“She'll be there,” he told himself, and he walked home with uplifted head. He would look for her; he would catch her eye; she would see that it was not necessary to be ashamed of him again.
And then close behind, very close, came recollections of her appearance. He could reconstruct her new dress by memory—her face was easy to remember. “After all, beauty is a kind of virtue,” he thought. “And all natural friendship is good for the progress of souls if it is built upon the love of God.”
He wrote nothing and learned nothing by heart. The only preparation he made for his sermon was thought and prayer. When the Wednesday night came he was very nervous. But the church was nearly empty, and the vergers, who were in their everyday clothes, had only partially lit up the nave. The canon had done him the honour to be present; his fellow-curates read the prayers and lessons.
As he ascended the pulpit he thought he saw the white bonnets of a group of nurses in the dim distance of one of the aisles, but he did not see Glory and he dared not look again. His text was, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He gave it out twice, and his voice sounded strange to himself—so weak and thin in that hollow place.
When he began to speak his sentences seemed awkward and difficult. The things of the world were temporal and the nations of the world were out of harmony with God. Men were biting and devouring each other who ought to live as brothers. “Cheat or be cheated” was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of God's people ... from Christ came the answer—the answer—the——
His words would not flow. He fought hard, threw out another passage, then stammered, began again, stammered again, felt hot, made a fresh effort, flagged, rattled out some words he had fixed in his mind, perspired, lost his voice, and finally stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “And now to God the Father—” and came down from the pulpit.
His sermon had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly. Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London—at All Saints' especially—expected culture and preparation.
“For my own part I confess—nay, I am proud to declare—my watchword is Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!”
As for the doctrine of the sermon it was not above question. It was necessary to live in the nineteenth century, and it was impossible to apply to its conditions the rules of life that had been proper to the first.
John Storm made no resistance. He slept badly that night. As often as he dozed off he dreamed that he was trying to do something he could not do, and when he awoke he became hot as with the memory of a disgrace. And always at the back of his shame was the thought of Glory.