I
The Bishop's House was a comfortable, double dwelling of a smooth,
bright red brick and large, plate-glass windows, situated in a plot at
the western end of Waverley Place. It had been bought by the Diocese
in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in
American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when
as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had
pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only
to darken the front door, made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically
curved.
It was precisely ten o'clock in the morning when Hodder rang the bell
and was shown into the ample study which he had entered on other
and less vital occasions. He found difficulty in realizing that this
pleasant room, lined with well-worn books and overlooking a back lawn
where the clothes of the episcopal family hung in the yellow autumn sun,
was to be his judgment seat, whence he might be committed to trial for
heresy.
And this was the twentieth century! The full force of the preposterous
fact smote him, and a consciousness of the distance he himself had
travelled since the comparatively recent days of his own orthodoxy. And
suddenly he was full again of a resentful impatience, not only that he
should be called away from his labours, his cares, the strangers who
were craving his help, to answer charges of such an absurd triviality,
but that the performance of the great task to which he had set his hand,
with God's help, should depend upon it. Would his enemies be permitted
to drive him out thus easily?
The old bishop came in, walking by the aid of a cane. He smiled at
Hodder, who greeted him respectfully, and bidding him sit down, took
a chair himself behind his writing table, from whence he gazed awhile
earnestly and contemplatively at the rugged features and strong
shoulders of the rector of St. John's. The effect of the look was that
of a visual effort to harmonize the man with the deed he had done,
the stir he had created in the city and the diocese; to readjust
impressions.
A hint of humour crept into the bishop's blue eyes, which were watery,
yet strong, with heavy creases in the corners. He indicated by a little
gesture three bundles of envelopes, bound by rubber bands, on the corner
of his blotter.
“Hodder,” he said, “see what a lot of trouble you have made for me in my
old age! All those are about you.”
The rector's expression could not have been deemed stern, but it had met
the bishop's look unflinchingly. Now it relaxed into a responding smile,
which was not without seriousness.
“I am sorry, sir,” Hodder answered, “to have caused you any worry--or
inconvenience.”
“Perhaps,” said the bishop, “I have had too much smooth sailing for a
servant of Christ. Indeed, I have come to that conclusion.”
Hodder did not reply. He was moved, even more by the bishop's manner
and voice than his words. And the opening to their conversation was
unexpected. The old man put on his spectacles, and drew from the top of
one of the bundles a letter.
“This is from one of your vestrymen, Mr. Gordon Atterbury,” he said, and
proceeded to read it, slowly. When he had finished he laid it down.
“Is that, according to your recollection, Mr. Hodder, a fairly accurate
summary of the sermon you gave when you resumed the pulpit at the end of
the summer?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the rector, “it is surprisingly accurate, with the
exception of two or three inferences which I shall explain at the proper
moment.”
“Mr. Atterbury is to be congratulated on his memory,” the bishop
observed a little dryly. “And he has saved me the trouble of reading
more. Now what are the inferences to which you object?”
Hodder stated them. “The most serious one,” he added, “is that which he
draws from my attitude on the virgin birth. Mr. Atterbury insists, like
others who cling to that dogma, that I have become what he vaguely calls
an Unitarian. He seems incapable of grasping my meaning, that the only
true God the age knows, the world has ever known, is the God in Christ,
is the Spirit in Christ, and is there not by any material proof, but
because we recognize it spiritually. And that doctrine and dogma,
ancient speculations as to how, definitely, that spirit came to be in
Christ, are fruitless and mischievous to-day. Mr. Atterbury and others
seem actually to resent my identification of our Lord's Spirit with the
social conscience as well as the individual conscience of our time.”
The bishop nodded.
“Hodder,” he demanded abruptly, leaning forward over his desk, “how did
this thing happen?”
