I
The annual scourge of summer had descended pitilessly upon the city once
more, enervating, depressing, stagnating, and people moved languidly
in the penetrating heat that steamed from the pores of the surrounding
river bottoms.
The rector of St. John's realized that a crisis had come in his life,--a
crisis he had tried to stave off in vain. And yet there was a period
during which he pursued his shrunken duties as though nothing had
happened to him; as a man who has been struck in battle keeps on,
loath to examine, to acknowledge the gravity of his wound; fearing to,
perhaps. Sometimes, as his mind went back to the merciless conflict of
his past, his experience at the law school, it was the unchaining of
that other man he dreaded, the man he believed himself to have
finally subdued. But night and day he was haunted by the sorrowful and
reproachful face of Truth.
Had he the courage, now, to submit the beliefs which had sustained him
all these years to Truth's inexorable inspection? Did he dare to turn
and open those books which she had inspired,--the new philosophies, the
historical criticisms which he had neglected and condemned, which he
had flattered himself he could do without,--and read of the fruit
of Knowledge? Twice, thrice he had hesitated on the steps of the big
library, and turned away with a wildly beating heart.
Day by day the storm increased, until from a cloud on the horizon it
grew into a soul-shaking tempest. Profoundly moved Parr's he had been
on that Sunday afternoon, in Eldon Parr's garden, he had resolutely
resolved to thrust the woman and the incident from his mind, to defer
the consideration of the questions she had raised--grave though they
were--to a calmer period. For now he was unable to separate her, to
eliminate the emotion--he was forced to acknowledge--the thought of her
aroused, from the problems themselves. Who was she? At moments he seemed
to see her shining, accusing, as Truth herself, and again as a Circe
who had drawn him by subtle arts from his wanderings, luring him to his
death; or, at other times, as the mutinous daughter of revolt. But when
he felt, in memory, the warm touch of her hand, the old wildness of his
nature responded, he ceased to speculate or care, and he longed only to
crush and subdue her by the brute power of the man in him. For good or
bad, she had woven her spell.
Here was the old, elemental, twofold contest, carnal and spiritual,
thoroughly revived!...
He recalled, in his musings, the little theological school surrounded
by southern woods and fields, where he had sometime walked under autumn
foliage with the elderly gentleman who had had such an influence on
his life--the dean. Mild-mannered and frail, patient in ordinary
converse,--a lion for the faith. He would have died for it as cheerfully
as any martyr in history. By the marvels of that faith Holder had
beheld, from his pew in the chapel, the little man transformed. He knew
young men, their perplexities and temptations, and he dealt with them
personally, like a father. Holder's doubts were stilled, he had gained
power of his temptations and peace for his soul, and he had gone forth
inspired by the reminder that there was no student of whom the dean
expected better things. Where now were the thousands of which he had
dreamed, and which he was to have brought into the Church?...
Now, he asked himself, was it the dean, or the dean's theology through
which his regeneration had come? Might not the inherent goodness of the
dean be one thing, and his theology quite another? Personality again!
He recalled one of the many things which Alison Parr had branded on his
memory,--“the belief, the authority in which the man is clothed, and
not the man!” The dean's God had remained silent on the subject of
personality. Or, at the best, he had not encouraged it; and there
were--Hodder could not but perceive--certain contradictions in his
character, which were an anomalistic blending of that of the jealous God
of Moses and of the God of Christ. There must be continuity--God could
not change. Therefore the God of infinite love must retain the wrath
which visited sins of the fathers on the children, which demanded
sacrifice, atonement,--an exact propitiation for his anger against
mankind. An innocent life of sorrow and suffering!
And again, “You and your religion are as far apart as the poles!” Had
he, Hodder, outgrown the dean's religion, or had it ever been his own?
Was there, after all, such a thing as religion? Might it not be merely a
figment of the fertile imagination of man? He did not escape the terror
of this thought when he paused to consider his labour of the past two
years and the vanity of its results. And little by little the feeling
grew upon him, such being the state of his mind, that he ought not to
continue, for the present at least, to conduct the services. Should he
resign, or go away for a while to some quiet place before he made such
a momentous decision? There was no one to whom he could turn; no layman,
and no clergyman; not even the old bishop, whom he had more than once
mentally accused of being, too broad and too tolerant! No, he did not
wish a clergyman's solution. The significance of this thought flashed
through him--that the world itself was no longer seeking clergymen's
solutions. He must go off alone, and submit his faith to the impartial
test.
