Part 17 (1/2)
He was entirely dominated by the man. In a burst of nervous words, he poured out his thoughts. He told of his futile visit to Hamlyn, his keen distress at the result, the misery the agitation gave him, and the harm he believed it to be doing.
Blantyre listened with few words. Now and then he made a warm and penetrating remark.
”It will pa.s.s,” he said at length; ”G.o.d will give us peace again. He is trying the faith of the poor and ignorant among us. Our prayers will avail. But we will concert together that we may take such measures to stop the local evil as we properly can. I have been loath to move in the matter, but now that you have come to me we will join forces and take action. There are ways and means. I hate pulling wires and using influence, but one must sometimes. I had hoped it wouldn't be necessary.
But something must be done. Lord Huddersfield will take action for us.
The street meetings can be stopped at once. Then we can inaugurate a real press campaign and let the leader-writers loose. Hitherto it's been our policy to say nothing much, except in the religious papers, of course. But the time has come when we must fight, too. I was talking to Sir Michael Manicho about it the other day. A word or two from him and the country will be ringing with warnings. We can rob this Luther League of its powers in a week. It will _go on_, of course, but with its fangs drawn. The people who support it will, many of them, cease their subscriptions. And there is the law also. The magistrates of London are quite ready to take a strong stand. That is settled. And a word from the Archbishop, perhaps, would be a help. Public opinion is very easily turned.”
He spoke calmly, but with conviction and a quiet sense of power. Carr began to see dimly what great forces were behind this man and others of his kind. The tremendous organising machinery of the Catholic Church was laid bare for a moment.
A most confidential talk followed. Blantyre gave the other details and names. He made it plain to Carr's astonished ears that those in high places were waiting to act, waiting to see if the Church needed them.
The depth and force of it all astonished him.
A bell began to ring. ”There's evensong,” said Blantyre, ”I must be off.
It's my turn to say it to-night.”
”I will come, too,” Carr answered.
”Do, do! and take some food with us all afterwards, and we'll have a longer talk. You can't think how happy I am that we have come together.
What? You've never seen our church? Why, then, you've a treat in front of ye! Every one says it's beautiful. We all love it, we're all proud of it!”
He took him by the arm and led him away.
Not a word of the differences that separated them, no suspicion, or distrust, nothing but welcome and brotherhood!
The tall, bearded man and the quick, shaven Celt in his ca.s.sock went into the church together to pray--
”Give peace in our time, O Lord.”
CHAPTER X
LOW WATER AND GREAT EXPECTATIONS
In a couple of months after the meeting between Carr and Blantyre, public opinion had spoken in no uncertain way about the ”Luther League.”
Public opinion in these days is very easily led in this or that direction--but only for a time. There is a vast stratum of common-sense, of love of justice, of wholesome sanity, in England, and it can always be reached by a little boring. In the end, especially upon any question which is in its essence sociological, a proper balance is found and the truth of a matter firmly established.
And Hamlyn's agitation was treated as a social question rather than a religious one, at any rate by a secular press. Whether the doings of the High Church party were legal or illegal according to the prayer-book (such was the line the papers took) was a question to be decided by experts in history and the authorities of the Church; a question, in fact, that ought to be decided in a legitimate way. What was, however, quite certain, was that the proceedings of Hamlyn and his party were improper, vulgar, and indecent. It was simply misleading nonsense to cover the Ritualistic party, a body of high-minded and earnest men, with the noisy and venomous vituperation of the streets. Freedom of thought was the heritage of every Englishman, and Hamlyn had simply elected himself a grand inquisitor of matters that did not concern him and which he was unable to understand. No dishonesty on the man's part was alleged. But his history was unearthed by one or two enterprising journalists, following the popular lead. It was shown that while nothing had ever been said against his personal character--and nothing was said now--he had risen from the position of a struggling local newspaper man to comparative affluence and the control of a large and costly organisation. The cash accounts of the League were scrutinised, and unkind remarks were made upon the constant advertis.e.m.e.nts of the League, with their cry for increased income and fresh subscribers. It was pointed out that people who supported a crusade made without authority by a self-const.i.tuted Peter the Hermit, over whom no proper control could be exercised and whose methods of prosecuting it were a mixture of buffoonery, uncharitable malice, and untruth, were incurring a serious responsibility.
In short, public opinion was told in plain language exactly how it ought to regard the campaign. Great newspapers spoke out during one fortnight with singular unanimity. Street meetings were promptly broken up by the police, and after some of the Luther Lecturers had been to prison, finding that public interest in their ”martyrdom” was languis.h.i.+ng, they subsided into quiet, devotional meetings on the sands at popular watering-places. Whenever Mr. Hamlyn hired a hall and lectured on the iniquities of the local clergy, he was confronted by the spectacle of a sharp-faced man who took down every word of his utterances with scrupulous fidelity. It was always the same machine-like man, in Liverpool or in Plymouth, in Bath or Dundee--there he was. The agitator's eloquence was considerably checked. He was in no condition to sustain an action for slander or libel in which, he well knew, some poor clergyman would somehow be able to brief all the great hawk-faced leaders of the bar, gentlemen with whom Mr. Hamlyn wished to have as little as possible to do.
At such open-air meetings as were permitted, some un.o.btrusive stranger was generally to be found distributing leaflets among the crowd, which resembled nothing so much as the literature of the Luther League itself in its general ”get-up” and appearance. On perusal, however, it proved to be of quite a different tenor, being nothing else than extracts from the best-known English newspapers on Mr. Hamlyn and his mission. This was very trying and disturbed the harmony of many meetings.
In the a.s.semblies convened at halls hired for the occasion,--admission by ticket only,--it frequently happened that some well-known local resident, who could not be denied, made his appearance, and with a few weighty words entirely changed the character of the meeting. The reports from his myrmidons all over the country, which reached Mr. Hamlyn in the Strand, showed a series of counter-moves which alarmed him in their neatness and ingenuity.
It had been for months a pleasing habit of the peripatetic Protestants under the Hamlyn banner to visit churches and make notes of the ornaments therein, afterwards lecturing on them in their own inimitable and humorous manner to crowds in back streets.
Mr. Moffatt, indeed--the young gentleman who had forsaken the plumbing and gas-fitting industry to become incandescent and watery on the Protestant war-path--had more than once broken a small crucifix with an umbrella. The lecturers found, however, that, as if by some concerted action, church doors were locked wherever they might go. The poor fellows' hunger for the sight of candlesticks and sanctuary lamps was hardly ever gratified now, and they were compelled to the somewhat ignominious expedient of nailing the bulls of Mr. Hamlyn to the doors of sacred buildings and going gloomily away.