Dorian

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The death of Mil­dred Brown af­fect­ed Do­ri­an Trent most pro­found­ly. Not that he dis­played any marked out­ward signs of his feel­ings, but his very soul was moved to its depths, some­times as of de­spair, some­times as of re­sent­ment. Why, he asked him­self, should God send--he put it this way--send to him this beau­ti­ful crea­ture who filled his heart so com­plete­ly, why hold her out to him as if invit­ing him to take her, and then sud­den­ly snatch her away out of his life--out of the life of the world!

For many days Do­ri­an went about as if in a pained stu­por. His moth­er, know­ing her boy, tried in a wise way to com­fort him; but it was not al­to­geth­er a suc­cess. His stud­ies were ne­glect­ed, and he had thoughts of quit­ting school al­to­geth­er; but he did not do this. He dragged through the few re­main­ing days un­til spring, when he ea­ger­ly went to work on the open reach­es of the farm, where he was more away from hu­man be­ings and near­er to that some­thing in his heart. He worked long and hard and faith­ful­ly that spring.

On the up­per bank of the canal, where the sage­brush stood un­touched, Do­ri­an that sum­mer found the first sego blos­soms. He had nev­er ob­served them so close­ly be­fore nor seen their re­al beau­ty. How like Mil­dred they were! He gath­ered a bou­quet of them that Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon as he went home, placed them in a glass of wa­ter, and then Sun­day af­ter­noon he wrapped them in a damp news­pa­per and took the bou­quet with him to town. His Sun­day trips to the city were usu­al­ly for the pur­pose of vis­it­ing Mil­dred's grave. The sun shone warm that day from a blue sky as Do­ri­an came slow­ly and rev­er­ent­ly to the plot where lay all that was earth­ly of one whom he loved so well. The new head­stone gleamed in white mar­ble and the young grass stood ten­der and green. Against the stone lay a bunch of with­ered wild ros­es. Some­one had been there be­fore him that day. Whom could it be? Her moth­er was not in the city, and who else would re­mem­ber the vis­it of the an­gel-​be­ing who had re­turned to her eter­nal home? A pang shot through his heart, and he was half tempt­ed to turn with­out plac­ing his own trib­ute on the grave, then im­me­di­ate­ly he knew the thought was fool­ish. He took off the wrap­ping and placed his fresh­er flow­ers near the more with­ered ones. Lat­er that sum­mer, he learned on­ly in­ci­dent­ly that it had been Car­lia who had been be­fore him that af­ter­noon.

Dur­ing those days, Car­lia kept out of Do­ri­an's way as much as pos­si­ble. She even avoid­ed walk­ing to and from school with him. He was so ab­sent­mind­ed even with her that she in time came to re­sent it in her feel­ings. She could not un­der­stand that a big, very-​much-​alive boy should have his mind so fixed on a dead girl that he should al­to­geth­er for­get there were liv­ing ones about, es­pe­cial­ly one, Car­lia Duke.

One evening Do­ri­an met Un­cle Zed driv­ing his cow home from the pas­ture, and the old man in­vit­ed the younger man to walk along with him. Do­ri­an al­ways found Un­cle Zed's com­pa­ny ac­cept­able.

“Why haven't you come to me with your trou­ble?” abrupt­ly asked Un­cle Zed.

Do­ri­an start­ed, then hung his head.

“We nev­er have any un­shared se­crets, you know, and I may have been able to help you.”

“I couldn't talk to any­body.”

“No; I sup­pose not.”

The cow was placed in the cor­ral, and then Un­cle Zed and Do­ri­an sat down on a grassy bank. The sun was paint­ing just such a pic­ture of the marsh­lands as Do­ri­an knew so well.

“But I can talk to you” con­tin­ued the old man as if there had been no break in his sen­tences. “Death, I know, is a strange and ter­ri­ble thing, for youth; when you get as old as I, I hope you will look on death as noth­ing more than a re­lease from mor­tal­ity, a mov­ing from one sphere to an­oth­er, a step along the eter­nal line of progress. I sup­pose that it is just as nec­es­sary that we pass out of the world by death as that we en­ter it by birth; and I fur­ther sup­pose that the ter­ror with which death is vest­ed is for the pur­pose of help­ing us to cling to this earth-​life un­til our mis­sion here is com­plet­ed.”

Do­ri­an did not speak; his eyes were on the marsh­lands.

