Chapter XI. Lunch and Chat at Retlaw's.

There were half a dozen people present, principally men. Mrs. Retlaw was not very popular with her own sex. Someone told me once that it was because Mrs. Retlaw was so much handsomer than the generality of women; but I have a theory of my own about the matter which is still less complimentary to the sex.

Mrs. Retlaw was at this time the active centre of a little circle of what might—if one may be permitted to coin a word—best be called Truth-hunters, in preference to the much-abused and misapplied title 'Free-thinkers.' These people were free-thinkers in that they were determined to think for themselves, to investigate, analyse, and, if necessary, cut themselves adrift from the long-fixed rust-encrusted anchors of orthodoxy.

'It is better to have nothing than to cherish that which is page 79false,' was a favourite observation of theirs; but whether they were right or wrong is, and always will be, a matter of opinion—a matter of controversy too, which begetteth new thought, which is good; and much enmity, which is bad. There is always one rabid member, if not more, in a small society like this; a rabid revolutionary character, with an overweening sense of its own importance and a profound contempt for all else in the universe. The one in this circle was a draper by profession; an exemplary man domestically speaking, and a man much respected commercially. But he was violent and merciless, loving debate and not above taking mean advantage of his opponents therein, and chopping away deliriously at theological dogmas with a belief that he felled them at every attack, and taking as intense a pride and pleasure in the process as the Premier of England takes in felling trees.

This individual attacked our heroine within five minutes of their introduction.

'Do you belong to any sect of religionists, Miss Campbell?'

'No; I do not.'

'Good. And why—if you will allow me to be catechetical without thinking me rudely inquisitive?'

'Because,' said Philiberta, hesitating between the natural impulse to speak truth and a combative tendency to offend this man, whom she summed up with a prompt accuracy peculiarly feminine—'because I am rather heterodox in my theological opinions.'

'Good. A Rationalist?'

'Yes; I hope my views are rational.'

'Ah! an Evolutionist?'

'As far as one may be that while still waiting for more proof.'

'All hail to you!' cried Mr. Soolum enthusiastically. 'Shake hands. It is not often we find such sense and courage in one so young. We will all join in a body and sweep orthodoxy from off the face of the earth.'

'But I don't want to join in a body to do any such thing,' said Philiberta.

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'What! would you let dogmatic religion live, then?'

'I would let it alone,' said Philiberta. 'The first principle of free-thought, as I see it, is allowing every one to think for himself. Dogmatic religion is an unspeakable comfort to many people; when you strive to rob them of that comfort, you show dogmatism too.'

'But the bulk of men are not competent to think for themselves.'

'Then striving with them won't mend the matter. In doing so you but strive with the theological teachers, and against these you have no chance, for they offer a pleasanter belief to unthinking minds than Rationalists and Materialists can ever offer.'

'You think so, Miss Campbell? I am disappointed in you.'

'I am sorry. But remember, I at least am innocent of any desire to provoke this discussion. I think there are many pleasanter subjects for conversation than theology.'

'And I think that that should be the chief subject of conversation and action until the world is entirely reformed and brought to common-sense. That which we know to be false and evil should be combated and destroyed.'

'The chief obstacle to that consummation,' said Philiberta, warming up under the instinctive disposition to contradict this man, merely because he was so assertive, 'is that there is nothing to prove orthodox religion either false or evil. The most we can say in regard to its truth is that we do not believe and cannot reconcile it with our self-formed ideas. That its effect on a certain class of minds is the reverse of evil no one, I think, can deny. I know several people who would be lost, miserable creatures without their blind theological faith; and to open whose eyes would be cruelty, even if it could be done successfully, which is doubtful. I know personally one woman, a Roman Catholic, who lost her only daughter when the girl was but nineteen. A fair, pretty, healthy girl, whom the mother naturally idolised. It was never proved whether it was a case of murder or suicide, but one day the girl went out from her mother's house on an errand, and was brought in dead and page 81dripping, but still warm, from the river, some two or three hours later. Nothing ever happened that I know of to cast further light upon the affair. But the one hard fact of death was enough for the mother, who would have gone into a lunatic asylum most certainly but for the consolation of saying masses for the girl's soul at five o'clock in the morning two days a week; and the hope, nay, the certainty, of meeting her lost darling in a better world. Could I, or anyone, be heartless enough to try to convince that woman that her masses were vain mummery and that there is no better world?'

