Читать книгу The Christian - Sir Hall Caine - Страница 12

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On Sunday morning his fellow-curate came to his room to accompany him to church. The Rev. Joshua Golightly was a little man with a hook nose, small keen eyes, scanty hair, and a voice that was something between a whisper and a whistle. He bowed subserviently, and made meek little speeches.

“I do trust you will not be disappointed with our church and service. We do all we can to make them worthy of our people.”

As they walked down the streets he talked first of the church officers—there were honorary wardens, gentlemen sidesmen, and lady superintendents of floral decorations; then of the choir, which consisted of organist and choir master, professional members, voluntary members, and choir secretary. The anthem was sung by a professional singer, generally the tenor from the opera; the canon could always get such people—he was a great favourite with artistes and “the profession.” Of course, the singers were paid, and the difficulty this week had been due to the exorbitant fee demanded by the Italian barytone from Covent Garden.

Disappointment and disenchantment were falling on John Storm at every step.

All Saints' was a plain, dark structure with a courtyard in front. The bells were ringing, and a line of carriages was drawing up at the portico as at the entrance to a theatre, discharging their occupants and passing on. Vergers in yellow and buff, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, and powdered wigs, were receiving the congregation at the doors.

“Let us go in by the west door—I should like you to see the screen to advantage,” said Mr. Golightly.

The inside of the church was gorgeous. As far up as the clerestory every wall was frescoed, and every timber of the roof was gilded. At the chancel end there was a wrought-iron screen of delicate tracery, and the altar was laden with gold candlesticks. Above the altar and at either side of it were stained glass windows. The morning sun was shining through them and filling the chancel with warm splashes of light. Ladies in beautiful spring dresses were following the vergers up the aisles.

“This way,” the curate whispered, and John Storm entered the sacristy by a low doorway like the auditorium entrance to a stage. There he met some six others of his fellow-curates. They nodded to him and went on arranging their surplices. The choir were gathering in their own quarters, where the violins were tuning up and the choir boys were laughing and behaving after their kind.

The bell slackened and stopped, and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger in blue stood guard.

“The canon's room,” whispered Mr. Golightly.

A prayer was said by some one, the choir sang the response, and then they walked in procession to their places in the chancel, the choir boys first, the canon last. Seen through the tracery of the screen, the congregation appeared to fill every sitting in the church with a blaze of light and colour, and the atmosphere was laden with delicate perfume.

The service was choral. An anthem was sung at the close of the sermon, the collection being made during the hymn before it. The professional singer looked like any other chorister in his surplice, save for his swarthy face and heavy mustache.

The canon preached. He wore his doctor's hood of scarlet cloth. His sermon was eloquent and literary, and it was delivered with elocutionary power. There were many references to great writers, painters, and musicians, including a panegyric on Michael Angelo and a quotation from Browning. The sermon concluded with a passage from Dante in the original.

John Storm was dazed and perplexed. When the service was over he came out alone, returning down the nave, which was now empty but still fragrant. Among other notices pasted on a board in the porch he found this one: “The vicar and wardens, having learned with regret that purses have been lost on leaving the church, recommend the congregation to bring only such money as they may need for the offertory.”

Had he been to the house of God? No matter! God ruled the world in righteousness and wrought out everything to his own glory.

Next morning he began duty as chaplain at the hospital, and when he had finished the reading of his first prayers he could see that he had lived down some of the derision due to his adventure with the old woman. That poor old bag of bones was sinking and could not last much longer.

Going out by way of the dispensary, he saw Glory again, and heard that she had been at church the day before. It was lovely. All those hundreds of nice-looking people in gay colours, with the rustle of silk and the hum of voices—it was beautiful—it reminded her of the sea in summer. He asked her what she thought of the sermon, and she said, “Well, it wasn't religion exactly—not what I call religion—not a 'reg'lar rousing rampage for sowls,' as old Chalse used to say, but——”

“Glory,” he said impetuously, “I'm to preach my first sermon on Wednesday.”

He did not ask her to come, but inquired if she was on night duty. She answered No, and then somebody called her.

“She'll be there,” he told himself, and he walked home with uplifted head. He would look for her; he would catch her eye; she would see that it was not necessary to be ashamed of him again.

And then close behind, very close, came recollections of her appearance. He could reconstruct her new dress by memory—her face was easy to remember. “After all, beauty is a kind of virtue,” he thought. “And all natural friendship is good for the progress of souls if it is built upon the love of God.”

