Everything in Its Place

The Reverend lived in a narrow grey house on Chapel Hill, a mile from the chapel and about a century from the town, and his study was lined with books he had read and some he had meant to. He was sixty, and thin, and did not seem to have slept in several days. He received you in a cardigan, with an apologetic fire and a tray of tea that had gone cold in the pot.

“I’m told the strikers heard a sermon on Exodus,” you began, “and that it was not quite the one you wrote.”

“It was not,” said the Reverend. He rubbed his eyes. “I wrote it on Tuesday. Pharaoh’s taskmasters. Bricks without straw. It was, I thought, the best thing I’d done in years. On Saturday Mrs Ward telephoned. She was very gracious. She wondered whether I might end it with Romans thirteen, in the circumstances. ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.’ I kept the bondage and I cut the crossing of the sea.”

“And you preached it.”

“I preached it.” He smiled at the cold tea. “Mr Crane pays for the roof. The Chamber pays for the organ. A man learns which verses are in season.” He did not seem to feel the shame as a heavy thing; he felt it as a very old one, like a pew. “The men sat under it and sang, and they will not picket on the Sabbath now, though the works are cold and the gates stand open. They believe that’s theirs. And perhaps, Dr Voss, it is. That’s the difficulty about consent. It is so often sincere.”

“Gramsci,” said Jonah, very softly, “but with a hymn book.”

“Josiah asked me a question on Thursday afternoon,” said the Reverend. He did not look up. “Whether a man who has kept faith can be cheated by the one he kept faith with. I said it was a question for the Almighty. I have thought of very little else all week.”

It was the first time the shadow of the chapel had fallen across the case, and it did not fall as you had expected. It did not accuse. It sat there, patient and plain, like something that had been waiting for the lamp to be lit.