第62章

There is no God! Even were He to come upon us we could escape from Him.We could make a very good case for ourselves.This world is safe, secure, founded upon our markets, our treasuries, our laws and commandments, our conventions of decent behaviour, our police and our ministers.God cannot touch us.We are secure...I tell you that at this very moment this earth in which you trust is trembling under you, at this instant everything in which you believed is undermined and is betraying you.You have been given your opportunity--you are refusing it--and God is upon you."His voice changed suddenly to tones of a marvellous sweetness.He appealed, pleaded, implored.The ugliness of his face and body was forgotten, he was simply a voice issuing from space, sent to save a world.

"And we here--the few of us out of this huge city gathered together here--it is not too late for us.Let us surrender ourselves.Let us go to Him and say that we are His, that we await His coming and obey His law...Brothers and sisters, I am as you are, weak and helpless and full of sin, but come to Him, come to Him, come to Him!

...There is help for us all, help and pity and love.Love such as none of us have ever known, love that cannot fail us and will be with us until eternity!"He stepped out from behind the desk, stood before them all with his little stunted, twisted body, his arms held out towards them.There followed then an extraordinary scene--from all over the Chapel came sobs and cries.A man rose suddenly from the back of the building and cried aloud, "Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief." One of the women who had come with Miss Avies fell upon her knees and began to sob, crying hysterically: "Oh God, have mercy! God have mercy!"Women pressed up the two aisles, some of them falling on their knees there where they had stood, others coming to the front and kneeling there.Somewhere they began to sing the hymn that had already been sung that evening, a few voices at first, then more, then all singing together:

"By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!"Everywhere now women were crying, the Chapel was filled with voices, sobs, cries and prayers.

Mr.Crashaw stood there, motionless, his arms outstretched.

Maggie did not know what she felt.She seemed deprived of all sensation on one side, and, on the other, fear and excitement; both joy and disgust held her.She could not have told any one what her sensations were; she was trembling from head to foot as though with cold.But behind everything she had this terror, that at any moment she might be drawn forward to do something, to give some pledge that would bind her for all her life.She felt as though some power were urging her to this, and as though the Chapel and every one in it was conscious of the struggle.

What might have happened she would never know.She felt a touch on her sleeve, and, turning round, saw Aunt Anne's eyes looking up at her out of a face that was so white and the skin of it so tightly drawn that it was like the face of a dead woman.

"I'm in great pain, Maggie.I think you must take me home," she heard her aunt say.

Aunt Anne took her arm, they went out followed by Aunt Elizabeth.

The fresh evening air that blew upon Maggie's forehead seemed suddenly to make of the Chapel a dim, incredible phantom; faintly from behind the closed door came the echo of the hymn.The street was absolutely still--no human being was in sight, only an old cab stationed close at hand waiting for a possible customer; into this they got.The pale, almost white, evening sky, with stars in sheets and squares and pools of fire, shone with the clear radiance of glass above them.Maggie could see the stars through the dirty windows of the cab.

They were quite silent all the way home.Aunt Anne sitting up very straight, motionless, her fingers still on Maggie's arm.

Inside the house there was Jane.She seemed at once to under-stand, and, with Aunt Elizabeth, led Aunt Anne up the dark stairs.

They disappeared, leaving Maggie alone in the hall, whose only sound was the ticking clock from the stairs and only light the dim lamp above the door.