“That's just what I came to speak about,” said John; and then his rapturous face straightened, and he made some effort to plunge into the practical aspect of his affairs at Soho. There was his club for girls and his home for children. They were to be turned out of the clergy-house tomorrow, and he had taken a shelter at Westminster. But the means to support them were still deficient, and if there was anything coming to him that would suffice for that purpose—if there was enough left—if his mother's money was not all gone——
The Prime Minister was looking into John's face, watching the play of his features, but hardly listening to what he said. “What does this mean?” he was asking himself, in the old habitual way of the man whose business it is to read the motives that are not revealed.
“So you are willing to leave London, after all, John?”
“Why not, uncle? London is nothing to me in itself, less than nothing; and if that brave girl to whom it is everything——”
“And yet six months ago I gave you the opportunity of doing so, and then——”
“Then my head was full of dreams, sir. Thank God, they are gone now, and I am awake at last!”
“But the Church—I thought your duty and devotion to the Church——”
“The Church is a chaos, uncle, a wreck of fragments without unity, principle, or life. No man can find foothold in it now without accommodating his duty and his loyalty to his chances of a livelihood. It is a career, not a crusade. Once I imagined that a man might live as a protest against all this, but it was a dream, a vain and presumptuous dream.”
“And then your woman movement——”
“Another dream, uncle! A whole standing army marshalled and equipped to do battle against the world's sins toward woman could never hope for victory. Why? Because the enemy is ourselves, and only God can contend against a foe like that. He will, too! For the wrongs inflicted on woman by this wicked and immoral London God will visit it with his vengeance yet. I see it coming, it is not far off, and God help those——”