a few days later the apostle was buried, and his will was read over before the assembled church. by earnest persuasion of his father, paul consented to be present, though he feared another humiliation from job grimshaw. but two days before he had taken the law into his own hands, by writing to meenie, at her aunt's in eaton place; and that very indiscreet young lady, in response, had actually consented to meet him in kensington gardens alone the next afternoon. there he sat with her on one of the benches by the serpentine, and talked the whole matter over[pg 187] with her to his heart's content.
"if the money is really left to me," he said, "i must in honour refuse it. it was left to me to carry on the apostolate, and i can't take it on any other ground. but what ought i to do with it? i can't give it over to the church, for in three days there will be no church left to give it to. what shall i do with it?"
"why," said meenie, thoughtfully, "if i were you i should do this. first, pay back everybody who contributed towards your support in full, principal and interest; then borrow from the remainder as much as you require to complete your oxford course; and finally, pay back all that and the other money to the fund when you are able, and hand it over for the purpose of doing some good work in peckham itself, where your church was originally founded. if the ideal can't be fulfilled, let the money do something good for the actual."
"you are quite right, meenie," said paul, "except in one particular. i will not borrow from the fund for my own support. i will not touch a penny of it, temporarily or permanently, for myself in any way. if it comes to me, i shall make it over to trustees at once for some good object, as you suggest, and shall borrow from them five hundred pounds to repay my own poor people, giving the trustees my bond to repay the fund hereafter. i shall fight my own battle henceforth unaided."
"you will do as you ought to do, paul, and i am proud of it."
so next morning, when the meeting took place, paul felt somewhat happier in his own mind as to the course he should pursue with reference to job grimshaw.
the senior episcop opened and read the last will and testament of arthur murgess, attorney-at-law. it provided in a few words that all his estate, real and personal, should pass unreservedly to his friend, paul owen, of christchurch, oxford. it was whispered about that, besides the[pg 188] house and grounds, the personalty might be sworn at ￡8000, a vast sum to those simple people.
when the reading was finished, paul rose and addressed the assembly. he told them briefly the plan he had formed, and insisted on his determination that not a penny of the money should be put to his own uses. he would face the world for himself, and thanks to their kindness he could face it easily enough. he would still earn and pay back all that he owed them. he would use the fund, first for the good of those who had been members of the church, and afterwards for the good of the people of peckham generally. and he thanked them from the bottom of his heart for the kindness they had shown him.
even job grimshaw could only mutter to himself that this was not sperritual grace, but mere worldly pride and stubbornness, lest the lad should betray his evil designs, which had thus availed him nothing. "he has lost his own soul and wrecked the church for the sake of the money," job said, "and now he dassn't touch a farden of it."
next john owen rose and said slowly, "friends, it seems to me we may as well all confess that this church has gone to pieces. i can't stop in it myself any longer, for i see it's clear agin nature, and what's agin nature can't be true." and though the assembly said nothing, it was plain that there were many waverers in the little body whom the affairs of the last week had shaken sadly in their simple faith. indeed, as a matter of fact, before the end of the month the gideonite church had melted away, member by member, till nobody at all was left of the whole assembly but job grimshaw.
"my dear," said the rector to his wife a few weeks later, laying down his illustrated, "this is really a very curious thing. that young fellow owen, of christchurch, that meenie fancied herself engaged to, has just come into a little landed property and eight or nine thousand[pg 189] pounds on his own account. he must be better connected than tom imagines. perhaps we might make inquiries about him after all."
the rector did make inquiries in the course of the week, and with such results that he returned to the rectory in blank amazement. "that fellow's mad, amelia," he said, "stark mad, if ever anybody was. the leader of his little bethel, or ebenezer, or whatever it may be, has left him all his property absolutely, without conditions; and the idiot of a boy declares he won't touch a penny of it, because he's ceased to believe in their particular shibboleth, and he thinks the leader wanted him to succeed him. very right and proper of him, of course, to leave the sect if he can't reconcile it with his conscience, but perfectly quixotic of him to give up the money and beggar himself outright. even if his connection was otherwise desirable (which it is far from being), it would be absurd to think of letting meenie marry such a ridiculous hair-brained fellow."
paul and meenie, however, went their own way, as young people often will, in spite of the rector. paul returned next term to oxford, penniless, but full of resolution, and by dint of taking pupils managed to eke out his scholarship for the next year. at the end of that time he took his first in greats, and shortly after gained a fellowship. from the very first day he began saving money to pay off that dead weight of five hundred pounds. the kindly ex-gideonites had mostly protested against his repaying them at all, but in vain: paul would not make his entry into life, he said, under false pretences. it was a hard pull, but he did it. he took pupils, he lectured, he wrote well and vigorously for the press, he worked late and early with volcanic energy; and by the end of three years he had not only saved the whole of the sum advanced by the gideonites, but had also begun to put away a little nest-egg[pg 190] against his marriage with meenie. and when the editor of a great morning paper in london offered him a permanent place upon the staff, at a large salary, he actually went down to worcestershire, saw the formidable rector himself in his own parish, and demanded meenie outright in marriage. and the rector observed to his wife that this young owen seemed a well-behaved and amiable young man; that after all one needn't know anything about his relations if one didn't like; and that as meenie had quite made up her mind, and was as headstrong as a mule, there was no use trying to oppose her any longer.
down in peckham, where paul owen lives, and is loved by half the poor of the district, no one has forgotten who was the real founder of the murgess institute, which does so much good in encouraging thrift, and is so admirably managed by the founder and his wife. he would take a house nowhere but at peckham, he said. to the peckham people he owed his education, and for the peckham people he would watch the working of his little institute. there is no better work being done anywhere in that great squalid desert, the east and south-east of london; there is no influence more magnetic than the founder's. john and margaret owen have recovered their hopes for their boy, only they run now in another and more feasible direction; and those who witness the good that is being done by the institute among the poor of peckham, or who have read that remarkable and brilliant economical work lately published on "the future of co-operation in the east end, by p. o.," venture to believe that meenie was right after all, and that even the great social world itself has not yet heard the last of young paul owen's lay apostolate.
