I Although he found the complications of a modern city parish somewhat
bewildering, the new rector entered into his duties that winter with
apostolic zeal. He was aware of limitations and anomalies, but his faith
was boundless, his energy the subject of good-natured comment by his
vestry and parishioners, whose pressing invitations' to dinners he
was often compelled to refuse. There was in John Hodder something
indefinable that inflamed curiosity and left it unsatisfied.
His excuse for attending these dinners, which indeed were relaxing and
enjoyable, he found in the obvious duty of getting to know the most
important members of his congregation. But invariably he came away from
them with an inner sense of having been baffled in this object. With
a few exceptions, these modern people seemed to have no time for
friendship in the real meaning of the word, no desire to carry a
relationship beyond a certain point. Although he was their spiritual
pastor, he knew less about most of them at the end of the winter than
their butlers and their maids.
They were kind, they were delightful, they were interested in him--he
occasionally thought--as a somewhat anachronistic phenomenon. They
petted, respected him, and deferred to him. He represented to them an
element in life they recognized, and which had its proper niche. What
they failed to acknowledge was his point of view--and this he was wise
enough not to press at dinner tables and in drawing-rooms--that religion
should have the penetrability of ether; that it should be the absorbent
of life. He did not have to commit the banality of reminding them of
this conviction of his at their own tables; he had sufficient humour and
penetration to credit them with knowing it. Nay, he went farther in his
unsuspected analysis, and perceived that these beliefs made one of his
chief attractions for them. It was pleasant to have authority in a black
coat at one's board; to defer, if not to bend to it. The traditions of
fashion demanded a clergyman in the milieu, and the more tenaciously he
clung to his prerogatives, the better they liked it.
Although they were conscious of a certain pressure, which they gently
resisted, they did not divine that the radiating and rugged young man
cherished serious designs upon them. He did not expect to transform the
world in a day, especially the modern world. He was biding his time,
awaiting individual opportunities.
They talked to him of the parish work, congratulated him on the vigour
with which he had attacked it, and often declared themselves jealous of
it because it claimed too much of him. Dear Dr. Gilman, they said,
had had neither the strength nor the perception of 'modern needs; and
McCrae, the first assistant clergyman, while a good man, was a plodder
and lacking in imagination. They talked sympathetically about the
problems of the poor. And some of them--particularly Mrs. Wallis
Plimpton were inclined to think Hodder's replies a trifle noncommittal.
The trouble, although he did not tell them so, was that he himself had
by no means solved the problem. And he felt a certain reluctance to
discuss the riddle of poverty over champagne and porcelain.
Mrs. Plimpton and Mrs. Constable, Mrs. Ferguson, Mrs. Langmaid, Mrs.
Larrabbee, Mrs. Atterbury, Mrs. Grey, and many other ladies and their
daughters were honorary members of his guilds and societies, and found
time in their busy lives to decorate the church, adorn the altar, care
for the vestments, and visit the parish house. Some of them did more:
Mrs. Larrabbee, for instance, when she was in town, often graced the
girls' classes with her presence, which was a little disquieting to
the daughters of immigrants: a little disquieting, too, to John Hodder.
During the three years that had elapsed since Mr. Larrabbee's death, she
had, with characteristic grace and ease, taken up philanthropy; become,
in particular, the feminine patron saint of Galt House, non-sectarian, a
rescue home for the erring of her sex.
There were, too, in this higher realm of wealth in and out of which
Hodder plunged, women like Mrs. Constable (much older than Mrs.
Larrabbee) with whom philanthropy and what is known as “church work”
had become second nature in a well-ordered life, and who attended
with praiseworthy regularity the meetings of charitable boards and
committees, not infrequently taking an interest in individuals in Mr.
Hodder's classes. With her, on occasions, he did discuss such matters,
only to come away from her with his bewilderment deepened.
It was only natural that he should have his moods of depression. But the
recurrent flow of his energy swept them away. Cynicism had no place in
his militant Christianity, and yet there were times when he wondered
whether these good people really wished achievements from their rector.
They had the air of saying “Bravo!” and then of turning away. And he did
not conceal from himself that he was really doing nothing but labour.
The distances were great; and between his dinner parties, classes,
services, and visits, he was forced to sit far into the night preparing
his sermons, when his brain was not so keen as it might have been.
