THEY HAVE SOULS TO BE SAVED.
When Lord Earlscourt was at home the only two topics that were debarred
from the dinner table were religion and politics; but when Lord
Earlscourt was absent these were the only two topics admitted at the
dinner table. Lady Earlscourt had views, well-defined, clearly outlined,
on both religion and politics, and she greatly regretted that there
still remained some people in the world who held other views on both
subjects; it was very sad--for them; and she felt that it was clearly
her duty to endeavor by all the legitimate means in her power--say,
dinner parties for eight--to reduce the number of these persons. It was
rumored that in the country she had shown herself ready to effect
her excellent object by illegitimate means--say, jelly and flannel
petticoats--as well.
She wore distinctly evangelical boots, though, in the absence of her
husband, she had expressed her willingness to discuss the advantages
of the confessional. She had, however, declined, in the presence of her
husband, to entertain the dogma of infallibility: though she admitted
that the cardinals were showy; she would have liked one about her house,
say, as a footman. She thought there was a great deal in Buddhism (she
had read “The Light of Asia” nearly through), and she believed that
the Rev. George Holland had been badly treated by Phyllis Ayrton.
She admitted having been young once--only once; but no one seemed to
remember it against her, so she was obliged to talk about it herself,
which she did with the lightness of a serious woman of thirty-two. When
a man had assured her that she was still handsome, she had shaken her
head deprecatingly, and had ignored his existence ever after. She had
her doubts regarding the justice of eternal punishment for temporary
lapses in the West End, but she sympathized with the missionary who
said: “Thank God we have still got our hell in the East End.” She knew
that all men are alike in the sight of Heaven, but she thought that the
licensing justices should be more particular.
She believed that there were some good men.
She had more than once talked seriously to Phyllis on the subject of
George Holland. Of course, George Holland had been indiscreet; the views
expressed in his book had shocked his best friends, but think how famous
that book had made him, in spite of the publication of Mr. Courtland’s
“Quest of the Meteor-Bird.” Was Phyllis not acting unkindly, not to say
indiscreetly, in throwing over a man who, it was rumored, was about to
start a new religion? She herself, Lady Earlscourt admitted, had been
very angry with George Holland for writing something that the newspapers
found it to their advantage to abuse so heartily; and Lord Earlscourt,
being a singularly sensitive man, had been greatly worried by the
comments which had been passed upon his discrimination in intrusting to
a clergyman who could bring himself to write “Revised Versions” a cure
of such important souls as were to be found at St. Chad’s. He had, in
fact, been so harassed--he was a singularly sensitive man--that he had
found it absolutely necessary to run across to Paris from time to time
for a change of scene. (This was perfectly true. Lord Earlscourt had
gone more than once to Paris for a change of scene, and had found it;
Lady Earlscourt was thirty-two, and wore evangelical boots.) But,
of course, since George Holland’s enterprise had turned out so well
socially, people who entertained could not be hard on him. There was the
new religion to be counted upon. It was just as likely as not that he
would actually start a new religion, and you can’t be hard upon a man
who starts a new religion. There was Buddha, for instance,--that was a
long time ago, to be sure; but still there he was, the most important
factor to be considered in attempting to solve the great question of
the reconcilement of the religions of the East,--Buddha, and Wesley, and
Edward Irving, and Confucius, and General Booth; if you took them all
seriously where would you be?
“Oh, no, my dear Phyllis!” continued Lady Earlscourt; “you must not
persist in your ill-treatment of Mr. Holland. If you do he may marry
someone else.”
Phyllis shook her head.
“I hope he will, indeed,” said she. “He certainly will never marry me.”
“Do not be obdurate,” said Lady Earlscourt. “He may not really believe
in all that he put into that book.”
“Then there is no excuse for his publishing it,” said Phyllis promptly.
“But if he doesn’t actually hold the views which he has formulated in
that book, you cannot consistently reject him on the plea that he is not
quite--well, not quite what you and I call orthodox.”
This contention was too plain to be combated by the girl. She did not
for a moment see her way out of the amazing logic of the lady. Quite a
minute had passed before she said:
“If he propounds such views without having a firm conviction that they
are true, he has acted a contemptible part, Lady Earlscourt. I think far
too highly of him to entertain for a single moment the idea that he is
not sincere.”
“But if you believe that he is sincere, why should you say that you will
not marry him?”
“I would not marry an atheist, however sincere he might be.”
