“That fellow Bradlaugh, as you are pleased to call him, is worth half-a-dozen such respectabilities as either you or I, Sam. In mere ability as a lawyer he is worth a round dozen of us lumped together. But he is more than that, he is a very fair scholar, though entirely self-educated. He has done more for his brains and with his brains than many do who have had hundreds of pounds spent upon their education by fond parents. He has not only brains but a conscience; he might have earned a fat living as a lawyer or a parson. He has not only a conscience but a character, and a good one, too, and besides all that, he’s the elected member for Northampton, has as much right legally to sit for that borough as Churchill has for Woodstock, and a great deal better right morally.”
“The man’s an atheist,” said Storth.
“I don’t know that he is; but even so, that’s his concern and Northampton’s. What are you, Sam? What, indeed, is anyone of us that we should throw stones at such a man as Bradlaugh?”
“Well, I call myself a Christian and I rather flatter myself I am one, at least, an indifferent one,” replied Sam. “I don’t set up for a saint, of course.”
“I should think not, indeed.” replied Beaumont, smiling, as he recalled certain gossip that had floated from the coulisses of the theatre to the club. “I Suppose you fancy yourself what we may call a so-so Christian. So are we all, so-so Christians. Why, man alive, I’d guarantee to empty any church in Christendom simply by preaching Christianity in it. I mean the pure, unadulterated article, as Jesus of Nazareth is reported to have preached it, not as it is watered down to suit the weak stomachs of your latter-day saints, or more likely to square with our conceptions of social necessity.”
“Look here, Beaumont;” Storth said, stretching his arms lazily and yawning long and loud, “I’m not going to be drawn into an argument on theology with you. I’d almost said another member of our illustrious family attends to that department. But I don’t think you’d catch the Rev. Jacob arguing about it, either. He’s far too downy for that. It pays better to treat matters you’re paid to believe as beyond question, and a man who questions them as a moral leper. Now, I don’t say you’re a moral leper any more than I say I’m a saint. But I do say that, from a business point of view, it’s just as bad to be thought one as to be one; worse, in fact, for you get damned as a sinner without the fun of the sin.”
“Oh, Sam, you’re just incorrigible. I’ve said in my haste you believe in nothing. But you do believe in Mrs. Grundy.”
“I do,” said Storth, devoutly. “Great is the Grundy of the British Philistine.”
“Hang the fellow, with his affectation of being so superior to another fellow,” he added to himself. “Mind you don’t carry your head so high in the clouds, Master Edward, that you trip and fall over a very little obstacle, and if that obstacle’s Sam Storth thank your own infernal folly. I’ll back common-sense against ideals any day, and if you’ll allow me the one. You’re welcome to my share of the other.”
CHAPTER II.