第252章

There was a stationer's shop at the end of the street.He went in here and bought a sheet of notepaper and an envelope, and, having borrowed the pen and ink, wrote a letter which he enclosed in the envelope with the two other pieces that he took out of his pocketbook.

Having addressed the letter he came out of the shop; Frankie was waiting for him outside.He gave the letter to the boy.

`I want you to take this straight home and give it to your dad.Idon't want you to stop to play or even to speak to anyone till you get home.'

`All right,' replied Frankie.`I won't stop running all the way.'

Barrington hesitated and looked at his watch.`I think I have time to go back with you as far as your front door,' he said, `then I shall be quite sure you haven't lost it.'

They accordingly retraced their steps and in a few minutes reached the entrance to the house.Barrington opened the door and stood for a moment in the hall watching Frankie ascend the stairs.

`Will your train cross over the bridge?' inquired the boy, pausing and looking over the banisters.

`Yes.Why?'

`Because we can see the bridge from our front-room window, and if you were to wave your handkerchief as your train goes over the bridge, we could wave back.'

`All right.I'll do so.Goodbye.'

`Goodbye.'

Barrington waited till he heard Frankie open and close the door of Owen's fiat, and then he hurried away.When he gained the main road he heard the sound of singing and saw a crowd at the corner of one of the side-streets.As he drew near he perceived that it was a religious meeting.

There was a lighted lamp on a standard in the centre of the crowd and on the glass of this lamp was painted: `Be not deceived: God is not mocked.'

Mr Rushton was preaching in the centre of the ring.He said that they had come hout there that evening to tell the Glad Tidings of Great Joy to hall those dear people that he saw standing around.The members of the Shining Light Chapel - to which he himself belonged - was the organizers of that meeting but it was not a sectarian meeting, for he was 'appy to say that several members of other denominations was there co-operating with them in the good work.As he continued his address, Rushton repeatedly referred to the individuals who composed the crowd as his `Brothers and Sisters' and, strange to say, nobody laughed.

Barrington looked round upon the `Brothers': Mr Sweater, resplendent in a new silk hat of the latest fashion, and a fur-trimmed overcoat.

The Rev.Mr Bosher, Vicar of the Church of the Whited Sepulchre, Mr Grinder - one of the churchwardens at the same place of alleged worship - both dressed in broadcloth and fine linen and glossy silk hats, while their general appearance testified to the fact that they had fared sumptuously for many days.Mr Didlum, Mrs Starvem, Mr Dauber, Mr Botchit, Mr Smeeriton, and Mr Leavit.

And in the midst was the Rev.John Starr, doing the work for which he was paid.

As he stood there in the forefront of this company, there was nothing in his refined and comely exterior to indicate that his real function was to pander to and flatter them; to invest with an air of respectability and rectitude the abominably selfish lives of the gang of swindlers, slave-drivers and petty tyrants who formed the majority of the congregation of the Shining Light Chapel.

He was doing the work for which he was paid.By the mere fact of his presence there, condoning and justifying the crimes of these typical representatives of that despicable class whose greed and inhumanity have made the earth into a hell.

There was also a number of `respectable', well-dressed people who looked as if they could do with a good meal, and a couple of shabbily dressed, poverty-stricken-looking individuals who seemed rather out of place in the glittering throng.

The remainder of the Brothers consisted of half-starved, pale-faced working men and women, most of them dressed in other people's cast-off clothing, and with broken, patched-up, leaky boots on their feet.

Rushton having concluded his address, Didlum stepped forward to give out the words of the hymn the former had quoted at the conclusion of his remarks:

`Oh, come and jine this 'oly band, And hon to glory go.'

Strange and incredible as it may appear to the reader, although none of them ever did any of the things Jesus said, the people who were conducting this meeting had the effrontery to claim to be followers of Christ - Christians!

Jesus said: `Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth', `Love not the world nor the things of the world', `Woe unto you that are rich -it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.' Yet all these self-styled `Followers' of Christ made the accumulation of money the principal business of their lives.

Jesus said: `Be ye not called masters; for they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not touch them with one of their fingers.For one is your master, even Christ, and ye are all brethren.' But nearly all these alleged followers of the humble Workman of Nazareth claimed to be other people's masters or mistresses.And as for being all brethren, whilst most of these were arrayed in broadcloth and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, they knew that all around them thousands of those they hypocritically called their `brethren', men, women and little children, were slowly perishing of hunger and cold;and we have already seen how much brotherhood existed between Sweater and Rushton and the miserable, half-starved wretches in their employment.