As well as her amazement would let her, Mercy excused herself from
guessing. She had never in all her life before spoken to any living
being so confusedly and so unintelligently as she now spoke to Julian
Gray!
He went on more gayly than ever, without appearing to notice the effect
that he had produced on her.
"Whom did I meet," he repeated, "when I was in full song? My bishop! If
I had been whistling a sacred melody, his lordship might perhaps have
excused my vulgarity out of consideration for my music. Unfortunately,
the composition I was executing at the moment (I am one of the loudest
of living whistlers) was by Verdi--"La Donna e Mobile"--familiar, no
doubt, to his lordship on the street organs. He recognized the tune,
poor man, and when I took off my hat to him he looked the other way.
Strange, in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow, to treat such
a trifle seriously as a cheerful clergyman whistling a tune!" He
pushed away his plate as he said the last words, and went on simply and
earnestly in an altered tone. "I have never been able," he said, "to
see why we should assert ourselves among other men as belonging to a
particular caste, and as being forbidden, in any harmless thing, to do
as other people do. The disciples of old set us no such example; they
were wiser and better than we are. I venture to say that one of the
worst obstacles in the way of our doing good among our fellow-creatures
is raised by the mere assumption of the clerical manner and the clerical
voice. For my part, I set up no claim to be more sacred and more
reverend than any other Christian man who does what good he can." He
glanced brightly at Mercy, looking at him in helpless perplexity. The
spirit of fun took possession of him again. "Are you a Radical?" he
asked, with a humorous twinkle in his large lustrous eyes. "I am!"
Mercy tried hard to understand him, and tried in vain. Could this be the
preacher whose words had charmed, purified, ennobled her? Was this the
man whose sermon had drawn tears from women about her whom she knew to
be shameless and hardened in crime? Yes! The eyes that now rested on her
humorously were the beautiful eyes which had once looked into her soul.
The voice that had just addressed a jesting question to her was the deep
and mellow voice which had once thrilled her to the heart. In the pulpit
he was an angel of mercy; out of the pulpit he was a boy let loose from
school.
"Don't let me startle you," he said, good-naturedly, noticing her
confusion. "Public opinion has called me by harder names than the name
of 'Radical.' I have been spending my time lately--as I told you just
now--in an agricultural district. My business there was to perform the
duty for the rector of the place, who wanted a holiday. How do you think
the experiment has ended? The Squire of the parish calls me a Communist;
the farmers denounce me as an Incendiary; my friend the rector has been
recalled in a hurry, and I have now the honor of speaking to you in the
character of a banished man who has made a respectable neighborhood too
hot to hold him."