Mrs. Chadwick hesitated: “A Dissenter?” she ventured. “There are so many sects in America I’ve heard. Though I met a very charming American bishop once.”
“No—not a Dissenter; if you mean by that a Presbyterian or a Methodist or a Swedenborgian,” said Miss Toner, shaking her head.
Palgrave had now joined them and stood on the step above her. She smiled round and up at him.
Mrs. Chadwick, her distress alleviated yet her perplexity deepened, ventured further: “You are a Christian, I hope, dear?”
“Oh, not at all,” said Miss Toner gravely now and very kindly. “Not in any orthodox way, I mean. Not in any way that an American bishop or your Mr. Bodman would acknowledge. I recognize Christ as a great teacher, as a great human soul; one of the very greatest; gone on before. But I don’t divide the human from the divine in the way the churches do; creeds mean nothing to me, and I’d rather say my prayers out of doors on a day like this, in the sunlight, than in any church. I feel nearer God alone in His great world, than in any church built with human hands. But we must all follow our own light.” She spoke in her flat, soft voice, gravely but very simply; and she looked affectionately at her hostess as she added: “You wouldn’t want me to come with you from mere conformity.”
Poor Mrs. Chadwick, standing, her brood about her, in the sweet Sabbath sunlight, had to Oldmeadow’s eye an almost comically arrested air. How was a creedless, churchless mistress of Coldbrooks to be fitted in to her happy vision of Barney’s future? What would the village say to a squiress who never went to church and who said her prayers in the sunlight alone? “But, of course, better alone,” he seemed to hear her cogitate, “than that anyone should see her doing such a very curious thing.” And aloud she did murmur: “Of course not; of course not, dear. And if you go into the little arbour down by the lake no one will disturb you, I’m sure. Must it be quite in the open? Mere conformity is such a shallow thing. But all the same I should like the rector to come and talk things over with you. He’s such a good man and very, very broad-minded. He brings science so often into his sermons—sometimes I think the people don’t quite follow it all; and only the other day he said to me, about modern unrest and scepticism:
‘There is more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.’
Mamma met Lord Tennyson once and felt him to be a deeply religious man—though rather ill-tempered; he was really very rude to her, I always thought, and I do so dislike rudeness.—And travelling about so much, dear, you probably had so little teaching.”
Miss Toner’s eyes were incapable of irony and they only deepened now in benevolence as they rested on her hostess. “But I haven’t any doubts,” she said, shaking her head and smiling: “No doubts at all. You reach the truth through your church and I reach it through nature and love and life. And the beautiful thing is that it’s the same truth, really; the same beautiful truth that God loves us all, and that we are all the children of God. I should be very pleased to meet your rector, of course, because I like meeting anyone who is good and true. But I was taught. My mother taught me always. And she was the freest, wisest soul I have ever known.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said Palgrave suddenly from his place on the step above her. His eyes, over her shoulder, had met Oldmeadow’s and perhaps what he saw in the old friend’s face determined his testimony. “Church means nothing to me, either; and less than nothing. I’m not so charitable as you are, and don’t think all roads lead to truth. Some lead away, I think. You know perfectly well, Mummy, that the dear old rector is a regular duffer and you slept all through the sermon the last time I went; you did, really! I was too amused to sleep. He was trying to explain original sin without mentioning Adam or Eve or the Garden of Eden. It was most endearing! Like some one trying to avoid the eye of an old acquaintance whom they’d come to the conclusion they really must cut! I do so like the idea of Adam and Eve becoming unsuitable acquaintances for the enlightened clergy!”