Now, our Methodist clergyman was a very nice gentleman indeed, and he was quite affected by the way the doctor told the story. He said, “I don’t know that I could induce Mrs. Elmore to let her daughter marry this young play-actor, while he is still acting in what we, rightly or wrongly, consider to be a sinful place, and a place full of devilish wiles and temptations; but if he would give up his present life, and take to another calling, perhaps it might be different.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “there is no time to lose. He ought to come down at once, but it’s no good his coming down while he is a play-actor, because the mother wouldn’t allow him to see his sweetheart. I can’t go to London, because I have a lot of people ill here, and a case I can’t leave. Would you go to London and see the young fellow?”
“Why not write to him?” said the clergyman.
“That’s no use,” said the doctor; “it couldn’t be explained in a letter. Come, it is a life that hangs on your decision. Won’t you go?”
The clergyman hesitated. He said he didn’t know the young fellow, and he wasn’t authorized by the young lady or her mamma, and it seemed such a queer thing for him to do.
But at last he consented, and the doctor so worked him up, that he promised to go that very evening. They didn’t know the young fellow’s private address; but the doctor knew the theatre he was playing at, because, of course, he was advertised among the company.
The clergyman said it was a dreadful thing for him to have to go to a theatre. He had never been inside one in his life, and he didn’t feel quite sure what would happen to him. He told the doctor that he looked upon it that perhaps he might be going to rescue a young man from perdition, and to do that, of course, a clergyman might go into a worse place than a theatre.
Our doctor—a very jolly sort of man, and fond of his joke, and not above coming into our parlour and having a little something warm when he is out on his rounds late on a cold night—told us all about what the clergyman said afterwards, and he told us that he couldn’t for the life of him help telling the dear old parson to be very careful in the theatre, as there were beautiful sirens there, and he told him to remember about St. Anthony. I didn’t know what he meant about St. Anthony, no more did Harry, because I asked him who St. Anthony was afterwards; but I didn’t tell the doctor I didn’t know, because I never like to show ignorance, if I can help it.
I suppose St. Anthony went to a theatre and fell in love with one of the lovely ladies. Perhaps it was that.
But our clergyman—the Methodist one—went. I call him ours, though we are Church of England, and our clergyman I told you about, is the Rev. Tommy Lloyd, who carries stones and roots in his pocket—Harry, in his exaggerating way, says he carries rocks and trunks of trees there. He went up to London, and, as we learnt afterwards, he got to the theatre about half-past eight in the evening. He saw the place all lit up, and he wondered how he was to find the young fellow—Mr. Frank Leighton his name was.