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+Project Gutenberg's The Inside of the Cup, Volume 7, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Inside of the Cup, Volume 7
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2004 [EBook #5362]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDE OF THE CUP, VOLUME 7 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INSIDE OF THE CUP
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+Volume 7.
+
+XXIII.  THE CHOICE
+XXIV.   THE VESTRY MEETS
+XXV.    "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
+XXVI.   THE CURRENT OF LIFE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE CHOICE
+
+
+I
+
+Pondering over Alison's note, he suddenly recalled and verified some
+phrases which had struck him that summer on reading Harnack's celebrated
+History of Dogma, and around these he framed his reply. "To act as if
+faith in eternal life and in the living Christ was the simplest thing in
+the world, or a dogma to which one has to submit, is irreligious. . .
+It is Christian to pray that God would give the Spirit to make us strong
+to overcome the feelings and the doubts of nature. . . Where this
+faith, obtained in this way, exists, it has always been supported by the
+conviction that the Man lives who brought life and immortality to light.
+To hold fast this faith is the goal of life, for only what we consciously
+strive for is in this matter our own. What we think we possess is very
+soon lost."
+
+"The feelings and the doubts of nature!" The Divine Discontent, the
+striving against the doubt that every honest soul experiences and admits.
+Thus the contrast between her and these others who accepted and went
+their several ways was brought home to him.
+
+He longed to talk to her, but his days were full. Yet the very thought
+of her helped to bear him up as his trials, his problems accumulated; nor
+would he at any time have exchanged them for the former false peace which
+had been bought (he perceived more and more clearly) at the price of
+compromise.
+
+The worst of these trials, perhaps, was a conspicuous article in a
+newspaper containing a garbled account of his sermon and of the sensation
+it had produced amongst his fashionable parishioners. He had refused to
+see the reporter, but he had been made out a hero, a socialistic champion
+of the poor. The black headlines were nauseating; and beside them, in
+juxtaposition, were pen portraits of himself and of Eldon Parr. There
+were rumours that the banker had left the church until the recalcitrant
+rector should be driven out of it; the usual long list of Mr. Parr's
+benefactions was included, and certain veiled paragraphs concerning his
+financial operations. Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Plimpton, Mr. Constable, did not
+escape,--although they, too, had refused to be interviewed . . . .
+
+The article brought to the parish house a bevy of reporters who had to be
+fought off, and another batch of letters, many of them from ministers, in
+approval or condemnation.
+
+His fellow-clergymen called, some to express sympathy and encouragement,
+more of them to voice in person indignant and horrified protests. Dr.
+Annesley of Calvary--a counterpart of whose rubicund face might have
+been found in the Council of Trent or in mediaeval fish-markets
+--pronounced his anathemas with his hands folded comfortably over his
+stomach, but eventually threw to the winds every vestige of his
+ecclesiastical dignity . . . .
+
+Then there came a note from the old bishop, who was traveling. A kindly
+note, withal, if non-committal,--to the effect that he had received
+certain communications, but that his physician would not permit him to
+return for another ten days or so. He would then be glad to see Mr.
+Holder and talk with him.
+
+What would the bishop do? Holder's relations with him had been more than
+friendly, but whether the bishop's views were sufficiently liberal to
+support him in the extreme stand he had taken he could not surmise. For
+it meant that the bishop, too, must enter into a conflict with the first
+layman of his diocese, of whose hospitality he had so often partaken,
+whose contributions had been on so lordly a scale. The bishop was in his
+seventieth year, and had hitherto successfully fought any attempt to
+supply him with an assistant,--coadjutor or suffragan.
+
+At such times the fear grew upon Hodder that he might be recommended for
+trial, forced to abandon his fight to free the Church from the fetters
+that bound her: that the implacable hostility of his enemies would rob
+him of his opportunity.
+
+Thus ties were broken, many hard things were said and brought to his
+ears. There were vacancies in the classes and guilds, absences that
+pained him, silences that wrung him. . . .
+
+Of all the conversations he held, that with Mrs. Constable was perhaps
+the most illuminating and distressing. As on that other occasion, when
+he had gone to her, this visit was under the seal of confession, unknown
+to her husband. And Hodder had been taken aback, on seeing her enter his
+office, by the very tragedy in her face--the tragedy he had momentarily
+beheld once before. He drew up a chair for her, and when she had sat
+down she gazed at him some moments without speaking.
+
+"I had to come," she said; "there are some things I feel I must ask you.
+For I have been very miserable since I heard you on Sunday."
+
+He nodded gently.
+
+"I knew that you would change your views--become broader, greater. You
+may remember that I predicted it."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"I thought you would grow more liberal, less bigoted, if you will allow
+me to say so. But I didn't anticipate--" she hesitated, and looked up at
+him again.
+
+"That I would take the extreme position I have taken," he assisted her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hodder," she cried impulsively, "was it necessary to go so far?
+and all at once. I am here not only because I am miserable, but I am
+concerned on your account. You hurt me very much that day you came to
+me, but you made me your friend. And I wonder if you really understand
+the terrible, bitter feeling you have aroused, the powerful enemies you
+have made by speaking so--so unreservedly?"
+
+"I was prepared for it," he answered. "Surely, Mrs. Constable, once I
+have arrived at what I believe to be the truth, you would not have me
+temporize?"
+
+She gave him a wan smile.
+
+"In one respect, at least, you have not changed," she told him. "I am
+afraid you are not the temporizing kind. But wasn't there,--mayn't there
+still be a way to deal with this fearful situation? You have made it
+very hard for us--for them. You have given them no loophole of escape.
+And there are many, like me, who do not wish to see your career ruined,
+Mr. Hodder."
+
+"Would you prefer," he asked, "to see my soul destroyed? And your own?"
+
+Her lips twitched.
+
+"Isn't there any other way but that? Can't this transformation, which
+you say is necessary and vital, come gradually? You carried me away as
+I listened to you, I was not myself when I came out of the church.
+But I have been thinking ever since. Consider my husband, Mr. Hodder,"
+her voice faltered. "I shall not mince matters with you--I know you will
+not pretend to misunderstand me. I have never seen him so upset since
+since that time Gertrude was married. He is in a most cruel position.
+I confessed to you once that Mr. Parr had made for us all the money we
+possess. Everett is fond of you, but if he espouses your cause, on the
+vestry, we shall be ruined."
+
+Hodder was greatly moved.
+
+"It is not my cause, Mrs. Constable," he said.
+
+"Surely, Christianity is not so harsh and uncompromising as that! And do
+you quite do justice to--to some of these men? There was no one to tell
+them the wrongs they were committing--if they were indeed wrongs. Our
+civilization is far from perfect."
+
+"The Church may have been remiss, mistaken," the rector replied. "But
+the Christianity she has taught, adulterated though it were, has never
+condoned the acts which have become commonplace in modern finance. There
+must have been a time, in the life of every one of these men, when they
+had to take that first step against which their consciences revolted,
+when they realized that fraud and taking advantage of the ignorant and
+weak were wrong. They have deliberately preferred gratification in this
+life to spiritual development--if indeed they believe in any future
+whatsoever. For 'whosoever will save his life shall lose it' is as true
+to-day as it ever was. They have had their choice--they still have it."
+
+"I am to blame," she cried. "I drove my husband to it, I made him think
+of riches, it was I who cultivated Mr. Parr. And oh, I suppose I am
+justly punished. I have never been happy for one instant since that
+day."
+
+He watched her, pityingly, as she wept. But presently she raised her
+face, wonderingly.
+
+"You do believe in the future life after--after what you have been
+through?"
+
+"I do," he answered simply.
+
+"Yes--I am sure you do. It is that, what you are, convinces me you do.
+Even the remarkable and sensible explanation you gave of it when you
+interpreted the parable of the talents is not so powerful as the
+impression that you yourself believe after thinking it out for yourself
+--not accepting the old explanations. And then," she added, with a note
+as of surprise, "you are willing to sacrifice everything for it!"
+
+"And you?" he asked. "Cannot you, too, believe to that extent?"
+
+"Everything?" she repeated. "It would mean--poverty. No--God help me
+--I cannot face it. I have become too hard. I cannot do without the
+world. And even if I could! Oh, you cannot know what you ask Everett,
+my husband--I must say it, you make me tell you everything--is not free.
+He is little better than a slave to Eldon Parr. I hate Eldon Parr," she
+added, with startling inconsequence.
+
+"If I had only known what it would lead to when I made Everett what he
+is! But I knew nothing of business, and I wanted money, position to
+satisfy my craving at the loss of--that other thing. And now I couldn't
+change my husband if I would. He hasn't the courage, he hasn't the
+vision. What there was of him, long ago, has been killed--and I killed
+it. He isn't--anybody, now."
+
+She relapsed again into weeping.
+
+"And then it might not mean only poverty--it might mean disgrace."
+
+"Disgrace!" the rector involuntarily took up the word.
+
+"There are some things he has done," she said in a low voice, "which he
+thought he was obliged to do which Eldon Parr made him do."
+
+"But Mr. Parr, too--?" Hodder began.
+
+"Oh, it was to shield Eldon Parr. They could never be traced to him.
+And if they ever came out, it would kill my husband. Tell me," she
+implored, "what can I do? What shall I do? You are responsible. You
+have made me more bitterly unhappy than ever."
+
+"Are you willing," he asked, after a moment, "to make the supreme
+renunciation? to face poverty, and perhaps disgrace, to save your soul
+and others?"
+
+"And--others?"
+
+"Yes. Your sacrifice would not, could not be in vain. Otherwise I
+should be merely urging on you the individualism which you once advocated
+with me."
+
+"Renunciation." She pronounced the word questioningly. "Can
+Christianity really mean that--renunciation of the world? Must we take
+it in the drastic sense of the Church of the early centuries-the Church
+of the Martyrs?"
+
+"Christianity demands all of us, or nothing," he replied. "But the false
+interpretation of renunciation of the early Church has cast its blight on
+Christianity even to our day. Oriental asceticism, Stoicism, Philo and
+other influences distorted Christ's meaning. Renunciation does not mean
+asceticism, retirement from the world, a denial of life. And the early
+Christian, since he was not a citizen, since he took the view that this
+mortal existence was essentially bad and kept his eyes steadfastly fixed
+on another, was the victim at once of false philosophies and of the
+literal messianic prophecies of the Jews, which were taken over with
+Christianity. The earthly kingdom which was to come was to be the result
+of some kind of a cataclysm. Personally, I believe our Lord merely used
+the Messianic literature as a convenient framework for his spiritual
+Kingdom of heaven, and that the Gospels misinterpret his meaning on this
+point.
+
+"Renunciation is not the withdrawal from, the denial of life, but the
+fulfilment of life, the submission to the divine will and guidance in
+order that our work may be shown us. Renunciation is the assumption,
+at once, of heavenly and earthly citizenship, of responsibility for
+ourselves and our fellow-men. It is the realization that the other
+world, the inner, spiritual world, is here, now, and that the soul may
+dwell in it before death, while the body and mind work for the coming of
+what may be called the collective kingdom. Life looked upon in that way
+is not bad, but good,--not meaningless, but luminous."
+
+She had listened hungrily, her eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"And for me?" she questioned.
+
+"For you," he answered, leaning forward and speaking with a conviction
+that shook her profoundly, "if you make the sacrifice of your present
+unhappiness, of your misery, all will be revealed. The labour which you
+have shirked, which is now hidden from you, will be disclosed, you will
+justify your existence by taking your place as an element of the
+community. You will be able to say of yourself, at last, 'I am of use.'"
+
+"You mean--social work?"
+
+The likeness of this to Mrs. Plimpton's question struck him. She had
+called it "charity." How far had they wandered in their teaching from
+the Revelation of the Master, since it was as new and incomprehensible to
+these so-called Christians as to Nicodemus himself!
+
+"All Christian work is social, Mrs. Constable, but it is founded on love.
+'Thou shaft love thy neighbour as thyself.' You hold your own soul
+precious, since it is the shrine of God. And for that reason you hold
+equally precious your neighbour's soul. Love comes first, as revelation,
+as imparted knowledge, as the divine gist of autonomy--self-government.
+And then one cannot help working, socially, at the task for which we are
+made by nature most efficient. And in order to discover what that task
+is, we must wait."
+
+"Why did not some one tell me this, when I was young?" she asked--not
+speaking to him. "It seems so simple."
+
+"It is simple. The difficult thing is to put it into practice--the most
+difficult thing in the world. Both courage and faith are required, faith
+that is content to trust as to the nature of the reward. It is the
+wisdom of foolishness. Have you the courage?"
+
+She pressed her hands together.
+
+"Alone--perhaps I should have. I don't know. But my husband!
+I was able to influence him to his destruction, and now I am powerless.
+Darkness has closed around me. He would not--he will not listen to me."
+
+"You have tried?"
+
+"I have attempted to talk to him, but the whole of my life contradicts my
+words. He cannot see me except as, the woman who drove him into making
+money. Sometimes I think he hates me."
+
+Hodder recalled, as his eyes rested on her compassionately, the
+sufferings of that other woman in Dalton Street.
+
+"Would you have me desert him--after all these years?" she whispered.
+"I often think he would be happier, even now."
+
+"I would have you do nothing save that which God himself will reveal to
+you. Go home, go into the church and pray--pray for knowledge. I think
+you will find that you are held responsible for your husband. Pray that
+that which you have broken, you may mend again."
+
+"Do you think there is a chance?"
+
+Hodder made a gesture.
+
+"God alone can judge as to the extent of his punishments."
+
+She got to her feet, wearily.
+
+"I feel no hope--I feel no courage, but--I will try. I see what you
+mean--that my punishment is my powerlessness."
+
+He bent his head.
+
+"You are so strong--perhaps you can help me."
+
+"I shall always be ready," he replied.
+
+He escorted her down the steps to the dark blue brougham with upstanding,
+chestnut horses which was waiting at the curb. But Mrs. Constable turned
+to the footman, who held open the door.
+
+"You may stay here awhile," she said to him, and gave Hodder her hand....
+
+She went into the church . . . .
+
+
+
+II
+
+Asa Waring and his son-in-law, Phil Goodrich, had been to see Hodder on
+the subject of the approaching vestry meeting, and both had gone away not
+a little astonished and impressed by the calmness with which the rector
+looked forward to the conflict. Others of his parishioners, some of whom
+were more discreet in their expressions of sympathy, were no less
+surprised by his attitude; and even his theological adversaries, such as
+Gordon Atterbury, paid him a reluctant tribute. Thanks, perhaps, to the
+newspaper comments as much as to any other factor, in the minds of those
+of all shades of opinion in the parish the issue had crystallized into a
+duel between the rector and Eldon Parr. Bitterly as they resented the
+glare of publicity into which St. John's had been dragged, the first
+layman of the diocese was not beloved; and the fairer-minded of Hodder's
+opponents, though appalled, were forced to admit in their hearts that the
+methods by which Mr. Parr had made his fortune and gained his ascendency
+would not bear scrutiny . . . . Some of them were disturbed, indeed,
+by the discovery that there had come about in them, by imperceptible
+degrees, in the last few years a new and critical attitude towards the
+ways of modern finance: moat of them had an uncomfortable feeling that
+Hodder was somehow right,--a feeling which they sought to stifle when
+they reflected upon the consequences of facing it. For this would mean
+a disagreeable shaking up of their own lives. Few of them were in a
+position whence they might cast stones at Eldon Parr . . . .
+
+What these did not grasp was the fact that that which they felt stirring
+within them was the new and spiritual product of the dawning twentieth
+century--the Social Conscience. They wished heartily that the new rector
+who had developed this disquieting personality would peacefully resign
+and leave them to the former, even tenor of their lives. They did not
+for one moment doubt the outcome of his struggle with Eldon Parr. The
+great banker was known to be relentless, his name was synonymous with
+victory. And yet, paradoxically, Hodder compelled their inner sympathy
+and admiration! . . .
+
+Some of them, who did not attempt peremptorily to choke the a processes
+made the startling discovery that they were not, after all, so shocked by
+his doctrines as they had at first supposed. The trouble was that they
+could not continue to listen to him, as formerly, with comfort.... One
+thing was certain, that they had never expected to look forward to a
+vestry meeting with such breathless interest and anxiety. This clergyman
+had suddenly accomplished the surprising feat of reviving the Church as a
+burning, vital factor in the life of the community! He had discerned her
+enemy, and defied his power . . . .
+
+As for Hodder, so absorbed had he been by his experiences, so wrung by
+the human contacts, the personal problems which he had sought to enter,
+that he had actually given no thought to the battle before him until
+the autumn afternoon, heavy with smoke, had settled down into darkness.
+The weather was damp and cold, and he sat musing on the ordeal now
+abruptly confronting him before his study fire when he heard a step
+behind him. He turned to recognize, by the glow of the embers, the heavy
+figure of Nelson Langmaid.
+
+"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Hodder," he said. "The janitor said you
+were in, and your door is open."
+
+"Not at all," replied the rector, rising. As he stood for a moment
+facing the lawyer, the thought of their friendship, and how it had begun
+in the little rectory overlooking the lake at Bremerton, was uppermost in
+his mind,--yes, and the memory of many friendly, literary discussions in
+the same room where they now stood, of pleasant dinners at Langmaid's
+house in the West End, when the two of them had often sat talking until
+late into the nights.
+
+"I must seem very inhospitable," said Hodder. "I'll light the lamp--it's
+pleasanter than the electric light."
+
+The added illumination at first revealed the lawyer in his familiar
+aspect, the broad shoulders, the big, reddish beard, the dome-like head,
+--the generous person that seemed to radiate scholarly benignity, peace,
+and good-will. But almost instantly the rector became aware of a new and
+troubled, puzzled glance from behind the round spectacles. . ."
+
+"I thought I'd drop in a moment on my way up town--" he began. And the
+note of uncertainty in his voice, too, was new. Hodder drew towards the
+fire the big chair in which it had been Langmaid's wont to sit, and
+perhaps it was the sight of this operation that loosed the lawyer's
+tongue.
+
+"Confound it, Hodder!" he exclaimed, "I like you--I always have liked
+you. And you've got a hundred times the ability of the average
+clergyman. Why in the world did you have to go and make all this
+trouble?"
+
+By so characteristic a remark Hodder was both amused and moved. It
+revealed so perfectly the point of view and predicament of the lawyer,
+and it was also an expression of an affection which the rector cordially,
+returned . . . . Before answering, he placed his visitor in the
+chair, and the deliberation of the act was a revelation of the
+unconscious poise of the clergyman. The spectacle of this self-command
+on the brink of such a crucial event as the vestry meeting had taken
+Langmaid aback more than he cared to show. He had lost the old sense of
+comradeship, of easy equality; and he had the odd feeling of dealing with
+a new man, at once familiar and unfamiliar, who had somehow lifted
+himself out of the everyday element in which they heretofore had met.
+The clergyman had contrived to step out of his, Langmaid's, experience:
+had actually set him--who all his life had known no difficulty in dealing
+with men--to groping for a medium of communication . . . .
+
+Hodder sat down on the other side of the fireplace. He, too, seemed to
+be striving for a common footing.
+
+"It was a question of proclaiming the truth when at last I came to see
+it, Langmaid. I could not help doing what I did. Matters of policy,
+of a false consideration for individuals could not enter into it.
+If this were not so, I should gladly admit that you had a just grievance,
+a peculiar right to demand why I had not remained the strictly orthodox
+person whom you induced to come here. You had every reason to
+congratulate yourself that you were getting what you doubtless would call
+a safe man."
+
+"I'll admit I had a twinge of uneasiness after I came home," Langmaid
+confessed.
+
+Hodder smiled at his frankness.
+
+"But that disappeared."
+
+"Yes, it disappeared. You seemed to suit 'em so perfectly. I'll own up,
+Hodder, that I was a little hurt that you did not come and talk to me
+just before you took the extraordinary--before you changed your
+opinions."
+
+"Would it have done any good?" asked the rector, gently. "Would you
+have agreed with me any better than you do now? I am perfectly willing,
+if you wish, to discuss with you any views of mine which you may not
+indorse. And it would make me very happy, I assure you, if I could bring
+you to look upon the matter as I do."
+
+This was a poser. And whether it were ingenuous, or had in it an element
+of the scriptural wisdom of the serpent, Langmaid could not have said.
+As a lawyer, he admired it.
+
+"I wasn't in church, as usual,--I didn't hear the sermon," he replied.
+"And I never could make head or tail of theology--I always told you that.
+What I deplore, Hodder, is that you've contrived to make a hornets' nest
+out of the most peaceful and contented congregation in America. Couldn't
+you have managed to stick to religion instead of getting mixed up with
+socialism?"
+
+"So you have been given the idea that my sermon was socialistic?" the
+rector said.
+
+"Socialistic and heretical,--it seems. Of course I'm not much of an
+authority on heresy, but they claim that you went out of your way to
+knock some of their most cherished and sacred beliefs in the head."
+
+"But suppose I have come to the honest conclusion that in the first
+place these so-called cherished beliefs have no foundation in fact,
+and no influence on the lives of the persons who cherished them, no real
+connection with Christianity? What would you have me do, as a man?
+Continue to preach them for the sake of the lethargic peace of which
+you speak? leave the church paralyzed, as I found it?"
+
+"Paralyzed! You've got the most influential people in the city."
+
+Hodder regarded him for a while without replying.
+
+"So has the Willesden Club," he said.
+
+Langmaid laughed a little, uncomfortably.
+
+"If Christianity, as one of the ancient popes is said to have remarked,
+were merely a profitable fable," the rector continued, "there might be
+something in your contention that St. John's, as a church, had reached
+the pinnacle of success. But let us ignore the spiritual side of this
+matter as non-vital, and consider it from the practical side. We have
+the most influential people in the city, but we have not their children.
+That does not promise well for the future. The children get more profit
+out of the country clubs. And then there is another question: is it
+going to continue to be profitable? Is it as profitable now as it was,
+say, twenty years ago?
+
+"You've got out of my depth," said Nelson Langmaid.
+
+"I'll try to explain. As a man of affairs, I think you will admit, if
+you reflect, that the return of St. John's, considering the large amount
+of money invested, is scarcely worth considering. And I am surprised
+that as astute a man as Mr. Pair has not been able to see this long ago.
+If we clear all the cobwebs away, what is the real function of this
+church as at present constituted? Why this heavy expenditure to maintain
+religious services for a handful of people? Is it not, when we come down
+to facts, an increasingly futile effort to bring the influences of
+religion--of superstition, if you will--to bear on the so-called lower
+classes in order that they may remain contented with their lot, with that
+station and condition in the world where--it is argued--it has pleased
+God to call them? If that were not so, in my opinion there are very few
+of the privileged classes who would invest a dollar in the Church. And
+the proof of it is that the moment a clergyman raises his voice to
+proclaim the true message of Christianity they are up in arms with the
+cry of socialism. They have the sense to see that their privileges are
+immediately threatened.
+
+"Looking at it from the financial side, it would be cheaper for them to
+close up their churches. It is a mere waste of time and money, because
+the influence on their less fortunate brethren in a worldly sense has
+dwindled to nothing. Few of the poor come near their churches in these
+days. The profitable fable is almost played out."
+
+Hodder had spoken without bitterness, yet his irony was by no means lost
+on the lawyer. Langmaid, if the truth be told, found himself for the
+moment in the unusual predicament of being at a loss, for the rector had
+put forward with more or less precision the very cynical view which he
+himself had been clever enough to evolve.
+
+"Haven't they the right," he asked, somewhat lamely to demand the kind of
+religion they pay for?"
+
+"Provided you don't call it religion," said the rector.
+
+Langmaid smiled in spite of himself.
+
+"See here, Hodder," he said, "I've always confessed frankly that I knew
+little or nothing about religion. I've come here this evening as your
+friend, without authority from anybody," he added significantly, "to see
+if this thing couldn't somehow be adjusted peaceably, for your sake as
+well as others'. Come, you must admit there's a grain of justice in the
+contention against you. When I went on to Bremerton to get you I had no
+real reason for supposing that these views would develop. I made a
+contract with you in all good faith."
+
+"And I with you," answered the rector. "Perhaps you do not realize,
+Langmaid, what has been the chief factor in developing these views."
+
+The lawyer was silent, from caution.
+
+"I must be frank with you. It was the discovery that Mr. Parr and others
+of my chief parishioners were so far from being Christians as to indulge,
+while they supported the Church of Christ, in operations like that of the
+Consolidated Tractions Company, wronging their fellow-men and condemning
+them to misery and hate. And that you, as a lawyer, used your talents to
+make that operation possible."
+
+"Hold on!" cried Langmaid, now plainly agitated. "You have no right--you
+can know nothing of that affair. You do not understand business."
+
+"I'm afraid," replied the rector, sadly, "that I understand one side of
+it only too well."
+
+"The Church has no right to meddle outside of her sphere, to dictate to
+politics and business."
+
+"Her sphere," said Holder,--is the world. If she does not change the
+world by sending out Christians into it, she would better close her
+doors."
+
+"Well, I don't intend to quarrel with you, Holder. I suppose it can't be
+helped that we look at these things differently, and I don't intend to
+enter into a defence of business. It would take too long, and it
+wouldn't help any." He got to his feet. "Whatever happens, it won't
+interfere with our personal friendship, even if you think me a highwayman
+and I think you a--"
+
+"A fanatic," Holder supplied. He had risen, too, and stood, with a smile
+on his face, gazing at the lawyer with an odd scrutiny.
+
+"An idealist, I was going to say," Langmaid answered, returning the
+smile, "I'll admit that we need them in the world. It's only when one
+of them gets in the gear-box . . . ."
+
+The rector laughed. And thus they stood, facing each other.
+
+"Langmaid," Holder asked, "don't you ever get tired and disgusted with
+the Juggernaut car?"
+
+The big lawyer continued to smile, but a sheepish, almost boyish
+expression came over his face. He had not credited the clergyman with
+so much astuteness.
+
+"Business, nowadays, is--business, Holder. The Juggernaut car claims us
+all. It has become-if you will permit me to continue to put my similes
+into slang--the modern band wagon. And we lawyers have to get on it, or
+fall by the wayside."
+
+Holder stared into the fire.
+
+"I appreciate your motive in coming here," he said, at length, "and I do
+you the justice of believing it was friendly, that the fact that you are,
+in a way, responsible for me to--to the congregation of St. John's did
+not enter into it. I realize that I have made matters particularly
+awkward for you. You have given them in me, and in good faith, something
+they didn't bargain for. You haven't said so, but you want me to resign.
+On the one hand, you don't care to see me tilting at the windmills, or,
+better, drawing down on my head the thunderbolts of your gods. On the
+other hand, you are just a little afraid for your gods. If the question
+in dispute were merely an academic one, I'd accommodate you at once. But
+I can't. I've thought it all out, and I have made up my mind that it is
+my clear duty to remain here and, if I am strong enough, wrest this
+church from the grip of Eldon Parr and the men whom he controls.
+
+"I am speaking plainly, and I understand the situation thoroughly. You
+will probably tell me, as others have done, that no one has ever opposed
+Eldon Parr who has not been crushed. I go in with my eyes open, I am
+willing to be crushed, if necessary. You have come here to warn me, and
+I appreciate your motive. Now I am going to warn you, in all sincerity
+and friendship. I may be beaten, I may be driven out. But the victory
+will be mine nevertheless. Eldon Parr and the men who stand with him in
+the struggle will never recover from the blow I shall give them. I shall
+leave them crippled because I have the truth on my side, and the truth
+is irresistible. And they shall not be able to injure me permanently.
+And you, I regret deeply to say, will be hurt, too. I beg you, for no
+selfish reason, to consider again the part you intend to play in this
+affair."
+
+Such was the conviction, such the unlooked-for fire with which the rector
+spoke that Langmaid was visibly shaken and taken aback in spite of
+himself.
+
+"Do you mean," he demanded, when he had caught his breath, "that you
+intend to attack us publicly?"
+
+"Is that the only punishment you can conceive of?" the rector asked. The
+reproach in his voice was in itself a denial.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Hodder," said the lawyer, quickly. "And I am sure
+you honestly believe what you say, but--"
+
+"In your heart you, too, believe it, Langmaid. The retribution has
+already begun. Nevertheless you will go on--for a while." He held out
+his hand, which Langmaid took mechanically. "I bear you no ill-will.
+I am sorry that you cannot yet see with sufficient clearness to save
+yourself."
+
+Langmaid turned and picked up his hat and stick and left the room without
+another word. The bewildered, wistful look which had replaced the
+ordinarily benign and cheerful expression haunted Hodder long after
+the lawyer had gone. It was the look of a man who has somehow lost
+his consciousness of power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE VESTRY MEETS
+
+At nine o'clock that evening Hodder stood alone in the arched vestry
+room, and the sight of the heavy Gothic chairs ranged about the long
+table brought up memories of comfortable, genial meetings prolonged by
+chat and banter.... The noise of feet, of subdued voices beside the coat
+room in the corridor, aroused him. All of the vestry would seem to have
+arrived at once.
+
+He regarded them with a detached curiosity as they entered, reading them
+with a new insight. The trace of off-handedness in Mr. Plimpton's former
+cordiality was not lost upon him--an intimation that his star had set.
+Mr. Plimpton had seen many breaches healed--had healed many himself. But
+he had never been known as a champion of lost causes.
+
+"Well, here we are, Mr. Hodder, on the stroke," he remarked.
+"As a vestry, I think we're entitled to the first prize for promptness.
+How about it, Everett?"
+
+Everett Constable was silent.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Hodder," he said. He did not offer to shake hands,
+as Mr. Plimpton had done, but sat down at the far end of the table.
+He looked tired and worn; sick, the rector thought, and felt a sudden
+swelling of compassion for the pompous little man whose fibre was not
+as tough as that of these other condottieri: as Francis Ferguson's, for
+instance, although his soft hand and pink and white face framed in the
+black whiskers would seem to belie any fibre whatever.
