“Precisely,” Mr. Bentley replied.
There was a note of enthusiasm, almost of militancy in the old gentleman's tone that surprised and agitated Hodder. He took a turn up and down the room before he answered.
“I ought to tell you that the view I expressed a moment ago is new to me. I had not thought of it before, and it is absolutely at variance with any previous ideas I have held. I can see that it must involve, if carried to its logical conclusion, a change in the conception of Christianity I have hitherto held.”
He was too intent upon following up the thought to notice Mr. Bentley's expression of assent.
“And suppose,” he asked, “I were unable to come to any conclusion? I will be frank, Mr. Bentley, and confess to you that at present I cannot see my way. You have heard me preach—you know what my beliefs have been. They are shattered. And, while I feel that there is some definite connection between the view of the Church which I mentioned and her message to the individual, I do not perceive it clearly. I am not prepared at present to be the advocate of Christianity, because I do not know what Christianity is. I thought I knew.
“I shall have to begin all over again, as though I had never taken orders, submit to a thorough test, examine the evidence impartially. It is the only way. Of this much I am sure, that the Church as a whole has been engaged in a senseless conflict with science and progressive thought, that she has insisted upon the acceptance of facts which are in violation of reason and which have nothing to do with religion. She has taught them to me—made them, in fact, a part of me. I have clung to them as long as I can, and in throwing them over I don't know where I shall land.”
His voice was measured, his words chosen, yet they expressed a withering indignation and contempt which were plainly the culmination of months of bewilderment—now replaced by a clear-cut determination.
“I do not blame any individual,” he continued, “but the system by which clergymen are educated.
“I intend to stay here, now, without conducting any services, and find out for myself what the conditions are here in Dalton Street. You know those people, Mr. Bentley, you understand them, and I am going to ask you to help me. You have evidently solved the problem.”
Mr. Bentley rose. And he laid a hand, which was not quite steady, on the rector's shoulder.
“Believe me, sir,” he replied, “I appreciate something of what such a course must mean to you—a clergyman.” He paused, and a look came upon his face, a look that might scarce have been called a smile—Hodder remembered it as a glow—reminiscent of many things. In it a life was summed ups in it understanding, beneficence, charity, sympathy, were all expressed, yet seemingly blended into one. “I do not know what my testimony may be worth to you, my friend, but I give it freely. I sometimes think I have been peculiarly fortunate. But I have lived a great many years, and the older I get and the more I see of human nature the firmer has grown my conviction of its essential nobility and goodness.”
Hodder marvelled, and was silent.
“You will come here, often,—every day if you can. There are many men and women, friends of mine, whom I should like you to know, who would like to know you.”
“I will, and thank you,” Hodder answered. Words were inadequate for the occasion....
CHAPTER XII. THE WOMAN OF THE SONG
On leaving Mr. Bentley, Hodder went slowly down Dalton Street, wondering that mere contact with another human being should have given him the resolution to turn his face once again toward the house whither he was bound. And this man had given him something more. It might hardly have been called faith; a new courage to fare forth across the Unknown—that was it; hope, faint but revived.
Presently he stopped on the sidewalk, looked around him, and read a sign in glaring, electric letters, Hotel Albert. Despite the heat, the place was ablaze with lights. Men and women were passing, pausing—going in. A motor, with a liveried chauffeur whom he remembered having seen before, was standing in front of the Rathskeller. The nightly carousal was beginning.
Hodder retraced his steps, crossed the street diagonally, came to the dilapidated gate he remembered so well, and looked up through the dusk at the house. If death had entered it, there was no sign: death must be a frequent visitor hereabouts. On the doorsteps he saw figures outlined, slatternly women and men in shirt-sleeves who rose in silence to make way for him, staring at him curiously. He plunged into the hot darkness of the hall, groped his way up the stairs and through the passage, and hesitated. A single gas jet burned low in the stagnant air, and after a moment he made out, by its dim light, a woman on her knees beside the couch, mechanically moving the tattered palm-leaf over the motionless little figure. The child was still alive. He drew a deep breath, and entered; at the sound of his step Mrs. Garvin suddenly started up.
“Richard!” she cried, and then stood staring at the rector. “Have you seen my husband, sir? He went away soon after you left.”
Hodder, taken by surprise, replied that he had not. Her tone, her gesture of anxiety he found vaguely disquieting.
“The doctor has been here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered absently. “I don't know where he can be—Richard. He didn't even wait to see the doctor. And he thinks so much of Dicky, sir, he sits here of an evening—”
Hodder sat down beside her, and taking the palm-leaf from her hand, began himself to fan the child. Something of her misgiving had communicated itself to him.
“Don't worry,” he said. “Remember that you have been through a great deal, and it is natural that you should be overwrought. Your husband feels strongly. I don't blame him. And the sight of me this afternoon upset him. He has gone out to walk.”
“Richard is proud,” she answered simply. “He used to say he'd rather die than take charity—and now he's come to it. And it's—that man, sir, who's got on his brain, and changed him. He wasn't always like this, but now he can't seem to think of anything else. He wakes up in the night .... And he used to have such a sweet nature—you wouldn't have known him... and came home so happy in the evenings in Alder Street, often with a little fruit, or something he'd bought for us, and romp with Dicky in the yard, and I'd stand and laugh at them. Even after we'd lost our money, when he was sick that time, he didn't feel this way. It grew on him when he couldn't get work, and then he began to cut things out of the papers about Mr. Parr. And I have sometimes thought that that's kept him from getting work. He talks about it, and people don't know what to make of him. They don't know how hard he'd try if they'd give him something.”....
