"But why, Dora--why not let things stop just as they are? What is the use of bringing all these things up again and making misery for everybody?"
"Simply because the truth should be known, because a man who has done another the greatest possible injury should not be allowed to remain his friend even in appearance. The truth ought to be told, and it must be told."
"Very well," said Carol, "tell it, Dora, after I am gone. I have told him all the truth, but you know I am like a girl coming out of h.e.l.l into heaven."
"And do you think that I would spoil your heaven?" said Dora. "No, you are too good for that."
"I am not half so good as you," said Carol. "I have only had infinitely more good fortune than I deserve."
"I don"t think that," replied Dora. "I have known you too long and too well. I believe, after all, that everyone does get in this world just about what they deserve if everything was understood, which of course it isn"t; but I am quite certain about you. Good-night, Carol, and pleasant dreams--as of course they will be if you have any."
"Good-night, Dora!" laughed Carol, with one of her swift changes of manner. "By the way, I have quite forgotten to ask you how you like Mr.
Ernshaw?"
Dora looked at her straight in the eyes for a moment, her cheeks flushed ever so slightly, and she said almost stiffly:
"I am afraid, Carol, you have begun to dream already."
As the door closed Carol went and stood in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe, and still smiling at herself, as well she might, she said:
"Well, it is all very wonderful, and part of it very terrible, and I certainly have got a great deal more than I deserve. If Dora only gets what she deserves it will make things a little more equal.
Good-night--Mrs. Rayburn!"
CHAPTER XXII.
On the following Sunday evening London had another theological sensation. The National Secular Society had advertised far and wide that the preacher of the famous sermon at St. Chrysostom had consented to deliver an address at the Hall of Science, and that the chair was to be taken by the President of the Society, who was one of the most eloquent and uncompromising exponents of free-thought and rationalism in the world.
Not only in the Anglican churches but also among Catholics and Nonconformists a perfect tempest of indignation had burst forth during the past few days. A hurriedly summoned but crowded meeting was held at Exeter Hall on the same night that Vane had welcomed Carol and her lover into the family circle. It was mainly expressive of evangelical opinion, and was addressed with indignant eloquence by several of the princ.i.p.al Low Church and Nonconformist divines in London. Their princ.i.p.al theme was ritualism and atheism, with special reference to the connection that appeared to exist between them in the person of the Rev. Vane Maxwell.
To begin with, he had joined a confraternity of Anglican priests whose practises were notoriously and admittedly illegal, and he had taken advantage of his position in the pulpit to preach a sermon which had sent a thrill of indignation through the hearts of all the most generous supporters of Church and mission work throughout the United Kingdom and abroad.
He had taken upon himself to put a brutally literal construction on the words of Christ which it would be absolutely impossible to carry out in practice unless the whole of Christendom were pauperised--and what, then, would become of the work of the churches, and, particularly, of those vast missionary movements which had spread the light of Christianity in so many dark places of the earth? How would they continue to exist without the vast sums which Christians of wealth so generously contributed? What was to happen, even to the churches of all denominations in England itself, if they accepted the preposterous doctrine that a man could not enjoy the fruit of his own labour, or inherit that of his ancestors, and at the same time remain a Christian?
It was totally out of the question, far beyond the bounds of all practical common sense, and therefore it could not be Christian, since, if such a doctrine were true, Christianity would be impossible.
And now, not content with preaching from a Christian pulpit a heresy which, if accepted by Christians, would make Christianity a practical impossibility, this headstrong, unthinking visionary, reckless of all the best traditions of his Church and his cloth, was going to address an a.s.sembly of infidels and atheists, and, as a minister of the Gospel, make friends with those who blasphemed the name of G.o.d every time they used it, and did their utmost to destroy the edifice of Christianity and to uproot the foundations of the Christian faith.
