He raised his hat and turned back, and she went on towards the house in Queen's Gate with many strange thoughts in her heart.
Enid and her husband were by no means the only members of the congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity as one thing and the practises of the Church as something entirely different.
"He's a clever fellow, a very clever fellow and very earnest," said Lord Canore, who was a patron of several fat livings, to her ladyship and his two daughters as they drove home, "but he'll soon get those rough corners knocked off him. If they are wise they will give him a good living, and then make him a canon as soon as possible. There's nothing like preferment to sober a man down in the Church."
"Yes," sighed Lady Caroline Rosse, the elder daughter, who was getting somewhat passée, and was deeply interested in Church work; "what a beautiful voice he has, and such a wonderful face! Really, he looked almost inspired at times. He would make quite an ideal bishop, and, you know, some quite young men are being made bishops now-a-days."
"Yes," chuckled his lordship, as he lay back against the cushions, "that is the sort of thing I mean. You don't catch bishops preaching the Sermon on the Mount and sub-editing it as they go on."
"My dear Canore," said her ladyship frigidly, "I think we had better change the subject; that last remark of yours was almost blasphemous."
"Never heard such rubbish preached from a respectable pulpit in my life," said Mr. Horace Faustmann, a member of the Stock Exchange, director of several limited companies and a most liberal contributor to the offertories, and all Church effort in the parish of St. Chrysostom, to his wife as they rolled smoothly in their cee-spring, rubber-tyred victoria towards Hyde Park Corner.
"Why, if you can't make plenty of money and still be a Christian, where are subscriptions coming from, and what price the Church endowments? It seems absolutely absurd to me. I wonder what on earth Baldwin was thinking about to let him preach a sermon like that in the smartest church in the West End. If he goes on in that style he will just ruin the show. Anyhow, he gets no more of my money if he is going to insult rich people in the pulpit. Any more of that sort of thing, my dear, and we'll go somewhere else, won't we?"
"I should think so," said the beautiful Mrs. Faustmann. She was the daughter of a poor aristocrat, and had made a very good social and financial bargain. She was one of the smartest women and most successful entertainers in London. There was another man eating his heart out on her account in the Burmese jungle, and sometimes, in her tenderest moment, she gave him a thought and a little sigh—about as much thought and sigh as her engagements permitted.