But to do the boy justice, he noted far more than this. He saw the slatternly woman, with an unspeakable gaping blouse, her hair in curl-papers and her feet in bulging unlaced boots, who came to the door of the first cottage and shouted at a flaxen-haired little toddler of a girl playing with a matchbox in the gutter. The burning words fell on his ears like a scream from hell. "Maud-Hemily, yer bloody little bitch, come in out o' that muck or I'll smack your bottom for yer." He saw the two men by the lamp-post look at him, and he read aright their besotted faces. Neither spoke, but one spat well and truly at the base of the pillar, and that did for speech. He rapped on the door of No. 5, and when Jimmie opened it, he saw the remains of a meal in greasy newspapers on the filthy table, and his nostrils caught the smell of unwashed clothes and Sunday morning's kippers. He tried to avoid the wall as he went up the stairs. And when he was in the little overhead bedroom, whose window never opened and through whose grimy glass one read an advertisement of Reckitt's Blue on the hoarding opposite, and stood by the side of a heap of blankets and sacks on which lay and coughed a child of thirteen in consumption, a cracked article on a chair by her bedside over which she occasionally leaned and expectorated, his heart moved with something of that compassion which had been the outstanding characteristic of the greatest Evangelist the world has ever known.
He was more silent than his wont at the midday dinner. But when Saturday's hot joint, cold on Sundays, had been removed, he looked across the table to the clergyman at its head, and spoke. "Dad," he said, "do you know Lambeth Court?"
"Lambeth?" queried the clergyman. "No. Oh, let me see. Isn't it that place behind the 'South Pole'?"
"Yes. I went in to-day to see Queenie Archer. She's awfully bad again. Dad, it's a ghastly place. I thought I'd speak to the Committee this afternoon and arrange an open-air there."
His mother looked up from helping the pudding and spoke with a trace of anxiety. "Paul, she has consumption. Ought you to visit her, dear? And it's a dreadful place; I don't think the C.E. girls ought to go into it even for an open-air."
Paul moved restlessly. "They'd be all right with us, mother," he said. "Do you think Jesus Christ would have stayed away because it was dirty or because Queenie had consumption? If there's a place in the parish where souls need saving, that place is Lambeth Court."
His mother suppressed a little sigh. The speech was typical of Paul. As a Christian she loved him for it; as a mother she was very proud. But this irresistible logic, which he was so prone to use, however much it belonged to the atmosphere of religion in which she whole-heartedly believed, affrighted her a little. It opened up infinities. She made the rather pathetic appeal which was characteristic of her. "What do you think, father?" she queried.
Mr. Kestern had very kindly eyes, a forehead which would have made for intellectuality if his ever-narrowing outlook on life had given it a chance, and a weak chin hidden by a short-beard and moustache. He smiled at her. "The boy is quite right, dear," he said, "but, Paul, you should not run unnecessary risks, especially now. You might have left the visit to me. I will go to-morrow. As for the open-air, I should think it would be a capital place, but keep the girls by you and don't let them wander alone into the houses with tracts or leaflets. Do you mean to go to-night?"
"No, not to-night, dad. Our pitch is in Laurence Place to-night. I thought perhaps next Sunday."
"Next Sunday is the first in the month, dear," said his mother gently. "Won't it be rather late? You don't usually have open-airs on the first Sunday, do you?"
"I know, mother," said Paul, "but why not? It is better to be a bit late when we go to Lambeth Court. Some of the men may be out of the publics by then. And it always seems to me that Communion Sunday is the best in the month for an open-air. Surely after we've remembered His 'precious Death and Burial' at the Table, that is just the time for us to preach the Cross."
"And 'His glorious Resurrection and Ascension,' Paul," quoted his father softly. "Don't forget that. It's the living Saviour, no dead Christ on a crucifix, that we proclaim."
"I know, dad," said the boy, his eyes shining. "How could one think otherwise?"
"I don't know, laddie," said his father, smiling tenderly at him, "but some appear to do so. God guard you from such errors, Paul. Don't be over-confident; Satan can deceive the very elect."
Thus was the mission to Lambeth Court decided upon. Paul had carried his Committee with him, as he always did. Its eldest member, a married bank clerk of a nervous temperament, had indeed echoed something of Mrs. Kestern's fears. He thought that the Court was no place for ladies, and said, frankly, he would not care for his wife to go there. Paul, at the head of the Mission vestry table, played with a pencil, and showed his instinctive leadership again by not answering him. He looked up instead, and caught Edith Thornton's eyes as she sat opposite him. They were eager and indignant, and he nodded ever so slightly. Edith, therefore, had taken up her parable, and the more forcefully since she did not often speak on Committee. "Oh, Mr. Derrick," she exclaimed, "I don't agree with you at all! What about our missionaries' wives? What about the Salvation Army? Do you think any place can be too bad for a Christian if there is one single soul to be saved?" She flushed a little at her own vehemence.
Mr. Derrick coughed, fumbling with his watchchain. He was well aware that the Spirit was at work in Apple Orchard Mission Hall, and he was conscious of being one of the weaker brethren. Paul's very silence daunted him, for he honestly loved the eager Paul. "Let us pray about it," he suggested.
Paul pushed his chair back, and slipped to his knees. Instinctively he always knelt to pray, though the more general custom was to sit. "A few minutes' silent prayer first," he commanded, and, in the slow ticking of the clock, he prayed himself, with utter simplicity and earnestness, for Lambeth Court, for the guidance of the Holy Spirit—and for Mr. Derrick. The result was, of course, a foregone conclusion.
Thus, at intervals, all that golden summer, Lambeth Court heard the Word. True, the signs following were so small that the less zealous Endeavourers openly shook their heads, and even the more ardent of the band would have been tempted to give in. But Paul and Edith were of different mettle. At devotional meetings, Paul spoke of heroic souls who had preached for half a generation in heathen lands and not seen a convert, until, one day, the tide turned in all its power. Most effective was the story of the Moravians who laboured among a certain band of Esquimaux for forty years unblessing and unblessed, and then, discovering that the channels were choked in themselves, cleared them, and saw many mighty works. And in July, indeed, the doubters had received a knock-out blow. Mrs. Reynolds, of No. 11, had been as truly converted as Saul on the road to Damascus, converted by the human instrumentality of Edith and a novel tract in the shape of a small slip of cardboard bearing nothing but a question mark on one side and on the other:
HOW SHALL YE ESCAPE IF YE NEGLECT SO GREAT SALVATION?
Poor Mrs. Reynolds, one would have thought that her present woes were big enough to discount effectively all future ones. Reynolds hawked, when he had anything to hawk or time to spare from the "South Pole" and regular terms of service for His Majesty. Mrs. Reynolds, herself, drank, when, more rarely than her spouse, she had the wherewithal to obtain drink. Reynolds, who should have accounted himself blessed in the number of olive branches round about his table, illogically cursed whenever he saw them, but added to the tribe as fast as Nature permitted. It was, indeed, when his wife was expecting what turned out to be twins, that Edith came her way. Against orders, she left the circle and gave the woman a chair within her