“I know of one, and it served as the foundation of the Christian Church,” said he.
“My dear Friswell, are you not going too far?”
“Not a step. The choosing of Peter is the foundation of your Church, and the authority assumed by its priests. Simon Barjonah, nicknamed Peter, is one of the most convincingly real characters to be found in any book, sacred or profane. How any one can read his record and doubt the inspiration of the Gospels is beyond me. I have been studying Simon Barjonah for many years—a conceited braggart and a coward—a blasphemer—maudlin! After he had been cursing and swearing in his denial of his Master, he went out and wept bitterly. Yes, but he wasn't man enough to stand by the Son of God—he was not even man enough to go to the nearest tree and hang himself. Judas Iscariot was a nobler character than Simon Barjonah, nicknamed Peter.”
“And what does all this mean, Mr. Friswell?”
“It means that it's fortunate that Truth is not dependent upon the truth of its exponents or affected by their falseness,” said he, and so took his departure.
We went on with our consideration of our Treillage—after a considerable silence. But when a silence comes between Dorothy and me it does not take the form of an impenetrable wall, nor yet that of a yew hedge with gaps in it; but rather that of a grateful screen of sweet-scented honeysuckle. It is the silence within a bower of white clematis—the silence of “heaven's ebon vault studded with stars unutterably bright”—the silence of the stars which is an unheard melody to such as have ears to hear.
“Yes,” said I at last, “I am sure that you are right: an oval centre from which the laths radiate—that shall be our new trellis.”
And so it was.
Our life in the Garden of Peace is, you will perceive, something of what the catalogues term “of rampant growth.” It is as digressive as a wild convolvulus. I perceive this now that I have taken to writing about it. It is not literary, but discursive. It throws out, it may he, the slenderest of tendrils in one direction; but this “between the bud and blossom,” sometimes Hies off in another, and the effect of the whole is pleasantly unforeseen.
It is about time that we had a firm trellis for the truant tendrils.