... “I was asked the other day,” he remarked, “by an enterprising journalist, what made me decide to come here and deliver these lectures to you. I did not tell him. It is because I wanted to speak to the most ignorant class in Christendom. You are that class. If you have intelligence, you make it the servant of your whims. If you have imagination, you use it to enlarge the sphere of your vices. You are worse than the ostrich who buries his head in the sand—you prefer to go underground altogether....
“As you sit here—with every tick of your jewelled watches, out in the world of which in your sublime selfishness you know nothing, a child dies, a woman is given to sin, a man’s heart is broken. What do you care? What do you know of that infernal, that everlasting tragedy of sin and suffering that seethes around you? Why should you care? Your life is attuned to the most pagan philosophy which all the ages of sin have evolved. You have sunk so low that you are content to sit and listen to the story of your ignominy....”
What fascination was it that kept them in their places? Holderness, who was sitting in the last row, fully expected to see them leave their seats and stream out; Macheson himself would not have been surprised. His voice had no particular charm, his words were simple words of abuse, he attempted no rhetorical flourishes, nor any of the tricks of oratory. He stood there like a disgusted schoolmaster lecturing a rebellious and backward school. Holderness, when he saw that no one left, chuckled to himself. Macheson, aware that his powers of invective were spent, suddenly changed his tone.
Consciously or unconsciously, he told them, every one was seeking to fashion his life according to some hidden philosophy, some unrealized ideal. With religion, as it was commonly understood, he had, in that place at any rate, nothing to do. Even the selfish drifting down the stream of idle pleasures, which constituted life for most of them, was the passive acceptance in their consciousness of the old “fainéant” philosophy of “laissez faire.” Had they any idea of the magnificent stimulus which work could give to the emptiest life! For health’s sake alone, they were willing sometimes to step out of the rut of their easy-going existence, to discipline their bodies at foreign watering-places, to take up courses of physical exercises, as prescribed by the fashionable crank of the moment. What they would do for their bodies, why should they not try for their souls! The one was surely as near decay as the other—the care of it, if only they would realize it, was ten thousand times more important! He had called them, perhaps, many hard names. There was one he could not call them. He could not call them cowards. On the contrary, he thought them the bravest people he had ever known, to live the lives they did, and await the end with the equanimity they showed. The equivalent of Hell, whatever it might be, had evidently no terrors for them....
He concluded his address abruptly, as his custom was, a few minutes later, and turned at once to leave the platform. But this afternoon an unexpected incident occurred. A man from the middle of the audience rose up and called to him by name.
Macheson, surprised, paused and turned round. It was Deyes who stood there, immaculately dressed in morning clothes, his long face pale as ever, his manner absolutely and entirely composed. He was swinging his eyeglass by its narrow black ribbon, and leaning a little forward.
“Sir,” he said, once more addressing Macheson, “as one of the audience whose shortcomings have so—er—profoundly impressed you, may I take the liberty of asking you a question? I ask it of you publicly because I imagine that there are many others here besides myself to whom your answer may prove interesting.”
Macheson came slowly to the front of the platform.
“Ask your question, sir, by all means,” he said.
Deyes bowed.