The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 4

specialist whom he could trust to make it move and
hum and whizz.
Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with
further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New
Zion, he explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an
evening service which had more than kept the promise of the morning,
was not Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to
help a man in his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful
human religion; and it happened that something of this very sort was
what Theophilus Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply.
The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge
guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources,
and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad
general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be
placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of
the faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in
conclusion, "is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to
how you do it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere
with you in that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject
of York hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists,"
repeated Mr. Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered
planets.
So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor,"
presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded
dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too
great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice
old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane.
I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her
little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe them
at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole survivors
of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly pious,
stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no sense
dialectical, and in every sense harmless.

Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when
front parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be
sitting in the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation,
"like white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he
ever thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He
would flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by
such from the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head
pathetically, and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled
good-evening. It disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his
tongue slumbered in his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and
perhaps very wise.
Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an
immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little
thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay
the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's
marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious
teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully
wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a
heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered
old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny
and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good
deal deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed
you, as she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too,
was very old, and she, I know, was very wise.
Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond
that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her,
was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the
school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and
pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet.
No lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful
superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty
or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only
beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't
pretty yet, but she wasn't plain.

Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it,
there was no telling to what