He wrote nothing and learned nothing by heart. The only preparation he made for his sermon was thought and prayer. When the Wednesday night came he was very nervous. But the church was nearly empty, and the vergers, who were in their everyday clothes, had only partially lit up the nave. The canon had done him the honour to be present; his fellow-curates read the prayers and lessons.

As he ascended the pulpit he thought he saw the white bonnets of a group of nurses in the dim distance of one of the aisles, but he did not see Glory and he dared not look again. His text was, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He gave it out twice, and his voice sounded strange to himself—so weak and thin in that hollow place.

When he began to speak his sentences seemed awkward and difficult. The things of the world were temporal and the nations of the world were out of harmony with God. Men were biting and devouring each other who ought to live as brothers. “Cheat or be cheated” was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire. … Then where was our refuge? … The Church was the refuge of God's people … from Christ came the answer—the answer—the——

His words would not flow. He fought hard, threw out another passage, then stammered, began again, stammered again, felt hot, made a fresh effort, flagged, rattled out some words he had fixed in his mind, perspired, lost his voice, and finally stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “And now to God the Father—” and came down from the pulpit.

His sermon had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly. Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London—at All Saints' especially—expected culture and preparation.

“For my own part I confess—nay, I am proud to declare—my watchword is Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!”

As for the doctrine of the sermon it was not above question. It was necessary to live in the nineteenth century, and it was impossible to apply to its conditions the rules of life that had been proper to the first.

John Storm made no resistance. He slept badly that night. As often as he dozed off he dreamed that he was trying to do something he could not do, and when he awoke he became hot as with the memory of a disgrace. And always at the back of his shame was the thought of Glory.

Next morning he was alone in his room and fumbling the toast on his breakfast table, when the door opened and a cheery voice cried, “May I no come in, laddie?”

An elderly lady entered. She was tall and slight and had a long, fine face, with shrewd but kindly eyes, and nearly snow-white hair.

“I'm Jane Callender,” she said, “and I couldna wait for an introduction or sic bother, but must just come and see ye. Ay, laddie, it was a bonnie sermon yon! I havena heard the match of it since I came frae Edinburgh and sat under the good Doctor Guthrie. Now he was nae slavish reader neither—none of your paper preachers was Thomas. My word, but you gave us the right doctrine, too! They're given over to the worship of Beelzebub—half these church-going folks! Oh, these Pharisees! They are enough to sour milk. I wish they had one neck and somebody would just squeeze it. Now, where did ye hear that, Jane? But no matter! And the lasses are worse than the men, with their fashions and foldololls. They love Jesus, but they like him best in heaven, not bothering down in Belgravia. But I must be going my ways. I left James on the street, and there's nae living with the man if you keep his horses waiting. Good-morning til ye! But eh, laddie, I'm afraid for ye! I'm thinking—I'm thinking … but come and see me at Victoria Square. Good-morning!”

She had rattled this off at a breath, and had hardly given time for a reply, when her black silk was rustling down the stairs.

John Storm remembered that the canon had spoken of her. She was the good woman who kept the home for girls at Soho.

“The good creature only came to comfort me,” he thought. But Glory! What was Glory thinking? That morning after prayers at the hospital he went in search of her in the out-patient department, but she pretended to be overwhelmed with work, and only nodded and smiled and excused herself.

“I haven't got a moment this morning either for the king or his dog. I'm up to my eyes in bandages, and have fourteen plasters on my conscience, and now I must run away to my little boy whose leg was amputated on Saturday.”

He understood her, but he came back in the evening and was resolved to face it out.

“What did you think of last night, Glory?” Then she put on a look of blank amazement.

“Why, what happened? Oh, of course, the sermon! How stupid of me! Do you know I forgot all about it?”

“You were not there, then?”

“Don't ask me. Really, I'm ashamed; after my promise to grandfather, too! But Wednesday doesn't count anyway, does it? You'll preach on Sunday—and then!”

His feeling of relief was followed by a sense of deeper humiliation. Glory had not even troubled herself to remember. Evidently he was nothing to her, nothing; while she——

He walked home through St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts were in the contemplation of the mighty city! He had been thinking only of himself and his own little doings. It was all so small and pitiful!

“Did my shame at my failure in the pulpit proceed solely from fear of losing the service of God, or did it proceed from wounded ambition, from pride, from thoughts of Glory——”

But the peaceful stars were over him. It was a majestic night.