A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
Gail stood at the rail of the _Whitecap_, gazing out over the dancing
blue waves with troubled eyes.
“Penny,” said a cheerful voice at her side.
“For my thoughts,” she replied, turning to the impossibly handsome Dick
Rodley who had strolled up, in his blue jacket and white trousers and
other nautical embellishments. “Give me your penny.”
He reached in his pockets, but of course, there was no money there. He
did, however, find a fountain pen and a card, and he wrote her a note
for the amount.
“Now deliver the merchandise,” he demanded.
“Well, to begin with, I’m glad that the fog has been driven away, and
that the sun is shining, and that so many of my friends are on board the
_Whitecap_.”
“You’re not a conscientious merchant,” objected Dick. “You’re not giving
me all I paid for. No one stands still so long, no matter how charming
of figure or becomingly gowned, without a serious thought. I want that
thought.”
Gail looked up into his big black eyes reflectively. She was
tremendously glad that she had such a friend as Dick. He was so
agreeable to look at, and he was no problem to her. The most of her
friends were.
“The news in the paper,” she told him. “It’s so big.”
Dick looked down at her critically. Her snow-white yachting costume,
with its touches of delicate blue, seemed to make her a part of the blue
sea and the blue sky, with their markings of white in foam and cloud, to
enhance the delicate pallor of her cheeks, to throw into her brown eyes
a trace of violet, to bring into relief, the rich colour of the brown
hair which rippled about her face, straying where it could into wanton
little ringlets, sometimes gold and sometimes almost red in the sun. She
was so new a Gail to Dick that he was puzzled, and worried, too, for he
felt, rather than saw, that some trouble possessed this dearest of his
friends.
“Yes, it is big news,” he admitted; “big enough and startling enough to
impress any one very gravely.” Then he shook his head at her. “But you
mustn’t worry about it, Gail. You’re not responsible.”
Gail turned her eyes from him and looked out over the white-edged waves
again.
“It is a tremendous responsibility,” she mused, whereupon Dick, as
became him, violently broke that thread of thought by taking her arm and
drawing her away from the rail, and walking gaily with her up to the
forward shelter deck, where, shielded from the crispness of the wind,
there sat, around the big table and amid a tangle of Sunday papers, Jim
Sargent and the Reverend Smith Boyd, Arly and Gerald Fosland, all four
deep in the discussion of the one possible topic of conversation.
“Allison’s explosion again,” objected Dick, as Gail and he joined the
group, and caught the general tenor of the thought. “I suppose the only
way to escape that is to jump off the _Whitecap_. Gail’s worse than any
of you. I find she’s responsible for the whole thing.”
Arly and Gerald looked up quickly.
“I neither said nor intimated anything of the sort,” Gail reprimanded
Dick, for the benefit of the Foslands, and she sat down by Arly,
whereupon Dick, observing that he was much offended, patted Gail on the
shoulder, and disappeared in search of Ted.
“I’d like to hand a vote of thanks to the responsible party,” laughed
Jim Sargent, to whom the news meant more than Gail appreciated. “With
Allison broke, Urbank of the Midcontinent succeeds to control of the
A.-P., and Urbank is anxious to incorporate the Towando Valley in the
system. He told me so yesterday.”
The light which leaped into Gail’s eyes, and the trace of colour which
flashed into her cheeks, were most comforting to Arly; and they
exchanged a smile of great satisfaction. They clutched hands
ecstatically under the corner of the table, and wanted to laugh
outright. However, it would keep.
“The destruction of Mr. Allison was a feat of which any gentleman’s
conscience might approve,” commented Gerald Fosland, who had spent some
time in definitely settling, with himself, the ethics of that question.
“The company he proposed to form was a menace to the liberty of the
world and the progress of civilisation.”
“The destruction didn’t go far enough,” snapped Jim Sargent. “Clark,
Vance, Haverman, Grandin, Babbitt, Taylor, Chisholm; these fellows won’t
be touched, and they built up their monopolies by the same method
Allison proposed; trickery, force, and plain theft!”
