Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Fanny clapped her hands to her ears.

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ she cried, ‘what shall we do? She’s down on the beach somewhere, playing with the children.’

  Of course this was serious. If Giuseppe came upon her unwarned, I didn’t doubt for a moment he’d carry out in real earnest his threat of stabbing her. So off I sent the porter to find her, if possible, and set her on her guard, telling him to bring her home, if he could, by the back way over the hillside. Then Fanny and I sat out, under the Japanese medlar on the terrace, where we could command a good view of the road either way, and watch if the girl was coming. Meanwhile, Giuseppe kept prowling under the olives on the plain, and bandying chaff now and again with the Bordighera cabmen.

  Presently, to our horror, Cecca hove suddenly in sight, round the corner by the Angst, with the children beside her. She was carrying a great bunch of anemones and asphodel. Evidently the porter had failed to warn and find her. My heart stood still within me with suspense. I rushed to the edge of the terrace. But quicker than I could rush, Cecca had seen Giuseppe, and Giuseppe Cecca. With a wild cry of joy, she flung down the flowers and darted upon him like a maniac. She threw her arms around him in a transport of delight. She covered him with kisses. I never saw a woman give any man such a welcome. One would think they were lovers on the eve of marriage. And not three weeks before, mind you, she had tried her level best with a knife in his breast to murder him at Naples!

  ‘Giuseppe!’ she cried, ‘Giuseppe! Oh, carissimo! How I love you!’

  Giuseppe shook her off and glared at her angrily. He drew the dagger from his belt, and held it, irresolute, in his hand for a moment.

  But Cecca laughed when she saw it. She laughed a merry laugh of amusement and astonishment. ‘No, no, caro mio,’ she cried, seizing his arm, quite unconcerned, with her pretty fingers. ‘Not now, when I rejoice to see you again, my own, are you going to stab me!’ She wrenched the knife from his grasp and flung it, all glittering, far away among the olive groves. It gleamed in the air and fell. Giuseppe watched her do it, and followed its flight with his eyes. Then he stood there, sheepish. He didn’t know what to do next. He just stared and looked glum, in spite of all her endearments.

  Cecca was more than a match for him, however. It was a picture to see her. She began with her blandishments, making such heartfelt love to him that no man in England, let alone in Italy, could possibly have resisted her. In just about two minutes by the watch he gave way. ‘But what did you stab me for, little one?’ he asked rather sullenly.

  Cecca stood back a pace and looked at him in amazement. She surveyed him from head to foot like some strange wild animal. ‘What did I stab you for!’ she repeated. ‘And he asks me that! Oh, Giuseppe, because I loved you! I loved you! I loved you! I loved you so much I couldn’t bear you out of my sight. And you to go and walk with that Thing Bianca!’

  ‘I won’t do it again,’ Giuseppe answered, all penitence.

  Cecca fell upon him once more, kisses, tears, and tenderness. ‘Oh, Giuseppe,’ she cried, ‘you can’t think what I’ve suffered all these days without you! I was longing for you to come. I was praying to our Lady every hour of the night; and, now you’re here, that horrid Bianca shall never again get hold of you.’

  We left them alone for half an hour, with half a flask of Chianti to compose their minds upon. At the end of that time Cecca came back to us smiling, and Giuseppe, looking more sheepish than ever, beside her.

  ‘Well, signora,’ she said, overjoyed, ‘it’s all arranged now. As soon as we can get the announcement published, Giuseppe and I are going to get married.’

  That settled our fate. Willy-nilly, we were tied to Bordighera. Cecca declared she would never go back to Naples again, to let that horrid Bianca practise her wiles and her evil eye on Giuseppe. Fanny declared she could never get on without Cecca for the children. Giuseppe declared he would never leave us. I shrugged my shoulders. The upshot of it all was that we took our present villa, on the slope of the Cima, and Giuseppe forswore the sea, turned gardener on the spot, and married Cecca. Married her, fair and square, at church, and before the Sindaco. He lives in our cottage. That’s him you see down yonder there, uncovering the artichokes. And now I daresay you’ll perceive what I mean when I say I never can understand these Italians.