“Imag­ine, Do­ri­an, this world, just as it is, with all its sin and mis­ery and with­out any death. What would hap­pen? We would all, I fear, be­come so self-​cen­tered, so hard­ened in self­ish­ness that it would be dif­fi­cult for the gen­tle pow­er of love to reach us; but now there is hard­ly a fam­ily that has not one or more of its mem­bers on the oth­er side. And these ab­sent loved ones are an­chors to our souls, tied to us by the nev­er-​end­ing cords of love and af­fec­tion. You, your­self, my boy, nev­er have had un­til now many in­ter­ests oth­er than those of this life; now your in­ter­ests are broad­ened to an­oth­er world, and that's some­thing worth while.... Now, come and see me of­ten.” They arose, each to go to his home.

“I will, Un­cle Zed. Thank you for what you have said.”

Do­ri­an com­plet­ed his four years high school. Go­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty might come lat­er, but now he was moved by a spir­it of ac­tiv­ity to do big­ger things with his farm, and to en­large it, if pos­si­ble.

About this time, dry-​farm­ing had tak­en the at­ten­tion of the farm­ers in his lo­cal­ity, and many of them had pro­cured lands on the slop­ing foothills. Do­ri­an, with a num­ber of oth­er young men had gone up the near­by canyon to the low hills of the val­ley be­yond and had tak­en up lands. That first sum­mer Do­ri­an spent much of his time in break­ing up the land. As tim­ber was not far away, he built him­self a one-​roomed log house and some cor­rals and out­hous­es. A moun­tain stream rushed by the low­er cor­ner of his farm, and its wild mu­sic sang him to sleep when he spent the night in the hills. He fur­nished his “sum­mer res­idence” with a few sim­ple ne­ces­si­ties so that he could live there a num­ber of days at a time. He mind­ed not the soli­tude. The wild odor­ous ver­dure of the hills, the cool breezes, the song of the dis­tant streams, the call of the birds, all seemed to har­mo­nize with his own feel­ings at that time. He had a good kerosene lamp, and at nights when he was not too tired, he read. On his vis­its to the city he usu­al­ly had an eye for book bar­gains, and thus his board shelv­ing came to be quite a lit­tle li­brary. He had no method in his col­lect­ing, no course of con­nect­ed study. At one time he would leisure­ly read one of How­ell's easy-​go­ing nov­els, at an­oth­er time he would be kept wide-​eyed un­til mid­night with “Lor­na Doone” or with “Ben Hur.”

Do­ri­an had heard of Dar­win, of Hux­ley, of In­ger­sol and of Tom Payne, but he had nev­er read any­thing but se­lec­tions from these writ­ers. Now he ob­tained a copy of the “Ori­gin of Species” and a book by In­ger­sol. These he read care­ful­ly. Dar­win's book was rather heavy, but by close ap­pli­ca­tion, the young stu­dent thought he learned what the sci­en­tist was “driv­ing at.” This book dis­turbed him some­what. There seemed to be much truth in it, but al­so some things which did not agree with what he had been taught to be true. In this he re­al­ized his lack of knowl­edge. More knowl­edge must clear up any seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion, he rea­soned. In­ger­sol was more read­able, snap­py, wit­ty, hit­ting the Bible in a fear­less way. Do­ri­an had no doubt that all of In­ger­sol's points could be an­swered, as he him­self could re­fute many of them.

One day as Do­ri­an was brows­ing as usu­al in a book store he came across a cheap copy of Drum­mond's “Nat­ural Law in the Spir­itu­al World,” the book which he had giv­en Un­cle Zed. As he want­ed a copy him­self, he pur­chased this one and took it with him to his cab­in in the hills. Im­me­di­ate­ly he was in­ter­est­ed in the book, and he filled its pages with co­pi­ous notes and marks of em­pha­sis.

It was Sun­day af­ter­noon in mid-​sum­mer at Green­street. The wheat again stood in the shock. The al­fal­fa waved in scent­ed pur­ple. Do­ri­an and the old philoso­pher of Green­street sat in the shade of the cot­ton­wood and looked out on the farm scene as they talked.

“I've al­so been read­ing 'Nat­ural Law in the Spir­itu­al World'” said Do­ri­an.

“Good,” replied Un­cle Zed. “I was go­ing to lend you my copy, so we could talk about it in­tel­li­gent­ly. What mes­sage have you found in it for you?”

