The Seeker

That was a moment of sweetness, of utter rest, of joyous peace—fighting no longer.

A little while and he was before her, proud as a conquerer may be—glad as a lover should.

"I always knew it, Nance—you had to give in."

Then as she drooped in his arms, a mere fragrant, pulsing, glad submission——

"You have always pleased me, Nancy. I know I shall never regret my choice."

And Nancy, scarce hearing, wondered happily on his breast.

CHAPTER IV

The Winning of Browett

A thoughtful Pagan once reported dignity to consist not in possessing honours, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. It is a theory fit to console multitudes. Edom's young rector was not only consoled by it, he was stimulated. To his ardent nature, the consciousness of deserving honour was the first vital step toward gaining it. Those things that he believed himself to deserve he forthwith subjected to the magnetic rays of his desire: Knowing with the inborn certainty of the successful, that they must finally yield to such silent, coercing influence and soon or late gravitate toward him in obedience to the same law that draws the apple to the earth's lap. In this manner had the young man won his prizes for oratory; so had he won his wife; so had he won his first pastorate; so now would he win that prize he was conscious of meriting next—a city parish—a rectorate in the chief seat of his church in America, where was all wealth and power as well as the great among men, to be swayed by his eloquence and brought at last to the Master's feet. And here, again, would his future enlarge to prospects now but mistily surmised—prospects to be moved upon anon with triumphant tread. Infinite aspiration opening ever beyond itself—this was his. Meantime, step by step, with zealous care for the accuracy of each, with eyes always ahead, leaving nothing undone—he was forever fashioning the moulds into which the Spirit should materialise his benefits.

The first step was the winning of Browett—old Cyrus Browett, whose villa, in the fashion of an English manor-house, was a feature of remark even to the Edom summer dwellers—a villa whose wide grounds were so swept, garnished, trimly flowered, hedge-bordered and shrub-upholstered that, to old Edom, they were like stately parlours built foolishly out of doors.

Months had the rector of tiny St. Anne's waited for Browett to come to him, knowing that Browett must come in the end. One less instinctively wise would have made the mistake of going to Browett. Not this one, whose good spirit warned him that his puissance lay rather with groups of men than with individuals. From back of the chancel railing he could sway the crowd and make it all his own; whereas, taking that same crowd singly, and beyond his sacerdotal functions, he might be at the mercy of each man composing it. He knew, in short, that Cyrus Browett as one of his congregation on a Sabbath morning would be a mere atom in the plastic cosmos below him; whereas Browett by himself, with the granite hardness of his crag-like face, his cool little green eyes—unemotional as two algebraic x's—would be a matter fearfully different. Even his white moustache, close-clipped as his own hedges, and guarding a stiff, chilled mouth, was a thing grimly repressed, telling that the man was quite invulnerable to his own vanity. A human Browett would have permitted that moustache to mitigate its surroundings with some flowing grace. He was, indeed, no adversary to meet alone in the open field—for one who could make him in a crowd a mere string of many to his harp.

The morning so long awaited came on a second Sunday after Trinity. Cyrus Browett, in whose keeping was the very ark of the money covenant, alighted from his coupé under the porte-cochère of candied Gothic and humbly took seat in his pew like a mere worshipper of God.

As such—a man among men—the young rector looked calmly down upon him, letting him sink into the crowd-entity which always became subject to him.

His rare, vibrant tones—tones that somehow carried the subdued light and warmth of stained glass—rolled out in moving volume:

"The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him."

Then, still as a mere worshipper of God, that Prince of the power of Mammon down in front knelt humbly to say after the young rector above him that he had erred and strayed like a lost sheep, followed too much the devices of his own heart, leaving undone those things he ought to have done, and doing those things which he ought not to have done; that there was no health in him; yet praying that he might, thereafter, lead a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of God's holy name. Even to Allan there was something affecting in this—a sort of sardonic absurdity in Browett's actually speaking thus.

The kneeling financier was indeed a gracious and lovely spectacle to the young clergyman, and in his next words, above the still-bended congregation, his tones grew warmly moist with an unction that thrilled his hearers as never before. Movingly, indeed, upon the authority that God hath given to his ministers, did he declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. Wonderful, in truth, had it been if his hearers did not thrill, for the minister himself was thrilled as never before. He, Allan Delcher Linford, was absolving and remitting the sins of a man whose millions were counted by the hundred, a god of money and of power—who yet cringed before him out there like one who feared and worshipped.

