Lewisham having selected the bishops as scapegoats for his turpitude, was inclined to ascribe even the nail in his boot to their agency.
Mrs. Lewisham looked puzzled. She realised his drift.
"You're not," she said, and dropped her voice, "an _infidel_?"
Lewisham nodded gloomily. "Aren't you?" he said.
"But you don't go to church, you don't--"
"No, I don't," said Mrs. Lewisham; and then with more assurance, "But I'm not an infidel."
"Oh! to tell the truth, and do right, and not hurt or injure people and all that."
"That's not a Christian. A Christian is one who believes."
"It's what _I_ mean by a Christian," said Mrs. Lewisham.
"Oh! at that rate anyone's a Christian," said Lewisham. "We all think it's right to do right and wrong to do wrong."
"But we don't all do it," said Mrs. Lewisham, taking up the cornflowers again.
"No," said Lewisham, a little taken aback by the feminine method of discussion. "We don't all do it--certainly." He stared at her for a moment--her head was a little on one side and her eyes on the cornflower--and his mind was full of a strange discovery. He seemed on the verge of speaking, and turned to his note-book again.
Very soon the centre of the table-cloth resumed its sway.
The following day Mr. Lucas Holderness received his cheque for a guinea. Unhappily it was crossed. He meditated for some time, and then took pen and ink and improved Lewisham's careless "one" to "five" and touched up his unticked figure one to correspond.
You perceive him, a lank, cadaverous, good-looking man with long black hair and a semi-clerical costume of quite painful rustiness. He made the emendations with grave carefulness. He took the cheque round to his grocer. His grocer looked at it suspiciously.
"You pay it in," said Mr. Lucas Holderness, "if you've any doubts about it. Pay it in. _I_ don't know the man or what he is. He may be a swindler for all I can tell. _I_ can't answer for him. Pay it in and see. Leave the change till then. I can wait. I'll call round in a few days' time."
"All right, wasn't it?" said Mr. Lucas Holderness in a casual tone two days later.
"Quite, sir," said his grocer with enhanced respect, and handed him his four pounds thirteen and sixpence change.
Mr. Lucas Holderness, who had been eyeing the grocer's stock with a curious intensity, immediately became animated and bought a tin of salmon. He went out of the shop with the rest of the money in his hand, for the pockets of his clothes were old and untrustworthy. At the baker's he bought a new roll.