“Mes­sage?”

“Yes; ev­ery book should have a mes­sage and should de­liv­er it to the read­er. Drum­mond's book thun­dered a mes­sage to me, but it came too late. I am old, and past the time when I could heed any such call. If I were young, if I--if I were like you, Do­ri­an, you who have life be­fore you, what might not I do, with the help of the Lord!”

“What, Un­cle Zed?”

“Drum­mond was a cler­gy­man and a pro­fes­sor of nat­ural his­to­ry and sci­ence. As such, he was a stu­dent of the laws of God as re­vealed both through the writ­ten word of in­spi­ra­tion and in na­ture about him. In his book he aims to prove that the spir­itu­al world is con­trolled by the same laws which op­er­ate in the nat­ural wold; and as you per­haps dis­cov­ered in your read­ing, he comes very near­ly prov­ing his claim. He presents some won­der­ful­ly in­ter­est­ing analo­gies. Of course, much of his the­ol­ogy is of the per­vert­ed sec­tar­ian kind, and there­in lies the weak­ness of his ar­gu­ment. If he had had the clear truth of the re­stored gospel, how much brighter would his facts have been il­lumed, how much stronger would have been his de­duc­tions. Why, even I with my lim­it­ed sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge can set him right in many places. So I say, if I were but a young man like you, do you know what I'd do?”

“What?” again ques­tioned Do­ri­an.

“I would de­vote all my mind, might and strength to the learn­ing of truth, of sci­en­tif­ic truth. I would cov­er ev­ery branch of sci­ence pos­si­ble in the lim­its of one life, es­pe­cial­ly the nat­ural sci­ences. Then with my knowl­edge of the gospel and the lamp of in­spi­ra­tion which the priest­hood en­ti­tles me to, I could har­mo­nize the great body of truth com­ing from any and ev­ery source. Do­ri­an, what a life work that would be!”

The old man looked smil­ing­ly at his com­pan­ion with a strange, know­ing in­ti­ma­tion. He spoke of him­self, but he meant that Do­ri­an should take the sug­ges­tion. Do­ri­an could pick up his beau­ti­ful dream and make it come true. Do­ri­an, with life and strength, and a de­sire for study and truth could ac­com­plish this very de­sir­able end. The old man placed his hand lov­ing­ly on the young man's shoul­der, as he con­tin­ued:

“You are the man to do this, Do­ri­an--you, not I.”

“I--Un­cle Zed, do you be­lieve that?”

“I do. Lis­ten, my boy. I see you look­ing over the har­vest­ed field. It is a fine work you are do­ing; thou­sands can plant and har­vest year af­ter year; but few there are who can and will de­vote their lives to the plant­ing of faith and the nour­ish­ing and the es­tab­lish­ing of faith in the hearts of men; and that's what we need now to prop­er­ly an­swer the Lord's cry that when He cometh shall He find faith on the earth?... Let the call come to you--but there, in the Lord's own good time. Come in­to the house. I have a new book to show you, al­so I have a very de­li­cious cher­ry pie.”

They went in­to the house to­geth­er, where they in­spect­ed both book and pie. Do­ri­an weak­ly ob­ject­ed to the gen­er­ous por­tion which was cut for him, but Un­cle Zed ex­plained that the pro­cess of di­vi­sion not on­ly in­creased the num­ber of pieces of pie, but al­so added to its tasti­ness. Do­ri­an led his com­pan­ion to talk about him­self.

“Yes,” he said in re­ply to a ques­tion, “I was born in Eng­land and brought up in the Wes­leyan Methodist church. I was a great read­er ev­er since I can re­mem­ber. I read not on­ly his­to­ry and some fic­tion, but even the dry-​as-​dust ser­mons were in­ter­est­ing to me. But I nev­er seemed sat­is­fied. The more I read, the deep­er grew the mys­ter­ies of life. Nowhere did I find a clear, com­pre­hendible state­ment of what I, an en­ti­ty with count­less oth­er en­ti­ties, was do­ing here. Where had I come from, where was I go­ing? I vis­it­ed the church­es with­in my reach. I heard the preach­ers and read the philoso­phers to ob­tain, if pos­si­ble, a clue to the mys­tery of life. I stud­ied, and prayed, and went about seek­ing, but nev­er find­ing.”

