(As a matter of fact, they had not been more than good friends to each other; but then some husbands are given to unworthy suspicions.)

Could it be possible, she asked herself, that some people with nasty minds had suggested to him in Paris that she and Herbert were together a great deal in London, and that he had been led to make this sudden visit, this surprise visit to London, with a view of satisfying himself as to the truth of the nasty reports--the disgraceful calumnies which had reached his ears?

If he had done so, all that could be said was that he had been singularly unfortunate in regard to his visit. "Unfortunate" was the word which was in her mind, though, of course _"fortunate"_ was the word which should have occurred to her. It was certainly a fortunate result of his visit--that tableau in the drawing room of Mr. Ayrton: Ella and her dearest friend standing side by side, hand in hand, as he entered.

A surprise visit, it may have been, but a.s.suredly the surprise was a pleasant one for the husband, if he had listened to the voice of calumny.

And then, after pondering upon this with a smiling face, her smile suddenly vanished. She was overwhelmed with the thought of what might have been the result of that surprise visit--yes, if she had not had the strength to run away to the side of Phyllis; yes, if Herbert had not had the weakness to join that party of poker-players aboard the yacht.

She began to wonder what her husband would have done if he had entered the house by the aid of his latch-key, and had found her sitting in that lovely costume by the side of Herbert Courtland? Would he have thought her a guilty woman? Would he have thought Herbert a false friend? Would he have killed her, or would he have killed Herbert? Herbert would, she thought, take a good deal of killing from a man of the caliber of her husband; but what could she have done?

Well, what she did, as the force of that thought crushed her back upon her chair, was to bring her hands together in a pa.s.sionate clasp, and to cry in a pa.s.sionate gasp:

"Thank G.o.d--thank G.o.d--thank G.o.d!"

She dined alone with her husband that night, and thought it well to appear in another evening toilet--one that was quite as lovely, though scarcely so striking, as that which her husband had so admired the previous night. He clearly appreciated her efforts to maintain her loveliness in his eyes, and their little dinner was a very pleasant one.

He told her that he had learned that the yacht _Water Nymph_ would put in to Leith before crossing the North Sea, and that he had written to Herbert Courtland at that port to return without delay.

"You did wrong," said she; and she felt that she was speaking the truth.

"I don't think so," he replied. "At any rate, you may rest perfectly certain that Herbert will receive my letter with grat.i.tude."

And Mr. Linton's judgment on this point was not in error. Herbert Courtland received, on the evening of the third day after leaving Southampton, the letter which called him back to London, and he contrived to conceal whatever emotion he may have felt at the prospect of parting from his shipmates. They accompanied him ash.o.r.e, however--they had worn out six packs of cards already, and were about to buy another dozen or two, to see them safely through the imposing scenery of the Hardanger Fjord.

The next day he was in London, and it was on the evening of that same day that he came face to face with the Rev. George Holland outside Miss Ayrton's drawing room.

CHAPTER XXV.

LIES! LIES! LIES!

"You should have come a little sooner," said Phyllis quite pleasantly.

"Mr. Courtland was giving me such an amusing account of his latest voyage. Will you have tea or iced coffee?"

"Tea, if you please," said George Holland, also quite pleasantly. "Has Mr. Courtland been on another voyage of discovery? What has he left himself to discover in the world of waters?"

"I think that what he discovered on his latest voyage was the effect of a banjo on the human mind," laughed Phyllis. "He was aboard Lord Earlscourt's yacht, the _Water Nymph_. Some other men were there also.

One of them had an idea that he could play upon the banjo. He was wrong, Mr. Courtland thinks."

"A good many people are subject to curious notions of the same type.

They usually take an optimistic view of the susceptibilities of enjoyment of their neighbors--not that there is any connection between enjoyment and a banjo."

"Mr. Courtland said just now that when Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that music was, of all noises, the least disagreeable, the banjo had not been invented."

"That a.s.sumes that there is some connection between music and the banjo, and that's going just a little too far, don't you think?"

"I should like to hear Dr. Johnson's criticism of Paderewski."

"His criticism of Signor Piozzi is extant: a fine piece of eighteenth century directness."

"I sometimes long for an hour or two of the eighteenth century. You remember f.a.n.n.y Burney's reference to the gentleman who thought it preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good enough sort of man for a painter. I think I should like to have an hour with that man."

