HE HAD EXPLAINED TO PHYLLIS ONCE THAT HE THOUGHT OF GOD ONLY AS A PRINCIPLE.
The sound of the hansom wheels died away before the father and daughter exchanged a word. Mr. Ayrton was the first to speak.
“It seems to have been a night of mischance,” said he.
“I am very glad that Mr. Linton has returned,” said she.
“What? Now, why should you be glad of that very ordinary incident?”
“Why? Oh, papa, I am so fond of her!”
“She may be fond of him, after all.”
Mr. Ayrton spoke musingly.
“Of course she is,” said Phyllis, with a positiveness that was designed to convince herself that she believed her own statement.
“And he may be fond of her—yes, at times,” resumed Mr. Ayrton. “That toilet of hers seems to have been the only happy element in the game of cross-purposes which was played to-night.”
“Ah,” whispered the girl.
“Yes; it was in inspiration. She could not have expected her husband to-night. What a dress! Even a husband would be compelled to admit its fascination. And she said she meant to wear it at the opera to-night. It was scarcely an opera toilet, was it?”
“Ella’s taste is never at fault, papa.”
“I suppose not. I wonder if he is capable of appreciating the—the—let us say, the inspiration of that toilet. Is that, I wonder, the sort of dress that a man likes his wife to wear when she welcomes him home after an absence of some months? No matter it was exquisite in every detail. Curious, her coming here and waiting after she had learned that you were out, was it not; from nine o’clock—that fateful hour!—to-night.”
“I think she must have felt—lonely,” said Phyllis. “She seemed so glad to see me—so relieved. She meant to stay with me all night, poor thing! Oh, why should her husband stay away from her for months at a time? It is quite disgraceful!”
“I think that we had better go to bed,” said her father. “If we begin to discuss abstract questions of temperament we may abandon all hope of sleep tonight. We might as well try to fathom Herbert Courtland’s reasons for going to yacht with so uncongenial a party as Lord Earlscourt’s. Good-night, my dear!”
He kissed her and went upstairs. She did not follow him immediately. She stood in the center of the room, and over her sweet face a puzzled expression crept, as a single breath of wind passes over the smooth surface of a lake on a day when no wind stirs a leaf.
She thought first of Herbert Courtland, which of itself was a curious incident. How did it come that he had yielded so easily to the invitation of Lord Earlscourt to accompany him on his cruise in the yachtWater Nymph? (Lord Earlscourt’s imagination in the direction of the nomenclature of his boats as well as his horses was not unlimited.)
But this was just the question which her father had suggested as an example of a subject of profitless discussion. She remembered this, and asked herself if it was likely that she, having at her command fewer data than her father bearing upon this case, should make a better attempt than he made at its solution. Her father had seen Herbert Courtland since he had agreed to go on the cruise, and was therefore in the better position to arrive at a reasonable conclusion in regard to the source of the impulse upon which Mr. Courtland had acted; so much she thought certain. And yet her father had suggested the profitless nature of such an investigation, and her father was certainly right.
Only for a single moment did it occur to her that something she had said to Herbert Courtland when he was sitting there, there in that chair beside her, might have had its influence upon him—only for a single moment, however; then she shook her head.
No, no! that supposition was too, too ridiculous to be entertained for a moment. He had, to be sure, shown that he felt deeply the words which she had quoted as they came from Mrs. Haddon; but what could those words have to do with his sudden acceptance of Lord Earlscourt’s invitation to go to Norway?
She made up her mind that it was nothing to her what course Herbert Courtland had pursued, consequently the endeavors to fathom his reason for adopting such a course would be wholly profitless. But the question of the singular moods suggested by the conduct and the words of her friend Ella Linton stood on a very different basis. Ella was her dearest friend, and nothing that she had said or done should be dismissed as profitless.
What on earth had Ella meant by appearing in that wonderful costume that night? It was not a toilet for the opera, even on a Melba night; even on a “Romeo and Juliet” night, unless, indeed, the wearer meant to appear on the stage asJuliet, was the thought which occurred to the girl. Her fantastic thought—she thought it was a fantastic thought—made her smile. Unless——
And then another thought came to her which, not being fantastic, banished her smile.
Unless——
She got to her feet—very slowly—and walked very slowly—across the room. She seated herself on the sofa where Ella had sat, and she remained motionless for some minutes. Then she made a motion with one of her hands as if sweeping from before her eyes some flimsy repulsiveness—the web of an unclean thing flashing in the air. In another instant she had buried her face in the pillow that still bore the impress of Ella’s face.
“Oh, God—my God, forgive me—forgive me—forgive me!” was her silent, passionate prayer as she lay there sobbing. “How could I ever have such a thought, so terrible a thought. She is my friend—my sister—and she put herself into her husband’s arms and kissed him! Oh, God, forgive me!”
That was her prayer for the greater part of the night as she lay in her white bed.
She felt that she had sinned grievously in thought against her friend, when she recalled the way in which her friend had thrown herself into the arms of her husband. That was the one action which the girl felt should entitle Ella Linton to be the subject of no such horrid thought as had been for a shocking instant forced upon her mind, when she reflected upon the strange passion which had tingled through Ella’s repetition of the fiery words ofJuliet.
