He went to bed in the same trouble of mind. Every
night he had fallen asleep with Statira in his thoughts,
but now it was Miss Carver that he thought of, and
more and more uncomfortably. He asked himself
what she would say if she saw his mother in the bloomers.
She was herself not dressed so fashionably as Statira,
but very nicely.
At Sewell’s house the maid told Evans to walk
up into the study, without seating him first in the
reception-room, as if that were needless with so intimate
a friend of the family. He found Sewell at his
desk, and he began at once, without the forms of greeting:
“If you don’t like that other subject,
I’ve got a new one for you, and you could write
a sermon on it that would make talk.”
“You look at it from the newspaper point of
view,” returned Sewell, in the same humour.
“I’m not an ‘enterprise,’ and
I don’t want to make talk in your sense.
I don’t know that I want to make talk at all;
I should prefer to make thought, to make feeling.”
“Well,” said the editor, “this would
do all three.”
“Would you come to hear me, if I wrote the sermon?”
“Ah, that’s asking a good deal.”
“Why don’t you develop your idea in an
article? You’re always bragging that you
preach to a larger congregation than I.”
“I propose to let you preach to my congregation
too, if you’ll write this sermon. I’ve
talked to you before about reporting your sermons
in Saturday Afternoon. They would be a
feature; and if we could open with this one, and have
a good ‘incisive’ editorial on it, disputing
some of your positions, and treating certain others
with a little satire, at the same time maintaining
a very respectful attitude towards you on the whole,
and calling attention to the fact that there was a
strong and increasing interest in your ‘utterances,’
which we were the first to recognise,—it
would be a card. We might agree beforehand on
the points the editorial was to touch, and so make
one hand wash another. See?”
“I see that journalism has eaten into your soul.
What is your subject?”
“Well, in general terms, and in a single word,
Complicity. Don’t you think that
would be rather taking? ’Mr. Sewell, in
his striking sermon on Complicity,’ and so forth.
It would be a great hit, and it would stand a chance
of sticking, like Emerson’s ‘Compensation.’”
“Delightful! The most amusing part is that
you’ve really a grain of business in your bushel
of chaff.” Sewell wheeled about in his
swivel-chair, and sat facing his guest, deeply sunken
in the low easy seat he always took. “When
did this famous idea occur to you?” he pursued,
swinging his glasses by their cord.
