THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT
I
Sunday after Sunday Hodder looked upon the same picture, the winter light
filtering through emblazoned windows, falling athwart stone pillars, and
staining with rich colours the marble of the centre aisle. The organ
rolled out hymns and anthems, the voices of the white robed choir echoed
among the arches. And Hodder's eye, sweeping over the decorous
congregation, grew to recognize certain landmarks: Eldon Parr, rigid at
one end of his empty pew; little Everett Constable, comfortably, but
always pompously settled at one end of his, his white-haired and
distinguished-looking wife at the other. The space between them had once
been filled by their children. There was Mr. Ferguson, who occasionally
stroked his black whiskers with a prodigious solemnity; Mrs. Ferguson,
resplendent and always a little warm, and their daughter Nan, dainty and
appealing, her eyes uplifted and questioning.
The Plimptons, with their rubicund and aggressively healthy offspring,
were always in evidence. And there was Mrs. Larrabbee. What between
wealth and youth, independence and initiative, a widowhood now emerged
from a mourning unexceptionable, an elegance so unobtrusive as to border
on mystery, she never failed to agitate any atmosphere she entered, even
that of prayer. From time to time, Hodder himself was uncomfortably
aware of her presence, and he read in her upturned face an interest
which, by a little stretch of the imagination, might have been deemed
personal . . . .
Another was Gordon Atterbury, still known as "young Gordon," though his
father was dead, and he was in the vestry. He was unmarried and
forty-five, and Mrs. Larrabbee had said he reminded her of a shrivelling
seed set aside from a once fruitful crop. He wore, invariably, checked
trousers and a black cutaway coat, eyeglasses that fell off when he
squinted, and were saved from destruction by a gold chain. No wedding or
funeral was complete without him. And one morning, as he joined Mr. Parr
and the other gentlemen who responded to the appeal, "Let your light so
shine before men," a strange, ironical question entered the rector's
mind--was Gordon Atterbury the logical product of those doctrines which
he, Hodder, preached with such feeling and conviction?
None, at least, was so fervent a defender of the faith, so punctilious
in all observances, so constant at the altar rail; none so versed in
rubrics, ritual, and canon law; none had such a knowledge of the Church
fathers. Mr. Atterbury delighted to discuss them with the rector at the
dinner parties where they met; none was more zealous for foreign
missions. He was the treasurer of St. John's.
It should undoubtedly have been a consolation to any rector to possess
Mr. Atterbury's unqualified approval, to listen to his somewhat delphic
compliments,--heralded by a clearing of the throat. He represented
the faith as delivered to the saints, and he spoke for those in the
congregation to whom it was precious. Why was it that, to Hodder,
he should gradually have assumed something of the aspect of a Cerberus?
Why was it that he incited a perverse desire to utter heresies?
Hodder invariably turned from his contemplation of Gordon Atterbury to
the double blaring pew, which went from aisle to aisle. In his heart, he
would have preferred the approval of Eleanor Goodrich and her husband,
and of Asa Waring. Instinct spoke to him here; he seemed to read in
their faces that he failed to strike in them responsive chords. He was
drawn to them: the conviction grew upon him that he did not reach them,
and it troubled him, as he thought, disproportionately.
He could not expect to reach all. But they were the type to which he
most wished to appeal; of all of his flock, this family seemed best to
preserve the vitality and ideals of the city and nation. Asa Waring was
a splendid, uncompromising survival; his piercing eyes sometimes met
Hodder's across the church, and they held for him a question and a
riddle. Eleanor Goodrich bore on her features the stamp of true nobility
of character, and her husband, Hodder knew, was a man among men. In
addition to a respected lineage, he possessed an unusual blending of
aggressiveness and personal charm that men found irresistible.
The rector's office in the parish house was a businesslike room on the
first floor, fitted up with a desk, a table, straight-backed chairs, and
a revolving bookcase. And to it, one windy morning in March, came
Eleanor Goodrich. Hodder rose to greet her with an eagerness which,
from his kindly yet penetrating glance, she did not suspect.
"Am I interrupting you, Mr. Hodder?" she asked, a little breathlessly.
"Not at all," he said, drawing up a chair. "Won't you sit down?"
She obeyed. There was an awkward pause during which the colour slowly
rose to her face.
"I wanted to ask you one or two things," she began, not very steadily.
"As perhaps you may know, I was brought up in this church, baptized and
confirmed in it. I've come to fear that, when I was confirmed, I wasn't
old enough to know what I was doing."
She took a deep breath, amazed at her boldness, for this wasn't in the
least how she had meant to begin. And she gazed at the rector anxiously.
To her surprise, he did not appear to be inordinately shocked.
"Do you know any better now?" he asked.
"Perhaps not," she admitted. "But the things of which I was sure at that
time I am not sure of now. My faith is--is not as complete."
