The New Abelard. Robert Williams Buchanan
friend.
Their way lay along green uplands with a distant sight of the sea, and they followed the footpath which led from field to field.
Presently Miss Combe, somewhat out of breath, seated herself on the foot-rest of a stile.
‘Won’t you take a rest, dear?’ she said; ‘there’s room for two.’
The young lady shook her head. As she fixed her eyes upon her companion, one peculiarity of hers became manifest. She was rather short-sighted, and, whenever examining anything or anybody, slightly closed her eyelashes.
‘If I were as rich as you,’ continued Miss Combe after a pause, ‘I know what I should do with my money.’
‘Indeed! pray tell me.’
‘I should build a church to the New Faith!’
‘Are you serious?’ said Alma merrily. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know what the new faith is.’
‘The faith of Humanity; not Comte’s, which is Frenchified rubbish, but the beautiful faith in human perfection and the divine future of the race. Just think what a Church it would make! In the centre an altar “to the Unknown God”; painted windows all round, with the figures of all the great teachers, from Socrates to Herbert Spencer, and signs of the zodiac and figures of the planets, if you like, on the celestial roof.’
‘I don’t quite see, Agatha, in what respect the new Church would be an improvement on the old one,’ returned Alma; and as she spoke her eyes travelled over the still landscape, and saw far away, between her and the sea, the glittering spire of the church of Fensea.
‘It would be different in every particular,’ said Miss Combe good-humouredly. ‘In the first place, the architecture would be, of course, pure Greek, and there would be none of the paraphernalia of superstition.’
‘And Jesus Christ?—would He have any place there at all? or would you banish Him with the rest of the gods?’
‘Heaven forbid! He should be pictured in the very central window, over the altar—not bleeding, horrible, and crucified, but as the happy painters represented Him in the early centuries, a beautiful young Shepherd—yes, beautiful as Apollo—carrying under His arm a stray lamb.’
Alma sighed, and shook her head again. She was amused with her friend’s opinions, and they never seemed to shock her, but her own attitude of mind with regard to Christianity was very different.
‘Yet,’ she said, still watching the distant spire, ‘If you abolish Christ crucified you abolish Christ the Saviour altogether; for sorrow, suffering, and death were the signs of His heavenly mission. Besides, I am of Mr. Bradley’s opinion, and think we have too many churches already.’
‘Does he think so?’ exclaimed Miss Combe with some surprise.
‘Yes, I have often heard him say that God’s temple is the best—the open fields for a floor and the vaulted heavens for a roof.’
Miss Combe rose, and they strolled on together.
‘Is he as heterodox as ever?’ asked Miss Combe.
‘Mr. Bradley? I don’t know what you mean by heterodox, but he has his own opinions on the articles of his religion.’
‘Just so. He doesn’t believe in the miracles, for example.’
‘Have you heard him say so?’
‘Not explicitly, but I have heard——’
‘You mustn’t believe all the nonsense you hear,’ cried Alma eagerly. ‘He is too intellectual for the people, and they don’t understand him. You shall go to church next Sunday, and hear him preach.’
‘But I’m not a church-goer,’ said the elder lady, smiling. ‘On Sundays I always read Herbert Spencer. Sermons are always so stupid.’
‘Not always. Wait till you hear Mr. Bradley. When I listen to him, I always think of the great Abelard, whom they called the “angel of bright discourse.” He says such wonderful things, and his voice is so beautiful. As he speaks, the church seems indeed a narrow place—too small for such words, for such a speaker; and you long to hear him on some mountain top, preaching to a multitude under the open sky.’
Miss Combe did not answer, but peeping sideways at her companion she saw that her face was warmly flushed, and her eyes were strangely bright and sparkling. She knew something, but not much, of Alma’s relations with the vicar, and she hoped with all her heart that they would never lead to matrimony. Alma was too wise a vestal, too precious to the cause of causes, to be thrown away on a mere country clergyman. In fact, Miss Combe had an errant brother of her own who, though an objectionable person, was a freethinker, and in her eyes just the sort of husband for her friend. He was rather poor, not particularly handsome, and somewhat averse to soap and water; but he had held his own in platform argument with divers clergymen, and was generally accounted a ticklish subject for the Christians. So she presently remarked:—
‘The finest speaker I ever heard is my brother Tom. I wish you could hear him.’
Alma had never done so, and, indeed, had never encountered the worthy in question.
‘Is he a clergyman?’ she asked innocently. ‘Heaven forbid!’ cried Miss Combe. ‘No; he speaks at the Hall of Science.’
‘Oh!’
‘We don’t quite agree philosophically, for he is too thick with Bradlaugh’s party, but I know he’s coming round to Agnosticism. Poor Tom! He is so clever, and has been so unfortunate. He married miserably, you know.’
‘Indeed,’ said Alma, not much interested.
‘There was a black-eyed sibyl of a woman who admired one of the Socialist lecturers, and when he died actually went to his lodgings, cut off his head, and carried it home under her cloak in the omnibus.’
‘Horrible!’ said Alma with a shudder. ‘But what for?’
‘To boil, my dear, so that she might keep the skull as a sacred relic! When Tom was introduced to her she had it under a glass case on her mantelpiece. Well, she was a very intellectual creature, wonderfully “advanced,” as they call it, and Tom was infatuated enough to make her his wife. They lived together for a year or so; after which she took to Spiritualism, and finally died in a madhouse. So poor Tom’s free, and I hope when he marries again he’ll be more lucky.’
Of course Miss Combe did not for a moment believe that her brother would have ever had any attraction in the eyes of her rich friend; for Tom Combe was the reverse of winsome, even to humbler maidens—few of whom felt drawn to a man who never brushed his hair, had a beard like a Communist refugee, and smelt strongly of beer and tobacco. But blood is thicker than water, and Miss Combe could not forbear putting in a word in season.
The word made little or no impression. The stately beauty walked silently on full of her own thoughts and dreams.
CHAPTER VII.—A SIDE CURRENT.
That bore of bores—a tedious male cousin!—Old Play.
Loitering slowly onward from stile to stile, from field to field, and from pasture to pasture, the two ladies at last reached a country road leading right through the heart of the parish, and commanding from time to time a view of the distant sea. They found Fensea, as usual, fast asleep, basking in the midst of its own breath; the red-tiled houses dormant, the population invisible, save in the square or market-place opposite the tavern, where a drowsy cart-horse was blinking into a water trough, and a somnambulistic ostler was vacantly looking on. Even in the open shops such as Radford the linendraper’s and Summerhayes the grocer’s, nothing seemed doing. But just as they left the village behind them, and saw in front of them the spire of the village church