Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/82

74 “Because you said nothing about the theatre. I was mortally afraid you would; for, d’ye see, you had a distinguished theatrical personage in your audience.”

“Indeed! I was not aware; who?”

“Miss Kellerton herself!”

“Is it possible?” Pendlam looked surprised, Susan interested, Mrs. D (with her Sunday things on her arm) amazed.

“She told me she was going to hear you, to show you that she could be quite as tolerant as yourself. She expects you to return the compliment, and go to her benefit.”

Poor Pendlam hardly knew what to say in his confusion. Susan spoke up,—

“Why didn’t you point her out to me? I have such a curiosity to see her.”

“It was to her I took off my hat, coming away from the church door.”

“To her!” broke forth Mrs. D, “to an actress! Horatio, I’m ashamed of you. You wouldn’t have caught me walking with you, if I had known!” She shook her Sunday things indignantly; and there was another general smile, as she took these representatives of her piety abruptly out of the room.

“All this is very interesting,” said Pendlam, recovering his equanimity. “I wonder what sort of a sermon I shall preach next Sabbath?”

We were invited to stay to luncheon. Horatio consented; but I declined, and took my leave, much to the gratification of Susan’s mother, no doubt.

Some months passed before I again saw Pendlam. Our next meeting was in the street. I observed him coming towards me with the peculiarly abstracted and intense expression which his face assumed under excitement.

“What now?” I asked.

“A little difficulty with my people,” he said, with a forced smile. “I have just come from a church meeting; it was terribly hot there!”

“No serious trouble, I hope?”

“O, no,—only, you will hardly be surprised to hear, my preaching has been somewhat too liberal for them.”

“Why, sir,” I cried, “if I remember right, you were for restoring the more rigorous and stringent forms of religion; drawing the rein and tightening the girth.”

“Most certainly! and do you not see? Step by step I worked back to the primitive and central principle, the soul of all religion. You know what that is. It is Love! This I have preached,” said Pendlam, his features suffused, his eyes glistening bright; “and this I shall continue to preach, while life lasts. Persecution cannot influence me. I know my duty, and I shall perform it, at all risks. You see where I am,” added Pendlam.

I was thrilled to admiration by his enthusiasm and heroic resolution. At the same time I saw him in that transitional state which is so full of peril to persons of certain temperaments, escaping into too sudden freedom and light from the walls of a narrow and gloomy belief; and I could not but smile, with mingled amusement and commiseration, at his singular step-by-step processes.

It was during the following autumn that Horatio and I one day looked in upon a reform meeting, held at the Melodeon. The audience was thin, the speaker’s numerous. The platform was crowded with male and female reformers, among whom I recognized our clerical friend Pendlam. A celebrated female orator sat down, and Pendlam stood up. The audience cheered a little; the platform cheered a good deal. He at first stammered and hesitated, not from want of thoughts, but from their pressure and multitude. They soon fused, however, and poured forth streams of fire, rather largely mixed with smoke.

“There is no other religion but Love,” declared the speaker. “And where Love is, there is Religion; in the Mohammedan, in the Mormon, in the savage,—I care not for names. And where Love is not, there Religion is not, though her image be preserved and clothed in all Christian forms. Theology and sects fall away from it; it is alone vital; it is eternal, it is unitary, it is God. Here I