It was in a vigil of the night, when he lay in the hot darkness, unable
to sleep, that he came at length to this resolve. And now that he had
cut the knot he was too just to blame Alison Parr for having pointed
out--with what often had seemed a pitiless cruelty--something of which
he had had a constantly growing perception yet had continually sought to
evade. And he reviewed, as the church bells recorded the silent hours,
how, little by little, his confidence had crumbled before the shocks of
the successive revelations--some of them so slight that they had
passed unnoticed: comparisons, inevitably compelled; Dalton Street; the
confessions of Eleanor Goodrich and Mrs. Constable; Mr. Plimpton and his
views of life--Eldon Parr! Even the slamming of the carriage doors in
Burton Street had had a significance!
Might it not prove that this woman had let fall into the turbid waters
of his soul the drop that was to clear them forever? He would go away.
He would not see her again.
Over the sleeping city, unapprehended, stole the dawn.
He arose, but instead of falling on his knees he went to the window and
lifted his face to the whitening sky.... Slowly out of the obscurity of
the earth's shadow emerged the vague outlines of familiar things
until they stood sharply material, in a silence as of death. A sparrow
twittered, and suddenly the familiar, soot-grimed roofs were bathed in
light, and by a touch made beautiful....
Some hours later the city was wide awake. And Hodder, bathed and
dressed, stood staring down from his study window into the street below,
full now of young men and girls; some with set faces, hurrying, intent,
others romping and laughing as they dodged the trucks and trolley cars;
all on their way to the great shoe factory around the corner, the huge
funnels of which were belching forth smoke into the morning air.
The street emptied, a bell rang, a whistle blew, the hum of distant
machinery began....
II
Later that morning Hodder sat in his study. The shutters were closed,
and the intensity of the tropical glare without was softened and
diffused by the slanting green slats. His eye wandered over the long and
comfortable room which had been his sanctuary in the feverish days of
his ministry, resting affectionately on the hospitable chairs, the wide
fireplace before which he had been wont to settle himself on winter
nights, and even on the green matting--a cooling note in summer. And
there, in the low cases along the walls, were the rows of his precious
books,--his one hobby and extravagance. He had grown to love the room.
Would he ever come back to it?
A step sounded in the hall, a knock, and the well-known gaunt form and
spectacled face of McCrae appeared in the doorway.
“Ye wished to see me?” he asked.
“McCrae,” said the rector, “I am going off for a while.”
His assistant regarded him a moment in silence. Although Hodder had no
intention of explaining his reasons, he had a curious conviction that it
were superfluous to do so, that McCrae had guessed them.
“Why shouldn't ye? There's but a handful left to preach to in this
weather.”
“I wouldn't go, in this sudden way, if it were not imperative,” Hodder
added, trying to speak calmly.
“Why shouldn't ye?” McCrae repeated, almost fiercely.
Hodder smiled in spite of himself.
“There's no reason,” he said, “except the added work put on you without
warning, and in this heat.”
“Ye'll not need to worry,” his assistant assured him, “the heat's
nothing to me.” McCrae hesitated, and then demanded abruptly, “Ye'll not
be visiting?”
The question took Hodder by surprise.
“No,” he answered quickly, and not quite steadily, and hesitated in his
turn, “I shan't be visiting.”
“It's a rest ye need, I've been wanting to say it.” McCrae took a step
forward, and for a moment it seemed as though he were at last about
to break the bonds of his reserve. Perhaps he detected an instinctive
shrinking on the rector's part. At any rate, there was another instant
of silence, in which the two men faced each other across the desk, and
McCrae held out his hand. “Good luck to ye,” he said, as Hodder took
it, “and don't have the pariah on your mind. Stay till ye're rested, and
come back to us.”