  But the worst of it is, they make us in the end almost as bad as they are. Have another cigarette? And be careful with your match, please.

  THE BACKSLIDER

  There was much stir and commotion on the night of Thursday, January the 14th, 1874, in the Gideonite Apostolic Church, number 47, Walworth Lane, Peckham, S.E. Anybody could see at a glance that some important business was under consideration; for the Apostle was there himself, in his chair of presidency, and the twelve Episcops were there, and the forty-eight Presbyters, and a large and earnest gathering of the Gideonite laity. It was only a small bare schoolroom, fitted with wooden benches, was that headquarters station of the young Church; but you could not look around it once without seeing that its occupants were of the sort by whom great religious revolutions may be made or marred. For the Gideonites were one of those strange enthusiastic hole-and-corner sects that spring up naturally in the outlying suburbs of great thinking centres. They gather around the marked personality of some one ardent, vigorous, half-educated visionary; and they consist for the most part of intelligent, half-reasoning people, who are bold enough to cast overboard the dogmatic beliefs of their fathers, but not so bold as to exercise their logical faculty upon the fundamental basis on which the dogmas originally rested. The Gideonites had thus collected around the fixed centre of their Apostle, a retired attorney, Murgess by name, whose teaching commended itself to their groping reason as the pure outcome of faithful Biblical research; and they had chosen their name because, though they were but three hundred in number, they had full confidence that when the time came they would blow their trumpets, and all the host of Midian would be scattered before them. In fact, they divided the world generally into Gideonite and Midianite, for they knew that he that was not with them was against them. And no wonder, for the people of Peckham did not love the struggling Church. Its chief doctrine was one of absolute celibacy, like the Shakers of America; and to this doctrine the Church had testified in the Old Kent Road and elsewhere after a vigorous practical fashion that roused the spirit of South-eastern London into the fiercest opposition. The young men and maidens, said the Apostle, must no longer marry or be given in marriage; the wives and husbands must dwell asunder; and the earth must be made as an image of heaven. These were heterodox opinions, indeed, which South-eastern London could only receive with a strenuous counterblast of orthodox brickbats and sound Anglican road metal.

  The fleece of wool was duly laid upon the floor; the trumpet and the lamp were placed upon the bare wooden reading-desk; and the Apostle, rising slowly from his seat, began to address the assembled Gideonites.

  ‘Friends,’ he said, in a low, clear, impressive voice, with a musical ring tempering its slow distinctness, ‘we have met together to-night to take counsel with one another upon a high matter. It is plain to all of us that the work of the Church in the world does not prosper as it might prosper were the charge of it in worthier hands. We have to contend against great difficulties. We are not among the rich or the mighty of the earth; and the poor whom we have always with us do not listen to us. It is expedient, therefore, that we should set some one among us aside to be instructed thoroughly in those things that are most commonly taught among the Midianites at Oxford or Cambridge. To some of you it may seem, as it seemed at first to me, that such a course would involve going back upon the very principles of our constitution. We are not to overcome Midian by our own hand, nor by the strength of two and thirty thousand, but by the trumpet, and the pitcher, and the cake of barley bread. Yet, when I searched and inquired after this matter, it seemed to me that we might also err by overmuch confidence on the other side. For Moses, who led the people out of Egypt, was made ready for the task by
being learned in all the learning of the Egyptians. Daniel, who testified in the captivity, was cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and instructed in the wisdom and tongue of the Chaldeans. Paul, who was the apostle of the Gentiles, had not only sat at the feet of Gamaliel, but was also able from their own poets and philosophers to confute the sophisms and subtleties of the Grecians themselves. These things show us that we should not too lightly despise even worldly learning and worldly science. Perhaps we have gone wrong in thinking too little of such dross, and being puffed up with spiritual pride. The world might listen to us more readily if we had one who could speak the word for us in the tongues understanded of the world.’

  As he paused, a hum of acquiescence went round the room.