"Faith may be likened to an egg, Mrs. Goodrich," he said. "It must be
kept whole. If the shell is chipped, it is spoiled."
Eleanor plucked up her courage. Eggs, she declared, had been used as
illustrations by conservatives before now.
Hodder relieved her by smiling in ready appreciation.
"Columbus had reference to this world," he said. "I was thinking of a
more perfect cue."
"Oh!" she cried, "I dare say there is a more perfect one. I should hate
to think there wasn't--but I can't imagine it. There's nothing in the
Bible in the way of description of it to make me really wish to go there.
The New Jerusalem is too insipid, too material. I'm sure I'm shocking
you, but I must be honest, and say what I feel."
"If some others were as honest," said the rector, "the problems of
clergymen would be much easier. And it is precisely because people will
not tell us what they feel that we are left in the dark and cannot help
them. Of course, the language of St. John about the future is
figurative."
"Figurative,--yes," she consented, "but not figurative in a way that
helps me, a modern American woman. The figures, to be of any use, ought
to appeal to my imagination--oughtn't they? But they don't. I can't see
any utility in such a heaven--it seems powerless to enter as a factor
into my life."
"It is probable that we are not meant to know anything about the future."
"Then I wish it hadn't been made so explicit. Its very definiteness is
somehow--stultifying. And, Mr. Hodder, if we were not meant to know its
details, it seems to me that if the hereafter is to have any real value
and influence over our lives here, we should know something of its
conditions, because it must be in some sense a continuation of this.
I'm not sure that I make myself clear."
"Admirably clear. But we have our Lord's example of how to live here."
"If we could be sure," said Eleanor, "just what that example meant."
Hodder was silent a moment.
"You mean that you cannot accept what the Church teaches about his life?"
he asked.
"No, I can't," she faltered. "You have helped me to say it. I want to
have the Church's side better explained,--that's why I'm here." She
glanced up at him, hesitatingly, with a puzzled wonder, such a positive,
dynamic representative of that teaching did he appear. "And my husband
can't,--so many people I know can't, Mr. Hodder. Only, some of them
don't mention the fact. They accept it. And you say things with such a
certainty--" she paused.
"I know," he replied, "I know. I have felt it since I have come here
more than ever before." He did not add that he had felt it particularly
about her, about her husband: nor did he give voice to his instinctive
conviction that he respected and admired these two more than a hundred
others whose professed orthodoxy was without a flaw. "What is it in
particular," he asked, troubled, "that you cannot accept? I will do my
best to help you."
"Well--" she hesitated again.
"Please continue to be frank," he begged.
"I can't believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth," she responded in a
low voice; "it seems to me so--so material. And I feel I am stating a
difficulty that many have, Mr. Hodder. Why should it have been thought
necessary for God to have departed from what is really a sacred and
sublime fact in nature, to resort to a material proof in order to
convince a doubting humanity that Jesus was his Son? Oughtn't the proof
of Christ's essential God-ship to lie in his life, to be discerned by the
spiritual; and wasn't he continually rebuking those who demanded material
proof? The very acceptance of a material proof, it seems to me, is a
denial of faith, since faith ceases to have any worth whatever the moment
the demand for such proof is gratified. Knowledge puts faith out of
the question, for faith to me means a trusting on spiritual grounds.
And surely the acceptance of scriptural statements like that of the
miraculous birth without investigation is not faith--it is mere
credulity. If Jesus had been born in a miraculous way, the disciples
must have known it. Joseph must have known it when he heard the answer
'I must be about my father's business,' and their doubts are
unexplained."
"I see you have been investigating," said the rector.
"Yes," replied Eleanor, with an unconscious shade of defiance, "people
want to know, Mr. Dodder,--they want to know the truth. And if you
consider the preponderance of the evidence of the Gospels themselves--my
brother-in-law says--you will find that the miraculous birth has very
little to stand on. Take out the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke,
and the rest of the four Gospels practically contradict it. The
genealogies differ, and they both trace through Joseph."
"I think people suffer in these days from giving too much weight to
the critics of Christianity," said the rector, "from not pondering more
deeply on its underlying truths. Do not think that I am accusing you
of superficiality, Mrs. Goodrich; I am sure you wish to go to the bottom,
or else you would be satisfied with what you have already read and
heard."
"I do," she murmured.
"And the more one reflects on the life of our Lord, the more one is
convinced that the doctrine of the virgin birth is a vital essential;
without it Christianity falls to pieces. Let us go at the matter the
other way round. If we attribute to our Lord a natural birth, we come at
once to the dilemma of having to admit that he was merely an individual
human person,--in an unsurpassed relationship with God, it is true, but
still a human person. That doctrine makes Christ historical, some one
to go back to, instead of the ever-present, preexistent Son of God and
mankind. I will go as far as to assert that if the virgin birth had
never been mentioned in the Gospels, it would nevertheless inevitably
have become a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. Such a truth
is too vast, too far-reaching to have been neglected, and it has a much
higher significance than the mere record of a fact. In spite of the
contradictions of science, it explains as nothing else can the mystery
of the divinity as well as the humanity of the Saviour."
