Читать книгу The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] - Richard Le Gallienne - Страница 11

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Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met.

You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to make it move and hum and whizz.

Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply.

The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion, "is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr. Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets.

So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor," presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane.

I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless.

Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise.

Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very old, and she, I know, was very wise.

Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't pretty yet, but she wasn't plain.

Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince! That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses.

Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that for granted as we begin the next chapter.