ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY
Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at
a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked
Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met.
You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you
couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know
what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he
was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief
deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no
little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a
different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance
as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative
rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of
Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He
wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his
neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to
make it move and hum and whizz.
Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with
further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he
explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening
service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not
Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in
his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and
it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus
Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply.
The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge
guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources,
and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad
general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be
placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the
faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion,
"is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do
it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in
that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York
hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr.
Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets.
So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor,"
presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded
dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too
great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice
old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane.
I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her
little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe
them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole
survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly
pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no
sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless.
Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front
parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in
the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like
white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever
thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would
flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from
the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically,
and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It
disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in
his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise.
Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an
immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little
thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay
the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's
marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious
teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully
wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a
heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered
old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny
and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal
deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as
she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very
old, and she, I know, was very wise.
Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond
that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her,
was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the
school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and
pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No
lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful
superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty
or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only
beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't
pretty yet, but she wasn't plain.
Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it,
there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince!
That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course,
though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the
task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of
chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of
course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning
to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow
merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses.
Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely
to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that
Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other
purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that
for granted as we begin the next chapter.