She recalled every strange element in the incident of Ella’s appearance in the drawing room: the way in which Ella had kissed her and clung to her as a child might have done on finding someone to protect it; she recalled the wild words which Ella had uttered, and, finally, the terrible expression which had appeared on her face as she whispered that reckless answer to Phyllis’ question, when she had picked up her wrap and flung it around her just before the sound of footsteps had come to their ears. All that she recalled in connection with that extraordinary visit of Ella’s was quite intelligible to her; but the mystery of all was more than neutralized by her recollection of the way Ella had thrown herself into her husband’s arms. That action should, she felt, be regarded as the one important factor, as it were, in the solution of the problem of Ella’s mood—Ella’s series of moods. Nothing else that she had done, nothing that she had said, was worthy of being taken account of, alongside that dominant act of the true wife.
The little whisper which suggested to her that there was a good deal that was mysterious in the incident of her friend’s visit she refused to regard as rendering it less obligatory on her—Phyllis—to pray that she might be forgiven that horrid suspicion which, for an instant, had come to her; and so she fell asleep praying to God to forgive her for her sin (in thought) against her friend.
And while Phyllis was praying her prayer, her friend, the True Wife, was praying with her face down upon her pillow, and her bare arms stretched out over the white lace of the bed:
“Forgive me, O God; forgive me! and keep him away from me—forever and ever and ever. Amen.”
And while both these prayers were being prayed, Herbert Courtland was sitting on one of the deck stools of the yachtWater Nymph, looking back at the many lights that gleamed in clusters along the southern coast of England, now far astern; for a light breeze was sending the boat along with a creaming, quivering wake. In the bows a youth was making the night hideous through the agency of a banjo and a sham negro melody. Amidships, Lord Earlscourt and two other men were playing, by the light of a lantern slung from the backstay, a game called poker; Lord Earlscourt, at every fresh deal, trying to make the rest understand how greatly the worry of being held responsible, as the patron of the living of St. Chad’s, for the eccentricities of his rector, had affected his nerves—a matter upon which his friends assured him, with varied degrees of emphasis, they were in no way interested.
Within a few feet of these congenial shipmates Herbert Courtland sat looking across the shining ripples to the shining lights of the coast; wondering how he came to be on the sea instead of on the shore. Was this indeed the night over which his imagination had gloated for months? Was it indeed possible that this was the very night following the day—Thursday—for which he had engaged himself in accordance with the letter that he still carried in his pocket?
How on earth did it come that he was sitting with his arm over the bulwarks of a yacht instead of——Oh, the thing was a miracle—a miracle! He could think of it in no other light than that of a miracle.
Well, if it were a miracle, it had been the work of God, and God had to be thanked for it. He had explained to Phyllis once that he thought of God only as a Principle—as the Principle which worked in opposition to the principle of nature. That was certainly the God which had been evolved out of modern civilization. The pagan gods had been just the opposite. They had been founded on natural principles. The Hebrew tradition that God had made man in his own image was the reverse of the scheme of the pagan man who had made God after his own image; in the image of man created he God.
But holding the theory that he held—that God was the sometimes successful opponent to the principles of nature (which he called the Devil)—Herbert Courtland felt that this was the very God to whom his thanks were due for the miracle that had been performed on his behalf.
“Thank God—thank God—thank God!” he murmured, looking out over the rippling waters, steel gray in the soft shadow of the summer’s night.
But then he held that “thank God” was but a figure of speech.
“Tinky-tink, tinky-tink, tinky-tinky-tinky-tinky-tinky-tinky-tink,” went the youth with the banjo in the bows.
It was very distressing—very disappointing! The bishop would neither institute proceedings against the rector of St. Chad’s nor state plainly if it was his intention to proceed against that clergyman. When some people suggested very delicately—the way ordinary people would suggest anything to a bishop—that it was surely not in sympathy with the organization of the Church for any clergyman to take advantage of his position and his pulpit to cast sometimes ridicule, sometimes abuse, upon certain “scriptural characters”—that was their phrase—who had hitherto always been regarded as sacred, comparatively sacred, the bishop had brought the tips of the fingers of one hand in immediate, or almost immediate, contact with the tips of the fingers of his other hand, and had shaken his head—mournfully, sadly. These signs of acquiescence, trifling though they were, had encouraged the deputation that once waited on his lordship—two military men (retired on the age clause), an officer of engineers (on the active list), a solicitor (retired), and a member of the London County Council (by occupation an ironmonger), to express the direct opinion that the scandal which had been created by the dissemination—the unrebuked dissemination—of the doctrines held by the rector of St. Chad’s was affording the friends of Disestablishment an additional argument in favor of their policy of spoliation. At this statement his lordship had nodded his head three times with a gravity that deeply impressed the spokesman of the deputation. He wondered if his lordship had ever before heard that phrase about the furnishing of an additional argument to the friends of Disestablishment. (As a matter of fact his lordship had heard it before.)
After an expression of the deputation’s opinion that immediate steps should be taken to make the rector of St. Chad’s amenable to the laws of the Church,
His lordship replied.
