THE ROMANCE OF
ZION CHAPEL
By
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
1898
TO
TWO IN HEAVEN
AND
TWO ON EARTH.
Contents
I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES
II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL
III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT
IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY
V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS
VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN
VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER.
VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER
IX. "THE DAWN"
X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER
XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY
XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION
XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE
XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE
XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER
XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME
XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..."
XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS
XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS
XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES
XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED
XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN
XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE
XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY
XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE
XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY
XXVII. ISABEL CALLING
XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE
XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST
The Romance of Zion Chapel
CHAPTER I
OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES
On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty,
hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there
stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of
disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway
embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely
obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty
for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly
present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the
gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting
the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is
proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the
gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps,
yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old
iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only
describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in
weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words
"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion
Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which
had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before
the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View
lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing
pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call.
A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a
romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the
reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady
Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary,
soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in,
on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a
spring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very
soul. Dull places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together,
and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and
the place to seek her is never the place where she was last found.
Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are
respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a
shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of
one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't
pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of
that great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary
rain that set someone quoting,--also in that street,--
"Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville."
Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion.
Actually.
Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of
Greece!