Perhaps it was the pathos of this little story that prevented Mr. Soolum's intended oration upon the incumbency of enlightening all benighted Christians, and forcing them, at the point of the sword if necessary, to adopt more rational views. However, as it was, Philiberta escaped the harangue, and he only asked her, in a quiet voice, by what process she had arrived at the advanced stage of thought evidenced by her conversation. To this she replied that she did not exactly know; she had read a good deal, and reading led to thinking, she supposed.

'Exactly my own experience,' he exclaimed, getting excited again. 'No one ever guided me. I got it all by myself. My friends were all rigid Presbyterians; not one of them ever gave me an inkling of independent thought. I struck out independently, though, and now I can whip the very ground from under their feet, figuratively speaking. Yet I used to sit in church. Dr. Stewart said to me the other day only, "Why do I never see you at the kirk now, Soolum?" I replied, "Doctor, because you cannot teach me anything, and I'm completely tired of hearing the same thing said in the same way every Sunday, when it is a thing no reasonable man can believe. When I have any leisure I want to spend it in interesting sensible converse with intellectual people." "Ah!" said Dr. Stewart, "I wish there were a few more sensible folks like you in the world. The world would be all the better for them."'

Now, although Philiberta did not know Dr. Stewart, she felt that this was a little fiction, or else that the Doctor was given to sarcasm.

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'Dr. Stewart is the noblest man in Otago,' observed Mrs. Retlaw at this point. 'It would be a good thing if both church-people and free-thinkers would profit by his splendid example of liberality, self-denial, and true charity.'

'They do profit by it, said Mr. Retlaw, a tall well-looking kindly-faced man. 'An orthodox family in poor circumstances profited by it the other day to the tune of ten pounds, which had been subscribed towards buying the doctor a horse. He needed the horse badly enough, for he finds that his parish includes all the sick, needy, and afflicted in all the country side; and the distances he walks are awful to think of. But he had got the ten pounds, and here was a case of need, and so away it went, and he still pedestrianises. Then the last thing I heard was of his being arrested the other night by a policeman new in the force to whom he was not known.'

'But what for?' cried Mrs. Retlaw anxiously.

'Why, for stealing a feather-bed that he was actually carrying on his own shoulder at midnight. The matter was soon explained It was his own bed, and he was conveying it from his own house to that of a poor sick heathen up in one of the lanes of Walker Street. So, you sec, Mrs. Retlaw, they do profit by him, both orthodox and heterodox.'

'But, Harry, I did not mean it in that sense exactly,' said his wife.

'No, I know you didn't, my dear,' said Mr. Retlaw, going on with his devilled leg of a chicken calmly.

'It's a pity so many of Dr. Stewart's parishioners go to the kirk merely as a matter of business,' remarked Mr. Soolum presently.

'But I don't believe they do,' said Mrs. Retlaw.

'Oh, but they do, I assure you. You would be surprised at the things people will be guilty of for the sake of advertisement. There's X. now'—(Mr. X. was a notable clock maker).—'What does he do the other day but go and present the kirk with a magnificent new clock. A really splendid clock,—with his name upon it. "What fine generosity!" say some of the congregation. "What a fine advertisement!" say I.'

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'Has your business suffered from your declaration of independence, Mr. Soolum?' inquired Mrs. Retlaw.

'Quite otherwise,' was the reply. 'People come to my shop who never came before. "Mr. Soolum," they say, "we do love a man like you; an independent man, who dares to say what he thinks and to act in accordance."'

The serene conceit of the little man was really entertaining.