Eleanor was unconvinced. She felt, as she listened, the pressure of his
sincerity and force, and had to strive to prevent her thoughts from
becoming confused.
"No, Mr. Hodder, I simply can't see any reason for resorting to a
physical miracle in order to explain a spiritual mystery. I can see why
the ancients demanded a sign of divinity as it were. But for us it has
ceased even to be that. It can't be proved. You ask me, in the face of
overwhelming evidence against it, to teach my children that the
Incarnation depends on it, but when they grow up and go to college and
find it discredited they run the risk of losing everything else with it.
And for my part, I fail utterly to see why, if with God all things are
possible, it isn't quite as believable, as we gather from St. Mark's
Gospel, that he incarnated himself in one naturally born. If you reach
the conclusion that Jesus was not a mere individual human person, you
reach it through the contemplation of his life and death."
"Then it isn't the physical miracle you object to, especially?" he asked.
"It's the uselessness of it, for this age," she exclaimed. "I think
clergymen don't understand the harm it is doing in concentrating the
attention on such a vulnerable and non-essential point. Those of us who
are striving to reorganize our beliefs and make them tenable, do not
bother our heads about miracles. They may be true, or may not, or some
of them may be. We are beginning to see that the virgin birth does not
add anything to Christ. We are beginning to see that perfection and
individuality are not incompatible,--one is divine, and the other human.
And isn't it by his very individuality that we are able to recognize
Jesus to-day?"
"You have evidently thought and read a great deal," Dodder said,
genuinely surprised. "Why didn't you come to me earlier?"
Eleanor bit her lip. He smiled a little.
"I think I can answer that for you," he went on; "you believe we are
prejudiced,--I've no doubt many of us are. You think we are bound to
stand up for certain dogmas, or go down, and that our minds are
consequently closed. I am not blaming you," he added quickly, as she
gave a sign of protest, "but I assure you that most of us, so far as my
observation has gone, are honestly trying to proclaim the truth as we see
it."
"Insincerity is the last thing I should have accused you of, Mr. Hodder,"
she said flushing. "As I told you, you seem so sure."
"I don't pretend to infallibility, except so far as I maintain that the
Church is the guardian of certain truths which human experience has
verified. Let me ask you if you have thought out the difference your
conception of the Incarnation;--the lack of a patently divine commission,
as it were,--makes in the doctrine of grace?"
"Yes, I have," she answered, "a little. It gives me more hope. I cannot
think I am totally depraved. I do not believe that God wishes me to
think so. And while I am still aware of the distance between Christ's
perfection and my own imperfection, I feel that the possibility is
greater of lessening that distance. It gives me more self-respect, more
self-reliance. George Bridges says that the logical conclusion of that
old doctrine is what philosophers call determinism--Calvinistic
predestination. I can't believe in that. The kind of grace God gives me
is the grace to help myself by drawing force from the element of him in
my soul. He gives me the satisfaction of developing."
"Of one thing I am assured, Mrs. Goodrich," Hodder replied, "that the
logical result of independent thinking is anarchy. Under this modern
tendency toward individual creeds, the Church has split and split again
until, if it keeps on, we shall have no Church at all to carry on the
work of our Lord on earth. History proves that to take anything away from
the faith is to atrophy, to destroy it. The answer to your arguments is
to be seen on every side, atheism, hypocrisy, vice, misery, insane and
cruel grasping after wealth. There is only one remedy I can see," he
added, inflexibly, yet with a touch of sadness, "believe."
"What if we can't believe?" she asked.
"You can." He spoke with unshaken conviction.
"You can if you make the effort, and I am sure you will. My experience
is that in the early stages of spiritual development we are impervious to
certain truths. Will you permit me to recommend to you certain books
dealing with these questions in a modern way?"
"I will read them gladly," she said, and rose.
"And then, perhaps, we may have another talk," he added, looking down at
her. "Give my regards to your husband."
Yet, as he stood in the window looking after her retreating figure, there
gradually grew upon him a vague and uncomfortable feeling that he had not
been satisfactory, and this was curiously coupled with the realization
that the visit had added a considerable increment to his already
pronounced liking for Eleanor Goodrich. She was, paradoxically, his
kind of a person--such was the form the puzzle took. And so ably had
she presented her difficulties that, at one point of the discussion,
it had ironically occurred to him to refer her to Gordon Atterbury.