“We shall find something,” said the rector, striving to throw into his voice confidence and calm. He did not dare to look at her, but continued to move the fan.
The child stirred a little. Mrs. Garvin put out her hand.
“Yes, the doctor was here. He was very kind. Oh, sir,” she exclaimed, “I hope you won't think us ungrateful—and that Mr. Bentley won't. Dr. Jarvis has hopes, sir,—he says—I forget the name he called it, what Dicky has. It's something uncommon. He says it was—brought on by the heat, and want of food—good food. And he's coming himself in the morning to take him out to that hospital beyond the park—in an automobile, sir. I was just thinking what a pity it is Dicky wouldn't realize it. He's always wanted to ride in one.” Suddenly her tears flowed, unheeded, and she clung to the little hand convulsively. “I don't know what I shall do without him, Sir, I don't.... I've always had him... and when he's sick, among strangers.”...
The rector rose to the occasion.
“Now, Mrs. Garvin,” he said firmly, “you must remember that there is only one way to save the boy's life. It will be easy to get you a room near the hospital, where you can see him constantly.”
“I know—I know, sir. But I couldn't leave his father, I couldn't leave Richard.” She looked around distractedly. “Where is he?”
“He will come back presently,” said the rector. “If not, I will look for him.”
She did not reply, but continued to weep in silence. Suddenly, above the confused noises of the night, the loud notes of a piano broke, and the woman whose voice he had heard in the afternoon began once more with appalling vigour to sing. The child moaned.
Mrs. Garvin started up hysterically.
“I can't stand it—I can't stand her singing that now,” she sobbed.
Thirty feet away, across the yard, Hodder saw the gleaming window from which the music came. He got to his feet. Another verse began, with more of the brazen emphasis of the concert-hall singer than ever. He glanced at the woman beside him, irresolutely.
“I'll speak to her,” he said.
Mrs. Garvin did not appear to hear him, but flung herself down beside the lounge. As he seized his hat and left the room he had the idea of telephoning for a nurse, when he almost ran into some one in the upper hall, and recognized the stout German woman, Mrs. Breitmann.
“Mrs. Garvin”—he said, “she ought not to be left—”
“I am just now going,” said Mrs. Breitmann. “I stay with her until her husband come.”
Such was the confidence with which, for some reason, she inspired him, that he left with an easier mind.
It was not until the rector had arrived at the vestibule of the apartment house next door that something—of the difficulty and delicacy of the errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had promised to stop it. Hodder accused himself of cowardice.
To his horror, Hodder felt stealing over him, incredible though it seemed after the depths through which he had passed, a faint sense of fascination in the adventure. It was this that appalled him—this tenacity of the flesh,—which no terrors seemed adequate to drive out. The sensation, faint as it was, unmanned him. There were still many unexplored corners in his soul.
He turned, once more contemplated the bells, and it was not until then he noticed that the door was ajar. He pushed it open, climbed the staircase, and stood in the doorway of what might be called a sitting room, his eyes fixed on a swaying back before an upright piano against the wall; his heart seemed to throb with the boisterous beat of the music. The woman's hair, in two long and heavy plaits falling below her waist, suddenly fascinated him. It was of the rarest of russet reds. She came abruptly to the end of the song.
“I beg your pardon—” he began.
She swung about with a start, her music dropping to the floor, and stared at him. Her tattered blue kimono fell away at her elbows, her full throat was bare, and a slipper she had kicked off lay on the floor beside her. He recoiled a little, breathing deeply. She stared at him.
“My God, how you scared me!” she exclaimed. Evidently a second glance brought to her a realization of his clerical costume. “Say, how did you get in here?”
“I beg your pardon,” he said again, “but there is a very sick child in the house next door and I came to ask you if you would mind not playing any more to-night.”
She did not reply at once, and her expression he found unsolvable. Much of it might be traced to a life which had contracted the habit of taking nothing on trust, a life which betrayed itself in unmistakable traces about the eyes. And Hodder perceived that the face, if the stamp of this expression could have been removed, was not unpleasing, although indulgence and recklessness were beginning to remould it.
“Quit stringin' me,” she said.
For a moment he was at a loss. He gathered that she did not believe him, and crossed to the open window.
“If you will come here,” he said, “I will show you the room where he lies. We hope to be able to take him to the hospital to-morrow.” He paused a moment, and added: “He enjoyed your music very much when he was better.”
The comment proved a touchstone.
“Say,” she remarked, with a smile that revealed a set of surprisingly good teeth, “I can make the box talk when I get a-goin'. There's no stopping me this side of grand opera,—that's no fable. I'm not so bad for an enginoo, am I?”
Thus directly appealed to, in common courtesy he assented.
“No indeed,” he said.
“That's right,” she declared. “But the managers won't have it at any price. Those jays don't know anything, do they? They've only got a dream of what the public wants. You wouldn't believe it, but I've sung for 'em, and they threw me out. You wouldn't believe it, would you?”
