A Laodicean: A Story of To-day | Page 8

its shabby plot of ground, from which
the herbage was all trodden away by busy feet, had a living human
interest that the numerous minsters and churches knee-deep in fresh
green grass, visited by him during the foregoing week, had often lacked.
Moreover, there was going to be a baptism: that meant the immersion
of a grown-up person; and he had been told that Baptists were serious
people and that the scene was most impressive. What manner of man
would it be who on an ordinary plodding and bustling evening of the
nineteenth century could single himself out as one different from the
rest of the inhabitants, banish all shyness, and come forward to undergo
such a trying ceremony? Who was he that had pondered, gone into
solitudes, wrestled with himself, worked up his courage and said, I will
do this, though few else will, for I believe it to be my duty?
Whether on account of these thoughts, or from the circumstance that he
had been alone amongst the tombs all day without communion with his
kind, he could not tell in after years (when he had good reason to think
of the subject); but so it was that Somerset went back, and again stood
under the chapel- wall.
Instead of entering he passed round to where the stove-chimney came
through the bricks, and holding on to the iron stay he put his toes on the
plinth and looked in at the window. The building was quite full of
people belonging to that vast majority of society who are denied the art
of articulating their higher emotions, and crave dumbly for a
fugleman-- respectably dressed working people, whose faces and forms
were worn and contorted by years of dreary toil. On a platform at the
end of the chapel a haggard man of more than middle age, with grey
whiskers ascetically cut back from the fore part of his face so far as to
be almost banished from the countenance, stood reading a chapter.
Between the minister and the congregation was an open space, and in

the floor of this was sunk a tank full of water, which just made its
surface visible above the blackness of its depths by reflecting the lights
overhead.
Somerset endeavoured to discover which one among the assemblage
was to be the subject of the ceremony. But nobody appeared there who
was at all out of the region of commonplace. The people were all quiet
and settled; yet he could discern on their faces something more than
attention, though it was less than excitement: perhaps it was
expectation. And as if to bear out his surmise he heard at that moment
the noise of wheels behind him.
His gaze into the lighted chapel made what had been an evening scene
when he looked away from the landscape night itself on looking back;
but he could see enough to discover that a brougham had driven up to
the side-door used by the young water-bearers, and that a lady in
white-and-black half- mourning was in the act of alighting, followed by
what appeared to be a waiting-woman carrying wraps. They entered the
vestry-room of the chapel, and the door was shut. The service went on
as before till at a certain moment the door between vestry and chapel
was opened, when a woman came out clothed in an ample robe of
flowing white, which descended to her feet. Somerset was unfortunate
in his position; he could not see her face, but her gait suggested at once
that she was the lady who had arrived just before. She was rather tall
than otherwise, and the contour of her head and shoulders denoted a
girl in the heyday of youth and activity. His imagination, stimulated by
this beginning, set about filling in the meagre outline with most
attractive details.
She stood upon the brink of the pool, and the minister descended the
steps at its edge till the soles of his shoes were moistened with the
water. He turned to the young candidate, but she did not follow him:
instead of doing so she remained rigid as a stone. He stretched out his
hand, but she still showed reluctance, till, with some embarrassment, he
went back, and spoke softly in her ear.
She approached the edge, looked into the water, and turned away
shaking her head. Somerset could for the first time see her face.
Though humanly imperfect, as is every face we see, it was one which
made him think that the best in woman-kind no less than the best in
psalm-tunes had gone over to the Dissenters. He had certainly seen

nobody so interesting in his tour hitherto; she was about twenty or
twenty-one--perhaps twenty-three, for years have a way of stealing
marches even upon beauty's anointed. The