+
+Gordon Atterbury hemmed and hawed,--"Ah, Mr. Hodder," and seated himself
+beside Mr. Constable, in a chair designed to accommodate a portly bishop.
+Both of them started nervously as Asa Waring, holding his head high, as a
+man should who has kept his birthright, went directly to the rector.
+
+"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Hodder," he said, and turning defiantly,
+surveyed the room. There was an awkward silence. Mr. Plimpton edged
+a little nearer. The decree might have gone forth for Mr. Hodder's
+destruction, but Asa Waring was a man whose displeasure was not to be
+lightly incurred.
+
+"What's this I hear about your moving out of Hamilton Place, Mr. Waring?
+You'd better come up and take the Spaulding lot, in Waverley, across from
+us."
+
+"I am an old man, Mr. Plimpton," Asa Waring replied. "I do not move as
+easily as some other people in these days."
+
+Everett Constable produced his handkerchief and rubbed his nose
+violently. But Mr. Plimpton was apparently undaunted.
+
+"I have always said," he observed, "that there was something very fine in
+your sticking to that neighbourhood after your friends had gone. Here's
+Phil!"
+
+Phil Goodrich looked positively belligerent, and as he took his stand
+on the other side of Hodder his father-in-law smiled at him grimly.
+Mr. Goodrich took hold of the rector's arm.
+
+"I missed one or two meetings last spring, Mr. Hodder," he said, "but I'm
+going to be on hand after this. My father, I believe, never missed a
+vestry meeting in his life. Perhaps that was because they used to hold
+most of 'em at his house."
+
+"And serve port and cigars, I'm told," Mr. Plimpton put in.
+
+"That was an inducement, Wallis, I'll admit," answered Phil. "But there
+are even greater inducements now."
+
+In view of Phil Goodrich's well-known liking for a fight, this was too
+pointed to admit of a reply, but Mr. Plimpton was spared the attempt by
+the entrance of. Nelson Langmaid. The lawyer, as he greeted them,
+seemed to be preoccupied, nor did he seek to relieve the tension with
+his customary joke. A few moments of silence followed, when Eldon Parr
+was seen to be standing in the doorway, surveying them.
+
+"Good evening, gentlemen," he said coldly, and without more ado went to
+his customary chair, and sat down in it. Immediately followed a scraping
+of other chairs. There was a dominating quality about the man not to be
+gainsaid.
+
+The rector called the meeting to order . . . .
+
+During the routine business none of the little asides occurred which
+produce laughter. Every man in the room was aware of the intensity of
+Eldon Parr's animosity, and yet he betrayed it neither by voice, look,
+or gesture. There was something uncanny in this self-control, this sang
+froid with which he was wont to sit at boards waiting unmoved for the
+time when he should draw his net about his enemies, and strangle them
+without pity. It got on Langmaid's nerves--hardened as he was to it.
+He had seen many men in that net; some had struggled, some had taken
+their annihilation stoically; honest merchants, freebooters, and
+brigands. Most of them had gone out, with their families, into that
+precarious border-land of existence in which the to-morrows are ever
+dreaded.
+
+Yet here, somehow, was a different case. Langmaid found himself going
+back to the days when his mother had taken him to church, and he could
+not bear to look at, Hodder. Since six o'clock that afternoon--had his
+companions but known it--he had passed through one of the worst periods
+of his existence. . . .
+
+After the regular business had been disposed of a brief interval was
+allowed, for the sake of decency, to ensue. That Eldon Parr would not
+lead the charge in person was a foregone conclusion. Whom, then, would
+he put forward? For obvious reasons, not Wallis Plimpton or Langmaid,
+nor Francis Ferguson. Hodder found his, glance unconsciously fixed upon
+Everett Constable, who, moved nervously and slowly pushed back his chair.
+He was called upon, in this hour and in the church his father had helped
+to found, to make the supreme payment for the years of financial
+prosperity. Although a little man, with his shoulders thrown back and
+his head high, he generally looked impressive when he spoke, and his fine
+features and clear-cut English contributed to the effect. But now his
+face was strained, and his voice seemed to lack command as he bowed and
+mentioned the rector's name. Eldon Parr sat back.
+
+"Gentlemen," Mr. Constable began, "I feel it my duty to say something
+this evening, something that distresses me. Like some of you who are
+here present, I have been on this vestry for many years, and my father
+was on it before me. I was brought up under Dr. Gilman, of whom I need
+not speak. All here, except our present rector, knew him. This church,
+St. John's, has been a part--a--large part--of my life. And anything
+that seems to touch its welfare, touches me.
+
+"When Dr. Gilman died, after so many years of faithful service, we faced
+a grave problem,--that of obtaining a young man of ability, an active man
+who would be able to assume the responsibilities of a large and growing
+parish, and at the same time carry on its traditions, precious to us all;
+one who believed in and preached, I need scarcely add, the accepted
+doctrines of the Church, which we have been taught to think are sacred
+and necessary to salvation. And in the discovery of the Reverend Mr.
+Hodder, we had reason to congratulate ourselves and the parish. He was
+all that we had hoped for, and more. His sermons were at once a pleasure
+and an instruction.
+
+"I wish to make it clear," he continued, "that in spite of the pain Mr.
+Hodder's words of last Sunday have given me, I respect and honour him
+still, and wish him every success. But, gentlemen, I think it is plain
+to all of you that he has changed his religious convictions. As to the
+causes through which that change has come about, I do not pretend to
+know. To say the least, the transition is a startling one, one for which
+some of us were totally unprepared. To speak restrainedly, it was a
+shock--a shock which I shall remember as long as I live.
+
+"I need not go into the doctrinal question here, except to express my
+opinion that the fundamental facts of our religion were contradicted.
+And we have also to consider the effect of this preaching on coming
+generations for whom we are responsible. There are, no doubt, other
+fields for Mr. Hodder's usefulness. But I think it may safely be taken
+as a principle that this parish has the right to demand from the pulpit
+that orthodox teaching which suits it, and to which it has been
+accustomed. And I venture further to give it as my opinion--to put it
+mildly that others have been as disturbed and shocked as I. I have seen
+many, talked with many, since Sunday. For these reasons, with much
+sorrow and regret, I venture to suggest to the vestry that Mr. Hodder
+resign as our rector. And I may add what I believe to be the feeling
+of all present, that we have nothing but good will for him, although
+we think we might have been informed of what he intended to do.
+
+"And that in requesting him to resign we are acting for his own good as
+well as our own, and are thus avoiding a situation which threatens to
+become impossible,--one which would bring serious reflection on him and
+calamity on the church. We already, in certain articles in the
+newspapers, have had an indication of the intolerable notoriety we may
+expect, although I hold Mr. Hodder innocent in regard to those articles.
+I am sure he will have the good sense to see this situation as I see it,
+as the majority of the parish see it."
+
+Mr. Constable sat down, breathing hard. He had not looked at the rector
+during the whole of his speech, nor at Eldon Parr. There was a heavy
+silence, and then Philip Goodrich rose, square, clean-cut, aggressive.
+
+"I, too, gentlemen, have had life-long association with this church," he
+began deliberately. "And for Mr. Hodder's sake I am going to give you a
+little of my personal history, because I think it typical of thousands of
+men of my age all over this country. It was nobody's fault, perhaps,
+that I was taught that the Christian religion depended on a certain
+series of nature miracles and a chain of historical events, and when I
+went East to school I had more of this same sort of instruction. I have
+never, perhaps, been overburdened with intellect, but the time arrived
+nevertheless when I began to think for myself. Some of the older boys
+went once, I remember, to the rector of the school--a dear old man--and
+frankly stated our troubles. To use a modern expression, he stood pat on
+everything. I do not say it was a consciously criminal act, he probably
+saw no way out himself. At any rate, he made us all agnostics at one
+stroke.
+
+"What I learned in college of science and history and philosophy merely
+confirmed me in my agnosticism. As a complete system for the making of
+atheists and materialists, I commend the education which I received. If
+there is any man here who believes religion to be an essential factor in
+life, I ask him to think of his children or grandchildren before he comes
+forward to the support of Mr. Constable.
+
+"In that sermon which he preached last Sunday, Mr. Hodder, for the first
+time in my life, made Christianity intelligible to me. I want him to
+know it. And there are other men and women in that congregation who
+feel as I do. Gentlemen, there is nothing I would not give to have had
+Christianity put before me in that simple and inspiring way when I was
+a boy. And in my opinion St. John's is more fortunate to-day than it
+ever has been in its existence. Mr. Hodder should have an unanimous
+testimonial of appreciation from this vestry for his courage. And if the
+vote requesting him to resign prevails, I venture to predict that there
+is not a man on this vestry who will not live to regret it."
+
+Phil Goodrich glared at Eldon Parr, who remained unmoved.
+
+"Permit me to add," he said, "that this controversy, in other respects
+than doctrine, is more befitting to the Middle Ages than to the twentieth
+century, when this Church and other denominations are passing resolutions
+in their national conventions with a view to unity and freedom of
+belief."
+
+Mr. Langmaid, Mr. Plimpton, and Mr. Constable sat still. Mr. Ferguson
+made no move. It was Gordon Atterbury who rushed into the breach, and
+proved that the extremists are allies of doubtful value.
+
+He had, apparently, not been idle since Sunday, and was armed cap-a pie
+with time-worn arguments that need not be set down. All of which went to
+show that Mr. Goodrich had not referred to the Middle Ages in vain. For
+Gordon Atterbury was a born school-man. But he finished by declaring, at
+the end of twenty minutes (much as he regretted the necessity of saying
+it), that Mr. Hodder's continuance as rector would mean the ruin of the
+church in which all present took such a pride. That the great majority
+of its members would never submit to what was so plainly heresy.
+
+It was then that Mr. Plimpton gathered courage to pour oil on the waters.
+There was nothing, in his opinion, he remarked smilingly, in his function
+as peacemaker, to warrant anything but the most friendly interchange of
+views. He was second to none in his regard for Mr. Hodder, in his
+admiration for a man who had the courage of his convictions. He had not
+the least doubt that Mr. Hodder did not desire to remain in the parish
+when it was so apparent that the doctrines which he now preached were not
+acceptable to most of those who supported the church. And he added (with
+sublime magnanimity) that he wished Mr. Hodder the success which he was
+sure he deserved, and gave him every assurance of his friendship.
+
+Asa Waring was about to rise, when he perceived that Hodder himself was
+on his feet. And the eyes of every man, save one, were fixed on him
+irresistibly. The rector seemed unaware of it. It was Philip Goodrich
+who remarked to his father-in-law, as they walked home afterwards, of the
+sense he had had at that moment that there were just two men in the
+room,--Hodder and Eldon Parr. All the rest were ciphers; all had lost,
+momentarily, their feelings of partisanship and were conscious only of
+these two intense, radiating, opposing centres of force; and no man,
+oddly enough, could say which was the stronger. They seemingly met on
+equal terms. There could not be the slightest doubt that the rector did
+not mean to yield, and yet they might have been puzzled if they had asked
+themselves how they had read the fact in his face or manner. For he
+betrayed neither anger nor impatience.
+
+No more did the financier reveal his own feelings. He still sat back in
+his chair, unmoved, in apparent contemplation. The posture was familiar
+to Langmaid.
+
+Would he destroy, too, this clergyman? For the first time in his life,
+and as he looked at Hodder, the lawyer wondered. Hodder did not defend
+himself, made no apologies. Christianity was not a collection of
+doctrines, he reminded them,--but a mode of life. If anything were clear
+to him, it was that the present situation was not, with the majority of
+them, a matter of doctrines, but of unwillingness to accept the message
+and precept of Jesus Christ, and lead Christian lives. They had made use
+of the doctrines as a stalking-horse.
+
+There was a stir at this, and Hodder paused a moment and glanced around
+the table. But no one interrupted.
+
+He was fully aware of his rights, and he had no intention of resigning.
+To resign would be to abandon the work for which he was responsible, not
+to them, but to God. And he was perfectly willing--nay, eager to defend
+his Christianity before any ecclesiastical court, should the bishop
+decide that a court was necessary. The day of freedom, of a truer vision
+was at hand, the day of Christian unity on the vital truths, and no
+better proof of it could be brought forward than the change in him.
+In his ignorance and blindness he had hitherto permitted compromise, but
+he would no longer allow those who made only an outward pretence of being
+Christians to direct the spiritual affairs of St. John's, to say what
+should and what should not be preached. This was to continue to paralyze
+the usefulness of the church, to set at naught her mission, to alienate
+those who most had need of her, who hungered and thirsted after
+righteousness, and went away unsatisfied.
+
+He had hardly resumed his seat when Everett Constable got up again. He
+remarked, somewhat unsteadily, that to prolong the controversy would be
+useless and painful to all concerned, and he infinitely regretted the
+necessity of putting his suggestion that the rector resign in the form of
+a resolution . . . . The vote was taken. Six men raised their hands
+in favour of his resignation--Nelson Langmaid among them: two, Asa Waring
+and Philip Goodrich, were against it. After announcing the result,
+Hodder rose.
+
+"For the reason I have stated, gentlemen, I decline to resign," he said.
+"I stand upon my canonical rights."
+
+Francis Ferguson arose, his voice actually trembling with anger. There
+is something uncanny in the passion of a man whose life has been ordered
+by the inexorable rules of commerce, who has been wont to decide all
+questions from the standpoint of dollars and cents. If one of his own
+wax models had suddenly become animated, the effect could not have been
+more startling.
+
+In the course of this discussion, he declared, Mr. Hodder had seen fit to
+make grave and in his opinion unwarranted charges concerning the lives of
+some, if not all, of the gentlemen who sat here. It surprised him that
+these remarks had not been resented, but he praised a Christian
+forbearance on the part of his colleagues which he was unable to achieve.
+He had no doubt that their object had been to spare Mr. Hodder's feelings
+as much as possible, but Mr. Hodder had shown no disposition to spare
+their own. He had outraged them, Mr. Ferguson thought,--wantonly so.
+He had made these preposterous and unchristian charges an excuse for his
+determination to remain in a position where his usefulness had ceased.
+
+No one, unfortunately, was perfect in this life,--not even Mr. Hodder.
+He, Francis Ferguson, was far from claiming to be so. But he believed
+that this arraignment of the men who stood highest in the city for
+decency, law, and order, who supported the Church, who revered its
+doctrines, who tried to live Christian lives, who gave their time and
+their money freely to it and to charities, that this arraignment was an
+arrogant accusation and affront to be repudiated. He demanded that Mr.
+Hodder be definite. If he had any charges to make, let him make them
+here and now.
+
+The consternation, the horror which succeeded such a stupid and
+unexpected tactical blunder on the part of the usually astute
+Mr. Ferguson were felt rather than visually discerned. The atmosphere
+might have been described as panicky. Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich
+smiled as Wallis Plimpton, after a moment's hush, scrambled to his feet,
+his face pale, his customary easiness and nonchalance now the result of
+an obvious effort. He, too, tried to smile, but swallowed instead as he
+remembered his property in Dalton Street . . . . Nelson Langmaid
+smiled, in spite of himself. . . Mr. Plimpton implored his
+fellow-members not to bring personalities into the debate, and he was
+aware all the while of the curious, pitying expression of the rector. He
+breathed a sigh of relief at the opening words of Hodder, who followed
+him.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I have no intention of being personal, even by
+unanimous consent. But if Mr. Ferguson will come to me after this
+meeting I shall have not the least objection to discussing this matter
+with him in so far as he himself is concerned. I can only assure you
+now that I have not spoken without warrant."
+
+There was, oddly enough, no acceptance of this offer by Mr. Ferguson.
+Another silence ensued, broken, at last, by a voice for which they had
+all been unconsciously waiting; a voice which, though unemotional, cold,
+and matter-of-fact, was nevertheless commanding, and long accustomed to
+speak with an overwhelming authority. Eldon Parr did not rise.
+
+"Mr. Hodder," he said, "in one respect seems to be under the delusion
+that we are still in the Middle Ages, instead of the twentieth century,
+since he assumes the right to meddle with the lives of his parishioners,
+to be the sole judge of their actions. That assumption will not, be
+tolerated by free men. I, for one, gentlemen, do not, propose to have
+a socialist for the rector of the church which I attend and support. And
+I maintain the privilege of an American citizen to set my own standards,
+within the law, and to be the sole arbitrar of those standards."
+
+"Good!" muttered Gordon Atterbury. Langmaid moved uncomfortably.
+
+"I shall not waste words," the financier continued. "There is in my
+mind no question that we are justified in demanding from our rector the
+Christian doctrines to which we have given our assent, and which are
+stated in the Creeds. That they shall be subject to the whims of the
+rector is beyond argument. I do not pretend to, understand either,
+gentlemen, the nature of the extraordinary change that has taken place
+in the rector of St. John's. I am not well versed m psychology. I am
+incapable of flights myself. One effect of this change is an attitude
+on which reasonable considerations would seem to have no effect.
+
+"Our resources, fortunately, are not yet at an end. It has been
+my hope, on account of my former friendship with Mr. Hodder, that an
+ecclesiastical trial might not be necessary. It now seems inevitable.
+In the meantime, since Mr. Hodder has seen fit to remain in spite of
+our protest, I do not intend to enter this church. I was prepared,
+gentlemen, as some of you no doubt know, to spend a considerable sum in
+adding to the beauty of St. John's and to the charitable activities of
+the parish. Mr. Hodder has not disapproved of my gifts in the past, but
+owing to his present scruples concerning my worthiness, I naturally
+hesitate to press the matter now." Mr. Parr indulged in the semblance of
+a smile. "I fear that he must take the responsibility of delaying this
+benefit, with the other responsibilities he has assumed."
+
+His voice changed. It became sharper.
+
+"In short, I propose to withhold all contributions for whatever purpose
+from this church while Mr. Hodder is rector, and I advise those of you
+who have voted for his resignation to do the same. In the meantime,
+I shall give my money to Calvary, and attend its services. And I shall
+offer further a resolution--which I am informed is within our right--to
+discontinue Mr. Hodder's salary."
+
+There was that in the unparalleled audacity of Eldon Parr that compelled
+Hodder's unwilling admiration. He sat gazing at the financier during
+this speech, speculating curiously on the inner consciousness of the man
+who could utter it. Was it possible that he had no sense of guilt? Even
+so, he had shown a remarkable astuteness in relying on the conviction
+that he (Hodder) would not betray what he knew.
+
+He was suddenly aware that Asa Waring was standing beside him.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Waring, "I have listened to this discussion as long
+as I can bear it with patience. Had I been told of it, I should have
+thought it incredible that the methods of the money changers should be
+applied to the direction and control of the house of God. In my opinion
+there is but one word which is suitable for what has passed here
+to-night, and the word is persecution. Perhaps I have lived too long I
+have lived to see honourable, upright men deprived of what was rightfully
+theirs, driven from their livelihood by the rapacity of those who strive
+to concentrate the wealth and power of the nation into their hands.
+I have seen this power gathering strength, stretching its arm little by
+little over the institutions I fought to preserve, and which I cherish
+over our politics, over our government, yes, and even over our courts.
+I have seen it poisoning the business honour in which we formerly took
+such a pride, I have seen it reestablishing a slavery more pernicious
+than that which millions died to efface. I have seen it compel a
+subservience which makes me ashamed, as an American, to witness."
+
+His glance, a withering moral scorn, darted from under the grizzled
+eyebrows and alighted on one man after another, and none met it. Everett
+Constable coughed, Wallis Plimpton shifted his position, the others sat
+like stones. Asa Waring was giving vent at last to the pent-up feelings
+of many years.
+
+"And now that power, which respects nothing, has crept into the sanctuary
+of the Church. Our rector recognizes it, I recognize it,--there is not
+a man here who, in his heart, misunderstands me. And when a man is found
+who has the courage to stand up against it, I honour him with all my
+soul, and a hope that was almost dead revives in me. For there is one
+force, and one force alone, able to overcome the power of which I speak,
+--the Spirit of Christ. And the mission of the Church is to disseminate
+that spirit. The Church is the champion on which we have to rely, or
+give up all hope of victory. The Church must train the recruits. And if
+the Church herself is betrayed into the hands of the enemy, the battle is
+lost.
+
+"If Mr. Hodder is forced out of this church, it would be better to lock
+the doors. St. John's will be held up, and rightfully, to the scorn of
+the city. All the money in the world will not save her. Though
+crippled, she has survived one disgrace, when she would not give free
+shelter to the man who above all others expressed her true spirit, when
+she drove Horace Bentley from her doors after he had been deprived of the
+fortune which he was spending for his fellow-men. She will not survive
+another.
+
+"I have no doubt Mr. Parr's motion to take from Mr. Hodder his living
+will go through. And still I urge him not to resign. I am not a rich
+man, even when such property as I have is compared to moderate fortunes
+of these days, but I would pay his salary willingly out of my own pocket
+rather than see him go . . . .
+
+"I call the attention of the Chairman," said Eldon Parr, after a certain
+interval in which no one had ventured to speak, "to the motion before the
+vestry relating to the discontinuance of Mr. Hodder's salary."
+
+It was then that the unexpected happened. Gordon Atterbury redeemed
+himself. His respect for Mr. Waring, he said, made him hesitate to take
+issue with him.
+
+He could speak for himself and for a number of people in the congregation
+when he reiterated his opinion that they were honestly shocked at what
+Mr. Hodder had preached, and that this was his sole motive in requesting
+Mr. Hodder to resign. He thought, under the circumstances, that this was
+a matter which might safely be left with the bishop. He would not vote
+to deprive Mr. Hodder of his salary.
+
+The motion was carried by a vote of five to three. For Eldon Parr well
+knew that his will needed no reenforcement by argument. And this much
+was to be said for him, that after he had entered a battle he never
+hesitated, never under any circumstances reconsidered the probable
+effect of his course.
+
+As for the others, those who had supported him, they were cast in a less
+heroic mould. Even Francis Ferguson. As between the devil and the deep
+sea, he was compelled, with as good a grace as possible, to choose the
+devil. He was utterly unable to contemplate the disaster which might
+ensue if certain financial ties, which were thicker than cables, were
+snapped. But his affection for the devil was not increased by thus being
+led into a charge from which he would willingly have drawn back. Asa
+Waring might mean nothing to Eldon Parr, but he meant a great deal to
+Francis Ferguson, who had by no means forgotten his sensations of
+satisfaction when Mrs. Waring had made her first call in Park Street on
+Francis Ferguson's wife. He left the room in such a state of
+absent-mindedness as actually to pass Mr. Parr in the corridor without
+speaking to him.
+
+The case of Wallis Plimpton was even worse. He had married the Gores,
+but he had sought to bind himself with hoops of steel to the Warings. He
+had always secretly admired that old Roman quality (which the Goodriches
+--their connections--shared) of holding fast to their course unmindful
+and rather scornful of influence which swayed their neighbours. The clan
+was sufficient unto itself, satisfied with a moderate prosperity and a
+continually increasing number of descendants. The name was unstained.
+Such are the strange incongruities in the hearts of men, that few
+realized the extent to which Wallis Plimpton had partaken of the general
+hero-worship of Phil Goodrich. He had assiduously cultivated his regard,
+at times discreetly boasted of it, and yet had never been sure of it.
+And now fate, in the form of his master, Eldon Parr had ironically
+compelled him at one stroke to undo the work of years. As soon as the
+meeting broke up, he crossed the room.
+
+"I can't tell you how much I regret this, Phil," he said. "Charlotte has
+very strong convictions, you know, and so have I. You can understand, I
+am sure, how certain articles of belief might be necessary to one person,
+and not to another."
+
+"Yes," said Phil, "I can understand. We needn't mention the articles,
+Wallis." And he turned his back.
+
+He never knew the pain he inflicted. Wallis Plimpton looked at the
+rector, who stood talking to Mr. Waring, and for the first time in his
+life recoiled from an overture.
+
+Something in the faces of both men warned him away.
+
+Even Everett Constable, as they went home in the cars together, was brief
+with him, and passed no comments when Mr. Plimpton recovered sufficiently
+to elaborate on the justification of their act, and upon the
+extraordinary stand taken by Phil Goodrich and Mr. Waring.
+
+"They might have told us what they were going to do."
+
+Everett Constable eyed him.
+
+"Would it have made any difference, Plimpton?" he demanded.
+
+After that they rode in silence, until they came to a certain West End
+corner, where they both descended. Little Mr. Constable's sensations
+were, if anything, less enviable, and he had not Mr. Plimpton's
+recuperative powers.  He had sold that night, for a mess of pottage,
+the friendship and respect of three generations. And he had fought,
+for pay, against his own people.
+
+And lastly, there was Langmaid, whose feelings almost defy analysis. He
+chose to walk through the still night the four miles--that separated him
+from his home. And he went back over the years of his life until he
+found, in the rubbish of the past, a forgotten and tarnished jewel. The
+discovery pained him. For that jewel was the ideal he had carried away,
+as a youth, from the old law school at the bottom of Hamilton Place,
+--a gift from no less a man than the great lawyer and public-spirited
+citizen, Judge Henry Goodrich--Philip Goodrich's grandfather, whose
+seated statue marked the entrance of the library. He, Nelson Langmaid,
+--had gone forth from that school resolved to follow in the footsteps
+of that man,--but somehow he missed the path. Somehow the jewel had lost
+its fire. There had come a tempting offer, and a struggle--just one:
+a readjustment on the plea that the world had changed since the days of
+Judge Goodrich, whose uncompromising figure had begun to fade: an
+exciting discovery that he, Nelson Langmaid, possessed the gift of
+drawing up agreements which had the faculty of passing magically through
+the meshes of the Statutes. Affluence had followed, and fame, and even
+that high office which the Judge himself had held, the Presidency of the
+State Bar Association. In all that time, one remark, which he had tried
+to forget, had cut him to the quick. Bedloe Hubbell had said on the
+political platform that Langmaid got one hundred thousand dollars a year
+for keeping Eldon Parr out of jail.
+
+Once he stopped in the street, his mind suddenly going back to the action
+of the financier at the vestry meeting.
+
+"Confound him!" he said aloud, "he has been a fool for once. I told him
+not to do it."
+
+He stood at last in the ample vestibule of his house, singling out his
+latch-key, when suddenly the door opened, and his daughter Helen
+appeared.
+
+"Oh, dad," she cried, "why are you so-late? I've been watching for you.
+I know you've let Mr. Hodder stay."
+
+She gazed at him with widened eyes.
+
+"Don't tell me that you've made him resign. I can't--I won't believe
+it."
+
+"He isn't going to resign, Helen," Langmaid replied, in an odd voice.
+
+"He--he refused to."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
+
+
+I
+
+The Church of St. John's, after a peaceful existence of so many years,
+had suddenly become the stage on which rapid and bewildering dramas were
+played: the storm-centre of chaotic forces, hitherto unperceived, drawn
+from the atmosphere around her. For there had been more publicity, more
+advertising. "The Rector of St. John's will not talk"--such had been
+one headline: neither would the vestry talk. And yet, despite all this
+secrecy, the whole story of the suspension of Hodder's salary was in
+print, and an editorial (which was sent to him) from a popular and
+sensational journal, on "tainted money," in which Hodder was held up
+to the public as a martyr because he refused any longer to accept for
+the Church ill-gotten gains from Consolidated Tractions and the like.
+
+This had opened again the floodgates of the mails, and it seemed as
+though every person who had a real or fancied grievance against Eldon
+Parr had written him. Nor did others of his congregation escape. The
+press of visitors at the parish house suddenly increased once more,
+men and women came to pour into his ears an appalling aeries of
+confessions; wrongs which, like Garvin's, had engendered bitter hatreds;
+woes, temptations, bewilderments. Hodder strove to keep his feet, sought
+wisdom to deal patiently with all, though at times he was tried to the
+uttermost. And he held steadfastly before his mind the great thing, that
+they did come. It was what he had longed for, prayed for, despaired of.
+He was no longer crying in the empty wilderness, but at last in touch-in
+natural touch with life: with life in all its sorrow, its crudity and
+horror. He had contrived, by the grace of God, to make the connection
+for his church.
+
+That church might have been likened to a ship sailing out of the snug
+harbour in which she had lain so long to range herself gallantly beside
+those whom she had formerly beheld, with complacent cowardice, fighting
+her fight: young men and women, enlisted under other banners than her
+own, doing their part in the battle of the twentieth century for
+humanity. Her rector was her captain. It was he who had cut her cables,
+quelled, for a time at least, her mutineers; and sought to hearten those
+of her little crew who wavered, who shrank back appalled as they realized
+something of the immensity of the conflict in which her destiny was to be
+wrought out.
+
+To carry on the figure, Philip Goodrich might have been deemed her first
+officer. He, at least, was not appalled, but grimly conscious of the
+greatness of the task to which they had set their hands. The sudden
+transformation of conservative St. John's was no more amazing than that
+of the son of a family which had never been without influence in the
+community. But that influence had always been conservative. And Phil
+Goodrich had hitherto taken but a listless interest in the church of his
+fathers. Fortune had smiled upon him, trusts had come to him unsought.
+He had inherited the family talent for the law, the freedom to practise
+when and where he chose. His love of active sport had led him into many
+vacations, when he tramped through marsh and thicket after game, and at
+five and forty there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his hard
+body. In spite of his plain speaking, an overwhelming popularity at
+college had followed him to his native place, and no organization,
+sporting or serious, was formed in the city that the question was not
+asked, "What does Goodrich think about it?"
+
+His whole-souled enlistment in the cause of what was regarded as radical
+religion became, therefore, the subject of amazed comment in the many
+clubs he now neglected. The "squabble" in St. John's, as it was
+generally referred to, had been aired in the press, but such was the
+magic in a name made without conscious effort that Phil Goodrich's
+participation in the struggle had a palpably disarming effect: and there
+were not a few men who commonly spent their Sunday mornings behind
+plate-glass windows, surrounded by newspapers, as well as some in the
+athletic club (whose contests Mr. Goodrich sometimes refereed) who went
+to St. John's out of curiosity and who waited, afterwards, for an
+interview with Phil or the rector. The remark of one of these was typical
+of others. He had never taken much stock in religion, but if Goodrich
+went in for it he thought he'd go and look it over.
