When It Was Dark Part 16

Another face, unknown to him, arrested his attention.

The s.e.xes were not separated for worship in St. Mary's. In the same seat where Schuabe sat was a woman, dark, handsome, expensively dressed.

She also was Jewish in appearance, though it was obvious that there was no connection between her and the millionaire. Her face, as the young clergyman's eyes rested on it for a second, seemed to be curiously familiar, as if he saw it every day of his life, but it nevertheless struck no _personal_ note.

Gortre began to speak, taking for his text part of a verse from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans--"_Declared to be the Son of G.o.d with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead._"

"In this world of to-day," he began calmly, and with a certain deliberation and precision in his utterance, "what men in general are hungering after is a positive a.s.surance of actual spiritual agency in the world. They crave for something to hold by which is outside themselves, and which cannot have grown out of the inner persuasions of men. They cannot understand people who tell them that, whether the events of the Gospels actually pa.s.sed upon earth or not, they may fashion their own dispositions all the same, on the supposition that these events occurred. If I can to-night show that any appearance of the Risen Lord is attested in the same way as are certain facts commonly accepted as history, I shall have accomplished as much as I can hope."

Then, very carefully, Gortre went through the scientific and historical evidences for the truth of the Resurrection. Gradually, as he marshalled his proofs and brought forth one after the other, he began, by a sort of unconscious hypnotism of the eye, to make the seat where Schuabe and the strange woman sat his objective.

Many speakers have this automatic habit of addressing one or two persons as if they were the ear of the whole congregation. It is said that by such means, even if unconsciously employed, the brain becomes more concentrated and clearer for the work in hand.

Slowly the preacher's voice became more resonant and triumphant. To many of the congregation the overwhelming and stupendous evidences for the truth of the Gospel narratives which the study of late years has collected was entirely new. The Higher Criticism, the fact that it is not only in science that "discoveries" can be made, the excavations in the East and the newly discovered MSS., with their variations of reading, the possibility that the lost Aramaic original of St. Matthew's Gospel may yet be discovered, were all things which came to them for the first time in their lives. Gortre's words began to open up to them an entirely new train of thought. Their interest was profoundly quickened.

Very few clergymen of middle age are cognisant of the latest theological thought. Time, money, and lack of education alike prevent them. The slight mental endowment and very ordinary education which are all that is absolutely necessary for an ordination candidate, are not realised by the ordinary member of a church congregation. The ma.s.s of the English clergy to-day are content to leave such questions alone, to do their duty simply, to impose upon their flock the necessity of "faith," and to deny the right of individual judgment and speculation.

They do not realise that the world of their middle age is more educated, and so more intelligent, than the world of their youth, and that, if the public intellect is nurtured by the public, those whose duty it is to keep it within the fold of Christianity must provide it with a food suited to its development.

Gortre, in his sermon, had crystallised and boiled down into pregnant paragraphs, without circ.u.mlocution or obscurity, all the brilliant work of Latham, Westcott, Professor Ramsay, and Homersham c.o.x. He quoted Renan's pa.s.sage from _Les Apotres_, dealing with the finding of the empty tomb, and showed the flaws and fallacies in that brilliant piece of antichristian suggestion.

As he began to bring his arguments to a close he was conscious that the people were with him. He could feel the brains around him thinking in unison; it was almost as if he _heard_ the thoughts of the congregation.

The dark, handsome woman stared straight up at him. Trouble was in her eyes, an awakened consciousness, and Gortre knew that the truth was dropping steadily into her mind, and that conviction was unwelcome and alarming.

And he felt also the bitter antagonism which was alive and working behind the impa.s.sive face and half-closed eyes of the millionaire below.

It was a silent duel between them. He knew that his words were full of meaning, _even of conviction_, to the man, and yet he was subjectively conscious of some _reserve_ of force, some hidden sense of fearful power, a desperate resolve which he could not overcome.

His soul wrestled in this dark, mysterious conflict as with a devil, but could not prevail.

He finished all his argument, the last of his proofs. There was a hushed silence in the church.

Then swiftly, with a voice which trembled with the power that was given him, he called them to repentance and a new life. _If_, he said, his words had carried conviction of the truth of Christ's resurrection, of His divinity, then, believing that, there was but one course open to them all. For to know the truth, and to believe it, and to continue in indifference, was to kill the soul.

It was over. Father Ripon had p.r.o.nounced the blessing, the great organ was thundering out the requiem of another Sunday, and Sir Michael was shaking hands warmly with Basil in the vestry.

Gortre was tired and shaken by the long, nervous strain, but the evident pleasure of Father Ripon and Sir Michael, the knowledge that he had acquitted himself well, was comforting and sustaining.

He walked home, down quiet Holborn, curiously dead without the traffic of a week day and the lights of the shop fronts, and not reanimated by the strolling pedestrians, young people of the lower cla.s.ses from the East End, who thronged it.

Lincoln's Inn was wonderfully soothing and quiet as his footsteps echoed in the old quadrangle. After a lonely, tranquil supper--Hands was at a dinner-party somewhere in Mayfair and Spence was at the office of _The Daily Wire_ preparing for Monday's paper--he wheeled a small writing-desk up to the fireside and began a long letter of news and thankfulness to Helena.

He pictured the pleasant dining-room at Walktown, the Sunday night's supper,--an inst.i.tution at the Vicarage after the labours of the busiest day in the week,--with a guest or two perhaps.

He knew they would be thinking of him, as he of them, and pictured the love-light in his lady's sweet, calm eyes.

