When George Holland received his two letters and read them he laid them side by side and asked himself what each of them meant.
Well, he could make a pretty good guess as to what the bishop’s meant. The bishop meant business. But what did Mr. Linton want with him? Mr. Linton was a business man, perhaps he meant business too. Business men occasionally mean business; they more frequently only pretend to do so, in order to put off their guard the men they are trying to get the better of.
He would have an interview with the bishop; so much was certain; and that interview was bound to be a difficult one—for the bishop. It was with some degree of pride that he anticipated the conflict. He would withdraw nothing that he had written. Let all the forces of the earth be leagued against him, he would abate not a jot—not a jot. (By the forces of the earth he meant the Bench of Bishops, which was scarcely doing justice to the bishops—or to the forces of the earth.)
Yes, they might deprive him of his living, but that would make no difference to him. Not a jot—not a jot! They might persecute him to the death. He would be faithful unto death to the truths he had endeavored to spread abroad. He felt that they were truths.
But that other letter, which also asked for an interview at his earliest convenience the next day, was rather more puzzling to George Holland. He had never had any but the most casual acquaintance with Mr. Linton—such an acquaintance as one has with one’s host at a house where one has occasionally dined. He had dined at Mr. Linton’s house more than once; but then he had been seated in such proximity to Mrs. Linton as necessitated his remoteness from Mr. Linton. Therefore he had never had a chance of becoming intimate with that gentleman. Why, then, should that gentleman desire an early interview with him?
It was certainly curious that within a few minutes of his having referred to Mrs. Linton, in the presence of Phyllis Ayrton, in a way that had had a very unhappy result so far as he was concerned, he should receive a letter from Mrs. Linton’s husband asking for an early interview.
He seated himself in his study chair and began to think what the writer of that letter might have to say to him.
He had not to ask himself if it was possible that Mr. Linton might have a word or two to say to him, respecting the word or two which he, George Holland, had just said about Mrs. Linton; for George knew very well that, though during the previous week or two he had heard some persons speaking lightly of Mrs. Linton, coupling her name with the name of Herbert Courtland, yet he had never had occasion to couple their names together except during the previous half hour, so that it could not be Mr. Linton’s intention to take him to task, so to speak, for his indiscretion—his slander, Phyllis might be disposed to term it.
Upon that point he was entirely satisfied. But he was not certain that Mr. Linton did not want to consult him on some matter having more or less direct bearing upon the coupling together of the names of Mrs. Linton and Mr. Courtland. People even in town are fond of consulting clergymen upon curious personal matters—matters upon which a lawyer or a doctor should rather be consulted. He himself had never encouraged such confidences. What did he keep curates for? His curates had saved him many a long hour of talk with inconsequent men and illogical women who had come to him with their stories. What were to him the stories of men whose wives were giving them trouble? What were to him the stories of wives who had difficulties with their housemaids or who could not keep their boys from reading pirate literature? His curates managed the domestic department of his church for him. They could give any earnest inquirer at a moment’s notice the addresses of several civil-spoken women (elderly) who went out as mother’s helps by the day. They were very useful young men and professed to like this work. He would not do them the injustice to believe that they spoke the truth in that particular way.
He could not fancy for what purpose Mr. Linton wished to see him. But he made up his mind that, if Mr. Linton was anxious that his wife should be remonstrated with, he, George Holland, would decline to accept the duty of remonstrating with her. He was wise enough to know that he did not know very much about womankind; but he knew too much to suppose that there is any more thankless employment than remonstrating with an extremely pretty woman on any subject, but particularly on the subject of a very distinguished man to whom she considers herself bound by ties of the truest friendship.
But then there came upon him with the force of a great shock the recollection of what Phyllis had said to him on this very point:
“If Ella Linton were wicked, you should be held responsible for it in the sight of God.”
Those were her words, and those words cut asunder the last strand of whatever tie there had been between him and Phyllis.
His duty as a clergyman intrusted with the care of the souls of the people, he had neglected that, she declared with startling vehemence. He had been actuated by vanity in publishing his book—his article in the Zeit Geist Review—she had said so; but there she had been wrong. He felt that she had done him a great injustice in that particular statement, and he tried to make his sense of this injustice take the place of the uneasy feeling of which he was conscious, when he thought over her other words. He knew that he was not actuated by vanity in adopting the bold course that was represented by his writings. He honestly believed that his efforts were calculated to work a great reform in the Church. If not in the Church, outside it.