Mr. Atterbury's faith was like an egg, and he took precious care not
to have it broken or chipped.
Hodder found himself smiling. It was perhaps inevitable that he began at
once to contrast Mrs. Goodrich with other feminine parishioners who had
sought him out, and who had surrendered unconditionally. They had
evinced an equally disturbing tendency,--a willingness to be overborne.
For had he not, indeed, overborne them? He could not help suspecting
these other ladies of a craving for the luxury of the confessional. One
thing was certain,--he had much less respect for them than for Eleanor
Goodrich . . . .
That afternoon he sent her the list of books. But the weeks passed,
and she did not come back. Once, when he met her at a dinner of Mrs.
Preston's, both avoided the subject of her visit, both were conscious
of a constraint. She did not know how often, unseen by her, his eyes had
sought her out from the chancel. For she continued to come to church as
frequently as before, and often brought her husband.
II
One bright and boisterous afternoon in March, Hodder alighted from an
electric car amid a swirl of dust and stood gazing for a moment at the
stone gate-houses of that 'rus in urbe', Waverley Place, and at the gold
block-letters written thereon, "No Thoroughfare." Against those gates
and their contiguous grill the rude onward rush of the city had beaten in
vain, and, baffled, had swept around their serene enclosure, westward.
Within, a silvery sunlight lit up the grass of the island running down
the middle, and in the beds the softening earth had already been broken
by the crocus sheaves. The bare branches of the trees swayed in the
gusts. As Hodder penetrated this hallowed precinct he recognized, on
either hand, the residences of several of his parishioners, each in its
ample allotted space: Mrs. Larrabbee's; the Laureston Greys'; Thurston
Gore's, of which Mr. Wallis Plimpton was now the master,--Mr. Plimpton,
before whose pertinacity the walls of Jericho had fallen; and finally the
queer, twisted Richardson mansion of the Everett Constables, whither he
was bound, with its recessed doorway and tiny windows peeping out from
under mediaeval penthouses.
He was ushered into a library where the shades were already drawn, where
a-white-clothed tea-table was set before the fire, the red rays dancing
on the silver tea-kettle. On the centre-table he was always sure to
find, neatly set in a rack, the books about which the world was talking,
or rather would soon begin to talk; and beside them were ranged
magazines; French, English, and American, Punch, the Spectator, the
Nation, the 'Revue des deux Mondes'. Like the able general she was,
Mrs. Constable kept her communications open, and her acquaintance was by
no means confined to the city of her nativity. And if a celebrity were
passing through, it were pretty safe, if in doubt, to address him in her
care.
Hodder liked and admired her, but somehow she gave him the impression of
having attained her ascendancy at a price, an ascendancy which had
apparently been gained by impressing upon her environment a new note
--literary, aesthetic, cosmopolitan. She held herself, and those she
carried with her, abreast of the times, and he was at a loss to see how
so congenial an effort could have left despite her sweetness--the little
mark of hardness he discerned, of worldliness. For she was as well born
as any woman in the city, and her husband was a Constable. He had
inherited, so the rector had been informed, one of those modest fortunes
that were deemed affluence in the eighties. His keeping abreast of the
times was the enigma, and Hodder had often wondered how financial genius
had contrived to house itself in the well-dressed, gently pompous little
man whose lack of force seemed at times so painfully evident. And yet he
was rated one of the rich men of the city, and his name Hodder had read
on many boards with Mr. Parr's!
A person more versed in the modern world of affairs than the late rector
of Bremerton would not have been so long in arriving at the answer to
this riddle. Hodder was astute, he saw into people more than they
suspected, but he was not sophisticated.
He stood picturing, now, the woman in answer to whose summons he had
come. With her finely chiselled features, her abundant white hair, her
slim figure and erect carriage she reminded him always of a Vigee Lebrun
portrait. He turned at the sound of her voice behind him.
"How good of you to come, Mr. Hodder, when you were so busy," she said,
taking his hand as she seated herself behind the tea-kettle. "I wanted
the chance to talk to you, and it seemed the best way. What is that you
have, Soter's book?"
"I pinked it up on the table," he explained.
"Then you haven't read it? You ought to. As a clergyman, it would
interest you. Religion treated from the economic side, you know, the
effect of lack of nutrition on character. Very unorthodox, of course."
"I find that I have very little time to read," he said. "I sometimes
take a book along in the cars."
"Your profession is not so leisurely as it once was, I often think it
such a pity. But you, too, are paying the penalty of complexity." She
smiled at him sympathetically. "How is Mr. Parr? I haven't seen him for
several weeks."
"He seemed well when I saw him last," replied Hodder.
"He's a wonderful man; the amount of work he accomplishes without
apparent effort is stupendous." Mrs. Constable cast what seemed a
tentative glance at the powerful head, and handed him his tea.
