"Well, how women can listen to bosh of that kind I can not imagine! What can it matter to you what he disbelieves or why he disbelieves it? And it is beastly cheek of him to suppose that it can."
"But he is right in supposing it, and it does matter to me. I like to know how old-fashioned truths accord or do not accord with modern phases of thought."
"Modern phases of nonsense, you mean! Well, the old-fashioned truths are good enough for me, and I"ll stick to them, if you please, in spite of Mr. Tremaine"s overwhelming arguments; and I should advise you to stick to them, too."
"Oh! Chris, I wish you wouldn"t be so disagreeable." And Elisabeth sighed. "It is so difficult to talk to you when you are like this."
"I"m not disagreeable," replied Christopher mendaciously; "only I can not let you be taken in by a stuck-up fool without trying to open your eyes; I shouldn"t be your friend if I could." And he actually believed that this was the case. He forgot that it is not the trick of friendship, but of love, to make "a corner" in affection, and to monopolize the whole stock of the commodity.
"You see," Elisabeth explained, "I am so frightfully modern, and yet I have been brought up in such a dreadfully old-fashioned way. It was all very well for the last generation to accept revealed truth without understanding it, but it won"t do for us."
"Why not?"
"Oh! because we are young and modern."
"So were they at one time, and we shall not be so for long."
Elisabeth sighed again. "How difficult you are! Of course, the sort of religion that did for Cousin Maria and Mr. Smallwood won"t do for Mr.
Tremaine and me. Can"t you see that?"
"I can not, I am sorry to say."
"Their religion had no connection with their intellects."
"Still, it changed their hearts, which I have heard is no unimportant operation."
"They accepted what they were told without trying to understand it,"
Elisabeth continued, "which is not, after all, a high form of faith."
"Indeed. I should have imagined that it was the highest."
"But can"t you see that to accept blindly what you are told is not half so great as to sift it all, and to separate the chaff from the wheat, and to find the kernel of truth in the sh.e.l.l of tradition?" Elisabeth had not talked to Alan Tremaine for over a year without learning his tricks of thought and even of expression. "Don"t you think that it is better to believe a little with the whole intellect than a great deal apart from it?"
Christopher looked obstinate. "I can"t and don"t."
"Have you no respect for "honest doubt"?"
"Honest bosh!"
Elisabeth"s face flushed. "You really are too rude for anything."
Christopher was penitent at once; he could not bear really to vex her.
"I am sorry if I was rude; but it riles me to hear you quoting Tremaine"s plat.i.tudes by the yard--such rotten plat.i.tudes as they are, too!"
"You don"t do Mr. Tremaine justice, Chris. Even though he may have outgrown the old faiths, he is a very good man; and he has such lovely thoughts about truth and beauty and love and things like that."
"His thoughts are nothing but empty windbags; for he is the type of man who is too ignorant to accept truth, too blind to appreciate beauty, and too selfish to be capable of loving any woman as a woman ought to be loved."
"I think his ideas about love are quite ideal," persisted the girl.
"Only yesterday he was abusing the selfishness of men in general, and saying that a man who is really in love thinks of the woman he loves as well as of himself."
"He said that, did he? Then he was mistaken."
Elisabeth looked surprised. "Then don"t you agree with him that a man in love thinks of the woman as well as of himself?"
"No; I don"t. A man who is really in love never thinks of himself at all, but only of the woman. It strikes me that Master Alan Tremaine knows precious little about the matter."
"I think he knows a great deal. He said that love was the discovery of the one woman whereof all other women were but types. That really was a sweet thing to say!"
"My dear Betty, you know no more about the matter than he does. Falling in love doesn"t merely mean that a man has found a woman who is dearer to him than all other women, but that he has found a woman who is dearer to him than himself."
Elisabeth changed her ground. "I admit that he isn"t what you might call orthodox," she said--"not the sort of man who would clothe himself in the rubric, tied on with red tape; but though he may not be a Christian, as we count Christianity, he believes with all his heart in an overruling Power which makes for righteousness."
"That is very generous of him," retorted Christopher; "still, I can not for the life of me see that the possession of three or four thousand a year, without the trouble of earning it, gives a man the right to patronize the Almighty."
"You are frightfully narrow, Chris."
"I know I am, and I am thankful for it. I had rather be as narrow as a plumbing-line than indulge in the sickly lat.i.tudinarianism that such men as Tremaine nickname breadth."
"Oh! I am tired of arguing with you; you are too stupid for anything."
"But you haven"t been arguing--you have only been quoting Tremaine verbatim; and that that may be tiring I can well believe."
"Well, you can call it what you like; but by any other name it will irritate you just as much, because you have such a horrid temper. Your religion may be very orthodox, but I can not say much for its improving qualities; it is the crossest, nastiest, narrowest, disagreeablest sort of religion that I ever came across."
And Elisabeth walked away in high dudgeon, leaving Christopher very angry with himself for having been disagreeable, and still angrier with Tremaine for having been the reverse.
CHAPTER VI
WHIT MONDAY
Light shadows--hardly seen as such-- Crept softly o"er the summer land In mute caresses, like the touch Of some familiar hand.
"I want to give your work-people a treat," said Tremaine to Elisabeth, in the early summer.
"That is very nice of you; but this goes without saying, as you are always planning and doing something nice. I shall be very glad for our people to have a little pleasure, as at present the annual tea-meeting at East Lane Chapel seems to be their one and only dissipation; and although tea-meetings may be very well in their way, they hardly seem to fulfil one"s ideal of human joy."
"Ah! you have touched upon a point to which I was coming," said Alan earnestly; "it is wonderful how often our minds jump together! Not only am I anxious to give the Osierfield people something more enjoyable than a tea-meeting--I also wish to eliminate the tea-meeting spirit from their idea of enjoyment."
"How do you mean?" It was noteworthy that while Elisabeth was always ready to teach Christopher, she was equally willing to learn from Alan.
"I mean that I want to show people that pleasure and religion have nothing to do with each other. It always seems to me such a mistake that the pleasures of the poor--the innocent pleasures, of course--are generally inseparable from religious inst.i.tutions. If they attend a tea-party, they open it with prayer; if they are taken for a country drive, they sing hymns by the way."
"Oh! but I think they do this because they like it, and not because they are made to do it," said Elisabeth eagerly.