The Prophet's Mantle. Hubert Bland
at dinner, however, was a complete change. Count Litvinoff appeared to feel no interest in life, save in the question of athletics at the English universities; but on this topic he managed to be so entertaining that his guests quite forgot, in his charm as talker, the irritation he had caused them to feel when he was merely the subject of someone else's talk. When dinner was over, and the three started to walk to Soho, they were all on the very best of terms with themselves and each other.
Would one of them have been quite so much at ease if he had known that the announcement of the coming lecture had been seen in the paper by Alice Hatfield, and that she—not being much by way of going to church—had made up her mind to be there?
CHAPTER VII.
SUNDAY EVENING IN SOHO.
When church and chapel—St. Waltheof's and Little Bethel—unite in teaching that ceremonial observance is at least as important as moral practice, is it to be wondered at that their congregations, feeling that it would be more than human to combine the two, choose to move along the line of least resistance? It is comparatively easy, though perhaps somewhat tiresome, especially in hot weather, to get up only a little late on Sunday mornings, instead of a good deal late, as the 'natural man' would prefer to do; to assume a more or less solemn aspect at the breakfast-table; to wear garments of unusual splendour, which do not see daylight during the week, and in assuming them to feel tremors of uneasiness lest they should be outshone by Mr. Jones' wife, Mr. Smith's daughter, Mr. Brown's sister, or Mr. Robinson's maiden aunt. It is not quite so easy, but still possible, to sit for two hours on a narrow seat, evidently made by someone who knew he would never have to sit on it, and to keep awake (in the old pews this was not imperative), while a preacher, whom one does not care for, talks, in language one does not understand, on subjects in which one takes not the slightest interest. And then, as a compensation, one has the heavy early dinner and the afternoon sleep, in itself almost a religious exercise. Perhaps one's ungodly neighbours curse the day they were born as they hear one, after tea, playing long-drawn hymn tunes on a harmonium, till the bells begin to go for evening 'worship'; then one's wife goes to put on her bonnet (which has been lying in state all day on the best bed, covered with a white handkerchief), and one goes to one's 'sitting' again with a delicious sense that the worse of it is over. All this is not so difficult, and an eternity of bliss is cheap at the price—distinctly.
But to refrain from sanding the sugar or watering the milk—especially for a 'family man,' who has 'others to think of besides himself'—to keep one's hand from this, and one's tongue from evil-speaking, lying and slandering, to keep one's body in temperance and soberness, to be true and just in all one's dealings—this would be not only difficult but absurd, nowadays.
There are a good many who try to carry out the moral teachings and let the ceremonial observances alone, and there are far more who disregard the one and the other; and for both these classes there are ways of spending Sunday evening of which the strict Sabbatarian has no conception. Among others are the entertainments provided by working men's clubs. These are not the wildest form of dissipation; but, as a rule, they have some practical bearing on this world and its affairs and, though rather solid pudding, are appreciated by the audiences, mostly working men, who have a strong and increasing taste for solids, and no small discernment in the matter of flavours.
To-night the dish provided for the Agora Club was a Russian one, and was likely to be highly spiced.
'Do you expect a large audience?' Richard Ferrier asked Litvinoff, as they walked along.
'I hope so,' he said. 'I can always speak better to a full room. Perhaps the physical heat does something to grease one's tongue; and then, again, in a large audience, you're sure to have some people who agree with you, and you and they reflect enthusiasm backwards and forwards between you. We're close there now,' he added, as they turned down a narrow street of high, unhappy-looking houses.
'How in the world do you come to be lecturing at a place like this? How do you know anything about it?' asked Roland.
'There is a freemasonry among the soldiers of Liberty which holds good all over the world, and we who serve her are pledged to carry her light into the darkest corners.'
If this seemed somewhat rhetorical to the young Englishmen, they were ready enough to excuse it in a foreigner, and especially in a foreigner who was about to make a speech. It did occur to Dick that the locality in which they were at the moment was a dark corner which stood as much in need of the services of the Metropolitan Gas Company as of those of the torch-bearers of Freedom; but there was light enough in the room into which Count Litvinoff soon led them.
It was long and rather low, not unlike a certain type of dissenting meeting-room. At one end was a platform, on which stood two wooden chairs, and a deal table which had upon it a tumbler, a bottle of water, and a small wooden hammer, similar to those used by auctioneers. The room was well filled—so well filled that all the wooden forms and chairs were occupied, and even the standing room was so much taken up that the three young men found a little difficulty in working their way to the upper end of the room. Roland noticed, with some surprise, that among the audience were several women, who seemed quite as much at home there as the husbands and brothers with whom they had come.
The two Ferriers were placed on a seat facing the platform, which Litvinoff at once ascended, in company with the chairman. The two were received with cheers and applause, which redoubled when the chairman in his opening remarks referred to the count as 'one who had suffered and worked for years for the cause he was about to advocate.'
Much as the Ferriers had already wondered at Litvinoff's mastery of English, they wondered still more after the first ten minutes on his speech. It is one thing to carry on a social conversation in a tongue not one's own; it is another and a widely different thing to be able to hold a foreign audience, and to sway and move it, to rouse its enthusiasm and to thrill it with horror, at one's will and pleasure. Yet such was the power of this young Russian rebel. He spoke without notes, and without the slightest hesitation. His voice in the opening sentences was very low, but so clear as to be heard distinctly all over the room.
The first part of his address was simply a narrative. In a calm, unimpassioned way he told his hearers the story, from its beginning, of a struggle for freedom; he told them how a movement which had begun in a spirit of love, enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice, had been turned by blind tyranny and brutal oppression into one of wild vengeance and bitter relentless hatred. He told them how, for a chance expression of sympathy with the down-trodden peasants; for the possession of a suppressed book; sometimes even for less than these offences, for having incurred the personal spite of some members of the police, aged men and tender girls had been, and were, at that moment while he spoke to them, being delivered over to the torture chambers of the Russian monarch, to be scourged and starved, to be devoured by disease and riven by madness. He told them how tyranny always had treated—how while it exists, tyranny always will treat the sons of men.
Then, when many among his audience had broken out into groans of indignation and cries of 'Shame!' the usual note of an indignant English audience, the speaker dropped the narrative tone and became argumentative. Here, when he justified the Nihilists' 'deeds of death' as the lawful punishment of criminals—punishment inflicted by the only power that has the right to execute vengeance, the outraged spirit of man—he seemed to lose for a moment the sympathy of some of his hearers, and certainly of the Ferriers, who like most Englishmen, believed in the efficacy of Parliamentary reforms, and also forgot, like most Englishmen, that these patent remedies for all the ills of life are hardly applicable to nations that have no parliament.
With the ready apprehension of a true orator, Litvinoff saw the slight shade of coldness as it passed over some of the upturned faces before him, and, with a consummate skill that was the result either of long practice or oratorical genius, he changed,