He left the room abruptly. Hodder remained motionless, looking after
him, and then, moved apparently by a sudden impulse, started toward the
door,--only to halt and turn before he got to it. Almost he had opened
his lips to call his assistant back. He could not do it--the moment had
come and fled when it might have been possible. Did this man hide, under
his brusqueness and brevity of speech, the fund of wisdom and the wider
sympathy and understanding he suspected? Hodder could have vouched for
it, and yet he had kept his own counsel. And he was struck suddenly by
the significance of the fact, often remarked, that McCrae in his brief
and common-sense and by no means enlivening sermons had never once
referred in any way to doctrine or dogma!
He spent half an hour in collecting and bestowing in two large valises
such articles as his simple needs would demand, and then set out for a
railroad office in the business portion of the city, where he bought his
ticket and berth. Then, after a moment of irresolution on the threshold
of the place, he turned to the right, thrusting his way through the
sluggish crowds on Tower Street until he came to the large bookstore
where he had been want to spend, from time to time, some of his leisure
moments. A clerk recognized him, and was about to lead the way to the
rear, where the precious editions were kept, when Hodder stopped him.
In casting about for a beginning in his venture over unknown seas, there
had naturally come into his mind three or four works which were anathema
to the orthodox; one of which, in seven volumes, went back to his
seminary days, and had been the subject of a ringing, denunciatory
sermon by the dean himself. Three of them were by Germans of established
reputations, another by a professor of the University of Paris. The
habit of years is strong.
And though he knew that many clergymen read these books, Hodder found it
impossible to overcome a nervous sense of adventure,--nay (knowing his
resolution), of apostasy, almost of clandestine guilt when he mentioned
them. And it seemed to him that the face of the clerk betrayed surprise.
One of the works was not in stock; he would send the others that
afternoon. Mr. Hodder would take them? They made a formidable parcel,
but a little handle was supplied and the rector hurried out, swinging
himself on a Tower Street car.
It must not be thought that the whole of what is called modern criticism
was new to Hodder. This would indeed be too much of a reflection on
the open-mindedness of the seminary from which he had graduated. But
he found himself, now, pondering a little cynically on that
“open-mindedness”; on that concession--if it had been a concession--to
the methods of science. There had been in truth a course of lectures on
this subject; but he saw now, very clearly, what a concerted effort had
been put forward in the rest of the teaching to minimize and discredit
it. Even the professor who gave the lectures had had the air of
deploring them. Here it is, but on the whole one would better let it
alone,--such was the inference. And he had let it alone, through all
these years.
In the seminary, too, volumes by semi-learned clergymen had been thrust
into his hands, efforts which Hodder recalled now, in spite of his
mental state, with a smile. These invariably championed the doctrine
of the virgin birth as the pillar on which the Incarnation depended. A
favourite argument declared that although the Gospel texts in regard
to it might be proven untrustworthy, the miraculous birth must have
happened anyway! And one of these clerical authors whom he had more
recently read, actually had had the audacity to turn the weapons of
the archenemy, science, back upon itself. The virgin birth was an
established fact in nature, and had its place in the social economy of
the bee. And did not parthenogenesis occur in the silk moth?
In brief, the conclusion impressed upon him by his seminary instruction
was this: that historical criticism had corrected some ideas and put
some things in their right place. What these things were remained
sufficiently vague. But whenever it attacked a cherished dogma it was,
on general principles, wrong.
Once again in his cool study, he cut the cord with a trembling hand, and
while he was eating the lunch his housekeeper had prepared, dipped into
one of the larger volumes. As he read again the critical disproofs he
felt an acute, almost physical pain, as though a vital part of him were
being cut away, as his mind dwelt upon those beautiful legends to which
he had so often turned, and which had seemed the very fountain of his
faith. Legends!....
He closed the book. The clock on the mantel struck three; his train was
to leave at five. He rose and went down into the silent church he had
grown to love, seating himself in one of the carved stalls of the choir,
his eye lingering in turn on each beautiful object: on the glowing
landscape in the window in memory of Eliza Parr, portraying the
delectable country, with the bewildered yet enraptured faces of the
pilgrims in the foreground; on the graceful, shining lectern, the
aspiring arches, the carved marble altar behind the rail, and above it
the painting of the Christ on the cross.
The hours of greatest suffering are the empty hours. 'Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani?' The hours when the mysterious sustaining and driving force
is withdrawn, and a lassitude and despair comes over us like that of
a deserted child: the hours when we feel we have reached the limit of
service, when our brief span of usefulness is done. Had God brought him,
John Hodder, to the height of the powers of his manhood only to abandon
him, to cast him adrift on the face of the waters--led him to this great
parish, with all its opportunities, only that he might fail and flee?
