“Yes, indeed, Mr Blackwood,” said Mr Billing; “yes, indeed. It has been a matter of great thankfulness to me, to find how much good work has been done in that direction in this neighbourhood — and done by your agency, if I understand aright. It is my opinion that there would be very little wrong with our old country, if we could get rid of the drink.”
“Hear, hear!” said Mr Blackwood, laying down the carving knife and fork. “That is the sort of thing that it does one good to listen to.”
“Dear Herbert,” said Mrs Blackwood, “do think of what you are doing, and attend to the wants of our guests. Mr Billing has not anything yet.”
“Oh — no — not at all — no; thank you, thank you, Mr Blackwood,” said Mr Billing; jumping in reception of his plate.
“I hope we shall hear you speak on Temperance soon, Mr Billing,” said Lettice.
“Oh, there will not be any need, Mr Billing,” said Elsa. “Father and mother will take all that off your hands. They get quite jealous of anybody else’s speaking on Temperance.
“Elsa, how can you say such things?” said Mrs Blackwood. “Your father and I do our best for the cause we have so much at heart; but if the work should be taken from us by abler hands than ours, we could do nothing but rejoice.”
“Yes, that is it, my darling,” said Mr Blackwood. “You are right, as you always are — as I have found you on every occasion for twenty years.”
“How pret-ty it is to hear him!” said Mrs Merton-Vane, looking round the company.
“Herbert, do not be so absurd, dear,” said Mrs Blackwood.
“Do you — are you — you are a teetotaler too, I suppose, Mr Hutton?” said Mr Billing, nervously, to the Reverend Cleveland; whom, dissenter on principle though he was, he could not but regard as a weighty personality, and a fit object for affable address, and whose open smile at Elsa’s words he had not perceived.
“No,” said the Reverend Cleveland without elaboration.
“We cant all feel the same about ev-er-y-thing,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, inclining her head.
“Ah, well, Mr Billing, we hope to convince the Vicar in time,” said Mr Blackwood.
“We — are told,” interposed Dr Cassell, “to ‘take a little wine for our health’s sake, and for our often infirmities.’”
“Oh, but, doctor,” said Mrs Blackwood, with eager shrillness, “it is definitely proved that the wine in those days had practically no intoxicating power. We cannot accept such different conditions as parallel. I was reading such an admirable little treatise on the question the other day. It put the different arguments so very powerfully. You would be most interested in it, I am sure, doctor. Would he not, Lettice?”
“Yes, he could not fail to be,” said Lettice. “There was so much interesting information in it, besides the treatment of the main question; and that, of course, was exceedingly able.”
“I believe,” said Dr Cassell, “that there are many different views upon the subject.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs Blackwood, gesticulating slightly with her hand; “but all those were discussed and most convincingly refuted. Nothing was glossed over, or passed by without perfectly fair treatment. I really must find the booklet for you, Dr Cassell. Do not forget to remind me, Lettice, dear.”
“Oh, I would not read it, Dr Cassell,” said Elsa. “It is only one of mother’s tracts.”
“Oh, you fun-ny child!” said Mrs Merton-Vane, looking at Mr Hutton.
“But surely,” interposed Mrs Cassell in very gentle tones, breaking off her dialogue with Mrs Hutton, to fulfil the duty of seconding her husband; “it is not for us to put our own interpretation on the words. Surely they should be enough for us as they stand.”
“No, I don’t agree with you there, Mrs Cassell,” said Mr Blackwood loudly; “I don’t agree with you. I remain a staunch upholder of Temperance myself. We Wesleyans don’t shrink from showing our colours for a cause we honestly have at heart; and I shall never shrink from showing mine for Temperance. Ah, yes; there are Wesleyans in every part of the world, showing their colours for what they believe in their hearts to be right.”
“Of course the Wesleyans are the largest religious body in existence,” said Mrs Blackwood, with detached appreciation of her native sect.
“The largest dissenting body,” supplied the Reverend Cleveland in a casual tone, suggesting an opinion that it was not worth while to adopt a decisive attitude in his present environment.
“Ye-es,” said Mrs Merton-Vane, inclining her head in rather shocked repudiation of the other view.
“The largest dissenting body, dear,” said Mrs Hutton, repeating her husband’s correction to her sister with more distinctness.
“No, dear,” said Mrs Blackwood, her voice becoming a little higher pitched; “it is generally known that no other religious sect can compare with the Wesleyans in point of numbers.”
“Or in point of anything else,” said Mr Blackwood—“in point of anything else, my darling.”
“My dear Caroline, it stands to reason that one of the dissenting sects could not be larger than the whole of the Established Church,” said Mrs Hutton with a little laugh, as though it were hardly needful to state a truth so obvious.
“My dear, it is not a question of its standing to reason,” said Mrs Blackwood. “It is a question of what is definitely known and proved. It is an established fact that the Wesleyan body is twenty times as large as any other body.”
“Oh, my darling, come, come,” said Mr Blackwood. “We all know that the Wesleyans are the largest and the most important body; but twenty times as large as any other is putting it rather strong.”
“My dear Herbert, I do not know why you should contradict me,” said Mrs Blackwood. “I should not speak if I had not my information on dependable authority.”
“Oh, well, if you have it on dependable authority, my love, then that is all right,” said Mr Blackwood, with tenderness.
“What do you think about it, Miss Hutton? I suppose you know all the arguments on both sides by heart,” said Mrs Cassell, with no misgiving on her words as a compliment to Dolores’ studious tastes.
“No; it is a branch of statistics in which I am quite unversed,” said Dolores, smiling.
“Why, de-ar, I thought you knew ever-ything,” said Mrs Merton-Vane.
“Are any of you Wesleyans aware,” said Dr Cassell, his tone not indicating any great respect for the sect he mentioned, “that you owe your existence — your existence as a religious body — to a mere accident?”
“No, doctor; let us hear the story,” said Mr Blackwood, with an easy frankness of falling in with the doctor’s plans.
“When John Wesley was six years old,” said Dr Cassell, “the rectory where his family lived — Wesley senior was a clergyman, you know — was burned to, the ground. Every one in the house had — as it was supposed — been rescued; and the family were watching the gradual — devastation of their abode; when it was discovered that John was missing. He was asleep in an upper room and had been forgotten. After many vain suggestions — of methods of rescue — he was saved by a man’s standing on the shoulders of another, and lifting him from the window. Hardly was the rescue accomplished, when the roof fell in. A moment later the founder of the Wesleyans would have been lying crushed beneath a heap of burning chaos.”
“Well, doctor, I never heard that before — I never heard that,” said Mr Blackwood loudly.