A Laodicean : A Story of To-day. Thomas Hardy
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happened that Somerset had been over this ground long ago. Born, so to speak, a High-Church infant, in his youth he had been of a thoughtful turn, till at one time an idea of his entering the Church had been entertained by his parents. He had formed acquaintance with men of almost every variety of doctrinal practice in this country; and, as the pleadings of each assailed him before he had arrived at an age of sufficient mental stability to resist new impressions, however badly substantiated, he inclined to each denomination as it presented itself, was
‘Everything by starts, and nothing long,’
till he had travelled through a great many beliefs and doctrines without feeling himself much better than when he set out.
A study of fonts and their origin had qualified him in this particular subject. Fully conscious of the inexpediency of contests on minor ritual differences, he yet felt a sudden impulse towards a mild intellectual tournament with the eager old man – purely as an exercise of his wits in the defence of a fair girl.
‘Sir, I accept your challenge to us,’ said Somerset, advancing to the minister’s side.
At the sound of a new voice the lady in the bower started, as he could see by her outline through the crevices of the wood-work and creepers. The minister looked surprised.
‘You will lend me your Bible, sir, to assist my memory?’ he continued.
The minister held out the Bible with some reluctance, but he allowed Somerset to take it from his hand. The latter, stepping upon a large moss-covered stone which stood near, and laying his hat on a flat beech bough that rose and fell behind him, pointed to the minister to seat himself on the grass. The minister looked at the grass, and looked up again at Somerset, but did not move.
Somerset for the moment was not observing him. His new position had turned out to be exactly opposite the open side of the bower, and now for the first time he beheld the interior. On the seat was the woman who had stood beneath his eyes in the chapel, the ‘Paula’ of Miss De Stancy’s enthusiastic eulogies. She wore a summer hat, beneath which her fair curly hair formed a thicket round her forehead. It would be impossible to describe her as she then appeared. Not sensuous enough for an Aphrodite, and too subdued for a Hebe, she would yet, with the adjunct of doves or nectar, have stood sufficiently well for either of those personages, if presented in a pink morning light, and with mythological scarcity of attire.
Half in surprise she glanced up at him; and lowering her eyes again, as if no surprise were ever let influence her actions for more than a moment, she sat on as before, looking past Somerset’s position at the view down the river, visible for a long distance before her till it was lost under the bending trees.
Somerset turned over the leaves of the minister’s Bible, and began: —
‘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,