Nor did he here make the mistake that many another would have made. Instead of preaching to Cyrus Browett alone—preaching at him—he preached as usual to his congregation. If his glance fell, now and then, upon the face of Browett, he saw it only through the haze of his own fervour—a patch of granite-gray holding two pricking points of light. Not once was Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a crowd; not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for pew-rent. Yet, though the young rector regarded Browett as but one of many, he knew infallibly the instant that invisible wire was strung between them, and felt, thereafter, every tug of opposition or signal of agreement that flashed from Browett's mind, knowing in the end, without a look, that he had won Browett's approval and even excited his interest.

For the sermon had been strangely, wonderfully suited to Browett's peculiar tastes. Hardly could a sermon have been better planned to win him. The choice of the text itself: "And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words of the righteous," was perfect art.

The plea was for intellectual honesty, for academic freedom, for fearless independence, which were said to be the crowning glories in the diadem of man's attributes. Fearlessly, then, did the speaker depreciate both the dogmatism of religion and the dogmatism of science. "Much of what we call religion," he said, "is only the superstition of the past; much of what we call science is but the superstition of the present." He pleaded that religion might be an ever-living growth in the human heart, not a dead formulary of dogmatic origin. True, organisation was necessary, but in the realm of spiritual essentials a creed drawn up in the fourth century should not be treated as if it were the final expression of the religious consciousness in secula seculorum. One should, indeed, be prepared for the perpetual restatement of religious truth, fearlessly submitting the most cherished convictions to the light of each succeeding age.

Yet, especially, should it not be forgotten in an age of ultra-physicism, of social and economic heterodoxies, that there must ever be in human society, according to the blessed ordinance of God, princes and subjects, masters and proletariat, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, nobles and plebeians—yet all united in the bonds of love to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last end in heaven;—all united in the bonds of fraternal good-will, independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence.

He closed with these words of Voltaire: "We must love our country whatever injustice we suffer in it, as we must love and serve the Supreme Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so often dishonour His worship."

The sermon was no marked achievement in coherence, but neither was Browett a coherent personality. It was, however, a swift, vivid sermon—a short and a busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, incoherent though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic doubter of his own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire and a believer in the Established Order of Things; despising a radical and a conservative equally, but, hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He must be preached to as one not yet brought into that flock purchased by God with the blood of His Son; and at the same time, as one who had always been of that flock and was now inalienable from it. In a word, Browett's doubt and his belief had both to be fed from the same spoon, a fact that all young preachers of God's word would not have fathomed.

Thus our young rector proved his power. His future rolled visibly toward him. During the rest of that service there sounded in his ears an undertone from out the golden centre of that future: "Reverend Father in God, we present unto you this godly and well-learned man to be ordained and consecrated Bishop——"

Rewarded, indeed, was he for the trouble he had taken long months before to build that particular sermon to fit Browett, after specifications confided to him by an obliging parishioner—keeping it ready to use at a second's notice, on the first morning that Browett should appear.

How diminished would be that envious railing at Success could we but know the hidden pains by which alone its victories of seeming ease are won!

The young minister could now meet Browett as man to man, having established a prestige.

It had been said by those who would fain have branded him with the stigma of disrepute that Browett's ethics were inferior to those of the prairie wolf; meaning, perhaps, that he might kill more sheep than he could possibly devour.

Browett had views of his own in this matter. As a tentative evolutionist he looked upon his survival as unimpeachable evidence of his fitness,—as the eagle is fitter than the lamb it may fasten upon. Again, as a believer in Revealed Religion, he accepted human society according to the ordinance of God, deeming himself as Master to be but the rightful, divinely-instituted complement of his humblest servant—the two of them necessary poles in the world spiritual.

One of the few fads of Browett being the memorial window, it was also said by enviers that if he would begin to erect a window to every small competitor his Trust had squeezed to death there would be an unprecedented flurry in stained glass. But Browett knew, as an evolutionist, that the eagle has a divine right to the lamb if it can come safely off with it; as a Christian, that one carries out the will of God as indubitably in preserving the established order of prince and subject, of noble and plebeian, as in giving of his abundance to relieve the necessitous—or in endowing universities which should teach the perpetual sacredness of the established order of things in Church and State.

In short, he derived comfort from both poles of his belief—one the God of Moses, a somewhat emotional god, not entirely uncarnal—the other the god of Spencer, an unemotional and unimaginative god of Law.

It followed that he was much taken with a preacher who could answer so appositely to the needs of his soul as did this impressive young man in a chance sermon of unstudied eloquence.

There were social meetings in which Browett dispassionately confirmed these early impressions gained under the spell of a matchless oratory, and in due time there followed an invitation to the young rector of St. Anne's of Edom to preach at the Church of St. Antipas, which was Browett's city church.