CHAPTER XI

"NEITHER DO I CONDEMN THEE"

Autumn came to London, a warm, lingering season. There was a hint of the South in the atmosphere of town. All business moved with languor; there was more enjoyment in life as people went and came through the streets under so ripe and genial a sun.

Gortre had settled down to steady, regular work. At no time before had a routine been so pleasant to him. His days were full of work, which, hard as it was, came to him with far more appeal than his duties at Walktown.

Nothing ever stagnated here, at the very hub and centre of things.

The splendid energy and force of Father Ripon, the magnificent unconvention of his methods, animated his staff to constant and unflagging exertions.

Gortre felt that he was suddenly "grown up," that his life before had been spent in futile playtime compared to the present.

One central fact in St. Mary's parish held all the great organisation together. This was the daily services in the great church. Priests, deacons, sisters of mercy, school teachers, and lay helpers all drew their strength and inspiration from this source. The daily Eucharist, matins, evensong, were both a stimulus and stimulant of enormous power.

Church brought the mysteries in which they lived, moved, and had their being into intimate relation with every circ.u.mstance of daily life.

The extraordinary thing, which many of Father Ripon's staff were almost unable to understand, was that more people did not avail themselves of what they regarded--viewing the thing from a standpoint of personal experience--such helpful opportunities.

"They are always coming to me," Father Ripon had said on one occasion, "and complaining that they find such a tremendous difficulty in leading a holy life--say that the worldly surroundings and so forth kill their good impulses--and yet they _won't_ come to church. People are such fools! My young men imagine that they can become good Christians by a sort of sudden magic--a low beast on Sat.u.r.day night, the twentieth of August, and, after a nerve storm in church and a few tears in the vestry, a saint for evermore! And then when they get drunk or do something beastly the next week, they rail against the Christian Faith because it isn't a sort of spiritual hand cuffs! And yet if you told them you could manage a bank after merely experience in a shipping office, they would see the absurdity of that at once. Donkeys!"

This with a genial smile of tenderness and compa.s.sion, for this Whirlwind in a Ca.s.sock loved his flock.

So from the very first Basil had found his life congenial. Privately he blessed his good fortune in living in Lincoln's Inn with Spence. On the nights when the journalist was free from the office, and not otherwise engaged, the two men sat late with pipes and coffee, enjoying that vigorous communion of two keen, young, and virile brains which is one of the truly stimulating pleasures of life.

Gortre admired Spence greatly for some of his qualities. His intellect was, of course, first cla.s.s--his high position on the great daily paper guaranteed that. His reading and sympathies were wide. Moreover, the clergyman found a great refreshment in the fact that, in an age of indifference, at a time when the best intellects of younger London life were professedly agnostic, Harold Spence was an avowed Christian and Churchman. As Gortre got to know him better, when the silence and detachment of midnight in the old Inn broke down reticence, he realised with a sense of thankfulness, and sometimes of fear also, how a thorough belief in religion kept the writer straight and captain of his own soul.

For the man was a creature of strong pa.s.sions and wayward desires. He had not always been the clean gentleman of the present. As is so often the case with a refined and cultured temperament, he had a dark and ugly side to his nature. The coa.r.s.e vices of the blood called to him long and often with their hollow siren voices. Evil came to him with swift invitation and cunning allurement. He had hinted to Basil of days of sin and secret shame. And now, very soberly and without any emotion, he clung to Christ for help.

And he had conquered.

This was ever a glorious fact to Basil, another miracle in those thousands of daily miracles which were happening all around him. But his fear for Harold came from his realisation of his friend's exact spiritual grip. Spence's Christianity was rather too _utilitarian_ for safety. Perhaps the deep inward conviction was weak. It seemed sometimes as if it were a barren, th.o.r.n.y thing--too much fetish, too much a return for benefits received, a sort of half-conscious bargain. He often prayed long that nothing should ever occur to shake Spence's belief; for he felt, if that should happen, the disaster would prove irreparable. A dammed river is a dangerous thing.

But he kept all these thoughts locked in his heart, and never spoke of them to Harold.

Since the evening of his first sermon he had never seen Schuabe again.

Now and then the thought of him pa.s.sed through his brain, and his mental sight seemed obscured for a moment, as though great wings hid the sun from him. But since the silent duel in the church, the curious and malign influence of the millionaire had waned. It was prominent no longer, and when it troubled him it did so without power and force. Fine health, the tonic of constant work, the armour of continual prayer, had their way and were able to banish much of what he now looked back on as morbidity, sinister though it had been.

Nevertheless, one thing often reminded him of that night. The dark, Jewish-looking lady he had seen sitting in the same pew with Schuabe often came to church on Sunday nights when he was preaching. The bold and insolently beautiful face looked up at him with steady interest. The fierce regard had something pa.s.sionate and yet wistful in it.

Sometimes Basil found himself preaching almost directly to the face and soul of the unknown woman. There was an understanding between them. He knew it; he felt it most certainly.

Sometimes she would remain in her seat after the ma.s.s of the congregation had shuffled away into the night. She did not pray, but sat still, with her musing eyes fixed on the huge ten-foot crucifix that swung down from the chancel arch.

Once, as he pa.s.sed the pew on the way to baptise the child of a poor woman of the streets--brought in furtively after the Sunday evensong--she made a movement as if to speak to him. He had waited in expectation for a moment, but she remained still, and he pa.s.sed on to the font, with its sad cl.u.s.ter of outcasts, its dim gas-jets, and the tiny child of shame with its thin cry of distress.

He was asking the tremendous question--

"_Dost thou, in the name of this child, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow nor be led by them?_"