When Paul Owen returned to Peckham for the long vacation, it was with a
heavy heart that he ventured back slowly to his father's cottage.
Margaret Owen had put everything straight and neat in the little living
room, as she always did, to welcome home her son who had grown into a
gentleman; and honest John stood at the threshold beaming with pleasure
to wring Paul's hand in his firm grip, just back unwashed from his day's
labour. After the first kissings and greetings were over, John Owen said
rather solemnly, "I have bad news for you, Paul. The Apostle is sick,
even unto death."
When Paul heard that, he was sorely tempted to put off the disclosure
for the present; but he felt he must not. So that same night, as they
sat together in the dusk near the window where the geraniums stood, he
began to unburden his whole mind, gently and tentatively, so as to spare
their feelings as much as possible, to his father and mother. He told
them how, since he went to Oxford, he had learned to think somewhat
differently about many things; how his ideas had gradually deepened and
broadened; how he had begun to inquire into fundamentals for himself;
how he had feared that the Gideonites took too much for granted, and
reposed too implicitly on the supposed critical learning of their
Apostle. As he spoke his mother listened in tearful silence; but his
father murmured from time to time, "I was afeard of this already, Paul;
I seen it coming, now and again, long ago." There was pity and regret in
his tone, but not a shade of reproachfulness.
At last, however, Paul came to speak, timidly and reservedly, of Meenie.
Then his father's eye began to flash a little, and his breath came
deeper and harder. When Paul told him briefly that he was engaged to
her, the strong man could stand it no longer. He rose up in righteous
wrath, and thrust his son at arm's length from him. "What!" he cried
fiercely, "you don't mean to tell me you have fallen into sin and looked
upon the daughters of Midian! It was no Scriptural doubts that druv you
on, then, but the desire of the flesh and the lust of the eyes that has
lost you! You dare to stand up there, Paul Owen, and tell me that you
throw over the Church and the Apostle for the sake of a girl, like a
poor miserable Samson! You are no son of mine, and I have nothin' more
to say to you."
But Margaret Owen put her hand on his shoulder and said softly, "John,
let us hear him out." And John, recalled by that gentle touch, listened
once more. Then Paul pleaded his case powerfully again. He quoted
Scripture to them; he argued with them, after their own fashion, and
down to their own comprehension, text by text; he pitted his own
critical and exegetical faculty against the Apostle's. Last of all, he
turned to his mother, who, tearful still and heart-broken with
disappointment, yet looked admiringly upon her learned, eloquent boy,
and said to her tenderly, "Remember, mother, you yourself were once in
love. You yourself once stood, night after night, leaning on the gate,
waiting with your heart beating for a footstep that you knew so well.
You yourself once counted the days and the hours and the minutes till
the next meeting came." And Margaret Owen, touched to the heart by that
simple appeal, kissed him fervently a dozen times over, the hot tears
dropping on his cheek meanwhile; and then, contrary to all the rules of
their austere Church, she flung her arms round her husband too, and
kissed him passionately the first time for twenty years, with all the
fervour of a floodgate loosed. Paul Owen's apostolate had surely borne
its first fruit.
The father stood for a moment in doubt and terror, like one stunned or
dazed, and then, in a moment of sudden remembrance, stepped forward and
returned the kiss. The spell was broken, and the Apostle's power was no
more. What else passed in the cottage that night, when John Owen fell
upon his knees and wrestled in spirit, was too wholly internal to the
man's own soul for telling here. Next day John and Margaret Owen felt
the dream of their lives was gone; but the mother in her heart rejoiced
to think her boy might know the depths of love, and might bring home a
real lady for his wife.
On Sunday it was rumoured that the Apostle's ailment was very serious;
but young Brother Paul Owen would address the Church. He did so, though
not exactly in the way the Church expected. He told them simply and
plainly how he had changed his views about certain matters; how he
thanked them from his heart for the loan of their money (he was careful
to emphasize the word _loan_), which had helped him to carry on his
education at Oxford; and how he would repay them the principal and
interest, though he could never repay them the kindness, at the earliest
possible opportunity. He was so grave, so earnest, so transparently
true, that, in spite of the downfall of their dearest hopes, he carried
the whole meeting with him, all save one man. That man was Job Grimshaw.