“I must own,” said the rector, “that I have never had any experience with managers.”
She sat still considering him from the piano stool, her knees apart, her hands folded in her lap. Mockery came into her eyes.
“Say, what did you come in here for, honest injun?” she demanded.
He was aware of trying to speak sternly, and of failing. To save his life he could not, then, bring up before himself the scene in the little back room across the yard in its full terror and reality, reproduce his own feelings of only a few minutes ago which had impelled him hither. A month, a year might have elapsed. Every faculty was now centred on the woman in front of him, and on her life.
“Why do you doubt me?” he asked.
She continued to contemplate him. Her eyes were strange, baffling, smouldering, yellow-brown, shifting, yet not shifty: eyes with a history. Her laugh proclaimed both effrontery and uneasiness.
“Don't get huffy,” she said. “The kid's sick—that's on the level, is it? You didn't come 'round to see me?” The insinuation was in her voice as well as in her words. He did not resent it, but felt an odd thrill of commingled pity and—fear.
“I came for the reason I have given you,” he replied; and added, more gently: “I know it is a good deal to ask, but you will be doing a great kindness. The mother is distracted. The child, as I told you, will be taken to the hospital in the morning.”
She reached out a hand and closed the piano softly.
“I guess I can hold off for to-night,” she said. “Sometimes things get kind of dull—you know, when there's nothing doing, and this keeps me lively. How old is the kid?”
“About nine,” he estimated.
“Say, I'm sorry.” She spoke with a genuineness of feeling that surprised him. He went slowly, almost apologetically toward the door.
“Good night,” he said, “and thank you.”
Her look halted him.
“What's your hurry?” she demanded.
“I'm sorry,” he said hastily, “but I must be going.” He was, in truth, in a panic to leave.
“You're a minister, ain't you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I guess you don't think much of me, do you?” she demanded.
He halted abruptly, struck by the challenge, and he saw that this woman had spoken not for herself, but for an entire outlawed and desperate class. The fact that the words were mocking and brazen made no difference; it would have been odd had they not been so. With a shock of surprise he suddenly remembered that his inability to reach this class had been one of the causes of his despair! And now? With the realization, reaction set in, an overpowering feeling of weariness, a desire—for rest—for sleep. The electric light beside the piano danced before his eyes, yet he heard within him a voice crying out to him to stay. Desperately tired though he was, he must not leave now. He walked slowly to the table, put his hat on it and sat down in a chair beside it.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Oh, cut it out!” said the woman. “I'm on to you church folks.” She laughed. “One of 'em came in here once, and wanted to pray. I made a monkey of him.”
“I hope,” said the rector, smiling a little, “that is not the reason why you wish me to stay.”
She regarded him doubtfully.
“You're not the same sort,” she announced at length.
“What sort was he?”
“He was easy,—old enough to know better—most of the easy ones are. He marched in sanctimonious as you please, with his mouth full of salvation and Bible verses.” She laughed again at the recollection.
“And after that,” said the rector, “you felt that ministers were a lot of hypocrites.”
“I never had much opinion of 'em,” she admitted, “nor of church people, either,” she added, with emphasis.
“There's Ferguson, who has the department store,—he's 'way up' in church circles. I saw him a couple of months ago, one Sunday morning, driving to that church on Burton Street, where all the rich folks go. I forget the name—”
“St. John's,” he supplied. He had got beyond surprise.
“St. John's—that's it. They tell me he gives a lot of money to it—money that he steals from the girls he hires. Oh, yes, he'll get to heaven—I don't think.”
“How do you mean that he steals money from the girls?”
“Say, you are innocent—ain't you! Did you ever go down to that store? Do you know what a floorwalker is? Did you ever see the cheap guys hanging around, and the young swells waiting to get a chance at the girls behind the counters? Why do you suppose so many of 'em take to the easy life? I'll put you next—because Ferguson don't pay 'em enough to live on. That's why. He makes 'em sign a paper, when he hires 'em, that they live at home, that they've got some place to eat and sleep, and they sign it all right. That's to square up Ferguson's conscience. But say, if you think a girl can support herself in this city and dress on what he pays, you've got another guess comin'.”
There rose up before him, unsummoned, the image of Nan Ferguson, in all her freshness and innocence, as she had stood beside him on the porch in Park Street. He was somewhat astonished to find himself defending his parishioner.
“May it not be true, in order to compete with other department stores, that Mr. Ferguson has to pay the same wages?” he said.
“Forget it. I guess you know what Galt House is? That's where women like me can go when we get all played out and there's nothing left in the game—it's on River Street. Maybe you've been there.”
Hodder nodded.
“Well,” she continued, “Ferguson pays a lot of money to keep that going, and gets his name in the papers. He hands over to the hospitals where some of us die—and it's all advertised. He forks out to the church. Now, I put it to you, why don't he sink some of that money where it belongs—in living wages? Because there's nothing in it for him—that's why.”
The rector looked at her in silence. He had not suspected her of so much intellect. He glanced about the apartment, at the cheap portiere flung over the sofa; at the gaudy sofa cushions, two of which bore the names and colours of certain colleges. The gas log was almost hidden by dried palm leaves, a cigarette stump lay on the fender; on the mantel above were several photographs of men and at the other side an open door revealed a bedroom.