“You mean, sir--”
There was, in the bishop's voice, a note almost pathetic. “Oh, I do not
mean to ask you anything you may deem too personal. And God forbid, as I
look at you, as I have known you, that I should doubt your sincerity. I
am not your inquisitor, but your bishop and your friend, and I am asking
for your confidence. Six months ago you were, apparently, one of the
most orthodox rectors in the diocese. I recognize that you are not an
impulsive, sensational man, and I am all the more anxious to learn from
your own lips something of the influences, of the processes which have
changed you, which have been strong enough to impel you to risk the
position you have achieved.”
By this unlooked-for appeal Hodder was not only disarmed, but smitten
with self-reproach at the thought of his former misjudgment and
underestimation of the man in whose presence he sat. And it came over
him, not only the extent to which, formerly, he had regarded the bishop
as too tolerant and easygoing, but the fact that he had arrived here
today prepared to find in his superior anything but the attitude he was
showing. Considering the bishop's age, Hodder had been ready for a lack
of understanding of the step he had taken, even for querulous reproaches
and rebuke.
He had, therefore, to pull himself together, to adjust himself to the
unexpected greatness of soul with which he was being received before he
began to sketch the misgivings he had felt from the early days of his
rectorship of St. John's; the helplessness and failure which by degrees
had come over him. He related how it had become apparent to him that
by far the greater part of his rich and fashionable congregation
were Christians only in name, who kept their religion in a small and
impervious compartment where it did not interfere with their lives. He
pictured the yearning and perplexity of those who had come to him for
help, who could not accept the old explanations, and had gone away
empty; and he had not been able to make Christians of the poor who
attended the parish house. Finally, trusting in the bishop's discretion,
he spoke of the revelations he had unearthed in Dalton Street, and how
these had completely destroyed his confidence in the Christianity he had
preached, and how he had put his old faith to the test of unprejudiced
modern criticism, philosophy, and science...
The bishop listened intently, his head bent, his eyes on he rector.
“And you have come out--convinced?” he asked tremulously. “Yes, yes, I
see you have. It is enough.”
He relapsed into thought, his wrinkled hand lying idly on the table.
“I need not tell you, my friend,” he resumed at length, “that a great
deal of pressure has been brought to bear upon me in this matter, more
than I have ever before experienced. You have mortally offended, among
others, the most powerful layman in the diocese, Mr. Parr, who complains
that you have presumed to take him to task concerning his private
affairs.”
“I told him,” answered Holder, “that so long as he continued to live the
life he leads, I could not accept his contributions to St. John's.”
“I am an old man,” said the bishop, “and whatever usefulness I have had
is almost finished. But if I were young to-day, I should pray God for
the courage and insight you have shown, and I am thankful to have lived
long enough to have known you. It has, at least, been given one to
realize that times have changed, that we are on the verge of a mighty
future. I will be frank to say that ten years ago, if this had happened,
I should have recommended you for trial. Now I can only wish you
Godspeed. I, too, can see the light, my friend. I can see, I think,
though dimly, the beginnings of a blending of all sects, of all
religions in the increasing vision of the truth revealed in Jesus
Christ, stripped, as you say, of dogma, of fruitless attempts at
rational explanation. In Japan and China, in India and Persia, as well
as in Christian countries, it is coming, coming by some working of the
Spirit the mystery of which is beyond us. And nations and men who even
yet know nothing of the Gospels are showing a willingness to adopt what
is Christ's, and the God of Christ.”
Holder was silent, from sheer inability to speak.
“If you had needed an advocate with me,” the bishop continued, “you
could not have had one to whose counsel I would more willingly have
listened, than that of Horace Bentley. He wrote asking to come and see
me, but I went to him in Dalton Street the day I returned. And it gives
me satisfaction, Mr. Holder, to confess to you freely that he has taught
me, by his life, more of true Christianity than I have learned in all my
experience elsewhere.”
“I had thought,” exclaimed the rector, wonderingly, “that I owed him
more than any other man.”