"I long for more than that. I should like to have seen David Garrick's reproduction, for the benefit of his schoolfellows, of Dr. Johnson's love pa.s.sages with his very mature wife. I should also like to have heard the complete story of old Grouse in the gun room."

"Told by Squire Hardcastle, of course?"

"Of course. I question if there was anything very much better aboard the _Water Nymph_. By the way, Lady Earlscourt invited me to join the yachting party. She did not mention it to her husband, however. She thought that there should be a chaplain aboard. Now, considering that Lord Earlscourt had told me the previous day that he was compelled to take to the sea solely on account of the way people were worrying him about me, I think that I did the right thing when I told her that I should be compelled to stay at home until the appearance of a certain paper of mine in the _Zeit Geist Review_."

"I'm sure that you did the right thing when you stayed at home."

"And in writing the paper in the _Zeit Geist_? You have read it?"

"Oh, yes! I have read it."

"You don't like it?"

"How could I like it? You have known me now for sometime. How could you fancy that I should like it--that is, if you thought of me at all in connection with it? I don't myself see why you should think of me at all."

He rose and stood before her. She had risen to take his empty cup from him.

"Don't you know that I think of you always, Phyllis?" he said, in that low tone of his which flowed around the hearts of his hearers, and made their hearts as one with his heart. "Don't you know that I think of you always--that all my hopes are centered in you?"

"I am so sorry if that is the case, Mr. Holland," said she. "I don't want to give you pain, but I must tell you again what I told you long ago: you have pa.s.sed completely out of my life. If you had not done so before, the publication of that article in the _Zeit Geist_ would force me to tell you that you had done so now. To me my religion has always been a living thing; my Bible has been my guide. You trampled upon the one some months ago, you have trampled on the other now. You shocked me, Mr. Holland."

"I have always loved you, Phyllis. I think I love you better than I ever did, if that were possible," said he. "I am overwhelmed with grief at the thought of the barrier which your fancy has built up between us."

"Fancy?"

"Your fancy, dear child. I feel that the barrier which you fancy is now between us is unworthy of you."

"What? Do you mean to say that you think that my detestation--my--my horror of your sneers at the Bible, which I believe to be the Word of G.o.d--of the contempt you have heaped upon the Church which I believe to be G.o.d's agent on earth for the salvation of men's souls--do you think that my detestation of these is a mere girlish fancy?"

"I don't think that, Phyllis. What I think is, that if you had ever loved me you would be ready to stand by my side now--to be guided by me in a matter which I have made the study of my life."

"In such matters as these--the value or the worthlessness of the Bible; the value or the worthlessness of the Church--I require no guide, Mr.

Holland. I do not need to go to a priest to ask if it is wrong to steal, to covet another's goods, to honor my father----Oh, I cannot discuss what is so very obvious. The Bible I regard as precious; you think that you are in a position to edit it as if it were an ordinary book. The Church I regard as the Temple of G.o.d upon the earth; you think that it exists only to be sneered at? and yet you talk of fanciful barriers between us!"

"I consider it the greatest privilege of a man on earth to be a minister of the Church of Christ."

"Why, then, do you take every opportunity of pointing to it as the greatest enemy to Christianity?"

"The Church of to-day represents some results of the great Reformation.

That Reformation was due to the intelligence of those men who perceived that it had become the enemy to freedom; the enemy to the development of thought; the enemy to the aspirations of a great nation. The nation rejoiced in the freedom of thought of which the great charter was the Reformation. But during the hundreds of years that have elapsed since that Reformation, some enormous changes have been brought about in the daily life of the people of this great nation. The people are being educated, and the Church must sooner or later face the fact that as education spreads church-going decreases. Why is that, I ask you?"

"Because men are growing more wicked every day."

"But they are not. Crime is steadily decreasing as education is spreading, and yet people will not go to church. They will go to lectures, to bands of music, to political demonstrations, but they will not go to church. The reason they will not go is because they know that they will hear within the church the arguments of men whose minds are stunted by a narrow theological course against every discovery of science or result of investigation. You know how the best minds in the Church ridiculed the discoveries of geology, of biology, ending, of course, by reluctantly accepting the teachings of the men whom they reviled."