The Damnation of Theron Ware

years ago. The Jews threw them out; we will put them back again. We will restore art and poetry and the love of beauty, and the gentle, spiritual, soulful life. The Greeks had it; and Christianity would have had it too, if it hadn’t been for those brutes they call the Fathers. They loved ugliness and dirt and the thought of hellfire. They hated women. In all the earlier stages of the Church, women were very prominent in it. Jesus himself appreciated women, and delighted to have them about him, and talk with them and listen to them. That was the very essence of the Greek spirit; and it breathed into Christianity at its birth a sweetness and a grace which twenty generations of cranks and savages like Paul and Jerome and Tertullian weren’t able to extinguish. But the very man, Cyril, who killed Hypatia, and thus began the dark ages, unwittingly did another thing which makes one almost forgive him. To please the Egyptians, he secured the Church’s acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin. It is that idea which has kept the Greek spirit alive, and grown and grown, till at last it will rule the world. It was only epileptic Jews who could imagine a religion without sex in it.”

“I remember the pictures of the Virgin in your room,” said Theron, feeling more himself again. “I wondered if they quite went with the statues.”

The remark won a smile from Celia’s lips.

“They get along together better than you suppose,” she answered. “Besides, they are not all pictures of Mary. One of them, standing on the moon, is of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms. Another might as well be Mahamie, bearing the miraculously born Buddha, or Olympias with her child Alexander, or even Perictione holding her babe Plato⁠—all these were similar cases, you know. Almost every religion had its Immaculate Conception. What does it all come to, except to show us that man turns naturally toward the worship of the maternal idea? That is the deepest of all our instincts⁠—love of woman, who is at once daughter and wife and mother. It is that that makes the world go round.”

Brave thoughts shaped themselves in Theron’s mind, and shone forth in a confident yet wistful smile on his face.

“It is a pity you cannot change estates with me for one minute,” he said, in steady, low tone. “Then you would realize the tremendous truth of what you have been saying. It is only your intellect that has reached out and grasped the idea. If you were in my place, you would discover that your heart was bursting with it as well.”

Celia turned and looked at him.

“I myself,” he went on, “would not have known, half an hour ago, what you meant by the worship of the maternal idea. I am much older than you. I am a strong, mature man. But when I lay down there, and shut my eyes⁠—because the charm and marvel of this whole experience had for the moment overcome me⁠—the strangest sensation seized upon me. It was absolutely as if I were a boy again, a good, pure-minded, fond little child, and you were the mother that I idolized.”

Celia had not taken her eyes from his face. “I find myself liking you better at this moment,” she said, with gravity, “than I have ever liked you before.”

Then, as by a sudden impulse, she sprang to her feet. “Come!” she cried, her voice and manner all vivacity once more, “we have been here long enough.”

Upon the instant, as Theron was more laboriously getting up, it became apparent to them both that perhaps they had been there too long.

A boy with a gun under his arm, and two gray squirrels tied by the tails slung across his shoulder, stood at the entrance to the glade, some dozen paces away, regarding them with undisguised interest. Upon the discovery that he was in turn observed, he resumed his interrupted progress through the woods, whistling softly as he went, and vanished among the trees.

“Heavens above!” groaned Theron, shudderingly.

“Know him?” he went on, in answer to the glance of inquiry on his companion’s face. “I should think I did! He spades my⁠—my wife’s garden for her. He used to bring our milk. He works in the law office of one of my trustees⁠—the one who isn’t friendly to me, but is very friendly indeed with my⁠—with Mrs. Ware. Oh, what shall I do? It may easily mean my ruin!”

Celia looked at him attentively. The color had gone out of his face, and with it the effect of earnestness and mental elevation which, a minute before, had caught her fancy. “Somehow, I fear that I do not like you quite so much just now, my friend,” she remarked.

“In God’s name, don’t say that!” urged Theron. He raised his voice in agitated entreaty. “You don’t know what these people are⁠—how they would leap at the barest hint of a scandal about me. In my position I am a thousand times more defenceless than any woman. Just a single whisper, and I am done for!”

“Let me point out to you, Mr. Ware,” said Celia, slowly, “that to be seen sitting and talking with me, whatever doubts it may raise as to a gentleman’s intellectual condition, need not necessarily blast his social reputation beyond all hope whatever.”

Theron stared at her, as if he had not grasped her meaning. Then he winced visibly under it, and put out his hands to implore her. “Forgive me! Forgive me!” he pleaded. “I was beside myself for the moment with the fright of the thing. Oh, say you do forgive me, Celia!” He made haste to support this daring use of her name. “I have been so happy today⁠—so deeply, so vastly happy⁠—like the little child I spoke of⁠—and that is so new in my lonely life⁠—that⁠—the suddenness of the thing⁠—it just for the instant unstrung me. Don’t be too hard on me for it! And I