It was monstrous, it was horrible, and the general sense of the speeches, and of the resolutions which were unanimously and enthusiastically carried at the end of the meeting, was that the man who could preach heresy in a Christian pulpit, then, the next Sunday, a.s.sociate himself deliberately with infidels and atheists, was not worthy to remain within the fold of the Christian Ministry.
Of course, the speeches were duly reported in the papers the next morning with, in some cases, a considerable amount of editorial embroidery, and nowhere were they read with greater interest than at the breakfast-table of Sir Arthur"s house in Warwick Gardens, especially as, side by side with them, came the announcement that another meeting of protest was to be held at St. James"s Hall on the Sat.u.r.day evening, under the auspices of a committee of members of the English Church Union. The chair was to be taken by Canon Thornton-Moore, and several of the leading lights of High Anglicanism were to speak.
"What a very wicked person you must be, Vane," said Carol, who had swiftly skimmed through some of the speeches and the comments on them.
"The Low Church people seem to have excommunicated you altogether, and now the High Church are going to do it. Why don"t you go to this meeting to-night and give them a bit of your mind? I believe they are all frightened of you and your new doctrines, and that is why they are making such a fuss about it."
"My doctrines are not new, Carol," replied Vane, with a smile which seemed to her very gentle and sweet. "They are just as old as Christianity itself, and they are not mine, but the Master"s. No, I don"t think I shall go to the meeting. I am afraid there will be quite trouble enough without me, and, besides, personal controversy seldom does any good at all. I only hope, indeed, that these good people will keep away from the Hall of Science on Sunday night. It is the greatest of pities that it was made public. I simply wanted to have a quiet talk with the usual audience."
"I am afraid you won"t have many more quiet talks with any audiences now, Vane," laughed Sir Arthur. "This sudden jump that you have made into fame has made it impossible. You will have to pay the usual penalty of greatness."
"It appears," said Carol, "in this case, to be mostly abuse and misunderstanding."
"I don"t think there is much misunderstanding, Carol," said Dora. "It seems to me to be quite the other way about. These people understand Mr.
Maxwell only too well for their own comfort. They see quite plainly that if he is right, as, of course, he is, wealth and real Christianity cannot go together; therefore, equally, of course, fat livings and bishoprics and archbishoprics at ten and fifteen thousand a year will also be impossible. It may be very wicked to say so, but I think a lot of these good people are worrying themselves much more about salaries and endowments and that sort of thing than real Christianity."
"Of course they are," said Carol. "I wonder how many of them will do what Vane has done, give up everything he had----"
"My dear Carol," interrupted Vane, gently, "that is not quite the point.
You must remember that these men have their opinions just as I have mine, and they may not think it their duty to do that. I do not believe that it is right for a man to be a priest of the Church and possess more than the actual necessaries of life. They believe that it is right."
"And a very convenient belief, too!" said Carol, with a look of admiration. "Well, I am not as charitable as you are, and I don"t believe that they do believe it. Now, there"s Cecil and the carriage.
Dear me! how very punctual he is."
"There"s not much to wonder at in that," said Sir Arthur. "Well, now, I suppose you young ladies are going to have a morning in Paradise--the one that is bounded by Oxford Street on the north and Piccadilly on the south. Vane, we will go and have a cigar with Mr. Rayburn while they are getting ready."
The meeting at St. James"s Hall was much less crowded, and, as some thought, much more decorous than the one at Exeter Hall. Canon Thornton-Moore, a man of stately presence, high social standing and very considerable wealth--he had married the daughter of one of the most successful operators in the Kaffir Circus--made an ideal chairman. He was a High Churchman and the son of a Bishop. He was the incarnation of the most aristocratic section of the Anglican Church. He was supported by the presence of a Duke and two High Church peers on the platform, and half a dozen vicars and curates, all eloquent preachers and fashionable exponents of ritualistic doctrine, were announced to speak in advocacy of the protest which the meeting had been called to make.
The proceedings were very quiet and dignified--and very churchy. It was the Church from beginning to end; it never seemed to strike either the speakers or the audience that there was anything that might fairly be called Christianity outside the Church. In fact, the words Christ and Christianity were not used at all from the platform.
