Phyllis of Philistia Part 6

"Ah! Good-by."

"Honestly speaking, George, old man, I think you've made a mistake this time. People don't mind much about Jacob and Jonah and Jeremiah and the whole job lot of Sheenies; but they do mind about Ruth. Hang it all man!

she was a woman."

"Ah! so was Jezebel, and yet--ah! good-by. I'll be late for my appointment."

"See you on Sunday," said the earl, with a broadish smile.

And so he did.

So did the largest congregation that had ever a.s.sembled within the venerable walls of St. Chad's. They heard him also, and so did the dozen reporters of the morning papers who were present--some to describe, with the subtle facetiousness of the newspaper reporter, the amusing occurrences incidental to the church service of the day, and others to take down his sermon to the extent of half a column to be headed "The Rev. George Holland Defends Himself." One reporter, however, earned an increase in his salary by making his headline, "The Defense of Holland."

It was supposed that casual readers would fancy that the kingdom of Holland had been repelling an invader, and would not find out their mistake until they had read half through the sermon.

George Holland had not been mistaken when he had a.s.sumed that his appearance in the church and his sermon this day would attract a large amount of attention. As a matter of fact the building was crowded with notable persons: Cabinet ministers (2), judges of the superior courts (4), company promoters (47), actors and actresses (3), music hall and variety artists (22), Royal Academician (1). Literature was represented by a lady who had written a high-church novel, and fas.h.i.+on by the publisher who had produced it. Science appeared in the person of a professional thought-reader (female). These were all strangers to St.

Chad's, though some of them could follow the service quite easily. The habitues of the church included several peers, the members of a foreign emba.s.sy, a few outside brokers, quite a number of retired officers of both services, and some Members of Parliament and the London County Council.

One of the chaplains of the bishop occupied a seat in the aisle; according to the facetious newspaper he held a watching brief.

The rector was, of course, oblivious of his brilliant entourage. He could not even tell if Phyllis or her father were present. (As a matter of fact both were in their accustomed seats in their own pew.) He, as usual, took but a small part in the ritual--as Lord Earlscourt once remarked, George Holland wasn't such a fool as to keep a dog and do the barking himself. (It has already been stated that he had a couple of excellent curates.) But the sermon was preached by himself, as indeed it usually was after the morning service.

It was the most brilliant of all his efforts. He took as his text the words, "All Scripture is given by inspiration and is profitable," and he had no difficulty in showing how vast was the profit to be derived from a consideration of every portion of the sacred volume, it appeared to him, than the account given of the early history of the Hebrew race.

That account appealed as an object lesson to all nations on the face of the earth. It allowed every people to see the course which the children of Israel had pursued at various periods of their existence and to profit by such observation. The Hebrews were a terrible example to all the world. If they were slaves when in the land of Egypt, that was their own fault. Milton had magnificently expressed the origin of slavery:

"He that hath light within his own clear breast May walk i' the noontide and enjoy bright day, But he that hides dark deeds and foul thoughts.

. . . Himself is his own dungeon."

The bondage of Egypt was, he believed, self-imposed. There is no account available, he said, of the enslavement of the Children of Israel by the Egyptians, but a careful consideration of the history of various peoples shows beyond the possibility of a mistake being made, that only those become enslaved who are best fitted for enslavement. A king arose that knew not Joseph--a king who could not believe that at any time there was belonging to that race of strangers a man of supreme intelligence.

The Israelites bowed their heads to the yoke of the superior race, the Egyptians, and took their rightful place as slaves. After many days a man of extraordinary intelligence appeared in the person of Moses. A patriot of patriots, he gave the race their G.o.d--they seemed to have lived in a perfectly G.o.dless condition in Egypt; and their theology had to be constructed for them by their leader, as well as their laws: the laws for the desert wanderers, and a decalogue for all humanity. He was equal to any emergency, and he had no scruples. He almost succeeded in making a great nation out of a horde of superst.i.tious robbers. Had he succeeded the record would have thrown civilization back a thousand years. Happy it was for the world that the triumph of crime was brief.