A free-thought discussion was going on at the other side of the table too. Some one was saying that men wanted leaders. That not one man in a score, or in a hundred perhaps, ever had an idea that he could call his own; and that it was wisely arranged that there were two classes of men—nor speaking of the medium types: the class that didn't think and the class that did. Wise also that the unthinkers were in excess in number, just as cart-horses exceed in number the racers and first-class trotters. Because if it were otherwise, how would the hard work—the drudgery of existence—be got through with—the drudgery of which there is so much, and which it would break the hearts of the racers to do? And so, to come back, there must be men and leaders of men; and the popular leaders now, and for a long time to come, must be the teachers of popular theology. Therefore rationalism must of necessity advance very slowly. Some other one began to combat this, and Philiberta was listening with great interest, when a young man who had come in with Mr. Heatherwood assailed her somewhat abruptly with a question as to who was her favourite poet. She replied that she had been a very fickle worshipper, but that her present deity was Adam Lindsay Gordon.

'Ah, that is because you are young,' said this young gentleman, pityingly, he himself being a patriarch of five-and-twenty years at least. 'A few years more, and poetry of the purely emotional type will fail to satisfy you. You will feel the need of depth, reflection, and philosophy in verse.'

'I think Gordon's verses can safely claim all those qualities. The Swimmer, Quare Fatigasti, The Road to Avernus and Ashtaroth, especially,' said Philiberta.

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'Perhaps,' said Mr. Drummond. 'But throughout all Gordon's poems emotional sentiment has first place.'

'I think,' said Heatherwood, who was rather a poet himself, though at that time condescending to edit a weekly paper—'I think you get more than mere emotional sentiment, Drummond, in Ye Wearie Wayfarer. In Fytte the Fourth, for instance—

'"All hurry is worse than useless; think
On the adage, 'Tis pace that kills,'
Shun bad tobacco, avoid strong drink,
Abstain from Holloway's pills.
Wear woollen socks, they're the best, you'll find,
Beware how you leave off flannel;
And whatever you do, don't change your mind
When once you have picked your panel.
With a bank of cloud in the south-south-east,
Stand ready to shorten sail;
Fight shy of a corporation feast;
Don't trust to a martingale.
Keep your powder dry and shut one eye,
Not both, when you touch the trigger;
Don't stop with your head too frequently
(This advice ain't meant for a nigger).
Look before you leap if you like, but if
You mean leaping, don't look long,
Or the weakest place will soon grow stiff,
And the strongest doubly strong.
As far as you can, to every man
Let your aid be freely given,
And hit out straight, 'tis your shortest plan,
When against the ropes you're driven."'

'But Gordon,' objected young Drummond, 'seems to me never to soar above feeling, never to rise superior to the harassments and vexations of life.'

'I differ from you,' said Philiberta; 'but granting that it is so, does it detract from the splendour of his poetry? And does anyone ever rise superior to life's harassments and vexations, think you?'

'Oh, yes, a well-balanced mind does at a very early stage of experience, I think.'

'But can a well-balanced mind ever produce poetry?' said Mrs. Retlaw.

'Oh, I know what you are thinking of—and what has been page 85said about the narrowness of the boundary dividing genius from insanity. But there's Wordsworth now; his must have been a well-balanced mind, I think.'

'Then that must account for a great deal of the dreariness in his poetry,' said Philiberta, daringly, and unaware that she was blaspheming Mr. Drummond's idol.

'Well, I can't rave about Wordsworth, I must admit,' observed Mrs. Retlaw.

'The fact is, he wrote too much,' said Heatherwood. 'His long poems could have been pruned and cut down with advantage.'

'And many of his short ones left out altogether with still greater advantage,' added Philiberta.

'Yes,' assented Heatherwood.

'It is to be hoped you will have wisdom enough to avoid his errors when you bring out your own book, Heatherwood,' said Drummond, with a withering look.

'It is indeed, dear boy,' was the reply. 'My idea is to pass the proof-sheets round to my most valued and discerning friends—of whom you, of course, are chief—with the entreaty that each one will cut out what he thinks would be best omitted,'

'Ah?' said Drummond, rubbing his hands as if he anticipated a treat.

'Only,' added Heatherwood, 'I am afraid that by the time the round was completed there would be nothing left. Everybody would discover something that would be better left out.'

'I wrote a poem once,' said Mr. Retlaw.

