“No! I won’t sing any more to-night; let us talk,” said Mary.
The weather had turned unkindly, a bright fire flickered on the hearth, while the rain outside drove and pattered against the rattling windows. The minister had come in “for some music” as had become his habit during the last weeks, but, Mary was in no mood to sing, so she laid the guitar aside.
“You told me that you intended to criticize my sermon of yesterday,” said Andrew deferentially. “I gather that you altogether disagree with me.”
Mary lit a cigarette and smiled at him, her own indulgent smile, which always softened the severity of her remarks. “Yes, I think your view is narrow, and in some respects unjust. Of course, I know it is the kind of sermon that is popular; and it is certainly kind to the novelists to abuse them from the pulpit—it increases the sale of their books so enormously. But that was hardly your object, was it?”
“I do not know what was my object, unless it were to deliver a message that I felt had been entrusted to me. I do feel strongly on this question. It seems to me so pitiful that people should waste their time in reading injurious trash, when all the time there waits in silent patience the great company of the Immortals.”
“I like Schumann’s view best. He says, ‘Reverence what is old, but have a warm heart also for what is new.’ Much that is new is true, and beautiful, and helpful.”
Mary leant forward, looking eagerly through a little cloud of smoke at the minister.
He shook his head. “A great deal is hopelessly false, and ugly and lowering.”
“I think you overrate the influence of bad books,” said Mary. “It is only the great books that live; a meretricious book may have a few months’ popularity, and then no one reads it any more, it is forgotten as absolutely as we forget the smell of decaying cabbage when we have passed the rubbish heaps.”