The cement of bloodshed that kept the kingdom of Israel together for a time soon dissolved. Captivity followed captivity. For a thousand years no improvement whatever took place in the condition of the people--they had no arts; they lived in mud huts at a period when architecture reached a higher level than it had ever attained to previously. When the patriot prophets arose, endeavoring to reform them with words of fire--the sacred fire of truth--they killed them. One chance remained to them. They were offered a religion that would have purified them, in place of the superst.i.tion that had demoralized them, and they cried with one voice, as everyone who had known their history and their social characteristics knew they would cry, "Not this Man, but Barabbas." That was from the earliest period in the history of the race the watchword of the Hebrews. Not the man, but the robber. All that is good and n.o.ble and true in manhood--the mercy, the compa.s.sion, the self-sacrifice that are comprised in true manhood--they cast beneath their feet, they spat upon, they crucified; but all of the Barabbas in man they embraced. Thus are they become a hissing in the earth, and properly so; for those who hiss at the spirit which has always animated Judaism show that they abhor a thing that is abhorrent. "All Scripture is profitable," continued the preacher, "and practically all that is referred to in the text is an indictment of Judaism. The more earnestly we hold to this truth the greater will be the profit accruing to us from a consideration of the Scripture. But what more terrible indictment of the Hebrew systems could we have than that which is afforded us in the record that the father of the race had twelve sons? He had. But where are ten of them now? Swept out of existence without leaving a single record of their destruction even to their two surviving brethren." He concluded his sermon by stating that he hoped it would be clearly understood that he recognized the fact that in England those members of the Hebrew community who had adopted the methods, the principles, the truths of Christianity even though they still maintained their ancient form of wors.h.i.+p in their synagogues, were on a line with civilization. They searched their scriptures and these scriptures had been profitable to them, inasmuch as they had been taught by those scriptures how impossible it was for that form of superst.i.tion known as Judaism to be the guide for any people on the face of the earth.

CHAPTER VIII.

I HOPE THAT YOU WILL NOT EVENTUALLY MARRY AN INFIDEL.

Some of the congregation were greatly disappointed. They had expected a brilliant and startling attack upon some other Bible personages who had hitherto been looked on with respect and admiration. But the sermon had only attacked the Jewish system as a whole, and everyone knows that there is nothing piquant in an attack, however eloquent it may be, upon a religious system in the abstract. One might as well find entertainment in an attack upon the Magnetic Pole or a denunciation of the Precession of the Equinoxes. No one cared, they said, anything more about the failure of the laws of Moses than one did about such abstractions as the Earth's Axis, or the Great Glacial Epoch. It was quite different when the characters of well-known individuals were subjected to an a.s.sault.

People could listen for hours to an attack upon celebrated persons.

If Mr. Holland's book had only dealt with the characteristics of the religion of the Jews, it would never have attracted attention, these critics said. It had called for notice simply because of its trenchant remarks in regard to some of those Bible celebrities who, it was generally understood, were considered worthy of admiration.

Why could Mr. Holland not have followed up the course indicated in his book by showing up some of the other persons in the Bible? it was asked.

There were quite a number of characters in the Bible who were regarded as estimable. Why could he not then have followed up his original scheme of "showing them up?"--that was the phrase of the critics. There was Solomon, for instance. He was usually regarded as a person of high intellectual gifts; but there was surely a good deal in his career which was susceptible of piquant treatment. And then someone said that Noah should have a chapter all to himself, also Lot; and what about the spies who had entered Jericho? Could the imagination not suggest the story which they had told to their wives on their return to the camp, relative to the house in which they had pa.s.sed all their spare time? They supposed that Jericho was the Paris of the high cla.s.s Jews of those days.

Then the conversation of these critics drifted on to the Paris of to-day, and the sermon and its lessons were forgotten as easily as is an ordinary sermon. But all the same it was plain that the clergyman had fallen short of what was expected of him upon this occasion. His book had gone far, and it was felt that he should have gone one better than his book, so to speak. Instead of that his sermon had been one to which scarcely any exception could be taken.

But the bishop's chaplain, who had watched at intervals of praying, came to the conclusion that the rector of St. Chad's was a good deal cleverer than the majority of youngish clergymen who endeavor to qualify for prosecution. It may be unorthodox to cross one's arms with the regularity of clockwork on coming to certain words in the service, and young clergymen had been prosecuted for less; but it was not unorthodox to speak evil of the Jews--for did not the Church pray for the Jews daily? and can anyone insult a man more than by praying for him--unless, of course, he is a king, in which case it is understood that no insult is intended?

The bishop's chaplain prepared a report of the sermon for his lords.h.i.+p, pointing out its general harmony, broadly speaking, with the tenets of the Church.

Mr. Ayrton also seemed to perceive a sort of cleverness in the sermon.