'Did you really?' cried his wife. 'When, dear? and what did you do with it?'

'Burnt it, love, carefully.'

'Oh, wisest among men!' remarked Heatherwood.

'Why do you say that?' asked Mrs. Retlaw.

'Oh, I was afraid he might want to read it to me. I'm a newspaper man, you know.'

'Well, and if he did,' she said, indignantly; 'a worse thing than that might happen to you, Mr. Heatherwood.'

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'Yes, I know, Mrs. Retlaw. But so many bad things happen to me in that line that I hate any risk. If you only knew the piles of stuff I have to wade through, and decline with thanks! Sometimes I have to accept, against my better judgment—Drummond's things, for instance, for friendship's sake; and three people lately have threatened to stop the paper if there was any more of that kind of stuff in it.'

'You will not be troubled with any more, Mr. Heatherwood,' said Drummond, with dignity. 'Your vile parody on my last quite settled that.'

Heatherwood laughed maliciously.

'What drove you to it, Retlaw?' he inquired. 'I know we are all liable to it one time or another; but if ever there were a sensible exception, I should have supposed you one.'

'Oh, I'd been reading some other fellow's bosh late at night over whisky hot,' said Mr. Retlaw. 'When I read my own effusion next morning—great heavens!'

'Well, you might have given other people an opportunity of judging your genius,' said Mrs. Retlaw.

'So I might, my dear, if there had been any genius to judge.'

'The most shameless instance, this, of fishing for a compliment that it was ever my lot to hear,' laughed Mrs. Retlaw. 'Miss Campbell, come up to my snuggery, and we will have some tea and talk all to ourselves.'

So then the party broke up, and Mr. Retlaw found his way to the snuggery too. It was a comfortable little den, where Mrs. Retlaw kept everything that she liked best in the way of furniture, books and ornaments. Things had a comfortably shabby look, as if they were well used and usable. It was a room where you could lounge and luxuriate, and not be afraid of disarranging anything.

'My drawing-room is for my acquaintances,' Mrs. Retlaw sometimes said; 'but this sanctum is sacred to myself and my few familiars.' When Mr. Retlaw came in, his wife attacked him for his want of confidence in her.

'You might have shown me that poem,' she said.

'My dear, a man should be careful never to lower himself in page 87the eyes of those from whom he desires respect. You would never have respected me again if you had read that poem.'

Then Mrs. Retlaw got up to chastise him, and in doing it ran her hand against a pin at the back of his neck.

'What on earth are you doing with pins in your clothes?' she said.

'My dear, that pin is where a button would be if you only fulfilled your duty. If you only looked after my wardrobe like a careful wife, instead of rushing off to lectures, and eclectical gatherings, and social meetings and the like. I assure you, Miss Campbell, I have scarcely one undergarment with its full complement of buttons, while as for my socks——'

'Oh, darn your socks!' laughed Mrs. Retlaw. 'My dear, when do I ever trouble you about my wardrobe? when I find things defective in the matter of buttons, or discover holes in my stockings, do I come to you with them? No. I pass them by in silence.'

Mr. Retlaw pretended to sigh. 'This is what comes of belief in the equality of the sexes,' said he. 'Miss Campbell, for the sake of the welfare of your future husband, I entreat you never to take your stand on the equality of the sexes.'

The afternoon seemed all too short. Philiberta, with little persuasion, stayed to dinner, and afterwards accompanied her new friends to a meeting of the Dunedin Eclectic Association. Then Mr. and Mrs. Retlaw insisted upon escorting her home to her lodgings.

The night was crisp and still, the sky all radiant with stars. In the west hung the half-grown moon, with Venus glowing brilliantly just below. 'But that large dull yellow star,' exclaimed Philiberta; 'there—not far from Venus. I thought I knew all the chief stars of the Australasian skies, but that one is entirely new to me.'

'I shouldn't wonder,' said Mr. Retlaw, laughing, 'for that is the lamp at the top of Maclaggan Street. Look back, over there, and you will see plenty more stars like that one.' It certainly was puzzling, and difficult for a stranger to make sure where the lamps ended and the stars began.