“This is a nice place, ain't it?” she observed. “I furnished it when I was on velvet—nothing was too good for me. Money's like champagne when you take the cork out, it won't keep. I was rich once. It was lively while it lasted,” she added, with a sigh: “I've struck the down trail. I oughtn't, by rights, to be here fooling with you. There's nothing in it.” She glanced at the clock. “I ought to get busy.”
As the realization of her meaning came to him, he quivered.
“Is there no way but that?” he asked, in a low voice.
“Say, you're not a-goin' to preach, are you?”
“No,” he answered, “God forbid! I was not asking the question of you.”
She stared at him.
“Of who, then?”
He was silent.
“You've left me at the station. But on the level, you don't seem to know much, that's a fact. You don't think the man who owns these flats is in it for charity, do you? 'Single ladies,' like me, have to give up. And then there are other little grafts that wouldn't interest you. What church do you come from anyway?”
“You mentioned it a little while ago.”
“St. John's!” She leaned back against the piano and laughed unrestrainedly. “That's a good one, to think how straight I've been talking to you.”
“I'm much obliged to you,” he said.
Again she gazed at him, now plainly perplexed.
“What are you giving me?”
“I mean what I say,” he answered. “I am obliged to you for telling me things I didn't know. And I appreciate—your asking me to stay.”
She was sitting upright now, her expression changed, her breath came more rapidly, her lips parted as she gazed at him.
“Do you know,” she said, “I haven't had anybody speak to me like that for four years.” Her voice betrayed excitement, and differed in tone, and she had cast off unconsciously the vulgarity of speech. At that moment she seemed reminiscent of what she must once have been; and he found himself going through an effort at reconstruction.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like a woman,” she answered vehemently.
“My name is John Hodder,” he said, “and I live in the parish house, next door to the church. I should like to be your friend, if you will let me. If I can be of any help to you now, or at any other time, I shall feel happy. I promise not to preach,” he added.
She got up abruptly, and went to the window. And when she turned to him again, it was with something of the old bravado.
“You'd better leave me alone, I'm no good;” she said. “I'm much obliged to you, but I don't want any charity or probation houses in mine. And honest work's a thing of the past for me—even if I could get a job. Nobody would have me. But if they would, I couldn't work any more. I've got out of the hang of it.” With a swift and decisive movement she crossed the room, opened a cabinet on the wall, revealing a bottle and glasses.
“So you're bent upon going—downhill?” he said.
“What can you do to stop it?” she retorted defiantly, “Give me religion—-I guess you'd tell me. Religion's all right for those on top, but say, it would be a joke if I got it. There ain't any danger. But if I did, it wouldn't pay room-rent and board.”
He sat mute. Once more the truth overwhelmed, the folly of his former optimism arose to mock him. What he beheld now, in its true aspect, was a disease of that civilization he had championed...
She took the bottle from the cupboard and laid it on the table.
“What's the difference?” she demanded. “It's all over in a little while, anyway. I guess you'd tell me there was a hell. But if that's so, some of your church folks'll broil, too. I'll take my chance on it, if they will.” She looked at him, half in defiance, half in friendliness, across the table. “Say, you mean all right, but you're only wastin' time here. You can't do me any good, I tell you, and I've got to get busy.”
“May we not at least remain friends?” he asked, after a moment.
Her laugh was a little harsh.
“What kind of friendship would that be? You, a minister, and me a woman on the town?”
“If I can stand it, I should think you might.”
“Well, I can't stand it,” she answered.
He got up, and held out his hand. She stood seemingly irresolute, and then took it.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” she repeated nonchalantly.
As he went out of the door she called after him:
“Don't be afraid I'll worry the kid!”
The stale odour of cigarette smoke with which the dim corridor was charged intoxicated, threatened to overpower him. It seemed to be the reek of evil itself. A closing door had a sinister meaning. He hurried; obscurity reigned below, the light in the lower hall being out; fumbled for the door-knob, and once in the street took a deep breath and mopped his brow; but he had not proceeded half a block before he hesitated, retraced his steps, reentered the vestibule, and stooped to peer at the cards under the speaking tubes. Cheaply printed in large script, was the name of the tenant of the second floor rear,—MISS KATE MARCY....
In crossing Tower Street he was frightened by the sharp clanging of a great electric car that roared past him, aflame with light. His brain had seemingly ceased to work, and he stumbled at the curb, for he was very tired. The events of the day no longer differentiated themselves in his mind but lay, a composite weight, upon his heart. At length he reached the silent parish house, climbed the stairs and searched in his pocket for the key of his rooms. The lock yielded, but while feeling for the switch he tripped and almost fell over an obstruction on the floor.
The flooding light revealed his travelling-bags, as he had piled them, packed and ready to go to the station.
Volume 4.
CHAPTER XIII. WINTERBOURNE
I
Hodder fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, awaking during the night at occasional intervals to recall chimerical dreams in which the events of the day before were reflected, but caricatured and distorted. Alison Parr was talking to the woman in the flat, and both were changed, and yet he identified both: and on another occasion he saw a familiar figure surrounded by romping, ragged children—a figure which turned out to be Eldon Parr's!