CHAPTER V

A Belated Martyrdom

The rectory at Edom was hot with the fever of preparation. The invitation to preach at St. Antipas meant an offer of that parish should the preaching be approved. It was a most desirable parish—Browett's city church being as smart as one of his steam yachts or his private train (for nothing less than a train sufficed him now—though there were those of the green eyes who pretended to remember, with heavy sarcasm, the humbler day when he had but a beggarly private car, coupled to the rear of a common Limited). It was, moreover, a high church, its last rector having been put away for the narrowness of refusing to "enrich the service." This was the church and this the patron above all others that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford would have chosen, and earnestly did he pray that God in His wisdom impart to him the grace to please Browett and those whom Browett permitted to have a nominal voice in the control of St. Antipas.

Both Aunt Bell and Nancy came to feel the strain of it all. The former promised to "go into the silence" each day and "hold the thought of success," thereby drawing psychic power for him from the Reservoir of the Eternal.

Nancy could only encourage by wifely sympathy, being devoid of those psychic powers that distinguished Aunt Bell. Tenderly she hovered about Allan the morning he began to write the first of the three sermons he was to preach.

As for him, though heavy with the possibilities of the moment, he was yet cool and centred; resigned to what might be, yet hopeful; his manner was determined, yet gentle, almost sweet—the manner of one who has committed all to God and will now put no cup from him, how bitter soever.

"I am so hopeful, dearest, for your sake," his wife said, softly, wishing to reveal her sympathy yet fearful lest she might obtrude it. He was arranging many sheets of notes before him.

"What will the first one be?" she asked. He straightened in his chair.

"I've made up my mind, Nance! It's a wealthy congregation—one of the wealthiest in the city—but I shall preach first from the parable of Dives and Lazarus."

"Isn't that—a little—wouldn't something else do as well—something that wouldn't seem quite so personal?"

He smiled up with fond indulgence. "That's the woman of it—concession for temporal advantage." Then more seriously he added, "I wouldn't be true to myself, Nance, if I went down there in any spirit of truckling to wealth. Public approval is a most desirable luxury, I grant you—wealth and ease are desirable luxuries, and the favour of those in power—but they're only luxuries. And I know in this matter but one real necessity: my own self-approval. If consciously I preached a polite sermon there, my own soul would accuse me and I should be as a leaf in the wind for power. No, Nance—never urge me to be untrue to that divine Christ-self within me! If I cannot be my best self before God, I am nothing. I must preach Christ and Him crucified, whether it be to the wealthy of St. Antipas or only to believing poverty."

Stung with contrition, she was quick to say, "Oh, my dearest, I didn't mean you to be untrue! Only it seemed unnecessary to affront them in your very first sermon."

"I have been divinely guided, Nance. No considerations of expediency can deflect me now. This had to be! I admit that I had my hour of temptation—but that has gone, and thank God my integrity survives it."

"Oh, how much bigger you are than I am, dearest!" She looked down at him proudly as she stood close to his side, smoothing the tawny hair. Then she laid one finger along his lips and made the least little kissing noise with her own lips—a trick of affection learned in the early days of their love. After a little she stole from his side, leaving him with head bent in prayerful study —to be herself alone with her new assurance.

It was moments like this that she had come to long for and to feed her love upon. Nor need it be concealed that there had not been one such for many months. The situation had been graver than she was willing to acknowledge to herself. Not only had she not ceased to wonder since the first days of her marriage, but she had begun to smile in her wonder, fancying from time to time that certain plain answers came to it—and not at all realising that a certain kind of smile is love's unforgivable blasphemy; conscious only that the smile left a strange hurt in her heart.

For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly turning the light of her newly fed faith upon an idol whose clearness of line and purity of tint had become blurred in a dusk of wondering—an idol that had begun, she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely through that deepening gloom of doubt.

Now all was well again. In this new light the dear idol might even at times show a dual personality—one kneeling beside her very earnestly to worship the other with her. Why not, since the other showed itself truly worthy of adoration? With faith made new in her husband—and, therefore, in God—she went to Aunt Bell.

She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, over her book, "The Beautiful Within," her particular chapter being headed, "Psychology of Rest: Rhythms and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism with Subliminal Spontaneity." Over this frank revelation of hidden truths Aunt Bell's handsome head was, for the moment, nodding in sub-rhythms of psychic placidity—a state from which Nancy's animated entrance sufficed to arouse her. As the proud wife spoke, she divested herself of the psychic restraint with something very like a carnal yawn behind her book.

"Oh, Aunt Bell! Isn't Allan fine! Of course, in a way, it's too bad—doubtless he'll spoil his chances for the thing I know he's set his heart upon—and he knows it, too—but he's going calmly ahead as if the day for martyrs to the truth hadn't long since gone by. Oh, dear, martyrs are so dowdy and out-of-date—but there he is, a great, noble, beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity and independence that is stunning!"

"What has Allan been saying now?" asked Aunt Bell, curiously unmoved.