(It was his facility in making conciliatory replies that had brought about his elevation in the Church):
He referred to (1) his deep appreciation of the sincerity of the deputation; (2) his own sense of responsibility in regard to the feelings of the weaker brethren; (3) his appreciation of the value of the counsel of practical men in many affairs of the Church; (4) the existing position of the Church in regard to the laity; (5) the friendly relations that had always existed between himself personally and the clergy of his extensive diocese; (6) his earnest and prayerful desire that these relations might be strengthened; (7) the insecurity of a house divided against itself; (8) the progress of socialism; (9) the impossibility of socialism commending itself to Englishmen; (10) the recent anarchist outrages; (11) the purity of the Court of her Majesty the Queen; (12) the union of all Christian Churches; (13) the impossibility of such union ever becoming permanent; (14) the value of Holy Scripture in daily life; (15) his firm belief in the achievement of England’s greatness by means of the open Bible; (16) the note of pessimism in modern life; (17) the necessity for the Church’s combating modern pessimism; (18) the Church’s position as a purveyor of healthy literature for the young; (19) his reluctance to take up any more of their valuable time, and (20) his assurance that the remarks of their spokesman would have his earnest and prayerful attention.
The deputation then thanked his lordship and withdrew.
But still the bishop made no move in the matter, and the friends of the Rev. George Holland felt grievously disappointed. They had counted on the bishop’s at least writing a letter of remonstrance to the rector of St. Chad’s, and upon the publication of the letter, with the rector’s reply in the newspapers; but now quite two months had passed since the appearance of “Revised Versions,” the bishop had returned from the Engadine, and still there were no indications of his intention to make the Rev. George Holland responsible to the right tribunal—whatever that was—for his doctrines. They counted on his martyrdom within six months; and, consequently, upon his election to a position of distinction in the eyes of his fellow-country-men—or, at least, of his country-women. But the bishop they found to be a poor thing after all. They felt sure that what the people said about his being quite humble in the presence of his wife was not without some foundation; and they thought that, after all, there was a great deal to be said in favor of the celibacy of priests compulsory in the Church of Rome. If the bishops of the Church of England were not very careful, they might be the means of such a going over to Rome as had never previously been witnessed in England.
George Holland may have been disappointed, or he may have been pleased at the inactivity of the bishop. He made no sign one way or the other. Of course he was no more than human: he would have regarded a letter of remonstrance from the bishop as a personal compliment; he had certainly expected such a letter, for he had already put together the heads of the reply he would make—and publish—to any official remonstrance that might be offered to him. Still he made no sign. He preached at least one sermon every Sunday morning, and whenever it was known that he would preach, St. Chad’s was crowded and the offertory was all that could be desired. The bishop’s chaplain no longer held a watching brief in regard in regard to those sermons. He did not think it worth while to do so much, George Holland’s friends said, shaking their heads and pursing out their lips. Oh, yes! there could be no doubt that the bishop was a very weak sort of man.
But then suddenly there appeared in the new number of theZeit Geist Reviewan article above the signature of George Holland, entitled “The Enemy to Christianity,” and in a moment it became pretty plain that George Holland had not in his “Revised Versions,” said the last word that he had to say regarding the attitude of the Church of England in respect of the non-church-goers of the day. When people read the article they asked “Who is the Enemy to Christianity referred to by the writer?” and they were forced to conclude that the answer which was made to such an inquiry by the article itself was, “The Church.”
He pointed out the infatuation which possessed the heads of the Church of England in expecting to appeal with success to the educated people of the present day, while still declining to move with the course of thought of the people. Already the braying of a trombone out of tune, and the barbarous jingle of a tambourine, had absorbed some hundred thousand of possible church-goers; and though, of course, it was impossible for sensible men and women—the people whom the Church should endeavor to grapple to its soul with hooks of steel—to look, except with amused sadness, at the ludicrous methods and vulgar ineptitude of the Salvation Army, still the Church was making no effort to provide the sensible, thinking, educated people of England with an equivalent as suitable to their requirements as the Salvation Army was to the requirements of the foolish, the hysterical, the unthinking people who played the tambourines and brayed on the tuneless trombones. Thus it is that one man says to another nowadays, when he has got nothing better to talk about, “Are you a man of intelligence, or do you go to church?”
Men of intelligence do not go to church nowadays, Mr. Holland announced in that article of his in theZeit Geist; many women of intelligence refrain from going, he added, though many beautifully dressed women were still frequent attenders. There was no blinking the fact that the crass stupidity of the Church had made church-going unpopular—almost impossible—with intelligent men and women. The Church insulted the intelligence by trying to reconcile the teachings of Judaism with the teachings of Christianity, when the two were absolutely irreconcilable. It was the crass stupidity of the Church that had caused it—for its self-protection, it fancied—to bitterly oppose every truth that was revealed to man. The Church had tortured and burned at the stake the great men to whom God had revealed the great facts of nature’s workings—the motion of the earth and the other planets. But these facts, being Divine Truth, became accepted by the world in spite of the thumb-screws and the fagots—the arguments of the Church against Divine Truth. The list of the Divine Truths which the Church had bitterly opposed was a sickening document. Geography, Geology, Biology—the progress of all had, even within recent years, been bitterly opposed by the Church, and yet the self-constituted arbiters between Truth and falsehood had been compelled to eat their own words—to devour their own denunciations when they found that the Truth was accepted by the intelligence of the people in spite of the anathemas of the Church.
