She was closing the door, when Falconer turned.
'Oh! Miss St.John,' he said, 'I was forgetting.Could you go down to No.13 in Soap Lane--you know it, don't you?'
'Yes.Quite well.'
'Ask for a girl called Nell--a plain, pock-marked young girl--and take her away with you.'
'When shall I go?'
'To-morrow morning.But I shall be in.Don't go till you see me.
Good-night.'
We took our leave without more ado.
'What a lady-like woman to be the matron of an asylum!' I said.
Falconer gave a little laugh.
'That is no asylum.It is a private house.'
'And the lady?'
'Is a lady of private means,' he answered, 'who prefers Bloomsbury to Belgravia, because it is easier to do noble work in it.Her heaven is on the confines of hell.'
'What will she do with those children?'
'Kiss them and wash them and put them to bed.'
'And after that?'
'Give them bread and milk in the morning.'
'And after that?'
'Oh! there's time enough.We'll see.There's only one thing she won't do.'
'What is that?'
'Turn them out again.'
A pause followed, I cogitating.
'Are you a society, then?' I asked at length.
'No.At least we don't use the word.And certainly no other society would acknowledge us.'
'What are you, then?'
'Why should we be anything, so long as we do our work?'
'Don't you think there is some affectation in refusing a name?'
'Yes, if the name belongs to you? Not otherwise.'
'Do you lay claim to no epithet of any sort?'
'We are a church, if you like.There!'
'Who is your clergyman?'
'Nobody.'
'Where do you meet?'
'Nowhere.'
'What are your rules, then?'
'We have none.'
'What makes you a church?'
'Divine Service.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'The sort of thing you have seen to-night.'
'What is your creed?'
'Christ Jesus.'
'But what do you believe about him?'
'What we can.We count any belief in him--the smallest--better than any belief about him--the greatest--or about anything else besides.
But we exclude no one.'
'How do you manage without?'
'By admitting no one.'
'I cannot understand you.'
'Well, then: we are an undefined company of people, who have grown into human relations with each other naturally, through one attractive force--love for human beings, regarding them as human beings only in virtue of the divine in them.'
'But you must have some rules,' I insisted.
'None whatever.They would cause us only trouble.We have nothing to take us from our work.Those that are most in earnest, draw most together; those that are on the outskirts have only to do nothing, and they are free of us.But we do sometimes ask people to help us--not with money.'
'But who are the we?'
'Why you, if you will do anything, and I and Miss St.John and twenty others--and a great many more I don't know, for every one is a centre to others.It is our work that binds us together.'
'Then when that stops you drop to pieces.'
'Yes, thank God.We shall then die.There will be no corporate body--which means a bodied body, or an unsouled body, left behind to simulate life, and corrupt, and work no end of disease.We go to ashes at once, and leave no corpse for a ghoul to inhabit and make a vampire of.When our spirit is dead, our body is vanished.'
'Then you won't last long.'
'Then we oughtn't to last long.'
'But the work of the world could not go on so.'
'We are not the life of the world.God is.And when we fail, he can and will send out more and better labourers into his harvest-field.It is a divine accident by which we are thus associated.'
'But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.'
'My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.'
'Do you belong to the Church of England?'
'Yes, some of us.Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to her are infinite.And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a thousand vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which life is too serious in my eyes.I have no time for that.'
'Then you count the Church of England the Church?' 'Of England, yes;of the universe, no: that is constituted just like ours, with the living working Lord for the heart of it.'
'Will you take me for a member?'
'No.'
'Will you not, if--?'
'You may make yourself one if you will.I will not speak a word to gain you.I have shown you work.Do something, and you are of Christ's Church.'
We were almost at the door of my lodging, and I was getting very weary in body, and indeed in mind, though I hope not in heart.
Before we separated, I ventured to say,'Will you tell me why you invited me to come and see you? Forgive my presumption, but you seemed to seek acquaintance with me, although you did make me address you first.'
He laughed gently, and answered in the words of the ancient mariner:--'The moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.'
Without another word, he shook hands with me, and left me.Weary as I was, I stood in the street until I could hear his footsteps no longer.