The Christian Part 71

"Original sin, dear boy!" said Lord Robert, with a curl of the lip.

"Original? A bad plagiarism, you mean!"

"Very well. If _I_ helped you to do it, shall I help you to give it up? Withdraw the prospectus and return the deposits on shares--the dear Archdeacon's among the rest."

Drake took up his hat and left the house. Lord Robert followed him presently. Then the drawing-room was empty, and the hollow sound of sobbing came down to it from the bedroom above.

Father Storm read prayers in church that night with a hard and absent heart. A terrible impulse of hate had taken hold of him. He hated Drake, he hated Glory, he hated himself most of all, and felt as if seven devils had taken possession of him, and he was a hypocrite, and might fall dead at the altar.

"But what a fate the Almighty has saved me from!" he thought. Glory would have been a drag on his work for life. He must forget her. She was only worthy of his contempt. Yet he could not help but remember how beautiful she had looked in her mourning dress, with that pure pale face and its signs of suffering! Or how charming she had seemed to him even in the midst of all that deception! Or how she had held him as by a spell!

Going home he came upon a group of men in the Court. One of them planted himself full in front and said with an insolent swagger: "Me and my mytes thinks there's too many parsons abart 'ere. What do you think, sir?"

"I think there are more gamblers and thieves, my lad," he answered, and at the next instant the man had struck him in the face. He closed with the ruffian, grappled him by the throat, and flung him on his back. One moment he held him there, writhing and gasping, then he said, "Get up, and get off, and let me see no more of you!"

"No, sir, not this time," said a voice above his back. The crowd had melted away and a policeman stood beside them. "I've been waiting for this one for weeks, Father," he said, and he marched the man to jail.

It was Charlie Wilkes. At the trial of Mrs. Jupe that morning, Aggie, being a witness, had been required to mention his name. It was all in the evening papers, and he had been dismissed from his time-keeping at the foundry.

XIII.

A week pa.s.sed. Breakfast was over at Victoria Square, and John Storm was glancing at the pages of a weekly paper. "Listen!" he cried, and then read aloud in a light tone of mock bravery which broke down at length into a husky gurgle:

"'The sympathy which has lately been evoked by the announcement that a proprietary church in Soho has been sold for secular uses, is creditable to public sentiment----'"

"Think of that, now!" interrupted Mrs. Callender.

"'----and no doubt the whole community will agree to hope that Father Storm will recover from the irritation natural to his eviction----'"

"Aye, we can all get over another body's disappointment, laddie."

"'But there is a danger that in this instance the altruism of the time may develop a sentimentality not entirely good for public morals----'"

"When the ox is down there are lots of butchers, ye ken!"

"'With the uses to which the fabric is to be converted, it is no part of our purpose to deal, further than to warn the public not to lend an ear to the all too prurient purity of the amateur moralist; but considering the character of the work now carried on in Soho, no doubt with the best intentions----'"

"Aye, aye, it's easy to steal the goose and give the giblets in alms."

"'----it behooves us to consider if the community is not to be congratulated on its speedy and effectual ending. Father Storm is a young man of some talents and social position, but without any special experience or knowledge of the world--in fact a weak, oversanguine, and rather foolish fanatic----'"

"Oh, aye, he's down; down with him!"

"'----and therefore it is monstrous that he should be allowed to subvert the order of social life or disturb the broad grounds of the reasonable and the practical----'"

"Never mind. High winds only blaw on high hills, laddie!"

"'----As for the "fallen sister" whom he has taken under his special care, we confess to a feeling that too much sympathy has been wasted on her already. Her feet take hold of h.e.l.l, her house is the way of the grave, going down to the chamber of death----'"

Mrs. Callender leaped to her feet. "That's the 'deacon-man; I ken the cloven hoof!"

John Storm had flung the paper away. "What a cowardly world it is!" he said. "But G.o.d wins in the end, and by G.o.d he shall!"

"Tut, man! don't tak' on like that. You can't climb the Alps on roller-skates, you see! But as for the Archdeacon, pooh! I'm no windy aboot your 'Sisters' and 'Settlements' and sic like, but if there had been society papers in the Lord's time, Simon the Pharisee would have been a namby-pamby critic compared to some of them."

A moment afterward she was looking out of the window and holding up both hands. "My gracious! It's himsel'! It's the Prime Minister!"

A gaunt old gentleman with a meagre mustache, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and unfas.h.i.+onable black clothes, was stepping up to the door.

"Yes, it's my uncle!" said John, and the old lady fled out of the room to change her cap.

"I have heard what has happened, John, so I have come to see you," said the Prime Minister.

Was he thinking of the money? John felt uneasy and ashamed.

"I'm sorry, my boy, very sorry!"

"Thank you, uncle."

"But it all comes, you see, of the ridiculous idea that we are a Christian nation! Such a thing couldn't have occurred at the shrine of a pagan G.o.d!"

"It was only a proprietary church, uncle. I was much to blame."

"I do not deny that you have acted unwisely, but what difference does that make, my boy? To sell a church seems like the climax of irreverence; but they are doing as bad every day. If you want to see what times the Church has fallen on, look at the advertis.e.m.e.nts in your religious papers--your Benefice and Church Patronage Gazette, and so forth. A traffic, John, a slave traffic, worse than anything in Africa, where they sell bodies, not souls!"

"It is a crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven," said John; "but it is the Establishment that is to blame, not the Church, uncle."

"We are a nation of money-lenders, my boy, and the Church is the worst usurer of them all, with its learned divines in scarlet hoods, who hold shares in music halls, and its Fathers in G.o.d living at ease and leasing out public-houses. _You_ have been lending money on usury too, and on a bad security. What are you going to do now?"

"Go on with my work, uncle, and do two hours where I did one before."

"And get yourself kicked where you got yourself kicked before!"

"Why not? If G.o.d puts ten pounds on a man, he gives him strength to bear twenty."

"John, John, I am feeling rather sore, and I can't bear much more of it.

I'm growing old, and my life is rather lonely too. Except your father, you are my only kinsman now, and it seems as if our old family must die with you. But come, my boy, come, throw up all this sorry masquerade.

Isn't there a woman in the world who can help me to persuade you? I don't care who she is, or what, or where she comes from."

John had coloured to the eyes, and was stammering something about the true priest cut off from earthly marriage, therefore free to commit himself completely to his work, when Mrs. Callender came back, spruce and smart, with many smiles and curtsies. The Prime Minister greeted her with the same old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy, and they cooed away like two old doves, until a splendid equipage drove up to the door, and the plain old gentleman drove away in it.

"Wasn't he nice with me? wasn't he, now?" the old lady kept saying, and John being silent--"Tut! you young men are just puir loblollyboys with a leddy when the auld ones come."

Going to Soho that day John Storm felt a sudden thrill at seeing on the street in front of him, walking in the same direction, an elderly figure in ca.s.sock and cord. It was the Father Superior of the Brotherhood. John overtook him and greeted him.