“An atheist! But Mr. Holland is not an atheist; on the contrary, he
actually believes that there are two Gods; one worshiped of the Jews
long ago, the other by us nowadays. An atheist! Oh, no!”
“I’m afraid that I can’t explain to you, dear Lady Earlscourt.”
Once more Phyllis shook her head with some degree of sadness. She felt
that it would indeed be impossible for her to explain to this lady of
logic that she believed the truth to be a horizon line, and that any
opinion which was a little above this line was as abhorrent as any that
was a little below it.
“If you are stubborn, God may marry you to a Dissenter yet,” said Lady
Earlscourt solemnly.
Phyllis smiled and shook her head again.
“Oh, you needn’t shake your head, my dear,” resumed Lady Earlscourt.
“I’ve known of such judgments falling on girls before now--yes, when the
Dissenters were well off. But no Dissenter rides straight to hounds.”
Phyllis laughed.
“More logic,” she said, and shook hands with her friend.
“That girl has another man in her eye,” said her friend sagaciously,
when Phyllis had left her opposite her own tea-table. “But I don’t
despair; if we can only persuade our bishop to prosecute George Holland,
she may return to him all right.”
She invariably referred to the bishop as if he were a member of the
Earlscourt household; but it was understood that the bishop had never
actually accepted the responsibilities incidental to such a position;
though he had his views on the subject of Lady Earlscourt’s cook.
This interview had taken place a week before the dinner party for which
Phyllis was carefully dressed by her maid Fidele while Herbert Courtland
was walking away from the house. In spite of her logic, Lady Earlscourt
now and again stumbled across the truth. When it occurred to her that
Phyllis had another man in her eye,--the phrase was Lady Earlscourt’s
and it served very well to express her meaning,--she had made some
careful inquiries on the subject of the girl’s male visitors, and she
had, of course, found out that no other man occupied that enviable
position; no social oculist would be required to remove the element
which, in Lady Earlscourt’s estimation, caused Phyllis’ vision to be
distorted.
George Holland was at the dinner. Phyllis had been asked very quietly by
the hostess if she would mind being taken in by George Holland; if she
had the least feeling on the matter, Sir Lionel Greatorex would not mind
taking her instead of Mrs. Vernon-Brooke. But Phyllis had said that of
course she would be delighted to sit beside Mr. Holland. Mr. Holland was
one of her best friends.
“Is his case so hopeless as that?” said Lady Earlscourt, in a low voice,
and Phyllis smiled in response--the smile of the guest when the hostess
had made a point.
When Lady Earlscourt had indiscreetly, but confidentially, explained to
some of her guests the previous week that she meant her little dinner
party to be the means of reuniting Mr. Holland and Miss Ayrton, one of
them--he was a man--smiled and said, when she had gone away, that she
was a singularly unobservant woman, or she would have known that the
best way of bringing two people together is to keep them as much apart
as possible. There was wisdom in the paradox, he declared; for everyone
should know that it was only when a man and a woman were far apart that
they came to appreciate each other.
It seemed, indeed, that there was some truth in what that man said, for
Phyllis, before the ice pudding appeared, had come to the conclusion
that George Holland was a very uninteresting sort of man. To be sure, he
had not talked about himself,--he was not such a fool as to do that: he
had talked about her to the exclusion of almost every other topic--he
had been wise enough to do that,--but in spite of all, he had not
succeeded in arousing her interest. He had not succeeded in making
her think of the present when her thoughts had been dwelling on the
past--not the distant past, not the past of two months ago, when they
had been lovers, but the past of two hours ago, when she had watched the
effect of her words upon Herbert Courtland.
She chatted away to George Holland very pleasantly--as pleasantly as
usual--so pleasantly as to cause some of her fellow-guests to smile and
whisper significantly to one another, suggesting the impossibility of
two persons who got on so well together as Mr. Holland and Miss Ayrton
being separated by a barrier so paltry as an engagement broken off by
the young woman for conscience’ sake.
But when the significant smiles of these persons were forced upon the
notice of their hostess, she did not smile; she was a lady with a really
remarkable lack of knowledge; but she knew better than to accept the
pleasant chat of George Holland and Phyllis Ayrton as an indication that
the _status quo ante bellum_--to make use of the expressive phrase of
diplomacy--had been re-established between them.
Only when George Holland ventured to express his admiration of Mr.
Ayrton’s adroitness in dealing with the foolish question of the
gentleman from Wales did he succeed in interesting Miss Ayrton.