He sat staring at the face of the Man on the cross. Did he, in his
overwrought state, imagine there an expression he had never before
remarked, or had the unknown artist of the seventies actually risen
above the mediocrity of the figure in his portrayal of the features of
the Christ? The rector started, and stared again. There was no weakness
in the face, no meekness, no suggestion of the conception of the
sacrificed Lamb, no hint of a beatific vision of opening heavens--and
yet no accusation, no despair. A knowing--that were nearer--a knowing of
all things through the experiencing of all things, the suffering of all
things. For suffering without revelation were vain, indeed! A perfected
wisdom that blended inevitably with a transcendent love. Love and wisdom
were one, then? To reach comprehension through conquering experience was
to achieve the love that could exclaim, “they know not what they do!”
Human or divine? Man or God? Hodder found himself inwardly repeating the
words, the controversy which had raged for nineteen hundred years, and
not yet was stilled. Perfection is divine. Human! Hodder repeated the
word, as one groping on the threshold of a great discovery....
III
He was listening--he had for a long time been listening to a sound which
had seemed only the natural accompaniment of the drama taking place in
his soul, as though some inspired organist were expressing in exquisite
music the undercurrent of his agony. Only gradually did he become aware
that it arose from the nave of the church, and, turning, his eyes fell
upon the bowed head and shoulders of a woman kneeling in one of the
pews. She was sobbing.
His movement, he recalled afterward, did not come of a conscious
volition, as he rose and descended the chancel steps and walked toward
her; he stood for what seemed a long time on the white marble of the
aisle looking down on her, his heart wrung by the violence of her grief,
which at moments swept through her like a tempest. She seemed still
young, but poverty had marked her with unmistakable signs. The white,
blue-veined hands that clung to the railing of the pew were thin; and
the shirtwaist, though clean, was cheap and frayed. At last she rose
from her knees and raised a tear-stained face to his, staring at him in
a dumb bewilderment.
“Can I do anything for you?” he said gently, “I am the rector here.” She
did not answer, but continued to stare uncomprehendingly. He sat down
beside her in the pew.
“You are in trouble,” he said. “Will you let me try to help you?” A sob
shook her--the beginning of a new paroxysm. He waited patiently until it
was over. Suddenly she got rather wildly and unsteadily to her feet.
“I must go!” she cried. “Oh, God, what would I do if--if he wasn't
there?”
Hodder rose too. She had thrust herself past him into the aisle, but if
he had not taken her arm she would have fallen. Thus they went together
to the door of the church, and out into the white, burning sunlight. In
spite of her weakness she seemed actually to be leading him, impelled
by a strange force and fled down the steps of the porch to the sidewalk.
And there she paused, seeing him still beside her. Fortunately he had
his hat in his hand.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To take you home,” he replied firmly, “you ought not to go alone.”
A look of something like terror came into her eyes.
“Oh, no!” she protested, with a vehemence that surprised him. “I am
strong. Oh, thank you, sir,--but I can go alone. It's Dicky--my little
boy. I've never left him so long. I had gone for the medicine and I saw
the church. I used to go to church, sir, before we had our troubles--and
I just went in. It suddenly came over me that God might help me--the
doctor can do nothing.”
“I will go with you,” he said.
She ceased to resist, as one submitting to the fatality of a superior
will.
The pavements that afternoon, as Hodder and the forlorn woman left the
cool porticoes of St. John's, were like the floor of a stone oven, and
the work horses wore little bonnets over their heads. Keeping to the
shady side, the rector and his companion crossed Tower Street with
its trolley cars and its awninged stores, and came to that depressing
district which had reproached him since the first Sunday of his
ministry when he had traversed it with Eldon Parr. They passed the once
prosperous houses, the corner saloons pandering to two vices, decked
with the flamboyant signs of the breweries. The trees were dying along
the asphalt and in the yards, the iron fences broken here and there, the
copings stained with rust and soot. Hodder's thoughts might have been
likened to the heated air that simmered above the bricks.