But his duty in regard to the souls of the people——Oh! it was the merest sophistry to assume that such responsibility on the part of a clergyman is susceptible of being particularized. It should, he felt, be touched upon, if at all, in a very general way. Did that young woman expect that he should preach a sermon to suit the special case of every individual soul intrusted (according to her absurd theory) to his keeping?
The idea was preposterous; it could not be seriously considered for a moment. She had allowed herself to be carried away by her affection for her friend to make accusations against him, in which even she herself would not persist in her quieter moments.
He found it quite easy to prove that Phyllis had been in the wrong and that he was in the right; but this fact did not prevent an intermittent recurrence during the evening of that feeling of uneasiness, as those words of the girl, “If Ella Linton were wicked, you would be held responsible for it in the sight of God,” buzzed in his ears.
“Would she have me become an ordinary clergyman of the Church of England?” he cried indignantly, as he switched on the light in his bedroom shortly before midnight—for the rushlight in the cell of the modern man of God is supplied at a strength of so many volts. “Would she have me become the model country parson, preaching to the squire and other yokels on Sunday, and chatting about their souls to wheezy Granfer this, and Gammer that?” He had read the works of Mr. Thomas Hardy. “Does she suppose that I was made for such a life as that? Poor Phyllis! When will she awake from this dream of hers?”
Did he fancy that he loved her still? or was the pain that he felt, when he reflected that he had lost her, the result of his wounded vanity—the result of his feeling that people would say he had not had sufficient skill, with all his cleverness, to retain the love of the girl who had promised to be his wife?
Before going to bed he had written replies to the two letters. The bishop had suggested an early hour for their interview—he had named eleven o’clock as convenient to himself, if it would also suit Mr. Holland. Two o’clock was the hour suggested by Mr. Linton, if that hour would not interfere with the other engagements of Mr. Holland; so he had written agreements to the suggestions of both his correspondents.
At eleven o’clock exactly he drove through the gates of the Palace of the bishop, and with no faltering hand pulled the bell. (So, he reflected for an instant,—only an instant,—Luther had gone, somewhere or other, he forgot at the moment what was the exact locality; but the occasion had been a momentous one in the history of the Church.)
He was cordially greeted by the bishop, who said:
“How do you do, Holland? I took it for granted that you were an early riser—that’s why I ventured to name eleven.”
“No hour could suit me better to-day,” said George, accepting the seat—he perceived at once that it was a genuine Chippendale chair upholstered in old red morocco—to which his lordship made a motion with his hand. He did not, however, seat himself until the bishop had occupied, which he did very comfortably, the corresponding chair at the side of the study desk.
“I was anxious to have a chat with you about that book, and that article of yours in the Zeit Geist, Holland,” said the bishop. “I wish you had written neither.”
“Litera scripta manet,” said George, with a smile.
One may quote Latin in conversation with a bishop without being thought a prig. In a letter to the Times and in conversation with a bishop are the only two occasions in these unclassical days when one may safely quote Latin or Greek.
“That’s the worst of it,” said the prelate, with a shake of his head that was Early Norman. “Yes, you see a book isn’t like a sermon. People don’t remember a man’s sermons against him nowadays; they do his books, however.”
“I am quite ready to accept the conditions of modern life, my lord,” said George.
“I was anxious to give you my opinion as early as possible,” resumed the bishop, “and that is, that what you have just published—the book and the Zeit Geist article—reflect—yes, in no inconsiderable measure—what I have long thought.”
“I am flattered, indeed, my lord.”
“You need not be, Holland. I believe that there are a large number of thinking men in the Church who are trying to solve the problem with which you have so daringly grappled—the problem of how to induce intellectual men and women to attend the services of the church. I’m afraid that there is a great deal of truth in what you say about the Church herself bearing responsibility for the existence of this problem.”
“There is no setting aside that fact, my lord.”
