Edgar Jepson

“ The admirable body of Aloysius enabled him to do twice as much of it as his two colleagues together, and his cheerful and abounding vitality was often of more use in a sick room than many drugs. But his colleagues, ascetics by temperament and conforming in appearance far more closely to the Anglican ideal, could never grow quite easy in their minds, any more than could Aloysius himself, about his bodily gifts. They were alive to their great usefulness; they admired his courage, endurance, and cheerfulness; they were even assured of his devout fondness for the Anglican ritual ”

“ On the morrow there was an undiminished attendance of heathen at Little St. Barnabas. On Monday morning, having failed to find Katusha anywhere during the day, Aloysius went to the house where she lived. At his knock, her mother came to the door of their room, with her finger on her lips, and said, "She ill; she sleep."
Aloysius was forced to possess his soul in patience. He sent the doctor to her; and the doctor told him that her illness was only a passing weakness, due probably to the heat. He sent her some fruit every day. ”

“ But Katusha would say no more. Aloysius pressed her to tell him, and let him see if he could find a way to prevent it. She only looked at him oddly, and shook her head.
A few days later he was coming along Palmer's street. On your right hand, as you come up it, is a row of tall eighteenth-century houses, once the abodes of merchants and master mariners, now a warren of the poor. The sudden feeling that eyes were on him made him look up, and he saw, sitting at an open window on the first floor of one of them, Katusha and the Finn woman who had been deported for sorcery. ”

“ Part of it is that as long as a man is well and strong these people virtually worship him; as soon as he grows feeble in any way, they kill him."
Aloysius was somewhat daunted, but, with a sick man's obstinacy, he said that it was absurd, and refused to go. Three nights later his colleagues were out, and there came an urgent call to a dying child. In defiance of the orders of the doctor and the commands of the vicar, Aloysius put on his hat and coat and went. His way lay through the slums of the Russians; he went slowly, and presently a little crowd was following him. ”

“ Katusha flushed, and shook her head.
"Oh, you 're too tiresome with your mysteries, both of you!" cried Aloysius.
"That's just it; they are mysteries—the mysteries, indeed," said Marriott. "You leave them alone. It's for your own sake I won't tell you about them. You 're a good Anglican, and the mysteries are unsettling. ”

“ On the Sunday after he was about again, Marriott noticed a change in the manner of the heathen; they left the church talking vehemently with one another, frowning and distressed, some of them, to all seeming, almost terrified. During that week Aloysius also perceived a change in the people. The faces of the Finns and Lascars were no longer respectful and awed; their eyes were full of distrust and fear. He told Marriott of the change; and Marriott, with a serious face, begged him to go away till his strength came back.
"You 're mixed up in a very curious primitive business," he said. ”

“ Higgins refused in words which do not lend themselves to print, and Aloysius scragged him with amazing promptness. Higgins loosed Katusha,—he had to,—and a savage fight followed. Aloysius, though he knew his parish, at first fought faithfully under the Queensberry rules; when he found that his opponent was fighting entirely by the light of nature, his plain English common sense asserted itself, with the result that Thick Higgins was presently taken to the East London Hospital suffering from a broken leg, two broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder. ”

“ As they went, a loud wailing of women broke out not only in the slum they were in, but in the surrounding slums; all the women in that quarter seemed to be wailing.
When the doctor saw Aloysius, he shook his head and said, "No use." But he was young and an enthusiast, and when, on looking into his injuries, he found the black thumb-marks on his throat, he set about trying to get his lungs working again. The policemen were strong and willing, and the three of them worked his arms, and rubbed and kneaded him vigorously. ”

“ The Tractarian movement, though it brought no adherent to Rome from the Wiltons, since their sturdy Toryism prevented so thorough a break with the family tradition, nevertheless lifted them somewhat out of the groove along which they had moved for five generations; and it became the custom for a Wilton, on being ordained at the close of his university career, to become a curate in a slum in one of the more bloated towns, and work for two or three years among the very poor. ”

“ A few days later Aloysius was smoking a restful pipe in his sitting-room, when the servant ushered in Bungay, an old Hindu interpreter, who has lived so long in the parish of St. Barnabas that it is to be doubted that even he himself remembers his Hindu name. He is at all times a very shuffling old man, and on this occasion his manner was of the most suspicious. ”

“ None of the family ever rose to the rank of bishop, a failure which their enemies, if they can be said to have enemies,— perhaps I should rather say those who envy them,—ascribe to their lack of conspicuous ability ”

“ One night while they were sitting up with a child she had found dying of starvation, and nourishing it at the prescribed intervals, she told him of her life as a child on the border of Finland, where she had lived till she was twelve and gained that knowledge of the Finnish and Russian dialects from which she made her living. ”

“ During that part of the eighteenth century covered by the family's records, and during the earlier part of the nineteenth century, they held comfortable livings in the country or in the more reputable towns—towns unsmirched by factories, the abodes of gentlefolk. ”

“ When at breakfast the next morning he told his colleagues of his adventure, Marriott said: "Your heathen have taken you under their protection. It looks as if they had elected you chief."
Meeting Katusha later in the day, Aloysius asked if she knew anything about it. She said with a somewhat constrained air: "Yes; they guard you. It is good. You go often where no coppers go."
"But why do these particular people, these Finns and Lascars, guard me?" said Aloysius.
Katusha only shook her head ”