BURNED BRIDGES
Imrie's impulsive resignation from St. Viateur's was not treated at all
seriously by the vestry. "The natural impetuousness of youth," observed
Mr. Corey, not a little virtuously; for Mr. Corey had never been
impetuous in his life. The other gentlemen quite agreed with him.
Judge Wolcott was magnanimous. "For my part, I believe in letting
bygones be bygones."
Mr. Aishton, who was very thin and dry, giving the curious impression of
never having experienced youth, was more explicit. "It's new
ideas--unassimilated," he declared. "His years make him restive. A
little guidance--that is all--merely guidance!"
Mr. Podgers was the only hesitant one. He was very large and rubicund,
with a resonant voice and a gusty dominant manner. He was extremely rich
and entirely self made, with the process still somewhat incomplete. Most
of his life had been devoted to the single-handed task of besting his
fellow men, and, until success, with its automobiles and ten servants
and social responsibilities, had arrived, matters theological had been
of absolute unimportance. Now, however, he was quite the most orthodox
member of the vestry, which, to be sure, was very desirable in one whose
contributions were so large. There was really nothing illogical or
surprising in the fact that faith and a set of ancestors came to Mr.
Podgers simultaneously with his distinction as a manufacturer of
therapeutic alcohol.
"I am not at all in favour," he said with profound conviction, "of
permitting even slightly lax doctrine to gain currency. The faith must
be kept pure. The Church must be preserved. Otherwise ..." Mr. Podgers
did not deign to indicate what shocking things might eventuate. That the
others shared his apprehension was evident from their knitted brows and
shaking heads.
But Mr. Podgers, having expressed his opinion and made clear his
unimpeachable conservatism, was anxious to get back to business, where
conservatism, a little of which, after all, went a very long way, was
not so necessary. So he rose.
"I think Mr. Imrie can be informed that his resignation will not be
accepted."
"Undoubtedly," echoed Mr. Campbell, who was Mr. Podgers' legal adviser,
though he took more advice than he gave. "I think no one questions
that." He surveyed the others as if daring anyone to question it. No one
did.
"I will talk to him again," said Judge Wolcott. "Like a father," he
added benevolently.
The other gentlemen accepted his suggestion with alacrity. Aside from a
reluctance at wasting valuable time in such a comparatively unimportant
matter, there was a natural distaste for the possibility of
unpleasantness. It was quickly decided, therefore, that the Judge should
be the vestry's vehicle of "guidance."
Filled with confidence and the best of intentions, he visited the
clergyman without delay. Remembering his former discomfiture, he began
very tactfully. Imrie listened quietly while he dilated upon the
generosity and tolerance of the vestry ... and then, instead of being
grateful and humiliated, as might reasonably have been expected, said
that he "would see."
To cover his surprise and irritation, the Judge went all over it again,
and this time Imrie "hoped for the best." It was very unsatisfactory. It
was with considerable asperity that he advised the young man "not to be
impossible."
So far from being properly impressed by the generosity and tolerance of
the vestry, and therefore reverting to his former eloquent
innocuousness, Imrie improved the following Sunday with a more or less
dispassionate analysis of the relations existing between a clergyman and
what he had the extreme bad taste to call his "employers." He drew
analogies which were extraordinarily tactless and unpleasant, and, as
Mrs. Aishton, a very refined woman, said afterward, made her regret that
her daughter was present.
Mr. Podgers shook his head, but said nothing. Therefore Mr. Campbell
also said nothing. But Judge Wolcott talked a great deal. And the rest
of the vestry talked a great deal too, though there was no meeting.
But when on the next Sunday Dr. Imrie cast all decent discretion aside
and said things concerning "Hypocrisy" so crudely that even the
stupidest of his congregation could understand, and even the most
tolerant could not evade; and when that dreadful sermon was followed by
one on "Charity" in which absolutely all the bonds of good taste were
shattered, Mr. Podgers ceased shaking his head and spoke. Then Mr.
Campbell spoke, and a meeting was held.
"He is insane," said Mr. Podgers with a finality which indicated a
profound familiarity with all forms of mental aberration.
"Quite," agreed Mr. Campbell, as if it was almost too obvious for
comment.
