The Combined Maze

he dated it-what happened. It followe

you traced it back far enough, poor old Wauchope was at the bottom of it. It was poor old Wauchope who had "rushed" him for the Service (in calling him poor

m. Wauchope wasn't going because he wanted to, but because the curate was such a decent chap he didn't like to disappoint him. He ran a Young Men's Club in St. Matthias's, Clapham, and Wauchope helped him by looking in now and then for a knock-up with the gloves. The curate was handy with the gloves himself. A bit cumbrous, but fancied himself as a featherw

till nine. Half past nine was the very earliest ho

rned out of his own door on his way to supper with Wauchope at Clapham. He had walked with her for f

to Winny Dymond, so that Winny could take care of her. She had

about three; and she said she really couldn't say. Saturday and Sunday were such a long way off, and things might be different now that she was in the millinery. And she smiled again, and in such a manner that he h

omised Winny she'd be

ve broken his promise to old Wauchope. But he did none of these things, and his abstention was the sign and measure of his coolness, of his sanity. He only said, a

. And he had reckoned with that difficulty; for Winny Dymond only had one room which she sh

ut the doorstep. She'd rather, if he didn't

assignation at the old elm tree b

Service for Men could be held responsible for

nine o'clock was still daytime. And when he went to

in for. The curate johnnie was bossing the Service, but he understood they'd engaged another joker for the Address. What he, Wauchope, funked, personally, mo

s rooms, and walked the few hundred y

ing in the latest Gothic, with a red-tiled roof, where a shrill

pitch pine, stained and varnished; north and south, clear glass windows shedding a

as he came, and thanking him for coming, thus carrying out the idea that it was an entertainment. He had his largest smile, his closest grip for Wauchope and for Ransome, for they were men after his own heart. Ransome observed the curate critically, and without committing

make room for hymns wherever it was possible to place a hymn. The Psalms were chanted, and the curate into

their purifying and clarifying treble, had a strange effect,

what it was going to do to

f it, were finely woven and highly strung. He had a tendency to be carried away and to be excited, exalted, and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, comin

leep by the rhythmic voices, and as his sense of decency had no reason whatever to expect an outrage, it was also off its guard, quiescent, passive

nce in singing. That silence and passivity of his left him open at every pore to the invasion of the powers of sound. These young, intensely vibrant bass and tenor voices sang all round him, they sa

was a trumpet ca

rs o-of Chr

your a

Ransome feel noble; and there is nothing mor

re poignant cry that melted him, so that his

ver o-of

ung man wit

to Thy b

athering wa

empest sti-

bout him, the wate

fuge ha-a

elpless so

leave me n

ort and co

Ranny sank, lost and shelterless and alone, till at the word "Life" he r

ife the fo

t me take

up with-in

g R

o all e

the Address. When the preacher rose in the pulpit, when he looked about him with ardent and earnest eyes in a face ravaged by emotio

e Evening Service, and by the singing of certain hymns. There were layers upon layers of emotion sunk beyond memory in Ranny's soul. So that what happened to him now had the profound and vehement, though secret, force of a revival. The submerge

d mystery it evoked the future. It was a prophecy, a premonition of the things

men on the right-"'your bodies'"-and he looked to the young men on the left-"'are the temple

rating eyes on Ranny. He adjured Ranny to remember that Sin which he had never committed; he implored him to recall the shame which he had never felt, and at the same t

and practical, thoroughly informed and competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon of the Soul, relentless in his handling of the knife, a

, and became more and more red as to his face, more and more dubious as to his eyes. He was like some young

by Wauchope's broad and somewhat flattened features was intensified to stupefaction. His head had sunk slight

n the surface. But Ranny was disturbed profoundl

pro" who had spoiled his "form" by overdoing it, and had lost the confidence of his backers. They agreed that if Wauchope's friend the curate had given them a straight talk it would have been much straig

Interpreted, it became in some perverse way justified. Over and above that innermost sanction and recognition it had the seal outside it of men's acknowledgment, it to

ld the full extent of his reaction t

joined Wauchope in a furious singing of the f

e had felt tender; n