“There are many who think that--hundreds, I should say,” the bishop
replied.... “Eldon Parr ruined him, drove him from the church.... It
is strange how, outside of the church, his influence has silently and
continuously grown until it has borne fruit in--this. Even now,” he
added after a pause, “the cautiousness, the dread of change which comes
with old age might, I think, lead me to be afraid of it if I--didn't
perceive behind it the spirit of Horace Bentley.”
It struck Holder, suddenly, what an unconscious but real source of
confidence this thought had likewise been to him. He spoke of it.
“It is not that I wouldn't trust you,” the bishop went on. “I have
watched you, I have talked to Asa Waring, I have read the newspapers. In
spite of it all, you have kept your head, you have not compromised the
dignity of the Church. But oh, my friend, I beg you to bear in mind
that you are launched upon deep waters, that you have raised up many
enemies--enemies of Christ--who seek to destroy you. You are still
young. And the uncompromising experiment to which you are pledged,
of freeing your church, of placing her in the position of power and
influence in the community which is rightfully hers, is as yet untried.
And no stone will be left unturned to discourage and overcome you. You
have faith,--you have made me feel it as you sat here,--a faith which
will save you from bitterness in personal defeat. You may not reap the
victory, or even see it in your lifetime. But of this I am sure, that
you will be able to say, with Paul, 'I have planted, Apollos watered,
but God gave the increase.' Whatever happens, you may count upon my
confidence and support. I can only wish that I were younger, that my arm
were stronger, and that I had always perceived the truth as clearly as I
see it now.”
Holder had risen involuntarily while these words were being spoken. They
were indeed a benediction, and the intensity of his feeling warned him
of the inadequacy of any reply. They were pronounced in sorrow, yet
in hope, and they brought home to him, sharply, the nobility of the
bishop's own sacrifice.
“And you, sir?” he asked.
“Ah,” answered the bishop, “with this I shall have had my life. I am
content....”
“You will come to me again, Hodder? some other day,” he said, after
an interval, “that we may talk over the new problems. They are
constructive, creative, and I am anxious to hear how you propose to
meet them. For one thing, to find a new basis for the support of such a
parish. I understand they have deprived you of your salary.”
“I have enough to live on, for a year or so,” replied the rector,
quickly. “Perhaps more.”
“I'm afraid,” said the bishop, with a smile in his old eyes, “that you
will need it, my friend. But who can say? You have strength, you have
confidence, and God is with you.”
II
Life, as Hodder now grasped it, was a rapidly whirling wheel which gave
him no chance to catch up with the impressions and experiences through
which it was dragging him. Here, for instance, were two far-reaching
and momentous events, one crowding upon the other, and not an hour for
reflection, realization, or adjustment! He had, indeed, after his return
from the bishop's, snatched a few minutes to write Alison the unexpected
result of that interview. But even as he wrote and rang for a messenger
to carry the note to Park Street, he was conscious of an effort to seize
upon and hold the fact that the woman he had so intensely desired was
now his helpmate; and had, of her own freewill, united herself with him.
A strong sense of the dignity of their relationship alone prevented his
calling her on the telephone--as it doubtless had prevented her. While
she remained in her father's house, he could not...
In the little room next to the office several persons were waiting to
see him. But as he went downstairs he halted on the landing, his hand
going to his forehead, a reflex movement significant of a final attempt
to achieve the hitherto unattainable feat of imagining her as his wife.
If he might only speak to her again--now, this morning! And yet he
knew that he needed no confirmation. The reality was there, in the
background; and though refusing to come forward to be touched, it had
already grafted itself as an actual and vital part of his being, never
to be eliminated.
Characteristically perfecting his own ideal, she had come to him in the
hour when his horizon had been most obscure. And he experienced now an
exultation, though solemn and sacred, that her faith had so far been
rewarded in the tidings he now confided to the messenger. He was not, as
yet, to be driven out from the task, to be deprived of the talent, the
opportunity intrusted to him by Lord--the emancipation of the parish of
St. John's.