"It is outrageous," declared Mr. Corey with a vindictiveness which
contrasted strangely with his white hair and pink cheeks and twinkling
little blue eyes. But it must be remembered that the barbs of the
clergyman's inexcusable tactlessness had lodged rather definitely in Mr.
Corey's bosom.
A verdict was passed of greater or less severity, according to
individual temperament. Mr. Podgers was quite impersonal, but positive,
as befitted an upholder of pure faith. Mr. Campbell, for obvious
reasons, was even more positive. Mr. Corey was frankly personal. Judge
Wolcott was the most regretful. Yet even he could not overlook what he
termed Imrie's "ingratitude." He felt that the young man should be
"disciplined," though he was vague as to the method. It was finally
decided, upon the suggestion of Mr. Campbell, that Mr. Podgers should
write the clergyman a note.
Mr. Podgers honestly intended his note to be a sort of premonitory
reprimand. But his life had unfitted him for delicate intimations. The
words which left him as carefully wrought subtleties reached Imrie, in
some occult fashion, as bald commands. The answer was made accordingly.
Its effect, of course, was to remove any lingering tolerance on the part
of the vestry, and his second resignation was solemnly accepted. The
young man was called in, after the decision, in order to hear their
"deep regret" that he was "going to leave them." He listened patiently
to their assurances of admiration, shook hands punctiliously with each
one, handed over all his accounts and plans, and went back to his room
to think about it.
He was not sorry that the break had come. It had been inevitable, he
realised, from the moment that Judith's contempt had driven him to put
himself to the test. To prove her wrong he had proven himself wrong, and
his whole life was upset thereby. The smoothly running engine had
stopped short. But characteristically he put all thought of its previous
smooth running out of his mind and devoted himself to a consideration of
its present inaction.
At this crisis he felt neither need nor desire for friends. None, he
realised clearly, could possibly understand or assist. He did not yet
entirely understand himself. But he knew that whether he wanted friends
or not, he could not well avoid them. The more candid would upbraid him
and attempt conciliation: the more tactful would be sympathetic. Both he
dreaded. So, after a day of meditation, in which his thoughts merely
moved in a circle, he put a few essentials into a bag, stored the rest
of his belongings, and disappeared, with a rod and a gun, into the north
woods.
There, while his memory in St. Viateur's grew more vague and less
fragrant, in contrast to the ductile genius of his successor, and with
only an Indian guide for company, he spread out the map of his soul and
planned his campaign.
The first possibility was the most obvious. But it was the least
attractive. To be true to what he now conceived to be his real self
would involve merely a repetition of his experience at St. Viateur's. He
was young and comparatively inexperienced, and it never occurred to him
that all churches were not alike. The result would be one living after
another, all in a constantly descending scale, until he either
capitulated or died. Neither prospect appealed to him. Night after night
was spent with his pipe and the unwinking stars, but he came no nearer
to a decision.
Finally he despaired of finding salvation in solitude, and went back to
the city. He established himself in a hotel, preferring to avoid friends
and relatives, few of whom, he felt, could possibly sympathise with him.
It is said that every criminal sooner or later visits the scene of his
crime. Some such spirit actuated Imrie. The day after his arrival in the
city was Sunday, and late in the morning, at an hour when he knew that
the congregation would be settling back in resignation preparatory to
the sermon, he strolled up to St. Viateur's.
But he did not enter. He preferred to stand across the street, and muse.
It was not a beautiful building. Squat, massive, in places heavily
ornate, in others dingily bare, it was a mere surface replica of
pristine architecture, at best, a caricature. It was a pretence even if
a candid one. It struck him with shocking force that its grim
insincerity was symbolic. Within its counterfeit solidity, wood and tin
masquerading as stone, machine-made carving strutting in fancied kinship
to the inspired craftsmanship of mediæval ornament, dwelt a faith
equally false, equally dead. Superficially it had not changed through
the centuries: but the soul, the true life had gone from it. As the
building was but the grinning skull of art, so the faith within its
walls was but the dry and rattling bones of truth.