“Alas! that short-sighted policy has been the Church’s greatest enemy from the earliest period. You remember what St. Augustine says? Ah, never mind just now. About your book—that’s the matter before us just now. I must say that I don’t consider the present time the most suitable for the issue of that book, or that article in the Zeit Geist. You meant them to be startling. Well, they are startling. There are some complaints—nervous complaints—that require to be startled out of the system; that’s a phrase of Sir Richard’s. He made use of it in regard to my neuralgia. ‘We must surprise it out of the system,’ said he, ‘with a large dose of quinine.’ The phrase seemed to me to be a very striking one. But the Church is not neurotic. You cannot apply the surprise method to her system with any chance of success. That is wherein the publication of your article seems to me to be—shall we call it premature? It is calculated to startle; but you cannot startle people into going to church, my dear Holland, and that is, of course, the only object you hope to achieve. Your book and your article were written with the sole object of bringing intelligent people to church. But it occurs to me, and I think it will occur to you also, that if the article be taken seriously,—and it is meant to be taken seriously,—it may be the means of keeping people away from the Church rather than bringing them to church. It may even be the means of alienating from that fond, if somewhat foolish old mother of ours, many of her children who are already attached to her. I trust I don’t speak harshly.”
“Your lordship speaks most kindly; but the truth—”
“Should be spoken as gently as possible when it is calculated to wound, Holland; that is why I trust I am speaking gently now. Ah, Holland! there are the little children to be considered as well as the Scribes and Pharisees. There are weaker brethren. You have heard of the necessity for considering the weaker brethren.”
“I seem to have heard of nothing else since I entered the Church; all the brethren are the weaker brethren.”
“They are; I am one of the weaker brethren myself. It is all a question of comparison. I don’t say that your article is likely to have the effect of causing me to join the band of non-church-goers. I don’t at this moment believe that it will drive me to golf instead of Gospel; but I honestly do believe that it is calculated to do that to hundreds of persons who just now require but the smallest grain of argument to turn the balance of their minds in favor of golf. Your aim was not in that direction, I’m sure, Holland.”
“My aim was to speak the truth, my lord.”
“In order to achieve a noble object—the gathering of the stragglers into the fold.”
“That was my motive, my lord.”
“You announce boldly that this old mother of ours is in a moribund condition, in order that you may gather in as many of her scattered children as possible to stand at her bedside? Ah, my dear Holland! the moribund brings together the wolves and the vultures and all unclean, hungry things to try and get a mouthful off those prostrate limbs of hers—a mouthful while her flesh is still warm. I tell you this—I who have from time to time during the last fifty years heard the howl of the hyena, seen the talons of the vulture at the door of her chamber. They fancied that the end could not be far off, that no more strength was left in that aged body that lay prone for the moment. But I have heard the howling wane into the distance and get lost in the outer darkness when the old Church roused herself and went forth to face the snarling teeth—the eager talons. There is life in this mighty old mother of ours still. New life comes to her, not as it did to the fabled hero of old, by contact with the earth, but by communing with heaven. The bark of the wolf, the snarl of the hyena, may be heard in the debate which the Government have encouraged in the House of Commons on the Church. Philistia rejoices. Let the movers in this obscene tumult look to themselves. Have they the confidence of the people even as the Church has that confidence? Let them put it to the test. I tell you, George Holland, the desert and the ditch, whose vomit those men are who now move against us in Parliament, shall receive them once more before many months have passed. The Church on whom they hoped to prey shall witness their dispersal, never again to return. I know the signs. I know what the present silence throughout the country means. The champion of God and the Church has drawn his breath for the conflict. His teeth are set—his weapon is in his hand—you will see the result within a year. We shall have a government in power, a government whose power will not be dependent on the faddists and the self-seekers—the ignorant, the blatant bellowers of pitiful platitudes, the platform loafers who call themselves labor-leaders, but whom the real laborers repudiate. Mark my words, their doom is sealed; back to the desert and the ditch! My dear Holland, pardon this digression. I feel that I need say nothing more to you than I have already said. The surprise system of therapeutics is not suited to the existing ailments of the Church. Caution is what is needed if you would not defeat your own worthy object, which, I know, is to give fresh vitality to the Church.”
“That is certainly my object, my lord; only let me say that—”
“My dear Holland, I will not let you say anything. I asked you to come here this morning in order that you might hear me. That is all that is necessary for the present. Perhaps, upon some future occasion, I may have the privilege of hearing you in a discourse of some greater length than that which I have just inflicted upon you. I have given you my candid opinion of your writings, and you know that is the opinion of a man who has but one object in life—you know that it is the opinion of an old man who has seen the beginning and the end of many movements in society and in the Church, and who has learned that the Church, for all her decrepitude, is yet the most stable thing that the world has seen. I have to thank you for coming to me, Holland.”
“Your lordship has spoken to me with the greatest kindness,” said George Holland, as his spiritual father offered him his hand.
In a few minutes he was in his hansom once more.
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