Job rose from his place with a look of undisguised triumph as soon as
Paul had finished, and, mounting the platform quietly, said his say.
"I knew, Episcops, Presbyters, and Brethren," he began, "how this 'ere
young man would finish. I saw it the day he was appinted. He's flushing
up now the same as he flushed up then when I spoke to him; and it ain't
sperritual, it's worldly pride and headstrongness, that's what it is.
He's had our money, and he's had his eddication, and now he's going to
round on us, just as I said he would. It's all very well talking about
paying us back: how's a young man like him to get five hundred pounds, I
should like to know. And if he did even, what sort o' repayment would
that be to many of the brethren, who've saved and scraped for five year
to let him live like a gentleman among the great and the mighty o'
Midian? He's got his eddication out of us, and he can keep that whatever
happens, and make a living out of it, too; and now he's going back on
us, same as I said he would, and, having got all he can out of the
Church, he's going to chuck it away like a sucked orange. I detest such
backsliding and such ungratefulness."
Paul's cup of humiliation was full, but he bit his lip till the blood
almost came, and made no answer.
"He boasted in his own strength," Job went on mercilessly, "that he
wasn't going to be a backslider, and he wasn't going to sign no bond,
and he wasn't going to confer with us, but we must trust his honour and
honesty, and such like. I've got his very words written down in my
notebook 'ere; for I made a note of 'em, foreseeing this. If we'd 'a'
bound him down, as I proposed, he wouldn't 'a' dared to go backsliding
and rounding on us, and making up to the daughters of Midian, as I don't
doubt but what he's been doing." Paul's tell-tale face showed him at
once that he had struck by accident on the right chord. "But if he ever
goes bringing a daughter of Midian here to Peckham," Job continued,
"we'll show her these very notes, and ask her what she thinks of such
dishonourable conduct. The Apostle's dying, that's clear; and before he
dies I warrant he shall know this treachery."
Paul could not stand that last threat. Though he had lost faith in the
Apostle as an Apostle, he could never forget the allegiance he had once
borne him as a father, or the spell which his powerful individuality had
once thrown around him as a teacher. To have embittered that man's dying
bed with the shadow of a terrible disappointment would be to Paul a
lifelong subject of deep remorse. "I did not intend to open my mouth in
answer to you, Mr. Grimshaw," he said (for the first time breaking
through the customary address of Brother), "but I pray you, I entreat
you, I beseech you, not to harass the Apostle in his last moments with
such a subject."
"Oh yes, I suppose so," Job Grimshaw answered maliciously, all the
ingrained coarseness of the man breaking out in the wrinkles of his
face. "No wonder you don't want him enlightened about your goings on
with the daughters of Midian, when you must know as well as I do that
his life ain't worth a day's purchase, and that he's a man of
independent means, and has left you every penny he's got in his will,
because he believes you're a fit successor to the Apostolate. I know it,
for I signed as a witness, and I read it through, being a short one,
while the other witness was signing. And you must know it as well as I
do. I suppose you don't think he'll make another will now; but there's
time enough to burn that one anyhow."
Paul Owen stood aghast at the vulgar baseness of which this lewd fellow
supposed him capable. He had never thought of it before; and yet it
flashed across his mind in a moment how obvious it was now. Of course
the Apostle would leave him his money. He was being educated for the
Apostolate, and the Apostolate could not be carried on without the
sinews of war. But that Job Grimshaw should think him guilty of angling
for the Apostle's money, and then throwing the Church overboard--the
bare notion of it was so horrible to him that he could not even hold up
his head to answer the taunt. He sat down and buried his crimson face
in his hands; and Job Grimshaw, taking up his hat sturdily, with the air
of a man who has to perform an unpleasant duty, left the meeting-room
abruptly without another word.
There was a gloomy Sunday dinner that morning in the mason's cottage,
and nobody seemed much inclined to speak in any way. But as they were in
the midst of their solemn meal, a neighbour who was also a Gideonite
came in hurriedly. "It's all over," he said, breathless--"all over with
us and with the Church. The Apostle is dead. He died this morning."