"Just what I says," muttered Chegwidden, greatly envying the other's powers of expression. "Immortality! That's what it be, varmer. 'Tis a hard word, but there ain't no other. Dirty immortality!" He meant immorality, but was confused by righteous indignation, the music, and other things.
"Can't us do nought?" Chegwidden went on. "Us lets their religion bide. They'm mocking us, varmer. That there last song was blasphemy, and immortality, and a-mocking us all through."
Pendoggat muttered something about a demonstration outside later on, to mark their disapproval of such infamous attempts to seduce young people from the paths of rectitude. Then he relapsed into taciturnity, while Chegwidden went on babbling of people's sins.
Most of the ill-feeling was due to the fact that the room had been used several years back as a meeting-house, where the pure Gospel had flowed regularly. Chegwidden's father had carried his Bible into a front seat there. Souls had been saved in that room; anniversary teas had been held there; services of song had been given; young couples, whose Nonconformity was unimpeachable, had conducted their amours there; and upon the outside of the door had been scrawled shockingly crude statements concerning such love-affairs, accompanied by anatomical caricatures of the parties in question. It was holy ground, and representatives of a hostile sect were defiling it.
Greater evils followed. An eccentric gentleman rose and recited a story about a lady trying to mount an overcrowded street-car, and being dragged along the entire length of a street, chatting to the conductor the while; quite a harmless story, but it made Brentor to grin. Church-people laughed noisily, and even Methodists tittered. Nonconformist maids of established reputations giggled, and their young men cackled like geese. It was in short a laughing audience. The threepenny-bits shivered. Fire from heaven was already overdue. Complete destruction might be looked for at any moment. One nervous old woman crept out. She had heard the doctrine of eternal punishment expounded in that place, and she explained she could remain there no longer and listen to profanity. The performer again obliged; this time with a comic song which set the seal of blasphemy upon the whole performance. Chegwidden turned his face to the wall, moaned, and demanded of a neighbour what he thought of it all.
"Brave fine singing," came the unscrupulous answer, which seemed to denote that the speaker had also been carried away by enthusiasm.
This was the last straw. Even the lights of Ebenezer were flickering and going out. Chegwidden and Pendoggat appeared to be the only godly men left. The farmer turned upon the irreligious speaker, and crushed him with weighty words.
"'Twas here father prayed," he said, in a voice unsteady with grief and alcohol. "Twice every Sunday, and me with 'en, and he've a-shook me in this chapel, and punched my ear many a time when I was cracking nuts in sermon time. Father led in prayer here, and he've a-told me how he once prayed twenty minutes by the clock. Some said 'twas nineteen, but father knew 'twas twenty, 'cause he had his watch in his hand, and never took his eyes off 'en. Never thought he'd do the last minute, but he did. They was religious volks in them days. Father prayed here, I tells ye, and I learnt Sunday-school here, and 'twas here us all learnt the blessed truths of immorality."—again he blundered in his meaning—"and now it be a place for dancing, and singing, and play-acting, and us will be judged for it, and weighed in the balances and found wanting."
"Us can repent," suggested the neighbour.
Chegwidden would not admit this. "Them what have laughed here to-night won't die natural, not in their beds," he declared. "They'll die sudden. They'll be cut off. They've committed blasphemy, which is the sin what ain't forgiven."