Week by week the lecture became more absorbing to him, the men more pliant, his hold on them firmer. His disinterestedness, his brightness and resource, perhaps, too, the signs about him of a light and frail physical organisation, the novelty of his position, the inventiveness of his method, gave him little by little an immense power in the place. After the first two lectures Murray Edwardes became his constant and enthusiastic hearer on Sunday afternoons, and, catching some of Robert's ways and spirit, he gradually brought his own chapel and teaching more and more into line with the Elgood Street undertaking. So that the venture of the two men began to take ever larger proportions; and, kindled by the growing interest and feeling about him, dreams began to rise in Elsmere's mind which as yet he hardly dared to cherish; which came and went, however, weaving a substance for themselves out of each successive incident and effort.
Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in the week besides the Sunday. In West End drawing-rooms his personal gift had begun to tell no less than in this crowded, squalid East; and as his aims became known, other men, finding the thoughts of their own hearts revealed in him, or touched with that social compunction which is one of the notes of our time, came down and became his helpers. Of all the social projects of which that Elgood Street room became the centre, Elsmere was, in some sense, the life and inspiration. But it was not these projects themselves which made this period of his life remarkable. London at the present moment, if it be honeycombed with vice and misery, is also honeycombed with the labour of an ever-expanding charity. Week by week men and women of like gifts and energies with Elsmere spend themselves, as he did, in the constant effort to serve and to alleviate. What was noticeable, what was remarkable in this work of his, was the spirit, the religious passion which, radiating from him, began after a while, to kindle the whole body of men about him. It was from his Sunday lectures and his talks with the children, boys and girls, who came in after the lecture to spend a happy hour and a half with him on Sunday afternoons, that in later years hundreds of men and women will date the beginnings of a new absorbing life. There came a time, indeed, when, instead of meeting criticism by argument, Robert was able simply to point to accomplished facts. 'You ask me,' he would say in effect, 'to prove to you that men can love, can make a new and fruitful use, for daily life and conduct, of a merely human Christ. Go amongst our men, talk to our children, and satisfy yourself. A little while ago scores of these men either hated the very name of Christianity or were entirely indifferent to it. To scores of them now the name of the teacher of Nazareth, the victim of Jerusalem, is dear and sacred; his life, his death, his words, are becoming once more a constant source of moral effort and spiritual hope. See for yourself!'
However, we are anticipating. Let us go back to May.
One beautiful morning Robert was sitting working in his study, his windows open to the breezy blue sky and the budding plane-trees outside, when the door was thrown open and 'Mr. Wendover' was announced.
The squire entered; but what a shrunken and aged squire! The gait was feeble, the bearing had lost all its old erectness, the bronzed strength of the face had given place to a waxen and ominous pallor. Robert, springing up with joy to meet the great gust of Murewell air which seemed to blow about him with the mention of the squire's name, was struck, arrested. He guided his guest to a chair with an almost filial carefulness.
'I don't believe, Squire,' he exclaimed, 'you ought to be doing this—wandering about London by yourself!'
But the squire, as silent and angular as ever when anything personal to himself was concerned, would take no notice of the implied anxiety and sympathy. He grasped his umbrella between his knees with a pair of brown twisted hands, and, sitting very upright, looked critically round the room. Robert, studying the dwindled figure, remembered with a pang the saying of another Oxford scholar, à propos of the death of a young man of extraordinary promise, 'What learning has perished with him! How vain seems all toil to acquire!'—and the words, as they passed through his mind, seemed to him to ring another death-knell.
But after the first painful impression he could not help losing himself in the pleasure of the familiar face, the Murewell associations.
'How is the village, and the Institute? And what sort of man is my successor—the man, I mean, who came after Armitstead?'
'I had him once to dinner,' said the squire briefly; 'he made a false quantity, and asked me to subscribe to the Church Missionary Society. I haven't seen him since. He and the village have been at loggerheads about the Institute, I believe. He wanted to turn out the dissenters. Bateson came to me, and we circumvented him, of course. But the man's an ass. Don't talk of him!'