The hedges gave way to houses; he was in the High Street.He saw then, plastered at intervals on the hoardings, strange phenomena.It was the colour that first attracted him--a bright indecent pink with huge black lettering.Because it was the offseason in Skeaton other announcements were few.All the more prominent then the following:
THE KINGSCOTE BEETHEEN WILL HOLD A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL IN THE TOWNOF SKEATON-ON-SEA FROM APRIL 10 TO 16.-----SERVICES 10 A.M., 3 P.M.
SPECIAL SONG SERVICE, 7.30 P.M.DAILY All are Cordially Invited.
ADDRESSES BY REV.JOHN THURSTON.REV.WILLIAM CRASHAW.SISTER AVIES.
Paul stared at this placard with horror and disgust in his soul.For the moment Maggie and Grace and all the scandal connected with them was forgotten.This was terrible.By temperament, tradition, training, he loathed and feared every phase of religion known to him as "Methodistic." Under this term he included everything that was noisy, demonstrative, ill-bred and melodramatic.Once when an undergraduate at Cambridge he had gone to some meeting of the kind.
There had been impromptu prayers, ghastly pictures of hell-fire, appeals to the undergraduates to save themselves at once lest it be too late, confessions and appeals for mercy.The memory of that evening still filled him with physical nausea.It was to him as though he had seen some gross indecent act in public or witnessed some horrible cruelty.
Maggie had told him very little about the Chapel and its doings, and he had shrunk from asking her any questions, but everything that was odd and unusual in her behaviour he attributed to her months under that influence.As he stared at the flaunting pink sheet he felt as though it were a direct personal assault on himself and his church.
And yet he knew that he could do nothing.Once before there had been something of the kind in Skeaton and he had tried with others to stop it.He had failed utterly; the civic authorities in Skeaton seemed almost to approve of these horrors.He looked at the thing once more and then turned hack towards home.Something must be done...Something must he done...but, as on so many earlier occasions in his life, he could face no clear course of action.
That Saturday evening he tried to change his sermon.He had determined to deliver a very fine address on "Brotherly Love" and then, most fortunately, he had discovered a five-years' old sermon that would, with a little adaptation, exactly fit the situation.
To-night he was sick of his adaptation.The sermon had not been a good one at the first, and now it was a tattered thing of shreds and patches.He tried to add to it some sentences about the approaching "Revival." No sentences would come.What a horrible fortnight it had been! He looked back upon his district visiting, his meetings, his choir-practices with disgust.Something had come in between himself and his people.Perhaps the relationship had never been very real?
Founded on jollity.An eagerness to accept anybody's mood for one's own if only that meant jollity.What had he thought, standing in the puddle that afternoon? That they were all dead, he and his congregation and God, all dead together? He sank into his chair, picked up the Church Times, and fell asleep.
Next morning as he walked into the choir this extraordinary impression that his congregation was dead persisted.As he recited the "Confession" he looked about him.There was Mr.Maxse, and there Miss Purves.Every one was in his and her appointed place; old Colonel Rideout with the purple gills not kneeling because of his gout; young Edward Walter, heir to the sugar factory, not kneeling because he was lazy; sporting Mr.Harper, whose golf handicap was +3, not kneeling because to do so would spoil the crease of his trousers; old Mrs.Dean with her bonnet and bugles, the worst gossip in Skeaton.her eyes raised to heaven; the Quiller girls with their hard red colour and their hard bright eyes; Mr.Fortinum, senior, with his County Council stomach and his J.P.neck; the dear old Miss Fursleis who believed in God and lived accordingly; young Captain Trent, who believed in his moustache and lived accordingly...Oh yes, there they all were--and there, too, were Grace and Maggie kneeling side by side.
Maggie! His eyes rested upon her.Her face suddenly struck him as being of extraordinary beauty.He had never thought her beautiful before; very plain, of course.Every one knew that she was plain.
But to-day her face and profile had the simplicity, the purity, the courage of a Madonna in one of the old pictures--or, rather, of one of those St.John the Baptist boys gazing up into the face of the Christ--child as it lay in its mother's arms.He finished the "Confession" hurriedly--Maggie's face faded from his view; he saw now only a garden of hats and heads, the bright varnished colour of the church around and about them all.
He gave out the psalms; there was a rustle of leaves, and soon shrill, untrained voices of the choir-boys were screaming the chant like a number of baby steam-whistles in competition.