"Said? It's what he's doing! The dear, big, stupid thing is going down there to preach the very first Sunday about Dives and Lazarus—the poor beggar in Abraham's bosom and the rich man down below, you remember?" she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to hover about the centre of psychic repose.

"Well?"

"Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to any one in this age—then think of a young minister talking it to a church of rich men and expecting to receive a call from them!"

Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness of her small hands with more than her usual studious complacence. "My dear," she said at last, "no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have —but I've observed that he usually knows what he's about."

"Indeed, he knows what he's about now, Aunt Bell!" There was a swift little warmth in her tones—"but he says he can't do otherwise. He's going deliberately to spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a piece of mere early-Christian quixotism. And you must see how great he is, Aunt Bell. Do you know—there have been times when I've misjudged Allan. I didn't know his simple genuineness. He wants that church, yet he will not, as so many in his place would do, make the least concession to its people."

Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to bear upon one small foot which she thrust absently out until its profile could be seen.

"Perhaps he will have his reward," she said. "Although it is many years since I broadened into what I may call the higher unbelief, I have never once suspected, my dear, that merit fails of its reward. And above all, I have faith in Allan, in his—well, his psychic nature is so perfectly attuned with the Universal that Allan simply cannot harm himself. Even when he seems deliberately to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead. So cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence and holding the thought of success for him. I think Allan will attend very acceptably to the mere details."

CHAPTER VI

The Walls of St. Antipas Fall at the Third Blast

On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when the young minister faced a thronged St. Antipas at eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at him from Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward—the pew of Cyrus Browett—looked up at him in trembling, loving wonder. Then a little tender half-smile of perfect faith went dreaming along her just-parted lips. Let the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas—she could see the relentless profile of their chief at her right—be offended by his rugged speech: he should find atoning comfort in her new love. Like Luther, he must stand there to say out the soul of him, and she was prostrate before his brave greatness.

When, at last, he came to read the biting verses of the parable, her heart beat as if it would be out to him, her face paled and hardened with the strain of his ordeal.

"And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died and was buried.

"And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.

"And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'

"But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'"

The sermon began. Unflinchingly the preacher pointed out that Dives, apparently, lay in hell for no other reason than that he had been a rich man; no sin was imputed to him; not even unbelief; he had not only transgressed no law, but was doubtless a respectable, God-fearing man of irreproachable morals—sent to hell for his wealth.

And Lazarus appeared to have won heaven merely by reason of his poverty. No virtue, no active good conduct, was accredited to him.

Reading with the eye of common understanding, Jesus taught that the rich merited eternal torment by reason of their riches, and the poor merited eternal life by reason of their poverty, a belief that one might hear declared even to-day. Nor was this view attested solely by this parable. Jesus railed constantly at those in high places, at the rich and at lawyers, and the chief priests and elders and those in authority—declaring that he had been sent, not to them, but to the poor who needed a physician.

But was there not a seeming inconsistency here in the teachings of the Master? If the poor achieved heaven automatically by their mere poverty, why were they still needing a physician? Under that view, why were not the rich those who needed a physician—according to the literal words of Jesus?

Up to the close of this passage the orator's manner had been one of glacial severity—of a sternness apparently checked by rare self-control from breaking into a denunciation of the modern Dives. Then all was changed. His face softened and lighted; the broad shoulders seemed to relax from their uncompromising squareness; he stood more easily upon his feet; he glowed with a certain encouraging companionableness.

Was that, indeed, the teaching of Jesus—as if in New York to-day he might say, "I have come to Third Avenue rather than to Fifth?" Can this crudely literal reading of his words prevail? Does it not carry its own refutation—the extreme absurdity of supposing that Jesus would come to the squalid Jews of the East Side and denounce the better elements that maintain a church like St. Antipas?

The fallacy were easily probed. A modern intelligence can scarcely prefigure heaven or hell as a reward or punishment for mere carnal comfort or discomfort —as many literal-minded persons believe that Jesus taught. The Son of Man was too subtle a philosopher to teach that a rich man is lost by his wealth and a poor man saved by his poverty, though primitive minds took this to be his meaning. Some primitive minds still believe this—witness the frequent attempts to read a literal meaning into certain other words of Jesus: the command, for example, that a man should give up his cloak also, if he be sued for his coat. Little acumen is required to see that no society could protect itself against the depredations of the lawless under such a system of non-resistance; and we may be sure that Jesus had no intention of tearing down the social structure or destroying vested rights. Those who demand a literal construction of the parable of Dives and Lazarus must look for it in the Bowery melodrama, wherein the wealthy only are vicious and poverty alone is virtuous.

We have only to consider the rawness of this conception to perceive that Jesus is not to be taken literally.