"I wanted to talk to you about Gertrude," she said.
He looked unenlightened.
"About my daughter, Mrs. Warren. She lives in New York, you know
--on Long Island."
Then he had remembered something he had heard.
"Yes," he said.
"She met you, at the Fergusons', just for a moment, when she was out here
last autumn. What really nice and simple people the Fergusons are, with
all their money!"
"Very nice indeed," he agreed, puzzled.
"I have been sorry for them in the past," she went on evenly. "They had
rather a hard time--perhaps you may have heard. Nobody appreciated them.
They were entombed, so to speak, in a hideous big house over on the South
Side, which fortunately burned down, and then they bought in Park Street,
and took a pew in St. John's. I suppose the idea of that huge department
store was rather difficult to get used to. But I made up my mind it was
nonsense to draw the line at department stores, especially since Mr.
Ferguson's was such a useful and remarkable one, so I went across and
called. Mrs. Ferguson was so grateful, it was almost pathetic. And
she's a very good friend--she came here everyday when Genevieve had
appendicitis."
"She's a good woman," the rector said.
"And Nan,--I adore Nan, everybody adores Nan. She reminds me of one of
those exquisite, blue-eyed dolls her father imports. Now if I were a
bachelor, Mr. Hodder--!" Mrs. Constable left the rest to his
imagination.
He smiled.
"I'm afraid Miss Ferguson has her own ideas." Running through Hodder's
mind, a troubled current, were certain memories connected with Mrs.
Warren. Was she the divorced daughter, or was she not?
"But I was going to speak to you about Gertrude. She's had such a
hard time, poor dear, my heart has bled for her." There was a barely
perceptible tremor in Mrs. Constable's voice. "All that publicity, and
the inevitable suffering connected with it! And no one can know the
misery she went through, she is so sensitive. But now, at last, she has
a chance for happiness--the real thing has come."
"The real thing!" he echoed.
"Yes. She's going to marry a splendid man, Eldridge Sumner. I know the
family well. They have always stood for public spirit, and this Mr.
Summer, although he is little over thirty, was chairman of that Vice
Commission which made such a stir in New York a year ago. He's a lawyer,
with a fine future, and they're madly in love. And Gertrude realizes
now, after her experience, the true values in life. She was only a child
when she married Victor Warren."
"But Mr. Warren," Hodder managed to say, "is still living."
"I sometimes wonder, Mr. Hodder," she went on hurriedly, "whether we can
realize how different the world is today from what it was twenty years
ago, until something of this kind is actually brought home to us.
I shall never forget how distressed, how overwhelmed Mr. Constable and I
were when Gertrude got her divorce. I know that they are regarding such
things differently in the East, but out here!--We never dreamed that such
a thing could happen to us, and we regarded it as a disgrace. But
gradually--" she hesitated, and looked at the motionless clergyman
--"gradually I began to see Gertrude's point of view, to understand that
she had made a mistake, that she had been too young to comprehend what
she was doing. Victor Warren had been ruined by money, he wasn't
faithful to her, but an extraordinary thing has happened in his case.
He's married again, and Gertrude tells me he's absurdly happy, and has
two children."
As he listened, Hodder's dominating feeling was amazement that such a
course as her daughter had taken should be condoned by this middle-aged
lady, a prominent member of his congregation and the wife of a vestryman,
who had been nurtured and steeped in Christianity. And not only that:
Mrs. Constable was plainly defending a further step, which in his opinion
involved a breach of the Seventh Commandment! To have invaded these
precincts, the muddy, turbulent river of individualism had risen higher
than he would have thought possible . . . .
"Wait!" she implored, checking his speech,--she had been watching him
with what was plainly anxiety, "don't say anything yet. I have a letter
here which she wrote me--at the time. I kept it. Let me read a part of
it to you, that you may understand more fully the tragedy of it."
Mrs. Constable thrust her hand into her lap and drew forth a thickly
covered sheet.
"It was written just after she left him--it is an answer to my protest,"
she explained, and began to read:
"I know I promised to love Victor, mother, but how can one promise to
do a thing over which one has no control? I loved him after he stopped
loving me. He wasn't a bit suited to me--I see that now--he was
attracted by the outside of me, and I never knew what he was like until I
married him. His character seemed to change completely; he grew morose
and quick-tempered and secretive, and nothing I did pleased him. We led
a cat-and-dog life. I never let you know--and yet I see now we might
have got along in any other relationship. We were very friendly when we
parted, and I'm not a bit jealous because he cares for another woman who
I can see is much better suited to him.