The first to greet him, when he entered his office, was one who, unknown
to himself, had been fighting the battle of the God in Christ, and
who now, thanks to John Hodder, had identified the Spirit as the
transforming force. Bedloe Hubbell had come to offer his services to the
Church. The tender was unqualified.
“I should even be willing, Mr. Hodder,” he said with a smile, “to
venture occasionally into a pulpit. You have not only changed my
conception of religion, but you have made it for me something which I
can now speak about naturally.”
Hodder was struck by the suggestion.
“Ah, we shall need the laymen in the pulpits, Mr. Hubbell,” he said
quickly. “A great spiritual movement must be primarily a lay movement.
And I promise you you shall not lack for opportunity.”
III
At nine o'clock that evening, when a reprieve came, Hodder went out.
Anxiety on the score of Kate Marcy, as well as a desire to see Mr.
Bentley and tell him of the conversation with the bishop, directed his
steps toward Dalton Street. And Hodder had, indeed, an intention of
confiding to his friend, as one eminently entitled to it, the news of
his engagement to Alison Parr.
Nothing, however, had been heard of Kate. She was not in Dalton Street,
Mr. Bentley feared. The search of Gratz, the cabinet-maker, had been
fruitless. And Sally Grover had even gone to see the woman in the
hospital, whom Kate had befriended, in the hope of getting a possible
clew. They sat close together before the fire in Mr. Bentley's
comfortable library, debating upon the possibility of other methods of
procedure, when a carriage was heard rattling over the pitted asphalt
without. As it pulled up at the curb, a silence fell between them. The
door-bell rang.
Holder found himself sitting erect, rigidly attentive, listening to the
muffled sound of a woman's voice in the entry. A few moments later came
a knock at the library door, and Sam entered. The old darky was plainly
frightened.
“It's Miss Kate, Marse Ho'ace, who you bin tryin' to fin',” he
stammered.
Holder sprang to his feet and made his way rapidly around the table,
where he stood confronting the woman in the doorway. There she was,
perceptibly swaying, as though the floor under her were rocked by an
earthquake. Her handsome face was white as chalk, her pupils widened in
terror. It was curious, at such an instant, that he should have taken
in her costume,--yet it was part of the mystery. She wore a new,
close-fitting, patently expensive suit of dark blue cloth and a small
hat, which were literally transforming in their effect, demanding a
palpable initial effort of identification.
He seized her by the arm.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. “He--he's out there--in the carriage.”
She leaned heavily against the doorpost, shivering.... Holder saw Sally
Grover coming down the stairs.
“Take her,” he said, and went out of the front door, which Sam had left
open. Mr. Bentley was behind him.
The driver had descended from the box and was peering into the darkness
of the vehicle when he heard them, and turned. At sight of the tall
clergyman, an expression of relief came into his face.
“I don't like the looks of this, sir,” he said. “I thought he was pretty
bad when I went to fetch him--”
Holder pushed past him and looked into the carriage. Leaning back,
motionless, in the corner of the seat was the figure of a man. For a
terrible moment of premonition, of enlightenment, the rector gazed at
it.
“They sent for me from a family hotel in Ayers Street,” the driver was
explaining. Mr. Bentley's voice interrupted him.
“He must be brought in, at once. Do you know where Dr. Latimer's office
is, on Tower Street?” he asked the man. “Go there, and bring this doctor
back with you as quickly as possible. If he is not in, get another,
physician.”
Between them, the driver and Holder got the burden out of the carriage
and up the steps. The light from the hallway confirmed the rector's
fear.
“It's Preston Parr,” he said.
