“Why should it?”
“Well, you’re human, and you believe in your mission-or so I assume.”
Llewellyn smiled a little.
“Oh yes, you can assume that.”
Wilding was silent for a moment. Then he said, speaking with a disarming eagerness:
“You know, it’s extraordinarily interesting to me to meet you like this. After attending the meeting, the thing I desired most was actually to meet you.”
“Surely there would have been no difficulty about doing that?”
“In a certain sense, no. It would have been obligatory on you! But I wanted to meet you on very different terms-on such terms that you could, if you wanted to, tell me to go to the devil.”
Llewellyn smiled again.
“Well, those conditions are fulfilled now. I have no longer any obligations.”
Wilding eyed him keenly.
“I wonder now, are you referring to health or to viewpoint?”
“It’s a question, I should say, of function.”
“Hm-that’s not very clear.”
The other did not answer.
Wilding began to pack up his painting things.
“I’d like to explain to you just how I came to hear you at Olympia. I’ll be frank, because I don’t think you’re the type of man to be offended by the truth when it’s not offensively meant. I disliked very much-still do-all that that meeting at Olympia stood for. I dislike more than I can tell you the idea of mass religion relayed, as it were, by loud-speaker. It offends every instinct in me.”
He noted the amusement that showed for a moment on Llewellyn’s face.
“Does that seem to you very British-and ridiculous?”
“Oh, I accept it as a point of view.”
“I came therefore, as I have told you, to scoff. I expected to have my finer susceptibilities outraged.”
“And you remained to bless?”
The question was more mocking than serious.
“No. My views in the main are unchanged. I dislike seeing God put on a commercial basis.”
“Even by a commercial people in a commercial age? Do we not always bring to God the fruits in season?”
“That is a point, yes. No, what struck me very forcibly was something that I had not expected-your own very patent sincerity.”
Llewellyn looked at him in genuine surprise.
“I should have thought that might be taken for granted.”
“Now that I have met you, yes. But it might have been a racket-a comfortable and well-paid racket. There are political rackets, so why not religious rackets? Granted you’ve got the gift of the gab, which you certainly have, I imagine it’s a thing you could do very well out of, if you put yourself over in a big way or could get someone to do that for you. The latter, I should imagine?”
It was half a question.
Llewellyn said soberly: “Yes, I was put over in a big way.”
“No expense spared?”
“No expense spared.”
“That, you know, is what intrigues me. How you could stand it? That is, after I had seen and heard you.”
He slung his painting things’ over his shoulder.
“Will you come and dine with me one night? It would interest me enormously to talk to you. That’s my house down there on the point. The white villa with the green shutters. But just say so, if you don’t want to. Don’t bother to find an excuse.”
Llewellyn considered for a moment before he replied:
“I should like to come very much.”
“Good. To-night?”
“Thank you.”
“Nine o’clock. Don’t change.”
He strode away down the hill-side. Llewellyn stood for a moment looking after him, then he resumed his own walk.
3
“So you go to the villa of the Se?or Sir Wilding?”
The driver of the ramshackle victoria was frankly interested. His dilapidated vehicle was gaily adorned with painted flowers, and his horse was decked with a necklace of blue beads. The horse, the carriage and the driver seemed equally cheerful and serene.
“He is very sympathetic, the Sen~or Sir Wilding,” he said. “He is not a stranger here. He is one of us. Don Estobal, who owned the villa and the land, he was old, very old. He let himself be cheated, all day long he read books, and more books came for him all the time. There are rooms in the villa lined with books to the ceiling. It is incredible that a man should want so many books. And then he dies, and we all wonder, will the villa be sold? But then Sir Wilding comes. He has been here as a boy, often, for Don Estobal’s sister married an Englishman, and her children and her children’s children would come here in the holidays from their schools. But after Don Estobal’s death the estate belongs to Sir Wilding, and he comes here to inherit, and he starts at once to put all in order, and he spends much money to do so. But then there comes the war, and he goes away for many years, but he says always that if he is not killed, he will return here-and so at last he has done so. Two years ago it is now since he returned here with his new wife, and has settled here to live.”