‘In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the seventh chapter and the
fourteenth verse--‘.
Here the young lady raised her eyes in spite of her reserve, but it
being, apparently, too much labour to keep them raised, allowed her
glance to subside upon her jet necklace, extending it with the thumb of
her left hand.
‘Sir!’ said the Baptist excitedly, ‘I know that passage well--it is the
last refuge of the Paedobaptists--I foresee your argument. I have met
it dozens of times, and it is not worth that snap of the fingers! It
is worth no more than the argument from circumcision, or the
Suffer-little-children argument.’
‘Then turn to the sixteenth chapter of the Acts, and the thirty-third--’
‘That, too,’ cried the minister, ‘is answered by what I said before! I
perceive, sir, that you adopt the method of a special pleader, and not
that of an honest inquirer. Is it, or is it not, an answer to my proofs
from the eighth chapter of the Acts, the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh
verses; the sixteenth of Mark, sixteenth verse; second of Acts,
forty-first verse; the tenth and the forty-seventh verse; or the
eighteenth and eighth verse?’
‘Very well, then. Let me prove the point by other reasoning--by the
argument from Apostolic tradition.’ He threw the minister’s book upon
the grass, and proceeded with his contention, which comprised a fairly
good exposition of the earliest practice of the Church and inferences
therefrom. (When he reached this point an interest in his off-hand
arguments was revealed by the mobile bosom of Miss Paula Power, though
she still occupied herself by drawing out the necklace.) Testimony from
Justin Martyr followed; with inferences from Irenaeus in the expression,
‘Omnes enim venit per semetipsum salvare; omnes inquam, qui per eum
renascuntur in Deum, INFANTES et parvulos et pueros et juvenes.’ (At the
sound of so much seriousness Paula turned her eyes upon the speaker with
attention.) He next adduced proof of the signification of ‘renascor’
in the writings of the Fathers, as reasoned by Wall; arguments
from Tertullian’s advice to defer the rite; citations from Cyprian,
Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Jerome; and briefly summed up the whole
matter.
Somerset looked round for the minister as he concluded. But the old man,
after standing face to face with the speaker, had turned his back upon
him, and during the latter portions of the attack had moved slowly away.
He now looked back; his countenance was full of commiserating reproach
as he lifted his hand, twice shook his head, and said, ‘In the Epistle
to the Philippians, first chapter and sixteenth verse, it is written
that there are some who preach in contention and not sincerely. And
in the Second Epistle to Timothy, fourth chapter and fourth verse,
attention is drawn to those whose ears refuse the truth, and are turned
unto fables. I wish you good afternoon, sir, and that priceless gift,
SINCERITY.’
The minister vanished behind the trees; Somerset and Miss Power being
left confronting each other alone.
Somerset stepped aside from the stone, hat in hand, at the same moment
in which Miss Power rose from her seat. She hesitated for an instant,
and said, with a pretty girlish stiffness, sweeping back the skirt of
her dress to free her toes in turning: ‘Although you are personally
unknown to me, I cannot leave you without expressing my deep sense of
your profound scholarship, and my admiration for the thoroughness of
your studies in divinity.’
‘Your opinion gives me great pleasure,’ said Somerset, bowing, and
fairly blushing. ‘But, believe me, I am no scholar, and no theologian.
My knowledge of the subject arises simply from the accident that some
few years ago I looked into the question for a special reason. In the
study of my profession I was interested in the designing of fonts and
baptisteries, and by a natural process I was led to investigate the
history of baptism; and some of the arguments I then learnt up still
remain with me. That’s the simple explanation of my erudition.’
‘If your sermons at the church only match your address to-day, I shall
not wonder at hearing that the parishioners are at last willing to
attend.’
It flashed upon Somerset’s mind that she supposed him to be the new
curate, of whose arrival he had casually heard, during his sojourn at
the inn. Before he could bring himself to correct an error to which,
perhaps, more than to anything else, was owing the friendliness of her
manner, she went on, as if to escape the embarrassment of silence:--
‘I need hardly say that I at least do not doubt the sincerity of your
arguments.’
‘Nevertheless, I was not altogether sincere,’ he answered.
She was silent.
‘Then why should you have delivered such a defence of me?’ she asked
with simple curiosity.
Somerset involuntarily looked in her face for his answer.
Paula again teased the necklace. ‘Would you have spoken so eloquently on
the other side if I--if occasion had served?’ she inquired shyly.
‘Perhaps I would.’
Another pause, till she said, ‘I, too, was insincere.’
‘You?’
‘I was.’
‘In what way?
‘In letting him, and you, think I had been at all influenced by
authority, scriptural or patristic.’
‘May I ask, why, then, did you decline the ceremony the other evening?’
‘Ah, you, too, have heard of it!’ she said quickly.
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘I saw it.’
She blushed and looked down the river. ‘I cannot give my reasons,’ she
said.
‘Of course not,’ said Somerset.
‘I would give a great deal to possess real logical dogmatism.’
‘So would I.’
There was a moment of embarrassment: she wanted to get away, but did
not precisely know how. He would have withdrawn had she not said, as if
rather oppressed by her conscience, and evidently still thinking him
the curate: ‘I cannot but feel that Mr. Woodwell’s heart has been
unnecessarily wounded.’
‘The minister’s?’