“Harsh language, Uncle Jim Sargent, to use toward your respectable
fellow-vestrymen,” chided Arly, her black eyes dancing.
“Clark and Chisholm?” and Jim Sargent’s brows knotted. “They’re not my
fellow-vestrymen. Either they go or I do!”
“I would like you to remain,” quietly stated the Reverend Smith Boyd. “I
hope to achieve several important alterations in the ethics of Market
Square Church.” He was grave this morning. He had unknowingly been
ripening for some time on many questions; and the revelations in this
morning’s papers had brought him to the point of decision. “I wish to
drive the money changers out of the temple,” he added, and glanced at
Gail with a smile in which there was acknowledgment.
“A remarkably lucrative enterprise, eh Gail?” laughed her Uncle Jim,
remembering her criticism on the occasion of her first and only vestry
meeting, when she had called their attention to the satire of the
stained glass window.
“You will have still the Scribes and Pharisees, Doctor; ‘those who stand
praying in the public places, so they may be seen of all men,’” and Gail
smiled across at him, within her eyes the mischievous twinkle which had
been absent for many days.
“I hope to be able to remove the public place,” replied the rector, with
a gravity which told of something vital beneath the apparent repartee.
Mrs. Boyd, strolling past with Aunt Grace Sargent, paused to look at him
fondly. “I shall set myself, with such strength as I may have, against
the building of the proposed cathedral.”
He had said it so quietly that it took the little group a full minute to
comprehend. Jim Sargent looked with acute interest at the end of his
cigar, and threw it overboard. Arly leaned slowly forward, and, resting
her piquant chin on her closed hand, studied the rector earnestly.
Gerald stroked his moustache contemplatively, and looked at the rector
with growing admiration. By George, that was a sportsmanlike attitude!
He’d have to take the Reverend Smith Boyd down to the Papyrus Club one
day. All the trouble flew back into Gail’s eyes. It was a stupendous
thing the Reverend Smith Boyd was proposing to relinquish! The
rectorship of the most wonderful cathedral in the world! Mrs. Boyd
looked startled for a moment. She had known of Tod’s bright dreams about
the new cathedral and the new rectory. He had planned his mother’s
apartments himself, and the last thing his eyes looked upon at night
were the beautifully coloured sketches on his walls.
“Don’t be foolish, Boyd,” protested Sargent, who had always felt a
fatherly responsibility for the young rector. “It’s a big ambition and a
worthy ambition, to build that cathedral; and because you’re offended
with certain things the papers have said, about Clark and Chisholm in
connection with the church, is no reason you should cut off your nose to
spite your face.”
“It is not the publication of these things which has determined me,”
returned the rector thoughtfully. “It has merely hastened my decision.
To begin with, I acknowledge now that it was only a vague, artistic
dream of mine that such a cathedral, by its very magnificence, would
promote worship. That might have been the case when cathedrals were the
only magnificent buildings erected, and when every rich and glittering
thing was devoted to religion. A golden candlestick then became
connected entirely with the service of the Almighty. Now, however,
magnificence has no such signification. The splendour of a cathedral
must enter into competition with the splendour of a state house, a
museum, or a hotel.”
“You shouldn’t switch that way, Boyd,” remonstrated Sargent, showing his
keen disappointment. “When you began to agitate for the cathedral you
brought a lot of our members in who hadn’t attended services in years.
You stirred them up. You got them interested. They’ll drop right off.”
“I hope not,” returned the rector earnestly. “I hope to reach them with
a higher ambition, a higher pride, a higher vanity, if you like to put
it that way. I wish them to take joy in establishing the most
magnificent living conditions for the poor which have ever been built!
We have no right to the money which is to be paid us for the Vedder
Court property. We have no right to spend it in pomp. It belongs to the
poor from whom we have taken it, and to the city which has made us rich
by enhancing the value of our ground. I propose to build permanent and
sanitary tenements, to house as many poor people as possible, and
conduct them without a penny of profit above the cost of repairs and
maintenance.”