Indeed--and this thought was cynical and out of character--he asked
himself on one occasion whether his principal achievement so far had
not consisted in getting on unusual terms with Eldon Parr. They were
not lacking who thought so, and who did not hesitate to imply it. They
evidently regarded his growing intimacy with the banker with approval,
as in some sort a supreme qualification for a rector of St. John's, and
a proof of unusual abilities. There could be no question, for instance,
that he had advanced perceptibly in the estimation of the wife of
another of his vestrymen, Mrs. Wallis Plimpton.
The daughter of Thurston Gore, with all her astuteness and real estate,
was of a naivete in regard to spiritual matters that Hodder had grown
to recognize as impermeable. In an evening gown, with a string of large
pearls testing on her firm and glowing neck, she appeared a concrete
refutation of the notion of rebirth, the triumph of an unconscious
philosophy of material common-sense. However, in parish house affairs,
Hodder had found her practical brain of no slight assistance.
“I think it quite wonderful,” she remarked, on the occasion at which he
was the guest of honour in what was still called the new Gore mansion,
“that you have come to know Mr. Parr so well in such a short time. How
did you do it, Mr. Hodder? Of course Wallis knows him, and sees a great
deal of him in business matters. He relies on Wallis. But they tell me
you have grown more intimate with him than any one has been since Alison
left him.”
There is, in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, a formula for answering people
in accordance with their point of view. The rector modestly disclaimed
intimacy. And he curbed his curiosity about Alison for the reason that
he preferred to hear her story from another source.
“Oh, but you are intimate!” Mrs. Plimpton protested. “Everybody says
so--that Mr. Parr sends for you all the time. What is he like when he's
alone, and relaxed? Is he ever relaxed?” The lady had a habit of
not waiting for answers to her questions. “Do you know, it stirs my
imagination tremendously when I think of all the power that man has.
I suppose you know he has become one of a very small group of men who
control this country, and naturally he has been cruelly maligned. All he
has to do is to say a word to his secretary, and he can make men or ruin
them. It isn't that he does ruin them--I don't mean that. He uses his
wealth, Wallis says, to maintain the prosperity of the nation! He feels
his trusteeship. And he is so generous! He has given a great deal to the
church, and now,” she added, “I am sure he will give more.”
Hodder was appalled. He felt helpless before the weight of this
onslaught.
“I dare say he will continue to assist, as he has in the past,” he
managed to say.
“Of course it's your disinterestedness,” she proclaimed, examining him
frankly. “He feels that you don't want anything. You always strike me as
so splendidly impartial, Mr. Hodder.”
Fortunately, he was spared an answer. Mr. Plimpton, who was wont to
apply his gifts as a toastmaster to his own festivals, hailed him from
the other end of the table.
And Nelson Langmaid, who had fallen into the habit of dropping into
Hodder's rooms in the parish house on his way uptown for a chat about
books, had been struck by the rector's friendship with the banker.
“I don't understand how you managed it, Hodder, in such a short time,”
he declared. “Mr. Parr's a difficult man. In all these years, I've been
closer to him than any one else, and I don't know him today half as well
as you do.”
“I didn't manage it,” said Hodder, briefly.
“Well,” replied the lawyer, quizzically, “you needn't eat me up. I'm
sure you didn't do it on purpose. If you had,--to use a Hibernian
phrase,--you never would have done it. I've seen it tried before. To
tell you the truth, after I'd come back from Bremerton, that was the one
thing I was afraid of--that you mightn't get along with him.”
Hodder himself was at a loss to account for the relationship. It
troubled him vaguely, for Mr. Parr was the aggressor; and often at dusk,
when Hodder was working under his study lamp, the telephone would ring,
and on taking down the receiver he would hear the banker's voice. “I'm
alone to-night, Mr. Hodder. Will you come and have dinner with me?”
Had he known it, this was a different method of communication than that
which the financier usually employed, one which should have flattered
him. If Wallis Plimpton, for instance, had received such a personal
message, the fact would not have remained unknown the next day at his
club. Sometimes it was impossible for Hodder to go, and he said so; but
he always went when he could.
The unwonted note of appeal (which the telephone seemed somehow to
enhance) in Mr. Parr's voice, never failed to find a response in the
rector's heart, and he would ponder over it as he walked across to Tower
Street to take the electric car for the six-mile trip westward.