There was nothing in it that was calculated to shock even the most susceptible hearer. Indeed, it seemed to Mr. Ayrton that there was a good deal in it that was calculated to soothe the nerves of those who had been shocked by the book. He said something to this effect to his daughter as they walked homeward. He was rather anxious to find out what chance George Holland had of being restored to his daughter's favor.

But Phyllis was firm in her condemnation of the methods of Mr. Holland.

"He attacks the Jews as a race in order to ridicule the statement in the Bible that they were G.o.d's chosen people, and they were, you know, papa," she said.

"They took so much for granted themselves, at any rate," said her father, with some show of acquiescence.

"But they were, and they are to be restored to their own land," said Phyllis.

"Are they, my dear? I should like to see the prospectus of that enterprise."

"You are mocking, papa. They are to be restored; it says so in the Bible quite clearly."

"I am not mocking, Phyllis. If gold is discovered in Palestine, the Jews may go there in some numbers; but, take my word for it, they won't go otherwise. They couldn't live in their own land, a.s.suming that it is their own, which is going pretty far. Palestine wouldn't support all the Jews alive at present; it's a wretched country--I know it well. Besides, they don't want to return to it, and furthermore, we couldn't spare them."

"I believe in the Bible, and I have faith," said Phyllis firmly.

"That's right," said her father. "I hope you may always hold to both.

I think that those girls who expect to be regarded as advanced, because they scoff at the Bible and at faith, are quite horrid. I also hope that you will not eventually marry an infidel."

"That would be impossible," said Phyllis firmly.

"Would it?" said her father. "There is a stronger influence at work in most of us, at times, than religion. I wonder if it will make a victim of you, my child, though you did send George Holland about his business."

"I don't quite know what you mean," said Phyllis, with only the slightest possible flush.

And she did not know what he meant until six months had pa.s.sed; but then she knew.

Seeing that she did not know what he meant, her father thanked Heaven that Heaven had given him a daughter who was unlike other daughters. He prayed that she might never become like other daughters. He thought that it would be good for his daughter to remain without experience of those overwhelming pa.s.sions which make up the life of a woman and a man.

Phyllis went out a good deal during the week, and everywhere she found herself looked at with interest; sometimes she found herself being examined through a _pince-nez_ as if she were a curious specimen, and a woman or two smiled derisively at her. She did not know what was meant by their curiosity--their derision--until one day an old lady named Mrs.

Haddon went up to her and kissed her, saying:

"I made up my mind that I would kiss you, my dear, the first chance I had. G.o.d bless you, my child! You have given your testimony as a woman should, in these days of scoffing at the truth."

"Testimony?" said Phyllis, quite puzzled. Had not her father felt a thrill of grat.i.tude on reflecting that she had none of the qualities of the prig about her? "Testimony?"

"You have testified to the truth, Miss Ayrton, and you shall have your reward. You have shown that the truth is more to you than--than love--the love of man--all that women hold sweet in life. You are right Miss Ayrton; and all true women must love and respect you."

Phyllis turned a very brilliant color, and kept her eyes fixed on the parquet pattern of the floor.

The dear old lady said a good deal more to her, all in praise of her act of having given Mr. Holland his _conge_ on account of his having written that shockingly unorthodox book.

By the end of the week Phyllis Ayrton was looked on as quite as much a heroine for having given Mr. Holland his _conge_, as Mr. Holland was a hero for having braved the bishop in writing the book. She wore her laurels meekly, though she had been rather embarra.s.sed when a ray of intelligence appeared among the dark sayings of the dear old lady. She could not help wondering how all the world had become possessed of the knowledge that she had said good-by to her lover. She considered if it were possible that Mr. Holland had spread abroad the account of her ill-treatment of him--he would naturally allude to it as ill-treatment.

The quick judgment of Ella Linton had enabled her to perceive how valuable to Mr. Holland was the incident of his rejection by Phyllis.

As a beginning of his persecution, its importance could scarcely be overestimated. But it did not take Phyllis long to rea.s.sure herself on this matter. It was, of course, Ella who had given the incident publicity. She had done so for two reasons: first, in order that her little afternoon At Home might have additional l.u.s.ter attached to it by the presence of a young woman who had, in these days of a marriage market overstocked with young women (and old women, for that matter), thrown over an eligible man for conscience' sake; and secondly, in order that her At Home might have additional l.u.s.ter attached to it from the presence of the man who allowed himself to be thrown over by a delightful girl rather than refrain from publis.h.i.+ng what he believed to be the truth.