The intelligence of the Church was equal only to the duty of burning witches. It burned them by the thousand, simply because ancient Judaism had a profound belief in the witch and because a blood-thirsty Jewish murderer-monarch had organized a witch hunt.
And yet with such a record against it—a record of the murder of innocent men and women who endeavored to promulgate the Divine Truths of nature—the Church still arrogated to itself the right to lay down a rule of life for intelligent people—a rule of life founded upon that impossible amalgamation of Judaism and Christianity. The science of the Church was not equal to the task of amalgamating two such deadly opponents.
Was it any wonder, then, that church-going had become practically obsolete among intelligent men and women? the writer asked.
He then went on to refer to the nature of the existing services of the Church of England. He dealt only casually with the mockery of the response of the congregation to the reading out of the Fourth Commandment by the priest, when no one in the Church paid the least respect to the Seventh Day. This was additional proof of the absurdity of the attempted amalgamation of Judaism and Christianity. But what he dealt most fully with was the indiscriminate selection of what were very properly termed the “Lessons” from the Hebrew Bible. It was, he said, far from edifying to hear some chapters read out from the lectern without comment; though fortunately the readers were as a rule so imperfectly trained that the most objectionable passages had their potentiality of mischief minimized. He concluded his indictment by a reference to a sermon preached by the average clergyman of the Church of England. This was, usually, he said, either a theological essay founded upon an obsolete system of theology, or a series of platitudes of morality delivered by an unpractical man. The first was an insult to the intelligence of an average man; the second was an insult to the intelligence of an average schoolgirl.
His summing up of the whole case against the Church was as logical as it was trenchant. The Church had surely become, he said, like unto the Giant Pagan in “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” who, when incapable of doing mischief, sat mumbling at the mouth of his cave on the roadside. The Church had become toothless, decrepit either for evil or for good. Its mouthings of the past had become its mumblings of the present. The cave at the mouth of which this toothless giant sat was very dark; and intelligent people went by with a good-natured and tolerant laugh.
This article was published in theReviewon Tuesday. Phyllis read it on the evening of that day. On Wednesday the newspapers were full of this further development of the theories of the writer, and on Thursday afternoon the writer paid a visit to Phyllis.
As he entered the drawing room he found himself face to face with Herbert Courtland, who was in the act of leaving.
The prayer of Ella Linton had not been answered. She had prayed, not that her heart wherewith she loved Herbert Courtland might be changed—that she knew would be difficult; not that her love for Herbert Courtland might cease—that she believed to be impossible; but simply that Herbert Courtland might be kept away from her—that she knew to be the most sensible course her scheme of imploration could take.
She was well aware of the fact that God had given her strength to run away from Herbert Courtland, and for that she was sincerely thankful; she did not pause to analyze her feelings, to ask herself if her thanks were due to her reflection upon the circumstance of her husband’s return, at the very hour when she had appointed to meet Herbert Courtland; she only felt that God had been good to her in giving her sufficient strength to run away from that appointment. Then it was that she had prayed that he might be kept away from her. Surely God would find it easy to do that, she thought. Surely she might assume that God was on her side, and that he would not leave his work half done.
But when she began to think of the thorough manner in which God does his work she began to wish that she had not prayed quite so earnestly. Supposing that God should think it fit to keep him away from her by sending a blast from heaven to capsize that yacht in the deep sea, what would she think of the fervency of her prayer then?
The terror of her reflection upon the possibility of this occurrence flung her from her bed and sent her pacing, with bare feet and flying lace, the floor of her bedroom in the first pearly light of dawn, just as she had paced the floor of Phyllis’ drawing room beneath the glow of the electric lights.
She wished that she had not prayed quite so earnestly that he might be kept apart from her. But one cannot pray hot and cold; she felt that she had no right now to lay down any conditions to Heaven in the matter of keeping Herbert Courtland away from her. She had prayed her prayer; only, if he were drowned before she saw him again, she would never say another prayer.
This feeling that she would be even with Heaven, so to speak, had the effect of soothing her. She threw herself upon her bed once more and was able to fall asleep; she had a considerable amount of confidence in the discrimination of Heaven.
But before she had come down to the breakfast room where her husband was reading a newspaper in the morning, she had thought a good deal upon another matter that disquieted her in some degree. She had been exuberant (she thought) at having had sufficient strength given to her to run away from her lover; but then she had not dwelt upon the rather important circumstance that all the running away had not been on her side. What were the facts as revealed by the narrative of Mr. Ayrton? Why, simply, that while she was putting on that supreme toilet which she had prepared for the delight of the eyes of her lover (feeling herself to be a modern Cleopatra), that lover of hers was sitting on the cushions of a first-class carriage, flying along to Southampton; and while she had been lying among the cushions of her drawing room, waiting tremulously, nervously, ecstatically, for the dreary minutes to crawl on until the clock should chime the hour of nine, he was probably lighting his first pipe aboard the yachtWater Nymph. What did it matter that she had lifted her hot face from her cushions and had fled in wild haste to the arms of Phyllis Ayrton? The fact remained the same; it was he who had run away from her.