Finally he was aroused by what seemed a summons from the unknown—the prolonged morning whistle of the shoe factory. For a while he lay as one benumbed, and the gradual realization that ensued might be likened to the straining of stiffened wounds. Little by little he reconstructed, until the process became unbearable, and then rose from his bed with one object in mind,—to go to Horace Bentley. At first—he seized upon the excuse that Mr. Bentley would wish to hear the verdict of Dr. Jarvis, but immediately abandoned it as dishonest, acknowledging the true reason, that in all the—world the presence of this one man alone might assuage in some degree the terror in his soul. For the first time in his life, since childhood, he knew a sense of utter dependence upon another human being. He felt no shame, would make no explanation for his early visit.
He turned up Tower, deliberately avoiding Dalton Street in its lower part, reached Mr. Bentley's door. The wrinkled, hospitable old darky actually seemed to radiate something of the personality with which he had so long been associated, and Hodder was conscious of a surge of relief, a return of confidence at sight of him. Yes, Mr. Bentley was at home, in the dining room. The rector said he would wait, and not disturb him.
“He done tole me to bring you out, sah, if you come,” said Sam.
“He expects me?” exclaimed Hodder, with a shock of surprise.
“That's what he done tole me, sah, to ax you kindly for to step out when you come.”
The sun was beginning to penetrate into the little back yard, where the flowers were still glistening with the drops of their morning bath; and Mr. Bentley sat by the window reading his newspaper, his spectacles on his nose, and a great grey cat rubbing herself against his legs. He rose with alacrity.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, and his welcome implied that early morning visits were the most common and natural of occurrences. “Sam, a plate for Mr. Hodder. I was just hoping you would come and tell me what Dr. Jarvis had said about the case.”
But Hodder was not deceived. He believed that Mr. Bentley understood perfectly why he had come, and the knowledge of the old gentleman's comprehension curiously added to his sense of refuge. He found himself seated once more at the mahogany table, permitting Sam to fill his cup with coffee.
“Jarvis has given a favourable report, and he is coming this morning himself, in an automobile, to take the boy out to the hospital.”
“That is like Jarvis,” was Mr. Bentley's comment. “We will go there, together, after breakfast, if convenient for you,” he added.
“I hoped you would,” replied the rector. “And I was going to ask you a favour. I have a check, given me by a young lady to use at my discretion, and it occurred to me that Garvin might be willing to accept some proposal from you.” He thought of Nan Ferguson, and of the hope he lead expressed of finding some one in Dalton Street.
“I have been considering the matter,” Mr. Bentley said. “I have a friend who lives on the trolley line a little beyond the hospital, a widow. It is like the country there, you know, and I think Mrs. Bledsoe could be induced to take the Garvins. And then something can be arranged for him. I will find an opportunity to speak to him this morning.”
Hodder sipped his coffee, and looked out at the morning-glories opening to the sun.
“Mrs. Garvin was alone last night. He had gone out shortly after we left, and had not waited for the doctor. She was greatly worried.”
Hodder found himself discussing these matters on which, an hour before, he had feared to permit his mind to dwell. And presently, not without feeling, but in a manner eliminating all account of his personal emotions, he was relating that climactic episode of the woman at the piano. The old gentleman listened intently, and in silence.
“Yes,” he said, when the rector had finished, “that is my observation. Most of them are driven to the life, and held in it, of course, by a remorseless civilization. Individuals may be culpable, Mr. Hodder—are culpable. But we cannot put the whole responsibility on individuals.”
“No,” Hodder assented, “I can see that now.” He paused a moment, and as his mind dwelt upon the scene and he saw again the woman standing before him in bravado, the whole terrible meaning of her life and end flashed through him as one poignant sensation. Her dauntless determination to accept the consequence of her acts, her willingness to look her future in the face, cried out to him in challenge.
“She refused unconditionally,” he said.
Mr. Bentley seemed to read his thought, divine his appeal.
“We must wait,” he answered.
“Do you think?—” Hodder began, and stopped abruptly.
“I remember another case, somewhat similar,” said Mr. Bentley. “This woman, too, had the spirit you describe—we could do nothing with her. We kept an eye on her—or rather Sally Grover did—she deserves credit—and finally an occasion presented itself.”
“And the woman you speak of was—rehabilitated?” Hodder asked. He avoided the word “saved.”
“Yes, sir. It was one of the fortunate cases. There are others which are not so fortunate.”
Hodder nodded.
“We are beginning to recognize that we are dealing, in, many instances, with a disease,” Mr. Bentley went on. “I am far from saying that it cannot be cured, but sometimes we are forced to admit that the cure is not within our power, Mr. Hodder.”
Two thoughts struck the rector simultaneously, the revelation of what might be called a modern enlightenment in one of Mr. Bentley's age, an indication of uninterrupted growth, of the sense of continued youth which had impressed him from the beginning; and, secondly, an intimation from the use of the plural pronoun we, of an association of workers (informal, undoubtedly) behind Mr. Bentley. While he was engaged in these speculations the door opened.
“Heah's Miss Sally, Marse Ho'ace,” said Sam.
“Good morning, Sally,” said Mr. Bentley, rising from the table with his customary courtesy, “I'm glad you came in. Let me introduce Mr. Hodder, of St. John's.”
