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. Thurston naturally appropriated to his own efforts. His long tapering fingers were not so clean as they might have been, but this did not prevent him from waving them in the air and pointing them at imaginary Putney citizens whom he evoked in support of his statements.
"We 'ad a reelly thumpin' meeting on Thursday--Town Hall--One for the women in the small 'all hand one for the men in the Main Hall. Almost no opposition you might say, and when it came to the Hymn singing it fairly took the roof off. A lot of 'em stopped afterwards--one lad of eighteen or so is coming over to us 'ere. Butcher's apprentice. Says 'e's felt the Lord pressing him a long way back but the flesh held him. Might work him up into a very useful lad with the Lord's help. Thank you, Mrs. Warlock, I will try a bit more of that cold beef if you don't mind. Pretty place, Putney. Ever been there, Mr. Warlock? Ah, you should go--"
Amy Warlock listened with the greatest interest; otherwise, it must be confessed, Mr. Thurston's audience was somewhat inattentive. Mr. Warlock's mind was obviously elsewhere; he passed his hand through his beard, his eyes staring at the table-cloth. Mr. Thurston, noticing this, tried another topic.
"What 'ave you heard, Mrs. Warlock, about the new Miss Cardinal? I 'aven't seen her yet myself."
Mrs. Warlock, who had just given herself a little piece of beef, some potato and some spinach, and was arranging these delicacies with the greatest care upon her plate, just smiled without raising her eyes. Amy answered--
"I've seen her. I was there this afternoon. I can't say that I found her very interesting. Plain-ugly in fact. She never opened her mouth all the afternoon. Caroline Smith tells me that she knows nothing at all, seen nothing, been nowhere. Bad-tempered I should think."
"Dear, dear," said Mr. Thurston with a gratified sigh, "is it so reelly?"
Martin looked across at his sister indignantly. "Trust one woman about another," he said. "Just because she doesn't chatter like a magpie you concluded she's got nothing to say. It's even conceivable that she found you dull, Amy."
Amy looked at him with a strange penetrating glance that in some undefined way increased his irritation. "It's quite possible," she said quietly. "But I don't think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As to her intelligence, she never gave me a chance of judging."
"I've been there several times," said Martin hotly. "I like her immensely." He felt as soon as he had spoken that it had been a foolish thing to say. He saw Mr. Thurston smile. In the pause that followed he felt as though he had with a gesture of the hand flung a stone into a pool of chatter and scandal whose ripples might spread far beyond his control. At that moment he hated his sister.
"I didn't know you knew her so well, dear," said his mother.
"I don't know her," he said, "I've only seen her three times. But she ought to be given her chance. It can't be much fun for her coming here where she knows no one--after her father suddenly dying. I believe she was all alone with him."
He had expected his father to defend her. He remembered that he had apparently liked her. But his father said nothing. There was an awkward and uncomfortable pause. After supper Mr. Thurston rubbed his hands, helped Amy Warlock into her cloak, said to the company in general:
"Good night. Should be a very full meeting to-night . . . Well, well . . . Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Warlock, I'm sure."
The door was closed, Mrs. Warlock retired into her bedroom; the house was left to Martin and his father.
Mr. Warlock's room was hideous. It opened, somewhat ironically, out of Mrs. Warlock's pink drawing-room. A huge and exceedingly ugly American roll-top desk took up much of the room. There were bookshelves into which books had been piled. Commentaries on the Bible, volumes of sermons, pamphlets, tattered copies of old religious magazines. A bare carpet displayed holes and rents. The fireplace was grim with dirty pieces of paper and untidy shavings. In the midst of this disorder there hung over the mantelpiece, against the faded grey wall-paper, a fine copy of Raphael's "Transfiguration." Mr. Warlock lighted a candle and the flame flickered with changing colours upon the picture's surface. It had been given to John Warlock many years before by an old lady who heard him preach and had been, for a week, converted, but on his demand that she should give her wealth to the poor and fling aside her passion for Musical Comedy, left him with indignation. The picture had remained; it hung there now crooked on its cord.
John Warlock was unconscious of the dust and disorder that surrounded him. His own passion for personal cleanliness sprang from the early days with his father, to whom bodily cleanliness had been part of a fanatical mysticism. Partly also by reason of that early training, sloth, drunkenness, immorality, had no power over him. And of the whole actual world that surrounded him he was very little conscious except that he hated towns and longed always for air and space.