“What a very foolish letter those missionaries sent home regarding the
explorations of Mr. Courtland!” said he. “Did they hope to jeopardize
the popularity of Mr. Courtland by suggesting that he had massacred a
number of cannibals?”
“I suppose that was their object,” said Phyllis.
“They must be singularly foolish persons, even for missionaries,” said
the Rev. George Holland.
“Even for missionaries?” Phyllis repeated. “Oh, I forgot that you are
no believer in the advantages of missions to the people whom we call
heathen. But I have not been able to bring myself to agree with you
there. They have souls to be saved.”
“That is quite likely,” said he. “But the methods of the missionaries,
generally speaking, have not tended in that direction. Hence the
missionary as a comestible is more highly esteemed by the natives
than the missionary as a reformer. They rarely understand the natives
themselves, and they nearly always fail to make themselves intelligible
to the natives. It would appear that the two foolish persons who wrote
that letter about Mr. Courtland made but a poor attempt at understanding
even their own countrymen, if they fancied that any rumor of a
massacre of cannibals--nay, any proof of such a massacre--would have an
appreciable effect upon the popularity of the man who brought home the
meteor-bird.”
“You don’t think that the public generally would believe the story?”
said Phyllis.
“I think it extremely unlikely that they would believe it,” he replied.
“But even if they believed every word of it they would not cease to
believe in Mr. Courtland’s bravery. What is a hecatomb of cannibals
compared to the discovery of the meteor-bird,--that is, in the eyes of
the general public, or for that matter, the Nonconformist public who
turn up their eyes at the suggestion of a massacre of natives of an
island that is almost as unknown to them as Ireland itself? The people
of this country of ours respect bravery more than any other virtue, and
I’m not altogether sure that they are generally astray in this matter.
The Christian faith is founded upon bravery, and the same faith has
inspired countless acts of brave men and women. Oh, no! Mr. Courtland
will not suffer from the attacks of these foolish persons.”
“I saw him this--a short time ago,” said Phyllis, “and he told me that
his publishers were delighted at the result of the agitation which that
newspaper tried to get up against him: they said it was selling his
book.”
“I saw you talking with Mr. Courtland after the first production of
‘Cagliostro.’ I envied you--and him,” said Mr. Holland. “I wonder if he
was really placed in the unfortunate position of having to massacre a
horde of cannibals.”
Phyllis laughed, and forthwith told him the truth as it had been
communicated to her regarding the dynamite outrage upon the unsuspecting
natives, and George Holland was greatly amused at the story--much more
highly amused, it would have occurred to some persons, than a clergyman
should be at such a recital. But then George Holland was not as other
clergymen. He was quite devoid of the affectations of his cloth. He did
not consider it necessary to put the tips of his fingers together
and show more of the white portion of the pupil of his eye than a
straight-forward gaze entailed, when people talked of the overflowing of
a river in China and the consequent drowning of a quarter of a million
of men--that is to say, Chinamen. He was no more affected by such
tidings than the Emperor of China. He was infinitely more affected when
he read of the cold-blooded massacre by David, sometime King of Israel,
in order to purchase for himself a woman for whom he had conceived a
liking. He knew that the majority of clergymen considered it to be their
duty to preach funeral service over the drowned Chinamen, and to impress
upon their hearers that David was a man after God’s own heart. He also
knew that the majority of clergymen preached annual sermons in aid
of the missionaries who did some yachting in the South Seas, and had
brought into existence the sin of nakedness among the natives, in order
that they might be the more easily swindled by those Christians who sold
them shoddy for calico, to purge them of their sin. George Holland could
not see his way to follow the example of his brethren in this respect.
He did not think that the Day of Judgment would witness the inauguration
of any great scheme of eternal punishment for the heathen in his
blindness who had been naked all his life without knowing it. He knew
that the heathen in his blindness had curiosity enough at his command to
inquire of the missionaries if the white beachcomber and his bottle of
square-face represented the product of centuries of Christianity, and
if they did not, why the missionaries did not evangelize the beachcomber
and his bottle off the face of the earth.
Phyllis, being well aware of George Holland’s views, was not shocked at
the sound of his laughter at the true story of Mr. Courtland’s dynamite
outrage at New Guinea; but all the same, she was glad that she was not
going to marry him.
He had not, however, been altogether uninteresting in her eyes while
sitting beside her, and that was something to record in his favor.
She drove home early, and running upstairs found herself face to face
with Ella Linton.