"'I can't honestly regret leaving him, and I'm not conscious of having
done anything wrong. I don't want to shock you, and I know how terribly
you and father must feel, but I can see now, somehow, that I had to go
through this experience, terrible as it was, to find myself. If it were
thirty years ago, before people began to be liberal in such matters,
I shudder to think what might have become of me. I should now be one of
those terrible women between fifty and sixty who have tried one frivolity
and excess after another--but I'm not coming to that! And my friends
have really been awfully kind, and supported me--even Victor's family.
Don't, don't think that I'm not respectable! I know how you look at such
things.'" Mrs. Constable closed the letter abruptly.
"I did look at such things in that way," she added, "but I've changed.
That letter helped to change me, and the fact that it was Gertrude who
had been through this. If you only knew Gertrude, Mr. Hodder, you
couldn't possibly think of her as anything but sweet and pure."
Although the extent of Hodder's acquaintance with Mrs. Warren had been
but five minutes, the letter had surprisingly retouched to something like
brilliancy her faded portrait, the glow in her cheeks, the iris blue in
her eyes. He recalled the little shock he had experienced when told that
she was divorced, for her appeal had lain in her very freshness, her
frank and confiding manner. She was one of those women who seem to say,
"Here I am, you can't but like me:" And he had responded--he remembered
that--he had liked her. And now her letter, despite his resistance, had
made its appeal, so genuinely human was it, so honest, although it
expressed a philosophy he abhorred.
Mrs. Constable was watching him mutely, striving to read in his grave
eyes the effect of her pleadings.
"You are telling me this, Mrs. Constable--why?" he asked.
"Because I wished you to know the exact situation before I asked you, as
a great favour to me, to Mr. Constable, to--to marry her in St. John's.
Of course," she went on, controlling her rising agitation, and
anticipating a sign of protest, "we shouldn't expect to have any people,
---and Gertrude wasn't married in St. John's before; that wedding was at
Passumset our seashore place. Oh, Mr. Hodder, before you answer, think
of our feelings, Mr. Constable's and mine! If you could see Mr.
Constable, you would know how he suffers--this thing has upset him more
than the divorce. His family have such pride. I am so worried about
him, and he doesn't eat anything and looks so haggard. I told him I
would see you and explain and that seemed to comfort him a little.
She is, after all, our child, and we don't want to feel, so far as our
church is concerned, that she is an Ishmaelite; we don't want to have the
spectacle of her having to go around, outside, to find a clergyman--that
would be too dreadful! I know how strict, how unflinching you are, and I
admire you for it. But this is a special case."
She paused, breathing deeply, and Hodder gazed at her with pity. What he
felt was more than pity; he was experiencing, indeed, but with a deeper
emotion, something of that same confusion of values into which Eleanor
Goodrich's visit had thrown him. At the same time it had not escaped his
logical mind that Mrs. Constable had made her final plea on the score of
respectability.
"It gives me great pain to have to refuse you," he said gently.
"Oh, don't," she said sharply, "don't say that! I can't have made the
case clear. You are too big, too comprehending, Mr. Hodder, to have a
hard-and-fast rule. There must be times--extenuating circumstances--and
I believe the canons make it optional for a clergyman to marry the
innocent person."
"Yes, it is optional, but I do, not believe it should be. The question
is left to the clergyman's' conscience. According to my view, Mrs.
Constable, the Church, as the agent of God, effects an indissoluble bond.
And much as I should like to do anything in my power for you and Mr.
Constable, you have asked the impossible,--believing as I do, there can
be no special case, no extenuating circumstance. And it is my duty to
tell you it is because people to-day are losing their beliefs that we
have this lenient attitude toward the sacred things. If they still held
the conviction that marriage is of God, they would labour to make it a
success, instead of flying apart at the first sign of what they choose to
call incompatibility."
"But surely," she said, "we ought not to be punished for our mistakes!
I cannot believe that Christ himself intended that his religion should be
so inelastic, so hard and fast, so cruel as you imply. Surely there is
enough unhappiness without making more. You speak of incompatibility
--but is it in all cases such an insignificant matter? We are beginning
to realize in these days something of the effects of character on
character,--deteriorating effects, in many instances. With certain
persons we are lifted up, inspired to face the battle of life and
overcome its difficulties. I have known fine men and women whose lives
have been stultified or ruined because they were badly mated. And I
cannot see that the character of my own daughter has deteriorated because
she has got a divorce from a man with whom she was profoundly out of
sympathy--of harmony. On the contrary, she seems more of a person than
she was; she has clearer, saner views of life; she has made her mistake
and profited by it. Her views changed--Victor Warren's did not. She
began to realize that some other woman might have an influence over his
life--she had none, simply because he did not love her. And love is not
a thing we can compel."
"You are making it very hard for me, Mrs. Constable," he said.