They were in Dalton Street! She seemed to have forgotten his presence,
her pace quickened as she turned into a gate and flew up a flight of
dirty stone steps, broken and sagging. Hodder took in, subconsciously,
that the house was a dingy grey, of three stories and a Mansard roof,
with a bay window on the yard side, and a fly-blown sign, “Rooms to
Rent” hanging in one window. Across the street, on a lot that had once
held a similar dignified residence, was the yellow brick building of
the “Albert Hotel,” and next door, on the east, a remodelled house of
“apartments” with speaking tubes in the doorway.
The woman led him up another flight of steps to the open door of
the house, through a hallway covered with a ragged carpet, where a
dilapidated walnut hat-rack stood, up the stairs, threading a dark
passage that led into a low-ceiled, stifling room at the very back.
A stout, slatternly person in a wrapper rose as they entered, but the
mother cast herself down beside the lounge where the child was. Hodder
had a moment of fear that she was indeed too late, so still the boy lay,
so pathetically wan was the little face and wasted the form under the
cotton nightgown. The mother passed her hand across his forehead.
“Dicky!” she whispered fearfully, “Dicky!”
He opened his eyes and smiled at her; feebly.
The stout woman, who had been looking on with that intensity of
sympathy of which the poor are capable, began waving gently the
palm-leaf fan. She was German.
“He is so good, is Dicky. He smile at me when I fan him--once, twice. He
complains not at all.”
The mother took the fan from her, hand.
“Thank you for staying with him, Mrs. Breitmann. I was gone longer than
I expected.” The fact that the child still lived, that she was again in
his presence, the absorbing act of caring for him seemed to have calmed
her.
“It is nothing, what I do,” answered Mrs. Breitmann, and turned away
reluctantly, the tears running on her cheeks. “When you go again, I come
always, Mrs. Garvin. Ach!”
Her exclamation was caused by the sight of the tall figure and black
coat of the rector, and as she left the room, Mrs. Garvin turned. And he
noticed in her eyes the same expression of dread they had held when she
had protested against his coming.
“Please don't think that I'm not thankful--” she faltered.
“I am not offering you charity,” he said. “Can you not take from other
human beings what you have accepted from this woman who has just left?”
“Oh, sir, it isn't that!” she cried, with a look of trust, of appeal
that was new, “I would do anything--I will do anything. But my
husband--he is so bitter against the church, against ministers! If he
came home and found you here--”
“I know--many people feel that way,” he assented, “too many. But you
cannot let a prejudice stand in the way of saving the boy's life, Mrs.
Garvin.”
“It is more than that. If you knew, sir--”
“Whatever it is,” he interrupted, a little sternly, “it must not
interfere. I will talk to your husband.”
She was silent, gazing at him now questioningly, yet with the dawning
hope of one whose strength is all but gone, and who has found at last a
stronger to lean upon.
The rector took the fan from her arrested hand and began to ply it.
“Listen, Mrs. Garvin. If you had come to the church half an hour later,
I should have been leaving the city for a place far distant.”
“You were going away? You stayed on my account?”
“I much prefer to stay, if I can be of any use, and I think I can. I am
sure I can. What is the matter with the child?”
“I don't know, sir--he just lies there listless and gets thinner and
thinner and weaker and weaker. Sometimes he feels sick, but not often.
The doctor don't seem to know.”
“What doctor have you?”
“His name is Welling. He's around the corner.”
“Exactly,” said the rector. “This is a case for Dr. Jarvis, who is the
best child specialist in the city. He is a friend of mine, and I intend
to send for him at once. And the boy must go to a hospital--”
“Oh, I couldn't, sir.”
He had a poignant realization of the agony behind the cry. She breathed
quickly through her parted lips, and from the yearning in her tired
eyes--as she gazed at the poor little form--he averted his glance.
“Now, Mrs. Garvin, you must be sensible,” he said. “This is no place for
a sick child. And it is such a nice little hospital, the one I have
in mind, and so many children get well and strong there,” he added,
cheerfully.
“He wouldn't hear of it.” Hodder comprehended that she was referring to
her husband. She added inconsequently: “If I let him go, and he never
came back! Oh, I couldn't do it--I couldn't.”