‘Yes. He is single-mindedness itself. He gives away nearly all he has
to the poor. He works among the sick, carrying them necessaries with his
own hands. He teaches the ignorant men and lads of the village when
he ought to be resting at home, till he is absolutely prostrate from
exhaustion, and then he sits up at night writing encouraging letters
to those poor people who formerly belonged to his congregation in the
village, and have now gone away. He always offends ladies, because he
can’t help speaking the truth as he believes it; but he hasn’t offended
me!’
Her feelings had risen towards the end, so that she finished quite
warmly, and turned aside.
‘I was not in the least aware that he was such a man,’ murmured
Somerset, looking wistfully after the minister.... ‘Whatever you may
have done, I fear that I have grievously wounded a worthy man’s heart
from an idle wish to engage in a useless, unbecoming, dull, last-century
argument.’
‘Not dull,’ she murmured, ‘for it interested me.’
Somerset accepted her correction willingly. ‘It was ill-considered of
me, however,’ he said; ‘and in his distress he has forgotten his Bible.’
He went and picked up the worn volume from where it lay on the grass.
‘You can easily win him to forgive you, by just following, and returning
the book to him,’ she observed.
‘I will,’ said the young man impulsively. And, bowing to her, he
hastened along the river brink after the minister. He at length saw his
friend before him, leaning over the gate which led from the private
path into a lane, his cheek resting on the palm of his hand with every
outward sign of abstraction. He was not conscious of Somerset’s presence
till the latter touched him on the shoulder.
Never was a reconciliation effected more readily. When Somerset said
that, fearing his motives might be misconstrued, he had followed to
assure the minister of his goodwill and esteem, Mr. Woodwell held out
his hand, and proved his friendliness in return by preparing to have
the controversy on their religious differences over again from the
beginning, with exhaustive detail. Somerset evaded this with alacrity,
and once having won his companion to other subjects he found that the
austere man had a smile as pleasant as an infant’s on the rare moments
when he indulged in it; moreover, that he was warmly attached to Miss
Power.
‘Though she gives me more trouble than all the rest of the Baptist
church in this district,’ he said, ‘I love her as my own daughter. But
I am sadly exercised to know what she is at heart. Heaven supply me with
fortitude to contest her wild opinions, and intractability! But she has
sweet virtues, and her conduct at times can be most endearing.’
‘I believe it!’ said Somerset, with more fervour than mere politeness
required.
‘Sometimes I think those Stancy towers and lands will be a curse to her.
The spirit of old papistical times still lingers in the nooks of those
silent walls, like a bad odour in a still atmosphere, dulling the
iconoclastic emotions of the true Puritan. It would be a pity indeed
if she were to be tainted by the very situation that her father’s
indomitable energy created for her.’
‘Do not be concerned about her,’ said Somerset gently. ‘She’s not a
Paedobaptist at heart, although she seems so.’
Mr. Woodwell placed his finger on Somerset’s arm, saying, ‘If she’s
not a Paedobaptist, or Episcopalian; if she is not vulnerable to the
mediaeval influences of her mansion, lands, and new acquaintance, it
is because she’s been vulnerable to what is worse: to doctrines beside
which the errors of Paaedobaptists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, are
but as air.’
‘How? You astonish me.’
‘Have you heard in your metropolitan experience of a curious body of New
Lights, as they think themselves?’ The minister whispered a name to his
listener, as if he were fearful of being overheard.
‘O no,’ said Somerset, shaking his head, and smiling at the minister’s
horror. ‘She’s not that; at least, I think not.. .. She’s a woman;
nothing more. Don’t fear for her; all will be well.’
The poor old man sighed. ‘I love her as my own. I will say no more.’
Somerset was now in haste to go back to the lady, to ease her apparent
anxiety as to the result of his mission, and also because time seemed
heavy in the loss of her discreet voice and soft, buoyant look. Every
moment of delay began to be as two. But the minister was too earnest
in his converse to see his companion’s haste, and it was not till
perception was forced upon him by the actual retreat of Somerset that he
remembered time to be a limited commodity. He then expressed his wish
to see Somerset at his house to tea any afternoon he could spare, and
receiving the other’s promise to call as soon as he could, allowed the
younger man to set out for the summer-house, which he did at a smart
pace. When he reached it he looked around, and found she was gone.
Somerset was immediately struck by his own lack of social dexterity. Why
did he act so readily on the whimsical suggestion of another person, and
follow the minister, when he might have said that he would call on
Mr. Woodwell to-morrow, and, making himself known to Miss Power as the
visiting architect of whom she had heard from Miss De Stancy, have had
the pleasure of attending her to the castle? ‘That’s what any other man
would have had wit enough to do!’ he said.
There then arose the question whether her despatching him after the
minister was such an admirable act of good-nature to a good man as it
had at first seemed to be. Perhaps it was simply a manoeuvre for getting
rid of himself; and he remembered his doubt whether a certain light
in her eyes when she inquired concerning his sincerity were innocent
earnestness or the reverse. As the possibility of levity crossed
his brain, his face warmed; it pained him to think that a woman so
interesting could condescend to a trick of even so mild a complexion as
that. He wanted to think her the soul of all that was tender, and noble,
and kind. The pleasure of setting himself to win a minister’s goodwill
was a little tarnished now.