying again to enchant
him with her smile and her eyes.

Is it to be supposed that this pretty thing
of two-and-twenty contemplated flirting
with her husband's gray-haired uncle?
Well, she was perhaps capable of it, when
there was no younger man to be got at;
and capable even of letting her mind stray
into suppositions of something more than a
mere flirtation. The colonel was a bachelor,
and she had heard that he had large possessions,
and she took it for granted that he was
socially lofty and influential. It was worth
while, for various likely and unlikely reasons,
to be on the best of terms with him.
Moreover, smiles and soft glances came naturally
to her, and were so habitual that she
could hardly help them.

But presently there commenced a conversation
which set her gently on one side, as
if she were a listener, revealing to her that

these elderly people had an intellectual life
quite outside of her narrow boundaries, and
making her fear that she would not be able
to command their respect and obedience.

“I had a walk with Bradford this morning,”
said the colonel, turning to his brother.
“And we held another powwow over the development
theory.”

Josie pricked up her ears; not that she
cared for the development theory, or so
much as knew what it was, but because
here was mention of one of her old beaus,
who might perchance be a beau again.

“Mr. Bradford, the Congressman?” she
asked. “I am so glad you know him! He
is an old, old friend of mine.”

“Is he? Well, he is a splendid fellow,”
answered the colonel, and went on with his
remarks to the rector. “Bradford agrees
with me in thinking that the Church Universal
won't suffer the least jot of harm
from the doctrine of development or evolution.”

“I don't want to hear from Congressman
Bradford about the future of the Church
Universal,” broke in the rector, with the
natural waspishness of a clergyman who
sees his domain taken under the protection
of a layman. “If he has any message to
forward to me concerning finance or our Indian
relations, I will listen to it respectfully.
But he is no more qualified to prophesy in
religious matters than he is to work miracles.”

The colonel laughed in his noiseless way,
not with any air of derision, but placatingly.

“Now, see here, John. Look at this question
in the light of history. Your Church
Universal has learned a great deal from laymen
since they were first invented. Once
it denounced astronomy, and sent Galileo to
the guard-house. But at last it had to accept
the solar systems, and since then it has
flourished wonderfully on them. See what
shining discourses your modern divines, from
Channing down to the Ecce Cœlum man, have
made out of astronomy! The Church actually
did not know what a great and beneficent
Deity it worshiped until the vastness of His
creation was revealed to it by the anathematized
star-gazers. Well, it accepted astronomy,
and it has grown mightier on it. Some
day it will accept evolution, and grow mightier
on that.”

“Never!—never!” exclaimed the clergyman,
his pulpy and pallid face beginning
to flush with agitation. “Evolution is not
true, and the Church can not accept it. God's
Church can not grow mightier on falsehood.”

“Don't, Mr. Murray!” softly interjected
his wife. “You mustn't get excited.”

She was eying him closely and anxiously.
For years she had watched over his health
with almost as much solicitude as he had
devoted to her. It would be hard to find
two other beings who cared for each other
more tenderly and vigilantly than did these
two elderly invalids.

“I don't want to annoy John, you know,
Mrs. Murray,” said the colonel.

“No; of course you don't,” assented the
old lady, nervously. “Of course, Mr. Murray,
Julian doesn't want to annoy you. And
I do wish you wouldn't get excited.”

“But I do want him to see this thing from
the right point of view,” continued the colonel.
“If he once gets hold of the butt-end
of it, instead of the muzzle-end, it won't hurt
him!”

“Certainly,” nodded Mrs. Murray, with
quite vague ideas, however, as to which was
the butt-end, and which the muzzle. “Do,
Mr. Murray, try to discuss it patiently, and
not agitate yourself.”

“I don't want to discuss it at all,” affirmed
the rector. “It is an irritating piece of
nonsense, and a matter of no importance.”

“But you can't help discussing it,” urged
Julian. “It is in the forefront of the battle
of modern thought. If you don't seize it,
and turn it to your own purposes, it will
damage you badly.”

“I say never!—I say never!” asserted the
old-school theologian. “The Church stands
solidly on Revelation, and needs no human
science to support it!”

“Suppose the Church had gone on denying
the Copernican system, and affirming
that the earth is the centre of the universe,
where would it be now? Would any intelligent
man respect its teachings?”

“Oh, I agree with you so far. I concede
astronomy, of course; there was a mistake
there. Theologians should not set themselves
against merely physical science. But
this development theory is an encroachment
on moral domain. If the human race grew
up from monads and monkeys, then I can't
tell you where its moral responsibility commenced,
and then you'll deny that there is
any such responsibility.”