The next moment was too dreadful for surprise, but never had the sense
of tragedy so pierced the innermost depths of Holder's being as now,
when Horace Bentley's calmness seemed to have forsaken him; and as he
gazed down upon the features on the pillow, he wept.... Holder turned
away. Whatever memories those features evoked, memories of a past that
still throbbed with life these were too sacred for intrusion. The years
of exile, of uncomplaining service to others in this sordid street and
over the wide city had not yet sufficed to allay the pain, to heal the
wound of youth. Nay, loyalty had kept it fresh--a loyalty that was the
handmaid of faith...
The rector softly left the room, only to be confronted with another
harrowing scene in the library, where a frantic woman was struggling in
Sally Grover's grasp. He went to her assistance... Words of comfort, of
entreaty were of no avail,--Kate Marcy did not seem to hear them. Hers,
in contrast to that other, was the unmeaning grief, the overwhelming
sense of injustice of the child; and with her regained physical strength
the two had all they could do to restrain her.
“I will go to him,” she sobbed, between her paroxysms, “you've got
no right to keep me--he's mine... he came back to me--he's all I ever
had....”
So intent were they that they did not notice Mr. Bentley standing beside
them until they heard his voice.
“What she says is true,” he told them. “Her place is in there. Let her
go.”
Kate Marcy raised her head at the words, and looked at him a strange,
half-comprehending, half-credulous gaze. They released her, helped her
towards the bedroom, and closed the door gently behind her... The three
sat in silence until the carriage was heard returning, and the doctor
entered.
The examination was brief, and two words, laconically spoken, sufficed
for an explanation--apoplexy, alcohol. The prostrate, quivering woman
was left where they had found her.
Dr. Latimer was a friend of Mr. Bentley's, and betrayed no surprise at a
situation which otherwise might have astonished him. It was only when
he learned the dead man's name, and his parentage, that he looked up
quickly from his note book.
“The matter can be arranged without a scandal,” he said, after an
instant. “Can you tell me something of the circumstances?”
It was Hodder who answered.
“Preston Parr had been in love with this woman, and separated from her.
She was under Mr. Bentley's care when he found her again, I infer, by
accident. From what the driver says, they were together in a hotel in
Ayers Street, and he died after he had been put in a carriage. In her
terror, she was bringing him to Mr. Bentley.”
The doctor nodded.
“Poor woman!” he said unexpectedly. “Will you be good enough to let Mr.
Parr know that I will see him at his house, to-night?” he added, as he
took his departure.
IV
Sally Grower went out with the physician, and it was Mr. Bentley who
answered the question in the rector's mind, which he hesitated to ask.
“Mr. Parr must come here,” he said.
As the rector turned, mechanically, to pick up his hat, Mr. Bentley
added,
“You will come back, Hodder?”
“Since you wish it, sir,” the rector said.
Once in the street, he faced a predicament, but swiftly decided that the
telephone was impossible under the circumstances, that there could be
no decent procedure without going himself to Park Street. It was only
a little after ten. The electric car which he caught seemed to lag, the
stops were interminable. His thoughts flew hither and thither. Should he
try first to see Alison? He was nearest to her now of all the world, and
he could not suffer the thought of her having the news otherwise. Yes,
he must tell her, since she knew nothing of the existence of Kate Marcy.
Having settled that,--though the thought of the blow she was to receive
lay like a weight on his heart,--Mr. Bentley's reason for summoning
Eldon Parr to Dalton Street came to him. That the feelings of Mr.
Bentley towards the financier were those of Christian forgiveness was
not for a moment to be doubted: but a meeting, particularly under such
circumstances, could not but be painful indeed. It must be, it was,
Hodder saw, for Kate Marcy's sake; yes, and for Eldon Parr's as well,
that he be given this opportunity to deal with the woman whom he had
driven away from his son, and ruined.