Miss Grover had capability written all over her. She was a young woman of thirty, slim to spareness, simply dressed in a shirtwaist and a dark blue skirt; alert, so distinctly American in type as to give a suggestion of the Indian. Her quick, deep-set eyes searched Hodder's face as she jerked his hand; but her greeting was cordial, and, matter-of-fact. She stimulated curiosity.
“Well, Sally, what's the news?” Mr. Bentley asked.
“Gratz, the cabinet-maker, was on the rampage again, Mr. Bentley. His wife was here yesterday when I got home from work, and I went over with her. He was in a beastly state, and all the niggers and children in the neighbourhood, including his own, around the shop. Fusel oil, labelled whiskey,” she explained, succinctly.
“What did you do?”
“Took the bottle away from him,” said Miss Grower. The simplicity of this method, Holder thought, was undeniable. “Stayed there until he came to. Then I reckon I scared him some.”
“How?” Mr. Bentley smiled.
“I told him he'd have to see you. He'd rather serve three months than do that—said so. I reckon he would, too,” she declared grimly. “He's better than he was last year, I think.” She thrust her hand in the pocket of her skirt and produced some bills and silver, which she counted. “Here's three thirty-five from Sue Brady. I told her she hadn't any business bothering you, but she swears she'd spend it.”
“That was wrong, Sally.”
Miss Grower tossed her head.
“Oh, she knew I'd take it, well enough.”
“I imagine she did,” Mr. Bentley replied, and his eyes twinkled. He rose and led the way into the library, where he opened his desk, produced a ledger, and wrote down the amount in a fine hand.
“Susan Brady, three dollars and thirty-five cents. I'll put it in the savings bank to-day. That makes twenty-two dollars and forty cents for Sue. She's growing rich.”
“Some man'll get it,” said Sally.
“Sally,” said Mr. Bentley, turning in his chair, “Mr. Holder's been telling me about a rather unusual woman in that apartment house just above Fourteenth Street, on the south side of Dalton.”
“I think I know her—by sight,” Sally corrected herself. She appealed. to Holder. “Red hair, and lots of it—I suppose a man would call it auburn. She must have been something of a beauty, once.”
The rector assented, in some astonishment.
“Couldn't do anything with her, could you? I reckoned not. I've noticed her up and down Dalton Street at night.”
Holder was no longer deceived by her matter-of-fact tone.
“I'll tell you what, Mr. Holder,” she went on, energetically, “there's not a particle of use running after those people, and the sooner you find it out the less worry and trouble you give yourself.”
“Mr. Holder didn't run after her, Sally,” said Mr. Bentley, in gentle reproof.
Holder smiled.
“Well,” said Miss Grower, “I've had my eye on her. She has a history—most of 'em have. But this one's out of the common. When they're brazen like that, and have had good looks, you can nearly always tell. You've got to wait for something to happen, and trust to luck to be on the spot, or near it. It's a toss-up, of course. One thing is sure, you can't make friends with that kind if they get a notion you're up to anything.”
“Sally, you must remember—” Mr. Bentley began.
Her tone became modified. Mr. Bentley was apparently the only human of whom she stood in awe.
“All I meant was,” she said, addressing the rector, “that you've got to run across 'em in some natural way.”
“I understood perfectly, and I agree with you,” Holder replied. “I have come, quite recently, to the same conclusion myself.”
She gave him a penetrating glance, and he had to admit, inwardly, that a certain satisfaction followed Miss Grower's approval.
“Mercy, I have to be going,” she exclaimed, glancing at the black marble clock on the mantel. “We've got a lot of invoices to put through to-day. See you again, Mr. Holder.” She jerked his hand once more. “Good morning, Mr. Bentley.”
“Good morning, Sally.”
Mr. Bentley rose, and took his hat and gold-headed stick from the rack in the hall.
“You mustn't mind Sally,” he said, when they had reached the sidewalk. “Sometimes her brusque manner is not understood. But she is a very extraordinary woman.”
“I can see that,” the rector assented quickly, and with a heartiness that dispelled all doubt of his liking for Miss Grower. Once more many questions rose to his lips, which he suppressed, since Mr. Bentley volunteered no information. Hodder became, in fact, so lost in speculation concerning Mr. Bentley's establishment as to forget the errand on which—they were bound. And Sally Grower's words, apropos of the woman in the flat, seemed but an energetic driving home of the severe lessons of his recent experiences. And how blind he had been, he reflected, not to have seen the thing for himself! Not to have realized the essential artificiality of his former method of approach! And then it struck him that Sally Grower herself must have had a history.
Mr. Bentley, too, was preoccupied.
Presently, in the midst of these thoughts, Hodder's eyes were arrested by a crowd barring the sidewalk on the block ahead; no unusual sight in that neighbourhood, and yet one which aroused in him sensations of weakness and nausea. Thus were the hidden vice and suffering of these sinister places occasionally brought to light, exposed to the curious and morbid stares of those whose own turn might come on the morrow. It was only by degrees he comprehended that the people were gathered in front of the house to which they were bound. An ambulance was seen to drive away: it turned into the aide street in front of them.
“A city ambulance!” the rector exclaimed.
Mr. Bentley did not reply.
