‘How curious,’ Selah said, colouring up. ‘I’m sure I remember Mr. Walters talking more than once to me about his brother Ronald.’
‘Indeed,’ Ronald answered, without even a passing tinge of suspicion. That any man should give a false name to other people with intent to deceive was a thing that would never have entered into his simple head—far less that his own brother Herbert should be guilty of such a piece of disgraceful meanness.
‘I think,’ Ronald went on, as soon as Selah had finished her lunch, ‘you’d better come with me back to my mother’s house for the present. I suppose, now you’ve talked it over a little, you won’t think of throwing yourself into the river any more for to-day. You’ll postpone your intention for the present, won’t you? Adjourn it sine die till we can see what can be done for you.’
Selah smiled faintly. Even with the slight fresh spring of hope that this chance rencontre had roused anew within her, it seemed rather absurd and childish of her to have meditated suicide only an hour ago. Besides, she had eaten and drunk since then, and the profoundest philosophers have always frankly admitted that the pessimistic side of human nature is greatly mitigated after a good dinner.
Ronald called a hansom, and drove up rapidly to Epsilon Terrace. When he got there, he took Selah into the little back breakfast room, regardless of the proprieties, and began once more to consider the prospects of the future.
‘Is Lady Le Breton in?’ he asked the servant: and Selah noticed with surprise and wonder that this strange young man’s mother was actually ‘a lady of title,’ as she called it to herself in her curious ordinary language.
‘No, sir,’ the girl answered; ‘she have been gone out about an hour.’
‘Then I must leave you here while I go out and get you lodgings for the present,’ Ronald said, quietly; ‘you won’t object to my doing that, of course: you can easily pay me back from your salary as soon as we succeed in finding you some suitable occupation. Let me see, where can I put you for the next fortnight? Naturally you wouldn’t like to live with religious people, would you?’
‘I hate them,’ Selah answered vigorously.
‘Of course, of course,’ Ronald went on, as if to himself. ‘Perfectly natural. She hates them! So should I if I’d been bothered and worried out of my life by them in the way she has. I hate them myself—that kind: or, rather, it’s wrong to say that of them, poor creatures, for they mean well, they really mean well at bottom, in their blundering, formal, pettifogging way. They think they can take the kingdom of Heaven, not by storm, but by petty compliances, like servile servants who have to deal with a capricious, exacting master. Poor souls, they know no better. They measure the universe by the reflection in their muddy mill-pond. Nasty pious people is what I always call them; nasty pious people: little narrow souls, trying hard to be Christians after their lights, and only attaining, after all, to a sort of second-hand diluted Judaism, a religion of cup-washing, and phylacteries, and new moons, and sabbaths, and daily sacrifices. However, that’s neither here nor there. I won’t hand you over, Miss Briggs, to any of those poor benighted people. No, nor to any religious people at all. It wouldn’t suit you: you want to be well out of it. I know the very place for you. There are the Baumanns: they’d be glad to let a room: Baumann’s a German refugee, and a friend of Ernest’s: a good man, but a secularist. THEY wouldn’t bother you with any religion: poor things, they haven’t got any. Mrs. Baumann’s an excellent woman—educated, too; no objection at all in any way to the Baumanns. They’re people I like and respect immensely—every good quality they have; and I’m often grieved to think such excellent people should be deprived of the comfort and pleasure of believing. But, then, so’s my dear brother Ernest; and you know, they’re none the worse for it, apparently, any of them: indeed, I don’t know that there’s anybody with whom I can talk more sympathetically on spiritual matters than dear Ernest. Depend upon it, most of the most spiritually-minded people nowadays are outside all the churches altogether.’