There was a bitterness in his tone which Mary must have guessed had some relation to the woman she had left a little while before; only Philip had always adored his mother. Emma Downes boasted of it.
“I think I went into the Mills,” he was saying, “because I had to find something solid to get hold of ... and that was the solidest thing I could find. It’s awfully solid, Mary. And it’s beginning to do the trick. At first I hadn’t faith in anything, least of all myself, and now I’ve got something new to take its place. It’s a kind of faith in man—a faith in yourself. I couldn’t go on always putting everything into the hands of God. It’s like cheating—and people don’t do it really. They only pretend they do. If they left it all to God, I suppose things would work out somehow; but they don’t. They insist on meddling, too, and when a thing succeeds then God is good and he’s answered their prayers, and if it fails, then it is God’s Will. But all the while they’re meddling themselves and making a mess of things.”
“And you don’t mean ever to go back to the church?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he said in a low voice, “No ... I don’t believe any longer—at least, not in the way of the church. And the church—well, the church is dead so far as the world is concerned. It’s full of meddling old women. It might disappear to-morrow and the world would go on just the same. That’s one thing about the Flats.... Down there you get down to brass tacks. You know how little all the hubbub really means.”
“Do people know how you feel?”
“No, they just think I’m a little mad. I’ve never told any one any of this, Mary, until now.”
She looked at him shyly. “Your blue shirt suits you better than your black clothes, Philip. I always thought you weren’t made for a preacher.”
He blushed. “Perhaps ... anyway, I feel natural in the blue shirt.” He halted again. “You know, Mary, it’s been the queerest thing—the whole business. It’s as if I never really existed before. It’s like being born again—it’s painful and awful.”
They were quite clear of the Town now. It had sunk down behind the rolling hills. They sat down side by side presently on the stone wall of the bridge that crossed the brook. The water here was clear and clean. It turned to oil further on, after it had passed through the Flats. For a time they sat in silence, watching the sun slipping down behind the distant woods that crowned Trimble’s Hill. In the far distance the valley had turned misty and blue.
Presently Mary sighed suddenly, and asked, “And your wife? What’s to be done about her? She’s a missionary, too, and she still believes, doesn’t she?”