‘Do you sing, Mr. Conneally?’
‘I do a little.’
‘Oh, then you must come and help us in the choir.’ ‘Choir’ seemed a grandiose name for the four Beechers and Mr. Quinn, but Marion, who had little experience of anything better, had no misgivings. ‘I hope you sing tenor. I always long to have a tenor in my choir. Why, we might have one of Barnby’s anthems at Easter, and we haven’t been able to sing one since Mr. Nash left the bank.’
Hyacinth had never sung a part in his life, and could not read music, but he grew bold, and, professing to have an excellent ear, said he was willing to learn. The prospect of a long series of choir practices conducted by Marion Beecher seemed to him just then an extremely pleasant one.
After dinner, while the two girls cleared away the plates and dishes, Canon Beecher invited Hyacinth to smoke.
‘I never learnt the habit myself,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t so much the fashion in my young days as it is now, but I have no objection whatever to the smell.’
Hyacinth lit a cigarette apologetically. It seemed to him almost a wicked thing to do, but his host evidently wished him to be comfortable. Their talk after the girls had left the room turned on politics. Hyacinth’s confession of his friendship with Augusta Goold had impressed the Canon, and he delivered himself of a very kindly little lecture on the duty of loyalty and the sinfulness of contention with the powers that be. His way of putting the matter neither irritated Hyacinth, like the flamboyant Imperialism of the Trinity students, nor drove him into self-assertion, like Dr. Henry’s contemptuous reasonableness. Still, he felt bound to make some sort of defence of the opinions which were still his own.
‘Surely,’ he said, ‘there must be some limit to the duty of loyalty. If a Government has no constitutional right to rule, is a man bound to be loyal to it?’
‘I think,’ said the Canon, ‘that the question is decided for us. Is it not, Mr. Conneally? “Render unto Caesar”—you remember the verse. Even if the Government were as unconstitutional as you appear to think, it would not be more so than the Roman Government of Judaea when these words were spoken.’
Hyacinth pondered this answer. It opened up to him an entirely new way of looking at the subject, and he could see that it might be necessary for a Christian to acquiesce without an attempt at resistance in any Government which happened to exist.