So that the windows were open one room was to him as another.
He had often, during his work with the members of his community, been conscious of his ignorance of the impulses and powers that went up to make the ordinary sensual physical life of the normal man. His own troubles, trials, failures were so utterly of another kind that in this other world his imagination refused to aid him. This had often deeply distressed him and made him timid and shy in his dealings with men and women. It was this, more than anything else, that held him back from the ambition to proselytise. How could he go forth and challenge men's souls when he could not understand nor feel their difficulties? More and more as his years advanced had he retired into himself, into his own mystical world of communion with a God who drew ever nearer and nearer to him. He humbled himself before men; he did not believe himself better than they because he had not yielded to their temptations; but he could not help them; his tongue was tied; he was a man cut off from his fellows and he knew it.
He had never felt so impatient of his impotence as he did to-night. For ten years he had been waiting for this interview with his son, and now that it was come he was timid and afraid as though he had been opposed by a stranger. He had always known that Martin would return. It had been his one worldly ambition and prayer to have him at his side again. When he had thought and dreamt of the time that was coming, he had thought that it would be simple enough to win the boy back to the old allegiance and faith to which he had once been bound. Meanwhile the boy had grown into a man; here was a new Martin deep in experiences, desires, ambitions of which his father could have no perception. Even in the moment that he was aware of the possibility of losing his son he was aware also of the deep almost fanatical resolve to keep him, to hold him at all costs.
This was to be the test of his whole earthly life. He seemed, as he sat there, looking across at his boy, to challenge God Himself to take him from him. It was as though he said:
"This reward at least I have a right to ask. I demand it . . ."
Martin, on his side, was conscious of a profound discomfort. He had, increasingly as the years had passed, wished to take life easily and pleasantly. Suddenly now another world rose up before him. Yes, another world. He was not fool enough to dismiss it simply because it did not resemble his own. Moreover it had been once his, and this was increasingly borne in upon him. But it all seemed to him now incredibly old, childish and even fantastic, as though here, in the middle of London, he had suddenly stepped into a little wood with a witch, a cottage and a boiling cauldron. Such things could not frighten, of course--he was no longer a child--and yet because he had once been frightened some impression of alarm and dismay hovered over him.
During all his normal years abroad he had forgotten the power of superstition, of dreams and omens; he knew now, as he faced his father, that the power was real enough.
They talked for a little while of ordinary things; the candle flame jumped and fell, the shavings rustled strangely in the fireplace, the "Transfiguration" swung a little on its cord, the colour still lingering at its heart as the rest of the room moved restlessly under the ebb and flow of black shadows. Then the candle suddenly blew out.
"A lamp will be better," said Mr. Warlock.
He left the room and Martin sat there, in the darkness, haunted by he knew not what anticipations. The light was brought, they drew closer together, sitting in the little glossy pool, the room pitch dark around them.
"Well, Martin," at last Mr. Warlock said, "I want to hear so many things. Our first time together alone."
"There isn't very much," Martin tried to speak naturally and carelessly. "I wrote about most things in my letters. Pretty rotten letters I'm afraid." He laughed.
"And now--what do you intend to do now?"
"Oh, I don't know--Look around for a bit."
There was another long pause. Then Mr. Warlock began again. "When I ask about your life, my boy, I don't mean where you've lived, how you've earned your living--I do know all that--you've been very good about writing. But your real life, what you've been thinking about things, how you feel about everything . . ."
"Well, father--I don't know. One hadn't much time for thinking, you know. No one did much thinking in Rio. When I was in the Bermudas there was a fellow . . ."
"Yes, but tell me about yourself."
Then, with a desperate effort, he broke out:
"Father, you'll be badly disappointed in me. I've been feeling it coming all the time. I can't help it. I'm just like any one else. I want to have a good time. One's only young once. I'm awfully sorry. I want to please you in any way I can, but--but--it's all gone--all that early part. It's simply one's childhood that's finished with."
"And it can't come back ?" his father said quietly.
"Never!" Martin's voice was almost a cry as though he were defying something.
"We are very weak against God's will," his father said, still quietly as though it were not he that was speaking but some voice in the shadow behind him. "You are not your own master, Martin."
