Verdict: Acquitted, but don’t do it again.
On the Sands
Broadwater was fearfully dull on a Sunday, so I came over from Bayview where I was staying, that Ronald and I might help each other in getting through the day.
It was a blazing afternoon in August, and the park, shut in by hills, shimmered in a haze of heat. “I can’t stand this,” said Ronald. “Air I must get somehow, and, as it’s not to be got nearer than the sea, we’ll walk to the shore in search of it. It’s rather hard on you, to be sure, who’ve done the walk once already. But it’s better than lounging about here, where it’s too hot to speak or think; and, at any rate, we shall see the trippers.”
It happened, most unluckily, that just as we reached the pier, an open air service had begun. Of course they had chosen the hottest corner possible for it; a nook sheltered by the masonry of the pier, which carefully excluded every breath of wind that might be travelling to us from the sea. But, despite the heat, it was a temptation to mild excitement that Ronald found it impossible to resist.
“Not so good as the nigger minstrels, but better than nothing,” he said. So we joined the throng of listeners. It was the usual audience, the devotees (mainly women) forming the inner circle, in close proximity to the preacher and the harmonium. Next came the half-hearted, weaker vessels, who separated the former as by a wall from the irreverent throng of idlers who laughed and talked and smoked on the outside fringe. The preacher was a man of the ordinary type, only a little stouter, a little more flaccid and even more illiterate than usual. Where do they come from, these preachers? Are they men who think they have a call or a gift? and are they accepted for the office on their own valuation? Certainly they are not chosen for any capability that can approve itself to the impartial hearer.
The present representative of the school was enlarging, when we came up, upon the demerits of the publican. Ronald, after a few minutes, began to fume and fret. But he behaved for a while excellently well, though I could hear him muttering words in an undertone distinctly uncomplimentary to the preacher.
“And it is publicans like these—the scum and refuse of Jerusalem—that are represented in this town to-day by the inn-keepers, barmen, and pot-boys, who an hour or two hence will be serving many of their fellow creatures—many, I fear, of this audience—with drink, to the ruin of their lives here and of their hopes of salvation hereafter.”
“Nothing of the sort,” shouted Ronald, “he wasn’t an innkeeper at all; he was a tax-gatherer. Every schoolboy knows that.”
The silence that followed was awful; every eye was turned upon the boy, and it was a strain upon my loyalty to remain at his side, and not then and there renounce his acquaintance.