+
+Scarcely a day passed that Phil did not drop in at the parish house....
+And he set himself, with all the vigour of an unsquandered manhood, to
+help Hodder to solve the multitude of new problems by which they were
+beset.
+
+A free church was a magnificent ideal, but how was it to be carried on
+without an Eldon Parr, a Ferguson, a Constable, a Mrs. Larrabbee, or a
+Gore who would make up the deficit at the end of the year? Could weekly
+contributions, on the envelope system, be relied upon, provided the
+people continued to come and fill the pews of absent and outraged
+parishioners? The music was the most expensive in the city, although
+Mr. Taylor, the organist, had come to the rector and offered to cut his
+salary in half, and to leave that in abeyance until the finances could be
+adjusted. And his example had been followed by some of the high-paid men
+in the choir. Others had offered to sing without pay. And there were
+the expenses of the parish house, an alarming sum now Eldon Parr had
+withdrawn: the salaries of the assistants. Hodder, who had saved a
+certain sum in past years, would take nothing for the present . . . .
+Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich borrowed on their own responsibility . . .
+
+
+
+II
+
+Something of the overwhelming nature of the forces Hodder had summoned
+was visibly apparent on that first Sunday after what many had called his
+apostasy. Instead of the orderly, sprucely-dressed groups of people
+which were wont to linger in greetings before the doors of St. John's,
+a motley crowd thronged the pavement and streamed into the church,
+pressing up the aisles and invading the sacred precincts where decorous
+parishioners had for so many years knelt in comfort and seclusion.
+The familiar figure of Gordon Atterbury was nowhere to be seen, and the
+Atterbury pew was occupied by shop-girls in gaudy hats. Eldon Parr's pew
+was filled, Everett Constable's, Wallis Plimpton's; and the ushers who
+had hastily been mustered were awestricken and powerless. Such a
+resistless invasion by the hordes of the unknown might well have struck
+with terror some of those who hitherto had had the courage to standup
+loyally in the rector's support. It had a distinct flavour of
+revolution: contained, for some, a grim suggestion of a time when that
+vague, irresponsible, and restless monster, the mob, would rise in its
+might and brutally and inexorably take possession of all property.
+
+Alison had met Eleanor Goodrich in Burton Street, and as the two made
+their way into the crowded vestibule they encountered Martha Preston,
+whose husband was Alison's cousin, in the act of flight.
+
+"You're not going in!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Of course we are."
+
+Mrs. Preston stared at Alison in amazement.
+
+"I didn't know you were still here," she said, irrelevantly. "I'm pretty
+liberal, my dear, as you know,--but this is more than I can stand. Look
+at them!" She drew up her skirts as a woman brushed against her.
+"I believe in the poor coming to church, and all that, but this is mere
+vulgar curiosity, the result of all that odious advertising in the
+newspapers. My pew is filled with them. If I had stayed, I should have
+fainted. I don't know what to think of Mr. Hodder."
+
+"Mr. Hodder is not to blame for the newspapers," replied Alison, warmly.
+She glanced around her at the people pushing past, her eyes shining, her
+colour high, and there was the ring of passion in her voice which had do
+Martha Preston a peculiarly disquieting effect. "I think it's splendid
+that they are here at all! I don't care what brought them."
+
+Mrs. Preston stared again. She was a pretty, intelligent woman, at whose
+dinner table one was sure to hear the discussion of some "modern
+problem": she believed herself to be a socialist. Her eyes sought
+Eleanor Goodrich's, who stood by, alight with excitement.
+
+"But surely you, Eleanor-you're not going in! You'll never be able to
+stand it, even if you find a seat. The few people we know who've come
+are leaving. I just saw the Allan Pendletons."
+
+"Have you seen Phil?" Eleanor asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, he's in there, and even he's helpless. And as I came out poor
+Mr. Bradley was jammed up against the wall. He seemed perfectly stunned
+. . . ."
+
+At this moment they were thrust apart. Eleanor quivered as she was
+carried through the swinging doors into the church.
+
+"I think you're right," she whispered to Alison, "it is splendid.
+There's something about it that takes hold of me, that carries one away.
+It makes me wonder how it can be guided--what will come of it?"
+
+They caught sight of Phil pushing his way towards them, and his face bore
+the set look of belligerency which Eleanor knew so well, but he returned
+her smile. Alison's heart warmed towards him.
+
+"What do you think of this?" he demanded. "Most of our respectable
+friends who dared to come have left in a towering rage--to institute
+lawsuits, probably. At tiny rate, strangers are not being made to wait
+until ten minutes after the service begins. That's one barbarous custom
+abolished."
+
+"Strangers seem to have taken matters in their own hands for once"
+Eleanor smiled. "We've made up our minds to stay, Phil, even if we have
+to stand."
+
+"That's the right spirit," declared her husband, glancing at Alison, who
+had remained silent, with approval and by no means a concealed surprise.
+"I think I know of a place where I can squeeze you in, near Professor
+Bridges and Sally, on the side aisle."
+
+"Are George and Sally here?" Eleanor exclaimed.
+
+"Hodder," said Phil, "is converting the heathen. You couldn't have kept
+George away. And it was George who made Sally stay!"
+
+Presently they found themselves established between a rawboned young
+workingman who smelled strongly of soap, whose hair was plastered tightly
+against his forehead, and a young woman who leaned against the wall. The
+black in which she was dressed enhanced the whiteness and weariness of
+her face, and she sat gazing ahead of her, apparently unconscious of
+those who surrounded her, her hands tightly folded in her lap. In their
+immediate vicinity, indeed, might have been found all the variety of type
+seen in the ordinary street car. And in truth there were some who seemed
+scarcely to realize they were not in a public vehicle. An elaborately
+dressed female in front of them, whose expansive hat brushed her
+neighbours, made audible comments to a stout man with a red neck which
+was set in a crease above his low collar.
+
+"They tell me Eldon Parr's pew has a gold plate on it. I wish I knew
+which it was. It ain't this one, anyway, I'll bet."
+
+"Say, they march in in this kind of a church, don't they?" some one said
+behind them.
+
+Eleanor, with her lips tightly pressed, opened her prayer book. Alison's
+lips were slightly parted as she gazed about her, across the aisle. Her
+experience of the Sunday before, deep and tense as it had been, seemed as
+nothing compared to this; the presence of all these people stimulated her
+inexpressibly, fired her; and she felt the blood pulsing through her
+body as she contrasted this gathering with the dignified, scattered
+congregation she had known. She scarcely recognized the church itself
+. . . She speculated on the homes from which these had come, and the
+motives which had brought them.
+
+For a second the perfume of the woman in front, mingling with other less
+definable odours, almost sickened her, evoking suggestions of tawdry,
+trivial, vulgar lives, fed on sensation and excitement; but the feeling
+was almost immediately swept away by a renewed sense of the bigness of
+the thing which she beheld,--of which, indeed, she was a part. And her
+thoughts turned more definitely to the man who had brought it all about.
+Could he control it, subdue it? Here was Opportunity suddenly upon him,
+like a huge, curving, ponderous wave. Could he ride it? or would it
+crush him remorselessly?
+
+Sensitive, alert, quickened as she was, she began to be aware of other
+values: of the intense spiritual hunger in the eyes of the woman in
+black, the yearning of barren, hopeless existences. And here and there
+Alison's look fell upon more prosperous individuals whose expressions
+proclaimed incredulity, a certain cynical amusement at the spectacle:
+others seemed uneasy, as having got more than they had bargained for,
+deliberating whether to flee . . . and then, just as her suspense was
+becoming almost unbearable, the service began. . . .
+
+How it had been accomplished, the thing she later felt, was beyond the
+range of intellectual analysis. Nor could she have told how much later,
+since the passage of time had gone unnoticed. Curiosities, doubts,
+passions, longings, antagonisms--all these seemed--as the most natural
+thing in the world--to have been fused into one common but ineffable
+emotion. Such, at least, was the impression to which Alison startlingly
+awoke. All the while she had been conscious of Hodder, from the moment
+she had heard his voice in the chancel; but somehow this consciousness of
+him had melted, imperceptibly, into that of the great congregation, once
+divided against itself, which had now achieved unity of soul.
+
+The mystery as to how this had been effected was the more elusive when
+she considered the absence of all methods which might have been deemed
+revivalistic. Few of those around her evinced a familiarity with the
+historic service. And then occurred to her his explanation of
+personality as the medium by which all truth is revealed, by which the
+current of religion, the motive power in all history, is transmitted.
+Surely this was the explanation, if it might be called one! That
+tingling sense of a pervading spirit which was his,--and yet not his.
+He was the incandescent medium, and yet, paradoxically, gained in
+identity and individuality and was inseparable from the thing itself.
+
+She could not see him. A pillar hid the chancel from her view.
+
+The service, to which she had objected as archaic, became subordinate,
+spiritualized, dominated by the personality. Hodder had departed from
+the usual custom by giving out the page of the psalter: and the verses,
+the throbbing responses which arose from every corner of the church,
+assumed a new significance, the vision of the ancient seer revived. One
+verse he read resounded with prophecy.
+
+"Thou shalt deliver me from the strivings of the people: and thou shalt
+make me the head of the heathen."
+
+And the reply:
+
+"A people whom I have not known shall serve me."
+
+The working-man next to Alison had no prayer-book. She thrust her own
+into his hand, and they read from it together . . . .
+
+When they came to the second hymn the woman in front of her had
+wonderfully shed her vulgarity. Her voice--a really good one--poured
+itself out:
+
+       "See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
+        See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,
+        In crowding ranks on every side arise,
+        Demanding life, impatient for the skies."
+
+Once Alison would have been critical of the words She was beyond that,
+now. What did it matter, if the essential Thing were present?
+
+The sermon was a surprise. And those who had come for excitement,
+for the sensation of hearing a denunciation of a class they envied and
+therefore hated, and nevertheless strove to imitate, were themselves
+rebuked. Were not their standards the same? And if the standard were
+false, it followed inevitably that the life was false also.
+
+Hodder fairly startled these out of their preconceived notions of
+Christianity. Let them shake out of their minds everything they had
+thought it to mean, churchgoing, acceptance of creed and dogma,
+contributive charity, withdrawal from the world, rites and ceremonies:
+it was none of these.
+
+The motive in the world to-day was the acquisition of property; the
+motive of Christianity was absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to
+this. Shock their practical sense as it might, Christianity looked
+forward with steadfast faith to a time when the incentive to amass
+property would be done away with, since it was a source of evil and
+a curse to mankind. If they would be Christians, let them face that.
+Let them enter into life, into the struggles going on around them to-day
+against greed, corruption, slavery, poverty, vice and crime. Let them
+protest, let them fight, even as Jesus Christ had fought and protested.
+For as sure as they sat there the day would come when they would be
+called to account, would be asked the question--what had they done to
+make the United States of America a better place to live in?
+
+There were in the Apostolic writings and tradition misinterpretations
+of life which had done much harm. Early Christianity had kept its eyes
+fixed on another world, and had ignored this: had overlooked the fact
+that every man and woman was put here to do a particular work. In the
+first epistle of Peter the advice was given, "submit yourselves to every
+ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." But Christ had preached
+democracy, responsibility, had foreseen a millennium, the fulfilment of
+his Kingdom, when all men, inspired by the Spirit, would make and keep
+in spirit the ordinances of God.
+
+Before they could do God's work and man's work they must first be
+awakened, filled with desire. Desire was power. And he prayed that some
+of them, on this day, would receive that desire, that power which nothing
+could resist. The desire which would lead each and every one to the
+gates of the Inner World which was limitless and eternal, filled with
+dazzling light . . . .
+
+Let them have faith then. Not credulity in a vague God they could not
+imagine, but faith in the Spirit of the Universe, humanity, in Jesus
+Christ who had been the complete human revelation of that Spirit, who had
+suffered and died that man might not live in ignorance of it. To doubt
+humanity,--such was the Great Refusal, the sin against the Holy Ghost,
+the repudiation of the only true God!
+
+After a pause, he spoke simply of his hope for St. John's. If he
+remained here his ambition was that it would be the free temple of
+humanity, of Jesus Christ, supported not by a few, but by all,--each in
+accordance with his means. Of those who could afford nothing, nothing
+would be required. Perhaps this did not sound practical, nor would it be
+so if the transforming inspiration failed. He could only trust and try,
+hold up to them the vision of the Church as a community of willing
+workers for the Kingdom . . .
+
+
+
+III
+
+After the service was over the people lingered in the church, standing in
+the pews and aisles, as though loath to leave. The woman with the
+perfume and the elaborate hat was heard to utter a succinct remark.
+
+"Say, Charlie, I guess he's all right. I never had it put like that."
+
+The thick-necked man's reply was inaudible.
+
+Eleanor Goodrich was silent and a little pale as she pressed close to
+Alison. Her imagination had been stretched, as it were, and she was
+still held in awe by the vastness of what she had heard and seen. Vaster
+even than ever,--so it appeared now,--demanding greater sacrifices than
+she had dreamed of. She looked back upon the old as at receding shores.
+
+Alison, with absorbed fascination, watched the people; encountered, here
+and there, recognitions from men and women with whom she had once danced
+and dined in what now seemed a previous existence. Why had they come?
+and how had they received the message? She ran into a little man, a
+dealer in artists' supplies who once had sold her paints and brushes, who
+stared and bowed uncertainly. She surprised him by taking his hand.
+
+"Did you like it?" she asked, impulsively.
+
+"It's what I've been thinking for years, Miss Parr," he responded,
+"thinking and feeling. But I never knew it was Christianity. And I
+never thought--" he stopped and looked at her, alarmed.
+
+"Oh," she said, "I believe in it, too--or try to."
+
+She left him, mentally gasping . . . . Without, on the sidewalk,
+Eleanor Goodrich was engaged in conversation with a stockily built man,
+inclined to stoutness; he had a brown face and a clipped, bristly
+mustache. Alison paused involuntarily, and saw him start and hesitate
+as his clear, direct gaze met her own.
+
+Bedloe Hubbell was one of those who had once sought to marry her. She
+recalled him as an amiable and aimless boy; and after she had gone East
+she had received with incredulity and then with amusement the news of his
+venture into altruistic politics. It was his efficiency she had doubted,
+not his sincerity. Later tidings, contemptuous and eventually irritable
+utterances of her own father, together with accounts in the New York
+newspapers of his campaign, had convinced her in spite of herself that
+Bedloe Hubbell had actually shaken the seats of power. And somehow, as
+she now took him in, he looked it.
+
+His transformation was one of the signs, one of the mysteries of the
+times. The ridicule and abuse of the press, the opposition and enmity of
+his childhood friends, had developed the man of force she now beheld, and
+who came forward to greet her.
+
+"Alison!" he exclaimed. He had changed in one sense, and not in another.
+Her colour deepened as the sound of his voice brought back the lapsed
+memories of the old intimacy. For she had been kind to him, kinder than
+to any other; and the news of his marriage--to a woman from the Pacific
+coast--had actually induced in her certain longings and regrets. When
+the cards had reached her, New York and the excitement of the life into
+which she had been weakly, if somewhat unwittingly, drawn had already
+begun to pall.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you," she told him. "I've heard--so many things.
+And I'm very much in sympathy with what you're doing."
+
+They crossed the street, and walked away from the church together. She
+had surprised him, and made him uncomfortable.
+
+"You've been away so long," he managed to say, "perhaps you do not
+realize--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do," she interrupted. "I am on the other side, on your side.
+I thought of writing you, when you nearly won last autumn."
+
+"You see it, too?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I've changed, too. Not so much as you," she added, shyly.
+"I always had a certain sympathy, you know, with the Robin Hoods."
+
+He laughed at her designation, both pleased and taken aback by her
+praise. . . But he wondered if she knew the extent of his criticism
+of her father.
+
+"That rector is a wonderful man," he broke out, irrelevantly. "I can't
+get over' him--I can't quite grasp the fact that he exists, that he has
+dared to do what he has done."
+
+This brought her colour back, but she faced him bravely. You think he is
+wonderful, then?"
+
+"Don't you?" he demanded.
+
+She assented. "But I am curious to know why you do. Somehow, I never
+thought of--you--"
+
+"As religious," he supplied. "And you? If I remember rightly--"
+
+"Yes," she interrupted, "I revolted, too. But Mr. Hodder puts it so
+--it makes one wonder."
+
+"He has not only made me wonder," declared Bedloe Hubbell, emphatically,
+"I never knew what religion was until I heard this man last Sunday."
+
+"Last Sunday!"
+
+"Until then, I hadn't been inside of a church for fifteen years,--except
+to get married. My wife takes the children, occasionally, to a
+Presbyterian church near us."
+
+"And why, did you go then?" she asked.
+
+"I am a little ashamed of my motive," he confessed. "There were rumours
+--I don't pretend to know how they got about--" he hesitated, once more
+aware of delicate ground. "Wallis Plimpton said something to a man who
+told me. I believe I went out of sheer curiosity to hear what Hodder
+would have to say. And then, I had been reading, wondering whether there
+were anything in Christianity, after all."
+
+"Yes?" she said, careless now as to what cause he might attribute her
+eagerness. "And he gave you something?"
+
+It was then she grasped the truth that this sudden renewed intimacy was
+the result of the impression Hodder had left upon the minds of both.
+
+"He gave me everything," Bedloe Hubbell replied. "I am willing to
+acknowledge it freely. In his explanation of the parable of the Prodigal
+Son, he gave me the clew to our modern times. What was for me an
+inextricable puzzle has become clear as day. He has made me understand,
+at last, the force which stirred me, which goaded me until I was fairly
+compelled to embark in the movement which the majority of our citizens
+still continue to regard as quixotic. I did not identify that force with
+religion, then, and when I looked back on the first crazy campaign we
+embarked upon, with the whole city laughing at me and at the obscure
+and impractical personnel we had, there were moments when it seemed
+incomprehensible folly. I had nothing to gain, and everything to lose by
+such a venture. I was lazy and easy-going, as you know. I belonged to
+the privileged class, I had sufficient money to live in comparative
+luxury all my days, I had no grudge against these men whom I had known
+all my life."
+
+"But it must have had some beginning," said Alison.
+
+"I was urged to run for the city council, by these very men." Bedloe
+Hubbell smiled at the recollection. "They accuse me now of having
+indulged once in the same practice, for which I am condemning them.
+Our company did accept rebates, and we sought favours from the city
+government. I have confessed it freely on the platform. Even during my
+first few months in the council what may be called the old political
+practices seemed natural to me. But gradually the iniquity of it all
+began to dawn on me, and then I couldn't rest until I had done something
+towards stopping it.
+
+"At length I began to see," he continued, "that education of the masses
+was to be our only preserver, that we should have to sink or swim by
+that. I began to see, dimly, that this was true for other movements
+going on to-day. Now comes Hodder with what I sincerely believe is the
+key. He compels men like me to recognize that our movements are not
+merely moral, but religious. Religion, as yet unidentified, is the force
+behind these portentous stirrings of politics in our country, from sea to
+sea. He aims, not to bring the Church into politics, but to make her the
+feeder of these movements. Men join them to-day from all motives, but
+the religious is the only one to which they may safely be trusted. He
+has rescued the jewel from the dust-heap of tradition, and holds it up,
+shining, before our eyes."
+
+Alison looked at her companion.
+
+"That," she said, "is a very beautiful phrase."
+
+Bedloe Hubbell smiled queerly.
+
+"I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I can't usually talk about
+it. But the sight of that congregation this morning, mixed as it was,
+and the way he managed to weld it together."
+
+"Ah, you noticed that!" she exclaimed sharply.
+
+"Noticed it!"
+
+"I know. It was a question of feeling it."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Will he succeed?" she asked presently.
+
+"Ah," said Bedloe Hubbell, "how is it possible to predict it? The forces
+against him are tremendous, and it is usually the pioneer who suffers.
+I agree absolutely with his definition of faith, I have it. And the work
+he has done already can never be undone. The time is ripe, and it is
+something that he has men like Phil Goodrich behind him, and Mr. Waring.
+I'm going to enlist, and from now on I intend to get every man and woman
+upon whom I have any influence whatever to go to that church . . . ."
+A little later Alison, marvelling, left him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CURRENT OF LIFE
+
+
+I
+
+The year when Hodder had gone east--to Bremerton and Bar Harbor,
+he had read in the train a magazine article which had set fire to his
+imagination. It had to do with the lives of the men, the engineers who
+dared to deal with the wild and terrible power of the western hills, who
+harnessed and conquered roaring rivers, and sent the power hundreds of
+miles over the wilderness, by flimsy wires, to turn the wheels of
+industry and light the dark places of the cities. And, like all men who
+came into touch with elemental mysteries, they had their moments of pure
+ecstasy, gaining a tingling, intenser life from the contact with dynamic
+things; and other moments when, in their struggle for mastery, they were
+buffeted about, scorched, and almost overwhelmed.
+
+In these days the remembrance of that article came back to Hodder.
+It was as though he, too, were seeking to deflect and guide a force
+--the Force of forces. He, too, was buffeted, scorched, and bruised,
+at periods scarce given time to recover himself in the onward rush he
+himself had started, and which he sought to control. Problems arose
+which demanded the quick thinking of emergency. He, too, had his moments
+of reward, the reward of the man who is in touch with reality.
+
+He lived, from day to day, in a bewildering succession of encouragements
+and trials, all unprecedented. If he remained at St. John's, an entire
+new organization would be necessary . . . . He did not as yet see it
+clearly; and in the meantime, with his vestry alienated, awaiting the
+bishop's decision, he could make no definite plans, even if he had had
+the leisure. Wholesale desertions had occurred in the guilds and
+societies, the activities of which had almost ceased. Little Tomkinson,
+the second assistant, had resigned; and McCrae, who worked harder than
+ever before, was already marked, Hodder knew, for dismissal if he himself
+were defeated.
+
+And then there was the ever present question of money. It remained to
+be seen whether a system of voluntary offerings were practicable. For
+Hodder had made some inquiries into the so-called "free churches," only
+to discover that there were benefactors behind them, benefactors the
+Christianity of whose lives was often doubtful.
+
+One morning he received in the mail the long-expected note from the
+bishop, making an appointment for the next day. Hodder, as he read it
+over again, smiled to himself. . . He could gather nothing of the mind
+of the writer from the contents.
+
+The piece of news which came to him on the same morning swept completely
+the contemplations of the approaching interview from his mind. Sally
+Grover stopped in at the parish house on her way to business.
+
+"Kate Marcy's gone," she announced, in her abrupt fashion.
+
+"Gone!" he exclaimed, and stared at her in dismay. "Gone where?"
+
+"That's just it," said Miss Grover. "I wish I knew. I reckon we'd got
+into the habit of trusting her too much, but it seemed the only way. She
+wasn't in her room last night, but Ella Finley didn't find it out until
+this morning, and she ran over scared to death, to tell us about it."
+
+Involuntarily the rector reached for his hat.
+
+"I've sent out word among our friends in Dalton Street," Sally continued.
+An earthquake could not have disturbed her outer, matter-of-fact
+calmness. But Hodder was not deceived: he knew that she was as
+profoundly grieved and discouraged as himself. "And I've got old Gratz,
+the cabinet-maker, on the job. If she's in Dalton Street, he'll find
+her."
+
+"But what--?" Hodder began.
+
+Sally threw up her hands.
+
+"You never can tell, with that kind. But it sticks in my mind she's done
+something foolish."
+
+"Foolish?"
+
+Sally twitched, nervously.
+
+"Somehow I don't think it's a spree--but as I say, you can't tell. She's
+full of impulses. You remember how she frightened us once before, when
+she went off and stayed all night with the woman she used to know in the
+flat house, when she heard she was sick?"
+
+Hodder nodded.
+
+"You've inquired there?"
+
+"That woman went to the hospital, you know. She may be with another one.
+If she is, Gratz ought to find her. . . You know there was a time, Mr.
+Hodder, when I didn't have much hope that we'd pull her through. But we
+got hold of her through her feelings. She'd do anything for Mr. Bentley
+--she'd do anything for you, and the way she stuck to that embroidery was
+fine. I don't say she was cured, but whenever she'd feel one of those
+fits coming on she'd let us know about it, and we'd watch her. And I
+never saw one of that kind change so. Why, she must be almost as good
+looking now as she ever was."
+
+"You don't think she has done anything--desperate?" asked Hodder, slowly.
+
+Sally comprehended.
+
+"Well--somehow I don't. She used to say if she ever got drunk again
+she'd never come back. But she didn't have any money--she's given Mr.
+Bentley every cent of it. And we didn't have any warning. She was as
+cheerful as could be yesterday morning, Mrs. McQuillen says."
+
+"It might not do any harm to notify the police," replied Hodder, rising.
+"I'll go around to headquarters now."
+
+He was glad of the excuse for action. He could not have sat still. And
+as he walked rapidly across Burton Street he realized with a pang how
+much his heart had been set on Kate Marcy's redemption. In spite of the
+fact that every moment of his time during the past fortnight had been
+absorbed by the cares, responsibilities, and trials thrust upon him, he
+reproached himself for not having gone oftener to Dalton Street. And
+yet, if Mr. Bentley and Sally Grower had been unable to foresee and
+prevent this, what could he have done?
+
+At police headquarters he got no news. The chief received him
+deferentially, sympathetically, took down Kate Marcy's description,
+went so far as to remark, sagely, that too much mustn't be expected
+of these women, and said he would notify the rector if she were found.
+The chief knew and admired Mr. Bentley, and declared he was glad to meet
+Mr. Hodder. . . Hodder left, too preoccupied to draw any significance
+from the nature of his welcome. He went at once to Mr. Bentley's.
+
+The old gentleman was inclined to be hopeful, to take Sally Grower's view
+of the matter. . He trusted, he said, Sally's instinct. And Hodder
+came away less uneasy, not a little comforted by a communion which never
+failed to fortify him, to make him marvel at the calmness of that world
+in which his friend lived, a calmness from which no vicarious sorrow was
+excluded. And before Hodder left, Mr. Bentley had drawn from him some
+account of the more recent complexities at the church. The very pressure
+of his hand seemed to impart courage.
+
+"You won't stay and have dinner with me?"
+
+The rector regretfully declined.
+
+"I hear the bishop has returned," said Mr. Bentley, smiling.
+
+Hodder was surprised. He had never heard Mr. Bentley speak of the
+bishop. Of course he must know him.
+
+"I have my talk with him to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Bentley said nothing, but pressed his hand again . . . .
+
+On Tower Street, from the direction of the church, he beheld a young man
+and a young woman approaching him absorbed in conversation. Even at a
+distance both seemed familiar, and presently he identified the lithe and
+dainty figure in the blue dress as that of the daughter of his vestryman,
+Francis Ferguson. Presently she turned her face, alight with animation,
+from her companion, and recognized him.
+
+"It's Mr. Hodder!" she exclaimed, and was suddenly overtaken with a
+crimson shyness. The young man seemed equally embarrassed as they stood
+facing the rector.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't remember me, Mr. Hodder," he said. "I met you at
+Mr. Ferguson's last spring."
+
+Then it came to him. This was the young man who had made the faux pas
+which had caused Mrs. Ferguson so much consternation, and who had so
+manfully apologized afterwards. His puzzled expression relaxed into a
+smile, and he took the young man's hand.
+
+"I was going to write to you," said Nan, as she looked up at the rector
+from under the wide brim of her hat. "Our engagement is to be announced
+Wednesday."
+
+Hodder congratulated them. There was a brief silence, when Nan said
+tremulously:
+
+"We're coming to St. John's!"
+
+"I'm very glad," Hodder replied, gravely. It was one of those
+compensating moments, for him, when his tribulations vanished; and the
+tributes of the younger generation were those to which his heart most
+freely responded. But the situation, in view of the attitude of Francis
+Ferguson, was too delicate to be dwelt upon.
+
+"I came to hear you last Sunday, Mr. Hodder," the young man volunteered,
+with that mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness which often
+characterize his sex and age in referring to such matters. "And I had
+an idea of writing you, too, to tell you how much I liked what you said.
+But I know you must have had many letters. You've made me think."
+
+He flushed, but met the rector's eye. Nan stood regarding him with
+pride.
+
+"You've made me think, too," she added. "And we intend to pitch in and
+help you, if we can be of any use."
+
+He parted from them, wondering. And it was not until he had reached the
+parish house that it occurred to him that he was as yet unenlightened as
+to the young man's name . . . .
+
+His second reflection brought back to his mind Kate Mercy, for it was
+with a portion of Nan Ferguson's generous check that her board had been
+paid. And he recalled the girl's hope, as she had given it to him, that
+he would find some one in Dalton Street to help . . . .
+
+
+
+II
+
+There might, to the mundane eye, have been an element of the ridiculous
+in the spectacle of the rector of St. John's counting his gains, since he
+had chosen--with every indication of insanity--to bring the pillars of
+his career crashing down on his own head. By no means the least,
+however, of the treasures flung into his lap was the tie which now bound
+him to the Philip Goodriches, which otherwise would never have been
+possible. And as he made his way thither on this particular evening, a
+renewed sense came upon him of his emancipation from the dreary, useless
+hours he had been wont to spend at other dinner tables. That existence
+appeared to him now as the glittering, feverish unreality of a nightmare
+filled with restless women and tired men who drank champagne, thus
+gradually achieving--by the time cigars were reached--an artificial
+vivacity. The caprice and superficiality of the one sex, the inability
+to dwell upon or even penetrate a serious subject, the blindness to what
+was going on around them; the materialism, the money standard of both,
+were nauseating in the retrospect.
+
+How, indeed, had life once appeared so distorted to him, a professed
+servant of humanity, as to lead him in the name of duty into that galley?