"You are now advocating an individualism with which the Church can have
no sympathy. Christianity teaches us that life is probationary, and if
we seek to avoid the trials sent us, instead of overcoming them, we find
ourselves farther than ever from any solution. We have to stand by our
mistakes. If marriage is to be a mere trial of compatibility, why go
through a ceremony than which there is none more binding in human and
divine institutions? One either believes in it, or one does not. And,
if belief be lacking, the state provides for the legalization of
marriages."
"Oh!" she exclaimed.
"If persons wish to be married in church in these days merely because it
is respectable, if such be their only reason, they are committing a great
wrong. They are taking an oath before God with reservations, knowing
that public opinion will release them if the marriage does not fulfil
their expectations."
For a moment she gazed at him with parted lips, and pressing her
handkerchief to her eyes began silently to cry. The sudden spectacle,
in this condition, of a self-controlled woman of the world was infinitely
distressing to Hodder, whose sympathies were even more sensitive than
(in her attempt to play upon them) she had suspected. . . She was
aware that he had got to his feet, and was standing beside her, speaking
with an oddly penetrating tenderness.
"I did not mean to be harsh," he said, "and it is not that I do not
understand how you feel. You have made my duty peculiarly difficult."
She raised up to him a face from which the mask had fallen, from which
the illusory look of youth had fled. He turned away. . . And
presently she began to speak again; in disconnected sentences.
"I so want her to be happy--I cannot think, I will not think that she has
wrecked her life--it would be too unjust, too cruel. You cannot know
what it is to be a woman!"
Before this cry he was silent.
"I don't ask anything of God except that she shall have a chance, and it
seems to me that he is making the world better--less harsh for women."
He did not reply. And presently she looked up at him again, steadfastly
now, searchingly. The barriers of the conventions were down, she had
cast her pride to the winds. He seemed to read in her a certain relief.
"I am going to tell you something, Mr. Hodder, which you may think
strange, but I have a reason for saying it. You are still a young man,
and I feel instinctively that you have an unusual career before you. You
interested me the first time you stepped into the pulpit of St. John's
--and it will do me good to talk to you, this once, frankly. You have
reiterated to-day, in no uncertain terms, doctrines which I once
believed, which I was brought up to think infallible. But I have
lived since then, and life itself has made me doubt them.
"I recognize in you a humanity, a sympathy and breadth which you are
yourself probably not aware of, all of which is greater than the rule
which you so confidently apply to fit all cases. It seems to me that
Christ did not intend us to have such rules. He went beyond them, into
the spirit.
"Under the conditions of society--of civilization to-day, most marriages
are merely a matter of chance. Even judgment cannot foresee the
development of character brought about by circumstances, by environment.
And in many marriages I have known about intimately both the man and the
woman have missed the most precious thing that life can give something I
cannot but think--God intends us to have. You see,"--she smiled at him
sadly--"I am still a little of an idealist.
"I missed--the thing I am talking about, and it has been the great sorrow
of my life--not only on my account, but on my husband's. And so far as I
am concerned, I am telling you the truth when I say I should have been
content to have lived in a log cabin if--if the gift had been mine. Not
all the money in the world, nor the intellect, nor the philanthropy--the
so-called interests of life, will satisfy me for its denial. I am a
disappointed woman, I sometimes think a bitter woman. I can't believe
that life is meant to be so. Those energies have gone into ambition
which should have been absorbed by--by something more worth while.
"And I can see so plainly now that my husband would have been far, far
happier with another kind of woman. I drew him away from the only work
he ever enjoyed--his painting. I do not say he ever could have been a
great artist, but he had a little of the divine spark, in his enthusiasm
at least--in his assiduity. I shall never forget our first trip abroad,
after we were married--he was like a boy in the galleries, in the
studios. I could not understand it then. I had no real sympathy with
art, but I tried to make sacrifices, what I thought were Christian
sacrifices. The motive power was lacking, and no matter how hard I
tried, I was only half-hearted, and he realized it instinctively--no
amount of feigning could deceive him. Something deep in me, which was a
part of my nature, was antagonistic, stultifying to the essentials of his
own being. Of course neither of us saw that then, but the results were
not long in developing. To him, art was a sacred thing, and it was
impossible for me to regard it with equal seriousness. He drew into
himself,--closed up, as it were,--no longer discussed it. I was hurt.
And when we came home he kept on in business--he still had his father's
affairs to look after--but he had a little workroom at the top of the
house where he used to go in the afternoon . . . .
"It was a question which one of us should be warped,--which personality
should be annihilated, so to speak, and I was the stronger. And as I
look back, Mr. Hodder, what occurred seems to me absolutely inevitable,
given the ingredients, as inevitable as a chemical process. We were both
striving against each other, and I won--at a tremendous cost. The
conflict, one might say, was subconscious, instinctive rather than
deliberate. My attitude forced him back into business, although we had
enough to live on very comfortably, and then the scale of life began to
increase, luxuries formerly unthought of seemed to become necessities.
