The rest of the speech died away in the distance. Tom and Erica laughed, but the incident set Erica thinking. Here was a man who would not believe what he could not understand, who wanted “pipes and a meter,” and for want of comprehensible outward signs pooh-poohed the great new discovery.
“Tom,” she said slowly, and with the manner of one who makes a very unpleasant suggestion, reluctantly putting forward an unwelcome thought, “suppose if, after all, we are like that man, and reject a grand discovery because we don't know and are too ignorant to understand! Tom, just suppose if, after all, Christianity should be true and we in the wrong!”
“Just suppose if, after all, the earth should be a flat plain with the sun moving round it!” replied Tom scornfully.
They were walking down the Strand; he did not speak for some minutes, in fact he was looking at the people who passed by them. For the first time in his life a great contrast struck him. Disreputable vulgarity, wickedness, and vice stared him in the face, then involuntarily he turned to Erica and looked down at her scrutinizingly as he had never looked before. She was evidently wrapped in thought but it was not the intellect in her face which he thought of just then, though it was ever noticeable, nor was it the actual beauty of feature which struck him, it was rather an undefined consciousness that here was a purity which was adorable. From that moment he became no longer a boy, but a man with a high standard of womanhood. Instantly he thought with regret of his scornful little speech—it was contemptible.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, abruptly, as if she had been following his whole train of thought. “Of course one is bound to study the question fairly, but we have done that, and all that remains for us is to live as usefully as we can and as creditably to the cause as may be.”
They had turned down one of the dingy little streets leading to the river, and now stood outside Professor Gosse's door. Erica did not reply. It was true she had heard arguments for and against Christianity all her life, but had she ever studied it with strict impartiality? Had she not always been strongly biased in favor of secularism? Had not Mr. Osmond gone unpleasantly near the mark when he warned her against being prejudiced by the wrong-doing of a few modern Christians against Christianity itself! She was coming now for special instruction in science from one who was best calculated to teach; she would not have dreamed of asking instruction from one who was a disbeliever in science. Would the same apply in matters of religious belief? Was she bound actually to ask instruction from Charles Osmond, for instance, even though she believed that he taught error—harmful error? Yet who was to be the judge of what was error, except by perfectly fair consideration of both sides of the case. Had she been fair? What was perfect fairness?
But people must go on living, and must speak and act even though their minds are in a chaos of doubts and questionings. They had reached Professor Gosse's study, or as he himself called it, his workshop, and Erica turned with relief to the verifiable results of scientific inquiry.
CHAPTER XI. The Wheels Run Down
Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,
To him must needs be given,
Who heareth heresy, and leaves
The heretic to Heaven. Whittier.