THE ROMANCE OF ZION CHAPEL By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 1898 TO TWO IN HEAVEN AND TWO ON EARTH. Contents I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER. VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER IX. "THE DAWN" X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..." XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY XXVII. ISABEL CALLING XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST The Romance of Zion Chapel CHAPTER I OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words "New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call.