Who, then, is the rich man and who the poor—who is the Dives and who the Lazarus of this intensely dramatic parable?

Dives is but the type of the spiritually rich man who has not charity for his spiritually poor brother; of the man rich in faith who will not trouble to counsel the doubting; of the one rich in humility who will yet not seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him rich in charity who indifferently views his uncharitable brethren; of the man rich in hope who will not strive to make hopeful the despairing; of the one rich in graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim the unsanctified beggar at his gate.

And who is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring—the soul-hungry, whether he be a millionaire or a poor clerk —the determined seeker whose eye is single and whose whole body is full of light? In this view, surely more creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material wealth ceases to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality may be the actual beggar rich in faith yet indifferent to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor Lazarus may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, day after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the beggar, out of the abundance of his faith, would never miss.

Christianity has suffered much from our failure to give the Saviour due credit for subtlety. So far as money—mere wealth—is a soul-factor at all, it must be held to increase rather than to diminish its possessor's chances of salvation, but not in merely providing the refinements of culture and the elegances of modern luxury and good taste, important though these are to the spirit's growth. The true value of wealth to the soul—a value difficult to over-estimate—is that it provides opportunity for, and encourages the cultivation of, that virtue which is "the greatest of all these"; that virtue which "suffereth long and is kind; which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up"—Charity, in short. While not denying the simple joys of penury, nor forgetting the Saviour's promises to the poor and meek and lowly, it is still easy to understand that charity is less likely to be a vigorous soul-growth in a poor man than in a rich. The poor man may possess it as a germ, a seed; but the rich man is, through superior prowess in the struggle for existence, in a position to cultivate this virtue; and who will say that he has not cultivated it? Certainly no one acquainted with the efforts of our wealthy men to uplift the worthy poor. A certain modern sentimentality demands that poverty be abolished —ignoring those pregnant words of Jesus—"the poor ye have always with you"—forgetting, indeed, that human society is composed of unequal parts, even as the human body; that equality exists among the social members only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have sinned in Adam, and have been, by the sacrificial blood of God's only begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary, equally redeemed into eternal life, if they will but accept Christ as their only true Saviour;—forgetting indeed that to abolish poverty would at once prevent all manifestations of human nature's most beauteous trait and virtue—Charity.

Present echoes from the business world indicate that the poor man to-day, with his vicious discontent, his preposterous hopes of trades-unionism, and his impracticable and very un-Christian dreams of an industrial millennium, is the true and veritable Dives, rich in arrogance and poor in that charity of judgment which the millionaire has so abundantly shown himself to possess.

The remedy was for the world to come up higher. Standing upon one of the grand old peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the speaker had once witnessed a scene in the valley below which, for beauty of illustration of the thought in hand, the world could not surpass. He told his hearers what the scene was. And he besought them to come up to the rock of Charity and mingle in the blue serene. Charity—a tear dropped on the world's cold cheek of intolerance to make it burn forever! Or it was the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity into the light of the present day where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for golden era when truth shall rise as a new and blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. Charity indeed was what Voltaire meant to inculcate when he declared: "Atheism and fanaticism are the two poles of a universe of confusion and horror. The narrow zone of virtue is between these two. March with a firm step in that path; believe in a good God and do good."

The peroration was beautifully simple, thrilling the vast throng with a sudden deeper conviction of the speaker's earnestness: "Charity! Oh, of all the flowers that have swung their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of charity. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed before their fragrance becomes perceptible; but this flower at early morn, at burning noon and when the dew of eve is on the flowers, has coursed its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, and up the mountain side—up, ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue—up along the cloudy corridors of the day, up along the misty pathway to the skies till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the breath of angels."

Hardly was there a dissenting voice in all St. Antipas that Sabbath upon the proposal that this powerful young preacher be called to its pulpit. The few who warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted the following Sabbath by a very different sermon on certain flaws in the fashionable drama.

The one and only possible immorality in this world, contended the speaker, was untruth. A sermon was as immoral as any stage play if the soul of it was not Truth; and a stage play became as moral as a sermon if its soul was truth. The special form of untruth he attacked was what he styled "the drama of the glorified wanton." Warmly and ably did he denounce the pernicious effect of those plays, that take the wanton for a heroine and sentimentalise her into a morbid attractiveness. The stage should show life, and the wanton, being of life, might be portrayed; but let it be with ruthless fidelity. She must not be falsified into a creature of fine sensibilities and lofty emotions—a thing of dangerous plausibility to the innocent.

