Phyllis shook hands with her visitor. He sought to retain her hand, as he had been in the habit of doing, as he stood beside her with something of a proprietary air. He relinquished her hand with a little look of surprise--a sort of pained surprise. She was inexorable. She would not even allow him to maintain his proprietary air.
"Do sit down, Mr. Holland," she said.
"What! 'Mr. Holland' already? Oh, Phyllis!"
He had a good voice, full of expression--something beyond mere musical expression. People (they were mostly women) said that his voice had soul in it, whatever they meant by that.
She made no reply. What reply could she make? She only waited for him to sit down.
"Your letter came as a great shock to me, Phyllis," said he, when he had seated himself, not too close to her. He did not wish her to fancy that he was desirous of having a subtle influence of propinquity as an ally. "A great shock to me."
"A shock?" said she. "A shock, after you had written that book?"
"I fancied you would understand it, Phyllis--you, at least. Of course I expected to be misrepresented by the world--the critics--the clerics --what you will--but you---- You had not read it when you wrote that letter to me--that terrible letter. You could not have read it."
"I had only read one notice of it--that was enough."
"And you could write that letter to me solely as the evidence of one wretched print? Oh, Phyllis!"
Pain was in his voice. It may have been in his face as well, but she did not see it; his face was averted from her.
"Yes," she said quietly; "I wrote that letter, Mr. Holland. You see, the paper gave large extracts from the book. I did not come to my conclusion from what the newspaper article said, but from what you had said in your book--from the quoted passages."
"They did not do me justice. I did not look for justice at their hands. But you, Phyllis----"
"I have read your book now, Mr. Holland----"
"Ah, let me plead with you, Phyllis--not 'Mr. Holland,' I entreat of you."
"And my first thought on reading it was that I had not written to you so strongly as I should have done."
"My dear Phyllis, do not say that, I beg of you. You cannot know how you pain me."
"To be misunderstood by you--/you/."
She got upon her feet so quickly that it might almost be said she sprang up.
"/You/ must have misunderstood /me/ greatly, Mr. Holland, if you fancied that you could write such a book as you wrote and not get such a letter from me. The Bible--Ruth--and you a clergyman--reading it daily in the church---- Oh! I cannot tell you all that I thought--all that I still think."
He did not correct the mistake she had made. She had no right to accuse him of reading the Bible daily in his church. He was not in the habit of doing that--it was his curates who did it. He watched her as she stood at a window with her back turned to him. Her hands were behind her. Her breath came audibly, for she had spoken excitedly.
Then he also rose and came beside her.
"I wrote that book, as I believed you would perceive when you had read it, in order to remove from the minds of the people--those people who have not given the matter a thought--the impression--I know it prevails--that our faith--the truth of our religion--is dependent upon the acceptance as good of such persons as our very religion itself enables us to pronounce evil. My aim was to show that our faith is not built upon such a foundation of impurity--of imperfection. The spirit which prevails nowadays--the modern spirit--it is the result of the development of science. This scientific spirit necessitates the consideration of all the elements of our faith from the standpoint of reason."
"Faith--reason?"
"If the Church is to appeal to all men, its method must be scientific.
It is sad to think of all that the Church has lost in the past through the want of wisdom of those who had its best interests at heart, and believed they were doing it good service by opposing scientific research. They fancied that the faith would not survive the light of truth. They professed to believe that the faith was strong enough to work miracles--to change the heart of man, and yet that it would be jeopardized by the calculations of astronomers. The astronomers were prohibited from calculating; the geologists were forbidden to unearth the mysteries of their science, lest the discovery of the truth should be detrimental to the faith. They believed that the truth was opposed to the faith. Warning after warning the Church received that the two were one; that man would only accept the truth, whether it came from the lips of the churchman or from the investigations of science.