This note of appeal he inevitably contrasted with the dry,
matter-of-fact reserve of his greeting at the great house, which loomed
all the greater in the darkness. Unsatisfactory, from many points of
view, as these evenings were, they served to keep whetted Hodder's
curiosity as to the life of this extraordinary man. All of its vaster
significance for the world, its tremendous machinery, was out of his
sight.
Mr. Parr seemed indeed to regard the rest of his fellow-creatures with
the suspicion at which Langmaid had hinted, to look askance at the
amenities people tentatively held out to him. And the private
watchman whom Hodder sometimes met in the darkness, and who invariably
scrutinized pedestrians on Park Street, seemed symbolic, of this
attitude. On rare occasions, when in town, the financier dined out,
limiting himself to a few houses.
Once in a long while he attended what are known as banquets, such as
those given by the Chamber of Commerce, though he generally refused
to speak. Hodder, through Mr. Parr's intervention, had gone to one of
these, ably and breezily presided over by the versatile Mr. Plimpton.
Hodder felt not only curiosity and sympathy, but a vexing sense of the
fruitlessness of his visits to Park Street. Mr. Parr seemed to like to
have him there. And the very fact that the conversation rarely took any
vital turn oddly contributed to the increasing permanence of the lien.
To venture on any topic relating to the affairs of the day were merely
to summon forth the banker's dogmatism, and Hodder's own opinions on
such matters were now in a strange and unsettled state. Mr. Parr liked
best to talk of his treasures, and of the circumstances during his trips
abroad that had led to their acquirement. Once the banker had asked him
about parish house matters.
“I'm told you're working very hard--stirring up McCrae. He needs it.”
“I'm only trying to study the situation,” Hodder replied. “I don't think
you quite do justice to McCrae,” he added; “he's very faithful, and
seems to understand those people thoroughly.”
Mr. Parr smiled.
“And what conclusions have you come to? If you think the system should
be enlarged and reorganized I am willing at any time to go over it with
you, with a view to making an additional contribution. Personally, while
I have sympathy for the unfortunate, I'm not at all sure that much of
the energy and money put into the institutional work of churches isn't
wasted.”
“I haven't come to any conclusions--yet,” said the rector, with a touch
of sadness. “Perhaps I demand too much--expect too much.”
The financier, deep in his leather chair under the shaded light,
the tips of his fingers pressed together, regarded the younger man
thoughtfully, but the smile lingered in his eyes.
“I told you you would meet problems,” he said.
II
Hodder's cosmos might have been compared, indeed, to that set forth in
the Ptolemaic theory of the ancients. Like a cleverly carved Chinese
object of ivory in the banker's collection, it was a system of spheres,
touching, concentric, yet separate. In an outer space swung Mr. Parr;
then came the scarcely less rarefied atmosphere of the Constables and
Atterburys, Fergusons, Plimptons, Langmaids, Prestons, Larrabbees,
Greys, and Gores, and then a smaller sphere which claims but a passing
mention. There were, in the congregation of St. John's, a few people of
moderate means whose houses or apartments the rector visited; people to
whom modern life was increasingly perplexing.
In these ranks were certain maiden ladies and widows who found in church
work an outlet to an otherwise circumscribed existence. Hodder met them
continually in his daily rounds. There were people like the Bradleys,
who rented half a pew and never missed a Sunday; Mr. Bradley, an elderly
man whose children had scattered, was an upper clerk in one of Mr.
Parr's trust companies: there were bachelors and young women, married
or single, who taught in the Sunday school or helped with the night
classes. For the most part, all of these mentioned above belonged to an
element that once had had a comfortable and well-recognized place in the
community, yet had somehow been displaced. Many of them were connected
by blood with more fortunate parishioners, but economic pressure had
scattered them throughout new neighbourhoods and suburbs. Tradition
still bound them to St. John's.
With no fixed orbit, the rector cut at random through all of these
strata, and into a fourth. Not very far into it, for this apparently
went down to limitless depths, the very contemplation of which made him
dizzy. The parish house seemed to float precariously on its surface.
Owing partly to the old-fashioned ideas of Dr. Gilman, and partly to the
conservatism of its vestry, the institutionalism of St. John's was by
no means up to date. No settlement house, with day nurseries, was
maintained in the slums. The parish house, built in the early nineties,
had its gymnasium hall and class and reading rooms, but was not what in
these rapidly moving times would be called modern. Presiding over its
activities, and seconded by a pale, but earnest young man recently
ordained, was Hodder's first assistant, the Reverend Mr. McCrae.