The moon, which had shed splendours over the world the night before,
was obscured by a low-drifting mist as Hodder turned in between the
ornamental lamps that marked the gateway of the Park Street mansion,
and by some undiscerned thought--suggestion he pictured the heart-broken
woman he had left beside the body of one who had been heir to all
this magnificence. Useless now, stone and iron and glass, pictures and
statuary. All the labour, all the care and cunning, all the stealthy
planning to get ahead of others had been in vain! What indeed were left
to Eldon Parr! It was he who needed pity,--not the woman who had sinned
and had been absolved because of her great love; not the wayward,
vice-driven boy who lay dead. The very horror of what Eldon Parr was now
to suffer turned Hodder cold as he rang the bell and listened for the
soft tread of the servant who would answer his summons.
The man who flung open the door knew him, and did not conceal his
astonishment.
“Will you take my card to Miss Parr,” the rector said, “if she has not
retired, and tell her I have a message?”
“Miss Parr is still in the library, sir.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, sir.” The man preceded him, but before his name had been announced
Alison was standing, her book in her hand, gazing at him with startled
eyes, his name rising, a low cry, to her lips.
“John!”
He took the book from her, gently, and held her hands.
“Something has happened!” she said. “Tell me--I can bear it.”
He saw instantly that her dread was for him, and it made his task the
harder.
“It's your brother, Alison.”
“Preston! What is it? He's done something----”
Hodder shook his head.
“He died--to-night. He is at Mr. Bentley's.”
It was like her that she did not cry out, or even speak, but stood
still, her hands tightening on his, her breast heaving. She was not, he
knew, a woman who wept easily, and her eyes were dry. And he had it to
be thankful for that it was given him to be with her, in this sacred
relationship, at such a moment. But even now, such was the mystery that
ever veiled her soul, he could not read her feelings, nor know what
these might be towards the brother whose death he announced.
“I want to tell you, first, Alison, to prepare you,” he said.
Her silence was eloquent. She looked up at him bravely, trustfully, in a
way that made him wince. Whatever the exact nature of her suffering, it
was too deep for speech. And yet she helped him, made it easier for him
by reason of her very trust, once given not to be withdrawn. It gave him
a paradoxical understanding of her which was beyond definition.
“You must know--you would have sometime to know that there was a woman
he loved, whom he intended to marry--but she was separated from him. She
was not what is called a bad woman, she was a working girl. I found her,
this summer, and she told me the story, and she has been under the care
of Mr. Bentley. She disappeared two or three days ago. Your brother
met her again, and he was stricken with apoplexy while with her this
evening. She brought him to Mr. Bentley's house.”
“My father--bought her and sent her away.”
“You knew?”
“I heard a little about it at the time, by accident. I have always
remembered it.... I have always felt that something like this would
happen.”
Her sense of fatality, another impression she gave of living in the
deeper, instinctive currents of life, had never been stronger upon him
than now.... She released his hands.
“How strange,” she said, “that the end should have come at Mr.
Bentley's! He loved my mother--she was the only woman he ever loved.”
It came to Hodder as the completing touch of the revelation he had half
glimpsed by the bedside.
“Ah,” he could not help exclaiming, “that explains much.”
She had looked at him again, through sudden tears, as though divining
his reference to Mr. Bentley's grief, when a step make them turn. Eldon
Parr had entered the room. Never, not even in that last interview, had
his hardness seemed so concretely apparent as now. Again, pity seemed
never more out of place, yet pity was Hodder's dominant feeling as
he met the coldness, the relentlessness of the glance. The thing that
struck him, that momentarily kept closed his lips, was the awful,
unconscious timeliness of the man's entrance, and his unpreparedness to
meet the blow that was to crush him.
“May I ask, Mr. Hodder,” he said, in an unemotional voice, “what you are
doing in this house?”
Still Hodder hesitated, an unwilling executioner.
“Father,” said Alison, “Mr. Hodder has come with a message.”
Never, perhaps, had Eldon Parr given such complete proof of his lack of
spiritual intuition. The atmosphere, charged with presage for him, gave
him nothing.
“Mr. Hodder takes a strange way of delivering it,” was his comment.
