第27章

Especially distressing was Aunt Elizabeth, who evidently loved to sing hymns but had little idea of melody or rhythm, and was influenced entirely by a copious sentiment which overflowed into her eyes and trembled at the tips of her fingers.

All this was as naive and awkward as is always the singing of English hymns in English churches by English citizens.The chapel, which had seemed before to be rising to some strange atmosphere of expectation, slipped back now to its native ugliness and sterility.

The personality was in the man and in the man alone.

Maggie looked about her, at the faces of the women who surrounded her.They were grey, strained, ugly in the poor light of the building.The majority of them seemed to be either servant-girls or women who had passed the adventurous period of life and had passed it without adventure.When the time for the sermon arrived Mr.

Warlock prayed, his head bowed, during a moment's silence, then leaning forward on his desk repeated some of the words of his earlier reading:

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:...say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!...

What followed was practical, eloquent, the preaching of a man who had through the course of a long life addressed men of all kinds and in all places.But behind the facility and easy flow of his words Maggie fancied that she detected some urgent insistence that came from the man's very heart.She was moved by that as though he were saying to her personally, "Don't heed these outward words of mine.

But listen to me myself.There is something I must tell you.There is no time to lose.You must believe me.I will compel your belief.

Follow me and I will show what will transform your life." He concluded his sermon with these words:

"And what of our responsibility? We may compare ourselves, I think, to men who, banded together on some secret service, wait for the moment when they are to declare themselves and, by that action, transform the world.Until that moment comes they must lead their ordinary daily lives, seem as careless of the future as their fellows, laugh and eat and work and play as though nothing beyond the business of the day were their concern.But in their hearts is the responsibility of their secret knowledge.They cannot be as other men knowing what they do, they cannot be to one another as they are to other men with the bond of their common duty shared between them.Much has been given them, much will be demanded of them; and when the day comes it will not be the events of that day that will test them but the private history, known only to themselves and their Master, of the hours that have preceded that day.""I tell you what I have often told you before from this same place, that beside the history of the spirit the history of the body is nothing--and that history of the spirit is no easy, tranquil progress from birth to death, but must rather be, if we are to have any history at all, a struggle, a wrestling, a contest, bloody, unceasing, uncertain in its issue from the first hour until the last.This is no mere warning spoken from the lips only by one who, from sheer weekly necessity, may seem to you formal and official; it is as urgent, as deeply from the heart as though it were a summons from a messenger who has come to you directly from his Master.I beg of you to consider your responsibility, which is greater than that of other men.We are brothers bound together by a great expectation, a great preparation, a great trust.We are in training for a day when more will be demanded of us than of any other men upon the earth.That is no light thing.Let us hold ourselves then as souls upon whom a great charge is laid."When he had ended and knelt again to pray Maggie felt instantly the inevitable reaction.The harmonium quavered and rumbled over the first bars of some hymn which began with the words, "Cry, sinner, cry before the altar of the Lord," the man with the brown, creaking boots walked about with a collection plate, an odour of gas-pipes, badly heated, penetrated the building, the rain lashed the grey window-panes.Maggie, looking about her, could not see in the pale, tired faces of the women who surrounded her the ardent souls of a glorious band.Their belief in the coming of God had, it seemed, done very little for them.It might be true that the history of the soul was of more importance than the history of the body, but common sense had something to say.

Her mind went back inevitably to St.Dreot's church, her father, Ellen the cook.That was what the history of the spirit had been to her so far.What reason had she to suppose that this was any more real than that had been? Nevertheless, when at the end of the sermon she left the building and went once more into the soaking streets some sense of expectation was with her, so that she hastened into her aunt's house as though she would find that some strange event had occurred in her absence.

Nothing, of course, had occurred.

During the afternoon the rain ceased to fall and a dim, grey light, born of an intense silence, enveloped the town.About three o'clock the aunts went out to some religious gathering and Maggie was left to herself.She discovered in Aunt Elizabeth's bedroom a bound volume of Good Words, and with this seated herself by the drawing-room fire.Soon she slept.

She was awakened by a consciousness that some one was in the room and, sitting up, staring through the gloom, heard a movement near the door, a rustle, a little jingle, a laugh.

"Is any one there?" said a high, shrill voice.

Maggie got up.

"I'm here," she said.