McCrae was another puzzle. He was fifty and gaunt, with a wide flat
forehead and thinning, grey hair, and wore steel spectacles. He had a
numerous family. His speech, of which he was sparing, bore strong traces
of a Caledonian accent. And this, with the addition of the fact that he
was painstaking and methodical in his duties, and that his sermons were
orthodox in the sense that they were extremely non-committal, was all
that Hodder knew about him for many months. He never doubted, however,
the man's sincerity and loyalty.
But McCrae had a peculiar effect on him, and as time went on, his
conviction deepened that his assistant was watching him. The fact that
this tacit criticism did not seem unkindly did not greatly alleviate
the impatience that he felt from time to time. He had formed a higher
estimate of McCrae's abilities than that generally prevailing throughout
the parish; and in spite of, perhaps because of his attitude, was
drawn toward the man. This attitude, as Hodder analyzed it from the
expressions he occasionally surprised on his assistant's face, was one
of tolerance and experience, contemplating, with a faint amusement and
a certain regret, the wasteful expenditure of youthful vitality. Yet
it involved more. McCrae looked as if he knew--knew many things that he
deemed it necessary for the new rector to find out by experience.
But he was a difficult man to talk to.
If the truth be told, the more Hodder became absorbed in these
activities of the parish house, the greater grew his perplexity, the
more acute his feeling of incompleteness; or rather, his sense that the
principle was somehow fundamentally at fault. Out of the waters of
the proletariat they fished, assiduously and benignly, but at random,
strange specimens! brought them, as it were, blinking to the light, and
held them by sheer struggling. And sometimes, when they slipped away,
dived after them. The young curate, Mr. Tompkinson, for the most part
did the diving; or, in scriptural language, the searching after the lost
sheep.
The results accomplished seemed indeed, as Mr. Parr had remarked,
strangely disproportionate to the efforts, for they laboured abundantly.
The Italian mothers appeared stolidly appreciative of the altruism of
Miss Ramsay, who taught the kindergarten, in taking their charges off
their hands for three hours of a morning, and the same might be said of
the Jews and Germans and Russians. The newsboys enjoyed the gymnasium
and reading-rooms: some of them were drafted into the choir, yet
the singing of Te Deums failed somehow to accomplish the miracle of
regeneration. The boys, as a rule, were happier, no doubt; the new
environments not wholly without results. But the rector was an idealist.
He strove hard to become their friend, and that of the men; to win their
confidence, and with a considerable measure of success. On more than one
occasion he threw aside his clerical coat and put on boxing-gloves, and
he gave a series of lectures, with lantern slides, collected during
the six months he had once spent in Europe. The Irish-Americans and the
Germans were the readiest to respond, and these were for the most part
young workingmen and youths by no means destitute. When they were out of
a place, he would often run across them in the reading-room or sitting
among the lockers beside the gymnasium, and they would rise and talk to
him cordially and even familiarly about their affairs. They liked and
trusted him--on a tacit condition. There was a boundary he might not
cross. And the existence of that boundary did not seem to trouble
McCrae.
One night as he stood with his assistant in the hall after the men had
gone, Hodder could contain himself no longer.
“Look here, McCrae,” he broke out, “these men never come to church--or
only a very few of them.”
“No more they do,” McCrae agreed.
“Why don't they?”
“Ye've asked them, perhaps.”
“I've spoken to one or two of them,” admitted the rector.
“And what do they tell you?”
Hodder smiled.
“They don't tell me anything. They dodge.”
“Precisely,” said McCrae.
“We're not making Christians of them,” said Hodder, beginning to walk up
and down. “Why is it?”
“It's a big question.”
“It is a big question. It's the question of all questions, it seems to
me. The function of the Church, in my opinion, is to make Christians.”
“Try to teach them religion,” said McCrae--he almost pronounced it
releegion--“and see what happens. Ye'll have no classes at all. They
only come, the best of them, because ye let them alone that way, and
they get a little decency and society help. It's somewhat to keep them
out of the dance-halls and saloons maybe.”
“It's not enough,” the rector asserted. “You've had a great deal of
experience with them. And I want to know why, in your view, more of them
don't come into the Church.”
“Would ye put Jimmy Flanagan and Otto Bauer and Tony Baldassaro in Mr.
