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The Christian, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Book 3. The Devil's Acre - Chapter 6 |
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_ THIRD BOOK. THE DEVIL'S ACRE CHAPTER VI On the Sunday evening after Glory's departure John Storm, with the bloodhound running by his side, made his way to Soho in search of the mother of Brother Andrew. He had come to a corner of a street where the walls of an ugly brick church ran up a narrow court and turned into a still narrower lane at the back. The church had been for some time disused, and its facade was half covered with boardings and plastered with placards: "Brighton and Back, 3_s_."; "_Lloyd's News_"; "Coals, 1_s_. a cwt."; and "Barclay's Sparkling Ales." There was a tumult in the court and lane. In the midst of a close-packed ring of excited people, chiefly foreigners, shouting in half the languages of Europe, a tall young Cockney, with bloated face and eyes aflame with drink, was writhing and wrestling and cursing. Sometimes he escaped from the grasp of the man who held him, and then he flung himself against the closed door of a shop which stood opposite, with the three balls of the pawnbroker suspended above it. Somebody within the shop was howling for help. It was a woman's voice, and the louder she screamed the more violent were the man's efforts to beat down the door between them. As John Storm stood a moment looking on, some one on the street beside him said, "It's a d---- shyme." It was a man with a feeble, ineffectual face and the appearance of a waiter. Seeing he had been overheard, the man stammered: "Beg parding, sir; but they may well say 'when the Devil can't come hisself 'e sends 'is brother Drink.'" Having said this he began to move along, but stopped suddenly on seeing what the clergyman with the dog was doing. John Storm was pushing his way through the crowd, and his black figure in that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and commanding. "What's this?" he was saying in a husky voice that rose clear above the clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save the howling from the inside of the shop, and the tumult settled down in a moment to mutterings and gnashings and a broken and irregular silence. Then somebody said, "It's nothink, sir." And somebody else said, "'Es on'y drunk, and wantin' to pench 'is mother." Without listening to this explanation John Storm had laid hold of the young man by the collar and was dragging him, struggling and fuming, from the door. "What's going on?" he demanded. "Will nobody speak?" Then a poor swaggering imitation of a man came up out of the cellar of a house that stood next to the disused church, and a comely young woman carrying a baby followed close behind him. He had a gin bottle in his hands, and with a wink he said: "A christenin'--that's what's going on. 'Ave a kepple o' pen'orth of 'ollands, old gel?" At this sally the crowd recovered its audacity and laughed, and the drunken man began to say that he could "knock spots out of any bloomin' parson, en' now bloomin' errer." But the young fellow with the gin bottle broke in again. "What's yer gime, mister? Preach the gawspel? Give us trecks? This is my funeral, down't ye know, and I'd jest like to hear." The little foreigners were enjoying the parson-baiting, and the drunken man's courage was rising to fever heat. "I'll give 'im one-two between the eyes if 'e touches me again." Then he flung himself on the pawnshop like a battering ram, the howling inside, which had subsided, burst out afresh, and finally the door was broken down. Half a minute afterward the crowd was making a wavering dance about the two men. "Look out, ducky!" the young fellow shouted to John. The warning came too late--John went reeling backward from a blow. "Now, my lads, who says next?" cried the drunken ruffian. But before the words were out of his mouth there was a growl, a plunge, a snarl, and he was full length on the street with the bloodhound's muzzle at his throat. The crowd shrieked and began to fly. Only one person seemed to remain. It was an elderly woman, with dry and straggling gray hair. She had come out of the pawnshop and thrown herself on the dog in an effort to rescue the man underneath, crying: "My son--oh, my son! It'll kill him! Tyke the beast away!" John Storm called the dog off, and the man got up unhurt, and nearly sober. But the woman continued to moan over the ruffian and to assail John and his dog with bitter insults. "We want no truck with parsons 'ere," she shouted. "Stou thet, mother. It was my fault," said the sobered man, and then the woman began to cry. At the next minute John Storm was going with mother and son into the shut-up pawnshop, and the unhinged door was being propped behind them. The crowd was trailing off when he came out again half an hour afterward, and the only commotion remaining was caused by a belated policeman asking, "Wot's bin the matter 'ere?" and by the young fellow with the gin bottle performing a step-dance on the pavement before the entrance to the cellar. The old woman stood at her door wiping her eyes on her apron, and her son was behind with a face that was now red from other causes than drink and rage. "Good-bye, Mrs. Pincher; I may see you again soon." Hearing this, the young swaggerer stopped his step-dancing and cried: "What cheer, myte? Was it a blowter and a cup of cawfy?" "For shynie, Charlie!" cried the girl with a baby, and the young fellow answered, "Shut yer 'ead, Aggie!" The waiter was still at the corner of the court, and when John came up he spoke again. "There must be sem amoosement knockin' women abart, but I can't see it myself." Then in a simple way he began to talk about his "missis," and what a good creature she was, and finally announced himself "gyme" to help a parson "as stood up to that there drunken blowke for sake of a woman." "What's your name?" said John. "Jupe," said the man, and then something stirred in John's memory. On the following day John Storm dined with his uncle at Downing Street. The Prime Minister was waiting in the library. In evening dress, with his back to the fireplace and his hands enlaced behind him, he looked even more thin and