+
+Such was the burden of his thought when the homelike front of the
+Goodrich house greeted him in the darkness, its enshrouded windows
+gleaming with friendly light. As the door opened, the merry sound of
+children's laughter floated down the stairs, and it seemed to Hodder as
+though a curse had been lifted. . . . The lintel of this house had
+been marked for salvation, the scourge had passed it by: the scourge of
+social striving which lay like a blight on a free people.
+
+Within, the note of gentility, of that instinctive good taste to which
+many greater mansions aspired in vain, was sustained. The furniture, the
+pictures, the walls and carpets were true expressions of the
+individuality of master and mistress, of the unity of the life lived
+together; and the rector smiled as he detected, in a corner of the hall,
+a sturdy but diminutive hobby-horse--here the final, harmonious touch.
+There was the sound of a scuffle, treble shrieks of ecstasy from above,
+and Eleanor Goodrich came out to welcome him.
+
+"Its Phil," she told him in laughing despair, "he upsets all my
+discipline, and gets them so excited they don't go to sleep for hours..."
+
+Seated in front of the fire in the drawing-room, he found Alison Parr.
+Her coolness, her radiancy, her complete acceptance of the situation, all
+this and more he felt from the moment he touched her hand and looked into
+her face. And never had she so distinctly represented to him the
+mysterious essence of fate. Why she should have made the fourth at this
+intimate gathering, and whether or not she was or had been an especial
+friend of Eleanor Goodrich he did not know. There was no explanation....
+
+A bowl of superb chrysanthemums occupied the centre of the table.
+Eleanor lifted them off and placed them on the sideboard.
+
+"I've got used to looking at Phil," she explained, "and craning is so
+painful."
+
+The effect at first was to increase the intensity of the intimacy. There
+was no reason--he told himself--why Alison's self-possession should have
+been disturbed; and as he glanced at her from time to time he perceived
+that it was not. So completely was she mistress of herself that
+presently he felt a certain faint resentment rising within him,--yet
+he asked himself why she should not have been. It was curious that his
+imagination would not rise, now, to a realization of that intercourse on
+which, at times, his fancy had dwelt with such vividness. The very
+interest, the eagerness with which she took part in their discussions
+seemed to him in the nature of an emphatic repudiation of any ties to him
+which might have been binding.
+
+All this was only, on Hodder's part, to be aware of the startling
+discovery as to how strong his sense of possession had been, and how
+irrational, how unwarranted.
+
+For he had believed himself, as regarding her, to have made the supreme
+renunciation of his life. And the very fact that he had not consulted,
+could not consult her feelings and her attitude made that renunciation no
+less difficult. All effort, all attempt at achievement of the only woman
+for whom he had ever felt the sublime harmony of desire--the harmony of
+the mind and the flesh--was cut off.
+
+To be here, facing her again in such close proximity, was at once a
+pleasure and a torture. And gradually he found himself yielding to the
+pleasure, to the illusion of permanency created by her presence.
+And, when all was said, he had as much to be grateful for as he could
+reasonably have wished; yes, and more. The bond (there was a bond, after
+all!) which united them was unbreakable. They had forged it together.
+The future would take care of itself.
+
+The range of the conversation upon which they at length embarked was a
+tacit acknowledgment of a relationship which now united four persons who,
+six months before, would have believed themselves to have had nothing
+in common. And it was characteristic of the new interest that it
+transcended the limits of the parish of St. John's, touched upon the
+greater affairs to which that parish--if their protest prevailed--would
+now be dedicated. Not that the church was at once mentioned, but subtly
+implied as now enlisted,--and emancipated henceforth from all
+ecclesiastical narrowness . . . . The amazing thing by which Hodder
+was suddenly struck was the naturalness with which Alison seemed to fit
+into the new scheme. It was as though she intended to remain there, and
+had abandoned all intention of returning to the life which apparently she
+had once permanently and definitely chosen....
+
+Bedloe Hubbell's campaign was another topic. And Phil had observed,
+with the earnestness which marked his more serious statements, that it
+wouldn't surprise him if young Carter, Hubbell's candidate for mayor,
+overturned that autumn the Beatty machine.
+
+"Oh, do you think so!" Alison exclaimed with exhilaration.
+
+"They're frightened and out of breath," said Phil, "they had no idea
+that Bedloe would stick after they had licked him in three campaigns.
+Two years ago they tried to buy him off by offering to send him to the
+Senate, and Wallis Plimpton has never got through his head to this why
+he refused."
+
+Plimpton's head, Eleanor declared dryly, was impervious to a certain kind
+of idea.
+
+"I wonder if you know, Mr. Hodder, what an admirer Mr. Hubbell is of
+yours?" Alison asked. "He is most anxious to have a talk with you."
+
+Hodder did not know.
+
+"Well," said Phil, enthusiastically, to the rector, "that's the best
+tribute you've had yet. I can't say that Bedloe was a more unregenerate
+heathen than I was, but he was pretty bad."
+
+This led them, all save Hodder, into comments on the character of the
+congregation the Sunday before, in the midst of which the rector was
+called away to the telephone. Sally Grover had promised to let him know
+whether or not they had found Kate Marcy, and his face was grave when he
+returned . . . . He was still preoccupied, an hour later, when Alison
+arose to go.
+
+"But your carriage isn't here," said Phil, going to the window.
+
+"Oh, I preferred to, walk," she told him, "it isn't far."
+
+
+
+III
+
+A blood-red October moon shed the fulness of its light on the silent
+houses, and the trees, still clinging to leaf, cast black shadows across
+the lawns and deserted streets. The very echoes of their footsteps on
+the pavement seemed to enhance the unreality of their surroundings: Some
+of the residences were already closed for the night, although the hour
+was not late, and the glow behind the blinds of the others was nullified
+by the radiancy from above. To Hodder, the sense of their isolation had
+never been more complete.
+
+Alison, while repudiating the notion that an escort were needed in a
+neighbourhood of such propriety and peace, had not refused his offer to
+accompany her. And Hodder felt instinctively, as he took his place
+beside her, a sense of climax. This situation, like those of the past,
+was not of his own making. It was here; confronting him, and a certain
+inevitable intoxication at being once, more alone with her prevented him
+from forming any policy with which to deal with it. He might either
+trust himself, or else he might not. And as she said, the distance was
+not great. But he could not help wondering, during those first moments
+of silence, whether she comprehended the strength of the temptation to
+which she subjected him . . . .
+
+The night was warm. She wore a coat, which was open, and from time to
+time he caught the gleam of the moonlight on the knotted pearls at her
+throat. Over her head she had flung, mantilla-like, a black lace scarf,
+the effect of which was, in the soft luminosity encircling her, to add to
+the quality of mystery never exhausted. If by acquiescing in his company
+she had owned to a tie between them, the lace shawl falling over the
+tails of her dark hair and framing in its folds her face, had somehow
+made her once more a stranger. Nor was it until she presently looked up
+into his face with a smile that this impression was, if not at once
+wholly dissipated, at least contradicted.
+
+Her question, indeed, was intimate.
+
+"Why did you come with me?"
+
+"Why?" he repeated, taken aback.
+
+"Yes. I'm sure you have something you wish to do, something which
+particularly worries you."
+
+"No," he answered, appraising her intuition of him, "there is nothing I
+can do, to-night. A young woman in whom Mr. Bentley is interested, in
+whom I am interested, has disappeared. But we have taken all the steps
+possible towards finding her."
+
+"It was nothing--more serious, then? That, of course, is serious enough.
+Nothing, I mean, directly affecting your prospects of remaining--where
+you are?"
+
+"No," he answered. He rejoiced fiercely that she should have asked him.
+The question was not bold, but a natural resumption of the old footing
+"Not that I mean to imply," he added, returning her smile, "that those
+prospects' are in any way improved."
+
+"Are they any worse?" she said.
+
+"I see the bishop to-morrow. I have no idea what position he will take.
+But even if he should decide not to recommend me for trial many difficult
+problems still remain to be solved."
+
+"I know. It's fine," she continued, after a moment, "the way you are
+going ahead as if there were no question of your not remaining; and
+getting all those people into the church and influencing them as you did
+when they had come for all sorts of reasons. Do you remember, the first
+time I met you, I told you I could not think of you as a clergyman. I
+cannot now--less than ever."
+
+"What do you think of me as?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know," she considered. "You are unlike any person I have ever
+known. It is curious that I cannot now even think of St. John's as a
+church. You have transformed it into something that seems new. I'm
+afraid I can't describe what I mean, but you have opened it up, let in
+the fresh air, rid it of the musty and deadening atmosphere which I have
+always associated with churches. I wanted to see you, before I went
+away," she went on steadily, "and when Eleanor mentioned that you were
+coming to her house to-night, I asked her to invite me. Do you think me
+shameless?"
+
+The emphasis of his gesture was sufficient. He could not trust himself
+to speak.
+
+"Writing seemed so unsatisfactory, after what you had done for me, and I
+never can express myself in writing. I seem to congeal."
+
+"After what I have done for you!" he exclaimed: "What can I have done?"
+
+"You have done more than you know," she answered, in a low voice.
+"More, I think, than I know. How are such things to be measured, put
+into words? You have effected some change in me which defies analysis,
+a change of attitude,--to attempt to dogmatize it would ruin it. I
+prefer to leave it undefined--not even to call it an acquisition of
+faith. I have faith," she said, simply, "in what you have become, and
+which has made you dare, superbly, to cast everything away. . .
+It is that, more than anything you have said. What you are."
+
+For the instant he lost control of himself.
+
+"What you are," he replied. "Do you realize--can you ever realize what
+your faith in me has been to me?"
+
+She appeared to ignore this.
+
+"I did not mean to say that you have not made many things clear, which
+once were obscure, as I wrote you. You have convinced me that true
+belief, for instance, is the hardest thing in the world, the denial of
+practically all these people, who profess to believe, represent. The
+majority of them insist that humanity is not to be trusted. . ."
+
+They had reached, in an incredibly brief time, the corner of Park Street.
+
+"When are you leaving?" he asked, in a voice that sounded harsh in his
+own ears.
+
+"Come!" she said gently, "I'm not going in yet, for a while."
+
+The Park lay before them, an empty, garden filled with checquered light
+and shadows under the moon. He followed her across the gravel,
+glistening with dew, past the statue of the mute statesman with arm
+upraised, into pastoral stretches--a delectable country which was theirs
+alone. He did not take it in, save as one expression of the breathing
+woman at his side. He was but partly conscious of a direction he had not
+chosen. His blood throbbed violently, and a feeling of actual physical
+faintness was upon him. He was being led, helplessly, all volition gone,
+and the very idea of resistance became chimerical . . . .
+
+There was a seat under a tree, beside a still lake burnished by the moon.
+It seemed as though he could not bear the current of her touch, and yet
+the thought of its removal were less bearable . . . For she had put
+her own hand out, not shyly, but with a movement so fraught with grace,
+so natural that it was but the crowning bestowal.
+
+"Alison!" he cried, "I can't ask it of you. I have no right--"
+
+"You're not asking it," she answered. "It is I who am asking it."
+
+"But I have no future--I may be an outcast to-morrow. I have nothing to
+offer you." He spoke more firmly now, more commandingly.
+
+"Don't you see, dear, that it is just because your future as obscure that
+I can do this? You never would have done it, I know,--and I couldn't
+face that. Don't you understand that I am demanding the great
+sacrifice?"
+
+"Sacrifice!" he repeated. His fingers turned, and closed convulsively on
+hers.
+
+"Yes, sacrifice," she said gently. "Isn't it the braver thing?"
+
+Still he failed to catch her meaning.
+
+"Braver," she explained, with her wonderful courage, "braver if I love
+you, if I need you, if I cannot do without you."
+
+He took her in his arms, crushing her to him in his strength, in one
+ineffable brief moment finding her lips, inhaling the faint perfume of
+her smooth akin. Her lithe figure lay passively against him, in
+marvellous, unbelievable surrender.
+
+"I see what you mean," he said, at length, "I should have been a coward.
+But I could not be sure that you loved me."
+
+So near was her face that he could detect, even under the obscurity of
+the branches, a smile.
+
+"And so I was reduced to this! I threw my pride to the winds," she
+whispered. "But I don't care. I was determined, selfishly, to take
+happiness."
+
+"And to give it," he added, bending down to her. The supreme quality of
+its essence was still to be doubted, a bright star-dust which dazzled
+him, to evaporate before his waking eyes. And, try as he would, he
+could not realize to the full depth the boy of contact with a being whom,
+by discipline, he had trained his mind to look upon as the unattainable.
+They had spoken of the future, yet in these moments any consideration of
+it was blotted out. . . It was only by degrees that he collected
+himself sufficiently to be able to return to it. . . Alison took up
+the thread.
+
+"Surely," she said, "sacrifice is useless unless it means something,
+unless it be a realization. It must be discriminating. And we should
+both of us have remained incomplete if we had not taken--this. You would
+always, I think, have been the one man for me,--but we should have lost
+touch." He felt her tremble. "And I needed you. I have needed you all
+my life--one in whom h might have absolute faith. That is my faith, of
+which I could not tell you awhile ago. Is it--sacrilegious?"
+
+She looked up at him. He shook his head, thinking of his own. It seemed
+the very distillation of the divine. "All my life," she went on, "I have
+been waiting for the one who would risk everything. Oh, if you had
+faltered the least little bit, I don't know what I should have done.
+That would have destroyed what was left of me, put out, I think, the
+flickering fire that remained, instead of fanning it into flame. You
+cannot know how I watched you, how I prayed! I think it was prayer--I am
+sure it was. And it was because you did not falter, because you risked
+all, that you gained me. You have gained only what you yourself made,
+more than I ever was, more than I ever expected to be."
+
+"Alison!" he remonstrated, "you mustn't say that."
+
+She straightened up and gazed at him, taking one of his hands in her
+lithe fingers.
+
+"Oh, but I must! It is the truth. I felt that you cared--women are
+surer in such matters than men. I must conceal nothing from you--nothing
+of my craftiness. Women are crafty, you know. And suppose you fail?
+Ah, I do not mean failure--you cannot fail, now. You have put yourself
+forever beyond failure. But what I mean is, suppose you were compelled
+to leave St. John's, and I came to you then as I have come now, and
+begged to take my place beside you? I was afraid to risk it. I was
+afraid you would not take me, even now, to-night. Do you realize how
+austere you are at times, how you have frightened me?"
+
+"That I should ever have done that!" he said.
+
+"When I looked at you in the pulpit you seemed so far from me, I could
+scarcely bear it. As if I had no share in you, as if you had already
+gone to a place beyond, where I could not go, where I never could. Oh,
+you will take me with you, now,--you won't leave me behind!"
+
+To this cry every fibre of his soul responded. He had thought himself,
+in these minutes, to have known all feelings, all thrills, but now,
+as he gathered her to him again, he was to know still another, the most
+exquisite of all. That it was conferred upon him to give this woman
+protection, to shield and lift her, inspire her as she inspired him--this
+consciousness was the most exquisite of all, transcending all conception
+of the love of woman. And the very fulness of her was beyond him. A
+lifetime were insufficient to exhaust her . . . .
+
+"I wanted to come to you now, John. I want to share your failure, if it
+comes--all your failures. Because they will be victories--don't you see?
+I have never been able to achieve that kind of victory--real victory, by
+myself. I have always succumbed, taken the baser, the easier thing."
+Her cheek was wet. "I wasn't strong enough, by myself, and I never knew
+the stronger one . . . .
+
+"See what my trust in you has been! I knew that you would not refuse me
+in spite of the fact that the world may misunderstand, may sneer at your
+taking me. I knew that you were big enough even for that, when you
+understood it, coming from me. I wanted to be with you, now, that we
+might fight it out together."
+
+"What have I done to deserve so priceless a thing?" he asked.
+
+She smiled at him again, her lip trembling.
+
+"Oh, I'm not priceless, I'm only real, I'm only human--human and tired.
+You are so strong, you can't know how tired. Have you any idea why I
+came out here, this summer? It was because I was desperate--because I
+had almost decided to marry some one else."
+
+She felt him start.
+
+"I was afraid of it;" he said.
+
+"Were you? Did you think, did you wonder a little about me?" There was
+a vibrant note of triumph to which he reacted. She drew away from him.
+a little. "Perhaps, when you know how sordid my life has been, you won't
+want me."
+
+"Is--Is that your faith, Alison?" he demanded. "God forbid! You have
+come to a man who also has confessions to make."
+
+"Oh, I am glad. I want to know all of you--all, do you understand? That
+will bring us even closer together. And it was one thing I felt about
+you in the beginning, that day in the garden, that you had had much to
+conquer--more than most men. It was a part of your force and of your
+knowledge of life. You were not a sexless ascetic who preached a mere
+neutral goodness. Does that shock you?"
+
+He smiled in turn.
+
+"I went away from here, as I once told you, full of a high resolution not
+to trail the honour of my art--if I achieved art--in the dust. But I
+have not only trailed my art--I trailed myself. In New York I became
+contaminated, --the poison of the place, of the people with whom I came in
+contact, got into my blood. Little by little I yielded--I wanted so to
+succeed, to be able to confound those who had doubted and ridiculed me!
+I wasn't content to wait to deny myself for the ideal. Success was in
+the air. That was the poison, and I only began to realize it after it
+was too late.
+
+"Please don't think I am asking pity--I feel that you must know. From
+the very first my success--which was really failure--began to come in the
+wrong way. As my father's daughter I could not be obscure. I was sought
+out, I was what was called picturesque, I suppose. The women petted me,
+although some of them hated me, and I had a fascination for a certain
+kind of men--the wrong kind. I began going to dinners, house parties,
+to recognize, that advantages came that way . . . . It seemed quite
+natural. It was what many others of my profession tried to do, and they
+envied me my opportunities.
+
+"I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I was not in the least
+cynical about it. I believed I was clinging to the ideal of art, and
+that all I wanted was a chance. And the people I went with had the same
+characteristics, only intensified, as those I had known here. Of course
+I was actually no better than the women who were striving frivolously to
+get away from themselves, and the men who were fighting to get money.
+Only I didn't know it.
+
+"Well, my chance came at last. I had done several little things, when an
+elderly man who is tremendously rich, whose name you would recognize if I
+mentioned it, gave me an order. For weeks, nearly every day, he came to
+my studio for tea, to talk over the plans. I was really unsophisticated
+then--but I can see now--well, that the garden was a secondary
+consideration . . . . And the fact that I did it for him gave me a
+standing I should not otherwise have had . . . . Oh, it is sickening
+to look back upon, to think what an idiot I was in how little I saw....
+
+"That garden launched me, and I began to have more work than I could do.
+I was conscientious about it tried--tried to make every garden better
+than the last. But I was a young woman, unconventionally living alone,
+and by degrees the handicap of my sex was brought home to me. I did not
+feel the pressure at first, and then--I am ashamed to say--it had in it
+an element of excitement, a sense of power. The poison was at work. I
+was amused. I thought I could carry it through, that the world had
+advanced sufficiently for a woman to do anything if she only had the
+courage. And I believed I possessed a true broadness of view, and could
+impress it, so far as I was concerned, on others . . . .
+
+"As I look back upon it all, I believe my reputation for coldness saved
+me, yet it was that very reputation which increased the pressure, and
+sometimes I was fairly driven into a corner. It seemed to madden some
+men--and the disillusionments began to come. Of course it was my fault
+--I don't pretend to say it wasn't. There were many whom, instinctively,
+I was on my guard against, but some I thought really nice, whom I
+trusted, revealed a side I had not suspected. That was the terrible
+thing! And yet I held to my ideal, tattered as it was. . . "
+
+Alison was silent a moment, still clinging to his hand, and when she
+spoke again it was with a tremor of agitation.
+
+"It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know. At last I met a
+man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York,
+achieving a reputation as a lawyer. Shall I tell you that I fell in love
+with him? He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was
+beginning to feel the staleness of it. Not that I surrendered at once,
+but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually
+disappeared--or rather I ignored them. He had charm, a magnificent
+self-confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he expressed,
+in regard to women, most appealed to me. I was weak on that side, and I
+have often wondered whether he knew it. I believed him incapable of a
+great refusal.
+
+"He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my freedom
+--freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.
+Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.
+One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two
+before the wedding . . . . The manner in which he said it suddenly
+turned me cold. Oh," Alison exclaimed, "I was quite willing to go back,
+to pay my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but--how can I
+tell you?--he could not believe that I had definitely given up-my
+father's money . . . .
+
+"I sat still and looked at him, I felt as if I were frozen, turned to
+stone. And after a long while, since I would not speak to him, he went
+out. . . Three months later he came back and said that I had
+misunderstood him, that he couldn't live without me. I sent him away....
+Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends . . . .
+
+"Well, after that, I was tired--so tired! Everything seemed to go out of
+life. It wasn't that I loved him any longer,--all had been crushed. But
+the illusion was gone, and I saw myself as I was. And for the first time
+in my life I felt defenceless, helpless. I wanted refuge. Did you ever
+hear of Jennings Howe?"
+
+"The architect?"
+
+Alison nodded. "Of course you must have--he is so well known. He has
+been a widower for several years. He liked my work, saw its defects,
+and was always frank about them, and I designed a good many gardens in
+connection with his houses. He himself is above all things an artist,
+and he fell into the habit of coming to my studio and giving me friendly
+advice, in the nicest way. He seemed to understand that I was going
+through some sort of a crisis. He called it 'too much society.' And
+then, without any warning, he asked me to marry him.
+
+"That is why I came out here--to think it over. I didn't love him, and I
+told him so, but I respected him.
+
+"He never compromised in his art, and I have known him over and over to
+refuse houses because certain conditions were stipulated. To marry him
+was an acknowledgment of defeat. I realized that. But I had come to the
+extremity where I wanted peace--peace and protection. I wanted to put
+myself irrevocably beyond the old life, which simply could not have gone
+on, and I saw myself in the advancing years becoming tawdry and worn,
+losing little by little what I had gained at a price.
+
+"So I came here--to reflect, to see, as it were, if I could find
+something left in me to take hold of, to build upon, to begin over again,
+perhaps, by going back to the old associations. I could think of no
+better place, and I knew that my father would, be going away after a few
+weeks, and that I should be lone, yet with an atmosphere back of me,--my
+old atmosphere. That was why I went to church the first Sunday, in order
+to feel more definitely that atmosphere, to summon up more completely the
+image of my mother. More and more, as the years have passed, I have
+thought of her in moments of trouble. I have recovered her as I never
+had hoped to do in Mr. Bentley. Isn't it strange," she exclaimed
+wonderingly, "that he should have come into both our lives, with such an
+influence, at this time?"
+
+"And then I met you, talked to you that afternoon in the garden. Shall I
+make a complete confession? I wrote to Jennings Howe that very week that
+I could not marry him."
+
+"You knew!" Hodder exclaimed: "You knew then?"
+
+"Ah, I can't tell what I knew--or when. I knew, after I had seen you,
+that I couldn't marry him! Isn't that enough?"
+
+He drew in his breath deeply.
+
+"I should be less than a man if I refused to take you, Alison. And--no
+matter what happens, I can and will find some honest work to support you.
+But oh, my dear, when I think of it, the nobility and generosity of what
+you have done appalls me."
+
+"No, no!" she protested, "you mustn't say that! I needed you more than
+you need me. And haven't we both discovered the world, and renounced it?
+I can at least go so far as to say that, with all my heart. And isn't
+marriage truer and higher when man and wife start with difficulties and
+problems to solve together? It is that thought that brings me the
+greatest joy, that I may be able to help you . . . . Didn't you need
+me, just a little?"
+
+"Now that I have you, I am unable to think of the emptiness which might
+have been. You came to me, like Beatrice, when I had lost my way in the
+darkness of the wood. And like Beatrice, you showed me the path, and
+hell and heaven."
+
+"Oh, you would have found the path without me. I cannot claim that.
+I saw from the first that you were destined to find it. And, unlike
+Beatrice, I too was lost, and it was you who lifted me up. You mustn't
+idealize me." . . . She stood up. "Come!" she said. He too stood,
+gazing at her, and she lifted her hands to his shoulders . . . . They
+moved out from under the tree and walked for a while in silence across
+the dew-drenched grass, towards Park Street. The moon, which had ridden
+over a great space in the sky, hung red above the blackness of the forest
+to the west.
+
+"Do you remember when we were here together, the day I met Mr. Bentley?
+And you never would have spoken!"
+
+"How could I, Alison?" he asked.
+
+"No, you couldn't. And yet--you would have let me go!"
+
+He put his arm in hers, and drew her towards him.
+
+"I must talk to your father," he said, "some day--soon. I ought to tell
+him--of our intentions. We cannot go on like this."
+
+"No," she agreed, "I realize it. And I cannot stay, much longer, in Park
+Street. I must go back to New York, until you send for me, dear. And
+there are things I must do. Do you know, even though I antagonize him
+so--my father, I mean--even though he suspects and bitterly resents any
+interest in you, my affection for you, and that I have lingered because
+of you, I believe, in his way, he has liked to have me here."
+
+"I can understand it," Hodder said.
+
+"It's because you are bigger than I, although he has quarrelled with you
+so bitterly. I don't know what definite wrongs he has done to other
+persons. I don't wish to know. I don't ask you to tell me what passed
+between you that night. Once you said that you had an affection for him
+--that he was lonely. He is lonely. In these last weeks, in spite of
+his anger, I can see that he suffers terribly. It is a tragedy, because
+he will never give in."
+
+"It is a tragedy." Hodder's tone was agitated.
+
+"I wonder if he realizes a little" she began, and paused. "Now that
+Preston has come home--"
+
+"Your brother?" Hodder exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. I forgot to tell you. I don't know why he came," she faltered.
+"I suppose he has got into some new trouble. He seems changed. I can't
+describe it now, but I will tell you about it . . . . It's the first
+time we've all three been together since my mother died, for Preston
+wasn't back from college when I went to Paris to study . . . ."
+
+They stood together on the pavement before the massive house, fraught
+with so many and varied associations for Hodder. And as he looked up at
+it, his eye involuntarily rested upon the windows of the boy's room where
+Eldon Parr had made his confession. Alison startled him by pronouncing
+his name, which came with such unaccustomed sweetness from her lips.
+"You will write me to-morrow," she said, "after you have seen the bishop?"
+
+"Yes, at once. You mustn't let it worry you."
+
+"I feel as if I had cast off that kind of worry forever. It is only
+--the other worries from which we do not escape, from which we do not wish
+to escape."
+
+With a wonderful smile she had dropped his hands and gone in at the
+entrance, when a sound made them turn, the humming of a motor. And even
+as they looked it swung into Park Street.
+
+"It's a taxicab!" she said. As she spoke it drew up almost beside them,
+instead of turning in at the driveway, the door opened, and a man
+alighted.
+
+"Preston!" Alison exclaimed.
+
+He started, turning from the driver, whom he was about to pay. As for
+Hodder, he was not only undergoing a certain shock through the sudden
+contact, at such a moment, with Alison's brother: there was an additional
+shock that this was Alison's brother and Eldon Parr's son. Not that his
+appearance was shocking, although the well-clad, athletic figure was
+growing a trifle heavy, and the light from the side lamps of the car
+revealed dissipation in a still handsome face. The effect was a subtler
+one, not to be analyzed, and due to a multitude of preconceptions.
+
+Alison came forward.
+
+"This is Mr. Hodder, Preston," she said simply.
+
+For a moment Preston continued to stare at the rector without speaking.
+Suddenly he put out his hand.
+
+"Mr. Hodder, of St. John's?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Hodder. His surprise deepened to perplexity at the warmth
+of the handclasp that followed.
+
+A smile that brought back vividly to Hodder the sunny expression of the
+schoolboy in the picture lightened the features of the man.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said, in a tone that left no doubt of its
+genuine quality.
+
+"Thank you," Hodder replied, meeting his eye with kindness, yet with a
+scrutiny that sought to penetrate the secret of an unexpected cordiality.
+"I, too, have hoped to see you."
+
+Alison, who stood by wondering, felt a meaning behind the rector's words.
+She pressed his hand as he bade her, once more, good night.
+
+"Won't you take my taxicab?" asked Preston. "It is going down town
+anyway."
+
+"I think I'd better stick to the street cars," Hodder said. His refusal
+was not ungraceful, but firm. Preston did not insist.
+
+In spite of the events of that evening, which he went over again and
+again as the midnight car carried him eastward, in spite of a new-born
+happiness the actuality of which was still difficult to grasp, Hodder
+was vaguely troubled when he thought of Preston Parr.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside of the Cup, Volume 7
+by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook The Inside of the Cup, v7, by Winston Churchill
+WC#25 in our series by Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
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+Title: The Inside of the Cup, Volume 7.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5362]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 24, 2002]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE OF THE CUP, V7, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INSIDE OF THE CUP
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+Volume 7.
+
+XXIII.    THE CHOICE
+XXIV.     THE VESTRY MEETS
+XXV.      "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
+XXVI.     THE CURRENT OF LIFE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE CHOICE
+
+
+I
+
+Pondering over Alison's note, he suddenly recalled and verified some
+phrases which had struck him that summer on reading Harnack's celebrated
+History of Dogma, and around these he framed his reply.  "To act as if
+faith in eternal life and in the living Christ was the simplest thing in
+the world, or a dogma to which one has to submit, is irreligious.  .  .
+It is Christian to pray that God would give the Spirit to make us strong
+to overcome the feelings and the doubts of nature.  .  .  Where this
+faith, obtained in this way, exists, it has always been supported by the
+conviction that the Man lives who brought life and immortality to light.
+To hold fast this faith is the goal of life, for only what we consciously
+strive for is in this matter our own.  What we think we possess is very
+soon lost."
+
+"The feelings and the doubts of nature!"  The Divine Discontent, the
+striving against the doubt that every honest soul experiences and admits.
+Thus the contrast between her and these others who accepted and went
+their several ways was brought home to him.
