Part 71 (2/2)
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.
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