Part 22 (1/2)

He reached his mission-room at last, through the close, unwholesome atmosphere, and found it fairly filled, chiefly with working men, some of whom had turned into it as being a trifle less hot and noisy than the baking pavements without, crowded with quarrelsome children. It was, moreover, the pay-night for a Providence club which Felix had established for any, either men or women, who chose to contribute to it.

There was a short and simple lecture given first; and afterwards the club-books were brought out, and a committee of working men received the weekly subscriptions, and attended to the affairs of the little club.

The lecture was near its close, when a drunken man, in the quarrelsome stage of intoxication, stumbled in through the open door. Felix knew him by sight well; a confirmed drunkard, a mere miserable sot, who hung about the spirit-vaults, and lived only for the drink he could pour down his throat. There had been a vague instinctive dread and disgust for the man, mingled with a deep interest he could not understand, in Felix's mind. He paused for an instant, looking at the dirty rags, and bleared eyes, and degraded face of the drunkard standing just in the doorway, with the summer's light behind him.

”What's the parson's name?” he called in a thick, unsteady voice. ”Is it Sefton?”

”Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+” cried two or three voices in answer.

”I'll not hus.h.!.+ If it's Sefton, it were his father as made me what I am.

It were his father as stole every blessed penny of my earnings. It were his father as drove me to drink, and ruined me, soul and body. Sefton!

I've a right to know the name of Sefton if any man on earth does. Curse it!”

Felix had ceased speaking, and stood facing his little congregation, listening as in a dream. The men caught the drunken accuser by the arms, and were violently expelling him, but his rough voice rose above the noise of the scuffle.

”Ay!” he shouted, ”the parson won't hear the truth told. But take care of your money, mates, or it'll go where mine went.”

”Don't turn him out,” called Felix; ”it's a mistake, my men. Let him alone. He never knew my father.”

The drunkard turned round and confronted him, and the little a.s.sembly was quiet again, with an intense quietness, waiting to hear what would follow.

”Your father's name was Roland Sefton?” said the drunkard.

”Yes,” answered Felix.

”And he was banker of the Old Bank at Riversborough?” he asked.

”Yes,” said Felix.

”Then what I've got to say is this,” went on the rough, thick voice of the half-drunken man; ”and the tale's true, mates. Roland Sefton, o'

Riversborough, cheated me out o' all my hard earnings--one hundred and nineteen pounds--as I'd trusted him with, and drove me to drink. I were a steady man till then, as steady as the best of ye; and he were a fine, handsome, fair-spoken gentleman as ever walked; and we poor folks trusted him as if he'd been G.o.d Almighty. There was a old deaf and dumb man, called Marlowe, lost six hundred pound by him, and it broke his heart; he never held his head up after, and he died. Me, it drove to drink. That's the father o' the parson who stands here telling you about Jesus Christ, and maybe trusted with your money, as I trusted mine with him as cheated me. It's a true tale, mates, if G.o.d Almighty struck me dead for it this moment.”

There was such a tone of truth in the hoa.r.s.e and pa.s.sionate tones, which grew steadier as the speaker gained a.s.surance by the silence of the audience, that there was not one there who did not believe the story.

Even Felix, listening with white face and flaming eyes, dared not cry out that the accusation was a lie. Horrible as it was, he could not say to himself that it was all untrue. There came flas.h.i.+ng across his mind confused reminiscences of the time when his father had disappeared from out of his life. He remembered asking his mother how long he would be away, and did he never write to her? and she had answered him that he was too young to understand the truth about his father. Was it possible that this was the truth?

In after years he never forgot that sultry evening, with the close, noisome atmosphere of the hot mission-hall, and the confused buzzing of many voices, which after a short silence began to hum in his ears. The drunkard was still standing in the doorway, the very wreck and ruin of a man; and every detail of his loathsome, degraded appearance was burnt in on Felix's brain. He felt stupefied and bewildered--as if he had received almost a death-blow. But in his inmost soul a cry went up to heaven, ”Lord, Thou also hast been a man!”

Then he saw that the cross lay before him in his path. ”Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” It had seemed to Felix at times as if he had never been called upon to bear any cross. But now it lay there close before him. He could not take another step forward unless he lifted it up and laid it on his shoulders, whatever its weight might be. The cross of shame--the bearing of another's sin--his father's sin. His whole soul recoiled from it. Any other cross but this he could have borne after Christ with willing feet and rejoicing heart. But to know that his father was a criminal; and to bear the shame of it openly!

Yet he could not stand there longer, fighting his battle, in the presence of these curious eyes so keenly fastened upon him. The clock over the door showed upon its dial only a minute or two gone; but to Felix the time consumed in his brief foretaste of the cross seemed years. He gathered together so much of his self-possession as could be summoned at a moment's notice, and looked straight into the faces of his audience.

”Friends,” he said, ”if this is true, it is as new to me as it is to you. My father died when I was a boy of ten; and no one had a heart hard enough to tell me then my father was a rogue. But if I find it is true, I'll not rest day nor night till this man has his money again. What is his name?”

”Nixey,” called out three or four voices; ”John Nixey.”

Again Felix's heart sank, for he knew Simon Nixey, whose farm lay nearest to Phebe's little homestead; and there was a familiar ring in the name.

”Ay, ay!” stammered Nixey; ”but old Clifford o' the Bank paid me the money back all right; only I'd sworn a dreadful oath I'd never lay by another farthin', and it soon came to an end. It were me as were lost as well as the money.”

”Then what do you come bothering here for,” asked one of the men, ”if you've had your money back all right? Get out with you.”