+
+He longed to talk to her, but his days were full.  Yet the very thought
+of her helped to bear him up as his trials, his problems accumulated; nor
+would he at any time have exchanged them for the former false peace which
+had been bought (he perceived more and more clearly) at the price of
+compromise.
+
+The worst of these trials, perhaps, was a conspicuous article in a
+newspaper containing a garbled account of his sermon and of the sensation
+it had produced amongst his fashionable parishioners.  He had refused to
+see the reporter, but he had been made out a hero, a socialistic champion
+of the poor.  The black headlines were nauseating; and beside them, in
+juxtaposition, were pen portraits of himself and of Eldon Parr.  There
+were rumours that the banker had left the church until the recalcitrant
+rector should be driven out of it; the usual long list of Mr. Parr's
+benefactions was included, and certain veiled paragraphs concerning his
+financial operations.  Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Plimpton, Mr. Constable, did not
+escape,--although they, too, had refused to be interviewed .  .  .  .
+
+The article brought to the parish house a bevy of reporters who had to be
+fought off, and another batch of letters, many of them from ministers, in
+approval or condemnation.
+
+His fellow-clergymen called, some to express sympathy and encouragement,
+more of them to voice in person indignant and horrified protests.  Dr.
+Annesley of Calvary --a counterpart of whose rubicund face might have
+been found in the Council of Trent or in mediaeval fish-markets-
+pronounced his anathemas with his hands folded comfortably over his
+stomach, but eventually threw to the winds every vestige of his
+ecclesiastical dignity .  .  .  .
+
+Then there came a note from the old bishop, who was traveling.  A kindly
+note, withal, if non-committal,--to the effect that he had received
+certain communications, but that his physician would not permit him to
+return for another ten days or so.  He would then be glad to see Mr.
+Holder and talk with him.
+
+What would the bishop do?  Holder's relations with him had been more than
+friendly, but whether the bishop's views were sufficiently liberal to
+support him in the extreme stand he had taken he could not surmise.  For
+it meant that the bishop, too, must enter into a conflict with the first
+layman of his diocese, of whose hospitality he had so often partaken,
+whose contributions had been on so lordly a scale.  The bishop was in his
+seventieth year, and had hitherto successfully fought any attempt to
+supply him with an assistant,--coadjutor or suffragan.
+
+At such times the fear grew upon Hodder that he might be recommended for
+trial, forced to abandon his fight to free the Church from the fetters
+that bound her: that the implacable hostility of his enemies would rob
+him of his opportunity.
+
+Thus ties were broken, many hard things were said and brought to his
+ears.  There were vacancies in the classes and guilds, absences that
+pained him, silences that wrung him. . . .
+
+Of all the conversations he held, that with Mrs. Constable was perhaps
+the most illuminating and distressing.  As on that other occasion, when
+he had gone to her, this visit was under the seal of confession, unknown
+to her husband.  And Hodder had been taken aback, on seeing her enter his
+office, by the very tragedy in her face--the tragedy he had momentarily
+beheld once before.  He drew up a chair for her, and when she had sat
+down she gazed at him some moments without speaking.
+
+"I had to come," she said; "there are some things I feel I must ask you.
+For I have been very miserable since I heard you on Sunday."
+
+He nodded gently.
+
+"I knew that you would change your views--become broader, greater.  You
+may remember that I predicted it."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"I thought you would grow more liberal, less bigoted, if you will allow
+me to say so.  But I didn't anticipate--"she hesitated, and looked up at
+him again.
+
+"That I would take the extreme position I have taken," he assisted her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hodder," she cried impulsively, "was it necessary to go so far?
+and all at once.  I am here not only because I am miserable, but I am
+concerned on your account.  You hurt me very much that day you came to
+me, but you made me your friend.  And I wonder if you really understand
+the terrible, bitter feeling you have aroused, the powerful enemies you
+have made by speaking so--so unreservedly?"
+
+"I was prepared for it," he answered.  "Surely, Mrs. Constable, once I
+have arrived at what I believe to be the truth, you would not have me
+temporize?"
+
+She gave him a wan smile.
+
+"In one respect, at least, you have not changed," she told him.  "I am
+afraid you are not the temporizing kind.  But wasn't there,--mayn't there
+still be a way to deal with this fearful situation?  You have made it
+very hard for us--for them.  You have given them no loophole of escape.
+And there are many, like me, who do not wish to see your career ruined,
+Mr. Hodder."
+
+"Would you prefer," he asked, "to see my soul destroyed?  And your own?"
+
+Her lips twitched.
+
+"Isn't there any other way but that?  Can't this transformation, which
+you say is necessary and vital, come gradually?  You carried me away as
+I listened to you, I was not myself when I came out of the church.
+But I have been thinking ever since.  Consider my husband, Mr. Hodder,"
+her voice faltered.  "I shall not mince matters with you--I know you will
+not pretend to misunderstand me.  I have never seen him so upset since
+since that time Gertrude was married.  He is in a most cruel position.
+I confessed to you once that Mr. Parr had made for us all the money we
+possess.  Everett is fond of you, but if he espouses your cause, on the
+vestry, we shall be ruined."
+
+Hodder was greatly moved.
+
+"It is not my cause, Mrs. Constable," he said.
+
+"Surely, Christianity is not so harsh and uncompromising as that!  And do
+you quite do justice to--to some of these men?  There was no one to tell
+them the wrongs they were committing--if they were indeed wrongs.  Our
+civilization is far from perfect."
+
+"The Church may have been remiss, mistaken," the rector replied.  "But
+the Christianity she has taught, adulterated though it were, has never
+condoned the acts which have become commonplace in modern finance.  There
+must have been a time, in the life of every one of these men, when they
+had to take that first step against which their consciences revolted,
+when they realized that fraud and taking advantage of the ignorant and
+weak were wrong.  They have deliberately preferred gratification in this
+life to spiritual development--if indeed they believe in any future
+whatsoever.  For 'whosoever will save his life shall lose it' is as true
+to-day as it ever was.  They have had their choice--they still have it."
+
+"I am to blame," she cried.  "I drove my husband to it, I made him think
+of riches, it was I who cultivated Mr. Parr.  And oh, I suppose I am
+justly punished.  I have never been happy for one instant since that
+day."
+
+He watched her, pityingly, as she wept.  But presently she raised her
+face, wonderingly.
+
+"You do believe in the future life after--after what you have been
+through?"
+
+"I do," he answered simply.
+
+"Yes--I am sure you do.  It is that, what you are, convinces me you do.
+Even the remarkable and sensible explanation you gave of it when you
+interpreted the parable of the talents is not so powerful as the
+impression that you yourself believe after thinking it out for yourself
+--not accepting the old explanations.  And then," she added, with a note
+as of surprise, "you are willing to sacrifice everything for it!"
+
+"And you?" he asked.  "Cannot you, too, believe to that extent?"
+
+"Everything?" she repeated.  "It would mean--poverty.  No--God help me
+--I cannot face it.  I have become too hard.  I cannot do without the
+world.  And even if I could!  Oh, you cannot know what you ask Everett,
+my husband--I must say it, you make me tell you everything--is not free.
+He is little better than a slave to Eldon Parr.  I hate Eldon Parr," she
+added, with startling inconsequence.
+
+"If I had only known what it would lead to when I made Everett what he
+is!  But I knew nothing of business, and I wanted money, position to
+satisfy my craving at the loss of--that other thing.  And now I couldn't
+change my husband if I would.  He hasn't the courage, he hasn't the
+vision.  What there was of him, long ago, has been killed--and I killed
+it.  He isn't--anybody, now."
+
+She relapsed again into weeping.
+
+"And then it might not mean only poverty--it might mean disgrace."
+
+"Disgrace!" the rector involuntarily took up the word.
+
+"There are some things he has done," she said in a low voice, "which he
+thought he was obliged to do which Eldon Parr made him do."
+
+"But Mr. Parr, too--?" Hodder began.
+
+"Oh, it was to shield Eldon Parr.  They could never be traced to him.
+And if they ever came out, it would kill my husband.  Tell me," she
+implored, "what can I do?  What shall I do?  You are responsible.  You
+have made me more bitterly unhappy than ever."
+
+"Are you willing," he asked, after a moment, "to make the supreme
+renunciation? to face poverty, and perhaps disgrace, to save your soul
+and others?"
+
+"And--others?"
+
+"Yes.  Your sacrifice would not, could not be in vain.  Otherwise I
+should be merely urging on you the individualism which you once advocated
+with me."
+
+"Renunciation."  She pronounced the word questioningly.  "Can
+Christianity really mean that--renunciation of the world?  Must we take
+it in the drastic sense of the Church of the early centuries-the Church
+of the Martyrs?"
+
+"Christianity demands all of us, or nothing," he replied.  "But the false
+interpretation of renunciation of the early Church has cast its blight on
+Christianity even to our day.  Oriental asceticism, Stoicism, Philo and
+other influences distorted Christ's meaning.  Renunciation does not mean
+asceticism, retirement from the world, a denial of life.  And the early
+Christian, since he was not a citizen, since he took the view that this
+mortal existence was essentially bad and kept his eyes steadfastly fixed
+on another, was the victim at once of false philosophies and of the
+literal messianic prophecies of the Jews, which were taken over with
+Christianity.  The earthly kingdom which was to come was to be the result
+of some kind of a cataclysm.  Personally, I believe our Lord merely used
+the Messianic literature as a convenient framework for his spiritual
+Kingdom of heaven, and that the Gospels misinterpret his meaning on this
+point.
+
+"Renunciation is not the withdrawal from, the denial of life, but the
+fulfilment of life, the submission to the divine will and guidance in
+order that our work may be shown us.  Renunciation is the assumption,
+at once, of heavenly and earthly citizenship, of responsibility for
+ourselves and our fellow-men.  It is the realization that the other
+world, the inner, spiritual world, is here, now, and that the soul may
+dwell in it before death, while the body and mind work for the coming of
+what may be called the collective kingdom.  Life looked upon in that way
+is not bad, but good,--not meaningless, but luminous."
+
+She had listened hungrily, her eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"And for me?" she questioned.
+
+"For you," he answered, leaning forward and speaking with a conviction
+that shook her profoundly, "if you make the sacrifice of your present
+unhappiness, of your misery, all will be revealed.  The labour which you
+have shirked, which is now hidden from you, will be disclosed, you will
+justify your existence by taking your place as an element of the
+community.  You will be able to say of yourself, at last, 'I am of use.'"
+
+"You mean--social work?"
+
+The likeness of this to Mrs. Plimpton's question struck him.  She had
+called it "charity."  How far had they wandered in their teaching from
+the Revelation of the Master, since it was as new and incomprehensible to
+these so-called Christians as to Nicodemus himself!
+
+"All Christian work is social, Mrs. Constable, but it is founded on love.
+'Thou shaft love thy neighbour as thyself.'  You hold your own soul
+precious, since it is the shrine of God.  And for that reason you hold
+equally precious your neighbour's soul.  Love comes first, as revelation,
+as imparted knowledge, as the divine gist of autonomy--self-government.
+And then one cannot help working, socially, at the task for which we are
+made by nature most efficient.  And in order to discover what that task
+is, we must wait."
+
+"Why did not some one tell me this, when I was young?"  she asked--not
+speaking to him.  "It seems so simple."
+
+"It is simple.  The difficult thing is to put it into practice--the most
+difficult thing in the world.  Both courage and faith are required, faith
+that is content to trust as to the nature of the reward.  It is the
+wisdom of foolishness.  Have you the courage?"
+
+She pressed her hands together.
+
+"Alone--perhaps I should have.  I don't know.  But my husband!
+I was able to influence him to his destruction, and now I am powerless.
+Darkness has closed around me.  He would not--he will not listen to me."
+
+"You have tried?"
+
+"I have attempted to talk to him, but the whole of my life contradicts my
+words.  He cannot see me except as, the woman who drove him into making
+money.  Sometimes I think he hates me."
+
+Hodder recalled, as his eyes rested on her compassionately, the
+sufferings of that other woman in Dalton Street.
+
+"Would you have me desert him--after all these years?"  she whispered.
+"I often think he would be happier, even now."
+
+"I would have you do nothing save that which God himself will reveal to
+you.  Go home, go into the church and pray--pray for knowledge.  I think
+you will find that you are held responsible for your husband.  Pray that
+that which you have broken, you may mend again."
+
+"Do you think there is a chance?"
+
+Hodder made a gesture.
+
+"God alone can judge as to the extent of his punishments."
+
+She got to her feet, wearily.
+
+"I feel no hope--I feel no courage, but--I will try.  I see what you
+mean--that my punishment is my powerlessness."
+
+He bent his head.
+
+"You are so strong--perhaps you can help me."
+
+"I shall always be ready," he replied.
+
+He escorted her down the steps to the dark blue brougham with upstanding,
+chestnut horses which was waiting at the curb.  But Mrs. Constable turned
+to the footman, who held open the door.
+
+"You may stay here awhile," she said to him, and gave Hodder her hand....
+
+She went into the church .  .  .  .
+
+
+
+II
+
+Asa Waring and his son-in-law, Phil Goodrich, had been to see Hodder on
+the subject of the approaching vestry meeting, and both had gone away not
+a little astonished and impressed by the calmness with which the rector
+looked forward to the conflict.  Others of his parishioners, some of whom
+were more discreet in their expressions of sympathy, were no less
+surprised by his attitude; and even his theological adversaries, such as
+Gordon Atterbury, paid him a reluctant tribute.  Thanks, perhaps, to the
+newspaper comments as much as to any other factor, in the minds of those
+of all shades of opinion in the parish the issue had crystallized into a
+duel between the rector and Eldon Parr.  Bitterly as they resented the
+glare of publicity into which St. John's had been dragged, the first
+layman of the diocese was not beloved; and the fairer-minded of Hodder's
+opponents, though appalled, were forced to admit in their hearts that the
+methods by which Mr. Parr had made his fortune and gained his ascendency
+would not bear scrutiny .  .  .  .  Some of them were disturbed, indeed,
+by the discovery that there had come about in them, by imperceptible
+degrees, in the last few years a new and critical attitude towards the
+ways of modern finance: moat of them had an uncomfortable feeling that
+Hodder was somehow right,--a feeling which they sought to stifle when
+they reflected upon the consequences of facing it.  For this would mean
+a disagreeable shaking up of their own lives.  Few of them were in a
+position whence they might cast stones at Eldon Parr .  .  .  .
+
+What these did not grasp was the fact that that which they felt stirring
+within them was the new and spiritual product of the dawning twentieth
+century--the Social Conscience.  They wished heartily that the new rector
+who had developed this disquieting personality would peacefully resign
+and leave them to the former, even tenor of their lives.  They did not
+for one moment doubt the outcome of his struggle with Eldon Parr.  The
+great banker was known to be relentless, his name was synonymous with
+victory.  And yet, paradoxically, Hodder compelled their inner sympathy
+and admiration!  .  .  .
+
+Some of them, who did not attempt peremptorily to choke the a processes
+made the startling discovery that they were not, after all, so shocked by
+his doctrines as they had at first supposed.  The trouble was that they
+could not continue to listen to him, as formerly, with comfort.... One
+thing was certain, that they had never expected to look forward to a
+vestry meeting with such breathless interest and anxiety.  This clergyman
+had suddenly accomplished the surprising feat of reviving the Church as a
+burning, vital factor in the life of the community!  He had discerned her
+enemy, and defied his power .  .  .  .
+
+As for Hodder, so absorbed had he been by his experiences, so wrung by
+the human contacts, the personal problems which he had sought to enter,
+that he had actually given no thought to the battle before him until
+the autumn afternoon, heavy with smoke, had settled down into darkness.
+The weather was damp and cold, and he sat musing on the ordeal now
+abruptly confronting him before his study fire when he heard a step
+behind him.  He turned to recognize, by the glow of the embers, the heavy
+figure of Nelson Langmaid.
+
+"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Hodder," he said.  "The janitor said you
+were in, and your door is open."
+
+"Not at all," replied the rector, rising.  As he stood for a moment
+facing the lawyer, the thought of their friendship, and how it had begun
+in the little rectory overlooking the lake at Bremerton, was uppermost in
+his mind,--yes, and the memory of many friendly, literary discussions in
+the same room where they now stood, of pleasant dinners at Langmaid's
+house in the West End, when the two of them had often sat talking until
+late into the nights.
+
+"I must seem very inhospitable," said Hodder.  "I'll light the lamp--it's
+pleasanter than the electric light."
+
+The added illumination at first revealed the lawyer in his familiar
+aspect, the broad shoulders, the big, reddish beard, the dome-like head,
+--the generous person that seemed to radiate scholarly benignity, peace,
+and good-will.  But almost instantly the rector became aware of a new and
+troubled, puzzled glance from behind the round spectacles.  .  ."
+
+"I thought I'd drop in a moment on my way up town--" he began.  And the
+note of uncertainty in his voice, too, was new.  Hodder drew towards the
+fire the big chair in which it had been Langmaid's wont to sit, and
+perhaps it was the sight of this operation that loosed the lawyer's
+tongue.
+
+"Confound it, Hodder!" he exclaimed, "I like you--I always have liked
+you.  And you've got a hundred times the ability of the average
+clergyman.  Why in the world did you have to go and make all this
+trouble?"
+
+By so characteristic a remark Hodder was both amused and moved.  It
+revealed so perfectly the point of view and predicament of the lawyer,
+and it was also an expression of an affection which the rector cordially,
+returned .  .  .  .  Before answering, he placed his visitor in the
+chair, and the deliberation of the act was a revelation of the
+unconscious poise of the clergyman.  The spectacle of this self-command
+on the brink of such a crucial event as the vestry meeting had taken
+Langmaid aback more than he cared to show.  He had lost the old sense of
+comradeship, of easy equality; and he had the odd feeling of dealing with
+a new man, at once familiar and unfamiliar, who had somehow lifted
+himself out of the everyday element in which they heretofore had met.
+The clergyman had contrived to step out of his, Langmaid's, experience:
+had actually set him--who all his life had known no difficulty in dealing
+with men--to groping for a medium of communication .  .  .  .
+
+Hodder sat down on the other side of the fireplace.  He, too, seemed to
+be striving for a common footing.
+
+"It was a question of proclaiming the truth when at last I came to see
+it, Langmaid.  I could not help doing what I did.  Matters of policy,
+of a false consideration for individuals could not enter into it.
+If this were not so, I should gladly admit that you had a just grievance,
+a peculiar right to demand why I had not remained the strictly orthodox
+person whom you induced to come here.  You had every reason to
+congratulate yourself that you were getting what you doubtless would call
+a safe man."
+
+"I'll admit I had a twinge of uneasiness after I came home," Langmaid
+confessed.
+
+Hodder smiled at his frankness.
+
+"But that disappeared."
+
+"Yes, it disappeared.  You seemed to suit 'em so perfectly.  I'll own up,
+Hodder, that I was a little hurt that you did not come and talk to me
+just before you took the extraordinary--before you changed your
+opinions."
+
+"Would it have done any good?"  asked the rector, gently.  "Would you
+have agreed with me any better than you do now?  I am perfectly willing,
+if you wish, to discuss with you any views of mine which you may not
+indorse.  And it would make me very happy, I assure you, if I could bring
+you to look upon the matter as I do."
+
+This was a poser.  And whether it were ingenuous, or had in it an element
+of the scriptural wisdom of the serpent, Langmaid could not have said.
+As a lawyer, he admired it.
+
+"I wasn't in church, as usual,--I didn't hear the sermon," he replied.
+"And I never could make head or tail of theology--I always told you that.
+What I deplore, Hodder, is that you've contrived to make a hornets' nest
+out of the most peaceful and contented congregation in America.  Couldn't
+you have managed to stick to religion instead of getting mixed up with
+socialism?"
+
+"So you have been given the idea that my sermon was socialistic?" the
+rector said.
+
+"Socialistic and heretical,--it seems.  Of course I'm not much of an
+authority on heresy, but they claim that you went out of your way to
+knock some of their most cherished and sacred beliefs in the head."
+
+"But suppose I have come to the honest conclusion that in the first
+place these so-called cherished beliefs have no foundation in fact,
+and no influence on the lives of the persons who cherished them, no real
+connection with Christianity?  What would you have me do, as a man?
+Continue to preach them for the sake of the lethargic peace of which
+you speak?  leave the church paralyzed, as I found it?"
+
+"Paralyzed!  You've got the most influential people in the city."
+
+Hodder regarded him for a while without replying.
+
+"So has the Willesden Club," he said.
+
+Langmaid laughed a little, uncomfortably.
+
+"If Christianity, as one of the ancient popes is said to have remarked,
+were merely a profitable fable," the rector continued, "there might be
+something in your contention that St. John's, as a church, had reached
+the pinnacle of success.  But let us ignore the spiritual side of this
+matter as non-vital, and consider it from the practical side.  We have
+the most influential people in the city, but we have not their children.
+That does not promise well for the future.  The children get more profit
+out of the country clubs.  And then there is another question: is it
+going to continue to be profitable?  Is it as profitable now as it was,
+say, twenty years ago?
+
+"You've got out of my depth," said Nelson Langmaid.
+
+"I'll try to explain.  As a man of affairs, I think you will admit, if
+you reflect, that the return of St. John's, considering the large amount
+of money invested, is scarcely worth considering.  And I am surprised
+that as astute a man as Mr. Pair has not been able to see this long ago.
+If we clear all the cobwebs away, what is the real function of this
+church as at present constituted?  Why this heavy expenditure to maintain
+religious services for a handful of people?  Is it not, when we come down
+to facts, an increasingly futile effort to bring the influences of
+religion--of superstition, if you will--to bear on the so-called lower
+classes in order that they may remain contented with their lot, with that
+station and condition in the world where--it is argued--it has pleased
+God to call them?  If that were not so, in my opinion there are very few
+of the privileged classes who would invest a dollar in the Church.  And
+the proof of it is that the moment a clergyman raises his voice to
+proclaim the true message of Christianity they are up in arms with the
+cry of socialism.  They have the sense to see that their privileges are
+immediately threatened.
+
+"Looking at it from the financial side, it would be cheaper for them to
+close up their churches.  It is a mere waste of time and money, because
+the influence on their less fortunate brethren in a worldly sense has
+dwindled to nothing.  Few of the poor come near their churches in these
+days.  The profitable fable is almost played out."
+
+Hodder had spoken without bitterness, yet his irony was by no means lost
+on the lawyer.  Langmaid, if the truth be told, found himself for the
+moment in the unusual predicament of being at a loss, for the rector had
+put forward with more or less precision the very cynical view which he
+himself had been clever enough to evolve.
+
+"Haven't they the right," he asked, somewhat lamely to demand the kind of
+religion they pay for?"
+
+"Provided you don't call it religion," said the rector.
+
+Langmaid smiled in spite of himself.
+
+"See here, Hodder," he said, "I've always confessed frankly that I knew
+little or nothing about religion.  I've come here this evening as your
+friend, without authority from anybody," he added significantly, "to see
+if this thing couldn't somehow be adjusted peaceably, for your sake as
+well as others'.  Come, you must admit there's a grain of justice in the
+contention against you.  When I went on to Bremerton to get you I had no
+real reason for supposing that these views would develop.  I made a
+contract with you in all good faith."
+
+"And I with you," answered the rector.  "Perhaps you do not realize,
+Langmaid, what has been the chief factor in developing these views."
+
+The lawyer was silent, from caution.
+
+"I must be frank with you.  It was the discovery that Mr. Parr and others
+of my chief parishioners were so far from being Christians as to indulge,
+while they supported the Church of Christ, in operations like that of the
+Consolidated Tractions Company, wronging their fellow-men and condemning
+them to misery and hate.  And that you, as a lawyer, used your talents to
+make that operation possible."
+
+"Hold on!" cried Langmaid, now plainly agitated.  "You have no right--you
+can know nothing of that affair.  You do not understand business."
+
+"I'm afraid," replied the rector, sadly, "that I understand one side of
+it only too well."
+
+"The Church has no right to meddle outside of her sphere, to dictate to
+politics and business."
+
+"Her sphere," said Holder,--is the world.  If she does not change the
+world by sending out Christians into it, she would better close her
+doors."
+
+"Well, I don't intend to quarrel with you, Holder.  I suppose it can't be
+helped that we look at these things differently, and I don't intend to
+enter into a defence of business.  It would take too long, and it
+wouldn't help any."  He got to his feet.  "Whatever happens, it won't
+interfere with our personal friendship, even if you think me a highwayman
+and I think you a--"
+
+"A fanatic," Holder supplied.  He had risen, too, and stood, with a smile
+on his face, gazing at the lawyer with an odd scrutiny.
+
+"An idealist, I was going to say," Langmaid answered, returning the
+smile, "I'll admit that we need them in the world.  It's only when one
+of them gets in the gear-box .  .  .  ."
+
+The rector laughed.  And thus they stood, facing each other.
+
+"Langmaid," Holder asked, "don't you ever get tired and disgusted with
+the Juggernaut car?"
+
+The big lawyer continued to smile, but a sheepish, almost boyish
+expression came over his face.  He had not credited the clergyman with
+so much astuteness.
+
+"Business, nowadays, is--business, Holder.  The Juggernaut car claims us
+all.  It has become-if you will permit me to continue to put my similes
+into slang--the modern band wagon.  And we lawyers have to get on it, or
+fall by the wayside."
+
+Holder stared into the fire.
+
+"I appreciate your motive in coming here," he said, at length, "and I do
+you the justice of believing it was friendly, that the fact that you are,
+in a way, responsible for me to--to the congregation of St. John's did
+not enter into it.  I realize that I have made matters particularly
+awkward for you.  You have given them in me, and in good faith, something
+they didn't bargain for.  You haven't said so, but you want me to resign.
+On the one hand, you don't care to see me tilting at the windmills, or,
+better, drawing down on my head the thunderbolts of your gods.  On the
+other hand, you are just a little afraid for your gods.  If the question
+in dispute were merely an academic one, I'd accommodate you at once.  But
+I can't.  I've thought it all out, and I have made up my mind that it is
+my clear duty to remain here and, if I am strong enough, wrest this
+church from the grip of Eldon Parr and the men whom he controls.
+
+"I am speaking plainly, and I understand the situation thoroughly.  You
+will probably tell me, as others have done, that no one has ever opposed
+Eldon Parr who has not been crushed.  I go in with my eyes open, I am
+willing to be crushed, if necessary.  You have come here to warn me, and
+I appreciate your motive.  Now I am going to warn you, in all sincerity
+and friendship.  I may be beaten, I may be driven out.  But the victory
+will be mine nevertheless.  Eldon Parr and the men who stand with him in
+the struggle will never recover from the blow I shall give them.  I shall
+leave them crippled because I have the truth on my side, and the truth
+is irresistible.  And they shall not be able to injure me permanently.
+And you, I regret deeply to say, will be hurt, too.  I beg you, for no
+selfish reason, to consider again the part you intend to play in this
+affair."
+
+Such was the conviction, such the unlooked-for fire with which the rector
+spoke that Langmaid was visibly shaken and taken aback in spite of
+himself.
+
+"Do you mean," he demanded, when he had caught his breath, "that you
+intend to attack us publicly?"
+
+"Is that the only punishment you can conceive of?" the rector asked.  The
+reproach in his voice was in itself a denial.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Hodder," said the lawyer, quickly.  "And I am sure
+you honestly believe what you say, but--"
+
+"In your heart you, too, believe it, Langmaid.  The retribution has
+already begun.  Nevertheless you will go on--for a while."  He held out
+his hand, which Langmaid took mechanically.  "I bear you no ill-will.
+I am sorry that you cannot yet see with sufficient clearness to save
+yourself."
+
+Langmaid turned and picked up his hat and stick and left the room without
+another word.  The bewildered, wistful look which had replaced the
+ordinarily benign and cheerful expression haunted Hodder long after
+the lawyer had gone.  It was the look of a man who has somehow lost
+his consciousness of power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE VESTRY MEETS
+
+At nine o'clock that evening Hodder stood alone in the arched vestry
+room, and the sight of the heavy Gothic chairs ranged about the long
+table brought up memories of comfortable, genial meetings prolonged by
+chat and banter.... The noise of feet, of subdued voices beside the coat
+room in the corridor, aroused him.  All of the vestry would seem to have
+arrived at once.
+
+He regarded them with a detached curiosity as they entered, reading them
+with a new insight.  The trace of off-handedness in Mr. Plimpton's former
+cordiality was not lost upon him--an intimation that his star had set.
+Mr. Plimpton had seen many breaches healed--had healed many himself.  But
+he had never been known as a champion of lost causes.
+
+"Well, here we are, Mr. Hodder, on the stroke," he remarked.
+"As a vestry, I think we're entitled to the first prize for promptness.
+How about it, Everett?"
+
+Everett Constable was silent.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Hodder," he said.  He did not offer to shake hands,
+as Mr. Plimpton had done, but sat down at the far end of the table.
+He looked tired and worn; sick, the rector thought, and felt a sudden
+swelling of compassion for the pompous little man whose fibre was not
+as tough as that of these other condottieri: as Francis Ferguson's, for
+instance, although his soft hand and pink and white face framed in the
+black whiskers would seem to belie any fibre whatever.
+
+Gordon Atterbury hemmed and hawed,--"Ah, Mr. Hodder," and seated himself
+beside Mr. Constable, in a chair designed to accommodate a portly bishop.
+Both of them started nervously as Asa Waring, holding his head high, as a
+man should who has kept his birthright, went directly to the rector.
+
+"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Hodder," he said, and turning defiantly,
+surveyed the room.  There was an awkward silence.  Mr. Plimpton edged
+a little nearer.  The decree might have gone forth for Mr. Hodder's
+destruction, but Asa Waring was a man whose displeasure was not to be
+lightly incurred.
+
+"What's this I hear about your moving out of Hamilton Place, Mr. Waring?
+You'd better come up and take the Spaulding lot, in Waverley, across from
+us."