gaunt than before. He welcomed John with a few familiar words and a smile. His smile was brief and difficult, like that which drags across the face of an invalid. Dinner was announced immediately, and the old man took the young one's arm and they passed into the dining-room. The panelled chamber looked cold and cheerless. It was lighted by a single lamp in the middle of the table. They took their seats at opposite sides. The statesman's thin hair shone on his head like streaks of silver. John exercised a strong physical influence upon him, and all through the dinner his bleak face kept smiling. "I ought to apologize for having nobody to meet you, but I had something to say--something to suggest--and I thought perhaps----" John interrupted with affectionate protestations, and a tremor passed over the wrinkles about the old man's eyes. "It is a great happiness to me, my dear boy, that you have turned your back on that Brotherhood, but I presume you intend to adhere to the Church?" John intended to take priest's orders without delay, and then go on with his work as a clergyman. "Just so, just so"--the long, tapering fingers drummed on the table--"and I should like to do something to help you." Then sipping at his wine-glass of water, the Prime Minister, in his slow, deep voice and official tone, began to detail his scheme. There was a bishopric vacant. It was only a colonial one--the Bishopric of Colombo. The income was small, no more than seventeen hundred pounds, the work was not light, and there were fifty clergy. Then a colonial bishopric was not usually a stepping-stone to preferment at home, yet still---- John interrupted again. "You are most kind, uncle, but I am only looking forward to living the life of a poor priest, out of sight of the world and the Church." "Surely Colombo is sufficiently out of sight, my boy?" "But I see no necessity to leave London." The Prime Minister glanced at him steadily, with the concentrated expression of a man who is accustomed to penetrate the thoughts and feelings of another. "Why then--why did you----" "Why did I leave the monastery, uncle? Because I had come to see that the monastic system was based on a faulty ideal of Christianity, which had been tried for the greater part of nineteen hundred years and failed. The theory of monasticism is that Christ died to redeem our carnal nature, and all we have to do is to believe and pray. But it is not enough that Christ died once. He must be dying always--every day--and in every one of us. God is calling on us in this age to seek a new social application of the Gospel, or, shall I say, to go back to the old one?" "And that is----?" "To present Christ in practical life as the living Master and King and example, and to apply Christianity to the life of our own time." 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 God's sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable 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 superstition that we were a Christian nation. It helped to curb the masses 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, passed 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 lordship?" 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 God 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. God would provide for him in this as in everything, and then God's priest ought to be God'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 God 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 pawnbroker, and another convert who is a club waiter. Nevertheless, I went through the whole service, morning and evening, prayers, psalms, and sermon. God 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 pawnbroker 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 cassock. 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 God, the ground of evil-doers is in danger, and they know it! "Behind my church, in a dark, unwholesome alley called. Crook Lane, we have a clergy house, at present let out in tenements, the cellar being occupied as a gin shop. As soon as these premises can be cleared of their encumbrances I shall turn them into a club for working girls. Why not? In the old days the Church came to the people: let it come to the people now. Here we are in the midst of this mighty stronghold of the devil's kingdom of sin and crime. Foreign clubs, casinos, dancing academies, and gambling houses are round about us. What are we to do? Put up a forest of props (as at the Abbey) and keep off touch and contamination? God forbid! Let us go down into these dens of moral disease and disinfect them. The poor working girls, of Soho want their Sunday: give it them. They want music and singing: give it them. They want dancing: give them that also, for God's sake, give it them in your churches, or the devil will give it them in his hells! "Expect to be howled at of course. Some good people will think I am either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers, who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright little woman, snatched from the brink of perdition, will be a better fruit, of religion than some of them have seen for many a year. "As soon as the workmen have cleared out I am going to establish a daily service and keep the church open always. Still at Mrs. Callender's, you see; but I am refusing all invitations, except as a priest, and already I don't seem to, have time to draw my breath. No income connected with St. Mary Magdalene's, or next to none, just enough to pay the caretaker; but I must not complain of that, for it is the accident to which I owe my church, nobody else wanting it under the circumstances. I had begun to think my time in the monastery wasted, but God knew better. It will help me to live the life of poverty, of purity, of freedom from the world. "Love to the grandfather and the ladies. How I wish you were with me in the thick of the fight! Sometimes I dream you are, too, and I fancy I see you in the midst of these bright young things with their flowers and feathers--they will make beautiful Christians yet! Oddly enough, on the day you travelled to the island, every hour that took you farther away seemed to bring you nearer. Greetings!" _ |
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