"I have heard about you," he said. "You are of those who cry peace when there is no peace; you entice the young men and maidens who ought to be seeking pardon and preaching repentance, and you destroy their souls with dancing and music. I come here to tell you that you are one of the instruments of the devil in this wicked town."
"Have you really come here, Mr. Coppin, on purpose to tell me that?"
"That," he said, "is part of my message."
"Do you think," asked Angela, because this was almost intolerable, "that it is becoming a preacher like yourself to invade a quiet and private house in order to insult a woman?"
"Truth is not insult," he said. "I come here as I would go to a theatre or a singing-hall or any soul-destroying place. You shall hear the plain truth. With your music and your dancing and your pleasant ways, you are corrupting the souls of many. My brother is hardened in his unrepentance since he knew you. My cousin goes on laughing, and dances over the very pit of destruction, through you. These girls——"
"Oh!" cried Rebekah, who had no sympathy with the Salvation Army, and felt herself an authority when the religious question was touched, "they are all mad. Let him go away."
"I would," replied the captain, "that you were half as mad. Oh! I know you now; I know you snug professors of a Saturday religion——"
"Your mission," Angela interrupted, "is not, I am sure, to argue about another sect. Come, Mr. Coppin, now that you have told us who you are and what is your profession and why you come here, you might like to preach to us. Do so, if you will. We were sitting here quietly when you came, and you interrupt nothing. So that, if it would really make you feel any happier, you may preach to us for a few minutes."
He looked about him in hesitation. This kind of preaching was not in his line: he loved a vast hall with a thousand faces looking at him; or a crowd of turbulent roughs ready to answer the Message with a volley of brickbats; or a chance gathering of unrepentant sinners in a wide thoroughfare. He could lift up his voice to them; but to preach in a quiet room to a dozen girls was a new experience.
And it was not the place which he had expected. His brother, in their last interview, had thrown in his teeth this house and its doings as offering a more reasonable solution of life's problems than his own. "You want everybody," he said, "to join you in singing and preaching every day; what should we do when there was nobody left to preach at? Now, there, what they say is, 'Let us make ourselves comfortable.' There's a deal in that, come to think of.