“But you did find the truth at last?”

“Yes; thank the Lord. I found the open­ing in the dark­ness, and it came through the sim­ple, hum­ble, and not very learned el­ders of the Church of Je­sus Christ of Lat­ter-​day Saints.”

“What is the prin­ci­ple trou­ble with all this learn­ing of the world that it does not lead to the truth?”

“The world's ig­no­rance of God. Eter­nal life con­sists in know­ing the on­ly true God, and the world does not know Him; there­fore, all their sys­tems of re­li­gion are found­ed on a false ba­sis. That is the rea­son there is so much un­cer­tain­ty and floun­der­ing when philoso­phers and re­li­gion­ists try to make a known truth agree with their con­cep­tions of God.”

“Ex­plain that a lit­tle more to me, Un­cle Zed.”

"Some claim that Na­ture is God, oth­ers that God on­ly man­ifests Him­self through na­ture. I read this lat­ter idea many places. For in­stance, Pope says:

"'All are but parts of one stu­pen­dous whole Whose body na­ture is, and God the soul.'

"Al­so Ten­nyson:

'The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and plains Are not these, O soul, the vi­sion of Him who reigns? Speak to Him there, for He hears, and spir­it with spir­it can meet, Clos­er is He than breath­ing, and near­er than hands and feet.'

"This, no doubt, is beau­ti­ful po­et­ry, but it tells on­ly a part of the truth. God, by His Spir­it is, and can be all the po­et here de­scribes. 'Whith­er shall I go from thy spir­it? or whith­er shall I flee from thy pres­ence?' ex­claims the Psalmist. 'In him we live and move and have our be­ing' de­clares Paul; but these state­ments alone are not enough for our prop­er un­der­stand­ing of the sub­ject. We try to see God be­hind the veil of na­ture, in sun and wind and flow­er and fruit; but there is some­thing lack­ing. Try now to for­mu­late some dis­tinct idea of what this uni­ver­sal and almighty force back of na­ture is. We are told that this force is God, whom we must love and wor­ship and serve. We want the feel­ing of near­ness to sat­is­fy the crav­ing for love and pro­tec­tion, but our in­tel­lect and our rea­son must al­so be some­what sat­is­fied. We must have some ob­ject on which to rest--we can­not al­ways be float­ing about un­sus­pend­ed in time and space.

"Then there is some fur­ther con­fu­sion: Chris­tian philoso­phers have tried to per­son­ify this 'soul of the uni­verse,' for God, they say, thinks and feels and knows. They try to get a per­son­al­ity with­out form or bounds or di­men­tions, but it all ends in vague­ness and con­fu­sion. As for me, and I think I am not so dif­fer­ent from oth­er men,--for me to be able to think of God, I must have some im­age of Him. I can­not think of love or good, or pow­er or glo­ry in the ab­stract. These must be ex­pressed to me by sym­bols at least as em­inat­ing from, or in­her­ent in, or ex­er­cised by some per­son. Love can­not ex­ist alone: there must be one who loves and one who is be­ing loved. God is love. That means to me that a per­son, a beau­ti­ful, glo­ri­fied, all­wise, benev­olent be­ing ex­er­cis­es that di­vine prin­ci­ple which is shed forth on you and me.

“Now, if the world would on­ly leave all this meta­phys­ical me­an­der­ing and come back to the sim­ple truth, what a clear­ing of mists there would be! All their philoso­phies would have a sol­id ba­sis if they would on­ly ac­cept the truth re­vealed anew to us through the Prophet Joseph Smith that God is one of a race, the fore­most and first, if you wish it, but still one of a race of be­ings who in­hab­it the uni­verse; that we hu­mans are His chil­dren, be­got­ten of Him in the pre-​mor­tal world in His im­age; that we are on the up­ward path through eter­ni­ty, fol­low­ing Him who has gone be­fore and has marked out the way; that if we fol­low, we shall even­tu­al­ly ar­rive at the point where He now is. Ig­no­rance of these things is what I un­der­stand to be ig­no­rance of God.”

“In Eng­land I lost my wife and two chil­dren. The gospel came to me short­ly af­ter, I am sure, to com­fort me in the depths of my de­spair. Not one church on earth that I knew of, Catholic or Protes­tant, would hold out any hope of my ev­er be­ing re­unit­ed with wife and chil­dren as such. There is no fam­ily life in heav­en, they teach. At that time I went about lis­ten­ing to the preach­ers, and I delved in­to books. I made ex­ten­sive copy­ings in my note books. I have them yet, and some day when you are in­ter­est­ed I will show them to you.”

