BROADWATER was fearfully dull on a Sunday, so I came over from Bayview
where I was staying, that Ronald and I might help each other in getting
through the day.
It was a blazing afternoon in August, and the park, shut in by hills,
shimmered in a haze of heat. “I can’t stand this,” said Ronald. “Air I
must get somehow, and, as it’s not to be got nearer than the sea, we’ll
walk to the shore in search of it. It’s rather hard on you, to be sure,
who’ve done the walk once already. But it’s better than lounging about
here, where it’s too hot to speak or think; and, at any rate, we shall
see the trippers.”
It happened, most unluckily, that just as we reached the pier, an open
air service had begun. Of course they had chosen the hottest corner
possible for it; a nook sheltered by the masonry of the pier, which
carefully excluded every breath of wind that might be travelling to us
from the sea. But, despite the heat, it was a temptation to mild
excitement that Ronald found it impossible to resist.
“Not so good as the nigger minstrels, but better than nothing,” he said.
So we joined the throng of listeners. It was the usual audience, the
devotees (mainly women) forming the inner circle, in close proximity to
the preacher and the harmonium. Next came the half-hearted, weaker
vessels, who separated the former as by a wall from the irreverent throng
of idlers who laughed and talked and smoked on the outside fringe. The
preacher was a man of the ordinary type, only a little stouter, a little
more flaccid and even more illiterate than usual. Where do they come
from, these preachers? Are they men who think they have a call or a
gift? and are they accepted for the office on their own valuation?
Certainly they are not chosen for any capability that can approve itself
to the impartial hearer.
The present representative of the school was enlarging, when we came up,
upon the demerits of the publican. Ronald, after a few minutes, began to
fume and fret. But he behaved for a while excellently well, though I
could hear him muttering words in an undertone distinctly uncomplimentary
to the preacher.
“And it is publicans like these—the scum and refuse of Jerusalem—that are
represented in this town to-day by the inn-keepers, barmen, and pot-boys,
who an hour or two hence will be serving many of their fellow
creatures—many, I fear, of this audience—with drink, to the ruin of their
lives here and of their hopes of salvation hereafter.”
“Nothing of the sort,” shouted Ronald, “he wasn’t an innkeeper at all; he
was a tax-gatherer. Every schoolboy knows that.”
The silence that followed was awful; every eye was turned upon the boy,
and it was a strain upon my loyalty to remain at his side, and not then
and there renounce his acquaintance.
“Oh, he wasn’t, wasn’t he, young man?” said the preacher. “Well, as you
seems to know more about the Bible than I do, perhaps you’ll step up here
and take my place. Kindly tell us, if _you_ please, out of _your_
superior knowledge, what he was, and why he was called a publican if he
was a tax-collector; and why a poor collector of rates, who only did his
duty, is held up to our scorn and reprobation; yes, our _reprobation_.”
(This word he regarded as a crushing climax.)
To my complete and indescribable confusion, Ronald, nothing loth,
accepted the challenge with delight, and the next moment was standing on
the platform addressing an appreciative audience. What a sermon he gave
them!—lasting without a pause or break for exactly half-an-hour; every
thought reasoned out, and closing with a peroration of consummate
eloquence. By a clever feint he had diverted the text of the preacher to
one on the Pharisee and the Publican, making a scathing attack on the
Pharisaism of the day, which went to church, and gave its alms openly and
never in secret; which paid its way and kept the conventional
commandments, and neglected (as of little count) the weightier things of
unselfishness and love. “A day is coming when it will matter nothing
where we lived, nor in what occupations, nor amidst what circumstances,
but only how we wrought, and in what spirit we suffered. Be the thing
you say; be unselfish, in your own poor way, to your friends and to your
home, and to the world about you; that is worth ten thousand sermons and
a hundred thousand Articles of Religion.” A dead silence followed as he
stepped down from the platform; he had left a charm upon us that it
seemed sacrilege to break. Then came a word or two. “What a wonderful
boy!—a second Spurgeon; with all his eloquence and none of his
irreverence.”
“Summat worth hearin’, I calls it; how he did pitch into they bloomin’
aristocrats. I’ll come and hear ye, young master, whensomdever you holds
forth agin.”
“Well—I never!” It was with this ungrammatical aposiopesis that I
started, so soon as I could find breath to start at all. “Where on
earth, Ronald, did you get it all from?” The boy had come back to me
looking as cool as a cucumber, and highly delighted with the sensation he
had created.
“Don’t tell, Fred,” he answered, “but it was a sermon of Vaughan’s. We
are made to analyse his sermons at school, and say them afterwards for
repetition lessons. So when that old donkey fell foul of the publican, I
had one handy you see, on that very subject, and I thought it a pity not
to fire it off.”
Surely, I thought, he’ll be satisfied now, and I tried to draw him away
from the crowd, who were becoming a trifle too much interested in our
name and identity. But no; not a bit of it. The excitement was full
upon him still. So up he went to the harmonium (they had now started a
hymn), and looking over the shoulder of the performer (she was a pretty
girl of eighteen) he began to sing as lustily as the best of them. By
degrees his arm, I saw, began to steal about her waist, and, fuss and
fidget as she might, she was powerless to help herself. Her hands were
occupied with the keyboard, and her feet with the blower, and with her
voice she had to lead the singing. So he had her at his mercy, and
hugged her disgracefully, while she, poor girl, was powerless to resist.
The audience all thought she was his sister, and highly commended him, it
was clear, for the countenance and support he was giving her.
While the last line of the last verse was being sung, the temptation
became too strong for resistance, and Ronald stooped down and kissed
her—an action which touched still further the sympathetic heart of the
audience.
“A dear, good young feller that, as ever I see’d”—said an old lady in my
immediate neighbourhood. “I only wish as how he were a son of mine; a
preachin’ that fine, for all the world like the Bishop, and a’ lookin’
arter his sister so prettily—and a nice young girl she is too.”
After this exploit he slipped across the circle and joined me, and a
minute later—with hot and blazing cheeks—I was thankful to find myself
round the corner, and well on the way home before the throng of listeners
had begun to disperse. I felt, indeed, as must that Bishop, who, to
oblige a small girl younger in years than in experience, condescended to
ring at a street door, and was rewarded with the advice, “Run! _run_ for
yer life! they’ll knock the ’ead off yer shoulders if they catches ye.”
I wonder what he elected to do? pocket his dignity and run? or rely upon
his clerical attire to see him through? In any case our anxiety would be
more protracted. What if the escapade should reach our uncle’s ears?
However I was spared this climax. The story of it got wind in the
servants’ hall, as all stories do; but the servants were far too loyal to
Master Ronald to betray him, and so it never made its way up stairs to
the drawing room.
* * * * *
But the career of that preacher was ended—in Bayview.