That was a terrible reflection. Hitherto she had never felt humiliated. She had not felt that he had insulted her by his kisses; she had given him kiss for kiss. She had but to hold up her finger and he was ready to obey her. But now—what was she to think of him? Had ever man so humiliated woman? She had offered him, not her heart but her soul—had he not told her a few days before that he meant her to give him her soul? and when she had laid heart and soul at his feet—that was how she put it to herself—he had not considered it worth his while to take the priceless gift that she offered to him.
“He will answer to me for that,” she said, as she thought over her humiliation, in front of her dressing-glass that morning, while her maid was absent from the room.
Her wish was now not that her prayer had been less earnest, but that it had not been uttered at all. It was necessary for her to meet him again in order that he might explain to her how it came that he had preferred the attractions incidental to a cruise with Lord Earlscourt and his friends to all that she had written to offer him.
And yet when her husband, after having quite finished with his paper, said:
“It’s very awkward that Herbert Courtland is not in town.”
She merely raised her shoulders an inch, saying:
“I suppose that he has a right to take a holiday now and then. If you didn’t telegraph to him from Paris, you cannot complain.”
“I felt certain that I should find him here,” said the husband.
“Here?” said the wife, raising her eyebrows and casting an offended glance at her husband. “Here?”
He smiled in the face of her offended glance.
“Here—in London, I mean, of course. Heavens, Ella! did you fancy for a moment that I meant——Ah, by the way, you have seen him recently?”
“Oh, yes; quite recently—on Tuesday, I think it was, we met at the Ayrton’s dinner party—yes, it was Tuesday. There was some fuss, or attempted fuss, about his adventures in New Guinea, and a question was being asked about the matter in the House of Commons. Mr. Ayrton got rid of some of his superfluous cleverness in putting a counter question—you know the way.”
“Oh, perfectly well! And that is how you met on Tuesday—if it was Tuesday?”
“Yes; he went to thank Mr. Ayrton, and Mr. Ayrton asked him to dinner. It was a small party, and not very brilliant. Herbert came here with me afterward—for five minutes.”
“Ah! To get the taste of the party off his mouth, I suppose? He didn’t say anything to you then about being tired of his London season?”
“Not a word. He seemed tired of the dinner party. He yawned.”
“And I’m sure that you yawned in sympathy. When a man so far forgets himself as to yawn in the presence of a woman, she never fails to respond with one of more ample circumference. When a woman so far remembers herself as to yawn in the presence of a man, he tries to say something witty.”
“Yes, when the woman is not his wife. If she is his wife, he asks her if she doesn’t think it’s about time she was in bed.”
“I dare say you’re right; you have observed men—and women, for that matter—much more closely than I have had time to do. It’s very awkward that he isn’t here. I must bring him back at once.”
She felt a little movement at her heart; but she only said:
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to enjoy his holiday in peace?”
“It’s a matter of business; the mine, I told you.”
“What’s wrong with the mine that could be set right by his coming back at once? Are you not making enough out of it?”
“We’re making quite as much as is good for us out of it. But if we can get a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for a few yards of our claim further east, without damaging the prospects of the mine itself, I don’t think we should refuse it—at any rate, I don’t think that we should refuse to consider the offer.”
“What is a hundred and fifty thousand pounds?” said she.
“I wonder why you dressed yourself as you did last night?” said he.
The suddenness of the words did not cause her to quail as the guilty wife quails—yes, under a properly managed lime-light. She did not even color. But then, of course, she was not a guilty wife.
She lay back on her chair and laughed.
He watched her—not eagerly, but pleasantly, admiringly.
“My dear Stephen, if you could understand why I dressed myself that way you would be able to give me a valuable hint as to where the connection lies between your mine and my toilet—I need such a hint, now, I can assure you.”
She was sitting up now looking at him with lovely laughing eyes. (After all, she was no guilty wife.)
“What, you can’t see the connection?” he said slowly. “You can sew over your dress about fifty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds, and yet you don’t see the connection between the wearing of that dress and the development of a gold mine by your husband?”
“I think I see it now—something of a connection. But I don’t want any more diamonds; I don’t care if you take all that are sewed about the dress and throw them into the river. That’s how I feel this morning.”
“I heard some time ago of a woman who had something of your mood upon her one day. She had some excellent diamonds, and in one of her moods, she flung them into the river. She was a wife and she had a lover who disappointed her. The story reads very smoothly in verse.”
She laughed.
“I have no lover,” she said—was it mournfully? “I have a husband, it is true; but he is not exactly of the type of King Arthur—nor Sir Galahad, for that matter. I hope you found Paris as enjoyable as ever?”
“Quite. I never saw at Paris a more enrapturing toilet than yours of last night. You are, I know, the handsomest woman of my acquaintance, and you looked handsomer than I had ever before seen you in that costume. I wonder why you put it on.”
“Didn’t someone—was it Phyllis?—suggest that it was an act of inspiration; that I had a secret, mysterious prompting to put it on to achieve the object which—well, which I did achieve.”
“Object? What object?”
“To make my husband fall in love with me again.”
“Ah! In love there is no again. I wonder where a telegram would find Herbert.”
“Don’t worry yourself about him. Let him enjoy his holiday.”