The only approach to unseemliness occurred when, in response to a formal intimation that "discussion within reasonable limits" would be permitted, one of the Kilburn Sisters, a woman who had given up a fortune and relinquished a t.i.tle, got up and asked the chairman point-blank what _his_ interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount was, and further, if any of the n.o.ble and reverend gentlemen on the platform could give a better exposition of it as a rule of Christian life than Vane Maxwell had done?
She had hardly uttered her question before murmurs of angry protest began to run from lip to lip through the hall; but when she went on to ask why the preacher of the now famous sermon should be denounced by his fellow priests for giving an address to free-thinkers in a free-thought hall, when Christ himself, for his own good purposes, a.s.sociated himself with publicans and sinners and thought none too low or too utterly lost to take by the hand, her voice was at once drowned by a chorus of "Oh!
Oh"s!" amidst which the chairman rose and said in his most dignified manner:
"I hope that I have the sense and feeling of the meeting with me when I say that the questions asked by our most respected sister seem to have been asked under a total misconception of the circ.u.mstances. It is obvious that they raise issues which could not possibly be discussed in such a place, and on such an occasion as this. I would remind our dear friend that this edifice is not a church, and this platform not a pulpit; and that, therefore, I do not feel myself justified, even if time and other circ.u.mstances permitted, to enter upon a doctrinal subject which involves so many far-reaching considerations as this one does."
The Canon sat down amidst a many-voiced murmur of approval, and the Duke said audibly to him:
"A very proper way, my dear Canon, of dealing with a most improper question. The dear lady seems to think that we are not capable of reading our Bibles for ourselves."
After that the chairman put to the meeting the resolution of protest to the effect that if the Reverend Vane Maxwell persisted in carrying out his intention to proceed from a pulpit of the church to the platform of an infidel lecture hall, he would make it the painful duty of his canonical superiors to take his conduct into most serious consideration, and, further, should he persist in this deplorable resolution, he would arouse the gravest suspicions in the minds of all loyal churchmen as to his fitness for dispensing the sacred functions of his office.
The Kilburn Sister and a few others walked out amidst a chilling silence, and under a silent fire of glances which ought to have made them feel very uncomfortable. Perhaps it did.
The resolution was put and pa.s.sed without a dissentient voice, and when the proceedings were over and Lady Canore, who had been one of the most energetic organisers of the meeting, got back into her carriage, she said to her husband:
"I think the dear Canon"s reply was most dignified and proper. That woman ought to be ashamed of herself--and a Kilburn Sister, too! Donald, I shall certainly go and hear what this Mr. Maxwell has to say to these--ah--these people at, where is it? the Hall of what? Oh, yes!
Science, and you must manage to get a seat. I believe you pay for them just as you do in a theatre. It is, of course, very shocking, but I think it will be most interesting."
A good many other members of the audience said practically the same thing in other ways, and so it came about that the Hall in Old Street was packed as it had not been since the most famous days of Charles Bradlaugh, and packed, too, with a most strangely a.s.sorted audience of democrats and aristocrats, socialists and landowners, freethinkers of the deistic, the atheistic, and the agnostic persuasions, and Christians of even more varying shades of opinion, from the most rigidly Calvinistic evangelical, to the most artistically emotional of the High Anglican cult.
The President rose amidst the usual applause, but it hushed the moment he began to speak, in clear incisive tones which sent every syllable distinctly from end to end of the hall:
"Friends, I intend to say very little, because we are going to hear to-night what we very seldom hear in a secular lecture-hall. We are going to hear an address which you are waiting for as eagerly as I am, an address delivered by a man who, as a Priest of the Church of England, last Sunday sent a thrill of astonishment, of amazement, I might almost say of horror, through Christian England."
A burst of applause, coming chiefly from the back of the hall, interrupted the speaker, but he put his hand up, and went on: