Two days later the Rev. George Prentiss dined at the house of another
of his parishioners, Mrs. Randolph Wilson. She was a widow of about
forty-five, the sister of Carleton Howard, reputedly the wealthiest and
most sagacious of Benham's financial magnates, and a generous
benefactress of St. Stephen's. Her bounty had enabled the rector from
time to time to carry out his cherished plans for the æsthetic
adornment of the church property. The reredos, two stained-glass
windows, and the baptismal font in the enlarged edifice had been
provided by her; and in the matter of charity she never failed to
respond by munificent subscriptions to the various causes in aid of
which he appealed to his congregation. They were friends and allies;
interested mutually in St. Stephen's, and interested also, as they both
liked to feel, in promoting American civilization outside of church
work. Her house, or palace, as it should more properly be termed, a
counterpart to that of her brother's which adjoined it, stood in the
van of progress, in Benham's fashionable new quarter beyond the River
Drive. No pains or expense had been spared to make these mansions
impressive and magnificent. Architects of repute had been employed to
superintend their construction, and their decorations and furnishings
had been chosen in consultation with persons whose business it was to
know the whereabouts of admirable objects of art, and to tempt
impecunious noble families abroad to exchange their unique treasures
for dazzling round sums of American gold.
Mrs. Wilson could fairly be termed the leader of social activity in
Benham, if such a term be compatible with the institutions of a country
where every women is supposed to be a law unto herself. Fashions, in
the narrow sense of clothes, are in America set by the dressmakers, but
what Mrs. Wilson wore was always a matter of moment to women who wished
to be in style. She dressed elegantly, and she was able to take
liberties with the dressmakers, doing daring things with colors and
materials which justified themselves, yet were so individual that they
were liable to make guys of those who copied her. Consequently, her
wardrobe had a distinction of its own which proclaimed fashion yet
defied it. Yet her clothes, striking and superb as they often were,
constituted only a small part of her social effectiveness. Her
gracious finished manners, and quick, tactful intelligence were the
agents of a spirit perpetually eager to be occupied and to lead, and
which had found a labor of love in directing what may well be called
Benham's æsthetic renaissance.
For Benham's evolution had been no mere growth of bricks and mortar,
and no mere triumph in census figures over other centres of population.
Even more remarkable and swift than its physical changes had been the
transformation in the point of view of its citizens. Twenty years
earlier--in 1870, when Mr. Prentiss was a young man just starting in
the ministry--he had been one of a small group of earnest souls
interested in awakening the public to a consciousness of the paucity of
their æsthetic interests, and to the value of color as a stimulating
factor in the every-day life of the community, and as such he had often
deplored the aridity of Benham's point of view. In those days the city
was virtually a hot-bed of republican simplicity and contempt for
social refinements so far as all but a very small percentage of the
inhabitants was concerned. Those who built houses larger and finer
than their neighbors were few in number and were stigmatized, if not as
enemies of the institutions of the country, as purse-proud and
frivolous. Hotels were conducted on the theory that what was good
enough for the landlord was good enough for the guest, and that
malcontents could go elsewhere. In matters appertaining to art,
hygiene, education or municipal management, one man's opinion was
regarded as equal to any other's, provided he could get the job.
Special knowledge was sneered at, and the best patriots in the public
estimation were those who did not distrust the ability of the average
citizen to produce masterpieces in the line of his or her employment by
dint of raw genius untrammelled or unpolluted by the experience of
older civilizations. Though solid business men wore solemn-looking
black frock-coats and black wisp ties in business hours, to dress again
in the evening was looked at askance as undemocratic. It would have
been considered an invasion of the rights of the free-born citizen to
forbid expectoration in the street cars. Suggestions that the vicious
and unregenerate adult pauper poor should not be herded with the young,
that busy physicians should cleanse a lancet before probing a wound,
and that sewage should not be emptied into a river used as a source of
water supply, were still sniffed at by those in charge of public
affairs as aristocratic innovations unworthy the attention of a
sovereign people. Architectural beauty both within and without the
house was disregarded in favor of monotonous sober hues and solid
effects, which were deemed to be suggestive of the seriousness of the
national character.
While deploring some of these civic manifestations, Mr. Prentiss had
appreciated that the basis of this æsthetic sterility was ethical.
When less discerning persons had attributed it solely to ignorance and
self-righteous superficiality he had maintained that a puritanical, yet
moral and sincere, hostility to extravagance and display was
responsible for the preference for ugly architecture and homely
upholstery and decoration, and that conscience was the most formidable
obstacle to progress. As a priest of a church which fostered beauty
and favored rational enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, he had never
sympathized with this public attitude, but he had understood and, as an
American, respected it.
Now, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, all was changed, and
Benham was in the throes of a revival; a revival which during the last
ten years had revolutionized Benham's architecture and Benham's point
of view. The public had become possessed by the conviction that they
had outgrown their associations and that the standards hitherto revered
were out of date and unworthy of a nation and a city pledged to
enlighten the world, upon whom prosperity had been bestowed in large
measure. The group of earnest souls who had dared to criticise seemed
suddenly to have become a phalanx--numerically unimportant, still, when
compared with the whole population, that seething army of industrial
wage-earners--but assertive and energetic out of proportion to their
numbers. The city had become a hive of reforming activities.
Specialists in the arts and humanities were no longer classed as
traitors, but were welcomed by a growing clientage as safeguards
against bumptious individualism. Though a cheerful optimism in regard
to the city's architectural merits still prevailed at large, a silent
censorship was at work; substituting, in the business quarter, new
mammoth structures adapted to modern industrial needs, erecting in the
fashionable quarter, by the aid of American architects trained in
Paris, well-built and individual-looking residences. Instead of three
or four cheerless, barrack-like caravansaries with sodden cookery,
there was a score of modern hotels, the proprietors of which vied with
one another in their endeavors to lure patronage by costly and
sumptuous innovations. There were comfortable and inviting
restaurants. The slap-dash luncheon counter, with its display of
pallid pie and one cadaverous chicken, was waning in the popular
esteem, in favor of neat spas, at which the rush of patronage was
alleviated by clean service and wholesome fare. There were eight
theatres, each more spacious and splendid than its predecessor. A
frowsy black coat, worn in the forenoon, had ceased to be a badge of
patriotism or moral worth, and the community had become alive to the
values of spruceness, color, and comfort in matters of dress. Not only
this, but on the streets of Benham there were many stylish equipages
with liveried grooms, and in the superb homes which the wealthy
citizens had established, there were grand entertainments, where
rivalry was rampant and money flowed like champagne. And last, but not
least, there was Mrs. Randolph Wilson, the quintessence in her own
person of all that was best in this revival in favor of the beautiful
things of life, the living embodiment of this newly directed and
freshly inspired energy. For well-to-do Benham and Mr. Prentiss liked
to believe that the impulse behind these materialistic manifestations
was conscience and aspiration, a reaching out for a greater human
happiness and a wider human usefulness than had been possible under the
old dispensation. This access of lavish philanthropy and study of
charitable methods, this zeal of committees promoting new and more
thorough methods in hygiene and education, and all the phases of this
new awakening in quest of Christian beauty signified to him
Benham's--and hence American--originality and fervor refined and
spiritualized; Benham's enterprise and independence informed,
chastened, and fortified.
And yet there was another side to this whole matter which had haunted
Mr. Prentiss much of late, and which was in his thoughts to-night as he
sat smoking his cigar after dinner. He had dined sumptuously. Cool
oysters, soup of mushrooms, fish smothered in a luscious sauce, cutlets
of venison with French beans, little pyramids of _paté de foie gras_
encased in jelly, butter-ball ducks with a salad richly dressed, and a
confection of fruit, cream, and pastry, which was evidently a
gastronomic specialty of Mrs. Wilson's French cook. He had tasted
everything; he had drunk two glasses of champagne, and been pleasantly
aware that the cup of black coffee, served after dinner, was an
entrancing concoction which his own kitchen did not afford; and he felt
that his repast had done him good. It was for him an occasion.
Obviously it was for Mrs. Wilson an every-day affair. Moreover, this
rich, delicious dinner, served by noiseless servants on choice china,
was in harmony with the rest of the magnificent establishment, in
harmony with the artistic scheme of color, the soft lustrous draperies,
the striking pictures and other masterpieces of art purchased for large
sums abroad, and Mrs. Wilson's beautiful toilette and exquisite
personality. Here was luxury triumphant and compelling, yet unappeased
and seeking fresh opportunities for æsthetic delight; as witness a
Millet, an inlaid table, and a Japanese idol in the room in which he
sat, all new since he had dined there last.
What a vivid contrast all this to the cheerless often squalid homes
which he was accustomed to visit as a rector of Christ's church! The
thought which haunted him was that one result of the city's marvellous
growth and development had been the accentuation of the distinctions
between rich and poor, between class and class in a community where,
until lately, there had been theoretically no classes. To be sure he
had Mr. Carleton Howard's assertion that there was no country in the
world where the poor man was so well off. This was very likely true,
but it did not affect the proposition that the rich were daily growing
richer and more self-indulgent. What was to be the limit--the outcome
of this renaissance of beauty and comfort, which he had welcomed? Had
not the æsthetic reaction almost reached the point where, both as a
priest of God and as a good American, it behooved him to cry halt
against luxury and extravagance? He frowned at this last reflection
for the reason that he was painfully aware that he had fulminated
against this sort of thing from the pulpit for years, formerly as part
of the clerical formula championing the cause of the spirit against the
flesh, and latterly because the Aladdin-like growth of great fortunes
all over the land, and conspicuously in his own community, had often
suggested the comparison between the passage of a camel through the eye
of a needle and the rich man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven as
an appropriate text. He had spoken with fervor and sincerity
concerning the responsibilities of those having great possessions, and
sometimes with living pictures in his mind. Neither Mrs. Wilson nor
her brother had ever been among those for whom these admonitions were
intended. They had opened their purse-strings liberally to every
meritorious cause. The goodly size of their cheques was to him a
constant source both of satisfaction and astonishment--astonishment at
the new possibilities open to those interested in God's kingdom.
Yet, though he put from him as ungenerous and unnecessary any positive
criticism of his hostess, in the teeth of her many benefactions and her
personal activity in social undertakings, he could not help realizing
that, in spite of his utterances, the evil which he deprecated was
proceeding at a pace which suggested the course of wild-fire. And the
worst of it was that he--the church--was so helpless. Great fortunes
had been accumulated with a zeal which suggested the inevitable march
of destiny--a law which seemed almost to mock the spirit of
Christ--and, even while he was musing, the city had become a theatre of
industrial contrasts, with the pomp and pride of life in the centre of
the stage and poverty and distress in the ample background. There
recurred to him the traditional image of the curate of his faith--the
Church of England--cringing before or patronized by the titled
worshippers of Mammon. This, at least, he could resent as impossible
in his case--he had never hesitated to speak his mind to any of his
parishioners, however important--still, the reminder was disconcerting
and a challenge to his conscience. Nor was the reflection that this
wave of luxury, this more and more exacting reverence for material
comforts, was a part of the movement of the century, and was common to
all civilized countries, a solace. He was an American, but first of
all, he was a servant of the church, and the church was the beacon of
civilization. Was she doing her work, if these terrible inequalities
were to continue? What was to be the outcome of this zest for
luxurious personal comfort?
To what extent the church ought to take part in the economic
regeneration of the world was one of the questions which Mr. Prentiss
had always found perplexing. He was well aware that his parishioners
as a body were not fond of hearing him preach on what they called
secular subjects. So long as he confined himself to enumerating
spiritual truths, they were not averse to his illustrating his stigmas
upon sin by generalizations from current worldly abuses; but he knew
that many shook their heads and declared that the cobbler should stick
to his last when he ventured to discourse on political topics or the
relations of labor and capital. Mr. Prentiss was not aware, however,
that some of this prejudice proceeded from the circumstance that he was
apt to lose his head on such occasions; but, on the other hand, much of
it was genuine disinclination for advice from the pulpit on subjects
which, to quote the women parishioners, were not spiritual, and, to
quote the men, were none of his business. His congregation was almost
entirely composed of pew owners, people with vested rights, among which
appeared to be the right not to be harrowed by socialistic doctrines.
They were ready to help the poor in any way which he would suggest, and
they had supplied him with a mission church where he could reach the
ignorant and needy more effectively, but they argued that he had better
leave to the politicians all suggestions tending to disturb the
existing industrial order.
Mr. Prentiss sometimes sighed over these limitations, but he had become
used to them, and in a measure, with advancing years, he had, in his
endeavor to be a man of the world in order to remain a more useful
Christian, accepted the doctrine that he had no plan to substitute for
the present economic system, and that he must make the best of the
existing situation. So, in practical, daily life, he exhorted the rich
to give their money and themselves to the advancement of their fellow
men, and the poor to shun vice and bear their privations with patience,
while he held forth the promise of the church of an existence hereafter
for the pure in heart where all the seeming inconsistencies of this
mortal life would be explained and justified. Not being endowed with
much sense of humor, Mr. Prentiss, as he waxed in years, and St.