The murmuring group which overflowed the uneven brick pavement to the asphalt was characteristic: women in calico, drudges, women in wrappers, with sleepy, awestricken faces; idlers, men and boys who had run out of the saloons, whose comments were more audible and caustic, and a fringe of children ceaselessly moving on the outskirts. The crowd parted at their approach, and they reached the gate, where a burly policeman, his helmet in his hand, was standing in the morning sunlight mopping his face with a red handkerchief. He greeted Mr. Bentley respectfully, by name, and made way for them to pass in.
“What is the trouble, Ryan?” Mr. Bentley asked.
“Suicide, sir,” the policeman replied. “Jumped off the bridge this morning. A tug picked him up, but he never came to—the strength wasn't in him. Sure it's all wore out he was. There was a letter on him, with the home number, so they knew where to fetch him. It's a sad case, sir, with the woman in there, and the child gone to the hospital not an hour ago.”
“You mean Garvin?” Mr. Bentley demanded.
“It's him I mean, sir.”
“We'd like to go in,” said Mr. Bentley. “We came to see them.”
“You're welcome, air, and the minister too. It's only them I'm holdin' back,” and the policeman shook his stick at the people.
Mr. Bentley walked up the steps, and took off his hat as he went through the battered doorway. Hodder followed, with a sense of curious faces staring at them from the thresholds as they passed; they reached the upper passage, and the room, and paused: the shutters were closed, the little couch where the child had been was empty. On the bed lay a form—covered with a sheet, and beside it a woman kneeling, shaken by sobs, ceaselessly calling a name....
A stout figure, hitherto unperceived, rose from a corner and came silently toward them—Mrs. Breitmann. She beckoned to them, and they followed her into a room on the same floor, where she told them what she knew, heedless of the tears coursing ceaselessly down her cheeks.
It seemed that Mrs. Garvin had had a premonition which she had not wholly confided to the rector. She had believed her husband never would come back; and early in the morning, in spite of all that Mrs. Breitmann could do, had insisted at intervals upon running downstairs and scanning the street. At half past seven Dr. Jarvis had come and himself carried down the child and put him in the back of his automobile. The doctor had had a nurse with him, and had begged the mother to accompany them to the hospital, saying that he would send her back. But she would not be persuaded to leave the house. The doctor could not wait, and had finally gone off with little. Dicky, leaving a powder with Mrs. Breitmann for the mother. Then she had become uncontrollable.
“Ach, it was terrible!” said the kind woman. “She was crazy, yes—she was not in her mind. I make a little coffee, but she will not touch it. All those things about her home she would talk of, and how good he was, and how she loved him more again than the child.
“Und then the wheels in the street, and she makes a cry and runs to see—I cannot hold her....”
“It would be well not to disturb her for a while,” said Mr. Bentley, seating himself on one of the dilapidated chairs which formed apart of the German woman's meagre furniture. “I will remain here if you, Mr. Hodder, will make the necessary arrangements for the funeral. Have you any objections, sir?”
“Not at all,” replied the rector, and left the house, the occupants of which had already returned to the daily round of their lives: the rattle of dishes and the noise of voices were heard in the 'ci devant' parlour, and on the steps he met the little waif with the pitcher of beer; in the street the boys who had gathered around the ambulance were playing baseball. Hodder glanced up, involuntarily, at the window of the woman he had visited the night before, but it was empty. He hurried along the littered sidewalks to the drug store, where he telephoned an undertaker; and then, as an afterthought, telephoned the hospital. The boy had arrived, and was seemingly no worse for the journey.
All this Hodder performed mechanically. Not until he was returning—not, indeed, until he entered the house did the whiff of its degrading, heated odours bring home to him the tragedy which it held, and he grasped the banister on the stairs. The thought that shook him now was of the cumulative misery of the city, of the world, of which this history on which he had stumbled was but one insignificant incident. But he went on into Mrs. Breitmann's room, and saw Mr. Bentley still seated where he had left him. The old gentleman looked up at him.
“Mrs. Breitmann and I are agreed, Mr. Hodder, that Mrs. Garvin ought not to remain in there. What do you think?”
“By all means, no,” said the rector.
The German woman burst into a soliloquy of sympathy that became incoherent.
“She will not leave him,—nein—she will not come....”
They went, the three of them, to the doorway of the death chamber and stood gazing at the huddled figure of the woman by the bedside. She had ceased to cry out: she was as one grown numb under torture; occasionally a convulsive shudder shook her. But when Mrs. Breitmann touched her, spoke to her, her grief awoke again in all its violence, and it was more by force than persuasion that she was finally removed. Mrs. Breitmann held one arm, Mr. Bentley another, and between them they fairly carried her out, for she was frail indeed.
As for Hodder, something held him back—some dread that he could not at once define. And while he groped for it, he stood staring at the man on the bed, for the hand of love had drawn back the sheet from the face. The battle was over of this poor weakling against the world; the torments of haunting fear and hate, of drink and despair had triumphed. The sight of the little group of toys brought up the image of the home in Alder Street as the wife had pictured it. Was it possible that this man, who had gone alone to the bridge in the night, had once been happy, content with life, grateful for it, possessed of a simple trust in his fellow-men—in Eldon Parr? Once more, unsummoned, came the memory of that evening of rain and thunder in the boy's room at the top of the great horse in Park Street. He had pitied Eldon Parr then. Did he now?
