The Philistines | Page 8

president had, meantime, got somewhat ponderously upon his feet, half a century of good living not having tended to increase his natural agility, and remarked that the company were, he was sure, extremely grateful to Mr. Fenwick, for his very intelligent interpretation of the poem read.
"Did he interpret it?" Fenton whispered to Mrs. Staggchase. "Why wasn't I told?" "Hush!" she answered, "I will never let you sit by me again if you do not behave better."
"Sitting isn't my metier, you know," he retorted.
The president went on to say that the lines of thought opened by the poem were so various and so wide that they could scarcely hope to explore them all in one evening, but that he was sure there must be many who had thoughts or questions they wished to express, and to start the discussion he would call upon a gentleman whom he had observed taking notes during the reading, Mr. Fenton.
"The old scaramouch!" Fenton muttered, under his breath. "I'll paint his portrait and send it to Punch."
Then with perfect coolness he got upon his feet and looked about the parlor.
"I am so seldom able to come to these meetings," he said, "that I am not at all familiar with your methods, and I certainly had no idea of saying anything; I was merely jotting down a few things to think over at home, and not making notes for a speech, as you would see if you examined the paper."
At this point Miss Dimmont gave a cough which had a sound strangely like a laugh strangled at its birth.
"The poem is one so subtile," Fenton continued, unmoved; "it is so clever in its knowledge of human nature, that I always have to take a certain time after reading it to get myself out of the mood of merely admiring its technique, before I can think of it critically at all. Of course the bit about 'an artist whose religion is his art' touches me keenly, for I have long held to the heresy that art is the highest thing in the world, and, as a matter of fact, the only thing one can depend upon. The clever sophistry of Bishop Blougram shows well enough how one can juggle with theology; and, after all, theology is chiefly some one man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same mistakes that he does."
Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and that in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he was rapidly getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd whimsicalities which always came as a surprise when committed by a man who usually displayed so much mental dexterity, that now, instead of endeavoring to get upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly and sat down.
His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the Church of the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands, and eyes of eager enthusiasm, which showed how the result of New England Puritanism had been to implant in his soul the true martyr spirit. Fenton was never weary of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness, his jests serving as an outlet, not only for the irritation physical ugliness always begot in him, but for his feeling of opposition to his wife's orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman as upholding her. The rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover, awakened in the artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive mind there is no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a character which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely forsaken. Arthur said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly person. "He is so out of drawing," he once told his wife, "that I always have a strong inclination to rub him out and make him over again." In that inmost chamber of his consciousness where he allowed himself the luxury of absolute frankness, however, the artist confessed that his animosity to the young rector had other causes.
As Fenton sank into his seat, Mrs. Staggchase leaned over to quote from the poem,--
"'For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.'"
The artist turned upon her a glance of comprehension and amusement, but before he could reply, the rough, rather loud voice of Mr. Candish arrested his attention.
"If the poem teaches anything," Mr. Candish said, speaking according to his custom, somewhat too warmly, "it seems to me it is the sophistry of the sort of talk which puts art above religion. The thing that offends an honest man in