Stephen's became the fashionable church of the city, had found less and
less difficulty in accommodating himself to this point of view, and in
devoting all his ardor to reclaiming souls for Christ. After all, was
not his mission to help men and women as he found them? First of all
to minister to their souls, and in the name of Christianity to lift
them from the slough of human suffering and misfortune that he might
expound to them the loving mercies of the Lord? The things of the
earth were not the things of the spirit, and he was more tenacious than
in his youth of the prerogatives of the church as an institution
controlling human consciences by standards of its own, founded on the
teachings of the Prince of Peace. Nevertheless, being reasonably
clear-headed and fearless, he was not without the suspicion at times
that this reasoning was mystical, and in the face of facts he had every
now and then his unpleasant quarters of an hour.
This was one of them to-night. His hostess, when the dinner was over,
had left him to a cigar and his own devices in the library. He was to
join her presently and be shown her daughter's wedding presents. He
had been invited to dine in order that he might see them, but Mrs.
Wilson and he both knew that this was an excuse for a quiet evening
together in which they might compare notes concerning their mutual
interests. Reaching out to knock off the ash of his cigar into a
dainty porcelain wheelbarrow, he noticed a new photograph on the
mantel-piece and rose to examine it. He recognized it as one of
Clarence Waldo, the New Yorker to whom Miss Lucille Wilson was
betrothed. The sight of this young man's countenance did not serve to
restore Mr. Prentiss's serenity. On the contrary, he stood gazing at
the photograph with an expression which suggested that his soul was
still perturbed. The face was that of a man of twenty-seven or eight
with delicate features--thin lips, a long nose and an indefinable
haughtiness of expression which was made up of weariness and disdain.
He had large eyes which lacked lustre, and his sparse hair gave the
effect of having been carefully brushed. The clergyman had met him
only a few times, and Mr. Prentiss had never forgotten the first
occasion, which was at Lucille's coming-out ball three years before.
He had happened to find himself in Mr. Waldo's path when the young man
was in the act of carrying everything before him with a plate of salad
for his partner, and he had never forgotten the cold impertinence of
the New Yorker's stare. Paul Howard, Lucille's cousin, who witnessed
the encounter, said afterward that Clarence had given Mr. Prentiss the
dead eye, which was a telling description of the stoniness of the
fashionable New Yorker's gaze. Mr. Prentiss had never heard this
diagnosis, but he had remembered the episode. He regarded it, however,
merely as additional evidence of the lack of reverence on the part of
the young men of the day--and the young women, too, for the matter of
that--not merely for sacred things, but for everything and everybody
which were in their way or did not happen to appeal to their fancy.
But though he considered this absence of social politeness as one of
the cardinal failings of the age, his present thoughts regarding
Lucille's future husband were not concerned with it.
Since the engagement had been announced four months ago he had been
making inquiries, and the information which he had received was in his
mind and troubled his soul as a corollary of the other problems which
had just been haunting him. It was not of a character to justify him
in forbidding the bans--not even in remonstrating with Mrs. Wilson,
unless she were to ask his advice or provide him with an opportunity.
But he deplored sincerely that this young man was to marry his friend's
daughter. Was this to be the outcome, the crowning of the wealth of
love and solicitude which had been lavished on this only child--a child
brought up in his church? Was it for this that Lucille had been made
the central figure of costly entertainments for the last three years,
in the hope that she might make a brilliant match? Decidedly, it was a
puzzling world, and circumstances seemed to be conspiring to cloud his
horizon and disturb his digestion at a time when he ought to be
enjoying himself and taking his ease.
"What does he offer her?" he said to himself. "Twelve months of
sporting life--American sporting life. A superb stable, a four-in-hand
coach and steam yacht, polo, golf, the horse show, cards, six months
every third year in Europe, their summers at Newport, their winters at
Palm Beach. The fortune which she will bring him will enable them to
live in the lap of luxury all the year round, and he will teach her to
regard those who are not rich and who do not imitate their manner of
life as beneath their notice. I know the kind--I know the kind."
Soft footsteps interrupted his mental soliloquy. "No, thank you," he
exclaimed in a tone which was almost militant to the waiters who
approached him with a tray. Mr. Prentiss supposed that another form of
stimulant was being offered him, for Madeira, liqueurs and coffee had
been successively brought in and solemnly presented to him by the two
men servants, one of whom seemed to him as superfluous as a plumber's
helper. Then as his gaze, which had been inward, appreciated that the
silver gilt tumbler contained apollinaris water, he called them back
and emptied the glass. He had finished his cigar and it was time to
rejoin his hostess.