  ‘It has seemed to me, then,’ the Apostle went on, ‘that we ought to choose some one among our younger brethren, upon whose shoulders the cares and duties of the Apostolate might hereafter fall. We are a poor people, but by subscription among ourselves we might raise a sufficient sum to send the chosen person first to a good school here in London, and afterwards to the University of Oxford. It may seem a doubtful and a hazardous thing thus to stake our future upon any one young man; but then we must remember that the choice will not be wholly or even mainly ours; we will be guided and directed as we ever are in the laying on of hands. To me, considering this matter thus, it has seemed that there is one youth in our body who is specially pointed out for this work. Only one child has ever been born into the Church: he, as you know, is the son of brother John Owen and sister Margaret Owen, who were received into the fold just six days before his birth. Paul Owen’s very name seems to many of us, who take nothing for chance but all things for divinely ordered, to mark him out at once as a foreordained Apostle. Is it your wish, then, Presbyter John Owen, to dedicate your only son to this ministry?’

  Presbyter John Owen rose from the row of seats assigned to the forty-eight, and moved hesitatingly towards the platform. He was an intelligent-looking, honest-faced, sunburnt working man, a mason by trade, who had come into the Church from the Baptist society; and he was awkwardly dressed in his Sunday clothes, with the scrupulous clumsy neatness of a respectable artisan who expects to take part in an important ceremony. He spoke nervously and with hesitation, but with all the transparent earnestness of a simple, enthusiastic nature.

  ‘Apostle and friends,’ he said, ‘it ain’t very easy for me to disentangle my feelins on this subjec’ from one another. I hope I ain’t moved by any worldly feelin’, an’ yet I hardly know how to keep such considerations out, for there’s no denyin’ that it would be a great pleasure to me and to his mother to see our Paul becomin’ a teacher in Israel, and receivin’ an education such as you, Apostle, has pinted out. But we hope, too, we ain’t insensible to the good of the Church and the advantage that it might derive from our Paul’s support and preachin’. We can’t help seein’ ourselves that the lad has got abilities; and we’ve tried to train him up from his youth upward, like Timothy, for the furtherance of the right doctrine. If the Church thinks he’s fit for the work laid upon him, his mother and me’ll be glad to dedicate him to the service.’

  He sat down awkwardly, and the Church again hummed its approbation in a suppressed murmur. The Apostle rose once more, and briefly called on Paul Owen to stand forward.

  In answer to the call, a tall, handsome, earnest-eyed boy advanced timidly to the platform. It was no wonder that those enthusiastic Gideonite visionaries should have seen in his face the visible stamp of the Apostleship. Paul Owen had a rich crop of dark-brown glossy and curly hair, cut something after the Florentine Cinque-cento fashion — not because his parents wished him to look artistic, but because that was the way in which they had seen the hair dressed in all the sacred pictures that they knew; and Margaret Owen, the daughter of some Wesleyan Spitalfields weaver folk, with the imaginative Huguenot blood still strong in her veins, had made up her mind ever since she became Convinced of the Truth (as their phrase ran) that her Paul was called from his cradle to a great work. His features were delicately chiselled, and showed rather natural culture, like his mother’s, than rough honesty, like John Owen’s, or strong individuality, like the masterful Apostle’s. His eyes were peculiarly deep and luminous, with a far-away look which might have reminded an artist of the central boyish figure in Holman Hunt’s picture of the Doctors in the Temple. And yet Paul Owen had a healthy colour in his cheek and a general sturdiness of limb and muscle which showed that he was none of your nervous, bloodless, sickly idealists, but a wholesome English peasant-boy of native refinement and delicate sensibilities. He moved forward with some natural hesitation before the eyes of so many people — ay, and what was more terrible, of the entire Church upon earth; but he was not awkward and constrained in his action like his father. One could see that he was sustained in the prominent part he took that morning by the consciousness of a duty he had to perform and a mission laid upon him which he must not reject.

  ‘Are you willing, my son Paul,’ asked the Apostle, gravely, ‘to take upon yourself the task that the Church proposes?’

  ‘I am willing,’ answered the boy in a low voice, ‘grace preventing me.’

