"My dear Carol," interrupted Vane, gently, "that is not quite the point. You must remember that these men have their opinions just as I have mine, and they may not think it their duty to do that. I do not believe that it is right for a man to be a priest of the Church and possess more than the actual necessaries of life. They believe that it is right."
"And a very convenient belief, too!" said Carol, with a look of admiration. "Well, I am not as charitable as you are, and I don't believe that they do believe it. Now, there's Cecil and the carriage. Dear me! how very punctual he is."
"There's not much to wonder at in that," said Sir Arthur. "Well, now, I suppose you young ladies are going to have a morning in Paradise—the one that is bounded by Oxford Street on the north and Piccadilly on the south. Vane, we will go and have a cigar with Mr. Rayburn while they are getting ready."
The meeting at St. James's Hall was much less crowded, and, as some thought, much more decorous than the one at Exeter Hall. Canon Thornton-Moore, a man of stately presence, high social standing and very considerable wealth—he had married the daughter of one of the most successful operators in the Kaffir Circus—made an ideal chairman. He was a High Churchman and the son of a Bishop. He was the incarnation of the most aristocratic section of the Anglican Church. He was supported by the presence of a Duke and two High Church peers on the platform, and half a dozen vicars and curates, all eloquent preachers and fashionable exponents of ritualistic doctrine, were announced to speak in advocacy of the protest which the meeting had been called to make.
The proceedings were very quiet and dignified—and very churchy. It was the Church from beginning to end; it never seemed to strike either the speakers or the audience that there was anything that might fairly be called Christianity outside the Church. In fact, the words Christ and Christianity were not used at all from the platform.
The only approach to unseemliness occurred when, in response to a formal intimation that "discussion within reasonable limits" would be permitted, one of the Kilburn Sisters, a woman who had given up a fortune and relinquished a title, got up and asked the chairman point-blank what his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount was, and further, if any of the noble and reverend gentlemen on the platform could give a better exposition of it as a rule of Christian life than Vane Maxwell had done?
She had hardly uttered her question before murmurs of angry protest began to run from lip to lip through the hall; but when she went on to ask why the preacher of the now famous sermon should be denounced by his fellow priests for giving an address to free-thinkers in a free-thought hall, when Christ himself, for his own good purposes, associated himself with publicans and sinners and thought none too low or too utterly lost to take by the hand, her voice was at once drowned by a chorus of "Oh! Oh's!" amidst which the chairman rose and said in his most dignified manner:
"I hope that I have the sense and feeling of the meeting with me when I say that the questions asked by our most respected sister seem to have been asked under a total misconception of the circumstances. It is obvious that they raise issues which could not possibly be discussed in such a place, and on such an occasion as this. I would remind our dear friend that this edifice is not a church, and this platform not a pulpit; and that, therefore, I do not feel myself justified, even if time and other circumstances permitted, to enter upon a doctrinal subject which involves so many far-reaching considerations as this one does."
The Canon sat down amidst a many-voiced murmur of approval, and the Duke said audibly to him:
"A very proper way, my dear Canon, of dealing with a most improper question. The dear lady seems to think that we are not capable of reading our Bibles for ourselves."