uchope's friend the curate had given
them a straight talk it would have been much straighter. As it was,
nothing could have been more devious, more mysterious and serpentine
than the discourse that turned and wound and wormed its way into the
last obscurities and secrecies of Ranny's being.

In the Mission Church of St. Matthias's Ranny underwent illumination. It
was as if all that was dark and passionate in him had been interpreted
for him by the preacher. Interpreted, it became in some perverse way
justified. Over and above that innermost sanction and recognition it had
the seal outside it of men's acknowledgment, it took its place among the
existent, the normal, the expected. Ranny was not alone in his passion
and confusion. He was companioned, here and now, in the great
enlightenment.

But even Ranny could not have foretold the full extent of his reaction
to that sinuous and evocative Address.

Meanwhile, so carried away was Ranny that he joined Wauchope in a
furious singing of the final hymn, "Onward, Christian so-o-oldier-ers!"

He had felt noble; he had felt tender; now he was triumphant.

CHAPTER XI

Wauchope, who hadn't a nerve in his composition, recovered soon after he
got into the open air. But in Ransome, without intermission, the magic
of that incantation worked.

The symptoms of its working were a frightful haste, anxiety, and fear.
He left Wauchope without any explanation, and rode off to his
appointment at a dangerous speed and with a furious ringing of his bell.
He was afraid that if he were late by five seconds Violet Usher would be
gone. It was incredible to him that she should be there. It was
incredible that it should have come to this, that he should be flying in
haste and anxiety and fear unspeakable to meet her at the elm tree by
the Causeway on Wandsworth Plain. The whole adventure was incredible.

Yet there could not be a better place for it than Wandsworth Plain, a
three-cornered patch of bare ground, bounded on one side by the river
Wandle, and on the other by a row of brown cottages and two little old
inns, with steep tiled roofs and naked walls, "The Bell" and "The
Crane." They were pure eighteenth century, and they give to Wandsworth
Plain its lonely and deserted air as of a little riverside hamlet
overlooked by time and the Borough Council. On a Sunday evening in
summer they stand as if in perpetual peace, without rivalry, without
regret, very bright and clean and simple