She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders.She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive.Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, but, behind that, there was a hint of pathos, a half-seen glimpse of a soul that desired friendship and affection.She was very tall and there was something masculine in the long angularity of her limbs.
She offered a strange contrast to the broad and ruddy Martin.There was, however, something in the eyes of each--some sudden surprised almost visionary flash that came and went that showed them to be the children of the same father.To Mrs.Warlock they bore no resemblance whatever.Amy stopped when she saw her brother as though she had not expected him to be there.
"Well, Martin," she said--then came forward and sat in a chair opposite her mother.
"Mr.Thurston's coming to suppar," she said.
Martin frowned."Oh, hang it, what for?" he cried.
"He's taking me to Miss Aries' Bible meeting," Amy answered coldly.
"What a baby you are about people, Martin.I should have thought all your living abroad so much would have made you understanding.But you're like the rest.You must have every one cut to the same pattern."Martin looked up for a moment as though he would answer angrily;then he controlled himself and said, laughing: "I suppose I have my prejudices like every one else.I daresay Thurston's a very good sort of fellow, but we don't like one another, and there's an end of it, Everybody can't like everybody, Amy--why, even you don't like every one.""No, I don't," she answered shortly.
She looked for an instant at her mother.Martin caught the glance that passed between them, and suddenly the discomfort of which he had been aware as he stood, half an hour before, in the street, returned to him with redoubled force.What was the matter with everybody? What had he done?
"Well, I'll go and change," he said.
"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, dear," said his mother.
"I'll be in time all right," he said.
At the door he almost ran into Mr.Thurston.This gentleman had been described, on some earlier occasion, by an unfriendly observer as "the Suburban Savonarola." He was tall and extremely thin with a bony pointed face that was in some lights grey and in others white.
He had the excited staring eyes of a fanatic, and his hair now very scanty, was plastered over his head in black shining streaks.He wore a rather faded black suit, a white low collar and a white bow tie.He had a habit, at moments of stress, of cracking his fingers.
He had a very pronounced cockney accent when he was excited, at other times he struggled against this with some success.
He passed from brooding silences into sudden bursts of declamation with such abruptness that strangers thought him very eloquent.When he was excited the colour ran into his nose as though he had been drinking, and often his ears were red.His history was simple.The son of a small draper in Streatham, he had at an early age joined himself to an American Revivalist called Harper.When after some six years of successful enterprise Mr.Harper had been imprisoned for forgery, young William Thurston had attached himself to a Christian Science Chapel in Hoxton.Then, somewhere about 1897, he had met Miss Avies at a Revivalist Meeting in the Albert Hall and, fascinated by her ardent spirit, transferred his services to the Kingscote Brethren.
He had now risen to a position of great importance in the Chapel; it was known that he disagreed profoundly with his leader on some vital questions, and it was thought that he might at a later date definitely secede and conduct a party of his own.
Certainly he had exceptional energies and gifts of exhortation and invective not to be despised.Martin politely wished him "Good evening" and escaped to his room.
As he changed his clothes he tried to translate into definite facts his vague discomfort.One, he hated that swine Thurston.Two, Amy was vexed with him (What strange impossible creatures women were!).
Third--and by far the most important of them all--his father wanted to talk to him.He knew very well that this talk had been preparing for him ever since his return from abroad.He dreaded it.Oh! he dreaded it most horribly!
He loved his father but with a love that had in it elements of fear, timidity, every possible sort of awkwardness.Moreover he was helpless.Ever since that first day when as a tiny child of four or five he had awakened to behold that figure, enormous in a long night-shirt, summoning God in the middle of the night with a candle flickering fantastic shadows on to the wall behind them, Martin had been weak as putty in his father's hands.Against other men he could stand up; against that strange company of fears, affections, superstitions, shadowy terrors, dim expectations that his father presented to him he could do nothing.
Well--that conversation had to come some time.He must show that he was a man now, moulded by the world with his own beliefs, purposes, resolves.But if he did not love him, how much easier it would be!
When he went downstairs he found the old man in the little pink drawing-room--he looked tired and worn.Martin remembered with alarm the things that he had heard recently about his father's heart.He glanced up and the older man's hand fastened on his shoulder; they stood there side by side.After a few minutes they all went in to supper.
Mr.Thurston's nose was flushed with the success of the mission from which he had just returned.He had been one of a number whose aim it had been during the preceding week to bring light and happiness into the lives of the inhabitants of Putney.They had been obviously appreciated, as the collection for the week had amounted to between seventy and eighty pounds.A proper share of this fine result Mr.