A few days later the Apostle was buried, and his will was read over
before the assembled Church. By earnest persuasion of his father, Paul
consented to be present, though he feared another humiliation from Job
Grimshaw. But two days before he had taken the law into his own hands,
by writing to Meenie, at her aunt's in Eaton Place; and that very
indiscreet young lady, in response, had actually consented to meet him
in Kensington Gardens alone the next afternoon. There he sat with her on
one of the benches by the Serpentine, and talked the whole matter over
with her to his heart's content.
"If the money is really left to me," he said, "I must in honour refuse
it. It was left to me to carry on the Apostolate, and I can't take it on
any other ground. But what ought I to do with it? I can't give it over
to the Church, for in three days there will be no Church left to give it
to. What shall I do with it?"
"Why," said Meenie, thoughtfully, "if I were you I should do this.
First, pay back everybody who contributed towards your support in full,
principal and interest; then borrow from the remainder as much as you
require to complete your Oxford course; and finally, pay back all that
and the other money to the fund when you are able, and hand it over for
the purpose of doing some good work in Peckham itself, where your Church
was originally founded. If the ideal can't be fulfilled, let the money
do something good for the actual."
"You are quite right, Meenie," said Paul, "except in one particular. I
will not borrow from the fund for my own support. I will not touch a
penny of it, temporarily or permanently, for myself in any way. If it
comes to me, I shall make it over to trustees at once for some good
object, as you suggest, and shall borrow from them five hundred pounds
to repay my own poor people, giving the trustees my bond to repay the
fund hereafter. I shall fight my own battle henceforth unaided."
"You will do as you ought to do, Paul, and I am proud of it."
So next morning, when the meeting took place, Paul felt somewhat happier
in his own mind as to the course he should pursue with reference to Job
Grimshaw.
The Senior Episcop opened and read the last will and testament of Arthur
Murgess, attorney-at-law. It provided in a few words that all his
estate, real and personal, should pass unreservedly to his friend, Paul
Owen, of Christchurch, Oxford. It was whispered about that, besides the
house and grounds, the personalty might be sworn at L8000, a vast sum to
those simple people.
When the reading was finished, Paul rose and addressed the assembly. He
told them briefly the plan he had formed, and insisted on his
determination that not a penny of the money should be put to his own
uses. He would face the world for himself, and thanks to their kindness
he could face it easily enough. He would still earn and pay back all
that he owed them. He would use the fund, first for the good of those
who had been members of the Church, and afterwards for the good of the
people of Peckham generally. And he thanked them from the bottom of his
heart for the kindness they had shown him.
Even Job Grimshaw could only mutter to himself that this was not
sperritual grace, but mere worldly pride and stubbornness, lest the lad
should betray his evil designs, which had thus availed him nothing. "He
has lost his own soul and wrecked the Church for the sake of the money,"
Job said, "and now he dassn't touch a farden of it."
Next John Owen rose and said slowly, "Friends, it seems to me we may as
well all confess that this Church has gone to pieces. I can't stop in it
myself any longer, for I see it's clear agin nature, and what's agin
nature can't be true." And though the assembly said nothing, it was
plain that there were many waverers in the little body whom the affairs
of the last week had shaken sadly in their simple faith. Indeed, as a
matter of fact, before the end of the month the Gideonite Church had
melted away, member by member, till nobody at all was left of the whole
assembly but Job Grimshaw.
"My dear," said the Rector to his wife a few weeks later, laying down
his _Illustrated_, "this is really a very curious thing. That young
fellow Owen, of Christchurch, that Meenie fancied herself engaged to,
has just come into a little landed property and eight or nine thousand
pounds on his own account. He must be better connected than Tom
imagines. Perhaps we might make inquiries about him after all."
The Rector did make inquiries in the course of the week, and with such
results that he returned to the rectory in blank amazement. "That
fellow's mad, Amelia," he said, "stark mad, if ever anybody was. The
leader of his Little Bethel, or Ebenezer, or whatever it may be, has
left him all his property absolutely, without conditions; and the idiot
of a boy declares he won't touch a penny of it, because he's ceased to
believe in their particular shibboleth, and he thinks the leader wanted
him to succeed him. Very right and proper of him, of course, to leave
the sect if he can't reconcile it with his conscience, but perfectly
Quixotic of him to give up the money and beggar himself outright. Even
if his connection was otherwise desirable (which it is far from being),
it would be absurd to think of letting Meenie marry such a ridiculous
hair-brained fellow."
Paul and Meenie, however, went their own way, as young people often
will, in spite of the Rector. Paul returned next term to Oxford,
penniless, but full of resolution, and by dint of taking pupils managed
to eke out his scholarship for the next year. At the end of that time he
took his first in Greats, and shortly after gained a fellowship. From
the very first day he began saving money to pay off that dead weight of
five hundred pounds. The kindly ex-Gideonites had mostly protested
against his repaying them at all, but in vain: Paul would not make his
entry into life, he said, under false pretences. It was a hard pull, but
he did it. He took pupils, he lectured, he wrote well and vigorously for
the press, he worked late and early with volcanic energy; and by the end
of three years he had not only saved the whole of the sum advanced by
the Gideonites, but had also begun to put away a little nest-egg
against his marriage with Meenie. And when the editor of a great morning
paper in London offered him a permanent place upon the staff, at a large
salary, he actually went down to Worcestershire, saw the formidable
Rector himself in his own parish, and demanded Meenie outright in
marriage. And the Rector observed to his wife that this young Owen
seemed a well-behaved and amiable young man; that after all one needn't
know anything about his relations if one didn't like; and that as Meenie
had quite made up her mind, and was as headstrong as a mule, there was
no use trying to oppose her any longer.
Down in Peckham, where Paul Owen lives, and is loved by half the poor of
the district, no one has forgotten who was the real founder of the
Murgess Institute, which does so much good in encouraging thrift, and is
so admirably managed by the founder and his wife. He would take a house
nowhere but at Peckham, he said. To the Peckham people he owed his
education, and for the Peckham people he would watch the working of his
little Institute. There is no better work being done anywhere in that
great squalid desert, the east and south-east of London; there is no
influence more magnetic than the founder's. John and Margaret Owen have
recovered their hopes for their boy, only they run now in another and
more feasible direction; and those who witness the good that is being
done by the Institute among the poor of Peckham, or who have read that
remarkable and brilliant economical work lately published on "The Future
of Co-operation in the East End, by P. O.," venture to believe that
Meenie was right after all, and that even the great social world itself
has not yet heard the last of young Paul Owen's lay apostolate.
_THE MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE IN PICCADILLY._