Those days in the changeless solitude of the forest, where the God in
the brown mists and the everlasting purple hills, was too near to be
worshipped, where Pan was more divine than Jehovah, had expanded Imrie's
soul more than he realised.
A veil he knew then, had covered his eyes. He had seen truth with
others' eyes. He had preached a truth which was his only by reflection.
Now, for the first time in his life, he was exultantly conscious of
seeing things with his own eyes.
St. Viateur's, which had once been so inspiring, was now only pitiful.
Even its successor, more vital as a work of art, would still house but a
ghost of truth.
He stared with a new wonder at the motor-cars, hurrying past, at a
wireless telegraph station in the distance, thrusting its antennæ into
the illimitable skies. How could he have ever been so blind! In all the
world--and on it and over it--man was ever seeking truth and finding it.
Always, like the wireless, he was pushing his antennæ into uncharted
space, never resting content with the achievements of yesterday. It was
only in the St. Viateur's that men still sat mumbling forgotten ritual,
praying to shattered idols, rotting in the darkness. Outside, in the
sunshine, the world forged ahead, living always in struggle, dying only
in content.
His had been death in life, thought Imrie with something between a
thrill and a shudder. But there were years left to him yet. He threw
back his shoulders and set his jaws as he turned homeward.
For the first time he felt that he had a key to the great mystery of
life. Paradox vanished, conflict dissolved. It seemed amazingly simple.
His call to the ministry was a phenomenon, an aberration of adolescence.
He still looked upon it with tenderness, but no longer with seriousness.
Beside this new call now sounding bell-like in his heart, that other was
but a beating of pans to drive the ghosts away, an empty relic of
childhood. To expound creeds was a petty matter of business. He had been
no nobler than the barrister who seeks to make right the wrong of his
client for a consideration of sundry pieces of silver. He had been a
mere tradesman in the things of the soul. It had seemed enough. Now,
crystal-clear, stretched the true road toward which he was summoned. He
had dallied long and comfortably in the well-tilled fields of the Past:
he was called now to the hard, never-ending conquest of the Future. He
would learn the Truth, and it would set him free ... and then, mayhap,
he would set others free.
He was restless that evening, after dinner. The self-imposed solitude of
the hotel had begun to be irksome. Forgetting momentarily that it was
Sunday, he decided to visit a theatre. But as he ran through the blatant
announcements of plays, an inconspicuous little advertisement caught his
eye.
Half an hour later, in consequence of what he felt was a veritably
inspired accident, he was in a theatre, listening to a sermon by a man
who repeatedly assured his audience that he was not a clergyman.
Imrie noticed with surprise that the congregation was largely of men,
and the thought struck him with unpleasant force that they were present
quite entirely of their own volition. He wondered ironically how many
people would attend St. Viateur's if there were no social ends to be
achieved.
The man who sat next to him answered some of the questions which rose in
his mind. He was about his own age, keen-featured, nervously alert, very
fashionably dressed, a type more often found on the golf links than in
church on Sunday mornings. Often, thought Imrie with a kind of shame, he
had himself preached against the "agnosticism," the "irreligion," the
"spiritual indifference," of such men. But this man's obviously profound
attention to a mere _sermon_ was a little bewildering.
From him Imrie learned that the speaker was a Jew, formerly a rabbi, who
had established a "church" in a distant city, which, though without
wealth or machinery of any sort, even to a home of its own, never had a
vacant seat, and had become a powerful factor in civic affairs.
The stranger's familiarity with the speaker's history, and his manifest
enthusiasm, were as surprising as they were significant, and as Imrie
cast his eyes around the hall, he saw many like him. It struck him
unpleasantly that men of this sort had not been numerous in his own
congregation.
After the service, moved by an impulse which he did not stop to analyse,
he made his way to the platform, introduced himself to the speaker, and
asked permission to call upon him at his hotel. It was an act very
foreign, he realised, to what he had always thought his natural reserve.
But the spirit which impelled him was as strong as it was novel.
Perhaps, he reflected, it was only necessity. He needed aid. Something
told him that Dr. Weis could give it.
The next afternoon he presented himself before the former rabbi, and
without hesitation told him everything of the quandary in which he found
himself, omitting nothing of the circumstances which had brought it
about.