“No, I won't. Look here. Can you tell
me in what week, or even in what month,
of life the responsibility of the individual
commences?”

The rector was silent. He did not at all
like to be catechised by his brother. Julian
had once or twice taken him down in a
memorandum-book, and had very shortly
brought him into a condition of contradiction
to himself, or into a very deplorable
state of flat heterodoxy.

“You don't believe in the damnation of
unborn infants?” persisted the colonel.

“Of course not. The Church never held
such nonsense.”

“And how about infants a week old?”

“I don't care to be put through my primer,”
said Parson Murray, seeing very plainly
where he was being driven to.

“But there is a time in the life of the individual

when moral responsibility has commenced?”

“Of course; and that is the only point
which it concerns us to know—the only
point which a good Christian will care to
investigate,” affirmed the theologian, becoming
fluent all at once, as he perceived a
chance to instruct.

“And there is a time in the life of the
individual when this responsibility has not
commenced?”

“I admit it,” conceded the rector, excitedly.
“But what of it? It is a matter of no
practical importance. We who hear the
truth and understand it are responsible for
our use of it. All the rest is of no account.”

“Very well,” pursued the colonel, remorselessly
pushing on his columns of logic.
“Now, if the time when this moral responsibility
commences is a point of no consequence
in the case of the individual, it is a
point of no consequence in the case of the
race. You can accept evolution, and still
hold fast to your doctrine of human responsibility
for sin, and all the while be as logical
as you are now. In fact, evolution does
not add to your difficulties at all. Nobody
queries when monads or monkeys become
responsible; they are not supposed ever to
become so; they are embryonic men. The
great trouble is to say when the infant—not
the monad or monkey infant, but the human
one—enters into responsibility.”

“I don't know any thing about it,” grumbled
the reverend. “I want to leave all
these mysteries in the hands of my Creator.
And I can not endure to see finite men striving
to take them out of his sufficient and
merciful grasp.”

“The scientists do not attempt to take
things out of his grasp. They only seek to
understand his method of working.”

“They have always been the foes of the
clergy and the scorners of doctrine,” asserted
the rector, getting irritated rapidly under the
repetition of that alarming word, “scientists.”

“They are the advanced guard and the
skirmishers of religion in the warfare of discovering
truth and glorifying the Creator.
Nine-tenths of them have been worthy men,
as little given to sin and atheism as the
clergy. The Church hierarchy is the only
army I ever heard of that poured cannon
and musketry into its own skirmishers and
forlorn hopes.”

The rector became very much flushed, and
seemed about to reply in high dudgeon. But
his wife checked him; she had been watching
him nervously all through this discussion;
and now, seeing the blood fly to his
tired face, she put up her shield to save him.

It was a very venerable Pallas withdrawing
a very feeble Achilles from the combat.

“Now, Mr. Murray, don't!” she said. “You
will get yourself excited, and have a rush of
blood to your head.”

He glanced aside at her, and saw that her
wrinkled old hands were tremulous, and said
to himself that he must be tranquil for her
sake.

“Oh, dear! this is a worrying sort of
world,” he groaned. “I trust that when
we get into the other one, we shall have no
mysteries to clear up. I don't want to be
troubled with heterodoxies and queries and
doubts there,” he concluded, in a pathetic
tone, which almost verged on a sob.

“Well, let us drop our discussion,” said
the colonel. “I am sorry if I seem to be a
foe, rather than an ally. You see,” he explained
to Josie, “I have just got to reading,
in my old age. I have had precious little
time for it during the greatest part of
my life. And while I was in active service
among the Indians and along our dull frontiers,
these fellows in the rear were writing
a prodigious quantity of the most wonderful
books. What with Max Müller and
Whitney, and Dalton and Lecky, and Spencer
and Darwin, and forty more amazing
chaps, I am up to my eyes in new ideas all
the while.”

“And who wrote about development?”
asked Josie, thinking she would book herself
on a subject which so interested the colonel.

“Why, Darwin, chiefly.”

“Oh yes—Darwin. I have heard about
him; of course I have. Only I never quite
understood what he wanted to prove.”

“You will never quite understand it,” declared
the unbeaten rector. “None of us
will ever quite understand it!”

“Don't, Mr. Murray!” expostulated his
wife, fearful of seeing the blood fly to his
head.

Then they once more talked of the Presidential
reception, and decided that they
would all go to it together.