Mercy took precedence over her natural directness. She laid her hand
gently on his arm. And she had, at that instant, no thought of the long
years he had neglected her for her brother.
“It's about--Preston,” she said.
“Preston!” The name came sharply from Eldon Parr's lips. “What about
him? Speak, can't you?”
“He died this evening,” said Alison, simply.
Hodder plainly heard the ticking of the clock on the mantel.... And the
drama that occurred was the more horrible because it was hidden; played,
as it were, behind closed doors. For the spectators, there was only the
black wall, and the silence. Eldon Parr literally did nothing,--made no
gesture, uttered no cry. The death, they knew, was taking place in
his soul, yet the man stood before them, naturally, for what seemed an
interminable time....
“Where is he?” he asked.
“At Mr. Bentley's, in Dalton Street.” It was Alison who replied again.
Even then he gave no sign that he read retribution in the coincidence,
betrayed no agitation at the mention of a name which, in such a
connection, might well have struck the terror of judgment into his
heart. They watched him while, with a firm step, he crossed the room and
pressed a button in the wall, and waited.
“I want the closed automobile, at once,” he said, when the servant came.
“I beg pardon; sir, but I think Gratton has gone to bed. He had no
orders.”
“Then wake him,” said Eldon Parr, “instantly. And send for my
secretary.”
With a glance which he perceived Alison comprehended, Hodder made his
way out of the room. He had from Eldon Parr, as he passed him, neither
question, acknowledgment, nor recognition. Whatever the banker
might have felt, or whether his body had now become a mere machine
mechanically carrying on a life-long habit of action, the impression was
one of the tremendousness of the man's consistency. A great effort was
demanded to summon up the now almost unimaginable experience of his
confidence; of the evening when, almost on that very spot, he had
revealed to Hodder the one weakness of his life. And yet the effort was
not to be, presently, without startling results. In the darkness of the
street the picture suddenly grew distinct on the screen of the rector's
mind, the face of the banker subtly drawn with pain as he had looked
down on it in compassion; the voice with its undercurrent of agony:
“He never knew how much I cared--that what I was doing was all for him,
building for him, that he might carry on my work.”
V
So swift was the trolley that ten minutes had elapsed, after Hodder's
arrival, before the purr of an engine and the shriek of a brake broke
the stillness of upper Dalton Street and announced the stopping of a
heavy motor before the door. The rector had found Mr. Bentley in the
library, alone, seated with bent head in front of the fire, and had
simply announced the intention of Eldon Parr to come. From the chair
Hodder had unobtrusively chosen, near the window, his eyes rested on the
noble profile of his friend. What his thoughts were, Hodder could not
surmise; for he seemed again, marvellously, to have regained the outward
peace which was the symbol of banishment from the inner man of all
thought of self.
“I have prepared her for Mr. Parr's coming,” he said to Hodder at
length.
And yet he had left her there! Hodder recalled the words Mr. Bentley had
spoken, “It is her place.” Her place, the fallen woman's, the place she
had earned by a great love and a great renunciation, of which no earthly
power might henceforth deprive her....
Then came the motor, the ring at the door, the entrance of Eldon Parr
into the library. He paused, a perceptible moment, on the threshold
as his look fell upon the man whom he had deprived of home and
fortune,--yes and of the one woman in the world for them both. Mr.
Bentley had risen, and stood facing him. That shining, compassionate
gaze should have been indeed a difficult one to meet. Vengeance was
the Lord's, in truth! What ordeal that Horace Bentley in anger and
retribution might have devised could have equalled this!
And yet Eldon Parr did meet it--with an effort. Hodder, from his corner,
detected the effort, though it were barely discernible, and would have
passed a scrutiny less rigid,--the first outward and visible sign of
the lesion within. For a brief instant the banker's eyes encountered
Mr. Bentley's look with a flash of the old defiance, and fell, and then
swept the room.
“Will you come this way, Mr. Parr?” Mr. Bentley said, indicating the
door of the bedroom.
