A Laodicean: A Story of To-day | Page 7

kept itself all these
years--why that sound and hearty melody had disappeared from all the
cathedrals, parish churches, minsters and chapels-of-ease that he had
been acquainted with during his apprenticeship to life, and until his
ways had become irregular and uncongregational-- he could not, at first,
say. But then he recollected that the tune appertained to the old
west-gallery period of church- music, anterior to the great choral
reformation and the rule of Monk--that old time when the repetition of
a word, or half- line of a verse, was not considered a disgrace to an
ecclesiastical choir.
Willing to be interested in anything which would keep him out-
of-doors, Somerset dismounted from the stile and descended the hill
before him, to learn whence the singing proceeded.

II.
He found that it had its origin in a building standing alone in a field;
and though the evening was not yet dark without, lights shone from the
windows. In a few moments Somerset stood before the edifice. Being
just then en rapport with ecclesiasticism by reason of his recent
occupation, he could not help murmuring, 'Shade of Pugin, what a
monstrosity!'
Perhaps this exclamation (rather out of date since the discovery that
Pugin himself often nodded amazingly) would not have been indulged
in by Somerset but for his new architectural resolves, which caused
professional opinions to advance themselves officiously to his lips
whenever occasion offered. The building was, in short, a
recently-erected chapel of red brick, with pseudo-classic ornamentation,
and the white regular joints of mortar could be seen streaking its
surface in geometrical oppressiveness from top to bottom. The roof was
of blue slate, clean as a table, and unbroken from gable to gable; the
windows were glazed with sheets of plate glass, a temporary iron

stovepipe passing out near one of these, and running up to the height of
the ridge, where it was finished by a covering like a parachute. Walking
round to the end, he perceived an oblong white stone let into the wall
just above the plinth, on which was inscribed in deep letters:--
Erected 187-,
AT THE SOLE EXPENSE OF
JOHN POWER, ESQ., M.P.
The 'New Sabbath' still proceeded line by line, with all the emotional
swells and cadences that had of old characterized the tune: and the
body of vocal harmony that it evoked implied a large congregation
within, to whom it was plainly as familiar as it had been to
church-goers of a past generation. With a whimsical sense of regret at
the secession of his once favourite air Somerset moved away, and
would have quite withdrawn from the field had he not at that moment
observed two young men with pitchers of water coming up from a
stream hard by, and hastening with their burdens into the chapel vestry
by a side door. Almost as soon as they had entered they emerged again
with empty pitchers, and proceeded to the stream to fill them as before,
an operation which they repeated several times. Somerset went forward
to the stream, and waited till the young men came out again.
'You are carrying in a great deal of water,' he said, as each dipped his
pitcher.
One of the young men modestly replied, 'Yes: we filled the cistern this
morning; but it leaks, and requires a few pitcherfuls more.'
'Why do you do it?'
'There is to be a baptism, sir.'
Somerset was not sufficiently interested to develop a further
conversation, and observing them in silence till they had again
vanished into the building, he went on his way. Reaching the brow of
the hill he stopped and looked back. The chapel was still in view, and
the shades of night having deepened, the lights shone from the
windows yet more brightly than before. A few steps further would hide
them and the edifice, and all that belonged to it from his sight, possibly
for ever. There was something in the thought which led him to linger.
The chapel had neither beauty, quaintness, nor congeniality to
recommend it: the dissimilitude between the new utilitarianism of the
place and the scenes of venerable Gothic art which had occupied his

daylight hours could not well be exceeded. But Somerset, as has been
said, was an instrument of no narrow gamut: he had a key for other
touches than the purely aesthetic, even on such an excursion as this. His
mind was arrested by the intense and busy energy which must needs
belong to an assembly that required such a glare of light to do its
religion by; in the heaving of that tune there was an earnestness which
made him thoughtful, and the shine of those windows he had
characterized as ugly reminded him of the shining of the good deed in a
naughty world. The chapel and