"What the deuce is it to him?" almost screamed Melmotte;—whereupon Father Barham bowed and took his leave.
"That's a remarkable thing," said Melmotte,—"very remarkable." Even this poor priest's mad visit added to his inflation. "I suppose he was in earnest."
"Mad as a hatter," said Lord Alfred.
"But why did he come to me in his madness—to me especially? That's what I want to know. I'll tell you what it is. There isn't a man in all England at this moment thought of so much as—your humble servant. I wonder whether the 'Morning Pulpit' people sent him here now to find out really what is my religion."
"Mad as a hatter," said Lord Alfred again;—"just that and no more."
"My dear fellow, I don't think you've the gift of seeing very far. The truth is they don't know what to make of me;—and I don't intend that they shall. I'm playing my game, and there isn't one of 'em understands it except myself. It's no good my sitting here, you know. I shan't be able to move. How am I to get at you if I want anything?"
"What can you want? There'll be lots of servants about."
"I'll have this bar down, at any rate." And he did succeed in having removed the bar which had been specially put up to prevent his intrusion on his own guests in his own house. "I look upon that fellow's coming here as a very singular sign of the times," he went on to say. "They'll want before long to know where I have my clothes made, and who measures me for my boots!" Perhaps the most remarkable circumstance in the career of this remarkable man was the fact that he came almost to believe in himself.
Father Barham went away certainly disgusted; and yet not altogether disheartened. The man had not declared that he was not a Roman Catholic. He had shown himself to be a brute. He had blasphemed and cursed. He had been outrageously uncivil to a man whom he must have known to be a minister of God. He had manifested himself to this priest, who had been born an English gentleman, as being no gentleman. But, not the less might he be a good Catholic,—or good enough at any rate to be influential on the right side. To his eyes Melmotte, with all his insolent vulgarity, was infinitely a more hopeful man than Roger Carbury. "He insulted me," said Father Barham to a brother religionist that evening within the cloisters of St. Fabricius.
"Did he intend to insult you?"