“Do you fancy he is enjoying himself with Earlscourt and his boon companions? They’ll be playing poker from morning till night—certainly from night till morning.”
“Why should he go on the cruise if he was not certain to enjoy himself?”
“Ah, that question is too much for me. Think over it yourself and let me know if you come to a solution, my dear.”
He rose and left the room before she could make any answer—before she could make an attempt to find out in what direction his thoughts regarding the departure of Herbert Courtland were moving.
She wondered if he had any suspicion in regard to Herbert and herself. He was not a man given to suspicion, or at any rate, given to allowing whatever suspicion he may have felt, to be apparent. He had allowed her to drive and to ride with Herbert Courtland during the four months they had been together, first at Egypt, then at Florence, Vienna, Munich, and Paris, and he could not have but seen that Herbert and she had a good many sympathies in common. Not a word had been breathed, however, of a suspicion that they were more than good friends to each other.
(As a matter of fact, they had not been more than good friends to each other; but then some husbands are given to unworthy suspicions.)
Could it be possible, she asked herself, that some people with nasty minds had suggested to him in Paris that she and Herbert were together a great deal in London, and that he had been led to make this sudden visit, this surprise visit to London, with a view of satisfying himself as to the truth of the nasty reports—the disgraceful calumnies which had reached his ears?
If he had done so, all that could be said was that he had been singularly unfortunate in regard to his visit. “Unfortunate” was the word which was in her mind, though, of course“fortunate”was the word which should have occurred to her. It was certainly a fortunate result of his visit—that tableau in the drawing room of Mr. Ayrton: Ella and her dearest friend standing side by side, hand in hand, as he entered. A surprise visit, it may have been, but assuredly the surprise was a pleasant one for the husband, if he had listened to the voice of calumny.
And then, after pondering upon this with a smiling face, her smile suddenly vanished. She was overwhelmed with the thought of what might have been the result of that surprise visit—yes, if she had not had the strength to run away to the side of Phyllis; yes, if Herbert had not had the weakness to join that party of poker-players aboard the yacht.
She began to wonder what her husband would have done if he had entered the house by the aid of his latch-key, and had found her sitting in that lovely costume by the side of Herbert Courtland? Would he have thought her a guilty woman? Would he have thought Herbert a false friend? Would he have killed her, or would he have killed Herbert? Herbert would, she thought, take a good deal of killing from a man of the caliber of her husband; but what could she have done?
Well, what she did, as the force of that thought crushed her back upon her chair, was to bring her hands together in a passionate clasp, and to cry in a passionate gasp:
“Thank God—thank God—thank God!”
She dined alone with her husband that night, and thought it well to appear in another evening toilet—one that was quite as lovely, though scarcely so striking, as that which her husband had so admired the previous night. He clearly appreciated her efforts to maintain her loveliness in his eyes, and their little dinner was a very pleasant one.
He told her that he had learned that the yachtWater Nymphwould put in to Leith before crossing the North Sea, and that he had written to Herbert Courtland at that port to return without delay.
“You did wrong,” said she; and she felt that she was speaking the truth.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “At any rate, you may rest perfectly certain that Herbert will receive my letter with gratitude.”
And Mr. Linton’s judgment on this point was not in error. Herbert Courtland received, on the evening of the third day after leaving Southampton, the letter which called him back to London, and he contrived to conceal whatever emotion he may have felt at the prospect of parting from his shipmates. They accompanied him ashore, however—they had worn out six packs of cards already, and were about to buy another dozen or two, to see them safely through the imposing scenery of the Hardanger Fjord.
The next day he was in London, and it was on the evening of that same day that he came face to face with the Rev. George Holland outside Miss Ayrton’s drawing room.
“You should have come a little sooner,” said Phyllis quite pleasantly. “Mr. Courtland was giving me such an amusing account of his latest voyage. Will you have tea or iced coffee?”
“Tea, if you please,” said George Holland, also quite pleasantly. “Has Mr. Courtland been on another voyage of discovery? What has he left himself to discover in the world of waters?”
“I think that what he discovered on his latest voyage was the effect of a banjo on the human mind,” laughed Phyllis. “He was aboard Lord Earlscourt’s yacht, theWater Nymph. Some other men were there also. One of them had an idea that he could play upon the banjo. He was wrong, Mr. Courtland thinks.”
“A good many people are subject to curious notions of the same type. They usually take an optimistic view of the susceptibilities of enjoyment of their neighbors—not that there is any connection between enjoyment and a banjo.”
“Mr. Courtland said just now that when Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that music was, of all noises, the least disagreeable, the banjo had not been invented.”
“That assumes that there is some connection between music and the banjo, and that’s going just a little too far, don’t you think?”
“I should like to hear Dr. Johnson’s criticism of Paderewski.”
“His criticism of Signor Piozzi is extant: a fine piece of eighteenth century directness.”
“I sometimes long for an hour or two of the eighteenth century. You remember Fanny Burney’s reference to the gentleman who thought it preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good enough sort of man for a painter. I think I should like to have an hour with that man.”
“I long for more than that. I should like to have seen David Garrick’s reproduction, for the benefit of his schoolfellows, of Dr. Johnson’s love passages with his very mature wife. I should also like to have heard the complete story of old Grouse in the gun room.”
