Dark Matter

After we were seated again, and we did converse again, I think, again most businesslike, she did turn our conversation to the plays of Mister Otway: in particular The Soldier’s Fortune and its sequel, The Atheist, which, she and I being both Whigs ourselves, neither of us had liked particularly well. If I had left things there, it might have gone well enough between us. In time, we might even have married. But then I made some remark to the effect that I knew not how any man could remain a Christian who came into close contact with her uncle’s opinions. At which point Miss Barton seemed to form the impression that some great insult had been done to him, for she withdrew her hand from mine immediately, and the colour she had worn since our bundling quite drained away in an instant.

“Pray, sir,” she said coldly, “what do you mean by that remark?”

“Why, only what must be well known to you, Miss Barton. That Doctor Newton believes all received Christian tradition to be counterfeit and a fraud perpetrated by evil men who, for their own purposes, have wilfully corrupted the heritage of Jesus Christ.”

“Stop,” cried Miss Barton, rising suddenly to her feet, one of which she stamped like an impatient little pony. “Stop. Stop.”

Slowly I stood up and faced her, only now too late realising the truth of the matter, which was that for all her uncle’s heretical opinions—of which I could now perceive that she knew nothing—her clever discourse, her inquiring mind, and her manifest desire for me, Miss Barton herself retained the simple Christian faith of a village curate’s wife.

“How could you say such a wicked thing about my uncle?” she demanded, her eyes moistening suddenly.

I did not compound my offences by asserting that I had merely spoken the truth, for that would have added insult to the box on the ears my words had already given her; and instead I chose to compound them by explaining that it was possible that the unorthodox opinions I had imputed to Doctor Newton were mine and mine alone.

“Can it be that you believe such heinous and wicked things as I have heard you utter tonight?”

What is a lie? Nothing. Nothing but words. Could I have dissembled and preserved the bond that was between us? It is possible. Love, like a cuckolded husband, wishes to be deceived. I could have answered smoothly that I was a true Christian and that I thought my fever had returned, and she might have believed me. I might even have counterfeited a fainting attack and collapsed down upon the floor, as if I had been afflicted with the falling sickness. But instead I avoided her question altogether, which I’ll warrant was all the answer she needed.

“If I have offended you, Miss Barton, I am most heartily sorry and beg your pardon, most humbly.”

“You have offended yourself, Mister Ellis,” she said with a quite regal degree of hauteur. “Not just in my eyes, but in the eyes of Him who created you and in front of whom you will one day stand for judgement and be held to account for your blasphemy.” And then, shaking her head, she sighed loudly and added, “I have loved you, Mister Ellis. There is nothing I could not have done for you, sir. As you have already witnessed this evening. You have occupied my every waking thought these past few months. I would have loved you so much. Perhaps in time we might even have married. How else could I have permitted our earlier intimacies? But I could not love anyone who did not love Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This was sore indeed and hardly to be endured, for it was plain to me that she intended our relationship to be at an end; and my only hope of her being reconciled to me now lay with him who had no more understanding of love than Oliver Cromwell. But still I tried to justify myself, as when one who is condemned although not yet sentenced is asked if he has anything to say.

“Religion is full of rogues,” said I, “who pretend to be pious. All I can say, Miss Barton, is that my atheism is honest and hard-wrought. I would that it were different. I had rather believe all the fables and all the legends than that this universal frame is without a mind. And yet I do not. I cannot. I will not. Until I met your uncle I had no other apprehension but that to deny God is to destroy the mystery of the world. Yet now that I have perceived how it is possible to see the mystery of the world explained by a man such as he, I cannot believe other than that the Church is as empty as a fairy ring, or that the Bible is as baseless as the Koran.”

Miss Barton shook her head vigorously. “But where does the uniformity in all the outward shapes of birds, beasts and men come but from the counsel and contrivance of a divine author? How is it that the eyes of all creatures are made the same? Did blind chance know that there was light and how it might be refracted, and did it design the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it?”