  ‘Does all the Church unanimously approve the election of our brother Paul to this office?’ the Apostle asked formally; for it was a rule with the Gideonites that nothing should be done except by the unanimous and spontaneous action of the whole body, acting under direct and immediate inspiration; and all important matters were accordingly arranged beforehand by the Apostle in private interviews with every member of the Church individually, so that everything that took place in public assembly had the appearance of being wholly unquestioned. They took counsel first with one another, and consulted the Scripture together; and when all private doubts were satisfied, they met as a Church to ratify in solemn conclave their separate conclusions. It was not often that the Apostle did not have his own way. Not only had he the most marked personality and the strongest will, but he alone also had Greek and Hebrew enough to appeal always to the original word; and that mysterious amount of learning, slight as it really was, sufficed almost invariably to settle the scruples of his wholly ignorant and pliant disciples. Reverence for the literal Scripture in its primitive language was the corner-stone of the Gideonite Church; and for all practical purposes, its one depositary and exponent for them was the Apostle himself. Even the Rev. Albert Barnes’s Commentary was held to possess an inferior authority.

  ‘The Church approves,’ was the unanimous answer.

  ‘Then, Episcops, Presbyters, and brethren,’ said the Apostle, taking up a roll of names, ‘I have to ask that you will each mark down on this paper opposite your own names how much a year you can spare of your substance for six years to come, as a guarantee fund for this great work. You must remember that the ministry of this Church has cost you nothing; freely I have received and freely given; do you now bear your part in equipping a new aspirant for the succession to the Apostolate.’

  The two senior Episcops took two rolls from his hand, and went round the benches with a stylographic pen (so strangely do the ages mingle — Apostles and stylographs) silently asking each to put down his voluntary subscription. Meanwhile the Apostle read slowly and reverently a few appropriate sentences of Scripture. Some of the richer members — well-to-do small tradesmen of Peckham — put down a pound or even two pounds apiece; the poorer brethren wrote themselves down for ten shillings or even five. In the end the guarantee list amounted to £195 a year. The Apostle reckoned it up rapidly to himself, and then announced the result to the assembly, with a gentle smile relaxing his austere countenance. He was well pleased, for the sum was quite sufficient to keep Paul Owen two years at school in London, and then send him comfortably if not splendidly to Oxford. The boy had already had a fair education in Latin and some Greek, at the Birkbeck Schools; and with two years’ further study he might even gain a scholarship (for he was a bright lad), which would materially lessen the expense to the young Church. U
nlike many prophets and enthusiasts, the Apostle was a good man of business; and he had taken pains to learn all about these favourable chances before embarking his people on so doubtful a speculation.

  The Assembly was just about to close, when one of the Presbyters rose unexpectedly to put a question which, contrary to the usual practice, had not already been submitted for approbation to the Apostle. He was a hard-headed, thickset, vulgar-looking man, a greengrocer at Denmark Hill, and the Apostle always looked upon him as a thorn in his side, promoted by inscrutable wisdom to the Presbytery for the special purpose of keeping down the Apostle’s spiritual pride.

  ‘One more pint, Apostle,’ he said abruptly, ‘afore we close. It seems to me that even in the Church’s work we’d ought to be business-like. Now, it ain’t business-like to let this young man, Brother Paul, get his eddication out of us, if I may so speak afore the Church, on spec. It’s all very well our sayin’ he’s to be eddicated and take on the Apostleship, but how do we know but what when he’s had his eddication he may fall away and become a backslider, like Demas, and like others among ourselves that we could mention? He may go to Oxford among a lot of Midianites, and them of the great an’ mighty of the earth too, and how do we know but what he may round upon the Church, and go back upon us after we’ve paid for his eddication? So what I want to ask is just this, can’t we bind him down in a bond that if he don’t take the Apostleship with the consent of the Church when it falls vacant, he’ll pay us back our money, so as we can eddicate up another as’ll be more worthy?’

  The Apostle moved uneasily in his chair; but before he could speak, Paul Owen’s indignation found voice, and he said out his say boldly before the whole assembly, blushing crimson with mingled shame and excitement as he did so. ‘If Brother Grimshaw and all the brethren think so ill of me that they cannot trust my honesty and honour,’ he said, ‘they need not be at the pains of educating me. I will sign no bond and enter into no compact. But if you suppose that I will be a backslider, you do not know me, and I will confer no more with you upon the subject.’