CHAPTER XXV.

LIES! LIES! LIES!

“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, the Water 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 the Water 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 the Zeit Geist Review.”

“I’m sure that you did the right thing when you stayed at home.”

“And in writing the paper in the Zeit 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 the Zeit Geist would 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.”