Alison followed. Her eyes, wet with unheeded tears, had never left Mr.
Bentley's face. She put out her hand to him....
Eldon Parr had halted abruptly. He knew from Alison the circumstances
in which his son had died, and how he had been brought hither to this
house, but the sight of the woman beside the bed fanned into flame his
fury against a world which had cheated him, by such ignominious means,
of his dearest wish. He grew white with sudden passion.
“What is she doing here?” he demanded.
Kate Marcy, who had not seemed to hear his entrance, raised up to him
a face from which all fear had fled, a face which, by its suggestive
power, compelled him to realize the absolute despair clutching now at
his own soul, and against which he was fighting wildly, hopelessly. It
was lying in wait for him, With hideous patience, in the coming watches
of the night. Perhaps he read in the face of this woman whom he had
condemned to suffer all degradation, and over whom he was now powerless,
something which would ultimately save her from the hell now yawning for
him; a redeeming element in her grief of which she herself were not
as yet conscious, a light shining in the darkness of her soul which in
eternity would become luminous. And he saw no light for him--He thrashed
in darkness. He had nothing, now, to give, no power longer to deprive.
She had given all she possessed, the memorial of her kind which would
outlast monuments.
It was Alison who crossed the room swiftly. She laid her hand
protectingly on Kate Marcy's shoulder, and stooped, and kissed her. She
turned to her father.
“It is her right,” she said. “He belonged to her, not to us. And we must
take her home with us.
“No,” answered Kate Marcy' “I don't want to go. I wouldn't live,” she
added with unexpected intensity, “with him.”
“You would live with me,” said Alison.
“I don't want to live!” Kate Marcy got up from the chair with an energy
they had not thought her to possess, a revival of the spirit which had
upheld her when she had contended, singly, with a remorseless world. She
addressed herself to Eldon Parr. “You took him from me, and I was a fool
to let you. He might have saved me and saved himself. I listened to you
when you told me lies as to how it would ruin him.... Well,--I had him
you never did.”
The sudden, intolerable sense of wrong done to her love, the swift anger
which followed it, the justness of her claim of him who now lay in the
dignity of death clothed her--who in life had been crushed and blotted
out--with a dignity not to be gainsaid. In this moment of final
self-assertion she became the dominating person in the room, knew for
once the birthright of human worth. They watched her in silence as she
turned and gave one last, lingering look at the features of the dead;
stretched out her hand towards them, but did not touch them... and then
went slowly towards the door. Beside Alison she stopped.
“You are his sister?” she said.
“Yes.”
She searched Alison's face, wistfully.
“I could have loved you.”
“And can you not--still?”
Kate Mercy did not answer the question.
“It is because you understand,” she said. “You're like those I've come
to know--here. And you're like him.... I don't mean in looks. He, too,
was good--and square.” She spoke the words a little defiantly, as though
challenging the verdict of the world. “And he wouldn't have been wild if
he could have got going straight.”
“I know,” said Alison, in a low voice.
“Yes,” said Kate Mercy, “you look as if you did. He thought a lot of
you, he said he was only beginning to find out what you was. I'd like
you to think as well of me as you can.”
“I could not think better,” Alison replied.
Kate Mercy shook her head.
“I got about as low as any woman ever got,” she said
“Mr. Hodder will tell you. I want you to know that I wouldn't
marry--your brother,” she hesitated over the name. “He wanted me to--he
was mad with me to night, because I wouldn't--when this happened.”
She snatched her hand free from Alison's, and fled out of the room, into
the hallway.
Eldon Parr had moved towards the bed, seemingly unaware of the words
they had spoken. Perhaps, as he gazed upon the face, he remembered in
his agony the sunny, smiling child who need to come hurrying down the
steps in Ransome Street to meet him.
In the library Mr. Bentley and John Hodder, knowing nothing of her
flight, heard the front door close on Kate Marcy forever....