+
+"I am an old man, Mr. Plimpton," Asa Waring replied.  "I do not move as
+easily as some other people in these days."
+
+Everett Constable produced his handkerchief and rubbed his nose
+violently.  But Mr. Plimpton was apparently undaunted.
+
+"I have always said," he observed, "that there was something very fine in
+your sticking to that neighbourhood after your friends had gone.  Here's
+Phil!"
+
+Phil Goodrich looked positively belligerent, and as he took his stand
+on the other side of Hodder his father-in-law smiled at him grimly.
+Mr. Goodrich took hold of the rector's arm.
+
+"I missed one or two meetings last spring, Mr. Hodder," he said, "but I'm
+going to be on hand after this.  My father, I believe, never missed a
+vestry meeting in his life.  Perhaps that was because they used to hold
+most of 'em at his house."
+
+"And serve port and cigars, I'm told," Mr. Plimpton put in.
+
+"That was an inducement, Wallis, I'll admit," answered Phil.  "But there
+are even greater inducements now."
+
+In view of Phil Goodrich's well-known liking for a fight, this was too
+pointed to admit of a reply, but Mr. Plimpton was spared the attempt by
+the entrance of.  Nelson Langmaid.  The lawyer, as he greeted them,
+seemed to be preoccupied, nor did he seek to relieve the tension with
+his customary joke.  A few moments of silence followed, when Eldon Parr
+was seen to be standing in the doorway, surveying them.
+
+"Good evening, gentlemen," he said coldly, and without more ado went to
+his customary chair, and sat down in it.  Immediately followed a scraping
+of other chairs.  There was a dominating quality about the man not to be
+gainsaid.
+
+The rector called the meeting to order .  .  .  .
+
+During the routine business none of the little asides occurred which
+produce laughter.  Every man in the room was aware of the intensity of
+Eldon Parr's animosity, and yet he betrayed it neither by voice, look,
+or gesture.  There was something uncanny in this self-control, this sang
+froid with which he was wont to sit at boards waiting unmoved for the
+time when he should draw his net about his enemies, and strangle them
+without pity.  It got on Langmaid's nerves--hardened as he was to it.
+He had seen many men in that net; some had struggled, some had taken
+their annihilation stoically; honest merchants, freebooters, and
+brigands.  Most of them had gone out, with their families, into that
+precarious border-land of existence in which the to-morrows are ever
+dreaded.
+
+Yet here, somehow, was a different case.  Langmaid found himself going
+back to the days when his mother had taken him to church, and he could
+not bear to look at, Hodder.  Since six o'clock that afternoon--had his
+companions but known it--he had passed through one of the worst periods
+of his existence. . . .
+
+After the regular business had been disposed of a brief interval was
+allowed, for the sake of decency, to ensue. That Eldon Parr would not
+lead the charge in person was a foregone conclusion.  Whom, then, would
+he put forward?  For obvious reasons, not Wallis Plimpton or Langmaid,
+nor Francis Ferguson.  Hodder found his, glance unconsciously fixed upon
+Everett Constable, who, moved nervously and slowly pushed back his chair.
+He was called upon, in this hour and in the church his father had helped
+to found, to make the supreme payment for the years of financial
+prosperity.  Although a little man, with his shoulders thrown back and
+his head high, he generally looked impressive when he spoke, and his fine
+features and clear-cut English contributed to the effect.  But now his
+face was strained, and his voice seemed to lack command as he bowed and
+mentioned the rector's name.  Eldon Parr sat back.
+
+"Gentlemen," Mr. Constable began, "I feel it my duty to say something
+this evening, something that distresses me.  Like some of you who are
+here present, I have been on this vestry for many years, and my father
+was on it before me.  I was brought up under Dr. Gilman, of whom I need
+not speak.  All here, except our present rector, knew him.  This church,
+St. John's, has been a part--a--large part--of my life.  And anything
+that seems to touch its welfare, touches me.
+
+"When Dr. Gilman died, after so many years of faithful service, we faced
+a grave problem,--that of obtaining a young man of ability, an active man
+who would be able to assume the responsibilities of a large and growing
+parish, and at the same time carry on its traditions, precious to us all;
+one who believed in and preached, I need scarcely add, the accepted
+doctrines of the Church, which we have been taught to think are sacred
+and necessary to salvation.  And in the discovery of the Reverend Mr.
+Hodder, we had reason to congratulate ourselves and the parish.  He was
+all that we had hoped for, and more.  His sermons were at once a pleasure
+and an instruction.
+
+"I wish to make it clear," he continued, "that in spite of the pain Mr.
+Hodder's words of last Sunday have given me, I respect and honour him
+still, and wish him every success.  But, gentlemen, I think it is plain
+to all of you that he has changed his religious convictions.  As to the
+causes through which that change has come about, I do not pretend to
+know.  To say the least, the transition is a startling one, one for which
+some of us were totally unprepared.  To speak restrainedly, it was a
+shock--a shock which I shall remember as long as I live.
+
+"I need not go into the doctrinal question here, except to express my
+opinion that the fundamental facts of our religion were contradicted.
+And we have also to consider the effect of this preaching on coming
+generations for whom we are responsible.  There are, no doubt, other
+fields for Mr. Hodder's usefulness.  But I think it may safely be taken
+as a principle that this parish has the right to demand from the pulpit
+that orthodox teaching which suits it, and to which it has been
+accustomed.  And I venture further to give it as my opinion--to put it
+mildly that others have been as disturbed and shocked as I.  I have seen
+many, talked with many, since Sunday.  For these reasons, with much
+sorrow and regret, I venture to suggest to the vestry that Mr. Hodder
+resign as our rector.  And I may add what I believe to be the feeling
+of all present, that we have nothing but good will for him, although
+we think we might have been informed of what he intended to do.
+
+"And that in requesting him to resign we are acting for his own good as
+well as our own, and are thus avoiding a situation which threatens to
+become impossible,--one which would bring serious reflection on him and
+calamity on the church.  We already, in certain articles in the
+newspapers, have had an indication of the intolerable notoriety we may
+expect, although I hold Mr. Hodder innocent in regard to those articles.
+I am sure he will have the good sense to see this situation as I see it,
+as the majority of the parish see it."
+
+Mr. Constable sat down, breathing hard.  He had not looked at the rector
+during the whole of his speech, nor at Eldon Parr.  There was a heavy
+silence, and then Philip Goodrich rose, square, clean-cut, aggressive.
+
+"I, too, gentlemen, have had life-long association with this church," he
+began deliberately.  "And for Mr. Hodder's sake I am going to give you a
+little of my personal history, because I think it typical of thousands of
+men of my age all over this country.  It was nobody's fault, perhaps,
+that I was taught that the Christian religion depended on a certain
+series of nature miracles and a chain of historical events, and when I
+went East to school I had more of this same sort of instruction.  I have
+never, perhaps, been overburdened with intellect, but the time arrived
+nevertheless when I began to think for myself.  Some of the older boys
+went once, I remember, to the rector of the school--a dear old man--and
+frankly stated our troubles.  To use a modern expression, he stood pat on
+everything.  I do not say it was a consciously criminal act, he probably
+saw no way out himself.  At any rate, he made us all agnostics at one
+stroke.
+
+"What I learned in college of science and history and philosophy merely
+confirmed me in my agnosticism.  As a complete system for the making of
+atheists and materialists, I commend the education which I received.  If
+there is any man here who believes religion to be an essential factor in
+life, I ask him to think of his children or grandchildren before he comes
+forward to the support of Mr. Constable.
+
+"In that sermon which he preached last Sunday, Mr. Hodder, for the first
+time in my life, made Christianity intelligible to me.  I want him to
+know it.  And there are other men and women in that congregation who
+feel as I do.  Gentlemen, there is nothing I would not give to have had
+Christianity put before me in that simple and inspiring way when I was
+a boy.  And in my opinion St. John's is more fortunate to-day than it
+ever has been in its existence.  Mr. Hodder should have an unanimous
+testimonial of appreciation from this vestry for his courage.  And if the
+vote requesting him to resign prevails, I venture to predict that there
+is not a man on this vestry who will not live to regret it."
+
+Phil Goodrich glared at Eldon Parr, who remained unmoved.
+
+"Permit me to add," he said, "that this controversy, in other respects
+than doctrine, is more befitting to the Middle Ages than to the twentieth
+century, when this Church and other denominations are passing resolutions
+in their national conventions with a view to unity and freedom of
+belief."
+
+Mr. Langmaid, Mr. Plimpton, and Mr. Constable sat still.  Mr. Ferguson
+made no move.  It was Gordon Atterbury who rushed into the breach, and
+proved that the extremists are allies of doubtful value.
+
+He had, apparently, not been idle since Sunday, and was armed cap-a pie
+with time-worn arguments that need not be set down.  All of which went to
+show that Mr. Goodrich had not referred to the Middle Ages in vain.  For
+Gordon Atterbury was a born school-man.  But he finished by declaring, at
+the end of twenty minutes (much as he regretted the necessity of saying
+it), that Mr. Hodder's continuance as rector would mean the ruin of the
+church in which all present took such a pride.  That the great majority
+of its members would never submit to what was so plainly heresy.
+
+It was then that Mr. Plimpton gathered courage to pour oil on the waters.
+There was nothing, in his opinion, he remarked smilingly, in his function
+as peacemaker, to warrant anything but the most friendly interchange of
+views.  He was second to none in his regard for Mr. Hodder, in his
+admiration for a man who had the courage of his convictions.  He had not
+the least doubt that Mr. Hodder did not desire to remain in the parish
+when it was so apparent that the doctrines which he now preached were not
+acceptable to most of those who supported the church.  And he added (with
+sublime magnanimity) that he wished Mr. Hodder the success which he was
+sure he deserved, and gave him every assurance of his friendship.
+
+Asa Waring was about to rise, when he perceived that Hodder himself was
+on his feet.  And the eyes of every man, save one, were fixed on him
+irresistibly.  The rector seemed unaware of it.  It was Philip Goodrich
+who remarked to his father-in-law, as they walked home afterwards, of the
+sense he had had at that moment that there were just two men in the
+room,--Hodder and Eldon Parr.  All the rest were ciphers; all had lost,
+momentarily, their feelings of partisanship and were conscious only of
+these two intense, radiating, opposing centres of force; and no man,
+oddly enough, could say which was the stronger.  They seemingly met on
+equal terms.  There could not be the slightest doubt that the rector did
+not mean to yield, and yet they might have been puzzled if they had asked
+themselves how they had read the fact in his face or manner.  For he
+betrayed neither anger nor impatience.
+
+No more did the financier reveal his own feelings.  He still sat back in
+his chair, unmoved, in apparent contemplation.  The posture was familiar
+to Langmaid.
+
+Would he destroy, too, this clergyman?  For the first time in his life,
+and as he looked at Hodder, the lawyer wondered.  Hodder did not defend
+himself, made no apologies.  Christianity was not a collection of
+doctrines, he reminded them,--but a mode of life.  If anything were clear
+to him, it was that the present situation was not, with the majority of
+them, a matter of doctrines, but of unwillingness to accept the message
+and precept of Jesus Christ, and lead Christian lives.  They had made use
+of the doctrines as a stalking-horse.
+
+There was a stir at this, and Hodder paused a moment and glanced around
+the table.  But no one interrupted.
+
+He was fully aware of his rights, and he had no intention of resigning.
+To resign would be to abandon the work for which he was responsible, not
+to them, but to God.  And he was perfectly willing--nay, eager to defend
+his Christianity before any ecclesiastical court, should the bishop
+decide that a court was necessary.  The day of freedom, of a truer vision
+was at hand, the day of Christian unity on the vital truths, and no
+better proof of it could be brought forward than the change in him.
+In his ignorance and blindness he had hitherto permitted compromise, but
+he would no longer allow those who made only an outward pretence of being
+Christians to direct the spiritual affairs of St. John's, to say what
+should and what should not be preached.  This was to continue to paralyze
+the usefulness of the church, to set at naught her mission, to alienate
+those who most had need of her, who hungered and thirsted after
+righteousness, and went away unsatisfied.
+
+He had hardly resumed his seat when Everett Constable got up again.  He
+remarked, somewhat unsteadily, that to prolong the controversy would be
+useless and painful to all concerned, and he infinitely regretted the
+necessity of putting his suggestion that the rector resign in the form of
+a resolution .  .  .  .  The vote was taken.  Six men raised their hands
+in favour of his resignation--Nelson Langmaid among them: two, Asa Waring
+and Philip Goodrich, were against it.  After announcing the result,
+Hodder rose.
+
+"For the reason I have stated, gentlemen, I decline to resign," he said.
+"I stand upon my canonical rights."
+
+Francis Ferguson arose, his voice actually trembling with anger.  There
+is something uncanny in the passion of a man whose life has been ordered
+by the inexorable rules of commerce, who has been wont to decide all
+questions from the standpoint of dollars and cents.  If one of his own
+wax models had suddenly become animated, the effect could not have been
+more startling.
+
+In the course of this discussion, he declared, Mr. Hodder had seen fit to
+make grave and in his opinion unwarranted charges concerning the lives of
+some, if not all, of the gentlemen who sat here.  It surprised him that
+these remarks had not been resented, but he praised a Christian
+forbearance on the part of his colleagues which he was unable to achieve.
+He had no doubt that their object had been to spare Mr. Hodder's feelings
+as much as possible, but Mr. Hodder had shown no disposition to spare
+their own.  He had outraged them, Mr. Ferguson thought,--wantonly so.
+He had made these preposterous and unchristian charges an excuse for his
+determination to remain in a position where his usefulness had ceased.
+
+No one, unfortunately, was perfect in this life,--not even Mr. Hodder.
+He, Francis Ferguson, was far from claiming to be so.  But he believed
+that this arraignment of the men who stood highest in the city for
+decency, law, and order, who supported the Church, who revered its
+doctrines, who tried to live Christian lives, who gave their time and
+their money freely to it and to charities, that this arraignment was an
+arrogant accusation and affront to be repudiated.  He demanded that Mr.
+Hodder be definite.  If he had any charges to make, let him make them
+here and now.
+
+The consternation, the horror which succeeded such a stupid and
+unexpected tactical blunder on the part of the usually astute
+Mr. Ferguson were felt rather than visually discerned.  The atmosphere
+might have been described as panicky.  Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich
+smiled as Wallis Plimpton, after a moment's hush, scrambled to his feet,
+his face pale, his customary easiness and nonchalance now the result of
+an obvious effort.  He, too, tried to smile, but swallowed instead as he
+remembered his property in Dalton Street .  .  .  .  Nelson Langmaid
+smiled, in spite of himself.  .  .  Mr. Plimpton implored his fellow-
+members not to bring personalities into the debate, and he was aware all
+the while of the curious, pitying expression of the rector.  He breathed
+a sigh of relief at the opening words of Hodder, who followed him.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I have no intention of being personal, even by
+unanimous consent.  But if Mr. Ferguson will come to me after this
+meeting I shall have not the least objection to discussing this matter
+with him in so far as he himself is concerned.  I can only assure you
+now that I have not spoken without warrant."
+
+There was, oddly enough, no acceptance of this offer by Mr. Ferguson.
+Another silence ensued, broken, at last, by a voice for which they had
+all been unconsciously waiting; a voice which, though unemotional, cold,
+and matter-of-fact, was nevertheless commanding, and long accustomed to
+speak with an overwhelming authority.  Eldon Parr did not rise.
+
+"Mr. Hodder," he said, "in one respect seems to be under the delusion
+that we are still in the Middle Ages, instead of the twentieth century,
+since he assumes the right to meddle with the lives of his parishioners,
+to be the sole judge of their actions.  That assumption will not, be
+tolerated by free men.  I, for one, gentlemen, do not, propose to have
+a socialist for the rector of the church which I attend and support.  And
+I maintain the privilege of an American citizen to set my own standards,
+within the law, and to be the sole arbitrar of those standards."
+
+"Good!" muttered Gordon Atterbury.  Langmaid moved uncomfortably.
+
+"I shall not waste words," the financier continued.  "There is in my
+mind no question that we are justified in demanding from our rector the
+Christian doctrines to which we have given our assent, and which are
+stated in the Creeds.  That they shall be subject to the whims of the
+rector is beyond argument.  I do not pretend to, understand either,
+gentlemen, the nature of the extraordinary change that has taken place
+in the rector of St. John's.  I am not well versed m psychology.  I am
+incapable of flights myself.  One effect of this change is an attitude
+on which reasonable considerations would seem to have no effect.
+
+"Our resources, fortunately, are not yet at an end.  It has been
+my hope, on account of my former friendship with Mr. Hodder, that an
+ecclesiastical trial might not be necessary.  It now seems inevitable.
+In the meantime, since Mr. Hodder has seen fit to remain in spite of
+our protest, I do not intend to enter this church.  I was prepared,
+gentlemen, as some of you no doubt know, to spend a considerable sum in
+adding to the beauty of St. John's and to the charitable activities of
+the parish.  Mr. Hodder has not disapproved of my gifts in the past, but
+owing to his present scruples concerning my worthiness, I naturally
+hesitate to press the matter now."  Mr. Parr indulged in the semblance of
+a smile.  "I fear that he must take the responsibility of delaying this
+benefit, with the other responsibilities he has assumed."
+
+His voice changed.  It became sharper.
+
+"In short, I propose to withhold all contributions for whatever purpose
+from this church while Mr. Hodder is rector, and I advise those of you
+who have voted for his resignation to do the same.  In the meantime,
+I shall give my money to Calvary, and attend its services.  And I shall
+offer further a resolution--which I am informed is within our right--to
+discontinue Mr. Hodder's salary."
+
+There was that in the unparalleled audacity of Eldon Parr that compelled
+Hodder's unwilling admiration.  He sat gazing at the financier during
+this speech, speculating curiously on the inner consciousness of the man
+who could utter it.  Was it possible that he had no sense of guilt?  Even
+so, he had shown a remarkable astuteness in relying on the conviction
+that he (Hodder) would not betray what he knew.
+
+He was suddenly aware that Asa Waring was standing beside him.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Waring, "I have listened to this discussion as long
+as I can bear it with patience.  Had I been told of it, I should have
+thought it incredible that the methods of the money changers should be
+applied to the direction and control of the house of God.  In my opinion
+there is but one word which is suitable for what has passed here
+to-night, and the word is persecution.  Perhaps I have lived too long I
+have lived to see honourable, upright men deprived of what was rightfully
+theirs, driven from their livelihood by the rapacity of those who strive
+to concentrate the wealth and power of the nation into their hands.
+I have seen this power gathering strength, stretching its arm little by
+little over the institutions I fought to preserve, and which I cherish
+over our politics, over our government, yes, and even over our courts.
+I have seen it poisoning the business honour in which we formerly took
+such a pride, I have seen it reestablishing a slavery more pernicious
+than that which millions died to efface.  I have seen it compel a
+subservience which makes me ashamed, as an American, to witness."
+
+His glance, a withering moral scorn, darted from under the grizzled
+eyebrows and alighted on one man after another, and none met it.  Everett
+Constable coughed, Wallis Plimpton shifted his position, the others sat
+like stones.  Asa Waring was giving vent at last to the pent-up feelings
+of many years.
+
+"And now that power, which respects nothing, has crept into the sanctuary
+of the Church.  Our rector recognizes it, I recognize it,--there is not
+a man here who, in his heart, misunderstands me.  And when a man is found
+who has the courage to stand up against it, I honour him with all my
+soul, and a hope that was almost dead revives in me.  For there is one
+force, and one force alone, able to overcome the power of which I speak,
+--the Spirit of Christ.  And the mission of the Church is to disseminate
+that spirit.  The Church is the champion on which we have to rely, or
+give up all hope of victory.  The Church must train the recruits.  And if
+the Church herself is betrayed into the hands of the enemy, the battle is
+lost.
+
+"If Mr. Hodder is forced out of this church, it would be better to lock
+the doors.  St. John's will be held up, and rightfully, to the scorn of
+the city.  All the money in the world will not save her.  Though
+crippled, she has survived one disgrace, when she would not give free
+shelter to the man who above all others expressed her true spirit, when
+she drove Horace Bentley from her doors after he had been deprived of the
+fortune which he was spending for his fellow-men.  She will not survive
+another.
+
+"I have no doubt Mr. Parr's motion to take from Mr. Hodder his living
+will go through.  And still I urge him not to resign.  I am not a rich
+man, even when such property as I have is compared to moderate fortunes
+of these days, but I would pay his salary willingly out of my own pocket
+rather than see him go .  .  .  .
+
+"I call the attention of the Chairman," said Eldon Parr, after a certain
+interval in which no one had ventured to speak, "to the motion before the
+vestry relating to the discontinuance of Mr. Hodder's salary."
+
+It was then that the unexpected happened.  Gordon Atterbury redeemed
+himself.  His respect for Mr. Waring, he said, made him hesitate to take
+issue with him.
+
+He could speak for himself and for a number of people in the congregation
+when he reiterated his opinion that they were honestly shocked at what
+Mr. Hodder had preached, and that this was his sole motive in requesting
+Mr. Hodder to resign.  He thought, under the circumstances, that this was
+a matter which might safely be left with the bishop.  He would not vote
+to deprive Mr. Hodder of his salary.
+
+The motion was carried by a vote of five to three.  For Eldon Parr well
+knew that his will needed no reenforcement by argument.  And this much
+was to be said for him, that after he had entered a battle he never
+hesitated, never under any circumstances reconsidered the probable
+effect of his course.
+
+As for the others, those who had supported him, they were cast in a less
+heroic mould.  Even Francis Ferguson.  As between the devil and the deep
+sea, he was compelled, with as good a grace as possible, to choose the
+devil.  He was utterly unable to contemplate the disaster which might
+ensue if certain financial ties, which were thicker than cables, were
+snapped.  But his affection for the devil was not increased by thus being
+led into a charge from which he would willingly have drawn back.  Asa
+Waring might mean nothing to Eldon Parr, but he meant a great deal to
+Francis Ferguson, who had by no means forgotten his sensations of
+satisfaction when Mrs. Waring had made her first call in Park Street on
+Francis Ferguson's wife.  He left the room in such a state of absent-
+mindedness as actually to pass Mr. Parr in the corridor without speaking
+to him.
+
+The case of Wallis Plimpton was even worse.  He had married the Gores,
+but he had sought to bind himself with hoops of steel to the Warings.  He
+had always secretly admired that old Roman quality (which the Goodriches
+--their connections--shared) of holding fast to their course unmindful
+and rather scornful of influence which swayed their neighbours.  The clan
+was sufficient unto itself, satisfied with a moderate prosperity and a
+continually increasing number of descendants.  The name was unstained.
+Such are the strange incongruities in the hearts of men, that few
+realized the extent to which Wallis Plimpton had partaken of the general
+hero-worship of Phil Goodrich.  He had assiduously cultivated his regard,
+at times discreetly boasted of it, and yet had never been sure of it.
+And now fate, in the form of his master, Eldon Parr had ironically
+compelled him at one stroke to undo the work of years.  As soon as the
+meeting broke up, he crossed the room.
+
+"I can't tell you how much I regret this, Phil, he said.  "Charlotte has
+very strong convictions, you know, and so have I.  You can understand, I
+am sure, how certain articles of belief might be necessary to one person,
+and not to another."
+
+"Yes," said Phil, "I can understand.  We needn't mention the articles,
+Wallis."  And he turned his back.
+
+He never knew the pain he inflicted.  Wallis Plimpton looked at the
+rector, who stood talking to Mr. Waring, and for the first time in his
+life recoiled from an overture.
+
+Something in the faces of both men warned him away.
+
+Even Everett Constable, as they went home in the cars together, was brief
+with him, and passed no comments when Mr. Plimpton recovered sufficiently
+to elaborate on the justification of their act, and upon the
+extraordinary stand taken by Phil Goodrich and Mr. Waring.
+
+"They might have told us what they were going to do."
+
+Everett Constable eyed him.
+
+"Would it have made any difference, Plimpton?"  he demanded.
+
+After that they rode in silence, until they came to a certain West End
+corner, where they both descended.  Little Mr. Constable's sensations
+were, if anything, less enviable, and he had not Mr. Plimpton's
+recuperative powers.   He had sold that night, for a mess of pottage,
+the friendship and respect of three generations.  And he had fought,
+for pay, against his own people.
+
+And lastly, there was Langmaid, whose feelings almost defy analysis.  He
+chose to walk through the still night the four miles--that separated him
+from his home.  And he went back over the years of his life until he
+found, in the rubbish of the past, a forgotten and tarnished jewel.  The
+discovery pained him.  For that jewel was the ideal he had carried away,
+as a youth, from the old law school at the bottom of Hamilton Place,
+--a gift from no less a man than the great lawyer and public-spirited
+citizen, Judge Henry Goodrich--Philip Goodrich's grandfather, whose
+seated statue marked the entrance of the library.  He, Nelson Langmaid,
+--had gone forth from that school resolved to follow in the footsteps
+of that man,--but somehow he missed the path.  Somehow the jewel had lost
+its fire.  There had come a tempting offer, and a struggle--just one:
+a readjustment on the plea that the world had changed since the days of
+Judge Goodrich, whose uncompromising figure had begun to fade: an
+exciting discovery that he, Nelson Langmaid, possessed the gift of
+drawing up agreements which had the faculty of passing magically through
+the meshes of the Statutes.  Affluence had followed, and fame, and even
+that high office which the Judge himself had held, the Presidency of the
+State Bar Association.  In all that time, one remark, which he had tried
+to forget, had cut him to the quick.  Bedloe Hubbell had said on the
+political platform that Langmaid got one hundred thousand dollars a year
+for keeping Eldon Parr out of jail.
+
+Once he stopped in the street, his mind suddenly going back to the action
+of the financier at the vestry meeting.
+
+"Confound him!" he said aloud, "he has been a fool for once.  I told him
+not to do it."
+
+He stood at last in the ample vestibule of his house, singling out his
+latch-key, when suddenly the door opened, and his daughter Helen
+appeared.
+
+"Oh, dad," she cried, "why are you so-late?  I've been watching for you.
+I know you've let Mr. Hodder stay."
+
+She gazed at him with widened eyes.
+
+"Don't tell me that you've made him resign.  I can't--I won't believe
+it."
+
+"He isn't going to resign, Helen," Langmaid replied, in an odd voice.
+
+"He--he refused to."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
+
+
+I
+
+The Church of St. John's, after a peaceful existence of so many years,
+had suddenly become the stage on which rapid and bewildering dramas were
+played: the storm-centre of chaotic forces, hitherto unperceived, drawn
+from the atmosphere around her.  For there had been more publicity, more
+advertising.  "The Rector of St. John's will not talk"--such had been
+one headline: neither would the vestry talk.  And yet, despite all this
+secrecy, the whole story of the suspension of Hodder's salary was in
+print, and an editorial (which was sent to him) from a popular and
+sensational journal, on "tainted money," in which Hodder was held up
+to the public as a martyr because he refused any longer to accept for
+the Church ill-gotten gains from Consolidated Tractions and the like.
+
+This had opened again the floodgates of the mails, and it seemed as
+though every person who had a real or fancied grievance against Eldon
+Parr had written him.  Nor did others of his congregation escape.  The
+press of visitors at the parish house suddenly increased once more,
+men and women came to pour into his ears an appalling aeries of
+confessions; wrongs which, like Garvin's, had engendered bitter hatreds;
+woes, temptations, bewilderments.  Hodder strove to keep his feet, sought
+wisdom to deal patiently with all, though at times he was tried to the
+uttermost.  And he held steadfastly before his mind the great thing, that
+they did come.  It was what he had longed for, prayed for, despaired of.
+He was no longer crying in the empty wilderness, but at last in touch-in
+natural touch with life: with life in all its sorrow, its crudity and
+horror.  He had contrived, by the grace of God, to make the connection
+for his church.
+
+That church might have been likened to a ship sailing out of the snug
+harbour in which she had lain so long to range herself gallantly beside
+those whom she had formerly beheld, with complacent cowardice, fighting
+her fight: young men and women, enlisted under other banners than her
+own, doing their part in the battle of the twentieth century for
+humanity.  Her rector was her captain.  It was he who had cut her cables,
+quelled, for a time at least, her mutineers; and sought to hearten those
+of her little crew who wavered, who shrank back appalled as they realized
+something of the immensity of the conflict in which her destiny was to be
+wrought out.
+
+To carry on the figure, Philip Goodrich might have been deemed her first
+officer.  He, at least, was not appalled, but grimly conscious of the
+greatness of the task to which they had set their hands.  The sudden
+transformation of conservative St. John's was no more amazing than that
+of the son of a family which had never been without influence in the
+community.  But that influence had always been conservative.  And Phil
+Goodrich had hitherto taken but a listless interest in the church of his
+fathers.  Fortune had smiled upon him, trusts had come to him unsought.
+He had inherited the family talent for the law, the freedom to practise
+when and where he chose.  His love of active sport had led him into many
+vacations, when he tramped through marsh and thicket after game, and at
+five and forty there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his hard
+body.  In spite of his plain speaking, an overwhelming popularity at
+college had followed him to his native place, and no organization,
+sporting or serious, was formed in the city that the question was not
+asked, "What does Goodrich think about it?"
+
+His whole-souled enlistment in the cause of what was regarded as radical
+religion became, therefore, the subject of amazed comment in the many
+clubs he now neglected.  The "squabble" in St. John's, as it was
+generally referred to, had been aired in the press, but such was the
+magic in a name made without conscious effort that Phil Goodrich's
+participation in the struggle had a palpably disarming effect: and there
+were not a few men who commonly spent their Sunday mornings behind plate-
+glass windows, surrounded by newspapers, as well as some in the athletic
+club (whose contests Mr. Goodrich sometimes refereed) who went to St.
+John's out of curiosity and who waited, afterwards, for an interview with
+Phil or the rector.  The remark of one of these was typical of others.
+He had never taken much stock in religion, but if Goodrich went in for
+it he thought he'd go and look it over.