“Told by Squire Hardcastle, of course?”
“Of course. I question if there was anything very much better aboard theWater Nymph. By the way, Lady Earlscourt invited me to join the yachting party. She did not mention it to her husband, however. She thought that there should be a chaplain aboard. Now, considering that Lord Earlscourt had told me the previous day that he was compelled to take to the sea solely on account of the way people were worrying him about me, I think that I did the right thing when I told her that I should be compelled to stay at home until the appearance of a certain paper of mine in theZeit Geist Review.”
“I’m sure that you did the right thing when you stayed at home.”
“And in writing the paper in theZeit Geist? You have read it?”
“Oh, yes! I have read it.”
“You don’t like it?”
“How could I like it? You have known me now for sometime. How could you fancy that I should like it—that is, if you thought of me at all in connection with it? I don’t myself see why you should think of me at all.”
He rose and stood before her. She had risen to take his empty cup from him.
“Don’t you know that I think of you always, Phyllis?” he said, in that low tone of his which flowed around the hearts of his hearers, and made their hearts as one with his heart. “Don’t you know that I think of you always—that all my hopes are centered in you?”
“I am so sorry if that is the case, Mr. Holland,” said she. “I don’t want to give you pain, but I must tell you again what I told you long ago: you have passed completely out of my life. If you had not done so before, the publication of that article in theZeit Geistwould force me to tell you that you had done so now. To me my religion has always been a living thing; my Bible has been my guide. You trampled upon the one some months ago, you have trampled on the other now. You shocked me, Mr. Holland.”
“I have always loved you, Phyllis. I think I love you better than I ever did, if that were possible,” said he. “I am overwhelmed with grief at the thought of the barrier which your fancy has built up between us.”
“Fancy?”
“Your fancy, dear child. I feel that the barrier which you fancy is now between us is unworthy of you.”
“What? Do you mean to say that you think that my detestation—my—my horror of your sneers at the Bible, which I believe to be the Word of God—of the contempt you have heaped upon the Church which I believe to be God’s agent on earth for the salvation of men’s souls—do you think that my detestation of these is a mere girlish fancy?”
“I don’t think that, Phyllis. What I think is, that if you had ever loved me you would be ready to stand by my side now—to be guided by me in a matter which I have made the study of my life.”
“In such matters as these—the value or the worthlessness of the Bible; the value or the worthlessness of the Church—I require no guide, Mr. Holland. I do not need to go to a priest to ask if it is wrong to steal, to covet another’s goods, to honor my father——Oh, I cannot discuss what is so very obvious. The Bible I regard as precious; you think that you are in a position to edit it as if it were an ordinary book. The Church I regard as the Temple of God upon the earth; you think that it exists only to be sneered at? and yet you talk of fanciful barriers between us!”
“I consider it the greatest privilege of a man on earth to be a minister of the Church of Christ.”
“Why, then, do you take every opportunity of pointing to it as the greatest enemy to Christianity?”
“The Church of to-day represents some results of the great Reformation. That Reformation was due to the intelligence of those men who perceived that it had become the enemy to freedom; the enemy to the development of thought; the enemy to the aspirations of a great nation. The nation rejoiced in the freedom of thought of which the great charter was the Reformation. But during the hundreds of years that have elapsed since that Reformation, some enormous changes have been brought about in the daily life of the people of this great nation. The people are being educated, and the Church must sooner or later face the fact that as education spreads church-going decreases. Why is that, I ask you?”
“Because men are growing more wicked every day.”
“But they are not. Crime is steadily decreasing as education is spreading, and yet people will not go to church. They will go to lectures, to bands of music, to political demonstrations, but they will not go to church. The reason they will not go is because they know that they will hear within the church the arguments of men whose minds are stunted by a narrow theological course against every discovery of science or result of investigation. You know how the best minds in the Church ridiculed the discoveries of geology, of biology, ending, of course, by reluctantly accepting the teachings of the men whom they reviled.”
“You said all that in your paper, Mr. Holland, and yet I tell you that I abhor your paper—that I shuddered when I read what you wrote about the Bible. The words that are in the Bible have given to millions of poor souls a consolation that science could never bring to them.”
“And those consoling words are what I would read to the people every day of the week, not the words which may have a certain historical signification, but which breathe a very different spirit from the spirit of Christianity. Phyllis, it is to be the aim of my life to help on the great work of making the Church once more the Church of the people—of making it in reality the exponent of Christianity and Judaism. That is my aim, and I want you to be my helper in this work.”
“And I tell you that I shall oppose you by all the means in my power, paltry though my power may be.”
Her eyes were flashing and she made a little automatic motion with her hands, as if sweeping something away from before her. He had become pale and there was a light in his eyes. He felt angry at this girl who had shown herself ready to argue with him,—in her girlish fashion, of course,—and who, after listening to his incontrovertible arguments, fell back resolutely upon a platitude, and considered that she had got the better of him.
She had got the better of him, too; that was the worst of it; his object in going to her, in arguing with her, was to induce her to promise to marry him, and he had failed.
It was on this account he was angry. He might have had a certain consciousness of succeeding as a theologian, but he had undoubtedly failed as a lover. He was angry. He was as little accustomed as other clergymen to be withstood by a girl.