The last doubter succumbed on the third Sabbath, when he preached from the warning of Jesus that many would come after him, performing in his name wonders that might deceive, were it possible, even the very elect. The sermon likened this generation to the people Paul found in Athens, running curiously after any new god; after Christian Science—which he took the liberty of remarking was neither Christian nor scientific—or mental science, spiritism, theosophy, clairvoyance, all black arts, straying from the fold of truth into outer darkness—forgetting that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein might not perish, but have everlasting life." As this was the sole means of salvation that God had provided, the time was, obviously, one fraught with vital interest to every thinking man.

As a sagacious member of the Board of Trustees remarked, it would hardly have been possible to preach three sermons better calculated, each in its way, to win the approval of St. Antipas.

The call came and was accepted after the signs of due and prayerful consideration. But as for Nancy, she had left off certain of her wonderings forever.

CHAPTER VII

There Entereth the Serpent of Inappreciation

For the young rector of St. Antipas there followed swift, rich, high-coloured days—days in which he might have framed more than one triumphant reply to that poet who questioned why the spirit of mortal should be proud, intimating that it should not be.

Also was the handsome young rector's parish proud of him; proud of his executive ability as shown in the management of its many organised activities, religious and secular; its Brotherhood of St. Bartholomew, its Men's Club, Women's Missionary Association, Guild and Visiting Society, King's Daughters, Sewing School, Poor Fund, and still others; proud of his decorative personality, his impressive oratory and the modern note in his preaching; proud that its ushers must each Sabbath morning turn away many late-comers. Indeed, the whole parish had been born to a new spiritual life since that day when the worship at St. Antipas had been kept simple to bareness by a stubborn and perverse reactionary. In this happier day St. Antipas was known for its advanced ritual, for a service so beautifully enriched that a new spiritual warmth pervaded the entire parish. The doctrine of the Real Presence was not timidly minced, but preached unequivocally, with dignified boldness. Also there was a confessional, and the gracious burning of incense. In short, St. Antipas throve, and the grace of the Holy Ghost palpably took possession of its worshippers. The church was become the smartest church in the diocese, and its communicants were held to have a tone.

And to these communicants their rector of the flawless pulchritude was a gracious spectacle, not only in the performance of his sacerdotal offices, but on the thoroughfares of the city, where his distinction was not less apparent than back of the chancel rail.

A certain popular avenue runs between rows of once splendid mansions now struggling a little awkwardly into trade on their lowest floors, like impoverished but courageous gentlefolk. To these little tragedies, however, the pedestrian throng is obtuse—blind to the pathos of those still haughty upper floors, silent and reserved, behind drawn curtains, while the lower two floors are degraded into shops. In so far as the throng is not busied with itself, its attention is upon the roadway, where is ever passing a festival procession of Success, its floats of Worth Rewarded being the costliest and shiniest of the carriage-maker's craft—eloquent of true dignity and fineness even in the swift silence of their rubber tires. This is a spectacle to be viewed seriously; to be mocked at only by the flippant, though the moving pedestrian mass on the sidewalk is gayer of colour, more sentient—more companionable, more understandably human.

It was in this weaving mass on the walk that the communicants of St. Antipas were often refreshed by the vision of their rector on pleasant afternoons. Here the Reverend Doctor Linford loved to walk in God's sunlight out of sheer simple joy in living—happily undismayed by any possible consciousness that his progress turned all faces to regard him, as inevitably as one would turn the spokes of an endless succession of turnstyles.

Habited with an obviously loving attention to detail, yet with tasteful restraint, a precise and frankly confessed, yet never obtrusive, elegance, bowing with a manner to those of his flock favoured by heaven to meet him, superbly, masculinely handsome, he was far more than a mere justification of the pride St. Antipas felt in him. He was a splendid inspiration to belief in God and man.

Nor was he of the type Pharasaic—the type to profess love for its kind, yet stay scrupulously aloof from the vanquished and court only the victors. Indeed, this was not so.

In the full tide of his progress—it was indeed a progress and never a mere walk—he would stop to address a few words of simple cheer to the aged female mendicant—perhaps to make a joke with her—some pleasantry not unbefitting his station, his mien denoting a tender chivalry which has been agreeably subdued though not impaired by the experience inevitable to a man of the world. When he dropped the coin into the withered palm, he did it with a certain lingering hurriedness, as one frankly unable to repress a human weakness, though nervously striving to have it over quickly and by stealth.

Young Rigby Reeves, generalising, as it later appeared, from inadequate data, swore once that the rector of St. Antipas kept always an eye ahead for the female mendicant in the tattered shawl and the bonnet of inferior modishness; that, if the Avenue was crowded enough to make it seem worth while, he would even cross from one side to the other for the sake of speaking to her publicly.