He crossed the room, on tiptoe, as though he feared to wake once more this poor wretch to his misery and hate, Gently he covered again the face with the sheet.
Suddenly he knew the reason of his dread,—he had to face the woman! He was a minister of Christ, it was his duty to speak to her, as he had spoken to others in the hour of sorrow and death, of the justice and goodness of the God to whom she had prayed in the church. What should he say, now? In an agony of spirit, he sat down on the little couch beside the window and buried his face in his hands. The sight of poor Garvin's white and wasted features, the terrible contrast between this miserable tenement and the palace with its unseen pictures and porcelains and tapestries, brought home to him with indescribable poignancy his own predicament. He was going to ask this woman to be comforted by faith and trust in the God of the man who had driven her husband to death! He beheld Eldon Parr in his pew complacently worshipping that God, who had rewarded him with riches and success—beheld himself as another man in his white surplice acquiescing in that God, preaching vainly....
At last he got to his feet, went out of the room, reached the doorway of that other room and looked in. Mr. Bentley sat there; and the woman, whose tears had ceased to flow, was looking up into his face.
II
“The office ensuing,” says the Book of Common Prayer, meaning the Burial of the Dead, “is not to be used for any Unbaptized adult, any who die excommunicate, or who have laid violent hands on themselves.”
Hodder had bought, with a part of Nan Ferguson's money, a tiny plot in a remote corner of Winterbourne Cemetery. And thither, the next morning, the body of Richard Garvin was taken.
A few mourners had stolen into the house and up the threadbare stairs into the miserable little back room, somehow dignified as it had never been before, and laid their gifts upon the coffin. An odd and pitiful assortment they were—mourners and gifts: men and women whose only bond with the man in life had been the bond of misery; who had seen him as he had fared forth morning after morning in the hopeless search for work, and slunk home night after night bitter and dejected; many of whom had listened, jeeringly perhaps, to his grievance against the world, though it were in some sort their own. Death, for them, had ennobled him. The little girl whom Hodder had met with the pitcher of beer came tiptoeing with a wilted bunch of pansies, picked heaven knows where; stolen, maybe, from one of the gardens of the West End. Carnations, lilies of the valley, geraniums even—such were the offerings scattered loosely on the lid until a woman came with a mass of white roses that filled the room with their fragrance,—a woman with burnished red hair. Hodder started as he recognized her; her gaze was a strange mixture of effrontery and—something else; sorrow did not quite express it. The very lavishness of her gift brought to him irresistibly the reminder of another offering. .... She was speaking.
“I don't blame him for what he done—I'd have done it, too, if I'd been him. But say, I felt kind of bad when I heard it, knowing about the kid, and all. I had to bring something—”
Instinctively Hodder surmised that she was in doubt as to the acceptance of her flowers. He took them from her hand, and laid them at the foot of the coffin.
“Thank you,” he said, simply.
She stared at him a moment with the perplexity she had shown at times on the night he visited her, and went out...
Funerals, if they might be dignified by this name, were not infrequent occurrences in Dalton Street, and why this one should have been looked upon as of sufficient importance to collect a group of onlookers at the gate it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was because of the seeming interest in it of the higher powers—for suicide and consequent widows and orphans were not unknown there. This widow and this orphan were to be miraculously rescued, were to know Dalton Street no more. The rector of a fashionable church, of all beings, was the agent in the miracle. Thus the occasion was tinged with awe. As for Mr. Bentley, his was a familiar figure, and had been remarked in Dalton Street funerals before.
They started, the three mourners, on the long drive to the cemetery, through unfrequented streets lined with mediocre dwellings, interspersed with groceries and saloons—short cuts known only to hearse drivers: they traversed, for some distance, that very Wilderness road where Mr. Bentley's old-fashioned mansion once had stood on its long green slope, framed by ancient trees; the Wilderness road, now paved with hot blocks of granite over which the carriage rattled; spread with car tracks, bordered by heterogeneous buildings of all characters and descriptions, bakeries and breweries, slaughter houses and markets, tumble-down shanties, weedy corner lots and “refreshment-houses” that announced “Lager Beer, Wines and Liquors.” At last they came to a region which was neither country nor city, where the road-houses were still in evidence, where the glass roofs of greenhouses caught the burning rays of the sun, where yards filled with marble blocks and half-finished tombstones appeared, and then they turned into the gates of Winterbourne.
Like the city itself, there was a fashionable district in Winterbourne: unlike the city, this district remained stationary. There was no soot here, and if there had been, the dead would not have minded it. They passed the Prestons and the Parrs; the lots grew smaller, the tombstones less pretentious; and finally they came to an open grave on a slope where the trees were still young, and where three men of the cemetery force lifted the coffin from the hearse—Richard Garvin's pallbearers.
John Hodder might not read the service, but there was none to tell him that the Gospel of John was not written for this man. He stood an the grass beside the grave, and a breeze from across the great river near by stirred the maple leaves above his head. “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Nor was there any canon to forbid the words of Paul: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in corruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
They laid the flowers on the fresh earth, even the white roses, and then they drove back to the city.