“I am disappointed in you,” said he. “I fancied that when I—when I——” It was in his mind to say that he had selected her out of a large number of candidates to be his helpmeet, but he pulled himself up in time, and the pause that he made seemed purely emotional. “When I loved you and got your promise to love me in return, you would share with me all the glory, the persecution, the work incidental to this crusade on behalf of the truth, but now——Ah! you can never have loved me.”
“Perhaps you are right, indeed,” said she meekly. She was ready to cede him this point if he set any store by it.
“Take care,” said he, with some measure of sternness. “Take care, if you fancy you love another man, that he may be worthy of you.”
“I do not love another man, Mr. Holland,” said she gently; scarcely regretfully.
“Do you not?” said he, with equal gentleness. “Then I will hope.”
“You will do very wrong.”
“You cannot say that without loving someone else. I would not like to hear of your loving such a man as Herbert Courtland.”
She started at that piece of impertinence, and then, without the slightest further warning, she felt her body blaze from head to foot. She was speechless with indignation.
“Perhaps I should have said a word of warning to you before.” He had now assumed the calm dignity of a clergyman who knows what is due to himself. “I am not one to place credence in vulgar gossip; I thought that your father, perhaps, might have given you a hint. Mrs. Linton is undoubtedly a very silly woman. God forbid that I should ever hear rumor play with your name as I have heard it deal with hers.”
His assumption of the clergyman’s solemn dignity did not make his remark less impertinent, considering that Ella Linton was her dearest friend. And yet people were in the habit of giving George Holland praise for his tact. Such persons had never seen him angry, wounded, and anxious to wound.
There was a pause after he had spoken his tactless words. It was broken by a thrice-repeated cry from Phyllis.
“Lies! Lies! Lies!” she cried, facing him, the light of scorn in her eyes. “I tell you that you have listened to lies; you, a clergyman, have listened to lying gossip, and have repeated that lying gossip to me. You have listened like a wicked man, and you should be ashamed of your behavior, of your words, your wicked words. If Ella Linton were wicked, you would be responsible for it in the sight of God. You, a clergyman, whose duty it is to help the weak ones, to give counsel to those who stand on the brink of danger; you speak your own condemnation if you speak Ella Linton’s. You have spent your time not in that practical work of the Church—that work which is done silently by those of her priests who are desirous of doing their duty; you have spent your time, not in this work, but in theorizing, in inventing vain sophistries to put in a book, and so cause people to talk about you; whether they talk well or ill of you, you care not so long as they talk; you have been doing this to gratify your own vanity, instead of doing your duty as a clergyman on behalf of the souls which have been intrusted to your keeping. Go away—go away! I am ashamed of you; I am ashamed of myself that I was ever foolish enough to allow my name to be associated with yours even for a single day. I shall never, never again enter the church where you preach. Go away! Go away!”
He stood before her with his hands by his sides as a man suddenly paralyzed might stand. He had never recovered from the shock produced by her crying of the word “lies! lies! lies!” He was dazed. He was barely conscious of the injustice which she was doing him, for he felt that he was not actuated by vanity, but sincerity in all that he had hitherto preached and written regarding the Church. Still he had not the power to interrupt her in her accusation; he had not the power to tell her that she was falsely accusing him.
When her impassioned denunciation of him had come to an end, and she stood with flaming face, one outstretched hand pointing to the door, he recovered himself—partially; and curiously enough, his first thought was that he had never seen a more beautiful girl in a more graceful attitude. She had insulted him grossly; she had behaved as none of the daughters of Philistia would behave in regard to him—him, a clergyman of the Church of England; but he forgot her insults, her injustice, and his only thought was that she was surely the most beautiful woman in the world.
“I am amazed!” he found words to say at last. “I am amazed! I felt certain that you at least would do me justice. I thought—”
“I will not listen to you,” she cried. “Every word you utter increases my self-contempt at having heard you say so much as you have said. Go away, please. No, I will go—I will go.”
And she did go.
He found himself standing in the middle of an empty room.
Never before had he been so treated by man or woman; and the worst of the matter was that he had an uneasy feeling that he had deserved the scorn which she had heaped upon him. He knew perfectly well that he had no right to speak to her as he had spoken regarding her friend, Ella Linton. Rumor—what right had he to suggest to her, as he had certainly done, that the evil rumors regarding her friend were believed by him at least?
Yes, he felt that she had treated him as he deserved; and when he tried to get up a case for himself, so to speak, by dwelling upon the injustice which she had done him in saying that he had been actuated by vanity, whereas he knew that he had been sincere, he completely failed.
But his greatest humiliation was due to a consciousness of his own want of tact. Any man may forget himself so far as to lose his temper upon occasions; but no man need hope to get on in the world who so far forgets himself as to allow other people to perceive that he has lost his temper.
What was he to do?
What was left for him to do but to leave the house with as little delay as possible?
He went down the stairs, and a footman opened the hall door for him. He felt a good deal better in the open air. Even the large drawing room which he had left was beginning to feel stuffy. (He was a singularly sensitive man.)
On reaching the rectory he found two letters waiting for him. One from the bishop requesting an early interview with him. The other was almost identical but it was signed “Stephen Linton.”