“I am in­ter­est­ed now,” said Do­ri­an.

“But I'm not go­ing to talk to you longer on this theme, even though it is Sun­day and time for ser­mo­niz­ing. I'm go­ing to meet­ing, where you al­so ought to go. You are not at­tend­ing as reg­ular­ly as you should.”

“No, but I've been very busy.”

“No ex­cuse that. There is dan­ger in re­main­ing away too long from the es­tab­lished sources of spir­itu­al in­spi­ra­tion and up­lift, es­pe­cial­ly when one is read­ing In­ger­sol and Tom Paine. I have no fault to find with your am­bi­tion to get ahead in the world, but with it 're­mem­ber thy cre­ator in the days of thy youth.' Are you ne­glect­ing your moth­er?”

“No; I think not, Un­cle Zed; but what do you mean about moth­er?”

“You are all she has. Are you mak­ing her days hap­py by your per­son­al care and pres­ence. Are you giv­ing of your­self to her?”

“Well, per­haps I am not so con­sid­er­ate as I might be; I am away quite a lot; thank you for call­ing my at­ten­tion to it.”

“Are you ne­glect­ing any­body else?”

“Not that I know.”

“Good. Now I must clear away my ta­ble and get ready for meet­ing. You'll go with me.”

“I can't. I haven't my Sun­day clothes.”

“The Lord will not look at your clothes.”

“No; but a lot of peo­ple will.”

“We go to meet­ing to wor­ship the Lord, not to be looked at by oth­ers. Go home and put on your Sun­day best; there is time.” The old man was busy be­tween ta­ble and cup­board as he talked. “Have you seen Car­lia late­ly?”

“No,” replied Do­ri­an.

“The last time she was here I thought she was a lit­tle peaked in the face, for you know she has such a rosy, roly-​poly one.”

“Is that so? She comes to see you, then?”

“Yes; of­ten­er than you do.”

“I nev­er meet her here.”

“No; she man­ages that, I sur­mise.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tell you Car­lia is a love­ly girl,” con­tin­ued Un­cle Zed, ig­nor­ing his di­rect ques­tion. “Have you ev­er eat­en but­ter she has churned?”

“Not that I know.”

“She used to bring me a nice pat when my cow was dry; and bread of her own bak­ing too, about as good as I my­self make.” He chuck­led as he wiped the last dish and placed it neat­ly in the rack.

Do­ri­an arose to go. “Re­mem­ber what I have told you this evening” said Un­cle Zed. The old man from be­hind his win­dow watched his young friend walk leisure­ly along the road un­til he reached the cross-​lots path which led to the Duke home. Here he saw him pause, go on again, pause once more, then jump light­ly over the fence and strike out across the field. Un­cle Zed then went on fin­ish­ing his prepa­ra­tions for meet­ing.

As Do­ri­an walked across the field, he did think of what Un­cle Zed had said to him. Do­ri­an had built his cas­tles, had dreamed his dreams; but nev­er be­fore had the ideas pre­sent­ed to him by Un­cle Zed that af­ter­noon ev­er en­tered in them. The good old man had seemed so ea­ger to pass on to the young man an un­ful­filled work, yes, a high, no­ble work. Do­ri­an caught a glimpse of the great­ness of it and the glo­ry of it that af­ter­noon, and his soul was thrilled. Was he equal to such a task?... He had want­ed to be­come a suc­cess­ful farmer, then his vi­sion had gone on to the teach­ing pro­fes­sion; but be­yond that he had not ven­tured. He was al­ready well on the way to make a suc­cess of his farms. He liked the work. He could with plea­sure be a farmer all his life. But should a man's busi­ness be all of life? Do­ri­an re­al­ized, not of course in its fuller mean­ing, that the ac­cu­mu­lat­ing of world­ly rich­es was on­ly a means to the ac­com­plish­ing of oth­er and greater ends of life; and here was be­fore him some­thing wor­thy of any man's best en­deav­ors. Here was a life's work which at its close would mean some­thing to him and to the world. With these thoughts in his mind he stepped up to the rear of the Duke place where he saw some­one in the cor­ral with the cows, busy with her milk­ing.