“We are much indebted to you!” the Professor said, looking over his
shoulder.
“Don’t mention it!” replied the officer, raising his hat as a parting
salute.
“What number did you say!” the Professor called from the distance.
The officer made a trumpet of his two hands. “Forty!” he shouted in
stentorian tones. “And not piano, by any means!” he added to himself.
“It’s a mad world, my masters, a mad world!” He lit another cigar,
and strolled on towards his hotel.
“What a lovely evening!” I said, joining him as he passed me.
“Lovely indeed,” he said. “Where did you come from?
Dropped from the clouds?”
“I’m strolling your way,” I said; and no further explanation seemed
necessary.
“Have a cigar?”
“Thanks: I’m not a smoker.”
“Is there a Lunatic Asylum near here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Thought there might be. Met a lunatic just now. Queer old fish as
ever I saw!”
And so, in friendly chat, we took our homeward ways, and wished each
other ‘good-night’ at the door of his hotel.
Left to myself, I felt the ‘eerie’ feeling rush over me again, and saw,
standing at the door of Number Forty, the three figures I knew so well.
“Then it’s the wrong house?” Bruno was saying.
“No, no! It’s the right house,” the Professor cheerfully replied:
“but it’s the wrong street. That’s where we’ve made our mistake!
Our best plan, now, will be to–”
It was over. The street was empty, Commonplace life was around me,
and the ‘eerie’ feeling had fled.
CHAPTER 19.
HOW TO MAKE A PHLIZZ.
The week passed without any further communication with the ‘Hall,’
as Arthur was evidently fearful that we might ‘wear out our welcome’;
but when, on Sunday morning, we were setting out for church, I gladly
agreed to his proposal to go round and enquire after the Earl, who was
said to be unwell.
Eric, who was strolling in the garden, gave us a good report of the
invalid, who was still in bed, with Lady Muriel in attendance.
“Are you coming with us to church?” I enquired.
“Thanks, no,” he courteously replied. “It’s not–exactly in my line,
you know. It’s an excellent institution–for the poor. When I’m with
my own folk, I go, just to set them an example. But I’m not known here:
so I think I’ll excuse myself sitting out a sermon. Country-preachers
are always so dull!”
Arthur was silent till we were out of hearing. Then he said to himself,
almost inaudibly, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.”
“Yes,” I assented: “no doubt that is the principle on which church-going
rests.”
“And when he does go,” he continued (our thoughts ran so much together,
that our conversation was often slightly elliptical), “I suppose he
repeats the words ‘I believe in the Communion of Saints’?”
But by this time we had reached the little church, into which a goodly
stream of worshipers, consisting mainly of fishermen and their
families, was flowing.
The service would have been pronounced by any modern aesthetic
religionist–or religious aesthete, which is it?–to be crude and cold:
to me, coming fresh from the ever-advancing developments of a London
church under a soi-disant ‘Catholic’ Rector, it was unspeakably
refreshing.
There was no theatrical procession of demure little choristers, trying
their best not to simper under the admiring gaze of the congregation:
the people’s share in the service was taken by the people themselves,
unaided, except that a few good voices, judiciously posted here and
there among them, kept the singing from going too far astray.
There was no murdering of the noble music, contained in the Bible and
the Liturgy, by its recital in a dead monotone, with no more expression
than a mechanical talking-doll.
No, the prayers were prayed, the lessons were read, and best of all the
sermon was talked; and I found myself repeating, as we left the church,
the words of Jacob, when he ‘awaked out of his sleep.’ “‘Surely the
Lord is in this place! This is none other but the house of God,
and this is the gate of heaven.'”
“Yes,” said Arthur, apparently in answer to my thoughts, “those ‘high’