from the poor Irish and Italians of the neighbourhood.  There had been talk of closing the church, and it would have had to be closed if the Jesuits had not accepted the mission.  Another subscription had been started, but the greater part of this third subscription the Jesuits had spent upon their schools, so the fate of St. Joseph’s seemed to be to remain, as someone had said, an unfinished ruin.  Their resources were exhausted, and they surveyed the barren aisles, dreaming of the painting and mosaics they would put up when the promises of Father Gordon were realised.  For it was understood that their fortunes should be retrieved by his musical abilities, and his competence to select the most attractive masses.  Father Gordon was a type often found among amateur musicians—­a man with a slight technical knowledge, a good ear, a nice voice, and absolutely no taste whatever.  His natural ear was for obvious rhythm, his taste coincided with the popular taste, and as the necessity of attracting a congregation was paramount, it is easy to imagine how easily he conceded to his natural inclinations.  And the arguments with which he rebutted those of his opponents were unanswerable, that whatever moved the heart to the love of God was right; that if the plain chant failed to help the soul to aspiration, we were justified in substituting Rossini’s Stabat Mater, or whatever other musical idiom the neighbourhood craved for.

Religious rite, according to Father Gordon, should conform to the artistic taste of the congregation, and he urged, with some force, that the artistic taste of Southwark stood on quite as high a level as that of Mayfair.  To get a Mayfair audience they had only to follow the taste of Southwark.  And so, under his guidance, the Jesuits had increased their orchestra and employed the best tenors that could be hired.  Nevertheless, their progress was slow.  Father Gordon pleaded patience.  The neighbourhood was unfashionable; it was difficult to persuade their friends to come so far.  Mr. Innes answered that if they gave him a choir of forty-five voices—­he could do nothing with less—­the West-end would come at once to hear Palestrina.  The distance, and the fact of the church being in a slum, he maintained, would not be in itself a drawback.  Half the success of Bayreuth, he urged, is owing to its being so far off.  And this plan, too, seemed to possess some elements of success, and so the Jesuits hesitated between very divergent methods by which the same result might be attained.

A few flakes of snow were falling, and Evelyn and her father put up their umbrellas as they crossed the road to the church.  Three steps led to the pointed door above which was the figure of the patron saint.

The nakedness of the unfinished and undecorated church was hidden in the twilight of the approaching storm, and Evelyn trembled as she walked up the aisle, so menacing seemed the darkness that descended from the sky.  The stained glass, blackened by the smoke of the factory chimneys, let in but little light, the aisles were plunged in darkness, and kneeling in her favourite place the ineffectual gaslight seemed to her like painted flames on a dark background.  The side chapels which opened on to the aisles were shut off by no ornamental screens, indeed, the only piece of decoration seemed to be the fine modern ironwork which veiled the sanctuary.