Part 62 (2/2)
The Prime Minister had not taken his eyes off him. ”What does this mean?” he had asked himself, but he only smiled his difficult smile and began to talk lightly. If this creed applied to the individual it applied also to the State; but think of a cabinet conducting the affairs of a nation on the charming principle of ”taking no thought for the morrow,” and ”loving your enemies,” and ”turning the other cheek,” and ”selling all and giving to the poor”!
John stuck to his guns. If the Christian religion could not be the ultimate authority to rule a Christian nation, it was only because we lacked faith and trusted too much to mechanical laws made by statesmen rather than to moral laws made by Christ. ”Either the life of Christ, as the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing.
If something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for G.o.d's sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and d.a.m.nable mummery!”
The Prime Minister continued to ask himself, ”What is the key to this?”
and to look at John as he would have looked at a problem that had to be solved, but he only went on smiling and talking lightly. It was true we said a prayer and took an oath on the Bible in the Houses of Parliament, but did anybody think for a moment that we intended to trust the nation to the charming romanticism of the politics of Jesus? As for the Church, it was founded on acts of Parliament, it was endowed and established by the State, its head was the sovereign, its clergy were civil servants who went to levees and hung on the edge of drawing-rooms and troubled the knocker of No. 10 Downing-Street. And as for Christ's laws--in this country they were interpreted by the Privy Council and were under the direct control of a State department. Still, it was a harmless superst.i.tion that we were a Christian nation. It helped to curb the ma.s.ses of the people, and if that was what John was thinking of----
The Prime Minister paused and stopped.
”Tell me, my boy,” touching John's arm, ”do you intend yourself to live--in short, the--well, after the example of the life of Christ?”
”As far as my weak and vain and sinful nature will permit, uncle!”
”And in what way would you propose to apply your new idea of Christianity?”
”My experiment would be made on a social basis, sir, and first of all in relation to women.” John was hot all over, and his face had flushed up to the eyes.
The Prime Minister glanced stealthily across the table, pa.s.sed his thin hand across his forehead, and thought, ”So that's how it is!” But John was deep in his theme and saw nothing. The present position of women was intolerable. Upon the well-being of women, especially of working women, the whole welfare of society rested. Yet what was their condition? Think of it--their dependence on man, their temptations, their rewards, their punishments! Three halfpence an hour was the average wage of a working woman in England!--and that in the midst of riches, in the heart of luxury, and with one easy and seductive means of escape from poverty always open. Ruin lay in wait for them, and was beckoning them and enticing them in the shape of dancing houses and music halls and rich and selfish men.
”Not one man in a million, sir, would come through such an ordeal unharmed. And yet what do we do?--what does the Church do for these brave creatures on whose virtue and heroism the welfare of the nation depends? If they fall it cuts them off, and there is nothing before them but the streets or crime or the Union or suicide. And meanwhile it marries the men who have tempted them to the snug and sheltered darlings for whose wealth or rank or beauty they have been pushed aside. Oh, uncle, when I walk down Regent Street in the daytime I am angry, but when I walk down Regent Street at night I am ashamed. And then to think of the terrible solitude of London to working girls who want to live pure lives--the terrible spiritual loneliness!”
John's voice was breaking, but the Prime Minister had almost ceased to hear. Thinking he had realized the truth at last, his own youth seemed to be sitting before him and he felt a deep pity.
”Coffee here or in the library, your lords.h.i.+p?” said the man at his elbow.
”The library,” he answered, and taking John's arm again he returned to the other room. There was a fire burning now, and a book lay under the lamp on a little table, with a silver paper-cutter through the middle to mark the page.
”How you remind me of your mother sometimes, John! That was just like her voice, do you know--just!”
Two hours afterward he led John Storm down the long corridor to the hall. His bleak face looked soft and his deep voice had a slight tremor.
”Good-night, my dear boy, and remember your money is always waiting for you. Until your Christian social state is established you are only an advocate of socialism, and may fairly use your own. If yours is the Christianity of the first century it has to exist in the nineteenth, you know. You can't live on air or fly without wings. I shall be curious to see what approach, to the Christian ideal the condition of civilization admits of. Yet I don't know what your religious friends and the humdrum herd will think of you--mad probably, or at least weak and childish and perhaps even a hunter after easy popularity. But good-night, and G.o.d bless you in, your people's church and Devil's Acre!”
John was flushed and excited. He had been talking of his plans, his hopes, his expectations. G.o.d would provide for him in this as in everything, and then G.o.d's priest ought to be G.o.d's poor. Meantime two gentlemen in plush waited for him at the door. One handed him his hat, the other his stick and gloves.
Then with regular steps, and his hands behind him, the Prime Minister paced back through the quiet corridors. Returning to the library, he took up his book and tried to read. It was a novel, but he could not attend to the incidents in other people's lives. From time to time he said to himself: ”Poor boy! Will he find her? Will he save her?” One pathetic idea had fixed itself on his mind--John Storm's love of G.o.d was love of a woman, and she was fallen and wrecked and lost.
A fortnight later John wrote to Glory:
”Fairly under weigh at last, dear Glory! Taken priest's orders, got the Bishop's 'license to officiate,' and found myself a church. It is St.
Mary Magdalene's, Crown Street, Soho, a district that has borne for three hundred years the name of the 'Devil's Acre,' bears it still, and deserves it. The church is an old proprietary place, licensed, not consecrated, formerly belonging to Greek, or Italian, or French, or some other refugees, but long shut up and now much out of repair. Present owners, a company of Greek merchants, removed from Soho to the City, and being too poor (as trustees) to renovate the structure, they have forced me to get money for that purpose from my uncle, the Prime Minister. But the money is my own, apparently, my uncle having in my interest demanded from my father ten thousand pounds out of my mother's dowry, and got it.
And now I am spending two thousand on the repair of my church buildings, notwithstanding the protests of the Prime Minister, who calls me 'chaplain to the Greek-Turks,' and of Mrs. Callender, who has discovered that I am a 'maudlin, sentimental, daft young spendthrift.' Dare say I am all that and a good deal more, as the wise world counts wisdom--but it matters little!
”Have not waited for the workmen, though, to begin operations. Took first services last Sunday. No organist, no choir, no clerk, and next to no congregation. Just the church cleaner, a good, simple old soul named Pincher, her son, a reformed drunkard and p.a.w.nbroker, and another convert who is a club waiter. Nevertheless, I went through the whole service, morning and evening, prayers, psalms, and sermon. G.o.d will be the more glorified.
”Have started my new crusade on behalf of women, too, and made various processions of three persons through the streets of Soho. First, my p.a.w.nbroker bearing the banner (a white cross, the object of various missiles), next my waiter carrying a little harmonium, and familiarly known as the 'organ man,' and finally myself in my ca.s.sock. Last mentioned proves to be a highly popular performance, being generally understood to be a man in a black petticoat. We have had a nightly accompaniment of a much larger procession, though, calling themselves 'Skellingtons,' otherwise the 'Skeletons,' an army of low women and roughs; who live vulture lives on this poor, soiled, grimy, forgotten world. Thank G.o.d, the ground of evil-doers is in danger, and they know it!
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