Chap­ter IX opens on a still, air­less room where Mr. Bod­i­ham sits in qui­et tor­ment. The walls are lined with dense the­o­log­i­cal texts, and every piece of fur­ni­ture seems dipped in the same somber shade of brown. Even the light that fil­ters through the win­dows arrives dimmed, like it hes­i­tates to dis­turb the heavy seri­ous­ness of the room. Mr. Bodiham’s pres­ence match­es this atmos­phere perfectly—sharp, aus­tere, unwa­ver­ing. His faith burns with a harsh inten­si­ty, yet it flick­ers under the grow­ing doubt that his words fall upon deaf ears. That morn­ing, he deliv­ered anoth­er impas­sioned ser­mon, one laced with fire and fear, warn­ing his con­gre­ga­tion about divine wrath. But as always, the peo­ple of Crome heard with­out lis­ten­ing, their reac­tions as soft and resis­tant as rub­ber bounc­ing off stone.

The ser­mon was meant to stir something—remorse, awe, even fear—but it only left him drained. He had spo­ken of God’s anger, of judg­ment loom­ing over a com­pla­cent world, and yet no trem­ble passed through the church pews. His words, he feared, were treat­ed like back­ground noise, tol­er­at­ed rather than felt. Years of preach­ing had not soft­ened their hearts or awak­ened their spir­its. The warn­ing signs were all around—war, moral decline, godlessness—but to the vil­lagers, these seemed like dis­tant mur­murs, not divine alarms. Bod­i­ham, return­ing home, couldn’t help but replay that ser­mon from 1914 in his mind. In that moment, war had seemed to him like a trum­pet call from heav­en, the first act of Rev­e­la­tion itself. Now, over a decade lat­er, that clar­i­ty had dulled, and the world con­tin­ued spin­ning as if untouched.

What griev­ed him most was not dis­be­lief, but indif­fer­ence. Peo­ple no longer fought God—they ignored Him. The Sec­ond Com­ing, once felt as a pulse in the air, had fad­ed to a the­o­log­i­cal con­cept with­out urgency. In Mr. Bodiham’s view, each year of peace and nor­mal­cy was anoth­er affront to prophe­cy. How could so many signs pass unno­ticed? He traced every famine, every fall­en city, every plague with the pre­ci­sion of a schol­ar and the devo­tion of a prophet, but the con­clu­sions nev­er moved oth­ers as they did him. It was not that his inter­pre­ta­tions lacked logic—it was that the world no longer want­ed mean­ing root­ed in fear or divine cor­rec­tion. When suf­fer­ing came, peo­ple turned to sci­ence or pol­i­cy, not to Scrip­ture. This shift crushed him more than ridicule ever could.

The silence is inter­rupt­ed by Mrs. Bod­i­ham, pale and almost spec­tral, enter­ing with a let­ter in hand. She says lit­tle, plac­ing the enve­lope before him with an air of rou­tine care. Inside is a cat­a­logue from “The House of Shee­ny, Cler­i­cal Outfitters”—a vibrant col­lec­tion of cas­socks, stoles, and cer­e­mo­ni­al hats. The absur­di­ty stings. Here he was, med­i­tat­ing on heaven’s fury and man’s blind­ness, and the world returned to him embroi­dered robes and price lists. It was a small reminder of how reli­gion, even in its most sacred forms, had been tamed into spec­ta­cle. Robes could be bought; repen­tance could not. And in that moment, the cat­a­logue felt more like a par­o­dy than a pro­vi­sion.

This brief inter­rup­tion lays bare the absurd gap between the spir­i­tu­al urgency Bod­i­ham feels and the mun­dane rou­tines he must still uphold. In his soul, judg­ment is near. In his mail­box, fash­ion options await. It’s this ten­sion that defines his character—not a fail­ure of belief, but a fail­ure to bridge his belief with the world he lives in. He doesn’t ques­tion God, but he ques­tions whether any­one else still knows how to lis­ten. His stern pos­ture hides weari­ness, not pride. As he lifts the cat­a­logue and turns its pages, it’s unclear whether he’s see­ing cloth or watch­ing his voca­tion slow­ly unrav­el. The weight of unheed­ed truth press­es heav­ier than ever.

For read­ers, Mr. Bod­i­ham embod­ies the arche­type of the iso­lat­ed believer—unshaken in con­vic­tion yet deeply shak­en by the world’s casu­al dis­in­ter­est. His study, more tomb than office, holds not just books but buried hope. Through him, the nov­el explores the per­son­al cost of cling­ing to prophe­cy in a sec­u­lar age. There’s a les­son here that applies beyond the­ol­o­gy: when a world­view meets a soci­ety no longer aligned with it, the result isn’t always confrontation—it’s silence, some­times worse than oppo­si­tion. Bodiham’s despair isn’t root­ed in fail­ure; it’s root­ed in irrel­e­vance. And in that, his tragedy becomes relat­able, even for those who do not share his beliefs.

This chap­ter, though cen­tered on one man, reflects a broad­er human struggle—the long­ing to mat­ter in a world that moves on with­out you. Whether through art, faith, or ideals, many feel the ache of being unheard. Mr. Bodiham’s frus­tra­tion may be extreme, but the sen­sa­tion is uni­ver­sal: shout­ing truth into a void and hear­ing noth­ing come back. His robes, his ser­mons, and even his prophe­cy feel like relics in a world rac­ing ahead. And so he sits, wrapped in brown shad­ows and the echo of unan­swered warn­ings, unsure whether it is the world or his pur­pose that has slipped away.