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!"