While the fact so declared may have been a fact, the young man's corollary that the rector of St. Antipas sought this experience for the sake of its mere publicity came from a prejudice which closer acquaintance with Dr. Linford happily dissolved from his mind. As reasonably might he have averred, as did another cynic, that the rector of St. Antipas was actuated by the instincts of a mountebank when he selected his evening papers each day—deliberately and with kind words— from the stock of a newswoman at a certain conspicuous and ever-crowded crossing. As reasonable was the imputation of this other cynic, that in greeting friends upon the thronged avenue, the rector never failed to use some word or phrase that would identify him to those passing, giving the person addressed an unpleasant sense of being placed in a lime-light, yet reducing him to an insignificance just this side the line of obliteration.

"You say, 'Ah, Doctor!' and shake hands, you know," said this hypercritical observer, "and, ten to one, he says something about St. Antipas directly, you know, or—'Tell him to call on Dr. Linford at the rectory adjoining St. Antipas—I'm always there at eleven,' or 'Yes, quite true, the bishop said to me, "My dear Linford, we depend on you in this matter,"' or telling how Mrs. General Somebody-Something, you know—I never could remember names—took him down dreadfully by calling him the most dangerously fascinating man in New York. And there you are, you know! It never fails, on my word! And all the time people are passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, so that it's quite rowdy—saying 'Yes—that's Linford— there he is,' quite as if they were on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some kind gentleman from the audience.'"

It may be told that this other person was of a cynicism hopelessly indurated. Not so with Rigby Reeves, even after Reeves alleged the other discoveries that the rector of St. Antipas had "a walk that would be a strut, by gad! if he was as short as I am"; also that he "walked like a parade," which, as expounded by Mr. Reeves, meant that his air in walking was that of one conscious always of leading a triumphal procession in his own honour; and again, that one might read in his eyes a keenly sensuous enjoyment in the tones of his own voice; that he coloured these with a certain unction corresponding to the flourishes with which people of a certain obliquity of mind love to ornament their chirography; still again that he, Reeves, was "ready to lay a bet that the fellow would continue to pose even at the foot of the Great White Throne."

Happily this young man was won out of his carping attitude by closer acquaintance with the rector of St. Antipas, and learned to regard those things as no more than the inseparable antennae of a nature unusually endowed with human warmth and richness—mere meaningless projections from a personality simple, rugged, genuine, never subtle, and entirely likable. He came to feel that, while the rector himself was unaffectedly impressed by that profusion of gifts with which it had pleased heaven to distinguish him, he was yet constantly annoyed and embarrassed by the fact that he was thus made so salient a man. Young Reeves found him an appreciative person, moreover, one who betrayed a sensible interest in a fellow's own achievements, finding many reasons to be impressed by a few little things in the way of athletics, travel, and sport that had never seemed at all to impress the many—not even the members of one's own family. Rigby Reeves, indeed, became an ardent partisan of Dr. Linford, attending services religiously with his mother and sisters—and nearly making a row in the club café one afternoon when the other and more obdurate cynic declared, with a fine assumption of the judicial, that Linford was "the best actor in New York—on the stage or off!"

It was concerning this habit of the daily stroll that Aunt Bell and her niece also disagreed one afternoon. They were in the little dark-wooded, red-walled library of the rectory, Aunt Bell with her book of devotion, Nancy at her desk, writing.

From her low chair near the window, Aunt Bell had just beheld the Doctor's erect head, its hat of flawless gloss, and his beautifully squared shoulders, progress at a moderate speed across her narrow field of vision. In so stiffly a level line had they passed that a profane thought seized her unawares: the fancy that the rector of St. Antipas had been pulled by the window on rollers. But this was at once atoned for. She observed that Allan was one of the few men who walk always like those born to rule. Then she spoke:

"Nancy, why do you never walk with Allan in the afternoon? Nothing would please him better—the boy is positively proud to have you."

"Oh, I had to finish this letter to Clara," Nancy answered abstractedly, as if still intent upon her writing, debating a word with narrowed eyes and pen-tip at her teeth.

But Aunt Bell was neither to be misunderstood nor insufficiently answered.

"Not this afternoon, especially—any afternoon. I can't remember when you've walked with him. So many times I've heard you refuse—and I dare say it doesn't please him, you know."

"Oh, he has often told me so."

"Well?"

"Aunt Bell—I—Oh, you've walked on the street with Allan!"

"To be sure I have!"

"Well!"

"Well—of course—that is true in a way—Allan does attract attention the moment he reaches the pavement— and of course every one stares at one—but it isn't the poor fellow's fault. At least, if the boy were at all conscious of it he might in very little ways here and there prevent the very tiniest bit of it—but, my dear, your husband is a man of most striking appearance— especially in the clerical garb—even on that avenue over there where striking persons abound—and it's not to be helped. And I can't wonder he's not pleased with you when it gives him such pleasure to have a modish and handsome young woman at his side. I met him the other day walking down from Forty-second Street with that stunning-looking Mrs. Wyeth, and he looked as happy and bubbling as a schoolboy."