Weis, a compact little man, with snapping black eyes and a combative
mouth, listened attentively, never taking his half-smiling gaze from
Imrie's face.
"The similarity is--remarkable," he said softly when the recital was
finished. Then he added crisply: "Well, young man, what do you propose
doing--next?"
"I came to ask you that question," said Imrie briefly.
The little rabbi pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So--you came to ask me.
Well, I have answered it. I moved on--yes. But it is a hard answer--oh,
quite hard."
He was silent for a moment, snapping his finger-nails one against
another. Suddenly he looked up.
"Do you wish," he demanded, "to be a preacher?" He paused and bored
Imrie with his sharp little eyes. "Do you wish to sway the multitudes
with your eloquence? It is applause--yes--you seek? You want _your_
church--or the _people's_ church ... what?"
"I'm afraid I don't quite...."
"You must understand," said Weis bluntly.
"It's quite essential. You wish to free yourself from dogmatic vestries.
Very well--will you substitute for dogmatic vestries, your dogmatic
self--yes?" And, when Imrie looked a little crestfallen, he added with a
smile, "We're _all_ dogmatic, my young friend. To all of us freedom is
the right to rule others."
"What is the alternative?"
"There is a plan--I've thought of it often. You want to avoid a
bureaucratic Church. You must not founder in the Charybdis of an
autocratic one. You have means of your own?"
Imrie nodded.
"That's excellent--for you. But do not finance the church on your money.
It must be self-supporting. And don't have 'patrons.' You'll soon have
another vestry."
"But the control?"
"Trustees. Build a democratic church. Let the congregation elect the
trustees. Let the regular attendants vote. Give out tickets at each
meeting and redeem three--five--a dozen, as you determine, for a ballot.
Then let your trustees choose the speakers. You may be the chief
servant. You must not be master. You may preach occasionally--there must
be many--all types--even Jews. To live, it must be free. You must seek
men with messages. Anarchists, devils, Catholics, free-masons,
republicans, single-taxers, socialists, aristocrats. As Milton put it,
you must let truth battle in a free and open encounter. Then you will
have something big, vital, valuable. Is it not so?"
He paused for breath, and Imrie sat silent in amazement at the
enthusiasm, the breadth of vision, the fertile ingenuity of the little
man. Then the self-consciousness which had shackled him hitherto in the
interview, fell away, and he took up the thread where Weis had
momentarily laid it down.
Gradually, as proposals were made and rejected and remade, with not a
little healthy acrimony, and a very great deal of humour on the part of
the older man, which Imrie needed most of all, the idea took shape.
"Ho--yes," cried Weis, as a crushing echo to one of Imrie's most
rhetorical flights. "That is fine--yes. Fine words--yes. But
words--pouf--what are they? You are young--you wish to reform the world.
That is excellent--ambition--yes. But no more. If you succeed beyond
your dreams, you will do little, very little. Hitch your wagon to a
star--yes. But don't try to ride it. On the ground all the time. Save a
soul or two if you can, not neglecting the bodies--and be glad. Most of
us cannot save our own. Think of the little bug who makes coral islands.
Be a good little bug. Be an earnest, God-fearing bug. Help your fellow
bugs along the narrow way. But don't forget--you are only a
bug--yes--only a bug--oh, so trifling!"
It was long after dark when they parted.
"It is a field worth tilling," said the older man as they shook hands.
"Your hand is on the plough. Keep your eyes ahead."
"I feel an inspiration," cried Imrie.
"Ho--yes," said Weis dryly. "But that will pass. Then it will be work.
But I will help you. I am older. I know--some things. You are a
Christian. I am only a Jew. Still--I can help. Ho--yes. I will be with
you when the inspiration goes. I am more useful than inspiration. Yes--I
will be with you--until you turn back. Then I will not be with you."
"I will not turn back," cried Imrie firmly.
"Yes--I have known young men before--who would not turn back. We shall
see--yes."
Imrie felt, as he walked toward the elevator, that there was nothing in
the world he would not suffer rather than have those snapping black eyes
look upon him with scorn, and hear that crisp voice, with its
indefinable accent, say--
"Ho--yes. I have seen--_another_ young man."