He saw that it was the part of wisdom not to press her, to give her time
to become accustomed to the idea. Come back--to what? His eye wandered
about the room, that bespoke the last shifts of poverty, for he knew
that none but the desperate were driven to these Dalton Street houses,
once the dwellings of the well-to-do, and all the more pitiful for the
contrast. The heated air reeked with the smell of stale cooking. There
was a gas stove at one side, a linoleum-covered table in the centre,
littered with bottles, plates, and pitchers, a bed and chairs which had
known better days, new obviously bruised and battered by many enforced
movings. In one corner was huddled a little group of toys.
He was suddenly and guiltily aware that the woman had followed his
glance.
“We had them in Alder Street,” she said. “We might have been there yet,
if we hadn't been foolish. It's a pretty street, sir--perhaps you know
it--you take the Fanshawe Avenue cars to Sherman Heights. The air is
like the country there, and all the houses are new, and Dicky had a yard
to play in, and he used to be so healthy and happy in it... We were
rich then,--not what you'd call rich,” she added apologetically, “but we
owned a little home with six rooms, and my husband had a good place
as bookkeeper in a grocery house, and every year for ten years we put
something by, and the boy came. We never knew how well off we were,
until it was taken away from us, I guess. And then Richard--he's my
husband--put his savings into a company--he thought it was so safe, and
we were to get eight per cent--and the company failed, and he fell sick
and lost his place, and we had to sell the house, and since he got well
again he's been going around trying for something else. Oh, he's tried
so hard,--every day, and all day long. You wouldn't believe it, sir. And
he's so proud. He got a job as porter, but he wasn't able to hold it--he
wasn't strong enough. That was in April. It almost broke my heart to see
him getting shabby--he used to look so tidy. And folks don't want you
when you're shabby.”...
There sprang to Hodder's mind a sentence in a book he had recently read:
“Our slums became filled with sick who need never have been sick; with
derelicts who need never have been abandoned.”
Suddenly, out of the suffocating stillness of the afternoon a woman's
voice was heard singing a concert-hall air, accompanied by a piano
played with vigour and abandon. And Hodder, following the sound, looked
out across the grimy yard--to a window in the apartment house opposite.
“There's that girl again,” said the mother, lifting her head. “She does
sing nice, and play, poor thing! There was a time when I wouldn't have
wanted to listen. But Dicky liked it so.... It's the very tune he loved.
He don't seem to hear it now. He don't even ask for Mr. Bentley any
more.”
“Mr. Bentley?” the rector repeated. The name was somehow familiar to
him.
The piano and the song ceased abruptly, with a bang.
“He lives up the street here a way--the kindest old gentleman you ever
saw. He always has candy in his pockets for the children, and it's a
sight to see them follow him up and down the sidewalk. He takes them to
the Park in the cars on Saturday afternoons. That was all Dicky could
think about at first--would he be well enough to go with Mr. Bentley by
Saturday? And he was forever asking me to tell Mr. Bentley he was sick.
I saw the old gentleman on the street to-day, and I almost went up to
him. But I hadn't the courage.”
The child moaned, stirred, and opened his eyes, gazing at them
feverishly, yet without seeming comprehension. She bent over him,
calling his name.... Hodder thrust the fan into her hand, and rose.
“I am going to telephone Dr. Jarvis,” he said, “and then I shall come
back, in order to be here when he arrives.”
She looked up at him.
“Oh, thank you, sir,--I guess it's for the best--”
Her voice died away, and the rector, seeking for the cause, saw that
a man had entered the room. He walked up to the couch and stood for
a moment staring moodily at the child, while the woman watched him,
transfixed.
“Richard!” she said.
He paid no attention to her. She turned to Hodder. “This is my husband,
sir.... Richard, I went into the church--just for a moment--I--I
couldn't help it, and this gentleman--the minister--came home with me.
He wanted to--he thought I was sick. And now he's going out to get the
best doctor in the city for Dicky.”
The man turned suddenly and confronted the rector.
“Why don't you let him die, you and your church people?” he asked.
“You've done your worst to kill him.”
The woman put her hand fearfully, imploringly on the man's arm.
“Richard!” she whispered.
But as Hodder glanced from the derelict beside him a wave of
comprehension passed through him that swept him clean of indignation, of
resentment. And this man had been prosperous and happy!
“There is but one way to save the boy's life, Mr. Garvin,” he said, “and
that is to put him in charge of Dr. Jarvis.”