"Oh—Aunt Bell—but of course, if you don't see, I couldn't possibly tell you." She turned suddenly to her letter, as if to dismiss the hopeless task.

Now Aunt Bell, being entirely human, would not keep silence under an intimation that her powers of discernment were less than phenomenal. The tone of her reply, therefore, hinted of much.

"My child—I may see and gather and understand much more than I give any sign of."

It was a wretchedly empty boast. Doubtless it had never been true of Aunt Bell at any time in her life, but she was nettled now: one must present frowning fortifications at a point where one is attacked, even if they be only of pasteboard. Then, too, a random claim to possess hidden fruits of observation is often productive. Much reticence goes down before it.

Nancy turned to her again with a kind of relief in her face.

"Oh, Aunt Bell, I was sure of it—I couldn't tell you, but I was sure you must see!" Her pen was thrown aside and she drooped in her chair, her hands listless in her lap.

Aunt Bell looked sympathetically voluble but wisely refrained from speech.

"I wonder," continued the girl, "if you knew at the time, the time when my eyes seemed to open—when I was deceived by his pretension into thinking—you remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell—how independent and noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, Aunt Bell—what a slump in my faith that day! I think its foundations all went, and then naturally the rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you realise it all the time?"

So it was religious doubt—a loss of faith—heterodoxy? Having listened until she gathered this much, Aunt Bell broke in—"My dear, you must let me guide you in this. You know what I've been through. Study the higher criticism, reverently, if you will— even broaden into the higher unbelief. Times have changed since my youth; one may broaden into almost anything now and still be orthodox, especially in our church. But beware of the literal mind, the material view of things. Remember that the essentials of Christianity are spiritually historic even if they aren't materially historic—facts in the human consciousness if not in the world of matter. You need not pretend to understand how God can be one in essence and three in person—I grant you that is only a reversion to polytheism and is so regarded by the best Biblical scholars— but never surrender your belief in the atoning blood of the Son whom He sent a ransom for many—at least as a spiritual fact. I myself have dismissed the Trinity as one of those mysteries to be adoringly believed on earth and comprehended only in heaven—but that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son—Child, do you think I could look forward without fear to facing God, if I did not believe that the blood of his only begotten Son had washed from my soul that guilt of the sin I committed in Adam? Cling to these simple essentials, and otherwise broaden even into the higher unbelief, if you like——"

"But, Aunt Bell, it isn't that! I never trouble about those things—though you have divined truly that I have doubted them lately—but the doubts don't distress me. Actually, Aunt Bell, for a woman to lose faith in her God seems a small matter beside losing faith in her husband. You can doubt and reason and speculate and argue about the first—it's fashionable—people rather respect unbelievers nowadays—but Oh, Aunt Bell, how the other hurts!"

"But, my child—my preposterous child! How can you have lost faith in that husband of yours? What nonsense! Do you mean you have taken seriously those harmless jesting little sallies of his about the snares and pitfalls of a clergyman's life, or his tales of how this or that silly woman has allowed him to detect in her that pure reverence which most women do feel for a clergyman, whether he's handsome or not? Take Mrs. Wyeth, for example——"

"Oh, Aunt Bell—no, no—how can you think——"

"I admit Allan is the least bit—er—redundant of those anecdotes—perhaps just the least bit insistent about the snares and pitfalls that beset an attractive man in his position. But really, my dear—I know men—and you need never feel a twinge of jealousy. For one thing, Allan would be held in bounds by fear of the world, even if his love for you were inadequate to hold him."

"It's no use trying to make you understand, Aunt Bell—you can't!"

Whereupon Aunt Bell neglected her former device of pretending that she did, indeed, understand, and bluntly asked:

"Well, what is it, child?"

"Nothing, nothing, nothing, Aunt Bell—it's only what he is."

"What he is? A handsome, agreeable, healthy, good-tempered, loyal, upright, irreproachable——"

"Aunt Bell, he's killing me. I seem to want to laugh when I tell you, because it's so funny that he should have the power to—but I tell you he's killing out all the good in me—a little bit every day. I can't even want to be good. Oh, how stupid to think you could see— that any one could see! Sometimes I do forget and laugh all at once. It's as grotesque and unreal as an imaginary monster I used to be afraid of—then I'm sick, for I remember we are bound together by the laws of God and man. Of course, you can't see, Aunt Bell— the fire hasn't eaten through yet—but I tell you it's burning inside day and night."

She laughed a little, as if to reassure her puzzled listener.

"A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell—burning out my goodness—if the firemen would only come with engines and axes and hooks and things, and water— I'd submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old house—it hurts so!"