Plainly she had uttered whatever words she had used in the form of a
sort of incantation, and here was the result in the living body of this
man sitting before her. She stared hard at him, repeating her words:
"YOU come. Yes, you did."
"It was the answer," said Miss Montaubyn, with entire simplicity as she
bit off her thread, "that's wot it was."
Antony Dart lifted his heavy head.
"You believe it," he said.
"I 'm livin' on believin' it," she said confidingly. "I ain't got
nothin' else. An' answers keeps comin' and comin'."
"What answers?"
"Bits o' work--an' things as 'elps. Glad there, she's one."
"Aw," said Glad, "I ain't nothin'. I likes to 'ear yer tell about it.
She ses," to Dart again, a little slowly, as she watched his face with
curiously questioning eyes--"she ses 'E'S in the room--same as 'E's
everywhere--in this 'ere room. Sometimes she talks out loud to 'Im."
"What!" cried Dart, startled again.
The strange Majestic Awful Idea--the Deity of the Ages--to be spoken of
as a mere unfeared Reality! And even as the vaguely formed thought
sprang in his brain he started once more, suddenly confronted by the
meaning his sense of shock implied. What had all the sermons of all the
centuries been preaching but that it was Reality? What had all the
infidels of every age contended but that it was Unreal, and the folly of
a dream? He had never thought of himself as an infidel; perhaps it
would have shocked him to be called one, though he was not quite sure.
But that a little superannuated dancer at music-halls, battered and worn
by an unlawful life, should sit and smile in absolute faith at such a--a
superstition as this, stirred something like awe in him.
For she was smiling in entire acquiescence.
"It's what the curick ses," she enlarged radiantly. "Though 'e don t
believe it, pore young man; 'e on'y thinks 'e does. 'It's for 'igh an'
low,' 'e ses, 'for you an' me as well as for them as is royal fambleys.
The Almighty 'E's EVERYWHERE!' 'Yes,' ses I, 'I've felt 'Im 'ere--as
near as y' are yerself, sir, I 'ave--an' I've spoke to 'Im."'
"What did the curate say?" Dart asked, amazed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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