The man made no reply, but went over to the window, staring out into the
yard. There was something vaguely ominous in his attitude. The rector
watched him a moment, and then turned to the mother.
“You must not lose hope,” he told her.
She looked at him with terror-stricken eyes that sought to be grateful.
He had picked up his hat from a corner of the littered table, and
started to leave, when Garvin, by a sudden movement, planted himself
in the doorway. Whether he had been drinking, or whether he were merely
crazed by misfortune and the hopeless search in the heat for employment,
and by lack of proper nourishment, Hodder could not say. There was a
light in his eyes like that in a wounded animal's; and although he was
thin and slight, he had the concentrated power of desperation.
“Say, what church do you come from?” he demanded.
“From St. John's,” said the rector.
“Eldon Parr's church?”
Hodder started, in spite of himself, at the name.
“Mr. Parr is a member of the congregation.”
“Come off! He owns it and runs it, the same as he does everything else
in this town. Maybe you don't think I read the Sunday papers. Say, I was
respectable once, and had a good place. You wouldn't believe it, would
you?”
Hodder hesitated. There was obviously no way to pass the man except by
using physical force.
“If you have anything to say to me, Mr. Garvin, I shall be glad to
talk to you later. You must not stop me now,” he said with a touch of
severity.
“You'll listen to me, right here and now,” cried Garvin. “If you think I
am going to let Eldon Parr's minister, or any one else belonging to him,
save that boy's life, you've got another guess comin'. That's all. I'd
rather have him die--d'ye hear? I'd rather have him die.”
The woman behind them whimpered.... The name was ringing like a knell in
Hodder's head--Eldon Parr! Coming, as it had, like a curse from the
lips of this wretched, half-demented creature, it filled his soul with
dismay. And the accusation had in it the profound ring of truth. He was
Eldon Parr's minister, and it was Eldon Parr who stood between him and
his opportunity.
“Why do you speak of Mr. Parr?” he asked, though the question cost him a
supreme effort.
“Why do I speak of him? My God, because he ruined me. If it hadn't been
for him, damn him, I'd have a home, and health and happiness to-day, and
the boy would be well and strong instead of lying there with the life
all but gone out of him. Eldon Parr did for me, and now he's murdered my
son--that's why I mention him.”
In the sudden intensity of his feeling, Hodder seized Garvin by the
arms--arms that were little more than skin and bone. The man might be
crazed, he might be drunk: that he believed what he was saying there
could be no question. He began to struggle violently, but the rector was
strong.
“Be still,” he commanded. And suddenly, overcome less by the physical
power than by the aspect of the clergyman, an expression of bewilderment
came into his eyes, and he was quiet. Hodder dropped his arms. “I do not
intend to go until I hear what you have to say. It would be useless, at
any rate, since your child's life is at stake. Tell me how Mr. Parr has
ruined you.”
Garvin stared at him, half in suspicion, half in amazement.
“I guess you never knew of his ruining anybody, did you?” he demanded
sullenly. “Well, I'll tell you all right, and you can go and tell him.
He won't care much--he's used to it by this time, and he gets square
with God by his churches and charities. Did you ever hear of a stock
called Consolidated Tractions?”
Consolidated Tractions! In contrast to the sordid misery and degradation
of this last refuge of the desperate Hodder saw the lofty, panelled
smoking room at Francis Ferguson's, and was listening again to Wallis
Plimpton's cynical amusement as to how he and Everett Constable and
Eldon Parr himself had “gat out” before the crash; “got out” with all
the money of the wretch who now stood before him! His parishioners! his
Christians! Oh God!
The man was speaking in his shrill voice.
“Well, I was a Traction sucker, all right, and I guess you wouldn't have
to walk more than two blocks to find another in this neighbourhood. You
think Eldon Parr's a big, noble man, don't you? You're proud to run his
church, ain't you? You wouldn't believe there was a time when I thought
he was a big man, when I was kind of proud to live in the same city with
him. She'll tell you how I used to come home from the store and talk
about him after supper, and hope that the kid there would grow up into
a financier like Eldon Parr. The boys at the store talked about him:
he sort of laid hold on our imaginations with the library he gave, and
Elmwood Park, and the picture of the big organ in your church in
the newspapers--and sometimes, Mary and me and the boy, in the baby
carriage, on Sunday afternoons we used to walk around by his house, just
to look at it. You couldn't have got me to believe that Eldon Parr would
put his name to anything that wasn't straight.