+
+Scarcely a day passed that Phil did not drop in at the parish house....
+And he set himself, with all the vigour of an unsquandered manhood, to
+help Hodder to solve the multitude of new problems by which they were
+beset.
+
+A free church was a magnificent ideal, but how was it to be carried on
+without an Eldon Parr, a Ferguson, a Constable, a Mrs. Larrabbee, or a
+Gore who would make up the deficit at the end of the year?  Could weekly
+contributions, on the envelope system, be relied upon, provided the
+people continued to come and fill the pews of absent and outraged
+parishioners?  The music was the most expensive in the city, although
+Mr. Taylor, the organist, had come to the rector and offered to cut his
+salary in half, and to leave that in abeyance until the finances could be
+adjusted.  And his example had been followed by some of the high-paid men
+in the choir.  Others had offered to sing without pay.  And there were
+the expenses of the parish house, an alarming sum now Eldon Parr had
+withdrawn: the salaries of the assistants.  Hodder, who had saved a
+certain sum in past years, would take nothing for the present .  .  .  .
+Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich borrowed on their own responsibility .  .  .
+
+
+
+II
+
+Something of the overwhelming nature of the forces Hodder had summoned
+was visibly apparent on that first Sunday after what many had called his
+apostasy.  Instead of the orderly, sprucely-dressed groups of people
+which were wont to linger in greetings before the doors of St. John's,
+a motley crowd thronged the pavement and streamed into the church,
+pressing up the aisles and invading the sacred precincts where decorous
+parishioners had for so many years knelt in comfort and seclusion.
+The familiar figure of Gordon Atterbury was nowhere to be seen, and the
+Atterbury pew was occupied by shop-girls in gaudy hats.  Eldon Parr's pew
+was filled, Everett Constable's, Wallis Plimpton's; and the ushers who
+had hastily been mustered were awestricken and powerless.  Such a
+resistless invasion by the hordes of the unknown might well have struck
+with terror some of those who hitherto had had the courage to standup
+loyally in the rector's support.  It had a distinct flavour of
+revolution: contained, for some, a grim suggestion of a time when that
+vague, irresponsible, and restless monster, the mob, would rise in its
+might and brutally and inexorably take possession of all property.
+
+Alison had met Eleanor Goodrich in Burton Street, and as the two made
+their way into the crowded vestibule they encountered Martha Preston,
+whose husband was Alison's cousin, in the act of flight.
+
+"You're not going in!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Of course we are."
+
+Mrs. Preston stared at Alison in amazement.
+
+"I didn't know you were still here," she said, irrelevantly.  "I'm pretty
+liberal, my dear, as you know,--but this is more than I can stand.  Look
+at them!"  She drew up her skirts as a woman brushed against her.
+"I believe in the poor coming to church, and all that, but this is mere
+vulgar curiosity, the result of all that odious advertising in the
+newspapers.  My pew is filled with them.  If I had stayed, I should have
+fainted.  I don't know what to think of Mr. Hodder."
+
+"Mr. Hodder is not to blame for the newspapers," replied Alison, warmly.
+She glanced around her at the people pushing past, her eyes shining, her
+colour high, and there was the ring of passion in her voice which had do
+Martha Preston a peculiarly disquieting effect.  "I think it's splendid
+that they are here at all!  I don't care what brought them."
+
+Mrs. Preston stared again.  She was a pretty, intelligent woman, at whose
+dinner table one was sure to hear the discussion of some "modern
+problem": she believed herself to be a socialist.  Her eyes sought
+Eleanor Goodrich's, who stood by, alight with excitement.
+
+"But surely you, Eleanor-you're not going in!  You'll never be able to
+stand it, even if you find a seat.  The few people we know who've come
+are leaving.  I just saw the Allan Pendletons."
+
+"Have you seen Phil?"  Eleanor asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, he's in there, and even he's helpless.  And as I came out poor
+Mr. Bradley was jammed up against the wall.  He seemed perfectly stunned
+.  .  .  ."
+
+At this moment they were thrust apart.  Eleanor quivered as she was
+carried through the swinging doors into the church.
+
+"I think you're right," she whispered to Alison, "it is splendid.
+There's something about it that takes hold of me, that carries one away.
+It makes me wonder how it can be guided--what will come of it?"
+
+They caught sight of Phil pushing his way towards them, and his face bore
+the set look of belligerency which Eleanor knew so well, but he returned
+her smile.  Alison's heart warmed towards him.
+
+"What do you think of this?" he demanded.  "Most of our respectable
+friends who dared to come have left in a towering rage--to institute
+lawsuits, probably.  At tiny rate, strangers are not being made to wait
+until ten minutes after the service begins.  That's one barbarous custom
+abolished."
+
+"Strangers seem to have taken matters in their own hands for once"
+Eleanor smiled.  "We've made up our minds to stay, Phil, even if we have
+to stand."
+
+"That's the right spirit," declared her husband, glancing at Alison, who
+had remained silent, with approval and by no means a concealed surprise.
+"I think I know of a place where I can squeeze you in, near Professor
+Bridges and Sally, on the side aisle."
+
+"Are George and Sally here?" Eleanor exclaimed.
+
+"Hodder," said Phil, "is converting the heathen.  You couldn't have kept
+George away.  And it was George who made Sally stay!"
+
+Presently they found themselves established between a rawboned young
+workingman who smelled strongly of soap, whose hair was plastered tightly
+against his forehead, and a young woman who leaned against the wall.  The
+black in which she was dressed enhanced the whiteness and weariness of
+her face, and she sat gazing ahead of her, apparently unconscious of
+those who surrounded her, her hands tightly folded in her lap.  In their
+immediate vicinity, indeed, might have been found all the variety of type
+seen in the ordinary street car.  And in truth there were some who seemed
+scarcely to realize they were not in a public vehicle.  An elaborately
+dressed female in front of them, whose expansive hat brushed her
+neighbours, made audible comments to a stout man with a red neck which
+was set in a crease above his low collar.
+
+"They tell me Eldon Parr's pew has a gold plate on it.  I wish I knew
+which it was.  It ain't this one, anyway, I'll bet."
+
+"Say, they march in in this kind of a church, don't they?" some one said
+behind them.
+
+Eleanor, with her lips tightly pressed, opened her prayer book.  Alison's
+lips were slightly parted as she gazed about her, across the aisle.  Her
+experience of the Sunday before, deep and tense as it had been, seemed as
+nothing compared to this; the presence of all these people stimulated her
+inexpressibly, fired her; and she felt the blood pulsing through her
+body as she contrasted this gathering with the dignified, scattered
+congregation she had known.  She scarcely recognized the church itself
+.  .  .  She speculated on the homes from which these had come, and the
+motives which had brought them.
+
+For a second the perfume of the woman in front, mingling with other less
+definable odours, almost sickened her, evoking suggestions of tawdry,
+trivial, vulgar lives, fed on sensation and excitement; but the feeling
+was almost immediately swept away by a renewed sense of the bigness of
+the thing which she beheld,--of which, indeed, she was a part.  And her
+thoughts turned more definitely to the man who had brought it all about.
+Could he control it, subdue it?  Here was Opportunity suddenly upon him,
+like a huge, curving, ponderous wave.  Could he ride it? or would it
+crush him remorselessly?
+
+Sensitive, alert, quickened as she was, she began to be aware of other
+values: of the intense spiritual hunger in the eyes of the woman in
+black, the yearning of barren, hopeless existences.  And here and there
+Alison's look fell upon more prosperous individuals whose expressions
+proclaimed incredulity, a certain cynical amusement at the spectacle:
+others seemed uneasy, as having got more than they had bargained for,
+deliberating whether to flee .  .  .  and then, just as her suspense was
+becoming almost unbearable, the service began. . . .
+
+How it had been accomplished, the thing she later felt, was beyond the
+range of intellectual analysis.  Nor could she have told how much later,
+since the passage of time had gone unnoticed.  Curiosities, doubts,
+passions, longings, antagonisms--all these seemed--as the most natural
+thing in the world--to have been fused into one common but ineffable
+emotion.  Such, at least, was the impression to which Alison startlingly
+awoke.  All the while she had been conscious of Hodder, from the moment
+she had heard his voice in the chancel; but somehow this consciousness of
+him had melted, imperceptibly, into that of the great congregation, once
+divided against itself, which had now achieved unity of soul.
+
+The mystery as to how this had been effected was the more elusive when
+she considered the absence of all methods which might have been deemed
+revivalistic.  Few of those around her evinced a familiarity with the
+historic service.  And then occurred to her his explanation of
+personality as the medium by which all truth is revealed, by which the
+current of religion, the motive power in all history, is transmitted.
+Surely this was the explanation, if it might be called one!  That
+tingling sense of a pervading spirit which was his,--and yet not his.
+He was the incandescent medium, and yet, paradoxically, gained in
+identity and individuality and was inseparable from the thing itself.
+
+She could not see him.  A pillar hid the chancel from her view.
+
+The service, to which she had objected as archaic, became subordinate,
+spiritualized, dominated by the personality.  Hodder had departed from
+the usual custom by giving out the page of the psalter: and the verses,
+the throbbing responses which arose from every corner of the church,
+assumed a new significance, the vision of the ancient seer revived.  One
+verse he read resounded with prophecy.
+
+"Thou shalt deliver me from the strivings of the people: and thou shalt
+make me the head of the heathen."
+
+And the reply:
+
+"A people whom I have not known shall serve me."
+
+The working-man next to Alison had no prayer-book.  She thrust her own
+into his hand, and they read from it together .  .  .  .
+
+When they came to the second hymn the woman in front of her had
+wonderfully shed her vulgarity.  Her voice--a really good one--poured
+itself out:
+
+              "See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
+               See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,
+               In crowding ranks on every side arise,
+               Demanding life, impatient for the skies."
+
+Once Alison would have been critical of the words She was beyond that,
+now.  What did it matter, if the essential Thing were present?
+
+The sermon was a surprise.  And those who had come for excitement,
+for the sensation of hearing a denunciation of a class they envied and
+therefore hated, and nevertheless strove to imitate, were themselves
+rebuked.  Were not their standards the same?  And if the standard were
+false, it followed inevitably that the life was false also.
+
+Hodder fairly startled these out of their preconceived notions of
+Christianity.  Let them shake out of their minds everything they had
+thought it to mean, churchgoing, acceptance of creed and dogma,
+contributive charity, withdrawal from the world, rites and ceremonies:
+it was none of these.
+
+The motive in the world to-day was the acquisition of property; the
+motive of Christianity was absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to
+this.  Shock their practical sense as it might, Christianity looked
+forward with steadfast faith to a time when the incentive to amass
+property would be done away with, since it was a source of evil and
+a curse to mankind.  If they would be Christians, let them face that.
+Let them enter into life, into the struggles going on around them to-day
+against greed, corruption, slavery, poverty, vice and crime.  Let them
+protest, let them fight, even as Jesus Christ had fought and protested.
+For as sure as they sat there the day would come when they would be
+called to account, would be asked the question--what had they done to
+make the United States of America a better place to live in?
+
+There were in the Apostolic writings and tradition misinterpretations
+of life which had done much harm.  Early Christianity had kept its eyes
+fixed on another world, and had ignored this: had overlooked the fact
+that every man and woman was put here to do a particular work.  In the
+first epistle of Peter the advice was given, "submit yourselves to every
+ordinance of man for the Lord's sake."  But Christ had preached
+democracy, responsibility, had foreseen a millennium, the fulfilment of
+his Kingdom, when all men, inspired by the Spirit, would make and keep
+in spirit the ordinances of God.
+
+Before they could do God's work and man's work they must first be
+awakened, filled with desire.  Desire was power.  And he prayed that some
+of them, on this day, would receive that desire, that power which nothing
+could resist.  The desire which would lead each and every one to the
+gates of the Inner World which was limitless and eternal, filled with
+dazzling light .  .  .  .
+
+Let them have faith then.  Not credulity in a vague God they could not
+imagine, but faith in the Spirit of the Universe, humanity, in Jesus
+Christ who had been the complete human revelation of that Spirit, who had
+suffered and died that man might not live in ignorance of it.  To doubt
+humanity,--such was the Great Refusal, the sin against the Holy Ghost,
+the repudiation of the only true God!
+
+After a pause, he spoke simply of his hope for St. John's.  If he
+remained here his ambition was that it would be the free temple of
+humanity, of Jesus Christ, supported not by a few, but by all,--each in
+accordance with his means.  Of those who could afford nothing, nothing
+would be required.  Perhaps this did not sound practical, nor would it be
+so if the transforming inspiration failed.  He could only trust and try,
+hold up to them the vision of the Church as a community of willing
+workers for the Kingdom .  .  .
+
+
+
+III
+
+After the service was over the people lingered in the church, standing in
+the pews and aisles, as though loath to leave.  The woman with the
+perfume and the elaborate hat was heard to utter a succinct remark.
+
+"Say, Charlie, I guess he's all right.  I never had it put like that."
+
+The thick-necked man's reply was inaudible.
+
+Eleanor Goodrich was silent and a little pale as she pressed close to
+Alison.  Her imagination had been stretched, as it were, and she was
+still held in awe by the vastness of what she had heard and seen.  Vaster
+even than ever,--so it appeared now,--demanding greater sacrifices than
+she had dreamed of.  She looked back upon the old as at receding shores.
+
+Alison, with absorbed fascination, watched the people; encountered, here
+and there, recognitions from men and women with whom she had once danced
+and dined in what now seemed a previous existence.  Why had they come?
+and how had they received the message?  She ran into a little man, a
+dealer in artists' supplies who once had sold her paints and brushes, who
+stared and bowed uncertainly.  She surprised him by taking his hand.
+
+"Did you like it?" she asked, impulsively.
+
+"It's what I've been thinking for years, Miss Parr," he responded,
+"thinking and feeling.  But I never knew it was Christianity.  And I
+never thought--" he stopped and looked at her, alarmed.
+
+"Oh," she said, "I believe in it, too--or try to."
+
+She left him, mentally gasping .  .  .  .  Without, on the sidewalk,
+Eleanor Goodrich was engaged in conversation with a stockily built man,
+inclined to stoutness; he had a brown face and a clipped, bristly
+mustache.  Alison paused involuntarily, and saw him start and hesitate
+as his clear, direct gaze met her own.
+
+Bedloe Hubbell was one of those who had once sought to marry her.  She
+recalled him as an amiable and aimless boy; and after she had gone East
+she had received with incredulity and then with amusement the news of his
+venture into altruistic politics.  It was his efficiency she had doubted,
+not his sincerity.  Later tidings, contemptuous and eventually irritable
+utterances of her own father, together with accounts in the New York
+newspapers of his campaign, had convinced her in spite of herself that
+Bedloe Hubbell had actually shaken the seats of power.  And somehow, as
+she now took him in, he looked it.
+
+His transformation was one of the signs, one of the mysteries of the
+times.  The ridicule and abuse of the press, the opposition and enmity of
+his childhood friends, had developed the man of force she now beheld, and
+who came forward to greet her.
+
+"Alison!" he exclaimed.  He had changed in one sense, and not in another.
+Her colour deepened as the sound of his voice brought back the lapsed
+memories of the old intimacy.  For she had been kind to him, kinder than
+to any other; and the news of his marriage--to a woman from the Pacific
+coast--had actually induced in her certain longings and regrets.  When
+the cards had reached her, New York and the excitement of the life into
+which she had been weakly, if somewhat unwittingly, drawn had already
+begun to pall.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you," she told him.  "I've heard--so many things.
+And I'm very much in sympathy with what you're doing."
+
+They crossed the street, and walked away from the church together.  She
+had surprised him, and made him uncomfortable.
+
+"You've been away so long," he managed to say, "perhaps you do not
+realize--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do," she interrupted.  "I am on the other side, on your side.
+I thought of writing you, when you nearly won last autumn."
+
+"You see it, too?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I've changed, too.  Not so much as you," she added, shyly.
+"I always had a certain sympathy, you know, with the Robin Hoods."
+
+He laughed at her designation, both pleased and taken aback by her
+praise.  .  .  But he wondered if she knew the extent of his criticism
+of her father.
+
+"That rector is a wonderful man," he broke out, irrelevantly.  "I can't
+get over' him--I can't quite grasp the fact that he exists, that he has
+dared to do what he has done."
+
+This brought her colour back, but she faced him bravely.  You think he is
+wonderful, then?"
+
+"Don't you?" he demanded.
+
+She assented.  "But I am curious to know why you do.  Somehow, I never
+thought of--you--"
+
+"As religious," he supplied.  "And you?  If I remember rightly--"
+
+"Yes," she interrupted, "I revolted, too.  But Mr. Hodder puts it so
+--it makes one wonder."
+
+"He has not only made me wonder," declared Bedloe Hubbell, emphatically,
+"I never knew what religion was until I heard this man last Sunday."
+
+"Last Sunday!"
+
+"Until then, I hadn't been inside of a church for fifteen years,--except
+to get married.  My wife takes the children, occasionally, to a
+Presbyterian church near us."
+
+"And why, did you go then?" she asked.
+
+"I am a little ashamed of my motive," he confessed.  "There were rumours
+--I don't pretend to know how they got about--" he hesitated, once more
+aware of delicate ground.  "Wallis Plimpton said something to a man who
+told me.  I believe I went out of sheer curiosity to hear what Hodder
+would have to say.  And then, I had been reading, wondering whether there
+were anything in Christianity, after all."
+
+"Yes?"  she said, careless now as to what cause he might attribute her
+eagerness.  "And he gave you something?"
+
+It was then she grasped the truth that this sudden renewed intimacy was
+the result of the impression Hodder had left upon the minds of both.
+
+"He gave me everything," Bedloe Hubbell replied.  "I am willing to
+acknowledge it freely.  In his explanation of the parable of the Prodigal
+Son, he gave me the clew to our modern times.  What was for me an
+inextricable puzzle has become clear as day.  He has made me understand,
+at last, the force which stirred me, which goaded me until I was fairly
+compelled to embark in the movement which the majority of our citizens
+still continue to regard as quixotic.  I did not identify that force with
+religion, then, and when I looked back on the first crazy campaign we
+embarked upon, with the whole city laughing at me and at the obscure
+and impractical personnel we had, there were moments when it seemed
+incomprehensible folly.  I had nothing to gain, and everything to lose by
+such a venture.  I was lazy and easy-going, as you know.  I belonged to
+the privileged class, I had sufficient money to live in comparative
+luxury all my days, I had no grudge against these men whom I had known
+all my life."
+
+"But it must have had some beginning," said Alison.
+
+"I was urged to run for the city council, by these very men."  Bedloe
+Hubbell smiled at the recollection.  "They accuse me now of having
+indulged once in the same practice, for which I am condemning them.
+Our company did accept rebates, and we sought favours from the city
+government.  I have confessed it freely on the platform.  Even during my
+first few months in the council what may be called the old political
+practices seemed natural to me.  But gradually the iniquity of it all
+began to dawn on me, and then I couldn't rest until I had done something
+towards stopping it.
+
+"At length I began to see," he continued, "that education of the masses
+was to be our only preserver, that we should have to sink or swim by
+that.  I began to see, dimly, that this was true for other movements
+going on to-day.  Now comes Hodder with what I sincerely believe is the
+key.  He compels men like me to recognize that our movements are not
+merely moral, but religious.  Religion, as yet unidentified, is the force
+behind these portentous stirrings of politics in our country, from sea to
+sea.  He aims, not to bring the Church into politics, but to make her the
+feeder of these movements.  Men join them to-day from all motives, but
+the religious is the only one to which they may safely be trusted.  He
+has rescued the jewel from the dust-heap of tradition, and holds it up,
+shining, before our eyes."
+
+Alison looked at her companion.
+
+"That," she said, "is a very beautiful phrase."
+
+Bedloe Hubbell smiled queerly.
+
+"I don't know why I'm telling you all this.  I can't usually talk about
+it.  But the sight of that congregation this morning, mixed as it was,
+and the way he managed to weld it together."
+
+"Ah, you noticed that!" she exclaimed sharply.
+
+"Noticed it!"
+
+"I know.  It was a question of feeling it."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Will he succeed?"  she asked presently.
+
+"Ah," said Bedloe Hubbell, "how is it possible to predict it?  The forces
+against him are tremendous, and it is usually the pioneer who suffers.
+I agree absolutely with his definition of faith, I have it.  And the work
+he has done already can never be undone.  The time is ripe, and it is
+something that he has men like Phil Goodrich behind him, and Mr. Waring.
+I'm going to enlist, and from now on I intend to get every man and woman
+upon whom I have any influence whatever to go to that church .  .  .  ."
+A little later Alison, marvelling, left him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CURRENT OF LIFE
+
+
+I
+
+The year when Hodder had gone east--to Bremerton and Bar Harbor,
+he had read in the train a magazine article which had set fire to his
+imagination.  It had to do with the lives of the men, the engineers who
+dared to deal with the wild and terrible power of the western hills, who
+harnessed and conquered roaring rivers, and sent the power hundreds of
+miles over the wilderness, by flimsy wires, to turn the wheels of
+industry and light the dark places of the cities.  And, like all men who
+came into touch with elemental mysteries, they had their moments of pure
+ecstasy, gaining a tingling, intenser life from the contact with dynamic
+things; and other moments when, in their struggle for mastery, they were
+buffeted about, scorched, and almost overwhelmed.
+
+In these days the remembrance of that article came back to Hodder.
+It was as though he, too, were seeking to deflect and guide a force--
+the Force of forces.  He, too, was buffeted, scorched, and bruised,
+at periods scarce given time to recover himself in the onward rush he
+himself had started, and which he sought to control.  Problems arose
+which demanded the quick thinking of emergency.  He, too, had his moments
+of reward, the reward of the man who is in touch with reality.
+
+He lived, from day to day, in a bewildering succession of encouragements
+and trials, all unprecedented.  If he remained at St. John's, an entire
+new organization would be necessary .  .  .  .  He did not as yet see it
+clearly; and in the meantime, with his vestry alienated, awaiting the
+bishop's decision, he could make no definite plans, even if he had had
+the leisure.  Wholesale desertions had occurred in the guilds and
+societies, the activities of which had almost ceased.  Little Tomkinson,
+the second assistant, had resigned; and McCrae, who worked harder than
+ever before, was already marked, Hodder knew, for dismissal if he himself
+were defeated.
+
+And then there was the ever present question of money.  It remained to
+be seen whether a system of voluntary offerings were practicable.  For
+Hodder had made some inquiries into the so-called "free churches," only
+to discover that there were benefactors behind them, benefactors the
+Christianity of whose lives was often doubtful.
+
+One morning he received in the mail the long-expected note from the
+bishop, making an appointment for the next day.  Hodder, as he read it
+over again, smiled to himself. . . He could gather nothing of the mind
+of the writer from the contents.
+
+The piece of news which came to him on the same morning swept completely
+the contemplations of the approaching interview from his mind.  Sally
+Grover stopped in at the parish house on her way to business.
+
+"Kate Marcy's gone," she announced, in her abrupt fashion.
+
+"Gone!" he exclaimed, and stared at her in dismay.  "Gone where?"
+
+"That's just it," said Miss Grover.  "I wish I knew.  I reckon we'd got
+into the habit of trusting her too much, but it seemed the only way.  She
+wasn't in her room last night, but Ella Finley didn't find it out until
+this morning, and she ran over scared to death, to tell us about it."
+
+Involuntarily the rector reached for his hat.
+
+"I've sent out word among our friends in Dalton Street," Sally continued.
+An earthquake could not have disturbed her outer, matter-of-fact
+calmness.  But Hodder was not deceived: he knew that she was as
+profoundly grieved and discouraged as himself.  "And I've got old Gratz,
+the cabinet-maker, on the job.  If she's in Dalton Street, he'll find
+her."
+
+"But what--?"  Hodder began.
+
+Sally threw up her hands.
+
+"You never can tell, with that kind.  But it sticks in my mind she's done
+something foolish."
+
+"Foolish?"
+
+Sally twitched, nervously.
+
+"Somehow I don't think it's a spree--but as I say, you can't tell.  She's
+full of impulses.  You remember how she frightened us once before, when
+she went off and stayed all night with the woman she used to know in the
+flat house, when she heard she was sick?"
+
+Hodder nodded.
+
+"You've inquired there?"
+
+"That woman went to the hospital, you know.  She may be with another one.
+If she is, Gratz ought to find her.  .  .  You know there was a time, Mr.
+Hodder, when I didn't have much hope that we'd pull her through.  But we
+got hold of her through her feelings.  She'd do anything for Mr. Bentley
+--she'd do anything for you, and the way she stuck to that embroidery was
+fine.  I don't say she was cured, but whenever she'd feel one of those
+fits coming on she'd let us know about it, and we'd watch her.  And I
+never saw one of that kind change so.  Why, she must be almost as good
+looking now as she ever was."
+
+"You don't think she has done anything--desperate?" asked Hodder, slowly.
+
+Sally comprehended.
+
+"Well--somehow I don't.  She used to say if she ever got drunk again
+she'd never come back.  But she didn't have any money--she's given Mr.
+Bentley every cent of it.  And we didn't have any warning.  She was as
+cheerful as could be yesterday morning, Mrs. McQuillen says."
+
+"It might not do any harm to notify the police," replied Hodder, rising.
+"I'll go around to headquarters now."
+
+He was glad of the excuse for action.  He could not have sat still.  And
+as he walked rapidly across Burton Street he realized with a pang how
+much his heart had been set on Kate Marcy's redemption.  In spite of the
+fact that every moment of his time during the past fortnight had been
+absorbed by the cares, responsibilities, and trials thrust upon him, he
+reproached himself for not having gone oftener to Dalton Street.  And
+yet, if Mr. Bentley and Sally Grower had been unable to foresee and
+prevent this, what could he have done?
+
+At police headquarters he got no news.  The chief received him
+deferentially, sympathetically, took down Kate Marcy's description,
+went so far as to remark, sagely, that too much mustn't be expected
+of these women, and said he would notify the rector if she were found.
+The chief knew and admired Mr. Bentley, and declared he was glad to meet
+Mr. Hodder.  .  .  Hodder left, too preoccupied to draw any significance
+from the nature of his welcome.  He went at once to Mr. Bentley's.
+
+The old gentleman was inclined to be hopeful, to take Sally Grower's view
+of the matter.  .  He trusted, he said, Sally's instinct.  And Hodder
+came away less uneasy, not a little comforted by a communion which never
+failed to fortify him, to make him marvel at the calmness of that world
+in which his friend lived, a calmness from which no vicarious sorrow was
+excluded.  And before Hodder left, Mr. Bentley had drawn from him some
+account of the more recent complexities at the church.  The very pressure
+of his hand seemed to impart courage.
+
+"You won't stay and have dinner with me?"
+
+The rector regretfully declined.
+
+"I hear the bishop has returned," said Mr. Bentley, smiling.
+
+Hodder was surprised.  He had never heard Mr. Bentley speak of the
+bishop.  Of course he must know him.
+
+"I have my talk with him to-morrow."
+
+"Mr. Bentley said nothing, but pressed his hand again .  .  .  .
+
+On Tower Street, from the direction of the church, he beheld a young man
+and a young woman approaching him absorbed in conversation.  Even at a
+distance both seemed familiar, and presently he identified the lithe and
+dainty figure in the blue dress as that of the daughter of his vestryman,
+Francis Ferguson.  Presently she turned her face, alight with animation,
+from her companion, and recognized him.
+
+"It's Mr. Hodder!"  she exclaimed, and was suddenly overtaken with a
+crimson shyness.  The young man seemed equally embarrassed as they stood
+facing the rector.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't remember me, Mr. Hodder," he said.  "I met you at
+Mr. Ferguson's last spring."
+
+Then it came to him.  This was the young man who had made the faux pas
+which had caused Mrs. Ferguson so much consternation, and who had so
+manfully apologized afterwards.  His puzzled expression relaxed into a
+smile, and he took the young man's hand.
+
+"I was going to write to you," said Nan, as she looked up at the rector
+from under the wide brim of her hat.  "Our engagement is to be announced
+Wednesday."
+
+Hodder congratulated them.  There was a brief silence, when Nan said
+tremulously:
+
+"We're coming to St. John's!"
+
+"I'm very glad," Hodder replied, gravely.  It was one of those
+compensating moments, for him, when his tribulations vanished; and the
+tributes of the younger generation were those to which his heart most
+freely responded.  But the situation, in view of the attitude of Francis
+Ferguson, was too delicate to be dwelt upon.
+
+"I came to hear you last Sunday, Mr. Hodder," the young man volunteered,
+with that mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness which often
+characterize his sex and age in referring to such matters.  "And I had
+an idea of writing you, too, to tell you how much I liked what you said.
+But I know you must have had many letters.  You've made me think."
+
+He flushed, but met the rector's eye.  Nan stood regarding him with
+pride.
+
+"You've made me think, too," she added.  "And we intend to pitch in and
+help you, if we can be of any use."
+
+He parted from them, wondering.  And it was not until he had reached the
+parish house that it occurred to him that he was as yet unenlightened as
+to the young man's name .  .  .  .
+
+His second reflection brought back to his mind Kate Mercy, for it was
+with a portion of Nan Ferguson's generous check that her board had been
+paid.  And he recalled the girl's hope, as she had given it to him, that
+he would find some one in Dalton Street to help .  .  .  .
+
+
+
+II
+
+There might, to the mundane eye, have been an element of the ridiculous
+in the spectacle of the rector of St. John's counting his gains, since he
+had chosen--with every indication of insanity--to bring the pillars of
+his career crashing down on his own head.  By no means the least,
+however, of the treasures flung into his lap was the tie which now bound
+him to the Philip Goodriches, which otherwise would never have been
+possible.  And as he made his way thither on this particular evening, a
+renewed sense came upon him of his emancipation from the dreary, useless
+hours he had been wont to spend at other dinner tables.  That existence
+appeared to him now as the glittering, feverish unreality of a nightmare
+filled with restless women and tired men who drank champagne, thus
+gradually achieving--by the time cigars were reached--an artificial
+vivacity.  The caprice and superficiality of the one sex, the inability
+to dwell upon or even penetrate a serious subject, the blindness to what
+was going on around them; the materialism, the money standard of both,
+were nauseating in the retrospect.
