'Till you die,' she answered.
And so, but this time very lightly, Mr. Loftus leaned once again, or made as if he leaned, on the fragile reed of human love.
[CHAPTER VI.]
'He has nae mair sense o' humour than an owl, and a' aye haud that a man withoot humour sudna be allowed intae a poopit.'—Ian Maclaren.
The arrival of Sibyl at Wilderleigh was the occasion of many anxious surmises at the little Vicarage on the part of the young Vicar and his young and adoring wife.
It had long been a great grief to them that Mr. Loftus only came to church once on Sunday. It was vaguely understood that he had yielded himself to doubts on religious subjects, which alone could account for this 'laxity'—doubts which the young Vicar felt could not have shaken himself or Mrs. Gresley, and which he was convinced he could dispel. But he could never obtain an opportunity to wage war against these ghostly enemies, for though he had preached during Lent a course of sermons calculated to pulverize the infidel tendencies of the age, which his wife had pronounced to be all-conclusive and to place the whole affair in a nutshell—it certainly did that—unfortunately the person for whose spiritual needs they were concocted did not hear them.
Mr. Gresley had several times called upon Mr. Loftus with a view to giving the conversation a deeper turn, but when he was actually in his presence, and Mr. Loftus's steel-gray attentive eye was upon him, the younger man found it difficult, not to say impossible, to force conversation on subjects which Mr. Loftus had no intention to discuss.
'If he would only meet me in fair argument!' Mr. Gresley said on his return from a futile attempt to approach Mr. Loftus on the subject of public worship; 'but when I had thoroughly explained my own views on the importance of regular attendance at both services on Sunday, he only said that those being my opinions, he considered that I was fully justified in having daily services as well. If he would only meet me fairly and hear reason,' said the young clergyman; 'but he won't. The other day when I pressed him on the subject of the devil—I know he is lax on the devil—I said: "But, Mr. Loftus, do you not believe in him?" If he had only owned what I am sure was the case—namely, that he did not believe in him—I could have confuted him in a moment. I was quite ready. But he slipped out of it by saying, "Believe in him! I would not trust him for a moment." There is no arguing with a man who scoffs or is silent.'