“Then Consolidated Tractions came along, with Parr's, name behind it.
Everybody was talking about it, and how it was payin' eight per cent.
from the start, and extra dividends and all, and what a marvel of
finance it was. Before the kid came, as soon as I married her, we began
to save up for him. We didn't go to the theatres or nothing. Well, I put
it all, five thousand dollars, into Consolidated. She'll tell you how we
sat up half the night after we got the first dividend talking about
how we'd send the kid to college, and after we went to bed we
couldn't sleep. It wasn't more than a year after that we began to hear
things--and we couldn't sleep for sure, and the dividends stopped and
the stock tumbled. Even then I wouldn't believe it of him, that he'd
take poor people's money that way when he had more than he knew what to
do with. I made up my mind if I went down to see him and told him about
it, he'd make it right. I asked the boss for an hour off, and headed for
the Parr building--I've been there as much as fifty times since--but he
don't bother with small fry. The clerks laugh when they see me comin'...
I got sick worryin', and when I was strong enough to be around they'd
filled my job at the grocery, and it wasn't long before we had to move
out of our little home in Alder Street. We've been movin' ever since,”
he cried, and tears of weakness were in his eyes, “until we've come to
this, and we'll have to get out of here in another week. God knows where
we'll go then.”
Hodder shuddered.
“Then I found out how he done it--from a lawyer. The lawyer laughed at
me, too. Say, do you wonder I ain't got much use for your church people?
Parr got a corporation lawyer named Langmaid--he's another one of your
millionnaire crooks--to fix it up and get around the law and keep him
out of jail. And then they had to settle with Tim Beatty for something
like three hundred thousand. You know who Beatty is--he owns this
city--his saloon's around here on Elm Street. All the crooks had to
be squared. Say,” he demanded aggressively, “are Parr and Langmaid any
better than Beatty, or any of the hold-up men Beatty covers? There's a
street-walker over there in those flats that's got a million times more
chance to get to heaven--if there is any--than those financiers, as they
call 'emselves--I ain't much on high finance, but I've got some respect
for a second story man now--he takes some risks! I'll tell you what they
did, they bought up the short car lines that didn't pay and sold 'em
to themselves for fifty times as much as they were worth; and they got
controlling interests in the big lines and leased 'em to themselves with
dividends guaranteed as high as eighteen per cent. They capitalized the
Consolidated for more millions than a little man like me can think of,
and we handed 'em our money because we thought they were honest. We
thought the men who listed the stock on the Exchange were honest. And
when the crash came, they'd got away with the swag, like any common
housebreakers. There were dummy directors, and a dummy president. Eldon
Parr didn't have a share--sold out everything when she went over two
hundred, but you bet he kept his stock in the leased lines, which
guarantee more than they earn. He cleaned up five million, they say....
My money--the money that might give that boy fresh air, and good doctors
....Say, you believe in hell, don't you? You tell Eldon Parr to keep his
charity,--he can't send any of it in here. And you'd better go back to
that church of his and pray to keep his soul out of hell.”...
His voice, which had risen even to a higher pitch, fell silent. And all
at once, without warning, Garvin sank, or rather tumbled upon the bed,
sobbing in a way that was terrible to see. The wife stole across the
room, sat down beside him, and laid her hand on his shoulder....
In spite of the intensity of his own anguish, Hodder was conscious of
a curious detachment; and for months afterward particular smells, the
sight of a gasoline stove, a certain popular tune gave him a sharp
twinge of pain. The acid distilling in his soul etched the scene, the
sounds, the odours forever in his memory: a stale hot wind from the
alley rattled the shutter-slats, and blew the door to; the child
stirred; and above the strident, irregular weeping rose main, in
ironical contrast, the piano and the voice across the yard. In that
glimpse he had into the heart of life's terrible mystery he momentarily
understood many things: he knew that behind the abandon of the woman's
song was the same terror which reigned in the room in which he stood....
There were voices in the passageway without, a woman saying in a German
accent,--“It is here, sir.”
There was a knock at the door....