And while it was still afar off I saw a great wave rolling toward us, the
wave of that new prosperity which threatened to submerge us, and I seized
the buoy fate had placed in our hands,--or rather, by suggestion, I
induced my husband to seize it--his name.
"I recognized the genius, the future of Eldon Parr at a time when he was
not yet independent and supreme, when association with a Constable meant
much to him. Mr. Parr made us, as the saying goes. Needless to say;
money has not brought happiness, but a host of hard, false ambitions
which culminated in Gertrude's marriage with Victor Warren. I set my
heart on the match, helped it in every, way, and until now nothing but
sorrow has come of it. But my point--is this,--I see so clearly, now
that it is too late, that two excellent persons may demoralize each other
if they are ill-mated. It may be possible that I had the germs of false
ambition in me when I was a girl, yet I was conscious only of the ideal
which is in most women's hearts . . . .
"You must not think that I have laid my soul bare in the hope of changing
your mind in regard to Gertrude. I recognize clearly, now, that that is
impossible. Oh, I know you do not so misjudge me," she added, reading
his quick protest in his face.
"Indeed, I cannot analyze my reasons for telling you something of which I
have never spoken to any one else."
Mrs. Constable regarded him fixedly. "You are the strongest reason.
You have somehow drawn it out of me . . . . And I suppose I wish some
one to profit by it. You can, Mr. Hodder,--I feel sure of that. You may
insist now that my argument against your present conviction of the
indissolubility of marriage is mere individualism, but I want you to
think of what I have told you, not to answer me now. I know your
argument by heart, that Christian character develops by submission,
by suffering, that it is the woman's place to submit, to efface herself.
But the root of the matter goes deeper than that. I am far from
deploring sacrifice, yet common-sense tells us that our sacrifice should
be guided by judgment, that foolish sacrifices are worse than useless.
And there are times when the very limitations of our individuality
--necessary limitation's for us--prevent our sacrifices from counting.
"I was wrong, I grant you, grievously wrong in the course I took, even
though it were not consciously deliberate. But if my husband had been an
artist I should always have remained separated from his real life by a
limitation I had no power to remove. The more I tried, the more apparent
my lack of insight became to him, the more irritated he grew. I studied
his sketches, I studied masterpieces, but it was all hopeless. The thing
wasn't in me, and he knew it wasn't. Every remark made him quiver.
"The Church, I think, will grow more liberal, must grow more liberal, if
it wishes to keep in touch with people in an age when they are thinking
out these questions for themselves. The law cannot fit all cases, I am
sure the Gospel can. And sometimes women have an instinct, a kind of
second sight into persons, Mr. Hodder. I cannot explain why I feel that
you have in you elements of growth which will eventually bring you more
into sympathy with the point of view I have set forth, but I do feel it."
Hodder did not attempt to refute her--she had, indeed, made discussion
impossible. She knew his arguments, as she had declared, and he had the
intelligence to realize that a repetition of them, on his part, would be
useless. She brought home to him, as never before, a sense of the
anomalistic position of the Church in these modern days, of its
appallingly lessened weight even with its own members. As a successor of
the Apostles, he had no power over this woman, or very little; he could
neither rebuke her, nor sentence her to penance. She recognized his
authority to marry her daughter, to baptize her daughter's children,
but not to interfere in any way with her spiritual life. It was as a
personality he had moved her--a personality apparently not in harmony
with his doctrine. Women had hinted at this before. And while Mrs.
Constable had not, as she perceived, shaken his conviction, the very
vividness and unexpectedness of a confession from her--had stirred him to
the marrow, had opened doors, perforce, which he, himself had marked
forbidden, and given him a glimpse beyond before he could lower his eyes.
Was there, after all, something in him that responded in spite of
himself?
He sat gazing at her, his head bent, his strong hands on the arms of the
chair.
"We never can foresee how we may change," he answered, a light in his
eyes that was like a smile, yet having no suggestion of levity. And his
voice--despite his disagreement--maintained the quality of his sympathy.
Neither felt the oddity, then, of the absence of a jarring note. "You
may be sure, at least, of my confidence, and of my gratitude for what you
have told me."
His tone belied the formality of his speech. Mrs. Constable returned his
gaze in silence, and before words came again to either, a step sounded on
the threshold and Mr. Constable entered.
Hodder looked at him with a new vision. His face was indeed lined and
worn, and dark circles here under his eyes. But at Mrs. Constable's
"Here's Mr. Hodder, dear," he came forward briskly to welcome the
clergyman.
"How do you do?" he said cordially. "We don't see you very often."
"I have been telling Mr. Hodder that modern rectors of big parishes have
far too many duties," said his wife.
And after a few minutes of desultory conversation, the rector left.