Part 43 (2/2)
”Only in practical matters, Clementina.”
”And duty towards G.o.d is with you such a practical matter that you cannot listen to anything he has got to say about it.”
Florimel shrugged her shoulders.
”For my part, I would give all I have to know there was a G.o.d worth believing in.”
”Clementina!”
”What?”
”Of course there is a G.o.d. It is very horrible to deny it.”
”Which is worse--to deny it, or to deny him? Now, I confess to doubting it--that is, the fact of a G.o.d; but you seem to me to deny G.o.d himself, for you admit there is a G.o.d--think it very wicked to deny that, and yet you don't take interest enough in him to wish to learn anything about him. You won't think, Florimel. I don't fancy you ever really think.”
Florimel again laughed.
”I am glad,” she said, ”that you don't judge me incapable of that high art. But it is not so very long since Malcolm used to hint something much the same about yourself, my lady!”
”Then he was quite right,” returned Clementina. ”I am only just beginning to think, and if I can find a teacher, here I am, his pupil.”
”Well, I suppose I can spare my groom quite enough to teach you all he knows,” Florimel said, with what Clementina took for a marked absence of expression. She reddened. But she was not one to defend herself before her principles.
”If he can, why should he not?” she said. ”But it was of his friend Mr Graham I was thinking---not himself.”
”You cannot tell whether he has got anything to teach you.”
”Your groom's testimony gives likelihood enough to make it my duty to go and see. I intend to find the place this evening.”
”It must be some little ranting methodist conventicle. He would not be allowed to preach in a church, you know.”
”Of course not! The church of England is like the apostle that forbade the man casting out devils, and got forbid himself for it --with this difference that she won't be forbid. Well, she chooses her portion with Dives and not Lazarus. She is the most arrant respecter of persons I know, and her Christianity is worse than a farce. It was that first of all that drove me to doubt. If I could find a place where everything was just the opposite, the poorer it was the better I should like it. It makes me feel quite wicked to hear a smug parson reading the gold ring and the goodly apparel, while the pew openers beneath are ill.u.s.trating in dumb show the very thing the apostle is pouring out the vial of his indignation upon over their heads;--doing it calmly and without a suspicion, for the parson, while he reads, is rejoicing in his heart over the increasing aristocracy of his congregation. The farce is fit to make a devil in torment laugh.”
Once more, Florimel laughed aloud.
”Another revolution, Clementina, and we shall have you heading the canaille to destroy Westminster Abbey.”
”I would follow any leader to destroy falsehood,” said Clementina.
”No canaille will take that up until it meddles with their stomachs or their pew rents.”
”Really, Clementina, you are the worst Jacobin I ever heard talk.
My groom is quite an aristocrat beside you.”
”Not an atom more than I am. I do acknowledge an aristocracy-- but it is one neither of birth nor of intellect nor of wealth.”
”What is there besides to make one?”
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