‘Soothing syrup,’ Hayter murmured. ‘Religion doesn’t face death: it only pretends it isn’t there. Gateway to the larger life, and all that cant.’ Hayter was a very positive young man in his way.
Mulroyd tried to banter us back into a more comfortable humour. ‘Material for a first-rate shindy there. Now then, Saunders, speak up for your cloth, my boy!’
‘I shall, when I’ve got it,’ said I. A theological student does not care to talk shop in mixed company. I was shy of posing as a preacher, and not to be drawn.
‘Well, if Saunders won’t, I will.’
The voice was harsh, and tense with emotion. It seemed to come out of the grave itself. We all stared at Bellingham, whom we had become accustomed to regard as almost incapable of contributing to a conversation. We waited. Hayter even forgot that work of chromatic art, his pipe.
‘Death waits for every man,’ said Bellingham. ‘At any moment it may engulf us.’ The triteness of the sermon was redeemed by the personality that blazed in the speaker. ‘And then....’ His voice trailed off into silence.
‘And then?’ enquired Hayter, with a politeness that I fancied covered a sneer.
‘And then,’ said the man of doom, ‘we shall find ourselves in the terrible presence of God.’
For once even the genial Mulroyd was stung to sarcasm. ‘I must say, judging from your tone, you don’t seem to relish the prospect much.’
‘Never mind what I relish,’ answered Bellingham sternly. ‘In that hour you and I will be judged. We shall be forced to look into the eye that at this moment, and always, is looking upon us.’ There was an uncomfortable silence, as well there might be. We had not reckoned upon such an explosion of evangelical fervour, and it embarrassed us as some flagrant breach of manners would have done. Perhaps, heaven help us, we regarded it as a flagrant breach of manners. Bellingham was committing the cardinal sin: he was taking something too seriously.