“He did not favor me with any remarkably heretical opinions,” Miss Tresilyan replied, carelessly. “Perhaps they have been exaggerated. At all events, he is not likely to do us much harm. Don’t you think we are safe, Bessie? Dick does not care much for play; and his ideas on religious subjects are so very simple that it would be hard to unsettle them.”
Clearly she thought the topic was exhausted, but it had a strange fascination for Mr. Fullarton. One of the many good-natured people, who especially abound in those semi-English Continental towns, had been kind enough to quote or misquote to him a remark of Royston’s about that sermon; and on this topic the chaplain was very vulnerable. He would have forgiven a real substantial injury far sooner than a depreciation of his discourses.
Was he one whit weaker or more susceptible than his fellows? I think not. All the philosophy on earth will not teach us to endure without wincing a mosquito’s bite. The hardiest hero bears about him one spot where an ivy-leaf clinging intercepted the petrifying water—a tiny out-of-the-way spot, not very near the head or heart, but palpable enough to be stricken by Paris’s arrow or Hagen’s spear. Cæsar is very sensitive about that bald crown of his, and fears lest even the laurel wreath should cover it but meagrely. Many wars, since that which brought Ilium to the dust, might have been traced to slighted vanity, and many excellent Christians have waxed quite as wroth as the queen of heathenish heaven about the spretæ injuria formæ. (Do you think this is a peculiarly feminine failing? I have seen a first-class man and Ireland scholar look massacres at the child of his bosom friend, when the unconscious innocent made disagreeable remarks on his personal appearance, alluding particularly to the shape of his nose, which was not Phidian. He has since been heard to speak of that terrible deed in Bethlehem as a painful but justifiable measure of political expediency; and is inclined, on many grounds, to excuse and sympathize with the stem Idumean.) The insult offered to the embassador in Tarentum was only the outbreak of a single drunkard’s brutality, but all the wealth of the fair city of Phalanthus did not suffice to pay the account for washing the soiled robe white again; and blood enough ran down her streets to have quenched some blazing temples before the Romans would give her a receipt in full.
Arguing from these data, we may conclude that Mr. Fullarton was laboring under a slight delusion in believing (which he did sincerely) that only a pure and disinterested zeal for the welfare of his flock impelled him to say, “I shall make it my business to inquire more fully into Major Keene’s antecedents. I am convinced there is something discreditable in the background, and it may be well to be armed with proofs in case of need.”
Though he may have deceived himself completely as to the nature of the spirit that possessed him, Cecil Tresilyan was more clear-sighted. She had not failed to remark a certain vicious twinkle in the speaker’s eye and a deeper flush on his ruddy countenance, betokening rather a mundane resentment. Her lip began to curl.
“How very disagreeable some of your duties must be. No doubt you interpret them correctly, but in this case perhaps it would be well to be quite sure before acting on the offensive. If I were a man—even a clergyman—I don’t think I should like to have Major Keene for my declared enemy.”
The text with which the chaplain enforced his reply—expressive of a determination to keep his own line at all hazards, strong in the rectitude of his cause—had better not be quoted here, especially as it was not apposite enough to “lay” the contradictory spirit that was alive in his fair opponent. (How very angry Cecil would have been if she had been told ten minutes ago that such an expression would apply to her!) The temptation to answer sharply was so powerful that she took refuge in distant coldness.
“You quite misunderstand me, Mr. Fullarton. I never dreamed of offering advice; it would have been excessively presumptuous in me, especially as I have not the faintest interest in the subject we have been talking about. Need we discuss it any longer? I think Major Keene has been too highly honored already.”
That weary look was so manifest now on the beautiful face that even the chaplain, albeit tenacious of his position as a sea-anemone, felt that, for once, he had overstaid his time and was periling his popularity. So, after an expansive benediction, and an entreaty that they would be early at church on the morrow, he went “to his own place.”
With a sigh of admiration—“What an excellent man, and how well he talks!” said Bessie Danvers.