Parr's pew?” McCrae inquired, with a slight flavour of irony that was
not ill-natured. “Or perhaps Mrs. Larrabbee would make room for them?”
“I've considered that, of course,” replied Hodder, thoughtfully, though
he was a little surprised that McCrae should have mentioned it. “You
think their reasons are social, then,--that they feel the gap. I feel it
myself most strongly. And yet none of these men are Socialists. If they
were, they wouldn't come here to the parish house.”
“They're not Socialists,” agreed McCrae.
“But there is room in the back and sides of the church, and there is the
early service and the Sunday night service, when the pews are free. Why
don't they come to these?”
“Religion doesn't appeal to them.”
“Why not?”
“Ye've asked me a riddle. All I know is that the minute ye begin to
preach, off they go and never come back.”
Hodder, with unconscious fixity, looked into his assistant's honest
face. He had an exasperating notion that McCrae might have said more, if
he would.
“Haven't you a theory?”
“Try yourself,” said McCrae. His manner was abrupt, yet oddly enough,
not ungracious.
“Don't think I'm criticizing,” said the rector, quickly.
“I know well ye're not.”
“I've been trying to learn. It seems to me that we are only
accomplishing half our task, and I know that St. John's is not unique
in this respect. I've been talking to Andrews, of Trinity, about their
poor.”
“Does he give you a remedy?”
“No,” Hodder said. “He can't see any more than I can why Christianity
doesn't appeal any longer. The fathers and mothers of these people went
to church, in the old country and in this. Of course he sees, as you and
I do, that society has settled into layers, and that the layers won't
mix. And he seems to agree with me that there is a good deal of energy
exerted for a comparatively small return.”
“I understand that's what Mr. Parr says.”
These references to Mr. Parr disturbed Hodder. He had sometimes
wondered, when he had been compelled to speak about his visits to the
financier, how McCrae regarded them. He was sure that McCrae did regard
them.
“Mr. Parr is willing to be even more generous than he has been,” Hodder
said. “The point is, whether it's wise to enlarge our scope on the
present plan. What do you think?”
“Ye can reach more,” McCrae spoke without enthusiasm.
“What's the use of reaching them, only to touch them? In addition to
being helped materially and socially, and kept away from the dance-halls
and saloons, they ought to be fired by the Gospels, to be remade. They
should be going out into the highways and byways to bring others into
the church.”
The Scotchman's face changed a little. For an instant his eyes lighted
up, whether in sympathy or commiseration or both, Hodder could not tell.
“I'm with ye, Mr. Hodder, if ye'll show me the way. But oughtn't we to
begin at both ends?”
“At both ends?” Hodder repeated.
“Surely. With the people in the pews? Oughtn't we to be firing them,
too?”
“Yes,” said the rector. “You're right.”
He turned away, to feel McCrae's hand on his sleeve.
“Maybe it will come, Mr. Hodder,” he said. “There's no telling when the
light will strike in.”
It was the nearest to optimism he had ever known his assistant to
approach.
“McCrae,” he asked, “have you ever tried to do anything with Dalton
Street?”
“Dalton Street?”
The real McCrae, whom he had seemed to see emerging, retired abruptly,
presenting his former baffling and noncommittal exterior.
“Yes,” Hodder forced himself to go on, and it came to him that he had
repeated virtually the same words to Mr. Parr, “it is at our very doors,
a continual reproach. There is real poverty in those rooming houses, and
I have never seen vice so defiant and shameless.”
“It's a shifty place, that,” McCrae replied. “They're in it one day and
gone the next, a sort of catch-basin for all the rubbish of the city.
I can recall when decent people lived there, and now it's all light
housekeeping and dives and what not.”
“But that doesn't relieve us of responsibility,” Hodder observed.
“I'm not denying it. I think ye'll find there's very little to get hold
of.”
Once more, he had the air of stopping short, of being able to say more.
Hodder refrained from pressing him.
Dalton Street continued to haunt him. And often at nightfall, as he
hurried back to his bright rooms in the parish house from some of the
many errands that absorbed his time, he had a feeling of self-accusation
as he avoided women wearily treading the pavements, or girls and
children plodding homeward through the wet, wintry streets. Some glanced
at him with heavy eyes, others passed sullenly, with bent heads. At such
moments his sense of helplessness was overpowering. He could not follow
them to the dreary dwellings where they lodged.
Eldon Parr had said that poverty was inevitable.
Volume 2.