Chapter 5

THE WAR DRUM CALLS



"Well, dad," said Barry next evening as they were sitting in the garden after tea, "I feel something like Mohammed's coffin, detached from earth but not yet ascended into heaven. It's unpleasant to be out of a job. I confess I shall always cherish a more intelligent sympathy henceforth for the great unemployed. But cheer up, dad! You are taking this thing much too seriously. The world is wide, and there is something waiting me that I can do better than any one else."

But the father had little to say. He felt bitterly the humiliation to which his son had been subjected.

Barry refused to see the humiliation.

"Why should I not resign if I decide it is my duty so to do? And why, on the other hand, should not they have the right to terminate my engagement with them when they so desire? That's democratic government."

"But good Lord, Barry!" burst out his father, with quite an unusual display of feeling; "to think that a gentleman should hold his position at the whim of such whippersnappers as Hayes, Boggs et hoc genus omne. And more than that, that I should have to accept as my minister a man who would be the choice of cattle like that."

"After all, dad, we are ruled by majorities in this age and in this country. That is at once the glory and the danger of democratic government. There is no better way discovered as yet. And besides, I couldn't go on here, dad, preaching Sunday after Sunday to people who I felt were all the time saying, 'He's no good'; to people, in short, who could not profit by my preaching."

"Because it had no pep, eh?" said his father with bitter scorn.

"Do you know, dad, I believe that's what is wrong with my preaching: it hasn't got pep. What pep is, only the initiated know. But the long and the short of this thing is, it is the people that must be satisfied. It is they who have to stand your preaching, they who pay the piper. But cheer up, dad, I have no fear for the future."

"Nor have I, my boy, not the slightest. I hope you did not think for a moment, my son," he added with some dignity, "that I was in doubt about your future."

"No, no, dad. We both feel a little sore naturally, but the future is all right."

"True, my dear boy, true. I was forgetting myself. As you say, the world is wide and your place is waiting."

"Hello! here comes my friend, Mr. Duff," said Barry in a low voice. "He was ready to throw Mr. McFettridge out of the meeting yesterday, body and bones. Awfully funny, if it hadn't been in church. Wonder what he wants! Seems in a bit of a hurry."

But hurry or not, it was a full hour before Mr. Duff introduced his business. As he entered the garden he stood gazing about him in amazed wonder and