Gail bent upon him beaming eyes, and the delicate flush, which had begun
to return to her cheeks, deepened. Was this the sort of tenements he had
proposed to re-erect in Vedder Court? Perhaps she had been hasty! The
Reverend Smith Boyd in turning slowly from one to the other of the
little group, by way of establishing mental communication with them,
rested, for a moment, in the beaming eyes of Gail, and smiled at her in
affectionate recognition then swept his glance on to his mother, where
it lingered.
“You are perfectly correct,” stated Gerald Fosland, who, though sitting
stiffly upright, had managed nevertheless to dispose one elbow where it
touched gently the surface of Arly. “Market Square Church is a much more
dignified old place of worship than the ostentatious cathedral would
ever be, and your project for spending the money has such strict justice
at the bottom of it that it must prevail. But, I say, Doctor Boyd,” and
he gave his moustache a contemplative tug; “don’t you think you should
include a small margin of profit for the future extension of your idea?”
“That’s glorious, Gerald!” approved Gail; and Arly, laughing, patted his
hand.
“You’re probably right,” considered the rector, studying Fosland with a
new interest. “I think we’ll have to put you on the vestry.”
“I’d be delighted, I’m sure,” responded Gerald, in the courteous tone of
one accepting an invitation to dinner.
“Do you hear what your son’s planning to do?” called Jim Sargent to Mrs.
Boyd. He was not quite reconciled. “He proposes to take that wonderful
new rectory away from you.”
The beautiful Mrs. Boyd merely dimpled.
“I am a trifle astonished,” she confessed. “My son has been so extremely
eager about it; but if he is relinquishing the dream, it is because he
wants something else very much more worth while. I entirely approve of
his plan for the new tenements,” and she did not understand why they all
laughed at her. She did feel, however, that there was affection in the
laughter; and she was quite content. Laughing with them, she walked on
with Grace Sargent. They had set out to make twenty trips around the
deck, for exercise.
“I find that I have been at work on the plans for these new tenements
ever since the condemnation,” went on the rector. “I would build them in
the semi-court style, with light and air in every room; with as little
woodwork as possible; with plumbing appliances of simple and perfect
sanitation; with centralised baths under the care of an attendant; with
assembly rooms for both social and religious observances and with self
contained bureaus of employment, health and police protection—one
building to each of six blocks, widening the street for a grass plot,
trees, and fountains. The fact that the Market Square Church property is
exempt from taxation, saving us over half a million dollars a year,
renders us able to provide these advantages at a much lower rental to my
Vedder Court people than they can secure quarters anywhere else in the
city, and at the same time lay up a small margin of profit for the
system.”
Gerald Fosland drew forward his chair.
“Do you know,” he observed, “I should like very much to become a member
of your vestry.”
“I’m glad you are interested,” returned the rector, and producing a
pencil he drew a white advertising space towards him. “This is the plan
of tenement I have in mind,” and for the next half hour the five of them
discussed tenement plans with great enthusiasm.
At the expiration of that time, Ted and Lucile and Dick and Marion came
romping up, with the deliberate intention of creating a disturbance; and
Gail and the Reverend Smith Boyd, being thrown accidentally to the edge
of that whirlpool, walked away for a rest.
“They tell me you’re going abroad,” observed the rector, looking down at
her sadly, as they paused at her favourite rail space.
“Yes,” she answered quietly. “Father and mother are coming next week,”
and she glanced up at the rector from under her curving lashes.
There was a short space of silence. It was almost as if these two were
weary.
“We shall miss you very much,” he told her, in all sincerity. They were
both looking out over the blue waves; he, tall, broad-shouldered, agile
of limb; she, straight, lithe, graceful. Mrs. Boyd and Mrs. Sargent
passed them admiringly, but went on by with a trace of sadness.
“I’m sorry to leave,” Gail replied. “I shall be very anxious to know how
you are coming on with your new plan. I’m proud of you for it.”
“Thank you,” he returned.
They were talking mechanically. In them was an inexpressible sadness.
They had come so near, and yet they were so far apart. Moreover, they
knew that there was no chance of change. It was a matter of conscience
which came between them, and it was a divergence which would widen with
the years. And yet they loved. They mutually knew it, and it was because
of that love that they must stay apart.