RDINARY men and women made up Carnavon's audience—shop-keepers, artisans, doctors, lawyers, clerks; and he held them breathless, spellbound. They leaned forward in their seats, every one of the two thousand of them avaricious of each vibrant word. In obedience to his genius they swayed with laughter, rewarded his pathos with tears, gasped at the daring of his climaxes. And yet he attacked what many of them held most dear—their God.
From the instant of Carnavon's appearance on the platform the audience had been his, conquered before he uttered a word by the potency of his presence, by the excellence of his physical self, by the magnificence of the animal. At his first utterance there seemed to arise a collective sigh, and thenceforward until he ceased speaking his hearers were not their own, but Carnavon's.
The showman moves his puppets with invisible threads, so that they dance and posture and contort themselves as he wills; Carnavon's invisible threads reached not from his fingers to the limbs of his audience, but from his mind to their brains and hearts—and they comported themselves according to his desires. He was such an orator as the world hears once in many generations. He held sacred matters dangling before men and women in whom religion had been planted and watered from the cradle, yet under his relentless logic, his flashing wit, his acid irony, they shriveled and crackled to ashes and were sacred no more. Out of curiosity, men firm in their faith came to see and hear him; they departed doubting God, if not denying Him; groping for a foothold in a world he had deprived of its firm foundation.
This thing Carnavon did for a price—for one thousand dollars a lecture.
After his address Carnavon was driven to his hotel, and went at once to his
apartments. Scarcely had he made himself comfortable, with a book to compose
himself before retiring, when a knock sounded on his door. He closed his volume impatiently.
"Come in," he said.
The door opened reluctantly, and Carnavon was startled to see on his threshold an old man—embarrassed, hesitating—an old man white of hair, with patriarchal beard, clothed in the garb of the Salvation Army.
"Mr. Carnavon," he said, diffidently, "may I come in?"
Carnavon recovered himself and motioned to a chair. "How can I serve you?" he asked, rising with always ready courtesy.
The old man paused a moment before replying, and fumbled the vizor of his cap.
"You can give a few of the many minutes yet before you to an old man whose course is nearly run," he said at length, and his voice was singularly gentle, "a few minutes leavened with patience."
Carnavon bowed assent, and again motioned to a chair, which the old man declined, but smiled in the declining.
"I heard you speak to-night," he said; then paused. "You were like the picture I have loved to make of young Saul of Tarsus before his feet trod the road to Damascus."
Carnavon was astonished. Not infrequently had he been compelled to listen privately to his opponents, to ministers of the gospel, to zealots who forced themselves upon him to convert or condemn. To all alike, whether they came in humility and love, or in heat and with invective on their lips, he had comported himself with the same dignity, the same courtesy, the same self-restraint. But none had been like this little old man in uniform; about none had hovered this spirit of gentle sweetness, of fatherly affection.
"Sir," continued the aged warrior of God's Army of the Streets, "I have not come hoping to convert you to my belief. You are a greater man than I, blessed with greater gifts, and I could not prevail. I have come to ask you one question. Sir, are you sincere? Do you believe in your heart the things you say with your lips?"
"If I did not," replied Carnavon, "I should remain silent."
The old man regarded him steadily, his expression one almost of affection. "Sir," he said presently, "can perfect sincerity and one thousand dollars a lecture go hand in hand? When I am gone I ask you to consider this. One, believing in the Master, betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver; you, not believing in Him, cannot betray Him, but you war on Him with the weapons He gave you—for many times thirty pieces of silver. With your honest unbelief I have no quarrel; when you pass it on to others for gain you do an ill thing. God may forgive the honest doubt—the thirty pieces of silver He cannot forget."
The stranger spoke as to one he loved, without rancor, softening criticism with gentleness. Carnavon was not offended; indeed, he was moved, but waited, making no reply.
Again the old man spoke, this time as he retired toward the door.