+
+How, indeed, had life once appeared so distorted to him, a professed
+servant of humanity, as to lead him in the name of duty into that galley?
+
+Such was the burden of his thought when the homelike front of the
+Goodrich house greeted him in the darkness, its enshrouded windows
+gleaming with friendly light.  As the door opened, the merry sound of
+children's laughter floated down the stairs, and it seemed to Hodder as
+though a curse had been lifted.  .  .  .  The lintel of this house had
+been marked for salvation, the scourge had passed it by: the scourge of
+social striving which lay like a blight on a free people.
+
+Within, the note of gentility, of that instinctive good taste to which
+many greater mansions aspired in vain, was sustained.  The furniture, the
+pictures, the walls and carpets were true expressions of the
+individuality of master and mistress, of the unity of the life lived
+together; and the rector smiled as he detected, in a corner of the hall,
+a sturdy but diminutive hobby-horse--here the final, harmonious touch.
+There was the sound of a scuffle, treble shrieks of ecstasy from above,
+and Eleanor Goodrich came out to welcome him.
+
+"Its Phil," she told him in laughing despair, "he upsets all my
+discipline, and gets them so excited they don't go to sleep for hours..."
+
+Seated in front of the fire in the drawing-room, he found Alison Parr.
+Her coolness, her radiancy, her complete acceptance of the situation, all
+this and more he felt from the moment he touched her hand and looked into
+her face.  And never had she so distinctly represented to him the
+mysterious essence of fate.  Why she should have made the fourth at this
+intimate gathering, and whether or not she was or had been an especial
+friend of Eleanor Goodrich he did not know.  There was no explanation....
+
+A bowl of superb chrysanthemums occupied the centre of the table.
+Eleanor lifted them off and placed them on the sideboard.
+
+"I've got used to looking at Phil," she explained, "and craning is so
+painful."
+
+The effect at first was to increase the intensity of the intimacy.  There
+was no reason--he told himself--why Alison's self-possession should have
+been disturbed; and as he glanced at her from time to time he perceived
+that it was not.  So completely was she mistress of herself that
+presently he felt a certain faint resentment rising within him,--yet
+he asked himself why she should not have been.  It was curious that his
+imagination would not rise, now, to a realization of that intercourse on
+which, at times, his fancy had dwelt with such vividness.  The very
+interest, the eagerness with which she took part in their discussions
+seemed to him in the nature of an emphatic repudiation of any ties to him
+which might have been binding.
+
+All this was only, on Hodder's part, to be aware of the startling
+discovery as to how strong his sense of possession had been, and how
+irrational, how unwarranted.
+
+For he had believed himself, as regarding her, to have made the supreme
+renunciation of his life.  And the very fact that he had not consulted,
+could not consult her feelings and her attitude made that renunciation no
+less difficult.  All effort, all attempt at achievement of the only woman
+for whom he had ever felt the sublime harmony of desire--the harmony of
+the mind and the flesh--was cut off.
+
+To be here, facing her again in such close proximity, was at once a
+pleasure and a torture.  And gradually he found himself yielding to the
+pleasure, to the illusion of permanency created by her presence.
+And, when all was said, he had as much to be grateful for as he could
+reasonably have wished; yes, and more.  The bond (there was a bond, after
+all!) which united them was unbreakable.  They had forged it together.
+The future would take care of itself.
+
+The range of the conversation upon which they at length embarked was a
+tacit acknowledgment of a relationship which now united four persons who,
+six months before, would have believed themselves to have had nothing
+in common.  And it was characteristic of the new interest that it
+transcended the limits of the parish of St. John's, touched upon the
+greater affairs to which that parish--if their protest prevailed--would
+now be dedicated.  Not that the church was at once mentioned, but subtly
+implied as now enlisted,--and emancipated henceforth from all
+ecclesiastical narrowness .  .  .  .  The amazing thing by which Hodder
+was suddenly struck was the naturalness with which Alison seemed to fit
+into the new scheme.  It was as though she intended to remain there, and
+had abandoned all intention of returning to the life which apparently she
+had once permanently and definitely chosen....
+
+Bedloe Hubbell's campaign was another topic.  And Phil had observed,
+with the earnestness which marked his more serious statements, that it
+wouldn't surprise him if young Carter, Hubbell's candidate for mayor,
+overturned that autumn the Beatty machine.
+
+"Oh, do you think so!" Alison exclaimed with exhilaration.
+
+"They're frightened and out of breath," said Phil, "they had no idea
+that Bedloe would stick after they had licked him in three campaigns.
+Two years ago they tried to buy him off by offering to send him to the
+Senate, and Wallis Plimpton has never got through his head to this why
+he refused."
+
+Plimpton's head, Eleanor declared dryly, was impervious to a certain kind
+of idea.
+
+"I wonder if you know, Mr. Hodder, what an admirer Mr. Hubbell is of
+yours?" Alison asked.  "He is most anxious to have a talk with you."
+
+Hodder did not know.
+
+"Well," said Phil, enthusiastically, to the rector, "that's the best
+tribute you've had yet.  I can't say that Bedloe was a more unregenerate
+heathen than I was, but he was pretty bad."
+
+This led them, all save Hodder, into comments on the character of the
+congregation the Sunday before, in the midst of which the rector was
+called away to the telephone.  Sally Grover had promised to let him know
+whether or not they had found Kate Marcy, and his face was grave when he
+returned .  .  .  .  He was still preoccupied, an hour later, when Alison
+arose to go.
+
+"But your carriage isn't here," said Phil, going to the window.
+
+"Oh, I preferred to, walk," she told him, "it isn't far."
+
+
+
+III
+
+A blood-red October moon shed the fulness of its light on the silent
+houses, and the trees, still clinging to leaf, cast black shadows across
+the lawns and deserted streets.  The very echoes of their footsteps on
+the pavement seemed to enhance the unreality of their surroundings: Some
+of the residences were already closed for the night, although the hour
+was not late, and the glow behind the blinds of the others was nullified
+by the radiancy from above.  To Hodder, the sense of their isolation had
+never been more complete.
+
+Alison, while repudiating the notion that an escort were needed in a
+neighbourhood of such propriety and peace, had not refused his offer to
+accompany her.  And Hodder felt instinctively, as he took his place
+beside her, a sense of climax.  This situation, like those of the past,
+was not of his own making.  It was here; confronting him, and a certain
+inevitable intoxication at being once, more alone with her prevented him
+from forming any policy with which to deal with it.  He might either
+trust himself, or else he might not.  And as she said, the distance was
+not great.  But he could not help wondering, during those first moments
+of silence, whether she comprehended the strength of the temptation to
+which she subjected him .  .  .  .
+
+The night was warm.  She wore a coat, which was open, and from time to
+time he caught the gleam of the moonlight on the knotted pearls at her
+throat.  Over her head she had flung, mantilla-like, a black lace scarf,
+the effect of which was, in the soft luminosity encircling her, to add to
+the quality of mystery never exhausted.  If by acquiescing in his company
+she had owned to a tie between them, the lace shawl falling over the
+tails of her dark hair and framing in its folds her face, had somehow
+made her once more a stranger.  Nor was it until she presently looked up
+into his face with a smile that this impression was, if not at once
+wholly dissipated, at least contradicted.
+
+Her question, indeed, was intimate.
+
+"Why did you come with me?"
+
+"Why?" he repeated, taken aback.
+
+"Yes.  I'm sure you have something you wish to do, something which
+particularly worries you."
+
+"No," he answered, appraising her intuition of him, "there is nothing I
+can do, to-night.  A young woman in whom Mr. Bentley is interested, in
+whom I am interested, has disappeared.  But we have taken all the steps
+possible towards finding her."
+
+"It was nothing--more serious, then?  That, of course, is serious enough.
+Nothing, I mean, directly affecting your prospects of remaining--where
+you are?"
+
+"No," he answered.  He rejoiced fiercely that she should have asked him.
+The question was not bold, but a natural resumption of the old footing
+"Not that I mean to imply," he added, returning her smile, "that those
+prospects' are in any way improved."
+
+"Are they any worse?"  she said.
+
+"I see the bishop to-morrow.  I have no idea what position he will take.
+But even if he should decide not to recommend me for trial many difficult
+problems still remain to be solved."
+
+"I know.  It's fine," she continued, after a moment, "the way you are
+going ahead as if there were no question of your not remaining; and
+getting all those people into the church and influencing them as you did
+when they had come for all sorts of reasons.  Do you remember, the first
+time I met you, I told you I could not think of you as a clergyman.  I
+cannot now--less than ever."
+
+"What do you think of me as?"  he asked.
+
+"I don't know," she considered.  "You are unlike any person I have ever
+known.  It is curious that I cannot now even think of St. John's as a
+church.  You have transformed it into something that seems new.  I'm
+afraid I can't describe what I mean, but you have opened it up, let in
+the fresh air, rid it of the musty and deadening atmosphere which I have
+always associated with churches.  I wanted to see you, before I went
+away," she went on steadily, "and when Eleanor mentioned that you were
+coming to her house to-night, I asked her to invite me.  Do you think me
+shameless?"
+
+The emphasis of his gesture was sufficient.  He could not trust himself
+to speak.
+
+"Writing seemed so unsatisfactory, after what you had done for me, and I
+never can express myself in writing.  I seem to congeal."
+
+"After what I have done for you!" he exclaimed: "What can I have done?"
+
+"You have done more than you know," she answered, in a low voice.
+"More, I think, than I know.  How are such things to be measured, put
+into words?  You have effected some change in me which defies analysis,
+a change of attitude,--to attempt to dogmatize it would ruin it.  I
+prefer to leave it undefined--not even to call it an acquisition of
+faith.  I have faith," she said, simply, "in what you have become, and
+which has made you dare, superbly, to cast everything away.  .  .
+It is that, more than anything you have said.  What you are."
+
+For the instant he lost control of himself.
+
+"What you are," he replied.  "Do you realize--can you ever realize what
+your faith in me has been to me?"
+
+She appeared to ignore this.
+
+"I did not mean to say that you have not made many things clear, which
+once were obscure, as I wrote you.  You have convinced me that true
+belief, for instance, is the hardest thing in the world, the denial of
+practically all these people, who profess to believe, represent.  The
+majority of them insist that humanity is not to be trusted.  .  ."
+
+They had reached, in an incredibly brief time, the corner of Park Street.
+
+"When are you leaving?"  he asked, in a voice that sounded harsh in his
+own ears.
+
+"Come!" she said gently, "I'm not going in yet, for a while."
+S
+The Park lay before them, an empty, garden filled with checquered light
+and shadows under the moon.  He followed her across the gravel,
+glistening with dew, past the statue of the mute statesman with arm
+upraised, into pastoral stretches--a delectable country which was theirs
+alone.  He did not take it in, save as one expression of the breathing
+woman at his side.  He was but partly conscious of a direction he had not
+chosen.  His blood throbbed violently, and a feeling of actual physical
+faintness was upon him.  He was being led, helplessly, all volition gone,
+and the very idea of resistance became chimerical .  .  .  .
+
+There was a seat under a tree, beside a still lake burnished by the moon.
+It seemed as though he could not bear the current of her touch, and yet
+the thought of its removal were less bearable .  .  .  For she had put
+her own hand out, not shyly, but with a movement so fraught with grace,
+so natural that it was but the crowning bestowal.
+
+"Alison!" he cried, "I can't ask it of you.  I have no right--"
+
+"You're not asking it," she answered.  "It is I who am asking it."
+
+"But I have no future--I may be an outcast to-morrow.  I have nothing to
+offer you."  He spoke more firmly now, more commandingly.
+
+"Don't you see, dear, that it is just because your future as obscure that
+I can do this?  You never would have done it, I know,--and I couldn't
+face that.  Don't you understand that I am demanding the great
+sacrifice?"
+
+"Sacrifice!" he repeated.  His fingers turned, and closed convulsively on
+hers.
+
+"Yes, sacrifice," she said gently.  "Isn't it the braver thing?"
+
+Still he failed to catch her meaning.
+
+"Braver," she explained, with her wonderful courage, "braver if I love
+you, if I need you, if I cannot do without you."
+
+He took her in his arms, crushing her to him in his strength, in one
+ineffable brief moment finding her lips, inhaling the faint perfume of
+her smooth akin.  Her lithe figure lay passively against him, in
+marvellous, unbelievable surrender.
+
+"I see what you mean," he said, at length, "I should have been a coward.
+But I could not be sure that you loved me."
+
+So near was her face that he could detect, even under the obscurity of
+the branches, a smile.
+
+"And so I was reduced to this!  I threw my pride to the winds," she
+whispered.  "But I don't care.  I was determined, selfishly, to take
+happiness."
+
+"And to give it," he added, bending down to her.  The supreme quality of
+its essence was still to be doubted, a bright star-dust which dazzled
+him, to evaporate before his waking eyes.  And, try as he would, he
+could not realize to the full depth the boy of contact with a being whom,
+by discipline, he had trained his mind to look upon as the unattainable.
+They had spoken of the future, yet in these moments any consideration of
+it was blotted out.  .  .  It was only by degrees that he collected
+himself sufficiently to be able to return to it.  .  .  Alison took up
+the thread.
+
+"Surely," she said, "sacrifice is useless unless it means something,
+unless it be a realization.  It must be discriminating.  And we should
+both of us have remained incomplete if we had not taken--this.  You would
+always, I think, have been the one man for me,--but we should have lost
+touch."  He felt her tremble.  "And I needed you.  I have needed you all
+my life--one in whom h might have absolute faith.  That is my faith, of
+which I could not tell you awhile ago.  Is it--sacrilegious?"
+
+She looked up at him.  He shook his head, thinking of his own.  It seemed
+the very distillation of the divine.  "All my life," she went on, "I have
+been waiting for the one who would risk everything.  Oh, if you had
+faltered the least little bit, I don't know what I should have done.
+That would have destroyed what was left of me, put out, I think, the
+flickering fire that remained, instead of fanning it into flame.  You
+cannot know how I watched you, how I prayed!  I think it was prayer--I am
+sure it was.  And it was because you did not falter, because you risked
+all, that you gained me.  You have gained only what you yourself made,
+more than I ever was, more than I ever expected to be."
+
+"Alison!" he remonstrated, "you mustn't say that."
+
+She straightened up and gazed at him, taking one of his hands in her
+lithe fingers.
+
+"Oh, but I must!  It is the truth.  I felt that you cared--women are
+surer in such matters than men.  I must conceal nothing from you--nothing
+of my craftiness.  Women are crafty, you know.  And suppose you fail?
+Ah, I do not mean failure--you cannot fail, now.  You have put yourself
+forever beyond failure.  But what I mean is, suppose you were compelled
+to leave St. John's, and I came to you then as I have come now, and
+begged to take my place beside you?  I was afraid to risk it.  I was
+afraid you would not take me, even now, to-night.  Do you realize how
+austere you are at times, how you have frightened me?"
+
+"That I should ever have done that!" he said.
+
+"When I looked at you in the pulpit you seemed so far from me, I could
+scarcely bear it.  As if I had no share in you, as if you had already
+gone to a place beyond, where I could not go, where I never could.  Oh,
+you will take me with you, now,--you won't leave me behind!"
+
+To this cry every fibre of his soul responded.  He had thought himself,
+in these minutes, to have known all feelings, all thrills, but now,
+as he gathered her to him again, he was to know still another, the most
+exquisite of all.  That it was conferred upon him to give this woman
+protection, to shield and lift her, inspire her as she inspired him--this
+consciousness was the most exquisite of all, transcending all conception
+of the love of woman.  And the very fulness of her was beyond him.  A
+lifetime were insufficient to exhaust her .  .  .  .
+
+"I wanted to come to you now, John.  I want to share your failure, if it
+comes--all your failures.  Because they will be victories--don't you see?
+I have never been able to achieve that kind of victory--real victory, by
+myself.  I have always succumbed, taken the baser, the easier thing."
+Her cheek was wet.  "I wasn't strong enough, by myself, and I never knew
+the stronger one .  .  .  .
+
+"See what my trust in you has been!  I knew that you would not refuse me
+in spite of the fact that the world may misunderstand, may sneer at your
+taking me.  I knew that you were big enough even for that, when you
+understood it, coming from me.  I wanted to be with you, now, that we
+might fight it out together."
+
+"What have I done to deserve so priceless a thing?"  he asked.
+
+She smiled at him again, her lip trembling.
+
+"Oh, I'm not priceless, I'm only real, I'm only human--human and tired.
+You are so strong, you can't know how tired.  Have you any idea why I
+came out here, this summer?  It was because I was desperate--because I
+had almost decided to marry some one else."
+
+She felt him start.
+
+"I was afraid of it;" he said.
+
+"Were you?  Did you think, did you wonder a little about me?"  There was
+a vibrant note of triumph to which he reacted.  She drew away from him.
+a little.  "Perhaps, when you know how sordid my life has been, you won't
+want me."
+
+"Is--Is that your faith, Alison?"  he demanded.  "God forbid!  You have
+come to a man who also has confessions to make."
+
+"Oh, I am glad.  I want to know all of you--all, do you understand?  That
+will bring us even closer together.  And it was one thing I felt about
+you in the beginning, that day in the garden, that you had had much to
+conquer--more than most men.  It was a part of your force and of your
+knowledge of life.  You were not a sexless ascetic who preached a mere
+neutral goodness.  Does that shock you?"
+
+He smiled in turn.
+
+"I went away from here, as I once told you, full of a high resolution not
+to trail the honour of my art--if ,I achieved art--in the dust.  But I
+have not only trailed my art--I trailed myself.  In New York I became
+contaminated,--the poison of the place, of the people with whom I came in
+contact, got into my blood.  Little by little I yielded--I wanted so to
+succeed, to be able to confound those who had doubted and ridiculed me!
+I wasn't content to wait to deny myself for the ideal.  Success was in
+the air.  That was the poison, and I only began to realize it after it
+was too late.
+
+"Please don't think I am asking pity--I feel that you must know.  From
+the very first my success--which was really failure--began to come in the
+wrong way.  As my father's daughter I could not be obscure.  I was sought
+out, I was what was called picturesque, I suppose.  The women petted me,
+although some of them hated me, and I had a fascination for a certain
+kind of men--the wrong kind.  I began going to dinners, house parties,
+to recognize, that advantages came that way .  .  .  .  It seemed quite
+natural.  It was what many others of my profession tried to do, and they
+envied me my opportunities.
+
+"I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I was not in the least
+cynical about it.  I believed I was clinging to the ideal of art, and
+that all I wanted was a chance.  And the people I went with had the same
+characteristics, only intensified, as those I had known here.  Of course
+I was actually no better than the women who were striving frivolously to
+get away from themselves, and the men who were fighting to get money.
+Only I didn't know it.
+
+"Well, my chance came at last.  I had done several little things, when an
+elderly man who is tremendously rich, whose name you would recognize if I
+mentioned it, gave me an order.  For weeks, nearly every day, he came to
+my studio for tea, to talk over the plans.  I was really unsophisticated
+then--but I can see now--well, that the garden was a secondary
+consideration .  .  .  .  And the fact that I did it for him gave me a
+standing I should not otherwise have had .  .  .  .  Oh, it is sickening
+to look back upon, to think what an idiot I was in how little I saw....
+
+"That garden launched me, and I began to have more work than I could do.
+I was conscientious about it tried--tried to make every garden better
+than the last.  But I was a young woman, unconventionally living alone,
+and by degrees the handicap of my sex was brought home to me.  I did not
+feel the pressure at first, and then--I am ashamed to say--it had in it
+an element of excitement, a sense of power.  The poison was at work.  I
+was amused. I thought I could carry it through, that the world had
+advanced sufficiently for a woman to do anything if she only had the
+courage.  And I believed I possessed a true broadness of view, and could
+impress it, so far as I was concerned, on others .  .  .  .
+
+"As I look back upon it all, I believe my reputation for coldness saved
+me, yet it was that very reputation which increased the pressure, and
+sometimes I was fairly driven into a corner.  It seemed to madden some
+men--and the disillusionments began to come.  Of course it was my fault
+--I don't pretend to say it wasn't.  There were many whom, instinctively,
+I was on my guard against, but some I thought really nice, whom I
+trusted, revealed a side I had not suspected.  That was the terrible
+thing!  And yet I held to my ideal, tattered as it was.  .  .  "
+
+Alison was silent a moment, still clinging to his hand, and when she
+spoke again it was with a tremor of agitation.
+
+"It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know.  At last I met a
+man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York,
+achieving a reputation as a lawyer.  Shall I tell you that I fell in love
+with him?  He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was
+beginning to feel the staleness of it.  Not that I surrendered at once,
+but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually
+disappeared--or rather I ignored them.  He had charm, a magnificent self-
+confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he expressed, in
+regard to women, most appealed to me.  I was weak on that side, and I
+have often wondered whether he knew it.  I believed him incapable of a
+great refusal.
+
+"He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my freedom
+--freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.
+Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.
+One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two
+before the wedding .  .  .  .  The manner in which he said it suddenly
+turned me cold.  Oh," Alison exclaimed, "I was quite willing to go back,
+to pay my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but--how can I
+tell you?--he could not believe that I had definitely given up-my
+father's money .  .  .  .
+
+"I sat still and looked at him, I felt as if I were frozen, turned to
+stone.  And after a long while, since I would not speak to him, he went
+out.  .  .  Three months later he came back and said that I had
+misunderstood him, that he couldn't live without me.  I sent him away....
+Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends .  .  .  .
+
+"Well, after that, I was tired--so tired!  Everything seemed to go out of
+life.  It wasn't that I loved him any longer,--all had been crushed.  But
+the illusion was gone, and I saw myself as I was.  And for the first time
+in my life I felt defenceless, helpless.  I wanted refuge.  Did you ever
+hear of Jennings Howe?"
+
+"The architect?"
+
+Alison nodded.  "Of course you must have--he is so well known.  He has
+been a widower for several years.  He liked my work, saw its defects,
+and was always frank about them, and I designed a good many gardens in
+connection with his houses.  He himself is above all things an artist,
+and he fell into the habit of coming to my studio and giving me friendly
+advice, in the nicest way.  He seemed to understand that I was going
+through some sort of a crisis.  He called it 'too much society.'  And
+then, without any warning, he asked me to marry him.
+
+"That is why I came out here--to think it over.  I didn't love him, and I
+told him so, but I respected him.
+
+"He never compromised in his art, and I have known him over and over to
+refuse houses because certain conditions were stipulated.  To marry him
+was an acknowledgment of defeat.  I realized that.  But I had come to the
+extremity where I wanted peace--peace and protection.  I wanted to put
+myself irrevocably beyond the old life, which simply could not have gone
+on, and I saw myself in the advancing years becoming tawdry and worn,
+losing little by little what I had gained at a price.
+
+"So I came here--to reflect, to see, as it were, if I could find
+something left in me to take hold of, to build upon, to begin over again,
+perhaps, by going back to the old associations.  I could think of no
+better place, and I knew that my father would, be going away after a few
+weeks, and that I should be lone, yet with an atmosphere back of me,--my
+old atmosphere.  That was why I went to church the first Sunday, in order
+to feel more definitely that atmosphere, to summon up more completely the
+image of my mother.  More and more, as the years have passed, I have
+thought of her in moments of trouble.  I have recovered her as I never
+had hoped to do in Mr. Bentley.  Isn't it strange," she exclaimed
+wonderingly, "that he should have come into both our lives, with such an
+influence, at this time?"
+
+"And then I met you, talked to you that afternoon in the garden.  Shall I
+make a complete confession?  I wrote to Jennings Howe that very week that
+I could not marry him."
+
+"You knew!" Hodder exclaimed: "You knew then?"
+
+"Ah, I can't tell what I knew--or when.  I knew, after I had seen you,
+that I couldn't marry him!  Isn't that enough?"
+
+He drew in his breath deeply.
+
+"I should be less than a man if I refused to take you, Alison.  And--no
+matter what happens, I can and will find some honest work to support you.
+But oh, my dear, when I think of it, the nobility and generosity of what
+you have done appalls me."
+
+"No, no!" she protested, "you mustn't say that!  I needed you more than
+you need me.  And haven't we both discovered the world, and renounced it?
+I can at least go so far as to say that, with all my heart.  And isn't
+marriage truer and higher when man and wife start with difficulties and
+problems to solve together?  It is that thought that brings me the
+greatest joy, that I may be able to help you .  .  .  .  Didn't you need
+me, just a little?"
+
+"Now that I have you, I am unable to think of the emptiness which might
+have been.  You came to me, like Beatrice, when I had lost my way in the
+darkness of the wood.  And like Beatrice, you showed me the path, and
+hell and heaven."
+
+"Oh, you would have found the path without me.  I cannot claim that.
+I saw from the first that you were destined to find it.  And, unlike
+Beatrice, I too was lost, and it was you who lifted me up.  You mustn't
+idealize me."  .  .  .  She stood up.  "Come!" she said.  He too stood,
+gazing at her, and she lifted her hands to his shoulders .  .  .  .  They
+moved out from under the tree and walked for a while in silence across
+the dew-drenched grass, towards Park Street.  The moon, which had ridden
+over a great space in the sky, hung red above the blackness of the forest
+to the west.
+
+"Do you remember when we were here together, the day I met Mr. Bentley?
+And you never would have spoken!"
+
+"How could I, Alison?" he asked.
+
+"No, you couldn't.  And yet--you would have let me go!"
+
+He put his arm in hers, and drew her towards him.
+
+"I must talk to your father," he said, "some day--soon.  I ought to tell
+him--of our intentions.  We cannot go on like this."
+
+"No," she agreed, "I realize it.  And I cannot stay, much longer, in Park
+Street.  I must go back to New York, until you send for me, dear.  And
+there are things I must do.  Do you know, even though I antagonize him
+so--my father, I mean--even though he suspects and bitterly resents any
+interest in you, my affection for you, and that I have lingered because
+of you, I believe, in his way, he has liked to have me here."
+
+"I can understand it," Hodder said.
+
+"It's because you are bigger than I, although he has quarrelled with you
+so bitterly.  I don't know what definite wrongs he has done to other
+persons.  I don't wish to know.  I don't ask you to tell me what passed
+between you that night.  Once you said that you had an affection for him
+--that he was lonely.  He is lonely.  In these last weeks, in spite of
+his anger, I can see that he suffers terribly.  It is a tragedy, because
+he will never give in."
+
+"It is a tragedy."  Hodder's tone was agitated.
+
+"I wonder if he realizes a little" she began, and paused.  "Now that
+Preston has come home--"
+
+"Your brother?"  Hodder exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. I forgot to tell you.  I don't know why he came," she faltered.
+"I suppose he has got into some new trouble.  He seems changed.  I can't
+describe it now, but I will tell you about it .  .  .  .  It's the first
+time we've all three been together since my mother died, for Preston
+wasn't back from college when I went to Paris to study .  .  .  ."
+
+They stood together on the pavement before the massive house, fraught
+with so many and varied associations for Hodder.  And as he looked up at
+it, his eye involuntarily rested upon the windows of the boy's room where
+Eldon Parr had made his confession.  Alison startled him by pronouncing
+his name, which came with such unaccustomed sweetness from her lips.
+You will write me to-morrow," she said, "after you have seen the bishop?"
+
+"Yes, at once.  You mustn't let it worry you."
+
+"I feel as if I had cast off that kind of worry forever.  It is only--
+the other worries from which we do not escape, from which we do not wish
+to escape."
+
+With a wonderful smile she had dropped his hands and gone in at the
+entrance, when a sound made them turn, the humming of a motor.  And even
+as they looked it swung into Park Street.
+
+"It's a taxicab!" she said.  As she spoke it drew up almost beside them,
+instead of turning in at the driveway, the door opened, and a man
+alighted.
+
+"Preston!" Alison exclaimed.
+
+He started, turning from the driver, whom he was about to pay.  As for
+Hodder, he was not only undergoing a certain shock through the sudden
+contact, at such a moment, with Alison's brother: there was an additional
+shock that this was Alison's brother and Eldon Parr's son.  Not that his
+appearance was shocking, although the well-clad, athletic figure was
+growing a trifle heavy, and the light from the side lamps of the car
+revealed dissipation in a still handsome face.  The effect was a subtler
+one, not to be analyzed, and due to a multitude of preconceptions.
+
+Alison came forward.
+
+"This is Mr. Hodder, Preston," she said simply.
+
+For a moment Preston continued to stare at the rector without speaking.
+Suddenly he put out his hand.
+
+"Mr. Hodder, of St. John's?"  he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Hodder.  His surprise deepened to perplexity at the warmth
+of the handclasp that followed.
+
+A smile that brought back vividly to Hodder the sunny expression of the
+schoolboy in the picture lightened the features of the man.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," he said, in a tone that left no doubt of its
+genuine quality.
+
+"Thank you," Hodder replied, meeting his eye with kindness, yet with a
+scrutiny that sought to penetrate the secret of an unexpected cordiality.
+"I, too, have hoped to see you."
+
+Alison, who stood by wondering, felt a meaning behind the rector's words.
+She pressed his hand as he bade her, once more, good night.
+
+"Won't you take my taxicab?"  asked Preston.  "It is going down town
+anyway."
+
+"I think I'd better stick to the street cars," Hodder said.  His refusal
+was not ungraceful, but firm.  Preston did not insist.
+
+In spite of the events of that evening, which he went over again and
+again as the midnight car carried him eastward, in spite of a new-born
+happiness the actuality of which was still difficult to grasp, Hodder
+was vaguely troubled when he thought of Preston Parr.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness
+Success--which was really failure
+
+
+
+
+
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