This was too much even for Julian’s politeness, and he joined in the shout of laughter with which Kennedy greeted this appeal.
“Fools make a mock at sin,” said Hazlet austerely. “I trust that you will both be brought to a better state of mind. Good morning!”
Kennedy flung himself into an armchair, and after finishing his laugh, exclaimed, “My dear Home, where did you pick up that intolerable hypocrite?”
“Hush, Kennedy, hush! Don’t call him a hypocrite. His mode of religion may be very offensive to us, and yet it may be sincere.”
“Faugh! the idea of asking you, ‘How’s your soul?’ It reminds me of a friend of mine who was suddenly asked by a minister in a train ‘if he didn’t feel an aching void?’ ‘An aching void? Where?’ said Jones, in a tone of alarm, for he was an unimaginative person. ‘Within, sir, within!’ said the stranger. Jones felt anxiously to find whether one of his ribs was accidentally protruding, but finding them all safe, set down the minister for a lunatic, and moved to the further end of the carriage.”
Julian smiled; he was more accustomed to this kind of phraseology than his friend, and knew that outrageous as it was to good taste under the circumstances, it yet might spring from a sincere and honourable motive, or at best must be regarded as the natural result of innate vulgarity and mistaken training.
“Surely at best,” continued Kennedy, “it’s a most unwarrantable impertinence for a fellow like that to want to dabble his ignorant and coarse hand in the hallowed secrets of the microcosm. Not to one’s nearest and dearest friend, not to one’s mother or brother would one babble promiscuously on such awful themes; and to have the soul’s sublime and eternal emotions, its sacred and unspoken communings, lugged out into farcical prominence by such conversational cant as that, is to dry up the very fountain of true religion, and put a premium on the successful grin of an offensive hypocrisy.”
Kennedy seemed quite agitated, and as usual found relief in striding up and down the room. His religious feelings were deep and real—none the less so for being hidden—and Hazlet’s language and manner had given him a rude shock.
“Another hour in that fellow’s company would make me an infidel,” he exclaimed with quivering lip. “Pray for me, indeed, with some of his ‘sound and congenial friends.’ Faugh! ‘sound!’ how does he dare to judge whether his superiors are ‘sound’ or not? and why must he borrow a metaphor from Stilton cheeses when he’s talking of religious convictions.”
“Why really, Kennedy,” said Julian, “to see the contempt written in your face, one would think you were an archangel looking at a black beetle, as a learned judge once observed. If you won’t regard Hazlet as a man and a brother, at least remember that he’s a vertebrate animal.”