“Well, I’m sure your father is a hero;’ she said to me, and patted my hand, soothing a troubled child. “He does seem very much to have cast himself in the old-fashioned heroic mold. Like one of Cromwell’s captains, the way he presents himself. Is he a man of action, as well as a man of religion?”
I could not determine if she was serious or making fun of me, and though I grew somewhat shy, I tried nonetheless to engage her bright spirit, which drew me irresistibly towards her. “Oh, yes, certainly. Action, action, action! That’s Father’s by-word.”
“A man of action and a man of God! My goodness, what a rare combination. I don’t believe I’ve ever met such a man, at least not until now. And you, Mister Owen Brown, in matters of war are you his lieutenant, and in matters of religion his acolyte?”
“You could say that. Regarding the war against slavery, I mean.”
“Then you, too, are a man of action?”
“Well, less than he. No, not at all, in fact. I suppose I’m a follower.”
“A man of God, then?”
“Less than he there, too. Not at all there, I fear. In religion, I’m not even a follower. Although I’d like to be.”
She said to me then that she thought she and I were much alike, which surprised me, for at that moment, no one seemed less like me than this woman, and I told her so.
“But we’re both attached to people of whom we are but diminished forms,” she said, and at that point there began a most extraordinary conversation between us. Slowly, we walked the length of the ship and back again, opening ourselves to one another in a manner altogether new to me. And, as it appeared, new to her as well, for every few moments she would exclaim, “Heavens, I can’t believe I’m talking this way to a perfect stranger!”
“I guess it’s difficult to be strangers on a sea-voyage,” I said.
“Yes, and I guess I’m even more lonely than I thought. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.
“No, no, of course not. I’m lonely, too.”
I called her by her given name, Sarah, and she addressed me familiarly, too. She confessed that she had come out onto the deck tonight filled with despondency and hatred for her life. Everything so far had ended up disappointing her, she said. Everything. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, she spoke of her illustrious family, the Peabodys of Salem, Massachusetts, with an admiration that approached awe, even including her Aunt Sophia, the woman whose politics she had previously criticized. Now she described her aunt as beautiful and kind and endlessly loyal to her husband, a man who himself was a literary genius, she conceded, in spite of his being a Democrat and anti-abolitionist.
She contrasted herself with these brilliant and famous relatives: she was ordinary, she said, without their gifts of intellect or speech. And she was in no sense as virtuous as they. Her family members and their friends and associates were, for the most part, rigorous Unitarians and well-known Transcendentalists. But for all their liberalism in religion, in terms of their public and private behavior they were still old-fashioned, upright Puritans. “In other words, they are good people” she said. “Morally upright.” Their generation had abandoned the Calvinist theology in their youth, but had kept the morality. She, on the other hand, having been encouraged by her elders since her nursery days to forsake the old Puritan forms of religion, had retained none of the Puritans’ moral uprightness and rigor. She was a sinner, she said. A sinner without the comfort of prayer and with no possibility of redemption.
“I wonder, Owen Brown, do you think that this is what it means to be all modern and up-to-date?” She gave a short, metallic laugh, and, once again, I couldn’t tell if she was serious. “Think about it,” she went on. “In spite of the fact that our lies and weaknesses and our sensualities feel to us exactly like sins, we are no longer permitted to believe in sin. It’s absurd!” she exclaimed. She went silent for a moment, when suddenly I realized that she was weeping.
“What’s wrong? Can you tell me what’s at the bottom of this, Miss Peabody?”
She didn’t answer at first, and I regretted my question. Then she sighed and said, “The simple truth is that my life has no meaning to me. It’s true, Owen Brown. None. I feel guilt, a great weight of guilt. But no shame!”
I touched her glistening cheek and said nothing. After a moment, I saw in the moonlight that she was smiling again. Though it was for me a struggle to follow the sudden twists and turns of her emotions and words, I had managed it nonetheless and believed that I understood her, at least momentarily, for I thought that I felt the same way as she — about life, about myself, about everything. Sarah Peabody’s words and her tears and her abrupt and bitter laughter had given sudden, expressive shape to my own inarticulated despair. Although despair, like a miasma, had long influenced my mind and spirit — gray, noxious, slick, and spreading into every corner of my consciousness — until now it had remained wordless, unnamed. But here, thanks to this girl, I could name it. My life, like hers, had no meaning, except as a diminished form of other lives. Father’s, in particular. And I, too, felt guilt and no shame.
“Then I’m as much a sinner as you, Sarah” I said. “More of a sinner,” I declared, offering cold comfort, I knew. I told her that she wasn’t alone, for I could no more believe in the God of our fathers than she. Despite Father’s tireless wish for me to believe. Thanks to her family’s apostasy, she was blameless for her fall from religion. But my fall, I pointed out, had been my own doing, not my family’s. Then I told her of my “awakening” at the Negro church in Boston and how my lie had thrilled Father. “It wasn’t wholly an act!’ I said to her. “I did feel something. But it certainly was a lie to let Father believe that I had been touched by the wing of an angel.” I told her how my lie had sent the Old Man into a paroxysm of thanksgiving. I was guilty, of course, a sinner, but there was no God to punish me. So here I was, continuing with the charade and feeling guilty every moment, devouring my guilt as if it were delicious, nourishing food, but growing fat and sick with it, as if it were rancid. I told her that I felt like a man with a need for putrid meat.
She gently laid her small hand over mine. We were standing again by the rail where I had first seen her. “Oh, Owen Brown, be easy on yourself. Really. You don’t know, maybe that is how it feels to be touched by the wing of an angel.” Even so, she explained, I had only a little lie to live with, and besides, it was a lie that made someone I loved very happy. My father now believed that his son was a Christian. And that, therefore, he had himself a proper acolyte. “It’s a good lie, Owen. There are such things, you know. Good lies. Even for us lapsed Calvinists. Don’t abandon it. Keep it,” she said. “For me, I’m afraid, it’s different. Significantly different. My lie can’t be kept, and there’s no way for me to abandon it, or it me. And, worse, my lie makes no one happy.”
Then, to my amazement, she told me the truth about her condition. “I’m unmarried, Owen, and I’m with child. I’m pregnant. As you may have already guessed,” she said, but I denied it.
Another lie.
“What do you think of that?” she asked, looking into my face for the answer. “Really. Tell me the truth.”
I could not speak at first. Finally, I managed to stammer, “Well… well, yes. That’s… that isn’t right. I mean… I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry… ’ stammering not because of any shock or disapproval but because I had not the ready answer that shock and disapproval would have provided: the politely smiling lie. She saw that and seemed pleased.